500–1000 CE
Art made worldwide between 500 and 1000 CE, from Hagia Sophia and the Book of Kells to Borobudur, Tōdai-ji and the Classic Maya.
No works indexed yet · 3 related artists
No open-access works for 500–1000 CE are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
These centuries are sometimes treated as a dark interval in Europe, but across much of the world they were a high point. In Constantinople, Hagia Sophia (537) set a new scale for domed building, and in western Europe monks and court artists produced the Book of Kells and, for Charlemagne, the gold-lettered gospels of the scribe Godescalc (781–83). In Spain, illuminators copied Beatus of Liébana's commentary on the Apocalypse in blazing flat colour.
Islam's first empires built the Great Mosque of Damascus and, under the Abbasids, the spiral minaret at Samarra. In Asia, Tang China carved the colossal Vairocana at Longmen (675), Japan cast the Great Buddha of Tōdai-ji (752), Indian workers cut the Kailasa temple at Ellora from rock, and Java raised Borobudur. The Classic Maya carved and painted at Palenque and Bonampak, Andean states such as Wari and Tiwanaku flourished, and casters at Igbo-Ukwu in Nigeria produced intricate bronzes.
