What Are the Main Canons of Beauty of Medieval Art?

A dark time. Little erudition. A rough and clumsy art. Very religious beings who were always praying… Those are the preconceived ideas we have about medieval times, partly spurred by movies and novels. The reality, however, was very different.

Human beings in the Middle Ages had artistic sensitivity, and had their own canons in relation to beauty In fact, in many aspects these do not differ too much from antiquity, although clichés have tried to teach us otherwise.

What were the beauty standards like in the Middle Ages?

So that, What are the main canons of beauty in medieval art? What was considered beautiful in the Middle Ages? In the following article, and relying on such illustrious authors as Umberto Eco, we will try to sketch a brief sketch of beauty in the Middle Ages and how it was reflected in their artistic works.

A symbolic universe

First of all, it is important to emphasize that we cannot compare medieval art, eminently symbolic, with the art of other periods, much more naturalistic. What do we mean by this? Well, simply, What was important for medieval artists when creating was not how something was represented, but what was represented

Therefore, it is frankly absurd to discuss whether the medieval they knew or not of perspective, or of proportion, or of symmetry. Do we ask ourselves this when we find ourselves in front of an Egyptian fresco? Probably not, and that is because we are used to seeing in Ancient Egypt a dogmatic civilization, not at all naturalistic.

So, if we are very clear that Egypt was a religious world and that the only intention they had when creating was to capture that spiritual universe, why are we so unfair to medieval art? Why do we compare the paintings of the Middle Ages with classical art, and wrinkle our brows and say that “they didn’t know how to paint,” but we don’t do the same with the art of the Egyptians?

In reality, the Egyptian and medieval worlds are not so far from each other. We explain ourselves. For medieval man and woman, the cosmos was God’s creation, the perfect work of the perfect architect, and therefore everything was imbued with his divinity.

This meant that each element of creation was interconnected and everything had a deeper meaning than it had at first glance For the medieval people, an animal was not just an animal, but was clothed in symbology: the pelican, which was believed to open its chest to feed its young with its blood, was a symbol of Christ and the sacrifice of he. The ostrich was the embodiment of the idea of ​​justice, since its feathers were strictly symmetrical. The ermine was purity, due to its immaculate white color. And so on with a long etcetera.

In divine creation, nothing was found in the world by pure chance. The medieval mentality did not believe in chance, as the modern scientific mentality later did. Each element was subject to a cause, established by God, so sometimes the existence of something could only be understood by the Creator.

It was the case of ugliness, deformity, the monster, which certainly plague medieval art, especially in capitals and columns. If they existed, it was because God had given them a mission, a meaning. In the Middle Ages, nothing was left over and nothing was lacking in the world.

An “unnaturalistic” art

This symbolic universe was constantly reflected in painting and sculpture Obviously, we cannot look for naturalistic elements in medieval art. We have already said that the intention was not the how, but the what. The medieval artist does not capture, therefore, what he sees, but rather what means reality. To do this, volumes, proportions and any other “academic” rule are dispensed with and, in this way, greater expressive freedom is acquired. Let us imagine that the medieval artist tried to represent Heaven and earth in a strictly naturalistic way. Impossible. How to capture concepts such as salvation, condemnation, God, Christ, immortality, resurrection…? To express similar ideas, a symbolic language is necessary, and symbolic language cannot be subject to physical or mathematical rules since, if he did so, his expressive capacity would be curtailed.

However, this does not mean that in the Middle Ages a certain idea of ​​proportion and symmetry did not exist. Let us remember that the medieval people knew many of the classical writings and were not so far from the ancient world as not to see themselves reflected in it. Even in Romanesque art, so unnaturalistic, we find clear examples in which the artist has attempted to represent reality with a certain accuracy.

This is the case of the reliefs and sculptures of the Moissac Abbey, in France, where we find a Saint Paul and a Saint Jeremiah that were astonishingly naturalistic for the time, with their clothes clinging to the body and falling in folds that inevitably remind us of the classical technique.. On the other hand, the Eve by Soulliac, also in France, is an excellent reclining nude that reproduces in a quite naturalistic way the breasts and body of the woman, which, by the way, destroys another quite hackneyed cliché: that in the Middle Ages “there were no nudes.” ”.

