Week Nine

Doors of Bishop Bernward:

“The Temptation/Fall” vs. “The Crucifixion”

On the left and third panel down on the Doors of Bishop Bernward – “The Temptation/Fall” – the narrative describes Adam and Eve falling to the temptation of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  I think on the right hand side you can see a snake or serpent in a tree holding a fruit out to Eve in his mouth. To the left of that is Eve passing a fruit in front of another tree to Adam. On the far left there is a serpent in another tree watching Adam accept the fruit. The point of the panel is that Woman and Man were tempted by Satan, and in this moment described, humanity is about to be condemned.

In the panel to the right, there is “The Crucifixion.” In the center of this panel there is Christ on a cross, and immediately on his left and right are two soldiers or guards torturing him with spears and a container – meant to be vinegar. On the outsides, two apparently holy figures (John and Mary with halos) cringe as they look to see Christ suffering. This event is to show viewers that in the storyline, Christ is tortured and crucified and humanity is about to be redeemed.

These two narratives are paired next to each other because they are the direct cause and effect of each other. Christ had to suffer and die as a consequence of humanity’s sins which were a result of the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve. Their implications are opposite each other: the first showing mankind’s doom and the second showing the rescue of mankind.

Even though they have opposing ideas, their composition is incredibly similar and balanced.

The significance of each figure depicted is shown by relief. In “The Fall,” Adam and Eve are of the highest relief; the serpent pops out of the trees, but recedes into lower relief; the trees surrounding them are very low relief. As far as I can tell in “The Crucifixion,” Christ is the highest relief, the next highest is the two outer figures, and the lowest relief figures are the soldiers. Both figures have every other figure pooping out making itself significant. Next to each other, the high, low, high relief pattern is continuous which makes the two panels visually connected. Individually, “The Fall” has the central and outside figures as the least important while “The Crucifixion” has the opposite. If I am wrong about the figures in “The Crucifixion,” we could look at them this way: The characters in both panels are in higher relief with the ground and the trees (including the cross) are in low relief. Despite the demotion to low relief, we can still see that the trees (still including the cross) are significant to the stories because of the detailing used.  The trees could have been left very simple without becoming unrecognizable, but they were not. We can see veins in the leaves, blossoms and fruits in the trees, and markings on the tree trunks. The cross is also decorated some. They both have plain backgrounds successfully pushed back so the foreground is obviously what is important to see. They create three distinct planes: sky as a background, the natural (trees and ground) in the middle distance, and then the characters in the very front.

Every shape in one panel is mimicked in the other. The central tree in “The Fall” has its branches reaching out like the cross in “The Crucifixion.” Adam and Eve have their arms stretching upward a little, similar to the spears of the soldiers pestering Christ, while the other figures lean in toward the central figures looking to see the key actions that change humanity’s path dramatically. The outside trees’ branches from “The Fall” flatten out on the tops to parallel the flat halos of Christ’s mourners.

Overall, the stories connect and the visual compositions are sure to remind us that they have to been seen as related and one cannot be balanced or necessary without the other.

Week Eight

A lot of Christian art seems to resemble Roman art sometimes. That probably has something to do with the fact that all Christians were either Romans or Roman citizens or under Roman rule at the time. Romans had a fairly big empire back then. I think there are also some tendencies that relate more to Jewish or Egyptian art, but even those cultures were currently being influenced or controlled by the Roman Empire. Also, because of this, I think that Roman culture would have been more relatable than the minority religions and cultures, certainly more so than the budding Christianity’s values. Roman art was probably the only art Early Christians (and most of the world known to them) knew.

Early Christians did not seem to know exactly what they were trying to do or express. I think it is more than likely they were preoccupied with other things like staying alive and true to Christ, not so much defining a unique art style. So it is safe to say that they were easily influenced by the cultures surrounding them, especially from the dominating Roman Empire, and less so from the Jews. I would think that Christians would try to take after the Jews, but Jewish art was apparently not setting much of an example. And at the same time, there were a lot more Romans and my assumption would be a lot more Roman converts, or at least more influential converts would be Roman.

