The Art of the Middle Ages

Reflections on the contemplation of Romanesque art

When you stand in front of Romanesque frescoes for the first time, in this case the Lambach frescoes, you might hear comments such as: The figures have a funny face colour, they stand on their toes, the arms and legs have something insect-like, the perspective is not right, etc. Remarks such as this or similar ones will be made as a non-conformity with visual reality.

Was it an inability of the artists of the time? Couldn't they have done better? Was the realistic art of antiquity lost with the fall of Western Rome and in the turmoil of the mass migrations?

The mental image that exists as the inner image of every artist exists for the time being only for him. Only when it takes shape as an image does it also exist for others. Of course, this also applies to the medieval artist. This image is defined twice: It exists autonomously in itself, through itself and for itself; but at the same time it has an existence outside itself, it means something. Its lines and its forms are there to form signs.

Painting represents thoughts pictorially through graphic signs, it has the character of writing. When the viewer reads the picture, they see what the painter wanted to represent, they identify the sign with the signified. For the medieval man, the graphic, plastic or linguistic sign is completely identical with the signified - a real identity with all its magical consequences.

With the beginning of the Gothic period and especially since the Renaissance, mankind's way of seeing and thinking has changed in the opposite direction. The cause of this is realism in representation, individualism and the scientific knowledge of the world. To them, this identity only appears in the concept as a unity. Exceptions are painting and sculpture, where the contemporary and naive viewer still retains a remnant of the ancient belief.

They are incapable of perceiving the work of art as a sign; for them, it remains bound to the object it represents - an identity they feel to be correct as long as the work of art is similar - otherwise they deny the work any right to exist. In their opinion, a work of art can only exist as a mirror image, as a double of the object it represents. Certainly, they would never make this demand of the written character they learned at school; for them, the written word is not identical with what it means.