ARTH 2710

Abbey of St. Denis, 1140-1144, [Early Gothic linestone, St. Denis, France

According to legend, after his execution on Montmartre (Martyr's Hill) in Paris, Saint Dionysius, the Christian martyr who was the city's first bishop, miraculously stood up and marched to his grave north of Paris carrying his severed head in hishands. In the seventh century, a Benedictine community of monks settled on the site of the saint's burial and founded an abbey there that they named Saint-Denis in honor of Dionysius. Two centuries later, the monks constructed a basilica at Saint-Denis, which housed the saint's tomb and those of nearly all the French kings dating back to the sixth century, as well as the crimson battle flag said to have belonged to Charlemagne. The Carolingian basilica became France's royal church, the very symbol of the monarchy—just as Speyer Cathedral (FIGS. 12-21 and 12-22) was the burial place of the German rulers of the Holy Roman Empire. Abbot Suger's remodeling of Saint-Denis marked the beginning of Gothic architecture. Rib vaults with pointed arches spring from slender columns. Stainedglass windows admit divine lux nova.

Column of Marcus Aurelius, c. 180 CE, [Antonine] marble, Campus Martius, Rome

Another break with the past occurred in the official portraits of Marcus Aurelius, although his images retain the pompous trappings of imperial iconography. In a larger-than-life-size gilded-bronze equestrian statue (FIG. 7-58), the emperor possesses a superhuman grandeur and is much larger in relation to his horse than any normal human would be. Marcus stretches out his right arm in a gesture that is both a greeting and an offer of clemency. Beneath the horse's raised right foreleg, an enemy once cowered, begging the emperor for mercy. The statue is a rare example of an imperial equestrian portrait, but the type was common in antiquity. For example, an equestrian statue of Trajan stood in the middle of his forum (FIG. 7-44, no. 6). Marcus's portrait survived the wholesale melting down of ancient bronze statues during the Middle Ages because it was mistakenly thought to portray Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome. Perhaps more than any other statuary type, the equestrian portrait expresses the Roman emperor's majesty and authority. In this equestrian portrait of Marcus Aurelius as omnipotent conqueror, the emperor stretches out his arm in a gesture of clemency. An enemy once cowered beneath the horse's raised foreleg. This message of supreme confidence is not, however, conveyed by the portrait head of Marcus's equestrian statue or any of the other portraits of the emperor in the years just before his death. Portraits of aged emperors were not new (FIG. 7-38), but Marcus's were the first in which a Roman emperor appeared weary, saddened, and even worried. For the first time, the strain of constant warfare on the frontiers and the burden of ruling a worldwide empire show in the emperor's face. The Antonine sculptor ventured beyond Republican verism, exposing the ruler's character, his thoughts, and his soul for all to see, as Marcus revealed them himself in his Meditations, a deeply moving philosophical treatise setting forth the emperor's personal worldview. This too was a major turning point in the history of ancient art, and, coming as it did when relief sculptors were also challenging the Classical style (FIG. 7-57), it marked the beginning of the end of Classical art's domination in the Greco-Roman world.

Tomb of the Haterii, Late 1st C. CE, [Flavian] marble, Vatican Museums, Rome

Another tomb featuring a recognizable funerary ritual is that of the Haterii, built around 100 C.E. Discovered piecemeal in Rome since the late 1800s, the original form and layout of the tomb is unknown but the ambition of its decoration and narrative scope is obvious from the series of reliefs and portrait busts that do remain.The Haterii were likely involved in important building projects during the reign of the Flavian emperors (69-96 C.E.), and another relief from the tomb probably documents some of their major projects in Rome including the Flavian Amphitheater (later known as the Colosseum) and the Arch of Titus. Whether all of the reliefs originally constituted a narrative sequence or not is debatable but what does get communicated is the considerable expenditure on this tomb and the biographical means by which it was created. Though amassing considerable wealth, the Haterii family was, nonetheless, of servile origin. Both the Amiternum relief and the Haterii tomb were commissioned by patrons outside of Roman elite society, a factor that had a huge impact on the style and narrative content of the monuments. Funerary art commissioned by the Roman elite almost never referenced commerce or sources of wealth though this was a driving goal for funerary art of the freedmen. Similarly, elite monuments do not document death rituals, though elites certainly observed them. The Amiternum relief and the Haterii tomb, however, rely on a narrative interplay between death ritual and biography. For these patrons, as for many freedmen and women, their final resting places provided an ideal opportunity for documenting ritual observance and, more importantly, for documenting their success in life and commerce.

Cluny III, 1088-1450, [Cluniac Romanesque] Cluny, France

Architectural historians are fortunate that several important late-11th-century churches still stand, but the greatest of them all does not. In 909, William the Pious, duke of Aquitaine (r. 893-918), donated land near Cluny in Burgundy to a community of reform-minded Benedictine monks under the leadership of Berno of Baume (d. 927). Because William waived his feudal rights to the land, the abbot of Cluny was obligated only to the pope in Rome, an exceptional privilege. Berno founded a new order at Cluny according to the rules of Saint Benedict (see "Medieval Monasteries and Benedictine Rule"). Under Berno's successors, the Cluniac monks became famous for their scholarship, music, and art. Their influence and wealth grew rapidly, and they built a series of ever more elaborate monastic churches at Cluny. Abbot Hugh of Semur (1024-1109) began construction of the third church at Cluny in 1088. Called Cluny III by architectural historians, the building has largely vanished, but it is possible to reconstruct what it looked like (FIG. 12-8). When work concluded in 1130, Cluny III was the largest church in Europe, and it retained that distinction for almost 500 years until the completion of the new Saint Peter's (FIG. 24-4) in Rome in the early 17th century. Contemporaries considered Cluny III a place suitable for angels to dwell if they lived on earth. The church had a bold and influential design, with a barrel-vaulted nave, four aisles, and radiating chapels, as at Saint-Sernin (FIGS. 12-6 and 12-7), but with a three-story nave elevation (arcade-tribune-clerestory) and vaults with pointed arches, which became typical of French church architecture only in the Gothic age (see "The Gothic Rib Vault"). With a nave more than 500 feet long and more than 100 feet high (both dimensions are about 50 percent greater than the comparable dimensions of Saint-Sernin), it exemplified the grandiose scale of the new stone-vaulted Romanesque churches and was a symbol of the power and prestige of the Cluniac order. Cluny III was the largest church in Europe for 500 years. It had a 500-foot-long, three-story (arcade-tribune-clerestory) nave, four aisles, radiating chapels, and slightly pointed stone barrel vaults.

Chartres Cathedral, after the fire of 1194-1220, [High Gothic; West Portal: 1140] limestone, Chartres, France

Architectural historians consider the rebuilt Chartres Cathedral the earliest example of High Gothic architecture. The sculptures of its two transept porches are also prime examples of High Gothic style. Churches burned frequently in the Middle Ages (see "The Burning of Canterbury Cathedral"), and church officials often had to raise money unexpectedly for new building campaigns. In contrast to monastic churches, which usually were small and often could be completed quickly, urban cathedrals had construction histories that frequently extended over decades and sometimes centuries, and required a large workforce of quarriers, masons, sculptors, glaziers, and metalsmiths. Financing for building projects depended largely on taxation and donations, and sometimes the clergy offered indulgences (pardons for sins committed) to those who helped underwrite the enormous cost of erecting a large urban cathedral. A shortfall of funds often caused an interruption in the building program. Unforeseen events, such as wars, famines, or plagues, or friction between the town and cathedral authorities would also often halt construction, which then might not resume for years. At Reims in 1323, the townspeople revolted against their heavy tax burden and stormed the bishop's residence, driving him out of the city and suspending work on the cathedral for three years. A notable exception to the rule was the rebuilding of Chartres Cathedral (FIG. 13-12) after the devastating fire of 1194, which took a relatively short 27 years. Chartres Cathedral's mid-12th-century west facade (FIG. 13-4) and the masonry of the crypt to the east were the only sections left standing after the 1194 conflagration. The crypt housed the most precious relic of Chartres—the mantle of the Virgin, which miraculously survived the fire. For reasons of piety and economy, the builders used the crypt for the foundation of the new structure. The retention of the crypt and west facade determined the new church's dimensions but not its plan or elevation. Architectural historians generally consider the post-1194 Chartres Cathedral the first High Gothic (1194-1300) building. The Chartres plan (FIG. 13-13) reveals a new kind of organization. Rectangular nave bays replaced the square bays with sexpartite vaults and the alternate-support system, still present in Early Gothic churches such as Laon Cathedral (FIG. 13-7). The new system, in which a single square in each aisle (rather than two, as before) flanks a single rectangular unit in the nave, became the High Gothic norm.

