Medieval Art: Early Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic
Medieval art in the PAU covers Early Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic, with particular weight on architecture and on the Catalan Romanesque and Gothic you can study in the MNAC and in Barcelona. You must read a building as a structural system and a programme of images, not as a list of parts.
Core rules and concepts
- Early Christian. From the domus ecclesiae and the catacomb to the basilica: atrium, narthex, nave, aisles, apse, transept. Santa Sabina (Rome, 422–432) is the canonical basilica; the Ravenna mosaics (Galla Placidia, San Vitale, c. 547) use gold grounds and a hieratic, flattened, courtly style.
- Byzantine. The pendentive carries a dome over a square, as at Hagia Sophia (532–537, Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus). The decorative programme is hierarchical: Pantocrator in the dome, Theotokos in the apse, feasts on the walls. Iconoclasm (726–843) and the triumph of images explain Byzantine image theory.
- Romanesque. Barrel and groin vaults, thick walls, small windows, tribunes; the pilgrimage church (Santiago de Compostela) adds an ambulatory with radiating chapels. Sculpture concentrates in tympana, capitals and portals; painting in the apse. Catalan Romanesque: Sant Climent de Taüll, consecrated 1123, Pantocrator in a mandorla, rigid symmetry, flat colour, Byzantine-derived models.
- Gothic. Pointed arch, rib vault and flying buttress channel loads to exterior piers, so walls open into stained glass. Chartres (after 1194) establishes the classic system. In Catalonia, Santa Maria del Mar (1329–1383) uses a wide unified nave and slender piers - a Mediterranean Gothic with little glazing.
Worked example
For the Taüll apse: identify the subject (Christ in Majesty, Pantocrator, with the Evangelist symbols), the technique (buon fresco on the curved apse), the composition (axial symmetry, Christ larger than the apostles, alpha and omega), the style (linear drapery, frontality, no modelling, gold ground) and the function (didactic and eschatological, placed above the altar). Then date it to the 12th century.
Traps that cost marks
- Romanesque and Gothic are structural systems: "pointed arches with barrel vaults" is a contradiction.
- Mosaic is not fresco; San Vitale is mosaic.
- Do not call the Pantocrator a Last Judgement.
- Catalan Gothic is not simply "French Gothic with fewer windows" - explain the wide nave, the flat apse and the slim piers.