Contributors
JOHN ONIANS
Director of the World Art Research Programme at the
University of East Anglia. He has published widely on
topics ranging from the origins of art to twentiethcentury
Chinese painting. A recent research interest is
the biological basis of artistic activity.
Naman Ahuja
Research Fellow at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. He
specializes in the art of India, with particular interest in
ancient sculpture and early medieval painting.
Daud Ali
Lecturer in early Indian History at the School of Oriental
and African Studies, London. His recent research has
been on medieval Indian polity and the growth and
spread of courtly culture.
Anne d’Alleva
Associate Professor of Art History and Women’s Studies
at the University of Connecticut. Her publications
include Art of the Pacific Islands (1998) and Look! An
Introduction to Art History and Its Methods (2003).
Paul Bahn
Writer, editor and translator of books on archaeology.
His main research interest is prehistoric art, especially
rock art of the world, and most notably Palaeolithic art.
Norman Bancroft-Hunt
Lecturer in design and visual theory at the Kent Institute
of Art and Design and at Croydon Art College. He has
published 15 books on the arts of the Americas,
including the award-winning People of the Totem (1979).
Tim Barringer
Associate Professor of History of Art at Yale University.
He has written widely on British art and is the author of
Reading the Pre-Raphaelites (1999) and Men at Work: Art and
Labour in Victorian Britain (2004).
Jane Beckett
Professor of Contemporary British Art at New York
University, London. She has published extensively on
modernism in Europe and Britain as well as on
contemporary art.
John Bennet
Professor of Aegean Archaeology in the University of
Sheffield. He has published on the archaeology of the
Minoan and Mycenaean cultures, and on Linear B
writing.
Elisabeth de Bièvre
Reasearcher in Netherlandish art. She has taught at the
University of East Anglia and elsewhere, and published
in journals in Britain and the Netherlands. She is
preparing The Urban Sub-Conscious. Ecology and Art in the
Netherlands, 1200-1700 for publication.
Sheila Blair
Joint Norma Jean Calderwood Professor of Islamic and
Asian Art at Boston College and co-author with Jonathan
Bloom of The Art and Architecture of Islam: 1250-1800 (1994),
Islamic Arts (1997), and Islam: A Thousand Years of Faith and
Power (2000). She is the author of ten books and
hundreds of articles on Islamic art and architecture.
Jeffrey Blomster
Researcher in ancient New World art. He has conducted
excavations throughout North and Central America,
focusing on the emergence of complex societies and
interregional interaction. He has taught at both
Muhlenberg College and Brandeis University.
Jonathan Bloom
Joint Norma Jean Calderwood Professor of Islamic and
Asian Art at Boston College and co-author with Sheila S.
Blair of The Art and Architecture of Islam: 1250-1800 (1994),
Islamic Arts (1997), and Islam: A Thousand Years of Faith and
Power (2000). He is also the author of Paper Before Print
(2001) and Minaret: Symbol of Islam (1989).
John Boardman
Emeritus Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at
Oxford University. He is the author of several handbooks
and monographs on Greek sculpture, vase-painting and
gems, and has specialized in studies of the interaction
of Greek art with the arts of other ancient peoples.
Anna Brodow
Editor of the the review Artes in Uppsala, Sweden. She
contributes to Svenska Dagbladet and is writing a doctoral
thesis on contemporary Swedish artists working with
project grants from Konstnärsnämnden 1976–2000.
Miranda Bruce-Mitford
Author of The Illustrated Guide to Signs and Symbols (1996).
She has been tutor and lecturer on the Sotheby’s and
Christie’s Asian arts courses at the School of Oriental
and African Studies, London, and accompanied tours
to Southeast Asia as guest lecturer. She has lectured at
the British Museum and written widely on Southeast
Asian Art.
Anita Callaway
Kluge fellow at the Library of Congress, Washington.
Author of Visual Ephemera (2000) and past editor of the
Australian Journal of Art (1996–99), she was a Getty fellow
in 2000 and a Centre for Cross-Cultural Research fellow
at the Australian National University until 2003.
Bruce Coats
Professor of Art History and the Humanities at Scripps
College. He teaches courses in East Asian art history for
the Claremont Colleges in California. He writes and
lectures about East Asian architecture and garden
history and about Japanese prints and paintings.
Herbert Cole
Professor Emeritus of art history at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. He is the author, co-author, or
editor of eight books on African art and many articles. In
2001 he received the Leadership Award from the Arts
Council of the African Studies Association.
Paul Collins
Research Associate in the Department of Ancient Near
Eastern Art of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York. He has also worked on Ancient Near East projects
for the British Museum.
Laura Malosetti Costa
Associate Professor of Art History at the University of
Buenos Aires. Her books include Los primeros modernos:
Arte y sociedad en Buenos Aires a fines del siglo XIX (2003).
Jocelyne Dudding
Doctoral candidate researching ‘Photographs as Cultural
Property: New Zealand Images within British Museums’.
She is based at the Photograph Collections Department
of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.
Elspeth Dusinberre
Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of
Colorado at Boulder. She has worked on archaeological
sites in the eastern Mediterranean and is interested in
cultural interactions in Anatolia. In 2001 she received
the University of Colorado Chancellor’s Faculty
Recognition Award for her contribution to teaching.
Murray Eiland
Researcher in archaeological science at the J. W. Goethe
University in Frankfurt. He has been a Fulbright lecturer
at the University of Damascus and writes for several
magazines on the evolution of technology and longdistance
trade in the ancient Near East.
Stephen Eskilson
Professor of the history of art at Eastern Illinois
University. He is a co-author of Frames of Reference: Art,
History, and the World (2004).
Alexandra Gajewsky
Researcher of French and German medieval architecture.
She studied at Münster University in Germany and at the
Courtauld Institute in London. She has taught at the
Courtauld Institute, at Birkbeck College and at the
Victoria and Albert Museum.
Michael Godby
Professor of History of Art at the University of Cape
Town. He has lectured and published on Early
Renaissance Italian art, eighteenth-century English art,
nineteenth-century South African art, contemporary and
nineteenth-century South African art and the history of
photography in South Africa.
Martin Henig
Visiting Lecturer in Roman Art, University of Oxford. He
has published a number of books on gems, including a
catalogue of the gems in the Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge (1994), and on Roman Britain. He is editor of
The Journal of the British Archaeological Association.
Alison Hilton
Wright Family Distinguished Professor of Art History and
Chair of the Department of Art, Music and Theater,
Georgetown University. Her publications cover many
aspects of Russian and Soviet art.
Mary Hollingsworth
Author of books on Renaissance patronage, now working
on the extensive surviving papers of Cardinal Ippolito
d’Este. Her first book on Ippolito, The Cardinal’s Hat, was
published in 2004.
Peter Kalb
Assistant Professor of Art History at Ursinus College.
Revising author of H. H. Arnason’s History of Modern Art
5th edn (2004), he is also author of High Drama: The New
York Cityscapes of Georgia O’Keeffe and Margaret Bourke-White
(2003,) and has contributed to Art in America.
Simon Kaner
Assistant Director of the Sainsbury Institute for the
Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures in Norwich. He
publishes and teaches on many different aspects of East
Asian archaeology.
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann
Professor in the Department of Art and Archaeology at
Princeton University. His books include The School of
Prague: Painting at the Court of Rudolf II (Chicago and
The
ART
Atlas
Edited by
John Onians
PART I
Art, Hunting and Gathering
40,000-5000 BC
John Onians 14
THE WORLD
Early Ice Age Art 40,000-20,000 BC
Paul Bahn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Later Ice Age Art 20,000-10,000 BC
Paul Bahn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Postglacial Art 10,000-5000 BC
Paul Bahn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
PART II
Art, Agriculture and Urbanization
5000-500 BC
John Onians 22
THE WORLD
The World 10,000-3000 BC
Chris Scarre. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
THE AMERICAS
The Americas 5000-500 BC
Frank Meddens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
EUROPE
Europe 7000-2500 BC
Chris Scarre. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Europe 2500-500 BC
Chris Scarre. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
The Aegean 2000-1000 BC
John Bennet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
The Mediterranean 1000-500 BC
John Boardman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
AFRICA
Africa 5000-500 BC
Peter Shinnie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
The Nile Valley 3000-500 BC
Christina Riggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
ASIA & THE PACIFIC
West Asia 3000-2000 BC
Paul Collins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
West Asia 2000-500 BC
Paul Collins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Central and South Asia 5000-500 BC
Ruth Young . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
East Asia and China 5000-500 BC
Wang Tao . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Japan and Korea 5000-500 BC
Simon Kaner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
The Pacific and Indonesia 5000-500 BC
Robert Welsch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
PART III
Art, War and Empire
500 BC-AD 600
John Onians 52
THE AMERICAS
North and Central America 500 BC-AD 600
Jeffrey Blomster. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
South America 500 BC-AD 600
Frank Meddens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
EUROPE
Europe 500 BC-AD 300
Timothy Taylor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
The Aegean 500-300 BC
John Onians. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
The Eastern Mediterranean 500-100 BC
Martin Henig. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
The Western Mediterranean 500-100 BC
Martin Henig. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
The Mediterranean 100 BC-AD 100
Martin Henig. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
The Mediterranean AD 100-300
Martin Henig. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Europe AD 300-600
Martin Henig. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
AFRICA
Africa 500 BC-AD 600
Peter Shinnie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
The Nile Valley 500 BC-AD 300
Christina Riggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
North Africa AD 300-600
Ruth Leader-Newby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
ASIA & THE PACIFIC
West Asia 500-300 BC
Elspeth Dusinberre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
West Asia 300 BC-AD 600
Murray Eiland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Central Asia 500 BC-AD 600
Burzine Waghmar and Ruth Young. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
South Asia 500 BC-AD 600
Naman Ahuja . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
China 500 BC-AD 600
Wang Tao . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Japan and Korea 500 BC-AD 600
Simon Kaner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Southeast Asia 500 BC-AD 600
Robert Welsch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
The Pacific 500 BC-AD 600
Robert Welsch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
CONTENTS
CONTRIBUTORS 5
INTRODUCTION 10
London, 1985), The Mastery of Nature (Princeton, 1993),
Court, Cloister, and City (Chicago and London, 1995), and
Toward a Geography of Art (Chicago and London, 2004).
Susan Koslow
Professor Emerita, Brooklyn College, The City University
of New York. She has written and lectured extensively on
the art of the Netherlands. Her publications include
essays on Hugo van der Goes, Dutch perspective boxes,
Frans Hals, Rubens, and a monograph on the Flemish
still-life and animal painter Frans Snyders.
Ruth Leader-Newby
Researcher in the interaction between art and literary
culture. She has taught at King’s College, London, and
the University of Warwick.
Mark Lindholm
Doctoral candidate in the Department of Art and
Archaeology at Princeton University. He researches
German Lutheran art in the century following Martin
Luther’s death.
Frank Meddens
Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a director of
Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd. He has carried out
extensive fieldwork in Peru and the United Kingdom, and
has published widely on Andean and British
archaeology.
Jonathan Meuli
Freelance artist and art historian based in Glasgow. He
is the author of Shadow House: Interpretations of Northwest
Coast Art (2001).
Min Mao
Journalist, photographer, illustrator and doctoral
candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies,
London. She is a visiting scholar at the Institut français
d'Études sur l'Asie centrale, Tashkent.
John Moffitt
Professor Emeritus of Art History at New Mexico State
University, where he also taught painting and drawing.
His publications include numerous books and over 165
articles in scholarly journals.
Myroslava Mudrak
Associate Professor in the Department of History of Art
at Ohio State University. She teaches modern art
between the two world wars, with a concentration on
early twentieth-century abstraction, and specializes in
the art of Eastern Europe, Ukraine and Russia.
Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius
Formerly Curator of the National Museum in Warsaw,
she teaches at the Faculty of Continuing Education,
Birkbeck College, University of London. She edited
Borders in Art: Revisiting ‘Kunstgeographie’ (2000), and the
National Museum in Warsaw guide (2001).
Stefan Muthesius
Research Fellow in the history of art, architecture and
design at the University of East Anglia. His books
include Das englische Vorbild (1974), The English Terraced
House (1982), Art, Architecture and Design in Poland: An
Introduction (1994) and The Postwar University. Utopianist
Campus and College (2000).
Lawrence Nees
Professor of Art History at the University of Delaware. He
is the author of From Justinian to Charlemagne, European Art
565–787 (1985), The Gundohinus Gospels (1987), A Tainted
Mantle: Hercules and the Classical Tradition at the Carolingian
Court (1991), and Early Medieval Art (2001). He is editor of
Approaches to Early-Medieval Art (1998).
Kristoffer Neville
Researcher in the arts of the Netherlands, Germany
and Scandinavia in the seventeenth century. He is
particularly interested in the life and career of the
German architect Nicodemus Tessin the elder.
Mike O’Mahony
Lecturer at the University of Bristol in Russian and
Soviet art with broad interests in nineteenth- and
twentieth-century art in Europe and the United States.
Claire O’Mahony
Director of Programmes for History of Art Continuing
Education at the University of Bristol. She specializes in
nineteenth- and twentieth-century design and art history
in Europe and America.
Morna O’Neill
Doctoral candidate working on Walter Crane at Yale
University. She has published on nineteenth-century
British photography and was curator of ‘Company
Culture’ at the Yale Center for British Art.
Rodney Palmer
World Art Librarian at the University of East Anglia. He
teaches the history of Italian and World art at the
University of Leicester and is co-editor of The Rise of the
Image: Essays on the History of the Illustrated Art Book (2003).
Carole Paul
Author of Making a Prince’s Museum: Drawings for the LateEighteenth-Century
Redecoration of the Villa Borghese (2000)
and the co-editor of ‘Viewing Antiquity: The Grand Tour,
Antiquarianism, and Collecting’ (Ricerche di Storia dell’arte
72, 2000).
Martin Powers
Sally Michelson Davidson Professor of Chinese Arts and
Cultures at the University of Michigan. His Art and Political
Expression in Early China (1991) received the Levenson
Prize for best book in pre-twentieth-century Chinese
Studies.
Jennifer Purtle
Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at
the University of Chicago. Her research interests are in
Chinese visual and material culture from the Six
Dynasties to the present.
Christina Riggs
Curator of Egyptology at the Manchester Museum,
University of Manchester, and a specialist in the funerary
art of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt.
Chris Scarre
Deputy Director of the McDonald Institute for
Archaeological Research in the University of Cambridge,
and editor of The Cambridge Archaeological Journal. He
specializes in the prehistory of western Europe, with an
interest also in the Mediterranean and the Classical
World of Greece and Rome.
Peter Shinnie
Professor Emeritus in Archaeology, University of Calgary.
After service with the Royal Air Force in World War II, he
taught and researched at the universities of Khartoum
and Ghana.
Marcella Sirhandi
Associate Professor of Art History at Oklahoma State
University, with a research focus on nineteenth- and
twentieth-century South Asian art. Her publications
include Contemporary Painting in Pakistan (1992).
Michael Sullivan
Fellow Emeritus of St Catherine’s College, Oxford. He
has been Lecturer in Art History, University of Singapore,
Lecturer in Asian Art, School of Oriental and African
Studies, London, and Christensen Professor of Chinese
Art, Stanford University.
Timothy Taylor
Lecturer in the Department of Archaeological Sciences,
University of Bradford. He is a specialist on the later
prehistory of Eurasia.
David Thomson
Author of Renaissance Paris: Architecture and Growth,
1475–1600 (1984) and many articles. He has lectured at
the University of East Anglia and is working on the
catalogue for an exhibition on Jean Androuet du
Cerceau.
Thomas Tolley
Senior Lecturer in the History of Art in the University of
Edinburgh. His publications include Painting the Cannon’s
Roar: Music, the Visual Arts and the Rise of an Attentive Public in
the Age of Haydn (2001).
Stephen Vernoit
Author of Occidentalism: Islamic Art in the 19th Century (1997)
and Discovering Islamic Art: Scholars, Collectors and Collections,
1850-1950 (2000). He has taught at Al-Akhawayn
University in Morocco and at the University of Durham.
Burzine Waghmar
Doctoral candidate in Iranian and Central Asian studies
at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
Wang Tao
Lecturer in Chinese archaeology at the School of
Oriental and African Studies, London. He specializes in
Chinese paleography and Bronze Age cultures.
Robert Welsch
Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College
and Adjunct Curator of Anthropology at the Field
Museum, Chicago. He has conducted field research in
Papua New Guinea and Indonesia and published widely
on the anthropology of the Pacific.
Isobel Whitelegg
Art historian and curator based at the Department of Art
History and Theory, University of Essex. Her research
specialism is modern and contemporary art from Brazil.
Benjamin Withers
Associate Professor of art history at Indiana University
South Bend. He specializes in early medieval English
manuscripts. His articles have appeared in The Art
Bulletin, Anglo-Saxon England and The Old English Newsletter.
He is co-editor of Naked Before God: Uncovering the Body in
Anglo-Saxon England (2003).
Ruth Young
Lecturer in South Asian archaeology and Distance
Learning Tutor at the University of Leicester. She has
done field work in Pakistan, Nepal and Iran, primarily
exploring relationships between urban and rural sites.
Barbara Zeitler
Independent scholar based in London. She has taught at
the University of California in Los Angeles. Her main
research interests are in reactions to Byzantine art
beyond the Byzantine empire.
PART IV
Art, Religion and the Ruler
600-1500
John Onians 94
THE AMERICAS
North America 600-1500
Norman Bancroft-Hunt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Central America 600-1500
Jeffrey Blomster. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
South America 600-1500
Frank Meddens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
EUROPE
Europe 600-800
Lawrence Nees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Europe 800-1000
Lawrence Nees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Eastern Europe and Southwest Asia 600-1500
Barbara Zeitler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Northern Europe 1000-1200
Alexandra Gajewsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Southern Europe 1000-1200
Alexandra Gajewsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Northern Europe 1200-1300
Benjamin Withers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Southern Europe 1200-1300
Benjamin Withers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Northern Europe 1300-1500
Thomas Tolley. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Southern Europe 1300-1500
Thomas Tolley. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Italy 1300-1400
Mary Hollingsworth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Italy 1400-1500
Mary Hollingsworth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
AFRICA
North Africa 600-1500
Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Sub-Saharan Africa 600-1500
Herbert Cole. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
ASIA & THE PACIFIC
West Asia and Egypt 600-1000
Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
West Asia 1000-1500
Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Central Asia 600-1500
Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
South Asia 600-1500
Daud Ali . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
China 600-1300
Martin Powers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
China and Tibet 1300-1500
Jennifer Purtle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Japan and Korea 600-1500
Bruce Coats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Southeast Asia 600-1500
Robert Welsch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
The Pacific 600-1500
Robert Welsch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
PART V
Art, Exploitation and Display
1500-1800
John Onians 146
THE AMERICAS
North America 1500-1800
Norman Bancroft-Hunt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Central America 1500-1800
Norman Bancroft-Hunt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
South America 1500-1800
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
EUROPE
Europe 1500-1600
Mark Lindholm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Scandinavia and the Baltic 1500-1800
Kristoffer Neville . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Poland and Lithuania 1500-1800
Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Russia 1500-1800
Alison Hilton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Britain 1500-1666
Tim Barringer and Morna O’Neill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Britain 1666-1800
Tim Barringer and Morna O’Neill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
The North Netherlands 1500-1800
Elisabeth de Bièvre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
The South Netherlands 1500-1800
Susan Koslow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Germany and Switzerland 1500-1650
Kristoffer Neville . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Germany and Switzerland 1650-1800
Kristoffer Neville . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
France 1500-1650
David Thomson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
France 1650-1800
David Thomson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Spain and Portugal 1500-1800
John Moffitt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Italy 1500-1600
Mary Hollingsworth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Italy 1600-1800
Carole Paul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Southeast Europe 1500-1800
Stefan Muthesius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Europe 1600-1800
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
AFRICA
North Africa 1500-1800
Stephen Vernoit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Sub-Saharan Africa 1500-1800
Herbert Cole. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
ASIA & THE PACIFIC
Asia 1500-1800
Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
West Asia 1500-1800
Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Central Asia 1500-1800
Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
South Asia 1500-1800
Daud Ali . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
China and Tibet 1500-1650
Jennifer Purtle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
China and Tibet 1650-1800
Jennifer Purtle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Japan and Korea 1500-1800
Bruce Coats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Southeast Asia 1500-1800
Miranda Bruce-Mitford. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
The Pacific 1500-1800
Anne d’Alleva. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
PART VI
Art, Industry and Science
1800-1900
John Onians 210
THE AMERICAS
North America 1800-1860
Peter Kalb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
North America 1860-1900
Jonathan Meuli and Peter Kalb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Central America and the Caribbean 1800-1900
Norman Bancroft-Hunt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
South America 1800-1900
Laura Malosetti Costa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
EUROPE
Europe 1800-1900
Claire O’Mahony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Scandinavia and the Baltic 1800-1900
Kristoffer Neville . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Russia 1800-1900
Alison Hilton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Britain 1800-1900
Tim Barringer and Morna O’Neill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
The Netherlands and Belgium 1800-1900
Jane Beckett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Germany and Switzerland 1800-1900
Stefan Muthesius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
France 1800-1900
Claire O’Mahony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Spain and Portugal 1800-1900
John Moffitt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Italy 1800-1900
Claire O’Mahony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Austria-Hungary and Southeast Europe 1800-1900
Stefan Muthesius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
AFRICA
North Africa 1800-1900
Stephen Vernoit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Sub-Saharan Africa 1800-1900
Herbert Cole. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
ASIA & THE PACIFIC
West Asia 1800-1900
Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
Central Asia 1800-1900
Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
South Asia 1800-1900
Marcella Sirhandi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
China and Tibet 1800-1900
Jennifer Purtle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Japan and Korea 1800-1900
Bruce Coats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
Southeast Asia 1800-1900
Miranda Bruce-Mitford. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
The Pacific 1800-1900
Jocelyne Dudding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Australia and New Zealand 1800-1900
Anita Callaway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
PART VII
Art, Ideas and Technology
1900-2000
John Onians 260
THE AMERICAS
North America 1900-1950
Peter Kalb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
North America 1950-2000
Peter Kalb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
Central America and the Caribbean 1900-2000
Norman Bancroft-Hunt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
South America 1900-2000
Isobel Whitelegg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
EUROPE
Europe 1900-2000
Mike O’Mahony. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Scandinavia and the Baltic States 1900-2000
Anna Brodow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Russia 1900-2000
Alison Hilton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
Britain and Ireland 1900-2000
Tim Barringer and Morna O’Neill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
The Netherlands and Belgium 1900-2000
Jane Beckett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
Germany, Switzerland, Austria 1900-2000
Mike O’Mahony. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Eastern Europe 1900-2000
Myroslava Mudrak. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
France 1900-2000
Stephen Eskilson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
Spain and Portugal 1900-2000
John Moffitt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Italy 1900-2000
Mike O’Mahony. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
AFRICA
North Africa 1900-2000
Stephen Vernoit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
East and Central Africa 1900-2000
Herbert Cole. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
West Africa 1900-2000
Herbert Cole. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
Southern Africa 1900-2000
Michael Godby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
ASIA & THE PACIFIC
Asia 1900-2000
Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
West Asia 1900-2000
Stephen Vernoit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
Central Asia 1900-2000
Min Mao . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
South Asia 1900-2000
Marcella Sirhandi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
China 1900-2000
Michael Sullivan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
Japan and Korea 1900-2000
Bruce Coats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
Southeast Asia 1900-2000
Miranda Bruce-Mitford. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
The Pacific 1900-2000
Robert Welsch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
Australia and New Zealand 1900-2000
Anita Callaway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
THE WORLD
Art Institutions Worldwide 2000
Rodney Palmer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
BIBLIOGRAPHY 318
PICTURE CREDITS AND LOCATIONS/NOTE ON SPELLINGS AND PLACE NAMES 322-3
INDEX 324
INTRODUCTION
11
Pacific, took place from west to east. Continents are taken as
the principal units because such large land masses have clear
boundaries, and also because continuities in their environmental
conditions mean that, in general, there is more movement within
than between them. The body of water of the Pacific is treated as a
large unit on similar grounds. There was a case for treating Europe
and Asia together as the single continent of Eurasia, but the
vertical division formed by the Urals and the Caucasus always
formed a significant barrier to communication, and it was in any
case appropriate to treat Africa between the two, since its junction
with the northern land mass at Sinai puts it into connection with
both. Within each land mass a sequence from north to south was
adopted because the northern hemisphere has more continuity of
land surface (and so of communication) than the southern. With
the exception of the first movements of humans out of Africa
before the Atlas starts, the majority of the ‘vertical’ movements of
populations, including the expansion of populations of Asian
origin through the Americas, the Bantu expansion into Southern
Africa and the expansion of Malay-speaking populations into
Indonesia, like the earlier movements of populations from
Southeast Asia into Oceania, were in a north-south direction.
The Atlas thus covers the globe from North America to South
America, from Europe to Africa, and from Asia to the Pacific.
The temporal framework of the Atlas is also natural, in the sense
that it is structured around divisions marked by the movements
of the two most visible heavenly bodies: the months by the moon,
and the day, the seasons and the year by the sun. The largest of
these divisions, the year, thus forms the basic unit for the division
of time. It was less easy to find a natural basis for defining the
larger divisions into periods, but, as the Atlas begins with the
appearance of art-related activities among humans, it seemed
appropriate that further divisions should be defined by the
appearance, or rise to predominance, of other human behaviours.
Accordingly, new sections begin either with the introduction of a
new way of life, such as agriculture or industry, or with the rise to
new importance of an existing behaviour, such as war, religion,
exploitation or technology. There is no suggestion that new ways of
life have a higher status, or that the sequence represents
inexorable ‘progress’. When urban merchants, like the Medici,
became princes, they tended to take up hunting, and when native
Americans gained access to horses and guns with the arrival of
European traders, they also largely abandoned tilling the fields to
shoot buffalo. Nor were these new ways of life adopted by
everybody. The hunting and gathering San of South Africa chose to
resist agriculture, while the Inuit were prevented from taking it up
by the Arctic climate. New forms of human behaviour are used to
mark new periods only because they had so great an impact on a
significant portion of the world’s population that, for them at least,
they changed the nature of the environment in which art
was made and used. The sequence only represents a development
in the sense that there is also a development in the behaviours of
the first inhabitants of Australia. Although they have remained
hunters and gatherers, they have, by invention and exchange,
been adding layers to their food-gathering, storytelling, dancing
and painting traditions ever since they arrived. Because humans
have such good memories and are so good at imitation, lifestyles
once adopted tend to remain available to later generations even as
they experience modification. As each new behaviour emerges, it
joins those that already exist, potentially providing successive
generations with more and more options.
Based on these principles, time was divided into seven periods.
These become progressively shorter. This was mainly because
the generally continuous increase in the speed and volume of
contacts between populations inevitably accelerated the rapidity of
change. Yet another factor was the parallel improvement in access
to resources, which meant that with the passage of time more and
more art was made – and indeed preserved – and
so more and more needed to be shown. It was in partial
acknowledgement of this trend that the latest period, 1900–2000,
although of the same length as the previous 1800–1900, has been
given more pages. As these dates indicate, the calendar followed is
one that was originally European. This was done only because it is
now the most widely used. It does not imply any pre-eminence and
it is easy to recalibrate the dates to fit any other system. The
underlying desire to minimize the influence of cultural criteria led
to the calendar being divided into round numbers, so creating
something like an objective grid. The departure from strict
regularity involved in placing a division not in AD 500 but in 600
acknowledges that, in terms of a majority of the religions whose
new importance seemed to call for a division around that time, the
later date was more significant. Falling close to the founding both
of Islam and the Tang Dynasty, AD 600 was more significant for
more people.
Once both spatial and temporal divisions had been arrived at, it
was necessary to decide which should determine the Atlas’ overall
structure. Time was chosen because there was a greater likelihood
that something that happened in a particular year would soon have
global implications than that something that happened in a
particular place would affect things that happened in the same
place thousands of years later. This means that instead of going
through a sequence of continents, beginning with a chronological
series of spreads on the Americas and ending with a series on the
Pacific, we move through a succession of periods, beginning with a
series of spreads covering 50,000–5000 BC. The use of the Atlas thus
involves turning the globe from the Americas to the Pacific seven
times, beginning with the earliest period and ending with the
century 1900–2000. The reader who wishes to give precedence to
spatial divisions and follow changes in a particular continent or
region can easily do so by choosing to review the seven sets of
period spreads for the relevant area as a group.
It is into this natural framework of space and time that humans
are inserted as natural beings. Most books about art in the
European tradition assume that it should be treated as part of
culture, something that distinguishes humans absolutely from
animals, and even from another type of human: those who live in
cities and use writing as opposed to those who do neither. In this
they take their cue from those among the ancient Greeks and the
ancient Jews who held that the human being is in a special
category as a superior god-created and god-like being. This
notion lies behind many of the prejudices embedded in European
art history. It has prevented the study of art as a worldwide
phenomenon and has long inhibited the study of the nature and
origins of human artistic behaviour. In order to open up enquiry
into these and other topics this Atlas takes a quite different point
of view, acknowledging that we are animals and seeing the
production of culture as part of our nature. This view, although at
odds with the European tradition, is compatible with the
perceptions of most peoples throughout history, who, whether
Indians or Inuit, whether living in Nigeria or New Guinea, have
always recognized human kinship with other creatures. It is also
in accord with modern science, which recognizes that we share
most of our genetic material with other living things. Instead of
taking art for granted as a divine gift, this view requires us to
explain both the origins of art and its complex and varied history
in terms of our distinctive make-up. If we started to make art
between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago, and have gone on making
and using it up to the present, it is because our biological nature
has led us to do so. Our species, Homo sapiens sapiens, or ‘moderntype’
man, which had emerged from Africa at least 100,000 years
ago, was able to complete its spread into Europe and Asia,
apparently replacing all its predecessors by 30,000 years ago
because it possessed resources that greatly enhanced its success,
however challenging the environment in which it found itself.
These resources were carried in a brain containing new and more
10
T
his Atlas gives a new overview of one of the oldest, most
widespread and most important of human activities. Art is,
with the exception of tool-making, the human activity with
the longest and also the fullest record. People have been making
and looking at patterns, and carving and painting images and other
visually interesting artefacts for more than 30,000 years, and doing
so on every inhabited continent. Music has a long history, too, as
is shown by the survival of hollow, perforated bones from a
similarly early date, but it was not until the first musical notation
appeared 2000 years ago that we have any idea of what was played.
It was not until 500 years ago that any substantial body of written
transcriptions was produced. Transcription of speech in the form of
writing was more widespread, but writing has only existed for 5000
years and was only practised in a limited number of places.
It is above all to visual art that we must turn if we want to know
about storytelling, religion or any other forms of thought, either
before writing was invented, or in areas where it remained
unknown. Even for communities in which writing was widespread,
art adds a crucial new dimension to our understanding. Art is also
of supreme significance in its own right. Through the ages,
individuals and communities have invested enormous energies
into creating art. In the past, when art was relatively rare, it was the
object of the most intense and profound attention, and today,
although the growing numbers of objects of visual interest has
reduced the amount of attention each is liable to get, visual
expression and communication are central to life, and art of all
kinds is highly valued. This is why the study of the history of
material visual expression mapped in this volume is so revealing
and engaging. In this book, people living anywhere in the world
can follow the story of the art of their own region, to the extent
that it is known. They can also learn the story of their neighbours’
art and, indeed, everybody else’s. There has probably never been
an art book of such potential interest to so many people.
This breadth of coverage of art through time and space was not
easy to achieve. A whole new approach to the subject had to be
developed. When art is viewed as a worldwide phenomenon it
includes many fields, the knowledge of each controlled by a
different group of specialists. There is simply too much disparity in
the ways each group deals with its subject for it to be easy to bring
them together. Archaeologists are the experts in the earliest art,
anthropologists in the art of modern pre-literate peoples, and art
historians in the art of literate peoples. Some scholars study a
particular medium, such as textiles or film; others, like
Egyptologists or Sinologists, study a particular region. Even more
restricted is the expertise of the few members of each of the tens of
thousands of, often remote, art-using communities worldwide who
are the guardians of purely local traditions. Each group works with
such different assumptions that to present them together as such
in a single volume would draw as much attention to their
limitations as to their achievements. This is why the Atlas of World
Art sets out to offer a new framework, one in which each specialist
can present his or her knowledge, but in a way that relates to those
of the others. This has required all the contributors to rethink their
fields, and it should enable readers to go through a similar
process. The new framework used here for the presentation of
knowledge about art also offers a new context for its
understanding. With its combination of great breadth and constant
clarity of focus, the Atlas allows exceptional insights both into what
unites all art and into what makes it so varied.
INTRODUCTION
Since it is this diversity of assumptions that makes it so difficult to
develop an integrated understanding of art as a worldwide
phenomenon, this new framework sets out to avoid categories that
depend on assumptions that are cultural: that is, preconceptions
that reflect the values of this or that community or group. Instead,
the categories used are founded as far as possible in nature. It may
be argued that to use the term ‘nature’ is still to base oneself in
culture, because nature as a concept can be claimed to go back to
Greek intellectual traditions, but it is not in that abstract sense
that it is used here. The nature referred to here is one familiar to
people of all cultures. It is nature as a set of resources and
constraints, principally those embodied in the nature of the earth,
of time and of man.
THE EARTH, TIME AND MAN
Here, we are concerned with the nature of the earth as it is
experienced by humans, whether as hunters or gatherers, farmers
or miners, traders or industrialists, wherever and whenever they
live, and however they viewed it culturally. Everyone who has
sailed the waters known by Europeans as the Pacific, whether they
were the humans who first discovered the place we call Easter
Island or their successors, such as James Cook, has needed to
exploit the same winds and currents, however differently they saw
them. In the deserts of Central Asia Marco Polo and Ghenghis
Khan were subject to the same constraints. Indeed, the ‘nature’
referred to here is not just that which supports and constrains
humans. It provides the context for the lives of all other animals, it
conditions the existence of all plants and determines the relations
of all inanimate matter. It is in this sense that this Atlas takes as its
initial foundation the nature of the earth, of its waters and its
atmosphere, of the life forms that grow on, under and above the
earth, and the inorganic material of which it is made. The first
immigrants to Australia and their successors tens of thousands
years later may have given the rocks, timbers, fibres and pigments
they found there different names and told each other different
stories of their origins, but they could all exploit only their
inherent properties. If the later immigrants could not find
materials they needed in their new home, they imported them.
Once they had brought them to Australia, these could then be
used by the first inhabitants’ descendants, as acrylic paint has
been used with such success. Humans, like all life forms, are
limited to the resources that they are able either to find locally or
to bring in from somewhere else. In the sense that these different
resources establish possibilities and set limits on them, they
determine lifestyles. They also determine the nature of all activities
requiring material expression, including art-making.
In order to keep us aware of these limitations, this Atlas adopts a
spatial framework that relates the local and global availability of
resources by mapping art onto the earth’s spherical surface.
Readers should try to keep that continuity of surface in their
minds as they look at the sequence of separate two-page spreads
into which that surface has been broken. The division into spreads
was required by the use of the book format, and this also
necessitated further decisions. The book had to begin somewhere
on the surface of the planet, and, since the deep sub-oceanic
trench along the eastern edge of the Pacific has, for the last 30,000
years, been the single greatest barrier to human movement and
exchange, that was taken as the most important dividing line.
Coverage moves eastwards from that division because the early
occupation of the Americas, like the much later occupation of the
INTRODUCTION
13
Chinese technology of printing, that were the chief instruments of
another remarkable diffusion: that of Italian artistic traditions to
Western and Northern Europe in the period from the sixteenth to
eighteenth centuries, as monarchs, princes and merchants
competed in displaying their knowledge of how to revive the
admired, lost inheritance of Ancient Greece and Rome. The
instruments of official censorship and authorization of
publications played an important part in this process, as they did
more recently in the case of the propagation of new political and
artistic traditions in the wake of the militant expansion of Russian
Communism after 1917, which for a time saw Socialist Realist
painting and monumental sculpture become orthodoxy from Cuba
to China. Equally aggressive, though less militant and more
warmly welcomed by individual consumers, has been the impact of
the commercial expansionism of the United States, which has used
the latest technologies to distribute throughout the world such
standardized products as cars and packaged food, films and
television programmes, as well as political rhetoric, which have
sometimes re-emerged in the artistic expressions of other people.
This story of the impact of military, religious, ideological and
commercial forces might suggest there was always a one-way
influence of the dominator on the dominated, but the reverse
was often the case. The Romans conquered the Greeks, but were
themselves conquered culturally and, above all, artistically. The
same thing happened when the Mongols conquered the Chinese in
the thirteenth century. Similarly, at the time when Britain was at its
most expansionist commercially, it put on the Great Exhibition of
1851, which, besides displaying British and European products,
also brought to London works from Asia, Africa and the Americas
that were critically to influence the formal vocabulary of much of
the ‘modern’ art of the twentieth century. Since then, exhibitions of
the art of remote and unfamiliar peoples have become more and
more a feature of the life of the wealthier countries, from North
America to Japan, and each has tended to have an impact on its
visitors. At the same time, artists have left such countries
to seek inspiration in exotic locations, while diasporas from Asia,
Africa, the Americas and the Pacific have brought artists from such
locations to the great metropolitan centres. By doing so, each
has unwittingly ensured that their neural networks are
transformed, whether by new natural surroundings or artefacts,
or by the traditional or modern media of their new homes, with
consequences for their output. This reminds us that, whatever the
overall patterns of art-related behaviours we observe, they
can only be explained if we understand the particular personal
experiences of each of the individuals involved, whether as
producers or consumers.
THE ATLAS AS CONSTRAINT AND RESOURCE
Like any environment, the Atlas offers both a set of resources and
a set of constraints. Some constraints are inherent to the project.
The most obvious are those that depend on its format, the
limitation on the number of maps and on the amount of
information that can be inserted into them. Much more important,
though, is the fundamental limitation on our knowledge. This
applies particularly to the art of the past, where little survives
because most was made in impermanent materials. But it also
applies to particular areas of the globe. In most of the tropics, for
example, where the climate was hostile to the art that was made in
a wealth of organic materials, we know virtually nothing of what
was produced until the last hundred years or so. In other areas of
the tropics, and elsewhere in the world, where there was a lack of
organic materials, either because, as in the Andean altiplano, the
climate did not allow them, or because, as in areas around the
Mediterranean, humans destroyed them through farming and
other activities, and where durable materials such as stone,
metals and baked clay were used, the picture is much fuller. In
some spreads there is simply much less knowledge that can be
mapped than in others.
In spite of this inherent unevenness, every effort has been made
to achieve consistency of treatment, while still allowing a variety
of approaches to be adopted by the contributors. Each spread
visually presents a similar set of information on such subjects as:
topography, both of landscape and of cities; raw materials, both
local and imported, and their processing; art, its production, use,
display and displacement; artists and their movements; social
institutions; and the boundaries of linguistic and religious groups,
ethnic communities, and states. It also provides a verbal essay on
their interrelations. The selection of information and of images, as
well as the character of the commentary, reflect the interests
of the almost seventy authors, who are themselves of many
different cultural, ethnic, linguistic, religious, social, sexual and
disciplinary backgrounds. Each spread is a highly personal essay,
but taken together they present a vast body of comparable
material and comparable ideas. It is possible to go through the
Atlas, assessing the degrees of influence of the different factors
noted in many different contexts. The reader can also compare the
merits of different explanations and the theoretical assumptions
on which they are based. Many of the leading authorities on
different areas of art have never before presented their arguments
in such a compressed and accessible form. The compression
inherent in the volume’s configuration brings losses, but also
important compensations.
The atlas format adopted here for the presentation of knowledge
of human artistic activity may be thought by some to be a vestige
of an imperialist project. It is better understood as a first template
for one that is egalitarian. No group or culture is favoured. All
have equal access to each other’s art. Nor is there a primary
viewpoint. Instead, the view offered is literally one of a person
circling the planet and viewing it from above during the 30–40,000
years that humans have been making art. It is a view helpful to
anyone interested in a particular set of activities that are typical of
this remarkable animal, those that relate to the visually
interesting modification of planet earth’s material resources. The
Atlas lifts its readers out of the positions they normally occupy on
the globe. It separates them from the conventional assumptions
in which their lives are founded, and provides them with new
perspectives. It allows them to descend into other places at other
times, to experience strange environments, unusual practices and
unfamiliar forms of art.
Those who take advantage of all the opportunities the Atlas offers
will acquire an unprecedented understanding of art as a worldwide
human behaviour. They will also acquire a much-needed awareness
of our ignorance about it. The Atlas thus challenges
its readers, whichever continent or island they come from, to
reduce the gaps in their knowledge, whether by new and deeper
studies of particular places and times, or by fresh reflections on
the broader issues raised. If, wherever they live, they respond to
that challenge, or if they simply revel in the pleasures of using a
new and visually satisfying intellectual tool, the considerable
efforts of the publisher, managing editor, editors, cartographers,
contributors and others involved in its production will not have
been in vain.
JOHN ONIANS
INTRODUCTION
12
complex networks, which reinforced important abilities possessed
by earlier ancestors. These included a number of tendencies:
the ability to look at and mimic each other’s movements and
expressions; the use of the visual imagination to search for
potential food and tool materials; the tendency to pick up, explore,
manipulate and modify such materials, and to understand the
importance of such actions when performed by others and, as a
result, to imitate them. It was the convergence of all these
genetically transmitted inclinations favouring success in the
competition with other creatures that led to the emergence of the
making and use of art and determined many of the properties that it
has retained to this day. These include its inherent fascination. One
of the reasons for art’s abiding power is that the neural networks
with which we experience it were originally developed not to
provide us with aesthetic pleasure but to ensure our very survival.
FROM NATURE TO CULTURE
The adaptations just referred to, especially the inclinations to
look at, to pick up, to manipulate and to modify materials and
to respond to the visual experience of materials so modified, are
inborn and therefore universal. However, the ways they manifest
themselves are transformed through time and space in response to
changes in the natural and social environment. This happens
because of another distinctive property of our nervous system, its
‘plasticity’. Humans are exceptional in that their brains are only
fifty percent formed at birth. The fifty percent that develops later is
formed both through passive exposure to the environment and
through the active intervention of others. It is the combination of
these inputs that largely accounts for the differences between
humans, including the differences in the ways in which art is both
made and used.
The dependence of such differences in art on differences of
passive exposure is particularly clear. Looking at anything with
particular attention causes the development of neural networks
that will help us deal with it better in future, and this results in
the formation of visual preferences that will unconsciously
influence us should we start to make or look at art. Thus, the
knowledge of what precisely people anywhere and at any time
were looking at intently will reveal a great deal about their
preferences. This knowledge is particularly relevant when we are
trying to understand the formation of an artistic tradition, where
little or none exists, since in these circumstances we can be
certain that the neural networks that shape people’s preferences
will be formed less by looking at man-made objects than at
important features of their natural environment which can easily
be reconstructed. Thus, when the first tradition, that of the
European Ice Age, was established around 30,000 BC, the
psychologically most important objects to which people were
exposed were large herbivorous and predatory animals, and these
are precisely the objects which they tended to see in the surfaces
around them and became inclined to represent. In the same way,
an important feature in the visual experience of those who made
the first monumental art, that of Egypt, around 3000 BC, were
regular fields and rows of plants, which is why paintings and
reliefs are arranged in rectangles and why buildings are full of
plant-like columns. The environment of the Nile Valley is soft
compared to the bare rocky mountains of Greece, and when the
Greeks started their own artistic traditions around 600 BC, they
replaced the soft lotus-bud capitals of Egyptian architecture with
the angular forms we know as Doric and Ionic. Also, since their
well-being depended on the physical strength of men rather than
the productivity of agriculture, it was life-size and lifelike naked
human figures that they saw in, and extracted from, the limestone
and marble with which they were surrounded. In the Yellow River
Valley of China, where another great tradition was developing at
the same time, wealth depended instead upon the irrigation of
fields with water that circulated from clouds to rain and back in
the form of mist. It was thus visual exposure to such phenomena
that helped to shape everything they made, from billowing clothes
to sculpted dragons, and which inspired their most typical
painting technique involving the irrigation of flat rectangles of silk
and paper with black ink. For the peoples inhabiting tropical
areas, where survival depended less on the exploitation of a
primary resource, such as stone or water, and where a wild and
bountiful nature was predominant in people’s visual experience,
the art traditions that developed were quite different. In this rich
natural environment it was powerful animals of all sizes – from
lions to spiders – and rampant plant life, that most attracted
visual attention, an attention that was often confused as both
plants and animals sought to camouflage themselves and protect
themselves by adopting each other’s attributes. For people
brought up in such environments, the masquerade, which allowed
humans to participate in a similar mimicry, alternately (and
sometimes simultaneously) adopting the appearance of grasses
and trees, buffalo and leopards, was an equally natural field of
visual expression. In Africa, where large mammals were
overwhelmingly powerful, they figured the most prominently. On
the islands of the Pacific, where there were no such predominant
forces, birds and fish were far more important, and it was their
forms that islanders tended to see as they worked the wood of the
boats and weapons that were their chief artefacts. In the frozen
North, on the other hand, large mammals, such as bear, seals and
whales, were again predominant in visual experience. In the
absence of flora, these beasts, which were both the principal prey
and principal enemy, blended in and out of an environment in
which snow, water, ice, mist and wind were in constant flux. In
both ivory and bone, materials which came from the animals and
were used to make the tools with which they were caught, the
Inuit saw the forms of these creatures, and especially their eyes,
teeth, paws and so on, which were also the stuff of their stories as
well as their shamanic belief systems.
If the main influence on the founding of a tradition is likely to be
the environment to which people are passively exposed, the main
factors that interrupt it and cause it to change are active forces,
whether developing within, or coming from outside, society.
Inside a society, a group, such as a secret association or otherwise
privileged collective, or an individual, such as a chief, priest, king
or wealthy citizen, may sense that a particular form or material can
be exploited to influence fellow members of the community. Often
such a sense may be awakened by the chance experience of what
is already done in another society, but the most powerful external
influences are those which come, whether welcomed or not, with
military conquest, religious conversion or commercial domination.
Such upheavals frequently bring an artistic tradition developed in
one area into another, replacing or blending with the one that
exists there. Alexander’s conquest brought Greek traditions of
stone sculpture and architecture deep into Asia, as far as India,
and when those traditions became transformed by Indian devotees
of Buddha, Shiva and Vishnu, they were then taken further east by
traders and monks, often invited by rulers, penetrating China and
Japan, Southeast Asia and Indonesia.
An even more miscellaneous set of influences brought Egyptian,
Mesopotamian, Syrian, Greek and Roman traditions together in
the Middle East, from where Muslim missionaries could take this
mixed tradition, strong in ceramics and wood- and metal-working,
both west to North Africa and Spain and east to Persia, India and
beyond. Even more dramatic, because more violent and intolerant,
was the impact of the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the
Americas. This absorbed residual local traditions in such media as
wood and stone, gold and silver, and textiles into a wave of
church-, monastery- and palace-building that represented the
dominance of a Christian European monarchy over the preexisting
peoples and institutions. Religious literature played an
important role in establishing this dominance, and it was books of
a more technical nature, on subjects such as how to use the
Classical orders or compose paintings, replicated through the new
amount of surviving evidence from different areas is highly variable,
with most being found in a belt between Russia and northern Spain.
This may be due to losses elsewhere, and it is certainly true that the
combination of an extremely severe climate and the ready
availability of limestone caves in Western Europe encouraged work
in more permanent materials in better-protected sites. There are,
however, other reasons why such predispositions might have been
more intensely activated in the same area. Those who lived in this
unusually hostile and unstable environment, close to the edge of the
advancing and receding ice sheet, where plant food was relatively
rare and the hunting of large animals was both more necessary and
more dangerous, would have been more than usually dependent on
visual and manual skills. Within this region of greater stress, artistic
activity seems to have been often strongest in localities where either
survival was most difficult, as at Sungir near Moscow, or where,
because of accidents of landscape, food supplies in the form of
migrating animals were periodically particularly rich, as at Dolní
Ve˘stonice in the Danube Valley or in the Dordogne.
LATER, BETWEEN 10,000 AND 5000 BC, as the climate warmed there was
some continuation of earlier traditions of artistic activity, but new
types also appear and these are increasingly differentiated
regionally, reflecting in part an increasing variety of lifestyles as
technologies became more complex and adapted to varying
ecologies. In Japan, for example, where there were neither large
mammals nor predators, the use of fibres to make baskets, nets and
lines enabled hunter-gatherers to exploit the smaller-scale food
resources of land, water and air so effectively that populations could
become increasingly sedentary, developing the first great ceramic
culture. The form and decoration of these pots so frequently
referred to fibres that they became known as Jomon, from the
Japanese for ‘string’. In Europe, too, the resources of water could be
intensely exploited, as at Lepenski Vir on the Danube, where many of
the fishing community’s houses feature stones in which a natural
resemblance to a fish has been enhanced by carving. Elsewhere
in Europe, it was the skilled individual hunter with bow and arrow
who became more important as woodland expanded north behind
the receding ice, and the new dominance of man over nature led
to male figures acquiring a prominence they had not had before,
as in the rock paintings of Spain. Other art became more
schematic, whether it was on the Azilian pebbles from southern
France, or the paddles from Denmark, as artefacts generally
became more important to people than the foods they helped
them to gather or kill.
THE GREATEST EXPLOITATION OF TECHNOLOGY and transformation of art,
however, was associated with the new understanding of how food
production could be expanded through the herding of livestock and
the sowing and reaping of grains in West Asia after 7000 BC. Çatal
Hüyük in Turkey, the early town whose existence was made possible
by this development, is made up of houses whose stone walls are
decorated with paintings of animals and landscapes and sculptures
of ox heads and leopard. These all testify to a new dominance of man
over nature, and this is even clearer in the Jordan valley, where
plaster statues celebrate the human body, and clay-covered skulls
document a consciousness of the individual.
CAVE PAINTINGS in the ‘great hall’ at Lascaux in France, c.15,000 BC.
A
RT IS FOUNDED IN HUMAN NATURE. Many animals are hunters and
gatherers, some are also sociable, and a few, like the
chimpanzees, our close relatives, are also tool-users. It is in
our special combination of these abilities that art has its origins. Our
hominid ancestors had been picking up and shaping stones for use
as tools for at least three million years, when, about 500,000 years
ago, a more human predecessor, Homo habilis, began collecting
objects of more purely visual interest: coloured minerals, such as
ochre, and fossil remains, such as animal teeth. The emergence of
these behaviours is connected with this creature’s distinctive brain
structure linking hand and eye, and enabling it to be successful both
at socialization and at gathering and hunting. Inborn visual interests
in such features as the redness associated with fruit and other foods,
as well as the associated inclinations to reach out for objects having
those properties, were becoming so strong that they could be
activated by the sight of even inorganic materials.
THESE TENDENCIES WERE EVEN STRONGER in the new species of lightboned,
large-brained primate, Homo sapiens sapiens, that probably
developed in Africa before spreading throughout the world by 35,000
BC. In the brain of Homo sapiens sapiens, modern-type man, the links
between the visual and motor systems were even stronger, and
during the period to 10,000 BC the manipulation, marking and
shaping of natural material resulted not only in an expanded use of
personal ornaments and random finger drawings, but in the making
of painted, engraved and carved representations. These included
animals, both edible and predatory, human hands, and a few human
figures, especially of women. Some were made on the walls of caves
and rock shelters, others on loose blocks, or out of clay or ivory.
Many image types were repeated, suggesting that what began as the
chance consequences of spontaneous interactions between
individuals and their environment became increasingly satisfying,
first to their makers, and then to others. Art began to acquire the
social function that was to give it such importance in the future.
THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE PREDISPOSITIONS involved is demonstrated by
the widespread appearance of this activity from Europe to Africa,
from India to South America, and from Siberia to Australia. Yet the
ART, HUNTING AND GATHERING
40,000-5000 BC
17
EARLY ICE AGE ART 40,000–20,000 BC
Le Placard
Pair-non-Pair
Grotte des Bernous
Cellier Belcayre
Laussel
Venta de la Perra
La Ferrassie
La Croze à Gontran
Grotte
Chauvet
Grotte
Cosquer
Abri Pataud Cougnac
Pech-Merle
Blanchard (Sergeac)
Labattut
Brassempouy
Isturitz
Gargas
Castanet
Chanlat
Lespugue
Rhône
Loire
Garonne
Vienne
Ardèche
Charente
Tarn
Lot
Dordog
ne
Ariège
MEDITER
R
A
N
EAN
SE
A
B A Y O F
B I S C A Y
P
Y
R
E N E E S
F R A N C E
S P A I N
Arcy-sur-Cure
N
100 miles0
0 150 kms
West European
Palaeolithic Art
parietal art find site
portable art find site
2
music and song leave no trace. So the surviving
examples of Early Ice Age art are merely the tip of
the iceberg, a tantalizing glimpse of a wealth of
varied artistic activity which probably stretches
back in time to the very first fossil humans.
One particularly important find of recent
years is the small ‘Venus’ of Galgenberg
(Austria, between Dolní Ve˘stonice and
Willendorf), carved in green serpentine, and
dated by charcoal around it to c.31,000–32,000
years ago. Its lively pose, so different from
those of later, more symmetrical and static
female figurines, is quite remarkable.
SUBJECT-MATTER
Where the Early Ice Age art of Eurasia is
concerned – and for the moment this is the
greater part of the corpus that is reliably dated to
this period – one noteworthy aspect that was
already evident in the small but sophisticated
ivory carvings from several sites in southwest
Germany (Vogelherd, and nearby Geissenklösterle
and Hohlenstein-Stadel, all more than 30,000
years old), and in the later terracotta figurines
from Central Europe is the marked emphasis
on depictions of what might be called large,
powerful or dangerous animals. This has really
come to the fore through the discovery of the
Chauvet Cave. The horse, bison and deer that
would dominate in later Ice Age art were
already present, but the art of Chauvet is
dominated by rhinoceros, mammoths and big
cats. When combined with the site's striking
bear figures, these four categories account for
about two-thirds of the cave’s animal figures.
In the Gravettian period (c.25,000–20,000
years ago) in Western Europe this situation
appears to alter radically towards the heavy
emphasis on herbivores that is so well-known in
later caves, though it persists somewhat longer
in Central Europe, as seen in the portable art of
Dolní Ve˘stonice and Russia’s Kostienki Culture.
A CHARCOAL DRAWING of an animal-human from the
Apollo 11 cave in Namibia. The rock slabs date
from about 25,000 years ago and are the earliest
dated rock paintings in Africa. This one shows
what appears to be a feline creature with a heavy
head, deep chest and thin tapering legs. The
drawing seems to have been retouched at some
stage, with the possible alteration of the hind legs
to resemble those of a human.
2 LARGE NUMBERS OF EARLY ICE AGE SITES have been
found in the southwest of France and down to the
Pyrenees. Many of the caves discovered contain
several chambers with painted walls, such as the
hand stencils in the cave of Gargas, or the panel of
spotted horses at Pech-Merle. The oldest rock
paintings found so far in the region are those at
Chauvet, if the radiocarbon dates are correct
(many features of this cave’s art suggest a later
date). Of the portable art sites, several have
yielded female ‘Venus’ figurines, such as that
carved in mammoth ivory from Lespugue and the
bas-relief carving of the ‘Venus with a horn’ from
Laussel. More elaborate is a carved head of a
figurine found at Brassempouy.
AT L A N T I C
O C E A N
I N D I A N
O C E A N
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
A R C T I C O C E A N
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
BLACK
SEA
CASPIAN
SEA
Mandu Mandu Creek
rock shelter with
shell-bead necklace
Apollo 11 Cave
painted
plaquettes
Border Cave
engraved pieces of
wood and bone
Nswatugi Cave
Zimbabwe palette
Patne
engraved
ostrich
eggshell
Aq Kupruq
carved stone head
Mal‘ta
Mezin
Dolní VestoniceˇDolní Vestonice
Pavlov
Willendorf
Galgenberg
Vogelherd
Hohlenstein-Stadel
Le Trou Magrite
Geissenklösterle Sungir
Kostienki Tolbaga
bone figurine
Brno
ˇPredmostí
Avdeevo
Blombos Cave
incised
rocks
Pedra Furada
rock shelter;
fallen fragments
of painted wall
Arnhem Land
shelters with
abundant ochre
Tanzania
shelters with ochre
pencils and palettes
Sandy Creek 2 /
Walkunder Arch
rock shelter
with paintings
Olary/Wharton Hill
Koonalda Cave
finger markings on
ceilings and walls
Carpenter‘s Gap
rock shelter with fallen
fragments of painted wall
N O R T H
A M E R I C A
S O U T H
A M E R I C A
MESOAMERICA
B E R I N G I A
NEW
GUINEA
JAVA
BOR
NEO
SUMATRA
PHILIPPINES
mammoth
ibex
horsereindeer
red deer
bison
giant sloth
kangaroo
eland antelope
cape
buffalo
JAPAN
GREENLAND
C H I N A
AUSTRALIA
A F R I C A
A S I A
S I B E R I A
E U R O P E
N
0
0
2400 miles
3600 kms
IT HAS BECOME clear in recent years that ‘art’,
however it is defined, did not begin with the
Upper Palaeolithic or Early Ice Age period
(c.40,000 years ago) or with modern humans.
Indeed, even the earliest fossil hominids –
Australopithecines of two or three million years
ago – seem to have had some kind of aesthetic
sense. However, it is from the period after about
40,000 BC that a substantial range of examples
of art is known. Contrary to popular belief, this
later art – Ice Age art – was not confined to
Eurasia; instead, in the last few decades it has
become clear that art, both parietal (in caves and
rock-shelters, and on rocks) and portable, occurs
in this period in every continent. The portable art
is relatively easy to date, from its stratigraphic
position and associated datable materials. The
parietal art, on the other hand, can only be
reliably dated where it was covered by occupation
layers, or where its figures contain organic
material such as charcoal (as at the Chauvet
Cave, where some animal figures have produced
age estimates of more than 30,000 years).
TECHNIQUES AND MEDIA
Very early dates – of 30,000 and even 42,000
years ago – have been obtained from organic
material trapped in the natural varnish covering
rock carvings in Australia, which would make
the petroglyphs beneath the varnish the oldest
dated examples of rock art in the world. However,
this dating method remains controversial and of
uncertain validity. At present, it is Eurasia which
has the greatest number of known sites with art
that is more or less reliably dated to this period.
The range of techniques and media present at
this time is already impressive – in parietal art,
there is fingermarking, engraving, and bas-relief
sculpture; outline drawing and shaded painting;
in portable art, adornments of perforated shells,
teeth, bones or stones; engraving on bone,
stone, antler, eggshell and ivory; painting on
stones, as at Apollo 11 Cave, Namibia, dating
to c.25,000 years ago; three-dimensional
carving of stone, antler and ivory; and even the
production of thousands of fired clay figurines,
notably in Central Europe, and dating back to
c.22,400 BC. Tests on these figurines from sites
in the Czech Republic indicate that they were
fired at temperatures from 500° to 800°C, and
the shape of their fractures implies that they
were broken by thermal shock – in other words,
they were placed, while still wet, in the hottest
part of the fire or ‘oven’, and thus deliberately
caused to explode. Rather than carefully made
art objects, therefore, their lack of finish and
the manner of their breakage suggest that they
may have been used in some special ritual.
ART, HUNTING AND GATHERING
EARLY ICE AGE ART 40,000-20,000 BC
16
ONE OF THE PAINTED PANELS discovered in the Chauvet
Cave in southern France in 1994, possibly dating to
more than 30,000 years ago: though this is a
matter of great controversy. It shows a number of
rhinoceros, while others depict similarly large,
dangerous animals – bears, big cats, mammoths.
1 THE LOWER SEA LEVELS in the Early Ice Age created
land bridges that allowed colonization of Australia
and the Americas. There were two alternative
routes into Australia, though both required the
crossing of large expanses of sea.
The Pedra Furada rock shelter in Brazil contains
fragments of painted rock which may be the
earliest evidence of art in the Americas. However,
the bulk of the currently known finds of this
period are in Eurasia, some sites containing large
numbers of art objects. At Dolní Ve˘ stonice in
Moravia, for example, hundreds of small
terracotta figurines have been found,
mostly of animals, which seem to have
been fragmented by thermal shock, and
hence deliberately caused to explode in a
fire, presumably for some ritual purpose.
MATERIALS
The materials used for artworks in this period
were all readily to hand, whether inorganic (the
various kinds of flint or hardstones) or organic
(animals provided an inexhaustible supply of
useful, workable materials). Mammoth ivory was
a very difficult material to work, but the artisans
of the period in Eurasia produced an astonishing
array of objects from it, and clearly mastered this
medium like the others. Other animals, in
different parts of the world, provided bones,
teeth, and sometimes antlers or horns. But one
should never forget that the archaeological
record comprises only those materials which
have survived the millennia – untold quantities
of art must have existed on rocks in the open
air, or in materials that have disintegrated to
nothing (wood, bark, fibres, feathers, hides).
Body-painting and elaborate hairstyles probably
extend far back into pre-history, together with
tattooing or piercings; and of course, dance,
1 Palaeolithic Art
coastline at height of last
Ice Age, c. 20,000 years ago
greatest extent of ice cover
tundra
steppe
forest
tropical forest
desert
main routes of colonization
using land bridges
parietal art find site
portable art find site
dominant animal,
source of food and materials
LATER ICE AGE ART 20,000–10,000 BC
19
localized in space and time, and are generally
assumed to be ‘ethnic markers’ of some kind.
Some decorated caves also served as
dwellings; others were never lived in and only
visited rarely or even once for the art’s
production. Some cave art – and all of that in
shelters and the open-air – seems meant for
public consumption, whereas a great deal of it is
extremely private, hidden away in dark depths,
crawl-ways or inaccessible niches. In many cases
it seems to have been the arduous journey to
reach the place where the art was produced
which was important. In such cases, it is likely
that the art had a religious motivation.
INTERPRETING ICE AGE ART
Attempts to interpret Ice Age art tend to reflect
their times. It was once thought to be the
mindless doodlings of idle hunters (‘art for art’s
sake’). Then ethnographic reports from Australia
and elsewhere at the turn of the century led to
theories of sympathetic magic (hunting magic,
fertility magic). Dominant in the first half of the
last century, these proved unsatisfactory since
there are no hunting or sexual scenes in the
art, and in most sites the artists were not
drawing the same species as they were hunting.
This approach was superseded in the 1950s
and 1960s by French structuralism, which saw
cave art as ‘mythograms’ incorporating a binary
system that was essentially sexual symbolism.
The Space Age brought an emphasis on
interpretations involving archaeoastronomy and
20˚
40˚
Rhône
Gar
onne
Ebro
Tagus
Guadalquivir
Saône
Loire
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
BAY
O F
B I S C AY
M E D I T E R R A N E A N
S E A
P Y R E N
E E S
Fontanet
Tête-du-Lion
Grotte Cosquer
Le Placard
Réseau Guy Martin
Las Chimeneas
Las Monedas
Lascaux
Cougnac
Fuente del Salín
Covaciella
Niaux La Vache
La Colombière
Enlène
Parpalló
Labastide
La Garma
Ekain
Altamira
Isturitz
Tito Bustillo
El Castillo
La Marche
Angles-sur-l’Anglin
Le Mas d’AzilLe Tuc d’Audoubert
Le Portel
Inset 1
Inset 3Inset 2
Inset 4
N
0
0
150 miles
225 kms
Later Ice Age Art,
20,000-10,000 BC
finds of parietal art
finds of portable art
parietal / portable art
1
2
34
2
2 CAVES, ROCK SHELTERS AND OPEN-AIR ROCKS – around
300 sites are currently known in Eurasia which have
parietal art of this period, most of them in France
and Spain. Even more are known with portable art
of the same antiquity. This map features only the
best-known and best-dated – there are too many
sites with art objects to be included, while
relatively few of the parietal sites are attributed to
the late Ice Age with complete certainty. Most of
them are dated primarily by style, though their
chronological attribution is highly probable,
through various factors such as comparison with
well-dated portable art.
ENGRAVING ON BONE from
the floor of the cave of
La Garma, northern
Spain, dating to more
than 12,000 BC, and
depicting a young ibex
or deer looking back
over its shoulder. It
bears a marked
resemblance to threedimensional
versions of
the same motif, carved
in antler on spearthrowers
from the
French Pyrenees in the
same period.
BISON PAINTED IN THE CAVE OF LASCAUX (Dordogne,
France), which is generally (but not securely)
ascribed to about 15,000 BC. Note how perspective
is shown by the simple but effective method of not
attaching the legs of the far side to the body.
notation; the Computer Age saw each cave as a
giant floppy disk with retrievable information
recorded on its walls; while the New Age
brought a return to simplistic notions of a
universal ‘shamanism’, and of images recording
trance experiences. There may be truth in all of
the above, but it is safe to say that no single
explanation will ever suffice for a phenomenon
which spans at least 30 millennia over a vast
area, and which encompasses such a huge
range of media, techniques and imagery.
Church Hole Cave
cave engravings
Mississippi
M
iss
ouri
Amazon
Y
angtze
Ye
llow
River
Danube
Nile
Volg
a
Congo
Niger
Darling
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
I N D I A N
O C E A N
ARABIAN
SEA
BAY
OF
BENGAL
CARIBBEAN SEA
C
H
INASEA
SO
UTH
HIMALAYAS
URALMTS
RO
CKY
MTS
A
NDES
A F R I C A
NORTH AMERICA
SOUTH
AMERICA
AUSTRALIA
A S I A
E U R O P E
Pedra Furada, Perna
early rock paintings
Spring Creek
decorated tooth Balawinne Cave
hand stencils
Koonalda Cave
finger markings
Gum Tree Valley
petroglyphs
Devil’s Lair
beads
Kimberley
rock paintings?
Snowy River Cave
finger markings
Early Man Shelter
petroglyphs
Longgu Cave
engraved antler
Zhoukoudian
jewellery
Kapova Cave
cave paintings
Avdeevo
portable art
Mezhirich'
portable art
Urkan e-Rub
engraved pebble
Mezin
portable art
Gönnersdorf
portable art
Ignatiev Cave
cave paintings
Afalou Bou Rhummel
terracotta figurines
Matupi Cave
incised bored stone
Tamar Hat
incised ceramic fragment
Maininskaya
terracotta figurine
Kamikuroiwa
engraved pebbles
Jomon
pottery
Gasja and Khummi
early pottery
early petroglyphs
N
0
0
1000 miles
1500 kms
1 Later Ice Age Art, 20,000-10,000 BC
18
IT IS IN THE LATTER PART of the last Ice Age
that the great majority of what is called
Palaeolithic art occurs; and as in the preceding
millennia, examples are to be found on every
continent, though it is Eurasia, and especially
southwest Europe, which has the most
numerous and best-known sites at present.
Outside Eurasia, most examples of art that
is attributable to this period are portable
objects of different kinds, such as terracotta
figurines in Algeria and Siberia, or engraved
pebbles in Israel and Japan. Some rock art,
however, in the New World and Australia is also
assigned to the late Ice Age. Petroglyphs in
different parts of the United States have been
dated through the still experimental and
controversial method of dating organic material
trapped in the natural varnish covering them.
AUSTRALIA AND BRAZIL
Some rock paintings in shelters in Brazil are
clearly from this period. At Pedra Furada, for
example, fragments of painted wall fell off over
time and became stratified in datable occupation
deposits. Even more definite are the petroglyphs
at Early Man Shelter in Queensland, Australia,
which were actually masked by occupation
deposits dated to 13,200 years ago, making it
certain that the petroglyphs were even older.
Other Australian sites are less securely dated
– for example, a wasp nest masking a painted
human figure at a rock-shelter in Kimberley
produced a luminescence date of 15,500 BC,
suggesting that the painting must be at least as
old as this, whereas radiocarbon analysis of
organic materials in paint from two similar figures
has yielded results of only 1900 BC or less.
SPAIN, PORTUGAL AND FRANCE
In southwest Europe, the past 20 years have seen
the discovery of twelve sites – in Spain, Portugal
and France – of pecked and engraved figures on
rocks in the open air, identical in style to figures
known in Ice Age caves and portable art. In
consequence, it is now clear that the rock art of
the period forms a continuum from the open-air
to the dark depths of caves. Every kind of rock
surface was being painted, engraved or sculpted.
Engravings could be made with any kind of
sharp-edged stone. Where paint is concerned, it
is clear that it was sometimes applied with
fingers, and often spat or sprayed from the
mouth or by means of an aerograph. In other
cases, the artists appear to have used actual
crayons of pigment, or applied paint to walls with
pads or brushes. No such implements have yet
been found in Eurasia, but experiments suggest
that a brush of chewed plant fibres or an animalhair
brush (badger hair seems particularly
good) would have produced the best results.
There are clear regional differences in
techniques and content, even within the
relatively small area of France and Spain. For
example, work in clay – from finger-markings in
cave floors to bas-reliefs and full threedimensional
statues – has been found only in
deep caves in the French Pyrenees, while basrelief
sculpture (which, like much portable art,
seems to have been originally painted) only
occurs in cave entrances or rock-shelters in the
Dordogne and Charente areas.
The content of the art is generally divided
into three major categories: animals, humans
and non-figurative or abstract (the ‘signs’). The
vast majority of animal figures seem to be adults
drawn in profile; there are very few recognizable
‘scenes’, no ground-lines, no landscapes, no
vegetation (other than a handful of plant-like
forms, primarily in portable art). The same limited
range of animals is always depicted so that this
is not a prehistoric bestiary simply depicting the
outside world. These animals were meant to
convey information or (probably highly
complex) messages to the people of the time.
Humans are extremely rare (other than the
famous female figurines), but the artists were
clearly capable of depicting them when they
wished; their virtual absence from cave art thus
suggests that human figures were either taboo,
unnecessary or irrelevant to whatever motivations
lay behind the art’s production. Simple ‘signs’ –
dots, lines – are fairly ubiquitous, as one might
expect, whereas complex signs tend to be very
LATER ICE AGE ART 20,000-10,000 BC
1 ICE AGE ART has
been studied for
more than a century,
but only in the last
few decades have
sparse finds begun
to be made outside
Europe. Still few in number, and so varied in type and
content as to defy any unifying link, they are merely the
first of many. The map will fill rapidly as more research is
carried out and new discoveries are made.
ART, HUNTING AND GATHERING
POSTGLACIAL ART 10,000–5000 BC
21
carved boulders, with human-like faces but
fish-like mouths, and abstract decoration which
might represent scales. These boulders, 20–60
cm (8–24 ins) in height, are among the earliest
known examples of ‘monumental’ threedimensional
sculpture in the world.
The best-known portable art of the early
postglacial is that of the ‘Azilian’ culture
(c.8000 BC), especially its small, flat pebbles
bearing dots and lines of red paint. These have
been found at sites in France, Spain and Italy,
but of the almost 2200 known, more than 1600
are from Le Mas d’Azil in the French Pyrenees.
Debate still rages over their possible functions
– with gaming pieces, proto-writing and
notations among those suggested. The Azilian
also produced pebbles bearing a series of
engraved lines, and these are likewise known
over quite a large part of western Europe.
Other than these, the best-known and bestdated
portable art objects from this period in
Europe are to be found in the north: for
example, the carvings of animals in amber,
stone and bone from Scandinavia, particularly
the Maglemose culture of Denmark (c.7500–
5700 BC), such as the amber bear from Resen
Mose with its geometrical decoration. A whole
range of objects has been found at sites in
northwest and western Russia. They include
stone and bone carvings of elk heads and ducks
from Zamostje; a carved wooden elk head
projection on a ski from Vis I; a profusion of
geometric decoration on bone objects from the
Veretye culture, east of Lake Onega; and items
in wood and birch-bark from waterlogged sites
like the Shigirsky bog in the Urals. One
spectacular wooden anthropomorphous idol
from Shigirsky, dated to about 6600 BC, was no
less than 5.3 metres (17 ft) tall.
It is therefore in this postglacial or
‘mesolithic’ period that we are afforded our
first glimpse of the kinds of materials which
have normally not survived. It can hardly be
doubted that a vast array of art in perishable
materials has irretrievably decomposed and
disappeared, not only from this postglacial
period but also from the Ice Age itself. At the
same time we see the growing importance of
new media such as plaster and the advent of
more widespread use of ceramics.
THE ROCK-SHELTER OF LES ORCHIDES in the Forest of
Fontainebleau, near Paris, France, is one of
numerous shelters here which contain enigmatic
incised grid-like designs on their floors, walls and
ceilings. Archaeological investigation in their
vicinity points to a probable mesolithic date, but
their significance remains a complete mystery.
20
ONE OF THE GREAT unanswered questions
of prehistory is: why did Ice Age art come
to an end? And part of the answer is that it did
not. Since most figures in Ice Age cave art
remain undated except by style, we have no
means of knowing whether it did indeed end
abruptly, or carried on for some time after the
end of the Ice Age – itself a gradual and uneven
phenomenon depending on latitude, climate
and so forth.
PROBLEMATIC DATING
In recent years some specialists have dared to
wonder if some of the art in the caves might
not extend into the early postglacial period,
beyond the end of what we call the Ice Age –
and recent direct dating of some black figures
in the Spanish cave of Ojo Gaureña has
produced results of 9470 to 8950 BC – quite late
for Ice Age cave art. And likewise we know that
the Ice Age portable art of southwest Europe
continued for a while at sites such as Pont
d’Ambon and the Abri Morin.
In fact, our knowledge of the art of the
millennia following the end of the Ice Age is
largely confined to such portable objects,
precisely because so little parietal art has yet
been reliably dated. A few rock art sites in the
New World, Australia and elsewhere are known
to belong to this period. Elsewhere, dating is
still a matter of faith or conjecture. Some
rock art sites in India are attributed to the
mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) period. So are
the numerous and enigmatic engraved grids in
shelters in the Forest of Fontainebleau (near
Paris). Spanish Levantine art (so-called
because it is mostly found in the eastern part
of the country) consists mainly of rock
paintings of small, lively human and animal
figures in rock shelters. It has traditionally been
ascribed to this period because it often shows
hunting scenes with deer or boar – staples
during the mesolithic in this part of the world.
It also neatly filled a gap between the cave art
of the Ice Age and the ceramics of the first
farmers. There was never any evidence for the
Levantine art being mesolithic, though, and
recent work has shown that some if not all of it
can be ascribed to the neolithic period (New
Stone Age) or even later.
PORTABLE ART IN THE MESOLITHIC
One of the most interesting recent finds from
the early postglacial was made at the Syrian
site of Jerf el-Ahmar, where a number of stones
of about 8000 BC bear a series of pictograms –
combinations of lines, arrows and animal
outlines – seen by some researchers as an
intermediate stage in an evolution from Ice Age
art to true writing, which arose about 5000
years later in the form of Sumerian cuneiform.
Even more spectacular developments are the
plastered skulls and statuettes from Israel and
Jordan, dating to about 7000 BC, when clay
figurines were becoming widespread in the
eastern Mediterranean.
The remarkable site of Lepenski Vir, in
Serbia, was a fishing village on the Danube
dating from c.6000 BC, and many of its houses
were found to contain enigmatic limestone
POSTGLACIAL ART 10,000-5000 BC
PAINTED WOODEN PADDLE from a submerged settlement
at Tybrind Vig, in Lille Baelt, Denmark. Its decoration
was produced by filling incised designs with brown
pigment. Ten such paddles, all heart-shaped and of
ash wood, were found at this waterlogged site with
exceptional preservation. Only two were decorated.
HAND STENCILS IN THE CUEVA DE LAS MANOS (southwest
Argentina). Huge clusters and superimpositions of
stencils, sometimes hundreds of them, in a wide
variety of colours can be found in rock shelters in
Patagonia. At this site, archaeological excavation
suggests that they date back to c.7300 BC. Some
specialists do not regard such stencils as ‘art’, since
they are mere impressions, but it is clear from
colourful groupings such as this that they were
intended to have a striking aesthetic impact.
M
ississippi
M
is
souri
Amazon
Y
angtze
Yel
lowRi
ver
Danube
Nile
Volga
Indus
G
anges
Congo
Niger
Darling
I N D I A N
O C E A N
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
SOU
T
H
CHINASEA
HIMALAYAS
URALMTS
ROCKY
MTS
A
NDES
A F R I C A
NORTH
AMERICA
SOUTH
AMERICA
AUSTRALIA
A S I A
E U R O P E
Jomon
pottery
Tybrind Vig
wooden paddles
Aucilla River
portable art
Gault Site
engraved stones
Toquepala Cave
rock paintings
Monte Alegre
rock paintings
Piauí
numerous
shelters
El Wad
Natufian figurines
Jericho
plastered portrait skulls,
plaster statues
Sha’ar Hagolan Yarmukian clay figurines
Jerf el-Ahmar pictograph tablets
Jiahu
bone flutes
Wargata Mina
hand stencils
Sturts Meadows
petroglyphs
Magnificent Gallery
paintings
Kakadu
paintings
Çatal Hüyük wall paintings in houses, clay figurines
Zamostje/Vis I
portable carvings
Kunda Culture
portable carvings
Maglemose Culture
portable art
Lepenski Vir
limestone sculptures
Le Mas d’Azil
Azilian Culture,
decorated pebbles
Fontainebleau
rock engravings?
Ojo Guareña
cave paintings
rock paintings?
Karelia/Lake Onega
Veretye Culture/Oleneostrovski Cemetery,
portable carvings, decorated implements
Shigirsky
portable carvings
Berelekh
portable engraving
stone and clay figurines
’Ain Ghazal
plaster statues
Whalebone
figurines,
6000 BC
Inca Cueva
rock paintings
Los Toldos/El Ceibo
rock paintings
Cueva de las Manos
rock paintings
petroglyphs
N
0
0
1000 miles
1500 kms
1 Postglacial Art, 10,000-5000 BC
1 AFTER THE ICE AGE, art around the
world becomes even more varied,
with a tremendous variety of forms
and motifs encountered around the
globe. The lack of firm dating greatly
hampers the development of a unifying
theory, but one clear phenomenon is the
appearance of art in well-preserved organic
materials from waterlogged sites in northern
Eurasia, as well as the rapidly growing importance
of work in other materials such as plaster and fired clay.
ART, HUNTING AND GATHERING
that could then be transformed into objects, ornaments and
representations of people, animals and plants. These objects filled
the houses and tombs of rulers and the shrines of deities. Stones,
such as granite and alabaster, were extracted from quarries and
carved; metals, such as gold, silver and copper, were mined, melted
and moulded; clay was dug and baked into bricks and pots; trees
were cut down and timbers sawn and polished; pigments were
extracted from plants and minerals and used to dye fibres and to
colour surfaces. All these resources and techniques were used to
create pleasure and confidence in the owner or fear or amazement in
others. In different areas, different materials received more attention,
depending on variations in availability and aesthetic preferences. In
Egypt craftsmen worked in granite and a glass-like substance called
faience; in China jade and bronze were used; and in coastal South
America the focus was on cotton textiles and painted ceramics.
IN REGIONS WHERE THE COMBINATION OF SOIL AND CLIMATE limited the
productivity of agriculture, as in the valleys of Europe, the plateaux
of Asia, the hills of Southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacfic,
communities were on a smaller scale, but were often distinguished
by remarkable artefact traditions. In coastal Europe, for example, a
shortage of trees, combined with other pressures, brought the
erection of massive but simple stone monuments such as the
temples of Malta and Britain’s Stonehenge.
AGRICULTURE CREATED A NEED FOR LAND, and one of the features of
this period is the beginning of the phenomenon of small groups
expanding into vast territories, their original homogeneity betrayed
by linguistic similarities, as well as belief systems and material
traditions. The Bantu who expanded out of West Africa into the
rest of Sub-Saharan Africa made little use of permanent materials,
leaving us largely ignorant of their art. The same is not true of the
peoples who migrated into the western Pacific from Southeast Asia.
These founders of Polynesian culture brought with them a refined
and elaborate pottery, known as Lapita, only to abandon it after their
arrival. On their way they passed, and probably mixed with, the
people who had arrived much earlier in neighbouring New Guinea
and Australia, whose rock art, although often difficult to date,
suggests a continuation of earlier traditions.
THE FIRST POLYNESIANS WERE A CLOSE-KNIT GROUP of courageous and
competitive sailors, and so were the Phoenicians and Greeks who
expanded to dominate most of the Mediterranean between 1000
and 500 BC, but it is the differences between these rival Semitic and
Indo-European peoples that is most remarkable. The Phoenicians
founded rich and important cities, such as Carthage, which have left
little permanent material trace besides their cemeteries (or tophets).
The Greeks, by contrast, especially the Athenians, began developing
a culture that was unprecedentedly rich in artefacts made of durable
materials. The militarization that followed from their need to defend
the resources of their narrow, rocky valleys led the Greeks to value
the properties of minerals. In mythology they represented
themselves as made of stone and metal, and they used the
same substances to portray themselves in art. The Greeks had
turned themselves into artefacts particularly adapted for war.
The success of their culture was to lead others to do the same.
PAINTED LIMESTONE RELIEF from the Tomb of Ti in Saqqara, Egypt, c.2450 BC.
T
HE DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE added a new and larger
dimension to humanity’s involvement with art. Agriculture was
in some sense itself an artistic activity. The selection of plants
and animals for breeding involved the expression of aesthetic
preferences; the process of preparing fields for planting involved
the shaping of the land; and the process of tending the sown plants
often required a coordination of visual and manual activity that
paralleled that of the artist.
THE RELATION BETWEEN AGRICULTURE AND ARCHITECTURE was
particularly close. In those areas where conditions favourable to
intense food production allowed the growth of bigger and bigger and
more and more permanent settlements, agriculture led directly to
urbanization. Between 3000 BC and 1000 BC cities built in fertile river
valleys, such as Ur in Mesopotamia, Memphis in Egypt, Harappa in
India, and Anyang in China, set new standards in scale, substance
and organization, and a similar process of urbanization was
beginning in Meso- and South America. Agriculture indirectly
affected both people’s thinking and their visual preferences. Growth
now became a vital metaphor in many areas of experience, and
those who enjoyed the wealth that farming generated constructed
ever larger palaces and tombs for themselves and temples for the
deities that were their protectors. Agriculture also involved
planning, and this, too, became an increasingly central activity and
metaphor, as both town and country were increasingly carefully
managed. Irrigation and road-building intensified, and both in and
around cities the straight line and the right angle became more and
more prominent. First in Egypt, and then elsewhere, design
principles were transferred from the horizontal layout of fields and
houses to the vertical surfaces of walls, so inaugurating the great
tradition of painted and sculpted decoration in rectangular panels.
At the same time architectural ornaments acquired the properties
desired in agricultural products, as the cornices and colonnades of
Egyptian and Mesopotamian buildings were made to look like rows
of leaves and sown plants.
AGRICULTURAL SURPLUSES COULD BE EXCHANGED for other goods,
often from foreign countries, sometimes in the form of raw materials
ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
5000-500 BC
By 2500 BC farming had spread
throughout most of the Old World
as it was shortly to do in the New.
The growing populations of the urban
heartlands were sending feelers deep into
their mountainous hinterlands, seeking
sources of raw materials and spreading ideas
as they did so. On the steppes of Eurasia, the
horse was domesticated and used to pull
wagons and chariots, though not yet for riding.
The transformation since the end of the last Ice
Age was profound and far-reaching. Human
societies dominated most of the land and
POLITICAL propaganda
is one of the
recurrent themes
of art from early
state societies.
This mace head
shows one of the
first kings of
Egypt
ceremonially
cutting an
irrigation ditch,
which waters a
small stylized
patch of four
long, rectangular
fields. The king
wears the crown
of Upper
(southern) Egypt,
and before his face
is carved a small
scorpion that is
believed to represent
his name or title. The
king is shown as father
or benefactor of the
people, bringing water to
the land, though in fact it
was the annual Nile flood
and the trapping of receding
floodwater in irrigation
basins that provided the basis
of ancient Egyptian agriculture.
THE WORLD 10,000–3000 BC
25
2 THE EARLIEST CITIES of the
Old World were
concentrated in four
limited regions, each
centred on a major river or
riverine system. These
provided the fertile soils
and the water needed to
grow regular harvests of
wheat, barley, millet and
rice. The populations of the
first cities were small by
modern standards –
numbering usually only a
few thousand people – but
they possessed a wide
range of craft skills and
administrative functions,
including ritual specialists,
bureaucrats and traders.
These together created
both new needs and new
potential, giving rise to
political and religious art
and architecture.
intensive, with the development of ploughing
in Eurasia and North Africa allowing still larger
areas of land to be brought into cultivation. In
drier areas towards or beyond the limit of the
rain-fed zone, cooperative effort created
systems of canals to bring river-water to the
fields. On steeply sloping hillsides, terraced
fields were laid out to bring yet more land into
cultivation to feed the growing populations.
THE FIRST CITIES
The introduction of irrigation canals in the
sixth millennium BC allowed the fertile plains of
southern Mesopotamia to be farmed for the
first time. Within 2000 years the productive
potential of these hot, dry plains had led to the
establishment of the world’s first cities. In
Egypt and the Indus valley, annual river flood
regimes gave rise to similar urban
developments around 3000 BC, later to be
joined by China during the second millennium
BC. The states and city-states of these densely
peopled lowlands demanded a new scale of
social organization and new types of religious
and political ideology that were represented in
art. Kings and gods required statues, palaces
and temples to proclaim their power and
emphasize their status. The tombs of rulers
took on a new impressiveness in the pyramids
of Egypt. The rich offerings placed in elite
graves at Ur in Mesopotamia or Anyang in
China revealed high levels of craftsmanship
and sophisticated symbolism, and were made
of costly imported materials.
Representation flourished in other ways
too. Writing was invented, originating out of
pictographic systems, and used not only for
economic control but for ritual texts and
literature. The image of the physical world took
on new form also in maps and plans, showing
the division of landed property, designs for
buildings, or the shape of the cosmos. Cities
became microcosms of the divine order, with
temples and palaces rising in their midst, and
rulers assuming the attributes of god-kings.
were rapidly clearing the remaining forests.
They were also creating artworks which still
today speak to us of elite power, craft skill,
and religious beliefs.
Nippur
Kish
Shuruppak
Umma
Susa
Lagash
Ur
Uruk
Eridu
Ashur
Tell Asmar
Rupar
Alamgirpur
Kalibangan
Harappa
Mehrgarh
Rana Ghundai
Mohenjo-
Daro
Nindowari
Balakot
Allahdino
Desalpur Rangpur
Lothal
Surkotada
Chanhu-Daro
Amri
Kot Diji Xingtai
Luoyang
Erlitou
Zhengzhou
Huixian
Anyang
Gaocheng
Liujiahe
Heliopolis
Memphis
El-Amarna
Abydus
Thebes
Hieraconpolis
Maidum
Giza
Saqqara
El-Lisht
Elephantine
Tell Brak
Habuba
Ebla
Mari
Sippar
Babylon
Nile
N
ig
er
Danube
Volga
Don
Yenisey
C
ongo
Ganges
M
ekong
Yangtze
Amu
r
Indus
Yellow R.
Euphrates
Tigris
PA C I F I C O C E A N
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
I N D I A N
O C E A N
N
0
0
2000 miles
3000 kms
2 Early Urbanism, 3500-1500 BC
areas of early urban development
first cities
Egypt: unified state with
hieroglyphic script c.3200 BC;
construction of pyramids for royal
burials from c.2650 BC; agriculture
dependent on water and silt from
annual Nile floods
Indus or Harappan: grid plan cities founded
c.3000 BC; pictographic script still undeciphered;
standardized system of weights and measures
but political organization unclear; seaborne
trade with southern Mesopotamia
China: Shang state develops in
Yellow River valley c.1600 BC;
elaborate Anyang tombs with
bronzes and lacquerwork
c.1300 BC; pictographic
script (ancestor of modern
Chinese) used for divination
and short inscriptions c.1200 BC
Mesopotamia: cities founded from c.3400 BC, protected by city walls by
2800 BC; pictographic script c.3400 BC develops into cuneiform script on
clay tablets by c.2900 BC; mud-brick temples on raised platforms give
rise to ziggurats c.2500 BC; networks of irrigation canals to water
the fields from Rivers Tigris and Euphrates
ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
24
AS THE WORLD WARMED UP after the last
Ice Age, the glaciers retreated and deserts
shrank. The water that had been locked up in
the ice sheets was released into the sea to
evaporate, condense into clouds and fall as
rain. Extensive forests developed in temperate
and tropical regions, spreading from late
glacial pockets to cover much of the earth’s
land surface. Forest vegetation supported
expanding herbivore populations and the
carnivores that in turn fed on them. But
arguably the main beneficiaries of the more
hospitable climate were the human groups.
These grew in size and progressively colonized
new areas in both northern and southern
latitudes, eventually covering virtually the
whole of the world including the inhospitable
arctic wastes and the driest deserts.
HUNTER-GATHERERS
The population of the world 10,000 years ago
consisted almost entirely of hunter-gatherers,
who lived by hunting and collecting wild plant
foods. They also fished in rivers, lakes and sea,
and many of the choicest locations for early
human settlement were along wetland coastal
margins. In some areas, such as Denmark or
northern Australia, their seasonal coastal
encampments were marked by mounds of
shells, the debris from the exploitation of
marine molluscs.
Despite their growing numbers, these early
postglacial peoples have not left such striking
imagery as the cave paintings of their
Palaeolithic predecessors. Rock art is known
from many regions, however, including, for
example, Australia, and the central Sahara,
which was moister than at present. Many
Saharan rock paintings depict parti-coloured
figures of domestic cattle, grouped in herds.
Already before the end of the last Ice Age,
hunter-gatherers in the Levant had begun to
exploit the wild large-seeded grasses which
were the ancestors of domestic wheat and
barley. Around 12,000 years ago this
exploitation shifted in character to include the
sowing and harvesting of plants that had been
removed from their natural habitat and were
being intentionally propagated by human
intervention. Agriculture had begun. The
immediate stimulus in the Levantine case may
have been a temporary shift towards colder
drier conditions as the Ice Age approached its
end. Whatever the specific cause in the Levant,
however, the adoption of cultivated plants,
sometimes accompanied by domestic animals,
was a development that was to be played out
in several regions of the world, in the millennia
which followed, in diverse human and
environmental circumstances: in China, in
tropical Africa, in Central and South America,
in the southern USA. It altered the human
outlook on the world, the relationship of
people to the natural world. This changed
understanding may be what was represented by
the vivid wall paintings and clay sculptures of
Çatal Hüyük in Turkey, perhaps the world’s
earliest town.
THE WORLD 10,000-3000 BC
Nil
e
N
ige
r
Amazon
Mississippi
Ganges
Amu
r
Mekong
Yangtze
Yellow R.
Indus
Tigris
Danube
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
I N D I A N
O C E A N
ARABIAN
SEA
ROCKYMTS
AND
ES
HIMALAYAS
N.AMERICA
EUROPE
AFRICA
ASIA
CHINA JAPAN
R U S S I A
INDIA
ARABIA
AUSTRALIA
S.AMERICA
c.3500 BC
c.4500 BC
c.4500 BC
c.1000 BC
c.8000 BC
c.2000 BC
c.2600 BC
c.2600 BC
c.300 BC
c.3000 BC
c.5500 BC
c.6500 BC
c.2500 BC
c.2800 BC
c.2500 BC
pre-3000 BC
c.3500 BC
c.3500 BC
N
0
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3000 kms
1 The Origins of Agriculture
areas where agriculture first emerged
adoption of the plough, with date
limit of plough agriculture
1 THE DOMESTICATION of
plants and animals occurred
independently in several
regions of the world,
becoming the dominant
mode of human subsistence
and leading to a significant
growth in population
levels. New techniques
were developed to increase
the amount of food that
could be produced. In the
Old World, one of the most
significant innovations was
the plough, drawn by a pair
of oxen. The New World
lacked suitable domestic
animals capable of
providing the necessary
traction, and cultivation
there remained dependent
on human muscle power
and the hoe.
THE IMPACT OF FARMING
The immediate consequence of agriculture was
the development of larger and more
permanent settlements – cultivation and
herding allowed many more people to be
supported from a given plot of land and
removed the need for regular or seasonal
mobility. Larger settlements in turn led to
more complex social arrangements, involving
personal displays of status and works of
communal labour. By the fifth millennium BC,
ground stone and carved or perforated shell
had been joined by objects of copper and gold
in graves as markers of individual identity and
importance. Agriculture became more
CARVED ALABASTER TROUGH of the late fourth
millennium BC from southern Mesopotamia,
possibly from the city of Uruk. In the centre stands
a reed hut or byre. This type of structure was
traditional in the southern marshlands of Iraq up
to recent times. Sheep and rams converge from
left and right, to be greeted by their offspring.
Reed bundles terminating in open loops project
from the roof; they are the symbols of Inanna,
goddess of fertility. The precise meaning of the
scene is unclear, but the reed hut with goddess
symbols may represent her temple, and the sheep
and goats her sacred herd.
THE AMERICAS 5000–500 BC
27
40˚50˚60˚70˚80˚90˚100˚110˚120˚130˚140˚150˚160˚170˚
70˚
60˚
40˚
30˚
20˚
10˚
10˚
20˚
30˚
40˚
50˚
Ga
Cu
Cu Cu
Denbigh
Saglek Bay
Cape Ray
Oconto
Serpent Mound
Adena
Poverty Point
Altamirano
La Venta
Tres Zapotes
Tlaxcala
Tehuacán Valley
Oaxaca Valley
San Lorenzo
Izapa
La Pitía
Puerto Hormiga
Monagrillo
Valdivia
Osceola
Tikoralak
Port aux Choix
Grave Creek
Caverna da
Pedra PintadaINSET
MINA CERAMIC
TRADITION
TUTISHCAINYO
TRADITION
Taperinha
culture
KOTOSH-MITO TRADITION
Asana
Qaluyo
Taperinha
Barra ceramic
complex
Poverty
Point
culture
Basketmaker
culture
Grand Gulch
Lovelock Cave
Marsh Pass
NORTHWEST
MICROBLADE
TRADITION
ARCTIC SMALL
TOOL TRADITION
Old Copper culture
Ocós Ceramic
complex
Early pottery culture
WOODLAND
TRADITION
PALAEO-ESKIMO/
MARITIME ARCHAIC
TRADITION
CHINCHORRO
TRADITION
COTTON
PRE-CERAMIC
TRADITION L. Titicaca
Great
Lakes
L. Poopó
Loa
M
ackenzie
Mississippi
Ohio
RioGr
ande
Pecos
Colorado
St L
awrence
Missouri
Amazon
Tocantins
Marañón
Ucayali
Japurá
Orinoco
Maro
ni
Putumayo
M
ade
ira
Magdalena
Paragu
ay
SãoFranci
sco
Paraná
Desaguadero
Salado
Deseado
Tehuantepec Isthmus
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
A R C T I C
O C E A N
H U D S O N
BAY
CARIBBEAN SEA
B E R I N G
S E A
L A B R A D O R
S E A
GULF OF
MEXICO
R
O
C
K
Y
M
O
U
N
TAINS
APPALA
CH
IAN
M
TS
ANDE
S
BAZILIAN
HIGH
LA
N
DS
ATACAMADESERT
GUIANA
HIGHLANDS
N O R T H
A M E R I C A
S O U T H
A M E R I C A
N
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600 kms
1 The Americas, 5000-500 BC
tradition/culture
Olmec heartland
principal site
resources:
gold
copper
obsidian
galena
soapstone
manioc
maize
cotton
sunflowers/other
native crops
peppers
gourds
camelids
caribou
buffalo
fish
sea mammals
Cu
Ga
Marcavalle
Huaca
Prieta
Sechín
El Aspero
Piedra Parada
Río Seco
Garagay
Caral
Chanapata
Paracas
Waywaka
Kotosh
Tutiscainyo
El Paraíso
KOTOSH-MITO
TRADITION
1 NORTH AND MESOAMERICA between 5000 and
500 BC witnessed changes which involved the
development of agriculture and the first steps
towards the establishment of complex society.
These developments were concentrated in
southern North America and Mexico. Between
5000 and 500 BC in South America agriculture
and herding developed in the Andes, while
pottery-making was invented in the area of the
east-central Amazon. At the same time
irrigated agriculture developed in the Peruvian
coastal desert river valleys, and large
architectural complexes began to appear.
SOUTH AMERICA
The earliest pottery-producing tradition in
South America comes from Caverna da Pedra
Pintada, dated to c.5530 BC. This is closely
related to the Taperinha culture of the lower
Amazon dated to c.5030 BC. The pottery
comprises small vessels, gourdlike or openbowl
in shape, very occasionally with incised
or impressed dot designs. The people
depended on fishing, shellfish gathering and
kitchen gardening. From about 2000 BC fully
sedentary agricultural settlements can be
found in the Amazon basin. An example is
the Tutishcainyo tradition in Peru, with its
distinctive incised decorative pottery, which
dates to c.3000–1800 BC.
Some of the earliest ceramics for
northwestern South America are found at
Valdivia (c.3200–1500 BC) in Ecuador. This
early pottery comprises low-fired incised
and rocker-stamped wares with geometric
designs.
At the Pre-Ceramic coastal village site of
Huaca Prieta (2500–1800 BC), in the Chicama
valley, pyro-decorated gourds and textiles
with bird and serpent designs have been
found. By the end of the Pre-Ceramic period
the coastal sites in Peru started to include
features such a temple mounds, plazas and
U-shaped and pyramidal constructions.
Irrigation was in use, and there is evidence of
social differentation. Ceramics appear on the
coast of Peru by c.1800 BC and are of
considerable quality and artistic merit.
Platform mounds and rectangular and
sunken circular courts are all found at the
site of Piedra Parada in the lower Supe
Valley. But the largest monumental
architecture is associated with the Aspero
tradition, one of the first Peruvian cultural
complexes to show evidence of social
differentiation. Mounds served as stages for
public ritualized display, for instance at El
Paraiso and Río Seco.
The Kotosh-Mito tradition, distinguished
by its small, single-room temples, was located
in the Huánuco region of the northern
highlands of Peru and was established c.2500
BC. The temple (Templo de los Manos Cruzados, or
temple of the crossed hands) at Kotosh is
associated with a twin-mound construction
with chambers on the summit.
Sechín in the Casma Valley dates to
c.1290 BC. It has a perimeter wall with carved
monoliths with designs of dismembered
bodies and warriors. It is antecedent to the
later Chavín tradition. In the Moquegua area
at Asana (c.5000 BC), small circular structures
are known. From c.3000 BC these were
constructed around a temple building.
The Chinchorro culture of c.5000 BC
practised mummification of their dead,
reflecting a form of ancestor worship. The
embalming process included the removal of
cerebral and visceral matter, skeletal bracing,
padding, exterior clay and paint enhancement
and addition of hair and wigs.
In Andahuaylas at Waywaka, the earliest
evidence of gold-working comprises a goldworking
kit with a burial, dating to c.1440 BC.
ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
26
construction of funerary mounds. The Adena
culture has large burial mounds, one of the
biggest being the Grave Creek. Elaborately
carved stone pipes and tablets are known from
the burial sites.
In the arid Southwest the Basketmaker
culture developed in c.1200 BC, with sites such
as Grand Gulch and Marsh Pass. Later
Basketmaker culture villages were substantial,
with up to 50 pit houses.
MESOAMERICA
Archaic cultures from Mesoamerica are known
from the Tehuacán and Oaxaca valleys of
Mexico. In the early Preclassic period
(2000–1000 BC) it is possible to see transition
from hunter-gathering to settled farming in
Mexico and Central America. Ancestor worship,
a hierarchical structure of society, forms of
kingship, sedentary settlement and agriculture
all first appeared during this period.
The early Preclassic period saw the rise of
Olmec culture on the Tehuantepec Isthmus
along the Gulf Coast. The Olmec believed that
a human woman had relations with a jaguar,
the resulting offspring being a form of werejaguar.
Images of beings with baby-like faces
with fanged mouths and cleft foreheads occur
frequently in three-dimensional Olmec art
carved in jadeite, serpentine and basalt. Werejaguars
appear to have represented a rain god.
The most famous examples are the basalt
monumental heads, stelae and altars found at
La Venta, Tres Zapotes and San Lorenzo.
ASHIFT TO A MORE SEDENTARY,
agriculturally based society, frequently
associated with increasingly complex social
structures, took place in parts of the Americas
during this period.
NORTH AMERICA
The formation of larger and more complex
social groups was probably the result of
environmental changes between 4000 and
2000 BC, which led to the emergence of more
varied ecosystems and wider availability of
resources. Settlements were concentrated in
transitional zones, where several different
environments came together. Rock art was
widely distributed, indicating that it was an
ancient custom in the Americas.
Around 4000 BC the construction of small
burial mounds began along the Mississippi
River. By 3500 BC copper was being used by
the ‘Old Copper’ culture around the Great
Lakes. The burial sites of Osceola and
Oconto have yielded many cold- and hothammered
artefacts.
The first pottery in North America
appeared c.2500 BC in the southeast, in South
Carolina, along the lower Savannah River valley
in Georgia and in coastal Florida. Evidence for
the use of basketry and featherwork dates back
to c.3000 BC, and is known from Lovelock Cave
in western Nevada.
The Northwest Microblade Tradition
(c.4500 BC–AD 1000) is present in Alaska and
Canada. The Arctic Small Tool tradition,
established between 4000 and 1000 BC, is
typified by small, finely pressure-flaked tools.
Palaeo-Eskimo culture arose between 2000 and
1000 BC. It was based on the hunting of sea
mammals and caribou. In the winter months,
semi-sunken houses were used. In the summer
a transition was made to tent-like structures.
By 1500 BC large earthworks were being
constructed, such as the Poverty Point site
along the banks of the Mississippi River in
Louisiana. The site of Poverty Point measures
c.40 hectares (104 acres). Six parallel, halfcircular
mounds arranged around a plaza
formed the core of the site. A mixed agricultural
and hunter-gathering economy was practised,
with crops such as sunflower, sumpweed,
goosefoot and gourd. Wide-ranging exchange
networks existed, demonstrated by finds at the
site of copper tools from the Great Lakes region,
lead ore (galena) from Missouri and soapstone
(steatite) from Alabama and Georgia.
The Woodland tradition developed
throughout much of eastern North America
between 1000 BC and AD 700, and was
characterized by cord- and fabric-marked
ceramics, incipient agriculture and the
THE AMERICAS 5000-500 BC
THE SERPENT MOUND IN OHIO This ritual site may
relate to astronomical features in Ursa Major and
Ursa Minor, the Big and Little Dipper, and was
probably made by the Adena Mound Builder
culture some time in the first millennium BC
(although recent excavators have suggested a
more recent date). The Adena people left their
burial mounds in the vicinity of the Serpent Mound
structure. No artefacts or burials have been found
in its construction fill.
THE TEMPLE OF SECHÍN IN THE CASMA VALLEY PERU,
belongs to the late Pre-Ceramic period/Initial
period. The stone carvings on the outer perimeter
wall depict warriors and trophy heads, with the
victors and defeated being depicted wearing
different clothes. The carvings have been dated to
c.1290 BC. The temple is part of a large ceremonial
complex comprising four sites: Sechín Alto,
Taukachi-Konkán, Sechín Bajo and Cerro Sechín
(illustrated here). The central structure of Cerro
Sechín comprises a multi-roomed adobe structure
with painted murals.
0˚10˚
40˚
50˚
Dublin
Paris
Brest
A Coruña
Oporto
Lisbon
Huelva
Málaga
Badajoz
St Nazaire
Lorient
Cork
Galway
Belfast
Escariz
Juncais
Tanque
Carapito
Cortiçô
Fontão
Antelas
Cunha Baixa
Sobreda
Pedralta
Fojinho Forles
Chão
Redondo Lubagueira
Vale de
Fachas
Viseu
Mississippi
Épone Les Ronces
Aveny
Les Houyottes
Guiry
Boury
Saran
St Piat
Vignes Jaunes
Razet
Dampont
La Pierre Turquaise
Paris
Chartres
Reims
See Inset 1
See Inset 2
See Inset 3
Inset 3
Inset 1
Brest Dinan
St Nazaire
Dissignac
Lorient
Locmariaquer
Vannes
Petit-Mont
Kermarquer
Inset 2
St Denec
Rungléo
Mougau-Bihar
Kermorvan
Kerguntuil St-Samson
Carnanmore
Moneydig
Donaghanie
Kiltierney
Aughnagwgan
Loughcrew
Tara
Tournant
Baltinglass
Sess Kilgreen
Carnavanaghan
King's Mtn
Boyne
Ardmulchan
Fourknocks
Clear Island
Knockmany
Santa Cruz
Dombate
Pedra Coberta
Espiñaredo
Alpériz
Corao
Baiñas
Lijó
Castañeira
Barrosa
Nora Velha Soto
Monte Frio
Marzo
Zambujeiro
Vale de Rodrigo Bulhôa
Granja de
Toninuelo
Almendras
Vega de
Guadancil
Codesas
Sallas
Zedes
Aboboreira
Vilarinho
Lamoso
Padrão
Alijó
Pola de Allande
Thames
Ouse
Tyne
Seine
Seine
Loire
Garon
ne
Forth
Severn
S
hannon
Duero
Ebro
Rhône
Tagus
Guadalquivir
NORTH
SEA
BAY O F
B I S C AY
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
M
E
D
I
T
E
R
R
A
N
E
A
N
S
E
A
PENNINES
P Y R E N E E S
GRAMPIAN
MTS
ANGLESEY
BRITTANY
CHANNEL IS.
CORSICA
SARDINIA
BALEARIC IS.
ORKNEY IS.
I B E R I A
F R A N C E
BRITAIN
A
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EUROPE 7000–2500 BC
29
THE ENTRANCE STONE
at Newgrange, a
chambered tomb in the
Boyne Valley of eastern
Ireland, provides one of
the finest examples of
what has come to be
called ‘megalithic art’.
The distribution of
similar motifs, from
Orkney to Iberia,
illustrates the links
(no doubt by sea)
which connected these
otherwise diverse areas
of Atlantic Europe in
the fifth and fourth
millennia BC.
2 MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS were built in several areas
of Atlantic Europe during the fifth millennium BC.
They range from chambered tombs, of stone or
timber construction covered by a mound, to simple
upright stones (menhirs) and elaborate stone
settings and circles. Engraved motifs are found
both on standing stones and chambered tombs,
and were also carved on exposed rock surfaces.
MOST OF THE EARLY FIGURINES of Neolithic southeastern
Europe were moulded from clay which was then
fired in a kiln. This technology was also used for
making ceramics, which was also adopted by these
communities at this period. Ceramics and figurines
alike were decorated with painted and engraved
designs, some of which may mimic patterns that
were used in the textiles or clothing of the period.
Loss of the less durable remains has, however,
deprived us of probably the bulk of the art
produced by these early European communities.
and sometimes massive stones (hence
‘megalithic’), which were arranged in rows or
circles, or as elements in a chambered tomb.
Among the most famous of these chambered
tombs are those of Brittany and Ireland, which
are decorated with carved motifs. The Irish
tombs such as Knowth and Newgrange in the
Boyne Valley have elaborate spirals, zigzags
and lozenges; those of Brittany include an early
group showing animals and axes, and an
enigmatic series of carved anthropomorphic
images which are sometimes interpreted as
evidence of a ‘mother goddess’ cult. Painted
motifs occur in the megalithic tombs of
western Iberia – spirals and zigzags similar to
those of ‘megalithic’ art are also found on rock
surfaces where they marked out places of
special significance in the landscape.
The abstract art of Neolithic western
Europe has been related to images of trance
and hallucination, which may have been
features of the rituals practised at this period.
The identification of a mother goddess cult in
some of the other motifs (which do include
pairs of carved breasts on the walls of
megalithic tombs) is, however, very difficult to
evaluate. The same is true of claims for a
mother goddess cult and a matriarchal society
in southeast Europe at this early period – it has
been postulated that this ideology of peace
was subsequently ended by the rise to
dominance of male power. There is evidence
enough of violence and warfare in European
society from earliest times, however, and the
figurines themselves (not all of them female in
any case) may have represented living individuals
or ancestors as easily as divinities. Nevertheless,
they do, along with megalithic art, constitute
the two most widespread and longest-lasting
artistic traditions of Neolithic Europe.
2 Megalithic Art in Western Europe
site with Megalithic art
20˚ 30˚
40˚
50˚
Belgrade Bucharest
Kiev
Sofia
Athens
Budapest
Prague
Vienna
Hódmezovásárely
Parta
Malca
Dudesti
Salcuta Colomfiresti
Habasesti Rusestii-Noi
Hluboké Masuvky
Vulcanesti
Frumusica¸
Izvoare
Traian
¸ ¸¸˘
˘
˘
Larga-Jijia
Krynichka
Tomashevka
Vladimirovka
Tripolye
Kolomijshchina
Zhukovtsi St Buda
Koshilovce Bilce-Zlote
Hamangia
Let¸Petresti
Vadastra˘
Potporanj
Dudesti¸
Vidra
Boian
Ruse
Khotnitsa
Hârsova¸
Cernavoda
Gumelnita¸
Cascioarele˘
˘
Sultana
Bolintin-Vale
Giulesti¸
¸
¸
¸
¸
Tangâru
Hotarele
˘
Zengovárkony
Sarvas˘
˝
Gomolava
Obrez
Carsija
Selevac
Medvednjak
Vinca
Gornja Tuzla
Lepenski Vir
Padina
TecicGrivac
Divostin Gradac
Plocnik
Gladnice
Predionica
Valac
Zelenikovo
Porodin
Elateia
Lerna
Nea Nikomideia
Tsangli
Achilleio
Tsani
Argissa
Otzaki
Pyrasos
Corinth
Nea Makri
Amorgos
Knossos
Kato Ierapetra
Chaironeia
Sesklo
Soufli
Rudnik Pavlovac
Kakanj
Lengyel
Nosa
Röske-Lúdvár
Kopáncs
Kökénydomb
TuzkövesSzegvár
Perieni
Langenzersdorf
Vösendorf
Srelice˘˚
Branc˘
˝
Aszód Füzesabony
Tiszapolgár
Kotacpart
Gorza
Donja Branjevina
Bordjos
Starcevo˘
˘
˘
˘
Cuina Turcului
Banjica
Obre
FafosDanilo
Smilcic˘
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Borsod
Bodrogkeresztúr
Ariusd¸
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Târpesti
Cucuteni
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Shipintsy
Zhvanets Luka Vrublevetskaya
Pianu de Jos
Turdas
Tartaria˘˘
˘
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Nitra
˘
Dikilitash
Sitagroi
Banjata
Rastu
SaveSupska
Drenovac
Crno-Bara
Paradimi
Vrsnik˘
Leskovica
Anza
Kojadermen
Kazanluk
Veselinovo
Lovets
Plovdiv
Yasatepe
Karanovo
Azmak
Cernica
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˝
Danube
Morava
Varda
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Maritsa
D
rava
Sava
Tisza
Vistula
Olt
Prut
Si
ret
Dniester
Dnieper
B L A C K
S E A
T Y R R H E N I A N
S E A
I O N I A N
S E A
A E G E A N
S E A
A
D
R
I
A
T
I C
S
E A
BALKAN MTS
TRANSYLVANIAN
ALPS
CARPATHIAN
M
TS
PINDUS
M
TS
DINARIC
ALPS
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A
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CRETE
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200 kms
ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
28
AROUND 9000 YEARS AGO the first
communities in Europe to cultivate
cereals and raise domestic animals appeared
in Thessaly and Thrace, dependent on crops
and livestock species that they had adopted
from their neighbours in Anatolia. Over the
succeeding millennia, the new way of life
spread steadily across Europe, reaching the
Rhineland before 5000 BC and becoming
established in Britain and Scandinavia a
millennium later.
MESOLITHIC HUNTERS
Hunter-gatherers were restricted in numbers by
the availability of wild resources, and in many
parts of Europe population levels may have been
very low. The scattered distribution of the
resources on which they relied also meant that
most hunter-gatherer communities had mobile
lifestyles, moving between a number of seasonal
or temporary settlements and camps during the
annual cycle. The exceptions were along coasts
and rivers in the Danube Gorges, for example, or
in Scandinavia, where rich and varied resources
made permanent settlements possible.
The Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of Europe
were the direct descendants of those of the last
Ice Age, but as the ice sheets retreated and
temperatures improved, they were able to
recolonize northern latitudes and take advantage
of the spread of temperate woodlands and
grasslands with their plant and animal food
resources. It is therefore at first sight perplexing
that Mesolithic art is so rare when compared with
the famous corpus of cave paintings and portable
art produced during the European Upper
Palaeolithic. It is likely that the Mesolithic
communities of Europe were just as culturally
sophisticated as any hunter-gatherers of the
world, but that much of this sophistication was
expressed in forms – such as song, dance, oral
tradition, clothing or carving – which have not
survived. In northern Europe waterlogged
settlements in Scandinavia provide an insight
into what may have been lost – a decorated
wooden paddle, for example, was excavated at
Tybrind Vig (see p.20). The cemetery of Olenii
Ostrov in northern Russia has yielded wooden
figurines and batons carved with antler heads.
Perishable materials such as wood only rarely
survive, however, and hunter-gatherer art in the
form of rock engravings is limited to marginal
areas such as the Alps and the sub-Arctic.
ART OF THE NEOLITHIC
The spread of domestic plants and animals that
marked the transition to the Neolithic age of
pottery and farming may have been associated
with some movement of population, but it is
likely that in many areas of Europe the earlier
EUROPE 7000-2500 BC
1 THE EARLIEST FARMING
communities of southeast
Europe had much in common
with their neighbours in
western Asia. Their
settlements of up to 50 or
more rectangular mud-brick
houses grew to form tells,
and some of the houses
themselves were decorated
with painted designs and
modelled clay mouldings.
A certain unity of background
is provided by the fired clay
figurines which again can be
paralleled in Anatolia, but are
not common at this period in
Europe north of the Danube.
In conventional terminology,
these first farming
communities of south-east
Europe mark the transition
from the foregoing
Mesolithic period of hunters
and gatherers, who relied on
wild resources, to the
Neolithic period with pottery
and farming. Europe was by
no means a unity at this
period, and was indeed
marked as much by
differences as by similarities.
These differences show
themselves in the way that
the new domesticates spread
and were adopted, and the
changes in settlement and
material culture that
accompanied them.
hunter-gatherers were not displaced by
newcomers but actually chose to adopt the new
way of life. The transition was both economic
and conceptual. An important new distinction
had been introduced between the wild and
domestic. Human societies began to alter and
control their living environment in unprecedented
ways. This included the clearance of forest (at
first on only a small scale) to grow cereals, and
the creation of more permanent settlements. In
the southeast these took the form of villages of
mud-brick houses, built and rebuilt in the same
place to form settlement mounds or ‘tells’.
Associated with these were figurines, mostly
made with the new technology of ceramics. The
fact that a large proportion of these figurines are
female, and relatively few are clearly male, has led
many to interpret them as evidence of a fertility
cult, related perhaps to the new concern with
the fertility of crops. Some have gone even
further, and argued that these figurines
represent a cult of female divinities at a time
when southeast European societies were
predominantly matriarchal in character.
Further west, the impact of the new way of
life had a different character, with settlements
remaining small and scattered. Above all, a
changed view of landscape was revealed
through the construction of monuments.
These included structures incorporating large
Early Farming Settlements
in Southeast Europe
early farming settlements
1
EUROPE 2500-500BC
31
tin from limited and distant sources set up a
series of networks across Europe, along which
other prized materials such as Baltic amber
also circulated. The result was a certain
‘international’ character to the metalwork
traditions of the European Bronze Age, where
similar forms are found across wide areas.
THE NEW METALLURGY
Polished stone axes were finely crafted objects,
demanding many hours of intensive shaping
and polishing to produce the prized endproduct.
The transformation of the original raw
material that they represented, however, was
significantly less dramatic than the process of
metallurgy, especially where that involved the
smelting of metal from the ores and its
subsequent casting to produce the desired
forms. This demanded new and rather
mysterious knowledge, and an entirely new
range of technological skills. Large-scale
mining for copper was undertaken in some
places, such as Great Orme in north Wales and
the Mitterberg in the Austrian Alps, where
complex systems of shafts and galleries date
back to the second millennium BC. The
presence of bronze-working tools in a number
of third-millennium elite graves in northwest
Europe suggests that the possession not only
of metal objects but of metallurgical skills
themselves may have conferred special status.
It is probably a mistake, however, to
characterize this entire period by the use of
bronze, since metals were only one of a broad
range of indicators reflecting new
developments in social and economic life
during the second millennium BC. The
development of metallurgy was not itself an
accidental discovery, and it had been known
since the sixth millennium BC in parts of
southern Europe and the Near East. Its rapid
spread during the late third millennium was as
much to do with social change as technological
need, a fact which is brought home by the
contexts in which metal objects are found and
the character of the objects themselves:
daggers, axes, spearheads and ornaments, the
latter fashioned in gold as well as bronze. It
was only after 1300 BC that bronze was
available in sufficient quantity to make a more
general impact on European economy. Much
more significant were the changes in individual
status marked by the appearance of richly
furnished graves in several regions of western
and central Europe around 2000 BC, then by the
widespread adoption of cremation in urnfields
six or seven centuries later.
THE RISE OF SOCIAL HIERARCHIES
Fortified or defended settlements indicate a
rise in inter-group hostility promoted perhaps
by growing ethnic awareness and by a general
rise in population density. In western and
northern Europe, the appearance of field
systems towards the end of the second
millennium is another sign of social change,
with rights to land now more clearly defined
and demarcated. The trend towards the
development of more complex societies finds
its most extreme expression in the Aegean
region, where the first European states emerge
in Mycenean Greece and Minoan Crete, with
palaces, scripts and a warrior aristocracy
subsequently immortalized in the works of
Homer. The existence of similar warrior elites is
suggested by the appearance of bronze shields,
helmets and breastplates across many parts of
Europe in the late second millennium BC,
coupled with heavier and more effective bronze
swords.
Social complexity and the rise of elites was
mirrored in the development of an increasingly
rich iconography, most clearly seen at the
northern and southern extremities of central
Europe: in the rock-art traditions of the Alps
and southern Scandinavia, and in the elaborate
ritual metalwork of Sardinia and the Danish
Bronze Age. These traditions continued into
the first millennium BC, but changes during the
eighth and seventh centuries BC mark a new
stage in European prehistory.
By the sixth century BC, a string of ‘princely’
centres had emerged across central Europe,
from Burgundy to Bohemia, marked by hilltop
enclosures, richly furnished burial mounds and
evidence of contact with the Mediterranean
world in the form of Greek and Etruscan
imports. By this period, the Mediterranean was
fringed by Greek, Etruscan and Carthaginian
cities and colonies, and a history of
interactions between the Mediterranean and
temperate Europe was beginning that was to
culminate in the expansion of the Roman
empire half a millennium later.
13˚12˚11˚10˚9˚54˚
55˚
56˚
57˚
58˚
Bulbjerg
Nyrup
Hove
Høng
Davding
Tellerup
Blistrup
Påarp
Karup
Gullåkra
Mosse
Brudevaelte
Voldtofte
Egebak
Skallerup
Valsømagle
Torupgaarde
Fragtrup
Fårdal
Trindhøj
Gedebjerg
Trundholm
GrevensvaengeFangel Torp
Muldbjerg
LofthøjGuldhøj
K A T T E G A T
N O R T H
S E A
LÜBECK
BAY
B A LT I
C
SEA
ZEALAND
F Y N
L O L L A N D
J U T L A N D
N
0
0
75 miles
100 kms
THE BRONZE SUN CHARIOT, found at Trundholm on
Zealand in 1902, is among the most elaborate and
most clearly symbolic of the products of the Danish
Bronze Age. The object was discovered in a bog,
were it may have been placed as a ritual offering in
around 1650 BC. It represents a bronze disk
mounted on four wheels and pulled by a single
horse. One face of the disk was covered with a
gold sheet, perhaps to represent day, while the
other face may indicate night. The chariot may
illustrate some kind of solar or astronomical myth
or be a miniature depiction of full-sized solar carts
that were used in Danish rituals at this period.
2 THE DANISH BRONZE AGE is
remarkable for the technical
sophistication of its products
and for the fact that
Denmark itself lacked any
natural deposits of bronze
and gold and had to import
the materials from source
regions. One material that
may have been exported in
exchange was amber, a fossil
resin from western Jutland
and the southern margin of
the Baltic Sea which has
special visual and electrical
properties. Artefacts of Baltic
amber have been found as
far afield as the famous Shaft
Graves at Mycenae in
southern Greece.
The Danish Bronze Age,
1800-700 BC
settlement
lures
bronze figurines
swords
other metalwork
2
ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
30
THE PERIOD 2500 to 800 BC is
conventionally known as the European
Bronze Age and was marked by the
introduction of weapons and ornaments made
of the new material. Bronze itself is an alloy of
two metals: copper and tin, in proportions of
approximately 90 percent copper and 10
percent tin. This produced a harder and
more useful material than copper alone.
LONG-DISTANCE TRADE
The adoption of bronze led to a new traffic in
raw materials across Europe. Long-distance
transport had been a feature of earlier
millennia, when especially prized varieties of
flint or hard stone had travelled hundreds of
kilometres from their sources. Jadeite from the
western Alps, for example, was used for the
manufacture of prestigious polished stone
axes as far afield as Scotland and southern
Scandinavia. Copper sources were much less
abundant than hard stone, however, and were
concentrated mainly in the Alps and the
Carpathians, and in parts of the Atlantic
seaboard, notably Britain, Ireland and Iberia.
If copper sources were far from widespread,
necessitating trade and exchange, the other
vital ingredient of bronze – tin – was even
rarer. The principal European tin sources
exploited in prehistory were in northern
Bohemia and the Atlantic seaboard: Brittany,
Galicia and south-west Britain. The demand for
EUROPE 2500-500 BC
50˚
40˚
10˚20˚ 0˚ 10˚ 20˚ 30˚
Sn
Sn
Sn
Sn
Cu Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
CuCu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Great Orme
Mitterberg
Mycenae
Ebro
Rhône
Loire
S
eine
Rh
ine
Elbe
Drava
Vistula
Danube
Ode
r
Tagus
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
N O R T H
S E A
AEGEAN
SEA
B A
LT
IC
SEA
A
D
R
I A
T I C
S E A
M E D I T E R R A
N
E
A
N
S E A
PYRENEES
DINARIC
ALPS
C A R PA
THIANS
A
L
P
S
CORSICA
BRITTANY
B O H E M I A
GALICIA
CRETE
SARDINIA
SICILY
B
A
LEA R I C I S
B R I T I S H
I S L E S
I B E R I A
S C A N D I N A V I A
A F R I C A
N
0
0
300 miles
450 kms
1 LONG-DISTANCE connections
linking different areas of
Europe became increasingly
clear during the second
millennium BC and are
reflected in similarities in
the forms of bronze
artefacts across the
continent. At the same
time, important local
traditions emerged which
gave certain regions a
special character. These
include rock art traditions,
which in Atlantic Europe
focused mainly on abstract
motifs (cup-marks and
concentric circles). In
southern Scandinavia and
the Alpine region rich
figurative traditions of rock
art emerged, depicting
humans, animals and
artefacts, sometimes in
scenes which may represent
myths or ritual enactments.
THE BEDOLINA ROCK CARVING is one of the most
complex of the many rock art panels found in the
Valcamonica region of northern Italy. The shapes of
the interlinked motifs and the fact that the carving
looks out across a landscape has suggested that it
may be a kind of map. The enclosures (mostly
rectangular) might indicate fields, and the spots
within them may even be individual trees. The lines
linking the ‘fields’ could be trackways or canals, or
simply property boundaries. Against this theory,
however, must be laid the recognition that we do
not know what the scene represents, or if it is
indeed intended to be a portrayal of the landscape.
Rock Art and Raw
Materials, 2000-800 BC
area of mainly abstract
rock art
area of mainly figurative
rock art
major source of copper
major source of tin
major source of amber
amber trade route
Cu
Sn
1
THE AEGEAN 2000–1000 BC
33
other hand, tin, a regular ingredient in bronze
by the second millennium, was absent from the
Aegean and could only be acquired through
long-distance exchange (although a source in
the Taurus Mountains may have been exploited
in the second millennium).
Along such exchange routes monopolized
by the palatial elites also travelled exotic raw
materials – ivory, ostrich eggs, glass, precious
stones, including Baltic amber and lapis lazuli
– transformed by Aegean craftspeople.
Manufactured items travelled as well – highvalue
objects in materials like faience – and,
more abundantly, pottery containers.
Although other archaeologically invisible
craft works were exchanged, it is the
indestructible fineware ceramics – both exchange
items and containers for perfumed oil and wine –
that signal the extent of Minoan and Mycenaean
exchange links throughout the central and
eastern Mediterranean. The Uluburun wreck
contained many of these materials and offers a
vivid insight into eastern Mediterranean
exchange in progress in about 1300 BC.
ARTISTIC PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION
‘Art for art’s sake’ is an anachronistic concept in
relation to eastern Mediterranean artistic
production. In the Aegean, monumental art
functioned to support and project elite power
and ideology, while minor works echoed the
STATUETTE OF A MALE YOUTH, one-third life-size,
constructed from multiple pieces of hippopotamus
ivory, with added details in serpentine and gold.
Remarkable for its detailed carving of muscles and
veins and the hairstyle indicating age, it reflects the
Minoan enthusiasm for depicting youthful vigour.
Probably displayed in a shrine, the statuette was
deliberately smashed during a destruction at
Palaikastro, Crete in the mid-fifteenth century BC.
28˚26˚24˚22˚
36˚
38˚
40˚
M M
St St
Pb
Ag
Pb
Ag
Cu
Cu
Iolkos/Volos
Orchomenos
Thebes
Troy
Chania
Kastri
Phylakopi
Vaphio
Gla
Perati
Ayios Stephanos
Kolonna
Pylos
Athens
Tiryns
Kakovatos Argos
Nichoria
Peristeria
Mycenae
Ialysos
Iasus
Miletus
Palaikastro
Pseira
Kato Zakros
Akrotiri
Malia
Amnisos
Phaistos
Kommos
Ayia Triada
Armenoi
Tylissos
Knossos
Archanes
Mt Ida
A
E
G
E
A
N
S
E
A
SEA OF
MARMARA
I O N I A N
S E A
PELOPONNESE
C R E T E
RHODESTHERA
AEGINA
PAROS
SAMOS
NAXOS
KOS
GIALI
KYTHERA
MELOS
KEA
KYTHNOS
SIPHNOS
ITHAKA
LEMNOS
LESBOS
CHIOS
A
N
A
T
O
L I A
EUBOEA
G R E E C E
emery
lapis
lacedaemonius
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
2 The Aegean, 2000-1000 BC
Minoan palace site
Mycenaean palace site
other significant site
Minoan fresco
Mycenaean fresco
source of copper
source of silver/lead
source of stone
source of marble
obsidian
textile production
raw ivory
carved stone vessels
amber jewellery
ostrich egg
cemetery
St
Pb
Ag
Cu
M
2 THE MINOAN PALACES dominated the Aegean
politically in the first half of the second millennium
BC. Their artistic styles were widely emulated. After
the eruption of Thera in the later seventeenth
century BC and the destruction of most Minoan
palaces in the mid-fifteenth century BC, the palaces
of southern mainland Greece became politically
dominant. Around 1200 BC most palatial centres in
the Aegean were destroyed.
and the paintings that often adorned their walls
and floors. Minor works also used indigenous
materials – stone vessels (some of them carved
with relief scenes); jewellery, including seal stones
used in administration, many with figured scenes;
fineware ceramics, a widespread class of material.
Archaeologically invisible, but attested in Linear
B documents of the fourteenth and thirteenth
centuries BC, were highly crafted textiles, while
metals were also used to produce elaborate
objects, such as weapons, vessels and jewellery.
Although there were silver, lead and copper
sources in the Aegean, Cyprus became an
increasingly important copper source in the later
second millennium, its copper transported from
eastern Mediterranean shores as far as Sardinia
in characteristic oxhide-shaped ingots. On the
iconography of monumental works and circulated
among a wider elite group, frequently finding
their way into tombs to accompany the dead,
particularly in the Mycenaean period.
Both Minoan and Mycenaean palaces were
architecturally complex, and their interior walls
and some floors were often decorated with
paintings on plaster, many in true fresco
technique, while palace-sponsored workshops
produced portable art works using both local and
exotic materials. Many of the art works produced
in the Aegean owed their inspiration to exotic
models (chiefly Egyptian and Mesopotamian),
but took on local characteristics and circulated
within the Aegean region. The wider elite
emulated palatial architecture and its
decoration and, ironically, our best examples of
Minoan-style frescoes were not preserved on
Crete, but in Akrotiri on Thera. They include
depictions of humans engaged in ritual, of
landscapes with wildlife, and, probably, of
narrative, notably the famous miniature fresco
from the West House depicting a ‘seascape’.
Despite the association of large-scale art
with the palaces, in the Aegean there is no
explicit iconography of rulers and life-size
sculpture is virtually unknown (other than the
well-known Lion Gate at Mycenae). Nevertheless,
Minoan artists frequently represented the human
figure, not only in frescoes, but also in smallscale
sculpture in ivory, bronze or clay. Such
representations are often associated with
sanctuaries in Minoan Crete. Ceramic production,
by contrast, was not a palatial monopoly,
although the palaces were major consumers of
fineware. Many fineware ceramics imitated
metal vessels in form and decoration, reflecting
the high value of metals and the tendency for
non-palatial artists to imitate palatial styles in
more accessible materials.
ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
32
be relevant to this picture of turmoil that Cyprus
became a predominantly Greek-speaking island
by the early first millennium. After 1200 BC, with
some short-lived exceptions like Tiryns and
Perati, a ‘Dark Age’ characterized by the
absence of major artistic production ensues.
MATERIALS AND EXCHANGE
Locally available materials were used in the
Aegean to create monumental architectural
forms such as palaces and other elite structures
THE EASTERN Mediterranean in this
millennium formed a ‘seascape’, rather than a
landscape, with major sites on its islands and
along its coasts, dominated by the inland powers
of Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Egypt. In the
Aegean, the emergence of a distinctive culture,
called ‘Minoan’ after the legendary king Minos, on
the island of Crete, is marked by the construction
around 2000 BC of palaces inspired by eastern
Mediterranean prototypes, with a literate
bureaucracy using a script of local adaptation.
AEGEAN PALACE CULTURE
Minoan styles of material culture were prevalent
in the Aegean islands in the first half of the
second millennium as local elites actively
appropriated them, or as the Minoans themselves
colonized them, as they did, for example, on the
island of Kythera. The volcanic eruption of Thera,
while too early to have been directly responsible
for the destruction of the Minoan palaces in
the fifteenth century BC, nevertheless disrupted
Aegean communication routes and must have
had a significant psychological effect.
These disruptions may have facilitated a shift
of political influence in the Aegean from Crete to
southern mainland Greece by about 1400 BC,
where a second palatial culture, called
‘Mycenaean’ after the prominent site of
Mycenae, had emerged. The mid-second
millennium societies on the Greek mainland
appropriated and adapted Minoan styles and,
like their Minoan counterparts, maintained
bureaucratic records, but in a script called
Linear B that recorded the Greek language.
In about 1200 BC political collapse in the
eastern Mediterranean – especially the fall of the
Hittite empire and the contraction of Egyptian
power – ended this widespread palace-based
culture. Symptomatic of this turmoil was the
destruction of sites, both in the Aegean and the
eastern Mediterranean, notably Ugarit. Egyptian
texts refer to an ill-defined group called the
‘peoples of the sea’ who threatened Egypt and
may have included Aegean peoples. It may also
THE AEGEAN 2000-1000 BC
A WALL PAINTING IN FRESCO TECHNIQUE from a house
(Xeste 3) at Akrotiri on Thera is one of a number
preserved by a volcanic eruption in the later
seventeenth century BC. It depicts three female
figures, close to life-size, in an outdoor scene.
Typically naturalistic, the figures’ ages are
distinguished by hairstyle and body form.
25˚ 30˚ 35˚
30˚
35˚
40˚
Cu
Gelidonya
Uluburun
Ugarit
Thebes
Tiryns
Iria
Assiros
Torone
Volos
Toumba tou Skourou
Troy
Pitane
Panaztepe
Tell el-Ajjul
Tell Abu Hawam
Megiddo
Tell Kabri
Sidon
Tarsus
Memphis
Pylos
Mycenae
Kommos
Phaistos
Orchomenos
Kastanas
Miletus
Müskebi
Antalya
Mersa Matruh
Kato Zakros
Knossos
Mallia
Chania
Kastri
Kourion
Enkomi
Citium Byblos
Qatna Mari
Qadesh
Amman
Lachish
Avaris (Tell el Dab’a)
Alalakh
Bogazköy˘
Kültepe
Nile
Jordan
Oronte
s
Halys
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
A E G E A N
S E A
SEA OF
MARMARA
DEAD SEA
B L A C K S E A
amber, tin?
ostrich eggs,
ivory,
faience,
semi-precious stone
blue glass ingots,
raw ivory,
ostrich eggs
tin,
lapis lazuli
ivory,
glass,
faience,
semi-precious stone
fineware pottery
S Y R I A N
D E S E R T
PINDUSMTS
TAURUS MTS
PELOPONNESE
A N A T O L I A
EUBOEA
CYPRUSCRETE
KYTHERA
RHODES
CHIOS
MELOS
THERA
NAXOS
E G Y P T
G R E E C E
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
The Eastern Mediterranean,
2000-1000 BC
port
shipwreck
Aegean palace site
Aegean-style fresco
copper source
copper ingot
Mycenaean pictorial pottery
Mycenaean fineware pottery
trade route
imports/exports
tin ingots
1
Cu
1 AEGEAN-STYLE FRESCOES in Egypt, Syria and Israel
and the broad distribution of Mycenaean ceramics
document the involvement of the Aegean in
eastern Mediterranean exchange networks. First
Minoan Crete, then, by the second half of the
second millennium, southern mainland Greece
participated in maritime exchange routes that
ultimately extended from Sardinia to Cyprus,
Syro-Palestine and Egypt. Exotic raw materials
and manufactured objects travelled along them.
THE MEDITERRANEAN 1000–500 BC
35
Iberian arts to a more monumental expression
of native crafts.
Here, too, some Greeks were active, as also
later in the south of France, whence elements
of Greek archaic art were carried up into
Europe, and had their effect, superficially, on
what is generally regarded as early Celtic art. In
their Black Sea colonies the Greeks made
luxury objects in Greek style – but of local
shape – for the Scythians, whose art style was
quite different – that of the eastern nomads. In
Italy the most important people affected by the
newcomers were the Etruscans, a rich and
warlike people who were ready buyers of the
more sophisticated arts coming from the east.
Their luxury arts were much influenced by
Phoenician art, while humbler crafts were more
Greek – and these won the day, so that by the
end of the sixth century Etruscan art looks like
a highly idiosyncratic derivative of archaic
Greek. This was an art shared by early Rome.
MONUMENTAL ART
By 500 BC Greek artists were well on their way
to the idealized realism that characterizes the
full classical style, while they had already
established orders of monumental architecture
that are still copied today. Orientalizing
sculpture of the seventh century had been
small in scale and generally of soft stone or
hammered bronze (‘sphyrelaton’), much
influenced by Syria. Crete was a major centre.
In the later seventh century the establishment
of a trading town in Egypt (Naucratis)
opened Greek eyes to the possibilities of colossal
sculpture executed in hard stone. This, for
Greeks, meant the white marble so accessible
in the Cyclades islands, where the earliest
studios were located. It was soon augmented
by other sources, notably the Pentelic marble
of Attica. They also had an advantage in using
tools that were virtually of steel, whereas the
Egyptians still worked stone by abrasion.
Another major source of influence was
Anatolia, where the sculpture and architecture
owed much to the example of Mesopotamia, as
well as the domination, often beneficial, of rich
Lydian kings (such as Croesus). The Greek
Ionians embarked on major architectural
projects and introduced influential new
sculptural modes. By the end of our period the
Persian empire had expanded to embrace all
the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, but
the new masters learned more than they
imposed on their Greek, Levantine and
Egyptian subjects.
The characteristic figures are standing male
nudes (kouroi), which look more Egyptian than
they in fact are. On them anatomical patterns
were devised which gradually conformed more
to live forms. Their female counterparts, korai,
have elaborately patterned, pleated dress
which is also designed to reveal the forms of
the body beneath, unlike such figures in
eastern art.
Meanwhile, relief sculpture, often now
applied to buildings, developed narrative
themes more familiar to us from the vase
painting of the day, especially the ‘black figure’
incised scenes on vases. They came from
Corinth and Athens, but also from many other
centres, including wealthy colonies that responded
to all the artistic innovations. Greek formulaic
presentation of narrative, developed in the archaic
period, was to be the mode for much of Western art
thereafter. The vases travelled the whole
Mediterranean and beyond, from Germany to Upper
Egypt, from Morocco to the Caucasus. Through their
sheer numbers they proved important messengers
of Greek narrative styles to non-Greek peoples. In
this respect they were no less influential than the
more prestigious metalwork, which was also
coveted but was less informative.
In mainland Greece the Doric order of
architecture was devised before 600 BC, a stone
translation of wooden forms. The temples are
rectangular in plan, with a peristyle of columns, a
porch, and a main room to house the cult statue.
Altars stood outside. In eastern Greece (Ionia) the
more ornate Ionic order developed, based on
orientalizing patterns more familiar in furniture. The
orders also spread through the colonial world and
beyond, the western colonies being adept at
combinations of the orders not admitted in the
homeland. Eastern arts had no effect on this
development and the temple plans were traditional.
The transmuted orientalizing arts of Greece,
developed in this period, were to be returned in
their new forms to their lands of origin in the
following centuries.
36˚
38˚
40˚
26˚22˚
Hermos
Maritsa
Vardar
Ali
akmon
Evrotas
Acheloo
s
Spercheio
s
Al
pheios
Bosporus
I O N I A N
S E A
A E G E A N
S E A
SEA OF MARMARA
M E D I T E R R A N E A N
S E A
P E L O P O N N E S E
AT T I C A
P
IN
D
O
S
M
TS
C R E T E
RHODES
SAMOS
COS
THERA
PAROS
CHIOS
LESBOS
LEMNOS
THASOS
T H R A C E
LY D I A
CHALCIDICE
THESSALY
PROCONNESOS
AEGINA
NAXOS
DELOS
C
Y
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L A
D E S
E U B O
EA
Ephesus
SmyrnaEretriaChalcis
Phocaea
Sardis
Troy
Thebes
EleusisSicyon
Sunium
Argos
Corinth
Knossos
Clazomenae
Olympia
Sparta
Miletus
Delphi
Athens
N
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150 kms
2 Major Arts in Greece
marble sources in archaic Greece
centres for sculpture and architecture
centres for vase painting and metalwork
2 MAJOR ARTS IN GREECE Development of the
monumental arts – sculpture and architecture –
depends in part of the availability of satisfactory
marble, but also on other material resources, and
on local politics. Figurative vase painting and
metalwork were sophisticated crafts which reveal
much about life, myth and interaction between
Greeks and non-Greeks. Some cities – notably
Corinth and Athens – were major exporters.
KOUROS DEDICATION in white marble – 3 metres (10 ft) high –
from an early sixth-century temple to Poseidon at Sunium in
Attica. The pose looks Egyptian but is freer since the figure
balances on both feet where Egyptian stone figures of this
size stand as against a back pillar. The anatomy is strongly
patterned, but barely realistic, and the figure is foursquare
with as yet no sense of volume. Details
would have been picked out in paint. Similar
figures also served as
tomb markers.
ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
34
THE BEGINNING OF the first millennium BC
saw, in much of the Mediterranean world, a
profound break with its Bronze Age past. In
some places, such as Greece, there was to be a
flowering of the arts which owed virtually
nothing to the past. The eastern shores of the
inland sea were under threat from Assyria to
the east and Egypt to the south. Even so,
Phoenicia was growing in influence and was
responsible for the design of Solomon’s temple
in Jerusalem, a model for later sacred
buildings. Cyprus was emerging as an
important meeting point of east and west, and
by the eighth century Greeks were probing
eastern shores, in Syria.
In Italy and Spain, successors to Bronze
Age societies were modest in their arts. The
Villanovans in Italy, ancestral to the Etruscans,
practised unambitious metalwork related
mainly to European crafts. In Sardinia until the
eighth century the ‘Nuraghic’ culture produced
more sophisticated bronze figures. In Spain,
Iberian art was centred on the silver-bearing
areas of the south, and waited for trade with
the east before developing a distinctive
‘Tartessian’ style.
All were to be reawakened by events that
added the arts of the Near East to the more
mannered ‘geometric’ arts of ninth- and
eighth-century Greece. The Greeks then
mediated this orientalizing mood to the rest of
the Mediterranean world through vigorous
colonization, side by side with equally
vigorous trading and settlement by
Phoenicians, who carried their own brand
of eastern, mainly Egyptianizing, arts.
ORIENTALIZING AND COLONIZING
Greek interest in the east grew by way of a
settlement they made on the Syrian coast (Al
Mina) and the reciprocal interest shown by
easterners in the major cities of central Greece
and Crete. It persuaded Greek artisans to
develop totally new decorative styles. These
are mainly two-dimensional, best studied in
vase painting. More realistic figure scenes,
with greater detail defining the identity of
actors and sometimes helped by inscriptions
(the alphabet had just been learnt from the
east), soon led to the creation of a lively
narrative idiom. To this was added a range of
eastern animal and floral motifs which all but
overwhelmed Greek geometric styles, with
their stick figures and maeander patterns.
By the mid-eighth century, the Greek need
for land and other material resources led to a
busy period of colonization in southern Italy
and eastern Sicily, the foundation of new cities
and the introduction through them of the new
orientalizing styles to neighbouring peoples.
The Greeks colonized the long-familiar shores
that were nearest to them.
At the same time, Phoenicians also moved
west, through Greek waters and now no longer
in competition with Greeks. They moved to
shores beyond the main Greek colonizing area
– to Sardinia, Spain and North Africa
(Carthage). In Spain they stimulated local
THE MEDITERRANEAN 1000-500 BC
1 COLONIZING THE MEDITERRANEAN FROM THE EAST The
flow of people and ideas begins in the eighth
century. Colonists from Greece and Phoenicia move
west, often along shared routes, but the two
cultures create definable spheres of influence. A
second phase of consolidation north and south
follows in the sixth century – mainly by Greeks – in
the Black Sea, France and Libya. Winds and currents
promote circulation, allowing different routes to be
used on outward and return voyages, ensuring
varied contacts and facilitating strong links with the
homelands. Northerlies take Greeks traders directly
to Egypt. They return by the Levant, making these
areas a main influence on the arts.
ATHENIAN BLACK FIGURE VASE – a mid-sixth century
jug by Amasis, showing Perseus decapitating
Medusa in a popular myth. This is a typical
example of thousands exported around the
Greek world and beyond. It was found in an
Etruscan grave.
0˚ 10˚10˚ 20˚ 30˚ 40˚
40˚
30˚
Rhône
Ebr
o
Tagus
Nile
Danube
Tigris
Po
Tiber
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
M E D I T
E
R
R
A
N E A N S E A
A
D
RIATIC
SEA
B L A C K S E A
RED
SEA
AEGEAN
SE
A
P
Y
R
E N E E S
A
L P S
A
T L A S
M T S
TAURUS M
TS
SIERRA
NEVADA
S C Y T H I A N S
I B E R I A N S
PHRYGIANS & LYDIANS
BALEARIC IS
SARDINIA
Nuraghic art
CORSICA
SICILY
MALTA
CRETE
RHODES
CYPRUS
EUBOEA
IONIA
PHOENICIA
ETRURIA
A F R I C A
ITA
LY
GREECE
A N A T O L I A
S Y R I A
E G Y P T
Iberian art
Villanovan
/
Etruscanar
t
Massalia
Cumae
Pithecusae Poseidonia
Syracuse
Cyrene Naucratis
Al Mina
Taras
Thasos
Sinope
Olbia
Phasis
Istrus
Sybaris
Emporion
Sidon
Tyre
CarthageLixus
Ibiza
Toscanos
Motya
Tharros
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500 miles
750 kms
1 The Colonizing of the Mediterranean from the East
flow of Syrian goods and Greek
orientalizing styles
flow of settlement
8th/7th centuries BC
flow of settlement
c. post 625 BC
flow of Phoenician goods
prevailing currents/winds
Phoenician colonies
and trading posts
Greek colonies
AFRICA 5000–500 BC
37
30˚
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Cu
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Elephantine
Aniba
Amara
Buhen
Abu Simbel
Shalfak
Semna
Sai
Askut
Uronarti
Kumma
Kawa c.650 BC
Napata c.700 BC
Kurru
mound graves of
Kushite kings,
from c.760 BC
Nuri
Kushite pyramid
burials, from c.664 BC
Meroë c.700 BC
Sedeinga
Sesibi
Kerma
N
ile
WhiteNile
BlueNile
Atbara
N U B I A N
D E S E R T
W E S T E R N
D E S E R T
S A H A R A
D E S E R T
First Cataract
Second Cataract
Third Cataract Fifth Cataract
Fourth
Cataract
Sixth
Cataract
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150 kms
3 EGYPTIANS BEGAN THEIR
colonization of the
southern Nile from about
2000 BC. Their presence in
the northern part of this
region left an indelible
mark on indigenous
cultures along the river.
An important state based
at Kerma confronted the
southern outposts of Egypt.
Large brick structures and a
distinctive pottery mark this
culture. It was superseded
by the state that grew up at
Napata, three of whose
kings also ruled Egypt.
ROCK PAINTING, c.3000 BC,
from the central Sahara. It
shows men herding what
are thought to be sheep
and cattle. Similar paintings
are widespread across the
Sahara. Some, showing wild
animals and hunting
scenes, are certainly earlier
than the ones showing
domesticated animals. At
this time the Sahara was
much greener than now
and men and animals were
able to move freely.
about 5000 BC. Potshards decorated with a
distinctive wavy line pattern are found here and at
many other sites in the Sahara. In addition, there
have also been finds of a distinctive type of bone
harpoon (freshwater fishing was then a mainstay
of life in what is now desert) and other items
which suggest that a similar level of cultural
development extended from the Sudanese Nile
Valley across much of the Sahara.
EARLY EGYPTIAN CULTURE
From this time on there was a rather rapid
development of cultures along the Nile, both in
Egypt and the Sudan. In Egypt the earliest village
cultures were found on the edge of the Faiyum
and at Merimda on the west edge of the Nile
delta. Soon after there were settlements at many
places along the Nile. The site at Naqada in
Middle Egypt has given its name to the main
culture of this period. From about this time there
is much evidence of decorated, painted pottery of
varying styles, mostly found in burials, and some
other artistic items such as female figures
frequently made of bone, or sometimes ivory or
limestone. From this period there is evidence of
village settlements, or even small town
settlements. At Hierakonpolis in Upper (southern)
Egypt there was a town which may have had as
many as 5000 inhabitants.
The beginning of an organized state can be
seen during this period. Writing, which made
administering the state possible, is known from
short inscriptions on large slate palettes, which
record the activities of early rulers. By about 3000
BC writing was sufficiently developed to meet the
needs of the single state that had by then united
Upper and Lower Egypt into one kingdom.
CULTURES OF THE SOUTHERN NILE
Further south, upstream of the First Cataract of
the Nile, the situation was rather different, and
the cultural remains there can be distinguished
from those of Egypt. From about 4000 BC to about
3200 BC the first settled food-producing societies,
known as the ‘A Group’, were occupying the Nile
banks between the First and the Second Cataracts,
living in mud houses of some size. They had a
distinctive pottery style. Wheat and barley were
cultivated, while fishing and hunting added
variety to the diet.
The ‘A Group’ were followed in the middle of
third millennium by a different culture, known as
the ‘C Group’. They are distinguished by quite
different pottery styles and by evidence from
buildings and tombs of a more advanced lifestyle.
The presence of imported Egyptian goods in
graves reveal contacts with Egypt, and the great
number of graves implies an increase in
population.
KERMA CULTURE
The Egyptians had entered Nubia and established
a series of forts as far south as Semna from about
2000 BC, but withdrew a few hundred years later at
the time of a spectacular development of an
independent Sudanese culture based at Kerma,
the first large town on the upper Nile. The Kerma
culture is renowned for its new and spectacular
developments in pottery styles, in weapons and in
elaborate burials, as well as the building of very
large mud-brick structures.
It is not clear what happened in the final
stages of the Kerma civilization, but after c.1500
BC the Egyptians once again entered and
conquered the northern Sudan (Nubia) and
eventually occupied it as far south as the Fourth
Cataract, building temples and towns at many
places. The furthest upriver they reached was
Napata, where a prominent hill, Jebel Barkal,
marked a site considered to be especially holy.
THE RISE OF MEROË
Near Jebel Barkal, an independent line of
Sudanese rulers established the Napatan
kingdom some time after 1100 BC. They built
palaces and temples, as well as cemeteries of
small pyramids. For a short time, from about
the middle of the eighth century BC in the
reign of Kashta, these Sudanese kings ruled
Egypt as its 25th Dynasty. They were defeated
and ejected from Egypt after the Assyrian
invasion of 671 BC, when King Tanwetamani
returned to his own territory, where the
Napatan Kingdom continued to develop.
After a move of the royal residence to Meroë,
in the south, in the seventh century BC, the
Napatan kingdom established a fascinating
new civilization with its own language and
writing.
Meroitic towns, temples and other
buildings took something from Egyptian styles,
but they were sufficiently different to be clearly
identifiable. By 500 BC Meroë was a wellestablished
city with many manufactures and
was the most highly developed society in Africa
south of the Sahara. The many towns, temples
and cemeteries of this period are all situated
along the banks of the River Nile as the desert
encroaches closely on both sides of the river
and made agriculture and animal herding
impossible. The one area where the Meroites
were able to live away from the Nile valley was
near Meroe itself – here in the vast plains
between the rivers Nile and Atbara there was
considerable activity, although much of it was
only toward the close of the period covered in
this section.
The Upper Nile,
3000-500 BC
‘C Group’ of cemeteries
and dwelling places,
c. 2250-c.1500 BC
Egyptian occupation of
Lower Nubia,
c.2000-c.1100 BC
Kerma culture,
c. 2400-c.1500 BC
Egyptian town
with temple
Egyptian fort
Egyptian religious site
Kushite town (with date
of temple building)
Resources:
gold
copper
limestone
calcite
(Egyptian alabaster)
basalt
sandstone
iron
fertile area
pastoralism
desert tracks
Cu
L
C
B
S
3
ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
36
eastern Sahara reveal that cereal crops were
being cultivated at several sites in what is now
desert, but then had plentiful rainfall – for
example, Nabta Playa. Large numbers of
grindstones provide good evidence for the use
of cereals. It is not certain at what point
farmers were able to grow domesticated cereal
crops to replace the collecting of wild grains,
but by 5000 BC it seems that this important
advance had been made.
The earliest pottery known in Africa is from
a site at Khartoum, where it can be dated to
THE EARLIEST EVIDENCE of artistic activity
in Africa can be seen in rock engravings and
rock paintings, which are located mainly in the
Sahara and in South and East Africa – those
parts of the continent where suitable rock faces
are located.
Scenes illustrated on rock faces frequently
depict animals both wild and, in later times,
domesticated. It is difficult to date these works
of art, but by 5000 BC they were widespread,
and some may be much earlier – examples in
Namibia are dated to as early as 25,000 BC.
Apart from pottery remains dating from as
long ago as 3000 BC, there is no evidence of
visual culture preserved in West and Central
Africa before 500 BC. Rock art is all we have
from southern Africa for this period.
AGRICUTURAL LIFE IN THE SAHARA
Rock paintings and rock engravings from North
and East Africa that date from 5000 BC to 500
BC are significant in that they show the
development of herding at about the same
time as archaeological excavations in the
AFRICA 5000-500 BC
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10˚ 0˚
10˚ 20˚ 30˚
40˚ 50˚
30˚
20˚
10˚
0˚
10˚
20˚
30˚
?
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?
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?
Haua Fteah
Faiyum
Memphis
El Khattara
Merimda
El Badari Hammamiya
Nabta
PlayaWadi
Shaw
Daima
Arlit
Karkarichinkat
Amekni
Tiltekin
Tichitt
Kourounkorokale
Bosumpra
Cave
Kintampo Iwo Eleru
Njoro River Cave
Ele Bor
Lowasera
Afikpo
Birimi Ntereso
Yagala
Kamabai
Yengema
Adrar Tioueïine
Tamaya
Mellet
GabrongAcacus
Ti-n-Torha
Outeidat
Meniet
Esh Shaheinab
Meroë
Shaqadud
Early Khartoum
Lalibela
Narosura
Long’s Drift
North Horr
Kadero
Shabona Tagra
Kiseiba
Sarurab
Wadi
Wassa
Jebel et Tomat
Capelletti
El Mermouta
Kristel-Jardins
El Khril
Nile
WhiteNileBlueNile
Nige
r
Benue
Congo
Zambezi
Lake
Victoria
Lake
Chad
ATLANTIC OCEAN
I N D I A N
O C E A N
RED
SEA
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
NAMIBDESERT
KALAHARI
DESERT
S A H A R A
W
E
STERN
DESERT
ATLAS MTS
ETHIOPIAN
HIGHLANDS
UWEINAT
TASSILI
PLATEAU
TIBESTI
MASSIF
wheat and
barley c. 5300 BC
c. 1000 BC
c. 600 BC
before 3000 BC
by 1000 BC
by 1000 BC
pearl millet c. 1500 BC
c. 600 BC
c. 3000 BCc. 1500 BC
barley c. 500 BC
Tef and finger
millet, c. 5000 BC
N
0
0
600 miles
800 kms
Agriculture:
the probable limits of domestic cattle:
c.4500 BC
c. 3500 BC
c.2000 BC
c.500 BC
probable spread of sheep and
goats from c.5000/500 BC
finds of early livestock remains
evidence of cereal cultivation
evidence of domestication of
indigenous African crops
Artefacts:
earliest known pottery, 6000/5000 BC
earliest known pottery in Sub-Saharan Africa
best-recorded prehistoric art
early copper-working
early iron-working
1 Rock Art and Agriculture, 5000-500 BC
Sahara Desert, c.6000 BC
Vegetation zones, c.500 BC:
desert
sub-desert
dry savannah
Lake Chad, c.500 BC
woodland
cape and Mediterranean vegetation
tropical forest
2 The Cultures of the Nile Valley, 5000-3000 BC
early predynastic Egyptian sites (c.5500-c.5000 BC)
middle predynastic Egyptian sites (c.5000-c.4000 BC)
late predynastic Egyptian sites (c.4000-c.3200 BC)
main First Dynasty Egyptian sites (from c.3200 BC)
southern limit of Egypt under the First Dynasty, c.3200 BC
?
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1 AND 2 THE OLDEST SURVIVING ART IN AFRICA is
rock art, depicting at first only wild
animals, found widely in southern and
eastern Africa and the Sahara. Northern
rock art later depicts both animal
herding and crop growing. Early
pottery making and metallurgy in the
continent flourished, especially in the
Nile Valley region.
30˚
30˚
Faiyum
Saqqara
Buto Minshat
Samara
Tell Ibrahim Awad
Maadi
Omari
Memphis
Tarkhan
Abusir el Malaq
Haraga
Gerza
Beda
Mendes
Matmar
El Badari Naga-ed-Der
Hu
Naqada
Armant
Hierakonpolis
Hammamiya
Mahasna
Abydos
Gebelein
Mostagedda
Merimda
Heliopolis
Nile
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
EASTERN
DESERT
WESTERN
DESERT
Earliest fully developed dated
Egyptian writing, tomb of Queen
Neithotep (c. 3000 BC)
‘A Group’ cemeteries
and dwelling sites
(c. 4000-c. 3200 BC)
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
BONE FIGURE OF A WOMAN from a
predynastic grave in Egypt, c.3500 BC.
Similar figures have been found in
graves of both men and women.
The eyes of this figure are made
of lapis lazuli, a prehistoric
trade good that came
from Afghanistan.
THE NILE VALLEY 3000–500 BC
39
Copper, gold and tin were mined in the
eastern deserts and were vital to Egyptian
craftsmanship and art. Copper was used for
tools and weapons after being hardened
through repeated heating and cooling. Sheets
of copper could be hammered over a core to
make large metal statues, although examples
rarely survive from antiquity.
Copper mixed with tin produced bronze,
which was easily worked into weapons, tools,
toiletry items like razors and mirrors, and cast
statuettes of gods or royalty. Gold was used
lavishly in products destined for temples or the
royal household, such as gilded furniture and
statuary, gold jewellery and vessels, and the
solid gold coffins and mummy mask made for
King Tutankhamun (c.1320 BC).
Mud and sand were also resources. Sundried
mud bricks were the most common
building material for the earliest tombs and
temples and for urban structures throughout
Egyptian history. Sand was formed into a paste
with quartzite and fired to produce Egyptian
faience, a forerunner of glass which took on a
distinctive blue or green colour when exposed
to heat in a kiln.
Although Egypt is primarily a desert
country, wood was available both from native
trees, like sycamore and acacia, and from
abroad, notably cedar imported from the
Levant. Statues, furniture and coffins were
among the products crafted from wood.
ART IN SOCIETY
Royal patronage funded temple and palace
construction and royal mortuary complexes.
Styles established by royal workshops were
imitated in work for private patrons. Even
lesser-quality works required considerable
outlay for the labour and materials involved,
putting them out of reach of most people.
Egyptian art from all periods has a
homogeneous character, because of the
conventions adopted from the outset. Art
depicts an idealized world revolving around
order and internal logic. In two dimensions,
figures and objects are shown in an outline
form that combines typical vantage points –
the human figure is seen with legs and head in
profile, shoulders squared and arms on either
side of the torso. To indicate depth, figures are
overlapped, and scenes are generally divided
into rows called registers. Scale conveys
information about the relative importance of
figures within a scene, with the most important
person as the tallest figure. Statuary also
assumes static postures, whether sitting,
kneeling or striding forward on the left leg.
A statue of a king might represent his wife and
children as reaching only to the height of his
knees. Wall decoration and most statues were
painted in vivid colours with an abundance of
green, red and yellow.
This representational system is linked
strongly to how Egyptians perceived the world
and their art. A vital role of the king and the
temples was to maintain order, or maat, in the
universe. Timelessness and the cycle of life,
death and rebirth were reflected in Egyptian
artists’ close observation of their natural world
in works of all media.
Many objects, particularly statues and
architectural decoration, were inscribed with
invocations, prayers and identifying texts, and
the arrangement of the hieroglyphs was an
integral component of the artwork. Whereas
the image itself might be ideal and universal,
the text gave it a specific identity and helped
define its purpose. On a funerary stele, for
instance, the text names the deceased and
grants them a share of the food, drink, linen
and ointments required for the afterlife.
Precinct of Amun (Karnak)
Precinct of Mut
Temple of Ramesses II (Ramesseum)
Temple of Amenhotep III (Memnon colossi)
Temple of Ramesses III
Temple of Hatshepsut
Temple of Mentuhotep
Cache of royal mummies
Tomb of Tutankhamun
Tomb of Nefertari
Workmen’s tombs
Precinct of Montu
Luxor Temple
DRA ABU EL-NAGA
DEIR EL-BAHRI
DEIR EL-MEDINA
SHEIKH ABD EL-QURNA
VALLEY OF THE KINGS
VALLEY OF THE QUEENS
MEDINET HABU
MALQATA
Nile
Nile
N
0
0
1 mile
2 kms
WALL PAINTING from the tomb of Nebamun at Thebes
(New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, c.1400 BC). The abundant
plant and animal life of the Nile marshes symbolize
erotic pleasure, fertility and rebirth. The scene evokes
both life and death: Nebamun and a cat attack birds
among their nests, while the young daughter of
Nebamun pulls lotus flowers from the river.
2 THE CITY OF THEBES (modern Luxor), was the site of
the state god Amun’s temple, Karnak. Nearby
temples honoured his consort Mut and falconheaded
Montu. In the annual Opet Festival,during
the flood season, Amun was carried to Luxor to be
united with the reigning king. For the Beautiful
Festival of the Valley, Amun crossed the river to
royal mortuary temples on the west bank. People
celebrated with feasts and visited family tombs.
Every 10 days, a form of Amun – Amunemopet –
was carried to Medinet Habu, and the offerings of
food and drink made during this procession were
believed to nurture the dead in the afterlife.
2 Thebes, 1500 BC
fertile area
estimated extent
of ancient city
temple
palace
tomb
concentrations of
private tombs
route of the Opet Festival
route of the Beautiful
Festival of the Valley
route of the Amunemopet
procession
ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
38
The first kings were buried at Abydos,
which was the mythological burial place of
Osiris, god of the afterlife, and the site of
private cemeteries and chapels, as well.
MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
During periods of strong central government,
the state had access to metal mines and stone
quarries in Egypt and in regions under
Egyptian control, such as Nubia and Sinai. The
Egyptians began building in stone as early as
the Third Dynasty (c.2600 BC), when the Step
Pyramid at Saqqara was constructed as a
mortuary complex for king Djoser. Stone
sculpture in the round and in relief was
another early accomplishment, along with
virtuoso carving of stone bowls and vases.
Coloured stones from distant parts of the
country, like red granite from Aswan, were
especially prized, as was calcite (known as
‘Egyptian alabaster’) for its translucency and
its veining.
THE NILE VALLEY, rich in resources, is
equipped with natural boundaries: the
western and eastern deserts, on the north the
Mediterranean Sea and, to the south, river
cataracts that make navigation nearly
impossible. These factors, coupled with annual
floods that supported agriculture, helped a
unified state to form in Egypt around 3000 BC.
The north-flowing Nile eased communication.
Cooperative action to regulate the floods may
have contributed to unifying the country under
a sole monarch.
Egypt was divided into 42 nomes, or
administrative districts, which embraced local
deities and sacred sites. Cult centres underwent
continual development, and landscapes
were adapted through the construction of
temples, palaces, causeways and monuments.
Certain towns had strong and ancient
affiliations with gods who attained national
importance: Buto, in the Delta, was the home
of the cobra goddess Wadjet; El-Kab, south of
Thebes, of the vulture goddess Nekhbet. These
goddesses personified the north and south of
the country and appeared in the two crowns
most often worn by kings. Ptah, the god of
artists and craftsmen, was based at Memphis,
while Amun was a Theban deity.
THE NILE VALLEY 3000-500 BC
25˚
30˚
30˚ 35˚
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu Cu
Memphis
(Mit Rahina)
El-Amarna
Aswan
Luxor
Asyut
Hibis
Balat
Elephantine
Aniba
Qift (Coptos)
Karnak
Thebes
Hierakonpolis
Bubastis
Buto
Sais
(Sa el-Hagar)
Tanis
Mendes
Giza
Saqqara
Abu Simbel
Abydos
El-Kab
Nile
BahrYusuf
Delta
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
R
E
D
S
E
A
N U B I A N
D E S E R T
EASTERN
DESERT
FAIYUM
W E S T E R N
D E S E R T
SINAI
E G Y P T
First cataract
Second
cataract
Bahariya
Oasis
Siwa
Oasis
Farafra
Oasis
Dakhla
Oasis
Kharga
Oasis
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 Sites and Monuments
fertile area
desert route
political centre
other important city
religious site
fortification
pyramid site
natural resources
gold
copper
tin
natron (salts)
limestone
calcite
(Egyptian alabaster)
basalt
greywacke
coloured stones
(jasper, porphyry)
quartzite
red granite
sandstone
turquoise
Cu
PAINTED AND CARVED WALL RELIEF of donkeys, from
the tomb of Metjetji at Saqqara (Old Kingdom,
Dynasty 5, c.2300 BC). Scenes of agriculture, animal
husbandry and manufacture brought the natural
world into the context of a funerary monument in
order to evoke the plentiful material resources
that were at the disposal of the deceased.
1 URBAN AND RELIGIOUS CENTRES played an important
role throughout Egyptian history. Capital cities
such as Memphis and Thebes, in particular,
supported the workshops of artists and
craftspeople responsible for architectural
decoration, statuary and work in precious metals
and stones. If necessary, completed works of art
could be moved from their place of manufacture to
the temple or tomb in which they were to be set
up. The raw materials for artistic production were
often obtained through expeditions organized by
the state. Limestone, sandstone and hard stones
such as calcite and granite were quarried in the Nile
Valley, whereas metals and coloured stones had to
be mined in the Eastern and Nubian deserts.
Art and the Akkadian
Empire, 2350-2100 BC
Akkadian Empire
import of lapis lazuli
import of etched
carnelian beads
import of carved
chlorite vessels
import of copper
chlorite
silver
gold
cedarwood
ancient coastline
Ch
2
WEST ASIA 3000–2000 BC
41
these areas are now attested in cuneiform
texts, written in the Sumerian language.
Carved chlorite vessels from Iran increasingly
appear in the archaeological record, as do objects
made of lapis lazuli from Afghanistan and etched
carnelian from the Indus Valley. Although metal
deposits are unknown in Mesopotamia, large
numbers of metal objects have also been
found, especially in the Royal Cemetery of Ur.
Sixteen extremely rich graves have been
excavated there, and – uniquely in
Mesopotamia – were found to contain multiple
sacrificial victims. The owners of the majority of
the graves are unknown but the wealth buried
with them, together with the human victims,
suggests that they were kings and queens or
religious leaders. Among the grave goods were
weapons and vessels in bronze, gold and silver,
and an astonishing amount of elaborate
jewellery. Inlay was a common feature of many
objects including sceptres, musical instruments
and, most famously, on the ‘Standard of Ur’.
Artistic connections are demonstrated by rich
finds from Troy and Alaca Hüyük in Anatolia.
30˚ 40˚ 50˚ 60˚
40˚
30˚
Ch
Ch
Susa
Umm an Nar
Tepe Yahya
Shahdad
Tillya Tepe
Lagash
Ur
Tell Brak
Nineveh
Tell Asmar
Ebla
Damascus
Byblos
Memphis
Thebes
Ugarit
Mari
Sippar
Kish
Nippur
Uruk
Ashur
Alaca HüyükTroy
Nile
Halys
Tigris
Khabur
Jordan
Euphr
ates
Orontes
Maeander
L. Van
L. Urmia
Dead Sea
B L A C K S E A
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
RED
SEA
AEGEANSEA
CASPIAN
SEA
P
E R
S I A
N
G U L F
C A U C A
S U
S
Z A
G
R
O
S
M
T
S
TAURUS
MTS
I R A N I A N
P L A T E A U
FAILAKA
TARUT BAHRAIN
CYPRUS
A N A T O L I A
A K K A D
S U M E R
A R A B I A
E G Y P T
N
0
0
300 miles
400 kms
2 MESOPOTAMIA WAS UNITED
under the military empire of
Akkad, a city thought to lie
close to Kish. The Akkadian
rulers diverted trade routes
through their cities and
established connections with
the civilizations of Iran, the
Indus Valley and Central Asia
as well as the resource-rich
regions of Anatolia and the
eastern Mediterranean.
The dynamic art of Akkad
influenced many of the
surrounding cultures.
THE FIRST EMPIRE
The commercial and military contacts of
Mesopotamia reached a peak with the dynasty of
Akkad, around 2350 BC. The rulers seem to have
been the first to unite the southern plain,
extending their control over much of northern
Mesopotamia. The dynasty’s founder was Sargon
of the city of Agade (Akkad) – its location remains
unconfirmed. The new dynasty displayed strong
cultural continuity with the Early Dynastic period.
However, under Naram-Sin (c. 2254–2218 BC) an
imperial state was born, the ideology of which is
reflected in an art which depicts the monarch as
intimately associated with both his city and
patron goddess Ishtar. Sculpture displays physical
naturalism and sensitivity, with many details
shown for the first time. For example, Naram-Sin
is depicted on a stele wearing the horned headdress
that was formerly the exclusive
prerogative of gods. Commercial links with the
Indus Valley were now focused on Akkad.
Ultimately both internal and external forces
overwhelmed the Akkadian Empire. Some citystates
regained their independence, for instance
Lagash which was ruled by King Gudea. This is
expressed in the many statues of the ruler
carved from diorite, which was imported from
the region of modern Oman. In the same
period Ur-Nammu established his rule over the
city of Ur and founded the Third Dynasty of Ur
which came to dominate southern Mesopotamia
(c.2100–2000 BC). The Third Dynasty rulers
presided over a prosperous kingdom, with an
ambitious programme of building, which
included palaces and temples. The most
spectacular religious monuments are the great
ziggurats, or staged towers, of which the best
surviving example is that of Ur-Nammu at Ur.
THE STANDARD OF UR. Dating from around 2500 BC,
this object came from one of the largest graves
in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, in which sacrificial
victims accompanied the main burial. Its function
is not understood though it may have formed
the soundbox of a musical instrument. An inlay
of shell, limestone and lapis lazuli depicts one of
the earliest representations of a Sumerian army.
The other side shows animals and other goods
brought in procession to a banquet.
1 The Art of West Asia, 3000-2000 BC
spread of cuneiform
carved chlorite vessels
rich burial
palace
ziggurat
schematic female figures
copper standards
ancient coastline
ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
40
power or felt the need to distinguish
themselves in inscriptions or monuments.
However, finely carved stone sculpture for
urban temples continued to be produced, often
combining animals and human figures and
probably influenced by contemporary artistic
traditions of southwestern Iran.
THE EMERGENCE OF AN ELITE
Over time the rise of a secular elite created
changes in the social structure. By around 2600
BC, palace architecture began to appear and kings
are depicted as warriors or builders, or presiding
over banquets. Statues of men and women, many
identified by short cuneiform inscriptions, were
set up in temples in Mesopotamia and Syria,
which were dedicated to specific gods. Similar
figures are also represented on stone plaques
carved in relief. The growth of this wealthy
class led to an increasing demand for luxury
items fashioned from materials obtained largely
from abroad. Military encounters with many of
WEST ASIA is a vast geographical area
covering ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq), Iran,
Syria and Anatolia, and extending in a great arc
from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indus River
valley. Societies throughout the region
maintained commercial and cultural contacts
across these great distances, although the
routes, trade goods, and artistic styles and motifs
that were exchanged varied in different periods.
The art and culture of Mesopotamia and Syria is
central to an understanding of the region, as it
had a profound impact on the surrounding areas.
THE FIRST CITIES
The world’s first literate, urban civilization
developed in southern Mesopotamia during the
late fourth millennium BC. Increasing trade
connections between Mesopotamian cities and
the surrounding regions led to major
innovations. The rise of elite institutions, such
as temples, created greater impetus for artistic
creation that would reflect both their power and
considerable wealth. Large-scale sculpture in the
round and relief carving appeared for the first
time, together with metal casting using the lostwax
process. A new realism is apparent in the
treatment of the human form, and figures appear
as part of narratives, especially on the miniature
reliefs carved on cylinder seals. Seals were used
to authorize transactions by officials, including
the allocation of rations, a development probably
linked to the expanding administrations of
cities. Simple pictographs, drawn on clay
tablets, were the precursors of later cuneiform
writing. Objects inspired by southern
Mesopotamia, such as cylinder seals, are found
from central Iran to Egypt. However, around
3000 BC, this widespread culture collapsed.
The result was that southern Mesopotamia
(Sumer) turned inward, although the cities,
centered on temples, continued to grow. It
appears that no individuals held supreme
WEST ASIA 3000-2000 BC
1 OVER SEVERAL CENTURIES centres of urban life, with
associated elites, emerged across West Asia. This
stimulated a demand for luxury goods and a flow
of materials and ideas began to circulate around
2500 BC. Artistic motifs increasingly linked the
eastern Mediterranean with the Indus valley.
Cuneiform writing, which had developed in
southern Mesopotamia, was adopted by palace
administrators to the east and the north. Rich
graves and monumental architecture are a
testament to the wealth of regional rulers.
30˚ 40˚ 50˚ 60˚
40˚
30˚
Susa
Umm an Nar
Tepe Yahya
Shahdad
Lagash
Ur
Acem Hüyük
Kanesh
(Kültepe)
Banat
Tell Brak
Nineveh
Eshnunna
(Tell Asmar)
Ebla
Byblos Mari
Sippar
Kish
Umm al
Marra
Nippur
Uruk
Tell el ’Ubaid
Ashur
Alaca HüyükTroy
Yortan
Horoztepe
Nile
H
alys
Tigris
Khabur
Jordan
Euphr
ates
Oront
es
Maeander
L. Van
L. Urmia
Dead Sea
B L A C K S E A
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
R
ED
SEA
AEGEANSEA
CASPIAN
SEA
P
E
R
S
I A
N
G
U L F
C A
U
C
A
S
U
S
Z A
G
R
O
S
M
T
S
TAURUS
MTS
I R A N I A N
P L A T E A U
FAILAKA
TARUT
BAHRAIN
CYPRUS
A N A T O L I A
A K K A D
S U M E R
A R A B I A
S Y R I A
E G Y P T
M
ESO
POTAMIA
N
0
0
300 miles
400 kms
THE ZIGGURAT OF UR. From
around 4000 BC, the temples
of Mesopotamia were raised
on mud brick platforms.
During the Third Dynasty of
Ur the platforms were
elaborated into ziggurats or
staged towers. The best
surviving example is at Ur. The
exterior is decorated with
buttresses and recesses to
break the monotony of the
flat surfaces. Archaeologist Sir
Leonard Woolley created this
reconstruction, restoring the
upper stages and a temple on
the summit.
2 Art and Empire, c.640 BC
Assyrian empire, c.640 BC
royal tomb
capital city
Assyrian stele/rock relief
Assyrian building
local metal production
local ivory carving
ancient coastline
WEST ASIA 2000–500 BC
43
along the coast. In northwest Iran local imagery
on finely crafted gold vessels from sites like
Marlik and Hasanlu reflects the wealth of
settled communities with links to the art of
nomadic groups in Central Asia.
THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE
After a period of relative weakness, the ninth
century BC saw Assyria emerge as a world power
and by the mid-seventh century, during the socalled
Neo-Assyrian period, it dominated the
region from Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean
to Iran and the Gulf. This imperial power is well
symbolized by enormous palaces and temples
built at Ashur, Nimrud and Nineveh.
The art of the Neo-Assyrian period consists
mainly of architectural decoration in the form
of reliefs which, though also a feature of
monumental buildings in Syria, were unique in
their scale. These carved stone slabs lined the
walls of important rooms in both palaces and
temples. The slabs, with images and texts
recording the activities of the ruler, are carved
in low relief, generally in a soft alabaster.
Figures are shown in the pose commonly used
in Mesopotamian art, with the head and legs in
profile and the torso generally shown frontally.
The wall reliefs were often complemented or
replaced by paintings.
It was probably during the period of Assyrian
domination that extraordinary bronze objects
were manufactured in the region of Luristan.
Elaborate standards with complex animal
imagery are part of a repertoire of objects known
from cemeteries, although many have been
plundered from sites or forged in modern times.
The great wealth of the empire during
these centuries is also reflected in other forms
of art, often originating outside Assyria. Huge
quantities of ivories found in the palaces,
30˚
30˚
35˚
40˚
35˚ 40˚ 45˚ 50˚ 55˚
Byblos
Sidon
Tyre
Aleppo
Hamath
Til Barsip
Samal
Gaza
Samaria
Gezer
Dor
Hazor
Arslantas
Megiddo
Nar al-Kalb
Carchemish
Gordium
Ashur
Balawat
Dur Sharrukin
NinevehTell
Halaf Nimrud
Babylon Susa
Nushijan
Nippur
Ur
Uruk
Ziwiye
Marlik
Hasanlu
Van
Toprakkale
Jerusalem
Lachish
L. Van
L. Urmia
Dead Sea
Euphrate
s
Tigris
Khabur
Nile
Halys(Kiz
il Irmak)
Orontes
M E D I T E R R A N E A N
S E A
PERSIAN
GULF
B L A C K S E A
CASPIANSEA
CYPRUS
FAILAKA
QUE
E L A M
L U R I S T A N
PHRYGIA
BAB
Y
L O N I A
PHOENICIA
I R A N I A N
P L A T E A U
A N A T O L I A
A R A B I A
URARTU
ASSYRIA
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
2 BETWEEN 900 AND 612 BC the
Assyrians came to dominate
much of West Asia. Freestanding
stele and rock
reliefs were carved in
Assyrian style to celebrate
the furthest extent of the
empire under succeeding
rulers. Artistic influences
flowed into Assyria from the
wealthy Phoenician cities to
the west and from the lands
rich in metal and horses to
the north and east.
temples and private houses at Nimrud had
arrived there as booty or tribute. Carved ivory
was used to decorate furniture as well as
daggers, cups and dishes and was sometimes
overlaid with gold or silver, or inlaid and
bejewelled. Three main styles of ivory carving
can be identified: a local Assyrian style, similar
to the stone reliefs in design; a North Syrian
style, with designs related to stone carvings of
the north Syrian cities; and a ‘Phoenician’ style,
with designs reflecting Egyptian influence.
As well as their distinctive ivories, the
Phoenician city-states also manufactured and
exported purple cloth, timber, copper, and
jewellery throughout the Mediterranean region.
Seeking new markets and sources of raw
materials, the Phoencians, in competition with
the Greeks, established trading colonies
throughout the Mediterranean. The most
famous Phoenician site was Carthage where
many elements in art and religion reflected the
city’s Near Eastern origins.
The Assyrian empire was briefly succeeded by
the Babylonian empire. Under kings Nabonidus
and his more famous son Nebuchadnezzar II the
city of Babylon was rebuilt to become one of the
wonders of the ancient world. Rather than using
stone reliefs, as in Assyria, royal buildings were
decorated in the traditional Babylonian manner –
glazed moulded bricks, often depicting animals
sacred to the gods of Mesopotamia, were used to
decorate the walls. Babylon and its empire fell
to the Iranian Persians in 539 BC, and the Near
East was united under a new dynamic imperial
power which produced an art that fused various
styles from throughout its vast empire.
ASSYRIAN WALL RELIEF. Important rooms within
Assyrian palaces were often decorated with huge
slabs of alabaster carved in relief. Many depict
the king who is shown as either the chief priest
of Assyria or the conqueror of dangerous forces.
The latter could take the form of rebellious
people or wild animals such as the lion, an
animal that had an ancient association with royalty
in Mesopotamia.
ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
42
were encouraged by an extensive system of
international contacts that stretched across the
entire region. From western Iran to the Aegean,
from Anatolia to Egypt, states were in contact and
an exchange of goods and art took place at a high
level of society. The exchange of gifts between
kings allowed them access to precious materials
unavailable at home. Babylonia and Assyria, for
instance, actively participated in this system and
as a result obtained gold from Egypt. In the
eastern Mediterranean, exchange of gifts created
international styles for elite objects, many
displaying a fusion of the dynamic Aegean animal
style with Egyptian and Syrian imagery and
compositions. This Mediterranean international
style survived into the early first millennium BC,
especially in the Canaanite (Phoenician) cities
FROM AROUND 2000 BC the Assyrians,
a north Mesopotamian people whose
civilization was centred on the city of Ashur,
established trading colonies throughout
Anatolia and exchanged Anatolian silver for
textiles and tin. The activities of these Assyrian
merchants are recorded in many cuneiform clay
letters found in their main colony, or karum, at
the site of Kanesh. The letters provide details
about all aspects of their culture – from the
varieties of Mesopotamian cloth to relations
with their home city – as well as preserving the
impressions of Assyrian-style cylinder seals.
Over the following centuries large
kingdoms came to dominate Mesopotamia,
especially that of Yamhad (with its capital at
Aleppo) in Syria and the successive powers of
Isin and Larsa in southern Mesopotamia.
Around 1760 BC King Hammurabi of Babylon
conquered much of Mesopotamia. A large
diorite stele known as the Code of
Hammurabi is perhaps the most famous work
of art of this time. It continues traditions of
representation found in the late third millennium
BC. The relief decorating the top of the stele
shows the king standing before the seated sun
god Shamash. Both the king and Shamash are
depicted for the first time with eyes in profile,
establishing a real gaze between god and ruler.
INTERNATIONAL ART
The second half of the second millennium BC saw
new styles of art emerge with the growing political
and economic importance of a variety of people.
These included the Hittites in Anatolia, a people
speaking an Indo-European language who had
possibly migrated from Europe in the late third
millennium BC, and the Canaanites, who spoke
a Semitic language and lived along the
Mediterranean coast. Much of the art of this
period was heavily influenced by Mesopotamian
traditions. For example, in Elam (southwest Iran)
the religious imagery of Mesopotamia was used to
depict Elamite mythology. However, new art-forms
1 DURING THE PERIOD 1500–1100 BC the states of the
Near East were linked through diplomatic
exchanges of people, precious materials and
artistic motifs. International styles developed,
particularly in the eastern Mediterranean where
Egyptian images fused with Aegean and Syrian
forms. Throughout the region, both palaces and
temples reflected the wealth of powerful
kingdoms. In Mesopotamia the most impressive
religious buildings were the solid stepped towers
or ziggurats.
30˚
40˚
35˚ 40˚ 45˚ 50˚ 55˚
35˚
35˚
Alalakh
Byblos
Aleppo
Troy
Tell el-Ajjul
Mari
Kanesh (Kültepe)
Hattushash (Bogazköy)
Ashur
Tell Brak
Nineveh
Babylon
Isin
Chogha
Zanbil
Kish
Eshnunna (Tell Asmar)
Tell el Rimah
Susa
Ur
Uruk
Larsa
Hasanlu
Ziwiye
Marlik
Jerusalem
Ugarit
Dur Kurigalzu
Sippar
L. Van
L. Urmia
Dead Sea
E
uphr
ates
Tigris
Nile
Jordan
Halys(K
izil Irmak)
Orontes
Diyala
M E D I T E R R A N E A N
S E A
PERSIAN
GULF
B L A C K S E A
CASPIANSEA
C A U C A S U S
Z
A
G
R
O
S
M
T
S
TAURUS M
TS
I R A N I A N
P L A T E A U
CYPRUS
FAILAKA
E L A M
LURISTAN
MITANNI
YAMHAD
H AT T I
BA
B
Y
L O
N I A
CANAAN
A N A T O L I A
E G Y P T
A R A B I A
ASSYRIA
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
THIS SOLID GOLD bowl from the site of
Ugarit demonstrates high quality
craftsmanship in metal and the wealth of
this important trading centre. The dense
composition and diverse motifs are
characteristic of the artwork of the
coastal Levant. The figures include
gazelles, bulls and lions, and mythical
creatures. Elements were borrowed from
many parts of the eastern Mediterranean
and this hybrid art was distributed along
trade networks across the region.
1 International Art, 2000-1000 BC
royal palace
ziggurat
movement:
tin
horses
lapis lazuli
gold
silver
textiles
copper
glass technology
local artistic metal
production
ancient coastline
WEST ASIA 2000-500 BC
CENTRAL AND SOUTH ASIA 5000–500 BC
45
THE GREAT BATH AT MOHENJO-DARO. One of the finest
examples of Indus architecture built from brick, the
Great Bath is lined with bitumen, with a dedicated
water supply, and is believed to have been used for
both public and ritual bathing. It links two major
aspects of Indus civilization: the importance of
major public buildings within the urban centres,
which can be interpreted as indicators of a strongly
egalitarian society, and the sophisticated ways in
which water management and other public
services were approached. The significance of ritual
is less well understood, but in addition to bathing
is likely to have included the veneration of cattle.
70˚65˚ 75˚
20˚
25˚
30˚
35˚
Musa Khel
Chanhu-Daro
Rupar
Banavali Rakhigarhi
Sukkur
Kot Diji
Nuhato
Allahdino
Desalpur Surkotada
Lothal
Rangpur
Rojadi
BalakotSutkagen Dor
Amri
Nindowari
Lohumjo-Daro
Mohenjo-Daro
Delhi
Karachi
Harappa
Naushahro
Judeirjo-Daro
Alamgirpur
Kalibangan
Islamabad
Indus
Chenab
Jhelum
Narmada
Tapi
Sutlej
Yamuna
G
anges
Chambal
A R A B I A N
S E A
GULF OF CUTCH
GULF OF CAM
B
AY
TH
A
R
DESERT
SULAIMANRANGE
H I N D U K U S H
K A C H I P L A I N S
I N D I A
A F G H A N I S TA N
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
2 Mature Harappan Sites
major Harappan site
modern city
local resources:
lapis lazuli
gold
copper and steatite
copper
deodar
pine
elm
2 THE INDUS IN THE BRONZE AGE is one of the world’s
great civilizations, and finds of worked goods from
copper, gold, lapis lazuli, exotic woods and so forth
show an extensive internal trade network between
the major cities and the outlying rural areas within
South Asia. Craft specialization, uniformity of
architecture and standardization of many artefacts
are among the main characteristics of the Indus
civilization.
silver (from Afghanistan or even Iran) and
coastal shells at inland sites. Etched carnelian
beads and lapis lazuli were exported from the
Indus region, particularly to the west.
Craft specialization, taken to the point of
mass production and great standardization,
were trademarks of the Indus, and goods
produced included well-fired, wheel-made
pottery with distinctive designs and shapes.
Bronze-working was significant, and along with
tools such as axes and swords, bronze
sculptures have also been recovered, one of the
most famous of which is the ‘Dancing Girl’ from
Mohenjo-Daro. Stone sculptures have also
been recovered, including the well-known
limestone ‘Priest-King’, also from MohenjoDaro.
The pottery decorations tended to be of
single subjects, such as people, animals or
birds, rather than narrative scenes.
The production of steatite seals was
particularly important, both for local use and
for long-distance trade. These seals were
carved with script and animal designs, such as
tigers, elephants, rhinoceros and bulls, and
were very finely made. Terracotta figurines
including zebu (humped cattle) and toy carts,
have been recovered from a large number of
sites. While these are often interpreted as
children’s toys, they may also be linked to the
veneration of cattle, an important source of
wealth within the Indus.
The two major cities of Mohenjo-Daro
and Harappa are strikingly similar in terms
of planning and layout. Both have two main
mounds, an eastern citadel and a western
occupation area. There is a lack of
conspicuous private buildings that could
be interpreted as palaces, giving rise to
suggestions that this was an egalitarian
society. There are major buildings that are
thought to be more public in nature, such as
the Great Baths at Mohenjo-Daro, and the
‘granary’ at Harappa. A standard brick size is
found throughout the region, with ratios of
1:2:4, suggesting a strong uniformity.
The end of Indus civilization is traditionally
thought to have been inexplicably sudden. It is
now known that while the major urban areas
certainly declined, many traits of the Indus
civilization continued into the next, or Early
Historic, urban period c.1000 BC. Although
relatively short-lived during its mature phase,
the Indus civilization without doubt achieved
remarkable cohesion of artistic style and
design across a huge area, and through traded
goods spread artefacts and influence across a
very large part of Central and South Asia, and
to areas beyond.
TERRACOTTA CART. Humped
cattle or zebu were vital to
Indus life, and cattle and
carts are frequent subjects of
numerous terracotta
figurines. The purpose of
these figurines is open to
debate, with suggestions
ranging from their
connection to ritual or
religion (particularly cattle),
a decorative or artistic
function, or simply use as
children’s toys.
70° 80°60°
50°40°
20°
10°
30°
40°
Mehrgarh
Mohenjo-Daro
Dholavira
Amri
Lothal
Sutkagen Dor
Harappa
Shortughai
Ganweriwala
Kalibangan
Kili Gul Muhammad
Chust
Kayrakkum
Dal’verzin
Zaman-Baba
Dzhanbas-Kala
Kokcha
Altin Tepe
Shibe
Katanda
Pazyryk
Ganeshwar
Jorwe
Inamgaon
Gaurimedu
Bariduh
Rupae
Lal Qila
Indus
Jh
elum
Ch
enab
Brahmapu
tra
God
avari
Narmada
Sutlej
Ganges
Am
uDarya
Tig
ris
Eu
phrate
s
Sy
rDarya
A R A B I A N
S E A
I N D I A N O C E A N
ARAL SEA
PERSIA
N
G
ULF
CASPIANSEA
H
I M A L A Y A S
H
IN
DU
KUSH
TA K L A M A K A N
ZA
G
R
O
S
M
T
S
PA M I R S
T H A R
D E S E R T
IRANIAN
PLATEAU
I N D I A
CEYLON
(SRI LANKA)
C H I N A
T I B E T
P E R S I A
A R A B I A
M
ESO
P
O
T
A
M
I A
N
1 Central Asia and India, 5000-500 BC
long-distance routes for trade and contact
cultures contemporary with Harappan:
Harappan/Indus, 2500-1500 BC
Bronze Age nomadic groups with graves and grave goods
Bactrian-Morgiana complex, 2nd millennium BC
peninsular Neolithic
Kayatha
Ganeswar
pre-Harappan site
Harappan site
Bronze Age settlement site
Bronze Age nomadic grave site
contemporary sites in India
0
0
300 miles
450 kms
ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
44
recent work has shown that early agricultural
sites, such as Mehrgarh in the Kachi Plains of
Pakistan (7000–3500 BC), are likely to be direct
precursors of this great urban civilization,
which relied heavily on floodwater irrigation
based round the Indus and other rivers.
Characterized by great uniformity of
architecture and art (although with many local
variations), the Indus is known to have been
part of a major trade network, both within
South Asia and beyond. Lapis lazuli from
Afghanistan and jade from China have been
recovered, along with gold (likely to have been
imported to supplement more local sources),
CENTRAL ASIA was an area of trade and
movement – not only of people and goods,
but also ideas and styles. This had a major
impact on the art and culture of this region,
while Central Asian materials and styles in turn
influenced other regions, particularly to the
west. Central Asia, to the north of the
Himalaya-Hindu Kush range, was home to a
mixture of nomadic cultures which ranged
across the lowland area stretching from central
Europe right across to China. They are known
primarily through their rich graves. Settled
peoples exploited river valleys and the fertile
loess soils between the mountains and the
deserts. To the south of this major physical
boundary lies India, a focal point for the
exchange of artefacts and ideas.
WESTERN INFLUENCES
The influences of the great cultures to the west
(Mesopotamia, Persia and Greece) can be seen
in the architecture, artefacts and archaeology
of Central Asia, and similarly, contact with
China and the north can be seen here. Bronze
tools, figurines, weapons and jewellery are
among the many finds that have been
recovered from both burial and settlement sites
to the north of the great mountain ranges,
along with fine pottery painted with both
geometric designs and wild animal motifs. The
recovery of artefacts of lapis lazuli, carnelian
and turquoise shows the extent of trading links
within this wider region. Indeed, large numbers
of seals very similar to those produced within
the Indus Valley have been recovered from the
site of Altin Tepe in modern Turkmenia. This is
significant evidence for trade and contact
between South and Central Asia during the
Bronze Age.
HARAPPAN CIVILIZATION
The Indus, or Harappan, civilization covered an
area of 500,000 square kilometres (193,000
square miles) extending across large areas of
Pakistan and northwest India. It was one of the
great civilizations of antiquity. Traditional dates
place its emergence around 2600 BC and
suggest that it appeared rather suddenly, but
CENTRAL AND SOUTH ASIA 5000-500 BC
1 THE INFLUENCE OF TRADE on the culture and art
of many groups in this region is clearly evident.
Pottery with distinctive decorations and
architectural styles reveal contact with the great
civilizations of the west, while jade ornaments,
burial patterns and styles of axes and other tools
show influences from the north and northeast.
In return, etched carnelian beads from the
specialized workshops of the Indus have been
recovered from Mesopotamian cities.
2 Bronze Age China, 2000-500 BC
political centre/capital
Shang
Western Zhou
Eastern Zhou
Spring & Autumn
other important Bronze Age centre
major archaeological site
modern city
EAST ASIA AND CHINA 5000–500 BC
47
decoration. Its peak is seen in the Longshan
culture on the east coast, where fine black
pottery was produced using advanced wheelthrowing
techniques and superb kiln control.
RITUAL AND ORNAMENTAL JADE
Early artisans also worked in other materials,
such as textiles, wood and bone. The earliest
silk production was developed in eastern
China. Jade was the most symbolic of all the
materials used: owing to its durability, smooth
texture, translucency and subtle colours, it was
regarded as a spiritual stone, which
communicated between man and gods. It also
came to symbolize different human qualities.
The earliest personal ornaments in jade were
found in northeast China, where jade birds,
turtles and a dragon with a curved body were
found in the elite tombs of the Hongshan
culture, which dates to the middle of the fourth
millennium BC. Jade was used in a similar
fashion in the south, most notably in the
Liangzhu culture of the southeast, where the
two most important types of ritual jades, the
bi-disc, symbolizing heaven, and the congtube,
symbolizing earth, were first found in a
ritual context. The distinctive taotie-motif,
combining both animal and human features,
which first appeared on Liangzhu jades, later
became the major motif in the decoration of
Shang ritual bronzes.
THE BRONZE AGE
Early use of bronze has been found in
northwest China, in the Tarim Basin and on the
Tibetan Plateau, but the Bronze Age in China is
more closely associated with the three
dynasties of the Central Plains: the Xia, the
Shang and the Zhou. Historians and
archaeologists continue to argue about the
existence of the Xia dynasty, but there is no
doubt that the Shang dynasty existed. Indeed,
archaeology has confirmed that the Shang had
a mature writing system and a sophisticated
calendar. In contrast to the civilizations of the
Near and Middle East, which created prominent
stone monuments and sculptures representing
their kings and queens, the Shang cast large
bronze vessels for use in sacrifice to the
ancestors and deities, and buried them in tombs.
SQUARE BRONZE DING with a human face decoration,
Late Shang period, c.1200 BC. Bronze vessels were
used in ritual ceremonies in the Shang dynasty,
often involving sacrifices to the ancestors. The
decoration on this ding, or cauldron, is unique. The
main motif is a human face, but with two horns
and animal claws. The whole scheme is realistic, in
a manner more typical of the
south than of the metropolitan style in the
capital city, Anyang (Yinxu).
130˚120˚110˚100˚90˚80˚50˚
40˚
30˚
20˚
Beijing
Shanghai
Xi’an
Luoyang
Zhengzhou
Erligang (Early Shang capital)
Jiang
Erlitou (early
Bronze Age site/Xia)
Sanxingdui (early
Bronze Age centre)
Zongzhou (Western Zhou capital)
Zhouyuan (Western Zhou ritual centre)
Chengdu
Lhasa
Wuhan
Dadianzi
(Lower Xiajiadian culture)
Gaocheng
(Shang burial)
Zhukaigou
(Bronze Age burial)
Shilou (Shang burial)
Qucun (Jin burial)
Baoji (Western Zhou bronzes)
Funan (Shang burial)
Danyang (Western
Zhou burial)
Ningxiang
(Shang bronzes)
Panlongcheng
(Shang garrison town)
Dayangzhou
(Shang burial)
Qugong
(early Bronze
Age site)
Kongquehe
(early Bronze Age site)
Chawuhugou
(Bronze/Iron Age site)
Anyang (Yinxu)
(Late Shang capital)
Xincai
Kuaiji
Xu
Xinzheng
Qufu
Linzi
Chengzhou (Eastern
Zhou capital)
KOREA
T I B E T
C H I N A
G O B
I
TAKLA MAKAN DESERT
Tarim Basin
QIN LING
QILIAN
SH
A
N
A LTA
I
M
T S
TAIHANGSHAN
K U N L U N M T S
P L A T E A U
O F T I B E T
N O R T H E R N S T E P P E
H
I
M
A
L A Y A S
Hexi
Corridor
Sichuan
Basin
Yellow River
Yangtze
Huai He
Qinghai Hu
Lop Nor
Poyang
HuDongting Hu
T I E N S H A N
BO
HAI
YELLOW
SEA
S O U T H
C H I NA
S E AN
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
2 THE CHINESE BRONZE AGE is marked by the ritual use
of bronze. The capitals of the Shang dynasty were
located in the Central Plains, and Shang people
had an advanced calendar and writing system. In
1045 BC the Zhou conquered the Shang and built a
new political system. The king was regarded as the
‘Son of Heaven’, whose mandate was symbolized
by the bronze ding (cauldron).
The invention of bronze casting, as well as
the basic schemes of shape and decoration,
were developed from earlier ceramic and jade
traditions. The piece-mould technique was very
efficient for making hollow vessels and allowed
great freedom in surface decoration. The most
important decorative feature on Shang ritual
bronzes was the taotie-motif, the usually highly
stylized animal mask comprising two eyes, two
ears and a nose, and sometimes horns and
claws.
The Shang were conquered in the eleventh
century BC by the Zhou, who brought new
changes to bronze art. The Zhou people
acquired new tastes, and this is reflected in the
different forms and surface decoration of their
bronze vessels. The taotie-motif gradually
disappeared, and the phoenix, bird and ox
became the favourite motifs. The changes were
not merely decorative: underlying them was the
huge transformation taking place in the Zhou
belief and ritual practice. Bronze vessels
became status symbols. They were buried with
the dead, and were displayed in ancestral
temples. Ancestor worship predominated and a
feudal system was established. Meanwhile, a
literary tradition was developed – inscriptions
on bronze vessels often carried more
significance than the decorations.
ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
46
THE BIRTH AND GROWTH of civilizations in
East Asia took place in a distinctive
environment. Japan is an island country where
the indigenous Jomon culture developed
independently. The earliest pottery in the world
has been discovered in Japan: it is hand-built,
and densely decorated with incised or cordimpressed
patterns. Similar techniques and
motifs are also found in Jomon figurative art.
The early cultures in the Korean peninsula, on
the other hand, share characteristics, such as
pottery with geometrical decoration, with
cultures in Siberia and northeast China.
China is a vast and geographically diverse
country with plateaus, basins, deserts and
grasslands. There are huge differences in
climate, ranging from the arid Gobi Desert to
tropical Hainan Island. Early civilizations in
China developed along the two major rivers,
the Yellow River (Huang He) and Yangtze River
(Chang Jiang). Both have their sources in the
Qinling Mountains and flow eastwards to the
Pacific Ocean. The Yangtze River has served as
a dividing line between north and south from
the very beginnings of Chinese civilization.
EARLY NEOLITHIC CULTURES
By the fifth millennium BC, several distinctive
Neolithic cultures had emerged in both north
and south China. From its origins in the
middle valleys of the Yellow River, the
Yangshao culture spread both up and
downstream. Its distinctive polychromatic
painted pottery, made of carefully selected
clays and fired at a high temperature, shows a
highly developed aesthetic value and skill. The
decoration of Yangshao pottery comprised
painted geometric and stylized flower patterns,
and more realistic animal and human motifs.
Religion played an important role in early
Neolithic art and interpretations of these
works often relate to the belief and practice of
Shamanism.
The Neolithic cultures in the south were
based mainly on rice-agriculture, differing from
the millet-agriculture in the north. Their
pottery tradition was also highly developed,
usually with incised rather than painted
EAST ASIA AND CHINA 5000-500 BC
JADE DRAGON, Hongshan Culture, c.3500 BC,
greenish nephrite. This is the earliest threedimensional
representation of a dragon found in
China. The dragon is the most prominent creature
in Chinese mythology, symbolizing the concept of
transformation and is associated with royalty in
much later periods. This jade dragon has a curved
body, forming a ring. Its face is similar to that of a
pig, with a protruding mouth and wrinkles on its
nose. The hole in the back suggests it may have
been used as a pendant.
100˚ 110˚ 120˚ 130˚ 140˚ 150˚
40˚
Beijing
Xinle
Niuheliang
Shanghai
Majiabang
Hangzhou
Xi’an
Beishouling
Yangshao
Xinglongwa
Liangzhu
Daxi
Jiangzhai
Laoguantai
Longshan
Dadiwan
Majiayao
Liuwan Pyongyang
Shenyang
Tokyo
Guangzhou
Zhengzhou
Peiligang
Jiahu
Banpo
Miaodigou
Dahecun Cishan
Dawenkou
Hemudu
Shijiahe
Qujialing
Taipei
KOREA
C H I N A
JAPAN
CISHAN,
PEILIGANG,
YANGSHAO
CULTURES
XINGLONGWA, XINLE,
HONGSHAN CULTURES
JOMON
CULTURE
CHULMAN
CULTURE
DAXI
CULTURE
QUJIALING,
SHIJIAHE
CULTURES
NEOLITHIC CULTURES
YINTAOWEN CULTURE
HEMUDU,
LIANGZHU
CULTURES
DAWENKOU,
LONGSHAN
CULTURES
TAIWAN
HAINAN
G O B
IQ I L I A
N
S H
A
N
TAIHANGSHAN
Q I N L I N G
HeLiao
Yellow River
Huai He
He
Wei
Yan
gtze
U
ssuri
Xi Jiang
Qinghai Hu
Tai Hu
S E A
O F
J A PA N
S O U T H
C H I NA
S E A
E A S T
C H I NA
S E A
Y E L L O W
S E A
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
BO HAI
K
O
R
E
A
S
T
R
A
I T
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
Jomon Culture: c.10,000-300 BC;
maritime economy, pottery with shells
and rotary stamps, clay figurines
Chulman Culture: c.8000-700 BC;
pottery with incised decoration
Cishan, Peiligang, Yangshao Cultures:
c.6000-3000 BC; millet agriculture,
slash-and-burn technique,
semi-subterranean/ground level
architecture, reddish pottery
with painted decoration
Hemudu/Liangzhu Cultures:
c.6000-3300 BC; early rice cultivation,
timber buildings, weaving, bone and
wood carving, earliest lacquer,
pottery with incised decoration,
carved jade with religious iconography
Daxi Culture: c.4400-3300 BC;
red/black/gray/white pottery, stamped
and painted, bone and stone carving
Dawenkou/Longshan Cultures:
c.4300-2500 BC; rich burials, great
variety of pottery typology and
painted decoration, jade carving
Xinglongwa, Xinle, Hongshan Cultures:
c.6500-3500 BC; early Neolithic
settlements; carved jade
Qujialing/Shijiahe Cultures:
c.3000-2600 BC, c.2500-2000 BC; pottery
with painted decoration, weaving;
city walls, pottery and stone carving
Neolithic Yintaowen Culture:
dates c.2000 BC; stamped pottery
1 AGRICULTURE BEGAN IN EAST ASIA as early as 10,000
years ago. From around 6000 BC large numbers
of farming communities emerged in the Yellow
River valleys and on the the east coast; millet
was grown in the north and rice
in the south. By 2000 BC competition and
interaction among different cultural zones
created a new era, and civilization was born.
1 Neolithic China and East Asia, 5000-2000 BC
Neolithic cultural zone
archaeological site
modern city
JAPAN AND KOREA 5000–500 BC
49
147˚144˚141˚
138˚135˚132˚129˚126˚123˚
42˚
40˚
38˚
36˚
34˚
32˚
30˚
Akyu
Tanabatake
Ikawazu
Shakado
Awazu
Jinnai
Shigasato
Yoshigo
Kashihara
Butsunami
Kitamura
Togari-ishi
Arayashiki
Ohatadai
Komakino
Sugizawadai
Teraji
Kinsei
Horinouchi
Nakasawame
Satohama
Omori
Kasori
Ogyozuka
Chikamori
Torihama
Mawaki
Minamikata
Maeike
Kuwagaishimo
Tsukumo
Yamaga
Ataka
YazeFudodo
Unggi
Negoyadai
Yoksam-dong
Oksong-ni
Yangpyong-ni
Ubayama
Kazahari
Korekawa
Nirakubo
Oyu
Nishida
Chiamigaito
Sakuramachi
Miharada
Higashi-Kushiro
Hamanasuno
Sannai
Maruyama
Bibi
Kashiwagi B
Hupo-ri
Mimanda Higashibaru
Kyo-dong
Amsa-dong
Osan-ni
Sinmae-ri
Kumgang-ni
Tosong-ni
Mizonoguchi
Naepyong-ni
Kungsan-ni
Soktal-li Simchol-li
Namgyong
Songgu-ni
Chitam-ni
Chonjin-dong
Hogok-dong
Kuksong-dong
Hunnam-ni
Song-Do
Changchon-ni
Naju
Sougam-dong
Taegong-ni
Taepyong-ni
Mugye-ri
Sangnodae-Do
Hwangsong-ni
Suga-ri
Yongsangong
Tongsam-dong
Tadaepo
Tongnae
Imbul-li
Shinam-ni
Taehuksan-do
Songgung-ni
Namsong-ni
Sogong-ni
Yangul-li
Naedong-ni
Undae-ri
Choji-ri
Kimpo
Nongpo-dong
Sopohang
Naktong-gang
Shi
nano-gawa
Han-gang
Imjin-gang
L. Biwa
Osumi-shoto
Oki-gunto
Izu-shoto
Sado
Cheju-do
Tsushima
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
S E A O F
J A P A N
S E A O F
O K H O T S K
TIARTSAEROK
NANGNIM-SANM
AEK
SOBAEK-SANMAEK
TAEBAEK
SANMAEK
HONSHU
HOKKAIDO
SHIKOKU
KYUSHU
KOREA
JAPAN
C H I N A
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
2 The Forager Communities of
Japan and Korea, 6000-500 BC
important settlements
settlements with large buildings
cemeteries
burials
cist burials
stone circles and standing stones
waterlogged sites
shell middens
sites with figurines
sites with face masks
sites with lacquer
sites with bronze
rice cultivation
millet cultivation
Japanese sites, 6000-500 BC
Korean sites, 6000-2000 BC
Korean sites, 2000-500 BC
sources of obsidian and greenstone
ancient coastline
2 A SERIES OF RELATIVELY SEDENTARY CULTURES, with no
clearly institutionalized social hierarchies, was wellestablished
across the Korean peninsula and
Japanese archipelago by 5000 BC. While these
communities show clearly localized developments
in their material culture, they were not totally
isolated, as shown by shared pottery styles. There
was also some contact between the peninsula and
archipelago, as shown by Jomon pottery sherds
and by obsidian from Korean Neolithic coastal sites
and influences from the peninsula on some Jomon
pottery styles. Resistance to change from outside,
however, is suggested by the relatively late arrival
of metallurgy and agriculture in the region.
DECORATING THE BODY was important in Jomon
times. Elaborate pottery ear ornaments became
especially popular in the Kanto region of Honshu
in the final stage of the Jomon period. Over 1000
ear ornaments were discovered at Chiamigaito
in central Honshu, indicating they were produced
in a specialist workshop. Large numbers of ear
ornaments are only found at a few sites, although
strikingly similar designs are found from sites
separated by long distances. These ornaments
were made from specially selected clay and are
sometimes decorated with red pigments. They
belong to a tradition of ear ornaments that
extends back to 5000 BC.
sap. Numbers of lacquered objects, including
hairpins, were excavated at Torihama on the
coast of Honshu. Lacquered bows and bows
whose shafts are wrapped in cherry bark were
also recovered from waterlogged sites.
THE AGE OF BRONZE
Bronze working, developed in China from the
start of the second millennium BC, appeared in
the Korean peninsula by about 1000 BC. At the
same time a new form of individual burial
monuments, dolmens – in which the remains
of clan chiefs were interred – appeared on the
Korean peninsula. These dolmens are an
important regional manifestation of megalithic
burial, examples of which are found around the
world, and prefigure the monumental mounded
tombs in which later elites were interred on
both the Korean peninsula and the Japanese
archipelago. Prior to 500 BC, however, social
power rested in the hands of local leaders and
household heads, and it was in this context of
relative domestic independence that the great
ceramic traditions of the Jomon and Chulmun
flourished. Bronze was a new medium for
expressive design, and with its use came new
locations for display, often in ritual and
funerary contexts away from settlements.
1 Pottery
Manufacture in
Jomon Japan
neolithic style zone
with example of
characteristic pottery
natural resources:
cold deciduous forest
evergreen
broad-leaf forest
warm deciduous
forest
wild boar
deer
sea lion
seal
salmon
acorns
chestnut
walnuts
buckeyes
ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
48
Body symbolism is further demonstrated
through the evidence for tooth filing from
skulls excavated at sites such as Tsukumo and
Yoshigo. This practice may have occurred at
age-related rituals and has been used by
archaeologists to identify people born in a
particular village and those who may have
‘married in’. Pottery masks, often suggesting
identifiable character traits, are known from a
number of sites across the Japanese
archipelago. At other sites, large numbers of
ear ornaments have been discovered.
THE CRAFTS OF JOMON JAPAN
The manufacture of certain objects, notably
greenstone jadeite beads and elaborate
earspools, luxury commodities which were
transported over great distances, indicates that
prestige goods were being circulated among
these forager societies. The construction of
carefully designed and laid out stone and
wooden monuments attests to the ability to
control and direct labour. These monuments,
including the twin circular arrangements of
stones at Oyu and the stone lines at Komakino,
which are often aligned on significant
topographic landmarks, also suggest a concern
with measuring and marking time and the
seasons. Certain buildings appear to have been
constructed using standardized units of
measurement. In addition, the analysis of the
design structure of pottery vessels suggests
that they express the conceptualization of
certain numbers, in particular 4, 5 and 7 which
may have had particular significance for Jomon
communities.
In recent years a number of waterlogged
sites have been investigated which
demonstrate how much of the rich material
culture of these early societies has perished.
Lacquer was used in Japan from before 5000 BC,
and its use demonstrates a high degree of
knowledge of the potential of the environment,
as the extraction and use of lacquer requires a
detailed understanding of the not immediately
obvious properties of the lacquer tree and its
frogs and snakes, and anthropomorphic
designs also occur, executed in relief appliqué
attached to the surfaces of some of the vessels.
Pottery vessels were often made in very large
numbers, as can be seen
in the massive pottery dumps at the site of
Sannai Maruyama.
In the Japanese archipelago, from about
5000 BC, pottery was also used to create clay
figurines, both anthropomorphic and
zoomorphic. Certain settlements were the
focus of figurine manufacture and use. At
Shakado over 1000 figurine fragments have
been recovered. These figurines were possibly
made so as to be easy to break into their
component body parts (possibly for use in
rituals), and complete figurines are rarely
discovered. Figures are varied; some have
female bodily attributes, while many others
appear more masculine, or androgynous. These
figurines bear designs which suggest elaborate
coiffures, facial tattooing, and decorative
clothing, indicating that bodily ornamentation
was important to many Jomon societies. Some
have distended stomachs,
and are thought to have played an important
role in fertility rites.
JAPAN AND KOREA 5000-500 BC
NEOLITHIC POTTERY from central western Korea
was often decorated with incised and
impressed geometric patterns, often applied
with a comb. This chulmun pottery was
replaced in the first millennium BC by plain
pottery (mumun). Many pointed-based
cooking vessels were found from settlements
of the period, such as Amsa-dong on the Han
River, where the remains of 20 pit buildings
were excavated. These vessels were used to
cook the foods derived from gathering,
hunting and fishing and, later, cultivated rice
and millet.
141˚135˚129˚
40˚
36˚
32˚
28˚
44˚
147˚
Sobata
Taishakukyo
Torihama
Togari-ishi
Okinohara
Natsushima
Kamo
Hamanasuno
Tokoro
S E A O F
J A PA N
Osumi-Shoto
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
KOREA
STRAIT
S H I K O K U
H O N S H U
H O K K A I D O
K Y U S H U
J A PA N
C H I N A
K O R E A
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
1 THE DIVERSITY of
forested environments
that supported a rich
array of wild food
resources across the
Japanese archipelago
was matched by a
multitude of local
pottery styles.
ASERIES OF FORAGER SOCIETIES was
well-established throughout the Korean
peninsula and the Japanese archipelago by
5000 BC. These societies subsisted on the
natural resources available in the rich
temperate forests, which included mediumsized
animals, notably deer and wild boar, nuts
and wild grains, as well as abundant aquatic
resources, such as shellfish, fish and sea
mammals. They lived in villages that were often
made up of clusters of pit houses, and on
occasion constructed large buildings and stone
monuments. These villages were sometimes
occupied for many generations and suggest a
remarkable degree of residential stability for
non-agricultural societies.
EARLY POTTERY IN JOMON JAPAN
The manufacture of pottery in the Japanese
archipelago has been practised for over 7,000
years. As pottery-making developed, a series of
regional traditions emerged and these are
recognized by Japanese archaeologists as
distinct styles, each with its own favourite
forms and decorative motifs. Deep, jar-shaped
cooking vessels formed the core of the
repertoire of forms, supplemented over time
with other vessels for the serving and
consumption of food. The basic decorative
element was cord-marking, produced by
pressing twisted cords made of plant fibres
into the leather-hard surface of pottery vessels
before firing them in bonfires. In some areas,
the upper parts of the vessels became highly
elaborated with the development of exotic
heavily sculptured rims. Abstract designs
became very sophisticated, although
representational images were relatively
uncommon – one good example of a hunting
scene is known from a vessel recovered from
the site at Nirakubo in northern Honshu. Other
motifs include zoomorphic designs similar to
THE PACIFIC AND INDONESIA 5000–500 BC
51
LAPITA FIGURATIVE POTTERY from the Santa Cruz
Islands. As little as one percent, never more
than 30 percent, of the pottery excavated at
Lapita sites is decorated. There is a strong
continuity in repeated patterns and faces,
but over time they become gradually
simpler. Among tools potters used to
impress patterns into the wet clay were
toothed combs and styluses.
180˚
15˚
15˚
0˚
165˚ 165˚150˚135˚120˚105˚
Duke of York Islands
Aitape
Manus
(250 BC)
New Ireland
Gazelle Pen.
Kandrian
Umboi
Ambitle
Bougainville
Tikopia (700 BC)
Efate
Lifou
Ile Maré
Futuna
Niuatoputapu
Uvea
Talasea
(1000 BC)
Reef Islands (800 BC)
Aneityum
(900 BC)
(800 BC)
Isle of Pines
(800 BC)
(900 BC)
Sigatoka
(750 BC)
Lakeba Island
(800 BC)
Ha’apai Islands
(900 BC)
Lifuka Island
(800 BC)
Foa Island
(940 BC)
Ofu Island
(950 BC)
New Caledonia
(1200 BC)
Naigani Island
(1100 BC)
Mussau (1500 BC)
Watom (1450 BC)
Arawe
(1500 BC)
Nissan (1300 BC)
Santa Cruz (1100 BC)
Anuta (800 BC)
Malo (1100 BC)
Viti Levu
(1200 BC)
Tongatapu
(1180 BC)
Upolu (1200 BC)
Samrong Sen (1540 BC)
Non Nok Tha (2785 BC)
Ma Dong
(2755 BC)
Hang Gon
(2515 BC)
Long Thanh (1075 BC)
Musang Cave (2722 BC)
Tham Ongbah
(2490 BC)
Niah
(1510 BC)
Pejaten
(650 BC)
PRESUMED LAPITA
HOMELAND
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
INDIAN
OCEAN
J A V A S E A BANDA
SEA
TIMOR
SEA
CELEBES
SEA
SULU
SEA
SOUTH
CHINA SEA
S
U
M
A
T
R
A
MOLUCCAS
VANUATU
SOLOMON ISLANDS
B O R N E O
NEW GUINEA
FIJI
TONGA
SAMOA
CELEBES
JAVA
TIMOR
A U S T R A L I A
C H I N A
I N D O N E S I A
MALAYSIA
BURMA
THAILANDLAOS
PHILIPPINES
CAMBODIA
VIETNAM
N
0
0
600 miles
900 kms
2 The Lapita Expansion, 2000-500 BC
the extent of human settlement, 2000 BC
possible expansion of Lapita settlement
distribution of Lapita pottery sites, 1500-750 BC
Lapita pottery sites:
1500-1000 BC
1000-700 BC
date unknown
obsidian quarries associated with Lapita sites
earliest finds of bronze implements in Southeast Asia
2 THE SPREAD OF LAPITA CULTURE, as indicated by finds
of pottery and remains of settlement, is still
enigmatic. In the oldest strata, the distribution of
Lapita-ware suggests that the pottery may have
been associated with quite different functions and
diverse social purposes in different places.
By 3000 BC many new traditions including
pottery began to develop throughout Indonesia
and the Philippines and in a few parts of New
Guinea. Fully ground stone axes appeared
about 3000 BC in Indonesia, representing the
final stage of the Hoabinhian culture on
mainland Southeast Asia. The inhabitants of
Indonesia were in contact with their mainland
neighbours during this period, but while
mainland peoples started using bronze and
iron over the next two millennia, there is no
clear evidence for the use of metals in
Indonesia until about 500 BC.
LAPITA CULTURE
The most important artistic development in the
Indo-Pacific region began in about 1500 BC.
This innovation was the appearance of a
certain style of dentate-impressed pottery
called Lapita, named after one of the sites
where it had been found in New Caledonia.
Pottery with more or less comparable dentate
designs has been found as far west as Aitape in
New Guinea and as far east as Samoa in
Western Polynesia. This type of pottery has
repeatedly been found associated with
obsidian tools, particularly tanged blades, and
a variety of shell ornaments or valuables made
from conus shells, trochus shell, spondylus
oysters and tridacna (giant clams).
From an artistic perspective Lapita pottery
represents the first class of highly decorated
objects in either Melanesia or Polynesia. From
an archaeological perspective the importance
of this pottery is that it is associated with the
earliest settlement of western Polynesia (Tonga
and Samoa). Since most scholars accept that
the rest of Polynesia was colonized from Tonga
and Samoa, Lapita has became associated with
the origin of the Polynesians.
A second approach accepts that
Austronesian languages came into Melanesia
and Polynesia from Southeast Asia, but
scholars argue that Lapita designs originated
in Melanesia and are a local development
rather than an Asian tradition – no one has
found any Lapita pottery in Indonesia. Many of
these scholars accept that the ‘tool kit’ of
Lapita pottery, obsidian tools and shell
ornaments represents a ‘Lapita cultural
complex’, but see this tool kit as one that was
put together in the Bismarck archipelago
before it was gradually brought to southern
parts of Melanesia, especially Vanuatu and New
Caledonia and then Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.
Both the designs stamped on the
earthenware and the delicately flaked obsidian
tools that so often accompany Lapita pottery
are magnificent artistic expressions – the most
elaborate artistic expression in the Pacific
world up to 1000 BC.
We now know that Lapita pottery began
about 1500 BC, and disappeared completely
1500 years later. The most highly decorated
forms are in the earliest strata, dating from
1500 BC to about 800 BC. In Tonga and Samoa, in
particular, this highly decorative pottery gives
way to plain pottery by 500 BC, and pottery
disappears altogether during the first
millennium AD.
Some scholars, drawing on the similarity
between Indonesian and Polynesian languages
(the Austronesian language family), have
proposed that Southeast Asians from the
Indonesian region migrated across the top of
New Guinea to the Bismarcks in about 1500 BC
or slightly earlier, bringing the technology for
pottery. They propose that Lapita represents
the prehistoric expression of the Neolithic
revolution in Melanesia. Thus, Polynesians
(and the rest of Austronesian-speaking peoples
in Melanesia) were essentially Southeast
Asians who had brought agriculture and
pottery with them.
ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
50
HUMANS HAVE LIVED in island Southeast
Asia, New Guinea, the Bismarck
Archipelago and Australia for a very long time.
In Java and mainland Southeast Asia, human
occupation dates back over a million years,
while New Guinea and Australia were settled
by at least 40,000 BC. When Europeans
discovered Australia, the inhabitants – like
their earliest ancestors – were still huntergatherers,
while most groups in Melanesia
were horticulturalists, and many relied heavily
on sago and other tree crops.
EARLY HORTICULTURE
No archaeological sites dating from before
5000 BC in Indonesia or Melanesia have
produced evidence of anything except flaked
tool industries. The earliest evidence for
horticulture in the Pacific occurs at Kuk in
the western highlands of Papua New Guinea.
Dating to 7000 BC, this site is the earliest
known example of swamp drainage for
horticultural purposes in the Indo-Pacific.
By 5000 BC simple horticulture was probably
present in most parts of New Guinea. A mortar
and pestle tradition of uncertain date appears
to begin by about 3000 BC. Some of these
utensils are elaborately carved with faces and
representations of animals and birds.
In Australia rock-painting sites at Jinmium
in the Northern Territory and in the Kakadu
area are thought by some to be 6000 years old.
The rock-art site near Kakadu, which depicts
the rainbow serpent, is evidence of the
oldest continuous religious art tradition in
Australia – a tradition that continued until
recent times.
THE PACIFIC AND INDONESIA 5000-500 BC
THE PREHISTORIC AMBUM STONE from the highlands of New
Guinea. More than 18 cm (7 ins) high, this pecked and
ground igneous rock carving appears to join the head
of an anteater to the body of a human. Along with
sculptures from the same region, exhibiting animal,
bird and human motifs, it is among the earliest known
Pacific art. Besides free-standing figures, the New
Guinea stones include pestles in the form of phallic
birds and mortars shaped like birds with spread wings.
180˚
45˚
30˚
15˚
0˚
165˚150˚135˚120˚
Ha Lung
(5300 BC)
Ulu Leang (3130 BC)
Niah
(5650 BC)
Vanimo
(c.3000 BC)
Sepik River
(c.3000 BC)
Hang Gon
(2515 BC)
Laan Spean
(5180 BC)
Non Nok Tha
(4170 BC)
Spirit Cave
Kok Phanom Di
(5720 BC)
Dimolit (3940 BC)
Sangasanga
(5520 BC)
Bagumbayan
(4280 BC)
Gua Harimau
(1815 BC)
Leuwiliang
(3050 BC)
Uai Bobo (2160 BC)
Kimberley
Kakadu
Jinmium
Ingaladdi
Port Hedland
Dead Man’s
Pocket
Papunya
Wargata
Mina Cavern
Spear Hill
Ramu River
Buka
Guadalcanal
Pamwak
Kuk
(earliest Pacific
horticulture,
from 7000 BC)
Nombe
rockshelter
Bobongara
Balof
Buang Merabak
Matenkupkum
Misisil
Yombon
Matenbek
Panakiwuk
Kosipe
Niah Caves
Tabon Caves
Madai &
Baturong
Paso midden
Halmahera
East
Timor
Talaud Islands
Gua
Lawa
Maros
Kalumpang
Bandung
DarlingRiver
VictoriaRiver
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
I N D I A N
O C E A N
SOUTH
CHINA SEA
TIMOR
SEA
ARAFURA
SEA
CELEBES
SEA
SULU
SEA
BANDA SEA
T A S M A N
S E A
C O R A L
S E A
JAVA SEA
S O U T H E A S T A S I A
S
U
M
A
T
R
A
I N D O N E S I A
BORNEO CELEBES
JAVA
TIMOR
MOLUCCAS
NEW GUINEA
BISMARCK
ARCHIPELAGO
SOLOMON
ISLANDS
M
I
C
R
O
N
E
S
I
A
M E L A
N
E
S
I
A
A U S T R A L I A
NEW
ZEALAND
PHILIPPINES
N
0
0
600 miles
900 kms
1 The Extent of Early Settlement, 4000 BC
pre-Lapita flaked industries
non-ceramic sites in Melanesia
rock-art sites in Australia
areas of early prehistoric stone mortars
and pestles in Papua New Guinea
pre-Lapita pottery sites, with dates
furthest extent of settlement, 4000 BC
Ice Age coastline, to 4000 BC
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
HAWAII
MARQUESAS
ISLANDS
EASTER
ISLAND
MELANESIA
MICRONESIA
AUSTRALIA
NORTH
AMERICAA S I A
Area of main map
1 IN ABOUT 4000 BC glacial ice finished melting and
sea level reached its current level, perhaps 150
metres higher than it had been 10,000 years earlier.
Rising sea level gradually inundated low-lying areas
leaving hundreds of islands that would formerly
have been continental land masses.
buildings of baked brick, concrete and marble. Not all cities were
built of such permanent materials, but many, like Chang’an,
capital of Han China, or Teotihuacan in modern Mexico, had large
populations, were extremely extensive and were filled with large
structures. Pataliputra (Patna), the Mauryan capital, was the largest
city in the world under Ashoka (r.268–232 BC), with as many as
300,000 inhabitants, Jenne on the Niger in Sub-Saharan Africa
occupied more than forty hectares (100 acres) by AD 500 and the
Huaca del Sol at Moche on the coast of modern Peru was
expanded by stages until it incorporated some 143 million
adobe bricks. Many of the monuments in these cities, as well as
the homes and the tombs of their citizens, were richly decorated
and filled with a wide variety of artefacts made of such processed
substances as metal and glass. Imperial rule over an unprecedented
number of people brought with it a hitherto unprecedented
exploitation of nature.
ALL THESE LARGE CITIES and empires depended on lands outside their
direct control for particularly valued material, such as amber from
the Baltic or lapis lazuli from modern Afghanistan. The human
contact and the exchange of goods and currency associated with
such trade steadily extended the area of intense material
consumption. Technologies were exported as part of the same
process. The Celtic peoples of Europe became expert metalworkers,
as did the nomadic tribes who followed them into the more
northerly areas. The same process also occurred in Central Asia.
Japan, too, which had long been relatively isolated, acquired bronzeand
iron-working and rice and silk production from China and Korea,
and took on the appearance of a more and more centralized state.
Further south, on the edge of modern Indonesia, improvements in
seafaring allowed longer and longer voyages into the Pacific,
bringing Neolithic agriculturalists deeper into Polynesia and
Micronesia. In Africa, ironworking was adopted south of the Sahara
and, when exploited for military purposes and associated agriculture,
sustained the Bantu expansion southwards at the expense of the
existing hunter-gatherers, who began their withdrawal into the
forests and deserts where farming was difficult or impossible.
ELSEWHERE, IN ALL CONTINENTS, other groups of hunter-gatherers
continued to develop their existing ways of life, which were largely
dependent on stone and bone tools, with little outside interference,
as did the Australian aborigines or the tundra-dwelling Inuit. The
most elaborate artefacts of such people were rock paintings and
carvings, vast numbers of which survive from numerous sites in
Europe, Asia, Africa, both North and South America and Australia.
Although often difficult to date, many must come from this period.
The majority of their products were, however, made of less
permanent materials such as wood. The main exception were those
communities such as the Inuit, Okvik and Ipiutak living on the Bering
Straits in northern Alaska two thousand years ago, whose lack of any
timber except driftwood led them to exploit walrus ivory, making
their traditions more easy to trace. At this period, like all the others
that are mapped in this atlas, our ability to document the uncertain
record of human material culture depends on wide variations in the
natural environment and the lifestyles it supported.
TERRACOTTA CAVALRYMEN, Qin Dynasty, 221–202 BC, discovered in Xi’an near the
tumulus of the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shihuangdi.
D
URING THESE CENTURIES the full impact of humanity’s
domination
of the planet emerged. Agriculture became more widespread
and urbanization was extended. Above all, warfare was carried out
more effectively. The experience of the Persian and Peloponnesian
wars, Alexander’s campaigns in Asia, and the
Warring States period in China in particular, brought great
improvements in weaponry, tactics, command and communications,
and these allowed rapid conquests to be effectively consolidated
into vast, centrally managed territories. The greatest of these are
today often called empires after one of the most successful, that
centred on Rome.
RULERS WERE OFTEN GENERALS, as was Augustus, the first Roman
imperator or commander (r.31 BC–AD 14). In all cases they relied on
military control, as did Qin Shihuangdi, the first emperor (r.221–210
BC) of an area comparable to modern China, and his Han Dynasty
successors, or Chandragupta Maurya (r.321–297 BC) and his
grandson Ashoka, who extended their authority over most of India.
The new power of such figures enabled them to transform both
society and the environment. They could use captives and criminals
as slaves to extract and work raw materials. They could levy taxes
with which to fund public works. They could standardize measures
to facilitate such activities as trade and construction. They could
impose and maintain peace over such large areas that private wealth
was generated on an unprecedented scale. As a result, by
AD 600, larger portions of the world had been changed by human
activity than ever before. The transformation was also far more
drastic. This can be seen in the further material enhancement of the
areas that had been urbanized earlier. As the pharaohs of Egypt were
succeeded by the Persians, the Ptolemies and the Romans
and the kings of Assyria by the Persians, the Parthians and the
Sasanians, new and larger cities, such as Alexandria at the mouth
of the Nile, were established and the numbers of baked- brick and
stone buildings rose steadily.
WHEREVER NEW STATES appeared lakes, were drained, canals were cut
and ports extended into the sea. Fortifications ringed cities and the
walls surrounding the Chinese and Roman empires stretched for
thousands of miles. Large areas of the globe were criss-crossed by
roads, some of which were paved and carried across rivers on
permanent bridges. Food and luxuries were transported along these
roads, down the rivers and across the seas for consumption in the
great centres. In Rome these luxuries included not only statues
looted and bought from Greece, but ancient granite obelisks and
modern columns from Egypt. Rome was distinguished by its huge
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE 500 BC-AD 600
NORTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA 500 BC–AD 600
55
AT TEOTIHUACÁN IN CENTRAL MEXICO the entire city –
including crowded apartments, craft workshops,
elegant palaces and towering monumental public
structures (such as the Pyramids of the Sun and
Moon) – was laid out along a grid. By AD 600 the
city covered nearly 21 square kilometres (8 sq miles).
20˚
30˚
90˚80˚70˚60˚50˚40˚30˚
Ga
M Ch
Cu
Cu
Cu
Serpent
Mound
Squawkie Hill
Crystal River
Weeden Island
Fort Center
Mandeville
Kolomoki
Swift Creek
Tremper
Gaston
Seip
Wright
Tunacunnhee
Mcquorquodale
Porter
Helena
Crossing
Fourche Malines
Marksville
Bynum
Miller
Pinson
Renner
Sterns Creek
Cahokia
Knight
Howard Lake
Effigy Mounds
Trempealeau 1
2
3
4
5
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
19
16
17
18
6
Boone
Cresap
Grave Creek
Abbott Farm
Mann
Grand Gulch
Mogollon
Pine Lawn Valley/
Bat cave and
Tularosa Cave
Mesa Grande
Talus Village
Igloolik
Gulf Hazard
Tyara
Step House
Snaketown
Patrick’s Point
Port-aux-Choix
Lonesome Creek
Ozette
St Lawrence
Island sites Ipiutak
Little
Diomede Island
Iyatayet
Norton
Walakpa
Engigstciak
Cottonwood Creek
Rolling Bay
Joss
Dundas Island
Keatley
Creek
site
Tuburon Hills
Coso Range sites
Little Harbor
Gunther Island
Marpole
Rio Gra
nde
St.Lawrence
L. Ontario
Columbia
Fraser
Yukon
L. Superior
L. Michigan
L. Erie
L. Huron
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
HUDSON
BAY
BAFFIN
BAY
B E R I N G
S E A
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
GULF OF MEXICO
R
O
C
K
Y
M
O
U
NTAINS
GREAT
PL
A
IN
S
Cape Nome
VANCOUVER
ISLAND
KODIAK
QUEEN
CHARLOTTE
ISLANDS
SIERRA
NEVADA
N O R T H
A M E R I C A
SONORAN
DESERT
MOJAVE DESERT
ballcourt
distribution of
Beluga whales
distribution of
Beluga whales
distribution of
Beluga whales
areaofhemlock,cedarandspruce
d i s t r i b u t i o n o f p o l a r b e a r s
distributi
onof Bearded and Ringed seal
s
distrib
ution
of Bearded and Ring
edseals
d i s t r i b u t i o n o f p o l a r
be
ars
d i s t r i b u t i o n o f p o l a r b e a r s
northe
rn
l
imit of trees
distrib
utionof Bearded
and
Ringed seals
1 Pikes Peak
2 Toolesboro Mounds
3 Norton Mound
4 Crab Orchard
5 Mount Horeb
6 Mound City
7 Serpent Mound
8 Fort Ancient
9 Adena
10 Hopewell
11 Alum Creek
12 Newark
13 Robbins
14 Turner
15 Bedford
16 Havana
17 Goodall
18 Jaketown
19 Harness
N
0
0
400 miles
300 kms
2 MANY CULTURES AND LIFESTYLES that continue until
the present-day were formed between 500 BC and
AD 600 in North America. In the Southwest initial
versions of the Hohokam, Mogollon, Ancestral
Puebloan and Fremont traditions crystallized. The
Adena and slightly later Hopewell traditions
spread throughout the Midwest and Eastern
United States. Resources from the Gulf of Mexico
to the Great Lakes and west to Wyoming moved
throughout the Hopewell Interaction Sphere,
which exhibited at least thirteen regional variants.
Mirador by their complex logophonetic writing
system. Architectural innovations such as the
corbel vault opened up narrow interior spaces,
while roof combs raised the exterior space of
plastered palaces and temples. These sat atop
large platform pyramids built in tiers that often
correlate with sacred numbers, such as the
nine levels (of the underworld) seen at Tikal
and Palenque. While some cities, such as Tikal
and Calakmul, were larger than others and may
have formed ‘superstates’, most Mayan cities
controlled limited land and competed with
adjacent city-states.
LOWER CENTRAL AMERICA
While this region interacted with Mesoamerica
and South America, it also developed distinct
indigenous cultures. Mace heads and
ceremonial stools from Las Huacas signal the
emergence of ranked societies prior to AD 500.
In eastern Costa Rica, large hierarchical sites
are identified as the El Bosque complex. Artists
excelled in jade-working in northern Costa
Rica. By AD 500 gold-working, with hammered
and lost wax techniques – probably from
Colombia, became important in Panama.
NORTH AMERICA
Over much of North America after 500 BC
pottery began to make its first appearance or
was more widely accepted. Throughout the
continent, groups used local resources to
produce various regional traditions. Peoples in
the Arctic and Subarctic focused on marine
resources, primarily seals, walruses and whales.
Artists from Ipiutak carved walruses, bears,
humans and fantastic creatures on bone, antler
and ivory. By AD 600 Northwest coast peoples
mastered carving the abundant cedar from the
coastal forests. In the American Southwest and
Northwest Mexico the large rocks of the caves
and canyons in this semi-arid/desert area
served as canvases for styles of pictographs and
petroglyphs, many of which have pre-500 BC
origins and continued after AD 600.
The Adena complex, with roots stretching
back to 700 BC, and the slightly later Hopewell
complex, peaked between 100 BC (Adena) and
AD 400 (Hopewell) in Ohio. Within the so-called
Hopewell Sphere elaborate networks moved
disparate raw materials and finished products
(such as beaten native copper artefacts) among
groups east of the Mississippi River. Both
Hopewell and Adena people built large
earthworks – often in bird, serpent or
geometric shapes – to form sacred enclosures.
People of both traditions also built burial
mounds, placing individuals in large log
tombs. Hopewell peoples elaborated Adena
traits, generating fine ceramics, human effigy
figures and platform pipes. The Hopewell also
exhibited more evidence of conspicuous
consumption and social differences.
Ch
Ga
M
2 North America, 500 BC-AD 600
areas of cultural influence:
Hopewell
Adena-Hopewell heartland
Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi)
Fremont
Mogollon
Hohokam
Cosumnes tradition
Hopewell site
Adena site
other archaeological site
copper ornaments
pictograph/petroglyph
stone palettes
stone pipes
beaver pipes
female effigy vessels/figurines
male figurines
antler/ivory/bone carvings
shell ornaments
mica ornaments
raw materials:
copper
silver
chert
galena
obsidian
mica
crystal
chlorite
whelk
barracuda
shark
alligator
whale
salmon
turtle shell
shell
Cu
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
54
An entire Zapotec barrio (urban area), found
at Teotihuacán, symbolizes the complex
relationships between states. Much of the
population of the Valley of Mexico shifted to
Teotihuacán from around 150 BC. By its peak in
AD 600, Teotihuacán, with a population of over
100,000 people, was the sixth largest city in the
world. Distinctive polychrome pots and
stereotyped faces on figurines and masks
identify this style throughout Mesoamerica;
objects in the Teotihuacán style have been
found at Mayan sites such as Copan and Tikal.
Teotihuacán’s control over important obsidian
sources illustrates its importance in regional
trade. The influx of distinctive Teotihuacán
talud/tablero architecture (sloping surfaces
alternating with vertical ones) around AD 400 at
the early Mayan centre of Kaminaljuyú
suggests to some scholars an aggressive
element to Teotihuacán interaction.
Teotihuacán both influenced and received
stimuli from Gulf Coast centres such as El Tajín
(known for its many ball courts and scrolling
sculptural motifs) and Cerro de las Mesas
(known for life-size ceramic sculptures).
Classic Mayan cities emerged throughout
the Petén after AD 300, distinguished from
earlier Mayan developments such as El
FROM 500 BC TO AD 600, traditions as rich,
complex and long-lived as any in the ‘Old’
World coalesced in North and Central America.
THE CULTURES OF MESOAMERICA
Mesoamerica witnessed both important
endings and new beginnings in 500 BC. The last
expressions of Olmec-style art, the La Venta
Horizon, occur between 500 and 400 BC at Gulf
Coast sites and in the Mexican Highlands at
Chalcatzingo, where artists familiar with the
Olmec style carved low-relief sculptures
illustrating enthroned rulers and scenes of
supernatural animals attacking humans. Basrelief
sculptures, probably marking a coastal
trade route, proliferate along the Pacific Coast,
from Chiapas, Mexico (Pijijiapan) to El
Salvador (Chalchuapa), although most of these
date between 800 and 500 BC.
New beginnings are seen in both the
valleys of Oaxaca and Mexico with the
emergence of the first cities and states.
Construction at Monte Albán, located on a
hilltop in the centre of the Oaxaca Valley,
began around 500 BC. Bas-relief sculptures
from this date illustrate ancestors and
sacrifices vital in the founding of the city, and
include some of the earliest examples of
Mesoamerican writing. By AD 200 Monte Albán
incorporated much of the Oaxaca Valley and
adjacent regions through trade, alliances and
possibly conquest. Zapotec craftsmen made
greyware pottery and anthropomorphic urns;
NORTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA 500 BC-AD 600
MAP 1
CENTRAL AMERICA
153.5 X 219mm
NB. Map has been skewed 10
degrees E to W to improve size.
Can we do this??
1 CENTRAL AMERICA encompasses
three cultural regions: Greater
Southwest/Northern Mexico,
Mesoamerica, and Lower Central
America. In Mesoamerica, several
different writing systems, earlier
than that of the Maya, emerged
after 500 BC. Some groups carved
‘Long Count’ dates that can be
correlated to those in our
calendar system; the earliest is 36
BC from Chiapa de Corzo. States at
El Tajín, Monte Albán and
Teotihuacán interacted in various
ways with each other and
Mesoamerica.
AT ITS PEAK BETWEEN AD 400 AND 600 Monte Albán
covered 7.5 square kilometres. The Zapotecs
approached urbanism by focusing this hilltop city
on a large open space, the Main Plaza, surrounded
by roughly symmetrically arranged public and
administrative structures. Additional civicceremonial
features – such as Mound H, in the
foreground – lie in the centre of this plaza.
15˚
80˚85˚
100˚105˚110˚115˚
30˚
25˚
20˚
CerrosRío Azul
Barriles
La Cabana
Las Mercedes
La Montana˜
˜
Nosara
Matapalo
Vidor
Playa Venado
Las Huacas
Lotun Cave
Acancéh Yaxuná
Palenque
Cobá
Uaxactún
Nakbe
Seibal
Piedras
Negras
Tonina
El Mirador
Tikal
Calkamul
Chiapa
de Corzo
Altar de
Sacrificios
Xunantunich
Caracol
Copán
Yaxchilán
ChalchuapaKaminaljuyú
Sitio Sierra
Yarumela
Los Naranjos
Naco
Quiriguá
Ceren
Santa Leticia
El Baúl
Abaj
TakalikIzapa
Pijijiapan
Tonalá
Remojadas
Cholula
La Mojarra
Cerro de las Mesas
Tres Zapotes
Miahuatlán
Río Grande
Etlatongo
Cerro de las Minas
Yucunudahui˜ Dainzú
Ejutla
Monte Albán
Huamelulpan
San Francisco de Arriba
San José Mogote
Río Viejo
Yucuita
Monte Negro
Tollantzinco
TehuacánPavón
El Tajín
Matacapan
Diquiyú
Quiotepec
La Venta
Cuicuilco
Teotihuacán
Calixtlahuaca
Xacalla
Apatzingán
Xiuhquilpan
Itztepetl
El Teul
Chalcatzingo
ZacoalcoAmeca
Etzatlán
El Arenal
Ixtlán del Río
Las Cebollas
Cueva Pintada
Los Ortices
Atzcapotzalco
Huetamo
Tuxtepec
Usumacinta
Motagua
Pánuco
GU
LF
O
F
CA
LIFO
R
N
IA
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
GULF OF
CAMPECHE
Yucatán
Peninsula
Isthmus of
Tehuantepec
T H E G R E A T E R
S O U T H W E S T
LOWER
CENTRAL
AMERICA
MESOAMERICA
PETÉN
Mostly hunter-gathering
Cultural influences:
area impacted by
Monte Albán
area impacted by trade
routes of Teotihuacan
area impacted by
Cerro de las Mesas
Raw materials:
jade/jadeite
cacao
salt
feathers
obsidian
desert and semi-arid scrub zones
Cultures of Central
America 500 BC-AD 600
major regional centre
important city/site
site with ballcourt
site with pre-Classic Maya writing
and/or long count date
sites with Late Preclassic
giant architectural masks
pictographs/petroglyphs
Oaxaca
Maya
Teotihuacán
1
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
these are found at regional centres well beyond
Monte Albán’s sphere of influence, from Río
Viejo on the coast to Mixtec centres such as
Cerro de las Minas and Yucuñudahui.
SOUTH AMERICA 500 BC –AD 600
57
CENTRAL ANDEAN CULTURES
Within the Andean area, extensive ritual practices
continued to be rooted in complex societies with
corporate political and religious leadership
throughout the Early Horizon (800–200 BC) and
the early Intermediate Period (c.200 BC–AD 600).
Chiripa (c.850–400 BC) is located in the
Titicaca basin. The site consists of a platform
mound with a sunken court and carved stone
stelae and plaques, ringed by rectangular
chambers. The economy was based on
intensive exploitation of lake resources as well
as domesticated and wild camelids, seeds and
tubers. Textiles and pottery were used, the latter
with incised and painted feline and human faces.
To the south, Pucará became dominant in the
Titicaca area in around 400 BC. Incised pottery
found there was decorated with slip-painted
panels, felines, birds, llamas and people. Stone
carvings occur frequently. Staircases and sunken
courts are common in the terraced hillsides.
Chavín de Huantár, located on a tributary of
the Marañon River, has been dated to c.800–200
BC. Its large U-shaped temple platform contains a
sunken court and galleries. Elaborate line
carvings of mythical beings include elements of
felines, snakes, cayman and plants. Within the
core of the principal temple there is a series of
corridors and channels. It also contains a crossfigures,
sometimes with aspects of a jaguar.
The oldest sculptures belong to the Isnos
phase (c.100 BC). They are found on hill slopes,
sometimes in elaborately painted tombs. San
Agustín is associated with the construction of
large earthworks and gold smelting as well as
wire and sheet metalworking.
The Periperí style, which belongs to the
eastern Brazilian pottery tradition, is related to
the Sambaquí cultures farther south. Houses
were post-built. Artefact assemblages are
dominated by pounding and grinding tools.
Beads from fish vertebrae and shell are common.
The pottery is plain and dark brown to black.
SOUTHERN CULTURES
The Paraná-Pampean cultural tradition (first
millennium BC) from Uruguay and Argentina
emerged from a hunter-gatherer economy.
Much of the pottery is plain, although finds
from Mal Abrigo, in the Santa Fe area of
Uruguay, include modelled animal head lugs.
THE ‘DECAPITATOR GOD’ in painted and modelled
plaster work at the ‘Temple of the Moon’, at the
site of Moche. Moche iconography was a complex
symbolic language expressing in summary a limited
number of themes which were understood by
society at large. A number of the characters
depicted were actual persons and officers within
Moche society.
80˚
0˚
?
St
St
St
St
St
NawinpuquioHuari
Waywaka
Chanapata
Sipán
Chavín de Huantár
Cerro Blanco
Cajamarquilla
Moche
Pampa Grande
Galindo
Pachacamac
Moxeke
Cahuachi
Pucará
Chiripa
MOCHE
Huascarán
Chimborazo
Ausangate
Coropuna
Misti
Chacani
L. Junín
L. Titicaca
Maranón˜
Chicama
Moche
Casma
Supe
Fortaleza
Chill
ón
Hua
llaga
Puira
Urubamba
Pampas
Oco
na˜
Sam
a
Canete
˜
M
ala
Pisco
Apurimac
P A C I F I C O C E A N
A
N
D
E
S
A TACA
M
A
D
ESERT
SECHURA
DESERT
L I M A
HUARPA
NAZCA
PARACAS
CHAVINOID
TRADITION
PUCARÁ
CHANAPATA
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
2 Early Horizon to Early
Intermediate Period
desert
highland
jungle
mountain peak/volcano
tradition/culture
site location
principal site
secondary site
religious site/shrine
terraced agriculture
raised fields
irrigation
gold
copper
cinnebar
salt
stone, andesite, basaltSt
spondylus
camelids, wool, textiles
cotton and textiles
birds and feathers
dung and guano
wood
maize and beans
obsidian
potatoes
gourds and squash
manioc
hallucinogens
coca
totora
emeralds
probable sea trade routes
shaped room with a large columnar sculpture
shaped like a very large foot plough and carved to
represent a large feline deity. This deity mediated
between the supernatural world and that of the
living. It has been persuasively argued that the
channels and vents found throughout the
temple enabled the deity to make sounds.
On the south coast of Peru the coastal
Paracas tradition shared elements of both the
Pucará and Chavín cultures. Incised pottery
painted with organic paints, and highly ornate
textiles showing flying shaman designs, are
common. Mummies are seated in shallow
baskets, wrapped in multiple textiles. Cemeteries
show a pattern which suggests that related kin
groups were entombed in the same grave.
During the Early Horizon period many
innovations in textile production developed, such
as tapestry weaving, tie-dye and batik techniques.
Metallurgical techniques such as soldering, sweat
welding and repoussé decoration developed, and
the frequency of metal use increased. Pottery
tended to have incised decoration, burnishing,
slip painting and organic paint.
THE MOCHE AND OTHER CULTURES
By the end of the first century BC most of the
land which could easily be taken into production
was in use. Ceremonial sites were reduced in
number and size whereas settlements, including
fortified ones, grew and multiplied. Regional
kingdoms and chiefdoms were established.
On the north coast in the Early Horizon,
Cupisnique style was followed by the Salinar,
Viru and Gallinazo traditions. In time, Moche
became the dominant culture, amalgamating a
series of independent valley-based chiefdoms
and kingdoms under one central authority. At
Cerro Blanco, the capital of the Moche, there
are two principal ceremonial sectors: the
Huaca del Sol (Temple of the Sun) and the
Huaca de la Luna (Temple of the Moon). On
these large platform pyramids prisoners were
ritually dismembered at times of crisis. The
Huaca del Sol is the largest single earth-built
structure in the Americas.
The Nazca culture dominated four river
valleys on the south coast. The Huarpa culture,
with sites such as Conchopata, Nawinpuquio and
Huari, focused on the Ayacucho basin, where
terraced fields and irrigation channels formed the
basis of an innovative agricultural strategy.
2 ANDEAN CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT during this period
was clearly affected by the comparative closeness
of very contrasting ecosystems. Because of the very
pronounced topography of South America, a range
of environmental zones, including coastal deserts,
mountains and tropical jungles were all within easy
reach. This proximity resulted in the development
of a cultural assemblage that was both materially
and symbolically very rich.
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
56
SOUTH AMERICA IS A LARGE and varied
continent and so were its cultures during
this period. The central Andean area was
dominated by complex societies, with elaborate
hierarchies, whereas the cultures of the Andes
of Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, like much
of the lowland rainforest, were often chiefdoms.
NORTHERN CULTURES
In Ecuador, the Guangala phase (340 BC–AD 360)
is distinguished by multi-coloured and engraved
pottery with geometric designs, small villages
and a maize-based agriculture. During this phase
metals were used for the first time, particularly
in hammered fish hooks and nose rings.
In the north and north-west of
Venezuela (500 BC–AD 500)
societies were predominantly
agricultural and were producing
pottery. The principal ceramic
tradition was the Barrancoid,
distinguished by its modelled
and incised designs. At sites
such as Barrancas in the Lower
Orinoco valley, houses were
built on piles and on earthen
platforms. Manioc cultivation
probably originated in this area.
The Barrancoid tradition
originated in the central Amazon
basin and its spread was linked
with the Maipuran and Arawak
language families. It was
widespread within the tropical
forest. At Jauari, on the lower
Amazon, there are midden remains, where Tshaped
and notched axes and pottery are
common. The Itacoatiara sites east of Manaus
have ceramics with typical scroll designs. The site
of Hupa-iya of the central Ucayali had un-walled
houses with earthen floors. Spindle whorls
indicate that textiles were being produced.
In Colombia, near the headwaters of the Rio
Magdalena, the San Agustín culture produced
stone monolithic sculptures depicting human
SOUTH AMERICA 500 BC-AD 600
GOLDEN EAR SPOOLS showing the ‘Spider God’ or
‘Decapitator’, as excavated from ‘Royal’ tomb 2 at
the Moche site of Sipán near Chiclayo in Peru. In
Moche art, the spider was seen as a spiritual
equivalent of the model Moche warrior. Just as
spiders capture their prey, bind them with thread,
and extract and consume their vital fluids, so
Moche warriors took their enemies prisoner, bound
them with ropes, and drained and drank their
blood in sacrifice.
1 SOUTH AMERICA is a continent with
a great variety of mineral
resources and environments, which
resulted in many diverse cultural
adaptations, ranging from the
hierarchical societies of the Andes
mountain range to the scattered
chiefdoms of the lowland
rainforests. Many of these societies
were based on agriculture, but in
the south of the continent smaller
groups depended more on
hunting, fishing and gathering.
40˚
50˚60˚70˚80˚
10˚
0˚
10˚
20˚
30˚
St
St
St
St
Barrancas
Mangueiras
Manta
Hupa-iya
Caimito
Chavín de
Huantár Camancaya
Moche
Pachacamac
Cahuachi Pucará Chiripa
Mal Abrigo
Chotua
Jauari
Itacoatiara
Teso dos Bichos
GUASARE
BAHIA
CANDELARIA
PUCARÁ
CHIRIPA
SAN
AGUSTÍN
B A R R A N C O I D T R A D I T I O N
B A R R A N C O I D
T R A D I T I O N
B A R R A N C O I D
T R A D I T I O N
ELMOLLE
VALLISERANA
LASMERCEDES
PARANÁ-PAMPEAN
TRADITION
EASTERN
BRAZILIAN
PO
TTERY
TRADITIO
N
CHAVINOID
TRADITION
CHANAPATA
Huila
Sierra Nevada
de Santa Marta
Antisana
Chimborazo
Huascarán
Illimani
Illampu
Coropuna
Tacora
Llullaillaco
Chachani
Misti
Cotopaxi
Amazon
M
adeira
Ju
rua
Negro
JapuraPutumay
o
Maranón˜
Ucayali
Para
ná
S
ãoFrancisco
Tocantins
Paraná
C
olorado
Negro
Loa
Maipó
Maule
Salado
Desaguadero
Deseado
Ch
ico
Paraguay
O
rinoco
Essequibo
Corantijn
Maroni
O
iapoque
Branco
Cauca
M
agdalena
L. Titicaca
L. Poopó
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
CARIBBEAN SEA
A
N
D
ES
ATACAMADESERT
B
R
A
Z
IL
IA
N
H
I G
H
L A
N
D S
GUIANA
HIGHLANDS
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 Principal Cultural
Traditions,
500 BC-AD 500
dry pampa
tropical rain forest
pampa
desert
mountain
peak/volcano
tradition/culture
principal site
religious site/shrine
raised field
irrigation
gold
silver
copper
tin
cinnebar
salt
stone, andesite,
basalt
obsidian
St
spondylus
strombus
coral
camelids, wool,
textiles
cotton and textiles
birds and feathers
dung and guano
wood
maize and beans
potatoes
gourds and squash
manioc
hallucinogens
totora
EUROPE 500 BC–AD 300
59
30˚20˚10˚0˚
40˚
50˚
ˇ
Medionemeton
Nemetobriga
Nemetacum
Drunemeton
Delphi
Roquepertuse Entremont
Fellbach-Schmiden
Bouray
Gournay-sur-Aronde
La Tène
Msecké Zehroviceˇ
Deskford
Neuvy-en
-Sullias
Euffigneix
Gundestrup
Praha Sarka
Salzberg-Reinberg
Báta
Luncani
Malaia Began
Mezek
Mérida
ˇ
Turoe
Reims
Pfalzfeld
Glauberg
Heidelberg
Holzgerlingen
Hirschlanden
Montbouy
Bichl
Clonmacnoise
Torrs
Llyn Cerrig Bach
Snettisham
Battersea
Aylesford
Amfreville
Basse-Yutz
Dürrnberg
-bei-Hallein
Waldalgesheim
Ciumesti¸
Massalia
Spina
Rhine
Elbe
Danube
Vistula
Dnieper
D
on
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
N O R T H
S E A
B L A C K
S E A
B A
LT
IC
SEA
PYRENEES
A L P S
CARPATHIAN
S
I B E R I A
C E LT I B E R I A
G E R M A N I A
S C Y T H I A
S A R M AT I A
D A C I A
G A L AT I A
T Y L I S
I L LY R I A
CORSICA
SARDINIA
SICILY
BAL
EARIC ISLANDS
GREECE
S C A N D I N AV I A
B R I T I S H
I S L E S
A N AT O L I A
Possible route of
Sarmatians' plunder
after defeat of
Galatian Celts
Alexander's
Celtic mercenaries
N
0
0
300 miles
450 kms
sites and artefacts:
nemeton sanctuaries and other cult centres
colonies
stone carvings
wood carvings
classic metalwork sites
wild boar representations
late La Tène vessels
Etrusco-Italic and Celtic vessels
2 THE CELTIC DIASPORA was both ethnic and
economic. From a heartland on the French-German
border militaristic elites spread southwest into
Spain, and eastwards to set up kingdoms in the
Balkans and Turkey. Mercenaries, wars and looting
carried La Tène objects to south Russia and
beyond. It is uncertain to what extent the ‘Insular’
style in Britain and Ireland was introduced by
continental invaders rather than adopted.
THE ICONOGRAPHY OF POWER
These elite artefacts, preserved from the hoards
and burial monuments of the wealthy, express
ideologies of power the iconography of which
may actively obscure the brutal realities of Iron
Age life. The obsession with virtuosity,
especially in repoussé metalwork, suggests a
high degree of competition among intensely
aesthetically-sensitive patrons. Gold-, silverand
bronze-smiths, however, may have ranged
in social status from mobile entrepreneurs to
virtual chattels.
By 500 BC the slave trade, powered by
endemic warfare, was crucial. Slaves reached
the Classical world via the coastal colonies of
the Black Sea and Mediterranean in exchange
for wine and finished goods, including pottery
finewares, jewellery and precious metalwork.
The Greek mercantile credit economy was
supported by the massive silver output of the
slave-worked mines of the Laurium peninsula
in Attica and the islands of Thasos and
Siphnos. It was such wealth, displayed in
votive offerings, that attracted the Celts south
to sack the sanctuary of Delphi in 279 BC. The
expansion of Celtic warrior society is evident in
the nemeton (sacred grove) sites, which extend
from Scotland to Spain to Turkey; small groups,
serving as mercenaries under Alexander, may
have reached India.
Trading and raiding brought Achaemenid
Persian objects into Europe in the fifth century
BC, La Tène bowls to the north Caucasus and
Kuban in the third century BC, and Thracian and
Dacian motifs as far west as the south coast of
Britain by the time of the Roman conquest, and
exposed local conventions to broader scrutiny.
The development of commercial markets
intensified in the second and first centuries BC,
THE BASSE-YUTZ FLAGON (one of a pair). This early
fourth-century BC vessel refines Italic prototypes.
Red champlevé enamel and Mediterranean coral
insets form interlace and chequerboard patterns.
The La Tène Early Style figural elements include a
maned wolf-form handle with engraved palmettes
rising from a human face built of S-curves, a
chained stopper with zoomorphic decoration and a
small duck swimming down the spout in the
direction of the pouring wine.
illustrated for example by the distribution of
mass-produced decorated clay lamps of the
types known as Dressel 2-4, which occur from
southern Spain and Sicily through to the Rhine
and North Sea coast. The extent to which the
later Iron Age societies produced and
maintained such distinctive styles over time is
fascinating. In Celtic art, the Early Style
developed via Waldalgesheim and Vegetal, the
Plastic and the Hungarian ‘sword style’, into
the late Insular styles which were still strong in
Ireland as late as AD 300.
This is ultimately an issue of ethnic
identity, expressed through close control of
form and content, the need for which was
actually heightened by the fluxes of wars,
invasions and resettlements. For the Scythians
the beast-fight, whether expressed at a
mythical or more realistic level, was central as
a metaphor of struggle and conquest. Swordscabbards,
belt-plates, bridle appliqués, and
pectorals, such as that from Tolstaya Mogila,
all depend on the same theme, one that was
continued by their martial successors on the
steppe, the Sarmatians. This worn art was
displayed on the body, expressing ethnicity
and social status on the move. The La Tène
Celts had their favourite motifs too (the wild
boar and horse, among animals) and a
penchant for virtuoso, vegetally-based
symmetries. The human form, often almost
cryptic in metalwork, found clear expression in
anthropomorphic grave stelae and in the
elaborate stone sacrificial altars of the south
French sites near Massalia.
2 The Spread of Celtic Culture
area of origin of La Tène style, 500-450 BC
Early Celtic world (western), 450-400 BC
Early Celtic world (eastern), 450-400 BC
primary Celtic expansion (western), 400-250 BC
primary Celtic expansion (eastern), 400-350 BC
secondary Celtic expansion (western), 250 BC-AD 300
secondary Celtic expansion (eastern), 350-150 BC
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
58
THE LATER IRON AGE was the age of the
Celts, Thracians, Scythians, Sarmatians,
Germans and Dacians. These quasi-national
tribal confederacies were in direct competition
with and dependent on the swathe of urban
empires – Persian, Greek, Macedonian and
Roman – to their south (see the later spreads in
this part). Although called ‘barbarian’ by the
Greeks (from their babble – ‘bar-bar’ – of
languages), it would be a mistake to judge their
arts ‘barbaric’. The Celts and Scythians
developed two of the most seductive and
sophisticated styles in world art: the La Tène
Style and the Steppe, or Scythian, Animal Style.
INDIGENOUS STYLES
Grounded in indigenous themes and craftskills,
the La Tène and Scythian styles
transformed Classical and Oriental elements in
memorable visual syntheses. In the CarpathoBalkans
the styles overlap to create lessintegrated
fusion styles, such as Thracian,
Thraco-Getic and Daco-Sarmatian, which all
owe debts to Greek, Achaemenid and central
Asian production. Other lesser style zones
include the Celt-Iberian, the Insular Celtic, the
Germanic-Scandinavian and the Etruscaninfluenced
southeast Alpine region with its
frieze-based situla (bronze bucket) style.
