[numlocked]

Good read! The idea that these marvels of artistry were painted like my 10th birthday at the local paint-your-own-pottery store always seemed incongruous, at best.

> Why, then, are the reconstructions so ugly?

> ...may be that they are hampered by conservation doctrines that forbid including any feature in a reconstruction for which there is no direct archaeological evidence. Since underlayers are generally the only element of which traces survive, such doctrines lead to all-underlayer reconstructions, with the overlayers that were obviously originally present excluded for lack of evidence.

That seems plausible -- and somewhat reasonable! To the credit of academics, they seems aware of this (according to the article):

> ‘reconstructions can be difficult to explain to the public – that these are not exact copies, that we can never know exactly how they looked’.

[CGMthrowaway]

> The idea that these marvels of artistry were painted like my 10th birthday at the local paint-your-own-pottery store always seemed incongruous, at best.

Have you seen medieval art though? https://www.artistcloseup.com/blog/explaining-weird-mediaeva...

The technique is quite different from the "old masters" of later periods that we often think of as fine art.

[nyeah]

Sure, but medieval European art generally sucked. (Call this a hypothesis if that helps.)

Compare the damn cave paintings of buffalo to most medieval European art. Some of the 10k-year-old stuff is much better observed. Europeans between about 500 and 1300 mostly couldn't paint. I'm sorry about that.

It's just not always taste. Sometimes it's taste. Sometimes people are bad at making art.

[sudobash1]

I think that the medieval art article is making a different point. The art there had a style that was dictated by its purpose and the beliefs of the artists.

For example, most of the examples given in that article are illustrations from manuscripts. This was something (as far as I know) that was new in the western world. The idea that books should be illustrated. And being before the printing press was introduced, each illustration (of which there were often many per page) was hand made. This added a substantial amount of time to an already labor-intensive process. And each image was not intended to be a standalone work of art.

Also, some of the other examples are of iconography. That style remains, largely unchanged to this day. If you do an image search for "religious iconography", you will see plenty of examples of sacred art that are not visually realistic but are meant to be metaphorically or spiritually realistic.

[nyeah]

Sure, but for me the standard isn't whether it's visually realistic. Plenty of good stuff isn't particularly realistic. Traditional Chinese landscapes aren't realistic, but a lot of them are great. David Hockney has a lot of good work that isn't realistic and uses primitive-looking technique. The standard is not realism or which style was used. The standard, for me, is whether the artist was any good at art. Hockney is. (Usually.)

I'm not particularly basing my opinion on the examples in this article. It's easy to see that a lot of surviving European medieval art sucks. Maybe "surviving" is the problem. Maybe the good stuff got all smokey from being displayed and only the leftovers and student paintings, in storage, have survived.

On illustrations, everybody can see the difference between Durer and most medieval stuff. It's not simply style or taste.

[ianstormtaylor]

So, just to make it clear… you define good art by “whether the artist is any good at art”.

Illuminating…

——

For anyone who’s interested in a slightly more nuanced take on how people in the Middle Ages perceived of “art” — and how different that notion was to how we perceive it today — Forgery, Replica, Fiction by Christopher Wood [1] is a really interesting read.

Here’s the last sentence of the Goodreads summary, which describes the major transition in thinking:

“… Ultimately, as forged replicas lost their value as historical evidence, they found a new identity as the intentionally fictional image-making we have come to understand as art.”

[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3921524-forgery-replica-...

[red75prime]

It's all good and spiritual, but it seems that they lost some artistic tools like point-projection perspective during non-that-well-documented ages.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Well, I mean you find lots of wonky sculptures and reliefs in medieval art but people in Europe still made some really stunning pieces of art, e.g. see The Lady and the Unicorn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_and_the_Unicorn), or the Choir Screen at the Amiens Cathedral (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiens_Cathedral#The_Choir_scr....)) and so on. So it's kind of a sweeping generalisation to say that "medieval art generally sucked".

