Medieval
The Italian poet, Petrarch, famously referred to this period as a loss of classical learning.
What is the Dark Ages?
The Middle Ages refers to a period between these two historical events.
What is the Fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance?
Newly built Christian Churches housed the first paintings of Jesus, Mary, and the Saints.
What are Icons?
A room in medieval European monasteries devoted to the writing, copying and illuminating of manuscripts commonly handled by monastic scribes.
What is the Scriptorium?
The Bayeux Tapestry (11th Century) is one of the most famous works of the Middle Ages to tell this type of story.
What is an historical event?
The fall of the Roman Empire crumbled due to these three things.
What is civil war, military over-expansion, and the rise of Christianity?
After the Roman Empire was split into two, the Eastern Empire was given this name.
What is the Byzantine Empire?
Early Church leaders fears icons led to idolatry, giving rise to this movement.
What is Iconoclasm?
A small-scale encasement that enshrined a relic associated by immediate or physical contact with a holy person in the faith.
What is a reliquary?
The method of creating Icons using hot, wax paint.
What is encaustic?
The central and principal part of a Christian church, extending from the entrance to the altar.
What is the Nave?
This Emperor made Christianity a legal religion under the Roman Empire.
Who is Emperor Constantine?
Christian art started to move away from naturalistic representation and instead pushed toward a new visual aesthetic.
What is abstraction?
A journey to a holy place or shrine.
What is a pilgrimage?
The Christian figure, St. George, was used in art to recruit volunteers for a series of military campaigns organized by popes and western powers in order to take Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
What are the Crusades?
The circular or angular end of a church, pointing to the East where the sun sets.
What is the Apse?
Much like the Jews, Early Christians wanted to stay away from a form of worship that idolized pagan deities, so they drew using these.
What are symbols?
This famous icon at St. Catherine's Monastery at Sinai represents the dual nature of Christ.
What is Christ Pantocrater?
Islamic artists created these visual characteristics to represent the infinity of God.
What are intricate patterns and designs?
In architecture, the trumeau, tymmpanum, archivolts, and jams make up this entry way into a cathedral.
What is a portal?
One hundred years after Christianity became legal under the Roman Empire, this Emperor made it the official state religion.
Who is Emperor Theodosius?
Roman Synagogues and Early Cathedrals were adopted from these barrel-vaulted structures.
What are basilicas?
Illuminated manuscripts are derived from these three latin words.
What are scriptus (to write), manus (hand), and illuminare (to light up)?
A decorative prayer niche in Islamic art used to identify the wall that faces Mecca.
What is a Mihrab?
Duccio's altarpiece in composed of many individual paintings gave way to a radical style that saw the return of naturalism.
What is Maestà (1308)?