compare and contrast the classical art and medieval art period/ era
Answers
Explanation:
One of my favorite books was written in 1919 by the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga (1872-1945): The Waning of the Middle Ages. Huizinga contextualized the stirrings of the Renaissance and the revival of classical values, a moment of birth, as the end of the Middle Ages, a moment of death. His thesis was one of commencement, that where every beginning was implicitly a conclusion.
Huizinga saw the contrast between the medieval and Renaissance minds this way: If the medieval mind wants to know the nature or the reason of a thing, it neither looks into it, to analyze its structure, nor behind it, to inquire into its origin, but looks up to heaven, where it shines as an idea. (p. 214). Medieval thought was a matter of spirituality and faith. It was the Renaissance mind that looked into a thing, analyzed its structure, and looked behind it to inquire into its origin. The Renaissance was also less a glorious moment of intellectual curiosity and grand discoveries that it was an ongoing struggle to reconcile the world view promulgated by the Roman Catholic Church with in inexorable changes wrought by advances in science, technology, economics and social structure.
Then there is the wisdom of the late Sir Ernst Gombrich: If art were only, or mainly, an expression of personal vision, there would be no history of art... The art historian's trade rests on the conviction once formulated by [Heinrich] Wofflin, that 'not everything is possible in every period.' (“Art and Illusion”). Gombrich also reminds us that [the great French cultural figure André] Malraux knows that art is born of art, not of nature.
In the classical era, say Greek and Roman art produced from about 600 BCE to about 300 CE, naturalistic representation was central to the purposes art filled and the ideals held by cultures. In medieval times in Europe, let’s call it about 500–1300 CE, art, so much in the service of Christian belief and the Catholic church, was an expression of spiritual Truth. Those truths were not tangible or quantifiable or visually ascertainable; they were felt, known, internal. The art, therefore, needed to express piety, fervor, God’s omniscience and omnipotence, righteousness, the certainty of judgment, the desirability of heaven and so on. These things simply weren’t comparable to the empirical life people knew so the art didn’t need to “match” what they saw with their eyes. It needed to concur what they felt with their hearts. And, of course, what they were taught by clergy.
Periods in art history, like the Renaissance, that focused on classical values and ideals in many ways contrast with the Middle Ages much as the Middle Ages contrasts with earlier classical antiquity.
#FIRSEMACHAENGE
There is no real comparison. The Middle Ages did not even have a conception of “art”. “Art” is a concept that belongs to the modern era. From there it is projected back into times that had no connection with it.
I suggest to look at classical art as classical art and medieval art as something different without comparing both or trying to judge one of them with the aesthetical categories of the other.One of my favorite books was written in 1919 by the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga (1872-1945): The Waning of the Middle Ages. Huizinga contextualized the stirrings of the Renaissance and the revival of classical values, a moment of birth, as the end of the Middle Ages, a moment of death. His thesis was one of commencement, that where every beginning was implicitly a conclusion.
Huizinga saw the contrast between the medieval and Renaissance minds this way: If the medieval mind wants to know the nature or the reason of a thing, it neither looks into it, to analyze its structure, nor behind it, to inquire into its origin, but looks up to heaven, where it shines as an idea. (p. 214). Medieval thought was a matter of spirituality and faith. It was the Renaissance mind that looked into a thing, analyzed its structure, and looked behind it to inquire into its origin. The Renaissance was also less a glorious moment of intellectual curiosity and grand discoveries that it was an ongoing struggle to reconcile the world view promulgated by the Roman Catholic Church with in inexorable changes wrought by advances in science, technology, economics and social structure.
Then there is the wisdom of the late Sir Ernst Gombrich: If art were only, or mainly, an expression of personal vision, there would be no history of art... The art historian's trade rests on the conviction once formulated by [Heinrich] Wofflin, that 'not everything is possible in every period.' (“Art and Illusion”). Gombrich also reminds us that [the great French cultural figure André] Malraux knows that art is born of art, not of nature.
In the classical era, say Greek and Roman art produced from about 600 BCE to about 300 CE, naturalistic representation was central to the purposes art filled and the ideals held by cultures. In medieval times in Europe, let’s call it about 500–1300 CE, art, so much in the service of Christian belief and the Catholic church, was an expression of spiritual Truth. Those truths were not tangible or quantifiable or visually ascertainable; they were felt, known, internal. The art, therefore, needed to express piety, fervor, God’s omniscience and omnipotence, righteousness, the certainty of judgment, the desirability of heaven and so on. These things simply weren’t comparable to the empirical life people knew so the art didn’t need to “match” what they saw with their eyes. It needed to concur what they felt with their hearts. And, of course, what they were taught by clergy.
Periods in art history, like the Renaissance, that focused on classical values and ideals in many ways contrast with the Middle Ages much as the Middle Ages contrasts with earlier classical antiquity.