THE HISTORY OF ART HISTORY: EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE AGES

It is a truism that medieval people did not regard themselves as living in the Middle Ages. The notion of an era "in the middle" is the creation of Renaissance humanists, who adopted the expression after the fact to distance themselves from those bygone days.ⁱ In the negative view of the Renaissance, the Middle Ages called for little analysis as it was essentially all of a piece: an age of barbarism. Today we have achieved a more nuanced view, one that seems more adequate to the immense variety of forms of thought and material existence of pre-Renaissance times. In addition, modern scholars recognize that, real differences, notwithstanding, there is continuity between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

In view of these changes in historical outlook, should one simply discard the terms medieval and Middle Ages? These expressions are well established, and no compelling reason exists to replace them, as long as one allows that they are essentially opaque and tell us little about the attitudes and cultural climate prevailing during the period.

            Until recently, historians took it for granted that the Middle Ages were simply the Christianized successor to the Roman Empire in Western Europe. Yet an increasing volume of studies are directed to far-flung realms, such as Armenian, Georgian, Slavic, and Viking medievalism. These endeavors are enriching. For the purposes of this chapter, however, the exposition adopts a somewhat old-fashioned concentration on the historiography in Western (Latin) Europe. This approach seems appropriate because the historiographical tradition is, on the one hand, heir to Latin thinking (albeit with major Judeo-Christian infusions), which adapted and prolonged Greek thought, including art history. On the other hand, the Latin Middle Ages leads straight to the Italian Renaissance, which created the first fully realized paradigm of the history of art as a meaningful process culminating in the (then) present.

Modern scholars have written extensively about the aesthetics of the Middle Ages. On closer inspection, however, the bulk of the texts addressed in these studies have either a general character--e.g. the definition of the beautiful; and proportion as a manifestation of the divine structure of the cosmos--or pertain to effects that are specific to rhetoric and literature.ⁱⁱ The extent to which one may fruitfully transfer the concepts generated by such interests to actual works of painting and sculpture, the minor arts, and architecture is problematic. The preoccupation of scholars with aesthetic themes reflects the ready availability in modern editions of works by theological and encyclopedic writers such as Augustine, Isidore of Seville, and Thomas Aquinas  none of whom showed much interest in the visual arts. To remedy this lack a number of art historians have perused chronicles, annals, lives of the saints and other sources, patiently gathering bits of information about the visual arts. Industrious scholars such as Julius von Schlosser, Victor Mortet, and Otto Lehmann-Brockhaus have published collections of these brief texts, usually in the original Latin, gleaned from larger works on quite different themes.ⁱⁱⁱ Others have provided shorter anthologies in English renderings.^iv

Until about 1200 CE, monasteries held a monopoly on culture in the western Middle Ages. The excerpted sources generally stem from monastic authors, many of them involved with commissioning works of art. Typically, they comment on works which were intimately known to them, but in part for this very reason feel obliged to say little more than that the works were "beautiful," "admirable," "excellent," "incomparable," and the like.^v Sometimes stock comparisons with famous artists of antiquity, such as Apelles or Phidias, appear, but these are merely generic praise, without implying a stylistic parallel. Use of the expression "by the hand of" suggests that they were willing to certify, when they deemed it appropriate, the execution of a work by a particular artist. However, medieval writers seem indifferent to the connoisseurship that would enable them to reconstruct the oeuvre of a master by adducing unattributed works to add to the one(s) already known. Nor do they concern themselves with identifying wrongly attributed works and detecting forgeries. Indeed, given the lack of a concept of originality, it is questionable whether the notion of forgery existed in the Middle Ages. These deficits reflect the absence of an art market (as distinct from a flourishing trade in relics, where questions of authenticity were in fact hotly debated.) Also relevant was the matter of geographical particularism. The horizons of the writers were generally limited to their locale or region; their experience did not suffice to furnish a solid fund of material for comparison.

Terms and Concepts.

