Ottonian art

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senkschmelz
enamels, c. 1000

Ottonian art is a

Henry II.[1] With Ottonian architecture, it is a key component of the Ottonian Renaissance (circa 951–1024). However, the style neither began nor ended to neatly coincide with the rule of the dynasty. It emerged some decades into their rule and persisted past the Ottonian emperors into the reigns of the early Salian dynasty, which lacks an artistic "style label" of its own.[2] In the traditional scheme of art history, Ottonian art follows Carolingian art and precedes Romanesque art, though the transitions at both ends of the period are gradual rather than sudden. Like the former and unlike the latter, it was very largely a style restricted to a few of the small cities of the period, and important monasteries, as well as the court circles of the emperor and his leading vassals
.

After the decline of the Carolingian Empire, the Holy Roman Empire was re-established under the Saxon Ottonian dynasty. From this emerged a renewed faith in the idea of Empire and a reformed Church, creating a period of heightened cultural and artistic fervour. It was in this atmosphere that masterpieces were created that fused the traditions from which Ottonian artists derived their inspiration: models of Late Antique, Carolingian, and Byzantine origin. Surviving Ottonian art is very largely religious, in the form of illuminated manuscripts and metalwork, and was produced in a small number of centres for a narrow range of patrons in the circle of the Imperial court, as well as important figures in the church. However much of it was designed for display to a wider public, especially of pilgrims.[3]

The style is generally grand and heavy, sometimes to excess, and initially less sophisticated than the Carolingian equivalents, with less direct influence from Byzantine art and less understanding of its classical models, but around 1000 a striking intensity and expressiveness emerge in many works, as "a solemn monumentality is combined with a vibrant inwardness, an unworldly, visionary quality with sharp attention to actuality, surface patterns of flowing lines and rich bright colours with passionate emotionalism".[4]

Context

"Roma", "Gallia", "Germania" and "Sclavinia" pay homage to Otto III, from the Munich Gospels of Otto III, one of the "Liuthar group"

Following late Carolingian styles, "

Justinian as well as to their Carolingian predecessors, particularly Charlemagne. This goal was accomplished in various ways. For example, the many Ottonian ruler portraits typically include elements, such as province personifications, or representatives of the military and the Church flanking the emperor, with a lengthy imperial iconographical history.[6]

As well as the reuse of motifs from older imperial art, the removal of

Palace of Theoderic in Ravenna and reused them in his new cathedral at Magdeburg
. The one thing the ruler portraits rarely attempt is a close likeness of the individual features of a ruler; when Otto III died, some manuscript images of him were re-purposed as portraits of Henry II without the need being felt to change the features.

In a continuation and intensification of late Carolingian trends, many miniatures contain

Pirmin, founder of Hornbach Abbey, who presents it to St Peter, who presents it to Christ, altogether taking up eight pages (with the facing illuminated tablets) to stress the unity and importance of the "command structure" binding church and state, on earth and in heaven.[7]

Early Medieval period, and some lay brothers and lay assistants employed by monasteries.[10] While secular jewellery supplied a steady stream of work for goldsmiths, ivory carving
at this period was mainly for the church, and may have been centred in monasteries, although (see below) wall-paintings seems to have been usually done by laymen.

Manuscripts

Codex Egberti, Resurrection of Lazarus, "Ruodprecht group"

Ottonian monasteries produced many magnificent medieval illuminated manuscripts. They were a major art form of the time, and monasteries received direct sponsorship from emperors and bishops, having the best in equipment and talent available.[11] The range of heavily illuminated texts was very largely restricted (unlike in the Carolingian Renaissance) to the main liturgical books, with very few secular works being so treated.[2]

In contrast to manuscripts of other periods, it is very often possible to say with certainty who commissioned or received a manuscript, but not where it was made. Some manuscripts also include relatively extensive cycles of narrative art, such as the sixteen pages of the Codex Aureus of Echternach devoted to "strips" in three tiers with scenes from the life of Christ and his parables.[12] Heavily illuminated manuscripts were given rich treasure bindings and their pages were probably seen by very few; when they were carried in the grand processions of Ottonian churches it seems to have been with the book closed to display the cover.[13]

