As we’ve looked at early forms of Christian art, we have mostly been focusing on the culture at its epicenter, in the East. But of course, although that’s where Christianity started out most strongly, Christendom did not remain confined there, so we will also need to trace the development and spread of the religion and its visual culture into Western and Northern Europe. In doing so, we’ll be examining the formation of Christian art in these places over the same span of time that we discussed previously – that is, concurrent with the course of the Byzantine Empire. And what we’ll find in these places is a kind of fusion of cultural traits, as Christianity migrated there and co-mingled with already existing indigenous civilizations and visual traditions.
Over the course of our studies of the Byzantine time, we have also transitioned away from classical culture, and saw traits that are commonly viewed as marking the onset of the Middle Ages, or the medieval period, or even more harshly sometimes the “dark ages.” We should keep in mind, however, that these terms were assigned to such eras because of certain cultural priorities, and they have tied up in them the values of a particular time and place. As we mentioned, later Renaissance historians felt that this was a period of art and culture that represented a kind of in-between time, an interim period between the high points of the classical and the Renaissance.
Although such historiographical terms are still sometimes used as a matter of convenience, however, our focus is now no longer on the value judgments that were originally embedded in these terms. We no longer try to suggest, in other words, that the art of one time is better than that of another, through any sort of objective measure, knowing instead that the art tends to take the form of, and help facilitate, whatever social demands it meets.
We’ll see that at play here too – as both new and old values and beliefs in these other places combine to create a wholly new art.