Everywhere there was a reawakening of
vibrant iconic content after the formulaic
themes of the later Bronze Age Urnfield period
and the restricted early Iron Age (Hallstatt)
repertoire. Significantly, with certain exceptions
among the situlae and in the most Hellenized
Thracian art, the literal narrative approach of
the Mediterranean area is eschewed in favour
of an emblematic or hieratic style – a
significant pre-figuration of medieval heraldry.
The rare preservation of wood-carving, as at the
Celtic sacred site of Fellbach-Schmiden in
Germany, indicates that conventions such as
symetrically paired animals extended to more
fugitive media: the richness of barbarian
tattooing, often remarked on by commentators,
can only be guessed at.
The military, political and economic
complexity of the period is immense. Most of
the art that survives is of a portable nature,
made in gilded bronze, silver and gold, used for
decking out horses, worn on the body as part of
a costume, or displayed at feasts. There is
evidence from metrology that the convertible
or bullion value of the art was of considerable
significance, and that pieces (such as the 165
silver and silver-gilt vessels that make up the
Rogozen hoard from Bulgaria) were made to
known weights.
EUROPE 500 BC-AD 300
30˚20˚10˚0˚
40˚
50˚
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Sn
Sn
Sn
Sn
Sn
Sn
Sn
Sn
Sn
Sn
Sn
Sn
Sn
Gundestrup
Oberaden
Hohemichele
Helden
Witaszkowo
Sark
Portland Bill
Colchester
Wroxeter
Kuffarn
Bologna
Orlovo
Olbia
Gaimonova Mogila
Tyras
Istrus
Tomi
Svestariˇ
Durentsi
Peretu
Herastrauˇ ˇ
Agighiol
Cotofenesti¸¸
Salistea/Cioara¸
Surcea
Poiana Baiceniˇ
Iron Gates
Rogozen
Galiche
Vratsa Stara Zagora
Abdera
DouvanlijKoukouva
Mogila
Starobel’sk
Balakliya
Aleksandropol’
Chertomlyk
Oguz
Solokha
TaganrogTolstaya Mogila
Great Ryzhanovka
Uspenskaya Stanitsa
Melitopol’
Severskaya Stanitsa
Panticapaeum
Chersonesus
Taxila/Rawalpindi
Sinope
Byzantium
Trebizond
Nymphaeum
Certosa
Hochdorf
Hallstatt
Spina
Vaceˇ
Tápiószentmárton
Zo´´ldhalompuszta
Magdalenska
Gora
Emporion
Massalia
Elbe
Rhine
Vistula
Don
Danube
Dnieper
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N N O R T H
S E A BALTIC
SEA
B L A C K S E A
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
PY
RENEES
A
L
P S
CARPATHIANS
CORSICA
SARDINIA
SICILY
BALE
ARIC ISLANDS
B R I T I S H
I S L E S
S C A N D I N AV I A
I B E R I A
A N A T O L I A
G R E E C E
BALKANS
E
U
R
O
P
E
Persian
Achaemenid
Influence
Thracian
cavalry
auxiliaries
major
source
major
source
Cimbri
booty
N
0
0
300 miles
450 kms
commodities:
silk
amber
silver
gold
tin
copper
red coral
trade flows
Sn
Cu
1 Eastern Influences
Dressel 2-4 lamp distribution, 70 BC-AD 15
cultural areas:
Scythian (500-150 BC) and
Sarmatian (150 BC-AD 300) zone
Southeast Hallstatt zone, until 400 BC
Geto-Dacian sphere, 400 BC-AD 107
South Thracian sphere, 500-85 BC
Bosporan Kingdom, 302-63 BC
Kingdom of Pontus, 480-63 BC
sites and burials:
Scythian ‘Royal’ burials
Thraco-Getic burials and hoards
Thracian dynastic tombs
Greek colonies
artefacts:
Geto-Dacian coins and grave stelae
Sark-class Dacian phalerae
Oriental silks
bronze situlae
Scythian animal-style objects
Achaemenid Persian objects
1 EASTERN INFLUENCES include the import of
Achaemenid artefacts, iconographies and silk to
Europe following the Persian occupation of Thrace
(513–480 BC), the impact of Scythian nomads on the
Hungarian basin and beyond, and the transport of
Thracian and Sarmatian motifs, some with north
Indian connections, westwards by cavalry
auxilliaries under Rome. The Gundestrup cauldron,
made with Thracian techniques and depicting La
Tène Celts, may have been carried to Jutland in the
booty of the Germanic Cimbri around 118 BC.
THE TOLSTAYA MOGILA PECTORAL is Graeco-Scythian in
style. The central flower and tendril frieze betrays
the master goldsmith’s training in southern Italy,
but the upper and lower friezes carry pastoral and
mythological scenes of pure steppe inspiration:
above, foals and calves suckle, a boy milks a ewe,
two men stretch a sheep skin and another threads
an awl for sewing leather; below, horses, stags and
boars are attacked by lions and griffins.
Dipylon
Gate
Pnyx
road to Peiraeus
Sacred W
ay
Panathenaic W
ay
roadtoAcharnai
Street
ofTripods
A G O R A
A R E I O PA G O S
A C R O P O L I S
Tholos
Strategeion
Hephaisteion
Statues of Heroes
South Stoa
Twelve Gods
Painted
Stoa
Royal
Stoa
Kerameikos
Tombs
Pompeion
Amyneion
Eleusineion
Stoa of Zeus
Temple of Nike
Sanctuary of Asklepios
Propylaia
Parthenon
Theatre of Dionysos
Odeion of
Pericles
Choragic
Monument of
Lysicrates
Erechtheion
N
0 200 m 0
0
2 miles
3 kms
N
2 Athens and Peiraeus, 500-300 BC
0 5 kms
N
Athens
Peiraeus
Phaleron
Academy
THE AEGEAN 500–300 BC
61
build long walls linking the port to the city. With her
position as both a military and trading power greatly
strengthened, Athens then entered on an exceptional
period of public building, private consumption and
personal self-development, during which architects such
as Ictinus, sculptors such as Pheidias and teachers such as
Socrates, acquired an authority in their fields matching
that of the city’s leader, the charismatic general, Pericles.
Expensive materials, both local and exotic were widely
employed. Marbles of different colours were used for the
building and sculptural decoration of the Parthenon
(447–32 BC), with its 15-metre-high (49 ft) gold and ivory
image of Athena, and for the Erechtheion, with its bronze
chimney. One of several new stoas, the Painted, was filled
with large pictures of Attic victories. Large but less
extravagant projects were the carving of new seating for
the Assembly from the hill of the Pnyx, the enlargement of
the Theatre of Dionysus, and the building of a new covered
Odeion to house musical performances.
Since Athens’ wealth depended critically on the
importation of raw materials, the establishment of the
Athenian colony of Amphipolis in 437 BC was vital, in that
it safeguarded supplies of gold from nearby Mt Pangaeum
and of timber for ship-building from the surrounding
forests. The loss of the colony in 424 BC paved the way for
the city’s defeat at the hands of Sparta in 404.
Nevertheless, public impoverishment had little impact
on growing personal expenditure. At the great drinking
parties, or symposia, in private houses, at which young men
would compete in conversation with their teachers, Attic
wine was served from painted Attic pottery, which
continued to dominate the international market into the
fourth century. From the late fifth century large marble
tomb reliefs in the Kerameikos, or Potter’s Quarter, show
2 ATHENS CONSISTED of an Acropolis (Upper City) on a great
fortified rock and a lower city that centred on the Agora, or
Market. The Acropolis was restored and rebuilt after the Persian
sack in 480. It was dominated by four magnificent marble
buildings, the Parthenon, the Propylaea or Entrance, the
Erechtheion and the Temple of Nike. In the lower city less
important temples of Apollo and Ares were constructed in the
Agora area, as were three stoas, while the theatre of Dionysos
was extended and a covered Odeion built nearby. The city’s
trade was assured by its connection, through a system of walls,
with the port of Peiraeus. Its flowering during the fourth
century was brought to an end after its conquest by Alexander
and by the passing of laws limiting expenditure.
THE PARTHENON, with its combination of Doric forms, typical
of the mainland, and Ionic forms and marble material, typical of
the islands and Ionian coast, illustrates Athens’ desire to lead all
Greece. Its sculptures celebrate the city's human and material
resources. The west pediment shows the competition for Attica
by the rival deities, Poseidon, who produces a fountain of salt
water, and Athena, who produces an olive tree.
Lower down, on an inner frieze, young women of the city offer
the goddess a newly woven embroidered robe.
THE ATTIC ‘FOUNDRY CUP’ provides evidence for some of the phases
in the production of a work of art in the early fifth century BC. It
illustrates the production process, from the sculptor's furnace
and tools, to the painted models that aided standardization, to
the final assembling of whole bronze statues.
women rivalling each other in their finery, as they sit in elegant dresses on elaborate
chairs taking jewels from rich caskets.
Both at symposia and on tombs the celebration of the individual reached new
heights, and during the fourth century both body and mind received new attention. At
Athens teachers established themselves at the gymnasia where young men went for
physical training – just as Plato did at the grove of the hero Academus. Such concerns
with the self relate closely to the consolidation of the roles of individual patrons and
individual artists, especially after the emergence of super-rich rulers such as King
Mausolus, the rebuilder of Halikarnassos, or the greatest city-founder of all time,
Alexander of Macedon. Mausolus’ wife Artemisia employed four famous
sculptors on her husband’s gigantic tomb. Alexander insisted on
patronizing the architect Dinocrates when planning his most
famous city, Alexandria in Egypt. He also patronized the
sculptor Lysippos when ordering portraits and grand
figure groups and the painter Apelles when
commissioning important paintings. It is against this
background that the first writings on art by
architects, sculptors and painters appeared in the
sixth and fifth centuries, and by around 300 BC the
first critical histories of painting and sculpture
by Xenocrates and the first biographies of
artists by Douris had made their appearance.
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
60
principal town of Attica, a large peninsula
projecting into the Aegean. Athens maximized
the benefit from its own Great Games by
sending around Greece and the Mediterranean
as prizes special Attic oil lamps made by the
best Attic potters and decorated by the best
Attic painters. It was competition between its
craftsmen that ensured the exceptional quality
of the city’s products.
In 509 BC the promotion of political
competition by the strengthening of
democratic institutions fostered a new selfawareness
on the part of the citizens of Athens.
This would mark many of their actions, whether
collective or individual, over the next two
hundred years. During this period, political
power was often concentrated in the hands of
generals, and economic considerations,
military policy and civic patronage were closely
linked. The discovery of important new veins in
the silver mines at Laurium in southern Attica
in 483 BC, for example, allowed Athens to
immediately expand ship production in time to
defeat the Persian fleet at Salamis in 480 BC
and made it easier subsequently both to
construct new harbours at Peiraeus and to
THE AEGEAN 500-300 BC
DURING THIS PERIOD the Aegean
experienced an unprecedented expansion
in the production of permanent artworks,
many made for private individuals. From 600 BC
the Greeks began representing themselves in
life-size statues, first of marble and then of
bronze, and from 500 BC, especially after the
defeat of the mighty Persian Empire, the
production of hard and durable artefacts, which
could be as large as temples or as small as
seals, rapidly increased.
THE RISE OF THE COMMUNITY
The original driving force behind this
development was competition between the
more or less independent communities that
grew up on the many Aegean islands and in the
fertile valleys of the European and Asiatic
mainlands. The settlements close to the coasts
grew rapidly, safeguarding their security by
constructing stone walls and forming well-
1 AS SHIPBUILDING AND NAVIGATION SKILLS improved,
the Aegean became the focus of an efficient multidirectional
trade in raw materials and finished
goods. Improved metal technology meant that
raw marbles and finished statues, in
marble or bronze, could be shipped long
distances. Better communications, as well
as the interest in display that came with
greater wealth, brought more and richer
visitors to the many cult centres to fund
bigger and better buildings.
Communication stimulated rivalry and
the wave of construction of stone
temples that had begun in the sixth
century only accelerated in the fifth and
fourth. Alexander of Macedon, who
conquered first Greece and then the East
as far as India before his death in 323 BC,
opened the area to new exotic luxuries
such as glass and unfamiliar gems.
trained and -equipped citizen armies and
navies. Increasingly, skilled craftsmen, soldiers
and artists exploited, and improved upon, the
available technologies of metallurgy, and
stone- and woodworking, as well as developing
their skills in navigation, agriculture, ceramic
and textile manufacture, warfare and
education. They also maximized the resources
of their small territories by exchanging their
surpluses of raw materials and finished
products, including trained and untrained
people, over great distances.
Often the degree of a community’s, or
individual’s, success could be measured in
displays of artistic patronage at the great cult
centres, such as Olympia and Delphi, where
people from all over the Greek world, from
southern France to North Africa, gathered at
the Great Games. Competing cities built
treasuries to show off their trophies, and rival
athletes were commemorated in increasingly
lifelike statues.
THE ATHENIAN EXPANSION
No city was more productive or more
successful in this competition than Athens,
21˚20˚ 22˚ 23˚ 24˚ 25˚ 26˚ 27˚ 28˚
36˚
37˚
38˚
39˚
4
(Tyrannicides c.470 BC)
(Lysander and battle of Aigospotamoi c.400 BC;
Daochos group c.335 BC; Alexander and Krateros hunt c.330 BC)
Megara
Salamis
Dion
(Alexander and
Hephaisteion c.320 BC)
(Athena c.440 BC)
(Zeus c.430 BC;
Philip of Macedon
and family c.336 BC)
(Hera
c.415 BC)
(Asklepios
c.380 BC)
Eretria
Oropos
Rhamnous
Peiraeus
Kephalos
Kassope
Lemnos
Messene
Thorikos
Plataea
Agrinion
Molycrion
Corinth
Mantineia
Megalopolis
Cu
Cu
Thebes
Pharsalos
Vergina
Olynthus
(Athena Nike, Erechtheion, ‘Ilissos’)
(Apollo)
(Athena)
(Zeus, Stratios)
Priene
(Athena Polias)
(Artemis)
Sardis
(Artemis-
Cybele)
Sounion
(Athena)
Labranda
Aegina
(Aphaia)
(Asklepios)
Epidauros
(Athena Alea)
Stratos (Zeus)
(Apollo, Ptoios)
Nemea
(Zeus)
Argos
(Apollo)
Delos
(Athena Pronaia, Apollo)
(Ares, Hephaistos, Parthenon)
(Nemesis)
(Amphiaraos)
(Poseidon)
(Metroum, Zeus)
(Apollo)
(Hera)
TP
TP
TP
TP
TP
Dodona
Sparta
Elis
Brauron
Miletos
Knidos
Ephesos
Olympia Magnesia
Didyma
Samothrace
Samos
Corinth
Eleusis
Phigaleia Bassai
Lindos
Rhodes
Thasos
Tegea
Pentelikon Belevi
NaxosParos
Marmara
Delphi
Mt Ptoion
Amphipolis
Halikarnassos
Athens
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
A E G E A N S E A
IONIANSEA
BOEOTIA
LACONIA
RHODES
LESBOS
CHIOS
THASOS
ZAKYNTHOS
KEPHALLENIA
AETOLIA
CHALCIDICE
ARCADIA
PHRYGIA
C A R I A
MESSENIA
EUBOEA
A N A T O L I A
KYTHERA
NAXOS
PAROS
MELOS
LEMNOS
SAMOS
KOS
M
A C E D O N I A
T H R A C E
T H E S S A L Y
E
P
I R
U S
AT
TICA
gold,silver,timber
tin, silver
vases, figures
ivory, gems
marble from
Marmara
PELOPONNESE
N
0
0
50 miles
75 kms
1 The Aegean, 500-300 BC
sources of metals:
copper
gold
iron
movement of marble
movement of Attic pottery
Greek artists to Persia
trade routes
major shrine
major town planning
major Doric temple (with dedication)
major Ionic temple (with dedication)
tholos
monumental
tomb
tomb relief
council
chamber
choragic
monument
propylaeum
major
sculptural group
Cu
TP
lead
silver
marble quarry
minor shrine
stadium
stoa
hotel
theatre
gold and ivory
cult statues
pediments
monumental
paintings
painted pottery
THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN 500–100 BC
63
university (the ‘Museum’), and a great library in
Alexandria, but he, like others of his house,
also patronized Egyptian sanctuaries.
Traditional art forms continued alongside
Greek ones, and inscriptions were set up in
hieroglyphic and demotic Egyptian as well as
in Greek. Similarly, although Antioch and
Pergamum were very thoroughly Hellenized,
native cultures and languages, notably
Aramaic, continued to flourish away from these
centres. From the beginning, there was a
tendency for this vast empire to fragment, most
particularly Seleucid Asia.
In the later third century in the west of Asia
Minor, the native people of Pergamum who had
come to think of themselves as Greeks, under
the patronage of Pallas Athene, resisted both
Antiochus I and invading Gauls. They
established a confident and vital state, a major
artistic centre epitomized by a lively sculptural
tradition but also by mastery of other arts.
Concurrently in the Far East, in the old
Achaemenid satrapy of Bactria, a line of Greek
kings managed to maintain their independence
for two centuries, greatly influencing the native
arts of northern India.
THE NATURE OF HELLENISTIC ART
The major centres of Hellenistic patronage
were the royal courts. They patronized
architects and sculptors as well as those
involved in the luxury arts, notably silver plate
and gold jewellery. This was often set with
gems, such as garnets, from the Himalayas.
Such materials had not only been hitherto too
distant from the Mediterranean world of the
Greeks to be imported, but the use of gold,
gems, ivory, silks, gold inlaid glass, and even
silver plate, would have been regarded with
great suspicion by the more egalitarian states
of old Greece.
Artistic expression, as shown by the
blatant exploitation of emotion in art – as well
as in literature as epitomized by the ‘new
comedy’ of the dramatist Menander – laid
great stress on individual character. Some
artists worked on an enormous scale. Even
before the Hellenistic age had begun, King
Mausolus (r.377–353 BC) of the Persian satrapy
of Caria had ordered Pythias of Priene to build
a colossal hero-shrine for him and his wife,
2 PERGAMUM. The city was founded on terrain too
irregular to allow a grid pattern. Instead buildings
were arranged on a series of dramatically rising
terraces. Many of the buildings of Attalus I and
Eumenes II, including the Great Altar of Zeus,
celebrate the regime’s remarkable victories over
the invading Gauls.
Upper Agora
Lower Agora
Arsenal Barracks
Palace
Library
Theatre
Sanctuary of
Athena
Stoa
Sanctuary
Great AltarTemple of
Dionysus
Sanctuary of Demeter
Gymnasia
(i) young men
(ii) Ephebes
(iii) boys
N
0
0
200 metres
150 yds
2 Pergamum
RELIEF FROM GREAT ALTAR OF ZEUS, Pergamum.
Eumenes II (r.197–158 BC) had his defeat of the
Gauls symbolized as the triumph of the gods over
the giants. In this masterpiece of the Pergamene
school of sculpture, the contest is given an epic
grandeur. The calm efficiency of the Olympian
gods (in this detail led by Athena) contrasts with
the emotional decadence of their barbarian foes.
anticipating in effect the 33 metre (109 ft)
Helios statue which Chares of Lindos created
for the independent island state of Rhodes in
304 BC to celebrate the lifting of a siege by the
Macedonian Demetrius I Poliorcetes (‘The
Besieger of Cities’). By contrast other craftsmen
such as Alexander the Great’s gem-cutter
Pyrgoteles specialized in creating the same
powerful effects on a miniature scale.
Hellenism was now manifested by the
externals of language, manners and taste
rather than by race. Even though the old Greek
world remained, Sparta, for example, was
merely a historical curiosity. Even Athens was
valued mainly for its culture, being patronized
not by her own citizens but by others such as
King Attalus I of Pergamum (r.241–197 BC).
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
62
DURING THE SECOND HALF of the first
millennium BC, goods and techniques were
brought in an increasing stream from east to
west by way of the ‘silk route’ through Central
Asia to the Levant as well as up the Persian
Gulf from the Indian Ocean. The conquests of
Alexander III of Macedon (‘the Great’, r.334–323
BC), in their turn brought cultural influences
back from the West to the East – so that to
some degree we can see a real circulation of
culture during the Hellenistic period. This
brought with it a transmutation of art and
intellectual ideas everywhere, and so paved the
way for the Roman empire.
In the fifth and early fourth centuries, the
Greek world was made up of autonomous city
states, generally small in size and for the most
part short of natural resources, ruled directly
by their citizens. From the time of the
Macedonian conquest of Asia, the most
powerful Greek states were infinitely larger, far
richer and under the control of kings. These
rulers were widely regarded as divine, and
called themselves by such epithets as
‘Saviour’, ‘Benefactor’ or ‘God made manifest’.
Even long-standing taboos such as that
against incest were overturned in the adoption
by the Ptolemies of the age-old Pharaonic
custom of brother and sister marriages.
POLITICS AND PATRONAGE
The empire of Alexander briefly encompassed
the same territory as the old Achaemenid
empire of Persia, which he had overthrown, but
after his death it was broken into three by his
generals, who established themselves as his
heirs. Antigonus Monophthalmos (‘The Oneeyed’)
took Macedonia itself and the old
European possessions; Seleucus Nicator (‘The
Victorious’) seized the satrapy of Babylonia
and most of the rest of Asia, while Ptolemy
Soter (‘The Saviour’) established himself as
Pharaoh of Egypt.
Greek literature was encouraged by these
rulers. For example, the ‘sister-loving’ Ptolemy
II and his consort Arsinoe, established a
THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN 500-100 BC
SILVER TETRADRACHM of King Antimachus I (c.181 BC)
of Bactria. This masterful portrait shows the king
wearing the traditional Macedonian kausia headdress.
Although from the most easterly part of the
Greek world, this coin shows the typical Hellenistic
interest in physiognomy.
60˚45˚30˚
45˚
30˚
Tropic of Cancer
Pergamum
Priene
Delos
Miletus
Cnidus
Lebena
Halicarnassus
Ephesus
Antioch
Antioch
Aspendos
Kourion
Nea Paphos
Trapezus Artaxata
Ecbatana
Hecatompylos
Alexandria Areion
Alexandria
Prophthasia
Alexandria
Alexandria
Olbia
Chersonnesus
Panticapaeum
Alexandria Eschate
Patala
Gabae
Maracanda
Ai Khanum
Taxila
Bactra
Pura
Carmana
Zadracarta
Apollonia
Samothrace CyzicusOlynthus
Eretria
Cos
Didyma
Odessus
Thessalonica
Pella
Aegae
Demetrias
Lysimachea
Istrus
Ancyra
Sinope
Petra
Jerusalem
Jericho
Apamea
Dura-Europos
Babylon
Ptolemais
Persepolis
Susa
Athens
Delphi
EpidaurusOlympia
Sicyon
Corinth
Vergina
Lefkadia
Kazanluk
Dilberzin
Sparta
Cyrene
Euhesperides
Alexandria
Memphis
Berenice
Seleucia
Heraclea
Byzantium
Tyre
Sidon
Nile
Euphr
ates
O
xus
Jaxartes
Tigris
Indus
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
B L A C K S E A
R
E
D
S
E
A
ARABIANSEA
PERSIAN
GULFC
A
S
P
IA
N
SEA
ARAL
SEA
AEGEAN
SEA
H I N D U
K U S H
I R A N I A N
P L A T E A U
C A U C A S U S
Z A
G
R
O
S
M
T
S
CYPRUSRHODES
LYCIA
BOSPORAN KINGDOM
CARIA
S E L E U C I D
K I N G D O MA R A B I A
I N D I A
GREECE
MACEDON
BITHYNIA
GALATIA
MEDIA
ATROPATENE
P A R T H I A
MARGIANA
E G Y P T
CAPPADO
CI
A
M
ESO
P
O
TA
M
IA
BABYLO
N
IA
PERS
IS
C A R M A N I A
S
Y
RIA
G E D R O S I A
D
R
A
N
G
IANA
A R A C H O S I A
S O G D I A N A
B A C T R I A
A R E I A
A
R
M
ENIA
HYR
CANIA
PAPHLAGONIA
spices
silk and spices
gem
s
and
spices
ivoryandslaves
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
1 The Hellenistic World, c.240 BC
independent Greek states
Antigonid Kingdom and dependencies
Ptolemaic Kingdom and dependencies
Kingdom of Pergamum
Hellenized non-Greek kingdoms
Seleucid Kingdom and vassal states
major sculpture centres
wall paintings (predominantly tombs)
important sanctuaries
mosaic workshops
Hellenistic royal palaces
gold finds
finds of silver plate
gem source
mint
currents in the Mediterranean
1 THE HELLENISTIC EMPIRES were essentially landbased.
They were connected by caravan routes
and, to some extent, by rivers such as the Tigris,
Euphrates and Nile. Luxury goods were
transported by sea through the Mediterranean.
The centres of patronage in this world were often
royal palaces. Fabulously rich kings were able to
collect artworks from distant places or
commission painters, gem-cutters and architects
to set up court studios.
40˚
10˚
Bononia (Felsina)
Marzabotto
Arretium
Vulci
Rome
Nemi
Caere
Tarquinii
Veii
Praeneste
Poseidonia (Paestum)
Elea
Taras (Tarentum)
Clusium
Urbs Vetus (Orvieto)
Morgantina
Locri
Croton
SyracuseAcragas
(Agrigentum)
Selinus
Segesta
Po
Tiber
A
D
R
I
A
T
I
C
S
E
A
M E D I T E R R A N E A N
S E A
A
L P S
A
P E N
N
I N
E S
VENETI
CENOMANI
SENONES
LINGONES
BO
II
ETRUSC
ANS
FALISCI
LATINI
VOLSCI
CAMPANI
LUCANI
S I C I L I A N S
APU
LI
BRUTTII
MESSAPII
SAM
NITES
CORSICA
SARDINIA
I T A L Y
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
2 Italy, c.400 BC
peoples
paintings
bronzes
terracottas
jewellery
mosaics
Greek temples
non-Greek temples
sculpture
VOLSCI
THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN 500–100 BC
65
recording its manufacture in Rome) and some
extremely advanced gems, and coins of
thoroughly Greek style but inscribed in Latin.
Initially, Roman expansion was directed
against other similar Italian peoples as well as
the Greeks in the south. Ultimately, hegemony
in the Mediterranean had to be settled with
Carthage. Remarkably, Rome managed to defeat
this centralized monarchy without rejecting her
own republican constitution. The First Punic
War (264–241 BC) ended in the Carthaginians
being driven from Sicily. The Second Punic War
(218–201) began disastrously for Rome, with the
Carthaginians under Hannibal invading Italy.
However, it ended with the defeat of what was
by then the only power which could halt
Rome’s seemingly inexorable progress.
In the following century, wars against
Macedon and other Greeks led to an enormous
influx of wealth. Some Romans acquired great
personal fortunes, although there was always
pressure to give much of the loot from the sack
of cities such as Syracuse (211 BC) or Corinth
(in 146 BC) to the gods.
THE CULTURE OF THE WEST
Although power in the western Mediterranean
was in Roman hands by 200, the cultural
influence of the Greeks was overwhelming. In
many respects it took the militarily stronger
Romans captive. Some Greek cities remained
independent and flourished, notably Massalia.
Hellenization came mainly from Roman
conquerors wishing to emulate what they had
seen in Sicily and the east.
FUNERARY STELE from Bologna with a wolf suckling a
boy child (mid-fourth century), showing that other
Italians shared this device, associated with the
Roman myth of Romulus and Remus.
1 THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN was culturally very
diverse, with only small areas colonized by nonnative
peoples, Greeks and Phoenicians. Syracuse
and Carthage were organized like Hellenistic
monarchies, but one native state, the Roman
Republic, defeated them and assumed a potential
for patronage surpassing all of them. Concurrently,
trade routes shown through Gaul and the eastern
Alps were taken over by Roman merchants.
2 ITALY HAD A great diversity of peoples. Power
lay in city states, mainly on the coast. Apart
from the Greek cities of the south,the most
important were those of Etruria, rich from trade
with Gauls to the north as well as with Greeks
and Etruscans. Culturally related, but speaking a
different language, the Latins of Rome
ultimately took over the entire peninsula.
to Greek and Phoenician influence, it is very
distinctive in its character.
The same can be said of the art of the city
states of Etruria, which grew rich through
trade, for example, in the eastern Alps through
Spina. Etruscan painted tombs, ornate
jewellery and engraved gems, and bronze and
terracotta sculpture (though obviously Greek
influenced) could not be mistaken for the
productions of any other people. Other Italian
peoples such as Lucanians and Samnites were
likewise influenced by Greek artistic styles,
though – with a superb position halfway up
the western coast of Italy – the Latins of Rome
were even better able to benefit from trading
and cultural currents within the peninsula. Not
only were they in touch with Etruria and
Magna Graecia but even with Athens.
By the later fourth and early third century
BC, Rome was in the cultural forefront, as it
was a political leader in the Mediterranean.
Among surviving artworks are the bronzes of
Praeneste (one of which bears an inscription
Nevertheless Italian art remained
distinctive and far from uniform. Separate
styles of gem-carving for signet rings were used
in Campania and Etruria, and these were in
their turn different from those of the eastern
(Hellenistic) world. Etruscan terracotta
sculpture, especially the tradition of funerary
chests with images of the deceased are
similarly idiosyncratic; while the historian
Polybius (c.200–118 BC) records a distinctive
Roman custom associated with wax funerary
effigies. Religious considerations also dictated
the continued use of a specific type of temple
on a high podium, uninfluenced by the Greek
temple type. And of course, the Latin language
more than held its own in the West against the
progress of Greek.
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
64
Greek expansion was always limited by
the dominant power of the Phoenicians of
Carthage, who controlled not only the western
part of North Africa (especially Tunisia) but
also had important trading posts in western
Sicily, Sardinia and southern Spain.
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
Influential as these essentially easternMediterranean
peoples were in moulding the
art and culture of the area, indigenous peoples
were of at least equal importance, one group
increasingly so. Apart from the barbarian art of
the Celts and related tribes such as the
Ligurians, a high culture developed in eastern
Spain characterized by elegant pottery, a
superb tradition of bronze casting and, above
all, sculpture. Although this owed something
THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN in this
period is, in many respects, a great contrast
with the East. Although there were powerful
city states in southern Italy (Magna Graecia)
and especially eastern Sicily – where the
kingdom of Syracuse had much in common
with some of the smaller Hellenistic
principalities – Greece was not the dominant
power here. Certainly, through being wellpositioned
for trade, some Greek communities
achieved considerable wealth and influence.
Important in this sense were Tarentum on the
heel of Italy, well-placed for trade up the
Adriatic, and Massalia and her colonies in
southern Gaul and in northeastern Spain
(notably Emporiae). They grew rich on
commerce up the Rhône and in the northern
part of Iberia.
THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN 500-100 BC
DAMA DE BAZA. This limestone sculpture of a
goddess seated on an elaborate winged and lionfooted
throne shows the mixed traditions of
Iberian sculpture in the fourth century. The deity is
related to the Punic Tanit and the Greek
Persephone, but the jewellery she wears is
distinctively Iberian. The statue seems to have
served as a funerary urn.
10˚
10˚
20˚
40˚
0˚
Cu
Cu Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Temple of Melkart
Río Tinto
mines
Nemi
Luceria
(Felsina)
Verona
Comum
Entremont
Roquepertuse
Glanum
Ensérune
Tolosa (Toulouse)
Mediolanum (Milan)
Bononia (Bologna)
Clusium
Ariminum
Spina
Perusia
Spoletium
Alba FucensOstia
Motya
Èze
Nicaea
Tivissa
Tarraco
Numantia Rhode
Emporiae
Ullastret
(Gerona)
Agathe
Santesteban
Despenaperros
Baza
CigarralejoPorcuna
Castulo
Tejada la Vieja
Massalia
˘
Carthago Nova
Ebusus
Paterno
Volsinii (Bolsena)
Taras (Tarentum)
Cumae
Santa
Eufemia
Avola
Gela
Sabratha
Oea
Leptis Magna
Vulci
Populonia
Rome
Caere
Pyrgi
Tarquinii
Cosa
Casilinum
(Capua)
Praeneste
Tarracina
Puteoli
Stabiae
Salernum
Pompeii
Nola
Veii
Neapolis
Herculaneum
Poseidonia
Heraclea
Sybaris
(Thurii)
Metapontum
Apollonia
Canusium
Beneventum
Aesernia
Kerkouane
Hadrumetum
Kef el-Blida
Utica
Zama
Cirta
Iol
Selinus
Nora
Tharros
Himera
Morgantina
Heraclea Minoa
Zancle (Messana)
Carthage
Syracuse
Segesta
Acragas
(Agrigentum)
Croton
Locri
Rhegion (Rhegium)
Montefortino
Arretium
Marzabotto
Pisae
Gades
Malaca
Carteia
Tingis
Abdera
Rusaddir
Carmona
Hemeroscopeum
Saguntum
Tagus
Eb
ro
Rhône
Po
Tiber
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
M
E
D
I T E R
R
A
N
E
A
N
S E A
ADRIATIC
SEA
T Y R R H E N I A N
S E A
A
L P S
P
Y
R
E
N
E E S
C E L T I B E R I A N S
B E R B E R S
I L L Y R I A N S
N U M I D I A N S
C
E
L
T
S
L I G U R I A N S
SICILY
SARDINIA
CORSICA
BA L E A R I C I S
A F R I C A
Tinfrom
Bri
tain
Tin from Britain
amber
N
0
0
150 miles
200 kms
cities of Celtic origin
peoples
currents in the Mediterranean
silver sources
silver finds
gold sources
gold finds
tin sources
BERBERS
tin trade routes
amber
amber trade route
centres of bronze manufacturing
mints
paintings
mosaics
palaces Cu
Greek temples
important early non-Greek temples
Punic sculpture
Iberian sculpture
Greek sculpture
Etruscan sculpture
Celto-Ligurian sculpture
copper sources
1 Greeks, Carthaginians and Etruscans: The Western Mediterranean World, c.450 BC
Punic settlement
Iberian settlement
Greek hegemony
Punic cities
Iberian cities
Greek cities
Italic cities
Etruscan cities
THE MEDITERRANEAN 100 BC–AD 100
67
Hill. In many respects the city was the direct
successor of the great Hellenistic royal cities,
such as Antioch, Pergamum and Alexandria –
though by providing more marble façades,
more public sculptures, more exotic beasts and
larger spectacles than had ever been seen
before, Rome demonstrated her superiority.
THE BRINGER OF CIVILIZATION
Roman culture sometimes appeared upstart
when viewed from the east, but it was the
bringer of Mediterranean civilization to much
of western Europe, including northern Gaul,
Germany and Britain. Such provinces fell into
Roman hands partly through conquest and
partly through diplomacy, an art in which the
Romans excelled. Julius Caesar and especially
Augustus founded settlements of Romans,
generally retired soldiers, throughout the
empire but most densely in the west, as
bastions of Roman culture.
Greco-Roman culture was not only spread
by colonists but even more resolutely by ruling
elites among the peoples under Roman sway.
Proud to be given Roman citizenship, they vied
with each other as public benefactors. Notable
for their wealth and influence over their
subjects were native princes such as Herod the
Great in Judaea (r. c.40 BC–4 BC), Juba II of
Mauretania (r.25 BC–AD 23) or King Togidubnus
in Britain (second half of first century AD), who
lived opulent life-styles in rooms veneered with
marble and floored with mosaic. Herod built
several palaces including Herodium and
Masada; Togidubnus is believed to have lived
in a large villa at Fishbourne, famous for its
elegant formal garden. Such men re-founded
cities: Caesarea Maritima by Herod, Caesarea
(modern Cherchel) by Juba and most probably
Noviomagus (Chichester) by Togidubnus,
endowing them with splendid buildings,
notably temples. They also used their wealth to
endow temples elsewhere, from Herod’s temple
to the Jewish God in Jerusalem to the temple of
Sulis Minerva at Bath, probably built by
Togidubnus.
Some arts appear to have been more
homogeneous than others. Silver plate,
produced in relatively few centres for very rich
patrons, was light and supremely portable. It
was spread through the empire and even
beyond the frontiers as diplomatic gifts.
Businessmen dined off the same plate as army
officers took on campaign. On the other hand,
sculpture, wall painting and even mosaic was
often made locally in provincial workshops.
Only the most important artists normally
travelled; the rest stayed and worked in their
home towns. It was not easy for those who
were not rich to go far, especially overland, and
this prevented total homogeneity of culture.
Regional schools in sculpture, painting,
mosaics and jewellery added interest to Roman
art. They also provided pools of non-Classical
ideas such as the frontality and linearity
displayed in some of the art of Syria and Egypt,
which may have influenced later art.
Augustus wanted to stress Roman and
Italian customs and religious rites. In his reign
the Latin language, handled by writers of
distinction, achieved parity with Greek. Yet
mainstream Roman art and architecture, both
public and private, could not avoid being a
development of the late Hellenistic culture,
making use of its existing rich repertoire of
mythology, iconography, symbolic
personification and vegetal decoration.
ODYSSEY FRESCO from a house on the Esquiline hill in
Rome. This scene shows the Laestrygones of Sicily
preparing to attack Ulysses’ ships, in a landscape
showing the rocky terrain of the Mediterranean
basin. In the mid-first century BC, classical Greek
culture was widely admired and imitated. Shortly
after the Odyssey frescoes were painted, Virgil
wrote The Aeneid, likewise with an Italian setting.
2 THE EMPIRE WAS HELD TOGETHER by ancient maritime
trade routes which in part reflect natural features
such as currents. Although portable works of art
such as silver plate were spread around the Roman
world, difficulties in communication – for example,
over mountains and through marshy areas – still
allowed a diversity of local artistic schools: for
example, of interior decoration and sculpture.
THE GEMMA AUGUSTEA, a sardonyx cameo cut in the
tradition of late Ptolemaic cameos but showing a
Roman subject – a victorious general visiting the
Emperor Augustus after a campaign. The stone
may have been imported from India and cut by a
Greek artist in Rome.
40°30°20°10°0°
30°
40°
50°
Gades
Tingis
Tarraco
Narbo
Mogontiacum
Messana
Leptis Magna
Rhegium
Panormus
Caesarea
Rome/Ostia
Puteoli
Salonae
Dyrrhachium
Thessalonica
Tomi
Olbia
Panticapaeum
Apollonia
Aquileia
Massilia
Ancona
Magdalensberg
Brundisium
Athens
Delos
Byzantium
Trebizond
Alexandria
Gaza
Rhodes
Myra
Ephesus
Sidon
Corinth
Cephalonia
Cyrene
Carthage
Pentelic
Quarries
Carrara
Barcino
Vasio
Fishbourne
Utica
Emporiae Praeneste
Tivoli
Rabat
Hildesheim
Arcisate
Vicarello
Thorey
Bursa
Hockwold
Verulamium
Hoby
Antioch
Capua
Jericho
Herodium
Masada
Herculaneum
Pergamum
Aphrodisias
Pompeii
Glanum
Brixia
Danube
Vistula
Loire
Nile
Tigris
Euphrate
s
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
N O R T H
S E A
M E D I T
E
R
R
A
N E A N S E A
BALTIC
SE
A
B L A C K S E A
RED
SEA
CAUCASUS
CARPATHIAN
M
T
S
CORSICA
SARDINIA
SICILY
CRETE
CYPRUS
BALEARIC IS
N
0
0
500 miles
750 kms
2 Art and Trade
Roman Empire
maritime trade routes
sculpture centre
painting school
silver workshop
finds of silver plate
gem workshop
1st century BC-1st century AD
mosaic school 1st century BC
mosaic school 1st century AD
marble quarry
66
THE PEOPLE OF LATIUM (the plain around
Rome) forged a new civilization after
throwing off their Etruscan rulers in about 500
BC. It reflected both the Etruscans (whose art
was very influenced by the Greeks) and the
Greek cities of southern Italy. Greek influence
intensified in the third and second centuries BC
through eastern Mediterranean contacts – at
first commercial and cultural, then political
and military, resulting in a vast Roman empire.
The process of eastern Mediterranean
conquest was only complete with the defeat of
the Ptolemaic empire in 31 BC by Octavian,
soon to become Augustus, the first emperor. By
the middle of the first century BC, however,
plundering Greek cities for treasures of
precious metals, gems and statues had already
come to seem uncouth. The writings of Romans
of the late republic and early empire confirm
the Hellenized character of their world. Cicero
expected to buy copies of Greek master-pieces
for his home and prosecuted the governor of
Sicily, Gaius Verres, for looting his province.
ROMAN PATRONAGE
The importance of Rome as a centre of
patronage is shown by finds such as that – in
the wreck of a ship at Nahdia off Tunisia – of
sculptures made in Athenian workshops for
export, as well as finds of numerous neo-Attic
sculptures from Rome, Pompeii, Herculaneum
and elsewhere. Many of the most important
artists of the first century BC, such as the
sculptor and silversmith Pasiteles and the gemcutters
Aulos and Dioskourides, were Greeks
working for Roman patrons.
The same is true in the early empire when
Zenodoros set up statues both for the Gallic tribe,
the Arverni, and for the Emperor Nero. Early in
the second century, Trajan employed Apollodorus
of Damascus to build his forum, as Greek in
conception and decoration as it was Roman.
The city of Rome grew prodigiously in
the first centuries BC and AD, eventually to a
million or more inhabitants. They were
provided with ever more temples and public
places (the imperial fora), with horti (public
gardens), baths and major centres of
entertainment, including theatres, race tracks
and the enormous Flavian amphitheatre now
known as the Colosseum. These public
buildings provided unrivalled displays of art
ranging from Greek pedimental groups to gem
collections shown to the cognoscenti visiting
select temples. There were also the private
marvels of the imperial palaces on the Palatine
THE MEDITERRANEAN 100 BC-AD 100
3 THE CITY OF ROME was the focus of the empire up
to the third century AD, but many of its grandest
buildings date from the reign of Augustus and his
successors, who wished to impress foreign visitors
by the grandeur of its buildings and provide ‘bread
and circuses’ for the urban masses.
1 COLONIES CLUSTER IN THE WEST in this view of the
Roman Empire shortly after AD 100, when it
reached its greatest extent. They were leading
centres of Italian culture, but the many important
centres of Greek culture would in their turn
Hellenize members of the colonial elites, like the
young Hadrian – future emperor of Rome – from
Italica in southern Spain.
40°30°20°10°0°
30°
40°
50°
Epidaurus
Dodona
Claros
Antioch
Alexandria
Rhodes
Cyrene
Ephesus
Delos
Athens
Eleusis
Syracuse
Massilia
Pergamum
Augusta Taurinorum
Parma
Minturnae
Augusta Praetoria
Brixia
Cremona
Ateste
Sora
Bononia
Pisaurum
Ariminum Senia
Narona
Patrae
Falerio
Firmum
Ancona
Beneventum
Antiochia
Lystra
Olbasa
Comama
Berytus
Cremna
Parlais
Venusia
Noviodunum
Lugdunum
Tarraco
Tucci
Astigi
Emerita Augusta
Pax Iulia
Cartenna
Gunugu
Zuccabar
Aquae
Calidae
Rusazu
Saldae
GilgiliCirta
Thubinica
Utica
Thermae
Tyndaris
Catana
Simitthu
Sicca
Veneria
Neapolis
Uthina
Tupusuctu
Rusguniae
Ucubi Carthago
Nova
Osca
Calagurris
Turiasso
Bilbilis
Dertosa
Arausio
Forum Iulii
NuceriaVenafrum
Corduba
Pollentia
Palma
Clupea
Messana
Curubis
Tragurium
Celsa
Arelate
Baeterrae
Carthage
Capua
Butua
Acruvium
Lipara
Allifae
Calatia
Nola
Corinth
Buthrotum
Sinope
Narbo
Italica
Scodra
Lissus
Cassandrea
Lampsacus
Heraclea Pontica
Dium
Risinium
Pompeii
Praeneste
Casilinum
Florentia
Arretium
Interamnia
Clusium
Faesulae
Aleria
Mariana
Jerusalem - centre of unique counter-culture
Danube
Vistula
Loire
Nile
Tigris
Euphrate
s
Ebr
o
Tagus
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
N O R T H
S E A
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
BALTIC
S
EA
B L A C K S E A
RED
SEA
AEG
EA
N
SE
A
C A U C A S U S
CARPATHIAN
M
T
S
CORSICA
SARDINIA
CRETE
CYPRUS
BALEARIC IS
GERMANIA
INFERIOR
BRITANNIA
43-71
LYCIA 43
JUDAEA
EPIRUS
DACIA
106
ACHAEA
GERMANIA
SUPERIOR 83
ALPES
POENINAE
ALPES COTTIAE 64
ALPES
MARITIMAE
A F R I C A
A
F
R
I C A
ARABIA
106
MACEDONIA
MOESIA INFERIOR
SUPE
RIOR
NORICUMRAETIA
BELGICA
LUGDUNENSIS
AQUITANIA
NARBONENSISTARRACONENSIS
LUSITANIA
BAETICA
MAURETANIA 44
NUMIDIA
CYRENAICA
A E G Y P T U S
SYRIA
MESOPOTAMIA
115-117
ASSYRIA
114-117
CAPPADOCIA
18
ARMENIA
114-117
A S I A
GALATIA
CILICIA
T H R A C I A
4 6
BITHYNIA & PONTUS 107
PANNONIA
SUPERIOR
PANNONIA
INFERIOR
ILLYRICUM
N
0
0
500 miles
750 kms
1 Colony and Empire
Roman Empire, AD 14
provinces added after AD 14, with date
colonies founded up to death of Julius Caesar, 44 BC
colonies founded up to death of Augustus, AD 14
centres of Greek artistic patronage
places of pilgrimage
Castra Urbana
Stadium of
Domitian
Baths of
Nero
Odeon
Baths of Trajan
Golden House of Nero
Baths of Titus
Castra
Pantheon
Castra Praetoria
Baths of
Caracalla
Temple of
Apollo
Colosseum
Mausoleum
of Hadrian
Circus
of Hadrian
Saepta
Julia
Baths of Agrippa
Theatre of
Marcellus
Theatre of Balbi
Circus
Maximus
Forum of Augustus
Emporium
Mausoleum
of Augustus
Theatre of Pompey
Forum
Julium
Basilica Julia
Circus Flaminius
Forum
RiverTiber
Quirinal
Hill Viminal
Hill
Esquiline
Hill
Palatine Hill
Caelian
Hill
Aventine
Hill
Capitoline Hill
CAMPUS
MARTIUS
Via Praenestina
Via Latina
Campus
Vaticanus
Pagus
Janiculensis
Aurelian
Wall
Via Nomentana
Via Flaminia
Via Portuensis
Via Ostiensis
Via Ardeatina
Via Appia
Servian Wall
Via Aurelia
Via Tiburtina Vetus
Via Tiburtina
N
3 Rome
road
wall
gate
bridge
aqueduct
Republican buildings
Augustan buildings
later Imperial buildings
0 500 m
0 500 yds
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
THE MEDITERRANEAN AD 100–300
exotic products of India and Sri Lanka (such as
gems, perfumes and spices), and of equatorial
Africa (ivory and black slaves).
Although by modern standards the Romans
did not really change the nature of the planet,
the historian Tacitus places in the mouth of a
British chieftain Calgacus sentiments that
sound modern in their environmental alarm:
‘Brigands of the world, they have ruined the
land by their indiscriminate robbery, and now
they ransack the sea ... Theft, murder and rape,
the liars call empire; they create a desolation
and call it peace’ (Tacitus, Agricola 30).
While some of the items imported or
extracted had few redeeming features (the slave
trade and the trade in wild animals), others
allowed the creation of new categories of art,
decoration and dress. The coloured marbles
from Mons Porphyrites in Egypt became elegant
columns in Imperial buildings; amber from the
Baltic and a great variety of precious stones from
Afghanistan and India, including lapis lazuli,
garnets and even sapphires were worked into
jewellery in Rome, Aquileia and elsewhere;
fragments of silk from China have been found
as far to the west as York, while the spice trade
had a direct effect on art as seen in distinctive
pepper pots.
LOCAL SCHOOLS AND MATERIALS
Despite the large numbers of statues carved
from marbles quarried in Greece, Asia Minor or
Italy (Carrara), in many regions of the Empire,
including the northwestern provinces (Gaul and
Britain), the Balkans and Syria sculptors worked
in local limestones and sandstones. These
works are often far more individual, perhaps
because they were not normally exported.
2 OUTSIDE THE MEDITERRANEAN most provinces were self-sufficient in their basic
needs, and mainly traded luxury items. Within the Mediterranean trade was
important for a wider variety of goods (to make up for occasional crop
failures or the lack of certain raw materials). Particularly important for art
were the numerous stone quarries. Though most were of only local
significance, some provided stone across the Empire, which was transported
in unhewn blocks or as partially worked pieces, such as columns or sarcophagi
which would be finished on site. There were huge stone depots at Ostia and
Rome. Coloured marbles were much sought after for decorating walls and
pavements and also for statuary, but the most important trade was in white
marble. The best-known quarries for these were in Greece and Asia Minor,
such as those providing marble for sculpture from Pentelikon in Greece.
DETAIL FROM A MOSAIC (‘The Great Hunt’) from the
Villa Filosofiana near Piazza Armerina, Sicily,
showing the embarcation of an antelope (perhaps
at Carthage) destined for the amphitheatre at
Rome (c.AD 300, preserved in situ).
30°
40°
50°
0° 10° 20° 30°
Cu
Cu
Londinium
Augusta
Trevirorum
Colonia Agrippinensis
Mogontiacum
Augusta
Vindelicorum
Mediolanum
Bononia
Salonae
Carnuntum
Syracuse
Tarentum
Nicomedia
Sinope
Athens
Rome
Ostia
Lugdunum
Byzantium
Narbo
Tarraco
Carthago
NovaCorduba
Emerita Augusta
Tingis Caesarea
Gades
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
N O R T H
S E A
M E D
I
T
E
R
R
A N E A N S E A
B
L A C K S E A
RED
SEA
BRITANNIA
GERMANIA
INFERIOR
GERMANIA
SUPERIOR
BELGICA
LUGDUNENSIS
AQUITANIA
NARBONENSIS
TARRACONENSIS
LUSITANIA
BAETICA
MAURETANIA
TINGITANA
MAURETANIA
CAESARIENSIS NUMIDIA
CYRENAICA
AEGYPTUS
ARABIA
JUDAEA
CYPRUS
CILICIA
CRETA
SICILIA
ITALIA
SARDINIA
CORSICA
ALPES
COTTIAE
ALPES
MARITIMAE
ALPES
POENINAE
EPIRUS
ACHAEA
MACEDONIA
LYCIA-PAMPHYLIA
DALMATIA
PANNONIA
NORICUM
RAETIA
DACIA
THRACIA
MOESIA
INFERIORMOESIA
SUPERIOR
CAPPADOCIA
A S I A
GALATIA
BITHYNIA AND
PONTUS
S Y R I A
A
F
R
I
C
A
Hadrian’s
Wall
from
Afghanistan/
India
from India/
Sri Lanka/
S Arabia
from
China
from
China
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
Almost every city had its workshops of wallpainters
and stuccoists, including Rome (note
the catacombs) and Ostia – and ranging from
Verulamium and Colonia Agrippina in the west
to Leptis Magna in Tripolitania to Dura Europos
(with its strikingly beautiful painted synagogue)
on the eastern border of the empire. Funerary
portraits on wooden panels from the Faiyum in
Egypt are good evidence for portable painting,
which was probably widespread.
Mosaicists used mainly local stones,
together with glass and pottery, and the work
of regional workshops can often be recognized,
for instance those of Antioch, Cyprus,
Carthage and Augusta Trevirorum (Trier). No
less than six distinctive schools have been
recognized in Britain alone, though even here
they drew on a common stock of ideas,
originally brought in by artists from other
provinces or else recorded in portable media,
such as illustrated scrolls and, later, books.
In this respect the most important material
in the empire was probably papyrus from the
Nile Delta, the main medium for permanent
record-keeping (though in northwestern
Europe slivers of wood were often used as
substitutes). In the late Roman period
parchment was used for luxury books, and
there was a vast manufacture from animal
skins ranging through dyed and gilded leathers
to utilitarian objects such as boots and horsetrappings.
Ultimately, the art of the Empire
rested on insatiable consumerism.
AKEY FACTOR IN the development of art in the
Roman Empire was the wealth derived
from agriculture – wine, olive oil, grain, and to a
more limited degree, the produce of the sea –
which created aristocracies able to purchase art
on a large scale. The other determining
influence was the geographical scope and variety
of the empire. The terrain in many regions was
difficult, for example, the mountains of the
Balkans, the hinterland of Asia Minor, the
Atlas Mountains and even northern Britain,
and areas of desert in parts of the Levant, Egypt
and North Africa. Thus, communication by sea
was often more reliable than that by land,
though the Mediterranean has yielded
many shipwrecks (the density around
France and Italy merely reflects the
focus of recent marine archaeology).
Few men travelled through the
entire Empire – Hadrian (AD
117–138) was exceptional in this
respect. Provinces and even parts of
provinces always differed markedly
from one another, and almost every
town of any size had its own traditions
in arts such as sculpture and mosaic
as it did in mundane crafts such as
pottery. Nevertheless, culture, based
on the universal use of Greek and Latin,
the idea of the city as the basis for
civilized life, and efforts to standardize
dress and the appearance (if not the
substance) of religious cult lent the
Empire unity.
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
THE MEDITERRANEAN AD 100-300
68
1 SILVER HOARDS have been found all across the Empire, particularly in the north
and west, though silverware was equally valued in the east. The quality of the
craftsmanship, together with the value of the material, made it a much-traded
commodity, though little is known of the individual silversmiths. Mosaic
schools arose in almost every major town of the empire, and especially in Asia
Minor and North Africa. Mosaic pavements became a very popular art form,
and genuine regional schools developed with their own distinctive styles. By
contrast, the models for the local sculpture schools frequently came from far
away. Often local sculptors adapted classical models in ways that suggested
little understanding of the canons of classical art.
TRANSPORTING ART AND MATERIALS
Despite great difficulties, works of art and raw
materials were extensively transported, as shown
by the well-studied finds of silver hoards, and
Attic and Proconnesian sarcophagi in map 2
(the last two are types of sarcophagi named
after their regions of main production).
The trade in marble and metals provides
another graphic instance: both were often
extracted from almost inaccessible
mountainous regions, though the building of
roads, bridges and large ships with substantial
port facilities made this prodigious exploitation
of natural resources possible. From the edges
of the Roman world and beyond came the
30°
40°
50°
0° 10° 20° 30° 40°
Colonia Agrippina
Glanum
Pompeii
Thamugadi
Caesarea
Lixus
Volubilis
Italica
Conimbriga
Sabratha
Delos
Paphos
Augusta Emerita
Luguvallium
Corinium
Verulamium
Camulodunum
Aquae Sulis
Augusta Trevirorum
Celeia
Sarmisegetuza
Adamklissi
Lugdunum
Vienna
Augustodunum
Agedincum
Aventicum
Salonae
Carthage
Leptis Magna
Pergamum
Proconnesus
Aphrodisias
Palmyra
Dura Europos
Hatra
Syracuse
Agrigentum
Tarentum
Dyrrhachium
Neapolis
Athens
Corinth Sparta
Alexandria
Ascalon
Philadelphia
Fayum
Tyre
Ephesus
Rhodes
Cyrene
Berenice
Antioch
Sidon
Attaleia
Tarsus
Rome
Ostia
Pisae
Aquileia
Byzantium
Thessalonica
NaissusNarbo
Arelate
Burdigala
Tarraco
Nemausus
Nile
Ebro
Loire
Seine
Rhône
Danube
Tagus
Gar
onne
Po
Tiber
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
N O R T H
S E A
M E D
I
T
E
R
R
A N E A N S E A
B L A C K S E A
RED
SEA
AEGEAN
SEA
PYRENEES
CYPRUS
CRETE
SICILY
SARDINIA
A F R I C A
BALEARIC IS
CORSICA
gem and
amber working
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 Art in the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
local sculpture schools
major mosaic workshops
finds of Proconnesian
sarcophagi
finds of Attic sarcophagi
Roman imperial silver hoards
painting
2 Trade in the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
province boundaries
Roman roads
site of 4 or more shipwrecks
major sources of traded items:
gold
silver
copper
tin
iron
lead
finished bronze items
glass
jet
amber
Cu
papyrus
Samian pottery
grain
olive oil
wine
spices
silks
perfumes
gems
ivory
slaves
wild beasts
major quarries of
decorative stones
(marble, coloured stones,
porphyries, granites)
M
BACCHUS SUPPORTED BY A SATYR – an amber
figurine of the third century, found in a
tomb at Esch in the Netherlands. Amber was
a prized luxury, believed to possess magical
powers. It was obtained from the Baltic,
worked in Aquileia, northern Italy – where
amber figurines and ornaments have been
found in quantity – and disseminated
throughout the Roman world.
69
EUROPE AD 300–600
71
and at Cologne. The latter industry, perhaps in
part in the hands of Syrian craftsmen, survived
the end of Roman control in the fifth century
and was involved in making claw-beakers and
other barbarian types. ‘Cage’ cups in g1ass
(cups with an openwork outer layer) seem to
have been widespread, made in both western
and eastern workshops. It is probable that the
models were far more precious vessels in hard
stone. Finally, gold glasses – that is, layered
glasses ornamented with thin sheets of gold
leaf showing portraits, Christian scenes and
(very occasionally) Jewish or pagan subjects –
are associated with Rome and were sometimes
employed decoratively in the catacombs.
The most characteristic of the precious
materials used at this time was elephant ivory
– normally for small boxes (generally with
biblical scenes) or decorative plaques, often
hinged together to comprise an invitation to a
wedding. Sometimes much larger objects were
made, such as Bishop Maximian’s throne at
Ravenna. Not only was ivory very beautiful and
capable of taking excellent carving, but it was
also very expensive. Quite clearly ivory was a
suitable homage to pay an emperor. One of the
finest surviving diptych-leaves shows Justinian
on horseback and various offerings being
brought to him, including an elephant tusk.
Other diptych-leaves show lion and stag hunts,
demonstrating the same cavalier attitude to
animal resources displayed by ‘The Great Hunt’
mosaic from Piazza Armerina (see p.69).
The superb cypress doors of St Sabina,
Rome (early fifth century), carved with biblical
scenes, stand for the widespread use of timber,
decorative as well as functional. Surviving
timber lintels and beams in Cairo and at St
Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai, suggest
that wood-carving achieved real distinction at
this time. Large timbers were in fact required
to roof all the large basilicas and argue a long
tradition of organized forest management.
Underlying the surprising achievements of
the Late Empire was an enormous volume of
trade. For example, fifth- and sixth-century
wine and oil amphorae are found in bulk
throughout the Mediterranean and beyond at
sites like Tintagel in Cornwall. This exchange of
commodities helped to support patronage.
SPLENDID SILKS AND JEWELLED METALWORK in this wall
mosaic in St Vitale, Ravenna (AD 546–547) of the
Emperor Justinian and his retinue emphasize
luxury and eastern contacts.
30°
30°
40°
20°10°
0°
30°
Paris
Dorchester
Sparta
Toulouse
Rouen
Trier
Córdoba
Complutum
(Alcalá de Henares)
Pedrosa
de la Vega
Cologne
Pisa
Valence-
sur-BaiseServiac
Tarragona
Desenzano
Centcelles
Cádiz
Bordeaux
Nantes
Balline
Balinrees
Toledo
Thuburbo Maius
Thamugadi
(Timgad)
Marseille
Milan
Kaiseraugst
Cagliari
Lyon
Piazza
Armerina
Sabrata
Ostia
Memphis
Sinop
Durrës
London
York
Cirencester
Water Newton Mildenhall
Hoxne
Canterbury
Brough-on-Humber
Traprain Law
Corbridge
Arles
Aquileia
Porec
Ravenna
Rome
Naples
Ephesus
Sardis Antioch
Zeugma
St Catherine’s
Monastery
Carthage
Nicopolis
Argos
Alexandria
Thessalonica
Trebizond
Nebo
Apamea
Palmyra
Nea Paphos
Madaba
Tiberias
Ma`on Nirim
Jerusalem
Tyre
Hama
Constantinople
Solin
A F R I C A
SCANDINAVIA
BRITAIN
BALKANS
LEVANT
I B E R I A
ITALY
GREECE
E G Y P T
GAUL
ASIA MINOR
CORSICA
SARDINIA
SICILY
CRETE
CYPRUS
BALEARIC IS
ALPS
A T L A S M T S
PYRENEES
CAUCASUS
S A H A R A
ARABIAN
DESERT
Mt Sinai
D
niester
Rhone
L
oire
Tagus
Ebr
o
R
hine
Elbe
Oder
N
ile
D
anube
NORTH
SEA
BALTIC SEA
M E D I T
E
R
R
A N E A N S E A
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
B L A C K S E A
RED
SEA
N
0
0
300 miles
450 kms
2 Late Roman Art
African Red Slip Ware, 6th century AD
Phocaean Ware, mid-5th-6th century AD
finds of silver plate, 4th century AD
glass-making centres
major churches with surviving vault mosaics
late Roman floor mosaics
late Roman sarcophagi
maritime trade routes
L
ycus
S E A O F M A R M A R A ( P r o p o n t i s )
G
O
LDE
N
H
O
RN
(Chry
sokeras)
BOSPORUS
KASHMIR
PSAMATHIA
EXOKI
O
NION
P
HANARION
EXOPHILOPAT
ION
PHILADELPHION
XEROLOPHOS
DEUTERON
XEROLOPHOS
PEMPTON
BLACHERNAE
STRATEGION
SYCAE
ACROPOLIS
TRITON
BLANGA
Harbour of
Theodosius
Cistern of
St Mocius
Golden
Gate
Cistern of
Aetius
Gate of
Charisius
Church of the Mother of God
Gate of Plataea
Cistern
of Aspar
Aqueduct
of Valens
Harbour of
Kontoskalion
Hippodrome
Augusteum
Hagia Sophia
St Irene
Baths of Zeuxippus
Imperial Palace
Forum of Constantine
Sts Sergius and Bacchus
Forum of
Theodosius
Forum of
Arcadius
Church of
the Holy Apostles
mese
mese
WallofTheodosius(AD
413)
WallofConstantine(AD
330)
N
0
0
1 miles
1.5 kms
3 Constantinople
wall
cistern
major building
built-up area by c. AD 413
church
2 MARITIME TRADE continued to flourish, servicing
the Justinianic revival of the sixth century, with
African and Levantine pottery reaching as far as
western Britain. The Late Roman dominus and
domina passed their lives in mosaic-floored
rooms, being served from silver vessels. Equal
opulence was evident in Christian church vaults
and floors, sparkling with mosaic.
33 CONSTANTINOPLE was founded by Constantine I in
324 on the European side of the Bosporus, and
maintained by his successors as a capital to rival
Rome itself, with its great Theodosian walls,
several fora, the hippodrome, the imperial palace
and many churches, especially Hagia Sophia. It
remained the eastern capital until 1453.
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
70
THE LATE ROMAN EMPIRE includes periods
of political dislocation, invasion, civil unrest
and famine. However, throughout the Roman
and former Roman provinces, from Britain to
Syria, the art continued to be rich. There is
impressive evidence for long-distance trade
reaching, as earlier, into sub-equatorial Africa
for ivory, to India for gems and spices and even
to China for silks, though in Justinian’s time the
secret of the silk worm and silk manufacture
came to Constantinople.
Most patronage was now private, wealth
being lavished in particular on the palatial
houses of the aristocracy. Mosaic floors survive
in considerable numbers and can often be
assigned to particular workshops – for
instance, those of the Cirencester region in
Britain, Carthage in North Africa, Nea Paphos
in Cyprus, Sparta in Greece and Antioch and
Apamea in Syria. Veined marbles were still
widely used and are commented on by writers.
There was some use and re-use of marble
sculpture. However, the only substantial
sculpture trade was in marble sarcophagi,
which now often had Christian scenes.
The sarcophagi were often placed in or
around churches. Churches and baptisteries
were patronized by emperors like Constantine
(St Peter’s in Rome and the Holy Sepulchre in
Jerusalem), or Justinian (Hagia Sophia in
Constantinople), or else by churchmen, such as
Bishop Patiens at Lyon, Bishop Ambrose at
Mediolanum (Milan) or Bishop Neon at
Ravenna. The church of St Vitale at Ravenna,
though dedicated by Bishop Maximian, was
financed by a banker called Julianus. Not only
were such buildings – with their marble and
mosaic décor – public displays of wealth and
power for this life, they ensured the pious
donor repose in the next, especially when
interred near the remains of holy men. In
Palestine, and sometimes elsewhere, especially
in Asia Minor (for example, at Sardis), similar
patronage was lavished by rich Jews on wellappointed
synagogues.
The minor arts are of especial interest.
Some of the silver treasures are very large – for
instance, those from Mildenhall, England, and
from Kaiseraugst, Switzerland, or the so-called
Sevso Treasure, possibly from Hungary. Many
of the vessels used at table are chased with
scenes from mythology, hunting and feasting.
Contacts with the east are shown not only by
pepper pots to include this much prized spice
but by the evident influence of western silver
on that of Sasanian Persia, which in its turn
was a model for the plate of western China.
Intricate workmanship was much prized,
whether in the cutting of sheet gold into
openwork patterns, inlaying gold or silver with
niello (silver sulphide) or the skilful setting of
gems in jewellery. The so-called barbarian
peoples in Visigothic Spain, Frankish Gaul and
Anglo-Saxon Britain produced their own
distinctive cloisonné jewellery. Here, too, a taste
for texture and the radiance of gems (often
brought in from the east, together with cowrie
shells and bronze vessels) is a feature.
Glass manufacture was carried on wherever
suitable sands existed, especially in the Levant
EUROPE AD 300-600
A SILVER-GILT PEPPER POT (piperatorium), one of four
from a rich treasure buried at Hoxne, Suffolk, in
the fifth century and now held in the British
Museum in London. This one takes the form of a
Late Roman empress. Its style suggests that it was
made in northwest Europe, perhaps even in
Britain, but the precious pepper it contained was
imported from India.
30°
30°
40°
20°10°
0°
30°
Paris
Troyes
Trier
Córdoba
Cologne
Genova
Pisae
Narbonne
Bordeaux
Saragossa
Tarragona
Cádiz
Toledo
Marseille
Mediolanum
Caralis
Lyon
Lisbon
Besançon
Leptis Magna
Memphis
Cyrene
Sinope
London
York
St Albans
Arles
Geneva
Aquileia
Ravenna
Rome
Naples
Ephesus Antioch
St Catherine’s
Monastery
Carthage
Sabratha
Nicopolis
Athens
Alexandria
Philippi
Thessalonica
Trapezus
Damascus
Caesarea
Bethlehem
Jerusalem
Mosul
Constantinople
Nicomedia
S L A
V
S
P I C T S
C
E
L
T
S
BASQUES
B E R B E R S
F I N N O U
G R I A N S
S L A V S
IRISH
BRITONS
IRISH
A F R I C A
SCANDINAVIA
BRITAIN
I B E R I A ITALY
GREECE
E G Y P T
GAUL
ASIA MINOR
CORSICA
SARDINIA
SICILY
CRETE
CYPRUS
BA
LEARIC IS
A L P S
A T L A S M T S
PYRENEES
CAUCASUS
S A H A R A
ARABIAN
DESERT
Mt Sinai
Dnieper
D
niester
RhôneLoire
Tagus
Elbe
Oder
N
ile
Danube
N O R T H
S E A
BALTIC SEA
M E D I T
E
R
R
A N E A N S E A
ENGLISH
CHA
N
N
EL
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
B L A C K S E A
RED
S
EA
370
376
455
410
439
418
406
452
N
0
0
300 miles
450 kms
1 The Disintegration of the Roman Empire
important churches
Huns
Vandals,Alans, Sueves
Visigoths
Burgundians
Ostrogoths
Angles, Saxons, Jutes
Lombards
Franks
Empire of Justinian, AD 565
successor kingdoms:
East Roman Empire
Kingdom of the Vandals
Kingdom of the Visigoths
Burgundian Kingdom
Kingdom of the Ostrogoths
Sasanian Empire
Kingdom of the Sueves
Frankish Kingdom
1 THREATENED BY BARBARIANS through the fourth
century and especially in the fifth century, the
western empire collapsed, though many elements
of its culture survived. The eastern empire was
eventually able to deflect its enemies. Mainly of
Germanic origin, the barbarians were forced
westwards by pressure from the nomads of
central Asia.
AFRICA 500 BC–AD 600
73
the name of a queen, Shanakdakhete. It is,
outside Egypt, the earliest writing in Africa.
AXUM
The city of Axum, located high on the
Ethiopian plateau, was the centre of a kingdom
which by the fourth century AD was a power in
northeast Africa and was responsible for the
collapse of Meroë in about AD 350. By this time
the people of Axum had developed a writing
system for their own language, Ge’ez. This
system was originally derived from the writing
of ancient south Arabia. The Ge’ez language is
now used only in the rituals of the Ethiopian
church, but it is the basis for the modern
Amharic script. Some inscriptions have also
been found in Greek, since a trade route had
been opened to the Mediterranean via the Red
Sea, and Greek merchants had come to Axum
bringing their language with them. The main
port was at Adulis on the Red Sea coast, and
50˚40˚30˚20˚10˚
30˚
20˚
20˚
30˚
10˚
10˚
0˚
Taruga
Nok
Samun Dukiya
Jenne
Taghaza
Mogador
Taoudenni
Bilma
Meroë
Axum
Musawwarat es-Sufra
Nuri
Napata
Kawa
Lydenburg
Alexandria
Memphis
Thebes
Syene
Philae
Niger
Benue
Congo
Zamb
ezi
Nile
BlueNile
WhiteNile
Lake
Victoria
Lake
Chad
Lake
Rudolf
Lake
Tanganyika
Lake
Nyasa
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
I N D I A N
O C E A N
M E D
I
T
E
R R A N E A N S E A
R
E
D
S
E
A
K A L A H A R I
D E S E R T
W E S T E R N
D E S E R T
S A H A R A
TASSILI
PLATEAU
TIBESTI
JEBEL
OWEINATHOGGAR
ETHIOPIAN
HIGHLANDS
ATLAS MOUNTAINS
NAMIBDESERT
salt,ivory,gold,
animalskins,slaves
Cowrie shells from the
Indian Ocean to Meroë.
Used in the decorative
arts from AD 100.
Domestic cattle everywhere
in Africa except heavily
forested areas by AD 600
Pottery in southern
Africa by AD 100
Sheep and goats
in eastern southern
Africa by AD 300
Yam
cultivation
from AD 100
c. AD 400-500
c.500 BC-AD 200
salt,glass,pottery,m
etalwork
N
0
0
500 miles
700 kms
1 Iron Age Africa, 500 BC-AD 600
frontier of the Roman Empire in AD 300
probable limits of domestic cattle, c.500 BC
spread of domestic animals and cereals
salt deposits
main trans-Saharan trade routes
earliest known iron-working
spread of iron working
main rock art areas
rock art showing wheeled chariots
terracotta sculpture
1 SEVERAL IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS took place at
this time, of which the most important for
subsequent development in Africa was the
appearance of iron-smelting. The map shows
the two best-known iron-smelting sites, Meroë
and Taruga, both of which flourished in the
5th century BC. Another important change was
the spread of domestic animals southwards.
The main areas of rock art are indicated and
the ones in the Sahara are of special interest
because they show many illustrations of
chariots, which appear to indicate routes
across what by this time had become desert.
AXUMITE STELA. This
monolithic stone stela
marks a royal burial at
Axum. It is 21 metres (68 ft)
in height, and with 3
further metres (10 ft)
underground, it represents
a royal building with nine
storeys. One even taller
stela, shattered by a fall,
lies nearby. It is likely that
royal residences were built
with façades like this.
Simpler, undecorated pillars
may mark important, nonroyal
burials.
traces of foreign merchants’ activities have
been found there. The inscriptions provide
information about the rulers and their military
activities, such as the attack by King Aezanes
on Meroë, and military expeditions to south
Arabia by King Kaleb in the sixth century AD.
Axum is best-known for the massive stone
stelae erected to mark royal burials, as well as
simpler, monolithic pillars that probably mark
important, non-royal burials. Recent
archaeological excavations in the area of the
group of stelae on the edge of the present-day
town of Axum have revealed some of the
underlying royal tombs, and though many of
these had been plundered, a number of luxury
objects brought to Axum by Mediterranean
trade have been found.
The Axumite kingdom was, apart from
Ptolemaic Egypt, the first in Africa to produce a
coinage, and many coins are known. Some
have a cross on the reverse showing that
Christianity had reached the area by the early
centuries AD and gradually superseded the
pagan relgions of earlier times. Because the
earliest Christian missionaries came from
Egypt, the Ethiopian church became associated
with the Coptic church of Egypt, and until
recently the head of the church was always
appointed by the Coptic patriarch in Egypt.
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
72
DURING THIS PERIOD there was an
increase in human control over Africa’s
natural resources. The smelting of iron
became common throughout much of the
continent and, wherever climatic conditions
made it possible, there was a development of
crop-growing and animal husbandry.
The earliest iron-producing sites were
associated with the famous Nok terracotta
figures at Taruga in Nigeria, and at Meroë in
the Sudan. At both places iron was being
smelted and tools and weapons were being
made from the sixth century BC.
Throughout the Sahara there are many
rock paintings and engravings showing light,
horse-drawn vehicles, and their distribution
may indicate routes from the Mediterranean
towards the River Niger. By the beginning of
the second century BC, a large town existed at
Jenne, where the earliest cultivation of African
rice took place. There, and in many other
places along the valley of the Niger, elaborate
terracotta figures, many depicting warriors on
horseback, were made.
TERRACOTTAS
During the early centuries of this period in SubSaharan
Africa the main art forms were
terracotta heads, and sometimes complete
figures, which have been found at several
places. The best-known are those of the Nok
culture discovered throughout the Jos plateau
of northern Nigeria. Many of these pieces were
found in the course of mining for tin. At two
small ancient villages located at Taruga and
Samun Dukiya, examples of terracotta art as
well as evidence for iron smelting were found.
These domestic traces are dated to between 300
and 100 BC, but some Nok pieces are earlier.
Much further south, pottery heads of
humans and one of an unidentified animal and
belonging to a different tradition, dating to the
fifth century AD or later, have been found at
Lydenburg in South Africa. Their use is not
known but the two largest could have been
used as masks.
CENTRAL AFRICA
This region has been much less studied than
the rest of the African continent, and dense
forest in some areas has been an obstacle to
research. Iron-smelting was widespread from
about 500 BC, and characteristic pottery types
are known from village sites. Iron-smelting
took place throughout the area, and may
indicate that Bantu-speaking people settled
there. Others moved south in what has
become known as the ‘Bantu migration’; as a
result, related Bantu languages are now
spoken widely over the whole of central and
southern Africa.
The spread of these languages has been
much discussed and there are several theories
as to how they came to dominate the area. The
Bantu language may have originated in
Cameroon, and it has been suggested that
agriculture, animal herding, ironworking and
pottery-making were all associated with
speakers of Bantu languages, who ultimately
spread throughout southern Africa.
MEROË
There is more information available about the
cultures of the Nile Valley, and the presence of
a literate civilization in Egypt enables
archaeologists to precisely date events. The
Egyptians penetrated south of the first cataract of
the Nile at Philae and subsequently ruled
northern Nubia from c.1550 BC. When Egyptian
rule was withdrawn from the area in c.1100 BC an
indigenous state arose which, by 500 BC, had
developed a culture based on two towns, Napata
and Meroë. By that date it is likely that Meroë was
where the rulers lived, though their burials
continued to be near Napata until early in the
third century BC. From that date, the rulers were
buried at Meroë and continued to be interred
there until the collapse of the Meroitic kingdom
in the fourth century AD.
The town of Meroë consists of a large area of
domestic houses built of sun-dried mud bricks,
and a royal palace, parts of which are built of
sandstone. There were several temples, also built
of sandstone. In one part of the town were the
furnaces for iron-smelting, for which ancient
Meroë has become famous in modern times.
The people of Meroë developed a writing
system based on an Egyptian model but used
their signs as an alphabet of 23 letters. The
earliest use of this writing system that can be
dated is of the early second century BC, although
it was probably in use before that date. It gives
AFRICA 500 BC-AD 600
40˚30˚
20˚
30˚
Cu
L C
B
S
S
S
Syene
Philae
Kalabsha
Faras
Amara
Kawa
Old Dongola
Jebel
Barkal
Kurru
Nuri
Napata to c.300 BC
Meroë
Wad ben Naqa
Musawwarat es-Sufra
from c. 300 BC
Naqa
50 BC-c. AD 50 Soba
Sennar
Jebel Moya
Adulis
Axum
Matara
Nile
Atbara
BlueNile
First Cataract
Second Cataract
Third Cataract
Fourth
Cataract
Fifth Cataract
Sixth Cataract
Lake Tana
WhiteNile
N U B I A N
D E S E R T
W E S T E R N
D E S E R T
S A H A R A
ISLAND OF
MEROË
Meroitic cemetery,
300 BC-AD 250
Axumite royal-stela
burial c.AD 250-700
664 BCc.AD
310
295 BC-c.AD 320 20 BC-c.AD 20
R
E
D
S
E
A
GULF
OF ADEN
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
Resources:
gold
copper
limestone
calcite
(Egyptian
alabaster)
basalt
sandstone
fertile area
pastoralism
desert tracks
Cu
L
C
B
S
2 THIS MAP OF THE NILE to the south
of Egypt shows activities, towns
and royal palaces in the kingdom
of Meroë and the surrounding
area until just after the arrival of
Christian missionaries in the middle
of the sixth century AD.
It also shows the area of the
Axumite kingdom and the main
trade routes of the period which
made use of the Red Sea and went
via the Gulf of Aden as
far as India. Aezanes, king of Axum
in c.AD 350, invaded Meroë as
described in an inscription in Greek
in Axum. Two Axumite inscriptions,
again in Greek, as
well as a coin have also been
found at Meroë.
TERRACOTTA HEAD from the Nok culture of northern
Nigeria, dated to approximately the fifth century BC.
The Nok culture is believed to have lasted for a few
hundred years. Many figurines are now known from
this artistic tradition and from excavations at Taruga.
Nok culture is known to be contemporary with the
earliest known iron-smelting from Sub-Saharan Africa.
It is likely that many of the heads were part of
complete figures but none have yet been found.
The Upper Nile,
500 BC-AD 600
extent of Meroë,
500 BC-AD 350
extent of Axum,
AD 300-700
Meroitic attack on
Egypt, c. 23 BC
Roman attack, 23 BC
Axumite invasion, AD 350
Egyptian town with temple
royal pyramid burials
Meroitic town, with date
of temple-building
trade routes
probable trade routes
2
THE NILE VALLEY 500 BC–AD 300
75
In urban and domestic art, new products
and techniques were developed or improved
upon, such as glassblowing, bronze casting and
mould-made pottery figurines. A popular
Egyptian product was faience, a quartz mixture
that was moulded, glazed and fired to a green
or blue colour for small sculptures, bowls,
vases and other objects.
Glass and ceramic vessel forms and
decoration styles parallel developments
elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean. They
attest to the extent of communication and
trade in this region. Egypt’s caravan, road and
seafaring routes gave it a pivotal military and
economic position, and the arts and crafts
within Egypt were affected by the movement of
people and ideas.
SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC CHANGE
Whereas Persian rule had minimal effect on
Egyptian cultural life, the Greeks had a great
impact. Greek culture was transmitted first
through trade contacts, especially in the Delta,
and, under the Ptolemies, through immigrants.
As Egypt was transformed into a Hellenistic
kingdom and then a Roman province, changes
in its administration altered the country’s
social structure and, consequently, the
make-up of the elite. In the Roman period,
status depended not only on wealth but also
on social standing, through belonging to the
gymnasium, holding a local office, and having
Roman, Alexandrian, or metropolitan citizenship,
all of which were highly desirable and
stringently regulated.
Egypt came to value Greek products and
art forms, sometimes adapting them in local
materials. For instance, popular figural themes
like grotesques (exaggerated depictions of the
poor and infirm) were reproduced in terracotta
figurines. The postures and costumes standard
to Greek and Roman sculpture, where they
would be executed in marble, were carved in
plentiful Egyptian limestone, as were classical
architectural elements such as columns,
friezes and capitals. Cities enjoyed Greek and
Roman features like baths, theatres and
colonnaded streets with public statuary.
Larger buildings and houses might have
mosaic floors, and smaller houses might have
a painted wall scene or small niche for
statuettes, for religious observances at home.
Conventional Egyptian art and architecture
became increasingly specialized for use in
temples and the funerary sphere. Egyptian
deities were widely worshipped and some,
especially Isis, had flourishing cults throughout
the Mediterranean. Few people funded
tombs or statues for themselves, but the
decoration of mummies was often elaborate
and used versatile materials such as cartonnage,
plaster and painted linen or wood. Some
funerary art included portraits of the deceased,
executed in the naturalistic style of Greek and
Roman art and depicting contemporary
fashions in hair, clothing and jewellery.
Hawara
er-Rubayat
Arsinoe
Narmouthis
Theadelphia
Tebtunis
Herakleopolis Magna
Karanis
Bacchias
Philadelphia
Soknopaiou Nesos
Dionysias
Lake Moeris
Bahr Yu
suf
N
0
0
10 miles
10 kms
2 TEMPLES TO THE EGYPTIAN GODS
continued to be built throughout
the Ptolemaic and Roman periods,
further developing traditional
forms and themes. Sculpted relief
was of the highest quality and
depicted myths and rites
alongside elaborate hieroglyphic
texts. The temple of Horus at
Edfu, seen here in a nineteenthcentury
lithograph, is the most
intact of the surviving temples. On
its outer pylon, Ptolemy XII
is depicted as a pharaoh smiting
his enemies.
2 LAND RECLAMATION AND GREEK IMMIGRANTS made the
Faiyum the most populous and agriculturally
abundant region in Egypt. Thousands of papyri
from this period have been found there – written
primarily in Greek and providing a detailed glimpse
of day to day life. Towns and temples in the Faiyum
used a variety of art and architecture, and in
several local cemeteries, mummified bodies were
buried with masks and painted portraits that
combined Egyptian, Greek and Roman forms.
2 The Greco-Roman Faiyum, AD 100
fertile area
extent of lake in
Roman period
extent of lake in
Ptolemaic period
temple
bath complex
papyrus findspot
glass findspot
mummy portrait findspot
mummy mask findspot
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
74
art. Instead, construction of Egyptian temples
continued even in physically remote areas like
the Kharga Oasis, where a temple was decorated
under the reign of Darius I (c.500 BC). All
the oases in the western desert, as well as
desert routes south to Nubia, became more
accessible following the Persian introduction of
the camel. Persian rule was resented, and
Egyptian rebels tried to re-establish native
rule. Alexander the Great and his armies were
welcomed as liberators from the Persians.
Egypt became a kingdom ruled from
Alexandria by Ptolemy, a Macedonian Greek
general whose heirs governed Egypt, Cyprus
and parts of Cyrenaica (modern Libya) until 30
BC, when Rome annexed Egypt as a province. At
the beginning of the Ptolemaic period, Greek
settlers from the eastern Aegean brought their
own cultural institutions and art forms but
intermarried to some extent with Egyptians.
After AD 284, the Emperor Diocletian divided
the Roman Empire in two, and Egypt, an early
centre of Christianity, became part of the
eastern empire, which was governed from
Constantinople (modern Istanbul).
TRADE, MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
Egypt’s natural resources were valuable
exports, especially grain, papyrus, precious
metals and luxurious stones. Egypt sent wheat
to Rome, and later to Constantinople, and also
supplied the Mediterranean world with
papyrus sheets for writing material. Stone
quarries in the eastern desert provided
porphyry, a hard purple-hued stone, for the
columns of the Pantheon in Rome and for
imperial sculptures. Romans transported
works of art from Egypt to Italy, both to
symbolize conquest and to satisfy their
fascination with an exotic, alien culture.
Within Egypt, extensive construction in
these years required ample supplies of
building materials. Existing urban areas were
added to in order to create new structures with
both Greek and Egyptian architectural forms
and decorations. Recently established cities
such as Alexandria (founded 332 BC) and
Antinoopolis (founded AD 130) were built from
almost nothing. Traditional Egyptian art was
fostered in the many temples built or rebuilt
with funding from the state, especially under
the Ptolemies. Temples at Dendera, Esna,
Edfu, Kom Ombo, Philae and Kalabsha, date
from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods.
EGYPT AND EGYPTIAN ART after 500 BC are
enmeshed with the Mediterranean and
Asia. The country was under Persian control
from 525 to 404 BC. Kings based in the Delta
were able to reassert native rule only until a
second Persian invasion in 343 BC. From then
on, Egypt was ruled by foreigners: Alexander
the Great in 332 BC, the Ptolemaic dynasty from
304 BC and the Romans from 30 BC. The
dominance of Greek culture brought sweeping
social, economic and artistic changes.
The Persians governed from Persepolis (in
modern Iran) and appointed Egyptian officials,
called satraps, to act for them locally. There was
little interaction between Persian and Egyptian
THE NILE VALLEY 500 BC-AD 300
30˚ 35˚
30˚
Thmuis
Arsinoe
Panopolis
Coptos
Syene (Aswan)
Berenike
Oxyrhynchus
Memphis
Paraetonium
Pelusium
Gaza
Edfu
Esna
Hermopolis Magna
Kom Ombo
Philae
Kalabsha
Dendera
Diospolis
Magna (Thebes)
Hibis
Alexandria
Naukratis
Antinoopolis
Ptolemais Hermiou
Via Hadriana
E G Y P T
EASTERN
DESERT
W E S T E R N
D E S E R T
SINAI
FAIYUM
Nile
BahrYusuf
Delta
Trajan’s
Canal
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
R
E
D
S
E
A
First cataract
Bahariya
Oasis
Siwa
Oasis
Farafra
Oasis
Dakhla
Oasis
Kharga
Oasis
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 Sites and Monuments
fertile area
Roman road
desert route
polis
native temple
known church
STATUES CARVED FROM HARD, DARK STONE and given a
fine polish were a hallmark of Egyptian art during
this period. Sculptors evoked the past by adapting
earlier artistic forms, and the short kilt and tightly
curled wig on this fourth-century BC statue recall
Old Kingdom styles. A hieroglyphic inscription on
the back invokes three Egyptian gods.
1 GREEK SETTLEMENT IN EGYPT began with Naukratis, a
trading colony founded in the seventh century BC.
Alexander the Great added a second Greek city
(polis) when he established a new capital at
Alexandria. A third, Ptolemais Hermiou, was
founded soon after by Ptolemy I. The cities were
vital to the spread of Greek, and later Roman,
culture, especially art and architecture. They
provided social centres, such as the gymnasium and
baths, as well as theatres and hippodromes.
Although such amenities were originally put in
place for Greek settlers, they were adopted along
with other aspects of Hellenism by a growing
portion of the population in urban areas.
Antinoopolis was the last Greek polis founded in
Egypt; it was established by the emperor Hadrian
in AD 130 during his tour of the country.
NORTH AFRICA AD 300–600
77
30˚
30˚
Mt Sinai
Monastery of the
Burning Bush,
now St Catherine’s
1st cataract
Alexandria
Menapolis / Abu Mena
Kellia
Memphis / Saqqara
Oxyrhynchus
Panopolis
(Akhmim)
Antinoopolis
(Antinoe)
Hawara
St Antonios
St Paulos
Herakleopolis Magna
Bawit
(Apa Apollo)
Hermonthis (Armant)
Bagawat
Latopolis (Esna)
Nile
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
R
E
D
S
E
A
S I NA I
RED
SEA
H
ILLS
WESTERN
DESERT
DAKHLA
OASIS
BAHARIYA
OASIS
EASTERN
DESERT
L O W E R E G Y P T
ARABIA
White Monastery
of Apa Shenoute
site of the Burning Bush
and handing down of the
Ten Commandments
fr
om
W
M
editerranean
from the Holy
Land
(Tomb of St Menas)
(Apa Jeremia)
N
0
0
120 miles
180 kms
2 CHRISTIANITY WAS
widespread in Egypt by the
beginning of the fourth
century, and had a major
effect on the country’s
landscape. The rise of
ascetic monasticism in the
villages of Egypt in the
fourth century led to the
creation of monasteries at
the juncture between
settled land and desert.
Two major pilgrimage sites
were also located in Egypt:
the shrine of St Menas,
near Alexandria, and the
monastery at Mt Sinai.
These acted as a focus for
artistic patronage and
production, much of which
has a distinctive regional
Egyptian character.
DOMINUS JULIUS MOSAIC. A grand country
villa, complete with its private bath
house, is surrounded by scenes of rural
activity corresponding to the four
seasons on this late fourth-century
mosaic from Carthage. In the top
register the mistress of the house is
offered products of the land, amid
depictions of olive harvesting (winter)
and a shepherd with his flock (summer).
The middle register shows the master
arriving at the villa on horseback,
together with preparations for a hunt,
while in the bottom register the
mistress of the house is presented with
flowers and a necklace. In the lower
right-hand corner a grape-harvester
(representing autumn), is shown behind
the master who is being handed a scroll
addressed to ‘Lord [Dominus] Julius’.
Such scenes of agricultural prosperity
hint at the source of the wealth of the
North African urban elite.
declined in the fifth and sixth centuries, but
sufficient examples exist, especially in the
vicinity of the regional capital of Carthage, to
show that some Vandals continued to
patronize the mosaic workshops, and favoured
the traditional subjects of hunting and the
spectacles of the amphitheatre and circus.
THE IMPACT OF CHRISTIANITY
Many of the mosaic workshops in this later
period may have turned from domestic to
ecclesiastical commissions, as artistic
patronage became increasingly directed
towards church building and decoration.
Church floors and even baptismal pools were
regularly covered with mosaics (sometimes
spectacularly, as at Rusguniae, or in the
Justinianic basilica at Sabratha); mosaic
pavements were also used in funerary contexts.
No wall or vault mosaics survive in North
Africa; those in the Monastery of the Burning
Bush (now St Catherine’s) at Sinai, built by the
emperor Justinian, were almost certainly
executed by craftsmen brought from
Constantinople. Located in the monastery
church’s apse, they depict biblical events
connected with Mount Sinai – Moses before
the burning bush and receiving the Ten
Commandments – as well as Christ’s
Transfiguration, when he appeared to the
apostles in the company of Moses and the
prophet Elijah.
Churches in Egypt were as numerous as
those in North Africa, but fewer have been
excavated in modern times. The churches and
funerary chapels associated with the
monastery at Bawit are decorated with
frescoes showing saints, the Virgin Mary and
angels. Other common forms of decoration
include carvings in local limestone and wood
carving, used to ornament beams and doors.
Limestone carving was also a major medium
for private funerary monuments, both pagan
and Christian. These carvings are a mixture of
decorative patterns and figural imagery, much
of the latter reflecting Graeco-Roman
mythological traditions.
The dry climate of Egypt has preserved
many of the woollen and linen textiles buried
in the graves of the better-off. These often
brightly coloured garments and wall-hangings
are decorated with both traditional GrecoRoman
subjects (including images of gods and
heroes) as well as Christian subjects from the
Old and New Testaments. The Hellenized
Egyptian tradition of funerary portraits painted
on wooden panels also contributed to a new
form of Christian art: the devotional icon.
A number of striking examples dating to
the sixth century have been found at Bawit and
Sinai, some painted in the local Egyptian
(‘Coptic’) style and others in a Hellenized, more
cosmopolitan, style. One of the ‘local’ type
from Bawit shows an abbot of the monastery,
Menas, in the company of Christ, who places a
protective arm around the abbot’s shoulder.
The icon of St Peter from Sinai, with its
naturalistic shadows and highlights on the
apostle’s face, and its illusionistic receeding
background of classical architecture, is a fine
example of the Hellenistic style.
Art and Monasticism
in Egypt
monastery
pilgrimage route
pilgrimage site
Christian cemetery
2
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
76
ART AND URBAN LIFE
North Africa had been a centre for domestic
floor mosaics since the early second century,
and their production continued unabated in
the fourth century. Many surviving examples
come from Carthage as well as the smaller
towns of the region, attesting to the continued
vitality of urban life. Subjects represented
include race horses, charioteers and the events
of the amphitheatre – a longstanding North
African fascination – but an increased
preoccupation with the lifestyles of the elite,
and the agricultural basis of their wealth is also
evident. Idealized scenes of life on country
estates have been found in Carthage and
Thabraca, and a scene of a wealthy woman at
her toilet was discovered at a villa at Sidi
Ghirib, 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Carthage.
The mixed hoard of fourth- and fifthcentury
silver plate and gold jewellery found in
Carthage is an example of the portable wealth
of those who commissioned such mosaics for
their dwellings. As ever in North Africa,
mythological scenes were less popular, but a
fine mosaic of a scene from the Iliad survives at
Neapolis, while at Caesarea there are scenes
from the life of Achilles, and a Judgement of
Paris. Production (and in some cases quality)
EGYPT AND THE NORTH AFRICAN
provinces in the year 300 were stable and
prosperous in comparison to the Roman
Empire’s western and eastern frontiers, and
would continue to be so for much of the next
three hundred years. However, political and
cultural upheaval affected Latin-speaking
North Africa in the fifth century, when the
Vandals, a tribe originally from central Europe,
north of the Danube, invaded the region via
Spain in 429. It was reconquered after a
century by the Roman emperor in the east,
Justinian, who placed the region under a
Greek-speaking administration for the first
time in its history. At the same time North
Africa was also forced to defend itself from
raids by the nomadic Berbers, who had
gradually encroached on its southwestern
frontier during the Vandal conquest.
Unfortunately, little is known of Berber material
culture in this period.
TRADE AND THE ECONOMY
Despite these disruptive events, North Africa’s
agricultural economy remained intact and
prospered. It was this economy, based on the
export of grain and olive oil, which supported
the region’s rich and varied artistic production
in late antiquity. In Egypt, too, it was the export
of grain (especially to Rome, and subsequently
the eastern capital of Constantinople), which
underpinned artistic production. The
manufacture of red slip pottery (exported as a
secondary cargo on grain or oil ships) was a
major industry, based initially in Carthage and
its vicinity, but also successfully copied in
Aswan in Egypt. Some of these tablewares
displayed a wide variety of stamped
decoration, both figural and ornamental. A
more valuable export was ivory, which came
principally from East Africa via Egypt’s Red Sea
ports, but also from the North African
elephants of Mauritania. Although ivory was
often exported in its raw state, there is
evidence that Alexandria was a major centre of
ivory carving, especially of decorative plaques
to cover furniture.
NORTH AFRICA AD 300-600
30˚20˚10˚
30˚
Ag
Carthage
Sabratha
Leptis Magna
Alexandria
Ptolemais
Hippo Regius
(Annaba)
Thugga
(Dougga)
Uthina
(Oudna)
Thabraca
(Tabarka)
Rusguniae (Matifou)
Iomnium
(Tigzirt)
Cirta
(Constantine)
Thamugadi
(Timgad)
Theveste
(Tébessa)
Clupea (Kélibia)
Neapolis (Nabeul)
Memphis/Saqqara
Syrene (Aswan)
Arsinoe
Oxyrhynchus
Faiyum
Antinooplois (Antinoe)
Panopolis
Aphrodito
Karanis
Hawara
Herakleopolis Magna
Hermopolis Magna
Bawit
Hermonthis
Latopolis (Esna)
Taparura (Sfax)
Thysdrus / El Djem
Cuicul (Djemila)
Thurburbo Maius
Caesarea (Cherchell)
Tipasa
N
ile
1st Cataract
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
R
E
D
S
E
A
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
A T L A S
M T S
S I NA I
S A H A R A D E S E R T
SICILY
CRETE
CYPRUS
A F R I C A
N
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
1 Continuity and Change
frontier of Roman Empire, c. AD 300
Vandal Kingdom, AD 429-533 (reconquered by Justinian, AD 533)
Berbers
source of raw ivory
domestic/secular mosaics
ecclesiastical mosaics
church/baptistry buildings (known from archaeological sources)
church (attested in literary sources)
wall/panel painting
Coptic textile finds
wood carving
stone carving
ivory carving
finds of silverware
pottery production centre
Ag
1 CARTHAGE AND ALEXANDRIA were the two largest
urban centres in Late Roman Africa, serving major
administrative as well as commercial roles, and
their hinterlands accordingly carried the largest
density of settlements, following the fertile banks
of the Nile in Egypt, and clustering in the Roman
provinces of Africa Proconsularis and Numidia to
the west. Local artistic products, such as mosaic
pavements, wall and panel painting, weaving, and
stone carving, which had long been deployed in
domestic and secular contexts, were now also used
in the service of the Christian church.
THIS TERRACOTTA PILGRIM FLASK depicts the Egyptian
saint, Menas, wearing the costume of a Roman
soldier, and flanked by the camels which legend
said brought his body to its resting place of Abu
Mena, near Alexandria. This was a major place of
pilgrimage, and flasks such as this were sold for
pilgrims to fill, either with the water of a
miraculous spring near the saint’s tomb, or oil
from the lamps which hung above the tomb.
A similar image of the saint appears on a
contemporary ivory box, probably carved in
Alexandria.
WEST ASIA 500–300 BC
79
Seal-stones were widely used throughout
the empire to ratify official and personal
documents and to claim ownership of
commodities. They demonstrate the choice
by an individual of a single artistic emblem
to indicate him or herself. The most frequently
depicted image in Achaemenid art (both
monumental and small-scale) is the figure of
a hero, often to be identified as a king,
mastering beasts. In individual as well as
official imperial art the image of the king
exerting control over nefarious forces to
maintain a balanced, symmetrical whole, was
widely favoured. Art had therefore become a
N
0 10 m
2a Palace P at Pasargadae
2 CYRUS II BUILT AN EXAMPLE of the Achaemenid
many-columned audience hall at Pasargadae, amid
tremendous formal gardens. Darius and his
successors elaborated on the idea. At Persepolis,
the entire fortified terrace was built up with
columned halls which fulfilled different functions
(audience halls, living quarters, treasury). Even at
the ancient city of Susa, Darius and his successors
built a new many-columned palace to complement
the city’s ancient Mesopotamian palace.
RELIEF FROM THE APADANA, or audience hall, at
Persepolis. It shows the king enthroned,
with his heir and other retainers standing
behind him. In front of him are two incense
burners of a type found as far away as Güre, in
Anatolia. A man bows towards the king, kissing his
hand: he is the foremost of many figures shown on
the Apadana reliefs, including
Persians as well as the 26 subject peoples
of the land, bearing gifts of animals,
textiles, and metal crafted into
Achaemenid-style vessels.
Xerxes Gate
Apadana
Tripylon (small central palace)
Treasury
rock-cut royal tomb
Hall of 100 columns
Tachara
(Palace of Darius I)
remains of mud-brick
fortification wall
remains of mud-brick
fortification wall
pavilions
terrace wall
Hadish (Palace of Xerxes)
Palace of Artaxerxes I
N
0 100 m
2b Persepolis
Propylaion
Gate of Darius
Mesopotamian
-type palace
Persian
Apadana
0 100 m
2c Susa
N
widely popular and effective way to proclaim
the stability of the empire, a stability that was
founded on the figurehead of the king himself.
There was remarkable coherence of style in
particular artefacts throughout the empire.
Metal vessels found in Anatolia, like the one
illustrated opposite, resemble very closely
those found in the southern and eastern
reaches of the empire as well as those depicted
on the Apadana reliefs at Persepolis. Indeed,
there is little stylistic variation in particular
categories of artefact across hundreds of years
and thousands of miles. A particular artistic
style was itself identified with the king, and
ownership of objects created in this style
proclaimed nearness to the king, and hence
membership in the Achaemenid elite.
ALEXANDER OF MACEDON
When Alexander of Macedon conquered Darius
III in a series of battles in the late 330s, he was
able to take over an empire that already
possessed an elaborate administrative hierarchy
and ready-made channels for propaganda
through the manipulation of artistic imagery. For
the rest of his life (he died in Babylon in 323)
much of his attention was focused on warfare.
He also founded many new cities to house
troops loyal to him who would oversee
administration of the region in his name. But
much of what had existed before his arrival
remained the same during his short reign. It is
clear, for instance, that official Achaemenid art
was perceived as being specifically Persian; and
it was used even after Alexander's death to
reinforce the ethnic identity of Persians.
CONCLUSION
Developing a new artistic style and
iconographic vocabulary that drew on antique
Mesopotamian and other regional traditions
was part of the overarching Achaemenid
strategy to incorporate widely disparate
peoples and places into the new empire.
Through ideologically charged art, the
Achaemenid Persians emphasized the new
world order that relied upon the good offices
of the Persian king. Imperial Persian art was
designed for widespread dissemination. Its
overarching message was one of a world under
control, a world in which the population joined
in harmonious, even joyous, service to the king
who maintained the empire. This art was so
widely recognized that it might be used to
identify people as Persian, or members of the
Achaemenid elite, throughout the empire and
even after its demise.
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
78
Achaemenid imperial art. Achaemenid art was
founded on ancient local artistic traditions:
throughout the empire, the Achaemenids
took local art and reformulated it to place the
figure of the king in positions previously
occupied by deities. Thus it became the king
who, artistically, held the universe in harmony.
An example of this is the Apadana relief
(illustrated opposite): depictions of people
bearing gifts to enthroned gods, and assuming
particular pious gestures in the presence of
deities (such as the traditional Mesopotamian
hand-over-wrist gesture, not shown here), had
a long-standing history. But here it is the king
who is the focus of the action. To reinforce that
sense of focus, the Achaemenid kings devised a
new ideologically charged kind of palace
including a columned audience hall at its core.
This idea of showing the king in the central
role traditionally attributed to deities was
repeated time and time again, in many
different contexts throughout the empire.
Drawing from different local traditions, the king
is depicted as godhead on architectural and
free-standing sculptures, on seal-stones and
coins and on embossed metal vessels. Imperial
texts make it clear that the kings saw
themselves as in direct communication with
the deity Ahuramazda, holding their positions
because of divine favour. It is a recurrent theme
both on imperial architectural sculpture and on
Achaemenid seal-stones.
THE ACHAEMENID PERSIAN EMPIRE was
vast and its people diverse. Its 26 different
subject peoples spoke different languages,
worshipped different deities, lived in different
environments and had widely differing social
customs. The Achaemenid kings had to devise a
system of empire strong enough to keep
themselves in control and flexible enough to
provide for the needs of all their subjects. The art
and architecture of the period both reflect the
diversity of the empire and proclaim the notion
of a stabilized, harmonious world under the
control of the Persian king. The last ruler of this
vast empire, Alexander of Macedon (the ‘Great’),
used the pre-existing Achaemenid ideological
channels and methods to maintain control.
Achaemenid art is preserved in many
media, including official architecture built of
stone and mud brick, architectural sculpture in
stone and brick, glazed bricks, wall paintings on
wood and stone and plaster, rock reliefs and
free-standing sculpture in stone and metal. On
a smaller scale, there are seals (preserved both
as stone artefacts and also as impressions left
on the documents they ratified), coins,
jewellery, weapons, horse trappings, vessels of
stone and glass and metal, personal effects
such as mirrors, ornamental wood and ivory
carvings and textiles. These artistic remains
complement the Greek and Near Eastern texts
to provide a complex image of the empire.
THE ART OF KINGSHIP
The concept of a harmonious world order is the
central theme of the entire programme of
WEST ASIA 500-300 BC
1 THE ACHAEMENID PERSIAN EMPIRE (c.550–330),
founded by Cyrus II, centred on southwest Iran and
lower Mesopotamia. Under Darius I (521–486) it
reached its greatest extent, stretching from the
Aegean Sea to the Indus River, from Egypt to the
modern Central Asian republics. When Alexander
of Macedon conquered the empire in 331, he
retained much of the Persian administrative system
and made use of many pre-existing artistic
channels to propagate his new ideology of empire.
20˚ 30˚ 40˚ 50˚ 60˚ 70˚ 80˚
40˚
30˚
Ss
Ss
Ss
Ss
Ss
Ss
Ss
Ss
Ss
SsSs Gordium
Halicarnassus
Kelaenae
Güre
Meydancikkâle
Deve Hüyük
Taxila
Tyre
Jerusalem
Tarsus
Damascus
Samaria
Sidon
Jericho
Ascalon
Lachish
Sais
Bubastis
Pazarlı
Erzincan
Aleppo
Thapsacus
Mari
Nimrud
Nineveh
Kharga Oasis
Ur
Uruk
Ashur
Hasanlu
Al Mina
Ctesiphon
Bisitun
Godin Tepe
Baba Jan
Anshan
Carchemish
Altıntepe
Byblos
Kerkenes Dagıˇ
Bactra
(Balkh)
Merv
Peshawar
Multan
Cyropolis
Kabul
Ai-Khanoum
Samarkand
Rhagae
Gaza
Miletus
Thebes
Sogdian Rock
Susa
Babylon
Seleucia
Sardis
Ecbatana
Persepolis
Elephantine
Ain Manawir
Pasargadae
Dascylium
Larisa am Hermos
Elmalı
LimyraXanthus
Hacımusalar
Afyon
Labraunda
Pasa Tepe¸
Erzurum
Köskerbaba Höyük¸
Sinop
Panticapaeum (Kerch)
Memphis
Priene
Bayindir
Magnesia ad Maeandrum
Ephesus
Abusir
Alexandria ad Issum
Alexandria
Charax
Alexandria
(in Carmania)
Alexandria Margiana
Alexandria Areion
Alexandria Prophthasia
Alexandria Arachoton
(Kandahar)
Alexandria
Oreiton
Alexandria
(south of Kabul)
Alexandria
ad Caucasum
Alexandria Eschate
Alexandria Oxiana
Nicaea
Bucephala 326BC
Alexandria ad Indum
Alexandria
(in Egypt)
Tigris
N
ile
In
dus
Za
radros(Sutlej)
Acesines
Hydaspes
(Jhelum)
(C
henab)
O
xus (Syr Dar
ya)
A
raxes
Cy
rus (Kura)
Euphr
ate
s
Red Sea Canal
J
axartes
(A
m
uDarya)
B L A C K S E A
C
A
S
P
IA
N
SEA
M
E
D
I T E R R A N E A N S E A
RED
SEA
PER
S
IA
N
G
U
LF
ARAL
SEA
A R A B I A N
S E A
AEGEAN
SEA
C A U C
A
S
U
S
HIN
DU
KU
SH
ZAGROS MTS
T H A R
D E S E R T
I R A N I A N
P L A T E A U
PERSIS
SATTAG
YDIA
HYRCANI
A
ASSYRIA
CAPPADOCIA
PHRYGIA
PAPHLAGONIA
PISIDIA
LYCIA
CARIA
LYDIA
CYPRUS
BITHYNIA
DRANGIANA
CILICIA
SOGDIANA
PHOENICIA
NUBIA
MAKA
SCYTHIA
A
N A T O L I A
A R A B I A
I N D I A
L I B YA
E G Y P T
S I N D
GEDROSIA
ARACHOSIA
GANDARA
BACTRIA
MARGIANA
PARTHIA
MEDIA
ELAM
BEYOND
THE RIVER
ARMENIA
COLCHIS
CARMANIA
CHORASMIA
S A K A
SEISTAN
ARIA
ancient
coastline
Sagalassus
333BC
Issus
333BC
Gaugamela
331BC
Granicus
334BC
N
0
0
300 miles
400 kms
1 The Achaemenid Empire
extent of the Achaemenid
Empire, c.500 BC
administrative centre
extent of Alexander’s Empire, 323 BC
Alexander’s route
Alexander’s commanders’ routes
major battle
siege
cities founded by Alexander
fortifications
architecture
inscriptions
sculpture
ceramics
metalwork
tablets
sealstones
stone vessels
Ss
glass
painting
coins
papyrus
ELABORATE METAL VESSELS like this bowl were probably
imbued with great symbolic significance during the
Achaemenid period. They were made throughout
the empire in a particular, recognizable, style,
brought to the king at his capitals in Iran, and
redistributed from there. Ownership of such a
vessel signified membership in the Achaemenid
elite, a polyethnic group of people responsible for
imperial administration.
WEST ASIA 300 BC–AD 600
81
building of churches with Christian stone
sculptures – particularly after the partition
(AD 387) of the kingdom between Persia
and Rome.
The Sasanians are credited with
introducing the medieval period to the Middle
East. The language of the Sasanian empire was
Middle Persian, and appears as a more
universal language than Parthian. Unlike the
preceding empire, this period is noted for
greater control over regional dynasties.
Sasanian art is of an entirely different
nature from that of the preceding dynasty. The
Sasanians supported court artists and
produced luxury goods for trade. While it is
likely that a trade in silk from east to west was
a major factor in earlier periods, at no other
time is there such a wealth of evidence for
trade between China and Rome. Elaborate
royal portraits, with crowns that differed from
ruler to ruler, can be found on everything from
coins to vessels and statues. Sasanian silver
bowls have been found in the Russian steppes,
textiles have been recovered from the dry
western Chinese deserts, and Sasanian glass
has even been found in Japan.
Sasanian rulers also carved rock
sculptures. Some of the best (Naqsh-e Rostam
and Naqsh-e Rajab) are near the ancient
Persian capital of Persepolis. Royal courts were
also active in creating grand architectural
monuments. Khosrow II built a vast palace –
with an intact mud-brick barrel vault – at
Ctesiphon (Taq-i Kisra). Many Sasanian
limestone and mortar buildings still survive in
Fars. The most important is the palace of
Ardashir I at Gur (Firuzabad).
After Khosrow II (r.590; 591–628) the
empire went into a sharp decline. Devastated
by fighting, plague, and a succession of weak
rulers, the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon fell in
637 to advancing Islamic Arab armies. In a
short space of time, Zoroastrian religious
SASANIAN TEXTILES, such as this one decorated with
the mythological winged horse Pegasus, drew on
a long history of weaving, and employed ancient
Iranian as well as Greek motifs. Pegasus, of Greek
inspiration, would have been known from Classical
art. The pearl roundel that frames the image is
typical of the Sasanians, and appears in Far Eastern
art at about this time. Finely woven and brightly
coloured with bold designs, such textiles were in
demand from Europe to China.
30˚ 40˚ 50˚ 60˚ 70˚
40˚
30˚
20˚
Veh Ardashir
Nehavend
Abarshahr
(Nishapur)
Ram Hurmizd
Kvas
Peshawar
Hurmizd Ardashir
Bost
Stakhr
Kangavar
Salmas
Bamiyan
Susa
Naqsh-i BahramShiraz
Warka (Uruk)
Hatra
Gundeshapur
Kuh-i Khwaja
Tashkent
Fortat
Bishapur
Edessa
Ganzak
Ghiz Kabul
Kholm
Darabgird
Dinavar
Balkh
(Bactra)
Zuzan
Yazd
Nisibis
Ahmantan
Herat
Rokhuadh
Rayy (Rhagae)
Jus
Samarkand
Kerman
Amida
Antioch
Damascus
Merv
AmolCarrhae
Nahr-Tire
Jerusalem
Rev Ardashir
Ctesiphon
Gur
Babylon
Dura-Europos
Palmyra
Tigris
Euphrates
Araxes
Indus
S
ir
Da
rya
Amu
D
arya
Ochus
Eryma
ndrus
Atrek
Nile
L. Urmia
L.Sevan
L.Van
M E D I T E R R A N E A N
S E A
B L A C K S E A
PER
SIAN
GULF
A R A B I A N S E A
CASPIANSEA
RED SEA
KO P E T DA G
S A LT D E S E R T
IRANIAN PLATEAU
KHYBER
PASS
TAURUS MTS
ELBURZ MTS
Z
A
G
R
O
S
M
T
S
CASPIAN GATE
M A C H E L O N I A
PUNJAB
D R A N G I A N A
M A R G I A N A
( M E R V )
S O G D I A N A
K H WA R I Z M
( C H O R A S M I A )
PA R T H I AHYRCANI
A
P O N T U S
G
A
LAT I A
C A P PA D O C I A
LYDIA
ARABISTAN
JUDAEA
IBERIA(GEORGIA)
C I L I C I A
PHRYGIA
P E R S I S
( F A R S )
PATISHKHWAGAR
S U S I A N A
A B A R S H A H R
G A N D H A R A
PA R ATA N
( PA R A D E N E )
M A K R A N
T O R A N
C A R M A N I A
( K E R M A N )
ALBANIA
ARMENIA
S Y R I A
MEDIA
ATROPATENE
A R I A
ASURISTAN
MAISHAN
ELYMAIS
E G Y P T
A R A B I A
To Europe
To China
Han dynasty 206 BC-AD 221
to Kashgar (W China) controlled by
Shapur I defeats
Roman emperor
Valerian 260
defeats Shapur I 260;
remains associated with Rome
Holy Sepulchre destroyed,
'True Cross' carried to
Ctesiphon 614
captured briefly
by Sasanians 613
Roman mosaics
1st-6th centuries AD
taken by
Sasanians 256
centre of
Nestorian Christianity
palace of Khosrow II
590; 591-628;
fell to Arabs 637
palace of Ardashir I
Buddhist
complex
world's tallest
standing Buddha;
destroyed
21st century
2 The Sasanian Empire, AD 250-650
Sasanian heartland
extent of the Sasanian Empire
under Shapur I, AD 241-272
Sasanian mints
Sasanian palaces
Sasanian rock sculptures
area of textile production
area of glazed ware/glass
area of silver production
area of bronze production
Silk Road
Sasanian architecture
N
0
0
350 miles
500 kms
2 DRAWING UPON THEIR ANCESTORS’ cultural
achievements in Fars province, the Sasanians are
known for their luxurious court. They controlled
the trade route between China and Rome, and
manufactured cloth and silver vessels that were
extensively traded. Sasanian mints, widely spaced
but under central control, produced a mass of coins
that were known from Europe to China.
horsemen – armed for war and in baggy
trousers with pointed hats – are popular.
Animals are rendered in a ‘steppe art’ style.
Figures in a flying gallop, with legs
outstretched, are common, as are a variety
of other poses that depict animals in motion
executed with bold lines. Parthian pictorial
art is noted for looking at a figure in full face,
which is a marked departure from the
earlier use of profile.
THE ART OF THE SASANIANS
In AD 224 a Sasanian king Ardashir I (r.224–241)
from Fars defeated and killed the Parthian
monarch. This signalled the end of Parthian art.
With their homeland in the centre of the
ancient Persian empire, the Sasanians were
reminded, through ruins, of a golden age
of culture with an elaborate court art.
Resenting the Parthians as usurpers of this
heritage, they sought to erase them from the
historical record.
The Sasanian dynasty adhered to the
Zoroastrian faith as a state religion. Silver coins
were now made from a broad, flat blank rather
than a short, thick flan, and were typically
struck with an elaborately crowned king on one
side, and two attendants and a Zorastrian fire
altar on the other. This dichotomy between
church and state draws attention to a powerful
priestly class that was unknown in the Parthian
empire. Gone was the loose confederation of
states with religious tolerance. Persecutions of
religious minorities, including the Christian
Armenians, occurred in cycles. This kindled
Armenian nationalism – reflected in the
imagery disappeared from the artistic
repertoire, though the tradition of luxurious
court art – such as textiles and metalwork –
was left intact.
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
80
TWO EMPIRES IN SUCCESSION, the
Parthians and the Sasanians, contained
Roman and then Byzantine expansion into
western Asia. Under them, the region became
progressively less Greek. Eastern culture was
re-asserted after being challenged by the
conquests of Alexander the Great.
Both visual art and language underwent a
gradual change over time. The Greek quest for
beauty and Roman realism were disregarded
for symbolic art. While scholars from previous
ages suggested that this was regression into
barbarism, the art of this region emerges as
one that contributed greatly – particularly
through architecture and textiles – to Roman
and early medieval European styles.
THE ART OF THE PARTHIANS
The Parthians, originally an Indo-Iranianspeaking
people from the steppes, defeated
the Greek successors to Alexander and
established a confederation of states under a
monarch who collected taxes and raised
armies. Mithradates I (r.171–138 BC) proclaimed
his independence by issuing coins bearing his
portrait with a royal diadem. The reverse bore
an image of Arsaces – ancestor of the dynasty –
seated holding a bow. Coins in the same Greek language and art was predominant
in the first phase of the Parthian period. In the
last centuries of the empire there was an
increasing use of the Parthian language (an
Iranian dialect written in Aramaic), as well as
distinctive art forms. The art of the Parthians is
rather hard to define, as they were more
collectors than originators. In general it
reflects the many nationalities incorporated
into their empire, but there are some nearly
universal features. Reflecting nomadic origins,
WEST ASIA 300 BC-AD 600
PARTHIAN GOLD DRACHM of Vonones I (r. AD 8–12)
struck at Rhagae to commemorate his victory over
his rival Artabanus II (r. AD 10–38). Parthian
portraits of rulers on coins, in contrast to rock art,
were hardly ever shown full face. The coin is a
mixture of east and west: the use of Greek for the
inscription contrasts with the representation of
the king as a horseman dressed in trousers.
Parthian gold coins are very rare.
30˚ 40˚ 50˚ 60˚ 70˚
40˚
30˚
20˚
Alexandria Areion (Herat)
Alexandria (Merv)
Abarshahr
(Nishapur)
Hecatompylos
(Shahr-i Qumis)
Nisa (Mihrakert)
Apamea
Saramana Syrinx
Laodicea
Kangavar Epardus
Tambrax (Sari)
Rhagae (Tehran)
Spasinou
Charax Persepolis
Susa
Bisitun
Ecbatana
(Hamadan)
Nineveh
Artemita
Seleucia
Edessa
Taxila
Metsketa
Kabul
Alexandropolis
Kandahar
Bactra (Zariaspa)
Alexandria Oxiana
Macacanda (Samarkand)
Alexandria
Meshed
Gabae
Praaspa
Artaxata
Gaugamela
Arbela
Borsippa
Tyre
Circesium
Singarra
Nisibis
Tigranocerta (Siirt)
Carrhae (Harran)
Zeugma
Jerusalem
Ashur
Hatra
Ctesiphon
Vologesias
Babylon Uruk
(Warka)
Dura-Europos
Palmyra (Tudmur)
Ti
gris
Euphrates
Indus
Jaxartes
Oxus(Am
u
Darya)
O
chus
Erym
a
ndrus
(Hel
m
and)
Atrek
Nile
L. Urmia
L.Sevan
L.Van
M E D I T E R R A N E A N
S E A
B L A C K S E A
PER
S
IA
N
G
U
L F
CASPIANSEA
RED
SEA
A R A B I A N S E A
S A L T
D E S E R T
I R A N I A N
P L A T E A U
KHYBER
PASS
TAURUS MTS
ZAGROS MTS
KO P E T DA G
CASPIAN GATES
ELBURZ
MTS
D A H A E
A R M E N I A
PUNJAB
G E D R O S I A
DRA
N
G
IA
N
A
A
RA
CHOSIA
A R I A
B A C T R I A
M A R G I A N A
S O G D I A N A
C H O R A S M I A
A S TA U E N E
P O N T U S
G
A
LAT I A
C A P PA D O C I A
LY D I A
S Y R I A
JUDAEA
I B E R I A
C I L I C I A
P H RY G I A
HYRCANIA
P
E
R
S
I
S
ELY
M
A
IS
COMMAGENE
SOPHENE
ARZANENE
GORDYENE
OSRHOENELYCIA
PARTHIA
(PARTHYENE)
MEDIA
ATROPATENE
M E D I A
CHARACENE
(MESENE)
E G Y P T
A R A B I A
captured by
Parthians AD 52
Parthian
capital
148-147 BC
Parthian royal
palace falls to Rome AD 115;
164/165; to Rome AD 198
Antony fails to
take city for
Rome, 36 BC
captured by
Rome 69 BC
Parthian from 113 BC; Roman AD 163
controlled by Romans AD 30
53 BC Parthians
defeat Rome
Parthians storm
city 40 BC
N
0
0
350 miles
500 kms
1 The Parthian Empire, 150 BC-AD 250
Parthian heartland (Mithradates I,
171-138 BC)
Parthian migration
extent of the Parthian Empire
under Mithradates II, 124-87 BC
Parthian architecture
Elymais, vassal kingdom 81 BC-AD 224
Osrhoene, independent 131 BC-AD 216
Characene, vassal kingdom 125-121 BC
Parthian mint
1 THE PARTHIAN MIGRATIONS from Central Asia
were dictated by geography. Separated from
Iran and subsequent nomadic attack by the
Zagros Mountains, Mesopotamia offered
rich cultural traditions, and was the centre
of the empire. Most surviving Parthian
architecture is from the west. The powerful
trading cities on the Euphrates, the
traditional border with Rome, fused Eastern
and Western motifs into a new style.
style were issued till the end of the empire,
though they range from the early style which
employed Greek artisans, to later issues that
reflected the nomadic heritage of these people.
The Parthians rapidly moved through Iran
and into the fertile Mesopotamian lowlands,
where they encountered ancient civilizations
with their own distinctive cultures and art
forms. Ceramics from this period show
strong regional trends.
Mithradates II (r.124–87 BC), perhaps the
greatest monarch, reconquered Mesopotamia.
By 113 BC, the Greek city of Dura-Europus
was taken, and the Euphrates River was
established as a border with Rome. This
city became a trading metropolis, and struck
Parthian tetradrachms (coins four times the
weight of the standard drachm), a preferred
silver coin in the west.
CENTRAL ASIA 500 BC–AD 600
83
PAINTED SCRIPTURES similar to this
surviving fragment from an
illuminated codex of Kocho,
Xinjiang, attracted adherents along
the Silk Road to Manichaeism, a
gnostic dualism originating in Iraq
in the third century. The fragment
is from a later period (11th–12th
century) but its subject-matter is
probably a scene that would have
been familiar in earlier centuries:
the Manichaean ‘Sermon Scene’.
Gold leaf, ink and pigments have
been used to portray Manichaean
leaders with the figures wearing
Uyghur royal headdress.
90˚80˚70˚60˚
20˚
30˚
40˚
Merv
Tus
Gurgan
Zaranj
Begram Tochi
Valley
Bactra (Balkh)
Dilberjin
Bishkek
Nishapur
Samarkand
Tok-kala
Afrasiab
Varakhsha
Bukhara
Khalchayan
Mt Mug
Kara-tepe
Ayrtam
Khalchangan
Ajina-tepe
Yakke-Parsan
Urgench
Koy-Krylgan-Kala
Kokand
Talas
Panjikent
Tash-Kurghan
Bamiyan Bimaran
Kashgar
Toprak-kala
Yarkand
Gilgit
Shatial Shigar
Hunza-
Haldeikish
Taxila
Manikyal
Huskapura
Rabatak
Mathura
Kocho
Jagatu
Barygaza
Kaushambi
Tamralipti
Khotan
Dandan Oilik
Niya
Cherchen
Aksu
Bulayiq
Hami
Bezeklik
Anxi
Dunhuang
Turfan
Urumchi
Loulan
Karashahr
Kyzyl
Kucha
Kushka
Purushapura
(Peshawar)
Uruzgan
Shiraz
Kapisa
Ganges
L. Balkhash
Syr Darya
AmuD
arya
Ch
e
nab
Sutlej
Helmand
Indus
I N D I A N O C E A N
CASPIANSEA
ARAL
SEA
K U N L U N S H A N
T A K L A M A K A NT A R I M B A S I N
T I E N S H A N
NAN SHAN
KARA KUM
KYZUL
KUM
PAMIRS
K
A
RAKORUM
HINDU KUSH
IRANIAN
PLATEAU
ELBURZ MTS
ZAG
RO
SM
TS
SOGDIANA
G A N D H A R A
B A C T R I A
A R A C H O S I A
D R A N G I A N A
C A R M A N I A
G E D R O S I A
I N D I A
P E R S I A
A R A B I A
N
0
0
500 miles
700 kms
2 Trade and Art Production
Silk Road
other trade routes
sites with Buddhist/Kushan art
sites with Buddhist art/Chinese
silk/lacquerware
ivory
glass
manuscripts
murals
statues/friezes
petroglyphs/graffiti/inscriptions
mummy remains
2 TRADE ROUTES AND RELIGIOUS ART.
Known as the ‘Crossroads of Asia’
Central Asia has been pivotal in the
movement of goods, people and
ideas from east to west and north
to south. This map shows the
spread of Kushan or Gandharan art
as well as the importance of the
Silk Road and other trading routes
across Central Asia. The region has
always developed its own unique
artistic tradition, drawing on the
many styles converging there.
THE BUDDHIST IMPACT
The birth of the Lord Buddha at Lumbini in
Nepal in c.560 BC had a major impact on
ideology in Central Asia, envisaging a means
for many of escaping the reincarnation cycle
of Hinduism. Buddhism also had an impact
on art through Ashoka and the later Kushans.
Ashoka’s aim was to spread his version of the
dharma or teachings, and he did this through
a series of edicts carved into boulders and
pillars across the whole of northern Nepal,
India and Pakistan. The Kushans, a branch of
a nomadic Chinese tribe spread through
Central Asia, Bactria and down into northern
India, and had united this whole region by
the early second century AD. Kanishka is one
of the best known Kushan rulers, and like
Ashoka he converted to Buddhism and was
ardent in the spread of Buddhist teachings,
building new monasteries and repairing old.
During Kanishka’s rule the style of art
known as ‘Gandharan Art’ which comprises
representations of the Buddha and scenes from
his life spread and developed. Gandharan Art is
so called because it is broadly spread
throughout the area of old Gandhara, a former
Achaemenid province. Gandharan stone
sculptures and reliefs draw heavily on GrecoRoman
styles of human depiction.
THE SILK ROAD
During Kushan rule another major
development was crucial in the spread of
goods and ideas: the Silk Road. This
international trading link increased in
importance from the early centuries AD as the
Chinese realized the potential market for their
valuable silk in the west, particularly the
Roman world. Trade along the road meant that
the Kushans were able to take advantage of
demand for products such as precious stones
and metals, and spices from India, while
receiving silks and jade and other rare goods
from China. Indeed, excavations at the Kushan
summer capital of Kapisa (north of Kabul),
reveal the richness of the Empire. A treasure
store, with carved ivories from India, Chinese
lacquers, Roman bonzes, Alexandrian glass was
uncovered. Yet the trade was not only in rare
goods – Buddhism also spread east along the
Silk Road at this time, becoming a major
religion in eastern Asia, and there are many
Kushan Buddhist sites with stupas decorated
with sculpted scenes from the life of the
Buddha in distinct Gandharan style to attest to
this movement.
Central Asia between the mid-first
millennia BC and AD is an area where the very
rich artistic traditions are the result of human
contact and movement – conquerors from the
east absorb indigenous styles and influences
from the north and east to produce distinctive
regional artistic cultures.80˚70˚60˚
30˚
40˚
Alexandria
Areion (Herat)
Alexandria Paropamisadae (Begram)
Ortospana
Shotorak
Tepe Maranjan
Tepe Sardar
Nagarahara
Hadda
Charsadda
Alexandria
Nicaea
Alexandria
Bucephala
Alexandria Margiana
MervAntioch-in-Margiana (Merv)
Maracanda (Samarkand)
Fayaz-tepe Ayrtam
Tillya-tepe
Takht-i-
Sangin
Dalverzin-tepe
Khalchayan
Kara-tepe
Dilberjin
Taxila
Manikyal
Takht-i-Bahi
Puskalavati
Bajaur
Jalalabad
Alexandria Bactra
(Bactra)
Surkh Kotal
Bamiyan
Paitava
Alexandria Oxiana
Ay Khanum
Drapsaca (Kunduz)
Kobadian (Oxus treasure)
Alexandria Eschate (Khojent)
Alexandria
Prophthasia
Alexandria Arachoton (Kandahar)
Alexandria
in India
Alexandria
Oreiton
Balkh
Sy
r Dar
ya
A
m
u D
arya
Indus
Sutlej
Chen
ab
Helmand
L. Balkhash
A R A B I A N S E A
A R A L
S E A
CASPIANSEA
K
A
RAKORAM
PA M I R S
K A R A
K U M
KYZUL KUM
IRANIAN
PLATEAU
ELBURZ
MTS
ZAGROS
MTS
HINDU KUSH
INDO-PARTHIANS
C A R M A N I A G E D R O S I A
A R A C H O S I A
DRANGIANA
S O G D I A N A
BACTRIA
G A N D H A R A
PARTHIA
A R I A
I N D I A
P E R S I A
A R A B I A
N
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
82
FROM THE MID-FIRST millennium BC
onwards Central Asia was a place of great
change and development. Trade and
ideological expansion stimulated artistic
growth in a variety of ways, leading to a rich
cultural heritage that we can trace through
artefacts and styles.
The Achaemenids (Persians) controlled
much of this area between c.539–311 BC, and
their awareness of the rich natural resources of
Central Asia is reflected in the natural goods
such as camels, horses, and bulls, and the
worked items, such as jewellery and skins that
were exports from both Bactria and Gandhara.
Achaemenid influence in art can be seen in the
items recovered from the frozen tombs of the
Altai in Siberia. Achaemenid elements, such as
columns with animal sculpture, persist into the
Buddhist art of the later Mauryan Emperor of
India, Ashoka.
THE HELLENISTIC IMPACT
The legacy of the Macedonian conqueror
Alexander the Great in Central Asia is thought
to include planned cities such as Ay Khanum,
Shaikhan Dheri (Charsadda) and Sirkap (Taxila)
as well as Greek mythological scenes in
sculpture and pottery. When Alexander
conquered the Achaemenids in c.331 BC, the
Greeks then ruled in much of Central Asia,
including Bactria and Sogdiana. Their attempts
to move further east into Northern India were
foiled by a number of smaller Indian states,
which eventually emerged into the great
Mauryan Empire. Ashoka (r.268–232 BC) is
perhaps the best known of the Mauryans, and
this is largely due to his ardent promotion of
Buddhism. Indeed, it was Ashoka who sent his
son Mahinda as a friend and missionary to
convert the ruling family of Sri Lanka to
Buddhism.
CENTRAL ASIA 500 BC-AD 600
FROM THE ‘GOLDEN MOUND’, a pair of open-worked
gold clasps representing warriors between columns
or trees. They are classically dressed but with
Graeco-Bactrian plumes on Macedonian-type
helmets. Menacing dragons at their feet betray
Eurasian ‘animal style’ influence. Unearthed from a
female grave, this is one of 20,000 artefacts
discovered in 1978 at Tillya-tepe or the ‘Golden
Mound’, a 2100-year-old necropolis in Bactria. The
priceless 'Treasure of Bactria' was last seen and
inspected by international archaeologists in 1993.
1 Empires and Tribute
campaigns of Alexander the Great
cities founded by Alexander
Hellenized cities
Kushan Empire
sites with Kushan art
Graeco-Bactrian Kingdom
Parthian Empire
sites of hoards
Achaemenid tribute:
bulls
camels
horses
silver
rings/jewellery
lances and shields
weapons
battle-axes
swords
vessels
animal hides
leather goods
lion-skin cloaks
1 GREAT EMPIRES OF CENTRAL ASIA
from the Persians to the Kushans
show just how desirable this region
is. Rich natural resources such as
camels and bulls, as well as access
to a variety of raw materials as
well as the indigenous skills to
produce fabulous jewellery and
weapons, have meant that Central
Asia has been conquered by
western, eastern and indigenous
groups over many centuries.
SOUTH ASIA 500 BC–AD 600
85
locally produced clay and pressed from
moulds, would have served the needs of the
burgeoning urban population. In addition to
Sanskrit, these growing cults often expressed
themselves in the local vernacular, the
prototypes of various modern Indian
languages. The earliest body of Dravidian
literature written in Tamil is the Sangam poetry
of the early centuries AD.
WIDER CONTACTS
Large areas of the northern parts of the
subcontinent were closely linked to
developments in Central Asia during the first to
the fourth centuries AD. The Kushan Empire’s
control over the Silk Road was aided by the
links between their twin capitals near modern
Peshawar in Gandhara, and Mathura in
northern India. Each region engendered a
prolific centre of artistic activity. Although
largely Greek or Roman and, to a lesser extent,
Central Asian in inspiration and expression,
the distinctive sculptural art of Gandhara was
mostly Indian in its content. Large Buddhist
stupas sculpted at first in local grey schist and
later in stucco were covered with narratives
from the Buddha’s biography and Jatakas
(mythological stories) that monks carried with
them from Indian stupas and monasteries. At
the same time, extensive maritime trade
between Rome and southern India is evident
from archaeological finds, texts and art.
Mainland India’s own artistic ideals reached
another apogee under her final empire in the
ancient period during the reign of the Guptas
and their tributaries, when previous
iconographic, structural and literary experiments
were given a fixed, classically Indian form. Their
bronze, stone and terracotta sculpture forms a
standard to which all subsequent Indian art
refers. The influence of the visual arts of this
period spread far beyond India, to Sri Lanka,
Southeast Asia and the Far East.
65° 70° 75° 80° 85° 90°60°
80˚ 85˚ 90˚ 95˚
30˚
25˚
20˚
15˚
10˚
5˚
1
2
3
4
Bamiyan
Peshawar
Rangmahal
Hadda
Akhnur
Srinagar
Harvan
Taxila
Mirpur Khas
MathuraAhar
Bhitargaon
Pawaya
Deogarh
Varanasi
Nachnakuthara
Tigawa
Ramtek
Nalanda
Sultanganj
Kurkihar
Pandu Rajar Dhibi
Vaishali
Elephanta
Kondapur
Ter
Anuradhapura
Sigiriya
Kanchipuram
Nagapattinam
Amaravati
Udayagiri
Bhattiprolu
Ghantasala
Goli
Nagarjunakonda
Jaggayyapeta
Sanchi
Akota
Ellora
Aihole
Kolhapur
Brahmagiri
Bagh
Ajanta
Dwarka
Barygaza
Phophnar
Noh
Gop
Sarnath
Kannauj
Bodh Gaya
Kaushambi
Ma
hanadi
Godava
ri
Ka
veri
Krishna
Ganges
Yamuna
Sutlej
Indus
Indus
Jhelu
m
Chen
ab
Ravi
Brahmaputra
A R A B I A N
S E A
I N D I A N
O C E A N
H
I
M
A
L A Y A S
EASTERNGHATS
WESTERNGHATS
D E C C A N
H I N D U
K U S H
T H A R
D E S E R T
KSHATRAPA
W
ESTERN
A N D H R A S
SATAVA
H
A
N
A
S
G U P T A S
H U N A S
IKSHVAKUS
PALLAVAS
CHOLAS
PANDYAS
CHERAS
VAKATAKAS
S
A
S
S
A
N
I
A
N
S
H E P H T H A L I T E S
K
U
S
H
A
N
A
S
Southwestern ports:
clothing/linen,
copper, tin, lead,
semi-precious stones,
coins, glass, wheat, wine
Eastern ports:
muslin, pearls,
ivory, cinnamon
Indus ports:
semi-precious stones,
furs/skins,
indigo/other dyes,
cotton, silk
Southeastern ports:
muslin,
semi-precious stones,
pearls, tortoise shell
N
0
0
2 India, AD 100-600
area of Gupta overlordship
major dynasty,
1st-3rd centuries AD
major dynasty,
3rd-6th centuries AD
route of Faxian,
AD 399-414
probable route of
Xuanzang, AD 629-645
painting
pillar
monastery remains
stupa
cave: sculpted or painted
temple structure
bronze sculpture
stone sculpture
terracotta/stucco imagery
ivory carving
jewellery
coins
imports
exports
ANDHRAS
GUPTAS
- Indus ports (imports):
silver/gold plate, semi-precious stones, glassware,
clothing/linen, wine
- Barygaza ports (exports):
semi-precious stones, cotton/silk cloth, yarn, pepper, ivory
- Southwestern ports (exports):
precious/semi-precious stones, tortoise shell, silk cloth,
cinnamon, pepper, ivory
- Barygaza ports (imports):
silverware, gold/silver coins, copper, tin,lead, glass,
clothing, wine
1
2
3
4
300 miles
450 kms
2 THE TRAVEL ACCOUNTS from the pilgrimages of the
two Chinese Buddhists Faxian and Xuanzang to
ancient Indian sites in the fourth and seventh
centuries have greatly assisted archaeologists.
Their descriptions of sites, the routes of their
travels and a wealth of other detail often ties in
well with interpretations of ancient Indian
literary sources and what has been excavated to
reveal one of the greatest phases of Indian art.
Maritime, riverine and overland trade both
within South Asia and with the rest of the world
saw the exchange of not just the listed
commodities but also ideas and artistic ideals.
DETAIL OF A WALL PAINTING from Ajanta caves, c. fifth
century AD, in the domain of the Vakataka dynasty.
These Buddhist paintings are celebrated for their
sophisticated compositions that burst with life. Set
in palaces and gardens, they show kings, ascetics,
animals and the most seductive women in selfconsciously
languid poses. The depictions of
textiles, furniture and ornament allow us a vivid
window into early India.
also preserve two of the earliest readable
Indian scripts: Brahmi and Kharoshti.
POST-MAURYAN ART
Early Buddhist and Jain worship was centred
on the cult of the veneration of relics housed in
stupas. In the politically fragmented PostMauryan
period (roughly c.250 BC–AD 100) preexisting
brick and clay stupas, such as those at
Sanchi, Amaravati and Mathura, began to
attract a vibrant tradition of stone sculptures
and buildings sponsored by the growing
middle classes. Some of the earliest Hindu
sculptures of Shiva, Vishnu, Lakshmi and other
forms of the goddess also made their first
appearance in stone. At the same time vast
amounts of sculpture in terracotta, made from
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
84
of the northeastern state of the Shakyas and
founder of Buddhism, emerged from this
tradition of heterodox sects. So too did
Vardhamana Mahavira, the founder of Jainism.
Although there are few artistic remains of this
early period, the early heterodox sects and
other pre-existing theistic cults perpetuated
the sanctity of sites associated with their seers
and myths. These sites consequently became
major centres of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain
pilgrimage, trade and artistic activity.
THE FIRST EMPIRE
The mountain passes of the northwest frontier
have always been India’s vital corridors for links
to the west, whether for overland trade, or, as
in the case of Alexander in the third century BC,
for conquest. Following Alexander’s retreat
from the Jhelum River in 326–5 BC, his
possessions in northwest India and
Afghanistan were divided between his generals.
By the period of the establishment of the
subcontinent-wide Mauryan Empire in the
third century BC, therefore, indigenous and
foreign models of statecraft, administration
and, moreover, control over a standing army
were well-known.
The extensive diplomatic and trade
exchanges of the Mauryan emperors
Chandragupta (r.321–297 BC) and Ashoka
(r.268–232 BC) with Iran, Greece, Egypt, Sri
Lanka and Southeast Asia are reflected in not
just the influences on their art, but the
conscious choice to leave lasting legacies in
stone. Imperial Mauryan freestanding
monolithic pillars were all quarried near
Varanasi and then transported over river
networks to far-flung regions of the empire.
Ashokan stone inscriptions concern a variety of
social, religious and economic matters. They
AN ENORMOUS BODY of artistic and
material remains and literary sources
survive from the period 500 BC–AD 600 from
South Asia. They reveal the establishment of
some of the most defining characteristics of
Indian civilization. From the sixth century BC
onward states formed as monarchies and tribal
confederacies. This was accompanied by the
development of urban centres, artisanal
classes, agriculture and trade. Major artistic
and architectural projects were supplied with
an increasingly wide range of raw materials as
India’s natural resources were exploited. Trade
in precious and semi-precious stones, such as
sapphire, coral, diamond and agate, and in
perfumes and ivory generated a surplus that
furnished crafts guilds with raw materials.
As an increasing number of peoples were
incorporated into wider organized trade and
agricultural networks, their various
shamanistic cults, wandering ascetics and
local theistic pantheons contrasted with the
existing Vedic liturgy. In the fifth century BC,
Siddhartha (later Gautama Buddha), a prince
SOUTH ASIA 500 BC-AD 600
65° 70° 75° 80° 85° 90°60°
65˚ 70˚ 75˚
40˚
35˚
30˚
25˚
20˚
15˚
90˚85˚80˚
Begram
Tashkent
Sogdian Rock
Rupar
Amin
Sanchi
Ujaini
Junagadh
Pattala
Multan
Nicaea
Herat
Gwadar
Taxila
Sangela
Kanheri Ajanta
Sannathi
Kolhapur
Amaravati
Udayagiri
Gudimallam
Arikamedu
Anuradhapura
Bhaja/Bedsa
Vidisha
Nagari
Bharhut
Hastinapura
Ahichhatra
Sravasti
Ayodhya
Sarnath
Chandraketugarh
Tamralipti
Varanasi
Vaishali
Pataliputra
Rajgriha
Bodh Gaya
Kaushambi
Mathura
Pushkalavati
Bala Hissar
Bactra
Ai Khanum
Samarkand
Indraprastha
Peshawar
Mahanadi
Godavari
Narmada
Krish
na
Kav
eri
G
anges
Yamuna
Sutlej
Indus
Indus
Jhelum
Chen
ab
Ravi
Bra
hmaputra
A R A B I A N
S E A
I N D I A N
O C E A N
H
I
M
A
L
A Y A S
EASTERNGHATS
WESTERNGHATS
D E C C A N
H
I N
D U
K U
S H
T H A R
D E S E R T
S C Y T H I A N S
IN
D
O
- G
R
E
E
K
S
GRAECO-BACTRIANS
S E L E U C I D S
S U N G A S
M A U R Y A S
K A L I N G A
economic commodities/
raw materials:
horses
elephants
cotton
silk
spices
iron/coal
gold
diamonds
gems
pearls
N
0
0
300 miles
450 kms
1 Early Historic India, 500-100 BC
dynasty
major trade route
Alexander's route
material remains:
painting
pillar
monastery remains
stupa
cave: sculpted or painted
structural remains
bronze sculpture
stone sculpture
terracotta/stucco imagery
ivory carving
jewellery
coins
SUNGAS
1 WHILE HUNDREDS OF megalithic burial sites were
dotted across India in this period and traces of
civilization and rural dwellings can be found across
the subcontinent, this map shows only major sites
or regions that either manufactured
or supplied materials for the production of ‘art’.
Several cities and monastic dwellings have
revealed structures, coins, paintings and artefacts
for what is called the ‘early-historic’ period in
India. The structures are mostly Buddhist, Jain or
Hindu, although there are traces of others which
can no longer be clearly identified. The map
uses only the most commonly known names
of dynasties.
LION CAPITAL, SARNATH, 3RD CENTRY BC. This monolithic
pillar capital was one of many erected by King
Ashoka. The capital is made from spectacularly
polished cream sandstone. Sarnath is the site where
the Buddha delivered his first sermon, thereby
establishing the religious order of Buddhism.
Interestingly, the pillar bears an inscription left by
Ashoka threatening dissenting monks with
expulsion from the order.
CHINA 500 BC–AD 600
87
living space. Their wealthy occupants have
been discovered wearing elaborate suits of
jade, or with the bodies preserved in silks.
The construction of the ‘Hall of Brightness’,
which symbolized the cosmos, demonstrated
a strong trend in architectural innovation
(using earth platforms and timbers for multistorey
buildings), which would continue into
later periods.
RELIGIOUS AND LANDSCAPE ART
After the fall of the Han dynasty, China split
into several small dynasties and was
fragmented until the sixth century. The
importance of art for the afterlife persisted:
Bronze vessels remained one of the highest
art forms, and innovations in metalwork, such
as new inlay techniques and the lost-wax
method, allowed for a much more sophisticated
scheme of decoration. At the same time,
particularly in the more southern Chu state,
there was significant development in textiles
and lacquerware. The status of such objects was
raised higher than ever before, and this in turn
stimulated new approaches to the forms and
decorations of mainstream bronze art.
There was also influence from further
afield, particularly from the nomadic art of the
northern steppes. Bronzes found at the tombs
of the kings of the Zhongshan state included
winged animals, a motif typical of western and
Central Asia. The influence was not one-way:
Chinese artworks, especially bronzes and silk,
now became sought-after commodities and
were exported to the west.
A UNIFIED STATE
In 221 BC the ruler of the northwestern Qin state
brought the Warring States to an end, unifying
them to create the Qin dynasty. He became the
First Emperor of China, Qin Shihuangdi. His
reforms included a series of standardizations: of
weights, measurements, currency and written
script. He amassed great wealth and
summoned skilled craftsmen to his capital at
Xianyang to build his palaces and his tomb
complex. The architectural remains of his
massive palaces show decorated ornaments
and walls. Most famous of all was the discovery
in the 1970s of the thousands of terracotta
warriors near his enormous tomb mound, which
revealed unprecedented achievements in
sculpture and human representation in early
Chinese art. The warriors are life-size and hold
real weapons, as though heading out for war in
the other world. They were created by modelling
on a mass-production line.
The Qin dynasty was overthrown by a
peasant uprising in 206 BC. The new ruler, Liu
Bang, established the Han Dynasty (202 BC–AD
220) and as peace prevailed, the Han dynasty
flourished. The two periods of the Han dynasty
reflect the location of the capital city: the
Western Han (206 BC–AD 24) with the capital at
Chang’an, and the Eastern Han (AD 25–220)
with its capital at Luoyang.
The Western Han capital at Chang’an was
the largest urban centre in Asia, with a
population of almost half a million, and a
thriving centre for art. The main themes in Han
art were paradise and immortality.
Contemporary belief and funerary practice
ensured that valuable objects were buried with
the dead for use in the afterlife. Indeed, many
funerary objects were made especially for the
burial. Archaeologists have excavated
decorated tombs, sometimes with several
chambers, which were intended to imitate real
‘THE ADMONITIONS OF THE INSTRUCTRESS TO COURT
LADIES’, attributed to Gu Kaizhi (c.AD 344–406),
though this is still a matter of scholastic dispute.
This silk painting is based on an essay by the Jin
scholar Zhang Hua. It has eleven different scenes,
with Chinese text written between each scene. The
importance of the painting lies in its fine
draftsmanship. It represents the highest
achievement ever of Chinese figurative painting.
70˚ 80˚ 90˚ 100˚ 110˚ 120˚ 130˚
40˚
50˚
60˚
70˚
Linzi
(Wang Xizhi 303-61,
Wang Xianzhi 344-86,
calligraphers)
Jiaojun
(Dai Kui d.396,
Dai Yu 378-441, sculptors)
Wuxi
(Gu Kaizhi
346-407, painter)
Dunhuang
Turfan
Kashgar
Khotan
Kucha
Yungang Caves
Mogao
Caves
Kezil Caves
Longmen
Caves
Juyan tombs
(murals depicting
everyday life)
Danyang tombs
(pictorial bricks
depicting famous
scholars)
Astana Cemetery
(textiles, clay figurines, tomb murals)
Chang’an
(silver)
Dingzhou
(silk)
Jingzhou
(paper)
Jinyang
(iron)
Xuzhou
(copper)
Kuaiji
(paper, ceramics)
Qingzhou
(Buddhist
sculpture)
Jianye
(royal tombs,
architecture,
animal sculpture,
ceramics)
(paper, iron, lacquers)
(copper mines, architecture, tombs)
Beijing
Shanghai
Guangzhou
Xi’an
Chengdu
Luoyang
Nanjing
S O U T H
C H I NA
S E A
SEA
OF
JAPAN
L. Balkhash
MANCHURIAN
PLAIN
ALTA
I
M
T
S .
T I E N
S H A N
TA K L A M A K A N
D E S E R T
TA R I M BA S I N
P L A T E A U O F T I B E T
G
O
B
I
H
I
M
A
L
A
Y A S
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
2 China Divided, AD 300-600
ancient city important for raw
materials/art production
maritime trade route
Silk Road
important archaeological site
site with Buddhist art
city associated with artists
modern city
2 THE CHINESE EMPIRE fragmented into many small
states from 220 to 581. There was a short period of
unity under the Western Jin dynasty (AD 265–316),
but during this 200-year period the political
landscape was dominated by nomadic invaders,
who adopted the culture and way of life of the
Chinese. In 581 the Sui dynasty reunified China.
huge stone sculptures of exotic animals were
placed at royal cemeteries, and small luxury
items are often found in tombs. Religious art
flourished under the patronage of the Northern
and Southern dynasties (420–581). The
introduction of Buddhism inspired an
enormous output of Buddhist icons, paintings
and scriptures. This in turn stimulated artistic
creativity in the indigenous religion, Taoism.
As urbanization intensified in the third and
fourth centuries, landscape architecture,
painting and poetry, which represented a desire
to be closer to nature, became the major new
passion of the elite. It coincided with the
transformation of calligraphy into a fine art.
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
86
THE EASTERN, OR LATE, ZHOU dynasty
(770–221 BC) witnessed the waning and
eventual collapse of the central power of the Zhou
royal house, as dukes and lords began to develop
their own states more or less independently.
ZHOU DIVERSITY
The names of the two periods of the Eastern
Zhou reflect these political changes: the Spring
and Autumn period (770–475 BC) and the
Warring States period (475–221 BC). These
changes are manifested in the great diversity of
the cultural development and art of the Eastern
Zhou. Many Eastern Zhou finds have been
traditionally interpreted as ritual art, but in such
diverse cultural contexts, and without a clear
understanding of the beliefs of the people, this
interpretation is no longer appropriate.
CHINA 500 BC-AD 600
TERRACOTTA CAVALRYMAN and
saddled horse, Qin Dynasty,
221–202 BC. In the 1960s
thousands of terracotta
warriors and horses were
discovered near the
tumulus of the first
emperor, Qin Shihuangdi,
in Xi’an. They are all lifesize
and made in a realistic
manner. Great attention
was paid to details such as
hairstyle and armour, and
originally both the human
and animal figures were
painted. Both the
scale of the burial and
the exquisite artistic
representation of these
tomb figurines are unique
in Chinese history.
140˚130˚120˚110˚100˚90˚80˚70˚
40˚
30˚
20˚
Leigudun
Tomb of Zeng Hou Yi
(bronze bells, bamboo documents,
bronze and jade artefacts)
Mancheng
Tomb of Liu Sheng and Douwan;
(both bodies wearing jade suits)
Tomb of the first Emperor
of Qin (and terracotta army)
Tomb of the
King of Nanyue
(bronze and
jade artefacts)
Qixian
Tomb of the King of Zhongshan state
(earliest known example of funerary
architecture; inlaid bronzes
with animal motifs)
Yangling
Tomb of Emperor Jing of Han
(terracotta figurines)
Mawangdui
Western Han tombs
(painted coffins, silk manuscripts,
funerary banners with earliest
portraiture, textiles, lacquer ware)
Shizhaishan
(cemetery, bronzes)
Alagou
cemetery
Bronze culture
Niya
major town on Silk Road
Loulan
major town on
Silk Road
Aluchaideng
(cemetery;
Ordos bronzes)
Houma
Jin royal cemetery;
centre for bronze production
Maoqingguo
(cemetery;
Ordos bronzes)
Ba
Dian
Shu
Chang’an
Chu
Changsha
Chengzhou
Sanmenxia
(Guo cemetery)
Dunhuang
major town on
Silk Road
Zhao
Wei
Han
Wenxian
(covenant tablets)
Shanbiaozheng
(Wei cemetery)
Jijiahu
(Chu cemetery)
Lelang
Qi
Nanyue
Lu
Wu
Yue
Xu
Luoyang
Chu
Yan
Qin
Xianyang
Beijing
(Peking)
ShanghaiXi’an
Guangzhou
(Canton)
Chengdu
Ürümqi
Kunming
Pyongyang
Jiangling
Ussuri
Yangtze
Huai R
iver
Bo Hai
Lop Nor
L. Balkhash
YellowRiver
S E A
O F
J A PA N
E A S T
C H I NA
S E A
S O U T H
C H I NA
S E A
YELLOW
SEA
H
I
M
A
L
A
Y A S
G
O
B
I
ALTA
I
M
T
S .
QILIAN SHAN
P L A T E A U O F T I B E T
M A N C H U R I A N
P L A I N
TA K L A M A K A N
D E S E R T
T I E N
S H A N
TA R I M BA S I N
ORDOS
DESERT
Q I A N G
(nomadic culture)
SAKA (nomadic culture)
X I O N G N U
(nomadic culture)
HAINAN
TAIWAN
KOREA
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 Building the Empire, 500 BC-AD 300
ancient capital/political centre
major archaeological site
important royal/aristocratic tomb
nomadic culture
maritime trade route
Silk Road
fortifications (Great Wall)
modern city
SAKA
1 THE QIN EMERGED FROM THE NORTHWEST, defeated
all their enemies and unified the country in 221
BC. The Qin king became the first emperor of
China. The Qin dynasty was short-lived, but its
successor, the Han dynasty, inherited its legacy
and turned China into an empire. A state
bureaucracy, territorial expansion, the opening
of the Silk Road, Confucian philosophy and
popular religious belief in the afterlife, all laid
foundations for Chinese society for centuries to
come.
147˚141˚129˚123˚
44˚
40˚
36˚
32˚
Hansan
(-AD 474)
Ungjin (AD 475-538)
Nam Puyo
(AD 538-663)
Pyongyang
(AD 427-668)
Kuknaesong
(37 BC-AD 427)
Kumsong
Acha-sansong
Isong-sansong
Mongchon
Hwangsae
Pusok-sa
Pulguk-sa
Kyongju10
Miruk-sa
Hae’in-sa
Denenchofu
Tamazukkuri-Uenodai
Nakazato
Koshinden
Tsuchihashi
Takahashi
Jizozo
Okaku
Shimoyama
Tohari ichibanwari
Sakitama
Suwayama
Gekkodaira
Nakayama
Minami
Takanohara
Tsukazaki
Matsuoka
Imakumano
Sanzen
Karausubayashi
Yotodoki
Horikoshi
HaranojoArago
Maruyama
Mitsudera
Nagamine
Nishikoko
Furuichi
Tadadayama
Oyamato-Yanagimoto
Saki
Mozu
Narutaki
Ozono
Waki
Takaita 3
Kitadeni
Asuka-Itabuki
Nakayama chiku
Ikaruga
Kayama
Katamatasuzuka
Umami
Umanoyama
Yoshizuka
Yoshida
Yajiri
Matsuno
Omiya
Miyamaegawa
Saitobaru
Kitsunezuka
Arita
Kumanohara
Magome
Sakuranojo
Ozuka
Ama
Hie
Takehara
Tojin
Yodong
Ponghwang
Cholbon
Ansi
Puso-sansong
Kumsong
maximumextentof
Koguryo border
Imjin-gang
H
an-gang
L. Biwa
Osumi-shoto
Oki-gunto
Izu-shoto
Sado
Cheju-do
Tsushima
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
S E A
O F
J A P A N
YELLOW
SEA
S E A O F
O K H O T S K
KOREA
BAY
TIARTS
AEROK
TAEBAEK
-SANMAEK
NA N G N I M
- S A N M A E K
KIBI
NOBI
KINAI
JOMO
IZUMO
YAMATO
SILLA
KAYA
PAEKCHE
K
O
G
U
R
Y
O
9
15
17
26
25
6,18
22
4
7
13 21
2,14,20
3
1,11,19
12,16,23
5,8,24
KYUSHU
SHIKOKU
HONSHU
HOKKAIDO
N
0
0
150 miles
200 kms
2 The Emergence of Elite Art, AD 300-600
Korean states:
Koguryo (37 BC-AD 668)
Paekche (18 BC-AD 664)
Silla (57 BC-AD 668)
Kaya (AD 42-562)
successive capitals
fortresses
early Buddhist temples
important tombs and cemeteries
Kofun Japan:
Yamato state
peripheral areas of state formation
expansion of state
major Kofun settlements
early palace sites
elite compounds
mound cemeteries
major decorated tombs
1- Bangi-dong
2- Bangyeje
3- Chinpa-ri
4- Chisang-dong
5- Choyang-dong
6- Hoechong-dong
7- Imdang-dong
8- Inwang-dong
9- Ipchom-ni
10- Kachoa-dong
11- Karak-dong
12- Kuam-dong
13- Kyo-dong
14- Okchon
15- Paekchon-ni
16- Pisan-dong
17- Pobchon-ni
18- Pokchon-dong
19- Sokchon-dong
20- Songsan-ni
21- Sunhong-dong
22- Taesong-dong
23- Tangkam-dong
24- Wolsongno
25- Yangpyong-dong
26- Yonggoong-ni
important tombs and cemeteries
JAPAN AND KOREA 500 BC–AD 600
89
were the animals most commonly depicted on
bronzes and incised on pottery, with birds also
being important, in particular water birds such
as cranes and herons. Wooden models of birds
have been found in many Yayoi settlements,
perhaps representing spiritual guardians. Dogs,
lizards, frogs and other animals also appear.
Scenes of fighting, pounding rice, storing rice
and hunting have also been found. Many deer
scapulae are known from Yayoi sites; they bear
deliberate burns and scratches, probably used in
divination, a practice which was also important
on the Korean peninsula. Ritual authority based
on the ability to communicate with the spirit
world seems to have been a major factor in
Yayoi society and Chinese accounts, such as
the Wei Zhi, provide vivid descriptions of the
way in which ritual power came to be vested in
the rulers of chiefdoms, such as the legendary
Queen of Yamataikoku, Himiko.
2 WITH THE APPEARANCE of highly
structured states on the Korean
peninsula and the Japanese
archipelago elite groups used art to
differentiate themselves from the rest
of society. Elaborate monumental
burials were the visual expression of
social and ritual power as well as the
receptacles for large quantities of
prestige items. As these early states
expanded, their elite rulers built
palaces, fortresses and, eventually,
Buddhist temples.
THE FIRST STATES
Contemporary Chinese chronicles and later
Korean and Japanese sources refer to the many
regional polities which flourished in the first
few centuries of the first millennium AD. The
influence of China is well-demonstrated by the
existence of colonies or commanderies
established by the Han Empire on the Korean
peninsula. The best-known is Lelang, near
present-day Pyongyang, where there was a
Chinese city and over 1500 tombs.
The agricultural communities on the
Korean peninsula and the Japanese
archipelago gave rise to a series of political
entities which, by the end of the sixth century
AD, had developed into states, ruled by elites
which interacted with each other and with the
Chinese empire. These included the three
kingdoms of Koguryo, Paekche and Silla on
the Korean peninsula and the Yamato polity in
the Kinai region of central Honshu. These
elites, which monopolized both secular and
ritual power, expressed themselves through
new forms of art, which often involved
technological advance, as seen in the
production of stoneware pottery, and the
control of key resources, such as iron and gold.
The emergence of this new social
hierarchy, complete with strict class divisions,
is best reflected in the tradition of burying
members of the elite in monumental mounded
tombs, often along with splendid treasures.
The labour invested in these great funerary
monuments is testimony to the unparalleled
development of social power.
These elites used material culture to great
effect, manipulating it to legitimize their own
position. Military prowess and the symbolism
associated with it, including weaponry and
armour, were valued, as the contents of tombs
from fifth-century Japan attest. Elites were not
only buried apart from the commoners, but
also began to live in separate enclosures. This
trend, which led from demarcated enclosures
within settlements, as at Yoshinogari, to the
appearance of entirely separate elite
compounds at sites such as Mitsudera,
ultimately resulted in the construction of early
palace sites in the Kansai region of Japan.
On the Korean peninsula, towns and
fortifications on the Chinese model had
appeared at Kyongju from the third century AD
onwards. It was in this context that Buddhism
appeared, introduced to Korea in the fourth
century and into Japan early in the sixth
century. The beliefs and practices associated
with Buddhism were taken up by the elites and,
along with the increased use of writing,
accompanied the gradual Sinification of
elite lifestyles, which helped to create further
distinctions between the elite classes
and commoners.
CAST BRONZE BELL (DOTAKU) from
Sakuragaoka, west-central Honshu.
During the Yayoi period, bronze was
used to make ceremonial objects.
Dotaku were buried at locations
away from settlements. More than
430 of these bells have been
discovered, mainly around the Kinai
region. Just over 50 of these carry
representations in relief, depicting
animals, in particular deer, birds,
water-insects and amphibians,
hunting and fishing, and
agricultural scenes of ricepounding
and storehouses.
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
88
is only in the later part of the first millennium
BC that bronze became an important medium,
when bronze assemblages included mirrors,
weapons, bells, belt hooks, horse trappings
and chariot ornaments. In Japan bronze was
used in rituals, and certain forms became very
stylized and ceremonial, in particular bronze
bells, or dotaku, and spears. Sometimes – at
sites such as Kojindani – bronzes were
deliberately deposited. At the end of the Yayoi
period, some of the newly emerging elite
groups engaged in deliberate iconoclasm,
breaking and smashing bronze objects and
burying them in pits.
Pictorial representation became much more
common during the Yayoi period. Deer, which
may have represented important local deities or
had symbolic associations with rice agriculture,
THE RICE REVOLUTION
The material culture of the Yayoi period in the
archipelago (c.400 BC–c. AD300) had much in
common with that of the Korean Iron Age
(c.500 BC–c.AD 300). In addition to the
technology associated with growing rice in
specially constructed paddy fields, such as
semilunar-shaped stone reaping knives, new
items included polished stone arrowheads,
megalithic burials (quickly replaced by jar
burials in Japan), and settlements enclosed by
ditches. These cultural traits gestated in
Kyushu during the Initial Yayoi (400–300 BC),
rapidly spreading throughout Honshu, and
displacing the preceding Jomon cultures. Yayoi
pottery differed from the elaborately decorated
Jomon traditions in terms of decoration, form
and fabrication. The shallow bowls which had
become common during the later Jomon had
all but disappeared by the end of the first
century AD, and the jar-shaped tsubo became a
distinctive Yayoi form.
Although many bronze artefacts are found
in Korea before 500 BC, in particular mirrors
and weapons such as daggers and halberds, it
JAPAN AND KOREA 500 BC-AD 600
140˚
130˚
40˚
30˚
Cho-Do
Hachon-ni
Kungong-ni
Majang-ni
Naksu-ri
Nuk-Do
Pomuigusok
Oksong-ni
Pungnam-ni
Songsan
Tang Tosong
Yonggangni
Sinmaei-ri
Nangming-dong
3
1
2
4
Choyang-dong,
Kujong-dong
Hapsong-ni
Karak-dong
Myongji-ri
Nopo-dong,Yean-ni
Singchang-ni
Sora-riSuksang-ni
Taho-ri
Tohwa-ri
Wau-ri
Wutuoling
Yangpyong-ni
Sokchong-dong
Susong-ni
Taegong-ni
PYONHAN
Tunnae-ri
Ama
Senya
Ozakidai
Toro
Kamezuka
Kanyo Iwakura
Karako-Kagi
Hidaka
Yayoi-cho
Arita
Numa
Asahi
Yoshinogari
Ikegami-Sone
Jizoden B
Oki II
Otsuka-Saikachido
Nishitani
Doigahama
Sugitani
Mine
Suku Okamoto
Tatetsuki
KamiItazuke
Kazahari
Magarida
Nabatake
Tareyanagi
Kojindani
Sakuragaoka
Jinnai
Kashihara
Kinsei
Korekawa
Kyunenbashi
Satohama
Banshoji
Kamegaoka
Nakayama
Miyanomae
Mimanda
Shinano
L. Biwa
S E A O F
J A P A N
YELLOW
SEA
SEA OF
OKHOTSK
KOREA
BAY
Osumi-shoto
Oki-gunto
Izu-shoto
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
KOREA STRAIT
NANGNIM-SANMAEK
MAHAN
CHINHAN
WIMAN
CHOSON
YE-MAEK
OK-CHO
PUYO
KYUSHU
SHIKOKU
Cheju-Do
Tsushima
Sado
HONSHU
HOKKAIDO
KOREA
C H I N A
Northern limit
of rice cultivation
in Japan, c. AD 300
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
The Spread of Agricultural Communities,
500 BC-AD 500
Japan:
Final Jomon (500-400 BC)
Yayoi (400 BC-AD 300)
Korea:
Iron Age (500 BC-AD 300)
site
important settlement
major burial and ceremonial site
hillforts and towns
shell middens
site with evidence of rice agriculture
site with major bronze hoard
ethnic groups in Korea
1
PUYO
1- Suga-ri, Ungchon,Yangsan
2- Toirae-ri
3- Chongbaeng-ni, Namsu-ri,
Sogam-ni,Taesong-ni
4- Yangdong-ni
Dengzhou
Lelang
Taifang
Toma
Yamatai
Shikashima
Na
Ito
Koyohan
Masuura
Possible route of
Wei and Himiko
embassies, AD 239-247
KOREA
historical location
along embassy route
RICE CULTIVATION and bronze working were
well-established on the Korean peninsula
by 1000 BC, and within 600 years had spread to
the Japanese archipelago. From the later part of
the first millennium BC, contacts between
Korea and Japan, as well as with China, under
the control of the expansionist Han empire,
became a major factor influencing the
development of visual, material culture and
technology. In Japan the last centuries of the
forager Jomon period saw the appearance of
plainer pottery vessels in the southwest, and
an increase in ritual activity involving clay
figurines, possibly indicating a resistance to
the advent of rice-paddy agriculture.
DETAIL OF ROCK ENGRAVINGS at Pan’gudae,
southeastern Korea, c.400–300 BC. There
are at least nine sites along the Naktong
River valley in south Korea where rock
art has been discovered. The panels at
Pan’gudae include abstract motifs such
as spirals and lozenges, as well as
representations of fishing, hunting,
boats, humans, fish and animals. Animals
and humans are depicted in two ways,
the ‘silhouette’ style and the ‘x-ray’ style,
in which bones are visible. These
different styles may represent different
periods of engraving; it appears that
some of the incisions required the use of
metal tools.
1 THE ADOPTION OF AGRICULTURAL LIFESTYLES on the
Korean peninsula and subsequently in the
Japanese archipelago was associated with major
technological, social and cultural transformations,
along with some degree of human migration and
higher population densities. These changes also
heralded changes in the
landscape, with forests
gradually being cleared to
make way for both dry and
irrigated fields.
Competition for good
agricultural land and trends
towards increasing social
differentiation were
associated with rising
tensions leading to the
appearance of defended
sites and warfare.
SOUTHEAST ASIA 500 BC–AD 600
91
sites include both bronze and iron objects as
well as carved stone ornaments, particularly
earrings, that are common in these
excavations. The Sa Huynh seem to be
ancestral to the Cham, who became prominent
by the sixth century AD.
THE RISE OF STATES
In about the first century BC, a series of
entrepôts and economic centres at the mouth
of the Mekong appear to have formed one of
the earliest indigenous states in Southeast
Asia. We know of this empire from Chinese
texts where it is called ‘Funan’. Funan’s rise in
significance is linked to two developments in
the region. Firstly, an advanced agrarian system
that included intensive rice agriculture and
swamp drainage had emerged, later evolving
into an elaborate irrigation system. Secondly,
these entrepôts had a strategic location
opposite the Isthmus of Kra on the Malay
Peninsula, which had come to dominate trade
between China to the east and India, Persia,
and the Roman world to the west. Early
sources suggest that a high-caste Indian visitor
had married a local woman to become the first
‘king’ of Funan. Contemporary texts have led
some scholars to speculate that Indian
immigrants were responsible for transforming
the style and structure of Funan society,
economics and politics. Migration of Brahman
clerks to the kingdom effectively Indianized the
state. More recent scholars tend to view the
introduction of Indian cultural and religious
forms as inspired by a local initiative to adopt
sophisticated foreign practices and ideas rather
than as the imposition of Indian culture by
immigrants. These scholars also argue that
while Chinese sources may write of Funan as a
kingdom, it was probably not a unitary state in
the modern sense, but a series of tribal
communities linked through kin ties and
marriage to form a coalition for military and
economic purposes. Some scholars suggest
that this coalition never reached the level of
integration where the chief was transformed
into a divine king, a crucial process in later
Southeast Asian states.
From its centre on the Mekong, Funan
used its superior naval power to expand its
control to the west, capturing the polity of
Dunsun at the base of the Malay Peninsula.
Dunsun was already an Indianized commercial
centre, monopolizing trade across the Isthmus
15˚
15˚
0˚
Tropic of Cancer
150˚135˚120˚105˚
Oc Eo
Salween
Mekong
Red
R.
Irrawaddy
I N D I A N
O C E A N
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
SOUTH
CHINA SEA
JAVA SEA
CELEBES
SEA
SULU
SEA
FLORES SEA
ANDAMAN
SEA
GULFO
F
THAILAN
D
BANDA
SEA
ARAFURA
SEA
STRAIT
O
F
M
ALACCA
MACASSARSTRAIT
VIETNAM
CHAMPA
SRIVIJAYA
KHMER
DUNSUN
ISTHMUS OF KRA FUNAN
YEPOTI
HELUODAN
GANTUOLI
GEYING
SHEBO
MOLU
C
C
A
S
JAVA
TIMOR
SULAWESI
BORNEO
S
U
M
A
TRA
M A L A Y A
E A S T I N D I E S
A U S T R A L I A
N E W
G U I N E A
B U R M A
P
H
ILIPPINES
S I A M
INDO
-CHINA
CAMBODIA
ANNAM
Key archaeological
site 1st-5th century
To China
To India
Creating a Cosmopolitan World:
Trade, AD 100-600
commercial centres, 1st-5th centuries
commercial centres, c. 6th century
trade routes:
1st century
2nd-3rd centuries
5th century
resources:
tin deposits
copper deposits
2
N
0
0
300 miles
450 kms
2 SOUTHEAST ASIAN TRADE ROUTES
by AD 100 were oriented
especially towards India,
although northern Vietnam was a
province of China. The Indianized
Funan culture of southern
Vietnam was the dominant
trading centre of the region.
Archaeological finds at the Funan
city of Oc Eo include amulets of
Hindu gods, Roman glass, coins
and medals, as well as mirrors
and Buddhist statuettes from
China. From the fourth century,
China, by then deprived of trade
through central Asia, turned its
attention south. Chinese
maritime traders developed a
commercial route through the
Strait of Malacca and developed
contacts with western Java and
Sumatra. Funan trade was now
eclipsed by that of the Khmer and
Cham centres.
of Kra. This expansion enhanced Funan’s
wealth, stimulating the local production of art.
Archaeological finds at Oc Eo include an
abundance of objects associated with Funan's
role in trade: imported jewels, gold rings,
merchant seals, ceramics, tin amulets of Visnu
and Shiva, Roman glass, a gold coin minted
during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (AD
161–180), a gold medal of Antoninus Pius
(dated AD 152), a Chinese bronze mirror (late
Han dynasty, first to third century) and several
Buddhist statuettes from the Wei period (AD
386–534). But besides these trade goods,
archaeologists have also found numerous glass
beads of local manufacture, interpreted as a
Funan adaptation of Roman technology, as well
as many moulded and engraved tin plaques.
Sculpture and stone architecture in Funan
show evidence of locally adapted Indian
religious art. These include wall reliefs as well
as wooden and stone sculptures of both Visnu
and Buddha.
TRADE AND CONTACT
While artefacts reveal little evidence for direct
Chinese contact in island Southeast Asia until
after the end of this period, the ties with India
were profound and influenced all forms of art,
religion and rituals, as well as the structure of
the Southeast Asian states that would form in
the following centuries. Only in Vietnam, which
became a Chinese province in about 111 BC,
was Hinduization not the predominant cultural
influence on art.
By the fourth century the Chin dynasty in
China lost access to caravan routes through
central Asia and the Chinese turned their
attention to maritime trade routes through
Southeast Asia. Chinese contacts with the lessdeveloped
centres of Heluodan in western Java
and Geying in Sumatra allowed Chinese traders
to circumvent Funan’s monopoly over the
portage across the Kra Isthmus by sailing
through the Strait of Malacca. This shift in
trade led to the demise of Funan as a coastal
entrepôt, Funan yielding to growing Khmer and
Cham centres in Cambodia and southern
Vietnam respectively. Chinese economic
influences in Sumatra encouraged the rise of
Srivijaya and other Hindu and Buddhist states
in neighbouring Java, but these states retained
their Indian cultural influences, suggesting
just how weak the cultural influences from
China still were.
KRISHNA GOVARDHANA, first half of the sixth century
AD. This Indianized grey limestone sculpture
belongs to the early Phnom Da style of preAngkorean
Cambodia. In spite of expanding
Chinese trade by the fourth century AD, the Hindu
and Buddhist states of Southeast Asia retained a
profoundly Indian cultural orientation.
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
90
IT IS GENERALLY ACCEPTED that the Bronze
Age in mainland Southeast Asia had begun
in earnest by the middle of the second
millennium BC. Some archaeologists claim to
have discovered bronze-working sites in
northeast Thailand dating to 3500 BC, much
earlier than bronze-working in China. Newer
dating of related sites suggests this industry is
much later than previously thought, placing
serious doubt on the emergence of a preChinese
bronze technology in Southeast Asia. It
is now believed that the earliest bronze working
in northeast Thailand dates to about 1500 BC.
Although bronze objects of Chinese origin had
already been available in some mainland
Southeast Asian settlements for nearly a
thousand years, they made little impact on
local art traditions until c.500 BC.
BRONZE-AGE CULTURES
The fifth century BC saw the emergence of what
has come to be known as the Dong Son culture
situated on the coast and Red River delta of
northern Vietnam. Dong Son is probably the
best-known Bronze Age tradition in Southeast
Asia. The most notable and famous Dong Son
objects are the large bronze kettle drums made
with the lost-wax technique. These drums often
weighed more than 80 kg (176 lb) and were
made by specialized and highly skilled,
stratification. Dong Son craftsmen also
produced many other bronze objects such as
bowls, beads, spears, daggers and ornaments,
and by this period iron tools are increasingly
important. Ceramic dishes, bowls and jars
elaborated on earlier ceramic traditions. From
the archaeological distribution Dong Son
kettle drums, it is clear that they played a key
role in the trade networks that were gradually
extending across island Southeast Asia.
About the same period as the emergence
of Dong Son culture, the Sa Huynh culture
developed in southern Vietnam. Most of what
we know of Sa Huynh culture comes from
excavations of large pottery burial jars. These
SOUTHEAST ASIA 500 BC-AD 600
15˚
15˚
0˚
150˚135˚120˚105˚90˚
Con Con Ngua (800 BC)
Manunggul Cave (200 BC)
Niah (400 BC)
Sungai Lang
(600 BC)
Pejaten
(650 BC)
(750 BC)
Tham Ongbah
(275 BC)
Ban Puan Phu
(925 BC)
Kalanay
Tabon Caves
Sa Huynh
Phu Hoa (500-1 BC)
Hang Gon
Go Mun
Lang Ca
Viet Khe
Dong Son (500 BC)
Lang Vac
P A C I F I C O C E A N
I N D I A N
O C E A N
S O U T H
C H I NA
S E A
TIMOR
SEA
ARAFURA
SEA
CELEBES
SEA
SULU
SEA
GULF OF
THAILAND
ANDAMAN
SEA
BANDA
SEA
J A V A S E A
BORNEO
JAVA
S
U
M
A
T
R
A
LUZON
TIMOR
FLORES
BALI LOMBOK
SUMBA
SUMBAWA
CELEBES
MINDAN
MOLU
C
C
A
S
PALA
W
AN
C H I N A
BURMA
VIETNAM
THAILAND
M A L A Y S I A
I N D O N E S I A
A U S T R A L I A
P
H
ILIPPINES
N E W
G U I N E A
Mekong
N
0
0
300 miles
450 kms
1 Bronze Age Southeast Asia, 500 BC-AD 100
distribution of bronze technology from China, pre-500 BC
trade with China
area of Dong Son culture
important Dong Son sites
area of Sa Huynh culture
important Sa Huynh sites
other Bronze Age sites
earliest sites with iron artefacts
distribution of Dong Son bronze kettle drums:
50 drums
5 drums
3 drums
1-2 drums
DONG SON LOST-WAX BRONZE TOMB FIGURE of a lamp
bearer. Dong Son culture flourished in northern
Vietnam from the fifth to the second century BC.
Besides figures, burial bronzes included ornate
kettle drums, ankle bells, axes, daggers and belt
buckles. Burials also included pottery and woodcarved
boat-shaped coffins, oars, spear handles,
axe handles and lacquered boxes.
1 THE DISTRIBUTION OF DONG SON KETTLE DRUMS reveals
a key role for the Dong Son culture in trade
networks that were gradually expanding to
encompass all of Southeast Asia. The bronze
drums, each requiring 1 to 7 tons of copper ore
were made by lost-wax casting and were richly
decorated with scenes of daily life and ritual.
craftsmen. Both the sides of these drums and
the tympanum are decorated with scenes that
provide some of the most important evidence
of Dong Son ritual and cultural life. Scenes of
dancers wearing bird-of-paradise plumes, for
example, document the increasing importance
of trade with New Guinea and other exotic
places as well as the emergence of social
180˚165˚150˚135˚
30˚
15˚
0˚
15˚
Madang
Humboldt Bay
Tumleo
Mailu
Motu
Wewak
Tinian
Bairulchau 200 AD
Nan Madol 1 AD
Kosrae 500 AD
Sepik River
S O U T H
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
GULF
OF
PAPUA
BISMARCK
ARCHIPELAGO
LOUISIADE
ARCHIPELAGO
FIJI
NEW CALEDONIA
NEW
HEBRIDES
(VANUATU)
SOLOMON
ISLANDS
TONGA
P
O
L
Y
N
E
S I A
M
E
L
A
N
E
S
I
A
M I C R O N E S I A
NEW
GUINEA
N
0
0
300 miles
400 kms
2 Artistic traditions in Melanesia, to AD 600
extent of pottery in Melanesia by AD 600
carved megaliths
dolomites
early carved stone figures
paddle-and-anvil pottery traditions
shell ring-producing areas
THE PACIFIC 500 BC–AD 600
93
2 WESTERN PACIFIC ART. Inferior late-Lapita pottery
dominated ceramic styles in most of Melanesia, but
northern New Guinea witnessed a vigorous
development of paddle-and-anvil techniques, in
which pots as much as a metre in diameter were
built up by a potter holding a support (the anvil)
on the inside of the vessel while shaping the
outside with a wooden paddle. Spiral-coiling and
slab-building techniques were also in use. This
period saw the wide diffusion of two Melanesian
art traditions that have survived: the stringing of
shells into rings and strings for body
ornamentation, and carving in stone.
THE POLYNESIAN EXPANSION
In any event, by 300 BC Polynesian culture had
established itself firmly in the Tonga and
Samoan archipelagos and it was from here that
Polynesians settled the Society Islands and the
Marquesas, in about 200 BC. After establishing
stable communities in both archipelagos,
Polynesian settlement expanded to the east as
far as Easter Island (by about AD 300) and to
the Hawaiian Islands in the north (about 400).
Unfortunately, little is known about the art
of any of these central, eastern and northern
Polynesian communities from this period.
Ceramics were absent, as were the carving
traditions in wood – prominent in the later art
styles of Hawaii and Tahiti – and megalithic
carving, which was to play so important a role
in later Marquesan and Easter Island art.
Further west in Melanesia and New Guinea
archaeologists are only just beginning to piece
together ceramic sequences for this period.
Pottery, which appeared only in a few places in
New Guinea up to this period, spread to most
areas along the north coast of the island and
along the south coast into the Papuan Gulf and
to the southeastern coast. Ceramic
technologies included spiral-coiling, slabbuilding
and paddle-and-anvil techniques.
Only the paddle-and-anvil techniques seem to
have developed into major commodityproducing
industries, with large-sized pots as
much as a metre in diameter. These ceramic
centres were situated at Tumleo, Wewak,
Madang, Mailu and the Motu area. Pottery
technologies seem to have expanded inland upriver
into the Sepik basin or perhaps across the
mountain ranges in the east of the island.
In much of island Melanesia ceramic
technologies declined. Late Lapita styles are
crude as compared with early designs. In many
of the islands in southern Melanesia where
Lapita shards have been found, pottery either
INCISED AND APPLIED-RELIEF WARE of the central New
Hebrides. These fragments were found at
Mangaasi on the Island of Efate, where such wares
appear between 700 and 1600. The Mangaasi
culture also flourished up until 1200 on
neighbouring islands.
disappears completely or becomes a plainware
tradition. We know that the arts were
developing in many diverse directions, but
few examples of wood carving, featherwork,
plaiting and the like have come down to us.
SURVIVING TRADITIONS
Two aspects of the art traditions of Melanesia
have survived. The first involves the use of shell
for ornaments. It is likely that during this
period rings of tridacna, trocus, and conus
shell emerge as fully developed traditions
found on the north coast of New Guinea. Large
shell arm-rings were produced in the islands of
the Louisiade archipelago – a local industry
that would later become part of the Kula
exchange network, a cycle of gift exchange
practised among a group of islands off eastern
New Guinea. Everywhere the people of New
Guinea and Melanesia began to develop a
plethora of local styles of shell ornaments,
shell beads, pendants and armbands.
Stone-working traditions were also
developing in the Melanesian region during
this period, although archaeologists have only
been able to date some of the utilitarian axe
and adze industries. The more important art
traditions in stone have proven much harder to
date in Melanesia, but it is probably during this
period that we see the efflorescence of carved
stone clubs, mortars and pestles, and simple
megaliths.
PARTLY RESTORED PAEPAE
(house platform in
stone) at Hiva Oa on
Taa’oa Island in the
Marquesas. Wellpreserved
examples like
this date from 1300 or
later, but some stone
accumulations in the
Marquesas provide
evidence that paepae
were being constructed
by eastern Polynesians
as early as AD 200.
ART, WAR AND EMPIRE
92
Polynesians as Southeast Asians who moved
through the north of Melanesia to Fiji, Tonga
and Samoa. A second school sees the
Bismarck Archipelago, northeast of New
Guinea, as the Lapita homeland, despatching
people, arts and culture to the Fiji-TongaSamoa
region; here, Lapita art, culture, and
society regrouped before expanding into more
remote parts of Polynesia. A third school
acknowledges that Lapita culture emerged in
the Bismarcks, but sees the emergence of
Polynesian culture as essentially a local
development that drew heavily on earlier
social and artistic forms in Melanesia. More
evidence is needed to explain when, where
and how early Polynesian culture developed.
BY ABOUT 500 BC the diverse peoples who
made and used Lapita pottery had
expanded into newly settled areas of western
Polynesia, most notably Tonga, Samoa, and
Fiji. People in all three of these archipelagos
were in regular and frequent contact through
trade and probably intermarriage. Such
interactions explain why the art and material
culture as well as political formations
developed in concert with one another.
THE CULTURE OF WESTERN POLYNESIA
Ceramics become less and less important after
500 BC, and the distinctive Lapita designs
disappeared altogether in the Polynesian area.
Archaeologists have suggested that these
designs persisted for more than a millennium
in other media, and are most visible today in
designs on Polynesian bark cloth (tapa) and
tattoos. It appears that this newly settled hub
of western Polynesian culture emerged with
fully developed horticulture, sedentary
settlement, and the beginnings of stratified
political systems. In these respects, western
Polynesia differs only slightly in form from
chiefly societies that were developing in New
Caledonia and the New Hebrides.
While most archaeologists have associated
all of these traits with the so-called Lapita
Expansion, there remain several uncertainties
about how Polynesian cultural forms actually
emerged. One school of thought sees
THE PACIFIC 500 BC-AD 600
135˚150˚165˚
180˚165˚150˚135˚
30˚
15˚
0˚
15˚
30˚
45˚
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A A
A
A
A
Vanimo
Kuk
Leitre
Teop
Aitape
Sio
Lake Sentani
Jayapura
(Humboldt Bay)
Lesu
Pu’u Ali’i
Moloka’i
Bellows Dune
Kawainui
Sasi
Bird's Head Lasigi
Oposisi
Mailu
Fissoa
Arawe
Navatu
Aoa valley
Mulfanua
Sasoa’a
Vailele
Luatuanu’u
Tatangamatau
Sigatoka
Lomolomo
Potanéan
Col de la Pirogue
Éfaté
100 AD
500 BC 1 AD
1 AD
1 AD
Bairulchau
Nan Madol
Ngerulmud
Lolokoka
Lotoaa
Niutoua
Pakea
S O U T H
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
C O R A L
S E A
ARAFURA SEA
CAROLINE ISLANDS
HAWAIIAN ISLANDS
SOLOMON ISLANDS
SAMOA
MARSHALL
ISLANDS
GILBERT ISLANDS
SOCIETY
ISLANDS
MARQUESAS
ISLANDS
NEW CALEDONIA
TONGA
FIJINEW HEBRIDES
(VANUATU)
NISSAN
TINIAN
BUKA
ULAWA
YAP
NGULU
FAIS
KWAJALEIN
MAJURO
MALOELAP
KOSRAE
CHUUK
YULE
ISLAND ANUTA
TONGATAPU
MAANU’A
TABUAERAN
(FANNING I.)
MÓOREA
TAHITI
MANGAREVA
PUKAPUKA
NUKU HIVA
UA POU
HIVA OA
UA HUKA
TIKOPIA
LOU ISLAND
MARE
ROTUMA
ERROMANGO
VANIKORO
FUTUANA
MARIANAS
ISLANDS
M I C R O N E S I A
M E L A
N
E
S
I
A
500 BC
500 BC COOK
ISLANDS
GUADALCANAL
NEW GEORGIA
SAN CRISTOBAL
MUSSAU
RAPA NUI
(EASTER I.)
P
O
L
Y
N
ESI
A
NEW
GUINEA
A U S T R A L I A
AD 200
AD 1
AD 500
AD 1 500 BC
500 BC
AD 100
AD 100
AD 200
900 BC
500 BC
200 BC
AD 200
AD 500
AD 300
400 BC
AD 200
200 BC
200 BC
AD 1
AD 300
AD 300
AD 1
AD 1
AD 500
200 BC
AD 100
AD 400
AD 400
AD 500
AD 620
AD 1
1000 BC
AD 500
AD 500
AD 500
1000 BC
AD 200
1000 BC
150 BC
AD 100
AD 100
AD 1
1000 BC
600 BC
AD 600
AD 400
300 BC
AD 640
AD 1
100 BC
AD 500 AD 500
N
0
0
1000 miles
1500 kms
1 The Expansion of Human Settlement, 500 BC-AD 600
extent of human settlement by 200 BC
expansion of human settlement:
300-200 BC
AD 300
AD 400
Archaeological sites, with earliest
dates where available:
archaeological site
habitation or settlement
A
cave site or rockshelter
midden
megaliths
fortification
cultivation
sites with glass or metal beads
originating in Southeast Asia
sites with brass artefacts
originating in Southeast Asia
1 THE SETTLING OF POLYNESIA. The western base of
Polynesian culture in the Tongan and Samoan
archipelagos was firmly established by about 300
BC. An eastward migration of Polynesians, starting
about 200 BC, brought human populations first to
the Society Islands and the Marquesas, then by about
AD 300 as far as Easter Island. Polynesians migrated
north to the Hawaiian Islands in about AD 400.
Evidence of ceramics and wood carving is not found
in these newly settled islands until later centuries.
By the end of the period individual Muslims were building
monuments of unprecedented refinement and luxury, such as the
Alhambra palace at Granada or the tomb of Timur (Tamerlane) at
Samarkand. In Europe, Christianity, already established in the
Mediterranean area, spread northwards, reaching most of
Scandinavia by the eleventh century. In 800 Charlemagne was
crowned western emperor by the pope in Rome, while another
Christian emperor based in Constantinople continued to rule the
East. Churches were built from Ireland to Armenia, becoming
progressively larger and more elaborate, especially in western
Europe, where first feudal rulers and then wealthy citizens competed
in the patronage of sculpture, paintings, stained glass, metalwork
and manuscripts. Activity eventually became most intense in Italy,
where the cult of the leading individual resulted in artists like
Leonardo and Michelangelo also being called monarchs and
creators. In the East Buddhism was sponsored enthusiastically by
the Sui Dynasty and then, along with Daoism, by the Tang (619–907),
whose capital of Chang’an (modern Xi’an) became the greatest city
in the world. It was also taken up by the Japanese empire, founded in
imitation of the Chinese in 645, and by the Silla Dynasty who unified
Korea in 688. In Southeast Asia Buddhism was also adopted by the
Sailendra Dynasty in Indonesia in the mid-eighth century, and by
later dynasties in Burma and Cambodia. Such cooperations resulted
in two of the biggest and most complex masonry structures ever
built: Borobudur on Java and Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
ELSEWHERE, THE INCREASE IN ARTISTIC ACTIVITY was more simply the
product of economic growth and the increasing concentration of
wealth in the hands of particular groups. In West Africa the wealthy
kingdom of Benin became established about 1100, and far to the
south and east another royal capital, Great Zimbabwe, was built
surrounded by vast stone ramparts. In Central America the Maya had
their pyramidal temples and their pictorial script, and the Aztecs
their violent sculptures, their palaces and gardens. In
modern Peru the Chimu on the coast were great builders in clay,
the Inca in the Andes in stone. The Nazca, also in Peru, and the
mound-builders of Ohio, far to the north, even shaped the earth into
extraordinary, gigantic images of birds and other animals. All these
cultures had flourishing ceramic industries, but on the islands of the
Pacific, from Hawaii to the Marquesas, the hierarchical seafarers of
Polynesia abandoned pottery to concentrate on wood and stone,
building great platforms and erecting scuptures of ancestors, of
which those of Easter Island are the most remarkable.
ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS FOR THE INCREASE IN WEALTH during this
period was the growth of trade, and it was the impact of this growth
on Europe that was to have the greatest effect on the next five
centuries. West African entrepreneurs in the thirteenth century sent
Europe the gold needed for new hard currencies, such as the
Florentine florin, while from China came vital technologies. Printing,
paper production and multiple-copy book publishing, which had
been firmly established in China in the Sung period, greatly
accelerated the circulation of knowledge when introduced to Europe
after 1450, and the adoption of the equally Chinese compass, rudder
and gunpowder allowed the more sinister worldwide circulation of a
new breed of merchant warriors.
THE BUDDHIST STUPA at Borobudur in Java.
F
IFTEEN HUNDRED YEARS AGO art began to take on a new
importance. The use of permanent materials, which had
previously been concentrated in western Asia, North Africa and
southern Europe, became increasingly frequent in other areas. It
spread to Central, South, and East Asia, to northern Europe and
Sub-Saharan Africa, and developed independently in the Americas
and the Polynesian islands in the eastern Pacific.
IN THIS PROCESS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS and the diffusion of
technologies were, as always, powerful factors, but the trend
towards grander and often more durable buildings, sculptures and
paintings was greatly accelerated by the increasing numbers of
connections between religious and political institutions, especially
where individual rulers encouraged religions that also focused on a
single deity, teacher or concept. These included not only the
descendants of Jewish monotheism, with its single creator,
Christianity and Islam, but Indian religions, such as Buddhism and
the cults of Vishnu and Shiva, and the Chinese belief in the ‘Way’
(Dao), Daoism. Monarchs across Europe, North Africa and Asia
indirectly enhanced their positions by pouring resources into such
religions, and these resources were often turned into buildings and
other works of art. For populations looking for order in a world
destabilized by the collapse of the great empires of Rome, Sasanian
Persia, Mauryan India and Han China, there was great reassurance
in religions and states that mirrored each other in their
concentration on one supreme authority. Since the religions
involved were all based on texts, and the texts themselves could be
made the subject of art, that reassurance was always liable to be
given material expression. This was particularly so when the
missionary nature of Buddhism, Islam and Christianity brought
them into competition.
FROM EUROPE TO JAPAN DYNASTIES SOUGHT to secure their positions by
sponsoring exclusively, or primarily, one religion. At the beginning of
the period dynasties in most of Europe adopted Christianity, those
in Spain, North Africa and much of Asia chose Islam, and those in
Southeast Asia adhered to Buddhism, often combined with related
forms of Hinduism. Buildings were essential for devotion, and in
each area churches, mosques or temples were constructed. Islam
was perhaps the religion that best represents the new trend. After
the death of its founder, Mohammed, in 632, it expanded rapidly
from the Arabian peninsula into West Asia before establishing itself
from West Africa to Indonesia. Mosques, decorated not with images
but texts, were built with great halls for prayer and preaching, often
associated with educational and other charitable institutions; new
cities, such as Haroun al-Rashid’s circular Baghdad, were laid out.
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER 600-1500
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
96
shells, and copper and mica, as well as the
high development of pottery and weaving.
Even mosses and lichens were used in
Florida to weave delicate lace-like aprons,
while California tribes made exquisite
miniature gift baskets decorated with shells
and hummingbird feathers.
ART AND SOCIETY
Since many of the tribes were small
nomadic family bands, this led to the
development of sophisticated portable
THE EARLY HUNTING-GATHERING cultures
of North America had adapted to a diverse
range of environmental factors by 600 and had
developed highly specialized economies, social
structures and arts. The North American
habitats range from Arctic in the far north to
sub-tropical in the south, with rainforest,
desert, woodlands and grasslands in between.
Prior to the arrival of Europeans the tribes of
North America had devised ingenious ways of
using virtually all the resources available to them,
and were doing so with an unrivalled sense for
form and aesthetics. Although materials varied
according to local conditions, they included
extensive use of skins and furs, plant fibres,
feathers, bird and porcupine quills, wood, stone,
NORTH AMERICA 600-1500
MIMBRES MORTUARY BOWL. Pottery was among the
highest achievements of early Native American
populations, particularly among the Mogollon
of the Mimbres Valley in Southeast New
Mexico. This example, from just after 1000, is
characteristic of the Mimbres style of shallow
mortuary bowl, in which the use of positive
and negative space and of stylized form was
very sophisticated. All Mimbres bowls have a
hole through the centre by which the vessel
was ritually ‘killed’.
80˚90˚
20˚
30˚
40˚
50˚
120˚
130˚
140˚
150˚
160˚
170˚
Cape Nome
Hooper Bay
Beluga Point
Campus
Canyon
Creek
Juneau
Birnik
Kurlgitavik
Cape Krusenstern
Ahteut
Onion PortageIyatayet
Merrill
Jackson Vaughn
Kuujjua River
Resolute
Turnstone Beach
Inglefield Land
Thule (Qaanaaq)
Illumersiut
Inussuk
Sermermiut
Kangia
Illutalik
De Blicquy
Buchanan
Pembroke
Clare
Malerualik
Crystal
Silumiut
Igluligardjuk
Naujan
Pingitkalik
Mittimatalik
Qilalukan
Craig
Harbour
Maxwell Bay
Nunguvik
Strathcona
Sound
Lady
Franklin
Point
Memorana
Kodiak Island
Platinum
Togiak
Prince Rupert
Dodge Island
Cape Flattery
Ozette
Isle Royale
Harris
Alkali
Ridge
San Luis
Obispo
Smith River
Canyon de Chelly
Wupatki
Lovelock Cave
Gunther Island
Hogup Cave
Danger Cave
Borax Lake
Oak Grove
Pinto
Basin
Gypsum
Cave
Humboldt
Cave
Naco
Snaketown
Casa
Grande
Lehner
Montezuma
Castle
Bandelier
Mimbres
Folsom
Pueblo
Bonito
Mesa Verde
Quivira
Olsen-Chubbock
Lipscomb
Marksville
Spiro
Meserve
Jaketown
Poverty Point
Emerald
Mound
Lubbock Aligates
Quarry
Midland
Levi
Bonfire
Modoc
Dalton
Graham Cave
NewarkFort
Ancient
Angel
Mound City
Serpent
Mound
Effigy Mounds
Aztalan
Cahokia
Logan Creek
Starved Rock
Huff Village
Dot Island
Shethane Lake
Neck
Metabetchouan
Rosenkrans Ferry
Williamson
Key Marco
Weeden
Island
Turtle Mound
Bilbo
Hollywood
Town Creek
Point Peninsula
Etowah
Mandeville
Moundville
Yukon
RioGrande
Mississippi
S
t Law
rence
Colorado
Ohio
Missouri
Mackenzie
Great
Lakes
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
A R C T I C
O C E A N
G U L F O F M E X I C O
GULFOFCALIFORNIA
B E A U F O R T
S E A
G U L F O F
A L A S K A
B E R I N G
S E A
H U D S O N
BAY
BA F F I N
BAY
ROCKYMOUNTAINS
A
P
PA
L
A
C
H
IA
N
M
TS
GREENLA
N
D
TEMPERATE
RAIN FOREST
maritime/timber resources
(mainly cedar)
extensive wood carving; house
posts, split plank houses, masks,
canoes, abalone and shell inlay
basketwork
CALIFORNIA
maritime economy
on coast;
acorn farming in
interior, hunting,
basketry,
featherwork,
some wood carving
GRASSLANDS
big game hunting;
skin clothing, featherwork,
buffalo robes, horn utensils,
porcupine quillwork
EASTERN FOREST
(semi-tropical in south)
maize farming; hunting; maritime
resources in south and eastern
seaboard; skin clothing, birch and
elm bark houses, containers, canoes;
wood carving, bird and porcupine
quill embroidery, featherwork in
Mississippian area, use of copper,
obsidian, shark teeth, and
some pottery; cane basketwork,
woven fabrics, tattooing in south
NORTHERN FOREST
hunter-gatherer economy;
skin clothing, birch bark houses, canoes and containers
ARCTIC
tundra in south;
maritime economy, including whale hunting, sealskin,
birdskin, fishskin clothing; ivory and driftwood carving,
snow block houses (igloos), skin-covered driftwood shelters
DESERT WEST
hunter-gathering;
maize farming in southwest,
pottery, woven fabrics, basketwork,
pit houses and adobe pueblos,
featherwork, some wood carving
N
0
0
500 miles
700 kms
1 Major Archaeological Sites
Inuit archaeological site, post-600
late archaeological site
extent of Mogollon tradition, c.300-1300
extent of Fremont tradition, c.400-1150
extent of Patayan tradition, c.500-1100
extent of Anasazi tradition, c.500-1300
extent of Hohokam tradition, c.600-1450
1 NORTH AMERICA is usually divided into culture
areas that reflect the distribution of resources.
Archaeological evidence suggests there was a
blending of traits at the boundaries between
culture areas rather than clear-cut distinctions.
The density of archaeological sites in any
particular region does not necessarily indicate
higher occupancy. Many archaeological sites in
originally populous areas, such as the eastern
seaboard, have been destroyed or are beneath
more recent developments and therefore
inaccessible.
2 Mississippian Temple
Mound Sites, c.900
Middle Mississippian
South Appalachian
Mississippian
Plaquemine Mississippian
Caddoan Mississippian
Fort Ancient
Oneota
temple mound site
raw materials:
obsidian
grizzly bear teeth
chalcedony
flint
silver
copper
pipestone
mica
marine shells
shark/alligator teeth
Cu
M
Ag
HOPEWELL/MISSISSIPPIAN MICA CUT-OUT. Decorative arts
were highly developed among the Hopewell and
Mississippian peoples of the Woodlands, where
artisans traded widely to obtain precious materials
that were unavailable locally. This exquisite carving
of an eagle’s claw is from thin sheet mica and
demonstrates their refined use of abstraction.
Such objects served no practical purpose, other
than to attest to the skill of the carver and the
status of the person for whom it was made.
It dates to just before 1000.
2 MISSISSIPPIAN CULTURE centred
on the Ohio River Valley, but
there were many regional
variations. Each of these has
minor, but distinguishing,
features. The spread of
distinctive Mississippian
cultural traits from Ohio to
outlying regions was largely
through trade networks.
artforms using locally available materials. In
the Subarctic, for instance, extensive use was
made of sheets of rolled birchbark in the
production of canoes and as house coverings,
whereas on the Great Plains there was use of
buffalo hide tipis. Many of these tipis were
painted with emblematic designs detailing
tribal affiliation and the status of the family
that lived there.
The two major population centres were the
Mississippians in the Eastern Woodlands,
based on the Ohio Valley, and the pueblo
cultures of the Anasazi, Hohokam and
Mogollon in the Southwest, although by 1500
the cultures of the Mississippians and of the
Anasazi, Hohokam and Mogollon had declined,
to be replaced by the tribes recorded in
historical accounts. There were also sizable
village settlements on the British Columbia
coast of western Canada, where there was a
flourishing maritime economy. In each of these
areas settled communities enabled the
production of more permanent art as well as
the growth of significant architectural forms.
MISSISSIPPIAN CULTURE
Mississippian culture displaced the earlier
Adena-Hopewell people of the Woodlands
region, and there followed an increased
construction of earth mounds that served as
bases for wooden temples used by a governing
priesthood. Many of these mounds have
complex geometric and interlocking patterns
and designs, including animal and bird effigy
figures that served as clan markers. It is also
apparent that Mississippian culture, like that of
the Adena-Hopewell, was based on ritual sites
that attracted large urban populations.
Cahokia, the largest of the Mississippian
settlements, was founded about 700 and
contains over 100 mounds in an area of 13
square kilometres (5 square miles).
Mississippian art was intended to
demonstrate the wealth and status of a ruling
hierarchy, and to this end exotic materials such
as obsidian, shells, shark teeth, mica, copper
and silver were traded into the region from as
far afield as the Rocky Mountains and Mexico.
Much of the work made from these materials
has a fragile delicacy, such as translucent
70˚
50˚
40˚
30˚
80˚90˚100˚
Ag
Ag
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
M
M
M
Dickson
Grave Creek Mound
Newark
AdenaHopewell
Fort
Ancient
Seip
Great Serpent
Mound
Aztalan
Cahokia
Angel
Kings
Mound
Towosahgy
Knapp Mounds
Spiro
Chucalissa
Owl Creek
Moundville
Winterville
Natchez
Emerald
Mound
Shiloh
Florence
Scotts LakeRock
Eagle Ocmulgee
Lamar
Kolomoki
Lake Jackson
Town Creek
Hiwassee
Island
Etowah
Old Fort
Utz
M
ississippi
Mis
souri
Ohio
RedRi
ver
Arkansas
Lake
Michigan
Lake Erie
G U L F O F
M E X I C O
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
APPALA
C
H
IA
N
M
TS
N
0
0
300 miles
450 kms
paper-thin mica cut-outs of bird claws and
hands, that indicates they were made as show
pieces rather than for utilitarian purposes.
SOUTHWESTERN CULTURE
Southwestern architecture, by contrast, was
based on adobe (mud brick), multi-storied
communal dwellings and a democratic sharing
of resources. There were high achievements
here in pottery – this is the most important
pottery region of North America – as well as in
basketwork and in cotton weaving. Pottery was
in fact so important here that much of the
chronology of the region is dated from pot
sherds. Probably the most striking pottery was
made by the Mimbres, a subgroup of the
Mogollon, whose shallow bowls contain
masterful depictions of birds, animals and
human figures that seem to dance on the bowl
surfaces and interlock with complex geometric
borders and patterns.
THE NORTHWEST COAST
The other major population area, the Northwest
Coast of British Columbia and southern Alaska,
had an economy based on salmon, eulachon
(candle-fish) and sea mammal hunting. The
resources here were so rich that only half the
year was spent in economic pursuits, and the
remainder was devoted to a sacred ceremonial
season. The dominant influence on Northwest
Coast art was the massive cedars of the rain
forest. Carved and painted house posts were
the largest wood carvings on the continent and
depicted complex figures detailing a family’s
lineage. In fact, family and clan lineage was so
dominant here that everything was carved and
painted with these ownership marks. Cedar
plank houses, as much as 30 metres (100 feet)
long, had painted fronts, and wooden storage
boxes, sea going dug-out canoes, utensils,
bowls, house screens, fish hooks, masks, even
clan hats and cedar bark capes all carried these
intricate designs. A unique characteristic of this
art is the use of split-representation, in which
the clan animal being shown is depicted as if
split down the middle and laid out flat so that
the entire animal can be seen. This is a highly
sophisticated form of abstract representation,
combining symbolism and geometry with
stylized animal features.
97
NORTH AMERICA 600–1500
CENTRAL AMERICA 600–1500
99
architecture – such as colonnaded halls
fronting structures supported by feathered
serpent columns and monumental Atlantean
figures – borrowed from the past but was also
innovative. The appearance of this style
at the distant Mayan site of Chichén Itzá is
often considered a Toltec invasion of the
Yucatán, but supporting evidence remains
unconvincing. Recumbent life-size stone
figures called chacmools, used for holding
blood offerings, appear at this time at Tula
and Chichén Itzá.
The Aztecs incorporated vast amounts of
Mesoamerica into a tribute-generating empire
in the final century before the Spanish
invasion. Emulating the earlier Toltecs, Aztec
sculptors created powerful works that both
embodied sacred concepts and glorified the
Aztec state. They arranged the twin pyramids of
the Templo Mayor (Great temple) in
COATLICUE, TENOCHTITLÁN, MEXICO. This massive Aztec
sculpture shows the earth and mother goddess
Coatlicue at the moment in which she gives birth
to the Aztec tribal deity Huitzilopochtli. Her
jealous children have decapitated her; blood
gushes from her neck, forming serpents. Snakes
writhe on her skirt while she wears a necklace of
human hearts and hands.
Tenochtitlán as sacred mountains – a replica of
the cosmos, with the Aztecs at the centre
In Oaxaca, after the decline of the Zapotec
state at Monte Albán, smaller city-states
competed for control over portions of the
Valley of Oaxaca and Mixteca Alta. A series of
indigenous painted books, called codices,
show the political intrigues of rulers such as
the Mixtec king known as 8 Deer, who around
1100 extended his control over other cities
from his base at Tilantongo through marriages,
alliances and conquest. The Mixtecs were
master craftsmen of raw materials such as rock
crystal, alabaster and turquoise. Although
metalworking probably did not enter West
Mexico until after AD 600, the Mixtecs mastered
gold-working, using the lost-wax technique.
Many great Mayan cities flourished until the
end of the Classic period. Mayan artists focused
on activities of the ruling elite, who are often
shown incorporating supernatural imagery to
legitimize their rule and whose blood was holy
and offered at select dates. While portraiture
flourished at Palenque, in most Mayan cities the
ruler’s regalia is carefully depicted with little
attention to physiognomy. Increasing warfare,
shown in the Bonampak murals, coincides with
the Classic Maya collapse. Mayan civilization
continued to thrive until after 900 in the
Yucatán Peninsula, with a series of nearby
competing styles (such as the Puuk and Chenes
styles) exuberantly expressed in architecture.
The final series of small states in the Yucatán
were still in place when the Spanish arrived.
LOWER CENTRAL AMERICA
Gold replaced jade in importance after 900.
As more organized chiefdoms developed,
upheavals occurred in trade routes and
politics. In central Costa Rica, clear site
hierarchies appeared, with elaborate status
differentiation expressed in burials. Some
sites, such as Quelepa in El Salvador, became
essentially Mesoamerican by AD 650. Despite
2 The Caribbean, 600-1500
Caribbean cultures, c.600:
Ciboney hunter-gatherers
Saladoid agriculturalists
Dabajuroid agriculturalists
settlement by Barrancoid agriculturalists, c.700
changing pottery traditions:
post-Saladoid with little decorated ware, c.600-1500
Ostionian Ostionoid, c.600-1200
Elenan Ostionoid, c.600-1200
origin of Chican Ostionoid, c.1200
Caribbean cultures, 1500:
Caquetian
mixed Arawakan
and Cariban speakers
egalitarian village culture
Taino heartland
western Taino
eastern Taino
Ciboney hunter-gatherers
islands with rock
carving-lined ball courts
islands with rock carvings
at sacred sites
islands with wooden
cohuba idols
gold
import of guanín
(copper-gold alloy)
conch pearls
˜
2 AT THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY Spaniards
arriving in Central America encountered
populations they knew as ‘Arawaks’ and ‘Caribs’.
Arawaks (the Taino) had a hierarchical social
structure with complex visual elements. The Caribs
had an egalitarian village-based culture combining
agriculture with marine exploitation. Both groups
spoke Arawakan languages.
these influences, areas such as the Nicoya
maintained a very unified material culture with
little foreign impact. In Panama the Chiriquí
region was famed for its exquisite goldwork.
THE CARIBBEAN
By the seventh century maize and manioc
cultivators in the Saladoid and Dabajuroid
ceramic traditions displaced Ciboney huntergatherers
as far as eastern Puerto Rico.
Saladoid pendants of amethyst, quartz crystal,
fossilized wood, carnelian, lapis lazuli,
turquoise and garnet were traded throughout
the Caribbean and northern South America.
By 600 the Saladoid tradition began to lose
its homogeneity as long-distance trade in the
Antilles declined. The richly decorated
Ostionoid ceramic tradition arose in Puerto
Rico and the western Virgin Islands, together
with Mesoamerican-influenced petroglyphs
lining the perimeters of batey (central plazas
used for sacred ball games and ceremonies).
Arawakan-speaking immigrants to Trinidad and
Tobago in the Barrancoid ceramic tradition
strongly influenced the Ostionoid after 700.
Beginning about 1200 Chican Ostionoid
ceramic styles from southeastern Hispaniola
spread widely. These were the ceramics of the
Taino culture that the invading Spaniards met
in the Bahamas and Greater Antilles. The Taino
had batey and hereditary chiefs; they ruled
partly by ownership of cohuba idols and sacred
objects, which controlled zemi (powerful
spirits). Expanding southeast into the Leeward
Islands, the Taino conflicted with practitioners
of more egalitarian village cultures that
predominated in the Lesser Antilles. They
called them ‘Caribs’. Their decorative arts
included woven cotton textiles, feather
headdresses and amulets in stone, conch-shell,
bone, clay and guañín.
80˚
70˚ 60˚
20˚
10˚
Orinoco
C A R I B B E A N
S E A
G U L F
O F
M E X I C O
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
Leeward
IslandsW
indwardIs
L e
s
s
e
r
Antilles
G
r
e
a
t
e
r
A
n t i l l e s
TURKS &
CAICOS IS
SABA
ST BARTHÉLÉMY
ST EUSTATIUS
BARBUDA
ANTIGUA
GUADELOUPE
DOMINICA
MARTINIQUE
ST LUCIA
ST VINCENT
GRENADA
ST MARTIN
VIRGIN IS
TRINIDAD
TOBAGO
ARUBA
BONAIRE
CURACÃO
CAYMAN IS
BARBADOS
FLORIDA
S O U T H A M E R I C A
C
U
B
A
JAMAICA HISPANIOLA
PUERTO
RICO
B
A
H
A
M
A
S
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
98
DURING THIS PERIOD, boundaries became
increasingly fluid between three cultural
regions: Northern Mexico/Greater Southwest,
Mesoamerica and Lower Central America.
NORTHERN MEXICO AND THE SOUTHWEST
More farmers occupied this land and
established larger settlements linked with the
increasing trade between the American
Southwest and Mesoamerica. The Toltecs
imported turquoise from the Southwest and
exported birds and feathers. La Quemada, on a
hilltop and occupied from 500 to 900, features
defensive walls, a Mesoamerican-style
I-shaped ball court, and a skull rack earlier
than the one at Tula, the Toltec capital. After
1300, Paquimé, a huge site with three
ballcourts and ceremonial effigy mounds,
would have been central to any interaction. The
Aztecs viewed the people of northern Mexico as
both nomadic barbarians and skilled craftsmen.
MESOAMERICA
After the fall of Teotihuacán, cities throughout
Mesoamerica declined. In Central Mexico the
period from 700 to 900 was a time of migrations
and competition. At the hilltop city of Cacaxtla
Mayan-style murals show a battle – real or
metaphorical – between Mayan-like bird warriors
and Central Mexican-like jaguar warriors.
From 950 to 1150, the Toltecs dominated
much of the Valley of Mexico, although their
influence beyond Central Mexico (usually
marked by finds of Tohil Plumbate ware, an
unusual glazed ceramic) is still a matter of
debate. The Toltecs’ blocky, militaristic art and
CENTRAL AMERICA 600-1500
10˚
20˚
25˚
30˚
35˚
80˚90˚
95˚100˚105˚110˚120˚ 115˚
85˚
15˚
Las Vegas
Río Claro
Cerro Brujo
Murciélago
Barriles
Bugavita
Corredor
Miraflores
Guayabo
San Francisco
Las Marías
Quelepa
Ceren
Amapa
Teuchitlán Tizapán el Alto
La Villita
Ilhuatzio
Tzintzuntzan
Pachuca
Sitio
Conte
Vidor
Barrial
Tomatlán
Alta Vista
Casas Grandes
(Paquimé)
Cueva Pintada
MolinoCuliacán
Durango
La Quemada El Tajín
Xochicalco
Teotihuacán
Chapultepec
Cholula
Tula
Río Viejo
Chiapa de Corzo
Cerro de las Minas
Tututepec
San Francisco de Arriba
El BaúlGuiengola
Zaachila
Monte Albán
Ejutla
Lambityeco
Jalieza
Mitla
Santa Rita
Naj Tunich
Seibal
Bonampak Yaxchilán
Piedras
Negras
Dos Pilas
Palenque
Toniná Tikal
Yagul
Cerro de la Campana
Coixtlahuaca
Nochixtlán
Chichén Itzá
Balankanche
CobáTulum
Iximché
Mixco Viejo
Utatlán
Hochob
Lamanai
Quiriguá
Altun Ha
Naco
Comalcalco
Copán
Río Bec
Cacaxtla
Sayula
Pungarabato
Tonalá
Cempoala
Uxmal
Jaina
Mérida Isla Mujeres
San Miguel
Xicallanco
Sayil
Maní
Kabáh
Mayapán
Tilantongo
Pánuco
Soto la Marina
Balsas
L. Nicaragua
L. Managua
L. Chapala
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
C A R I B B E A N
S E A
BAY OF
CAMPECHE
GULF OF
HONDURAS
G U L F O F M E X I C O
GULFOFCALIFORNIA
Popocatépetl
SIERRAMADREOCCIDENTAL
SIERRAMADREORIEN
T
AL
CORDILLERA
ISABELÍA
SANTA ELENA
PENINSULA
NICOYA
PENINSULA
YUCATÁN PENINSULA
CHIHUAHUA
DESERT
CHICHIMECA
export of
turquoise
Puuk style
Cotzumalhuapa style
Río Bec style
Chenes style
Tolteca-
Chichimeca
export of
turquoise
possible K‘icha-Kaqchikal
elite migration route
Greater Nicoya region
Greater Chiriquí region
Aztec Empire, 1519
Tarascan Empire, 1519
Mogollon tradition in Mexico
petroglyphs/pictographs
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 Central America, 600-1500
Greater Southwest
Mesoamerica in the
Postclassic period
Lower Central America
obsidian
jade/jadeite
gold
centre of goldworking
limit of metalworking zone
site with evidence of
metalworking pre-1100
feathers
cacao
immigration of Toltecs, c.900
trade and movement of
Toltec imagery, c.980-1200
Río Bec Late Classic Maya styles
Putún Maya territory
Putún Maya trade routes
Itzá territory
probable Itzá migration route
salt
ball courts
skull racks
Late Classic and/or
Postclassic centre/site
Late Classic and/or
Postclassic regional centre
Late Postclassic trade routes
Central American imagery
Maya imagery, 700-900
extent of Xochicalco influence
Toltec heartland
other important sites
1a The Valley of Mexico, 1519
major regional Postclassic
centre/member of Triple Alliance
important Postclassic city/site
ball court
skull rack
causeways
aqueduct
TA
1 MANY FORMERLY IMPORTANT STATES in Mesoamerica,
such as Teotihuacán and Monte Albán, declined
after 600. While southern Maya cities succumbed
by 900, Maya centres flourished in the Yucatán
peninsula. In Central Mexico the Aztecs controlled
more territory than did their predecessors, the
Toltecs. The inset map indicates the arrangement
of Aztec city-states around Lake Texcoco. While the
boundaries of the Aztec Empire in 1519 are based
on ethno-historic sources, only ballcourts
documented archaeologically are shown.
YAXCHILÁN LINTEL 24, MEXICO. This Maya lintel
graphically depicts a royal bloodletting ritual,
which the text dates to October 28, 709. While the
ruler holds a torch, his wife – Lady Xoc – draws a
rope with thorns through her tongue. The details
of Lady Xoc’s garment suggest the great artistry of
Maya textiles.
TA
TA
TA
Acolman
Xaltocan
Huexotla
Texcoco
Coatlinchán
Chalco
Tenochtitlán
Xico
Amecameca
Xochimilco
Tlalpan
Coyoacán
Tlacopan
Tenayuca
Tepotzotlán
Chapultepec
Atzcapotzalco
Culhuacan
L. Zumpango
L. Xaltocan
L. Texcoco
L. Xochimilco
L. Chalco
Mt Tláloc
Popocatépetl
Ixtaccihuatl
Netzahualcóyotl’s
Dyke
N
0
0
15 miles
25 kms
80˚
0˚
10˚
?
?
Cerro Baúl
Huaca
del Loro
Jincamocco
Chimú Capac
Conchopata
Azangaro
Wari Willka
Cajamarca
Honco Pampa
Paramonga
Farfan
Niño KorinPacheco
Pampa
Grande
Pachacamac
Cuzco
(Cusco)
Tiahuanaco
Pikillaqta
Paucartambo
Huari
Manchan
Marca Huamachuco
Chan Chan
Huaca el Dragón
CHANCA
CHANCAY
HUARI
ICA
CHIM
Ú
Huascarán
Chimborazo
Ausangate
Coropuna
Misti
Chacani
L. Junín
L. Titicaca
M
arañón
Chicama
Moche
Chao
Casma
Supe
Fortaleza
Chil
lón
Hua
llaga
Amazon
Piura
Urubamba
Pampa
s
M
ala
Apurimac
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
A
N
D
E
S
A TACA
M
A
D
ESERT
SECHURA
DESERT
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
2 Middle Horizon to Late
Intermediate Period
Huari cultural influence
tradition/culture
desert
border highland/jungle
Inca empire
mountain peak/volcano
principal site
secondary site
religious site/shrine
fortification
gold
silver
copper
cinnebar
salt
obsidian
emeralds
spondylus
deer
camelids, wool, textiles
birds and feathers
dung and guano
potatoes
hallucinogens
coca
totora
cotton and textiles
probable sea trade routes
SOUTH AMERICA 600–1500
101
complexes of individual rulers, as well as their
tombs. Approximately 25,000 single irregular,
agglutinated rooms were used as living
quarters and for craft production.
The Incas, who may have came from Lake
Titicaca or Paucartambo, settled in Cuzco. Their
empire began to expand after their defeat of
their rivals, the Chancas, during the reign of
Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui (c.1438–1463).
The Inca state reached from the southern
borders of Colombia to southwest Argentina
and southern Chile. The Inca administration
demanded tribute, which was paid in labour.
achieved dominance. The agricultural success of
the Huari was based on the development of
hillside terracing and irrigation. Huari
iconography has its roots in earlier Chavín and
Pucará concepts. The state was characterized
by corporate art styles (such as Ocros,
Chakipampa, Black Decorated, Viñaque, Atarco),
rectangular compound architecture and Dshaped
‘temple’ structures. There is evidence, at
Niño Korin, of the use of the quipu, a kind of
knotted string used for record-keeping.
Worship of ancestors and cultural heroes was a
major element of the ideological framework.
Tihuanaco, on the margins of Lake Titicaca
(c.500–1000), had a marked influence on Huari
iconography. The large ceremonial core of
Tiwanaku included monolithic gateways and
stelae, sunken courts and a pyramid with great
drains, as well as an area of elite residences.
This centre was surrounded by up to 10 square
km (3.8 square miles) of lower status housing.
LATE INTERMEDIATE PERIOD
During the Late Intermediate Period
(c.1000–1476) there was a return to dispersed
political control with large numbers of regional
states. The Collao and Lupaka were located in
southern Peru. The Chanca confederation
comprised a loosely knit series of polities
within the Ayacucho and Apurimac areas,
which were characterized by terraced
agriculture, camelid herding, fortified sites on
hilltop locations and badly fired, roughly
modelled ceramics. The Chincha merchants of
the Ica area on the south coast dominated the
trade in spondylus shell from Ecuador. The
Chancay culture of the central coast produced
black-on-white coloured ceramics, including
face-neck jars and figurines, as well as very
high-quality gauze textiles.
The Chimú (c.1000–1470) were in control
of irrigated lands and population along the
north coast. Their corporate buildings were
tapia-walled (made of adobe and sun-dried
mud) and their craft production was centrally
organized and managed. Chan Chan was the
centre of Chimú power. It measured c.20
square kilometres (7.7 square miles) and
comprised ten large rectangular compounds.
These were the palaces and administrative
INCA SHIRT in a fine tapestry weave, depicting
miniature examples of other Inca shirt designs. This
may reflect the high status of the individual who
was allowed to wear the example below, who
would have been superior in the hierarchy to those
who wore the shirts depicted in miniature.
THE HUACA EL DRAGÓN in
what is now Trujillo, Peru.
This was a Chimú storage
site with a highly
specialized and effective
ventilation system that
supported the long-term
storage of organic
produce. The façades
are decorated in
modelled mudplasterwork,
depicting
a ‘Sky serpent’ design.
Exchange and trade were based largely on
kinship obligations rather than a market
system. Administration in an empire without
reading or writing was maintained by highly
structured work practices, as well as the use
of formalized aides mémoire, such as the quipu.
These knotted, multi-coloured strings were
used as accounting tools, as well as a record
of histories, legends and song. Inca shrines, or
huacas, included boulders frequently carved in
abstract geometric forms. These forms often
remained unseen as the rocks were covered in
elaborately woven textiles.
2 IN THE ANDES the Huari empire achieved
dominance over much of the Andean region
between 550 and 1000. Much of its success lay in its
system of hill terracing and irrigation, developed
during a period of severe drought in the sixth and
seventh centuries. The Huari empire lay the
foundations of many of the administrative systems
and infrastructure that were later used to even
greater effect by the Inca empire.
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
100
DURING THIS PERIOD cultural and technological complexity
increased over much of South America. Pottery use was
widespread, and copper and gold-working were common in the
west and northeast.
CULTURAL TRADITIONS
A polychrome ceramic tradition, exemplified by the Guarita
phase (c.1000–1500), developed within the central Amazon
region. Anthropomorphic burial urns, such as the one found at
Miracanguera, were popular, and the culture spread into the
upper Amazon region. Ridged
field cultivation became a
feature of intensively cultivated
tropical floodplain areas such
as the Llanos de Mojos.
The Tairona of northeast
Colombia (500–700) had a
hierarchical society, possibly
connected to Mesoamerican
cultures. Large sites, with up to
3000 structures, included
religious and elite buidings and
circular houses. Ceramics
included face-necked urns, and
they also produced stone celts
and cast goldwork.
The Quimbaya culture of the
Cordillera Central (c.400–1000)
produced exceptional goldwork,
using a lost-wax technique. The
palisaded towns of the Chibcha
state (c.650–1500), with their
priestly class, were ruled by a
dual leadership. They cultivated
maize and potatoes on terrace
based fields.
The Manteño culture of Ecuador
(c.800–1500), with its principal site at Manta, is linked with the
local development of towns and small kingdoms. Gold,
copper and silver metallurgy became common. Within their
stone-built structures a typical feature was a carved Ushaped
stone seat on the back of a crouching man or animal.
The Middle Horizon period in Peru (550–1000) comprises an
era when the Huari (or Wari) polity of the Ayacucho area
SOUTH AMERICA 600-1500
60˚ 50˚70˚80˚
10˚
0˚
10˚
20˚
30˚
40˚
50˚
40˚ 30˚
Paramonga
Islands of Sun
and Moon
Samaipata
RaqchiSayhuite
Itacoatiara
Oriximiná
Santarém
Tucacas
Valencia
TAIRONA
Corobal
Paredão
Aranquin
El Cerrillo
Tambería del Inka
Iquique
Ranchillos
Punta Piedras
Puerto Montt
Malabrigo
Las Mercedes
Chagua
Mizque
Quelap
Cajamarca
Huánuco Pampa
Pumpu
Vilcas Huamán
Gran Pajatén
Machu Picchu
Oma Porco
Turi
El Shincal
Miracanguera
Pedro Oca
Quito
Manta
Cuzco (Cusco)
Chan
Chan
Pachacamac
Ciudad
Perdida
VALENCIOID
TRADITION
ARAWAK
ARATU
SITES
ARATU
SITES
SAMBAQUI
TRADITION
GÓMEZ
SAQUERERA
MACEDO
TAQUERA
TRADITION
SAN
BLAS
GUARANÍ
ARATU
SITES
SAN
AGUSTÍN
MANTEÑO
QUIMBAYA
CHIBCHA
ARAW
AK
PERIPERISITES
Huila
Sierra
Nevada de
Santa Marta
Antisana
Chimborazo
Huascarán
Illimani
IllampuCoropuna
Tacora
Llullaillaco
Coipapo
Chachani
Misti
Cotopaxi
Amazon
J
uruá
JapuráPutumay
o
Marañó
nUcayali
Par
aná
S
ãoFrancisco
Tocantins
Paraná
C
olorado
Negro
Loa
Maipó
Maule
Salado
Desaguadero
Deseado
Chi
co
Paraguay
Orinoco
Essequibo
Corantijn
Maroni
O
iapoque
Branco
Cauc
a
M
agdalena
L. Titicaca
L. Poopó
Llanos de Mojos
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
CARIBBEAN
SEA
A
N
D
ES
ATACAMADESERT
BR
A
Z
IL
IA
N
H
I G
H
L A
N
D S
GUIANA
HIGHLANDS
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 Principal Cultural Traditions, c. AD 1000-1500
dry pampa
tropical rain forest
pampa
desert
mountain peak/volcano
Inca Empire
Inca road system
tradition/culture
principal site
secondary site
religious site/shrine
raised field
gold
silver
copper
salt
obsidian
emeralds
spondylus
strombus
coral
fortification
birds and feathers
dung and guano
maize and beans
manioc
totora
camelids, wool, textiles
cotton and textiles
terraced agriculture
sunken fields/gardens
deer
1 IN SOUTH AMERICA major empires located along the eastern
watershed of the Andes expanded between 600 and 1500. In the
north and east, chiefdoms developed in Ecuador, Colombia,
Venezuela and Brazil. These flourishing chiefdoms were
dependent on highly productive agricultural systems – usually
linked with drainage or irrigation techniques and the creation
of terraced or sunken fields.
EUROPE 600–800
103
combining elements of the Mediterranean
tradition, such as vine ornament, with recent
varieties of northern animal ornament and
aristocratic patronage and functions.
ROMAN CONTINUITY
Royal and ecclesiastical patrons achieved
prestige and conveyed authority through
monumental stone architecture, especially
churches, using Roman structural and
decorative features such as columns and
large arches. Some quarries were exploited
for building stone, fine carving in marble for
sarcophagi and architectural ornament such
as columns and capitals. However, when
employed, such features were frequently actual
remnants (spolia) taken from Roman buildings,
appropriated to new uses. Ancient gems were
SACRAMENTARY MANUSCRIPT from
Chelles (Vat. Reg. lat. 316, fols.
131v-132r). Produced probably by
and for the use of nuns
in a convent founded by
St Balthilde, a queen of the
Merovingian Franks, in the 660s.
The codex form, still used today,
makes possible the kind of large
pictorial spread on facing pages
fundamental also for this atlas.
10˚
40˚
50˚
60˚
Toulouse
Périgueux
Aniane
Narbonne Lérins
Gerona
Poitiers
Saintes
St Maixent
Vienne
Chalon
Arles
Gellone
Urgel
Liebana
Bordeaux
Aix-en-Provence
London
Paris
Fleury
Milan
Bobbio
Monza
Ratisbon
Freising
Mondsee
Salzburg
St Gall
Chur
Müstair
Constance
Verona
Venice
Aquileia
Ravenna
Lucca
Nonantola
Rome
Monte Cassino
Farfa
Naples
Lyon
Barcelona
25
Utrecht
York
Cividale
Lorsch
Strasbourg
Jarrow
Whitby
Bangor
NendrumMonasterboice
Glendalough
Clonard
St Mullin’s
Lindisfarne
Monkwearmouth
Jouarre
Echternach
Reims
Dol
Corbie
Aachen
Cologne
Stavelot
1
2
3
9
10
8
22
14
11 12
4
Murbach
5
6
7
16
Flavigny
18
21
19
17 15
13
24 Metz
Trier
Lobbes
Laon
20
Essen
Nivelles
Péronne
St Vaast d’Arras
23
Basle
Reichenau
Dijon
Luxeuil
Disentis
Augsburg
St Wandrille
Léhon
Redon Le Mans
Nantes
Noirmoutier
St Philibert-de-Grand-Lieu
Landévennec
Jumieges
St Bertin
Liège
Osnabrück
Münster
Bremen
Hamburg
Verden
Minden
Gandersheim
Hersfeld
FuldaMainz
Würzburg
Amorbach
Melrose
Ruthwell
Ripon
Iona
Clonmacnoise
Armagh
Malmesbury
St Denis
Orléans
Tours
Benevento
San Vincenzo
Salerno
Vivarium
Pavia
Canterbury
Langres
Bourges
Rhône
Tagus
Ebro
Danube
Elbe Vistula
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
N O R T H
S E A
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
A
D
R
I A
T I C
S E A
BA
L
T
IC
SEA
A L P S
PYRE N E E S
B
ALEARIC IS
CORSICA
SARDINIA
SICILY
2 Monasteries, Writing Centres and Artistic Work
Carolingian schools/scriptoria/literary centres
important monasteries founded 4th-7th century
monasteries founded 6th-9th century
probable centres of manuscript illumination
distribution of objects decorated in the Tassilo chalice style
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
1. Prüm
2. Weissenburg
3. Faremoutiers
4. Troyes
5. Chiemsee
6. Tegernsee
7. Benediktbeuern
8. St Amand
9. Meaux
10.Amiens
11.Whithorn
12. Hexham
13. Sens
14. Chelles
15.Auxerre
16.Autun
17. St Germigny-des-Prés
18. Ferrières
19. Nevers
20. Maastricht
21. St Germain-des-Prés
22. Rouen
23. St Riquier
24. Hauvillers
25.Werden
2 MONASTERIES WERE FOUNDED by local saints, often
with the support of local aristocracies, sometimes
also by missionaries, often coming from the British
Isles. A few were large and wealthy, but even the
many small and poor ones required liturgical
implements of valued materials and workmanship,
along with reliquaries and books. A few were
engaged in production, but all provided a market
for artistic works.
similarly incorporated in liturgical crosses and
luxury bookbindings.
The Roman tradition survived chiefly in
and through Christianity, Rome becoming to
contemporaries not the city of Caesar and
Augustus but of saints Peter and Paul. The
great churches built in late Antiquity by
Constantine and his followers continued in
use, but during this period only one pagan
building was converted for Christian use, when
Hadrian’s domed Pantheon was rededicated as
S. Maria ad Martyres in 609. In a fundamentally
new phenomenon, large painted wooden
panels representing Christ or his mother were
created and displayed in many churches, and
sometimes carried in processions through the
city, for example the so-called Christ image
kept in the Lateran chapel of the Sancta
Sanctorum (‘the Holy of Holies’) in Rome from
at least the end of the eighth century.
Greco-Roman civilization was a literary
culture in which books played a large role, but
their role was both altered and intensified
through the emergence and triumph of
Christianity and Islam (established in Spain in
the 8th century). Each of them had a sacred
book at its core and both developed a new form
of decorated book commonly referred to as
‘illuminated’. Even in late Antiquity and with the
triumph of Christianity, from the fifth century or
even earlier, the new form of bound codex that
replaced the ancient book roll had been
provided on some occasions with elaborate
coloured pictures. These most commonly were
portraits of the authors or of the patrons who
either received or commissioned books of
unusual and outstanding luxury.
Only in the seventh century did the text itself
come to be a focus for decoration, with coloured
ornament around and within and sometimes
altogether comprising the letters. Pages were
provided also with ornamental embellishment,
beautifying as well as communicating the
written word. Not all new manuscripts were
made in monasteries or by monks, but many
were, and the monasteries were a major patron
of this art form, and of precious metalwork, and
thye became the eventual repositories of nearly
all examples that survive.
RECALLING ROMAN NUMISMATIC PRACTICE, a silver
denarius, with profile portrait, issued by
Charlemagne after about 806. Around the
portrait is the inscription KAROLUS IMP AUG
(Charles Emperor Augustus). On the reverse,
however, the central role of the Christian
religion is explicitly stated. The temple-like
structure is based on Roman imperial coinage,
but is now crowned with a cross and inscribed
XPICTIANA RELIGIO (Christian Religion).
metalwork and textiles, sometimes exchanged
not for purely economic reasons but as
gift-exchanges that forged ties between the
various rulers.
The range of places of origin for the
material collected in the Sutton Hoo shipburial
(c.630), indicates the direct and indirect
connections stretching from southeastern
England to Scandinavia, the Frankish kingdom,
even to Constantinople and Egypt. Towards the
end of the eighth century occurred the
converse phenomenon: the wide distribution of
objects produced in a single or closely related
centres, including both objects for Christian
use, like the Tassilo Chalice (opposite), and others
in a similar style primarily for secular use
(swords, jewellery and riding equipment). The
common denominators are a new style,
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
102
FROM THE LATER SIXTH CENTURY the
Roman Empire ceased to dominate the
western Mediterranean and European world.
Associated with this political change – the
emergence of new ‘barbarian’ rulers – was the
decline of the urban centres that had been the
focus of Greco-Roman civilization and its
artistic production.
NEW PATTERNS OF TRADE
Constantinople and, especially, Rome shrank
considerably. Alexandria was conquered by
Islam. Carthage and Ephesus virtually ceased
to exist. Smaller cities in the west such as
Trier, Winchester, Metz or Tours became
primarily military and episcopal administrative
centres. Trade also declined, especially longdistance
trade in bulk cargoes like grain, wine
and pottery. For example, the eastern and
African pottery found at many fifth- and early
sixth-century sites in western Europe is absent
at later sites. From the seventh century trade
tended to be more localized for such items,
with the emerging new economic and cultural
centres in suburban and rural estates founded
essentially upon agriculture.
Some north–south trade continued, using
the Rhine and Rhône valleys, and northern
trade around the North Sea and Baltic Sea
became significant, by the end of the period
reaching across modern Russia to the Islamic
world. Sites like Hedeby (Haithabu) on the
Baltic, Dorestad in the Netherlands on the
North Sea, and Southampton (Hamwih) on the
Channel grew rapidly in the eighth century,
and are associated with the production of
small silver coins (sceattas). Trade shifted
toward luxury items, such as precious
EUROPE 600-800
0˚
10˚
40˚
50˚
10˚ 20˚
711
714
670
697
711
Kairouan
Carthage
Tulaytulah (Toledo)
Mérida
Oviedo
(c.790)
Tangier
Saragossa
Ceuta
Toulouse
Poitiers
Turones
London
Sutton Hoo
Hamwih
Paris
Geneva
Milan
Ratisbon
Turin
Verona
Bononia
Florence
Genoa
Venice
Ravenna
Rome
Naples
Taranto
Athens
Thessalonica
Adrianople
Varna
Constantinople
Smyrna
Bari
Spalatum
Palermo Messina
Lyon
Marseille
Barshilunah (Barcelona)
Tarrakunah (Tarragona)
Cartagena
Algiers
Qurtubah (Córdoba)
Cologne
NijmegenDorestad Paderborn
(776)
Hedeby
York
Scone
Winchester
Glastonbury
Cividale
Quintanilla
de las Viñas
Lorsch
(after 764)
St Maurice
d’Agaune
Jarrow (684)
Monkwearmouth (674)
Reculver (669)
Grenoble
Germigny
-des-Prés
(c.800)
Jouarre
(670s)
Ingelheim
Centula (790s)
Aachen
(795)
Escomb
(670s) Hexham
Ripon (670s)
Yeavering
St Denis
Benevento
(c.770)
Tempio di
Clitunno
San Vincenzo al Volturno
Pavia
Lomello
San Pedro
della Nave
São Gião
de Navaré
São Frutuoso
de Montelios
San Juan
de Baños
Santa Comba
de Bande
Santianes
de Pravia
Santa María
de Melque
Canterbury
(after 597)
Seine
Rhine
Tagus
Ebro
Danube
Elbe
Oder
Vistula
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
N O R T H
S E A
BA LT I C
S E A
BLACK
SEA
M E D I T E R
R
A
N
E A N S E A
A
D
R
I A
T I C
S E A
A L P S
P
Y
R E N E E S
BALTIC
PEO
P
LES
S L A
V
S
S
L
A
V
S
NO
RTHM
E N
(SCA
NDINAV I A N S )
SAXO N SF R I S I A N
S
BRETONS
BASQUES
B
ALEARIC IS
CORSICA
SARDINIA
SICILY
MALTA CRETE
BAVARIA
AQUITAINE
ASTURIAS
KINGDOM OF
THE PICTS
SCOTTISH
KINGDOMS
IRISH
KINGDOMS
STRATH-
CLYDE
EAST
ANGLIA
KENT
WELSH
STATES
WEST
WALES
NORTHUMBRIA
MERCIA
AVAR
EMPIRE
BULGARIA
B
Y
Z
A
N
T I N E E M P I R E
U
M
A
Y
Y
A
D
C
A
L I P H A T E
KIN
G
DO
M
OF THE LOMBARDS
FRANKISH KINGDOM
WESSEX
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
Centres and Distribution
of Luxury Goods c.730
Muslim Umayyad Caliphate
date of Muslim conquest
Byzantine Empire
Frankish Kingdom
Kingdom of the Lombards
mints represented in the
Sutton Hoo burial (c.630)
provenance of objects found in
the Sutton Hoo burial (c.630)
distribution of marble sarcophagi
and capitals quarried/carved
in Toulouse region, 6th-7th C
ecclesiastical structures of which
significant remains survive
secular (mostly royal) sites with
substantial surviving fragments
or known from literary sources
trade route
670
1
1 CHURCHMEN’S TRAVELS played a large role in artistic
exchanges, as they brought gifts and returned with
new acquisitions. Benedict Biscop travelled five
times from Northumbria to Rome as a pilgrim,
returning to the monastery he founded laden with
books and pictures, and in 669 brought with him
Theodore of Tarsus (in Asia Minor), the new
Archbishop of Canterbury.
THE TASSILO CHALICE, a liturgical chalice in
copper, with silver and gold inlay and niello,
Salzburg region c.770 (Kremsmünster, Abbey
Treasury). A Latin inscription names Duke
Tassilo, last ruler of independent Bavaria, and his
wife Liutpirc, a Lombard princess. Images in
medallions represent four patron saints of the
family, and Christ and the four evangelists.
EUROPE 800–1000
105
campaign of literary and artistic production,
which continued into the tenth century. From
the later tenth century the Roman empire ruled
by a Saxon dynasty in Germany, commonly
called the Ottonian dynasty, also drew scholars
and artists from afar, including the Byzantine
empire.
For a small group, the world suddenly
became much smaller, and men such as
Gerbert of Aurillac took advantage of the new
range of possibilities. Born and educated in
southern France, he became a famous teacher
at Reims in northern France, then became tutor
to the future Emperor Otto III, and was
appointed by him Pope Sylvester II in 997.
Artists similarly travelled. We know of a
Carolingian painter in the employ of abbots
travelling from central France to central
Germany and returning, of Anglo-Saxon artists
active at Fleury and probably in the Meuse
region, and one famous master who worked for
the Archbishop of Trier in the late tenth century
probably visited Rome.
Gerbert’s career exemplifies the relative
insignificance of borders. Latin was the shared
language of written culture and administration
nearly everywhere in the West, and there was
an emerging sense of a special Western
Christendom, represented by the enlargement
of Christendom westwards to encompass all of
Scandinavia, including Iceland and Greenland,
and eastwards to include Poland and Hungary.
Borders were very much in flux in any event,
prompted only in part by the raids and
subsequent invasions of the Vikings. By the
tradition, and for it was made the earliest
preserved luxury illuminated manuscript for a
ruler, known after its scribe and painter as the
Godescalc Evangelistary (781–83). Although we
do not know where that book was made, it and
a group of other extraordinarily luxurious
books were made for Charlemagne.
After a hiatus of more than three centuries,
carvings on ivory were produced under court
patronage. As there was no current supply of
new ivory, many were made by turning over
Late Roman secular (never Christian) ivories
and carving the back.
Also for the court were made large-scale
works in bronze, including the doors and
railings for the palace chapel. How the difficult
art of bronze casting was recovered remains
something of a mystery, as is also the case with
the wall mosaics at Aachen and at Theodulf’s
chapel at Germigny, another technique revived
after several centuries abeyance other than in
the city of Rome.
The Frankish royal courts became the first
court centre of cultural and artistic patronage
in the post-Roman period, and drew many
creative figures from beyond the Frankish
realm, including Alcuin from northern England,
Theodulf from northern Spain, Paulinus of
Aquileia and others from Italy, and later John
the Scot Eriugena from Ireland.
OTTONIAN EUROPE
From the later ninth century the Frankish
kingdoms were in decline, but Alfred the
Great’s Wessex began a major royal-sponsored
THE EGMOND GOSPELS, facing miniatures added c.950
to a ninth-century manuscript by Count Theoderic
II of West Frisia and his wife Hildegard. The couple
present the book at the monastery’s altar, and
then are presented to Christ by the monastery’s
patron saint, St Adalbert.
Rohrbach
Leutmerken
Tägerschen
Pfäffikon
Helfenschwil
Willmandingen
Bettighofen
Dieterskirchen
Oberndorf
Buchheim
Mengen
Wolfenweiler
Spaichingen
Tuningen
Klengen
Wurmlingen
Tuttlingen
Löffingen
Fischingen
Binzen
Lausheim
Weizen Singen
Diessenhofen
Bülach
Glatt
Höngg
Zurich
Ringwil
Kempraten Grabs
Fischbach
Constance
Bermatingen
Siggingen Urlau Luttolsberg
Mindersdorf
Bussnang Amriswil
Sitterdorf
Heldswil
Zuzwil
Lommis
Aadorf
Elgg
Büren
Zell
Turbental
Jonschwil Bütschwil
Ulm
Schörzingen
Pfohren
Ewattingen
Goldach
Steinach
Durnten
Wetzikon
Langenargen
Egringen
Winterthur
Wängi
Rickinbach Henau
Uzwil
HerisauUster
Kirchen
Stammheim
Mönchaltorf
Egg
Eschenbach
Schlins
Leiblach
Buchorn
Bodman
Romanshorn
ST GALL
ST GALL
Gossau
Leutkirch
Wasserburg
Uznach
Rankweil
Rhine
Thur
Rhine
Rhine
Lake Constance
Lake Zurich
Lake Wallen
Allgäner
AlpenBregenzer Wald
S w a b i a n J u r a
Black F
orest
BREISGAU
BERCHTOLDSBAAR
SCHERRAGA
U
ARGENGAU
AARGAU
KLETTGAU
ALBGAU
LINZGAU
NIBELGAU
ZÜRICHGAU
THURGAU
HEGAU
RAETIA
CURIENSIS
N
0
0
20 miles
30 kms
2 FROM THE MID-EIGHTH CENTURY
until the end of the tenth St
Gall, supported largely by its
land holdings, was a centre
for illuminated manuscripts.
Although the most elaborate
books, ivory carvings and
metalwork were for the
abbey itself, some were sent
to the many dependent
monasteries, priories and
churches in the wide region
dominated by St Gall as an
administrative as well as
artistic centre. The map
shows how widely dispersed
the administrative work of
the abbey was – each site
‘with charters’ is a place
where these property
documents were drawn up.
end of the period the core of the later English
and French nations had been defined.
Monasteries, already important in
preceding centuries, played if anything an
enhanced role in the ninth and tenth. Many
received royal support, or the support of major
local aristocratic patrons, and in turn were
expected to contribute to royal projects,
providing not only books and teachers but also
money and even soldiers. Some of the royal
monasteries became major centres of artistic
production, the monastery at Tours, for
example, producing something like two
complete bibles and a gospel book annually
during the second quarter of the ninth century.
The ties between state and church were
especially intimate in Ottonian Germany,
culminating in the eleventh century in intense
conflicts. Some monasteries sought to insulate
themselves from secular ties; the great
monastery of Cluny (founded 919) was
chartered as dependent only upon the pope,
and also strengthened its independence by
creating an order, an alliance of many
monasteries scattered across Christendom
with the Burgundian mother house at its head.
The well-documented case of the abbey of St
Gall, just south of Lake Constance in modern
Switzerland, shows the extent of monastic
involvement in land-holding patterns and also
of literary and administrative culture.
Monasteries were also important as the
home of holy men, specialists in prayer, and of
the holy men and women of the past, present
through their relics, whose cult became
increasingly important through the period.
Relics were required in association with every
altar, usually small portions of holy bodies in
small but elaborately decorated reliquaries.
Charlemagne’s biographer, Einhard, tells how
holy relics were acquired from Rome. Other
famous relics were rescued or stolen by new
owners, including St Foi at Conques and St
Mark at Venice.
2 The Abbey of St Gall
sites with abbey properties
places with 10 charters or more
places with 5-10 charters
places with 3 or 4 charters
places with 2 charters
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
104
THE FRANKISH KINGDOMS of Charlemagne
(r.768–814) and his successors were the
dominant political and military force in ninthcentury
western Europe, and also the main
cultural centre. In the early tenth century,
artists were supported by Anglo-Saxon Wessex,
and later by the Ottonian empire in Germany.
CAROLINGIAN EUROPE
Central power in the Carolingian empire
depended upon the personal qualities and
presence of the ruler. Charlemagne travelled
incessantly for decades, and his ‘court’,
including the queen, travelled with him four
times to Italy, around the scattered royal
estates, and on annual military campaigns
which took them as far afield as northern Spain
or modern Hungary.
The construction on one of the royal
estates of a new fixed capital, at Aachen (after
794) was a new phenomenon. It contained the
first large palace chapel in the Western
EUROPE 800-1000
0˚ 10˚ 20˚
50˚
40˚
London
GhentSt Omer
Valenciennes
Ingelheim
St Quentin
Worms
Orville
Lorsch
QuierzyVerberie
Frankfurt
Soissons
Koeth
Compiègne
Corbeny
Salz
Fulda
Ven
Kissingen
St Denis
Würzburg
Chelles
Svalafeld
Remiremont
Karlsgraben
Geneva
RatisbonMetz
Lechfeld
Diedenhofen
Bodman
Longlien
(Longlier)
Speyer
Seilles
Brumath
Herstal
Schlettstadt
Duren
Sinfeld Eresburg
Herstelle
Lügde
Thuringen
Paderborn
Brunsberg
Üffeln
Rehme
Minden
Hocheleve
Oker
Ohrum
Schöningen
Wolmirst
Steinfurth
Verden
Hollenstedt
Armagh
York
Canterbury
St Riquier
Winchester
Rouen
Reims
St Amand
1
2
6 7
3 4
5
Cologne
Echternach
Aachen
Bremen
Hamburg
Gniezno
Salzburg Esztergom
Magdeburg
Tours
Germigny
Bordeaux
Auch
Bourges
St Gall
Reichenau
Paris
Toulouse
Narbonne Aix-en-Provence
Avignon
Lyon
Vienne
Cluny
Tarentaise
Embrun
Pisa
Trivento
Naples
Sorrento
Amalfi
Salerno
Messina
Aquileia
Gerona
BurgosBraga
Santiago
Barcelona
Turin
Genoa
Milan
Ravenna
Florence
Monte Sant’ Angelo
Trani
Bari
Brindisi
Otranto
ReggioPalermo
Conza
Siena
Rome
Venice
Ragusa
Oporto
Rhine
Seine
L
oire
Rhône
Elbe
Danube
Vistula
Po
N O R T H S E A
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
BA LT I C
S E A
A
D
R
IA
T
I C
S E A
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
P
Y R E N E E S
A L P S
BAL E A R I C I S
CORSICA
SARDINIA
SICILY
B R I T TA N Y
SAXONY
KINGDOM
OF ORKNEY
SCOTLAND
E N G L A N D
WESSEX
D E N M A R K
W E S T
F R A N K I S H
K I N G D O M
EAST
FRANKISH
KINGDOM
P O L A N D
H U N G A RY
BURGUNDY
L E Ó N
C A L I P H AT E O F C Ó R D O B A
CROATIA
WELSH
STATES
IRISH
KINGDOMS
CASTILE
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
1 Western Christendom before AD 1000
places visited by Charlemagne, 768-814
palace complexes constructed/rebuilt
major churches constructed by those
closely associated with royal/imperial court
centres of decorated book production
archbishopric
main Viking routes, 792-870
Ottonian lands, c.1000
borders c.1000
extent of Catholicism, c.1000
1 - Trier
2 - Kreuznath
3 - Hohensburg
4 - Lippspringe
5 - Detmold
6 - Mainz
7 - Seligenstadt
1 RAIDS BY VIKINGS and others destroyed many of the
works of art produced during the peak of
Carolingian culture, roughly 780–880. Nevertheless,
by the end of the tenth century Christendom had
expanded. Kings, increasingly powerful aristocratic
lords, and clergymen (especially bishops and
abbots) were patrons of books, fine metalwork
and architecture. Urban centres were also
renascent, especially in Italy.
THE WUOLVINIUS ALTAR, centre-rear view
(Milan, S. Ambrogio), mid-ninth century. On its
front this elaborately enamelled silver and gold
altar displayed Christ enthroned in majesty, with
scenes from his life at both sides. Access to the relic
(the entire preserved body of the patron saint) is
through these doors on the back displaying
archangels and the current Archbishop Angilbertus
and the craftsman Wuolvinius bowing before and
being blessed by the saint.
EASTERN EUROPE AND SOUTHWEST ASIA 600–1500
107
The Crusades increased knowledge of
Byzantine art in western Europe. In the late
Byzantine period, Byzantine art also showed an
increasing awareness of western art, reflecting
the close contact between Byzantium and the
West from the twelfth century onwards.
ARTISTIC CENTRES
Constantinople and Thessaloniki were major
artistic centres. A local artistic tradition is
exemplified by the ninth- to eleventh-century
frescoes in the cave churches of Cappadocia, in
eastern Turkey. Church decoration in Cyprus and
Serbia provides important insights into artistic
developments in the late Byzantine period
BYZANTINE SILK PRODUCTION was strictly regulated, being
an imperial monopoly. Silks were highly prized in
the West where, as in the example below, they
were often used to decorate the inside of saints’
reliquaries. The woven patterns, such as the birds
and griffins visible in this twelfth-century fabric
known as the Shroud of St Potentien (Cathedral
Treasury, Sens), find parallels in Islamic silks.
60˚
50˚
40˚
10˚ 20˚ 30˚ 40˚ 50˚ 60˚
Cu
Cu
Cu
Pb
Pb
M
Venice
Ragusa
Thessalonica
Constantinople
Smyrna
Iconium
(Konya)
Candia
Caesarea
Constantia
Antioch
Damascus
Acre
Tyre
Jerusalem
Baghdad
Sebastea
Trebizond
Chersonesus
Kiev
Moscow
Smolensk
Riga
Reväl Novgorod
Van
Dvin
Ani
Tiflis
Sinope
Athens
Monemvasia
Corinth
Thebes
Dnieper
Dniester
Vistula Volga
Euphrates
Tigri
s
Danube
Oder
Donets
Don
Bug
L.Van
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
BALT
IC
SEA
ADRIATIC
SEA
B L A C K S E A
CASPIANSEA
AEGEAN
SEA
TA
U
RUS M
TS
C A U C A S U S
BALKAN MTS
RHODOPE
MTS
DINARIC ALPS
PIND
U
S
M
T
S
CARPATHIAN
M
T
S
CRETE
SICILY
CYPRUS
PROCONNESUS
from Egypt from Axum
from
Muslim lands
Byzantine
glass to Rus
Byzantine
glass to Ani
N
0
0
300 miles
450 kms
2 EASTERN EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN were linked
by an extensive trading network. Luxury goods
from Byzantium were exported to Rus, the River
Dnieper forming an important trade route, and
overland and across the Black Sea to the Caucasus.
Raw materials from Byzantium, such as alum, were
exported to western Europe. Even though
Byzantium had its own silk production, silks and
dyes were also imported from the Islamic world.
The Caucasus, Cyprus and the mountains near
Thessalonica were mined for silver and copper.
Some gold was imported from Africa.
3 CONSTANTINOPLE formed the hub of a vast, longdistance
trade network, which carried commodities
as far afield as Russia and the Caucasus. The city’s
wealth is reflected in the religious topography of
the capital. Monasteries were lavishly decorated
with mosaics. Cult images, kept at individual
monasteries, formed an integral part of religious
life in Constantinople, attracting worshippers from
within and without the Byzantine Empire.
L
ycus
S E A O F M A R M A R A
GO
LD
EN
H
O
RN
BOSPORUS
Mother of
God Kyriotissa
St John
stoudios
Golden
Gate
Cistern
Cistern
Cistern
Christ in Chora
Blachernae
Palace
Christ
Pantepoptes
Christ
Evergetes
Mother of God Pammakaristos
Christ
Pantokrator
Mangana Monastery
St Sophia
St Eirene
Hodegon Monastery
Imperial Palace
complex
Forum of
Constantine
Forum of
Arkadios
Forum of
Theodosios
St Polyeuktos
Mother of God
Peribleptos
Church of
the Holy Apostles
N
0
0
1 miles
1.5 kms
Constantinople,
900-1300
pre-900 monuments
post-900 monuments
church
monastery
mosaic
fresco
cult image
Italian merchant
community
aqueduct
3
(12th–15th centuries). Alongside Constantinople
major centres of manuscript production existed
in Armenia, Cilicia (13th–14th centuries) and
Bulgaria (14th–15th centuries).
MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
Marble from the island of Proconnesus in the Sea
of Marmara was the main construction medium
in the early Byzantine period, while in later
centuries brick became dominant. Mosaic was
the prime medium of Byzantine monumental
decoration. Glass workshops are thought to have
produced mosaic tesserae as well as glass vessels
– Byzantine glass has been found in Russia and
Armenia. Glass was also used in enamel
production, with cloisonné being the most widely
practised technique. From the early Byzantine
period Constantinople was the centre of a silk
industry; from the tenth century silk workshops
also existed in Greece. Silk was also imported
from the Islamic world. Various pigments were
used to dye silk, the most expensive being purple
produced from murex shells. Mordants, such as
alum, found primarily in Asia Minor, were used to
fix the dyes. Some metals were mined within
the Byzantine Empire. Others, such as gold,
were imported. Mints producing coins in
precious and base metal existed in both
Constantinople and Thessalonica.
MOVEMENTS OF ART AND ARTISTS
Knowledge of Byzantine art was disseminated
through trade, diplomatic contacts, pilgrimage
and, starting in the late eleventh century, the
Crusades. Byzantine art looted in Constantinople
in 1204 is still housed in church treasuries in
Venice and France. In Russia, the activities of
traders, who imported honey, wax and furs from
Rus to Byzantium, and sold Byzantine silks and
glass in Rus, were complemented by the
activities of Byzantine missionaries. Following
the elevation of Christianity to the status of
official religion in Rus in 988, Byzantine icons
and liturgical silver were also imported. The
skills of Byzantine craftsmen were highly sought
after outside Byzantium. Byzantine mosaicists
were active in Kiev in the eleventh century and
in Norman Sicily in the twelfth century.
2 Natural Resources, Trade and Industry, 600-1500
trading centre
trade route
imports
exports
dyes
silk
Pb
CuM
ceramics
glass
marble
alum
mint
gold
silver
lead
copper
iron
tin
PROFOUND SOCIAL, political and economic
changes in the seventh century transformed
the civilization of late antiquity into the
medieval Greek world, known as Byzantium. For
centuries the Byzantine Empire, with
Constantinople at its centre, provided a
powerful cultural and artistic model to
neighbouring cultures, while also absorbing
cultural influences from neighbours such as the
Islamic world. The Vikings and Slavs of Rus were
incorporated into the political and ecclesiastical
orbit of Byzantium in the ninth and tenth
centuries; the introduction of both Christianity
and the Cyrillic alphabet to Rus were
manifestations of this process. Contacts with
western Europe existed throughout the period,
but became particularly intense in the
aftermath of the Crusades in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. The influence of Byzantium
declined after the Sack of Constantinople by the
participants of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. After
the fall of Constantinople in 1453 Byzantine art
and Orthodox religion lived on only in eastern
Europe and the Balkans. Until the late
Byzantine period the emperor was a major
patron of the arts. His example was imitated by
rulers of Norman Sicily, Serbia and Bulgaria.
ART AND SOCIETY
Although silks and ceramics are testimony to
the widespread production of secular arts, the
surviving arts of the period are mainly
Christian. Religious diversity is a key factor in
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
106
an understanding of the art of this region.
Parts of eastern Europe, including Poland,
Hungary and regions of the Balkans, followed
the Latin rite, whereas the dominant religion
in Byzantium and Rus was Orthodox
Christianity. Georgia was Orthodox,
neighbouring Armenia Monophysite. Such
diversity is reflected in the visual arts, with
each region presenting distinctive artistic
idioms. Throughout the Byzantine world,
religious cult sites provided a stimulus for the
production of art and architecture. Many
smaller pilgrimage sites existed alongside the
major international pilgrimage centres of
Jerusalem and Constantinople.
The influence of the Islamic world was also
profound. The Iconoclast controversy of the
eighth and ninth centuries, which concerned the
role and extent of religious imagery in Christian
worship, cannot be understood without reference
to the Islamic prohibition of iconic imagery for
religious purposes. In the secular sphere,
tenth-century courtly ceremonies of the
imperial court in Constantinople were very
similar to those practised in Baghdad.
EASTERN EUROPE AND SOUTHWEST
ASIA 600-1500
THE CLOSE CULTURAL links between medieval Russia
and Byzantium are reflected in the art and
architecture of medieval Rus. Byzantine craftsmen
and architects introduced artistic ideas to Rus, but
its art and architecture are not slavish copies of
Byzantine models. The Church of SS Peter and
Paul, Kozhevniki in Novgorod, northern Russia, is
dated 1406. It is centrally planned, radiating from
a central point, like a Byzantine church. Its onion
dome, however, is a local adaptation.
