This course considers the process of making great paintings from the perspectives of international trade, practical craft, scientific endeavour, religious ‘mystery’ and embodied ‘secret’. It also acknowledges that none of these different ways of looking at the medieval visual arts were the exclusive preserve of elites but were, instead, widely recognised by those contemporaries who saw and lived with works of art.
The first lecture sets the scene by outlining the origins and processing of colours from animal, vegetable and mineral realms as well as colours of artificial origin. In so doing, it shows how artists’ materials were understood in relation to the material world, as defined by the well-established Greek philosophical tradition and Christian religious tradition.
The second and third lectures use details of the construction of two important English altarpieces to throw light upon the lives and activities of 13th- and 14th-century merchants, artists, craftspeople and scientists. The fourth and fifth lectures report on extensive detailed examinations of early modern paintings to illustrate the persistence of medieval trades, artistic practices and scientific concepts in post-Reformation art.
As a whole, the course will suggest that strict adherence to modern academic discipline boundaries can serve to obscure the inherently inter- or cross-disciplinary nature of the medieval world. It moreover attempts of demonstrate how the medieval work of art can represent the intersection between the everyday and the esoteric, and how medieval visual artefacts partake equally in the material and the immaterial.