Coronation Gospels, c. 800 [Carolingian, Palace School] manuscript, Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna

As noted, Charlemagne was a sincere admirer of learning, the arts, and classical culture, even before his coronation as emperor of Rome. He placed high value on books, both sacred and secular, importing many and sponsoring the production of far more. One of the earliest is the Godescalc Lectionary (FIG. 11-12A), securely dated to 781 to 783, but the most famous is the early-ninth-century purple vellum Coronation Gospels (also known as the Gospel Book of Charlemagne), which has a text written in handsome gold letters. The major full-page illuminations, which show the four Gospel authors at work (see "The Four Evangelists"), reveal that, compared with their Hiberno-Saxon counterparts, Carolingian manuscript painters brought a radically different stylistic sensibility to their work. For example, for the page depicting Saint Matthew (FIG. 11-13), the Coronation Gospels painter, in contrast to the Northumbrian illuminator who painted the portrait of the same evangelist in the Lindisfarne Gospels (FIG. 11-8), created shapes using color and modulation of light and shade, not line, and defined the massive drapery folds wrapped around Matthew's body by employing deft, illusionistic brushwork. The cross-legged chair, the lectern, and the saint's toga are familiar Roman accessories. In fact, this Carolingian evangelist portrait closely follows the format and style of Greco-Roman author portraits, as exemplified by the seated Menander (FIG. 7-25) at Pompeii. The Coronation Gospels landscape background also has many parallels in Roman painting, and the frame consists of the kind of acanthus leaves found in Roman temple capitals and friezes (FIG. 7-32). Almost nothing is known in the Hiberno-Saxon or Frankish world that could have prepared the way for this portrayal of Saint Matthew. If a Frankish, rather than an Italian or a Byzantine, artist painted the evangelist portraits of the Coronation Gospels, the Carolingian artist had fully absorbed the classical manner. Classical painting style was one of the many components of Charlemagne's program to establish Aachen as the capital of a renewed Christian Roman Empire. The books produced for Charlemagne's court reveal the legacy of classical art (FIG. 7-25). The Carolingian painter used light, shade, and perspective in this representation of the evangelist at work.

Ara Pacis, (Altar of Peace) c. 13-9 BCE, [Augustan] Marble, Rome Willa of the Mysteries, 1st C. CE, Fresco, Pompeii

Augustus sought to present his new order as a Golden Age equaling that of Athens under Pericles. The Ara Pacis celebrates the emperor's most important achievement, the establishment of peace.

St. Foy, 1050-1120, [Mature or Pulgrimage Romanesque] France Conques, France

Conques, like Toulouse (FIG. 12-5) and Arles (FIG. 12-12B), was a major stopping point along the roads running westward through southern France to the tomb of Saint James at Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain (see "Pilgrimage Roads in France and Spain", and MAP 12-1). Conques boasted the remains of Saint Faith (FIG. 12-2), a child martyr whom the Romans killed in 303 because she refused to sacrifice to the official gods. The abbey church obtained the saint's relics around 880, when a Conques monk stole them from the nearby abbey of Agen. The theft underscores the intense competition among towns and monasteries for saints' relics at a time when pilgrimage traffic was a major source of revenue for churches (see "The Veneration of Relics"). The church of Sainte-Foy (FIG. 12-6A) stands on a lofty hill commanding a picturesque view of the Auvergne countryside. Much smaller than the urban pilgrimage churches at Toulouse and Santiago de Compostela (FIG. 12-6B), Sainte-Foy still had to accommodate large numbers of pilgrims, and it has the same basic plan: a wide nave and a transept and ambulatory with radiating chapels, seven in all. In fact, Conques is the earliest (and best-preserved) of the group of churches of the pilgrimage type. It has a barrel-vaulted nave, buttressed in part by groin vaults in the aisles and quadrant arches in the tribune gallery, as at Santiago de Compostela. The earliest and smallest pilgrimage church is the abbey church at Conques, which features radiating chapels in the apse and transept for displaying the relics of Saint Faith

San Vitale, 528-547, [Justinian] mosaic, Ravenna, Italy

Construction of Ravenna's greatest shrine, San Vitale (FIGS. 9-1 and 9-10), began under Bishop Ecclesius (r. 522-532) shortly after Theodoric's death in 526. A wealthy citizen, Julianus Argentarius (Julian the Banker), provided the enormous sum of 26,000 solidi (gold coins), weighing in excess of 350 pounds, required to proceed with the work. San Vitale is unlike any of the Early Christian churches (FIG. 8-25) of Ravenna. It is not a basilica. Rather, it is centrally planned, like Justinian's churches in Constantinople, and it seems, in fact, to have been loosely modeled on the earlier Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus there. Justinian's general Belisarius captured Ravenna from the Ostrogoths. The city became the seat of Byzantine dominion in Italy. San Vitale honored Saint Vitalis, a second-century Ravenna martyr. As already discussed (see "Church and State United"), San Vitale's design features a dome-covered, clerestory-lit central space defined by piers alternating with curved, columned exedrae, creating an intricate eight-leafed plan (FIG. 9-11). The exedrae closely integrate the inner and outer spaces that otherwise would have existed simply side by side as independent units. A cross-vaulted choir preceding the apse interrupts the ambulatory and gives the plan some axial stability. Weakening this effect, however, is the off-axis placement of the narthex, whose odd angle (and that of the atrium that once preceded the narthex) is probably to be explained by the orientation of the preexisting streets in this section of Ravenna.

Reims Cathedral, begun 1211, [High Gothic] limestone, Reims, France

Construction of Reims Cathedral in the heart of France's Champagne wine district began about a decade before work commenced at Amiens. Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Reims Cathedral occupies a special place in the history of France as well as in the history of architecture. Since 496 it has been the site of all French kings' coronations. The architects were Jean d'Orbais, Jean le Loup, Gaucher de Reims,and Bernard de Soissons. The last two were primarily responsible for the west facade (FIG. 13-24), where they carried the High Gothic style of Amiens still further, both architecturally and sculpturally. The Amiens and Reims facades, although similar, display some significant differences. The kings' gallery of statues at Reims is above the great rose window, and the figures stand in taller and more ornate frames. In fact, the builders "stretched" every detail of the facade. The openings in the towers and those to the left and right of the rose window are taller, narrower, and more intricately decorated, and they more closely resemble the elegant lancets of the clerestory within (FIG. 13-24A). A pointed arch also frames the rose window itself, and the pinnacles over the portals are taller and more elaborate than those at Amiens. Most striking, however, is the treatment of the tympana over the doorways, where the builders inserted stained-glass windows instead of the stone relief sculptures that adorned earlier facades. The contrast with Romanesque heavy masonry construction (FIG. 12-33) is extreme. No less noteworthy, however, is the rapid transformation of the Gothic facade since the 12th-century designs of Saint-Denis (FIG. 13-1) and Chartres (FIG. 13-4) and even Laon (FIG. 13-8). Reims Cathedral's facade reveals High Gothic architects' desire to replace heavy masonry with intricately framed voids. Stained-glass windows, not stone reliefs, fill the three tympana. Reims Cathedral is also a prime example of the High Gothic style in sculpture. The statues and reliefs of the west facade celebrate the Virgin Mary. Above the central gable, Mary is crowned as queen of Heaven. On the trumeau, she is the youthful Mother of God above reliefs depicting Original Sin. (Many medieval theologians considered Mary the new Eve, who, through her son, Jesus, the new Adam, can guide the way to redemption.) The jamb statues to Mary's left and right relate episodes from the infancy cycle (see "The Life of Jesus in Art"), including the Annunciation and Visitation (FIG. 13-25). The statues appear completely detached from their architectural background because the sculptors shrank the supporting columns into insignificance. The columns in no way restrict the free and easy movements of the full-bodied figures. These 13th-century jamb statues contrast strikingly with those of the Early Gothic Royal Portal (FIG. 13-6), where the background columns occupy a volume equal to that of the figures.