50˚40˚30˚20˚
60˚
50˚
40˚
10˚
Constantinople
Nicomedia
Pliska
Preslav
Cracow
Esztergom
(Gran)
Gniezno
Kiev
Novgorod
Pskov Moscow
Vladimir
Yaroslavl
Trebizond
˘
¸Eski Gümüs
Göreme
Soganli
Echmiadzin
Aghtamar
Hromkla
Edessa
AntiochTarsus
Tripoli
Ani
Gelati
Asinou
Acre
Sis
Iconium
Mtskheta
Thessalonica
Daphni
Meteora
Bari
Chios
Boyana
Kurbinovo
Studenica
Kastoria
Ochrida
Skopje
(Scupi) Nerezi
Gracanica˘
Sopocani
Dyrrhachium
´
Mistra
Hosios
Loukas
Palermo
Cefalù
Venice
Jerusalem
Lagoudera
L. Van
Dnieper
Dnieste
r
Don
Volga
Ural
Danube
Euphrates
Tigr
is
Jordan
Vistula
SEA
OF AZOV
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
B L A C K S E A
B A
LT
IC
SEA
A
EGEAN
SEA
A
D
RIATIC SEA
Mt
Athos
C
A
R
PA
TH
IAN
MTS
DIN
A
RIC
ALPS
C A U C A S U S
TAU
RU
S
M
TS
FINNS
FINNS
SELJUK
TURKS
ESTONIANS
LIVS
LITHUANIANS
CYPRUSRHODES
K. OF
ARMENIA
CRETE
SICILY
H O L Y
R O M A N
E M P I R E
R U S S I A N
P R I N C I P A L I T I E S
A Y Y U B I D
S U L T A N A T E
BYZANTINE
EMPIREKINGDOM
OF
SICILY
SWEDEN
POLAND
HUNGARY
GEORGIA
looted works of art
after sack of
Constantinople, 1204
Byzantine artists,
bronze doors exported
to Italy, 11th century
Byzantineartists,Byzantineicons
N
0
0
300 miles
400 kms
1 BYZANTINE CRAFTSMEN, mostly from Constantinople,
were much in demand abroad. Byzantine
craftsmen made mosaics in southern Italy, Sicily
and Rus. Byzantine artefacts, in particular icons or
liturgical objects, also reached Rus through trade
and diplomatic missions. Many Byzantine artefacts
in western church treasuries were looted during
the sack of Constantinople in 1204.
Art in Eastern Europe and
Byzantine Asia, 600-1500
borders c.1200
Muslim lands
Orthodox Christian lands
Christian (Armenian/
Monophysite) territory
Catholic Christian lands
Jewish settlements
pagans
Bogomils (Manichaeans)
route of the First
Crusade, 1096-99
extent of Crusader control
church pre-1000
church post-1000
monastery pre-1000
monastery post-1000
patriarchal seat
archbishopric
bishopric
pilgrimage centre
rock monasteries of Cappadocia
wall mosaic
fresco decoration
scriptorium
metalwork
enamel
relief sculpture
ceramics
bronze-casting
icons
movement of artists and
artefacts from Constantinople
1
2 Art and Trade
border of Holy Roman
Empire, c.1095
sources of:
silver
copper
iron
lead
tin
trade centre for Viking
sculpture (wood/stone/bone)
and metalwork
centres of metalwork
centres of alabaster
centres of ivory-working
export of alabaster
trade route
Cu
Pb
109
THE TOWER OF LONDON was built by William the
Conqueror soon after his invasion of England in 1066.
For the design William’s architects looked to castle
architecture in western France. The square plan
was to become typical for English castle
building. Inside were apartments, a hall and
a well. Situated on the banks of the River
Thames the dominant building was
meant to impress anyone coming
from the sea up to London.
THE LUND CRUCIFIX.
This crucifix comes
from the cathedral
of Lund, since 1103 the
seat of the
archbishopric for
Scandinavia. It is made
from gilded metal.
Originally, the figure
of Christ was
surrounded by the
symbols of the four
Evangelists on the
arms of the cross.
Crucifixes like this
were treasured items.
0˚ 10˚ 20˚ 30˚ 40˚ 50˚ 60˚
60˚
50˚
40˚
10˚20˚30˚
Pb
Pb
Cu
Cu
Cu
Limerick
Cork
Dublin
Wexford
York
Durham
Cammin (Kamien)
Gdansk´
´
Lund
Vejrum
Lade
Urnes
Borbjerg
Trondheim
Lincoln
Norwich
King’s
Lynn
Hull
London
Paderborn
Utrecht Hamburg
Bruges
Paris
Tours Vienna
Florence
Venice
Barcelona
Perpignan
Gerona
Valencia
Palma
Toledo
Seville
Lisbon
Cartagena
Zurich
Naples
Rome
Basle
Milan
Pavia
Genoa
Siena
Pisa
Avignon
Limoges
Bordeaux
Fuenterrabia
Aviles
Morella
Nantes
Ecaquelon
Kermaria
Chatelaudren
Roscoff
Cologne
Toulouse
MontpellierSantiago de
Compostela
Burgos
Zamora
Silos
Palermo Messina
Catania
Otok
Prague
Buda
Kiev
Novgorod
Waterford
Winchester
Tutbury
Dartmouth
Bristol
St Albans
Poole
Evreux
Southampton
Wolin
Zuchau
Gross-Grönau
Ribe
Kaupang
Oseberg
Flatalunga
Dorestad
Sigtuna
Po
Danube
Dnieper
Dvina
Volga
Rhône
Loire
Sein
e
E
lbe
Od
er
Rhine
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
N O R T H
S E A
BAY O F
B I S C AY
BALT
IC
SEA
B L A C K S E A
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
PYRENEES
A L P S
HARZ
MTS
SICILY
CORSICA
SARDINIA
NORWAY
ICELAND
SWEDEN
POLAND
ENGLAND
FRANCE
NORMANDY
SCOTLAND
IRISH
KINGDOMS
WELSH
PRINCIPALITIES
HUNGARY
KINGDOM
OF ITALY
BYZANTINE
EMPIRE
KINGDOM
OF ITALY
KINGDOM
OF
GERMANY
DENMARK
S E L J U K
E M P I R E S
FIN
N
O
-U
G
RIA
N
S
T
U
R
K
IC
P
E
O
P
L E S
carved wood
carved
wood
N
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
2 THE SUPPLY OF MATERIALS was
essential for art production. In
Germany and in England, local
stone was in good supply and
was a perfect source for
buildings and sculpture, while
in Scandinavia patrons and
artists exploited the rich
timber resources. Rare
materials like alabaster and
metal were exploited at
source and then exported to
other regions. Trade, a crucial
factor in the growing
European economy, fuelled
the arts. In turn, trade routes
contributed to the dispersal of
craftsmen and their methods.
had to be found for constructions, gold, silver
and gems were needed for the liturgical
furnishings. Such materials were sometimes
found in the local vicinity but they were often
imported. Iron, copper and tin, for example,
were brought from the east to centres of
metalwork, such as Cologne and Tours.
The perfection of the material and of the
craftsmanship was a vital factor in the
production of Christian art created for the
honour of God.
ARTISTS AND PATRONS
The European secular elite also underlined
their newly found positions of power by
patronizing the arts. They constructed castles
and palaces that reflected their
authority and position in society,
for example at Trier, Leyden and
Hildesheim. At the same time,
they also demanded religious objects for their
personal devotional practices.
The personalities and working methods of
artists are little documented at this time, and
only few artists signed a finished work. Most
art production was collaborative and often
several generations of a family worked in the
same workshop. If a wealthy patron wished it,
foreign artists travelled great distances to
bring their specialized knowledge with them.
Some areas developed a reputation for the
manufacture and sale of luxury goods, like
alabaster from England. In this way craftsmen
became entrepreneurs. Other artists worked
over long periods at the same court, for
example at Westminster and Aachen. In this
case a close consultation between artist and
patron could develop, so that works were
created that were specifically designed to
fulfill the wishes of the patron.
CENTRES OF ART AND LEARNING
The religious institutions of the time were also
the seats of education and learning. Schools
developed around many of the newly built
cathedrals. The monasteries that dotted the
landscape were also important centres of
teaching and art production. Many had
scriptoria famous for manuscript illumination,
such as the monastery of Echternach which in
turn inspired the mural painters. The
combination of religion, learning and artistic
production is symptomatic of this time when
much of the intellectual creativity was
concentrated on devotional subjects.
NORTHERN EUROPE 1000–1200ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
108
THE FIRST TWO HUNDRED YEARS of the
second millennium were a period of
expansion and economic growth for northern
Europe. This prosperity stimulated an increased
production of art and architecture. Though the
time of the great invasions from the east had
passed, political boundaries continued to shift.
Notionally the German Emperors dominated
western Europe. Nevertheless, it was often
smaller barons and counts who held real
power, and many were able to extend their
power base. The Normans of northern France,
for example, conquered England in 1066. They
brought with them their system of government,
as well as their artistic tastes and their
architects to rebuild the cathedrals, such as
Durham and Ely, and to construct new castles,
like Norwich and Rochester.
Next to the secular courts, cathedrals and
monasteries were the main centres of authority
and culture in this period. Bishops and abbots
recruited themselves from the same families as
secular rulers, and as major landowners they
held comparable power. They were also
influential patrons of the arts, commissioning
works of art for their own personal use but also
for their religious institutions. The cathedralmonastery
of Canterbury in England, the
cathedral of Lund in Sweden and the
monastery of Hirsau were all important sites.
Between 1100 and 1200 society became
much more stable. New trade links opened up
to the north and south. A thriving agricultural
base brought wealth to many regions. New
towns and universities developed, and roads
allowed safer travel for artists and merchants.
In this flourishing society, visual art and
architecture were increasingly put into the
service of individuals and institutions. Often,
they were intended to convey multiple
NORTHERN EUROPE 1000-1200
0˚ 10˚ 20˚
50˚
60˚
Lincoln
Oakham
Norwich
Bury St Edmunds
Castle Rising
Ely
Colchester
Orford
Castle Hedingham
Canterbury
London (Westminster)
Rochester
Durham
Richmond
Norham
Minden
Paderborn
Hamburg
Lund
Hildesheim
Brunswick Halberstadt
Magdeburg
Gniezno
PlockTrzemeszno
Quedlinburg
GoslarHersfeld
Wartburg
Helmarshausen
Regensburg
Weingarten
St Gall
Einsiedeln
Engelberg
Augsburg
Salzburg
Klosterneuburg
Stavanger
Bergen
Ringsaker
Gamla
Uppsala
Falun
Hamar
Trondheim
Viborg
Husaby
Visby
Soest
Essen
Corvey
Leyden
EberbachMaria Laach
(Abtei Laach)
Maulbronn
Trier
Echternach
Aachen
Liège
Stavelot
Hirsau
Reichenau
Schaffhausen
Habsburg
Cologne
Deutz
Werden
Bonn
Andernach
Mainz
Limburg
Winchester
Tournai
Peterborough
Newcastle
Conisbrough
York
Gloucester
Malmesbury
HerefordSt David’s
Exeter
Romsey
Sherborne
Shaftesbury
St Albans
Reading
Loire
Seine
Rhine
Elbe
Po
Oder
Rhône
Danube
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
BAY O F
B I S C AY
N O R T H
S E A
B A
LT
IC
SEA
A
L
P
S
P Y R E N E E S
S L AV S
FINNICPEOPLES
B
A
L T
I C
P
E
O
PLES
T U R K I C
P E O P L E S
SCOTLAND
ENGLAND
F R A N C E
DENMARK
NORWAY
SWEDEN
POLAND
HUNGARY
CROATIA
NORMANDY
LEÓN-CASTILE
BURGUNDY
POMERANIA
H O LY R O M A N
E M P I R E
B
Y
Z A
N
T I N
E
E M
P I R
E
KINGDOM
OF ITALY
IRISH
KINGDOMS
WELSH
PRINCIPALITIES
N
O
V
G
O
RO
D
P O L O T S K
K I E V
G A L I C H V
O L H Y N I A
N
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
1 Art in the Regions
borders, c.1095
border of Holy Roman Empire
cathedral/abbey
cathedral/abbey with sculpture cycle
castle
palace
manuscript illumination
mural painting
stained glass
centre of metalwork
1 WITH LESS THREAT from eastern invasions, new
cathedrals, abbeys, castles and palaces began to
cover northern Europe, including the recently
Christianized areas of Scandinavia and eastern
Europe. Rulers like Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony
(c.1129–1195) continued to suppress pagan
religions. By conquering lands to the east
Christianity extended ever further, bringing with
it Christian art and architecture and establishing
important centres of metalwork.
messages, and to express the beliefs and the
attitudes of the time.
CHRISTIANITY
In the early decades of the second millennium
Christianity finally established itself as the
dominant religion in northern Europe. The
Scandinavian rulers were the last of the
European rulers to be baptized. The
evangelizing church demonstrated its increased
influence by associating itself with opulent art
and imposing architecture. All over Europe
cathedrals, abbeys and parish churches were
built or rebuilt. The churches were filled with
paintings, altarpieces, sculpture and stained
glass. These objects performed a part in the
visual display of the Christian faith and the
rituals of the daily liturgy. The funding was
supplied mainly by donations from the faithful.
Laity and clergy alike invested in the religious
spectacle in order to illustrate their personal
devotion and to attain salvation.
Only the most famous artists and the most
precious metals were suitable for these pious
aspirations: good building stone and timber
10˚0˚
40˚
Paris
Tours
Orléans
Conques
Rome
Naples
Anagni
Catania
Palma de Mallorca
Pisa
Ferrara
Trieste
Roscoff
Cluny
Cologne
Nantes
Syracuse
Cahors
Zamora
Lisbon
Seville
Cartagena
Nantes
Barcelona
Palermo
Winchester
Bury St Edmunds
Canterbury
Amalfi
Maiori
Monte Cassino
Carcassonne
Monte Sant’ Angelo
Genoa
Chartres
Poitiers
St Jean d’Angély
Saintes
Silos
Moissac St Gilles-du-Gard
Arles
St Guilhem le Desert
Toulouse
Avilés
Salerno
Atrani
Venice
Santiago de
Compostela
Vézelay
Kermaria
Chatelaudren
Limoges
Périgueux
Le Puy
León
Bordeaux
Roncesvalles
Puente-la-Reina
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
A
D
R I A T I C
SEA
P
Y
R
EN
E
E
S
A
L
P
S
M E D I T E R R A
N
E
A
N
S E AA F R I C A N
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
2 Trade and Artistic Influence
major pilgrimage route
city on pilgrimage route with major site
movements of artistic style
stylistic influence from the Holy Land
movement of Arab gold and gems
centre for trade of gems and bone
centre for import of alabaster from England
bronze doors from Constantinople
SOUTHERN EUROPE 1000–1200
111
2 IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY southern
Europe was criss-crossed by a
network of roads. From the late
eleventh century, four of these
roads developed into specific
pilgrimage roads, leading towards
Santiago de Compostela. Despite
conflict with the Arabs in the
south and a strained relationship
with the Byzantine Empire, trade
with the east was flourishing and
southern Europe depended on
artistic influences from the Holy
Land and the east.
in Germany. A major confrontation developed
between European Christians and Muslims in
southern Spain and in the Holy Land, and in
the mid-twelfth century the Plantagenet king of
England owned more land in France than the
king of France himself. Artistic production
reflects these complex relationships. There is
evidence for cross-cultural exchanges between
Islamic and Christian art, and between French
and English art. On an ideological level, the
popes used the revival of the art and
architecture of imperial Rome to underline
their authority and to emphasize the
continuing power of the Christian church.
PILGRIMAGE
The cult of relics became a major focus of
medieval life and art. Imposing churches were
built to house the precious remains of saints
and Christian martyrs. Numerous chapels and
tall towers advertised their power to the world,
and attracted pilgrims from far and wide. Inside
the churches, the story of the saints was told in
paintings and sculpture, their bones were
displayed in richly decorated gold or silver
reliquaries, and manuscripts depicted their
lives and their miracles. Here pilgrims could
pray for the atonement of sins and hope for
cures of illnesses. Their pious donations
sustained monastic communities and helped
fund churches and art works.
The main sites to be visited by Christian
pilgrims were traditionally Rome and the Holy
Land. During the eleventh century a pilgrimage
developed to Compostela in northern Spain
where the remains of James, the apostle of
Christ, were kept. Pilgrims from eastern Europe
travelled to Spain along pilgrimage routes
starting from Paris, Vézelay, Le Puy and Arles,
which took in many celebrated shrines on the
way, such as Conques, St Gilles, Limoges and
Toulouse. Relics became a major object of
trade between northern Europe and the south
where early Christian martyrs were in greater
supply. The acquisition of relics and free access
to their sites was a fundamental requirement of
Christian society, which saw saints as its
defenders, an essential part of its faith, and a
crucial factor for its economy.
CRUSADES AND ISLAM
In the seventh century, the south of the
Mediterranean world became detached from
the north by the advance of Islam. In 711
Islamic troops moved into Spain and then into
France. In the eleventh century, the Near East
was conquered by the Seljuks, separating
Christians from sites in the Holy Land,
especially from Jerusalem. In the face of this
perceived danger, Christian Europe united
behind the idea of reconquest. Initiated by the
pope, Christian knights from all over Europe
set out in 1096 on the first crusade to win back
the Holy Land. This was the beginning of
continuing Christian invasions of the east in
THE CENTRAL PORTAL of the
narthex at Vézelay, France.
The pilgrimage church was
one of the four starting
points on the route to
Santiago de Compostela.
This portal was carved in
c.1120 to welcome medieval
pilgrims who had come to
visit the shrine of Saint Mary
Magdalene. The tympanum
shows, at the centre, the
figure of Christ at Pentecost
investing his apostles with
the power to commence
their mission and preach the
Christian message to nonChristians.
On the lintel and
in the square fields
surrounding the central
scene the people of the
world are shown. The outer
voussoirs are decorated with
the signs of the Zodiac and a
decorative scroll. On the
trumeau, or central support
of the doorway, the figure
of John the Baptist can be
seen presenting a now
damaged lamb of God. The
abbey’s fame reached a peak
when at Easter 1146, the
second crusade was
launched at Vézelay.
order to keep the main pilgrimage places out of
Muslim control. Possessions in the Near East
and good contacts with the Byzantine Empire
opened up new trade routes and encouraged
artistic exchange. In Spain, the warrior image of
Saint James fused the idea of pilgrimage with
that of the Reconquista, the recapture of Islamic
Spain. Between 1000 and 1200, the Caliphate of
Córdoba was almost completely defeated.
Despite this confrontation, the north of Spain
enjoyed cultural interaction with Islamic art.
TRADE AND ARTISTS
Mediterranean trade continued to flourish.
From the Islamic coast of Africa gold and gems
were imported into Spain and France. Italian
towns like Genoa and Venice became major
trading centres linking the European west with
the south and the Near East. At Venice, buyers
could find alabaster from England, and gems,
bone and ivory from Byzantium. Artists and
craftsman from the Byzantine Empire, where
Roman artistic traditions survived, brought
their experience to the west. At Monte Cassino
in Italy, Abbot Desiderius (1058–87) rebuilt
Saint Benedict’s church in a splendour not
seen since early Christian times. A set of
majestic bronze doors was imported from
Constantinople, and artists were invited to
help to create mosaics and wall paintings.
The pope in Rome and other patrons soon
followed Desiderius’ example.
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
110
IN SOUTHERN EUROPE the long-forgotten
artistic traditions of ancient Rome became
an important source of artistic models. The
city’s early Christian monuments, such as St
Peter’s, were a constant reminder that the
religion had originated there. Roman buildings
and sculpture survived elsewhere in what had
been the Roman Empire, as for example at
Autun, Arles and Tarragona. Now they became
an inspiration for artists and craftsman. The art
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries is
therefore called Romanesque, or ‘Roman-like’.
During this period France emerged as one
of the leading centres of art production. The
Capetian rulers had established a stable
dynasty, and the country was blessed with
ample resources. In the 1140s, Abbot Suger
(c.1080–1151) of St Denis near Paris and his
un-named architect created a new lightweight
architecture for the apse of the abbey church
which came to be called Gothic. It was further
developed in the northeast of France, for
example at Laon and Chartres. Although it
initially co-existed with the Romanesque, this
new Gothic style eventually dominated both
northern and southern Europe.
While the economy and the arts flourished,
European rulers continued to wrestle for
power. In the eleventh century Sicily and
southern Italy were captured by the Normans,
in 1194 they were taken over by the
Hohenstaufen Emperor Henry VI (d.1197) and
became the Kingdom of Sicily. The pope in
Rome quarrelled constantly with the Emperor
SOUTHERN EUROPE 1000-1200
20˚10˚0˚
40˚
Jumièges
Fécamp
Coutances
Bayeux
Château Gontier
Provins
St Denis
Huym St Hubert
Rouen
Gisors Reims
Laon
Dinant
Stavelot
Troyes
Avesnes
Valenciennes
Saint-Amand
Périgueux
Souillac
Cahors
Bordeaux
Moissac
Limoges
Conques
Toulouse
Angoulême
Lisbon
Alcobaca
Tomar
Coimbra
Oporto
Ávila
Sigena
Santiago de Compostela
Evora
Seville
Granada
Córdoba
Guadalajara
Arévalo
La Roda
Oviedo
León
Jaca
TahullLeyre
Pamplona
Salamanca
Zamora
Ciudad
Rodrigo
Sahagún
Las Huelgas
Silos
Burgos
Loarre
Huesca
Tarragona
Roda da Ribagorça
Lérida Gerona
Fenovillar
L'Écluse
Sorède
Ripoll
Poblet
Cuxa
San Pedro de Roda
Avignon
Carcassonne
St Gilles-du-Gard
Aix
Marseille
Arles
Cluny
Macon
St Chef
Lyon
Ebreuil
Lavaudieu
Perrecy-les-Forges
Autun
Strasbourg
Châlons-sur-Marne
Sens
Auxerre
Saulieu
Nevers
Orbais
Fontevrault
Souvigny
Le Puy
Cressac
Brioude
Clermont-
Ferrand
Angers
St André des Eaux
Langeais Cîteaux
Besançon
Payerne
Ravello
Amalfi
Atrani
Monte Cassino
Castellamare di Stabia
Calvi
Trani
Canosa
Bari
MolfettaTroia
Anagni
Sta Elia
di Nepi
Palermo
Caltanisetta
Taormina
Messina
Adrano
Monreale
Ravenusa
Cefalù
Mazara
Siena Sant’ Antimo
Assisi
Ancona
Spoleto Ferentillo
Marcellina
Ronzano Fossascesia
Rome
Tivoli
Tuscania
Termeno
Todi
Lucca
Borgo di
S. Donnino
Piacenza
Turin
Ferrara
Pompasa
BolognaModena
Genoa
Spigno
Verona
Venice Torcello
Trieste
Aquileia
Castel Appiano
Vicenza
Cremona
Como
Civate
Milan
Chiaravalle
Vercelli
Novara
Pisa
Volterra
Cortona
Montepulciano
Gimignano
Florence
Pistoia
Poitiers Chauvigny
Niort
St Savin
Les
Andelys
Bec
St Evrault
Falaise
Caen
Mayenne
Mont-Saint-Michel
Syracuse
Vézelay
Clairvaux
Cambrai
Noyon
Thérouanne
St Bertin
Arras
Loire
Po
Eb
ro
Guadalquivir
T
agus
Rhône
Rhine
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
A
D
R I A T I C
S
EA
P
Y R E N E E S
A
L P S
KINGDOM
OF
GERMANY
KINGDOM
OF
BOHEMIA
KINGDOM OF ITALY
KINGDOM
OF
BURGUNDY
KINGDOM
OF SICILY
E
M
P
I
R
E
O
F
T H E A L M O H A D S
PO
RTUGAL
MUSLIM KINGDOM
OF MALLORCA
LEÓN
CASTILE
PAPAL STATES
CORSICA
SARDINIA
ARAGON
FRANCE
NAVARRE
1
2
34
23
33
34
35
26
32 36
37
31
28 29
30
27
5
6
7
89
10
11 12
13
14
24
25
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
15
N
0
0
150 miles
200 kms
1 Southern Europe,
1000-1200
borders c. 1180
border of the
Holy Roman Empire
cathedral/abbey
with sculpture
cathedral/abbey
with no sculpture
castle
palace
centre of manuscript
illumination
mural paintings
bronze doors
stained glass
mosaics
centres of metalwork
early Gothic architecture
- Poncé
- Tours
- Orléans
- Vendôme
- Dourdan
- Château-Landon
- Bourges
- Brinay
- Loches
- Tavant
- Montmorrillon
- Nohant-Vicq
- Paray-le-Monial
- Berzé-la-Ville
- Rocamadour
- Ravello
- Parma
- Pianella
- Bominaco
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
- Foro Claudio
- Sant’ Angelo in Formis
- Benevento
- Le Mans
- Lausanne
- St Maurice d’Augaune
- Paris
- Pontigny
- Étampes
- St Loup de Naud
- Preuilly
- Ivry la Bataille
- Mantes
- Châteaudun
- Chartres
- Braine
- Senlis
- St Germer-de-Fly
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
1 DESPITE FREQUENT POWER SHIFTS IN the territories of
southern Europe, art production increased
drastically after 1000. Cathedrals, abbeys, castles
and palaces began to cover the landscape. In some
cities specialized centres of art production
developed. Limoges and Pisa became famous for
their metalwork, while Strasbourg and St Denis
had important workshops of stained glass. In the
mid to late twelfth century, the northeast of France
became a hub of building activity when churches
were rebuilt in the Gothic style.
THE GREAT MOSQUE AT CÓRDOBA was built soon after
the Islamic conquest of Spain and inaugurated in
786. It was continually enlarged until the late
tenth century. When the Christians recaptured
Córdoba in 1236 the mosque became a cathedral,
but long before this time the architecture
impressed Christian artists, in particular the
horseshoe arches consisting of voussoirs in
alternating colours. The marble columns and the
use of Roman capitals can be compared to
contemporary Christian architecture.
Hôtel de Nesle
(1270-1380)
André-des-Arcs
(1210-20)
La Sainte-Chapelle
(1246-48)
ÎLE-DE-LA-CITÉ
Saints Cosme et Damien (1213)
Collège de la Sorbonne (1256)
La Trinité
(hospital, c.1200)
St-Sauveur (1214)
Abbey of
St-Victor
Hôtel of the King
of Navarre (1260)
Collège d’Harcourt (1280)
St-Jacques (1221-)
Hôtel de Nesle
(1180-1223)
Louvre
(1190-)
St-Honoré
(1205)
Collège des
Bons-Enfants
d’Arras (1208)
Collège
St-Nicolas-
du-Louvre
(1212)
St-Nicolas-des-Champs (c.1200)
St-Nicolas-duChardonnet
(1230, 1243)
Commanderie
of the Knights
Templars (1265)
St-Gervais-StProtais
(1213)
Béguines
(1264)
Monastery of Ste-Croix
(1258)
St-Merri
Ste-Opportune
(hospital, c.1200)
St-Josse (1235)
St-Leu-St-Gilles (1235)
Monastery of Les
Blancs-Manteaux
(1258)
St-Germain-l’Auxerrois (1250)
Hôtel d’Alphonse
de Poitiers
Notre Dame
Hôtel-Dieu (1200, 1250)
St-Étienne-du-Mont
(1225)
St-Séverin
Les
Halles
LaGrantRue
rueStMartin
L
a
Rue St-Victor
La Draperie
La Grève
rue aux
Écrivainsrue Erembourc-en-Brie
Seine
Seine
NORTHERN EUROPE 1200–1300
113
the agricultural surplus that resulted from the
development of better technology such as
ploughs and crop rotation. The population of
the medieval cities adjusted economically and
socially to improved living conditions, moving
toward ever greater specialization in the
production of goods. Controlled by
organizations known as guilds, specialized
workers served as engines of economic
development whose most lucrative products
were luxury goods. Because these goods were
relatively light and thus readily transported,
they could be profitably carried overland to the
fairs of Champagne in northeast France, or
alternatively traded by the merchants of the
Hanseatic League (a commercial confederation
originating in German-speaking areas
surrounding the Baltic Sea).
CULTURAL CONTACTS
These continental trades routes extended
further eastwards and southwards as Europeans
continued to make contact with the civilizations
of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Four major
Crusades offered opportunities for cultural
contact through conquest; they resulted in the
capture of Constantinople in 1204, the brief
control over Jerusalem (negotiated by the
German Emperor Fredrick II in 1229), and two
spectacularly unsuccessful campaigns by the
French King Louis IX in
1248 and 1270. The strategic failures of the
Crusaders may have been countered by the
2 BASED ON A PLAN drawn by a
nineteenth-century historian, the
map above reconstructs Paris in the
late thirteenth century. Details
derived from the records of special
taxes levied in the 1290s
demonstrate the distinct
differences in the wealth among
the city’s parishes, as well providing
a glimpse of where various
artisans, for example, glaziers lived
and worked throughout the city.
Illuminators, parchment dealers
and book traders tended to
congregate on the left bank of the
Seine, near the University, founded
in the twelfth century.
cultural effects of their interaction with the
relatively more advanced Arabic Middle Eastern
civilization, though some modern historians
argue that the Crusades did not inspire
intellectual and economic development as
much as they promoted religious, ethnic and
even national intolerance, not only between
Christians and Arabs, but also between
Christians and Jews, Latins and Greeks.
The growth of cities also provided a new
geographic focus for learning, marking a shift
from the predominantly rural monasteries to
major universities such as Paris and Bologna.
Even more than monasteries and cathedral
schools before them, universities provided
access to learning for children of non-noble
classes, especially as secular rulers looked to
university graduates to fill the administrative
ranks of government.
As universities developed their own
curricula to fill this need, they created a
demand for very different books: illustrated
anatomical treatises, law books (especially
Gratian’s Decretals), the newly fashionable texts
of Aristotle and their accompanying
commentaries, and traditional bibles, now
made in smaller ‘pocket versions’ suitable for
university students. This demand in turn
stimulated a greater specialization in the book
trade, a market that was increasingly dominated
by lay artisans in major urban areas. University
books developed a unique ‘visual geography’ in
their own layouts – the text being studied was
written in large letters in the centre of the
manuscript page, around which was gathered
marginal glosses of relevant citations from key
authorities in smaller letters, with space left in
the margins for the owner’s annotations.
PARIS: A CULTURAL CENTRE
A regional centre for artistic production in the
early Middle Ages, Paris emerged in the course
of the thirteenth century as the premier capital
city in western Europe, recognized widely for its
leading role as a producer of high-quality
manuscripts, painting and ivory carving. Paris’
reputation as an intellectual centre grew with
the establishment of its university on the left
bank of the Seine in the late twelfth century;
the presence of scholars such as Peter Abelard
ensured that the university was widely
recognized as the pre-eminent school of
theology and liberal arts by the early 1200s.
King Phillipe Auguste (r.1180–1223) established
Paris as the political and administrative centre
of an aggressively expanding kingdom. In an
age when most rulers criss-crossed their
domains, dragging along the people and
equipment necessary for government, Phillipe
permanently installed the royal archives,
treasury and staff in one place, on the Île-de-laCité
in the middle of the Seine. Under his
successors, Louis IX and Phillipe the Fair,
Paris emerged as the locus of French national
government and as an international capital of
art, learning and fashion.
REIMS CATHEDRAL. Pierced by deep porches,
covered with elaborate sculptural
programmes and supported by pointed
arches and flying buttresses, Gothic
cathedrals such as this one at Rheims
dominated the European cities of the
thirteenth century. These enormous
buildings required a huge expenditure of
capital for their construction, money made
available by a growing agricultural
economy. Records of chapter meetings at
Reims demonstrate that demands for
funds were not always welcomed by either
the lay or ecclesiastical communities.
2 Paris in the 13th Century
workshops of glaziers
1296/1297
home to a concentration of
Paris illuminators
home to parchment-makers
and scribes
major building
relative wealth of areas of Paris
(taxes paid in 1297):
less than 10 sous per household
10-20 sous
20-30 sous
more than 30 sous
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
112
IN THE YEARS 1200–1300, northern Europe
initiated a remarkable geographic shift in its
production of culture from isolated, rural
monasteries to urban centres. As enduring
landmarks of this shift, the century has left us
numerous light-filled churches which still
dominate the urban landscapes of Europe
today, a potent visual reminder of the medieval
sense of the presence of God and the power of
the Church that connected the earthly to the
divine. Often covered with elaborate
programmes of figural sculpture, these edifices
were enormous billboards in stone that
towered physically and psychologically over the
cultural landscape, so much so that craftsmen
and -women in other media quickly adopted
the slender proportions and graceful lines of
this first ‘modern’ style.
MEDIEVAL CITIES
Known in the Middle Ages as opus francigenum
(literally ‘French work’), the Gothic style spread
rapidly from city to city in and near the royal
domains in the Île-de-France and then on to
Germany, Flanders, Spain and England. Its
home was in rapidly growing cities; with a few
exceptions, such as Rome and Cologne,
important medieval cities developed as
mercantile centres in the suburbs of former
Roman towns. In northern Europe, the largest
of these cities formed at the nexus of Alpine
passes and sea- and river-routes in Flanders,
northern Germany, northern France and
southern England. These cities were fed from
NORTHERN EUROPE 1200-1300
20˚10˚0˚
50˚
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
(Westminster)
(Ste-Chapelle, Notre Dame, St-Denis)
(Westminster)
1170
1229
1229
c. 1230
1209
c. 1180
c. 1150
Limoges
Bordeaux
León Toulouse
Nantes
Orléans
Tours
Chillon
Angers
Honnecourt
Exeter
York
Flint
Roscrea
Winchester
Canterbury
St Albans
Norwich
Peterborough
Oxford
Nenagh
Roscommon
Wells
Utrecht
Cambridge
Ghent
Tournai
Cambrai
Vaucelles
Bruges
Nottingham
Laon
Meaux
Schlettstadt (Sélestat)
Paderborn
Hamburg
Prague
Vienna
Klosterneuburg
Avignon
Aigues-Mortes
Montpellier
Carcassonne
Neubrandenburg
Linköping
Meissen
Frankfurt
Marburg
Mainz
Naumburg
Erfurt
Aachen
Arras
Metz
Basle
Schloss-Bruck
Hardegg
Lausanne
La Bâtiaz
Kalmar
Magdeburg
Nuremberg
Goslar
Heiligenkreuz
Bologna
Pils
Worms
Colmar
Montségur
Grandson
Lincoln
Hull
Southwell
Rhuddlan
Conway
Beaumaris
Caernarvon
Harlech
Caerlaverock
Chellaston
Salisbury
Corfe
Pevensey
Dover
1 London
3 Cologne
4 Strassburg (Strasbourg)
Reims
5 Troyes
6 Amiens
7 Chartres
8 Bamberg
9 Bourges
3
4
8
5
9
6
2 Paris
2
7
1 Rhi
ne
L
oire
Rhône
Danube
Seine
N O R T H
S E A
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
BA
LT I C
S
E
A
PYRENEES
A L P S
H O L Y
R O M A N
E M P I R E
WALES
ENGLAND
F R A N C E
ARAGON
NAVARRE
CASTILE ITALY
VENETIAN
REP.
SCOTLAND
NORWAY
SWEDEN
DENMARKIRELAND
to Toledo
to Barcelona
N
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
1 Northern Europe, 1200-1300
borders, c. 1270
major church
church with important sculpture
church with important stained glass
church related to opus francigenum
hall church
castle/fortification
alabaster
export of alabaster
centre of manuscript painting
diffusion of manuscript styles
ivory carving
metalworking centre
spread of metalwork
university, with date of foundation
city visited by the French draughtsman
Villard de Honnecourt (fl. c.1220-40)
diffusion of artistic styles
A
1 NORTHERN EUROPE in the years from 1200 to 1300 was
characterized by increased long-distance trade, especially
in luxury goods. Paris and northern France rapidly grew in
importance as the leading international centre for art and
architecture. Artisans in and around Paris developed highly
specialized workshops, especially for the carving of ivory
and miniature painting in a fashionable and appealing
style known then as opus francigenum (‘French work’).
Recognizably idiosyncratic styles emerged in England, Germany
and France, which had a regional appeal, though both
Limoges (enamels) and East Anglia (manuscripts) produced
work that found much wider markets.
PICTURE OF AN ELEPHANT given
to King Henry III of
England by Louis IX of
France in 1255. As
Matthew Paris, a monk at
St Albans, tells us, this
elephant is drawn from
life. A suitable prefatory
illustration to Matthew’s
World Chronicle, the
elephant demonstrates
European political
relationships and the
increasing regularity of
trade with areas outside
Europe. While monks such
as Matthew would
continue to illuminate
manuscripts, lay artists
were increasingly
becoming more important
in the commercial booktrade
for universities and
aristocrats.
SOUTHERN EUROPE 1200–1300
115
30˚20˚10˚0˚
30˚
40˚
50˚
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Pb
Pb
Sn
Sn
Venice
Verona
Assisi
Rome
Vienna Buda
Innsbruck
Prague
Geneva
Paris
Rouen
Arras
Reims
Espalato
Durazzo
Zara
Trieste Belgrade
Alexandria Damietta
Famagusta
Antioch
Constantinople
Smyrna
Candia
Kaffa
Trebizond
Moncastro
Kiliya
Syracuse
Tripoli
Messina
Palermo
TunisAlgiers
Granada
Palma
Cádiz
Córdoba
Seville
Melilla
Lisbon
Southampton
London
Hull
Mainz
Worms
Hamburg
Bremen
Cracow
Breslau
Danzig
Kiev
NovgorodChristiania
Bergen
Stockholm
Nuremburg
Lübeck
Edinburgh
Bruges
Genoa
SienaMarseille
Cagliari
Lyon
Dijon
Poitiers
Aigues-
Mortes
Valencia
Barcelona
León
Milan
Tripoli
Beirut
Acre
Jaffa
Loire
Ebro
Tagus
Danube
Dneiper
Rhine
Elbe
Seine
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
N O R T H
S E A BA
L
TIC
SEA
B L A C K S E A
M E D I T E R
R
A
N
E
A N S E A
PYRENEES
CARPATHIAN MTS
A
L
P S
CYPRUS
CORSICA
CRETE
SARDINIA
SICILY
BALEARIC IS
A F R I C A
E G Y P T
N
0
0
300 miles
400 kms
raw materials:
gold
silver
iron
copper
lead
tin
ivory
timber
wax
gems
silk
spices
hides
wool
linen
furs
Cu
Pb
Sn
2 Trade and Transmission
Venetian trade routes
Genoese trade routes
Hanseatic League trade routes
major inland trade routes
route of Fourth Crusade, 1202-04
Fifth Crusade, 1217-21
Seventh Crusade, 1248-54
Eighth Crusade, 1270
artistic influence from Paris
artistic influence from Constantinople
imported goods
witnessed by the foundation of well-respected
universities in a number of Iberian cities:
Palencia, Salamanca, Seville, Valladolid, Lérida
and Lisbon.
ROMANESQUE FOUNDATIONS
As in Spain, the struggle for political supremacy
helped determine the spread of artistic styles in
Italy. Long a temptation for northerners with
designs on imperial dignity, Italy experienced a
decades-long struggle between supporters of the
Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and his
enemies, which to a large measure merely
masked local rivalries between burgeoning
cities. The collapse of the German Hohenstaufen
dynasty with the death of Frederick II permitted
greater French influence both in the political
realm, through the rise of the house of Charles
of Anjou, brother of Louis IX, in Naples, and in
the artistic realm, through the patronage of
French styles. In northern Italy, Siena and
Florence led the way in the import of Gothic
elements, especially in the Florentine church of
Sta Maria Novella. The most important stylistic
influences in Italy, however, were those
‘imported’ from its own Roman and Early
Christian past. Classicizing styles are evident in
the work of the sculptor Nicola Pisano
(d. c.1284) and in the products of the artisans
in southern Italy associated with the court of
EASTERN (PERSIAN) INSPIRED DESIGNS, expertly woven
on silk with gold and silk threads, celebrated the
pleasures of aristocratic pastimes of hunting
and feasting. A refined object of secular luxury,
this textile formed part of the grave wrappings
of a Spanish bishop, demonstrating the
interrelationships of secular and sacred and the
mutual appreciation of the visual culture of the
Christian, Islamic and Jewish inhabitants of Spain.
2 THE DISPARATE GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS of Europe in
the thirteenth century were interlinked by
trade routes controlled by the members of the
German Hanseatic League and by the Italian
city states of Genoa and Venice. The same cities
provided entryways for gold, silk, ivory and
spices from Asia and Africa, and furs and timber
from Russia and the Baltic. Artistic influences
radiated out from cultural centres such as Paris
and Constantinople.
the Holy Roman Emperor. Mosaics in Rome
were derived from styles considered to be from
the earliest, formative days of the Christian
church, while the mosaics at St Mark’s in
Venice are influenced by illustrations from a
revered sixth-century Bible. Italian painting in
the thirteenth century developed on the
foundation of Classically derived Romanesque,
spiced with influences from Byzantium. In
Rome Pietro Cavallini and Jacopo Torriti
developed mural painting influenced by the
influx of Byzantine artists following the capture
of Constantinople. Tuscan painting in the last
half of the century was dominated by Cimabue
(d.1302) who is credited with influencing the
young Florentine, Giotto (d.1337). The
connection and competition among these
artists mirror the larger networks of trade,
religion and cultures, and set the stage for the
creative explosions of the century that followed.
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
114
CENTRED BETWEEN the burgeoning
markets of northern Europe and the
resource-rich provinces of Africa and the
Middle East, the cities of southern Europe
became key points of contact for the
cultures bordering the Mediterranean Sea.
MEDIEVAL ITALY
With its long coastline and well-established
tradition of civil government, Italy enjoyed an
interlinked network of cities connected by
sailors and merchants. The most extensive of
these trading networks in the thirteenth
century belong to Genoa and Venice, both of
which established fleets that traded between
the eastern Mediterranean, Africa and far
northern ports. Venice, in particular, was able
to use its trading connections to forge a wide
sphere of influence, re-directing the armies of
the Fourth Crusade towards the conquest of
the city of Constantinople in 1204.
Italy also led the way in the development
of other trans-European networks. Perhaps
the most visible belonged to the new religious
organizations of the Dominicans and
Fransciscans. Both orders were founded in
the 1220s and rejected wealth, espousing
dedication to study and simple devotion.
They were the first of the medieval monastic
orders to target cities as their special areas of
interest and influence. By the mid-thirteenth
century each order allowed its members to
settle in permanent foundations dedicated
to the memory of their sainted founders,
Francis and Dominic. Priories and churches
dedicated to preaching to large audiences
sprang up in nearly all urban communities of
note across Europe, forming vast and often
competing networks.
SOUTHERN EUROPE 1200-1300
10˚ 0˚ 10˚ 20˚
40˚
Arezzo (1286)
Castello
dell’Imperatore
(1215)
(1224)(1283)
(1292-97)
(Cathedral San Lorenzo, 1245-)
(1266)
(1247)
(1286)(1260) (1275-78)
(1266-68)
(13th c)
(San Marco, 1280s)
(1180)
(1231)
(1246)
(1248)
(1228)
Tolentino
Urbino
San Gimignano 7
Assisi
(1228-53)
Todi
(1296)
Bologna
(S Domenico, 1233;
S Francesco, 1236-63)
Brescia
Verona(S Zeno, 1225)(1250, 1277)
Trento (1200-)
Castello del Buonconsiglio
Bassano Venice (post-1293)Lodi
Lucca
Lerici
Milan(1221)
8 Vercelli
Parma
Pisa 9
Volterra 6
Naples
(S Lorenzo Maggiore, 1266-)
Viterbo
(1266)
Anagni
Castello Caetani
Massa Marittima
(pre-1250)
Cremona (1250)
Castel Nuovo
Castello di Lombardia
Castello Maniace
Augusta
Benevento
Salerno
Monte Cassino
Castel del Monte
Lucera
Caserta Vecchia
Barcelona (1298)
(1267)
Tortosa
Gerona
Aigues-Mortes
Piacenza
Valencia
Granada
Ávila (13th c)
Évora (1186-1250)
Toledo
(1226)
(1238)
Burgos
(1221) Pamplona
Tudela
Huesca
Sigena
(1204)
(1250)
Valladolid
Montpellier
(1180)
(1229)
Toulouse
(1300)
Lérida Vic
(1290)Lisbon
(1254)
(c.1220)
(c.1285)
Seville
(1250)Salamanca
La Mota
Coimbra
(from 1281)
Calatrava
la Nueva
(1212) Palencia
Tarragona
(from 1277)
León
(1255)
(1203-78)
Santiago de Compostela
Santarém
Alcobaça
(from 1178)
Orvieto
(Cathedral, 1228-;
S Domenico, 1233-64)
Subiaco
Perugia
Siena 4
Syracuse
Alhambra
Genoa
Córdoba
Ebro
Po
Tagus
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
A
D
R
I A
T I C
S E A
M E D I T E R R A N E A N
S E
A
P
Y
R
E N E E S
A
L
P
S
B
A
L
E
A
R I C I S
PORTUGAL
A R A G O N
C A S T I L E
L E Ó N
CORSICA
SICILY
SARDINIA
(to Genoa)
GASCONY
(to England)
K I N G D O M
O F
S I C I LY
NAVARRE
F R A N C E
EM
P
IR
E
O
F
T H
E
A L M
O H A D S
1
2
3
5
11
N
0
0
150 miles
200 kms
1 Rome
(Sta Maria Sopra Minerva, 1280)
(Sta Cecilia in Trastavere)
(Curia Romana, 1244)
(Sta Maria in Trastevere, 1290s;
Sta Maria Maggiore, 1294;
San Paolo Fuori le Mura, 1220;
St John Lateran, 1291)
11 Padua
(Baptistry, 13th c; Sant’Antonio, 1232-1307)
2 Florence
(Santa Maria del Fiore, 1296-; Santissima Annunziata,
1250-; Sta Croce, 1252; Sta Maria Novella, 1278-)
(1293) (Bapistry, 1225)
3 (S Francesco, 1255-65)
4 (Cathedral, 13th c; S Galgano, 1218-)
5 (Baptistry, 1196-1260)
6 (Cathedral, restored 13th c)
7 (San Agostino,1280)
8 (Sant’Andrea, 1219)
9 (Campo Santo, 1278)
10 (S Francesco, 1230;
Cathedral San Lorenzo, 1245-)
(1210)(1222)
Italy pioneered the establishment of
another trans-European network, based on the
international market for money. The Florentine
banking families of the Bardi and the Peruzzi,
for example, financed the papacy and royalty
across Europe, even providing a type of
‘venture capital’ to certain monasteries as they
cleared more land for agricultural production.
THE CHRISTIAN ‘RECONQUEST’ OF SPAIN
In Spain, the renewed conquest of the
peninsula from its Islamic inhabitants was
driven in large measure by Ferdinand III, King
of Castile (1217–52) and León (1230–52) and
King James of Aragon. With re-conquest,
Christian rulers were able to extend cultural
patronage in ways that rivalled the legendary
Muslim caliphs of Córdoba and Granada. For
men such as Ferdinand, new French styles
represented an identifiably modern and
Christian visual symbol of the recent triumphs
over his Moorish opponents. Cathedrals in
Burgos (1226), Toledo (1227) and León (1255)
were built following patterns directly
influenced by French models, complete with
stained glass and elaborate portal sculpture.
By the century’s end, however, the Catalan
region produced its own identifiable variant of
the Gothic style, one in which spaciousness
derived from the breadth of the church rather
than height. The peninsula also boasted not
only some of the leading thinkers of the age,
but also institutions to nurture them, as
INTERIOR VIEW OF UPPER CHURCH AT ASSISI. Though
sometimes influenced by northern styles, Italian
architects sought to provide room for painted
narrative cycles such as this one at Assisi, dedicated
to the Life of St. Francis. Commissions for such
frescoes inspired competition, bringing painters
from various cities across the peninsula, including
the young Giotto. This led to the development of
innovative techniques for picturing stories with
careful observation and drama.
1 SOUTHERN EUROPE SERVED as an important gateway
for goods and ideas in the years 1200–1300. Italy
inherited a dense pattern of urban communities
from Late Antiquity. These cities increasingly
competed with one another economically and
socially. In Spain the Christian kingdoms of the
north continued to extend their political control
over the Muslim south through conquest, often
appropriating key aspects of the rich tradition of
Islamic art and literature as they did so.
1 Southern Europe, 1200-1300
border of Holy Roman Empire, c. 1223
ecclesiastical building
castle
notable municipal building/palace/tower
university (with date of foundation)
centre of manuscript production
painting
sculpture
mosaics
metalworking centre
50˚
Lille
Arras
Cambrai
Valenciennes
Tournai
Ypres Brussels
Louvain
Mechlin
Dinant
Mons
Maubeuge
Soignies
Ghent
Bruges
Utrecht
Zwolle
Amsterdam
Maastricht
Liège
Antwerp
Breda
s‘Hertogenbosch
Gouda
Delft
The Hague
Middleburg
NijmegenDordrecht
Arnhem
Deventer
Haarlem
Leiden
Rhine
M
euse
Sch
eldt
Lys
N O R T H
S E A
ZUID
ER
ZEE
H
O
LLAND
F L A N D E R S
ZEELAND
ARTOIS
GELDERLAND
LIMBURG
LUXEMBOURG
N A M U R
HAINAULT
B R A B A N T
panel paintings,
tapestries to
Scotland, England,
Scandinavia,
Germany
panel paintings,
tapestries to
Portugal,
Spain, Italy
panel paintings
to Germany
panel paintings,
tapestries to France,
Italy, Burgundy
N
0
0
50 miles
75 kms
2 The Low Countries
imports of wool for
tapestries/cloth
exports
painting and illumination
tapestry weaving
monumental brass
engraving/bronze work
sculpture
NORTHERN EUROPE 1300–1500
117
Dijon in Burgundy. Leading artists from the
Low Countries, such as the sculptor Claus
Sluter, were charged with creating an
impressive mausoleum for the dynasty he
founded. The most notable aspect of this work
is how strikingly naturalistic, forceful and
expressive it appears by comparison with Parisbased
productions. Arguably these qualities
were encouraged to distinguish a specific
Burgundian outlook. They were quickly and
widely imitated; Philip’s tomb, for example,
acted as a model for numerous prominent
monuments over several decades.
2 THE REGION STRADDLING the Rhine and Meuse was
already associated with intense artistic activity
through the wealth and number of its ecclesiastical
foundations. Rapid development of trade with
other major centres across Europe, combined with
Burgundian patronage, ensured that this region
continued to expand its prestige. Bruges and
Antwerp imported materials for the new art of
painting in oil: high-quality oak from the Baltic
regions for the panels; pigments and oils from
southern Europe and further afield. Burgundian
alliances with England (against France) ensured
that wool from the Cotswolds and other English
regions, the best in Europe, continued to feed the
cloth and tapestry industries of Flanders and
neighbouring counties. Merchants involved in this
trade were often Italians, who ensured that the
manufactured goods were exported to the
Mediterranean world. No other region of Europe
during this period could claim such a cosmopolitan
economic structure, providing a productive
environment for artistic creativity.
The third Valois duke of Burgundy, Philip
the Good (d.1467), extended his grandfather’s
political and cultural aspirations. Since he
chose to reside principally within his southern
Netherlandish territories, the patronage of his
court meant that Netherlandish artists no
longer needed to look abroad to develop their
careers. This was especially important for the
development of panel painting, which
flourished in several centres submitting to
Philip’s authority, becoming a more widely
affordable commodity by the later fifteenth
century. Detailed naturalism remained a
distinguishing characteristic of many artists
working in these centres; it may be seen at its
most refined in the work of the painter Philip
appointed to his own employment, Jan van
Eyck (d.1441). The meticulous style of van Eyck,
his contemporaries and followers, with its
bewildering range of light effects, notably
reflective surfaces and gleaming jewels, was
quickly taken up abroad. Among the earliest
reflections of these pictorial preoccupations is
the altarpiece by Lucas Moser at Tiefenbronn in
Germany (1432). Such were the reputations of
later Netherlandish artists that patrons from
distant regions frequently sought their works or
used them as models.
Philip the Good also developed further
policies to stimulate economic activity in the
Netherlands, encouraging fresh activities in
tapestry, illumination and wood-carving (in
oak). Elsewhere in Europe, artists responded to
BEAR AND BOAR HUNT, part of
the Devonshire Hunting
Tapestries, c.1425–30.
Tapestries were
manufactured in several
centres in the Low Countries
throughout this period. The
most luxurious tapestries
were woven from wool
imported from England and
included precious metals
formed into threads. Sets of
these tapestries, perhaps the
most expensive products of
the period, were exported to
all regions of Europe, for use
in larger churches and
secular residences, including
castles.
JAN VAN EYCK, Portrait of a Man (Leal Souvenir), oil
on oak panel, dated 1432. The detailed naturalism
developed by Jan van Eyck and his contemporaries
led to the development of new genres of painting
not practised since Antiquity, such as portraiture
based on observation from life. Painters succeeded
in rendering precise detail and subtle changes in
lighting by refining the use of oils as the binding
medium for their pigments. The identity of the
man in this portrait is unclear from the inscriptions
on the panel. Perhaps the man’s name was
recorded on the original frame, now lost. This is
the case with other portraits by Jan van Eyck. Here,
the words ‘LEAL SOVVENIR’ (‘Loyal remembrance’),
painted to appear as though carved into the
parapet immediately above the date and the
artist’s signature, suggest that the sitter may have
been acquainted with the artist.
the demand for more naturalistic images by
adapting local traditions or developing new
materials. For example, in southern Germany,
indigenous limewood, with its dense though
elastic properties, was found to be ideally
suited to carving complicated details and
forms unworkable in other woods. In such
regions, the development of organized religion
meant that altarpieces, often large and
imposing, were in great demand. Large
examples, like Michael Pacher’s Saint
Wolfgang Altarpiece (carved in limewood and
pine), might take as long as a decade to
complete (1471–81).
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
116
IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY centres of
artistic practice were often primarily
determined by the needs of the Church. By
the fifteenth century, as new forms of
patronage developed, artists were increasingly
required to provide decoration for secular
residences where collections might be
displayed, admired and used to impress.
PARIS AS A CULTURAL CENTRE
Throughout the fourteenth century the most
active and widely admired centre for the
production of the visual arts in northern
Europe was Paris, a position the city owed to
the primacy it had assumed in the French
realm. It was in Paris that guilds formed to
support artists – including goldsmiths,
painters, ivory carvers – and first became well
organized and numerous, effectively
streamlining artistic output and providing
models for developments further afield.
The city’s prosperity attracted merchants who
provided desirable materials for creating the
finest luxury objects of the period, such as
ivory (from Africa) and pigments for the most
dazzling kinds of painting (from Asia).
Interest in lavish decorative arts on the
part of the royal family furnished artists with a
key incentive for refining the intricacies of their
work and striving for novel effects. By c.1410
Parisian illumination, for example, was the
most ostentatious, meticulous and detailed in
Europe, and significant commissions involved
teams of artists, each dedicated to distinct
processes. The exquisite nature of such artistry
partly inspired, perhaps for the first time since
Antiquity, a desire on the part of royal patrons
to form significant collections of objects;
craftsmanship was valued above utility.
The dominance of Paris attracted artists
from many areas (especially the Netherlands),
including prosperous regions such as Italy.
Patrons from countries like Navarre, Scotland
and Bohemia also looked to Paris to form their
tastes. In many other regions of Europe, local
materials were adapted to produce devotional
and commemorative works of art for those
concerned with display, but whose financial
resources were limited. Among the most
successful of these was English alabaster,
quarried near Nottingham and used for carved
altarpieces and tombs. Alabasters were
exported across all regions of Western Europe
throughout this period. Though technically
standards are rarely distinguished, the results
were clearly considered widely desirable.
BURGUNDIAN INFLUENCE
By the 1420s the artistic predominance of Paris
sharply declined, one consequence of civil
conflict and English occupation. Perhaps the
principal political development of the period
c.1380–c.1450 was the ascendancy of the Valois
dukes of Burgundy. The power they
commanded had major cultural implications,
many aspects of their taste and patronage
being admired and imitated at courts
throughout Europe. Taking advantage of the
weakness of the French monarch, the first
duke, Philip the Bold (d.1404) was able to
manipulate himself into a position of
considerable prestige following a marriage that
brought him authority over Flanders. His
descendants extended Burgundian control
throughout the Low Countries, a region that
had traditionally furnished the courts of France
with skilled artists. Philip’s political ambitions
are to some extent reflected in the decorative
schemes he commissioned for his grandest
foundation, the Chartreuse de Champmol, near
NORTHERN EUROPE 1300-1500
0˚ 10˚ 20˚
50˚
Portsmouth WellsPoole
Southampton
Dorchester
Bayeux
Quimper
Rouen
Fécamp
Caudebec
Fougères
Liège
Lier
Zichem
Leuven
Bourges
Le Mans
Chartres
Laon
Autun
Moulins Cluny
Hull
Carlisle
Lynn
Boston
Eton
Derby
Beaumaris
Caernarvon
Ely
Lincoln
York
Pontefract
Edinburgh
Alnwick
Stirling
Tutbury
Tewkesbury
Great Malvern
Gloucester
Norwich
Canterbury
Oxford
Warwick
Kenilworth
Winchester
Chellaston
Nottingham
Bristol
Edington
Vienna
Herzogenburg
Buda
Esztergom
Zágráb
Graz
Gurk
Viktring
Landshut
Augsburg
Munich Zwettl
Passau
Hohenfurth
Klosterneuberg
Friedersbach
Raudnitz
Kefermarkt
Salzburg
Heiligenkreuz
Cologne
Dortmund
Kalkar
Mainz
Worms
Frankfurt
Erfurt
Münster
München-Gladbach
Halle
Speyer
Heilbronn
HeidelbergTrier
Aachen
Maastricht
St Wolfgang
Mondsee
Innsbruck
Bolzano
Wiener Neustadt
Saint-Omer
Tournai
Brussels
Bruges Antwerp
Ghent
Utrecht
Gouda
Amiens
Dôle
Tours
Blois
Chinon
Saumur
St Romain-le-Puy
Cléry-
Saint-André
Orléans
Nantes Auxerre
Mussy-
sur-Seine
Ecouis
StrasbourgAngers
ÉvronRennes
Louviers
Laval
Solesmes
Reims
Châlons-sur-Marne
ParisMantes
Évreux
Metz
Nancy
Sens Ulm
Ravensburg
Blaubeuren
Constance
Fribourg
ZurichBasle
Memmingen
Bern
Esslingen
Tübingen
Nuremberg
Regensburg
Würzburg
Oppenheim
Coburg
Lübeck
Hamburg
Roskilde
Kongsted
Ringsted
Ågerup
Malmö
Lund
Visby
Helsingor/
Meissen
Dresden
Rothenburg
Prague
Tabor
Karlstejn
Houbice
Kuttenberg
Serowitz
Neuhaus
ˇ
Saar
Krumau
Pisek
Sazau Trebosice
Altpilsenetz
Blatna
Strakonitz
Mysenecˇ
ˇ
Brünn
Rimabánya
CsetnekCserény
Zseliz
Cracow
Breslau
Torun´
Danzig
Marienburg
Marienwerder
Pilsen
Nördlingen
Magdeburg
Freiburg
Langres
Besançon
Poligny
Colmar
Dijon
Toul
Troyes
Arras
Ypres
Lille
Cambrai
Valenciennes
London
St Albans
Long Melford
Chester
Ludlow
Elbe
M
oselle
Seine
M
arne
Loire
Ems
Rhine
Danube
Oder
FRISIAN IS
N O R T H
S E A
BA LT I C S E A
BAY
O F
B I S C AY
KATTEGAT
ENGLISH CHANNEL
A
L
P
S
H A R Z
M T S
FLANDERS
HOLLAND
BURGUNDY
BRABANT
NORMANDY
FRANCHE-COMTÉ
AUSTRIA
BOHEMIA
S
I L
E
S
I A
ÎLE-DE-FRANCE
POI
TOU
LORRAINE
LU
XEMBOURG
CHAMPAGNE
ARTOIS
PICARDY
S A X O N Y
SWABIA
F R A N C O N I A
C R O A T I A
CARINTHIA
MORAVIA
BAVARIA
STYRIA
HAINAUT
P O M E R
A
N
I
A
BRITTANY
ANJOU
B E R RY
ENGLAND
IRELAND
F R A N C E
P O L A N D
H U N G A R Y
S W E D E N
DENMARK
S C O T L A N D
from
Castile
Extent of English
possessions in
1429
to
S France, Spain,
Portugal,
Italy
to Iceland
to Norway
to Denmark,
Baltic Regions
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 Northern Europe, 1300-1500
English possessions, c.1430
border of Holy Roman Empire
export of oak for painted panels
area of limewood carving
area of ivory carving
wool imports to Flanders for
tapestry/cloth
area of alabaster sculpture
export of English alabasters
ecclesiastical centre with major building
projects and associated sculpture
major schemes of wall painting
major programmes of stained glass
castle/château with associated decoration
centre for wood sculpture
centre of printing/print-making
centre for panel painting/
manuscript illumination
goldsmiths
monumental brass engraving/
bronze work
1 IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY arts
suitable for decorating
ecclesiastical structures
continued to flourish. Stained
glass, for example, remained
much in demand. Increasing
literacy led to demand for
illustrated books, especially
prayer-books which were
decorated by illuminators. The
development of printed
images (woodcuts and
engravings) during the later
fifteenth century also served
to increase opportunities for
artists and their audiences.
SOUTHERN EUROPE 1300–1500
119
the painter Enguerrand Quarton (d. after 1466),
who came from northern France, resided in
Avignon for most of his working career. Other
Provençal cities during the later fifteenth
century also attracted leading northern
(generally Netherlandish) painters at this time,
such as Nicolas Froment (d.1484) who was
active in Aix-en-Provence. This city was also the
frequent residence of one of the most active
patrons of the visual arts in the French royal
family, René of Anjou (d.1480), who himself
gained a reputation for practising as a painter.
As a claimant to the throne of Naples, René
occupied that city from 1438 to 1442,
accompanied by several French court artists.
Some Italians were subsequently encouraged
to follow him home. These circumstances may
account for stylistic connections – figure types,
similar details and colour range – between the
work of the leading Neapolitan painter of the
time, Niccolò Colantonio (d. after 1460), and
the painter of an important altarpiece made for
Aix Cathedral, attributable to René’s favourite
painter, Barthélemy d’Eyck (d.1469).
ARTISTIC INTERACTIONS
The rival who succeeded in ousting René from
Naples was Alfonso V of Aragon (d.1458),
among the leading advocates from the Iberian
Peninsula for artistic tastes stemming from the
Burgundian court. Alfonso acquired from
merchants a number of works by leading
Netherlandish painters, including Jan van Eyck,
and encouraged painters active in cities under
his authority to follow their example, clearly
fascinated (as indeed René was) by the
profusion of naturalistic detail included in
paintings created in Flanders. Later Spanish
monarchs and court officials furthered these
trends, partly for dynastic reasons, encouraging
such Netherlandish-trained painters as Juan de
Flandes and Michel Sittow to develop their
careers in Spain.
Alfonso’s combined rule in southern Italy
and in Aragon, one of the wealthiest regions of
Spain, facilitated other kinds of artistic
interaction. In 1447, for instance, the Spanish
architect and sculptor Guillem Sagrera was
summoned to Naples to participate in
reconstructing the royal residence, having
previously worked extensively in Catalonia,
southern France and Majorca. Most Spanish
10˚0˚10˚
40˚
50˚
Avignon
SienaPerpignan 1410
Elne
Gerona 1416
Palma
Naples
Toledo 1393 Cuença
Ciudad Real
Brussels
Bruges
Burgos
Palencia
Salamanca
Urbino
Paredes de Nava
Venice
Florence
Valencia
BarcelonaDaroca
Córdoba
Cologne
Dijon
Autun
Saragossa
Paris
La Chaise-Dieu
Laon
AixArles
Ghent
Madrid
Lisbon
Toulouse
Avigliana
Chambéry
Copenhagen
Reval
(Tallinn)
London
Seine
Rhine
Rhône
Loire
Garonne
Ebro
Tagus
Gu
adalquivir
Elbe
Vistula
Danube
N O R T H
S E A
BALTIC
SEA
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
PYRENEES
A L P S
B
ALEARIC IS
SARDINIA
CORSICA
SICILY
ENGLAND
IRELAND
FRANCE
PORTUGAL
C A S T I L E
ARAGON
GRANADA
HOLY
ROMAN
EMPIRE
POLAND
DENMARK
HUNGARY
PAPAL
STATES
NAPLES
WALES
SCOTLAND
1496
1492
1449
1428
14
62
1443
1313
1446
1349
1448
1454
1470-75
15
09
1505
-08
1433
1395
1468
1486
1474
1438
1447
1334-35
1387
1401
1486
1514
1447
1433
1427
424
1
1506
1397, 1422-45
1475-78
1444
1446
1466
1462
1431
1505?
1428
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
artists, however, were obliged to devote their
careers exclusively to devotional images. Iberia
was subjected to numerous conflicts that
meant concerted programmes of secular
patronage were harder to establish than in
northern Europe. In Spain, decoration of the
altar, and areas associated with it, became
increasingly imposing and eye-catching during
this period. Even after Netherlandish stylistic
traits became widely practised in Spain (by
c.1450), Spanish taste favoured increasingly
imposing retables, with many panels. This
conspicuous emphasis is perhaps one
outcome of large parts of Iberia remaining
Islamic during the later Middle Ages. The
Christian reconquest of Granada was only
completed in 1492.
In northern Spain, reconquered much
earlier, the new order was consolidated
through visual means. Catalonia in particular
developed an intense pictorial culture with a
significantly high proportion of ecclesiastical
foundations acquiring striking painted
decorations for their altars. The development
of pilgrimage sites across northern Spain
provided a further incentive for using images
and artefacts to guide, reassure and inspire the
faithful. The most popular pilgrimage was from
France to Santiago de Compostela, a major
channel for artistic exchange.
ST MICHAEL WITH A DONOR, central panel from a
painted retable (oil and gilt on panel), Bartolomé
Bermejo, 1468. Bermejo is a good example of a
very skilful Spanish artist who travelled widely.
This magnificent figure of St Michael, with its vivid
reflections in shining armour, may be paralleled in
works by leading Netherlandish painters such as
Rogier van der Weyden and Memling. Contracts
for later Spanish altarpieces often stipulate that
colours were to be worked in oil.
2 ARTISTS AND ARCHITECTS often travelled
considerable distances to secure patronage during
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
2 Artists’ Travels, 1300-1500
(routes are approximate only)
Simone Martini, painter
Guillem Sagrera, sculptor, architect
Hanequin de Bruselas, architect
Juan de Flandes, painter
Pedro Berruguete, painter
Dello di Niccolò Delli, painter
Gherardo Starnina, painter
Bartolomé Bermejo, painter
Juan de Colonia, architect
Juan de la Huerta, sculptor
Pierre Boye, sculptor
Enguerrand Quarton, painter
Lluís Dalmau, painter
Jan van Eyck, painter
Antoine de Lonhy, painter
Michel Sittow, painter
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
118
THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN world had
a well-established system of maritime trade
routes facilitating artistic contacts between
regions (including many Italian cities) by
c.1300. Several factors intensified these links
over the next two centuries, particularly in
Provence and Catalonia.
PROVENCE AND THE PAPACY
In 1307 the papacy, politically insecure in
Rome, moved to southern France, soon settling
in Avignon, where the imposing Papal Palace
(among the grandest structures of the
fourteenth century in Europe) still testifies to
the role the city played in acting temporarily as
the focus of Western Christianity. Although
France had earlier received leading artists from
Italy, the papal presence stimulated northern
European interest in issues that had first been
addressed by artists in Italy, such as concern
with pictorial perspective and expression.
Notable among the goldsmiths, sculptors,
weavers, masons and painters who were
attracted to Avignon was Simone Martini
(d.1344) who worked in fresco and panel
painting. The activities of prominent Italian
merchants, such as Francesco Datini (d.1410)
emphasize how the city played a crucial part in
introducing luxury Italian objects to the north.
But the wealth of ecclesiastic patronage
provided by southern France during this
period as a result of hosting the papal court
also drew artists from other countries,
including the English sculptors responsible
for the tomb of John XXII (d.1334).
Long after the papacy left, Avignon
remained a focus for artists from the north
seeking new sources of patronage. For example,
SOUTHERN EUROPE 1300-1500
0˚10˚
40˚
Melide
León
Frómista
Palencia
Avilés
Seville
Huelva
Niebla
Córdoba
Alcalá de Guadaira
Granada
(Generalife)
Murcia
Cartagena
Madrid
Illescas
Guadalajara
Segovia
Salamanca
EL Barco
de Avila
Medina del Campo
Ciudad Rodrigo
Sigüenza
Cuenca
Belmonte
Castrojeriz
Vallodolid
Coca
Peñafiel
San Juan
de Ortega
Burgos
Miraflores
Nájera
Logroño
Saragossa
Embid
Sangüesa
Olite
Pamplona
Oloron
Escalona
Pau Toulouse
Palma
(Bellver)
Conques
Saintes
Bordeaux
Périgeux
Angoulême
Luçon
Souvigny
St Léonard
Le Puy
Lausanne
Aigle
Montpellier
Marseille
Arles
Saluzzo
Geneva
Estella
Roncesvalles
Limoges
Béziers
Clermont
-Ferrand
Sahagún
OviedoLugo Laredo
Orduña
Valencia
Morella
Poblet Barcelona
Tarrasa
Manresa
Gerona
Puigcerdà
Lérida
Cardona
Vich
Tudela
Foix
Rodez
Cahors
Dax
Saint-Flour
St
Floret
Tarragona
Tortosa
Montalbán
Daroca
Carrión de
los Condes
Cebreiro
Toledo
Manzanares el Real
Montealegre
del Castillo
Alhambra
Carmona
Almodóvar del Río
Tarifa
Gibralfaro
Guadalupe
Barcience
Lisbon
Óbidos
Beja
Ponferrada
Valencia de Don Juan
Zamora
Astorga
Villafranca
del Bierzo
Santiago de
Compostela
Santo Domingo
de la Calzada
Lyon
Bourg-en-Bresse
Annecy
MâconMoulins
Riom
Mazerier
Ravel
Billom
Jenzat
Nîmes
Uzès
Chambéry
Aosta
Vienne
Valence
Turin
Perpignan
Carcassonne
Narbonne
Elne
Albi
Bayonne
Aix
Nice
Auch
Alcobaça
Batalha
Tomar
Estremoz
Coimbra
Leiria
Tentúgal
Agen
Poitiers
Avignon
OrangeMende
Garonne
Guadalquivir
EbroDuero
Rhône
Tagus
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
M
E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
A
L
P
S
P Y R E N E E S
SIERRA NEVADA
SIERRA MORENA B A L E A R I C I S
DAUPHINÉ
PROVENCE
POITOU
L E Ó N
C A S T I L E
NAVARRE
GRANADA (to Castile 1492)
ARAGON
(to Castile
1479)
GALICIA
FRANCE
S P A I N
PORTUGAL
to England
to Low
Countries
to Paris
To Vézelay
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 THE ARTISTS OF SOUTHERN
Europe looked to the North
for inspiration. But in Spain,
Islamic forms of decoration
long remained popular. Some
northern European art forms,
such as extensive schemes of
stained glass, did not lend
themselves easily to the
hotter climate of the south,
where churches tended to
have smaller windows.
SCENES FROM THE LIFE of St
George, painted retable
(c.1410–20, tempera and gilt
on pine), attributed to
Maraal de Sas. This large
altar retable, painted for a
military confraternity in
Valencia, is typical of Spanish
altarpieces of this period in
consisting of several tiers and
many scenes, set within an
architectural frame. This
arrangement is a more
elaborate version of a type of
altarpiece design originating
in Tuscany. The style of this
example, however, shows
many features suggesting the
artist was trained in northern
Europe. Maraal de Sas is
documented working in
Valencia from 1396, when he
is described as German. His
style illustrates the success
talented foreign artists often
met with in establishing
careers in Spain.
Southern Europe,
1300-1500
border of the
Holy Roman Empire, c.1430
pilgrimage routes to
Santiago de Compostela
major trade routes
export of wool
export of enamel products
area of walnut-carving
distribution of
English alabasters
ecclesiastical centre with
major building projects and
associated sculpture
major programmes of
wall painting
major schemes of
stained glass
castle/château
centre for wood sculpture
centre of printing/
print-making
centre for panel painting/
manuscript illumination
goldsmiths
1
ITALY 1300–1400
121
10˚
40˚
R
R
R
R
R
R R
R
S
S
TP
TP
Bologna
Ferrara
Venice
Treviso
Padua
Verona
Milan Crema
Pavia
Monza
Como
Mantua
Bergamo
Turin
Genoa
Pisa
Lucca
Florence
Pistoia
Arezzo
Massa Marittima
Siena
San Gimignano
Orvieto
Perugia
Gubbio
Città di Castello
Assisi
Rome
Naples
Palermo
Po
Arno
T
iber
T Y R R H E N I A N
S E A
A
D
R
I
A
T
I
C
S
E
A
A
L
P
S
A
P
E
N
N
I
N
E
S
P A P A L
S T A T E S
N A P L E S
S I E N A
S A R D I N I A
CORSICA
FERRARA
F L O R E N C E
MODENA
M I L A N
P R O V E N C E
F R A N C E
S W I S S
C O N F E D .
S A V O Y
T Y R O L
B U R G U N D Y
V E N E T I A N
R E P U B L I C
LUCCA
MANTUA
S I C I L Y
O T T O M A N
E M P I R E
H U N G A R Y
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
2 Patrons and Projects
cathedrals
churches
town halls
castles
palace
sculptural programmes
tombs
equestrian monuments
sculpted altarpieces
painted altarpieces
painted cycles (religious)
painted cycles (secular)
mosaic cycles
town planning
manuscripts
patronage by princes (including popes)
patronage by individual merchants
patronage by government,
guilds and other civic institutions
patronage by religious orders
more than one project
four or more projects
project lost or destroyed
TP
R
S
2 TAXES ON TRADE provided the city-states with the
resources to finance a spectacular building boom. New
cathedrals and town halls gave visual expression to the
freedom and prosperity of the communes. Mercantile
profits also financed the decoration of churches for the
recently founded Dominican and Franciscan Orders,
which were embellished with lavish altarpieces, fresco
cycles and tombs, commissioned by merchants to
display their religious fervour.
GIOTTO, Birth of the Virgin (1304–13)
Padua, Arena Chapel. Built by the
banker, Enrico Scrovegni, to expiate
the sin of usury, the decoration of the
Arena Chapel illustrates the
new artistic developments in Italy,
inspired by the Franciscans and
pioneered by Giotto. In this scene
Giotto created a convincing
architectural space, filled with solid
figures and domestic objects, which
would have been easily recognizable
to viewers, making it possible for
them to identify with the event.
della Signoria in Florence (begun 1299) contrasted deliberately with the
costly imported marble facade of the Duomo. Town planners exploited
the value of architecture as propaganda: both the Palazzo Pubblico
(1298) in Siena and the Doge’s palace (1340) in Venice opened onto
enormous public spaces, deliberate contrasts to the narrow streets
behind. These town halls provided a forum for the display of local
history: Siena commissioned a portrait (c.1330) of Guidoriccio da
Fogliano, who led her armies to victory in southern Tuscany.
COURTLY DISPLAY
Italy’s courts had a different agenda. The Angevin rulers of Naples and
the Visconti of Milan cemented their power with strategic marriages into
the royal houses of northern Europe and gave visual expression to their
dynastic ambitions by adopting International Gothic, the elaborate style
of the powerful French monarchy. The Visconti library included several
Books of Hours, a type of devotional text rare in Italy, decorated with
miniatures influenced by French courtly art, while the ornate Gothic
structure of Milan Cathedral contrasted with the cathedrals in the city-states.
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
120
ITALY’S CITY-STATES prospered from
international trade: by 1300 Milan and Venice
had populations of 120,000. Money had
challenged the traditional structure of feudal
power as rich merchants expelled aristocratic
rulers and set up their own elected governments.
The rise of this elite had a momentous impact on
society. The old canonical hours, which varied
according to the season were rejected – time was
now measured logically, dividing the day into
24 equal hours, which were made audible by
new mechanical clocks on public buildings.
Education, once the preserve of the clergy,
became widely accessible: merchants had a
real need to read and write. Intellectual debate
was encouraged, stimulating the foundation of
universities and the revival of the literature of
antiquity. Humanists found sources for their
republican governments in classical political
theory, while theologians sought to reconcile
Aristotle and Plato with Christian tradition.
Inevitably, the economic boom did not last.
Poor harvests contributed to a general decline
and the Black Death (1347–48) reduced Italy’s
population by a third. Widely perceived as a
display of divine wrath against corruption and
greed, this disaster benefitted the arts.
Donations to religious institutions rose
dramatically, notably to two influential new
orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans,
established in the early thirteenth century in
response to calls for Church reform.
FRANCISCAN ART
The Franciscans had a profound impact on
religious life, their ideas visible in artistic
innovations which changed the course of Western
art. Franciscan preachers exhorted their audience
to visualize the life of Christ in order to
understand the nature of Christian faith. Painters,
working on church walls, did the same. Starting
with the frescoes in S. Francesco in Assisi and
popularized by Giotto’s work in Florence and
Padua, artists rejected the ethereal frontality of
Byzantine art in favour of more prosaic scenes
with solid figures set in convincingly threedimensional
spaces. The image of the Virgin
enthroned as Queen of Heaven was increasingly
replaced by the Madonna seated on the ground,
or simply a mother suckling her child at her
breast. Perhaps Giotto’s major achievement
was the introduction of realistic gestures and
facial expressions to convey the range of
human emotions, giving human meaning to
the mysteries of religious belief.
Mercantile wealth produced a new type of
patron. Few merchants went as far as St Francis
and renounced their material goods to live in
holy poverty but most allocated part of their
profits to the Church. Extravagant chapels,
tombs and altars proclaimed their patrons’
wealth, their faith, but also their guilt. The
banker Enrico Scrovegni built the Arena Chapel
to expiate the sin of usury, which was banned
by the Church, commissioning Giotto to
decorate the interior. On the entrance wall, a
massive scene of the Last Judgement showed
Scrovegni offering his chapel to the Virgin in
the hope that she would intercede for him.
IMAGES OF CIVIC POWER
The new republican governments gave visual
expression to civic prosperity and religious
devotion in ostentatious cathedrals. Preferring
traditional Romanesque groin-vault construction,
they showed little interest in the structural
innovations that accompanied the emergence
of Gothic in northern Europe. Extravagant
decoration was justifiable in a religious
context. Costly multi-coloured marble facades
ornamented cathedrals in Florence, Pisa, Siena
and Orvieto. Competition encouraged increasing
elaboration, though the ambitious plans to
enlarge Siena Cathedral were abruptly halted by
the plague. Duccio’s Maestà (1308), commissioned
by the Sienese government for the high altar, was
lavish in its use of gold, detail and number of
ITALY 1300-1400
AMBROGIO LORENZETTI, WellGoverned
Town (1338–9)
Siena, Palazzo Pubblico.
As civic power grew, moral
government was promoted.
Wealthy revellers, industrious
tradesmen and children at
school show the ideal aspired
to by the Sienese state.
10˚
40˚
Bologna
Ferrara
Venice
Treviso
Brenner Pass
St Bernard Pass
Padua
Verona
Milan
Crema
Pavia
Monza
Como
Mantua
Bergamo
Turin
Genoa
Pisa
Lucca
Florence
Pistoia
Arezzo
Massa
Marittima
San Gimignano
Siena
Orvieto
Perugia
Gubbio
Urbino
Città di Castello
Assisi
Rome
Naples
Palermo
1329
1335
1361
1303
XIII cent
1359
XII cent
XIII cent
XIII cent
1324
1335
1354
1364
1356
1362
1344
13541353
1318
P o
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PA PA L
S TAT E S
N A P L E S
F R A N C E
A U S T R I A
H U N G A R Y
O T T O M A N
E M P I R E
P R O V E N C E
SIENA
FERRARA
FLORENCE
SAN MARINO
M I L A N
VENETIAN
REPUBLIC
LUCCA
MANTUA
MODENA
S I C I L Y
Papacy in
Avignon
1309-77
roniMaisAot
ro
ni
MaisAot
nia
pS,ecnarFaivcitnaltAot
1 Trade and Culture
population over 75,000
population 50-75,000
population 25-50,000
population under 25,000
population cut by half
by Black Death, 1348-49
elected government
subject town of town with
elected government
court
subject town of court
centre of international trade
centre of international banking
university, with date
of foundation
clocks striking 24 equal hours
centres of humanism and/or
vernacular literature
trade route
border of Holy Roman Empire
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 THE PROSPERITY OF the citystates
was based on trade.
Venetian merchants sailed to
markets in the eastern
Mediterranean, filling their
galleys with luxury goods.
Florence and Siena both had
thriving textile industries,
while Florentine bankers
dominated the European
credit market.
figures, all features that visibly displayed the cost
of a painting. And the Tuscan fashion for richly
carved marble pulpits offered Nicolò and
Giovanni Pisano the opportunity to adapt
classical pagan imagery to a Christian context,
such as the Venus used by Giovanni for his figure
of Prudence on the pulpit in Pisa (1302–10).
Political authority was manifest in new
town halls. Conspicuously cheaper than the
cathedrals, they were designed to convey an
image of moral government. Built of local
sandstone and austerely plain, the Palazzo
ITALY 1400–1500
123
10˚
40˚
TP
TP
TP
TP
TP
TP
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
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M
M
M
M
H
H
H
H
H
H
C
C
C
C
Cs Cs
Cs
Cs
Cs
Cs
Cs
Bologna
Ferrara
Venice
Padua
Verona
Milan
Pavia
Mantua
Bergamo
Turin
Genoa
Florence
Arezzo
Siena
Orvieto
Gubbio
Rome
Naples
Palermo
Vigevano
Savona
Cremona
Brescia
Pienza
Cortona
Loreto
Ostia
Cagli
San Leo
Urbino
Mondavio
Poggio
a Caiano Pesaro
Rimini
Brenner Pass
St Bernard Pass
Po
Arno
Tiber
T Y R R H E N I A N
S E A
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S
N A P L E S
PA PA L
S TAT E S
SIENAPIOMBINO
F R A N C E
S W I S S
C O N F E D .
HUNGARY
D. OF URBINO
LUCCA
MODENA
SAVOY
PARMA
MILAN
MANTUA
SAN MARINO
FERRARA
ECNEROL
F
REP. OF
GENOA
VENETIAN REP.
S I C I L Y
SARDINIA
CORSICA
2 Patrons and Projects
painted altarpieces
sculptural altarpieces
antique copies
collections of antiquities
castles and fortifications
chapels and cloisters
cathedrals and churches
classical style
painted cycles (court life/chivalry)
painted cycles (history)
painted cycles (mythological/classical)
painted cycles (religious)
equestrian monuments
revival of antique gardens
survival of Gothic styles
guildhalls
hospitals
libraries
mosaic cycles
palaces
portrait busts
portrait medals
painted portraits
sculptural programmes
studioli
town halls
tombs
town planning
villas
2 Patrons and Projects
patronage by princes (including popes)
patronage by courtiers and cardinals
patronage by individual merchants
patronage by governments,
guilds and other civic institutions
patronage by religious orders
more than one project
five or more projects
eight or more projects
project lost/destroyed
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
TP
R
M
H
C
Cs
2 THE STUDY OF THE CULTURE of the ancient world inspired
the emergence of new types of imagery, such as portrait
busts and medals, and a renewed interest
in established forms, such as equestrian monuments.
Antique statues unearthed in Rome were prized by
collectors. Painters produced works illustrating scenes
from mythology and classical history, while the use of
the classical orders radically altered architectural styles.
MANTEGNA, Ludovico Gonzaga and his
Court (1465–74), Mantua, Palazzo
Ducale, Camera degli Sposi. To assert
the power and prestige of his court,
Ludovico Gonzaga, Marquis of
Mantua, decorated a room in his
palace with portraits of himself, his
family, courtiers, and even his dwarf
and dog. Mantegna’s fictive
architectural framework, composed
of all’antica motifs, associated the
Gonzaga court with imperial Rome.
tiny hilltop fortress into one of the most
impressive courts of the period. Bramante’s
archaeological interest in antiquity was evident in
his drawings of S. Lorenzo, once the imperial
palace chapel in Milan, and provided inspiration
for the churches he designed for Ludovico
Sforza, who also commissioned Leonardo’s
experimental oil fresco, the Last Supper (1496–7).
In Rome the adoption of antique forms
posed particular problems for the Papacy. Pius II,
the first humanist pope, rebuilt the facade of St
Peter’s, underlining his links with pagan imperial
Rome with his use of columns from ancient ruins.
By contrast, the Franciscan Sixtus IV displayed no
interest in classical antiquity. Inside his austere
and defensive Sistine Chapel the decoration had
strong early Christian resonances while the
frescoes by Botticelli, Perugino and others
emphasized papal primacy and the superiority
of the Christian faith.
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
122
EVIDENCE OF ROME’S mighty empire
survived in literary sources and ruins, and
stimulated innovation in fifteenth-century Italy.
Inspired by Vitruvius, Alberti wrote a treatise
(1452) outlining the rules of classical architecture,
while Francesco di Giorgio’s treatise included
drawings of ancient Roman ruins. Julius Caesar
had a seaside villa near Naples, and Pliny’s
description of his own country retreat encouraged
the fashion for patrician villas. Painters began
to investigate the structure of the human body:
Leonardo filled his notebooks with anatomical
drawings and novel ideas. The culture of
antiquity was exploited by artists to develop
new styles and themes. The pattern was not
uniform but reflected the differing economic,
social and political traditions of each centre.
FLORENCE AND VENICE
Wealthy merchants in Florence and Venice gave
visual expression to their prosperity in chapels,
altarpieces and palaces, and, as members of
elected governments, embellished the images of
state authority. In Florence humanists studied
Cicero to praise republican ideals and the virtue
of moral civic duty. Pride in the city’s achievement
was visibly evident when the cathedral was finally
crowned with its massive dome. It was also
evident in a boom in palace building. The
grandest of the Florentine palaces, crowned by
an all’antica cornice, belonged to the Medici
family, rich bankers who used their money to
create a powerful faction in government and
establish de facto control of Florence.
Patriotism was evident in new artistic
styles. The round arches of local Tuscan
Romanesque replaced Gothic while painters
used all’antica details such as capitals and
fluted pilasters to provide new settings for
traditional religious themes. Donatello and
Masaccio developed new figurative styles, solid
human figures that belonged to the real world,
while Brunelleschi and Masaccio pioneered the
use of perspective, a device based on the same
mathematical and spatial skills used daily by
merchants in commercial calculations.
Venice celebrated her unique achievements
in a different way. Showing little interest in
antiquity, her patricians built residences that
deliberately imitated the Doge’s Palace. The
Christian origins of the city were asserted in
church plans and decorative details derived
from the basilica of St Mark, built to imitate
Constantine’s church of the Apostles in
Constantinople. Venetian patriotism was also
evident in painting as artists like Giovanni Bellini
ITALY 1400-1500
MASACCIO, Trinity (c.1427), Florence, S. Maria
Novella. Masaccio’s solid figures and his use of
perspective were intended to create the illusion of
reality. Inspired by the architecture of ancient
Rome, the classical Ionic and Corinthian capitals,
fluted pilasters and a coffered barrel vault
provided an innovative setting for this traditional
theme and made a decisive break with
contemporary preferences for ornate and
decorative Gothic details.
10˚
40˚
Bologna
Ferrara
Venice
Brenner Pass
St Bernard Pass
Padua
Verona
Milan
Vigevano
Savona
Cremona
Pavia
Mantua
Bergamo Brescia
Turin
Genoa
Pisa
Florence Arezzo
Siena
Orvieto
Pienza
Gubbio
Cortona
Loreto
Ostia
Cagli
San Leo
Urbino
Mondavio
Poggio a Caiano
Pesaro
Rimini
Rome
Naples
Palermo
1428 1426
1447
1411
1435
1459
1445
1450
1450
1405
1405
1406
P o
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N A P L E S
PA PA L
S TAT E S
SIENA
PIOMBINO
D. OF URBINO
LUCCA
MODENA
PARMA
SAVOY
MILAN
MANTUA
SAN MARINO
F R A N C E
S W I S S
C O N F E D .
H U N G A RY
O T T O M A N
E M P I R E
FERRARA
V
E
N
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E
P
.
REP.OFGENO
A
ECNERO
LF
S I C I L Y
roniMaisAot
ro
ni
MaisAot
niapS,ecnarFaivcitnaltA
1 Trade and Culture
population over 75,000
population 50-75,000
population 25-50,000
population under 25,000
elected government
subject town of town with
elected government
court
subject town of court
change of dynasty, with date
major rebellion, with date
centre of international trade
centre of international banking
centre of humanism
centre of chivalry
treatises, sketchbooks, drawings
ruins of antiquity
trade route
border of Holy Roman Empire
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 RENAISSANCE CITIES varied enormously in history,
size and politics. Milan and Naples, both dynastic
courts and important centres in Roman times, were
two of Europe’s largest cities, as was Venice, a
mercantile republic boasting Christian origins.
Florence, also a republic, was much smaller, as were
the courts of Rimini, Mantua, Ferrara and Urbino.
Rome, once the capital of a mighty Empire, was
similar in size.
developed their own unique style, filling their
canvases with anecdotal detail to give a
convincing sense of reality to their scenes.
ANTIQUITY AT THE ITALIAN COURTS
The absolute rulers of dynastic courts
promoted themselves as heirs to the culture of
imperial Rome. Inspired by the coins of ancient
Roman emperors, Leonello d’Este, the Marquis
of Ferrara, pioneered the fashion for all’antica
portrait medals, which was widely adopted by
other dynastic rulers, such as Alfonso I of
Naples, to display their imperial associations.
The humanist intellectuals who surrounded
Alfonso justified his conquest of Naples by
drawing parallels with the Spanish-born
Emperor Trajan. Alfonso asserted his new
authority in a massive sculptured gate inspired
by the triumphal arches of Ancient Rome.
Alberti designed innovative churches for
Sigismondo Malatesta in Rimini, inspired by the
city’s Arch of Augustus, and in Mantua for
Ludovico Gonzaga (who also employed
Mantegna, whose all’antica painting style was
based on his study of antique reliefs). Both
rulers abandoned traditional Gothic in favour
of the language of imperial Rome to promote
the prestige of their relatively unimportant
states. Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino,
employed Piero della Francesca and Francesco di
Giorgio to exploit the new style and transform his
NORTH AFRICA 600–1500
125
applied to the region of North Africa and
Spain), the area initially shared a remarkable
cultural homogeneity with West Asia, as artistic
ideas from the Abbasid capitals in
Mesopotamia were enthusiastically adopted in
the Maghreb. For example, hypostyle and ninebay
mosques, architectural types developed in
the central Islamic lands, were carried to North
Africa and Spain, where they were realized with
the use of local materials and techniques of
construction, particularly stone masonry.
Lustre tiles and teakwood panels produced in
Iraq were installed in the mosque of Kairouan
(Tunisia), and the Mesopotamian technique of
carved plaster revetments became a hallmark
of Umayyad architecture in Spain. Scribes used
the same angular (‘Kufic’) scripts for copying
manuscripts of the Koran in brown ink on
parchment codices, produced from the skins of
for mosques and other buildings in the central
Islamic lands and even in Egypt, was rarely if
ever used in North Africa. The muqarnas, a
series of serried tiers of niches used for
architectural decoration and often likened to
stalactites, were introduced to the region from
the east by the twelfth century, but the system
underwent a distinctive development in the
Maghreb. While scribes in West Asia were
developing new rounded scripts in black ink on
paper, their contemporaries in North Africa
adhered for centuries to the old materials and
styles and developed a distinctive Maghrebi
script characterized by bowl-shaped
descenders and strokes of uniform thickness. In
the Maghreb, parchment remained the
preferred medium for copying manuscripts of
the Koran until the fourteenth century,
although paper had been introduced to the
region in the tenth century and papermaking
became an important industry of such cities as
Fez and Jativa in the eleventh. Artistic
conservatism in the production of Koran
manuscripts reflects the religious conservatism
of the region, which largely followed the Maliki
school of religious law.
The increased isolation of the Maghreb
from developments in West Asia led artists in
the region to look for inspiration in their own
artistic traditions, resulting in the creation of a
distinctly Maghrebi architectural style under
the Almoravids and Almohads. Often dubbed
‘Hispano-Moresque’, this style is characterized
by cusped arches, muqarnas cornices and vaults,
and colourful revetments of glazed tiles
arranged in geometric patterns. Typical walls
had a tiled dado, a carved plaster upper
surface, and an elaborate wooden cornice,
reflecting the perennial availability of timber
from the mountain forests of Spain and North
Africa. These techniques were used not only for
mosques but also for palaces (of which the
Alhambra in Granada is the only one to survive
in the region) and madrasas (theological
colleges, which spread across North Africa to
Spain in the thirteenth century). The city of Fez,
particularly under the Marinids, became
a centre of intellectual and artistic life,
remarkable for the many madrasas
commissioned by the sultans.
PAGE FROM THE ‘Blue
Koran’, copied in tenthcentury
Tunisia. As Arabic
replaced local languages
in religious, intellectual,
administrative and
commercial matters,
copies of the Koran
became the most
important type of
manuscript produced in
North Africa. This unique
Koran was written in gold
and silver ink on
parchment dyed blue to
imitate Byzantine
imperial purple-dyed
manuscripts.
20˚10˚0˚10˚40˚
30˚
Cu
Rabat 1150
Tinmal 1153
Marrakesh 1070
Meknès 11th c
Taza 11th c
Almería
Málaga
Granada
Algiers
Saragossa
Tunis
Córdoba
(destroyed)
Fez
Tlemcen
Nedroma
Qala of the Bani
Hammad
Bône
Palermo
Kairouan
Alicante
Seville
Játiva
Valencia
Salé
Jaén
Toledo
Ceuta
E
bro
Tagus
Guadalquivir
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
T Y R R H E N I A N
S E A
M E D I T E R R A N E A
N
S
E
A
A
DRIATIC
SEA
S A H A R A
A T L A S
M T S
H
A
F
S
I D
S
NASRIDS
M
A
R
IN
ID
S
SARDINIA
SICILY
CORSICA
SICIRAEL
A
B
A F R I C A
S P A I N I T
A
L
Y
to Marseille, Pisa,
Genoa, Venice
conquered by
Normans 1060
timber,
grain,
linen
1007
-08
1097
11361135
late 12th c
1172-76
post-1191
1158
1033
1249
1271
1349
1341
1310
N
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
2 Western Islam, 1000-1500
Almoravid Empire, c.1140
Almohad Empire, c.1220
dynasties
new city, with date founded
new mosque, with date founded
wooden minbar
madrasa (theological school)
paper-making centre
manuscript production
ceramic production
textile centre
silk production
copper/iron
metalwork and scientific instruments
shipyards
muqarnas (Islamic vault)
trade route
1097
Cu
HAFSIDS
1070
2 IN THE PERIOD AFTER 1000, distinct architectural and
artistic styles evolved in the western Maghreb.
Almohad mosques at Marrakesh, Rabat and Seville
were distinguished by monumental minarets.
Following the precedent of the Great Mosque at
Córdoba, inlaid wooden minbars (pulpits) were
installed in the major cities. A shared artistic
tradition continued in the second half of this
period, despite increasing political fragmentation.
the many sheep herded in the region. Textile
factories in North Africa supplied the courts of
the caliphates in West Asia with inscribed ‘tiraz’
fabrics and woollen carpets.
International trade and diplomacy between
Byzantium, Fatimid rulers in North Africa and
Umayyad rulers in Spain led to the exchange of
materials, artistic ideas and traditions. In
Tunisia Muslim scribes emulated the murexdyed
purple manuscripts made for the
Byzantine court. The Córdoban rulers hosted
Byzantine mosaicists to decorate their
congregational mosque with a re-creation of
the mosaics commissioned two centuries
earlier by their Umayyad forebears in Syria.
Trans-Saharan trade supplied the ivory tusks
carved in Tunisia, Córdoba and Byzantium, as
well as the gold minted into coins and made
into fine filigreed and granulated jewellery
popular throughout the region.
NORTH AFRICA APART
The rise of the heterodox Fatimid dynasty in
the tenth century created a wedge that began
to split North Africa from West Asia and – from
the eleventh century – delayed or interrupted
the east-west exchange of ideas. For example,
the four-iwan plan, which became ubiquitous
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
124
THE MAJOR FACTOR that affected the
production of art in this period was the
advent of Islam, which became the dominant
religion of North Africa, largely supplanting
Judaism, Christianity and indigenous cults.
Arabic, the language of Islam, replaced local
languages in religious, intellectual,
administrative and commercial matters. The
region’s distance from the centres of ArabIslamic
civilization in West Asia made it an
attractive destination for dissidents, who often
established their own principalities.
The new Muslim rulers occupied many of
the cities and towns established in antiquity,
but they also founded many new centres,
showing the extraordinary prosperity of this
agricultural region. These new foundations
were often located inland, rather than on the
coast as in Roman times. With the decline of
Mediterranean shipping in the early Middle
Ages, traders relied increasingly on caravans
for long-distance trade, particularly across the
Sahara to tropical West Africa. By the ninth
century Muslim fleets were raiding the
Mediterranean islands and northern coasts
from strongholds on the Tunisian coast. For
several centuries Sicily was dependent on
Tunisia, and the Arab-Islamic cultural legacy
lasted even after the Normans conquered the
island in the late eleventh century. The revival
of maritime trade in the tenth century had led
to the transformation of North African ports
into Mediterranean entrepôts. The central role
of North Africa in trade between Africa, Europe
and Asia funded a cultural florescence.
In the eleventh century invasions by Arab
nomads despatched from Egypt devastated the
countryside and destroyed the agricultural
basis on which much urban life depended. The
ensuing chaos led to the emergence of Berber
dynasties, first in the western Sahara and then
in the Atlas Mountains. These dynasties
included the Almoravids (1062–1147) and the
Almohads (1130–1269), who ruled in both
northwest Africa and Spain, and the Marinids
(1217–1465), who ruled in Morocco.
The ongoing Christian re-conquest of
Muslim principalities in Spain, which was
completed in 1492, and the opening up of
oceanic trade routes from European Atlantic
ports to the New World and around Africa, cut
North Africa out of the global economy. The
region became a backwater, exacerbating
inherent conservatism in the arts.
NORTH AFRICA TOGETHER
Despite political differences between the
Islamic rulers of West Asia and of the Maghreb
(the Arabic word for ‘west’ and the term
NORTH AFRICA 600-1500
THE COURTYARD OF THE ATTARIN MADRASA in Fez
(1323–5) shows the distinctive style of architecture
that developed in the Maghreb, with tiled walls
surmounted by carved stucco and a wooden
cornice. Rooms and cells behind these decorated
walls provided places for prayer, classrooms for
study, and accommodation for students.
20˚10˚0˚10˚
40˚
30˚
Salé
Rabat
Bizerta 661
Tozeur
Bône
Oran
Messila
TulmaithaGabès
Tébessa
Gafsa
Nafta
Almería
Arzeu late 7th c
Mostaganem
Dai
Azzammur
Marrakesh
Oujda
850 838-41
829
866
999
9th c
732 (864)
c.1000 796
821
(860-63)
857 (857, 859)
790
9th c955
9th c
1150 (1195)
Ceuta c. 700
Tétouan 628
Nakur 761
Fez 789
Aghmat 11th c
Sijilmasa 758
Tahert 761
Valencia 714
Toledo 714
Seville 713
Melilla
Granada 713
Gibraltar 711
Tunis 699
Monastir 796
Sedrata 908
Kairouan 670
Ashir
935-6
Tobna
early 8th c
Qala of the Bani
Hammad late 10th c
Ténes
Mahdia 912
Surt 640s
Ajdabiya 643
Tripoli 643
Hippo Regius
(Bijaya/Annaba) 705
Sufetula (Sbeitla) 640s
Hadrumetum (Sousse)647
Carthage 698 Syracuse 878
Taormina 902
Palermo 831
Enna (Castrogiovanni)
859
Barca 642
Taparura (Sfax) 640s
Tangier c. 700
Pomaria
(Tlemcen) 1082
Córdoba 711
Rhône
E
bro
Tagus
Guadalquivir
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
TYRRHENIAN
SEA
A
D
R
I A
T
I C
S E A
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
P
Y
R
E N E E S
A
T L A
S
M
T S
S A H A R A
UMAYYADS (756-1031)
R U S TA M I D S ( 7 7 8 - 9 0 9 )
I D R I S I D S
( 7 8 9 - 9 8 5 )
L
O
M
B
A
R
D
S
AGHLABID
EMIRATE
(800-909)
CORSICA
SARDINIA
SICILY
B
ALEA R I C I S
A F R I C A
N
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
1 Western Islam before 1000
Byzantine Empire
disputed by
Byzantines/Muslims
trade route
ivory route
salt trade
gold route
export of carpets
export of slaves
spread of merino sheep
pre-Islamic city, with date of conquest
Islamic city, with date founded
manuscript centre
ivory-working centre
643
congregational mosque,
with date founded,
(date remodelled)
nine-bay mosque,
with date founded
ribat, with date founded,
(date remodelled)
textile production
866
732
643
1 THE SOUTHERN SHORES of the Mediterranean basin
prospered under Islam as trade routes linked it to
tropical Africa, Europe and West Asia. Inland cities
became centres of commerce, scholarship and art
and were embellished with hypostyle mosques,
often built with debris taken from Roman and
Byzantine ruins. Kairouan was the centre of
religious learning, and its mosque has yielded an
important cache of early leather-bound parchment
codices of the Koran.
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 600–1500
127
copper alloy and terracotta artefacts just
mentioned probably served elite people
and especially rulers, sometimes as part of
their identifying regalia, sometimes in
ceremonial and ritual contexts. Other more
democratic forms, such as pottery and
woodcarving, were undoubtedly made and
used by the people at large.
THREE ARTISTIC STREAMS
Traditional religions, cultural and political
structures, and domestic life account for the
great majority of art and architecture from this
period. Two other influential streams, Christian
and Muslim, are also important in certain
areas: across the Sudan from east to west
(Islam), and on the eastern coast, especially,
where they account for distinctive forms of
both visual art and architecture.
Both Christian churches and Muslim
mosques, for example, proliferated in this era,
in stone and in less durable materials. Many
Christian paintings are known from the later
centuries in Ethiopia, such as the fifteenthcentury
painting of Mary and Christ, which was
part of a socio-political cult promulgated by
the emperor Zara Yaqob (r.1434-68). Metal
vessels with Arabic inscriptions from
fourteenth-century Mamluk Egypt were traded
all the way to what is now central Ghana, where
some are still in service as shrines among Akan
peoples. These also served as prototypes for
10˚ 0˚ 10˚ 20˚ 30˚ 40˚ 50˚
20˚
10˚
0˚
10˚
20˚
20˚
Ingombe Ilede
Chedzurgwe
Lekkerwater
Chipadze’s
Great Zimbabwe
elaborate stone enclosures,
numerous buildings,
soapstone carvings, c.1200-1450
Mwene Mutapa’s Court
toIndia
Mogadishu
Brava
Pate
LAMU
Gedi Malindi
Mombasa
Ile Ife
heads in terracotta and
copper alloy in naturalistic
styles from c.1100-1400
Esie
soapstone carvings of
human figures
c.12th-15th c
Lalibela
13th-century rock-cut
Christian churches
Axum
Jenne
terra cottas and
lost wax castings
from c.1000-1500
Takedda
Zanzibar
Kilwa Kisiwani
Mozambique
Angoche
Sofala
Nosy
Manja
PEMBA
MAFIA
SANJI
YA KATI
Marka
Manda
N
ile
BlueNile
W
hiteNile
Za
m
bezi
Orange
Save
Limpopo
Niger
Sene
gal
Gambia
Congo
Benue
L. Chad
L. Victoria
L. Tenganyika
L. Nyasa
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
I N D I A N
O C E A N
MOZAMBIQUECHANNEL
R
E
D
S
E
A
KALAHARI
DESERT
S A H A R A
MALI
c.1350
SONGHAY
c.1500
KANEM-BORNU
c.11th-15th c
ETHIOPIA
c.1320
BUNYORO
c.1400
MARAVI
c.15th c
LUNDA c.15th cNDONGO
c.15th c
NGOYO
KAKONGO
LOANGO
c.1400
BENIN
c.1500
AKAN STATES
c.1400-1500
KONGO c.14th c
KUBA c.16th c
LUNDU c.16th c
LUBA c.16th c
MUTAPA c.15th-16th c
ZIMBABWE
c.11th-15th c
A R A B I A
MADAGASCAR
N
0
0
500 miles
700 kms
2 Africa, c.1400-1500
African states
Arab coastal settlements
Rhodesian stone ruins
copper deposits
gold deposits
exports of gold, copper,
iron, ivory and slaves
imports of arms,
beads and ceramics
2 AND 3 IN RESPONSE TO VISITS first of Portuguese, then
of other European merchants and travellers, a shift
occurs in West Africa – from its orientation to Islam
and the Saharan trade – towards the coast. Islam
continues its spread, especially on the Swahili
Coast, and Ethiopian Christianity became stronger.
Despite these incursions, native religions and values
hold sway over most of the continent.
DIPTYCH OF THE MADONNA AND CHILD, APOSTLES, ST
GEORGE AND THEODORE by Fere Seyou(?).
Tempera on gessoed wood, 44 x 31.5 cm
(172
⁄5 x 122
⁄5 ins). Institute of Ethiopian Studies,
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This is one of countless
works commissioned as part of the emperor
Zara Yaqob’s mandatory cult of Mary.
later Akan metalwork of local manufacture.
Merged Arab and Indian influences are also
detectable in the art and architecture of the
Swahili coast of eastern Africa.
3 Outside Influences
route of Ibn Battuta, 1353
route of Fernão Gomes, 1469-79
route of Diogo Cão, 1482-84
route of Bartolomeu Dias, 1487
route of Pêro da Covilhã, 1487-1525
route of Vasco da Gama, 1497-99
NaplesValenciaLisbon
Sala
Gao
Takedda
Ile Ife
Benin
Jenne
Oyo
Walata
Niani
Kangaba
Timbuktu
Adrar
In Salah
Taghaza
Sijilmassa
Cairo
Suakin
Zeila
Mecca
Elmina
Benguela
Walvis Bay
Ormuz
Aden
Malindi
Kilwa
Sofala
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
INDIAN
OCEAN
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
RED
SEA
Cape of
Good Hope Mossel Bay
Gold Coast
S A H A R A
CANARY
IS
A F R I C A
N
0
0
1200 miles
1600 kms
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
126
men. That of Ile-Ife shows an exceptionally
sensitive naturalism, including mimetic
portraiture on idealized, life-size human heads,
along with terracottas of several styles and
types. That of the Inland Delta involved rather
stylized human figures in many poses, and
animals, especially snakes, which appear to
have been sacred to the local people. Most of
the latter have come from illegal excavations.
Ile-Ife also contains some eleventh- and
twelfth-century granite sculpture and
decorative pavements, presumably for royal
precincts, made of inlaid potsherds.
ART AND SOCIETY
Socio-political organization for this era ranged
from small headless bands – the San in
southern Africa continued to paint on rock-wall
surfaces – to centralized kingdoms, empires,
and city-states, the arts of some of the latter
having been mentioned by medieval Muslim
travellers and chroniclers such as Al Bakri, Ibn
Battuta and Ibn Khaldun. Gold regalia and
horse trappings, for example, are reported at
the court of ancient Ghana, which also had a
divided capital city (Kumbi Saleh) part Muslim,
partly traditional believers. Many of the early
THE VARIED GEOGRAPHY of Africa south of
the Sahara includes the drainage systems
of three great rivers: the Niger, the Congo and
the Nile, which with their tributaries embrace
forest, savannah, and mountain zones
constituting a large percentage of the
continent. Most forest-region peoples and
some living in the savannah were
agriculturalists (apart from small huntergatherer
populations in central and southern
areas) while savannah and sahel dwellers were
often pastoral or semi-pastoral.
Major population movements during the
early centuries of this period included the
Bantu migrations from eastern West Africa
(present-day Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad) into
the vast Congo drainage and further south,
often displacing hunter-gatherers. European
maps of the continent were often very
inaccurate regarding interior regions. TransSaharan
trade was very active during this entire
period, and remains difficult to map accurately,
although oases were obvious stopping points
and trade centres.
MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
Pottery (including some ceramic sculpture),
woodcarving, iron-smithing, leather-working
and basketry were surely practised by many,
perhaps most, agricultural peoples during this
entire period. Lost-wax casting and loomed
weavings, however, were introduced in the
ninth or tenth centuries, presumably across the
Sahara. They were probably transmitted by
Muslims, in the same era that Islam penetrated
areas just south of the Sahara and coastal
zones of east Africa. Christianity entered Egypt
and Ethiopia still earlier, by around the fourth
century. Stone architectural complexes are
known from the western Sudan and in southern
Africa.
Excavations in Kumbi Saleh in southern
Mauritania – probably the capital city of the
ancient Ghana empire (c.800–1100) – revealed
foundations of a stone mosque dating to the
tenth century and a fragment of a female terracotta
figure made several centuries earlier.
Great Zimbabwe and other sites in what is now
Zimbabwe dating from about 1000 to 1500
feature elaborate stone buildings and
enclosing walls. Churches hewn out of bedrock
in Lalibela, Ethiopia, date from the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. Rock art, probably no
longer made in Sahara regions, was being
made in southern Africa during the whole
period, apparently mostly by San peoples.
Lost-wax castings in several styles were
made from about the ninth or tenth century
in what is now southern Nigeria (Igbo Ukwu),
from about 1000 in the inland Delta region of
the Niger River, and in Ile Ife from around 1100.
These are all distinctive, well-resolved
art styles. That of Igbo Ukwu is very refined,
with almost fussy decorative surfaces on
objects of many types associated with early
priest-leaders who conferred titles on worthy
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 600-1500
1 WEAVING AND LOST-WAX CASTING appear to have
entered West African savannah and forest regions
during this period. Presumably, they were brought
south across the Sahara by Muslims, who at the
same time were establishing their own trading and
learning centres in the western Sudan. Islam also
became a political presence in states located in the
savannah, but the majority of peoples south of this
zone (apart from Christianized Ethiopia)
worshipped local nature spirits and ancestors,
and were unaffected by Islam or Christianity.
10˚ 0˚ 10˚ 20˚ 30˚ 40˚ 50˚
30˚
20˚
20˚
10˚
0˚
10˚
20˚
30˚
Fez
Tlemcen
Marrakesh
Tunis
Tripoli
Cairo
Ghat
Gao
Tadmekka
Sijilmassa
Nok
Timbuktu
WalataAwdaghost
Kumbi Saleh
Jenne
Kairouan
Ghadamis
Bilma
Niani
Salaga
Oyo
Ouagadougou Niamey
Kufra
Barca
Awjilah
Siwa
Mecca
Medina
Meroë
El Fasher
Dongola
Mogadishu
Aden
Zeila
Agadez
Igbo Ukwu
earliest lost-wax
castings south of Sahara
Mali
Lydenburg
heads of terracotta found in
fragments, 500-700
Ile Ife
granite monolith,
granite figural sculpture
mosaic pavements 800-1000
Bura
terracotta heads
and figures found
widely in W Africa
200-1000
Nile
Blue
N
ile
Whit
e
Nile
Seneg
al
Niger
Benue
Congo
Gambia
Zam
bezi
Orange
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
INDIAN
OCEAN
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
R
ED
SEA
TIBESTI
TASSILI
KALAHARI
DESERT
A T L A S M T S
S A H A R A
ARABIA
GHANA
c.1000
SONGHAY KANEM
ETHIOPIA
HOGGAR
FEZZAN
AIR
YORUBA
IGBO
BAMBUK
MALI
c.1350
rock paintings and engravings
in S Africa by San and related
peoples produced in great
numbers
1 Africa, c.900-1100
southern limit of Sahara
northern limit of thick forest
Saharan trade routes
possible routes of introduction of narrow
strip weaving into W Sudan
possible routes of introduction of lost wax
casting, 9th-10th centuries
gold deposits
slaves
rock art sites
Empires African languages
Ghana Niger-Kordofanian
Mali Nilo-Saharan
Songhay Afro-Asiatic
Kanem Khoisan
N
0
0
500 miles
700 kms
saltivory
FIGURE OF A SACRED KING, the Oni of Ile-Ife, excavated
at Ita Yemoo, Nigeria, in 1957 (47 cm – 181
⁄2 ins –
high, cast copper alloy, eleventh or twelfth century,
Museum of Ife Antiquities). The king is shown in
bead-rich regalia. The fleshy naturalism is typical of
the finest of Ife works, and the ideologically
skewed proportions emphasize his sacred head.
WEST ASIA AND EGYPT 600–1000
129
Under the Abbasids, the congregational
mosque evolved from an early community
centre into a more strictly religious institution
under the control of the ulema, or religious
scholars. To signal this change, towers were
added to congregational mosques to advertise
their presence from afar. Small mosques were
erected to serve the needs of smaller
communities; one popular type was a square
structure with nine domed bays. This type,
which has been found from Spain to Central
Asia, was probably developed in the Abbasid
heartlands and disseminated by pilgrims
returning from Mecca.
Abbasid patrons were fabulously rich and
enjoyed imported luxuries, including
stonewares and porcelains from China. These
were imported either by sea, across the Indian
Ocean and up the Persian Gulf, or overland
along the Silk Road through Central Asia. The
taste for imported ceramics led Mesopotamian
potters to develop fine earthenwares covered
by a white opaque glaze imitating Chinese
porcelain. Other potters applied to ceramics
the Syrian technique of painting glass with
metallic oxides and firing it in a reducing
atmosphere. Thereby they created the
technique for lustreware. Abbasid four-colour
lustrewares represent the acme of the art.
The art of the book was also transformed in
this period. Parchment manuscripts were
supplanted by paper codices, and the
traditional angular script, often called kufic
after the city of Kufa in southern Iraq, gave way
to rounder, cursive styles of writing more
suitable for the smoother surface. Brown
tannin inks which stained the parchment
surface were replaced by carbon-based black
10˚ 0˚ 10˚ 20˚ 30˚ 40˚ 50˚ 60˚ 70˚
40˚
30˚
20˚
10˚
Manbij
Samarra
Mosul
Erzurum
Amida
Raqqa
Tiflis
ArdabilTabriz
Constantinople
Rayy
Damghan
Nishapur
Merv
Herat
Termez
Balkh
Kabul
Ghazni
Kandahar
Zaranj
SamarkandBukhara
Susa
Shushtar
Basra
Urgench
Alexandria
Seville
Ashmunayn
Asyut
Aswan
Qus
Damietta
Siraf
Shibam
Sana
Zabid
Aden
Shiraz Bam
Hormuz
Banbhore
Istakhr
Isfahan
Yazd
Nayin
Baghdad
Jerusalem
Medina
Muscat
Mecca
Damascus
Fustat
Sus
Tunis
Kairouan
Tripoli
Toledo
Córdoba
Granada
Faiyum
Tinnis
Nil
e
Euphrates
Tig
ris
Indus
Danube
Syr Dary
a
A
m
u Darya
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
R
E
D
S
E
A
PERS
IAN
GULF
A R A B I A N
S E A
ARAL
SEA
CASPIAN
SEA
B L A C K S E A
ARABIAN
PENINSULA
HINDU KUSH
CAUCASUS
ZAGR
O
SMTS
UMAYYADS
(756-1031)
IDRISIDS
(789-926)
RUSTAMIDS
(776-906)
E G Y P T
SYRIA
PERSIA
ARMENIA
AZERBAIJAN
B Y Z A N T I N E
E M P I R E
TRANSOXANIA
FERGHANA
KHWARIZM
KHURASAN
FARS
SISTAN
MAKRAN
KIRMAN
O
MAN
HEJAZ
MESOPO
TAM
IA
YEMEN
gold,
slaves,
ivory
gold, slaves,
ivory, exotic woods
silver coins
to Vikings
furs, slaves
from Russia
slaves from
Turkestan
spices, teak
from India
porcelain
from China
N
0
0
300 miles
400 kms
2 The Abbasid Caliphate, c.950
Abbasid Caliphate at greatest extent, 786-809
other Muslim dynasties
Abbasid mosque
tiraz (textile inscription band) factories
ceramic centres
paper mills
nine-bay mosque
imports/exports
pilgrimage routes
main roads
2 THE ABBASID CAPITALS in Mesopotamia attracted
intellectual and artistic talent from all over their
enormous empire, particularly from the eastern
provinces that had helped the Abbasids seize
power. Following the conquest of Central Asia,
paper was introduced to fuel the enormous
Abbasid bureaucracy, and as its use and
manufacture spread, it led to fundamental changes
in styles of writing and the production and
distribution of manuscripts. Major cities had
hypostyle mosques with minarets and bevelled
style carving, showing the dissemination of
metropolitan Abbasid styles and taste. Fine textiles
of linen, cotton, silk and wool to be distributed to
courtiers were produced in state manufactories
established throughout the empire, but especially
in Egypt and lower Iraq. Luxury goods, such as
teak, carpets and porcelain, were imported from
India, Armenia and China.
STUCCO REVETMENT from the Balkuwara palace at
Samarra, c.850. The huge scale of the palaces at
the sprawling new Abbasid capital demanded
cheap and efficient techniques. The slanted or
bevelled technique of moulding was imitated in
other media, such as carved wood and rock-crystal,
and became a hallmark of the period.
ink, which did not degrade the paper.
Calligraphers specializing in the transcription
of the Koran were slow to adopt the new
medium of paper, perhaps because of the
sacredness of the text, but by the year 1000,
they, too, had realized its artistic potential.
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
128
THE RISE OF ISLAM in seventh-century
Arabia and its rapid spread throughout
western Asia, Mesopotamia and Egypt (as well
as North Africa, Spain and Central Asia)
dramatically affected the nature and
production of art in this enormous region.
The new rulers initially adopted and adapted
indigenous artistic and architectural traditions,
only gradually creating a distinctly Islamic style
by the ninth century.
Following the death of the prophet
Muhammad in 632, Muslim armies crossed the
Arabian peninsula and neighbouring regions,
founding new cantonments for the troops at
Basra, Kufa (both 638), Fustat (641), Wasit
(702) and Ramla (715). Older buildings,
whether Persian audience halls or Christian
churches in established cities, were
transformed into mosques. They had to be
large enough to house the male population for
Friday noon worship and had to point in the
direction of Mecca, the centre of the faith.
Elsewhere Muslims built new mosques, usually
hypostyle (many-column) structures arranged
around an open courtyard.
In order to preserve the integrity of the
Koran, God’s revelation to Muhammad in
Arabic, Muslims soon began transcribing
onto parchment codices the message that the
Prophet had relayed orally. In doing this, they
transformed Arabic script into one of
extraordinary elegance and beauty.
THE CONTINUATION OF ANTIQUITY
The first dynasty of Muslim rulers was the
Umayyad line (r.661–750), who made Syria
their capital province. They continued to
Uncompromisingly monotheistic, Islam
strongly discouraged the use of figural imagery
in religious settings. Subsidiary themes of lateAntique
art, such as vine scrolls or geometric
patterns, thus became the major subjects of
decoration. The one new decorative element
was Arabic script, the language of Koranic
revelation. Its use soon became a hallmark of
Islamic art, as inscriptions became important
elements in the design of buildings, elegant
textiles and even humble ceramics. In private
settings, however, particularly on the country
estates erected by the Umayyad rulers in the
Syrian steppe, exuberant figural art remained
popular at such sites as Khirbat al Mafjar and
Qusayr Amra.
THE NEW ABBASID STYLE
With the destruction of the Umayyads by the
Abbasids (749–1258), the centre of art and
patronage shifted from Syria to Mesopotamia,
as the new rulers established a series of
capitals there, including Baghdad (762), Raqqa
(772) and Samarra (836). The Abbasids had
come to power with the help of disaffected
Iranians, many from the wealthy province of
Khurasan, and the eastern lands became
increasingly important in the evolution of
Abbasid art and society.
Brick rendered with plaster, the ubiquitous
building material of Mesopotamia and Iran,
replaced the stone and mosaics of the
Mediterranean coast. To render the walls of
their sprawling palaces – the Dar al Khilafa at
Samarra, for example, covers 125 hectares
(over 300 acres) – Abbasid artisans developed
a carved and moulded style of abstract vegetal
decoration with bevelled edges. This technique
allowed the plaster to be released easily from
the mould and was suitable for covering
extensive wall surfaces. The bevelled style was
also used in other architectural media, such as
carved teakwood doors and shutters and stone
capitals. It soon was applied to other arts, such
as carved rock-crystal, and was exported
throughout the empire, as far as Kairouan in
North Africa and Balkh in Central Asia.
WEST ASIA AND EGYPT 600-1000
1 THE HEARTLAND OF THE UMAYYAD EMPIRE was Syria,
for the founder of the dynasty, Mu`awiya, had
been governor of Damascus before he seized
power in 661. His successors, after consolidating
their power over the next three decades, turned
the region into an enormous public works project,
with the construction of cities, mosques, urban
palaces and enormous rural agricultural estates.
The major Islamic shrines at Mecca (centre of the
faith), Medina (burial place of the Prophet) and
Jerusalem were transformed into major
architectural ensembles. These projects were
funded by the enormous booty gained from the
continuing conquests of outlying areas – from
North Africa to Central Asia.
THE INTERIOR OF THE DOME OF THE ROCK in Jerusalem
shows how early Muslim patrons wholeheartedly
adopted the forms and decoration of late-Antique
and early Byzantine architecture. The only
distinctively Islamic feature is the Arabic inscription
beneath the ceiling.
30˚ 35˚ 40˚ 45˚ 50˚
35˚
30˚
25˚
Medina
Mecca
Jabal Says
Qusayr Amra
Mshatta
Khirbat al Minya
Khirbat al Mafjar
Qasr al Hayr East
Qasr al Hayr West
Jerusalem
Amman
Bosra
Antioch
Latakia
Homs Palmyra
Damascus
Hama
Rusafa
Raqqa
Hiraqla
Harran (Carrhe)
Ruha (Edessa)
Balis
Manbij
(Hierapolis)
Aleppo
‘Anjar (c.710)
Kufa (638)
Basra (638)
Wasit (702)
Ramla (715)
Fustat (641)
Alexandria
Tyre
Gaza
Mosul
Iconium
Hamadan
Rayy
Susa
Hafar
Ctesiphon
Qadisiya
Riyadh
Suez
Küs
Edfu
Aydhab
Suakin
Kom Ombo
Isfahan
Ardabil
Nile
Euphrate
sTigris
L.Van
MEDITERRANEAN
SEA
R
E
D
S
E
A
PER
SIA
N
G
U
L F
E G Y P T
SYRIA
A R A B I A
H
E
JA
Z
P
E
R
S
I
A
M
E
S
O
P O
T A M I A
BAH
R
A
IN
N
0
0
300 miles
400 kms
develop the artistic traditions of late Antiquity in
such buildings as the Dome of the Rock in
Jerusalem (begun 692) and the Great Mosque of
Damascus (705–15): classical structures of stone
with marble columns and veneers, decorated
with glittering glass mosaics.
1 Umayyad Syria and the Levant
extent of Islam
to 632
extent of Islam
to 750
pilgrimage routes
to Mecca
old cities
new cities,
with date of foundation
rural palaces/
agricultural estates
centres of manuscript
production
site with mosaic
site with stucco
Umayyad mosque
WEST ASIA 1000–1500
131
Turks arrived in Iran during the eleventh
century. Following the defeat of the Byzantines
at the battle of Manzikert (Malazgird) in 1071,
Anatolia was opened to Turkish settlement and
Islamization, creating a demand for new
buildings to serve the faith.
The Byzantine defeat led European
Crusaders to invade the region, capture
Jerusalem and carve out four principalities.
The Muslims were unable to mount effective
resistance until the rise of Saladin (r.1169–93),
who defeated the Crusaders under the banner
of a resurgent Islam. In these uncertain times
artists – whether builders, potters, or metalworkers
– were often forced to move, thus
further disseminating Iranian artistic forms
and techniques.
THE INTEGRATION OF OLD AND NEW
The Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century
reconfigured the artistic map of western Asia,
as Iran became the entrepôt of an international
trading system linking Europe and China. The
Mongols adapted and refined the four-iwan
mosque, the brick dome, glazed tile and lustre
ceramics. Traditional mosques, minarets,
madrasas (theological colleges) and khanaqahs
(hospices for mystics) were combined into
multi-functional complexes, often arranged
around the tomb of the founder in order to
perpetuate his memory.
The major artistic innovation of the
fourteenth century was the new role played by
the illustrated book, which became a major
vehicle for the dissemination of Persian
literature and political ideologies. This was
made possible in part by papermakers’ new
capability to produce large sheets of fine white
paper, perhaps due to knowledge of Chinese
technology. The most able painters in western
Asia now turned from the ceramic surface to
paper, drawing upon the traditions of
Chinese landscape scrolls and Italian panel
painting alike.
Iranian artistic ideas were adopted by the
the Mamluks in Egypt – the four-iwan plan,
stucco decoration, Chinoiserie ornament –
testifying to the international prestige of
Ilkhanid art. Traditional rivalries obscured the
meteoric rise of the Ottoman Turks, who would,
by the end of the period, become the most
powerful force in western Asia and
southeastern Europe.
Drawing on the architectural and artistic
heritage of Seljuk Anatolia as well as
Byzantium and the Classical past, Ottoman
artists developed a new idiom of Islamic art in
the Mediterranean region. In the years before
and after the conquest of Constantinople in
1453, Ottoman builders refined a third type of
congregational mosque characterized by a
huge single dome surrounded by pencil-thin
minarets: a style that became the symbol of
Ottoman domination in the region.
15˚ 20˚ 25˚ 30˚ 35˚ 40˚ 45˚ 50˚ 55˚ 60˚ 65˚ 70˚ 75˚ 80˚
20˚
25˚
30˚
35˚
40˚
45˚
Baghdad
Najaf
Samarra
Kufa
Gaza
Bursa
Inegol
Isfahan
Linjan
KashanNatanzQuhrud
Aran
Zavara
Qumm
Sultanabad
Bastam
Sarvistan
Darab
Yazd
Abarquh
Hajiabad
Kuhpaya
Nayin
Shiraz
Mashiz
Kirman
Nigar
Khonj
Siraf
Tabriz
Salmas
Shahi
Marand Astara
BakuBerda'a
Nasmus
Nakhichevan
Ardabil Gurgan
Ziaret
Damghan Nishapur
Mashhad
Tus
Radkan Merv
SimnanRayy
Veramin
Herat
Qayin
Ghazna
Kandahar
Samarkand
Khiva
Balkh
Tashkent Kashgar
Mosul Sava
Qazvin
Sultaniya
SojasTakht-i-Sulayman
Sarcham
Bukhara
Hamadan
Quchan
Diyarbakir
Damascus
Tripoli
Palmyra
Jerusalem
Aqaba
Petra
Qus
Medina
Mecca
Basra
Shustar
Hormuz
Konya
Alanya
Tarsus
Manisa
Selcuk
Bilecek
Iznik
Mudurnu
Afyon
Gebze
Sivas
Rome
Venice
Genoa
Naples
Palermo
Amasya Trebizond
Tokat
Kaiseri
Kirsehir
Aleppo
Constantinople
Adrianople
Thessalonica
Cairo
Alexandria
N
ile
Euph
rates
Tigris
Indus
Amu Darya
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
ARAL
SEA
CASPIAN
SEA
R
ED
SEA
AEGEANSEA
B L A C K S E A
C A U C A S U S
I R A N I A N
P L A T E A U
ARABIAN
PENINSULA
H
I
N
D
U
K
U
S H
MAMLUK
SULTANATE
I L K H A N AT E
C H A G ATA I
K H A N AT E
D E L H I
S U LTA N AT E
G O L D E N H O R D E
(1326-1402)
(1402-53)
(1453 onwards)
A F R I C A
CYPRUS
N
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
3 West Asia, c.1325
Byzantine Empire, c.1300
Mamluk Sultanate
Ilkhanate and vassals
Chagatai Khanate
Ottomans/Turkish principalities
Armenian territory in the Levant
towns/sites where lustre ware found
Ilkhanid monuments
centres of manuscript production
textile centres
metalwork centres
shrine complexes
Mamluk monument
Ottoman mosques
Ottoman capitals
trade routes
3 IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY much of Eurasia was
ruled by various descendants of Genghis Khan, of
whom the Ilkhan rulers of Iran and Iraq controlled
the central region. The ensuing pax Mongolica
fostered overland trade and communication
between Italy and China. The arts created in Iran
under the patronage of the Ilkhanids, who had
converted to Islam by the late thirteenth century,
reflect this extraordinarily broad range of sources.
The Ilkhans wholeheartedly adopted Persian and
Islamic cultural traditions; their great rivals in the
west were the Mamluks, whose capital at Cairo
became the centre of Arab-Islamic civilization after
the Mongols conquered Baghdad in 1258.
COURTYARD OF THE CONGREGATIONAL MOSQUE in Isfahan,
Iran. The large open court with iwans, or vaulted
halls, in the middle of each side, epitomizes the
new mosque plan introduced and popularized by
the Seljuks from the early twelfth century. Much of
the present tile decoration was added later, as the
form remained standard until modern times.
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
130
DURING THE ELEVENTH CENTURY the
unified Abbasid caliphate came apart at
the seams. Egypt, Syria and Arabia (as well as
most of North Africa) were controlled by
Fatimid caliphs from their capital at Cairo, but
the major threat came from the east, as groups
of Turkish nomads moved southwest from the
Central Asian steppe, converted to Islam, and
came to dominate political, intellectual and
artistic life.
THE DOMINATION OF IRANIAN IDEAS
Iranian techniques, themes and motifs began
to play a dominant role in all the arts of the
region, from architecture to ceramics and
metalwares. The old type of hypostyle
(many-column) congregational mosque was
supplanted by the four-iwan plan, in which
vaulted open rooms are arranged around the
four sides of a rectangular court and connected
by vaulted halls. The iwan, which had been used
in Iranian architecture since Parthian times,
was often combined with a great brick dome, as
the arched and vaulted techniques of the
Iranian plateau replaced the stone post-andbeam
system that Muslims had inherited from
the Mediterranean lands. The iwan was
inherently flexibile, being suitable for all types
of buildings, whether mosques, palaces,
schools or caravanserais (caravan motels).
Iranian ideas also dominated the decorative
arts. Paper became the ubiquitous support for
manuscripts produced in the region. These
included not only the illuminated manuscripts
of the Koran produced in earlier times but also
illustrated works of many types, from scientific
and technical manuals to epic and lyric poetry.
Potters exploited the artistic potential of the
fritted (or stone-paste) ceramic body that
emulated the fine white Chinese Song
porcelains imported in great quantity. New
shapes and techniques (including overglaze
lustre and enamel and underglaze painting)
resulted in a period of great ceramic innovation.
Weavers also exploited increasingly
sophisticated structures and designs. Colour
suffused all the arts, as monochrome
metalwares were inlaid with copper, silver and
gold, and buildings were enveloped in glittering
webs of glazed tile and painted plaster.
DISSEMINATION OF THE FAITH
The major work of conversion had been
accomplished by this time, but the ethnic
composition of western Asia changed
dramatically as Turko-Mongolian peoples
resettled and converted to Islam, adapting the
norms of Persian-Islamic culture. The Seljuk
WEST ASIA 1000-1500
1 AROUND THE YEAR 1100 much of western Asia came
under the control of the Seljuks, a Turkish tribe from
Central Asia, while Egypt remained under the
control of the Fatimid dynasty. Militant Muslims, the
Seljuks promulgated their version of Islam by
building monuments for the faith, such as mosques,
minarets and madrasas. A collateral branch, the
Seljuks of Rum, settled along with other Turkish
tribes in Anatolia. They too built mosques and
madrasas to promulgate the faith, as well as
caravanserais to foster trade, but the typical brick
and plaster forms of Iranian Seljuk architecture
were translated into stone. Seljuk patrons
commissioned splendid lustre ceramics and inlaid
metalwares to decorate their mosques and palaces.
2 CRUSADERS FROM EUROPE intent on rescuing
Jerusalem from the Muslims established
principalities in the eastern Mediterranean. These
invaders – and Muslim defenders – built some of
the finest medieval military architecture to survive.
Crusaders returned to Europe from western Asian
bazaars with fabulous souvenirs, including textiles
and metalwares.
20˚ 25˚ 30˚ 35˚ 40˚ 45˚ 50˚ 55˚ 60˚ 65˚ 70˚
35˚
30˚
25˚
20˚
Konya
Kubadabad
Beysehir
Sarajevo
Dubrovnik
Tirana
Skopje
Sofia
Tutrakan
Plovdiv
Varna
Izmit
Iznik
Manisa
Alasehir
Afyon
Eskisehir
Sögüt
Kutahya
Tire
Aydin
Constantinople
Adrianople
Uzunköprü
Balikesir
Canakkale
Bergama
Izmir
Bursa
Ruse
Thessalonica
Nigde
Kaiseri
Kirsehir
Ankara Sivas
Amasya
Kastamonu
Niksar
Sinope
Bolu
Zonguldak
Divrigiˇ
Malatya
Urfa
Aleppo
Damascus
Raqqa
Mardin
Baghdad
Mosul
Cairo
Bitlis
Ardabil
Damavand
Damghan
Nayin Zarand
Tabas
Sabzevar
Nishapur
Merv
Balkh
Sangbast
Kirat
Herat
Khusrawgird
Khargird
Nigar
Nayriz
Firuzabad Hormuz
Muscat
Ardistan
Zavara
Gulpaygan
Isfahan
Kermanshah
Bastam
Gurgan
Baku
Harput
Silvan
Siirt
Diyarbakir
Erzurum
Manzikert
Trebizond
Tiflis
¸
Z
A
G
R
O
S
M T S
C A U C A S U S
A n a t o l i a
I R A N I A N
P L A T E A U
A R A B I A N
P E N I N S U L A
Tekirdag
Simnan
Kashan
Kirman
Nile
Tigris
Am
u
Darya
Euphrat
es
Danube
L. Van
L. Urmia
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
B L A C K S E A
C
A
S
P
IA
N
SEA
P
E
R
S I A
N
G U L F
A R A B I A N
S E A
AEGEANSEA
R E D
S E A
HINDU
KU
S
H
CYPRUS
CRETE
GEORGIAN
STATES
SHIRWAN
ARMENIAN RULERS
1080-1137
PALESTINE
E G Y P T
SYRIA P E R S I A
M
ESO
POTAMIA
BYZANTINE
EMPIRE
F AT I M I D C A L I P H AT E
G R E A T S E L J U K E M P I R E
textiles, metalware, military architecture to Europe
1071
N
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
1 West Asia in the Twelfth Century
Byzantine frontier in Asia, c.1025
Byzantine Empire, 1095
Seljuk Empire, c.1095
Seljuk tributary states
Byzantine territory overrun by Seljuks by 1095
eastern frontier of area recovered
by Byzantine Empire by 1180
nomads
other Muslim
dynasty
mosque
minaret
madrasa
caravanserai
ceramic centre
metalworking centre
40˚35˚
35˚
30˚
Saone
Bourzey
Crac des Chevaliers
Beaufort
Belvoir
Ajlun
Bosra
Subeibe
Kerak
Chastel Rouge
Tripoli
Giblet
Sidon
Tyre
Acre
Caesarea
Montreal
Arima
Antioch
Beirut
Jaffa
Gaza
Jerusalem
Edessa
Aleppo
Baalbek
Homs
Damascus
Eilat
Tigris
Euphrates
Jordan
DEAD
SEA
MEDITERRANEANSEA
S E L J U K S O F R U M
CILICIAN ARMENIA
CYPRUS
PRINCIPALITY
OF ANTIOCH
COUNTY OF TRIPOLI
KINGDOM OF
JERUSALEM
COUNTY OF EDESSA
1098-1144
EGYPT
S Y R I A
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
2 Latin States of the Levant
Latin Christian territory
Armenian Christian territory
Greek Christian territory
Muslim territory
Crusader castle
Muslim castle
CENTRAL ASIA 600–1500
133
that the Yuan rulers of China moved weavers
from Samarkand to Beshbalik and Daidu
(Beijing) in north China where they introduced
the silk tapestry technique.
Little if any stone was available for
building, but earth – whether as rammed earth,
sun-dried brick, baked brick, or glazed tile –
and a surprising quantity of timber (from the
forested mountains) were readily exploited for
construction. Columns and beams were used
for hypostyle mosques, as at Khiva, and for the
ubiquitous columned verandas found on
houses and other buildings. Baked bricks and
tiles were exploited for their decorative
potential: the early tenth-century Samanid
mausoleum at Bukhara is the earliest surviving
example of the decorative brick style that later
40˚
30˚
20˚
40˚ 50˚ 60˚ 70˚ 80˚
90˚
Merv
Ziyaragah
Shiraz
Tiflis
Damascus
1400
Sarai 1395
Tabriz 1385
Isfahan
Lahore
Samarkand
Bukhara
Anau
Khargird
Nishapur
Ribat-i Qelli
Ribat-i Qarabil
Ribat-i Eshq
Ribat-i Safid
Turbat-i Jam
Kaffa
Tana
Yelets
Kandahar
Ghazni
Otrar
Khotan
Kabul
Herat
Balkh Termez
Mazar-i Sharif
Shahrisabz
Gizhduvan
Turkestan
Gazurgah
Khiva
Astrakhan
Maragheh
Baghdad
1396
Urgench
Meshed
1380
Sangbast
Delhi 1398
Tashkent
1387
L. Balkhash
Euph
rates
Tigris
A
m
u Dary
a
Syr Darya
V
olga
Dnieper
Don
Indus
Ural
Ganges
M E D.
S E A
ARAL
SEA
CASPIANSEA
PERSIA
N
GULF
R
ED
SEA
B L A C K S E A
K H A N AT E O F T H E G O L D E N H O R D E
D E L H I
S U LTA N AT E
C H A G ATA I
K H A N AT E
O T T O M A N
E M P I R E
A R A B I A
MAMLUKEMPIRE
I R A N I A N
P L A T E A U
A R A B I A N
D E S E R T
T H A R
D E S E R T
T I E N
S H A N
HINDU KUSH
Z
A
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O
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M
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500 miles
700 kms
THOUSANDS OF SLIP-DECORATED
earthenwares have been
unearthed at the sites of medieval
Nishapur and Afrasiyab (Old
Samarkand). Many are decorated
with phrases or aphorisms in
Arabic, such as ‘Blessings to its
owner’, while others are
decorated with vegetal, geometric
and figural motifs. These
aphorisms are written in a stylized
script, which is often difficult to
decipher. Nevertheless, the
inscriptions are carefully planned
and deserve to be called
calligraphy, literally ‘beautiful
writing’ and one of the hallmarks
of Islamic art. The texts reflect the
literate society of the time, in
which Arabic, the language of the
faith, co-existed with the
vernacular Persian. The latter soon
came to the fore as a literary
language, and the first surviving
manuscript in Persian, which dates
from the mid-eleventh century,
uses a similar stylized script for
headings.
2 TIMUR AND HIS SUCCESSORS used the
arts to enhance prestige. The scale
of his constructions – at his capital
Samarkand, his birthplace
Shahrisabz, or the grave site of
the Sufi sheikh Ahmad Yasavi in
Turkestan – matched his
ambitions. These mammoth works
were created by artisans who
came – often involuntarily – from
afar to the court to make intricate
plaster vaults and glittering tile
revetments. Timur’s successors had
fewer resources, but they still
commissioned fine manuscripts,
metalwares, and carved jades.
integrated its people into a vast zone that
stretched from North Africa to the Tien-Shan
mountains. The importance of trade is reflected
in the superb caravanserais set up
by officials along major trade routes.
Another constant was the unusually harsh
climate, ranging from torrid summers to frigid
winters. Despite little rainfall, water is available
from subterranean aqueducts or the few great
rivers flowing from distant mountains into
landlocked seas and lakes. The settled
population was concentrated in oasis towns,
while the deserts and steppes were inhabited
by the nomads. Despite the constant tension
between nomads and settled peoples over the
sparse resources, the two groups were
interdependent: the nomads’ sheep supplied
wool, meat and fertilizer for the settled
peoples, who in turn supplied the nomads with
grain, metals, fibres and ceramics.
MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
The vast number of sheep raised on the
steppes made woollen textiles pre-eminent,
although cotton and silk were cultivated by
settled populations. The knotted carpet came
to the fore as the ancient nomadic craft was
transformed, especially in West Asia, into a
village and urban industry. The earliest
examples, small carpets showing stylized
animals were exported as luxury goods and
have been found as far apart as Sweden, Italy
and Tibet; they are also depicted in Persian
manuscripts and Italian panel paintings of the
early fourteenth century. Village and urban
weavers were also known for their fine silk
textiles. Zandaniji textiles made in the village
of Zandane near Bukhara for several centuries
after the Islamic conquest were exported as far
as Europe and China. By the thirteenth century,
Central Asian textiles, particularly the silks
woven with gold-wrapped threads known in
Europe as panni tartarici, were so appreciated
became pre-eminent throughout the region. In
addition to mosques, found everywhere in the
Islamic lands, tombs became popular in this
region. These were typically domed cubic
structures, many of which honoured the local
saints and mystics who had been responsible
for converting the steppe nomads to Islam.
The earth also provided the raw materials
for other arts, including metalwares and
ceramics. Tenth-century potters in Samarkand
and Nishapur covered earthenwares with
colourful slip decoration, whether abstract,
figural or epigraphic, and glazed wares soon
followed. The epigraphic wares, calligraphed
with moralizing aphorisms in Arabic, show how
quickly the region had been integrated into the
Arabophone world of Islam.
2 Central Asia under the
Timurids, 1370-1506
Timurid Empire
conquests of Timur, with date
movement of metalworkers,
builders, ceramicists
movement of weavers
mosque
tomb/shrine
madrasa
caravanserai
jade sources
ceramics
manuscript production
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
132
and he was preparing to conquer China on his
deathbed. Although the Timurid empire shrank
as fast as it had grown, its artistic impact was
long-lived: the architects and craftsmen who
had been forcibly brought to Central Asia
created an international Timurid style which
became the common language for virtually all
Islamic art produced between Istanbul and
Delhi after 1500. Timurid artists refined the
Persian art of the book, which combined paper,
calligraphy, illumination, illustration and
binding in a brilliant and colourful whole.
THE IMPACT OF THE LANDSCAPE
Geography continued to play a pivotal role in
the evolution of artistic life. The region’s
accessibility and location put it at the
intersection of transcontinental routes and
CENTRAL ASIA CHANGED dramatically as it
was transformed from an independent
centre under the Turkic Khanates to a
peripheral border region which lay between the
great empires of the Abbasids in southwest
Asia and the Tang in China. From the late
seventh century, Arab armies brought Islam
and the Arabic language to this region where
many religions, including Zoroastrianism,
Manichaeism, Buddhism, Judaism, and
Nestorian Christianity, had been practised for
centuries and where Iranian and Turkic
languages were spoken. The Arabs knew the
region as ‘The Land Beyond the River’, or
Transoxiana. The Islamic conquest increased
the region’s prosperity, as it was integrated
into the nexus of trans-Asian trade along the
ancient Silk Road.
Far from the capitals of Arab-Islamic
civilization in Syria and Mesopotamia, moreor-less
independent dynasties of Persian and
Turkish governors and rulers emerged,
including the Saffarids, Samanids,
Karakhanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids and
Khwarazmshahs. They enlarged old cities or
created new capitals such as Merv, Bukhara,
Nishapur, Balkh, Shash (Tashkent), Kabul and
Delhi. In the period after 1000 many Central
Asian Turks migrated westward to Anatolia and
southeast into the Indian subcontinent,
integrating Central Asia further into the
Eurasian network.
A second great migration of TurkoMongolian
peoples in the late twelfth and
early thirteenth centuries devastated the
region, destroying the hydraulic infrastructure,
particularly the subterranean aqueducts (qanat)
which supplied cities, towns, villages and
farms with water from distant mountain
ranges. The region flowered again under the
patronage of the Timurids, who made
Samarkand and Herat sparkling centres of
intellectual and artistic life. The conquests of
Timur (r.1370–1405), known in the West as
Tamerlane, were rapid and ephemeral; at its
height his empire stretched to Syria and
Anatolia on the west and India on the east,
CENTRAL ASIA 600-1500
THE GRAVE SITE OF the Sufi sheikh
Ahmad Yasavi (d.1166) had long
been venerated by the Turks of
Central Asia and the Volga. In
1397–9 Timur used the vast
booty amassed from his victory
over the Golden Horde to
transform his modest brick tomb
at Yasi (now Turkestan City) into
one of the most spectacular
buildings in the region. Built
of brick and glazed tile, the
rectangular complex looms
above the steppe and projects
the presence of Islam from afar.
A giant iwan leads to a domed
central hall with an enormous
basin holding water for pilgrims,
and a smaller ribbed dome in the
back corner marks the site of the
sheikh’s grave.
40˚
30˚
20˚
40˚ 50˚ 60˚ 70˚ 80˚ 90˚
Merv
Mecca
Sana
Sohar
Shiraz
Tiflis
Konya
Isfahan
Tyre
Damascus
Siraf
Jam
Multan
Lahore
Leh
Medina
Samarkand
Ribat-i Malik
Dayakhatyn
Vabkent
Bukhara
Nishapur
Ribat Sharaf
Sarakhs
Talkhaytan Baba Amol
Ghazni
Basra
Hamadan
Baghdad
Mosul
Talas
Uzgend
Tim
Otrar
Kashgar
Yarkand
Khotan
Turfan
Burana
Kumul (Hami)
DunhuangLoulan
Miran
Kusha
Beshbalik
Kabul
Herat
Balkh
Termez
Khiva
Urgench
Delhi
Srinagar
Panjikent
Tashkent
L. Balkhash
Eup
hrates
Tigris
A
m
u
Darya
HariRud
Murgab
Syr Darya
V
olga
Indus
B L A C K
S E A
ARABIAN
SEA
ARAL
SEA
CASPIANSEA
PERSIA
N
GULF
R
ED
SEA
H
I
M
A
L A Y A S
TA K L A M A K A N
P L A T E A U
O F T I B E T
I R A N I A N
P L A T E A U
A R A B I A N
D E S E R T
T H A R
D E S E R T
T I E N
S H A N
HINDU KUSH
Z
A
G
R
O
S
M
TS
N
0
0
500 miles
700 kms
1 Before the Mongols: Central Asia, c.1090
Seljuk Empire
Karakhanids
Ghaznavids
Fatimids
Qarmatians
Byzantine Empire, 1090
territory contested by
Seljuks/Byzantines
Silk Road
spread of silk weaving,
paper-making
spread of Islam,Arabic
caravanserai
manuscript and paper production
ceramic production
metal production
textiles
congregational
mosque
nine-bay mosque
tomb
minaret
1 THE CONSTRUCTION of new types of buildings
associated with Islam, particularly mosques,
minarets and tombs, reflects the spread of the
faith. Congregational mosques were an essential
feature of urban life, but minarets and tombs over
the graves of local saints were erected in rural
areas as well, particularly along the trade routes
that spanned the region, probably because they
came to symbolize the presence of Islam.
Vitthala Temple
Narasimha Temple
Virupaksha
Temple
Krsna
Temple
Monolithic
Narasimha and
Linga Shrine
Siva Temple
Tiruvengalanatha Temple
Vishnu Temple
Elephant Stables
Jain Temple
Madhava Temple
Hundred-Columned Audience Hall
Siva Temple
Square Water
Pavilion
Ruined
Palaces
Nine-Domed
Pavilion
Multi-Domed
Watchtower
Domed
Gate
Ganagitti
Jain Temple
Lotus
Mahal
Hazara
Ramachandra
Temple
Hanmatha
Tank
Tungabhadra River
SACRED
CENTRE
ROYAL
CENTRE
N
0
0
0.5 miles
0.75 kms
2 Vijayanagara: Temples and Courtly Monuments, c.1500
N
0
0
0.5 miles
0.75 kms
2 Vijayanagara: Temples and Courtly Monuments, c.1500
SOUTH ASIA 600–1500
135
consumption and exchange for various luxury
goods, and in a sense represented not only the
spiritual but material aspirations of the age.
From the thirteenth century a Turkish
Muslim empire, known as the Delhi Sultanate,
was founded in northern India, an event which
was to have a dramatic impact on Indian life as
well as exerting more subtle, long-term cultural
and economic influences. In one sense at least,
the Delhi Sultanate succumbed to the
centrifugal rhythms of Indian history. By 1400
regional sultanates had emerged in the west,
east and south, each of which exhibited a
distinctive regional identity. Islamic rulers
introduced new forms of monumental
architecture such as the mosque and tomb, as
well as providing a conduit for Central Asian
craft techniques and fashions to enter into the
subcontinent.
Despite destroying a number of politically
important temples in northern India and
interrupting traditional Hindu structures of
patronage, Muslim rulers did not attempt to
convert the large mass of their subjects to
Islam. Instead, the two cultures interacted with
one another. Beyond the southern borders of
the Delhi Sultanate flourished both the
Sultanates of the Deccan and the kingdom of
Vijayanagara, the last great Hindu empire,
which loosely united much of southern India
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Vijayanagara and Delhi were among the most
cosmopolitan and dynamic cities of their day,
importing materials and men of culture from as
far away as Portugal and China.
Luxury goods at court typically had both
economic as well as ceremonial or ritual value
and were transacted as emblems of political
and moral rank and authority. These objects
(robes, tunics, turbans, crowns, necklaces,
armbands and rings), along with a host of less
permanent substances such as betelnut and
sandalwood paste, were the object of great
concern in medieval sumptuary manuals
designed for the king and his nobility.
MATERIALS, TECHNIQUES AND EVIDENCE
In India climate has had a significant influence
on the development of material culture and,
unfortunately, on its survival. High levels of
heat and moisture have made the survival of
ephemeral materials, such as palm leaf, paper,
wood, textiles and plasters, sporadic from
periods before the sixteenth century. For this
reason many art forms, which we know to have
existed from other sources, cannot be
reconstructed with a satisfactory degree of
precision. Since the surviving record is only
partial, stone, terracotta monuments and
sculpture and durable decorative arts must
therefore remain our chief artefacts.
The most palpable legacy of the past
has been stone architecture, which flourished
during this period in both Hindu and Muslim
kingdoms. Temple architecture was based on
the combination of vertical and horizontal
stonework held together by weight. Large
monoliths were transported from quarries
using elephants or water and, having been
worked, were either hoisted or rolled into place
via earthen ramps. The arrival of Islamic
architecture in the subcontinent brought with it
new architectural styles such as the true arch,
the dome and the vault, built with the
extensive use of lime-mortar as a cementing
material. The emphasis in Islamic architecture
was primarily on the manipulation of line,
space and movement, though decorative
techniques were also developed in calligraphy
and mosaic.
THE TIRUVENGALANATHA TEMPLE at
Vijayanagara, dedicated to
Vishnu in 1534, is set in the
rugged terrain of the land
immediately south of the
Tungabhadra River. This temple
was sponsored by a prominent
courtier (a brother-in-law and
minister) of the Vijayanagar king
Achyutaraya (r.1529–42).
While few specimens have survived, other
sources suggest that the production of silk and
cotton textiles formed an important industry
during this period. Sources provide scores of
names of fabric styles which remain only dimly
understood by historians today.
The quality of cotton production was
improved by the introduction of the spinningwheel
and carder’s bow in the eleventh century,
probably from Central Asia, which must have
significantly cheapened the cost
of spun yarn. Weaving techniques during this
period are not very well understood, but the
expansion of the profession, as reflected in the
2 WHILE LARGE NUMBERS of temples
survive throughout India from
the sixth century, the empire of
Vijayanagara is unique among
Hindu dyanstic realms in
preserving a copious amount of
both secular and religious
architecture. The city of
Vijayanagara may be divided
into distinct zones. Immediately
south of the Tungabhadra River,
within the urban area but
outside the city walls, are a large
number of temples, which
scholars have designated the
sacred centre of the city. Further
south, surrounded by massive
outer fortifications, is the urban
core, where most of the
population lived. In the southeast
corner of the fortified city is
the royal centre, a complex of
many buildings, surrounded by
another tier of fortifications. It is
here where the king, his family,
and a large retinue of courtiers,
ritualists and palace servants
lived together.
increased prominence of weaver castes
in the historical record, suggests the
retention of traditional methods. Printing
and dyeing techniques are also unclear,
although some methods, like the famous
tie-dye technique, are mentioned as early
as the seventh century. Carpet-making also
seems to have been introduced into the
subcontinent between the eleventh and
thirteenth centuries, again from Central
Asia. In addition to textiles, there were rich
traditions of regionally differentiated,
decorative arts, but centres of production
and regional styles still remain elusive.
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
134
THE DEVELOPMENT OF art and material
culture in India from 600 to1500 is
impressive. As an increasingly integrated
economy, society and culture emerged in the
Indian subcontinent, regional styles and
identities emerged which often formed the
precursors to later cultural developments.
KINGDOMS AND EMPIRES
At the beginning of this period numerous
Hindu temple-kingdoms spread throughout key
regions in the subcontinent and struggled for
local and pan-regional supremacy. A highly
refined and complex court culture flourished
upon a largely agrarian economy and feudal
social order. With the rise and triumph of the
theistic cults of Saivism (Siva) and Vaisnavis
(Vishnu), Hindu temples, which were often
endowed with massive landholdings by secular
lords, dominated the landscape from about
the sixth century AD. Heavily decorated with
sumptuous and ornate sculpture, their spires
rose dramatically from the surrounding
countryside. Temples functioned as points of
SOUTH ASIA 600-1500
70˚ 80˚
60˚
20˚
10˚
30˚
40˚
Mathura
Bayana
Ghazni
Kanauj
Badayun
Amrol
Delhi
Sthanvisvara
Varanasi
Jaunpur
Ayodhya
Madurai
Vanci
Ramesvaram
Kalahasti
Kanchipuram
Vengi
Mallikarjuna
Tiruvannamalai
Mamallapuram
Tanjavur
Nagapattinam
Anuradhapura
Pulatthinagara
Tiruvarur
Kumbakonam
Gangaikondacolapuram
Chidambaram
Nuggihalli
Srirangam
Tirumalai
Jambukesvara
Ajmer
Chanderi
Udayapura
Gyaraspur
Batesar
Gopagiri (Gwalior)
Harsagiri (Harsha)
Puri
Kathmandu
Svayambhunatha
Bhojapura
Citrakuta
Ujjain
Khajuravahaka
Kosambi
Kiratakupa (Kiradu)
Vidisha
Kalanjar
Dhar
Satgaon
Arbuda
(Abu)
Prabhasa
Mangrol
Girinagara (Girnar)
Mudhera (Modhera)
Sarkhej
Patan
Mahmudabad (Champaner)
Dholka
Anlar
Thatta
Khambayat
Mulasthana
(Multan)
Pakpattan
Avantipura
Martanda
Parihasapura
Hisar
Herat
Qala Bist
Kandahar
Lahore
Warangal
HaidarabadGolkonda
Palampet
Kalinganagara
Ekamra (Bhubaneshwar)
Konarka
Draksharama
Gaya
Pataliputra
Monghyr (Mongir)
Nalanda
Vikramasila
Gaur
Pandua
Pundravardhana
Tamralipti
Seunapura (Sinnar)
Ambaranatha
Elapura
Bharuch
Satrunjaya Thalner
Mahkar
Burhanpur
Mandu
Batwa
Lonar
Daulatabad
Ahmadnagar
Ahmadabad
Roda
Bijapur
Bidar
Gulbarga
Hampi
Ittagi
Belur
Sringeri
Dvarasamudra
(Halebid)
Sravana Belgola
Somnathapura
Anumakonda
Vijayanagara
Lokkigundi (Lakhundi)
Dambal
Arsikere Penukonda
Hemavati
Srisailam
Kanyakumari
Srinagar
Campavati
Brahmapura
Chhatrarhi
Ratnagiri
Indus
Narmada
Ganges
Penner
Godav
ari
Krishna
Kaveri
Yamuna
A R A B I A N
S E A
B A Y O F
B E N G A L
I N D I A N
O C E A N
WESTERNGHATS
H
I
M
A
L A Y A S
CEYLON
(SRI LANKA)
D E C C A N
S I N D
KALINGA
N E PA L
KASH
M
IR
R A S T R A K U T A S ( 7 5 4 - 9 7 2 )
PALAS
(750-1120)
HOYSALAS
(1126-1347)
COLAS
(906-1279)
SOLANKIS
(974-1241)
D E L H I S U L T A N A T E
(1206-1526)
VIJAYANAGARA
(1336-1565)
G U R J A R A P R A T I H A R A S ( 7 2 5 - 9 3 1 )
PARAMARAS (945-1235)
CANDELLAS (925-1308)
PALLAVAS
(550-870)
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
1 Monumental Art, 600-1500
dynastic empire (with dates)
major Hindu temple/monastery
major Jain temple/monastery
Buddhist stupa
Buddhist university
Buddhist monastery
major Muslim mosque/tomb
probable trade route
copper mine
diamond mine
gold mine
precious stones
pearls
conch shells
silk weaving
teak
sandalwood
pepper
cinnamon
COLAS
1a Trade Goods
trade route
exports:
cloth
glass
incense
metal
wine
coin
spices
imports:
cloth
dye
incense
ivory
precious stones
rice/wheat
silk
slaves
timber
tortoise shell
spices
1 THE PERIOD BETWEEN 600 AND 1500 saw the
proliferation of a bewildering number of small
kingdoms and larger pan-regional empires
throughout the subcontinent. While many major
towns known from ancient India declined, a
subsequent phase of urban development saw new
networks of towns, more closely integrated with
the expanding agrarian economy, spread
throughout the landscape. Larger urban centres
were integrated into the world economy through
the export of luxury goods to the Middle East and
China. Through this trade India developed its
reputation for finely wrought metal objects (like
swords), jewellery textiles and precious stones.
KORANIC VERSES are carved in relief on the massive
Qutb Minar in Delhi, begun by Qutb-ud-din
Aibak on a Ghaznavid model in 1199 and
completed in 1369 by Firuz Shah Tughluq. The
magnificent minaret, which rises some 73 metres
(240 ft), functioned as both a victory tower and
lookout tower.
I N D I A N
O C E A N
Lahore
Pataliputra
Tamralipti
Machilipatnam
Barygaza
Cane
Barbaricum
Pattala
Harmozia
Omana
Charax
Sopatma
Muziris
Pegu
Taxila
1a
CHINA 600–1300
137
THE NEW MOBILITY
Modern institutions require the ability to move
consumers, materials or commodities rapidly.
Mobility of ideas and human resources is even
more important. Song China was able to move
commodities rapidly because of better nautical
technology (the compass and movable rudder),
better roads, and a more rational
administration. Ideas circulated rapidly
because of paper, printing and private
publishers. Talent was valued above birth in
the assignment of social roles, ensuring greater
social mobility. All these developments laid the
foundation for more modern forms of social
practice, first in China and later in the West as
Europeans learned of China’s pioneering
innovations.
One product of enhanced mobility was a
lively art market offering a range of styles and
genres for buyers from different walks of life,
including women. This made it possible for
ordinary people to fashion an individual
persona by displaying personal art – decorated
silk or paper fans, calligraphy, paintings,
ceramics or antiques – reflecting the values
they embraced. Art histories of the period
reveal how men of plebeian background gained
social access by acquiring fine-art collections.
Private scholars, such as the poetess Li
Qingzhao and her husband, built collections of
national renown. The imperial collection
became but one among many, with private
collections influencing the taste of the court.
Eventually, in deference to scholarly values, the
royal academy, formerly under the Privy
Treasury, was placed under the state, with its
own faculty, curriculum and academic degrees.
Critics of the period distinguished
mainstream work by court and professional
artists from the art of nonconformist painters.
The former worked in naturalistic styles
permitting artists to portray bamboo, insect
bodies or the technology of ships in
135˚
30˚
120˚105˚
Laizhou
Qingzhou
Weizhou
Haizhou
Hangzhou
Zhendingfu
Dingzhou
Kaifeng
Ruzhou
DamingfuTaiyuan
YingtianfuChenliu
Jiangningfu
Chuzhou
Jingzhaofu
Qinzhou
Kuizhou
Xiangzhou
Shouzhou
Zizhou
Jianglingfu
Ezhou
Guangzhou
Mingzhou
Shaoxingfu
Yangzhou
Xingyuanfu
Chengdu
Tanzhou
Hongzhou
Fuzhou
Dunhuang Yulin
Maijishan
Yan’an
Tong’an Quanzhou
Dengzhou
Mizhou
Yizhou
Zibo
Jinan
Bazhou
Shanzhou
Yunzhou
Dizhou
Cizhou
Junzhou
Wuji
Shucheng
Hanzhou
Meizhou
Shuzhou
Fuzhou
Liulichang
Ningzhou
Fengzhou
Shanzhou
Hezhongfu
Caizhou
Shangjing
Gangwayao
Xicun
Tengxian
Yongfu
Qiongzhou
Chaozhou
Dehua
Anxi
Nan’an
Putian
Wuzhou
Jingdezhen Longquan
Yuezhou
Shaoxin
Wenzhou
Lishui
Lianjiang
Meizhou
Yaozhou
Luoyang
Jiexiu
Dazu
Mekong
Salween
Xi Jiang
Yangtze
Yellow River
S O U T H
C H I NA
S E A
E A S T
C H I N A
S E A
Y E L L O W
S E A
BO
HAI
GULF OF
TONGKING
HIMALAYAS
K U N L U N M T S
QILIAN SHAN
ALTUN SHAN
X I A
D A L I
T I B E TA N S
HAINAN
TAIWAN
C H I N A
K O R Y O
J A PA N
silk
quality printing, silk, ceramics,
currency, books, lacquerware
quality printing,
silk, ceramics,
currency, books,
lacquerware
fans, pearls, gold,
mercury, chemicals,
medicine
silk, ceramics,
currency, books,
lacquerware
aromatics,
luxury goods,
medicine
silk, ceramics,
paper
education
silk and paper
silk and paper
silkandpaper
education
students
precious
metals
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
2 Art, Publishing and Trade in Song China, 960-1268
border of Song China
boundary between Southern Song and Jin, post-1127
Grand Canal
major roads
capital city
provincial city
centre for religious art
silk production
major kilns
paper production
commercial print centre
high-quality printing centre
large-scale government publishing
important private art collection
exports
imports
peoplesXIA
2 THE RISE OF PRINT CULTURE in the eleventh century
made paper a major commodity, but it was also the
preferred medium for works by literati masters. An
active market for porcelain encouraged a great
variety of wares for display and ordinary uses. Art
collecting spread to the broader populace, and
regional styles evolved
that were independent of courtly taste. In general,
naturalistic styles were favoured, to the extent that
even Buddhist images appear more human and
worldly than their Tang predecessors.
astonishing detail. The latter set themselves in
opposition to established styles, either
adopting a wild, bohemian approach or an
intellectualized rebellion against courtly taste.
Among the latter, the most influential were
known as wenren or ‘literati’. Some literati
championed greater recognition for women
artists, and so women first appear in formal art
MONK MENDING CLOTHING. Near life-sized clay
sculpture, c. twelfth century, Lingyansi Temple,
Shandong. One of 40 clay statues of famous monks,
this work exemplifies Song naturalism.
The monk is shown as fully human, mending his
clothing with a look of puzzlement and wonder.
His parted lips and expression of deep thought
suggest he may be undergoing enlightenment
while pursuing ordinary tasks, as is described in
Chan (Zen) anecdotes of the period.
historical writings at this time. The literatus Su
Shi (1036–1101) exemplifies the new styles of
social practice. Son of a clerk, Su won first
place in the national examinations, after which
his answers were printed and sold as models.
His published poems criticized unjust policies,
and he was framed and exiled by political
enemies. Although formally a criminal, public
opinion treated him as a hero, and Su’s
publications continued to influence political
sentiment and artistic taste. While in exile he
remained a social activist, organizing trust
funds for the needy. As an artist and critic he
laid the foundations for literati criticism with
its stress on personal expression, originality
and integrity over naturalism and finish.
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
136
THE TRANSITION FROM Tang society
(618–907) to Song society (960–1268) was a
watershed in world history. Tang China shared
much in common with late Medieval and early
Renaissance Europe. Political authority was
dominated by a hereditary, military aristocracy
and serfdom was common. The Buddhist
authorities bolstered the power of the nobility
and assumed charge of education, hospitals
and charity. There was no clear distinction
between the royal budget and the state budget,
and formal checks on central authority were
weak. Many artists worked in the service of the
religious authorities or nobility on large
architectural projects such as palace and
temple sculpture or murals, with the nobility
competing for the services of the greatest
masters. An artistic canon was evolving and the
notion of ‘genius’ was well-developed, but it
was the courts and their intellectuals which
determined standards of taste.
THE NEW EGALITARIANISM
By the eleventh century, however, educated
men of almost any background could acquire
positions of authority through egalitarian
examinations and performance in office. The
nobility had lost most of its fiscal and political
privileges, while private and public schools
overtook monastic schools as centres of
education. The state assumed responsibility for
welfare, and most farmers were either
freeholders or tenants. The state was separate
sold their work through restaurants or painting
galleries, while others sold out of their studios.
Private publishers provided outlets for nonestablishment
views, while the state supported
major publishing projects such as the
ambitious, 1000-chapter Taiping Yulan
encyclopedia (published in 982). Printing also
encouraged a lively literature on art, with critics
aiming to influence public opinion (gonglun). In
other words, Song social practice incorporated
many phenomena associated with more
modern times.
CHINA 600-1300
135˚120˚105˚
30˚
Chang’an
JizhouYouzhou
Cangzhou
Dengzhou
QingzhouXiangzhou
Taiyuan
Puzhou
Liangzhou
Luoyang
Songzhou
Yangzhou
Runzhou
Suzhou
Xuanzhou
Hangzhou
Wuzhou
Hongzhou
Changsha
Yizhou
Qianzhou
Guangzhou
Fuzhou
Bianzhou
Wutaishan
Binxian
Tianlongshan
Longmen
Guangyuan
Dunhuang
Shazhou
Huaizhou
Caozhou
Bozhou
Sizhou
Yuezhou
Mianzhou
Shouzhou
Dingzhou
Weizhou
Hunyuan Xingzhou
Tongchuan
Gongxian
Shanzhou
Shuzhou
Qiongzhou
Xiangzhou
Tanzhou
Yellow River
Yangtze
Xi Jiang
Mekong
Salween
S O U T H
C H I N A
S E A
E A S T
C H I N A
S E A
Y E L L O W
S E A
BO
HAI
GULF OF
TONGKING
QILIAN SHAN
ALTUN SHAN
HIMALAYAS
K U N L U N M T S
TA R I M BA S I N
TAKLA MAKAN DESERT T U R K S (to 744)
T I B E TA N S
U I G H U R S
(replace Turks from 745)
HAINAN
TAIWAN
PA R H A E
S I L L A
P Y U
A N X I
P R O T E C T O R AT E
N A N Z H A O
C H I N A
J A PA Neducation,
ceramics,
sculpture,
silk
aromatics,
turtle shells, skins,
bamboo,
wood, rattan,
precious metals
ceramics, silk,
administrative
expertise
precious metals
silk
ceramics
aromatics, medicines,
wood
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
Major Art Production Sites in
Tang China, 618-907
borders of the Tang Empire, 618-907
Grand Canal
major roads
capital city
provincial city
centre for religious art
silk production
major kilns
exports
imports
peoples
1
Turks
1 DURING THE TANG DYNASTY it was common for
the nobility to donate monumental sculpture and
murals for newly constructed Buddhist temples.
Many such testaments to devotion exist even today
at cave temple sites throughout China. Ceramics
and porcelain enriched the daily lives of nobility
and officials, and adorned their tombs as well. The
upper classes collected paintings and calligraphy,
but most paintings from the period have not
survived.
ATTRIBUTED TO QIAO ZHONGCHANG (after Su Shi), Latter
Prose-poem on the Red Cliff, handscroll, ink on
paper, detail showing a pond and rocks. Critics said
of Su Shi’s painting that ‘the texture strokes on
rocks were... original and bizarre, just like the
pent-up twistings in his heart’. Qiao’s painting, a
homage to Su’s poetry, echoes these values,
rejecting the deep space and subtle shading of
courtly painting in favour of a style that flattens
and distorts for expressive effect, with every stroke
of the brush visible.
from the court in budget and administration,
and major resources were invested in providing
checks on abuses of power.
Paper production had become big
business. By 1000 Hunan paper-makers were
producing 1.78 million sheets for official use
annually, while Huizhou produced 500,000
sheets for paper money, all this in addition to
commercial products, ranging from toilet paper
and fans to paper for books, painting and
calligraphy. Artists produced for an open
market – some accepted commissions, some
CHINA AND TIBET 1300–1500
139
The decorative arts produced in China
under Mongol rule reflect the variety of
influences available to artisans through a
nearly global range of cultural contacts.
Ceramics and lacquerware began to include a
number of Islamic ornaments, including the
mihrab shape; ceramic production began to rely
heavily on the use of cobalt, mined in Persia,
for underglaze and overglaze decoration. The
export of ceramics and silk was also a major
source of revenue for individuals and for the
government; finds of ceramics and textiles from
sunken cargo ships extend through much of
Southeast Asia. Sculpture was influenced by
Mongol patronage of Tibetan Buddhism, which
led to the production of Tibetan Buddhist
images in many parts of China.
COURTLY ART
The Yuan court patronized a great diversity of
pictorial objects, from portrait tapestry of
Mongol origin to Chinese-style painting. Unlike
the Chinese, who restricted the role and
visibility of women, Mongol princesses were
given income-earning fiefs. One of the greatest
painting collectors of the era was the Mongol
princess Sengge Ragi (c.1283–1331), who
collected canonical masterpieces of Chinese
painting. Her approximate contemporary Guan
Daosheng (1262–1319), a renowned painter of
bamboo and the wife of the prime minister, the
painter and painting theorist Zhao Mengfu
(1254–1322), was less sequestered than most
women of the gentry at this time, consorting
with her husband’s coterie of artist friends.
Although a wide variety of pictorial practices
existed under Mongol rule, the best-known,
documented practitioners of painting were
men from southeastern China like Zhao
Mengfu, many of whom painted works that they
2 ARTISTIC PRODUCTION IN CHINA during the Yuan and
early Ming dynasties was permeated by global
contacts, including those made during the
expeditions of Zheng He. Influences ranged from
people and objects as diverse as Franciscan
missionaries and their paintings on cloth, Inner
Asian Buddhist monks and their devotional objects,
and animal and material specimens brought from
as far away as the East African coast.
150˚135˚120˚105˚90˚75˚60˚45˚30˚15˚
0˚
15˚
30˚
60˚
15˚
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
I N D I A N O C E A N
Java
Borneo
Sicily
Japan
Sumatra
A F R I C A
A S I A
EUROPE
I N D I A
A U S T R A L I A
C H I N A
Mogadishu
Rome
Alexandria
Venice
Jedda
Hormuz
Rostov
Baghdad
Bukhara Samarkand
Mathura
Bombay
Istanbul
Muscat
Calicut
Chittagong
Dunhuang
Xi’an
Luoyang
Pusan
Osaka
Beijing
Shenyang
Guangzhou
Quanzhou
N
0
0
1200 miles
1800 kms
2 China’s Global Contacts, 1300-1500
land routes
maritime routes
Zheng He’s main fleets, 1405-33
Zheng He’s subsidiary fleet, 1405-33
and their associates inscribed with antiMongol
texts. Painting theory of the period
stressed the importance of historical models.
THE INDIGENOUS REVIVAL
During the Yuan and Ming dynasties the visual
arts were practised throughout China’s
provinces and localities, especially in and near
provincial and county seats. Archaeological
evidence suggests that everyday ceramics were
manufactured in local kilns throughout China;
these wares differed qualitatively from those of
empire-wide reputation and distribution.
During the early Ming period the practice of
painting based on the indigenous Chinese
models of the Southern Song court underwent
a widespread revival in southeastern China as
part of a broader rediscovery of native cultural
practices. However, the production of painting
and printing were undertaken throughout
China, with only the highest-quality products
drum tower
Twin Pagodas
of Kaiyuan Si,
founded mid-
8th century,
rebuilt
c.1225-50
administrative
offices/school
JinJiang
to stone Siva
Lingam site
East Gate
to Huabiao Si,
Manichaean
temple
to Lingshan
Muslim tombs
Shengyou Si
960-1279
Muhanmode Si
1279-1368
Qingjing Si
built 1131, rebuilt 1350
Yemenjia Si
Yemenite mosque 1322
Yemenjiao Si
Yemenite
mosque 960-1279
to Wenling,
Song imperial
ancestral temple
Shengyou Si
mosque built
c.960-1279
N
0
0
0.5 miles
1 km
having an empire-wide audience. Under early
Ming rule, the decoration of porcelain
emphasized native Chinese cultural emblems,
rather than imported Islamic ones; sculpture
focused on both indigenous and imported
Tibetan deities.
The period 1300–1500 has been termed a
Tibetan renaissance, during which the Tibetan
Buddhist canon was compiled, edited and
revised; it was subsequently printed in Beijing.
The Muslim conquest of northern India sent
scholars and artists into Nepal as refugees,
reinvigorating Nepalese painting and
sculpture. The transmission of Indo-Nepalese
work to Tibet expanded the stylistic repertoire
of Tibetan art at this time. Tibetan religious
leaders were invited to the Ming court
generating both an exchange of Buddhist
images and texts, as well as of monks,
especially under the auspices of the Yongle
emperor (r.1403–1424).
3 THE MULTI-ETHNIC AND MULTICULTURAL city of
Quanzhou was among the largest port cities of
the world in the fourteenth century. Although
originally rectangularly shaped, with residence
limited to ethnic Chinese, the city walls grew
beyond this plan to include the non-ethnic
Chinese formerly required to live outside the
walls, resulting in its unusual shape.
THE TIBETAN DEITY MAHAKALA was revered by the Mongols,
who believed him to give assistance in battle. This image,
attributed to the school of the Nepalese artist Arniko
(Anige, c.1244–c.1306), is thought to be like those of
Mahakala carried onto the battlefield during the Mongol
conquest of 1279.
3 Quanzhou, 1300-1500
city boundaries:
c.711
c.906
c.964
c.893
c.1352
pre-1937
commercial district
Buddhist temple
mosque
Catholic church
Confucian/Daoist temple
Manichaean temple
Hindu site
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
138
BETWEEN 1300 AND 1500 the significant
political and geographic transformation of
the Chinese empire, including the extension of
its relationship to Tibet, created a tumultuous
but vibrant environment for artistic production.
MONGOL CHINA
The Mongol conquest of China resulted in the
founding of the Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368),
which had close links to Mongol polities across
northern and inner Asia. The Yuan Dynasty
acknowledged its northern origins by building a
new imperial capital, Dadu, in northern China,
at modern Beijing. Although the capital at
Dadu was based on canonical principles of
Chinese urban planning, two other Mongol
capitals at Karakorum
(c.1229–1241) and at Shangdu (begun 1256)
reflect both nomadic and Chinese traditions.
The former capital of Hangzhou continued to
flourish and grow beyond its walls, as did
Quanzhou, China’s pre-eminent port for
maritime trade. Resistance to the Mongols
resulted in their overthrow in 1368 by forces led
by Zhu Yuanzhang (1328–98), a peasant who
became the founding emperor of the Ming
(‘Bright’) Dynasty. The Ming established its first
capital in southern China, at Nanjing, to
reaffirm its ties to native Chinese culture; in
1420 Beijing was proclaimed the sole capital.
CHINA AND TIBET 1300-1500
90˚ 100˚ 110˚ 120˚ 130˚ 140˚ 150˚
40˚
30˚
20˚
10˚
Dadu (Beijing)
Badaling
Shangdu
(Xanadu)
Shanhaiguan
Liaoyang
Ürümqi
Helin (Karakorum)
Lijiang
Chengdu
Qionglai Xian
Jianyang
Shexian
Lhasa
Shigatse
Shalu
Samye
Grathang
Densatil
Dali
Hanoi
Sukhothai
Nanning
Yunnanfu (Kunming)
Yuxi xian
Wuxing
Linru
Mixian
Bianliang
(Kaifeng)
Yu xian
Yaozhou
Fengyuan
(Xi’an)
Ding
Cixian
Jiayuguan
Ganzhou
Dunhuang
Hangzhou
JingdezhenWuchang
Chaozhou
Longxing
(Nanchang)
Longquan
Suzhou
Yangzhou
Nanjing - first Ming capital
Ningbo
Jinhua
Jizhou
Jian
Dehua
Fuzhou
Tong’an
Canton
(Guangzhou)
Quanzhou
Gyantse
Kathmandu
Narthang
Sakya
Lhatse
(Lhazê)
Mustang
Ngor
Tashi Lhunpo
(Zhaxilhüno)
Yalu
YellowRiver
Xi Jiang
Lop Nor
YELLOW
SEA
S O U T H
C H I NA
S E A
S E A
O F
J A PA N
EAST
CHINA
SEA
G
O
B
I
TAKLA MAKAN DESERT
P L A T E A U
O F T I B E T
H
I
M
A
L
A
Y
A
S
A
L
T
A
I
M
T S
QILIAN SHAN
TIEN
SHAN
TAIWAN
ZHONGSHU
H E N A N
SHAANXI
Y U N N A N
JIANGZHES I C H U A N
C H A H E TA I
JIANGXI
H U G U A N G
XUANZHENGYUAN
G A N S U
HAMILI, BEITING,
AND
HALAHUOZHOU
L I N G B E I
L I A O Y A N G
HAINAN
K
O
R
E
A
M O N G O L I A
C H I N A
T I B E T
K A S H M I R
I N D I A
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 Visual Production, 1300-1500
border of China under Mongol rule,
1279-1368
provincial boundary, c.1300
border of China under the Ming,
1368-1500
successive capitals
provincial capitals in
Yuan China, c.1330
capitals of lu with more than
100,000 inhabitants
Mongol imperial capitals
Great Wall, 15th century
Grand Canal
important kiln site
major centre of textile production
major painting centre
major printing centre
important Tibetan art centre
AFTER THE FALL OF MONGOL RULE
in 1368, the Ming imperium
articulated new aesthetic
preferences in ceramic
production, the effect of which
was felt beyond the court.
While the Ming imperial family
patronized wares with red glazes
and with red underglaze
painting, their patronage of
underglaze blue and white
ceramics, such as the Xuande era
(1426–35) flask from Jingdezhen
shown here, promoted native
Chinese traditions of pictorial
representation as ceramic
decoration.
1 UNDER MONGOL RULE, China
became more politically and
culturally integrated with North
and Central Asia. Although this
period has traditionally been
viewed as one in which the
Chinese literary elite retreated
from the advance of Mongol
culture, this was, in fact, a vibrant
and multicultural era. For the
Chinese literati, whose records
dominate our knowledge of the
period, the southeast remained
the cultural centre of the empire,
as evidenced by the concentration
of famous kilns and painting
centres in that part of China.
JAPAN AND KOREA 600–1500
141
TALE OF GENJI SCROLL, ink and
colours on paper, by court
artists in Kyoto, Japan,
twelfth century. The
monumental narrative of the
‘Tale of Genji’, written by the
court lady Murasaki Shikibu
(c.1000) is often described as
the world’s first novel. The
54 chapters describing three
generations of Kyoto
aritoscrats have been
illustrated by painters,
printmakers, fabric designers
and other artists for over
1000 years, including
twentieth-century manga
and anime (comic strip)
illustrators. This example is
taken from the earliest
extant handscroll depiciting
Genji scenes.
129˚ 132˚ 135˚
34˚
Yamaguchi
Okayama
Nara
Kyoto
Horyu-ji
Negoroji
Ise
Hakata
(Fukuoka)
L.BiwaE A S T
S E A
E A S T
C H I N A
S E A
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
K Y U S H U
S H I K O K U
H O N S H U
J A P A N
K O R E A
Mt
Koya
Mt Hiei
10th-16th c
7th-10th
c
N
0
0
80 miles
120 kms
2 The Japanese Heartland, 600-1500
Chinese culture and Buddhist arts,
7th-9th c/trade with China 8th-15th c
artists fleeing civil war in Kyoto, 15th c
religious pilgrimages
movement of Korean culture
lacquerware
kiln sites
paintings, Buddhist and secular
sculpture, Buddhist and secular
calligraphy
papermaking
textiles
furniture
metalwork
armour
and in the fifteenth century white porcelain ware
became widespread in the peninsula. Lacquered
objects included ritual vessels and statuary as
well as daily utensils, since neither Korea nor
Japan produced glass during this period. Most
metalwork was small in scale and was used for
religious objects, swords or horse trappings.
ART AND SOCIETY
The political consolidations of the seventh
century led to the development of urban centres.
Kyongju became the capital of the Korean state
of Unified Silla in the seventh century; in Japan.
Nara (called Heijokyo) was founded in the
eighth century, and Kyoto (called Heiankyo) in
the ninth century. These cities followed the
pattern of Tang China’s imperial capital,
Chang’an. They were laid out in a grid pattern of
streets and densely populated residential areas.
Large Buddhist temples, government buildings
and imperial palaces and gardens were closely
modelled on Chinese examples and furnished
with imported goods or locally produced artwork
that copied Chinese-style paintings, sculpture,
metalwork, textiles and ceramics. The Shosoin
imperial repository in Nara has survived as a
time-capsule containing luxury goods from the
time of Emperor Shomu (r.724–49), with items
from Persia, Central Asia and China clearly
demonstrating the extent of international trade
along the Silk Road. By the tenth century,
however, Korea and Japan had begun to change
these imported traditions, establishing
distinctive styles and artistic production lineages.
In 918 the Koryo Dynasty replaced
declining Silla leadership in Korea and
relocated the capital to Kaesong, which
became the new cultural centre for the
peninsula until 1394. Buddhism continued to
flourish in Korea, with the construction of
extensive temple compounds and the
production of printed and illustrated sutras. A
new sect of distinctly Korean Buddhism was
established by the monk Chinul (1158–1210),
and in 1234 movable metal type was first used
to print Buddhist texts.
During the tenth century, the Japanese
aristocracy developed an elaborate court
culture (now considered a ‘classic’ age) with
new aesthetic concepts that would influence
2 MOST OF JAPAN’S TRADE with China and Korea
flowed through the Inland Sea to the urban centres
of Kyoto and Nara. These imperial capitals
imported continental arts and also produced
objects for use by aristocrats, as well as the
Buddhist temples which were located in, and near,
these cultural centres.
Japanese arts for the next 1000 years. While
Kyoto remained the imperial capital from 794 to
1868, Kamakura and Hiraizumi emerged in the
late twelfth century as political and cultural
centres in the eastern provinces of Japan.
INDEPENDENT TRADITIONS
Due to political unrest in China, Korea and
Japan both reduced their contacts with the
mainland from the eleventh century, resulting
in artistic developments that were independent
of Chinese traditions. Distinctive ceramic
techniques and forms, for example twelfthcentury
inlaid celadons, evolved in Korea. New
calligraphy and painting styles were created in
Japan. While temple and palace architecture in
both countries continued to follow Chinese
prototypes, different types of secular residential
buildings were constructed that better suited
their climates and lifestyles. Sculptural
production in both countries was still closely
associated with Buddhism, but now hereditary
workshops independent of the temples
developed in Japan with particular artistic
styles maintained over many generations.
In 1392 the Yi (Choson) Dynasty was
established in Korea, and the capital was
moved to Seoul two years later. A gradual shift
of artistic patronage from Buddhist temples to
imperial court and Neo-Confucian institutions
followed. Also in 1392, recent political turmoil
in Japan was resolved with Kyoto resuming its
place as the political and cultural centre under
the Ashikaga military dictatorship.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries China again influenced artistic
production in Korea and Japan, especially in
architecture and painting. Trade missions
carried goods among various ports in East
Asia, with both raw materials and finished
artworks being imported and exported. Japan
sent gold and gold-leafed paintings to China
and Korea, while Korea traded gold, silver,
paper, ink sticks and fan paintings to China for
textiles, porcelains, books and musical
instruments. Japanese Zen temples were
sending monks to study in China and to bring
back Chinese paintings, ceramics and lacquerware,
much of which became associated with
the social rituals of the tea ceremony.
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
140
with either thin fine lines or thicker modulated
brushwork. Calligraphy was considered a major
art form, and a close relationship between
image and text is found in both religious and
secular paintings.
Buddhist sculptures, executed in a variety
of media, followed Chinese models. Extant
examples of non-Buddhist sculpture are rare,
although in Japan some Shinto deities were
depicted as court figures and some portrait
statues were made for memorial services. Some
stylized images of deer, dogs, or ‘Chinese lions’
in wood or stone have also survived.
Furniture was primarily low tables and
cabinets, for both Koreans and Japanese sat on
the floor in private and public buildings.
Textiles included both cotton and silk, used for
clothing and interior decorations in residential
and government buildings. Glazed and
unglazed ceramics were locally produced;
imported Chinese ceramics were highly prized
and copied. In the eleventh century distinctive
pale green celadon wares were first produced
in Korea for court and Buddhist temple use,
plastered walls and raised flooring (often
surfaced with tile, dressed stone or polished
wood), were used for government-sponsored
structures, such as palaces and Buddhist
temples. Less important buildings were also
post and beam structures, built to withstand
earthquakes, although roofed with lighterweight
materials like reeds or thatch.
Paintings followed Chinese prototypes,
using ink and/or mineral pigments on silk or
paper, which was then mounted in album, hand
scroll or hanging-scroll formats. Within
compositions, images were commonly outlined
JAPAN AND KOREA 600-1500
140˚
30˚
130˚
40˚
AINU HUNTERGATHERER
CULTURE
AINU
HUNTER-
GATHERER
CULTURE
AINU
HUNTER-
GATHERER
CULTURESeoul
(14th-16th c)
Kaesong
(10th-14th c)
Kyongju
Hakata
Nara
Kamakura
Hiraizumi
Ise
Kyoto
Echizen
Seto
Waifu
Yamaguchi
Okayama
Gifu
Wakamatsu
SanageBizen
Kanazawa
Inuyama
Odawara
Tokoname
Shigaraki
Iga
Matsumoto
Tamba
Sakai
Negoroji
Nam-gang
Han-g
ang
Posong-gang
Yello
w
Rive
r
Tu
men
Ya
lu
Amur
C h’ongch’on-gang
L.Biwa
E A S T
S E A
S E A O F
O K H O T S K
E A S T
C H I N A
S E A
Y E L L O W
S E A
KOREA
BAY
BO HAI
P
A
C
I
F
I
C
O
C
E
A
N
KOREA
STRAIT
Mt
Fuji
Mt Koya
Y E Z O
KYUSHU
SHIKOKU
H O N S H U
RY
U
K
YU
IS
O S U
M
I
IS
C H I N A
JAPAN
K O R E A
M A N C H U R I A
Silla 668-918
Koryo 918-1392
Choson 1392-1910
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
1 Japan and Korea, 600-1500
frontier of Japan, c.600
frontier of Japan, c.800
frontier of Japan, c.1000
Chinese culture and Buddhist arts, 7th-9th c
Chinese culture and Buddhist arts, 8th-15th c
Indian Buddhist arts, 8th c
pottery kilns
Koryo kiln sites
lacquerware
papermaking
furniture, fine textiles
metalwork
paintings, Buddhist and secular
Buddhist sculpture
calligraphy
book-printing centres
major surviving castles, pre-Edo period
BY THE EIGHTH CENTURY both Korea and
Japan had direct, though limited, contacts
with China and India. All art forms were
influenced by continental models, but from
the ninth to twelfth centuries Japan developed
distinctly different art forms (kana calligraphy,
yamato-e scroll painting, and Shinto arts), while
Korea created a culture that refined and altered
Chinese prototypes.
MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
In architecture, Chinese-style post-and-beam
wooden structures, with clay tile roofs,
1 FROM THE SEVENTH CENTURY onwards, both Japan
and Korea absorbed artistic influences from China,
Central Asia and India, especially in Buddhist arts.
Court culture in both countries was modelled on
Chinese examples, although distinctive regional
tastes and styles evolved. During periods of
political unrest, such as the eleventh century, there
was a tendency for more independent traditions to
evolve in both Japan and Korea. Artistic
production and patronage in Japan centered on
the Kansai area (Nara and Kyoto) of the main
island, while Korean cities developed along the
coasts (Kyongju and Seoul).
SEATED BUDDHA, with
Bodhisattvas and guardian
figures, Sokkuram Cave, near
Kyongju, Korea, c.751–74.
Buddhist sculpture in Korea and
Japan was modelled after
Chinese and Indian examples,
which were either imported
statues or iconographic
drawings, reflecting
international artistic styles.
Images were created
in a variety of media – carved
stone (as in this example) or
wood, polychromed clay or
lacquer on wood structures, or
cast bronze and iron. The
idealized forms of these deities
followed a strict iconography,
but the facial features and
clothing often reflected
regional styles.
SOUTHEAST ASIA 600–1500
143
130˚
0˚
10˚
120˚110˚100˚
Pasai
Aceh
Trengganu
Pattani
Perlak (Marco Polo, 1292)
Samudra
(Ibn Battuta, 1341)
Tomb of Sultan Malik Al-Saleh (1297)
(Chen Ho, 1490,
Don Afonse de
Albuquerque, 1510)
Pedir
(Ludovico di
Varthema, c. 1506)
Malacca
Cirebon
Kutai
Demak
Great Mosque of
Demak (1477)
Tomb of Sunan
Kalijaga
(c. 1460)
(1549)
Sunan Muria
Sunan Ampel
Tomb of Sunan
Bayat (1530s)
Sunan Gunungiati
Aceh Sultan
(1421)
Tomb of Sunan Giri
Syekh Maghribi (1419)
Sunan Kudus
Sunan Bonang
(1525)
(c. 1525)
Sunan Giri
Sunan Drajat
First Mosque
on Ambon
(1405?)
Macassar
Buton
Brunei
Sulu
Tidore
Banjarmasin
Gresik
Banten
(1479)
(1550)
B O R N E O
S
U
M
A
T
R
A
P H I L I P P I N E S
I N D O N E S I A
MALAY
PENINSULA
JAVA BALI
LOMBOK
SUMBAWA
SULAWESI
SUMBA
FLORES
TIM
O
R
BURU
SERAM
SULU ARCHIPELAGO
HALMAHERA
TIDORE
BACAN
TERNATE
BANJARMASIN
ARU
ACEH
KUTAI
JAILOLO
BA N DA
S E A
T
IM
O
R
S
E
A
M
OLUCCASSEA
ANDAMAN
SEA
STRAITOFMALACC
A
JAVA SEA
C E L E B E S
S E A
From
India
earliest evidence of Islam on Java, 11021410
1480
1530
1530
1580
1605
1525
1525
1460
1460
1460
1500
1303?
1410
1290
1520
1400 (14th century)
(16th century)
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
2 ISLAM BEGAN TO MAKE INROADS in coastal Southeast
Asia in the thirteenth century. Court art preserved
many Hindu influences, but in the coastal trading
cities figurative art forms were displaced by
geometric and calligraphic decorative principles. By
1500 Malacca had become the most important of
these trading polities in the entire Malay
Archipelago, controlling the trade with China,
Vietnam, the Islamic sultanates in the Spice Islands,
Siam, India and the Arab world. It dominated Asian
commerce and rivalled, and perhaps surpassed, the
supremacy of Venice and other European ports.
WAYANG KULIT SHADOW PUPPET from Java, in leather,
wood and paint, thought to be the hero Aruna.
The wayang kulit style of puppetry was at its peak
in the northern coastal region of Java in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Performances
based on the Hindu epic Mahabharata lasted
through the night.
state. Srivijaya therefore left few architectural
monuments to its past greatness in Sumatra,
although numerous inscriptions and smaller
monuments have been identified that
demonstrate both the Indian character of the
state and its economic might.
In the eighth century the Sailendra dynasty
established itself as a ruling class and
expanded the kingdom’s influence into central
Java. Here a succession of rulers established
their courts and built temples that served
simultaneously as Hindu temples and as cult
shrines to the king’s ancestors. With their rich
agrarian base in central Java, the Sailendras
initiated an ambitious building programme
that involved construction of dozens of Hindu
temples, or candi. For example, from about 680
to 780 they built a complex of some 40
towering stone candi on the Dieng plateau.
Most temples had statues of Shiva or other
Hindu gods.
In about 775 some of the Sailendra rulers
accepted Buddhism, which became the state
religion. They transformed several earlier
stone or brick Hindu temples into Buddhist
shrines. The best-known of these is
Borobudur, which consists of a series of
ascending galleries and stupas, capped by a
hollow temple symbolizing nirvana. This
cosmological model of Buddhist religion was
adopted for other Southeast Asian stupas –
for example at Pagan in Burma.
During the Hindu renaissance after 832,
Javanese rulers moved their capital to another
site in central Java and continued to pursue an
active temple-building programme. The largest
and most important of these was the
Prambanan temple complex. In the tenth
century the Javanese monarchs moved their
seat of power to eastern Java. This kingdom
became known as Majapahit and established
its royal palace, or kraton, on the Brantas River
delta. This location offered Majapahit an
opportunity to control both its agrarian base as
well as inter-island trade, which it expanded
from the tenth century.
The late eighth century saw the florescence
of the Khmer Empire in Cambodia, with its
political, economic and religious centre at
Angkor. Khmer religion became a blend of an
indigenous cult of ancestor worship and Hindu
religious forms that bestowed magical and
divine power on the monarch. The most
important of the Khmer temple complexes was
at Angkor Wat, started in the ninth century by
Yasovarman, but periodically expanded by
subsequent kings. Some rulers accepted
Buddhism and built a Buddhist shrine, but
many of these were reconfigured as Hindu
shrines when a Hindu leader came to power.
The arts flourished under successful leadership,
2 The Rise of Islam in the
Malay Archipelago,
1100-1550
extent of Majapahit’s
control in 1400
Malacca at its greatest
territorial extent, 1488
sphere of Ternate’s
influence, 16th century
areas converted to Islam
by 1450
areas converted to Islam
by 1550
main routes for the
spread of Islam
Dates of conversion to Islam
important mosques
important Muslim tombs
important foreign visitors who
witnessed process of
Islamization
1297
a fact that is nowhere as visible as with the
kingdom’s grandiose architecture. But after
1400 the Angkor empire disintegrated and the
temple complex at Angkor Wat was abandoned.
THE RISE OF ISLAM
By the thirteenth century Islam had made
inroads in many coastal commercial centres in
the Malay Archipelago, including Malacca on
the Malay Peninsula, and a series of port
communities on the north coast of Java. In the
next two centuries, Islam expanded as far east
as the two competing sultanates of Ternate
and Tidore in the Moluccas. These eastern
sultanates could mount fleets of more than
200 ships, which they used to control their own
part of the lucrative inter-island trade. The
Hindu empire of Majapahit ultimately
collapsed under the economic competition
with the Islamic communities on the north
coast of Java, and with this power-shift both art
and architecture in Java changed. Art at the
kraton would once again become a syncretic
blend that represented a mix of the new
religion and the old, while in the coastal cities
art took on much more Islamic forms.
In 1509 the Portuguese fleet reached
Malacca, immediately recognizing the city’s
wealth and economic potential. Portuguese
influence expanded into India and Southeast
Asia; Malacca was seized in 1511. This shift of
power in Malacca would have a gradual but
profound impact on economics, religion and
art throughout the Malay Archipelago.
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
142
IN THE MILLENNIUM after 600 Southeast
Asia was transformed by the rise of Hindu
and Buddhist kingdoms, as well as by the rise
of Islam, which found its first converts at the
north end of Sumatra during the eleventh and
twelfth centuries. From this humble beginning
Islam gradually moved through the archipelago
and the Malay peninsula, transforming the
highly figurative art tradition whose inspiration
was from India into much more geometric
forms that blended indigenous themes
syncretically with Muslim ones.
THE HINDU STATES
In the early seventh century the maritime
empire of Srivijaya emerged as a major
economic and political force in insular
Southeast Asia. In many respects it was an
Indic state that used Sanskrit, Hindu forms of
ritual, and an Indian style of government.
Originally, the centre of Srivijaya’s political and
economic power was in Sumatra, but this
kingdom had no single capital city. It operated
more as a federation of trading ports on the
fringes of large forests rather than a centralized
SOUTHEAST ASIA 600-1500
10°
120°
120˚110˚100˚90˚80˚30˚
20˚
10˚
0˚
Pagan (849) (post-1287)
Pegu
(825)
Chiengmai
Sukhothai (13th century)
Palembang
(Srivijaya)
Jambi (Malayu)
Singhasari
Kutai
Nakhon
Pathom
Angkor
Gua Gajah (11th century)
Gunung Kawi (late 11th century)
Mauro Takus (11th-12th century)
Angkor Wat (12th century)
Preah Koh (9th century)
Mison
Yasodharapura (9th century)
Kulen (8th century)
Phimai (11th century)
Phra Prang Sam Yot
Indrapura
I N D I A
C H I N A
SUMATRA
B O R N E O
E A S T I N D I E S
PH
ILIPPIN
ES
CEYLON
M
ALAY
PENINSULA
PAGAN
CHAMPA
N A M V I E T
FORMOSA
LUZON
M
O
LU
CCA
S
SULAWESI
(CELEBES)
FLORES
SUMBAWA
SUMBA
KHMER EMPIRE
BALI
LOMBOK
HAINAN
PALAWAN
TIMOR
NORTH
SUMATRA
WEST
SUMATRA
WEST
JAVA EAST
JAVA
CENTRAL
JAVA
Irrawaddy
Salween
Red
River
Mek
ong
ChaoPhraya
I N D I A N
O C E A N
GULF
OF
THAILAND
J AVA S E A F L O R E S S E A
C E L E B E S
S E A
S U L U
S E A
S O U T H
C H I NA
S E A
GULFOF
TONGKING
BA N DA
S E A
T I M O R
S E A
ARAFURA
SEA
BAY O F
B E N G A L
STRAIT
O
F M
ALACCA
ANDAMAN
SEA
To India
To China
To China
To eastern Indonesia
To India
To Europe
To Thailand
Muslim traders from
India and Arabia
(11th century onwards)
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 The Rise of Indianized
States, 700-1400
eastern limits of HinduBuddhist
state formation
eastern limits of HinduBuddhist
cultural influence
centres for the dissemination
of Hindu-Buddhist art,
religion and culture
Hindu temple sites
Buddhist temple sites
main centres of power
extent of Srivijaya‘s influence
in the 8th century
Khmer Empire
Pagan
areas under Majapahit‘s
dominance, c.1350
areas under Majapahit naval
control, c.1350
international trade networks,
7th century
trade routes active during the
Majapahit period
(10th-14th centuries)
INSET
Kalasan Sukuh
(1430)
Ceta
Ngawen
(900)
Piaosan (9th century)
Gedong Songo
Prambanan
(9th century)
(1470)
(778)
Borobudur
Yogyakarta
(790)
(850) Medut
(850) Pawon
Dieng Complex (8th century)(8th century)
Pantaran
(1369)
Selamangleng (11th century)
Singhasari (12th century)
Kedaton (14th century)
Jago (13th century)
Kidal
(13th century)
J A V A
1 FROM THE SEVENTH CENTURY the highly figurative arts
of the state of Srivijaya, based in Sumatra,
reflected a blend of Hinduism and local ancestor
cults. Rulers in the Sailendra dynasty shifted the
focus of Srivijaya to Java after 700, where in the
latter part of the century they made Buddhism
the state religion and transformed earlier
Hindu temples into Buddhist shrines, including
Borobudur. A Hindu renaissance after 832 was
centred on Prambanan in central Java, then in the
tenth century on the eastern Javan kingdom that
became known as Majapahit. The Khmer Empire of
Cambodia saw a parallel blend of ancestor cult and
Hinduism in competition with Buddhism.
BOROBUDUR IN JAVA IS STILL THE LARGEST Buddhist stupa ever built. This colossal
mountain of stone contains 1500 bas-reliefs and niches for more than 400 statues
of the Buddha arranged in six ascending tiers. These panels depict the progression
of the Buddha from depravity to enlightenment. Each gallery is faced with
exterior and interior reliefs. The base is more than 120 metres (390 ft) along each
side and the structure stands about 35 metres (115 ft) above the base.
THE PACIFIC 600–1500
145
hierarchies, with hereditary chiefs and a system
of ranked clans. Micronesian elites sponsored
elaborate architectural projects, fortification
and religious centres. Many of these contained
carved stone statues and other megaliths.
In Palau, construction of elaborate terraces
began in many sites starting around 500 and
continued until 1400. Great carved faces and
other megaliths are poorly dated in Palau, but
probably belong to this period. On Yap in the
western Carolines, local elites extended their
political control around 1400 to form an empire
that extracted tribute from islanders on the
smaller atolls under their control. Local elites
competed over the ownership of the most
remarkable stone money in the world – huge
stone disks with holes at their centre. On Guam
and several of the other Mariana Islands clans
erected houses on stone columns (latte).
POLYNESIAN HIERARCHIES
But while Melanesia was diversifying into many
hundreds of distinctive cultural traditions,
Polynesians were developing stratified
societies headed by hereditary chiefs, nobles
and priests. Before 1500, none of the larger
islands had a single chief, king or other
centralized political authority. As a result, on
most of the larger island groups, artistic
traditions typically celebrated local deities and
ancestors. During this period art became more
dramatic, with larger stone and wood
sculpture. These sculptures and the temple
complexes in which they were erected generally
provide a cosmological map that
metaphorically paralleled the sociopolitical
structure of individual societies.
Social stratification brought competition
among chiefly families, which often broke out
into warfare between districts. Stratification
also brought with it major building projects for
temples (heiau) in the Hawaiian Islands, with
large wooden sculptures representing local
deities. Each of the main islands seems to have
developed its own local style of carving, most
examples of which were destroyed by
A
A
A
A A
A
A
A
A
Ahu 'Akivi
1300
Rano Raraku 1200
Ahu Naunau 1200
'Orongo Ahu Vinapu
Ahu Akahanga
Ahu Tongariki
Ahu Te Pito Kura
Ana o Keke
Poike Ditch
Puna Pau
Ahu Tepeu
Ahu Tahai
Ma'unga Orito
'Orongo 1400
S O U T H
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
RANO
KAO
POIKE
RANO AROI
Ma'unga
Terevaka
Ma'unga Pui
MOTU NUI
MOTU ITI
HANGA ROA
HANGA OETO
OVAHE
MOTU
MAROTIRI
Ceremonial village
Topknot quarry
Statue quarry
N
0
0
2 miles
3 kms
The Megalithic Sculptures
of Easter Island, 1100-1500
quarry
archaeological site
temple platforms (ahu)
2
A
2 THE STATUE CULT that
emerged on Easter
Island about 1100
began with small
statues quarried from
the soft tufa of the
volcano Rano Raraku.
These were transported
to ahu platforms. Over
time, these platforms
became larger and
more elaborate, often
incorporating dressed
basalt and red scoria in
their facings. More
than 324 moai were
completed before
competition between
chiefdoms depleted the
resources of the island,
leading to a social and
economic collapse.
missionaries and Hawaiian converts to
Christianity in the early nineteenth century.
As in the Hawaiian archipelago, the seven
mid-sized islands that make up the Marquesas
were never politically unified. By about 1100
Marquesans began a period of expansion. New
architectural features emerged, including
house platforms of stone, temple foundations,
and rectangular courts that served as dance or
feast centers. It was during this period that
inter-group rivalries intensified. From about
1400 megalithic-style house platforms
frequently incorporated large anthropomorphic
statues. These stone figures had developed
independently from similar carvings in Hawaii,
Easter Island, or New Zealand.
On Rapa Nui (Easter Island) chiefs carved
and erected huge stone figures (moai) set on
temple platforms (ahu). More than 245 ahu
platforms were constructed and 324 moai
were completed before chiefly competition
overtaxed and degraded the environmental
resources of the island leading to the gradual
socio-economic collapse of the society during
the decadent period from about 1500 to 1722 .
Nearly all of the 200 or so unfinished statues
still in the quarries or on the slopes nearby
date to the period around 1500.
In New Zealand, warfare was more
common and chiefly hierarchies were never as
powerful as on most of the other Polynesian
islands. Competition among clans led to the
efflorescence of wood carving. Most Maori
carvings were figurative representations of clan
ancestors that were important in the local
religious traditions, which elsewere in
Polynesia reflected and supported the
intertwined political, social and religious
hierarchies. The beginning of small carved
greenstone figures and pendants (called hei tiki)
dates to this period, largely using greenstone
quarried on the South Island.
MONOLITHIC STATUES
(moai), three of 70
erected at Rano Raraku
Quarry, Easter Island
between about 1000
and 1600. Excavation
reveals that some of
these figures, of which
the heads only are visible
here, stand on paved
platforms, suggesting
that they were to remain
beside the quarry. Others
were intended for
removal to one of about
100 ahu temple
platforms. On each ahu
stood 1–15 moai, facing
inland to a ceremonial
courtyard used in
ancestor worship. The
average height of the
moai, including head
and torso, was 4–5
metres (13–16 ft). The
moai statues became
larger and changed style
over the centuries. Some
had simple, sleek lines;
others were complex
representations of the
ancestors. One style of
moai was capped by
a large, red topknot,
made of a cylinder of red
volcanic tufa.
ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
144
IN THE MILLENNIUM following 600, while
Aboriginal art continued in isolation in
Australia, societies throughout the Pacific
continued to diversify, developing their own
distinctive local cultural and artistic traditions.
Archaeologists, anthropologists and
linguists continue to debate whether the
remarkable Polynesian expansion into
peripheral Polynesia during this period was by
accident or design. Recent interpretations
suggest that, rather than intentionally setting
off to discover new worlds, settlement was by a
complex pattern of drift voyaging. Sophisticated
navigational skills allowed the early Polynesians
to be flexible voyagers, even enabling them to
make occasional contacts between such distant
places as Hawaii and Tahiti that would have
facilitated artistic and cultural interaction.
DIVERSE CULTURES
In Melanesia, more than a thousand different
ethnic groups developed, each speaking a
distinct, mutually unintelligible language.
Little is known of the diverse art traditions that
emerged in Melanesia at this time, but they
reflected the egalitarian nature of these
communities and their political independence.
Everywhere Melanesian art was closely
intertwined with diverse local rituals, dances
and ceremonies, nearly all of which were aimed
at placating ancestral ghosts, local spirits and
minor deities.
In Micronesia cultural and artistic
diversification was less pronounced, in large
part because these tiny coral atolls and small
raised islands established extensive interisland
exchange relations. Throughout
Micronesia communities developed social
THE PACIFIC 600-1500
135˚150˚165˚180˚165˚150˚135˚120˚
45˚
30˚
15˚
0˚
15˚
30˚
45˚
Aitape
Mussua 1000
Palau 500
Palau
Lamotrek
1000
Yap
Nukuoro 800
Kosrae
500
Kapingamarangi
1300
Nan Madol
900
Tuvalu 1100
Tinian Stone columns
Guam Stone columns
Uki 1100
Nendo 1500
Mateone 1400
Vuda Point 900
Wakaya 1350
Mt.Camel 1200
Papatowai 1150
Shag River 1000
Washpool 1200
Wairau Bar
1150 Burial ground
Mauke 1000
Mangaia 1000
Moorea AD 600
Tahuata 750
Easter Island (Rapa Nui) 1000
Easter Island (Rapa Nui) 1100
Henderson I. 900
CHATHAM I.
Mangareva
Ua Huka 100
Hiva Oa 100
Waiahukini 800
Lapakahi
1000
Puako
Petroglyphs
Fanning Island
(Tabuaeran) 660
Anahula 1200
Moloka‘i 600 Pi’ilanihale Heiau
1300 Temple
Kahikinui 1400
Nuku Hiva 700
Nuku Hiva 1500
Huahine 800Maupiti
900
Burial
Rarotonga
1500
Aitutaki 950
Anatom
(Aneityum) 1050
Lakeba 1100
Collingwood Bay
Roviana
Motupore
1200
1000
S O U T H P A C I F I C O C E A N
C O R A L
S E A
ARAFURA SEA
SOLOMON
ISLANDS
TONGA
SAMOA
COOK
ISLANDS
SOCIETY
ISLANDS
H
AW
AIIAN ISLANDS
CAROLINE ISLANDS
MARSHALL
ISLANDS
GILBERT
ISLANDS
KERMADEC
ISLANDS
MARIANAS
ISLANDS
M E L A N
E
S
I
A
M
I
C
R
O
N
E
S
I
A
NEW
HEBREDES
(VANUATU)
EASTER ISLAND
(RAPA NUI)
MARQUESAS
ISLANDS
A U S T R A L I A
NEW
GUINEA
NEW
BRITAIN
NEW ZEALAND
NEW
CALEDONIA
FIJI
c.1000
c.1000 c.1000
c.1000
c.1000
c.1200
N
0
0
1000 miles
1500 kms
1 The Polynesian Expansion
Polynesian triangle
Yapese Empire
expansion of human settlement,
c.1000-1200
Archaeological sites, with
earliest dates where available:
village or settlement
cave site or rockshelter
fortified site
midden
megaliths
cultivation
other important sites
important sources of
New Zealand greenstone
1 AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS PERIOD Polynesian
communities were well-established only in the
central archipelagos of Tonga and Samoa, with
relatively young communities in the Marquesas,
the Society Islands, Hawaii and Easter Island. In
southern areas new settlements began to appear
around 1000, as Polynesians from the Society and
northern Cook Islands established themselves on
the uninhabited islands of Mangareva and
Mangaia and in New Zealand and the Kermadec
group. Later, settlers from New Zealand would
establish themselves on the Chatham Islands.
KUKAILIMOKU, the
Hawaiian god of
war. Carved in wood,
probably towards
the end of the
eighteenth century,
this monumental
figure comes from the
Kona coast of Hawaii
Island. It stood 2.36
metres
(91 ins) tall, facing
the altar in a temple
composed of walled
stone platforms.
It was a focus of ritual
activities.
Its expressive face
projects a sense of
contained energy, as
do its flexed knees
and elbows, slightly
turned rather than
presenting a full
frontal torso.
the Pacific. Beads, buttons and silken threads had the same appeal
for them as coral and mother-of-pearl did for Chinese and
Europeans. The eyes of all involved in the worldwide trade, whether
buyers or sellers, consumers or producers, were sharpened by
growing rivalry in the pursuit of quality products, and in this climate
of heightened sensual alertness all the visual arts took on a new
prominence globally.
SIGHT ITSELF WAS A RESOURCE THAT WAS EXPLOITED to a new degree.
The Italians showed how a knowledge of optics could help architects,
sculptors and especially painters with their tasks, from simply
describing reality to amazing the viewer with trompe l’oeil deceptions.
The same knowledge was used to develop new aids to vision. Glass
lenses made by the Dutch and fitted to telescopes and microscopes
brought a new understanding, both of the minutiae of nature on
earth and the grand order of the universe, while in England Newton
could use the prism to break light down into a spectrum of colours.
These discoveries were immediately recognized far to the East, where
the Chinese emperor welcomed both European knowledge and
European artists.
EYES WERE OPENING EVERYWHERE, and the growth of larger and larger
towns meant greater numbers of potential viewers and a greater
concentration of visual attention. By the eighteenth century cities
such as Naples, Paris and London set new standards for size and
splendour, as did the capitals of the Ottoman and Safavid
dominions, Istanbul and Isfahan, and the Chinese cities of Beijing
and Nanjing. But the largest of all was Edo, modern Tokyo. In the
Japanese capital large numbers of refined craftsmen and artists fed
the privileged elite’s passion for display, while printmakers, as in
China and western Europe, met the needs of the less well-off. These
and other cities also provided the labour for the increasing massproduction
of often highly ornamented ceramics and textiles. In Asia
these products were often sent for sale in Europe. China exported
pottery, India cotton, and the Ottoman Empire carpets, setting
examples soon to be followed, and surpassed, by Britain. There, by
1800, the combined impact of the inflow of wealth generated by the
use of slave labour in Caribbean colonies, the rapid growth of
population supported by improved agriculture at home, and
industrial mechanization made possible by the exploitation of local
coal and iron, brought the beginning of the large-scale production of
what had previously been luxury goods for a greatly enlarged market.
OUTSIDE EUROPE AND ASIA the patterns of mutual influence were
more complex. In the vast Spanish and Portuguese colonies of
Central and South America in the western hemisphere, and smaller
colonies such as Goa and the Philipines in the East, wealth was
invested in the building of churches, which were decorated by
indigenous craftsmen with a combination of European and local
forms and techniques. In West Africa and elsewhere the influence of
taste was reversed as local rulers, enriched by the trade in slaves and
other commodities, expanded their use of cast bronze and carved
wood, often based on European models. The new phenomenon with
the deepest long-term impact, however, was the arrival, even in the
remotest communities, of cheaper and more effective new tools from
the factories of Britain.
INLAID DECORATION on the Taj Mahal, Agra, India, 1631-48.
T
HE MAKING OF ART HAD ALWAYS BEGUN with the exploitation of
resources, and its use involved display, but after 1500 both took
on a new importance. This was largely as a result of the
expansion of global exchange networks. If trade overland and via
coastal shipping had been dominant before 1500, especially in and
around the land mass of Asia and Europe, new developments in
shipbuilding and navigation for the first time allowed commerce
across the oceans. Magellan’s expedition around the world in
1519–22, linking Europe to the Americas, the islands of the Pacific,
Asia and Africa, showed what could be done. The volume of goods
carried increased, speeds of transport accelerated, and movement
could be in any direction permitted by wind and current. Possession
of superior firearms meant that trading privileges and rights of
settlement that previously would have had to be negotiated could
now be forcibly imposed. Those countries and individuals that were
in a position to exploit the new situation – first the Portuguese and
Spanish and later the Dutch, French and English – could gain access
to an unprecedented range of natural resources, from slaves and
animals to plants and minerals. They, and those they traded with,
could also learn from each other how to use the art and artefacts
they made from these materials in a competitive display. Such
competitive displays had developed earlier in evolution as a
desirable substitute for physical conflict, and now that wars between
humans had become so destructive, as the Thirty Years’ War in
Germany most tragically demonstrated, they became a particularly
wise investment. Competitive displays took place among the Ming
and Qing emperors of China, the Mughal rulers of India, the
Ottoman sultans, the tsars of Russia and the monarchs and
ecclesiastics, princes and merchants of the rest of Europe. They all
vied with each other in the collection and display both of precious
materials, such as gold and silver from South America, gems from
India, hard timbers from Southeast Asia, ivory from Africa and furs
from North America and Siberia, and of art in which these and other
materials were used, from ‘cabinets of curiosities’ and buildings to
sculptures and clothes. Also involved were the princes, chiefs and
other members of the smaller communities with which they dealt,
first in areas such as Indonesia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and then, in
the eighteenth century, in more remote places, such as the islands of
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
1500-1800
NORTH AMERICA 1500–1800
149
and loosely organized hunting tribes of the
Inuit (Eskimo) and the Subarctic; organized
confederacies such as the Iroquois in the
Woodlands; ranked hierarchies on the
Northwest Coast; family bands and very
localized groups in California; nomadic and
highly democratic hunting bands and tribes on
the Plains; and kiva (ceremonial) organizations
of the Southwestern Pueblos.
EUROPEAN EXPANSION
Aggressive expansionist and trade policies of
Europeans began, however, to undermine the
material culture and beliefs of many of these
groups. Also, in some areas tribes had become
dependent on the supply of trade goods such
as weapons and ammunition, the withdrawal of
which left these groups without the means for
hunting or defence. The effect that European
policy had on the tribes was largely dependent
on which European power happened to be
dominant in the area.
English policy was one of both
colonization and trade. The growth of the
English colonies and shifting politics and
aggression between Britain and France led to
the decimation of the Algonquian tribes of the
Woodlands by the mid-1600s. Other tribes of
the region, especially the Creeks who were
already adept agriculturalists, adapted to the
changing conditions by adopting English
farming techniques and livestock, items of
English dress, and even used English names. In
fact, so successful were they at these
adaptations that the English married into their
leading families and during the eighteenth
BROWN BEAR CLAN COAT, CHILKAT. Split-representation,
in which a figure is depicted as if split and laid out
so all its features can be seen simultaneously, was a
characteristic element in Northwest Coast art. The
animal featured on this Chilkat shirt is the Brown
Bear, an important clan crest of the Tlingit tribes,
which also appeared in carved form on crest
helmets and on totem poles and house posts. Such
an elaborate costume would have been reserved
for socially significant occasions and worn by a
member of a prestigious household.
2 THE FIRST EXPEDITIONS TO NORTH AMERICA were ones
of discovery and a search for knowledge. The
uncharted regions of the continent offered
unparalleled scope for the advancement of
scientific knowledge as well as promising
opportunities for trade. Following first contacts,
numerous European nations vied with each other
for control of North America’s resources. Although
the fur trade dominated the central and northern
regions and the north Pacific coast, interest on the
eastern seaboard was in land for settlement while
the Spanish in the Southwest sought silver.
60˚70˚80˚90˚
20˚
30˚
40˚
50˚
Annapolis
Jamestown
Roanoke
Cotachiqui
Plymouth
L’Anse aux
Meadows
Brattahlid
Mississippi
StLa
wrence
Missouri
Colorado
Mackenzie
RioGrande
Arkansas
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
PA C I F I C
O C E A N HUDSON
BAY
BAFFIN
BAY
L A B R A D O R
S E A
B E R I N G
S E A
G U L F O F
M E X I C O
ROCKYMOUNTAINS
A
PPALACHIAN
M
TS
CUBA
SAN SALVADOR
N
0
0
400 miles
500 kms
European explorers:
Norse expeditions, 1000-1013
Columbus, 1492
Cabot, 1497
Verrazzano, 1524
Narváez, Cabeza de Vaca, 1529-36
de Soto, 1539-43
Coronado, 1540-42
2 European Exploration and Contacts
European penetration:
English
Spanish
French
Dutch
Swedish
Russian
British seeking Northwest Passage
British fur trade
Spanish trading posts, 1598-1821
French trading posts, 1604-1760
Hudson’s Bay Company, 1670-1869
Montreal fur trade, 1763-84
Northwest Company, 1784-1821
Russian trading posts, 1784-1867
century Alexander McGillivray, the son of a
Scots trader and a half-French Creek mother,
became the undisputed leader of the Creek
Confederacy.
Spanish incursions into the Southwest and
California were driven by religious zeal and a
search for wealth, leading to the establishment
of missions and military governments in the
area during the 1770s and the virtual loss of a
Californian cultural identity. Although the
Pueblo groups of the Southwest had nominally
converted to Catholicism, they retained more of
their beliefs and arts than groups in the other
regions. They continued to conduct secret
ceremonies in their underground kivas that
featured elaborately masked and costumed
kachina dancers.
In other regions influence was expressed
primarily through trade. The Hudson’s Bay
Company agents, although dominating the fur
trade in the north, were too widely scattered to
alter the nomadic hunting life of the Subarctic
groups, even though these tribes had become
dependent on European weapons and other
trade goods. Some changes, such as the
replacement of birchbark containers by trade
kettles, did occur but these were insufficient to
cause massive upheaval. In fact, among the
Athapascan tribes in the western reaches of the
Subarctic material culture and beliefs
underwent no significant change at all, while
the tribes of the far north of the area, including
the Inuit, were virtually unknown during this
period and obtained trade items only through
native intermediaries.
Curiously, the area that most typifies the
general perception of Native American culture
and art was almost entirely a consequence of
the late introduction of European trade items.
This was the Great Plains, where mounted,
nomadic buffalo hunting and warrior elites
developed in the early 1700s after the
introduction of guns from the east and Spanish
horses from the south.
Few of these tribes were original to the
area. They came from all directions and formed
a complex mix of culture traits. Flowing eagle
feather war bonnets, for instance, came
originally from the eastern Sioux, some
decorative techniques such as quillwork were
from the Woodlands, other ideas came from
the south. They met on the Great Plains in a
brilliant and spectacular, but short-lived,
explosion of colour and motion.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
148
MOST OF THE EARLY North American
cultures had evolved into the historic
tribes by the time of European arrival and, for
convenience, are generally grouped according
to culture area. These culture areas are
environmental niches that shaped the material
arts and social organizations of the regions. For
the most part these were developments of
earlier cultural trends, and traditional materials
and techniques were being practised well into
the early historic period.
There had, however, been some major
population shifts immediately prior to 1500.
In particular, the Mississippian groups of the
Eastern Woodlands had waned and been replaced
by the Algonquian tribes and the Iroquois
Confederacy. Although these new occupants
maintained Mississippian trade routes and
farming traditions, they were more democratic
and usually had elected leaders rather than
hierarchical systems. In the Southwest, earlier
groups had abandoned large settlements,
possibly as a consequence of prolonged droughts,
and coalesced into the more compact, modern
Pueblo tribes of the Rio Grande Valley: the Hopi
and Zuni.
MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
Traditional materials such as skins and furs,
feathers and quillwork, basketry, pottery and
weaving continued to be utilized throughout this
period, although these began to be supplemented
by new trade materials and techniques introduced
by Europeans. In most cases these changes were
positive ones. Northwest Coast woodcarving
reached new heights after the introduction of
metal bladed tools replaced the earlier use of
stone and shell blades. The new ease of carving
led to a rapid increase in the production of
ceremonial and clan items, and former carved
house posts evolved into much larger free
standing totem poles. Trade beads, copper cones,
and small bells were important trade items, often
used to supplement rather than replace earlier
quill embroidery. Ribbon appliqué was a new
technique introduced to the Woodland areas,
while the ready availability of commercial dyes
introduced vibrant colour. The Navajo of the
Southwest obtained sheep and silver that started
the jewellery and blanket traditions for which they
are renowned, and at the same time began a
change from nomadic hunting to pastoral herding.
All of these introductions and changes saw a
floresence of Native American arts.
CULTURE AND SOCIETY
While the European presence remained small and
dependent on favourable trade, the native cultures
and beliefs remained stable and largely intact.
There was a wide variety of native cultures: coastal
NORTH AMERICA 1500-1800
BUFFALO HORN SOCIETY HEADDRESS. Blackfoot
Feathers were used by Plains tribes as symbolic
links with the forces of nature and were
frequently given sacred meaning. This buffalo
horn and feather headdress was worn by a
shaman in the Buffalo Horn Society.
20˚
30˚
40˚
50˚
60˚
60˚70˚80˚90˚100˚110˚
Beothuk
Micmac
Abnaki
OnondagaErie
Sauk Mohawk
Delaware
Nanticoke
Calusa
Cherokee
Apalachee
Timucua
Chitimacha
Washa
Ute
Zuni
Navajo
HopiYuma
13
4
5
2
12
13 15
16
17 18
20
21
Seri
Biloxi
Tunica
Missouri
Osage Quapaw
Chickasaw
Wichita
Susquehanna
Oneida
Algonquian
Seneca
Cayuga
Abitibi
Tutelo
Natchez
Menominee
Potawatomi
Winnebago
Illinois
Miami
Shawnee
Fox
Kickapoo
Atakapa
Karankawa
Yaqui
Papago W Apache
6
8
9
14
19
Mimbreño
Tonto
Havasupai
Tarahumara
Chiricahua
Pericu
Tonkawa
Tawakoni
Comanche
Lipan
Apache
Waco
Montagnais
Tete de
Boule Cree
Naskapi
Inuit
Mistassini Cree
East
Greenland
Eskimo
Polar
Eskimo
Baffinland
Eskimo
Labrador Eskimo
Southampton
Eskimo
Iglulik
Eskimo
Hare
Mountain
SaschutkenneHan
Yellowknife
Chipewyan
Saulteaux Ojibwa
Sekani
Beaver
Klickitat
7
10
Pend d’Oreille
Flathead
Coeur d’Alene
Blackfoot
Sarsi
Bannock
Spokan
Wind
River
Shoshone
Crow
Piegan Hidatsa
Assiniboin
Mandan
Yankton Dakota
Santee
Dakota
Arikara
Omaha
Cheyenne
Arapaho
Pawnee Oto
Kansa
Kiowa
Ponca
Netsilik
Eskimo
Caribou
Eskimo
Dogrib
Kaska
Tahltan
Tsimshian
Tlingit
Haida
Tagish
Carrier
Gabrieleño
Luiseño
Mojave
Diegueño
Paipai
Mono
S Paiute
N Paiute
Gosiute
Walapai
Modoc
Washo
Maidu
Slave
Cree
Swampy Cree
Western Wood Cree
Plains Cree
Copper
Eskimo
Mackenzie Eskimo
Pacific
Eskimo
Nunivak Eskimo
Koyukon
Ahtena
Ingalik
Tanana
Kutchin
Tanaina
Tutchone
St Lawrence Island Eskimo Kotzebue
Sound
Eskimo
Aleut
Aleut
West
Greenland
Eskimo
Passamaquoddy
Malecite
Penobscot
Pennacook
Mohican
Nipmuc
Massachuset
Powhatan
Catawba
Chilcotin
Bella Coola
Bella Bella
Kwakiutl
Coast Salish
Nisqually
Nootka
Makah
Quinault
Chehalis
Chinook
Tillamook
Klamath
Shasta
Karok
Yurok
Hupa
Wiyot
Wintun
Pamlico
Tuscarora
Cape Fear
Miwok
Pomo
Chumash
Chemehuevi
Guaycura
Cochimi
Cusabo
Great Lakes
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
ARCTIC
OCEAN
HUDSON
BAY
BAFFIN
BAY
LABRADOR
SEA
GULF OF
MEXICO
GREENLAND
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
- Pima
- Yavapai
- Maricopa
- Western Shoshone
- Nez Percé
- Mescalero Apache
- Umatilla,Wailatpu
- Acoma
- Jicarilla Apache
- Atsina
- Rio Grande Pueblos
- Caddo
- Kichai
- Oglala Sioux
- Upper Creek
- Choctaw
- Mobile
- Pensacola
- Teton Dekota
- Lower Creek
- Huron
N
0
0
400 miles
500 kms
1a Weaving
suspended warp weaving
true loom weaving
1b Carving
wood and ivory carving
stone carving
clay modelling
1c Basketry
coiled baskets
twined baskets
plaited baskets
1 THIS MAP SHOWS LOCATIONS OF TRIBES when they were
first contacted, although this occurred much earlier
in the east and Southwest than in central and
northern regions. Following contact with
Europeans, a number of the tribes were displaced
and moved to new areas or became extinct.
1 Tribal North America
clothing materials:
mainly hide and fur
mainly cotton
hide, fur and various plant materials
tribeHopi
CENTRAL AMERICA 1500–1800
151
CHURCH OF SAN SEBASTIÁN AND SANTA PRISCA, TAXCO,
built between 1748 and 1758 with money donated
by José de la Borda, the owner of Taxco’s silver
mine. It is one of the finest examples of Mexican
Baroque with a façade that combines finely
worked pink stone with plaster decoration that has
detail picked out in gold.
10˚
20˚
Acámbaro
Tlalpujahua de Rayón
Tepeapulco
Tlaxcala
San Martin Texmelucan
Guanajuato
Zacatecas
León
Irapuato
(date?)
Ajijic
Guadalajara
Querétaro
San Miguel de Allende
San Miguel Huautla
Cartagena
Coro
Santo
Domingo
Isabella
Erongaricuaro
Uruapan
Atlixco
Huejotzingo
Acapulco de
Juárez
(1523) 13
Jolalpan
Tzicatlán
Cholula
San Martín Tepotzotlán
Santa Casa de Loreto (Jesuit, 1584)
Church of San Francisco Javier (1762)
Tzintzuntzan
Pátzcuaro
San Luis Acatlán
Quecholac
Tecamachalco
Oaxaca de Juárez
Chapultenango
Tecpatán
Copainalá
Chamula-Huistán
Zinacantan
Teopisca
Amatenango
Comayagua
Tegucigalpa
Portobelo
Taboga
Gracias
León
Antigua
Guatemala City
San Vicente
Santo Domingo Yanhuitlan
Axochiapan
Cuernavaca
Taxco
Oaxtepec
Chalcatzingo
Chilapa
Tepalcingo de Hidalgo
(1532) Church of
Jesús Nazareno
Tlapa de Comonfort
Jacona
Cuitzeo
Yuriria
Morelia
Ixmiquilpan
Acolman de Nezahualcóyotl
Actopan
Ocotlan
Atotonilco
Santa Cruz
San Pedro Tlaquepaque (date?)
Tlayacapan
Tepotzlán
Santa Maria Tultepec
Azcapotzalco
Mexico City
Zinacantepec
Acapulco
Zacatula
Bogotá
Tlalmanalco
Texcoco de Mora
Santo Tomás Xochimilco
Puebla
Izamal
Mérida
Motul de Carrillo Puerto
Ticul
Mani
Hopelchén
Havana
Valladolid
Santa Cruz Acatepec
Veracruz
Granada
Panama City
Atlixtac
Zempoala
Mississippi
G U L F O F
M E X I C O
PA C I F I C O C E A N
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
BAY OF
CAMPECHE
C A R I B B E A N
S E AGULF OF HONDURAS
GULF
OF
PANAMA
SIERRA
M
ADRE
CO
RDILL
ERA
DE
TALA
M
A
N
CA
CORDILLERA
ISABELIA
HI S PA N I O L A
B
A
H
A M
A S
JAMAICA
C U B A
(1531)
(1542)
(1540)
(1533)
(1617) Cathedral
(1496)
(1496) 29
28
(16th c)1
3
32
Church of Santo Domingo
Chapel of the
Holy Sacrament
Convent of San Gabriel
6
7
12
4
Convent of San Francisco
Convent of San Miguel Arcángel (1550)
Monastery of San Agustín
25
26
Monastery of San Francisco
8
14
16
22
21
Convent of San
Pablo Apóstol
11
10
(1529)
(16th c)
(1533)
(1534)
(1555)
(16th c)
(1570)
(16th c)
(1555)
(1539)
(1547)
(1580)
23 (1528)
(16th c)9
(16th c)
(1510)15
(16th c)
(17th c)
(1538)
(16th c)
(16th c)
(1521)
2 (1558) (1577)
(1546)
24
(16th c)
(1532)27
(1542)
(1531)
(16th c)
(1540)20
(1550)18
(16th c)
5 (1533)
(16th c)
(16th c)
(16th c)
(16th c)
17
Church of San Lucas
(16th c)
(16th c)
(16th c)(1522)
(16th c)
(16th c)
(16th c)
(1590)
(1614)
(16th c)Church of San Miguel
(16th c)Church of San Juan(16th c)
(16th c)Church of San Agustín(16th c)
(1537)
(1539)
(1544)
(1632)
Cathedral (1669)
(1549)
(18th c)
(1524)
Church and Convent
of San Francisco
El Pilar
Cathedral (1703)
Cathedral (1756)
(1502)
(1516)
Customs House (1630)
(1519)31
(1541)
(16th c)
(1524)
(1596)
(16th c)
(1527)
(1558)
Cathedral
Convent of San Miguel Arcángel
(17th c)Mission of San Antonio
(1542)Palace of the Governors
Cathedral of San Ildefonso (1556)
(1519)30
(1537)
Virgin of Izamal Monastery
Convent of San Bernardino
(1519)
19(1570)
SOUTH
AMERICA
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
2 Spanish Colonial Architecture, 1500-1800
principal missions and monasteries:
Franciscan
Dominican
Augustinian
Spanish trade and colonial administrative centres
gold mines
silver mines
1- Palace of Cortés (1530)
Cathedral of San Francisco (1529)
Convent of La Asunción de María (1529)
Chapel of San José
2 - Church of San Diego (1663)
La Compañía (Jesuit, 1747)
Church of San Cayetano (1765)
La Valencia Silver Mine (1765)
3 - Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (1562)
Church of San Francisco (1550)
4 - Church of San Francisco
Santa Rosa y Santa Clara
Aqueduct (1726)
5 - Convent of San Francisco
Chapel of La Magdalena (16th c)
6 - Cathedral of Our Lady of Asunción (16th c)
Fortress of San Juan de Ulúa
7 - Basilica of La Magdalena
Church of La Merced
8 - Chapel Real de Indias
Convent of San Francisco
9 - Church of San Antonio
Church of San Martín
Convent of St John the Baptist (Augustinian)
10 - Cathedral (1560)
Governor’s Palace (1643)
Church of San Juan de Dios
11 - Church of Santa María Natívitas
12 - Cathedral (1535)
El Carmen de Abajo (Carmelite, 1554)
Priory of Santo Domingo (1570)
Church of San Francisco (1575)
Convent of Carmen (1596)
Hermitage of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (1644)
Basilica of the Virgin (1682)
Hermitage of Santa Veracruz (Carmelite, 1696)
13 - Cathedral
Fort San Diego (1617)
14 - Church and Monastery of San Francisco
15 - Church of San Sebastián
and Santa Prisca (1758)
16 - Convent of Our Lady
of Asunción
17 - Church of Santa María
Convent of Las Rosas
18 - Metropolitan Cathedral (1563)
Palacio Nacional
Sagrario Chapel (1749)
19 - Convent of All Saints
Aqueduct
20 - College of San Nicolás (1540)
La Compañía (1546)
Basilica Nuestra Señora de la Salud (1550)
21 - Convent of Santa María Magdalena
22 - Convent of Santo Domingo
23 - Church of Jesús Nazareno (1740)
24 - Mission of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (1707)
Cathedral (1761)
25 - Church and Convent of La Concepción
Church of San Francisco (1779)
26 - College of San Nicolás (1580)
Convent of San Agustín (1580)
Cathedral of the Divine Saviour (1640)
Church of La Merced (18th c)
27 - Church of Los Zapateros (1765)
Church of San Pedro and San Pablo (18th c)
28 - Cathedral of San Pedro
Palace of the Inquisition
29 - Monastery of Las Mercedes (1510)
Santa María La Menor Cathedral (1519)
Palace of the Real Audiencia (1520)
Palace of the Governors (1520)
University (1538)
Hospital of San Nicolás de Bari (1522)
30 - La Fuerza Real Castle (1577)
El Morro Castle (1630)
San Cristóbal Cathedral (1787)
Church of San Francisco de Asís (1738)
31 - Cathedral of Our Lady of La Asunción (1519)
Convent of Santo Domingo (1570)
Metropolitan Cathedral (1690)
Casco Viejo
32 - Church of San Francisco (1650)
Inset 1
Inset 1
2 PART OF SPANISH PHILOSOPHY was that the people
they conquered should become subjects of Spain.
This, however, was not possible unless they
embraced the Catholic faith. Missionaries of
various Catholic denominations travelled with the
conquistadores, and Spanish military garrisons
were often part of the fabric of the church. Much
of Spanish colonial architecture therefore consists
of monasteries, churches, and cathedrals, although
there were also imposing buildings erected for the
governors of the provinces.
primarily to European diseases against which
they had little or no natural resistance. Second
was the arrival of increasing numbers of
Europeans, many of them with better
architectural skill and artistic ability than the
early conquistadores and missionaries.
At the same time there was a considerable
increase in the numbers of people who were of
Spanish descent but who had been born in the
New World, as well as offspring of mixed
marriages. While welcoming the ideas and
inspiration of the new arrivals, these people
did not claim the same cultural and family ties
to Spain. Thus new art forms began to emerge
that were based on a European tradition but
which incorporated elements of a Central
American national identity. This gave rise to
distinctive arts in furniture, metalwork,
ceramics, mural painting and votive offerings,
as well as in building, that were no longer
confined to the religious sphere but were also
seen in the domestic environment. For
example, carved figures placed at street corners
and even house fronts with elaborate murals
were used as a means of identifying districts in
the absence of names and numbers.
CENTRAL AMERICAN BAROQUE
Central American Baroque reached its climax in
Mexico during the eighteenth century, although
there are also good examples in Guatemala and
Cuba, where the ornate Churrigueresque style
imported from Spain is combined with the
exaggerated ornamentation of the Mayans and
Aztecs. The resemblance between the façade
decorations of Mayan buildings and Mexican
Baroque churches is so striking that there has
to be a direct relationship.
In Baroque architecture there was a
deliberate play of light and shade through the
application of raised plasterwork, further
enriched with polychrome decoration and,
often, glazed tiles. Scrolls and arabesques, lines
and geometric interlocking forms, and other
decorative motifs were twined and twisted
around figures in niches of Mexicanized saints.
No part of the surface was left untouched by
carving, plaster or paint.
The interior of the Cathedral of Mexico City
contains a retable that was completed in 1737,
and which is so massive and ornate that it has
been referred to as ‘Ultra-Baroque’. Other
extreme examples of Mexican Baroque can be
seen in the vault of the Rosary Chapel in the
Church of Santo Domingo, Oaxaca (1729) and
at the Cathedral of Zacatecas (1761).
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
150
missionaries. The inevitable fusion resulted in
a mix of European and indigenous styles
during the sixteenth century. There is, for
instance, a post-Conquest Aztec frieze in the
church at Cholula, and a carving of the Virgin at
the Augustinian monastery of Acolman that is
derived from Coatlicue, the Aztec goddess of
life and death. Similarly, angels carved at the
Franciscan monastery at Tlalmanalco are
depicted with monkey faces in reference to
Ozomatli, the Aztec god of writing and sacred
knowledge. The style of colonial buildings
also had to change in response to local
circumstances and environments; for instance,
open chapels (capilla abierta) were included to
accommodate the large native populations.
Some elaborate European filigree work is
noticeable from the early sixteenth century,
and this is generally referred to as Plateresque:
from the phrase Plasteros de yeso (silversmiths in
plaster), referring to the fine detailing of plaster
over stonework. The Santo Domingo Cathedral
(1519, the oldest cathedral in the Americas)
and the Hospital of San Nicolás de Bari (1522)
are outstanding examples of Plateresque work
by Spanish artists.
THE RISE OF NATIONALISM
The late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
saw two changes in population demographics
that affected the arts. First was a dramatic
decline in the indigenous populations, due
THE BEGINNING OF THIS PERIOD saw a
collision between two vastly different
cultures: the Aztec and the Spanish. Neither of
these cultures had any real understanding of
the beliefs and artistic expression of the other,
leading to the confrontation in which the Aztec
Empire was effectively dismantled by Hernán
Cortés between 1519 and 1521.
A CLASH OF CULTURES
That this clash occurred so suddenly and
irrevocably changed the artistic production of
the region can be understood by considering
the ideologies that were involved. The Spanish
came from a European background of powerful
and wealthy state and religious institutions
based on a belief in one true god. Spanish
ideals were to convert and Christianize the
people they came into contact with, and to use
wealth to establish the state and religious
buildings that supported this. The Aztec ideal
also had an architectural base that combined
state and religion, but leadership was vested in
the Tlatoani (Great Speaker) and Cihuacoatl
(Female Serpent), who were considered deities.
The Aztecs did not impose their beliefs on
subjugated groups but instead exacted
punitive taxes to maintain the Aztec centres.
Thus Cortés encountered many disaffected
groups to support him, and with the killing of
the Tlatoani and Cihuacoatl, effectively
destroyed the entire Aztec state and religious
foundation, leading to an immediate collapse.
EARLY COLONIAL ARTS
The first acts of the Spanish were to destroy the
religious symbols of the old culture and
replace them with their own. Temples built on
the tops of imposing pyramids were
dismantled, their elaborate frescoed surfaces
studded with gold, silver and mosaic defaced,
and the images of their gods destroyed.
Materials from these were re-used to erect the
buildings of the new religion, using indigenous
labour under the guidance of Spanish
CENTRAL AMERICA 1500-1800
1 THE SPANISH DOMINATED both exploration and trade
in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
After the conquest of the Aztecs in 1521, most of
the region was declared a province of Spain and
placed under the control of Spanish governors.
Silver from this region financed Spain’s colonial
ambitions and, indirectly through the looting of
Spanish treasure ships, the ambitions of other
European nations as well. Silver was a trade
mainstay, but other goods such as gold, sugar,
tobacco and cochineal were also important.
SANTO DOMINGO CATHEDRAL, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC.
The Cathedral of Santa María la Menor in Santo
Domingo is the oldest cathedral in the Americas.
Founded in 1519, when the Spanish used Santo
Domingo as a staging post for their incursions into
Mexico and Central America, it was from here that
Cortés launched his attacks against the Aztecs.
A marble sarcophagus in the cathedral is said,
controversially, to contain the bones of Christopher
Columbus. There is also a Madonna
by Murillo (1617–82).
60˚ 30˚
20˚
10˚
0˚
70˚80˚90˚100˚110˚
C
C
olorado
Orinoco
Magdalena
RioGrande
Mississippi
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
G U L F O F
M E X I C O
C A R I B B E A N
S E A
GULFOFCALIFORNIA
ISTHMUS
OF
PANAMA
YUCA
TÁN
SIERRAMADREOCCIDENTALSIERRAMADREORIENTAL
SI
ERRA
MADRE DEL SUR
CORDILLERA
DE MÉRIDA
C U B A
PUERTO
RICO
HISPANIOLA
B
AHAMAS
S O U T H
A M E R I C A
N O R T H
A M E R I C A
Acapulco to
Manila
Seville to
Veracruz
Seville to
Nombre de Dios
Havana to
Seville
Manila to
Acapulco (silk)
Urdaneta
1565
Saavedra
1527
Pineda
1519
Grijalva
1517
Columbus
1492-93
Columbus
1493-94
Columbus
1498
Columbus
1502-04
Pinzón & Solís
1508
Hernández de Córdoba
1516 Ojeda & Vespucci
1499-1500
Bastidas
1501-02
Ponce de León
1512-13
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 Exploration and Trade, 1500-1800
European voyages of discovery
Spanish trade routes
Spanish routes of colonization
exports:
gold
silver
sugar and tobacco
cochinealC
SOUTH AMERICA 1500–1800
153
eventually exported art.
The search for precious metals also
affected economic, and consequently cultural,
developments. The discovery of silver near
Potosí in the mid-sixteenth century created a
boom town whose population in the
seventeenth century exceeded that of most
European cities. New wealth paid for the
explosion of buildings and furnishing in Potosí
– it was to do the same in the cities that
became Sucre and La Paz in Bolivia.
Some gold was also found in what is now
Colombia, where the Spanish had settled at an
early date, creating cities (Tunja) with a
European aspect and even with Renaissance
wall paintings. Towns on the coast such as
Cartagena, with extensive fortifications and
churches in stone, originated as points of
embarkation for the treasure fleets.
THE DISSEMINATION OF ART
The Jesuits played a special role in the
dissemination of art, especially by Europeans
who were not of Iberian origin. In the sixteenth
century the Jesuit Bernardo Bitti, from
Camerino in Italy, made paintings and
sculpture while en route from Ecuador to Bolivia.
In the eighteenth century, German Jesuits
established workshops in what is now Chile to
supply works to that Captaincy General. The
Jesuits also established several new sorts of
institutions, notably estancias (ranches) in what
is now Argentina, which were often designed by
Italian or Germanic architects. Even more
remarkable are the European-style art and
architecture produced on Jesuit missions by
rainforest people like the Guaraní in Paraguay.
The Jesuits left some of the first surviving
monuments in Portuguese America as well, but
because of the unsettled and long-contested
political situation, most early surviving
monuments in Brazil are of a later,
seventeenth-century date. In fact, some of the
most noteworthy works made in Brazil during
the seventeenth century were produced by
Dutch artists during the period of the
Netherlandish incursion, especially in the
region around Pernambuco (Recife). Frans Post
painted some of the first landscapes of the
continent, and Albert Eckhout recorded its
inhabitants and fauna. While Benedictines,
Jesuits and other religious orders played an
important role along the coast, their activities
were forbidden in the interior province of
Minas Gerais, where diamonds and gold were
found in the eighteenth century.
In the mining regions several boom towns
90˚ 80˚ 70˚ 60˚
50˚
40˚
30˚
20˚
0˚
10˚
1523
1523
1529
1519
1534
1526
1532
1548
1537
1540
1535
1533
1545
1538
1630
1550
1573
1532
1637
1525
1674
1616
1535
1616
Córdoba
Copacabana
Valdivia
Potosí
Sucre
La Paz
Arequipa
Callao
Trujillo
Maracaibo
CaracasCartagena
Santa Marta
Chinquiquita
Manáos
Lima
Cajamarca
Tumbes
Quito
Belém do Pará
Pernambuco
(Recife)
Bahía (Salvador)
Pôrto Alegre
GUAIRÁ
c.1630-32
GUARANÍ
1630-1767
CHACO
1732-67
CHIQUITOS
1691
MAYNAS
1638-1767
CASANARE AND
LOS LLANOS 1659
MOJOS
1659-1767
Ciudad Real
Concepción
Valparaíso
La Calera
Arica
Tiahuanaco
Panama
Cuzco
Machu Picchu
São Paulo
Ouro Prêto
Pôrto Seguro
Santa Fe de Bogotá
Rio de Janeiro
Buenos Aires
1536
ITATÍN
1609-70
A
m
azon
Río Negro
SãoFr
ancisco
M
a
deir
a
Orinoco
Uruguay
Colorado
L. Titicaca
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
C A R I B B E A N S E A
Amazon
Basin
Gran Chaco
Pampas
FALKLAND
IS
WINDWARD IS
ISTHMUS
OF
PANAMA
GUIANA
HIGHLANDS
A
N
DE
S
CHILOÉ I
VICEROYALTY OF
NEW GRANADA
V I C E R O YA LT Y
O F
B R A Z I L
VICEROYALTY
OF LA PLATA
GUIANA
PERU
VICEROYA
LTY
OF
1565, capital from 1763
Dutch artists to Brazil:
Post (1608-69)
Eckhout (1610-65)
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
2 Centres of Artistic Activity
Spanish territory by c.1650
Portuguese territory by c.1650
date of colonial foundation
administrative centre
Jesuit missions
Jesuit workshops
pilgrimage centres
centre of indigenous art
carved wood
other art and production centres
school of painting
school of sculpture
visited by Bernardo Bitti, 1571-1610
surviving indigenous cultures
1565
THE SILVER MOUNTAIN (the cerro rico) outside Potosí
was a source of enormous wealth. It is depicted by
an unknown artist (c.1740) as the mantle of the
Virgin, who is crowned by the Trinity – the Father
and Son represented as priests. The possible
conflation with pre-conquest indigenous beliefs, in
which mountains, rocks, and a mother goddess
were venerated, is striking.
2 ARTISTIC CENTRES CRYSTALLIZED in several colonial
sites. Aside from the schools established by the
Franciscans (Quito), and Jesuit ateliers (Chile and
Argentina), cities such as Cuzco, Quito and Lima
housed many artists, who produced vast quantities
of painting and sculpture. Brazil was home to
numerous regional centres: most conspicuous were
the architects, sculptors and painters in Minas
Gerais (Ouro Prêto).
grew up in mountain valleys: the most
remarkable of them is Ouro Prêto, whose name
means ‘black gold’. The monuments of this
region were built by peoples of African as well
as European origin, and draw on many different
European artistic sources – they even reveal
elements of chinoiserie. Such details provide
more evidence for the multicultural aspects of
art and architecture in colonial South America.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
152
(massive walls were a common feature): Europeans adapted
wattle-and-daub thatching for roofing construction.
Two of the most important artistic sites during the period
were located in what had been the Inca capitals, the present
cities of Cuzco and Quito. Paintings were exported throughout
the region of the vice-royalty of Peru from Cuzco. The first art
school on the continent was already established in Quito in the
sixteenth century, and the first South American art treatise was
written there in the eighteenth; Quito was also home to an
important school of sculptors. The Spanish, however,
established their vice-regal capital at the new city of Lima, a
more accessible site near the sea. Lima had buildings designed
by Europeans, and a grid plan, which was a standard model for
new foundations throughout Spanish America. Lima itself
SOUTH AMERICA 1500-1800
THE CHURCH OF SÃO FRANCISCO in
Ouro Prêto was built for lay
brethren of the Franciscan order,
as Franciscan regulars were not
allowed into the mining
province of Minas Gerais. The
artist Aleijandinho, the child of
European and African parents,
carved the sculpture on the
façade, but the building’s design
echoes Italian and central
European prototypes.
1 SOUTH AMERICAN architecture is
notable for its use local materials,
including different kinds of
metamorphic stones in the Andes,
and, where stone was not at
hand, other building materials,
such as adobe. However, materials
used were also often brought
from great distances (limestone
from Portugal), and new solutions
(quincha roofs) were devised to
deal with specia, for example,
seismic circumstances.
THE CONQUEST OF SOUTH AMERICA by Europeans largely
eradicated the cultures of the indigenous peoples with whom they
came in contact. Although Europeans did not actually take over the
whole continent until the nineteenth century – the southernmost
regions, and Amazonian interior were not occupied until then, and
some sites such as Machu Pichu in Peru actually may postdate the
subjugation of the Inca Empire – the Spanish levelled previously
existing sites and built on top of them; the indigenous populations of
the Brazilian coast were largely eradicated. European forms thus often
literally supplanted or stood on top of indigenous architecture. Native
American and African artists and artisans worked mainly in the service
of the hegemonic culture, and traces of their artistic input can be seen
at best only in elements of iconography, construction and forms of
manufacture.
ARTISTIC CENTRES
Because of the vast distances, formidable terrain, including high
mountain ranges and jungles, and the forbidding (and ever changing)
climates, architectural forms in particular depended on local materials,
and many independent artistic centres also came into existence. Since
stone was largely lacking on the Brazilian littoral, building techniques
utilizing mud, earth, or clay were often employed there, although
limestone (sometimes imported) and soapstone were used for
ornament on façades, and for sculpture. In contrast, many local stones,
with varying degrees of hardness, hence difficulty for carving, were used
in the Andean regions: Andesite in what is central Peru, varieties of
granite around La Paz, volcanic tufa in Arequipa. Earthquakes, which
are frequent in this region, also affected construction techniques
90˚ 80˚ 70˚ 60˚
50˚
40˚
30˚
20˚
10˚
0˚
10˚
Cu
Córdoba
Valdivia
La Plata
Potosí
La Paz
Rio de Janeiro
Saô Bento
monastery
(in pedra de
limoz, 1640s)
Callao
Trujillo
MaracaiboCartagena
Santa Marta
Manáos
Lima
Cajamarca
Tumbes
Quito
Belém do Pará
Pernambuco
(Recife)
Olinda
Bahía
(Salvador)
São Paulo
Ouro Prêto
Pôrto Seguro
Ciudad Real
Sabara
Pôrto Alegre
Montevideo
Concepción
Arica
Panama
Amaz
on
Río Negro
SãoFranci
sco
Paraguay
Pa
ra
ná
M
a
deir
a
Orinoco
Uruguay
Colorado
ATLANTIC OCEAN
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
C A R I B B E A N S E A
Amazon
Basin
Mato
Grosso
Gran
Chaco
Pampas
FALKLAND
IS
WINDWARD IS
ISTHMUS
OF
PANAMA
GUIANA
HIGHLANDS
A
N
D
ES
Patagonia
VICEROYALTY OF
NEW GRANADA
V I C E R O YA LT Y
O F
B R A Z I L
VICEROYALTY
OF LA PLATA
GUIANA
PERU
VICEROYA
LTY
OF
taipa de mão
(hand-worked mud and clay),
taipo de pelao (mud and straw)
pau-a-pique
pau-a-
pique
(mud and
clay)
Church of San
Francisco (in
granite, c.1700)
Cuzco
Cathedral and
Jesuit church
(in andesite, c. 1660)
Arequipa
Jesuit church
(in tufa, c. 1700)
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
resources:
gold
silver
copper
diamonds
dyes
hidesCu
1 Materials and Means
building materials:
andesite
tufa
granite
quincha (mud and straw) roofs
spread of quincha techniques
adobe
mud and clay
limestone (pedra de cal)
import of Portuguese
limestone (pedra de limoz)
major mining regions
EUROPE 1500–1600
155
ST BASIL’S CATHEDRAL, 1555–60, Moscow, Russia, was
built following Ivan IV’s conquest of Kazan. This
dynamic structure consists of eight churches
grouped around a ninth. Despite trends in Moscow
towards the employment of Italian architects and
adoption of Renaissance architectural idioms, St
Basil’s is the product of native architects. Here,
traditional Russian forms dominate and make the
cathedral an enduring national symbol.
1 THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION in the sixteenth
century had a profound impact on religious art.
Catholics maintained their worship traditions and
patronage patterns, but Calvinists, Anglicans and
others rejected the role of images in worship and
cleansed their sanctuaries of art. Lutherans
believed Christian art was inherently neither good
nor bad; religious art was destroyed, modified, and
even commissioned in Lutheran churches.
architects and patrons to select, mix and adapt
from a palette of concepts and styles.
The Italians set new standards by creating
paradigmatic High Renaissance, Mannerist and
then early Baroque works. If stylistic diversity
ultimately dominated at the international and
regional levels, the pervasive effect of Italy and
the Italianate linked all of Europe. This often
first involved an update of native or current
architectural traditions, a transition that might
then follow in other arts. Outside Italy, a purer
expression of Renaissance architectural ideals
was also made in places like Granada, Munich,
Landshut, Cracow, Esztergom and Alba Iulia.
Punctuated by the 1541 capture of Budapest,
once a Renaissance cultural centre, the Ottoman
surge into southeastern Europe essentially
halted that area’s classicizing tendencies.
THE WORLDLY COURT
Artists and architects benefited immensely from
Church patronage in Catholic territories and
that of prosperous merchants in commercial
centres, but princely courts of all ranks,
confessions and locations remained their most
consistent employers. Two special, somewhat
reciprocal phenomena contributed to this
arrangement: the formation of ‘art chambers’
(Kunstkammern) and the staging of festivals,
triumphal entries and other spectacles.
In his private Kunstkammer, a prince distilled
the spectrum of divine and human creation down
to displayable highlights. Mineral samples, flora
and fauna specimens and nature’s abnormalities
found a place in the Kunstkammer next to fine
tools, intricate mechanisms and classical,
scientific or architectural texts. A Kunstkammer’s
inventory also included works of art such as
paintings, prints, statuettes, medals or
meticulously crafted works of goldsmithery. The
proprietor of such an assemblage symbolically
possessed and ruled over the known world, albeit
in miniature. The Kunstkammer also projected its
keeper’s magnificence, intellect, worldliness, and
tastes to whomever viewed it. The Kunstkammern
of the Central European courts were the most
impressive; the Prague Kunstkammer of Emperor
Rudolf II surpassed all others.
A more public form of court expression
matured during the sixteenth century. On special
occasions, European courts frequently sponsored
ostentatious productions for audiences. These
varied spectacles could last for days, and
incorporated everything from costumes, scenery,
floats and music to fireworks, automata, parades
and competitions. Triumphal entries were
especially important. Organized around the
arrival of a regent or distinguished guest into a
town or city, some ceremonial entries were
isolated events, others preludes to extended
festivities. Entries often dotted the path of a
territorial or international progress. Multiple
grand entries were included, for example, in
the journeys of Charles V through Italy
following his conquest of Tunis. Leading artists
and artisans provided the many temporary
props and backdrops that lent such events
their pomp. Imagery invariably referred to the
virtues, achievements, authority, and territorial
possessions of the arriving dignitary using
classical, mythological and biblical iconography.
Just as the Kunstkammer brought the outside
world to a prince’s court, these spectacles
brought a prince’s court to the outside world.
The gradual advance of European seafaring
powers into the Americas, Africa, India, South
Pacific, China and Japan had important
consequences. The fortunes created through
intercontinental commercial ventures and
military conquests translated into copious
artistic commissions. The extensive artistic and
architectural patronage of the royal courts and
Catholic institutions in both Portugal and Spain
speaks to their successes overseas. Artefacts
from faraway cultures also arrived in Europe
and were often absorbed into Kunstkammern.
royalty. Many cities participated in the network,
but as a hub for the production and distribution
of art objects none equalled Antwerp in variety,
scale and geographic reach. Working with
personal agents or art dealers, major collectors
supported the art and artistic trades through
their eclectic acquisitions. Philip II of Spain, for
example, favoured works by Bosch and Titian,
but had little interest in El Greco. Knowledge
gained through such interaction allowed artists,
BENVENUTO CELLINI, Salt Cellar,
1540–43. During his second
trip to France, the great
Florentine goldsmith created
this masterpiece for King
Francis I. The salt cellar
exemplifies contemporary
European courts’ interest in
both artistic virtuosity and
microcosmic collections of
art, antiquities, naturalia,
scientific instruments and
artefacts from around the
world. In 1570 King Charles
IX gave the salt cellar to
Archduke Ferdinand II of
Austria, who added it to his
Innsbruck Kunstkammer.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
154
SIXTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE experienced
an unprecedented intermingling of its various
artistic and architectural traditions. Of these,
the Italian tradition had the broadest impact,
extending from Portugal to Scandinavia, France
to Russia, and Scotland to the Balkans. Even as
the influence of Italy spread, other exchanges
between different regions took place, creating
an era of artistic cross-fertilization.
ARTISTIC CROSS-CURRENTS
Untold numbers of artists and craftsmen
traversed the continent in search of patronage or
training. Foreigners flocked to Italy to study its
monuments and learn from Italian masters.
Relocated or new court centres, including those
at Fontainebleau, Dresden, Madrid and Prague,
attracted fresh mixtures of international artists.
Through their personal travels, patrons, too,
became important conduits for ideas about art.
Finally, events like the sack of Rome (1527), the
French Wars of Religion (1562–98), and the
Spanish conquest of Antwerp (1585) prompted
many artists to flee these areas and seek their
livelihoods elsewhere.