From these texts one might assume that medieval accounts of works of art are wholly particularistic; it would seem that they are only concerned to address, in a business-like manner, the isolated individual work. In fact, there is scattered evidence of an endeavor to construct larger contexts. One category of these efforts reflects a nascent recognition of the idea of style. To be sure the medieval writers never use abstract terms such as classicism, Gothicism, or impressionism. The terms that connote style are adjectives, usually modifying the noun opus (in the ablative opere; "work"). Thus objects in a style we would regards as Byzantine style are frequently designated as graeco opere. Significantly, this adjective is never used for ancient Greek art, which (in context) might be called antiquus or antiquissimus. Objects in the English manner are called anglico opere, and German ones opere theutonico. Islamic works acquire the label opere saracenico. In a famous, though isolated instance, the Gothic church at Wimpfen built about 1280 is dubbed opere francigeno (French work). Although this comment reflects a valid perception of the French origin of the Gothic way of building, it probably should not be generalized, as Paul Frankl has sought to do, as a recognition of the overall character of the Gothic style.^vi

All the foregoing terms refer to peoples or locales, suggesting a view that particular groups achieved special excellence in individual crafts. The term used may simply indicate that the object was imported from the country to which it is ascribed. Sometimes a technical feature is meant: romanorum opere indicates that a building is constructed in stone rather than the less durable wood.

In other instances medieval writers distinguish between an older and a newer manner, implying awareness of a stylistic watershed. William of Malmesbury, for example, speaks of buildings erected since the Norman conquest (in the style that we would term Romanesque) as "new." Most often, however, new work is just that, new without implying a fundamental difference of style. Unlike Pliny and Vitruvius, who did not hesitate to censure aspects of art that were current in their own day, medieval writers tend to applaud new work as better. It is described as finer, larger, more beautiful, and brighter--though sometimes care is taken to refer tactfully to the older work as venerable. Some writers seem to distinguish the adjectives vetus and antiquus using the first to refer to old work that is relatively recent, the latter to things that are centuries old. Of course, very old works may be dubbed antiquissimus. Interestingly, a synonym for novus is modernus (from the Latin modo, "only recently, just now").

Artists and Patrons.

Contrary to common belief, many names of individual artists are recorded from the Middle Ages--probably more per capita than in Roman times.^vii These names appear in the chronicles, as has been noted, but also in the form of signatures on their works. With reference to Modena in the early twelfth century much has been made of the search for the famous architect Lanfranco who constructed the cathedral. Lanfranco is not alone, for an inscription carved on the façade praises Wiligelmo as famous among sculptors. This emphasis on the enduring fame of artists seems to set Italy apart as early as the twelfth century.^viii Yet the names rarely suffice, in and of themselves, to reconstruct the overall careers of artists. Some sources indicate whether artists were novices or experienced masters.

Medieval writers generally declined to construct "dynasties" or chains of influence of the type "x studied with y, y with z" type, which are found in Pliny. A rare instance of such a relationship is Giotto's pupillage with Cimabue, whom he surpassed. One commentator, Benvenuto da Imola, writing a few years after Giotto's death in 1337 indicates that this master's work is not perfect and will likely be surpassed in turn; in support of this expectation, the writer makes explicit reference to the sequence of Greek artists.

Is authorship of works of art truly of transcendent importance? Some thinkers of our own day, such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault, have downgraded the role of the artist or creative figure, holding that the matter of artistic origination is too diffuse to be attributed to one person.^ix On the one hand, the input of countless individuals goes into the making of the sensibility that made the work possible; on the other, the reader or viewer recreates it with each encounter. Whatever the ultimate fate of such theories may be, the matter of authorship is often problematic in the Middle Ages. No stigma was attached to copying; indeed merit derived from the careful imitation of good models. Another point is that patrons often regarded themselves as the true originary minds. The close involvement of such churchmen as Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim and Abbot Suger of St. Denis is striking.

               Although he did not scorn the use of professional architects, the emperor Justinian (483-565) took a close interest in the buildings erected during his reign, regarding himself as "the founder." He commissioned a special book, On the Buildings, by his court historian Procopius to extol his achievements and preserve their memory.^x Later, Charlemagne supervised the revival of art in his reign so that he could be regarded as an artist himself. Something of the same is true of other art-loving monarchs, such as Louis IX of France and Edward III of England. Sometimes whole dynasties seem to leave a particular impress on art, as the Hohenstaufen in Germany. Hence modern art historians speak of Carolingian and Hohenstaufen art.

Themes.

