Early Medieval Art

Originally published by Prentice-Hall, 1971.

Earliest Christian art - Saints and holy places - Holy images - Artistic production for the wealthy - Icons & iconography.

Beginning with the coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor of the West in A.D. 800, John Beckwith guides us through the architecture, painting, sculpture, illuminations and ivories of the three great periods of early medieval art. The Ottonian period, perhaps best known for the great center of art and craftsmanship attached to the court, presented an artistic style which had developed from early Christian and Carolingian sources--a style which was the gateway to the great artistic revival in the eleventh and twelfth centuries--the Romanesque period.

In the rapidly changing world of the early Middle Ages, depictions of the cosmos represented a consistent point of reference across the three dominant states--the Frankish, Byzantine, and Islamic Empires. As these empires diverged from their Greco-Roman roots between 700 and 1000 A.D. and established distinctive medieval artistic traditions, cosmic imagery created a web of visual continuity, though local meanings of these images varied greatly. Benjamin Anderson uses thrones, tables, mantles, frescoes, and manuscripts to show how cosmological motifs informed relationships between individuals, especially the ruling elite, and communities, demonstrating how domestic and global politics informed the production and reception of these depictions. The first book to consider such imagery across the dramatically diverse cultures of Western Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic Middle East, Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art illuminates the distinctions between the cosmological art of these three cultural spheres, and reasserts the centrality of astronomical imagery to the study of art history.

This book provides an introduction to early medieval art, both the images themselves and the methods used to study them, focusing on the relationship of word and image, a relationship that was central in northern Europe and the Mediterranean from about 600 to about 1050.

This beautifully produced survey of over a thousand years of Western art and architecture introduces the reader to a vast period of history ranging from ancient Rome to the age of exploration. The monumental arts and the diverse minor arts of the Middle Ages are presented here within the social, religious, and political frameworks of lands as varied as France and Denmark, Spain and Turkey. Marilyn Stokstad also teaches her reader how to look at medieval art-which aspects of architecture, sculpture, or painting are important and for what reasons. Stylistic and iconographic issues and themes are thoroughly addressed with attention paid to aesthetic and social contexts.

An interdisciplinary collection of essays examining Irish and Anglo-Saxon art in the early medieval period.