St. Sernin, 1060-1119, [Mature or Pilgramage Romanesque] Toulouse, France

Dwarfing the Vignory, Cardona, and Tournus churches is the immense stone-vaulted basilica of Saint-Sernin (Saint Saturninus; FIG. 12-5) at Toulouse. Construction began around 1070 to honor the city's first bishop, a martyr saint of the mid-third century. Toulouse was an important stop on the pilgrimage road through southwestern France to Santiago de Compostela (see "Pilgrimage Roads"). Large congregations gathered at the shrines along the major pilgrimage routes, and the unknown architect designed Saint-Sernin to accommodate them. The grand scale of the building is apparent in the aerial view reproduced here, which includes automobiles, trucks, and nearly invisible pedestrians. The church's 12th-century exterior is still largely intact, although the two towers of the western facade (FIG. 12-5, left) were never completed, and the prominent crossing tower dates to the Gothic and later periods. Pilgrimages were a major economic catalyst in the Romanesque era. The clergy vied to provide magnificent settings for the display of holy relics. Toulouse was a major stop on the road to Santiago de Compostela. Saint-Sernin's plan (FIG. 12-6) closely resembles those of the churches of Sainte-Foy (FIG. 12-6A) at Conques, Saint James (FIG. 12-6B) at Santiago de Compostela, and Saint-Martin at Tours, and exemplifies what has come to be called the "pilgrimage church" type. At Toulouse, the builders increased the length of the nave, doubled the side aisles, and added a transept, ambulatory, and radiating chapels to provide additional space for pilgrims and the clergy. Radiating chapels opening onto an ambulatory had been introduced earlier in Vignory's abbey church (FIG. 12-4), but at Toulouse the chapels are greater in number and open onto the transept as well as the ambulatory. The Saint-Sernin plan is extremely regular and geometrically precise. The crossing square, flanked by massive piers and marked off by heavy arches, served as the module for the entire church. Each nave bay, for example, measures exactly one half of the crossing square, and each aisle bay measures exactly one quarter. The builders employed similar simple ratios throughout the church. The first suggestion of this kind of planning scheme in medieval Europe was the Saint Gall monastery plan (FIG. 11-20) almost three centuries earlier. The Toulouse solution was a crisply rational and highly refined realization of an idea first seen in Carolingian architecture. This approach to design became increasingly common in the Romanesque period. Another telling feature of Saint-Sernin's design is the insertion of tribunes opening onto the nave over the inner aisles (FIG. 12-7), a feature also of the nave (FIG. 12-6B) of the church of Saint James at Santiago de Compostela. These galleries housed overflow crowds on special occasions and played an important role in buttressing the nave's continuous semicircular cut-stone barrel vault, in contrast to the fire-prone timber roof over the nave (FIG. 12-3) of the smaller abbey church at Vignory (see "The Burning of Canterbury Cathedral"). Groin vaults (indicated by Xs on the plan, FIG. 12-6; compare FIG. 7-6) in the tribunes as well as in the ground-floor aisles absorbed the pressure exerted by the barrel vault along the entire length of the nave and transferred the main thrust to the thick outer walls (see "Stone Vaulting in Romanesque Churches"). The builders of Saint-Sernin were not content merely to buttress the massive nave vault. They also carefully coordinated the design of the vault with that of the nave arcade below and with the modular plan of the building as a whole. The nave elevation (FIG. 12-7), which features engaged columns (attached half-columns) embellishing the piers marking the corners of the bays, fully reflects the church's geometric floor plan (FIG. 12-6). Architectural historians refer to piers with columns or pilasters attached to their rectangular cores as compound piers. At Saint-Sernin, the engaged columns rise from the bottom of the compound piers to the vault's springing (the lowest stone of an arch) and continue across the nave as transverse arches. As a result, the Saint-Sernin nave gives the impression of being numerous identical vertical volumes of space placed one behind the other, marching down the building's length in orderly procession. Saint-Sernin's spatial organization corresponds to and renders visually the plan's geometric organization. The articulation of the building's exterior walls (FIG. 12-5), where buttresses frame each bay, also reflects the segmentation of the nave. This rationally integrated scheme, with repeated units decorated and separated by moldings, would have a long future in European church architecture.

House of Vetii, before 79 CE, [Julio-Claudian] Fresco, Pompeii

Extant houses—for example, the House of the Vettii (FIG. 7-16)— display endless variations of the same basic plan, dictated by the owners' personal tastes and means, the size and shape of the lot, and so forth, but all Roman houses of this type were inward-looking in nature. The design shut off the street's noise and dust, and all internal activity focused on the brightly illuminated atrium at the center of the residence. This basic module (only the front half of the typical house in FIG. 7-15) resembles the plan of the typical Etruscan house as reflected in the tombs of Cerveteri (FIGS. 6-7 and 6-7A). The early Roman house, like the early Roman temple, grew out of the Etruscan tradition. The house of the Vettius brothers was of the later Hellenized type with a peristyle garden behind the atrium. The impluvium below the open roof collected rainwater for domestic use.

Doors of Bishop Bernward, c. 1015, [Ottonian], bronze St. Michael's, Hildesheim, Germany

In 1001, when Bishop Bernward was in Rome visiting the young Otto III, he resided in Otto's palace on the Aventine Hill in the neighborhood of Santa Sabina (FIGS. 8-18 and 8-19), an Early Christian church renowned for its carved wood doors (FIG. 8-19A). Those doors, decorated with episodes from both the Old and New Testaments, may have inspired the remarkable bronze doors that the bishop commissioned for his new church in Germany. The doors (FIG. 11-26) to Saint Michael's, dated by inscription to 1015, are more than 15 feet tall. They are technological marvels, because the Ottonian metalworkers cast each door in a single piece with the figural sculpture. Carolingian sculpture, like most sculpture since Late Antiquity, consisted primarily of small-scale art executed in ivory and precious metals, often for book covers (FIG. 11-16). The Hildesheim doors are gigantic in comparison, but the 16 individual panels stem from this tradition. Bernward's doors tell the story of Original Sin and redemption, and draw parallels between the Old and New Testaments, juxtaposing, for example, Eve nursing Cain with Mary and the infant Christ. Bernward placed the bronze doors in the portal to Saint Michael's that led from the cloister, where the monks would see them each time they entered the church. The panels of the left door illustrate highlights from Genesis, beginning with the creation of Eve (at the top) and ending with the murder of Abel, Adam and Eve's son, by his brother Cain (at the bottom). The right door recounts the life of Christ (reading from the bottom up), starting with the Annunciation and terminating with Noli me tangere, when Christ appears to Mary Magdalene after his resurrection (see "The Life of Jesus in Art"). Together, the doors tell the story of Original Sin and ultimate redemption, showing the expulsion from the Garden of Eden and the path back to Paradise through the Church. (Reliefs depicting additional episodes from Jesus's life decorate a bronze column [FIG. 11-26A] that Bernward also commissioned for Saint Michael's.) As in Early Christian times, the Ottonian clergy interpreted the Hebrew Bible as prefiguring the New Testament (see "Old Testament Subjects in Christian Art"). For example, the Hildesheim designer juxtaposed the Fall of Adam and Eve on the left door with the Crucifixion on the right door. Eve nursing the infant Cain is opposite Mary with the Christ Child in her lap. The composition of many of the scenes on the doors derives from Carolingian manuscript illumination, and the style of the figures has an expressive strength that brings to mind the illustrations in the Utrecht Psalter (FIGS. 11-14A and 11-15). For example, in the fourth panel (FIG. 11-27) from the top on the left door, God, portrayed as a man, accuses Adam and Eve after their fall from grace. He jabs his finger at them with the force of his whole body. The force is concentrated in the gesture, which becomes the psychic focus of the entire composition. The frightened pair crouch, not only to hide their shame but also to escape the lightning bolt of divine wrath. Each passes the blame—Adam pointing backward to Eve and Eve pointing downward to the deceitful serpent. The starkly flat setting throws into relief the gestures and attitudes of rage, accusation, guilt, and fear. The sculptor presented the story with simplicity, although with great emotional impact, as well as a flair for anecdotal detail. Adam and Eve both struggle to point with one arm while attempting to shield their bodies from view with the other. With an instinct for expressive pose and gesture, the artist brilliantly communicated their newfound embarrassment at their nakedness and their unconvincing denials of wrongdoing.

Palatine Chapel, 792-805, [Carolingian] Aachen, Germany

In his eagerness to reestablish the imperial past, Charlemagne also encouraged the use of Roman building techniques. In architecture, as in sculpture and painting, innovations made in the reinterpretation of earlier Roman Christian sources became fundamental to the subsequent development of northern European architecture. For his models, Charlemagne looked to Rome and Ravenna. One was the former heart of the Roman Empire, which he wanted to renew. The other was the long-term western outpost of Byzantine might and splendor, which he wanted to emulate in his own capital at Aachen, a site chosen because of its renowned hot springs. Charlemagne often visited Ravenna, and the equestrian statue of Theodoric he brought from there to display in his Aachen palace complex served as a model for Carolingian equestrian portraits (FIG. 11-12). Charlemagne also imported porphyry (purple marble) columns from Ravenna to adorn his Palatine Chapel (see "Charlemagne's Palatine Chapel at Aachen"), and historians long have thought that he chose one of Ravenna's churches as the model for the new structure. The Aachen chapel's plan (FIG. 11-17) resembles San Vitale's (FIG. 9-11), and a direct relationship very likely exists between the two. Charlemagne sought to emulate Byzantine splendor in Germany. The plan of his Aachen chapel is based on that of San Vitale (FIG. 9-11) at Ravenna, but the architect omitted San Vitale's apse-like extensions.