Prints and printed books played a key role in
the artistic interchange. Mass-produced, easily
transportable prints from Italy, Germany, France
EUROPE 1500-1600
0˚ 10˚ 20˚ 30˚ 40˚ 50˚10˚20˚
50˚
40˚
Edinburgh
Bergen
Borgholm
Kaliningrad
Szczecin
Gdansk
Plock
Lublin
Zamosc
Pinczów
Kezmarok
Poznan
Wroclaw
Lwow
Bardejov
Levoca
Riga
Moscow
Zagorsk
Vologda
Solvychegodsk
Smolensk
Novgorod
Vilnius
Mariefred
Vadstena
Stockholm
Uppsala
Turku
Kalmar
Copenhagen
Hillerod
Roskilde
Helsingor
Svartsjö
London
Epsom
Lille
Angers
Lyon
Valence
Florence
Genoa
Milan
Como
Verona
Mantua
Parma
Lucca
Cremona
Felletin
Avignon
Narbonne
Bordeaux
Bayonne
Toulouse
Viseu
Valladolid
Toledo
Madrid
Guadalajara
SegoviaSalamanca
Ávila
El Escorial
Medina del Campo
Seville
Córdoba
Cádiz
Málaga
Granada
Lorca
Murcia
Valencia
Tortosa
Saragossa
Tudela
Barcelona
Ubeda
Chincilla
Palencia
Burgos
Oviedo
Èvora
Portalegre
Porto
León
Coimbra
Tomar
Leiria
Lisbon
Valverde
Guimarães
Aubusson
Moulins
Angoulême
La Rochelle
Rouen
Chantilly
Tonnerre
Dijon
Bern Lucerne
Zurich
Basle
Geneva
Strasbourg
Stuttgart
Augsburg
Kranjska Gora
Prague
Pilsen
Kratochvile
Landshut
Munich
Salzburg
Jindrichuv Hradec
Litomysl
Pernstejn
Linz
Cesky Krumlov
Vienna
Cluj-Napoca
Prostejov
Pardubice
Bratislava
Budapest
Esztergom
Bucharest
Tirgoviste
Alba Iulia
Bistrita
Suceava
Graz
Naples
Palermo
Trapani
Messina
Tunis
Rome
Siena
Urbino
Ferrara
Venice
Vicenza
Trent
Bologna
Klagenfurt
Slovenske Gorice
Innsbruck
Heidelberg Nuremberg
Orléans
Chenonceaux
Chambord
Calais
Bruges
Ghent
Amsterdam
Utrecht
Münster
Langres
Wolfenbüttel
Wittenberg
Dresden
Berlin
Cracow
HamburgDelft
Haarlem
Lüneburg
Kassel
Halle
Leiden
Binche
Brussels
Mariemont
Antwerp
Liège
Paris
Troyes
Bar-le-Duc
BloisNantes
Fontainebleau
Stirling
Exeter
Falkland
´
´
´ ´
˘
´
Loire
Rhône
Elbe
W
eser
Danube
Tagus
Ga
ronne
E
bro
Seine
Tham
es
Meuse
Po
Tiber
Vistula
Ne
m
an
Oder
Rhi
ne
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
N O R T H
S E A
BALTICSEA
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
P Y R E N
E E
S
A L P S
Östergötland
SARDINIA
SICILY
CORSICA
IRELAND
SCOTLAND
ENGLAND
HOLY ROMAN
EMPIRE
DENMARK-NORWAY
S W
E D E N
FINLAND
PRUSSIA
HUNGARY
SWISS
CONFED
BOHEMIA
S P A I N
A F R I C A
F R A N C E
PORTUGAL
(to Spain 1580)
POLAND-LITHUANIA
(United 1569)
R U S S I A
TRANSYLVANIA
I TA
LY
OTTOMAN
EMPIRE
N
E
T
H
E
R
L
A
N
D
S
to/from S America,
Africa, India,
West Indies, Asia
Italians to Portugal,
Spain, France, Low Countries,
England, Scandinavia,
Germany, Poland-Lithuania,
Russia, Bohemia, Austria,
Balkan States
to/from Brazil,
Africa, Asia
to/from N America,
C America, S America
Portuguese and Spanish to
Low Countries, England,
Italy, C & S America,
India, W Indies, Asia
Belgians and Dutch to
England, Scotland, Scandinavia,
Germany, Poland-Lithuania,
Bohemia, Austria, Italy,
Portugal, Spain, France Germans to Poland-Lithuania,
Bohemia, Austria, Italy, France,
England, Scandinavia
French to England,
Scotland, Low Countries,
Germany, Portugal, Spain
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
1 Artistic Cross-currents in
16th-century Europe
borders c. 1560
attitude towards Christian art:
Roman Catholic (positive)
Lutheran (indifferent)
Calvinist,Anabaptist/
Anglican/Hussite (negative)
Eastern Orthodox (positive)
Muslim (negative)
emigration/travel of architects
/artists/craftsmen
centre of patronage and/or
art production
architecture
painting
sculpture
printmaking
gold/silversmithery
tapestry manufacture
Kunstkammer and/or major art collection
significant acts of iconoclasm, with date
triumphal state/ceremonial entry, with date
spectacle/festival/tournament, with date
paths of exemplary imperial/royal progress:
Emperor Charles V,Aug 1535-May 1536
Prince Philip of Spain, Oct 1548-Sept 1549
King Charles IX of France and his mother,
Queen Catherine de’ Medici,
April 1564-Jan 1566
major international trade routes (export of
European artistic and architectural styles;
import of gold, silver, spices, cultural
artefacts etc).
(1547/48)
(1561)
(1522, 33, 59)
(annually, 1559-1602)
(1520)
(1549)
(1558) (1547, 48, 51, 53, 54, 57, 58,
62, 70, 76/77, 78/79, 85, 97)
(1563)
(1500)
(1539)
(1572, 81)
(1580)
(1521-22)
(1525)
(1590)
(1534-35)
(1524, 34-37)
(1566-67)
(1524)
(1557)
(1592/93)
(1566-67)
(1566)
(1566-68, 78)
(1562-63)
(1562)
(1524-30)
(1529)
(1528)
(1534-35)
(1520-24, 87)
(1566-67, 81)
(1515, 48, 95)
(1518, 48, 51)
(1515, 30, 40, 49, 71, 73)
(1550, 96)
(1582)
(1563, 77)
(1586)
(1586)
(1586)
(1577)
(1563)
(1558, 62)
(1515)
(1585)
(1570)
(1517)
(1528, 86)
(1570)
(1560)
(1543)
(1506, 15, 29)
(1506)
(1507, 38)
(1515, 39, 89)
(1513, 18, 36, 39,
45, 86, 89)
(1502, 07, 29)
(1507, 09, 12,
15, 34, 41) (1528, 43)
(1530, 32, 49)
(1549, 74)
(1518, 25)
(1560, 63, 71)
(1572)
(1533)
(1559)
(1585)
(1526)
(1500, 01, 13, 49, 50)
(1530)
(1502, 65)
(1502, 30)
and the Low Countries circulated throughout
Europe. Leading print publishers joined
printmakers to reproduce the treasures of
antiquity and works of Raphael, Michelangelo,
Heemskerck and Bruegel, among others. The
writings of Vitruvius and Sebastiano Serlio had
immense bearing on architectural developments.
Others in western Europe authored vernacular,
sometimes nationalistic, theoretical texts
which typically responded to Italian ideas.
The burgeoning art market and formation of
multi-faceted art collections propagated styles
and trends. Artists sold their wares to local
merchants, at regional fairs, and to foreign
SCANDINAVIA AND THE BALTIC 1500–1800
157
these regions were not necessarily derivative or
inferior to those of the capital. Arent Passer
(c.1560–1637), perhaps the finest sculptor in
the region, worked exclusively for the Swedish
governor in Estonia.
Sweden remained the great Baltic power
into the eighteenth century, by which time the
artistic orientation of the state had shifted
from the Netherlands and Germany to France.
The architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger
(1654–1728) was an ambassador at the court of
Versailles, and arranged for a permanent agent
there to inform him of all developments in
French arts and culture. The loss of territories
and stature following the Great Northern War
(1700–21), led to a sharp drop in resources for
artistic production. Thus Tessin represents the
culmination of the arts in Sweden; after his
death, most of the finest Swedish artists lived
and worked in other European capitals,
Alexander Roslin (1718–93) in Paris, Martin van
Meytens the Younger (1695–1770) in Vienna,
Michael Dahl (1659–1743) in London, and
Georg Desmarées (1697–1776) in Munich.
FREDERIKSBORG CASTLE AT HILLERØD, DENMARK, represents
the international importance of Christian IV’s work
particularly well. The sculptural Neptune fountain
was designed and cast by the imperial sculptor
Adriaen de Vries in Prague. Hendrick de Keyser, an
Amsterdam sculptor and builder who pioneered
Dutch classical architecture, provided a number of
decorative sculptures and reliefs. The palace was built
between 1602 and 1623 as an enlargement of a much
smaller sixteenth-century hunting lodge. The
architect is unknown, but it may have been the
Netherlandish Hans van Steenwinckel.
60˚
50˚
30˚20˚10˚
Gothenburg
Kalmar
Roskilde
Hillerod
Helsingor
Jönköping
Norrköping
Lübeck
Bremen
Amsterdam
Hamburg
Uppsala
Stockholm
Trondheim
Christiania
(Oslo)
Bergen
Copenhagen
Berlin
Stralsund
Stettin
Königsberg
Gdansk
(Danzig)
Riga
Wilno (Vilnius)
Elbing
Reväl (Tallinn)
Åbo
(Turku)
Novgorod
Pskov
Kexholm
Narva
Dorpat
(Tartu)
Helsingfors
Viborg
’
Lake Peipus
L. Ladoga
L. Vänern
L. Vättern
Klarälven
Umeälven
Torneälven
Dvina
VistulaElbe
N O R T H
S E A
WHITE
SEA
GULF
OF RIGA
GULF OF
FINLAND
N O R W E G I A N
S E A
BA
LTIC
SEA
GULFOFBOTHNIA
R U S S I A
FYN
ZEALAND
BORNHOLM
GOTLAND
ÖSEL
ÅLAND
POMERANIA
BREMEN-VERDEN
P R U S S I A
P O L A N D
LIVONIA
DENMARK-NORWAY
K
I
N
G
D
O
M
O
F
S W
E D E N
F I N L A N D
L A P L A N D
L I T H U A N I A
Established 1735
Royal Palace (1697)
Drottningholm Palace (1662)
(1660)
Established 1754
Rosenborg Palace
Frederiksborg Castle (from 1560)
Kronborg Castle
(c. 1574-1585)
Established
1696
Primarily
after 1650
0
0
150 miles
200 kms
N
2 THE ARTS IN THE BALTIC
region in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries were
an eclectic mix of imported
talent, primarily from
Germany and the
Netherlands. Some of these
artists travelled from court
to court throughout the
region, fostering the
transfer of artistic ideas.
Few local artists were of
any significance until the
eighteenth century. By
then, however, economic
circumstances reduced
major patronage. Fewer
foreign artists came to
Scandinavia, and many of
the best talents left to seek
work elsewhere.
NEOCLASSICISM
French Rococo surrendered to Neoclassicism
throughout the Baltic in the later eighteenth
century. In Sweden this is associated with King
Gustav III and the sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel
(1740–1814). Denmark experienced similar
developments under the leadership of the
painter Nicolai Abildgaard (1743–1809), the
architect Christian Frederik Hansen
(1756–1845), and especially the sculptor Bertel
Thorvaldsen (1770–1844), who worked primarily
in Rome, but was the greatest Scandinavian
Neoclassical artist. While Sweden and Denmark
both sent their leading students to Rome to
train, Danish artists also established ties with
the pioneering theorist Johann Joachim
Winckelmann and with the Prussian architect
Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841), and thus
drew on the whole spectrum of European
Neoclassicism.
2 Artistic Movement in
16th- and 17th-century
Scandinavia
Swedish empire, c.1660
artistic academy, with date
of establishment
Artistic influences:
from the Netherlands
from Germany, primarily
17th century
from France, after 1650
from Sweden
from Rome
castle
cathedral
palace
1 Scandinavia and the
Baltic, c. 1500
international
borders, c.1500
semi-independent
territories
Swedish-speaking
areas of Finland
Saami region of Finland
trade routes
Raw materials:
grain
timber
copper
iron
flax
hemp
hides
tallow
leather
potash
Natural resources:
copper mines
iron mines
silver mines
gold mines
limestone quarries
sandstone
Cu
L
S
Cu
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
156
SCANDINAVIA IN 1500 was dominated by
Denmark politically and artistically, but
the entire Baltic region was connected with
northern European culture through the trade
routes of the Hansa (a series of trading
alliances linking the cities of northern Europe).
Sweden-Finland gained independence from
Denmark in 1523. The Protestant Reformation
was fundamental to the establishment of the
Swedish state, for King Gustav Vasa (r.1523–60)
seized church lands and wealth, which he used
to pay state debts. Denmark converted to
Lutheranism soon after. Thus by the 1530s
Denmark ruled Norway, and Sweden ruled the
duchy of Finland; all were Protestant lands.
THE DOMINANCE OF DENMARK
Although there was a certain artistic unity
throughout the Baltic region, Denmark
provided the artistic leadership for Scandinavia
until the seventeenth century. The high point of
the Danish Renaissance was the reign of
Christian IV (r.1588–1648). Most of the artists
he patronized were of Netherlandish origin.
Pieter Isaacz (1569–1625) and Karel van Mander
III (1610–70) were resident at the court, but
Christian commissioned significant works from
Gerrit van Honthorst (1592–1656), Abraham
Bloemaert (1566–1651), Jacob Jordaens
(1593–1678) and Adriaen de Vries (1545–1626),
among others, which adorned Kronborg,
Rosenborg and Frederiksborg palaces. These
were built in the Netherlandish tradition of
brick with stone decoration.
THE RISE OF SWEDEN
Denmark and Sweden both took part in the
Thirty Years War (1618–48), which crippled
the former and greatly enriched the latter.
Under Gustav II Adolf (r.1611–32) Sweden
expanded its territories to include the eastern
Baltic lands and parts of northern Germany.
Accordingly, many German artists moved to
Stockholm, a new centre of patronage.
Among them were the painter David Klöcker
Ehrenstrahl (1629–98) and the architect
Nicodemus Tessin the Elder (1615–81).
Tessin used locally available materials
(particularly wood), but he and his patrons
willfully disregarded traditional, provincial
building practices as they sought international
recognition.
In the mid-seventeenth century, Queen
Christina became a cultural patron, bringing
René Descartes and other intellectuals to the
court. She also encouraged the seizure of the
remains of Emperor Rudolf II’s collection at
Prague, which brought many first-rate Italian
paintings to Stockholm. She took most of
these with her to Rome when she abdicated in
1654, but the larger works remained in
Sweden. In Rome she remained an important
patron for Swedish artists, commissioning
works from them and using her contacts to
introduce them to leading Italian artists.
The influence of the Stockholm court was
felt as far away as the eastern Baltic lands.
Classicizing buildings, similar to those built by
Tessin, may be found in Tallinn. The artists in
SCANDINAVIA AND THE BALTIC 1500-1800
JOHAN TOBIAS SERGEL, CUPID AND PSYCHE. Sergel
studied in Paris and received a medal from the
Académie Royale. He worked in Rome for a
number of years before returning in 1779 to
Stockholm, where he became head of the Royal
Academy of Fine Arts. He was highly regarded and
sought by internationally important patrons. This
sculpture was commissioned around 1772 by Louis
XV for his mistress, Madame du Barry. When the
French king died two years later, King Gustav III of
Sweden took over the commission.
50˚40˚30˚20˚10˚0˚
70˚
60˚
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
L
L
L
L
S
S
S
Stockholm
Älvsborg
Jönköping
Norrköping
Lübeck
Bremen
Hamburg
Uppsala
Nidaros
(Trondheim)
Oslo
Bergen
Copenhagen
Stralsund
Stettin
Königsberg
Gdansk
(Danzig)
Riga
Wilno (Vilnius)
Elbing
Reväl
(Tallinn)
Åbo
(Turku)
Novgorod
Narva
Dorpat (Tartu)
Helsingfors
Viborg
Archangel
’
L. Ladoga
Lake Peipus
Elbe
Vistula
Dvina
Um
eälven
Torneälven
Klarälven
L. Vättern
L. Vänern
N O RW E G I A N
S E A
N O R T H
S E A
GULFOFBOTHNIA
GULF OF FINLAND
G
U
LF OF RIG
A
WHITE
SEA
BALTIC
SEA
T E U T O N I C
O R D E R
BORNHOLM
FYN
ÅLAND
ÖSEL
ZEALAND
ÖLAND
GOTLAND
R U S S I A
F I N L A N D
ESTONIA
P O L A N D - L I T H U A N I A
INGRIA
L A P L A N D
DENMARK-NORWAY
S
W
E
D
E
N
KAR
ELIA
COURLAND
BREMEN-
VERDEN
POMERANIA
BRANDENBURG
borders
uncertain
to Amsterdam
and London
N
0
0
150 miles
200 kms
1 THE BALTIC REGION’S rich
natural resources brought
income and international
contacts. Sweden’s copper
and iron, for example, were
exported all over Europe.
Wealthy foreign merchants
moved to Scandinavia,
bringing artistic
contacts and building
influential residences.
30˚20˚
50˚
TP
TP
TP
Polock
Wilno
Grodno
Tykocin
Snów
Miedzyrzecz Korecki
Kamieniec Podolski
Buczacz
Lancut
Brzezany
Krystynopol
Zamosc
Labunie
Lublin
Czemierniki
Radzyn Podlaski
Koden
Drohiczyn
Gdansk´
Plock
Warsaw
Brochów
Walewice
Gostyn
Biala Radziwillowska
Bialystok
Siedlce
Nieborów
Lubartów
Kock
Wegrów
Swieta Lipka
Stanislawów
Zbaraz
Lezajsk
Klimontów
Sandomierz
Baranów
Pulawy
Podhorce
Brody
Tarnopol
Korsun
Zofiówka
Tulczyn
Winnica
Tywrów
Sluck
Lwów
Zólkiew
Krasiczyn
Rzeszów
Rytwiany
Ksiaz Wielki
Tarnów
Nowy
Wisnicz
Niepolomice
UjazdKielce
Bialaczów
Lad
Smielów
Poznan
Sierniki
Lubostron
Sieraków
Leszno
Debnik
Checiny
Pinczow
Grodzisk
Wielkopolski
Rogalin
Cracow
Koscielec
Kalisz
Pawlowice
Rydzyna
Nieswiez
Chelmno
´ ˙
Lowicz
´
˙
˙
´ ´
´
˙
´
´
´
´
´
´
˛
˛
˛
˛
˛
´
˛
˛
´
˙
˙
´
´
BA LT I C
S E A
Gulf of
Danzig
EAST PRUSS
IA
Gulf
of
Riga
Vis
tula
Warta
Oder
Pripet
Berezina
Dvina
Neman
Volga
Dniester
Prut
Bug
D
nieper
CARPATHIAN
M
TS
P O L A N D
L I T H U A N I A
R U S S I A N
E M P I R E
O T T O M A N E M P I R E
H A B S B U
R
G
E
M
P
I R
E
P R U S S I A
2 Sarmatism, Occidentalism and Orientalism
major church
palazzo a fortezza
quadrilateral
castle/square palazzo
villa suburbana
Renaissance town hall
Palladian baroque building
Neo-Palladian classical building
18th- century replica
of Villa Rotonda
entre cour et jardin palaces
English gardens
art collection
Gothic Revival building
manufacture of Polish sashes
marble quarry
sandstone quarry
modern town planning
N
0
0
150 miles
200 kms
TP
POLAND AND LITHUANIA 1500 –1800
159
Polish lesser gentry and for churches of all
denominations, including Lutheran, Roman
Catholic, Uniate and Orthodox, as well as
mosques, and elaborate wooden synagogues.
The majority of these places of worship have
been destroyed. Sculpted plaster decor was
another architectural feature. Italian-inspired
and initiated by the Lublin guild of master
masons, it embellished townhouses in
Kazimierz and Zamo´s´c, and church vaults all
over Poland. Its fantastical plaster ornaments
of somewhat blunted, pudding-like texture
displayed an untamed richness of detail.
Orientalization went hand in hand with
Latinization. The ‘Polish attica’, a decorative
parapet at the top of buildings in Venetian
style, surmounted sturdy synagogues.
Paintings by Western artists were covered with
‘Orthodox’ silver robes, icons dovetailing with
northern-European prints and Bohemian
rococo dressed the façades of Uniate churches.
Perhaps the most Polish art-form of this period
was the Sarmatian portrait. A Western-style
full-length likeness was used as a frame to
WOODEN SYNAGOGUE in Wolpa near Grodno, early
eighteenth century. Timber was used in Polish
manor houses and village churches of all
denominations and occasionally also in large
and complex religious structures, with domes
and high pitched, multi-tiered roofs.
2–3 SOUTHEAST EXPANSION introduced oriental styles,
including dress and manners used by the PolishLithuanian
nobility to underline their claim of
descent from the legendary Sarmatians. However,
dynastic alliances of the royalty and the fabulous
buying power of the elite promoted a rapid
absorption of ‘high’ forms of Western art.
20˚
50˚
Póznan´
Zamosc´ ´
Tarnów
Gdansk´
Cracow
Krasiczyn
Lwów
Olesko
Bejsce
Miechów
Staszów
Turobin Uchanie
Lublin
Kazimierz
Dolny
Wilno
Radlin
Gniezno
Koszuty
Wloclawek
Pinczów´
Lezajsk˙
Brzezany´
Sroda
Wielkopolska
´
Lowicz
Wroclaw
Grodzisk
Tarlów
Rzeszów
Ujazd
Warsaw
Krosno
Koscielec´
Rabka
Klementowice
Debno˛
Lopuszna
Paplin Sucha
Romanów
Mereczowszczyzna
Ozarów˙
´Koden
´Koden
Stara Wies´
Sokule
Tykocin
BA LT I C
S E A
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
enunciate the ‘defining features’ of PolishLithuanian
nobility, which were visualized by
the details of Orientalized attire, complete with
zhupan, kontusz, delia and the Armenian silk sash
belt, Turkish haircut and Morocco leather
boots. These served as an adopted skin, the
exteriorization of the Sarmatian identity. The
form was also significant: the decorativeness
of these portraits’ two-dimensionality and the
flat patches of local colour pronounced a
disregard for Western chiaroscuro and linear
perspective.
Domed Sepulchral Chapels and
Vernacular Architecture
border of Poland, late 17th century
domed sepulchral chapel
tomb/sculpture
stucco decor
wooden church
Polish manor house built of wood
3
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
158
MULTI-ETHNIC AND MULTICONFESSIONAL,
the Polish Commonwealth of Two
Nations united the Catholic Kingdom of Poland
and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The long
process of unification, begun in 1385, was
finalized in 1569 by annexation of the western
Ukraine, mainly Orthodox and bordering the
Ottoman empire and Persia. The commonwealth
lasted almost two and a half centuries
more, until swallowed by the expanding
empires of Russia, Prussia and Austria in 1795.
The union dislodged Poland’s alignments
with the Latin west, redirecting them to the
east and south-east. This outpost of Latin
Christendom saw a confrontation between an
emerging Eurocentrist modernity, with its
paradigms of the modern territorial state and
of the rational western self, and, on the other
hand, the nomadic values of Crimean Tartars
and Ottoman Turks, and oriental fluidity and
excess. A primary identification with the
Occidental merged with an experience of and
desire for the Oriental. The myth of Poland as
the bulwark of Christendom intertwined itself
with a contradictory ethos of Sarmatism – of
the nobility’s descendance from the
Sarmatians, a legendary tribe of horsemen
from the Black Sea steppe.
WESTERN IMPORTS
In the sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries fabulous wealth from landholding
enabled the nobility to acquire foreign
consumer goods and artefacts, as well as
commission builders, artists and craftsmen
from all over Europe. Mainly from Italy, artists
were also summoned from Nuremberg and the
Netherlands, France, Saxony and Habsburgian
countries. At this stage the union was a society
of consumers, rather than producers, of
POLAND AND LITHUANIA 1500-1800
ZBIGNIEW OSSOLINSKI WITH HIS SONS, c.1654, oil on
canvas, 210 x 110 cm (82 x 43 ins), Castle Museum,
Liw. A forceful Sarmatian portrait showing details
of the ‘Polish dress’, which reserves its most lavish
display for male progenitors.
20˚ 30˚
50˚
Gniezno
Reszel
Drohiczyn
Grodno Nowogródek
Piotrków
Raków
Braniewo
Königsberg
Kiejdany
Kowno
Prowosze
Lwów
Mysz Nowa Bobrujsk
Chernigov
Mohylów
Warsaw
KrasnystawSandomierz
Tarnów
RawaKalisz
Tykocin
Cracow
Przedbórz
Kazimierz
Dolny
Wolpa
Gwozdziec´
Chodorów
Narowla
Pohrebyszcze
Lublin
Kamieniec Podolski
Bar
Winnica
Owrucz
Ostróg
Kiev
Wilno
Troki
Wornie
Smolensk
Mohylów
Orsza
Witebsk
Malbork
(Marienburg)
Leszno
Rozdót
Plock
Wroclaw
Wloclawek
Gdansk´
Torun´
Minsk
Przemysl´
Chelmno
Nieswiez´ ˙
Kroze˙
Pinsk´
Brzesc Litewski´ ´
Birze˙
Swieta Lipka´ ˛
Grudziadz˛
Elblag˛
Poznan´
Pinczów´
Zamosc´ ´ Zytomierz˙
Zydaczów˙
Polock
Illukszta
Zabludów
Chelm
Wlodzimierz
˙Lomza
Pultusk
Jaroslaw
Lancut´
Luck
VistulaWarta
Oder
Pripet
Berezina
Dvina
Neman
Volga
Dniester
Prut
Bug
Dnieper
Gulf of
Danzig
Gulf of
Riga
B A L T I C
S
E
A
CARPATHIAN
M
TS
GREAT
POLAND
LITTLE POLAND
OTTOMAN
EMPIRE
OTTOMAN
EMPIRE
HOLY
ROMAN
EMPIRE
MOLDAVIA
HUNGARY
U K R A I N E
R U S S I A
RUTHENIA
C
O
URLAND
LIVONIA
VOLHYNIA
POMERANIA
EAST
PRUSSIA
G R A N D
D U C H Y
O F
L I T H U A N I A
1579
1544
1594
1661
1364
N
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
1 Multi-ethnicity and Multiconfessionality
border Poland/Lithuania, pre-1569
border Poland/Lithuania post 1569
Poland, 1582
to Poland, 1616-67
lost in war 1621-26
SE border of Poland, 1667-1793
Roman Catholic archbishopric
Roman Catholic bishopric
Uniate archbishopric
Uniate bishopric
Orthodox metropolitan sees
Orthodox eparchy
Armenian archbishopric
Armenian church
Jewish synagogue/centre of learning
wooden synagogue
centre of Karaite faith
centre of Islamic faith
centre of Reformation
university, with date of foundation
academy of higher education
Jesuit convent/college
Lutheran church
major centre for the grain trade
Vistula river port
artefacts. In the aftermath of disasters in the
mid-seventeenth century and the Great
Northern War (1700–21) – which ruined towns
and halted the grain trade – kings and nobility
established various manufactories.
Renaissance ‘high art’ was imported
directly from Italy by Poland’s kings of the
Jagiellonian dynasty redeveloping the Wawel
Castle in Cracow. The Sigismundus chapel in
the Wawel Cathedral, by Florentine Bartolomeo
Berrecci (1519–31), provided a model of a
central funerary chapel and tomb with
recumbent figures, widely reproduced by the
nobility and even the bourgeoisie. Another new
type of building was the suburban villa, erected
for the nobility by Italian builders on the
outskirts of Cracow. Royal patronage, extensive
building by the Catholic Church, and, above all,
the spending power of the high nobility
changed the cultural landscape. They built new
towns on an ‘ideal city’ plan, such as Zamo´s´c,
designed for the Lord Chancellor Jan Zamoyski
by Bernardo Morando of Venice; they gave
funds for Baroque churches following the
models of Il Gesù (Cracow, Nieswiez) and Santa
Maria della Salute (Gosty´n); they multiplied
their country residences and palaces in
Warsaw, designed by fashionable architects
such as Andrea del’Aqua (Podhorce), the
Polonized Dutchman, Tylman van Gameren
(Pulawy, Stary Otwock, Warsaw, Wegrów),
Johann Sigmund Deybel of Dresden (Warsaw,
Bialystok), and Juste-Aurèle Meissonier
(interiors in Warsaw and Pulawy).
LOCAL AND ORIENTAL INFLUENCES
Elitist architecture was of brick, decorated with
sandstone masonry and furnished in local
marble. A dominant building material was
timber, used for the abundant manor houses of
11 AT ITS PEAK the Commonwealth was Europe’s
granary and second largest state. Its minorities
included Ruthenians, Byelorussians, Jews,
Karaites, Armenians, Tartars, Germans, Italians,
Greeks and Scots. Prosperity and tolerance
made it an asylum for Jews, Lutherans,
Calvinists, Bohemian Brethren, and Aryans, all
of whom established centres of learning and
printing presses. The Uniate Church (following
Orthodox rites under Papist supremacy)
dominated in the east. Roman Catholic
mendicant and teaching orders, in particular
Jesuits, waged Counter-Reformation by
inculcating militant forms of Roman baroque
art and ritual.
RUSSIA 1500–1800
161
development of resources; establishment of
Russian porcelain, lapidary, metalwork and
tapestry factories; creation of a university and
academy of arts; art collecting on a grand scale
and major building projects. St Petersburg
became a microcosm of architectural evolution
from Peter’s northern European Baroque (for
example, the Cathedral of Saints Peter and
Paul by Domenico Tressini) to Elizabeth’s
French-Italian Rococo (Bartollomeo Rastrelli’s
Catherine Palace, Winter Palace and Smolny
Cathedral), and Catherine’s international
classicism (Charles Cameron’s Pavolvsk Palace
and Giacomo Quarenghi’s Hermitage Theatre).
The Academy of Fine Arts, housed in an
imposing classical edifice in 1772, fulfilled
Peter’s goal of creating a cohort of Russianborn
artists trained in European traditions.
Among the early graduates were Anton
Losenko (honoured as the first Russian
historical painter), portraitists Dmitry Levitsky
and Vladimir Borovikovsky, and sculptors
Mikhail Kozlovsky and Ivan Martos.
Meanwhile, outside the cities, in the
northern regions of Arkhangel’sk and Vologda
provinces settled by merchants from Novgorod,
distinctive folk arts flourished. Along the Volga
and the other rivers that served as trade
arteries, local decorative traditions crossfertilized
with forms and motifs adapted from
western models. In the central agricultural
lands, vast and productive estates were worked
largely by serfs: peasants tied to the land. Folk
customs and traditions
in music and the arts enriched all levels of
culture.
This period witnessed Russia’s transformation
from a regional principality to a multiethnic
empire bridging east and west, and saw
a corresponding change in the role of the arts.
Initially serving the church, the arts expanded
their secular functions as Russia’s rulers and
the nobility began collecting art. The transfer
from Moscow to St Petersburg replaced older
Russian values with a new, European-oriented,
rational and bureaucratic culture, initiating the
dilemma of eastern or western identification
that would trouble Russian thinkers of the
following centuries. By the end of Catherine’s
reign, Russian elite culture, especially in St
Petersburg, embodied the themes of expansion
and display.
eastern point of the Gulf of Finland in 1703.
Moving his capital to the new city in 1712, he
inaugurated an unprecedented era of grand
architecture and city planning that lasted well
into the next century.
CULTURAL EXPANSION
Peter I’s efforts to modernize Russia brought
the country into the cultural orbit of Europe.
He invited European architects and artists to St
Petersburg and provided training and study
abroad for Russian-born artists. It fell to his
successors, Elizabeth I and Catherine II (‘The
Grea’t, r.1762–96) to consolidate Peter’s
European model for the Russian empire. Their
reigns were marked by exploration and
CHURCH OF THE TRANSFIGURATION (1714), Kizhi, Lake
Onega. Traditional carpenters used no plans, only
simple hand tools, and no metal nails, but they
inventively combined pine, ash, and other woods
for pleasing effects. The ash ‘fish-scale’ shingles on
the twenty-two domes glisten with gold or silver
tones, depending on the light.
70˚
55˚
40˚
30˚ 45˚ 60˚ 75˚ 90˚ 105˚ 120˚ 135˚ 150˚ 165˚ 180˚
M
M
Moscow
Astrakhan
Kazan’
St Petersburg
(1703)
Novgorod
Velikiy Ustyug
Yaroslavl’
Solikamsk
Pskov
Smolensk
Nizhniy Novgorod
Vyatka
Vologda
Kiev
Ufa (1586)
Tobol’sk
(1587)
Tyumen’
(1586)
Tara (1594)
Sibir’ (1581)
Omsk (1716)
Archangel
(Arkhangel’sk)
(1589)
Samara (1586)
Tsaritsyn (1589)
Saratov
(1590)
Voronezh
(1586)
Yakutsk (1632)
Nizhne-Kolymsk (1644)
Petropavlosk
(1752)Irkutsk (1652)
Krasnoyarsk (1628)
Yeniseysk (1619)
Tomsk
(1604)
Kuznetsk
(1618)
Semipalatinsk
(1718)
L. Balkhash
L. Baikal
Ko
lyma
Lena
Lena
A
m
ur
Yenisey
Ob
Irtysh
N.D
vina
Ural
Oka
Kam
aViatka
D
on
Volga
Dnieper
Syr-
Darya
Am
u-D
arya
BA R E N T S
S E A
WHITE
SEA
KARA
SEA
EAST SIBERIAN
SEA
CHUKCHI
SEA
BALTICSEA
BLACK SEA
CASPIAN
SEA
ARAL
SEA
BERI
N
G
STRAIT
URALMTS
ALTAI MTS
TIEN SHANKALMYKS
BASHKIR
S
TAT A R S
K A Z A K H S
BU RYAT S
YA K U T S
COSSACKS
UKRAINIANS
NOVAY
A
ZEMLYA N O V O S I B I R SK
S I B E R I A
MANCHUR
IA
OUTER MONGOLIA
KAMCHATKA
R U S S I A N E M P I R E
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
2 The Expansion of Russia,
1500-1800
Russia c. 1550
expansion to 1598
annexed to c. 1700
acquired 1700-c. 1800
route of Yermak, 1580s
cities (with date of
foundation/conquest)
minerals
furs
ivory/bone
(1652)
M
2 RUSSIA EXPANDED through military conquests. Ivan
IV victory conquered Kazan in 1555. The Cossack
Yermak pushed into Siberia in quest of furs in the
1580s. Peter I and Catherine II campaigned in the
west and the south in the eighteenth century.
Cities were both fortresses and trade outposts for
gold, and precious stones that enriched the
decorative arts.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
160
RUSSIA ACHIEVED a distinctive cultural
identity in this period, separate from but
at times rivalling those of the Renaissance,
Baroque and Enlightenment in western
Europe. Traditionally, the arts had served
religion, with architecture and icon painting
controlled by rigorous orthodoxy, but the
sixteenth century introduced some
secularization.
THE RISE OF MOSCOW
At the end of the fourteenth century, Muscovite
princes began driving back the Mongols who
had occupied Russian territories for 250 years.
The city of Novgorod, in the northwest, maintained
trading contacts with the Hanseatic
League, but most of Russia was virtually
isolated. Reforging ties with both Orthodox
east and the Latin west, Ivan III was the first
Russian ruler to take the title Tsar or Czar
(derived from Caesar). Ivan and his successors
brought architects from Italy to build the great
stone cathedrals of the Moscow Kremlin,
Dormition, the Annunciation and St Michael
the Archangel, the Faceted Palace and the
crenellated walls around the citadel, combining
Russian and European architectural forms.
Ivan IV (‘The Terrible’) initiated major building
and reconstruction projects after a fire
destroyed much of Moscow. He annexed
Novgorod and Tver’, brought both loot and
artists to the Kremlin, and established workshops
of icon painters and metalsmiths in the
Armoury Palace. Ivan’s conquest of Kazan (1555)
brought the plains east of the Volga River and
their pagan and Islamic inhabitants under his
control. Later campaigns pushed Russia’s
boundaries south to Astrakhan and east into
Siberia. To commemorate his victory, Ivan
commissioned St Basil’s Cathedral on Red
Square, just outside the Kremlin walls (see
p.155). It was based on the central ‘tent-roof’
design of wooden churches and contained eight
separate churches, each set off by multiple
domes embellished with polychrome tiles and
paint. This cathedral, with its inventive use of
both Russian and Asian features, marked a new
stage in Russia’s political and cultural identity.
Ivan IV’s reign ended in violence and
confusion in 1584. In the following ‘Time of
Troubles’, Moscow’s authority diminished as
Poland conquered much of western Russia.
While central control declined, new centres of
icon painting, metalwork and enamel developed
in the northeastern regions, around Veliky
Ustyug, Sol’vychegodsk and Perm’. These towns
were settled by merchant clans from Novgorod,
notably the Stroganov family, who established a
renowned school of icon painting. The election
of Mikhail Romanov as tsar in 1613 began a
period of political retrenchment and
ecclesiastical reform lasting two generations.
Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich encouraged
foreign traders to settle in an eastern suburb of
Moscow known as the ‘German Suburb’ and
opened new routes north of Moscow to the
White Sea. The port of Arkhangel’sk on the
Northern Dvina River became the major hub of
commerce during the summer months when it
was free of ice. Alexey’s son Peter I, known as
Peter the Great (r.1696–1725), recognized that
only a permanent commercial and naval port
would allow Russia to interact fully with
western nations, and after winning the region
from Sweden, he founded St Petersburg at the
RUSSIA 1500-1800
DMITRY LEVITSKY, Princess
Khovanskaia and Mlle
Khrushcheva (1773), State Russian
Museum, St Petersburg. Acclaimed
for imposing portraits of
Catherine II, Levitsky introduced
an informal style in seven
paintings of Catherine’s favourite
pupils in the school she founded
for well-born girls, the Smolny
Institute. Shown in a performance
at the school for the Empress, the
girls display an engaging
concentration, in contrast to the
stilted poses of earlier portraiture.
70˚
60˚
50˚
20˚ 30˚ 40˚
Moscow
Kostroma Kazan’
Samara
Orenburg
Gorodets
Archangel (Arkhangel’sk)
Sol’vychegodsk
Perm’
Chelyabinsk
Ufa
Vyatka
Solikamsk Nizhniy Tagil
Yekaterinburg
Tobol’sk
Vorkuta
Velikiy Ustyug
Vladimir
SaratovTula
Ryazan’
Orël
Yaroslavl’
Kholmogory
Nizhniy Novgorod
Tsaritsyn
Astrakhan
Vologda
Kargopol’
Sergiyev-Posad
Smolensk
Vitebsk
Kiev
Chernigov
Poltava
Odessa
Zaporozh’ye
Rostov
Kharkov
Kursk
Novgorod
Pskov
Revel’
Riga
Vilna
Warsaw
Tver’
Helsinki
St Petersburg
Tikhvin
L. Onega
L. Ladoga
Vistula
Dnieste
r
Danube
Dnieper
Don
Donets
Volga
U
r
al
Kama
Pechora
Mezen’
Onega
Sukhona
Vycheg
da
Oka
N
orthern Dvina
Western Dvina
B A
LTIC
SEA
GULF OF FINLAND
WHITE SEA
B L A C K S E A
SEA OF
AZOV
KARA SEA
CASPI
A
N
SEA
C A U C A S U S
U
R
A
L
M
T
S
KALMYKS
BASHKIRS
SAM O Y E D S
LAP P S
KAZAKHS
TA
TA
RS
F I N L A N D
P R U S S I A
H A B S B U R G
P O S S E S S I O N S
R U S S I A N
E M P I R E
SWEDEN
O T T O M A N E M P I R E
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
1 European Western Russia
in the 18th century
concentration of serfdom
area of ‘Old Believers’ settlements
site of major architectural landmarks,
16th-18th centuries
centre of court-sponsored art
metalwork
stonework and gems
ceramic and porcelain
bone carving
wood carving and painting
textiles
printing
regional market/fair
shipbuilding
1 THE FOUNDING OF ST PETERSBURG in 1703 signalled a
shift to the West, but efforts to modernize the
country confronted the beliefs and practices of
many nationalities and religious groups, including
the Old Believers, who rejected reforms and
settled in northern forests. Serfdom was the
economic base of the central ‘black soil’ farming
regions. Bound to the land, serfs endured harsh
conditions, but some received training in the arts.
St. Petersburg and Moscow were the centers of
culture, but other cities were famed for special
resources and crafts.
5˚
50˚
St Columb‘s Cathedral
Tintern Abbey
Byland
Abbey
Dryburgh Abbey
Cleeve Abbey
Canterbury Cathedral
Rochester Cathedral
Ely
Cathedral
Durham
Cathedral
York Minster
Carlisle Cathedral
St Patrick’s
Cathedral
Salisbury
Cathedral
Winchester
Cathedral
Fountains
Abbey
Bolton Abbey & Priory
Woburn
Abbey
Fore
Abbey
Timoleague Abbey
Melrose Abbey
Bury St Edmunds
Waverley
Abbey
Rievaulx
Abbey
St Andrews
Dunblane Cathedral
Arundel
Castle
York House
Whitehall - (Charles I)
St James’s - (Charles I)
Stirling Castle
Falkland Palace
Nonsuch Palace
Knole HouseHampton Court Palace
(Charles I)
Oatlands
Palace
Queen’s House
Worksop ManorPlas Teg Hall
Castle Menzies
Rufford Old Hall
Beaulieu
Dundalk
Carrickfergus
Londonderry
Powis Castle
Little Moreton Hall
Blickling Hall
Burghley House
Wollaton Hall
Hardwick Hall
Aston Hall
Audley End
Hatfield House
Charlton House
Parham Park
Longleat
Montacute House
London
Deptford
Cambridge
Yarmouth
York
Newcastle
Blackburn
Rochdale
Bury
Liverpool
Chester
ConwayBeaumaris
Caernarvon
Birmingham
Nottingham
Hull
Kidderminster Coventry
Gloucester
Tewkesbury
Worcester
Chepstow
Teignmouth
Milford Haven
Tenby
Carmarthen
Bristol
Bridgewater
Southampton
Portsmouth
Shoreham
Pevensey
Winchelsea
Romney
Sandwich
Haverfordwest
Exeter
Otterton
Exmouth
Lyme Regis
Weymouth
Kingswear
St Helens
Melcombe Regis
Poole
Wareham
Plymouth
Fowey
Dartmouth
Sidmouth
St Ives
Edinburgh
Dumfries
Glasgow
Dumbarton
Inverary
Dundee
Perth
Leith
Aberdeen
Inverness
Dublin
WexfordWaterford
Cork
Baltimore
Drogheda
Oxford
Tyne
Trent
Severn
Thames
N O R T H
S E A
I R I S H
S E A
E N G L I S H C H A N N E L
BRISTOL CHANNEL
E N G L A N D
I R E L A N D
S C O T L A N D
W A L E S
1570s
timber from
West Indies
timber from
Baltic
Caen stone
from France
tapestries
from
Belgium
furniture, leather goods
from Low Countries
skilled labourers from
Low Countries, France, Italy
alabaster
searoutetransportingcoal
1
19
18
2
5
3
4
16
9
8
7
10
11
12
20
23
21
25
26
24
22
13
14
6
17
15
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 The English Renaissance, 1500-1666
country house
country house no longer standing
palace
outstanding interior
art collection (with collector)
cathedral
cathedral stripped
abbey dissolved
monastery destroyed
monastery converted to private house
sacred art destroyed
toolmakers
nails
metal goods
glass
stone
cloth
wool
cotton
important port
main route/road
imports
1 -
2 -
3 -
4 -
5 -
6 -
7 -
8 -
9 -
10 -
11 -
12 -
13 -
14 -
15 -
16 -
17 -
18 -
19 -
20 -
21 -
22 -
23 -
24 -
25 -
26 -
1577, seat of Clan Menzies
16th c, timber-framed
1591, for Elizabeth Shrewsbury
1580-88, by Robert Smythson, extensive windows
early 16th c, timber-framed, moated
medieval, 1587-96 modernized by Sir Edward
Herbert, only long gallery remains
1618-35, for Sir Thomas Holte, by John Thorp
1565-87, for William Cecil
early 17th c
1603-16, for 1st Earl of Suffolk, 1699 made royal
palace by Charles II
1611, expansion of royal palace at Hatfield
1607-12, for Sir James Newton, attributed to
James Thorpe
1572-80, by Sir John Thynne
finished 1599, for Edward Philips, early
use of H-shaped plan
1660‘s, rare surviving example of pre-18th c
Irish country house
1761 destroyed by fire
early 17th c
mid-16th c, for James V of Scotland
early 16th c, country house of Stuart monarchs
from 1538, for Henry VIII, 1556 completed by
Earl of Arundel, 1682 demolished
1538 ceded to Henry VIII, rebuilt, home to
Elizabeth I, James I, Charles I, 1650 destroyed
remodelled for Cardinal Wolsey, 1514-28,
home to Tudor monarchs in 16th c
1540s acquired and enlarged by Henry VIII,
1566 granted to Thomas Sackville
from 1616, for Anne of Denmark, by Inigo Jones,
completed by Charles I, pure classical style
Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel 1586-1646
demolished 1670s, George Villiers,
1st Duke of Buckingham 1592-1628
BRITAIN 1500–1666
163
1 THE ARTISTIC AND INTELLECTUAL SPIRIT of the
Renaissance blossomed at the court of Henry VIII
(r.1509–47). Renaissance humanism can be discerned
in the writings of Thomas More (1478–1535). In
1512–18 the Italian sculptor Pietro Torrigiano
(1472–1522) created monuments for Henry’s
parents at Westminster Abbey in the latest Italian
idiom. The newly cosmopolitan court attracted the
German portraitist Hans Holbein (1497–1543) in
1526. Hampton Court Palace was begun in 1515
under the patronage of Cardinal Wolsey (1475–
1530). Terracotta roundels by Giovanni da Maiano
added an Italianate element to the inner courtyard.
The interiors, with superbly decorated
ceilings, imported and domestic tapestries, were by
English and Continental craftsmen. England’s
growing mercantile prowess during the sixteenth
century, gradually securing dominance over key
trade routes, underpinned artistic production.
NICHOLAS HILLIARD’S Young man leaning against a tree
among roses (c.1587). Miniature painting (limning) was
probably introduced from the Low Countries. By the
Elizabethan period, Hilliard (1547–1619) was leading an
indigenous tradition. His young man wears Elizabeth I’s
heraldic colours – black and white – and holds an
eglantine rose, also Elizabeth’s chosen symbol. Hand
on heart, and wandering in the forest like the lovers
of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, the young man
declares his devotion for his queen.
painted at the court of Charles I while serving as a
diplomat. In this work can be seen the full glory
and extravagance of the European baroque.
The extravagance of Charles’s patronage, and
his absolutist claims, precipitated a disastrous
Civil War (1642–6), Charles’s execution in 1649,
and the iconoclastic and Puritan government of
Oliver Cromwell (r.1649–58). The word, as
exemplified in the works of John Milton
(1608–74), was preferred to the image, though
the portrait of Cromwell himself by Peter Lely
(1618–80) – straightforward, dour, and unflattering
– presents an ideal of Protestant art. The
restoration of the monarchy in 1660 saw a blaze
of Baroque ceremonial, such as the lavishly
orchestrated state entry of Charles II to London
in 1661. Disgraced Puritans saw in the Great
Fire of 1666, which decimated London, divine
retribution for the return to courtly decadence.
St Paul’s
Cathedral
St Bride’s
St Sepulchre
St EdmundSt Michael
Paternoster
St Stephen
Walbrook
St Lawrence Jewry
St Mary-le-Bow
Horse
Ferry
London
Bridge
Tottenham Court
Queen’s House,
Greenwich
Tower of London
Hampton Court
Palace
Mile End Road
Ratcliff Highway
Thames
NewRiver
W
albrook
Fleet
Ditch
LAMBETH
MARSH
Spital Fields
St Giles’s
Fields
Lincoln’s
Inn
Fields
Smithfield
Cornhill
Leicester Fields
MARY-LE-BONE
VAUXHALL
LAMBETH
WESTMINSTER
SOUTHWARK
WHITECHAPEL
ROTHERHITHE
BERMONDSEY
WAPPING
BETHNAL
GREEN
STEPNEY
SHADWELL
MILE
ENDCLERKENWELL
ISLINGTON
HOXTON
built by Romans,
renovated 1586, 1608, 1610
site of bridge
since Roman
times
1509 converted from
palace to prison
1 2
3
4
5
6
7
N
0
0
1 mile
1.5 kms
2 London c.1600
built-up area
London Wall
extent of fire damage Sept. 1666
(destroys 13,000 houses, 87 churches)
road
palace
theatre
Wren church rebuilt 1670s
after fire of 1666
CONTINENTAL ARTISTS IN LONDON
Hans Holbein Hans
Eworth Antonis
Mor Marcus
Gheeraerts Sir
Peter Paul Rubens Sir
Anthony Van Dyck Wenceslaus
Hollar (1497/8-1543)
From Augsburg. Portrait painter
at court of Henry VIII.
(fl.1540-1573) From Antwerp. In England by 1545.
Portraits of nobility and gentry.
(c.1516-76) From Utrecht. In England 1554-55 as
painter to Philip II of Spain.
(c.1520-90) From Antwerp. In England by 1570.
Worked at court of Elizabeth I.
(1577-1640) Flemish painter sent to England as a
diplomat of Philip II of Spain. Commissioned by
Charles I to paint ceilings of Banqueting House,
Whitehall
(1599-1641) From Antwerp. Worked in England
during reign of Charles I.
(1607-77) From Prague. Brought to England by
Earl of Arundel. Worked primarily as an engraver.
built 1598-99, destroyed by fire 1613, closed 1642 by Puritans
built 1613-14, closed 1656
built 1587, closed 1606
residence of Archbishop of Canterbury since 1200, Great Hall rebuilt 1600
designed by Inigo Jones for James I 1603-25, decorated by Rubens 1629-34
built 1532-40 by Henry VIII
piazza and market square developed 1556 after designs by Inigo Jones
1 Globe Theatre -
2 Hope Theatre -
3 Rose Theatre -
4 Lambeth Palace -
5 Whitehall Palace -
6 St James’s Palace -
7 Covent Garden ART,
EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
162
THE STUART ASCENDANCY
Scotland and England were united when James VI
of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth I in 1603. During
the previous century Scottish architecture had
absorbed Renaissance influences, seen in the
portrait medallions and buttresses at Falkland
Palace, Fife. Little survives of the sacred arts of
medieval Scotland as a result of the extreme
iconoclasm of the sixteenth century.
A unified Britain, renowned for its maritime
expertise, began to trade with the East and West
Indies. Exotic imports – silk and spices from the
East, timber from the Caribbean – became
available. This period saw the founding of the
earliest British colonies, and international
trade greatly increased the country’s wealth.
THE ENGLISH BAROQUE
After the Act of Union, the Stuart dynasty, under
James I (r.1603–25) and his son Charles I
(r.1625–49), gradually assumed the cultural
trappings of an absolute monarchy. Vernacular
architectural traditions were abandoned. The
work of Inigo Jones (1573–1652), such as the
Banqueting House, Whitehall (1619–22), brought
Classical and Palladian influences to England.
The Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640)
IN 1500 MANY ASPECTS of life and culture in
the British Isles continued much as they had
throughout the medieval era. The period
covered here, concluding with the Great Fire of
London in 1666, was one of remarkable
achievement and innovation in architecture
and the visual arts, coupled with social,
economic, political and religious convulsions.
REFORMATION ICONOCLASM
For the first three decades of the sixteenth
century, the Church, and especially the great
monastic foundations across Britain, remained
centres of wealth and artistic excellence. The
richness of late-medieval sacred visual culture
was abruptly terminated by the Reformation.
Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy of 1534 was
aimed primarily at securing him a divorce. It
was followed swiftly by the dissolution of the
monasteries, ending a major source of
patronage for the arts, and a wave of
iconoclasm which swept away many of the
glories of Gothic stained glass, ceramics,
metalwork, textiles and wall-paintings.
In many cases (such as Rievaulx in Yorkshire,
and Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk), the monastic
buildings themselves were left as ruins. Monastic
wealth was distributed to Henry’s supporters
among the aristocracy, resulting in an
expansion in the building of country houses.
THE COURT OF THE VIRGIN QUEEN
The age of Elizabeth I (r.1558–1603) revealed the
full possibilities for the arts under a Protestant
regime. The rich literary and musical culture of
the period found counterparts in the secular
decorative arts, and miniature painting
attained the highest levels of excellence.
The growing wealth and confidence of the
aristocracy and gentry found cultural
expression in the design and decoration of
country houses, which became the defining
architectural form of the period. Fortifications
were no longer necessary, and the availability
of glass, as well as the influence of classicizing
styles, produced new architectural forms.
Noblemen who occupied the highest ranks
of government received large financial rewards,
and were able to create grandiose country
houses. Elizabeth’s chief minister, William Cecil
(1520–98), built Burghley House. Edward
Seymour (c.1506–1552), ruler (‘Protector’)
during the reign of the boy king Edward VI
(r.1547–53) created Longleat House, Wiltshire.
BRITAIN 1500-1666
HARDWICK HALL, built of local Derbyshire sandstone,
impresses upon the viewer a sense of the dynastic
ambitions of Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury
(‘Bess of Hardwick’), by whom it was built between
1591 and 1597. The architect, Robert Smythson,
incorporated medieval elements, such as the tall,
encircling towers, as well as the Renaissance loggia
and balustrade. The interiors feature rich
tapestries, portraits in oils and elaborate
decorative plasterwork.
2 TUDOR AND STUART LONDON. London was by far the
largest city in Britain in 1500 and has remained so
ever since. The centre of court and government
and a major mercantile and financial centre,
London was home to the finest practitioners of the
arts, from silversmiths and silk-weavers to
plasterers and painters. Continental artists from
Holbein to Van Dyck, Rubens and Lely found
patronage at the English court. The theatre,
though considered suspect by Puritans, thrived
during this period, the age of Marlowe,
Shakespeare and Jonson.
BRITAIN 1666–1800
165
10˚ 5˚ 0˚
55˚
Sl
Sl
Sl
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
M
M
M
L
L
L
L
L L
L
L
L L
L
L
L
L
L L
L
G
G
G
G
G
London
Colchester
Brighton 14
Dover 27
Cambridge 24
York 84
Newcastle 132
84 Liverpool
Bolton
Preston
Bradford
Chester
36 Birmingham
Stourbridge
63 Hereford
Nottingham
36 NorwichDerby
Hull
Whitby
Leeds 84
Manchester 80
Sheffield 60
Stafford
24 Ipswich
Swansea
Kilkenny
Newry
Cookstown
75 Shrewsbury
Stoke-on-Trent
Coventry
Gloucester 39
40 Bristol
Bath 30
Southampton
40 Exeter
Plymouth
Edinburgh 230Glasgow
Dublin
Belfast
Oxford 13
Wedgwood factory
founded 1759
Ty
ne
Dee
T
hames
N O R T H
S E A
IRISH SEA
E N G L I S H C H A N N E L
BRISTOL CHANNEL
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
ENGLANDIRELAND
SCOTLAND
WALES
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
2 Industrial Britain, c.1800
source of granite
source of limestone
source of marble
source of sandstone
source of slate
iron works
shipbuilding
major dock development
booming city
glass
pottery
cutlery
woollens/cloth/cotton
silk
coalfields
turnpike road
network, 1750
journey time from
London, in hours
L
G
M
S
Sl
Bath 30
3 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON was a recognizably
modern city, as seen in Hogarth’s lively ‘modern
moral subjects’. Coffee houses provided meeting
places for artists and literary figures, patronized by
wealthy merchants as well as the aristocracy whose
Palladian townhouses dignified the city. Elegant
West End developments, such as Hanover Square,
provided an ideal backdrop for polite society.
amateur draughtsmen of the leisured classes
would be accompanied by a drawing teacher.
The artists Paul Sandby and Thomas Hearne
were among their number. After the beginning of
the French Revolution in 1789, travel in Europe
became more difficult, sometimes impossible,
focusing even greater attention on the beauties
of the local landscape. Landscape painting,
however, was a precarious profession. Thomas
Gainsborough (1727–88), a native of Suffolk,
sustained his fashionable lifestyle by selling
portraits of exceptional elegance; but his letters
reveal a preference for the creation of idyllic rustic
landscapes. Richard Wilson, a Welsh landscape
painter deeply influenced by Claude
(1604/5–1682), pioneered a classical landscape
style in Britain, painting subjects such as the
Cader Idris and Dinas Bran mountains in
Wales, but received scant patronage.
BIRTH OF A MODERN ART WORLD
The organization of artistic life in London
underwent profound changes during this
period. The court painters Godfrey Kneller and
James Thornhill had led small academies in the
early eighteenth century, which were succeeded
by William Hogarth’s St Martin’s Lane Academy
(active 1735–67). None of the many attempts to
organize the profession, however, had a fraction
of the impact made by the Royal Academy of Arts.
Founded in 1768, with Joshua Reynolds (1723–92)
as its first President, the Academy assured its
forty members of social and intellectual status,
BEGUN IN 1699, Castle Howard is a magnificent
country house set in the Yorkshire countryside.
Various members of the Howard family financed its
construction and decoration, which was completed
only in 1811. Its dramatic outline and spectacular
detailing belie the fact that it was the first building
designed by the dramatist John Vanburgh.
T h a m e s
Lam
beth
M
a
r s h
Tuthill Fields
Cavendish Square
Soho Square
Bloomsbury
Square
Charing
Cross
Covent Garden
Piccadilly
St James’s
Square
Westminster
Abbey
Westminster
Bridge
St James’s
Palace
St James’s Park
Hyde
Park
19
20
21
22
23
40
41
42
43
4849
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
44
4546
47
24
33
37
39
38
35
1,4,5,6
36
34
27
28
29
30
31
32
25
26
12
12
9
11
3
1
8
10
14
13
7
2,3,6
3
5
18
15
16
17
N
0
0
500 yards
500 metres
3 London
area of late 17th-century development
development c.1710-50
development c.1750-1800
structure now destroyed
Studios and homes of artists
1 - Hogarth
2 - Hayman
3 - Reynolds
4 - Lely
5 - Kneller
6 - Thornhill
7 - Hudson
8 - Wilson
9 - Zoffany
10 - Gravelot
11 - Roubiliac, Read
12 - Paul Sandby
Meeting places
13 - Old Slaughter’s Coffee House
14 - Tom’s Coffee House
Art schools and academies
15 - St Martin’s Lane Academy
16 - Society of Arts
17 - Royal Academy Schools
18 - Great Queen Street Academy
Churches, with architect and date
19 - St Clement Danes, Wren 1680-82
20 - St James, Wren 1676-84
21 - St Anne, Wren 1686-1717
22 - St George, James 1721-24
23 - St Mary-le-Strand, Gibbs 1714-17
24 - St George, Hawksmoor 1720-30
25 - St Peter, Gibbs 1721-24
26 - St Martin-in-the-Fields, Gibbs 1722-26
Theatres, with architect and date
27 - Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Davenant 1658-1794
28 - Theatre Royal, Wren 1764; remodelled by Adam, 1775;
remodelled by Holland, 1794
29 - Opera House, Vanbrugh 1704
30 - Theatre Royal, Shephard 1792; remodelled by Holland, 1792
31 - Little Theatre (Theatre Royal from 1767), Potter 1720
32 - The Pantheon, Wyatt 1722
Academies and exhibition rooms
33 - Sir Godfrey Kneller’s Academy, 1711-23
34 - Sir James Thornhill’s Academy, 1724-34
35 - St Martin’s Lane Academy, 1735-67
36 - Great Exhibition Room from 1757
37 - British Museum, Montagu House, from 1759
38 - Royal Academy, Old Somerset House, 1771
39 - Society of Arts, 1754
Palladian mansions, with architect and date
40 - Burlington House, 1665; additions by Gibbs, 1715, 1719
41 - Queensbury House, Leoni 1721-23
42 - General Wade’s House, Burlington 1723
43 - Pembroke House, Campbell 1723
44 - Devonshire House, Kent 1730s
45 - 44 Berkeley Square, Kent 1742-47
46 - Chesterfield House, Ware 1747-52
47 - Spencer House, Vardy 1766
Adam-style mansions, with architect and date
48 - Lichfield House, Stuart 1764-66
49 - Londonderry House, Stuart 1774-82
50 - Melbourne House, Chambers 1771-76
51 - Landsdown House, Robert Adam 1761-68
52 - 20 St James’s Square, Robert Adam 1775-89
53 - Derby House, 1773-75; remodelled by Robert Adam
54 - The Adelphi, Adam brothers 1768-74
Other important monuments, with architect and date
55 - Somerset House, Chambers 1776-86
56 - The Admiralty, Ripley 1723-26
57 - The Horse Guards, Kent 1750-58
58 - Dover House, Paine 1755-58
59 - Paymaster General’s Office, Lane 1753
60 - The Treasury Building, Kent 1734-37
61 - Home of Sir John Soane (now Sir John Soane’s Museum), 1792
62 - Hanover Square, post 1714
2 BETWEEN 1760–80
industrial production
burgeoned, benefitting
from the availability of
fast-flowing water, coal
and iron. The
Staffordshire pottery
of Josiah Wedgwood
cutlery and silverware
from Sheffield or
woollen cloth from
Leeds achieved
growing renown.
while offering an annual juried exhibition for the
sale of work. It also provided a thorough artistic
education to generations of aspiring artists and,
in Reynolds’s Discourses (1769–90) it was underpinned
by a fully articulated body of theory. The
Academy was housed in William Chambers’s
grandiose Somerset House, where densely
hung exhibitions became fashionable events. It
signalled a new status for the arts, which
Reynolds considered to be commensurate with
the status of Britain as a major imperial power
and a centre of scientific innovation.
The Royal Academy of Arts successfully
established a professional elite, and its members
included two women artists, Mary Moser and
Angelica Kauffman. Art education was placed
on a professional footing. The middle-class
public who flocked to the Academy’s exhibitions
were, however, more enthusiastic as patrons of
landscape and portraiture than for the history
paintings which Reynolds aimed to promote.
The stage was set for the triumph of English
landscape painting in the Romantic decades
from the 1790s to the 1840s.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
164
Priory in Yorkshire. Great collections of classical
antiquities, particularly sculpture, were acquired
by the British aristocracy and gentry – the ‘milordi’
– on the European Grand Tour. This was also the
age of the landscape garden. At Stowe, temples
designed by John Vanburgh, William Kent and
James Gibbs are situated in an informal garden
designed in its evolving forms by Charles
Bridgeman and Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. The
Gothic ‘folly’ became a favourite adornment, for
example at Harewood House in Yorkshire, and
Horace Walpole, author of The Castle of Otranto
(1765) transformed a Twickenham farmhouse,
Strawberry Hill, into an early masterpiece of
‘Gothick’, whose style contrasts with the Palladian
villas of Alexander Pope and David Garrick nearby.
TRAVEL, TOURISM AND LANDSCAPE
Towards the end of the eighteenth century,
educated tourists and artists alike began to turn
their attention to the natural scenery of the
British Isles. Guided by Rev. William Gilpin’s
picturesque tours of areas such as the Western
Highlands, the Lake District and the Wye Valley,
THE GREAT FIRE of London (1666) destroyed
much of the medieval city, including the great
Gothic structure of St Paul’s Cathedral. Despite
various proposals, one by Christopher Wren, the
capital was not transformed into a great Baroque
city, but largely retained its medieval street
plan. The lavish culture of the Restoration court
was epitomized by Sir Peter Lely’s portraits of
the King Charles II’s courtiers and mistresses.
THE AESTHETICS OF THE GREAT ESTATE
This was the great age of country-house building,
as profits from landed estates burgeoned, owing
to new farming techniques, and the aristocracy
invested in profitable mercantile and industrial
ventures. Country seats of the aristocracy
included such palatial structures as
Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, Blenheim
Palace in Oxfordshire and Powerscourt House
near Dublin in Ireland. Distinguished not only
by their sophisticated adaptation of Palladian
architecture, these ‘stately homes’ contain
superlative examples of a wide range of
decorative arts, from the work of the wood
carver Grinling Gibbons at Petworth in Sussex
to furnitute by Thomas Chippendale at Nostell
BRITAIN 1666-1800
1 DESPITE THE increasing
influence of the
bourgeoisie, the eighteenth
century was dominated
culturally, politically and
socially by the aristocracy
and gentry. A large number
of great country houses
from this period have
survived intact, revealing
the extremely high quality
of decorative art production
in this period, as well as the
lavish collections acquired at
home and abroad.
5˚ 0˚
50˚
Au
Ag
en
Pb
Ag
London
Cambridge
Norwich
Lowestoft
Ipswich
York
Whitby
Grasmere
Kendal
Penrith
Liverpool
Betws-
y-coed
Bangor
Caernarfon
Keswick
Birmingham
Stoke-on-Trent
New Hall
Swinton
Derby
Loughborough
Pinxton
Sheffield
Leeds
Lancaster
Kidderminster
Worcester
ChepstowSwansea
Killarney
Bristol
Caughley
Bath
Aberystwyth
Exeter Wilton
Woodstock
Monmouth
Nantgarw
Axminster
Plymouth
Edinburgh
Kenmore Dunkeld
Kinross
Bothwell
Lanark
DumbartonTarbert
Inverary
Perth
Stirling
Glasgow
Dublin
Limerick
Cork
Oxford
Longton
Hall
Chatsworth
Taymouth Castle
Blarney Castle
Tintern Abbey
Goodrich Castle
Dolbadarn
Castle
Dinas BranValle Crucis Abbey
Drumlanrig
Seaton Delaval
Castle Howard
Erddig
Beaulieu
Dyrham
Park
Blenheim
Palace
Chatsworth House
Petworth
House
Moor Park
Royal Naval Hospital
Florence Court
Floors Castle
Yester House
Thirlestaine Castle
Mellerstain
Dalkeith
Park
Inverary Castle
Powerscourt
House
Attingham Park
Hagley Hall
Nostell Priory
Holkham Hall
Stowe
House
Woburn Abbey
Mereworth
Clandon Park
Chiswick House
Stourhead House
Rousham
Houghton Hall
Russborough House
Culzean Castle
Mount Stewart
Kenwood
House
Garrick’s Villa
Syon House
Osterley
Park
The Casino
Castletown House
Castle Coole
Belvedere
Westport House
Castle Ward
Kedleston Hall
Heaton
Park
Harewood House
Plas Newydd
Charlemont House
Gosford House
Dumfries House
Castle House
Slane Castle
Strawberry Hill
Headfort House
The Leasowes
Pope’s Villa
Kew Gardens
Tyne
Tees
Trent
Sev
ern
Mersey
Shanno
n
Lee
Thames
Loch Lomond
Falls of
the Clyde
Dargle
Forest of Dean
Coldwell
Rocks
Liffey
Belle Isle
Swallow
Falls
Avon
Wye
Dee
NORTH
SEA
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
I R I S H
S E A
E N G L I S H C H A N N E L
BRISTOL CHANNEL
Ben
Lomond
Snowdon
Skiddaw
Scafell Pike
Cadair Idris
Great
Sugarloaf
Saddleback/
Blencathra
Helvellyn
Latrigg
WICKLOW
MTS
E N G L A N DI R E L A N D
S C O T L A N D
WALES
Devil’s Bridge
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 The Age of Aristocracy, 1666-1800
major artistic and architectural centres
areas of artistic activity
regions important in the picturesque discovery
of Britain and the rise of landscape painting
artists touring the area
castle/fort/abbey
mountain
other physical feature
major country houses:
Baroque
Palladian
Neoclassical
Gothic
important interior
important garden/parkland
important art collection
carpet manufacturer
centre of furniture and cabinet-making
centres of ceramics:
creamware
earthenware
porcelain
stoneware
tin-glazed earthenware
centres of production of
metalwork and jewellery:
pewter
jet
wrought iron
electroplate
silver
iron and steel jewellery
pearl shell
ormulu
bronze
enamels
lead
brass
gold and silver
Pb
Ag
Au
Ag
en
Southwest
Ireland:
Carver
Barrett
Delane
Mullins
Roberts
Ashford
Fisher
Wheatley
Barry
Dublin and the
Wicklow Mts:
Carver
Barrett
Delane
Mullins
Roberts
Ashford
Fisher
Wheatley
Barry
North Wales:
Buck
Boydell
Wilson
P. Sandby
Gilpin
Ibbetson
Warwick Smith
Rowlandson
Turner
Western
Highlands:
Norie
P. Sandby
T. Sandby
A. Runciman
J. Runciman
More
Gilpin
Hearne
Naysmyth
Allan
Farington
Ibbetson
Lake District:
Gilpin
Beaumont
Hearne
Farington
Gainsborough
de Loutherbourg
Wheatley
Tourne
Dayes
Abbot
P. Sandby
Warwick Smith
Wright of Derby
Turner
Wye Valley:
Gilpin
Hearne
Turner
Girtin
WILLIAM HOGARTH’S Beer
Street epitomizes the robust
humour of this most
profound satirist. Published
in 1749 with a pendant Gin
Lane, the plate extolls the
wholesome virtues of beer:
everyone except the
pawnbroker thrives under its
influence.
Trade with the North
Netherlands, c.1600
political boundary, c.1550
navigable waterway
Imports
From Germany: wine and stone
From Russia: talcum, fish oil,
hides and furs
From Norway: stockfish
and timber
From Sweden: iron and weapons
From Prussia and Poland: grain,
rye, wax, flax, ash, tar and wood
From Scotland: wool, lead,
sheepskins and candles
From England: beer, fine cloth,
tin and baize
From Americas: gold and silver,
salt, timber, pearls, hides
From Caribbean: tortoiseshell
and ebony
From East Indies: pepper, nutmeg,
cloves and silk
From Italy: marble, recent art,
antiquities and luxury goods
From France: sail cloth,
salt and wines
From Spain: oil, salt, raisins,
wine, figs, sugar, cork,
semi-precious stone and spices
2
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
THE NORTH NETHERLANDS 1500–1800
167
Baltic and later by extensive global exploits.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century
Amsterdam, with little more than 10,000
inhabitants, still lagged behind her local
competitors; a century later she had overtaken
all, not only in size, but also in wealth, which
was increasingly related to the import of
precious commodities and raw materials often
from halfway around the globe. Iron from
Sweden was forged into arms, which
guaranteed the hegemony of the trading
classes in their worldwide ventures.
Amsterdam’s sudden riches, the envy of
Europe, forced her ‘upstart’ rulers to present
visual apologies in the shape of small oil
paintings with internationally recognizable,
moral stories. This genre of predominantly
Biblical history painting was the most popular
in Amsterdam until the second half of the
century, and was made famous by the city’s
most celebrated immigrant, Rembrandt.
THE DUTCH ART MARKET
Rembrandt first left Leiden for Amsterdam
soon after the concentric canal expansion
(1612–20) had created thousands of
prosperous homes which were seeking visual
aggrandizement and display. Besides history
paintings, many landscapes and portraits were
produced and an active art market developed.
The print industry also expanded, developing a
particular specialization in map-making. With a
second town expansion in the 1660s up to 300
more painters arrived, their work exported by
an increasing number of art dealers.
The clientele, boasting by then three or
more generations of established wealth, was
increasingly seeking refined opulence. This was
introduced in all genres, but best expressed in
exquisite still-lifes, full of allusions to exotic
imports. In the first half of the century
Amsterdam had asserted her power through
militia paintings, culminating in Rembrandt’s
Nightwatch (1642, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).
During the second half of the century marine
painting reflected the Anglo-Dutch conflicts,
fought out in a series of spectacular sea battles.
Other cities like Amsterdam profited
from immigration and overseas exploits, but
JAN VERMEER, THE ART OF PAINTING, 1662–5. Probably
made in connection with a new building for the Delft
painters' guild, this large work not only documents
the city's refinement, but celebrates
the art of painting in general. The painter, dressed
according to a much earlier fashion, portrays an
introverted young woman, elegantly attired as the
muse of history. In an interior richly decorated with
marble and aristocratic Delft tapestry, she poses
against a wall map of the Northern and Southern
Netherlands. The values represented in the painting
include an interest in the long pedigree of local
painting, in secretive female beauty, in learning, in
spacious, high-class environments and patriotism.
1
2
5
6
7
8
9
10
43
111213
Haarlem Amsterdam
Alkmaar
Enkhuizen
Utrecht
Middelburg
Dordrecht
Leeuwarden
Zwolle
Arnhem
Zutphen
Nijmegen
Breda
Antwerp
Maastricht
’s Hertogenbosch
Kampen
Deventer
Groningen
Rotterdam
Delft Gouda
The Hague
Leiden
Rhine
Vecht
Kr
om
m e Rijn
Scheldt
Waal
M
euse
Amst
el
Vl
iet
ZUIDER
ZEE
N O R T H
S E A
UTRECHT
DRENTHE
GRONINGEN
BRABANT
GELDERS
LIMBURG
LIÈGE JÜLICH
(GULLIK)
EAST
FRIESLAND
CLEVES
OVERIJSSEL
FRIESLAND
FLANDERS
HOLLAND
ZEELAND
COLOGNE
M
Ü
N
STER
N
0
0
80 miles
50 kms
2 THE FOUNDATION of the East Indies Company in
1602 followed by that of the West Indies Company
in 1621, fortified single enterprises through
unification. Some individual merchant families
continued within established trades such as grain.
variations in these and other factors may
explain the striking differences in the type of
painting produced in each of them. For
example, Delft allowed only a limited import
of skilled labour mainly for her new, capitalintensive,
tapestry industry. It remained a
small, clean, conservative community in which
Jan Vermeer could create his genteel, light and
spacious interiors, draped with tapestries and
peopled with dreamy, dignified citizens.
Leiden, in contrast, needed a large workforce to
ensure that her labour-intensive wool industry
flourished. Immigrants filled all available living
space, providing the context
for the small paintings of shallow and dark
interiors by Leiden’s most famous painter
Gerrit Dou. The elite of Utrecht, on the other
hand, continued the traditions of the former
bishopric and its landed aristocracy and
patronized painters who travelled as a matter
of course to Rome. They became the major
importers of Italian style and subject matter.
THE END OF AN ERA
The eighteenth century was a reaction to the
previous period of aggressive wealth and art
accumulation. Capital was invested, and art
collections were passed on from generation to
generation, meaning that fewer painters found
a market. If they succeeded, it was often with
decorative work, such as painted ceilings and
wall hangings with pastoral landscapes and
classical allegories (De Lairesse) or with
flower paintings (Ruysch). Genre painting
concentrated on refined interiors (Ochtervelt,
Schalcken, Van der Werff). Cornelis Troost
(1696–1750) in Amsterdam was the only painter
who satirized this establishment satisfied with
living off its former glory.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
166
SINCE THEIR ORIGINS in around the
twelfth century the cities in the fertile
delta of the two great northern European
rivers, the Rhine and Meuse, had enjoyed
growing prosperity mainly due to
agriculture and trade. At first, they
concentrated on architecture – religious,
feudal and civic. But, by 1500, at the end
of the Burgundian period, towns such as
Haarlem and Leiden had started to
support other artistic activities as well.
The Church and the governing classes
patronized expensive art, for example
painted or sculpted altarpieces, silver
vessels, portraits and illuminated
manuscripts. Simultaneously the young
print industry satisfied a new bourgeoisie with
images of a more varied subject-matter, distributed
more widely at lower cost.
THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
Yet artistic production came to a virtual halt in 1568
when different, discontented groups brought about a
revolt against the ‘foreign’ Roman Catholic Church
and the centralized government of the equally
‘foreign’ Spanish Habsburgs, who in 1515 had
inherited the feudal titles to the Netherlands.
Although this conflict was to continue for 80 years,
in 1579 the Seven Northern Provinces succeeded in
establishing a new state, a federal republic.
The young republic’s fate was strongly influenced
by her embargo of Antwerp after this formidable
trading and banking centre
had come under control of the Spanish enemy
(1585). The exodus of Protestant merchants and
craftspeople, including artists, benefited the
northern cities, above all Amsterdam. The character
of Amsterdam’s citizens was shaped by the
disadvantages of their original landless, waterlogged
situation, which spurred them on to take advantage
of their geographical position, first by trading on the
THE NORTH NETHERLANDS 1500-1800
AMSTERDAM’S NEW TOWN HALL
(1648), the largest secular
structure in Europe before
Louis XIV erected his palace
in Versailles, was constructed
from German Bentheim
stone, with the grandiose
citizen’s hall entirely clad in
white Italian marble. With its
floor inlaid with maps of the
earth and the heavens, the
building epitomized in its
use of materials and
decoration the city’s prime
position in world trade.
Haarlem
1245
Amsterdam 1304
Utrecht
1122
Middelburg
1217
Dordrecht 1150
Rotterdam 1340
Delft 1246
The Hague
Leiden 1206
Rhine
Gouwe
Scheldt
Schie
V
liet
Am
stel
N O R T H
S E A
ZUIDER
ZEE
U T R E C H THOLLAND
Z E E L A N D
Dunes
D
u
n
e
s
N
0
0
40 miles
25 kms
2 2019
1 431
210
1 5
212
2
3 421
1 222
Year Population
1500 - 12,000
1560 - 14,000
1622 - 40,000
1700 - 50,000
1800 - 19,000
Town hall, Doelen
Weighhouse, Meat Hall
16th C: M. van Heemskert, H. Goltzius
17th C: H.Vroom, P. Saenzedam, C.W. Heda
F. Hals, J. Leyster, M. Molenaar,A. van Ostade
S. Ruisdael, L. de Key, J. van Campen, P. Post
16th C: M. van Heemskert, H. Goltzius
17th C: J. van der Velde; H. Segers
Year Population
1501 - 12,000
1561 - 27,000
1623 - 105,000
1701 - 140,000
1801 - 205,000
Town hall,Weighhouse, Doelen
Houses of Corrections, Stock Exchange,
Offices of E.I. & W.I. Co, Doelen,Arsenal, Orphanages
Theatre,Town Hall, Hospitals,Almhouses,Admiralty
Warehouse,Wharf, Inns
16th C: J. Cornelisz, D. Jacobsz, D. Bazendsz
17th C: P. Lastman, Rembrandt, H.Avercamp,
G. van Coninxloo, H. Segers, E van der Velde,
Ph. Koninck, B. van der Helst, F. Bol, G. Flinck, G. Metsu,
A van Everdingen, J. van Ruisdael, M. Hobbema,
A van der Neer, P. de Hooch, E de Witte,
W. van de Velde I,II, H. de Keyser, J. van Campen
Vingboons Bros
16th C: C.Anthonisz, D. Barendsz
17th C: Rembrandt van Rijn, H. Segers
Year Population
1502 - 15,000
1560 - 26,000
1624 - 35,000
1702 - 41,000
Citadel,Town hall, Bishop's Palace
Mint, University
16th C: J. Gossaert,A. Mor, J van Scorel
17th C: J.Wttewael,A. Bloemaert,
P. Moreelse, C. van Poelemburg,
H.Terbruggen, G. Honthorst,
D. van Baburen, J. van Biljert,
R. Savery
Year Population
1504 - 14,000
1564 - 16,000
1626 - 44,000
1704 - 72,000
1800 - 63,000
Burch, Count's prison,
Town hall
Town Hall, Dike reeve,
University, Botanical garden,
Theatre,Weighhouse, Serge hall
16th C: C. Engelbrechtsz, L. van Leyden
17th C: J. van Goyen, G. Dou,
Jan Steen, F. van Mieris
16th C: Lucas van Leyden
Year Population
1500 - 15,000
1560 - 16,000
1622 - 18,000
1700 - 22,000
1800 - 18,000
Town hall, Doelen
Mint
16th C: J.J. Doudijn
17th C: G. and A. Cuyp,
S. van Hoogstraten,
J. de Bischop, N. Maes,
A. de Gelder
Year Population
1501 - 3,000
1561 - 8,000
1623 - 45,000
1701 - 50,000
1800 - 58,000
Stock Exchange,Town hall, Doelen,
E.I. Co Building, Dike reeve office,
Admiralty building, statue of Erasmus
17th C: J. Porcellis, S. de Vlieger,
W. Buytenwech, H. Sorgh,
Saftleven Bros, L. de Jong,
E. van der Neer,A. van der Werff
Year Population
1502 - 10,000
1562 - 14,000
1624 - 23,000
1702 - 19,000
1800 - 13,000
Town hall
New Town Hall, Meat Hall
E.I. Co building,Arsenal,
Artillery house
17th C: M.Van Mierevelt,
C. Fabritius, J.Vermeer
P. de Hoogh
Year Population
1503 - 3,000
1563 - 7,000
1625 - 16,000
1703 - 30,000
1800 - 38,000
Castle, Government offices,Town hall,
Doelen
Doelen, Princely palaces
17th C: J. van Ravensteyn, J. van Goyen,
A. Hanneman,A. van Beyeren
18th C: D. Marot, J. de Wit, C.Troost
17th C: E. van de Velde
2 78
Year Population
1500 - 8,000
1562 - 15,000
1622 - 28,000
1702 - 30,000
1800 - 15,000
Town hall
E.I. Co warehouse
17th C: A. Bosschaert, B. van der Ast,
A. van der Venne
1 THE DIFFERENT SOIL and water
conditions that influenced
the first siting of the Dutch
cities resulted in their
acquiring different civic
characters, experiencing
different historical
developments and ultimately
creating different types of
art. After 1500 the medieval
towns grew phenomenally,
some supported by newly
drained polderland. The
most decisive change in civic
life took place between 1590
and 1630, when Protestants
fleeing persecution in
Catholic countries took
advantage of new
possibilities for world trade.
Commerce was fed by
imports from all parts of the
globe. Earlier established
industries, such as dairy and
textile production and
brewing, were turned into
more capitalist and
specialized enterprises,
profiting from fresh export
opportunities. Painting and
printmaking enjoyed a
similar expansion, becoming
part of a prestigious luxury
trade. Sculpture, by contrast,
became a rare art form used
for civic display – for
example within the
Amsterdam townhall or for
tombs of naval heroes.
1 Dutch Cities: Art and Commerce, 1500-1800
Major city, with date of first city privilege
Number of monastic buildings
Number of churches before Alteration
Number of churches after Alteration
Civic architecture before Alteration (c.1570-80)
Purpose-built civic institutions after Alteration
Administrative centre
Well-known artists and architects
Well-known printmakers
Major economic resources:
brewing
earthenware
fishing
flower bulbs
harbour
linen
2
19
20
light manufacturing
shipbuilding
silk
trade
woollen cloth
tapestry making
THE SOUTH NETHERLANDS 1500–1800
169
industrial production of art by anonymous
masters. Purchased speculatively by merchants,
goods were marketed along the trade networks.
Examples are sizable oak altarpieces with painted
wings and sculpture-filled interiors; oak and
walnut polychromed statuettes of Jesus and
Mary, whose nurturant appeal explains
Magellan’s gift of a Jesus ‘poupée’ to a Philippine
princess; and devotional reliefs carved in
Mechelen from English (Nottingham) alabaster.
THE CROSSROADS OF THE NORTH
Antwerp’s commercial supremacy was established
after the Portuguese spice staple moved there in
1501. Merchants poured in, making Antwerp the
pivot of global trade networks and Europe’s most
cosmopolitan metropolis. Many of its notable
sixteenth-century buildings were commercial: the
Beurs, the world’s first stock exchange, with 100
stalls reserved for art; the German merchants’
warehouse; shops publishing quality copper
engravings; the Plantin Press, which
monopolized the sale of religious texts in Spain
and its colonies; and a tapestry sales hall.
Tapestry, the most sumptuous commodity,
woven in Brabantine and Flemish cities, required
Spanish wool and Italian silk thread. By the
THE COLLECTION pictured in
this painting, The
Allegory of Sight (1617)
by Jan Brueghel the Elder
and Peter Paul Rubens,
reflects the eminence of
the South Netherlands as
an art centre. When
hostilities ceased in the
early seventeenth
century, money which
had previously been used
for warfare was now
redirected to peacetime
concerns, notably the arts
and sciences. The
Archdukes gave their
enthusiastic support to
these pursuits. In this
painting, Flemish art
predominates, but
classical sculpture,
scientific instruments and
rarities are also well
represented, evidence of
the cultivated milieu of
this Habsburg court.
20˚10˚0˚
40˚
50˚
I
C
E
E
St
Ma
St
Ma
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
L
L
L
L
L
L
Verona
Hamburg
Amsterdam
Delft
Venice
Seville
Pavia
Genoa
Cologne
Rubens
Rubens
Van Dyck
Van Dyck
Brueghel
Snyders
Brueghel
Rubens
Snyders
Rubens
van Dyck
Snyders
Rubens
Snyders
Rubens
Van Dyck
Snyders
and many others
Rubens
Rubens
Rubens
Snyders
Seine
Loir
e
Rhône
E
bro
Tagus
Od
er
Rhine
Elbe
N O R T H
S E A
M E D I T E R R A N E A N
S E A
BALTIC
SEA
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
PYRENEES
A L P S
G R E AT
B R I TA I N
PAPAL
STATES
MILAN
BAVARIA
AUSTRIA
PRUSSIA
DENMARK
O T T O M A N
E M P I R E
K.DOM
OF
NORWAY
S W E D E N
BOHEMIA
SOUTHERN
NETHERLANDS
TUSCANY
P O L A N D
KINGD
O
M
OFNAPLES
A
N
D
SICILY
SARDINIA
SICILY
NETHERL
ANDS
SAXONY
S P A I N
PORTUGAL
F R A N C E
to the Americas
from Caribbean and E. Indies
from
India
from Africa, India
New Spain
to the West Indies
from Guatemala
from the Americas
from Caribbean and E. Indies
N
0
0 450 kms
300 miles
Artists who returned
to the Netherlands
de Vriendt
Coebergher
Francart
Rubens
Huyssens
Duquesnoy
Quellinus I
2 The South Netherlands in an International Context, 1500-1800
border of Holy Roman Empire, 1721
exports from the Southern Netherlands:
tapestry
paintings
prints and books
sculpture
carved Brabantine oak altarpieces, 1500-1550s
art cabinets, 17th century
lace
silk
diamonds
export of tapestry expertise, 17th century
countries playing host to
17th-century painters
imports/local production centres:
copper
stone/marble
ebony
ivory
tortoise shell
gold and silver
diamonds
cochineal
indigo
Cu
St
Ma
L
E
C
I
2 STRATEGICALLY SITUATED, the South Netherlands in
the sixteenth century was an art emporium where
mass-produced goods were distributed to all
compass points along extensive trade networks. In
the seventeenth century trendsetting artists, such
as Rubens and Van Dyck, personally transmitted
their style abroad, as well as absorbing cultural
influences from far-flung places.
seventeenth century, Flemish expertise was in
such demand that princely patrons lured
weavers to foreign cities to found competitive
shops. Another wall covering, cordwain (made
of leather), was a Mechelen specialty.
With the arrival of the Archdukes, the region
became the northernmost Habsburg bulwark
against Protestantism. To this end, ecclesiastical
institutions assumed a formidable propagandistic
role. Substantial sums were expended on
pilgrimage centres, such as Scherpenheuvel, new
churches were styled in the Roman Baroque
manner, old churches were repaired, and up-todate
decor – windows, choirscreens, altarpieces –
was incorporated. Antwerp gives some indication
of this intense activity: ten cloisters were
founded between 1607 and 1621 and, at roughly
the same time, Rubens’s shop turned out some
60 altarpieces. Court culture offered Flemish
painters international opportunities to fashion
political imagery, court portraits and paintings for
picture galleries, a new symbol of princely or
aristocratic status. Flemish painters had always
travelled south; in the seventeenth century
many, such as Rubens and Van Dyck, embarked
on lengthy Italian sojourns. Their reputations
spread south of the Alps, and the international
Baroque idiom was widely diffused.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
168
THE SOUTH NETHERLANDS, a sovereignty
only during the reign of Albert and Isabella
(1598–1621), was a Habsburg territory governed
from afar. Still, it profited from its integration
within the Empire, as three examples illustrate.
The art cabinet originated in Antwerp c.1620,
when collecting rarities became fashionable. Its
fabrication required ebony and tortoiseshell
from the Indies and ivory from Ceylon and west
Africa; these arrived in Antwerp via Lisbon and
Cádiz. Another instance is diamonds, carried by
Portuguese merchants from India for cutting in
Antwerp. Antwerp’s dyeing industry depended
on American cochineal and indigo.
The Iberian peninsula was a primary market
for products from the South Netherlands.
Numerous art cabinets were exported there, as
well as oil paintings on copper and inexpensive
watercolours on linen. Thousands of pictures
were sent on to New Spain and the West Indies.
Markets outside the Empire were tapped too.
One estimate claims that one-third of the
sixteenth-century pictures collected in Florence,
Genoa and Venice were of Netherlandish origin,
with landscape the preferred subject.
AN ABUNDANT LAND
Natural resources abounded for architecture,
sculpture and church furnishings: clay (for brick),
sandstone, limestone, bluestone and marble. The
latter included touchstone from Dinant and
Namur, Tournai blue-black, and red and
variegated colours from Rance. A brownish-ochre
marble from Hainault was used at St Peter’s in
Rome. Only white marble was unavailable locally
and had to be imported from Italy. Coal and iron
from the Ardennnes and Liège supported small
arms and armour industries in Antwerp and
Liège, but other manufactures – engraving plates,
picture supports and scientific instruments –
depended on copper imported via Hamburg.
Extensive oak and walnut stands furnished
wood for sculpture, picture supports and
timber. Flax from Flanders was used to make
thread for damask, linen, canvas and lace.
Two periods are remarkable. The years
between 1500 and the 1560s were characterized
by entrepreneurial innovations. The period from
1600 to 1650 was distinguished by the CounterRefomation
and court culture. The most notable
sixteenth-century innovation is the quasiTHE
SOUTH NETHERLANDS 1500-1800
THE ANTWERP JESUIT CHURCH
(as depicted by William
Schubart von Ehrenberg,
oil on canvas, 1667) was
completed in 1621. The
church was built in
anticipation of the
canonization of the
order’s founder Ignatius
of Loyola, and in
recognition of the Jesuits
as Catholicism’s most
militant defenders. The
edifice symbolized the
triumph of the CounterReformation
in the
Habsburg Netherlands.
No expense was spared:
Italian marble dressed
the severe interior, while
Rubens, the foremost
Netherlandish master,
furnished paintings and
sculptural designs, and
advised the Jesuit
architect Huyssens.
8˚
52˚
51˚
7˚6˚5˚4˚3˚2˚
R
R
R
R
B
B
B
B
LL
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
L
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
T
T
Middelburg
The Hague
Rotterdam
Utrecht
Zutphen
’s-Hertongenbosch
Maastricht
Saint Truiden
Asse
Diegem
Vilvoorde
Scherpenheuvel
Antwerp
Ghent
Basècles
Namur
Floreffe
Fontaine-
l‘Évêque
Moulin
Dinant
Agimont
Merlemont
Senzeille
Rance
Rochefort La Roche-en-Ardenne
Bouillon
Stavelot
Trier
Luxembourg
Liège
Cambrai
Oudenaarde
(Audenarde)
Bruges
Ypres
Lille
Dilbeek
Tournai
(Doornik)
Mons
Bouvignes
Soulme
Cerfontaine
Solre-Saint-Géry
Dunkirk
Artois
Courtrai (Kortrijk)
Louvain
Brussels
Enghien (Edingen)
Avesnes
Saint-Rémy
Écausinnes-Lalaing
Écausinnes-d’Enghien
Mechelen
(Malines)
Munster
Cologne
Scheldt
Rhine
O
u
rthe
Lesse
Meuse/M
aas
Sambre
Leie
N O R T H
S E A
FLANDERS
A R T O I S H A I N A U LT
TOURNAI
WALLOON
FLANDERS
C A M B R A I
L U X E M B O U R G
L I M B U R G
UPPER
GELDERLAND
B
R
A
B
A
N
T
F R A N C E
HOLY
ROMAN
EMPIRE
16th-18th C
Our Lady (Coebergher) 1609
Jesuit Church of St Michael (Hesius) 1650-71
16th C
Jesuit Church (Huyssens) 1615-21
16th-17th C: Cathedral of Sts Michael & Gudule
Carmelite Church (Coebergher) 1607-11
17th-18th C
17th C: DuQuesnoy
17th C: cordwain
16th-17th C: Coudenberg Palace (Coebergher)
1607-11, Grande Place, 1696-1700,
Palace of Charles Lorraine 1756
cordwain
1500-1685
until 1530s
16th-18th C
16th C: alabaster sculptures and reliefs, brass
lecterns, baptismal fonts, 17th C: Quellinus,
art cabinets 16th-17th C; gold and silver tableware;
and liturgical objects, keyboard instruments
16th-17th C: Cathedral of Our Lady; 17th C:
Church of St James
Print publisher J. Cock establishes shop;
Plantin Press established 1555
16th-17th C
to 1530s
16th C
17th C
16th-17th C watercolour
paintings on linen
16th C; Hieronymous Bosch
16th-18th C: 746 registered painters 1600-50
17th C: dyeing, lace, linen, silk, embroidered
trimmings; diamond cutting, pearls
Stock Exchange 1531-33, Tapestry Hall,
Town Hall 1561-65, Hansa Warehouse 1564-69,
Militia Company Hall 1631-33
mid-16th-18th C
to mid-16th C
damask linen
wooden devotional sculptures
(beeldjes/poupées de Malines)
16th-18th C, cordwain
16th C
N
0
0
30 miles
40 kms
1 South Netherlands, 1500-1800
frontier, 1609
Netherlands, 1609
Principality of Liège
tapestry
paintings on panel, copper, cloth
painting on glass
prints and books
carved altarpieces, to 1530s
sculpture
furnishings
fashion and fabrics
secular/residential architecture/civic structures
religious architecture
scientific instruments
armour
mining centres/quarries:
bluestone
limestone
marble
sandstone
touchstone
S
T
M
L
B
R
1 THE TERRAIN of the South Netherlands was
conducive to the transport of raw
materials and manufactures, thanks to its
mainly flat or undulating topography and
extensive network of rivers and roadways.
During the course of the sixteenth century,
deep-sea harbours were lost through
warfare, and Antwerp’s river port
blockaded, leaving only Dunkirk with
direct ocean access.
2 Swiss Diversity
Swiss languages:
French
German
Italian
Romansh
typical architectural style
GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND 1500–1650
171
sculptor Hubert Gerhard (1540/50–before 1621),
who may also have trained in Florence, worked
in Munich, Augsburg and Innsbruck. More
broadly, Counter-Reformation patronage by the
Jesuit order provided many opportunities for
artists in the second half of the sixteenth
century. Roman Catholics were not the only
ecclesiastical patrons in Germany. Martin
Luther himself dedicated the palace chapel at
Torgau, which has significant classicizing
decoration. It is considered the first chapel
conceived specifically for Protestant worship.
The German lands suffered terribly in the
Thirty Years’ War, and it is often thought that
artistic production stopped in these years. This
view comes largely from the painter and writer
Joachim von Sandrart (1606–88). But while
mid-fifteenth century, almost simultaneously in
Italy and Germany. Although many early prints
were either cheap devotional images or
propaganda, those made by the best masters in
Augsburg and Nuremberg were art objects of
the highest standard. Dürer’s engravings and
woodcuts were prized throughout Europe.
Dürer was fundamental to the artistic
culture of this period, for he embodied the
ideal ‘Renaissance man’ more completely than
any of his contemporaries. He was interested in
classical antiquity, and, unlike his peers, he
studied in Italy (1494–5 and 1505–7). He was a
close friend of humanists and intellectuals and
wrote a treatise on human proportion. All of
this influenced his work profoundly. More than
any other German painter, he approached art
as an intellectual.
RENAISSANCE ART IN SWITZERLAND
Dürer’s younger contemporary, Hans Holbein
the Younger (1497/8–1543), was born and
trained in Augsburg, but moved to Basle in
1515. Basle was a thriving intellectual and
artistic centre in the early sixteenth century,
drawing Dürer (as a student) and the humanist
Erasmus of Rotterdam, as well as Swiss artists
such as the goldsmith and draftsman Urs Graf
(c.1485–1527/29). There was a long tradition of
artistic contacts between Germany and
Switzerland. In the fifteenth century, the
German Konrad Witz (1400/10–1445/46) was the
most important painter working in Basle and
Geneva. Likewise, Italian-speaking parts of
Switzerland profited from close contacts with
northern Italy; the prominent Milanese painter
Bernardino Luini (c.1480/85–1532) provided a
number of works for the Catholic city of Lugano.
Many other Swiss cities, including Basle,
Geneva and Zurich, converted to Protestantism
in the 1520s. Religious painting, the most
attractive work for a painter, was banished in
the ensuing iconoclasm. Frustrated with this
artistic climate, Holbein left Basle in 1526 for
the court of Henry VIII (r.1509–47) in England.
Although the Catholic regions continued to
support devotional art, and there was still a
market for graphic works, portraits, and other
non-religious art in other regions, few
internationally important artists settled in
Switzerland after the 1520s.
REFORMATION GERMANY
It is often assumed that the arts in Germany
declined precipitously after the deaths of
Cranach and Dürer. The Reformation initiated
in Saxony by Martin Luther (1483–1546), and
the devastating Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), are
supposed to have crippled the artistic life of
the region. Significant projects were
undertaken throughout this period, however.
The Ottheinrichsbau of Heidelberg Castle was
begun around 1556, and the Friedrichsbau of
the same complex in 1601, both with rich
sculptural decoration. Munich prospered in the
same period. The ornate Antiquarium (begun
1563), which housed the Duke of Bavaria’s
collection of antique sculpture, was designed
by the Italian architect and antiquarian Jacopo
Strada (1515–88).
Strada, who was trained by Giulio Romano
(c.1499–1546), was crucial for the transmission
of Italian and classical forms and ideas to
northern Europe, but he was not alone. The
imperial sculptor Adriaen de Vries (1556–1626)
was trained in Florence by Giambologna
(1529–1608). He worked primarily in Prague,
but completed significant commissions for
German patrons, including two monumental
fountains for the city of Augsburg. The Dutch
2 THE EXTREME DIVERSITY of
the mountainous Swiss
landscape fosters an
extraordinary variety of
provincial building types.
This map shows only
a few of the many
traditional forms.
The variations can be
attributed to many
factors, including
practical limitations on
building sites, locally
available building
materials, and traditional
building techniques in a
given region. These
considerations are
directly related to
Switzerland’s tremendous
topographical and
climatic range.
8˚6˚
46˚
48˚
10˚
Konstanz
Zurich
Freiburg
Basle
Geneva
Lausanne
Bern
Lugano
L. Geneva
Rhine
L. Constance
L. Neuchâtel
L. Maggiore
A L P
S
FRANCHE-COMTÉ
DUCHY OF SAVOY
DUCHY
OF MILAN REPUBLIC OF
VENICE
H O L Y R O M A N E M P I R E
T Y R O L
N
0
0
50 miles
75 kms
PETER FLÖTNER, APOLLO FOUNTAIN (1532).
This fountain, which stood in the house of
the Nuremberg archers’ company, reveals the
sophisticated Renaissance interests of patricians in
that city. Its classical subject, form and proportions
were inspired by prints by Albrecht Dürer and the
Venetian Jacopo de’ Barbari (1460/70–1516), the
first Italian to work extensively in Germany.
Magdeburg and Heidelberg were destroyed
(including Heidelberg Castle, which survives
as a ruin), many other centres survived largely
unharmed, including Augsburg and
Nuremberg. Although there is some truth to
Sandrart’s comments, the German artistic
tradition survived this period, and was thus
poised for renewed growth at the end of the
seventeenth century.
Germanic Art in the
16th Century
Holy Roman Empire
borders of Swiss Confederation
modern borders of Germany
region of brick construction
region of oak and walnut sculpture
region of limewood sculpture
important painting workshops
important sculpture workshops
centres of large-scale bronze casting
terracotta decorative sculpture
centres of fine metalwork
centres of printmaking
and distribution
centres of book production
Natural resources:
marble quarries
limestone quarries
alabaster quarries
copper and silver mines
P
A
1
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
170
THE FIRST HALF of the sixteenth century
marks a high point in the art of the German
lands, which were a collection of principalities
grouped under the rule of the elected Holy
Roman Emperor. The painters Albrecht Dürer
(1471–1528), Matthias Nithart, called Grünewald
(1475/80–1528), and Lucas Cranach (1472–1553)
are the most familiar artists of the period, but
the artistic flowering extended far beyond their
works. Limewood, abundant in
the southern German lands, was ideal for
delicately sculpted figures and altarpieces, and
was exploited to its limits by Tilman
Riemenschneider (c.1460–1531) and others of
his generation. Masters in the north worked in
oak and walnut, harder woods that tend to yield
somewhat more blocky figures. Especially in
Augsburg and Nuremberg, where Italian
Renaissance principles were accepted almost
unconditionally, cast bronze sculpture was
produced at a very high level by Peter Vischer
(c.1460–1529), Peter Flötner (1485/96–1546),
and others. Printmaking was developed in the
GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND 1500-1650
LUCAS CRANACH THE YOUNGER, Last
Supper of the Protestants and the
Pope’s Descent to Hell
(c.1546). Cheap to produce and
distribute, prints were used
widely in the bitter religious
struggles of the Reformation.
Here Martin Luther stands in the
pulpit, blessing the Protestants
receiving the host on the left. On
the right, flaming hell consumes
monks, bishops, cardinals
and a pope.
14˚6˚
46˚
50˚
54˚
10˚
P
P
P
A
A
Geneva
Bern
Basle
Zurich
Salzburg
Innsbruck
Vienna
Freiburg
Strassburg
(Strasbourg)
Hamburg
Schwerin
Lüneburg
Wismar
Cologne
Güstrow
Wittenberg
Lübeck
Bremen
Münster
Lemgo
Magdeburg
Würzburg
Aschaffenburg
Heidelberg
Marburg
Leipzig
Erfurt
Mainz
Prague
Dresden
Stettin
Berlin
Brunswick
Torgau
Munich
Eichstätt
Passau
Augsburg
Ulm
Solnhofen
Nuremberg
Bamberg
Regensburg
Frankfurt
am Main
Rhine
Meuse
Elbe
Oder
Danube
BA LT I C S E A
A
L P S
N E TH
ER
L
A
N
D
S
LORRAINE
W E S T P H A L I A
BRUNSWICK-
LÜNEBURG
H O L S T E I N
MECKLENBURG
PRUSSIA
B R A N D E N B U R G
P
O
M
E
R
A
N
I
A
S A X O N Y
T H U R I N G I A
H O L Y R O M A N E M P I R E
BAYREUTH
HESSE
BADEN
LO
W
ER
PALATINATE
F R A N C O N I A
K I N G D O M O F
B O H E M I A
K I N G D O M
O F
P O L A N D
BAVARIA
S I L E S I A
WÜRTTEMBERG
SALZBURG
TYROL
A R C H D U C H Y O F
A U S T R I A
S W I S S C O N F E D E R AT I O N
1
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
16
17
14
15
2
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
Important artistic workshops
1 - Albrecht Dürer; Hans Süss von
Kulmbach: George Pencz
2 - Lucas Cranach I; Lucas Cranach II
3 - Hans Holbein the Elder; Jörg Breu;
Hans Burgkmair
4 - Hans Holbein the Younger
5 - Bartholomäus Spranger
6 - Albrecht Altdorfer
7 - Hans Baldung Grien
8 - Matthias Grünewald
9 - Bernt Notke
10 - Tilman Riemenschneider
11 - Veit Stross; Peter Vischer;
Peter Flötner
12 - Daucher family; Gregor Erhart
13 - Loy Hering
14 - Adriaen de Vries
15 - Philipp Brandin
16 - Hubert Gerhard
17 - Alexander Colin
1 DIFFERENT REGIONS of Germany
provided different materials used
in artistic production, helping to
define distinct local styles. While
many German and Swiss cities
specialized in the production of
certain goods, other centres,
including Augsburg and
Nuremberg, produced a variety
of arts at a high level for patrons
throughout Europe.
GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND 1650–1800
173
by Roman fresco painting, but other aspects of
their work come from Vienna and elsewhere.
A distinctive, highly decorative Rococo
architecture is found throughout southern
Germany, the legacy of the Asams, Johann
Baptist and Dominikus Zimmermann
(1680–1758 and 1685–1766), and others.
But if Roman and French styles were
prevalent in Germany, one need not look far to
discover other international influences. The
architecture of Johann Conrad Schlaun
(1695–1773) in Westphalia, for example, shows
the influence of nearby Holland, which is also
visible in Brandenburg. Balthasar Neumann
(1687–1753), perhaps the greatest German
architect of the eighteenth century, drew freely
on the work of Guarino Guarini (1624–1683) in
Turin. His best-known building, the residence of
the Prince-Bishop at Würzburg, demonstrates
the international interests of patrons and
artists. The fresco on the vault above the
monumental staircase is a masterpiece by the
Venetian painter Giambattista Tiepolo
(1696–1770).
SWISS ARTISTS ABROAD
Switzerland has four official languages, twentysix
cantons (confederate regions) and a variety
of religious confessions, all of which conspire
against artistic unity. Moreover, Switzerland has
always been strongly influenced by its larger
neighbours, and the reception of these
influences is to a large degree determined by
linguistic region. Thus when French-speaking
Geneva became a major financial centre in the
DRESDEN FROM THE RIGHT BANK OF
THE ELBE (1748) by Bernardo
Bellotto (1721–80), born in
Venice and trained by his uncle,
the famous Venetian painter
Canaletto (1697–1768). He made
a career as a view painter in
Central Europe, working in
Dresden, Vienna, Munich and
Warsaw. A number of artists
travelled from centre to centre
in this manner, carrying artistic
ideas with them from one
region to another.
10˚
50˚
60˚
Paris
Amsterdam
Stockholm
St Petersburg
Copenhagen
Berlin
Dresden
Breslau
Prague
Vienna
Salzburg
Munich
Augsburg
Würzburg
Hamburg
Münster
Cologne
Stralsund
Warsaw
Rome
Turin
Venice
Geneva
Versailles
S
eine
Rhine
Elbe
Oder
Vistula
Danube
A D R I A T I C
S E A
BA LT I C
S E A
N O R T H
S E A
MEDITERRANEAN
SEA
H O LY R O M A N E M P I R E
SAVOY
F R A N C E
UNITED PROV
INCES
DENMARK-NORWAY
S W E D E N
R U S S I A
P O L A N D
OTTOMAN
EMPIRE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
major artist or architect associated with
main cities (and date of death)
1 - Guarino Guarini (d.1683);
Filippo Juvarra (d.1736)
2 - Giambattista Tiepolo (d.1770)
3 - Cosmas Damian Asam (d.1739);
Egid Quirin Asam (d.1750);
François Cuvilliés (d.1768)
4 - Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (d.1723);
Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt (d.1745)
5 - Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann (d.1736);
Balthasar Permöser (d.1732)
6 - Andreas Schlüter (d.1714);
Georg Wenceslaus von Knobelsdorff (d.1753);
Antoine Pesne (d.1757)
7 - Balthasar Neumann (d.1753)
8 - Johann Conrad Schlaun (d.1773)
9 - Nicodemus Tessin the Younger (d.1728)
10 - Jules Hardouin-Mansart (d.1708);
Antoine Watteau (d.1721)
11 - Gianlorenzo Bernini (d.1680);
Francesco Borromini (d.1667)
2 THE POSITION OF GERMANY AND
SWITZERLAND at the heart of
Europe guaranteed the
reception of artistic ideas from
all sides. Paris and Rome were
most important, but
Amsterdam, Turin, Stockholm,
Venice, and other centres also
exerted more limited influences.
International and regional ideas
mixed, creating a remarkable
variety of artistic forms. Some
German centres were artistically
strong enough to exert their
own influence on other regions,
particularly to the east.
eighteenth century, its residents built Parisianstyle
apartments. Despite religious differences,
this region maintained close cultural ties with
France – Rousseau and Voltaire both lived in
Geneva. The German-speaking parts identified
more closely with Germany, and artistic
developments and exchange generally reflect
this. Likewise, the arts of the Roman Catholic,
Italian-speaking canton of Ticino were more
dependent on northern Italy.
After the Swiss Reformation, still lifes,
landscapes, portraits and civic paintings were
always in demand, and there were significant
religious commissions in Ticino. Nonetheless,
most of the finest Swiss artists pursued careers
elsewhere. Among many others, Angelica
Kauffman (1741–1807) worked in London and
Rome, Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli,
1741–1825) in London, and Anton Graff
(1736–1813) in Dresden.
Kauffman was an internationally important
proponent of Neoclassicism. Neoclassicism
dominated Europe and North America, but
German theorists and artists were central to its
formation. The writer and historian Johann
Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68) and his
acquaintance, the painter Anton Raphael
Mengs (1728–79), were essential to the rise of
historicism. Winckelmann and Mengs were
Saxon, but both worked in Rome (Mengs also
worked in Madrid). Their principles were
practised at the highest level by the architects
Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841) in Berlin
and Leo von Klenze (1784–1864) in Munich.
Germany at the Crossroads
of Europe, 1680-1750
Holy Roman Empire
borders, c.1721
Papal States
Brandenburg-Prussia
Poland and Electorate of Saxony
(united under same ruler
1697-1763)
Lands of the House of Habsburg
Hanover (united with
Great Britain since 1714)
Venetian lands
Bavaria
spread of artistic influences
2
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
172
GERMANY’ WAS A LARGE GROUP of semiindependent
principalities until unified in
1871. Until 1806, these were grouped together
in the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by the
Austrian Habsburg dynasty. Some of these
territories were Roman Catholic, others
(particularly in the north) were fiercely
Protestant. The German lands are at the heart
of Europe, and have always been influenced by
the arts and culture of neighbouring countries.
In the Baroque period, the dominant influences
came from France and Rome, but variants were
found in each region.
COURTLY SPLENDOUR
Frederick II of Prussia (r.1740–86) commented
that every German prince considered his court
a reflection of Louis XIV’s Versailles, and
indeed a number of magnificent courts
emerged in the early eighteenth century, many
with a distinct French character. Brandenburg,
for example, had been a minor provincial
region, but Berlin emerged as an important
artistic centre at the end of the century when
the court patronized the work of the sculptor
and architect Andreas Schlüter (1659?–1714). In
Dresden, the Saxon Electors commissioned
new works and collected old-master paintings
on a grand scale beginning in this period. The
Palais im Grossen Garten (destroyed 1945) was
built in a French manner, but other influences
were at play as well. The architect Matthäus
Daniel Pöppelmann (1662–1736) and sculptor
Balthasar Permöser (1651–1732) developed a
flamboyant and distinctive baroque that
recalls the Roman tradition, which is best seen
in the Zwinger pavilion. This dichotomy of
French and Roman influences characterizes
much of German artistic production in this
period, and indeed much of central European
art as well. They were synthesized particularly
successfully in Vienna by the imperial architect
Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach
(1656–1723).
A different resolution of these influences
was achieved in southern Germany. François
Cuvilliés (1695–1768), who was trained in
France, brought a glittery French Rococo to
Bavaria. In the same region the brothers
Cosmas Damian and Egid Quirin Asam
(1686–1739 and 1692–1750) developed an
almost seamless blend of architecture and
decoration that is often described as ‘total
artwork’. The Asams were strongly influenced
GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND 1650-1800
EINSIEDELN ABBEY. The German architect Caspar
Moosbrugger (1656–1723) began work in 1702 on
the Benedictine Abbey of Einsiedeln, which was
completed in 1735. Moosbrugger, who became a
monk there, was involved in the design of a
number of other monasteries in Switzerland and
southern Germany. The church was decorated by
the Asam brothers, showing the
close cultural contact between
German-speaking Switzerland and
Germany. The monastery is
southeast of Zurich.
14˚6˚
46˚
50˚
54˚
10˚
Geneva
Bern
Basle
Mühlhausen
Zurich
ViennaLinz
Hamburg
Lübeck
Bremen
Würzburg
Heidelberg
Karlsruhe
Zweibrücken
Stuttgart
Mannheim
Hagenau
(Haguenau)
Kolmar
(Colmar)
Leipzig
Magdeburg
Quedlinburg
Halle
NaumburgWeimar
Berlin
Neubrandenburg
Pasewalk
Frankfurt
an der Oder
Mainz
Prague
Bautzen
Dresden
Munich
Augsburg
Kaufbeuren
Kempten
Nuremberg
Bamberg
Frankfurt
am Main
Paderborn
Kassel
Düsseldorf
Minden
Meuse
Rhine
Elbe
Oder
Danube
BALTIC SEA
A
L
P
S
UNITED
PRO
VINCES
NETHERLA
NDS
SPANISH
WESTPHALIA
BRUNSWICK-
LÜNEBURG
SCHLESWIG-
HOLSTEIN
MECKLENBURG
B R A N D E N B U R G
P
O
M
E
R
A
N
IA
SAXONY
THURINGIA
HESSE
T R I E R
LOW
ER PALATINATE
WÜRZBURG
UPPER
PALATINATE
B O H E M I A
B AVA R I AWÜRTTEMBERG
SALZBURG
A U S T R I A
SWISS CONFEDERATION
TICINO
1777 1764
1697
1774
c.1680 (re-established 1705 and 1764)
1752
1674
1766
post-1674
(re-established 1710)
1692
(re-established 1705)
1781
1773
1753
1786
1773
1751
1767
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 AFTER THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR, the
Académie Royale in Paris, founded
in 1648, and the academies in
Rome, Florence and Bologna
provided a model for artistic
education that was eagerly
absorbed in the German lands.
Often supported by the courts,
these academies provided training
in artistic theory and practice. Many
of the earliest German academies
were little more than informal
meetings to draw from nature. In
the eighteenth century most
northern European academies were
reorganized with a more formal
curriculum.
Recovery and Transformation
after the Thirty Years’ War
Holy Roman Empire
borders of Swiss Confederation
regions that suffered greatly during
the Thirty Years’ War
major art collections
pre-Thirty Years’ War
major art collections
post-Thirty Years’ War
centres destroyed in
the Thirty Years’ War
art collections plundered in
the Thirty Years’ War
academies and dates of foundation
major regional academies, post 1750
1
‘
Porte St Denis
Porte St Martin
Pont Marie
Le Palais
Seine
Seine
rueStJacques
rue de Vaugirard
rue St Honoré
rueStDenis
rueStMartin
elp
meTudeur
1
2
11
28
19
18
23
29
20
21
22
10
13
12
27 30
26
3
7
8
4
9
25
15
14
16 17
6
5
24
0 1 mile
FRANCE 1500–1650
175
THE RISE OF PARIS
After the French defeat at Pavia in 1525, Francis
was captured by Emperor Charles V and
detained in Madrid. In 1528 Francis announced
he was to make Paris his customary residence.
As a result, the Loire rapidly faded as the
‘locus’ of royal and court patronage. This was a
watershed for the centres of arts and
manufactures of the Loire, above all Tours and,
to a lesser extent, Orléans, long-established
centres for painters, book illuminators,
sculptors, luxury fabric manufacture,
enamellers, and tapestry makers.
From the 1520s Francis strove to make
Fontainebleau and its gardens a European
centre for the arts. He nurtured a school of
etchers and engravers at Fontainebleau, which
consisted of Italians, Frenchmen and Flemings.
He used his Venetian ambassador and agents
to acquire a fine collection of Greek and Latin
manuscripts. After the Sack of Rome in 1527 he
procured Rosso to paint frescoes and design
stucco frames in his gallery, and Scibec da
Carpi for woodwork inlay. Later, from Mantua
he lured Giulio Romano’s chief assistant,
Francesco Primaticcio. Benvenuto Cellini was
Francis’s star recruit in sculpture.
NICOLAS POUSSIN: The
Kingdom of Flora, 1631.
This picture for long has
been held to be the first
full refinement in the
synthesis of literary
symbolism and the
painter’s poetry. It is based
on the world of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, but
consciously does not depict
a scene or episode lifted
from the text. Poussin’s
patrons were the
‘cognoscenti’ of Rome and
Paris, and every history of
art casts him as the father
of Neoclassicism of the next
century.
The second half of the sixteenth century
was dominated by three ruinous civil wars of
religion, spanning the reigns of the last of the
kings of the House of Valois, Francis II, Charles
IX and Henry III, who was assassinated in 1589.
A subsidiary cause of dissent and bloodshed
was the considerable number of Italians in and
around the French court, presided over by the
queen mother, Catherine de Medici. Because of
the crisis, a succession of grand royal
architectural projects, planned for the Tuileries
and elsewhere, foundered. Sporadic
destruction of church artefacts and Calvinist
iconoclasm occurred across France.
THE BOURBON DYNASTY
In 1592 the last of the wars ended with the siege
and taking of Paris by Henri de Navarre, the first
of the House of Bourbon. As Henry IV, he
pursued a series of ambitious building projects
with indefatigable energy, all cut short or put on
ice by his assassination in 1610. The lengthy
and colossal ‘Grande Galerie’ linking the Louvre
to the Tuileries was, however, begun and
completed. The repopulation and rebuilding of
the capital was Henry IV’s key political and
economic priority, leading to two urban
initiatives, the Place Royale (now Vosges) and
the Place Dauphine, which were designed to
settle and root the elite and their attendant
trades and services in the capital. Henry even
tried to establish mulberry bushes for silk works
adjacent to the Place Royale, a failed attempt to
expand the industry north from Lyon.
Henry’s queen, who acted as regent for the
Dauphin Louis (XIII), was Marie de’ Medici. The
Luxembourg Palace was built for her on the
southern perimeter of Paris in a style
reminiscent of the Pitti Palace in Florence.
Between 1622 and 1625 Rubens produced 24
allegorical panels for one of the galleries of the
Luxembourg evoking events of 1620–21, for
which he was paid the immense sum of 20,000
crowns. Otherwise, patronage of foreign artists
was minimal. In the third quarter of the
century, many leading figures of the French
school, including Poussin and Claude, were
centred at Rome.
Louis XIII’s first ministers, the cardinals
Richelieu (d.1642) and his successor Mazarin
(d.1661), were both avid builders of enormous
town houses and of châteaux, and were eager
to fill them with artistic acquisitions.
Richelieu’s country palace at the model town of
Richelieu in Poitou was destined for the
display of works by Mantegna, Perugino and
Michelangelo, as well as those of French
contemporaries such as Poussin, patronized
by Richelieu himself. In 1652–3 Cardinal
Mazarin acquired the art collection of King
Charles I of England. A high proportion of the
most famous works, including Caravaggio’s
Death of the Virgin and Van Dyck’s full-length
portrait of Charles I, can now be found in the
Louvre.
2 THE RESIDENTIAL, COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL area of
Paris did not grow to any significant extent beyond
the fourteenth-century circuit of walls and
fortifications built by Charles V. In 1500, over a
third of the city within the walls consisted of
market gardens belonging to religious houses. By
1650, half of all these had been subdivided and
developed for upper and middle class houses. The
reclaiming and development of the Île-Saint-Louis
from 1612 onwards required immensely costly
bridges and embankments.
2 Central Paris, c.1650
- Quartier St Honoré
- Quartier St Denis
- Quartier St Antoine (the Marais)
- L’Université/Montagne St Geneviève
- Quartier St Michel/Quartier Latin
- Quartier St Germain-des-Prés
- Hôtel de Sens; begun 1498, completed c.1521
- Hôtel de Cluny; begun c.1485, completed c. 1519
- Hôtel de Ligneris/Carnavalet; begun 1548
- Hôtel d'Angoulême/Lemoignon; begun c. 1580
- Church of St Eustache; built 1532-1640
- Hotel de Sully; built 1624-29
- Place Royale (later Place des Vosges); begun 1605
- The Louvre; square court begun 1551, enlarged 1578, 1624. Grande
Galérie along the Seine begun 1603
- Tuileries Palace; first building begun 1566, extended from 1603
- Pont Neuf; begun 1578, completed 1607
- Place Dauphine; begun 1607
- Luxembourg Palace; begun 1615
- Sorbonne College and Church; begun 1635
- Church of Val-de-Grâce; begun 1645
- Hôtel Lambert; begun 1640
- Salpêtrière; gunpowder factory from 1634, hospital from 1656
- Fosses Jaunes; new ramparts built 1630s, 1640s
- Palais Richelieu (later Royal); built 1625-39
- Palais Mazarin; begun 1634
- Île Saint-Louis; developments begun 1612
- Jesuit Church of St Paul and St Louis; begun 1627
- Hôtel de Ville; begun 1533
- Port Royal; built 1628-53
- Church of the Visitation; built 1632-34
bookselling
publishing and printmaking
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
174
THE REIGN OF FRANCIS I, from 1515 to 1547,
was a time of remarkable artistic
florescence in France. Unprecedented building
initiatives were undertaken by the crown in the
Loire Valley and the Île-de-France, and works
by Leonardo (who died in France), Raphael,
Andrea del Sarto and other Italian High
Renaissance masters were acquired for
Fontainebleau. In the Loire Valley at Blois a
new wing in an imperfectly Italianate manner
was begun within two years of the accession of
Francis I. The focus of the court on the Loire
engendered a proliferation of houses built for
senior royal servants, such as Bury and
Beauregard, largely known from drawings and
engravings. The king’s most ambitious
undertaking was Chambord.
FRANCE 1500-1650
0˚
50˚
Paris
Troyes
Amboise
Tours
Fontainebleau
Chambord
Villandry
Orléans
Ancy-le Franc
Blois
Chantilly
Blérancourt (Aisne)
Bury
Anet
Maisons
Balleroy
Chenonceaux
Rennes
Lille
Charleville
Henrichemont
Arras
Brussels
begun 1519
major works
1528-40, 1568,
1606-09
north wing begun 1515;
west wing 1635-38
built 1511-24
1514-22, 1560s
begun1612
Écouen 1538
1514-22, 1560s
1626
1548-54
1546
1642-46
Parlement 1618
Bourse 1651
Vitry-le-François 1545
1608
1608
Richelieu
Bourges
1631
Limoges
Lyon
Dijon
M
eu
se
M
osell
e
Seine
Loire
Garonne
Rhône
Dordogne
E N G L I S H
C H A N N E L
B A Y O F
B I S C A Y
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
P
Y
R
E
N
E
E S
A
R
A G O N
O R A N G E
C H A R O L A I S
A N D O R R A
F R A N C E
H O L Y
R O M A N
E M P I R E
Jean Clouet, portrait painter,
from Brussels 1516
Philippe de Champagne,
religious and portrait painter,
from Brussels 1621
Leonardo da Vinci
from Milan 1517
Domenico el Barbiere,
sculptor, from Florence 1530
Nicolas Poussin, mythological,
religious landscape painter, to Rome 1624
Sebastiano Serlio,
architect, from
Venice 1541
Giambattista di
Jacopo (Rosso),
painter, from
Italy 1530
Claude Gellée (Lorrain),
landscape painter,
to Rome 1612
Benvenuto Cellini,
sculptor, from Rome
1537, 1540-45
Nicolò dell' Abate,
painter, from Modena 1532
Francesco Primaticcio, painter and architect,
from Mantua 1532
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 France, 1500-1600
borders, c.1530
royal château by known
architects/documented masons
aristocratic château by known
architects/documented masons
public building
urbanism (planned new town)
tapestry
inlayed enamel
publishing and bookselling
artists from abroad settling/working in France
emigration of French artists
1 THE REUNIFICATION OF FRANCE was substantially
completed between 1500 and the conclusion of
the last religious civil war in 1594. In 1528 Francis I
announced he was to make Paris his customary
residence, and the royal wardrobe of the most
valuable royal possessions became a central
depository adjacent to the Louvre.
THE CHÂTEAU AT CHAMBORD.
Begun in 1519, Chambord is
the most sensational and
spectacular fusion of
medieval and romantic castle
with its round, bastion-like
angle pavilions with FrancoItalian
decorative detail. Its
purpose was solely for the
reception of a select few, for
entertainment and for the
recreations of country blood
sports. It was a deliberate
expression of the king’s cult
of magnificence, which makes
it all the more surprising to
learn that Francis I spent no
more than eight nights there
after 1528, when the focus of
court and government life
shifted permanently to Paris.
FRANCE 1650–1800
177
0˚
50˚
Paris
Beauvais
Maupertuis
Valenciennes
Rouen
Bénouville
St Malo
Bourges
Tours
Chartres
Aubusson
Limoges
Versailles
Vaux-le Vicomte
Compiègne
Strasbourg
Metz
Reims
Châlons-sur-Marne
Verdun
Troyes
Chantilly
Fontainebleau
Rennes
Quimper
Brest
La Rochelle
Blois
Bordeaux
Nantes
Lyon
Besançon
Montmusard
Dijon
Nancy
Toulouse
Montpellier
Aix-en-Provence
Arles
Sète
Valence
Sèvres
Marseille
Toulon
1768
1657-61
1764
Town Hall 1673
Place
Royale 1758
Avignon
M
euse
Mose
lle
Seine
Loi
re
Garonne
Seine
Rhône
Loire
Dordogne
BAY
O F
B I S C AY
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
E N G L I S H C H A N N E L
P Y R E N E E S
ANDORRA
F R A N C E
S P A I N
H O LY R O M A N E M P I R E
Gianlorenzo Bernini,
Papal sculptor and architect,
from Rome 1665
‘Prix de Rome’ winners from
the Academies of Painting,
Sculpture and of Architecture
to Rome 1671 onwards
to North America
after 1710
to Dresden/Berlinto Amsterdam/
London/Stockholm
to St Petersburg
Jean-Antoine Watteau,
fête-gallante painter, 1702
1750-54
1664 onwards
1736-88
stables 1721
1762
Town Hall 1736-44
Grand Théâtre 1784
Bourse 1762
Place Royale 1735-55;
Grand Théâtre 1772-88
Town Hall/‘Capitole’ 1750 Place Peyrou 1767
Palais de Justice, Prison,
Palais de Parcement 1786
Hôtel Dieu 1741-48;
Grand Théâtre 1754
Placedes États 1724
Grand Théâtre 1775,
Intendance completed 1776
Archbishop’s
Palace 1731
Bishop’s
Palace
Place des Armes 1763
Place Stanislas (Place Royale)
Place de la Carrière 1752-65
Intendance 1759-70
Bishop’s Palace 1700
N
0
0
2 France, 1650-1800
borders, c.1530
royal château
aristocratic château
major public building/urbanism
tapestry/carpets
faience
cloth
glass
iron
madder dye
paper
pottery
porcelain
printing
silk
Canal du Midi
commercial harbours/military dockyards
artists settling/working in France
French artists to Italy
mass emigration of Huguenot
masters and tradesmen in luxury trades
(cabinet-makers, silk workers, goldsmiths,
clock and watch-makers etc) after the
Revocation (1685) of the Edict of Nantes
100 miles
150 kms
2 THE ARTISTIC ACADEMIES founded by Louis XIV,
especially the French Academy in Rome,
continued to be of primary importance for
official artistic policy. But after the death of Louis
XIV their significance remained only in the spheres
of history painting, sculpture and architecture.
Their influence waned as a proliferation of new
genres and tastes began to flourish amongst major
private patrons.
JEAN-ANTOINE WATTEAU,
L’Enseigne de Gersaint, 1720.
Gersaint’s little gallery was
in an arcade on the Pont
Notre-Dame in Paris. Young
men and women in their
finery loll about, while only
one periwigged man and a
priest scrutinize a painting.
On the left a portrait of Louis
XIV is being loaded into a
crate, suggesting
the passing of an age of
glory to one of fashionabe
slothfulness. Everything
is merchandise.
particularly porcelain. The Gobelins workshops
produced not only popular pastoral and
hunting scenes after drawings by leading
painters, but also door curtains and upholstery
covers. Ready markets were found in almost all
European capitals. In the provinces the most
successful porcelain manufacturer was
Moustiers, based at Marseille from the 1740s.
The most prestigious porcelain producer was,
however, Sèvres, founded in 1753 by the
Marquis de Marigny to quench the thirst for
modish imports. Deep blue was, and is, the
trademark colour. Novel combinations drawn
from a variety of decorative arts kept their everchanging
wares in demand nationally and
internationally. In 1768 the discovery of kaolin
at Limoges created ideal conditions for
manufacturing hard-paste porcelain.
The newly crowned Louis XVI (r.1774–92)
subscribed to a philosophy that saw art as an
essential element in man’s moral formation.
Thus, moral and historical subjects in painting
and sculpture mattered most, and Neoclassicism
of the school of painters led by Jacques-Louis
David was the future.
By the mid-eighteenth century French, the
language of diplomacy, was spoken in courts in
the Rhineland, Parma and St Petersburg. All
over Europe, French art, culture, luxury goods
and fashions were emulated. However, the
proliferation of the newer order of French
art around Europe was destined to be stalled
by the revolution of 1789 and the Napoleonic
era. The French Academy in Rome, established
in 1666, was to play a vital role in the artistic
developments of the later eighteenth
century and beyond.
Le Palais
Place Dauphine
Porte St Denis
Fosses Jaunes
St Sulpice
Sorbonne
Luxembourg
Place
Vendôme
Palais
Royal
Porte St Martin
Pont Neuf
Châtelet
Hôtel de Ville
Notre
Dame
Les Halles
Bastille
Temple
Pont Marie
Hôtel de Sully
Tuileries
Gardens
Port Royal
Seine
Seine rue St Honoré
rueStDenis
rue du Faubourg du Temple
rueMontmartre
ruedeRichelieu
rueStMartin
rueStJacques
ruedelaHa
rpe
rue de Vaugirard
boulevarddel’Hopital
Champs Élysées
Cours or Boulevard Cours or Boulevard
CoursorBoulevard
Cours la Reine
elp
meTudeur
rue de Grenelle
rue St
Dominique
étisrevinU’ledeurFaubourg
St Germain
Faubourg St Honoré
1
2
11
19
18
23
20
21
22
10
13
13
12
3
7
8
4
9
15
14
17
16
6
5
24
0 1 mile
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
176
LOUIS XIV ASSUMED his right to power in
1661, but it was not until May 1682 that a
great symbolic event for the arts took place,
when he took possession of the Palace of
Versailles. The huge complex was designed to
accommodate both government and the court.
It was also intended to be an overwhelming
showcase of French art and manufactures, the
pre-eminent symbol of State mercantalism. The
ideology of mercantilism focused on long-term
planning for industry and agriculture, as well as
those fine arts which might best be enlisted to
broadcast the glory of the monarchy, and the
manufactures and decorative arts that could
satisfy demand at home and create demand
abroad. The architect of it all was Louis XIV’s
first minister, Colbert.
This policy of state centralization had an
impact on the artistic academies in Paris. The
academy for painting and sculpture, founded in
1648, was reorganized in 1663 to focus on
official subject-matters. The academy for
architecture was set up in 1671 under royal
auspices. The French Academy in Rome was
founded in 1666, to serve as a training school
for French-born artists.
State initiatives and investments focused
on famous French manufacturers. In 1663
the Gobelins tapestry workshop in the southern
suburbs of Paris was reformed; a high- and lowweave
tapestry workshop was set up to produce
furnishings for royal palaces. The Savonnerie
factory for premier-quality carpets, based in the
southeastern suburbs of Paris, achieved both
national and international recognition. Another
initiative focused on the development of
processes to make mirror glass in considerably
larger sheets than could be furnished by
Venice, the European centre of mirror
manufacture. The glorification of this
development is the Galerie des Glaces, the
pivot and climax of Versailles.
THE HUGUENOT EXPULSION
After Colbert’s death in 1683, the king’s
obsession with his absolute authority led, in
1689, to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
The Edict of Nantes of 1599 had established
criteria for conditional toleration of Protestants
(Huguenots) within the realm, resolving the
crises perpetrated by the French civil wars of
religion of the second half of the sixteenth
century. Its revocation was a disaster for French
manufacturers, especially those working in
FRANCE 1650-1800
LOUIS XIV visiting the
Gobelins. Tapestry after
Charles Le Brun, c.1670. This
image evokes the army of
painters, sculptors, engravers,
weavers, dyers, goldsmiths,
embroiderers, cabinetmakers,
woodcarvers, marble
workers, mosaicists and many
more, who worked under
and to the designs of Charles
Le Brun. The diversity of the
luxury objects produced for
the king’s inspection and
approval is a symbol of his
munificence, omnipotence
and glory, but more subtly
might be read as as allegory
of the fruits and abundance
of peace.
specialized crafts and luxury goods, such as
precious metalwork or fashion fabrics and
tailoring. Poor Huguenots had no choice but to
abjure their religion, but the affluent urban
class moved in their tens of thousands. Within
a year of the Revocation, communities of
French Huguenots had been established in
Amsterdam, Frankfurt and, above all, London.
Significant numbers were able to escape
sequestration of their moveable assets of light
machinery, tools, materials and money, which
allowed for quite rapid re-establishment of
their businesses, many of which had preexisting
agents or connections outside France.
Refugees they may have been, but very few
were destitute.
A LUXURIOUS ERA
The two most significant luxury commodities
produced in the mid- and late eighteenth
century, in terms of immediate export and
volume produced, were tapestry and
1 DURING THE REIGNS of the last three Bourbon kings
Versailles became an integral part of the history
of the capital. With the death of Louis XIV in
1715, however, there was an inexorable drift of
aristocrats wishing to live in the metropolis and
commute to Versailles when required, resulting in
the wholesale development of the Faubourg St
Honoré on the Right bank and the Faubourg St
Germain on the Left.
1 Paris, c.1700
- Louvre; east wing 1667-70
- Saint Roch; begun 1653
- Place Louis-le-Grand (Vendôme); begun 1685
- Place des Victoires; begun 1685
- Hôtel des Invalides; hospital built 1670-77, church built 1679-91
- Collège des Quatre Nations; begun 1662
- Pont Royal; built 1685-87
- Porte St Denis; built 1672
- Porte St Martin; built 1674
- Porte St Antoine; remodelled c.1670
- Porte St Bernard; built 1670
- Hôtel de Lauzun; built 1656-57
- Grands Boulevards; replace walls of Charles V, begun early 1670s,
completed 1705
- Salpêtrière; hospital buildings begun 1658
- Hôtel de Beauvais; built 1652-55
- Gobelins; tapestry factory, reformed as the Manufacture Royal 1687
- Hôtel de Soubise; built 1705-09
- Hôtel de Rohan; built 1705-08
- Hôtel Aubert de Fontenay dit Sale; begun 1656
- Tuileries Palace; extensions to the north 1659-66
- Tuileries Gardens; redesigned 1664 onwards
- Val de Grâce; conventual buildings 1655-63,
church completed 1669
- St Joseph des Carmes; completion of conventual buildings 1674
- Church of the Assumption; built 1670-76
1
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SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 1500–1800
179
0˚
40˚
La Coruña
Santander
Burgos
Madrid
Valladolid
Seville
Granada
Lisbon
Córdoba
Toledo
El Escorial
Valencia
Duero
Tagus
Guadalquivir
Eb
ro
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
B A Y
O F
B I S C A Y
M E D I T E R R A N E A N
S E A
P Y R E N E E S
B
A
L E A R I C I SS P A I N
F R A N C E
P
O
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T
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works by Titian, Tintoretto to Spanish
court from 1533; Leoni, Tibaldi, Zuccaro
commissioned for mural, sculptural
decorations at El Escorial, 1563; El Greco
settles in Toledo, 1582; works by Titian,
Bassano, Palma to El Escorial, 1593;
Velázquez acquires works in Rome for
palaces in Madrid, 1630-31, 1649-51;
Tiepolo in Madrid from 1761
Bourbon dynasty
installs French fashions
and artists (Honasse,
Ranc, van Loo)
from 1700
de Ribera to Naples, 1616;
founds Neapolitan School
Velázquez supervises
painting cycle in Palacio
del Buen Retiro celebrating
imperial victories (1633-35);
equestrian statue of Philip IV
(1634-40) by Tacca
Macip, Ribalta
Mor, Zurbaran,
Murillo, Mengs,
Tiepolo, Goya
Navarrete
Kempeneer, Zurbarán,
Velázquez, Murillo
Kempeneer (Flemish) in Seville from 1540;
Mor (Dutch) in Spain 1551, 1574, in Portugal, 1552;
van der Wynegaerde (Flemish) commissioned for views
of Spanish cities, 1563-70; paintings by Bosch and
Flemish artists to El Escorial, 1593; Rubens (Flemish)
in Madrid, 1628-29, Valladolid, 1603; works from
Charles V’s collection to Philip IV from 1649;
Mengs (German) in Madrid from 1761
N
0
0
150 miles
200 kms
Painting and Sculpture,
1500-1800
foreign artistic influences
schools of painting
major art collections
2
2 A WORLDWIDE EMPIRE and the wealthiest European
nation, Spain became a magnet for foreign
artworks and artists. Madrid, the imperial capital
since 1561, became the beachhead for the artistic
invasion. The initial stylistic influences were
Netherlandish, providing a pious, late-medieval
realism suited to ecclesiastical commissions.
However, imperial taste increasingly focused upon
the prestige associated with Italian Renaissance art,
expanding the artistic canon to include pagan
subjects and idealizing form.
1541–1614) was not willing to do so, he was
rejected as a court painter. Later Habsburg
rulers, especially Philip IV, actively worked to
create a native school of artists who would
surpass the Italians; these uniquely Spanish
luminaries include the likes of Francisco de
Zurburán (1598–1664), Jusepe de Ribera
(1591–1652), Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
(1617–82), and the greatest of them all: Diego
Velázquez (1599–1660).
THE BOURBON IMPACT
In 1700 Philip of Anjou was proclaimed King
Philip V (reigning to 1746), and the Spanish
throne passed from the Habsburgs to the
French house of Bourbon. The next year saw
the beginning of the War of the Spanish
Succession, lasting until 1715, in which Spain
lost most of her European possessions,
including Gibraltar. Even while the rest of
Europe was experiencing an ‘Age of
Enlightenment’, south of the Pyrenees the
eighteenth century began as a period of
political humiliation, waning military power,
and material and intellectual privation. It was
also seen as a period of decline in the arts, as
many of the familiar attributes of native culture
gave way under foreign influences. Palomino
made Velázquez, long dead, the hero of his
pioneering history of Spanish art. This was an
era of academicism: an Escuela Nacional for
architects was founded in 1744 and the Real
Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
opened in 1752. Artists were strictly controlled:
a royal decree prohibited the construction of
any public building, the plans of which had not
been previously approved by the Academy. The
many foreign artists invited to Spain by the
Bourbon court – Mengs, Tiepolo, Juvarra,
Houasse, Van Loo, Ranc and so on – forced
native talent either to conform or go
PEDRO MACHUCA, GRANADA, PALACE OF CHARLES V,
begun 1533 (unfinished). When the Emperor
visited Granada in 1526, he ordered the Islamic
arcropolis of the Alhambra transformed into a
visual symbol of triumphant Universal
Christendom. The result was the most
severely classical structure of the European
Renaissance. The ground-plan is a
purely geometrical abstraction: a circle
inscribed within a square, as in Leonardo's
famous drawing of 'The Vitruvian Man'.
underground. An exception was Francisco de
Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828), appointed a
court artist in 1786, though his most
characteristic work only appears in the next
century. In the courtly culture created under
Bourbon sponsorship the motivating idea was a
reform of a perceived ‘decadence’ suffered
under the last Habsburgs. The ‘national style’,
with its traits of austere simplicity and iconic
veracity, was often superseded by Rococo
complexity and artifice, even frivolity.
The architectural embodiment of the new
regal taste is Philip’s reformed summer palace,
La Granja (‘The Grange’, 1735–64), seemingly
the very antithesis of the Escorial. Even though
La Granja nostalgically evokes Versailles,
particularly its strict axial alignment between a
regal residence and a series of formal gardens,
the plan of the palace itself adheres to the
traditional layout of Spanish Alcázares reales
(royal palaces). This comprises a rectangular
grid plan with towers at the corners. The
gardens include (as at Versailles) a
mythological-allegorical sculptural theme,
including Psyche, symbol of the soul, and
Apollo, a poet-musician embodying the Sun
and surrounded by adoring Muses, just as the
enlightened patron-king surrounded himself
with court artists. The two architects
responsible, Felipe Juvarra and Juan Bautista
Sachetti, later designed the Palacio Nuevo in
Madrid (1738–64), also conforming to the
rectangle-with-courtyards scheme. The ‘New
Palace’, as befits a monument set within a
capital city, is more conspicuously ‘Roman’ in
style, its regal and theatrical sculptures draw on
national history. Its political agenda is
demonstrated in the fact that inscriptions
appear in Castilian and not in Latin.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
178
IN THE MID-FOURTEENTH CENTURY,
Portugal had initiated what was to become
an ever-expanding European conquest of all
the rest of the known world. The initial impetus
for the momentous European shift from a
Mediterranean to an Atlantic focus was spices,
necessary to make palatable the meat-based
diets of Europeans before the invention of
refrigeration. With land-routes to the Spice
Islands blocked by Islam, Portugal went to sea,
sailing to India via Africa, in order to secure the
coveted goods. With that sea-route co-opted by
the Portuguese, Spain instead went west
towards India, finding its way blocked by a
wholly unknown ‘New World’, one rich in gold
and advanced, pagan civilizations. All this the
Spanish appropriated with dazzling alacrity –
including, in 1581, the Kingdom of Portugal.
WEALTH ATTRACTS ART
The gold of the Indies paid for an eruption of
ecclesiastical monuments and transfiguring
artworks throughout Iberia. In Portugal, the
‘Manueline’ style of architecture was briefly
established, a curious blend of flamboyant late
Gothic and Hindu sensuality that died out after
1530.
Both as a worldwide empire and the
wealthiest European nation, Spain became a
magnet for foreign artworks and artists. Initially
the stylistic influences were from the Spanish
dependency of the Netherlands, providing a
pious, late-medieval realism suited to
ecclesiastical commissions. In Madrid, the
imperial capital since 1561, imperial taste
increasingly focused upon the prestige
associated with Italian Renaissance art. The
artworks aquired by Habsburg imperial agents
today provide the basis for the collection of the
Museo del Prado.
HABSBURG INFLUENCE AND PATRONAGE
The classicistic mould was set by Charles V,
who ruled from 1519 until 1555. Regarding
himself as the personal champion of a
Universal Christendom, this monarch was to
become the most determined sponsor in Spain
of an antiquarian Classical style which he
encountered in Italy during his various state
visits and triumphal entries. Contemporary
Italian classicism represented to Charles V a
timely recreation of the content of ancient
‘Imperial’ Roman art, the concrete expression
of absolute temporal power. Pure Classicism,
at odds with the traditional medieval
expressionism still attached to religious
commissions, was to become the preferred
iconographic language of the imperial court.
This idiom was best expressed in architecture,
long since made an ideological vehicle by
Spanish rulers. The Palace of Charles V in
Granada and the Escorial built outside Madrid
by Philip II served these purposes.
Beside importing Italian painters (mostly
mediocre) to decorate the Escorial, Philip II
also patronized native painters, especially
Juan Fernández de Navarrete (‘el Mudo’,
c.1520–1579), for he was most able to work
in the manner of his favourite Titian. Since
El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos,
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 1500-1800
0˚
40˚
Seville
Salamanca
Segovia
Valladolid (1600-06)
Málaga
Oran
Spanish
from 1509
Melilla
Spanish
from 1497
Algiers
Spanish
from 1510-41
Bougie
Spanish
from 1510-55
Granada
Toledo (to 1561)
El Escorial
Aranjuez
Talavera
la Reina
Alcalá de Henares
Madrid (1561-1600, 1606-)
Royal Tapestry Factory (1720)
National School of Architects (1744)
Academia de Bellas Artes (1752)
Barcelona
ROUSSILLON
to France 1659
Tarragona
Alicante
Valencia
Saragossa
(Zaragoza)
Pamplona
San Sebastián
Laredo
Bilbao
La Coruña
Santander
Burgos
Medina
del Campo
Lisbon
Braga
Oporto
Batalha
Coimbra
Tomar
Santiago de Compostela
Córdoba
Faro
Tangier
Portuguese 1471-1580
Spanish 1580-1656
English 1662-1684
Mafra
Tagus
Duero
E
bro
Guadalquivir
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
B A Y
O F
B I S C A Y
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
P
Y
R
E N E E S
B
A
L
E
A
R I C I S
A
RA
G
O
N
A N D A L U S I A
EST
REM
ADURA
N AVA R R E
L E Ó N
G A L I C I A
C
A
S T I L E
GRANADA
to Spain
1492
S P A I N
PO
RTUGAL
F R A N C E
ANDORRA
(toSpain1581-1640)
royal tombs in the
Capilla Real (1519-20)
Cathedral (1528-61)
Cathedral façade (1667)
Palace of Charles V
(begun 1533)
Pavilion of Charles V
(1543-46)
Renaissance
Cathedral
wthin Great
Mosque (1523)
Cathedral (1680)
Cathedral (c. 1585)
Obradoiro of the Cathedral(1738-49)
Cathedral portal (1702-20)
wealth from
wool pays for
Burgos Cathedral
Convent of
Christ (1510-14)
Church of São
Lourenço
(1614-22)
Church of the
Clérigos
(1731-63)
Church of Santa María
de Belém (1502-20)
Palacio Nacional
Basilica (1717-30)
Tower of Belém: built in
Manueline style, with Flemish,
German influences (1515-20)
University Library: Plateresque style
with humanist motifs (1525-53)
Portal-façade of university (c. 1525)
Plaza Mayor (1728)
University: facade
in Renaissance style
(1537-53)
Palacio Real Nuevo (1738-64)
Palacio del Buen Retiro, with royal porcelain factory (1633-40)
El Escorial church and
Monastery (1563-84)
reconstruction of
16th-c garden palaces
(from 1748)
El Alcázar (begun 1085)
La Granja Palace
(1719-64)
El Prado: Neoclassical style, designed to house royal art collection (1788)
Plaza Mayor (1617-19)
Chapelhas
Imperfeitas
(1509-33)
colonies of Genoese bankers;
merchants from France and
Netherlands (from 1503)
Spanish wool monopoly
displaces farmers and
native industry (1502-20)
Spanish wool and silk
to England, Netherlands,
France until 1550s;
New World silver to
Antwerp, Bruges
from 1552; Dutch
prints and court
art by Flemish
artists to Spain
Spainish trade with New
World from 1503; ’Treasure
of Montezuma‘ from Cortés,
1519; Chinese silks and
porcelain across Pacific through
New World to Seville from
1565. Spain exports wine. olive
oil, devotional sculptures,
ceramic tiles, ironware, mercury
Catalonia allowed access to
New World trade from 1778
trade with England, Netherlands, France,
exporting spices, sugar, coffee
trade with Africa, East Indies,
New World; Chinese
and Japanese porcelain
to Lisbon, 1550-1640
textile
industry
collapses,
1590
silver from New World to Genoa from 1552
N
0
0
150 miles
200 kms
1 THE NEWLY-DISCOVERED
wealth of the New World
paid for ecclesiastical
monuments and artworks
throughout Iberia. Spain
exported wool, silk and
wine to the Spanish
Netherlands, and imported
influential Dutch and
Flemish artworks. The
religious revolt in the
Netherlands involved Spain
in endless wars which
eventually ruined the local
economy.
JOSÉ BENITO CHURRIGUERA, ‘RETABLO MAYOR’ in San
Esteban, Salamanca, 1692. Besides providing the
English word ‘churrigueresque’, this altarpiece
defines the Baroque look of both Spain and Latin
America. This is a gilded, highly elaborate piece of
‘micro-architecture’ which focuses on the centrally
placed ‘custodia’ containing the eucharistic wafer.
Glittering and theatrical, populist and emotionstirring,
structures like this example provided the
stylistic model for hundreds of altarpieces in
Spanish America.
Church, State and
International Trade,
1500-1800
Spanish trade routes
Portuguese trade routes
New World emigration,
690,000 emigrants,
1503-1700
expulsion of Muslims
(1492, Jews (1586),
moriscos (1609-14)
imperial capital
major church
Habsburg palace
Bourbon palace
other major architecture
metalwork
textiles
ceramics
painted tiles
leatherwork
1
ITALY 1500–1600
181
10˚
40˚
TP
TP
TP
TP
TP
TP
TP
TP
TP
TP
TP
TP
TP
TP
TP
TP
R R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
H
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
Bologna
Ferrara
Venice
Padua
Verona
Milan
Pavia
Mantua
Turin
Genoa
Pisa
Florence
Pistoia
Arezzo
Siena Perugia
Città di Castello
Rome
Naples
Loreto
Urbino
Poggio a Caiano
Pesaro
Ancona
Bagnaia
Bagnolo
Barletta
Bomarzo
Bosco
Marengo
Bracciano
Brindisi
Caprarola
Castelfranco Veneto
Castello
Castiglione del Lago
Castro
Civitavecchia
Cuneo
Fanzolo
Gallipoli
Ghedi
Guastalla
Livorno
Maser
Mira
Monreale
Montepulciano
Otranto
Parma
Petraia
Piacenza
Pratolino
Reggio Calabria
Sabbioneta
Sansepolcro
Tivoli
Frascati
Trani
Trent
Todi
Varallo
Vicenza
Vicoforte di Mondovi
Volterra
Po
Arno
Tiber
T Y R R H E N I A N
S E A
A
D
R
I A
T I C
S E A
A
L
P
S
A
P
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N
N
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N A P L E S
TUSCANY
PAPAL STATES
PARMA
V
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N
E
T
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R
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P
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REP. OF GENOA
FERRARA
MILAN
S I C I L Y
2 Patrons and Projects
town planning/urban renewal
more than one project
five or more projects
eight or more projects
project lost/destroyed
altarpieces
altarpieces associated
with the Eucharist
cathedrals and churches
cathedrals and churches
built/remodelled for reform
use of multi-coloured
marble decoration
patronage by princes
(including popes), governors
patronage by cardinals,
courtiers, non-ruling nobles
patronage by merchants
patronage by governments,
guilds and other civic institutions
patronage by religious orders
patronage by new orders
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
TP
2 Patrons and Projects
population over 75,000
population 50-75,000
population 25-50,000
population under 25,000
antique copies
collections of Flemish art
collections of modern art
collections of antiquities
chapels and cloisters
college for training Catholic priests
revival style of Early Christian art
painted/sculpted cycles (ancestors)
painted/sculpted cycles (history)
painted/sculpted cycles (mythology)
painted/sculpted cycles (religious)
astrological vaults
revival of antique gardens
guildhalls
hospitals
library
mosaic cycles
palaces
monumental sculpture
studioli
theatre
town halls
works by Titian
tombs
villas
R
M
H
A
2 WHILE SECULAR RULERS promoted themselves as heirs to
imperial Rome, the Catholic Church countered
Protestantism, and encouraged new orders like the
Jesuits and Oratorians. Martyrdom and conversion
became popular themes for altarpieces, as did the
Eucharist, the sacrament that saw the miraculous
conversion of bread and wine into the body and blood
of Christ, a doctrine rejected by Protestants.
TITIAN, Paul III & his
Grandsons (1545), Naples,
Museo Capodimonte. The
Farnese family rose from
minor Roman nobility to
become major European
rulers in the space of just 50
years, and owed their success
largely to the political
acumen of Alessandro
Farnese, Pope Paul III
(1534–49). Titian’s skilful
portrayal of this wily ruler
underlined the Pope’s
dynastic ambitions for his
family by including his
grandsons: Alessandro,
whom he made a cardinal
aged 14, and Ottavio, whom
he married to Emperor
Charles V’s daughter.
origins: Vasari’s frescoes praised them as
enlightened patrons, a theme he underlined in
his famous biographies of artists.
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
The Protestant Reformation finally forced the
Papacy to reform. The Council of Trent (1545–63)
set new standards for religious life, art and
music. The proliferation of new confraternities
encouraged piety. Cardinal Borromeo, working
with the Jesuits and other new orders in Milan,
promoted Christian renewal in a series of
churches, their open naves testifying to his belief
that all should see the altar. New churches
transformed the city of Rome. Above all, the
papacy rejected links with pagan antiquity,
reviving the styles of early Christian art to
promote Rome as the capital of Christendom.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
180
THIS WAS A period of great political
upheaval in Italy, during which there were
extraordinary levels of artistic expenditure.
Rulers exploited the culture of antiquity to
promote their authority. Classical mythology
provided new decorative imagery and new
fashions emerged, such as the revival of classical
theatre, villas, gardens and art collections.
HIGH RENAISSANCE IN ROME
Early sixteenth-century popes promoted Rome
as the capital of a new empire. Inspired by
descriptions of the palaces of Roman emperors,
Julius II massively enlarged the Vatican: his
impressive collection of antique sculpture was
reached via a staircase designed by Bramante
that incorporated all the Classical orders. His
major projects, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel
ceiling, Raphael’s Vatican frescoes and
Bramante’s radical design for rebuilding
St Peter’s, established the High Renaissance.
His successors continued the pattern of
extravagance and the style soon spread
throughout Italy. Leo X built the Villa Madama,
with its theatre and gardens, and embellished
the Sistine Chapel with priceless tapestries,
designed by Raphael. Paul III exploited the
talents of Michelangelo, commissioning his
Last Judgement, the decoration of the Sala Regia,
the dome of St Peter’s and the remodelling of
the Capitol. The papal court further embellished
the city, building lavish palaces and villas, set
in gardens inspired by descriptions in Roman
literature, filled with grottoes, fountains and
mythological sculptures.
INDEPENDENT VENICE
Venice remained neutral and celebrated her
independence in a building boom that radically
transformed the city. Abandoning tradition, the
Venetian government voted to adopt the
language of ancient Rome to remodel the focus
of political power, adding a new library, mint and
loggetta, all designed by the Roman-trained
Sansovino, to the government buildings around
St Mark’s. Inside the Doge’s Palace artists
recorded Venetian triumphs and celebrated the
doges in votive portraits, many painted by Titian,
the official state artist. Mythological themes were
exploited to provide allegories to replace the
religious imagery that had traditionally promoted
state authority. Rich patricians also adopted the
new language, advertising their rank in palaces
and chapels, and all’antica villas designed by
Palladio on their mainland estates.
THE ITALIAN COURTS
The rulers of Italy’s courts were also conspicuous
spenders. New streets and piazzas ornamented
with allegorical fountains testified to their
authority. They built fortifications to resist
modern artillery, and provide protection against
Turkish navies. Above all, they built palaces,
villas and gardens, expensively decorated with
tapestries, paintings and antique sculpture.
Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, commissioned
Titian to paint mythological scenes for his studiolo,
where he kept his antiques and curios. Federigo
Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, employed the Romantrained
Giulio Romano as his court artist,
commissioning him to build and decorate his
palaces, villas and churches. His art collection
contained Flemish landscapes as well as over
30 paintings by Titian, including his portrait.
Titian’s portraits were fashionable among allies
of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V: Federigo
Gonzaga had himself portrayed with his lapdog,
while his brother-in-law, the Duke of Urbino,
sent his armour to Venice for Titian to copy.
ITALY 1500-1600
RAPHAEL, School of Athens
(1509–12), Vatican, Stanza
della Segnatura. Individual
portraits of famous men
were traditional decoration
for libraries, but their
representation within the
same pictorial space was
new. Portrayed in groups
with Plato and Aristototle in
the centre, these
philosophers involved in
animated discussion gave
visual expression to the
intellectual freedom of preCounter-Reformation
Rome.
Italy’s nobility expanded as Charles V
rewarded his generals with titles and as popes
established their families as rulers of their own
states. New dynasties, like the Medici and the
Farnese, had a particularly pressing need to
justify their claims to power. Determined to
impose his authority, Duke Cosimo transformed
Florence with new palaces and churches. He
also converted the old town hall into the ducal
palace, commissioning an ancestor cycle which
conveniently ignored the Medicis’ commercial
10˚
40˚
watchtow
ersbuilt1567
313 fortif
ied
watchtower
M
M
M
M
M
M
P
P
P
V
V
V
V
F
F
F
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
Bologna
Ferrara
Venice
Brenner
Pass
St Bernard Pass
PaduaVerona
Milan
Pavia
Mantua
Turin
Genoa
Pisa
Florence
Ancona
Barletta
Brindisi
CaprarolaCastro
Città di
Castello
Civitavecchia
Cuneo
Gallipoli
Ghedi
Guastalla
Monreale
Otranto
Parma
Perugia
Petraia
Pistoia
Portoferraio
Reggio Calabria
Sabbioneta
Trani
Trento
Vicenza
Siena Loreto
Urbino
Pesaro
Rome
Naples
1547
1527
1537
1547
1557
1534-6 1545
1580
1527-30
1530
1512
1513
1537
Po
Arn o
Tiber
T Y R R H E N I A N
S E A
A
D
R
I
A
T
I
C
S
E
A
A
L
P
S
A
P
E
N
N
I N
E S
N A P L E S
TUSCANY
LUCCA
FERRARA
FRANCE
PARMA
MILAN
V
E
N
E
T
IA
N
R
E
P .REP. OF GENOA
S I C I L Y
roniMaisAot
ro
ni
MaisAot
nia
pS,ecnarFaivcitnaltAot
13
7
fortified watchtowers built
1535-43
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 Trade and Culture
court
court ruled by papal
family, with date
subject town of court
change of dynasty
rulers loyal to Charles V
major rebellion, with date
Habsburg-Valois wars
centres of Protestantism
centre of international trade
major centres of Counter-Reformation
elected government
subject town of town with elected government
artists trained in Rome working for patrons elsewhere
artists trained in Florence working for patrons elsewhere
artists trained in Venice working for patrons elsewhere
artistic treatises, theories and academies
fortified watchtowers against Turks
other fortifications
innovative bastions
Spanish Habsburg possessions
border of Holy Roman Empire
V
F
R
1 Trade and Culture
population over 75,000
population 50-75,000
population 25-50,000
population under 25,000
conquered by Charles V
Titian portrait of ruler
centre of printing
centre of music
direction of Turkish threat
trade route
M
P
1 THIS WAS A VIOLENT CENTURY. The Habsburg-Valois
wars changed the balance of power in Italy:
Charles V conquered Milan and Naples, installing
imperial governors, and Florence was brutally
besieged by his armies before accepting the Medici
restoration. Süleyman, the Turkish sultan, seriously
threatened Venetian trade.
ITALY 1600–1800
183
S. Croce in
GerusalemmeS. Giovanni
in Laterano
S. Bibiana
S. Clemente
S. Martino ai Monti
S. Francesca Romana
Ss. Cosmo e
Damiano
S. Gregorio al Celio
S. Maria in
Cosmedin
S. Cecilia
S. Maria in
Campitelli
Capitoline
Museum
S. Francesco
a Ripa
S. Maria in
Trastevere
S. Cesareo
S. Maria Maggiore
S. Pietro in Vincoli
S. Susanna
Ospizio di S. Michele
(poor house)
Porto di Ripetta
(destroyed)
Porto di Ripa Grande
Ponte S.Angelo
Accademia dell’Arcadia
Villa Medici
S. Maria di Montesanto
(Piazza del Popolo)
S. Maria dei Miracoli
(Piazza del Popolo)
S. Maria del Popolo
Il Gesú
Piazza di S. Pietro
S. Pietro in Vaticano
Piazza di S. Maria della Pace
S. Maria del
Priorato
S. Pasquale
Baylon
S. Dorotea
Palazzo Corsini
S. Maria della Vittoria
Ss. Domenico e Sisto
Santi Andrea al Quirinale
S. Nicola da Tolentino
S. Maria della Concezione
Palazzo
Borghese
S. Pancrazio
S. Maria in
Via Lata
S. Caterina da Siena
Oratorio di S.
Filippo Neri
S. Maria in
Vallicella
Palazzo Barberini
Ss. Nome di Maria
Collegio di
Propaganda Fide
S. Carlo ai
Catinari
Santi Andrea
delle Fratte
Santi Carlo e Ambrogio al Corso
S. Carlo alle
Quattro Fontane
Villa Giustiniani
Villa Altieri
Villa Pamphili
Acqua Paola
Villa Ludovisi
Villa Borghese
Villa Albani (Torlonia)
Villa Bolognetti
Villa Aldobrandini
Palazzi Vaticani
Palazzo Lancellotti
Palazzo
Spada
S. Pantaleo
S. Filippo Neri
Palazzo Rondanini
Palazzo della Consulta
Palazzo Rospigliosi-Pallavicini
Palazzo Falconieri
Piazza del Popolo
Palazzo Colonna
Orti Farnesiani
(Farnese Gardens)
Baths of Diocletian
Colosseum
Arch of
Constantine
Roman Forum
Tiber
Tiber
CAPITOLINE
HILL
ISOLA
TIBERINA
PALATINE
HILL
AVENTINE
HILL
C A E L I A N H I L L
E S Q U I L I N E H I L L
QUIRINAL HILL
VATICAN
HILL
JANICULUMHILL
TRASTEVERE
VIMINAL
HILL
PINCIAN HILL
(1656-67)
(1667-71)
(1771)
(1655-79)
(1723-28)
(1577)
(1695)
(1734)(1690)
(1707)
(1610-11)
(Bosco Parrasio)
(1735-62)
(1656-57)
Porta
Angelica
Porta del Popolo
Porta Pia
Porta S. Lorenzo
Porta S. Paolo
Via della Lungara
Borgo Santo Spirito
Via Alexandrina
Borgo Sant’Angelo
Via Angelica
Via Trinitatis
Via Cassia
Via Triumphale
Borgo Pio
ViaAppiaAntica
ViadiS.Gregorio
Via di S. Giovanni in Laterano
ViaMerulana
ViaFelice
Via S. Lorenzo
Via Pia
19
30
1031
5
3229
17
27
14
7 11
23
2021
35
33
3
15 6
34
12
8
2 1
22
9
18 1613
4
24
26
25
28
N
0
0
0.5 miles
0.5 kms
2 Rome, 1748-98
city walls
city gate
street commissioned by Renaissance popes, 1471-1590
academy, with date of foundation
artists‘ neighbourhood, 18th century
art dealers/restorers/antiquarian shops, 18th century
church/religious institution, built or rebuilt 17th century
church/religious institution, built or rebuilt 18th century
17th-century palace
18th-century palace
17th-century villa
18th-century villa
private collection of ancient art
private collection of ‘modern’ art
piazza/square, with date
fountain/monument, with date
bridge, with date
port, with date
excavation or spolia site, 17th century
excavation or spolia site, 18th century
museum, with founding date
(1539-1600)
(1734)
(1754)
(1666)
(1543)
Sant‘ Ignazio
S. Ivo della Sapienza
S. Maria Maddalena
S. Stanislao dei Polacchi
Stimmate di S. Francesco
Ss.Vincenzo e Anastasio
Palazzo Aldobrandini-Chigi
Palazzo Altieri
Académie de France
(Palazzo Mancini/Salviati)
Virtuosi al Pantheon
Pantheon
Palazzo Braschi
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
(1642-3)
(1666-7)
(1627-9)
(1727-8)
Palazzo Chigi (Odescalchi)
Palazzo de Carolis
Palazzo Doria-Pamphili
Palazzo Farnese
Palazzo Giustiniani
Palazzo Madama
Palazzo Mattei di Giove
Palazzo di Montecitorio
Palazzo del Quirinale
Piazza di Spagna (Spanish Steps)
Fontana della Barcaccia
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Via
del Babuino
Piazza di Sant‘ Ignazio
Fontana del Tritone
L’Obelisco e l’Elefante
Fontana di Trevi
Customs House
Collegio Romano
S.Agostino
Sant‘ Andrea della Valle
S. Luigi dei Francesi
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Accademia
di S. Luca
Ss. Luca e Martina
Piazza del Campidoglio
Accademia del Nudo
Piazza Navona
Palazzo Pamphili
S.Agnese in Agone
Fontana del Moro
Fontana dei Quattro Fiume
Ss.Apostoli
1
2
3
4
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
(1646-66)
(1648-55)
Renovation/restoration/preservation
completion campaign,
17th/18th century on:
ancient site
early Christian or medieval
church/religious site
early Christian/medieval palace
Renaissance church/
religious institution
Renaissance palace/
villa/other site
2 IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Rome had
established itself as the artistic capital
of Europe, and in the eighteenth
century it continued to be the great
international training ground for
artists and the premier attraction of
the Grand Tour. During the later
period, the Via del Babuino (26) was
occupied by the shops of
antiquarians, art dealers and
restorers, while artists lived at either
end. The central urban fabric of the
city, where most of Rome's
incomparable treasures of ancient,
medieval and ‘modern’ art and
architecture are clustered, was
surrounded by the natural beauty of
its villa parks and gardens.
CANALETTO (GIOVANNI ANTONIO CANAL),
Piazza S. Marco with the Cathedral,
1735–40?, oil on canvas. Canaletto's
artfully topographical vedute, or
views, were among Grand Tourists'
most coveted souvenirs of Venice.
Commissions for the artist's paintings
were exclusively arranged, for at least
a time, by the British consular
representative in Venice, Joseph
Smith, a noted businessman, art
dealer, collector and patron. At his
palace on the Grand Canal, the
consul's own collection of Canaletto's
paintings offered potential patrons
examples of what they could order.
Engraved and drawn views were less
costly alternatives to painted vedute.
As appreciation for drawings rose in
the eighteenth century, the market
expanded, and drawn views were
created as independent works of art.
Naples – which in turn made their way into artistic depictions. Italian
patrons, for their part, helped to satisfy the interests of tourists by
opening their residences on a semi-public basis, so that visitors could
view their art collections. In the eighteenth century some of the first
public museums in Europe were established on the peninsula.
Rome, the ‘Academy of Europe’, was the climactic destination of
most travellers, mainly for its antiquities, and in the eighteenth century
this interest coordinated with a rash of excavations throughout Italy,
such as those of the ancient cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, buried
since AD 79 by an eruption of Vesuvius.
Although the majority of art dealers and agents were stationed in
Rome, in the eighteenth century the market for souvenirs, both large and
small, fostered a veritable Italian industry in restored antiquities and newly
made objects and works all’antica, as well as painted and engraved views of
various monuments and sights by artists such as Canaletto, Francesco
Guardi and Giovanni Paolo Panini. By the end of the century this demand
gave rise to modes of production geared toward serving a mass market and
to the development of new techniques, such as miniature mosaics and
tinted prints, and the revival of ancient ones, such as encaustic painting.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
182
IN THE SEVENTEENTH and eighteenth
centuries the Italian peninsula was not yet a
unified nation. There were continual changes in
its diverse political entities and considerable
regional differences to its shared language and
culture. Artists and architects continued to
develop traditional techniques and to work in
traditional materials, some associated with
particular regions – fresco painting in central Italy,
marble sculpture throughout, with abundant
sources in the quarries of Massa and Carrara
(from which area came many masons and
stonecutters), travertine architecture in Rome,
and so on. Painters, sculptors and architects
worked in various combinations with different
types of artisans and craftsmen, especially as
required by projects for the multimedia
decorative ensembles characteristic of the period.
THE ACADEMIC SYSTEM
Among the forces unifying artistic practice during
this time was the growth and institutionalization
of the academic system, founded on the artistic
tradition that had emerged in the Renaissance.
This was in turn based upon the art of classical
antiquity, considered a ‘native’ tradition in
Italy, with attendant political implications. The
academic system was disseminated not only
through art academies and related writings, but
also through artistic practice and production. It
did not so much replace traditional workshops as
training grounds for artists and architects as
function alongside them. Academicism did not
promulgate any specific ‘style’ in the modern
sense of the term, and Italian artists and
architects worked during the period in an everevolving
range of modes, now usually classified
under the rubric ’Baroque’. In the mid-eighteenth
century ‘Neoclassicism’ was introduced in
Rome, less as a break with those modes than
as another, not entirely new, alternative.
From its development in sixteenth-century
Italy, the academic system had spread all over
Europe, and with it the establishment of Italian
art as an international standard. Foreign
collectors and patrons acquired examples of
Italian art, both ancient and ‘modern’
(Renaissance and later), in the original and in
various kinds of reproductions. Italian artists,
such as Luca Giordano and Giambattista Tiepolo,
worked throughout Europe. The many foreign
artists, like Peter Paul Rubens, who came to study
and work in Italy influenced Italian art and
carried its influence back to their own countries.
ITALY 1600-1800
GIANLORENZO BERNINI, The Ecstasy of S. Teresa,
1645–52, marble and gilded wood, Rome, S. Maria
della Vittoria, Cornaro Chapel. This famous
altarpiece is the quintessential example of postCounter-Reformation
art: ‘divinely’ illuminated by a
hidden window, the sensual figures of Teresa and
the angel compellingly enact the dramatic visionary
experiences of the revered saint.
10˚
40˚
Milan
Turin
VareseVarallo
Modena
Avignon
Lucca
Velleia
Genoa
Piacenza
Parma
Bergamo
VeniceVerona
Bologna
Ferrara
Mantua
Pisa
Massa
Carrara
Volterra
Tarquinia
Florence
Cortona
Perugia
Rome
Vatican
Pompeii
Paestum
Naples
Caserta
Benevento
Herculaneum
Pórtici
Palermo
Syracuse
Po
Arno
Tiber
Adige
LIGURIAN SEA
TYRRHENIAN SEA
IONIAN
SEA
M
E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
A
D
R
I
A
T
I
C
S
E
A
A
PEN
NIN
E
S
A
L
P
S
CORSICA
ELBA
LOMBARDY
PIEDMONT
REP. OF GENOA
PR. OF MONACO
MODENA
KINGDOM
OF NAPLES
PAPAL
STATES
REP. OF SAN MARINO
TUSCANY
SARDINIA
MALTA
S I C I LY
R
E
P.
O
F
V
E
N
I C
E
F R A N C E
OTTOMAN
EMPIRE
HABSBURG EMPIRE
SW
ISS CONFED.
Roman Arena
Roman Sites
Greek
temples
(to the Pope)
(to the Popes)
Roman monuments and works
(to Genoa)
(to Savoy by 1720)
Etruscan Tombs
ancient Roman city ancient Roman city
ancient Greek city
Royal Palace
Uffizi
(1620)
(1751)
(1769)
(1748)
(1757)
(1760)
(1604-80)
(1586-1765)
(1752)
(1639)
(1736)
(1710)
(1563)
(1573)
(1577)
(1755)
(1738)
(1756)(1763)
(1794) (1714)
(1727)
(1771)
(1748)
(1745)
(1769)
(1785)
(1723)
(1752-74)
(1734)
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 Italy, 1648-1715: Political Divisions and Artistic Centres
art academy, with date of foundation
city with important monuments/works, 17th century
city with important monuments/works, 18th century
institutional museum, with date of foundation
public museum, with date of foundation
major private collections of ancient art
major private collections of ’early modern art’
major early modern site
major ancient site
excavations, with date
marble quarry
textile production, 18th century
Spanish Habsburg lands
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
The presence of the papacy in the peninsula
underscored the continuing influence of the
ideals of the Counter-Reformation on artistic
production, especially in the seventeenth
century. Although no particular ‘style’ was
promoted, urban planning, church architecture
and decoration, the manufacture of liturgical
objects and vestments and the choice of subjects
and their treatment in painting and sculpture
were all affected. In Piedmont and Lombardy, in
the town of Varallo and near that of Varese, the
Sacri Monti (Sacred Mountains) were built as
popular devotional simulacra for those pilgrims
to whom the Holy Land was inaccessible. These
hillside complexes of chapels and churches,
marking the venerated sites of Christ’s life and
Passion, were ornamented with frescoes and
lifesize, unidealized polychromed wood or
terracotta figures composing tableaux, such as
the scene of the Crucifixion. In Rome, the wealth
of the papal court and its associates attracted
artists from Italy and abroad seeking
patronage, both ecclesiastical and secular.
Caravaggio, Gianlorenzo Bernini, Francesco
Borromini, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and
Antonio Canova were among those who came
from other parts of Italy, while Claude Lorrain
and Nicolas Poussin arrived from France.
TRAVEL AND TOURISM
During this period, Italy was a travel destination
not only for artists and pilgrims, but also for
aristocrats, dilettantes and scholars, who served
as well to diffuse the taste for Italian art
throughout Europe and the New World. Tourism
rose sharply in the eighteenth century and came
to be ritualized, in the case of the British, in the
itinerary of the Grand Tour. While travellers went
to Italy primarily to view its incomparable
artworks and monuments, they were also
attracted by its natural sights and wonders – such
as the volcanic eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, near
1 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY initiated a period of
intensive building and artistic activity throughout
Italy, and important collections of ancient and
‘modern’ art were formed. By the end of the
eighteenth century art academies had been
established in all the major cities and many smaller
ones, museums dotted the peninsula, and
archaeological excavations were increasing.
SOUTHEAST EUROPE 1500 –1800
185
It was in western Hungary where the clash
between Turkey and Europe was at its most
intense. From c.1470, under the rule of King
Matthias Corvinus, the country enjoyed a
period when early Italian Renaissance art was
imported. In 1526 the Habsburgs gained the
Hungarian crown. But from 1541 almost the
whole country was occupied by Ottoman
Turkey, and many of its monuments were
destroyed. The occupation lasted until the late
seventeenth century when German-Austrian
power drove the Turks back. Artists from Vienna
and the German lands, working under the
banner of the Counter-Reformation movement,
designed Hungarian urban churches, country
houses, and, later on, bishops’ palaces. The
Hungarian artistic landscape is strongly
divided into the dense western and northern
parts (some of which now belong to Slovakia)
and the poor south and east, with a third area,
staunchly sober and Calvinist, in the northeast.
A CULTURAL CROSSROADS
The central region of Transylvania
(Erdely/Siebenburgen) experienced extreme
population diversity, but avoided antagonisms;
Greater Hungary was the chief power for most
of the time. Incorporating Roman remains, the
Late Romanesque-Early Gothic Cathedral of
Alba Iulia mixes forms from many western
European countries, as do the late Gothic
parish churches, built mainly by German
settlers. These are fitted out with German-style
altarpieces, which, in turn, existed side by side
with monuments in the style of the Early Italian
Renaissance, mediated by Hungarian cultural
influences. Two-thirds of the population was
Orthodox, and the Romanians built churches in
the Wallachian style, though from the later
eighteenth century urban Orthodox churches
adopted Western Classical styles, too. By then,
a certain standardization, often dubbed
‘European’, had set in.
THE MONASTERY of the Premostratensians (1745–65)
at Jászó (Jasov, formerly in Hungary, now in
Slovakia), by the Viennese architect Franz Anton
Pilgram, shows what is probably the most
accomplished of Hungary’s eighteenth-century
church complexes, contrasting strongly with the
Byzantine continuity of Sucevit,a.
30˚25˚20˚15˚
45˚
40˚
Nyírbátor
Suceava
Dragomirna
Moldovita
Sucevita
Kishinev
Causani
Cozia
Tismana
Kremikowszi
Monastery
St Joachim Osogovski
Preobrazhenski
Monastery
Troyan
Monastery
Bachkovo Monastery
Philippopolis
(Plovdiv)
Pazardzhik
Rila MonasteryÜsküb
Prizren
Shkodër
Elbasan
Tirana
Berat
Sofia
Svishtov
Kriva Palanka
Hurez
Bucharest
Ruse
Tryavna
Karlovo
Samokov
Mt Athos
Melnik
Roshen
Monastery
Bitola
St John
Bigorski
Gostivar
Churchi
Rudí
Jassy
Putna
Humor
Hîrlau
Kassa
SárospatakJászó
Eger
(Erlau)
Veszprem
Pozsony
(Bratislava)
Szeged
Kalocsa
Temesvár
Kecskemét
Györ (Raab)
Fertorákos´´
Osijek
Bosna Saray
(Sarajevo)
Foca
Maglaj
Cajnice
Pljevlja
Sümeg
Szentendre
Esztergom
(Gran)
Székesfehérvár
Szombathely Buda
Pest
Ljubljana
Ribnica
Fiume (Rijeka)
Zagreb
Belec
Hvar
Ragusa (Dubrovnik)
Trogir
Sibenik˘
Balti˘
Capriana˘
Patrauti˘ ˘
˘
¸
¸
Arbanasi˘ ¸
¸
˘ ˘Radauti¸
¸
¸
Neamt
Monastery
¸
Tîrgoviste¸
Curtea de Arges¸
Nesebur˘
˘
˘
Pristina˘
˘
Danube
Dniester
Drava
Sava
A E G E A N
S E A
B L A C K
S E A
A
D
R
I
A
T
I
C
S
E
A
A L P S
PIN
D
U
S
M
TS
D
I N
A
R
IC
A
L
PS
BA L K A N M T S
O
T
T
O
M
A
N
E
M
P
I
R
E
H
A
B
S
B
U
R
G
P
O
S
S
E S S I O N S
H U N G A R YH O L Y
R O M A N
E M P I R E
TRANSYLVANIA
MOLDAVIA
W A L L A C H I A
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
2 Religious Architecture
border of Holy
Roman Empire
Roman Catholic church
Roman Catholic
bishop’s palace
Protestant church
Orthodox church
Orthodox church in shape
of a Roman Catholic church
mosque
late medieval-early 16th c
16th century
17th century
18th century
19th century
INSET 2A
2 UNTIL WELL INTO the nineteenth
century the significant works of
architecture and decoration in the
Balkans are religious, and it is the
diverse denominations that
account for the strong differences
between them. In Transylvania,
Roman Catholics, Germans
Lutherans, Hungarian Calvinists,
and Orthodox Romanians coexisted,
creating a unique multicultural
landscape.
Danube
TRANSYLVANIA
W A L L A C H I A
H A B S B U R G
P O S S E S S I O N S
Nagyvárad
(Oradea)
Szamosújvár
(Gherla)
Szászbuzd
(Buzd)
Brassó
(Brasov)
Kolozsvár
(Cluj-Napoca)
Segesvár (Sighisoara)
Berethalom (Biertan)
Prázsmár
(Prejmer)
Gyulafehérvár
(Alba Iulia) Seben
Balazsfalva (Blaj)
Nagyszeben
(Sibiu)
Beszterce
(Bistrita)¸
Demsus
(Densus)¸
Marosvásárhely
(Târgu Mures)¸
Fogaras
(Fagaras)¸˘ ˘
Resinár
(Rasinari)¸˘
Muzsna (Mosna)¸
2A Transylvania
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
184
THE POLITICAL BORDERS of the Balkans
have undergone constant and dramatic
changes. Dominated by Turkey between 1453
and 1683, the full pattern of national states in
the region was not established until 1912–13,
when Turkey’s presence in Europe was all but
eliminated. At this point, the Balkans lacked
the consolidated, independent states of
northern and western Europe. Statehood in
almost all areas changed at least once, in some
areas many times. Many towns bear three or
even more names. Large parts of the region
lacked a system of territorial units altogether;
to some extent this was also due to low
population density and a lack of towns.
Culturally, there are vast discrepancies in
the region. Bulgaria may be said to have
changed little from the ninth to the nineteenth
centuries and Mount Athos in Greece has
remained unchanged until the present day.
Hungary, on the other hand, was intensely
receptive to trends from outside. There was an
immense contrast between areas into which
strangers never strayed and those where a
multitude of peoples lived (and still live) side
by side, such as Transylvania. In general, the
patronage of art was haphazard. The most
stable institutions were probably the politically
relatively independent monasteries.
RELIGIOUS COHESION
The southern and eastern parts of the region
belong to the Orthodox Church, the northern
and Western parts to the Roman Catholic
Church, one of the oldest dividing lines in
Europe. It was, ironically, perpetuated by the
fact that the Orthodox areas remained much
longer under Turkish rule, which allowed some
freedom for the church. In these areas
monasteries, usually in very remote locations,
served as a refuge from foreign domination.
The areas of the Roman Catholic Church, on
the other hand, were always open to the West,
whether it was the Italian (Venetian) domination
of Dalmatia, or the more generalized GermanAustrian/southern
and western European
influence in Hungary and Croatia. A third, major
religion, dispersed all over the region, was
Judaism, but it was deprived of the possibility
of architectural expression.
RELIGIOUS ARCHITECTURE
The most stable urban features of the region,
reflecting the extent of Turkish occupation, are
the mosques, which can even be found in
western Hungary. But the Byzantine
architectural style was also strikingly persistent.
The churches of Bulgaria and Macedonia, in
particular, and especially their painted
decorations and icons, had hardly changed
when they reached their last major florescence
in the monastery of Rila in the nineteenth
century. In Moldavia and Wallachia Byzantine
models continued into the eighteenth century,
although these principalities developed a
special style in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries that corresponded with their degree
of political independence. All churches, even
cathedrals, were small. A nave with a major
apse and two side apses sufficed in Moldovia
and it was high and narrow, crowned by one or
two cupolas carried up in a complex system of
vaulting. Wallachian churches adhered more to
the multi-domed Byzantine models. In the
sixteenth century many exteriors of the
Moldavian churches were covered with frescoes.
Occasionally Western imports, such as Gothic
windows and Western-type buttresses, are
found on the exterior of Moldavian churches.
SOUTHEAST EUROPE 1500-1800
SUCEVITA MONASTERY CHURCH, Moldavia (Romania)
1582–1606, one of a group of monuments that
highlights both the continuation and the
modification of the Byzantine tradition.
40˚35˚30˚25˚20˚15˚10˚50˚
45˚
Athens
Varna
Bucharest
Bakchisarai
Azov
Jassy
Kassa
Cracow
Brassó
Constantinople
Adrianople
Smyrna
Philippopolis
Sofia
Belgrade
Temesvár
Mostar
Spalato
Zagreb
PécsTrieste
Zara
Üsküb
Bosna Saray
(Sarajevo)
Graz
Vienna
Venice
Kolozsvár
Debrecen
Buda
Thessalonica
Danube
Dniester
B L A C K S E A
A
EG
EAN
SEA
A
D
R
IA
T
I C
S E A
C R E T E
MOLDAVIA
PRINC. OF
THÖKÖLY
AUSTRIA
WALLACHIA
BULGARIA
CROATIA
DALMATIA
SERBIA
MONTENEGRO
MACEDONIA
O
T
T
O
M
A
N
E M P I R E
TRANSYLVA
NIA
VENETIAN REPUBLIC
HU
N
G
A R Y
N
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
1 Southeastern Empires
greatest extent of
Ottoman Empire to 1683
border of Holy Roman Empire, 1683
states with a degree of autonomy
from Ottomans
Venetian territories
extent of lands regained
or newly gained by Austrian
Habsburgs, 1683-1775
1 THE BALKAN region was flanked by two great powers,
the Ottoman empire, and the Holy Roman Empire,
ruled by the Habsburg family from their seat in
Vienna. Despite the fluid nature of states and borders
within the region and the multitude of different
ethnic groups there is one stable border that crosses
the whole area, that of religion.
AEGEAN
SEA
B L A C K S E A
ADRIA
TIC
SEA
CRETE RHODES
O
T
T
O
M
A
N
E M P I R E
H
U
NGARY
ITA
LY
GREECE
1A Ethnicity and Language in SE Europe
Germans
Slovaks
Magyars (Hungarians)
Romanians
Slovenians
Croats
Serbs
Bosnians
Macedonians
Bulgars
Greeks
Albanians
Turks
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
Bucharest
Kishinev
Nikopol
Jassy
Constantinople
Adrianople
Spalato
Vienna
Budapest
Thessalonica
B L A C K S E A
ADRIA
TIC
SEA
AEGEAN
SEA
CRETE RHODES
O
T
T
O
M
A
N
E M P I R E
H
U
NGARY
IT
A
LY
GREECE
Religion in SE Europe
Roman Catholic
Protestant
centres with a large Jewish population
Orthodox
Muslim
1B
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
EUROPE 1600–1800
187
2 ART AND ARTISTS circulated
throughout the continent
during this period. Italian
masons and stuccoists in the
fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, sculptors in the
seventeenth, and painters in
the eighteenth century plied
their trades abroad.
Netherlandish sculptors and
architects also travelled
around Europe in the
seventeenth and eighteenth
century, as did French artists
during the entire period. Art
was shipped from
manufacturers to clients in
distant countries. The
plunder of art in Europe’s
many conflicts also led to a
further distribution of
treasures across Europe.
30˚20˚10˚0˚
40˚
50˚
Paris
Antwerp
Berlin
Prague
Magdeburg
Hamburg
Würzburg
Nuremberg
Augsburg
Münster
Frankfurt
Dresden
Breslau Kiev
Vienna
Munich
Amsterdam
London
Turin
Naples
Lisbon
Rome
Venice
Madrid
Dublin
Edinburgh
Stockholm
Moscow
St Petersburg
Christiania
(Oslo)
Copenhagen
Fredericksburg
Warsaw
Milan
Florence
Ebro
Duero
Guadalquivir
Seine
Elbe
O
der
Vistula
Rhi
ne
Dniester
Dnieper
Loire
Rhône
Ga
ronne
Danube
Tagus
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N N O R T H
S E A BALTIC
SEA
B L A C K
S E A
M
E D I T E R R A N
E
A
N
S E A
A
D
RIA
TIC
SEA
PYRENEES
A
L P S
SICILY
SARDINIA
CORSICA
ENGLAND
NETHERLANDS
SPANISH
NETHERLANDS
DENMARK
RUSSIAN
EMPIRE
P O L A N D
PRUSSIA
HUNGARY
SWISS
CONFED.
NORWAY
S W E D E N
F R A N C E
S P A I N
SCOTLAND
WALES
IRELAND
PORTUGAL
V
E
N
E
T
I A
N
R
E
P
U
B
LIC
BRANDENB
U
RG
to American
colonies
to New
France
to
Mexico
1632
1648
from c.1720
from c.1660
salons from c.1730 from
c.1660
c.16-1700
from c.1720
from c.1700
c.16-1700
1630
1659
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
Travels of individual artists:
From London:
-Reynolds to Rome, Florence, Bologna,
Venice, 1749-52; to Flanders & Holland, 1781
From Paris:
-Poussin to Rome 1624-40, 1642-65
From Venice:
-Canaletto to Rome 1719-20, 1742-3;
to London twice between 1746 and 1753
-Tiepolo to Milan 1730-34, Würzburg 1750-53,
Madrid 1761–1770
From Rome:
-Caravaggio to Naples, Sicily, Malta 1605-10
-Bernini to Paris c.1665
From Madrid:
-Velázquez to Venice, Rome and Naples 1629;
Rome and Naples 1649-50
From Antwerp:
-Rubens to Venice, Mantua, Rome, Genoa,
Valladolid 1600-8; London and
Madrid 1628-30
-van Dyck to Genoa, Rome, Florence, Palermo,
Marseille from 1621-7;
to London from 1632
2 Cultural Contacts
general routes of
the ‘Grand Tour’
major art centre
travels of artists abroad
sacks of art
sales of art
also worked throughout the continent. In Spain
the French Bourbon dynasty assumed the
throne in the early eighteenth century, and
French painters followed them. In the
eighteenth century French architects and
decorators were also active in many places in
Germany, in Bohemia, and in Austria, after the
court changed its previous orientation from
Italy to France.
ART COLLECTIONS AND DISPLAY
In large measure the rise of princely courts
stimulated the circulation of artists and art.
Eager for prestige, many rulers made their
residences into centres of patronage and
collecting. The example set by Rudolf II’s
Prague (c.1600), which was singled out by the
artist and art historian/biographer Karel van
Mander as the best place to go and see art,
provided a model, especially for German
courts. In mid-seventeenth century Brussels
and Vienna Archduke Leopold Wilhelm
assembled a major collection of paintings, to
which eighteenth-century Habsburgs added
and reorganized. In Spain, another dominion
ruled by the Habsburgs through the
seventeenth century, Philip IV became one of
the first European mega-collectors.
In part because of rivalry, but also because
of genuine interest, rulers in other lands
followed, imitated or independently amassed
their own collections. Notable examples
include the English royal collections under
Charles I, and the French royal collections of
Louis XIV. In the mid-seventeenth century
Queen Christina of Sweden also established an
important collection of many kinds of works of
art, taking much of it with her to the Continent,
ultimately to Rome, when she converted to
Catholicism and abdicated. The Papal and
Neapolitan collections, especially of
antiquities unearthed in ongoing excavations,
were also significant. In the eighteenth century
the last king of Poland, Stanisaw Poniatowski
had a painting collection assembled for him
(now in Dulwich College, England).
THE DISSEMINATION OF ART
Political rivalries resulted in frequent warfare,
and art was plundered. Sometimes art
vandalism was organized, for example the
plunder of the German monasteries and the
pillaging of the treasures of Prague and
Frederiksborg in Denmark by Swedish troops.
Plunder became an important means by which
works of art moved around the continent.
Important sales of art collections – for
example, that of the Gonzagas, which went in
large measure to England – were another
means by which art was dispersed. Private
collectors, such as Eberhard Jabach in Cologne,
also sold their collections to the French crown.
A burgeoning market provided the larger
context for commerce in art. In the seventeenth
century agents and auctions were centred in
Antwerp and Amsterdam, with other locales in
Nuremberg and Augsburg. In the eighteenth
century auction houses were established in
London and Hamburg.
Although Italian art academies, both state
(in Florence) and private (in Rome) had been
established already in the sixteenth century,
many similar institutions were founded
throughout Europe, beginning with the French
Academy in 1648. These institutions involved
primarily instruction in the rudiments of art,
but also theoretical discussion and debate, and
display, in the form of public salons. Other
forms of public attention were encouraged by
the development of aesthetics, independent
criticism and art history, and the first public
museums. Thus the eighteenth century
provided both sources and sites for the origins
of the modern reception of art.
THE INSTITUTION OF THE SALON
in eighteenth-century Paris
created a new public site for
art. Paintings were placed
on display in exhibitions
accessible to a larger public.
Salon exhibitions provided
the impetus for a new form
of often hotly contested
discussion in which writers
who were neither artists nor
art theorists participated.
The most famous
eighteenth-century
criticism of the Paris salons is
that of the philosophe Denis
Diderot.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
186
ARTISTS AND ARCHITECTS, as well as works
of art, moved around Europe to an
unprecedented degree during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. While earlier
individual Italian artists had worked abroad,
now whole teams of painters, masons,
sculptors and stuccoers, often from the
Lombard lakes, travelled north to build or
decorate churches, convents and palaces. From
Luca Giordano and Tiepolo in Spain, to
Rastrelli in Russia, Italian artists worked from
one end of the Continent to the other. An
entire chapel was shipped from Rome to
Lisbon, and groups of paintings were also
transported from Italy to Mafra, in Portugal.
AN ARTISTIC CROSSROADS
Italians were not unique. In the early
seventeenth-century Netherlandish painters,
sculptors and architects also worked
throughout the Continent. In the Baltic
region they came to play an increasingly
dominant role during the seventeenth
century. Conversely, German artists and
architects worked in the Netherlands and
in Scandinavia.
As French taste came to replace Italian
during the reign of Louis XIV, French artists
EUROPE 1600-1800
30˚20˚10˚0˚
40˚
50˚
Paris
(Académie Française, 1648)
(from 1650; Paris salons, c.1750)
CologneBrussels
(c.1650)
Antwerp
(1665)
Kassel
Copenhagen
Berlin
(1696)
Prague
(c.1576)Würzburg
Dresden
(1697)
Warsaw
Wilno
Breslau
Kiev
Cracow
Lwów
Gdansk
(Danzig)
´
Vienna (1705)
Graz
Mainz
Munich
Augsburg
(1670)
Salzburg
Amsterdam
Utrecht
Haarlem
Versailles
Fontainebleau
Nuremberg
(1662)
(Royal Academy,1768)
(1630s)
London
Castle Howard
Blenheim
Bath
Turin
(1563)
(open to public, c.1780)
Florence
Bologna
Naples
Palermo
Milan
Nancy
Besançon
Trier
Lemberg
Lisbon
(French Academy, 1666)
(from 1650s; Papal
collections from 1700s)
Rome
Venice
Madrid
(Real Academia de Bellas
Artes San Fernando, 1752)
Salamanca
Seville
Granada
Valladolid
Dublin
Edinburgh
Christiania (Oslo) Stockholm
(c.1650)
Moscow
St Petersburg
(1757)
Ebro
Duero
Guadalquivir
Seine
Elbe
O
der
Vistula
Rhine
Dnieste
r
Dnieper
Loire
Rhône
Garo
nne
Danube
Tagus
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N N O R T H
S E A
BALTIC
SEA
B L A C K
S E A
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
A
D
R
IA
TIC
SEA
P
Y
R
E N E E S
A
L P S
S I C I LY
NAPLES
PAPAL
STATES
PARMA LUCCA
SAVOY
MILAN
MANTUA
SAXONY
BOHEMIA
MORAVIA
SWEDISH
POMERANIASCHLESWIG-
HOLSTEIN
AUSTRIA
BAVARIA
MODENA
TUSCANY
TRANSYLVANIA
L I T H U A N I A
SARDINIA
CORSICA
SI
LESIA
GENOA
ENGLAND
NETHERLANDS
SPANISH
NETHERLANDS
DENMARK
R U S S I A N
E M P I R E
P O L A N D
PRUSSIA
HUNGARY
SWISS
CONFED.
NORWAY
S W E D E N
F R A N C E
S P A I N
SCOTLAND
WALES
IRELAND
PORTUGA
L
O
T
T
O
M
A
N
E M P I R E
V
E
N
E
T
I
A
N
R
E
P
U
B
L
IC
BRANDENB
U
RG
(Kunstkammer,
c.1560; Belvedere,
1780)
(c.1740)
(c.1710)
(c.1620)
(c.1790)
(c.1769)
(1746)
(1754)
(1777)
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
1 Centres, Collections and Academies, 1600-1800
border of Holy Roman Empire, c.1700
major urban development project
major palace complex
major art collection (with date of foundation)
art academy (with date of foundation)
major art centre
1 DURING THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH centuries
courts throughout Europe formed art collections,
and an art market developed to serve royal,
aristocratic and eventually bourgeois clients.
Instruction in the arts was provided by academies,
which, starting in cinquecento Florence, were also
established throughout Europe. In the eighteenth
century the foundation of public museums and the
institution of public art displays in salons fostered
increased familiarity with the arts.
IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH
century the Dresden
Kunstkammer was broken
up into its constituent
elements. The collection of
objets d’art and precious
jewels was placed in a suite
of rooms decorated with
mirrors and woodwork
known as the Grünes
Gewölbe, on the ground
floor of the Schloss. Opened
to a larger public, the
establishment of this
collection marks one of the
beginnings of the move
towards modern public
museums. The present
Kunstkammer is a
reconstruction made
necessary by bombing of
Dresden in World War II.
NORTH AFRICA 1500–1800
189
THE BAB AL MANSUR AL-‘ILJ at
Meknès in Morocco. It was the
principal ceremonial gateway in
the city, connecting the Medina
and the Hadim Square with the
Dar al Kabirah, the palace
complex that was built by Mawlay
Isma‘il in 1679. The gateway was
named after the government
minister Mansur al-‘Ilj, who was a
Christian renegade. It was begun
during the reign of Mawlay Isma‘il
and was completed in 1732, five
years after his death,
by his son Mawlay ‘Abdallah.
3 Bab ad Dar al Kabirah
4 Dar al Kabirah
8 Mosque of Lalla ’Awda
9 Tomb of Mawlay Isma’il
10 Qasr al
Muhannashah
14 Hury al Mansur/
Qasr al Mansur
stables
granary
Bridge of
the Cavalry
(built 1681-93)
water towerwater
tower
13 Dar al Madrasah
12 Madinat ar
Riyad al 'Anbari
6 Sahat al Hadim
7 Bab al Khamis
11 Qubbat al Khayyatin
5 Bab al Mansur
1
2
Mellah
Djenane al Af
i
a
Krim
at al Oudaiya
Bo
u
Fekrane
Agdal Basin
MEDINA
1 Old city of Meknès,
pre-dating Mawlay Isma’il
2 Jewish quarter
3 Gateway of the Dar al Kabirah, 1679
4 ‘Grand Palace’ complex
5 Gateway, 1732
6 Square of Destruction
7 Gateway, 1687
8 One of several mosques built in the royal city
during Mawlay Isma’il's reign
9 Tomb of Mawlay Isma’il
10 ‘Palace of the Labyrinth’, with a series of
courtyards, pavilions and gardens
11 ‘Dome of the Tailors’ used for the
reception of ambassadors
12 ‘City of Amber Gardens’; residences for viziers
13 ‘Palace of the Madrasah’; complex of apartments,
courtyards and gardens
14 Storehouse and palace
N
0
0
0.5 miles
0.75 kms
2 Meknès: the City of Mawlay Isma’il
ramparts of the royal city
extent of the royal city
principal palace complexes
old city of Meknès
cemetery
Jewish quarter
City of Amber Gardens
canals
In the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Turks
subdued all of North Africa with the exception of
Morocco. New mosques, palaces and other
buildings had Ottoman features, especially in
Cairo, but also in the other capitals – for
example, the mosque of Sidi Mahriz (built
1675–92) in Tunis. Turkish styles of dress were
adopted among the urban elite. In Morocco,
however, artistic patronage lay largely in the
hands of the sultans of the Sa‘dian (1511–1631)
and ‘Alawi (1631–present) dynasties. Marrakesh,
Meknès and Fez maintained a distinct style of
architectural decoration using tile mosaics
(zillij), carved stucco and wood, though its
quality declined from the seventeenth century.
European influence was evident in coastal
enclaves eventually created by the Portuguese
and Spanish. From 1765 the Moroccan coastal
town of Essaouira, previously a Portuguese fort,
was constructed following designs provided by
European architects and masons. Some
European influences, including Renaissance
designs, penetrated the interior. Ahmad alMansur
procured carved marble from Pisa in
Italy for the construction of his Badi‘ Palace.
When Mawlay Isma‘il (r.1672–1727) created
his capital at Meknès, he plundered building
materials from older sites in Morocco but also
ordered marble from Italy. Mawlay Isma‘il
admired and perhaps tried to emulate his
contemporary, Louis XIV of France.
Along trade routes across the Sahara,
caravans from the north carried textiles,
paper, swords and other merchandise, while
from the sub-Saharan regions came gold,
slaves, ivory, ostrich feathers and hides. In the
east an important corridor for trade was the
Nile, along which gold was brought to Egypt.
INDIGENOUS RURAL TRADITIONS
Local traditions in architecture, textiles,
metalwork, pottery and other crafts flourished
especially in remote areas, with many regional
variations. The sedentary Arabic-speaking Jbala
tribes in northern Morocco lived in single-room
thatched huts. The sedentary Berber-speaking
Rif tribes built two-storey wooden houses. On
the coastal plains, semi-nomadic Arabicspeaking
tribes lived in tents and conical huts
made of reeds, cane and thatch. The traditions
of the High Atlas and Anti Atlas included qasbas
(individual houses, communal fortified
granaries or whole towns made of mud-brick
and pisé). In the Berber-speaking Kabylia and
Aurès regions of Algeria, dwellings of stone and
brick were made with tile roofs.
The Mzab oases of the Sahara had adobe
tapering horned minarets and domes. Tunisia
had the domed houses and mosques of Djerba
Island, the barrel-vaulted granaries of Matmata
and cave dwellings in the south. Libya had the
distinct buildings of the Jabal Nafusah.
2 A VAST ROYAL COMPLEX was added to the Moroccan
city of Meknès when sultan Mawlay Isma‘il (r.1672–
1727) moved his capital there. Materials came from
the Roman remains of Volubilis, the Marinid
necropolis at Chella and the Sa‘dian Badi‘ Palace in
Marrakesh. Marble also came from Pisa in Italy. The
labour was provided by Christian renegades and
slaves. Much of Mawlay Isma‘il‘s city is now in ruins.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
188
ISLAMIC ORTHODOXY in North Africa
supported the production of manuscripts,
especially the Koran and other religious texts,
sometimes illuminated and with fine bindings.
The annual pilgrimage to Mecca encouraged
the movement of artistic ideas. Cultural life
was also characterized by networks of Sufi
orders, and by religious fraternities organized
around zawiyas (schools). During this period,
marabouts (religious hermits) became a marked
feature of North African life. Saints’ tombs,
often modest domed buildings, were
constructed throughout the region.
Jewish minorities lived throughout North
Africa. Christians in Egypt and Ethiopia gave
architecture and art Christian purposes,
producing items for church ritual, figural
paintings, manuscripts and other artefacts.
The main centres for textiles, metalwork,
pottery and other crafts were the larger urban
communities. In Cairo each year the covering
(kiswa) for the Ka‘bah in Mecca was made from
black silk brocade lined with cotton, with a
band of Koranic inscriptions embroidered in
silver-gilt and silver thread. The arts of urban
centres were considered more refined than the
rural ones, which served local needs.
FOREIGN INFLUENCES
The Christian conquest of Spain, completed in
1492, brought Muslim and Jewish refugees.
They made important contributions in
Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. In Tunis, for
example, the zawiya of the Andalusian refugee
Sidi Qasim al-Jalizi was built in the HispanoMoresque
tradition, decorated with small
glazed tiles of Andalusian type, which began to
be manufactured in Tunis. When the Moroccan
sultan Ahmad al-Mansur (r.1578–1603) built
the Badi Palace (1578–93) in Marrakesh, its
plan was based on that of the Court of the
Lions in the Alhambra at Granada, though
much larger in scale. This influence was also
felt in the addition of pavilions at either end of
the courtyard of the Qarawiyyin mosque in Fez.
NORTH AFRICA 1500-1800
0˚ 10˚ 20˚ 30˚ 40˚ 50˚
30˚
Qarawiyyin Mosque
Zaytunah Mosque
Al Azhar Mosque
Jerusalem
Mecca
Sana
Jedda
Suakin
Quseir
Cairo
Alexandria
Tripoli 1551
Algiers 1525
Great Kabylia
Meknès
Essaouira
KairouanTlemcen
Tétouan
GaoTimbuktu
Jenne
Walata
Kano
Katsina
Agadez
Sokoto
Fez
Marrakesh
Medina
DJERBA
N
ile
BlueNile
WhiteNile
Niger
Seneg
al
L. Chad
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
B L A C K S E A
R
E
D
S
E
A
A T L A S
M T S
SINAI
A R A B I A N
P E N I N S U L A
KABYLIA MTS
CHOKE MTS
MASSIF DE L’AURÈS
AL JABAL
AL AKHDAR
JABAL
NAFUSAH
TIBESTI
S Y R I A N
D E S E R T
N U B I A N
D E S E R T
S A H A R A
I TA
LY
A N A T O L I A
PORTUGAL
S P A I N
SULTANATE
OF MOROCCO
S Y R I A
E G Y P T
Kiswa (cover)
for Ka’bah in
Mecca made here
and sent annually
Tunis 1574
export of tilework;
Spanish garrison 1534-74
Wattasid capital 1472-1549;
’Alawi capital 1666-72, 1729-1912
Berber artistic traditions in architecture,
textiles, pottery and metalwork
in mountainous regions
marble carved at
Pisa for Al Mansur's
palace in Marrakesh
conquered 1516
conquered 1517
camel and
goat hair tents
distinct
vernacular
buildings
’Alawi capital 1672-1727;
developed by
Mawlay Isma’il
Portuguese and Spanish Christian
centres on coast from 15th century
Mawlay Isma'il (r. 1672-1727)
builds over 70 qasbas,
employing slave army
to construct them
refugees from
Muslim Spain
continue Spanish
artistic traditions
Muhammad ibn 'Abd Allah (r.1757-90) builds
new town on site of Portuguese fort, designed by
European architects and masons
Sa’dian capital 1525-1659
conquered by
Morocco 1591;
gold and slaves
taken to Morocco
goldbroughttoEgypt
goldbroughttoEgypt
N
0
0
500 miles
750 kms
1 North Africa, 1500-1800
extent of Ottoman Empire and
Ottoman artistic influences
Ottoman artistic influence
other artistic influences
routes of pilgrimage to Mecca
trade routes
approximate limit of desert
cities captured by Ottomans
important Islamic school
centre of manuscript production
textile centre and embroidery
urban pottery centre
rural pottery centre
metalworking centre
leatherworking centre
saints’ tombs constructed
throughout period
COLOURED GLAZED TILES in the Qaramanli mosque in
Tripoli, Libya (built 1711–44), probably from Tunis,
then the major centre in the region for their
manufacture. The floral designs are arranged in a
geometric grid with pronounced borders.
1 EAST–WEST TRADE ROUTES linked the major cities of
North Africa, and trade extended southwards
across the Sahara. The arts were influenced by
refugees from Muslim Spain, and by the artistic
practices of the Ottomans, especially in the urban
centres. Berber artistic traditions continued
especially in the Rif and Atlas mountains of
Morocco and the Kabylia and Aurès
regions of Algeria.
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 1500–1800
191
20˚ 10˚ 0˚ 10˚ 20˚ 30˚ 40˚ 50˚
20˚
10˚
0˚
10˚
Axim
Benguela
Luanda
Cacheu
Delagoa
Bay
Inhambane
Sofala
El Mina
Cape Town
Mozambique
Saint-Louis
Gorée
Fort James
Cape Coast Castle
Bunce Island
Accra
Whydah
New Calabar
Loango
Malemba
Kilwa
Mombasa
Senegal
Niger
Congo
Nile
Zam
bezi
Li
m
popo
Orange
L. Victoria
L. Chad
L. Nyasa
L. Tanganyika
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
I N D I A N
O C E A N
R
E
D
S
E
A
S A H A R A
K A L A H A R I
D E S E R T
ETHIOPIAN
HIGHLANDS
ARABIAN
PENINSULA
D
R
A
K
E
N
SBERG
EGYPT
KAARTA
SEGU
AIR
OYO
BORGU
KABI
GOBIR
KANO
JUKUN
BENIN
BORNU
WADAI DARFUR
SENNAR
ETHIOPIA
SHILLUK
BUNYORO
BUGANDA
TIO
KUBA
YAKA
LUNDA
LOZI
VIYE
NJIMBO
A KALUNGA
KALONGA
LUBA
UNDI
LUNDU
ROZWI
DUTCH
SOUTH AFRICA
WANDU
MATAMBA
KASANJE
MBAILUNDU
WAMBU
ANGOLA (PORTUGUESE)
LOANGO
KONGO
DAHOMEY
KONG
WALO
FUTA
JALLON
ASANTE
(ASHANTI)
A F R I C A
M
ADAGASCAR
FUT
A
TORO
K
ATSINA
Z
ARIA
(Portuguese)
Zulu
Hebe/Lughuru
Gwazhili
Jimma
Chewa
Pende
Yoruba
Asante
Malinke
Bamum and
grasslands kingdoms
Chokwe
Tabwa
Nyamwezi
Pepper
Coast
GrainCoast Ivory
Coast
Gold Coast
toArabia
to India
to N America
Caribbean
to Brazil
to Caribbean, Brazil
to Brazil
to Caribbean
to N America, Caribbean, Brazilto N America, Caribbean
to
Brazil
to the Americas
Slave C
oast
Christian imagery
(crucifixes and statues
of saints) enter Kongo
in late 15th c: later
secularized and persist
well beyond 18th c
18th and 19th c imports
of brass vessels and copper
wire used to embellish
reliquary images among
Kota and Ossyeba peoples
N
0
0
500 miles
700 kms
Imports
cloth (linen, silk etc)*
clothing*
iron, pewter, brass* (manillas, basins)
horses
firearms (muskets, gunpowder, cannon)
kettles (19th c)
wines, spirits, bottles
bells
beads (often Venetian)*
keys, locks, clocks
glassware, crockery
hardware
tobacco*
books*
* items involved in trans-Saharan trade
2 African States and Trade, c.1750
approximate borders of kingdoms
trans-Saharan trade routes
Ottoman Empire
Dutch South Africa
slave trade
Portuguese settlement
Dutch settlement
French settlement
British settlement
distribution of high-backed chairs,
17th-19th c, indicating European
influence, even if indirect
Exports
slaves*
gold*
ivory*
wax
hides*
pepper*
sugar
palm oil (19th c)
gum Arabic*
ostrich feathers*
kola nuts*
adopted Christian symbols, using some forms, such
as crucifixes, in secular political and judicial contexts
after abandoning Christianity. Islamic/Arabic styles
prevailed on the Swahili coast and islands, in the
emirates of northern Nigeria, and in the mosques
and architecture of the western Sudan. Leatherwork
and embroidery on cotton garments in the same
areas also betray Muslim influence. Secular Europe
is present along coastal West Africa in forts and
castles, and also in motifs (weapons, clocks, bells,
hats and many other items) that were assimilated
into local iconography.
European art, architecture and material culture
entered southern Africa with the Boers and later the
British who colonized large areas. These forms –
metalwork, glassware, furniture and other household
goods, plus architectural forms and styles – were
adopted by the separatist European colonies
2 BY THE YEAR 1750 many European nations were involved
in African slave traffic and other trading. In some areas the
arts changed markedly because of these interactions,
resulting in new object and architecture types, new
materials, motifs, and sometimes, styles. Islam continued
its expansion southwards and along the East African coast.
Christianity was perhaps less influential in 1750 than in
1550, but its legacies remained in art and architecture.
PORTRAIT OF KING MISHE MISHYAANG MAMBUL. Wood, c.
eighteenth century, Kongo. This work was commissioned
and carved during the king’s lifetime, and housed in his
harem. Each Kuba monarch since the seventeenthcentury
King Shayaam nMbul aNgoong has
commissioned a similar commemorative image.
established from the mid-seventeenth century. Such arts,
still present today, evolved alongside the indigenous
art forms and styles of black African peoples.
Black peoples were frequently moved off their
original lands, yet in new locations many were able to
maintain, partly modified, their arts of personal
decoration, carved domestic objects and their
distinctive construction of houses and compounds,
sometimes decorated with wall paintings. Woodcarving
was apparently never highly developed among
southern African Bantu and Khoisan peoples who
were displaced by European colonists. Although
some instances of figural sculpture remain, carvers
mostly made everyday, useful objects, such as stools
and neck rests, staffs, beer containers and meat plates.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
190
THIS IS THE FIRST PERIOD for which firm
documentation survives for what Westerners
term works of African art, and indeed often the
works themselves are extant. Most art was made
by, and for, local peoples using local materials,
according to inherited styles and purposes. Yet
this is also a period when Islamic culture was
continuing to penetrate the east coast and
interior. At the same time, there was increasing
coastal contact and trade with Europe and the
Americas, including the slave trade. Around
1500 the first ‘tourist’ arts were produced: the
famed Afro-Portuguese ivories. European
colonization of southern Africa began in 1652.
Christianity, long established in Ethiopia,
persisted there, and was also introduced into
the interior Kongo kingdom early in this period.
MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
Most art forms and material culture collected in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had
antecedents in this period. Art was used in daily
life, in spiritual and political rituals and for rites
of passage. Figural sculptures and masks were
broadly distributed. Iron-smithing and copper
alloy casting were widespread, whereas silver,
gold and stone sculptures were rare. Arabinfluenced
chip-carved architectural elements
were made in east coast Swahili towns, and
distinctive architectural forms prevailed in
countless areas. Bead-making and varied forms
of personal decoration, such as scarification,
hairstyling and body painting, were important.
Probably festivals and other performances were
the artforms that were most highly valued by
local African peoples during this era.
THE ARTISTIC CONSEQUENCES OF SLAVERY
Slavery and related trading had widespread
effects in Africa. European ships became royal
emblems in the arts of Dahomey in the
eighteenth century, after Dahomean troops
gained access to coastal slaving and other trading
ships and their luxury material goods. Bound
captives (some doubtless slaves) appear in the Ife
sculptures of the twelfth to thirteenth centuries,
and the Inland Niger Delta sculpture of the
fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, as well as in
eighteenth-century Asante goldweights, as do
slave manacles. Many other European artefacts
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 1500-1800
and motifs entered Africa partly as a result of
slave trading. Locks, keys and bells, for
example, occur in brass goldweights and gold
beads; such motifs can be considered at least a
metaphor for the control African leaders and
Europeans had over coastal slave trade.
In the seventeenth century European chairs
were adapted by many African peoples, serving as
high-status symbols. Their direct relationship to
slavery – like aspects of European dress adopted
by coastal traders – remains to be established.
However, there can be little doubt that chairs,
dress items and other imports were among the
treasured goods that were exchanged for slaves
from the sixteenth to the nineteeth centuries.
FOUR ARTISTIC COMPLEXES
Four complexes of artistic ideas, objects and
styles characterize this period: indigenous,
Muslim, Christian and European secular. Most
artefacts, made for domestic, ritual and
political use by hundreds of peoples, were
created without influence from outside forms and
ideologies. This is true despite the inroads of
Islam and the contacts made along the western
coast with both secular and Christian Europe.
Exceptionally, the Christian art of Ethiopia
is, in fact, indigenous. The Kongo peoples also
IVORY SAPI-PORTUGUESE SALT CELLAR, c.1490–1530,
Berlin, Museum für Volkerkunde. Originally carved
by an African for Europeans, probably for the
curiosity cabinets of the wealthy or nobility. The
snakes and humans are African in style and type,
whereas the covered sphere-on-pedestal derives
from European chalices.
10˚ 0˚ 10˚ 20˚ 30˚ 40˚ 50˚
30˚
20˚
10˚
0˚
10˚
20˚
30˚
20˚30˚
Sierra Leone
1460
Santa Maria
1462
Fernando Po 1472
Benguela
1484
Walvis Bay
1486
Cabral 1500
Lüderitz
1487
Principe I. 1472
Sofala 1488
Kilimani
1498
Mozambique
1489-90
Kilwa 1488-89
Mombasa
1489-90
Mogadishu
1499
Malindi 1489
Cape St
Catherine 1474
Elmina
1482
Alexandria
Tangier
Jerusalem
Mecca
Medina
Sana
Gondar
Barka
Axum
Lalibela
Zeila
Berbera
Aden
Suakin
Tunis
Tripoli
Benin
Ikom
Zimbabwe
Luzira
Sao
Igbo-Ukwu
Nok
Bura
Timbuktu
Walata
Marrakesh
Koma
Kissi
Owo
Esie
Ilorin
Ile Ife
Oyo
Ibadan
Akan
N
i
le
Senegal
Congo
Za
m
bezi
L. Tanganyika
L. Nyasa
L. Chad
L. Victoria
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
I N D I A N
O C E A N
RED
SEA
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
KALAHARI
DESERT
S A H A R A
ARABIAN
PENINSULA
A T L A S
M T SWATTASIDS
ZAYYANIDS
HAFSIDS
M
A
M
L
U
KS
K H O I S A N
P E O P L E S
BED
U
IN
S
B E D U I N S
B
A
N
T
U
S
B
A
N
TUS
C U S H I T E
S
T U A R E G S
MALAYS
TAKRUR
MOSSI
KINGDOMS
BORGU KINGDOMS
YORUBA
KINGDOMS
KAKONGO
MBANGALA
LUNDU BEMBA
LUBA
NGOYO
KONGO
CHOKWE
JAGA
BENGUELA
MARAVI
MONOMOTAPA
TORWA
HAUSA
STATES
KANEMBORNU
TUNJUR
LOANGO
BENIN KINGDOM
TEKE
KUBA
DARFUR
AIR
AKW
AM
U
MAKURIA
FUNJ
ETHIOPIA
SMALL
STATES
INTERLACUSTRINE
STATES
AKAN
STATES
DENKYIRA
NUPE
IGALA
KWARARAFA
S O N G H AY
M A L I
WOLOF
SIINE
A F R I C A
PORTUGAL
MADAGASCAR
c.15th c
c.15th c
15th-16th c
began 11th c
15th-17th c
12th-15th c
c.16th c
c. 17th-19th c
13th-15th c
began 17th c
Sapi-Portuguese
ivories, late 15th/
early 16th c
Bini-Portuguese
ivories, late 15th/
early 16th c
Allada Tray
to Ulm,
early 17th c
9th-10th c
pre-1750
12th-13th c
3rd-11th c
N
0
0
800 miles
1200 kms
1 Africa, c.1550: States and Early
European Trade
extent of Islam by 1500
approximate borders of kingdoms
trans-Saharan trade
areas under Portuguese control c.1550
Portuguese settlements, with date
Portuguese trade and travel,
late 15th c. onwards
peoples
distribution of figural terracottas
distribution of stone sculpture
extent of Nok culture, c.500 BC-AD 200
exports of art
approximate limit of desert
approximate northern limit of thick forest
1534
HAFSIDS
1 IN THE CENTURIES before 1500, most non-internal
African trade was across the Sahara. After 1500,
however, the centre of ‘trade gravity’ shifted to
the coasts. First the Portuguese, then later most
other European powers, had extensive coastal
interchange with many diverse African peoples.
Trade relations thrived, and European contacts had
a strong impact on African art and culture.
ASIA 1500–1800
193
style that had developed under the Timurid
rulers of Central Asia in the fifteenth century
was adopted by Muslim courts from Istanbul to
Delhi. An international visual language was
created that united disparate – and often
antagonistic – political entities (although
architectural styles remained regionally
distinct). Throughout Asia imperial rulers
created magnificent capital cities that
proclaimed their grand – and often grandiose –
aspirations. From Edo (now Tokyo) to
Ayutthaya and Constantinople (Istanbul), the
finest buildings in these cities – whether
temples, pagodas or mosques – were designed
to express imperial power and prestige.
Rulers, their courtiers and even merchants
amassed the wealth necessary to transform the
landscape, and large and lavish gardens
became a hallmark of this period. Persian
hydraulic gardens, however pleasant and
beautiful, were first and foremost designed for
growing food in an arid land, whereas Chinese
and especially Japanese gardens were aimed
primarily at aesthetic delight, especially with
the development of the tea ceremony in Japan.
Conflicting territorial claims often led to
the displacement of artists and the consequent
commingling of artistic techniques and ideas.
MASJID AGUNG, OR GREAT MOSQUE OF DEMAK, central
Java, Indonesia, 1477–79. The oldest mosque in
Indonesia is located in a trading settlement on the
north coast of Java. The building is based on the
traditional Javanese pendopo, a square, open
pavilion whose four enormous timber pillars
support a high, multi-tiered roof. A broad pillared
verandah extending from the entrance is used for
teaching and meetings, and instead of a tower
minaret, a drum is used to call the faithful to
prayer. This form became standard for mosques
throughout Indonesia and Malaysia.
1 A NEW WORLD ECONOMIC SYSTEM replaced the
ancient Silk Road, which had served for millennia
to link China with the Mediterranean. The major
commodities traded were the spices and textiles
traditionally made throughout South and East
Asia, but European merchants also sought out
ceramics, lacquerwares, gems and exotic Asian
woods. Even American silver was brought across
the Pacific Ocean via the Spanish Philippines to
Southeast Asia. While long-distance trade had a
decisive impact on the arts of Asia, Asian arts in
turn exercised an impact on the arts of Europe.
The Persian artists and works of art captured by
the Ottomans at the Battle of Chaldiran in 1517
brought a new wave of Persian artistic culture
to the court at Constantinople. Following the
Japanese invasions of Korea in the 1590s,
Korean artists, especially potters, were
captured and taken to northern Japan, where
their rustic wares captivated Japanese
connoisseurs. The enormous booty brought
back to Iran following the brilliantly successful
invasion of India by the Afghan Nadir Khan in
1738–89 included the jewel-encrusted Peacock
Throne, which not only became the symbol of
the Iranian monarchy but also inspired a new
taste for bejewelled excess.
Along with the expansion of empires came
the spread of West Asian monotheism,
especially Islam and Christianity, at the
expense of the traditional Asian religions,
ranging from Shamanism to neo-Confucianism.
Muslim merchants and Sufis (mystics) brought
Islam to western China and Southeast Asia,
along with new forms of architecture (such as
the mosque) and new attitudes towards the
visual arts (such as the discouraging of figural
sculpture). The Spanish and Portuguese
brought Catholicism to their trading colonies
along the coasts of South, Southeast and East
Asia, where they built Mannerist and Baroque
churches and promoted painting and sculpture
depicting Christ, the Virgin and a host of saints.
The various manifestations of Buddhism, long
displaced in its Indian homeland by Hinduism
and Islam, remained dominant in Tibet,
Mongolia, Southeast Asia, Korea and Japan.
COMMERCE AND ART
Exquisite blue-and-white porcelains, which had
been produced since the fourteenth century at
the great kilns of Jingdezhen in southern China,
were exported by European merchants east to
Korea and Japan and west to Iran, Turkey and
eventually Italy and the rest of Europe. Chinese
blue-and-white porcelains inspired not only
the production of local pottery imitations, but
also the incorporation of Chinese motifs, such
as the lotus, peony and dragon, in a wide range
of other media. Europeans resident in Asia as
well as back at home coveted Asian arts –
Polish ambassadors to Iran and British
merchants in India commissioned splendid
carpets in which traditional arabesques were
combined with European coats-of-arms. At the
same time Asian artists took inspiration from
the arts of the West, adopting such techniques
as painting in oils on canvas and the overglaze
painting of ceramics with colloidal gold.
The techniques of papermaking and
printing, which had been used in East Asia for
centuries to disseminate Buddhism and had
already spread across Asia to Europe by the
fifteenth century, became major vehicles of
both artistic dissemination and expression.
Chinese painted papers were exported to
decorate European walls, while European
biblical and allegorical prints were brought
by Jesuit missionaries to India, where they
were copied by Mughal artists, who adopted
the European imagery and techniques of
perspective and shading, if not the meanings,
of the originals. Jesuits also introduced
printing with moveable type to the
Philippines, where only Chinese-inspired block
printing had been known. Indian block-printed
cottons were exported to Southeast Asia and
Europe, where they inspired a fashion
revolution as bright patterned colour at last
became affordable. In Japan, which alone had
closed its ports to European traders,
woodblock printing became a major industry,
as artists perfected the technique of colour
printing for a burgeoning merchant class.
Nevertheless, Dutch merchants managed to
export some Japanese paper to Holland,
where Rembrandt used it for printing some
of his etchings.
160˚150˚140˚130˚120˚110˚100˚90˚80˚70˚60˚50˚40˚30˚20˚
30˚
10˚
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
Constantinople
(Istanbul)
Aleppo
Cairo
Mecca
Mocha
Baghdad
Azov
Astrakhan
Samarkand
Tashkent
Kashgar
Kucha
Khotan
Herat
Meshed
Alexandria
Isfahan
Shiraz
Delhi
Agra
Lahore
Nagasaki
Macao
Fuzhou
Hangzhou
Pasai
Colombo
Cochin
Calicut
Goa
Bombay
Surat
Cambay
Tranquebar
Madras
Masulipatam
ChittagongBalasore
Calcutta
Pondicherry
Malacca
Manila
Batavia
Demak
Ternate
Macassar
Muscat
Hormuz Island
Guangzhou
Xiamen
Nanjing
Shexian
Xuancheng
Xiuning
Anping
Beijing
ChengduDerge
Seoul
Edo (Tokyo)
Kyoto
Osaka
Ayutthaya
Bukhara
I N D I A
A R A B I A
P E R S I A
S Y R I A
EGYPT
CEYLON
C H I N A
JAPAN
KOREA
T I B E T
M O N G O L I A
R U S S I A
S O U T H E A S T
A S I A
C E N T R A L
A S I A
C E N T R A L
A S I A
P
H
I
L
I
P
P
INES
E A S T
I N
D
I
E
S
M
ESOPOTAMIA
ANATOLIA
J AVA
BORNEO
CELEBES
LUZON
HAINAN
FORMOSA
MINDANAO
NEW
GUINEA
UZBEK RULERS
1500-1785
KINGDOM
OF AYUTHIA
SUMATRA
A R A B I A N
S E A
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
SEA
OF
JAPAN
YELLOW
SEA
EAST
CHINA SEA
ARAL
SEA
CASPIANSEA
BLA
CK
SEAPERSIAN
G
U
LF
REDSEA
YELLOWSEA
I N D I A N O C E A N
Hebrew 1493, Turkish 1729
1556
1579
Bengali and
Persian 1780
timber
cotton
textiles
spicesgold
Gold
spices,
sugar
Gold
copper
gems
porcelain, silk, tea
wallpaper
copper,
gems,
spices
carpets
opium
Opium
gems,
textiles
cotton, silk,
textiles
spices
copper,
gold
1712
1591
1604
1706
Arabic and
Persian
1637,
Armenian
1644
1540s
1557
1684
1643
17251762
1613
1624
1510
1639
1611
1687
1612
1672
1616
1498
1514
1507
1522
1619
1521
1571
1664
1669
1511
1641
1517
1656
1796
1690
1642
New
W
orld silver
New World silver
New World
silver and
opium from
India
furs, gems and silver
from Russia
Furs, gems and silver
from Russia
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 Asia, 1500-1800: Trade and Culture
Asian empires:
Ottoman Empire 1683
Safavid Empire 1512
Mughal Empire 1707
Qing Empire 1800
Korea 1800
Japan 1800
Predominant religions:
Animism
Buddhism
Buddhism with Confucianism
Buddhism with Shintoism
Christianity
Hinduism
Islam
Jesuit travels in the 16th century
culture:
major centre of courtly art
major centre of
religious architecture
centres of traditional
Chinese printing
major centres of
Japanese colour
woodblock printing c.1650
introduction of European
printing technology
trade:
main European trading ports:
Portuguese
Spanish
Dutch
English
French
Danish
goods imported to Asia
by Europeans
sources of traded goods (specified):
carpets
Islamic trade routes
R
INDIA
CHINA
SOUTHEAST
ASIA
PHI
LIPPINES
I N D O N E S I A
European
possessions, 1650
Dutch
Spanish
Portuguese
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
192
IN THIS PERIOD Asia entered a new global
economic system, based on long-distance
maritime trade and dominated by Europeans.
The treaty of Tordesillas (1494) promised the
Spanish control over much of the New World,
while allotting Portugal all the trade from the
Cape Verde Islands east to the Moluccas. After
the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama
rounded Africa in 1498, the Spanish and the
Portuguese, followed closely by the English
and the Dutch, began to establish trading
colonies along the coasts of Southwest, South,
Southeast and East Asia.
EMPIRE, RELIGION AND ART
The land-based empires of Asia, while
conceding control of the seas to European
fleets, expanded at each other’s expense. Ming
and Qing rulers moved west from China into
Tibet and Turkestan, while both the Japanese
and the Chinese invaded Korea. Muscovy
pushed south into the Caucasus and Central
Asia. Timurid princes decamped from Central
Asia into northern India where they established
the Mughal Dynasty, which itself expanded
southward at the expense of the Hindu rulers
of the Deccan. The Shi’ite Safavids of Iran were
wedged between two Sunni and Turkish rivals,
the Uzbeks of Central Asia and the Ottomans of
Anatolia, the Levant and the Balkans.
Everywhere, these courts took inspiration from
the fine arts of times past.
This age of empires went hand-in-hand
with the creation of imperial styles and capital
cities. Throughout West and South Asia, for
example, the Persian language and the artistic
ASIA 1500-1800
CHINESE EXPORT WALLPAPER, gouache on paper, second
half of the eighteenth century. Beginning in the
late seventeenth century, European merchants
imported hand-painted Chinese wallpapers to
decorate private sitting and bedrooms. They were
so valuable that they were not pasted directly on
walls, but on canvas stretched over battens, which
were then nailed to the walls. They were supplied
in sets of 25 to 40 rolls, each about 1 metre wide.
WEST ASIA 1500–1800
195
travellers also brought back many exotic goods,
which in turn influenced European taste. Ogier
Ghislain de Busbecq, Habsburg ambassador to
the Ottoman sultan Süleyman, for example,
imported tulip bulbs to Austria, thereby laying
the foundation for the tulip mania of 1636–7.
THE IMPERIAL STYLE
To bolster their creation of nation-states, the
Ottomans and Safavids not only played upon
sectarian rivalries (for example, between the
Sunni and Shi‘i sects) and ethnic divisions
(Arab/Persian/Turk), but also created glorious
capital cities. For reasons of politics and
security, they sometimes had to move their
capitals, but their final choices – Istanbul and
Isfahan – become the showpieces of their
empires. Each power also created an imperial
style of architecture, which was used to define
territory. Thus the distinctive Ottoman style of
mosque – built of limestone masonry with a
large domed hall surrounded by cascading semidomes
and pencil-point minarets – was erected
throughout the empire. The message of these
mosques as signifiers of the dynasty was so
clear that when conservative Wahhabi clerics
came to power in eighteenth-century Arabia,
they ordered Ottoman minarets and domes
destroyed. Safavid mosques are equally distinct.
They were built of brick and glazed tile with an
open courtyard, which was surrounded by two
storeys of rooms and four iwans on the sides, and
a large portal with an iwan flanked by minarets.
Although both the Ottomans and Safavids
drew on the common heritage of Persian culture
promulgated by the Timurids in fifteenthcentury
Central Asia, each dynasty created a
distinct artistic style by establishing state
control over manufactures. As in architecture,
royal design studios ensured stylistic coherence
through the use of paper patterns and designs.
The same motif, such as a jagged leaf (saz),
appears on Ottoman tiles, ceramic vessels,
textiles, carpets and metalwork. Distinct artistic
personalities also emerged in this period,
notably Sinan (d.1588), the premier Ottoman
architect, and Reza (d.1635), who was the
foremost painter of Safavid Iran.
UNDERGLAZED PAINTED DISH with floral design. Royal
design studios allowed the Ottomans and Safavids
to develop dynastic styles of art with common
motifs in many media. The jagged leaf painted on
this large dish in the Ottoman workshops at Iznik,
for example, is also found on contemporary textiles
and metalwork.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
194
maker Thomas Dallam, the Huguenot jeweller
Jean Chardin, the German physician Engelbert
Kaempfer and the Capuchin father Raphael du
Mans. Most were impressed by what they found
and wrote long accounts of their journeys, often
illustrated with engravings of these exotic lands.
These emissaries brought European goods
as gifts, thereby introducing new media and
artistic techniques to the region. Venetian plateglass
mirrors and oil painting on canvas, for
example, were introduced to Isfahan in the
seventeenth century, as were single-point
perspective and shading. The Hungarian convert
Ibrahim Müteferrika introduced printing with
moveable type to Istanbul in the early eighteenth
century. An Armenian press was established in
Isfahan and a Maronite press in Lebanon,
although printing was not fully exploited in the
region until the nineteenth century. European
DURING THIS PERIOD West Asia was
contested between two rival Muslim
dynasties of Turkish origin. The more powerful
were the Ottomans (r. 1282–1924), who had
grown from a minor principality in northwestern
Anatolia to rule a vast empire that
encompassed Anatolia, Syria, the Levant,
Arabia and Mesopotamia, as well as the
Balkans, much of southwestern Europe, all of
Egypt and all of North Africa except Morocco.
The Ottomans challenged the Christian powers
of Europe for control of the Mediterranean and
challenged the Habsburgs and Romanovs for
control of eastern Europe and southern Russia.
The Ottomans’ rivals to the east, the
Safavids (r.1501–1732), ruled Persia and made
the Shi‘i sect of Islam the state religion. Their
borders were constantly harrassed on the west by
the Ottomans, who vied with them for control of
the Shi‘i shrines at Najaf and Kerbela, and on the
east by the Uzbeks, who vied for control of the
Shi‘i shrine at Meshed. Eventually the moribund
Safavid dynasty was overthrown by the Turkmen
chieftain Nadir, who re-established the territorial
integrity of Persia through constant wars
financed by invading India in 1738–9. This
brilliant campaign brought him enormous booty,
including the Mughals’ fabled Peacock Throne.
INTERNATIONAL TRADE
After European ships rounded the Cape of Good
Hope, the traditional land routes across Eurasia
were displaced. Inland caravan cities were
supplanted by Persian Gulf ports which linked
Persia directly into the European mercantile
system. Persian silk cultivated on the Caspian
littoral was shipped to Europe through
Ottoman-controlled Aleppo in northern Syria,
while the Ottomans themselves exported silk
from Bursa. Both the Safavids and the Ottomans
also exported fine finished textiles including
silks, velvets and carpets. Most carpets exported
to Europe came from the Ottoman Empire. Their
increased presence is amply documented in
European paintings, and they are consequently
known as, for example, ‘Holbein’, ‘Bellini’ or
‘Crivelli’ carpets. Other carpets – and works of
art – were made on commission for Europeans.
The Armenian merchant Sefer Muratowicz, for
example, ordered ‘Polonaise’ carpets woven in
Isfahan with the arms of the Czartowski family.
Ottoman potters at Iznik made polychrome
ceramics bearing European coats of arms.
European trade was encouraged by
merchants, missionaries, adventurers and
ambassadors, including the English organWEST
ASIA 1500-1800
10˚ 0˚ 10˚ 20˚ 30˚ 40˚ 50˚ 60˚ 70˚
40˚
30˚
20˚
10˚
Istanbul (Ottoman capital)
Tabriz
(Safavid
capital to 1555)
Isfahan (Safavid capital from 1590s)
Qazvin
(Safavid capital
1555-1590s)
Vienna
Szigetvár
Samarkand
Meshed
Mecca
Hormuz
Bandar Abbas
(Gombroon)
Medina
Ardabil
Rhodes
Antalya
Kütahya
Ushak
Athens
Bursa Ankara
Tokat
Trebizond
Simferopol
Erzurum
Diyarbakir
Van
Mardin
Mosul
Baghdad
Najaf
Kerbela
QumSaveh
Shiraz
Kashan
Kerman
Tabas
Kandahar
Yazd
Urfa
Nishapur
Aleppo
Damascus
Jerusalem
Amman
Cairo
Alexandria
Benghazi
Tripoli
Rosetta
Jericho
Nicosia
Amasya
Konya
Eupatoria
Gaziantep
Tripoli
Beirut
Acre
Jaffa
Belgrade
Budapest
Üsküb
Thessalonica
Adrianople
Iznik
Smyrna
Tirana
Sofia
Pec´ (Ipek)
Khiva
Bukhara
Nile
E
uphrates
Tigris
Danube
B L A C K S E A
A R A B I A N
S E A
ARAL
SEA
M E D I
T
E
R
R
A
N
E
A
N
S
E A
R
E
D
S
E
A
C
A
SPIAN
SEA
PE
R
S
I A
N
G U L F
H U N G A R Y
BALKANS
A L G E R I A
T U N I S I A
E G Y P T
S Y R I A
A R A B I A
E
U
R
O
P
E
P E R S I A
ANATOLIA
LEBANON
R U S S I A
C E N T R A L
A S I A
K H A N AT E
O F
K H I VA
KHANATE
OF
BUKHARA
T
R
I P O L I
M
ESO
PO
TAM
IA
Safavid trade
with Europe
Silk
Silk, carpets and
Iznik ceramics
Raw silk
Carpets
Raw
silk
1 West Asia, 1500-1800: Trade and Culture
Ottoman Empire, 1520
Ottoman Empire, 1683
Safavid Empire, c.1520
Safavid Empire, early 17th century
area fought over by Ottoman and Safavids after 1512
trade routes
Ottoman exports
Safavid exports
capital cities
new trade centres
towns with Ottoman construction
Safavid mosques
pottery manufacture
textile manufacture
centre of manuscript production
N
0
0
300 miles
400 kms
MUHAMMAD ZAMAN, Fitna Astonishing Bahram Gur,
added in 1675 to a copy of Nizami’s Khamsa
(Quintet) made in 1539–43 for the Safavid shah
Tahmasp. Seventeenth-century Persian miniature
painters adopted such features of European art as
single-point-perspective and shading, used here
within a traditional Persian tripartite composition
and subject to create a sense of space and to focus
attention on the figure of the ruler.
Old Meydan
New
Meydan
(1590-1602)
Shah Mosque
(1611-30)
Chahar Bagh Avenue
Bridge of
33 Arches
(1602)
Madar-i Shah
Madrasa
(early 18 c)
Mosque of
Sheikh Lotfallah
(1603-19)
Ali Qapu
(entrance to
palace precinct
1597-1660)
Bazar
Old
Congregational
mosque
R
.Zayandeh
To New Jolfa
N
0
0
500 m
1000 ft
Isfahan under
the Safavids
mosques
mansions of the nobility
2
1 THE TWO MAJOR POWERS in the region, the
Ottomans and the Safavids, were active traders
in the global market, exporting many goods to
Europe overland and by sea. The most
important were fibres and textiles, which were
cultivated and produced throughout their
realms. Both dynasties also used architecture as
a nationalist symbol, creating dynastic styles of
architecture displayed in the many cities that
flourished during this period. Although they
were sometimes forced to move their capitals,
their final choices – Istanbul and Isfahan –
became the showpieces of their empires.
2 THE NEW CAPITAL OF Shah Abbas (r.1587–1628) at
Isfahan reflected the role of the city as the hub of
the Safavid order. A long covered market led from
the old city to the New Meydan (square) with a
congregational mosque at the south and the palace
precinct to the west. Beyond, a broad avenue,
flanked by the mansions of the nobility, led across
the river to the suburb of the Armenian merchants
and hunting preserves for the court.
CENTRAL ASIA 1500 –1800
197
rooms and an iwan in the middle of each of its
four sides. The largest (73 x 55 metres; 237 x
179 ft) is the Mir-i Arab madrasa (1530–36) in
Bukhara. As in Timurid times, surfaces were
decorated with brilliantly glazed tiles which
were set in geometric or figural patterns. These
buildings were often arranged in beautifully
laid-out complexes, either facing other
structures, as at the Registan complex in
Samarkand, or set around reservoirs, as at
Bukhara.
City Wall
City Wall
City Wall
Khanagah (1572)
(exact location & size unknown)
Sheikh
Jahal Gate
Qul Baba
Kukultash
mosque
Labi-i Haws complex
Qul Baba Kukaltash Madrasa
(1569)
Warehouse
Caravanserai
Mir-i Arab Madrasa (1530-36)Inner City
Congregational
Mosque
Arg
(Citadel)Registan
Bath
Madar-i Khan
Madrasa (1567)
Abd Allah Khan
Madrasa (1590)
To Chahr
Bakr
Royal
Bath
Rud i-Shah
See
Inset B
See
Inset A
Goldsmith’s
dome (1417)
Ulugh Beg
Madrasa (1417)
Hatseller’s dome
(c. 1582-7)
Congregational
mosque
(1574-9)
Gaukushan
Madrasa
1562-6
Moneychanger’s
dome
Caravanserai of
Khwaja Sa’d
Warehouse of
Abd Allah Khan
(c.1577)Bath of
Khwaja
Sa’d
Rud i-Shah
N
A: Central Commercial
District
B: Qul Baba
Kukaltash
Madrasa
0
500 m
500 yds
0
2 LOCAL PATRONS USED THE WEALTH garnered from
trade to develop their cities. Bukhara, for example,
was extensively enlarged under the local Shibanid
khans, who added mosques, madrasas and shrines
around a large commercial district with
warehouses, caravanserais and domed markets.
The city replaced Samarkand as the political and
religious centre of Transoxania. The city walls were
rebuilt, and the site presents one of the finest
examples of a pre-modern Islamic city.
THE REGISTAN, OR TOWN SQUARE, IN SAMARKAND. Most
public buildings erected in Central Asia during this
period were made of brick and glazed tile. Many
were set in complexes, often around a pool. The
Registan, the most spectacular ensemble, was laid
out in the early fifteenth century by the Timurids.
It was redeveloped in the seventeenth century
when governor Yalangtush Bi Alchin built a new
madrasa known as the Shirdar (‘lion-possessing’)
from the decoration of rampant lions on the
spandrels on the entrance. Erected between 1616
and 1636, it replaced a large madrasa built by the
Timurid ruler Ulugh Beg.
region is reflected in the substantial new
investment in commercial facilities, such as
caravanserais and covered markets, as well as
expenditure lavished on religious architecture
and literary and artistic works. New building in
Bukhara and Samarkand was carried out on a
scale not seen since the time of the Timurids.
By the middle of the seventeenth century,
however, the traditional land routes across
Central Asia were insufficient to meet the
growing world demand for goods created by
European industrialization. Prosperity
dramatically slackened as the economic
significance of the region diminished. Deprived
of their Mediterranean markets, Central Asian
merchants turned northwards towards Russia
and Siberia, developing reciprocal trade in
textiles, furs, precious stones and rhubarb
(used as a medicine).
THE RELIGIOUS ART OF CENTRAL ASIA
In reaction to the establishment of Shi‘i Islam
as the state religion of Persia under the
Safavids, Central Asia became a staunch centre
of Sunni Islam. It was taught by religious
scholars who presided over many large madrasas
(theological colleges) constructed in the major
cities, which attracted students from across
Asia. The typical madrasa, like most buildings in
the region, was a large brick structure with a
central open court surrounded by two stories of
Sufis, or mystics, had been responsible for
much of the conversion of Central Asia to
Islam, and Sufi orders remained important.
Shrine complexes were developed around the
graves of Sufi saints. The most famous is the
Char Bakr complex (1559–69) outside Bukhara,
which comprises a khanaqah (hospice), madrasa
and mosque in the midst of the cemetery for
the Jubayri family of Naqshbandi sheikhs.
lllustrated manuscripts produced in the
region became increasingly repetitive in
subject, composition and style. Following
successive incursions into Khurasan, the
northeastern province of the Safavid realm,
painters in Central Asia began to incorporate
the classical elements of Persian manuscript
painting as had been practised in fifteenthcentury
court ateliers at the Timurid capital of
Herat. The most important texts were the
classics of Persian literature, illustrated for
emirs and members of the learned class, as
well as for local princes.
Many of the other arts also followed earlier
traditions. Fine metalwares, not only inlaid
bronzes but especially tinned coppers,
continued to be produced, but few are dated.
Polychrome ceramics were replaced by blueand-white
wares imitating Chinese porcelains.
Typical pieces, mainly bowls, were covered with
a slip and decorated under a transparent glaze
with flowers, fruits, birds and geometric
designs. The expensive cobalt pigment used in
the fifteenth century was replaced with cheaper
manganese and copper that produced darkgreen,
turquoise and purple-brown hues. To
judge from earlier and later examples, fine
textiles and carpets in wool, silk and cotton
were also made in this period, but so far it is
difficult to date or localize many of them.
2 Bukhara in the 16th Century
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
196
Uch Turfan, Khotan, Kashgar and Yarkand. By
the middle of the seventeenth century, power
passed from the Chaghatayids to the Khojas
(1658–1759), descendants of Naqshbandi Sufi
sheikhs, who cemented their authority by
marriage into the Chaghatayid family.
ARTISTIC PATRONAGE
The khans, emirs and sufis were all important
patrons of architecture and art, especially the
arts of the book. In form and style, the works of
art produced under Uzbek patronage in Central
Asia were dependent upon models the
Timurids had established in the fifteenth
century. The repetition of the same forms for
the next three centuries means that these
works of art, although copious, are often
mediocre in quality, particularly when they are
compared with contemporary works produced
by Safavid and Ottoman patrons in West Asia
or by the Mughals in South Asia, all of whom
had far greater resources at their disposal.
The European discovery of direct sea links
with Asia and the Americas at the end of the
fifteenth century had a crucial impact on the
economy of this region, which was an entrepôt
on the intercontinental trade route linking
China to South and West Asia. By the midsixteenth
century, precious metals from the
New World had found their way into the
pockets of Central Asian businessmen and
politicians. The ensuing prosperity of the
IN THE THREE CENTURIES following the
collapse of the last remnants of the Timurid
Empire in 1506, the Turko-Mongolian rulers of
Central Asia were challenged by the advances
of two powerful rivals, the Chinese and the
Russians. The area to the east of the Tien-Shan
mountains fell increasingly under Chinese
control, and in 1757 it was made a Chinese
province called Sinkiang (‘new frontiers’). The
region to the west became tied to the growing
economic power of Muscovy. After defeating
the Tartars and annexing the Khanate of Kazan
in 1552, Muscovy extended its political and
economic reach south and eastward. Anthony
Jenkins, representative of the English Muscovy
Company, established the first diplomatic
exchange with the Central Asian khanates in
1558, and Russia became the region’s main
trading partner.
SETTLEMENT PATTERNS
During this period authority reverted to
descendants of Genghis Khan who exercised
their power from oasis cities irrigated by rivers
and irrigation systems fed by waters collected
in distant mountain ranges. In western Central
Asia the political system was organized into
fiefdoms led by khans descended from
Genghis’s eldest son, Jochi. The main lines
were the Shibanids (1500–1599) and the ToqayTimurids
(1599–1747), who ruled from capitals
at Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Balkh.
Military and bureaucratic figures from the
Turko-Mongolian tribes were sometimes even
more important than the khans, while the
learned class, which included traditional
Muslim scholars and members of Sufi
(mystical Islamic) brotherhoods, often served
as mediators between the disenfranchised and
the ruling classes.
In eastern Central Asia descendants of
Genghis Khan’s second son, Chaghatay, ruled
in the Altishahr, the ‘six cities’ of Kucha, Aksu,
CENTRAL ASIA 1500-1800
PAGE FROM SAADI’S MASTERPIECE in prose and poetry,
the Bustan (‘Orchard’), made at Bukhara in 1616.
Rich patrons continued to commission illustrated
copies of Persian classics. This manuscript of the
famous poem by the thirteenth-century Persian
master from Shiraz, for example, was made for the
library of a Juybari sheikh who represented the
Naqshbandi order of Sufis in the Transoxanian city
of Bukhara. It gives a good idea of court life there.
50˚ 60˚ 70˚ 90˚80˚ 100˚
30˚
Turfan
Kucha
Andijan
Kokand
Tashkent
Bukhara
Karmina
Samarkand
Yasi (Turkestan)
Khiva
Baqirqan
Merv
HeratIsfahan
Shiraz
Mashhad
Old Urgench
Kandahar
Kashgar
Uch Turfan
Aksu
Yarkand
Khotan
Kabul
Yamghan
Lahore
Balkh
Lake Balkhash
Il
i
Indus
Tarim
M
urgab
Helmand
Zeravshan
Am
u
Darya
Syr Darya
Hari Rud
CASPIANSEA
PERSIAN
GULF
ARAL
SEA
T I E N
S H A N
H
I N
D
U
K
U
S H
P A M I R S
K A Z A K H S T E P P E
KOPET DAGH
KYZYL KUM
KARA KUM
To Hami:
horses, camels, skins
To China
To Orenburg:
textiles, rhubarb,
precious stones
To Khiva:
furs
To Kazan
R U S S I A
C H I N A
TURKMENISTAN
AFGHANISTAN
KHANATE
OF KHIVA
KHANATE
OF KOKAND
S I N K I A N G
KHANATE
OF BUKHARA
TURKESTAN
P E R S I A
OTTOMANEMPIRE
M U G H A L
E M P I R E
KARA-KIRGHIZ
1 The Civilizations of Central Asia, 1500-1800
border of Qing Empire, 1779
border of Safavid Empire, 1725
border of Russian Empire, 1725
‘six cities‘ of the Altishahr
trade routes
madrasas
shrine complexes
caravanserais
centres of manuscript production
N
0
0
600 miles
800 kms
1 SANDWICHED BETWEEN GREAT POWERS in China, India,
Persia and Russia, Central Asia was fragmented
among principalties and city-states ruled by
descendants of Genghis Khan, and artistic
patronage became inwardly focused. To display
their might and cement their authority, patrons in
the western part of the region commissioned
buildings and objects resembling those that had
been commisioned by the Timurids, their richer and
more powerful ancestors in the fifteenth century.
ONE OF FOURTEEN CENOTAPHS (chhatries)
constructed in the seventeenth
century to commemorate the
kings of the Rajput dyansty of the
Bundelas in their capital city of
Orccha. While their form resembles a
common north-Indian-style Hindu
temple, their function, to
commemorate the dead, reflects the
influence of Islam, as mausolea
and tombs are unknown among
Hindus, who bury their dead.
Interestingly, the cenotaphs contain
no human remains.
SOUTH ASIA 1500–1800
199
(particularly when decorated), books were
exchanged at ceremonial occasions and are
often mentioned as war spoils by court
historians. Painters were usually
commissioned personally by patrons to
illustrate manuals, court histories and
biographies, a fact often reflected in the highly
individualized nature of miniature painting.
MUGHAL ARCHITCTURE
The Mughal emperors constructed palaces,
mosques, forts and cities. Mughal architecture
blended Persian and Central Asian prototypes
with indigenous Indian techniques and styles.
Mughal monuments in the sixteenth century,
like the city of Fatepuhr Sikri, were largely built
in distinctive red sandstone with contrasting
marble inlays, while those of the seventeenth
century, such as the Taj Mahal (see pp.146–7), a
mausoleum sponsored by Emperor Shah Jahan
(r.1627–58), were constructed in white marble
and inlaid with semi-precious stones. Decorative
techniques were distinctive: perforated screens,
tesselated designs of alternating stone types,
inlaid floral motifs and glazed tiling.
One of the more remarkable architectural
developments of the Mughal period was the
proliferation of garden architecture (and
culture) among the courtly elite. The Mughal
prototypes came from Persia, where the Islamic
concept of paradise as a utopian garden of
plants and flowers arranged in geometrical
symmetry around pools of water had
developed. Though inspired by Persian
prototypes, Mughal gardens, like painting, were
quickly adapted to Mughal taste.
privileges alone but by the end of the
eighteenth century had come to acquire limited
diplomatic and administrative powers, a
process which would eventually lead to fullscale
colonial rule.
Despite the rapidly changing political
landscape, this was a period of increasing
economic dynamism. A significant rise in the
flow of commodities during the Mughal period
led to a corresponding expansion in the
demand for manufactured products, including
luxury goods and crafts. This demand was
reinforced by the development (and imitation)
of an impressive courtly culture in the major
imperial metropolises, as well as vigorous and
distinctive provincial courtly styles. These were
manifested in architecture, painting, textiles
and portable decorative arts.
COURTLY CULTURE
Early Mughal courtly culture was heavily
influenced by contemporary Persia, particularly
in painting and architecture. While painting
(both Hindu and Muslim) was by no means
unknown in pre-Mughal India, it was developed
extensively as a courtly art from early Mughal
times, partly as a result of the emperor
Humayun’s exile to the court of Tahmasp in
Persia, where he witnessed the spendours of
Persian miniature painting, and partly due to
the subsequent arrival of Persian artists at the
Mughal court seeking refuge from religious
iconoclasts. Miniature paintings were
essentially book illustrations and were closely
associated with the culture of books in Mughal
India. Considered rare and precious objects
Gwalior Gate
Tehra Gate
Mosque and Tomb of
Shaikh Baha-ud-Din
Tansen’s
Baradari
Naubat Khana (Music House)
Mint
Diwan-i-Khass
(Hall of Private Audience)
Diwan-i-Amm
(Hall of Public Audience)
Jodha Bai’s Palace
Anup Talao (‘Peerless Pool’)
Daftar Khana (Records House)
Buland Darwaza
(Gate of Victory)
Panch Mahal
(Five-Storey Palace)
Hiran Minar
(‘Sunken Minaret’)
Hawa Mahal
(Palace of Breezes)
Jami Masjid
VILLAGE
AREA
Sarai (Caravanserai)
Chor
Gate
Ajmer Gate
Chodanpol
Gate
Birbal
Gate
Agra Gate
Lal GateDelhi Gate
N
0
0
500 yds
500 m
2 Fatehpur Sikri, Mughal Imperial City, 1571-1600
TEXTILES AND DECORATIVE ARTS
Sources suggest that the Indian textile industry
was truly mammoth, with every part of the
country producing textiles for both local
consumption and distant markets. The English
factory records alone mention some 150
varieties of cotton fabric available for export.
There were many regional specialities, such as
painted cloth from the Deccan and mixed silk
and cotton from Gujarat. Indian fabrics were
printed, painted, dyed and often embroidered
and appliquéd. Yet technologies remained
comparatively simple and rudimentary.
Inlaid jewellery was a Mughal speciality,
particularly under the patronage of Shah Jahan,
whose famous golden ‘peacock throne’ was
encrusted with precious stones. Exports
of fine cotton and silk textiles, precious and
semi-precious stones, spices and other luxury
items reached Persia, Turkey, Muscovy, Poland,
Egypt and Arabia. It is no surprise that
European merchants were drawn in the
seventeenth century to trading entrepôts
along the coast of India, where they
established factories.
The art of miniature painting involved a
variety of artisans – painters, paper-makers,
binders, gilders and calligraphers. The studio
masters drew models on paper with graphite or
ink, which were then coated with a white
translucent layer of paint. Details were added
and then paint, made of plant, animal and
mineral-based pigments mixed with glue or
gum arabic, was applied with squirrel-hair
brushes. Finally, the surface of the paintings
was burnished.
2 THE CITY OF FATEHPUR SIKRI was
constructed under the patronage of
Emperor Akbar over a
fifteen-year span (1571–85), to
celebrate a prophecy made by the
Chisti saint Shaikh Salim, of the birth
of a son. A brilliant combination of
Persian principles with an Indian
flavour, the city is built of red
sandstone with contrasting marble
inlays. Fatehpur Sikri was not
destined to last, however, and was
abandoned by 1600.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
198
Empire, with its complex system of flexible
political alliances with Hindu kings called
Rajputs, was one of the most remarkable states
witnessed in the subcontinent. By the latter
half of the seventeeth century, however, it had
been weakened by internal divisions (which
included the rise of the independent state of
the Marathas in the Deccan) and fiscal
overspending. At the same time, European
merchant companies began to arrive in India
seeking precious materials and finely worked
goods. At first they excercised trading
THE PERIOD BETWEEN 1500 and 1800 has
traditionally been seen as an epoch of
imperial grandeur followed by political and
economic decay and stagnation, setting the
stage for the arrival of European powers and
colonial rule. Recent research suggests that
this period instead saw steady but remarkable
economic growth and socio-political dynamism.
ART AND SOCIETY
In 1526 Babur (r.1526–30), who had been forced
from his homeland in Samarkand by the
Uzbeks, defeated the acting Sultan of Delhi,
and established what was to become the last
great imperium before the arrival of European
powers, the Mughal empire. Throughout the
sixteenth century, the Mughal emperors
established control throughout the
subcontinent. The Deccan, where the kingdom
of Vijayanagara had fallen to a confederation
of sultanates in 1565, saw a power vacuum and
was soon swallowed up by the expanding
Mughal Empire under the dynamic leadership
of Emperor Akbar (r.1556–1605). The Mughal
SOUTH ASIA 1500-1800
70˚
15˚
20˚
25˚
65˚60˚ 80˚75˚
M
A
A
18
17
13
2
12
4
7
3
16
1
9
10
15
8
19
6
14
5
11
Ghazni
JalalabadKabul
Peshawar
Sirhind
Chamba
Kangra
Kulu
Dadeldhura
Dullu Dailekh
Mandi
Basohli
Jammu
Lahore
Ahmadabad
Hisar
Bikaner
Gwalior
Chitor
Kotah
Udaipur
Uch
Pandua
Kantanagar
Ujjain
Asirgarh
Dhar
Kathmandu
Baranagar
Ayodhya Jaunpur
MauTanda
Patna
Bihar
Bhadgaon
Cuttack
Lakhawar
Benares
Monghir
Kalinjar
Allahabad
Calcutta
Bishnupur
Qasimbazar
Dacca
Kanauj
Balasore
Chicacole
Vizagapatam
Bidar
Puri
Jaisalmer
Srinagar
Panipat
Delhi
Multan
Bhuj
Thatta
Nasarpur
Baroda
Patan
Aurangabad
Thalner
Dharangaon
Burhanpur
Hariharpur
Sonargaon
Malda
Chanderi
Surat
Cambay
Diu
Broach
Daman
Junagarh
Thana
Ikkeri
Goa
Bednur
Rajahmundry
Masulipatam
Nagapattinam
Tranquebar
Nizampatam
Chandragiri
Madras
Golkonda
Gulbarga
Hyderabad
Gingee
Pulicat
Hampi
Tanjore
Seringapatam
Madurai
Tuticorin
Jaffna
Trincomalee
Kandy
Mannar
Bombay
Chaul
Janjira
AhmadnagarJunnar
Cochin
Quilon
Colombo
Calicut
Mysore
Mangalore
Kandahar
Brahmaputra
Ganges
Goda
vari
Mahanadi
Narmada
Krishna
I
ndus
I N D I A N O C E A N
ARABIAN
SEA
H
I
M
A
L
A Y A S
WESTER
N
G
H
ATS
EASTER
N
GHATS
T H A R
D E S E RT
KATHIAWAR
CUTCH
MEWAR
D E C C A N
AHMADNAGAR
CEYLON
(SRI LANKA)
A J M E R
M A R W A R
P U N J A B
D E L H I
A W A D H
B E N G A L
A G R A
B E R A R
KANDAHAR
S
I
N
D
K
A
B
U
L
A S S A M
GO
N
D
W
A
N
A
GOLKONDA
O
RISSA
M
A L W
A
KHANDESH
GUJARAT
BIJAPURMYSORE
KASHMIR
S
I
K
H
S
Zamorins
Savulus
Udaiyars
Nayakas
M
arathas
R a t h o r s Jats
Sisodiyas
Bundelas
Nizam
Shahis
Q u t b
S h a h i s
A d i l
S h a h i s
M U G H
A
L
S
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
trade routes
leathers
centres of miniature painting
centres of terracotta arts
palace
garden
Sikh gurudwara
Hindu temple
mosque
tomb
centres of textiles:
sericulture
silk stuffs
major silk mart
brocade
chintz
calico
muslin
cotton cloth
long cloth
carpets
shawls
felts
baftas
Materials, Techniques
and Evidence
Mughal Empire, 1605
minor dynasty
region
ruby
jade
diamonds
sapphires
agate
gold
marble
pearls
conch shells
1
M
A
MALWA
Sikhs
S
1. Amber
2. Ajmer
3. Agra
4. Jaipur
5. Mathura
6. Orccha
7. Jodhpur
8. Lucknow
9. Bundi
10. Nagaur
11. Fatehpur Sikri
12. Kishengarh
13. Amritsar
14. Datia
15. Murshidabad
16. Sikandra
17. Lati Koili
18. Sambhal
19. Sasaram
ports with European
mercantile interests:
British
Dutch
French
Portuguese
Danish
S
1 THE EXPANSION OF THE MUGHAL STATE from the end
of the sixteenth century was facilitated by
centralizing economic and political reforms put in
place by Emperor Akbar to maximize state
revenue and curb rebellions. Persian sources of the
period, combined with early European trade
records make it possible to reconstruct numerous
zones of agricultural and mineral production as
well as centres of exchange and industry. During
Mughal times India was more integrated into the
world economy than ever before, in part through
the presence, from as early as the sixteenth
century, of Portugese, Dutch, British and French
trading interests at different ports throughout
the subcontinent.
A JALI, OR PERFORATED STONE SCREEN, at Humayan’s
tomb in Delhi. Constructed under the direction
of Emperor Akbar to commemorate his father,
this monument marked a departure from
Sultanate period architecture. Its massive
dimensions, bulbous dome, supporting platform
and surrounding quadrisected garden
(charbagh), make it a one of the defining
monuments of the classic Mughal style.
CHINA AND TIBET 1500–1650
201
SCHOLARS IN A GARDEN and its
accompanying text are the
painter Ding Yunpeng’s
(1547–c.1621) designs for the
front and back of an ink-cake.
They were published by the ink
producer Cheng Dayue
(1541–c.1616) in a 1606
catalogue of such designs,
Master Cheng’s Ink Garden. The
images in such catalogues
evoke the literati ideals of the
famous men who created and
signed them, presumably to
attract status-conscious
buyers of ink.
