Читать книгу Art History For Dummies - Jesse Bryant Wilder - Страница 20

Medieval art is mostly Christian art created in Europe between Rome’s fall and the Renaissance. Its art forms include stained-glass windows, illuminated manuscripts, reliquaries (containers for holy relics — the bones and clothes of saints), architectural reliefs, and Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals.

Throughout the Middle Ages, art and architecture had a spiritual mission: to direct people’s attention toward God. Churches soared in that direction, and sculpture and paintings pointed the way to paradise. They depicted the sufferings of Christ, the Apostles, martyrs, the Last Judgment, and so on. Humans’ physical features mattered less to medieval artists than their spiritual struggles and aspirations. So they tended to represent people more symbolically than realistically.