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.