Tiger Hill
Cold
Mountain
Temple
West Garden
Lingering
Garden
North
Temple
Pagoda
Lion Grove
East
Garden
Coupling
Garden
Garden of Harmony
Twin
Pagodas
Ruigang Pagoda
Prefectural school
Wu County
offices
Local government
inspection office (Ming)
Garden of the Master
of the Nets and Fishing
Blue Wave
Pavilion
Changzhou
county offices
Prefectural
offices Department of
prefectural
defence (Ming)
Humble
Administrator’s
Garden
Fengqiao Lu
GuangjiLu
Pingqi Lu
Outermoat
Outermoat
Dongbei Jie
Dong Baita
Baita
Donglu
Xilu
Zhongshi
Jingde
Lu
Daoqian Shiquan Jie
Shizi Jie
Jie
Guanqian Jie
N
2 Modern Remains of the Gardens of Suzhou, 1500-1650
gardens
pagoda/temple/pavilion
non-Buddhist temple/government offices
canal
old city walls
0
0
0.5 miles
1 km
2 AFFLUENT CHINESE of the late
Ming were avid consumers of
luxury goods, curiosities and art
objects. Among the most
extravagant possessions of the
period were large gardens,
consisting of buildings,
landscaping and rare plants and
rocks. Suzhou was famous for
the number and magnificence
of its gardens, the most famous
extant examples of which are
marked here. Suzhou gardens
artfully re-created nature in all
of its asymmetrical and
seemingly random beauty, and
were favoured gathering places
of literary salons and venues for
private theatrical performances.
manufacture of luxury goods such as
chopsticks.
Furniture-making reached an apex in the
late Ming. Utilization of mortise-and-tenon
joinery on hardwoods, many of which were
imported from Southeast Asia, produced
architectonically engineered pieces of extreme
simplicity and great value. Such furniture was
complemented by advances in textile
manufacture; complex and intricate brocades
and embroidery were made in great volume.
Such textiles were used, for example, for chair
covers and cushions, as well as for wall
hangings and robes.
Lacquer was another indigenous material
prized during the late Ming. Small lacquer
objects circulated easily among the urban
elites, but large, expensive pieces of lacquer
furniture were considered particularly
ostentatious – sets of lacquer furniture were
commissioned for imperial palaces, and were
regarded as decadent outside that context.
Major urban centres were homes to celebrated
artists and artisans of national reputation; they
were also important sites of artistic production
for more local consumption and reputation.
CONNOISSEURS AND THEORISTS
The late Ming was also a period in which
antiques collecting flourished. Collecting
enabled men of means to engage with the past
through its material culture, and to assert their
cultivation. As social mobility was broadly
possible through the accumulation of wealth,
or through success in the civil service
examinations, the need to assert cultural
sophistication was pressing. In addition to its
ancient associations as a metaphor for the
ability to make political decisions,
connoisseurship legitimized the semi-public
assertion of one’s cultural sophistication.
Together with poetry writing and painting, it
became a component of literary gatherings.
Connoisseurship manuals, for example, Wen
Zhengheng’s (1585–1625) Superfluous Things,
became an important genre at this time.
Interest in connoisseurship paralleled the
expansion of theoretical writing about painting.
Extrapolating from Buddhist history and
literary theory of the early Ming period, the
painter Dong Qichang (1555–1636) described
lineages of past painters in order to establish
‘orthodox’ models for current practitioners.
Dong, whose work as an amateur painter
complemented a successful political
career, rejected the work of artisan
painters in favour of those of his literati
predecessors. Although Dong’s historical
knowledge of painting made him famous
as a connoisseur, extant paintings
appraised by Dong indicate that political
expedience, rather than authenticity, was
a frequent factor in his attribution.
Increases in women’s literacy are perhaps
responsible for the larger number of
recorded female artists, who included
professional artisans, courtesans and gentry
women. During the late Ming, traditional
disciplinary boundaries between the visual arts
eroded: while Dong, for example, stressed the
interrelationship of painting and calligraphy,
elite literary culture found expression in all
media of the visual arts, and many forms of
popular visual phenomena were manifest in
literati texts and images.
The Tibetan Renaissance of
c.1300–1500 fostered considerable artistic
heterogeneity. Under the rule of the
Gelugpa sect and the auspices of the
Dalai Lama, there was a political
consolidation of an unprecedented
territory from the western border of
modern Ladakh to the eastern borders
of modern Sichuan and Yunnan. This
political unification thus encouraged
consolidation of Tibetan artistic
production, especially in painting and
sculpture. Tibetan art history was born in
the writings of Pemo Karpa (1527–92), a
Karma Kagyu religious master and painter
who distinguished Tibetan religious art in
historical and regional terms, and continued in
the writings of Taranatha (1575–1635).
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
200
THE PERIOD 1500–1650 in China was
characterized by a rich visual field that
included the rise of a society of spectacle, in
which life was as much watched as lived. The
emergence of a media culture allowed printing
technology to translate spectacle into widely
disseminated images. The stability of native
rule permitted the demographic expansion of
urban centres: by the late Ming, the population
of Beijing may have been as high as 1.15
million people; the population of Suzhou was
approximately 500,000 during the sixteenth
century. Other urban centres were
commensurately large. Well-developed urban
economies were concomitant with such large
populations; in fact, the economies of Beijing
and Suzhou were integrated to some degree
through their proximity to the Grand Canal.
Stability and prosperity during this period
began to decline through regionalist and
eunuch political factionalism at the Ming court,
which became especially pronounced
at the turn of the seventeenth century. The
imperial ambitions of the Manchus, whose
incursions across the Chinese border became
more frequent and sustained, resulted in the
Manchu conquest of China, leading to the
establishment of the Qing (‘Pure’) Dynasty in
1644. Remnants of the Ming Dynasty remained
intact in southern China until 1662, when the
eradication of all claimants to the Ming throne
completed the Manchu conquest.
ARTS IN THE LATE MING PERIOD
The late Ming was a period in which the arts
flourished. The boundaries between the
decorative and fine arts were eroded as the
pictorial quality of decorative arts came close
to that of painting itself. Production of blueand-white
porcelain at Jingdezhen reached new
heights, both through indigenous
development, and through contact with foreign
traders who circulated Chinese porcelain
CHINA AND TIBET 1500-1650
90˚
100˚ 110˚ 120˚ 130˚ 140˚ 40˚
30˚
20˚
10˚
Ag
Beijing
Chengdu
Lijiang
Litang
Chamdo
Kumbum
Lhasa
Tsurpu
Sakya
Shigatse
Alchi
Khotan
Tabo Toling
Tsaparang
Samye
Gyantse
FuzhouJianyang
Dehua
Xuancheng
Guangzhou
(Canton)
Manila
Longquan
Jizhou
Qishicun
Shantou
Xiuning
Changsha
Guilin
Guiyang
Kunming
Shexian
Jingdezhen
Ningbo
Jiaxing
Hangzhou
Nanjing
Zhongdu Wuxi
Jinan
Taiyuan
Kaifeng
Wuchang
Nanchang
Fengyuan
(Xi‘an)
Suzhou
Songjiang
Yixing
Putian
Yalu
Yellow
Rive
r
Yangtze
Xi Jiang
Lop Nor
S E A O F
J A PA N
Y E L L O W
S E A
E A S T
C H I NA
S E A
S O U T H C H I NA
S E A
G O B
I
TAKLA MAKAN
DESERT
T I B E TA N P L A T E A U
H
I
M
A
L A Y A S
A
LTA I M T S
Q I L I A N S H A N
T I E N S H A N
TAIWAN
HAINAN
FUJIAN
HUGUANG
GUANGDONG
GUANGXIYUNNAN
GUIZHOU
SICHUANWUSI ZANG,
TUOGAN REGIONAL COMMANDS
SHAANXI
HENAN
SHANXI
NANJING
JINGSHI
KHANATE
OF CHAHAR
KHANATE OF
ORDOS TUMET
JURCHEN
TERRITORY
KHANATE OF
ORDOS TUMET
HAMI AND OTHER KINGDOMS
JIANGXI
ZHEJIANG
S
H
A
N
DONG
I N D I A
M O N G O L I A
C H I N AT I B E T
K
O
R
E
A
JAPAN
P
H
IL
IP
P
I N
E
S
(Martaban wares) to China from the
New World via Manila
from Mongolia,
Manchuria, Siberia:
Mongolian oak,
Korean oak
Willow
Wall
Great
Wall
from Korea:
Korean oak
from Taiwan: camphor
from Hainan Island: Chinese rosewood,
‘chicken-wing’ wood; Mount Hongmao
nanmu, camphor
English and
Portuguese
Spanish
Dutch
from Vietnam:
non-indigenous
varieties of cypress
(Swatow
wares)
1 Visual Production, 1500-1650
China’s borders, 1500-1650
provincial boundary
provincial capitals
imperial capitals
painting centre
kiln site of empire-wide reputation
important printing centre
important silk-production site
important gardens
Tibetan art centre
jade
silver
external sources of
exotic hardwood
foreign contact
Ag
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 NATIVE RULE UNDER THE MING DYNASTY created the
climate of political and economic stability that
fostered an era of cultural florescence, despite
China’s self-imposed isolation from maritime and
overland communication. The large urban centres
of southeastern China were vibrant sites of artistic
production and commerce, producing new
developments in painting, printing, ceramics and
textiles and the creation of optical devices. This
multidimensional visual culture was enriched by the
engagements between the various media in play in
the visual field.
throughout maritime Asia, and to Europe,
where it was highly valued. Chinese porcelain,
especially that from Jingdezhen, revolutionized
both the European taste for ceramics as well as
their production processes. The Medici were
among the first to try to replicate Chinese
porcelain in Europe, and were subsequently
joined by the Dutch and others. Silver, brought
to China from New Spain via Manila, was used
for currency, and increasingly for the
THE AESTHETIC VISION of the later Ming
was one informed by simplicity and
restraint on the one hand, and by
conspicuous consumption on the other.
These ideals produced objects such as
this huanghuali (Chinese rosewood)
painting table. Its simple lines and
mortise-and-tenon joinery bespeak
restraint, while the material,
huanghuali, was one of the most
valuable woods of the time. Such
tables were used by scholar-officials
for painting works often exchanged
with friends or traded for favours.
CHINA AND TIBET 1650–1800
203
‘BUDDHAS OF THE THREE GENERATIONS’ is a silk tapestry
manufactured in 1744 on behalf of the Qianlong
emperor. Created in the style of the famous
Buddhist painter Lu Lengjia (active c.730–60), the
work depicts, left to right: Kashyapa, a Buddha of
the past; Shakyamuni, Buddha of the present; and,
Maitreya, Buddha of the future, and thus suggests
the unbroken continuity of Buddhism.
A nearly identical work was presented to the Dalai
Lama by Qianlong.
Inner City
Outer City
Inset
Temple of Earth
Yellow Temple
Temple of
the Moon Temple of
the Sun
Temple of
Heaven
Temple of
Agriculture
Imperial Palace
(Forbidden City)
Wenming He
N
0
0
2 miles
2 kms
Beijing, the Forbidden
City, 1650-1800
boundary of city, c.1267-71
inner city
outer city
quarters of the city
2
1
2
3
4
5
9
10
18
11
13
12
17
16
14
15
6
7
8
Inset Major buildings or monuments
1 - Da Ming (Qing) Gate
2 - Five Marble Bridges
3 - Chengtian (Tian’an) Gate
4 - Duan Gate
5 - Wu Gate
6 - Ancestral Temple
7 - Twin Altars of Soil and Grain
8 - Five Marble Bridges
9 - Taihe (Great Harmony) Gate
10 - Three Great Halls
11 - Three Back Halls
12 - Imperial Garden
13 - Six Eastern Palaces
14 - Six Western Palaces
15 - Yangxin Palace Complex
16 - Ningshou Palace Complex
17 - Shenwu Gate
18 - Jing Shan (Prospect Hill)
N 0 300 m
2 THE CITY OF BEIJING and its enclosed Forbidden City,
or Imperial Palace Complex, remained the centre of
government administration under Qing Dynasty
rule. The plan of Ming Dynasty Beijing was said to
be based on the body of an eight-armed boy,
Nezha, who had killed the son of the dragon king.
Independently, during the Qing dynasty the Inner
City was divided into designated quarters for the
Eight Banners, the hereditary military class
established under Manchu rule.
The Outer City housed the ethnic Chinese
strata of society.
in painting on porcelain, and is presumed to be
the result of Dutch transmission of a technique
already known in Vienna by 1725.
Simultaneously, the Qing also developed
highly vitreous enamelled monochrome wares
for palace use.
Pictorial culture in China under Manchu
rule developed in a number of directions.
Firstly, the Orthodox tradition of Dong Qichang
(1555–1636) was developed by practitioners in
the southeast who retreated from the reality of
Manchu rule into an art-historical past. These
men, including Wang Shimin (1592–1680),
Wang Jian (1598–1677), Wang Hui (1632–1717),
and Wang Yuanqi (1642–1715) copied
canonical works and creatively reworked the
ideas of the canonical masters established by
Dong. They perpetuated art-historical ideas in
painted form as well as in their writings.
Individualist painters, such as Shitao
(1642–1707) and Bada Shanren (1626–1705),
sought to address the question of Manchu
rule through their exploration of self and
subjectivity, creating works steeped in
personal visual perception and psychological
introspection.
At the Manchu court, patronage of painting
reflected a willingness to experiment with
divergent representational sensibilities. The
Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766), also
known by the Chinese name of Lang Shining,
introduced Western single-point perspective to
the court, as well as colouristic techniques and
chiaroscuro. However, Castiglione worked in
traditional Chinese materials, and frequently
painted traditional Chinese subjects, producing
a remarkable hybrid European-Chinese
painting style perpetuated by other Qing court
painters.
THE DISSEMINATION OF MANCHU ART
As in previous dynasties, fine and decorative
arts of local and regional reputation were
produced throughout the Qing empire in urban
centres such as provinicial and prefectural
seats. Unlike works of national reputation, few
such works survive. The development of
Chinese decorative arts during the Qing
Dynasty was also affected by past traditions,
Manchu culture and European influence.
The export of Chinese decorative arts,
together with Chinese philosophy, created the
craze for chinoiserie in Europe and her colonies
during the eighteenth century. Although the
Qing court was a patron of ornate lacquered
furniture, Qing hardwood furniture maintained
the clean, classical lines of the best Ming
pieces. The export of Ming-style furniture to
Europe is thought to have resulted in the
Queen Anne style, and in a heightened
understanding of joinery, especially the use of
mortise and tenons. Ceramics produced
outside Jingdezhen, for example the teapots of
Yixing, explored three-dimensional natural and
geometric forms. These pots, as well as
Jingdezhen wares, influenced the rise of
porcelain manufacture in Europe, for example
the 1710 establishment of the Meissen factory
under the patronage of Augustus the Strong
(1670–1733). Chinese ceramics also influenced
the forms of English and American silver of the
late seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries. Traditionally, Chinese pasted plain
paper to their walls; European knowledge of
this custom and access to inexpensive Chinese
artisanal painting led to the development of
hand-painted wallpaper for export to Europe.
As a result of civil unrest, Manchu troops
were garrisoned in eastern Tibet, which
subsequently became a Manchu protectorate
under local Tibetan rule in 1725. Manchu
control of the area was further consolidated by
the installation of two Manchu imperial
representatives in Lhasa from 1728 through to
the end of the dynasty. The Qianlong emperor
(r.1735–96) was a significant patron of Tibetan
Buddhist teachers and Buddhist art; his
patronage produced a hybrid Sino-Tibetan
Buddhist art. Under Manchu rule, Eastern Tibet
flourished, especially the city of Derge, whose
princes supported Buddhist art and literature.
Not only did painting flourish, for example as
practised by Tshultrim Rinchen (1698–1774),
but the existence of a large printing industry
facilitated the empire-wide distribution of
Derge images and texts, including Tshultrim
Rinchen’s work and a
1744 edition of the Buddhist canon.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
202
THE MANCHU CONQUEST of China was
consolidated in 1644 with the proclamation
of the Qing (literally ‘pure’) dynasty. Under
Ming rule, the capital of the empire had shifted
north to Beijing despite the cultural primacy of
south-eastern China. As nomadic people from
northern Asia, the Manchu occupation and
renovation of Beijing as a capital allowed
China’s new rulers to assimilate to pre-existing
paradigms of imperial mandate and to place
themselves in proximity to their ancestral lands
to the north of China proper. The Qing
imperium made its mark on the capital city by
dividing it into an inner and outer city,
inhabited by hereditary military families,
Manchu and Chinese, and ethnic Chinese,
respectively. The population may have reached
800,000 people.
DECORATIVE ARTS UNDER THE MANCHU
The Manchus were arbiters of popular custom,
for example, requiring men under their power
to wear the ‘queue’ – shaving the front of their
head and wearing a long braid down the back.
As patrons of the arts they promoted
indigenous Chinese traditions, supported
Western arts and artistic technology
transmitted to China, and developed their own
Manchu tastes. The imperial kiln at Jingdezhen
continued to operate during the Qing Dynasty
under the auspices of Chinese administrators,
for example, Tang Ying (1728–56). In addition
to production of blue-and-white wares, the
Manchus increasingly used overglaze enamel
to achieve new decorative effects. These
included the development, circa 1723–35, of
CHINA AND TIBET 1650-1800
150˚140˚130˚120˚110˚100˚
50˚
40˚
30˚
20˚
Ag
Beijing
Kumbum
Derge
Litang
ChengduBatang
Kunming
Guilin
Lhasa
Gyantse
(Gyangzê)
Tashi Lhunpo
(Zhaxilhünbo)
Shigatse
(Xigazê)
Sakya (Sa’gya)
Mt Kailas
Toling
Khotan
Wuxi
Suzhou
Shenyang
Lanzhou
Jilin
Tsitsihar
Jinan
Nanjing
Kaifeng YangzhouXi’an
Taiyuan
Yixing
Xuancheng
Wuxing
Wuchang
Xiuning
Anqing
Jingdezhen
Nanchang
Changsha Longquan
Shexian
Changshu
Fuzhou
Taiwan
Kunshan
Jiading
Shanghai
Songjiang
Jiashan
Jiaxing
Hangzhou
Dehua
Guangzhou
Ganges
Yalu
Yellow River
Yangtze
Xi Jiang
Lop Nor
S E A O F
J A PA N
YELLOW
SEA
EAST CHINA
SEA
SOUTH
CHINA
SEA
G O B
I
TA K L A
M A K A
N
D E S E RT
A
LTA I M T S
Q I L I A N
S H
A
N
T I E N S H A N
Z H I K A N G
SHENGJING
JILIN
HEILONGJIAN
JIANGSU
ANHUI
SHANXI
I N N E R M O N G O L I A
SHANDONG
HENANSHAANXI
G A N S U
ZHEJIANG
JIANGXI
HUBEI
HUNAN
S I C H U A N
Q I N G H A I
FUJIAN
GUANGDONG
Y U N N A N
G U A N G X I
TAIWAN
HAINAN
G U I Z H O U
X I N J I A N G
KO
REA
I N D I A
C H I N A
BURMA
TIBET
M O N G O L I A
JAPAN
from New World
via Philippines
Ming Great
Wall
from Mongolia,
Manchuria, Siberia:
Mongolian oak,
Korean oak
1717
1696
1720
1720
from Korea:
Korean oak
from Taiwan: camphor
from Hainan Island: Chinese rosewood,
‘chicken-wing’ wood; Mount Hongmao
nanmu, camphor
from Vietnam:
non-indigenous
varieties of cypress
English and
Portuguese
Spanish
Dutch
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 Visual Production, 1650-1800
China’s borders
provincial boundaries
provincial capitals
imperial capital
painting centre
kiln site of empire-wide reputation
gardens of empire-wide reputation
textile centre
printing centre
Tibetan art centre
jade
silver
external sources of exotic hardwood
Dzungar campaigns, with dates
foreign contact
Ag
1 THE MANCHU CONQUEST of China re-established
stable but non-indigenous rule after the political
infighting of the late Ming. As nomadic people,
with ties to North and Central Asia, the Manchus
had different customs from the Chinese. However,
their policies maintained the economic stability of
the empire, and encouraged greater contact with
North and Central Asia, especially Tibet.
so-called famille rose decoration, which used
colloidal gold to create the pinks for which it
was named, and lead-arsenic to create whites
and opaque enamels. This technical
transformation permitted greater verisimilitude
Visit to Master Zhang’s Grotto by Shitao. A scion
of the first Ming emperor, Shitao was raised in a
Buddhist monastery, unaware of his origins. He left
monastic life to paint professionally and to explore
Daoist philosophy. His treatise, Huayu lu,
reinscribed individual creativity in a theoretical
discourse of painting preoccupied with past
models. This copy of Shen Zhou’s (1427–1509) work
of the same name represents the use of subjective
visual experience to reinvent a past model.
JAPAN AND KOREA 1500–1800
205
2 IN THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, Edo became the
headquarters of the Tokugawa shogunate.
Concurrently, Kyoto was rebuilt with new palaces,
gardens and temples, and regained its position as
the primary centre for traditional arts. New castle
towns (Himeji, Kanazawa, Nagoya and Osaka being
the largest), linked by major roadways, also
developed distinctive arts and crafts, usually
funded by their military governors. Thus, regional
styles in ceramics, lacquer ware, fabrics, paper and
even paintings were encouraged.
135˚ 138˚
Nara
Kyoto
Ise
Sakai
Osaka
Kanazawa
Edo
Kamakura
Nikko
Nagoya
Hikone
Wakayama
L. Biwa
Yodo-ga
w
a
Uji-gawa
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
S E A O F
J A P A N
INLAND
SEA
CHIBA
PEN.
IZU
PEN.Todai-ji
Mampuku-ji
Himeji
INSET
Mt Hiei
Mt Koya
AW
AJIIS
S H I K O K U
H O N S H U
Tokaido Road
HokkokuRoad
to Kyoto
centre for collection
of Chinese arts and
tea utensils
goods from China,
Korea, foreign lands,
via Dutch trade ships
major trade
route from
Osaka to
Inland Sea
production centre for
traditional Buddhist arts
Shinto Grand Shrine
- Buddhist arts
workshops
- Chinese-style
Zen temple, 17th c
Kyoto to
northern
provinces
Major
seaport N
0
0
50 miles
75 kms
exported finished goods:
ceramic kiln
ceramics
lacquerware
textiles
paintings
calligraphy
metalwork
tea utensils
Zen temple (production of calligraphy,
paintings; collections of Chinese arts,
tea houses, gardens)
artists’ community
castle
road
2 The Kyoto Area
imported raw materials:
gold
silver
bronze
wood
paper
raw silk
imported finished goods:
altar furnishings
paintings
sculpture
printed materials
calligraphy
Oi-gawa
Katsura-gawa
Kamo-gawa
Uji-gawa
Nanzen-ji
Tofuku-ji
Daitoku-ji
Imperial Palace c.900-1500 Imperial Palace
c.1600-2000
Gion
pleasure
quarters
Shokoku-ji
Takagamine 17th c
large
monastic
complex
Enryaku-ji
Tokaido Rd
Myoshin-ji
INSET
Katsura Rikyu
Nijo Castle c.1600-2000
yuzen dyeing
yuzen dyeing
nishijin weaving
shijo shopping and
studio area
Shugakuin Villa
innovative staging devices for quick set changes
and for dramatic entrances through trap doors
or ramps in the audience area.
VISUAL ARTS
Painting in Japan and Korea continued to follow
Chinese prototypes of ink and colours on silk or
paper, though specific aspects of style and
subject-matter varied such that each country
developed distinctive characteristics. Professional
guilds in Kyoto and Edo dominated official
commissions; Kano artists generally maintained a
modified Zhe School style of boldly brushed
forms, while Tosa and Sumiyoshi painters revived
delicately outlined and thickly coloured shapes.
Most artists worked in a variety of formats, from
large wall panels and folding screens to small
albums, hand-scrolls and fans. Their clients were
mainly military and imperial court officials.
HIMEJI CASTLE, C.1600. In Japan during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries fortified towns were
built with multistoried towers, complex moats, and
elaborate halls (shoin) for entertaining. Some of
these military compounds included naturalistic
gardens designed for strolling, boating and the tea
ceremony. These compounds were probably
inspired by reports from foreign traders and
missionaries about European castles.
In both Korea and Japan during the
eighteenth century, some amateur and
professional artists began to emulate the
literati painting styles of the Chinese Wu School,
who painted for themselves and friends, primarily
as a means of self-expression and philosophical
exchange. Chinese illustrated books on ‘how to
paint’ (such as the Mustard Seed Garden Painting
Manual) were imported and copied.
Wood-block printing became a major
industry in Japan during this period, with
illustrated guidebooks, histories and fictional
works being produced inexpensively in Kyoto,
Edo and Osaka. Initially, black-ink printed
images on paper were hand-coloured, but by
the mid-eighteenth century full-colour printing
was widespread. Kabuki theatres and brothels
in these urban centres also used printed
broadsheets for advertising, and by the end of the
eighteenth century some of Japan’s best artists
were creating designs for the print media.
Publishers like Tsutaya Jusaburo in Edo produced
works by Shunsho, Kitao Masanobu, Kiyonaga,
Sharaku and Utamaro, some of the finest print
designers of the late eighteenth century.
Large-scale sculptures in wood, metal and
lacquered materials tended to follow earlier
conservative prototypes, but small works such as
ivory toggles (netsuke) and desk ornaments in
stone, wood or bamboo were often both inventive
and humorous. Household furnishings, especially
lacquerware and ceramics, became elegantly
refined in shape and decoration. Creamy white
porcelains in Korea were not only favoured at
court but also exported to China and Japan. A
variety of painted ceramics were developed in
Japan – many new shapes and glazes were
developed for tea ceremony utensils. Extensive
SELF-PORTRAIT by Yun Du-so (1668–1715). This
portrait exemplifies the new realism that
characterized Korean painting in the eighteenth
century. A detailed ‘true image’ of a person was
important for Neo-Confucian ancestral ceremonies.
kiln sites were established in northern Kyushu
around Arita, in Honshu at Kyoto and in the
Nagoya region. Metalworking focused on sword
production and military paraphernalia.
Government-sponsored kilns at Punwon-ri,
near Seoul, produced an exquisite and distinctive
white porcelain for use at court and for export to
China. Its undecorated cream-colored surfaces
and austere elegant shapes were thought to
reflect a purity of mind and moral character
appropriate for Neo-Confucian patrons.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
204
MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
In architecture, government buildings and
Buddhist temples were still built using Chinesestyle
wooden post-and-beam construction.
However, modifications were made to these
continental prototypes, especially in residential
structures, where the Koreans developed an
underfloor heating system (ondol) and the
Japanese used thick rice straw matting (tatami) to
provide comfortable living spaces.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries castles (a new architectural form)
were constructed throughout Japan, and small
rustic pavilions set in elaborate gardens were
specially built for the tea ceremony. The
aesthetic of ‘refined rusticity’ combined
expensive materials with farm cottage forms to
create a fantasy environment for the elaborate
rituals of making and drinking tea. Country
retreats, like Katsura Rikyu outside Kyoto,
featured elegantly understated palace buildings
and extensive plantings that made allusions to
classical literature. In some urban centres, large
kabuki theatres were constructed of wood, with
civil wars – was rebuilt and flourished again as a
centre of traditional arts. New urban centres
(Osaka, Edo [Tokyo], Nagoya and Nagasaki)
emerged as places of artistic experimentation,
especially with arts connected to the kabuki
theatres and the pleasure quarters. The newly
enriched merchant class strongly supported the
production of wood-block prints (ukiyoe) and
illustrated books, textiles, ceramics and
lacquerware. While professional painting guilds
still provided traditional works for the imperial
court and for military patrons, artists from the
merchant and scholar classes explored new
styles, often influenced by imported Chinese
and Western prints and paintings.
Korea was invaded twice by Japan during the
1590s, and in the early seventeenth century
Manchus also invaded, further destroying the
economy and dispersing artists. From 1724 to
1800 two successive Korean rulers provided
unity and stability for the kingdom, and the
arts recovered, achieving new prominence and
distinction. In painting attention was given to
depicting ‘true views’ of the country and its
people, rather than imaginary scenes, and a
strong sense of national identity developed
which emphasized how Korea could be different
from China and Japan in the arts. Ancestral shrines
were rebuilt, using architectural forms and layouts
that differed from earlier Chinese-style buildings,
and portrait paintings used in memorial
ceremonies displayed a high degree of realism.
JAPAN AND KOREA 1500-1800
140˚130˚
30˚
40˚
Seoul
Kamakura
Edo
Akita
Sendai
Nikko mortuary shrines of Tokugawa shoguns
IseSakai
Osaka
Nagoya
Kanazawa
Hiroshima
Hakata
Himeji
Nagasaki
Nara
Kyoto
Suwon
Shiga
Arita
Kwangju
(porcelain: 17th-18th c)
Sadang-ri
(celadon: 16th c)
L.Biwa
Yellow
River
Tumen
Yal
u
C h’ongch’on-gang
Naktong
-gang
Posong
-gang
Nam-gang
H
an-gang
S E A O F
J A P A N
S E A O F
O K H O T S K
E A S T
C H I N A S E A
Y E L L O W
S E A
KOREA
BAY
BO HAI
P
A
C
I
F
I
C
O
C
E
A
N
AINU
HUNTER-GATHERER
CULTURE
AINU
HUNTER-GATHERER
CULTURE
European imports
from Russian
traders, 18th c
trade with Mexico
and S America, 17th c
coastal trade
European trade 16th-17th
c; Dutch trade 17th-18th c
direct trade between China
and Japan, 16th-18th c
direct trade
between China
and Korea
Manchus,
17th c
Japanese,
1590s
Mt Fuji
Mt Koya
RY U
K
Y
U
IS
M A N C H U R I A
KOREA
(CHOSON
1392-1910)
Y E Z O
KYUSHU
SHIKOKU
H O N S H U
C H I N A
J A P A N
Tokaido Road
Punwon-ri
(porcelain: 17th-18th c)
N
0
0
200 miles
150 kms
1 Art and Trade, 1500-1800
trade routes
invasions of Korea
kiln sites
ceramics
lacquerware
paper
fabrics
painting
Buddhist arts
sculpture
printed materials
ivory toggles (netsuke)
castle
WHILE THE CHOSON DYNASTY of Korea was
fairly stable during much of the sixteenth
century, Japan was torn apart by constant civil
wars, which devastated Kyoto and dispersed
many artists to provincial towns where they
sought the patronage and protection of regional
military rulers. The 1590s saw the reunification of
Japan, and then the massive destruction of Korea
by Japanese armies. Many Korean artists were
forcibly taken to Japan and kept in isolated
communities where they produced ceramics and
other goods for their captors. This tragic situation
changed the arts in both Japan and Korea;
Korean potters significantly influenced Japanese
ceramics in the following century, while Korea
was struggling to recover its cultural heritage.
RECOVERY AND RENEWAL
When Japan was reunified in the 1590s, Kyoto –
which had been destroyed repeatedly during the
1 ARTISTIC INFLUENCES reached Japan and Korea from
China (and from Europe through China), inspiring
individual artists to experiment with greater
realism, chiaroscuro and one-point perspective
while still using traditional materials and painting
techniques. Some direct exposure to European arts
was available in the sixteenth and early seventeeth
centuries through foreign merchants and
missionaries, and images of Europeans (‘southern
barbarians’) were used in painting, ceramics,
lacquer goods and textiles. But, from the
seventeenth century, Japan and Korea tried to
restrict contact with European culture.
SOUTHEAST ASIA 1500–1800
207
dominant faith, and almost all sculpture was
Buddhist, the most common work being of the
Buddha seated in bhumisparsa mudra – calling
the earth to witness his worthiness to attain
Buddhahood.
Although Buddhism was the principal
religion of the mainland, Confucianism and
Taoism were also practised in Vietnam, while in
the islands and in Malaya, Islam was the
dominant faith. In the major Islamic cities of
the south – where sculpture had once been
very fine – art was now mainly non-figurative,
in accordance with Islamic norms. However,
bronze weaponry and other metalware was
produced in great quantities. During this
period, Christianity became popular amongst
some hill tribe groups in the highland regions.
In the Philippines, Catholicism, introduced
by the Spanish, rapidly replaced Islam and led
to sculpture and painting in which the Virgin
Mary and the saints were depicted. Christianity
spread into eastern Indonesia and New Guinea.
Bali alone retained the ancient Hindu beliefs,
once widespread.
Everywhere, however, animistic beliefs
underlay these world religions. Southeast
Asians had a strong belief in the spirit world, in
spirits that inhabited the trees, water and
mountains, and which influenced human life
for good or ill according to the respect
accorded to them. Some of these spirits – the
earth goddess, for instance – became merged
in some cases with Hindu deities and were also
accepted into the Buddhist pantheon.
Everywhere death rituals were characterized by
90˚
75˚
105˚ 120˚ 135˚
15˚
0˚
15˚
30˚
Cu
Cu
Cu
Faifo
Hanoi
(Thang Long)
Phan Rang
Macassar
Melaka (Malacca)
Banten
Atjeh
Pegu
Ayutthaya
Phnom Penh
Luang Prabang
Macao
Chiengmai
Tenasserim
Vientiane
Masulipatnam
Madura
Hyderabad
Benares Patna
Cambay
Surat
Poona
Calcutta
Ava
Delhi
Hooghly
Negapatam
Pattani
Manila
Cebu
Ternate
Brunei
Bandjarmasin
Ambon
Palembang
Batavia
Indus
Ganges
Irrawaddy
C
hao
Phr
aya
Mekong
Brahmaputra
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
I N D I A N
O C E A N
SOUTH
CHINA SEA
ARABIAN
SEA
T I M O R
S E A
B A Y
O F
B E N G A L
ARAFURA
SEA
CELEBES
SEA
SULU
SEA
GULF OF
THAILAND
ANDAMAN
SEA
BANDA SEA
JAVA SEA
STRAIT
O
F
M
ALACCA
MAKASSAR
STRAIT
BORNEO
JAVA
S I A M
BURMA
S
U
M
A
T
R
A
LUZON
JAPAN
TIMOR
FLORES
HAINAN
FORMOSA
BALI
LOMBOK SUMBA
SUMBAWA
CELEBES
MINDANAO
MOLUCC
A
S
NEGROS
SAMAR
CEBU
CERAMBURU
HALMAHERA
BUTUNG
CHAMPA
DAIVIET
LANCHANG
MALAY
PENINSULA
P
H
ILIPPINES
RYU
K
Y
U
ISLANDS
CAMBODIA
I N D I A
CEYLON
(SRI LANKA)
C H I N A
incense from
benzoin, to
Ayutthaya
to Ayutthaya
to Japan
to China, Japan,
India, the Americas
(via Philippines)
to China, Japan,
India, the Americas
(via Philippines)
to Japan
to China,
India, Japan
to China,
India, Japan
to Indonesia
and Philippines
to Japan
Chinese imports are
transported to India
and beyond
Vietnamese
ceramics
exported to
Arab market
to Americas,
via the Philippines
to Atjeh,
Banten
to Atjeh,
Banten, Pegu
to Melaka, Ayutthaya,
Tenasserim, Atjeh,
Macassar, Banten
to Faifo,
Phan Rang,
Melaka,
Banten, Bali
to Japan, The Ryukyus,
Manila, Cebu, Macassar,
Ternate, Maluku, Ambon
from the Americas
(via Philippines),
to Ayutthaya, Banten,
Banjamarsan,
Faifo, Macao
to Thang Long, Phan Rang,
Mekong Delta, Ayutthaya,
Pattani, Manila
to Atjeh,
Malacca
to Java, Sumatra,
Luzon, S. China to Manila,
Vietnam,
E. Indonesia
to Japan
cloves, nutmeg
to India, China,
Americas (via Philippines)
pepper
cloves,
nutmeg
2 Trading Patterns in Southeast Asia, early 17th Century
export trade
import trade
trade winds
(April-August)
trade winds
(December-March)
trade routes
Commodities:
porcelain
ceramics
silk
cloth
cotton
textiles
gold
silver
copper
iron
metalwork
weaponry
spices
sugar
tea
timber
lacquerwork
fans
tortoiseshell
pearls
deerskins
precious stones
Cu
N
0
0
300 miles
450 kms
2 TRADE WAS VITALLY IMPORTANT
in the region: local merchants
traded with China, India and
the Arab world, as they had
done for centuries. Yet in the
seventeenth century there was
a rapid expansion in global
trade. European trading
companies such as the Dutch
and English East India
companies became involved in
the commerce, competing with
each other for dominance in
the highly lucrative trade to
Europe. Southeast Asia’s central
role depended on its location
and on its spices: pepper and
highly prized cloves and
nutmeg, grown only in the
Moluccas, were exchanged for
Indian cloth and textiles and
Chinese silks.
CROWNED BUDDHA, Ayutthaya, Thailand, sixteenth
century. This magnificent bronze head shows many
characteristics of the classical period of Thai art in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The
strongly arched brows over heavily lidded,
downcast eyes, the strongly defined nose and
incised mouth are typical. The Buddha wears a
crown ornamented in the court style of the period.
celebration and by the burial of cloth, jewellery
and ceramics with the deceased. Wooden
ancestral sculpture and masks played an
important role in ritual life.
CULTURAL INFLUENCES
Countries within the region influenced each
other’s artistic production in complex ways,
partly through trade, and partly due to the
widespread custom of taking captives in great
numbers after battle. Skilled craftsmen were
often transported between countries and
courts in this way. The resulting fresh artistic
input was felt particularly in the fields of
sculpture and architecture but was also evident
in crafts such as ceramics and lacquerware.
Portable items were also carried off as booty
during warfare, further complicating later
identification. The finest works of art were
produced in the major cities. Rulers were the
major benefactors and commissioners of
religious architecture and fine sculpture, and
royal cities with their magnificent courts were
magnets for craftsmen of all types.
Fine textiles were produced in every region.
Textiles were usually woven on simple
backstrap looms and bore designs and motifs
particular to their community. The tie-dye
method was widespread. There was also a
demand for Indian textiles, which formed a
large proportion of trade imports into
Southeast Asia. Silks were produced in some
parts, and batik was popular in Java and the
neighbouring islands.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
206
BY THE BEGINNING of the sixteenth century
the great empires of Angkor and Sukhothai
had fallen into decline, to be overtaken by
Ayutthaya in the central Thai plains.
TRADING NATIONS
During this period trade continued with China,
India and the Arab world. Trading patterns in
Southeast Asia were governed by the trade
winds, which blow in a southerly direction into
the Indian Ocean and South China Sea between
December and March, and in a northerly
direction between April and August. Chinese
and Japanese ships sailed south in January or
February and returned home in June or July, and
the merchants spent the intervening months in
Southeast Asia trading their wares as they
waited for the winds to change. Gujaratis used
the same winds in order to meet the Chinese
ships while they were based in
the region.
The traders formed sizeable communities in
the major trading centres. They would spend
many months living in the region, conducting
trade with each other and with local merchants.
This ethnic diversity, concentrated in coastal
ports and delta cities, affected the religious
and artistic climate of the region, and
intermarriage added to the mingling of ideas.
Ayutthaya, for example, although not a
seafaring nation, was powerful on an
international level, with a cosmopolitan
population and a strong trade network. Malay
and Chinese ships carried the bulk of its
produce. There was a profitable commerce in
export ceramics, particularly to Japan and the
Philippines. Trade also flourished along the
river routes: deerskins, benzoin (for incense),
musk, lacquerware and other items were
brought along overland routes and downriver
in exchange for Indian cottons, Chinese silks
and metalware.
European interests were now also aimed at
the region. There was high demand in Europe
for trade profits, and the lure of the spices
(cloves, nutmeg and mace), grown only in the
Moluccas, was the draw for Western trade
companies such as the East India Company,
which now competed with the traditional
traders. Apart from these highly valued spices,
trade items included pepper, ceramics, textiles,
gems, exotic woods and lacquerware. As
Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, British and French
communities appeared, the demand for items
‘in the European taste’ increased. Textiles,
furniture and silverware were commissioned
purely for the European market.
THE IMPACT OF RELIGION
Southeast Asia was characterized by its diverse
religious beliefs. The Mahayana form of
Buddhism was accepted in Vietnam, producing
images such as the thousand-armed
bodhisattva Kuan Yin, dating from the
seventeenth century. In the other mainland
countries, Theravaddha Buddhism was the
SOUTHEAST ASIA 1500-1800
15˚
15˚
0˚
120˚105˚90˚
Sawankhalok
Lampang
Ba Trang Bac Ninh
My Xuyen
KINGDOM
OF DAI VIET
KINGDOM
OF AYUTTHAYA
Stadthuys, built 1641-60 by Dutch
Royal tombs and palace,
mid-17th century
Manar Mosque, 1685
Mesjid Agung, 1428,
the oldest mosque in Java
Katanga Mosque, 1605
St Paul’s Church, mid-16th century
Fort Santiago, 1599
San Agustin church, 1599
Fort San Pedro, 1565
Basilica Minore
del Santo Niño
Cathedral of St Paul
San Pedro Cathedral, 1511
Portuguese Church, 1696
Wat Xieng Thong, 1560
Cheng Hoon Teng Temple, 1646
Kaunghmudaw
pagoda, 1636
Shit-thaung
pagoda, 1536
Shwe Dagon pagoda,
enlarged early
16th century
Thein Mu pagoda, 1602
Pha That Luong, 1566
Pegu
Ava
Sagaing
Dagon
KyaukseMrauk-U
(Myohaung)
Ayutthaya
Sukhothai Phitsanulok
Chiengmai
Korat
Kamphengphet
Lop Buri
Ligor
(Nakhon Si Thammarat)
Preii Nokor
SamborLovek
Phnom Penh
Luwu
Macassar
Gowa
Atjeh
Vientiane
Luang Prabang
Faifo (Hoi An)
Vijaya (Bin Dinh)
Melaka (Malacca)
Manila
Vigan
Kedah
Johore
Hatien
Padang
Indrapura
Batavia
(Jakarta)
Banten
Jogjakarta
Surakarta
Tjirebon
Bandjarmasin
Demak
Kudus
Cebu
Pagan
Angkor
Plain of Jars
Borobudur
Prambanan
Dieng Plateau
Bada Valley
M
ekong
Do
ng Nai
Red R
iver
Irrawaddy
Salween
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
I N D I A N
O C E A N
S O U T H
C H I N A
S E A
T I M O R
S E A
C E L E B E S
S E A
SULU
SEA
GULF
OF
THAILAND
GULF OF
TONGKING
ANDAMAN
SEA
BANDA
SEA
JAVA SEA
STRAIT
O
F
M
ALACCA
DANGREK
MTNS
CORDILLERA
ANNAMESE
BUKIT
BARISA
N
M
TN
S
B O R N E O
J AVA
S
U
M
A
T
R
A
LUZON
TIMOR
FLORES
BALI
LOMBOK
SUMBASUMBAWA
CELEBES
(SULAWESI)
MINDANAO
MOLUCC
A
S
ARAKAN
PEGU
BRUNEI
HAINAN
NEGROS
SAMAR
CEBU
CERAMBURU
HALMAHERA
BUTUNG
LAMPUNG
PALEMBANG
SHAN
PRINCIPALITIES
CHAMPA
CHANGLAN
CHIENGMAI
C H I N A
MALAY
PENINSULA
V
I
S
A
Y
A
S
CAMBODIA
N
0
0
300 miles
450 kms
1 THE DOMINANT POLITY on
the mainland in the early
sixteenth century was
Ayutthaya in Thailand,
which was to prosper for
400 years. Ayutthaya was
an extremely wealthy
cosmopolitan city-state
because of its
enlightened trading
policies. In the south,
Islam had entered the
islands and Malaya and
was now a major cultural
force, influencing the
artistic output of the
region. Sculpture was no
longer produced here,
but craftsmen became
skilled at creating the
ornate designs and
metalwork associated
with Islamic art.
KAUNGHMUDAW PAGODA, Sagaing, Burma. Modelled
on the Mahaceti Pagoda in Sri Lanka, it is the only
one of its kind in Burma. Reaching a height of 46
metres (151 ft), it was built in 1636 by King
Thalun to mark the return of the court to Ava. It
enshrines a tooth of the Buddha.
The Kingdoms of
Southeast Asia,
mid-17th Century
important towns and cities
ancient religious sites
centre of sculpture
pagoda (stupa)
wat or temple
cathedral / church
mosque
fort
other buildings of interest
kiln site
gold and silver workshop
lacquerware
wood carving
1
THE PACIFIC 1500–1800
209
improve navigational techniques), to find the
Southern Continent and to find the Northwest
Passage. Of course, these goals were not purely
scientific, but had important military and
economic implications as well. Significantly, the
Royal Society, a scientific association, and the
Admiralty sponsored the voyages together. The
separate instructions Cook received from these
organizations reflect their sometimes
conflicting ideas about the voyages – the
Admiralty, for example, ordered Cook to claim
newly discovered land in the name of the king,
while the Royal Society instructed him to
respect the land rights of indigenous peoples.
In pursuit of these scientific goals, the
voyagers sometimes spent weeks, even months,
in various island groups, including New
Zealand, Tahiti, Tonga and Hawaii. They
developed sustained relationships with many
individual Islanders and had an unprecedented
opportunity to observe Pacific cultures. The arts
played a key role in the exchanges between
Islanders and voyagers. Islanders gave the
voyagers gifts of regalia, cloth, tools and other
objects to indicate goodwill and cement
relationships, and they also traded such things
for the new materials and objects brought by
the voyagers. The collections and journals
created on these voyages are today a major
source of knowledge about eighteenth-century
Pacific cultures, complementing Islanders’ own
oral histories and the archaeological record.
‘FATAL’ IMPACT?
The contact experience is sometimes discussed
in terms of the ‘fatal’ impact of Europeans on
Pacific Islanders, but it is essential to separate
the issues of health and government from
cultural practice. The severely negative impact
of Europeans on the Pacific Islanders in terms
of disease, violence and dispossession of land
cannot be overstated. Some of these effects
were experienced immediately in the
eighteenth century, others only fully so in the
nineteenth century.
The idea of fatal impact works rather
differently when the focus turns to culture. If
populations were decimated, the argument
goes, then culture must have been destroyed
as well. This viewpoint implies,
mistakenly, that Pacific cultures
were weak and inferior to
European culture, and that
they had no control over
the degree to which
they assimilated
European practices. For the visual arts, a fresh
examination of the archival and material record
suggests that in the eighteenth century, Pacific
Islanders responded very strongly to certain
materials and images introduced by
Europeans. At the same time, artistic styles,
forms, and usages showed tremendous
continuity. It is important to remember that
innovation is a fundamental part of tradition,
and that Pacific cultures were never timeless
and unchanging.
A good example of this is Tahitian
resistance to trading mourning dresses during
Cook’s first and second voyages. The mourning
dress, a spectacular costume incorporating a
pearl-shell mask and feather cape, was worn to
mark the death of high-ranking titleholders.
Cook voyagers greatly admired them, and
offered desirable items in trade, but Tahitians
refused. Only on Cook’s third visit to Tahiti,
during his Second Voyage, did Tahitians
consent to trade mourning dresses. This was
because the voyagers had inadvertently
brought something more valuable: red feathers
that ornamented artefacts collected in Tonga.
With time, trading and gift-giving patterns
changed. When the ill-fated Bounty arrived in
1788, the powerful titleholder Pomare I
(c.1750–1803) chose to entrust Captain William
Bligh (1754–1817) with a gift of two mourning
dresses for George III.
In fact, the experience of interacting with
such foreign visitors was not entirely new for
many of the Pacific peoples encountered by
Cook and other voyagers – long before the
arrival of Europeans, trade, warfare and
diplomatic alliances took place between
islands and between island groups. In western
Polynesia, for example, Samoa, Tonga and Fiji
maintained active relations. Tongan canoe
builders often went to Fiji to work, and pottery,
bark cloth and mats were traded widely. In
eastern Polynesia, the Tuamotu Islanders
traded pearl shells and bundles of white dog
hair (used to ornament regalia) to Tahiti and
the Society Islands. While the arrival of
European visitors may have been remarkable in
many respects, it was not long before they were
encompassed within long-standing frameworks
of human relations.
GABLE FRONT. The Maori people of New Zealand
already had a remarkable sculptural tradition
before the arrival of Europeans. Imposing
architectural panels depicted gods, ancestors and
mythic creatures, as did smaller figures and objects
in wood and stone. During the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
Maori traded for nails, chisels, axes and
other tools that transformed their
sculptural style. Surface decoration
became increasingly elaborate,
both on large architectural
works and small items like
treasure boxes.
DANCE APRON, TONGA. During his Second Voyage
(1772–5), when Captain James Cook and his crew
visited Tahiti for the second time, they found, to
their surprise, that the dance aprons they had
collected in Tonga were valuable trade items – not
in themselves, but for the red feathers they
incorporated. In Tahiti, red feathers were a
medium for the gods, and ornamented both god
figures and the girdles worn by the highestranking
titleholders.
ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
208
prompted the creation of new images and
styles. At the same time, the arrival of
outsiders sometimes threatened to upset the
local balance of power. Virulent new diseases,
land claims and deadly conflicts between
Europeans and Islanders also formed part of
the contact experience.
THE COOK VOYAGES
The three Pacific voyages of Captain James
Cook (1728–79) between 1769 and 1780 were
the most comprehensive undertaken by any
European nation at that time. Accompanied by
astronomers, naturalists and artists, each
voyage had a scientific goal: to trace the transit
of Venus across the sun (in an attempt to
THE KEY EVENT of this period was the
intensive exploration of the Pacific by
Europeans in the eighteenth century, including
English, French and Spanish voyagers. This
meant that Pacific Islanders and Europeans
came into more sustained contact than ever
before. The Enlightenment scientific spirit of
enquiry also meant that such encounters were
more thoroughly documented and widely
published than previously. The knowledge
gained from these voyages contributed not only
to European geography and natural history, but
also to philosophy – the idea of the Noble
Savage, for example, was widely debated via
accounts of Pacific peoples – and the arts.
For Pacific Islanders, extensive contact with
Europeans also changed their worlds in
profound ways. New trade goods, including
woven cotton cloth, glass beads, nails, chisels
and axes, transformed artistic traditions and
THE PACIFIC 1500-1800
75˚90˚105˚120˚135˚150˚165˚180˚165˚150˚
30˚
15˚
0˚
15˚
5
6
28
7
NEW CALEDONIA
September 5-13, 1774
HAWAII
Third voyage:
January 19-February 2, 1778
January 17-March 14, 1779
MARQUESAS ISLANDS
Second voyage:
April 8-12, 1774
AUSTRALIA
First voyage:April 19-23, 1770
Third voyage: January 24-30, 1777
8VANUATU
July 22-August 20, 1774
7
TAHITI AND THE SOCIETY ISLANDS
First voyage:April 13-August 13, 1769
Second voyage:August 18-September 18, 1773;April 22-June 4, 1774
Third voyage:August 12-December 9, 1777
6
NEW ZEALAND
First voyage: October 3, 1769-March 31, 1770
Second voyage: March 26-June 6, 1773; October 22-November 26, 1773
Third voyage: February 12-25, 1777
1
EASTER ISLAND
Second voyage: March 13-16; 1774
5
AUSTRAL ISLANDS
First voyage:August 14-15, 1769
4
COOK ISLANDS
Third voyage: March 29-April 3, 1777
3
TONGA
Second voyage: October 2-8, 1773; June 26-29, 1774
Third Voyage: May 1-29, 1777; June 10-July 17, 1777
2
C O R A L
S E A
TA S M A N
S E A
P A C I F I C O C E A N
CAROLINE ISLANDS
SOLOMON
ISLANDS
NORFOLK
ISLAND
FIJI
ISLANDS
SAMOA
ELLICE
ISLANDS
(TUVALU)
CHRISTMAS
ISLAND
CHATHAM
ISLANDS
MARIANAS
ISLANDS
MARSHALL
ISLANDS
GILBERT
ISLANDS
PITCAIRN
ISLAND
TAHITI
TONGANEW
CALEDONIA
NEWHEBRIDES(VANUATU)
H AWA I I A N I S L A N D S
M E L A
N
E
S
I
A
M I C R O
N
E
S
I
A
A L E U TA I N
I S L A N D S
TUAMOTU ISLANDS
NEW
GUINEA
JAPAN
From South Atlantic
Jan 1777
To Mauritius
To Kamchatka
To
Alaska
From
Bering Strait
From Antarctica
March 1773
Oct 1773
Nov 1774
Feb 1774 From
Cape Horn
whale’s teeth, fine mats,
ornaments, barkcloth
bark cloth,
sleeping mats,
red feathers
fine
mats
canoes, red feathers,
decorated bark cloth,
mats, baskets,
sandalwood, sails,
pottery
FIJI
TONGA
WESTERN SAMOA
SAMOA
TONGATAPU
VAVA`U
VITI LEVU
VANUA
LEVU
mats, coconuts,
marine resources
obsidian
pottery, pigs,
cultigens
PAPUA
NEW
GUINEA
NEW BRITAIN
SIASSI
ISLANDS
AROP I.
(LONG I.)
TOLOKIWA I.
SAKAR I.
ARAWE IS.
TAMI IS. (CRETIN IS.)
UMBOI (ROOKE I.)
Trade from Yap to East:
cultigens, timber, basalt
Trade from East to Yap:
rape, mats, pearlshells, woven fibre, cloth
MARIANAIS
C A R O L I N E I S
YAP
ULITHI
GUAM
PULUWAT
(ENDERBY I.)
YAPESE
EMPIRE
LAMOTREK
PALAU
N
0
0
1000 miles
1500 kms
1 The Cook Voyage Collections, 1768-1780
Cook’s voyages:
First voyage, 1769-71
Second voyage, 1772-75
Third voyage, 1776-80
Objects collected from the Pacific Islands:
bark cloth
canoe equipment
clothing
figural sculpture
fishing equipment
games
jewellery
household furnishings
mats
musical instruments
regalia
ritual objects
tattoo implements
tools
weapons
Number of objects collected:
5 or fewer objects
6-19 objects
20 or more objects
Indigenous trading networks
1 - The Yapese Empire: Indigenous Trade
2 - The Vitiaz Strait: Indigenous Trade
3 - Fiji-Tonga-Samoa:
Indigenous Trade
Inset 1
Inset 2
Inset 3
1 THE COOK VOYAGE COLLECTIONS show a direct
correlation between the length of time spent at an
island and both the quantity and nature of the
objects collected. With long acquaintance,
voyagers were more likely to acquire valuable and
sacred items in trade or gift exchanges. The
exception was Hawaii, where Cook’s arrival
coincided with rituals for the god Lono –
Hawaiians included Cook in the celebrations, and
bestowed precious gifts on him. Even so, for all
island groups, sacred or valuable objects are less
prevalent in the collections than ordinary items
such as tools and fishhooks.
periods and peoples, including modern Oceania and ancient India.
The Grammar was intended to improve British art by encouraging the
imitation of early and distant cultures that were less advanced, and
soon William Morris and others had extended this preference for the
less sophisticated to Europe’s own local folk and vernacular
traditions. By the end of the century, alongside the traditional
galleries filled with Classical statues and Old Masters, there were
permanent collections of both folk and exotic objects. The products
of East European peasants and Japanese artisans were influencing
art from Vienna to Paris.
IN OTHER REGIONS THIS SITUATION WAS OFTEN REVERSED. Centralized
empires such as the Turkish, and, even more decisively, the Japanese,
abandoned policies of relative isolation and set out to imitate the
industry, science and art of Europe, as did the newly independent
Spanish and Portuguese colonies of Latin America. This, though, was
only part of the story outside Europe. In many places local art foms
took on a new lease of life. New and much more efficient and cheap
steel tools, for example, allowed communities that had previously
had to rely on stone implements to improve their own traditions by
making works that were both larger and more permanent. This was
most strikingly the case with the carved houses of the Maori and the
totem poles of the peoples of the northwest coast of America, but
the same phenomenon was found throughout Africa. New styles
were also developed around new imported artefacts. Mass-produced
glass beads allowed refined beadwork objects to be made by many of
the native populations of both the United States and sub-Saharan
Africa. Even more intriguingly, a wide variety of European objects,
from nails and locks to buttons and mirrors, were used to enhance
the appearance and the magic of many African ritual objects at the
very moment that their power was threatened by Christianity. Hence,
at the same time that much art was being either destroyed by
missionaries or seized as booty – as in the sack of Benin in 1897,
which distributed a great collection of Nigerian bronzes around
Britain, France and Germany – much more was being created in an
invigoration of local traditions.
IN EUROPE ITSELF, one of the main factors revitalizing art was a reaction
against industrialization, often in the name of science and the
pursuit of the natural. Owen Jones saw ‘savage’ cultures as more
natural in a positive sense, while William Morris rejected the
machine in favour of the hand and eventually the imitation of nature
created the organic forms of Art Nouveau. In painting the French
Impressionists tried to capture something of external nature, often
by analogy with a camera, while the Post-Impressionists were
influenced by Chevreul’s theory of colour and Helmholtz’s physiology
of perception. Behind these developments, though, the most
important advance was the progressive improvement in the
understanding of the nervous system and the brain, and it was this
that, before 1900, inspired the first truly professional art historians,
those in the German-speaking world led by the Swiss Heinrich
Wölfflin. With the ability, for the first time, to travel great distances
easily by train, his knowledge surpassed that of his predecessors,
enabling him to imagine a history of art as a worldwide project
founded in a scientific psychology.
BIBLIOTHÈQUE SAINTE-GENEVIÈVE in Paris, 1839-51, by Henri Labrouste showing
the exposed cast-iron frame.
T
HE MAKING, THE USE AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF ART were all
transformed during the nineteenth century under the impact of
industry and science, which for the first time put all parts of the
world in touch with each other. Engines, powered first by steam and
later by electricity and internal combustion, allowed mechanization,
which in turn brought an acceleration of everything from the
production and distribution of goods to travel. Objects, from printed
textiles to lithographic images, from furniture to the parts of
buildings, could be replicated cheaply, making them available to new
markets. People could travel farther, faster and in larger numbers,
whether locally or globally, whether to commute or to emigrate,
whether for leisure or for research.
MACHINES MAY HAVE BEEN DEVELOPED FIRST in Britain and continental
Europe, but they were used increasingly widely and came to affect
lives all over the world. The raw materials required by an industry
might be found in one place and turned into goods in another, while
those goods would then be sold in many more, in a circulation
involving many individuals. All the processes involved became more
effective as the knowledge on which they were based became more
reliable, and that stimulated the improvement of science. Science as
such was a European creation, but worldwide there was a more
limited expansion of less formal knowledge, as people everywhere
had new experiences, either because they were imposed on them,
as by missionaries and colonial administrators, or because they were
the result of chance contacts. In the field of the visual arts,
everyone had access to a wider range of models. In Europe,
museum collections expanded to accommodate the arts of every
continent. Worldwide, all sorts of foreign artefacts were displayed
on streets, in markets and in public buildings. Thus, everyone
had some freedom to choose between their own way of making
and using art and those of others who might live thousands of
miles away.
THE WAY THIS NEW FREEDOM COULD PROVOKE CHANGE is well
demonstrated by one particular response to London’s Great
Exhibition of 1851. The Crystal Palace, a vast glazed hall put together
in a few months out of standard cast-iron components, displayed
goods from many countries to over six million visitors with
surprising results. Many of the British visitors were disturbed to find
that their own products, however clever the process by which they
were made, were surpassed in the quality of both craftsman-ship and
design by those created by people they thought of as their cultural
inferiors. Owen Jones, who had himself based the colours of the
Crystal Palace on Islamic tastes, was a leader in this self-criticism,
and his Grammar of Ornament (1856) published designs from many
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE 1800-1900
2 Education and Institutions
artists travelling to Europe
arts institutions
NORTH AMERICA 1800–1860
213
Numerous artists made careers for themselves
away from the metropolitan centres of
the east. George Caleb Bingham (1811–79)
began a long career as artist and statesman in
St Louis, Missouri, in 1819 and others, like
Charles Deas (1818–67), followed suit. By the
end of the next decade William Sidney Mount
(1807–68) was painting local scenes with local
pigments in Long Island, New York, while in
Gloucester, Massachusetts, Fitz Hugh Lane
(1804–65) would soon establish his national
reputation. Regional centres often supported
artists whose nationality or ethnicity mark the
changing demographics of the continent.
Painting in the outskirts of Quebec City, the
German immigrant Cornelius Krieghoff
(1815–72) established himself as the foremost
Canadian painter. Cincinnati, Ohio, across the
Ohio River from the slave state of Kentucky,
supported the only African American associate
of the Hudson River School: the American- and
Scottish-trained Robert Duncanson (1821–72).
Cincinnati also facilitated the photographic
activities of free blacks, including James Presley
Ball (1825–1904/5) who opened ‘Ball’s Great
Daguerrean Gallery of the West’ there in 1849.
When Ball opened his gallery, North
American photography was only a decade old.
Daguerreotypes had been introduced in New
York by Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872) in
1839, and within a year H. L. Pattinson
(1796–1858) was at Niagara Falls in New York
State and Samuel Bemis (1789–1881) was in
the White Mountains in New Hampshire
pioneering landscape photography. By 1844,
there was enough interest in photography to
convince Mathew Brady (1823–96) to open his
Daguerrean Miniature Museum in New York
City. With the Gold Rush of the late forties,
photographers followed prospectors out west
to document the natural wonders of Yosemite
and outpost cities such as San Francisco.
INDIGENOUS ARTS
A wealth of Native American art was being
discovered as the artist explorers moved west.
Typical of the pioneers, Paul Kane reported his
distaste for most of what he saw as he crossed
PORTRAIT OF BLACK HAWK, Indian
chief, colour lithograph by
George Catlin (1796–1872),
National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution,
Washington DC. Travelling west
from eastern cities in the US and
Canada, artists such as Catlin,
Bodmer and Kane sought to
document the indigenous
cultures of North America.
Catlin’s Indian Gallery, from
which this image of Black Hawk
derives, was a collection of
paintings and artefacts that
toured North America and
Europe, producing a record of
native peoples that continues to
impress viewers with its interest
in the humanity as well as the
individuality of its subjects. Black
Hawk was the leader of the Sauk
and Fox tribes during the Black
Hawk War of 1832, a struggle
against white settlers
encroaching on native lands in
the states of Illinois and
Wisconsin. This image
demonstrates Catlin’s sensitivity
to detail and personality as well
as his interest in circulating his
vision of North America’s First
Peoples.
35˚
70˚75˚
40˚
Washington DC
New York
New Haven (CT)
Hartford
Toronto
Montreal
Philadelphia
Boston
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
A
B
C
D
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 -
2 -
3 -
4 -
5 -
6 -
7 -
8 Arts
Institutions
1800 Library of Congress
1802 American Academy of Fine Arts
1802 Philadelphia Peale Museum
1825 National Academy of Design
1838 Apollo Gallery
1805 Pennsylvania Academy
of Fine Arts
1807 Boston Athenaeum
1826 Open Museum
1832 Trumbull Gallery at Yale
1842 Wadsworth Atheneum
1834 Society of Artists & Amateurs
1841 Upper Canada Art Society
1846 Provincial Agriculture and
Arts Association
1860 Arts Association of Montreal
A B
-
C D
-
Artists Travelling to Europe
to Rome: Vanderlyn 1803, Heade 1837, Duncanson 1853
to Paris: Allston 1803, Vanderlyn 1805,
Eastman Johnson, Inness 1854, La Farge 1856
to London: Allston, Morse 1811, Cole 1829, Cropsey 1857
to Düsseldorf: Eastman Johnson, Whittredge 1849,
Bierstadt 1853, Bingham 1856, Richards 1856
2 EDUCATION AND CULTURE continued to draw North
Americans to Europe. Rome, London, Paris and
Düsseldorf provided artists with advanced training.
As the continent entered the new century,
returning artists joined the cultural elite to foster
the arts. The Library of Congress, founded in 1800,
was the first of many institutions that dotted the
eastern seaboard.
the Canadian south, but still pocketed small
utilitarian items he found artfully crafted.
Indigenous art was encountered on the
Northwest Coast through the Plains and the
Great Lakes region south to the American
Southwest. The variety of native arts, all of
which would become part of western
collections in the second half of the century
and would then be circulated in exhibitions in
the next, included objects as diverse as Ojibwa
scrolls and Tlingit totem poles.
ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE
Significant architectural developments also
followed the westward expansion. Two Englishtrained
architects, Benjamin H. Latrobe (1764–
1820) and John Haviland (1792–1852), led the
way. Latrobe, made Surveyor of Public
Buildings by US President Thomas Jefferson in
1803, laid the groundwork for rebuilding
Washington DC after the British razed the city
in 1814. As Latrobe and his successors were
creating a classical monument to American
democracy in the form of the Capitol building,
Jefferson himself was perfecting his colonial
classicism in his city of knowledge, the
University of Virginia, which he founded at
Charlottesville in 1825. Haviland’s fusion of
knowledge and architecture proved quite
different from Jefferson’s. His Eastern State
Penitentiary in Philadelphia of 1821–5 was built
as a set of radial arms that permitted a
centrally posted guard to watch over inmates.
While Haviland was experimenting with
new techniques of observation and control,
more conventional technologies were being
developed. In the 1820s the mining of granite
at Quincy, Massachusetts, aided by the first
railroad in North America, shaped the
appearance of contemporary municipal
architecture. The most conspicuous
destination for Quincy granite was the Quincy
Market in Boston by Alexander Parris (1780–
1850). Parris used the stone to dress a skeleton
of cast-iron supports, a novelty that soon
became essential to construction. In the midcentury
John A. Roebling (1806–69) created the
great suspension bridges over the
Monongahela River in Pittsburgh and the
Niagara River in New York, prototypes for his
Brooklyn Bridge begun the following decade.
The Greek revival of Latrobe and Jefferson
was adopted in state capitols from Hartford,
Connecticut, to Benecia, California. Plantation
estates built near New Orleans, beginning in
the 1830s, mark the southern migration of
Greek revival architecture. A tour from New
York to Cincinnati of Hiram Powers’s
Neoclassical sculpture Greek Slave (1843)
signalled a similar revivalist taste in sculpture.
The picturesque Neo-Gothic that came of age
in Pugin’s Houses of Parliament, begun in
London in 1836, was also successfully
transplanted to the Americas. Taste for the
medieval is evident in such monuments as
Richard Upjohn’s 1839–46 Trinity Church in
New York City and James Renwick’s
Smithsonian Institution (1847–55) in
Washington DC. From the late 1840s into the
1880s, the great Egyptian obelisk of Robert Mills’s
Washington Monument rose as a testament to
the eclecticism and energy of the century.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
212
BEFORE THE NINETEENTH century was
fifteen years old, the new nation of the
USA had, in the War of 1812, repelled the
British from the East Coast for a second time
and, in the expedition (1803–6) of Meriwether
Lewis and William Clark, blazed trails to the
shores of the Pacific. In Canada, whose
explorers had reached the Pacific in the 1790s,
British-trained topographical engineers were
also surveying and recording the landscape.
Painters and photographers – from John
Vanderlyn (1775–1852) at Niagara Falls in 1801
to Paul Kane (1810–71) in Vancouver in 1848,
Albert Bierstadt in the American West in 1858,
and Frederic Church in Labrador in 1859 – set
forth across the continent capturing visions of
the uncharted terrain and its inhabitants.
PIONEERING ARTS
Regions of the continent attracted artists of
different temperament. Karl Bodmer (1809–93),
George Catlin, and Paul Kane set out west with
an eye toward documenting the native peoples
as much as the landscape. Eastern artists such
as Thomas Cole (1801–48), Asher B. Durand
(1796–1886) and Frederic Church travelled up
the Hudson River from New York City in search
of sublime vistas empty of inhabitants.
NORTH AMERICA 1800-1860
NIAGARA FALLS, 1867, by Frederic
Edwin Church (1826–1900), oil on
canvas. By the 1860s, Niagara
Falls had provided generations of
American artists with the most
dramatic scene of the national
landscape. As Roebling was
spanning the river with
suspension bridges of stone and
steel, Church gave this symbol of
the force of the continent a
palpably physical and
comfortingly visible form.
30˚
40˚
50˚
120˚ 110˚ 100˚ 90˚ 80˚ 70˚ 60˚ 50˚130˚
1
12
15
13
16
17
3
6
8
10
5
7
9
14
2
11
4
Montreal
Fort William
Grand Rapids
Quebec City
St Louis
St Joseph
Independence
Halifax
Gloucester
Albany Boston
New York
Baltimore
Raleigh
Columbus
Pittsburgh
Philadelphia
Charlottesville
New Orleans
St Francisville
White Castle
Benecia
Frankfort
Washington DC
Indianapolis
Troy
Sault Ste Marie
Red River Settlement
Toronto
Buffalo
Fort Union
Fort Nez Percé
Fort Carlton
Fort Edmonton
Fort Colville
Wyoming
Fort McKenzie
Portland
Fort Clatsop
Sacramento
San
Francisco
Pensacola
Nashville
Hartford
Cincinnati
Fort Vancouver
Vancouver
Mississippi
M
issouri
Wisconsin
Ottawa
Ohio
Hudson
StLawr
ence
Saskatchewan
R
ioGrande
Colorado
Sn
ake
Columbia
Arkans
as
Platte
L.Winnipeg
L. Superior
L. Ontario
L. Huro
n
L.Michigan
L. Erie
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
H U D S O N
B A Y
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
G U L F O F
M E X I C O
Adirondack Mts
White Mts
R
O
C
K
Y
M
OUNTAINS
P L A I N S
GREAT
LAKES
N O R T H E R N
P E O P L E S
N E W
F O
U
N
D
LA
N
D
LABRADOR
NOVA SCOTIA
LONG ISLAND
NORTHWEST
COAST
SOUTHWEST
NORTHEASTERN
U N I T E D S TAT E S
O F A M E R I C A
C A N A D A
M E X I C O
Niagara
Falls
Vanderlyn
Bingham
Deas
Mount
Lane
Krieghoff
Krieghoff
Duncanson
1839 Morse exhibits
first Daguerreotype
1825-26 Quincy Market, Parris
1840 Pattinson
Daguerreotypes
1849 Ball’s
Great Daguerrean
Gallery of the West
Yosemite
1859 Weed
stereographs
totem poles,
wood carving,
painting
Winnebago
deerskin garments,
beadwork, shields
Algonquin
painted birchbark,
Ojibwa scrolls,
Huron weavings
Yupik
wood and ivory masks,
Tanaina and Innu
painted and beaded skins,
carvings
Navajo rugs,
pueblo pottery
and baskets
Micmac
quill work
Crawford Notch
1840 Bemis
Daguerreotype
1849
photographers
accompany the
Gold Rush
1844 Brady
opens Daguerrean
Miniature Museum
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 Art and Exploration
topographers’ destination
artistic centre
artistic travels:
Catlin, 1830-66
Bodmer, 1833-34
Kane, 1845-48
Bierstadt, 1859
Hudson River School of Painters
(Cole, Durand, Church)
Oregon Trail
route of the Pony Express
travels of Lewis and Clark
centres of photographic development
indigenous arts
Architecture
1805-20 Catholic Cathedral, Latrobe
1814 burned by British
1815-17 US Capitol, Latrobe, finished
1829 by Bulfinch, Neoclassical
1848-85 Washington Monument, Mills
1847-55 The Smithsonian, Renwick, Neo-Gothic
1822-26 University of Virginia, Jefferson
1821-25 Eastern State Penitentiary, Haviland
1830 Greenwood, Neoclassical
1836 Oak Alley, Neoclassical
1 -
2 -
-
-
-
3 -
4 -
5 -
6 -
7 - 1857 Belle-Grove, Neoclassical
8 - 1845-51 State capitol, Strickland, Neoclassical
9 - 1852-53 State capitol, Houghton, Rider, Neoclassical
10 - 1827-31 State capitol, Town & Davis, Neoclassical
11 - 1831-35 State capitol, Town & Davis, Neoclassical
12 - 1833-42 State capitol, Town & Davis, Neoclassical
13 - 1836-61 State capitol, Cole, Rogers, Neoclassical
14 - 1831-35 State capitol, Shyrock, Neoclassical
15 - 1839-46 Trinity Church, Upjohn, Neo-Gothic
16 - 1846 Suspension Bridge, Roebling
17 - 1855 Suspension Bridge, Roebling
1 ANGLO-AMERICAN ARTISTS found
inspiration in the landscape and
culture of North America as they
spread the reach of European
culture west to the Pacific. The
routes and communities of artistexplorers
are charted against the
activities of indigenous cultures.
Architecture of the period
was marked by the spread
of Neoclassicism, evident in
the capitol buildings from
Washington DC to California or
plantations in Louisiana. The
historicism of the period found
its complement in new modern
markets, prisons and bridges.
Movement of Indigenous
Artefacts
state territories c.1860
indigenous tribal regions
pueblo
ancestral puebloan sites
examples of massacres resulting
in movement of artefacts
museums of indigenous material,
with date of foundation
world fairs acquiring and
displaying indigenous material
movement of artefacts
KOSO
2
215
NORTH AMERICA 1860–1900
80˚85˚90˚95˚100˚
30˚
25˚
35˚
40˚
45˚
105˚110˚115˚
KWAKWAKA‘WAKW
NUU-CHAH-NULTH
KAWAIISU
KOSO
POMO
HUPA
YUROK
KAROK
MAIDU
WASHOE
MONACHE
HEILTSUK NUXALK
YOKUT
TUBATULABAL
MIMBRES
CANYON DE CHELLY
MESA VERDE
ACOMA
TAOS
SANTA CLARAZUNI
HOPI
Seattle
Portland
Salt Lake
City
Denver
Albuquerque
San Antonio
New Orleans
Memphis
Atlanta
Charleston
Jacksonville
St Louis
Chicago
Boston
CambridgeBuffalo
Omaha
New York
Philadelphia
Washington
Kansas
City
San Francisco
Los Angeles
L. Superior
L. Erie
L.Michigan
Great Salt
Lake
Mississippi
RioGrand
e
Colorado
Missouri
Ohio
StLawre
nce
Tennessee
Sn ak
e
L. Ontario
L. Huron
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
G U L F O F M E X I C O
R
O
C
K
Y
M
O
UNTAINS
APPALACH
I
A
N
M
TS
C
A
N
A
D A
M E X I C O
Wounded
Knee 1890
Sand Creek 1864
Brooklyn
Museum
1895
American
Museum
of Natural
History 1869
Peabody Museum of
Archaeology and
Ethnology 1866
Columbian Museum
Field Museum
from 1905
Thomas Burke
Memorial, Washington
State Museum 1885
US National Museum
(Smithsonian
Institution 1858)
1876 The
Centennial
Exposition
1901 The Pan
American
Exposition1893 The World Columbian
International Exposition
1904 St Louis
Universal Exposition
1898 TransMississippi
and
International
Exposition
1908 The Alaska-
Yukon-Pacific
Exposition
basketry
pottery, Kachina dolls
Carl Hagenbeck
organizes a series of tours
to Europe (1876-86)
with Indigenous
people and artefacts;
hires Johan Adrean Jacobsen
to lead them
m
asks, shaman’s items, rattles, Chilkat blankets
masks, totem
poles, house posts, feast dishes, Bent Boxes, rattles, raven rattles
N
0
0
500 miles
700 kms
East Coast aesthetic most eloquently
expressed by Henry James – which perceived
Europe as having everything to offer and the
USA nothing. Whistler, Sargent and many
others joined James in exile in Europe.
NATIVE AMERICAN ART
After Native American artefacts were first
shown in quantity to a mass audience at the
Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876,
major collecting institutions competed to
acquire hundreds of thousands of objects.
From the Northwest came graves, houses,
totem poles, masks, clothing, boxes, spoons,
weapons, canoes – no item too small or too
large. From the pueblos of the Southwest
came staggering volumes of pottery and
kachina dolls (tihus). Thousands of baskets
were collected in California. From the battleand
killing-fields of the Plains came war shirts,
feather bonnets, drawings in ledger books.
Essentially, the entire material culture of
Native America was removed to storerooms
and glass-fronted cabinets in the metropolis.
Boston
Cambridge
Worcester
New York
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Chicago
Washington
Cincinnati
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
USA
UNITED
KINGDOM
FRANCE
GERMANY
NETHERLANDS
ITALY
Stewart Gardner
Johnson
Widener
Museum of Fine Arts 1870
Fogg Art Museum,
Harvard 1895
Philadelphia Museum of Art 1876
Carnegie Institute 1895
Worcester Art
Museum 1895
Art Institute 1879
National Sculpture Society 1893
Cincinnati Art
Museum 1881
Corcoran Gallery
1870
Barbizon School (Altman, Frick)
contemporary paintings (Avery)Vermeer (Metropolitan Museum)
Gutenberg Bible and Mainz Psalter (Morgan)
Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, Simone Martini, Vermeer (Stewart Gardner)
New York
Metropolitan Museum 1870
Brooklyn Museum 1895
Morgan
Altman
Frick
Avery
Rockefeller
Marquand
Vanderbilt
3 European Art in the United States
museums with important collections
of European art, with date of foundation
important private collections of
European art
typical art exports to US
N
0
0
800 miles
1200 kms
3 THE VAST EXPLOSION in wealth and prosperity
following the Civil War led to an unprecedented
acquisition of European art. Bankers and industrialists
laid the foundations of an impressive array of
museums and art galleries. Accompanying the
transfer of European art to North America was
a continued American interest in exploring Europe
and beyond.
160° 150° 140° 130°
60°
65° TLINGIT
HAIDA
YUPIK
YUPIK
TSIMSHIAN
Yukon
Kuskokw
im
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
B E R I N G
S E A
B R I S T O L
S E A
C
A
N
A
D
A
A L A S K A
masks, shaman’s items, dance rattles
artefacts moved east
N
0
0
500 miles
700 kms
2 THE ACQUISITION of Native
American art involved the
movement of both objects and
ideas – the whole aesthetic and
intellectual capital of the Native
American peoples. In scale, it
was immense and unique.
Metropolitan museums
competed for booty – bought,
stolen, given, traded, pillaged.
Epithets such as ‘swept clean’
and ‘dredged’ were commonly
in use even at the time.
THOMAS MORAN: Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
(detail), 1872, oil on canvas. Moran used photographs
as well as his own sketches for the final composition,
which freely interprets the scene in the interests of
drama. His participation in the 1871 expedition was
partly funded by the Northern Pacific Railroad, eager
to publicize Western scenery.
THE PEACE THAT FOLLOWED the Civil War
(1861–5) enabled North America to
concentrate on the creation and disposition of
colossal wealth. New technologies altered the
physical and aesthetic relationships between
human beings and landscape. Photographers
had enlisted the new art of photography to
comprehend the catastrophe of the Civil War.
Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner
published photo albums that transformed the
image of war from one glorifying patriotic battle
to one concerned with recording the sites and
mourning the dead.
As the nation healed, its artists looked
beyond the technology of the camera to the
needs of the growing cities. America’s new art
form was the massive rectilinear structure of
the city – the steel grids of skyscrapers pushing
ever higher, the spreading grid of streets and
the straight-drawn lines of property claims and
of new city layouts. The construction of
skyscrapers was finally perfected in the late
1880s, their form conditioned not only by steelbeam
technology, but by the prior inventions of
the lift (1852), the telephone (1872) and the
light bulb (1879). Technology, cartography and
perspective possessed the land. Photography
documented the untamed and, in so doing,
tamed it.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
214
Older art forms survived and a style of
painting was developed that was vividly
perspectival, evoking and measuring immense
distances. Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone by
Thomas Moran (1837–1926) brought the
dramatic scenery of the West to Washington in
full colour. Bought by Congress, it played a key
role in starting the National Parks programme.
Moran went out West as a guest of a national
scientific and survey expedition led by Dr
Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden, but he used the
Northern Pacific railroad to get there. The
railroad financiers had their eye on the scenery
and on bringing tourists out West to look at
geysers and gorges. In the USA and Canada
artists provided the imagery for the public
perception of the railroads. In 1882 just a year
after construction on the Canadian Pacific
Railway began, Lucius O’Brien instructed
artists to travel from the Gaspé Peninsula to
the Rocky Mountains for Picturesque Canada (ed.
Principal Grant, Queens University, Kingston
Ont.). Upon completion of the railway in 1885,
Sir William Van Horne of Montreal
commissioned artists to travel West and send
back images of the Canadian Rockies for
eastern galleries.
THE ACQUISITION OF EUROPEAN ART
The same economic power that generated all
this invention and industry also created
enormous surpluses of private wealth. To fill
these empty rooms, to flesh out this
unprecedented prosperity, came the biggest
transfer of cultural property in history:
European artworks – Barbizon landscapes, Old
Masters, altarpieces and allegories, marbles,
ANONYMOUS TLINGIT CARVER: mask of a land-otter
man, to be worn by a shaman. Made from wood,
copper, bearskin, hide, nails and pigment, c.1850, it
was collected before 1875 by James G. Swan in
Alaska. The Tlingit considered the land otter a
go-between for shamans attempting to control
potent spirits.
manuscripts, porcelain and genre paintings.
The huge collections of bankers, industrialists
and their heirs laid the foundations of the
great civic, state and national US museums
and art galleries. But America was not just
filling its empty rooms at random. In 1888
Isabella Stewart Gardner, advised by Bernard
Berenson, bought a Madonna by Zurbarán and
during the following years bought works by
Titian and Raphael, medieval panelling and
tapestries, carved cabinets, ancient stonework
and coloured glass, turning her house into an
inward-looking dream of a Venetian palace.
This was the flowering of that North American
Seattle
Vancouver Calgary
Portland
Butte
Bismarck
Winnipeg
Virginia City
Duluth
Cheyenne
Milwaukee
Cleveland
Boston
New York
Hartford (CT)
Philadelphia
Washington DC
Charleston
Appomattox
Fredericksburg
Manassas
Jacksonville
Savannah
Atlanta
Shiloh
Cairo
Memphis
TallahasseeMobile
Richmond
Baltimore
Gettysburg
Birmingham
Jackson
Cincinnati
Vicksburg
St Louis
Sedalia
Kansas City
St Joseph
Omaha
Des Moines
Topeka
Harrisburg
Pittsburgh
Buffalo
Niagara
Falls
Quebec City
Ottowa
Port
Hope
Sault Ste
Marie
Montreal
New Orleans
San
Francisco
Detroit
Chicago
Dodge City
Denver
Reno
Sacramento
Yuma
Tucson
El Paso
Albuquerque
Las Vegas
San Antonio
Laredo
Dallas
Los Angeles
Salt Lake City
Promontory Point
Pueblo
Minneapolis
Spokane
Lake Superior
L. Erie
L.Michigan
L. Ontario
Lake
Huron
Georgian Bay
Lake Nipissing
Lake Nipigon
Lake Winnipeg
Cross Lake
Lake Manitoba
Lake of the Woods
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
PACIFIC
OCEAN
GULF
OF
MEXICO
1883
1878
1873
1864
1859
1865
1865-69
1863-69
1863
1877
1872
railways
meet 1869
Northern Pacific
Southern Pacific
Texas & Pacific
So
uthernPacific
Central Pacific
Union Pacific
Kansas PacificAtlantic &
Pacific
Great Northern
Canadian Pacific Railway (1885)
Atchison,
Topeka &
Santa Fe
Missouri,
Kansas &
Texas
Crater Lake
NP 1902
Mount Rainier
NP 1899
Yellowstone
NP 1872
Mesa Verde
NP 1906
Rocky Mountain
NP 1915
General Grant
NP 1890
Yosemite
NP 1890
Sequoia
NP 1890
Glacier
NP 1910
Grand Canyon
NM c.1915
Lassen
Volcanic
NM c.1915
Petrified
Forest
NM 1915
C A N A D A
M E X I C O
To England:
Moran 1862;
Homer 1881
To France:
Homer 1866;
Eakins 1866-9
(on to Madrid 1870);
Weir 1873;
Tanner 1891
To England: Watson 1886,
To France: Brymner 1878;
Wilson Morrice 1889;
Cullen 1888,1900,
To Europe: Hammond 1885
To Europe:
Bierdstadt (1867-69;
Ryder 1877
To Cuba:
Remington 1898
To Japan:
LaFarge 1886
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
N
Artists following the CPR in the 1880s:
T. Mower Martin, John C. Forbes,
Lucius O’Brien, John Hammond
approximate routes
travelled by artists:
Charles Wimar, 1858
Charles Wimar, 1858-60
Albert Bierstadt, 1859
Albert Bierstadt, 1863
Thomas Moran, 1871
Thomas Moran, 1873
Thomas Moran, 1874
Charles Russell, 1880
Frederic Remington, 1881
Horatio Walker, 1880
Homer Watson, 1876
US artists travelling abroad
Canadian artists travelling abroad
1 Taming the Wilderness
state and provincial boundaries c.1914
railway
date of construction of railway
National Park
National Monument
city with 250,000 - 1 million inhabitants c.1900
city with over 1 million inhabitants c.1900
city with important early skyscrapers
locations represented in the Picturesque Canada volume
Civil War sites, photographically documented
1865
1 AS THE CITIES OF AMERICA GREW, the spectacular
landscapes of the West became better-known.
Scientists and surveyors, railroad speculators,
painters and inventors like George Eastman
(1854–1932), whose Kodak camera was brought out
in 1888, made the landscape a commodity –
bringing home images, stimulating mass travel and
drawing the boundaries of parks and reserves.
NORTH AMERICA 1860-1900
CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN 1800–1900
217
sponsoring institution. It sought to further
the aim of democratic debate and promote
thinking that led to calls for political as well as
intellectual independence. After independence
new academies were established, such as that
at Puebla, with the express purpose of
developing a national intellectual and artistic
life that was freed from the constraints of the
old colonial powers.
NEOCLASSICISM
The Academies were originally based on the
concept that art should be learned by study of
the work of the Old Masters and that true
aesthetics lay in historical precedent. This
Classical tradition was enthusiastically
espoused by some artists, such as Santiago
Rebull (1829–1902), who was directly
influenced by Jacques-Louis David.
Others, although working in a distinctly
European aesthetic tradition, began to turn to
local history for their inspiration. Francisco
Eduardo Tresguerras (1759–1833), an architect,
painter and engraver, attempted to use
Classical style in his work but was nevertheless
clearly influenced by regional Baroque.
Similarly, José María Velasco (1840–1912)
considered himself to be a ‘scientific’ painter
who drew his understanding from many
different academic disciplines, and gained a
rich knowledge of zoology, botany, physics,
mathematics, geometry, geography and
architecture, in addition to Classical aesthetics.
He is best-known as an academic landscape
painter whose work was exhibited in
international fairs in Paris, Philadelphia and
Chicago, yet his inspiration was drawn almost
entirely from the Valley of Mexico and its
surroundings. He was a major influence on
Diego Rivera in the twentieth century. JOSÉ MARÍA VELASCO, Valley of Mexico. José María
Velasco (1840–1912) was the most famous of the
Mexican academic painters and achieved
international recognition. He received many
awards and honours, including Chevalier de la
Légion d’Honneur, Paris, the Franz Joseph Cross,
Austria, and First prize at the Chicago World Fair.
He was Professor of Perspective (1868) and
Professor of Landscape (1875) at the San Carlos
Academy. His subject-matter was nevertheless
Mexican, particularly the volcanoes and landscapes
of the Valley of Mexico.
PRIMITIVISM
The search for historical truth also led to
reaction against the academies and the
development of popular art. Many of these
artists had formal training, and the Primitivist
movement was an attempt to express a sense
of regional pride and local values. One of the
most important artists of this movement was
Hermenegildo Bustos (1832–1907) who, in
addition to painting portraits, also produced
religious murals and sculptures, and made
festival masks for his local parish of Purísima
del Rincón in Guanajuato. Another significant
artist was José María Estrada. Estrada had
trained at the Puebla Academy and became
director of the Academy of Fine Arts in the
state of Jalisco, but throughout his working life
he never left his native state. His own output
consisted entirely of portraits of local people
and of regional history and myths.
The search for a popular art culminated in
the work of José Guadalupe Posada
(1851–1913), who came from a peasant family
in Aguascalientes and died in poverty in
Mexico City. He thought of himself as a
craftsman and a voice for the people.
Throughout his life he produced printed work
in the form of broadsheets with illustrated, and
often satirical, texts that were intended to be
read to a largely illiterate peasant population,
and which became the inspiration for much of
the revolutionary art that would follow in the
twentieth century.
CARIBBEAN ART
The history of Caribbean art is different from
that of Mexico and Central America. Following
European colonization, the indigenous
populations were annihilated at an early date
and replaced by slave labour from Africa. Used
by Spain as a stepping-stone for its conquests
in the sixteenth century, the area had become
politically and culturally divided by the
seventeenth century and Spanish dominance
was challenged by the British, French and
Dutch. Slavery was abolished during the course
of the nineteenth century, and wage workers
from India and China were brought in to the
region.
This political and cultural mix resulted in
unique art forms and styles. These often
incorporated ideas derived from the original
homelands of the new arrivals, such as Vodoun
in Haiti and Santos in Puerto Rico. While
popular sacred art was of significant
importance in the region during the nineteenth
century, much of our knowledge of this derives
from a later period. Expressions of local mixed
customs, especially of Carnival, were produced
by artists such as the Jamaican painter Isaac
Belisario (1795–1849), who made a series of
lithographs which depicted the Christmas
Masquerade.
There were influences from some major
French painters. Paul Gauguin (1848–1903)
visited here in 1887, and Camille Pissarro
(1830–1903) was the son of French merchants
from the island of St Thomas. A French School
was established in Havana, Cuba, in 1817 at
the San Alejandro Academy under the direction
of Jean-Baptiste Vernay (1786–1833), a French
painter and student of David. Francisco Oller
(1833–1917), a Puerto Rican painter, was a
friend of both Pissarro and Cézanne, but
nevertheless failed in his successive attempts
to establish a French academy at San Juan.
As in Mexico and Central America,
Caribbean artists were often actively involved
in the independence wars and the struggles
between liberal and conservative factions.
Armando Menocal (1863–1942) and Eduardo
Morales (1868–1938), for instance, were both
active combatants during Cuba’s wars for
independence and both artists painted scenes
of the conflicts.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
216
IN 1800 THE SEEDS OF NATIONALISM
established during the preceding Baroque
period rested uneasily with the ideals of
academic Classicism being taught by
professors who came to the Americas from
Spain. While much of the argument was
political and questioned the continuing role
of a European-dominated government and
aristocracy, the debate was fuelled and even
encouraged by divisions in the arts between
liberal and conservative practitioners.
In 1810 these conflicts led to armed
struggle between the Nationalists and Spain,
resulting in the declaration of independence by
Mexico in 1821, followed shortly after by
Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa
Rica. Despite its avowed aims, independence
strengthened the Creole (Spanish American)
power base and created further instability:
Mexico, for instance, had 30 different
presidents during its first 50 years of
independence.
THE ROLE OF THE ACADEMY
In attempts to reassert Spanish intellectual
dominance, the Royal Academy of San Carlos,
Mexico City, was founded on 4 November 1785
under the sponsorship of the San Fernando
Academy in Madrid. Its first director, Manuel
Tolsá (1757–1816), and all its professors had
been trained in Madrid. The Royal Academy,
however, immediately broke links with its
CENTRAL AMERICA AND
THE CARIBBEAN 1800-1900
60˚
10˚
20˚
70˚80˚90˚
Po
Pr
Pr
Mexico City
Guadalajara
Aguascalientes
Guanajuato
Zacatecas
San Luis Potosí
Nuevo Laredo
Purísima del Rincón
Celaya
Temascalcingo Santa Ana
Puebla
El Carmen
Santiago
de Cuba
San Juan
Havana
C A R I B B E A N S E A
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
G U L F O F
M E X I C O
GULFOFCALIFORNIA
YUCATÁN
SIERR
A
M
A
D
R E
SIER
RA
M
ADRE DEL SUR
WESTERNSIERRAMADRE
EASTERN
SIERRA
MADRE
BAHAMAS
JAMAICA HAITI
1804
VIRGIN IS
GUADELOUPE
ANTIGUA
ANGUILLA
DOMINICA
MARTINIQUE
ST LUCIA
ST VINCENTNETHERLANDS
ANTILLES
GRENADA
BARBADOS
TRINIDAD
DOMINICAN
REPUBLIC
1844
PUERTO
RICO
CUBA
N O R T H
A M E R I C A
M E X I C O
1821
BRITISH
HONDURAS
GUATEMALA
1838
HONDURAS
1838
NICARAGUA
1838
COSTA RICA
1838
PANAMA
1903
EL SALVADOR
1838
S O U T H
A M E R I C A
Martínez
(1871-1946)
Ruelas (1870-1907)
Posada (1851-1913)
Estrada (1800-60)
Bustos (1832-1907)
Belisario
(1795-1849)
des Roches
(1802-80)
Cazabon (1813-88)
Tresguerras
(1759-1833)
Catherwood (English) in Yucatán 1839-40, 1841-42
Charnay (French) in Yucatán and Mexico 1857-59, 1880
Linati (Italian) in Mexico 1825-26
Egerton (English) in Mexico 1830-31, 1840-42
Rugendas (German) in Mexico 1831-45
Pingret (French) in Mexico 1850-55
Gutiérrez (1848-1903)
Bustos (1832-1907)
Arrieta (1802-74)
N
0
0
300 miles
400 kms
1838
Spanish
African
Amerindian
East Indian
religious groups:
Roman Catholic
Protestant
Anglican
Santera
Voodoo
Hindu
1 Mexico and Central America, 1800-1900
Spanish
British
French
Danish
Dutch
date of independence
Mexican artists of the
Independence period
ethnic groups:
Maya
European
dominant art movements:
Real Academia de
San Carlos (founded 1785)
Neoclassicism
Impressionism
Primitivism
Populism
French School
Academia de Puebla
Caribbean painters
European traveller-artists
I
Pr
Po
MEXICO
Mexico City - Tolsá (1750-1810)
Clavé (1810-80)
Ixtolinque (1774-1834)
Rebull (1829-1902)
Noreña (1843-94)
Izaguirre (1867-1941)
Clausell (1866-1935)
Puebla - Cordero (1822-84), Jara (1867-1939)
Arrieta (1802-74), Clausell (1866-1935)
Bustos (1832-1907), Estrada (1800-60)
Celaya - Tresguerras (1759-1833)
Temascalcingo - Posada (1851-1913)
Velasco (1840-1912)
I
Po
CUBA
de Lanadaluze (1827-89)
Collazo (1850-96)
Morell (1864-89)
Escobar (1762-1834)
Collazo (1850-96)
Menocal (1863-1942)
Morell (1864-89)
Tejada (1867-1943)
Morales (1868-1938)
PUERTO RICO
Oller y Cestero (1833-1917)
Campeche (1751-1809)
Oller y Cestero (1833-1917)
1 THE MOVE TOWARDS POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE led to
divisions and factionalism, and this was reflected in
the diversity of art movements from this period.
The main division was between the Neoclassicism
of scholars based in the Academies and the
populist movements, although there were also
divisions between ethnic groups on the Caribbean
islands. Influences from non-Spanish Europe,
especially France, were apparent in the Caribbean
and, to a lesser extent, on the mainland.
HERMENEGILDO BUSTOS, Still Life with Fruit and Toad.
Unlike many of the ‘primitive’ artists of the
period, Hermenegildo Bustos (1832–1907) was too
poor to afford formal academic training and
supported himself and his family by making and
selling ice-cream. Bustos painted for the people of
his community, making portraits of local
dignitaries, retablos for the church, and festival
masks, and his work was only ‘discovered’ in 1942
by the art historian Walter Pach. The fruits shown
in this painting are those Bustos used to flavour
his ice-creams.
40˚ 30˚50˚60˚70˚80˚90˚100˚
0˚
10˚
20˚
30˚
40˚
50˚
Paraná
Santa Fe
Pôrto Alegre
Rio de Janeiro
São Salvador
(Bahia)
Asunción
Bogotá
Medellín
Maracaibo Caracas
(1877)Cartagena
Belém (Pará)
Recife
(Pernambuco)
Valdivia
Rosario
Punta Arenas
Trujillo
Callao
Arequipa
Iquique
Lima Cuzco
Potosí
La Paz
Santiago
Valparaíso
Quito
(1860)
Montevideo
(1905)
Buenos Aires
(1878)
Córdoba
(1896)
Villavicencio
Meireles de Lima,
Américo,
Almeida Junior,
Bernardelli
Blanes, Pallejá,
Sáez, Viale
García, Ríos
Boneo, Agrelo,
Lastra, Mendilaharzu,
Della Valle, Cafferata,
Sivori, Schiaffino
Plaza, Lira,
Puelma, Arias,
Subercaseaux
Laso,
Montero
Urdaneta,
Garay,
Santa María
Toro, Rojas, Michelena,
Tovar y Tovar
Salas,
Cadena
Amazon
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
C A R I B B E A N
S E A
A
N
D
E
S
Patagonia
FALKLAND IS
(to Britain 1833)
COLOMBIA
VENEZUELA
GUIANA
BR.
FR.
ECUADOR
BOLIVIA
B R A Z I L
ARGENTINA
URUGUAY
PARAGUAY
CHILE
PERU
DUTCH
N
0
0
750 miles
1000 kms
Art, National Image and
Modernization, 1850-1900
borders, c.1900
areas of international conflict
migratory currents from Europe
artists’ travels to European centres
academies/schools of fine art
areas of interest and activity of
painter Juan Manuel Blanes
2
SOUTH AMERICA 1800–1900
219
More regions became integrated in modern
economic systems – cattle-raising, agriculture,
mining and so on, producing raw materials and
food for the international market. At the same
time, hundreds of thousands of impoverished
European immigrants arrived in South
America. In large cities like Buenos Aires urban
life was so dramatically transformed by
immigration that it seemed to threaten the
budding sense of national identity.
Young painters and sculptors began to be
sent by their national governments to
European academies and ateliers in order to
study there and return as ‘national artists’.
Museums, academies of fine arts and schools
of arts and crafts were opened in the main
together with the popularization of portraits of
heroes of independence, like the Libertadores
Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín, whose
campaigns acquired a continental dimension.
Painters such as the Peruvian mulatto José Gil
de Castro (1785–c.1841) accompanied the
revolutionary campaigns, and with the images
they created they took an active part in the
process of emancipation.
THE SOUTH AMERICAN LANDSCAPE
The end of the colonial era signified that
other imperial interests could explore, map
and evaluate the commercial and economic
potential of South America. The growing
attention of modern European industrialized
countries (England, Germany, France) on South
America was manifested in the European
expeditions to the continent,
which brought together a confluence of artistic,
scientific, geographic, economic and political
aims. Among the most significant expeditions
were those of Alexander von Humboldt
between 1799 and 1803 and
Charles Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle (1831–6).
During the first half of the nineteenth century,
several different European cultural traditions
became established in Latin America: the
Neoclassical rhetoric of revolutionary France;
the Romantic approach to Nature; and the
topographical and naturalistic interest in the
detailed description of geography, fauna
and vegetation.
Large areas of the continent, such as the
extensive forests and deserts, continued to be
almost inaccessible for Europeans. Areas such
as Patagonia, Amazonia and Chaco were
already occupied by native peoples who were
resistant to colonization and European
occupation. They continued with their
traditional production of artefacts, which they
sometimes traded with Europeans in order to
survive in hostile new locations.
European artists such as Johann Moritz
Rugendas (who travelled in South America
between 1822 and 1846) produced the first
modern landscapes, which imposed their
European conventions and representational
schemes on South American nature. They looked
for the picturesque and the sublime in South
American rainforests, volcanoes, mountains and
valleys, and also in the different regional
lifestyles and costumes of the inhabitants. Most
of these images were transformed into
engravings and widely published in England,
France, Germany, and so on. These albums of
‘picturesque views’ also circulated in South
America. From about 1850, photographic albums
superseded artistic engravings. The construction
of a landscape (giving shape to the relationship
between human societies and nature) was not
easy in regions too far from the European
experience and patterns of perception. The vast
deserts of the south, the pampas and Patagonia
were regarded by many Europeans (as the
English traveller John Miers wrote in 1826) as a
place where nature was ‘empty of landscape’.
EMERGING NATIONAL IDENTITIES
During the second half of the nineteenth
century the end of the civil wars paved the way
for the consolidation of South American
nations. Increasingly, natural resources were
exploited which could be traded with the
nations of Europe. Towards the end of the
nineteenth century most South American
countries were ruled by authoritarian and
conservative governments, which were at the
same time liberal and progressive in their
economic policies.
THE URUGUAYAN PAINTER Juan Manuel Blanes
(1830–1901) studied in Florence. Identified with
the ideals of the modern urban bourgeoisie, his
intention was to become a ‘South American
painter’, creating a national imagery for the
countries in the south of the continent. Un episodio
de la fiebre amarilla en Buenos Aires (‘An episode
of yellow fever in Buenos Aires’) exhibited in 1871,
consecrated him as a great painter in Argentina,
Uruguay and Chile.
cities, and several European artists established
in South America also acted as professors in
these new institutions.
During the latter decades of the nineteenth
century, national historical narratives and
iconographies were created and consolidated,
and at the same time, a number of important
monuments were built in the cities. Latin
American countries occupied a peculiar place
in the global economic system: they were
neither developed and industrialized countries,
nor colonies. As young, independent nations
they tried to create positions for themselves
and national identities on the periphery. One
way of fulfilling this aim was to participate in
International Exhibitions and World Fairs –
not only as producers of raw materials and
food but as civilized nations with a Europeanlike
fine-arts culture.
2 AS THEIR NEW NATIONAL IDENTITIES became
established, South American countries integrated
into the international economic system as
producers of raw materials. There was a vast influx
of European immigrants and cities grew and
modernized very rapidly. An emerging urban
bourgeoisie emulated European culture and
fashion. It was a period of intense interaction with
European artistic centres. South American artists
travelled to Rome, Florence and Paris to study in
academies and ateliers, while new art schools were
opened in the capital cities.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
218
TO CONSIDER SOUTH AMERICA as a unity is always
problematic. Even during colonial times when, with the
exception of Brazil, the continent was a Spanish domain the
differences between diverse regions were huge. These
differences were caused by geographical diversity, the existence
or lack of gold and silver, and the particularities of the conflicts
between the European conquerors and many different cultures.
From around 1810, when the wars of independence began to
succeed, regional differences persisted, although they were
activated by new reasons and circumstances. During the first
half of the nineteenth century
South America suffered a long
period of violence and warfare,
initially directed against the
former colonial powers. Civil
confrontations and divisions
between the emerging nations
led to further violent conflicts,
creating new and shifting
boundaries.
ART AND CONFLICT
Revolutions, war and civil
conflicts did not create a
propitious atmosphere for the
flourishing of fine arts.
Nevertheless, the field of visual
representations played a crucial
role in the emergence of the new
nations. In the first decades of
independent life the images and
symbols of colonial power were
dramatically transformed and
substituted: national anthems,
flags, images and allegories of
the new nations were created,
SOUTH AMERICA 1800-1900
0˚
10˚
20˚
30˚
40˚
50˚
60˚
70˚ 60˚ 50˚ 40˚80˚90˚100˚
10˚Cartagena
Cajamarca
Trujillo
Guayaquil
Junín
Lima
Callao
Copiapó
La Serena
Concepción
Valdivia
Valparaíso
Santiago
Pisco
Arequipa
Arica
Iquique
Quito
Bogotá
Ollantaytambo
Cuzco
La Paz
Potosí
Salta
Córdoba
Santa Fe
Asunción
Montevideo
Buenos
Aires
Rio de Janeiro
Recife
(Pernambuco)
São Salvador
(Bahía)
Belém
(Pará)
Georgetown (Stabroek)
Paramaribo
Cayenne
El Carmen
Caracas
Angostura (Ciudad Bolívar)
São Luís
(Maranhão)
Mendoza
Pichincha
Boyacá
Amazon
Juruá
Marañón
Uruguay
Rio N
egro
Pa
raná
C
ol
orado
Orinoco A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
C A R I B B E A N
S E A
ATACAMA
DESERT
A
N
D
E
S
ANDES
GRANCHACO
GUIANA
HIGHLANDS
BRAZILIANH
IGHLANDS
Patagonia
Cape
Horn
FALKLAND
ISLANDS
TRINIDAD
GALAPAGOS
ISLANDS
B R A Z I L
G U I A N A
CAPTAINCY-
GENERAL
OF VENEZUELA
VICE-ROYALTY
OF NEW GRANADA
VICE-ROYALTY
OF PERU
VICE-ROYALTY OF
RÍO DE LA PLATA
CAPTAINCY-
GENERAL
OF CHILE
(1826)
(1849)
(1816)
(1846)
to
Tahiti
from
Cape Verde
Islands
to Brazil
1822-25
return to
Europe 1846
N
0
0
750 miles
1000 kms
Art, Revolution and
Exploration, 1800-50
colonial borders
pre-1810
Portuguese territory
Spanish territory
Dutch territory
British territory
French territory
regions unexplored
by Europeans
Alexander von
Humboldt’s voyages,
1799-1803
Charles Darwin’s
voyages on the
Beagle, 1831-36
military campaign,
1810-13
campaigns of José de
San Martín, 1817-22
campaigns of
Simón Bolívar, 1821-24
voyages of painter
Johann Moritz
Rugendas, 1822-46
places of interest and
activity of painter
José Gil de Castro
academies/schools
of fine art
1
1 BETWEEN 1800 AND 1850 VISUAL ARTS IN SOUTH AMERICA were
deeply transformed by the process of emancipation from
colonial domination. Revolutionary campaigns gave place to the
emergence of new nations, accompanied by iconographic and
symbolic paraphernalia which were created to replace the
images and emblems of the colonial era. On the other hand, the
growing interest of other European countries (England,
Germany, France) in South America encouraged many artistic
and scientific expeditions across the continent.
GENERAL JOSÉ DE SAN MARTÍN (detail) by José Gil de Castro, 1818. Gil
de Castro (1785–c.1841) began his career in Lima as a portraitist.
He embraced the revolutionary cause not only as a painter but
also marching with the emancipating forces: with Bolívar to
Santiago de Chile and with San Martín to Lima. His portraits of
those heroes combine the rigidity of the colonial tradition with
the freshness and potency of his political ideals. The careful
depiction of the subject's garment, paying special attention to
the gold trimmings, may indicate the persistence of elements of
colonial religious images.
EUROPE 1800–1900
221
COALBROOKDALE BY NIGHT,
1801, by Philip James De
Loutherbourg (1740–1812).
De Loutherbourg described
this dramatic view of newly
industrialized Shropshire in
western England as
appealing equally to an
economist and a Romantic
artist. This landscape
celebrates both the
exhilarating ‘satanic’ blaze
of blast furnaces abhorred
by Blake and the idyllic
surrounding woodland valley
and its rustic inhabitants.
HÔTEL TASSEL, BRUSSELS 1892–93, Victor Horta
(1861–1947). Horta’s townhouse typifies the lavish
ornament and modern structural achievements of
the pan-European phenomenon of ‘Art Nouveau’.
Many disparate examples of architecture and
design are classified as Art Nouveau; most embrace
new materials and technologies whilst still
celebrating local motifs, such as flora and folklore.
NATURE AND NATIONALISM
The attempted centralization of Europe into an
imperial culture prescribed from Paris also
inspired Romantic expressions of dissent.
Discredited traditions were reclaimed, for
example Schinkel’s reconstructed Gothic Cologne
Cathedral, Beckford’s Fonthill Abbey or Scott’s
Abbotsford. These, as well as heroic landscapes
such as the desolate Baltic coasts and dense
Alpine forests of Friedrich or the idyllic rusticity
of Constable and Repton, revealed a new-found
determination to assert alternative national
identities amidst the Napoleonic bloodshed. The
drama of the natural world encouraged not
only scientific measurement and study (the
Vulcanists’ examination of mounts Etna and
Vesuvius, for example), but also the visionary
landscapes of Martin and Girodet. At the same
time, this period of socio-political dislocation
inspired complex alternative visions – the
ecstatic horror of the ‘Sublime’, witnessed in
Goya’s and Géricault’s imagery of madness and
dehumanized brutality, or the retreat into
esotericism of Runge’s Masonic decorations, or
Blake’s and Fuseli’s mystic utopianism.
INDUSTRIALIZATION AND THE ARTS
The first four railway lines (1825–37), succeeded
by a construction boom in the 1860s, linked the
most far-flung corners of Europe, allowing more
widespread diffusion of raw materials, artworks
and ideas. At the same time, new forms of
transportation led to mass tourism and
international exhibitions, which encouraged
national manufactures such as Sèvres and
Meissen porcelain and the Gobelins’ tapestry
works. New techniques of reproduction processes
helped the proliferation of photography as an art
medium, and many illustrated periodicals
appeared, from The Illustrated London News to the
Vienna Secessionist journal Ver Sacrum.
New processes led to the more efficient
exploitation of natural resources (the coal
mines of Britain and Russia, the iron ore
deposits of northern France and Spain, the
expansion of metal industries and armaments
led by Germany, textile production in Britain,
Belgium and France). These industries created
a vibrant yet volatile economic climate. They
also provided the materials and patronage that
facilitated the new industrial architecture of
production, transport and display such as
Saunier’s Menier Factory (1869–74, Noisel-surMarne),
Eiffel’s Ponte Maria Pia Bridge (1877,
Oporto), Mengoni’s Galleria (1865–77, Milan)
and the luxury-liner ships decorated by artists.
Many paternalist entrepreneurs embarked
on utopian communal housing projects such as
Boliger’s Laegeforeningens, which replaced
Copenhagen’s slums, Lever’s Port Sunlight near
Liverpool and Godin’s Familistère project in
Guise. The experience of the working-class was
a motif that inspired many nineteenth-century
artists, from the bleak ennui of ToulouseLautrec
and Seurat’s proletarians to the heroic
mill workers of Menzel.
FIN DE SIÈCLE EUROPE
A complex climate of internationalism and
competition was created by the unification of
Germany and Italy, the expansion of AustriaHungary
and Russia, and European colonization
in Africa and Asia. Experimentation in
architecture and design, known as ‘Art Nouveau’,
flowered against this background. New unusual
materials inspired new forms. Wolfers’s
chryselephantine objets d’art relied upon ivory from
the new Belgian Congo. Advances in metallurgy
allowed Guimard and Horta to create their
extraordinary ironwork arabesques. Gallé’s
participation in the latest discoveries in chemistry
and botany emerged in the themes and
techniques of his glassware. Art Nouveau often
emerged in secondary metropolitan centres, and
celebrated these area’s distinctive materials and
skills; Mackintosh’s furniture relied upon the skills
of Glasgow’s ship fitters, and Eliel Saarinen,
Lindgren and Gesellius deployed Finnish granite
and timber as their signature materials. Industrial
entrepreneurs were key patrons (Güell for Gaudí
or Solvay for Horta), and their urban townhouses
became one of Art Nouveau’s principal forms.
Nostalgia for traditional life also inspired a
revival of traditional techniques and art forms.
This was evident in the art colonies in Brittany,
Abramtsevo and Worpswede as well as the Arts
and Crafts collectives formed across Europe,
which were inspired by Ruskin’s and Morris’s
championing of medieval and folk craftsmanship
and sincerity. Lechner drew upon Hungarian folk
lace for his architectural ornament in the Postal
Savings Bank (Budapest 1898–1901). The Watts’
Chapel and Pottery (Compton 1897) not only
taught local people techniques of Celtic interlace
but also helped the village economically by
marketing the artworks to Liberty’s in London.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
220
NAPOLEON’S CONQUESTS LED to an
unprecedented movement and creation of
artworks around Europe in the form of war
trophies, art publications and research, official
portraits and monuments celebrating victories
or the fallen. The Napoleonic era also saw the
formation of the great state museums of Europe:
the Louvre, the British Museum, and the
Pinakotheks of Berlin and Munich. These
institutions formulated the artistic heritage just
as State patronage of contemporary art through
acquisitions and exhibitions shaped art’s future.
The technological advances and atrocities of
warfare inspired complex artistic responses from
the conflicted heroism of Gros’s and Turner’s
battle paintings to Goya’s horrific etchings.
EUROPE 1800-1900
10˚ 0˚ 10˚ 20˚ 30˚
40˚
40˚
50˚
Vienna
Graz
Budapest
Szolnok
Nagybánya
(Baia Mare)
Prague Cracow
Brussels
Darmstadt
OstendNewlyn
St Nazaire
Brighton
Southampton
Hvitträsk Kirkkonummi
(Gesellius, Lindgren, Saarinen 1901-19)
Kalela Ruovesi (Gallen-Kallela 1894-95)
Tuomiokirkko Tampere (Sonck 1899-1907)
Mikaelin Kirkko
(Sonck 1900)
Biology Museum
(Lindegren 1893)
Sundborn
(C. & K. Larsson
1884-1912)
Villa Stuck (1897-98)
Elvira Studios (Endell)
Haarlem
Worpswede
Bremen
Skagen
Paris
Nantes
Guise
Fontainebleau
Barbizon
LyonSt Étienne
San Sebastián
BilbaoOviedo
Lisbon
Geneva
Barcelona
Cape Trafalgar
Oporto
Le Havre
Pont-Aven Nancy
Antwerp
Liège
Cologne
Amsterdam
Rotterdam
Scheveningen
Walberswick
Hamburg
Hanover
Copenhagen
Malmö
Christiania (Oslo)
Bergen
Stockholm
Uppsala
Helsingfors
(Helsinki)
Riga
Åbo (Turku)
Karelia
St Petersburg
Moscow
Abramtsevo
Tula
GorlovkaDresden
Frankfurt
Fürth
Stuttgart
Nuremberg
Lódz
Warsaw
Munich
Füssen
Florence
Verona
Venice
Trieste
Milan
Turin
Genoa
Rome
Berlin
Danzig
StettinBirminghamWolverhampton
Oxford
Merton Abbey
Manchester
Edinburgh
Newcastle (Tyne)
Aberdeen
Stockton
Salts Mill
(1853)
Glasgow
Kilmalcolm
Clyde
Dublin Liverpool
Barrow-in-Furness
Darlington
London
Compton
Bristol
Belfast
´
Clifton Suspension
Bridge (Brunel 1829-54)
Menai Road Bridge
(Telford 1818-26)
Forth Railway Bridge
(Fowler, Baker 1881-90)
Hack Kampmann
Diplon (1892)
Saltash, Royal Albert
Bridge (Brunel 1859)
Ponte Maria Pia
(Eiffel 1877)
Glasgow
School of Art
(Mackintosh)
Postal Savings Bank
(Lechner 1898-1901)
Secession
Building
(Olbrich 1898)
Central Hotel
(Ohmann 1899-1901)
Casa Castiglione
(Sommaruga 1900-03)
Sagrada Familia
(Gaudí 1883-)
Duero
Tagus
Ebro
Rhône
Po
Loire
S
eine
Rhine
Elbe
VistulaOder
Dnieper
Dniester
Danube
D
on
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
N O R T H
S E A
B L A C K S E A
M E D I T E R
R
A
N
E
A N S E A
A
D
R
I A
T
I C
S E A
BA
LT I C
S E A
Mt Etna
Mt Vesuvius
SCOTTISH
HIGHLANDS
P
Y
R E N E E S
A L P S
CARPATH
IA
N
M
T
S
RÜGEN
CRETE
SICILY
CYPRUS
BA
L E A R I C I S
CORSICA
SARDINIA
UNITED
KINGDOM
F R A N C E
S PA I N
M O R O C C O A L G E R I A TUNISIA
G E R M A N
E M P I R E
F I N L A N D
DENMARK
A U S T R O - H U N G A R I A N
E M P I R E
R U S S I A N
E M P I R E
SWITZERLAND
SERBIA
GREECE
MONTENEGRO
PORTUGAL
R
O
M
ANIA
O T T O M A N E M P I R E
NORW
AY
SWEDEN
(Friedrich, Runge)
Oesterbrogade housing
project (Boliger 1853-55)
Grosset House
(Kampff,
Scherwinsky 1899)
Eylau (Gros 1807)
Crimea (Butler, Fenton 1854)
Piedmont
Alsace Lorraine
(Rodin, Détaille 1870)
Galeria
(Mengoni 1865)
Viaduc Garabit
(Eiffel 1877)
Santa Justa Lift
(Eiffel 1898-1901)
(Vulcanists,
Neptunists, Girondet)
(Turner, Ruskin, Hodler)
(Turner, Benjamin West)
9
4
2
5
21
19
10
20
22
13
18
1215
3023, 24
25
17
7
6
28
29
16
14
27
31
11
1
3
26
8
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
1 Europe 1800-1900
controlled directly from Paris, c. 1810
controlled by members of
Napoleon’s family, c. 1810
other states dependent on
Napoleonic empire, c. 1810
international borders, 1871
industrial area
first railways
artistic colony
Romantic site
battle zone
industrial/utopian architecture
shipyard
bridge
Art Nouveau building
Royal Pavilion (Nash 1815-22)
East Bergholt (Constable)
R. Stour (Constable)
Dedham (Constable)
Fonthill Abbey (Beckford 1796)
Salisbury Cathedral (Turner, Constable)
Abbotsford (Walter Scott’s castle)
Shoreham (Palmer)
Cologne Cathedral (Schinkel 1824-80)
Walhalla Donaustauf (von Klenze 1814-42)
Neuschwanstein Castle (Riedel, Jank,
Dollmann, Hoffmann 1868-92)
Uppsala University botanical
collections (Runge, Friedrich)
Port Sunlight (Lever, Owen 1887-1900)
Glasshouse (Kibble 1860)
Iron Building (Baird 1855-56)
Chiswick, Great Conservatory,
Syon house (Fowler 1820-27)
Kew Palm House (Turner, Burton 1845-47)
University Museum
(Woodward, Ruskin 1855-60)
Communal housing (Familistère 1859-70)
Deptford
Horta and van de Velde houses
Liberal Volkhuis ‘Help U Zelve’ (1898)
Art Nouveau Wijk (c. 1900)
Watts Memorial Chapel (1897)
L.Windermere, Broadleys Gill Head
(Voysey 1898-1900)
Hale, Halecroft (1890)
Windy Hill (Mackintosh 1899-1901)
Knutsford, (Richard Harding
Watt 1895-1908)
Bexleyheath,The Red House
(Webb, Morris 1859-60)
Chiswick, Bedford Park, South Parade
(Shaw 1874-90, Voysey 1889-94)
Sanderson and Sons Wallpaper Factory
(Voysey 1900-02)
Harrow Weald, Grims Dyke (Shaw 1870-72)
Wightwick Manor (Ould 1887-93)
Maison Hennebique (1900-04)
Maison Coilliot Lille (Guimard 1898-1900)
Villa Majorelle (Sauvage 1900-01)
Alexandraweg (Olbrich, Glückert,
Behrens 1899-1901)
De Beurs (Berlage 1897-1903)
American Hotel & Cafe
(Kromhout 1898-1901)
Menier Factory (Saunier 1869-74)
1 -
2 -
-
-
3 -
-
4 -
5 -
6 -
7 -
8 -
9 -
10 -
11 -
-
12 -
-
13 -
14 -
15 -
16 -
17 -
-
18 -
19 -
20 -
21 -
22 -
23 -
24 -
-
25 -
26 -
27 -
-
28 -
29 -
30 -
-
31 -
1 THE EMERGENCE AND SUPPRESSION of national cultures
by conflicting imperial ambitions forged the aims
and vocabularies of artistic movements such as
Romanticism and Art Nouveau. Booming
industrialization inspired exhilarating
collaborations between art and the new needs of
entrepreneurial and urban culture, but also
inspired a mood of nostalgia for traditional, rural
life manifest in artists’ colonies.
SCANDINAVIA AND THE BALTIC 1800–1900
223
ANDERS ZORN, MIDSUMMER DANCE (1897). Farmers are
shown in provincial costume, dancing at the
summer solstice. The midsummer pole is visible in
silhouette against the sky on the right. The scene is
set in a farmyard. A fiddler sits on the stoop of a
rustic log shed on the left. The farmhouse is visible
behind the shed, painted the dark red with white
trim traditional for rural buildings. Zorn’s gift for
painting light and atmosphere allowed him to
capture the warm glow of the midnight sun on the
longest day of the year, which is celebrated as a
holiday throughout Scandinavia.
0˚ 10˚ 20˚ 30˚ 40˚ 50˚
60˚
50˚
Gothenburg
Jönköping
Norrköping
Lübeck
Bremen
Hamburg
Uppsala
Stockholm
Trondheim
Christiania
(Oslo)
Bergen
Copenhagen
Berlin
Düsseldorf Dresden
Stralsund
Stettin
KönigsbergDanzig
(Gdansk)
Riga
Vilna (Vilnius)
Elbing
Revel
(Tallinn)
Åbo
(Turku)
Novgorod
Pskov
Kexholm
Narva
Yuryev
(Tartu)
Helsingfors
(Helsinki)
Viborg
St Petersburg
’
Elbe Vist u l a
D
vina
L. Pskov
L. Vänern
L. Vättern
L. Ladoga
N O R T H
S E A
WHITE
SEA
GULF OF FINLAND
N O RW E G I A N
S E A
GULFOFBOTHNIA
GU
LF OF RIG
A
BA
LT
I C
S
E
A
HANOVER
FYN
ZEALAND
BORNHOLM
ÅLAND
GOTLAND
ÖSEL
POMERANIA
DENMARK
SWED
E
N
N
O
R
W
A
Y
BRANDENBURG
P
R U S
S I A
G R A N D D U C H Y
O F F I N L A N D
R U S S I A
POLAND
EAST PRUSSIA
From Western Europe
From France
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
N
2 THROUGHOUT THE
nineteenth century,
regional traditions mixed
with international
movements. Early in the
century, the Russian tsar
employed Western
European Neoclassical
artists, whom he sent out
to territorial possessions.
In Sweden and Norway,
Neoclassical and Nordic
themes were employed
equally by the crown.
Toward mid-century, the
influence of the landscape
and history paintings of
the Düsseldorf and
Munich schools became
dominant. The technique
of these schools was
applied to local landscape
and history to produce a
regional variant.
group of Norwegian artists displayed works
inspired by German painting. The Swedish king
immediately offered a scholarship to the first
painter to study in Düsseldorf, and the pattern
was established for the next 30 years. There
was a significant Scandinavian community
there until about 1880. The Düsseldorf painters
were a revelation, but this also indicates the
retardation of Swedish painting at mid-century.
Their influence came just at the time when
Johan Christian Dahl (1788–1857), a Norwegian
painter who had been a close friend of Caspar
David Friedrich (1774–1840) in Dresden,
advised painters to go to Paris, as German
artistic leadership had waned.
NATIONAL ROMANTICISM AND IDENTITY
In the 1890s the long-standing search for
inspiration from beyond Scandinavia was
overturned when nearly all the important
Scandinavian painters returned home,
determined to paint subjects specifically
related to local traditions. This movement,
called National Romanticism, accompanied a
growth of patriotic or nationalistic sentiment in
all the Baltic lands. This can be related to a
desire for independence in lands ruled by
foreign powers. Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s
(1865–1931) paintings of the Finnish saga,
Kalevala, can be understood in this way. This
yearning for independence from Russia, the
dominant power, is even more apparent in
Lithuania at mid-century. Folk woodcuts with
inscriptions in the vernacular were banned in
the 1860s for fear that they would incite revolt
against Russia. Traditional Lithuanian images
were considered so provocative that national
antiquities were seized and sent to Moscow,
and artistic life in general was dampened; only
one school in Vilnius trained painters between
1866 and 1914.
National Romanticism dominated the arts
in sovereign countries as well, however. Anders
Zorn (1860–1920), who had been in France in
the 1880s, took the techniques he had learned
there and painted Swedish folk dances and
rustic life with a crystalline light and an
impressionistic touch. Carl Larsson
(1853–1919) is widely loved for his depictions
of the seasonal activities of a typical Swedish
home in the provinces. Both painters’ studios
were far from the capital. Larsson refused to
accept a position at the Royal Academy in
Stockholm, believing that its conservatism
would compromise his artistic convictions.
National Romanticism extended far beyond the
fine arts, and became a broader cultural
phenomenon; traditional building techniques
and handcrafts were also embraced.
While most Scandinavian artists in the
1890s worked with a regional focus, the
Norwegian Edvard Munch (1863–1944)
pioneered a haunting style of painting that
pointed the way to Expressionism, one of the
most important international movements of
the early twentieth century. More than any
Scandinavian since Thorvaldsen, Munch was
recognized as a leading international figure,
and was indeed the most important
Scandinavian artist of the century.
2 Artistic Diffusion in
the Baltic, early
19th century
Western Empire style of
Neoclassicism, officially
sanctioned by Imperial
Russia 1801-1855
official artistic influence in
the new Russian territories
German influence in the
north, mid-19th century
official construction,
directed from Stockholm
post-1814
Empire style associated
with French Bernadotte
dynasty in Sweden,
post-1810
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
222
SCANDINAVIAN REALISM
In the 1820s, a different trend began to emerge
among painters in Denmark, particularly in
Copenhagen, which stressed a carefully
observed realism, with subjects often taken
from national history, local landscape and
everyday life. C. W. Eckersberg (1783–1853) and
J. L. Lund (1771–1867) led this movement. They
were prominent professors at the academy, and
thus influenced a generation of painters. Often
considered the ‘Golden Age’ of Danish
painting, this was really part of a broader trend.
Lund in particular maintained close ties with
the leading academies in Düsseldorf and
Munich, and so this development is linked to
German Romanticism.
In the second decade of the century in
Sweden many figural artists and writers
considered Neoclassicism both exhausted
and foreign, and looked instead to regional
traditions and Norse mythology. Even King Karl
XIV Johan of Sweden and Norway (r.1818–44),
who had earlier portrayed himself as the
Roman god Mars, identified himself as the
Norse ruler-god Odin from the later 1810s. In
Finland, Neoclassicism can be associated with
imperial rule, while in Sweden the crown
supported both the internationally current
style as well as displaying an interest in
regional subjects. Thus the interest in Norse
heritage cannot be dismissed as little more
than a provincial trend. The continuing
adherence to the Neoclassical style and the
interest in Norse heritage are equally
important aspects of the arts in this period.
In 1850, the explicit influence of the
Düsseldorf School became apparent in
Sweden, when the Stockholm Academy
mounted an important exhibition in which a
THE GEOGRAPHY OF SCANDINAVIA was
redefined in the early nineteenth century.
Sweden ceded Finland to Russia in 1809, losing
the last vestige of its former dominance of the
eastern Baltic. Sweden’s loss was compensated
in 1814 when Denmark, which had been an ally
of Napoleon, lost Norway
to Sweden. There was a great deal of new
building in both of these territories, much of it
in a strictly Neoclassical style, which suited
both international taste and imperial themes
as rulers asserted their superiority over new
lands. For example, the new palace for the
Swedish king in Christiania (now Oslo), built in
the 1820s, imposingly established the Swedish
monarchy in Norway.
THE NEOCLASSICAL APOGEE
The Finnish capital was moved from Åbo
(Turku) to the little fishing village of Helsinki
after the transfer of the duchy to Russia. This
was in part because Turku was the capital of
Swedish Finland, and even today takes Swedish
as its first language. Helsinki was much closer
to St Petersburg, and Tsar Alexander I
(r.1801–25) hoped to make the
new city reflect Russian rule. Already in 1811
Alexander planned the highly symbolic
Neoclassical Senate Square in Helsinki,
which was to include the senate, the governorgeneral’s
residence, and a grand-ducal palace
(not built). Carl Ludwig Engel (1778–1840), who
had studied with Karl Friedrich Schinkel
(1781–1841) at the Berlin Academy of
Architecture, carried out these plans.
Neoclassicism lingered longer in Denmark
than in the other Scandinavian countries,
largely because of the influence of the sculptor
Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844). Thorvaldsen
was active in Rome for nearly his entire career,
but was a celebrity in his own country. When he
returned home in 1838 he oversaw the opening
of a museum for his works, which included
sketches, plaster models and full-size marble
copies of his complete oeuvre. Thorvaldsen’s
work continued to cast a long shadow over the
arts in Denmark.
SCANDINAVIA AND THE BALTIC 1800-1900
CARL LUDWIG ENGEL’S design for the Imperial
Alexander University Library in Helsinki. Born and
trained in Berlin, Engel settled in St Petersburg in
1814, where he soon impressed Tsar Alexander I.
The tsar worked closely with the architect in the
planning of the Neoclassical core of Helsinki, and
ultimately chose the plans. He wanted the
architecture of the city to reflect Russian rule, but
also the broad independence granted the Finnish
grand duchy.
50˚
60˚
50˚
40˚30˚20˚
Stockholm
Jönköping
Norrköping
Lübeck
Bremen
Hamburg
Uppsala
Trondheim
Christiania
(Oslo)
Bergen
Copenhagen
Stralsund
Stettin
Berlin
Königsberg
Danzig
Riga
Vilna (Vilnius)
Revel
(Tallinn)
Åbo
(Turku)
Novgorod
St. Petersburg
Narva
Helsingfors
(Helsinki)
Viborg
Gothenburg
L. Ladoga
Elbe
Vistula
Dvina
L. Vänern
L. Vättern
N O RW E G I A N
S E A
N O R T H
S E A
WHITE
SEA
GULFOFBOTHNIA
GULF OF FINLAND
GULF OF RI
GA
BALTIC
SEA
BORNHOLM
HANOVER
FYN
ÅLAND
ZEALAND
DNALTOG
ÖSEL
GRAND DUCHY
OF FINLAND
DENMARK
R U S S I A
POLAND
(1831: Fully
part of Russia)
SW
E
D
E
N
POMERANIA
BRANDENBURG
EAST PRUSSIA
N
O
RW
AY
P
R
U
S S I A
Finland: Transferred from
Sweden to Russia as Grand
Duchy of Finland 1809
Norway: Transferred from
Denmark to Sweden 1814
Johann Tobias
Sergel, to 1814
Swedish royal
palace, 1823-1848
Karl Rossi, 1815-49
Academy founded 1757
Carl Ludwig
Engel 1816-40
Golden age
painters
c. 1820-1850
Bertel Thorvaldsen, to 1844
Estonia: Transferred from
Sweden to Russia
Lithuania: Transferred from
Poland to Russia 1795
Latvia: Transferred from
Sweden and Poland to
Russia: 1721, 1722, 1795
N
0
0
250miles
350kms
1 THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE of the Baltic region was
fundamentally realigned in the early nineteenth
century. Russia expanded on gains made in the
eighteenth century, and dominated the eastern
Baltic lands. Sweden gained Norway, but lost
territories in Pomerania, the last vestige of its
former imperialism. All of this had a profound
effect on the arts of the colonial territories.
Cultural patronage came from new centres with
different traditions and often had thinly veiled
political implications – new buildings represented
the new order.
1 Scandinavia after 1814
borders, 1815
contemporary borders, Baltic States and Norway
Residence of prominent artist, with dates
RUSSIA 1800–1900
225
colleagues Vladimir Makovsky (1846–1920) and
Nikolay Iaroshenko (1846–98) all dealt with
issues and images of the populist and
revolutionary movements of the 1870s,
depicting young, educated men and women
from the cities travelling to the countryside, ‘to
the people’, as teachers, doctors and advisers
to the former serfs about their legal rights.
PATRONAGE AND NEW GOALS
Independent-minded merchant-class collectors
supported the Peredvizhniki. In 1892 Pavel
Tretyakov (1832–98) donated to the city of
Moscow a collection that ranged from icons to
works by his contemporaries and friends. Savva
Mamontov (1841–1918), railway magnate and
art amateur, formed one of Russia’s first art
colonies at Abramtsevo, near Moscow, in the
1870s. Among the members were Repin,
Polenov, history painters Viktor Vasnetsov and
Vasily Surikov (1848–1916), Korovin, Levitan
and Mikhail Vrubel (1856–1910), who became
the most innovative artists of the last decades
of the century.
Alexander III (r.1881–94), while politically
conservative and authoritarian, collected art for
ISAAK LEVITAN (1861–1900) March, 1895, oil on
canvas, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Levitan
presents a moment in the country in early spring,
without the message or narrative typical of the
previous decades. A Jew and extremely poor,
Levitan overcame great obstacles to study at the
Academy of Art, and became one of Russia’s
greatest landscape painters.
Murmansk
Serov, Korovin
Archangel
Mezen’
Kotlas
Vologda lace, textiles, wood-carving
Kholmogory
St Petersburg
Vyshniy Volochëk
Novgorod
Pskov
Nizhniy Novgorod trade fairs and art
exhibits-pavilions on regions and arts;
Vrubel, Korovin, Polenov, wood-working, annual market
Plës Levitan
Azarmas Stupin Art School
Perm’ home of Sergey Diaghilev
Vyatka home ofVictor and
Apollinary Vasnetsov
Ufa
home of Nesterov
Samara
Moscow
Sergiyev Posad
monastery and toy-making industry
Talashkino
Princess Tenisheva’s art colony
Vrubel, Malyutin, Rerikh
Vladimir
Tula
Smolensk
Riga
Vilna
Minsk
Revel’
Kursk
Repin
Orël
Abramtsevo
Tambov
Tver’
Kostroma
Astrakhan
Rostov
Kharkov Chuguyev
Repin’s birthplace
Yekaterinodar
Sukhumi
BakuErivan
Tiflis
Odessa
Sevastopol
Kherson
Kiev
Kazan’
Mamontov art
circle-Repin,
Polenov, Serov, Korovin,
Vrubel, Nesterov, Levitan
Dnieper
Volga
D
o
n
N
o
rthern D
vina
Pechora
Ural
Irtysh
Kam
a
B L A C K S E A
CASPIAN
SEA
ARAL
SEA
BARENTS SEA
W H I T
E
SEA
GULFOFBOTHNIA
C AU C A S U S
URALMTS
R U S S I A
FINLAND
Yaroslavl’
Savrasov
Academic dacha;
Venetsianov
and students
Saratov
Radishchev Art Museum
Bogolyubov Collection
ivory carving
ivory carving
Academy of Arts
Hermitage
Museum of Alexander III
Stieglitz Technical School
Bryullov, Bruni, Ivanov;
Kramskoi, Repin,
the Itinerants, Vrubel;
World of Art group
(Benua, Somov, Bakst)
Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture
and Architecture, Collection of Pavel
Tretyakov Tropinin; Perov, Savasov,
Polenov, Korovin, Serov
Turkmenistan
Palestine
Bulgaria
Paris
Rome
Briullov, Ivanov
Repin, Polenov,
Korovin,
Iakunchikova
Polenov,
Vereshchagin
Polenov
Vereshchagin
Vereshchagin Port
Arthur
(Japan)
metalwork
carved and
painted wood
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
2 Art Centres in Western Russia
border of Russia c.1900
railways built by 1860
railways built 1860-1900
concentration of serfdom
before 1861 emancipation
percentage of peasants who
are serfs, 50% and over
percentage of peasants who
are serfs, 18%-50%
centre connected with
artists and groups
centres for folk and applied arts
artists’ activity abroad
2 TOWN AND COUNTRY. Serfdom dominated
agriculture until emancipation in 1861, and many
peasants were left impoverished after the reforms.
Yet improved transport and regional trade centres,
especially the market at Nizhniy Novgorod, created
demand for cultural amenities in the provinces.
Many artists came from provincial towns – for
example, Saratov (Aleksey Bogolyubov 1824–96),
Chuguyev (Ilya Repin 1844–1930), Vyatka (Viktor,
1848–1926, and Apollinary, 1856–1933, Vasnetsov)
and Ufa (Mikhail Nesterov 1862–1942). Some chose
to paint in rural areas: Aleksey Venetsianov (1780–1847)
at Vyshny Volochëk in Tver’ Province,
Valentin Serov (1865–1911) at Domotkanovo near
Tver’, Levitan at Plës on the Volga; and many
participated in the artists’ colonies at Abramtsevo
and Talashkino. Some artists spent parts of their
careers in Rome early in the century, and by the
1870s in France (Repin, Vasely Polenov, 1844–1927,
Serov, Konstantin Korovin, 1861–1939, Konstantin
Somov, 1869-1939) and Aleksandr Benua,
1870–1960, among others). Folk and applied arts
were exhibited at regional fairs and, late in the
century, abroad.
his own museum, opened to the public in 1898
in the Neoclassical Michael Palace (today the
Russian Museum). By the 1890s, the Academy
was becoming open to new ideas, and some of
the Peredvizhniki taught there.
The younger generation of artists avoided
socially critical realism and instead explored a
variety of new styles related to Impressionism,
Post-Impressionism, Symbolism and Art Nouveau
(called style moderne in Russia). A Slavic revival
(retrospective and nationalist in content and
often highly decorative in style) based itself in
Moscow and Abramtsevo. A Western-oriented,
urban, sophisticated style was associated with
the St Petersburg ‘World of Art’ group. Some
artists participated in both groups. The new
sense of the importance of style itself marked a
significant change in ideas.
The World of Art group, including Benua,
Lev Bakst (1866–1924) and Konstantin Somov
(1869–1939), joined by the impressario Sergey
Diaghilev (1872–1929), effectively bridged the
art worlds of the two centuries while
deliberately linking Russia with the West. Their
exhibitions and the journal Mir iskusstva,
(1898–1904) emphasized form and design as
much as text and content, and their theatrical
productions united the best efforts of writers,
musicians, choreographers and visual artists.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
224
and announced that art must serve reality and
expose the conditions of real life.
In 1863, Academy students led by Ivan
Kramskoy (1837–87) formed a cooperative.
Like-minded artists from the Moscow School
joined them in 1871 in the Association of
Travelling Art Exhibitions. Among Peredvizhniki
(‘travellers’) were Kramskoy, Vasily Perov
(1833–82) and Repin. They produced portraits
of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Musorgsky, and genre
works such as Repin’s Barge Haulers on the Volga
(1871) and Savitsky’s Repair Work on the Railroad
(1874). Russia’s waterways and growing
railways gave Aleksey Savrasov (1830–97), Ivan
Shishkin (1831–98), Polenov and Levitan access
to much of their subject matter: forests, plains,
rivers and provincial towns. As a railway
promotion, Serov and Korovin painted
northern scenes. Savitsky, Repin and their
NINETEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIA saw a shift
from court display to a broader audience
and a corresponding shift from classicism to
realism and individual styles. Underlying this
change were improved technology and
transport and expanded territory in Central
Asia, which led to expanding trade. Growth of
the middle classes brought a pragmatic
concern for production, distribution and profit.
THE EUPHORIA OF VICTORY
The formative event for early nineteenthcentury
Russia was Napoleon’s invasion in
1812 and his defeat. Portraits, sculptures and
prints celebrated the Russian victory. The
rebuilding of Moscow (burnt in the conflict)
stimulated architectural and city planning in
St Petersburg and other cities. This reached a
high point in the Neoclassical architecture and
sculpture of such ensembles as the General
Staff Arch adjacent to the Winter Palace, the
Academic Theatre and the Michael Palace by
architect Karl Rossi (1775–1849).
The court-controlled Academy of Art based
instruction on classical and Renaissance
models that harmonized with the autocratic
rule of Tsar Nicholas I (r.1825–55). The leading
Russian artists resident in Rome, including
Karl Bryullov (1799–1852), Orest Kiprensky
(1782–1836) and Aleksandr Ivanov (1806–58),
earned international recognition. The highest
prestige attached to history painting.
Some artists, though, preferred landscape
and genre. Venetsianov began painting scenes
of peasant life in the 1820s. He taught young
peasants and serfs to paint ‘according to
nature’. This set the stage for the realist
movement of the second half of the century.
The Academy gradually modified its
curriculum, and the Moscow School of Painting
and Sculpture, founded in the 1840s, gained a
reputation for high standards in genre and
landscape. Instruction became widely available
through drawing schools in the capitals and art
studios at Azarmas near Nizhniy Novgorod, in
Vilna, Kharkov, Kiev, Sevastopol and Odessa.
Peasant crafts were exhibited at trade fairs –
bone and ivory carving in the far north, wood
carving in forested areas along the Dvina and
Volga rivers, metalwork in Rostov and Tula,
textiles in Vladimir, Vologda and Smolensk
provinces, toy-making in Sergiyev Posad.
GROWING SOCIAL TENSIONS
By mid-century, military campaigns brought
more non-Russians into the empire and sent
Russian soldiers to far-flung outposts. Within
European Russia, the social order, especially
the institution of serfdom, accentuated class
divisions. Tsar Alexander II (r.1855–81), though,
brought a period of peace and liberalization.
Essayists questioned the classical conventions
RUSSIA 1800-1900
Turkey
1878
Caucasus 1859
Crimea
1845
Central Asia
1860s-90s
Murmansk
Archangel
Kotlas
Perm’
Vyatka
Helsingfors
Kostroma
Sergiyev
Posad
Kazan’
Yaroslavl’Novgorod
Tallinn
Revel’
Vilna
Minsk
Warsaw
Pskov
Smolensk
Tver’
Moscow
Vladimir
Ryazan’
Tambov
Kursk
Kharkov
Yekaterinodar
Sukhumi
Baku
Sevastopol
Istanbul Trebizond
Erivan
Tiflis
Odessa
Bucharest
Sofia
Kherson Astrakhan
Samara
Ufa
Chelyabinsk
Tyumen’
Omsk Novonikolayevsk
Krasnoyarsk Surikov
Irkutsk
Harbin
Vladivostok
Khabarovsk
Tomsk
Yekaterinburg
Saratov
Tula
Orël
Kiev
St Petersburg
Mezen’
Kholmogory Ob
Pechora
Vologda
Nizhniy Novgorod
Rostov
L. Baikal
Yenisey
Lena
Am
ur
I
rtysh
B A R E N T S
S E A
SEA
OF
OKHOTSK
SEA OF
JAPAN
A R C T I C O C E A N
BAL
TICSEA
BLACK SEA
ARAL
SEA
B E R I N G
S E A
URALMTS
A
LTAI MTS
TIEN
SHAN G O B I
TAKLA MAKAN
NORW
AY
SWEDEN
FINLAND
R U S S I A
GERMAN
EMPIRE
OTTOMAN
EMPIRE
PERSIA AFGHANISTAN
C H I N
A
M O N G O L I A
M
A
N
CHURIA
KOREA
J
A
P
A
N
Shishkin,
Kuindzhi
Apollinarii Vasnetsov, Shishkin
Repin, Levitan
Repin
Nesterov
L. Balkhash
L. Ladoga
N
E N E T S
Y A K U T
CHUKCHI
E V E N K
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 The Russian Empire
border of Russia c.1900
limit of permafrost
limit of taiga
military conflict, with date
artists’ homes / landscape,
genre subjects
folk art
toy-making
textiles
metalwork
lace
wood carving /
painted wood
ivory carving
fur and leatherwork
annual market
railway
1 RUSSIAN EXPANSES. Cities clustering east of the
Urals, new territories in Central Asia, Vladivostok
as a Pacific port from 1860 – all these were barely
accessible until the Trans–Siberian Railway linked
them. Siberia – home of many distinct ethnic
groups with their own arts – continued to be a
place of exile for political dissidents, prisoners of
foreign wars and revolutionaries – by 1890, some
3400 a week passed through holding stations at
Chelyabinsk and Irkutsk. But artists such as Vasily
Surikov (1848–1916), a native of Krasnoyarsk,
celebrated the distinctive landscapes and peoples
of Asian Russia.
KONSTANTIN SAVITSKY (1844–1905), Off to War,
1880–88, oil on canvas, Russian Museum, St
Petersburg. This scene of peasant recruits being
separated from their families contradicts the heroic
images of war in academic historical painting. The
emotional turbulence of the crowd is set against
the sleek steam engine, sharpening the disparity
between backward peasantry and modern
machine.
BRITAIN 1800–1900
227
Birmingham and Leeds, who tended to purchase
the work of contemporary artists. The railway
system, which linked every major city by 1852,
also allowed for the free circulation of decorative
arts, such as Sheffield cutlery, and textiles from
Leeds and Bradford. The Crystal Palace,
designed by Joseph Paxton and assembled in
London in 1851 to house the Great Exhibition,
was made from iron elements pre-fabricated in
Birmingham. The cornucopia of goods shown
there displayed British manufacturing skill, but
were often in poor taste. The South Kensington
Museum, which opened in 1857, was intended
to promote design reform.
Thames
Vauxhall
Bridge,
1811
Waterloo Bridge
Rennie, 1817,
demolished 1836
Sir John Soane’s
Museum, 1837
South Kensington Museum,
Francis Fowke 1857
(now the Victoria and Albert Museum)
Royal Midland (St Pancras) Hotel,
Gilbert Scott 1866-76
Paddington Station,
Brunel, Wyatt 1850-54
Royal Albert Hall,
Grimshaw 1871
Albert Memorial,
Gilbert Scott, Foley,
Armstead 1861-71
Buckingham Palace,
remodelled by
Nash (1820), Blore (1840)
St James’s Palace,
official royal
residence to 1857
Marshalsea
Debtors Prison
Newgate
Prison
Fleet Prison
Crystal Palace,
Paxton 1851
Vauxhall Gardens
Covent Garden
St James’s Park,
Nash 1829
Hyde Park
Regent’s Park,
Nash 1811
3
6
7
5
4
2
2
13
32
31
35
15
2627
23
24
22 14
29
30
34
1936 20
21 37
17
18
169
25
8
10 28
1
33
11
12
West
Partridge
Partridge
Partridge
Stothard
Flaxman
Egg
Linnell
Linnell
Russell
Constable
Constable
Philip
Ward
O’Neil
Frith
Brooks
Leighton
Millais
Marochetti
Turner
Menpes
Steer, Hunt, Jopling,
Jacomb-Hood
Whistler
Whistler
Whistler
Philip
de Morgan
de Morgan
Rossetti
Hunt
Greaves
Lowndes
Lowndes
Linnell
Constable
Waters Watts
Constable
Constable
Collins
Hampstead
SOHO
CHELSEA
KENSINGTON
BLOOMSBURY
3 Victorian London, 1800-1900
studios and homes of artists
meeting places
art schools/academies
exhibition spaces/dealers
museum
palace
prison
government building
public entertainment
bridge
park
public square
public monument/sculpture
major building
N
0
0
500 yards
500 metres
1 - Jack Straw’s Castle
2 - Chelsea Arts Club
3 - Leigh’s Art School/
Heatherley’s Art School
4 - Chelsea Arts School
5 - Louise Jopling’s Art School
6 - Gambart & Co
7 - Lord Grosvenor’s Gallery
8 - Grosvenor Gallery
9 - Fine Arts Society
10 - The Royal Academy, from 1869
11 - British Museum,
Smirke c.1830-52
12 - National Gallery, Wilkins 1838
13 - Houses of Parliament:
Palace of Westminster,
Pugin, Barry 1840-60
14 - Somerset House,
Chambers 1836
15 - Scotland Yard, Shaw 1887-1907
16 - Mansion House, Dance 1735
17 - Guildhall Art Gallery 1873
18 - Royal Exchange, Tite 1844
19 - Blackfriars Bridge, 1863,
rebuilt 1899
20 - Southwark Bridge, Rennie 1815-19
21 - London Bridge, Rennie 1831
22 - St James’s Square
23 - Trafalgar Square
24 - Leicester Square
25 - Grosvenor Square
26 - Charing Cross, Barry/Earp 1864
27 - Admiral Nelson, Railton 1839-43
28 - Eros, Gilbert 1893
29 - Brunel, Marochetti 1877
30 - Shakespeare, Fontana 1875
31 - General Gordon,
Thorneycroft 1889
32 - Richard I, Marochetti 1860
33 - All Saints, Butterfield 1849-59
34 - Royal Courts of Justice,
Street 1874-82
35 - Foreign Office,
Gilbert Scott 1868-73
36 - The Embankment,
Bazalgette 1864-70
37 - Thames Tunnel, Brunel 1824-40
2 THE INDUSTRIAL
Revolution saw a
profound change in
the geography and
demography of the
British Isles. Industrial
cities emerged in the
Midlands and north, such
as Manchester, Leeds,
Liverpool and Newcastle.
Shipbuilding made
Glasgow into a great city.
5˚10˚
55˚
50˚
Edinburgh
Glasgow
Newcastle upon Tyne
Liverpool
Stoke-on-Trent
Caughley
Holyhead
Carmarthen
New Hall
Worcester
Wolverhampton
Swinton
Manchester
Sheffield
Derby
Pinxton
Bradford
Swansea
CardiffNantgarw Bristol
Exeter
Portsmouth
Dover
Plymouth
Penzance
Birmingham
Northampton
Leicester
Nottingham
Leeds
Hull
Belleek
Oxford
London
Windsor
Cambridge
Norwich
NORTH
SEA
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
ENGLISH CHANNEL
2 Growth of Industry, 1800-1900
coal
cotton
wool
silk
linen/flax
carpet-making
furniture-making
creamware
earthenware
porcelain
stoneware
tin-glazed earthenware
railways, c.1852
lace
hats
cutlery
boots
stockings
N
0
0
75 miles
100 kms
3 IN LONDON the focus of artistic life shifted from
Bloomsbury and Soho, where many artists lived until
1850, to fashionable Kensington, where leading
figures included Frederic Leighton and John Everett
Millais, successive presidents of the Royal Academy
who lived in opulent mansions. Chelsea acquired a
bohemian reputation at the height of the Aesthetic
Movement in the 1860s and 1870s.
REVIVALISM
London architecture underwent dramatic
changes during this period. John Nash’s elegantly
stuccoed Neoclassical development in Regent’s
Park, dating to 1811, was vehemently criticised by
A. W. N. Pugin and the great art critic John Ruskin.
Pugin and Barry’s Palace of Westminster
(1840–60) joined William Butterfield’s All Saints,
Margaret Street (1849–59) and George Gilbert
Scott’s Albert Memorial (1863–76) to form a
corpus of major Gothic Revival structures. Ruskin
supported the Pre-Raphaelites, a group of young
artists turning to naturalism as a means of
countering their academic education, and his
follower William Morris moved from London to
an idyllic Thames side residence at Kelmscott,
pursuing his medieval ideal by reviving various
craft techniques and eventually adopting
Socialist politics. Towards the end of the
century, the Arts and Crafts Movement distilled
from nostalgic Medievalism a pioneering form
of Modernist design.
THE AESTHETIC MOVEMENT
From the 1860s, British artists and designers
abandoned the excessive elaboration of early
Victorian styles in favour of formal simplification.
The subtle, tonal paintings of James McNeill
Whistler, entitled as ‘symphonies’ and
‘nocturnes’, aspired, in the phrase of the
aesthete Walter Pater ‘to the condition of music’.
Artists such as Frederic Leighton and Edward
Burne-Jones created subjectless canvases which
were pure meditations on beauty. The Aesthetic
Movement influenced interior design for the rest
of the century. Oscar Wilde was a prominent
aesthete – his advocacy of blue-and-white china
and his use of the lily emblem were satirized in
Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta Patience (1881).
THE GOTHIC REVIVAL. A.W.N. Pugin and Charles Barry
designed a spectacular Neo-Gothic Palace of
Westminster (1840–60) to replace the medieval
structure destroyed by fire in 1834. Universally
known as the ‘Houses of Parliament’ the design
was intended to recreate the grandeur and
spiritual purity of the Middle Ages, though modern
techniques were utilized.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
226
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY saw Britain’s industrial development,
imperial power and artistic creativity reach a climax. As urbanization and
industrialization, along with population growth and new forms of transport,
transformed the British landscape, artists turned more than ever before to
the picturesque and sublime modes of landscape painting for solace.
THE CULT OF NATURE
James Ward pioneered the genre of large-scale sublime, landscape with Gordale
Scar (1812–14), based on Yorkshire scenery. For five decades until his death in
1851, Turner travelled tirelessly both within and beyond Britain. Like the work
of his contemporary, John Constable, Turner’s oil paintings, watercolours and
engravings were vastly more ambitious than any that had gone before. While
returning to familiar subjects such as Tintern Abbey, and Bamburgh and
Norham Castles, Turner also painted industrial
subjects such as Leeds. Constable, whose
finest works depicted his native Stour Valley in
Suffolk, lived and painted in Hampstead on the
outskirts of London, acknowledging the need to
be close to the burgeoning art market. While
some Victorian artists such as Edwin Landseer
painted the Scottish subjects dear to Queen
Victoria, who spent much time at Balmoral
Castle, most preferred the rolling landscapes of
southern England. John Linnell depicted a rural
paradise at Redhill in Surrey, while William
Dyce and William Powell Frith created
contrasting visions of tourism on the Kent
coast in Pegwell Bay (1859, Tate) and Ramsgate
Sands (1853, Royal Collection).
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The industrial development of Britain shifted
the economic and manufacturing centre of the
country from the southeast to the north and
Midlands. By the 1850s industrial profits had
created a new generation of middle-class
patrons based in Manchester, Liverpool,
BRITAIN 1800-1900
1 ROMANTIC LANDSCAPE PAINTERS in search of
the Sublime favoured the rugged and
mountainous landscapes of the Lake
District, Wales and the Scottish highlands.
The rolling countryside of the southeast,
on the other hand, appealed to the
picturesque taste. John Constable, like
the earlier Suffolk painter Thomas
Gainsborough, made icons of national
identity from its agrarian scenery.
5˚ 0˚
50˚
EdinburghGlasgow
Dundee
Douglas
Aberdeen
Belfast
Newcastle upon Tyne
Dublin
Liverpool
Chester
Cheadle
Manchester
Sheffield
Bradford
Hessle
Halifax
Corofin
Ennis
Killarney
Cork
Swansea
Aberystwyth
Newport
Bristol
Exeter
Newlyn School
Birmingham
Leicester
Chipping Campden
Cirencester
Kelmscott
Bath
Ramsgate
Leeds
Lacock
Oxford
Reading London
Brighton
Cambridge
Letchworth
Scarborough
Durham
Cathedral
Kirkstall Abbey
Crowland
Abbey
Tintern Abbey
The Trossachs
Pegwell
BayRedhill
Red House
The
Grange
Wightwick Manor
Cragside
Ballyfin
House
Balmoral
Standen
Osborne
House
Cardiff
Castle
LAKE
DISTRICT
Gordale
Scar
Rhyl Sands
Hampstead Heath
Stour Valley
Norham Castle
Bamburgh Castle
Caernarvon
Castle
S
pey
Tay
Trent
Wye
Shannon
Severn
Thames
Loch Avon
Stonehenge
Falls of Tummel
N O R T H
S E A
I R I S H
S E A
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
E N G L I S H C H A N N E L
NORTHWESTHIGHLANDS
P
E
N
N
IN
ES
G
R
A
M
PIAN
MTS
CAMBRIANMTS
WICKLOW
MTS
S C O T L A N D
E N G L A N DWALES
I R E L A N D
(Mullock)
(Brunel)
(Cockerell, Deane, Woodward,
O’Shea Brothers, Butterfield)
(Basevi, Wilkins,
Butterfield, Gilbert Scott,
Bodley, Morris & Co)(Cox, Hansom)
(Lynn, Harrison)
(Elmes, Cockerell)
(Guthries, Macgregor, Walton,
Paterson, Lavery,Young, Thomson,
Gilbert Scott, Sellers)
(Kemp, Playfair, Gilbert Scott,
Geddes, Raeburn, Wilkie, Faed,
Nicol, Paton)
(Barry) (Lockwood, Mawson)
(Waterhouse, Cockerell)
(Sedding, Morris & Co, Pugin)
(Grimshaw,
Brodrick)
(Bewick)
(Gilbert Scott, Burn)
(Dyce)
(Brodrick, Bodley, Morris & Co,
Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Madox Brown)
(Nash)
1840s (Watkeys)
(Rowland)
(Fox Talbot)
1880s (Stanhope Forbes,
Bramley, Gotch, Langley,
Taylor, Hall, Garstin)
(Gandon, Semple,
Farrell, Dean,
Woodward,
Richard Turner)
(Nicholl, Lavery)
(Maclise)
(A.W.N. Pugin, E.W. Pugin)
(Burton)
(Mulready)
1
2
2
2
3
4
4
5
6
7
8
8 8
7
6
6
6
6
7
9
9
10
2
18 19
1
1514
3
20
16
7
21 22
1
23 24 25
9
26 27
3
12
42
10
6
11
28
5
11
1
2
12
1225
13
3
14
14
15
15
15
2
13
16
15
19
6
17
16
15 6
15
17
1 From Romanticism to
Victorian Art, 1800-1900
cathedral/abbey associated
with Romanticism
castle/fort associated
with Romanticism
natural feature associated
with Romanticism
art movement/architecture
important art collection
important country house
important geographical
feature
centre for Arts and Crafts
centre for Art Nouveau
N
0
0
75 miles
100 kms
Romantic painter
1 - Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-73)
2 - Paul Sandby (1725-1809)
3 - Patrick Nasmyth (1787-1831)
4 - Allan Ramsay (1713-84)
5 - Sir David Wilkie (1785-1841)
6 - Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)
7 - Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
8 - John Crome (1768-1821)
9 - Philippe de Loutherbourg (1740-1812)
10 - Thomas Stothard (1755-1834)
11 - James Ward (1769-1855)
12 - Samuel Palmer (1805-81)
13 - David Cox (1783-1859)
14 - John Sell Cotman (1782-1859)
15 - John Constable (1776-1837)
16 - Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88)
17 - Francis Danby (1792/3-1861), Francis Towne
18 - William Blake (1757-1827)
19 - Edward Calvert (1799-1883)
20 - John Henry Fuseli (1741-1825)
21 - Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846)
22 - John Hoppner (1758-1810)
23 - Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830)
24 - John Frederick Lewis (1805-76)
25 - John Linnell (1792-1882)
26 - John Martin (1789-1854)
27 - George Morland (1763-1804)
28 - Benjamin West (1738-1820)
Romantic sculptor
1 - Sir Francis Chantrey (1781-1841)
2 - Thomas Banks (1735-1805)
3 - John Flaxman (1755-1826)
FORD MADOX BROWN’S Work (1852–63) has come to
symbolize the Victorian era's obsession with labour,
on the part of the working classes, intellectuals
(such as Thomas Carlyle and F. D. Maurice, seen to
the right) and also of artists: Madox Brown worked
on this elaborate Pre-Raphaelite paintings of
modern life for 13 years.
THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM 1800–1900
229
5˚
51˚
S
S
L
L
L
PP
AmsterdamHaarlem
Leiden
Rotterdam
The Hague
Utrecht Arnhem
Nijmegen
Groningen
Leeuwarden
’s-Hertogenbosch (Bois-le Duc)Dordrecht
Brussels
Rebecq
CharleroiMons
Antwerp
BrugesOstend
Maastricht
Ghent
Courtrai
(Kortrijk)
Tournai Liège
Seraing
RhineWaal
Scheldt
Meuse(Maas)
N O R T H S E A
ZUIDER ZEE
(IJSSELMEER)
F R A N C E
LUXEM-
BOURG
NETHERLANDS
B E L G I U M
G
E
R
M
A
N
Y
North
Sea
Canal
Border of the
Netherlands 1813
Belgium 1830
1 -
2 -
3 -
4 -
5 -
6 Teyler
Museum 1778
Mauritshuis 1815; Hague School 1885-1910; Panorama Mesdag 1881
Boymans Museum 1847
Ethnographical and Maritime Museum, 1873; Museum voor Volkenkunde, 1875
Musée d’Archéologie; Oudheid Kundig Museum, 1833
James Ensorhuis, 1884
National Museum of Ethnography
N
0
0
60 miles
80 kms
Musée Royale des Beaux-Arts;
Koninklijk Museum foor Schone;
Kunsten 1879-90;
Musée Plantiin-Moretus 1875
International Exhibition 1885
International Exhibition 1883
Musée Wellington
Waterloo
to Belgium
from Congo
Free State:
rubber, ivory,
minerals,
handicrafts
1
2
3
6
4
5
to Amsterdam from
South Africa: diamonds
to Amsterdam and
Rotterdam from Java
& East Indies: artists,
art objects, rubber,
textiles & coffee
to Antwerp from
South Africa:
diamonds
2 BY DRAINING RIVERS, COASTAL AREAS AND LAKES, new land was created in
the Netherlands and used for agriculture. In Belgium the traditional
production of linen and lace continued in the Flemish regions, while
the iron and glass industries around Liège produced the raw
materials for Art Nouveau buildings. Major museums of European art
and ethnographic museums were established. The Ixelles district of
Brussels became the area in which artists, writers and intellectuals
lived, including Auguste Rodin and Constantin Meunier and, along
with the St Gilles district, the site of a rich array of Art Nouveau
buildings commissioned by a new
industrial bourgeoisie. The Palais du
Cinquantenaire, a grand exhibition
space opened in 1880, contains the
Musée d’Art Monumental et
Industriel, displaying historical,
monumental and decorative art.
one of the first modern styles to rework the
languages of Classical art, architecture and the
decorative arts. Fundamental to Art Nouveau
are flowing organic forms employed as both
decorative and structural elements. In Brussels,
Victor Horta and Paul Hankar built private
houses and department stores, such as the
Grand Magasin Waucquez, for wealthy bankers
and industrialists and the socialist Maison du
Peuple (1896–9; destroyed 1965).
Individual wealth and state funding
supported national collections of historical and
modern European art. Rembrandt’s Nightwatch
was placed in a pre-eminent position in the
new Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, which
displayed ceramics, furniture, gold, silver and
glass. The impressionistic style and sombre
tonalities of Amsterdam School (1890–1910)
painters George Breitner and Isaac Israëls
forged a new iconography in paintings and
photographs of city spaces, shops, workers and
entertainment. The robust financial sector in
Amsterdam commissioned new buildings,
notably De Beurs (the stock exchange),
designed by H. P. Berlage. Rooted in arts and
crafts ideals, it contained a rich decorative
interior, paradoxically symbolizing both the
financial strength of the Netherlands and
Amsterdam's Socialism.
COLONIAL ACQUISITIONS
Numerous art objects and artefacts entered
both countries from the Netherlands’ colonies
and Léopold II’s central African territories,
Place Royal:
Musée Moderne 1890s;
Palais des Beaux Arts 1880
Hôtel
Tassel
1893
Maison du Peuple
(destroyed 1960)
Grand Magasin
Waucquez 1906
Hôtel
Winssinger 1890s
Musée
Wiertz 1865
Hôtel
Solvay
1894
Musée Horta
(opened as Museum
in the 1960s)
Musée Royale
du Congo 1897
Brussels-Tervuren
Exhibition, 1897
Ixelles
St Gilles
Parc
Royale
Artists working in Brussels
Société Libre des Beaux Arts 1868-mid 1870s:
Félicien Rops, Constant Meunier, Camille van Camp
Les Vingt 1883-93: J. Ensor; F. Khnopff. J. Lambeaux; A. Rodin;
F. Rops; T. van Rysselberghe; H. van der Velde; G. Miine; J. Toorop
Parc du Cinquantenaire
Palais du Cinquantenaire 1880 (Musée d’Art Monumental;
Musée Royal d’Art Décoratifs; Musée d’Art Industriel Ancien;
Pavilion des Passions Humaines (designed by Victor Horta)
(1878–1908). Scientific researchers and traders
in Africa collected souvenirs and curios which
were sold and exhibited in western Europe
until Léopold insisted that significant material
was state property; 250,000 agricultural and
musical objects, masks, sacred objects and
weapons from central Africa acquired by
Léopold were exhibited in the BrusselsTervuren
Exposition 1897.
Dutch trade in raw materials, dyes, spices,
coffee and sugar with the East Indies was
extensive. Exchange trade in textiles brought
batik and art objects from Southeast and East
Asia into the hands of Dutch private collectors
and into ethnographic museums and galleries.
Javanese art influenced the Dutch Symbolists,
particularly Jan Toorop.
Japanese art and artefacts were collected
by colonial officials and brought to the
Netherlands, although the Dutch monopoly on
trade with Japan was broken by America in
1850. Japanese material was displayed in the
Hague in the Royal Cabinet of Curiosities
before 1835, and formed the nucleus of the
National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden.
Japanese goods and prints were exhibited in
Antwerp’s Exposition Universelles in 1885 and
sold in Belgian and Dutch cities. Prints bought
by artists, including van Gogh, offered new
visual forms to western artists.
HENDRIK WILLEM MESDAG, Bluff-bowed Fishing
Boats on the Beach, 1870s, oil on panel.
Scheveningen, near The Hague, offered numerous
subjects for artists; the men and women of the
fishing industry, the boats, sea and tourists.
Mesdag's grandest work, Panorama Mesdag, was
funded by a Belgian entrepreneur. It is a huge
circular painting made with assistance from five
artists, including Sientje Mesdag, from
topographical sketches and photographs
panoramically representing the old fishing village
of Scheveningen.
Resources and
Collections
Natural resources and industry:
agriculture
fishing grounds
coal
iron
steel
glassmaking
flax
lace
carpets
porphyry
imported goods
Artistic institutions:
national museums
ethnographic collections
international exhibitions
S
L
P
2
2a Brussels
new museums with
historical and contemporary
European art
new museum showing
African art
key buildings
areas with important
Art Nouveau buildings
1895-1909
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
228
THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM were
under Austrian then French domination
(1794–1813), becoming one nation, the United
Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815–30),
following victory over Napoleon at Waterloo.
French Beaux Arts traditions in art and
architecture remained strong, particularly the
Romantic tradition, seen in the work of Antoine
Wiertz. In 1830 Belgian independence was
established under Leopold of Saxe-CoburgGotha.
The cultural institutions, museums and
galleries of each new state were fundamental
to the formation of national unity and identity.
BELGIUM AFTER 1830
Belgium became the fifth-largest industrial
state in Europe, dominated after 1848 by a
wealthy urban bourgeoisie. Heavy industries
expanded in the Wallonian French-speaking
provinces, while the development of the port of
Antwerp and a rail network allowed the global
circulation of goods from, and into, Belgium.
Working-class radicalism flourished in the poor
conditions of factory workers in the textile,
mining, steel and glass industries. The
emergent Socialist movement had a profound
cultural impact in Belgium. Artists committed
to social change and reform in industrial
production depicted these workers; Vincent van
Gogh (1853–90) worked among Borinage
miners, and Constantin Meunier (1831–1905)
painted and drew in the industrial Liège basin
and Antwerp docks. His Monument to Labour was
installed in the Place de Trooz, Brussels.
THE NETHERLANDS AFTER 1830
Land, water and wind, the natural elements of
the Dutch landscape, remained its most
valuable natural resources. Agriculture, mainly
dairy and potatoes, and fishing flourished.
Engineering and scientific skills were built on
traditional expertise, used over the centuries to
drain sea and lakes. The Dutch landscape
provided rich subject matter for artists, who
were inspired by seventeenth-century
precedents. The English artist J. M. W. Turner
chose a Jan van Goyen subject on his first visit
in 1817, while artists from France, England,
Germany, Japan and North America were drawn
to the atmospheric land- and seascapes.
Utilizing the rail networks, art colonies
flourished along the Dutch coast, at Egmond,
the island of Marken, Volendam, Zandvoort,
Katwijk and Domburg, and inland at Laren,
THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM 1800-1900
51˚
Nijmegen
Arnhem
Laren
Groningen
Volendam
Utrecht
Zandvoort
Leeuwarden
’s-Hertogenbosch
(Bois-le-Duc)
Brussels
Charleroi
Nuenen
Heeze
Ostend
Zundert
Brabant
Liège
SeraingMons
Courtrai
(Kortrijk)
Laethem-Saint-Martin
Domburg
The Hague
Leiden
Scheveningen
Katwijk aan Zee
Bruges
Rotterdam
Dordrecht
Maastricht
Antwerp
Amsterdam
Tournai
Ghent
Egmond aan Zee
Rhine
Waal
Scheldt
Meuse(M
aas)
ZUIDER ZEE
(IJSSELMEER)
N O R T H
S E A
D R E N T H E
BORINAGE
BELGIUM
FRANCE
GERMANY
NETHERLANDS
1869
1870s to London, England
summers, 1897-1928
1881 Den Haag
1875
1869 from Java
1883-5
1885
1902
1882
1900
1886toParis
1887-90 to England & Brussels
N
0
0
30 miles
40 kms
Artists’ Colonies
1 Laren (1871-1886):A. Neuheuys;A. Mauve;W. Moes; P. Gabriel; Max Liebermann; Laura Knight
2 Laethem-Saint-Martin (1898):Valerius de Saedeleer; G Minne; G.Van Woestijne
3 Egmond aan Zee (1883-1903): Jozef Israëls; Isaac Israëls; J.M.Whistler
4 Katwijk aan Zee (1880-1914): J. Israëls; Jan Toorop; Max Liebermann
5 Domburg (1897-1900) J.Toorop; J.M.Whistler
6 Volendam (1880-1914): C. Beaux; E.Armstrong; Stanhope Forbes; G. Clausen; G. Seurat
7 Zandvoort (1855): J. Israëls
1
7
5
6
3
4
2
to Paris: Ary Scheffer; J.B. Jongkind 1846;
Willem Mathijs 1869-1877;
Jacob Maris 1865-71; George Breitner 1884
1883 to Drenthe
with G. Breitner
and A. Van Rappard
Jacques-Louis David 1815;
Auguste Rodin 1870s;
Claude Monet 1870s;
Georges Seurat 1886
from America and Britain:
James McNeill Whistler
1863, 1882, 1884;
Seymour Hayden 1863;
A. Stieglitz 1894;
A. L. Coburn 1908
from France: Charles Daubigny,
Claude Monet 1871-2, 1874
to England:
L. Alma-Tadema 1870;
Maathijs Maris 1877-1917;
I. Israëls 1914-20
1 HISTORIC WORKS from
Belgium and the
Netherlands were
acquired by American
museums and
European, British and
American artists came
to Dutch and Belgian
art colonies. Colonial
expansion brought
imports of African, East
Asian and Japanese art.
Amsterdam was a
major marketplace for
colonial products and a
cultural centre for
artists, photographers
and tourists.
Heeze and Laethem-Saint-Maarten in Belgium.
Van Gogh made numerous drawings and
paintings of agricultural landscapes and
workers, weavers and their looms, potato
production and consumption on the moors and
peat bogs of Drenthe (1883) and in Brabant
(1881 and 1883–5).
The market for Dutch landscape painting
expanded to America, Europe, Australia, New
Zealand and Britain. The Hague School
(1870–85) formed when a number of artists
including Jozef Israëls, Anton Mauve, the Maris
brothers and H. W. Mesdag, began painting the
landscape, sea and fishing communities at
nearby Scheveningen in a characteristic sketchy
style with a grey palette. The land reclamation
schemes of engineers had created the unique
Dutch landscape, and railways now made it
accessible. It was artists and photographers.
however, who now turned the landscape into a
popular tourist attraction.
METROPOLITAN CENTRES
Wealth and power resided in the metropolitan
centres, where collections of national and
global artefacts were displayed in private and
public collections. Symbolism and
Impressionism flourished in Brussels where
artists and writers embraced socialist and
anarchistic politics. Les XX (‘Les Vingt’,
1883–93), became the leading exhibition space
and forum for avant-garde ideas and included
European, British and American artists. James
Ensor's giant canvas Christ’s Entry into Brussels in
1889, was rejected by Les Vingt. The painting
represents the imagined entry of Christ into
Brussels as part of a socialist demonstration
and a Mardi Gras, drawing on long-standing
Belgian traditions of masked carnival.
The flourishing of the Belgian iron, glass
and steel industries underpinned the
development of Art Nouveau, which became
Museum
Amstelkring 1888
Zoological
Gardens
Diamond Workers
Union HQ 1898-1900
(architect H.P. Berlage)
Fodor
1869
Paleis van
Volksvleit 1864
(destroyed
by fire 1929)
Rijksmuseum
1876-85
Stedelijk Museum 1891-95
Councertegebouw 1883
(architect A.L. van Gendt)
Arti et Amicitiae
1855
De Beurs
(Stock Exchange)
1898-1903
(architect H.P. Berlage)
Multatuli’s House
Line of
removed
fortification
West
Dock
East
Dock
Am
stel
N 0 250 m
Artists and Photographers
working in Amsterdam
Thérèse Schwartze (1851-1918)
George Breitner (1857-1923)
Isaac Israëls (1865-1934)
Willem Witsen (1860-1923)
Jacob Olie (1834-1905)
James McNeill Whistler
1863, 1882-83, 1889
STAIRWELL OF THE ART NOUVEAU Hotel van Eetvelde,
Brussels, designed in 1895 by Victor Horta for Baron
van Eetvelde, state secretary to the Independent
Congo state. Like other houses Horta designed for
wealthy Brussels clients, the stairwell is the pivot of
the design, creating spatial fluidity and complexity.
1 Cross-Border Contacts
French state of Belgium and
Holland 1799-1813
United Kingdom of the
Netherlands 1813-30
Holland 1813
Belgium 1830
artists arriving in the Netherlands
artists leaving the Netherlands
artists arriving in Belgium
artistic colonies
Journeys made by individual artists:
Vincent Van Gogh 1853-90
Jan Toorop 1858-1928
Constant Meunier 1831-1905
1a Amsterdam
new museums with historical
and contemporary European art
artists’ societies
key buildings
GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND 1800 –1900
231
Industrialization and commercialization
had become nationwide by late in the century.
They made the towns of the new German Empire
look more alike, and the primarily industrial
towns of the Ruhr, Upper Saxony or eastern
Upper-Silesia assumed some cultural status,
too. Finally, the rise of art publishing on a mass
scale, centred in Leipzig and Munich, led to a
further democratization of fine art.
SWITZERLAND
Swiss patronage in the nineteenth century also
reflected a background context of urban and
regional independence. Within the old
Roman/German empire (which included the
lands that became French- and Italian-speaking
Switzerland) the Swiss had gradually gained
their independence and kept their religious
freedom (which mostly meant Protestantism).
Unlike the Germans, however, the Swiss
virtually eliminated rule by princelings.
Like Germany, Switzerland was a federal
state, and, typically, the federal capital, Bern
(from 1848), was only the fourth city in most
other respects, after Basle, Zurich and Geneva.
Thus one expects no ‘official’ patronage, but
the situation is more complex. Most museums
were founded by artists’ associations, but the
Basle collection was municipal from the
seventeenth century onwards, and the
Schweizerisches Landesmuseum in Zurich was
a federal institution.
ARTISTIC MOVEMENTS
Regional institutionalism was counterbalanced
by artistic movements. Almost by definition,
Classicism, Romanticism, Medievalism,
Realism, Impressionism and Modernism ignore
political boundaries. In any case, many of the
movements were directed not from within
Germany, but by the major European art
centres outside. Rome had been a centre of
‘German’ art since the growth of the Grand Tour
from the 1770s. During the 1860s and from the
late 1890s Germans joined most other
Europeans in flocking to Paris. There were also
Copenhagen (in the early nineteenth century),
Brussels (in the 1840s) and England (for late
nineteenth-century painting and applied arts).
Art-geography in German-speaking countries
is highly complex where pan-Europeanism
interacts with nationalism – for instance, the
Nazarene Brotherhood preached a new love of
medieval German painting from Rome, and
Gothic Revivalists looked to England. PanGerman
nationalism increasingly interacted
with, or conflicted with, the revival of regional
vernacular styles. Its first manifestations were
artists’ colonies in the countryside. Did
Bavarianism, to name the most pervasive of
them, belong to greater German culture or to
the wider current of ‘Alpinism’ which included
the Tyroleans and the Swiss? The fundamental
German problem was that a definition of panGerman
art remained elusive.
20˚10˚
50˚
Hermannsdenkmal
Hohensyburg Völkerschlachtdenkmal/Leipzig
Niederwalddenkmal
Porta Wesfalica Minden
Kyffhäuserdenkmal
Koblenz
Binz
Marienburg
ReinhardsbrunnSchloss Drachenburg
Stolzenfels
Rheinstein
Moschen
Koppitz
Landsberg/Meiningen
HohenzollernHoch Königsburg
Neuschwanstein
Hohenschwangau
Babelsberg
Wartburg
Elbe
Oder
Danube
Rhine
Vistula
L. Geneva
N O R T H
S E A
B A L T I C
S E
A
A
L
P
S
SWITZERLAND
LIECHTENSTEIN
LUXEMBOURG
F R A N C E
I T A L Y
NETHERLAN
DS
BELGIUM
D E N M A R K
SWEDEN
AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN
EMPIRE
R U S S I A N
E M P I R E
G E R M A N
E M P I R E
8
7
16
15
6
5
1413
4 3
12
11
21
10
9
Friedrich
Modersohn-Becker
Liebermann
Blechen
Leistikow
Rethel
Schirmer
Friedri ch
Spitzweg
Schwind
Kandinsky
Münter
Defregger
Segantini
KochHodler
Courbet
Thoma
Leibl
Calame
Jura
ALTES LAND
OBERHESSEN
ELSASS
(ALSACE)
SCHWARZWALD
(BLACK FOREST)
OBERBAYERN (ALPS)
SWISS ALPS
THURINGIAN
POTTERY
WESTERWALD
POTTERY
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
Artists’ Colonies
1. Sylt, Föhr,Amrum, from c.1850
2. Ekensund, c.1830/1864
3. Rügen,Vilm, Hiddensee, c.1830
4.Ahrenshoop, 1889
5. Nidden, c.1880
6. Daugart, c.1910
7.Worpswede, 1884
8. Goppeln, c.1890
9. Schreiberhau, c.1890
10.Willingshausen, 1814
11. Kronberg im Taunus, 1857
12. Grötzingen, 1877
13. Dachau, c.1850
14. Osternberg, c.1870-80
15. Frauenchiemsee, 1828
16. Murnau, 1908
2 THE DIVERSITY OF LANDSCAPES Artists and
antiquarians liked to emphasize the diversity
of landscapes in West-Central Europe; folklore
studies drew attention to regional peasant dress
and later indigenous craft products. Large-scale
sculptural and architectonic monuments,
celebrating moments of German history, as well
as the numerous castellated mansions, also
interpreted the landscape.
RIGHT: THE EXPULSION OF ST. ELISABETH (of Hungary) (1855) by
Moritz von Schwind (1804–71), fresco, Wartburg Castle. The
Grand-Duchy of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach had few equals
for cultural influence. It played host to the poets Goethe
and Schiller and initiated the Bauhaus movement of the
architect Walter Gropius (1883–
1969). The castle, near Eisenach, was fitted out with
frescoes, romantically depicting episodes from its own
medieval history.
ABOVE: THE KÖNIGSPLATZ IN MUNICH (1815–60). In the early
nineteenth century Bavaria became a kingdom under
Ludwig I (r.1825–48), who was personally acquainted
with the artistic avant-garde. He made Munich his seat
of government, the art capital of Germany, by creating
grandiose avenues, squares, monuments (including the
Propylaen, bottom right) and museums, the first being
the Glyptothek (right), for Antique sculpture.
2 Romanticized Landscape
boundary of German Empire, 1871
19th and early 20th-century artist's colonies, with date
major areas of activity of landscape painters
popular stretches of rivers
areas of mid-/late 19th-century interest in
folklore/crafts revivals
castellated country houses/extensively rebuilt
medieval ruined castles
sculptural/architectural public monument in
landscaped surroundings
1
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
230
IT IS WELL KNOWN that the history of
German-speaking Europe is one of
drastically shifting external borders. However,
what is less often realized is that there are
traditionally strong internal borders that have
changed little. As far as many regionally
minded Germans are concerned, they are still
very much with us today. They developed
during many centuries preceding the abolition
of the old Roman/German empire in 1803 and
they continued through the unification process
of the Second German Empire under Prussian
rule from 1866 to 1918. Furthermore, there has
never been a real centre in Germany; the
country was and is truly federal. Competition
between centres has always been inbuilt.
GERMAN DIVERSITY
One major difference between regions that
carried on from the centuries before was
religion. During the Reformation the principle
was Cuius regio, eius religio (‘of that kingdom, of
that religion’): it was each prince’s decision
whether his principality would become
Protestant or remain Catholic.
Another difference between German
regions is the vast range of sizes of regional
units. What is singular in Germany is that there
is not the same number of similarly mediumsized
regions as found in France or Italy.
Between 1815 and 1866 Prussia and Bavaria
were virtually independent countries on a
European scale. Their capitals, Berlin and
Munich, both ranked among the top ten
European art centres. But there were also the
small, and even the diminutive princelings and
their ‘capitals’.
PRINCELY PATRONAGE AND PUBLIC SPIRIT
The Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, largely rural,
comprised about 250,000 inhabitants. Its
capital, Oldenburg, with some 30,000
inhabitants, sported a picture gallery, a
museum of natural history, a theatre and a
public library, all purpose-built. In even smaller
Meiningen, in the dukedom of Saxe-Meiningen,
the Duke’s Van Ruisdaels and Botticellis were
accessible in his palace, and the town’s large,
purpose-built theatre/opera house became
world famous for its first performances of
works by Brahms and Richard Strauss and for
its historicist stage sets.
Of course, one may compare this kind of
patronage with that of the aristocracy
throughout Europe, but as the German princes
were still to some extent sovereigns (until
1918) there was a unique process that
gradually transformed privately funded
institutions into state ones. Today, the tiny
principality of Liechtenstein is a lone survivor
of this ancient tradition. A somewhat different
kind of public spirit can be found in the
ancient ‘free cities’ of the old Roman/German
empire and in other large cities that were not
capitals of principalities, such as Frankfurt am
Main, Hamburg, Bremen, Strassburg, Cologne,
Leipzig or Breslau (Wroclaw). Patronage came
from local citizens and corporate bodies. Most
towns also had art societies (Kunstvereine).
GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND 1800-1900
20˚10˚
50˚
Elbe
Oder
Danube
Rhine
Vistula
N O R T H
S E A
B
A
L
T
I
C
S
E
A
A
L
P
S
SWITZERLAND
LIECHTENSTEIN
F R A N C E
LUX.
I T A L Y
N E T H E R L A
N
D
S
B E L G I U M
D E N M A R K
A U S T R I A
B O H E M I A
B A V A R I A
E A S T
P R U S S I A
W E S T
P R U S S I A
B R A N D E N B U R G
THURINGIA
B A D E N
S A X O N Y
H U N G A R Y
SWEDEN
R U S S I A
P O M
E R A
N
I A
S I L E S I A
MECKLENBURG
H A N O V E R
W
E S T P H A L I A
W
ÜRT
TEM
BERG
P R U S S I A
Berlin
Schwerin Strehlitz
Schleswig
Kiel
Oldenburg
Hanover
Brunswick
Dessau
Kassel
Arolsen
Wiesbaden
Strassburg
Dresden
Munich
Gera
Mannheim
Karlsruhe
Stuttgart
Darmstadt
Mainz
Nuremberg
Bayreuth
Coburg
Meiningen
AltenburgWeimarGotha
Sondershausen
Posen (Poznan)´
Stettin (Szczecin)
Rostock
Lübeck
Düsseldorf
Cologne
Vaduz
Hamburg
Bremen
Hagen
Frankfurt am Main
Geneva
Zurich
Bern
Basle
Leipzig
Detmold
Bückeburg
Königsberg (Kaliningrad)
Danzig (Gdansk)´
Breslau
(Wroclaw)
1 Centres of Art: Princely and State Support
boundary of German Confederation,1815
boundary of German Empire, 1871
Prussia, 1815
Prussian gains, 1866
other German states, 1866
Austria-Hungary, 1867
major cultural / regional centre
other cultural centre
major provincial town
town with institutions founded by private / corporate donors
major 19th-century museum
other 19th-century museum
museum of 19th-century fine art
museum for applied arts
regional / folk art collection
classical sculpture / old master paintings
other kinds of European art / historical objects
theatre / opera house / concert hall
art academy
ruler‘s town palace
government building
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 THE FEDERAL NATURE of German art
institutions reflects all the major, and
some of the minor, regional divisions
within the country, shown here
essentially as they were between
1866 and 1918. The twentieth
century would greatly change the
external borders, but the internal art
map today remains virtually
unchanged since the 1800s.
FRANCE 1800–1900
233
CLAUDE MONET, A Train in the Countryside, 1870.
More affordable and easy travel by rail facilitated a
blossoming of French landscape painting.
Impressionist paintings of the 1860s highlighted
the encroachment of metropolitan ‘modernity’
upon the verdant riverside suburbs of Paris, as with
Monet’s suburban commuter train and
promenading day-tripper. However, by the 1890s,
much Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting
celebrated a nostalgic vision of unpopulated
nature, typified by Monet’s Giverny water garden
or Van Gogh’s and Cézanne’s Provence.
passion for the lush, individualistic images
of a timeless countryside, be it Rousseau’s
Fontainebleau forest, Monet’s Normandy or
Gauguin’s Pont-Aven, reflects the blend of
nostalgia and anxiety which the new
predominance of the industrial city fuelled.
Paris’s dominance also inspired a
contrasting desire to escape the uniformity and
functionalism of modern metropolitan life.
Artists of every style and vision sought out a
dream of a simple and artistically sincere life
amidst the regional peasantry. Bernard’s and
Gauguin’s sojourn in Brittany in the late 1880s
drew generations of artists to this distinctive
maritime and medieval region. Monet was
besieged by eager American acolytes at
Giverny. American, British and Scandinavian
artists created their own riverside Barbizon at
Grez. While Van Gogh and Cézanne each
wrestled in isolated studios in Provence,
Signac founded an anarchist collective in the
then unknown fishing village of St Tropez. The
cultural hegemony of Paris was also undermined
by the artistic revival of provincial cities.
This can be seen, for example, in the flowering
of Art Nouveau design in Nancy, around Gallé
and Majorelle, or the decoration in public
buildings such as Puvis de Chavannes’s murals
for the Palace of Fine Arts in Lyon.
PARIS: CAPITAL OF THE ARTS
The psychological and architectural axis of
Paris, from the Arc de Triomphe to the Tuileries
and the Louvre initiated by Napoleon I, was
fully realized by Baron Haussmann for
Napoleon III. Paris was transformed into a city
of radial vistas, elegant if anonymous façades
and entertainments from the Opéra to the
brothel. It became the icon of the modern and
the metropolitan in art. This unprecedented
display of arts, from antiquities like the Luxor
obelisk and the Venus de Milo to Dutch
seventeenth-century landscapes to the
panorama of contemporary trends in art at the
World Fairs, annual Salons and independent
exhibitions, drew art students, critics and
collectors from every corner of the globe. Paris
was the essential artistic début for any
nineteenth-century artist of ambition. The
eminent École des Beaux-Arts, coupled with
more informal studios such as the Académie
Julian, which accepted women students, made
Paris an unsurpassed educational centre.
The city and its environs also offered a vast
array of more bohemian sites of learning.
Urban cafés, such as Manet’s and Baudelaire’s
Café Guerbois and the Café des Nouvelles
Athènes, were frequented by the
Impressionists, while suburban guingettes
(riverside cafés) like La Grenouillière were
immortalized by Renoir and Monet. The fin de
siècle cabarets of Montmartre, the Chat Noir and
the Moulin Rouge were celebrated by
Toulouse-Lautrec and drew the young Picasso
to Paris in 1899.
Paris had an unprecedented concentration
of artistic spaces, from the private art galleries
and auction houses of international repute on
the rue Lafitte, to elegant restaurants such as
Maxime’s and the Café Anglais. Exclusive
proponents of haute couture and design, such as
fashion designer Worth, the jeweller Fouquet
or the interior design impresario Siegfried
Bing, chose to open their boutiques in Paris.
Both these more elite shops and the vast
departments stores such as the Bon Marché or
the Samaritaine fostered some of the most
innovative architectural and sociological
experiments of the age. Franz Jourdain’s
Samaritaine, for example, was the apotheosis
of Art Nouveau extravagance, as well as being
systematically functional.
N
N
N
Seine
Ave des Champs-Élysées
Boulevard St Germain
Rue de
Rivoli
Ave de l’Opéra
Bois de
Boulogne
Buttes-Chaumont
Bois de Vincennes
Tuileries
Montsouris
Luxembourg
Pl.d’Italie
Pl.de la République
Pl.Pigalle
Pl.de la Bastille
École des
BeauxArts
Institut de France
Gobelins TapestryManufacturers
EiffelTower1889
Salons,Champ de Mars
Palais duTrocadéro 1878
Grand et Petit Palais 1900
Salons,Champs
Élysées
Rue Lafitte (art dealers)
Louvre
Musée de Luxembourg
Gare de l’Est
Gare de Lyon
Gare d’Orsay
Gare du Nord
Gare St Lazare
Pont Neuf(painted byPissarro,Monet etc)
PontAlexandre
Pont des Arts (painted byRenoir)
Arc de Triomphe
1806-36
CarrouselTriumphalArch 1805
St Germain des Prés (Flandrin murals)
Tuileries Palace
Folies Bergères
LesHalles 1854-66
Hôtel de Ville
Panthéon
CastelBéranger
(Guimard)
Samaritaine
(department
store-Jourdain)
Maxime’s
Grand Café (first cinema)
Chat Noir
Moulin Rouge
Guimard Synagogue
Triumph ofthe
Republic (Dalou)
Batignolles (Peladan)
Passy(Bashkirtseff,Manet,Morisot)
Invalides
(Napoleon
1840)
Montparnasse (Baudelaire,Fantin-Latour,Rude)
PASSY
LAVILLETTE
BELLEVILLE
CHARONNE
BERCY
AUSTERLITZ
MONTROUGE
LESBATIGNOLLES
AUTEUIL
MONTM
AR
TRE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1012
14
13
11
N
0
0
1 mile
1.5 kms
2 Paris,Hub of the 19th-Century ArtWorld
artistic institution
1Académie Julian,2 First Impressionist Exhibition,Nadar’s Studio
3 Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
Royalist site (Restoration/Louis Philippe)
4 Obelisk 1829,5 Madeleine Church 1842
Haussmann/Impressionist site
6 Café Guerbois,7 Garnier’s Opera,8 Moulin de la Galette
9 Café des Nouvelles Athènes,10 Sacré Coeur 1876-1914
11 St Sulpice (Delacroix murals) 1849-61
Fin de Siècle site
important tomb
12 Montmartre (Degas,Creuze,Scheffer)
13 Père Lachaise (Champollion,Baron Haussmann,Pissarro,Géricault,Ingres,
Lalique,Daumier,Corot,David d’Angers,Nadar,Seurat,Delacroix,David,
Bonheur,Wilde,Rodenbach,Noir)
Napoleonic monument
14 Vendôme Column
park
bridge
railway station
Thiers fortifications
N
2 PARIS WAS A UNIQUE
artistic centre in the
nineteenth century,
from Napoleon’s
monuments to
Toulouse-Lautrec’s
Moulin Rouge. Art
students came from all
over the world to learn
in its museums, studios and cafés, while ambitious
artists battled for fame and commissions at its
Salons, World Fairs and exhibitions. Posthumous
celebrity could be assured in the pantheon of
cemeteries like Père Lachaise.
Auvers
Épinay
Gennevilliers
Asnières
Clichy
Ile de la Grande Jatte
Bougival
St-Cloud
Billancourt
Argenteuil
Chatou
St Germain
-en-Laye
Marly-le-Roi
Louveciennes
La Celle-St Cloud
Versailles Chennevières
Puteaux
Pontoise
Osny
Seine
PARIS
Inset
Suburbs painted by
Impressionist and
Post-Impressionist
painters
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
232
THE LEGACY of Napoleon cannot be
overstated. During his brief regime, he not
only centralized most of Europe and the Near
East politically, but also culturally, setting a
precedent for France’s invasion and pillaging of
each new territory by sending legions of
scholars and artists as well as soldiers.
Baron Vivant Denon’s Description de l’Egypte
of 1809–29 informed the distinctive
Orientalism of Maxime Du Camp’s photo
albums or the paintings of Vernet, Fromentin,
Delacroix and Gérome of the second half of the
century. The popularity and refinement of
French design emanating from the national
manufactures of porcelain at Sèvres (near
Paris) and textiles at Gobelins, set up by
Napoleon, fostered the culture of technical
innovation and skill required by Art Nouveau
designers such as Lalique or Guimard at the
end of the century.
THE ESCAPE TO THE COUNTRY
The volatility of France’s political identity over
the century, the unrelenting migration to cities
such as Paris, Lyon and Marseille by workmen,
artists and the middle classes, and the
expansion of the railways fostered the vogue
for landscape painting. The nineteenth-century
FRANCE 1800-1900
0˚
50˚
Sainte-Adresse
Deauville
Honfleur
Paris
Fontainebleau
Moret
Ornans
Nice
Marseille
Montpellier
Antibes
St Tropez
Toulon
Aix-en-Provence
L’Estaque
Drôme
Nancy
Grez
Clermont-Ferrand
Commentry
Lyon
Le Creusot
Besançon
Dijon
Barbizon
Marlotte
Orléans
Rouen
Calais
Dunkerque
Lille
Louvain
Giverny
Étretat
Varengeville
TrouvilleGrandcamp
Caen
Cherbourg
Brest
Quimper
Pont-Aven
Nantes
Tours
Rennes
Poitiers
Bordeaux
Toulouse
Carcassonne
Concarneau
Lorient
Ebro
Garo
nne
Dordogne
Loire
Seine
Rhône
Meuse
N O R T H
S E A
B A Y O F
B I S C A Y
E N G L I S H C H A N N E L
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
P
Y
R
E
N
E
E
S
A
L
P S
B R I T TA N Y N O R M A N D Y
F R A N C H E C
O M T É
P R O V E N C E
ALSCACE
LO
RRA
INE
U N I T E D K I N G D O M
F R A N C E
S P A I N
I T A L Y
G E R M A N
E M P I R E
B E L G I U M
LUXEMBOURG
S W
I T Z E R L A N D
Palais Idéal du Facteur
Cheval Hautrives 1879-1912
American painters, sculptors, architects
to École des Beaux Arts, Académie Julian, Paris
Brittany, Monet’s Giverny 1883
Munch
to Paris
British Impressionists
study in Paris 1870s
Dutch Old Master
landscapes inspire
Barbizon painters 1830s
Barbizon (1830s), Impressionist (1880s),
Symbolist (1890s) painters visit Rome
(School of David, École de Rome), continues
throughout century
Flaubert and photographer Maxime du Camp to Egypt and Near East, 1849–51;
Delacroix to Algeria and Morocco, 1832;
Gérôme, repeatedly from 1856, to Africa and Near East.
Many artists, including Bonnat and Fromentin, attend
opening of Suez Canal 1869
Antiquities, Denon’s
Description de l’Egypte,
Obelisk from Luxor gift
to Charles X 1829
Impressionists,
Post-Impressionists
exhibit in Brussels
1880s, 1890sRoderic O’Connor
to Pont-Aven 1889
Munch and
Scandinavian
Pont-Aven
colony
Pissarro, Monet flee the Commune 1870
Art dealers Durand-Ruel, Goupil bring Impressionist Art to London 1870
Alexander Reid brings Impressionism to Glasgow 1880s
Durand-Ruel exhibits Impressionist
paintings in New York 1886, Chicago 1870s onwards.
Cassatt advises American collectors
to purchase European art
Gauguin to Tahiti 1891-93, 1895-1901
Japanese prints and objets d’art c. 1860s, Paris Fair 1878
Gauguin from Peru 1855
Pissarro from Virgin Islands 1842
Venus de Milo 1820 from Greece
N
0
0
400 miles
500 kms
1 FRANCE EXPERIENCED unprecedented political
and cultural upheavals in the nineteenth
century, enduring revolutions and everchanging
governments from empire to
monarchy and commune. Military and
economic defeat by Britain, Prussia and
America helped inspire France’s selfpromotion
as a centre for luxury goods and
the arts rather than industrial might.
THE VENDÔME COLUMN Forged from cannons from
the Battle of Austerlitz (1805), Bergeret’s basreliefs
of Napoleon’s victories and Gondouin’s and
Lepère’s toga-clad emperor were replaced by a
fleur-de-lys during the Restoration. Louis Philippe
erected a new statue of Napoleon in a frock coat.
The column, toppled by Courbet during the 1870
Commune, was re-erected in 1874.
coal mining
ironworking
steel
engineering
chemicals
shipyard
textiles
1 Regionalism and Industrial Revolution
artists’ colonies
movement of artists
railways to 1848
railways to 1860
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 1800–1900
235
ANTONÍ GAUDÍ, EXPIATORY CHURCH of the Sagrada
Familia, Barcelona, begun 1883. The Sagrada
Familia by Gaudí (1852–1926) provokes questions
about whether it should be called architecture or
sculpture. For Gaudí, the architect was only the
humble instrument of a Divine Power, and each
form was to be fraught with mystical symbolism.
He said his architectural operations led to ‘the
physical revelation of Divinity’, conforming to
‘the laws of Creation and Nature’ to achieve a
spiritual result.
0˚10˚
40˚
Barcelona
Universidad Literaria
(Rogent, 1863-72)
La Sagrada Familia
(Gaudí, begun 1883)
Zaragoza
Valencia
Seville
monument to Juan de Ribera
(Benlliure, 1895-96)
monument to the
Marqués de Campo
(Benlliure, 1889-1902)
Plaza de Toros
(Monleón, 1850)
monument to
Cervantes (Solá, 1835)
Columbus (Mélida, 1881-85)
Velázquez (Marinas, 1899)
Madrid
expropriation of church properties
for secular building, 1836
Escuela de Arquitectura, 1844
Biblioteca Nacional (Jareño, 1865)
Plaza de Toros (Ayuso, 1874)
Almudena Cathedral (de Cubas, 1883)
Banco de España (Adaro, 1884-91)
Atocha Station (de Palacio, 1889-92)
Lisbon
early 19th-century
urban renewal;
Santa Justa Lift
(Eiffel, 1898-1901)
Funerary
monument
of Columbus
(Mélida, 1892)
Pena Palace
(von Eschwege),
1840-50
Sintra
Oporto
monument to
Ramon de
Pignatelli
(Palao, 1859)
monument to Columbus
(Atché et al, 1882-88)
Ponte Maria Pia
(Eiffel, 1877)
Ebro
Tagus
G
uadalquivir
Duero
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
P
Y
R
E
N
E E S
B
A
L E A R I C I S
S P A I N
F R A N C E
PORTUGAL
2 Architecture and Monumental Art, 1800-1900
major works of architecture
major works of sculpture
N
0
0
150 miles
200 kms
2 AN ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS was founded in
Lisbon in 1836. As a result of Napoleonic
looting, the Galerie Espagnol opened in 1838
in the Louvre, Paris. Spain became an ‘exotic’
tourist mecca. Major French artists who visited
Spain and depicted local scenes were Eugène
Delacroix (1832) and Gustave Doré (1862). In
Seville the Costumbrismo school of genre
painting depicting exotic local customs,
flourished, while Valencia espoused
Impressionism, and Barcelona fostered a
Spanish version of French Symbolist art.
Barcelona. Els Quartre Gats café, founded in 1897,
became a gathering place of the avant-garde in
Barcelona; Picasso had his first show there in 1900.
IBERIAN ARCHITECTURE
In 1758, an earthquake levelled the city of Lisbon.
A comprehensive project for urban renewal
commenced with the plan by Manuel da Maia,
approved in April 1756, for the Baixa district facing
the harbour. The Peña Palace at Sintra, near Lisbon,
designed by a German, Baron Wilhelm von
FRANCISCO GOYA, The Third of May, 1808, 1814.
Responding to the Napoleonic invasion of his
homeland, Goya (1746–1828) recreated in
horrifying detail the vengeance of the French
against mostly innocent civilians following an
uprising in Madrid. Here Goya invented a wholly
modern variation of history painting which may
be called the ‘atrocity picture’. Goya’s modern
mutation puts a conventional religious subject,
‘The Massacre of the Innocents’, into a secular and
contemporary, anonymous and politicized context.
Eschwege, was built between 1840 and 1850.
Inspired by Ludwig II’s Neuschwanstein Palace
in Bavaria, it inaugurated a Portuguese taste
for Wagnerian fantasy.
In Madrid the expropriation of church
properties by the state in 1836 freed up threequarters
of the centre of the capital for secular
rebuilding, administrative buildings and mass
housing. In 1844 the Escuela de Arquitectura,
independent of the Royal Academy of Art, was
founded in Madrid; it declared architecture a
‘technical science’, one advancing modern
technology in the service of pragmatic goals,
especially mass housing. A multi-volume
Monumentos arquitectónicos de España, published in
1859, defined the ‘national artistic identity’.
Giving new prominence to Arabic monuments,
it encouraged historical eclecticism, and a
Neo-Gothic revival.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
234
continued to be the central art school well into
the twentieth century. The most important art
collection in Iberia was in Madrid, where the
Prado was made a public museum of painting
in 1819 (it was originally built, in 1785–1808,
to serve as a museum of natural history). In
Lisbon the Academy of Fine Arts was founded
in 1836, but no figures of international status
emerged. After Goya’s death, a dour and wholly
secular ‘history’ painting predominated in
government commissions; major artists were
Antonio Esquivel (1806–57), Antonio Gisbert
Pérez (1834–1901) and Eduardo Rosales
(1836–73). Later, in Valencia an Impressionisttype
of folklorish genre painting was
popularized by Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923);
in Barcelona a Spanish version of French
Symbolist art was practised by Santiago
Rusiñol (1861–1931), Ramón Casas
(1866–1932) and Joaquim Míro (1873–1940).
Following the precedent set by grandiose
(and profitable) trade-fair ‘international
expositions’ mounted in England and France,
the Universal Exposition of 1888 was staged in
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY was a time of
social unrest and economic upheaval
throughout the Iberian Peninsula, beginning
dramatically with the Napoleonic invasions of
1808–12. Spain’s political impotence led to the
loss of its American colonies – and their trade
– (some 50 percent of all Spanish trade in
1800), starting with Paraguay, in 1811. In 1822,
Brazil seceded from Portugal, precipitating an
economic crisis. The disruptive Carlist Wars in
Spain (1833–76) paralleled the Miguelista
upheavals in Portugal; both involved revolts
against the installation of a female ruler. In
1898, the loss of Cuba and the Philippines to
the United States signalled the end of the
Spanish Empire.
GOYA’S ‘TERRIBLE’ VISION
Against this backdrop of foreign domination
and national debilitation, the culminating
stages of outraged expression attained in the
art of Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
(1746–1828) after 1799 seem astonishing.
Goya’s artistic evolution points to a delayed
reaffirmation of Spanish paradigms of
spontaneous, direct expression and ethical
‘naturalism’, an attitude which seeks to capture
life as it is, without the distortions of idealism.
By his increasing attachment to social
commentary, he returned to that native
tradition which considers painting as a vehicle
for moral instruction as opposed to the
concept of painting for art’s sake. In so doing,
Goya seemed also to have invented modern
art; at least one underlying modernist
conviction – nihilism – propelled much of his
anarchic pessimism, irrationality and anticonventionality.
Goya’s ‘terrible’ vision bears
objective witness and is a precocious parallel
to the best of modern journalism.
SCHOOLS OF PAINTING
Celebrated by visiting Romantic writers and
major French artists – including Victor Hugo,
Washington Irving, Alexandre Dumas, Prosper
Mérimée, Eugène Delacroix and Gustave Doré
– Spain suddenly became an exotic tourist
mecca. The impact of these foreign men of
letters on Spanish visual culture was to
encourage Costumbrismo, genre paintings that
were a studied, anecdotal depiction of native
life and contemporary customs. Major
practitioners were José Domínguez Bécquer
(1810–41), Manuel Cabral Bejarano (1827–91)
and Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer (1833–70).
Outside of the School of Seville, the most
prominent exponent was the Catalan painter
Mariano Fortuny (1838–74).
In Madrid Goya, appointed ‘Principal
Painter to the King’ in 1799, devoted much of
his time to society portraits. He published the
‘underground’ engraving series, the Caprichos, in
1799; another ‘underground’ engraving series,
the Disparates or Proverbios, was only published
posthumously, in 1864. This vision reached an
unprecedented climax in Goya’s cycle of ‘black
paintings’ (c.1820–22) placed in his private
villa, the Quinta del Sordo.
The Fine Arts Academy of San Fernando
in Madrid, given a royal charter in 1744,
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 1800-1900
0˚
40˚
Barcelona
Mataró
Sabadell
Olot
Ripoll
Arenys
Rambla de
Santa Coloma
Corominas
Tarragona
Gerona
Zaragoza
Buñol
Palma
ValenciaAlbacete
Cuenca
Alicante
Alcoy
Murcia
Cartagena
Toledo
Cáceres
Almansa
Castillejo
Talavera
Móstoles
Guadalajara
Jadraque
Brihuega
Segovia
Ezcaray
Aranjuez
Manzanares
Córdoba Úbeda
Jerez
Puerto Real
Gibraltar (to UK)
Melilla (to Spain)
Ceuta (to Spain)
Alcázar de San Juan
Sanchidrián
Salamanca
MadridÁvila
Daimiel
Badajoz
Baeza
Granada
Lorca
Trocadero
Cádiz
Medina del Campo
Burgos
Bilbao
La Cabada
Pamplona
Tolosa
Santander
San Sebastián
Valladolid
Caparroso
Lérida
Tarrasa
Manresa
Reus
Lisbon
Marvão
Santarém
Oporto
El Ferrol
Coimbra
Seville
Palencia
Zamora
Bragança
Liérganes
Oviedo
La Coruña
Ebro
Tagus
Guadalquivir
Duero
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
P Y
R
E
N
E
E S
B A L E A R I C
I S
F R A N C E
S P A I N
A F R I C A
P
O
R
T
U
G
A
L
1802-12 Spanish art
treasures plundered
by French
Delacroix, 1832
Doré, 1862
trade with New World
declines after Brazilian
independence, 1822
exports to England, France
(wine, iron, lead) imports
(manufactured goods)
rise of cotton cloth industry
contributes to 500% increase
in population 1826-87
El Prado made
public museum
of painting, 1819
1 Portable Art, 1800-1900
main railways, 1860
Spanish trade routes
Portuguese trade routes
major industrialized areas
silk production
wool centres
cotton manufacture
chintz
hat-making
royal manufactory
luxury goods
decorative tiles
iron and steel production
arsenals
schools of painting
academies of art
The Peninsular War, 1808-12:
main area of British occupation
main area of French occupation
main area defended by Joseph
Bonaparte against Spanish guerrillas
main area of Spanish
resistance to Bonaparte
major uprisings against French rule
Madrid
Seville
Valencia
Barcelona
Goya principal painter to the king from 1799; secular history
painting (Esquivel, 1806-57; Gisbert Pérez, 1834-1901;
Rosales, 1836-73)
Costumbrismo genre painting (José Domínguez Bécquer,
1810-41; Bejarano, 1827-91; Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer, 1833-70)
Impressionist-type genre painting (Sorolla, 1863-1923)
Costumbrismo genre painting (Fortuny, 1838-74);
Spanish version of Symbolist art (Rusiñol, 1861-1931;
Casas, 1866-1932; Miró, 1873-1949); International Exhibition, 1888;
Avant-garde meetings at Els Quatre Gats Café from 1897
Madrid
Lisbon
Fine Arts Academy of San Fernando, 1744
Academy of Fine Arts, 1836
N
0
0
150 miles
200 kms
1 NAPOLEONIC INVASIONS of the Iberian peninsula
from 1808–12 resulted in a ‘War of Independence’,
commemorated by Goya. Loss of the American
colonies was accompanied by fragmentation in
Spain (Carlist Wars, 1833–76) and the Miguelista
revolts in Portugal. The economy revived with the
rise of the cotton cloth industry in Catalonia. In
1848, the first railway linked Barcelona to Mataró.
From 1826–87, the population of Barcelona rose
500 per cent. In 1898, the loss of Cuba and the
Philippines marked the end of the Spanish Empire.
2 Garibaldi, Nationalism and the Macchiaioli
Kingdom of Sardinia, 1815
territory annexed, 1859
territory annexed, May 1860
territory annexed, Nov 1860
territory annexed, 1866
territory lost to France, 1860
French from 1768, formerly Genoese
Italian border, 1914
Garibaldi’s travels abroad
Garibaldi’s route, 1860
support for Garibaldi from abroad
route of Victor Emanuel, 1860
battle, with date
nationalistic site represented in/decorated with art
ITALY 1800–1900
237
NAPOLEON AS MARS, 1806, by Antonio Canova
(1757–1822). Through an unconventional
deployment of classical formulae, Canova typifies
the emperor’s ambiguous status for Italians.
Napoleon’s colossal scale and heroic posture as
peaceful and victorious ruler is undermined by his
hesitant step and distracted gaze.
10˚
40˚
1859
Magenta, 1859
1859
Naples Salerno
Volturno
Messina
Catania
Palermo
Marsala
Rome
Pescara
Siena
Talamone
Ancona
Ravenna
Modigliana
Turin
Milan
Solferino
Genoa
Pisa
Livorno
Florence
T Y R R H E N I A N
S E A
M
E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
KINGDOM
OF
SARDINIA
PAPAL
STATES
TUSCANY
ROMAGNAPARMA
NICE
SAVOY
LOMBARDY VENETIA
CORSICA
PIEDMONT
M
O
DENA
GENO
A
KING
DOM
OFTHETWOSICILIES
F R A N C E
SWITZERLAND A U S T R O - H U N G A R I A N
E M P I R E
to UK
1854, 1864
to USA
1850, 1853
to S America
1834, 1851
US ships Washington,
Franklin, Oregon transport supplies
to Garibaldi; African-American
slaves arrive to fight with Garibaldi
to Piedmont
1848, 1854
Siege (Borrani, Fanfani)
Sicilian Campaign
(Fattori)
Victor
Emanuel
Monument
Town Hall murals devoted to
Victor Emanuel (Aldi)
Lunettes in the Oratory of
Madonna della Cantone (Lega)
Battle of Solferino
1859 (Meissonier, Yvon)
The 1000 taking
Sicily (Fattori)
Battle of Magenta, 1859
(Bertini, Fattori, Yvon)
Piedmontese Assault on
Madonna della
Scoperta (Fattori)
Death of
Mazzini (Lega)
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
2 THE IMPACT OF ITALIAN unification and
Garibaldi’s central role in this transformation
of Italian cultural and political life cannot
be underestimated. New artistic idioms
and institutions that were enlisted to
express national identity were intimately
linked to the battles and personalities of the
Risorgimento. Garibaldi’s romantic persona
helped create the rhetoric of individualism
and local pride developed by the Macchiaioli,
a group of young artists based in Florence.
PIETRO ALDI (1852–88) Victor
Emanuel II with Garibaldi at the
Gates of Teano, 1886–1891 Town
Hall, Siena. Near Ambrogio
Lorenzetti’s Good and Bad
Government (1337–39), this later
mural decoration memorializes
the Risorgimento’s triumphs,
celebrating Italy’s regions, the
military victories and alliances
leading to reunification.
THE ARTISTIC LEGACY
Direct experience of the achievements of
classical architecture and Palladio’s later rearticulation
of these vocabularies informed the
work of many of the great nineteenth-century
architects, from Sir John Soane to Charles
Barry. New industrial millionaires
commissioned Classical and Renaissance
interiors to house their art collections. In this
way, they cloaked their nouveau riche anxieties in
the cultural authority of these golden ages,
from the shipping magnate Frederick Leyland’s
‘Botticelli Room’ in his London town house to
the Renaissance extravaganza in the AmesWebster
House in Boston, Massachusetts.
Important furniture firms such as the Gerson
Weber Company in Stuttgart or the Bernhard
Ludwig factory in Vienna specialized in
historicist Italianate designs.
Although overshadowed by the Classical
tradition, the art and architecture of late
medieval Italy attracted new attention in the
nineteenth century. The German Nazarenes
emulated idioms and techniques, such as
fresco, favoured by late-medieval Italian artists.
The Victorian aesthetician and supporter of the
Pre-Raphaelites, John Ruskin, championed the
sincerity and virtue of unknown medieval
artisans who created the splendours of Italy’s
cathedrals; they were alternative role models
and antidotes for the slick, soulless paintings
that mimicked Raphael and which he abhorred
on the walls of the Royal Academy in London.
ART OF THE RISORGIMENTO
The importance of earlier masters was
celebrated locally through initiatives such as
the Titian memorial in Venice, but many young
Italian painters sought new subjects and
rhetorics for their art. Before the unification
(see map 2) each of the regions had its own
academy and local art schools; the tuition in
these institutions centred on developing a capo
lavoro, or masterwork, which was the test of
matriculation. A group of young radical
painters, principally from the northern regions
of Italy, rejected such highly finished works and
allegorical subjects, envisioning Italy’s desired
nationhood by representing the events of local,
contemporary life in dramatic sketchy
paintings. Critics coined a resonant name for
this group of young artists who met at the Café
Michelangiolo in Florence, the Macchiaioli. This
name couples macchia a term invoking the
unusual rough touch of their brushwork – often
likened to the vibrant surfaces and colouristic
effects of the Impressionist painters working in
France – and aiolo, a Latin name for the socially
marginal plebeians of Florence. This direct
correspondence between artistic and political
identity reflected the direct involvement of
these young artists in the struggle for
nationhood and egalitarianism embodied in
the figure of Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–82).
Several members of the Macchiaioli group were
wounded veterans of Garibaldi’s fighting force,
known as ‘The 1000’.
Unification inspired artists to portray
unusual themes as well as to attempt the
centralization of exhibitions beginning with the
First National Exhibition in Florence in 1861.
The struggle for nationhood underlies many
works of art: the battle paintings of Giovanni
Fattori (1825–1908); the portraits and
memorials to Victor Emanuel and Garibaldi by
Silvestro Lega (1826–93) and Pietro Aldi
(1852–88); landscapes by Odardo Borrani
(1833–1905) of the post-unification reclaimed
Maremma; and the modern life paintings of
Giuseppe Abbati (1836–68), Telemaco Signorini
(1835–1901), Borrani and Lega which subtly
capture the complexities of visualizing
nationhood and class in this brave new world.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
236
ITALY’S CULTURAL GLORIES, dating from
many eras, were a major attraction to artists
from all over Europe. Art academies
encouraged their students to compete for
scholarships and prizes to travel to Rome to
consolidate their skills by copying Roman
sculpture and the paintings of the Old Masters.
French artists of every aesthetic allegiance
recognized the importance of the Italian
tradition; Corot, Renoir and Rodin as well as
Ingres sketched in the Rome collections and
surrounding campagna. The light and scenery of
ITALY 1800-1900
10˚
40˚
Ferrara
Santa
Croce
sull’Arno
Modigliana
Bologna
Florence
Canova,
Cammuccini, Costa
Abbati,
Cabianca,
Fattori
Café
Michelangiolo
Veduta painters,
Signorini, Turner,
Cooke, Whistler
Fattori
Martelli, Borrani
Livorno
Castiglioncello
Pisa
Rome
Turin
Naples
Pesaro
Milan Venice
Verona
to United
Kingdom:
Signorini
to Paris: Canova, de
Tivoli, Boldini, de Nittis,
Zandomeneghi
from France to School
of David: Robert, Corot,
Ingres, Degas, Renoir,
Rodin, Péladan
from United
Kingdom/USA:
to Naples:
Eastlake,
Anderson,
Rossetti
to Florence:
Holman Hunt,
Leighton,
Burne-Jones,
Powers
to Rome, Royal Academy
Schools: Westmacott, Barry
to Venice: Sargent, Whistler,
Turner, E.W. Cooke, Sickert
to Palladian villas
of N Italy:
Soane, Nash
from Germany:
Nazarenes
Titian memorial
Gilded Salon of Poldi Pezzoli
Palazzo Bagatti Valsecchi
Spalla statues,
Palazzo Stupinigi
Palazzo Imperiale
Tiber
Arno
Po
T Y R R H E N I A N S E A
A
D
R
I
A
T
I
C
S
E
A
M
E D I T E R
R
A
N
E
A
N
S
E
A
CORSICA
ELBA
N I C E
S AV O Y P I E D M O N T
L O M B A R D Y
V E N E T I A
R O M A G N A
T U S C A N Y
P A P A L
S T A T E S
PA R M A
M
A
R
EM
M
A
G
E
N
O
A
M
O
DENA
FRANCE
S W I T Z E R L A N D
A U S T R O - H U N G A R I A N
E M P I R E
K I N G D O
M
O
F
T
H
E
T
W
O
SICILIES
K I N G D O M
O F
S A R D I N I A
( K I N G D O M
O F S A R D I N I A )
Abbati
Veduta painters
Martelli,
Signorini
Tivoli, Fattori
Benvenuti
Borrani
d’Ancona
Banti
Lega
Boldini
Zandomeneghi
CabiancaAppiani
to USA:
Ames-Webster House,
Boston 1890-1900
to London:
Botticelli Room for Leyland,
49 Prince’s Gate
to Paris: Canova’s Napoleon statuary
to Vienna:
Bernhard Ludwig
furniture factory
to Stuttgart:
Garson & Weber
Company
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 Italy, 1800-1900
influx of artists/patrons
Italian artists’ travels outside Italy
birthplace of Italian artist
major arts school/exhibition
Classical and Renaissance revival
Classical and Renaissance revival outside Italy
landscape site/artists’ colony
1 THE ENDURING CULTURAL authority of the Roman
Empire and the Renaissance ensured that the
Italian peninsula maintained its centrality in the
artistic life of the nineteenth century. Artists,
designers, collectors, writers and tourists from
around the globe flocked to Italy to experience
the importance of classical and humanist
aesthetics and art production at first hand.
nineteenth-century Italy inspired both local
and international artists to create a distinctive
idiom of landscape painting known as veduta
which was particularly attentive to the play of
light and water and the picturesque festivals
and architecture of Venice and Naples.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND SOUTHEAST EUROPE 1800–1900
239
specialist architectural commission and many of
them were designed by a single Viennese firm,
Fellner and Hellmer. New large town halls and
museums likewise made a considerable impact.
New green public areas were neatly clipped and
adorned with countless statues, mostly of rulers.
Bulgaria alone, after 1878, is said to have
erected over 400 public monuments. All this was
in stark contrast to the traditional look of the
towns of the region: low, small-scale, dense and
mostly very irregular, with each property tending
(in Hungarian lands) to close in on itself.
NATIONALIST COUNTER-CURRENTS
Paradoxically, the great wave of ‘progress’ during
the later nineteenth century was met with a
counter-movement that re-emphasized precisely
some of those factors progress was meant to
overcome. The key was a new kind of nationalism.
It held that borders should be determined by
ethnicity and language. In the Turkish areas,
ethnic and religious minorities had long enjoyed
a certain amount of autonomy. In parts of the
Austro-Hungarian empire – particularly in the
Slav provinces – dominance by the German or
Hungarian-speaking populations began to be
strongly resented. Czechoslovakia and
Yugoslavia were the eventual political outcomes
of these movements after World War I.
After 1867 the Austrian Empire tried to
confront these problems with tolerance and
Hungary was given complete cultural autonomy.
After the World Fairs of 1867 (Paris) and
especially of 1873 in Vienna, the diversity of
nationalities began to be seen as an asset, but
within the strictly limited field of ethnic crafts. A
further curious twist occurred in the 1860s. The
Austrian state decided to ‘reform’ the artistic
aspects of most of the major manufactures, based
on what it saw as the model of the schools and
the museum at South Kensington in London.
Schools and museums for ‘art and industry’ were
created whose first aim was to bring up standards
to the international styles of Classical and
Renaissance design. Indeed, the vast majority
of new town buildings followed these precepts.
But by the 1880s a major function of the
regional museums had become that of collecting
ethnic, ‘folk’, or ‘peasant’ art – mainly textiles,
TULIP CHEST (1910), by the Hungarian István Csók. It
represents the love of local and national folk art
that developed in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, here shown not in actual folk
art but in a fantasy on folk objects, with the main
emphasis being on brilliant colour.
2 IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY, the spread of
‘Westernization’ led to the development of a
counter-movement. While wary of the political
nationalisms of the smaller ethnicities, the Austrian
and Hungarian governments strongly supported
the diversity of ethnic applied arts.
30°25°20°15°10°
50°
45°
40°
35°
1911
19111859
1896
1877
1891
1878
1874
1874
1896 1872
1863
1895
1873
1885
1882
1875
1913
1879
1888
1888
1844
1893
RUTHENIANS
CARINTHIA
CORTINA
BOSNIA
CARNIOLA
NÉMETEMÉR
ROMANIANS
SZÉKELYFÖLD
EGERLAND
SALZKAM
M
ER
G
U
T
MATYSZOK
BUKOVINA
KALOTASZEG
TYROL
DALM
ATIA
Prague Cracow
Zakopane
Lemberg
Vienna
Höritz
Graz
Kimpolung
Agram
Sarajevo
Cetinje
Laibach
Linz
Salzburg
Innsbruck
Bozen
Brünn
Reichenberg
Troppau
Czernowitz
Budapest
Belgrade
Bucharest
Sofia
Marosvásárhely
Sepsiszentgyörgy
Hermannstadt
Koloszvár
Grosswardein
Temesvár
Dniester
Danube
BLACK
SEA
I O N I A N
S E A
A
E
G
EA
N
SEA
A
D
R
I
A
T
I
C
S
E
A
A U S T R O - H U N G A R I A N
E M P I R E
SERBIA
BULGARIA
GREECE
SICILY
CORSICA
CRETE
ROMANIA
R U S S I A N
E M P I R E
MONTE-
NEGRO
O
T
T
O
M
A
N
E M
P I R E
I
T
A
L
Y
Bulgarian/Russian Style
State Educational
Workshop 1888
Pottery Class 1908
Ceramics Workshop in
Fine Art School 1906
Home Arts
Assoc, 1885
Gödöllö
Workshops 1902
Huzul Style
Polish Górale Style
Hungarian
National
Style
Romanian (Wallachian/
Moldavian) Style
Maria
Theresa Style
Slovakian Style
Czech Renaissance
Neo-Byzantine Style
Greek
Style
Byzantine
Style
Bosnian
Style
Tornjow 1900
Pomeranzeff 1904
Antonescu 1906
Mincu 1890
Ziller 1890
von Klenze 1830
von Hansen 1859
Gärtner 1835
Ivackvic
Ilkic
˘ ˘
´
Glauka 1867
Feszl 1859
Lechner 1892
Komor/Jacob 1902
Márkus 1902
Lajta 1908
Kós 1908
Jurkovic 1896˘
Witkiewicz
1892
Wiehl
1883
Vejrich 1887
Ullmann 1866
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
2 Nationalism and Neo-Vernacularism
region/ethnic group of folk art/folk customs
museums of applied art/trade/national or
regional museum, with date of foundation/building
Crafts Training School/courses
revivalist movement,
mainly in architecture
revivalist designer, with date
art and crafts workshop, with date
borders c.1900
languages
German
Hungarian
Italian
Ladin
Romanian
Czech
Polish
Slovak
Ukrainian
Slovene
Croat
Serbian
Bosnian
Macedonian
Bulgarian
Albanian
Greek
Turkish
1834
1866
TYROL
but also metalwork, ceramics and leatherwork.
The designs were usually the opposite of
Renaissance naturalism and illusionism, or
Classical ‘refinement’. They presented abstract,
often crude patterns with motifs held to be
characteristic of the ethnicity of the producers.
Above all it was the lively colours that
delighted late Victorian connoisseurs. Soon
the interest of a few academics and designers
turned into active state and commercial
support for the old production methods.
It ran parallel with a Europe-wide interest
in philological studies of linguistic roots,
painters’ new interpretations of local
landscapes and musicians’ interest in folksong.
By 1900 young and ambitious designers
were taking up ‘folk’ motifs. Arts and Crafts
groups, to some extent based on English
models, started workshops emphasizing ‘work
by hand’. Even architecture began to adopt folk
styles. In some cases this approximated,
paradoxically, to international Art Nouveau and
even Vienna Secession styles.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
238
type. They were focused on, or lined by, imposing
buildings, three to five stories high, richly
decorated in the Renaissance style, serving the
commerce of the towns. Invariably there was a
grand theatre or opera house. This was a
THE COMPLEX CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY of
Southeast Europe, from the long-standing
perspective of western and central Europe,
showed a decline in civilization from northwest
to southeast. At the ‘bottom’ end the Ottoman
Turks personified the threat from unbelievers
and barbarians. At the ‘top’ were the German
lands of Austria.
During the nineteenth century Austria
separated itself from Germany, and its ruler, as
Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary,
became the head of a new ‘double monarchy’,
with respective capital cities, Vienna and
Budapest. For much of the century, this state
was trying to expand its hold over an area
where numerous smaller ethnic groups were on
the rise. As a result of this complex history, we
inherit today both urban and ‘folk’ images,
through which, by 1914, the initial perception
of the lowering cultural standards towards the
east had already been somewhat moderated.
URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Until about 1850 Vienna and Constantinople
were the only really large cities in the region.
In 1857 an imperial fiat abolished the ring of
fortifications surrounding the old inner city of
Vienna. In its place arose the celebrated
Ringstrasse, essentially a boulevard. This
entailed the rebuilding of many of the city’s,
and thus the empire’s, major public places. The
relative openness of Vienna’s later nineteenthcentury
developments contrasted strongly with
the square grid layout and dense assembly of
public buildings that characterized the plan of
Athens under Otto, Greece’s Bavarian king
(r.1832-62).
By 1900 a considerable number of towns
throughout the Balkans had over 100,000
inhabitants. Most significantly, a great many of
them had acquired a ‘European’ look, largely
based on the Viennese model, with large squares,
and straight, wide streets, often of the boulevard
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND
SOUTHEAST EUROPE 1800-1900
THE BUCHAREST ATHENAEUM (1886–8) by the French
architect P. L. Albert Galleron is Bucharest’s most
splendid building of the period. Built to serve the
educated public as a concert hall, gallery and
library, it represents the craving for western
European splendour in Southeast Europe in the
late nineteenth century, typically manifest in
a very late Neoclassical style.
10° 15° 20° 25°
30° 35°
50°
45°
40°
35°
Prague Cracow
Lemberg
Vienna
Graz
Agram
Sarajevo
Trieste
Laibach
Linz
Salzburg
Innsbruck
Brünn
Reichenberg
Troppau
Czernowitz
JassyBudapest
Belgrade
Bucharest
Athens
Sofia
Constantinople
Marosvásárhely
Vizaknafürdo´´
Constanza
Teplitz
Bielsko
Krynica
Kaschau
Klausenburg
Hermannstadt
Herkulesfürdö
Debreczen
Grosswardein
Neusatz
Temesvár Kronstadt
Arad
Szabadka
Sopron
Baden bei Wien
Klagenfurt
Karlsbad
Franzensbad
Marienbad
Szeged
Pécs
Szombathely
Pöstyén
Meran
Kecskemét
Fiume
Bad Gastein
Pressburg
Ilidzeˇ
Dniester
Danube
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
A
E
G
EA
N
SEA
A
D
R
I
A
T
I
C
S
E
A
B
L
A C K
S E A
A U S T R O - H U N G A R I A N
E M P I R E
G E R M A N
E M P I R E
CROATIA
BOHEMIA
MORAVIA GALICIA
SERBIA
1878
AUSTRIA
HUNGARY
BULGARIA
1878
E. RUMELIA
1878
GREECE
CRETE
1898
ROMANIA
1878
BOSNIA-
HERZEGOVINA
MONTE-
NEGRO
1878
DALM
ATIA
CARNIOLA
I
T
A
L
Y
R
U
S
S
I
A
N
E
M
P
I R E
O
T
T
O
M
A
N
E M
P I R E
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
1 The Spread of the ‘European‘ Town
border of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, 1878
Austrian Crown Lands
Hungary and dependencies
former Ottoman provinces,
with date of autonomy
major national/provincial capitals
other national/provincial capitals
towns with substantial new street
layouts (Ringstrasse)
new theatre and/or opera house
theatre and/or opera house by Ferdinand
Fellner and Hermann Hellmer
fine art museum
applied art/ethnographic or trade museum
‘national‘ or general regional museum
town hall
central government/parliament building
watering place
1 THE ‘EUROPEAN TOWN’ PLAN that spread to Southeast
Europe in the nineteenth century was characterized by
a regular grand town layout and a more or less
complete set of public buildings. The vast majority of
those buildings were in the Classical or Renaissance
styles and thus in a tradition that was essentially the
same throughout Europe. From around 1900,
however, many Hungarian public buildings resorted to
a new folksy national style.
10°
10°
20°
30°
0° 10° 20° 30° 40° 50°
ARABIC
SOMALI
ARABIC
ARABIC
ARABICARABIC
TUAREG
ARABIC & BERBER
ARABIC
ARABIC
ARABIC
BERBER
Sokoto
Kano
Katsina
Agades
Gao
Timbuktu
Jenne
Walata
Jerusalem
Suez
Jedda
Mecca
Sawakin
Qusayr
Medina
Cairo
Alexandria
Tunis
Qayrawan
Algiers
Rabat
Casablanca
Marrakesh
Tangier
Fez
Tlemcen
Tripoli
Sana
Khartoum
Nile
WhiteNile
BlueNile
Niger
S
ene
gal
L.Chad
L. Tana
R
E
D
S
EA
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
S A H A R A
AURES MTS
KABYLIA MTS
TIBESTI MTS
A NA T O L I A
CHOKE
MTS
AMHARA
PLATEAU
JABAL
AKHDAR
A R A B I A N
D E S E R T
RIF
MIDDLE ATLAS
H I G H A T L A S
A N T I - A T L A S
SINAI
CYPRUS
CRETE
SICILY
JERBA
A F R I C A
A R A B I A
GREECE
S P A I N
pilgrimage centre for
Jews, Christians and
Muslims
Kiswa (cover) for Kaba at Mecca
manufactured in Cairo and sent annually
with pilgrimage caravan
Al-Azhar
Mosque
Zaytuna
Mosque
Qarawiyyin
Mosque
camel and goat hair tents
rise of steamship
in 19th century
leads to demise
of Saharan
trade routes
Berber artistic traditions
continue in mountains of
Morocco and Algeria
imports of European manufactures during 19th century
until 1830
1 Muslim North Africa
mountain regions
desert
fertile land
extent of Ottoman Empire and
cultural influence c.1800
Coptic Christians
Ethiopian Church
trade routes
early 19th-century pilgrimage
routes to Mecca
major Islamic school
centre of manuscript
production
silk textile and embroidery centre
urban pottery centre
rural pottery centre
metalworking centre
leather-working centre
language spokenARABIC
N
0 500 miles
0 750 kms
NORTH AFRICA 1800–1900
241
3 CAIRO BECAME A DYNAMIC CULTURAL CENTRE during the
nineteenth century and the hub of the Arab cultural revival.
The city expanded rapidly, especially late in the century, and
new suburbs were constructed. Along with European styles
of architecture, Islamic revival architecture in a historicizing
manner was adopted. Cairo was the first city in the Arab
world to witness the emergence of a conservation
movement (Committee for the Conservation of Monuments
of Arab Art, 1881). It saw the founding of the Museum of
Arab Art in 1884 and the opening of the School of Fine Art
in 1908.
10°
10°
20°
30°
0° 10° 20° 30° 50°40°
SuezCairo
Alexandria
Tunis
Algiers
Fort Napoléon
Rabat
Tangier
Fez
Tripoli
(under international
administration 1912)
Niger
Sen
eg
al
Nile
L. Chad
M EDI T E R R A NEAN S E A
R
ED
SEA
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
S A H A R A
A R A B I A N
D E S E R T
MOROCCO
SPANISH
MOROCCO
A L G E R I A
RIO
DE
ORO
F R E N C H W E S T A F R I C AGAMBIA
PORTUGUESE
GUINEA
SIERRA
LEONE
LIBERIA
GOLD
COAST
TOGO
N I G E R I A
BELGIAN (CONGO)
CAM
EROONS
FRENCH
EQUATORIAL
AFRICA
FRENCH
SOMALILAND
BRITISH
SOMALILAND
TUNISIA
L I B Y A
E G Y P T
ANGLO-EGYPTIAN
SUDAN ERITREA
ITALIAN
SO
M
ALILAND
E T H I O P I A
1881 École des BeauxArts
created by French
1867 School of Arts and
Crafts opened by French
1894 Annual Tunisian Salon
inaugurated by French
1912 First Tunisian artist
exhibits at Salon
1868 School of Applied Art opens
1880s Museum of Arab Art established
1891 European Orientalist painters hold
first exhibition of painting in Egypt at
the Opera House
1908 School of Fine Arts opens
Suez Canal opened 1869
2 The Colonial Impact by 1914
areas of colonial control by 1914:
Spanish
French
British
Belgian
N
750 miles0
0 1000 kms
Italian
Portuguese
German
MOSQUE OF MUHAMMAD ‘ALI in
Cairo, Egypt, 1828–57. The large
mosque was erected by
Muhammad ‘Ali (r.1805-48) in a
prominent location on the
Citadel. Built in a style inspired
by the Ottoman mosques of
Istanbul, it marks a departure
from earlier traditions of
mosque architecture in Cairo.
European artists developed a style of painting that has
come to be called ‘Orientalist’ and which embodied a
heavily romanticized view of the
Arab world.
Under European influence archaeological exploration
was initiated at a range of sites. Indeed, the French
invasion of Egypt in 1798 (which they held until 1801)
marked the emergence of Egyptology as a new field of
enquiry. By the late nineteenth century various
departments of antiquities had been established. This
prompted concerns over the conservation of artefacts; in
Cairo, for example, the Committee for the Conservation
of the Monuments of Arab Art was created in 1881.
Museums were founded to preserve Ancient Egyptian,
Classical, Phoenician, Byzantine and Islamic remains. In
Cairo the Museum of Arab Art was established in 1884,
and the Coptic Museum in 1908.
URBAN DEVELOPMENT
In the French colonies European-style quarters were
created within or beside many Arab cities. Between 1830
and 1870 the medina of Algiers was partly destroyed by the
French and then rebuilt. New public buildings were
constructed in Neoclassical or neo-Islamic idioms
(pastiches of Arab styles). Even before colonization in
late nineteenth-century Morocco, rich merchants and
officials were building palatial houses in the major cities,
using imported European materials and designs.
In Egypt modernization began under Muhammad
’Ali (r.1805–48), and during the reign of Khedive Isma‘il
a new European-style urban environment emerged in
Cairo, implemented by the engineer and statesman ‘Ali
Mubarak. Public buildings and apartments were
constructed to the west of the Arab city in styles similar
to those found in Paris or Rome, and Isma‘il moved his
residence from the Citadel to the ’Abdin Palace (built
1863–74). Transport was facilitated by the construction of
wide boulevards, tramlines and railways, and in 1869 the
Suez Canal opened. Some buildings such as the royal
mosque of Al-Rifa‘i (built 1869–1912) were constructed in
a new neo-Islamic idiom that alluded to the architecture
of the Mamluks (r.1250–1517); the reliance on foreign
expertise for the design and construction of this mosque
was extensive.
Jazira Palace
1863-69;
first example
of Islamic
revivalist
architecture
in Cairo
Azbakiya
Garden
Opera House
opened 1869;
first exhibition of
paintings by European
Orientalist painters 1891;
destroyed by fire 1972
Qasr al-Nil
Palace 1863;
destroyed
1947
Mosque of
Al-Rifa‘i
1869-1912;
designed by
Herz (Austrian)
Citadel
place of
manufacture
of Kiswa
Mosque of
Muhammad ‘Ali
1828-57;
Ottoman style
‘Abdin Palace
1863-74;
designed by
del Rosso (French)
Museum of Arab
Art opened 1903;
designed by
Manescalo
(Italian)
Khan Al-Khalili
Bazaar
inlaid metalwork
bought by
Europeans
Orientalist
painters 1891
destroyed by
fire 1972
Nile
JAZIRAIS
RAWDAISLAND
Ismailiya
Canal
filled after
1897
Abu’l-Ala
Bridge 1912
Zamalek
Bridge
1912
Qasr al-Nil
Bridge
1871-72;
rebuilt 1931
Abbas
Bridge 1907;
rebuilt 1966-67
Al-Jala
Bridge 1870s;
rebuilt 1914
Imbaba Railway
Bridge 1890-91;
rebuilt 1925
CanalAl-Khalijfilledafter1897
Canal
Al-Khalij
railway to Heliopolis
Ism
ailiya Canal
1
2
3
4
5
AL-ABBASIYA
originally quarters
for military
personnel:
Khedive Isma‘il
founds School of
Irrigation and
Architecture 1866
BULAQ
state printing
press 1822;
workshops
GREEK
QUARTER
NORTHERN
CEMETERY
SOUTHERN
CEMETERY
FUSTAT
(OLD CAIRO)
GIZA
MUQATTAM
SPUR
COPTIC & JEWISH
QUARTERS
EUROPEAN
QUARTER
settled by
Europeans
settled by
Europeans
settled by Copts
founded by Empain
(Belgian) 1906
1
2
3
4
5
N
1000 metres0
0 800 yards
2 WITH EUROPEAN COLONIZATION, many artistic traditions were dislocated or came to an end.
East–west trade routes were interrupted, and there was a decline of trans-Saharan trade. In
cities, European architectural styles were introduced and indigenous craft traditions were
undermined by European imports. Western notions of fine art also began to be disseminated,
and Europeans started to document the indigenous architecture and arts they encountered.
3 Cairo c.1800-1914
Old City
(before 1863)
additions made
by Khedive Isma‘il
(1863-79)
Khedive Isma‘il’s
planned new
arteries for Old City
Suburbs developed
in early 20th century
Zamalek 1905
Shubra 1898
Heliopolis 1905
Maadi 1907
Garden City 1905
Streets
Shubra Street
Clot Bay Street 1872
al-Sikka al-Jadida 1845
Abdul Aziz Street 1872
Muhammad ‘Ali Square
1
2
3
4
5
1
2
3
4
5
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
240
NORTH AFRICA 1800-1900
BY THE EARLY nineteenth century the arts
of North Africa had a well-established,
continuous tradition (partly because of
widespread Ottoman influences), with
substantial regional variations. Over the course
of the century these cultures were transformed
by European colonial expansion. Algeria, which
was invaded by the French as early as 1830, was
the most intensively colonized. With the arrival
of European settlers (including workers from
Spain, Italy and Greece), land was purchased or
appropriated while indigenous craft traditions
were undermined by the importation of lowcost
European manufactures. French also
began to be widely spoken.
Sure of their belief in the European ‘fineart’
traditions of painting and sculpture, for
which they could find no evidence, the
colonists saw the indigenous North African
culture as being one of decline. Despite an
admiration for craft techniques, ‘real’ Arab
cultural achievements were, for them, located
firmly in the medieval past. Such attitudes
helped justify colonial expansion.
INDIGENOUS ART TRADITIONS
Despite the colonial presence across North
Africa some indigenous art traditions
continued, especially in the remote
mountainous regions, such as the Kabilya and
Aurès mountains in Algeria and the Rif and
Atlas mountains in Morocco. In such areas,
there were distinctive Berber traditions in
architecture, textiles, jewellery and other arts.
Further south in the Sahara Desert, where
nomadic lifestyles prevailed, European
influences were minimal, although there were
profound changes in overland trade patterns
because of the rise of the steamship and
colonial prohibitions against slavery, which
passed along these routes.
The Islamic schools and the network of
pilgrimage routes to Mecca helped to bind
together the traditional cultures. There were
also long-established centres for the
production of manuscripts, silks, pottery,
metalwork and leatherwork. These continued to
operate, though in some cases they adapted
their products to suit European tastes – most
notably Cairo began to produce Mamluk-style
metalwork from the latter part of the century.
The major centres of manuscript production
were closely associated with Islamic schools,
calligraphy being the most esteemed art in the
Muslim world. Rural pottery, made for local
consumption, remained largely untouched, but
the more sophisticated and refined urban
pottery was again affected by European tastes.
COLONIAL ART INSTITUTIONS
A number of institutes and schools opened in
the nineteenth century to promote indigenous
arts and crafts, but equally significant was the
promotion of Western notions of ‘fine’ art. In
Algeria in 1851 the Société des Beaux-Arts was
founded to encourage art in the European
community. In 1894 an annual salon was
inaugurated by the French in Tunis, although it
was not until 1912 that a Tunisian artist
exhibited there. By 1908 a School of Fine art was
opened by Prince Yusuf Kamal to train Egyptian
painters and sculptors in Western techniques.
1 BEFORE EUROPEAN COLONIZATION North Africa as far as
the Moroccan-Algerian border remained within the
sphere of Ottoman cultural influences. Artistic
traditions showed a high degree of continuity, with
distinct regional variations. Following the French
occupation (1798–1801), however, a modernizing
Egypt under Muhammad ‘Ali (r.1805–48) began to
challenge the political and cultural hegemony of
Istanbul, and by the late 19th century Cairo had
emerged as the dominant centre in
the region.
POLYCHROME BOWL from
Fez, Morocco, midnineteenth
century.
The tin-glazed
pottery manufactured
in Morocco in the
nineteenth century
continued a long and
relatively conservative
ceramic tradition. This
polychrome bowl on
a high foot is typical
of the urban pottery
manufactured in Fez. The bowl has an
interior design with a central rosette
and radiating ‘tortoise’ motifs.
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 1800–1900
243
10˚ 0˚ 10˚ 20˚ 30˚ 40˚
20˚
10˚
0˚
10˚
20˚
30˚
L. Victoria
L. Chad
L. Tanganyika
Senegal
N
iger
Benue
C
ongo
Za
m
bezi
I N D I A N
O C E A N
RED
SEA
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
S A H A R A
BENIN
DAHOMEY
LUNDA
LOANGO
KUBA
LOZI
SOKOTO
CALIPHATE
TUKOLOR
EMPIRE
FUTA
JALLON
ASANTE
SAMORI
A F R I C A
c.1850-1900, art objects
removed by travellers,
missionaries, government
officials taken to natural
history museums in Europe
1897 Over 1000 art objects
(cast copper alloy, carved ivory)
looted from Benin king’s palace:
taken to England; dispersed among
British and European museums
1894 French defeat
kingdom of Dahomey: royal
statues, thrones, leadership
insignia taken to Paris
1830-1900, over 400
carved elephant ivory tusks
made by Kongo artists for
European traders, travellers
and missionaries
Post Anglo-Asante wars
of 1874 and 1900, cast gold
objects, sword ornaments,
pipes, bracelets, beads,
jewellery enter English
private/public collections
N
0
0
400 miles
500 kms
2 Masquerades and Traffic in Art
distribution of masquerades
movement of war booty and tourist art
positions and to help effect policy. From the
regalia of kings and courtiers to palace
architecture and planning, leaders had the
power and wealth to commission and maintain
art forms that projected their position and
stature. Art elevated, framed, dramatized,
embellished and otherwise expanded the
image of leaders across the continent. Wealthy
leaders were able to command rich, durable
and rare materials: ivory, cast copper alloys,
gold, silver and imported goods. Similarly, they
employed the finest artists, often moving them
from conquered areas to their own capitals.
ART FOR RELIGION
On a local level, masks and figural sculptures,
and sometimes more practical objects such as
stools, were used as symbols or
representations of ancestors, deities and
spirits. Unlike Leadership arts, this symbolic
art tended to be confined to the forest and
savannah regions of west and central Africa,
but was also found among Bantu-speakers in
some eastern and southern regions, mostly
among settled agricultural peoples. A large
majority of both figural sculptures and masks
were associated with religious institutions,
many of which also supported leaders. Wooden
figures and sometimes small copper alloy
castings were also used by diviners and fortune
tellers. Much figural sculpture now in western
museums and private collections was originally
housed in shrines, and served as a point of
contact between this world and that
of varied supernatural beings.
ART IN EVERYDAY LIFE
A third category constitutes furniture and
household goods (pottery, gourds and
baskets), implements (spoons, staffs, dance
wands) and personal possessions such as
cloth, neckrests and snuff containers. These
objects are often of a modest size and made
of common, readily available materials.
Included in this category is a vast array of
textiles, as well as non-woven fabric such
as barkcloth.
Perhaps the most widely distributed
objects on the African continent are beads
made of wood, stone, shell and, in earlier
times, bone, as well as glass beads of
European manufacture. They were used by
common people, while rarer specimens
served as markers of status for elites. There
are no known African peoples who did not
focus their artistic sensibility on personal
decoration, often marshalling quite spectacular
effects for special occasions. Pastoral and
nomadic peoples in particular were masters of
personal adornment.
INFLUENCES FROM ABROAD
Some of the above-mentioned objects were
more or less strongly affected by ideas from
beyond the locales in which they were made.
Islamic design ideas can be found in
architecture (Asante, Fulani or Fulbe),
metalwork and gourd decoration, textile
patterns, leatherwork and charm-making.
Christianity is ancient enough in Ethiopia to be
considered both traditional and indigenous,
but this is not the case for churches built along
the west African coast in the nineteenth
century. Much secular influence from Europe,
in dress styles and object types, assimilated
motifs, materials and even manufacturing
techniques (such as carpentry as opposed to
monoxylous – single piece – carving) can also
be found wherever there was sustained contact
with European strangers.
FIGURE OF THE ‘CIVILIZING CULTURAL HERO’, Chibunda
Ilunga, Angola, before 1850, 39 cm (15 ins) high,
made of wood, hair, cotton fibre and bead (Museum
für Volkerkunde, Berlin). This legendary Luba hunter
is credited with leading political and technical
advances for Chowke, Lunda and other Central
African peoples around 1600. He exemplifies
internally inspired historical change.
3 ALIEN RULE in about 1890. The Berlin Conference
(1884–5) partitioned much of the continent,
establishing ‘national’ boundaries without reference
to the distribution and borders of ethnic groups
and/or indigenous polities.
20˚ 30˚ 40˚ 50˚
20˚
10˚
10˚
20˚
30˚
40˚
0˚
20˚ 10˚ 10˚0˚
SENEGAL
GAMBIA
PORT.
GUINEA
SIERRA
LEONE
LIBERIA
TOGO
ANGOLA
GOLD
COAST
CAPE
COLONY
MOZAMBIQUE
MADAGASCAR
ETHIOPIA
SOMALILANDA F R I C A
N
0
0
800 miles
1000 kms
3 Alien Rule, c.1890
c.1830
Portuguese
British
French
c.1890
Portuguese
British
French
German
Spanish
Italian
Congo Free State
2 EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY EUROPEAN INFLUENCE on art
and architecture was minimal and confined to a few
forest zones and what later became the Republic of
South Africa. Yet the effects of slavery were
significant if often indirect – for example, in the
formation and artistic character of the kingdom of
Dahomey, and in the increasingly coastal orientation
of strong West African kingdoms. European beads
were very widely distributed in the nineteenth
century, but for the most part they were a wholly
indigenous form of decoration. During the final years
of the century wars were fought to subjugate African
peoples, and in some cases substantial numbers of art
objects were exported to Europe.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
242
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY saw many
changes in sub-Saharan Africa wrought by the
increasingly insistent presence of Europeans. The
slave trade persisted during the first half of the
century and Islam continued its conversions. On
the other hand, traditional religious practices
and political structures accounted for extensive
patronage of artists and craftspeople in all
media, and the century was very active
artistically. Apart from the European arts and
crafts in Southern Africa, the wholesale influence
of Europe on the arts was relatively slight.
The export of art from the continent to Europe,
however, began towards the end of the century, in
some cases as war booty, in others, adding to the
collections of museums of natural history
(pointedly not art museums), successors to the
‘curiosity cabinets’ formed by nobility and the
wealthy since the Renaissance. The following
three main categories of nineteenth-century art
may be discerned.
ART FOR AFRICAN LEADERS
Virtually all African kings and chiefs, as well as
religious leaders (often secular and spiritual
leadership merge in the same person), invoked
myriad arts to legitimize and reinforce their
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 1800-1900
20˚ 10˚ 0˚ 10˚ 20˚ 30˚ 40˚ 50˚
20˚
10˚
0˚
10˚
20˚
30˚
Freetown
Bobo-Dioulasso
Korhogo
Bondoukou
Sikasso
Segu
Monrovia
Kumasi
Mombasa
Kasongo
Kirundi
Mtowa
Nyangwe
Zanzibar
Bagamoyo
KilwaLuanda
Benguela
Port Natal (Durban)
Wadi Halfa
Axum
Magdala
GondarSokoto
Gao
Agadez
Yendi
Elmina
Salaga
Cape Coast
Jenne
Timbuktu
St Louis
Zaria
Abuja
Yola
San Salvador
Lourenço Marques
Sofala
Mozambique
Mussumba
Cabinda
Idah
Aboh
Brass
Bida
Kano
Duala
Loango
Old Calabar
Arochukwu WhiteNile
B
lueNile
At
bara
Nile
Benue
Gambia
Niger
Oka
vango
Congo
Uele
Zambezi
Limpopo
Orange River
Vaal
L. Tana
L. Rudolf
L. Chad
L. Victoria
L. Tanganyika
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
I N D I A N
O C E A N
R
E
D
SEA
KALAHARI
DESERT
S
A
H A R A
FUTA
JALON
M O O
R S
T U A R E G
D
AMARGAM
MARAD
I
T U A R E G
M E N D E
BAULE
G A L L A
MONGO
OVAMBO
H E R E R O
LWENA
LAMBA
VENDA
PEDI
X H O S A
S A N
SIDAM
O
MASAI KIKUYU
S
O
M
A
LI
1835
NDEBELE
NGWATO
GAZA
SWAZI
ZULU
LESOTHO
GRIQUA
CHOKWE
LOZI
MBAILUNDU
HUAMBO
KIAKA
KAKONDA
NDULU
BIHE
GALANGI
KATANGA BEMBA
NGONI
NGONI
NGONI
NGONI
TEKE
LUNDA
KUBA
LUBAYAKA
KASANJE
KANIOK
ANKOLE
RWANDA
BURUNDI
KASONGO
KALUNDE
BUGANDA
MIRAMBO
NGONI
1848
KIKONJA
BUNY
ORO
KAMBA
WAGERA
TIGRE
SHOA
WALLO
LASTA
GOJJAM
AMHARA
KORDOFAN
SENAR
BAHR EL GHAZAL
GRASSLAND
KINGDOMS
FADA NGOURMA
BORNU
WADAI DARFUR
TENKODOGO
DAHOMEY BENIN
YORUBA
STATES
MAMPRUSI
DAGOMBA BORGU
SOKOTO CALIPHATE
FUTA TORO
CALAMA
BAMBUK
SAMORI
(c.1895)
SAMORI
(c.1895)
BONDU
FANTE
ASANTE
WALO
CAYOR W
OLOF
TUKOLOR
EMPIRE
WAHIGUYA
WAGADUGU
DONGOLA
SIMIEN
BUTANA
CHEWA
MADAGA
S
C
A
R
A F R I C A
A R A B I A
N
0
0
400 miles
500 kms
1 Africa in the Nineteenth Century
kingdom/state
settlement/kingdom of Ngoni peoples
people
Swahili/Arab trading post
XHOSA
1b Islam in W Africa
Islamized areas of Africa
mosque
Niger
Ni
ger
SenegalSene
gal
Gamb
ia
Gambia
L. Chad
S A H A R A
1a Masking in W Africa
distribution of masking
3-part horizontal masks
WOOD STOOL AND FOOT REST covered with African and
European beads and cowrie shells. Commissioned
for King Njoya of Bamum, Cameroon, c.1885,
Museum für Volkerkunde, Berlin. Only highranking
or wealthy chiefs and kings could
command such elaborate thrones.
1 THE WORLD OF AFRICAN ART that came to be known in the
middle decades of the twentieth century was firmly
established in the nineteenth. Forest-region states and
decentralized peoples created numerous figures and masks,
as well as elaborate personal decoration, jewellery, domestic
objects and myriad architectural forms. Both Islam and
Christianity made further inroads, but earlier, more traditional
arts were still widely distributed. Peoples living beyond the
forests and savannahs of West and Central Africa – in eastern
and southern areas – had fewer sculptural forms.
WEST ASIA 1800–1900
245
region after 1842 when petroleum wells were
sunk at Baku on the Caspian Sea, known since
antiquity for its oil seeps. The British, anxious to
maintain quick communications with India, ran
telegraph wires across the Ottoman Empire in
the 1850s and 1860s. Major General Sir Robert
Murdoch-Smith continued the project across
Persia, incidentally acquiring large collections of
Persian art for the South Kensington (later
Victoria and Albert) and Royal Scottish
museums. Other Europeans built railway lines
across the Balkans to Istanbul, and the Ottomans
began work on a rail system that would link
Istanbul to Baghdad, Damascus, Jerusalem and
the Hejaz in western Arabia, which they hoped
would facilitate the pilgrimage to Mecca and
assert their authority over the region. The project
was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I.
ART LIFE
Traditional craft techniques were supplanted as
local bazaars were flooded with European
manufactured goods, ranging from Manchester
cottons and aniline dyes to Russian glass and
paper. Carpet-weaving, for example, was
transformed from a traditional village and
nomad craft to a factory-driven enterprise –
rugged floor-coverings were made in standard
sizes to fit European and American drawingrooms.
The Manchester firm of Ziegler and Co
went so far as to supply woollen yarns dyed in
appropriate shades to weavers working around
Sultanabad. Many traditional craftsmen in
Istanbul, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Cairo turned
to making souvenir replicas for the tourist trade.
Impressed with the technical superiority of
Europe, the Ottomans sent students to study
abroad. Krikor Balyan, the first Ottoman
architect to study in Europe, returned to design
the Nusretiye Mosque (1826) and the Selimiye
Barracks (1828) in Istanbul; his son Garabed
designed the Dolmabahce Palace (1853)
following European models. Sultan Abdülaziz
(r.1861–76) was the first Ottoman ruler to visit
Western Europe, attending the 1867 Exposition
Universelle in Paris. He was soon followed by
the Qajar shah Nasir al-Din (r.1848–96) who
toured Europe in 1873, visiting the Vienna
World Fair. These visits led to the introduction
of European skills and techniques to West Asia.
The Ottoman and Qajar armies, for example,
were reorganized along European lines, and
European-style schools of architecture and art
were established in Tehran (1851 - Polytechnic/
Dar al-Funun) and Istanbul (1883 - Imperial
Academy of Fine Arts; 1884 - College of Civil
Engineering). Photography, which had been
introduced by European travellers, was taken up
by both the court (Nasir al-Din was an avid
photographer) and professionals, such as the
Russian-Armenian Antoine Sevruguin, who
established studios in Tabriz and Teheran.
30˚ 40˚ 50˚ 60˚
20˚
30˚
40˚
Gordium
Pergamum
Bogazköy˘
Yazilikaya
Ani
Ur
Khorsabad
Babylon
Nineveh
Eridu
Rosetta
Nippur
Bisitun
Lagash (Telloh)
Susa
Uruk (Warka)
Petra
Jericho
Nimrud
Balawat
KuyunjikCarchemish
Thebes
Saqqara
Abu Simbel
Troy
Ephesus
N
ile
Euphra
tes
Tigris
Danube
L. Van
L. Urmia
A R A B I A N
S E A
R
ED
SEA
B L A C K S E A
PE
RSIAN
GULF
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
CA
SPIANSEA
ELBURZ MTS
ZAGROS
M
TS
TAURUS MTS
E G Y P T
A R A B I A
ANATOLIA
B A L K A N S
P E R S I A
MESOPOTAM
IA
Napoleon’s
expedition
to Egypt
1798-1801
British expedition to
Palestine to explore
Biblical sites, 1801
Russians survey Golden
Horde sites, 1850s
1870
1889
1882 1847
1843
1878
1887
1845
1878-82
1835
1808
1808
1850
1850
1850
1853
1850-52
1884-87; 1897
1882
1878-81
1869
1812
1878
1869
1799
1850
1817
1813
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
2 Archaeological Excavations
Sites excavated by British,
with dates
Sites excavated by French,
with dates
Sites excavated by Swiss,
with dates
Sites excavated by Americans,
with dates
Sites excavated by Russians,
with dates
Sites excavated by Germans,
with dates
2 SPURRED BY AN INTEREST in
ancient and biblical history,
Europeans and Americans
began excavating ancient
Egyptian and Near Eastern
sites in the nineteenth
century. They brought back
many of the finds which were
prominently displayed in
European national museums
Only at the very end of the
period were museums
established in the major
cities of the region in an
attempt to staunch the
flow of archaeological
material from the area.
REDISCOVERING THE PAST
Following Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in
1798–1800, European interest in ancient Egypt
had waxed, particularly after the Frenchman Jean
François Champollion deciphered the Rosetta
Stone in 1822. Similarly, after the English
Orientalist and historian Sir Henry Rawlinson
unravelled the trilingual (Old Persian, Elamite
and Babylonian) inscription from Bisutun in
Persia and unlocked the secrets of the cuneiform
script, interest in ancient Near Eastern
antiquities flourished and ancient sites, such as
Nimrud and Nineveh, began to be excavated.
Museums were founded to house these
antiquities. A museum of Arab art was envisioned
for Cairo as early as 1869 but not realized until
1880; the Egyptian Museum (for antiquities)
was the brainchild of Auguste Mariette (d.1881),
although it did not open in its present location
until 1902. In 1876 Sultan Abdülhamid
established the Imperial Ottoman Museum at
the Çinili Kiosk in the Topkapi Palace under the
directorship of the European-trained Orientalist
painter Osman Hamdi. In 1891 the Ottomans
founded an archaeological museum in Istanbul,
partly in an effort to stem the traffic in illegal
antiquities. The Kavkazsky Muzei, the precursor to
the Georgian national museums of art and
archaeology, was founded at Tiflis (Tbilisi) in the
1870s, achieving an international reputation
under its director, Countess P. S. Uvarova.
THE DOLMABAHCE PALACE in
Istanbul, designed by
Garabed Balyan in 1853. In
contrast to traditional Islamic
palaces, which were enclosed
behind high, blank walls, the
Europeanizing Dolmabahce
Palace was built on a riverbank
site overlooking the
Bosphorus with classicizing
and luxurious details,
including a grand staircase
with rock-crystal balustrades.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
244
LOCAL POWERS IN WEST ASIA came in
contact and conflict with the superior
military and economic might of Western Europe
and Russia as the region was increasingly
marginalized by the oceanic economic system
and the Industrial Revolution. The main powers
in the region were the Ottomans (who continued
to rule from Istanbul until 1922), the Qajars in
Persia (1799–1924), who made Tehran their
capital, and the Russians, who expanded
southwards into the Crimea, the Caucasus, and
Transcaucasia, as well as Central Asia at the
expense of the Ottomans, the Qajars and the
Uzbek Khans. Russia locked horns with the
Ottomans in the Crimean War (1854–56), and the
Russians lost Sebastopol, their major port on the
Black Sea, to the British. The Ottomans
themselves lost much territory in Eastern Europe,
the Balkans, the Levant and Iraq. Egypt became
virtually independent under Muhammad ‘Ali
(r.1805–48) in the aftermath of Napoleon’s
abortive expedition to Egypt (1798–1800), and
much of Arabia fell under the sway of
conservative Wahhabi reformers. The Russians
annexed Georgia in 1801, extending the Russian
frontier westwards by the Treaty of Gulistan
(1813) and the Treaty of Turkmanchay (1828).
Persia, blocked on the west and north by the
Ottomans and the Russians, turned its attention
to the east, invading what is now Afghanistan.
EUROPEAN ECONOMIC INVOLVEMENT
Although the Qajars strove to maintain Persia’s
territorial integrity, both they and the Ottomans
became increasingly dependent on European
capital. European involvement increased in the
WEST ASIA 1800-1900
1 THE EUROPEAN POWERS encroached on the lands of
West Asia in the nineteenth century bringing, new
technologies such as telegraphs and railways and
new institutions, including museums and schools of
art and architecture. Europeans returned home
with ‘Oriental’ furnishings, including carpets,
souvenirs and works of art for their own museum
collections. Railways and telegraph lines made
access to and control of the region easier.
