Middle Ages

 

Early Christian (From the 3rd - 7th century)

This is the art and architecture produced for the unsplited Christian church. This art extends over the Late Antique period, Roman art and architecture (the late 2nd - 7th century), and the Byzantine art and architecture (from 5th - 7th century).
Before the Edict of Milan (313), which made Christianity the Roman Empire's state religion, Christian art was restricted to the decoration of the hidden places of worship. Most early religious artists worked in manner that was derived from Roman art, appropriately stylized to suit the spirituality of the religion. These artists chose to reject the ideals of perfection in form and technique. They rather sought to present images which would draw the spectator into the inner eye of their work, pointing to its spiritual significance. An iconography was devised to visualize Christian concepts. The first Christians don't see in art a way of expressing beauty, but one of transmitting their faith and beliefs as well as to teach them.
After the fourth century, under imperial sponsorship, Early Christian architecture flourished throughout the Roman Empire on a monumental scale. Buildings were of two types, the longitudinal hall - basilica, and the centralized building - a baptistery or a mausoleum.
The exteriors of Early Christian buildings were plain and unadorned and the interiors contrarily, were richly decorated with marble floors and wall slabs, frescoes, mosaics, metal works, hangings, and sumptuous altar furnishings in gold and silver. Early Christian illuminated manuscripts are of an unusually high quality.Freestanding Early Christian sculpture is rarely seen. Early Christian bas-reliefs survive in abundance in marble and porphyry.

Byzantine

Byzantine art is the term commonly used to describe the artistic products of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) from about the 5th century until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The term has also been used for the art of states which were contemporary with the Byzantine Empire and shared a common culture with it, such as Bulgaria, Serbia or Russia, and also Venice, which had close ties to the Byzantine Empire. It has also been used for the art of peoples of the former Byzantine Empire under the rule of the Ottoman Empire after 1453. In some respects the Byzantine artistic tradition has continued in Russia, Greece, Serbia and other Eastern Orthodox countries to the present day.
Byzantine art grew from the art of Ancient Greece, and never lost sight of its classical heritage, but was distinguished from it in a number of ways. The most profound of these was that the humanist ethic of Ancient Greek art was replaced by a Christian ethic. If the purpose of classical art was the glorification of man, the purpose of Byzantine art was the glorification of God, and of His Son, Jesus.

This had a number of consequences. Classical artistic tradition of depicting nude figures was banished. The triumph of Christianity brought with it a Christian moral derived from its roots in Judaism and replaced this classical preoccupation with human body. The figures of God the Father, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints and martyrs of Christian tradition were elevated, and became the dominant - indeed almost exclusive - focus of Byzantine art. This is also connected with the most important form of Byzantine art, still dominant, - the icon. Icon creates reverence in worship and serves as an existential link to God. Icon has been called prayer, hymn, sermon in form and color. It's used as an object or veneration in Orthodox churches and private homes.
Another consequence of the triumph of Christianity was a decline in the importance of naturalistic representation in art. The Byzantines lost interest in the realistic portraiture. Ideal images of Christ, the saints and martyrs were used, and this became the norm of Byzantine art.
This is sometimes interpreted on the West as a decline in artistic skills and standards. It is only partially true that some of the technical expertise of the classical world, particularly in sculpture, was lost in the Byzantine world and it wasn't seen there as representing as any decline. It was seen as the harnessing of artistic skill to the service of the one true Belief, rather than using art for the production of pagan idols or the gratification of personal vanity and sensual pleasure, as the ancients had done. The Byzantine artist sought to depict the inner or spiritual nature of his subjects. To this end simplification and stylization were perfectly acceptable.
The Byzantines developed new techniques and reached new heights. Byzantine gold and silversmith, enamel-work, jewelry and textiles preserved the quality of anything done in ancient times. In mosaics and icon-painting they developed major and original art forms of their own. In architecture they achieved masterpieces such as Hagia Sophia, a building of superior scale and magnificence to anything in the ancient world.

Periods of Byzantine Art
Artistic characteristic of Byzantine art began to develop in the Roman Empire as early as the 4th century. As the classical tradition declined in vitality, eastern influences were more widely felt. The founding of Constantinople in 324 created a great new Christian artistic centre for the eastern half of the Empire. Artistic traditions flourished also in rival cities. Constantinople established its supremacy after the fall of Alexandria and Antioch to the Arabs, and Rome to the Goths.

Justinian Age (5th-6th Century)
The first great age of Byzantine art coincided with the reign of Justinian I (483-565). Justinian was the last Emperor of the whole Greco-Roman world, and was devoted to reconquering Italy, North Africa and Spain. He laid the foundations of the imperial absolutism of the Byzantine state, codifying its laws and imposing Christian views on all subjects by law. Part of his program of imperial glory was a massive building program, including Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople and the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna.

Invasions of the Avars, Slavs and Arabs (7th century) and Iconoclasm (730 - 843)
The Justinian Age was followed by a decline. Empire faced acute crisis with the invasions of the Avars, Slavs and Arabs in the 7th century. The rise of Islam had important consequences for Byzantine art. The Islamic view that the depiction of the human form was blasphemous made the Emperor Leo III in 730 to ban the use of images of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. This inaugurated the Iconoclastic period, which lasted, with interruptions, until 843. Period of Iconoclasm was the period of military and political crisis of the Empire and great decline in artistic achievement. With icon-painting banned and the state too preoccupied with warfare to commission major buildings, this was a thin period for Byzantine art.

