History of Western Art 1: Gothic Art (1 of 23)

History of Western Art

Here we are in the centre of Paris in front of the Notre Dame cathedral.
A truly remarkable monument, to the power and glory of the medieval church, look how it is designed, it is tall vertical, declarations draws the eye upwards towards heaven.
indeed the medieval church was the most powerful institution in Europe at the time and these constructions helped to create medieval city.
imagine what it would have been like coming from the feudal countryside to an urban centre like Paris and finding a construction like this it is built entirely in stone and its technology had to be worked out generation by generation.
And the church's dominance in society also expressed itself in the world of art.
in the early medieval world most of the art most of the art that was produced was produced in monasteries on illuminated manuscripts and most of the artists were in fact were manuscript illustrators.

Well that period that we understand as the late medieval and early renaissance period is that time when artist began to rely more and more on motifs from the ancient classical world.
Specifically they were concerned with how objects were distributed in space and moved through space.
So essentially what one is seeing is a move from a God's eye view of the world to a man's view of the world.
The anonymous painters and sculptors of those days were concerned almost exclusively with religious themes.
Their aim was simply to use time-honoured techniques to produce images that would communicate a spiritual message.