30˚ 40˚ 50˚ 60˚
10˚
20˚
40˚
30˚
Adrianople (Edirne)
Bursa
Kula
Mugla˘ Konya
Adana
Kirsehir
Sebastopol
¸
Kayseri
Sivas
Samsun
Trebizond
Batumi
Erzurum
Kars
Erivan
Lenkoran
Ardabil
Teheran
Qum
Isfahan
Sultanabad
Basra
Baghdad
Shiraz
Mecca
Medina
Kerman
Birjand
Meshed
Kermanshah
Damascus
Aleppo
Salyany
Surakhany
Karagashli
BakuChonderesk
Tabriz
Bijar
Seichur
Tiflis
Grozny
Derbent
Diyarbakir
Zonguldak
Antalya Mersin
Jerusalem
Cairo
Alexandria
Istanbul
Çanakkale
Balikesir
Bergama
Smyrna
Melas
N
ile
Euph
rates
Tigris
Danube
Amu
Darya
Syr Darya
I N D I A N
O C E A N
A R A B I A N
S E A
GULF OF ADEN
R
E
D
S
E
A
ARAL
SEA
B L A C K S E A
PE
RSIAN
GULF
M
E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
CASPIAN
SEA
ELBU RZ MTS
ZAGROS
M
TS
IRANIAN
PLATEAU
TAURUS MTS
ITA
LY
R U S S I A N E M P I R EA U S T R O H
U N G A R I A N
E M P I R E
L I B Y A
E G Y P T
ANATOLIA
SERBIA
GREECE
ROMANIA CRIMEA
BULGARIA
ALBANIA
O T T O M
A N
E M
P I R
E
H
EJA
Z
N E J D O M A N
KUWAIT
P E R S I A
KHANATE
OF
KHIVA
KAZAKHSTAN
KHANATE
OF
BUKHARA
AFGHANISTAN
B R I T I S H
I N D I A
A D E N
HADHRAMAUT
cotton
Carpets
Carpets
N
1 Empires under Threat, 1800-1900
Ottoman Empire, 1800
Ottoman Empire, 1913
Persian Empire, 1913
Russian Empire, 1913
strategic railways, 1880-1910
regional exports
museums
art schools
carpet-making centres
centres of the souvenir trade
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
OIL PAINTING OF THE QAJAR RULER Fath Ali Shah.
Intended as a royal gift to Napoleon,
this oil painting was presented by Fath Ali
Shah to the French envoy Amédée Jaubert
on July 11, 1806. Attributed to the court
painter Mihr Ali, it shows the ruler impassive,
rigidly posed on a chair-throne, and bedecked with
jewels, including the Kayani crown. It is the state
image, par excellence.
2 Archaeological Surveys
Sites excavated by:
Sven Hedin (Sweden), 1895-99, 1899-1902
Dmitry Klementz (Russia) 1898
N. I.Veselovsky (Russia) 1885, 1895
Aurel Stein (Great Britain), 1900-1901
R. Pumpelly (US) 1904
expedition of Aurel Stein, 1900-1901
CENTRAL ASIA 1800–1900
247
2 DECIPHERMENT BY A. F. R. HOERNLEIN in 1884 of
ancient Buddhist documents, found near Kucha,
led to a series of archaeological expeditions to
eastern Turkestan. Explorers, some of them spies
for their European governments, uncovered the
remains of many sites that had once thrived along
the Silk Road, the transcontinental network of
trade routes connecting ancient China, India and
the Mediterranean.
WOOL, COTTON AND SILK
textiles and carpets
were the mainstay of
the Central Asian
economy. Though
sometimes made by
nomads for their own
use, others were
typically sold in urban
bazaars, whose small
shops had wooden
doors which could be
closed at night. The
Russian photographer
Sergei Mikhailovich
Prokudin-Gorskii took
some of the earliest
colour photographs of
the region, including
this one of a
Samarkand merchant
in 1911.
coverlets of cotton with brightly coloured birds
and flowers (suzani) for their dowries.
Urban weavers, particularly Jews, made
spectacular silk ikats, in which resist-dyed
warps create colourful kaleidoscopic designs.
Other traditional crafts included silver jewellery
encrusted with turquoise and carnelian or
coral. Metalsmiths and potters repeated
traditional forms and designs, but local
production was increasingly replaced by
European and Far Eastern export wares.
CULTURAL INCURSIONS
Orientalist painters accompanied the Russian
army, and travellers compiled albums of
photographs, drawings and watercolours of
exotic eastern locales. The Russians began
excavation in the western half of the region to
explore its pre-Islamic history. In 1885 the
Imperial Archaeological Commission
appointed N. I. Veselovsky to excavate old
Samarkand, and the Turkestan Archaeological
Society was created in 1893. Other national
archaeological surveys soon followed.
Western explorers, some also spies, made
expeditions to the eastern half of the region in
search of ancient Buddhist remains along what
90˚80˚70˚60˚
40˚
30˚
Kashgar
Samarkand
Turkestan (Yasi)
Anau
Merv
Khotan
Yotkan
Tawakkel
Dandan-Oilik
Keriya
Niya
Endere
Cherchen
Yarkand
Aksu
Kucha
Karashahr
Loulan
Urumchi
TurfanYarkhoto
Astana Karakhoja
Hami
Peshawar
Chitral
Gilgit
Srinagar Leh
B R I T I S H
I N D I A
T I B E T
S I N K I A N G
QING
CHINA
R U S S I A
M
O
N
G
O
LIA
T I E N
S H
A
N
P
A
M
I
R
S
K
A
RA
KORAM
K U N L U N
H I N D U
K U S H
L O P N O R
TARIM BASIN
TA K L A M A K A N
Yarkand
Tarim
I
li
Cherchen
Khotan
Issyk Kul
Lake Balkhash
1899-1902
1901
1885, 1895
Russians 1898-99, 1906
1904
1904
1901
Niya site
1901
1898
1895-6
1898
1898
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
became the centrepieces of Russian and
European museums. The inlaid wooden doors
from the Gur-i Mir, Timur’s tomb in Samarkand,
went to the Hermitage, along with many other
objects from the area. Turkoman tribal weaving
began to be studied seriously in late
nineteenth-century Russia, and the collection
of Turkmen rugs amassed by General A. A.
Bogolyubov, Russian governor of Transcaspia,
formed the core of the Ethnographic Museum
in St Petersburg. The imperial armoury in the
Moscow Kremlin acquired a rich collection of
clothes, carpets and jewellery. Silk ikats
collected by the English tea-planter Robert
Shaw during a visit to Yarkand in 1868 are now
in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Henri
Moser, who accompanied the Prince of
Wittgenstein to Central Asia in 1882–3, was
presented with 140 robes of honour and 17 sets
of horse trappings and harnesses; his collection
is now in the Historisches Museum, Bern.
Ferdinand von Richtoven had named the ‘Silk
Road’. In the 1880s local treasure hunters
found several ancient Buddhist manuscripts
near Kucha, and their decipherment led to a
series of Russian, Swedish, British, German,
French and Japanese expeditions.
Sven Hedin (1865–1952) set out from
Tehran via Meshed, Merv, Bukhara, Samarkand,
to Kashgar, whence he made expeditions to the
Takla Makan. During his second expedition to
East Turkestan and Tibet, he discovered Loulan
and explored the Gobi Desert. More famous
was Aurel Stein, who made his first expedition
from British India to Central Asia in 1900–01. In
1898 the Russian Dmitry Klementz set out with
his botanist wife to explore the area around
Turfan.
Some historical and archaeological
museums were created in the region, for
example at Ashkhabad, Samarkand and
Tashkent, but many of the finest objects
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
246
CENTRAL ASIA WAS TORN apart
as imperial rivalries invaded
the region in the ‘Great Game’. The
British gradually expanded their
presence up the Ganges from India
against the Russians, who had
been spreading south since the midsixteenth
century. Following the loss of
Sebastopol in the Crimean War, the Russians
embarked on a 22-year offensive (1864–86) in
Central Asia, conquering the khanates of
Bukhara (1868), Kokand (1871) and Khiva
(1873). The 1881 Battle of Geoktepe, in which
15,000 Tekke Turkmen were slaughtered, and
the 1884 capture of Merv established Russian
pre-eminence from the Caspian Sea to the Tien
Shan. The Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1887
set the Amu River as the boundary between the
Russian-dominated territory of Central Asia
and the British client state of Afghanistan.
ECONOMIC EXPANSION
The Russians made Tashkent, historically the
least important of all the oases in western
Central Asia, the capital of Russian Turkestan. They laid out a new town modelled on
European patterns with European-style
buildings and residential quarters. Tashkent
was linked by rail to other cities, as the
Transcaspian Railway ensured Russian control
over, and exploitation of, the region.
Russian demand for Central Asian cotton
had increased during the American Civil War
(1860–65), and the Transcaspian Railway
facilitated cotton shipments to factories in
European Russia and Europe. In the 1880s the
CENTRAL ASIA 1800-1900
60˚ 70˚ 80˚
30˚
40˚
Baku
Krasnovodsk
Kizil Arvat
Geoktepe Ashkhabad
KaakhaAnau
Dushak
Meshed
Ferghana
Bairam-Ali
Kushka Panjdeh
Herat
Mazar-i Sharif
Kunduz
Kabul
Sarakhs
Charjui
Bukhara
Samarkand
Shahrisabz
Jizak
Khojent
Kokand
TashkentChimkent
Khiva
Turkestan (Yasi)
Aralsk
Fort Shevchenko
Perovsk
Kazanlinsk
Chulak
Andijan
Osh
Kashgar
Merv
A F G H A N I S T A N
P E R S I A C H I N A
K I R G H I Z
U Z B E K S
T
E
K
K
E
T U R K M E N
KHANATE
OF KHIVA
KHANATE OF
KOKAND
KHANATE OF BUKHARA
HINDU
KUSH
PA M I R S
K A R A
K U M
K Y Z Y L K U M
TIEN SHAN
K
O
P
ET
D
A
G
H
Indus
AmuDar
ya
SyrDarya
Atrek
Issyk Kul
Lake Balkhash
ARAL
SEA
CASPIANSEA
(1876)
(1896)
(1899)
1846
1869
1881
1873
1847
1859
1851
1865
1868
1885
1881
1886
1897
1888
1895
c1900
export
ofCotton
to China
to India
to Persian Gulf
and Teheran
1 The Russian Conquest of Central Asia, 1800-1900
Russian campaigns, 1853-71
Russian settlement or conquest, with dates
Russian railways, with dates of construction
railway station
centre of textile production
carpet market
museum
trade route
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
ROBE OF RESIST-DYED silk and
cotton ikat, late nineteenthcentury
Bukhara. Red and
yellow stylized fruits appear
on a blue and white
chequered ground. The
garment is trimmed with
needlebraid borders and lined in Russian
printed cloth. Many Central Asian Jews
specialized in weaving spectacular ikat silks, with
bright colours and bold patterns created by resistdyeing
the warps before weaving. The fabrics
were typically tailored into large robes
or kaftans. The centre of production was the
Ferghana Valley, roughly equivalent to the
khanate of Kokand.
Russians introduced improved long-staple
American strains of cotton and expanded
irrigation in the Ferghana Valley and the
middle reaches of the Syr River. By the
twentieth century cotton provided more than
half of Russian Turkestan’s agricultural income.
Textiles made of cotton, wool or silk were
the other major export. Carpets, though
marketed in urban bazaars, were traditionally
made by nomads, who also made small
saddlebags, door covers and tent bands.
Weavers combined undyed yarns with others
dyed bright red with madder; they favoured
geometric designs, often characterized by an
octagonal emblem known as a gol. As carpetweaving
was transformed by mass production,
European aniline dyes were introduced and
traditional compositions compressed.
Nomadic women also embroidered large
1 THE RUSSIAN CONQUEST OF CENTRAL ASIA 1800–1900.
The Russians moved south in the second half of the
nineteenth century, conquering the khanates of
Khiva, Kokand and Bukhara and establishing
political and economic control over Central Asia,
from their newly built capital at Tashkent.
They developed the production of cotton which
they made the mainstay of the economy,
exporting it to European factories along newly
constructed railways.
SOUTH ASIA 1800–1900
249
2 AFTER 1857 INDIA BECAME part of the British
Empire and while nationalist movements
proliferated, more Indians were Westernized.
Calcutta was the centre of culture and trade.
Calcutta presses rolled out art prints as well as
Bengali literature and English magazines and
newspapers. Anglo-Indian architecture spread
across the country creating the impression of
wealth and ingenuity.
COMPANY ART: A Groom with Horse and Carriage,
Shakykh Muhammad Amir, c.1840–50, gouache on
paper. Displaced Indian artists learned Western
techniques of shading and perspective to find
employment with the East India Company. Some
were commissioned to paint family scenes and
homesteads by foreigners who kept the art
as mementoes or sent it to friends and relatives.
65° 70° 75° 80° 85° 90°
80˚75˚70˚
10˚
15˚
20˚
25˚
30˚
35˚
I
I
I
Delhi
Panipat
Surat
Baroda
Bombay
Kolhapur
Lahore
Simla
Agra
Raniganj
Lucknow
Fatehpur
Rawalpindi
Jalandhar
Aligarh
Allahabad
Benares
Mithila
Calcutta
Ajmer
Nathadwara
Shahpur
Poona
Hyderabad
Aurangabad
Ajanta
Pondicherry
Mysore
Goa
Madurai
Trincomalee
Kandy
Trinchinopoly
Madras
Puri
Jaipur
KhurjaIndus
Ravi
Jamu
na
Sutlej
Jh
elum
Ch
enab
Gan
ges
Narmada
Godavari
Krishna
Brahmaputra
A R A B I A N
S E A
BAY O F
B E N G A L
I N D I A N
O C E A N
H
I
M
A
L
A
Y A S
WESTERNGHATS
E A
S
T
E
R
N
G
H
ATS
K A S H M I R
N E P A L
P U N J A B
KUMAUN
B I H A R
A S S A M
B E N G A L
O R I S S A
S I N D
C U T C H
G U J A R AT
M Y S O R E
COORG
COCHIN
CEYLON
TRAVANCORE
R A J P U TA N A
N I Z A M ’ S
D O M I N I O N S
BAHAWALPUR
NORTH-WESTERNPROVIN
CES
HOLKAR
OUDH
UTTAR
PRADESH
REWA
MALWA
BHOPAL
N A G P U R
BERAR
(from 1857)
Ravi Varma (1848-1906)
First independent,
gentleman-artist of India
N
0
0
300 miles
150 kms
2 India, 1857-1900
British territory, 1857
Anglo-Indian architecture
(Indo-Saracenic)
Anglo-Indian architecture
(Syncretic European)
art presses/book production
cotton mills
Grand Trunk Road
folk art:
painted cloth banners
Warli wall art
other mud wall art
export products:
raw cotton
indigo
opium
tea
blue pottery
Bidri ware (inlaid metal)
glass bangles
I
European civil and military personnel,
constructed with army barracks behind an open
parade ground. Pre-mid-century public
buildings and personal residences, intended to
promote the grandeur of the Raj and show off
individual wealth and status, were often
Neoclassical – modelled on British prototypes.
After the Uprising of 1857 when the Company
was replaced by the British Raj (1858), urban
architecture became recognizably hybrid, as
Indo-Saracenic (of Islamic-Syrian origin) style
took precedence. Laxmi Vilas Palace, Baroda
and the Victoria Terminus, Mumbai (Bombay)
are among the best examples of this native
Indian category, while Government House and
the Marble Palace, both in Calcutta, represent
the imported Neoclassical. Though modest, the
domestic bungalow (a rustic Bengali-style hut
with high ceilings and other European
adaptations) may be the most noteworthy
architectural innovation of the Raj.
THE REVIVAL OF INDIAN ART
Alarmed by the erosion of native craft and
decorative arts, the British began to establish
art schools to improve native taste and revive
the industrial and applied arts. Based on the
industrial arts curriculum practised at London’s
South Kensington School of Art, painting and
sculpture courses were not a priority and were
often omitted at government art schools in
India. Plagued by a conflict between fine and
applied art, the art-school dilemma is yet to be
resolved. The growth of Art Societies – Calcutta
Art Society, founded in 1831, was the first –
eventually benefited native artists after years of
exclusion from exhibitions and social events.
As upper- and middle-class Indian society
was being Westernized, its notion of art and
the artist was changing. While the upper
classes bought European oil paintings on
canvas, art that hung on walls or sculpture that
was intended to decorate house and garden
were new concepts. Indian artists were
apprenticed to learn the trade and worked in
karkhanas (group workshops, like an atelier) for
an exclusive patron (royalty or gentry). The
small-size paintings they produced were kept in
leather containers or placed in a muraqqa
(bound like a book) to be hand-held and
viewed at close range. If Company Art was an
initial break from the karkhana, the first
independent Indian ‘gentleman artist’ could
come only from wealth and royalty.
Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906) belonged to
the royal family of Travancore. He learned to
paint by watching European artists at court and
travelled around India earning fame and
lucrative commissions. By the turn of the
century his work was hailed as the renaissance
in Indian art. Varma painted familiar subjects –
mythology and Indian literature – in the
Western academic tradition and had oleograph
reproductions made for mass consumption.
Nevertheless, by the time of his death, the
rising tide of Indian nationalism rejected his
Western style in favour of a new, more spiritual,
Oriental approach to painting.
The ethnic and religious diversity that
comprises Indian culture of this period reflects
upheaval and compromise. The Sikh religious
centre at Amritsar is a living museum of
distinctive art and architecture. The Jains have
recorded their ancient religious literature on
brilliantly painted palm-leaf manuscripts.
Nothing is lost from India’s past.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
248
studies and other surveys. To accommodate
the foreign employer, Indian artists, from
hereditary painting families and those newly
inducted, learned techniques of illusionism –
Western perspective and shading.
As Company towns grew, native artists
painted family scenes and homesteads for
foreign residents, who also bought picturesque
scenes of India to send to friends and family
back home. While the languishing courts in
Rajasthan, the Punjab Hills and at Hyderabad
continued to produce Indian miniature painting
(referred to as ‘provincial’ to distinguish it from
the highly refined painting of the seventeenthand
eighteenth-century Mughal and Hindu
courts), a style of Indo-European painting
called ‘Company Art’, evolved and flourished in
cities under British domination. Provenance
and style have distinguished a large body of
these Indo-European paintings from southern
India, eastern and upper India, northern and
western India, even Nepal, Burma, Sri Lanka
and Malacca.
COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE
European and Indo-European architecture was
not the invention of the East India Company. In
the seventeenth century the Portuguese
erected Mannerist- and Baroque-style churches
in Goa and created a blended Indo-Portuguese
form. However, while Portuguese influence was
geographically concentrated, British-inspired
architecture spread throughout India.
Cantonments, the hub of Company towns and
cities, constituted a segregated community of
BY 1800 THE BRITISH EAST INDIA Company
was firmly entrenched in India. The
Company exported textile goods (cotton and
silk) as well as foodstuffs (sugar cane, tea,
coffee, rice, spices) and indigo. It contributed
to the Opium Wars by exporting quantities of
Indian opium to China. Oddly, the Indian
cotton trade was nearly obliterated by cheap
imports from Britain’s Lancashire mills. While
Surat, Madras, Bombay and Calcutta were the
primary Company seaports and major cities,
Calcutta became the capital and undisputed
cultural centre. Kalighat Pat, a style of painting
that was a syncretic blend of Bengali folk and
Western realism, was produced and sold at the
Kali temple on the outskirts of urban Calcutta,
epitomizing the ingenuity of local artists in a
socially and economically compromised
climate. Ironically, the Calcutta fine-art print
industry, so greatly influenced by Kalighat art,
caused the demise of that folk tradition by the
end of the 1930s. In addition to the print
industry, Kalighat had an impact on other art
movements, notably that of the Modernist
painter, Jamini Roy (1887–1972).
COMPANY ART
European artists (amateur and professional)
had been travelling the breadth of India since
the 1780s, painting scenic landscapes, Hindu
and Mughal architecture and making sketches
and watercolours of the various ethnic groups,
trades and castes. Most were freelance artists,
but the more famous were commissioned to
paint nawabs’ and rajas’ portraits in oil on
canvas. A number of British artists made
etchings and aquatints in Calcutta studios
and later in London. The Company needed
artists to map the country, make ethnographic
SOUTH ASIA 1800-1900
65° 70° 75° 80° 85° 90°
90˚85˚80˚75˚
10˚
15˚
20˚
30˚
25˚
35˚
I
I
I en
en
en
en
en
Delhi
Surat
Nasik
Ellora
Karkala
Nagamangala
Durgi
Allagadda
Bhuvaneswar
Konarka
Puri
Bombay
Salsette
Elephanta
Jodhpur
Nathdwara
Multan
Amritsar
Lahore
Jaipur
Gwalior
Agra
Mathura Lucknow
Allahabad Benares
Bharhut
Sanchi
Chitor
Faizabad
Patna
Murshidabad
Calcutta
Kalighat
Dacca
NagpurAjanta
Aurangabad
Bagh
Ajmer
Broach
Ahmadabad
Poona
Aihole
Malabar
Goa
Divar
Karle
Amaravati
Ahmadnagar
Hyderabad
Masulipatam
Madras
Mailapur
Mahabalipuram
Pondicherry
Chidambaram
Srirangam
Negapatan
Madurai
Chettinad Tanjore
Sigiriya
Kandy
Cochin
Colombo
Calicut
Quilon
Coorg
Trichinopoly
Seringapatam
Bangalore
Mysore
Indus
Ravi
Jamuna
Sutlej
Jh
elum
Ch
enab
Ganges
Narmada
Godavari
Krishna
Brahmaputra
A R A B I A N
S E A
BAY
O F
B E N G A L
I N D I A N O C E A N
H
I M A L A Y A S
WESTERNGHATS
E A
S
T
E
R
N
GHATS
K A S H M I R
N E P A LO
U D H
P U N J A B
KANGRA
G A N D H A R A
SHEKHAWATI
B I H A R
A S S A M
B E N G A L
O R I S S A
S I N D
G U J A R AT
KUTCH
G O A
MYSORE
CEYLON
TRAVANCORE
KERALA
R A J P U T S TAT E S
MARATHA
CONFEDERACY
NIZAM’S
DOMINIONS
CARNATIC
first railway, 1834
Calcutta Mechanics'
Institution and
School of Arts, 1839;
School of Art, 1854
Mayo School
of Art, 1875
Madras School
of Arts, 1850
JJ School of
Art, 1856
export products:
quality cloth and yarn
low-quality cloth
raw cotton
silk piece goods
jute
indigo
opium
sugar cane
rice
tea
coffee
spices
stone carving
carved timber work
copper/brass forming, casting
Bidri ware (inlaid metal)
enamelled jewellery
gold/inlaid, gem jewellery
N
0
0
300 miles
150 kms
I
1 India, 1800-1857
British territory, 1805
historic site
folk art
East India Company
painting centre
native patronage centre
photography centre
British government art school,
with date of foundation
major sea port
Anglo-Indian architecture
(Neoclassical)
Anglo-Indian architecture
(Syncretic European)
en
1 THE BRITISH EAST INDIA COMPANY expanded their
interests and land holdings in India which fostered
trade with the home country and the Far East.
Imported British cotton cloth almost ruined Indian
cloth production and export of opium to China
contributed to the Opium Wars. As Company cities
proliferated and grew, displaced artists learnt
Western techniques to make maps, geological
surveys and ethnographic studies. The British
government created art schools to instill Western
taste and revive the applied arts.
KALIGHAT PAINTING: The Tarakeshwar Murder, artist
unknown, c.1875, watercolour and silver on paper.
Folk artists from Bengal gathered at the Kali
temple in Calcutta. The syncretic folk and Western
watercolour style met the demands of the mass
pilgrim market. Subject-matter focused on
mythology, but artists also drew from the local
social-political milieu, particularly life around the
temple, local prostitutes, exotic Europeans and
scandals, such as the Tarakeshwar murder. This
painting is part of a series in which a husband
murdered his wife when he discovered that she had
an adulterous affair with a Hindu mahant (abbott
of a monastic foundation).
CHINA AND TIBET 1800–1900
251
companies, electric plants, telegraph
companies, iron mines and foundries and
Western schools were founded at this time.
Such engines of modernity were unevenly
distributed, existing primarily in the Treaty
Ports and along their connecting routes.
Chinese intellectuals such as Kang Youwei
(1858–1927) sought to reconcile traditional
Chinese thought with the need for
modernization by retaining and rethinking
China’s intellectual history while embracing
Western contributions to knowledge, especially
in science and technology.
THE VISUAL ARTS IN CHINA
Visual production in nineteenth-century China
was similarly informed by indigenous tradition
and imported modernity. Localized production
of traditional arts continued to flourish
throughout the empire, especially in county,
prefectural and provincial seats. A number of
sites continued to have an empire-wide
reputation for specialized artistic production,
such as ceramics from Jingdezhen, Dehua,
Longquan and Yixing, and paintings from
Suzhou and Yangzhou. In the Treaty Ports,
Western techniques for the representation and
reproduction of images, including single-point
perspective and colourism, lithography and
photography, challenged traditional modes of
making images, as did exposure to new
materials, especially oil-paint. A new interest in
colour, shading and perspective is found in the
works of members of the so-called Shanghai
School, for example, Ren Xiong (1820–57).
The introduction of photography to China by
foreigners, for example, Felice Beato (1820–1907)
and John Thompson (1837–1921), documented
China’s social and political conditions and
challenged established traditional Chinese
notions of realism and representation articulated
in classical Chinese painting theory.
Photography also advanced Western imperial
ideology, while recording and disseminating
knowledge of China abroad. Cinema was also
introduced to China through foreign interests
in Shanghai in 1896 by a representative of the
Lumière brothers. Early viewing of cinema in
China was limited to the Treaty Ports, where it
co-existed together with traditional forms of
spectacular entertainment such as shadow
puppetry, acrobatics, juggling, and magic.
SELF-PORTRAIT by Ren Xiong (1820–57) epitomizes
the intellectual tensions of nineteenth-century
China. The poetic inscription recounts a dialogue
between the artist and his image (as reflected in a
mirror) that probes questions of moral and ethical
conduct, and the value of classical Chinese learning
in the modern world. Ren represents the
contradictions of the era by contrasting a Westerninfluenced
realistic depiction of Ren’s body with
the traditional, calligraphic rendering of his robes.
2 SHANGHAI was the richest and most populous of
China’s Treaty Ports. Foreign extraterritorial
rights created the foreign concession areas,
distinct from the old Chinese city. Western
expatriates in Shanghai recreated their native
visual cultures in the construction and decoration
of governmental and commercial buildings,
schools, churches, clubs and houses. Tea houses,
artists’ studios, and antique dealers catered to
Chinese interested in the visual arts; in contrast,
expatriates replicated the emergent museum
culture of their homelands by founding ‘modern’
musems in Shanghai at this time.
In the second half of the nineteenth
century, China’s media culture, previously
dependent on woodblock printing, with some
mid-Qing experiments with metal-plate
engraving, was transformed by the Western
technology of lithography, and Western-style
printed books and newspapers were produced.
The development of an alternative, nontraditionally
Chinese media culture is evident,
for example, in the advertisement and review of
imported movies in the new newspapers, and
in the turn-of-the-century filming of Chinese
street life.
ART IN THE TREATY PORTS
In the Treaty Ports, traditional Chinese
architectural and social forms were articulated
within walled Chinese cities. Western and
hybrid Sino-European architectural and social
practices – including clothing styles –
transformed extramural suburbs into small
approximations of Western cities. Commercial,
administrative, religious and residential
structures were built for expatriate residents.
To furnish the interiors of these buildings,
Western-style paintings, stained glass,
furniture, and other decorative arts were locally
produced. Techniques for their manufacture
were taught to the Chinese, for example, in
Shanghai at the Jesuit-run Tushanwan Arts and
Crafts Centre in the Xujiawei suburb.
The new visual forms of modern life in
the Treaty Ports were underscored by the
foundation of museums. China’s first museum,
the Shanghai Museum of Natural History, was
founded in 1868 by Father Pierre Heude in
Xujiawei, Shanghai; in 1874 the Northern
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society founded
its museum, which became the Shanghai
Museum of Art. Establishment of museums
meant that objects were on public view under
scientific conditions, as opposed to the
teahouses, restaurants, antique and curio
dealers, and elite private gatherings of
traditional China.
2 Shanghai after the Opium Wars
private clubs schools
consulates hotels
public utilities museums
gardens and parks Chinese temple
Christian churches and missions
Chinese government offices
English and American business
Foreign concessions, 1843, 1848, 1899
French concessions, 1849, 1861
public lands, 1863, 1899
SC
P
P
P
S
S
S
S
S
S
C
C
Bubbling Well
Cemetery
St John‘s
College
Old
Cemetery
Anglo Chinese
CollegeShanghai Public School
12
2
3
1
4
9
5
13
14
15
16
18
20
19
21
27
22
23
24
25
28
26
17
6
7
8
Hongkew Park
Yuyuan
garden
Customs Club Hongkew
Markets
Lower Boathouse
Chamber of Commerce
Water Tower
Union Church
London Mission
Society
American Methodist Mission
American Baptist Mission
English Church
Mission
Arts and Crafts School
Museum of
Natural History
British Consulate
Masonic Hall
French Consulate
American Baptist
Mission ChapelAmerican Church
Mission Chapel
American Board
Foreign Mission
American Mission
Society Chapel
11
10
Race
Course
Huangpu
Jiang
W
uson
g
Jiang
NORTHERN
DISTRICT
CENTRAL
DISTRICT
WESTERN
DISTRICT
NATIVE
CITY
FRENCH SETTLEMENT
French Ziccawei (Xujiahui) Road
0
0
1 mile
1.5 kms
- Astor House Hotel
- U.S. Consulate
- Japanese Consulate
- German Consulate
- Old Dock
- American Episcopal Church Mission
- London Mission Society Chapel
- Tongkadoo (Roman Catholic) Cathedral
- English Church
- Japanese Post Office
- Electric Light Station
- Hanbury School
- Jardine, Matheson & Co
- P. & O.B.N. Co, and Sassoon & Co
- Gibb, Livingston & Co
- Augustins Heard & Co
- Dr Dixon (in 1886)
- Shaw Bros & Co
- Dent & Co
- Turner & Co
- Smith, Kennedy & Co
- Russell & Co
- Wheelock & Co
- Adamson & Co
- H.Fogg & Co
- Oriental Bank
- Chinese Custom house
- Russian Consulate
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
N
ART IN TIBET
A more independent and unified Tibet emerged
in the nineteenth century from the political
turmoil of border rebellion. Kongtrul Lama
(1813–99), who headed the Ri mé (literally
‘without partisan views’) religious movement,
oversaw the compilation of a Tibetan
encyclopedia, which included esoteric
Buddhism, Sanskrit grammar, Tibetan
medicine, iconometry and Tibetan painting
traditions, and authored an important treatise
on Tibetan art history. Although the thirteenth
Dalai Lama (1876–1933) encouraged study
abroad, there is little evidence of the impact of
such study on Tibetan art.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
250
AFTER THE DEATH of the Qianlong emperor
in 1795, peasant revolts, the rebellion of non-ethnic
Chinese peoples in Hunan and Guizhou in China’s
southwest and the incursion of piracy on the Guangdong
and Fujian coasts began to destabilize China. Peasant
unrest persisted throughout the first quarter of the
nineteenth century, most notably in southern China.
Simultaneously, non-ethnic Chinese populations on
China’s borders, including the Tibetans, the Yao of
Guizhou, and the Muslims of Xinjiang also rebelled. In
1816 China’s political and economic situation was
complicated by the British East India Company’s
development of the opium trade, outlawed by China in
1729, to offset its China Trade imbalances.
CHINA IN TURMOIL
The 1839 ban on opium by the official Lin Zexu
(1785–1850), a traditional Chinese literatus also active as
an amateur painter and calligrapher, resulted in British
piracy and other acts of military aggression on China’s
south coast. China’s military failed to contain the foreign
threat, and China consequently agreed to negotiate an
end to hostilities. Through the Treaty of Nanjing of 1842
Britain acquired Hong Kong island and trading rights in
five Chinese ports; Britain also received payment in
silver of large indemnities. The Second Opium War,
resolved by the Treaty of Tianjin in 1858, opened up
further ports – the ‘Treaty Ports’ – to foreign influence, as
did other further diplomatic negotiation.
China’s attempts to modernize along Western lines
were undercut by social, political and economic
instability. Nonetheless, railroads, steamship
CHINA AND TIBET 1800-1900
110˚ 120˚ 130˚ 140˚100˚
40˚
50˚
30˚
20˚
Beijing
Yangzhou
Xiuning
Xuancheng
Shexian
Derge
Lhasa
Shigatse
(Xigazê)
Wuxi
Zhenjiang
(Chinkiang)
Suzhou
Chengdu
Nanjing
(Nanking)
Yixing
Dehua
Longquan
Jingdezhen
Wuhu
Yichang
(Ichang)
Changsha
Hankou
(Hankow)
Jiujiang
(Kiukiang)
Newchwang
Dairen
Port Arthur
Nanning
Chongqing
WuzhouLongzhou
Qingdao
Mukden
Yantai
(Chefoo) Weihaiwei
Tianjin
(Tientsin)
Shantou
(Swatow)
Hong Kong
to Britain 1842
Shanghai
Ningbo (Ningpo)
Wenzhou (Wenchow)
Fuzhou
(Foochow)Xiamen
(Amoy)
Hangzhou
Guangzhou
(Canton)
Macao
to Portugal 1849
Khotan
Kunming
Guilin
Lanzhou Jinan
KaifengXi’an
Taiyuan
Wuchang Anqing
Nanchang
Taiwan
Jilin
Tsitsihar
G
anges
Y
alu
Yellow River
Yangtze
Xi Jiang
Lop Nor
S E A O F
J A P A N
YELLOW SEA
EAST CHINA SEA
SOUTH
CHINA SEA
G O B I
TA K L A M A K A N
A
LTA I M T S
Q I L I A N
S H
A
N
T I E N S H A N
RY U KYU
ISLANDS
to Japan
1881
Z H I L I
SHENGJING
H E I L O N G J I A N
J I L I N
JIANGSU
ANHUI
SHANXI
SHANDONG
HENAN
SHAANXI
G A N S U
INNER MONGOLIA
ZHEJIANG
JIANGXI
HUBEI
HUNAN
S I C H U A N
Q I N G H A I
FUJIAN
GUANG-
DONG
Y U N N A N
G U A N G X I
TAIWAN
HAINAN
G U I Z H O U
T I B E T
M O N G O L I A
X I N J I A N G
K
O
REA
I N D I A
C H I N A
BURMA
Silver from
the New World
Ming Great
Wall
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 Visual Production, 1800-1900
China’s borders, c.1850
provincial borders
treaty port/open city
ceded to foreign power, with date
provincial capitals
imperial capital
painting production site
of empire-wide reputation
Western-influenced painting
major printing centre
kiln site of empire-wide
reputation
textile production site of
empire-wide reputation
Tibetan art site
jade
British attacks during the
First Opium War, 1839–42
1 THE LAST CENTURY of
Manchu rule was shaped by
Western interest in China.
The Opium Wars led to the
opening of treaty ports; the
Taiping rebellions, led by
the ‘new Messiah’ Hong
Xiuquan (1813–64), sought
to refashion Chinese society
from within. In the Treaty
Ports modern Western art
forms were practised
alongside traditional
Chinese ones; in this setting
a range of hybrid EuroChinese
forms emerged.
THE INTRODUCTION of
photography to China
during the nineteenth
century transformed the
pictorial practices,
documentary habits and
established media culture of
the Chinese visual field, as
represented by this image, A
Hong Kong Artist, from
John Thompson’s 1873
Illustrations of China and Its
People. Photography
disseminated knowledge of
China and her pictorial
practices abroad;
domestically it became an
important tool for creating
Chinese ritual images for
ancestral worship.
Edo Castle Compound
Shogun‘s residence to 1868;
emperor‘s palace from 1869;
art collections
Akasaka Palace (1899-1909)
Western-style
palace complex
Ueno Park
Western-style architecture
in late 19th c, including art museums;
Ueno Imperial Museum 1882;
Tokyo University of Arts Campus
Tokyo University Campus (1869)
Yoshiwara Licensed Pleasure Quarters (17th-20th c)
printed materials
Nihonbashi area
Shopping district for ceramics,
textiles, lacquerware, metalwork;
Western-style architecture in the
19th c, including Bank of Japan
(1890-96)
Tokyo Station (1914)
Western-style architecture
in late 19th c
Ginza area (post-1870)
Western-style architecture
and shopping area in late 19th c
Sumo Tournament
Grounds (17th-20th c)
printed materials
Theatre district (19th c)
performing arts,
printed materials
to Kisokaido, Mt Fuji,
Northwest provinces
to Nikkokaido
to Yokohama,
Western
provinces
Sum
ida
River
Furukawa
RiverM
eguro
R
iver
T O K Y O B A Y
2 Edo/Tokyo, 1800-1900
canal
railway
bridge
silk textile sales
cotton dyeing/textile sales
woodblock print production and sales
kilns for tiles and pottery
warehouses/lumberyards
N
0
0
2 miles
3 kms
JAPAN AND KOREA 1800 –1900
253
HIROSHIGE’S PRINT SURUGACHO from 100 Famous Views
of Edo, 1856. Western techniques of one-point
perspective and shading were widely known
among Japanese painters and print designers.
Some artists, like Ando Hiroshige (1797–1858) and
Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), used traditional
Japanese materials to create woodblock prints and
paintings that were influenced by illustrated books
from Europe and China.
KOREA: THE SURVIVAL OF TRADITION
At the start of the nineteenth century Korean
rulers, observing the dismemberment of China
by European colonial forces, felt that their
country was now the last bastion of Confucian
traditions in Asia and made efforts to officially
sponsor and protect Korean values and arts.
Seoul, the capital city, continued to be the
centre of artistic production, and most artists,
scholars and aristocrats (yangban) preferred
conservative Chinese styles of painting,
calligraphy, ceramics and sculpture. Plain white
porcelain wares that had developed during the
Chosun Period (1392–1910) were viewed as
distinctly Korean and valued for their simplicity
and purity, as physical manifestations of
Confucian virtues. These continued to be
produced in the imperial factories in the
Kwangju area southeast of Seoul. Some Korean
artists continued to experiment with genre and
‘true view’ landscape (chin’gyong sansu) painting
styles begun in the eighteenth century, depicting
the Korean people and actual countryside rather
than imaginary figures and landscapes. However,
Western art seen by Koreans visiting China or
brought to Korea by Christian missionaries
during the nineteenth century gradually began
to affect the traditional arts – especially
2 ARTISTIC PRODUCTION IN JAPAN was concentrated in
Kyoto, the imperial city, and in Edo (Tokyo), the
government’s political centre. Kyoto focused on
traditional arts developed for the aristocracy,
wealthy merchants, Buddhist temples and tourists.
Edo was associated with innovation, especially in
response to foreign imports, and with material
goods, produced for the growing middle class.
portraiture, which became increasingly detailed
and realistic. Western architecture had a limited
impact on Korea in the nineteenth century,
being identified primarily with buildings for the
foreign consulates and Christian missionaries,
such as the Gothic-Revival style Myodong
Catholic Cathedral, completed in 1898.
As part of mid-nineteenth century efforts to
affirm Korea’s identity and independence, the
old imperial palace compounds in Seoul, which
had been in ruins since their destruction by
Japanese armies in the 1590s, were elaborately
rebuilt. These brightly painted Chinese-style
wooden pavilions were raised on stone
platforms above paved courtyards, where grand
ceremonies of state and Confucian rituals were
held as part of the revival of ancient traditions.
Korea, like Japan, participated in
international expositions, sending artworks to
Chicago (1893) and Paris (1900), but outside
interests in traditional Korean culture did not
really materialize. After 1895 Japan became
increasingly involved in Korean politics,
eventually annexing the peninsula in 1910, and
began sending Korean artists to train in Japan.
Efforts to preserve Korean national identity and
cultural traditions would be severely
challenged in the next century.
SWIMMING DUCKS by Korean artist Hong
Se-sop (1832–84). The eighteenth-century scholarartist
tradition was vigorously continued as part of
the overall efforts of the Korean elite to preserve
and protect Confucian, Chinese and Korean
cultural values from foreign influences. Bird and
flower paintings, both in ink on paper and in
colours on silk, were extremely popular.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
252
building forms, such as factories, banks, train
stations, and public halls, were modelled after
examples in Europe and the USA.
Japanese painting in the nineteenth century
was greatly affected by Western influences.
Japanese woodblock prints were extremely
popular in the nineteenth century, with
landscape images by Hokusai and Hiroshige
being produced in large sets (‘36 Views of Mt.
Fuji’, ‘53 Stations of the Tokaido’, ‘100 Views of
Edo’) and in many editions. The more
traditional subject matter of ukiyo-e, such as
kabuki actors and courtesans, continued to sell
well, although more intense colours and more
intricate carving techniques reflected Western
influence and fashionable ‘modern’ tastes.
Not all Japanese painters reacted to Western
techniques, and eighteenth-century trends in
literati painting derived from Chinese models still
flourished, especially in the Kyoto-Osaka area,
and particularly among ‘amateur’ artists. Among
these, Uragami Gyokudo (1745–1820) sought selfexpression
through the harmony of music and
visual art in the gentleman-scholar tradition.
gunboats in Japanese waters led to the overthrow
of the Tokugawa military government which had
controlled the islands for over 250 years. Reform
groups moved the young emperor to Tokyo and
initiated a process of ‘modernization’ that
included inviting foreign artists and technicians
to teach in Japan and sending Japanese
representatives to study in Europe and the USA.
In the 1860s and 1870s Japanese prints, paintings
and traditional decorative objects were becoming
extremely popular in the West, sparking ‘Japonisme’
and influencing Impressionist painters. By the
end of the nineteenth century the government
had established art schools and museums in
Tokyo and Kyoto, where both traditional and
modern arts were taught and displayed.
Japanese architecture was significantly
changed by the introduction of Western building
techniques and materials, especially brick and
glass. Wood construction traditions, which
essentially had been the same for centuries,
were affected by the rapid modernization of
Japan in the 1870s–90s. Tokyo and Yokohama
were linked by a rail line, and in both cities new
JAPAN AND KOREA 1800-1900
140˚130˚120˚110˚
40˚
30˚
Nara
Edo/Tokyo
Aomori
Sendai
Nagoya
Tokaido
Kanazawa
Yokohama
Kyoto
Arita
OsakaHiroshima
Nagasaki
KagoshimaShanghai
Pusan
Seoul
Yellow
River
Yangtze
S E A O F
J A P A N
E A S T
C H I N A
S E A
Y E L L O W
S E A
P A C I F I C O C E A N
KYUSHU
SHIKOKU
HONSHU
HOKKAIDO
RYUKY
U
ISLANDS
C H I N A
J A P A N
K O R E A
TAIWAN
overseas trade,
late 19th c
trade with/from
Tokyo via
Nagasaki/
Yokohama
overseas trade,
late 19th c
Ainu
hunter-gatherer
culture
government-sponsored exhibits
sent to international exhibitions
tribute gifts exported to China
imports of raw materials,
finished goodsfrom China to Seoul
to China from Seoul
toJapa
nto China
toEurope
from
India and Europe
from
China to Nagasaki
toKor
ea
N
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
1 Japan and Korea, 1800-1900
gold
silver
raw cotton
textiles
paintings
calligraphy
lacquerware
ceramics
kiln sites
paper
books
altar utensils
printed materials
metalwork
sculpture (netsuke/No masks)
performing arts centre (kabuki/ No/puppet theatre)
private art collections
important port
overland trade
exports
imports
included under Japanese administration, pre-1870s
included under Japanese administration, post-1870s
DURING THE EARLY nineteenth century,
Japan and Korea feared the destruction of
their own national identities by Western
imperialism and tried to isolate themselves
from outside political and cultural incursions.
But by the end of the nineteenth century both
Japan and Korea were adopting and adapting
to outside artistic influences.
THE MODERNIZATION OF JAPAN
By the mid-nineteenth century in Japan,
government corruption, nationwide economic
hardships and the appearance of foreign
1 IN THE LATE EDO PERIOD, Japanese ceramics were
made in a number of provinces, and in a wide
variety of styles. While mass production in the early
nineteenth century was still controlled by regional
military governors, who used ceramic sales as a
source of income, certain kilns provided distinctive
wares for the tea ceremony and others were geared
to the export trade. Modern factory production of
textiles, cloisonné, ceramics and lacquer developed
quickly in the 1880–90s, with significant amounts
intended for export to Europe, the USA and Asia.
SOUTHEAST ASIA 1800–1900
255
signified wealth, rank and family connections.
Fine sarongs were worn at weddings, funerals
and other occasions where status and group
membership were important. Imported textiles,
usually from India, were also popular. Ikat or
tie-dyed textiles were woven on backstrap
looms, and batik – wax-resistant cloth – was
produced in Java, and more widely. The most
sacred cloths – those kept for ritual occasions –
were kept as family heirlooms. In many of the
great, tall-roofed houses of Indonesia, such
heirlooms were kept, along with heads taken in
head-hunting raids, in the upper roof space,
which was considered to relate to and
symbolize the upper realm. In some of the
more remote areas of Borneo, the Philippines
and New Guinea, soft, painted bark-cloth fabric
was produced.
In more populous areas, the European
developers, aware of native hostility, continued
to rely on foreign middlemen to build up the
businesses, and Chinese and Indian
immigration increased. In Siam local Chinese
merchants were increasingly involved in trade,
and the Chinese quickly became a wealthy
group. They brought with them Confucianist
and Taoist ideals and built family temples and
houses of brick directly on the ground. These
they surrounded with high walls. To reflect their
status, the more successful among them both
imported and commissioned artworks,
particularly ceramics, silverware, textiles and
furniture. Most of these items were of a highly
ornate design, many of them designed
specifically for the overseas Chinese or
Peranakan market.
With the growing strength of the European
powers there was also a change in the
structuring of local society. Local leaders were
in many cases now answerable to European
district officers. Christian missionaries were
active in the hill regions of the interior and in
the outer islands. Mission schools were
established in many areas, teaching in the
language of the European power, which created
an educated elite unable to assume control of
government.
ART AND ARCHITECTURE
In the field of art, lacquerware and wood
carving were particularly fine at this time,
although little wood carving remains from the
period, due to climatic conditions. A few
wooden monastic buildings dating from the
nineteenth century remain in Burma. Carved
with foliate and floral designs, fabulous beasts
and other motifs, they show remarkable skill
and delicacy. Another – secular – architectural
gem from this period is the Lacquer Pavilion in
Thailand. This small wooden pavilion, the walls
of which are lined with exquisite lacquer
panels, escaped destruction in the sacking of
Ayutthaya by being moved to the grounds of a
summer palace at a safe distance from the city.
Southeast Asian houses were very
distinctive, as they still are; traditionally the
roof generally formed the greater part of the
building, which was usually raised on stilts –
an ancient design. Longhouses were still built
in many parts of the region including the
Philippines, Borneo, New Guinea, Vietnam and
Malaya. In these houses, which were raised
high above the ground on wooden piles, a
communal area stretched the length of the
house, with individual sleeping areas leading
off. These houses were particularly common in
head-hunting regions, where safety in numbers
was the rule. However, they gradually became
scarcer as Christian missionaries discouraged
the building of traditional longhouses,
considering them to be both unhygienic and
conducive to immorality.
In the field of architecture and sculpture,
the emphasis, as in the past, was on the
recreation of earlier forms, although in many
cases in a more ornate manner than before. In
the Buddhist sculpture of Siam and Cambodia
for example, there was an echoing of earlier
Ayutthayan forms, but crowned Buddha images
wore more decorative robes and crowns.
Stupas built in the new city of Bangkok were
taller than before, and blended Khmer and Thai
forms. One innovation of this period was the
use of broken ceramic mosaic to cover stupa
walls, creating a brilliant and colourful effect,
as can be seen at the soaring Wat Arun in
Bangkok and in some buildings within the
palace walls.
Also noticeable here, however, is the
influence of European architecture. Bangkok’s
palace, constructed in 1867, is topped with
stepped roofs covered with coloured tiles in
the Siamese style, but it has a classical façade
in marble. Although rather startling, this
adopting of different styles and influences is
typical of the Southeast Asian approach to the
visual over many centuries. In the Philippines,
too, Spanish influence could be seen both in
the colonial-style architecture of the period
and in the sculpture, much of which was
catholic in inspiration.
ART AND SOCIETY
The social framework of Southeast Asia was
reflected in the textiles of the region. The
thread used, the colours and motifs, all
100˚98˚
10˚
12˚
14˚
16˚
18˚
20˚
22˚Mandalay
Kyaukmyaung
Shwei-nyein
Amarapura
Pyinmana
Möng Noi
Kengtung
Möng Nai
Kenglong
Kehsi Mansam
Möng Küng
Bawdwin
Meiktila
Prome
Nwa-ma-ran
Tharrawaddy
Rangoon
Pegu
Moulmein
Tavoy
Mergui
Henzada
Bassein
Akyab
Kyauktaw
Sandoway
Kyaukpyu
Thayetmyo
Pagan
Minbya
Ava
Sagaing
Yesa-gyo
Mingun
Inle
Lake
Mouths of the Irrawad
dy
Irrawaddy
Salween
Chindwin
Salin Chaung
BAY
O F
B E N G A L
A N DA M A N S E A
CHIN
HILLS
NAGA
HILLS
MINGINRANGE
A
R
A
K
A
N
PEGU
RANGOON
SHAN
STATES
TENASSERIM
Ponnyashin
nearby village of Ywataung
palm-leaf manuscripts
(folding
books)
(kalaga)
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
Burma in the
Age of Empire, 1895
Date of annexation by British:
1826
1852
1885
1889
2
Crafts and Manufactures:
boat building
weaponry
stone carving
wood carving
ivory carving
metalwork
silversmiths
gold beating
jade carving
amber carving
ceramics
textiles
silk weaving
umbrellas
lacquerware
basketry
manuscripts
Major buildings:
pagoda
monastery
palace
fort
Mandalay
Mahamuni, 1857
Kyauk taw gyi, 1865
Mandalay Hill
Atumashi, 1857
Nan daw gyi, 1857
Royal palace, 1857
Kalaga wall hangings
Kyauktawgyi,
1847
Patodawgyi,
1820
Amarapura
Mingun
(unfinished),
started 1790
Hsinbyume,
1816
Mingun
2 OVER THE COURSE of the
nineteenth century
Burma underwent
dramatic political
changes. In three AngloBurmese
wars British
forces gained control of
most of its territory.
Their movement
northward culminated in
the fall of the Burmese
monarchy at Mandalay in
1885, when the royal
family was exiled to
India. Administrative
change quickly followed,
and the British
government also
encouraged migrant
workers from India and
China. With the
departure of the court,
many traditional crafts
became less widespread
but some craftsmen
made items to suit
European taste.
WOODEN MASK, BbohnarJolong
people, central
Vietnam. This rare mask
shows that in the
nineteenth century
masks were used in
ritual, as they still are
today in many parts of
Southeast Asia. Masks
had a sacred function
and were used either to
invoke the ancestors or
the spirits, usually in
dance. In some regions it
was the custom for men
to carve their own masks
which represented their
ancestor and which
performed a protective
function.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
254
AT THE OUTSET of the nineteenth century
the last of the great Southeast Asian
empires had been formed: the Konbaung
(1752–1885) in Burma, the Chakri (1782–
present) in Siam, and the Nguyen (1802–1945)
in Vietnam. In Java, the Mataram dynasty had
divided into two lines: the houses of Surakata
and Jogjakarta, neither of which held much
power beyond their capitals. These kingdoms
functioned in the traditional manner but their
rulers were increasingly aware of external
influence in the form of European trade and
power. During this period the European powers
made rapid political and territorial advances
into the region, aware of the enormous profits
to be made from the trade in spices and other
commodities.
Government-appointed officials now took
the place of representatives of companies such
as the East India Company, and territorial
revenues replaced trading profits. Natural
resources were developed for export,
particularly in the form of plantation crops. The
French controlled the trade of Indochina:
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, where huge
plantations produced export crops such as
rubber and tobacco.Very few areas remained
unaffected by Western influence. Even in the
inaccessible interior regions, trade brought
exotic items and ideas.
SOUTHEAST ASIA 1800-1900
90˚ 100˚ 110˚ 120˚ 130˚
30˚
20˚
10˚
0˚ Ag
Ag
Ag
Ag
Ag
Ag
Ag
Ag
Ag
Ag
Ag
Batak Funerary effigies Dayak
Funerary
effigies
Torajan
Funerary
effigies
Asmat
Totemic
poles
Masjid Tranquerah
Masjid Jami
Mosque
Wat Doi Suthep
Wat Arun
Temple of the
Emerald Buddha
Hainan temple (1866)
Sri Marriamman
temple (1883)
National temple
to Confucius
Mingun
Hsinbyume
pagoda (1816)
Pagan
Sawankhalok
Sukhothai
Angkor
Dieng
Plateau
Borobudur
Prambanan
Cebu
Basilica Minore
de Santo Niño
Bangkok
Chanthaburi
Nakhon Si Thammarat
Pattani
Kedah
Malacca
Padang
Palembang
Batavia
Bandung
Tjeribon Surakarta
Surabaya
Bandjarmasin Pandang
(Macassar)
Dili
Ambon
Tidore
Menado
Ternate
Sarawak
Brunei
Yogyakarta
George Town (Penang)
Phnom Penh
Korat
Toungoo
VientianeChiengmai
Moulmein
Tavoy
Rangoon
Pegu
Mandalay
Prome
Macao
(To Portugal)
Hong Kong (To Britain)
Luang Prabang
Hanoi
Da Nang
Nha Trang
Saigon
Hué
Atjeh
Manila
Kuala Terengganu
Kuala Lumpur
founded 1857
Singapore
founded 1819
Pontianak
S
U
M
A
T
R
A
COCHIN
CHINA
1862
CELEBES
TONGKING 1883
S I A M
CAMBODIA
C H I N A
MALAYA
British protectorate 1888-1914
FRENCH
INDOCHINA
united 1887
SARA
W
AK
M
O
L U C C A S
J A V A
BORNEO
B R I T I S H
I N D I A
C O M M O N W E A LT H O F
A U S T R A L I A
P
H
IL
IP
PINES1899
A
N
N
A
M
UPPER
BURMA
1886
BRITISH
NORTH BORNEO
1881
BURMA
1852
D
U T C H
E A S T
I N D
I
E
S
N E W
G U I N E A
LOWER
BURMA
1852
BALI
BURU
LOMBOK
FLORES
SUMBA
TIMOR
BUTUNG
CERAM
HALMAHERA
MINDANAO
LUZON
TAIWAN
HAINAN
SAMAR
CEBU
PANAY
NEGROS
MINDORO
ANDAMAN IS.
NIAS
SUMBAWA
MADURA
Irawaddy
Mekong
R
ed River
Salween
I N D I A N
O C E A N
S O U T H
C H I NA
S E A
GULF OF
TONGKING
GULF OF
THAILAND
C E L E B E S
S E A
S U L U
S E A
ANDAMAN
SEA
O
F M
ALACCA
STRAIT
STRAITOFMACASSAR
FLORES SEA
TIMOR
SEA
BANDA
SEA
JAVA SEA
ARAFURA
SEA
emperors’ tombs
Notre Dame cathedral
Kyauktawgyi
pagoda (1878)
Shwezigon
pagoda
Shwe Dagon
pagoda
St. Joseph’s
Cathedral
Tu Hieu pagoda (1808)
Silver pagoda (1866)
N
0
0
500 miles
700 kms
1 The Age of Empire, 1900
British
French
Dutch
U.S.
Portuguese
important town or city
royal palace
colonial building
Historical and religious sites:
important historical site
pagoda
temple
mosque
church
funerary effigies and ancestral images
Economic resources:
silver work
gold
metalwork
wood carving
manuscripts
textiles
ceramics
stone carving
Ag
1 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY saw the consolidation of
Western control over the region. Whereas
previously the Dutch and English East India
Companies had concentrated purely on trade with
India, China and the Arab world, Western
governments now took over the administration of
large areas. Gradually the various Southeast Asian
countries became part of the empires of the
Netherlands, England, France and the United
States. By 1900 only Siam remained independent.
FUNERARY EFFIGIES, Torajaland, Celebes (Sulawesi).
These effigies, almost life-size, stand guard high
on the cliff face overlooking their village. After a
person's death an effigy (tao tao) was carved to
represent the deceased, and placed high above the
village close to the upper realm. In this way the
ancestors retained an important protective role in
society and provided a sense of continuity within
the group. This custom still continues despite the
inroads of Islam and Christianity.
S O U T H
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
C O R A L S E A
SOLOMON
SEA
WESTERN &
ANARVON ISLANDS
LAULASI & BUSU ISLANDS
SANTA ISABEL
NEW
GEORGIA
MALAITA
FLORIDA IS
GUADALCANAL
CHOISEUL
VELLA
LAVELLA
SIMBO
TREASURY
ISLANDS
RENNELL
BELLONA
SAN CRISTOVAL
SANTA
ANA
ULAWA I.
SANTA
CATALINA
REEF IS.
SANTA CRUZ
SOLOMON
ISLANDS
NEW
GUINEA
N Areas of Art Production
in Solomon Islands
2
0 120 miles
0 200 kms
Tumbou
(Tubou)
Voua
Nambukeluka
Nakoro
Si
ngatoka
Rewa
M
ba
Nba Bay
SOUTH PACIFIC
OCEAN
BLIGH
WATER
KORO
SEA
NANUKU
PASSAGE
YASAWA
GROUP
VANUA LEVU
KANDAVU
GROUP
F I J I
LOMAIVITI
GROUP
LAU
GROUP
MAMANUTHA
GROUP
LAKEMBA-I-LAU
NAMUKA-I-LAU
KANDAVU
MOTHE
ONEATA
KAMBARA-I-LAU
FULANGA
ONGEA
NDRIKI
ONGEA LEVU
VITI LEVU
VATULELE
N
0 30 miles
3 Areas of Art Production in Fiji
0 50 kms
THE PACIFIC 1800–1900
257
often just added further layers to already
complex practices of taboo.
Missionaries, like explorers, whalers, and
traders, also brought with them iron tools,
cloth and guns – all of which became sources
of power and prestige. (Alcohol also became a
bartering object, with the resulting, connected
social problems.)
COLLECTING PACIFIC ART
As part of the process of ‘civilization’,
islanders were encouraged to destroy
representations of gods, although the LMS in
particular collected many of these pieces and
brought them back to London, where many
suffered emasculation in order to become
suitable for public viewing.
Explorers, sailors and traders also
collected artefacts to take home to Europe,
Australia and America, where they frequently
made their way into museums, private
collections and commercial institutes, often
without proper documentation. Although
many museums are now established in the
Pacific archipelago, only the Bishop Museum
in Honolulu came into existence during the
nineteenth century, and as a result the
majority of collections in Pacific museums
are contemporary.
Islanders soon recognized the value of
their artefacts, and as early as the 1770s the
productions of ‘tourist art’ began. In Fiji, for
example, traditional oversized pots were
reduced to compact pottery bowls that could
easily be packed and transported. In New
Zealand clubs that were traditionally carved
using greenstone (nephrite) were replaced
with wood, as the softer material was more
readily available as well as quicker to produce.
Colonial officers also banned, confiscated
and destroyed artefacts and cultural practices.
When the Solomon Islands came under a
British protectorate in 1893, the administrator
Charles Woodford, in an attempt to wipe out
the practice of headhunting, destroyed many
of the canoes and canoe houses that required
heads for their inauguration. In New Zealand
war canoes were similarly destroyed or banned
as a method of decreasing inter-tribal fighting
and the Maori Wars.
Along with the destruction or loss of
‘idols’, rituals and the related dances and
songs were also banned by the missionaries
and colonialists and supplemented with
Christian practices and hymns. Missionaries
formalized spoken languages into written
formats and thereafter manipulated traditional
practices and influenced inter-island
communication through their newspapers and
newsletters.
Despite a century of intensive and
considerable change, the majority of islands
still maintained a sense of unique cultural
practices, arts and architecture. Their arts and
cultures have not remained unaffected by
increased contact among differing islands and
with the wider world, but instead they have
increasingly chosen what traditions they wish
to retain and what new materials, techniques
and styles they wish to adopt and adapt for
their own purposes.
body art. Religious structures, the ‘big house’
or ‘meeting house’, are also widely distributed.
In contrast, while diverse and intricate masks
and shields appear in Melanesia, neither are
conspicuous in either Micronesia or Polynesia.
THE EUROPEAN IMPACT
By the turn of the nineteenth century all but
a few of the islands had experienced contact
with Europeans, bringing their materials and
technologies. As these early European
explorers required water and food supplies,
barter systems were quickly established.
Islanders sought iron nails, which they reappropriated
as tools, particularly as carving
points for fine ivory work. Nails did not
significantly influence the architecture of many
islands; in the eastern Pacific construction is
based on complex lashings
for securing joints. Although nails are now
used in house-building, these joints are
still covered with traditional lashings. The
introduction of saw and timber mills, however,
did have an impact on architecture. Hewn logs
were used to provide uniform, thinner planks
than previously used, and this was particularly
noticeable in the meeting houses of New
Zealand. The availability of metal chisels also
reduced the time taken to complete pieces
with greater detail, thus encouraging more
ornate styles of design to develop.
One of the most significant factors
influencing Pacific art and architecture
was the arrival of the missionary. The first
missionaries to arrive in the Pacific were
sent from the London Missionary Society
(LMS) in 1797 to Tahiti. As part of the
evangelist movement, islanders themselves
trained as missionaries, and over 1200
of these native evangelists travelled to other
islands to spread the word. The introduction
of a new belief system attempted to
destabilize local belief systems, but instead
2/3 THE TRANSFERENCE OF IDEAS regarding art was
not a one-way process, but rather a mutual
interchange. Important items of adornment and
status such as red feathers, tortoise-shell and
mother-of-pearl ornaments were taken back to
Europe where they were quickly adopted into
Western fashion. Western colonialists and
missionaries discouraged ‘heathen’ practices,
including tattooing, and abstract and decorative
styles were encouraged, or replaced with
‘acceptable’ and ‘productive’ crafts – such as
sewing and quilt-making. Due to this emphasis,
woman’s arts and cultural practices have survived
longer and more intact than men’s.
AN EXAMPLE OF CEREMONIAL and decorative
architecture from San Cristoval, Solomon Islands.
This canoe house has upright posts in human
form, carved purlin ends, a bamboo palisade
fence, and the interior is decorated with carved
figures and human and animal skulls.
Photographer: George Smith, 1873.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
256
BETWEEN 1800 AND 1900 Pacific islanders
fought to maintain their own traditions
and identities against a number of new factors,
including the arrival of missionaries who
attempted to civilize the ‘heathen native’;
traders and later colonialists, who exploited
many of the resources and people; and the
related introduction of diseases, land loss,
commercialization and breakdown of
traditional status and relationships.
Although the Pacific covers an area of
165,384,000 sq km, and over 20,000 islands,
there are a number of similarities in art and
architecture, as well as noteworthy differences.
Throughout the Pacific the human body
becomes a cultural art piece through the
application of tattoo, scarification or other
THE PACIFIC 1800-1900
15°
0°
15°
165° 180° 165° 150° 135° 120° 105°
S O U T H P A C I F I C
O C E A N
ARAFURA SEA TORRES STRAIT
MARIANASIS
MARSHALL IS
C A R O L I N E I S
ELLICE IS
NORFOLK ISLAND
UNION IS
GILBERT IS
NEW IRELAND
(New Mecklenburg)
NEW BRITAIN
(New Pomerania)
NEW GEORGIA
NAURU
SOLOMON IS
NEW GUINEA
NEW CALEDONIA
NEW HEBRIDES
FIJI
CHATHAM IS
FUTUNA
WALLIS IS
SAMOA
TONGA
(Friendly Is) COOK IS
SAVAGE IS
AUSTRAL IS
SOCIETY IS
TAHITI
OGALEPIHCRA
T
UAM
OTU
MARQUESAS IS
HAWAIIAN IS
EASTER I.
MANGAREVA
GAMBIER IS
PITCAIRN IS
M E L A N E
S
I
A
M I C R O
N
E
S
I
A
POLY
N
E
S
I
A
NEW ZEALAND
MEXICO
A U S T R A L I A
from Melanesian Islands to Peru
aise
nyloP
hcnerFotecnarF
morf
from Fiji to Australia
ijiFotsIaisenaleMmorf
aomaSotynamreGmorf
iiawaHotnapaJmorf
iiawaHotaisenyloP
aomaSWotanihCmorf
ijiFotaidnImorf
from Melanesian Is
to Australia
Torres Strait Is.
from Fiji
to W Samoa
7,500
96% Cook Islanders
4% Europeans & others
120,100
78.6% Fijians
14.2% Indians
7.2% others
38,700
89% Samoans
4% Tongans
7% Europeans and
others
26,000
91% Tongans
5% Samoans
4% others
21,000
96.3% Melanesians & Polynesians
2.3% French
1.4% British
37,000
93% Melanesians
4% Polynesians
3% others
3,500
99.7% islanders
0.3% Europeans
21,000
56% Islanders
44% Europeans
est. 587,000
98.8% islanders
1.2% Europeans
500
99.5% islanders
0.5% Europeans
900
Predominantly Bounty descendants
130
Predominantly
Bounty descendants
(first missionary in the Pacific, 1797)
first museum
established 1889
0
0
800 miles
1200 kms
1 Migrants, Missionaires and Producers
migrations from inside Pacific
migrations from outside Pacific
missionary activity:
before 1800
1800-1840
1841-1880
1881-1910
breakdown of island populations
population figures, 1900120,100
N
1 THE INCREASING CONTACT between Europeans and
islanders, and also between different groups of
islanders, enabled exchange of cultural ideas and
objects, as well as providing exposure to differing
materials and techniques for the production of
arts, crafts and architecture.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JOSIAH MARTIN, C.1880. Images such as
this posed photograph of five young Samoan
women recreating the kava ceremony, led to
increased tourism to the Pacific Islands and thereby
the establishment of cultural centres.
1, 2, 3 Areas of Art Production
bark cloth
baskets and bags
pottery
feather work
decorative painting
wood carving
stone carving
musical instruments
tattoos
jewellery and body ornaments
combs and headdresses
masks
shields
canoes and equipment
photography
ceremonial bowls
2 Landscape in 19thCentury
Australia
topographical views from first
white settlement, 1788
Glover‘s Claudean
arcadian views, 1831
Romantic views, 1835-78,
by Martens
journeys of von Guérard
places visited by von Guérard
Victorian goldfields
plein-air paintings by Buvelot
painted by Heidelberg
School/Australian
Impressionists from 1885
I
Sydney
170˚
40˚
London: Brees
London, New York:
Earle
Paris/London:
von Guérard
Dunedin Gallery 1884
works loaned to South Seas Exhibition,
Dunedin, 1889
Auckland
Gisborne
Wellington
Otaki
Oamaru
Dunedin
Christchurch
Wanganui
Milford
Sound
Manutuke
Rotorua
POVERTY
BAY
BAY OF ISLANDS
CO
O
K
STR
A
IT
DUSKY
SOUND
SO
U
TH
ER
N
A
LPS
NORTH
ISLAND
SOUTH
ISLAND
OTAGO
W
EST
COAST
NEW ZEALAND
Maori meeting house carved
by Raharuhi Rukupo using
iron tools 1842
tourist Maori wood-carving
from 1870s
tourist Maori wood-carving
from 1870s
Maori portraits by Lindauer
exhibited in London 1886
tourist Maori wood-carving from 1870s
Rangitea church
built in Maori
meeting house
style 1848
Te Hau ki Turanga carved
meeting house (1842)
removed from Manutuke
to Wellington 1867
Captain Cook
describes Maori
hei tiki 1769
c.28 Maori artefacts collected by J & G
Forster on Captain Cook‘s second voyage
(now in Pitt Rivers Museum)
1865, 1889
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
140˚ 150˚
40˚
30˚
I
I
I
I I
I
I
I
Brisbane
Warwick
Armidale
Mudgee
Wellington
Bathurst
Lithgow
Glenbrook
Sydney
Richmond
North
Richmond
Mosman
DromanaBacchus Marsh
Lilydale
Heidelberg
Ballarat
Box Hill
Templestowe
Eaglemont
Melbourne
Dandenong
Hobart
Deddington
Adelaide
Tower Hill
TA S M A N
S E A
BASS
STRAIT
Mt Arapiles
THE
GRAMPIANS
Mt Kosciuszko
Cape Otway
Cape Schanck
TASMANIA
VICTORIA
N E W
S O U T H
W A L E S
to New Zealand 1876
to
Adelaide 1855
to Sydney 1859
to Hobart
1855, 1875
N
0
0
300 miles
400 kms
AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND 1800–1900
259
London in 1835; Benjamin Duterrau
(1767–1851) recorded The Conciliation of the
remaining Tasmanian Aborigines as a modern
history painting in 1840; Marshall Claxton
(1813–81) used Sydney residents as models for
his Christ Blessing the Little Children in 1851, a
colonial event considered so droll that it was
written up in Dickens’s Household Words.
The colonial balance changed with the
discovery of gold in New South Wales and
Victoria in 1851, and in Otago in 1861. Among
the immigrant prospectors were artists who
found a society extravagant enough to support
their artistic endeavours. Sydney, a growing
town in the 1840s employing local sandstone
and imported cast iron for its substantial
buildings, was supplanted in the 1850s and
1860s by Melbourne (known as ‘Marvellous
Melbourne’ by the 1880s), where grandiose
Italianate buildings were erected on unsealed
streets with no footpaths. In New Zealand the
South Island goldfields upset the North
Island’s hegemony. The earliest white settlers
had built simply, using basalt rubble with
imported Sydney sandstone trim. Even the
British Resident’s house, where the Treaty of
Waitangi was signed in 1840, had been
prefabricated in Sydney in 1833. The discovery
of gold, however, encouraged architectural
development in both islands, especially in the
southern cities of Dunedin and Christchurch
where public buildings were erected in grey
basalt and white Oamaru limestone.
The exotic distinction of the colonial terrain
remained the key feature of antipodean painting
even as it progressed aesthetically from simple
topographical views to the grandiose landscapes
of the 1860s and 1870s. A near-panoramic format
was thought to suit the vastness of Australia; a
sublime prospect matched the grandeur of New
Zealand scenery. Von Guérard’s painting of Milford
Sound (1877), considered to be the quintessential
image of New Zealand, was exhibited as such in
2 INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS have
a special relationship with
the land. Ironically, the
colonial presence of nonindigenous
artists was
validated through visual
representations of the land.
Colonial painting telescoped
European landscape tradition
into a single century – from
topography to arcadian
nostalgia, picturesque
romanticism and panoramic
grandeur. Finally, the
Heidelberg plein-airist
landscapes proclaimed
national self-confidence.
Melbourne, Paris, Sydney, Melbourne (again) and
London between 1877 and 1886. Following the
example of the Swiss-born painter Buvelot
(1814–88), Australian landscape painting became
less formal in the mid-1880s as it responded to
the introduction of plein-air painting, the influx of
(inaccurate) reports on French Impressionism,
and the growth of nationalist feeling.
By the last decades of the nineteenth
century, the white newcomers to both Australia
and New Zealand firmly believed that the
indigenous peoples they had supplanted were
doomed to extinction. The twentieth century
was to prove the white colonists wrong, not
only in the physical survival of the indigenous
population, but in their cultural renaissance.
GOLDEN SUMMER, EAGLEMONT (1889) by Arthur
Streeton (1867–1943) exemplifies the nationalistic
landscapes painted by young Australian pleinairists
in the late 1880s, coinciding with the
centenary of white settlement. The group, now
known as the Heidelberg School, flouted
convention by painting scenes that were clearly
Australian. Streeton’s blue-and-gold vista has since
come to stand for the very essence of Australia.
MAORI HARDWOOD MEETING HOUSE, carved by Raharuhi
Rukupo (c.1800–1873) in 1842. Ceremonial houses
often evoked a male ancestor, with the ridgepole
symbolizing his spine, the rafters his ribs, the
interior his belly. This intricately carved example
(Te Hau ki Turanga), made with iron tools rather
than traditional implements, was removed from its
original site in 1867 and is now installed at the
Museum of New Zealand/Te Papa Tongarewa.
ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
258
COLONIAL ART
The earliest white art produced in the Australian
colonies and in New Zealand was produced for a
British audience. The first white settlement at
Sydney Cove in 1788 was documented by British
First Fleet officers, and from the 1790s by convict
artists transported to the Australian colonies.
From the 1820s professional artists visited both
Australia and New Zealand. Augustus Earle’s
(1793–1838) views of Hobart (1825), Sydney
(1827), and the Bay of Islands (1828) were
exhibited as circular panoramas in London and
New York. Other artists – Conrad Martens
(1801–78) in South Australia, George French
Angas (1822–86) in South Australia and New
Zealand, and Charles Heaphy (1820–81) in New
Zealand – were employed to produce flattering
views as inducements for potential immigrants.
Colonial art was not limited to practical
objectives. John Glover (1767–1849) sent thityeight
of his Tasmanian views for exhibition in
1842. Maori artefacts were turned out quickly
for commercial rather than traditional
purposes: North Island wood-carvers produced
small objects for tourists from the 1870s, while
South Island greenstone carvers substituted
bowenite, previously despised for its softness,
for their original nephrite.
In Australia traditional Aboriginal culture
retreated from encroaching white settlement,
rather than engaging with it. Despite the rich
variety of the sandstone carvings, bark
paintings and cave paintings described by
white explorers, they were regarded as mere
ethnographic specimens. Some Aborigines,
however, crossed the cultural divide by drawing
on paper (as Aborigines of the Sydney district
did for the Baudin expedition as early as 1802).
The pencil portraits that Eugène von Guérard
(1811–1901) and Black Johnny (c.1842–1883)
made of each other in 1855 are rare examples
of Aboriginal-European cultural reciprocity.
AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND 1800-1900
110˚ 120˚
160˚150˚140˚
40˚
30˚
20˚
10˚
Paris/London:
Streeton
London: Earle, Glover
National Gallery of Victoria 1861
Art Gallery of South Australia 1881
Ballarat Fine Art Gallery 1884
Bendigo Art
Gallery 1887
Art Gallery of Western
Australia 1895
Tasmanian Museum
and Art Gallery 1863
Queensland Art
Gallery 1895
Melbourne
Perth
Hobart
Adelaide
Warrnambool
Ballarat
Bendigo Corowa
Sydney
Ulladulla
Eaglemont
Brisbane
Darwin
Darling
Murray
Murrumbidgee
F
linders
Fitzroy
G
lenelg
Murc
hison
Victoria
I N D I A N
O C E A N
S O U T H E R N
O C E A N
S O U T H
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
S O U T H
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
BASS STRAIT
T I M O R S E A
G U L F O F
C A R P E N TA R I A
C
O
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A
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S
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A
TASMAN
SEA
G R E A T S A N D Y
D E S E R T
G I B S O N D E S E R T
G R E A T V I C T O R I A D E S E R T
N U L L A R B O R P L A I N
S I M P S O N D E S E R T
KIMBERLEY
PLATEAU GREAT
DIVID
IN
G
RAN
G
E
GREAT
DIVIDING
RANGE
ARNHEM
LAND
W E S T E R N A U S T R A L I A
S O U T H A U S T R A L I A
Q U E E N S L A N D
V I C T O R I A
TASMANIA
N O R T H E R N T E R R I T O RY
N E W
S O U T H
W A L E S
GROOTE
EYLANDT
MARIA
ISLAND
A U S T R A L I A
drawings by Aboriginal
Mickey of Ulladulla sent to
Chicago World Fair 1893
drawings by Aboriginal Tommy
McRae used to illustrate legendary
tales published in London 1896, 1898
rock paintings described
and copied by Westall 1803
Wandjina rock paintings described
and copied by Grey 1837
bark paintings collected for
Australian Museum, Sydney 1878
pencil drawings on paper by Aboriginal
inmates of Fannie Bay Prison;
exhibited at Melbourne 1888
bark paintings (not extant)
described by Baudin 1802
reciprocal portraits by von
Guérard and Black Johnny 1855
Murray River, Aboriginal bark
paintings sent to Paris
International Exhibition 1855
1888
1845, 1846, 1862
1847, 1848, 1857
1853, 1857, 1864, 1866, 1870,
1880 1886, 1870, 1880,
1886, 1888, 1888-89
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1 Indigenous and Colonial Interactions
first white reports of indigenous art
indigenous art influenced by white contact
major public gallery, with date of foundation
intercolonial/international exhibition
exported art
rock carvings on sandstone platforms
described by first white settlers 1788
chalk drawings on paper made by
Aborigines for Baudin expedition 1802
Art Gallery of New South Wales 1874
1826, 1841, 1847, 1849, 1851, 1857,
1870, 1872, 1879-80, 1880, 1895
Australian works loaned to
South Seas Exhibition, Dunedin, 1889
London: e.g. Earle; Grafton Gallery
Exhibition of Australian Art 1898
AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND were
relatively isolated from the rest of the
world (and from each other) until the arrival of
European settlers in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. Even then, the long
and arduous voyage necessary for the
movement of objects and ideas between the
colonial centre and its periphery kept both
antipodean colonies in a cultural time lag.
INDIGENOUS CULTURES
The indigenous cultures of Australia and New
Zealand were unknown to the Western world
until the white man arrived to disrupt and
destroy them. In New Zealand, the distinctive
carving of the Maori people was improved and
accelerated by the introduction of iron tools.
Maori artists adapted so quickly to European
influence that few examples of pre-contact art
remain. Indeed, the earliest surviving carved
ceremonial house was built with iron tools in
1 THE WHITE NEWCOMERS to Australia and New
Zealand assumed a proprietorial interest in
the indigenous arts, although scarcely
acknowledging their cultural significance.
In New Zealand the Maori cleverly adapted
their carving tradition to produce novelties
such as miniature canoes and churches built
in meeting-house style. In Australia
Aborigines who engaged with the
introduced culture, such as Tommy McRae
(c.1836–1901), were considered curiosities,
not artists. Meanwhile the interlopers
mimicked, via exhibitions, galleries and art
societies, the cultural environment of a
European ‘home’.
become world-famous celebrities. These successes, however, have
not been easy. For many ethnic communities the regional arts are
much lower in the scale than art that claims to be international, as
does that displayed in the great international exhibitions in the
tradition of the Venice Biennale. Artists represented in such venues,
whose work may unconsciously betray a background in the savannah
of Africa or the jungles of Southeast Asia, often prefer to play down
their origins and claim instead to be artists in a sense that
corresponds to some transcendent European and US norm. Their
overriding idea is that they are not craftsmen, but ‘artists’.
ONE OF THE SOURCES of the concept of an ‘international’ art is the
socialist theory of a worldwide human community, and socialism,
in its different forms, has been the idea shaping the work of many
individuals and movements. Sometimes it has been associated with
conservative tendencies, as in the Soviet Union, where, after the
brief innovative episode of Constructivism, there was a move to
Socialist Realism with its nineteenth-century roots. The same style
was then taken up by many other countries in the Russian orbit, and
when China became Communist in 1948 it, too, adapted the same
mode until after the Cultural Revolution. Sometimes socialism has
been associated with more progressive tendencies, as with the
worldwide post-Second World War diffusion of architecture in
concrete, a material untainted by elitist associations and inherently
sharing properties with the ‘masses’. Le Corbusier was the leader in
this trend, as at Chandigarh, the capital of the Punjab, but he also
had many local followers, such as Oscar Niemeyer in Brasilia. Other
types of art driven by socialist political ideas were the more
aggressive mural art of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the softer,
but still threatening, art of Latinos in the United States. Less
necessarily political has been the much longer tradition of Black or
African-American art, which now has its parallels in Britain and
elsewhere in an art of People of Colour by immigrants from Asia and
Africa. Another art which may be more or less political is that driven
by the idea of feminism, which emerged strongly in the United
States in the 1960s and 1970s, before manifesting itself in most
other countries in an effort to reclaim an activity from which women
have been systematically excluded. Around the world art has now be
harnessed to a myriad causes or ‘ideas’.
FINALLY, THERE ARE CATEGORIES OF ART that relate to an idea embedded
in art-making itself. Dada set out to smash artistic norms, while
Surrealism, taking its cue from Sigmund Freud’s writing on dreams,
sought to give all forms of creativity a new starting point in the
unconscious. These two connected movements were centred on
Europe and the United States, but post-Second World War
Conceptual Art – which typically argues that art is less about
making, and more about an idea – has, from the beginning, engaged
artists worldwide. Its success, like that of so-called Post-Modernist
art, often depends on the use of different technologies, videos,
lights, lasers, and even containers of formaldehyde. As such it
illustrates to what extent, by 2000, art was often only an idea
embedded in a technology.
MIRIAM SCHAPIRO Anatomy of a Kimono (detail), 1975–6, acrylic and fabric
on canvas, one of ten panels.
A
RT HAS ALWAYS BEEN CONNECTED to the worlds of ideas and
technology, but in the twentieth century the connections
tightened. Indeed for many the ‘idea’ has been that
twentieth- century art should directly reflect technology, and this
notion lay behind American skyscrapers, Italian Futurism, Russian
Constructivism and the International Modernist architecture of the
Bauhaus and Le Corbusier before the Second World War, and Jean
Tinguely’s motorized sculptures, Nam Jun Paik’s video installations
and Tony Oursler’s projections after it. One reason why this
convergence occurred was because, thanks to new technologies,
ideas could be disseminated much quicker and more effectively than
before. Another was that some of these technologies, such as those
of the cinema, television and computer screen, were themselves
visual.
OF THE MANY OTHER IDEAS that affected twentieth-century art,
none were more recurrent than those of nationalism and
internationalism. The search for visual expressions of national or
regional identity, which has roots in tendencies humans share with
other animals and has long been important in culture, strengthened
in the nineteenth century before further intensifiying in the
twentieth. For many communities, as in the countries of eastern
Europe that acquired independence after 1918, the starting point
was a new awareness of vernacular and folk traditions, but in Fascist
Italy and National Socialist Germany new political and moral
ideologies were also involved. Outside Europe, on the other hand,
where the suppression of local artistic traditions had been part of
the policy both of colonial powers and of the classes that succeeded
them, aesthetic and political ideologies were more likely to be
combined in some revival of local cultural traditions, as in the
Mexican revival of Aztec and the Indian revival of Hindu imagery. In
such movements art was an important way for a people to
strengthen its sense of a political identity recovered after
independence. The vigorous new regional and ethnic art forms that
emerged after 1950 were ore economically driven, only loosely
inspired by earlier traditions that were fostered and marketed, often
by just one or two individuals. Prominent examples are the stone
sculptures of the Canadian Inuit, of the Shona in present-day
Zimbabwe and of the Makonde on the borders between Tanzania
and Mozambique. But the most successful, perhaps because
painting is always liable to be taken more seriously than sculpture,
have been the acrylic paintings of the Australian Aborigines, which,
since 1970, have allowed male and female members of one of the
world’s most victimized communities isolated in the desert to
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY 1900-2000
NORTH AMERICA 1900–1950
263
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE: Cow’s Skull, Red, White, and Blue
1931, oil on canvas. O’Keeffe’s answer to the great
American novel applied the modernist abstraction
she had perfected in paintings of nature and
skyscrapers with the evocative detritus of the New
Mexican desert. Resonating with the hues of the
desert and the colours of the flag, O’Keeffe joined
abstraction with a patriotic love of the West.
65˚70˚75˚80˚
50˚
45˚
40˚
WPA
Cleveland
Algonquin Park
Lancaster
Woodstock
Toronto
Pittsburgh
Gloucester
Ogunquit
Halifax
York Beach
Provincetown
New York
Bear Run19
1 12
Lake George
StL
awrenc
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NEW
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JERSEY
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VERMONT
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CONNECTICUT
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C A N A D A
U S A
Stieglitz, Paris 1907; Hartley, Paris 1912,
Berlin 1913, 1921; Davis, Paris 1928; Wood, Paris 1920,
1923-24, 1926, Munich 1928; Bourke-White,
USSR 1932, postwar Europe 1945
1926-39 Rockefeller Park
Freud 1909; Picabia 1913;
Duchamp 1915; Matisse 1930;
Léger 1931, 1935, 1938;
Le Corbusier 1935
Davis1915
O'Keeffe1920
Marin1914;Hartley1935
O'Keeffe1932
Strand1929,1936
Group
ofSeven
Hartley 1936
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CHARLES SHEELER, Crisscrossed Conveyors, River
Rouge Plant, Ford Motor Company, 1927. Sheeler
documented the factory as it was secretly re-tooled
to produce the Model A. The photographs were
published in the USA and as far as Japan and
Russia. In 1932 a two-metre (7-ft) enlargement of
this image hung at the Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Capitalizing on the refined geometry of
modern architecture and an experimental
approach to printing that included using multiple
negatives and liberal cropping, Sheeler produced
lasting images of American industry in the 1920s.
previous century, artists often took to the
northern and western landscape as a refuge
from the growing metropolitan centres.
Destinations such as Taos, New Mexico, Stone
City, Iowa, or Algonquin Park, Ontario, became
meeting places for artists interested in creating
art that was connected to the American
continent. Georgia O’Keeffe, an artist who was
deeply committed to the environment, went as
far as distant Hawaii.
A similarly modern and romantic impulse
drove artists from the cities to explore the
industrial landscapes of the USA and Canada.
From Port Arthur, Texas, where Edward Weston
photographed oil refineries, to the Georgian
Bay mining town of Sudbury, Ontario, which
was painted by associates of the Canadian
Group of Seven, artists crossed the continent,
depicting the sites of modern production.
Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit now held an
allure that in the previous century was reserved
for natural wonders of the American West.
ART OF THE DEPRESSION ERA
Beginning as early as the first decade of the
century, artists such as Lewis Hine and Joseph
Stella, men sensitive to the human cost of
modernization, toured the country, investigating
the conditions of the working classes in places as
far-flung as Ellis Island (New York), Pittsburgh,
and South Carolina. Two decades later, artists
such as Thomas Hart Benton, Walker Evans and
Margaret Bourke-White re-examined Southern
poverty during the Depression. The explosion of
industrial jobs in the north occurred in direct
contrast to changes in economic conditions in
the South, the region of the United States that
had been suffering from insufficient industrial
advancement since before the Civil War.
The plight of rural America led to the
migration of American Blacks, sending
thousands of people to northern cities. Artists
such as Augusta Savage from Florida and
Aaron Douglas from Kansas moved to New
York City to participate in the Harlem
Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. At the end
of the period, Jacob Lawrence depicted this
dramatic uprooting in a portfolio of prints
titled The Migration Series that toured the USA
from Manchester, New Hampshire, to Los
Angeles, California, between 1942 and 1944.
New York City remained the dominant urban
centre of the early twentieth century. As well as a
destination for artists of all cultures and
countries, New York was the site of the most
dramatic architectural achievements of the
period. Three of the world’s tallest buildings, the
Woolworth, Chrysler and Empire State Buildings,
were all constructed here before the boom of the
1920s became the bust of the Great Depression.
As engineers and architects filled American
cities of the 1920s with vertical metaphors of
American progress, Frank Lloyd Wright was
creating his masterpieces of earth-bound prairie
architecture. Wright began his residence and
studio, Taliesin, in Spring Green, Wisconsin, in
1911. Over a quarter of a decade later, in
southern Pennsylvania, he married the prairie
aesthetic to the woodlands of Bear Run in his
picturesque Fallingwater of 1935-9.
Industrial architecture was also developed as
methods of production were modernized. Most
significant were the Michigan Ford Plants at River
Rouge – the model for mass production all over
the world. In 1922 Albert Kahn designed the Ford
Motor Company facilities, and late in the decade
Charles Sheeler created a documentary record of
the factories, using an experimental approach
that transformed the factories into paradigmatic
examples of modernist photography.
During the Depression the government
became a primary contractor, building
structures as great as the Hoover Dam in
Nevada or as small as cascades in Washington
DC or rose gardens in California. Shortly after
the projects of the Works Progress
Administration (WPA) – a federal relief agency
initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as
a means of generating employment and
infrastructure during the Great Depression –
the North American nations shifted into war
production as the global community braced
itself for the World War II.
2 EVEN AS AMERICAN and Canadian artists grew
secure as capable modernists, few resisted the urge
to travel abroad. Artists of this century, however,
travelled for research, money or love rather than
for training and refinement. Education was found
in the company of other artists or in excursions
into the American landscape. For the first time,
numerous European artists visited America. Famous
figures from Freud to Dalí came to gaze at the
wonders of skyscrapers and grain silos and, in some
cases, to find new homes after the Fascist
incursions of the 1930s.
1908 The Eight, Macbeth Gallery, New York
1913 Armory Show, New York, Boston, Chicago
1917 Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists,
New York
1926 Société Anonyme International Exhibition,
Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, Buffalo, Toronto
1942-44 Jacob Lawrence Migration Series exhibition tour,
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Manchester,
San Francisco, Portland, Sacramento, Los Angeles, St Louis
1943 Jackson Pollock, Art of this Century, New York
1948 Willem de Kooning, Charles Egan Gallery, New York
EXHIBITION PANEL
130˚ 120˚ 110˚ 100˚ 90˚ 80˚ 70˚ 60˚ 50˚
50˚
40˚
WPA
WPA
Toledo
Dayton
Kansas City
St Louis
Cleveland
Asheville
Atlanta
St Augustine
Charleston
Port Arthur
Austin
Torreon
Washington DC
Detroit
Baltimore
Pittsburgh
Merion
New York
Boston
ManchesterMinneapolis
Spring Green
Madison
Chicago
Stone City
Iowa City
Santa Fe
Taos
Los Angeles
San
Francisco
Seattle
Portland
Vancouver
Oakland
Sacramento
Berkeley
Buffalo
Indianapolis
Toronto
Sudbury Montreal
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Masson, Breton,
Ernst, Buñuel,
Dalí, Chagall,
Gropius, Mies
van der Rohe
Mississippi
Missouri
St
La
w
rence
Rio
Grande
Colorado
Ohio
G U L F O F M E X I C O
H U D S O N
BAY
PACIFICOCEAN
ROCKYMOUNTAINS
G R E A T
L A K E S
B R I T I S H
C O L U M B I A
A L B E R T A
M A N I T O B A
O N T A R I O
Q U É B E C
NEW
BRUNSWICK
MAINE
NEW HAMPSHIRE
VERMONT
MASSACHUSETTS
RHODE ISLAND
CONNECTICUT
NEW JERSEY
DELAWARE
MARYLAND
VIRGINIA
GEORGIA
T E N N E S S E E
KENTUCKY
OHIO
INDIANA
ILLINOIS
MISSOURI
I O WA
WISCONSIN
MINNESOTA
N O R T H
D A K O TA
S O U T H
D A K O TA
N E B R A S K A
W Y O M I N G
M O N T A N A
I D A H O
CALIFORNIA
N E VA D A
U TA H
C O L O R A D O
A R I Z O N A
NEW
MEXICO
T E X A S
OKLAHOMA
ARKANSAS
LOUISIANA
K A N S A S
WASHINGTON
O R E G O N
SOUTH
CAROLINA
N CAROLINA
W
ESTVIRGINIA
PENNSYLVANIA
NEW
YORK
NEWFOUNDLAND
AND LABRADOR
SASKATCHEWAN
NOVA
SCOTIA
MISSISSIPPI
ALABAM
A
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IC
H
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FLORIDA
SIERRA
NEVADA
C A N A D A
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M E X I C O
Hartley 1918; Sloan 1919;
Davis 1923; O’Keeffe 1929;
Marin 1930; Strand 1926;
Gottlieb 1937-38
Strand
1932-33
to Veracruz,
Mexico City
1932
Rivera: San Francisco Stock Exchange 1930,
Detroit 1932, New York 1933
Siqueiros: Los Angeles 1932, New York 1934,
Experimental Workshop 1936
Orozco: Claremont (CA), Pomona College 1930,
New York 1930, Dartmouth, Hanover (NH) 1932
Hoover Dam 1931-36
1933-37 Municipal Rose Garden
Group of Seven 1920s, 1930s
Emily Carr
c. 1912
Douglas 1925
Hine 1904, 1918; Benton 1929;
Evans 1933-35; Bourke-White 1937
1932 Meridian Hill Cascade
Morrice, Morocco 1911-12, 1912-13;
Colville, post-WWII Europe 1945;
Bayefsky, post-WWII Europe 1945
Savage
1921
Stella 1906; Hine 1909
O’Keeffe 1939To
Hawaii
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1 The Path to Modernization
art institutions
regional art centres, 1900-30
regional art centres, 1930-50
industrial subjects
architectural monuments
WPA projects
domestic movements of artists
movement of artists to and from Mexico
American artists overseas
Canadian artists overseas
visitors from Europe
emigrés from Europe, 1930s, 1940s
- 1900 Art Museum
- 1901 Museum of Art
- 1905 Albright Art Gallery
- 1906 Museum of the Art Association
- 1907 Walters Art Gallery
- 1912 Museum of the Art Association
- 1913 Los Angeles County Museum
- 1915 Institute of Fine Arts
- 1916 Museum of Art
- 1918 Institute of Art
- 1919 Art Institute
- 1920 Art Museum of Toronto
- 1924 Barnes Foundation
- 1933 Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
- 1941 National Museum of Art
- 1902-11 Pennsylvania Station,
McKim, Mead & White
1910-13 Woolworth Building, Gilbert
1930-31 Empire State Building,
Shreve, Lamb & Harmon
- 1917-22 Ford Factory, Kahn
- 1911 Taliesin, Lloyd Wright
- 1935-9 Fallingwater, Lloyd Wright
Art Institutions
1
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16
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ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
262
early exhibitions of European Modernist art,
most notably the Armory Show of 1913 that
travelled from New York to Boston and Chicago.
Over a decade later, the Société Anonyme (1920)
curated the International Exhibition of 1926 that
carried European modernism from the Brooklyn
Museum of Art and the Anderson Galleries,
Manhattan, to the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo,
and the Art Museum of Toronto.
THE ARTISTIC COLONIZATION OF AMERICA
As European modernism toured the continents
so did the artists of the USA and Canada. No
longer sharing in the Manifest Destiny of the
THE FIRST HALF of the twentieth century
saw the United States come to the fore as
the economic and political global power. The
centrality of North America to the cultural life
of the Western world was seen most
dramatically in the dominance of New York City.
Home to both Wall Street and the Museum of
Modern Art, New York was the heart of the
American arts in the early twentieth century.
PATHS TO MODERNIZATION
Already host to the nation’s premier cultural
institutions, New York saw the formation of five
museums of modern art and numerous
exhibitions. Moreover, the city was the home
of many of the most significant American
artists and, in the late 1930s, it was also a
refuge to European artists.
Accompanying the rise of New York as a
global capital was the importance of the
industrial cities of the Midwest. During the first
decades of the century the cities of the west
consolidated their cultural capital. Between
1900 and 1920 museums were opened in
Toronto (1900), Toledo (1901), Buffalo (1905),
Indianapolis (1906), Minneapolis (1915),
Cleveland (1916), Detroit (1918) and Dayton
(1919). The Midwest also played host to several
NORTH AMERICA 1900-1950
1 IN AN AGE OF MODERNIZATION, signs of power – from
the automotive industry in Detroit to the cultural
dynamism of New York – attracted artists of all
races and nationalities. The century began with
the rapid and unceasing transportation of artists
and ideas from Mexico through to Canada and
from America overseas. Throughout the ‘Roaring
Twenties’ and the Great Depression artists and
collectors gathered in the cities and cultural
enclaves that spanned the continent.
NORTH AMERICA 1950–2000
265
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S
Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum New York City,
1956–9. Wright’s only
building in New York City, the
Guggenheim has become a
symbol for the grace and
insistence of modernist art as
well as a flagship for the
international network of
Guggenheim museums. The
structure was modified in
1992 by Charles Gwathmey
to increase exhibition space
with minimal intrusion on
the original design
30˚
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San
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Seattle
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Phoenix
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DenverRifle
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Amarillo
Las Vegas
Garden Valley
Overton
Flagstaff
M
issouri
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ioGrande
Colorado
Sna
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Columbia
Great
Salt
Lake
Tecovas Lake
PACIFIC
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ROCKY
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GREAT
BASIN
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DESERT
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WASHINGTON
OREGON
M O N TA N A
WYOMING
COLORADO K A N S A S
NEBRASKA
SOUTH
DAKOTA
NORTH
DAKOTA
UTAH
IDAHO
CALIFORNIA
NEVADA
ARIZONA
NEW MEXICO
T E X A S
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
C A N A D A
M E X I C O
Watts Towers
Rodia, 1921-54
Running Fence
Christo &
Jeanne Claude,
1972-76
King County Project
Morris, 1979
Double Negative
Heizer, 1969-70
Roden Crater
Turrell, 1972-2003?
Spiral Jetty
Smithson, 1970
Sonoma
& Marin
counties
King County
Lightning Field
de Maria, 1971-72 Amarillo Ramp
Smithson, 1973
Valley Curtain
Christo & Jeanne Claude, 1970-72
Sun Tunnels
Holt, 1973-76
Complex City
Heizer, 1972-76
Mile Long Drawing
de Maria, 1968
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
2 Art and the Earth
site of environmental art
2 AN ARTISTIC CENTRE for decades, the American
Southwest took on significance as the site of a new
form of art, the earthwork. Earthworks were the
result of individual engagements with nature,
which could be as substantial as stone and earth or
as ephemeral as lightning. By the 1990s, the region
was host to cross-cultural exchanges in the
multinational festivals in Santa Fe and San Diego.
In addition to new buildings, the cultural
politics of the era inspired the growth of new
types of art institutions. Museums such as the
National Museum of Women in the Arts
(Washington DC, 1981) joined alternative spaces
such as the Museo del Bario (New York City,
1970), the New Museum (New York City, 1977),
the Artemesia Gallery (Chicago, 1973) and the
Powerhouse Gallery (Montreal, 1973) to respond
to the cultural demands of underrepresented
artists and constituencies. By the end of the
century, despite attacks on artistic freedom,
including the 1990 censuring of the Robert
Mapplethorpe (1946–89) retrospective in the USA
and parlimentary debate over funding a Jana
Sterbak (1955–) retrospective in Canada the
following year, arts institutions in North America
had become as widespread as they were diverse.
A NEW ARCHITECTURE
Architects enjoyed significant advances in scale
and style in the second half of the twentieth
century. Two of the world’s tallest buildings were
completed in North America: Minoru Yamasaki’s
World Trade Center, New York (1973, destroyed in
the terrorist attack of 2001), Bruce Graham’s Sears
Tower, Chicago (1974), which has since passed on
the accolade. The towers serve to accent the
dénouement of late modernist architecture, a style
beautifully illustrated in Eero Saarinen’s soaring
TWA Terminal (1962) at John F. Kennedy Airport,
New York. As monuments erected to the
advancement of trade and travel, these structures
signal the constant international contact and
commercial development of the era.
Accompanying globalization, Post
Modernism, an eclectic and often historicist
style, was articulated first in architecture of the
years following World War II. Forms from
Classical Greece to the International Style were
copied and assembled into new compositions.
Evident as early as Robert Venturi’s Vanna
Venturi House (1962), by 1980 the masters of
the new style had created works from New
Orleans, site of Charles Moore’s Piazza d’Italia
(1975–80) to Portland, Oregon and Michael
Graves’s Portland Building (1980).
International
exhibitions:
Kansas City
International Sculpture
Conference, 1960
Toronto
Isaacs Gallery
Sign of Dada, 1961-2
Pasadena
Pasadena Art Museum
Marcel Duchamp
Retrospective, 1963
Los Angeles
County Museum of Art
Post Painterly Abstraction,
1964 (> Toronto)
St Louis
St Louis Art Museum
Expressions: New Art from
Germany, 1983
New York
New Museum Difference:
On Representation and
Sexuality, 1985
(> Chicago > Boston
> London, England)
New York
Sotheby’s Auction of
Russian Art, 1988
San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art
Against Nature: Japanese
Art in the Eighties, 1989
(> Akron > Boston
> Seattle > Cincinnati
> New York > Houston)
San Diego
InSITE, 1992 (> Tijuana)
Santa Fe
Site Santa Fe, 1995
Montreal
Montreal Biennial, 1998
New York
Asia Society/PSI Inside/Out
New Chinese Art, 1998
(> San Francisco
> Monterrey > Seattle)
New York
Brooklyn Museum of Art
Sensation, 1999
National exhibitions:
Ottawa
National Gallery of Canada
Canadian Abstract
Painting, 1952
(> Montreal)
Toronto
Abstracts at Home, 1953
New York
New American Painting,
1958
Los Angeles
Ferus Gallery Warhol
Exhibition, 1962
Vancouver
Arts of the Raven, 1967
Ottawa
National Gallery of Canada
Masterpieces of Indian and
Eskimo Art in Canada,
1970
Boston
Museum of Fine Arts
Black American Art, 1971
New York
Whitney Museum of
American Art
Contemporary Black Artists
in America, 1971
Los Angeles
County Museum of Art
Women Artists 1550-1976,
1976 (> Austin
> Pittsburgh > Brooklyn)
San Francisco
Museum of Art Judy
Chicago’s Dinner Party,
1979
New York
Museum of Modern Art
Primitivism in 20th century
Art, 1985
(> Detroit > Dallas)
Cincinnati
Contemporary Art Center
Robert Mapplethorpe,
1990
Ottawa
National Gallery of Canada
Jana Sterbak Exhibition,
1991
EXHIBITION PANEL
BREAKING THE BOUNDARIES
Despite new facilities, many artists began
constructing work that could not be contained in
traditional or alternative exhibition spaces.
Sculptors, particularly participants in the Earth
Art movement such as Robert Smithson, Christo
and Jeanne-Claude, and Nancy Holt, created
monuments that depended on the vastness of
the North American landscape. Deserts, beaches
and rivers were transformed by massive earthmoving
vehicles, explosives and concrete into the
canvases and pedestals for this new art. Even
such ephemeral materials as silk or ice and snow
took on artistic form in the hands of Earth artists.
By the end of the 1970s, interest in such
obdurate works of art waned. The 1980s market
for saleable objects was booming, creating rich
men and women out of some collectors and
celebrities out of a few artists. In the auction
houses and galleries of New York City, the arts
of other cultures were explored as potential
goods for the market. This was especially the
case for contemporary Russian art as houses
like Sotheby’s went directly to the artist to
secure works for sale.
Arts of non-Western and indigenous cultures
were also in demand from North American
institutions which were becoming increasingly
receptive to alternative voices. Museums in both
the USA and Canada sponsored major
exhibitions of Russian, Japanese and Chinese
art, while cities from San Diego to Montreal
sponsored international showcases of the kind
that proliferated all over the world. Into this
environment appeared artists drawing upon
experiences in any number of different
cultures, transforming the shape of the art
world and the content of art. By the turn of the
millennium new art from around the world was
regularly on view in any number of North
American cities and, via the internet, available
online for anyone who chose to investigate.
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
264
In response to expanding interest in the
arts in the USA and Canada, public and private
institutions multiplied and expanded. In many
cases the new institutions erected what have
become highlights of post-war architecture.
Attending collections at Frank Lloyd Wright’s
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York
City, 1956–9), Arthur Erickson’s Museum of
Anthropology (Vancouver, 1971–6) or Richard
Meier’s Getty Center (Los Angeles, 1997)
provides lessons in modern and Post-Modern
architecture as well as the visual arts.
THE CONSEQUENCES of space in North
America changed dramatically following
World War II. Images from places as far away as
May Lai or the moon and as close as Kent State
University, Ohio, or Dallas, Texas, circulated
quickly into the public eye. Following the
expansion of mass media, experimental printing
houses opened in cities from Long Island to
Los Angeles. By the end of the century, the ease
of air travel and the invention of cyberspace
collapsed nearly all the geographic obstacles
that had localized art production in the past.
A CHANGING WORLD
Confronted with change, some artists and
intellectuals sought to preserve the separation
of art and everyday life. Exhibitions such as
‘New American Painting’ and ‘Post Painterly
Abstraction’, consisting largely of work produced
in New York in the 1950s and 1960s, crossed the
USA and Canada and toured Europe, spreading
the influence of American Abstract Expressionism
and its formalist and existentialist interpretations.
Other artists demanded that art engage with
contemporary social life. Dada-related
activities such as the Duchamp retrospective
(Pasadena, California, 1963) and ‘The Sign of
Dada’ (Toronto,1961–2), feminist productions
such as ‘Womanhouse’ (Los Angeles, 1971) and
Judy Chicago’s ‘Dinner Party’ (San Francisco,
1979) and multi-cultural exhibitions such as
‘Black American Art’ (Boston, 1971) and ‘The
Decade Show’ (New York, 1990) represented
alternatives to the modernist activities.
NORTH AMERICA 1950-2000
30˚
40˚
50˚
120˚130˚
Montreal
Halifax
Ottawa
St Louis
Detroit
Sante Fe
Kansas City
Ithaca North Adams
Cambridge
Mountainville
Boston
New York
Miami
Columbus
Pittsburgh
Philadelphia
New Orleans
Dallas
Fort Lauderdale
Austin
Houston
Fort Worth
Atlanta
Santa Monica
San Diego
Los Angeles
Pasadena
Washington DC
Oshawa
Chicago
St Paul
Cleveland
Winnipeg
Toronto
Buffalo
Portland
Seattle
Monterrey
San Francisco
Akron
Newark
Cincinnati
Vancouver
14
15
16
17
22
24
21
18
23
19
20
2 6
13
11
10
9
8
1
3
4
5
12
7
Mississippi
M
issouri
Wisconsin
Ohio
R
ioGrande
Sn
ake
Columbia
Arkans
as
Platte
L. Superior
L. Ontario
L. Huron
L.Michigan
L. Erie
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
BISCAYNE BAY
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
G U L F O F M E X I C O
R
O
C
K
Y
M
OUNTAINS
APPALACHIAN MTS
MAINE
VIRGINIA
OHIOINDIANA
MISSOURI
ILLINOIS
IOWA
MINNESOTA
N DAKOTA
S DAKOTA
WYOMING
NEVADA
UTAH
ARIZONA
NEW MEXICO
COLORADO
CALIFORNIA
MONTANA
IDAHO
OREGON
WASHINGTON
NEBRASKA
KANSAS
OKLAHOMA
T E X A S
ARKANSAS
MICHIGAN
QUÉBEC
ONTARIO
SASKATCHEWAN
ALBERTA
BRITISH
COLUMBIA
WISCONSIN
NEW
YORK
N CAROLINA
S CAROLINA
GEORGIA
TENNESSEE
KENTUCKY
ALABAMA
MISSISSIPPI
LOUISIANA
FLORIDA
NOVA
SCOTIA
U N I T E D S TAT E S
O F A M E R I C A
C A N A D A
M E X I C O
Nova Scotia College
of Art and
Design Lithography
Workshop (1969)
Annual Rings Oppenheim, (1968)
Arthur M. Sackler Museum,
Harvard University (Stirling, 1985)
L’Atelier Recherchers Graphiques (1963)
Musée d’Art Contemporain (1964)
Centre International d’Art Contemporain (1983)
National Gallery of Canada (Moshe Safdie 1989)
Pigs Eye Landfill
Revival Field (Mel Chin, 1990-93)
Wexner Centre (Eisenman, 1989)
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (Pei, 1998)
The Kemper Museum of
Contemporary Art & Design (1995)
Universal Limited Arts Editions (1957)
Guggenheim (Frank Lloyd Wright,
1956-59) Whitney Museum of
American Art (Brauer, 1964-66)
Museum of
Contemporary Art (1999)
Newark Museums (Graves, 1989)
Warhol
Museum (1994)
The Mattress
Factory (1977)
National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Humanities (1965)
National Museum of Women in the Arts (1981)
National Gallery of Art, East Building (Pei 1978)
Kimbell Museum
(Kahn, 1967-72)
Museum of
Art (1984)
High Museum
of Art
(Meier, 1983)
DeMenil Collection
(Piano, 1987)
Museum of Art (Barnes, 1985)
Museum of Contemporary Art (1996)
Museum of Anthropology
(Erickson, 1971-76)
Grand Western Canadian
Screenshop (1969)
Moosehead Lithography
Press (1977)
Tamarind Lithography
Workshop (1959)
Gemini GEL (1965)
Temporary Contemporary
Museum (Gehry, 1984)
Armand Hammer Museum (1990)
Getty Centre (Meier, 1997)
Disneyland
(Anaheim, 1977)
Open Studio
(1970)
N
1 New Spaces for New Art
printing houses
new art/archeology institutions
site of international exhibition
(see panel)
site of national exhibition
(see panel)
Emma Lake Workshop
(Newman 1959, Greenberg 1962)
Storm King Art Centre (1960)
N.E. Thing Co. (1966)
OBAC Wall of Respect (1967)
Artemesia Gallery (1973)
Great Wall of Los Angeles
(Judy Baca, 1967-84)
Womanhouse (1971)
New York Art Workers Coalition (1969)
Museo del Bario (1970)
Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (1971)
Artistspace (1973)
The New Museum (1977)
Exit Art (1982)
Art Against Aids (1987)
Alternative spaces/political art
1
2
3
4
5
6
-
-
-
-
-
Corcoran:
protests at the Biennial
regarding representation of
women (1971)
Powerhouse Gallery (1973)
Nexus Contemporary
Art Centre (1973)
Hallwalls (1974)
MUSE (1977)
Border Arts Workshop (1984)
AIDS Names Project (1992)
Harvard University Graduate
Centre (Gropius, 1948-50)
TWA Terminal, JFK Airport
(Saarinen, 1956-62)
Vanna Venturi House (Venturi, 1962)
Architecture
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Demolition
of the
Pruitt-Igoe Housing (1972)
Sears Tower (Graham, 1974)
Gehry House (Gehry, 1977-78)
Portland Building (Graves, 1980)
Piazza d'Italia (Moore, 1975-80)
Accumulation Cut (Oppenheim, 1969)
Surrounded Islands
(Christo & Jeanne Claude, 1980-83)
Vietnam Memorial (Maya Lin, 1981-84)
Environmental art
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 IN THE 1950S AND 1960S art museums vigorously
supported American modernism at home and
abroad. In the 1970s alternative spaces joined
museums to exhibit contemporary work created
on the local and international scene. By the end of
the century, travelling exhibitions, new institutions
and improved means of communication broadcast
global contemporary culture to nearly every part
of the continent.
ROBERT SMITHSON’S Spiral Jetty,
Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1970.
Now hidden beneath the red
waters of the Great Salt
Lake, Spiral Jetty suggests
the artist’s experience of land
that seemed to move and
water that resisted it. Unlike
much Earth Art, Spiral Jetty,
with its deliberate
engagement of the entropic
forces of water and crystals,
courted the instability of the
landscape rather than its
permanence. An essay and a
film are part of the artwork.
CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN 1900–2000
267
BEYOND MURALISM
Muralism engendered ideas of national pride
that can be best be summed up by the term
Indigenista, but it was not only through
Muralism and not only in Mexico that these
Indigenista views were expressed. Juan
O’Gorman (1905–82), an Irish-Mexican
architect, believed in a return to organic form
that was archaeologically and socially
significant and was a founder member of the
Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (League
of Revolutionary Writers and Artists). Frida
Kahlo (1907–54), wife of Diego Rivera, was
instrumental in the development of what has
been called Mexican Surrealism, although this
was deeply rooted in her personal life and in
Mexican folk culture. Both Carlos Orozco
Romero (1898–1984) and Rufino Tamayo
(1899–1991) explored indigenous themes
through their paintings.
Similar ideas were taken up in Cuba by
Amelia Peláez (1896–1968) and Wilfredo Lam
(1902–82). Both travelled extensively in
Europe, but on their returns to Cuba started
using themes of indigenous significance.
Peláez’s work, both in painting and murals,
draws on the Cubist movement but reinterprets
this in terms of Cuban architecture. Lam, also
influenced by Picasso and Cubism, explores his
Afro-Caribbean heritage and has gained
international acclaim. In Haiti, Hector
Hyppolite (1894–1948) explored his own
spiritual life as a Vodoun priest and painted
mystic narratives; while Wilson Bigaud
(b.1931), Hyppolite’s neighbour and pupil,
turned his attention to the depiction of
dissident exhibition in September 1910, two
months before the outbreak of the Revolution.
Through political connections he was
appointed director of the Academy of Fine Arts
in 1914, but in his inaugural address he
claimed that art belonged on the walls of
buildings and then proceeded to close the
academy down.
Another of Dr Atl’s students, David
Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1975), published
his Manifesto in 1922 in which he claimed
that Muralism was the only valid art form and
that it should deal with Revolutionary themes.
Siqueiros’ political activism was
even more extreme than that of Dr Atl,
including leadership of an assassination
squad that made an attempt on the life of
Trotsky in 1940, who was at that time in exile
in Mexico.
Muralism was largely expressed through
the work of Orozco, Siqueiros, and a then
relatively unknown Diego Rivera (1886–1957),
who had also been one of Dr Atl’s pupils.
Although they shared the ideal that Muralism
should represent revolutionary thoughts and
deal with issues of nationalism, poverty and
social reform, they disagreed intensely on how
this should be done. Rivera broke with his
mentor Dr Atl and painted over the work of
other Muralists whom he considered inferior;
Siqueiros accused Rivera of romanticism,
while Orozco, taking Siqueiros’ Manifesto
literally, destroyed all his ‘easel paintings’
when he embarked on Muralism.
Of the three Mexican muralists, Rivera has
gained the most acclaim, partly on the
strength of his massive mural for the
National Palace in Mexico City, and this has
secured him the accolade of ‘The First Great
Mexican Artist’.
JOSÉ CLEMENTE OROZCO, University Library, Mexico
City. This magnificient mural by José Clemente
Orozco (1883–1949) was created towards the end
of his career. The use of colour and figurative
detail to cover large wall spaces is very
characteristic of Mexican Muralism and is
reminiscent of the manner in which wall spaces
were used by the earlier Mayans and Aztecs.
Orozco, unlike the other Muralists, abandoned all
easel art early in his career and concentrated solely
on producing large public artworks such as this.
everyday street scenes. After suffering a series
of breakdowns in the 1960s, Bigaud’s work
since 1970 has focussed more on themes
relating to his illness.
NEW ART
While much of the work of the new generation
of artists continues to explore the idea of
opposition between the old and the new, it has
increasingly seen this as a sense of inner and
personal struggle which finds an outlet not
only within the region but also in an
international context. Influences are drawn
from the international art community and from
such diverse areas as Conceptual Art, Concrete
Art, Abstract Expressionism, Performance, and
Photography. Yet there is always a sense that
these movements are viewed purely as the
medium through which expression takes place
and that meaning is located within the Central
American and Caribbean context.
These new artists have not formed
particular schools, and, therefore, comment on
individual work would be that of the art critic,
not the art historian. There are, however, some
generalized trends. In Mexico contemporary art
tends to deal with ideas of space and
architectural form. Cuban art is exploring new
parameters, although the cultural context
remains restrictive and many young Cuban
artists are in exile, whereas in Jamaica and
Haiti there remains a focus on an AfroCaribbean
heritage and, in particular, the
use of sculptural and votive forms. Central
American and Caribbean art is appreciated as a
valid expressive form that has gained
worldwide recognition. Artists are exhibiting
globally and are represented in major
collections, such as the Tate Gallery in London
and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
1 THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION and its impact
throughout the area attracted international
attention. It was during this period that artists
actively sought to state a national consciousness
that would find its place within the international
arena, through distinctive architecture and
painting, and especially through Muralism. Many
artists travelled widely and drew on influences
from outside the area, international exhibitions
were promoted, and public manifestos of
indigenous awareness were published. Although
Modernism has led to artists being recognized in
their own right, for the majority this is clearly
rooted in a sense of national pride and heritage.
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
266
THE INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENTS of the nineteenth century
caused considerable political, social and cultural upheaval
throughout Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. In the
arts, conflict raged between schools of thought from Neoclassicism,
through Impressionism, to a populist ‘art of the
people’. Independence had manifested itself in factionalism and
dictatorships rather than national unity. This inherent instability
erupted in 1910 with the Mexican Revolution, followed shortly
after in the rest of Central America, and gave rise directly to
dissident and political art forms that were first expressed
through Mexican Muralism.
MEXICAN MURALISM
The revolution for social change in Mexico coincided with an
artistic revolution, and its initiation can largely be credited to
one man, Gerardo Murillo (1875–1964). After several years in
Europe where he was inspired by Fauvism, Murillo returned to
Mexico in 1903, changing his name to Dr Atl (Aztec for ‘water’) as
a symbol of his return to cultural roots, and began mural
painting. With two of his students, Joáquin Clausell (1866–1935)
and José Clemente Orozco (1883–1949), he organized the first
CENTRAL AMERICA AND
THE CARIBBEAN 1900-2000
60˚
10˚
70˚80˚90˚
Coyoacán
Aguascalientes
Guanajuato
Ciudad
Guzmán
Zacatecas
Ciudad Camargo
(Santa Rosalía)
CampecheVeracruz
Guatemala City
Puebla
Chihuahua
Oaxaca
San Marcos
San José
Heredia
Panama City
Port of Spain
St Andrew
St-Marc
Port-au-Prince
Limbé
Yaguajay
Manzanillo
Lucca
Sagua la
GrandeHavana
Santo
Domingo
C A R I B B E A N
S E A
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
ATLANTIC OCEAN
G U L F O F M E X I C O
GULFOFCALIFORNIA
YUCATÁN
SIERRA
M
A
DRE
M
A
DRE
DEL SUR
SIERRA
WESTERNSIERRAMADRE
EASTERN
SIERRA
MADRE
BAHAMAS
1973
CUBA
1898
JAMAICA
1962
PUERTO
RICO (to USA)
1898
BARBADOS
1966GRENADA
1974
DOMINICAN
REPUBLIC
1978 VIRGIN IS
GUADELOUPE (FRANCE)
ANTIGUA & BARBUDA 1981
DOMINICA 1978
ST LUCIA 1979
ANGUILLA
(BRAZIL)
MARTINIQUE (FRANCE)ST VINCENT & THE
GRENADINES
1979
NETHERLANDS
ANTILLES (DUTCH)
TRINIDAD &
TOBAGO
1962
N O R T H
A M E R I C A
M E X I C O
BELIZE
GUATEMALA
HONDURAS
NICARAGUA
COSTA
RICA
PANAMA COLOMBIA V E N E Z U E L A
EL SALVADOR
S O U T H A M E R I C A
Vértebra
Congress of Abstract Artists
1
3
12
13
4
7
8
2
24
25
1944-54
Amighetti (1907-98)
Zúñiga (1912-98)
Universidad Nacional
5
Ferrer (1929-)
15
Coronel
(1932-)
Siqueiros
(1896-1975)
Posada
(1851-1913)
Rivera
(1886-1957)
Orozco
(1883-1949)
16
17
19
20
20
Clausell
(1866-1935)
22
23
18
Tamayo
(1899-1991)
Palacio de
Gobernado
(Bustos, 1978)
21
14
9
10
6
11
Mexico1914,1916
Guatemala1954
Nicaragua1912-33
Panama1903-18,1989
Cuba1921-23,1933,1961
Haiti 1915-34, 1944, 1994
Dominican Republic 1916-24, 1
965-66
Grenada 1983
Burnside
(1947-)
Escuela
Nacional
de Bellas
Artes
Centre d’Art
- Dr Atl (to Madrid 1896-1903)
- Clausell (to Paris 1900)
- Montenegro (to Paris 1907Picasso,
Braque, Gris)
- Rivera (to Paris 1909, 1912Picasso,
Breton, Gris)
- Siqueiros (to Barcelona
1919-21)
- Barragán (to Paris 1932Le
Corbusier)
- Goeritz (to Madrid
1944-45- Arp)
- Bustos (to Berlin 1951)
Orozco (to New
York 1927-34), Siqueiros (to New York 1935)
Academia de
Bellas Artes
Mérida (to Paris 1910-14-Picasso,
Modigliani, van Dongen)
- Lam (to Madrid 1928-38; to
Marseille 1940-Breton, Ernst)
- Peláez (to Paris 1927-33)
Hyppolite
(to Haiti
1945-20 -
Breton)
N
0
0
300 miles
400 kms
major artist
active 1900-2000
1 - Malone (1941-)
2 - Ramsay (1953-)
Butcher (1960-)
3 - Peláez (1896-1968)
4 - Lam (1902-82)
5 - Portocarrero (1912-85)
Sierra (1944-)
Mendieta (1948-85)
Bedia (1959-)
6 - Woss y Gil (1891-1985)
7 - Mérida (1891-1985)
8 - Barrios (1946-)
9 - Obin (1891-1986)
10 - Hyppolite (1894-1948)
11 - Benoit (1911-86)
Bigaud (1931-)
12 - Manley (1900-87)
13 - Abrahams (1913-)
14 - Watson (1931-)
15 - Posada (1851-1913)
16 - Dr Atl (1875-1968)
Montenegro (1887-1968)
17 - Orozco (1883-1949)
18 - Rivera (1886-1957)
19 - Leal (1896-1964)
Álvarez Bravo (1902-2002)
Covarrubias (1904-57)
O’Gorman (1905-82)
Bustos (1926-)
20 - Siqueiros (1896-1975)
21 - Kahlo (1907-54)
22 - Alfaro (1949-)
23 - Solis (1953-)
24 - Stollmeyer (1913-81)
25 - Holder (1920-)
MEXICO 1910-40
1838
Central America and
the Caribbean, 1900-2000
date of independence
US intervention
revolution
Mexican artists of
the revolutionary period
major artist active 1900-2000
art academy/institute
gallery showing
international work
international exhibition
artists’ group
artists’ publication
architecture
Muralism
foreign visits and contacts
Cuban exiles
G
G
Mexico City
- Leal (1896-1964), Bravo (1902-2002),
Covarrubias (1904-57), O’Gorman (1905-82),
Kahlo (1907-54), Bustos (1926-)
- Escuela de Pintura y Escultura la Esmeralda
- Museo de Arte Moderno
- Taller de Gráfica Popular
- Chapúltepec Park (Vázquez, 1964)
- Palacio de Bellas Artes (Boari, 1904-34)
- Hotel Reforma (Pani, 1936)
- Museo Nacional de Antropología (Vázquez, 1963)
- Universidad de Mexico (Rivera, 1922)
- Escuela Nacional Preparatoria
(Rivera, Siqueiros, Leal, Orozco, 1922)
- Museo de Arte Moderno (O’Gorman, Orozco, 1942)
- Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes
(Rivera, Tamayo, Siqueiros, 1934)
- Museo Nacional de Antropología (Coronel, 1964)
- Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios
Puebla School
- El Machete
Guadalajara
Murillo (Dr Atl)(1875-1964) Montenegro
(1887-1968) Revista
Moderna Casa
Cristo (Barragán, 1929) -
Havana
Academia de San Alejandro Museo
Nacional Escuela
de Artes Plásticas (Posso, 1961) Tribunal
de Cuentas (Peláez, 1954) -
Kingston
School of Arts and Crafts John
Peartree Gallery Norman
Manley Airport (Abrahams,
1985)
G
G
HAITI
Savain -
(1906-73)
Holy Trinity -
Cathedral
(Bigaud, 1954)
CUBA 1959
- Biennal de Arte
- Revista de Avance
- Cárdenas (to Paris 1955)
Sierra (to Chicago 1961)
Mendieta (to Iowa 1961)
Bedia (to New York 1985)
1
DIEGO RIVERA, The Arrival of Cortés at Veracruz.
Diego Rivera (1886–1957) described his own art
as ‘narrative history’: realistic portrayal – as in this
detail of Cortés arriving at Veracruz – by which the
people could learn the story of their culture and
gain pride in nationhood. Rivera, together with
other influential artists such as Dr Atl, Siqueiros,
and Orozco, was at the forefront of Mexican
Revolutionary art. Yet he enjoyed publicity and
the company of high society and was denounced
by Orozco as a betrayer of the socialist cause
for accepting large sums to produce commissioned
artwork.
SOUTH AMERICA 1900–2000
269
strategies were used to overcome censorship
and the withdrawal of government support.
Collective groups of artists remaining in Chile
and Brazil during repressive dictatorships
appropriated urban spaces for ‘happenings’ and
installations, mail art, and later internet art, was
pioneered in South America as a means to
come to terms with its growing diaspora. By the
close of the twentieth century democracy was
In 1935, the Uruguayan Joaquín TorresGarcía
founded the Asociación de Arte
Constructivo and the review Circulo y Cuadrado,
containing contributions by leading
international Constructivists. Torres-García’s
workshop, and his writings and lectures, were a
source of encouragement for a generation of
younger artists in Uruguay and Argentina. He
contributed to the review Arturo (Buenos Aires
1944), a publication bringing together artists
who subsequently formed the two Concrete art
movements, Madi and Concreto Invención.
THE POST-WAR BOOM
While Europe suffered in the aftermath of the
Second World War, some of the economies in
South America thrived. Concrete and kinetic art
movements were particularly strong in Brazil and
Venezuela, where the demand for urban housing
and other public building also generated a boom
in modern architecture. The war also prompted
the immigration of many artists, including Mira
Schendel (Italy to Brazil) and Gego (Germany
to Venezuela), into South America.
The São Paulo Bienal was launched in
1951, establishing a lasting focus for
contemporary art in South America and
beyond. Outstanding modern museums were
constructed in Rio and São Paulo, where
groups of non-figurative artists were formed,
encompassing both visual art and experimental
poetry and causing heated discussion both in
the Brazilian press (an active forum for
contemporary art) and internationally. Artists
from the Rio Frente group later formed the
Grupo Neoconcreta, members of which (Lygia
Clark and Hélio Oiticica) were invited to
London for solo exhibitions during the 1960s. A
climate of modernization, and opportunities for
public commission, encouraged a strong
current of abstract and kinetic art in Venezuela,
the leading artists of which were Alejandro
Otero, Jesús Soto and Carlos Cruz-Diez.
In the later decades of the twentieth century
local art markets in Venezuela and Colombia
were buoyant, international art magazines were
launched and dealers supported the work of
young artists. In Brazil, Uruguay, Chile and Peru,
political and economic instability forced many
artists to continue their careers in exile. Diverse
AULA MAGNA AUDITORIUM, Carlos Raúl Villanueva,
Central University of Venezuela, Caracas, 1948–57.
Alongside the work of Costa, Niemeyer and Reidy,
this project is representative of South America’s
groundbreaking modern architecture. Villanueva
supported and encouraged the work of young
Venezuelan abstract artists Jésus Soto and
Alejandro Otero, inviting them to collaborate on
the University’s design. Other artists involved in
the project included Alexander Calder, who
designed the auditorium’s ‘acoustic clouds’.
MIRA SCHENDEL, DISKS, 1972. Schendel
was born in Zurich, brought up in
Italy and after being displaced by
the Second World War, came to
Brazil. Her use of linguistic signs is
representative of an experimental
attitude towards language,
encouraged by concrete and visual
poetry, an active and important
current in the recent history of
Brazilian art.
nrocirpaCfociporT
90˚ 80˚ 70˚ 60˚ 50˚ 40˚ 30˚ 20˚
40˚
50˚
30˚
20˚
10˚
0˚
10˚
The Northeast seen as
home to peasant populations,
and productive in terms of
Arte Popular. The region
became a focus for creative
and political interest in
1950s/60s
1959 Pioneering architect
Lino Bo Bardi obtains grant
to restore 16th- century
Solar de Unhão in Salvador
into a Museum of Popular Art
Populist dictatorship
witnesses renewed artistic
interest in a mass audience.
1976 Premio Nacional de Arte
awarded to Antay, artist of the
popular retablo
1962 Centro Popular de Cultura,
student organization promoting
arte popularPorto Alegre
Rio de Janeiro
Salvador
Santiago
Lima
Cali
Maracaibo Caracas
São Paulo
Montevideo
1963 First American Biennial of Printmaking,
Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Chile
from 1959 National Exhibitions of Graphics,
Central University of Venezuela
1967 Latin American Exhibition
of Drawings and Prints
1970 Pan-American Exhibition of Drawings and Prints
1971 First South American Biennial of Graphic Arts
1977-81 Biennials of South
American Printmaking
1950 Clube de Gravura de
Porto Alegre
1952 Clube de Grabado
1958 Taller 99,
Catholic
University
of Santiago
1970 Centro de Enseñanza Gráfica
Taller de Artistas Gráficos Asociados
Marañón
A
mazon
TapajósPa
ra
náXingu
Magdalena
Ori
noco
Paraguay
Ucayalí
Desead
o
Río Negro
L. Titicaca
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
CARIBBEAN SEA
PACIFICOCEAN
A
N
D
E
S
GUIANA HIGHLANDS
BRAZILIANHIGHLANDS
ATACAMADESERT
ANDES
PIAUÍ
BAHÍA
MARANHÃO
VENEZUELA
COLOMBIA
PERU
URUGUAY
ECUADOR
BOLIVIA
B R A Z I L
PA
RAGUAY
CHILE
ARGENTINA
Arte Popular in
Post-war South America
independent
graphics workshop
biennials and exhibitions
of printmaking and graphics
2
N
0
0
800 miles
1200 kms
restored throughout South America, although
economic instability continued to be a problem
for artists. A burgeoning internationalism in art
history and criticism has led to greater
recognition in Europe and the USA of the
significant role played by South America in the
history of twentieth-century art and architecture.
2 CHARACTERISTICS OF ARTE POPULAR
have been diversely reinterpreted
according to political and artistic
demands. In Brazil, for example, the
popularist government of Goulart
(1961–4) encouraged a national
focus on tradition, whereas in Chile
arpilleras (patchwork pictures) were
produced in opposition to the
dictatorship, by the families of the
disappeared. Another approach to
the popular was a renewed interest
in printmaking; biennials and
competitions held since 1960 have
established a lasting current of
graphic art in South America.
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
268
THE 1920s SAW the emergence of radical
artistic developments in South America.
Movements such as Expressionism, Dada and
Cubism were translated into innovative forms
in the cosmopolitan art centres of the region.
These developments ruptured the conservative
tradition of fine art institutions established
during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Artists such as Tarsila do Amaral
(Brazil), Emilio Pettoruti and Xul Solar
(Argentina) and Luis Vargas
(Chile) returned to their
respective countries after
intense involvement with the
Parisian avant-garde. Modern
artists established themselves in
South America with exhibitions
and lectures, and reviews that
circulated and debated ideas
beyond national boundaries.
CRUCIAL OPPOSITIONS
The review Amauta (Peru) linked
avant-garde aesthetics with
revolutionary politics. Although
international in scope, it
emphasized a Peruvian
identity: its title (a Quecha
word meaning ‘wise man’)
stating adherence to
Indigenismo. Martín Fierro,
(Argentina), on the other hand,
rejected any nationalistic
promotion of ancient cultural
traditions; its leading writer
was Jorge Luis Borges, and the review asserted
South American independence but conceded
the inevitable presence of European influence.
Brazil’s ‘Semana de Arte Moderna’, a week of
exhibitions, poetry readings, concerts, and
debates, was organized by a group of young
artists, writers and musicians and held at São
Paulo’s Teatro Municipal in 1922. The monthly
review Klaxon embraced a new, modern and
industrialized context for art. The phenomenon of
modernity in a country of economic contrasts,
with African and Indian populations and a
colonized history, was examined in the writings of
the poet Oswald de Andrade. His 1928
Anthropophagite Manifesto, attempted to come to
terms with the contradictions of this position. The
anthropophagite (cannibal) personified a critical
model for art from Brazil: the notion of devouring
the colonizer in order to appropriate his power.
The Mexican Muralist movement gave
momentum to a broad current of socially
committed art in the 1920s, and established a
lasting medium for public art throughout South
America. In the 1920s Muralism was often
associated with social protest (as in Ecuador and
the work of Eduardo Kingman) and Indigenismo.
Elsewhere Muralism was encouraged by
revolutionary political reform, as was the case
with the muralist group ‘Anteo,’ which emerged
during the 1952 Revolución Nacional in Bolivia.
SOUTH AMERICA 1900-2000
1 FROM THE EARLY DECADES of the twentieth century,
focus shifted from the traditional academy to the
activities of independent groups of artists,
contesting conservatism on both political and
artistic grounds and supporting an independent
American modernism with exhibitions and
workshops. Contacts were maintained with the
international avant-garde via art reviews and
research trips in and out of the region.
80˚ 70˚ 60˚
10˚
0˚
10˚
20˚
F
F
F
F
F
São Paulo
Santiago Buenos Aires
La Paz
Asunciõn
Barranquilla
Lima
Cuenca
Quito
Bogotá
Caracas
Recife
Salvador
Belo Horizonte
Brasília
Curitiba
Pôrto Alegre
Montevideo
Sucre
Rio de Janeiro
Medellín
Cali
O
rinoco
Amazon
Tapajós
Ucayalí
Río Negro
M
arañón
Paraná
D
eseado
Paraguay
Xingu
Magdalena
L. Titicaca
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
C A R I B B E A N S E A
A
N
D
E
S
ATACAMADESERT
BRAZILIAN HIGHLANDS
GUIANA
HIGHLANDS
VENEZUELA
B R A Z I L
COLOMBIA
ECUADOR
P E R U
B O L I V I A
A R G E N T I N A
URUGUAY
PA
R A
G
U
A
Y
CHILE
Estética 1924Madrugada
1925
Círculo y Cuadrado 1936
Martín Fierro 1924, Qué (Surrealist) 1926, Arturo 1944
Mandragora (Surrealist) 1938
Anteo
(Muralists)
1950
Amauta 1926
Agrupación Espacio 1945
Plástica 1957, Prisma 1957
Taller Libre de Arte 1948
A Revista 1925
Klaxon 1922
Revista de Antropofagia 1928
Noigandres (Concrete Poetry) 1952
Frente 1952
Neoconcreta 1959
Ministério da Edução
e Saúde (Costa 1937)
Museum of Modern
Art (Reidy 1953)
capital city
(Niemeyer 1960)
Bienal Building (Niemeyer 1951)
Salões de Maio 1937-39
Week of Modern Art 1922
M.A.S.P. 1947
Academia d’Altamira 1946
Centro de Artes y Letras de ‘El País’ 1959-66
Instituto General Electric 1963-69
1973-84 Military dictatorship
1973-88 Pinochet dictatorship
1940-48 Military government
1964-82 Military government;
muralism banned
1980s Military repression
1964-85 Military
dictatorship
Taller Torres-Garcia (TTG) 1944
Madi 1944, Asociación Arte Concreto Invención 1945
International Centenary Exhibition 1910
International Centenary
Exhibition 1910
Montparnasse 1923
Rectángulo 1955
Ruptura 1952
Agrupación Espacio 1945
Arte Nuevo c. 1950
Escuela Nacional de
Bellas Artes 1919
Fine Arts
School 1946
Fine Arts School 1946
Indigenismo c. 1935
Mural art c. 1930, Landscape painting c. 1930
Central University (Villanueva 1952)
Colegio Paraguay
Brasil (Reidy 1953)
Bienal 1968, Anti-Bienal 1968
Taller Libre de Arte 1948
National Exhibition of
Concrete Art 1957
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
South America 1900-2000:
Centres of Artistic Activity
1900s
1910s
1920s
1930s
1940s
1
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
art review
national movement/group of artists
landmarks of modern architecture
exhibition of national and international artists
national exhibition with international impact
art institution/school
independent taller (workshop)
early 20th-century Fine Arts Academy
establishment of commercial art market
international bienal
arts centre established by FUNARTE
(Brazilian government body)
South American artists abroad
visiting artists/architects
politics
F
1922-24 Tarsila do Amaral in Paris:
contacts Léger, poet Blaise Cendrars
1959 Haroldo de Campos (Concrete
poet) teaches at University of Stuttgart
1960s Oiticica, Clark, Schendel: solo
exhibitions in London
1890-1933 Torres-García in Spain,
France and USA, founder-member of
Cercle et Carré movement, Paris
1913-24 Emilio Pettoruti in Florence,
Paris
1912-24 Xul Solar in Italy, Germany,
England, France
1945-52 Alejandro Otero in Paris; forms
Los Disidentes (with group of other
Venezuelan artists in Paris) and review
of same name
1950 Otero and Soto visit Holland to
see Mondrian‘s work
1924 Blaise Cendrars (France) lectures
on modern French poetry
1929, 1936 Le Corbusier (France)
lecture tours
1951 Max Bill (Switzerland)
participates in 1st Bienal
1929, 1936 Le Corbusier (France)
lecture tours
1929, 1936 Le Corbusier (France)
lecture tours
1948 Concreto Invención group
(Argentina) exhibit at Taller Libre
de Arte
1952 Villanueva invites international
artists (Léger, Arp, Laurens, Calder,
Vasarély) to design work for the
Central University
1953 Affonso Reidy (Brazil) designs
Colegio Paraguay-Brasil
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
15
4
9
378
2 64
EUROPE 1900–2000
271
PABLO PICASSO, Guernica, 1937. Picasso’s
large-scale mural Guernica depicts the
atrocities committed against innocent
civilians during the Spanish Civil War.
Here Picasso presents, in his own Cubist
style, women, children and animals in the
midst of a terrifying conflagration. The
work has been exhibited throughout the
world and stands as a powerful symbol of
anti-war protest.
VLADIMIR TATLIN, Model for the Monument
to the Third International, 1919–20. Tatlin’s
proposed monument in honour of the 1917
Bolshevik Revolution reflected the utopian
and internationalist aspirations of the new
Soviet state. Planned to be 300 metres
(975 ft) high and to include within its
structure vast rotating rooms for state
agencies, Tatlin’s tower was never, and
probably could never have been, built.
1 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY was a period of intense sociopolitical
change resulting in the map of Europe being
redrawn many times over. Two world wars, the rise and
fall of Fascism and the emergence, consolidation and
eventual collapse of the world’s first communist state all
contributed to mass changes in national and
international identities and to dramatic shifts in practice
in the visual arts.
had once taken for granted, but it was now
increasingly forced to take second place to the growing
strength and authority of the United States. New York
was gradually to establish its primacy over Paris as the
capital of the art world.
THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY
From the very dawn of the twentieth century, scientific
and technological developments had a considerable
impact upon art production throughout Europe. In
Italy, new industries such as automobile manufacture,
significantly influenced artists such as the Futurists.
Based in the north of the country, where hydroelectric
power from the Alps was needed to run the turbines of
the new factories, Futurism celebrated speed and
modernity. Moreover, through the energetic
proselytizing of the movement by its founder and chief
spokesman Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Futurism gained
a foothold in many countries throughout Europe.
Technology also made a huge impact in the newly
established Soviet Union where artists associated
with the Constructivist movement embraced new
materials and techniques in an attempt to link the
worlds of art and industry. Many of the
Constructivists’ ideas were gradually exported
throughout Europe through dialogues established
with artists such as Vasily Kandinsky and El Lissitzky.
In architecture, too, new technological
developments played a major role in forming a new
aesthetic. In the first half of the century an increased
emphasis on machine and mass production opposed
the more decorative approach to architecture and design
that had characterized the late nineteenth century.
Reinforced concrete in particular facilitated greater
freedom in the design of interior spaces. External walls
were also liberated from their previous load-bearing
requirement. Throughout Europe architects such as
Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and
Konstantin Melnikov erected modern, geometrically
inspired and sparsely decorated houses and villas
that were to have a marked, and continuing, influence
on the development of twentieth-century architecture.
These experiments with new technology also went
on to influence post-World War II religious
architecture such as Le Corbusier’s works at
Ronchamp and Eveux and Frederick Gibberd’s
Cathedral of Christ the King in Liverpool. Brutalist
mass housing projects, such as Le Corbusier’s Unité
d’Habitation in Marseille, and Ernö Goldfinger’s
Trellick Tower in London also exploited the
possibilities of new building technology.
PUBLIC ART
Public monuments also played a key part
in the cultural landscape of twentiethcentury
Europe. While most of these
monuments occupy urban centres some,
including Konstantin Brancusi’s trio of
sculptures entitled Endless Column, The Table
of Silence and The Gate of the Kiss, and Antony
Gormley’s Angel of the North, have been
positioned further afield at sites,
respectively, at Târgu-Jiu in Romania and
Gateshead in England. These works serve
more distant audiences for public art, as
well as attracting the more determined
art pilgrim.
The principle of making art available
to a mass public audience generated the
development of many new museums
throughout Europe in the latter half of the
twentieth century. Many of these, such as
the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the
Pompidou Centre in Paris and the recently
opened Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao
have commissioned famous architects to
build ultra-modern buildings to house the
works of the modernist era. Others have
redesigned old industrial buildings, most
notably London’s Tate Modern at
Bankside, to reinforce the link between
modern art and the industrial era.
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
270
FOLLOWING PATTERNS that had emerged
during the previous century, many early
twentieth-century artists sought to escape the
ever-expanding urban centres of Europe in
favour of more secluded, sparsely populated
and less industrially developed rural centres.
MODERNITY AND MIGRATION
In France, artists associated with both Fauvism
and Cubism travelled south from their Parisian
studios in search of remote landscapes at St
Tropez, Collioure and L’Estaque. Conversely,
other European artists travelled great distances
to live and work in Paris, recognized at this time
as the centre of the art world. The outbreak of the
World War I further exacerbated the patterns of
international migration already established.
German and Russian artists in particular were
forced to abandon their Parisian studios and
return home, bringing with them their knowledge
and experiences of modern art practices. In the
midst of the conflict the city of Zurich in neutral
Switzerland, little renowned at this point as a
haunt for modern artists, became home to some
of the most experimental art produced in the
twentieth century as a host of international exiles
joined forces to launch the Dada movement,
soon to spread its influence far and wide.
EUROPE 1900-2000
10˚ 0˚ 10˚ 20˚ 30˚
40˚
50˚
Châtou
Collioure
St Tropez
Marseille
Trouville
Paris
L'Estaque
Milan
London
Dresden
Munich
Oslo
Murnau
Stampa
Vienna
Church of Notre Dame
(Perret 1922-23)
Villa Savoye
(Le Corbusier 1929-31)
Moscow
Melnikov House
(Melnikov 1929)
Notre Dame du Haut
(Le Corbusier 1950-54)
Ronchamp
Eveux sur l'Arbresle
Worpswede
Zurich
Cologne
Hanover
Barcelona
Migration to USA
Duchamp from France 1915
Ernst from France 1941
Grosz from Germany 1932
Albers from Germany 1933
Gropius from Germany 1937
Moholy-Nagy from Germany 1937
Mies van der Rohe from Germany 1938
Mondrian from Netherlands 1940
Amsterdam
Florence
Ferrara
St Petersburg
Copenhagen
Düsseldorf
Liverpool
St Ives
Brussels
House
(Whiteread 1993)
Târgu-Jiu
Puppy (Koons 1997)
Vitebsk
Gris Madrid
Ernst
Giacometti
Brancusi
Bilbao
Construction for the
Bijenkorf Department store
(Gabo 1954-57)
Gateshead
Angel of the North
(Gormley 1998)
Stockholm
Moderna Museet
(1958)
Venice
Livorno
Rome
Mondrian
Rotterdam
Utrecht
Berlin
Budapest
BrnoLe Raincy
Poissy
Sightpoint
(Serra 1971-75)
Endless Column
(Brancusi 1937)
Trellick Tower
(Goldfinger 1972)
Palais Stoclet
(Hoffmann 1905-11)
Schröder House
(Rietveld 1923-24)
Tugendhat House
(Mies van der Rohe 1930)
Steiner House
(Loos 1910)
Unité d’Habitation
(Le Corbusier 1945-52)
Cathedral of Christ the King
(Gibberd 1967)
Monastery of Ste Marie de laTourette
(Le Corbusier 1953-9)
Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
Tate Modern
(Herzog & de Meuron 2000)
Guggenheim Museum
Pompidou Centre
(Rogers & Piano 1971-77)
Guggenheim Museum
(Gehry 1997)
Guggenheim
Museum
(1951)
Goncharova, Kandinsky, Larionov
Chagall
Severini
Modigliani
Miró, Picasso
Graveyard of Fallen Monuments
Szoborpark
Tham
e
s
Seine
Loire
Po
Rhône
Ebro
Gar
onne
Duero
Rhine
Elbe
Oder
Volga
Vistula
Danube
Dniester
Dnieper
Tagus
Me
use
N O R T H
S E A
BA LT I C
S E A
A
D
R
IA
TIC
SEA
B L A C K
S E A
B A Y O F
B I S C A Y
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
P Y R E N E E S
A
L P S
B A L K A N M T S.
CA
R PA
T
IAN
MTS
D
IN
A
R
I C
A L P S
S I C I LY
CORSICA
SARDINIA
BA
L E A R I C I S .
A F R I C A
UNITED
KINGDOM
IRELAND
F R A N C E
S P A I N
I TA LY
GREECE
T U R K E Y
MACE-
DONIA
BELGIUM
SWITZ.
LUX.
NETH.
DENMARK
N O R W AY
S W E D E N
FINLAND
ESTONIA
LATVIA
LITHUANIA
RUSS. FED BELORUSSIA
R U S S I A N
F E D E R A T I O N
U K R A I N E
P O L A N D
CZECH
REPUBLIC
SLOVAKIA
R O M A N I A
B U L G A R I A
SLOVENIA
CROATIA
BOSNIA &
HERZEGOVINA
A U S T R I A
H U N G A R Y
G E R M A N Y
YUGO
S
LAVIA
ALBANIA
PORTUGAL
M
OLDAVIA
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
1 Europe, 1900-2000
centres associated with Fauvism
centres associated with Cubism
centres associated with Futurism
centres associated with Expressionism
centres associated with Dada
centres associated with Surrealism
centres associated with de Stijl
centres associated with
Metaphysical painting
centres associated with Constructivism
centres associated with CoBra
centres associated with Fluxus
religious architecture
domestic architecture
museum/gallery of modern art
public monument
open air sculpture park
artist/architect moving to Paris
artist/architect moving to USA
During the 1920s and 1930s, the rise of
Fascism in Italy, Germany and Spain further
contributed to artistic migrations. But it was the
outbreak of World War II in 1939 that was to
generate social movements on a scale that was
barely conceivable in previous epochs.
Throughout the conflict many of Europe’s most
respected artists, not least of all those who had
played a major role in developing the Surrealist
movement, fled the battlefields of Europe for
more peaceful and receptive surroundings,
many eventually reaching the shores of the
United States. In the post-war era Europe
fought to regain the cultural dominance that it
2 Art in a Globalized World, 1988-2000
NIFCA studio exchange programme, based in Helsinki
IASPIS studio exchange programme, based in Stockholm
NORDPLUS exchange with art colleges
artistic migrations, with date
art gallery with 20th-century art
contemporary art space
college of art
SCANDINAVIA AND THE BALTIC STATES 1900–2000
273
Einar Jolin and Leander Engström; the
Icelander, Jón Stefánsson; the Dane, Harald
Giersing, and the Norwegians, Ludvig Karsten
and Henrik Sørensen.
ART AND POLITICS
Public art, which sought to express a unifying
national purpose, came to have increasing
importance in Norway after the dissolution of
the Union between Sweden and Norway in 1905.
Monumental frescoes were produced by both
Edvard Munch and Gerhard Munthe, while the
country’s major sculptural decoration is the
Vigeland Park (1905–43), in Oslo, created by
Gustav Vigeland. During World War II, when
Norway was occupied by the Germans, a
parallel art emerged which sought to examine
topical subjects away from the public arena –
Hannah Ryggen, for example, reflected
contemporary subjects in her textile work.
The political situation in Finland had a
decisive role in the strongly national presentation
of art – attempts were made to manifest
genuinely Finnish qualities, rather than merely
absorbing international trends. In Finland, the
influence of international Modernism is first
noticeable around 1915, with the formation of the
Septem and November groups. The Expressionist
Tyko Sallinen, whose wild painting was inspired
by the French Fauvistes and Edvard Munch,
attracted violent criticism when he first exhibited
in 1912. One of the most radical Finnish
Modernists was Helene Schjerfbeck, who
distinguished herself in a series of selfportraits.
The sculptor Wäinö Aaltonen
dominated the 1920s and 1930s in Finland,
producing granite sculptures that are steeped
in patriotic heroism and classicism. It was not
until the 1960s that Finnish public art
experienced a new era with the monument to
Jean Sibelius by Eila Hiltunen, which, among
others, paved the way for abstract sculpture.
EIJA-LIISA AHTILA (b.1959 in Finland), Anne, Aki and
God, 1998, DVD-installation. Ahtila is one of the
most famous young contemporary Scandinavian
artists. Her works often deal with questions of
identity and psychoanalysis mixed with the
melancholy tradition of Nordic film. Anne, Aki and
God is ostensibly based on the diary of a schizophrenic.
60˚
10˚ 20˚ 30˚
Helsinki
Riga
Tallinn
Copenhagen
Malmö
Bornholm
Lund
1990s; to Berlin
to Berlin
to New York,
San Francisco
to New York,
1980s-1990s
with exchange countries
Roskilde
Odense
Vilnius
Turku
Umeå
Tampere (Tammerfors)
Jyväskylä
Oulu
Reykjavík
Bergen
Oslo
Trondheim
Tromsø
Uppsala
Jönköping
Gothenburg
Helsingborg
Wanås
Humlebæk
Kolding
Stavanger
Mariefred
Bornholms
Kunstmuseum 1990s
Stockholm
Norrtälje
Trapholt 1988
1992 Grafikens hus 1993
1988
1990
Vistula
Oder
W
. Dvina
SKAGERRAK
GULFOFBOTHNIA
GULF OF FINLAND
A
R
C
T I C O C E A N
N O R W E G I A N
S E A
BALTIC
SEA
DENMARK
SW
ED
E
N
N
O
R
W
A
Y
FINLAND
RU SSI A N
FED ERATI O N
LATVIA
B E L A R U S
POLANDGERMANY
LITHUANIA
ESTONIA
6
5
19
7, 8
10, 11, 12, 13
18
21
22
23
24
20
16
9
17
3
1 14, 15
2
4
Baltic States
1980s:
photography, performance
art and conceptual art flourish.
post-1991:
Baltic artists participate in
international exhibitions.
There are studio programs in
Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius.
N
0
0
500 miles
600 kms
1 - Arken 1996
2 - Museet for Samtidskunst 1991
3 - Louisiana 1957
4 - Brandts Klaedefabrik 1997
5 - Kiasma 1998
6 - Tampere Taidemuseo 1966
7 - Astrup Fernley Museum 1993
8 - Museet for Samtidskunst 1990
9 - Dunkerska Kulturhuset 1997
10 - Liljevalchs 1916
11 - Museum of Modern Art 1956
12 - Magasin 3 1987
13 - Färgfabriken 1996
14 - Rooseum 1986
15 - Malmö Konsthall 1975
16 - Konsthallen 1923
17 - Lund Art Gallery 1957
18 - Norrtälje Konsthall 1983
19 - Bildmuseet 1981
20 - Wanås Sculpture Park 1987
21 - Baltic Art Centre
22 - Centre for Contemporary Arts
23 - Latvia Centre for Contemporary Art
24 - Contemporary Art Information Centre
2 THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES and the Baltic states
are on the periphery of the art world, but since the
early 1990s this perspective has been greeted as
something interesting and refreshing, and – in a
global art market – the periphery is having an
increasing influence on the centre. Since the 1990s,
many Scandinavian and Baltic artists have made
careers on the international art scene. The most
reputable Scandinavian artists are, in fact, women.
The most popular media used by contemporary
artists are photography, video and computer art.
Conscious Naïvism – in which the subjects
were bucolic and idyllic – grew and flourished
in Sweden during the 1910s, especially at a
time when World War I was preventing artists
from working abroad. This trend, together with
Expressionism, continued to dominate the
Swedish art world over the following two
decades, although by the 1930s post-Cubism
and Surrealism were also having a marked
impact in both Sweden and Denmark.
Alvar Aalto from Finland and Gunnar
Asplund, from Sweden, have had the greatest
influence as pioneers for Functionalism in
Scandinavian design. Asplund was the chief
architect for the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930,
which was Functionalism’s greatest showcase –
revealing the impact of the movement on art,
architecture and design.
THE POST-WAR WORLD
After World War II international art trends
became significant. In Denmark, an expressive,
abstract painting style was created in the 1940s
mainly by the internationally active CoBra
group (1948–52). A group calling itself ‘1947 års
män’ (‘The Men of 1947’) appeared in Sweden
during the same period. Their espousal of nonfigurative
art came to have considerable
influence in the following decade.
Pop Art has an internationally famous
Scandinavian exponent in Öiyvind Fahlström. He
lived and worked in New York, and represents
the shift between French and American
influence on art in the early 1960s. The Moderna
Museet in Stockholm, under the leadership of
Pontus Hultén, had an all-important role in
developing artistic contacts with the USA.
The Danish painter and sculptor Per Kirkeby
represented the new Expressionism in the first
half of the 1980s, while others who used
photography marked the way for a conceptualbased
art which flourished in the late 1980s and
1990s. Scandinavian art has recently attracted
much attention for its anti-Expressionist style.
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
272
AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY, the
Symbolism of the 1890s, combined with
national Romanticism, resulted in ‘atmospheric’
painting, in which the revealing daylight of
Naturalism gave way to the thoughtful, soft light
of the long summer evenings. Older-generation
exponents of this type of art included Richard
Berg and Karl Nordström, while representatives
of the younger generation included J. F.
Willumsen, Hugo Simberg and Magnus Enckell.
SCANDINAVIAN MODERNISM
The landscape and culture of Scandinavia had a
marked impact on artistic trends that were
imported from elsewhere in Europe. Continental
Art Nouveau, which utilized flourishing plant
motifs in interiors and design, led to a more
rustic style in Scandinavia, reflecting local plant
life with its use of motifs featuring pineneedles
and cones. The many brickworks in Denmark
and southern Sweden infused local architecture
with a special character – façades of dark brick
were frequently used to give a sense of weight
and simplicity. In Finland the local materials of
wood and granite made their mark on
buildings, and Helsinki evolved a unique style
of Art Nouveau within the Baltic region.
Many Scandinavian artists travelled to
Europe, where they mixed Continental
Modernism with local traditions. A generation of
artists, born in the 1880s, went to Paris around
1908, to study under Matisse. Among them were
the Swedes, Isaac Grünewald, Sigrid Hjertén,
SCANDINAVIA AND THE
BALTIC STATES 1900-2000
HILMA AF KLINT (1862–1944) The Swan, No. 17,
1914–15, oil on canvas. Trained at the Academy of
Art in Stockholm, Klint was inspired by Spiritualism
and Theosophy. In 1906 she embarked on an
abstract and symbolic painting, guided by spirits.
From that date she never showed her works in
public, but she was ‘discovered’ in the late 1980s,
and hailed as a pioneer of abstract art.
20˚10˚
60˚
20˚
M
L
L
1
3
22
44
66
55
77
88
Tartu
Tallinn
Helsinki
Riga
Klaipéda (Memel)
Copenhagen
Ystad
Malmö
Frederikssund
Faaborg
Esbjerg
SilkeborgHerning
Kaunas
Vilnius Minsk
Pori
Paimio
Vaasa
Sundsvall
Skellefteå
Kiruna
Jokkmokk
Jukkasjärvi
Örnsköldsvik
Studio of Bror
Marklund, sculptor
(1907-77)
Turku
Mänttä
Tampere
(Tammerfors)
Hämeenlinna
Espoo
Rovaniemi
Savonlinna
Hafnarfjördhur
Reykjavík
Bergen
Moss
Oslo
Arvika
Karlstad Örebro
Linköping
Skövde
Norrköping
Tromsø
StockholmEskilstuna
Falun
Sala
Gävle
Uppsala
Borås
Kalmar
Emmaboda
Jönköping
Halmstad
Helsingborg
Båstad
Humlebæk
Vi
s
tulaOder
W. Dv
ina
S K A G E R R A K
GULFOFBOTHNIA
GULF OF FINLAND
GULF
OF
RIGA
A R C T I C O C E A N
N O R W E G I A N
S E A
BA LT I C
S E A
L
A
P
P
S
BORNHOLM
FYN
JYLLAND
DENMARK
SW
ED
E
N
N
O
R
W
A
Y
FINLAND
RUSSIAN FEDERATION
L AT V I A
B E L A R U S
P O L A N D
G E R M A N Y
ESTONIA
LITHUANIA
Henie-Onstad
museum 1968
1962
1915
1976
1957
1950s
Museum of Amos
Andersson 1965
SOUP 69 (American Pop Art)
Cubism 1924
The Baltic Exhibition 1914
Louisiana 1958
H55 (industrial design) 1955
Thielska galleriet 1905
1905
1981
1983
1978
Gösta Serlachius
(1876-1942) collection
1930
1986
19611967
Kjarvalsstadir 1973
1980
1988
1978
1966
1976
Surrealists
1929
1916
1917
After the Wall 1999
Baltic artists
emigrate
1940-53
1950
1942
1936
The School of Bornholm
1920-40 (landscape painting)
COBRA 1948-52
The School of Fyn
1885-1920
(national romanticism)
1963
1985
1913
The Stockholm Exhibition 1930
Baltic States
1940s-1953
Social Realist art
under Stalin
Lithuania
Nationally coloured
modernism between
two world wars
Implosion-a Postmodern
Perspective 1987
1970
1986
1937
1929
1962
1897
1964
1940
1956
SUM 1965-75 Fluxus and conceptual art
The Rackstad
colony 1898
Osslund, Elgström
and Bauer 1900-1910
1970s to Holland
and England
1960s: to New York and USA
pre-1960s:toParis
Lapp handcrafts are sold
at the market of Jokkmokk
1
2
5
3
4
N
0
0
500 miles
600 kms
Inset Major buildings
or monuments
1 - Paimio
Permar sanitorium, by
Alvar Aalto, 1929-32
2 - Turku
Turun Sanomat, by
Alvar Aalto, 1928-30
- The Chapel of Resurrection,
by Erik Bryggman, 1941
3 - Tampere
The Church of Kalevala,
by Reima Pietilä &
Raili Paatelainen, 1954-55
4 - Savonlinna
The Heroes' Tomb,
by Wäinö Aaltonen, 1920-21
5 - Helsinki
The Jean Sibelius monument,
by Eila Hiltunen, 1960-67
6 - Jukkasjärvi
Altarpiece, by Bror Hjorth, 1958
7 - Stockholm
Skogskyrkogården,
by Gunnar Asplund &
Sigurd Lewerentz, 1914-40
8 - Oslo
The sculpture park of
Gustav Vigeland, 1905-43
1 From Symbolism to Post-Modernism, 1900-1987
territory under Russian rule pre-1917
territory under Soviet rule, 1940-1991
major museum of art, with date of foundation
museum of art, with date of foundation
regional museum of art, with date of foundation
major exhibition
artists group or colony
major building or monument
artistic migrations, with date
Raw materials:
granite
glass
limestone
marble
Industrial design:
textiles
pottery
Major Museums:
1 - The Museum of Edvard Munch (1863-1944)
2 - The Museum of J.F.Willumsen (1863-1958)
3 - The Museum of Carl-Hening Petersen and Else Atfelt
4 - The Museum of Ivan Agnéli (1869-1917)
5 - The Museum of Wäinö Aaltonen (1894-1966)
porphyry
timber
soapstone
glassworks
enamel
L
M
1
1 DURING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY art in Scandinavia
became more and more accessible to the people.
Art museums were built in every major town. Many
of these museums were based on donations of
private collections, while others have gradually
built up their collections through purchases.
Regional art museums specialize in locally-based
work, but are also able to increase their impact by
featuring a range of temporary exhibitions.
RUSSIA 1900-2000
30˚ 45˚
60˚
50˚
St Petersburg
(Petrograd/
Leningrad)
Tallinn
Odessa
Kiev
Vitebsk
Velikiy Ustyug
Moscow
Tbilisi
Saratov
Palekh
L. Balkhash
Dnieper
Ural
V
olga
Don
Pechora
NDvi
na
Ob
V
yatka
BA
LTIC
SEA
BLACK SEA
CASPIANSEA
WHITE
SEA
B A R E N T S
S E A
ARAL
SEA
CAUCASUS
URAL
M
TS
UKRAINE K A Z A K H S T A N
U
ZBEKISTA
N
FINLAND
POLAND
World of Art (1898-1904);
Union of Youth (1910-13);
Victory over the Sun (1913);
Tramway V (Futurist Exhibition, 1913);
0.10 Exhibition (Suprematism, 1915)
Non-Conformist art groups (1970s-80s)
Donkey's Tail Exhibition (Neo-Primitivism, 1912);
Exhibition of Folk Art and Icons (1913);
Knave of Diamonds (Cubo-Futurism, 1910-17);
Suprematism, Constructivism
ROSTA, Russian Telegraph Agency
posters (1919-21);
festivals, re-enactments of Revolution;
IZO Department of Fine Arts (1918);
Tatlin's model for Monument to the Third
International (1920; Proletkult (1906, active 1917);
Tenth State Exhibition (1919);
OST Society of Easel Artists (1925-28);
School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture
(later SVOMAS, Vhkutemas, 1920-30, Inkhuk)
AkhRR (Association of Artists of Revolutionary
Russia, 1922-32); All-Union Exhibition of Arts
and Handcrafts (1923); Krupskaya Central House
of People's Art (1934); Exhibition of Industry and
Agriculture (1937); Manezh Exhibition (1965);
Open Air Exhibitions (1974-75);
Sotheby's Auction of Non-Conformist Art (1988)
Blue Rose
(1905)
Golden Fleece Exhibitions
(Neo-Primitivism, 1908-10)
Non-Conformist
art groups (1970s-80s)
Neo-Primitivism
Non-Conformist
art groups (1970s-80s)
UNOVIS
(Affirmers of the
New Art School,
(1919-21)
Northern Niello
artel (1920s)
Lacquer box factory
(founded 1924)
Non-Conformist
art groups
(1970s-80s)
Non-Conformist
art groups (1970s-80s)
N
0
0
750 miles
1000 kms
2 Western Russia: Pre-Revolutionary to Post-Soviet Art
border of the Eastern Front, Nov 1917
western border of Soviet Union, 1939
furthest extent of German invasion, 1941-44
area of collectivization of farmland, 1929-38
virgin lands, 1953-61
art movements, early 20th century
Revolutionary era schools, organizations, exhibitions
artistic activity, Soviet period
2 BEFORE AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION, provincial centres
flourished. Both artists of the avant-garde and
leaders of Socialist Realism worked at state art
schools. ‘Agit-prop’ trains and steamboats carried
posters and revolutionary theatre to outlying
regions. Soviet authorities renamed many towns to
honour political and cultural heroes (most have
now resumed their traditional names).
SERGEY GERASIMOV (1875–1970),
Holiday on the Kolkhoz (1937), oil
on canvas, Moscow, Tretyakov
Gallery. True to the tenets of
Soviet Socialist Realism, Gerasimov
celebrates community life on the
collective farm. The clear,
sunshine-yellow tones in the
landscape amplify the sense of
relaxation and festivity in the
gathering. Avoiding the reality of
crop failure and widespread
famine, the artist offers what
Communist Party spokesman
Andrey Zhdanov called ‘a glimpse
of our tomorrow’.
were sent to the state prison camps (gulags) in
the far north and Siberia. Survivors testify that
Stalin’s secret terror was more insidious than
the invasion by Nazi Germany in 1941. World
War II, the Great Patriotic War, marshalled
artists to intensify patriotism and national
identity. Films, symphonies, operas, paintings,
sculptures and photographs documented the
war and exhorted the population. Socialist
Realism proved capable of rising above
propaganda to express tragedy.
NONCONFORMIST ART
The return to normality after the war was
signalled by depictions of new settlements in
the eastern ‘virgin lands’, new housing projects
and the achievements of the Soviet
cosmonauts. Khrushchev’s denunciation of
Stalin in 1956 released a current of unrest that
evolved into an unofficial and illegal art
underground. The first public display of
nonconformist art occurred in 1962 at the
Manezh exhibition hall in Moscow, where
artists such as Ernst Neizvestny (1926–)
defended their right to determine their own
subjects and styles of work. Khrushchev’s ‘thaw’
was soon over, but some artists managed to
work outside of the official system. Unofficial
art became known abroad in the mid-1970s,
when an outdoor exhibition was deliberately
wrecked by bulldozers and fire-hoses. The
government eventually permitted independent
exhibits, though under tight restrictions.
During the ‘era of stagnation’ under Brezhnev,
artists developed networks for mutual support.
They asserted their right to treat any subject
and to employ any style, including
Expressionism, Surrealism, Photorealism,
Abstract, Kinetic and Conceptual art. Some of
the most radical innovations came from the
Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania, and from Georgia and Armenia in
the Caucasus, far from Moscow, where control
was less strict.
Near the end of the Soviet period,
conceptualist groups such as Collective Action
became adept at evoking the sense of chaos as
Soviet traditions and standards came into
question. Sots Art (based on Pop Art, with the
premise that the Soviet Union, lacking
consumer goods, had an over-abundance of
ideology) featured absurd slogans and PostModernist
pastiches of heroic portraits of
Lenin and Stalin. When the Soviet Union
dissolved in 1991, many artists considered
themselves to be both Russian (or Jewish,
Ukrainian, Estonian, Georgian) and international
in their allegiance. The challenge
before them today is to find ways to relate their
individual visions and national traditions to a
realistic understanding of modern markets and
audiences in an international art world.
275
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
274
cultural unity. Scenes of daily life showed
citizens working together in the community,
building strong bodies, reading and studying in
workers’ clubs or village reading rooms.
While official arts celebrated unity and
prosperity, multitudes starved in the famines
caused by collectivization, and thousands of
intellectuals, politicians and ordinary citizens
LEADERS OF VANGUARD movements in
Russia knew contemporary European art in
the collections of Moscow merchants, and
several maintained contact with counterparts
in France, Germany and Italy. Besides this
international cross-fertilization, new regional
perspectives were introduced by artists from
provincial backgrounds. Neo-primitivist and
futurist groups exploited the bold forms and
lively motifs of folk and popular arts.
REVOLUTIONARY ART
The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 galvanized
artists to invent new forms and venues: to use
the streets and squares as their canvases.
Revolutionary anniversaries generated parades
and decorations on landmarks throughout the
country. Embodying the aspirations of the new
state was the steel, glass and wood Monument
to the Third International (see p.271) by
Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953), never erected but
displayed as a model. Besides Tatlin, Malevich
and others in the Constructivist and
Suprematist movements many artists identified
themselves with revolutionary art. After Lenin’s
death in 1924 realism gained authority, and
abstract art was suppressed. The doctrine of
Soviet Socialist Realism announced in 1934
required that subjects and styles of all the arts
reflect ‘revolutionary reality’.
While Stalin’s government marshalled
resources for transport, industry and
collectivization of farmland, the official Union
of Artists commissioned appropriate works in
all media – from textiles and ceramics to
murals and monumental sculptures for
stadiums and metro stations. Themes of
industry and agriculture dominated major
exhibitions and the Soviet pavilions at the
World Fairs in Paris (1937) and New York
(1939). Art projects highlighted geographical
and ethnic variety in ways that accentuated
RUSSIA 1900-2000
30˚ 45˚ 60˚ 75˚ 90˚ 105˚ 120˚ 135˚ 150˚ 165˚ 180˚
70˚
60˚
Murmansk
Archangel
(Arkhangel’sk)
St Petersburg
(Petrograd 1914-24,
Leningrad)
Novgorod
Tallinn
Riga
Belomor
Vilnius
Warsaw
Odessa
Kiev
Minsk
Smolensk
Tver’
(Kalinin)
Velikiy Ustyug
Kotlas
Vologda
Yaroslavl’
Moscow
Tula
Kharkov
Rostov-na-Donu
Astrakhan
Saratov
Ural’sk
Samara
(Kuybyshev)
Kazan
Nizhniy Novgorod
(Gor’kiy)
Ufa
Perm'
Solikamsk
Vorkuta
Nizhniy Tagil
Tobol’sk
Yekaterinburg
(Sverdlovsk)
Chelyabinsk
Tashkent
Omsk
Tara
Novokuznetsk
Novosibirsk
Irkutsk
Vladivostok
Khabarovsk
Noril’sk
Volgograd (Stalingrad/Tsaritsyn)
Yakutsk
Magadan
Viatka (Kirov)
L. Balkhash
L. Baikal
L. Ladoga
L. Onega
Ural
Volga
Don
N.
Dvin
a
Dnieper
Pechora
Ob
Syr Dar
ya
Yenisey
Lena
A
m
ur
Kolym
a
Kama
A R C T I C
SEA OF
OKHOTSK
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
S E A O F
J A PA N
O C E A N
B
ALTICSEA
BLACK SEA
CASPIANSEA
ARAL
SEA
GULFOFBOTHNIA
WHITE
SEA
K A R A S E A
L A P T E V S E A
E A S T
S I B E R I A N
S E A
CAUCASUS
URAL
M
TS
A
LTA I M T S
C E N TA L
S I B E R I A N
P L A T E A U
W E S T
S I B E R I A N
P L A I N
KOLYMA
RANGE
T I E N S H A N
S I B E R I A
NOVAYA
ZEMLYA
KAMCHATKA
R U S S I A N F E D E R A T I O N
ESTONIA
LATVIA
LITHUANIA
BELORUSSIA
JAPAN
UKRAINE
K A Z A K H S T A N
FINLAND
C H I N A
M O N G O L I A
POLAND
SWEDEN
Turkestan-Siberian
railway, 1930
Rodchenko photo
series, 1935
Memorial to WWII Heroes (Buchetich, 1967)
Gulag Memorial
(E. Neizvestny, 1996)
Trans-Siberian
railway, 1890-1917
N
0
0
1000 miles
1500 kms
1 Russia and the Soviet Union, 1900-2000
area of famine, 1921
collectivization of agricultural lands, 1929-38
virgin lands
prison/labour camps and areas designated for isolated,
forced labour, 1918-58
extent of German invasion of Soviet Union, 1941-44
White Sea - Baltic Canal (forced labour)
Kotlas-Vorkuta railway (forced labour)
1 THE MAGNITUDE OF RUSSIA was a
challenge to development and a
recurrent theme in art. New
industrial centres, hydro-electric
dams, canals and railways
transformed the landscape. A
network of forced-labour camps
lined the Kotlas–Vorkuta railway,
the Belomor canal and other
projects. Vast areas of Siberia
became state prison-camp (gulag)
zones. While art celebrated
prosperity, the Russian heartland
suffered crop failures, then brutal
occupation by the Nazis.
KAZIMIR MALEVICH (1878–1935), Rye
Harvest (1912), oil on canvas,
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum.
Malevich, stimulated by French
Modernist art and by Russian neoprimitivists,
took motifs from folk
and popular life. Here, the
women binding sheaves resemble
painted wooden toys. In 1915
Malevich announced his invention
of purely abstract Suprematism.
BRITAIN AND IRELAND 1900-2000
277
Thames
Tham
es
Lloyd’s Building
(Rogers 1979-86)
Adelaide House
(Burnet 1924-25)
Royal Festival Hall
(Martin, Moro, Matthews 1951)
National Threatre
(Lasdun 1967-76)
Daily Express Building
(Ellis & Clarke 1931)
British Library
(St John Wilson 1995)
Gorilla House,
Penguin Pool at London Zoo
(Lubetkin 1939, 1940)
Royal Institute of British Architects
(Wornum 1931-34)
Wolseley Showroom
(1922; refit as Barclays
Bank Curtis Gree 1925)
The Clore Gallery
(Stirling 1980)
Battersea Power Station (Gilbert Scott 1930-34)
Tate Modern
(Herzog & de
Meuron 2000)
Cenotaph
(Lutyens 1920)
Queen Victoria
(outside Buckingham Palace
(Webb, Brock 1901-24)
Hyde Park
Regent’s
Park
Dilston Grove Studios
Butlers Wharf
Studios
Chisenhale Gallery
Henderson
WESTMINSTER
KENSINGTON
BAYSWATER
BATTERSEA
CITY
HOLBORN
CAMDEN TOWN
ISLINGTON
Artangel
Pellici’s
Cafe
The Lux Centre
Hales Gallery
Delfina
Flowers East
Matt’s Gallery
Interim Art
The AIR
Gallery
Hanover Gallery
Goldsmiths College
Cable Street Studios
18
18
18
19
18
18
18
18
19
18
49
42
18
19
18
19 19
22
19
35
50
48
18
52
18
18
18
18
18
19
20
53
18
2151
18
19
19
18
18
18
18
34
44
41
43
45
46
54
40
39
24
30
1
4
4
37
1
1
1
1
1
38
365
1 3
2328
44
31
29
47
33
27
26
32
55
17 2 Modern Art in London,
1900-2000
artist‘s home/studio
meeting place
art school/academy
art trades/organization
important exhibition
venue/dealer
modern architecture
public sculpture
1
3
4
5
8
9
10
11
13
14
15
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
- Sickert
- Gilman
- Gore
- Omega Workshop
- Hepworth
- Moholy-Nagy
- Mondrian
- Moore
- Nevinson
- Nicholson
- Stephenson
- Ayres, Mundy
- Acme Houses & Studios
- SPACE Studios
- The Old Jewish
School Studios
- Chisenhale Studios
- Gilbert, George
- Fitzroy Tavern
- La Tour Eiffel
- Isokon Building and
Isobar Club
- The Colony Room Club
- The Gargoyle Club
- London Jazz Club
- Barcelona restaurant
- Wheelers restaurant
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
- The Dog and Duck pub
- The French House pub
- Academy Cinema
- Arts Theatre
- The Bricklayers Arms
- The Slade School
- Rowlandson House
- Euston Road School
- St Martin’s School of Art
- Central School of Arts and Crafts
- Brodie and Middleton
- Atlantis
- Zwemmers
- Gallery One
- Artists International Association
- New Vision Group exhibition
- Institute of Contemporary Arts
- Factual Nonsense Gallery
- Whitechapel Gallery
- White Cube
- The showroom
- The Approach Gallery
- Camera Work Gallery
- Plinth (Whiteread 2000)
- Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery
(Venturi, Rauch,
Scott Brown 1987-91)
N
0
0
1000 yards
1000 metres
HAMPSTEAD
9
25
9
10 11
8
14
11
15
13
Everyman Cinema
21 Downshire Hill
Keats Grove
Bomberg
Nash
Gabo
AgarBevan, de Karlowska
47 Downshire Hill
2 POST-WAR LONDON spawned a bohemian culture,
based in the pubs and clubs of Soho, in central
London, such as the Colony Room, favourite
watering hole of such luminaries as Francis Bacon
and Lucian Freud. In recent years the East End has
become the centre of a thriving art scene, while
the opening of Tate Modern at Bankside marked a
major geo-cultural shift
(1932–4), whose form frankly expressed the
functional requirements of modern urban living.
After a period of experimentation with what
were considered ‘primitive’ sources, such as
Pre-Columbian figures, Henry Moore and Barbara
Hepworth pioneered a new and distinctively
British approach to modern sculpture in the
1930s. Among the most distinguished work to be
produced in London in the 1930s was Ben
Nicholson’s series of white reliefs exploring the
purest forms of abstraction. Following the pattern
established earlier in the century, Nicholson,
Hepworth and Christopher Wood moved to the
picturesque fishing village of St Ives in Cornwall,
which remained a centre for the production of
sculpture, ceramics and painting for the rest of
the century. Questions of landscape, national
identity and history preoccupied many NeoRomantic
artists, such as Graham Sutherland,
in the late 1930s, a concern which intensified
with the threat of World War II.
POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION
The Labour government initiated a welfare state
and sponsored the Festival of Britain in 1951,
whose lasting memorial is the Royal Festival Hall
WYNDHAM LEWIS, A Battery
Shelled, 1919. Vorticism,
an angular near-abstract
style, was pioneered by
Wyndham Lewis in the
years before the First
World War. His Futuristinspired
publication
Blast (1914) advocated
a celebration of the
machine and of war.
Lewis's experiences as
a combatant in the First
World War undermined
these beliefs, however,
and he returned to the
more figurative style
seen here.
(1951, Leslie Martin). Economic austerity and
post-war shortages were reflected in the gritty
social realism of much art produced at this time,
such as L.S. Lowry’s canvases of working class life
in industrial Lancashire. The ‘School of London’.
led by Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud, was the
focus of bohemian culture in the 1950s. The
reconstruction of Coventry Cathedral (1956–62),
to Basil Spence’s designs included work by
Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland.
By the 1960s government-funded initiatives
led to ambitious experiments in modernist
architecture, such as the National Theatre
(1967–76, Denys Lasdun) and Kenneth Capon’s
University of Essex (1963–8). Away from London,
St Ives continued to be an artistic hub, reflected
in the work of Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron.
The lure of American consumerism and the
mass media was irresistible to a generation of
young artists in the 1950s and 1960s. The
Independent Group, who met at the Institute of
Contemporary Arts in Westminster, and a group
of artists such as Peter Blake and David Hockney,
students together at the Royal College of Art in
Kensington, created a new style – ‘Pop’ – which is
a keynote for the analysis of British culture from
RACHEL WHITEREAD, House, East London, 1993.
Whiteread is among the 'young British artists' who
revived interest in contemporary art in the 1990s.
She filled the interior of a Victorian terrace house
with concrete prior to its demolition, preserving a
ghostly simulacrum of its interior space. House won
her the prestigious Turner Prize in 1993.
the 1950s onwards. The 1970s saw various forms
of conceptual art, notably ‘the walks’. These were
effectively geographical performance pieces, by
Bristol-based Richard Long which hark back to
the traditions of English landscape painting.
There was a period of artistic decline
under Margaret Thatcher’s premiership in the
early 1980s, an era epitomized by the
commercial brashness of Richard Rogers’s
Post-Modernist Lloyd’s Building (1979–86).
Later, a young generation of artists led by
Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread, many
trained at Goldsmiths’ School of Art, began to
exhibit challenging conceptual work under the
patronage of a new generation of collectors,
notably Charles Saatchi, as well as that of
galleries such as White Cube. By 2000, London
once again held a central place in the
international art world.
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
276
Modernism in Glasgow, epitomized by his
suburban masterpiece, Hill House.
Challenging forms of Modernist painting
definitively entered British culture through a
series of exhibitions held in London between
1910 and 1914. The most important of these were
curated by the critic and painter Roger Fry who,
with the painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant,
became a central member of the Bloomsbury
Group, based in central London. At the Omega
Workshop, the Bloomsbury Group created
innovative decorative art objects: one of their
most completely realized collective creations is
the interior of Charleston Farmhouse near Lewes,
the rural home of the art writer Clive Bell and his
wife Vanessa from 1916. In London, the Camden
Town Group, founded in North London in 1911
and led by Walter Richard Sickert, Spencer
Gore and Harold Gilman, pioneered a sensitive
Post-Impressionist vision of the modern city.
THE GREAT WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH
The catastrophic loss of life in World War I
(1914–18) found expression in the work of
numerous artists. Stanley Spencer’s Sandham
Memorial Chapel at Burghclere, near his home at
Cookham, memorialized his experiences in
Macedonia in a visionary, naive, figurative style.
While British culture was preoccupied with
mourning during the early 1920s, often articulated
through the use of traditional styles, this decade
also saw the impact of Modernist influences in
Britain. A distinctive Modernist architecture
based on the style of Le Corbusier appeared in
Wells Coates’ Isokon Building in Hampstead
AN AMBIVALENCE towards Continental
Modernism and a sensitive exploration of
vernacular traditions characterized the work of
British artists in the twentieth century. The
opulent culture of the Edwardian era (1901–10)
balanced an idealization of rural life with a
celebration of London as the centre of the
British Empire at its fullest extent. Victorian
political certainties were undermined by a
constitutional crisis and the Suffragette
movement, demanding votes for women.
Although London was to remain the undisputed
centre for artistic production throughout the
century, many artists chose to abandon the
city for remote rural locations. Adopting
French plein-air techniques, painters moved to
artists’ colonies amid the unspoilt coastal
scenery of Walberswick, Staithes and Newlyn.
MODERNISM AND RURALISM
The attempt to balance both the urban and
rural in architecture and town planning
resulted in Garden Cities at Letchworth (1903)
and Welwyn (c.1920). Incorporating natural
forms, Charles Rennie Mackintosh pioneered a
uniquely decorative form of architectural
BRITAIN AND IRELAND 1900-2000
1 LIKE THEIR PREDECESSORS,
many modern British artists
were fascinated by the
landscape, especially the
coastline, which – twice
menaced by German
invasion – gained a special
significance. Early artists’
colonies at Staithes in
Yorkshire and Newlyn in
Cornwall prefigured the
tremendous post-war
impact of the Cornish
fishing village of St Ives
which became home to
many of the leading
British artists.
5˚
0˚
55˚
50˚
1
2
3
4
5
12
8 10
9
6 7
11
F/C
F/C
F/C
F/C
V
321
1
10
11
32 13
4 5
6
7 8
9
12
14
15
I
EdinburghGlasgow
1901, 1938
Dundee
Aberdeen
Belfast
City Hall,
Brumwell Thomas
1896-1906
Newcastle
Dublin
Municipal Gallery
of Modern Art, 1908
Liverpool
Tate Liverpool, 1988
St Ives
Tate Gallery, 1993
Leach
Moser,
Hoffman
Queen Victoria statue, Webb, Brock 1901-24
University of Birmingham,
Webb 1901-09
Breuer, Gropius, Moholy-Nagy
Gropius
London Tate Modern, 2000
Wembley
1924-25
1951
Birkenhead
Williamson Museum, 1928
Manchester Lowry 1909-48
Coventry
Piper, Moore, Epstein, Spence all
work on Cathedral 1956-62
Sheffield Graves Art Gallery, 1934
Stoke-on-Trent
Cliff
Bradford
Cartwright Hall, 1904
Hull
Swansea
Ceri Richards
1921-24
Cedric Morris,
Tenby
Augustus &
Gwen John
Sligo
Yeats
Bristol
Salford
Birmingham
Barber Institute
of Fine Arts, 1939
Bath
Leeds
Oxford
Reading
Brighton
Lewes
Cambridge Kettle’s Yard, 1957
Stansted Stansted Airport, Foster 1990s
Downing College, Terry 1988
Northampton
Nottingham
Walberswick
Steer & others
Staithes
Newlyn
Hunstanton
Wivenhoe
Dufy Henley-on-Thames
Ascot
Dufy
Cowes Dufy
Spencer 1923-32 Cookham
Broadstairs
Sickert 1930s
Dymchurch
Nash 1920s
Norwich Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, 1978
Orpen 1914
Wyndham Lewis, Wadsworth, Nevinson
Fry, Hone, Kauffner
Hone
Derain, de Vlaminck
Capel-y-ffin
Gray
Lalique
Charleston
Sp
ey
Tay
Wye
Shannon
Severn
N O R T H
S E A
I R I S H
S E A
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
E N G L I S H C H A N N E L
NORTHWESTHIGHLANDS
P
E
N
N
IN
ES
G
R
A
M
PIAN
MTS
CAMBRIANMTS
WICKLOW
MTS
S C O T L A N D
E N G L A N D
WALES
NORTHERN
IRELAND
I R E L A N D
N
0
0
75 miles
100 kms
1 Modernity and Britishness, 1900-2000
major museum/collection
World Fair
places associated with particular artists
Impressionism/Post-Impressionism
Vorticism
Fauvism/Cubism
Constructivists/independent artists
Art Deco
De Stijl and Secessionists
Bauhaus
Eclectic architecture
Post-Modernist architecture
site of German bombing, 1939-45
F/C
V
I
Modernist architecture
1 - W.J. Basset-Lowke Home (Behrens 1926)
2 - Cambridge University Library (Gilbert Scott 1930-34)
3 - Impington Village College (Gropius & Fry 1936-39)
4 - Hill House (Mackintosh 1902-04)
5 - The Burrell Collection (Barry Gasson Architects 1983)
6 - City Hall (James, Pierce 1932-38)
7 - Highgate, Highpoint I (Tecton 1933-36)
8 - Wembley, Empire Pool (Williams 1934)
9 - Boots Wets Factory (Williams 1930-32)
10 - Secondary Modern School (A & P Smithson 1950-54)
11 - University of Essex (Kenneth Capon Architects Co-partnership 1963-68)
12 - Law Library (Martin & St John Wilson 1959-64)
13 - New Hall (Chamberlin, Powell & Bon 1962-65)
14 - Metropolitan Roman Catholic Cathedral (Gibberd 1967)
15 - St Andrew’s House (Tait 1934-39)
City planning
1 - Letchworth Garden City (Parker, Unwin 1903)
2 - Great London Plan (Abercrombie 1944)
3 - Welwyn Garden City (Howard 1920)
Artists’ colonies
1 - English Impressionists (Steer & others 1910s)
2 - Impressionists (Dame Laura Knight, Harold Knight 1900s-1930s)
3 - Forbes, Langley, Bramley, Gotch, Tuke 1910s-1920s
4 - Nicholson, Gabo, Hepworth, Wood, Wallis, Heron, Barnes-Graham,
founded 1928
5 - Scottish Colourists (Fergusson, Cadell, Hunter, Peploe 1920s)
6 - New Scottish Group (Fergusson, Bain, Frood, Eardley 1950s)
7 - Edinburgh Group (Walton, Duncan, Johnstone post-WW1)
8 - Bloomsbury Group (Fry, Bell, Grant 1904-1930s)
9 - Bloomsbury Group (Fry, Bell, Grant 1904-1930s)
10 - Camden Town Group (Sickert, Ginner, Gore, Gilman, Bevan, John,
Pissarro, founded 1911)
11 - Guild of St Joseph & St Dominic (Gill, Jones 1924-28)
12 - White Stag Group (Hall, Rakozci, Scott, Reid, Dillon, founded 1939)
THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM 1900–2000
279
5˚
51˚
Amsterdam
Hilversum
Almelo;
Library 1991-95
Otterlo
Arnhem
Eindhoven1
6
4
3
2
5
7
8
9
10
11
12 13
14
15
Delft
Rotterdam;
1918-41;
1948-50s; 1990s
Bergen;
Park Meerwijk
1916-18
Vredespaleis 1908
Scheveningen; Museum
Beelden aan Zee 1990-94
Leiden; Rijksmuseum
Volkunde 1837
The Hague
Utrecht
Park Sonsbeek
Openluct Museum
for architecture and
folklore, 1913
Palais du
Congo 1930
Musée d’Art
Contemporain 1908
(renovated 1933),
and 1930
Nijmegen
Groningen;
Groninger
Museum
1988-94
Leeuwarden
’s-Hertogenbosch
Dordrecht
Waalwijk;
1929-31
Brussels;
Expositions
Universelles 1910;
Atomium 1958
Koksijde-
Oostduinkerke
Binche
Charleroi
Mons
Antwerp
Bruges
Oostend
Maastricht
Ghent
Kortrijk
(Courtrai)
Menin Gate
Jabbeke
Tournai
Liège
Hasselt;
Kapermolen Park
(Japanese gardens)
Mechelen
Verviers
Rhine
Waal
Scheldt
Meuse(M
aas)
N O R T H
S E A
IJSSELMEER
(ZUIDER ZEE)
F R A N C E
LUXEM-
BOURG
NETHERLANDS
BELGIUM
GERM
AN
CONFEDERATIO
N
1919-28; 1980s
1923-36
1915-19;
1924
1926-30
N
0
0
60 miles
80 kms
1 - van Abbemuseum 1933-36
2 - Gemeentemuseum 1919-35
3 - Bonnefanten Museum 1990-95
4 - Kröller-Müller Museum 1938
5 - Museum Boymans-van Beuningen 1928-35
- Kunsthal 1988-92
6 - Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst
Antwerp, 1987
- Openlucht Museum voor Beeldhouwkunst, 1950
- Rubenshuis 1616-40, museum 1950
7 - Provinciaal Museum voor Moderne Kunst
- Museum voor Schone Kunsten
- James Ensorhuis and souvenir shell shop, 1960s
8 - Gaspard de Wit Royal Tapestry Factory
9 - Museum voor Industriele Archaelogue en
Textiel (Mule Jenny Sewing Machine)
10 - Veriersima-Centre de la Laine et de la Mode Museum 1999
11 - Glass Museum
12 - Paul Delvaux Museum, 1982
13 - Constant Permeke Museum 1930-52
14 - Volkundig Museum Nusantara (artefacts from Dutch
East Indies), 1864, 20th c
15 - Musée International du Carnaval et du Masque
(masks and carnival objects from around the world)
2 MAJOR CULTURAL SITES AND objects
were destroyed in both world
wars. During the occupation of
World War II Jewish populations
were deported, state
infrastructures were destroyed,
and ports were bombed.
Museums expanded after 1950
with collections of contemporary,
historic and modern art and
displays of African, Japanese and
Chinese objects. Tintin, the
cartoon character created by
Hergé in 1929, despite critiques
from post-colonialism, remains a
popular part of Belgian visual
culture. Brussels became the
headquarters of the European
Economic Union in 1957.
committed to the pictorial language and theory
of Surrealism. With the Belgian artist Paul
Delvaux (1897–1994), Magritte produced a form
of poetic Surrealism, moving across dream
imagery to amplify the Surrealist concept of the
power of desire and eroticism to ‘change life’.
RECONSTRUCTION AND EXPANSION
During wartime occupation, art objects were
taken to Germany and after the war an
extensive recovery programme was instituted.
The Atomium, a steel and aluminium structure
of a magnified molecule of iron, built for the
Brussels World Fair in 1958, signified post-war
reconstruction. Devastated by bombing,
Rotterdam embarked on urban restructuring,
commissioning Dutch and international
architects and sculptors. Marcel Breuer
designed the De Bijenkorf department store,
1955–7, with sculpture by Naum Gabo.
Museums were reformulated after 1945.
Memorial museums to Jewish history were
established, significantly the Anne Frankhuis in
Amsterdam (1957). The collections of the
0
0
1 mile
1.5 kms
Musée Royale de
l’Afrique Centrale,
Tervuren 1907;
Koninklijk Museum
voor midden-Afrika
1907-10
Palais Stoclet,
J. Hoffman 1908
Musée Royale d’Art et d’Histoire;
Koninklijk Musea voor Kunst
en Geschiedenis 1880s
Musée David et
Alicevan Buuren,
1928-70
Musée Constant
Meunier,1939;
Musée Beaux
Arts d’Ixelles, 1892
European Union
Parliament Building, 1997
Maison du Peuple
(destroyed 1969)
Musée de Costume
et de la Dentelle, 1977
Centre Belge de la
Bande Dessinée, 1987-89
Musée René Magritte, 2000
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts
Laeken Pavilion Chinois &
Tour Japonaise, 1900
Atomium, 1958 Brussels
Kröller-Müller shipping and mining dynasty
offered a model for museum policy at Otterlo,
celebrating the international canon of modern
art. At the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam,
curated by Willem Sandberg and Hans Jaffé
(1945–63), a commitment to European
Modernism was strengthened by acquisitions
of Suprematist work by Malevich, American
Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. The first
exhibition of CoBra (Copenhagen [Co] Brussels
[Br] and Amsterdam [A] 1948–55), an avantgarde
group of abstract artists, provoked huge
uproar, and was held here in 1949. Aided by
international competitions, public sculpture in
parks and cities developed in both countries.
Museums dedicated to individual artists
flourished, notably the Van Gogh Museum,
Amsterdam, designed by Rietveld (1973), with a
Post-Modern extension (1999) by the Japanese
architect Kisho Kurokawa .
In the late twentieth century, Brussels,
Antwerp and Amsterdam were centres for the
international fashion trade. Artists such as Jan
Dibbets, Ger van Elk and Marcel Broodthaers
have been central to Conceptual art and the
formation of global Post Modernism which
references a wide range of cultural phenomena.
Dutch architects, such as Rem Koolhaas’s Office
of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), have
achieved international standing with their rich
interpretation of architectural form.
RENÉ MAGRITTE, THE MENACED ASSASSIN, 1926, oil on
canvas. A central figure of the Surrealist movement
in Brussels and Paris, using a meticulous academic
style, Magritte developed a disturbing relationship
between the world and objects in his paintings,
placing the familiar in unfamiliar situations and
spaces, enlarging elements of familiar objects,
animating inanimate everyday objects such as
bowler hats, baguettes, shoes and dresses, or
reconfiguring anatomical parts.
2 Institutions and monuments
key buildings/monuments
international modernism
Expressionist architecture
Post-Modern architecture
Major museums:
collections of European and American art
museums devoted to the Belgian textile and glass industry
museums devoted to the work of a single artist
other museums (specified)
international fairs and exhibitions
Inset: 20th century Brussels
key monuments and buildings
museums with contemporary European and American Art
museums devoted to Asian and African Art
other museums
Quartier des Institutions Europénnes (major EU institutions)
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
278
THE OUTBREAK OF WAR in 1914 halted the
economic buoyancy and cultural expansion
of both the Netherlands and Belgium. In 1940,
despite neutrality, both countries were
occupied for four years. Post-war landreclamation
programmes rebuilt a Dutch
landscape that had been partly flooded
through destruction of the dykes during
occupation. In 1957 the European Community
was established, with its headquarters in
Brussels; the Benelux trade area, including
Luxembourg, followed in 1958.
GLOBAL COLLECTING AND TRADING
Léopold II founded the Musée Royal de
l’Afrique Centrale at Tervuren (Brussels) in 1907
to display his collections. Global artefacts,
textiles and peoples had been included in the
Brussels 1910 Expositions Universelles and at
the Palais du Congo, Antwerp, in 1930.
Although international condemnation
prompted Belgium to annex Léopold II’s
African territories in 1908, colonial exploitation
of Congo’s resources continued until its
independence as Zaire in 1960.
The Dutch presence in Indonesia continued
until the Japanese invasion in 1942; their
withdrawal marked the beginning of the
struggle for independence, which was achieved
in 1949. The foundation of the Openlucht
Museum for architecture and folklore in
Arnhem in 1913 enabled Dutch architects to
study the detailing and structure of Sumatran
buildings. The Tropen Museum in Amsterdam
(previously the Dutch Colonial Institute, 1926)
displayed Indonesian textiles, batiks, shadow
puppets and other objects and now includes
objects from Southeast Asia, Oceania, West
Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.
THE AVANT-GARDES
Luminism, Expressionism, Abstraction and
Surrealism were the principle movements in
the first half of the twentieth century. Whereas
Expressionism was important in Belgian
painting, notably in the work of Constant
Permeke (1886–1952), it was manifested most
strongly in Dutch sculpture and architecture.
Expressionist buildings, using traditional
Dutch brickwork in expressive and playful
forms, were built throughout the Netherlands
THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM 1900-2000
51˚
A
A
A
A
Nijmegen
Arnhem
Groningen
Utrecht
Leeuwarden
Drachten
’s-Hertogenbosch
(Bois-le-Duc)
Brussels
Charleroi
Namur
Nuenen
Zundert
Liège
SeraingMons
Kortrijk
(Courtrai)
The Hague
Bruges
Rotterdam
Haarlem
Dordrecht
Maastricht
Antwerp
Eindhoven
Ostend
Amsterdam
Hilversum
Tournai
Ghent
Leuven
(Louvain)
LarenKatwijk aan Zee
Domburg
Rhine
Waal
Scheldt
Meuse(Maas)
N O R T H
S E A
IJSSELMEER
(ZUIDER ZEE)
LU
XEM
BOURG
BELGIUM
GERMANY
NETHERLANDS
FRANCE
to Holland from Indonesia:
textiles, batiks, shadow puppets
De Stijl
1917-31
CoBra
1948-51
to Japan
to Hungary
T. van
Doesburg
1920-22;
Piet Mondrian;
J.J.P. Oud;
C. Domela
Dutch architects to
Weissenhofsiedlung
Stuttgart, 1927
to USA
P. Mondrian 1940;
W. De Kooning 1926
to UK
to
Germany
Surrealism:
R. Magritte; P. Delvaux;
E.L.T. Mesens; R. Ubac
1903-39
Dutch artists to and from Paris: participation
in Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, 1925,
Abstract Création/Cercle et Carré & Art Concret
to Russia
toFrance
to Belgium from Central Africa/
Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire):
African objects, weapons,
sculpture, diamonds
to Czechoslovakia
toCopenhagen
Surrealism: to London
Surrealism
:toParis
N
0
0
30 miles
40 kms
between 1890 and 1939. The work of the
Amsterdam School elaborated on the expressive
form of H. P. Berlage’s De Beurs and J. M. van der
Mey’s Scheepvaarthuis. M. de Klerk (1884–1923)
and K. P. C. de Bazel (1869–1923) developed an
architecture of decorative and organic form
including stylish housing projects for
Amsterdam’s socialist Office of Public Works.
The theory and practice of De Stijl
dominated the international avant-garde, setting
agendas for the twentieth century. Founded in
Leiden in 1917, De Stijl advocated a universal
style. In painting, formal elements were reduced
to the rectangle and pure primary colours; in
architecture and sculpture these concepts were
extended to include volume and space.
Influences from America, Japan and Indonesia
shaped the work, which retained strong idealist
and spiritual dimensions. Theo van Doesburg
(1883–1931), Gerrit Rietveld (1888–1964), J. J. P.
Oud (1890–1963) and Piet Mondrian (1872– 1944)
were, with Belgian sculptor Georges
Vantongerloo, the leading figures. De Stijl artists
participated in Parisian avant-garde circles such
as: Abstraction Création, Cercle et Carré and Art
Concret; at the Bauhaus in Germany, and in the
Dada movement, staging a famous Dada Tour of
the Netherlands in 1923.
In De Stijl architecture van Doesburg
introduced axonometric drawing to exemplify
the dynamic interrelation of interior and
exterior space partly carried out in Rietveld’s
Schroder House, Utrecht (1924). By the late
1920s architecture in Belgium and the
Netherlands drew on the immateriality and
formal abstraction of De Stijl but linked it to a
more Russian constructivist aesthetic of
machine-like surfaces and smooth glazing. In
buildings such as the van Nelle Factory,
Rotterdam (J. A. Brinckman and L. C. van der
Vlught, 1925–31) and the Zonnestraal
Sanatorium at Hilversum (J. Duiker, 1926–31) a
unified architectural style was developed for the
modern world.
Although René Magritte (1898–1967) flirted
briefly with De Stijl abstraction, by 1926 he was
NEMO Building
(R.Piano 1999)
Scheepvaarthuis 1912-16
(J.M. van der Mey)
Rembrandt House, 1911
Jewish Historical
Museum, 1987
Stadhuis/Muziek
Theatre-Stopera, 1988
Anne Frankhuis, 1957
Stedelijk Museum, 1938
Museum Vincent van Gogh, 1973, 1999
Cobramuseum
Tropen Museum, 1926
Housing,
OMA
1989-90
Tuschinski Theatre, 1921
AMSTELVEEN
AMSTERDAMSE
BOS BIJLMERMEER,1954
Am
stel
N
0
0
1 miles
1.5 kms
Amsterdam
PIET MONDRIAN, Tableau 1 with Red, Black, Blue and
Yellow (1921), oil on canvas. A central figure of De
Stijl, Mondrian developed his mature nieuwe
beelding paintings in Paris (1919–30), London
(1939–40) and New York, where his theoretical
writings and exhilarating paintings, such as
Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1942–3, in the collection
of the Museum of Modern Art, New York),
influenced post-war abstraction, architecture,
industrial design and the graphic arts.
1 THE MOVEMENT OF ARTISTS AND ART OBJECTS in and out
of Belgium and the Netherlands was determined
by wars and the growth of collections of
international modern art. Art historian Hans Jaffé
fled to Amsterdam in 1936 and Expressionist
painter Max Beckmann lived there 1937–47.
Innovative Post Modern
buildings were constructed on
Amsterdam’s eastern harbour.
1a 20th-Century Amsterdam
key moments and buildings
major museums
Key areas of 20th-century
architectural development:
Amsterdam School architecture housing,
1909-21
Nieuwe Bouwen/International
Style Modernist architecture,
1921-34
Olympic quarter: Stadium
(J.Wils & C. van Eesteren,
1928
Forum architecture, 1955-66
Post-Modern architecture
Eastern harbour area,
1989-present
International Connections,
1900-2000
line of trench warfare, 1914-17
territory acquired
post-World War I
imports from colonial territories
important artistic centres
artists‘ colonies, 1900-20
artistic movements:
De Stijl, 1917-31
CoBra, 1948-51
Surrealism, from 1926
Dada tour of Holland, 1923
movements of artists
A
1
2 Politics and the Division of Germany
Federal Republic of Germany, 1945
German Democratic Republic, 1945
border of United Germany from 1990
city where museums had modern works confiscated
by the National Socialists
venue of Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition
site of auction of modern art under the Third Reich
National Socialist architectural project (completed)
National Socialist architectural project (not completed)
routes of artists emigrating after the National Socialists
took power in Germany
anti-Nazi/Holocaust memorial
memorial erected at former concentration camp
autobahns, 1939: open to traffic
under construction
authorized
$
GERMANY, SWITZERLAND, AUSTRIA 1900–2000
281
Bauhaus has come to symbolize
experimentation and innovation in all forms of art
and design as well as in its teaching methods.
When the National Socialists came to power
in 1933, the cultural landscape of central Europe
was once again transformed. Art was of vital
importance to Hitler’s regime and he moved
early on to control the production and display of
art throughout the region. Munich was destined
to be the new capital of the arts of the Third
Reich, and with this objective in mind Hitler
called upon the architect Paul Troost to build a
new museum in his favoured Neoclassical style:
the House of German Art. To coincide with the
opening of this new museum, however, the
National Socialist regime also launched an
exhibition showing the art that it regarded as
anathema to its ideals. The works of modern
German, Swiss and Austrian artists such as Otto
Dix, Paul Klee and Oskar Kokoschka were
subsequently confiscated from museums
throughout the territories of the Third Reich and
MILLIONS STAND BEHIND ME, 1932, by John Heartfield.
Heartfield was a highly political artist whose
images were mass-produced and disseminated
throughout the country in the workers’ journals
of the day. In this work Heartfield condemns
those who funded Hitler’s rise to power.
Heartfield was best known for his use of the
photomontage technique.
10˚
50˚
$
Dresden
Prague
Breslau
Chemnitz
Jena
Kassel
Cologne
Hanover
Mannheim
Wiesbaden
Saarbrücken
Karlsruhe
Lübeck
Kiel
Munich
Leipzig
Erfurt
BuchenwaldDüsseldorf
Essen
Wuppertal
Weimar
Hamburg
Bremen
Bergen-Belsen
Bielefeld
Berlin
Stettin
Frankfurt
Ulm
Nuremberg
Dachau
Lucerne
Waldenburg
Bern
Salzburg
Linz
Mauthausen
Graz
Stuttgart
Vienna
Rhine
OderElbe
Danube
N O R T H
S E A
BA LT I C S E A
F E D E R A L
R E P U B L I C
O F
G E R M A N Y
GERMAN
DEMOCRATIC
REPUBLIC
P O L A N D
I T A L Y
A U S T R I A
F R A N C E
BELGIUM
LUX.
Y U G O S L A V I A
C Z E C H O S L O VA K I A
SWITZERLAND
NE
THERLANDS
1937
1938
1938
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1941
1938
1937 Olympic Stadium 1936 (March)
New Reichs Chancellory 1938-39 (Speer)
Triumphal Arch 1939 (Speer)
Great Hall 1940 (Speer)
Harburg Column against Racial
Hatred and Injustice 1986 (J & E Gerz)
Black Form dedicated to the Missing
Jews 1989 (LeWitt)
Negative Form
Monument 1987
(Hoheisel)
Monument against
War and Fascism
1988 (Hrdlicka)
Point of Reference
Installation 1988 (Haacke)
Deportation Memorial (Mirrorwall)
1995 (Göchel, von Rosenberg, Burkert)
Fuhrermuseum
1939 (Speer)
Parade Ground 1934 (Speer)
Memorial Sculpture
1968 (Glid)
Revolt of the
Prisoners
1958 (Cremer)
Jewish Memorial
1945-49
Berlin Wall constructed
1962; dismantled 1989
Sculpture
Garden
c. 1957
House of German
Art 1937 (Troost)
1938
Kokoschka to Prague 1933
KleetoBerne1933
Kandinsky to Paris 1933
Beckmann to
Amsterdam 1937
Grosz to New York 1933-58
Kokoschka & Meidner to London 1938
Moholy-Nagy to London 1935
Moholy-Nagy to Chicago 1937
Schwitters to Lysaker, Norway 1937,
to Edinburgh 1940, to Lake District,
England 1945
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
2 THE RISE AND FALL of National Socialism had a
massive impact across the region. Hitler’s grandiose
architectural plans called for monumental public
buildings in cities throughout the territories of the
Third Reich as well as an extensive autobahn
network to connect these sites. With the
conclusion of the war, however, Germany was
divided into two opposing states which remained
in place until the nation was finally reunited in
1990.
were put on exhibition in a deliberately negative
light in the so-called ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibitions.
These exhibitions toured throughout Germany,
Switzerland and Austria from 1937 onwards.
In this grim climate, many of the nation’s
best-known artists fled the country, spending
the war years in England or the United States.
Hitler’s grandest plan for the arts was, however,
never to be completed. In 1939 he called upon
his favourite architect, Albert Speer, to build a
monumental museum in Linz, in Hitler’s native
Austria. The so-called Fuhrermuseum was planned
on a gigantic scale and was intended to house
the greatest collection of art ever assembled.
This museum was planned to be the
culmination of Hitler’s policy of confiscating
works of art from private and public collections
throughout the territories conquered by the
military might of the Third Reich.
POST-WAR TURMOIL
Following the defeat of National Socialism in
1945, Germany entered a new period of
instability and turmoil. With the occupation of
the east of the country by the victorious Soviet
army Germany was now divided into two
separate states and thus became one of the key
cultural battlegrounds upon which the Cold
War was metaphorically fought. The dialogue
between east and west was largely restricted by
the Berlin Wall, yet some artists, such as Georg
Baselitz and Gerhard Richter, did manage to
move from east to west.
As in many other countries in Europe, the
early post-war period was characterized by
debates between proponents of abstraction and
realism. Artists such as Willi Baumeister, whose
works had been exhibited in the ‘Degenerate Art’
exhibitions of the 1930s, staunchly supported
abstraction as the way forward for German art
in the wake of the Nazi period. Having been
deprived of his teaching rights during the 1930s,
he now took up an influential post at the
Stuttgart Academy of Arts. The tensions between
abstraction and realism were, however, most
keenly felt in the divided city of Berlin. Here
Georg Baselitz, an artist who had been trained on
both sides of the Berlin Wall, strove throughout
the 1960s to find a new way to bring together
figurative painting and abstraction.
It was the city of Düsseldorf, however, that
was to become the primary centre of
experimental art production and teaching in the
second half of the twentieth century. Joseph
Beuys first entered the State Academy of Art in
Düsseldorf as a student in 1947. By the early
1960s he was a key figure in this prestigious
teaching institution which had attracted artists of
the stature of Jörg Immendorf, Sigmar Polke and
Gerhard Richter. Beuys was active in the
conceptual art movement known as Fluxus and
participated in many of their exhibitions
throughout Europe. The intense political climate
of post-war Germany took its toll on Beuys,
however, whose increasing political activism
alienated him from the Düsseldorf Academy
and led to his summary dismissal in 1972.
The shadow of the Nazi atrocities continues
to haunt Germany, Austria and Switzerland, a
factor made evident by the continuing practice
of building Holocaust and anti-Nazi
monuments. Some of these, constructed on the
sites of former concentration camps, pay tribute
to the victims of the Hitler era whilst others,
erected during the 1980s, emphasize the need
for continuing vigilance against a resurgence of
Fascism. Such monuments, sited at strategic
spots throughout the region, attest to the
continuing influence of art in people’s lives.
1 The Modern Movement
Dada site
rural site for modern painting
centre of artistic training
Bauhaus site (Kandinsky and Gabo from Moscow;
Moholy-Nagy from Budapest; Klee from Bern;
Kokoschka from Vienna to Bauhaus to teach)
Expressionism site
architectural site
D
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
280
GERMANY, SWITZERLAND AND AUSTRIA,
situated geographically at the very epicentre
of Europe, witnessed major social and political
turmoil throughout the twentieth century. These
changes were to have a considerable impact upon
art and artists and, as a result, the centres of
artistic activity shifted around the region.
CITY AND COUNTRYSIDE
The early German Expressionist artists of the
group called Die Brücke explored the relationship
between city and countryside. Trained originally
as architects in Dresden, many Die Brücke artists
spent their early careers working in the idyllic
countryside of the Moritzburg Lakes, thus
following in the footsteps of artists such as
Paula Modersohn-Becker who had worked
extensively at a rural colony in Worpswede
between 1897 and her early death in 1907. In
southern Germany too, Vasily Kandinsky and
Gabriele Münter left the city of Munich behind
for the rural, timeless pleasures of Murnau.
However, the Die Brücke artists did not
actually avoid the city. In 1911 many of them
moved to Berlin where they painted images of
modern urban life with all its glamour, excitement
and dangers. In Vienna artists including Oskar
Kokoschka, Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele
were also experimenting with modern art
styles. Their work explored the social anxieties
and sexual mores so intrinsically linked to
turn-of-the-century bourgeois society.
WORLD WARS AND ARTISTIC EXPRESSION
World War I inevitably transformed the cultural
climate. The city of Zurich, in neutral
Switzerland, soon became a mecca for artists
escaping the conflict. This hotbed of political
and pacifist activity became the spawning
ground for the Dada movement that was soon to
spread its influence to cities such as Cologne,
Hanover, Dresden and Berlin. In the confused
years of post-war reconstruction Germany
became a centre of artistic experimentation in
many media. Artists such as George Grosz, John
Heartfield and Hannah Höch all produced
illustrations for popular journals while training
centres such as the Bauhaus contributed to a
design revolution. Founded in Weimar in 1919,
the Bauhaus drew artists from throughout the
region and beyond. Forced to move to Dessau
in 1925 and again to Berlin in 1932 before
eventually being closed the following year, the
GERMANY, SWITZERLAND, AUSTRIA 1900-2000
BATHERS AT MORITZBURG, 1909–26, by Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner, one of Die Brücke artists. Kirchner’s
exuberant and celebratory painting of figures
bathing in the Moritzburg Lakes near Dresden
epitomizes the artist’s desire to go ‘back to nature’.
Here the bathers’ bodies take on a green cast as if
they are part of the natural surroundings in which
they are represented. Kirchner’s mythic Eden is
here situated in the idyllic surroundings of the
German countryside.
10˚
50˚
Berlin
AEG Turbine Factory 1908-09 (Behrens)
New National Gallery 1968 (Mies van der Rohe)
Anfield-an-der-Leine
Fagus Shoe Factory
1910-14 (Gropius and Meyer)
La Chaux-de-Fonds
Villa Schwob 1916 (Le Corbusier)
Potsdam
Einstein Tower 1920-21
(Mendelsohn)
Vienna
Steiner House 1910 (Loos)
Karl Marx Housing Complex 1927 (Ehn)
Weimar 1919-25
1925-32 Dessau
1932-33
(Kollwitz, Höch)
(Dix, Kirchner, Heckel)
Munich
(Kandinsky, Münter, Marc)
(Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka)
Düsseldorf
(Beuys, Richter, Immendorff, Polke)
Worpswede (Modersohn-Becker)
Murnau
(Kandinsky, Münter,
Jawlensky, Werefkin)
Moritzburg Lakes
(Kirchner, Heckel)
D
D
D
D
D
Zurich
Cabaret Voltaire 1916
(Ball, Tzara, Arp)
Dresden (Dix)
Cologne (Ernst)
(Grosz, Dix, Hausmann, Höch)
Hanover
(Schwitters)
N O R T H
S E A
BA LT I C S E A
O
der
Elbe
Rhi
ne
Danube
G E R M A N Y
F R A N C E
BELGIUM
LUX.
P O L A N D
I T A L Y
A U S T R I A
S L O V E N I A
C Z E C H
R E P U B L I C
SWITZERLAND
NETHE
RLANDS
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 IN CONTRAST TO FRANCE, where many modern artists
established their reputations and their studios
almost exclusively in Paris, Germany was home to a
diverse number of artistic centres from Hanover in
the north to Munich in the south. Important
developments also took place in the Austrian city
of Vienna and, during World War I, in Zurich in
Switzerland.
EASTERN EUROPE 1900–2000
283
BERLIN’S DER STURM covers (1910–32)
often featured Hungarian artists,
including, as here, Lajos Kassák.
40˚
50˚
10˚ 20˚ 30˚ 40˚
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Cu
Danube
Oder
Elbe
Dniest
er
BALTIC
SEA
A
D
RIA
TIC
SEA
R U S S I A N
F E D E R A T I O N
U K R A I N E
P O L A N D
ROMANIA
BULGARIA
GREECE
SLOVENIA
ALB.
HUNGARY
MACE.
BOSNIA
& HERZ.
CROATIA
CZECH
REP.
GERMANY
ESTONIA
LATVIA
LITHUANIA
B E L A R U S
M
OLDAVIA
YUGOSLAVIA
SLOVAKIA
A U S T R I A
PAROS
AIGINA
TINOS
ANDROS
RHODES
CRETE
Poznan
Prague
Zagreb
Ljubljana
Patra
Pyrgos
Ioannina
Nafpaktos
Irakleion
Bucharest
Skopje
Thessaloniki
Trikala
Larisa
Xanthi
Polykastro
Athens
Galati
Cluj-Napoca
Odessa
Poltava
Kiev
Warsaw
L’viv
Sanak
Bardejov
Budapest
Chisinau¸ ˇ
Cracow
Wroclaw
´
¸
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
High Modernism in Central
and Eastern Europe
USSR in 1945
Communist states, 1948-89
Iron Curtain, 1948
present-day borders
coal foundries
copper
glassworks
textiles and weaving
paper production
wrought iron
wooden architecture
pottery
outdoor architectural museums
national modern style of architecture
totalitarian architecture (large-scale projects)
experimental modernist architecture
centre of contemporary art
Cu
2
Thessaloniki
Cu
Athens
century was marked by its uniquely peripatetic
nature as national artistic identity gave way to
international contact across Europe. Romanian
artists Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco
originated the Dada movement in Zurich, while
the Czech group, Deve˘tsíl, staged a Dada-like
Bazaar of Modern Art in Prague and Brno in
1923–4. The East European presence was
strong at the 1925 Exposition Internationale
des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels in Paris, and
even more pronounced in frequent exhibitions
as the Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin and the
Bauhaus, where Hungarian László MoholyNagy
was put in charge of the curriculum.
Artists adapted formal experimentation to
the field of industry and design, creating
hybridized art forms such as photomontage
(Karel Teige) and ‘picture architecture’ (Lajos
Kassák). Private collectors (Vincenc Kramár˘ of
Prague) amassed significant works of French
Cubism and the first national collection and
museum of contemporary art was created by
Polish Constructivists in the industrial town of
L/ ód´z. Multilingual art magazines published in
every East European capital facilitated the
dissemination of Modernist theory. Political
unrest forced artists to seek better conditions
abroad, where they were absorbed into the
Modernist culture of their adopted countries.
ISOLATION AND RECOVERY
After World War II Eastern Europe was subject
to increasing isolation along an ideological
divide. The politicized aesthetics of Soviet
Socialist Realism established an artificial
artistic cordon. Conventional, academic-style
painting and cast bronze sculpture were
reinstated for propaganda purposes on a
WARSAW’S PALACE OF CULTURE AND SCIENCE, built in the
1950s, is the only one of the Stalinist ‘wedding
cake’ structures to be erected outside of Moscow.
Its towering scale and dark stone symbolize the
severity of authoritarian rule – a brute imposition
of the Stalinist ‘vampire’ style on its neighbouring
Soviet satellite.
2 THE IRON CURTAIN separated the
Communist East, politically as
well as culturally, from Western
Europe. As dictatorships
intensified and Communism
spread an artificial homogeneity
of artistic culture became
pervasive through the politicized
aesthetics of Socialist Realism.
3 MANY EAST EUROPEAN ARTISTS made long journeys
westwards, establishing their reputations abroad.
Their migration reinforced the peripatetic nature
of early Modernism in Eastern Europe, and
exposed the effects of politically restrictive systems.
monumental scale. Foundries were erected to
supply every city with its requisite statues of
revolutionary heroes. Architecture resorted to
classical large-scale Roman imperial models or
grand ‘wedding-cake’ forms. Huge complexes
of prefabricated high-rises replaced the
visionary experimental architecture of the
1920s. In Greece, on the other hand, the
regimes – even the dictatorship of Metaxas
(1936–40) – encouraged modernist tendencies,
with public sculptures displaying a lateromantic
style and nationalist iconography.
The Khrushchev Thaw of the 1960s brought
about a dissident underground movement that
exchanged artistic ideas through clandestinely
disseminated art materials, books, and
photographs smuggled in from the West. With
the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989,
authoritarian rule and state control over artists
disintegrated. Centres of Contemporary Art
were set up in every major East European city
facilitating a discourse over the nature of art in
post-totalitarian society, and making possible
a viable global exchange of art. As Communist
rule became a fading memory, the restoration
of sovereign national borders reinforced the
rich ethnic diversity and regional integrity of
East European Modernist culture.
London
Paris
Amsterdam
Zurich
Athens
Munich
Dessau
Berlin
BudapestVienna
Bucharest
KharkovKiev
Leningrad
Moscow
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
UNITED
KINGDOM
FRANCE
SPAIN
PORT.
ITA
LY
YUGO.
BUL.
ROM.HUN.
CZECH.
GER. POLAND
U S S R
Artists from Russia/USSR
Archipenko (>Berlin>Paris>New York)
Delaunay-Terk (>Paris)
Malevich (>Moscow>Leningrad>Kharkov>Kiev
>Warsaw>Dessau>Berlin)
Artists from Romania
Brancusi (>Paris)
Mattis-Teutsch (>Budapest>Munich)
Tzara (>Zurich>Paris)
Janco (>Zurich>Paris)
Artists from Hungary
Moholy-Nagy (>Amsterdam>Dessau (Bahaus)
>London>Chicago)
Rippl-Rónai (>Paris)
Scheiber (>Berlin)
Artists from Poland
Kisling (>Paris)
Marcoussis (>Paris)
Stazewski (>Paris)
Artists from Czechoslovakia
Mucha (>Paris>New York)
Kupka (>Paris)
Artists from Bulgaria
Pascin (>Paris)
Artists from Slovenia
Mestrovíc (>Vienna>Paris>Italy)
Major US exhibitions of East European Art
St Louis: Polish Sztuka at the Louisiana
Purchase Expositions (1904)
New York: Polish Constructivists (Stazewski and Strzeminski)
at the Machine Age Exposition (1927)
Artists from Greece
Galanis (>Paris)
Bouzianis (>Munich)
Marros (>San Francisco)
Vassos, Kaldis, Lefakis,Vagi,
Hios (>New York)
to USA
˘
First Russian Art
Exhibition (1922) ˇ
The Diaspora of East
European Artists
general migration of
East European artists
major artistic centres:
Post-Impressionism
Secessionism
Expressionism
Constructivism
Bauhaus
Dada
Surrealism
De Stijl
Cubism
3
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
282
CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE is a
swathe of fertile agricultural land incised
by waterways that drain into the Black Sea.
Until the end of World War I, this region,
coveted for its rich resources, was parcelled
out among four great empires, resulting in a
free-flowing migration of art influences from
the East and West. With the collapse of the
Hapsburgs, Romanovs and Ottomans, and the
redrawing of political borders after World War
I, the preservation of the local material
ethnographic culture, disrupted by
industrialization, brought about a rise in small
cottage industries of peasant handiwork. Folkinspired
decorative ceramic tiles and brick
ornament were integrated into modern
regional-style architecture from Cracow to
Poltava. Swedish-style outdoor architectural
museums (skansen) were set up in
Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania and Hungary
to physically reconstruct and preserve the
degrading wooden architecture typical of
village life. Naïve and primitivist art meshed
long-standing folk traditions with modern
urban and agricultural themes, especially
throughout Yugoslavia and the Balkans. In
Greece, the revival of an indigenous style
reexamined and rehabilitated Byzantine and
rural traditions, and the separation of Greece
from its Balkan neighbours was emphasized.
EASTERN EUROPE 1900-2000
50˚
50˚40˚30˚20˚10˚
Leningrad (Petrograd)
Poznan
Prague
Munich
Milan
Vienna
Brno
Zagreb
Sarajevo
Pécs
Tirana
Trieste
Ljubljana
Gorizia
Budapest
Szeged
Bratislava
Belgrade
Timisoara
Sofia
Skopje
Athens
Thessaloniki
Volos
Tinos
Bucharest
Brasov
Cluj
Nagybánya
(Baia-Mare)
Odessa
Kherson
Poltava
1
2
3
4
6
5
4
Kiev
Kharkov
Moscow
Warsaw
Vilnius
Lwów
Cracow
Medzilaborce
BreslauDresden
Hanover
Dessau
Weimar
Iasi˛
˛
Constanta˛
´
Lódz´
Danube
Sava
Dniester
Oder
Elbe
Vistula
Dnieper
Masurian
Lakes
N O R T H
S E A
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
B L A C K S E A
AEG
EA
N
S
E
A
A
D
R
I
A
T
I C
S
E A
BA
LT
I
C
SEA
CARPATH
I
A
N
M
TS
TRANSYLVANIAN
MTS
TATRA
MTS
BALKAN MTS
BE
SSA
RABIA
MONTE
NEGRO
BOSNIA-
HERZEGOVINA
CROATIA
SERBIA
MALEDONIA
SLOVENIA
F I N L A N D
DENMARK
G E R M A N Y P O L A N D
L A T V I A
ESTONIA
EAST
PRUSSIA
LITHUANIA
YUGOSLAVIA
G R E E C E
U K R A I N E
ROMANIA
WHITE RUSSIA
U S S R
T U R K E Y
SWEDEN
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
B U L G A R
I A
H U N G
A
R
Y
A U S T R I A
ALBANIA
I
T
A
L
Y
N
ORWAY
from
Holland
from
Paris
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
Modernism in Central and
Eastern Europe to 1939
German Empire, 1914
Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1914
Russian Empire, 1914
borders, 1919-38
states created after 1919
art academies
art schools
art colonies
art collections and museums
art review magazines,
with date of first issue
spread of artistic movements:
De Stijl, c.1917
Cubism, c.1900
Secessionism, c.1900
Futurism, c.1909
Constructivism, c.1917
Bauhaus, c.1919
Expressionism, c.1910, 1920
prominent religions:
Eastern Orthodox
Greek Catholic
Roman Catholic
Protestant
Muslim
1
Berlin
Der Sturm (1910);
Die Aktion (1911);
Veshch (1922)
Merz (1923)
Blok (1924);
Praesens (1926)
Aurora
(1923)
Tank (1927)
Art Review Magazines:
1 Devetsil (1927); Stavba (1922);
Disk (1923); Red (1927)
2 Zwrotnica (1922)
3 MA (1916)
4 Zenit (1921)
5 20th Century (1930s);
Third Eye (1930s); Art (1930s)
6 Integral (1925); Contimporanul (1922)
Avangard
al’manakh (1930)
Nova generatsiia (1927)
Mystetstvo (1932)
LEF (1923);
Novyi LEF (1927)
˘
THE FINE ARTS
Art colonies began to proliferate in towns and
rural areas. A homegrown ethnic modernism
flourished in many artists' collectives,
represented by variously named societies: the
Czech Eight in Prague; Polish Formists in
Warsaw; Hungarian Activists in Budapest.
Avant-garde exhibitions in most major cities
showed works of Cubism, Futurism and
Expressionism transported from France and
Germany. Individual artists made long journeys
away from their homelands to study at Paris’
Académie Julian and the painting school of
Slovenian artist, Anton Az˘bè in Munich. In
general, East European art of the twentieth
1 THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
was marked by a free assimilation of
contemporary formalist styles, modified
and adopted for the purposes of
establishing a national and regional
Modernist presence against the largescale
assimilation of international styles.
Art magazines, local art colonies, private
collections and the movement of artists
across the continent were all a cohesive
exploration of progressive tendencies.
FRANCE 1900–2000
285
France played a crucial role in Modernist
architecture in the first half of the century
through the work of such architects as the
Swiss-born Charles Jeanneret, who took the
name Le Corbusier (1887–1965), Auguste Perret
(1874–1954), Tony Garnier (1869–1948) and
Jean Prouvé (1901–84), and there are major
works all over France. Perret’s innovative use of
reinforced concrete in a Paris apartment
building of 1903 represents one of the first uses
of this industrial material in a fashionable
public space. His church (1922–3) in Le
Raincy, near Paris, used ferroconcrete in
an effort to recall the structural honesty of
French Gothic cathedrals.
Le Corbusier also espoused the use of
modern materials in carrying forward classical
aesthetics. His Villa Savoye (1930) at Poissy
reconciled modern life with a classical sense of
proportion. He adapted ferroconcrete for an
apartment block in Marseilles, the Unité
d’Habitation (1946–52), that was the
culmination of his lifelong commitment
to inexpensive urban housing.
WORLD WAR II AND LATER
In the 1930s there was an exodus of French and
foreign-born artists from Paris as Fascism
spread across the Continent. Many artists
returned to their home countries, while a
substantial number, notably many Surrealists,
emigrated to the United States. However,
following a period of recovery after World War
II, France again established itself as a major
art centre, though without recovering its
earlier supremacy.
In the 1960s the Nouveaux Réalistes, which
included such artists as Yves Klein (1928–62),
Arman (1928–) and Jean Tinguely (1925–91),
successfully asserted themselves in the
international art market. Paris once again
became a magnet for foreign artists, as
Tinguely collaborated with his American wife
Niki de Saint-Phalle (1930–2002) while the
French artist Jeanne-Claude (1935–) worked
exclusively with her Bulgarian husband Christo
Javacheff (1935–). French contemporary art was
further helped in the 1970s when the
government began devoting large resources to
its creation and exhibition. In the 1980s this
project was expanded with the establishment
of a series of collecting centres, called Regional
Collections of Contemporary Art.
In the last decade of the century, artists
such as Christian Boltanski (1944–) and Pierre
et Gilles (working from 1976), have continued
to treat contemporary art themes, particularly
the search for personal identity in a fractured
postmodern world. The Dutch architect Rem
Koolhaas’s (1944–) master plan for the
transportation hub near Lille, dubbed Euralille,
is notable and features buildings by Koolhaas
and Christian de Portzamparc (1944–). Cities
outside of Paris have become more significant
in a decentralized, global art market. For
example, the Lyon biennials of the 1990s
established that city as a major contemporary
art exhibition centre.
0˚
50˚
Paris
Angers
Musée Jean Lurçat
et de la Tapisserie Tours (Oiron)
Château d’Oiron
Dunkerque
Musée d’Art Contemporain
Liège
Musée d’Art Moderne
et d’Art Contemporain
Tourcoing
Studio National des
Arts Contemporains
Lille
Antibes
Château Grimaldi:
Musée Picasso
Vallauris
Musée National
Picasso War and Peace
Biot
Antibes/Cannes/Mougins/Vallauris
Picasso
Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain
Musée Matisse
Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall
Grenoble
Musée du Grenoble 1994
Le Magasin, Centre National
d’Art Contemporain
Villeurbanne
Institut d’Art
Contemporain
Aix-en-Provence
Masson
Derain, Vlaminck
Lyon
Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon
Biennials (1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2000)
Reims
Chapelle Foujita
Le Collège-FRACAsnières
Matisse
Puteaux
Duchamp, Gris, Duchamp-Villon,
Gleizes, Léger, Picabia, VillonFontainebleau
Picasso
Étretat
Matisse
Varengeville-sur-Mer
Braque
Braque
Bougival/Chatou
Derain, Vlaminck, Matisse
Braque
Troyes
Musée d’Art Moderne
Foundation
Angladon-Dubrujeaud Sorgues Vence
Chapelle du Rosaire
(Matisse)
Musée Cantini Musée d’Art Contemporain
Bordeaux
Pessac
Podensac
Ronchamp
Carré d’Art-Musée d’Art
Contemporain de Nîmes
Saint-Étienne
Musée d’Art Moderne de St. Etienne
Strasbourg
Musée d’Art Moderne1 Évry
Poissy
St-Cloud
10
Issy-les-Moulineaux
Matisse
Le Havre
Toulouse
Espace d’Art Moderne et
Contemporain de Toulouse
Céret
Musée d’Art Moderne
Collioure
Derain, Matisse, Picasso,
Braque, Foujita, Maillol
Braque, Picasso, Soutine
Nice
11
Musée d’Art Moderne
Lille Metropole (Villeneuve d’Ascq)
Musée d’Art
Contemporain
Nîmes
Avignon
Martigues
Marseille
Musée National
Fernand Léger
Matisse, Brassaï
Eveux sur l‘Arbresle
Loire
Seine
Rhône
P
Y
R
E
N
E
E
S
F R A N C E
S P A I N
3, 4
9
2 8
6
7
12
5
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 - Cathédrale de la Résurrection, 1995 (Botta)
2 - Hôtel de Ville & Church of St. Joseph,
1953 (Perret)
3 - Euralille, 1989 (Koolhaas)
4 - Euralille Crédit Lyonnais Tower, 1995
(de Portzamparc)
5 - Unité d’Habitation de Marseille,
1945-52 (Le Corbusier)
6 - Quartiers Modernes Frugès,
1925-8 (Le Corbusier)
7 - Château d’Eau, 1917 (Le Corbusier)
8 - Villa Savoye, 1929-31 (Le Corbusier)
9 - Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut,
1950-54 (Le Corbusier)
10 - Maison Dall’Ava, 1991 (Koolhaas)
11 - Palais des Droits de l’Homme, 1994 (Rogers)
12 - Ste Marie de La Tourette, 1953-9 (Le Corbusier)
N
2 LIVING AND WORKING IN THE
PROVINCES. Paris was a mecca for
artists and architects, but Pablo
Picasso, Georges Braque, and
Henri Matisse, among others,
maintained homes and studios far
from the capital. Some of the
century’s finest architecture is
scattered throughout France, in
cities like Lille and Marseille.
Later, many French cities become
significant contemporary
exhibition centres.
LE CORBUSIER’S VILLA SAVOYE (1929–31), POISSY: a view
into the living room. Built as a traditional French
country home, but of concrete, the villa is designed
to display the geometric clarity of the machine
aesthetic. Le Corbusier argued that this type of
‘House-Machine’ demonstrated classical beauty in
the modern industrial world.
2 Art and Artists throughout France
artists’ home/retreat
exhibition space/museum
architecture
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
284
MUCH OF THE ART of the pre-1914 period
in France is a continuation of the latenineteenth
century commitment to stylistic
experimentation. During this period foreign
artists, collectors and critics converged on
Paris and worked alongside native artists to
create a community informally dubbed the
‘School of Paris’. These included the Spanish
painter Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), who
settled in the city in 1904, the American author
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), who established a
salon around 1905 in Montparnasse, and the
Italian poet Filippo Marinetti (1876–1944),
who published his manifesto of Futurism in the
Paris newspaper Le Figaro in 1909.
THE SCHOOL OF PARIS
The two key art movements that emerged
before World War I were Fauvism, unofficially
led by the artist Henri Matisse (1869–1954),
and a little later Cubism, which was developed
by Picasso and Georges Braque (1882–1963),
but taken up and disseminated by several other
artists, including the Puteaux Cubists (named
after the Paris suburb where they lived), whose
members included the Franco-American Marcel
Duchamp (1877–1968), the Spaniard Juan Gris
(1887–1927), Fernand Léger (1881–1955), and
Francis Picabia (1879–1953), one of the few
French artists in Paris who was actually a native
of the city.
In the interwar period artists profited from
the support of an established group of collectors
and galleries. The dominant Surrealist movement,
which grew out of Dadaism, was led by
the poet André Breton (1896–1966) and
included painters such as the German Max
Ernst (1891–1976), André Masson (1896–1987),
and the Spaniards Joan Miró (1893–1983) and
Salvador Dalí (1904–89). It also spawned many
Surrealist groups in other nations. Breton,
insisting that political engagement was key to
the arts, eschewed the apolitical formalism of
the pre-war period. France’s cultural preeminence
at this time was demonstrated by the
major International Exhibitions of 1925 and
1937, both held in Paris.
All these early artistic movements looked
beyond the traditions of Western art for
inspiration: both Fauvism and Cubism were
influenced by African sculpture, while the
FRANCE 1900-2000
1 CENTRED IN MONTMARTRE AND MONTPARNASSE, a
‘School of Paris’ developed in the French capital
in the first half of the century but declined in
World War II. In the 1960s the French government
began funding modern museums and public
sculpture that created a new and flourishing
environment for contemporary art in Paris. Parisian
architecture began the century with the
experimental forms and materials of Auguste
Perret, Le Corbusier and others, and climaxed in
the 1980s and 1990s with the spectacle of
President François Mitterand’s Grands Projets.
5 imp. de Guelma
Braque
Severini
Dufy
Utrillo
11 bd. de Clichy
Picasso
71 rue de Caulaincourt
Duchamp
21 rue Cambon
Chanel
5 rue Auber
Poiret
13 Pl. Émile Goudeau,
Bâteau-Lavoir
Picasso
Gris
La Ruche, 2 pas. Dantzig
Chagall
Brancusi
Modigliani
Léger
Archipenko
27 rue de Fleurus
Stein
33 bd. des Invalides
Matisse
19 quai Saint-Michel
Matisse
9 rue Campagne
- Première
de Chirico
3 sq. Montsouris
Foujita
Académie Russe,
54 av. du Maine
Vassilieff
Mondrian
52 av. du Maine
Rivera
Laurens
Delaunay
Lipchitz
Zadkine
Soutine
1903 Flats (Perret)
- rue Franklin
1923 Villas La Roche
- Jeanneret (Le Corbusier)
- 8/10 sq. du Docteur Blanche
1913 Théâtre des Champs-Élysées
(Perret) - 13 av. Montaigne 1905 Garage (Perret)
- rue de Ponthieu
1925 Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau
(Le Corbusier)
1933 Glass House (Chareau)
- 31 rue St Guillaume
1973 Montparnasse Tower
(Beaudouin, Cassan,
de Marien, Saubot)
pl. Raoul Dautry
1923 Notre Dame
de Raincy (Perret)
1989 Opéra Bastille
(Ott) - rue de Lyon
1922 Maison-atelier Ozenfant
(Le Corbusier) - 53 av. de Reille
1930 Pavillon Suisse
(Le Corbusier) - 7 bd. Jourdan
1989 Grande Arche
de la Défense
(von Sprechelsen, Reitzel)
- La Défense metro
1958 CNIT Tower
(Bernard Zehrfuss et al)
- La Défence metro
1977 Centre National d’Art
et de Culture Georges
Pompidou - (Piano, Rogers)
1984 Baroque Ladders (Bofill)
78 rue du Château
1972 Mignonette (Dubuffet)
- 3 quai Voltaire 1990 Parc de la Villette
(Tschumi) - av. Corentin-Cariou
1994 Hommage à Arago (Dibbets)
1983 Fontaine Stravinsky
(Saint-Phalle, Tinguely)
1986 Two Plateaus (Buren)
- pl. du Palais-Royal
1986 Great White Monument
(Kirili) - Tuileries
1985 The Hour of Everything
(Arman) - Gare St Lazare
Fondation Dina Vierny,
Musée Maillol
- 61 rue de Grenelle
Fondation Le Corbusier
- sq. du Docteur Blanche
Musée de l’Homme
- pl. du Trocadéro
Musée du Cinéma
Henri-Langlois - pl. du Trocadéro
Fondation Cartier pour l’Art
Contemporain - bd. Raspail
Palais de Tokyo,
Musée d’Art Moderne
Musée de Montparnasse
- 21 av. du Maine
Musée Zadkine-rue d’Assas
Institut Français d’Architecture
- 6 bis rue de Tournon
Musée d'Orsay
Espace Dalí
- rue Poulbot
Musée de d’Art Naïf
Max Fourny
- rue Ronsard
Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre de Création Industrielle
- pl. Georges Pompidou
I.M. Pei Pyramid &
Carrousel du Louvre
Musée Picasso
- rue de Thorigny
Maison Européenne
de Photographie
- 5-7 rue de Fourcy
Institut du Monde Arabe (Nouvel)
- rue des Fossées St Bernard
Seine
Seine
Seine
BOIS
DE
BOULOGNE
MONTPARNASSE
MONTMARTRE
1 Paris, Artistic Capital of the 20th Century
studio/patron's address
architecture
sculpture
museum
GERTRUDE STEIN, by Pablo Picasso, 1906. A major
patron, she supported the work of both Picasso
and Henri Matisse. This portrait displays the
flattening of form charcteristic of Cubism.
Surrealists were particularly fascinated by the
art of the Pacific.
Beginning with the Fauvists’ extended
sojourns in St Tropez and Collioure, many
major artists worked in the south of France
both before and after the war. Several
museums are dedicated to their work in this
region, such as Matisse’s Chapelle du Rosaire
in Vence, the Musée Matisse in Nice, the Musée
National Message Biblique of the Russian Marc
Chagall (1887–1985) in Nice, the Musée Léger in
Biot and the Musée Picasso in Antibes.
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 1900–2000
287
of the outside world through the work of an
inspired architect, Antoní Gaudí
(1852–1926).
After a permanent exhibition of Iberian
art was installed in the Louvre in 1906, Paris
became the chosen residence for most of the
memorable artists of the Spanish avantgarde
– Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró
and Salvador Dalí (who also made regular
visits to Cadaqués in northeast Spain). After
1906, ‘primitive’ Iberian art suddenly became
popular among avant-garde artists. In 1907,
Picasso began to use ‘primitive’ Iberian
motifs. Picasso’s Guernica was commissioned
for the Republican Spanish Pavillion in Paris,
and exhibited there in 1937. The Surrealist
canvases of Joan Miró were exhibited in New
York after 1941, and these influenced future
American practitioners of Abstract
Expressionism.
SCHOOLS OF PAINTING
In Barcelona the Renaixença (‘Renaissance’)
is exemplified in the expressionist
architecture of Gaudí. El modernismo
represents the local adaptation of
contemporary French Symbolist painting and
architecture. A later offshoot of these
tendencies is seen in the work of the Catalan
painter Joan Miró (1893–1983). In Madrid,
Tremendismo, a gritty urban realism, was
championed by José Gutiérrez Solano
(1886–1945) from around 1925. The Arte
Nuevo (‘New Art’) group timidly pursued
French Cubism and Surrealism before the
outbreak of the Civil War. The only
internationally ranked Portuguese painter,
María Elena Vieira da Silva, worked in exile
in France; a rising star following in her lead
is Paula Rego (1935–), based in London.
0˚
40˚
Salazar Bridge
(1966)
Valencia
City of Arts
and Sciences
(Calatrava,
1998-2000)
Marco de Canavezes
Santa María Church
and Parish Centre,
(Siza, 1990-96)
Basilica Church
of Our Lady
of Fátima (1944)
Barcelona
Madrid Gaudí (1852-1926):
Casa Calvet (1904),
Casa Batlló(1905-07),
Casa Milá (1905-10),
Parque Güell (1914)
Sagrada Familia
(building resumed
1914, unfinished)
Barcelona Pavilion
(Mies van der Rohe, 1929)
urban renewal for
Olympic Games (1992)
Air Ministry
(Gutierrez Soto, 1941-57)
Torres Inclinadas
(Johnson & Burgee, 1992)
Bilbao
Guggenheim Museum
(Gehry, 1997)
Mérida
Valley of the
Fallen 1942-59,
(Pantheon to
celebrate Falangist
heroes
El Escorial
Seville San Pablo Airport
(Moneo, 1991)
Lisbon
Fátima
Ebro
Tagus
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
P
Y
R
E N E E S
S P A I N
PORTUGAL
National Museum
of Roman Art
(Moneo, 1980-85)
2 Architecture and Monumental Art, 1900-2000
major works of architecture/monumental art
N
0
0
150 miles
200 kms
2 NOTABLE IBERIAN
twentieth-century
architectural monuments
exemplify various
approaches to
Modernism beginning in
Barcelona with the Casa
Calvet (1904) by Antoní
Gaudí. Architectural
conservatism
characterized Castile
after the Civil War. In
Madrid, the Air Ministry,
1941–57, by L. Gutiérrez
Soto, was a prime
example of Franco-era
Fascist architecture
derived from the Escorial,
nostalgically symbolizing
Catholic imperialism.
After the death of
Franco, architecture
joined the European
mainstream, as
characterized by
commissions designed by
Rafael Moneo and Philip
Johnson. The flashy
Guggenheim Museum,
designed by Frank Gehry,
opened in 1997, making
Bilbao a tourist mecca.
SCULPTURE AND ARCHITECTURE
In Barcelona a Modernist school of radically
abstract sculpture in iron based on medieval
Catalan blacksmith traditions, was pioneered by
Pablo Gargallo (1881–1934) and Julio González
(1876–1942). The sculptor Eduardo Chillida
(1924–2002) later followed similar lines of
RAFAEL MONEO, National Museum of Roman Art,
Mérida, 1980–85. Suspended above the excavated
ruins of Roman Mérida, the archaeological
museum designed by this widely acclaimed
architect (1937–) achieves a brilliant Post-Modern
synthesis of indigenous forms and materials. This is
a building which partakes at once of the ancient
and of the modern; while employing the Modernist
format of a concrete core, the soaring, light-filled
interior arcades are revetted in bricks deliberately
proportioned to simulate ancient Roman terracotta
building blocks.
reductive abstraction. In Barcelona, the Dau al
Set (‘Seven-spot Dice’) group, founded in 1948,
practised total abstraction with a surrealist
ideological foundation; its major exponents
were Joan Ponç (1927–84), Modest Cuixart
(1925–), Joan-Josep Tharrats (1918–), and
Antoní Tàpies (1923–). Founded in 1957 in
Madrid, the El Paso group adopted ‘Informalist’
post-Cubist radical abstraction; its central
figures are Manuel Millares (1926–72), Antonio
Saura (1930–98), Rafael Canogar (1935–), Luis
Feito (1929–). Founded in 1964, the Equipo
Crónica (‘Chronicle Team’), centred in Valencia,
used American Pop Art techniques to revisit
Spanish art history; its founders were Rafael
Solbes (1940–81), and Manuel Valdés (1942–).
Founded in 1968, the school of Madrid Realism
melded Pop Art and Hyper Realism; the
principal practitioners are Juan Genovés
(1930–) and Antonio López (1936–).
An outstanding twentieth-century
architectural legacy in Iberia is spearheaded by
the work of Gaudí, who died in a traffic accident
in 1926, leaving the Sagrada Familia project,
begun in 1914, unfinished. In Madrid, the Air
Ministry (1941–57), designed by L. Gutiérrez
Soto, is a prime example of Franco-era Fascist
architecture. It is derived from the Escorial
palace, In contrast, Madrid also boasts the
Torres Inclinadas, financial headquarters of the
Caja de Madrid, designed by Philip Johnson
and John Burgee and opened in 1992. In Bilbao
the Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank
Gehry, and opened in 1997, made the city a
tourist mecca.
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
286
IN 1900 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA was
confronted with a century of upheaval,
revolution and modernization. In 1898 Spain’s
loss of colonies in the Spanish-American War
was the final blow to its imperialist
pretentions, causing continuing economic
distress. By declaring itself neutral during
World War I, Spain benefitted economically,
but rampant inflation caused much civil unrest,
and a military coup d’état seized control of the
government in 1923. In 1931 a Second Republic
was declared; in 1934, the Fascist Falangist
Party was founded. Between 1936 and 1939,
and after 1945, Fascist Spain was ostracized by
the international community. The tourist boom
of the 1960s finally led Spain towards
economic modernization.
In Portugal a revolution in 1910 unseated
the ruling house of Bragança and a republic
was declared, but true democracy was never
practised and the army changed governments
at will. In 1932 Antonio de Oliviera Salazar
seized power, creating a ‘New State’ modelled
on Italian Fascism, which served as a precursor
for the Spanish state later shaped by Francisco
Franco. Salazar died in 1970 and Franco died in
1975, when Spain became a constitutional
monarchy. Both Iberian states entered the EU,
but Portugal remained the poorest member.
ARTISTIC TRENDS AND INFLUENCE
After the turn of the century, the literary
‘Generation of ’98’ set out to renew Spanish
culture through reappraisals of its moribund
traditions. At the same time, another
progressive group sought to formulate a
‘modernistic’ spirit to cope with the profoundly
altered world in which they found themselves.
This sense of modernity was later to acquire a
more aggressive political tone (el vanguardismo).
The major centre of creative ferment was
Barcelona, newly wealthy from its
manufacturing economy and always more
culturally energetic and centrifugally
‘European’ than dour and centralist Madrid.
Catalans themselves were keenly aware that
they were taking part in a renaissance – not
merely artistic, but also musical, literary,
industrial, scientific, even political. This
Catalan creative fervour came to the attention
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 1900-2000
MARÍA-ELENA VIEIRA DA SILVA, The
Town, 1955, oil on canvas.
Vieira da Silva (1908–92) was
the only internationally ranked
Portuguese painter of the
twentieth century. Born in
Lisbon into a rich, liberal
family, she moved to Paris in
1928, where she studied
sculpture with Antoine
Bourdelle and Charles Despiau,
later painting at Fernand
Léger’s academy. Typical of
her mature work, The Town is
abstract and wiry, composed of
prismatic forms which stretch
out through space.
0˚
40˚
Barcelona
Toledo
Jarama
Brunete
Burgos
Valladolid
León
Lisbon
Seville (Jan 1938)
Huelva
Cadiz
Tarragona
Saragossa
Albacete
Alicante
Valencia
Equipo Crónica ('Chronicle Team'):
uses American Pop Art techniques
to revisit Spanish art history
(from 1964): Solbes (1940-81),
Valdés (1942-)
Castellón
de la Plana
Teruel
Cuenca
Belchete
Granallos
Cartagena
Almería
Cáceres
Mérida
Guadalajara
Córdoba
Lopera
Gibraltar (to UK)
Ceuta
Salamanca
Madrid
Ávila
Badajoz
Granada
Málaga
Durango
Guernica
(April 1937)
San
Sebastián
Santander
Oporto
El Ferrol
Oviedo
Gijón
La Coruña
Santiago de
Compostela
Museum of
Spanish Abstract
Art (1963)
Bilbao
Cadaqués
Ebro
Duero
Tagus
Guadalquivir
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
P
Y
R
E N E E S
C A T A L O N I A
A N D A L U S I A
N A V A R R E
S PA N I S H M O R O C C O
E
X
TREMADURA
BASQUE PROVINCES
CAST
IL
E
A
R
A
G
O
N
L E Ó N
M U R C I A
G A L I C I A
A F R I C A
A L G E R I A
S P A I N
F R A N C E
PORTU
G
A
L
da Silva (1908-92) to Paris 1928
Rego (1935-) to London 1952
Picasso's first
exhibition at Els
Quatre Gats Café, 1900
Picasso Museum
(1963, 1975)
Gris (1887-1927)
to Paris 1906
Picasso (1881-1973)
to Paris 1907
Miró (1893-1983)
to Paris 1920
Dalí (1904-89)
to Paris 1926
First International Congress
of Abstract Art, 1953
Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation (1969)
José Azeredo Perdigão
Centre of Modern
Art (1983)
Guggenheim Museum
(Gehry, 1997)
National Museum
of Roman Art
(Moneo, 1980-85)
(March
1937)
(Jan 1938)
(Nov 1936)
N
0
0
150 miles
200 kms
Renaixença (Catalan regionalist Renaissance):
exemplified in Expressionist architecture of
Gaudí (1852-1926)
Barcelona
El Modernismo: adaptation of contemporary
French Symbolist painting and architecture
(from c.1895)
Dau al Set ('Seven-spot dice') group: total
abstraction with Surrealist ideological
foundation (from 1948) Ponç (1927-84),
Cuixart (1925-), Tharrats (1918-),
Tàpies (1923-)
Modernist school of radically abstract
sculpture in iron based upon medieval Catalan
blacksmith traditions (from c.1925) Gargallo
(1881-1934), González (1876-1942),
Chillida (1924-2002)
Museum of Catalan Art (1934)
Fundación Joan Miró (1979)
(Jan, March, June 1938)
Madrid
Tremendismo: gritty urban realism (from c.1925)
Solano (1886-1945)
El Paso group: Informalist post-Cubist radical
abstraction (from 1957): Millares (1926-72),
Saura (1930-98), Canogar (1935-), Feito (1929-)
Arte Nuevo: (new art group): French Cubism and
Surrealism (from c.1925)
Madrid Realism: Pop Art and Hyper Realism
(from 1968): Genovés (1930-), López (1938-)
(Aug, Nov 1936)
Museo Arqueológico Nacional (1972)
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection (1992)
Reina Sofía Museum of Contemporary Art (1991)
1 FROM C.1895, ‘El modernismo’
represented the local
adaptation of contemporary
French Symbolist painting and
architecture. In Madrid
beginning around 1925
‘Tremendismo’, a gritty urban
realism, was championed by
José Gutiérrez Solano. At the
same time The ‘Arte Nuevo’
(New Art) group timidly
pursued French Cubism and
Surrealism until the outbreak
of the Civil War. In Barcelona a
Modernist school of radically
abstract sculpture in iron was
pioneered from c.1925.
1 Portable Art, 1900-2000
Iberian painters' travels abroad
schools of painting/sculpture
major art collections
Spanish Civil War, 1936-39:
Nationalist territory
by July 1938
Nationalist air raid (with date)
Republican air raid (with date)
‘International Brigade’
operations
ITALY 1900–2000
289
Tiber
Tiber
TIBURTINA
QUARTIERE
MONTEVERDE
QUARTIERE
PIAZZI D’ARMI
QUARTIERE
PARIOLI
Viale Giulio Cesare
Via Cola di Rienzo
Via Salaria
Via XX Settembre
Via Liguria
Via Depretis
Via Aurelia
Via della Lungara
Via della Conciliazione
Corso Vittorio Emanuele II
Viale Trastevere
Via
Arenula
Via del Babuino
Via dei Corso
Via Cavour
Via Giovanni
Giolitti
Via dei Cerchi
Via dei Fori
Imperiali
(Imperial route)
Via Nazionale
Via del Quirinale
Via della
Vite
Via del Corso
Forum
Piazza
Augusto
Imperatore
Foro Mussolini
Villa
Borghese
Vatican
City
St. Peter’s
Esposizione
Universale
di Roma (EUR)
ToPisa
ToNaples
Appian
W
ay
ToFlorence
Corso di'Italia
Via Claudia
Via del
Circo
Massimo
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
112
1
0 1.5 miles
1 - Mausoleum of Augustus & Ara Pacis Augustae 1934-38
2 - Theatre of Marcellus
3 - Campidoglio
4 - Basilica of Maxentius
5 - Piazza Venezia
6 - Palazzo delle Esposizioni
7 - Castel Sant' Angelo
8 - Piazza Navona
9 - Piazza della Rotonda
10 - Colosseum
11 - Palazzo del Lithorio
N
GERARDO DOTTORI, Portrait of the Duce, 1933.
Dottori’s powerful portrait of Benito Mussolini
notably represents the Italian Fascist leader in a
style derived from Cubism and early Italian
Futurism. Here, Mussolini’s bust bursts forth from a
landscape setting as if he is as powerful and
indestructible as nature itself. His monumental
presence, emphasized by his strong, jutting chin
and robust forehead, towers over the viewer who
is forced to gaze upwards at this awe-inspiring, yet
profoundly intimidating, figure. Mussolini’s head is
here framed by a halo of aeroplanes. Thus, nature
and technology are deployed to evoke the eternity
and modernity of the Italian state.
the Fascists under Benito Mussolini ushered in
a new and complex era in Italian history. Yet,
unlike art policies in Nazi Germany or the
Soviet Union, the state remained open to
certain aspects of modern art, as can be seen in
the diverse works exhibited at the major
exhibitions staged throughout the period and
in the selection of winners for two new art
competitions, the Cremona and Bergamo
prizes, launched in 1939. The key figure here
was, once again, Marinetti, who had emerged
relatively unscathed from the war and was now
a staunch supporter of the Fascist dictator. In
1925 he moved to Rome, now capital of the
new Fascist Empire, soon to be transformed by
a major building programme resulting in the
clearing of major sites from ancient Roman
history. It was from here in 1929 that Marinetti,
along with a new wave of artists including
Fortunato Depero (1892–1960), Gerardo Dottori
(1884–1977) and Enrico Prampolini
(1894–1956), launched a new Futurist
manifesto dedicated to Aeropittura or Air
Painting. The aeroplane was now to become
the archetypal symbol of post-war Futurism.
THE AFTERMATH OF WAR
The final defeat of Mussolini in 1945 threw Italy
once more into a period of great political and
cultural instability. The city of Rome remained
other extreme lay the abstract works of Alberto
Burri (1915–95), frequently deploying
unconventional materials such as sacking,
pieces of wood and rusted metal. Similar
experiments in abstraction and in the
exploration of the qualities of materials were
conducted in Milan by the painter, sculptor and
ceramicist Lucio Fontana (1899–1968).
FROM ARTE POVERA TO THE PRESENT
Both Burri and Fontana were highly influential
for the generation of artists who emerged in
the late 1960s and whose works are frequently
characterized under the label Arte Povera. This
term covers the experimental works of artists
as diverse as Michelangelo Pistoletto (1933–)
and Jannis Kounellis (1936–). Arte Povera was, in
essence, a fragmented movement and had
centres of activity in Genoa, Bologna, Rome
and Milan. Despite its adherence to the use of
new and radical materials, however, a sense of
the Italian Renaissance tradition often lurked
just below the surface.
2 THE RISE OF FASCISM during the inter-war years led
to the wholesale reconstruction of Rome. The
Fascists, under Mussolini, sought to exploit Rome's
past grandeur and used architecture and planning
to declare the notional power and legitimacy of
the new regime. Sites of Roman archaeological and
historical interest, such as the Mausoleum of
Augustus, the Theatre of Marcellus, the
Campidoglio and the Basilica of Maxentius were all
systematically cleared and integrated into a new
city plan. Great triumphal routes such as the Via
dell’Impero were also designed to form the
theatrical backdrop to the excesses of Mussolini’s
own self image.
2 Mussolini and the Rebuilding of Rome, 1922-43
sites of archaeological interest cleared and promoted
during Mussolini’s reconstruction of Rome
Via dell’Impero triumphal route
the major cultural arena during this period as
the debate between Realism and Abstraction
that characterized artistic positions throughout
much of Europe, continued to rage. At one end
of the spectrum lay Renato Guttuso (1912–87),
whose large-scale images of Sicilian peasants
were inspired by, but never subordinated to, the
cultural policies of the Communist Party. At the
1 The Modern Movement in Italy, 1900-2000
art centre
exhibition
journal
artists group or club
prize
major architectural projects
Movements and periods:
Italian Futurism 1909-18
Italian Futurism 1918-44
Metaphysical painting 1910-24
Art under the Fascist State 1922-45
Post-war Italy
Arte Povera
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
288
THROUGHOUT THE TWENTIETH CENTURY,
Italy underwent major social and political
changes that inevitably impacted considerably
on the production of art. One theme, however,
remained dominant throughout the century;
namely, the tension between Italy’s Classical
past and its desire to be recognized as a
modern nation-state.
FROM SYMBOLISM TO FUTURISM
At the turn of the twentieth century Italian art
remained much influenced by current trends in
Paris. Symbolism and Neo-Impressionism
continued to dominate modern art exhibitions
as evidenced in the work of artists such as
Giovanni Pelizza da Valpedo (1868–1907) and
Gaetano Previati (1852–1920). However, the
new national identity which had been forged in
1870 with the movement for unification was
soon to explode dramatically onto the art
scene through the activities of one of Italy’s
most influential twentieth-century cultural
figures, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
(1876–1944). In 1909 Marinetti launched the
movement known as Futurism upon the world
stage. Futurism demanded the rejection of all
past art and called upon artists and writers to
celebrate the modern age. The ultimate symbol
of modernity for Marinetti and his Futurist
colleagues was the motor car. The industrial
centres of Milan and Turin, where much
Futurist activity was based, were also home to
the Fiat and Pirelli factories, both major players
in the burgeoning automobile industry in the
early twentieth century.
Futurism, however, did not confine itself to
Milan and Turin. From the start Marinetti
looked to promote the movement nationally
and internationally. Exhibitions drew attention
to the movement while artists’ clubs were
formed in Ferrara, Florence, Rome and Taranto.
Journals such as Poesia and Lacerba also
promoted Futurism. Within three years of
Marinetti’s announcement of the birth of the
movement, Futurist exhibitions were staged in
Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Zurich,
Vienna and Budapest and Futurist groups were
formed as far afield as England, France,
Germany, Russia, Mexico and Japan.
METAPHYSICAL PAINTING
While Futurism staunchly rejected the past,
other modern movements identified a
nostalgia for the now faded Classical grandeur
of Italy as a major influence in their art.
Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) first developed
the style that he later called Metaphysical
Painting while in Milan. It was in the more
sedate surroundings of Florence, however, that
he subsequently developed his emphasis on
strange, eerie spaces, based upon the Italian
piazza. Many of de Chirico’s works from his
Florence period evoke a sense of dislocation
between past and present, between the
individual subject and the space he or she
inhabits. These works soon drew the attention
of other artists such as Carlo Carrà (1881–1966)
and Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964). In 1917, in
the midst of the First World War, Carrà and de
Chirico spent time in Ferarra where they further
developed the Metaphysical Painting style that
was later to attract the attention of the French
Surrealists.
ART UNDER MUSSOLINI
The initial phase of Italian Futurism effectively
collapsed with the outbreak of the First World
War. Although many Futurist artists had openly
supported military conflict the experiences of
war transformed many attitudes. Some artists,
such as Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) were
killed during the conflict. The rise to power of
ITALY 1900-2000
UMBERTO BOCCIONI, Unique Forms of Continuity in
Space, 1913. Boccioni’s most famous sculpture
represents, in true Futurist style, an aggressive,
powerfully striding figure whose dynamic
movement forward cannot be captured by
reference to a static moment. Yet, despite the
Futurist cry to reject art of the past, the work has
most frequently been compared to the Classical
sculpture, the Victory of Samothrace.
