Impact of the Battle in the Medieval Tradition

This chapter focuses on the magnitude of a historic episode that became a key literary and artistic topic of early medieval European art. It analyzes the characterization of the Frankish heroes as depicted in the epic poem La Chanson de Roland and in the Historia Caroli Magni et Rotholandi, and the interpretation of the battle by the master glassmaker who manufactured the exceptional stained-glass window of the Chartres cathedral, four centuries later. Chartres has been designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, which identifies the glass as ‘the high point of French Gothic art’. It is fascinating to study how real characters became legendary heroes and how real, historic events became legends; especially interesting is the analysis of the intentions behind this conversion from reality into fantasy.

Portable Museums: Imaging and Staging the “Northern Gothic Art Tour” – Ephemera and Alterity

During the early nineteenth century, the voyage to the past was to become a central destination for the discerning art tourist as for artists and writers. Yet, such voyages were as much ephemeral as actual, virtual creations of burgeoning antiquities tours in print and image. This chapter explores the pivotal, yet neglected significance of Northern European Gothic ‘tours’ flourishing between Britain and the Low Countries from the 1830s–1860s. It sheds new light on trailblazing accounts by Romantic tourists, Maria Graham (Lady) Callcott, Johann David Passavant, and the Gothic revivalist, W.H. James Weale, examining their fascination with Northern medieval Gothic architectures, art, and spaces of unseen heritage, constructed via ephemeral tour experiences as complex palimpsests of memory, modernity, and its other.

Courtly Motives In The Art Of The High Middle Ages

Purpose of the article. The article presents a study of courtly motives in the art of the high Middle Ages and the foundations of the ideological and figurative-symbolic representation of courtly images in various artistic forms of this era. Methodology. The study of the content of courtly motives and images, the definition of the ideological foundations of their figurative and symbolic representation was carried out through the use of historical, analytical, symbolic, and allegorical methods. Scientific novelty. The article examines courtly motives and courtly images presented in the art of the High Middle Ages, identifies the ideological foundations of their figurative and symbolic representation in various artistic forms of this era. Conclusions. The visual images of medieval masters create the world of courtly, filling the courtly universe with numerous subjects that reflect the image and lifestyle of both knights and their Beautiful ladies. And thus they help to understand the norms and prescriptions of courtesy, the models of the participants' behavior in the courteous action, the corresponding rituals and etiquette norms of courteous relations, their attributes, and stylistics. In order to do this, the artists used various techniques - bright colors, saturation with symbols, heraldry, outfits, etc. Especially popular was the use of the rose image, which became the quintessence of Gothic art, its courtly and religious symbol, the embodiment of the ideal of chivalry to the Beautiful Lady, and a kind of reflection of the Christian image of the Virgin Mary.

Crossing Cultural Boundaries: Saint George in the Eastern Mediterranean under the Latinokratia (13th–14th Centuries) and His Mythification in the Crown of Aragon

The cult of St George in the Eastern Mediterranean is one of the most extraordinary examples of cohabitation among different religious communities. For a long time, Greek Orthodox, Latins, and Muslims shared shrines dedicated to the Cappadocian warrior in very different places. This phenomenon touches on two aspects of the cult—the intercultural and the transcultural—that should be considered separately. My paper mainly focuses on the cross-cultural value of the cult and the iconography of St George in continental and insular Greece during the Latinokratia (13th–14th centuries). In this area, we face the same phenomenon with similar contradictions to those found in Turkey or Palestine, where George was shared by different communities, but could also serve to strengthen the identity of a particular ethnic group. Venetians, Franks, Genoese, Catalans, and Greeks (Ῥωμαῖοι) sought the protection of St George, and in this process, they tried to physically or figuratively appropriate his image. However, in order to gain a better understanding of the peculiar situation in Frankish-Palaiologian Greece, it is necessary first to analyze the use of images of St George by the Palaiologian dynasty (1261–1453). Later, we will consider this in relation to the cult and the depiction of the saint on a series of artworks and monuments in Frankish and Catalan Greece. The latter enables us to more precisely interrogate the significance of the former cult of St George in the Crown of Aragon and assess the consequences of the rulership of Greece for the flourishing of his iconography in Late Gothic art.