I understand that historians hate it when the middle ages are called "the dark ages" because that term seems to denote a time of anti-intellectualism and loss of culture, but why exactly did art become so bad after the fall of the Western Roman Empire? Is it not because of loss of culture?
Byzantine style sucks so much in comparison to classical Roman and Renaissance style.
Other urls found in this thread:
en.wikipedia.org
twitter.com
Art was shit in ancient world, everything improved after Rome was destroyed. Science and mathematics flourished in Catholic Europe.
Respected historian Rodney Stark said so. He not cherrypick and shilling on behalf of reactionary Catholicism
It was like that on purpose. We just think of it as bad, but the artists didn't care about depicting anyone, especially religious figures as natural. You can thank the Renaissance for the return to depicting humans more naturally.
Also
>gothic art
>bad
This.
The metaphysical, otherworldly element of Medieval art can't be overlooked. You're meant to see all their work as glimpses into another world, and guides for the living to follow in order to achieve that world.
>its bad on purpose!
What makes it bad exactly? Simply because it's not humanistic?
You do realise gothic was another name for barbaric at the time?
what point are you trying to make
You realize that the word was coined by the smug italian artist vasari as a way to belittle the art outside muh peninsula
I look at that and it seems quite apparent to me that there is a deliberate stylistic choice for the central figure of Christ to not be strictly realistic.
That's Francis of Assisi.
I believe it came into use by some Renaissance artist simply because the art wasn't more like that of the romans.
>spiritual art is bad
>modern art shit is good
Liberals have no taste
bit of a bedshit on my behalf not seeing the tonsure and figuring the wounds were stigmata
You have to realize, most high art and literature in the Roman world were confined to places like Italy, Greece, and urban colonies. The barbarians rome ruled over didnt understand these arts.
And while deurbanization during the fall of the west hurt these things in places, through things like the church they were eventually spread.
...
He had a point, the romans were alot better at building
>figuring the wounds were stigmata
they are, totally acceptable to think that was suppose to be jesus for the stigmata alone. dont really know why the holy wounds were painted on saint francis here.
Name one significant intellectual that came from the time other than Scotus eriugena. Asking really
St. Francis received the stigmata towards the end of his life.
This is the best work of art of the renaissance, or at the very least, the proto-renaissance.
>how many levels of arches are you on my dude?
Roger Bacon
Is that the one whos spires kept collapsing?
Could the romans make entire walls made out of glass?
Kinda unrelated, but what happened to moneylending and charging interest for loans being frowned upon? To me, that's always stood out as the best thing about the Christian middle ages. Suddenly in the 13th century, it seems like tons of Italians were engaging in usury. Ironically, tons of famous christian works of arts were paid for by usurers.
You could start a new thread, all it would push off the board is shitposting.
Patronage by private wealthy citizens was a thing in the 13th century? I figured that early it was just royalty and high ranking church guys.
People like to money. When it comes to Europeans, who are creative, have drive and are more intelligent than a savage Arab I'm not surprised they started having grandiose banking operations.
>Patronage by private wealthy citizens was a thing in the 13th century?
I meant the 14th century, but I'm sure it happened during the late 13th century as well.
Is there a reason why perspective is fucked up in a lot of byzantine paintings? I'm not talking about hierarchical proportions, that stuff is totally okay with me. In a lot of paintings I see from that era, objects in the same scene are on completely different perspective planes. Linear perspective seems to be pretty much missing in this era.
They used "reverse perspective" aka Byzantine perspective
those proportions
Its because they dont want them to look realistic for spiritual reasons - ie if they look real people might start worshiping them
They shifted away from realism for spiritual but also to distance themselves from the pagans who had persecuted them for years. Eventually that's what they valued in their art: the supernatural over realism.
This painting of Dido and Aeneas shows the beginning of the Roman Christians abandoning perspective.
Where did I say modernity was good?
There was once a brilliant amateurist and enlightenment man called Edward Gibbon. His pet project was compiling a history of the Roman Empire. Being a whig and a man of the "enlightenment", he smeared post-roman-pre-modern society as "UN-enlightened" and uncivilised. This made him very popular among his liberal friends. He created a totally fictitious smear against Christians which was that the "Christian Dark Ages", were started by Christians burning the Library at Alexandria which contained "700,000" books (lol). This is totally wrong and not corroborated by facts, the burning of the library did not happen. Gibbon was an amateurish enlightenment man. There was no "Christian Dark Age". There was no anti-intellectualism in the Church, again, a myth.
as for anti-intellectualism.. One wikipedia search should show how wrong this is en.wikipedia.org
Paris in the 11th century had something of an intellectual rebirth, and many of those who are not materialists say that 11th-14th centuries were the zenith of the West.
The """enlightenment""" myth has found its way into all aspects of society. We are told that medieval culture is inferior and yet no one pays attention to Chartres cathedral. The period produced the greatest architecture in the history of man: the Gothic cathedral.
You mean stuff like portraying Jesus as a fish?
Justinian