10˚
40˚
Milan
Como
Turin
Ivrea
Genoa
1
4
5
6
3
2
Parma
Bergamo
Cremona
Trento
Venice
Bologna
San Marino
Ancona
L’Aquila
Ferrara
Florence
Perugia
Rome
Naples
Taranto
Catanzaro
Bari
Palermo
Cagliari
Po
Tiber
LIGURIAN
SEA
T Y R R H E N I A N S E A
I O N I A N
S E A
M E D I T E R R A N E A N
S E A
A
D
R
I
A
T
I
C
S
E
A
A
P
E
N
N
I
N
E
S
A L P S
SARDINIA
CORSICA
MOLISE
UMBRIA
L I G U R I A
VALLE
D’AOSTA
PIEDMONT
FRIULI-
VENEZIA
GIULIA
VENETO
TRENTINO-ALTO
ADIGE
ABRUZZO
L A Z I O
S I C I L Y
CAL
ABRIA
BASI
LICATA
LOMBARDY
P U G L I A
CA
M
P
A
N
IA
M
AR
CHE
EMILIA-ROMAGNA
TUSCANY
FRANCE
SWITZERLAND AUSTRIA
SLOVENIA
BOSNIA AND
HERZEGOVINA
MONTE-
NEGRO
CROATIA
ALBANIA
Poesia
Lingotto
Fiat Factory
1916-26
(Trucco)
Palazzetto dello Sport
1956-58 (Nervi)
Lacerba
1939
1923
1967
1968 1939
1968
1931
N
0
0
100 miles
150 kms
1 - Fronte Nuovo delle Arti 1947
Movimento Spaziale 1947
Movimento Nucleare 1951
2 - Art Sociale 1946
Gruppo Origine 1951
Astratto-Concreto 1952
3 - Pirelli Tower 1955-59 (Ponti)
4 - Casa del Fascio 1932-36 (Terragni)
5 - Olivetti Factory 1934-57
(Figini & Pollini)
6 - S Giovanni Battista 1961-64
(Michelucci)
1 THROUGHOUT THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Italy struggled
to overcome the sharp divisions between the
industrial north and rural south. The growth
of cities like Milan and Turin in the north acted as
the catalyst for the emergence and development of
Futurism, a movement much enamoured of
modernity, and symbolized by the Italian car
industry. Through both the rise and subsequent
fall of Fascism, however, Rome has retained a preeminence
as the first cultural city of the nation.
NORTH AFRICA 1900–2000
291
the apogee of artistic achievement had a
notable impact in the colonized lands.
Although there was some admiration in Europe
for North African craft techniques, it was
generally believed that Arab cultural and
artistic achievements belonged to the medieval
era, and that since then there had been a
decline.
Influenced by European artistic norms,
fine-art movements developed across North
Africa. In 1908 a School of Fine Art was founded
in Cairo to train Egyptian artists in Western
styles and techniques – the first to open in
Arab lands. Among the first graduates were
some of the pioneering figures of the new
Egyptian fine-art movement. They included the
sculptor Mahmoud Moukhtar (1891–1934),
whose large granite statue The Awakening of
Egypt (1927) dominated the entrance to Cairo
University, and the painters Mohamed Naghi
(1880–1956), Mahmoud Said (1897–1964) and
Ragheb Ayad (1892–1980). Similar movements
were encouraged in other regions. In Algeria,
for example, Western-style art was promoted by
the French Orientalist painter AlphonseEtienne
Dinet (1861–1929), while in Morocco
the Spanish Orientalist painter Mariano
Bertuchi (1895–1958) established the Escuela
Preparatoria de Bellas Artes in Tétouan.
Following independence, North African
artists working in the fine-art context continued
NJA MAHDAOUI Calligram, 1994, 40 × 50cm (151/2 ×
191/2 in). Calligraphy was a dominant theme in the
work of this Tunisian painter. With his emphasis on
visual, painterly qualities rather than on
calligraphy per se, he created a lyrical and abstract
style that was at once relevant in the context of
Western art yet distinct from it.
2 NEW GOURNA by Hassan Fathy. The village, built
from the late 1940s, did not attract residents, and
the design was only partially implemented. Clearly
seen on the plan are Fathy’s use of domed mudbrick
houses with courtyards, and clusters of houses
arranged around small open spaces.
1 THE CULTURAL LIFE OF NORTH AFRICA was dominated
in the first half of the century by colonialism, but
with the emergence of independent nations (in the
years shown in white boxes), new movements in
architecture and art reflected the indigenous
heritage. At the same time, Western artistic
influences remained powerful, with attention
shifting increasingly to the United States.
2 New Gourna, Master Plan Implementation
to visit Europe or, increasingly, the United
States as part of their training and to exhibit
their work. While absorbing the current
preoccupations of the Western tradition, they
also began to search for new ways to express
their own identity. One result was calligraphic
painting, which started to appear in North
Africa and elsewhere in the Muslim world in
the 1950s and 1960s. Representatives of this
movement in North Africa include Nja
Mahdaoui (1937–) from Tunisia, Ahmed
Moustafa (1943–) from Egypt, Ali Omar Ermes
(1945–) from Libya, Rachid Koraichi (1947–)
from Algeria, and Mehdi Qotbi (1951–) from
Morocco. In the Maghreb some artists
employed Berber motifs in a similar manner.
TRADITIONAL CRAFTS
Textiles, metalwork, woodwork, pottery and
other crafts continued to be produced in many
of the traditional urban centres, such as Fez,
Tunis and Cairo. With the European colonial
presence, however, some new styles and
techniques were adopted, and imported
materials became available. In Morocco, where
the French implemented policies to protect
indigenous traditions, there was greater
continuity and more conservatism. Rural
Berber traditions in architecture, textiles,
jewellery and other arts were also given a
measure of protection. In general, urban rather
than rural arts were most affected by Western
influences. From the 1960s, mass tourism
constituted a new form of patronage.
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
290
IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Western
cultural and artistic ideas had a great impact
across North Africa. Europeans administered
the area as colonial rulers until the 1950s and
1960s. New movements in architecture and art
then arose to reflect the indigenous heritages
of the newly independent states, although
Western cultural influences remained powerful.
ARCHITECTURE
Colonial rule and the arrival of settlers,
especially in the Maghreb, had numerous
consequences. European-style quarters were
built, often using imported European
materials. The buildings were erected in
European styles and also in revivalist ‘Arab’
styles. New types of buildings, such as railway
stations and banks, were introduced, and
several industrial centres emerged, the most
notable in the Maghreb being Casablanca,
where the dock installations were begun in
1915. Some cities, especially Algiers, became a
focus for European Modernist ideas. In the
1930s Le Corbusier drew up plans for the
development of the city, and he designed a
plan for the town of Nemours on the Algerian
coast. These projects were documented in his
book Poésie sur Alger (1950).
Although European influences remained
minimal in the Sahara, the new political
situation, together with the development of
maritime routes and aviation, led to the
demise of trans-Saharan trade. In sub-Saharan
West Africa, artistic traditions were also
disrupted by rapid colonization. Thus, new
congregational mosques that were built under
French supervision at Djenné in 1909 and at
Mopti in 1935 marked the emergence of an
official colonial style for the region, which also
became accepted for secular buildings.
Even after independence in North Africa,
many architectural projects relied on Western
architects and expertise. In Libya, for example,
the University of Garyounis (built 1966–77) at
Benghazi was designed by James Cubitt. Highrise
buildings were introduced to the major
cities, such as the Hotel Meridien Africa (built
1970) in Tunis, which rose to twenty-one
storeys. Japanese companies also became
involved in the region: the National Cultural
Centre (built 1985–8) in Cairo, for example, was
designed by a team of architects from the
Japanese firm of Nikken Sekkei.
It was against this background that some
Arab architects began to examine their
indigenous architectural traditions. The most
influential was the Egyptian architect Hassan
Fathy (1900–89). After the Second World War
he designed the village of New Gourna, near
Luxor, an experiment in rural regeneration that
aimed at the relocation of 7,000 villagers. The
inhabitants, some of whom had depended on
tomb robbing for their livelihood, were to be
moved there from the village of Gourna in the
Valley of the Kings. The project encountered
NORTH AFRICA 1900-2000
10˚
20˚
20˚
30˚
50˚40˚30˚20˚10˚0˚10˚
Casablanca
industrial centre
Tangier
Timbuktu
Djenné
Mopti
JerusalemAlexandria
Cairo
opened 1908
Khartoum
Rabat
Safi
Algiers
Oran
Constantine
Gafsa
Fez
Tunis
NabeulKairouan
Tripoli
Benghazi
Tétouan
New Gourna
1948 designed
by Hassan
Fathy; inspired
by traditional
Egyptian architecture
Medina
Mecca
(international zone 1912-56)
Nile
Niger
Seneg
al
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
R
E
D
S
E
A
B L A C K S E A
N U B I A N
D E S E R T
SINAI
C
H
OKE MTS
S
A H A R A
T I B E S T I
AL JABAL
AL AKHDAR
S Y R I A N
D E S E R T
JERBA
MOROCCO 1956
ALGERIA 1962
SPAIN
LIBYA 1951
EGYPT
1956
CHAD
1960
MAURITANIA
1960
NIGER
1960
MALI
1960
F R E N C H
W E S T A F R I C A
SENEGAL
1960
ERITREA
ETHIOPIA 1942
FRENCH
SOMALILAND 1977
BRITISH
SOMALILAND
1960
ITALIAN
SOMALILAND
1960
KENYA 1963BELGIAN CONGO
GAMBIA
SIERRA
LEONE
LIBERIA
GOLD
COAST
N I G E R I A
FRENCH
EQUATORIAL
AFRICA
SAUDI
ARABIA
IRAQ
YEMEN
ADEN
PROTECTORATE
TRANS-
JORDAN
SYRIA
LEBANON
PALESTINE
ANGLO-EGYPTIAN
SUDAN 1956
TUNISIA 1956
ITALY
SPANISH
M
O
RO
CCO
(Spanish
1912-5
6)
Spanish orientalist
painter Mariano
Bertuchi (1895-1958)
establishes Escuela
Preparatoria
de Bellas Artes
French Orientalist painter Alphonse-Etienne Dinet
(1861-1929) promotes Western-style art French painters promote
Western-style art
1931-42 Le Corbusier
submits plans for
city - none accepted.
1950s Fernand Pouillon,
chief architect of Algiers,
designs large-scale
housing estates
1993 Great Mosque of Hassan II
designed by Michel Pinseau (French) and
Royal Architectural Workshop
new colonial towns built by French;
old towns preserved as historic monuments
1973 Mausoleum of Muhammad V
designed by Vietnamese architect Vo Toan
1920s Cathedral
of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus,
designed by
Panteri (Italian)
buildings of neo-Islamic,
neo-Pharaonic modernist
idioms by European architects
1985-88 National Cultural
Centre designed by
Japanese architects
1966-77
University of
Garyounis
designed by
James Cubitt
neo-vernacular
architecture developed
post-World War II
(French 1912-56)
(French 1830-1962)
(Italian 1911-43)
(British
1882-1952)
(Italian)
(Italian 1934-42)
(British 1899-1952)
(French
1881-1956)
Melehi,Belkahia
Melehi, Turki
OmerErmes
Koraichi,benHaffaf
M
oukhtar, Ayad, Nada
Turki
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 Colonies and States
French colony
British colony
Spanish colony
Italian colony
date of independence
architecture of foreign design
school of fine art
urban pottery centre
rural pottery centre
textile and embroidery centre
metalworking centre
artists from N Africa train in USA
from mid-20th century
Moroccan artists train in
France and Spain
Algerian artists train and work
in France
Tunisian artists train and work
in France and Italy
Libyan artists train in
Rome and Europe
Libyan artists train at School of
Fine Art in Cairo
Egyptian artists train in
France and Italy
migration of Jewish craftsmen
from N Africa to Israel
European influence
1960
STUDY IN GOUACHE by Hassan Fathy of his Nasr House,
Egypt (1945). Fathy graduated from the High
School of Engineering in Cairo in 1926 and worked
for the Egyptian Department of Municipal Affairs.
From 1930 to 1946 he taught in the Faculty of Fine
Arts in Cairo and, from 1946 to 1953, worked for the
Antiquities Department. Active until his death in
1989, he was influential as an architect and theorist
concerning the environmental significance of lowcost
indigenous construction techniques.
social and administrative problems. Fathy also
designed many individual buildings and by the
end of his life had won international acclaim.
In Tunisia, meanwhile, a neo-vernacular style of
architecture was attempted, based on the
traditions of Djerba Island. Regenerative
projects were also implemented, such as the
redevelopment of the Hafsia quarter of the
Tunis medina, completed in 1977.
Independence led to a new role for state
sponsorship in architecture. This took a
number of forms, depending on the desired
self-image of the state. In Morocco, for
example, the monarchy promoted its
legitimacy by fostering traditionalism in
architecture, although often with recourse to
modern techniques and foreign architects. In
this category can be placed the mausoleum of
Muhammad V (completed 1973) in Rabat,
designed by the Vietnamese architect Vo Toan,
and the vast Great Mosque of Hassan II
(completed 1993) in Casablanca, designed by
French architect Michel Pinseau in association
with the Royal Architectural Workshop.
PAINTING AND SCULPTURE
The European belief that the so-called ‘fine’ art
traditions of painting and sculpture represent
EAST AND CENTRAL AFRICA 1900-2000
293
50˚
20˚
10˚
0˚
10˚
20˚
40˚30˚20˚10˚
Tinga Tinga
(Dar es Salaam) 1960s
Pachipamwe
(nr. Bulawayo) 1989
Ujamaa (Maputo) 1990-93
Kinshasa CICIBA
Biennale,1987
Poto-Poto
(Brazzaville)
Mbile
(Lusaka) 1993
Makerere University
(Kampala)
Kisangani
Paa Ya Paa
(Nairobi) 1961-96
Harare
(Salisbury)
Libreville
Lubumbashi
(Elizabethville)
Addis Ababa
Djibouti
Mogadishu
Kigali
Bujumbura (Usumbura)
Kisumu
Zanzibar
Lilongwe
Luanda
Antananarivo
(Tananarive)
Mombasa
Congo
Zam
bezi
WhiteNile
Shebeli
L. Tana
L. Victoria
L. Nyasa
L. Rukwa
L. Tanganyika
L. Kariba
L. Albert
L. Rudolph
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
I N D I A N
O C E A N
ETHIOPIAN
HIGHLANDS
GREAT RIFT
VALLEY
CENTRAL AFRICAN
REPUBLIC
S U D A NC H A D
N I G E R I A
SOUTH
AFRICA
BOTSWANA
NAMIBIA
RWANDA 1962
BURUNDI 1962
SWAZILAND
ZANZIBAR
(united with Tanzania 1964)
E R I T R E A
E T H I O P I A
1941
K E N YA
1963
UGANDA
1962
TA N Z A N I A
(TANGANYIKA)
1961
MOZAMBIQUE
1975
MALAWI
(NYASALAND)
1974
MADAGASCAR
1960
A N G O L A
1975
ZAMBIA
1963
ZIMBABWE
(S. RHODESIA)
1979
SOMALIA
1960
GABON
1960
CONGO
1960
Z A I R E
(BELGIAN
CONGO)
1960
CAM
ERO
O
N
N
0
0
400 miles
500 kms
2 POST-COLONIAL EAST AND CENTRAL AFRICA extended and
expanded upon the European forms of visual and
material culture in place at independence. Painting
and graphic arts became more important than
sculpture. The visual arts were centred in urban,
university and East African coastal settings, which were
also the the places where tourist arts were made for
export or sale to a largely non-African clientele.
COLONIE BELGE, 1885–1959. Prison yard, with
prisoner being flogged by guard, with officer
watching. Painted on a flour sack, 21 November
1974, by Tchibumba Kanda Matulu. Such images,
ostensibly about the early colonial era, are actually
a critical commentary on the repressive, violent
regime of Mobutu Sese Seko, president of Zaire
from 1960 until 1997, after the painting was
completed.
than by village-based traditions. These
included centres at Makerere University in
Uganda, founded by M. Trowell in 1939, and the
Atelier d’Art Le Hangar, established by P.
Roman-Desfosses in Elizabethville, Congo, in
1953. Europeans were the main patrons of
these art forms. The late 1960s saw the
invention of a form of popular urban painting
in Zaire (now Congo) called Colonie Belge which
depicted apparently earlier colonial topics but
actually referred to then current political
violence under the corrupt presidency of
Mobutu Sese Seko. These were painted on flour
sacks and sold cheaply in great numbers in
many cities.
Thus in 1975, there was a multiplicity of art
forms in the region. It would have been
possible to visit a university-trained painter of
figures or landscapes in acrylics by European
conventions, a mukanda initiation among
Chokwe-related groups in Angola or Zambia
with masked dances, a self-trained sign painter
in Mombasa, an urban painter of political
themes in Lubumbashi, or a workshop near Dar
es Salaam where Makonde carvers daily turned
out hundreds of tourist carvings of animals or
stacked human figures in ebony.
AFRICAN-INSPIRED ART
Towards 2000 few rural arts (which could be
described as pre-colonial), such as
masquerades or shrines with figural sculptures,
were to be found, apart from occasional
masquerading, and continuing personal
decoration among East African pastoralists.
Many portable artworks had been stolen or
purchased from their original sites in Congo,
Angola, Gabon and Kenya, ending up on the
international art market in Paris, Brussels,
London or New York. By the 1980s most
countries boasted a number of self-taught and
school-trained painters, and modern,
manifestly post-colonial artists whose work
was sold in galleries or hung in museums.
Painting often replaced sculpture as the
dominant form. Artists’ workshops were held in
a number of places in the late 1980s and 1990s,
and some African artists were invited to
biennial exhibitions in Dakar, Johannesburg, or
Venice.
Towards the end of the twentieth century
a significant shift had occurred in art, from
stimulus by whites to African-led discourses. In
the 1980s and 1990s many books, journals and
catalogues also featured contemporary arts,
most from university or urban centres. Some
artists migrated to Paris or New York either
because of socio-political unrest at home
and/or because their primary markets were
abroad. By the 1990s a great plurality of styles
and types of art could be discerned, most
betraying an interdependence of Western and
African ideas, motifs, materials and themes.
While in rural East Africa, on the one hand,
modified forms of earlier, very striking personal
adornment were still viable in the 1990s, in
much of central Africa, the final decade saw the
production of very few art forms due to
prevailing patterns of warfare
and civil unrest.
2 The Growth of Modern Art in East and Central Africa
date of independence
Centres of tourist and modern art / craft production
1960
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
292
THE SO-CALLED ‘TRADITIONAL’ ARTS of
wood carving (figures, masks, and domestic
implements), pottery making, blacksmithing,
house-building and personal decoration
continued fairly well intact from the late
nineteenth century into the 1930s and 1940s in
East and Central Africa. Fine Arab- and Islaminfluenced
wood portals survived into the
twentieth century in Zanzibar and other coastal
trading centres, as did varied figural memorial
posts. Yet as in most of the continent, this was
a time of overwhelming change and adaptation
to the structures, ideas and materials of
colonial overlords who established hegemony
around 1900.
THE COLONIAL IMPACT
In the period prior to the 1950s the following
forms were introduced: a money economy,
Western schooling, Christian missions,
European political forms, dress, trains and
automobiles. By 1950 arts were being affected
by these imports. Many earlier forms were
eroding, some becoming extinct. By 1965, in
most places, governments established by the
French and British had become independent,
yet foreign impact continued to the end of the
millennium. Nevertheless, there were
exceptions; masked dances continued to
EAST AND CENTRAL AFRICA 1900-2000
50˚
20˚
10˚
0˚
10˚
20˚
40˚30˚
Mombasa
Malindi
Lamu
Kilwa
Kisumu
Nairobi
Kigali
Mbuji-Mayi
(Bakwanga)
Tabora
Mbeya
Lusaka
Beira
Pemba
Antananarivo
(Tananarive)
Mahajanga
(Majunga)
Maputo (Lourenço Marques)
Bulawayo
Luanda
Addis Ababa
Libreville
Kinshasa
(Léopoldville) Kananga
(Luluabourg)
Mbandaka
(Coquilhatville)
Kisangani
(Stanleyville)
Kalémié
(Albertville)
Brazzaville
Djibouti
Mogadishu
Kampala
Asmara
Lilongwe
Harare
(Salisbury)
Dodoma
Bujumbura (Usumbura)
Gonder
Zanzibar
Dar es Salaam
Congo
Zam
bez
i
WhiteNile
Shebeli
L. Tana
L. Victoria
L. Nyasa
L. Rukwa
L. Tanganyika
L. Kariba
L. Albert
L. Rudolph
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
I N D I A N
O C E A N
E T H I O P I A N
H I G H L A N D S
G R E A T R I F T
VA L L E Y
B O N G O
K O N S O
K E R E W E
S U K U M A
L U G U R U
ZARAMO
M A H A FA LY
SA
K
A
LA
V
A
MIJIKENDA
G A B O N
C E N T R A L A F R I C A N
R E P U B L I C
S U D A N
C H A D
L I B YA E G Y P T
C O N G O
E T H I O P I A
S O M A L I A
K E N YA
TANZANIA
(TANGANYIKA)
M A D A G A S C A R
Z A I R E
(BELGIAN CONGO)
Z I M B A B W E
(SOUTHERN RHODESIA)
A N G O L A
S O U T H
A F R I C A
Z A M B I A
RWANDA
SWAZILAND
BURUNDI
ZANZIBAR
UGANDA
MALAW
I
)DNALASAYN(
E R I T R E A
M
O
ZA
M
B I Q
U
E
CAM
ER
O
O
N
N
0
0
400 miles
500 kms
1 Traditional Arts in East and Central Africa
distribution of Central African masquerades
sites with Arab-Islamic Swahili architectural decoration
distribution of post sculptures
peoples with East African memorial posts
sites of post-Colonial art production
production of international African arts
major national artistic and cultural centre
LUGURU
Inset: European Colonial Possessions, 1925
British
French
Belgian
Italian
Portuguese
Under League of Nations mandate
Independent
1 AS IN THE WHOLE of the African
continent, the overwhelming
impact of European colonial
powers transformed the visual,
material and ideological cultures
of East and Central Africa
irrevocably in the twentieth
century. Changes that had begun
in the late nineteenth century
accelerated by the 1930s and
1940s, and by the era of
Independence (c.1960–65), had
become wholesale and extreme,
especially in expanding urban
regions. Traditional dress,
household material culture and
architectural forms remained
intact, if modified, in remote
rural areas, however, until the
end of the century.
ELABORATELY DECORATED SWAHILI
portals with interlocking parts
such as this (in the collection of
the Museum für Volkerkunde),
some dating as early as the
sixteenth century, were
concentrated in Zanzibar, Lamu
and Mombasa. Most were in
place in the early decades of the
twentieth century, but by the
end of the century had largely
been removed to museums or
private collections. In place, these
doorways reflected the wealth of
their owners from trade in the
Muslim-dominated Indian Ocean.
feature in coming-of-age and agricultural
rituals in remote Angola, Zambia and Zaire into
the 1970s and later.
By 1950 tourism was common in East
and Central Africa, with emerging cities such as
Kampala, Nairobi, Mombasa, Dar es Salaam,
Kinshasa becoming sites of tourist
art production, often by Kamba or Makonde
men. As many as 10,000 men were involved in
making tourist arts at any one time. Cottage
industries also produced stamped, batiked
and tie-dyed fabrics, as well as baskets and
some toys.
Cities also became sites for instruction in
painting, sculpture, pottery and textile design
in art schools which had been established by
Europeans and continued to be influenced by
European teachers, styles and materials rather
MADAGASCAR
ABYSSINIA
KENYA
TANGANYIKA
BRITISH
SOMALILAND
M
OZAM
BIQUE
NORTHERN
RHODESIA
ITA
LIAN
S
O
M
ALILAND
FRENCH
EQUATORIAL
AFRICA
FRENCH
SOMALILAND
CAMEROONS
BELGIAN
CONGO
ANGOLA
WEST AFRICA 1900–2000
295
20˚10˚0˚10˚20˚
0˚
10˚
20˚
To New York City
ToLondon
ToParis
To Washington D.C.
To Los Angeles Abidjan
Conakry
Freetown
Monrovia
Korhogo
Bandiagara
Bamako
Nouakchott
Bouaké
Bissau
Banjul
Yamoussoukro
Lomé
Jos Ndjamena
Abuja
Abomey
Cotonou
Bobo-Dioulasso
Ouagadougo
Niamey
Zaria
Lagos
Porto-
Novo
Ife
Oshogbo
Benin City
Nsukka
Douala
Yaoundé
Foumban
Bangui
Accra
Kumasi
Man
Dakar Niger
Sene
gal
Benue
Black Vol
ta
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
M A U R I T I A N I A
1960
M A L I
1960
GUINEA
1975
NIGERIA
1960
SAO TOME &
PRINCIPE 1975
EQUATORIAL
GUINEA 1968
SIERRA LEONE
1961
GUINEA-BISSAU
1974
GAMBIA 1965
SENEGAL
1960
IVORY
COAST
1960
GHANA
1957
LIBERIA
1847
CAMEROON
1960 CENTRAL
AFRICAN REP
1960
C H A D
1960
N I G E R
1960
BURKINA
FASO 1960
BENIN1960
TOGO1960
1966,1992
1997
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
2 THE EUROPEAN IMPACT ON ALL REALMS of visual and
material culture continues to be felt in post-colonial,
late twentieth-century West Africa. European
imports – transportation systems, urban architecture,
signs, publications – were only slightly ‘Africanized’
in their local manifestations. In dress, however, local
and even nationalistic inventions or adaptations
(such as industrialized wax prints all over the region
and kente and adinkra cloth in Ghana) prevailed
alongside more strongly Western-influenced fabrics
and styles for both men and women.
MASQUERADES WERE perhaps
the quintessential
‘traditional’ African art in
the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. They
had many vital social,
political, judicial and
educational roles, as well as
being an entertainment and
a means of aesthetic
expression – verbal, visual
and kinetic. This installation
photograph of
contemporary arts of the
Kalabari Ijo is displayed in
the British Museum. Here a
contemporary woman
sculptor, Sokari Douglas
Camp, who lives and works
in England, has recreated an
earlier wood, cloth and
feather masquerade in
welded steel for display in a
gallery setting.
and Uzo Egonu (1931–94) worked in modern
traditions of painting and sculpture, taught by
Europeans (some in Europe) from around
1950. The Negritude movement was
established in Francophone Africa in the late
1930s, where it was the reigning artistic
philosophy into the independence period.
Around then (the 1960s), many artists, still
trained by Europeans, entered studio practice,
producing modern art which often used African
motifs self-consciously, even if styles and
materials were mostly imported. Unlike most
earlier artists, often anonymous and usually
identified with the style of an ethnic group,
these artists had personal styles tied more to
internationalism than to local canons. There
was relatively little wood sculpture among the
modern works, that of El Anatsui (1944–) being
a notable exception.
Colonial governments in most West African
nations established museums and art schools
by 1950–60, usually in growing urban centres.
These cities also experienced the infusion of
European-style architecture, urban planning
and imported materials: cinder block,
reinforced concrete, steel and glass. From the
1920s to the 1950s colonial education officers
and mission schools introduced drawing and
easel painting, gallery exhibitions, new
theatrical forms and other new ideas.
NEW BEGINNINGS
In the independence period (1957–65) new
nations took over colonial-inspired art
institutions, and art centres and workshops
were born and sometimes quickly died. Those
at Oshogbo, Nigeria, and Dakar, Senegal (Ecole
de Dakar), are the best-known.
The same period saw the growth of African
art history programmes, mostly in the USA,
which fostered fieldwork across Africa. As the
use of earlier, ‘traditional’ forms decreased or
ceased, new types of art came into being. These
included commercial forms (signs, posters),
tourist-oriented work (copies, fakes, thorn and
gourd carvings, ebony busts), glazed pottery,
recycled materials (tin, wire) for toys, cement
sculpture (memorials, urban monuments), and
carpentered works (‘fantasy’ coffins in Ghana,
Ode-lay masks in Freetown).
In the latter part of the century, painting
and sculpture were made for display,
enjoyment and sale across West Africa.
Yoruba adire (starch resist indigo) cloth,
Bamana bogolan (mud-dyed resist) and Asante
and Ewe kente cloth, all long used in local
dress, plus innovative tie-dyes and batiks, were
made for sale. At first most new arts and crafts
found expatriate patronage, but by the end of
the century they were supported by middleclass
Africans. Kente and bogolan were brought
into the international fashion industry.
By the 1980s and 1990s studio artists had
become the teachers of their younger
compatriots, usually in university settings.
This work was showcased at pan-African
venues: the 1st World Festival of Negro Arts,
(Dakar, 1966), then at the larger Second World
Black Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC,
Lagos, 1977), followed by Dak’Art, the First
Dakar Biennale (1992). While many artists
remained in African urban centres, the
structures supporting West African arts had
undergone fundamental change, and some
artists had moved to Europe or the USA.
Overwhelmingly, late twentieth-century arts
were secular, made not for local but for
national or international audiences and a few
African collectors, corporations and
government projects.
ART FOR AFRICANS?
Towards the year 2000 both ‘traditional’ and
more recent art, including street and studio
photography, had gained international
recognition, as shown by numerous exhibitions
and books such as Magiciens de la Terre (1989,
Paris) and Africa Explores: 20th-Century African Art
(1991, New York), and several exhibitions
known as ‘Africa 95’ (London, 1995). The new
interest in African arts also stimulated the
publication of several journals.
Yet traditional or ‘classical’ African art
rarely upheld the values of African
communities, and indeed, much of it had left
Africa to enter the lucrative international
antiquities market. It is a troubling irony that
the finest West African art, from ancient times
until the final years of the 20th century, is in
museum and private collections in England,
Europe and the United States.
2 Post-Colonial West Africa
date of independence
sites of post-Colonial art production
production of international African arts
major national artistic and cultural centre
sites (and years) of international art festivals
international dispersal of West African artists
1960
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
294
THE PAST 100 YEARS have seen changes in
art and lifestyle that are unprecedented in
African history. Colonial governments, which
had imposed rule over much of the continent
from around 1900, were mostly gone by 1965
with incalculable impact.
NEW INFLUENCES ON TRADITIONAL ART
The century began with traditional arts and
architectures intact. Until the mid-century and
later, a number of traditional items were still
made: woodcarving (masks and figures);
ironwork and copper-alloy casting; jewellery,
personal decoration and leadership regalia;
sun-dried mud buildings, some with painted
walls. In rural areas these traditional forms
remained viable until the 1970s or 1980s. Most
areas, however, were influenced increasingly by
both a more insistent European presence in
coastal regions and cities, and by further
conversions to Islam.
Colonial regimes helped to stimulate
changes in the arts: from the 1920s
conversions to Christianity meant a loss of
patronage for local religions, and the
traditional arts associated with them. As well
as a money economy and new educational and
political structures, Europeans also introduced
new materials, pigments, styles, technologies
WEST AFRICA 1900-2000
10˚
0˚
20˚
0˚10˚
10˚
20˚
Freetown
Monrovia
Abidjan
Accra
KumasiYamoussoukro
Lomé
Lagos
Naimey
Bangui
Benin
City
Enugu
Calabar
Ikot Ekpene
Okigwi
Nsukka
Zaria
Abuja
Oshogbo
Ouagadougou
Porto-
Novo
Malabo (Santa Isabel)
Yaoundé
Ndjamena
(Fort-Lamy)
Bamako
Conakry
Bissau
Banjul (Bathurst)
Dakar
Nouakchott
Niger
Niger
Niger Benue
Sen
egal
BlackVolta
Gambia
White
Volta
RedVolt
a
Lake
Volta
BIGHT OF
BENIN
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
A L G E R I A
M
O
R
O
C
C
O
L I B Y A
N I G E R
M A L I
(FRENCH SUDAN)
LIBERIA
N I G E R I A
C H A D
M A U R I T A N I A
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
(UBANGI-SHARI)
CAMEROON
I V O R Y
C O A S T
SENEGAL
D E M O C R A T I C
R E P U B L I C O F
C O N G O ( Z A I R E )
CONGOG A B O N
GAMBIA
G U I N E A
GUINEA
BISSAU
(PORT. GUINEA)
SIERRA
LEONE
BURKINA
FASO
(UPPER VOLTA)
BENIN
(DAHOMEY)
SÃO TOME
& PRINCIPE
TOGO
GHANA
(GOLD COAST)
EQUATORIAL GUINEA
(SPANISH GUINEA)
Inland Niger
Delta 1100
Nok 800 BC
Yelwa
100
Karauchi
200 BC
Bankoni
1300
Ke
950
Sao ?950
Daima 900
Koma
1550
Bura 200
Messo
900
Ife 1100
Owo
1350
Akan
1650
The Colonial Impact on
West African Arts
Distribution of technologies
and materials:
cement, reinforced concrete,
enamel paint
photography, easel painting
and print-making
carpentry
recycled wire, tin and rubber
glazed pottery
Distribution of motifs:
grave markers and civic
monuments
bicycles, cars, trucks
aeroplane motifs
crucifix motifs
distribution of
Western-style dress
sites where terracotta heads
and figures have been found,
and excavated, with dates
of manufacture
movement of art objects to
Europe and America
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1
1 THE IMPACT OF EUROPEAN COLONIALISM on the peoples and visual cultures
of West Africa was so great that the face of the entire region was
forever changed. The growth of urbanism, along with permanent roads
and buildings, are major factors in this transformation, followed by the
overwhelming presence of pictorial imagery and writing (signs,
magazines, books), and by transportation systems using trains, trucks,
cars, and since about 1950s, buses and aeroplanes.
IGBO SHRINE to major
tutelary deities in Oba
Uke, eastern Nigeria.
Photograph by Herbert M.
Cole, 1983. The wooden
figures are ‘traditional’
but the impact of Europe
can be seen in the
clothing the priest has
provided for them. By the
close of the twentieth
century few such shrines
remained. Figures were
either destroyed or sold to
art dealers for export to
Europe or the USA.
Figures such as these can
now be found in museums
and private collections.
Some sell for very high
prices.
and motifs. Glass painting in Senegal and
cement sculpture in urban and rural areas are
examples of these developments. Islam had a
dampening effect on the arts due to its
proscription of figurative arts, although textile
production and some dress styles, as well as
mosque building and other architecture,
thrived. By the 1990s most West African
peoples were either nominally Muslim or
Christian, so most traditional arts were no
longer viable.
ART BEFORE INDEPENDENCE
A handful of artists such as Aina Onobulu
(1882–1963), Ben Enwonwu (1918–94),
Christian Lattier (1925–78), Iba Ndiaye (1928–)
FRENCH
WEST AFRICA
NIGERIA
RIO DE ORO
& SPANISH
SAHARA
GAMBIA
GOLD
COASTSIERRA
LEONE
CAM
EROON
PORT
GUINEA
N
British French Spanish
Portuguese Independent
Under League of Nations mandate
European Colonial
Possessions, 1925
Community Art Centres
in South Africa
community art centre, with
date of foundation
2
2 PUBLICLY FUNDED ART CENTRES
like the Polly Street Art
School in Johannesburg
played a crucial role in
nurturing the creativity of
black artists as early as the
1950s. In the 1970s these
attempts to empower black
artists were further
promoted through
independent, often privately
funded centres, most with
increasingly radical political
agendas of black
consciousness. State funding
retained as its primary aim
the generation of employment
in impoverished black
townships.
SOUTHERN AFRICA 1900–2000
297
30˚
20˚
30˚
Germiston
Katlehong Art Centre, 1977-90
Nyanga
Port Elizabeth
East London
Bloemfontein
Pretoria
Pretoria Arts,
Music and
Drama
Association
(PAMDA),
est. 1989
Pietermaritzburg
Kimberley
Lim
popo
Vaal
Orange R.
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
I N D I A N
O C E A N
CAPE OF GOOD HOPE
DRAKENSBER
G
NORTHERN
PROVINCE
(LIMPOPO)
FREE
STATE
MPUMALANGA
GAUTENG
KWAZULU-NATAL
NORTH-WEST
NORTHERN CAPE
EASTERN CAPE
WESTERN CAPE
REPUBLIC OF
SOUTH
AFRICA
BOTSWANA
NAMIBIA
LESOTHO
SWAZILAND
ZIMBABWE
Nyanga Art Centre,
1979-90
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
- Funda-The African Institute of Art.
Founded with the support of
international artists in 1983
Soweto
- The Johannesburg Arts Foundation, est. 1972
in the suburb of Saxonwold
- Federated Union of Black Artists (FUBA), est. in 1978
in Newtown, central Johannesburg
- The Bag Factory. Studio cooperative est. 1995 in Newtown
- Polly Street Art School, est. 1952. Major centre for training
Black artists in the 1950s and 1960s
Johannesburg
- Community Arts Project
(CAP), est. 1977 in the
suburb of Woodstock
- Greatmore Studios.
Studio cooperative est.
1998 in Woodstock
Cape Town
- Community Arts
Workshop, est. 1983
- The Bartel Arts Trust
(the BAT Centre),
est. 1990 on the
quays in Durban
Durban
THE BASOTHO CULTURAL
VILLAGE in the Free State
was opened in 1994,
evidently as part of the
policy of the new South
African government to
restore the history of
African peoples that had
been systematically denied
by the previous apartheid
government. The village
traces the evolution of
South Sotho material
culture, especially
architecture, from prehistoric
times to the
present, thereby avoiding
the trap of many tourist
villages that work
uncritically with the idea of
an ethnographic present.
This illustration shows the
contemporary version of
painted clay shelving, of
which there are several
earlier forms in the village.
THE SOUTH AFRICAN National
Gallery in Cape Town, by
Francis Kendall, includes
elements of European
classical tradition and Cape
Dutch architecture. Since
its completion in 1930, the
colonial appearance of the
façade has been modified
by the introduction of
later artwork, notably,
after the first democratic
elections in 1994, the
decoration of the niches
by the Ndebele artists, Isa
Kabini and Rose
Mahlangu, in an African
mural style. The sculpture
in the foreground is Bruce
Arnott’s Numinous Beast.
colonial population. Soon these schools, and
those founded at Afrikaans-language
universities such as Pretoria, Stellenbosch and
Bloemfontein, assumed the role of promoting
European culture in support of white claims to
power. As in other parts of the world at that
time, these institutions distinguished their
product not only from craft (both black and
white), but also from the various forms of
commercial art. As the urban centres grew, the
demands from industry for graphic design,
illustration and photography were satisfied at
first by a number of technical schools
established not only in South Africa but
throughout the region. For economic reasons,
and because of changes in the understanding
of art, the South African universities that
continue to teach Fine Art now also include
commercial subjects in their curricula.
COMMUNITY ART
The apartheid Bantu education policy denied
young South African black people the
qualifications to study either fine art or
commercial art at tertiary level, and for the
most part prevented admission to such courses
at white institutions to those few black
students who survived the system. A number of
well-qualified black students enrolled at such
private art schools as the Frank Joubert Art
School in Cape Town and the Johannesburg
Arts Foundation. In a few urban areas, or
‘townships’, municipalities set up a variety of
art courses at community art centres, such as
the influential but short-lived Polly Street Art
School in Johannesburg, and the Katlehong Art
Centre, near Germiston. Other community
centres, such as the Community Arts Project in
Cape Town, operated with the help of overseas
funding. Many community schools quickly
acquired a political dimension, and several of
them combined regular art classes with
workshops on the making of posters, banners
and community murals.
In rural areas throughout the region, the
major proponents of art training were the
mission schools. From the middle of the
nineteenth century, mission schools
encouraged their scholars to produce both
liturgical objects and religious themes in three
and two dimensions. Around the mid-twentieth
century mission teachers seem to have
recognized generally that, in a hostile
economic climate, communities could sustain
themselves by making art- and some
individuals could actually make a career from
art. Thus, in the 1960s, at the Art and Craft
Centre at Rorke’s Drift in KwaZulu-Natal, the
Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church
introduced ceramic and textile workshops,
which employed mainly local women, and a
fine art school, which attracted mainly urban
black men. The political aspirations of the
black art students disturbed the peace of the
mission and it was closed after only a few
years. In the short time of its existence,
however, it not only produced Azaria Mbatha
and John Muafangejo from Namibia, two of
southern Africa’s most significant artists of
recent years, but it also established the linocut
as a major medium of South African artistic
expression. Similarly, mission schools in
Rhodesia/Zimbabwe played a significant role in
establishing the genre of soapstone carving,
and they launched the careers of several
notable sculptors.
As the world economic climate deteriorates,
on the one hand, and global tourism proliferates,
on the other, philanthropic enterprises have
founded community craft centres throughout
southern Africa. Thus basket-making centres
have been set up in KwaZulu-Natal and
Botswana; textile and embroidery cooperatives
have been established throughout the region;
and San, or Bushman, art and craft schools
have been founded in Namibia, South Africa
and Botswana. While not all of these would be
seen as centres of art in some countries, they
are performing the significant function of
bringing traditional craft practices into the new
global economy, while providing much-needed
employment for their practitioners.
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
296
collected at all, was displayed in natural history
museums, where it remains to this day in
Maputo, for example. Post-colonial
developments in museum practice vary
throughout the region and include: the
integration of African art into the major art
galleries of Cape Town and Johannesburg; the
establishment of schools of carving within the
precincts of the national art museums in
Harare and Maputo; the displacement of the
colonial collection by the work of such
revolutionary artists as Malangatana in the
national museum in Maputo; and the creation
of a new series of museums celebrating the
achievements of national heroes in Botswana.
The oldest art schools in the region are in
South Africa and they are attached to
universities – in Cape Town, Pietermaritzburg
and Johannesburg – that had as part of their
original mission the function of civilizing the
THE DISTRIBUTION OF ART CENTRES
throughout Southern Africa, both
collections of art and formal educational
institutions, reflects the political and economic
history of the region – as well as colonial
debates over the definition of the term ‘art’.
Art, in the European sense, was practised as a
rule by people of European origin in the great
urban centres of the region. For a long time,
this understanding of art was denied to African
peoples, whose traditional practice in rural
areas was generally thought of as ‘material
culture’ and whose production in mission
schools and other philanthropic foundations
was widely regarded as ‘craft’.
THE COLONIAL LEGACY
Similarly, collections of art in the region were
affected by changes in the understanding of
this concept. Thus the earliest collections of
art were made with the purpose of instilling
European cultural values, and occasionally
craft-manufacturing techniques, in a
supposedly unrefined colonial population.
Gradually art produced locally in the European
mould, mainly by white people but eventually
by blacks also, was admitted into the
collections, a trend accelerated, of course, by
the decline in value of local currencies.
Traditionalist African art, meanwhile, if it was
SOUTHERN AFRICA 1900-2000
20˚ 30˚ 40˚
10˚
20˚
30˚
Nyanga Art School
C
C
C
C
Gaborone
(Gaberones)
Johannesburg
Rustenburg
Letsitele
Soweto
Molepolole
Kanye
D’Kar
Dobe
Francistown
Mutare (Umtali)
Rusape
Beira Municipal Museum
Maputo (Lourenço Marques)
Nyanga
Guruve
Mochudi
Pietersburg (Polokwane)
Bakone Malapa Museum
Mpumalanga
Port Elizabeth
East London
Alice
Bloemfontein
Thaba Nchu
Tweespruit
Cape Town
Thupelo
Ujamaa/Pemba
Siavonga
Marondera
Mbile
Pachipamwe
Thapong
Robben Island
Museum
Stellenbosch
Pretoria
Gauteng
Mabopane
Winterveld
Radoo
Mpambo
Mbabne
Serowe
Bulawayo
Nampula
Harare (Salisbury)
Macheke
Maun
Windhoek
Gibeon
Lüderitz Museum
Kagga Kamma
Okaukuejo
Pietermaritzburg
Morija
Museum of Morija
Kimberley
Durban
Richmond
Basotho
village
Marburg
Eshowe
UlundiRorke’s Drift
Golden Gate
Nkwalini
Hlabisa
3
3
5
2
2
Grahamstown
Fort Hare
William Fehr Collection
Michaelis Collection
South African Museum
South African National Gallery
Irma Stern Museum
Philani Workshops
Schmidtsdrif
Nelson Mandela
Art Gallery
Albany Museum
Ann Bryant Art Gallery
East London Museum
Zululand Historical Museum
E.S. Malan Ethnographical Museum
De Beers Art Gallery
The Sasol
Art Gallery
Duggan-Cronin Bantu Gallery
William Humphreys Art Gallery
Museum and Art Gallery
William Campbell Museum
Mariannhill Mission and Teachers Training College
Natal Museum
Tatham Art Gallery
KwaZulu Cultural Museum
African Window Museum
Pretoria Art Museum
Museum Africa
Gertrude Posel Art Gallery
Johannesburg Art Gallery
National Art Collection
Museu Chissano
Natural History Museum
Putakikobo Museum
Kaross Workers
Embroidery
Project
Chivirika
Embroidery Project
Shangaan
Motifs
Weya
Bathoen II
Museum
National Museum
and Art Gallery
Art Gallery
State Museum
Educational Museum
Sechebele I Museum
Kuru Museum
Kuru Art Project
Supa-Ngwao
Museum
Khama III
Memorial Museum
National Museum
Khami Ruins Site Museum
Museu Nacional de Etnologia
Nyahokwe Ruins Site Museum
The Vukutu School
National Archives
National Gallery
The Workshop School
St Francis Mission
Mission of Our
Lady of Sorrows
Evangelical Lutheran Church
Art and Craft Centre
Mission of the Good Shepherd
St Faith's Mission
Serima Mission
National
Museum
Matsulu village
Nedebele village at the Middelburg Museum
Cyrene
Mission
Nabe
Museum
Ondini, reconstructed Zulu capital
Shakaland
The Tengenenge
Sculpture Community
Gibeon
Folk Art
’Ikhoba
National Museum
Olievenhuis Art Gallery
Museum of
the Island of
Mozambique
Ndaleni Methodist Mission
Grace Dieu Anglican Mission
Limpopo
Zam
bezi
Vaal
Orange R.
Okavango Delta
Victoria Falls
L. Cabora Bassa
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
I N D I A N
O C E A N
CAPE OF
GOOD HOPE
K A L A H A R I D E S E R T
N
A
M
IB
DESERT
DRAKENSBER
G
S O U T H
A F R I C A
B O T S W A N A
N A M I B I A
LESOTHO
SWAZILAND
ZIMBABWE
Z A M B I A
M O Z A M B I Q U E
Zimbabwe Ruins
Site Museum
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
1 Arts and Crafts in Southern Africa
major art galleries and museums
ethnographic reconstructions
art schools and university art departments
mission schools that encouraged art
international artists workshops, held annually
Khoisan art centres
stone-carving centres in Zimbabwe
embroidery and textile projects
basket-making co-operatives
C
1 SOUTHERN AFRICAN ECONOMIC HISTORY reflects the
geography of the region, for example the gold
seam underlying Johannesburg and the
Witwatersrand. However, the distribution of art
centres in southern Africa follows economic and
political dictates. European-inspired art, both in
museum collections and fine art schools, clusters
around the major cities. Both traditionalist art
forms and philanthropically-founded community
art and craft centres are distributed in the vast,
and generally impoverished, rural areas.
ASIA 1900–2000
299
GLOBALIZATION
New means of transport – from steamships and
railways to cars and aeroplanes – globalized
the arts throughout the region. With the advent
of radio, television and the internet, images
were instantaneously transmitted to the
remotest corners of the world. During this
period Asian urban culture was assaulted by
the latest in world developments, ranging from
Parisian Cubism and the International Style
to Soviet realism and American PostModernism.
Conversely Asian arts and
artists became familiar in the West, as Asian
cinematographers, designers, architects,
sculptors and painters developed worldwide
reputations.
Enhanced communication encouraged
individuals to travel, and artists from one
culture studied in another. Iranian architects
trained in the USA, while British potters
studied in Japan. Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn
designed regional capitals in South Asia, while
the Chinese-born I. M. Pei redesigned the
Louvre in Paris and the Japanese Kenzo Tange
redesigned the Italian cities of Bologna and
Catania. Communication also encouraged
group tourism on an unprecedented scale, as
NATIONAL STADIUMS, TOKYO, 1961–64. Kenzo Tange
(1913–) designed these two stunning pavilions
for the 1964 Olympic Games held in Tokyo. Two
asymmetrically arranged steel suspension
structures with sweeping curved roofs recall
traditional Japanese architecture as well as
contemporary structures by Le Corbusier and
Eero Saarinen. Tange’s work thus encapsulates
the fruitful conjunction of East and West and won
him the Pritzker Prize for architecture in 1987.
1 THE ENTIRE ASIAN CONTINENT became integrated into
the global world of art in the twentieth century as
newly-independent nations established Westernstyle
institutions, including museums of art and
archaeology as well as schools for teaching the fine
and applied arts. World organizations identified
cultural sites throughout the region as having
significance not only for local histories but also –
and more importantly – in the shared heritage of
civilization on earth.
some people became wealthier and had more
leisure time in the post-war period. The
popularization of cheap portable still and video
cameras led to a proliferation of images
worldwide. From the late 1970s UNESCO, itself
a creation of a post-war desire for world
improvement, began designating cultural
complexes throughout the region as World
Heritage Sites to preserve them from
destruction, unrestricted development and
industrial pollution.
Concrete and steel construction replaced
brick and wood, as skyscrapers supplanted
traditional low structures, and Western-style
rooms with particular functions and furniture
replaced traditional multi-functional spaces
defined only by their furnishings. Iranian artists
turned calligraphy into sculpture, and Indian
artists realized traditional subjects using
Japanese washes and Chinese brushwork.
Artists also looked for inspiration in their
endangered folk art traditions and in their own
cultural past, newly-revealed through
archaeology and art history. West and Central
Asian carpets and kilims became collectable
worldwide, and Japanese raku pottery was in
vogue everwhere, as was the traditional
Indonesian textile technique of batik resistdyeing.
Indeed, some individuals held up these
traditional crafts as the antitdote for what they
saw as the poison of globalization and
Modernism, and many artists combined
traditional craft techniques with modern tools
and sensibilities in their work.
Archaeology, which had been introduced to
Asia by Europeans at the beginning of the
century to fill European museums, became a
means of establishing national identities in the
post-war period. From Syria and Saudi Arabia
through Iran and Pakistan to China and
Mongolia, archaeologists made startling
discoveries that revolutionized knowledge of
the arts of the distant past. National and
regional museums were established
throughout Asia to house the finds and old
royal collections. Although the bulk of their
collections was local material, some museums,
particularly in wealthy countries like Japan and
pre-revolutionary Iran, not only repurchased
their country’s own antiquities but also
became players in the international art market
for European painting.
THE ARTIST IN ASIA
Continuing a process begun earlier, the
individual artist emerged as a distinct
personality throughout Asia. The traditional
master-pupil system of individual instruction,
where the best a student could do was to
imitate his master flawlessly, was replaced
by training in government-sponsored art
schools that offered a variety of courses in
many media and techniques, both traditional
and foreign. Innovation and individual
expression were emphasized over tradition
and continuity. The exit of maharajas and
emperors from the political stage closed
artists’ traditional source of patronage.
It was replaced on the one hand by
government sponsorship, particularly for
large projects, and on the other hand by
private patronage, whether by newly-enriched
industrialists or – at a more modest level –
by the emerging middle class.
20˚ 30˚ 40˚ 50˚ 60˚ 70˚ 80˚ 100˚ 110˚ 120˚ 130˚ 140˚ 150˚ 160˚90˚
30˚
20˚
10˚
0˚
10˚
Nanjing
Guangzhou
Shanghai
Tokyo
Hanoi
Lucknow
Mathura
Bhubaneshwar
Sarnath
Tashkent
Khudzhand (Khojent)
1876
Samarkand
Bukhara
Nukus
Khiva
Almaty
(Alma-Ata)
Ashgabat
(Ashkhabad)
Lhasa
Seoul
Mandalay
Rangoon
Pagan
Hue
KyotoOsaka
Nara
Hangzhou
Suzhou
Taipei
Manila
Cebu City
Marawi
Naga
Quezon City
Tianjin
Ulan Bator
Ulan-Ude
Yeniseysk
Krasnoyarsk
Tyumen’
Omsk
Yekaterinburg
(Sverdlovsk)
Erdeni Dzuu
Hohhot
(Kuei-sui)
Irkutsk
Tobol’sk
Xi’an
Hong
Kong
Ho Chi Minh City
(Saigon)
Phnom
Penh
Ayutthaya
National Museum Khon
Kaien
National
MuseumPhimai
National
Museum
Pahang
Bangkok
Battambang
Gia Dinh
Jakarta
Denpasar
Calcutta
(Kolkata)
Allahabad
Gwalior
1922Jaipur
Ajmer
Hyderabad1930
1950 Karachi
TeheranBaghdad
Isfahan
Kuwait
Baku
Tblisi
Kashan
Shiraz
Mosul
Riyadh
Sana’a
Tarim
Muscat
Aleppo
Damascus
Istanbul
Ankara
Bursa
1975
Gazi Teachers
College, 1932
Anatolian
Civilization, 1921;
Ethnographical,
1925
Palestine
(Rockefeller)
(1927-34)
Bezalel (Israel)
Museum (1965)
Konya
Jerusalem
Tel Aviv
Meshed
Kabul
Dushanbe
(Stalinabad)
Bishkek
(Frunze)
Ethnographical Museum, 1938
Archaeological Museum, 1946
Archaeology and
Ethnography, 1978
National
Museum, 1978
Patna
Guwahati (Gauhati)
Shantiniketan
Gianyar
Ubud
Cagayan de Oro
Bandung
Yogyakarta1950
Kuala Lumpur1960
Madras (Chennai)
Bombay (Mumbai)
Lahore Fort 1864
National College of Arts
National Museum of
Afghanistan, 1919/1931
National Museum of Modern Art
Varanasi
Bharat Kala
Bhavan, 1920
Vadodara
(Baroda)
Ahmedabad
National Institute of Design, 1962
1948
NewDelhi
Malacca Singapore
Penang
Taiping
Baoding
1906
Yan’an
Beijing
Lahore
Merv
Harappa
Islamabad
Taxila
Peshawar
Mohenjo-Daro
Quetta
I N D I A
I R A N
S A U D I
A R A B I A
I R A Q
OMAN
YEMEN
SYRIA
JORDAN
LEBANON
TURKEY
BURMA
THAILAND
SOUTH
KOREA
NORTH
KOREA
C H I N A
M O N G O L I A
R U S S I A
(SIBERIA)
AFGHANISTAN
KYRGYZSTAN
V
I
E
T
N
A
M
L A
O
S
TAJIKISTAN
TU
RKMENISTAN
U
ZBEK
ISTA
N
P H
I LI
P
PIN
ES
CAMBODIA
T I B E T
ISRAEL
M A L A Y S I A
K A Z A K H S T A N
BANGLA-
DESH
JAPAN
N
E
P
A
L
PAKISTAN
SUMATRA
SRI LANKA
SIND
JAVA
SARAWAK
SABAH
BORNEO
I N D O N E S I A
TAIWAN
MINDANAO
NEW
GUINEA
LUZON
TIMOR
SULAWESI
(CELEBES)
HAINAN
I N D I A N
O C E A N
A R A B I A N
S E A
B A Y
O F
B E N G A L
YELLOW SEA
ARAL
SEA
SEA OF
JAPAN
EAST
CHINA SEA
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
CASPIANSEA
BLAC
K
SEA
REDSEA
PERSIAN
G
ULF
Academy of Fine Art, 1922
Academy of Fine Art, 1912
National Academy of Art, 1928
Municipal Academy
of Art, 1922
Lu Xun Academy, 1938
Beijing Academy, 1918
National Palace Museum, 1925
1936
1936 1883
1977
1924
Lianjing Higher Normal School, 1906
Central University Art Department, 1927
Technical Art School, 1876-83
Prefectural School of Painting, 1880
1925
1955
1957
1913, 1933
1953
State Museum
1953
National
Museum
1947
1986
1965
Bali Museum
Sabah State
Museum
1954
Victoria Memorial, 1906
Birla Academy of Art, 1967
1850
1851
1914
1856
Prince of Wales, 1922
National Museum, 1946
National College of Arts,
Lalit Kala Akademi
1894-1920 1950
1960
1960
1863
1931
1880
1940
1917
1959
1908
Archaeological Museum, 1920
1974
1984
1905
1925
1926
Dar al-Funun, 1851
Museum of
Pioneer Artists, 1979;
National Museum
of Modern Art, 1962;
Iraq Museum, 1923
College of Fine Arts, 1938
Archaeological
Museum, 1950
Museum of Art, 1920
Nizami Museum of
Azerbaijani Literature, 1940
Caucasian Museum, 1852
State Museum of Arts, 1923
State Museum of Georgia, 1923-9
Armenian, 1930
Chehel-Sotun, 1938
National Museum, 1971
al-Afqa Library, 1972
Pars, 1936
1957/1981
National, 1967
1977
1960
1932
National Museum (1921; 1938)
Academy of Fine Arts, 1883
State School of Applied Arts, 1957
1846, 1876, 1914,1924
1934
1876
1931
1926, 1935
x3
x2
x5
x4
x3
x3
N
0
0
800 miles
1200 kms
1 The Arts of Asia, 1900-2000
art schools, with date of foundation
art museums,
with number and date of foundation
archaeological museum
UNESCO World Heritage Sites
(history, art and architecture only)
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
298
AT THE BEGINNING of the twentieth
century Asia was largely controlled,
directly or indirectly, by European powers,
which exploited the region for its raw materials
as well as its markets for European
manufactured goods. By the end of the century
Asia was totally independent and poised to be
the economic powerhouse of the new
millennium. In the interval, the continent was
wracked by political and social upheavals
resulting from two world wars, wars of national
liberation, civil wars and other regional
conflicts.
The Japanese victory over the Russians in
1905, the first Asian defeat of a European
colonial power, encouraged the Japanese to
embark on their own programme of imperial
expansion over East and South Asia, from
which the continent was rescued,
paradoxically, by a new wave of Western
intervention. The end of World War II was
followed not only by the American occupation
of Japan, but also by the collapse of European
colonial empires in much of the region and
the establishment of Communist regimes from
Eastern Europe to Southeast Asia.
By the end of the century, most of the
Communist systems had collapsed in the
face of freewheeling market capitalism, which
came to rule Asia along with the rest of the
world. Nevertheless, millions of Asians in
isolated and rural areas were untouched by
world developments and largely maintained
their traditional lifestyles.
ASIA 1900-2000
CAST BRONZE by the Italian-trained Iranian artist
Parviz Tanavoli (1937–), who used sculpture,
which is not a traditional art form in Islamic
societies, for calligraphy, the most appreciated
Islamic art form. His most famous theme is the
sculptural representation of the Persian word
heech, meaning ‘nothing’. Here the word
becomes a complex visual pun, appearing to
represent something but saying ‘nothing’.
2 The Indigenous Artistic Traditions of W Asia, c. 1914
extent of the Ottoman Empire
Anatolian carpet area
Persian carpet area
Kurdish textile area
influence of Ottoman patronage and cosmopolitan styles
influence of Qajar patronage and cosmopolitan styles
European mass-produced goods
(undermining local craft traditions)
holy city
calligraphy and the arts of the book
centres of woodworking
centres of metalworking
centres of ceramics
WEST ASIA 1900–2000
301
Gulf states most of the architectural
development occurred during the construction
boom between the 1960s and the 1980s, for
which both Arab and Western architects were
employed. Both Riyadh and Jiddah became
centres for modern architecture.
PAINTING AND SCULPTURE
The Academy of Fine Arts was founded in
Istanbul in 1883 by Osman Hamdi (1842–1910).
From the outset the academy employed
Europeans on its staff. Various artists from the
academy continued their training in Europe,
and then returned to Turkey as instructors of
the next generation of artists. Some Lebanese
artists also studied in Europe: the writer and
painter Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883–1931)
trained in Paris and settled in New York, while
Saliba Douaihy (1915–) trained in Paris,
returned to Beirut, and moved to New York in
1950. Turkish and Lebanese painters in turn
influenced artists in Iraq, Jordan, Palestine and
Syria, some of whom also trained in the West.
20˚ 25˚ 30˚ 35˚ 40˚ 45˚ 50˚ 55˚ 60˚ 65˚ 70˚
40˚
35˚
30˚
25˚
20˚
15˚
Istanbul
Teheran
Muscat
Cairo
Medina
Jerusalem
Damascus
Isfahan
Sana
Na'in
Aden
Mashhad
Tabriz
Zenjan
Bijar
Sanandaj
Hamadan Arak
Yazd
Mecca
Euph
rates
Tigris
Nile
Indus
A R A B I A N
P E N I N S U L A
BLACK SEA
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
CASPIANSEA
PERSI
A
N
GULF
TARSUS MTS
R
E
D
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E
A
A R A B I A N
S E A
Z
A
G
R
O
S
M
T S
IRANIAN
PLATEAU
E
L
B
U
R Z
M T S
CAUCASUS
M A R S H
A R A B S
H
A
D
H
R
A
M
A
U
T
A S I R
YEMEN
KUWAIT
H
E
JA
Z
A N AT O L I A
KURDISTAN
ARM
ENIA
O M A N
S Y R I A
MESOPOTAMIA
A N G L O E
G Y P T I A N
S U D A N
R U S S I A
RUSSIA
B R I T I S H
I N D I A
P E R S I A
ABYSSINIA
E R I T R E A
O T T O M A N
E M P I R E
AFG
H
A
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E G Y P T
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350 miles
500 kms
2 THERE WAS A DECLINE in indigenous artistic practices
across much of the region as mass-produced
imported goods undermined local craft traditions.
Nomadism, which had favoured portable art forms,
also declined. Carpets, however, remained an
important export. Tourism provided a new but
limited market in the late twentieth century. The
manufacture of Jewish ritual objects in Palestine
and Israel was expanded and revitalized.
The Iraqi sculptor Jawad Salim (1920–61),
who studied in Paris, Rome and London,
founded the Baghdad Group of Modern Art
(1951), which was concerned with forging a
modern identity for Iraqi art. In the 1970s Iraq
made a bid for cultural leadership in the Arab
world and Iraqi cultural centres were set up in
many countries. The regime of Saddam Hussein
extolled ancient Assyrian history in an attempt
to create a strong national consciousness.
However, there was also an exodus of artists
from Iraq for political reasons.
In Iran the court painter Muhammad
Ghaffari (1848–1940) studied in Europe and set
up an art school in Tehran in 1911. Modernism
was promoted by Jalil Ziapur (1928–), Marcos
Gregorian (1925–) and others. From the 1960s
the Shah, Muhammad Reza, identified himself
with the pre-Islamic Iranian heritage and held
cultural events at Persepolis. Meanwhile, the
painter Hussein Zenderoudi (1937–), the
sculptor Parviz Tanavoli (1937–) and other
artists of the Saqqakhana school in Iran were
inspired by indigenous Shi‘a iconography and
folklore. After 1979 art that affirmed the ideals
of the Iranian Revolution was promoted.
CALLIGRAPHY AND TRADITIONAL ARTS
The art of calligraphy was undermined by the
advent of printing. The situation was greatly
exacerbated in Turkey, where the Roman
alphabet was adopted in 1928. Some Turkish
calligraphers emigrated, and the Ottoman
tradition of calligraphy was kept alive in Cairo
and Baghdad. In Iran the calligraphic tradition
was more vibrant. From the 1950s a new genre
known as calligraphic painting developed
throughout the region, which fused elements of
calligraphy with Western-style painting.
West Asia, especially Iran and Turkey, is
noted for its carpets. Metalwork, ceramics and
woodwork are found in the major centres such
as Istanbul, Cairo, Damascus, Teheran and
Isfahan. Textile and metalworking traditions are
found in the Kurdish region, and also among
the Lur and Bakhtyari tribes in western Iran
and among the Baluchs in the east. Circassian
émigrés brought niello work on silver to Jordan,
and there were traditions of silversmithing in
Yemen and Oman.
PLAQUE OF BRASS SHEET, inlaid with silver and copper,
and silver appliqué bosses with niello, Damascus,
1912–13. The inscriptions in the roundels consist of
Arabic proverbs and sayings. The inscription in
Turkish within the arms of the star reads ‘Bomb
Foundry of the Inspectorate of Long-range
Artillery, Damascus 1331’. The Kufic inscription on
the band surrounding the central field praises the
Ottoman sultan Mehmed V Rashad (r.1906–18).
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
300
onto reinforced concrete structures. The
monumentalizing national idiom of the 1930s
was influenced by contemporary Italian and
German architecture. After the Second World
War, the International Style gained favour.
In Palestine, Jewish immigrants introduced
European modernism, while after the creation
of Israel the International and Post-Modernist
idioms were employed. In Saudi Arabia and the
THE ARTISTIC TRADITIONS of Western Asia
underwent a profound transformation after
World War I, when new states were created in
former Ottoman lands; these included the
British Mandates of Palestine, Jordan and Iraq,
and the French Mandates of Lebanon and
Syria. The new states were later bolstered by
the promotion of ‘national’ schools of art, and
the foundation of national museums and
galleries of fine art – a concept that was
imported from the West. In Turkey and Iran
modernization programmes were also
implemented. After World War II, cultural
links were established with Western Europe
and the United States, or with the Soviet
Union.
ARCHITECTURE
Traditional building practices, which used mudbrick
and baked brick or stone, disappeared as
buildings were increasingly built with concrete,
glass, steel and aluminium. Architectural styles
imported from the West, such as Art Nouveau,
changed the character of many cities. Turkish
architects developed an eclectic style for their
public buildings, grafting Ottoman elements
WEST ASIA 1900-2000
1 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY was marked by the
emergence of many new states in the region, each
of which attempted to create a specific cultural
identity. Money from oil, which was produced in
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait from the 1940s, and Iraq
and Iran from the 1950s, was invested in various
cultural programmes. Although Western ideas
about fine art were adopted throughout the
region, many artists strove to integrate them
with indigenous traditions.
70˚65˚60˚55˚50˚45˚40˚35˚30˚25˚
40˚
35˚
30˚
25˚
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Baghdad
Riyadh
Kuwait City
Teheran
Doha
Manama
Muscat
Aden
Sana
Mecca
Medina
Jerusalem
Beirut
Tel Aviv
Ankara
Istanbul
Amman
Damascus
Euphr
ates
Tigris
Indus
A R A B I A N
S E A
R
E
D
S
E
A
M
E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
PERSIAN GULF
CASPIAN
SEA
B L A C K S E A C A U
C A
S U
S
Z
A
G
R
O
S
M
T S
E
L B U R Z M T S
I R A N I A N
P L A T E A U
SINAI
S A U D I A R A B I A
O M A N
U A E
Y E M E N
I R A Q
T U R K E Y
I R A N
A F G H A N I S T A N
T U R K M E N I S T A N
U Z B E K I S T A N
PAKISTAN
S Y R I A
EGYPT
SUDAN
ETHIOPIA
QATAR
BAHRAIN
KUWAIT
MUSCAT
ISRAEL
LEBANON
NADROJ
Muhammad Ghaffari’s art school, 1911
College of Fine Arts, 1938
College of Decorative Arts, 1960
Ethnographical Museum, 1938
Iran Bastan Museum, 1946
Decorative Arts Museum, 1960
Museum of Contemporary Art, 1976
Institute of Fine Arts
(painting and sculture
taught by 1939)
Dept. of Architecture at
College of Engineering, 1959)
Academy of Fine Arts, 1962
Institute of Applied Arts, 1969
Iraq Museum, inception 1923,
fully inaugurated 1966
National Museum of
Modern Art, 1962
Museum of Pioneer Artists, 1979
Saddam Arts Centre,
replaced 1962 and 1979 museums
National Museum, 1976
Institute of Art Education, 1965
Museum of Archaeology and
Ethnography, 1978
Art Dept. at Gazi Teachers’ College, 1932
Museum of Archaeology, 1936
Museum of Ethnography, 1920s
Museum of Painting and Sculpture, 1980s
National Museum, Ethnographical Museum
Atelier for Fine Arts, 1980s
Oman Museum, 1974
National Museum, 1975
National Museum, 1971
Cultural Centre (including
training in arts and crafts) 1975
Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, 1906
Bezalel Museum, 1906
Israel Museum, 1965
Museum of Art, 1932
National
Gallery
of Fine Arts,
1980
Archaeological
Museum, 1951
Institute of Music
and Painting, 1952
(closed 1962)
Institute of Fine
Arts, 1972
architects: Mohamed Makiya (b.1914),
Rifat Chadirji (b.1926)
trained in England
artists: Faik Hassan (1914-92),
Jawad Salim (1920-61),
Ismail Fattah (b.1934)
trained in Paris,
Rome or London
artists: Muhammad Ghaffari (1848-1940),
Jalil Ziapur (b.1928),
Marcos Gregorian (b.1925),
Parviz Tanavoli (b.1937)
studied in France or Italy
National Museum, 1957,
Museum of Islamic Art, 1983
Tareq al-Sayyid Rajab Museum, 1983
1 2
3
5
4
N
0
0
350 miles
500 kms
1 Architecture and Fine Art in
W Asia, late 20th Century
area of British colonial rule,
early 20th century
area of French colonial rule,
early 20th century
international borders, 2000
principal colleges/schools of
architecture and art,
with date founded
principal national/archaeological/
ethnographical museums,
with date founded
principal galleries of modern 'fine'
art, with date founded
architects/artists studying/working
in Europe/USA
migration of Jewish
craftsmen/artists to Israel
1
2
3
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
College
of Fine Arts, 1959
National Museum, early 20th c
'Azm Palace Museum
Academy of Fine Arts, 1883
College of Civil Engineering, 1884
State School of Applied Arts, 1957
Museum of Turkish and
Islamic Art, 1914
Topkapi Palace Museum, 1924
Museum of Painting and
Sculpture, 1937
Academy of Fine Arts, 1937
Dept. of Fine Arts, American
University, 1954
Fine Arts Institute, Lebanese
University, 1965
National Archaeological
Museum, 1919
Archaeology Museum,
American University in Beirut4
5
architects: Kemalettin Bey (1870-1927) trained in Berlin
Vedat Bey (1873-1942) trained in Paris
artists: Ibrahim Çalli (1882-1960), Nazmi Ziya Güran (1881-1937),
Ahmet Zeki Kocamemi (1901-59), Refik Epikman (1902-74), Ali Çelebi
(1904-), Nurullah Berk (1906-82), Hadi Bara (1906-71), Zühtü
Müridoglu (1906-), Bedri Rahmi Eyüboglu (1911-75), Hüseyin Gezer
(1920-) trained in Paris or Munich
architects: Farid Trad (early 20th c) trained in Paris
Antoine Tabet (early 20th c) trained in Paris
artists: Habib Srour (1860-1938),
Khalil Saleeby (1870-1928),
Youssef Hoyeck (1883-1962). Saliba Douaihy (1915-)
trained in Rome or Paris
* ˇ
THE MARTYR’S MONUMENT,
Baghdad (1981–3). The
monument was conceived by
the Iraqi artist Ismail Fattah
(1934–) and built by the
Mitsubishi Corporation to the
specifications of Ove Arup
and Partners. It was
constructed to commemorate
the dead in the Iran-Iraq war
(1980–88). The giant turquoise
ceramic-tile dome (40 metres,
130 ft, high) is, split into
halves and encloses a twisted
metal flag. The monument
stands on a circular platform,
situated in the middle of an
artificial lake.
CENTRAL ASIA 1900–2000
303
‘TIANSHAN MOUNTAIN’ by GUO
BU, ink on paper, 1988. This
painting uses Chinese ink and
brush to interpret the
splendour of nature,
depicting the rocky Tianshan
Mountain in the golden
sunset. The abstract image is
more or less Western in style,
but the taste is still very
Central Asian. It embodies the
so-called New Humanistic
Movement, which emerged in
Xinjiang from 1986 to 2000,
when Xinjiang artists were
inspired by traditional Central
Asian, Chinese and Western
modern art. Guo Bu was born
in 1957 in Xinjiang, and
graduated from the Art
Institute of Xinjiang and Xi’an
Academy of Fine Arts,
Russian and Soviet Expeditions
and Archaeological Surveys
museum
date of expedition
archaeological site
1938
2
80˚75˚70˚65˚60˚55˚50˚
35˚
40˚
45˚
Nukus
Nisa
Anau
Khiva
Khorezm Province
Koy-Krylgan-Kala site
SEMIRETCHIE
Kara-tepe
Tula-Tepe
Paykend
Varakhsha
Mary
(Merv)
Kampyr-tepe
Khalchayan
Bukhara
Ashgabat
(Ashkhabad)
Tashkent
Panjikent
Dzhizak (Jizak)
Afrasiyab
Karakol
Almaty (Alma-Ata)
Tomak
(Ak-Beshim site)
Frunze
(Bishkek)
Kashgar
Yarkand
Taxila
Dushanbe
(Stalinabad)
Gilgit
Khotan
Niya
Kabul
Termez
Dalverzine-tepe
Bactra
Begram
Bamiyan
Hadda
Fayaz-tepe
Samarkand
Kok-tepe
Ind
us
Talas
Murgab
Kashgar H
e
Sutlej
Syr D
arya
Am
u
Darya
L.Balkhash
Issy Kul
ARAL
SEA
CASPIANSEA
TIEN SHAN
HINDU KUSH
HIM
ALAYAS
KARA
KUM
TAKLA
MAKAN
DESERT
E
L B U R Z M T S
KARAKORAMRANGE
KYZYL KUM
TURKMENISTAN
UZBEKISTAN
TAJIKISTAN
KYRGYZSTAN
C H I N A
A F G H A N I S TA N
I R A N
K A Z A K H S T A N
Kirghiz Museum
of Fine Arts
(textile)
N
0
0
300 miles
400 kms
1963
1940s
1960s
1938-57
1913-89
1947-2000
1983-2000
1989-2000
1947-2000
1948-1950s
1966-81
1938-60s
1960s-90s
2 CENTRAL ASIA is rich in ancient sites and Soviet
scientists organized a great number of excavations
in Russian Central Asia. In the 1930s and 1940s they
investigated Varakhsha, Paykend, Koy-KrylganKala,
Khalchayan, Dalverzine-tepe, Kampyr-tepe,
Kara-tepe and Fayaz-tepe. Subsequent expeditions
have excavated Pandjikent, old Nisa and new Nisa.
In the east important archaeological excavations
occurred in the Turfan Basin, Khotan and
elsewhere.
Navoi (1441–1501) and the astronomer Ulug
Bek (1397–1449), were made during the
1960s–1980s in Bukhara, Tashkent and
Samarkand respectively.
Many government buildings at this time
were typically Soviet ‘wedding cake’ in style,
especially in Dushanbe, Beshkek, Tashkent and
Almaty. Nevertheless, some old mosques and
monuments were repaired or reconstructed
and traditional interior and exterior Islamic
designs remained popular.
Artists who formed the Central Asian
School of Art, brought to this area the spirit
and traditions of the Russian avant-garde and
modern Western art, which were transformed
and enriched by oriental culture and
philosophy. Important artists who lived in
Central Asia during this time include P. P.
Benkov, Isupov, R. Falk, R. Mazel, V. Ufimtsev, A.
Volkov, N. Karakhan, Usto-Mumin and
E. Korovay. For Russian artists, Central Asia
provided an opportunity to indulge in
Orientalist themes. A young mother breastfeeding
her baby on a summer night, an old
man cutting a boy’s hair, village girls collecting
grapes, a wife calling her husband in the fields
back for lunch, were among the favourite topics
for modern Central Asian artists. Most of these
paintings are kept in the Uzbekistan National
Museum of Fine Art in Tashkent and the
Savitsky Art Museum of the Karakalpakstan in
Nukus, Northern Uzbekistan.
The traditional art of miniature painting
has been an inexhaustible source of inspiration
for Central Asian artists. Influenced by this, in
1968 Iskander Azimov (1945–) painted the
mural Ibn Sina and his Students in the Institute of
Oriental Studies, Uzbekistan Academy of
Sciences, Tashkent. Likewise, in 1968 Chingiv
Ashmarov, inspired by Navoi’s lyrics, painted
many murals which were used to decorate the
metro station of Alisher Navoi in Tashkent.
TRADITIONAL CRAFTS
Today, the heritage of craftsmen of the past is
lovingly preserved and developed. Among
the famous crafts of Central Asia are carpetweaving,
embroidery, wood carving, including
Ustun uyma-carved columns, ceramics such as
the blue-and-white ware of Rishtan and
Gurumsaray, metal wares such as copperembossing,
and leather crafts.
At the beginning of the twentieth century,
Russian factory production undermined the
development of local handicrafts. In the first
half of the twentieth century technological
developments meant that a number of
traditional handicraft products became
obsolete and were no longer made. For
instance, the appearance of porcelain
production in Uzbekistan in the early 1950s and
the mass use of porcelain in everyday life
caused a sharp drop in demand for the
traditional handmade pottery; the decrease
in the production of copper-embossed utensils
had the same cause. The impact of Soviet
ideological doctrine, backed by corresponding
economic programmes, was another important
factor in the decline of traditional handicrafts.
After independence, the transition to a
market economy changed the organization of
handicrafts. Traditional gold-embroidered
wedding gowns and wooden cradles (beshik)
had been banned during the Soviet period as
survivals of feudalism, but they soon became
widespread again. The openness of the new
countries to the world community also
provided craftsmen with new resources
and inspiration.
XINJIANG ART
After lengthy exposure to Chinese and Soviet
influences, traditional Central Asian, Chinese
and Western modern art inspired Xinjiang
artists after 1980. Some Xinxiang artists used
traditional Chinese ink and brush techniques
to interpret the splendour of nature, especially
evident in Xinjiang’s spectacular scenery of
deserts, snow-capped mountains, and vast
grassy plains. Kashgar rural artisans were
highly appreciated, especially for their naive
but lyrical depictions of lively local bazaars and
festivals. Traditional artefacts, such as the
woven carpets of Kashgar and the silk and jade
of Khotan, were also famous.
THE ART OF TIBET
Tibet’s traditional art was influenced by India
and Nepal, swept away by Mao’s Communist
propaganda, and rediscovered after 1980. While
railways and highways have opened this
mysterious land to the world and introducing
modern technology, traditional artefacts, such
as wool carpets and decorated metal knives,
are still well-known.
Thangka scroll paintings, depicting
Buddhist scenes, are the most famous art of
Tibet. Several Thangka schools survived the
vandalism of China’s cultural revolution, and
each year competitions are held among
different Thangka schools during festivals.
Tibetan artists, such as Anduo Qianngba, also
excelled at Buddhist figure paintings. Tibetan
dramatic art, especially the dancing masks
called ‘cham’, sometimes exaggerated as
demons or beasts, are unique and fabulous.
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
302
WESTERN CENTRAL ASIAN ART of the
twentieth century can be divided into
three stages. The first stage, from 1900 to 1917,
covers the period of the Russian conquest of
Western Turkestan. The second stage is from
1917 to 1991. After the Great October
revolution in 1917, Russian Central Asian
states joined the USSR in the early 1920s.
During the Soviet period, Central Asian art
adopted some Communist ideological
doctrine. The third stage starts from 1991
when, following the dissolution of the USSR,
Central Asian republics became five
independent countries. Many types of
traditional art and artefacts formerly forbidden
on ideological grounds, were revived.
THE ECONOMIC BACKGROUND
Natural resources such as oil, gas and gold
were found in Central Asia., but the main
CENTRAL ASIA 1900-2000
70˚65˚60˚
40˚
35˚
30˚
45˚
Nukus
Urgench
Khiva
Charjui
Andizhan
(Andijan)
Kuybyshevo
(Rishtan)
Ferghana
Kashgar
Dushanbe
Khotan
Niya
Aksu
Kucha
Almaty
Tokmak
Turfan
Kurle
Qiemo
Urumqi
Shahrisabz
Urgut
NavoiGizhduvan
Madyt
Ashkhabad
Merv
Baysun
Kandahar
KabulHerat
Denau
Dzhizak
(Jizak)
Bukhara
Tashkent
Turkestan
Otraro
Termez
Balkh
Namangan
Chirik-Rabat
Bishkek
(Frunze)
Samarkand
Karshi
Syr Dary
a
C
hu
Amu
Darya
L.Balkhash
Issy Kul
A R A L
S E A
K A R A
K U M
TA K L A M A K A N D E S E R T
TA R I M BA S I N
K
A
R
A
K
O
R
A
M
K Y Z Y L K U M
T U R K M E N I S TA N
U Z B E K I S TA N
K Y R G Y Z S TA N
TA J I K I S TA N X I N J I A N G
A F G H A N I S T A N
PA K I S TA NI R A N
K A Z A K H S TA N
N
0
0
150 miles
400 kms
Lhasa
Mozugongkar
Golmud
SuoxianAnduo
Dangxiong
Yangbajin
Shigatse
Linzhi
Changdu
Dege
Yushu
Deqin
Mangkang
Zay
Naqu
Gongbu Griamda
Gonggar
Gyantse
Purang
Gegye
Ali
Rutak
Zhada
Saga
Dingri
Yangzt
e
N E P A L
T I B E T
C H I N A
Tibet
Thangka painting/Ikat weaving
temple
dramatic art
1 Arts and Crafts of Central Asia
museum
ceramics
embroidery
carpet weaving
metalwork
jade ware
wood carving/printing
copper embossing
lacquered miniature painting
leather processing
Silk
1 THE REGIONS OF CENTRAL ASIA have spent much of the
twentieth century under the sway of imperial
regimes and Communist orthodoxies. However,
their emergence as independent countries, with
the exception of Tibet, in the 1990s has been
accompanied by an outpouring of art, which seeks
to integrate the lessons learnt from the past with a
celebration of the newly rediscovered indigenous
cultures, traditions and oriental philosophy of the
region.
resource in the Soviet period was cotton.
Uzbekistan alone contributed 61.8 percent to
total Soviet cotton production. Today, cotton is
still over-planted, and the area lacks natural
irrigation. The Aral Sea has become a synonym
for ecological disaster. Water is scarce in
Central Asia and the two rivers that feed the
Aral Sea, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya,
have been taxed to the limit for irrigation. Now
their waters are nearly depleted by the time
they reach the Aral Sea, which has shrunk to
half its former size and is four times more salty.
Vast western segments of Kazakhstan and
Uzbekistan now suffer from the millions of tons
of salt and dust which are swept off the dried
sea floor every year.
CENTRAL ASIAN ART
During the Soviet period, statues of Lenin and
Stalin, along with some propaganda
monuments, were established in the city
centres of Tashkent, Bukhara, Samarkand, and
Khiva, standing alongside thousands of ancient
madrasas, mausolea and mosques. After the
dissolution of the USSR, some of these statues
were removed, and replaced with statues of
Central Asian historical heroes. Statues of
figures such as the medicinal scientist Abu Ibn
Sina (Avicenna, 980–1037), the poet Alisher
‘THE END OF THE BAZAAR’, REYIMU SELIMU, 1992 This
painting shows the end of a local bazaar in
Kashgar, when people carry their goods back
home. The perspective of the painting is distorted,
such that the camel and the donkey in the
foreground are much smaller than the young
couple at the top left corner, in the distance. The
naive art of Kashgar, which depicts everyday events
in a childish, but lyrical manner, has been well
known since the 1960s.
SOUTH ASIA 1900–2000
305
WESTERN INFLUENCES
Abstraction competed with realistic portraiture,
landscape and still-life throughout India, but
Bombay, New Delhi and Calcutta were centres
for Modernist art. In 1946 Francis Newton Souza
(1924–2002) founded the Bombay Progressives,
a Leftist group that wished to be part of the
global art scene. India’s fascination with
modernity was further evidenced by the choice
of the French architect Le Corbusier to create
a new state capital for Chandigarh in 1951.
In the 1950–70s there arose a popular painting
movement, called Neo-Tantric, which was
both abstract and modern, yet reflected
Indian identity.
Maqbool Fida Husain (1915–) was the major
Indian artist of the mid-twentieth-century.
Though Muslim, he treated the spectrum of
Indian themes, from Hindu myth to Islamic
history to social and political commentary,
favouring realism with a Cubist edge. In the
1970s the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University
of Baroda became pre-eminent in India under
the artist and teacher K. G. Subramanyan
(1924–). In 1980 Subramanyan transferred to
Santiniketan and there gathered together a
talented group of artists and art historians. By
the 1980s women – among the most prominent
artists in the country – helped to reconcile the
2 NEW DELHI was founded by the
the British government of India,
the Raj, after a decision to move
the capital from Calcutta to
Delhi in 1911. The masterplan
was drawn up by the chief
architect Edwin Lutyens
(1869–1944), who created a
regal, symmetrically designed
administrative centre with a
wide central axis to carry on the
imperial tradition of grand
processions. Predominantly
Neoclassical, reflecting Lutyens’
own taste, some of the
structures were Indianized by
his collaborator, Herbert Baker
(1862–1946),
who organized the interior
decoration by Indian artists.
YATRA, 1956, oil on canvas by
Maqbool Fida Husain. Husain
was the most significant Indian
artist of the mid-twentieth
century. Among the few artists
who remained in India after
Independence, he evolved a
quasi-Cubist style. He treated
myriad themes – from
mythology and history to sociopolitical
commentary – with
intelligence and humour. Going
on yatra (pilgrimage) in a
bullock cart is still a familiar
sight in India. So, too, is mixing
myth and reality. Here the
standing figure is Hanuman, the
monkey god, racing to save a
dying hero in the epic
Ramayana. The scantily clad
woman derives from the yakshi
(female fertility figure) on
Hindu and Buddhist
monuments.
Cantonment Road
South Avenue North Avenue
Queen Mary AvenueKing George Avenue
Parliament
FerozshanRoad
Delhi Muttra Road
Hardinge
Lytton Road
Jaswant
Man Singh Road
Pandara Road
Akdar
Road
Prithnvi Raj Road
Singh Road
CanningRoad
Church
KingsWayKingsWay
WaterWay
WaterWay
Water
KingEdwardRoad
Water
Way
Way
Road
Bhagwan Das Road
Curzon Road
Avenue
RajinaRoad
Street
Surgeon
Private
Secretary
Military Secretary
Gurudwara
Secretariat
Parliament house
Secretariat
Staff
Quarters
Talkatora
Park
Mughal
Garden
Viceroy’s
House
Park
Great Place
Honourable
members’
houses
Honourable
members’
houses
Hostels
War
Museum
Record
OfficeEthnological
Museum
Museum Medical
Research
Memorial
Arch
Ruling
Princes and
Chiefs Club
Powana
Park
Princes Park
Hostels
Park
Comptroller’s
House
Body
Guard
N
0 500 yds
2 Plan of New Delhi, 1911-31
buildings designed by Edwin Lutyens
buildings designed by Herbert Baker
0 500 m
incompatibility of Indian identity with the
dominance of Western art.
MODERNISM IN PAKISTAN
In Pakistan artists also struggled in finding a
national, cultural or religious identity. Some
artists, such as A. R. Chughtai (1894–1975),
painted in a modified Bengal School style,
others, such as Anna Molka Ahmed (head of
the art department at Punjab University) and
Khalid Iqbal (principal at the National College
of Arts [NCA]), used Western realism. Shakir
Ali, the first Pakistani principal of the Mayo
School of Arts (now NCA) who studied with
André Lhote in France, introduced Cubism in
the 1950s. Artists from East Pakistan, notably
Zain ul Abedin, further popularized abstraction.
A movement featuring abstracted
calligraphy swept the country from the 1960s to
1980s. It satisfied the need to be modern, but
also fulfilled Muslim religious and Asian
cultural identity. Contemporary themes were
combined with age-old painting techniques to
update traditional Indian miniature art. Bashir
Ahmed, trained by two court painters, started a
degree programme in miniature painting at the
NCA in 1982. The movement had eager
patronage in Pakistan as well as in Europe.
Shahzia Sikander, a Pakistani wunderkind in
America, studied miniature painting at NCA.
ART IN SRI LANKA
Like India, Sri Lanka was heavily influenced by
British Victorian art. Harry Pieris, the foremost
academic portrait painter, earned a diploma
from the Royal College of Art in London in 1927
and worked in Paris until 1935. He later became
secretary of the 43 Group – an organization
formed in 1943 by ten artists offering an
alternative to the Victorian naturalism espoused
by the Ceylon Society of Arts.
The most famous mid-century painter was
self-taught George Keyt (1901–93), whose
images of robust, sensous women derive from
Léger, Matisse and Picasso as well as Indian
poetry. Tissa De Alwis and Jagath Weerasinghe
made sculpture and installations with social
and political content. The acclaimed architect
Geoffrey Bawa (1919–2002) was also a major
patron of the arts.
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
304
CALCUTTA WAS THE PRE-EMINENT city of art
and culture for most of the twentieth century,
even though New Delhi became the administrative
capital in 1911. While British institutions
permeated society and infrastructure, the impact of
Calcutta’s leading family, the Tagores, on art and
culture cannot be overestimated. The poet and
novelist Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, and
his darkly Expressionist paintings – which he began
only at the age of 65 – were highly acclaimed in
Paris and London. In 1920 he began a revolutionary
fine arts and language university at Santiniketan, a
short train ride north of Calcutta. At the Tagore
ancestral home, Joresanko, the famous Japanese
philosopher Okakura Kazuko wrote Ideals of the East,
which fuelled the idea of pan-Asianism. Influenced
by the two Japanese painters who had accompanied
Okakura (1902–4), Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951),
nephew of the poet, devised the distinctive wash
technique that became the keynote of his style.
THE BENGAL SCHOOL
Abanindranath’s Bengal School movement evolved
with encouragement from E. B. Havell, principal of
the Calcutta School of Art. Havell, in pursuit of a
return to Indian artistic ideals and style, sold
the gallery’s European paintings and replaced
them with Mughal miniatures and other Indian
art. He made Abanindranath vice-principal of
the art school in 1905, and when Tagore’s
painting students graduated and took teaching
positions in other art schools, the movement
spread across the country. The resulting
delicate, softly coloured, small watercolours
were praised for their esoteric, spiritual
qualities, countering the West’s declaration
that Indian painting was not fine art, but only
craft. Avid nationalists and Theosophists
supported Abanindranath’s art, most notably
Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, art historian
and friend of the family, as well as the political
activist, Sister Nivideta and Calcutta publisher
O. C. Ganguli.
The style and subject-matter of Ajanta wall
painting permeated Bengal School painting
after its students copied the fifth-century
masterpieces in 1910. Yet it was an exhibition of
works on paper by German Bauhaus artists in
Calcutta in 1922 that pointed to the future.
Gagendranath Tagore may have been the first
artist influenced by the show, implementing a
technique that resembled the Orphism of the
French painter Robert Delaunay. Gagendranath,
however, is best remembered for his cynical
cartoons making fun of baboos (Westernized
Indians), not unlike the humour of Kalighat
artists from the seamier side of the city.
The national debate over Bengal School
Orientalism versus Western realism created
serious competitive tensions between the
Calcutta School of Art and the J. J. School in
Bombay from the 1920s to 1940s. Indicative of a
contemporaneous Bengali initiative to revive
folk and native arts, the academically trained
artist Jamini Roy created a new idiom inspired
by Kalighat pat (folk art) and then by indigenous
Bengali craft and architectural decoration. The
Punjabi artist Amrita Sher Gil, with his
Hungarian and Punjabi heritage and a master’s
degree from the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris,
mixed the colour and style of Rajput miniatures
with that of Gauguin and Matisse. Roy and Sher
Gil were the first Indian Modernists.
SOUTH ASIA 1900-2000
60˚ 70˚ 80˚
30˚
20˚
10˚
TP
Calcutta
Dacca (Dhaka)
Santiniketan
Srinagar
Islamabad
Lahore
Amritsar
Chandigarh
Peshawar
Simla
Agra
Lucknow
Gwalior
Jaipur
Ahmadabad
Baroda
Bhopal
Ajanta
Bombay
Hyderabad
Bangalore
Calicut
Mysore
Colombo
Cochin
Tanjore (Thanjavur)
Quilon
Madras
Kanchipuram
Cuttack
Raipur
Varanasi
(Benares)
Kathmandu
Karachi
Kandahar
Quetta
Bamiyan
I N D I A
IRAN
A F G H A N I S TA N
PA K I S TA N ( 1 9 4 7 )
N E P A L
BURMA
C H I N A
BHUTAN
CEYLON (1948)
SRI LANKA (FROM 1972)
EAST PAKISTAN
(1947)
BANGLADESH
(FROM 1971)
H
I M
A
L A Y A S
WESTERNGHATS
EASTERN
GH
AT
S
Indus
J
helum
Ravi
Chenab
Ganges
Jam
una
Narmada
Godavari
Krishna
Brahmaputra
Sutlej
A R A B I A N
S E A
B A Y
O F B E N G A L
I N D I A N O C E A N
Pakistan National
Council of Arts (1972)
(from 1920s)Calcutta School
of Art (1920s-30s)
Cholamandel
(1960s-80s)
Vibahavi Academy
of Fine Arts(1993);
School of Aesthetic
Studies (1974)
(1951)
J. J. School of Art
(1920s-30s)
National College of
Arts (1958)
Indus Valley School
of Arts (from 1990s)
University of Baroda,
Faculty of Fine Arts (1970s-80s)
The folk art of India:
lacquerwork
glass painting
stone carving
wood carving
brass-work
metalwork
saris (silk brocade)
saris (cotton)
folk embroidery
block-textile printing
tie-dye and ikat
carpets (dhurries)
carpets (knotted pile)
folk painting
miniature painting
N
0
0
800 miles
1200 kms
1 India, 1900-2000
European town planning
major art school/art commune
national art society
seminal art exhibition centre,
1920s-40s
major museum
centre of film production
important artistic centre
TP
New Delhi
Arts Co-operative (from 1970s)
(1911-31)
Lalit Kala Akademi (1954)
TP
1 INDIAN ARTISTS in the twentieth
century absorbed Western
influences and merged them with
elements of the native culture.
However, traditional arts and
crafts continued alongside these
Western-oriented developments.
Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
evolved independent art
institutions and artistic
personalities after 1947. Later in
the century Bollywood (Bombay
cinema) came to rival Hollywood
in terms of its prolific output.
TISSARAKSHITA, QUEEN OF ASHOKA,
c.1910, watercolour on paper, by
Abanindranath Tagore. Tagore’s
Bengal School style of painting
defied the British declaration that
Indian painting was not fine art. A
mix of East and West, the misty,
effeminate style was deemed
spiritual, while historical themes
revived the past. One of the most
famous of Indian kings, the thirdcentury
BC king, Ashoka Maurya,
converted to Buddhism. His queen
is shown pondering her future.
CHINA 1900–2000
307
School. Ambitious young artists went to Japan
and, increasingly, to Paris, where they were
influenced by a range of artistic trends.
The conflict between the Communists and
the ruling Guomindang led, in 1927, to the
expulsion of the former from Shanghai to a
rural base, from which they set out seven years
later on their Long March round south and
west China to their new base at Yan’an. There
they disseminated anti-Japanese propaganda
making effective use of the woodcut, which had
been developed as a revolutionary tool under
the inspiration of the writer and polemicist Lu
Xun (1881–1936).
WARTIME EXILE
During the years of the war with Japan
(1937–45), the government, schools and
universities, as well as teachers and students,
migrated to the western provinces of ‘Free
China’. Cut off from the coastal cities, artists
discovered the wild beauty of the West, many
of them travelling among the minority people.
This gave the art of the period a new urgency
and realism. The traditional painter Zhang
Daqian (Chang Dai Chien, 1899–1983) spent
the years 1942–3 copying the wall-paintings at
the remote desert site of Dunhuang, leading to
the creation of the Dunhuang Research
Institute, still active today. When the war
ended, dreams of reconstruction were soon
shattered by civil war and rising inflation. In
1948, the Guomindang moved its seat of
government, together with treasures, from the
Palace Museum to Taiwan.
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY,
Beijing, 1987, by architects
Yang Tingbao and others.
The straight roof-line and
emphasized frame structure
of this building represent a
rejection of both the Soviet
style and the synthesis of
Western elements with the
elaborate bracketing
and curved roof of
later dynasties, which
characterized many
buildings in modern China.
Here, the architect went
back to the simpler style of
the Han Dynasty, which was
perceived to be more
expressive of modern
taste and needs.
130˚120˚110˚100˚90˚
30˚
20˚
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
9,10,11
19
20,21
18
30
29
31
27,28
17
26
36
15
12,13
14
1,2,3,4,5
6,7
8
37
35
34
33
32
24,25
16
22,23
Beijing
Dingzhou
ShanghaiSuzhou
Jiaxingxian
Fuzhou
HemuduHangzhou
Tangshan
Qingliangang
Yangzhou
Qingzhou
Pyongyang
Tangshan
Tianjin
Jinan
Hongshan
Dawenkou
Nanjing
PixianLuoyang
Houma
Banpo
Luoyang
Huxian
Shenyang
Xianyang
Maijishan
Binglingsi
Leitai
Lanzhou
Dunhuang
Ürümqi
Qishan
Jiangling
Jiangxi
Hefei
Wuhan
Mancheng
Taipei
Macao
Luoyang
Nanchang
Panlongcheng
Mawangdui
Guangzhou
(Canton)
Hong Kong
Guilin
Changsha
Xiamen
(Amoy)
Chongqing
Lantian
LongmenSanmenxia
Zhengzhou
Anyang
Seoul
Yan‘an
Yungang
Taiyuan
Xuzhou
Ulan Bator
Sanxingdui
Chengdu
Xi‘an
Dazu
GuiyangPanxian
Shizhaishan
Yuanmou
Kunming
Shenzhen
M O N G O L I A
VIETNAM
NORTH KOREA
SOUTH
KOREA
LAOS
C H I N A
T I B E T
BURMA
JAPAN
INNER MONGOLIA
TAIWAN
HAINAN
G O B I D E S E R T
Q I L I A N S H A N
Y I N S H A N
N A N
L I N G
KUNLUN
MTS
Yell
ow River
Yangtze
Yuan Jiang
Great Wall
S O U T H
C H I NA
S E A
E A S T
C H I NA
S E A
YELLOW
SEA
SEA
OF
JAPAN
to USA
to
Europe
2 Revolutionary Art in
20th-century China
dissemination of new art
policy from Beijing
artistic exchange with
Soviet Union in 1950s
artists travel to Tibet and
minority areas
artists travel to the USA and
Europe in 1980s and 1990s
major cities
archaeological sites
Buddhist cave shrines
Provincial museums
founded after 1949,
with date of foundation
A N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
THE COMMUNIST ERA
On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong declared the
establishment of the People’s Republic of
China. The early years after Liberation, as it
was called, were devoted to political education
of the masses, reconstruction, and social and
economic levelling, in which there was both
idealism and tight Party control. Brief periods
of liberalization were followed by reaction and
chaos. The turmoil of the Cultural Revolution
only ended with Mao’s death in 1976.
During the early years after Liberation the
influence of Soviet Russia on architecture and
art was dominant, although the Great Hall of
the People, opened in 1959, was in a new
compromise style embodying Chinese and
Western elements. The Central Art Academy in
Beijing, under direct control of the Ministry of
Culture, was the centre where new policies and
styles in art were tried out, and disseminated
across the country. Monumental sculpture
was created for propaganda purposes. Much
attention was given to archaeology and the
preservation of ancient monuments. Meantime,
the art of the peasants was officially promoted.
More recently regional schools, with strong
local character, have developed.
After the death of Mao, a freer cultural
atmosphere began to develop, sparked by the
first exhibition of dissident art in 1979. During
the 1980s contacts were renewed with the
whole tradition of Western art and culture. The
departure to the West of independent artists
accelerated after the crushing of the prodemocracy
demonstration at Tiananmen on
4 June 1989. More recently, booming
consumerism and the rebirth of a ‘middle class’
in China have brought a degree of freedom,
cynicism and new sources of patronage beyond
the state, while major exhibitions in China, and
shows abroad of the work of modern Chinese
artists, have helped to establish a place for
China in the international world of
contemporary art.
Provinicial museums
founded after 1949
1 China Art Gallery 1962
2 Museum of Arts and Crafts 1964
3 Historical Museum 1959
4 Beijing Art Museum 1975
5 Xu Beihong Memorial
Museum 1954
6 Tianjin Municipal Art
Museum 1957
7 Tianjin Historical Museum 1952
8 Shaanxi Provincial Museum 1951
9 Shanghai Art Museum 1956
10 Shanghai Museum 1951
11 Lu Xun Memorial Museum 1951
12 Jiangsu Provincial Museum 1956
13 Nanjing Municipal Museum 1958
14 Suzhou Museum 1960
15 Yangzhou Museum 1951
16 Xuzhou Museum 1960
17 Pan Tianshou Memorial
Museum 1981
18 Anhui Provincial Museum 1956
19 Fujian Provincial Museum 1953
20 Jiangxi Crafts Museum 1971
21 Jiangxi Provincial Museum 1961
22 Shandong Provincial Art
Museum 1977
23 Shandong Provincial
Museum 1956
24 Luoyang Museum 1958
25 Museum of Ancient Art 1981
26 Hunan Provincial Museum 1951
27 Guangdong Provincial
Museum 1959
28 Guangdong Art Museum 1957
29 Chongqing Municipal
Museum 1951
30 Guizhou Provincial
Museum 1957
31 Yunnan Provincial Museum 1951
32 Qinshihuangdi Terracotta Figures
Museum 1971
33 Xi'an Banpo Museum 1958
34 Shenyang Municipal
Museum 1962
35 Gansu Provincial Museum 1953
36 Hubei Provincial Museum 1951
37 Xinjiang Regional Museum
2 FROM 1949 UNTIL MAO’S DEATH IN 1976, China’s
artistic life was largely controlled by the Ministry of
Culture, acting through the art schools and the
local brances of the Artists Association.
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
306
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY IN CHINA
was an era of political and social upheaval,
marked by war and civil war, rapid but uneven
modernization and an ever-widening
involvement with Western ideas, technology
and culture.
THE WESTERN IMPACT
By 1900, the alien Manchu Dynasty was in
terminal decline, its death-blow being dealt
by the revolution of 1911. Thereafter the era
of the warlords (1912–26) was followed by the
establishment of a central government by the
Guomindang Party under Chiang Kaishek
(Jiang Jieshi), ruling from Nanjing. The early
and mid-1930s was a time of rapid
development. New architecture sprang up in
the cities and towns touched by Western
culture. The commercial buildings tended
to be Western in style, while government
buildings, such as those in the new national
capital at Nanjing, were essentially Western
in form and construction, enriched with the
traditional Chinese roof and ornament.
At the beginning of the twentieth century,
tombs were robbed of their treasures, as has
always happened in Chinese history. Many
of these treasures enriched foreign museums.
The first archaeological excavations were
carried out in the early 1920s at Neolithic
pottery sites in central China, while in 1927
scientific excavation began at the site of
the late Shang royal tombs at Anyang
(c.1300–1050 BC).
Although traditional painting continued to
flourish, the need for teachers of the more
useful Western methods grew rapidly, leading
to the founding of the first Western-style art
schools in Nanjing, Shanghai and Hangzhou.
In Canton the Lingnan pai (Southern School)
promoted a modernized form of traditional
painting modelled on the Japanese Nihonga
CHINA 1900-2000
140˚130˚120˚110˚100˚90˚
50˚
40˚
30˚
20˚
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A A AA A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
Zhengzhou Kaifeng
Chengdu
Luoyang
Mukden
Shenyang
Jinzhou
Weifang
Seoul
Pyongyang
Yuanling Communist base
1929-33
Guiyang
Macao
to Europe
Anshun
Harbin
Ulan Bator
Changchun
Jilin
Beijing
ShanghaiSuzhou
Lanzhou
Hong Kong
Chongqing
Kunming
Changsha
Taipei
Xi‘an
Guilin
Xiamen
(Amoy)
Guangzhou
(Canton)
Yan‘an
Nanjing
Hangzhou
Zhejiang Provincial Museum,
1929
Palace Museum,
1924
Palace Museum, 1925
Sichuan Provincial Museum, 1940
Weijang Municipal
Museum, 1948
West China Union
University Museum, 1939
Henan Provincial
Museum, 1927
Shaanxi Provincial
Museum, 1938
Nanjing Museum,
1933
Maijishan
Yungang
Dunhuang
Longmen
Tianlong Shan
Tai Shan
Hua Shan
Jingcheng Shan
Emei Shan
Huang Shan
Zhoukoudian
(Peking man)
Anyang
Banshan
Machang
Shouzhou
Majiayao
Piziwo
Longshan
Yinan
Li Yu
Jincun
Luolang
Liangzhu
Hemudu
Yangshao
M A N C H U R I A
M O N G O L I A
C H I N A
KOREA
T I B E T
BURMA FRENCH
INDO-CHINA
TAIWAN
U S S R
J
A
P
A
N
G O B I D E S E R T
Q I L I A N S H A N
YIN SHAN
NAN
LING
K U N L U N
M T S
YellowRiver
Yangtze
Yuan Jiang
GreatW
all
S E A O F
J A PA N
S O U T H
C H I N A
S E A
E A S T
C H I NA
S E A
YELLOW
SEA
GULF OF
TONGKING
N
0 400 miles
0 600 kms
1 Pre-Communist Art
in 20th century China
journey of Communist party
and armies 1929-33
the Long March, Oct 1934-35
artists travelling to Europe 1920-37
artists travelling to Japan 1916-37
route taken by National Academy,
Beijing and Hangzhou Academy to
west China during World War II,
and travels of individual artists
route taken by Palace Museum
treasures evacuated during
World War II and in 1948
major cities
museums founded pre-1949
archaeological sites
sacred mountains
Buddhist cave shrines
A
1 THE GREAT REVOLUTIONARY
movements and developments of
the early decades of the twentieth
century took place in the big cities
and coastal areas from which new
styles in architecture, and new
movements in the arts, spread into
the interior. This era saw the
founding of the first public
collections of art in China,
beginning with the National Palace
Museum in Beijing (1925). This map
also shows how artists travelled
abroad to study, how Communism
travelled to Yan’an, and the
removal of the former imperial art
collection to west China and
eventually to Taiwan.
HUANG BINHONG (1864–1955), A Ferry in Sichuan, ink
and colour on paper, 1948. Huang Binhong was a
leading member of the traditional school of scholarly
landscape painting which was revived in the
twentieth century.
JAPAN AND KOREA 1900-2000
309
1960s and 1970s, but the south gradually
allowed more freedom of expression and
experimentation in the arts. Both Japanese and
South Korean artists were greatly affected by
outside cultures, especially – because of the
presence of military forces from the USA – by
American culture. After the Second World War
many young Japanese architects and artists
pursued graduate studies abroad, especially in
the USA, and began careers documented by the
international press.
MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
In both Japan and Korea, Western construction
techniques and materials were increasingly
adopted throughout the twentieth century. The
lightweight wooden framing and easily
movable wall panels of traditional one-storey
residential buildings in both countries have
been replaced by concrete and steel multilevel
construction with Western-style rooms and
furnishings. The staging of the 1964 Tokyo
Olympics was a significant moment for the
revitalized city, with several strikingly beautiful
new sports facilities designed by Kenzo Tange
(1913–) and his studio. This group of young
architects developed the idea of ‘metabolism’,
believing that buildings must be considered as
organic forms that expand and contract
according to functional needs.
In the early twentieth century, Nihonga
(Japanese painting) and yoga (Western
painting) were taught in governmentsponsored
art schools in Tokyo and Kyoto.
Nihonga, begun in the last decades of the
nineteenth century, used traditional Japanese
materials (ink and natural pigments on silk or
paper) and formats (folding screens, hanging
scrolls and hand-scrolls), but the subject
matter was not limited to pre-twentiethcentury
topics. Japanese artists also studied
abroad and had access to publications about
Western art. As a result they followed the
various changes in modern European and
American painting materials and techniques.
There was a deliberate revival of Korean ink
painting in the early twentieth century
and a strong interest in folk-painting styles
and materials. In both Japan and Korea,
printmaking was influenced by the introduction
of lithography, silk screening and other
Western techniques, although artists in the
post-war period had a renewed interest in
Ch‘angdok Palace
15th-c royal palace complex;
rebuilt 17th-19th c
Kyongbok Palace
14th-c royal palace complex;
rebuilt 20th c. Site of Japanese
governor-general’s
headquarters (d.1995)
Olympic Park
1988 Olympic pavilions with
sculpture park and remains
of 5th-c Mongch’on Fortress
Toksu Palace
16th-c royal palace
complex; rebuilt 20th c
Seoul
sports
complex
Piwon
South Gate
Ch‘anggyong Palace
12th-c royal palace complex; rebuilt 20th c
Chongye-sa
12th-c temple complex for
Korea’s largest Budddhist sect;
exemplifies traditional Korean
wooden architectural styles; shops and
studios for traditional Buddhist arts and alter fittings
Namsan Park
site of National Theatre
and preserved traditional
houses
Sinch’on area
comprises several universities,
including Hong-ik University,
noted for its arts school, Yonsei
University, and Ewha Women’s
University with its art
programmes
Chongmyo Shrine
ancestral shrine to Choson dynasty
kings; UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site
Han-gang
2 Seoul in the 20th Century
traditional woodblock printing. Artists often
used handmade papers to distinguish their
work from Western prints.
The Japanese-American artist Isamu
Noguchi (1904–88) proved to be an important
link between modern abstract sculpture and
Japanese three-dimensional arts. Multimedia
installation artworks, such as those by the South
Korean video artist Nam June Paik (1932–), have
captured world attention. The government often
sponsored North Korean sculptors to create
large-scale public monuments celebrating the
achievements of Communism.
In the areas of photography and film, both
Japan and Korea initially followed Western
models. Japan’s success in the manufacture of
cameras and electronics in the next few
decades would also identify Japanese film
artists as significant contributors to modern art
internationally, and in the post-war era
Japanese filmmakers developed worldwide
audiences for their often evocative imagery.
Directors like Akira Kurosawa (1910–98) were
internationally respected and emulated.
Television developed quickly in Japan, both as
a new technology for export and in
programming: samurai films and science fiction
thrillers (like the Godzilla films) were seen
worldwide in the 1960s–80s, and manga
(cartoon) characters dominated international
markets in the 1980s and 1990s.
While traditional Japanese textiles were
popular in the USA and Europe, especially in
haute couture circles, Japanese fashion designers
like Issey Miyake and Hanae Mori created new
shapes and developed new fabrics that made
headlines. In both countries, government
encouragement of traditional arts has helped
2 FOLLOWING THE JAPANESE OCCUPATION of Korea in
1910, areas of Seoul were bulldozed for the
construction of office buildings and residences for
the occupation authorities. The enormous Beaux
Arts style Japanese government headquarters
building became a symbol of this imposed
‘modernization’ and was knocked down in 1995 as
a demonstration of Korea’s cultural independence
from Japan. The 1988 Seoul Olympics was an
important moment culturally for the South
Koreans, as their nation’s heritage and potential
were recognized internationally.
preserve many textile and costume making
techniques, and has supported traditional
performers (music, dance and theatre) who use
such clothing and accessories.
ART AND SOCIETY
In Japan, both the military and industry were
headquartered in Tokyo, and this city became
the hub for modern art production and sales.
Several wealthy Japanese businessmen formed
important collections of both contemporary art
and historical pieces, and these collections
would later become the core of many small
private museums in the Tokyo and Osaka areas.
The economic boom in Japan during the 1970s
and 1980s resulted in extraordinary public and
private displays of support for the arts. Many
brand-new prefectural museums were built to
display travelling exhibitions of Japanese and
foreign artists, and major department stores
dedicated whole floors to the staging of art
events. When the ‘bubble economy’ burst in
the early 1990s, financial support for the arts
was badly affected. Nevertheless, Japanese
architects garnered major commissions to
design important buildings outside Japan, and
Japanese films and videos reached a worldwide
audience.
Korean ceramics, both traditional and
contemporary, are collected worldwide, and
many museums in Europe and America have
created separate galleries to feature Korean
antiquities. Korean arts are increasingly seen
as distinctive and worthy of special
consideration. North Korea has remained
isolated from the international arts community,
and internal economic problems in the late
twentieth century restricted both public and
private support of the arts.
GRANDMOTHER by O YUN (1946–85), woodblock on
paper. The anguish felt by many Koreans after a
half century of war, territorial occupation and
rapid modernization is vividly expressed in this
print by O Yun, who was a leading member of the
People’s Art Protest Movement in the 1980s that
sought both to revive traditional Korean arts and
crafts and to comment on contemporary social
issues. The bold outlines and flat colours suggest
the personal strength and dignity of this woman
who has suffered and survived the political and
cultural transformations of her country.
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
308
caused a gradual reduction in support for the
arts, especially those not linked in some way to
the increasing sense of nationalism. As military
efforts overseas expanded, Japanese and
Korean artists were placed under greater and
greater control.
In the final years of World War II Japan was
devastated but recovered industrial strength by
the 1960s. Korea had barely emerged from the
war when the country was divided and then
immersed in the Korean War, which further
decimated the population and its resources.
Although a truce was signed in 1953, the
peninsula is still partitioned, and the economic
‘miracle’ of South Korea has not been matched
by North Korea. Both governments exerted
strict controls over society and the arts in the
JAPAN AND KOREA 1900-2000
NAKATANI TSURU DRESSING BY HASHIGUCHI GOYO
(1880–1921). Modern Japanese print artists like
Goyo studied both Western art and traditional
ukiyo-e and then combined features from each to
create distinctive new images. In this portrait of a
specific, identified woman rather than an idealized
anonymous female, Goyo subtly combines the
three-dimensionality of European figure painting
with a flatness of patterns and lines in her sheer
silk robe, which displays an understanding of
eighteenth-century prints designed by Utamaro.
150˚145˚140˚135˚130˚125˚120˚115˚110˚
25˚
30˚
40˚
35˚
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
SG
G
G
Yokohama
Sendai
Hachinohe
KushiroSapporo
Hitachi
Nagaoka
Toyama
Tokyo
Osaka
Fukuoka
Kitakyushu
Nagoya
Kyoto
Kobe
Kanazawa
Hiroshima
Pusan
Kwangju
Inch’on Seoul
Kyongju
KWANGJU-GUN
Pyongyang
Ch’ongjin
Yellow
River
Ya
ngtze
P A C I F I C
O C E A N
S E A O F
J A P A N
TONGJOSON-
MAN
SEA OF
OKHOTSK
KOREA
BAY
Y E L L O W
S E A
E A S T
C H I N A
S E A
KOREA
STRAI
T
TAIWAN
HOKKAIDO
HONSHU
SHIKOKU
KYUSHU
RY U K Y
U
I
SLA
N
D
S
C H I N A
NORTH
KOREA
SOUTH
KOREA
JAPAN
RUSSIAN
FEDERATION
political and artistic
exchange Between
N. Korea/Russian
Federation/China
late 20th-century
political and
artistic exchange
between
Japan/USA/Europe
economic and
artistic exchange
between Japan,
Taiwan and S Asia
direct trade between
Japan and China from
late 20th century
early 20th-century artistic
and political exchange
between Japan and China
through Korea
and Manchuria
1 Twentieth-Century Japan and Korea
economic/political/cultural exchange
centre for arts education
contemporary arts production/export
traditional arts/export
ceramics
silk
paper
paintings
lacquerware
public/private musuems
art galleries
movie and TV industry
traditional performing arts
(Kabuki/No/puppet theatre)
major port
major industrial centre
car manufacture
chemicals
engineering
iron and steel
shipbuilding
textiles
hi-tech
research and developmentN
0
0
250 miles
350 kms
S
G
JAPANESE AND KOREAN ARTISTS in
the twentieth century responded to
modernization and imperialism, to various
powerful outside influences, to strong
traditions from within their cultures, and to
many decades of warfare.
A TURBULENT CENTURY
The first half of the twentieth century was overshadowed
by the rise of Japanese militarism
and by the social disruptions caused by
Japanese imperialism in Asia and the South
Pacific. In 1910 Japan annexed Korea and tried
to impose its own culture on the Koreans. In
the 1930s, the Japanese government’s
increasing focus on militarization and colonial
expansion in Manchuria, China and South Asia
1 BY THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, Japan and
South Korea had become important industrial
nations with modern urban centres, numerous
public and private art museums, important
public and private art collections and vigorous
artistic communities. North Korea was influenced
by artistic styles developed in the Soviet Union,
particularly in monumental works of architecture,
sculpture and painting designed to celebrate the
communist government’s policies and personalities.
SOUTHEAST ASIA 1900–2000
311
end in itself, not necessarily connected to
religious beliefs. Many artists began to produce
items – which once would have been used
solely for ritual purposes – purely for
commercial gain.
Western influence was discernible in many
areas, but traditional styles were still the most
popular. Buddha images continued to emulate
earlier models, although Western naturalism
can be seen in some of the Ratnakosin
(Bangkok) Buddha images, which otherwise
seek to recreate the stylized images of the
Sukhothai period. In many parts of the region
there was now a flourishing trade in small
carvings, handicrafts and textiles, all objects
which are easily portable. Many objects such as
With the eventual recovery from war there
was little money available for restoration, and
it was not until the latter part of the century
that joint restoration programmes were
conducted between the Southeast Asian
countries and international organizations.
In 1973 a ten-year programme, with funding
from the government, private organizations and
UNESCO, was undertaken at Borobudur in
central Java. This great monument was
gradually collapsing due to water seepage from
within the hill on which it was built. The stupa
was dismantled and reassembled stone by
stone, the galleries were strengthened and the
reliefs cleaned. The area was turned into a
national park, and now attracts thousands of
visitors from all over the world. Other major
sites throughout Southeast Asia were restored
from the 1970s to the 1990s, and now attract
local and foreign visitors.
NEW ARTISTIC TRADITIONS
Carving and painting had previously been for
religious or ritual purposes. Originality was not
valued and had little meaning. However, the
West was to profoundly influence this aspect of
art. An important influence on the art of Bali,
which was to become famous for its painting
tradition, was the residency of Walter Spies and
Rudolf Bonnet, European artists who settled
on the island in the 1920s and introduced
materials and ideas which influenced young
artists there to paint in a more expressionist
manner, free from the constraints of earlier
rigid conventions.
In countries such as Burma and Vietnam
the fall of the monarchy had led to a lack of
sponsorship of the arts. Many of the arts had
fallen into decline, but the advent of largescale
tourism in the region during the second
half of the twentieth century caused major
changes both in production and approach to
the arts. There was a new demand for crafts
such as wood carving, lacquerware and
painting, and creativity began to be seen as an
Singaraja
Beratan
Banguning
Luhur
Ululn Danu
Jati
PujungTegallatang
Tampaksiring
Besakih
Goa Lawah
Ulu Watu
Tirta Empul
Bangli
Sideman
Budakling
Tenganan
Kamason
Ubud
TohpatiBelayn
Bedulu
Mas
Mengwi
Penarukun
Pejaton
Pataen
Krambitan
Taman
Ayun
Tanah Lot
Celuk
Denpasar
Gianyar
Bono
Tihingan
Batuan
Blahbatuh
Batubulan
Puaya
Ubung
Sawan
BA L I
S E A
S E L A T
L O M B O K
S E L A T BA L I
J E M B R A N A
NUSA
PENIDA
stone carving
jewellery
B A L I
N
0
0
30 miles
40 kms
2 The Arts and Crafts of Bali
temple
silver workshops
gold workshops
ikat cloth
weaving
ceramics
wood carving
gamelan
instruments
painting
basketry
other
2 THE TINY ISLAND OF BALI has seen an explosion of
creative talent over the last hundred years. In the
fields of music, dance, painting, wood carving,
weaving and metalwork, its originality is
unrivalled, and the success of the tourist trade has
meant that examples of Balinese work are found
worldwide. Unlike craftsmen in some other areas
who continue to produce traditional work,
Balinese craftsmen are innovative, incorporating
ideas and stylistic influences from other cultures,
yet they retain a distinctively Balinese style.
MALAY WALL HANGING, by Kelvin Chap Kok Leong. This
work is a synthesis of the modern and the
traditional in that the media used are western in
inspiration, but the themes and images – the Iban
culture of Sarawak – are of traditional society,
often seen to be in conflict with Western ideology.
The field of painting is developing rapidly in
Southeast Asia. In contrast to earlier times, the
identity of the artist is known, and the subject
matter is usually secular rather than religious.
Western influence was strong from the start of the
century but a return to Asian roots began to
manifest itself by the mid-1900s.
lacquerware, which can take months to
produce, showed a decrease in quality;
however, fine pieces were also being made in
smaller numbers, usually to order.
Textile production now made use of
synthetic rather than vegetable dyes. Although
traditional motifs were still used, most cloth
was not of such a fine finish as in former days,
when a garment might have taken months to
complete; however, alongside this commercial
production of objects the traditional methods
continued on items that would be used in a
sacred/ritual context.
Architecturally, the ability to blend cultural
styles continued in the twentieth century. In
several places, such as Papua New Guinea and
Sumatra, government buildings or museums
have been built in the distinctive traditional
style but on a larger scale. Householders
continue to build in the traditional style but
many find it cheaper to roof their houses with
corrugated iron rather than thatched or woven
rattan roofs.
The major change in creativity within the
region over the course of the century is that
artists have become conscious of themselves
as a distinct group. Their work has contributed
enormously to the economy of Southeast Asia.
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
310
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY was a time of
great political and social change in
Southeast Asia. After a long period of Western
encroachment and colonial rule, the outbreak
of the Second World War brought a growing
awareness that the Western nations could be
defeated. After the war, Independence
movements sprang up throughout Southeast
Asia. The pattern of government established
over the previous two hundred years crumbled,
and the colonial powers were gradually forced
into granting independence. The independence
struggle was reflected in literature, painting
and theatre.
PRESERVING THE PAST
The disruptions of this period meant that work
on artefacts and on the great ‘lost’ cities of
Southeast Asia was abruptly halted. The
French, in particular, had undertaken extensive
research into the great city of Angkor in
Cambodia, and into the sculpture of the
period, but they were forced to abandon this
work, and for a long period no local
archaeologists took their place. World War II,
followed by the Vietnam War and the ensuing
Cambodian holocaust, meant that the field of
art was neglected. The systematic identification
of sculpture and temples, and their
conservation, ceased, and the humid
conditions of the region caused deterioration
of temples and sculpture.
SOUTHEAST ASIA 1900-2000
20°
90° 100° 110° 120° 130°
10°
0°
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
Bangkok
Rat Buri
Phimai
Pattaya
Ayutthaya
Nakhon
Ratchasima (Korat)
Sukhothai
Chanthaburi
Gan Tho
Preah Vihear
Angkor
Sawankhalok
Malacca
Padang
Bengkulu
Bukittinggi
Medan
(Atjeh) Banda Aceh
Palembang
Surabaya
Surakarta
(Solo)
Banjarmasin
Ujung Pandang
(Macassar)
Watensoppeng
Rantepao
Samarinda
Pontianak
Kuching
Kota Kinabalu
(Jesselton)
Bandar Seri Begawan
Kalumpang
Bada
Yogyakarta
(Jogjakarta)Borobudur
Prambanan
Bandung
Jakarta (Batavia)
Gresik
Kendari
Agats
George
Town
Phnom Penh
Vientiane
Chiengmai
Chiang Rai
Moulmein
Haiphong
Bassein
Pagan
Rangoon
Myohaung
Myitkyina
Lashio
Pegu
MandalaySagaing
Luang Prabang
Sam Neua
Hanoi
Da Nang
Ho Chi Minh City
(Saigon)
Hué
Xieng Khouang
Vinh
Manila
Baguio
Naga
Tacloban
Butuan
Zamboanga
Cebu
Davao
Terengganu
Kota Bahru
Songkhla
Kuala
Lumpur
Singapore
S
U
M
A
T
R
A
B O R N E O
CELEBES
(SULAWESI)
I N D O N E S I A
CAMBODIA
THAILAND
C H I N A
MALAYSIA
S ARA
W
AK
M
O
LUCCAS
J A V A
SENIPPILI
H
P
BURMA
LAOS
N E W
G U I N E A
A U S T R A L I A
VIETNAM
BALI
BURU
LOMBOK NDAO
FLORES
SUMBA
TIMOR
IRIAN
JAYA
BUTUNG
CERAM
BASILAN
HALMAHERA
MINDANAO
LUZON
HAINAN
CEBU
SAMAR
NEGROS
SABAHBRUNEI
SUMBAWA
MADURA
KO SAMUI
KO PHUKET
NIAS
KELANTAN
YUNNAN
PLATEAU
ChaoPhraya
(Menam)
Re
d
River
Salween
Lake Toba
Tonle Sap
I N D I A N
O C E A N
MALAY
PENINSULA
S O U T H
C H I N A
S E A
GULF OF
TONGKING
GULF OF
THAILAND
C E L E B E S
S E A
S U L U
S E A
PHILIPPINES
SEA
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
ANDAMAN
SEA
S
TRAIT OF M
ALACCA
FLORES SEA
TIMOR
SEA
BANDA
SEA
JAVA SEA
ARAFURA
SEA
shadow puppets
shadow puppets
bark cloth
boatbuilding
fine basketry
fine basketry
tattooing and
beadwork
pottery,
basketware
furniture
gold and silver
jewellery
water puppets
umbrella
workshops
umbrella making
& hill tribe
handicrafts
paper
making
marionette making
N
0
0
400 miles
600 kms
1 The Arts and Crafts of Southeast Asia
ancient religious site
important tourist destination
arts and crafts:
silverware
gold workshop
metalwork
textiles
silk weaving
stone carving
wood carving
lacquerware
ceramics
painting
other crafts (specified)
batik
T
1 A GRADUAL DECLINE in the production of many
crafts occurred during the first half of the
twentieth century, but the rise of tourism after
the Second World War brought about a
renewal of artistic production, and many old
crafts were saved from extinction. Although
tourism has brought problems to the region, it
has done much to revitalize its creative life.
GRANARIES, TANA TORAJALAND, west Sulawesi.
Buildings such as this exemplify the sweeping
saddle-backed roof formations of Southeast Asia.
The houses, which are raised on stilts, have a
threefold symbolism: the area beneath the house
symbolizes the underworld, the living area of the
house is the world of men and the roof area
represents the realm of the heavens.
THE PACIFIC 1900–2000
313
one of the major Pacific powers for
international relations and defence. Only
France and the United States have maintained
colonies in the Pacific. Papua New Guinea, with
more than 4 million, people and Fiji, with nearly
1 million, are clearly the largest and most
important of these newly independent states.
ART AND COLONIALISM
During the twentieth century art throughout
the Pacific was profoundly affected by the
presence of these foreigners, and in each
archipelago artists experienced a different
impact from the interests and desires of their
colonial elites. Modernization and missionaries
led villagers to abandon customary religions
and the art that so often accompanied them.
Traders, curio collectors and missionaries
bought up most of the major carved wooden
figures that had previously been so central in
Polynesian religions. Ironically, the
introduction of steel tools in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, led to an
increased production of art early on, allowing
carvers to elaborate on detail and motifs that
were difficult with traditional stone, bone and
shell tools. The vast majority of objects in
museum collections from Melanesia, for
example, were made after the introduction of
steel.
But between the World Wars production of
traditional art in most areas of the Pacific was
in decline, being replaced in some areas by
production of art solely for overseas visitors
and markets. These carved, painted, plaited,
woven or netted objects began to incorporate
imported media, especially paints, beads, and
yarns, as well as increasingly realistic motifs
that foreigners could easily recognize and
appreciate. The carving that did persist in
twentieth-century Polynesia was largely a
nostalgic reinterpretation of traditional styles,
made for sale to international travellers.
Production of bark cloth (tapa) continued
into the twentieth century and flourished in
Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and Hawaii. In Tonga and
Fiji tapa cloths with intricate designs were used
at royal ceremonies, such as weddings. During
the same period tapa also took on many
innovative design elements and motifs that
islanders had obtained from contact with
Europeans and natives from other island
groups. Necklaces of shell and indigenous
beads, together with grass skirts, became
emblematic of the sexual freedom that Western
visitors associated with the Polynesian islands.
TRADITIONAL ART COLLECTIONS
Traditional art continued to flourish in New
Guinea and many of the Melanesian Islands
until the 1920s. This was the period when most
European, Australian and American museums
built up huge collections of Melanesian art, by
sending out anthropological expeditions to
make field collections or by purchasing
collections from traders, missionaries and
government officers living in various parts of
10°
5°
0°
150°145°140°135°130°
Manokwari
Port Moresby
Lae
Madang
Goroka
Wabag
Hoskins
Kokopo
Jayapura
Biak
Agats
Lake
Murray
SOLOMON
SEA
C O R A L
S E A
Gulf of
Papua
BISMARCK ARCHIPELAGO
Geelvink
Bay
Torres Strait
Humboldt
Bay
Puncak Trikora
(Mt. Wilhelmina)
OW
EN
STANLEY RA.
M A S S I M
PA P U A
N E W
G U I N E A
IRIAN JAYA NEW
IRELAND
NEW BRITAIN
SCHOUTEN IS.
Marind
Anim
Asmat
Dani
Mimika
Lake Sentani Berlinhafen
Finschhafen
Arawe
Islands
Kerepuna
Motu
Paniai
National Museum & Art Gallery 1954
Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies 1974
Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Papua New Guinea
J.K. McCarthy
Museum
Kundiawa Women’s
Cultural Centre
West
New Britain
Cultural Centre
University of Technology
Universitas Cenderawasih Museum 1973
Museum Negeri Irian Jaya 1982
Jayapura Museum
Cenderawasih Museum
East New Britain
Cultural CentreMadang Museum and
Cultural Bureau 1981
Western Highlands Cultural Centre
Enga Cultural Centre
Baliem Valley
Palimo Museum
Asmat Museum of
Culture and Progress 1973
Sulka
Bainings
Aua
(Durour Island)
Wuvulu
(Matty Island)
HERMIT ISLANDS
NUMFOR
BIAK
KIRIWINA
(TROBRIAND IS.)
SIASSI
ISLANDS
ADMIRALTY
ISLANDS
Huon Gulf
Orokaiva
Sepik River
(Kaiserin Augusta)
Ramu
River
Madang
(Fredrich
Wilhelmsafen)
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
Changing 20th-Century
Art Production in New Guinea
important art-producing areas in 1910
important art-producing areas, c. 1975
Art products:
carvings
bowls
pottery
string bags
wickerwork
bark cloth
necklaces
Cultural institutions:
museums
art gallery
cultural
centre
university
or institute
2
NATIONAL MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY, Port Moresby,
Papua New Guinea, 1974. The facade was designed
by the New Ireland artist, David Lasisi, its mural
executed by students of the National Arts School.
Buildings like this aim to express bung wantaim,
pidgin for ‘a true coming together’, here
symbolized by cooperation and mixing of styles by
artists from different regions, in celebration of the
multicultural richness of Papua New Guinea, a
more diverse nation than any other in the Pacific.
2 DESPITE COLONIAL INFLUENCE traditional art flourished
in New Guinea until the 1920s. Art from New
Guinea was the focus for many European
collections of Pacific art. The earliest collections
from New Guinea and Melanesia emphasized
carved clubs, spears, shields and other weapons,
but collectors soon noticed the remarkable variety
of wood, bark cloth and wickerwork masks, carved
figures, ancestor boards, wooden bowls and
ornaments made of shell. Since the 1960s the rise
of tourism in Papua New Guinea has had a
profound impact on art production as visitors have
demanded ‘traditional’ art forms using traditional
materials and pigments.
this vast region. The Museum für Volkerkunde
in Berlin assembled the largest collection from
Melanesia, emphasizing material from its
colony, German New Guinea, followed closely
by Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History
and Sydney’s Australian Museum, both of
which had much broader general collections.
Within the Pacific region, only the Bernice P.
Bishop Museum in Honolulu, the Fiji Museum
in Suva and the Territorial Museum of New
Caledonia contain early Pacific collections,
each emphasizing collections from their own
subregions. There are also Pacific collections in
New Zealand: in the National Museum in
Wellington and the Auckland Museum.
In the latter half of the twentieth century,
as new countries and self-governing states
have sought to assert a national identity, they
have established museums and cultural
centres as ways of promoting the arts. They
have also sought to promote performances of
customary dances. Among the most important
of these are the National Museum and Art
Gallery in Port Moresby and the Tjibaou
Cultural Centre in Nouméa. Both institutions
have made use of innovative architecture that
drew on indigenous house forms.
NEW DIRECTIONS
Around the 1960s, new artistic movements
began to emerge in many Pacific Island
countries. Centred on the growing cities, a new
group of contemporary artists emerged, using
innovative media, styles and forms. In Papua
New Guinea, contemporary artists began
painting on canvas in acrylics, tempera or oil.
Some artists have begun sculptures that
elaborate on traditional pottery, while others
have begun sculpting in metals. Similar
movements are present in most urban centres
in the Pacific as well as in cities in New
Zealand and Australia, where Pacific Islanders
had migrated.
Contemporary artists throughout the
Pacific have incorporated traditional elements
into their art at the same time that they have
made use of modern themes, motifs and
situations to react to their changing social
conditions. New Zealand, in particular, has
played an important role in the development of
contemporary Polynesian art by bringing
together thousands of Pacific Islanders from
other islands who now live in Auckland,
Wellington, Hamilton and other New Zealand
cities. Since 1972 Pacific Island states have
participated in eight South Pacific Festivals of
Art, each in a different Pacific country, with
participation from more than twenty Pacific
Island countries which send dance troops,
artists and representatives from museums and
cultural centres. These festivals have
encouraged the preservation of traditional art
forms as emblems of national and cultural
identity, while simultaneously offering
opportunities for islanders to innovate by
drawing on themes from other Pacific countries.
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
312
POLITICALLY, BY 1900 the inhabited
archipelagos in the Pacific had been divided
up as colonies or protectorates controlled by
one or another of the major European powers,
as well as the United States. Several colonies,
such as New Caledonia, Fiji and Samoa, had
become important centres for a plantation
economy and attracted significant European
settlement. Others, like the tiny coconut-rich
Micronesian islands of the Marianas, the
Carolines, and the Marshalls were
economically useful colonial possessions
because of products such as copra or
phosphate. Still others, such as New Guinea,
the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides,
were inhabited by native peoples who fiercely
resisted any form of European exploitation. For
these Melanesian islands the only economic
product they seemed to offer was human
labour for plantations and sugar-cane fields in
Australia, leading to slave raids by European
‘blackbirding’ ships.
In the post-war period all but the smallest
island groups became either independent
nations or self-governing states that relied on
THE PACIFIC 1900-2000
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN
TRADITION AND CHANGE.
A member of the
Pacific Sisters, a collective
of performance artists
based in Auckland, New
Zealand, appearing at
the Seventh Pacific
Festival of Art, Western
Samoa, 1996. The
costumes worn by the
Sisters juxtapose tapa
(bark cloth) and raffia
with coconut-shell bras,
lycra and polyester. This
playful body ornament
incorporates longestablished
meanings,
helping to recreate the
spirit of the Polynesian
legends that the Sisters
frequently perform.
1 IN THE POST-WAR PERIOD
the vast majority of
the Pacific islands gained
independence from
colonial overlords, or
achieved self-
government.
In nearly all of the new
Pacific Island countries
and self-governing states,
governments
have seen the local
production of art as
playing an important role
in creating new national
identities,
both for their own
peoples and for
outsiders. Regular
festivals of Pacific art
have also promoted
the preservation of
traditional art.
135˚ 135˚ 120˚150˚ 150˚165˚ 165˚180˚
45˚
30˚
15˚
0˚
15˚
30˚
Tropic of Capricorn
Tropic of Cancer
Com
Com
Com
Com
Com
Com
Com
Com
Com
Com
Adm
Adm
Adm
Adm
Adm
Adm
Adm
Adm
Adm
S-G
S-G
S-G
IND
IND
IND
IND
IND
IND
IND
IND
IND
IND
IND
IND
IND
IND
IND
Honiara
Port-Vila
Pago Pago
Honolulu
Townsville
1988
Auckland
Hamilton
Wellington
Suva 1972
Rotorua 1976
Port Moresby
1980
Rarotonga
1992
Apia 1996
Nouméa 2000
S O U T H P A C I F I C
O C E A N
N O R T H PA C I F I C
O C E A N
CORAL
SEA
ARAFURA
SEA
SOLOMON IS.
Kiribati
(Gilbert Islands)
Tokelau
(Union Islands) 1877
Ellice Island 1877
1887 New Hebrides
Northern
Mariana
Islands
1899
Galapagos
Islands
1832
(Ecuadorian
possession)
M E L A N
E
S
I
A
POLY
N
E
S
I
A
M I C
R
O
N
E
S
IA
EASTER
ISLAND
1888
Marquesas
1842
Tuvalu
LINE ISLANDS
claimed by Britain
and USA
COOK
ISLANDS
1888
PITCAIRN
ISLANDS
1898
Tonga
1900
Caroline Islands
1899
HAWAIIAN
ISLANDS
1898
AM. SAMOASAMOA
AUSTRALIA
U S A
IRIAN JAYA
PAPUA
NEW
GUINEA
Dutch
New Guinea
1828
1884
NEW ZEALAND
New
Caledonia
1853
Fiji
1874
PHOENIX ISLANDS
claimed by Britain
and USA
Norfolk
Island
1788
Tahiti
1842
1900
1985
Vanuatu
Nauru
Island
1888
Guam Marshall
Islands
1885
Wallis 1842
Futuna 1888
left commonwealth
1987
Palau
FEDERATED STATES OF MICRONESIA
German New Guinea
Papua
to Los Angeles
to San Francisco
1840
1980
1970
1979
transferred to
New Zealand 1925
1970
1975
1975
1978
1979
1978
1962
1968
19941994
1898
1965
1974
1986
ceded by USA to Kiribati,
Tuvalu & Cook Islands, 1979-80
ceded to Kiribati, 1979
Tuamotu
Archipelago
1880
Niue
1900
Austral
Islands
1842
18
1
6
7
8
9 10
12
34
13
19
20
21
22
26
32 33
29
28
3031
27
25
23
24
17
1415
16
11
5
4 3
2
35 36 37
N
0
0
1200 miles
1800 kms
1 Port Moresby National Museum
& Art Gallery 1954
2 Goroka J.K. McCarthy Museum
3 Honiara Solomon Islands
National Museum 1969
4 Honiara National Art Gallery & Cultural Centre
5 Port-Vila Vanuatu Cultural Centre &
National Museum 1959
6 Suva Fiji Museum 1904
7 Suva Indian Cultural Centre
8 Levuka Museum and Library
9 Nouméa Musée Territorial de
Nouvelle-Caledonie 1971
10 Nouméa Tjibaou Cultural Centre 1998
11 Nouméa Musée de la Histoire Maritime de
Nouvelle-Caledonie
12 Bourail Historical Museum
13 Pago Pago Jean P. Haydon Museum 1970
14 Apia National Museum & Cultural Centre 1984
15 Apia Robert Louis Stevenson Museum 1994
16 Tarawa Kiribati National Cultural
Centre & Museum
17 Panaauia Musée des Iles Tahiti 1974
18 Papeari Paul Gauguin Museum 1965
19 Alofi Huaniaki Cultural Centre,
National Museum and Open Theatre
20 Rarotonga Sir Geoffrey Henry National
Cultural Centre 1992
21 Cook Islands National Art Gallery
22 Rarotonga Cook Islands National Museum
23 Nuku'alofa Tonga National Museum
24 Nuku'alofa Tupou College Museum
25 Easter Island Rapa Nui Museum and
Cultural Centre 1973
26 Koror National Museum of Belau 1955
27 Tolfol Kosrae State Museum
28 Kolonia Pohnpei Lidorkini Museum
29 Kolonia Pohnpei Maritime Museum
30 Majuro Alele Museum 1981
31 Kwajalein Cultural Centre
32 Hagåtña (Agana) Guam Museum
33 Saipan Northern Mariana Islands Museum of
History and Culture 1981
34 Norfolk Islands Integrated Museum
35 La'ie Polynesian Cultural Centre 1963
36 Honolulu Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum 1889
37 Manoa Hawaiian Cultural Centre
1 Major Cultural Centres of the Pacific
Colonial possessions, with dates of acquisition
(Historical names are shown in italics)
Dutch
German
British
British protectorates
IND
S-G
Adm
Com
Changing political status in the 20th century
independence, with date
self-government, with date
administration, with date
member of the British Commonwealth
main routes of Pacific migration
Cultural and artistic centres
museum
cultural centre
art gallery
main urban centres for production of
contemporary Pacific art
South Pacific Festivals of Art
Australian
French
American
Chilean
166˚ 168˚ 170˚ 172˚ 174˚ 176˚ 178˚ 180˚
46˚
44˚
42˚
40˚
38˚
36˚
Napier
G
G
G
rebuilt in Art Deco
style (1932-3)
Christchurch
Dunedin
Wellington
Lower Hutt
Palmerston North
Rotorua
Aniwaniwa
Auckland
Hamilton
New Plymouth
SO
U
TH
ER
N
A
LPS
N O R T H
I S L A N D
S O U T H
I S L A N D
STEWART I.
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
TA S M A N
S E A
C
O
OKSTRA
IT
Te Ao Marama exhibition of seven
Maori artists tour Australia (1986)
Robert Mcdougall Gallery (1932)
New Zealand Maori Culture and the
Contemporary Scene (1966)
first exhibition of Maori
Artists and Writers
Society/Nga Puna
Waihanga (1976)
Cross-
Currents
exhibition
(1991)
1
2 3
4
Dowse Art
Gallery (1971)
Manawatu Art Gallery (1977)
Dorset Street Flats (1956, Warren)
N
0
0
200 miles
300 kms
2 - Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (1970)
- Borrowing and Belonging exhibition,
and The Raising of the Noxious
answering exhibition (1999)
3 - Colin McCahon’s Urewera Mural stolen
from Te Urewera National Park Visitor
Centre (1997): rehung in Visitor
Centre (2000)
4 - National Art Gallery of
New Zealand (1936)
- Kohia Ko Taikaka Anake exhibition
of contemporary Maori art (1990)
- Museum of New Zealand/
Te Papa Tongarewa (1998)
(1994-8, JASMAX Architects)
- Contemporary Painting in
New Zealand at Commonwealth
Institute, London (1965)
- Te Maori exhibition to
USA galleries (1984)
- Colin McCahon’s exhibition
I Will Need Words in Sydney,
Edinburgh (1984)
- Pacific Parallels exhibition to
seven USA galleries (1991-92)
- Cultural Safety exhibition in
Frankfurt (1995)
- Massey House (1952-7, Plischke)
G
G 1 -Urewera Mural restored
(1998); exhibited (1999)
- Maori portraits by Gottfried
Lindauer at St Louis
World Fair (1904)
- Arts Building,
University of Auckland
(1921-5, Lippincott)
AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND 1900–2000
315
Aborigine to be ‘a relic of the early childhood
of mankind left stranded’. He could not see
that, in agreeing to paint bark paintings to
order, these Aboriginal artists demonstrated
that they were not frozen in time, but willing to
respond to new cultural circumstances.
Uncertain of their own national identity,
white antipodean artists turned to indigenous
culture for inspiration. In Australia Preston
exhorted her fellow artists to ‘Be Aboriginal’.
Beginning with Jessie Traill in 1928, white artists
visited remote Aboriginal communities in
central Australia – a region unfamiliar to citybased
Australians – and were influenced by the
stark landscape and the rich indigenous culture.
Initially, Aboriginal motifs were respected
in much the same way as the ‘primitive’
elements that had informed European
Modernism earlier in the century. Later, they
were used indiscriminately and carelessly as
decoration, so that by the 1950s pseudoAboriginal
ornamentation and furnishings
overwhelmed Australian suburbia. This
commercialization occurred without the
collaboration of the Aboriginal originators of
these designs and without acknowledgement of
the cultural misappropriation involved.
There were, however, some reverse benefits
from this contact between indigenous and nonindigenous
artists. Albert Namatjira, an
Arrenrte resident of the Hermannsburg
Lutheran mission, learned watercolour
technique from the visitors. His idiosyncratic
depictions of his own country were dismissed
at the time as poor attempts at copying the
Western landscape paradigm, but have since
been critically rehabilitated as sophisticated
reworkings of Aboriginal tradition. In the
Kimberley district the monumental Wandjina
figures characteristic of the region were
transferred from rock faces to small bark panels
for the first time in the 1930s, producing
paintings that were both accessible and
collectable.
2 WHILE ART SCHOOL-TRAINED
Maori artists combined Maori
and Western (Pakeha)
traditions to produce
paintings that negotiated the
cultural gap with wit and
self-reflection, Maori elders
maintained control over the
more profound elements of
their visual culture,
encouraging a resurgence of
traditional arts. New
Zealand’s biculturalism, which
became official policy in 1990,
was exemplified in 1998 by
the opening of the Museum
of New Zealand/Te Papa
Tongarewa.
Another significant innovation occurred in
central Australia, where Aboriginal elders
painted The Honey Ant Dreaming – sacred/secret
knowledge, traditionally inscribed in ephemeral
sand-paintings – as a mural on the external
walls of the Papunya school in 1971. By the
1980s, Papunya artists were painting
secularized versions of their dreamings with
acrylic pigments on canvas or composition
board, and the northwestern bark painters had
extended their art practice to non-traditional
screen prints and fabric panels. These
Aboriginal artists of central and northern
Australia retained the authenticity of their
culture while altering its material base. Their
work commercially overshadowed the art
COLIN MCCAHON, Urewera
Mural, 1975, acrylic on three
canvas panels, Aniwaniwa
Park headquarters building,
Lake Waikaremoana, New
Zealand. It represents the
theme ‘The Mystery of Man
in the Urewera’, which was
suggested by the Maori
architect of the building,
John Scott. The Urewera is a
forested region of the North
Island.
NED KELLY, 1955, oil on
board, by Sydney Nolan,
perhaps the most
famous Australian
painter of the twentieth
century. From 1945
onwards Nolan
produced numerous
paintings of Ned Kelly,
the Irish-Australian
outlaw who was hanged
in 1880 and whose life
had achieved almost
mythic status in the
Australian consciousness.
In all of these Nolan
emphasized the black
square of Kelly’s head,
derived from the homemade
metal armour that
Kelly had worn.
produced by city-based Aborigines of the
southeast, whose ironic visual responses to
their urban environment were not considered
authentically Aboriginal.
Maori artists had adapted to Western
influences in the nineteenth century, so that,
for most of the twentieth century, Maori
decorative motifs were familiar to, and
regarded as the cultural heritage of, all New
Zealanders. Non-Maori artists, such as Gordon
Walters, who incorporated the koru motif into
his Modernist paintings from the mid-1960s
to the mid-1980s, absorbed Maori design
elements into their work, a practice that
by the end of the century was considered
exploitative.
CULTURAL APPROPRIATIONS
The axiom that indigenous artists can ‘borrow’,
whereas non-indigenous artists cannot
‘appropriate’ seems heavy-handed, but is
necessary in light of persistent non-indigenous
assumption of cultural authority. Australian
examples include the unilateral decision to
restore (by overpainting!) ancient rock
paintings in the Kimberleys (1987), and the
imposture of the white artist Elizabeth Durack
as the fictitious indigenous painter Eddie
Burrup in a misguided belief that her long
association and empathy with the Aboriginal
people allowed her to paint in their name
(1997). The Maori text incorporated into the
Urewera Mural (1975) by the non-indigenous
painter, Colin McCahon, was judged an affront
rather than the homage he perhaps intended,
and the painting was taken hostage by radical
Maoris in 1997.
2 Art and Architecture in New Zealand, 1900-2000
gallery (with date of foundation)
Maori and Pakeha interrelated art
exported art
G architecture
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
314
Danish architect Jørn Utzon after winning an
international competition in 1957.
INDIGENOUS ROOTS
Despite these outside influences, Australia and
New Zealand were largely defined by their
indigenous cultures, even though the
Aboriginal and Maori people were still
considered – just as they had been at the end
of the previous century – to be ‘dying out’.
Their physical appearance was recorded for
posterity by white artists such as Percy Leason
in his forty-six portraits of The Last of the Victorian
Aborigines (1934) and Charles Goldie in his
series of Maori portraits (1900–40). Similarly,
their material culture was collected for its
historic or nostalgic value. In 1912 the noted
anthropologist Baldwin Spencer
commissioned bark paintings from the
Aboriginal people of Oenpelli for the Museum
of Victoria. Spencer believed the Australian
Margaret Preston (1875–1963) in Australia and
Rita Angus (1908–70) in New Zealand. Later, the
short-lived Australian magazine Angry Penguins
(1941–6) gathered around it a group of likeminded
figurative painters, such as Arthur Boyd
(1920–99) and Sidney Nolan (1917–92), whose
work drew on a range of influences, including
Surrealism. In the latter half of the century,
artists keenly followed the developments in
abstract, performance and conceptual art that
were prevalent in the international art world.
In architecture the earliest, considered
response to modernism came from the work of
the Austrian-born Harry Seidler (1923–), who
moved to Sydney in 1948. The later work of the
Australian Glenn Murcutt (1936–) showed a
growing interest in vernacular building types:
in particular the verandah-style house.
However, the most significant single work of
twentieth-century architecture in the region is
the Sydney Opera House, designed by the
AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND 1900-2000
150˚
15˚
30˚
135˚120˚
Kempsey
G
G
Riverside Centre
(1983-6, Seidler)
Marie Short House
(1974-5, Murcutt)
Sydney Opera House
(1957-73, Utzon)
Australia Square
(1961-7, Seidler)
Ball-Eastaway House,
Glenorie (1983, Murcutt)
Brisbane
Sydney
Canberra
Melbourne
Adelaide
Darwin Oenpelli
Ramingining
Derby
Mowanjum
Mount
Barnett Station
Yirrkala
Broome
Hermannsburg
Papunya
Utopia
Perth
Darling
M
ur
ray
Fitzroy
M
ur
chison
Victoria
Flinde
rs
M
itchell
I N D I A N
O C E A N
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
G R E A T
A U S T R A L I A N B I G H T
C O R A L S E A
GULF OF
CARPENTARIA
BASS STRAIT
G R E A T S A N D Y
D E S E R T
KIMBERLEY
PLATEAU
G R E A T V I C T O R I A
D E S E R T
G I B S O N
D E S E R T
SIMPSON
DESERT
M
ACDONNELL RANGES
MUSGRAVE RANGES
G
R
E
A
T
D
IV
ID
IN
G
RANGE
GREATDIVID
IN
G
R
A
N
G E
ARNHEM LAND
Q U E E N S L A N D
N E W
S O U T H
W A L E S
V I C T O R I A
TASMANIA
N O R T H E R N
T E R R I T O RY
W E S T E R N
A U S T R A L I A
S O U T H
A U S T R A L I A
MELVILLE I.
A U S T R A L I A
’Eddie Burrup’ (Elizabeth Durack)
awarded Indigenous Artist prize (1996)
replica of Kimberley rock
shelter painted for Western
Australian Museum (1972)
controversial
repainting of
fading cave
paintings (1987)
Namatjira’s one-man show (1939)
Albert Namatjira
begins painting (1936)
formation of Western Desert
art movement (1972)
Honey Ant Dreaming mural (1971)
first attempts at painting Wandjina
cave motifs on bark (early 1930s)
G National Gallery of Australia (1982)
Michael Nelson Tjakamarra’s mosiac
for Parliament House forecourt (1988)
Aboriginal Memorial (now housed at
the National Gallery) exhibited at
Lausanne (1999)
Contemporary Australian Aboriginal
Art in Modern Worlds exhibition at
St Petersburg and Hanover (2000)
Namatjira’s one-man show (1939)
Aboriginal women (including
Emily Kame Kngwarreye)
paint with acrylics (late 1980s)
artists prepare 200 burial poles (The Aboriginal
Memorial) to commemorate Aboriginal deaths
during 200 years of white settlement (1788-1988), 1988
Emily Kame
Kngwarreye
retrospective
exhibition (1998)
G Museum of Contemporary
Art (1991)
Margaret Preston exhorts
white artists to ‘Be
Aboriginal’ (1925-1941)
Aboriginal Art and Its
Application exhibition (1941)
Aboriginal Memorial
exhibited at Biennale of
Sydney (1988)
Australian Aboriginal Art exhibition (1929)
Museum and Art Gallery of
the Northern Territory (1971)
bark paintings commissioned
for Art Gallery of
New South Wales (1959)
Baldwin Spencer commissions bark paintings for Museum of Victoria (1912)
pukumani mortuary poles commissioned
for Art Gallery of New South Wales (1958)
Australian-American
Expedition sponsored
by National Geographic
Society (1948)
Public Library (1912, Bates, Peebles & Smart)
ICI House (1958, Bates, Smart & McCutcheon)
101 Collins Street (1992, Denton, Corker & Marshall)
Flinders University Art Museum (1966)
Parliament House (1980-88,
Mitchell/Giurgola & Thorp)
1 Art and Architecture in Australia,
1900-2000
gallery (with date of foundation)
traditional Aboriginal art collection
white appropriation of Aboriginal art
landmark in Australian indigenous art
architecture
N
0
0
300 miles
400 kms
G
DESPITE GAINING INDEPENDENCE at the
beginning of the twentieth century, the
former British colonies of Australia (1901) and
New Zealand (1907) remained culturally
subordinate for much of the subsequent
century. Antipodean artists who followed
European trends were dismissed as derivative.
Those who ignored them were regarded as
provincial. Earnest debates on the merits of
internationalism over regionalism, modernism
over conservatism, and abstraction over
figurative art – key issues of early twentiethcentury
Western visual culture – seemed
somewhat comical to the wider world when
argued at such a geographical remove.
Nevertheless, Australian and New Zealand
artists developed their own distinctive
responses to these new schools, as they had in
the previous century. Some of the earliest
modernist works were by the women artists
Grace Cossington Smith (1892–1984) and
1 CROSS-CULTURAL TENSION has been the
dominant thread in the development of
the visual arts in both Australia and New
Zealand. Architecture and public sculpture
are exceptions that follow international
trends and only occasionally incorporate
indigenous components. Two-dimensional
art, however, owes its international appeal
and regional relevance
(a paradoxical combination) to the
contested issues of national identity and
belonging to the land. By combining
Western and traditional art practices,
Australian Aborigines affirmed their
cultural relevance, globally and locally.
ART INSTITUTIONS WORLDWIDE 2000
317
American Express the WMF has since 1996
published biennial ‘World Monuments Watch’
reports on ‘100 Sites in Peril’. In September
2001 Lower Manhattan became the 101st site
in the list for 2002.
Perceptions of cultural identity reflect
a much more varied reality than does
contemporary political rhetoric. For instance,
recent exhibitions and publications in
Bogotá, Buenos Aires and Mexico City have
investigated the aesthetics of ‘América’, and
consider the nomenclature of the USA as
‘America’ to be misleading.
The outreach of UNESCO and of the World
Monuments Fund is broad but not ubiquitous.
In many areas of post-colonial Africa it is felt
that heritage is better managed through
indigenous involvement than by the imposition
of international guidelines.
TOURISM
Tourism increased over the latter part of the
twentieth century to become in itself an
important, even dominant, cultural
phenomenon. Its effects are ambivalent.
Tourist visits fund sites, both directly by way
of admission fees and indirectly via the
souvenir trade. However, many sites are
unwittingly ‘uglified’ for the supposed benefit
of visitors, and every tourist visit causes
wear and tear.
Attacks on both tourists and monuments
have contributed to a reduction in travel, but
the destruction of the Buddhas at Bamiyan in
Afghanistan has had the side effect of
focussing global attention on heritage
conservation.
WORLDWIDE WEB
The worldwide web enables the display and
viewing of art. The internet is especially
appreciated by artists operating outside the
established cities for private exhibiting
galleries because it lets them bypass
intermediary gallery owners to find a public
directly. Biennials’ and other art events’ web
pages are an end in themselves as well as a
means of self-publicity. The web also
increasingly serves scholarship with online
journals. The internet, a dynamic visual
medium in its own right, makes art accessible
to anyone who wants it.
2 ARTISTIC SITES IN PERIL. This map quantifies by
country UNESCO World Heritage sites nominated in
the quarter of a century up to 2002, and shows the
‘100 Sites in Peril’ as listed by the World
Monuments Fund in 2000; it also marks some of
the important sites that were wilfully attacked
either side of 2000.
THE THAI-LANGUAGE
brochure for the SEAMEO
Regional Centre for the
Project in Archaeology
and the Fine Arts (SPAFA).
SPAFA promotes and
supports educational
initiatives to further
professional competence
in the fields of
archaeology and the fine
arts, with the aim of
cultiviating awareness of
cultural heritage within
and between Southeast
Asian nations. The
Bangkok regional centre
produces the thrice-yearly
SPAFA Journal.
I N D I A N
O C E A N
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
Dubrovnik, Croatia
(Oct.-Dec. 1991)
Colossal Buddha
Bamiyan,Afghanistan
(March 2001)
Twin Towers,
New York City
(September 2001)
2 Artistic Sites in Peril
World Monuments Fund sites in peril, c.2000
destruction of patrimony
Dulan - Dulan County Tibetan Royal
Tomb Group, Reshuixiang-Xuewei
Sichuan - Palpung Monastery, Babang Village
Beijing - Temple of Agriculture (Xiannongtan)
Shanxi - Xuanjian Tower,Yuci City
Nias - Omo Hada (Royal Palace Complex)
Tabanan - Tanah Lot Temple
Ulan Bator - Bogd Haan Palace Museum
Ifugao - Rice Terraces of the Cordilleras
Kathmandu - Itum Monastery
- Teku Thapatali Monument Zone
Bahawalpur - Uch Monument Complex
Huê - Minh Mang Tomb
Quang Nam/Quang Ngai -My Son Temple Complex, Duy Xuyên
George Town - George Town Historic Enclave, Penang State
Kuala Terengganu -Kampung Cina River Frontage
CHINA
46
47
48
49
INDONESIA
50
51
MONGOLIA
52
PHILIPPINES
53
NEPAL
54
PAKISTAN
55
VIETNAM
56
57
MALAYSIA
58
59
Moscow - Arkhangelskoye State Museum
- Russakov club
Irkutsk - Irkutsk Historic Center
Lomonosov - Oranienbaum State Museum
Panayarvi Village
Rostov Velikiy - Rostov Velikiy Historic Center
Vyborg - Viipuri Library
Chihuahua - Madera Cave Dwellings
Veracruz - San Juan de Ulúa Fort
Taxco de Alarcón - Santa Prisca Parish Church
San Juan Teotihuacán - Teotihuacán Archaeological Site
Cuenca del Usumacinta - Yaxchilán Archaeological Zone
Philadelphia - Eastern State Penitentiary
Lancaster County
New York - Seventh Regiment Armory
Chicago - Tree Studios and Medinah Temple
Los Angeles - VDL Research House II
Bahia/Salvador - Santo Antonio do Paraguaço,
São Francisco do Paraguaçu
São Paulo - Vila de Paranapiacaba, Santo André
Easter Island - Orongo Ceremonial Site
Havana - National Art Schools, Cubanacán
- Santa Teresa de Jesús Cloisters
Valle de los Ingenios - San Isidro de los Destiladeros
Puerto Plata - Puerto Plata Lighthouse
Cuscatlán - Suchitoto City
Falmouth Historic Town - Trelawny Parish
Colón and Portobelo - San Lorenzo Castle and
San Gerónimo Fort
Cuzco - Cuzco Historic Center
- Machu Picchu, Urubamba
Rio Abiseo National Park - Los Pinchudos
Archaeological Site
Redi Doti - Jodensavanne Archaeological Site
Coro, Falcón - San Francisco Church
RUSSIA
68
69
70
71
72
73
MEXICO
74
75
76
77
78
U.S.A.
79
80
81
82
83
BRAZIL
84
85
CHILE
86
CUBA
87
88
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
89
EL SALVADOR
90
JAMAICA
91
PANAMA
92
PERU
93
94
SURINAM
95
VENEZUELA
96
Gonder - Mentewab-Qwesqwam Palace
Migori - Thimlich Ohinga Cultural Landscape
Giraffe Rock Art Site near Agadez
Kareima - Gebel Barkal Archaeological Site
Bulawayo - Khami National Monument
Thmar Puok -Banteay Chhmar Temple
of Jayavarman VII
ETHIOPIA
31
KENYA
32
NIGER
33
SUDAN
34
ZIMBABWE
35
CAMBODIA
36
Faversham - Abbey Farmstead
East Manchester - Saint Francis
Church and Monastery
Clonfert - Saint Brendan’s Cathedral
Brussels - Tour and Taxis (transport hub)
Beauvais, Saint Pierre Cathedral
Dessau - Gartenreich
Dessau-Wörlitz
Leipzig - Thomaskirche
Rhodes - Kahal
Shalom Synagogue
Subotica - Subotica
Synagogue
Mostar - Mostar
Historic Center
Ruse Region - Ivanovo
Rock Chapels
Vukovar City, Center Vukovar
Naples - Ancient Pompeii
Bagni di Lucca - Bridge
of Chains
Liguria - Cinque Terre
Rome - Santi Quattro Coronati Cloister
Mnajdra - Mnajdra Prehistoric Temples
Ocarli Köyü, Kars - Ani Archaeological Site
Konya - Çatalhöyük, Çumra
Kâhta - Mount Nemrut Archaeological Site
Istanbul - Zeyrek Mosque
Tipasa - Tipasa Archaeological Park
Idfu, Kom el Ahmar Khasekhemwy
at Hierakonpolis
Cairo - Sultan Qa’it Bay Complex
Luxor - Valley of the Kings,Thebes
UNITED KINGDOM
1
2
IRELAND
3
BELGIUM
4
FRANCE
5
GERMANY
6
7
GREECE
8
YUGOSLAVIA
9
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
10
BULGARIA
11
CROATIA
12
ITALY
13
14
15
16
MALTA
17
TURKEY
18
19
20
21
ALGERIA
22
EGYPT
23
24
25
Mary (Merv) - Archaeological Site, Bayramaly
Bukhara - Abdulaziz Khan Complex
Wadi Hadhramaut - Tarim Historic City
Sarandë - Butrint Archaeological Site
Leh - Basgo Gompa (Maitreya Temples), Ladakh
Gujarat - Champaner Archaeological Site, Panchmahal
Rajasthan - Jaisalmer Fort
Calcutta - Metropolitan Building
Goa - Saint Anne Church,Talaulim
TURKMENISTAN
37
UZBEKISTAN
38
YEMEN
39
ALBANIA
40
INDIA
41
42
43
44
45
Arbil Citadel - Kurdish Autonomous Region
Tel-Dan - Tel-Dan Canaanite Gate
Ramla - Ramla White
Mosque Archaeological Site
Wadi Musa - Petra Archaeological Site
Enfé - Enfé Archaeological Site
IRAQ
26
ISRAEL
27
28
JORDAN
29
LEBANON
30
Kuks - Kuks Forest Sculptures
Zemo Artsevi Village - Ikorta Church of the Archangel
Tbilisi - Tbilisi Historic District
Gdansk - Vistula Mouth Fortress
Bontida - Bánffy Castle
Krajné Cierno - Basil the Great Church
Kamyanets Podilsky - Kamyanets Podilskyy Castle Bridge
Zhovkva - Zhovkva Synagogue
CZECH REPUBLIC
60
GEORGIA
61
62
POLAND
63
ROMANIA
64
SLOVAKIA
65
UKRAINE
66
67
N
0
0
1800 miles
2400 kms
´
˘
¸
84
8586
93
94
95
96
92
91
89
88
87
90
78
75
76
7774
83
82 81
80
79
52
69
48
49
47
46
56 57
36
53
58 59
50
51
45
4442
43
54
41
55
38
37
71
73
70 72
68
67 66
62
61
18
20 26
30
27
2928
39
19
8
9
11
64
6563
76
60
12
15
4
2
3
1 5
14 16
1322
17
10 40
23
24
25
34
31
33
35
32
21
I N D I A N
O C E A N
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
Dubrovnik, Croatia
(Oct.-Dec. 1991)
Colossal Buddha
Bamiyan,Afghanistan
(March 2001)
Twin Towers,
New York City
(September 2001)
2 Artistic Sites in Peril
World Monuments Fund sites in peril, c.2000
destruction of patrimony
Dulan - Dulan County Tibetan Royal
Tomb Group, Reshuixiang-Xuewei
Sichuan - Palpung Monastery, Babang Village
Beijing - Temple of Agriculture (Xiannongtan)
Shanxi - Xuanjian Tower,Yuci City
Nias - Omo Hada (Royal Palace Complex)
Tabanan - Tanah Lot Temple
Ulan Bator - Bogd Haan Palace Museum
Ifugao - Rice Terraces of the Cordilleras
Kathmandu - Itum Monastery
- Teku Thapatali Monument Zone
Bahawalpur - Uch Monument Complex
Huê - Minh Mang Tomb
Quang Nam/Quang Ngai -My Son Temple Complex, Duy Xuyên
George Town - George Town Historic Enclave, Penang State
Kuala Terengganu -Kampung Cina River Frontage
CHINA
46
47
48
49
INDONESIA
50
51
MONGOLIA
52
PHILIPPINES
53
NEPAL
54
PAKISTAN
55
VIETNAM
56
57
MALAYSIA
58
59
Moscow - Arkhangelskoye State Museum
- Russakov club
Irkutsk - Irkutsk Historic Center
Lomonosov - Oranienbaum State Museum
Panayarvi Village
Rostov Velikiy - Rostov Velikiy Historic Center
Vyborg - Viipuri Library
Chihuahua - Madera Cave Dwellings
Veracruz - San Juan de Ulúa Fort
Taxco de Alarcón - Santa Prisca Parish Church
San Juan Teotihuacán - Teotihuacán Archaeological Site
Cuenca del Usumacinta - Yaxchilán Archaeological Zone
Philadelphia - Eastern State Penitentiary
Lancaster County
New York - Seventh Regiment Armory
Chicago - Tree Studios and Medinah Temple
Los Angeles - VDL Research House II
Bahia/Salvador - Santo Antonio do Paraguaço,
São Francisco do Paraguaçu
São Paulo - Vila de Paranapiacaba, Santo André
Easter Island - Orongo Ceremonial Site
Havana - National Art Schools, Cubanacán
- Santa Teresa de Jesús Cloisters
Valle de los Ingenios - San Isidro de los Destiladeros
Puerto Plata - Puerto Plata Lighthouse
Cuscatlán - Suchitoto City
Falmouth Historic Town - Trelawny Parish
Colón and Portobelo - San Lorenzo Castle and
San Gerónimo Fort
Cuzco - Cuzco Historic Center
- Machu Picchu, Urubamba
Rio Abiseo National Park - Los Pinchudos
Archaeological Site
Redi Doti - Jodensavanne Archaeological Site
Coro, Falcón - San Francisco Church
RUSSIA
68
69
70
71
72
73
MEXICO
74
75
76
77
78
U.S.A.
79
80
81
82
83
BRAZIL
84
85
CHILE
86
CUBA
87
88
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
89
EL SALVADOR
90
JAMAICA
91
PANAMA
92
PERU
93
94
SURINAM
95
VENEZUELA
96
Gonder - Mentewab-Qwesqwam Palace
Migori - Thimlich Ohinga Cultural Landscape
Giraffe Rock Art Site near Agadez
Kareima - Gebel Barkal Archaeological Site
Bulawayo - Khami National Monument
Thmar Puok -Banteay Chhmar Temple
of Jayavarman VII
ETHIOPIA
31
KENYA
32
NIGER
33
SUDAN
34
ZIMBABWE
35
CAMBODIA
36
Faversham - Abbey Farmstead
East Manchester - Saint Francis
Church and Monastery
Clonfert - Saint Brendan’s Cathedral
Brussels - Tour and Taxis (transport hub)
Beauvais, Saint Pierre Cathedral
Dessau - Gartenreich
Dessau-Wörlitz
Leipzig - Thomaskirche
Rhodes - Kahal
Shalom Synagogue
Subotica - Subotica
Synagogue
Mostar - Mostar
Historic Center
Ruse Region - Ivanovo
Rock Chapels
Vukovar City, Center Vukovar
Naples - Ancient Pompeii
Bagni di Lucca - Bridge
of Chains
Liguria - Cinque Terre
Rome - Santi Quattro Coronati Cloister
Mnajdra - Mnajdra Prehistoric Temples
Ocarli Köyü, Kars - Ani Archaeological Site
Konya - Çatalhöyük, Çumra
Kâhta - Mount Nemrut Archaeological Site
Istanbul - Zeyrek Mosque
Tipasa - Tipasa Archaeological Park
Idfu, Kom el Ahmar Khasekhemwy
at Hierakonpolis
Cairo - Sultan Qa’it Bay Complex
Luxor - Valley of the Kings,Thebes
UNITED KINGDOM
1
2
IRELAND
3
BELGIUM
4
FRANCE
5
GERMANY
6
7
GREECE
8
YUGOSLAVIA
9
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
10
BULGARIA
11
CROATIA
12
ITALY
13
14
15
16
MALTA
17
TURKEY
18
19
20
21
ALGERIA
22
EGYPT
23
24
25
Mary (Merv) - Archaeological Site, Bayramaly
Bukhara - Abdulaziz Khan Complex
Wadi Hadhramaut - Tarim Historic City
Sarandë - Butrint Archaeological Site
Leh - Basgo Gompa (Maitreya Temples), Ladakh
Gujarat - Champaner Archaeological Site, Panchmahal
Rajasthan - Jaisalmer Fort
Calcutta - Metropolitan Building
Goa - Saint Anne Church,Talaulim
TURKMENISTAN
37
UZBEKISTAN
38
YEMEN
39
ALBANIA
40
INDIA
41
42
43
44
45
Arbil Citadel - Kurdish Autonomous Region
Tel-Dan - Tel-Dan Canaanite Gate
Ramla - Ramla White
Mosque Archaeological Site
Wadi Musa - Petra Archaeological Site
Enfé - Enfé Archaeological Site
IRAQ
26
ISRAEL
27
28
JORDAN
29
LEBANON
30
Kuks - Kuks Forest Sculptures
Zemo Artsevi Village - Ikorta Church of the Archangel
Tbilisi - Tbilisi Historic District
Gdansk - Vistula Mouth Fortress
Bontida - Bánffy Castle
Krajné Cierno - Basil the Great Church
Kamyanets Podilsky - Kamyanets Podilskyy Castle Bridge
Zhovkva - Zhovkva Synagogue
CZECH REPUBLIC
60
GEORGIA
61
62
POLAND
63
ROMANIA
64
SLOVAKIA
65
UKRAINE
66
67
N
0
0
1800 miles
2400 kms
´
˘
¸
84
8586
93
94
95
96
92
91
89
88
87
90
78
75
76
7774
83
82 81
80
79
52
69
48
49
47
46
56 57
36
53
58 59
50
51
45
4442
43
54
41
55
38
37
71
73
70 72
68
67 66
62
61
18
20 26
30
27
2928
39
19
8
9
11
64
6563
76
60
12
15
4
2
3
1 5
14 16
1322
17
10 40
23
24
25
34
31
33
35
32
21
A
A
A
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
BB
T
B
B
B
B
B
T
T
T
T
T
Q
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
L
P
P
P
P
P
P
P
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S
S1
2
2
2
6
6
3
4 5
7
W
W
W W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
W
Dakar
Addis Ababa
Zanzibar
Colombo
Tel Aviv
Cairo
Karachi
New
Delhi
Fukuoka
Kwangju
Shanghai
Hong Kong
Quezon City
Taipei
Singapore
Bangkok
Hangzhou
Melbourne
Wellington
Sydney
Brisbane
Honiara
Head office of the
SEAMEO Project in
Archaeology and
Fine Arts
SPAFA
Yokohama
Tokyo
Havana
New York
Williamstown
St. Louis
Washington DC
Newport Beach
Toronto
Los Angeles
Mexico City
Chicago
San Juan
Bogotá
La Paz
Panama
São Paulo
Buenos Aires
Santiago
Belo Horizonte
Johannesburg
Cape Town
Sofia
Rome
Lyon
Valencia
Paris
London
Venice
Munich
Berlin
Hamburg
Norwich
Eindhoven
NovosibirskMoscow
Edinburgh
Tirana
Jerusalem
Tel Aviv
Istanbul
Rome
Karlsruhe
Ljubljana
Milan
Monaco
Geneva
Albisola
Luxembourg
Much Hadham
Versailles
Kassel
Amsterdam
Rotterdam
Zurich
CAA (College Art Association)
International Society for
Education through Art
I N D I A N
O C E A N
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
PA C I F I C
O C E A N
J K
KAZAKHSTAN
INDIA
NEPAL
CHINA
SRI
LANKA BRUNEI
PHILIPPINES
JAPAN
CANADA
PUERTO RICO
BARBADOS
VENEZUELA
PARAGUAY
URUGUAY
ARGENTINA
COLOMBIA
ECUADOR
BOLIVIA
CHILE
UNITED
STATES
MEXICO
CUBA
BRAZIL
MA
SE
GU-B
GU
CI
BF
T B
GH
MALI NIGER
NIGERIA
CA
GABON
ZI
CHAD
KENYA
EGYPT SAUDI
ARABIA
IRAN
PA
BA
SK
TH
V
L
MAL
INDONESIA
AUSTRALIA FIJI
SAMOA
PAPUA
NEW
GUINEA
SWITZ
MOROCCO
SEYCHELLES
COMOROS
SINGAPORE
MALDIVES
SOUTH
AFRICA
MADAGASCAR
MAURITIUS
NORWAY
GERMANY
REP OF
IRELAND
N
EDEWS
FINLAND
PORTUGAL SPAIN
CYPRUS
ALBANIA
ISRAEL
HUNGARY
SLOVAKIA
LITHUANIA
BELGIUM
FRANCE
GREECE
TUNISIA
DENMARK
UK
Festival
do Inverno
Mécénat
Getty Grant Program
Samuel H. Kress Foundation
Ford Foundation
American Express
Andy Warhol Foundation
Banco de la República
African Heritage Trust
UNESCO
Henry Moore
Foundation
N
0
0
1800 miles
2400 kms
1 Art Institutions, c.2000
yearly art event
biennial art event
triennial art event
quadriennial art event
sponsor of the arts
auctioneers:
Christie‘s
Los Angeles Modern
Phillip’s
Sotheby’s
international organization
A
T
Q
B
ICOM -International Council of Museums
SEAMEO -South East Asian Ministers of Education Organization
CIHA -Comité International de l’Histoire de l’Art
ICOMOS -International Council on Monuments and Sites
IFLA -International Federation of Landscape Architects
ICCROM -International Centre for the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property
DOCOMOMO -International Working Party for Documentation and Conservation of Buildings,
Sites and Neighbourhoods of the Modern Movement
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
selected art research institutes
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, London
School of World Art Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich
Institut National pour l’Histoire de l’Art, Paris
Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (ZKM), Karlsruhe
Warburg Haus, Hamburg
Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome
Research Institute of History and Theory of Fine Arts, Moscow
Swiss Institute for Art Research, Zurich
Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa
Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg
Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Institute of Ethnography, Novosibirsk, Siberia
Lok Virsa, Karachi
Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi
All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi
Institute of Aesthetic Studies, Colombo
Silpakorn University, Bangkok
College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines, Quezon City
National Academy of Fine Art, Hangzhou
Power Institute, Sydney
New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Wellington
National Museum and Cultural Centre, Honiara
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Centre for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Washington DC
Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Mexico City
Escuela de Bellas Artes, Universidad Nacional, Bogotá
Instituto de Investigaciones Artísticas, La Paz
Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas J. Payró, Buenos Aires
Facultad de Bellas Artes, Universidad de Chile, Santiago
W - Abbreviated Countries with World Crafts Council
- Benin
- Bangladesh
- Burkina Faso
- Cameroon
- Côte d’Ivoire
- Ghana
- Guinea
B
BA
BF
CA
CI
GH
GU
- Guinea-Bissau
- Jordan
- Kuwait
- Kenya
- Laos
- Mauritania
- Malaysia
GU-B
J
K
KE
L
MA
MAL
- Pakistan
- Senegal
- South Korea
- Togo
- Thailand
- Vietnam
- Zimbabwe
PA
SE
SK
T
TH
V
ZI
C
L
P
S
ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
316
The World Monuments Fund, a coalition of
philanthropic individuals loosely allied with
UNESCO, was created in 1965. Based in New
York and with subsidiary offices in London,
Paris, Madrid and Lisbon, with the support of
AROUND 2000 INTERCONTINENTAL travel
and communication networks have
enabled an unprecedented degree of reciprocal
cultural awareness to develop around the
world. New technologies make contact between
artists amazingly quick and easy; they also
affect heritage, its conservation and the
tourism that depends upon it.
ART EVENTS
From the mid-twentieth century biennials and
other art events have recast the geographical
canon of art. Of late-nineteenth-century
origins, the Venice Biennale remains primarily
European; the São Paulo Biennial, founded in
1951, epitomizes Latin-American relations with
the First World. Dating from the mid-1980s, the
Havana Biennial has cast itself as the first
transperipheral exhibition open to artists from
Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and
the Middle East. Since the 1990s events such as
the Zanzibar Film Festival and the Johannesburg,
Dakar, Prague, Tirana and Sofia Biennials have
helped to shift attention towards Africa and
Eastern Europe. Reflecting how curatorial
power is now shared more widely, the eleventh
Documenta quadriennial in Kassel was curated
by the Nigerian Okwui Enwezor.
Annual national and international prizes
for art and architecture include the Turner Prize
(1984–), administered from the Tate Gallery in
London and, since 1991, only for artists under
50 and resident in Britain. Based in Los
Angeles, the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1979–)
is open to architects from around the world.
The most successful visual media of the
twentieth century – photography, film and
television – continue to attract a mass
audience. Fine art’s public is by comparison
very restricted, even though for the last 100
years the parameters of ‘art’ have been
expanded. One way artists and their supporters
attempt to regain a wider appeal is by
borrowing the tools and approaches of more
popular media. The Turner and other such
prizes are screened on television, and art
events are normally publicized on the web.
The World Crafts Council is a nonprofit
NGO that promotes contact between
craftspeople worldwide. In 2001 its secretariat
transferred from Kyoto to Ioannina in Greece.
SPONSORSHIP
The USA remains the main centre of private
sponsorship of artistic activity and heritage
management worldwide, and a high proportion
of international organizations are based in
Paris – but in recent decades African, Asian,
Australasian and Latin American banks,
foundations and ministerial organizations
have played an increasing part in the
management of the artistic heritages of their
respective continents. Worldwide, public
sponsorship remains the most powerful force.
On the commercial side, London-based
auction houses, with tentacles in well-to-do
centres elsewhere, continue to enjoy the lion’s
share of the art market – although they are
increasingly subject to legal challenges.
WORLD HERITAGE ORGANIZATIONS
UNESCO initiatives of the 1960s led to the
1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of
World Cultural and Natural Heritage, and
thence to the World Heritage List. Since the
first List of 1978, new locations of ‘outstanding
universal value’ have been added annually; by
2002, 730 sites in 125 countries were inscribed.
Of these, 563 are cultural, 144 natural and the
remaining twenty-odd ‘mixed’ – reflecting how
nature and culture are now understood by
many to be interrelated.
ART INSTITUTIONS WORLDWIDE 2000
PAGE FROM THE WEBSITE of the seventh Havana
Biennial of 2000–01, showing the internet’s
effectiveness as a means of visual communication.
The stills are from the South African William
Kentridge’s Shadow Procession, a video of handmade
cut-out figures. Shadow Procession revisited
absurdist Ubu iconography in the nostalgic and
slightly apocalyptic spirit of 1999. Shadow
Procession now exists as a DVD.
1 WHILE ART AND ARCHITECTURAL initiatives beyond
national boundaries continue to be largely
financed and organized by wealthier nations, later
twentieth-century educational and curatorial
initiatives in Asia, Africa and Latin America have
succeeded in transferring significant artistic clout
to the eastern and southern hemispheres.
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SOUTH AMERICA 600-1500
E. P. Benson and A. G. Cook Ritual Sacrifice in
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M. E. Moseley The Incas and Their Ancestors, The
Archaeology of Peru London, 1992
K. Olsen Bruhns Ancient South America Cambridge,
1994
EUROPE 600-800
Michael McCormick Origins of the European Economy
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Martin Carver (ed.) The Age of Sutton Hoo: The
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Leslie Webster and Michelle Brown (eds) The
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EUROPE 800-1000
Rosamond McKitterick (ed.) The New Cambridge
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Timothy Reuter (ed.) The New Cambridge Medieval
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Mayke De Jong and Frans Theuws (eds)
Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages
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EASTERN EUROPE AND SOUTHWEST ASIA 600-1500
H. E. Evans and W. Wixom (eds) The Glory of
Byzantium New York, 1997
R. Cormack and D. Gaze (eds) The Art of Holy
Russia London, 1998
R. Cormack Byzantine Art Oxford, 2000
NORTHERN EUROPE 1000-1200
R. W. Southern The Making of the Middle Ages
London, 1953
Veronica Sekules Medieval Art Oxford and New
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SOUTHERN EUROPE 1000-1200
C. H. Lawrence Medieval Monasticism London and
New York, 1984
Kenneth John Conant Carolingean and Romanesque
Architecture 4th edn, New Haven and London,
1978
NORTHERN EUROPE 1200-1300
Michael Camille Gothic Art: Glorious Visions New
York, 1996
Henry Kraus Gold Was the Mortar: The Economics of
Cathedral Building London and Boston, 1979
SOUTHERN EUROPE 1200-1300
Xavier Barral i Altet Art and Architecture of Spain
Boston, 1998
André Chastel Italian Art New York, 1963
Maria Romanini Angiola Assisi: The Frescoes in the
Basilica of St Francis New York, 1998
NORTHERN EUROPE 1300-1500
James Snyder Northern Renaissance Art: Painting,
Sculpture and the Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575 New
York, 1985
Till-Holger Borchert et al. The Age of Van Eyck: The
Mediterranean World and Early Netherlandish Painting
1430–1530 London, 2002
Walter Prevenier and Wim Blockmans The
Burgundian Netherlands (trans. P. Kin and Y. Mead),
Cambridge, 1986
SOUTHERN EUROPE 1300-1500
Michel Laclotte and Dominique Thiébaut L’École
d’Avignon Paris, 1983
Judith Berg Sobré Behind the Altar Table: The
Development of the Painted Retable in Spain,
1350–1500 Columbia, Missouri, 1989
Theodor Müller Sculpture in the Netherlands,
Germany, France, and Spain 1400 to 1500
Harmondsworth, 1966
ITALY 1300-1400
Giovanni Boccaccio The Decameron (trans. G. H.
McWilliam) 2nd edn, Harmondsworth, 1995
John White Art and Architecture in Italy 1250–1400
Harmondsworth, 1966
John White The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space
London, 1972
ITALY 1400-1500
Michael Baxandall Painting and Experience in
Fifteenth-Century Italy Oxford, 1972
Mary Hollingsworth Patronage in Renaissance Italy:
From 1400 to the Early Sixteenth Century London,
1994
Iris Origo The Merchant of Prato Harmondsworth,
1963
NORTH AFRICA 600-1500
Richard Ettinghausen, Oleg Grabar and Marilyn
Jenkins-Madina Islamic Art and Architecture
650–1250 New Haven and London, 2001
Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom The Art and
Architecture of Islam: 1250–1800 New Haven and
London, 1994
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 600–1500
Peter Garlake Early Art and Architecture of Africa
Oxford, 2002
M. B. Visona, R. Poyner, H. M. Cole et al. A History
of Art in Africa New York, 2000
WEST ASIA AND EGYPT 600-1000
Richard Ettinghausen, Oleg Grabar and Marilyn
Jenkins-Madina Islamic Art and Architecture
650–1250 New Haven and London, 2001
Oleg Grabar The Formation of Islamic Art New
Haven, 1990
WEST ASIA 1000-1500
Richard Ettinghausen, Oleg Grabar and Marilyn
Jenkins-Madina Islamic Art and Architecture
650–1250 New Haven and London, 2001
Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom The Art and
Architecture of Islam: 1250–1800 New Haven and
London, 1994
CENTRAL ASIA 600-1500
Richard Ettinghausen, Oleg Grabar and Marilyn
Jenkins-Madina Islamic Art and Architecture
650–1250 New Haven and London, 2001
Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom The Art and
Architecture of Islam: 1250–1800 New Haven and
London, 1994
SOUTH ASIA 600-1500
Lallanji Gopal The Economic Life of Northern India,
c.AD 700–1200 Delhi, 1989
Vishaka N. Desai and Darielle Mason Gods,
Guardians and Lovers: Temple Sculptures from North
India, AD 700–1200 London, 1993
Gordon Johnson Cultural Atlas of India New York,
1996
Hamida Khatoon Naqvi Agricultural, Industrial and
Urban Dynamism Under the Sultans of Delhi,
1200–1555 Delhi, 1986
Tapan Rayachaudhuri and Irfan Habib The
Cambridge Economic History of India, c.1200–c.1750
vol. 1, Cambridge, 1982
John Fritz, George Michell and M. S. Nagaraja
Rao Where Kings and Gods Meet: The Royal Centre at
Vijayanagara, India Tuscon, Arizona, 2002
CHINA 600-1300
Peter K. Bol This Culture of Ours: Intellectual
Transitions in T’ang and Sung China Stanford, 1991
Maxwell K. Hearn and Judith G. Smith (eds) Arts
of the Sung and Yuan New York, 1996
Shiba Yoshinobu Commerce and Society in Sung
China (trans. Mark Elvin) Ann Arbor, 1992
CHINA AND TIBET 1300-1500
Lauren Arnold Princely Gifts and Papal Treasures: The
Franciscan Mission to China and its Influence on the Art
of the West, 1250–1350 San Francisco, 1999
Maggie Bickford Ink Plum: The Making of a Chinese
Scholar-Painting Genre New York, 1996
Percival David Chinese Connoisseurship: The ‘Ke Ku
Yao Lun’, the Essential Criteria of Antiquities London,
1971
Adam Kessler et al. Empires Beyond the Great Wall:
The Heritage of Genghis Khan Los Angeles, 1993
Marco Polo The Travels (trans. Ronald Latham)
New York, 1992
JAPAN AND KOREA 600-1500
Penelope Mason History of Japanese Art New York,
1993
Jane Portal Korea: Art and Archeology London, 2000
Kumya Paik Kim Goryeo Dynasty: Korea’s Age of
Enlightenment San Francisco, 2003
Quitman E. Phillips The Practices of Painting in
Japan, 1475-1500 Stanford, 2000
Naomi Richard (ed.) Transmitting the Forms of
Divinity: Early Buddhist Art from Korea and Japan New
York, 2003
SOUTHEAST ASIA 600-1500
Kenneth R. Hall Maritime Trade and State
Development in Early Southeast Asia Honolulu, 1985
Charles Higham The Civilization of Angkor Berkeley,
2001
Philip Rawson The Art of Southeast Asia: Cambodia,
Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Burma, Java, Bali New York,
1967
Reimar Schefold and Han F. Vermeulen Treasure
Hunting?: Collectors and Collections of Indonesian
Artifacts Leiden, 2002
J. F. Scheltema Monumental Java London, 1912
THE PACIFIC 600-1500
Adrienne L. Kaeppler, Christian Kaufmann
and Douglas Newton Oceanic Art New York,
1997
Patrick V. Kirsch On the Road of the Winds: An
Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands Before
European Contact Berkeley, 2000
Eric Kjellgren, with Jo Anne Van Tilburg and
Adrienne L. Kaeppler, Splendid Isolation: Art of
Easter Island New York, 2001
Sidney M. Mead Te Maori: Maori Art from New
Zealand Collections New York, 1984
PART V ART, EXPLOITATION AND DISPLAY
1500-1800
NORTH AMERICA 1500-1800
Norman Bancroft Hunt North American Indians: The
Life and Culture of the Native American London, 1991
Janet C. Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips Native North
American Art Oxford, 1998
Jayne Sokolow The Great Encounter: Native Peoples
and European Settlers in the Americas, 1492–1800
New York, 2002
Carl Waldman Atlas of the North American Indian
London, 2000
CENTRAL AMERICA 1500-1800
Norman Bancroft Hunt Historical Atlas of Ancient
America New York, 2001
Samuel Y. Edgerton and Jorge Perez de Lara
Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian
Artisans in Colonial Mexico Albuquerque, New
Mexico, 2001
Diane Fane Converging Cultures: Art and Identity in
Spanish America New York, 1996
Alan Knight Mexico, vol 2 The Colonial Era,
Cambridge, 2002
SOUTH AMERICA 1500-1800
Thomas DaCosta Kauffman Toward a Geography of
Art Chicago and London, 2004
D. Bayón et al. History of South American Colonial Art
and Architecture New York, 1992
R. Gutiérrez Arquitectura y urbanismo en Iberoamérica
Madrid, 1983
EUROPE 1500-1600
Peter Burke The European Renaissance: Centres and
Peripheries Oxford and Malden, Massachusetts,
1998
Thomas DaCosta Kauffman Court, Cloister, and City
Chicago and London, 1995
Roy Strong Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals,
1450–1650 Rochester, New York, 1984
SCANDINAVIA AND THE BALTIC 1500-1800
Marian C. Donnelly Architecture in the Scandinavian
Countries Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992
Christian IV and Europe: The 19th Council of Europe
Exhibition, Denmark 1988 exh. cat., Copenhagen,
1988
POLAND AND LITHUANIA 1500-1800
Jan Bialostocki The Art of the Renaissance in Eastern
Europe New York, 1976
Adam Milobedzki The Architecture of Poland: A
Chapter of the European Heritage Cracow, 1994
Stefan Muthesius Art, Architecture and Design in
Poland: An Introduction Königstein im Taunus, 1994
Jan K. Ostrowski et al. Land of the Winged Horse: Art
in Poland 1572–1764 exh. cat., Walters Art Galley,
Baltimore, 1999
RUSSIA 1500-1800
William C. Brumfield A History of Russian
Architecture New York and Cambridge, 1993
George Heard Hamilton The Art and Architecture of
Russia New Haven and London, 1986
Alison Hilton Russian Folk Art Bloomington,
Indiana, 1995
A. Opolovnikov and Y. Opolovnikova The Wooden
Architecture of Russia New York, 1989
BRITAIN 1500-1666
Catharine MacLeod Painted Ladies: Women at the
Court of Charles II London, 2001
Karen Hearn Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and
Jacobean England,1530–1630 London, 1995
Simon Thurley The Royal Palaces of Tudor England
New Haven and London, 1993
BRITAIN 1666-1800
David Solkin Painting for Money New Haven and
London, 1992
Marcia Pointon Hanging the Head New Haven and
London, 1994
John Brewer The Pleasures of the Imagination London,
1997
THE NORTH NETHERLANDS 1500-1800
J. I. Israel The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and
Fall, 1477–1806 Oxford, 1995
B. Haak The Golden Age: Dutch Painters of the
Seventeenth Century London, 1984
A. Lambert The Making of the Dutch Landscape
London, 1971
THE SOUTH NETHERLANDS 1500-1800
Luc Duerloo and Werner Thomas (eds) Albert &
Isabelle 1598–1621, Catalogue and Essays exh. cat., 2
vols, Brussels,1998
Copper as Canvas: Two Centuries of Masterpiece
Paintings on Copper, 1575–1775 exh. cat., Phoenix
Art Museum, New York, 1998
Guy Delmarcel Flemish Tapestry New York, 2000
Lynn F. Jacobs Early Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces
1380—1550: Medieval Tastes and Mass Marketing
Cambridge, 1998
Neil de Marchi, Hans J. van Miegroet and
Matthew E. Raiff, ‘Dealer–Dealer
Pricing in the Mid Seventeenth-Century Antwerp
to Paris Art Trade’ in Art Markets in
Europe, 1400–1800, ed. M. North and D. Ormond:
Brookfield, Vermont, 1998
GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND 1500-1650
Ars Helvetica 13 vols. Bern, 1987–93
Henry Russell Hitchcock German Renaissance
Architecture Princeton, 1981
Jeffrey Chipps Smith German Sculpture of the Later
Renaissance, c.1520–1580 Princeton, 1994
GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND 1650-1800
Ars Helvetica 13 vols. Bern, 1987–93
Thomas DaCosta Kauffman Court, Cloister, and City
Chicago and London, 1995
Eberhard Hempel Baroque Art and Architecture in
Central Europe Baltimore, 1965
FRANCE 1500-1650
Anthony Blunt Art and Architecture in France
1500–1700 Harmondsworth, 1984
Ivan Cloules and Michèle Baimbenet-Privat
Treasures of the French Renaissance New York,
1998
André Chastel French Art: The Renaissance
1430–1620 Paris and New York, 1995
FRANCE 1650-1800
Walter Kalein and Michael Levey Art and
Architecture in France 1700–1800 Harmondsworth,
1976
Guy Walton Louis XIV’s Versailles Chicago, 1980
John Fleming and Hugh Honour Neo-Classicism
Harmondsworth, 1970
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 1500-1800
John F. Moffitt The Arts in Spain London, 1999
Robert C. Smith The Art of Portugal New York, 1968
ITALY 1500-1600
Benvenuto Cellini Autobiography (trans. George
Anthony Bull) revised edn, Harmondsworth, 1999
Mary Hollingsworth Patronage in Sixteenth-Century
318
GENERAL READING ON WORLD ART
Hugh Honour and John Fleming A World History of
Art 6th edn, London, 2002
Alfred Gell Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory
Oxford, 1998
E. H. Gombrich The Sense of Order: A Study in the
Psychology of Decorative Art Oxford, 1979
Martin Kemp (ed.) The Oxford History of Western Art
Oxford, 2000
David Summers Real Spaces: World Art History and
the Rise of Western Modernism London, 2003
Jane Turner (ed.) The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols,
London, 1996
Part I ART, HUNTING AND GATHERING
40,000-5000 BC
P. G. Bahn The Cambridge Illustrated History of
Prehistoric Art Cambridge, 1998
P. Bahn and J. Vertut Journey Through the Ice Age
London and Berkeley, 1997
M. Lorblanchet Les grottes ornées de la préhistoire
Paris, 1995
M. Lorblanchet La naissance de l’art: Genèse de l’art
préhistorique Paris, 1999
PART II ART, AGRICULTURE AND URBANIZATION
5000–500 BC
THE WORLD 10,000–3000 BC
S. Mithen After the Ice: A Global Human History
20,000–5000 BC. London, 2003
C. Scarre and B. M. Fagan Ancient Civilizations
revised 2nd edn, New York, 2002
B. D. Smith The Emergence of Agriculture New York,
1995
THE AMERICAS 5000–500BC
B. T. Arriaza Beyond Death: The Chinchorro Mummies
of Ancient Chile Washington, 1995
Thomas D. Hurst Exploring Ancient Native America:
An Archaeological Guide New York, 1999
C. McEwan, C. Barreto and E. Neves (eds)
Unknown Amazon: Culture in Nature in Ancient Brazil
London, 2001
G. R. Willey and J. A. Sabloff A History of American
Archaeology New York, 1993
EUROPE 7000-2500 BC
T. D. Price (ed.) Europe’s First Farmers Cambridge,
2000
C. Scarre Exploring Prehistoric Europe New York,
1998
A. Whittle Europe in the Neolithic: The Creation of New
Worlds Cambridge, 1996
EUROPE 2500 –500BC
B. Cunliffe Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and its
Peoples Oxford, 2001
K. Kristiansen Europe before History
Cambridge,1998
A. F. Harding European Societies in the Bronze Age
Cambridge, 2000
THE AEGEAN 2000–1000 BC
D. Preziosi and L. Hitchcock Aegean Art and
Architecture Oxford, 1999
T. Cullen (ed.) Aegean Prehistory: A Review Boston,
2001
S. Sherratt (ed.) The Wall Paintings of Thera London,
2000
THE MEDITERRANEAN 1000-500 BC
John Boardman (ed.) The Oxford History of Classical
Art Oxford, 1993
John Boardman The Greeks Overseas London,
1999
Otto Brendel, Etruscan Art New Haven, 1978
F. Briquel-Chatonnet and E. Gubel Les Phéniciens
aux origines du Liban Paris, 1998
AFRICA 5000-500 BC
Werner Gillon A Short History of African Art
Harmondsworth, 1984
Peter Garlake Early Art and Architecture of Africa
Oxford, 2002
David Phillipson African Archaeology 2nd edn,
Cambridge, 2001
THE NILE VALLEY 3000-500 BC
Gay Robins The Art of Ancient Egypt London, 1997
Paul.T. Nicholson and Ian Shaw (eds) Ancient
Egyptian Materials and Technology Cambridge, 2000
Jaromir Malek Egypt: 4000 Years of Art London,
2003
WEST ASIA 3000-2000 BC
Dominique Collon Ancient Near Eastern Art
London, 1995
Henri Frankfort The Art and Architecture of the Ancient
Orient revised edn, Harmondsworth, 1970
Julian Reade Mesopotamia revised edn, London,
2000
WEST ASIA 2000-500 BC
Julian Reade Assyrian Sculpture London, 1998
Dominique Collon Ancient Near Eastern Art
London, 1995
CENTRAL AND SOUTH ASIA 5000-500 BC
J. R. McIntosh A Peaceful Realm: The Rise and Fall of
the Indus Civilization Boulder, Colorado, 2002
J. M. Kenoyer Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley
Civilization Karachi, 1998
EAST ASIA AND CHINA 5000-500 BC
L. Sickman and A. Soper The Art and Architecture of
China Harmondsworth, 1971
J. Rawson (ed.) The British Museum Book of Chinese
Art London, 1992
C. Clunas Art in China Oxford, 1997
JAPAN AND KOREA 5000-500 BC
Sarah M. Nelson The Archaeology of Korea
Cambridge, 1993
Jane Portal Korea: Art and Archaeology London,
2000
Koji Mizoguchi An Archaeological History of Japan
Philadelphia, 2002
THE PACIFIC AND INDONESIA 5000-500 BC
Peter Bellwood Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian
Archipelago Honolulu, 1997
Charles Higham The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia
Cambridge, 1996
Patrick V. Kirsch The Lapita Peoples: Ancestors of the
Oceanic World Oxford, 1997
Matthew Spriggs The Island Melanesians Oxford,
1997
John Terrell Prehistory of the Pacific Islands
Cambridge, 1986
J. Peter White, James F. O’Connell and Margrit
Koettig (eds) A Prehistory of Australia, New Guinea,
and Sahul Sydney, 1982
Part III ART, WAR AND EMPIRE, 500 BC-AD 600
NORTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA 600 BC-AD 600
Michael D. Coe, Dean Snow and Elizabeth
Benson Atlas of Ancient America New York, 1986
Michael D. Coe and Rex Koontz Mexico 5th edn,
London, 2002
Michael D. Coe The Maya 6th edn, London and
New York, 1999
Alice Beck Kehoe America Before the European
Invasions London and New York, 2002
SOUTH AMERICA 500 BC-AD 600
R. W. Keatinge Peruvian Prehistory New York,
1988
K. Olsen Bruhns Ancient South America Cambridge,
1994
H. Silverman and D. A. Proulx The Nasca Malden,
Massachusetts and Oxford, 2002
EUROPE 500 BC-AD 300
Ruth and Vincent Megaw Celtic Art from its
Beginnings to the Book of Kells London, 1989
Boris Piotrowsky, Luidmila Galanina and Nonna
Grach Scythian Art Oxford,1987
Timothy Taylor, ‘Thracians, Scythians and
Dacians’, in Barry Cunliffe (ed.) Prehistoric Europe
Oxford, 1998
THE AEGEAN 500-300 BC
John Onians Classical Art and the Cultures of Greece
and Rome New Haven and London, 1999
J. J. Pollitt Art and Experience in Classical Greece
Cambridge, 1972
THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN 500-100 BC
Martin Robertson, A History of Greek Art
Cambridge, 1975
John Onians Art and Thought in the Hellenistic Age:
The Greek World View 350–50 BC London, 1979
Peter Levi Atlas of the Greek World Oxford, 1980
J. J. Pollitt Art in the Hellenistic Age Cambridge, 1986
THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN 500-100 BC
R. J. Harrison Spain at the Dawn of History: Iberians,
Phoenicians and Greeks London, 1988
Sybille Haynes Etruscan Civilization: A Cultural
History London and Malibu, 2000
Glenn Markoe Phoenicians London, 2000
Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli The Western Greeks:
Classical Civilization in the Western Mediterranean
London, 1996
THE MEDITERRANEAN 100 BC-AD 100
Tim Cornell and John Matthews Atlas of the Roman
World Oxford, 1982
Susan Walker and Peter Higgs Cleopatra of Egypt:
From History to Myth London, 2000
Mary Beard and John Henderson Classical Art from
Greece to Rome Oxford, 2001
Karl Galinsky Augustan Culture: An Interpretative
Introduction Princeton,1996
THE MEDITERRANEAN AD 100-300
M. Henig (ed.) A Handbook of Roman Art: A Survey of
the Visual Arts of the Roman World Oxford, 1983
J. B. Ward-Perkins Roman Imperial Architecture 2nd
edn, Harmondsworth, 1981
Donald Strong (ed. J. M. C. Toynbee) Roman Art
revised edn (with further revisions and notes by
R. Ling), Harmondsworth, 1988
Mary T. Boatwright Hadrian and the Cities of the
Roman Empire Princeton, 2000
EUROPE AD 300-600
F. van der Meer and Christine Mohrmann Atlas of
the Early Christian World 3rd edn (trans. M.
Hedlund and H. H. Rowley), London, 1966
Jás Elsner Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph: The
Art of the Roman Empire AD 100–450 Oxford, 1998
Peter Brown The World of Late Antiquity from Marcus
Aurelius to Muhammad London, 1971
G. W. Bowersock, Peter Brown and Oleg Grabar
Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World
Cambridge, Massachusetts and London,1999
AFRICA 500 BC-AD 600
Werner Gillon A Short History of African Art,
Harmondsworth, 1984
Peter Garlake Early Art and Architecture of Africa
Oxford, 2002
David Phillipson African Archaeology 2nd edn.,
Cambridge, 2001
THE NILE VALLEY 500 BC-AD 300
Paul. T. Nicholson and Ian Shaw (eds) Ancient
Egyptian Materials and Technology Cambridge, 2000
Jaromir Malek Egypt: 4000 Years of Art London,
2003
NORTH AFRICA AD 300-600
R. Bagnall Egypt in Late Antiquity Princeton, 1993
K. Dunbabin The Mosaics of Roman North Africa
Oxford, 1978
T. K. Thomas Egyptian Funerary Sculpture: Images for
This World and the Next Princeton, 2000
WEST ASIA 500-300 BC
Margaret Cool Root The King and Kingship in
Archaemenid Art Acta Iranica 19, Leiden, 1979
Pierre Birant From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of
the Persian Empire (trans. Peter T. Daniels) Winona
Lake, Indiana, 2002
Peter Green Alexander to Actavian Berkeley, 1990
WEST ASIA 300 BC-AD 600
M. A. R. Colledge The Parthian Period Leiden, 1986
V. S. Curtis, R. Hillenbrand and M. Rogers (eds)
The Art and Archaeology of Ancient Persia: New Light on
the Parthian and Sasanian Empires London,1996
N. C. Debevoise A Political History of Parthia
Chicago, 1938
CENTRAL ASIA 500 BC-AD 600
E. Errington, J. Cribb and M. Claringbull (eds) The
Crossroads of Asia: Transformation in Image and Symbol
Cambridge, 1992
M. Hallade Gandharan Art of North India and the
Graeco-Buddhist Tradition in India, Persia, and Central
Asia New York, 1968
SOUTH ASIA 500 BC-AD 600
S. L. and J. C. Huntington The Art of Ancient India:
Buddhist, Hindu, Jain New York, 1985
J. Schwartzberg (ed.) A Historical Atlas of South Asia
Oxford, 1992
R. Thapar Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300
Berkeley, 2003
CHINA 500 BC-AD 600
L. Sickman and A. Soper The Art and Architecture of
China Harmondsworth, 1971
J. Rawson (ed.) The British Museum Book of Chinese
Art London, 1992
C. Clunas Art in China Oxford, 1997
JAPAN AND KOREA 500 BC-AD 600
Sarah. M. Nelson The Archaeology of Korea
Cambridge, 1993
Jane Portal Korea, Art and Archaeology London. 2000
Koji Mizoguchi An Archaeological History of Japan
Philadelphia, 2002
SOUTHEAST ASIA 500 BC-AD 600
Peter Bellwood Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian
Archipelago Honolulu, 1997
H. R. van Heekeren The Bronze-Iron Age of Indonesia
‘s-Gravenhage, 1958
Charles Higham The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia
Cambridge, 1996
THE PACIFIC 500 BC-AD 600
Patrick V. Kirsch On the Road of the Winds: An
Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands Before
European Contact Berkeley, 2000
R. C. Green and M. Kelly Studies in Oceanic Culture
History Honolulu, 1970
James R. Specht and J. Peter White Trade and
Exchange in Oceania and Australia Sydney, 1978
Matthew Spriggs The Island Melanesians Oxford, 1997
PART IV ART, RELIGION AND THE RULER
600-1500
NORTH AMERICA 600-1500
Michael Coe, Dean Snow and Elizabeth Benson
Atlas of Ancient America New York, 1986
James E. Dixon Bones, Boats, and Bison: Archaeology
and the First Colonization of North America
Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2000
Brian M. Fagan Ancient North America: The
Archaeology of a Continent London, 1991
CENTRAL AMERICA 600-1500
Richard F. Townsend The Aztecs revised edn,
London and New York, 2000
Michael E. Smith and Francis F. Berdan (eds) The
Postclassic Mesoamerican World, Salt Lake City, 2003
Richard A. Diehl and Janet Catherine Berlo (eds)
Mesoamerica After the Decline of Teotihuacan, A.D.
700–900 Washington D.C., 1989
Frederick W. Lange and Doris Z. Stone (eds) The
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Joan Murray Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century
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Nancy Lou Patterson Canadian Native Arts Don
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NORTH AMERICA 1950-2000
David Hopkins After Modern Art 1945–2000 New
York, 2000
Mark Cheetham and Linda Hutcheon Remembering
Postmodernism: Trends in Recent Canadian Art New
York, 1991
David Bjelajac American Art: A Cultural History
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2000
Robert Hughes American Visions: The Epic History of
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Janet Catherine Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips Native
North American Art New York, 1998
Joan Murray Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century
Toronto, 1999
Nancy Lou Patterson Canadian Native Arts Don
Mills, Ontario, 1973
CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN 1900-2000
Veerle Poupeye Caribbean Art London, 1998
Desmond Rochfort Mexican Muralists: Orozco, Rivera
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Edward Sullivan (ed.) Latin American Art in the
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SOUTH AMERICA 1900-2000
Dawn Ades Art in Latin America: The Modern Period
New Haven and London, 1989
Valerie Fraser Building the New World: Studies in the
Modern Architecture of Latin America 1930–1960
London and New York, 2000
Oriana Baddeley and Valerie Fraser Drawing the
Line: Art and Cultural Identity in Contemporary Latin
America London, 1989
EUROPE 1900-2000
Pam Meecham and Julie Sheldon Modern Art: A
Critical Introduction London and New York, 2000
Robert Hughes The Shock of the New: Art and the
Century of Change London, 1980
H. H. Arnason A History of Modern Art: Painting,
Sculpture, Architecture London 1977
SCANDINAVIA AND THE BALTIC STATES 1900-2000
Cecilia Widenheim (ed.) Utopia and Reality:
Modernity in Sweden 1900–1960 New
Haven, 2002
Charlotte Fiell, Scandinavian Design Cologne,
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RUSSIA 1900-2000
John E. Bowlt Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory
and Criticism 1902–1934 New York, 1976
Norton Dodge and Alison Hilton (eds) New Art
from the Soviet Union: The Known and the Unknown
Washington DC, 1977
Norton Dodge and Alla Rosenfeld (eds)
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1995
Camilla Gray The Russian Experiment in Art revised
edn by M. Burleigh-Motley, London, 1986
The Great Utopia exh. cat., Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum and Tretyakov Gallery,
New York and Moscow, 1993
Christina Lodder Russian Constructivism New
Haven and London, 1990
Margarita Tupitsyn The Soviet Photograph New
Haven and London, 1996
BRITAIN AND IRELAND 1900-2000
Lisa Tickner Modern Life and Modern Subjects: British
Art in the Early Twentieth Century New Haven and
London, 2000
Margaret Garlake New Art, New World: British Art in
Postwar Society New
Haven and London, 1998
Norman Rosenthal Sensation: Young British Artists
from the Saatchi
Collection London, 1997
THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM 1900-2000
H. Kossman The Low Countries: 1780–1940 Oxford,
1978
Michael Wintle An Economic and Social History of The
Netherlands 1880–1920 Cambridge, 2000
Auke van der Woude The Art of Building, from
Classicism to Modernity: The
Dutch Architectural Debate 1840–1990 Aldershot,
2001
GERMANY, SWITZERLAND, AUSTRIA 1900-2000
Shearer West The Visual Arts in Germany,
1890–1937: Utopia and Despair Piscataway, New
Jersey, 2001
Brandon Taylor and Wilfried van der Will (eds)
The Nazification of Art Winchester, 1990
Christos Joachimides, Norman Rosenthal and
Wieland Schmied (eds) German Art in the Twentieth
Century: Painting and Sculpture 1905–1985 exh cat.,
Royal Academy of Art, London, 1985
EASTERN EUROPE 1900-2000
S. A. Mansbach Modern Art in Eastern Europe: From
the Baltic to the Balkans, c.1890–1939 Cambridge,
1999
Bojana Pejic and David Elliott (eds) After the Wall:
Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe
Stockholm, 1999
FRANCE 1900-2000
David Cottington Cubism in the Shadow of War: The
Avant-Garde and Politics in Paris,1905–1914 New
Haven, 1998
Alexander Tzonis Le Corbusier: The Poetics of Machine
and Metaphor Lincoln, Nebraska, 2002
Sidra Stich Art-SITES France: Contemporary Art and
Architecture Handbook Chicago, 1999
Christopher Green Art in France: 1900–1940 New
Haven, 2001
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 1900-2000
John F. Moffitt The Arts in Spain London,
1999
Robert C. Smith The Art of Portugal New York,
1968
ITALY 1900-2000
Italian Art in the Twentieth Century exh. cat., Royal
Academy of Arts, London, 1989
Marjorie Perloff The Futurist Moment Chicago,
1986
NORTH AFRICA 1900-2000
Henriette Camps-Fabrer Les bijoux de Grande
Kabylie Paris, 1970
Mohamed Sijelmassi Les arts traditionnels au Maroc
Paris, 1986
Wijdan Ali (ed.) Contemporary Art from the Islamic
World London, 1989
John Hedgecoe and S. Samar Damluji (eds) Zillïj:
The Art of Moroccan Ceramics Reading, 1992
Tarek Mohamed Refaat Sakr Early TwentiethCentury
Architecture in Cairo Cairo, 1993
Christopher Spring and Julie Hudson North
African Textiles London, 1995
EAST AND CENTRAL AFRICA 1900-2000
M. B. Visona, R. Poyner, H. M. Cole et al. A History
of Art in Africa New York, 2000
André Magnin Contemporary African Art New York,
1995
WEST AFRICA 1900-2000
M. B. Visona, R. Poyner, H. M. Cole et al. A History
of Art in Africa New York, 2000
Susan M. Vogel Africa Explores: 20th Century African
Art New York, 1991
SOUTHERN AFRICA 1900-2000
Art and Ambiguity: Perspectives on the Brenthurst
Collection of African Art exh. cat., Johannesburg Art
Gallery, Johannesburg, 1991
Elizabeth Rankin Images of Wood: Aspects of the
History of Sculpture in 20th-Century South Africa
Johannesburg, 1989
Sue Williamson Resistance Art in South Africa Cape
Town, 1989
Nigel Worden The Making of Modern South Africa:
Conquest, Segregation and Apartheid Oxford, 1994
ASIA 1900-2000
Jane Turner (ed.) The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols,
London, 1996
WEST ASIA 1900-2000
H. E. Wulff The Traditional Crafts of Persia
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London,
1966
Renata Holod and A. Evin (eds) Modern Turkish
Architecture Philadelphia, 1984
Günsel Renda, Turan Erol, Adnan Turani, Kaya
Özsezgin and Mustafa Aslıer A History of Turkish
Painting Geneva, Seattle and London, 1988
Lebanon – the Artist’s View: 200 Years of Lebanese
Painting exh. cat., British Lebanese Association,
London, 1989
Wijdan Ali (ed.) Contemporary Art from the Islamic
World London, 1989
H. Glassie Turkish Traditional Art Today
Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1993
Stephen Vernoit (ed.) Discovering Islamic Art:
Scholars, Collectors and Collections London, 2000
CENTRAL ASIA 1900-2000
Gulina Pugachenkova Akbar Khakimov The Art of
Central Asia Leningrad, 1988
Johannes Kalter and Margareta Pavaloi (eds)
Heirs to the Silk Road: Uzbekistan London, 1997
Shakhalil Shayakubov Modern Miniature Painting of
Uzbekistan Tashkent, 1994
SOUTH ASIA 1900-2000
Balraj Khanna and Aziz Kurtha Art of Modern India
London, 1998
Marcella Sirhandi Contemporary Painting in Pakistan
Lahore, 1992
CHINA 1900-2000
Julia F. Andrews Painters and Politics in the People’s
Republic of China, 1949–1979 Berkeley, Los Angeles
and London, 1994
Michael Sullivan Art and Artists of Twentieth Century
China Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1996
JAPAN AND KOREA 1900-2000
Penelope Mason History of Japanese Art New York,
1993
Jane Portal Korea: Art and Archeology London, 2000
Ellen Conant Nihonga, Transcending the Past:
Japanese-Style Painting,
1868–1968 New York, 1995
SOUTHEAST ASIA 1900-2000
Fred B. Eiseman Bali: Sekala and Niskala Vol. 1
Essays on Religion, Ritual and Art Berkeley, 1989
Jacqueline M. Piper Bamboo and Rattan: Traditional
Uses and Beliefs Oxford, 1992
Sylvia Fraser-Lu Silverware of South-East Asia
Oxford, 1989
THE PACIFIC 1900-2000
Susan Cochrane Contemporary Art in Papua New
Guinea Sydney, 1997
Anita Herle, Nick Stanley, Karen Stevenson and
Robert L. Welsch (eds) Pacific Art: Persistence,
Change, and Meaning Honolulu, 2002
Nicholas Thomas Oceanic Art London, 1995
Robert L. Welsch (ed.) An American Anthropologist
in Melanesia: A. B. Lewis and the Joseph N. Field South
Pacific Expedition, 1909–1913 Honolulu, 1998
AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND 1900-2000
Sylvia Kleinert and Margo Neale (eds) The Oxford
Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture Melbourne,
2000
Francis Pound The Space Between: Pakeha Use of
Maori Motifs in Modernist New Zealand Art Auckland,
1994
Bernard Smith, with additional chapters by Terry
Smith and Christopher Heathcote, Australian
Painting, 1788–2000 4th edn, Melbourne, 2001
ART INSTITUTIONS WORLDWIDE 2000
Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s–1980s
exh. cat., Queens Museum of Art, New York, 1999
BIBLIOGRAPHY
320
Italy London, 1996
Peter Partner Renaissance Rome 1500–1559 Los
Angeles and London, 1976
ITALY 1600-1800
Francis Haskell Patrons and Painters: A Study in the
Relations between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the
Baroque revised edn, New Haven and London,
1980
SOUTHEAST EUROPE 1500-1800
R. Hootz (ed.) Kunstmälerei in Ungarn Leipzig and
Munich, 1981
R. Hootz (ed.) Kunstmälerei in Rumänien Leipzig
and Munich, 1986
R. Hootz (ed.) Kunstmälerei in Jugoslavien Leipzig
and Munich, 1981
R. Hootz (ed.) Kunstmälerei in Bulgarien Leipzig and
Munich, 1983
EUROPE 1600-1800
Thomas DaCosta Kauffman Court, Cloister, and City
Chicago and London, 1995
E. Bergvelt, D. Meijers and M. Rijnders
Verzamelen: van rariteitenkabinet tot kunstmuseum
Houten, 1993
Thomas Crow Painters and Public Life in EighteenthCentury
Paris New Haven and London, 1985
NORTH AFRICA 1500-1800
André Raymond Artisans et commerçants au Caire au
XVIIIe siècle 2 vols, Paris, 1973–4
J. Revault and B. Maury Palais et maisons du Caire du
XIVe au XVIIIe siècle 3 vols, Paris, 1975–9
D. Hill, L. Golvin and R. Hillenbrand Islamic
Architecture in North Africa London, 1976
Antony Hutt Islamic Architecture: North Africa
London, 1977
John Hedgecoe and S. Samar Damluji (eds) Zillïj:
The Art of Moroccan Ceramics Reading, 1992
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 1500-1800
Paula BenAmos The Art of Benin London, 1980
M. B. Visona, R. Poyner, H. M. Cole et al.
A History of Art in Africa New York, 2000
ASIA 1500-1800
Jane Turner (ed.) The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols,
London, 1996
WEST ASIA 1500-1800
Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom The Art and
Architecture of Islam: 1250–1800 New Haven and
London, 1994
J. M. Rogers Islamic Art and Design: 1500–1700
London, 1983
CENTRAL ASIA 1500-1800
Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom The Art and
Architecture of Islam: 1250–1800 New Haven and
London, 1994
Jane Turner (ed.) The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols,
London, 1996
SOUTH ASIA 1500-1800
Bianca Maria Alfieri Islamic Architecture of the Indian
Subcontinent London, 2000
Catherine Asher Architecture of Mughal India
Cambridge, 1992
Milo Cleveland Beach Mughal and Rajput Painting
Cambridge, 1992
CHINA AND TIBET 1500-1650
Sarah Handler Austere Luminosity of Chinese Classical
Furniture Berkeley, 2001
Chu-tsing Li and James Watt (eds) The Chinese
Scholar’s Studio: Artistic Life in the Later Ming Period
New York, 1987
Jonathan Spence The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci
London, 1983
Yinong Xu The Chinese City in Space and Time: The
Development of Urban Form in Suzhou Honolulu,
2000
CHINA AND TIBET 1650-1800
Qianshen Bai Fu Shan’s World: The Transformation of
Chinese Calligraphy in the Seventeenth Century
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2003
Patricia Berger Empire of Emptiness: Buddhist Art and
Political Authority in Qing China Honolulu,
2003
Jonathan Hay Painting and Modernity in Early Qing
China New York, 2001
Tobie Meyer-Fong Building Culture in Early Qing
Yangzhou Stanford, 2003
Susan Naquin Peking: Temples and City Life,
1400–1900 Berkeley, 2000
Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt Chinese Imperial City
Planning Honolulu, 1990
JAPAN AND KOREA 1500-1800
Penelope Mason History of Japanese Art New York,
1993
Jane Portal Korea: Art and Archeology London, 2000
Christine Guth Art of Edo Japan: The Artist and the
City 1615–1868 New York, 1996
Hongnam Kim Korean Arts of the Eighteenth Century:
Splendor and Simplicity New York, 1993
Miyeko Murase (ed.) Turning Point: Oribe and the
Arts of Sixteenth-Century Japan New York, 2003
Robert T. Singer Edo: Art in Japan 1615–1868 New
Haven, 1998
SOUTHEAST ASIA 1500-1800
Anthony Reid Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce
Volume One: The Land Below the Winds New Haven
and London, 1988
Nicholas Tarling (ed.) The Cambridge History of
Southeast Asia Volume One: From Early Times to
c.1800 Cambridge, 1992
Gwyneth Chaturachinda, Sunanda Krishnamurty
and Pauline W. Tabtiang Dictionary of South and
Southeast Asian Art Chiang Mai, 2000
THE PACIFIC 1500-1800
The Forster Collection, a website for Pacific
artefacts collected by Johann Reinhold and
George Forster on Captain Cook’s second voyage
(1772–75), Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford:
www.prm.ox.ac.uk/forster/
Anne Salmond Two Worlds: First Meetings between
Maori and Europeans 1642–1772 London, 1991
PART VI ART, INDUSTRY AND SCIENCE
1800-1900
NORTH AMERICA 1800-1860
David Bjelajac American Art: A Cultural History
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2000
Robert Hughes American Visions: The Epic History of
Art in America New York, 1997
Janet Catherine Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips Native
North American Art New York, 1998
Nancy Lou Patterson Canadian Native Arts Don
Mills, Ontario, 1973
NORTH AMERICA 1860-1900
David Bjelajac American Art: A Cultural History
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2000
Robert Hughes American Visions: The Epic History of
Art in America New York, 1997
Janet Catherine Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips Native
North American Art New York, 1998
Nancy Lou Patterson Canadian Native Arts Don
Mills, Ontario, 1973
CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN 1800-1900
Dawn Ades Art in Latin America 1820–1980;
London, 1989
Timothy E. Anna Forging Mexico, 1821–1835
Lincoln, Nebraska, 1998
Robert Harvey The Liberators: Latin America’s
Struggle for Independence, 1810–1850 London, 2002
Elizabeth Netto Calil Zarur Art and Faith in Mexico:
The Nineteenth Century Retablo Tradition
Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2001
SOUTH AMERICA 1800-1900
Dawn Ades (ed.) Art in Latin America: The Modern
Era, 1820–1980 New Haven and London, 1974
Gustavo Curiel, Renato González Mello and
Juana Gutiérrez Haces (eds) Arte, Historia e
Identidad en América: Visiones comparativas Mexico
City, 1994
Pablo Diener Ojeda (ed.) Rugendas: América de
punta a cabo Santiago de Chile, 1992
EUROPE 1800-1900
Stephen F. Eisenman Nineteenth Century Art: A
Critical History London, 1994
Paul Greenhalgh Art Nouveau 1890–1914 London,
2000
Dennis and Elizabeth De Witt Modern Architecture
in Europe: A Guide to Buildings since the Industrial
Revolution London, 1987
SCANDINAVIA AND THE BALTIC 1800-1900
Marian C. Donnelly Architecture in the Scandinavian
Countries Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992
Neil Kent The Soul of the North. A Social, Architectural
and Cultural History of the Nordic Countries,
1700–1940 London, 2000
Barbara Miller Lane National Romanticism and
Modern Architecture in Germany and the Scandinavian
Countries Cambridge, 2000
RUSSIA 1800-1900
The Art of Russia 1800–1850 exh. cat., University of
Minnesota Art Gallery, Minneapolis, 1977
Dmitry Sarabianov Russian Art from Neoclassicism to
the Avant-Garde New York, 1990
G. T. Stavrou (ed.) Art and Culture in NineteenthCentury
Russia Bloomington, Indiana, 1983
Elizabeth Valkenier Russian Realist Art: The
Peredvizhniki and their Tradition New York, 1989
BRITAIN 1800-1900
John Gage and J. M. W. Turner A Wonderful Range of
Mind New Haven and London,
1984
Chris Brooks The Gothic Revival London, 1999
Elizabeth Prettejohn Art of the Pre-Raphaelites
London, 2000
THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM 1800-1900
H. Kossman The Low Countries: 1780–1940 Oxford,
1978
Michael Wintle An Economic and Social History of The
Netherlands 1880–1920
Cambridge, 2000
Richard Bionda and Carel Blotkamp (eds.) The
Age of van Gogh: Dutch Painting
1880–1895 Zwolle, 1990
Auke van der Woude The Art of Building, from
Classicism to Modernity: The
Dutch Architectural Debate 1840–1990 Aldershot,
2001
GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND 1800-1900
Harry Francis Mallgrave and Gottfried Semper
Architecture of the Nineteenth Century New Haven and
London, 1996
G. Wietek (ed.) Deutsche Künstlerkolonien und
Künstlerorte Munich, 1976
FRANCE 1800-1900
John House Landscapes of France: Impressionism and
its Rivals London, 1995
Charles Rearick Pleasures of the Belle Époque:
Entertainment and Festivity in Turn-of-the-Century
France London, 1985
Eugen Weber France: Fin de Siècle London, 1986
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 1800-1900
John F. Moffitt The Arts in Spain London, 1999
Robert C. Smith The Art of Portugal New York, 1968
ITALY 1800-1900
Albert Boime The Art of the Macchia and the
Risorgimento: Representing Culture and Nationalism in
Nineteenth-Century Italy Chicago, 1993
Omar Calabrese (ed.) Modern Italy: Images and
History of a National Identity, from Unification to the
New Century Milan, 1982
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND SOUTHEAST EUROPE 1800-1900
Akos Moravánsky Competing Visions: Aesthetic
Invention and Social Imagination in Central European
Architecture 1867–1918 Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1997
Gyöngyi Éri and Zsuzsa Tobbágyi A Golden Age: Art
and Society in Hungary 1896–1914 Budapest,
London and Miami, 1990/91
NORTH AFRICA 1800-1900
Gaston Wiet Mohammed Ali et les beaux-arts Cairo,
1949
Caroline Stone The Embroideries of North Africa
London, 1985
James F. Jereb Arts and Crafts of Morocco London,
1995
Christopher Spring and Julie Hudson North
African Textiles London, 1995
Stephen Vernoit Occidentalism: Islamic Art in the 19th
Century London, 1997
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 1800-1900
Suzanne P. Blier The Royal Arts of Africa: The Majesty
of Form New York, 1998
Labelle Prussin Hatumere: Islamic Design in West
Africa Berkeley, 1986
M. B. Visona, R. Poyner, H. M. Cole et al. A History
of Art in Africa New York, 2000
WEST ASIA 1800-1900
Jane Turner (ed.) The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols,
London, 1996
CENTRAL ASIA 1800-1900
Jane Turner (ed.) The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols,
London, 1996
INDIA 1800-1900
Rosemary Crill, John Guy, Veronica Murphy,
Susan Stronge and Deborah Swallow Arts of India:
1550–1900 London, 1990
Tapati Guha-Thakurta The Making of a New Indian
Art: 1850–1920 Cambridge, 1992
Partha Mitter Art and Nationalism in Colonial
India:1850–1922 Cambridge, 1994
CHINA AND TIBET 1800-1900
Claudia Brown and Ju-hsi Chou Transcending
Turmoil: Painting at the Close of China’s Empire,
1796–1911 Phoenix, Arizona, 1992
Carl Crossman The Decorative Arts of the China Trade:
Paintings, Furnishings, and Exotic Curiosities
Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1991
F. L. Hawkes Pott A Short History of Shanghai
Shanghai, 1928
Richard Ellis Vinograd Boundaries of the Self: Chinese
Portraits 1600–1900 New York, 1992
JAPAN AND KOREA 1800-1900
Penelope Mason History of Japanese Art New York,
1993
Jane Portal Korea: Art and Archeology London, 2000
Dallas Finn Meiji Revisited: The Sites of Victorian Japan
New York,1995
Young-pil Kwon (ed.) The Fragrance of Ink: Korean
Literati Paintings of
the Choson Dynasty (1392–1910) Seoul, 1996
Julia Meech-Pekarik The World of the Meiji Print:
Impressions of a New Civilization New York, 1987
SOUTHEAST ASIA 1800-1900
Sylvia Fraser-Lu Burmese Crafts Past and Present
Oxford, 1994
Jean-Paul Barbier and Douglas Newton (eds)
Islands and Ancestors: Indigenous Styles of Southeast
Asia New York and Geneva, 1988
Robyn Maxwell Textiles of Southeast Asia: Tradition,
Trade and Transformation Melbourne, 1990
THE PACIFIC 1800-1900
A. Herle, N. Stanley, K. Stevenson and R. Welsch
(eds) Pacific Art: Persistence, Change and Meaning
Hawaii, 2002
R. Nile and C. Clerk Cultural Atlas of Australia, New
Zealand and the South Pacific Oxford, 1996
Nicholas Thomas Oceanic Art London, 1995
AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND 1800-1900
Joan Kerr (ed.) The Dictionary of Australian Artists:
Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to
1870 Melbourne, 1992
D. C. Starzecka (ed.) Maori: Art and Culture
London, 1996
Jane Clark and Bridget Whitelaw Golden Summers:
Heidelberg and Beyond, International Cultural
Corporation of Australia Sydney, 1986
PART VII ART, IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY
1900-2000
NORTH AMERICA 1900-1950
Abraham A. Davidson Early American Modernist
Painting, 1910–1935 New York, 1981
Terry Smith Making the Modern: Industry, Art, and
Design in America Chicago, 1993
David Bjelajac American Art: A Cultural History
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2000
Robert Hughes American Visions: The Epic History of
Art in America New York, 1997
Janet Catherine Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips Native
North American Art New York, 1998
PICTURE CREDITS AND LOCATIONS
323
264 © Estate of Robert Smithson/VAGA,
New York/DACS, London 2003
265 Bridgeman Art Library, London
266 National Palace, Mexico City/Art
Archive/Dagli Orti © 2003 Banco de
Mexico Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo
Museums Trust. Av. Cinco de Mayo No 2,
Col.Centro, Del. Cuauhtemoc 06059,
Mexico, D.F.
267 Hutchison-Eye Ubiquitous/Liba Taylor ©
DACS 2003
269t Mira Schendel Archiv, Sao Paolo, Brazil
269b Fundacion Villaneuva, Caracas,
Venezuela
271t Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina
Sofia, Madrid/Bridgeman Art Library,
London © Succession Picasso/DACS
2003
271b Moderna Museet, Stockholm © DACS
2003
272 The Hilma af Klint Foundation,
Stockholm
273 Moderna Museet, Stockholm
274 Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum/Artothek
275 Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow/Scala ©
DACS 2003
277t Imperial War Museum,
London/Bridgeman Art Library,
London
277b © Rachel Whiteread/Artangel/Sue
Ormerod
278 Haags Gemeentemuseum,
Netherlands/Bridgeman Art Library,
London © 2004 Mondrian/Holtzman
Trust c/o HCRinternational-
hcr@hcrinternational.com
279 Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2003
280 Tate Gallery, London © by Dr. Wolfgang
& Ingeborg Henze-Ketterer,
Wichtrach/Bern
281 Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Kunste
Berlin, Kunstsammlung © DACS 2003
283t Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, BPK
283b Hutchison-Eye Ubiquitous/Vladimir
Birgus
284 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
Bequest of Gertrude Stein, 1947 (47 106)
photo © 1996; © Succession
Picasso/DACS 2003
285 Peter Kent © FLC/ADAGP, Paris and
DACS, London 2003
286 Private Collection/Bridgeman Art
Library, London © ADAGP, Paris and
DACS, London 2003
287 Lluis Casals Fotografia Scp
288 Tate Gallery, London
289 Civico Museo d’Arte Contemporanea,
Milan/© Saporetti
290 Aga Khan Trust for Culture/Gary Otte
291 Rose Issa
292 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Ethnologisches Museum, BPK/Heini
Schneebeli
293 from Johannes Fabian: Remembering the
Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire
(1996)
294 Herbert Cole
295 British Museum, London © Sokari
Douglas Camp
297 Professor Michael Godby
298 Parviz Tanavoli
299 Sue Barr/View Pictures, London
300 Robert Harding Picture Library
301 Khalili Collection/The Nour
Foundation
302 Fine Arts & Photography, Xinjiang,
China
303 Fine Arts & Photography, Xinjiang,
China
304 The Royal Collection © HM Queen
Elizabeth II
305 Thomas B Keehn
306 Private Collection/Michael Sullivan
307 SMC Publishing Inc.Taipei
308 British Museum, London
309 British Museum, London
310 Hutchison-Eye Ubiquitous/Michael
MacIntyre
311 National Gallery of Malaysia Permanent
Collection
312 © Karen Stevenson, Christchurch, New
Zealand
313 © Hugh Stevenson, P.N.G Advisers, New
South Wales
315t Photo: Dunstan and Kinge
Photographers, Gisborne, New Zealand
315b Private Collection/Bridgeman Art
Library, London
316 Universe in Universe Worlds of Art © Pat
Binder, Gerhard Haupt and William
Kentridge
NOTE ON SPELLINGS AND PLACE NAMES
The names of all the countries, major physical features and regions, and cities (modern or historical) are spelled in accordance with English
conventional usage, e.g. Burma, Nile, Anatolia, Carthage, Constantinople.
For all other names the general practice is to show them in terms of the contemporary forms that fit the time-scale of the maps concerned.
Thus Latin names in the Classical world, Sanskrit names in the early dynastic states of India, e.g. Nicaea (modern Iznik), Pataliputra (modern Patna).
All Chinese names, whether ancient or modern, are spelled in accordance with the now widely accepted Pinyin system. For the early
modern period contemporary names may reflect a political administrative situation rather different from today’s, e.g. Christiania (now Oslo), Pozsony
(now Bratislava), Königsberg (now Kaliningrad).
All names in languages using Roman alphabet are spelled with all the diacritics appropriate to those languages, e.g. Córdoba, Århus, S˘ibenik,
Chis,nina˘u. But names derived from transliteration or transcription from non-Roman alphabet languages, e.g. Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean,
Persian, Sanskrit, are spelled without the often unfamiliar diacritics used in the scholarly romanisation of these languages, e.g. Sana (not S,an‘a¯’),
Sravasti (not S´ra¯vastı¯).
322
PICTURE CREDITS AND LOCATIONS
14–15 © Colorphoto Hinz, Allschwil-Basel
16 Direction Regionale des Affaires
Culturelles, Rhônes-Alpes
17 National Museum of Namibia
20l Paul Bahn
20r Bridgeman Art Library, London
21 Paul Bahn
20r Flemming Bau
22–23 Robert Harding Picture Library/Richard
Ashworth
24 British Museum, London
25 Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
26t South American Pictures,
Woodbridge/Tony Morrison
26b Powerstock
29 Hutchison-Eye Ubiquitous/Peter
Moszynski
29b Natural History Museum, Vienna/Alice
Schumacher
30 © 2003 Centro Camuno di Studi
Preistorici, Capo di Ponte, Italy
31 National Museum of Denmark,
Copenhagen
32 from Christos Doumas: The Wall Paintings
of Thera (Athens & London, 1992)
33 British School at Athens
34 British Museum, London
35 Ancient Art & Architecture Collection,
Pinner, Middlesex
36 British Museum, London
37 Sonia Halliday Photographs/James
Wellard
38 Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto © ROM
39 British Museum, London/Bridgeman Art
Library, London
40 from L Woolley: The Ziggurat and its
Surroundings, Ur Excavations, vol. V (1939)
41 British Museum, London/Bridgeman Art
Library, London
42 The Art Archive/Archaeological Museum,
Aleppo, Syria/Dagli Orti
43 British Museum, London/Bridgeman Art
Library, London
45t&b Omar Khan www.harappa.com
46 Cultural Relics Press, Beijing
47 Cultural Relics Press, Beijing
48 National Museum of Korea, Seoul
49 Shinto Village Museum for Earrings,
Gumma Prefecture, Japan
50 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
51 Auckland University
52–3 Robert Harding Picture Library, London
54 Jeffrey Blomster
55 South American Pictures,
Woodbridge/Tony Morrison
56 Adriana von Hagen
57 Adriana von Hagen
61t Hutchison-Eye Ubiquitous/Nigel
Howard
61b Bildarchiv Preussisches Kulturbesitz,
Berlin
62 British Museum, London
63 Pergamon Museum, Berlin/Bridgeman
Art Library, London
64 Archivo Fotografico, Museo
Arqueologica Nacional, Madrid/Jose
Latova
65 Museo Civico Archeologico, Bologna
67r Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
67l Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,
Rome/Scala
68 Noordbrabants Museum,
‘s-Hertogenbosch
69 Bridgeman Art Library, London
70 British Museum, London
71 Cameraphoto Arte, Venice
72 Museum of Fine Arts Houston,
Texas/Bridgeman Art Library, London
73 Werner Forman Archive, London
74 Brooklyn Museum of Art/Bridgeman Art
Library, London
75 Stapleton Collection/Bridgeman Art
Library, London
76 British Museum, London
77 Ancient Art & Architecture Collection,
Pinner, Middlesex
78 Usak Archaeological Museum, Usak
79 Ancient Art & Architecture Collection,
Pinner, Middlesex
80 Murray Eiland
81 Musée Historique des Tissus, Lyon
Inv.897.iii.s/Studio Basset
82 Kabul Museum, Afghanistan Bridgeman
Art Library, London
83 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum
für Indische Kunst
84 Sarnath Museum, Uttar
Pradesh/Bridgeman Art Library, London
85 Hutchison-Eye Ubiquitous/Patricio
Goycolea
86 Robert Harding Picture Library, London
87 British Museum, London
88 Gwongu Kim, The New National
Museum project Team, Seoul
89 Kobe City Museum
89 Historical Museum, Hanoi/Werner
Forman Archive, London
90 Cleveland Museum of Art, John L.
Severance Fund 1973.106
93t Stuart Bedford, New Zealand Historic
Places Trust/Pouhere Taongo
93b Archives Barbier-Mueller, Geneva/JeanLouis
Sosna,1998
94–95 Robert Harding Picture Library, London
96t Maxwell Museum of Anthropology,
Albuquerque/Werner Forman Archive,
London
96b Field Museum of Natural History,
Chicago/Werner Forman Archive,
London
98 British Museum, London
99 Museo Nacional de Antropología,
Mexico City/Ancient Art & Architecture
Collection, Pinner, Middlesex
101 Frank Meddens
102 AKG London/Erich Lessing
103l Bildarchiv Preussisches
Kulturbesitz/photo Karin Marz
103r Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome
104 Scala Picture Library
105 National Library of the Netherlands
106 Ancient Art & Architecture, Pinner,
Middlesex /John King
107 Trésors de la Cathédrale, Musées de
Sens/J. P. Elie
109l Crown Copyright Historic Royal Palaces
109r National Museum of Denmark,
Copenhagen
110 Paul M. R. Maeyaert
112 Parker Library, Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge
113 Laurence King Publishing
114 Scala Picture Library
115 Cleveland Museum of Art 2003,
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
1966.368
117t © National Gallery, London
117b © Victoria & Albert Museum, London
118 © Victoria & Albert Museum, London
119 © National Gallery, London
120 Laurence King Archive
121 Bridgeman Art Library, London
122 Studio Quattrone, Florence
123 Bridgeman Art Library, London
124 Sheila Blair & Jonathan Bloom
125 Mrs Bashir Mohamed Collection/Werner
Forman Archive, London
126 Ancient Art & Architecture/Ronald
Sheridan
127 Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia/Malcolm Varon
128 Sheila Blair & Jonathan Bloom
129 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museen für
Islam/G.Niedermeiser Inv nr. 1346G
131 Sheila Blair & Jonathan Bloom
132 Sheila Blair & Jonathan Bloom
133 Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, DC, Purchase F
1952.11
134 Daud Ali
135 Daud Ali
136 Nelson–Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas
City (Purchase) F80-5
137 Martin Powers
138 Percival David Foundation, London
139 Musée des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet,
Paris (copyright L. Fournier)/© RMNEvandro
Costa
140 UNESCO
141 Tokugawam Reimeikai Foundation,
Tokyo/Bridgeman Art Library, London
142 Robert Harding Picture Library,
London
143 Private Collection/Werner Forman
Archive, London
144 British Museum, London
145 Bridgeman Art Library, London/Ken
Walsh
146–7 AKG Images/Jean Louis Nou
148 Collection Anderson, Plains Indian
Museum, Cody, Wyoming/Werner
Forman Archive, London
149 Portland Museum, Oregon/Werner
Forman Archive, London
150 Hutchison-Eye Ubiquitous/Jeremy
Horner
151 Hutchison-Eye Ubiquitous/Liba Taylor
152 South American Pictures,
Woodbridge/Tony Morrison
153 South American Pictures,
Woodbridge/Tony Morrison
155t Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna/Bridgeman Art Library, London
155b Hutchison-Eye Ubiquitous
156 Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
157 Det Nationalhistoriske Museum pa
Frederiksborg, Hillerød
158 Castle Museum, Liw, Poland
159 Polska Akademia Nauk, Instytut Sztuki
160 State Russian Museum, St
Petersburg/Bridgeman Art Library,
London
161 Hutchison-Eye Ubiquitous/Nick Haslam
162 Bridgeman Art Library, London/John
Bethell
163 © Victoria & Albert Museum, London/
Bridgeman Art Library, London
164 AKG London
165 Christopher Simon-Sykes
166 Stichting Koninklijk Amsterdam,
Educatieve Dienst
167 Kunsthistorisches Museum
Vienna/Bridgeman Art Library, London
168 Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts de
Belgique/photo Cussac
169 Museo del Prado, Madrid/Bridgeman Art
Library, London
170 Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden
171 Stadtarchiv, Nuremberg
172 A. F. Kersting
173 Die Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen
Dresden
174 Bridgeman Art Library, London
175 Gemaldegalerie, Dresden/Artothek
176 Château de Versailles et de
Trianon/Photo Réunion des Musées
Nationaux/Jean Schormans
177 Schloss Charlottenburg,
Berlin/Bridgeman Art Library, London
178 Art Archive/Dagli Orti
179 Bridgeman Art Library, London/Ken
Walsh
180 Vatican Museums and
Galleries/Bridgeman Art Library,
London
181 Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di
Capodimonte/Bridgeman Art Library,
London
182 Araldo de Luca, Rome
183 Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg
Art Museum/Bridgeman Art Library,
London
184 Paul M. R. Maeyaert
185 Paul M. R. Maeyaert
188 Antony Hutt Archive/Ashmolean
Museum
189 N. Erzini
190 Museen zu Berlin-Preussischer
Kulturbesitz Ethnologisches Museum
191 Brooklyn Museum of Art, New
York/Bridgeman Art Library, London
192 © Victoria & Albert Museum, London
193 Sheila Blair & Jonathan Bloom
194 British Library, London
195 Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
196 Chester Beatty Library, Dublin
197 © John Fleming & Hugh Honour
198 Daud Ali
199 Daud Ali
200 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Purchase, The Vincent Astor Foundation
and the Dillon Funds Gifts (1996.338)
201 Rare Books, East Asiatic Collection,
University of California, Berkeley
202 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Purchase, The Dillon Fund, 1982
(1982.126), photo © 1995
203 Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The
Avery Brundage Collection, B60.D102
205l Hutchison-Eye Ubiquitous
205r Yun Young-Son Collection/National
Museum of Korea
206 Miranda Bruce-Mitford
207 Rijksmuseum Foundation, Amsterdam
209t Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
209b Auckland War Memorial Museum
210–11 AKG London/Joseph Martin
212 National Gallery of Scotland/Bridgeman
Art Library, London
213 Smithsonian Institution, Washington
DC/Bridgeman Art Library, London
214 Bridgeman Art Library, London
215 Bridgeman Art Library, London
216 Museo de Alhondiga de Granadita,
Guanajuat/Index Bridgeman Art Library,
London
217 Museo Nacional de Arte,
Mexico/Bridgeman Art Library, London
218 Munipipalidad de la Serena, Chile
219 Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales,
Montevideo, Uruguay
221t Science Museum, London/Bridgeman
Art Library, London
221b Martin Charles © DACS: 2003
222 Kansallisarkisto, Helsinki
223 Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
224 State Russian Museum, St
Petersburg/Scala
225 Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow/Bridgeman
Art Library, London
226 Manchester City Art Galleries,
UK/Bridgeman Art Library, London
227 Hutchison-Eye Ubiquitous/Robert
Francis
228 AKG Images/Hilbich © DACS 2003
229 Mesdag Documentatie Stichting,
Wassenaar
231l Deutsche Luftbild, Hamburg
231r Ulrich Kneise, Fotogalerie
232 Musée d’Orsay, Paris/Bridgeman Art
Library, London
233 Musée d’Orsay, Paris,/Bridgeman Art
Library, London
235t Robert HardingPicture Library,
London/Adina Tovy
235b Museo del Prado, Madrid/Bridgeman Art
Library, London
237t Wellington Museum, London/Victoria
and Albert Museum Picture Library
237b Town Hall & Civic Museum,
Siena/Bridgeman Art Library, London
238 Paul M. R. Maeyaert
239 Hungarian National Gallery,
Budapest/Mester Tibor
240 Khalili Collection/The Nour Foundation
241 Steven Vernoit
242 Staatliche Museen zu BerlinPreussischer
Kulturbesitz
Ethnologisches Museum/BPK
243 Staatliche Museen zu BerlinPreussischer
Kulturbesitz
Ethnologisches Museum/BPK
244 Musée du Louvre, Paris/© Photo RMN-
HerveLewandowski
245 Hutchison-Eye Ubiqitous/John Egan
246 Christies Images
247 Library of Congress/Prokudin-Gorskii
Collection
248 India Office Library and Records,
London
249 © Victoria & Albert Museum, London
250 Martyn Gregory Gallery
251 National Palace Museum, Beijing
253t National Museum of Korea, Seoul
251b Scripps College, Claremont, CA
254 Hutchison-Eye Ubiquitous/Jeremy
Horner
255 Archives Barbier-Mueller, Geneva/Alain
Ferrazzini
256 Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
257 Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
259t National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
259b National Museum of New Zealand,
Wellington/Werner Forman Archive,
London
260–61 © Miriam Schapiro/Galerie
Bischofberger, Zurich
263t Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
Alfred Stieglitz Collection 1952 (52.203)
Photo © ARS, NY and DACS, London
2003
263b Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield
Village
Every effort has been made by the
publishers to trace the copyright
holders and we apologize in advance
for any unintentional omissions.
We would be pleased to insert the
appropriate acknowledgement in
any subsequent edition of this
publication.
Picture credits are given by page
number. The following abbreviations
are used:
l left
r right
b bottom
t top
INDEX
325
Angels, collapse of 70
Angers
architecture 110, 154
ecclesiastical centre 116
museum 285
university 112
Angevin family 121
Angilbertus, Archbishop 104
Angkor
historical site 206, 254, 310
temple 95, 142, 143, 206, 206
Angles-sur-l’Anglin 19
Anglesey, megalithic art 29
Anglo-Russian Agreement 246
Angoche 127
Angola 191, 243, 292
Angostura 218
Angoulême
murals 110
panel painting 118
royal progress 154
Angry Penguins 314
Angus, Rita (1908-70) 314
Ani 106, 107
excavations 245
Aniane 103
Aniba 37, 38
Anige (1245-1306) 139
Anika 272
Animals
in art 42-43, 43, 57, 80
trade in wild 69, 69
Aniwaniwa, indigenous art 315
Anjar 128
Ankara 130, 195
archaeology 298
fine arts 298, 300
Anlar, temple 134
Anman 128
Annaba 76, 124
Annam 254
Anne, Aki and God (Ahtila) 273
Annecy, château 118
Anping, trade centre 192
Anqing 202, 250
Anshan (Persis) 78
Anshun (China) 306
Ansi 89
Antalya 32, 195
carpet-making 244
Antelas, megalithic art 29
Anthropophagite Manifesto 268
Antibes 284, 285
Antigonid kingdom 62
Antigonus Monophthalmos 62
Antimachus I, tetradrachm 62
Antinoopolis 74, 74, 77
Antioch 63, 67, 69, 70, 128
Crusader control 106
gem workshop 67
Latin Christian territory 130
mosaics 71, 81
patronage centre 66
Roman empire art 68
sculpture centre 62
trading centre 107
Antiochia 66
Antiochus I 63
Antiquities
Italian 122, 122, 123, 181
restored 183
Antiquity, culture of 128, 171, 180,
182
Antoninus Pius, emperor 91
Antwerp
architecture 279
art academy 186
art collection 187
art market 155
Art Nouveau 220
artistic centre 154, 166, 168,
228, 278, 279
artistic institutions 229
artists’ travels 187
auction houses 187
ecclesiastical centre 116
Exposition Universelles 229
global artefacts 278
Jesuit Church 168
sculpture 117
Spanish conquest 154
trade centre 228, 228
Anumakonda, temple 134
Anuradhapura, stupa 84, 85, 134
Anuta, Lapita pottery 51, 92
Anxi 83
kiln site 137
Anyang
archaeology 306, 306, 307
early urbanism 22, 25
tombs 25, 25
Aomori 252
Aosta, panel painting 118
Apa Apollo 77
Apa Jeremia 77
Apa Shenoute, White Monastery
77
Apadana relief 78, 79, 79
Apamea 62, 70, 71, 80
Apatzingan 54, 54
Apelles (painter) 61
Apennines 65
Aphrodisias 67, 68
Aphrodito 77
Apollo 11 Cave 16, 16, 17
Apollo Fountain (Flötner) 171
Apollodorus of Damascus 66
Apollonia 62, 65, 67
Appomaottox, Civil War site 214
Apuli peoples 65
Apurimac 101
Aq Kupruq, carved stone head
16
Aqaba, trade centre 131
Aqua, Andrea del’ 158
Aquae Calidae 66
Aquae Sulis 68
Aquileia 67, 68, 69, 70
archbishopric 104
glass-making centre 71
literary centre 103
murals 110
Aquitaine 102
Aquitania 65, 69
Arabia
Ottoman Possession 194
Roman Empire trade 69
Wahhabi clerics 195
Wahhabi reformers 244
and West Asia 80, 195
Arabistan 81
Arachosia 63, 79, 80, 83
Arad 238
Arago 89
Aragon 110, 119
Araisk 246
Arak, carpets 301
Arakan 206
Aran, lustre ware 131
Aranjuez 178, 234
Aranquin 100
Aratu sites 100
Arausio 66
Arawak 100
language 56
Arawe, Lapita pottery 51, 92
Arayashiki 49
Arbanasi 185
Arbela 80
Arbuda, temple 134
Arcadia 60
Archaeology
Africa 36, 72, 73
Asia 298, 299
Central Asia 247, 247
China 46, 47, 86, 87, 139, 306,
306, 307, 307
Ice Age 16, 18
India 84, 85
Italy 182, 183, 183
Japan and Korea 48, 49
marine 68
North Africa 76, 241
Pacific 92, 92
Southeast Asia 91, 310
West Africa 294
West Asia 245, 300
Archanes 33
Archangel 160
folk art 224, 225
trade centre 156
Architecture
countries
Abbasid 128, 129
Achaemenid 78, 78
Aegean 60
Asia 192, 193
Australia 259, 314
Austria 280
Britain 162, 164, 226, 227,
276
Byzantine 184
Central America 54, 55, 99,
151, 151, 167, 266
Central Andean 57
Central Asia 196
China 136, 251, 306, 307,
307
Egyptian 12, 22, 75
European 112, 184-185,
185, 186, 220, 220, 221,
282-283, 283
Finland 222
France 174, 276, 284, 284,
285, 285
Germany 61, 170, 171, 172,
173, 280, 281
Greek centres 35
India 135, 248, 248, 249,
304, 304
Iran 130
Italy 120-121, 122, 123, 155,
181, 182, 237, 288, 289
Japan 140, 141, 204, 205,
252, 309
Korea 140, 141, 204, 309
Netherlands 166, 166, 168,
169, 229, 278, 278, 279,
279
New Zealand 315
North Africa 76, 124, 124,
125, 125, 188, 188, 189,
241, 290, 290-291
North America 97, 214
Pacific 257, 257
Parthian 80, 80, 130
Poland/Lithuania 158-159,
159
Portugal 178, 178, 235
Roman 67
Russian 160, 160, 161, 224
Sasanian 81
Scandinavia and the Baltic
156-157, 222-223, 223,
272
Scottish 162
South America 27, 152,
268, 269
South Asia 198, 199
South Netherlands 168,
169
Southeast Asia 91, 206, 255
Spain 178, 179, 235, 287
Sub-Saharan Africa 126,
190-191, 243
Switzerland 171, 171, 280
Umayyad 125
USA 212, 213, 213, 263,
264, 265
West Africa 294, 295
West Asia 194, 195, 195,
245, 300, 300
Pritzker Prize 316
styles
Adam 165
Baroque 151, 155, 162, 164,
164, 169, 182
Beaux Arts 309
church patronage 155
Churrigueresque 151
classical rules 12, 122, 123,
154, 180, 224
decoration 39, 43
domestic 270
Doric order 12, 35, 60
eclectic 276
Gothic 110, 110, 112, 120-
121, 122, 159, 162, 164,
164, 184, 185
Gothic Revival (NeoGothic)
227, 227
Greek revival 213
Hispano-Moresque 125
industrial 220, 221, 263
International 300
Ionic order 12, 35, 60
major architects and main
cities 173
Manueline 178
Modernism/Post- 260, 276,
276, 277, 278, 280, 283,
285
monumental 35, 103, 135,
262
Mughal 199, 199
Neo-Gothic (Gothic
Revival) 213
Neoclassical 164, 212, 222,
224, 238, 248, 249, 281
Palladian 159, 162, 164,
165
revivalism 226, 239
Rococo 173
Spanish colonial 151
technological
developments 271
town-planning 60, 123, 159,
174, 181, 221, 238, 238, 239,
276, 304
city layouts 214
communal housing 221
see also Churches; Palace/castle
sites; Religious; Renaissance
Arcisate 67
Arcy-sur-Cure 17
Ardabil 128, 195
carpet-making 244
minaret 130
shrine comples 131
Ardashir I 81, 81
Ardistan, minaret 130
Ardmulchan, megalithic art
29
Areia 63
Areion 82
Arelate 66, 68
Arenys 234
Arequipa 152, 152, 218, 219
art centre 153
Arévalo 110
Arezzo 121, 122, 123
altarpieces 181
university 114
Argentina 57, 101
architecture 153
artistic activity 219, 219, 268,
268, 269, 269
Jesuit institutions 153
Postglacial 20
World Crafts Council 317
Argos 33, 35
cult statues 60
floor mosaics 71
Aria 78, 80, 81, 82
Arica 152, 153, 218
Arikamedu, coins 84
Arima, Crusader castle 130
Ariminum 64, 66
Aristotle 120
Arita 88, 89, 204, 205, 252
Arkhangel’sk 160, 160
Arles 70, 103
architecture 177
artists’ travels 119
glass-making centre 71
pilgrimage centre 110, 111,
111, 118
Arman (1928-) 285
Armant 77
Armenia 78
Christian persecution 81
Christian territory 130
churches 158
kingdom 106
Levant territory 131
manuscript production 107
Monophysite 106
nationalism 81
radical art 275
Armenoi 33
Armidale 259
Armory Show, New York 262
Arnhem 228
architecture 278, 279
painting 117
Arnhem Land
indigenous art 314
shelters 16
Arnott, Bruce 297
Arofreville, metalwork 59
Arolsen 230
Arras 110
ecclesiastical centre 116
metalworking 112
tapestry 117, 174
Arretium 64, 65, 66
Arsaces 80
Arsikere, temple 134
Arsinoe 74, 75, 77
Arsinoe, Pharaoh consort 62
Arslantas 43
Art
associations/institutions/
societies 186, 204, 205, 230,
231, 244, 262, 268, 286
chambers see Kunstkammern
colonies/groups 220, 221, 228,
228, 232, 236, 272, 276,
278, 282, 282, 288, 304
environmental 265
and the Earth 265, 265
in a globalized world 273
and industry 239
events 316
exhibitions 215, 219, 236, 239,
245, 258, 262, 265, 266,
268, 269, 272, 274, 284,
288, 295, 304, 307
folk
Eastern Europe 282
ethnic/folk 230, 231, 239,
239, 274, 291, 307
India 248, 249, 304, 304
Russian folk/peasant crafts
161, 224, 224, 225
graphic workshops 269
guilds 116
institutions, worldwide 316,
316, 317, 317
mail 269
markets 154-155, 226, 232, 277
movements see names, e.g. Art
Nouveau
publishing 231, 282
research institutes 316, 317
review magazines, 268, 268,
269, 282, 283
revolutionary 274
schools/academies 157, 165,
172, 172, 179, 179, 180,
218, 236, 248, 259, 266,
277, 282, 298, 300
sponsors 316, 317
styles
cave art 18, 18, 19-20, 258-
259, 314
conceptual 267, 273, 275,
277, 279
Costumbrismo 234
experimentation 204, 270
Greek archaic 35
Ilkhanid 131
illusionism 248
internet 269
Japanese 204, 205, 252
kinetic 275
linocut 297
Muralism 266, 267, 267
new spaces for new art 264,
273
non-figurative 207, 269, 273
nonconformist 275, 275
panel painting 116, 117
plein-air 259, 259
popular media 273, 309
public 271, 273
Timurid 132
video 309, 316
studios 205, 224
training centres 280
workshops 268
vandalism 187
see also Movie and TV
Art cabinet 146, 168, 168, 169
Art collections
Australia 258, 314, 314
British 226, 243
China 137, 306, 307
English Renaissance 163
European 154, 186, 187, 220,
243, 282
Germany 172
Japan and Korea 252, 308, 309
Netherlands 167, 228, 278,
279
North America 214, 215, 262,
262
Pacific 312, 313
Poland/Lithuania 159
Russian 161, 225
Scandinavia and the Baltic
States 272
Spain and Portugal 179, 286
Swedish 156
and Thirty Years’ War 172
West Asia 300
Art Concret 278
Art Deco 276
Art Nouveau 211, 220, 221, 221,
225, 226, 228, 228, 229, 232,
233, 239, 272, 300
Art of Painting (Vermeer) 167
Artabanus II 80
Artaxata 62, 80
Arte Popular 269
Arte Povera 288, 289
Artemita 80
Artistic work
African exports 190, 243
British 226-227
commissions 155
cross-currents 154, 154, 155,
169, 173, 174, 180, 182,
187, 218, 219, 225, 262,
263, 270, 270, 272, 273,
286, 290-291, 300
European 103, 108, 109,
110
North America 212, 212, 213,
213, 213
Pacific cultural centres 312
Russian 224-225
Russian patronage 160
treatises 180
Artois 168
Arts and Crafts movement 221,
226, 227, 239, 239
Arturo (review) 269
Arverni tribe 66
Aryans 159
Arzanene 80
Arzeu 124
Asahi 88
Asam, Cosmas Damian (1686-
1739) and Egid Quirin (1692-
1750) 172, 172
Asana 27, 27
Asante kingdom 191, 243, 243
Ascalon 68, 78
Aschaffenburg 170
Ashgabat 303
Ashikaga dictatorship 141
Ashir 124
Ashkhabad
arts and crafts 302
carpet market 246
museum 247, 302, 303
Ashmarov, Chingiv 303
Ashmed, Bashir 305
Ashmunayn 129
Ashoka, emperor 53, 82, 84
Buddhism 83
lion capital 84
Tissarakshita, Queen of Ashoka
(A. Tagore) 304
Ashur 40, 42, 42, 43, 43
early urbanism 25
Parthian architecture 80
tablets 78
Ashville 262
Asia 16, 18, 21, 94, 106-107, 111,
192-193, 298-299
art forms 298
art schools 298
Byzantine art 106, 106, 107
Communism 298
courtly art 192
east 46, 46, 47
globalization 299
international art market 299
Japanese imperialism 308
museums 298
Postglacial 21
religions 192
trade
and culture 192, 192
maritime 192
Roman Empire 69
Asia Minor 63, 68
late Roman Art 71
324
A Battery Shelled (Lewis) 277
A Ferry in Sichuan (Huang Binhong)
306
A Hong Kong Artist (Thompson)
250
Aachen 10, 102
ecclesiastical centre116
manuscript painting 112
palace 104, 104, 108, 109
wall mosaics 105
Aalto, Alvar 273
Aaltonen, Wäinö 272, 273
Abaj Takalik 54
Abarquh 131
Abarshahr 80, 81
Abbas, Shah 194
Abbasid Caliphate 125, 128-129,
129, 130, 132
Abbati, Giuseppe (1836-68) 237
Abbott Farm 55
Abd Allah, Muhammad ibn
188
Abdera 64
Greek colony 58
Abdulaziz, sultan 245
Abdulhamid, sultan 245
Abelard, Peter 113
Aberdeen 163, 220
art movement 226
Aberystwyth 164
art movement 226
Abi 302
Abildgaard, Nicolai (1743-1809)
157
Abo 157, 220, 222, 222
Aboboreira, megalithic art 29
Abomey, art centre 295
Aboriginal Memorial 315
Abramtsevo, art colony 220, 221,
225, 225
Abri Morin 20
Abri Pataud 17
Abstract art 267, 272, 274-275,
278, 281, 287, 289, 314
Abtei Laach 108
Abu, temple 134
Abu Iulia, architecture 155
Abu Mena
cemetery 77
pilgrimage centre 76
Abu Simbel 37, 38
excavations 245
Abuja, archaeology 294
Abusir 78
Abydos 38
early urbanism 25
Acacus, pottery 36
Academy of Fine Arts, St
Petersburg 161
Acancéh 54
Accra 191
Aceh 143
Acem Hüyük 41
Acha-sansong 89
Achaea 66, 69
Achaemenid empire 58, 58, 59, 62-
63, 78, 78, 79, 82
tributes 82
Achyutaraya, king 135
Acolman 98
Acra, arts and crafts 294
Acragas 64, 65
Acre 106
Crusader castle 130
Ottoman 195
trading centre 107
Acruvium 66
Adamklissi 68
Adana 244
Addis Ababa
tourist/modern art 293
traditional arts 292
Adelaide 258, 259
indigenous art 314
Aden 126, 129, 190
museums 300
Adena 27, 55, 97
Adena people 26, 55, 55, 97
Admonitions of the Instructress to Court
Ladies (Gu Kaizhi) 87
Adrano 110
Adrianople 102, 130
carpet-making 244
Judaism 184
Ottoman capital 131
trade centre 195
Adriatic Sea, trading route 107,
122
Adulis 72, 73
Aegae 62
Aegean 32-33, 33, 60, 60, 61
-style frescoes 32
art 42
palace sites 32
Aegina 33, 35
temple 60
Aegyptus 66, 69
Aeneid, The 67
Aesthetic movement 227
Aetolia 60
Aezanes, king 72, 73
Afalou Bou Rhummel 18
Afghanistan 41, 53, 69
art schools/museums 298
British client state 246
destruction of Buddhas 317
Roman Empire trade 69
trade 36
Afrasiyab 133
Buddhist art 83
museum 303
Africa 11, 36-37, 72-73, 190-191,
242-243
culture
art 190, 211, 242, 243, 284
chairs 190, 191
festivals 190
iron-age 73
iron-working 53, 72
late Roman Art 71
masks 12, 242, 243
Nile Valley 36
Nok figures 72, 72
red slip ware 71
rock art and agriculture 14,
36
rock paintings 17
Upper Nile 37
war booty 243
Ice Age/Postglacial 16, 16, 17,
18, 21
politics
in the 19th century 242
alien rule 243
colonial settlements 190,
191
outside influences 127, 242
Roman empire 66, 70
states 127, 190, 191
religion
Christianity 154
trade 69, 127, 190, 191, 242
ivory 70, 127
Afro-Portuguese ivories 190, 191
Afyon 78, 130
mosque 131
Agade (Akkad) 41
Agades 240
Agadez, trade centre 126, 188
Agathe 64
Agats, wood carving 310
Agedincum 68
Agen, ecclesiastical centre 118
Agerup, wall painting 116
Aghmat, textiles 124
Aghtamar 106
Agighiol, Thraco-Getic hoard 58
Agimont 168
Agnéli, Ivan (1869-1917) 272
Agra
architecture 249
historic site 248
miniature paintings 198
museum 304
religious architecture 192
Taj Mahal 147
Agricola (Tacitus) 69
Agrigentum 64, 65, 68
Agrinion 60
Aguascalientes 266
Populism 216
Ahar, sculpture 85
Ahichhatra, archaeology 84
Ahmad Yasavi, gravesite 132, 133
Ahmadabad
mosque 134
painting 248, 304
textiles 198, 248, 304
Ahmadnagar
miniatures 198
mosque 134
Ahmantan 81
Ahmedabad, museum 298
Ahteut 96
Ahtila, Eua-Liisa (1959-) 273
Ahuramazda (deity) 78
Ai Khanum 63, 79, 84
Aigle, château 118
Aigues-Mortes 112, 114
Aihole, historic site 248
‘Ain Ghazal 21
Ain Manawir 78
Ainu culture 204
Air 126, 190, 191
Air Painting (Aeropittura) 289
Aitape, Lapita pottery 51, 51, 92
Aix-en-Provence 103, 104, 110,
119, 285
architecture 177
cathedral altarpiece 119
stained glass 118
Ajanta
folk art 249
historic site 248
painted caves 84, 85, 85
wall painting 304
Ajdabiya, textiles 124
Ajlun, Muslim castle 130
Ajmer
architecture 249
miniature paintings 198
mosque 134
museum 298
Akan, archaeology 294
Akan states 127, 127, 190
Akbar, emperor 198, 199
Akhmim 77
Akhnur 85
Akita 204
Akkad 40, 41
Akkadian Empire 41
and art 41
Akota, sculpture 85
Akrotiri 32, 33
Aksu 196, 196, 247, 302
Akwamu 190
Akyu 49
Al Akhdar 188
Al Azhar mosque 188
Al Bakri (chronicler) 126
Al Jabal 188
Al Mina 34, 34, 78
al-Mansur, Ahmad 188, 188,
189
Alabaster 23, 37, 43
Assyrian wall relief 43
carved trough 24
Egyptian see calcite
English 109, 111, 112, 116,
116, 118, 163, 169
exports 109
Northern Europe 116
South Netherlands 168, 169
Alaca Hüyük 40, 41, 41
Alagou 86
Alalakh 32
Alamgirpur, early urbanism 25
Åland 157
Alans, collapse of 70
Alanya, mosque 130, 131
Alasehir 130
Alaska
decorative art 97
Inuits 53, 96
land-otter mask 214
Microblade tradition 26
Alawi dynasty 188, 189
Alba Fucens 64
Alba Iulia 154
cathedral 185, 185
Albacet 234
Albania 81
World Crafts Council 316
Albany 212
Albert Galleron, P. L. 238
Albert and Isabella 168
Alberti, Leon Battista 122
Albi, print-making 118
Albisola, art event 316
Albright Art Gallery 262
Alcalá de Guadaira, castle 118
Alcalá de Henares 71, 178
Alcázar de San Juan 234
Alchi, art centre 200
Alcobaça 110, 114
ecclesiastical centre 118
Alcoy, paper 234
Alcuin 105
Aldi, Pietro (1858-88) 237, 237
Aleijandinho 152
Aleksandropol, Dacian phalerae
58
Aleppo 42, 42, 43, 78
mosaics 128
museum 298
Muslim 130
Seljuk 130
textiles 195
trading centre 131
Aleria 66
Alexander I, Tsar 222
Alexander II, Tsar 224
Alexander III of Macedon (the
Great) 12, 52, 60, 61, 62-63, 74,
78, 78, 79, 80, 82, 82, 84
Alexander III (Russia) 225
Alexandria 52, 63, 67, 73, 74, 78,
82, 128
cemetery 77
churches 70, 74
Hellenistic art 63
Islamic control 102
ivory carving 76
Mamluk monument 131
mosaics 77
Ottoman city 188, 195
patronage centre 66
pilgrimage centre 240
red slip ware 71
Roman art and trade 67, 68
School of Fine Art 291
tiraz factories 129
trade 131, 190
and West Asia 80
Alexandria ad Caucasum 79
Alexandria ad Indum 79
Alexandria ad Issum 78
Alexandria Arachoton 79
Alexandria Areion 63, 78, 80
Alexandria Bactra, Kushan
art/hoards 82
Alexandria Bucephala 82
Alexandria (Carmania) 78
Alexandria Charax 78
Alexandria in Egypt 61
Alexandria Eschate 63, 79, 82
Alexandria in India 82
Alexandria (Kabul) 79
Alexandria Margiana 78
Alexandria (Merv), Parthian mint
80
Alexandria Nicaea 82
Alexandria Oreiton 79, 82
Alexandria Oxiana 79, 80, 82
Alexandria Prophthasia 63, 78, 82
Alexandropolis 80
Alfonso I of Naples 122
Alfonso V of Aragon 119
Alfred the Great 105
Algeria
architecture 290
artistic cross-currents 290
colonial expansion 240
Ice Age 18
indigenous art 240, 240
Muslim/Jewish refugees 188
Ottoman 194
Western-style art 240, 291
Algiers 102, 178
architecture 125, 290, 290
artistic centre 188, 241, 290
textiles 240
urban development 241
Algonquin Park 263
Algonquian tribe 148, 148, 212
Alhambra see Granada
Alicante 125, 178, 234
Alice (South Africa), art school
296
Aligates Quarry 96
Alijó, megalithic art 29
Alkali Ridge 96
Allagadda, carving 248
Allahabad
miniatures 198
museum 298
Allahdino, early urbanism 25
all’antica 122, 123, 183
Allegory of Sight, The (Jan Brueghel
the Elder) 169
Allifae 66
Alligator teeth 97
Almansa 234
Almaty, museum 298, 303
Almelo, architecture 279
Almendras, megalithic art 29
Almería 124, 125
Almodóvar del Rio, castle 118
Almohads empire 110, 124, 125,
125
Almoravid empire 124, 125, 125
Alnwick, castle 116
Alpériz, megalithic art 29
Alphabet
Cyrillic 106
Greek art 34
Roman 301
Alpinism 231
Alsace Lorraine 220
Alta Vista 98
Altai 82
Altamira 19
Altar de Sacrificios 54
Altenburg 230
Altintepe 44, 44, 78,
Altishahr 196, 196
Altun Ha 98
Aluchaideng 86
Alum Creek 55
Alvsborg 156
Ama 88, 89
Amagh
archbishopric 104
monastery 103
Amalfi
archbishopric 104
bronze doors 111
metalworking 110
Amapa 98
Amara 72
Amara, temple 37
Amaral, Tarsila do 268, 268
Amarapura, pagodas 255
Amaravati
archaeology 84
historic site 248
stupa 85, 85
Amasis vase 34
Amasya 130, 195
mosque 131
Amauta (review) 268
Amazon region 100
Amazonia 219
Ambaranatha, temple 134
Amber 21, 53
Aegean 32, 33
Baltic 68, 69
Burma 255
figurine 68
Northern Europe 58
Roman empire 67, 69
trade route 30
Western Mediterranean 64-65
Amber (S Asia), minature painting
198
Ambitle, Lapita pottery 51
Ambon 254
mosque 143
trade 207
Ambrose, Bishop 70
Ameca 54
Amecameca 98
Amekni, pottery 36
Amenhotep III, temple 39
America 10, 12, 94
Civil War 214, 214, 215, 246
North Netherlands trade 167
see also North America; South
America
Americas 26-27, 27
Ames-Webster house, Boston 236,
237
Amida 81, 129
Amiens 103, 112
ecclesiastical centre 116
Amin, sculpture 84
Amir, Shakykh Muhammad 249
Amman 32, 195
fine arts 300
Amnisos 33
Amoi 132
Amol, Sasanian mint 81
Amorbach 103
Amoy 250, 306, 307
Amphipolis 60, 61
Amphorae, wine/oil 71
Amri, early urbanism 25
Amritsar
artistic centre 304
miniature paintings 198
Sikh religious centre 249
Amrol, temple 134
Amsa-dong 49
Amsterdam 154, 157
20th century 278
architecture 278, 279, 279
art centre 166, 166, 186, 228,
228, 270, 278, 279
art collection 187
Art Nouveau 220
artistic influences 173, 176
artistic institutions 229, 278,
279
artists’ travels 187
auction houses 187, 316
De Stijl 283
illumination 117
map-making 167
School 229, 278, 278
Town Hall 166
trade centre 166, 167, 169
Amun
Karnak temple 39
precinct 39
Theban deity 38-9
Amunemopet 39
Anabaptist, attitudes to art 154
Anagni 110, 111, 114
Anasazi culture 96, 97
Anatolia 28, 78, 132
artistic influences 79, 188
carpet-making centres 244,
301
Islamization 131
Ottoman Possession 188, 194
trade routes 195
Anatomy of a Komono (Schapiro)
261
Anau 246, 303
archaeological survey 247
madrasa 133
Ancona 66, 67, 181
cathedral 110
fortifications 180
Ancyra 62
Andermach 108
Anderson Galleries 262
Andes, Andean cultures 56-57,
100
Andhras dynasty 85
Andijan 196, 246, 302
Andizhan, arts and crafts 302
Andrade, Oswald de 268
Andros, architecture 283
Anduo 302
Aneityum, Lapita pottery 51
Anfield-an-der-Leine 280
Angas, George French (1822-86)
258
Angel 96, 97
INDEX
Figures in roman refer to
main text references; figures
in bold refer to maps; and
figures in extra bold refer
to illustration captions.