As noted above, more ambitious aesthetic analyses are rare. Some attempts at discussing earlier works note qualities such as naturalism in terms purloined with little elaboration or aptness from classical sources.^xi Novelties, however, do occur, generally reflecting Christian or Christianized neo-Platonic motifs; noteworthy among these is the light mysticism stemming from Dionysius the Areopagite, a Syrian mystic who wrote about 500 A.D.^xii The ubiquitous use of gold backgrounds in Byzantine mosaics and icons undoubtedly reflects this trend. In a different way light mysticism may have played a role in the thinking of Abbot Suger, who believed, mistaken­ly, that his abbey had been founded by the mysterious Syrian (Denis = Dionysius). In this way, the architecture of the abbey church of  St. Denis was shaped, and its success was so conspicuous as to launch the Gothic style.^xiii

The theology of icons attributed the origin of specific prototypes to divine manufacture (acheiropoieta) or some miraculous intervention in human affairs.^xiv Accordingly, no premium was placed on improving either their iconographical style or details; the closer they remained to the prototype the better. Joining with the venerable belief that things of long-standing are better than novelties, this characteristic of icon production tended to discourage any positive evaluation of processes of artistic change. The effects of this stasis were particularly observable in Byzantium and the lands dominated by its civilization. Nonetheless, despite admonitions to copy the older prototypes with the utmost fidelity, art did change--though more slowly than in contemporary Western Europe. Yet since change was not prized, the mainly clerical intellectuals of Byzantium did not feel called upon to trace its course.

Social Aspects.

Archival documents have permitted the recovery of histories of great building enterprises in western Europe--often conducted over centuries--as seen in the cathedrals of Chartres, Canterbury, and Troyes and many others. Yet no one in the Middle Ages seems to have taken the trouble to write a comprehensive history of any individual building, one of the thriving growth areas of the modern historiog­raphy of medieval art. Although documents and signatures have yielded a considerable number of names of medieval artists in various media--including architecture, sculpture, goldsmith's work, and book illumination--it is significant that hardly ever do these documents permit one to monitor an artist's career. That is to say, they usually reflect one single work or complex of works, leaving us to search for other creations that might be added to the oeuvre.^xv

As has been noted, the monasteries held a monopoly on culture until about 1200. Ancient texts, including the writings of Pliny the Elder and Vitruvius, the architectural writer, were assiduously copied in the monastic scriptoria.^xvi Monasteries gave considerable employment to artists, especially in the luxury arts of enamel, goldsmith's work, and illuminated manuscripts. Even after 1200 many artists continued to work mainly for the church, which naturally regarded their achievements as inferior to those of the clergy. Insofar as the historiography of medieval art exists, it lies in the chronicles, memoirs and hagiographical documents of the medieval church. Everywhere in western Europe clerics undertook major projects of building and church decoration. They are therefore oftentimes cited as the creators of the works--and in some cases may have actually practiced one technique or another. Certainly most luxury manuscripts were illuminated by monks, who engaged in other crafts as well.

Secular culture arose in other contexts, notably in the vernacular lyric poetry of southern Europe that began in the eleventh century. Some of the outstanding creators of these compositions, the troubadours and trouvères, were celebrated by name. Julius von Schlosser has suggested that the biographies of Provençal trouba­dours provided a model for the later genre of artists' biogra­phies.^xvii If so, the harvest for art history was only realized later--during the Renaissance.

It is sometimes claimed that the new poetry of the troubadours was influenced by Arabic models which filtered in from Spain. Whatever the case may have been in poetry, Islamic ivories and textiles were appreciated and imported. Yet Islam had its own restrictions on visual art stemming from its version of the Second Commandment; living things were not to be shown in sacred art, and were only exceptionally tolerated in secular works (as in Persian miniatures). Even if the Islamic faith had placed a higher value on the visual arts, as a product of a "heretical" culture it could have made little positive impact on Europe. Only the revival of classical antiquity could lead to a full-throated appreciation of the contribution of visual artists. Many obstacles to the recognition of the concept of artistic personality, including some bequeathed by antiquity itself, stood in the way.

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries images of pagan deities appear increasingly in manuscripts and other representa­tions. Generally, however, the negative contexts of such figures accorded with their repute as abodes of demons in keeping with the concept of idolatry.^xviii Medieval atti­tudes towards ancient art were wrapped in an ambivalence that dissipated only slowly.