The Macedonian Dynasty (843-1025)
The lifting of the ban on icons was followed by the Macedonian Renaissance, beginning with the reign of Emperor Basil I the Macedonian in 867. In the 9th and 10th centuries the Empire's military situation improved, and art and architecture revived. New churches were again commissioned, and the Byzantine church mosaic style became standardized. One of the best known examples is at Hosias Lukas, near Athens. More sophisticated techniques were used to depict human figures.

The Comnene Dynasty (1025-1204)
The Macedonian emperors were followed by the Comnene dynasty, beginning with the reign of Alexius I Comnenus in 1057. Empire lost most of its eastern territories to the Seljuk Turks. Although Byzantium was no longer a great power, following the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the Comnenans were great patrons of the arts, and with their support Byzantine artists continued to move in the direction of great emotion in their works. Themes such as the Virgin and Child and the Threnos (the lamentation over Christ's body) became more common. The finest Byzantine work of this period was actually outside the Empire: the Basilica of St Mark in Venice, begun in 1063. The basilica is based on the great Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, now destroyed, and is thus an echo of the age of Justinian. The acquisitive habits of the Venetians mean that the basilica is also great museum of Byzantine artworks of all kinds.

The Latin Occupation of Constantinople (1204-1261)
Eight hundred years of continuous Byzantine culture were brought to an abrupt end in 1204 with the sacking of Constantinople by the knights of the Fourth Crusade, a disaster from which the Empire never recovered. Although the Byzantines recovered the city in 1261, the Empire was thereafter a small and weak state confined to the Greek peninsula and the islands of the Aegean.

The Palaiologan Period (1261-1453)
Nevertheless the Palaeologan Dynasty, beginning with Michael VIII Palaeologus in 1259, was a last golden age of Byzantine art, partly because of the increasing cultural exchange between Byzantine and Italian artists. Italian-style frescoes began to replace the traditional mosaic-work.
The Byzantine era, properly defined, came to an end with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, but by this time the Byzantine cultural heritage had been widely diffused, carried by the spread of Orthodox Christianity, to Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania and, most importantly, to Russia, which became the centre of the Orthodox world following the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. Even under Ottoman rule, Byzantine traditions in icon-painting and other small-scale arts survived. 

 

Islamic

The word "Islam" is an Arabic word which means "submission to the will of God". This word comes from the same root as the Arabic word "salam", which means "peace".

Islamic art consists of architecture, calligraphy, painting and ceramics.

Islamic art does not pertain only to religion but also to the rich and varied culture. Islamic art mainly uses geometrical , floral or vegetal designs.

Architecture

Architecture is one of the important expressions of Islamic art. The principal of Islamic architectural types are the Mosque, the Tomb, the Palace and the Fort. It is also used in fountains, domestic architecture and public baths to name a few.

Calligraphy

Calligraphy is a visual art. It is often called the art of writing. Islamic calligraphy is an aspect of Islamic art and has eveolved longside the arabic languauge. Calligraphy in arabic is Khatt ul-Yad.

Painting

Islamic paintings - Ottoman empire, Persian and Mughal

Pottery

Islamic pottery started around early medieval period (622-1200).

Early Medieval

Content to be added.

 

Romanesque

At the end of the 10th century and the beginning of the 11th, Romanesque art flourished in Auvergne like nowhere else. With over 250 buildings, Auvergne’s heritage is among the most developed in Europe. It is also among the purest. The Auvergnat style is an important component in Romanesque art. The development of the Auvergne School was centred around the diocese of Clermont-Ferrand at the end of the 10th century, a period in which Romanesque art had already reached a certain maturity in Germany and northern France. It features a quest for simplicity and purity. Its strength and homogeneity come in part from the speed with which all these buildings were built in Auvergne. Indeed, it took only a few decades. The task was huge… the result is considerable.The art of the Romanesque period was characterized by an important revival of monumental forms, notably sculpture and fresco painting, which developed in close association with architectural decoration and exhibited a forceful and often severely structural quality. At the same time an element of realism, which parallels the first flowering of vernacular literature, came to the fore. It was expressed in terms of a direct and naive observation of certain details drawn from daily life and a heightened emphasis on emotion and fantasy.

For many aspects of its rich imagery Romanesque art depended on the heritage of antiquity and of earlier medieval art, while the prestige of Byzantine art remained high in Western eyes. The pilgrimages and Crusades contributed to an unprecedented expansion of the formal vocabulary through the development of closer contacts between regional cultures and distant peoples. 

 

Gothic

Gothic painting, sculpture and architecture became prominent in Europe at
the start of the twelfth century and remained popular until the Renaissance
period.
Gothic style was dominated by dark oil paintings that represented a shift
from the Dark Ages into a more civilized society.
Gothic art and architecture consisted primarily of religious works and was
characterized by arches, stained glass, and illuminated manuscripts.