Library: Art History by Credo Reference: Early & Medieval

Ancient Art

Bronze age: Topic Page
Stage of prehistory and early history when copper and bronze (an alloy of tin and copper) became the first metals worked extensively and used for tools and weapons.
Cycladic art
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Bronze Age art of the Cyclades, an island group of the central Aegean.
Etruscan art
From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
(c. 8th-4th centuries BC) Art of the people of Etruria. Characteristic achievements are the wall frescoes-painted in two-dimensional style-and realistic terra-cotta portraits found in tombs. Bronze reliefs and sculptures are also common.
Greek art: Topic Page
Works of art produced in the Aegean basin, a center of artistic activity from very early times.
Mesopotamian art
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Art of the ancient civilizations that grew up in the area around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, now in Iraq. Mesopotamian art was largely used to glorify powerful dynasties, and often reflected the belief that kingship and the divine were closely interlocked.
Roman art: Topic Page
The origins of Roman art are a complex mix of native and imported styles and concepts that ultimately coalesced into what we now view as the art created by the Romans.
Terracotta Army
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
One of the great archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century was made by accident in the spring of 1974. Peasants from the village of Xiyang in Lintong, Shaanxi Province, in the People’s Republic of china, were engaged in digging a well and discovered pottery figures and tiles.

Byzantine Art

Byzantine art: Topic Page
Style in the visual arts and architecture that originated in the 4th–5th centuries in Byzantium (capital of the Eastern Roman Empire; renamed Constantinople in 330; now Istanbul).
Byzantine Architecture: Topic Page
The architecture of the Byzantine Empire at its outset was essentially that of the Late Roman Empire from which it emerged in the early fourth century CE.
Christianity: Topic Page
One of the world's major religions, it predominates in Europe and the Americas, where it has been a powerful historical force and cultural influence, but it also claims adherents in virtually every country of the world.
Hagia Sophia: Topic Page
[Gr.,=Holy Wisdom] or Santa Sophia, Turkish Aya Sofia, originally a Christian church at Constantinople (now Istanbul), later a mosque, and now converted into a museum.
Iconoclasm: Topic Page
Opposition to the religious use of images. Veneration of pictures and statues symbolizing sacred figures, Christian doctrine, and biblical events was an early feature of Christian worship.

Ancient Artists

Apelles (BCE 4th Century)
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Greek painter, the most celebrated in antiquity but now known only through descriptions of his works. He is thought to have studied under Ephorus of Ephesus and under Pamphilus of Amphipolis at Sicyon.
Phidias (BCE 5th Century)
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Greek sculptor, one of the greatest sculptors of ancient Greece.
Praxiteles (BCE 4th Century): Topic Page
A Greek late Classical sculptor from Athens, Praxiteles was the foremost representative of the Attic School in the middle years of the 4th century BC.
Protogenes (BCE 4th Century)
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
one of the most celebrated Greek painters of Rhodes and Athens. Apelles is said to have been the first to recognize the talents of Protogenes, then 50 years old and known only as a painter of decorations for ships.

Medieval Art

Altarpiece: Topic Page
A painting (more rarely a sculpture) placed on, behind, or above an altar in a Christian church.
Bayeux Tapestry: Topic Page
This so-called tapestry is in fact an embroidery that chronicles the Norman Conquest of England by William the Conqueror (William I) in 1066. It is a long, narrow strip of coarse linen, 230 ft by 20 in. (70 m by 51 cm), embroidered in worsteds of eight colors in couching and stem stitch.
Gothic Art: Topic Page
Style that succeeded Romanesque as the most popular force in European art and prevailed in most countries, particularly in northern Europe, from the middle of the 12th century to the 16th century, when it gave way to Renaissance influence.
Iconography: Topic Page
The study and interpretation of figural representations, either individual or symbolic, religious or secular.
Illuminated Manuscripts
From The Macmillan Encyclopedia
Manuscripts of gospels, books of hours, prayers, etc., decorated with designs in opaque or transparent watercolour and frequently gold leaf.
Mozarabic Art
From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Architecture and religious arts of the Mozarabs, Christians who lived in the Iberian Peninsula after the Arab invasion of 711.
Romanesque Art and Architecture: Topic Page
The artistic style that prevailed throughout Europe from the 10th to the mid-12th cent., although it persisted until considerably later in certain areas.

Medieval and Pre-Renaissance Artists

Fra Angelico (1400 - 1455): Topic Page
Painter, born in Vicchio, Tuscany, NW Italy. His most important frescoes are in the Florentine convent of S Marco (St Mark), which is now a museum.
Alberti Leon Battista (1404 - 1472): Topic Page
Italian art theorist, architect, author, and diplomat. Alberti is often regarded as the embodiment of the Uomo Universale, but the range and quality of his activities are not typical of his own or any other age.
Hieronymus Bosch (1450 - 1516): Topic Page
Both his subject matter and his free and painterly brushwork, which contrasts sharply with the jewel-like brilliance of the Eyckian tradition, set him apart from the mainstream of Flemish art.
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 - 1446): Topic Page
The Florentine artist Filippo Brunelleschi was architect, engineer, and sculptor. More than any other individual, he established the forms and demonstrated the preoccupations of Italian Renaissance architecture.
Pietro Cavallini (1250 - 1330): Topic Page
Pietro Cavallini was a Roman painter; his name is associated with those of Cimabue and Giotto in the movement towards greatly increased naturalism in painting which took place in the latter part of the 13th and the first part of the 14th centuries.
Giovanni Cimabue (13th Century)
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Florentine painter, whose real name was Cenni di Pepo or Peppi. The works with which his name is associated constitute a transition in painting from the strictly formalized Byzantine style, hitherto prevalent in Italy, to the freer expression of the 14th cent.
Fra Filippo Lippi (1406 - 1469): Topic Page
Florentine painter. His most important works include frescoes depicting the lives of St Stephen and St John the Baptist (1452-66; Prato Cathedral), which in their use of perspective and grouping of figures show the influence of Masaccio.
Masaccio (1401 - 1428): Topic Page
Italian painter. He is the foremost Italian painter of the Florentine Renaissance in the early 15th cent. Masaccio's original name was Tommaso Guidi.
Nicholas of Verdun (1181 - 1205)
From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
French enamelist and goldsmith, considered the greatest of his day. He was an important figure during the transition from late Romanesque to early Gothic style.
Martin Schongauer (1430 - 1491): Topic Page
Descended from a patrician family of Augsburg, the German artist Martin Schongauer was best known in his lifetime as a painter, but his influence and his posthumous fame stem from his copper engravings.
Theophanes the Greek (1340 - 1410)
From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
His extant frescoes in the Church of Our Saviour of the Transfiguration at Novgorod (from 1378) are some of the finest examples of Russian medieval art, fusing Byzantine and Russian influences and inspiring a new generation of artists around Novgorod.
Jan van Eyck (1390 - 1441): Topic Page

Flemish painter, who gained in his lifetime a Europe-wide reputation. One of the first painters to use oil paint effectively, he is noted for his meticulous detail and his brilliance of colour and finish.
Michael Wolgemut (1434 - 1519): Topic Page
The German painter Michael Wolgemut was born in Nuremberg where he was the master of Albrecht Dürer from 1486 to 1490.

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