The Work of Art in the European Middle Ages, 1100-1500

Aims of the course

• To bring medieval art to life by exploring its varied functions across medieval culture and society (with a focus on northern Europe, c. 1100-1500).
• To broaden understanding of what medieval art is through encounters with a huge range of objects and artistic media (glass, manuscripts, buildings) with a range of functions (educative, propagandistic, devotional).
• To learn how historical approaches to medieval art have changed over time, and consider the significance of movements like ‘material history’ and the ‘affective turn’ for the study of medieval works of art.

Course content overview

This course introduces you to the art of the central European Middle Ages through a human lens, through its active roles in medieval life and society. At the same time as this course embeds medieval art in its world, it brings the medieval world to life through art. The course will be structured as a week-by-week journey through the different contexts where art did important work, educatively, emotionally, devotionally: from the Abbey Church, to Cloister, Schoolroom, University, Court, and Home. We’ll look at famous medieval survivals, like the French Cathedral of Saint-Denis, reconstructing how its artistic programme would have been experienced by pilgrims from the evidence of contemporaneous texts, and the English monumental Bury Bible made for monks in East Anglia. But we’ll also analyse lesser-known secular objects, from cosmological diagrams produced in the cathedral schools, to the bronze handwarmers which were used by students and decorated with entertaining allegories of the Liberal Arts. We’ll take a step into the lives of medieval art, and the lives medieval art shaped, but also a step back to see how the study of medieval art is always evolving and assess the relative merits of symbolical, material, and rhetorical approaches, for example.

Welcome week (Week 0)

Purpose:

• personal introductions
• introducing the course
• useful reading
• personal objectives

Learning outcomes:

By studying this week, the students should have: 

• become familiar with navigating around the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and from VLE to links and back
• test your ability to access files and the web conferencing software and sort out any problems with the help of the Technology Enhanced Learning team
• learn how to look for, assess and reference internet resources
• contribute to a discussion forum to introduce yourself to other students and discuss why you are interested in the course and what you hope to get out of your studies 

Teaching Week 1: The Church

Purpose:

This week we will study the role of art in the medieval Church – one of the most familiar ‘settings’ for art of the Middle Ages. We’ll reimagine how art functioned in this space. We’ll begin with the basic structure of Abbey Churches in this period, through the example of the French royal burial Abbey of Saint-Denis whose rebuilding in the 1140s launched the gothic style and set the standard for gothic structures throughout Europe for the next hundred years. Through Abbot Suger’s surviving description of the church De Administratione, and looking at the building and its objects, we’ll explore how the key components of a gothic church – stained glass, ornaments for the eucharist, portal sculpture - worked together to form a programme (as Paul Crossley influentially argued) for spiritual uplift. We’ll debate how these programmes might have worked on multiple levels – for laypeople, pilgrims, and clergy. 

Learning outcomes:

• to gain the ability to identify the main parts of a Gothic church (nave, apse, narthex, etc) and to explain their connection to form a ‘programme’
• to develop an understanding of the main stylistic developments that came with the Gothic style and be able to distinguish a gothic from a Romanesque building, for instance
• to gain knowledge of the key sources we have for the experiences such buildings provoked

Teaching Week 2: The Cloister

Purpose

This week will introduce the role of art in the medieval monastery/nunnery. Gothic churches, like Suger’s, were most often part of a bigger complex containing a cloistered community who used the church separately from lay visitors. We’ll begin with a brief history of monasticism via short readings from the fifth-century Rule of St Benedict. We’ll then focus on the form and experience of the cloister itself. We’ll look at the different ways cloisters were ‘equipped’ to help monks with meditation: from the sculpturally complex example of Moissac, to the utterly pared-back examples of Fontenay and Senanque, inspired by the fiery writings of Cistercian monk St Bernard of Clairvaux. As counterpoint to that austerity, we’ll explore the astonishing artistic productions of monastic scriptoria (‘places for writing’) usually positioned just off the cloister, and reimagine the experiences of monks who worked here, through the English example of the Bury Bible.