The Ottonian style did not produce surviving manuscripts from before about the 960s, when books known as the "

Lorsch Gospels. This is the first stylistic group of the traditional "Reichenau school". The two other major manuscripts of the group are the sacramentaries named for Hornbach and Petershausen. In the group of four presentation miniatures in the former described above "we can almost follow ... the movement away from the expansive Carolingian idiom to the more sharply defined Ottonian one".[14]

the Annunciation to the shepherds from the Pericopes of Henry II, "Liuthar group" of the "Reichenau school"

A number of important manuscripts produced from this period onwards in a distinctive group of styles are usually attributed to the scriptorium of the

Memory of the World International Register.[16]

The most important "Reichenau school" manuscripts are agreed to fall into three distinct groups, all named after scribes whose names are recorded in their books.[17] The "Eburnant group" covered above was followed by the "Ruodprecht group" named after the scribe of the Egbert Psalter; Dodwell assigns this group to Trier. The Aachen Gospels of Otto III, also known as the Liuthar Gospels, give their name to the third "Liuthar group" of manuscripts, most from the 11th century, in a strongly contrasting style, though still attributed by most scholars to Reichenau, but by Dodwell also to Trier.[18]

The outstanding miniaturist of the "Ruodprecht group" was the so-called Master of the

Egbert of Trier, probably in the 980s. However, the majority of the 51 images in this book, which represent the first extensive cycle of images depicting the events of Christ's life in a western European manuscript, were made by two monks from Reichenau, who are named and depicted in one of the miniatures.[20]

The style of the "Liuthar group" is very different, and departs further from rather than returning to classical traditions; it "carried transcendentalism to an extreme", with "marked schematization of the forms and colours", "flattened form, conceptualized draperies and expansive gesture".[21] Backgrounds are often composed of bands of colour with a symbolic rather than naturalistic rationale, the size of figures reflects their importance, and in them "emphasis is not so much on movement as in gesture and glance", with narrative scenes "presented as a quasi-liturgical act, dialogues of divinity".[22] This gestural "dumb-show [was] soon to be conventionalized as a visual language throughout medieval Europe".[4]

The group were produced perhaps from the 990s to 1015 or later, and major manuscripts include the Munich Gospels of Otto III, the Bamberg Apocalypse and a volume of biblical commentary there, and the Pericopes of Henry II, the best known and most extreme of the group, where "the figure-style has become more monumental, more rarified and sublime, at the same time thin in density, insubstantial, mere silhouettes of colour against a shimmering void".[23] The group introduced the background of solid gold to Western illumination.

Labourers in the vineyard, from the Codex Aureus of Echternach

Two dedication miniatures added to the

St. Emmeram's Abbey held the major Carolingian Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram, which probably influenced a style with "an incisive line and highly formal organization of the page", giving in the Uta Codex of c. 1020 complex schemes where "bands of gold outline the bold, squares circles, ellipses, and rhombs that enclose the figures", and inscriptions are incorporated in the design explicating its complex theological symbolism. This style was to be very influential on Romanesque art in several media.[24]

Corvey, Fulda, and Cologne, where the Hitda Codex was made.[27]

Gallery of Christ calming the storm

This scene was often included in Ottonian cycles of the Life of Christ. Many show Jesus (with crossed halo) twice, once asleep and once calming the storm.

Metalwork and enamels

A corner of the cover of the Codex Aureus of Echternach, Trier, 980s

Objects for decorating churches such as crosses,

Celestial city, and particular types of gem were believed to have actual powerful properties in various "scientific", medical and magical respects, as set out in the popular lapidary books.[30] The few surviving pieces of secular jewellery are in similar styles, including the crown worn by Otto III as a child, which he presented to the Golden Madonna of Essen after he outgrew it.[31]

Examples of

Morgan Library, New York) and the Arnulf Ciborium in Munich were important forerunners of the style, from a few decades before and probably from the same workshop.[36]