The establishment of medieval universities did not enhance the status of the visual arts--rather perhaps the reverse. For art in our sense did not figure in the standard curriculum of the liberal arts. There were two sets of courses. The lower division, so to speak, the trivium, addressed the verbal arts of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. The upper division, the quadrivium, comprised theoretical studies of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. Painting, sculpture, and architecture found no place in this scheme: they were relegated to a place apart among the artes mechanicae, the manual arts. Despite the monastic ideal of the value of labor, the old prejudice about working with one's hands found among the Greeks and Romans persisted; it may even have been reinforced by the incipient revival of classical ideals. Even later, Renaissance admirers of the visual arts still had to confront a paradox. On the one hand, classical antiquity had left signal records of great artists; on the other hand, its characteristic mentality seemed to place manual craft on a distinctly secondary level. Ultimately, only time, coupled with the spread of the idea of individual genius, could dissolve the prejudice against the visual arts.

The New Medieval Idea of Human Progress.

Disparate as they are, the kinds of information discussed above have provided valuable building blocks for the modern historiography of medieval art. These scattered data, however, did not contain within themselves the principles required for their own organization. These principles were, it seems, supplied by modern art history. Yet there is one area in which the Middle Ages made a signal contribution of its own. Struggling to understand the chronology of the Bible, medieval thinkers invented the principles of universal history. Eventually these principles made their way also into art history. In this secularized context they were found serviceable to explain postmedieval developments--indeed those of any period.

Medieval ideas of progressive universal history did not go uncontested. Since the Renaissance, historians have been impressed with the decline of the ancient world (the so-called Fall of the Roman empire) and the resulting inception of the Dark Ages. Such a decline was less evident to medieval thinkers, for they felt that the acquisition of the sacred truths of Christianity more than made up for material sacrifices. Their own concept of the past was rooted in salvation history as recounted in the Scriptures: the unfolding of sacred history followed a ground plan that was divinely ordained. Since the ways of the divine are incommensurate with inferior human understanding, a considerable effort was needed to grasp the outlines of the ground plan. But Scripture, rightly interpreted, could supply what was required.

For a long time the scheme these studies yielded was considered inappropriate for evaluating human cultural achievements. After all, the ground plan applied essentially to sacred history. Eventually, however, elements that emerged from this intellectual labor migrated into the consciousness of secular historians, especially during the period stretching from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.

What parts of Scripture were most relevant for this endeavor? The primitive Church witnessed a lively debate as to whether the Old Testament should be retained as canonical. Could one, as the followers of Marcion maintained, simply stick to the New Testament and leave it at that? No, said the majority party, for the Old Testament contains many prophetic anticipations of the New Testament, confirming its preeminence. Moreover, the Old Testament is a record of the progressive assimilation by the Jewish people of the truths which were ultimately to lead to the fullness of the Christian revelation. With this last concept Christian theologians and exegetes forged a new concept of progress, which was not open-ended as the Greeks had believed it to be, but was goal directed. In this way history was seen as a story not just with a beginning and a continuation, but with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Moreover, the character of all the events of the story acquires significance in the light of the preordained conclusion.^xix

To this goal-directed concept Patristic interpreters of sacred history added a new pattern of progressive segmentation, with history divided into a series of major tranches, each of which constitutes an advance on its predecessor. This concept of logical sequencing has provided the essential undergirding of our modern idea of periodization. Of course, segmentation is not an exclusive property of progressive salvation history. To the poet Hesiod, who personified the idea of historical segmentation for the Greeks, the process was one of entropic decline. The key feature for our tradition, however, is the combination of the notion of distinct historical periods with the correlative concept that these periods are linked in a chain of upward progress.

The Patristic writers posited three major models for progressive periodiza­tion.^xx  (1) The first of these is divided into three segments. St. Augustine and his followers recognized an era ante legem, from the creation of the world to the time of Moses; an era sub lege, under the Law; and a final era sub gratia, stretching from the Incarnation of Christ to the Last Judgment. Characteristically, this scheme embraced not only the past and present, but the future as well so that it had a prophetic dimension. (2) Another Christian model, which interfaced more clearly with secular history, stemmed from the book of Daniel, where the four empires discerned by the prophet were identified with the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. (3) The third model provided for six stages, corresponding to the six days of creation described in Genesis.  The details of this most elaborate periodization varied from one writer to another. A typical scheme, however, was from Adam to the Flood, from the Flood to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to David, from David to Christ, and from Christ to the end of the world.