Adaptation to space and symmetry

What is characteristic of medieval art is the adaptation of the figures to space. In this sense, the Middle Ages are quite strict: The one who rules is the building or the place where the work is destined, and this must adapt to its characteristics. For this reason, it is quite common that, in order to correctly place the characters in a tympanum, archivolt or capital, scenes are deleted or altered.

On the other hand, the criterion of symmetry is quite present in medieval art. Umberto Eco, in his magnificent essay Art and beauty in medieval aesthetics, collects some interesting examples, such as that of Soisson, where one of the wise men is “eliminated” to exercise perfect symmetry with the juxtaposed scene. We see here a clear example of the rigidity with which the medievals contemplated the arrangement and symmetry of the figures, since the entire representation had to form an absolutely perfect whole.

In the Middle Ages there was no room for innovation, at least during the first centuries. Medieval artisans repeat canons and forms and adapt their work to the space following clear precepts that are transmitted from generation to generation. A Pantocrator will always follow similar models, as will a Virgin Theotokos or an Annunciation. We will have to wait until the end of the Gothic period for a new expression to begin to emerge, which naturalizes the figures and expressions and attempts to feign perspective and recreate real spaces.

Light and color

Another important aspect to understand what medieval humans based the concept of beauty on is light and color. The Middle Ages cannot be understood without these two elements, since, for its protagonists, God is light, and light is color

Thus, everything becomes a chromatic expression: the walls and ceilings of churches and cathedrals, sculptures, clothing, banners, miniatures, jewelry. Despite his conviction that beauty is supraterrestrial and that it exists beyond the visible, the medieval human being is not indifferent to the attraction that sensible beauty exerts on him. Suger himself, abbot of Saint-Denis, was amazed by the roar of color and light that his church housed, since he linked it directly to divine beauty. Something that, by the way, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians will consider dangerous for virtue and will try to eradicate from their buildings.

In medieval painting, color is pure, precisely because it is light. The human being of the Middle Ages does not conceive color “halfway”; The tones are pure, bright, clear. The use of gold reached its peak during the so-called international Gothic, in which the backgrounds were decorated with this tone, which represents God. Gems and precious stones are also highly valued, not only for their economic value, but also because they “catch” color and light. In novels and troubadour poetry, the red cheeks of the beloved, her white complexion and her blonde hair are exalted, and the nobles dress in impossible combinations that include blues with greens and reds with yellows or violets. In short, contrary to what people (still) believe, the Middle Ages are a time that radiates light.

The new “gothic” beauty

The Romanesque expresses beauty through forceful and “massive” figures, inspired by iconography of the Byzantine East, like the icons of the Virgin and Christs in Majesty. Towards the end of the 13th century, the style shows clear signs of exhaustion, and a much more “stylized” ideal of beauty emerges, the one characteristic of Gothic.

This does not mean that verticality did not exist in the Romanesque. Another cliché that is repeated from the Middle Ages is that Romanesque churches are only horizontal, when there are numerous examples of cathedrals of the time that testify to the love of verticality (the ascent towards God). However, it is true that, during the Gothic period, the figures in plastic representations were “lengthened”, thus obeying the late medieval canon of human beauty, which corresponds to ten heads. As we can see, the resulting figure is excessively slender, if we take into account that, in classical times, the canon was reduced to seven and eight.

Verticality, then, is beauty during the Gothic period Cathedrals rise to infinity, stained glass windows take up more and more space (especially in northern Europe), and even fashion reflects this fascination with the “elongated”: peaked headdresses for ladies and doublets narrow at the waist for men. the men who, complemented with stockings and long shoes, contribute to creating the ideal masculine beauty of the late Middle Ages: a tall and stylized man like the tower of a Gothic cathedral.