Wedding at Cana on the Bernward Column

Large objects in non-precious metals were also made, with the earliest surviving

Hildesheim Cathedral from the period of Bishop Bernward (died 1022), who was himself an artist, although his biographer was unusually honest in saying that he did not reach "the peaks of perfection". The most famous of these is the pair of church doors, the Bernward Doors, with biblical figure scenes in bronze relief, each cast in a single piece, where the powerfully simple compositions convey their meanings by emphatic gestures, in a way comparable to the Reichenau miniatures of the same period.[37] There is also a bronze column, the Bernward Column, 3.79 metres (12.4 ft) high, originally the base for a crucifix, cast in a single hollow piece. This unusual form is decorated with twenty-four scenes from the ministry of Jesus in a continuous strip winding round the column in the manner of Trajan's Column and other Roman examples.[38]

Around 980, Archbishop Egbert of Trier seems to have established the major Ottonian workshop producing

vollschmelz one already used. Small plaques with decorative motifs derived from plant forms continued to use vollschmelz, with enamel all over the plaque, while figures were now usually in senkschmelz, surrounded by a plain gold surface into which the outline of the figure had been recessed. The Essen cross with large enamels illustrated above shows both these techniques.[39]

Gallery of bronzes

Ivory carving

The "dedication" panel, one of the Magdeburg Ivories

Much very fine small-scale sculpture in ivory was made during the Ottonian period, with Milan probably a site if not the main centre, along with Trier and other German and French sites. There are many oblong panels with reliefs which once decorated book-covers, or still do, with the Crucifixion of Jesus as the most common subject. These and other subjects very largely continue Carolingian iconography, but in a very different style.[40]

A group of four Ottonian ivory

Life of Christ on two levels,[41] the "Situla of Gotofredo" of c. 980 in Milan Cathedral,[42] one in the Aachen Cathedral Treasury,[43] and one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.[44] All came from the milieu of the Ottonian court: an inscription says that Archbishop Gotfredus presented the Milan example in anticipation of a visit by the Emperor,[45] also referred to in the London example which was possibly from the same workshop.[46] The latest and most lavish is the Aachen example, which is studded with jewels and shows an enthroned Emperor, surrounded by a pope and archbishops. This was probably made in Trier about 1000.[47]

Among various stylistic groups and putative workshops that can be detected, that responsible for pieces including the panel from the cover of the Codex Aureus of Echternach and two diptych wings now in Berlin (all illustrated below) produced particularly fine and distinctive work, perhaps in Trier, with "an astonishing perception of the human form ... [and] facility in handling the material".[48]

A very important group of

Life of Christ inside a plain flat frame; one plaque in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York has a "dedication" scene, where a crowned monarch presents Christ with a model church, usually taken to be Otto I with Magdeburg Cathedral. Altogether seventeen survive, probably fewer than half of the original set. The plaques include background areas fully cut through the ivory, which would presumably originally have been backed with gold. Apart from the spaces left beside buildings, these openwork elements include some that leave chequerboard or foliage patterns.[49] The style of the figures is described by Peter Lasko as "very heavy, stiff, and massive ... with extremely clear and flat treatment of drapery ... in simple but powerful compositions".[50]

Wall painting

Jesus and the Gadarene swine, nave fresco in St George, Oberzell

Although it is clear from documentary records that many churches were decorated with extensive cycles of wall-painting, survivals are extremely rare, and more often than not fragmentary and in poor condition. Generally they lack evidence to help with dating such as donor portraits, and their date is often uncertain; many have been restored in the past, further complicating the matter. Most survivals are clustered in south Germany and around Fulda in Hesse; though there are also important examples from north Italy.[51] There is a record of bishop Gebhard of Constance hiring lay artists for a now vanished cycle at his newly foundation (983) of Petershausen Abbey, and laymen may have dominated the art of wall-painting, though perhaps sometimes working to designs by monastic illuminators. The artists seem to have been rather mobile: "at about the time of the Oberzell pictures there was an Italian wall-painter working in Germany, and a German one in England".[52]

The church of St George at Oberzell on Reichenau Island has the best-known surviving scheme, though much of the original work has been lost and the remaining paintings to the sides of the nave have suffered from time and restoration. The largest scenes show the miracles of Christ in a style that both shows specific Byzantine input in some elements, and a closeness to Reichenau manuscripts such as the Munich Gospels of Otto III; they are therefore usually dated around 980–1000. Indeed, the paintings are one of the foundations of the case for Reichenau Abbey as a major centre of manuscript painting.[53]

Larger sculpture

Very little wood carving has survived from the period, but the monumental painted figure of Christ on the

Sant' Ambrogio, Milan, and also on that in the Abbey of San Pietro al Monte, Civate, which relate to ivory carving of the same period,[56] the large silver cross of the Abbess Raingarda in the Basilica of San Michele Maggiore in Pavia[57]
and some stone sculpture.