Because Romans were polytheistic, their art and stories focused on depicting the characteristics of all their gods and goddesses. That would explain why early and more orthodox Christians’ values were (or are) placed on saints and depictions of those saints as well as Christ. Greek, Roman, and eventually the Early Christian art all seem to want to depict these key characters. Page 238 of the third edition of our textbook (I do not know if they kept it for the next edition), there are Christian symbols depicting St Matthew as an angel, St Mark as a lion, St Luke as an ox, and St John as an eagle. That is definitely not something that Christians would have picked up from Judaism.  Depicting a person or god as an animal is more of a polytheistic tendency, which you can see in another culture feeling the Roman Empire’s control: Egypt. Romans and Greeks do not seem to have much of a problem having their gods being animals either.

At the same time, we can see that Early Christian art used to some degree narratives. We can see in comparison to what little Jewish art we have, and also with Ancient Egyptian art, there can be a focus on narratives. When Christian art relied on narratives, we can see that they valued things beyond Roman influence. Their narratives show what morals they value and what saints and martyrs they value, as well as what their favorite stories may have been. Jonah seemed to be a favorite. His story showed how God could save and resurrect from death. Other examples are on the “Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus” from our lectures. It has several narratives showing favorite stories and the values behind them. The figures from this sarcophagus suffer some proportion issues, so we can see that reality is not that important in these depictions, something that differs greatly from a lot of Roman art. Other works supporting that idea are the Good Shepherd sculptures that stylize to some degree, which we did not see in any of the Roman works we looked at. Also, the Good Shepherd sculptures and other artworks that depicted Christ tended to use a young man or boy. When Roman art used youth to make depictions of their rulers look strong, sometimes we can see that artists were still concerned with creating works that looked natural, as we can see with “Caracalla”. But we can also see that Romans were moving away from this naturalism back toward stylizing along with those Christians, like we can see in “Commodus as Hercules” and the Basilica Nova’s statue of Constantine. All in all, though Christianity started form Judaism, they mostly grew alongside the Romans and their art shows us that.

Week Seven

Honestly, I think Winckelmann's influence is quite impressive.  The man stated and enforced his opinion which managed to shape the perspectives of viewers and artists up to centuries later so far.  Even though he may have been incorrect about the basis of his argument, he still convinced pretty much all of Western Society that sculpture is most beautiful when plain and uncolored, as well as assisting in the beginnings of art history and archaeology.
It is hard to say whether or not our society would have eventually drawn the same conclusions about art and sculpture if the Greeks' paint and colors had remained on their works long enough archaeologists to see how Greek art looked originally. Perhaps the idea of simple white sculpture being the purest and most sophisticated would have come to us no matter what we found. I am sure this we would have reached this mindset at some point, but the real question is if we did not have white Greek sculpture to look at and consider "classical", would white become an ideal as a trend or as permanently or timeless as it has been? We may phase in and out of valuing busyness and colorfulness since the Greeks, but the cold white of marble has always been considered classic, timeless, and sophisticated - the epitome of sculpture. Personally, I prefer the white because it leaves room for shape and shadow to speak at first viewing, although color does add a lot of interest and can make an image easier to look at for longer time periods. I am inclined to think society would have come to agree with this whether we looked to Greek sculpture or not.
I wonder if it was popular at all for Greeks to color only simply or subtly or if all sculpture was as bright and interesting to the eye as some modern reconstructions are. For instance, the archer in the lecture (from the West pediment of the Temple of Aphaia) was shown next to a rather brightly colored reconstruction with busy patterns on the sleeves and leggings. The way the original looks today may be pleasant for our minds to appreciate, but the reconstruction appeals only to the eye by giving it plenty to look at as one walks by. I would prefer to have something simple and subtle for me to ponder at for a little while and assess what makes it beautiful, but I think modern reconstructions make Greek sculpture more logical for the time. The way that art functioned in that society was not for expression or contemplation necessarily.  Artwork had purposes other than just existing.  Ancient Greek art was there to make necessary, functioning objects (religious, spiritual, or mundane) more interesting to look at. The more color and designs included, the more an average type person could look at it and appreciate it without getting bored.  You can see this from the statues of the Hellenistic period all the way back to the vases of the Geometric period. If artwork functioned then as it does now, then it would have made sense for the colors to be omitted right at the get-go. We look at those marble sculptures to analyze and appreciate raw beauty and form, but that just was not what the Ancient Greeks were necessarily after.
Winckelmann may not have had all the facts, but he had the good idea to appreciate what he had in front of him. I think the sculpture we have now is serving a purpose even without its original color for modern artists - so long as we keep current functions separate from historical contexts.