Hagia Sophia, 532-37, [Justinian] Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey)

Like the emperors of Old Rome, Justinian was an ambitious builder. In Constantinople alone, he erected or restored more than 30 churches of the Orthodox faith. Procopius, the official chronicler of the Justinianic era, admitted that the emperor's extravagant building program was an obsession that cost his subjects dearly in taxation. But Justinian's monuments defined the Byzantine style in architecture forever after. The emperor's most important project was the construction of Hagia Sophia (FIG. 9-5), the church of Holy Wisdom, in Constantinople. Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus, respectively a mathematician and a physicist (neither man an architect in the modern sense of the word), designed and built the church for Justinian between 532 and 537. They began work immediately after fire destroyed an earlier church on the site during the Nika riot in January 532. Justinian intended the new church to rival all other churches ever erected and even to surpass in scale and magnificence the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. The result was Byzantium's grandest building and one of the supreme accomplishments of world architecture. Justinian's reign was the first golden age of Byzantine art and architecture. Hagia Sophia was the most magnificent of the more than 30 churches that Justinian built or restored in Constantinople alone. Hagia Sophia's dimensions are formidable for any structure not made of steel. In plan (FIG. 9-6), it is about 270 feet long and 240 feet wide. The dome is 108 feet in diameter, and its crown rises some 180 feet above the pavement (FIGS. 9-7 and 9-8). (The first dome collapsed in 558. Its replacement required repair in the 9th and 14th centuries. The present dome is steeper and more stable than the original.) In scale, Hagia Sophia rivals the architectural wonders of Rome: the Pantheon (FIG. 7-49), the Baths of Caracalla (FIG. 7-65) and Diocletian (FIG. 7-66), and the Basilica Nova (FIG. 7-74). In exterior view (FIG. 9-5), the great dome dominates the structure, but the building's external aspects today are much changed from their original appearance. The huge buttresses are later additions to the Justinianic design, and after the Ottoman conquest of 1453, when Hagia Sophia became a mosque, the Turks constructed four towering minarets (see "The Mosque") at the corners of the former church. The building became a museum in 1935, but many in Turkey today wish to reconsecrate it as an Islamic shrine and reopen the building as a mosque for Muslim worship.

Notre Dame, 1163-1250, [Early Gothic transtitioning to High Gothic, S. Transept: Rayonnant Gothic] limestone, Paris, France

Notre-Dame (FIG. 13-10) occupies a picturesque site on an island in the Seine River called the Île-de-la-Cité. The Gothic church, which replaced a large Merovingian basilica, has a complicated building history. The choir and transept were in place by 1182, the nave by about 1225, and the facade not until 1250 to 1260. Sexpartite vaults cover the nave, as at Laon. The original elevation (the builders modified the design as work progressed) had four stories, but the scheme (FIG. 13-15b) differed from Laon's (FIG. 13-15a). In each bay, in place of the triforium over the gallery, was a stained-glass oculus (small round window), opening up the wall below the clerestory lancet. As a result, windows filled two of the four stories, further reducing the masonry area. The innovative architectural device that made this possible was the flying buttress,an external buttress that springs from the lower roofs over the aisles and ambulatory and counters the outward thrust of the nave vaults. Gothic builders had introduced flying buttresses as early as 1150 in a few smaller churches, but at Notre-Dame in Paris, they circle a great urban cathedral. The internal quadrant arches (FIG. 12-36, right) beneath the aisle roofs at Durham, also employed at Laon, perform a similar function and may be regarded as precedents for exposed Gothic flying buttresses. The combination of precisely positioned flying buttresses and rib vaults with pointed arches was the ideal solution to the problem of constructing lofty naves with huge windows King Philip II initiated a building boom in Paris, which quickly became the intellectual capital of Europe. Notre-Dame in Paris was the first great cathedral built using flying buttresses. One result of the urbanization of Paris that had enormous consequences for the later history of Europe was the emergence of cities as the centers of scholarship and teaching, displacing monasteries in this role. Although Rome remained the religious center of Western Christendom, the Île-de-France and Paris in particular became its intellectual capital as well as the leading artistic center of the Gothic world. The University of Paris attracted the best minds from all over Europe. Virtually every thinker of note in the Gothic age at some point studied or taught in Paris. Even in the Romanesque period, Paris was a center of learning. Its Cathedral School professors, known as Schoolmen, developed the philosophy called Scholasticism. The greatest of the early Schoolmen was Peter Abelard (1079-1142), a champion of logical reasoning. Abelard and his contemporaries had been introduced to the writings of the Greek philosopher Aristotle through the Arabic scholars of Islamic Spain. Abelard applied Aristotle's system of rational inquiry to the interpretation of religious belief. Until the 12th century, both clergy and laymen considered truth the exclusive property of divine revelation as given in the holy scriptures. But the Schoolmen, using Aristotle's method, sought to demonstrate that reason alone could lead to certain truths. Their goal was to prove the central articles of Christian faith by argument (disputatio). In Scholastic argument, the Schoolmen stated a possibility, then cited an authoritative view in objection, next reconciled the positions, and, finally, offered a reply to each of the rejected original arguments. One of Abelard's greatest critics was Bernard of Clairvaux (see "Bernard of Clairvaux"), who believed that Scholasticism was equivalent to questioning Christian dogma. Although Bernard succeeded in 1140 in having the Church officially condemn Abelard's doctrines, the Schoolmen's philosophy developed systematically until it became the dominant Western philosophy of the late Middle Ages. By the 13th century, the Schoolmen of Paris already had organized as a professional guild of master scholars, separate from the numerous Church schools overseen by the bishop of Paris. The structure of the Parisian guild served as the model for many other European universities. The greatest advocate of Abelard's Scholasticism was Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), an Italian Dominican friar who was declared a saint in 1323. Aquinas settled in Paris in 1244. There, the German theologian Albertus Magnus (d. 1280) instructed him in Aristotelian philosophy. Aquinas went on to become an influential teacher at the University of Paris. His most famous work, Summa Theologica (Compendium of Theology; left unfinished at his death), is a model of the Scholastic approach to knowledge. Aquinas divided his treatise into books, the books into questions, the questions into articles, each article into objections with contradictions and responses, and, finally, answers to the objections. He set forth five ways to prove the existence of God by rational argument. Aquinas's work remains the foundation of contemporary Catholic teaching.

Statue of Aula Metellus (The Orator), 1st C. BCE, [Late Etruscan / Early Republican] bronze, Archaeological Museum, Florence

One of the latest extant works produced for an Etruscan patron is the bronze statue (FIG. 6-17) portraying the magistrate Aule Metele raising his arm to address an assembly—hence his modern nickname Arringatore (Orator). This life-size statue, which dates to the early first century bce, proves that Etruscan artists continued to be experts at bronze-casting long after the heyday of Etruscan prosperity. The time coincides with the Roman achievement of total domination of Etruria. The so-called Social War ended in 89 bce with the conferring of Roman citizenship on all of Italy's inhabitants. In fact, Aule Metele—identifiable because the sculptor inscribed the magistrate's Etruscan name and those of his father and mother on the hem of his garment—wears the short toga and high, laced boots of a Roman magistrate. His head, with its close-cropped hair and signs of age in the face, resembles portraits produced in Rome at the same time. This orator is Etruscan in name only. If the origin of the Etruscans remains the subject of debate, the question of their demise has a ready answer. Aule Metele and his compatriots became Roman citizens, and Etruscan art became Roman art. This life-size bronze statue portraying Aule Metele is Etruscan in name only. The orator wears the short toga and high boots of a Roman magistrate, and the portrait style is Roman as well.

San Apollinaire in Classe, 6th C., [Justinian] mosaic, Classe, Italy

Ravenna is famous for its treasure trove of Early Christian and Byzantine mosaics. About 30 years later than the Galla Placidia mosaics are those of Ravenna's Orthodox Baptistery (FIG. 8-24A). An especially large cycle of mosaics adorns the palace-church (FIG. 8-25) that Theodoric built soon after he settled in Ravenna. A three-aisled basilica originally dedicated to "Our Lord Jesus Christ," the church, probably constructed between 495 and 504, was rededicated in the ninth century as Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, when it acquired the relics of Saint Apollinaris. The rich mosaic decoration of the nave walls fills three zones. Only the upper two remain unchanged from Theodoric's time. Hebrew patriarchs and prophets stand between the clerestory windows. Above them, scenes from Christ's life alternate with decorative panels. Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, established his capital at Ravenna in 493. His palace-church features an extensive series of mosaics depicting Hebrew prophets and scenes from the life of Christ.