For didactic purposes this six-stage scheme was presented as an illustrated diagram. And where was such a diagram placed? At the start of the most commonly consulted book in medieval libraries, the Bible itself. The initial "I" (for "In principio," in the beginning, the first words of Genesis in the Vulgate) of Romanesque and Gothic Bibles, which was usually given over to the six days of creation,^xxi lent itself well to this sequence. In the great Winchester Bible, the initial I presents a clear rendering of the six age scheme.^xxii From the top to bottom the medallions show (1) the creation of Adam and Eve; (2) Noah's Ark; (3) Abraham sacrificing Isaac; (4) God bestowing the tablets of the Ten Commandments on Moses; (5) Samuel anointing David; (6) the Nativity; and (7) the Last Judgment. Clearly the scenes in this elaborate "trailer" for the whole of Scripture are singled not simply for their own importance, but because they mark essential "joints" in the articulation of the six-fold scheme. After the seventh medallion, of course, we enter the realm of eternity in which time as we know it disappears.

Some writers were even more ambitious, coupling this last scheme with one marking the stages of an individual's human life.^xxiii This composite, pairing the Ages of the World with the Ages of Man, is significant because in time it yielded one of the most popular metaphors for the rise, apogee, and decline of a civilization, which was compared with a human life, rising to full maturity and declining to old age and death. This kind of allegorical comparison depends upon an exegetical method known as typology, whereby incidents and sequences from realm are compared with analogous ones from another. Harmonizing these schemes--or selecting among them--produced certain problems, but they all had the virtue of clarity: the breaks between periods were sharp and unmistakable.

The basic principles of the schemes discussed thus far were all familiar to Early Christian writers, and for the most part later medieval authors simply elaborated them, sometimes applying them to current events. However, the high Middle Ages did see the appearance of at least one new scheme of historical development. This was the creation of the Calabrian abbot Joachim of Fiore, who died in 1202.^xxiv As Beryl Smalley remarks, "Joachim was not a historian, but a commentator on Scripture, a religious reformer, and a prophet."^xxv Still, his ideas had great resonance for anyone who reflected on historical periodization. Joachim believed that history had three major stages: the Age of the Father, which corresponded to the Old Testament dispensation; the Age of the Son, which was inaugurated with the Incarnation as described in the New Testament; and the concluding Age of the Holy Spirit. He held that in his own day humanity stood on the threshold of the third age. Joachim's theory is one of progress through three stages, extending the hope that if one can bear the tribulations of present times, better ones soon will dawn. Later some followers held that the final Age of the Holy Spirit did in fact dawn, so that we are now living in it.

Although Joachimism has been extensively investigated by modern scholars, it has scarcely been noticed that it may have influenced art historians, beginning in the Renaissance. The three-stage scheme of artistic progress advocated by Giorgio Vasari, to be discussed in the following chapter, suggests Joachim in a secular form. Later, in the nineteenth century, when Joachimism enjoyed a new spate of popularity, Alexander William Crawford, Lord Lindsay (1812-1880) took up his ideas in his Sketches of the History of Christian Art. Mediated through other sources, Joachimite notions were even to influence Vassily Kandinsky's apologia for abstract art, his Über das Geistige in der Kunst (On the Spiritual in Art; 1912).^xxvi

As indicated, these grand schemes were developed from religious premises and consequently applied mainly to sacred history. Human variability ensured that the details of secular history, though ultimately under divine guidance, would display a more capricious pattern. To symbolize this less predictable course the Middle Ages had another image, also susceptible to presentation in diagrammatic and pictorial form: the wheel of fortune. The concept of Fortuna (or Tyche in Greek) as a fickle goddess was familiar to the classical Greeks and Romans. At the close of antiquity, however, the philosopher Boethius (ca. 480-ca.524) made Dame Fortune the custodian of a great wheel to which human fates were linked.^xxvii One could find oneself on the ascending (left) side of the rim, and therefore reasonably hope for even better things. The summit of success is symbolized by a triumphant figure at the top. But this blissful supremacy cannot last, A further turn of Fortune's wheel sends the hapless victim down on the right, ultimately to the very bottom. The sequence of ascent and descent is inescapable, and no one can know the timetable; that is decided by Dame Fortune on a contingency basis. Instead of the progress of step-by-step ascent, leading to final permanent triumph, the cyclical concept of the wheel of fortune promises ephemeral success only to yield to descent and degradation at the end. Transmitted by literary sources, this concept was not turned into visual form until the eleventh century. Then images proliferated, appearing first in the private realm of illuminated manuscripts and then in imposing stained-glass windows and vividly colored frescoes. Poets and chroniclers also had recourse to the idea of fortune's wheel which served, for example, as an image for the rise and fall of political dynasties.

