corpora

Once again, this is a somewhat irrelevant post to my professed intention to focus on bestiaries... but I just finished writing a wee assignment for my Art History class that discusses depictions of the human form in classical and medieval art. ARTH 120 is a first year course and this was a small assignment so it is by no means a fourth-year level examination of the subject.

But I put in the time to write it and thought I might as well slap it on WPTL. 

For the sake of drawing a sharper contrast between ancient and medieval art, the most appropriate period to examine in antiquity is the fifth-century B.C. At this time in particular, the philosophical, political, and the artistic spheres of the ancient western world were inundated with new ideas that are very much manifest in various forms of artwork, especially sculpture. The Greeks of course are famous for the polis (civitas in Latin), or the city-state that was not ruled by one autonomous authority or governing body but by the citizens; hence the popular assertion that the Greeks founded the modern democratic system of government. These political developments combined with the philosophical teachings of Socrates and Plato, and the famous ancient Delphic maxim “Know Thyself”, all imply that the ancients cultivated a greater understanding of the man as individual. Art and sculpture, in turn, was moving in a different direction from its archaic motifs that often depicted the gods whose features were frozen in stolid, un-human stances. The human form became the new subject of an artistic movement centred on idealism. Mortal man was soon rendered in impeccable detail that is still breathtaking today but often betrays what is anatomically possible for the human body. The prowess of humanity was extolled in pieces such as Warrior from Riace the intricate details of which show the artist’s desire to create a stark, life-like image of the corporeal epitome of man.  

 ~ dat ass

The curving axis of the statue’s features create an asymmetrical balance know as ‘contrapposto’ that properly emulates natural human posture.  If the warrior was a real man, however, the curvature of his spine is so deeply imbedded in his back that he would be unable to stand. Similarly, Myron’s Discobolis is an example of the desire to capture natural movement and notably in this case, the bodily movements of the virile gymnasium athlete.

Once again, the musculature here is exaggerated even though it would be physically impossible in real life for one to flex all of the muscles Myron has chiselled into the marble. Such was the extent Greek and Roman artists were willing to go to in order to demonstrate physical perfection in their work. This praise of the human form is also a reaction to the military successes of the Greeks during the Persian wars which influenced the cultural shift from a people that relied on the clemency of the gods, to a people reassured and confident in their own will and might. This confidence in humanity so evident in classical art provides an utter contrast to the treatment of the human figure in the art of the medieval era.              

The medieval person, regardless of status or rank, was born and raised in a time where God and moreover, the Church, were not to be doubted or questioned. Recalcitrance against the institution of the Church was seldom ventured, with the exception of a few belligerent kings who earned papal indictment and/or excommunication for their audacity. The head of state and secular representative of God on earth was a divinely appointed monarch. The social and economic facets of society functioned in what modern historians have deemed the “feudal state” or “feudalism” and by nature lumped people into socially constructed collectives leaving them little room to obtain any sense of individualism. The salience of Christianity’s role in the life of medieval people is uncontested. Literary, historical, and artistic primary sources attest to the power of the Roman Catholic Church during this period where high mortality rates dictated that the purpose of life on earth was to prepare the soul for heaven. The human body, then, was merely a vessel to carry the soul until it succumbed to plague, disease, malnourishment, child- bearing, or warfare. The human form in artwork and sculpture was necessary to portray Biblical images but was used as an auxiliary device serving a greater purpose. Such are those figures in the scenes depicted on the doors of Hildesheim Cathedral.

 NB: For those of us who are perhaps unfamiliar with the story of Adam and Eve, she is grasping the forbidden fruit and offering it to Adam.... not her boob....
That comes later in manuscripts where we get images of Mary spraying people with her breast-milk because it will heal them or something....?!



























Bronze figurines of people found in the Book of Genesis and the New Testament Gospels are cast

with such character in their gestures and expressions that we can imagine they would have effectively

communicated the stories to a widely illiterate laity population. Aesthetically, the figures are rather

crude and ungainly, devoid of any vestige of the formerly strove for proportions and idealism of

classical art. It is even difficult to ascertain the nakedness of Adam and Eve because detail is so

stunted. The piece, however, was not commissioned to exemplify humanity, but to glorify God and

bolster the Church’s reputation. Piety and the spiritual transcended the material, but man, innately

sinful, was subject to the carnal lusts of the human body that was but a temporary cell to house the

eternal soul until life on earth came to an end. The human body was by no means something to be

celebrated, but was seen as a fomenting man's corrupt nature.