Temple of Fortuna Virilis, 1st C. BCE, [Republican Period] Forum Boarium, Rome

Republican temples combined Etruscan plans and Greek elevations. This pseudoperipteral stone temple employs the Ionic order, but it has a staircase and freestanding columns only at the front. The most impressive and innovative use of concrete during the Republic was in the Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia (FIG. 7-5), the goddess of good fortune, at Palestrina, southeast of Rome. Spread out over several terraces leading up the hillside to a tholos at the peak of an ascending triangle, the layout reflects the new Republican familiarity with the terraced sanctuaries of the Hellenistic East. The construction method, however, was distinctly Roman. Concrete construction made possible Fortuna's hillside sanctuary at Palestrina with its terraces, ramps, shops, and porticos spread out over several levels. A tholos temple crowned the complex.

Vesperbild (Pietas), 14th C., [German Gothic Sculpture] Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The 13th-century donor statues at Naumburg and the Bamberg Rider stand in marked contrast to a haunting 14th-century German painted wood statuette (FIG. 13-52) of the Virgin Mary holding the dead Christ in her lap. As does the Crucifixion (FIGS. 13-49 and 13-49A) of Naumburg's west choir, this Pietà (Italian, "pity" or "compassion") reflects the increased interest during the 13th and 14th centuries in humanizing biblical figures and in the suffering of Jesus and the grief of his mother and followers. This expressed emotionalism accompanied the shift toward the representation of the human body in motion. As the figures of the church portals began to twist on their columns, then move within their niches, and then stand independently, their details became more outwardly related to the human audience as indicators of recognizable human emotions. This statuette of the Virgin grieving over the distorted dead body of Christ in her lap reflects the increased interest during the 13th and 14th centuries in the Savior's suffering and the Virgin's grief. The sculptor of the Röttgen Pietà (named after a collector) portrayed Christ as a stunted, distorted human wreck, stiffened in death and covered with streams of blood gushing from a huge wound. The Virgin, who cradles him in her lap as if he were a child, is the very image of maternal anguish, her oversized face twisted in an expression of unbearable grief. This statue expresses nothing of the serenity of Romanesque (FIG. 12-20) and earlier Gothic (FIG. 13-17) depictions of Mary. Nor does it have anything in common with the aloof, iconic images of the Theotokos with the infant Jesus in her lap common in Byzantine art (FIGS. 9-19 and 9-20). Here the artist forcibly confronts the devout with an appalling icon of agony, death, and sorrow. The work calls out to the horrified believer, "What is your suffering compared to this?"

Colesseum (Flavian Amphitheater), c. 80 CE, [Flavian] concrete & travertine, Rome

The Flavians left their mark on the capital in many ways, not the least being the construction of the Colosseum (FIGS. 7-2, no. 17; 7-36; and 7-37), the gigantic amphitheater that, for most people, still represents Rome more than any other building. The Flavian Amphitheater, as it was then known, was one of Vespasian's first undertakings after becoming emperor. The decision to build the Colosseum was politically shrewd. The site chosen was the artificial lake on the grounds of Nero's Domus Aurea, which engineers drained to make way for the new entertainment center. By building his amphitheater there, Vespasian reclaimed for the public the land that Nero had confiscated for his private pleasure, and provided Romans with the largest arena for gladiatorial combats and other lavish spectacles ever constructed. The Colosseum takes its name, however, not from its size—although it could hold more than 50,000 spectators—but from its location beside the Colossus of Nero (FIG. 7-2, no. 16), the 120-foot-tall statue at the entrance to his urban villa. Vespasian did not live to see the Colosseum in use. But his elder son, Titus, completed and formally dedicated the amphitheater in the year 80 with great fanfare A complex system of concrete barrel vaults once held up the seats in the world's largest amphitheater, where 50,000 spectators could watch gladiatorial combats and wild animal hunts. The Colosseum, like the much earlier Pompeian amphitheater (FIG. 7-13), could not have been built without concrete. Concrete engineering had, however, advanced rapidly during the century and a half since the Pompeians constructed the earliest known amphitheater. In the Colosseum, instead of an earthen mound, a complex system of barrel-vaulted corridors held up the enormous oval seating area. This concrete "skeleton" is exposed today because in the centuries following the fall of Rome, the Colosseum served as a convenient quarry for ready-made building materials. All of its marble seats were hauled away (the remaining ones are restorations of the Fascist era in Rome), revealing the network of vaults below (FIG. 7-36). Also visible today but hidden in antiquity are the arena substructures, which in their present form date to the third century ce. They housed waiting rooms for the gladiators, animal cages, and machinery for raising and lowering stage sets as well as animals and humans. Cleverly designed lifting devices brought beasts from their dark dens into the arena's bright light. Above the seats, a great velarium, as at Pompeii (FIG. 7-14), once shielded the spectators. The exterior travertine shell (FIG. 7-37) is approximately 160 feet high, the height of a modern 16-story building. In antiquity, 76 numbered gateways provided efficient entrance and exit paths leading to and from the cavea, where, as at Pompeii, the spectators sat according to their place in the social hierarchy. The decor of the exterior, however, had nothing to do with function. The architect divided the facade into four bands, with large arched openings piercing the lower three. Ornamental Greek orders frame the arches in the standard Roman sequence for multistory buildings: from the ground up, Tuscan, Ionic, and then Corinthian. The diverse proportions of the orders formed the basis for this progression, with the Tuscan viewed as capable of supporting the heaviest load. Corinthian pilasters (and between them the brackets for the wood poles that held up the velarium; compare FIG. 7-14) circle the uppermost story.

Baths of Caracalla (Antonine Baths), c. 217 CE, [Severan] concrete, Esquiline Hill, Rome

The Severans were also active builders in the capital. The Baths of Caracalla (FIG. 7-65) in Rome were the greatest in a long line of bathing and recreational complexes constructed, beginning with Augustus, with imperial funds to win the public's favor. Caracalla's baths dwarfed the typical baths of cities and towns such as Ostia (FIG. 7-53A) and Pompeii. All the rooms had thick brick-faced concrete walls up to 140 feet high, covered by enormous concrete vaults. The design was symmetrical along a central axis, facilitating the Roman custom of taking sequential plunges in warm-, hot-, and cold-water baths in, respectively, the tepidarium, caldarium, and frigidarium. The caldarium (FIG. 7-65, no. 4) was a huge circular chamber with a concrete drum even taller than the Pantheon's (FIGS. 7-50 and 7-51) and a dome almost as large. Caracalla's 50-acre bathing complex also included landscaped gardens, lecture halls, libraries, colonnaded exercise courts (palaestras), and a giant swimming pool (natatio). Archaeologists estimate that up to 1,600 bathersat a time could enjoy this Roman equivalent of a modern health spa. A branch of one of the city's major aqueducts supplied water, and furnaces circulated hot air through hollow floors and walls throughout the bathing rooms. (The Romans were pioneers in central heating, as in so many other areas.) Caracalla's baths could accommodate 1,600 bathers. They resembled a modern health spa and included libraries, lecture halls, and exercise courts in addition to bathing rooms and a swimming pool. The Baths of Caracalla also featured stucco-covered vaults, marble-faced walls, marble statuary, and mosaic floors—both black-and-white (compare FIG. 7-53A) and polychrome. One of the statues on display was the 10-foot-tall marble version of Lysippos's Herakles (FIG. 5-66), whose muscular body must have inspired Romans to exercise vigorously. The concrete vaults of the Baths of Caracalla collapsed long ago, but visitors can approximate the original appearance of the central bathing hall, the frigidarium, by entering the nave (FIG. 7-66) of the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome, which was once the frigidarium of the later Baths of Diocletian. The Renaissance interior (remodeled in the 18th century) of that church has, of course, many features foreign to a Roman bath, including a painted altarpiece. The ancient mosaics and marble revetment are long gone, but the present-day interior— with its rich wall treatment, colossal columns with Composite capitals, immense groin vaults, and clerestory lighting—provides a better sense of what it was like to be in a Roman imperial bathing complex than does any other building in the world. It takes a powerful imagination to visualize the original appearance of Roman concrete buildings from the pathetic ruins of brick-faced walls and fallen vaults at ancient sites today, but Santa Maria degli Angeli— and the Pantheon (FIG. 7-51)—make the task much easier.

