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Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages: An Overview

© George R. Hoelzeman

Too often since the Enlightenment, the art and architecture of the Medieval period have been looked upon as unskilled and philistine. The fact of the matter, however, is that artists and architects of the period operated out of a unique aesthetic, although that aesthetic was articulated less in terms of Art than theology. The purpose of this brief article is to identify some aspects of this aesthetic and encourage consideration of a vision of Art and Beauty which does not see the two as independent of a larger reality.

Generally, when medieval thinkers discussed aesthetic issues, their point of reference was Classical Antiquity. To this was added principles derived from the Bible and Church Fathers. These elements were synthesized into the systematic philosophical constructs of the Medieval mind to create a view of Art and Beauty at once traditional, yet also unique and innovative. On one hand, the Classical tradition was consistently seen as the ideal of artistic beauty, on the other, a certain anti-Classical element rejected the high level of realism in that tradition replacing it with an iconography centered on symbol and theological theory.

Several aspects of this theory warrant mention. Roman custom had inspired both the East and West with a deep sense of respect for tradition and continuity. The West, further influenced by the centrality of custom in Germanic law, saw tradition not only as the deposit of Truth, but also as a means of ensuring social stability and peace. Truth, inherited as it was from antiquity, was the basis of Medieval theory, and theory was the basis of Medieval knowledge. Thus, a Medieval thinker could discuss the nature of the earth as described in Ptolemy without reference to experiential reality fully confident that reality would reflect the theory precisely because it originated with Ptolemy. (1) Beauty, therefore, was abstract and conceptual.

But it was also much more. It also referred to lived experience. The ancients had looked to Nature for the foundations of the Beautiful, but the Medieval saw nature as a barrier between life and the transcendent world. Thus, an icon or statue became a means of contacting by proxy a reality which would otherwise be totally inaccessible. For this reason, the ritual image (Icon) became crucial, both on a practical level and a theoretical level. On one hand, the material, natural world blocked total access to the transcendent. Sin, temptations, distraction, etc. abound in the world. Yet, in the Christian perspective, Christ had made the transcendent tangible through the Incarnation. Thus, the imaginal form became a means of transcending earthly existence to touch transcendent reality. (2) Art, as a reflection of Beauty, was an extension of the attributes of God.

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