Eric Knickerbocker
April 14, 2002
After the unprecedented classical art from the Greeks and the Romans, historians see a sharp regression in the realism and life-like qualities of the Early Christian and Byzantine art. Gone are the monumental sculpture, forbidden due to the second commandment. Gone are the graceful movement of the models and the noble emotional portrayal of the features, perfected, as they were, to such a fine degree in classical rendering. Yet there was a reason for this step backward: art was not to be exalted above the inward cleansing of the Christian experience—not to be exalted above God, as it were. God alone was Artist and human use of artistic medium served only to convey this truth and take the seeker to a source higher than itself. Such was the corporate thought, and such was the art that spawned from under its good graces.
The earliest known art from this period came from the catacombs under the city, a place where the renegade Christians gathered in defiance of the prohibition against their religion. The painting on the ceilings and walls was typically crude and artless, but served to effectively illustrate spiritual truths. Motifs from the Bible were recurrent themes during this time period; a favorite scene was Christ as a youthful shepherd without a beard—it would be some time before Christians began portraying the Messiah as a bearded adult—perhaps nodding its head to Archaic Grecian influence?
In time, the spread of Christianity was accelerated when the Emperor Constantine converted and declared Christianity a legal religion in the Roman Empire. While he did not mandate that it be the official religion, due to his influence, the new faith grew to an unforeseen height, soon towering over its other religious competitors. The amount of money and resources he dumped into architectural majesty played no little part in this transition. Soon the countryside became blanketed in basilicas, and a new art form, the mosaic, gained immense popularity for decorating the inner walls, while the patrons were content to leave the outsides somewhat bare and austere in stark contrast to the Greek and Roman temples. The mosaics, like the illuminated manuscripts soon to follow, featured scenes that focused on clarity while rendering their figures stiff and elongated. Still, with the level of illiteracy of the times, such art served to educate the uninitiated and resulted in the conversion of many more to the burgeoning faith. By the close of the Late Byzantine era, paintings and mosaics were beginning to show intimations of emotions, slowly creeping back into the lifeless faces.
Early medieval art came and went, and left little notable impact short of one exception: Charlemagne and his circle responsible for Carolingian art, as it was called. In short, he all but single-handedly revived an interest in classical art and had an impact on the Romanesque period following. Indeed, during this period bigger was better and basilicas climbed higher and higher into the heavens, seeking, as it were, the very face of God Himself. By now the blanket of basilicas had become a “white mantle of churches,” or so said Raoul Glaber, a monk from the eleventh century. Everywhere the eye could see, new projects were underway sporting superior craftsmanship and dazzling design techniques. The wooden roofs of the naves were replaced with vaults, and the vaults soon gave way to arches.
In Southwestern France, St-Sernin, one of the earlier examples from this period, made use of such arches. However, it was Burgundy and Western France which arrived on the prospect first, as is evidenced in Autun Cathedral. Normandy took it to even greater heights with St-Étienne and its four bulging buttresses and impressive towers; England developed Durham Cathedral, which employed groin-vaulting in the form of “double-X” ribs interlacing the ceiling, providing grace, flexibility, and strength. Interestingly, Italy contributed little to this towering trend, however, content to build in Early Christian forms.
Perhaps even more revealing was the resurgence of monumental sculpture along the road to Santiago. Southwestern France saw fit to revive the Byzantine spirit in Archaic art form, as is evidenced by the Apostle at St-Sernin at Toulouse. This relief foreshadows the impressive ornamentation of St-Pierre in Moissac, the same opulence that prompted St. Bernard of Clairvaux to express his rather reluctant and regretful respect in a letter to Abbot William at St-Thierry. Likewise, the Autun Cathedral (alluded to in the preceding paragraph) features the stonework of Giselbertus, replete with scenes carved into the marble surrounding the entrances like so many stone sentinels.
It was to be the Gothic era, however, building on Romanesque innovations, which burst the sonic barrier of towering heights, its weightless structures silhouetting the sky like so many skyscraping castles. An ancient Germanic people, the Goths were thought to be uncivilized, hence the condescending term “Gothic” scorning this apparent excess in architectural renovation. And excessive and wonderful it was! Heights hitherto unimagined were sustained with seeming effortless ease. Delicate, lattice-like exteriors combined with ethereal stained glass interiors created mystical effects aimed at inspiring awe from all it beheld, looking down, as it did, from such lofty grandeur. Few were the persons who felt unimpacted by the sheer sophistication and elegance of these mammoth cathedrals.
The Gothic style owed its birth to Abbot Suger, the primary “architect” who rebuilt the Abbey Church of St-Denis and did much to solidify the power of the kingship by forging a partnership between church and state. Upon entering the St-Denis, one was immediately struck by its featherweight lightness of appearance and how its huge, lacy windows bathed the interior with “heavenly light.” Each section was built with mathematical precision according to exacting ratios, embracing a new symmetry of parts as the preeminent source of beauty for the whole. In addition, the groundbreaking use of the pointed arch allowed for unprecedented flexibility in the integration of various shapes from triangles to trapezoids. This model would serve as the template for the age to follow, soon spreading its wings beyond the borders of Île-de-France’s sky.
Nôtre-Dame (“Our Lady”) in Paris remains one of the most popular standing legacies of Gothic architecture today. Flying buttresses, gargoyles, sexpartite nave vaults arching over rectangular bays: inside and out, the cathedral is a standing marvel of the ingenious of the Gothic architects.
Many other structures—including Chartes and Reims Cathedrals in France, Glouchester Cathedral in England, St. Sebald in Germany, and Florence Catheral in Florence—offer their own impressive expansions and “variations on a theme,” showing the impact Suger left on the world. But it didn’t stop here. Sculpture took on a new freedom, it forms increasingly liberated from their marble medium. Gothic sculpture featured a great emotional expressiveness, one of its crowning hallmarks. Classicism was evidenced to a much greater degree, the contrapposto, sinuous “S-curve” replacing the rigor mortis ridden figures, soon exceeding the classical ideal to forge new boundaries, as with The Virgin of Paris, an oriental-like sculpture of the Madonna and Christ-child. In addition, stained glass became an important element; illuminated manuscripts once again began to regain a foothold in popularity, while painting meanwhile was coaxed to new levels.
Church history evolved considerably from its early Christian/Byzantine days through the Romanesque and into the Gothic. Each generation took the majesty and grace of architecture, sculpture, and other renovations to new heights, until their works towered high above the Gothic skies. In short, much had happened since a humble man led a band of twelve motley members around the countryside; the contributions centered around this one man would forever change the civilized world as we know it. The domes, the cathedrals, the towering minarets—even history itself it seems—pivot around this one man and the people whose lives He impacted. Some say He was a great prophet, some say He was a King, others call Him Lord and Savior. Whoever you say He was, He is certainly hard to ignore, influencing scholars, theologians, artists, poets, mystics and persons from all walks of life as He has for the past two thousand years now. Do you suppose perhaps that He knew something of great towers in the sky?
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