Survival and historiography

Surviving Ottonian works are very largely those in the care of the church which were kept and valued for their connections with either royal or church figures of the period. Very often the jewels in metalwork were pilfered or sold over the centuries, and many pieces now completely lack them, or have modern glass paste replacements. As from other periods, there are many more surviving ivory panels (whose material is usually hard to re-use) for book-covers than complete metalwork covers, and some thicker ivory panels were later re-carved from the back with a new relief.[58] Many objects mentioned in written sources have completely disappeared, and we probably now only have a tiny fraction of the original production of reliquaries and the like.[2] A number of pieces have major additions or changes made later in the Middle Ages or in later periods. Manuscripts that avoided major library fires have had the best chance of survival; the dangers facing wall-paintings are mentioned above. Most major objects remain in German collections, often still church libraries and treasuries.

The term "Ottonian art" was not coined until 1890, and the following decade saw the first serious studies of the period; for the next several decades the subject was dominated by German art historians mainly dealing with manuscripts,[59] apart from Adolph Goldschmidt's studies of ivories and sculpture in general. A number of exhibitions held in Germany in the years following World War II helped introduce the subject to a wider public and promote the understanding of art media other than manuscript illustrations. The 1950 Munich exhibition Ars Sacra ("sacred art" in Latin) devised this term for religious metalwork and the associated ivories and enamels, which was re-used by Peter Lasko in his book for the Pelican History of Art, the first survey of the subject written in English, as the usual art-historical term, the "minor arts", seemed unsuitable for this period, where they were, with manuscript miniatures, the most significant art forms.[60] In 2003 a reviewer noted that Ottonian manuscript illustration was a field "that is still significantly under-represented in English-language art-historical research".[61]