Oseberg Ship Burial (ship prow detail & wagon) 9th C., [Viking, Oseberg Period] Oak, Oseberg, Norway

The Vikings, famous for their prowess as shipbuilders and sailors, were not the only early medieval northern European civilization to bury their elite in sailing vessels, whether beneath grand earthen mounds or set adrift in the ocean. For example, the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf saga recounts the funeral of the warrior lord Scyld, whom his comrades laid to rest in a ship overflowing with arms and armor and costly adornments. They laid their dear lord, the giver of rings, deep within the ship by the mast in majesty; many treasures and adornments from far and wide were gathered there. I have never heard of a ship equipped more handsomely with weapons and war-gear, swords and corselets; on his breast lay countless treasures that were to travel far with him into the waves' domain. Two archaeological discoveries during the first half of the 20th century at Sutton Hoo (FIGS. 11-3 and 11-3A) in England and Oseberg (FIG. 11-4) in Norway confirmed that ship burials were not fictional literary inventions. Norwegian excavators discovered the Oseberg ship in 1904 in a burial mound near Tonsberg on the west coast of the Oslo fjord. Grave robbers had long before plundered the treasure of jewelry and metalwork presumably buried with the deceased, but most of the other furnishings of the ship were intact. These included five animal-head posts (FIG. 11-4A) of uncertain function found in the ship's burial chamber, dated ca. 834 based on analysis of the tree rings in the wood. The burial chamber also contained the remains of two women of different ages, clothing, furniture, and a four-wheeled cart. Scholars are uncertain whether the older woman, thought to be 60-70 years of age, or her younger companion, a woman about 50 years old, was the more important, the other possibly being her attendant, who may have been sacrificed to accompany her mistress into the afterlife. Also found aboard the Oseberg ship were the skeletons of 14 horses, three dogs, and an ox. This Viking burial ship features carved wood ornament with interlaced animals. In it were the remains of two women, 14 horses, three dogs, and an ox. There was probably also a treasure of jewelry and metalwork. The ship itself is most likely about 15 years older than the burial and was a seaworthy vessel, but because of its relatively light construction, it probably was used only for coastal voyages. Fifteen pairs of holes for oars indicate that 30 rowers formed the crew of the Oseberg ship. The mast was about 28 feet tall. The vessel may have been a pleasure yacht belonging to a woman of high status. It has an elegant, elongated shape designed to cut through the water. Its sweeping lines end in a stylized sea serpent's head at the top of the prow. All along the border of the ship are carved reliefs of interlaced animals, the most characteristic motif in the Viking decorative repertoire.

Chapel of Henry VII, 1503-1512, [English Gothic, Perpendicular Style] Westminster Abbey, London, England

The decorative, structure-disguising qualities of the Perpendicular style became even more pronounced in its late phases. The primary example (FIG. 13-45) is the early-16th-century ceiling of the chapel of Henry VII (FIG. 13-45A) adjoining Westminster Abbey in London. Here, Robert and William Vertue turned the earlier English linear play of ribs into a kind of architectural embroidery. The architects pulled the ribs into distinctly English fan vaults (vaults with radiating ribs forming a fanlike pattern) with large hanging pendants resembling stalactites. The vault looks as if it had been some organic mass hardened in the process of melting. Intricate tracery resembling lace overwhelms the cones hanging from the ceiling. The chapel represents the dissolution of structural Gothic into decorative fancy. The architects released the Gothic style's original lines from their function and multiplied them into the uninhibited architectural virtuosity and theatrics of the Perpendicular style. A parallel phenomenon in France is the Flamboyant style of Saint-Maclou (FIG. 13-28) at Rouen. The chapel of Henry VII is the primary example of the decorative and structure-disguising qualities of the Perpendicular style in the use of fan vaults with lacelike tracery and pendants resembling stalactites. The Chapel of Henry VII is the culminating feature of the east end of Westminster Abbey (FIG. 13-45A). It replaced an earlier lady chapel (a chapel in an English church dedicated to Our Lady, the Virgin Mary). Erected with funds provided in King Henry's will, the chapel was designed to house the monarch's tomb and that of his wife, Elizabeth of York. The tombs of other English kings and queens were subsequently also installed in Henry's lady chapel.

Church of Old St. Peter's, c. 325, [Constantine] Rome

The greatest of Constantine's churches in Rome was Old Saint Peter's (FIGS. 8-9 and 8-10), probably begun as early as 319. The present-day church (FIGS. 22-25, 24-3, and 24-4), one of the masterpieces of Italian Renaissance and Baroque architecture, is a replacement for the Constantinian structure. Old Saint Peter's stood on the western side of the Tiber River, on a terrace on the irregular slope of the Vatican Hill over the ancient cemetery in which Constantine and Pope Sylvester (r. 314-335) believed that Peter, the founder of the Christian community in Rome, had been buried (see "Early Christian Saints"). In keeping with Roman burial practice, Peter's grave, like those of all Christian martyrs, was on the city's outskirts. The decision to erect Peter's church on the Vatican Hill also enabled Constantine to locate the new Christian shrine away from the city center to avoid any confrontation between Rome's Christians and those who continued to worship the old gods. Excavations in the Roman cemetery beneath Saint Peter's have in fact revealed a second-century martyrium erected in honor of Peter at his reputed grave. Capable of housing 3,000 to 4,000 worshipers at one time, the immense church (its nave was 300 feet long) enshrined Peter's tomb, one of the most hallowed sites in Christendom, second only to the Holy Sepulchre (FIG. 8-8C) in Jerusalem, the site of Christ's resurrection. The project also fulfilled the figurative words of Christ himself, when he said, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church" (Matt. 16:18). Peter was Rome's first bishop and the head of the long line of popes extending to the present. (Saint Peter's, however, is not the cathedral of Rome—the bishop's church, from the Latin word for seat or throne, cathedra—despite its location in Vatican City.) Old Saint Peter's followed the pattern of Roman basilicas in most respects (see "What Should a Church Look Like?"), but a special feature of this Constantinian church was the transept, or transverse aisle, an area perpendicular to the nave between the nave and apse (FIG. 8-10). Over the archway leading into the transept was an inscription stating that "Constantine, victor, built this hall." The transept housed Saint Peter's relics, which attracted hordes of pilgrims. (Relics are body parts, clothing, or objects associated with a saint or Christ himself; see "The Veneration of Relics".) Transepts were, however, rare additions to Early Christian basilicas. The transept became a standard element of church design in the West only much later (compare, for example, FIGS. 12-5 and 12-6), when it also took on, with the nave and apse, the symbolism of the Christian cross. Saint Peter's basilica also had an open colonnaded courtyard in front of the narthex, very much like the forum proper in the Forum of Trajan (FIG. 7-44, no. 5), but called an atrium (compare FIGS. 8-9 and 12-24), like the central room in a Roman private house (FIG. 7-15, no. 2). Compared with Roman temples, which usually displayed statuary in pediments on their facades, most Early Christian basilicas were quite austere on the exterior. Inside, however, were frescoes and mosaics, marble columns (spolia taken from older Roman buildings, as was customary at the time), and costly ornaments. The Liber Pontificalis, or Book of the Pontiffs (Popes), compiled by an anonymous sixth-century author, lists Constantine's gifts to Old Saint Peter's. They included altars, chandeliers, candlesticks, pitchers, goblets, and plates fashioned of gold and silver and sometimes embellished with jewels and pearls, as well as jeweled altar cloths for use in the Mass and gold foil to sheathe the vault of the apse. A huge marble baldacchino (domical canopy over an altar), supported by four spiral porphyry columns, marked the spot of Saint Peter's tomb. Built by Constantine, the first imperial patron of Christianity, this huge church stood over Saint Peter's grave. The building's plan and elevation resemble those of Roman basilicas, not temples.

Book of Kells, 8th C., [Hiberno-Saxon] Insular manuscript, Trinity Library, Dublin

The half millennium between 500 and 1000 was the great formative period of western medieval art, a time of significant innovation that produced some of the most extraordinary artworks in world history. The patrons of many of these works were Christian missionaries, who brought to the non-Christian peoples of the former northwestern provinces of the Roman Empire not only the Gospel but the culture of the Late Antique Mediterranean world, including the art of the book. In Ireland, the most distant European outpost of the then-known world, the Christianization of the Celts began in the fifth century. By the end of the seventh century, monks at several Irish monasteries were producing magnificent illuminated books for use by the clergy but also to dazzle their converts, who could not read, with the beauty of God's words. The greatest of these early Irish books is the Book of Kells, which one commentator described in the Annals of Ulster for the year 1003 as "the chief relic of the western world." The manuscript (named after the monastery in central Ireland that once owned it) was probably the work of scribes and illuminators at the monastery at Iona. The monks kept the Book of Kells in an elaborate metalwork box, as befits a greatly revered "relic," and they most likely displayed it on the church altar. The page reproduced here (FIG. 11-1) opens the account of the nativity of Jesus in the Gospel of Saint Matthew and is the passage read in church on Christmas Eve. The initial letters of Christ in Greek (XPI, chi-rho-iota) occupy nearly the entire page, although two words—autem (abbreviated simply as h) and generatio—appear at the lower right. Together they read: "Now this is how the birth of Christ came about." The illuminator transformed the holy words into extraordinarily intricate abstract designs that recall Celtic and Anglo-Saxon metalwork (compare FIG. 11-3A), but the page is not purely embellished script and abstract pattern. The letter rho, for example, ends in a youthful long-haired male head, and half-figures of winged angels appear to the left of chi,accompanying the Christogram as if accompanying Christ himself. When the priest Giraldus Cambrensis visited Ireland in 1185, he described a manuscript that, if not the Book of Kells itself, must have been very much like it: Fine craftsmanship is all about you, but you might not notice it. Look more keenly at it and you . . . will make out intricacies, so delicate and subtle, so exact and compact, so full of knots and links, with colors so fresh and vivid, that you might say that all this was the work of an angel, and not of a man. For my part, the oftener I see the book, the more carefully I study it, the more I am lost in ever fresh amazement, and I see more and more wonders in the book.

