¶ … Art
The shift from Byzantine or Medieval art to the early Renaissance is perfectly demonstrated by examining the change in depictions of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus, or Madonna and Child, over time. What we see is a gradual tendency toward realistic depictions of human form, as a way of making religious art less remote and decorative, and more immediately related to actual human experience.
We can begin with the thirteenth-century Byzantine icon of the Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne. The painting is, in some sense, a highly stylized representation of a familiar image. The figures of mother and child do not really seem to exist in real space: for example, the gold leaf that is used for the flat backdrop behind the Madonna and Child is also used (in a decorative but not particularly realistic fashion) to highlight the folds of the Madonna's garments. Where we would expect light and shading around her knees, instead we get an excess of gold leaf, as though bright light were hitting her knees and trickling into the folds of her robe. Darker pigment here is not used for realistic depiction of light and shadow but...
The Byzantine artists are well-known for the icon of Symeon with the Christ Child. The icon was effectively changed by Byzantine artists toward the ending of the iconoclastic controversy in the ninth century. Originally the artistic protocol for the depiction has Symeon submissively approaching Mary who is holding the Christ child in her hands however the changes in the icon are of the nature that show Symeon holding the
The abstract characteristics of Germanic art prior to this work are now relegated to supporting positions and in the midst of the geometric designs and patterns is the figure of St. Mark, preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Germanic tribes have thus submitted themselves to the religious and political doctrine of both the Church and its anointed emperor in Charlemagne. The Carolingian Renaissance followed the unification of France
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