[mcmoor]

Mmm both of those are from 1400s and OP do limit it to 1300. And that 1300 limit is for good reason. Renaissance is usually dated after 1453 and that's when European art quality exploded. So yeah, those examples instead prove OP's statement.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

If you want to nitpick, I can point out that the full quote is "Europeans between about 500 and 1300 mostly couldn't paint"; stress on "about", and those aren't paintings.

Besides the comment started by saying that "medieval European art generally sucked", so it covers the work I mention.

That's if you want to nitpick. If you don't, both those works are hallmarks of medieval art and while they're not necessarily exemplars, it is important to remember that there were still artists who knew their stuff in and out in medieval times and the Renaissance didn't come out of nowhere.

Edit: I travel through Europe by train a lot (mainly France and Italy but also Switzerland and Germany occasionally) and I visit museums, cathedrals, and art galleries in every city I stay. I have seen a lot of medieval art because those places just seem to have it lying around by the bucketload. There is a broad range in quality, but I have seen some very high quality woodcuts and, indeed, paintings, although those tend to be religious icons. Sculptures also, but mainly in statues of saints on the outside of cathedrals (see e.g. the Rouen cathedral). I'm trying to say that I'm not some kind of art authority or expert on medieval art, but I have seen my fair share of it, and no, Europeans didn't just suck at art in the medieval. I think what happened is there was a lot of mostly religious art that was lower quality, sort of like you can find plenty of slop on the internet today, but there were still skilled artists that created shockingly good art. You'd be more likely to find it in the palaces of the rich and powerful, I reckon, because they were the ones who could afford/support talented artists, as opposed to more ordinary craftsmen, who would be paid less. For the same reason you might find less of the good art lying around than the rougher, cruder kind, because the former was more expensive and thus harder to obtain. This also goes for religious art, which tended to include a smorgasboard of art forms, from painted icons and sculptures to reliquaries and liturgical equipment like communion chalices. But good medieval art existed, I've seen it, and it wasn't that rare.

[nyeah]

It's not nitpicking. 1450 is not between 500 and 1300. You may stress "about" but I certainly didn't.

I put the cut-off at 1300 very intentionally. As soon as you go much past 1300, you start to see stuff like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Rublev#/media/File:Rubl... That's some good shit. I see this in Wikipedia dated 1338: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lorenzetti_amb.effect2.jp... Not bad at all. They're already creeping up on or El Greco or Da Vinci or something.

And if we move the cut-off all the way to 1450, fuhgeddaboudit. You have freaking Albrecht D\:urer by that time. No fair. I'm sorry. The challenge concerned a particular 800-year period, which I chose carefully.

Yes I hear you about the range of quality. You're right. Many of the best pieces may have been "exhibited to death." There was presumably lots of student art and whatnot, probably not considered very good at the time, but it happened to survive. I accept that. But I'm only asking for a single counterexample in an 800-year block of time. I think that's fair.

If you like, though, I'm happy to amend my claim to this: "No, medieval European art did not suck. European art between 500 and 1300 sucked. But from 1300 until whenever the Renaissance starts, watch out. Those folks did some really nice work."

[Bayart]

I won't bother getting into trying to demonstrate Medieval art doesn't "suck", it's not worth dignifying. But you should be aware you might be placing too much emphasis on painting and drawing specifically as opposed to other art forms.

[nyeah]

Fine, good point. Medieval paintings and drawings suck, but the pottery may have been incredible.

Yeah, why sacrifice dignity by providing a counterexample? Dignity is important.

[IAmBroom]

Isn't the actual topic of this thread specific to painting? On sculptures, but the skillset is painting; you can't paint a marble bust with a chisel.

[Ekaros]

I have my own take that painting as art peaked long ago. And now we are mostly at similar level to that in middle-ages...

Paintings used to be better, and before that they were worse.

[IAmBroom]

Pre-Raphaelites still exist. Your tribe!

[joefourier]

If you think medieval artists lacked skill, check out Villard Honnecourt’s sketchbook, especially the insects on folio 7 and Christ in Majesty on 16:

https://www.medievalists.net/2024/12/sketchbook-villard-honn...

