Why is Gallia depicted as a brown woman in this Early Medieval depiction?

Why is Gallia depicted as a brown woman in this Early Medieval depiction?

Because skin colors back then weren't depicting actual skin colors.

Because the Gauls were the niggers of Europe?

You don't think the painter chose the different hair and skin colours for a reason? Germania and Roma seem to be kinda fitting

Because whoever made this shitty manga thought it would be neat to have alternating skin colours.

Because Europe was ruled by black people until the 1500's.

maybe it denoted barbarism, maybe because they are out in the sun more due to less civilization, maybe we wuz gaulz

WE

It was kind of like Egypt where skin color was symbolic in art. I wouldn't take any depictions until renaissance as striving for accuracy.

Them feets tho.

Are there seriously people on this board who think France was less civilised than fucking Germany at any point ever?

>You don't think the painter chose the different hair and skin colours for a reason?
Of course he had a reason, but considering Sclavinia (slavs) and gallia (gaul/germans) the reason clearly isn't realism.

At the height of the HRE Germany was a bigger cultural and economic centre than France actually. It only lasted a couple centuries, but it was right at the time the painting was made. Not that I agree with skin colour denoting barbarism.

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Now look, nevermind holy and roman, but you can't deny empire at that point in time.

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>a couple of centuries
I suppose an argument could be made for the height of Ottonian power in the 10th century, but even in that century the most significant civilisational change (the Cluniac Reforms) came from France, and the Cluniac style of art and architecture is at least as significant as the Ottonian.

By the 11th century it's definitely France though, inventing scholasticism at the French cathedral schools and playing the main role in the Crusades.

It's symbolic. The same way the ambassadors weren't actually girls and Germany didn't wear a birthday cake on her head.

When did this meme first start?

18th century.

1756.

You talk of Cluny, but the ottonian renaissance is totally a thing you know. Germany and Italy led the cultural life of Europe in the 10th to 12th century, until Germany kinda went to shit with the investiture controversy.

962 AD

Not really, the "Ottonian Renaissance" is just a continuation of the "Carolingian Renaissance". The difference is that those "renaissances" were just about imitating Byzantine art, while the Cluniac style (and of course the Gothic which appeared in the 12th century in France and came to be the quintessential Western style) was original and new. In the 10th century Germany (and Italy) was still in the cultural periphery of Byzantium, while France was birthing what would become Western civilisation.

The cultural dominance of France is even more obvious in the 12th century, not only because of Gothic art and architecture, but with the University of Paris succeeding to the cathedral schools from the time of Peter Abelard in dominating scholastic thought, and with Chretien de Troyes and other French authors writing the first great works of Western literature.

Because in the Early Medieval period, Franks believed themselves to be a lost tribe of Israel.