Description

This module will examine the art of the years c. 1050-1200, a period which saw an astonishing vitality and profusion in the production of works of art, associated with the revival in western civilisation which has gone under the name of the Twelfth Century Renaissance.  As well as monumental art - sculpture, stained glass, wall paintings - the smaller-scale but no less exquisite media such as manuscript illuminations, enamels and ivories will also be examined.  Architecture will be touched upon only insofar as it is necessary for understanding the monumental context of some of the media.  The geographical focus will be on England, France and the Mosan region, within which attention will be given to such major centres as Canterbury, York, Chartres and Saint-Denis.  The complex and inventive imagery in the religious art of the period will be the major focus (with an inevitable concentration on biblical imagery), but themes such as the movement of artistic ideas around Europe, and the twelfth-century controversies about art and its place in the church will also be considered.

Seminar topics will cover such matters as: Bible and psalter illustration;  the imagery of the great sculpted portals at Chartres and elsewhere; the iconography of the saints; Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis; the Cistercians - an anti-art movement of the twelfth century?