Term Paper on "Medieval Art and Architecture"

Term Paper 5 pages (1678 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Medieval Art and Architecture

If one thing can be said about architects and artists working in medieval Europe it is this: They were shameless in their borrowings from all the cultures surrounding the Mediterranean, or coming across the central European mountain ranges.

Armenia, a nation rarely considered in global artistic inquiry of any kind, was nonetheless a likely conduit for cultural donations because, while its position -- wedged between the Hellenistic, Iranian, Byzantine, and Islamic worlds -- destined it to a history of invasion and domination, it also allowed it to serve as a cultural intercessor between disparate traditions" (Parseghian, 1994). There were, of course, other avenues. The Bulgarians, the Rus, the Georgians, and the Syrians also served to transmit Islamic ideas through Byzantium to the West (Ukrainian Weekly, 1997).

Arguably Islam was the most influential of the cultural donors to medieval art and architecture, via Armenia as well as the cultures hugging the Mediterranean, but Islam itself had already influence other cultures (Byzantine) and been influenced by even earlier ones (pre-Islamic Persia and more). Therefore, necessarily, any tracing of Islamic influence in medieval European art and architecture must include the incorporated remnants of all the earlier inter-cultural donations. The two most influential contacts though which the cultural iconographies were spread are, arguably, the Crusades and the Moorish subjugation of Spain. In fact, "Islamic rule in much of Spain lasted from 711 until the fall of Granada in 1492 and for long periods was an exemplar of religious tolerance. It also produced a flowering of science, arts and letters. Via the efforts of Andalusian translators the works of classical authors made their way into Christian Europe, laying the foundations of the Renaissance" (Lee, 1993)

However, limiting contact to those two seminal events is to ignore the constant currents of cross-pollination between the paradisiacal vision of the Eastern world, and the redemptive vision of the West.

In addition, the precursors of Islamic art and architecture -- elements that continued to inform their vision throughout their expansion into Spain and later, via their export to 'corporate' Europe by returning Crusaders -- cannot be surgically removed from any consideration of so-called Islamic influences on medieval European art and architecture. Rather, they must be viewed as a substrate that upheld the Islamic vision by virtue of continuous adherence in the society in which Islam was born, and therefore as an unbroken line into the monastic traditions of medieval Europe. It was, moreover, the monastic tradition that formed the bedrock on which all other medieval art and architecture achievements were based; the monasteries were the repositories, after all, of the learning that would otherwise have been lost.

Monastic tradition and Islam

Of particular importance to medieval life was the abbey and the priory. Particularly important were the Benedictine abbeys. While Benedict was a mid-sixth century cleric, and Islam itself, of course, could not have been influential until at least the start of the seventh century, Benedictine abbeys continued to be built for centuries, reflecting in great degree an Eastern influence. While "the typical plan of Benedictine abbeys and priories evolved out of the Roman country villa of late antiquity" about 820, a plan for an idea monastery was created (Schuetz-Miller, 2000). It was considered to be the first pattern that took into account the relationship of all the parts to each other and to the whole, assuring geometric harmony; harmony had been a hallmark of Eastern life. The most Eastern/Islamic feature was the inclusion of the atrium, known in the plans as a "Field of Paradise" (Schuetz-Miller, 2000). How it reached Europe and its basis in and use by Islam demonstrates the impossibility of isolating influences. By the time great monasteries were built in the late middle ages, ecclesiastic art and architecture were a conglomeration of ideas of both western and Eastern antiquity, and Eastern modernity, in other words, Islam.

The atrium had its origin in Near Eastern residential buildings in which single rooms were arranged around a square courtyard with the plain, unprepossessing front wall giving directly onto the street. The plan was adopted by Roman builders, who carried the idea to the far outposts of their western empire" (Schuetz-Miller, 2000). The Marian cults (those devoted especially to veneration of Mary, mother of Jesus of Nazareth, were particularly fond of the atrium idea, also, in their earliest of Christian churches. This has been attributed by Schuetz-Miller to a Byzantine influence, which places it firmly in the eastern tradition, although a Christian one. However, from there, it is possible to construct the continuing influences of Islam and Byzantine/Christian art and architecture on each other.

The atrium, used as a metaphor for paradise in the Islamic tradition, was an inheritance from pre-Islamic Persia. Thus, an architectural form that is attributable to Islam came to Islam from its predecessor cultures, as it may well have come to Europe as well, although specifically associating it with and using it in western religious structures, particularly post-Mohammed, is properly attributed to an "Islamic" influence. Indeed, Schuetz-Miller makes note that the use of Islamic and western atriums was probably contemporaneous. She notes that, "Like those of the west, Persian paradise gardens representing the cosmos were accessed by way of four avenues, at the intersection of which pavilions were erected, while pools with fountains mirrored the heavens, unifying the terrestrial and celestial spheres" (2000).

There were also four directions common to both Islamic and western buildings built for religious uses. The ciborium, a dome form resting on four pillars, "reprinted a universal image of the dome of heaven" (Schuetz-Miller, 2000). This structure, too, exemplifies the continuing fusion between Islamic and western art and architecture.

This symbolism stretched across the Iranian plateau and India and was basic to the Zoroastrian, Hindu, and Buddhist iconography of buildings. The image of the heavenly dome and pillars which link heaven and earth derive from the most ancient myths of creation in which there was a forced separation of the two spheres from an egg or other orb-shaped object. (...The ciborium was a miniature version of the dome placed over the central plan of early Near Eastern churches which culminated in the great Hagia Sophia. Its most immediate ancestral form, however, was the Ark of the Covenant in the Hebrew temple (Schuetz-Miller, 2000).

By the latter part of the medieval period, the Islamic influence was being expressed not only in the architecture of religious buildings, but in the decoration of them as well. There were, of course, depictions meant to "spur crusading fervor" and send many more knights to the Holy Lands.

The church of S. Maria in Cosmedin in Rome is an example of a building that combines many of the earlier donations from Eastern and Islamic art with the contemporary ones of the Crusades era, and furthermore stands in the long East-West tradition of veneration of Mary so central to the earlier cultural borrowings.

The church was consecrated in 1123 by Pope Calixtus II, the scion of a family that was "ferociously committed" to holy warfare (Derbes, 1995). That being the case, and with three of his brothers figuring prominently in the Crusade of 1001, there was enormous opportunity for contact with Islam within the family. And "a fourth brother, Raymond of Burgundy, took part in the Reconquista in Spain" (Derbes, 1995). Calixtus himself was preparing a major crusade to attack Islam both in Spain and in the Levant. "In the same years that Calixtus was organizing his crusade, he singled out S. Maria in Cosmedin for special attention, associating it closely both with his family and with the Holy Land" (Derbes, 1995). While the church received relics of Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre, the church was also adorned with frescoes. In fact, "the frescoes in S. Maria further attest to the pope's preoccupation with the Levant"… READ MORE

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