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Art Through Time · AD 500 to 1450

Medieval art

Medieval art is the art of Europe's Middle Ages, the thousand years between the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, in 476, and the Renaissance: Gospel books painted in gold, mosaics, icons, stained glass and altarpieces.

Nearly all of it was made for the Church, to teach the faith and to honor God, and most of it is by artists whose names were never written down.

When
AD 500 to 1450
Where
Western Europe
Began
After the fall of Rome, 476

When was the medieval period in art?

Medieval art runs from about 500 to the middle of the 1400s, in three long stages. The Early Middle Ages, about 500 to 1000, are the age of monastery books and Byzantine mosaic: the mosaics of San Vitale in Ravenna, finished in the 540s, and the Book of Kells, made in Ireland around 800. The Romanesque, about 1000 to 1150, built thick-walled churches and covered them with carved and painted saints. Gothic art, from about 1150, raised cathedrals of glass and, in Italy, painted the first great altarpieces on wood.

It ends at different times in different places: in Florence with Masaccio in the 1420s, in Siena and much of the north not until the late 1400s.

How to recognize medieval art

  • Gold for heaven. Backgrounds of gold leaf instead of sky or landscape.
  • Size by importance. Christ and the Virgin larger than the saints, the saints larger than the people who paid for the picture.
  • Flat, frontal figures, with halos, looking straight out at the viewer.
  • Symbols everywhere: a lamb for Christ, keys for Saint Peter, a lily for the Virgin's purity.
  • Stories told in strips and panels, one scene after another, like a book.
  • Little or no perspective. Space is arranged to be read, not to look real.

Why medieval art looks the way it does

Medieval painters could draw what they saw; they chose not to. A holy image was meant to point beyond this world, so gold replaced the sky and the figures became timeless. Around the year 600, Pope Gregory the Great wrote that pictures do for those who cannot read what writing does for those who can, and for centuries church walls were the Bible of most Christians.

The Byzantine Empire, which kept the eastern half of Rome alive until 1453, set the pattern for the holy image: the icon, painted to a fixed design so that each copy carries the presence of the original. Italian painters learned from Byzantine icons until Cimabue and Giotto, around 1300, began to give those figures weight and feeling.

Famous medieval paintings

What came after medieval art?

The Renaissance. In Florence in the 1420s, Masaccio painted figures that stand in real space and cast real shadows, and the gold background began to give way to a window onto the world.

Inside Medieval art

  • Gothic art, 1140 to 1400. Graceful figures, gold leaf and the first painted rooms.
  • Sienese School, 1260 to 1450. Jewel color and gold, and tender Madonnas.
  • International Gothic, 1375 to 1435. Courtly elegance, flowing robes and precious detail.

Medieval art painters

More Medieval art paintings

See Medieval art on the timelineEvery art movement in order