The idea of the mutability of fortune, if not its stereotypical figural embodiment as a turning wheel, seems to have been even more popular in the Renaissance. Steeped in disillusionment, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) applied the concept to the destiny of individuals and states.^xxviii The young, in their impetuousness, assault her, but Fortune favors them only when she wished to. With his famously varied concerns Michel de Montaigne uses the word fortune some 350 times in his Essays (1571-88). Gradually, however, the progressive concept gained the upper hand; in art history, as will be seen, it undergirds most of the major nineteenth-century ideas of development.

In summary, then, medieval sacred historiographers bequeathed two major themes, master theories in fact, for later exploitation by historians--and by art historians. In the first, the progressive concept, instead of seeing human evolution as one of a process of trial and error leading to results that could not be foreseen (the Greek model), they perceived of human destiny as providential, divinely guided, and directed towards a specific goal. Thus historical development was viewed as highly charged with meaning. It was also, in its larger outlines at least, inevitable. Moreover, the medieval historio­graphical concept segmented this grand course of human history into clear and distinct "bites," each one being characterized as a major advance over the earlier one. History then is a story of meaning­ful ascent in a series of distinct stages.

The concept of the wheel of fortune is less reassuring. Yet it may be regarded as the basis for the ideas of sequential alternation: between the classical and the baroque, between the linear and painterly styles. It also offers a prospect of decline and fall, and this theme of decadence was to engage many cultural historians of a pessimistic bent.

As has been noted, medieval thinkers did not deem it necessary to apply these schemes of development, either the providential or the fatal one, to the visual arts. When, however, the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century posited a new concept of the dignity of art, as bestower of fame to individuals, cities, and countries, the way lay open to the transfer of the overarching schemes--suitably modified--to the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture.

i The chapter following this one discusses the disparagement of the Middle Ages in the Renaissance.

ii Edgar de Bruyne, Etudes d'esthétique médiévale, 3 vols., Bruges: Rijksuniversiteit te Gent, 1946; Wladislaw Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics, II: Medieval Aesthetics, The Hague: Mouton, 1970. There is a stimulat­ing sketch by Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Meyer Schapiro ("On the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Art," in his Romanesque Art, New York: George Braziller, 1977, pp. 1-27) is unusual for its concentration on the reception of visual art. See also Conrad Rudolph, The "Things of Greater Importance": Bernard of Clairvaux’s Apologia and the Medieval Attitude Toward Art, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.

iii Julius von Schlosser, ed., Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der karolingischen Kunst, Vienna: C. Graeser, 1892; idem, ed., Quellenbuch zur Kunstgeschichte des abendländischen Mittelalters, Vienna: C. Graeser, 1896; Victor Mortet, ed., Recueil de textes relatifs à l'histoire de l'architecture et à la condition des architectes en France, au moyen âge, Paris: Picard, 1911; idem, ed. (with Paul Deschamps), Recueil de textes relatifs à l'histoire de l'architecture et à la condition des architectes en France, au moyen âge, XIe-XIII siècles, Paris: Picard, 1929; Otto Lehmann-Brockhaus, ed., Schriftquellen zur Kunstgeschichte des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts für Deutschland, Lothringen und Italien, 2 vols., Berlin: Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, 1938; and idem, Lateinische Schriftquellen zur Kunst in England, Wales und Schottland vom Jahre 901 bis zum Jahre 1307, 5 vols., Munich: Prestel, 1955-60.

iv Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, ed., A Documentary History of Art, I. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance, new ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981; Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312-1453, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972; Cecilia Davis-Weyer, Early Medieval Art, 300-1150, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971; and Teresa G. Frisch, Gothic Art, 1140-c.1450, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971.

v For this and what follows, see the valuable analysis by E. F. van der Grinten, Elements of Art Historiography in Medieval Texts, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969.