Learning outcomes

• to gain a basic grasp of the history and tenets of medieval monasticism, how it developed out of early Christian ideals, and flourished in the central Middle Ages
• to develop an understanding of the arguments around art in monastic settings in the Middle Ages
• to provide an overview of the processes and experience of manuscript production which took place exclusively in monasteries until the later Middle Ages; and the kinds of books and illuminations produced in these settings

Teaching Week 3: The Schoolroom

Purpose:

This week we will study artistic survivals from the medieval schoolroom, and how images and objects had a central role in medieval pedagogy. We’ll start by exploring the development of education, from taking place in monastic and court schools, to the cathedral schools which flourished from the eleventh century, up to the eclipse of these by the nascent universities from 1200 onwards. We’ll study how the classical system and purpose of the Seven Liberal Arts was communicated to students creatively: through poetic allegory (Martianus Cappella), sculpture (Chartres), and manuscript illumination (the Hortus Deliciarum). And we’ll explore the role of the image in translating complex scientific knowledge in the medieval schoolroom from the cosmological diagrams found in manuscripts of Macrobius’ Commentary on Scipio; to anatomical diagrams used by medical students at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century.

Learning outcomes:

• to develop an understanding of the development of schools in medieval Europe
• to gain an understanding of what is meant by the ‘Liberal Arts’, and knowledge of some of the key conduits for this classical system into the medieval schoolroom
• to develop the ability to identify some uses of art objects/images in medieval educational contexts

Teaching Week 4: The Court

Purpose:

We continue on our journey and learn about the role of art in medieval court life; and conversely about how court patronage shaped the future and evolution of gothic art. We’ll start where we left off last week, with thirteenth-century Paris, and Blanche of Castille and her son Louis IX’s programme of artistic renewal: from their patronage of magisterial ‘Moralised Bibles’ and what these tell us about the education of the young king, to the building of the Sainte Chapelle in the 1240s, a giant reliquary for Louis’ acquisition of the Crown of Thorns. We’ll also look at the astonishing wall paintings commissioned by the popes at Avignon a century later; and the court style which evolved under English King Richard II in the late fourteenth century: from manuscripts of Chaucer’s poetry to the Wilton Diptych.

Learning outcomes:

• to gain an understanding of the importance of royal patronage for the development of the Gothic style
• to develop the ability to explain the layout of moralised bible pages
• to understand the varied functions of art in medieval courtly contexts: instruction, display of authority, pleasure

Teaching Week 5: The Household

Purpose: 

We continue in the later Middle Ages in Europe, with the increasing affluence of the middle classes, art enters the homes of the wealthy. We’ll pick up where we left off with the private painted chambers of Avignon, next to the privately commissioned secular paintings which survive in Italy’s Castel Roncolo. We’ll see how private patronage allowed secular themes to flourish in art, but also how it drove transformations in book and sculpture. We’ll examine the emergence of personalised devotional books like the Book of Hours, that shaped daily spiritual routines – from the exquisite examples of Jeanne d’Evreaux’s Book of Hours, by the great master Jeanne Pucelle, to that of Jean, duc de Berry. Connectedly we’ll marvel at the explosion of small-scale devotional sculptures, prayer nuts and portable ivories, and reflect on art as cause and effect of the increasing emphasis on individual religious conscience at the dawn of the renaissance.

Learning outcomes:

• to gain an understanding of changes in medieval society and wealth distribution towards the end of the Middle Ages (c. 1300–1500)
• to gain knowledge of the kinds of themes and artworks wealthy patrons were drawn to commission in this period, and why
• to develop a basic ability to analyse how objects like Books of Hours or miniature ivories ‘worked’ and the scenes or iconography one would expect to find within them

Week 6: what next?

• assessment of student learning
• assessment of student satisfaction
• encouragement of further study

This course is open to everyone, and you don’t need any previous knowledge or experience of the subject to attend.  

Our short courses are designed especially for adult learners who want to advance their personal or professional development. They are taught by tutors who are expert in both their subjects and in teaching students of all ages and experiences. 

Please note that all teaching is in English. You should have near-native command of the English language to get the maximum benefit from the course. 

Fees 

The course fee includes access to the course on our VLE, personal feedback on your work from an expert tutor, a certificate of participation (if you complete work and take part in discussions), and access to the class resources for two years after your course finishes. 

Concessions 

For more information, please see our concessions information page. 

Alison Fordham Bursary

University of Cambridge Professional and Continuing Education is proud to offer the Alison Fordham bursary, which is awarded to students who wish to study on one of our short online courses via our VLE, reducing the fee paid by 50%. The bursary is limited to a single award for each set of online courses. 

Application criteria:  

• applicants should set out their personal learning motivations since priority will be given to those who are returning to learning after an extended break, or have not previously engaged with fully online learning, or are seeking to use the online short course as a bridge towards undergraduate award-bearing study
• applicants who can demonstrate financial need 

For more information, please see our bursaries information page. 

A certificate of participation and a digital credential will be awarded to those who contribute constructively to weekly discussions, exercises and assignments for the duration of the course.