Notes

  1. ^ "Dictionary of Art Historians: Janitschek, Hubert". Retrieved 2013-07-18.
  2. ^ a b c Suckale-Redlefsen, 524
  3. ^ Beckwith, 81–86; Lasko, 82; Dodwell, 123–126
  4. ^ a b Honour and Fleming, 277
  5. ^ in contrast, there are no surviving contemporary portraits of Charlemagne in manuscripts
  6. ^ Dodwell, 123; Imperial portraiture is a major subject in Garrison
  7. ^ Solothurn Zentralbibliothek Codex U1 (ex-Cathedral Treasury), folios 7v to 10r; Alexander, 89–90; Legner, Vol 2, B2, all eight pages illustrated on pp. 140-141; Dodwell, 134; the Egbert Psalter also has four pages of presentation scenes, with two each spread across a full opening.
  8. ^ Or so it is usually assumed, but see Suckale-Redlefsen, 98
  9. ^ Metz, 47–49
  10. ^ An area where evidence is generally thin across Europe, see Cherry, Chapter 1
  11. ISBN 978-0-19-820801-3
    .
  12. ^ Metz, throughout; Dodwell, 144
  13. ^ Suckale-Redlefsen, 98
  14. ^ Dodwell, 134, quoted; Beckwith, 92–93; compare the St John portraits in the Gero Codex and the Lorsch Gospels
  15. ^ Dodwell, 130, with his full views in: C.R. Dodwell et D. H. Turner (eds.), Reichenau reconsidered. A Re-assessment of the Place of Reichenau in Ottonian Art, 1965, Warburg Surveys, 2, of which Backhouse is a review. See Backhouse, 98 for German scholars dubious about the traditional Reichenau school. Garrison, 15, supports the traditional view.
  16. ^ "Illuminated manuscripts from the Ottonian period produced in the monastery of Reichenau (Lake Constance)". UNESCO. Retrieved 6 July 2014.
  17. ^ Or at any rate, monks depicted and named in them. Whether these would actually have been the main scribes of the text is discussed by Mayr-Harting, 229
  18. ^ Dodwell, 134–144; Backhouse, throughout, is rather sceptical about Trier as a major centre; Beckwith, 96–104 stresses the mobility of illuminators.
  19. ^ Dodwell, 141–142, 141 quoted; Lasko, 106–107
  20. ^ Dodwell, 134–142
  21. ^ Beckwith, 104, 102
  22. ^ Beckwith, 108–110, both quoted
  23. ^ Beckwith, 112
  24. ^ Dodwell, 151–153; Garrison, 16-18
  25. ^ Dodwell, 144–146
  26. ^ Dodwell, 153–15
  27. ^ Dodwell, 130–156 covers the whole period, as does Beckwith, 92–124; Legner's three volumes have catalogue entries on considerable numbers of manuscripts made in Cologne, or now located there.
  28. ^ Lasko, Part Two (pp. 77–142), gives a very comprehensive account. Beckwith, 138–145
  29. ^ Lasko, 94–95; Henderson, 15, 202–214; see Head for an analysis of the political significance of reliquaries commissioned by Egbert of Trier.
  30. ^ Metz, 26–30.
  31. ^ Lasko, 94-95; also this brooch in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  32. ^ Lasko, 99–109; Beckwith, 138–142
  33. ^ Metz, 59–60; Lasko, 98; Beckwith, 133–134.
  34. ^ Henderson, 15; Lasko, 96–98; Head.
  35. ^ Lasko, 129–131; Beckwith, 144–145.
  36. ^ Lasko, 64–66; Beckwith, 50, 80.
  37. ^ Lasko, 111–123, 119 quoted; Beckwith, 145–149
  38. ^ Lasko, 120-122
  39. ^ Lasko, 95–106; Beckwith, 138–142
  40. ^ Beckwith, 126–138; Lasko, 78–79, 94, 106–108, 112, 131, as well as the passages cited below
  41. ^ Basilewsky Situla V&A Museum
  42. ^ image of Milan situla
  43. ^ "Image of Aachen situla". Archived from the original on 2011-07-22. Retrieved 2014-02-15.
  44. ^ Metropolitan Museum example
  45. ^ Lasko, 92-3
  46. ^ Williamson, 26, though Lasko, 92 disagrees with this.
  47. ^ All except the New York situla are illustrated and discussed in Beckwith, pp. 129–130, 135–136
  48. ^ Beckwith, 133-136, 135-136 quoted
  49. ^ Lasko, 87–91; Williamson, 12; Beckwith, 126–129. On the function of the original object, Williamson favours a door, Lasko leans towards a pulpit, and Beckwith an antependium, but none seem emphatic in their preference.
  50. ^ Lasko, 89
  51. ^ Dodwell, 127–128; Beckwith, 88–92
  52. ^ Dodwell, 130; the Italian was "Johannes Italicus", who one scholar has identified with the Gregory Master, see Beckwith, 103
  53. ^ Dodwell, 128–130; Beckwith, 88–92; Backhouse, 100
  54. ^ Beckwith, 142; Lauer, Rolf, in Legner, III, 142 (in German)
  55. ^ Beckwith, 150–152 Lasko, 104
  56. ^ Beckwith, 132
  57. ^ "Crocifisso". Lombardia Beni Culturali. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  58. ^ For example, Legner, Vol 2 pp. 238-240, no. E32, where a largely rubbed-down 6th-century Byzantine bookcover plaque has on the original back a Cologne relief of c. 1000 (Schnütgen Museum, Inv. B 98).
  59. ^ Suckale-Redlefsen, 524–525
  60. ^ Suckale-Redlefsen, 524; Lasko, xxii lists a number of the exhibitions up to 1972.
  61. ^ Review by Karen Blough of The Uta Codex: Art, Philosophy, and Reform in Eleventh-Century Germany by Adam S. Cohen, Speculum, Vol. 78, No. 3 (Jul., 2003), pp. 856-858, JSTOR

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ottonian art.

Further reading

  • Mayr-Harting, Henry, Ottonian Book Illumination. An Historical Study, 1991, 2 vols, Harvey Miller (see Suckale-Redlefsen above for review; also there is a 1999 single volume edition)

External links

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