Amiens Cathedral, by Master Roberts, 1225-1288, [High Gothic] limestone, Amiens, France

The major elements of the High Gothic formula for constructing a church in the opus modernum style are rib vaults with pointed arches, flying buttresses, and stained-glass windows. Chartres Cathedral is one of the most influential buildings in the history of architecture. Its builders set a pattern that many other Gothic architects followed, even if they refined the details. Construction of Amiens Cathedral began in 1220 while work was still in progress at Chartres. The architects were Robert deLuzarches, Thomas de Cormont, and Renaud de Cormont. The survival of the names of these and other Gothic architects no doubt reflects the enormous prestige that accrued to all associated with the great cathedrals of the Gothic age. The Amiens builders finished the cathedral's nave (FIG. 13-20) by 1236 and the radiating chapels by 1247, but work on the choir (FIG. 13-21) continued until almost 1270. The Amiens elevation (FIGS. 13-15d and 13-20) derived from the High Gothic formula of Chartres (FIGS. 13-14 and 13-15c). Amiens Cathedral's proportions are more slender, however, and the number and complexity of the lancet windows in both its clerestory and its triforium are greater. The whole design reflects the Amiens builders' confident use of the complete High Gothic structural vocabulary: the rectangular-bay system, the four-part rib vault, and an external buttressing system that made possible the almost complete elimination of heavy masses and thick weight-bearing walls. At Amiens, the concept of skeletal architecture reached full maturity. The remaining stretches of wall seem to serve no purpose other than to provide a weather screen for the interior.

Siena Cathedral, 1226-1380, [Italian Gothic] Siena, Italy

The present Duomo of Siena, the third to be built on the site, is the fruit of a century-long construction campaign (FIG. 14-13A). The cathedral bears a strong family relationship to other basilican churches in central Italy, especially the later Orvieto Cathedral (FIG. 14-13), designed by a Sienese architect. But Siena's Duomo differs from the typical timber-roofed Italian Romanesque and Gothic basilica in having groin vaults in the nave and aisles springing from compound piers, the norm in French churches of similar date (see "High Gothic Cathedrals"). Siena Cathedral combines French Gothic details (pointed gables, pinnacles, and a rose window) with the colored stonework typical of Italian churches. Giovanni Pisano (FIG. 14-4) designed the lower facade. The Sienese commissioned Nicola Pisano (FIGS. 14-2 and 14-3) in 1265 to carve the pulpit for their cathedral, and in 1284, after work on the nave and aisles had been completed, awarded Nicola's son, Giovanni (FIG. 14-4), the job of designing the west facade. His conception reveals a familiarity with French Gothic church facades and incorporates tall pointed gables, pinnacles, and a large rose window. The arches over the three portals, however, are round instead of pointed, and there are no statues on the door jambs or narrative reliefs in the tympana. Nonetheless, the Pisan sculptor (who received Sienese citizenship and exemption from taxation when he was hired) placed statues of Old Testament prophets and sibyls above the portals and extending to the sides of the flanking towers. The bright coloration of the marble facade—pink, green, yellow, and red contrasting with creamy white—is also distinctively Italian.

Philip the Arab, c. 248, [Soldier Emperors] marble, Vatican Museum, Rome

The third century ce was a tumultuous era, a time of constant civil warfare when one soldier emperor after another fell at the hands of other aspirants to imperial power. In 238 ce, for example, the Senate chose two coemperors, Balbinus and Pupienus, in the hope of reestablishing stability. The senators entrusted Balbinus with overseeing the civil administration of the Empire and Pupienus with command of the Roman army. Notwithstanding that the new emperors enjoyed senatorial backing, they lacked the support of the praetorian guard, the soldiers stationed in the capital and charged with protecting the city and the emperor. The praetorians mutinied and killed both men, saluting the 13-year-old Gordian III (r. 238-244 ce) as emperor. Gordian died in battle in 244. The head of the praetorian guard, Philip the Arabian (r. 244-249 ce), succeeded him as emperor. He ruled for five years, but was killed by the forces of Trajan Decius (FIG. 7-67). Portraits of Philip are rare, but a bust of very high quality now in the Vatican Museums represents the short-lived soldier emperor (FIG. 7-67A). It shows Philip playing the role of first citizen, dressed in a toga with a wide band across the chest, the type fashionable at the time (compare FIG. 7-77). Although no third-century ce emperor could hold on to power without the army's backing, it was still important for each ruler to project an image as the head of state and source of all governmental largesse. Nonetheless, this is not a portrait of a confident and powerful man. The insecurity of the age seems to be reflected in Philip's furrowed forehead, knotted brow, scowling expression, and avoidance of the viewer's gaze. The sculptor reproduced Philip's features in a manner similar to the sculptor of the Trajan Decius portrait, using incision instead of modeling in relief to indicate the beard and cap of hair at the top of the head, and employing a drill to show the pupils of the eyes. In this portrait of Philip the Arabian, whom Trajan Decius (FIG. 7-67) killed, the furrowed forehead, knotted brow, scowling expression, and avoidance of the viewer's gaze reveal Philip's psyche.

Count Ekkehard and Uta, c. 1230s, [German Gothic Sculpture] Naumberg Cathedral, Germany

They represent the margrave (military governor) Ekkehard II of Meissen and his wife, Uta. The statues are attached to columns and stand beneath architectural canopies, following the pattern of French Gothic portal statuary, but they project from the architecture more forcefully and move more freely than contemporaneous French jamb figures. The period garments and the individualized features and personalities of the margrave and his wife give the impression that they posed for the Naumburg Master, although the subjects lived well before the sculptor's time. Ekkehard, the intense knight, contrasts with the beautiful and aloof Uta. With a wonderfully graceful gesture, she draws the collar of her cloak partly across her face while she gathers up a soft fold of drapery with a jeweled, delicate hand. The sculptor subtly revealed the shape of Uta's right arm beneath her cloak and rendered the fall of drapery folds with an accuracy suggesting that the Naumburg Master used a living model. The two statues are convincing images of real people, even if they bear the names of aristocrats whom the artist never met. By the mid-13th century, in the Holy Roman Empire as well as in England (FIG. 13-44A) and elsewhere, life-size statues of secular personages had found their way into churches. The period costumes and individualized features of these donor statues give the impression that Ekkehard and Uta posed for the Naumburg Master, but they lived long before the sculptor's time.

