Early medieval art for beginners

How to read the labels Historical what the old sources say. Later tradition what later writers added. Modern modern practice and my own notes.

Older books called the centuries after the fall of the western Roman Empire the “Dark Ages”. That phrase was invented by Renaissance writers who wanted their own time to look like a rebirth. The art says otherwise. Between about 400 and 1000, monks, goldsmiths and carvers across Europe made some of the most intricate objects ever created, mixing Roman, Christian, Celtic and Germanic traditions into something new.

Three layers

Historical What objects and texts show. Later tradition What later centuries, especially the nineteenth, made of them. Modern How people use these symbols today.

Dura-Europos: images where we least expect them

Historical In the 1930s excavators at Dura-Europos, a Roman frontier town in Syria, found a synagogue whose walls were covered with paintings of Hebrew Bible stories, from Moses to Esther. An inscription dates a renovation to 244 or 245 CE. It overturns the belief that Judaism always forbade figurative images. Nearby, a house converted into a Christian meeting place had a painted baptism room from around 232 or 233, among the oldest known Christian paintings.

Insular manuscripts

Historical In Ireland and Britain, monks made Gospel books that combine Christian text with an ornamental tradition of interlace, spirals and animals. Art historians call the style Insular, from the Latin for “island”. The Lindisfarne Gospels, made around 700 at the monastery of Lindisfarne in northeast England and now in the British Library, include “carpet pages” filled with interlocking patterns that form a cross. The Book of Kells, made around 800, probably partly on Iona in Scotland, is now at Trinity College Dublin. Its Chi-Rho page fills a whole folio with the first two Greek letters of Christ’s name, wrapped in spirals, knots and tiny animals, including cats and mice.

Charlemagne’s revival

Plaque with the Virgin Mary as a Personification of the Church, about 800 to 825. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (17.190.49). Image: Open Access, public domain (CC0).

Historical Charlemagne, crowned emperor in Rome in 800, promoted a revival of learning and classical forms that historians call the Carolingian Renaissance. His court made manuscripts, ivories and metalwork that blended Roman models with northern traditions. This ivory plaque at the Met, from about 800 to 825, shows the Virgin Mary as a personification of the Church, crowned and holding a staff, carved with a delicacy that looks back to Late Antique ivories.

Viking and Norse art

Historical Scandinavian art of the Viking Age, roughly 790 to 1100, survives mainly in metalwork, wood and stone, and it is dominated by animals: stretched, twisted creatures that bite and grip each other. Scholars name the styles after key finds, from Oseberg and Borre to Jelling, Mammen, Ringerike and Urnes. The Oseberg ship burial in Norway, dated by tree rings to 834, held two women buried with a carved ship, a cart and sledges. The great Jelling runestone in Denmark, raised by King Harald Bluetooth around 965, carries an image of Christ to mark Denmark’s conversion.

The esoteric angle

Historical Runes were primarily a writing system. Some inscriptions have magical or ritual content, but most are memorials, names and messages. Early medieval people also used charms and amulets, and some Old English healing charms survive in manuscripts.

Later tradition Modern rune divination sets are largely twentieth-century creations. One influential early system was invented by the Austrian occultist Guido von List in the early 1900s, whose ideas were later taken up by far-right movements. Many “Celtic” knot meanings sold online are also modern. My runes section explains what we know and what we do not.

Modern Many people use runes and knotwork in practice today. That is fine, and it is more honest and more interesting when we know which parts are old.

Try it yourself

Open the Chi-Rho page in Trinity College Dublin’s digital edition of the Book of Kells, or a photo of an Urnes-style carving. Choose one animal and follow its body from head to tail with your finger. Count how many times it crosses something. How long did it take you to find its tail?

Before and after

Before this: Byzantine art.

After this: Romanesque.

See every movement in order on the art movements timeline, or learn to look step by step in the free Art History for Beginners course.