Medieval

A thousand years between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, when most art served the Church and most of it was made by people whose names were never written down. In the East, Byzantium kept the Roman craft of mosaic and turned it to gold: flat, frontal saints that look out of a timeless heaven, a tradition that passed to Russia with its icons. In the West, monks painted the Gospels with interlaced beasts and spirals (the Book of Kells), Romanesque churches filled their portals with stern carved Last Judgements, and from about 1140 Gothic cathedrals opened their walls to stained glass. By the 1300s painters in Siena and Florence, Duccio and Giotto, were giving the holy figures weight and feeling, and the Middle Ages were already turning into something else.

What to look for: gold grounds and flat, frontal figures (Byzantine icons and mosaics), heavy carving and bold outlines (Romanesque), tall, swaying figures and coloured glass (Gothic).

2,290 works in the quiz. Play a round on Medieval.

Artists

Donatello · Andrei Rublev · Giotto · Gothic art · Cimabue · Duccio di Buoninsegna · Emperor Huizong of Song · Theophanes the Greek · Insular art · Russian icons · Byzantine art · Pre-Romanesque art · Korean art · Indian art · Islamic art · Japanese art · Early Christian art · Romanesque art · Chinese art · Pre-Columbian art · Persian art · Simone Martini · Ambrogio Lorenzetti · Arnolfo di Cambio · Nicola Pisano · Pietro Lorenzetti · Zhao Mengfu · Gentile da Fabriano · Coptic art · Peter Parler

Best-known works

“Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains” — Huang Gongwang, 1348
“Book of Kells” — Insular art, 800 AD
“Theotokos of Vladimir” — Russian icons, 1125
“Black Madonna of Częstochowa” — Byzantine art, 1382
“Our Lady of the Don” — Theophanes the Greek, 1382
“Bunian Tu” — Yan Liben
“Codex Gigas” — Gothic art
“Maestà” — Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1308
“Night-Shining White” — Han Gan, 742–756 AD
“Christ Pantocrator (Sinai)” — Byzantine art
“Six Persimmons” — Muqi
“Annunciation with Saints Maxima and Ansanus” — Simone Martini, 1333
“Early Spring” — Guo Xi, 1072
“Vienna Dioscurides” — Pre-Romanesque art
“Madonna Enthroned” — Giotto, 1300–1305
“Our Lady of Perpetual Help” — Byzantine art
“Gwanggaeto Stele” — Korean art, 414 AD
“paduka” — Indian art, 1201
“Blue Qur'an” — Islamic art
“Rabbula Gospels” — Pre-Romanesque art, 586 AD
“Theotokos Fyodorovskaya” — Byzantine art, 1239
“Utrecht Psalter” — Pre-Romanesque art, 820 AD
“Tōdai-ji Daibutsu” — Japanese art, 752 AD
“Paris Psalter” — Byzantine art, 901 AD
“Blachernitissa” — Byzantine art
“Vienna Genesis” — Early Christian art, 500 AD
“Godescalc Evangelistary” — Pre-Romanesque art, 781–783 AD
“Rucellai Madonna” — Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1285
“Wilton Diptych” — Gothic art, 1397
“Throne of Maximian” — Early Christian art, 500s