Sutton Hoo Ship Burial, 7th C., [Anglo-Saxon] gold, enamel and iron, British Museum, London

This purse cover with cloisonné ornamentation comes from a treasure-laden royal burial ship. The combination of abstract interlace with animal figures is the hallmark of early medieval art in western Europe. The technique, however, is much older than the era of the Merovingian and Anglo-Saxon kings, and dates at least as early as the New Kingdom in Egypt. Metalworkers produced cloisonné jewelry by soldering small metal strips, or cloisons (French for "partitions"), edge up, to a metal background, and then filling the compartments with semiprecious stones, pieces of colored glass, or glass paste fired to resemble sparkling jewels. The edges of the cloisons are an important part of the design. Cloisonné is a cross between mosaic and stained glass (see "Mosaics", and "Stained-Glass Windows"), but medieval artists used it only on a miniature scale. The decoration of the Sutton Hoo purse cover consists of seven cloisonné plaques within a cloisonné border—five plaques with human and animal figures and two with purely abstract ornament. This gold belt buckle, more than 5 inches long, was among the treasures excavated in 1939 in the ship buried beneath a tumulus at Sutton Hoo (see "Early Medieval Ship Burials") in England (FIG. 11-3A). Usually thought to be the tomb of King Raedwald, the ship also contained a host of other precious items and coins and, most notably, a spectacular gold-and-cloisonné purse cover (FIG. 11-3). The buckle illustrated here features three prominent circular bosses (part of the belt's locking system) around which writhe stylized elongated animal forms. The patterns appear chaotic at first sight, but the goldsmith applied the decoration in a bilaterally symmetrical composition. For example, around the two bosses closest to the medallion of the clasp are two mirror-image profile eagles' heads, more intricate versions of those on the Merovingian fibulae (FIG. 11-2) from Jouy-le-Comte. Elsewhere, intertwined serpents cover most of the buckle's surface. Abstract linear ornamentation fills the horseshoe-shaped loop of the buckle. The intricate decoration of this gold belt buckle typifies the early medieval animal-and-interlace style. Both the motifs and the compositional principles survived in Hiberno-Saxon Christian art. The decoration of the Sutton Hoo belt buckle typifies the animal-and-interlace style that dominated the art of northern Europe after the fall of Rome, from France to the British Isles to Scandinavia, home of the Vikings and of the heroes of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. Both the animal motifs and the compositional principles survived in the Christian art of the Hiberno-Saxon monasteries of the seventh through ninth centuries—for example, in the cross-inscribed carpet page (FIG. 11-7) of the Lindisfarne Gospels.

Colossal Statue of Constantine, 315, [Constantine] marble, Capitoline Museum, Rome

Until Constantine's victory over Maxentius, his portraits conformed to the tetrarchic mode, but once he secured control of Rome, the portraits he commissioned took on a very different look, resuscitating the Augustan image of a perpetually youthful head of state. The most impressive of the emperor's preserved portraits is an 8½-foot-tall head (FIG. 7-78), one of several fragments of a colossal enthroned statue of the emperor set up in the western apse of the Basilica Nova (FIG. 7-74, bottom). The emperor's image dominated the interior of the basilica in much the same way that statues of Greco-Roman divinities loomed over awestruck mortals in temple cellas (compare FIG. 5-46). The statue's head and limbs were marble, but it had a brick core and a wood torso covered with bronze. The emperor held an orb (possibly surmounted by the cross of Christ), the symbol of global power, in his extended left hand. The sideways glance of third-century portraits is absent, replaced by a frontal mask with enormous eyes set into the broad and simple planes of the head (FIG. 7-78). Constantine's personality is lost in this immense image of eternal authority. The colossal size, the likening of the emperor to Jupiter, the eyes directed at no person or thing of this world—all combine to produce a formula of overwhelming power appropriate to Constantine's exalted position as absolute ruler. Constantine's portraits revive the Augustan image of a perpetually youthful ruler. This colossal head is one fragment of an enthroned Jupiter-like statue of the emperor holding the orb of world power.

Unknown Republican Man, 1st C. BCE, [Republican Period] marble, Palazzo Torlonia, Rome

Veristic (superrealistic) portraits of old men from distinguished families were the norm during the Republic. The sculptor of this head painstakingly recorded every detail of the elderly priest's face. The subjects of these portraits were almost exclusively men (and, occasionally, women) of advanced age, for generally only elders held power in the Republic. These patricians did not ask sculptors to make them appear nobler than they were, as Kresilas portrayed Pericles (FIG. 5-42). Instead, they requested images memorializing their distinctive features, in the tradition of the treasured household imagines. One of the most striking of these so-called veristic(superrealistic) portraits is the head (FIG. 7-8) of a Republican priest now in the Vatican Museums. (Roman priests drew part of their toga over their head to form a hood while performing their sacred duties; compare FIG. I-10.) The sculptor painstakingly recorded his bald head and the lines, bulges, and folds of his aged face, not wanting to miss the slightest detail of the priest's unique appearance. Scholars debate whether Republican veristic portraits were truly blunt records of individual features or exaggerated types designed to make a statement about personality: serious, experienced, determined, loyal to family and state—the most admired virtues during the Republic.

Arch of Titus, c. 80 CE, [Flavian] Forum Romanum

When Titus died in 81 ce, only two years after becoming emperor, his younger brother, Domitian, succeeded him. Domitian erected an arch (FIGS. 7-2, no. 13, and 7-40) in Titus's honor on the Sacred Way leading into the Republican Forum Romanum (FIG. 7-2, no. 11). This type of freestanding arch, the so-called triumphal arch, has a long history in Roman art and architecture, beginning in the second century bce. The term is something of a misnomer, however, because Roman arches did not celebrate only military victories. Usually crowned by gilded bronze statues, they commemorated a wide variety of events, ranging from victories abroad to the building of roads and bridges at home (FIG. 7-44A). Domitian built this arch on the road leading into the Roman Forum to honor his brother, the emperor Titus, who became a god after his death. Victories fill the spandrels of the arcuated passageway.

Four Tetrarchs, c. 300 BCE, [Tetrarchy] porphyry, Basilica of San Marco, Venice

With the establishment of the tetrarchy in 293 ce, the sculptors in the emperors' employ suddenly had to grapple with a new problem—namely, how to represent four individuals who oversaw different regions of a vast empire but were equal partners in power. Although in life the four tetrarchs were rarely in the same place, in art they usually appeared together, both on coins and in statues. Artists did not try to capture their individual appearances and personalities—the norm in portraiture of the preceding soldier emperors (FIGS. 7-67, 7-67A, and 7-68)—but sought instead to represent the power-sharing nature of the tetrarchy itself. The finest extant tetrarchic portraits are the two pairs of porphyry (purple marble) statues (FIG. 7-72) that have since medieval times adorned the southwestern corner of the great church (FIG. 9-26) dedicated to Saint Mark in Venice. (Originally, they adorned the shafts of two columns, probably in Byzantium, present-day Istanbul, Turkey.) In this and similar tetrarchic group portraits, it is impossible to name the rulers. Each of the four emperors has lost his identity as an individual and been absorbed into the larger entity of the tetrarchy. All the tetrarchs are identically clad in cuirass and cloak. Each grasps a sheathed sword in his left hand. With their right arms, the corulers embrace one another in an overt display of concord. The figures, like those on the decursio relief (FIG. 7-57) of the Column of Antoninus Pius, have large cubical heads and squat bodies. The drapery is schematic, the bodies are shapeless, and the faces are emotionless masks, distinguished only by the beards of two of the tetrarchs (the older Augusti, differentiating them from the younger Caesars). Other than the presence or absence of facial hair, each pair is as alike as freehand carving can achieve. Diocletian established the tetrarchy to bring order to the Roman world. In group portraits, artists always depicted the four corulers as nearly identical partners in power, not as distinct individuals. In this group portrait, carved eight centuries after Greek sculptors first freed the human form from the rigidity of the Egyptian-inspired kouros stance, an artist or artists once again conceived the human figure in iconic terms. Idealism, naturalism, individuality, and personality have disappeared.

Pantheon, by Hadrian, c. 135 CE, [Hadrian] concrete, Rome

Work began on the Pantheon (FIGS. 7-2, no. 5; 7-49; 7-50; and 7-51), the temple of all the gods, soon after Hadrian became emperor (or possibly shortly before, as indicated by the use of some Trajanic bricks in the building's construction). The Pantheon is one of the best-preserved buildings of antiquity, and also one of the most influential designs in architectural history. Hadrian did not take credit for the building, however, preferring, as Augustus did before him (see "Res Gestae"), to dedicate the temple in the name of Marcus Agrippa, who had erected an earlier Pantheon on this site in the late first century bce. Unfortunately, neither the inscription on the Pantheon facade nor any historical source gives the name of the brilliant architect who in this building revealed the full potential of concrete, both as a construction material and as a means of shaping architectural space. The Pantheon's traditional facade masked its revolutionary cylindrical drum and its huge hemispherical dome. The interior symbolized both the orb of the earth and the vault of the heavens.

Prima Porta Augustus, after 14 CE, [Augustan] marble, Vatican Museums, Rome

[The models for Augustus's idealized portraits, which depict him as a never-aging youth, were Classical Greek statues (FIG. 5-41). This portrait presents the armor-clad emperor in his role as general] from textbook One of Augustus' most famous portraits is the so-called Augustus of Primaporta of 20 B.C.E. (the sculpture gets its name from the town in Italy where it was found in 1863). At first glance this statue might appear to simply resemble a portrait of Augustus as an orator and general, but this sculpture also communicates a good deal about the emperor's power and ideology. In fact, in this portrait Augustus shows himself as a great military victor and a staunch supporter of Roman religion. The statue also foretells the 200 year period of peace that Augustus initiated, called the Pax Romana.

Jelling Stone of King Harald Bluetooth, c. 960, [Viking, Jelling Period] stone, Jelling, Denmark

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