ERA KESENIAN

EARLY MEDIEVAL ART The early Medieval period was referred to as " the dark ages " as early as the 14 century by Petrarch (1304-1374) , an Italian poet and scholar of the fourteenth century, who found no redeeming qualities in civilizations after the loss of the Classical tradition in education and learning until the Renaissance.  VIKING ERA Highly elaborate hilt of an early medieval Viking sword from Finland. The Viking Age lasted until the mid-11th century, when the Christianization of Scandinavia was largely completed. The period 1050 to 1350 ,when the Black Death struck Europe – is considered the Older Middle Ages. The period 1350 to 1523 , when king Gustav Vasa, who led the unification of Sweden, was crowned  is considered the Younger Middle Ages. During this period, Sweden was gradually consolidated as a single nation. Scandinavia was formally Christianized by 1100 AD. The Kalmar Union between the Scandinavian countries was established ...

Han Dynasty  Era (206 BCE - 220 CE)     During the era of  Han Dynasty art  a new, naturalistic outlook prevailed in figurative art.     This is particularly evident in bronzes and in the pottery figures called  ming-chi  which people had buried with them in their graves.   The Chinese believed in an afterlife and they liked to surround themselves with representations of familiar sights, particularly of those things which had given them pleasure on earth, such as dogs and horses, dancers and concubines.  These figures enable us to know precisely how the subjects of the Han dynasty were dressed, what they ate, what tools they used, what games they played, the domestic animals they reared and the appearance of the houses in which they lived.   Many of the figures were coated in a lead glaze; others were painted. All are interesting and their stylised elegance is often of arresting beauty.   Bronze vases...

GREEK ART Iktinos and Kallikrates, Parthenon, Acropolis, Athens, 447 – 432 B.C.E Greek art began in the Cycladic and Minoan civilization , and gave birth to Western classical art in the subsequent Geometric, Archaic and Classical periods (with further developments during the Hellenistic Period).   It absorbed influences of Eastern civilizations, of Roman art and its patrons, and the new religion of Orthodox Christianity in the Byzantine era and absorbed Italian and European ideas during the period of Romanticism (with the invigoration of the Greek Revolution), until the Modernist and Postmodernist. Greek art is mainly five forms: architecture, sculpture, painting, pottery and jewellery making. The  Stag Hunt Mosaic  at the  Archaeological Museum of Pella  (3rd BC) Artistic production in Greece began in the prehistoric pre-Greek  Cycladic  and the  Minoan civilizations, both of which were influenced by local traditions a...

      BYZANTINE ART BEFORE                         AFTER   The  purpose of Byzantine art  was to glorify the Christian  religion  and to express its        mystery.   Byzantine art  is a combination of Eastern and classical Western  art .     The  Byzantine  Empire inherited the ideas and forms of  art  of the classical world of Greece and Rome. However, part of the empire was in Asia and Africa.  Icon in Byzantine art Byzantine  Iconoclasm (Greek: Εἰκονομαχία, Eikonomachía) refers to two periods in the history of the  Byzantine  Empire when the use of religious images or  icons  was opposed by religious and imperial authorities within the Eastern Church and the temporal imperial hierarchy.  The Byzantine period in art   The pictorial and architec...

ROMAN ART Roman art  refers to the visual  arts  made in Ancient Rome and in the territories of the  Roman  Empire. Roman art  includes architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work . ·          Roman art is a very broad topic, spanning almost 1,000 years and three continents, from Europe into Africa and Asia. ·           The first Roman art can be dated back to 509 B.C.E., with the legendary founding of the Roman Republic, and lasted until 330 C.E. Roman art also encompasses a broad spectrum of media including marble, painting, mosaic, gems, silver and bronze work, and terracotta, just to name a few.  ·          The city of Rome was a melting pot, and the Romans had no qualms about adapting artistic influences from the other Mediterranean cultures that surrounded and preceded them.     ...

EGYPT ART Wood Gilded Statue of Lady Tiye, mother of Akhenaten, Egypt ca. 1390-1352 B.C.E. Amarna Period Tomb of Sarenput II. Queen Tiye (?), ca. 1352-1336 B.C.E. Sandstone. Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 33.55 ü   Ancient Egyptian art  is the painting, sculpture, architecture and other arts produced by the civilization of  ancient Egypt  in the lower  Nile Valley from about 3000 BC to 30 AD. ü   Ancient Egyptian art reached a high level in painting and sculpture, and was both highly stylized and  symbolic . ü   It was famously conservative, and Egyptian styles changed remarkably little over more than three thousand years. ü   Much of the surviving art comes from tombs and monuments and thus there is an emphasis on life after death and the preservation of knowledge of the past. ü   Ancient Egyptian art included paintings, sculpture in wood (now rarely surviving), stone and ceramics, drawi...