vi The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations Through Eight Centuries, Princeton: 1960, p. 55ff. Of course the term Gothic itself was never used for works of art in the Middle Ages; this is a creation of sixteenth-century Italian writers. See also Wayne R. Dynes, "Concept of Gothic," Dictionary of the History of Ideas, vol. 2, New York: Scribner's, 1973, pp. 367-74.

vii For France see Michèle Beaulieu and Victor Beyer, Dictionnaire des sculpteurs français du moyen age, Paris: Picard, 1992, which records over 900 individuals.

viii Peter Cornelius Claussen, "Früher Künstlerstolz: Mittelalterliche Signaturen als Quelle der Kunstsoziologie," in Karl Clausberg, et al., ed., Bauwerk und Bildwerk im Hochmitteralter: Anschauliche Beiträge zur Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte, Giessen: Anabas-Verlag, 1981, pp. 7-34.

ix Seán Burke, The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992.

x Procopius, Buildings, ed. and trans. by H. B. Dewing and Glanville Downey, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940.

xi Cyril Mango, "Antique Statuary and the Byzantine Beholder," Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 17 (1963), 65ff.

xii Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, translated by Colm Luibheid, New York: Paulist Press, 1987.

xiii Suger's response to the light mysticism of Dionysus was affirmed in a classic monograph by Erwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger and the Abbey Church of St. Denis and Its Art Treasures, Princeton: Princeton University Press (second ed. edited by Gerda Panofsky-Soergel, 1979). Panofsky's ideas have been vigorously disputed by Peter Kidson, "Panofsky, Suger and St. Denis," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 50 (1987), 1-17.  See also Conrad Rudolph, Artistic Change at St-Denis : Abbot Suger’s Program and the Early Twelfth-century Controversy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. 

xiv See Ernst Kitzinger, "The Cult of Images in the Age Before Iconoclasm," Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 8 (1954), 83-150 (reprinted in his The Art of Byzantium and the Medieval West: Selected Studies, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976, pp. 90-156).

xv An interesting exception, one of the few that prove the rule, is the North Italian sculptor Nicholaus, whose works are traceable ca. 1115-1140. See Angiola Maria Romanini, ed., Nicholaus e l'arte del suo tempo, Ferrara: Corbo, 1985.

xvi For the transmission of the texts of these two writers, see L. D. Reynolds, ed., Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, pp. 307-16, 440-43.

xviiJulius Schlosser Magnino, La letteratura artistica, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1956.

xviii Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

xix The distinctive character of the medieval idea of progress has been well seen by Robert Nesbit, History of the Idea of Progress, New York: Basic Books, 1980. See also Richard W. Southern, "Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: 2. Hugh of St. Victor and the Idea of Historical Development," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, 21 (1971), 159-79.

xx Roderich Schmidt, "Aetates mundi: Die Weltalter als Glieder­ungs­prinzip der Geschichte," Zeitschrift fur Kirchegeschichte, 67 (1955-56), 288-317. I have discussed these schemes and their application to art in my Illuminations of the Stavelot Bible, New York: Garland, 1978.

xxi For a synoptic consideration of this theme see Johannes Zahlten, Creatio mundi: Darstellung­en der sechs Schöpfungstage und naturwissenschafliches Weltbild im Mittelalter, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1979.

xxii C. M. Kauffmann, Romanesque Manuscripts 1066-1190 (A Survey of romanesque Illumination Manuscripts in the British Isles, 3), London: Harvey Miller, 1975, pp. 108-11, fig. 259.

xxiii See Elizabeth Sears, The Ages of Man: Medieval Interpreta­tions of the Life Cycle, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986; and J. A. Burrow, The Ages of Man: A Study in Medieval Writing and Thought, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986,

xxiv Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study of Joachimism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969; Marjorie Reeves and Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.

xxv Beryl Smalley, Historians in the Middle Ages, London: Thames and Hudson, 1974, p. 181.

xxvi For the later fortunes of Joachimism, see Henri de Lubac, La postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore, 2 vols, Paris: Lethielleux, 1979-80; Marjorie Reeves and Warwick Gould, Joachim of Fiore and the Myth of the Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.

xxvii Pierre Courcelle, La Consolation de philosophie dans la tradition littéraire: antécédents de postérité de Boèce, Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1967, pp. 101-58; F. P. Pickering, Literature and Art in the Middle Ages, London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 168-22. More generally on the career of the author, see Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.

xxviii Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, Fortune is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolò Machiavelli, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.