This brief discussion of the human figure as portrayed in the art of two vastly different periods has called to question one of the conclusions people often draw when they see the contrasts between medieval and Greek and Roman sculpture. As the successor of the Classical age, which reached an apex of political, philosophical, and cultural enlightenment, the early medieval period has earned the term “The Dark Ages.” Historians deemed it a time when learning ceased, tyrants ruled, and all knowledge of technique and beauty seemed to be forgotten.  Scholars of the Northumbrian and Carolingian Renaissances have refuted this unjust claim on the status of culture in the medieval period, which was indeed flowering with learning. This study has gone to show that it was in fact a shift in worldview; the medieval occupation with spirituality and notion of humanity as a collective, that was responsible for a marked change in the human form as it appears in works of art.   

kykvendi

I have yet to write a post that pertains to the reason for which I created this blog (although I've had a long-harboured desire to start one, albeit one devoted to my passion for food, sharing recipes, talking about chocolate a lot etc.). That reason being to study medieval bestiaries! ... in the context of digital humanities which I'm still not sure about but willing to eventually try!

I have never conducted research, nor read up on bestiaries much at all, until choosing to make them my focus for this course. I don't suppose my interest in bestiaries stems from anything more peculiar than what any human being would find intriguing about them. The more illuminated a manuscript is- the more decoration and imagery it contains, is all the more a wonderful an object to behold. Because bestiaries are moral as well as visual tools, most of them bear drawings of the creatures discussed in the text. As inveterately curious beings, we humans have always desired and sought to understand the world around us, including the myriads of creatures who dwell in every ecosystem on earth. I have always been an animal lover and when I was wee(er) I planned on becoming a veterinarian when I grew up! That was until science and math became a plague o'er my existence. But I was (am) the little girl who picked up the tiny broken bodies of birds that got drunk off the fall-fermented berries on our trees and flew into the sky that tragically did not continue through our living room window-pane...  and buried them with all the funerary rites our backyard afforded amidst my own pained ululations. I used to dig up worms, catch frogs and snakes, give them a cute name and then proceed to mercilessly chase my little sister (she is not as fond of the supra dictus) around the yard with them.  When I was five or six my Dad started taking me horseback riding at the Marten's ranch outside of town, and either stupidity, audacity, or naiveté would inspire me to crawl under the corral gate when he wasn't looking and toddle right into the centre of a gathering circle of geldings. I would rub their velvety noses with my little doting hands and giggle when they tried to eat my hair. I have a useless talent for recognizing obscure breeds of dogs and may jump and point in the excitement of spotting an 'irish setter' or a 'lakeland terrier'. Everyone always said I had an odd, disney princessque 'way with animals' and it's true, like many people, I love animals and I believe somehow, they can sense our emotions. It's the only reason I have for why I wasn't trampled by horses in true Svanhildr fashion. Humankind can and has learned a lot from animals or at least has used them didactically- a process that began before antiquity, was carried on into the Middle Ages and very much exists in modern and post-modern culture. This is a notable feature of bestiaries, which provide their audience not only with a description of the nature of an animal (as it was then understood), but moreover with how and what this creature tells us about good and bad which, to medieval folks, was heaven and hell, salvation and sin, ThePopeGod and Devil. But providing actual pictures of the creatures was imperative to the function of bestiaries as a didactic tool. The author of The Aberdeen Bestiary writes that he paints the pictures of the beasts "to improve the minds of ordinary people, in such a way that their soul will at least perceive physically things which it has difficulty in grasping mentally; that what they have difficulty comprehending with their ears, they will perceive with their eyes." This quotation also sounds curiously similar to the purpose assigned to the stain glass windows of medieval minsters and cathedrals all over Europe and Britain...

So what is it about animals that makes them apt subjects for teaching us about morality? Why does Aesop use a lion and a mouse to show that clemency does not go without reward or that one should "treat others as you would have them treat you"? How does Beatrix Potter's "Tale of Benjamin Bunny" teach children to heed their parent's word?

Thoughts?