Medieval art is very stylised, but the quality of the lines, the details in the clothes, the crispness of the composition, all that requires a lot of skill. Check out Jean Bondol’s work for instance https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/tapisserie-de-l-apoc...

You may not like the style, but being able to produce works like that requires you to be good at art on some level.

[nyeah]

Ok, but the Honnecourt sketches are kind of strong. Not professional by today's standards, but decent. I'd be happy to have done them--but I'm not an artist. The tapestry can be appreciated, like Klimt's 2-D-ish stuff can be appreciated. The style is fine. It's not fantastic work, I wouldn't hang it up, but it's reasonably accomplished.

In general, though, yes, I think medieval European artists were short on skill compared to artists from Europe in pre-medieval and post-medieval times, and art from other places between ~500 and ~1300. They had some skill, but not as much.

Artists with limited technique are a real thing. Not everything is taste or style.

[thaumasiotes]

You convinced me that they lack skill.

The clothing does often look good. In folio 16v ( https://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Vill... ), it's been overdone and appears to be far wrinklier than fabric could support, suggesting that Jesus is embedded in some kind of strange plant.

The faces are terrible in all cases.

In general, perspective is off, anatomy is off, and you get shown things that aren't physically possible.

[regentbowerbird]

Are you aware there are artistic styles beyond photorealism?

[thaumasiotes]

Yes, but in that case, as this article argues, you'd expect something that looked good. https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/teentitans/images/e/e3/TTO...

The Honnecourt illustrations strongly suggest that (a) photorealism is the goal, but (b) Honnecourt doesn't know how to draw it. He does things like place a person's right eye at a different angle to the rest of the face than the left eye has. But hey, how likely is it that viewers will notice a malformed human face?

[Der_Einzige]

So were the Japanese better at painting circa the 1700s and 1800s? Because you got a whole lot of paints of, uhhh, octopi…

[nyeah]

That's hard to call. Both Europe and Japan seemed fine in that time period. Octopi or no octopi.

[MyOutfitIsVague]

Octopuses or octopodes. Octopi is incorrect.

[Der_Einzige]

Tell that to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s...

(warning, NSFW)

[watwut]

The medieval art was better then those cave paintings. Like, common.

> Europeans between about 500 and 1300 mostly couldn't paint.

They could. And they had wide variety of what they painted and how.

[nyeah]

I've given up asking for an example to support that.

[archagon]

Utterly bizarre to claim that a diverse group of people within an 800-year period were simply “bad at art.”

[nyeah]

No need to generalize. Post some clear exceptions. Or if the statement turns out to be "utterly bizarre but correct" I'm fine with that.

[archagon]

What do you mean by “exceptions”? Who are we, in our own infinitesimal slice of human history, to judge historic taste in art? And is naturalism the be-all, end-all of good taste? If so, we need to throw out the majority of art in the 20th century.

This is a question for an art historian, not some anon on a tech forum. (For what it’s worth, I find Medieval and Renaissance art to be about equally tepid despite the difference in execution. And plenty of people non-ironically enjoy Medieval art despite its supposed deficiencies.)

[nyeah]

"some anon on a tech forum"

Don't sell yourself short. Post some art from those 800 years that doesn't suck, and I'll change my views.

Sure, there's plenty of crap in 20th century art. I've seen examples of that. But that's a different subject.

[lo_zamoyski]

Your exposure to medieval art must be very limited. I have seen some very magnificent pieces of medieval art personally. And paintings are a small part of what falls under "medieval art". Include those in the category, please.

And there is another element to consider, which is the purpose of the art. Medieval art was not concerned so much with realism, but with the symbolic.

I wonder: do you think Byzantine icons "suck"? I suspect you do.

[nyeah]

Do you just want to generalize, or do you want to provide a counterexample? Fine either way.

[lo_zamoyski]

Stop being an obnoxious pest.

