CategoriesCultural and Religious Styles
Early Medieval Art
European art from the end of Roman rule to about 1000: jewelled metalwork, illuminated gospels, Carolingian and Ottonian art.
No works indexed yet · 1 related artist
No open-access works for Early Medieval Art are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
Between the collapse of Roman rule in the West and the rise of the Romanesque, European art was made mostly in metal, parchment, ivory and stone, for kings, warrior elites and monasteries. The new ruling peoples prized portable wealth: the Sutton Hoo ship burial in East Anglia, from the early 7th century, held a gold buckle and shoulder clasps set with cut garnets in tight cells, and animal bodies twist through their ornament.
Christian patronage transformed these skills. Monks in Northumbria and Ireland painted gospel books in which interlace fills whole pages. Charlemagne's court revived Roman forms: the scribe Godescalc finished a gospel lectionary on purple-dyed parchment for the king in 783, and the Palatine Chapel at Aachen took its octagonal plan from Byzantine Ravenna. Ottonian Germany followed with the near life-size Gero Crucifix in Cologne, from around 970, and Bishop Bernward's bronze doors at Hildesheim (1015). Viking carvers covered ships and sledges with writhing beasts.