Exam 22: Art of the Middle Ages

The sixth-century Christ icon in this Chapter (3.2.6)survived the outbreak of iconoclasm that swept the Byzantine Empire in the eighth and ninth centuries by being protected in the monastery of St.Catherine on Mount Sinai,in the middle of the Egyptian desert.Find out more about Byzantine iconoclasm and describe the events of this turbulent period.Who was involved? Where did it happen? Why did religious images,such as the Christ icon,so disturb the iconoclasts?

Reliquaries often look like the body part they contain.

If you were to build a cathedral with a huge stained-glass window covering nearly an entire wall,you would use these architectural features to ensure the building's structural stability.

Compare Cimabue's Virgin and Child Enthroned (3.2.26)with Giotto's artwork of the same subject,painted just thirty years later (3.2.27).How do the artists handle the arrangement and volume of the figures? How does each create a sense of depth in their composition?

The Church of San Vitale in Ravenna,Italy,is from this period.

Iconoclasm is the destruction of images.

Match the term with its definition: -qibla

Styles of architecture and painting from the Middle Ages are not at all related to each other.