What would be the point? Any example given will be met with some snarky and ignorant remark. Veit Stoss's Krakow triptych? Gentile da Fabriano's "Adoration of the Magi"? Byzantine art, like Monreale Cathedral? The Christ Pantocrator icon from St. Catherine's Monastery? Romanesque and gothic cathedrals? Ornate illuminated manuscripts? Shall I continue? You don't have to like medieval art, but claiming it "sucks" is not only generalizing (your very accusation in this thread), but it is boorish and ignorant. You've already gotten more "discussion" out of this topic than you deserve.

So, go troll somewhere else.

[nyeah]

I checked your first example. It's from 1423, well outside the time period 500-1300. If you have valid examples, including the other works you mentioned above, please provide dates. I'm a little tired of doing that for people.

Adoration of the Magi, 1423. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoration_of_the_Magi_(Gentile...

[Sharlin]

Weell, there's a reason the Renaissance is called "renaissance" and not something else.

[Bayart]

That reason is self-hype. The Renaissance was dreadful in comparison to the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period in much of Europe.

[anthk]

Go read the Book of the Games from the 1200's and now you'll learn something. The Middle ages were centuries wide. The last centuries had nothing to do, say, with the 5th century.

[Sharlin]

I should have clarified that I meant there are reasons why the people who branded the Renaissance branded it like that.

[lo_zamoyski]

The Renaissance is really the tail end of the Middle Ages historically, and the name is a bit of propaganda, just like "Enlightenment".

People flatter themselves.

[anthk]

This: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libro_de_los_juegos

13th century. Not just the art, but for the content. Truly ahead of its time.

[IAmBroom]

> The Renaissance is really the tail end of the Middle Ages historically

And the Space Age is really the tail end of the Steam Age. Human history doesn't have any sharp divisors, aside from total genocides or the even rare natural disasters on the scale of Pompeii's demise.

The admittedly artificial definition of the start of the Renaissance, however, does help frame an explosive growth of useful new tools in art (and other endeavors), like perspective, oil paints, and so on.

[lo_zamoyski]

You're missing the point.

Obviously, there is no sharp line. That is too trivial to mention. But the distinction is made, because it captures something about the characteristic spirit of an age.

In the received black legends of whig history, the Renaissance is typically presented as some kind of enlightened rift with and rebellion against the supposedly dark and evil Middle Ages, but in some sense, it is more accurate to view it as a culmination of the Middle Ages or something continuous with it.

You will find great rifts later on with the rise of modernism.

[marcellus23]

The medieval period is different from the classical period. There's no reason to compare to medieval art when we have other examples of classical art that we can compare to.

[mminer237]

Those are a few examples of weird art from hundreds of years of examples, but even then, those aren't super unskilled paintings. Medieval artists still used shading.

[Employee6645]

"Written By Angelika Semynina" She writes exactly what we're taught in Russian universities; it's a textbook, almost word for word. Apparently, she's simply repeating the words of her teachers. I haven't seen anything like it anywhere else, and it comes not from professional art scholars, but from "philosophers." So I consider it more a form of coping than the result of scientific research. I have two Russian degrees, one in cultural studies and one in philosophy, and this is just my opinion.

[peacebeard]

Medieval art isn't comparable to a 10 year old's paint by numbers kit either. As seen in your link, they understood how to use shading for light and shadow for example.

[cgh]

You graciously omitted the article’s follow-on conclusion: the public is being gently trolled.

“On the other hand, at a time when trust in the honest intentions of experts is at a low, it may be unwise for experts to troll the public.”

[ActivePattern]

I still don't understand is why they don't even make an attempt to apply overlayers, when (as the author notes) there is ample secondary evidence that it would be present. It's not like there isn't already some element of inference and "filling in the blanks" when reconstructing how something was painted from the scant traces of paint that survived.

[mbo]

This is somewhat an unfounded theory of mine and I was hoping if anyone has any insight: but I sense that this is perhaps a construction of Western restoration/preservationist theory. A lot of effort seems to be taken to either preserve original material, not take liberties etc. While touring temples and museums in Japan, I got a sense that restorations were much more aggressive, and less regard was taken to the preservation of material (or building "fabric"), with a greater focus on the use of traditional techniques during restoration.