Arts In the Middle Ages, religion was the preponderant
If we review as an antecedent, art in medieval times referred to a preponderant theme, which is, the religious.
The reason is not necessary to point it out in the ecclesiastical taste of customers, rather, in the demands that referred to a whole conglomerate of society, that even religious fact makes a mark on the various aspects of life, becoming a commondenominator in people of a superior economic range, since we put the main clients in estates such as the nobility, the court and the Church. The people in general will have a role as a recipient, in which they can even use established creations, but of less relevance, this from a merely technical point of view. So, artistic orders will be different from each other.
The most modest and poor audience will see how those great artistic creations are only available to the most privileged class. In what the wealthiest clientele, in order to exalt the relevance of the family before society, will make orders which will be used as an allegory of the power and prestige of their home, and even, as a path towards the transmission of thoughtand contemplation.
In this sense, the perception of the visual will play a fundamental part in people of all conditions when the end of the Middle Ages arises in the West, since, the fundamental instruments such as the book and the artistic manifestations used for the daily cult inparticular oratories, however, largely in the daily trades of religious society aimed at a broader audience.
In the convents, within the celebrations they understood prayers and representations of what they read, in which the religious themselves had an active participation as actors. However, there was a fervent inclination that this aspect has for the understanding of medieval theater, as it would occupy in the loud readings of the sacred writings and the sermon in the churches, this as an obvious didactic example aimed at the popular masses, it iscomplemented with the corresponding images for greater effectiveness.
In this way, the public formed could be the receiver of the knowledge that the books expressed, however, those books without words such as the images and other forms of plastic expression, were responsible for spreading the dogmatic load that was foundIn the written environment, thus being a pillar they base towards training.
As we have expressed, the importance and use of images regarding the very different social ranges as whose purposes are previously indicated. Thus making an addition of the word be manifested written or spoken always as a result of the support and the site in which they express themselves. So, as we see, the written and visual cultures formed a group which should not be separated if we intend to make an approach to the meaning of the 15th century art.
What allows us to make an approach to the meaning of those characteristics such as the word and the image that refer to something totally new, being a coexistence that would attract attention and debate in the social discussions of the moment, as could be the true meaning of representationIn image, which is a fact that refers us in the Bible:
“You will not do sculpture or image of what is above in the sky, or here below on earth or in the water underground. You will not prostrate before her or serve her … "(Exodus 20, 4-6).
As we can see, the argument of this biblical passage ended up producing a great discussion and controversy in the Ensenada of the Church, which would cause the creation of a fertile literature on the use and use of liturgical cult in painting and sculpture, in which, as expected the various thinkers and main ecclesiastics of the time demonstrated in favor and against .
In this way, we take as an example, that, in the literature of antiquity, we have that Isaiah wrote a satire against the pagans in which the sacral nature of religious representations debates:
“Idol sculptors, all together, are nothing;His works, which they appreciate so much, are useless … He who sculpts a God, melts a statue that is useless … ”(Isaiah 44, 9-24).
The various warnings made based on the Bible helped as a medium, in which the Church Fathers began to refuse the possibility of using images as an object of worship. Having an importance as a mediating agent between divinity and man was not admitted until once the iconoclast period is finished. After this moment, the Church will allow proliferation in the use of religious images, in practically mandatory. In a council made in Trêves in 1310 it is stipulated that, the consecrated altars will be completed with a registration corresponding to the dedicated saint.
With this vision the doors opened so that the plastic arts follow the communication channel of the sacred, it will even be used as a differentiating brand of the other religions, such as the Jewish. In this way Christianity will become the religion of the image par excellence and the tendency of sacred exhibitions will determine all social scales, determining, even the level of Catholic righteousness of its owners.
In Christian thought it admits an aesthetic by which over time it has been assimilated by the most primary Christian philosophy, but not because of its ways. In this way, chasing the neoplatonic parameters that converge in the fall of all sensitive or seductive material for the human soul, tools such as the search for common in us, to disconnect from the world. This path would guide the purest intellect. In this way the Christian model, assigned with desire would have a passive degree becoming more virtuous and inflexible than the Platonic ideal. Ending in a way in which sensitive life must end the pleasure produced by the beautiful and sensual in nature.
In Santo Tomás we can find the suggestion of the limitation to enjoyment sensitive to intellectual delight, but, in San Agustín it allows us to maintain a certain measure of sensitivity. Being this moral, which eliminates the sensitive component, in the depths of its inner metaphysics, it houses Christianity in that religion can admit an aesthetic and an art, even, the methods with which its metaphysical vision must developIn life, discarding the art and aesthetics of said conception.
To some extent with the Christian influence in the European Middle Ages, the importance of light is given, as a primary source of everything, it takes over a link with symbolism. As would happen with the Romanesque churches, whose interiors in darkness stimulates contemplation and abstraction, while the Gothic temples would establish par excellence the light as evocation of divinity, being manifested by the colored light that crosses the stained glass windows and their rich decoration,thus turning the Gothic churches into the living image of a heavenly Jerusalem which describes San Juan in the book of Apocalypse:
“The angel took me in spirit to a large and raised mountain, and showed me the city of Jerusalem, which descended from heaven and came from God. Which had the clarity of God, whose light was similar to a precious stone, to Jaspe stone, transparent as crystal. The wall material was of Jaspe stone;plus the city was pure gold, similar to pure glass. And the foundations of the city wall were adorned with all kinds of precious stones. The first foundation was from Jaspe. The second of sapphire;the third of Chalcedonia;the Emerald room;the fifth of sardonic;The sixth of Sardio;the seventh of Crisolito;The eighth of Beacho;the nono of Topacio;the tenth of crisoprasa;The eleventh of Jacinto and the twelfth of Amatista. And each door was made of one of these pearls, and the pavement of the city was pure gold as a transparent glass. And the city does not need a sun or moon to alumn it because God’s clarity has it illuminated ”. (Apocalypse 21; 10-11; 18-23).
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