INDEX
327
Beckmann, Max (1884-1950) 278
Bécquer, José Domínguez (1805-
45) 234
Bécquer, Valeriano Domínguez
(1833-70) 234
Bedford 55
Bednur 198
Bedolina rock carving 30
Bedsa, caves 84
Beduins 190
Beer Street (Hogarth) 164
Begram
archaeology 303
Buddhist art 83
ivory 83, 84
Beijing 46, 47, 86, 87, 133, 138,
200
architecture 192
art centre 138, 200, 202, 250
Central Art Academy 307
courtly art 192
Forbidden City 203, 203
gardens 200, 202
Ming capital 138
museums 298, 306, 307
National Library 307
policy centre 307
printing 139, 192, 200, 202,
250
route to west China 306
textiles 250
treasures’ route 306
Beirut 130
Beirut 195, fine arts 300
Beja, castle 118
Bejarano, Manuel Cabral (1827-
91) 234
Belcayre 17
Belec 185
Belém 218, 219
Belém do Pará 152, 153
Belevi 60
Belfast 220
architecture 276
art movement 226
Belgian Congo, ivory 221
Belgica 66, 69
Belgium 228-229, 278-279
artistic institutions 229
artists’ travels 228, 278
cross-border contacts 228
institutions and monuments
279
World Crafts Council 316
Belgrade 184, 195
art centre 282
art review magazine 282
town-planning 238
Belisario, Isaac (1795-1849) 217
Belize 266
Bell, Clive and Vanessa 276
Bellini, Giovanni 122
Bellotto, Bernardo (1721-80) 173
Belmonte, castle 118
Belo Horizonte 268
art event 317
Beluga Point 96
Belur, temple 134
Belvoir, Crusader castle 130
Bemba 190
Bemis, Samuel 213
Benares
architecture 248
historic site 248
textiles 198
Bendigo 258
Beneca 212
Benedict Biscop 102
Benedictine order 153
Benediktbeuern 103
Benevento 102, 110, 114, 182
Beneventum 64, 66
Bengal, art movement 304
Benghazi 195, 290, 291
Benguela 190, 191
Benin 95, 127, 190, 191, 211
distribution of masks 243
World Crafts Council 316
Benin City, arts and crafts 294,
295
Benton, Thomas Hart 263
Benua, Aleksandr (1870-1960) 225
Berat 185
Berber dynasty 64, 70, 124, 188,
189
indigenous art 240, 240
motifs in art 291
Berbera 190
Berbers 76, 76
Berda’a, Ilkhanid monument 131
Berelekh 21
Berenice 62, 68
Berenike 74
Berenson, Bernard 214
Berethalom 185
Berg, Richard 272
Bergama, carpet-making 244
Bergamo 121, 122, 123
art collection 182
prize 288, 289
Bergana 130
Bergen 108, 154, 156, 157, 220,
222
architecture 279
art college 273
Jewish memorial 281
museum 272
Beringia, Ice Age 17
Berlage, H. P. 229, 278
Berlin 170, 222
abstract/realism conflicts 281
academy 172, 186
architecture 173, 270, 280,
281
art collections 172, 282, 313
art event 316
art review magazine 282, 283
artistic academy 157, 280, 282
artistic cross-currents 154,
173
artists’ travels 187
arts centre 172, 230
Bauhaus site 280
Dada movement 280, 280, 283
Deportation memorial 281
Die Brücke artists 280
Expressionism 280, 283
industrial 220
Prussian capital 230
urban development 186
Bermejo, Bartolomé (c.1440-after
1495) 119, 119
Bern (Berne) 154, 170, 281
academy 172
architecture 171
arts centre 230
federal capital 231
Historisches Museum 247
stained glass 110, 116
Bernadotte dynasty 223
Bernard, Emile 233
Bernhard Ludwig factory 237
Bernini, Gianlorenzo (1598-1680)
182, 182
Berrecci, Bartolomeo 158
Berruguete, Pedro (c.1450-c.1500)
119
Bertuchi, Mariano (1895-1958) 291
Berytus 66
Berzé-la-Ville 110
Besançon 70, 110
architecture 177
art centre 186
ecclesiastical centre 116
Beshbalik 132
textiles 133
Beszterce 185
Bethlehem 70
Beuys, Joseph 281
Beysehir 130
Bezeklik, Buddhist/Kushan art 83
Béziers, wall painting 118
Bhadgaon, palace 198
Bhaja, caves 84
Bharhut
caves 84
historic site 248
Bharuch, mosque 134
Bhattiprolu, stupa 85
Bhitargaon, temple 85
Bhojapura, temple 134
Bhopal, museum 304
Bhubaneshwar
art school 298
temple 134
Bhuj 198
Bhuvaneswar, historic site 248
Biala Radziwillowska 159
Bialaczów 159
Bialystok 159
Bianliang 138
Bianzhou, silk production 136
Bibi 49
Bichl, wood carving 59
Bidar, mosque 134
Biecek, mosque 131
Bielefeld 281
Bielsko 238
Bierstadt, Albert (1830-1902) 212,
212, 214
Biertan 185
Bigaud, Wilson (1931-) 267
Bihar 198
Bijapur, mosque 134
Bijar 244, 301
Bijaya 124
Bikaner, palace 198
Bilbao 178, 220, 234, 270, 271,
286, 287
Bilbilis 66
Bilbo 96
Billom, wall painting 118
Bilma 126
Bimaran, Buddhist/Kushan art 83
Bin Dinh 206
Binche 154, 279
Bing, Siegfried 233
Bingham, George Caleb 213
Binglingsi, Buddhist caves 307
Binxian, religious art 136
Biot 284, 285
Birjand 244
Birkenhead 276
Birmingham 163, 164, 220
architecture 276
art movement 226
Birnik 96
Birth of a Virgin (Giotto) 121
Birze 158
Bishapur 81
Bishkek 83
arts and crafts 302, 303
Bishket, museum 298
Bishnupur, temple 198
Bisitun 80
excavations 245
sculpture 78
Bismarck Archipelago 50, 50, 51,
92, 93
Bistrita 154, 185
Bisutun, trilingual inscription 245
Bithynia 62, 66, 69, 78
Bitlis, mosque 130
Bitola 185
Bitti, Bernardo (1548-1610) 153
Bizen, pottery 140
Bizerta 124
Black Death 120, 120
Black Decorated art 101
Black Hawk, portrait 213
Black Johnny (c.1842-1883) 258
Blackburn 163
Blaj 185
Blake, Peter 277
Blake, William 221
Blanchard 17
Blanes, Juan Manuel (1830-1901)
219, 219
Blast (publication/Lewis) 277
Blatná, wall painting 116
Blaubeuren, ecclesiastical centre
116
Blenheim 186
Bligh, Captain William 209
Blima 73
Blistrup 31
Blombos 16
Bloemaert, Abraham (1566-1651)
156
Bloemfontein, art schools 296,
297
Blois 154, 174
Blois
architecture 177
château 116
Bloomsbury Group 276
Bluff-bowed Fishing Boats (Mesdag)
229
Bobbio 103
Bobo-Dioulasso, art production
295
Bobongara 50
Bobrujsk 158
Boccioni, Umberto (1882-1916)
288, 288
Bodh Gaya
caves 84
temple 85
Bodman 105
Charlemagne 104
Bodmer, Karl (1809-93) 212, 212,
213
Body-painting 16
Body symbolism 48
Boeotia 60
Boers 191
Bogatá 268
Bogazköy 32, 42
excavations 245
Bogolyubov, Aleksei (1824-96) 225
Bogolyubov, General A. A. 247
Bogomils (Manichaeans) 106
Bogotá 218, 219
art event 317
Bohemia 110, 169, 170
architecture 238
copper and tin sources 30, 30
Lutheran 154
patronage 116
Bohemian Brethren 159
Boii peoples 65
Bois-le Duc 228, 229
Bolívar, Simón 218, 218, 219
Bolivia
artistic activity 219, 268, 268,
269
World Crafts Council 317
Bologna 64, 121, 123
academy 182, 236
architecture 299
art centre 114, 154, 186, 288
Arte Povera 288, 289
Bronze situlae 58
Counter-Reformation 180
court 122
funerary stele 65
murals 110
town planning 181
university 113, 114, 120
Bolsena 64
Bolshevik Revolution 274
Boltanski, Christian (1944-) 285
Bolu 130
Bolzano, wood sculpture 116
Bomarzo 181
Bombay 198, 248, 248
architecture 249, 249
art school 298, 304, 304
Bollywood 304
Modernism 305
museum 298, 304
Progressives group 305
trade centre 192
Bominaco 110
Bonampak 98, 99
Bône, 124, 125
Bone
carvings 16, 21, 37
Russian 160
tools 53
trade in relics 111, 111
Bonfire 96
Bongo, post sculptures 292
Bonn 108
Bonnet, Rudolf 311
Bononia 64, 65, 66, 69, 102
Books 69
Central America 99
centres of decorated 106
China 136, 251
European centres 103, 170,
174, 175
Greco-Roman 103
Hellenstic 63
illustrated 112, 131, 199
Indian centres 249
Italian 120
Japan and Korea 140, 204, 252
patronage 196
scriptoriums 106
South Netherlands 168, 169
and universities 113
West Asia 131, 301
see also manuscripts; papyrus;
scrolls
Boone 55
Boräs 272
Borax Lake 96
Borbjeto 109
Bordeaux 70, 71
alabaster 109, 112, 118
archbishopric 104
architecture 177
murals 110
museum 285
royal progress 154
shrine 111
wall painting 118
writing centre 103
Border Cave, engraved wood/bone
16
Borges, Jorge Luis 268
Borgholm 154
Borgo di S. Donnino 110
Borgu kingdoms 190, 191
Borneo 142, 206, 255
arts and crafts 310
Bronze Age 51, 90
early settlements 50
funerary effigies 254
Ice Age 16
trade 91, 207
Bornholm 156, 157
art gallery 273
landscape painting 272
Bornu 191
Borobudur, Buddhist stupa 94-
95, 95, 142, 142, 206, 254,
310, 311
Borovikovsky, Vladimir 161
Borrani, Odardo (1833-1905) 237
Borromeo, Cardinal 181
Borromini, Francesco 182
Borsippa 80
Bosch 155
Bosco 181
Bosna Saray 184, 185
Bosnia-Herzegovina, architecture
238
Bosporan kingdom 58, 62
Bosra 128
Muslim castle 130
Bost 81
Boston (UK), alabaster 116
Boston (USA) 212
exhibitions 262, 264
Quincy Market 213
Bothwell 164
Botswana
arts and crafts 296
basket-making 296, 297
museums 296, 296
Botticelli, Sandro 123, 230
Bouaké, art production 295
Bougainville, Lapita pottery 51
Bougie 178
Bouillon 168
Bouray, metalwork 59
Bourbon empire 175, 187
palaces 178
Bourg-en-Bresse, ecclesiastical
centre 118
Bourges 103, 110, 112, 174
Bourges
archbishopric 104
ecclesiastical centre 116
Bourke-White, Margaret 263
Boury, megalithic art 29
Bourzey, Crusader castle 130
Bouvignes 168
Box Hill, Heidelberg School 259
Boyacá 218
Boyana 106
Boye, Pierre 119
Boyne, megalithic art 29
Bozhou, silk production 136
Brabant 168
landscapes 228, 228
Brabantine 169
Bracciano 181
Bradford 276
Brady, Mathew 213, 214
Braga 104, 178
Brahmagiri, coins 85
Brahmapura, temple 134
Brahms, Johannes 230
Braine 110
Bramante (architect) 123, 180
Brancusi, Konstantin 271, 271
Brandenburg 170, 172, 172, 230
architecture 173
Brandenburg-Prussia 173
Braniewo 158
Braque, Georges (1881-1963) 284,
285
Brasov 185, 282
Brassempouy 17
Brassó 184, 185
Bratislava 154, 185, 282
Brauron, shrine 60
Brava 127
Brazil 16-18, 100, 218, 218, 234
artistic activity 153, 219, 268,
268, 269, 269
building techniques 152
Jesuit order 153
pottery 56
Brazzaville, tourist/modern art
292, 293
Breda, sculpture 117
Breitner, George (1857-1923) 228,
229
Bremen 103, 104, 156, 157, 170,
172, 222
National Socialism 281
public spirit 230
shipyard 220
Bremen-Verden 156
Brennen, arts centre 230
Brescia 122, 123
Breslau
173, 230, 282
art centre 186
artists’ travels 119, 187
National Socialism 281
public spirit 230
Breton, André 284
Bretons 102
Breuer, Marcel 279
Bridgeman, Charles 164
Bridgewater 163
Brighton 220
art movement 226
Brihuega, wool production 234
Brinay 110
Brinckman, J. A. 278
Brindisi 181
archbishopric 104
fortifications 180
Brioude 110
Brisbane 258, 259
architecture 314
art event 316
indigenous art 314
Bristol 163, 164
alabaster 109
Clifton Suspension Bridge 220
ecclesiastical centre 116
Romanticism 226
Britain 162-163, 164-165, 226-227,
276-277
culture
Anglo-Saxon 70, 70
architecture 276
art workshops 69
artistic centres 164
artists’ colonies 276
birth of modern art world
165
city planning 276
English Baroque 162
great estates 164
Iron Age 58
landscape 164
late Roman Art 71
modernity and Britishness
276
museums 245, 276
Roman 67, 68, 70
Virgin Queen 162
politics
industrial 165, 226-227,
227
settlements in Africa
191
INDEX
326
marble quarries 69
mosaic schools 68
Roman empire collapse 70
Asinou 106
Asirgarh 198
Askut, fort 37
Asociación de Arte Constructivo
269
Aspendos 62
Asplund, Gunnar 273
Asse 168
Assiros 32
Assisi 110, 114, 120, 121
Association of Travelling Art
Exhibitions 224
Assyria 34, 42, 42, 43, 66, 78
Empire 43, 43, 52
palace wall relief 43
Assyrians 42
Astana 247
Astana Cemetery 87
Astara, Safavid capital 195
Astauene 80
Astigi 66
Astorga, castle 118
Astrakhan 133, 160, 160, 224, 225
Astrological vaults 181
Asturias 102
Asuka-Itabuki, palace site 89
Asunción 218, 219, 268
Asuristan 81
Aswan 38, 74, 179
red slip pottery 76
textiles 77
Asyut 38, 129
Atacama Desert 56, 57, 100, 101
Ataka, maska 49
Atarco art 101
Ateste 65
Atfelt, Else 272
Athena, Olympian god 63
Athens 23, 33, 35, 62, 63, 65, 66,
68
art centre 283
art review magazine 282
art school 282
Byzantine 102
city’s expansion 60, 60, 61
contemporary art 283
marble quarries 69
museums 282
Ottoman 184, 195
Parthenon 61
and Peiraeus 61
town-planning 238, 238
trade centre 107
Athos Mt 184, 185
Atjeh 254
arts and crafts 310
gold workshops 206
trade centre 207
Atlanta 264
Civil War site 214
Atlantic Ocean, Viking route 104
Atlas Mountains, Berber dynasty
124, 124
Atrani 110, 111
Atropatene 80, 81
Attaleia 68
Attalus I of Pergamum 63
Attic
’Foundry Cup’ 61
sarcophagi 68
Attica 35, 35, 59, 60
Atzcapotzalco 98
Aubusson, tapestry 154, 174, 177
Auch
archbishopric 104
ecclesiastical centre 118
Auckland
architecture 315
indigenous art 315
Maori art 259
Pacific art 313
Pacific Sisters 312
Auctioneers 187, 316, 317
Audenarde 168
Aughnagwgan, megalithic art 29
Augsburg 103, 108
academy 172, 186
artistic cross-currents 173
arts centre 170
auction houses 187
ecclesiastical centre 116
printmaking 171
royal progress 154
sculpture 170, 171
Augusta Emerita 68
Augusta Praetoria 66
Augusta Taurinorum 66
Augusta Trevirorum 68, 69, 69
Augusta Vindelicorum 69
Augustodonum 68
Augustus
emperor 66, 66, 67
Roman commander 52
Aula Magna Auditorium
(Villanueva) 269
Aulos, gem-cutter 66
Aurangabad
historic site 248
miniatures 198
Aurès 189
Austral Islands 208
Australia 10, 11, 16, 18, 18, 21,
258-259, 314-315
Aboriginal culture 50, 53, 258,
260, 314, 315
architecture 314
Cook’s voyages 208
Heidelberg School 259, 259
indigenous art 314
indigenous and Colonial
interactions 258
landscape paintings 259
Pacific cultural centres 312
rock art 23, 24, 50, 258, 258,
314
World Crafts Council 316
Austria 172, 280, 280, 281, 281
archduchy 170
architecture 238
Crown lands 238
Habsburg lands 184
Holy Roman Empire 120
Ice Age 17
Modern movement 280
and Poland/Lithuania 158
South Netherlands trade
169
tulip bulbs 195
Austria-Hungary 230
Austro-Hungarian empire 220,
238, 238, 239, 239
borders 282
crafts training schools/courses
239
ethnic applied arts 239
nationalism and neovernacularism
239, 239
Autun 103, 110, 110
artists’ travels 119
ecclesiastical centre 116
Auxerre 103, 110
stained glass 116
Ava
lacquerware 206
trade centre 207
Avantipura, temple 134
Avar empire 102
Avaris 32
Avdeevo 16, 18
Aventicum 68
Aveny, megalithic art 29
Avesnes 110
Avigliana, artists’ travels 119
Avignon 109, 119, 182
archbishopric 104
architecture 110, 154
artists’ travels 119
manuscript painting 112
museum 285
panel painting 118
Papal Palace 118
Avila 110, 114, 154
alabaster 118
wool centre 234
Aviles 109
Avola 64
Awazu 49
Awdaghost 126
Awjilah 126
Axim 191
Axminster 164
Axum 72, 73, 73, 127, 190
stela 73
Ay Khanum
Hellenized city 82
Kushan art 82
Ayacucho
area 100-101
basin 57
Ayad, Ragheb (1892-1980) 291
Aydhab 128
Aydin 130
Ayia Triada 33
Ayios Stephanos 33
Aylesford, metalwork 59
Ayodhya 198
coins 84
trade 134
Ayrtam, Kushan art 82
Ayutthaya 255
architecture 192, 193
ceramics 207
city state 206, 206
courtly art 192
crowned Buddha 207
museum 298
religious site 310
Ayyubid Sultanate 106
Azangaro 101
Azarmas 224
Stupin Art School 225
Az˘bè, Anton (1862-1905) 282
Azcapotzalco 54
Azilian Culture 15, 21, 21
Azimov, Iskander (1945-) 303
Azov 184
Aztalan, archaeology 96, 97
Aztec empire 95, 98, 99, 99, 150,
260
Azzammur, textiles 124
Ba 86
Ba Trang, kiln site 206
Baalbek, Muslim castle 130
Bab al Mansur al-Ilj gateway
189
Baba Jan 78
Babur, emperor 198
Babylon 42, 42, 43, 81
artistic centre 78
early urbanism 25
excavations 245
Parthian architecture 80
Babylonia 42, 42, 43, 62, 62
Bac Ninh, kiln site 206
Bacan 143
Bacchias 75
Bacchus 68
Bacchus Marsh, plein-air paintings
259
Bachkovo monastery 185
Bacon, Francis 277
Bactra 63, 79, 81, 83, 84, 303
Hellenized city 82
Bactria 44, 63, 63, 79, 80, 83
Achaemenid tribute 82
Golden Mound artefacts
82
trade 82
Bad Gastein 238
Bada, bark cloth 310
Bada shanren (1626-1705) 203
Bada Valley 206
Badajoz 234
Badaling 138
Badayun, mosque 134
Baden 170, 230
Baden bei Wien 238
Badetta 181
Badi Palace 189
Baeterrae 66
Baetica 66, 69
Baeza, wool production 234
Bagamoyo, trading post 242
Bagawat 77
Bagh
caves 85
historic site 248
Baghdad 94, 106, 107, 133
Abbasid capital 128, 129
calligraphy 301
fine arts 298, 300
lustre ware 131
madrasa 130
Martyr’s Monument 300
railway connections 245
trade centre 131, 132, 195
Bagnaia 181
Bagnola 181
Baguio, silverware 310
Bagumbayan, pottery 50
Bahamas 99, 266
Bahariya Oasis 38, 74
Bahía 152, 218, 219, 269
art centre 153
Bahrain 40, 41, 128
Baia Mare, art colony 220, 282
Bainas, megalithic art 29
Bairam-Ali 246
Bajaur, site of hoard 82
Bakchisarai 184
Bakhtyari tribes 301
Bakra 190
Bakst, Lev (1866-1924) 225
Baku 224, 225, 246
carpet-making centre 244
lustr ware 131
minaret 130
museums 298
petroleum wells 245
Bala Hissar, caves 84
Balaklije, Dacian phalerae 58
Balakot, early urbanism 25
Balankanche 98
Balasore 198
trade centre 192
Balat 38
Balawat 43
excavations 245
Balawinne Cave 18
Balazsfalva 185
Balearic Is 34
art and trade 67, 68
Byzantine 102
late Roman Art 71
Mediterranean world 64
and Napoleon 220
Roman empire 66, 70
Viking route 104
Bali 142, 143, 206, 207
arts and crafts 310, 311, 311
cotton 207
Dong Son culture 90
economic resources 254
painting 311
Balikesir 130
Balinees 71
Balkans 68, 184
art styles 282
Byzantine art 106
late Roman Art 71
Latin rite 106
Ottoman Possession 194
political borders 184
population increase 238
trade and culture 195
Balkesir 244
Balkh 83, 128, 132, 196
arts and crafts 302
ceramics 79
coins 81
madrasa 130
mosque 129
shrine 133, 196
textiles 132
trade centre 131
Balkuwara palace 129
Ball, James Presley 213
Ball courts 98
Ballarat 258, 259
Balline 71
Balof 50
Balti 185
Baltic region 156, 156, 157, 222,
222, 223, 223, 272, 272, 273,
273
amber trade 30
artistic influence 186
National Romanticism 223
peoples 102
trade route 102, 102
see also individual countries
Baltimore, Ireland 163
Baltimore, USA 212, 262
Baltinglass, megalithic art 29
Baluch tribes 301
Balyan, Garabed 245
Balyan, Krikor 245
Bam 129
Bamako, arts and crafts 294, 295
Bamberg 112, 170, 172
Bambuk 126
Bamburgh 226
Bamiyan 81, 85, 303, 317, 317
Buddhist/Kushan art 83
Bamum kingdom 191
Bamyian, Kushan art 82
Ban 104
Ban Puan Phu, iron work 90
Banat 40
Banbhore 129
Banda Aceh, arts and crafts 310
Bandar Abbas 195
Bandar Seri Begawan, silverware
310
Bandelier 96
Bandiagara, art production 295
Bandjarmasin 206
trade centre 207
Bandung 50, 254
art school 298
painting 310
Bangalore, architecture 248
Bangkok
museum 298
temples 254, 255
UNESCO project 316
Bangladesh
art movements 298
World Crafts Council 316
Bangor 103, 164
Banjarmasin 143
Bankoni, archaeology 294
Banpo, museum 307
Banshan, archaeology 306
Banshoji 88
Banten 143, 206, 207
Bantu 11, 23, 53, 72, 126, 191, 243
Baoding, art school 298
Baptist, Johann 173
Baqirqan 196
Bar 158
Bar-le-Duc 154
Baranagar, temple 198
Baranów 159
Barbados, World Crafts Council
317
Barbari, Jacopo de’ 171
Barbarians
collapse of Roman empire 70
symbolic art 80
Barbaricum 134
Barbizon, artistic colony 214, 220,
232, 233
Barca 126
textiles 124
Barcelona
architecture 235
art centre 111, 154, 270, 286,
286
Art Nouveau 220
artistic groups/influence 286,
287
artists’ travels 119
Charlemagne 104
Costumbrismo 234, 234
Els Quatre Gats café 235
French Symbolism 234, 234,
235
literary centre 103, 114
metalwork 109, 114, 287
Sagrada Familia (Gaudí) 235
sculpture 235, 287
textiles 234
trade route 178
Umayyad Caliphate 102
Universal Exposition (1888)
235
wall painting 118
Barciense, castle 118
Barcino 67
Barco de Avila, castle 118
Bardejov, architecture 283
Bardi family 114
Bardjov 154
Barge Haulers on the Volga (Repin)
224
Bari 102, 106, 110
Bark cloth see textiles
Barletta 180
Baroda 198
architecture 249
art school 304, 305
museum 298, 304
Baroque period 155, 162, 164,
164, 169, 172, 182, 216, 217
Barrancas 56, 56
Barrancoid tradition 56, 56
Barranquilla, art market 268
Barrial 98
Barriles 54, 98
Barrosa, megalithic art 29
Barrow-in-Furness 220
Barry, Charles 227, 227, 237
Barry, Madame du 156
Barshilunah 102
Barygaza, trade centre 83, 85, 134
Basècles 168
Baselitz, Georg 281
Bashkirs 160, 161
Basket-making 296
Basle (Basel) 103,109, 154, 172,
230, 231
architecture 171
arts centre 170, 171
metalworking 112
Protestantism 171
wood sculpture 116
Basohli 198
Basotho Cultural Village 296, 297
Basques 70, 102
Basra 128, 128, 132
trade centre 131
Bassano 114
Basse-Yutz, metalwork 59, 59
Bassein, umbrellas 310
Bästad 272
Bastam
minaret 130
shrine 131
Bat Cave 55
Báta, wild boar 59
Batalha 178
Batang, art centre 202
Batavia 254
church 206
furniture 310
trade centre 192, 207
Batesar, temple 134
Bath 67, 164
Arts and Crafts 226
urban development 186
Bathers at Mitzburg (Kirchner) 280
Bathhurst 259
Batik see Textiles
Battambang, museum 298
Battersea, metalwork 59
Batumi, carpet-making centre
244
Batwa, mosque 134
Baudelaire, Charles 233
Bauhaus movement 231, 260, 276,
278, 280, 280, 282, 283, 283,
304
Baumeister, Willi 281
Bautzen 172
Bavaria 102, 169, 170, 172, 173,
230, 230
architecture 172
Bavarianism 231
Bawit 77, 77
Bay of Islands 258
Bayana, mosque 134
Bayeux 110
ecclesiastical centre 116
Bayindir 78
Bayonne
ecclesiastical centre 118
royal progress 154
Bayreuth 170, 230
Baysum, arts and crafts 302
Baza 64
Dama de 64
Bazhou, silk production 137
Beato, Felice 251
Beaufort, Crusader castle 130
Beaumaris 112, 163
castle 116
Beauvais, tapestry 177
Beaux Arts tradition 228
Bec 110
INDEX
329
Carrhe 128
Carrickfergus 163
Carrion los Condes 118
Cartagena 102, 109, 111, 152,
153, 153, 218, 219, 234
alabaster 118
Carteia 64
Cartenna 66
Carthage 23, 34, 34, 43, 102, 124
art and trade 67, 68
art workshops 69, 70
Dominus Julius mosaic 77
floor mosaics 71, 76, 76, 77
Muslim conquest 102
portable wealth 76
red slip pottery 76
Roman empire 66
and Western Mediterranean
64-65, 64, 65
Carthago Nova 64, 66, 69
Cartonnage 75
Casa grande 96
Casablanca 240, 290
Casas, Ramón (1866-1932) 234
Casas Grandes 98
Caserta 182
Casilinum 64, 66
Caspian Gates 80, 81
Cassandrea 66
Castañeira, megalithic art 29
Castanet 17
Castel Appiano 110
Castel Nuovo 114
Castelfranco Veneto 181
Castellamare di Stabia 110
Castello 181
Castello Caetani 114
Castello del Buonconsiglio 114
Castello dell’Imperatore 114
Castiglioncello 236
Castiglione, Guiseppe (1688-1766)
203
Castiglione del Lago 181
Castile 104, 110
Castle Hedingham 108
Castle Howard 165, 186
Castle Rising 108
Castllejo 234
Castro 180, 181
Castro, José Gil de (1785-c.1841)
218, 218, 219
Castrogiovanni 124
Castrojeriz, print-making 118
Castulo 64
Çatal Hüyük 15, 21, 24
Catalonia 118, 119
Catana 66
Catania 109, 111
architecture 299
Catherine de’ Medici, royal
progress 154, 155
Catherine II (the Great) 161
Catlin, George (1796-1872) 212,
212, 213
Caucasus 35
Russian expansion 244
Caudebec, stained glass 116
Caughley 164
Causani 185
Cavallini, Pietro 115
Caverna da Pedra, pottery 27, 27
Cayenne 218
Cayman Is 99
Cebreiro 118
Cebu 206, 254
trade 207
Cecil, William 162
Cefalu 106, 110
Celaya, art movements 216
Celebes
arts and crafts 310
early settlements 50
funerary effigies 254, 254
trade 207
Celeia 68
Cellier 17
Cellini, Benvenuto (1500-71) 155,
175
Celsa 66
Celtiberians 64
Celtic
art 35, 59, 64
Basse-Yutz flagon 59
diaspora 59
La Tène style 58, 59, 59
metalwork 53
peoples 58, 64, 70
Western Mediterranean origins
64-65
Cempola 98
Cenomani peoples 65
Centcelles 71
Central Africa 292-293
modern art 293
traditional arts 292
Central America 54-55, 98-99, 147,
150-151, 216-217, 266-267
cultures 54
exploration and trade 150
independence movements 266,
266
major artists 266
Spanish colonial architecture
151
three cultural regions 98
Central Andean, cultures 57, 57
Central Asia 44-45, 82-83, 85, 132-
133, 196, 197, 246, 247, 302-303
archaeological surveys 247
art production 83
artistic influence 140
arts and crafts 302, 302
before the Mongols 132
Buddhist impact 83
civilizations 44, 44, 133, 195,
196, 196, 197
colonization 244, 246
ecology 302
empires and tributes 82
’Golden Mound’ artefacts 82
Hellenistic impact 82
Islam 128
metalwork 53
Russian conquest 246
School of Art 303
trade 44, 82, 83, 83
western influences 44
Central Europe, High Modernism
283
Centula 102
Cephalonia 67
Ceram 206, 254
trade 207
Ceramics
countries
Abbasic centres 129
Achaemenid 78
Aegean 60
British 164, 227
Byzantine 106, 107
Central America 98
Central Asia 132, 133, 133,
197, 302, 303
Chinese 136, 137, 138, 139,
140, 200, 202-203
Egyptian 75
Japan and Korea 140, 141,
204, 204, 205, 205, 252
Korean 308, 309
Mesopotamian 80
Mycenaean 32-33
North America 26
Pacific 93
Russian 160, 274
South American 23, 27, 56,
100-101
Southeast Asia 90, 207,
254, 255, 255, 310, 311
Southern Africa 297
Spain and Portugal 178
West Asia 130, 130, 131,
194-195, 301, 301
Western Islam 125
styles
celadon ware 140, 141
ethnic/folk 239
folk inspired 282
Ice Age 18, 20-21
lustre ware 129
Neolithic 28
Pacific 93, 93
Syrian technique 129
Tohil Plumbate ware 98
white ware 140
Cercle et Carré 278
Ceren 54, 98
Céret 285
Cerfontaine 168
Cerro Baúl 101
Cerro Blanco 57, 57
Cerro Brujo 98
Cerro de la Campana 98
Cerro de las Mesas 54, 54
Cerro de las Minas 54, 54, 98
Cerros 54
Certosa, Bronze situlae 58
Cesky Krumlov 154
ecclesiastical centre 116
Ceta, temple 142
Ceuta 102, 124, 125, 234
Cézanne, Paul (1839-1906) 217,
233
Chaco 219
Chad 126, 291
World Crafts Council 316
Chagall, Marc (1887-1985) 284
Chagatai Khanate 131, 133
Chaghatay (ruler) 196
Chagua 100
Chakipampa art 101
Chalchuapa 54
Chalcidice 35, 60
Chalcedony 97
Chalco 98
Chalon 103
Châlons-sur-Marne 110
architecture 177
ecclesiastical centre 116
Chaltcatzingo 54, 54
Cham culture 91
Chamba, miniature paintings 198
Chambers, William 165
Chambéry
artists’ travels 119
panel painting 118
Chambord 154, 174, 174, 174
Chamdo, art centre 200
Champa 206
trade 91, 207
Champagne 113
Champaner, temple 134
Champollion, Jean François 245
Chan Chan 100, 101
Chanapata 56, 57
Chancay culture 101, 101
Chanchan 101
Chanderi
mosque 134
textiles 198
Chandigarh 261, 304, 305
Chandragiri, palace 198
Chandragupta, emperor 84
Chandraketugarh, ivory 84
Chang Dai Chien see Zhang Daqian
Chang’an 53, 86, 87, 87, 95
capital city 136, 141
Changchon-ni 49
Changchun 306
Changdu 302
Changsha 86, 136, 202, 250
archaeology 306
museum 307
painting 200
Changshu, painting 202
Chanhu-Daro, early urbanism 25
Chania 32, 33
Chanka confederation 101
Chanlat 17
Channel Islands, megalithic art 29
Chanthaburi 254
Chantilly 154, 174, 177
Chao Redondo, megalithic art 29
Chaozhou 138
kiln site 137
Chap Kok Leong, Kelvin 311
Chapultepec 98
Char Bakr 197
Characene, kingdom 80
Charax 134
Charcoal 16-17
Chardin, Jean 194
Charente 18
Chares of Lindos 63
Charjui 246, 302
Charlemagne 95, 105
denarius coin 103
Frankish kingdoms 104
visits by 104
Charleroi 228, 229, 279
Charles I (England) 162-163, 175,
187
Charles II (England) 163, 164
Charles IV (Denmark) 156
Charles IX 154, 155, 175
Charles V 154, 155, 175, 178, 180,
180
Charleston, Civil War site 214
Charleston Farmhouse 276, 276
Charlottesville 212, 213
Charsadda, Hellenized city 82, 82
Chartres 112, 177
pilgrimage route 111
stained glass 110, 116
Chartreuse de Champmol 116
Chastel Rouge, Crusader castle
130
Château Gontier 110
Château-Landon 110
Châteaudun 110
Chatelaudren 109, 111
Chatham Islands 144, 208
Châtou 270
Chaul, textiles 198
Chauvet Cave 16, 16, 17
Chavín de Huantár 56, 57, 57
Chavín tradition 27, 56, 57, 101
Cheadle, art movement 226
Checiny 159
Chedzurgwe 127
Chefoo 250
Chellaston, alabaster 112, 116
Chelles 103, 104
Chelmno 158, 159
Chelyabinsk 160, 224
Chemnitz, Degenerate Art
exhibition 281
Chengdu 47, 86, 87, 307
gardens 200, 202
museums 306
printing 137, 138, 192, 200
textiles 250
Chengzhou 86
Chenonceaux 154, 174
Chepstow 163
Cheras dynasty 85
Cherchel 67, 76
Cherchen 83, 247
Chernigov 158, 160
Chersonesus, Greek colony 58
Chersonnesus 62, 107
Chertomlyk, Scythian burials 58
Chester 163
art movement 226
ecclesiastical centre 116
Chewa 191
Chhatrarhi, temple 134
Chiamigaito 49, 49
Chiang Kaishek 306
Chiang Rai, paper making 310
Chiapa de Corzo 54, 98
Chiaravalle 110
Chiaroscuro 159
Chibcha 100, 100
Chibunda Ilunga 243
Chicacole 198
Chicago 262, 264, 265
auctioneers 317
Pacific art 313
world fair 215
Chichén Itzá 98, 99
Chichester 67
Chiclayo 56
Chidambaram 134
historic site 248
Chiemsee 103
Chiengmai 142, 207
arts and crafts 310
carving 206, 254
Chihuahua 266
Chikamori 49
Chile 101
artistic activity 219, 268, 268,
269, 269
campaigns 218
Jesuit workshops 153
World Crafts Council 317
Chillon 112
Chiloe Island, Jesuit workshop
153
Chimkent 246
Chimú Capac 101
Chimú culture 95, 101, 101
China 16, 46-47, 86-87, 94, 138-
139, 200-201, 202-203, 250-251,
306-307
culture
archaeological sites 86
art market 137
art production sites 136,
137
art schools/museums 298
artistic centres 87, 138,
200, 250
artistic influence 12, 140,
140, 141, 201, 203, 204,
205
artists’ travels 306, 307
Buddhas of the Three
Generations 203
cultural influence 12, 89,
139
modern cities 46, 47, 86
Mongol/Yuan/Ming dynasty
138, 139, 200, 200, 201
museums 306, 307
neolithic 46
nomadic tribes 46, 46, 86
paper production see Paper-
making
pioneering innovations 137
pre-Communist art 306
printing see Printing
publishing 137
religious art 136, 137
revolutionary art 307
state funded projects 136,
137
urban development 25
visual production 138, 200,
202, 250, 251
wallpaper 192, 192, 193
politics
building the empire 86, 87
Central Asia 196
Communism 261, 306, 307,
307
divided 87
Dzungar campaigns 202
egalitarianism 136
foreign contact 200, 202
global contacts 139
Great Wall 86, 138, 200,
202, 306, 307
Guomindang Party 306-307
Japanese expansion 308
Long March route 306
Manchu conquest 200, 202-
203
Ming dynasty 138, 139,
192, 200, 200
Mongol rule 138, 139
Opium Wars 248, 250, 250,
251
peasant revolts 250
Qing dynasty 192, 200, 202-
203, 250
Song dynasty 136, 137
Tang empire 11, 95, 132,
136, 136
urban planning 139, 200
Warring States 52
Willow Wall 200
Yuan dynasty 139
trade 53, 69, 70, 81, 86, 87, 91,
91, 95, 136, 137, 200, 207,
250
World Crafts Council 316
Chincha 101
Chincilla 154
Chinkiang 250
Chinon, château 116
Chinquiquita, pilgrimage centre
153
Chinul (monk) 141
Chios 32, 33, 35, 60
monastery 106
Chipadze’s 127
Chipas 54
Chippendale, Thomas 164
Chipping Campden, Arts and
Crafts 226
Chirik-Rabat 302
Chiripa 56, 57, 57
Chisinau, contemporary art 283
Chitam-ni 49
Chitor 198, 248
Chitral 247
Chivalry centres 122
Chlorite vessels 41, 41
Cho-Do 88
Chodorow 158
Choga 42
Ch’ogjin 308
Choji-ri 49
Chokwe 190, 191
Cholas dynasty 85
Cholbon 89
Cholula 54, 98
Chonderesk 244
Chongbaeng-ni 88
Chongqing 250
archaeology 306
museum 307
Chonjin-dong 49
Chorasmia 78, 80, 81
Choson Dynasty 140, 204, 204
Chotua 56
Chowke people 243
Choyang-dong 88
Christchurch
architecture 259, 315
indigenous art 315
Christendom, Western 104, 105
Christian IV 157
Christiana 222, 222
Christiania 186, 220
Christianity 94, 95
countries
Asia 192, 193
Eastern Europe 282
Egypt 74, 77
Islam 111
Levant’s Latin states 130
North Africa 77, 124, 188,
240
northern Europe 108
Southeast Asia 207
Sub-Saharan Africa 126-
127, 190-191, 191
culture
attitudes to art 70-71, 108,
154
and Byzantine art 106, 106
cross-cultural exchanges
111
devotional icons 77
illuminated book 103
Lund Crucifix 109
patronage 77, 77, 181
revival of Early Christian art
181
groups
church reform 120
Huguenots 176
Nestorian 132
Orthodox 106
Protestantism 169, 171,
176, 180, 181, 184, 185,
231, 282
Reformation 154, 156, 170,
171, 181, 230
see also Reformation; Religious
Christina, Queen 156, 187
Christo and Jeanne-Claude 265
Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889
(Ensor) 228
Chu 86
Chucalissa 97
Chughtai, A. R. (1895-1975) 305
Chuguyev 225, 225
Chukchi 224
Chulak 246
Chulman culture 46, 49
Chur 103
Church, Frederic 212
Church Hole Cave 18
Church of the Transfiguration 161
Churches
architecture 12, 76, 77, 95, 147,
184, 184-185, 185, 186, 196,
197, 270, 271
cathedrals 108, 109, 110,
114, 120-121, 121, 123,
157, 163, 226
chapels/cloisters 181
INDEX
328
Stuart ascendancy 162
telegraph communications
245
religion, Reformation 162
trade
copper sources 30, 30
international 162
North Netherlands 167
South Netherlands 169
tin 30
World Fair 276
travel/tourism 164
Britannia 66, 69
British Columbia, decorative art
97
British Hondurus 216
Brittany
chambered tombs 29
tin 30, 30
Brivan 244
Brixia 66, 67
Brno 16, 270, 282
Brno
Bazaar of Modern Art 283
panel painting 116
Broach 198
Broadstairs 276
Brochow 159
Brody 159
Bronze 33, 147
countries
Aegean 61
Asia 298
British centres 164
Central Asia 45, 197
China 23, 25, 47, 47, 86, 87,
88, 90
Danish Bronze Age 31, 31
Egyptian 39
European 105, 110, 170
Greece 60
India 84, 85
Italian 65
Japanese 49, 53, 88, 88, 89,
205
Korea 49, 49, 88
Mesopotamian 41
Northern Europe 58, 116
Nuraghic 34
Pacific and Indonesia 51
Roman empire 67, 69, 83
Sasanian 81
Southeast Asia 90, 207
Spanish 64
Western Mediterranean 64-
65
general
Attic ’Foundry Cup’ 61
casting 105, 106, 170
doors 110, 111
early implements 51
figurines 31
from Constantinople 111,
111
hammered 35
long-distance trade 30,
31
sun chariot 31
taotie motif 47
Bronze Age 30, 31, 34, 44, 47, 47,
58, 90, 90
Dong Son kettledrums 90
Broodthaers, Marcel 279
Brooklyn Bridge 213
Brooklyn Museum of Art 262
Brough-on-Humber 71
Brown, Lancelot ’Capability’ 164
Brudevaelte 31
Bruegel the Elder, Pieter (d.1569)
154
Brueghel the Elder, Jan (1568-
1625) 169
Bruges 109, 228, 229
artistic centre 154, 168
artists’ travels 119
manuscript painting 112
stained glass 116
tapestry 117
Brundisium 67
Brunei 206, 254
trade centre 207
World Crafts Council 316
Brunei Sabah, arts and crafts
310
Brunelleschi, Filippo 122
Brunn 238
Brunsberg 104
Brunswick 108, 170
arts centre 230
Brunswick-Lüneburg 170, 172
Bruselas, Hanequin de 119
Brussels
20th century 279
architecture 168
art collection 187
Art Nouveau 220, 228, 228,
229, 229
artistic centre 154, 168, 174,
228, 231, 232, 270, 278, 279
artistic institutions 229
artists’ travels 119
ecclesiastical centre 116
Expositions Universelles 278,
279
Hotel Eetvelde 228
Hotel Tassel 221
sculpture 117
stained glass 116
Tervuren Exposition 229, 278
Brutini peoples 65
Bryullov, Karl 224
Brzesc Litewski 158
Brzezany 159
Buang Merabak 50
Bubastis 78
Bucephala 79
Buchanap 96
Bucharest 154, 224
architecture 283
art colony 282
art review magazine 282
Athenaeum 238
Judaism 184
religious architecture 185
town-planning 238
Buchenwald, memorial 281
Buckeburg 230
Buczacz 159
Buda 109
Buda 184
Buda, ecclesiastical centre 116
Buda Pest 185
Budapest
Activists 282
architecture 195
art colony 282
Art Nouveau 220
art review magazine 282
artistic centre 154, 155, 282,
283
capital city 238
Judaism 184
Postal Building 221
sculpture park 270
Secessionism 283
town-planning 238
Buddhas of the Three Generations
203
Buddhism 82, 84, 94, 95, 132
countries
Asia 192, 193
Central Asia 83, 83
China 136
Japan and Korea 89, 140,
141
rise of Indianized states
142
Southeast Asia 91
Tibet 139, 201, 203
culture
Ajanta cave painting 85
archaeology 84, 91, 247
architecture 136, 140, 141
artistic influence 12, 140,
204, 311
Bamiyan destruction 317
Buddhas of the Three
Generations 203
Chinese art 87, 87, 139
crowned Buddha 207, 255
Gandharan Art 83
movable metal type 141
Sasanian complex 81
sculptures 140, 140, 141,
207, 255
seated Buddha 140
tallest Buddha 81
religion
Mahayana 206
monasteries 84, 85, 85,
134
Ratnakosin images 311
temple sites 134, 142, 206
Theravaddha 206
veneration of relics 85
shrines
Borobudor stupa 142, 143
cave shrines 136, 306, 307
stupas 83, 84, 85, 85, 134,
206, 254, 255, 255
Buenos Aires
artistic activity 218, 219, 268
Jesuit workshop 153
Buffalo 212, 262, 262, 264
Buganda 191
Bugavita 98
Buhen, fort 37
Buka 50, 93
Bukhara 83, 129, 132, 195, 196
in the 16th century 197
architecture 192, 197
artistic centre 133
arts and crafts 302
carpet market 246
courtly art 192
manuscript centre 196
Mir-i Arab madrasa 197
museum 298, 302, 303
paper-making 132
Samanid mausoleum 132, 133
sculpture 302-303
shrine complex 196, 197
silk and cotton ikat 246
textile centre 246
trade centre 131
Bukhara khanate 246, 246
Bukittinggi, arts and crafts 310
Bulaway, art school 296
Bulayiq 83
Bulbjerg 31
Bulgaria 102, 184
architecture 238
Byzantine architecture 184
cultural status 184
diaspora of artists 283
manuscript production 107
nationalism and neovernacularism
239
public monuments 239
Bulhoa, megalithic art 29
Bunce Island 191
Bundi, miniature paintings 198
Bunol, paper production 234
Bunyoro 127, 191
Bura 126, 190
archaeology 294
Burana, minaret 132
Burdig 68
Burghley House 162
Burgos 109, 114, 234
archbishopric 104
architecture 154, 178
artists’ travels 119
metalwork 110
Burgundians, kingdom 70
Burgundy 121
kingdom 110
Valois dukes 116-117
Burhanpur
mosque 134
textiles 198
Burial see funerary
Burkin Faso, World Crafts Council
316
Burkina Faso, arts and crafts 294
Burma 95
age of empire 255
architecture 255
art schools/museums 298
arts and crafts 310
crafts and manufacture 255
historic sites 254
Konbaung dynasty 254
tourism 311
trade 207, 254
Burne-Jones, Edward 227
Burri, Alberto (1915-95) 289
Burrup, Eddie see Durack,
Elizabeth
Bursa 67, 130, 244
art museum 298
Ottoman capital 131
silk trade 194, 195
Buru 143, 206, 254
Bury 163
Bury St Edmunds 108, 111, 162,
163
Buryats 161
Busbecq, Ogier Ghislain du 195
Bustan (’Orchard’/Saadi) 196
Bustos, Hermenegildo (1832-
1907) 216, 217
Buthrotum 66
Buto 38
Bütschwil
Butsunami, masks 49
Butterfield, William 227
Butua 66
Butung 206
Buvelot, Abram-Louis 259
Buzd 185
Byblos 32, 40, 41, 42, 43
Alexander the Great 78
Bynum 55
Byzantine empire 102, 106, 124,
129, 130, 132
architecture 184
contested territory 124, 132
Europe and Asia 106, 106, 107,
107
expansion 80
ivory trade 125
Manzikert battle 131
movement of art/artists 106
trade routes 111, 125, 131
Byzantium 62, 67, 68, 69
Cabral 190
Cacaxtla 98, 98
Cáceres 234
Cacheu 191
Cadaqués 287
Cádiz 71, 234
trading port 154
Caen, architecture 110
Caere 64, 65
Caerlaverock 112
Caernarvon 112, 164
castle 116
Caesarea 67, 67, 68, 69, 70
Crusader castle 130
mosaics 76, 76
trading centre 107
Caesarea Maritima 67
Cagayan de Oro 299
Cagli 122, 123
Cahokia 55, 96, 97, 97
Cahor, wall painting 118
Cahors 110, 111
Cahuachi 56, 57
Caimito 56
Cairo 71
Al-Azhar mosque 240
architecture 189, 195, 241,
241, 290, 291
art event 316
art schools 241
c.1800-1914 241
calligraphy 301
ceramics 130
crafts 291, 291
Fatimid capital 130
Ka’bah Kiswa 188, 188
manuscript production 240
metalwork 240, 240
museums/souvenirs 241, 244
School of Fine Art 241, 291
textiles 131, 188, 240, 301
tourist souvenirs 245
trade centre 126, 240
traditional arts 301, 301
Cairo (USA), Civil War site 214
Caizhou, silk production 137
Cajamarca 100, 101, 152, 153,
218
Cajamarquilla 57
Cajnice 185
Calagurris 66
Calais 154
Calakmul 54, 55
Calatia 66
Calcite 38, 72
Calcutta
architecture 249
art schools 298, 304, 304
cultural centre 248, 248
film-production 304
Modernism 305
museums 298, 304
printing 192
Tarakeshwar Murder 248
textiles 198, 248, 304
trade centre 192, 207
Calder, Alexander 268, 269
Calgacus, chieftain 69
Calgary, paintings 214
Cali, artistic activity 268, 269
Calicut 192, 198
jewellery 248
California, archaelogical sites
96
Calixtlahuaca 54
Callao 152, 153, 218, 219
Calligram (Mahdaour) 291
Calligraphy
calligraphic painting 291, 301
cast bronze 298
Chinese 87, 87, 136, 137, 201
India 305
Islamic art 133, 135, 240
Japan and Korea 140, 140,
141, 205, 252
kana 140
Kufic 125, 301
Mughal empire 199
West Asia 301, 301
Caltanisetta 110
Calvi 110
Calvinism 158, 175
attitudes to art 154
in Hungary 185, 185
Camancaya 56
Camarthen 163
Cambay 192, 198
trade centre 207
Cambodia 95, 206, 254
art schools/museums 298
arts and crafts 310
bronze implements 51
Khmer empire 142
Krishna Govardhana 91
sculpture 255
trade 91, 207
Cambrai 110, 112, 168
ecclesiastical centre 116
sculpture 117
Cambridge 163, 164
Arts and Crafts 226
modernist architecture 276
university 112
Cambridge, USA 264
Camden Town Group 276
Cameron, Charles 161
Cameroon 126
World Crafts Council 316
Cammin 109
Camp, Maxime Du 232
Camp, Sokari Douglas (1958-) 295
Campani peoples 65
Campania 65
Campavati, temple 134
Campeche 266
Campus 96
Camulodunum 68
Canaan 42
Canaanites 42
Canada
art and exploration 212, 212,
263
Canadian Group of Seven 263
environmental art 265
exhibitions 265
Microblade tradition 26
post-war architecture 264, 264,
265
World Crafts Council 317
Canakkale 130
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio
Canal, 1697-1768) 173, 183, 183
Canberra, indigenous art 314
Candelaria 56
Candia 107
Cane 134
Cangzhou 136
Cannakkate 244
Canoe equipment 209
Canosa 110
Canova, Antonio (1757-1822) 182,
237
Canterbury 71, 102, 111
Archbishops 102, 104
book production 103, 104,
112
cathedral 108, 108
ecclesiastical centre 116
Canton 86
archaeology 306, 307
kiln site 138
Lingnan pai (Southern School)
306
painting/printing 250
Canusium 65
Canyon Creek 96
Canyon de Chelly 96
Cao, Diago, route of 127
Caozhou, silk production 136
Caparroso 234
Cape Colony 243
Cape Flattery 96
Cape Krusenstern 96
Cape Nome 96
Cape St Catherine 190
Cape Town 191
art schools 297
arts and crafts 296
auctioneers 316
community art centres 297
South African National Gallery
297
Cape Trafalgar 220
Capel-y-ffin, artists’ colony 276
Capon, Kenneth 277
Cappadocia 62, 66, 69, 78, 80, 81
frescoes 107
rock monasteries 106
Caprarola 180, 181
Capriana 185
Capua 64, 66, 67
Caracas 153
artistic activity 218, 219, 268,
269
Aula Magna Auditorium 269
Carallis 70
Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi
da (1571-1610) 175, 182
Caravanserais 130, 130, 132, 133,
133, 177, 196
Carcassonne 110, 111, 112
stained glass 118
Carchemish 43, 78
excavations 245
Cardona, wall painting 118
Caria 62, 63, 78
Caribbean 99, 216-217, 266-267
art & artists 216, 217, 266
cultures 99
independence movements 266,
266
North Netherlands trade 167
pottery traditions 99
Carlisle, wall painting 116
Carlyle, Thomas 226
Carmana 62
Carmania 62, 78, 81, 82, 83
Carmona 64
castle 118
Carnanmore, megalithic art 29
Carnavanaghan, megalithic art
29
Carnelian, etched 41, 41
Carniola 238
Carnuncum 69
Carolina 263
Caroline Islands
92, 208, 312, 312
art production 256
Carolingian
Europe 104
schools 103
Carpenter’s Gap, rock shelter 16
Carpets see textiles
Carrà, Carlo (1881-1966) 288
Carrara 67, 69, 182
Carrhae 80, 81
INDEX
331
pilgramage route 1299
plaque of brass sheet 301
railway connections 245
souvenir trade 244
textiles 131, 195
tourist souvenirs 245
trading centre 107, 131, 132
traditional arts 301, 301
Damavand, minaret 130
Dambal, temple 134
Damghan 129
lustre ware 131
minaret 130
Damietta 129
Damingfu, silk production 137
Damstadt 230
Dandan-Oilik 83, 247
Dandenong, plein-air paintings 259
Danger Cave 96
Dangziong 302
Danyang tombs 87
Danzig 156, 157, 220, 222, 230
Daphni 106
Dar es Salaam
tourism 292
tourist/modern art 292, 293
Darab, lustre ware 131
Darabgird 81
Darfur 190, 191
Darius I 74, 78
Darius III 79
Darlington 220
Darmstadt 220
Daroca
alabaster 118
artists’ travels 119
Dartmouth 109, 163
Darwin
Aboriginal drawings 258
indigenous art 314
Darwin, Charles 218, 219
Dascylioum 78
Datia, miniature paintings 198
Daulatabad, mosque 134
Davad, wood carving 310
Davaudieu 110
Davding 31
David, Jacques-Louis (1748-1825)
177, 217
Dawenkou
archaeology 307
culture 46
Dax, ecclesiastical centre 118
Daxi culture 46
Dayak, effigies 254
Dayakhatyn 132
Dayton 262, 262
Dazu
Buddhist cave 307
religious art 137
de Bazel, K. P. C. (1869-1923) 278
de Blicquy 96
de Chirico, Giorgio (1888-1978)
288
de Lairesse, Gérard (1640-1711)
167
de Medici, Catherine 175
De Stijl movement 270, 276, 278,
279, 282, 283
Dead Man’s Pocket, rock art 50
Deas, Charles 213
Debnik 159
Debreczen 238
Deccan Sultanate 135, 198
Deddington 259
Dege 302
Dehua, kiln site 137, 138, 200,
202, 251
Deir El-Bahri 39
Deir El-Medina 39
del Sarto, Andrea (1486-1530) 174
Delacroix, Eugène (1798-1863)
232, 235
Delagoa Bay 191
Delaunay, Robert (1885-1941) 304
Delft 154
architecture 166
East Indies artefacts 279
painting 117
South Netherlands trade 169
tapestry 167
Delhi 132, 132, 133, 135
architecture 192
courtly art 192
Humayan’s tomb 198
miniature paintings 198
mosque 134, 198
painting centre 248
Qutb Minar 134
Delhi Sultanate 131, 135
Delli, Dello di Niccolò 119
Delos 35, 62, 66, 68
temple 60
Delphi 35, 60, 60, 62
sanctuary 59, 59
Delvaux, Paul (1897-1994) 279
Demak
architecture 192
mosque 143, 193, 206
Demetrias 62
Demetrius I Poliorcetes 63
Demsus 185
Denau, arts and crafts 302
Dendera 74, 74
Denenchofu 89
Dengzhou 88, 136
silk production 137
Denkyira 190
Denmark 156, 169, 222, 222
architecture 272
art in a globalized world 273
artistic leadership 156, 157
arts movement 220, 222, 273
Catholicism 104
Danish Bronze Age 31, 31
Lutheran 154, 156
museums 272
Neoclassicism 222
Postglacial 15, 20-21
Renaissance 156
trade in Asia 192
World Crafts Council 316
Denon, Baron 232, 232
Denpasar, art school 299
Densatil, art centre
Densus 185
Deogarh, temple 85
Depero, Fortunato (1892-1960)
289
Deptford 163
Deqin 302
Der Sturm 282, 283
Derbent 244
Derby 116, 164
Derge
art centre 202, 203
printing 192, 250
Dertosa 66
Desalpur, early urbanism 25
Descartes, René 156
Description de l’Egypte (Denon) 232,
232
Desenzano 71
Desiderius, Abbot 111
Deskford, wild boar 59
Desmarées, Georg (1697-1776) 157
Despeñaperros 64
Dessau
art centre 230
art school 282
Bauhaus movement 280, 280,
283
Detmold 104, 230
Detroit 262, 262, 263, 264
Deutz 108
Deve Hüyük 78
Deventer, painting 117
Devetsíl group 283
Devil’s Lair 18
Deybel, Johann Sigmund 158
Dhar 198
mosque 134
Dharangaon, textiles 198
Dholka, mosque 134
Diaghilev, Sergey 225
Dian 86
Dias, Bartolomeu, route of 127
Dibbets, Jan 279
Dickson 97
Didyma 62
temple 60
Die Brücke group 280, 280
Diedenhofen 104
Diegem 168
Dieng Plateau 206, 254
temples 142, 143
Dijon 103, 154, 174
architecture 177
artists’ travels 119
ecclesiastical centre 116
Dilbeek 168
Dilberjin
inscriptions 83
Kushan art 82
Dilberzin 63
Dili 254
Dimchurch 276
Dimolit, pottery 50
Dinant
brass engraving 117
metalworking 110
mining 168, 168
Dinavar 81
Dinet, Alphonse-Etienne (1861-
1929) 291
Ding 138
Ding Yunpeng (1547-c.1621)
201
Dingri 302
Dingzhou 87
archaeology 307
kiln site 136, 137
Diocletian, emperor 74
Dionysias 75
Diorite 41
Dioskourides (gem-cutter) 66
Diospolis Magna 74
Diquiyú 54
Discourses (Reynolds) 165
Disentis 103
Disks (Schendel) 269
Dissignac, megalithic art 29
Diu 198
Dium 66
Divar, historic site 248
Divrig˘i, mosque 130
Dix, Otto (1891-1969) 281
Diyarbakir 131, 195, 244
mosque 130
Dizhou, silk production 137
Djemila 76
Djenné 290
Djerba Island
architecture 290
textiles/pottery 188, 189
Djoser, king 38
D’Kar, museum 296
Dnieper River, trade route 107
Dodge Island 96
Dodona 60, 66
Doha 300
Doigahama 88
Dol 103
Dole, ecclesiastical centre 116
Dolmabahce Palace 245, 245
Dolmen (burial monuments) 49
Dolní Ve˘stonice 15, 16-17, 16
Dombate, megalithic art 29
Domburg, art colony 228, 228,
278
Dominican order 114, 120, 121
Dominican Republic
artists 266
independence 216
Domotkanovo 225
Donatello (sculptor) 122
Dong Qichang (1555-1636) 201,
203
Dong Son culture 90, 90, 90
Dongola 126
Donkeys, wall relief 38
Doornik 168
Dor 43
Dorchester 71
stained glass 116
Dordogne 15, 18
Dordrecht 228, 229
artists 166
painting 117
Doré, Gustave 235
Dorestad 102, 102, 109
Dorpat 156, 157
Dortmund, wood sculpture 116
Dos Pilas 98
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 224
Dot Island 96
Dottori, Gerardo (1884-1977) 289,
289
Dou, Gerrit (1613-75) 167
Douaihy, Saliba (1915–) 301
Douala, art production 295
Dougga 76
Douglas, Aaron 263
Douglas, Arts and Crafts 226
Dourdan 110
Douris (biographer) 61
Dover 112
Dr Atl see Murillo, Gerardo
Dra Abu El-Naga 39
Drachten 278
Dragomima 185
Draksharama 134
Drangiana 63, 79, 80, 81, 83
Achaemenid tribute 82
Drapsaca, site of hoard 82
Dravidian literature 85
Drenthe, landscapes 228
Dresden 170, 220
academy 172, 186, 282
artistic cross-currents 173, 223
artists’ travels 119, 187
bronze work 116
court centre 154, 154
Dada movement 280, 280
Degenerate Art exhibition
281
Expressionism centre 270, 280
Kunstkammern 154, 155, 186
patronage 172
urban development 186
Dresden from the Right Bank of the Elbe
(Bellotto) 173
Dressel 58
Drogheda 163
Drohiczyn 158, 159
Dromana, plein-air paintings
259
Drome, art colony 232
Drunemeton, cult centre 59
Dublin 163, 164, 220
art academy 186
art movement 226
artists’ travels 187
trade centre 109
urban development 186
Dubrovnik 130, 185
Duccio (artist) 120
Duchamp, Marcel (1877-1968) 284
Duiker, Johannes 278
Duke of York Islands, Lapita
pottery 51
Dullu Dailek, temple 198
Dumbarton 163, 164
Dumfries 163
Duncanson, Robert 213
Dundalk 163
Dundee 163
art movement 226
Dunedin 259
architecture 259
Dunhuang 86, 87, 132
art centre 138
Buddhist art 83
Buddhist shrine 306, 307
religious art 136, 137
wall-paintings 307
Dunkeld 164
Dunkerque 285
Dunkirk 168
Dunsun 91, 91
Dur Karigalzu 42
Dur Sharrukin 43
Dura Europos 62, 68, 69, 80, 80,
81
Durack, Elizabeth 315
Durand, Asher B. (1796-1886) 212
Durango 98
Durban
community art centres 297
museums 296
Duren 104
Durentsi, Dacian phalerae 58
Dürer, Albrecht (1471-1528) 170,
171
Durgi, carving 248
Durham 108, 108, 109
Durmberg-bei-Hallein, metalwork
59
Durres 71
Dushak 246
Dushanbe
arts and crafts 302
museum 298, 302, 303
Düsseldorf 230
academy 172, 222-223, 281,
281
art centre 270
artistic influence 223
Degenerate Art exhibition 281
experimental art 281
Duterrau, Benjamin (1767-1851)
259
Dvin 107
Dwarka, trade centre 85
Dyce, William (1806-64) 226
Dyrrhachium 67, 68, 106
Dzhizak, ceramics 302, 303
Eaglemont
exported art 258
Heidelberg School 259, 259
Earle, Augustus (1793-1838) 258
Early Man Shelter 18
Earth Art movement 265, 265
East Africa 292-293
modern art 293
traditional arts 292
East Anglia 102
East Asia 46-47, 229
East India Company 206, 207, 229,
248, 248, 250, 254
East Indies 91, 142
North Netherlands trade 167
East Indies Company 167
East London (South Africa), art
gallery 296
East Prussa 230
East Rumelia 238
East Timor 50
Easter Island 92, 93, 95, 144
art production 257
Cook’s voyage 209
Pacific art 312
sculptures 145, 145
Eastern Europe 106-107, 282-283
diaspora of artists 283
Modernism 282, 283
Soviet Socialist Realism 283
Eastern Orthodox religion 282
Eastman, George (1854-1932) 214
Eberbach 108
Ebing 156
Ebla 40, 41
early urbanism 25
Ebreuil 110
Ebusus 64
Ecaquelon 109
Ecausinnes-d’Enghein 168
Ecausinnes-Lalaing 168
Ecbatana 62, 80
architecture 78
Echizen 140
Echmiadzin 106
Echternach
archbishopric 104
book production 103, 108, 109
Eckersburg, C. W. (1783-1853) 222
Eckhout, Albert (c.1610-1666) 153
Ecouis, ecclesiastical centre 116
Ecstasy of S. Teresa (Bernini) 183
Ecuador 56, 100-101
artistic activity 219, 268, 269
World Crafts Council 317
Edessa 81, 106, 128, 130
Edfu 74, 74, 128
Edime 244
Edinburgh 154, 163
artistic centre 164, 226
artists’ colony 276
artists’ travels 187
Arts and Crafts 226
arts movement 220
auctioneers 316
ecclesiastical centre 116
modernist architecture 276
urban development 186
Edingen 168
Edo 147, 204, 252, 253
architecture 193, 193
arts centre 204, 205
painting guilds 206, 207
Tokugawa headquarters 205
woodblock printing 205
Efate, Lapita pottery 51, 92, 93
Effigy Mounds 96
Efigy Mounds 55
Egebak 31
Eger 185
Egmond aan Zee, art colony 228,
228
Egmond gospels 105
Egonu, Uzo (1931-94) 295
Egypt 38-39
culture
artistic cross-currents 290
art and monasticism 77
art styles 22, 39, 42, 67
bone figure of a woman 36
Egyptian art 74-75
Egyptology 241
late Roman art 71
macehead 25
monumental art 12
Nile Valley 36, 37, 37
obelisks and columns 53
pilgrimage sites 77
sites and monuments 38
urban development 25, 241
politics
after Napoleon 244
British colony 291
Nile colonization 37
Ottoman Possession 188,
194, 195
Pharaohs 52, 62-63
Roman empire 70
and West Asia 80, 81, 128-
129
religion
Christianity 77, 77, 126, 188
Upper Nile sites 37
trade 35, 76, 84
natural resources 74
World Crafts Council 316
see also Fatimid Caliphate;
Islam; Mamluk
Ehrenberg, William Schubert von
168
Ehrenstrahl, David Klöcker (1629-
98) 156
Eichstätt 170
Eilat 130
Eindhoven
art collection 279
UNESCO project 316
Einhard (biographer) 105
Einsiedeln 108
Einsiedeln Abbey 172
Ejutla 54, 98
Ekain 19
Ekamra, temple 134
Ekpene, arts and crafts 294
El Anatsui (1944-) 295
El Arenal 54
El Baúl 54, 98
El Bosque 55
El Carmen 218
Neoclassicism 216
El Castillo 19
El Ceibo 20
El Cerrillo 100
El Djem 76
El Escorial 154, 178, 179
El Fasher 126
El Ferrol 234
El Greco (1541-1614) 155, 178
El Kab 38, 38
El Mermouta, pottery 36
El Mina 191
El Mirador 54, 54
El Molle 56
El Paraiso 27, 27
El Salvador
independence 216, 266
sculpture 54
El Shincal 100
El Tajín 54, 54, 98
El Teul 54
El Wad 21
El-Amarna 38
early urbanism 25
El-Lisht, early urbanism 25
Elam 42, 42, 43, 78
Elapura, temple 134
INDEX
330
domed sepulchral 159
ecclesiastical remains 102
Gothic 112, 114, 185
groin-vault construction
120
monasteries see
monasteries
vault mosaics 71
countries
Armenian 81
British abbeys 164
Italian 123, 181, 181
Moldavian 184
Northern Europe 112, 112
Northern Europe 116
Poland/Lithuania 158-159,
159
Portugal 178
Roman empire 70
SE Europe 184-185, 185
South Netherlands 169
Southeast Asia 206, 207,
254
Southern Europe 114, 118
Spain 178
Uniate 158, 159
furnishings
altar utensils in Japan and
Korea 252
altarpieces 118, 123, 166,
169, 169, 181, 181, 185
wooden minbars (pulpits)
125
general
archbishoprics 104, 106
Jesuit 168, 181
monastic dissolution 162,
163
royal/imperial 104
see also Religious architecture;
Specific names
Churchi 185
Churriguera, José Benito (1664-
1725) 178
Chuzhou, silk production 137
Cicero 66, 122
Cigarralejo 64
Cilicia 66, 69, 78, 80, 81
manuscript production 107
Cimabue (d.1302) 115
Cincinnati, Ohio 212, 213, 264
Cinema see Film-making
Çinili Kiosk, Imperial Ottoman
Museum 245
Cioara, Dacian phalerae 58
Circesium 80
Circulo y Cuadrado (review) 269
Cirebon, mosque 143
Cirencester 70, 71
Arts and Crafts 226
Cirta 64, 66
mosaics 76
Cishan culture 46
Citeaux 110
Citium 32
Citrakuta, temple 134
Città di Castello 121, 180, 181
City states 43, 62, 64, 68, 120,
121, 126
Ciudad 100
Ciudad Bolivar 218
Ciudad Camargo 266
Ciudad Guzán 266
Ciudad Real 152, 153
artists’ travels 119
Ciudad Rodrigo 110
ecclesiastical centre 118
Ciumesti, stone carving 59
Civate 110
Cividale 103
Civil War (England) 162
Civitavecchia 180, 181
Cixian, kiln site 138
Cizhou
kiln site 137
silk production 137
Clairvaux 110
Clark, Lygia 269
Clark, William 212
Claros 66
Classicism 178, 216, 231, 236
Claude (1604/5-1682) 165, 182, 175
Clausell, Joáquin (1866-1935)
266
Claxton, Marshall (1813-81) 259
Clazomenae 35
Clear Island, megalithic art 29
Clermont-Ferrand 110
stained glass 118
Cléry-Saint-André, ecclesiastical
centre 116
Cleveland 262, 262, 263, 263, 264
Clocks, 24
equal hours 120
Cloisonné 107
Clonard 103
Clonmacnoise 103
metalwork 59
Cluj 282
Cluj-Baoica 185
Cluj-Napoca 154
architecture 283
Cluny
alabaster 111
ecclesiastical centre 116
monastery 104, 105
murals 110
Clupea 66
mosaics 76
Clusium 64, 65, 66
Clyde 220
Clyidale 102
Cnidus 62
Coalbrookdale by Night (de
Loutherbourg) 221
Coatlinchan 98
Cobá 54, 98
CoBra movement 270, 272, 273,
278, 279
Coburg
arts centre 230
castle 116
Coca, castle 118
Cochin 198
printing 192
Cochin China 254
Codesas, megalithic art 29
Coimbra 110, 114, 154, 178, 234
wood sculpture 118
Coins 95
Abbasid 129
Achaemenid 78, 78
Axumite 72, 73
Byzantine 107
Geto-Dacian 58
Greek style 65
India 84, 85
Parthian 80, 80
Roman 91, 122
Sasanian 81
sceattas 102
silver denarius 103
stone 145
tetradrachms 80
trans-Saharan trade 125
see also mints
Coixtlahuaca 98
Colantonio (d.after 1460) 119
Colchester 108
coins 58
Colchis 78
Cole, Thomas 212
Collao 101
Collioure, Fauvism 270, 270, 284,
285
Colmar 112
ecclesiastical centre 116
Cologne 70, 71, 111, 173, 230
art collections 186, 187
artists’ travels 119
book production 103, 104,
112, 170
cathedral 220
Dada centre 270, 280, 280
glass-making centre 71
metalwork 108, 109, 109, 112
National Socialism 281
public spirit 230
South Netherlands trade 169
stained glass 116
trade route 102
Colombia 56, 100-101
architecture 153
artistic activity 219, 268, 269,
269
World Crafts Council 317
Colombo 192, 198
art school 304
Colonia Agrippina 68, 69, 69
Colonia, Juan de 119
Colonie Belge (Matulu) 293
Colosseum 66
Columbus 212, 264
Columbus, Christopher 150
Comalcalco 98
Comama 66
Commagene 80
Como 121
architecture 110, 154, 288
Comoros, World Crafts Council
316
Compiègne 104, 177
Complutum 71
Compostela see Santiago de
Compostela
Compton 220, 221
Comum 64
Comza 158
Con Con Ngua, iron work 90
Conakry, art centre 295
Concepción 152, 153, 218
Conceptual Art 261
Conchopata 57, 101
Concreto Invencíon 268, 269
Confucianism 192, 193, 207, 255
Congo, colonial exploitation 278
Conimbriga 68
Conisbrough 108
Conques 105, 110, 111, 111, 118
Conscious Naivism 273
Constable, John 220, 221, 226
Constance 103
ecclesiastical centre 116
Constantia 107
Constantine 76, 290
Constantine, emperor 70, 71, 103,
122
Constantinople 70, 95, 102-103, 113
architecture 193
artistic influence 115
Byzantine 102, 106-107, 106,
107, 129, 130
churches 70, 122
city 238
crusades 114
government centre 74
Judaism 184
late Roman art 71
map (c.AD 413) 71
Ottoman capital 131
pilgrimage centre 106
Sack of 106
silk industry 107
trading centre 76, 107
Constanza 238
Constructivism 260, 261, 269, 270,
270, 274, 276, 282, 283, 283
Conway 112, 163
Conza, archbishopric 104
Cook, Captain James 208, 10, 208,
209, 259
Cook Islands 92, 144, 208
art production 256
Cookham 276
Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish
304
Coorg, painting 248
Copacabana, art centre 153
Copán 54, 54
Copáno 98
Copenhagen 156, 157, 272
art academy 186
art college 273
artistic influences 173
artists’ travels 119, 187
arts movements 220, 222, 222,
231, 270
contemporary art 273
Laegeforeningens 221
Copiapo 218
Copper
countries
Aegean 32, 33, 33, 60
Africa 36, 37, 72
Akkadian 41
Byzantine 107
Central Asia 302
Egyptian 38, 39
European 109, 283
India 134, 248
North America 97
Northern Europe 58
Roman empire 67, 69
Scandinavia and the Baltic
156
South American 27, 56, 57,
100, 100, 101, 152
South Netherlands 168,
168, 169
Southeast Asia 91, 91
Southern Europe 115
Sub-Saharan Africa 126,
127
West Africa 294
West Asia 42
Western Mediterranean 64-
65
general
oil paintings on 168
sources 30
standards 40
Coptos 38, 74
Corao, megalithic art 29
Corbeny 104
Corbie 103
Corbridge 71
Cordillera Central 100
Córdoba 66, 69, 70, 71, 102, 152,
234
architecture 114, 178
art centre 154
artists’ travels 119
Caliphate 104, 111, 114
ecclesiastical centre 118
Islamic 124, 129
ivory 125
mosque 110, 125
palace 110
Córdoba (Chile) 218
art academy 219
Jesuit workshop 153
Corfe 112
Corinium 68
Corinth 35, 62, 65, 66, 68
pottery 60
trading centre 107
Cork 163, 164
art movement 226
trade centre 109
Corobal 100
Corofin, art movement 226
Coromina 234
Corot, Camille (1796-1875) 236
Corredor 98
Corsica 34, 103
art and trade 67, 68, 69
controlled from Paris 220
late Roman Art 71
Lombard 102
Mediterranean world 64-5, 64-5
Roman empire 66, 70
to Genoa 182
Viking route 104
Cortés, Hernán 150
Cortona 122, 123
museum 182
palace 110
Corvey 108
Cos 35, 62
Cosa 64
Cosimo, Duke 180
Coso Range sites 55
Cosquer Cave 17
Cossacks 161
Cossington Smith, Grace (1892-
1984) 314
Costa, Lúcio (1902-98) 268, 269
Costa Rica
early cultures 55, 99
independence 216, 216, 266
Cote d’Ivoire, World Crafts Council
316
Cotofenesti, Thraco-Getic hoard
58
Cotonou, art production 295
Cotowa, Aboriginal drawings
258
Cottonwood Creek 55
Cougnac 17, 19
Council of Trent 181
Courland 156, 158
Courtrai 168, 228, 229
Coutances 110
Covaciella 19
Coventry 163, 276
Covilha, Pero de, route of 127
Cowes, Fauvism/Cubism 276
Cow’s Skull, Red, White, and Blue
(O’Keeffe) 263
Coyoacán 98, 266
Coza 185
Crab Orchard 55
Crac des Chevaliers, Crusader
castle 130
Cracow 106, 154, 184, 283
architecture 155,159, 282
art centre 186, 262
art review magazine 262
ecclesiastical centre 116
industrial 220
Sigismundus chapel 158
town-planning 238
university 158
Wawel Castle 158
Crafts training schools 239
Craig Harbour 96
Cranach the Elder, Lucas (1472-
1553) 170, 171
Cranach the Younger, Lucas (1515-
86) 170
Crayons, Ice Age 18
Crema 121
Cremna 66
Cremona 66, 122, 123
architecture 110, 154, 114
prize 288, 289
Cresap 55
Cressac 110
Creta 69
Crete 32, 64-65
art and trade 67, 68, 69
Byzantine 102, 106
Mediterranean world 64-65
Ottoman 184
Phocaean ware 71
Roman empire 66, 70
Crimea 220, 224
Russian expansion 244
Crimean War 244, 246
Croatia 184
architecture 238
Catholicism 104, 184
Croesus, king 35
Cromwell, Oliver 162
Cross Lake, paintings 214
Croton 65
Crusades 106-107, 111, 113, 114,
115, 131
castles 130
First 106
and Islam 111
Second 111
Cruz-Diez, Carlos 269
Crystal 96
Crystal River 55
Cserény, panel painting 116
Csetnek, wall painting 116
Csók, István (1865-1961) 239
Ctesiphon 80, 81, 81, 128
Achaemenid 78
Cuba 234
architecture 151, 267
art movements 216, 266
gold sites 99
World Crafts Council 317
Cubism 267, 268, 270, 270, 271,
276, 282, 282, 283, 283, 284,
287, 305
post- 273
Cubitt, James 290
Cuenca
abstract art 286
artists’ travels 119
ecclesiastical centre 118
wool production 234
Cuenta 268
Cueva de las Manos 20, 20
Cueva Pintada 54, 98
Cuicuilco 54
Cuicul, mosaics 76
Culiacán 98
Cumae 34, 34, 64
Cuneo 180, 181
Cunha Baixa, megalithic art 29
Cupid and Psyche (Sergel) 156
Cupisnique style 57
Curitiba 268
Curtea de Arges 185
Curubis 66
Cusco see Cuzco
Cushites 190
Cuttack, miniatures 198
Cuvilliés, François 172
Cuxa 110
Cuzco (Cusco) 100, 101, 101, 152,
152, 218, 219
indigenous art 153
Cyclades Is 35, 35
Cyprus 32, 32, 33-34, 74
art and trade 67, 68, 69, 69
Byzantine 106, 107
church art 107
Mediterranean world 64-5,
64-5
Roman empire 66, 69, 70
World Crafts Council 316
Cyrenaica 66, 69, 74
Cyrene 34, 62, 66, 67, 68, 70
Cyropilis 79
Cyrus II 78
Cyzicus 62
Czechoslovakia 239
architecture 238, 282
clay figurines 16
diaspora of artists 283
Czemierniki 159
Czernowitz, town-planning
238
Da Carpi, Scibec 175
Da Nang 254
Dacca
art centre 304
textiles 198, 248
Dachau, memorial 281
Dacia 58, 66, 69
artefacts 58, 59
Dada movement 261, 268, 270,
270, 278, 278, 280, 280, 283,
283, 284
Dadeldhura, temple 198
Dadu,
Dagon, kiln site 206
Daguerrean Miniature Museum
212, 213
Dahae 80
Dahl, Johan Christian (1788-1857)
223
Dahl, Michael (1659-1743) 157
Dahomey 190, 191
effect of slave trade 243
Dai, textiles 124
Dai Viet, trade 207
Dai Viet kingdom 206
Daidu, textiles 133
Daima, archaeology 294
Daimiel 234
Dainzú 54
Dairen 250
Dakar
art event 316
arts and crafts 294, 295, 295
Biennial 316
Dakhla Oasis 38, 74
Dali 138
Dalí, Salvador (1904-89) 263, 284,
287
Dallam, Thomas 194
Dallas 264
Dalmatia 69, 184, 184, 238
Dalmau, Lluis 119
Dalton 96
Dalverzin-tepe
archaeology 303
Kushan art 82
Dama de Baza 64
Daman 198
Damascus 41, 70, 81, 133
Alexander the Great 78
fine arts 300
Great Mosque 128, 128
metalworking 130, 131
museum 298
Muslim castle 130
INDEX
333
Frith, William Powell (1819-1909)
226
Froment, Nicolas (d.1484) 119
Fromentin, Eugène (1820-76)
232
Frómista 118
Fry, Roger 276
Fudodo 49
Fuente del Salin 19
Fuenterrabia 109
Fukuoka 141
art event 316
Fulani 243
Fulbe 243
Fulda 103
book production 104
Funan empire 91, 91
Functionalism 273
Funerary
burial sites 26, 31, 49, 58, 72,
73, 73, 84, 89
effigies 65, 254, 254
Egyptian art 75
grave wrappings 115
jar burials 88, 90
monuments 77
portraits 69, 77
urnfields 31
urns 100
see also Grave-goods; Pyramids;
Stele
Funj 190
Furniture
Japan and Korea 140, 141
Southeast Asia 206, 255
Fürth 220
Furuichi 89
Fuseli, Henry (Johann Heinrich
Füssli, 1741-1825) 173, 221
Füssen 220
Fustat 128, 128, 129
Futa Jallon 191, 243
Futa Toro 191
Futurism 260, 260, 270, 270, 274,
282, 282, 284, 288, 288, 289
Fuzhou 136
gardens 200
kiln site 250
museum 307
printing 137, 192, 200
silk production 137
textiles 138, 202, 250
Fyn 156, 157, 222, 272
Gabae 62, 80
Gabès, textiles 124
Gabo, Naum (1890-1977) 279
Gabon, World Crafts Council 316
Gaborone, museum 296
Gabrong, pottery 36
Gades 64, 67, 69
Gafsa 290
textiles 124
Gaimonova Mogila, Scythian
burials 58
Gainsborough, Thomas (1727-88)
165, 226
Gaius Verres 66
Galapagos Islands 218
Galati, architecture 283
Galatia 66, 69, 80, 81
Galerie Der Sturm 283
Galgertberg 16
Galich-Volhynia 108
Galiche, Dacian phalerae 58
Galicia
architecture 178, 238
tin 30, 30
Galindo 57
Gallé, Emile (1846-1904) 221, 233
Gallen-Kallela, Akseli (1865-1931)
223
Gallinazo culture 57
Gallipoli 180, 181
Gama, Vasco da, route of 127
Gambia 243, 290
Games 209
Gamla Uppsala 108
Gandara 79
Gandesheim 103
Gandhara 81, 82, 83
Achaemenid tribute 82
art style 83
sculpture 85
Gangaikondacolapuram 134
Gangala culture 56
Gangwayao, kiln site 137
Gantuoli 91
Ganzak 81
Ganzhou
Gao 126, 188, 240
Gaocheng, early urbanism 25
Gardens
Asia 193
Chinese 200, 202
Italian 123, 180
landscape 164
Mughal 198, 199
Poland/Lithuania 159
revival of antique 181
Gardner, Alexander 214
Gargas 17
Garibaldi, Giuseppe 237, 237
Garnier, Tony 285
Garrick, David 164
Gasja 18
Gaston 55
Gateshead 270, 271
Gaudí, Antoní (1852-1926) 221,
235, 287
Gaugamela 78, 80
Gauguin, Paul (1848-1903) 217, 233
Gauhati 298
Gaul 64, 69
art workshops 69
Frankish 70
late Roman Art 71
Roman culture 67
Gauls 63, 65
Gault Site 20
Gauteng, Nedebele village 296
Gävle 272
Gaya, stupa 134
Gaza 130
Achaemenid 43, 67, 74, 78
Mamluk monument 131
pilgrimage route 128
Gazelle Pen, Lapita pottery 51
Gaziantep 195
Gazurgah 133
Gdansk 109, 156
alabaster 109
architecture 159
artistic centre 154, 230
artistic influence 157
ecclesiastical centre 116
Jesuit centre 158
Gebze, mosque 131
Gedebjerg 31
Gedi 127
Gedong Songo, temple 142
Gedrosia 63, 79, 80, 82, 83
Gego (artist, 1912-94) 269
Gehry, Frank (1929-) 287
Geissenklôsterle, ivory carvings
16, 17
Gekkodaira 89
Gela 64
Gelati 106
Gelidonya 32
Gellone 103
Gemma Augustea 67
Gems
carving 65, 66
diamonds 134, 152, 153, 168,
169, 198
emeralds 57, 100, 101
engraved 65
garnets 63, 69
gold/inlaid 248
Mediterranean workshops 67
precious and semi- 32, 38, 57,
63, 69, 74, 84, 84
Roman trade 69, 70
Russian 160, 197
sapphires 69
South Asia 198
trade routes 111, 111
workmanship 70, 103
see also lapis lazuli
Geneva 70, 102, 171, 220, 231
academy 172
art collection 154
arts centre 171, 230
auctioneers 316
book production 170
Catholicism 104
French influence 173
metalwork 170
print-making 118
Protestantism 171
Genghis Khan 196
Genoa 121, 123
alabaster 111
archbishopric 104
Arte Povera 288, 289
gold/silversmithery 154
metalwork 109
monuments 182
murals 110
patronage 181
sculpture 114
shipyard 220
South Netherlands trade 169
trade centre 102, 111, 114,
115, 120, 122, 131, 180
Genova 70
Geoktepe 246, 246
George III 209
George Town
temples 254
tourism 310
Georgetown (Guina) 218
Georgia 81
annexed by Russia 244
Orthodox 106, 106
radical art 275
Georgian Bay, paintings 214
Gera 230
Gerasimov, Sergey (1875-1970)
275
Gerbert of Aurillac (Sylvester II)
105
Gerhard, Hubert 171
Géricault, Théodore (1791-1824)
221
German-Austrian, power 185
Germania Inferior 66, 69
Germania Superior 66, 69
Germany 58, 170-171, 172-173,
230-231, 280-281
culture
19th century museums 230
art centres 230, 231
art societies 230
artistic influence 223
artistic workshops 170
artists’ colonies 231
Degenerate Art exhibitions
281, 281
Modern movement 280
Roman 67
romanticized landscape
231
routes of emigrating artists
281
politics
anti-Nazi/Holocaust
memorials 281
at the crossroads of Europe
173
borders 110, 170, 230,
231, 281, 282
Holocaust memorials 281
National Socialism 260,
281, 281
Ottonian 105
political divisions 281
Roman/German empire
230-231
Third Reich auction sites
281
Thirty Years War 146, 156,
171, 172, 172
religion 230
Reformation 170, 171
trade 35
North Netherlands 167
World Crafts Council 316
Germigny 104
Germigny-des-Prés 102, 103, 105
Germiston, art centre 297
Gérome, Jean-Léon (1821-1904)
232
Gerona 64
archbishopric 104
artists’ travels 119
cathedral 110
literary centre 103
metalwork 109, 114
wool production 234
Gerson Weber Company 237
Gêrzê 302
Gesellius, Herman (1874-1916)
221
Geto-Dacian, trade and culture 58
Gettysburg, Civil War site 214
Geying 91, 91
Gezer 43
Ghadami 126
Ghaffari, Muhammad 301
Ghana 126, 126, 127, 294
fantasy coffins 295
World Crafts Council 316
Ghantasala, stupa 85
Ghat 126
Ghaznavid rulers 132, 132
Ghazni 129
lustre ware 131
minaret 132
mosque 134
tomb 133
trade centre 198
Ghedi 180, 181
Gheeraerts, Marcus (1520-90) 162
Ghengis Khan 10
Ghent 228
art centre 154, 279
artistic institutions 229
artists’ travels 119
brass engraving 117
furnishings 168
manuscript painting 112
visited by Charlemagne 104
Gherla 185
Ghiz 81
Ghurid rulers 132
Gia 33
Giali 33
Giambologna (1529-1608) 171
Gianyar, museum 299
Gibberd, Frederick 271
Gibbons, Grinling (1648-1721) 164
Gibbs, James 164
Gibeon, folk art 296
Giblet, Crusader castle 130
Gibralfaro, castle 118
Gibraltar 124, 179, 234
Giersing, Harald 273
Gifu 140
Gil, Amrita Sher (1913-41) 304
Gilbert Islands 92
Gilgili 66
Gilgit 83, 247, 303
Gilman, Harold (1876-1919) 276
Gilpin, Revd. William 164
Gimar, temple 134
Gimignano 110
Gingee 198
Giordano, Luca (1634-1705) 182
Giorgio, Francesco di 122
Giotto (d.1337) 115, 120
Birth of a Virgin 121
Girodet, Anne-Louis (1767-1824)
221
Girona, stained glass 118
Gisbert, Antonio (1834-1901) 234
Gisborne, Maori art 259
Gisors 110
Giverny 232, 233
Giza 38
early urbanism 25
Gizhduvan 133
arts and crafts 302
Glanum 64, 67, 68
Glasgow 163, 164
art collection 226
artists’ colony 276
Arts and Crafts 226
industry 227
modernist architecture 276
School of Art 220
Glass
countries
Achaemenid 78, 78
Aegean 32
Alexandrian 83
Belgium 229
Byzantine 107, 107
Central Asia 83
Central and Eastern
Europe 283
Egyptian 75
English Renaissance 163
France 177
Hellenistic 63
Netherlands 279
Northern Europe 116
Roman empire 67, 69, 91
Sasanian 81
Scandinavia and the Baltic
States 272
Senegal 294
sub-Saharan Africa 191
West Asia 42, 81
techniques
artefacts 52
blue ingots 32
cage cups 71
claw beakers 71
Gallé’s technology 221
gold 71
mirror 176
mosaics 128
painting 168, 294, 304
stained 108, 110, 116, 118
workshops/centres 69, 70-71,
71
Glastonbury 102
Glauberg, stone carving 59
Glenbrook, Heidelberg School 259
Glendalough 103
Gloucester 108, 163
ecclesiastical centre 116
Gloucester, USA 212, 213
Glover, John (1767-1849) 258, 259
Gniezno 104, 106
churches 158
metalwork 108
Go Mun, Dong Son culture 90
Goa 147, 198
architecture 248
historic site 248
printing 192
Gobelins, textiles 221, 232
Gobi Desert, exploration 247
Gobir 191
Godescalc Evangelistary 105
Godin Tepe 78
Goethe 231
Gold
countries
Aegean 60
African 37, 72, 95, 127,
188, 189, 190
Akkadian 41
Arab trade 111
Australia 259, 259
British centres 164
Byzantine 107, 107
Central America 55, 98, 99,
150, 151
Central Asia 44, 302
Egyptian 38, 39, 42
European centres 111, 154
Hellenstic 62-3, 63
India 84, 134, 248
Japan and Korea 89, 141,
205, 252
Mesopotamian 41
Northern Europe 58, 58,
116
Roman trade 69
South American 27, 56, 57,
57, 100, 100, 101, 152,
153
South Asia 198
South Netherlands 169
Southeast Asia 206, 254,
255, 310, 311
Southern Europe 115, 118
West Asia 42
Western Islam 124
Western Mediterranean 64-
65
early ornaments 31
glasses 71
workmanship 70, 100
Gold Coast 243
Gold Rush 213
Golden Gate, Basotho village 296,
297
Golden Horde 131
Russian excavations 245
Golden Summer (Streeton) 259
Goldfinger, Ernö (1902-87) 271
Goldie, Charles 314
Goldsmiths’ School of Art 277
Golkonda, mosque 134, 198
Golmud 302
Gombroon 195
Gomes, Fernao, route of 127
Gómez Saquerera Macedo
100
Gondar 190
Gongbo Giarda 302
Gonggar 302
Gongxian, kiln site 136
Gönnersdorf 18
Gonzaga, Federigo 180
Gonzaga, Ludovico 122, 123
Good and Bad Government
(Lorenzetti) 237
Goodall 55
Gop, sculpture 85
Gopagiri, temple 134
Gordale Scar (Ward) 226
Gordium 43
ceramics 78
excavations 245
Gordyene 80
Gore, Spencer 276
Gorée 191
Göreme 106
Gorizia 282
Gorlovka, industrial 220
Gormley, Antony 270, 271
Gorodets 160
Goslar
manuscript painting 112
metalwork 108
Gostyn 159
Gotha 230
Gothenburg 157, 273
Gothic
architecture 120-121, 164, 184,
185
’folly’ 164
Gothick 164
and monastic dissolution
162
revival 159, 227, 227, 231
styles 123
Gotland 157
Gouda
painting 117
printing 116
Gourna 290
Gournay-sur-Aronde, metalwork
59
Gowa, mosque 206
Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de
(1746-1828) 179, 221, 234,
235
Goyo, Hashiguchi (1880-1921)
308
Gracanica 106
Graeco-Bactrians 82, 84
Graeco-Roman culture 67, 77, 102-
3
Graf, Urs 171
Graff, Anton (1736-1813) 173
Graham, Bruce 265
Graham Cave 96
Grahamstown, art school 296
Grain Coast 191
Gran 106, 185
Gran Pajatén 100
Granada 114, 124, 129
Alhambra 95, 114, 125, 179,
188
castle 118
architecture 110, 114, 155,
178, 178
art centre 154
Christian reconquest 119
ecclesiastical centre 118
madrasa 125
Palace of Charles V 179
textiles 125, 234
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
(Moran) 214, 215
Grand Gulch 26, 27
Grand Rapids 212
INDEX
332
Elba 182
Elbasan 185
Elbing 157
Elblag 158
Elea 65
Elephanta, temple 85, 248
Elephantine 25, 37, 38, 78
Eleusis 35, 66
shrine 60
Elis, theatre 60
Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury
162
Elizabeth I of England 162
Elizabeth I of Russia 161
Elizabethville, art school 293
Ellora
historic site 248
temple 85
Elmali 78
Elmina 190
Elne
artists’ travels 119
ecclesiastical centre 118
Ely 108, 108
ecclesiastical centre 116
Elymais, kingdom 80
Embid, castle 118
Embrun, archbishopric 104
Emerald Mound 96, 97
Emerita Augusta 66, 69
Emmaboda 272
Empire style 223
Emporiae 64, 64, 67
Emporion 34
Greek colony 58
Enamelwork
Limoges 174
Russian 160
Scandinavia and the Baltic
States 272
Enckell, Magnus 272
End of the Bazaar (Selimu) 302
Endere 247
Engel, Carl Ludwig (1778-1840)
222, 222
Engelburg 108
Enghien 168
England
age of the aristrocracy 164
art centre 231
Catholicism 104
Christianity 154
cross-cultural exchanges 111
English Renaissance 163
North Netherlands trade 167
see also Britain
English Baroque 162
Engraving
Ice Age 16, 18
metal-plate 251
niello 301
Northern Europe 116, 117
South American 219
Engström, Leander 272
Enkomi 32
Enlène 19
Enna, pre-Islamic 124
Ennis, art movement 226
Enseigne de Gersaint (Watteau) 177
Ensérune 64
Ensor, James (1860-1949) 228
Entremont 64
stone carving 59
Enugu, arts and crafts 294
Enwonwu (1918-94) 294
Eoca 185
Epardus 80
Ephesus (Ephesos)
Achaemenid 62, 66, 67, 68,
70, 78
demise 102
excavations 245
shrine 60
source of marble 35
Epidaurus 60, 62, 66
Epirus 66, 69
Épone, megalithic art 29
Epsom 154
Equatorial Africa, exotic products
68
Erasmus of Rotterdam 171
Erdely 185
Erdeni Dzuu 298
Eresburg 104
Eretria 35, 62
theatre 60
Erfurt 112, 170, 281
ecclesiastical centre 116
Erickson, Arthur 264
Eridu
early urbanism 25
excavations 245
Erivan 224, 225
Erlau 185
Erlitou, early urbanism 25
Ermes, Ali Omar (1945-) 291
Ernst, Max (1891-1976) 284
Erzincan 78
Erzurum
Abbasid 129
carpet-making 244
metalwork 78
mosque 130
trade centre 195
Esbjerg 272
Escalona, castle 118
Escariz, megalithic art 29
Esch, amber figurine 68
Escomb 102
Eshnunna 40, 42
Eshowe, museum 296
Esie 127, 190
Eski Gümus 106
Eskilstuna 272
Eskisehir 130
Esna 74, 74, 77
Espiñaredo, megalithic art 29
Espoo 272
Esquivel, Antonio (1806-57) 234
Essaouira, architecture 188, 189
Essen 103, 108, 281
Esslingen, ecclesiastical centre
116
Este, Alfonso d’ 180
Este, Leonello d’ 122
Estella 118
Estonia 156, 157
art in a globalized world 273
pagan 106
radical art 275
Estrada, José María (c.1800-60)
217
Estremoz, castle 118
Esztergom 104, 106
architecture 155, 185
artistic cross-currents 154
ecclesiastical centre 116
Étampes 110
Ethiopia 126, 127, 190, 191
Christianity 73, 126-127, 188,
190, 240, 243
Etowah 96, 97
Etretat 285
Etruria 34, 65, 65
Etruscans
artistic influence 34, 34, 35, 58,
65, 66
and Western Mediterranean
64-65
Etzatlán 54
Euboea 32, 33, 34, 35, 60
Eufemia 65
Euffigneix, stone carving 59
Euhesperides 62
Eumenes II 63
Eupatoria 195
Eurasia
Ice Age 16-19
trade routes 131, 194
Europe 11, 28-29, 102-103, 104-
105, 154-155, 184-185, 186-187,
220-221, 270, 271
agriculture
early farming settlements
28
culture
Age of Enlightenment 179,
208
artistic cross-currents 154,
154, 155, 221, 290
artistic crossroad 186
artistic works 103
artists’ travels 187
Byzantine art 106
court expression 154, 155
cultural contacts 187
fin de siècle 221
industrial/utopian
architecture 220, 221
late Roman art 71
luxury goods 102
major art centres 186, 187
writing centres 103
Ice Age/Postglacial 16, 16, 18,
18, 19, 21, 28
politics
Asian possessions 192
Eastern 106-107, 282-283
ethnicity 184
involvement in west Asia
244-245
nature and nationalism
220
Northern 108, 108, 109,
109, 112, 112, 113
Ottoman empire 194
Roman disintegration 70
Southeastern 28, 184-185,
238-9
Southern 110, 110, 111,
111, 114-115
religion
monasteries 103
Western Christendom 104
trade
and art 109
and artistic influence 111
Asian ports 192
imports/exports 154, 155,
194-195, 194-195, 301
and industry 107
Evans, Walker 263
Evenk 224
Éveux sur l’Arbresle 270, 271
Évora 110, 114, 154
Évreux 109
stained glass 116
Evron, stained glass 110, 116
Evry 285
Eworth, Hans (1540-73) 162
Exeter 154
cathedral 108, 112
Romanticism 226
wool trade 163, 164
Exmouth 163
Exposition Universelle (Paris
1867) 245
Expressionism 223, 268, 270, 273,
275, 278, 279, 280, 280, 282,
282, 283, 287, 311
Expulsion of St. Elizabeth (Schwind)
231
Eyck, Barthélemy d’ 119
Eylau, battle zone 220
Ezcaray, wool production 234
Èze 64
Faaborg 272
Faesulae 66
Fagaras 185
Fahlström, Öiyvind 273
Faico, gold 207
Faience, 23, 32, 33, 39, 75, 177
Faifo 206
Failaka 40, 41, 42, 43
Faiyum 38, 68, 69, 74, 77
Graeco-Roman 75
pottery 36, 37
tiraz 129
Falaise 110
Falerio 66
Falisci peoples 65
Falkland 154
Falkland Palace 162
Falls of Tummel 226
Falun 108, 272
Familistère (housing) 221
Fangel Torp, figurines 31
Fanzolo 181
Far East 85
Farafra Oasis 38, 74
Faras 72
Fardal, figurines 31
Faremoutiers 103
Farfa 103
Farfan 101
Farnese family 180, 181
Faro 178
Fars 81, 81
Fatehpur Sikri
miniature paintings 198
Mughal imperial city 199
Fath Ali Shah 244
Fathy, Hassan (1900-1989) 290,
290, 291, 291
Fatimid dynasty 125, 132
Fattori, Giovanni (1825-1908) 237
Fauvism 270, 270, 273, 276, 284
Faxian (Buddhist pilgrim) 85
Fayaz-Tepe 303
Kushan art 82
Fécamp 110
stained glass 116
Fellbach-Schmiden, wood carving
58, 59
Felletin, tapestry 154
Fellner, Ferdinand 238, 239
Felsina 64, 65
Fengyuan, 200
Fengzhou, silk production 137
Fenovillar 110
Ferdinand II 114, 155
Ferentillo 110
Ferghana 129, 246, 246
arts and crafts 302
Fernando Po 190
Ferrara 121, 122, 236
academy 182
alabaster 111
antiquities 181
art centre 154, 180, 181
artists’ club 288, 288
Metaphysical painting 270
music 180
patrons and projects 110, 123,
181
printing 180
Ferrières 103
Festival of Britain 277
Fetörákos 185
Fez 126, 188
architecture 124, 124, 125,
189
Attarin Madrasa 124, 125
crafts 240, 291
paper-making 125, 125
polychrome bowl 240
trade centre 240
Fez Wattasid 188
Fezzan 126
Fiji
archaeology 92
art production 256, 257
indigenous trade 209, 209
Pacific art 257, 312, 312, 313
pottery 51, 51, 92
World Crafts Council 316
Film-making 251, 304, 304, 309
Finland 156, 157, 160, 222, 222
architecture 272
art in a globalized world 273
artistic movements 220, 221,
273
exchange programme 273
Lutheran 154
museums 272
Neoclassicism 222
pre-Revolutionary to PostSoviet
art 275
Swedish-speaking areas 156
Finno Ugrians 70, 109
Finns, pagan 106
Firmum 66
Firuz Shah Tughlug 134
Firuzabad (Gur) 81
minaret 130
Fischer von Erlach, Johann
Bernhard 172
Fishbourne 67, 67
Fitna Astonishing Bahram Gur
(Zaman) 194
Fiume 185
Flanders 168, 168
style of painting 119
wool imports 116
Flandes, Juan de (d. before 1519)
119, 119
Flatalunga 109
Flavigny 103
Flavium amphitheatre 66
Flemish art 180, 181
Fleury 103
Anglo-Saxon artists 105
Flint 97, 112
Floreffe 168
Florence 102
archbishopric 104
architecture 110, 114, 115,
120-121, 122, 180
art academy 186, 187
art centre 154, 236
art collection 172, 182, 186,
282
artists’ club 288, 288
artists’ travels 119, 187
Counter-Reformation 180
First National Exhibition
(1861) 237
Giotto’s work 120
industrial 220
library 181
Macchiaioli group 236, 237
manuscript production 114
metalwork 109, 114
Metaphysical painting 270
monuments 182
music 180
nationalistic site 237
patrons and projects 121, 122,
123, 180, 181
trading centre 122
treatises/academies 180
university 120
Florence (USA) 97
Florentia 66
Flores 142, 143, 206, 254, 310
Bronze Age 90
Flötner, Peter (d.1546) 170, 171
Fluxus movement 270, 281
Foa Island, Lapita pottery 51
Fogaras 185
Fogliano, Guidoriccio da 121
Foix, panel painting 118
Fojinho, megalithic art 29
Folsom 96
Fontaine-l’Evêque 168
Fontainebleau 20, 21, 21
art centre 154, 175, 177, 285
court centre 154, 174, 174
Romantic site 220
urban development 186
Fontana, Lucio (1899-1968) 289
Fontanet 19
Fontao, megalithic art 29
Fontevrault 110
Foochow 250
Ford Motor Company 263, 263
Forles, megalithic art 29
Foro Claudio 110
Fort Ancient 55, 96, 97
Fort Carlton 212
Fort Center 55
Fort Clatson 212
Fort Colville 212
Fort Edmonton 212
Fort James 191
Fort Lauderdale 264
Fort McKenzie 212
Fort Napoléon, art school 241
Fort Nez Percé 212
Fort Shevchenko 246
Fort Union 212
Fort Vancouver 212
Fort William 212
Fort Worth 264
Fortat 81
Fortuny, Mariano (1838-74) 234
Forum Iulii 66
Fossascesia 110
Fossils, hominids 16
Fotuna, Lapita pottery 51
Fougères, château 116
Foumban, art production 295
Fouquet (jewellery designer) 233
Fourche Maliners 55
Fourknocks, megalithic art 29
Fowey 163
Fragtrup 31
France 16, 17-19, 20-21, 174-175,
176-177, 232-233, 284-285
culture
art and artists 285
art centre 110, 232
artistic florescence 174,
174, 175, 177
artistic influence 111, 157,
232
Byzantine art 107
château 116, 118, 174,
174, 177
Gothic churches 110
politics
borders 120, 122
civil wars 175, 176
colonization 34
Edict of Nantes 176
Islamic 111
North African colonies
290-291
regionalism 232
reunification 174
Revolution 165, 177, 232
settlements in Africa 191,
243
state centralization 176
Wars of Religion 154
trade 167, 169
in Asia 192
railways 232
World Crafts Council 316
Francesca, Piero della 122
Francis I 174-175
Cellini salt cellar 155
Franciscan order 114, 120, 121,
139, 152
Francistown, museum 296
Franconia 170
Frankfort, Indiana 212
Frankfurt 104, 112, 176, 220
ecclesiastical centre 116
National Socialism 281
Frankfurt am Main 230
academy 172
arts centre 230
book production 170
Frankfurt an der Oder 172
Franks, kingdom 70, 70, 102, 104,
105
Franzensbad 238
Frascati 181
Frederick II of Prussia 113, 115, 172
Fredericksburg (USA), Civil War
site 214
Frederiksborg palace 156, 157,
157, 187
Frederikssund 272
Free State, Basotho Cultural
Village 297
Freetown, Ode-lay masks 295
Freiburg 170, 171
ecclesiastical centre 116
stained-glass 116
wood sculpture 116
Fremont tradition 96
French West Africa 290
Frescoes/murals/wall paintings
Aegean 32
Byzantine 106, 184
Central Asia 83
China 136
Egypt 77
European 108, 110
France 175, 233
Franciscan 120
German 173, 237
Graeco-Roman 67
Hellenstic 62-3
Italian 180, 182, 237
Minoan 33
Muralism 266, 267, 268
Mycenaean 33
Nile Valley 39
Northern Europe 116
Norway 273
Odyssey 67
Rome 115
Southern Europe 118
and ‘total artwork’ 173
Freud, Lucian (1922-) 277
Friedersbach, stained glass 110,
116
Friedrich, Caspar David (1774-
1840) 223
Frisians 102
INDEX
335
auctioneers 316
museum 298
painting/printing 250
Hong Se-sop (1832-84) 253
Hongshan
archaeology 307
culture 46, 46, 47
Hongzhou, kiln site 136, 137
Honhot, museum 298
Honiara, museums 312
Honnecourt 112
Honnecourt, Villard de 112
Honolulu, Pacific art 257, 312, 313
Honshu 48, 49, 49, 88, 88, 140,
141, 204, 205, 205, 252
Honthorst, Gerrit von (1592-1656)
156
Hooghly 207
Hooper Bay 96
Hopewell 55, 97
Hopewell peoples 55, 55, 97, 97
Horikoshi 89
Horinouchi 49
Hormuz 129
Seljuk 130
trade centre 131
Hormuz Island, trading port 192
Horoztepe 40
Horta, Victor 221, 228, 229
Horus, temple at Edfu 75
Horyu-ji 141
Hosios 106
Hotel van Eetvelde, Brussels 297
Houbice, wall painting 116
Houma 86
archaeology 307
House (Whiteread) 277
Houses of Parliament see Palace of
Westminster
Houston 264
Hove (Jutland) 31
Howard Lake 55
Hoxne, pepper-pot 70, 71
Hradec, wall painting 116
Hromkla 106
Huaca de la Luna 57
Huaca del Loro 101
Huaca del Sol 53, 57
Huaca el Dragón 101
Huaca Prieta, textiles 27
Huaizhou, silk production 136
Huamelupan 54
Huang Binhong (1865-1955) 306
Huánuco Pampa 100
Huánuco Picchu 100
Huari (Wuari) 57, 57, 101
empire 100-101, 101
Huarpa 57
culture 57
Hudson River School of painters
212, 213
Hué
arts and crafts 310
historical site 254
Hue, museum 298
Huelva, ecclesiastical centre 118
Huerta, Juan de la 119
Huesca 110, 114
Huetamo 54, 54
Huexotla 98
Huff Village 96
Huguenot emigration 176, 177
Huixian, early urbanism 25
Huizhou, paper production 136
Hull 109, 112, 163
alabaster 116
Hultén, Pontus 273
Humanism 120, 122, 122, 123
Renaissance 163
Humayun, emperor 198, 199
Humboldt, Alexander von 218,
219
Humboldt Bay 92, 93
Humboldt Cave 96
Humersiut 96
Humlebæk 273
Humor 185
Huna dynasty 85
Hunan 250
paper production 136
Hungary
architecture 238, 282
borders 120, 122, 123
Byzantine art 106
cultural influences 184-5
dependencies 238
diaspora of artists 283
Jászó monastery 185
Latin rite 106
religion 104, 105, 154
religious architecture 185
Renaissance art 185
trade and culture 195
World Crafts Council 316
Hunnam-ni 49
Hunstanton 276
Hunyuan, kiln site 136
Hunza-Haldeikish 83
Hupa-iya 56, 56
Hupo-ri 49
Hurez 185
Hurmizd Ardashir 81
Husaby 108
Husain, Maqbool Fida (1915-) 305,
305
Huskapura, Buddhist/Kushan art
83
Hussite, attitudes to art 154
Huxian 307
Huym St Hubert 110
Huyssens, Peter (1577-1637) 168
Hwangsae 89
Hwangsong-ni 49
Hyderabad 207
architecture 248
museum 298, 304
palace 198
textiles 304
Hyppolite, Hector (1894-1948) 267
Hyrcania 62, 80, 81
Ialysos 33
Iaroshenko, Nikolay (1846-98) 224
IASPIS studio programme 273
Iasus 33
Ibadan 190
Iberia 58, 64, 70, 80, 81
artworks 178, 287
copper sources 30, 30
Islamic influence 119
late Roman Art 71
major art collection 234
megalithic tombs 29
painters’ travels 286
secular patronage 119
settlements 64-65
South Netherlands trade 168
Iberians 34, 34, 35
Ibiza 34
Ibn Battuta, route of 127
Ibn Khaldun (chronicler) 126
Ice Age 12, 16-17, 16-17, 18-19,
18-19, 20, 24-25
Iceland, Christendom 105
Ichang 250
Iconium 106, 107, 128
Iconoclast controversy 106
Icons, Byzantine 106, 106, 184
Ictinus (architect) 61
Idrisids 124, 129
Ife
archaeology 294
cultural centre 295
Iga, pottery 140
Igala 190
Igbo 126
Igbo Ukwu 126, 126, 190
Igluligardjuk 96
Ignatiev Cave 18
Ignatius of Loyola 168
Ikaruga, palace site 89
Ikawazu 49
Ikegami-Sone 88
Ikkeri 198
Ikot, arts and crafts 294
Il Gesù, Rome 158
Ile Ife 126, 126, 127
Ile Maré, Lapita pottery 51
Ilhuatzio 98
Iliad 76
Ilidze 238
Ilkhanate 131, 131
Illesca, castle 118
Illutalik 96
Illyrians 65
Illyricum 66
Ilorin 190
Imakumano 89
Imbul-li 49
Immendorf, Jörg 281
Imperial Academy of Fine Arts,
Istanbul 245
Impressionism/Post- 211, 216,
225, 228, 231, 232, 233, 233,
259, 276, 276, 283, 288
Inca Cueva 20
Inca empire 100, 101
culture 95, 101
indigenous culture 152
shirt 101
Inch’on 308
Independence 212
Independent Group 277
India 44-45, 63, 79, 84, 85, 134-
135, 248-249, 304-305
culture
20th century 304
archaeology 84, 85
architecture 248, 304
art schools 248, 249
art societies 249
artistic influence 12, 140,
140, 208, 248-249, 304
Bengal School movement
304
early historic period 84
East India Company 248-
249
exotic products 68, 69
folk/native art 304, 304
miniature painting 248, 304
monumental art 134
town-planning 304
politics
British government 248-249
emperors 52
major dynasties 84, 85,
134
Persian invasion 194
religion, temple kingdoms 134,
134
trade
export products 248
Roman Empire 69, 70
routes 44, 84, 85, 134, 207
Southeast Asia 91, 91
World Crafts Council 316
Indianapolis 212, 262, 262
Indo-Greek dynasty 84
Indo-Pacific 50, 51
Indochina 254, see also Vietnam,
Laos, Cambodia
Indonesia 11, 12, 50, 50, 51, 53,
95, 146
art schools/museums 298
arts and crafts 310
Catholicism 207
Dong Son culture 90
independence 278
World Crafts Council 316
Indraprastha, archaeology 84
Indrapura 206
Indus
civilization 44-45, 45
early urbanism 25
Industrial Revolution 244
Inegol 131
Ingaladdi, rock art 50
Ingelheim 102
palace complex 104
Inglefield Land 96
Ingobe Ilede 127
Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique
(1780-1867) 236
Inhambane 191
Inlay, Mesopotamian 41
Innsbruck 154, 238
bronze casting 170
castle 116
Institute of Ethiopian Studies 127
Interamnia 66
Inuit culture 11, 53, 96, 149, 260
Inussul 96
Inuyama 140
Inverary 163, 164
Inverness 163
Ioannina 283
Iol 64
Iolkos 33
Iomnium 76
Iona 103
Ionia 34, 35
Ionic order 35
Iowa City 262, 263
Ipec 195
Ipiutak peoples 53
Ipswich 164
Iquique 218, 219
Irakleion, pottery 283
Iran 40, 40, 41, 43, 192, 300
art schools/museums 298
artistic influence 130
calligraphic cast bronze 298
calligraphy 299, 301
carpet-making 301
cultural programmes 300
Parthian expansion 80
Peacock Throne 193
Saqqakhana school 301
Seljuk Turks 131
trade 84, 131
World Crafts Council 316
Iran-Iraq war 300
Iraq 40
art schools/museums 298
British Mandate 300
fine arts 300, 301
Ireland
artistic centres 164
Catholic 154
Celtic art 59
copper sources 30, 30
major country houses 164
World Crafts Council 316
Iria 32
Irian Jaya, Pacific art 312, 313
Irish 70
kingdoms 102
Irkutsk 224
museum 298
Iron see metalwork
Iron Age 47, 58-59
Iron Gates, Thraco-Getic hoard 58
Isaacz, Pieter (1569-1625) 156
Ise 140
Isfahan 128, 129, 131, 132, 133,
195, 196
architecture 192
carpet trade 194, 244, 301
courtly art 192
Courtyard of the
Congregational Mosque 131
map of capital 194
minarets 130
museum 298
printing 192, 194
Safavid capital 195
traditional arts 301, 301
Ishtar, goddess 41
Isin 42, 42
Isis, god 75
Isla Mujeres 98
Islam 94
Christian invasions 111, 130
conquests
Asia 192, 193
in Central Asia 132
Eastern Europe 282
Levant 128, 130
Muslim battles 102
in North Africa 124, 125
in SE Europe 184, 185
Southeast Asia 142, 143,
143, 206, 207, 254
Sub-Saharan Africa 127,
190, 190, 191, 242, 242,
243
Umayyad Syria 128
West Africa 294
Western 124, 125
West Asia 128-129, 130
culture
architecture 135, 136, 193,
241
attitudes to art 132, 154
and Byzantium 106
cultural influence 11, 12,
111, 126, 190-191
illuminated book 103
important schools 188,
240
khanaqahs 131
madrasas 125, 130, 131,
133, 196, 197, 302
Maliki school 125
Muslim dynasties 129
sects
Shi’i 194-195, 197
Sufi brotherhood 196,
197
Sunni 195, 197
trade, routes in Asia 192
see also Minarets; Mosques
Islamabad
museum 298
National Art Society 304
Islands of Sun and Moon 100
Isle of Pines, Lapita pottery 51
Isle Royal 96
Isma’il (statesman) 241
Isnik 194
Isong-sansong 89
Israel
architecture 300
art schools/museums 298
Ice Age 18
N. African craftsmen 291
World Crafts Council 316
Israëls
Isaac (1865-1934) 228, 229
Jozef (1824-1911) 228
Issus 78
Issy-les-Moulineaux 285
Istakhr 129
Istanbul 224, 240
Academy of Fine Arts 298,
301
art centre 244, 301, 301
art event 316
fine arts 300
illegal antiquities 245
museums 298
Ottoman capital 194-195, 195,
244
railway connections 245
tourist souvenirs 245
traditional arts 301
Istrus 62
Greek colony 34, 58
Isturitz 17
Isuritz 19
Ita Yemoo 126
Itacoatiara 56, 56, 100
Italia 69
Italica 66, 68
Italy 21, 34, 65, 114, 120-121, 180-
183, 236-237, 288-289
culture
academic system 182, 182,
236, 237
ancient sites 182, 183
art collections 182, 183
art and Fascism 288
art forms 65, 155
artistic centres 180, 182,
236
cultural influence 13, 121,
186, 188, 236, 290
excavations 182
late Roman Art 71
modern movement 288
museums 182
patrons and projects95
121, 123, 181, 236
universities 120
politics
city states 64, 120
Fascism 260, 288
Garibaldi, Nationalism and
the Macchiaioli 237
and Napoleon 220
Norman incursions 110
North African colonies
290-291
political divisions 182
Roman empire collapse 70
Unification 237, 237
religion, Catholicism 154
trade
and culture 120, 122, 180
medieval 114
North Netherlands 167
travel and tourism 182
Itazuke 88
Ithaca, USA 264
Ithaka 33
Ito 88
Ittagi, diamonds 134
Itztepetl 54
Ivan III 160
Ivan IV (the Terrible) 155, 160-161
Ivanov, Aleksandr 224
Ivory
countries
Abbasid trade 129
Achaemenid 78
African 37, 116, 126, 168,
189, 190, 243
Belgian Congo 221
Burma 255
Central Asia 83
Eastern Mediterranean 32,
33, 63
European centres 109, 112
India 83, 84, 84, 85
Maghreb 124, 125
North Africa 76, 76, 124, 125
North America 55, 148
Northern Europe 116
Pacific 257
Roman trade 69
in Russia 224, 224
South Netherlands 169
Southern Europe 115
West Asia 43, 43
general
Aegean statuette 33
and bone 224
court patronage 105
diptych-leaves 71
elephant 71
mammoth 16
St Gall abbey 105
toggles 204, 205
walrus 53
Ivory Coast 191
arts and crafts 294
Ivrea, architecture 288
Ivry la Bataille 110
Ixtían del Rio 54
Iyatayet 55, 96
Izapa 54
Izmir 130
Izmit 130
Iznik 130, 131, 195, 195
Izumo 89
Jabal Nafusah 188, 189
Jabal Says 128
Jabbeke, museum 279
Jaca 110
Jackson Vaughan 96
Jade see stone
Jadraque 234
Jaén 125
Jaffa 130, 195
Jaffé, Hans (art historian) 278, 279
Jaffna 198
Jagatu, inscriptions 83
Jaggayyapeta, stupa 85
Jagiellonian dynasty 158
Jago, temple 142
Jahan (Shah) 199
Jaina 98
Jainism 84, 85, 134, 249
Jaipur
carpets 304
miniature paintings 198, 304
museum 298, 304
pottery 249
stone carving 248
Jaisalmer, palace 198
Jakarta
art school 298
church 206
furniture 310
museum 298
Jaketown 55, 96
Jalalabad 198
site of hoard 82
Jalieza 98
Jam, minaret 132
Jamaica
INDEX
334
Grand Tour 164, 182, 183, 187, 231
Grandmother (O Yun) 309
Grandson 112
Granicus 78
Granite 38, 38
Granja de Toninuelo, megalithic
art 29
Grant, Duncan 276
Graphic Arts 269
Grasmere 164
Grathang, art centre
Grave Creek Mound 26, 55, 97
Grave-goods 24, 31, 40, 41, 44, 58
Graves, Michael 265
Gravettian period 17
Graz 154, 184
art centre 154, 186
industrial 220
memorial 281
stained glass 110, 116
town-planning 238
Great Fire of London 162-3, 164
Great Hunt mosaic 69
Great Kabylia, pottery 188
Great Malvern, stained glass 116
Great Northern War 157, 158
Great Orme, copper 30, 31
Great Ryzhanovka, Scythian
burials 58
Great Serpent Mound 97
Great Zimbabwe 95, 126, 127
Greece
culture
artistic patronage 60
artistic/cultural influence
12, 23, 34-35, 60, 64-66,
66, 75
diaspora of artists 283
frescoes 33
Helllenstic period 62-63,
62-63, 64
indigenous style 282
late Roman Art 71
major arts 35, 35
marble quarries 69
modernist tendencies 283
Mycenaean pottery 32
palace sites 32, 33
silk industry 107
politics
colonies 58
Iron Age 58
looting by Rome 53, 66
nationalism and neovernacularism
239
Roman empire collapse 70
and West Asia 80
and Western
Mediterranean 64-65
religion, Christian territory 130
trade 32, 34, 84
World Crafts Council 316
Greek Slave (Powers) 213
Greenland
archaeological sites 96
Christendom 105
Ice Age 17
Gregorian, Marcos 301
Grenoble 102, 285
Gresik 143, 310
Grevensvaenge 31
Greywacke 38
Grez 232, 233
Grid designs 20, 21
Grinagara, temple 134
Gris, Juan (1887-1927) 284, 287
Grizzly bear teeth 97
Grodno 158, 159
Grodzisk Wielkopolski 159
Groningen 228, 229
architecture 279
Groom with Horse and Carriage
(Amir) 249
Gropius, Walter (1883-1969) 231,
280
Gross-Grönau 109
Grosswardein 238
Grosz, George (1893-1959) 280
Grotte Chauvet 17, 17
Grotte Cosquer 17, 17, 19
Grotte des Bernous 17
Grozny, carpet-making centre 244
Grumath 104
Grundestrup, wild boar 59
Grünewald, Isaac 272
Grupo Neoconcreta 269
Gu Kaizhi (344-406) 87
Gua Gajah, temple 142
Gua Harimau, pottery 50
Gua Lawa 50
Guadalajara 110, 154
castle 118
Primitivism 216
wool production 234
Guadalcanal 50
Guadalquivir 19
Guadalupe, ecclesiastical centre
118
Guam 145, 312
Guan Daosheng (1262-1319) 139
Guanajuato 266
Primitivism 216, 217
Guangyuan, religious art 136
Guangzhou 46, 86, 87, 136, 192,
200
archaeology 306, 307
kiln site 138, 202
museums 298, 307
painting/printing 250
Guar, mosque 134
Guaraní 100
Guardi, Francesco 183
Guarini, Guarino 173
Guarita phase 100
Guasare 56
Guascalla 180
Guastalla 181
Guatemala 151, 216, 216, 266
Guatemala City 266
Guayabo 98
Guayaquil 218
Gubbio 121
court 122, 123
Gudea 41
Gudimallam, archaeology 84
Guernica, air raid 286
Guernica (Picasso) 271, 287
Guggenheim, Solomon R. 264
Guiana 218, 219
Guiana Highlands 56, 100, 218
Guiengola 98
Guilin 200, 202, 250, 306, 307
Guimaraes 154
Guimard, Hector 221
Guimard (designer) 232
Guinea, World Crafts Council 316
Guinea Bissau
arts and crafts 294
World Crafts Council 316
Guiry, megalithic art 29
Guise, Familistère project 220, 221
Guiyang 200, 306
museum 307
Guizhou 250
Gulbarga 198
mosque 134
Guldhoj 31
Gulf of Finland 160, 161
Gulf states 301
Gullakra Mosse 31
Gulpaygan, mosque 130
Gum Tree Valley 18
Gundeshapur 81
Gundestrup
cauldron 58
Dacian phalerae 58
Gunther Island 96
Gunugu 66
Gunung Kawi, temple 142
Gupta empire 85, 85
Gur (Firuzabad) 81
Gur-i Mir, Timur’s tomb 247
Güre 78
Gurgan 83
ceramics 130, 131
Gurk, wall painting 116
Guruve, sculpture community 296
Gustav II Adolf 156
Gustav III 156, 157
Gustav Vasa, king 156
Güstrow 170
Gutiérrez Soto, L. 287
Guttuso, Renato (1912-87) 289
Guwahati, museum 298
Gwadar 84
Gwalior
museum 298
temple 134, 198
Gwathmey, Charles (1938-) 265
Gwazhili 191
Gwozdziec 158
Gyantse, art centre, 200
Gyaraspur, temple 134
Gyartse 302
Gyokudo, Uragami 252
Gyor 185
Gypsum Cave 96
Gyulafehérvär 185
Ha Lung, pottery 50
Ha’apai Islands, Lapita pottery 51
Haarlem 154, 166, 166
Teyler museum 229
Habsburg 108
Habsburg dynasty 194-195, 282
Habsburg empire 159, 182
-Valois wars 180
influence and patronage 178-
179, 187
palaces 178
possessions 160, 166, 168-169,
172, 173, 180, 184, 185, 185
Habuba, early urbanism 25
Hachinohe 308
Hachon-ni 88
Hacimusalar 78
Hadda
archaeology 85, 303
Kushan art 82
Hadrian 68, 103
Hadrian’s Wall 69
Hadrumetum 64, 124
Hae’in-sa 89
Hafar 128
Hafnarfjördhur 272
Hafsid dynasty 125, 190
Hagen 230
Hagenau (Haguenau) 172
Haidarabad, mosque 134
Hainan 206
Hainault 117, 168, 168
Haithabu 102
Haiti 267
art movement 216
independence 216
Hajiabad 131
Hakata 140, 141, 204
Halberstadt 108
Halicarnassus 62, 78
Halifax (UK), art movement 226
Halifax (USA) 212, 264
Halikarnassos, town-planning 60,
61
Halle 154, 172
ecclesiastical centre 116
Hallstatt, Scythian objects 58, 58
Halmahera 50, 206, 254
boatbuilding 310
trade 207
Halmstad 272
Hama 71, 128
Hamadan 80, 128, 132, 300
Ilkhanid monuments 131
Hamanasuno 49
Hamar 108
Hamath 43
Hamburg 103, 109, 156, 172, 222
archbishopric 104
artistic cross-currents 154,
157, 173
arts centre 230
auction houses 187, 316, 316,
317
copper exports 168
Degenerate Art venue 281
Holocaust memorial 281
manuscript painting 112
metalwork 108, 170
public spirit 230
shipyard 220
South Netherlands trade 169
wood sculpture 116
Hamdi, Osman 245, 301
Hämeenlinna 272
Hamess 55
Hami 83, 132, 196, 247, 302
Hamilton, indigenous art 315
Hammamiya, pottery 36
Hammurabi
Code of 42
king 42
Hamozia 134
Hampi
palace 198
temple 134
Hampton Court Palace 163
Hamwih 102, 102
Han Dynasty 52, 81, 86, 87, 88, 91,
94
Hang Gon
bronze 51
pottery 50
Sa Huynh site 90
Hangzhou 46, 136
art schools 299, 306
gardens 200, 202
kiln site 136, 137
museum 307
printing/painting 138, 192,
200, 202
route to west China 306
silk production 200, 250
Hanhoi, museum 298
Hankar, Paul 229
Hankou 250
Hannibal 65
Hanoi 138
arts and crafts 310
ceramics 207
stone carving 254
Hanover 222
art review magazine 282
arts centre 230, 270, 282
Dada site 280
industrial 220
National Socialism 281
united with Great Britain 173
Hans Empire 89
Hansan 89
Hanseatic League 113, 115, 160
Hansen, Christian Frederik 157
Hanzhou, silk production 137
Hapsong-ni 88
Haranojo 89
Harappa 22, 25, 45
Harappan civilization 44, 44, 45
Harare
art school 296
tourist/modern art 292, 293
traditional arts 292, 296, 296
Harbin 224, 306
Hardegg 112
Hardwick Hall 162
Hariharpur, textiles 198
Harlech 112
Harlem Renaissance 263
Harput 130
Harran 80, 128
Harris 96
Harsaagiri 134
Harsha, temple 134
Hartford 212
Harvan 85
Hasanlu 42, 43, 43, 78
Hasselt, garden 279
Hastinapura, archaeology 84
Hatien 206
Hatra 68, 80, 81
Hatshepsut, temple 39
Hatti 42
Hattushash 42
Hausa States 190
Haussmann, Baron 233, 233
Hauvillers 103
Havana 55
art event 317
art movement 217, 266
Biennial 316, 316
Haverdfordwest 163
Haviland, John 213
Hawaii 93, 95, 144-145, 263
Cook’s voyages 208, 209
Kukailimoku 144
Pacific art 312, 313
Hawaiian Islands 92, 93
Hawaiian Islands 92, art
production 256
Hawara 75
monastery 77
textiles 77
Hazor 43
Heaphy, Charles (1820-81) 258
Hearne, Thomas 165
Heartfield, John (1891-1968) 280,
281
Hebe/Lughuru 191
Hecatompylos 62, 80
Hedeby 102
Hedin, Sven 247, 247
Heeze, art colony 228, 228
Hefei, museum 307
Heiankyo 141
Heidelberg 170
art collection 172
artistic centre 154, 172
Castle 171
panel painting 116
stone carving 59
Heidelberg (Australia) 259, 259,
259
Heijokyo 141
Heilbronn, ecclesiastical centre
116
Heiligencreuz, stained glass 110,
116
Heiligenkreuz 112
Hejaz 128
Helden, Dacian phalerae 58
Helena Crossing 55
Heliopolis, early urbanism 25
Helios statue 63
Hellenistic empires 62-3, 62-3
culture 66-7
Hellner, Hermann 238, 239
Helmarshausen 108
Helsingborg 272, 273
Helsingfors 157, 220, 222, 224
Helsingor 154, 157
wall painting 116
Helsinki 160, 220, 222
Art Nouveau 272
arts centre 272, 273
Neoclassicism 222
NIFCA programme 273
Heluodan 91, 91
Hemavati, temple 134
Hemeroscopeum 64
Hemudu, archaeology 306, 307
Hemudua culture 46
Henley-on-Thames 276
Henry III 112
Henry VI, emperor 110
Henry VIII 162, 163, 171
Hephthalite dynasty 85
Hepworth, Barbara 277
Heraclea 62, 65
Heraclea Minoa 64
Heraclea Pontica 66
Herakleopolis Magna 75, 77
Herastrau, Dacian phalerae 58
Herat 81, 82, 84, 129, 132, 246
manuscripts 133, 196, 197
metalwork 130, 131, 132
shrine complex 134, 196
Herculaneum 64, 66, 67, 182, 183
Hereford 108
Herkulesfurdo 238
Hermannsburg, indigenous art
314, 315
Hermannstadt 238
Hermonthis 77
Hermopolis Magna 74, 76
Hermuz 195
Herning 272
Herod the Great 67
Herodium 67
Heron, Patrick 277
Hersfeld 103, 108
Herstal 104
Herstelle 104
Hertogenbosch 228, 229, 279
Herzogenburg, stained glass 110,
116
Hesle, Arts and Crafts 226
Hesse 170, 172
Hexham 102, 103
Hezhongfu, silk production 137
Hibis 38, 74
Hidaka 88
Hie 89
Hieraconpolis, early urbanism 25
Hierakonpolis 37, 38
Hierapolis 128
Hieroglyphs see Scripts
Higashi-Kushiro 49
High Atlas 189
Hikone 205
Hildesheim 67
artistic centre 108, 109
Hillerød 157
Hilliard, Nicholas (d.1619) 163
Hiltunen, Eila 273
Hilversum, architecture 278, 279
Himeji 204, 205
castle 205
Himera 64
Hinduism 85, 94, 134, 142, 260
in Asia 192, 193
in Central Asia 83
rise of Indianized states 142
Southeast Asia 91, 207
temple sites 134
Hine, Lewis 263
Hippo Regius 76, 124
Hiraizumi 140, 141
Hirlau 185
Hiroshige, Ando (1797-1858) 252,
253
Hiroshima 204, 308
Hirsau 108, 108
Hirschlanden, stone carving 59
Hirst, Damien 277
Hisar 198
Hisare, mosque 134
Hispaniola 99
Hispano-Moresque tradition 188
Hitachi 308
Hittite empire 32, 42
Hjertén, Sigrid 272
Hlabisa, mission school 296
Ho Chi Minh City
arts and crafts 310
museum 298
Hoabinhian culture 51
Hobart 258, 258, 259
Höch, Hannah 280
Hochdorf, Dacian phalerae 58
Hocheleve 104
Hochob 98
Hockwold 67
Hoernlein, A. F. R. 247
Hogarth, William (1697-1764)
164, 165
Hoggar 73, 126
Hogok-dong 49
Hogup Cave 96
Hohemichele, Dacian phalerae 58
Hohensburg 104
Hohlenstein-Stadel 16
ivory carvings 17
Hohokam culture 96, 97
Hoi An 206
Hokkaido 49, 88, 252, 308
Hokusai, Katsushika (1760-1849)
252, 253
Holbein the Younger, Hans
(1497/8-1543) 162, 163, 171
Holiday on the Kolkhoz (Gerasimov)
275
Holland 173
trade in Asia 192
Hollar, Wenceslaus (1607-77) 162
Hollensted 104
Hollywood 96
Holstein 170
Holt, Nancy 265
Holy Land
artistic influence 111
see also Crusades
Holy Roman Empire 158, 168
artistic cross-currents 154
borders 108, 110, 114, 116,
118, 120, 122, 170, 172,
173, 180, 184, 185, 186
Byzantine art 106
German lands 170, 172
Holzgerlingen, stone carving 59
Homer 31
Homs 128, 130
Honco Pampa 101
Honduras, independence 216,
216, 266
Høng 31
Hong Kong 250, 254, 306, 307
INDEX
337
Khorezm Province 303
Khorsabad, excavations 245
Khosrow II 81, 81
Khotan 87, 132, 133, 196, 196
archaeological 83, 247
Buddhist/Kushan art 83
jade 200, 202, 250, 303
Khudzhand, museum 298
Khummi 18
Khurasan 128, 129, 197
Khurga, pottery 249
Khusrawgird, minaret 130
Khwarazmshahs 132
Khwarizm 81
Khyber Pass 80, 81
Kibi 89
Kidal, temple 142
Kidderminster 163, 164
Kiejdany 158
Kiel 230, 281
Kielce 159
Kiev 225
architecture 160, 283
art colony 282
art movements 275
art review magazine 282
art studio 224, 224, 282
Byzantine 106, 107, 107
churches 158
Constructivism 283
Kiliman 190
Killarney 164
art movement 226
Kilmalcolm 220
Kiltierney, megalithic art 29
Kilwa 190, 191, 292
trading post 242
Kilwa Kisiwani 127
Kimberley Plateau 18
indigenous art 314, 315
rock art 50
Kimberley (South Africa), art
galleries 296
Kinai region 89
Kinetic art 269
Kingdom of Flora (Poussin) 175
Kingman, Eduardo 268
King’s Lynn 109
Kings Mound 97
King’s Mtn, megalithic art 29
Kingswear 163
Kinsei 49, 88
Kinshasa
tourism 292
tourist/modern art 292, 293
traditional arts 292
Kiprensky, Orest 224
Kiradu, temple 134
Kirat, minaret 130
Kiratakupa, temple 134
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig (1880-
1938) 280
Kiribati 312
Kirkeby, Per 273
Kirman 129, 131
minaret 130
Kirsehir 130, 244
mosque 130, 131
Kiruna 272
Kiseiba, pottery 36
Kish 40, 41, 42
early urbanism 25
Kishengarh, miniature paintings
198
Kishinev 185
Judaism 184
Kissengen 104
Kissi 190
Kisumu, tourist/modern art 293
Kitadeni 89
Kitakyushu 308
Kitamura 49
Kitao Musanobu (print designer)
205
Kitsunezuka 89
Kiukiang 250
Kiyonaga (print designer) 205
Kizil Arvat 246
Kjarvalsstadir 272
Klagenfurt 154, 238
Klaipéda 272
Klausenburg 238
Klaxon (review) 268
Klee, Paul (1879-1940) 281
Klein, Yves (1928-62) 285
Klejdany 158
Klementz, Dmitry 247, 247
Klenze, Leo von 173
Klerk, M de 278
Klimontów 159
Klimt, Gustav 280
Klint, Hilma af (1862-1944) 272
Klosterneuberg, stained glass
110, 116
Klosterneuburg, metalwork 108,
112
Knapp Mounds 97
Kneller, Godfrey 165
Knidos, shrine 60
Knight 55
Knockmany, megalithic art 29
Knossos 32, 33, 35
Knowth 29
Ko Samui, tourism 310
Kobadian, Oxus treasure 82
Kobe 308
Kocho, manuscripts 83
Kock 159
Koden 159
Kodiak 55
Kodiak Island 96
Koeth 104
Koguryo state 89, 89
Kojindani 88, 88
Kok Phanom Di, pottery 50
Kok-tepe 303
Kokand 83, 196, 246, 246
khanate 246, 246
Kokoschka, Oskar 280, 281
Koksijde-Oostduinkerke 279
Kolding 273
Kolhapur
architecture 249
coins 84
sculpture 85
Kolomoki 55, 97
Kolonna 33
Kolozsvár 184, 185
Kom Ombo 74, 74, 128
Koma 190
archaeology 294
Komakino 48, 49
Kommos 32, 33
Konarka
historic site 248
temple 134
Konda Culture 21
Kondapur, coins 85
Kong 191
Kongo 127, 190, 190, 191, 191,
243
Kongsted, wall painting 116
Königsberg 156, 157, 158, 222,
230
Konson, post sculptures 292
Konstanz 171
Konya 107, 132, 195, 244
art museum 298
caravanserai 130
mosque 130, 131
Koolhaas, Rem (1944-) 279, 285
Koonalda Cave 16, 18
Kopet Dag 80, 81
Korai 35
Koraichi, Rachid (1947-) 291
Koran 125, 128, 188
Blue 125
Korat 206
ceramics 310
textiles 254
Korea 48-49, 88-89, 95, 140-141,
204-205, 306, 308-309
20th Century 308
agricultural communities 88
art centres 140
artistic influence 204
artistic influences 193
Buddhism 89
cultural influences 46, 140,
141, 204, 309
emergence of elite art 89
forager communities 49
ink painting 309
invasions by China/Japan 192
Iron Age 88, 88
museums 308
rice 53
rock engravings 88
silk 53
tombs and cemeteries 89
trade and culture 192
see also North Korea, South
Korea
Korean War 308
Korekawa 49, 88
Korovin, Konstantin (1861-1939)
224-225
Korsun 159
Kortrijk 168, 228, 229
Koryo Dynasty 140, 141
Kos 33, 60
Kosambi, trade 134
Koscielec 159
Koshinden 89
Kosipe 50
Köskerbaba Hoyük 78
Kostienki 16
Kostienki Culture 17
Kostroma 160, 224, 225
Kot Diji, early urbanism 25
Kota Bahru, tourism 310
Kotah, miniature paintings 198
Kotlas 224, 225
Kotosh, temple 27
Kounellis, Jannis (1936-) 289
Kourion 32
Kouros dedication 35
Kowno 158
Koy-Krylgan-Kaln 303
inscriptions 83
Koyohan 88
Kozlovsky, Mikhail 161
Kramár, Vincenc 283
Kramskoy, Ivan (1837-87) 224
Kranjska Gora 154
Krasiczyn 159
Krasnovodsk 246
Krasnoyarsk 224
museum 298
Krasnystaw 158
Kratochvile 154
Kremikowszi monastery 185
Kremsmünster, Abbey Treasury
102
Kreuznath 104
Krieghoff, Cornelius 212
Krisel-Jardins, pottery 36
Krishna Govardhana 91
Kriva Palanka 185
Kronborg palace 156, 157
Kronstadt 238
Kroze 158
Krynica 238
Krystynopol 159
Kshvakkus dynasty 85
Ksiaz Wielki 159
Kuaiji 87
Kuala Lumpur 254
museum 298
painting 310
Kuala Terengganu, silverwork 254
Kuba 127, 190, 191
Kubadabad, ceramics 130
Kucha 87, 196, 196, 302
Buddhist documents 247, 247
Buddhist/Kushan art 83
Kudus 206
Kufa 128, 128, 129, 131
Kuffarn, Bronze situlae 58
Kufra 126
Kuh-i Khwaja 81
Kuhpaya, lustre ware 131
Kujong-dong 88
Kuk 50, 50, 92
Kuknaesong 89
Kuksong-dong 49
Kula 244
Kulen, temple 142
Kültepe 32, 40, 42
Kulu, miniature paintings 198
Kumanohara 89
Kumasi, arts and crafts 294, 295
Kumbakonam, temple 134
Kumbi Saleh 126, 126
Kumbum, art centre 200, 202
Kumgang-ni 49
Kumma, fort 37
Kumsong 89
Kunduz 246
site of hoard 82
Kungsan-ni 49
Kunming 86, 200, 202, 250, 306
museum 307
Kunshan, painting 202
Kunstkammern 154, 155, 186
Kurbinovo 106
Kurdish textiles 301
Kurkihar, sculpture 85
Kurlgitavik 96
Kurokawa, Kisho 279
Kurosawa, Akira 309
Kurru 37, 72
Kursk 160, 224
artists’ centre 225
Küs 128
Kusha 132
Kushan dynasty 82, 83, 83, 85,
85
Kushiro 308
Kushka 83, 246
Kutahya 130, 195
Kutai 142, 143
Kutná Hora, ecclesiastical centre
116
Kuujjua River 96
Kuwagaishmo 49
Kuwait 300
fine art 300
museum 298
World Crafts Council 316
Kuybyshevo, arts and crafts 302
Kuyunjik, excavations 245
Kvas 81
Kwangiu 204
Kwangju
art event 316
textiles 308
Kwangju-Gun, ceramics 308
Kwararafa 190
KwaZula-Natal, basket-making
296, 297
Kyauks 206
Kyo-dong 49
Kyongiu 141
arts centre 140
Kyongju 89
architecture 89
museum 308
seated Buddha 140
Kyoto 141, 204
arts centre 140, 141, 204, 205,
252, 253, 299
cultural centre 308
imports and exports 205
kiln sites 205
movement of artists 141
Nihonga painting 309
painting guilds 206, 207
Tale of Genji 141
woodblock printing 192, 205
Kyrgyzstan
art schools/museums 298
arts and crafts 302
Kythera 32, 32, 33
Kythnos 33
Kyushu 49, 88, 88, 89, 140, 141,
204, 205, 252
Kyzyl 83
La Bâtiaz 112
La Cabada 234
La Cabana 54
La Chaux-de-Fonds, architecture
280
La Colombière 19
La Coruña 178, 234
La Croze à Gontran 17
La Ferrassie 17
La Garma 19
La Granja 179
La Marche 19
La Mojarra 54
La Montaná 54
La Mota 114
La Paz 152, 152, 153, 218, 219,
268
art centre 153
La Pierre Turquaise, megalithic art
29
La Plata 152, 153
La Quemada 98, 98
La Roche-en-Ardenne 168
La Rochelle
architecture 177
royal progress 154
La Roda 110
La Serena 218
La Tène
Celtic culture 58, 59
metalwork 59
La Vathe 19
La Venta 26, 54, 54
La Villita 98
Laan Spean, pottery 50
Labastide 19
Labattut 17
Labrador 212, 212
Labranda, temple 60
Labraunda 78
Labrouste, Henri (1801-75)
211
Labunie 159
Lace 229
Lacerba (journal) 288, 288
Lachish 32, 78
Lachsh 43
Lacock, art movement 226
Laconia, pottery 60
Lacquerware
Anyang tombs 25
archaeological finds 48
Central Asia 302
China 83, 139, 201, 203
Chu state 87
India 304
Japan and Korea 49, 140, 140,
141, 204, 205, 205, 308
Southeast Asia 206, 206, 207,
255, 255, 310, 311
Lad 159
Laddicea 80
Lade 109
Lady Franklin Point 96
Laegeforeningens (housing)
221
Laestrygones of Sicily 67
Laethem-Saint-Martin 228
art colony 228, 228
Lagash 40, 41, 41
early urbanism 25
excavations 245
Lagos, arts and crafts 294, 295,
295
Lagoudera 106
Lahore 132, 133, 196
architecture 249
art centre 304
garden 198
mosque 134, 198
museum 298
trade 134
Laibach 238
Lake Jackson 97
Lakeba Island, Lapita pottery 51
Lakhawar, textiles 198
Lakhundi, temple 134
Lalibela 126, 127, 190
Lalique (designer) 232
Lam, Wilfredo (1902-82) 267
Lamanai 98
Lamar 97
Lambityeco 98
Lamoso, megalithic art 29
Lampang, kiln site 206
Lampsacus 66
Lampung 206
Lamu 127, 292
Lan Chang 206
trade 207
Lanark 164
Lancut 158, 159
Landévennec 103
Landscape gardens 164
Landscape paintings 164, 164, 168
American industrial 263
Australian 258, 259, 259
Barbizon 214
British 226, 226, 277
Chinese 306
Dutch 228
Flemish 180
French 232, 233
Italian 236, 236, 237
Japanese images 252
Mexican 217
Netherlands 167
romanticized 231
Russian 224, 225
South American 219
veduta 236
Landseer, Edwin 226
Landshut 154, 155
ecclesiastical centre 116
Lane, Fitz Hugh 213
Lang Ca, Dong Son culture 90
Lang Shining see Castiglione,
Guiseppe
Lang Vac, Dong Son culture 90
Langeais 110
Langres 103, 154
ecclesiastical centre 116
Languages
African 72, 73, 126
Afrikaans 297
Arabic 124, 125, 132, 240
Aramaic 63, 80
Arawak 56, 99
in Austro-Hungarian empire
239
Austronesian 51
Berber 240
and ethnicity 239
French 177
Greek 63, 64-65, 68, 72
Indo-European 42
Iranian 132
Latin 64-65, 67, 68, 105
linguistic signs 269
Maipuran 56
Melanesia 144
Middle Persian 81
Napatan 37
Parthian 80
Persian 193
Sanskrit 85, 142
Semitic 42
Somali 241
in South-East Europe 184, 239
Swiss 171, 173
Tamil 85
Tuareg 240
Turkic 132
Lantian, archaeology 307
Lanyon, Peter 277
Lanzhou 202, 250, 306, 307
Laon 103, 110, 110, 112
wall painting 116
Laos
art schools/museums 298
arts and crafts 310
bronze implements 51
World Crafts Council 316
Lapidary, Russian 16
Lapis lazuli
Aegean 32, 33
Afghanistan 36, 41, 44, 45, 53,
69
Akkadian 41, 41
West Asia 42
Lapita culture 23, 50, 51, 51, 51
Lapland 157
Lapps 160
artists’ colony 272
Laredo 178
ecclesiastical centre 118
Laren, art colony 228, 228, 278
Larisa, textiles 283
Larisa am Hermos 78
Larsa 42, 42
Larsson, Carl (1853-1919) 223
Las Cebollas 54
Las Chimeneas 19
Las Heulgas 110
Las Huacas 54, 55
Las Marias 98
Las Mercedes 54, 56, 100
Las Monedas 19
Las Vegas 98
Lascaux 15, 19
Lasdun, Denys 277
Lashio, arts and crafts 310
Lasisi, David 313
Last Judgement (Michelangelo) 180
Last Supper (Leonardo) 123
INDEX
336
art movement 216, 267
gold 99
Jambi 142
Jambukesvara 134
James, Henry 215
James of Aragon, King 114
James VI of Scotland 162
Jammu, miniature painting 198
Janco, Marcel (1895-1984) 283
Janjira 198
Japan 16, 18, 48-49, 88-89, 95, 140-
141, 204-205, 308-309
culture
20th century 308
agricultural communities
88
art forms 140
art schools/museums 298
artistic influence 12, 140,
193, 204, 306, 307, 309
artists’ communities 205
Chinese/Buddhist arts 141
court 140, 141
elite art 89
forager communities 49
heartland 141
Jomon 46
museums 308
Nihonga School 307, 309
tea ceremony 193
politics
imperial expansion 298
modernization 252, 252
and North Africa 290
religion
Buddhism 89
tombs and cemeteries 89
trade 207, 229
and culture 192
World Crafts Council 316
Jaroslaw 158
Jarrow 102, 103
JASMAX Architects 315
Jasov (Jászó) monastery 185
Jasper 38
Jassy 184, 185
fine art museum 238
Judaism 184
Jászó (Jasov) 185, 185
Jativa, paper-making 125, 125
Jauar 56
Jauari 56
Jaubert, Amedee 244
Jaunpur, mosque 134
Java 206
art schools/museums 298
artistic influence 229
arts and crafts 310
bronze implements 51
Buddhist stupa 142
cult shrines 143
Dong Son culture 90
early settlements 50, 50
Great Mosque of Demak 193
historical sites 254
Ice Age 16
Mataram dynasty 254
rise of Islam 143
temples 142
trade 91, 91, 207
Wayang Kulit puppet 143
Javacheff, Christo (1935-) 285
Jbala tribes 189
Jeanne-Claude (1935-) 285
Jeanneret, Charles see Le Corbusier
Jebel Barkal 37, 72
Jebel Moya 72
Jedda 188, 240
Jefferson, President Thomas 213
Jena 281
Jenkins, Anthony 196
Jenne 53, 72, 73, 127, 188, 240
Jenzat, wall painting 118
Jerez 234
Jerf el-Ahmar 20, 21
Jericho 21, 62, 67, 195
Achaemenid ceramics 78
excavations 245
Jerusalem 34, 42, 43, 62, 301
Alexander the Great 78
churches 70
craft centre 291
Crusader control 106, 113, 131
Dome of the Rock 128, 129
fine arts 300
Herod’s temples 67
Holy Sepulchre 70, 81
Islamic architecture 128, 128,
195
late Roman art 71
Latin Christian territory 130
Mamluk monument 131
metalworking 301
Ottoman city 188
and Parthians 80
pilgrimage centre 106, 106,
188, 240
railway connections 245
souvenir trade 244, 245
trading centre 107, 188
unique centre 66
Jesuit order
Asian travels 192
centres 158, 168, 181
missions/workshops 153, 153
Jewellery
Achaemenid 78
Aegean 33, 33
Berber 291
British centres 164
Central Asian 44, 247
Etruscan 65
European 103
Graeco-Roman 67, 69
Hellenistic 63
Ice Age 16, 16, 18
Indian 84, 85, 134, 248, 249
Italian 65
Kayani crown 244
Maghreb 125
Mesopotamian 41
Mughal 199
Nile Valley 39
North Africa 76
Pacific 92, 93, 256, 313
Southeast Asia 207
techniques
beads 48, 57, 92, 190, 211,
242, 243, 243, 313
cloisonné 70
ear ornaments 48, 49, 57
rings 53, 65
workmanship 70
West Africa 294
Jewish
art 70-71
migration to Israel 300
N. African craftsmen 291
ritual objects 301
settlements 106
see also Judaism
Jiading, painting 202
Jiahu 21
Jiangling 86
archaeology 307
Jiangningfu, paper production 137
Jiangxi, museum 307
Jianyang
kiln site 138
printing 200
Jianye 87
Jiaojun 87
Jiashan, painting 202
Jiaxing
gardens 200
painting 202
Jiaxingxian 307
Jiayuguan 138
Jiddah, architecture 301
Jiexiu, kiln site 137
Jijiahu 86
Jilin 202, 250, 306
Jimma 191
Jinan 202, 250
museums 307
religious art 137
Jincamocco 101
Jincun 306
Jindrichuv Hradec 154
Jingdezhen
ceramics 251
kiln site 137, 138, 193, 200,
202, 202, 250
Ming flask
porcelain 200, 202, 203
Jingzhaofu
print centre 137
silk production 137
Jingzhen, kiln site 200
Jingzhou 87
Jinhau, kiln site 138
Jinmium, rock art 50, 50
Jinnai 88
figurines 49
Jinzhou 306
Jiujiang 250
Jizak 246, 302, 303
Jizhou 136, 200
kiln site 138
Jizoden 88
Jizozo 89
Jochi (ruler) 196
Jodhpur, miniature paintings 198
Jogjakarta 206
arts and crafts 310
Johannesburg
art event 316
art galleries 296
art schools 296, 297
auctioneers 316
Biennial 316
community art centres 297
John the Scot Eriugena 105
Johore 206
Jokkmokk 272
Jolin, Einar 273
Jomon culture 15, 18, 46, 48, 48,
49, 49, 88, 89
Jones, Inigo 162, 162
Jones, Owen 210-211
Jönköping 156, 157, 222, 272,
273
Jordaens, Jacob (1593-1678) 156
Jordan 15
art schools/museums 298
British Mandate 300
fine arts 300, 301
World Crafts Council 316
Joresanko 304
Jos, art centre 295
Jouarre 102, 103
Jourdain, Franz 233
Juanpur, textiles 198
Juba II of Mauretania 67
Jubayri family 197
Judaea 66, 67, 69
and West Asia 80
Judaism 94, 132
in North Africa 124, 188
in SE Europe 184, 184
synagogues 69, 70, 158
Jukkasjarvi 272
Jukun 191
Julianos (banker) 70
Julius Caesar 66, 67, 122
Julius II, pope 180
Jumieges 103, 110
Junagadh 198
coins 84
Juncais, megalithic art 29
Juneau 96
Junim 218
Junnar 198
Junzhou, kiln site 137
Jus 81
Justinian, emperor 70, 70, 71, 71,
76, 77
Jutes, collapse of 70
Jutland
amber trade 30, 31
Danish Bronze Age 31
Gundestrup cauldron 58
Juvarra, Felipe 179
Juyan Tombs 87
Jylland 272
Kaakha 246
Kaarta 191
Kabáh 98
Kabi 191
Kabini, Isa 297
Kabuki theatres 204, 205, 308
Kabul 80, 81, 129, 132, 132, 133,
196, 246, 303
ceramics 79
mosque 198
museum 298, 303
Kaempfer, Engelbert 194
Kaesong 140, 141
Kaffa 133
Kagga Kamma, Khoisan art 296
Kagoshima 252
Kahlo, Frida (1907-54) 267
Kahn, Albert 263
Kahn, Louis 299
Kaifeng 138, 200, 202, 250, 306
art collection 137
kiln site 137
Kairoua, manuscripts 125
Kairouan 102, 126, 128, 128
mosque 124, 125
textiles 124, 290
trade centre 124, 188
Kaiseraugst 70, 71
Kaiseri, mosque 130, 131
Kakadu 21
rock art 50, 50
Kakongo 127, 190
Kakovatos 33
Kalabari Ijo masquerade 295
Kalabsha 72, 74, 74
Kalahari Desert 126, 127
Kalahasti 134
Kalanay, Bronze Age 90
Kalanjar, temple 134
Kalasan, temple 142
Kalchayan 303
Kaleb, king 73
Kalevala (Finnish saga) 223
Kalibangan, early urbanism 25
Kalinga dynasty 84
Kalinganagara, temple 134
Kaliningrad 154, 230
Kalinjar, textiles 198
Kalisz 158, 159
Kalkar, ecclesiastical centre 116
Kalmar 112, 154, 157, 272
Kalmyks 160, 161
Kalocsa 185
Kalonga 191
Kalumpang 50
textiles 310
Kamakura 141
lacquerware 140, 204, 205
Kamchatka 161
Kamegaoka 88
Kamezuka 88
Kami 88
Kamien 109
Kamieniec 158
Kamieniec Podolski 159
Kamikuroiwa 18
Kaminaljuyú 54, 54
Kampala
tourist/modern art 292, 293
traditional arts 292
Kamphengphet 206
Kampyr-Tepe 303
Kamul 132
Kanauj 198
trade 134
Kanazawa, art and trade 140, 204,
205, 308
Kanchipuram 85, 134
saris 304
Kandahar 79, 80, 129, 133, 196
mosque 134
trade centre 131, 195, 198
Kandinsky, Vasily (1866-1944) 270,
280
Kandrian, Lapita pottery 51
Kandy, temple 198
Kane, Paul 212, 212-213
Kanem 126
Kanem-Bornu 127, 190
Kanesh 40, 42, 42
Kangavar 80, 81
Kangia 96
Kangra, miniature paintings
198
Kanheri, caves 84
Kanishka (Koshan ruler) 83
Kannauj, temple 85
Kano 188, 191, 240
Kansas City 262, 264
Kantanagar, temple 198
Kanyakumari, temple 134
Kanye, museum 296
Kanyo Iwakura 88
Kapisa, treasure hoard 83
Kapova Cave 18, 19
Kara Sea 160
Kara-tepe 83, 303
Kushan art 82
Karachi
art school 304
museum 298, 304
Karagashli 244
Karaite faith 158
Karak-dong 88
Karakhanid rulers 132, 132
Karakhoja 247
Karako-Kagi 88
Karakol 303
Karakorum 138
Karanis 75, 77
Karashahr 247
Buddhist/Kushan art 83
Karauchi, archaeology 294
Karausubayashi 89
Karelia 21, 156, 220
Kargopol’ 160
Karhogo, art production 295
Karkala, carving 248
Karl XIV Johan, King 222
Karle, historic site 248
Karlovo 185
Karlsbad 238
Karlsgraben 104
Karlsruhe 172, 230, 281
Karlstad 272
Karlstejn, wall painting 116
Karmina 196
Karnak 38, 39
Kars 244
Karshi, arts and crafts 302
Karsten, Ludwig 273
Karum 42
Kasanje 191
Kashan 130, 195
lustre ware 131
museum 298
Kashgar 81, 87, 132, 196, 196,
246, 303
archaeological expeditions
247, 247
arts and crafts 302, 303
Buddhist/Kushan art 83
The End of the Bazaar 302
trade centre 131
Kashihara 88
figurines 49
Kashiwagi B 49
Kasori 49
Kassa 184, 185
Kassák, Lajos (1887-1967) 283
Kassel 154, 172
art academy 186
art collection 186
art event 316
Documenta quadriennial 316
memorial 281
Kassope, theatre 60
Kastamonu 130
Kastanas 32
Kastoria 106
Kastri 32, 33
Katamatasuzuka 89
Kathmandu 134
art centre
temple 198
Kato Zakros 32, 33
Katsina 188, 191, 240
Katsura Rikyu 204
Katwijk aan Zee, art colony 228,
228, 278
Kaufbeuren 172
Kauffman, Angelica 165, 173
Kaunas 272
Kaupang 109
Kaushambi 83
archaeology 84
Kawa 37, 72, 73
Kaya state 89
Kayama 89
Kaysen 244
Kayseri 244
Kazahari 49, 88
Kazakhstan 160, 161, 302
art schools/museums 298
World Crafts Council 316
Kazan’ 160, 160, 196, 224, 225
Kazanluk 62
Kazimierz Dolny 158
Kazuko, Okakura 304
Ke, archaeology 294
Kea 33
Keatley Creek 55
Kecskemet 185, 238
Kedah 206, 254
Kedaton, temple 142
Kef el-Blida 64
Kefermarkt, ecclesiastical centre
116
Kelaenae 78
Kélibia 76
Kellia, cemetery 77
Kelmscott, Arts and Crafts 226
Kempten 172
Kendal, Francis 297
Kendari, silverware 310
Kenilworth, castle 116
Kent 102
Kent, William 164
Kenya, World Crafts Council 316
Kephalos, theatre 60
Kerak, Crusader castle 130
Kerbela 194, 195
Kerch 78
Kerewe, post sculptures 292
Kerguntuil, megalithic art 29
Keriya 247
Kerkenes Dagi 78
Kerkouane 64
Kerma, culture 37, 37
Kermadec Islands 144
Kerman 81, 195
carpet-making 244
Kermanshah 130, 244
Kermaria 109, 111
Kermarquer, megalithic art 29
Kermorvan, megalithic art 29
Keswick 164
Kexholme 157
Key Marco 96
Keyser, Hendrick de (1565-1621)
157
Keyt, George (1901-88) 305
Kezil Caves 87
Kezmarok 154
Khabarovsk 224
Khajuravahaka, temple 134
Khalchangan, Buddhist/Kushan
art 83
Khalchayan 303
Kushan art 82, 83
Khalil Gibran, Gibran (1883-1931)
301
Khambayat, mosque 134
Khamsa (Quintet) (Nizami) 194
Khanate of the Golden Horde 132,
133
Kharga Oasis 38, 74, 78
Khargird, mosque 130, 133
Kharkov 160, 225
art colony 282
art review magazine 282
art studio 224, 224, 282
Constructivism 283
Khartoum 36, 291
pottery 36
trade centre 240
Kherson 224, 225, 282
Khirbat al-Mafjar 128, 128
Khirbat al-Minya 128
Khiva 133, 195, 196
arts and crafts 302
mosque 132, 133
museum 303
sculpture 302
trade centre 131
Khiva khanate 246, 246
Khmer empire 91, 142, 143
Khoisan
art centres 296
peoples 190, 191
Khojas 196
Khojent 82, 246
museum 298
Kholm 81
Kholmogory 160
folk art 224, 225
Khon, museum 298
Khonj, lustre ware 131
INDEX
339
Machang, archaeology 306
Macheke, textiles 296
Machelonia 81
Machilipatnam 134
Machu Picchu 100, 152
indigenous art 153
Mackintosh, Charles Rennie 221,
276
Mâcon 110
ecclesiastical centre 118
Mcquorquodale 55
McRae, Tommy (c.1836-1901) 258
Madaba 71
Madagascar 127, 243
World Crafts Council 316
Madai & Baturong 50
Madi movement 269
Madison 262
Madox Brown, Ford (1821-93) 226
Madras 248
architecture 249
art school 298, 304
historic site 248
museum 298, 304
painting 248
textiles 198
trade centre 192
Madrid 286
architecture 178, 178, 235,
235, 287
art academy 186, 234, 234
art centre 154, 179, 216, 286
art collection 186, 187, 234,
234
artist migration 270
artistic groups/influence 286,
287
artists’ travels 187
court centre 154
ecclesiastical centre 118
expulsions 178
Goy’s work 234
sculpture 235
urban development 186
Madura
batik 310
textiles 207, 310
Madurai
painting 248
palace 198
temple 134
Madyt, arts and crafts 302
Maeander 41
Maeike 49
Maestà (Duccio) 120
Mafia (Africa) 127
Mafra 178, 186
Magadan, Gualag memorial 275
Magarida 88
Magasins Waucquez 229
Magdalensberg 67
Magdalenska Gora, Bronze situlae
58
Magdeburg 104, 108, 112, 170,
171, 172
ecclesiastical centre 116
Maghreb 124-125, 290, 291
Maglaj 185
Maglemose Culture 21, 21
Magna Graecia 64-5
Magnesia, shrine 60
Magnesia ad Maendrum 78
Magnificent Gallery 21
Magome 89
Magritte, René 278, 279, 279
Mahabalipuram, historic site 248
Mahdaoui, Nja (1937-) 291
Mahdia, textiles 124
Mahkar, temple 134
Mahlangu, Rosa (1935-) 297
Mahmudabad, temple 134
Mahriz, Sidi 189
Maiano, Giovanni de 163
Maidum, early urbanism 25
Maijishan
Buddhist caves 306, 307
religious art 137
Mailapur, historic site 248
Maininskaya 18
Mainz 103, 170, 230
art centre 186
art collection 172
ecclesiastical centre 116
manuscript painting 112
stained glass 108
Maiori 111
Maishan 81
Majang-ni 88
Majapahit kingdom 142, 143
Majiayao, archaeology 306
Majorelle, Louis (1859-1926) 233
Maka 78
Makerere University,
tourist/modern art 293
Makovsky, Vladimir (1846-1920)
224
Makran 81, 129
Makuria 190
Mal Abrigo 56, 57
Malaca 64
Malacca 143, 143, 192, 206, 207,
254
museum 298
Málaga 125, 154, 178
Malaia Began, wild boar 59
Malangatana (1936-) 296
Malatesta, Sigismondo 122
Malatya 130
Malay peninsula 142, 143
cultural influence 206
trade 207
Malaya, British protectorate 254
Malaysia
art schools/museums 298
arts and crafts 310
wall hanging 311
World Crafts Council 316
Malayu 142
Malazgird 131
Malbork 158
Malda, textiles 198
Maldives, World Crafts Council
316
Malemba 191
Malerualik 96
Malevich, Kazimir (1878-1935)
274, 274, 279
Mali 126, 127, 190
World Crafts Council 316
Malia 33
Malindi 127, 190, 292
Malines 168
Mallia 32
Mallikarjuna 134
Mallorca, Muslim kingdom 110
Malmesbury 103, 108
Malmö 220
art college 273
Baltic Exhibition 272
wall painting 116
Malo, Lapita pottery 51
Malqata 39
Mal’ta 16
Malta 23, 34, 102, 182
Mamallapuram 134
Mamluk Sultanate 128, 131, 131,
190
Mammoths 16, 16, 17, 19
Mamontov, Savva (1841-1918) 225
Mampuku-ji 205
Man, art production 295
Manama, national museum 300
Manassas, Civil War site 214
Manaus 56, 152, 153
Manbij 128, 129
Manchan 101
Mancheng 86
archaeology 307
Manchester 220
art collection 276
Arts and Crafts 226
Manchuria 161, 200, 202-203, 204,
204, 306
Japanese expansion 308
Manda 127
Mandalay
arts and crafts 310
museum 298
pagodas 254, 255
Mander III, Karel van (1610-1670)
156
Mandeville 55, 96
Mandi, miniature paintings
198
Mandu, mosque 134
Mandu Mandu Creek, rock shelter
16
Manefred 154
Manet, Edouard (1832-83) 233
Mangaia 144
Mangalore 198
Mangareva 144
Mangkang 302
Mangrol, mosque 134
Mangueiras 56
Mani 98
Manichaeans (Bogomils) 106
Manichaeism 132
Codex 83
Manikyal, Kushan art 82, 83
Manila
architecture 206
museum 299
painting 310
printing 192
silver work 200, 254
trade centre 192, 207
Manisa 130
mosque 131
Mann 55
Mannar 198
Mannerist style 155
Mannheim 172, 230, 281
Manresa, textiles 234
Mans, Raphael du 194
Manta 100, 100
Mantegna, Andrea (1430/31-1506)
123, 175
Manteño 100, 100
Mantes 110
ecclesiastical centre 116
Mantineia, theatre 60
Manttä 272
Mantua
academy 182
art centre 154, 180
art collections 181, 182
chivalry centre 122
music 180
painted/sculpted cycles 181
patrons and projects 121, 122,
123, 181
Manunggul Cave 90
Manus, Lapita pottery 51
Manuscripts
Abbasid paper mills 129, 129
Blue Koran 125
Burma 255
Central Asia 83, 132, 133, 196,
197
centres
European 108, 110
Italian 110, 121
North African 188, 240, 240
Northern Europe 116, 117
Southeast Asia 254
Southern Europe 114, 118
Umayyad 128
West Asia 131
Western Islamic 124, 125
Chelles 103
illuminated 103, 103, 104, 104,
105, 112, 166
Manutuke, Maori art 259
Manzanares 234
Manzanares el Real, castle 118
Manzanillo 266
Manzikert, Byzantine defeat 130,
131
Mao Zedong 307
Ma’on Nirim, floor mosaics 71
Maoqingguo 86
Mapplethorpe, Robert 265
Maputo
tourist/modern art 292, 293
traditional arts 292, 296, 296
Maracaibo 152, 153, 219, 269
Maracanda 63, 82
Maraghen 133
Marand, Ilkhanid monument 131
Maranhão 218, 269
Marathas state 198
Maravi 127, 190
Marawi 299
Marble
Aegean sources 33, 60
Byzantine 107, 107
coloured 69, 70
Greek sources 35, 61
Italian use 120-121, 181
Mediterranean 67
Pentelic 35
Poland/Lithuania 159
Roman Empire 67, 68, 69, 69,
103
South Asia 198
South Netherlands 168, 168,
169
white 35, 166, 168, 199
Marburg 112, 170
textiles 296
Marca Huamachuco 101
Marcellina 110
March (Levitan) 225
Marcus Aurelius, emperor 91
Mardin 195
mosque 130
Maremma 236, 237
Marengo 181
Margiana 78
Mari 32, 40, 41, 42
early urbanism 25
Maria Island, bark paintings 258
Maria Laach 108
Mariana 66
Marianas Islands 92, 208, 312,
312
Mariefred 273
Mariemont 154
Marienbad 238
Marienburg 158
castle 116
Marienwerder, castle 116
Mariette, Auguste 245
Marine shells 97
Marinetti, Filippo Tomaso (1876-
1944) 270, 284, 288
Marinid dynasty 124, 125, 125
Maris brothers (Jacob, Matthijs
and Willem) 228
Marka 127
Marksville 55, 96
Marlik 42, 43, 43
Maros 50
Marosvásárhely 185, 238
Marpole 55
Marquesas Islands
92, 93, 95, 144, 145, 312
art production 256
Cook’s voyage 208
paepae (house platform) 93
Marrakesh 126, 188, 190, 240
architecture 125, 189
metalworking 125, 188
textiles 124
Marseille 70, 71
murals 110
panel painting 118
porcelain 177
trade route 102
Unité d’Habitation 270, 271,
285, 285
Marsh Pass 26, 27
Marshall Islands 92, 312, 312
Marsin 244
Martanda, temple 134
Martens, Conrad (1801-78) 259
Martigues 285
Martin, John (1789-1854) 221
Martín Fierro (review) 268
Martin, Leslie 277
Martini, Simone (d.1344) 118,
119
Martos, Ivan 161
Martyr’s Monument 300
Maruyama 49, 89
Marvao 234
Marzabotto 64, 65
Marzo, megalithic art 29
Masaccio (1401-28) 122, 122
Masada 67
Maser 181
Mashhad 196, 301
lustre ware 131
Mashiz, Ilkhanid monuments 131
Masks 12
Africa 72, 190
Japan and Korea 49
Mesoamerica 54, 54
Pacific 256
Tibetan 303
Massa 182
Massa Marittima 114
Massalia 34, 64, 64, 65, 66, 67
Celtic colony 59
grave stele 59
Greek colony 58
Masson, André (1896-1987) 284
Master Cheng’s Ink Garden (Cheng
Dayue) 201
Masulipatam
textiles 198, 207
trade centre 192
Masuura 88
Matacapan 54
Matamba 191
Matanbek 50
Matapalo 54
Matara 72
Mataro, wool production 234
Matenkupkum 50
Mathu, archaeology 84
Mathura
Buddhist/Kushan art 83
historic site 248
Kushan capital 85
miniature paintings 198
museum 298
stupas 85, 85
trade 134
Matifou 76
Matisse, Henri (1869-1954) 272,
284, 285
Matmata 189
Matsumoto 140
Matsuno 89
Matsuoka 89
Matthew Paris (d.1259) 112
Matulu, Tchibumba Kanda 293
Matupi Cave 18
Mau, textiles 198
Mauberge, painting 117
Maulbronn 108
Maun, museum 296
Mauretania 66
Mauretania Caesariensis 69
Mauretania Tingitania 69
Maurice, F. D. 226
Mauritania 290
ivory 76
World Crafts Council 316
Mauritius, World Crafts Council 316
Mauro Takus, temple 142
Mauryan Empire 53, 82, 84, 84, 85,
94
Mausolus, king 61, 63
Mauthausen, memorial 281
Mauve, Anton (1838-88) 228
Mawaki 49
Mawangdui 86
archaeology 307
Mawlay Isma’il 188, 189, 189
Maximian, Bishop 70-71
Maxwell Bay 96
Maya civilization 98, 98, 99
Mayapán 98
Mayenne 110
Mazar-i Sharif 246
tomb 133
Mazara 110
Mazarin, Cardinal 175
Mazerier, wall painting 118
Mbabne, art school 296
Mbailundu 191
Mbangala 190
Mbatha, Azaria (1941-) 297
Mbile, tourist/modern art 292, 293
Meaux 103, 112
Mecca 126, 128, 132, 188, 195
Islamic centre 128, 301
pilgrimage routes 128, 188,
240, 240
railway connections 245
trade centre 131
Mechelen 168, 169
brass engraving 117
tapestry factory 279
Mecklenburg 170, 172, 230
Medellin 219, 268
Media 78, 80, 81
Media Atropatene 62
Medici family 11, 122, 180, 200
Medievalism 231
Medina 126, 132, 240, 195, 301
Islam 128
Mamluk monument 131
Ottoman city 188
Medina del Campo 154, 178, 234
Medinet Habu 39
Mediolanum 64, 69, 70, 70
Medionemeton, cult centre 59
Mediterranean 34-35, 62-63, 64-65,
66-67, 68-69
art and trade 67, 71
colonizing from East 34, 124
colony and empire 66
international art 42
movement of artists 106
shipwrecks 68
western 64-65
see also Trade routes
Medut, temple 142
Megalithic art 28-29, 29, 29, 92,
93, 93, 145
Megalopolis, theatre 60
Megara 60
Megiddo 32, 43
Mehmed V Rashad 301
Mehrgam, early urbanism 25
Mehrgarh 44, 44
Meier, Richard 264
Meiningen 230, 230
Meissen 112, 203
ecclesiastical centre 116
Meissonier, Juste-Aurèle 158
Meizhou, silk production 137
Meknès
architecture 125, 189
artistic centre 188
city of Mawlay Isma’il 189
Melaka
architecture 206
trade 207
Melanesia 50, 50, 51, 92, 92, 144,
208, 312, 313
artistic traditions 93, 93, 257
Melas 244
Melbourne 258, 259
architecture 259, 314, 314
auctioneers 316
indigenous art 314
Melcome Regis 163
Melide 118
Melilla 124, 178, 234
Melkart, temple of 64
Melnik 185
Melnikov, Konstantin 271
Melos 32, 33, 60
Melrose 103
Memmingen, wood sculpture 116
Memorana 96
Memphis 22, 32, 38, 41, 70, 73
Achaemenid 78
Civil War site 214
early urbanism 25
Hellenistic art 62
iron working 36
Nile Valley sites 38, 74
stone carving 77
Memphis (Egypt)
monastery 77
pottery 32, 71
Menaced Assassin (Magritte) 279
Menado 254
Menander (dramatist) 63
Menapolis, cemetery 77
Mende, ecclesiastical centre 118
Mendes 38
Mendoza 218
Mengs, Anton Raphael 173
Menin Gate 279
Menocal, Armando (1863-1942)
217
Mentuhotep tomb 39
Menzel 221
Meran 238
Mercia 102
Mergiana 81
Mérida 98, 102, 286
National Museum of Roman
Art 287
wild boar 59
Merimda, pottery 36, 37
Merlemont 168
Meroë 36, 37, 126
INDEX
338
Last Supper of the Protestants
(Cranach the Younger) 170
Latakia 128
Lati Koili, palace 198
Latin Christian territory 130
Latini peoples 65
Latium 66
Latopolis 77
Latrobe, Benhamin H. 213
Latter Prose-poem (Qiao
Zhongchang) 136
Lattier, Christian (1925-78) 294
Latvia
art in a globalized world 273
museums 272
radical art 275
Laurium, silver mines 59, 60
Lausanne 110, 112, 171
stained glass 118
Laussel, Venus with horn 17
Laval, château 116
Lawrence, Jacob 263
Layyanids 190
Le Brun, Charles (1619-90) 176
Le Corbusier (Charles Jeanneret,
1887-1965) 260, 261, 268, 271,
276, 284, 285, 285, 290, 299, 305
Le Havre 220, 285
Le Mans 103, 110
stained glass 110, 116
Le Mas d’Azil 19, 21, 21
Le Placard 17, 19
Le Portel 19
Le Puy
pilgrimage centre 111, 111,
118
wall painting 118
Le Raincy 270
Le Tret Magrite 16
Le Tuc d’Audoubert 19
Leason, Percy 314
Lebanon
art schools/museums 298
fine arts 301
French Mandate 300
Ottoman 195
printing 194
Lebena 62
Lechfeld 104
Lechner, Ödön (1845-1914) 221
L’Écluse 110
Leeds
art collection 226
ceramic centre 164
painted by Turner 226
woollen trade 165
Leeuwarden 228, 229
Lefkadia 62
Lega, Silvestro (1826-93) 237
Léger, Fernand (1881-1955) 268,
284
Leh 247
Silk Road 132
Lehner 96
Léhon 103
Leiden 154, 166, 228, 229, 278
artists 166
De Stijl 278
ethnography 229
painting 117
Rijksmuseum 279
Leighton, Frederic 227
Leigudun 86
Leipzig 230
academy 172
art publishing 231
book production 170
Degenerate Art exhibition
281
patronage 230
Leiria 154
castle 118
Leitai, archaeology 307
Leith 163
Leizno 158
Lekkerwater 127
Lelang 88, 89
Lely, Sir Peter (1608-80) 162,
164
Lemberg
art centre 186
town-planning 238
Lemgo 170
Lemnos 33, 35
theatre 60
Leningrad
art centre 282
Constructivism 283
Lenkoran 244
Lenne 126
Leo X 180
León 104, 112, 114
architecture 110, 154
cathedral 114, 114
pilgrimage route 111
stained glass 118
León-Castile 108
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) 95,
122, 123, 174, 179
Léopoldville 292
Lepenski Vir 15, 20, 21
Leptis Magna 65, 67, 68, 69, 70,
76
Lerici 114
Lérida 110, 114, 115, 234
Lerida, panel painting 118
Lérins 103
Les Andelys 110
Les Houyottes, megalithic art 29
Les Orchides 21
Les Ronces, megalithic art 29
Lesbos 33, 35, 60
Lesotho, arts and crafts 296
Lespugue, Venus figurines 17
L’Estaque 270, 270
Leszno 159
Letchworth
Arts and Crafts 226
Garden City 276, 276
Letsitele, textiles 296
Leuven, stained glass 110, 116
Leuwiliang, pottery 50
Levant 68, 70
Armenian territory 131
late Roman Art 71
Latin states 130
Ottoman Possession 194
rock art 24
Umayyad empire 129
Levantine art 20, 35
Levitan, Isak (1861-1900) 224-225,
225
Levitsky, Dmitry (1735-1822) 160,
161
Levoca 154
Levy 96
Lewis, Meriwether 212
Lewis, Wyndham (1882-1957) 277
Leyden, architecture 108, 109
Leyland, Frederick 237
Leyre 110
Lezajsk 159
Lhasa 47, 203
art centre, 200, 202, 250
arts and crafts 302
museum 298
Lhatse, art centre
Li Qizhao (poetess) 137
Li Yu, archaeology 306
Liangzhou 136
Liangzhu 46, 47
archaeology 306
Lianjiang, kiln site 137
Liaoyang
Liberia 243
arts and crafts 294
Libya 189, 290-291
architecture 290, 290-291
aristic cross-currents 290
colonization 34
Liebana 103
Liechtenstein 230, 230
Liège 103, 220, 228, 229
armour 168, 168
artistic centre 154, 279, 285
brass engraving 117
ecclesiastical centre 116
manuscripts 108
Lier, stained glass 116
Liérganes 234
Life of St George (de Sas) 118
Lifou, Lapita pottery 51
Lifuka Island, Lapita pottery 51
Ligor 206
Ligurians 64, 64
Lijiang 138
art centre 200
Lijó, megalithic art 29
Lille 116, 154, 168, 174
Euralille 285
museums 285
tapestry 117
Lille Baelt 20
Lilydale, plein-air paintings 259
Lima 57, 152, 153
architecture 152
artistic activity 218, 219, 268,
269
Limbe 266
Limburg 108, 168
Limerick 109
Limoges
alabaster 118
enamels 112
gems trade 111
metalwork 109, 110, 112, 174
porcelain 177
shrine 111, 111
Limyra 78
Lincoln 108, 109, 112
ecclesiastical centre 116
Lindgren, Armas (1874-1929) 221
Lindisfarne 103
Lindos, shrine 60
Linear B see script
Lingones peoples 65
Linjan, shrine 131
Linköping 112, 272
Linnell, John 226
Linru 138
Linz 154, 172, 238
architecture 281
Fuhrermuseum 281
Linzhi 302
Linzi 87
Lipara 66
Lippspringe 104
Lipscomb 96
Lisbon 70
alabaster 109, 111
architecture110 178, 220, 235,
235
art academy 234, 234, 235
art centre 154, 286
artists’ travels 119
university 114, 115
Lishui, kiln site 137
Lissitzky, El 270
Lissus 66
Litang, art centre 200, 202
Lithgow 259
Lithuania
art in a globalized world 273
folk woodcuts 223
multi-ethnicity 158
Occidentalism 159
Orientalism 159
pagan 106
and Poland 158-9
radical art 275
and Russia 223
Sarmatism 159
World Crafts Council 316
Litomysl 154
Little Diomeda Island 55
Little Harbor 55
Liu Bang 87
Liulichang, silk production 137
Liverpool 163
architecture 270, 271
art movement 226
Arts and Crafts 226
ceramic centre 164
modernist architecture 276
shipyard 2220
Tate 276
Livonia 157, 158
Livorno 181, 236, 237, 270
Livs, pagan 106
Lixus 34, 68
Ljubljana 185
art colony 282
art event 316
contemporary art 283
Llanos de Mojos 100, 100
Llullaillaco River 100
Llyn Cerrig Bach, metalwork 59
Loango 127, 190, 191
distribution of masks 243
Loarre 110
Lobbes 103
Loches 110
Locmariaquer, megalithic art 29
Locri 65
Lodi, painting 114
L/ ód´z 220
art collection 282, 283
art colony 282
Lofthoj 31
Logan Creek 96
Logrono 118
Loire Valley 174, 174, 175
Lokkigundi, temple 134
Lolland, Danish Bronze Age 31
Lombard, kingdom 102
Lombardy 182, 182, 236
Lombok 142, 143, 206, 254
Bronze Age 90
cotton 207, 310
Lomé, arts and crafts 294, 295
Lomello 102
Lonar, temple 134
Londinium 69
London 70, 71, 102, 147, 277
academies/exhibition rooms
165, 186, 277
Adam-style mansions 165
age of the aristocracy 164
art collection 186, 187
art dealers/trades/
organizations 277
art movements 276
art schools/acadamies 165,
227, 277
artistic cross-currents 112,
154, 236
artists’ studios/homes 165,
227, 277
artists’ travels 119, 187
Arts and Crafts 226
auction houses 187, 316, 316,
317
c.1600 162
c.1700-1800 165
cathedral/churches 108, 112,
165
Catholicism 104
city-planning 276
ecclesiastical centre 116
English Renaissance 163
Great Exhibition 210
Huguenots 176
important monuments 165,
227
manuscript painting 112
meeting places 165, 227,
277
metalworking 112
modern architecture 270, 271
modern art sites 277
Palladian mansions 165
Romantic site 220, 226
theatres/architect/date 165
Tower of 109
trade centre 109
Tudor and Stuart 162
urban development 186
Victorian 227
writing centre 103
see also sculpture
Londonderry 163
Long, Richard 277
Long Island, New York 213
Long Melford, stained glass 116
Long Thanh 51
Longgu Cave 18
Longleat House 162
Longlien 104
Longlier 104
Longmen
Buddhist caves 87, 306, 307
religious art 136
silk production 136
Longquan, kiln site 137, 138, 200,
202, 250, 251
Longshan
archaeology 306
culture 46
Longxing
Longzhou 250
Lonhy, Antoine de 119
Loos, Adolf 271
Lop Buri 206
Lorca, textiles 234
Lorenzetti, Ambrogio (d.1348)
120, 237
Loreto 122, 123, 180, 181
Lorient, megalithic art 29
Lorsch 102, 103
book production 104
Los Angeles 262, 264, 264
auctioneers 317
Los Narannjos 54
Los Ortices 54
Los Toldos 20
Losenko, Anton 161
Lost-wax process 40, 55, 87, 90,
126, 126
Lotun Cave 54
Loughborough 164
Loughcrew, megalithic art 29
Louis XIV (France) 112, 113, 166,
172, 176, 187, 189
Louis XV (France) 156
Louis XVI (France) 177
Louisade archipelago 93
Loukas 106
Loulan 86, 132
archaeological survey 247, 247
Buddhist art 83
Lourenço Marques 292
Loutherbourg, Philip James de
(1740-1812) 221
Louvain 168
painting 117
Louviers, ecclesiastical centre 116
Lovek 206
Lovelock Cave 26, 27, 96
Lowasera, pottery 36
Lower Hutt, indigenous art 315
Lower Palatinate 170
Lowestoft 164
Lowicz 159
Lowry, L. S. 277
Lozi 191
Lu 86
Lu Lengjia (active c.730-60) 203
Lu Xun (writer) 307
Luang Prabang 207
kiln site 206
silver work 254
textiles 310
Luba 127, 190
Chibunda Ilunga 243
Lubagueira, megalithic art 29
Lubbock 96
Lübeck 156, 157, 172, 222, 230
ecclesiastical centre 116
National Socialism 281
sculpture 170
Lublin 154, 158, 159
Lubostron 159
Lucani peoples 65, 65
Lucca 103, 121, 123, 180
art academy 182
cathedral 110
painting 114
royal progress 154
trading centre 120
Lucca (Jamaica) 266
Luceria 64
Lucerne 154, 281
Luck 158
Lucknow
architecture 248
miniature paintings 198, 248
museum 298
textiles 304
Luçon, ecclesiastical centre 118
Lüderitz 190
museum 296
Ludlow, castle 116
Ludovico Gonzaga and his Court
(Mantegna) 123
Ludwig I 231
Lugano 171, 171
Lügde 104
Lugdunensis 66, 69
Lugdunum 66, 68, 69
Lugo, castle 118
Luguru, post sculptures 292
Luguvallium 68
Luini, Bernardino (c.1480/85-1532)
171
Luminism 278
Luncani, wild boar 59
Lund 108, 108, 109, 273
crucifix 109
ecclesiastical centre 116
Lund, J. L. (1771-1867) 222
Lunda 127, 191
Chibunda Ilunga 243
distribution of masks 243
Lundu 127, 190, 191
Lüneburg 154, 170
Luolang 306
Luoyang 47, 86, 87, 87, 136, 306,
307
art collection 137
early urbanism 25
Luoyang, 307
Lupaka 101
Lur tribes 301
Luristan 42, 43, 43
Lusaka
tourist/modern art 292, 293
traditional arts 292
Lusitania 66, 69
Lustreware 131
Luther, Martin 170, 171
Lutheranism 156
attitudes to art 154
churches 158, 159, 185
Luwu 206
Luxembourg 168
art event 316
UNESCO project 316
Luxeuil 103
Luxor 38, 290
temple 39
see also Thebes
Luzira 190
Luzon 207, 254
L’viv, architecture 283
Lwow 154
art centre 282
art review magazine 282
churches 158, 159
Lycia 62, 66, 78, 80
Lycia-Pamphylia 69
Lydenburg, pottery 72, 73, 126
Lydia 35, 78, 80, 81
Lydians 34
Lyme Regis 163
Lyon 70
archbishopric 104
architecture 177
art centre 154, 285
art event 316
biennials 285
floor mosaics 71
industrial 220
literary centre 103
murals 110, 233
print-making 118
publishing 174
trade route 102
Lysimachea 62
Lysippos (sculptor) 61
Lystra 66
Ma Dong 51
Maarken, art colony 228
Maastricht 103, 168, 228, 229
art collection 279
brass engraving 117
ecclesiastical centre 116
Maat 39
Mabopane, art school 296
Macacanda 80
Macao 250, 306, 307
trade centre 192, 207, 254
Macassar 143, 206
arts and crafts 310
cotton 207, 254
trade centre 192
McCahon, Colin (1919-87) 315,
315
Macchiaioli group 236, 237
Macedon 62, 65
Macedonia 58, 62, 66, 69, 184
Byzantine architecture 184
headdress 62
McGillivray, Alexander 149
INDEX
341
198, 199
courtly culture 199
miniatures 304
patronage 196
Peacock Throne 194, 199
Mugla 244
Mugye-ri 49
Muhammad 128
Muhammad’Ali (Egypt) 240, 241,
241, 244
Mühlhausen 172
Mukden 250, 306
Mulasthana, mosque 134
Muldbjerg 31
Multan 79, 132
carpets 198
mosque 134
trade centre 84
Mumbai 198, 248, 248, 249
Mummies 57, 75, 83
Munch, Edvard (1863-1944) 223,
272, 273
Munich 154
academies 172, 222, 280, 282,
282
architecture 155, 173, 281
art centre 186
art collections 172, 282
art colony 282
Art Nouveau 220
art publishing 231
artistic cross-currents 173
artists’ travels 187
arts centre 171, 230
auctioneers 316
Bavarian capital 230
bronze casting 170
Degenerate Art exhibition 281
Expressionism centre 270
Königsplatz 231
Secessionism 283
Third Reich arts capital 281
wood sculpture 116
Münster 103, 154, 168, 170, 173
artists’ travels 187
ecclesiastical centre 116
Münter, Gabriele 280
Munthe, Gerhard 273
Muralism 266, 266, 267, 267
Murals see Frescoes
Murasaki Shikibu 141
Muratowicz, Sefer 194
Murbach 103
Murcia 154
print-making 118
textiles 234
Murciélago 98
Murcutt, Glen (1936-) 314, 314
Murdoch-Smith, Major General Sir
Robert 245
Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban (1617-
82) 150, 179
Murillo, Gerardo (Dr Atl,1875-
1964) 266-267
Murmansk 224
artists’ centre 225
Murnau 280
Expressionism centre 270
modern painting 280
Murray river, Aboriginal art 258
Murshidabad 198
architecture 248
Musang Cave 51
Musawwarat es-Sufra 72, 73
Muscat 129
fine arts 300
museum 298
Seljuk 130
trading port 192
Muscovy 196
Music, Italian centres 180
Musical instruments 41, 256
Muskebi 32
Muslim see Islam
Musorgsky, Modest 224
Mussau, Lapita pottery 51
Mussolini, Benito 289
Mussy-sur-Seine, stained glass
116
Müstair 103
Mustang, art centre
Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual
205
Mut precint (Amun’s consort) 39
Mutapa 127
Mutare, museum 296
Müteferrika, Ibrahim 194
Muzins, trade 134
Muzná 185
Mwene Mutapa’s court 127
My Xuyen, pagoda 206
Mycenae 32, 33, 33
first states 31
Lion Gate 33
Shaft Graves 31
Mycenaean culture 32-33, 33
Myitkyina, arts and crafts 310
Myohaung 206
Myongji-ni 88
Myra 67
Mysenec, wall painting 116
Mysore
exhibition centre 304
jewellery 248
museum 304
palace 198
Mysz Nowa 158
Mythograms 19
Mythology
Central Andean 57
classical 180
Elamite 42
Hellenistic 67
Norse 222
painted scenes 123
Romulus and Remus 65
on silver vessels 70
Mzab oases 189
Na 88
Naayama 88
Nabatake 88
Nabeul 76, 290
Nabonidus, king 43
Nabta Playa 36
Nachnakuthara, temple 85
Naco 54, 96, 98
Naedong-ni 49
Naepyong-ni 49
Nafta, textiles 124
Naga 299
Nagamangala, carving 248
Nagamine 89
Nagaoka 308
Nagapattinam (Negapatam) 134,
198, 248
coins 85
textiles 207
Nagarahara, Kushan art 82
Nagari, coins 84
Nagarjunakonda, stupa 85
Nagasaki 204, 204, 252
Naghi, Mohamed (1880-1956) 291
Nagoya 204, 204, 205, 205, 252,
308
Naguar, miniature paintings 198
Nagybánya, art colony 220, 282
Nagyszeben 185
Nagyvárad 185
Nahdia 66
Nahr-Tire 81
Naigani Island, Lapita pottery 51
Na’in, ceramics 301
Nairobi
tourist/modern art 292, 293
traditional arts 292
Naissus 68
Naj Tunich 98
Najaf 131, 194, 195
Nájera 118
Naju 49
Nakasawame 49
Nakatani Tsuru Dressing (Hashiguchi
Goyo) 308
Nakayama chiku 89
Nakayama Minami 89
Nakazato 89
Nakbe 54
Nakhichevan, Ilkhanid monument
131
Nakhon Ratchasima, religious site
310
Nakhon Si Thammarat 206, 254
Nakur 124
Nakusu-ri 88
Nalanda 134
archaeology 85
Nam Puyo 89
Namangan, arts and crafts 302
Namatjira, Albert 315
Namgyong 49
Namibia 16, 36, 297
arts and crafts 296
Nampula, museum 296
Namsong-ni 49
Namsu-ri 88
Namur 168, 168
Nan’an, kiln site 137
Nanchang 200, 202, 250, 307
Nancy 220
architecture 177
ecclesiastical centre 116
urban development 186
Nangminng-dong 88
Nanjing 87, 306
Ming capital,
museum 298
museums 306, 307
painting 202
printing 192, 200
textiles 250
Nanning 138, 250
Nantes 71, 103, 111
albaster 109
architecture 177
château 116
ecclesiastical centre 116
Edict of 176
manuscript painting 112
sculpture 154
shipyard 220
Nanyue 86
Napata, 37, 37, 72, 72
Napier, architecture 314
Naples 70, 71, 102, 147
alabaster 109, 111
archbishopric 104
architecture 114, 119, 181
art centre 154, 181, 236
art collections 182
artists’ travels 119, 187
humanism 122
literary centre 103, 114
monuments 182
patrons and projects 121, 123,
181
trade and culture 180
university 114, 120
urban development 186
Napoleon 220, 220, 221
Egypt expedition 244, 245
and Russia 224
Napoleon as Mars (Canova) 237
Naqa 72
Naqada, early culture 36, 37
Naqsh-e Rajab 81
Naqsh-e Rostam 81
Naqsh-i Bahram 81, 81
Naqshbandi sheikhs 196, 197
Naqu 302
Nar al-Kalb 43
Nara
arts centre 140, 141, 205, 252,
299
Buddhist arts 204
Naram-Sin 41
Narbo 66, 67, 68, 69
Narbonensis 69
Narbonne 70
archbishopric 104
literary centre 103
royal progress 154
stained glass 118
Narmouthis 75
Narona 66
Narowla 158
Narthang, art centre 138
Narutaki 89
Narva 156, 157, 222
Nasarpur 198
Nash, John 226
Nashville 212
Nasik 248
Nasir al-Din 245
Nasmus, Ilkhanid monument 131
Nasrids 125
Nassilia 67
Natanz, shrine 131
Natchez 97
Nathadwara, folk art 249
National Romanticism 223
Nationalism and NeoVernacularism
239
Native American art 213
Natpaktos, textiles 283
Natufian figurines 21
Naturalism 272
Naucratis 34, 35, 74
Naujan 96
Naumburg 112, 172
Navajo tribe 148, 148, 212
Navarre 110, 116
Navarrete, Juan Fernández de (’el
Mudo; 1520-1579) 178
Nawinpuquio 57, 57
Naxos 32, 33, 35
marble 60
Nayin 129, 131
minaret 130
Nayriz, minaret 130
Nazarene Brotherhood 231, 237
Nazca culture 57, 57, 95
Ndiaye, Iba (1928-) 294
Ndongo 127
Nea Paphos 70
Neam monastery 185
Neapolis 64, 66, 68
mosaics 76, 76
Near East 34, 111
Nebamun, tomb 38, 39
Nebo 71
Nebuchadnezzar II 43
Neck 96
Nedroma 125
Nefertari, tomb 39
Negapatam see Nagapattinam
Negoroji, lacquerware 140, 141
Negoyadai 49
Negritude movement 295
Negros 206, 254
Nehavend 81
Neizvestny, Ernst (1926-) 275
Nekhbet, vulture goddess 38
Nemausus 68
Nemea, Doric temple 60
Nemetacum, cult centre 59
Nemetogriga, cult centre 59
Nemi 64, 65
Nemours 290
Nenagh 112
Nendram 103
Neo-Assyrian period 43
Neo-Attic 66
Neo-Confucianism 141, 205, 205
Neo-Impressionism 288
Neo-primitivism 274
Neo-Romanticism 277
Neo-Tantric 305
Neoclassicism 157, 173, 175, 177,
182, 216, 216, 217, 222, 223, 219
Neolithic
agriculture 53
art 28-29
cultures 44, 46, 46
figurine 29
Neon, Bishop 70
Nepal
art schools/museums 298
sculpture/painting 139, 139
World Crafts Council 316
Nerezi 106
Nero, emperor 66
Nesebur 185
Nesterov, Mikhail (1862-1942)
225
Nestorian Christianity 132
Netherlands 228-229, 278-279
art and commerce 117, 166
artistic influence 157, 178, 186
artistic institutions 229
artists’ travels 228, 278
colonial acquisitions 229
institutions and monuments
279
North 166, 166, 167, 167
South 168-169
Neubrandenburg 112, 172
Neumann, Balthasar 173
Neusatz 238
Neuvy-en-Sullias, wild boar 59
Nevers 103, 110
New Age 19
New Caledonia 92, 92, 312, 312,
313
art production 256
Cook’s voyage 208
Lapita pottery 51, 51
New Delhi
art event 316
artistic centre 304
European town planning 304,
305, 305
Modernism 305
museums 298, 304
New Gourna 290, 291
New Granada 218
New Guinea 11, 23, 255, 312
archaeology 92
architecture 311
art production 256
artistic traditions 93
arts and crafts 310
Catholicism 207
Cook’s voyage 208
Dong Son culture 90
early settlements 16, 50, 50
Pacific art 312, 313
pottery 51, 51, 93
wood-carving 254
New Hall 164
New Hebrides, 92, 92, 93 93, 312
New Hebrides art production
256
New Ireland, Lapita pottery 51
New Mexico 263
New Orleans 212, 264, 265
Civil War site 214
plantation estates 213
New Plymouth, indigenous art
315
New South Wales, goldfields 259
New Stone Age 20
New York, auctioneers 317
New York City 212, 212
architecture 263, 264, 265
art capital 271
exhibitions 262, 262, 264
World Fair (1939) 274
New Zealand 144, 145, 258-259,
314-315
architecture 315
Cook’s voyages 208, 209
gable front 209
indigenous art 257, 315
indigenous and colonial
interactions 259
Maori artists 145, 211, 258,
259, 314, 315
meeting house 257, 259, 259
Pacific art 312, 312, 313
Newark 55, 96, 97, 264
Newcastle upon Tyne 108, 163,
220,
art movement 226
Newchwang 250
Newfoundland 212
Newgrange, chambered tomb 29,
29
Newlyn, art colony 220, 226, 276,
276
Newport 226
Newport Beach, art event 317
Ngawen, temple 142
Ngor, art centre
Ngoyo 127, 190
Niagara Falls 212, 212, 212, 213
paintings 214
Niah 51
iron work 90
pottery 50
Niamey 126
art production 295
Niani 126
Nias, wood-carving 254, 310
Niaux 19
Nicaea 64, 79, 84
Nicaragua 261
independence 216, 216, 266
Nice 284, 285
panel painting 118
Nicholas I, Tsar 224
Nicholson, Ben 277
Nichoria 33
Nicomedia 69, 70, 106
Nicopolis 70
floor mosaics 71
Nicosta 195
Nidaros 156
Niebla, castle 118
Nieborów 159
Niello (silver sulphide) 70, 301
Niemeyer, Oscar (1907-) 261, 269
Niepolomice 159
Nieswiez 158, 159
NIFCA studio programme 273
Nigar
Ilkhanid monuments 131
minaret 130
Nigde 130
Niger 290
archaeology 294
World Crafts Council 316
Niger Delta 190
Nigeria 11, 126, 191
Igbo shrine 294
Nok figures 72, 72
World Crafts Council 316
Night Watch (Rembrandt) 229
Nijmegen 102, 228
painting 117
Nikken Sekkei 290
Nikko 204
Nikopol, Judaism 184
Niksar, mosque 130
Nile 72
trade routes 72, 188, 189
Nile Delta, papyrus 69
Nile Valley 38-9, 74-5
city of Thebes 39
early cultures 36, 37, 72
sites and monuments 38, 74
Nimes 285
ecclesiastical centre 118
Nimrud 43, 43
ceramics 78
excavations 245, 245
Nindowari, early urbanism 25
Nineveh 40, 42, 43, 43, 80
Achaemenid 78
excavations 245, 245
Ningbo 250
painting/printing, 200
Ningzhou, silk production 137
Niño Korin 101, 101
Niort 110
Nipigon Lake, paintings 214
Nipissing Lake, paintings 214
Nippur 40, 41, 43
early urbanism 25
excavations 245
Nirakubo 49
pottery 48
Nisa 80, 303
Nishapur 80, 81, 83, 129, 132
madrasa 130
pottery 132, 133, 133, 195
textiles 132
Nishida 49
Nishikoko 89
Nishitan 88
Nishpur, lustre ware 131
Nisibis 80, 81
Nissan, Lapita pottery 51, 93
Nithart, Matthias (1475/80-1528)
170
Niuatoputapu, Lapita pottery 51
Niuheliang 46
Nivelles 103
Niya 86, 247
arts and crafts 302
Buddhist art 83
Nizami (Khamsa/Quintet) 194
Nizampatam, textiles 198
Nizhniy Novgorod 160
annual market 224, 225, 225
toy-making 224, 224
Nizhniy Tagil 160
Njimbo a Kalunga 191
Njoya of Bamum, wood stool and
foot rest 242
Nkwalini 296
Nobi 89
Nochixtlán 98
Noguchi, Isamu (1904-88) 309
INDEX
340
iron smelting 73
kingdom 72, 73
Nok figures 72
Merrill 96
Mersa Matruh 32
Merton Abbey 220
Merv 80, 81, 83, 129, 132, 133,
196
archaeological survey 247
captured by Russians 246
carpet market 246
ceramics 78, 131
museum 298, 303
tomb 132
Merve, madrasa 130
Mesa Verde 96
Mesdag, H. W. (1831-1915) 228,
229
Mesdag, Sientje (1834-1909) 229
Mesene 80
Meserve 96
Meshed 80, 194, 195, 246
architecture 192
carpet-making 244
manuscripts 195
mosque 133, 195
museum 298
shrine 133, 194
Mesoamerica 17, 22, 26, 27
cultures 54, 54, 55, 100
Postclassic period 98
Mesolithic art 28, 28
Mesopotamia 12, 22, 25, 32, 35,
42-43, 62, 66
Abbasid capital 128, 129
Achaemenid empire 78, 78, 79
animal carvings 43
Islam 128, 128
Ottoman Possession 194, 195
Parthian expansion 80
pious gestures 78
religious imagery 42, 42
urban civilization 25, 40
Messana 65, 66, 67
Messapii peoples 65
Messe, archaeology 294
Messene, theatre 60
Messila, textiles 124
Messina 102, 109, 110
royal progress 154
Western Christendom 104
Metabetchouan 96
Metallurgy 31, 31, 60
Metalwork
countries
Achaemenid 78, 78, 78, 79
Aegean 60
Africa 36, 37, 72, 72, 73
British centre 164
Byzantine 106
Celtic 53
Central America 98
Central Asia 132, 133, 133,
197, 247, 303
Chinese 47, 47, 87
Danish Bronze Age 31, 31
East and Central Africa 292
Egyptian 75
European 108, 109, 110,
112, 170, 283
France 177
Greek centres 34, 35
Guangala 56
India 248, 249, 304
Japan and Korea 53, 140,
141, 205, 252
North Africa 188, 188, 240,
290-291, 291
Northern Europe 59, 116,
117
Russian 160, 160, 161, 224,
224
St Gall abbey 105
South American 56-57
Southeast Asia 90, 90, 254,
255, 310
Southern Europe 114
Spain and Portugal 178
sub-Saharan Africa 190-191
West Africa 294
West Asia 42, 43, 81, 130,
131, 195, 301, 301
Western Islam 125
Iron Age 59
techniques
casting 40
decoration 52
enamel 118
ethnic/folk 239
gift-exchanges 103
industrial architecture 220,
221
jewelled 71
trade 30, 31, 68
Metaphysical painting 270, 288,
288
Metapontum 65
Meteora 106
Metjetji tomb, wall relief 38
Metsketa 80
Metz 102, 103
architecture 177
Charlemagne 104
ecclesiastical centre 116
manuscript painting 112
Meunier, Constant (1831-1905)
228, 228
Meuse 105
Mexico
archaic cultures 26, 54, 98,
98
architecture 151
artistic activity 216, 217, 266,
268
Muralism 266
Northern/Greater Southwest
98
Revolution 216, 266, 266, 267
sculpture 54
World Crafts Council 317
Yaxchilán Lintel 98
Mexico City 216
art movements 216
Meydancikkâle 78
Meytens the Younger, Martin van
(1695-1770) 157
Mezek, wild boar 59
Mezen’ 224, 225
Mezhirich 18
Mezin 16, 18
Miahuatlán 54
Miami 264
Mianzhou, silk production 136
Mica 97
Michelangelo (1475-1564) 95, 154,
175, 180
Micronesia 53, 92, 93, 144-145,
208, 312, 312
Middelburg 168
Middle East 12
medieval period 81
Middle Stone Age 20
Middleburg, brass engraving 117
Midland 96
Midsummer Dance (Zorn) 223
Miedzyrzecz Korecki 159
Miers, John 219
Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 270,
271
Miharada 49
Mihr Ali (artist) 244
Mihrakert 80
Mikhailovich, Tsar Alexey 160
Milan 64, 70, 71
archbishopric 104
architecture 121, 123, 181,
182, 220, 288
art centre 154, 180, 186, 236
art collections 182
Art Nouveau 220
Arte Povera 288, 289
artists’ travels 119, 187
auctioneers 316
Counter-Reformation 180, 181
cultural centre 122
Futurism centre 270, 288
literary centre 103, 121
manuscript production 114
metalwork 109, 110, 114
nationalistic site 237
patrons and projects 121, 123,
181
S. Ambrogio 104
South Netherlands trade 169
trade centre 102, 120
Mildenhall 70, 71
Miletus 32, 33, 35, 62, 78
temple 60
Milford Haven 163
Milford Sound 259
Millais, John Everett 227
Miller 55
Millions Stand Behind Me
(Heartfield) 281
Mills, Robert 213
Milton, John 162
Mimanda 88
Mimanda Higashibaru, figurines
49
Mimbres 96
Minamikata 49
Minarets 130, 132, 132
Minas Gerais 152, 153
Minas Nova 152
Mindanao 206, 254
trade 207
Minden 103, 104, 108, 172
Mindoro 254
Mine 88
Mingun, pagodas 255
Mingzhou, paper production 137
Minneapolis 262, 262
Minoan culture 31, 32-33, 33
Minsk 158, 224, 225, 272
Mints
Byzantine 107, 107
Hellenestic 62-3
Parthian 80
Sasanian 81
Sutton Hoo burial 102
Western Mediterranean 64-5
see also coins
Minturnae 66
Mir, Joaquim (1873-1949) 234
Mir iskusstva (journal) 225
Mira 181
Miracanguera 100, 100
Miraflores, ecclesiastical centre
118
Miran 132
Miró, Joan (1893-1983) 284, 287
Mirpur Khas, stupa 85
Miruk-sa 89
Mishe MiShyaang ma Mbul (king)
191
Misisil 50
Mison, temple 142
Mississippi (France), megalithic
art 29
Mississippian culture 97, 97, 97,
148, 148
Mistra 106
Mit Rahina 38
Mitanni 42
Mithila, folk art 249
Mithradates I 80, 80
Mithradates II 80, 80
Mitla 98
Mitsubishi Corporation 300
Mitsudera 89, 89
Mitterburg 30, 31
Mittimatalik 96
Mixco Viejo 98
Mixian 138
Mixteca Alta 99
Miyake, Issey 309
Miyamaegawa 89
Miyanomae 88
Mizhou, silk production 137
Mizonoguchi 49
Mizque 100
Mjikenda, post sculptures 292
Mocha 192
Moche 53, 56, 57
culture 57
’Decapitator God’ 57
ear spools 56
Mochudi, museum 296
Model for the Monument to the
Third International (Tatlin) 271,
274
Modena 110, 122, 123
academy 182
art collection 182
Modern art 270, 277, 280
birth of 165
Italian collections 181, 182
rural sites 280
Scandinavian/Baltic galleries
273
Modernism 227, 231, 260, 261,
262, 263, 264, 264, 265, 265,
267, 272, 272, 273, 276, 279,
280, 282, 304, 305, 314
Modersohn-Becker, Paula 280
Modhera, temple 134
Modigliana 236, 237
Modoc 96
Mogadishu 126, 127, 190
Mogador 73
Mogao Caves 87
Mogollon 55
Mogollon culture 96, 97
Mimbres mortuary bowl 96
Mogontiacum 67, 69
Mohenio, museum 298
Mohenjo-Daro
Dancing Girl 45
early urbanism 25
Great Bath 45
Moholy-Nagy, László 283
Mohylów 158
Moissac 110, 111
Moldavia 158, 184
religious architecture 184,
185
Moldovita 185
Molepolole, museum 296
Molfetta 110
Molino 98
Moluccas 50, 142, 143, 206, 206,
207, 207
Bronze Age 90
trade 207
Molycrion 60
Mombasa 127, 190, 191, 292
tourist/modern art 292, 293
trading post 242
wood carving 292
Monaco
auctioneers 316
Principality 182
Monasteboice 103
Monasteries
art vandalism 187
Balkan 184
Buddhist 84, 85, 85, 134
Burma 255
Byzantine 184
dissolution 162, 163
in Egypt 77
European 103, 109, 113
illuminated texts 103
Netherlands 166
patrons 105
relics 105
SE Europe 184-5, 185
Spanish colonial architecture
12, 151
see also specific names
Monastir 124
Monchengladbach, stained glass
110, 116
Mondavio 122, 123
Mondrian, Piet (1872-1944) 278,
278
Mondsee 103
ecclesiastical centre 116
Monemvasia 107
Monet, Claude (1840-1926) 233,
233
Moneydig, megalithic art 29
Mongchon 89
Monghyr (Mongir, Monghir) 134,
198
Mongol dynasty 131, 139, 160
Mongolia, art schools/museums
298
Monk Mending Clothes 137
Monkwearmouth 102, 103
Monomotapa 190
Monongahela River 213
Monreale 110, 180, 181
Monrovia, art centre 295
Mons 69, 168, 228, 229
painting 117
Monte Sant’ Angelo 104, 111
Mont-Saint-Michel 110
Montalbán, castle 118
Montbouy, wood carving 59
Monte Albán 54, 98, 99
sculpture 54
Monte Alegre 20
Monte Cassino
manuscript production 114
monastery 103, 110, 111,
111
Monte Frio, megalithic art 29
Monte Negro 54
Montealegre, castle 118
Montefeltro, Federigo da 122
Montefortino 64
Montenegro 184, 220, 238
nationalism and neovernacularism
239
Montepulciano 110, 181
Montevideo 152, 218
artistic activity 268, 269
Montezuma Castle 96
Montmorrillon 110
Montpellier 109
architecture 177
panel painting 118
university 112, 114
Montreal 212, 262, 264, 265
paintings 214
Montreal (Levant), Crusader castle
130
Montségur 112
Montu
falcon-headed 39
precinct 39
Monument to Labour (Meunier) 228
Monza 103, 121
Moore, Charles 265
Moore, Henry 277
Moosbrugger, Caspar (1656-1723)
172
Mopti 290
Mor, Antonis (1516-76) 162
Morales, Eduardo (1868-1938) 217
Moran, Thomas (1837-1926) 214,
214, 215
Morandi, Giorgio (1890-1964) 288
Morando, Bernardo 158
Moravia 16-17
architecture 238
More, Thomas 163
Morella 109
panel painting 118
Morgantina 64, 65
Mori, Hanae 309
Moritzburg Lakes 280, 280, 280
Morocco 35, 189
architecture 290, 290
aristic cross-currents 290
indigenous art 240, 240
indigenous traditions 291
Muslim/Jewish refugees 188
patronage 189, 290
Sultanate 188
urban development 241
World Crafts Council 316
Morris, William 211-212, 220, 221,
227
Morse, Samuel F. B. 213
Mosaics
Aachen 105
Byzantine 106, 107, 125
Central America 150
European 110
Graeco-Roman 67
Great Hunt 69
Hellenstic 62-3
Islamic 135
Italian 65, 121, 181
Mediterranean 64-5, 67, 68, 68
miniature 183
North Africa 76, 76, 77, 77
Roman 67, 70, 71, 115
Southeast Asia 255
Southern Europe 114
tile 189
Umayyad 128, 128
workshops 69, 70
Moscow
architecture 160, 160, 271
art movements 275
art review magazines 282
artistic centre 160, 186
artistic cross-currents 154,
271, 282
Byzantine 106
Constructivism 283
folk art 224
Graveyard of Fallen
Monuments 271
Hermitage museum 247
industrial 220
Kremlin 160
Neoclassical Michael Palace
225
noncomformist art 275
rebuilt 224
St Basil’s Cathedral 155
School of Painting and
Sculpture 224, 225
Slavic revival 225
trading centre 107
urban development 186
Moser, Henry 247
Moser, Mary 165
Mosman, Heidelberg School 259
Mosna 185
Mosques
Asia 193
Central Asia 133, 302
congregational 124, 125, 130,
131, 131, 132, 132
Córdoba 110, 125
four-iwan plan 130, 131
hypostyle 125, 130, 133
Maghreb 125
nine-bay 124, 125, 132
North Africa 188-189, 240, 241,
241
Ottoman 131, 245
Poland and Lithuania 158, 159
SE Europe 184, 185
South Asia 134, 198
Southeast Asia 143, 206, 254
Sub-Saharan Africa 191
West Africa 290, 294
West Asia and Egypt 128, 128,
129, 129
West Asia 130, 194, 195, 195
Western Islam 124, 125
see also Islam
Moss 272
Mossi kingdoms 190
Mostaganem, textiles 124
Mostar 184
Móstoles 234
Mosul 70, 128, 129, 132, 195
metalworking 130, 131
museum 298
textiles 131
Motya 34, 64
Mougau-Bihar, megalithic art 29
Moukhtar, Mahmoud 291
Moulin 168
Moulins 154
château 116
stained glass 118
Moulmein 254
Mound City 96
Moundville 96, 97
Mount, William Sydney 213
Mount Barnett Station 314
Mount Horeb 55
Mousstafa, Ahmed (1943-) 291
Movie and TV industry 308, 309
Moxeke 57
Mozambique 127, 190, 191, 243,
260
art 292
arts and crafts 296
Mozu 89
Mozugenglar 302
Mpambo, textiles 296
Mpumalanga, Matsulu village 296
Mrauk-U, pagoda 206
Msecké Zehrovice, stone carving
59
Mshatta 128
Mtskheta 106
Muafangejo, John (1943-87) 297
Mu’awiya, Umayyad founder 128
Mubarak, ’Ali 241
Much Hadham, Henry Moore
Foundation 316
Mudgee 259
Mudhera, temple 134
Muduma, mosque 131
Mughal empire 146, 192, 198,
INDEX
343
Palenque 54, 55, 98, 99
Palermo 102, 109, 111, 120, 124,
131
architecture 121
monuments 182
mosaics 106, 110
nationalistic site 237
royal progress 154
textiles 125
Western Christendom 104
Palestine
archaeology 298
architecture 300
British excavations 245
British Mandate 300
fine arts 300, 301
patronage 70
Palladio, Andrea 237
Pallas Athene 63
Pallavas dynasty 85
Palma 66
artists’ travels 119
metalwork 109
Palma de Mallorca
alabaster 111, 118
wall painting 118
Palmerston North, indigenous art
315
Palmyra 68, 71, 80, 81, 128
trade centre 131
Palomino (historian) 179
Pamplona 110, 114, 178, 234
wall painting 118
Pamwak 50
Panakiwuk 50
Panama 152, 153
art event 317
gold-work 99
independence 216, 266
lost-wax process 55
Panama City 266
Panay 254
Panaztepe 32
Pandang 254
Pandua 198
mosque 134
Pandyas dynasty 85
Pan’gudae, rock engravings 88
Panini, Giovanni Paolo 183
Panipat 198
Panjdeh 246
Panjikent 132, 303
Buddhist art 83
Panlongcheng, archaeology 307
Pannonia 69
Pannonia Inferior 66
Pannonia Superior 66
Panopolis 74, 77
Panormus 67
Pantaran, temple 142
Panticapaeum 62, 67, 78
Greek colony 58
Panxian, archaeology 307
Papal States 122, 123, 173, 181,
182
South Netherlands trade 169
Paper-making 125, 125
Asia 193
Central and Eastern Europe
283
Chinese 95, 131, 136, 137
France 177
Japan and Korea 140, 141,
141, 193, 204, 308, 309
Mughal 199
production 132, 137
spread of 132, 136
West Asia 130, 131
Paphlagonia 62, 78
Paphos 68
Papua New Guinea 50, 50, 311,
312, 313
Papua New Guinea, World Crafts
Council 316
Papunya, indigenous art 314, 315
Papyrus 69, 69, 74, 75, 78, 129
Paquimé 98
effigy mounds 98
Pará 218, 219
Paracas 57
culture 57
Paradene 81
Paraguay 234
artistic activity 219, 268, 269
Guaraní art 153
World Crafts Council 317
Paramaribo 218
Paramonga 100, 101
Paraná 219
Pampean tradition 56, 57
Paratan 81
Paray-le-Monial 110
Parchment 69, 125
Pardubice 154
Paredao 100
Paredes de Nava, artists’ travels
119
Parietal art 16-17, 16-17, 18-19,
20
Parihasapura, monastery 134
Paris 70, 71, 102, 147
architecture 270, 271
art academy 186
art centre 110, 112, 113, 154,
231, 232, 233, 236, 268, 270,
270, 284, 284, 285, 287
art collection 186, 187, 235
art event 316
Art Nouveau 220
artistic influence 115, 173,
174, 307
artistic institutions 172, 176,
233, 282
artists’ travels 119, 187
auctioneers 316
Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève
211
c.1650 175
c.1700 176
Catholicism 104
churches 112
cultural centre 113, 113, 116
ecclesiastical centre 116
ivory-work 109, 112
literary centre 103
palace complex 186
pilgrimage centre 111, 111
Post-Impressionism 283
salon exhibitions 187
sarcophagi 102
Surrealism 283
UNESCO project 316
university 112, 113
urban development 186
Vendôme Column 232, 233
World Fairs 283, 284
World Fair (1867) 239, 245
World Fair (1937) 274
Parma 66, 114, 123
art centre 110, 154
art collections 181, 182
papal court 180
Paros 33, 35
marble 60
pottery 283
Parpalló 19
Parris, Alexander 213
Partais 66
Parthia 52, 62, 80, 81, 82
Parthian empire 82
art style 80-81
migrations 80
Parthyene 80
Pasa Tepe 78
Pasadena 264, 264
Pasai 143, 192
Pasargadae 78
Palace P 79
Pasewalk 172
Pasiteles, silversmith 66
Paso midden 50
Passau 170
Passer, Arent (c.1560-1637) 157
Patagonia 20, 219
Patala 63
Pataliputra 53, 134
archaeology 84
trade 134
Patan
mosque 134
palace 198
Patayan tradition 96
Pate 127
Pater, Walter 227
Paterno 64
Patiens, Bishop 70
Patishkhwagar 81
Patna 53
miniatures 198
museum 298
painting 248
Patne, ostrich eggshell 16
Patra, textiles 283
Patrae 66
Patrauti 185
Patrick’s Point 55
Patronage 70-71
countries
Abbasid 129
Asia 299
British 162, 226-227, 277
Central Asia 196
Egypt 77
European 95, 109, 220-221
Frankish 105
German 171, 172, 230
Italian 121, 122, 180, 236
Japan and Korea 141, 204,
205
Netherlands and Belgium
229
Northern Europe 116
Ottoman 301
Portugal 155
SE Europe 184-185
South Asia 135
Southern Europe 119
Swedish 156
Swiss 231
West Africa 294
kinds of
aristocratic 103, 106, 164
artistic 60
artists’ travels 119
centres 154
church 155, 166
court 105
ecclesiastical 118
industrial millionaires 237
mercantile 120
patriotism 122
royal 158, 174-175
state sponsorship 290
via tourism 291
Pattala 84, 134
Pattani 143, 207, 254
Pattaya, tourism 310
Pattinson, H. L. 213
Pau, castle 118
Paucartambo 101, 101
Paul III, pope 180, 181
Paul III & his Grandsons (Titian) 181
Paulinus of Aquileia 105
Pavia 102, 103, 109, 121, 122,
123
Catholic college 181
Counter-Reformation 180
French defeat 175
South Netherlands trade 169
Pavlov 16
Pavón 54
Pawaya, temple 85
Pawlowice 159
Pawon, temple 142
Pax Lulia 66
Paxton, Joseph 226
Payerne 110
Pazardzhik 185
Pazarli 78
Péc 195
Pech-Merle 17
Pécs 184
town-planning 238
Pedir 143
Pedra Furada, rock shelter 16, 17,
18, 19
Pedralta, megalithic art 29
Pedro Coberta, megalithic art 29
Pedro Oca 100
Pedrosa de la Vega 71
Pegasus 81
Pegu 134, 206, 254, 255
trade centre 207
Pegwell Bay 226, 226
Pei, I. M. 299
Peiligang culture 46
Peiraeus, town-planning 60
Peking 86, 307
Peláez, Amelia (1896-1968) 267
Pella 62
Peloponnesian War 52
Pelusium 74
Pemba 127
Pembroke Clare 96
Penafiel, castle 118
Penang 254
museum 298
Pende 191
Pensacola 212
Pentelikon, marble 35, 60, 67, 69
Penukonda, temple 134
People’s Art Protest Movement
309
Pepper Coast 191
Perati 32, 33
Perdida 100
Peredvizhniki 224-5
Peretu, Thraco-Getic hoard 58
Performing arts, Japan and Korea
252
Pergamum (Pergamon) 62, 63, 66,
67, 67, 68
excavations 245
Great Altar of Zeus 63
kingdom 62, 63
Peri Peri, sites 100
Pericles (general) 61
Périgueux 118
cathedral 110, 111
literary centre 103
Periperí, culture 57
Peristeria 33
Perlak 143
Perm’ 160, 160, 224
Permeke, Constant (1886-1952)
278
Permöser, Balthasar 172
Pernambuco 152, 218, 219
art centre 153
Pernstejn 154
Péronne 103
Perov, Vasily (1833-82) 224
Perovsk 246
Perpignan 109
artists’ travels 119
Perrecy-les-Forges 110
Perret, Auguste 284, 285
Persepolis 62, 74, 81
Apadana reliefs 78, 79, 79
artistic centre 78
fortified terrace 79
Parthian mint/architecture 80
Perseus decapitating Medusa
34
Persian empire 12, 52, 58, 82
Abbasid Caliphate 129
Achaemenid empire 62, 78-79
Achaemenid objects 58
and Afghanistan 244
artistic culture 193
carpet area 301
and Egypt 74
garden architecture 199
invades India 194
and Islam 128
literary language 133, 193
miniature painting 199
partition of Armenia 81
Safavid 195
Shi’i sect 194
trading routes 194
under threat 244
Persian War 52
Persis 62, 78, 80, 81
Persopolis 301
Perth 163, 164, 258
indigenous art 314
Peru 53, 95, 27
artistic activity 152, 219, 268,
268, 269, 269
Bolíva’s campaigns 218
Middle Horizon 100
Perugia 121
academy 182
altarpieces 182
fortifications 180
sculpture 114
Perugino (c.1450-?1523) 123, 175
Perusia 64
Peruzzi family 114
Pesaro 122, 123, 236
culture 180
patrons and projects 181
Peshawar 79, 81, 198, 247
archaeology 84, 85
Buddhist/Kushan art 83
Kushan capital 85
museum 298, 304
Pessac 285
Peter I (Peter the Great) 160-161
Peterborough 108, 112
Petersen, Carl-Hening 272
Petit Mont, megalithic art 29
Petra 62
excavations 245
Mamluk 131
Petraia 180, 181
Petroglyphs 16, 18, 18-19, 20-21,
83, 99
Petrograd, art centre 282
Petturoti, Emilio 268, 268
Pevensey 112, 163
Pfalzfeld, stone carving 59
Phaistos 32, 33
Phan Rang, trade 207
Pharaohs 52, 62-63
Pharsalos 60
Phasis 34
Pheidias (sculptor) 61
Phigaleia Bassai, shrine 60
Philadelphia 68
Philadelphia er-Rubayat 75
Philadelphia (USA) 212, 264
Centennial Exhibition 215, 215
Philae 72, 72, 73, 74, 74
Philip the Bold 116-117
Philip II of Spain 155
Philip IV 179, 187
Philip of Spain, royal progress
154, 155
Philip V 179
Philippi 70
Philippines 147, 234, 254, 255
arts and crafts 310
Bronze Age 90
Catholicism 207
Ice Age 16
museums 298
pottery 51
trade 91, 207
World Crafts Council 316
Philippopolis 184, 185
Phillipe Auguste, King 113
Phimal, temple 142
Phitsanulok 206
Phnom Penh 206, 207, 254, 310
museum 298
Phocaea 35
Phocaean ware 71
Phoenicia 23, 34, 34, 42, 43
artistic influence 43
colonizing by 34, 34, 35, 64
Phophnar, sculpture 85
Photography
American 212, 213, 263
Central America/Caribbean 267
Chinese 250, 251
Civil War 214, 214
Daguerreotypes 213
Dutch landscape 228, 228
film-making see Movie and TV
Indian centres 248
Kodak camera 214
modernist 263
Netherlands and Belgium 228,
228, 229
Pacific Islands 256, 257
photo realism 275
photo-albums 214, 219, 228,
232, 232
photo-montage 281, 283
Scandinavia and Baltic States
273
Southern Africa 297
West Africa 294, 295
in western Asia 245
Phra Prang Sam Yo, temple 142
Phrygia 43, 60, 78, 80, 81
Phrygians 34, 34
Phu Hoa, iron work 90
Phylakopi 33
Piacenza 110, 114, 182
Pianella 110
Piaosan, temple 142
Piauí 20, 269
Piazza Armerina 71, 71
Piazza S. Marco with the Cathedral
(Canaletto) 183
Picabia, Francis (1879-1953) 284
Picasso, Pablo (1881-1973) 233,
235, 267, 271, 284, 285, 286,
287
Pictograms 20, 21, 54, 55
Pictographs 25, 25, 40, 54, 55
Picts 70, 102
Picturearchitecture 283
Picturesque Canada 214, 214
Piedmont 182, 182, 220
Piedra Parada 27
Piedras Negras 54, 98
Pienza 122, 123
Pierre et Gilles 285
Pietermaritzburg, art school 296,
296
Pietersburg, museum 296
Pijevija 185
Pijijiapan 54
Pikes Peak 55
Pikillaqta 101
Pilgram, Franz Anton (1699-1761)
185
Pilgrimages
cult of relics 111
European routes 111, 118, 119
Japanese 141
routes in Egypt 77
routes to Mecca 128, 129, 188
Sacri Monti 182
sites 66, 77, 106, 106, 111, 119
South American centres 153
South Netherlands 169
Pils 112
Pilsen 154
Pinczow 154, 159
Pine Lawn Valley 55
Pingitkalik 96
Pinseau, Michel 290
Pinsk 158
Pinson 55
Pinto Basin 96
Pinxton 164
Piombino 123
Piotrkow 158
Pipestone 97
Piranesi, Giovanni Battista 182
Pisa 68, 71, 236
alabaster 109, 111
archbishopric 104
cathedral 110, 120
marble to North Africa 188, 189
metalwork 110
monuments 182
nationalistic site 237
sculpture 114, 121, 181
subject town 122, 180
Pisano
Nicola 115
Nicolò and Giovanni 120
Pisaurum 66
Pisco 218
Pisea 70
Pisek, wall painting 116
Pisidia 78
Piska 106
Pissarro, Camille (1831-1903) 217
Pistoia 121, 180, 181
murals 110
Pistoletto, Michelangelo (1933-)
289
Pitane 32
Pithecusae 34
Pithincha 218
Pittsburgh 212, 263, 264
Pius II, pope 123
Pixian 307
Pizen, ecclesiastical centre 116
Pizenec, wall painting 116
Piziwo, archaeology 306
Placenza 181
Plain of Jars 206
Plaster 20, 21, 75, 128
Plataea, hotel 60
Platinum 96
Plato 61, 120
Playa Venado 54
INDEX
342
Noh, sculpture 85
Nohant-Vicq 110
Noirmoutier 103
Nok 126
archaeology 294
culture 73, 190
Nola 64, 66
Nolan, Sydney (1917-92) 314, 315
Nombe rockshelter 50
Non Nok Tha 50, 51
Nonantola 103
Nongpo-dong 49
Nopo-dong 88
Nora 64
Nora Velha, megalithic art 29
Nördlingen, ecclesiastical centre
116
NORDPLUS 273
Nordström, Karl 272
Norfolk Island 312
Norham 108, 226
Noricum 66, 69
Norman conquest 108
Norrköping 156, 157, 222, 272
Norrtalje 273
North Adamas 264
North Africa 34, 64, 76, 77, 94, 188,
189, 240-241, 290-291
architecture 290
artistic influences 12, 124, 125,
188, 291
christianity 76, 77
colonialism 240, 241, 290-291
continuity and change 76
cultural life 290-291
and Islam 124, 128, 188, 240
pottery 76
trade 76, 125
and West Asia 124, 125
North America 26, 54-55, 96-97,
148-149, 212-213, 214-215, 262-
263, 264-265
culture
areas of cultural influence
55
art collections 214, 215
art and the earth 265, 265
artists’ travels 214, 263
exhibitions 262, 264, 264,
265
forms 97
indigenous artefacts 26, 27,
215
major archaeological sites
96
National monuments 214
temple mound sites 97
European exploration 148
path to modernization 262
railroads 214, 214
taming the wilderness 214
tribes 26, 55, 55, 97, 97, 97,
148, 149, 211, 215
Buffalo Horn Society
headdress 148
Chilkat coat 149
North Korea 307, 308, 308
20th Century 308
museums 298
North Netherlands 166, 166, 167,
167
North Richmond, Heidelberg
School 259
North Sea
trade route 102, 102
Viking route 104
Northampton, architecture 276
Northern Europe 58-59, 94, 108-
109, 112-113, 116-117
art in the regions 108
art and trade 109
cultural centre of Paris 113
long-distance trade 112
spread of Celtic culture 59
trade and culture 58, 116
Northumbria 102
Norton 55
Norway 156, 156, 169, 222, 222
art in a globalized world 273
arts movement 220, 273
exchange programmes 273
Lutheran 154
museums 272
North Netherlands trade 167
World Crafts Council 316
Norwich 164
artists’ colony 276
castle 108, 108
ecclesiastical centre 116
manuscript painting 112
metalwork 109, 112
Nosara 54
Nosy Manja 127
Nottingham 112, 116, 163, 276
Nouméa, Pacific art 312, 313
Nouveaux Réalistes 285
Nova Scotia 212
Novara 110
Novaya Zemyla 161
Novgorod 156, 157, 222, 224,
225
architecture 160
artistic cross-currents 154
Byzantine 106, 107
Hanseatic League 160
sculpture109
Noviodarum 66
Noviomagus 67
Novonikolayevsk 224
Novosibirsk 161
Nowogredek 158
Nowy Wisnicz 159
Noyon 110
Nsukka, arts and crafts 294, 295
Nswatugi Cave 16
Nubia 37, 37, 72, 74, 78
Nubian Desert 38, 38, 188
Nuceria 66
Nuenen 228
Nuevo Lareda, art movement 216
Nuggihalli, temple 134
Nuk-Do 88
Nukus
arts and crafts 302
museum 302, 303, 303
Numa 88
Numantia 64
Numidia 66, 69
Numidians 64
Numinous Beast (Arnott) 297
Nunguvik 96
Nupe 190
Nuraghic art 34, 34
Nuremberg 220, 230
academy 172, 186
architecgture 281
arts centre 154, 158, 170
auction houses 187
ecclesiastical centre 116
metalwork 112
printmaking 171
sculpture 170, 170, 171
Nuri 37, 72, 73
Nushijan 43
Nusretiye Mosque 245
Nyamwezi 191
Nyanga
art centre 297
museum 296
Nyirátor 1855
Nymphaeum, Greek colony 58
Nyrup 31
Oak Grove 96
Oakham 108
Oakland 262
Oamaru 259
Oaxaca 54, 99
Muralism 266
Oberaden, Dacian phalerae 58
Óbidos, castle 118
O’Brian, Lucius 214
Obsidian 54, 55, 97, 98
Oc Eo, archaeology 91, 91
Occidentalism 159
Ochrida 106
Ocmulgee 97
Oconto, burial site 26, 27
Ocros art 101
Octavian (later emperor Augustus)
66
Odawara 140
Odense 273
Oder 70, 71, 102, 107
Odessa 160, 225
art colony 282
art movements 275
art studio 224, 224
Odessus 62
Odyssey fresco 67
Oea 65
Oenpelli, bark painting 314, 314
Öensköldsvik 272
Off to War (Savitsky) 224
Offeln 104
Ofu Island, Lapita pottery 51
O’Gorman, Juan (1905-82) 267
Oguz, Scythian burials 58
Ogyozuka 49
Ohatadai 49
Ohio, Serpent Mound 26
Ohrum 104
Oiticica, Hélio 269
Ojibwa tribe 212, 213
Ojo Gaureña 20, 21
Okaku 89
Okaukuejo, museum 296
Okayama 140, 141
O’Keeffe, Georgia (1887-1986) 263,
263
Oker 104
Oki II 88
Okigwi, archaeology 294
Oksong-ni 49, 88
Okvik peoples 53
Oland 156
Olary 16
Olbasa 66
Olbia 34, 62, 67
Greek colony 58
Old Dongola 72
Old Fort 97
Old Urgench 196
Oldenburg 230, 230
Oleneostrovski Cemetery 21
Olenii Ostrov 28
Olite, castle 118
Ollantaytambo 218
Oller, Francisco (1833-1917)
217
Oloron 118
Olot, textiles 234
Olsen-Chubbock 96
Olximché 98
Olympia 35, 62
cult centre 60, 60
Olymthus 60
Olynthus 62
Oma Porco 100
Omaha, World Fair 215
Oman 41, 129, 301
art schools/museums 298
Omana 134
Omega Workshop 276
Omiya 89
Omori 49
Omsk 224
museum 298
Onega, Lake 21, 21, 160, 161
Oni of Ile-Ife 127
Onion Portage 96
Onobulu, Aina (1882-1963) 294
Oostend, art collection 279
Opet Festival 39
Opium Wars 248, 250, 250, 251
Oporto 104, 234
architecture 110, 178, 220
sculpture 235
Oppenheim, ecclesiastical centre
116
Oradea 185
Oran 290
textiles 124
trade centre 178
Orange, ecclesiastical centre
118
Orbais 110
Orccha
miniature paintings 198
Rajput cenotaphs 199
Orchomenos 32, 33
Orduna, ecclesiastical centre
118
Örebro 272
Orël 160, 224, 225
Orenburg 160, 196
Orford 108
Orientalism 159, 247
Greek 35
Oriximiná 100
Orkney 104
megalithic art 29
Orléans 103, 174
art centre 154, 175
castle 116
murals 110
pilgrimage route 111
university 112
Orlovo, Dacian phalerae 58
Oropos, theatre 60
Orozco, José Clemente (1883-
1949) 266, 267
Orsza 158
Orthodox religion
churches 158, 159
Eastern 154
eastern attitudes to art 154
principalities 106
status in SE Europe 184-5, 185
Turkish rule 184
Ortospana, site of hoard 82
Orvieto 65
cathedrals 114, 120, 121
court 122, 123
metalwork 144
Orville 104
Osaka 204, 204, 205, 252
art centre 309
cultural centre 308
museum 299
woodblock printing 192, 205
Osan-ni, masks 49
Osca 66
Osceola, burial site 26, 27
Oseberg 109
Ösel 156, 157
Osh 246
Oshogbo, arts and crafts 294, 295,
295
Osijek 185
Osiris, god of afterlife 38
Osküb 184
Oslo 220, 222, 222
art college 273
Metaphysical painting 270
palace 186
Vigeland Park 272, 273
Osnabrück 103
Osrhoene, kingdom 80
Ostend 220, 228, 229
Ostergotland 154
Ostia 64, 67, 68, 69, 69
court 122, 123
floor mosaics 71
Ostrich, eggs 16, 32, 33
Ostróg 158
Ostrogoths, kingdom 70
Otago, goldfields 259
Otaki, Maori art 259
Otero, Alejandro 268, 269
Othon of Greece 238
Otok 109
Otranto 180, 181
archbishopric 104
Otrar 132, 133, 302
Otsuka-Saikachido 88
Ottawa 264
Ottedo 279
Otterlo 279
Otterton 163
Otto III 105
Ottoman empire 120, 121, 122,
146, 154, 155, 158, 159, 160,
182, 192, 220, 282
architecture 131, 185, 185,
194-195, 195
artistic influence 131
greatest extent 184
mosques 131, 195, 195
North Africa 188, 240, 240
patronage 196, 301
principalities 131
royal design studios 195, 195
Sub-Saharan Africa 191
trade and culture 194-5, 240
under threat 244
and West Asia 194-195, 244-
245, 301
Ottonian dynasty 104, 104, 105
Ottowa, paintings 214
Ouagadougou, arts and crafts 294,
295
Oud, J. J. P. 278
Oudenaarde 168
Oudna 76
Oujda, textiles 124
Oulu, art gallery 273
Ouro Preto 152
art and architecture 153, 153
church of Sao Francisco 152
Oursler, Tony 260
Outeidat, pottery 36
Ove Arup and Partners 300
Oviedo 102, 234
architecture 110, 154
industrial 220
wood sculpture 118
Owl Creek 97
Owo 190
archaeology 294
Owrucz 158
Oxford 163, 164
art movements 220, 226, 276
Ashmolean Museum 247
ecclesiastical centre 116
university 112
Oxyrhynchus 74, 76, 77
Oyamato-Yanagimoto 89
Oyo 126, 190, 191
Oyu 48, 49
Ozakidai 88
Ozette 55, 96
Ozono 89
Ozuka 89
Paa Ya Paa, tourist/modern art
292, 293
Paarp Karup 31
Pach, Walter 216
Pachacama 56, 57, 100, 101
Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui 101
Pacheco 101
Pachipamwe
artists workshop 296
tourist/modern art 292, 293
Pachuca 98
Pacific 10, 11, 50, 51, 92-93, 144-
145, 208-209, 256-257, 312-313
art production 256, 313
art and Surrealism 284
colonigrants, missionaries and
producers 256, 257
Padang, gold workshops 206, 254
Paderborn 102, 112, 172
metalwork 108, 109
palace complex 104
Padrao, megalithic art 29
Padua
Giotto’s work 120, 121
patrons and projects 121, 123
subject town 122, 180
town planning 181
university 120
Paekche kingdom 89, 89
Paestum 65, 182
Pagan
areas 106
art 71, 120
museum 298
Pagan (Burma)
arts and crafts 310
lacquerware 255
religious site 206, 254
stupa 142, 143
Pago Pago, Pacific art 312
Pagodas see Buddhism, stupas
Pahang, museum 298
Paik, Nam June (1932-) 260, 309
Paimio 272
Paint Peninsula 96
Painting
bark 314, 315
calligraphic 291, 301
Greek vase 34, 35
important workshops 170
Korean ink 309
Metaphysical 270
Nihonga School 307, 309
yoga 309
Paintings
countries
Achaeminid 78
Australia 258, 259
China 136
India 84, 85, 304
Italian 65, 120
Italian cycles 121, 123, 181
Japan and Korea 140, 204,
204, 205, 205
Mediterranean schools 67,
68, 68
Netherlands 166, 167, 168,
168, 169, 169
North Africa 76
Northern Europe 116, 116,
117
Russian 224-225
South America 153
Southeast Asia 310, 311,
311
Southern Europe 118
Spain and Portugal 179,
179
West Africa 294-295
West Asia 194
Western Mediterranean
64-65
general
Biblical history 167
calligraphic 291
on canvas 194
encaustic 183
fan 141
historical 224
Ice Age 16-21
militia 167
miniatures 105, 198, 199,
248, 302, 304
oil on copper 168
orientalist 247
religious see Religious
royal portraits 81
scroll 140
slip- 57
wall paintings see Frescoes
water-colours on linen 168
Pair-non-Pair 17
Paitava, Kushan art 82
Pakistan
art movements 298, 304,
305
World Crafts Council 316
Pakpattan, mosque 134
Palace of Westminster 227
Palace/castle sites
Aegean 32
associated with Romanticism
226
British 67, 164
China 136
English Renaissance 163
European 108, 109, 110, 186
Germany 172
great estates 164
Hellenistic 62-3
Italian 110, 121, 123, 181
Japan and Korea 89, 140, 204,
204, 205
Northern Europe 116
Poland/Lithuania 159
Sasanian 81
Scandinavia 157
Scotland 162
South Asia 198
Southeast Asia 254, 255, 255
Southern Europe 114, 118
Spain 178-179
West Asia 40, 42, 43
Western Christendom 104
Western Mediterranean 64-5
Palaeolithic art 16-17, 16-17, 18-
19, 24, 28
Palaikastro 33, 33
Palampet, temple 134
Palau 145, 312
Palawan, Bronze Age 90
Palekh 275
Palembang 142, 206, 207, 254
Palencia 234
art centre 154
artists’ travels 119
ecclesiastical centre 118
university 114, 115
INDEX
345
Rajgriha 84
Rajput dynasty 198, 199
Raków 158
Raleigh 212
Ram Hurmizd 81
Rambla de Santa Coloma 234
Ramesses II, temple 39
Ramesses III, temple 39
Ramesvaram 134
Ramingining, indigenous art 314,
315
Ramla 128, 128
Ramsgate 226, 226
Ramtek, sculpture 85
Ramu River 50
Rana Ghundai, early urbanism 25
Rance 168, 168
Ranchillos 100
Rangmahal, imagery 85
Rangoon 254, 255
museum 298
Rangpur, early urbanism 25
Rano Raraku volcano 145, 145
Rapa Nui see Easter Island
Raphael (1483-1520) 154, 174, 180,
180, 214, 237
Raqchi 100
Raqqa 128, 129
ceramics 130
Rarotonga, Pacific art 312
Rasinari 185
Rastrelli, Bartollomeo 161
Rat Buri, ceramics 310
Ratisbon 102, 103, 104
Ratnagiri, stupa 134
Ravel, wall painting 118
Ravello 110
Ravenna 70, 70, 71, 71
archbishopric 104
ecclesiastical ruins 102
literary centre 103
Ravensburg, ecclesiastical centre
116
Ravenusa 110
Rawa 158
Rawalpindi, Dacian phalerae 58
Rawlinson, Sir Henry 245
Rayy 81, 128, 129
lustre ware 131
Razet, megalithic art 29
Reading
Arts and Crafts 226
sculpture cycle 108
Realism 13, 222, 224, 231, 261,
274-275, 286, 283, 289
Rebecq 229
Rebull, Santiago (1829-1902) 217
Rechenberg 238
Recife 152, 218, 219, 268
art centre 153
Reculver 102
Red River Settlement 212
Redhill 226, 226
Redon 103
Reef Islands, Lapita pottery 51
Reformation 154, 156, 162, 170,
171, 181, 230
centres 158
Counter- 158, 168, 171, 180,
181, 182, 185
post-Counter 183
Regensburg 108, 170
ecclesiastical centre 116
Reggio, archbishopric 104
Reggio Calabria 180, 181
Rego, Paula (1935-) 287
Rehme 104
Reichenau 103
book production 104
murals 108
Reidy, Affonso Eduardo (1909-64)
269
Reims 103, 110, 285
archbishopric 104
cathedral 112, 113
architecture 177
ecclesiastical centre 116
stone carving 59
Religious
architecture 76, 77, 184, 184-
185, 185, 192, 193, 196, 197,
207, 270, 271
art 18, 42, 42, 77, 83, 136, 137,
171
cults 68, 106
diversity 106, 192, 192, 193
imagery 42, 106
patronage 121
persecutions 81
rites 67
sites
Egyptian 38
South American 56, 57,
100, 101
Rembrandt (1606-69) 166, 167,
193, 229
Remington, Frederic 214
Remojadas 54
Ren Xiong (1820-57) 251, 251
Renaissance
countries
English 163
France 174-175
Germany 170, 171
Hungary 165
Italy 180, 183
Poland/Lithuania town
halls 159
Scotland 162
Spain 178
Switzerland 171
USA 263
culture
academic system 182
architecture/style 155, 224,
238
cultural authority 236
’high art’ 155, 158, 174, 180
revival 236
René of Anjou (d.1480) 119
Rennes 55
architecture 174, 177
panel painting 116
Renoir, Auguste (1841-1919) 236,
233
Renwick, James 213
Repair Work on the Railroad (Savitsky)
224
Repin, Ilya (1844-1930) 224-5
Repton, Humphry (1752-1818) 221
Réseau Guy Martin 19
Resen Mose 21
Resinár 185
Resolute 96
Reszel 158
Reus, textiles 234
Rev Ardashir 81
Reväl 107, 156, 157
Revel’ 160, 222, 224, 225
Revivalist designers 239
Reykjavik 272
Reynolds, Joshua 165
Reza (painter) 195
Reza, Muhammad 301
Rhagae 78, 80, 80, 81
Rhamnous, theatre 60
Rhegion 65
Rhegium 65, 67
Rhine River, trade route 102, 102
Rhineland 28
Rhode 64
Rhodes
architecture 195
art centre 35, 62, 66, 68
Byzantine 106
island state 63
Minoan fresco 33
pottery 32, 60, 283
trade centre 67
Rhodesia, stone ruins 127
Rhône River, trade route 102, 103
Rhuddan 112
Rhyl Sands 226
Ribat 124
Ribat Sharaf 132
Ribat-i Eshq 133
Ribat-i Malik 132
Ribat-i Qarabil 133
Ribat-i Qelli 133
Ribat-i Safid 133
Ribe 109
Ribera, Jusepe de (1591-1652) 179
Ribnica 185
Richelieu, cardinal 174, 175
Richmond (Australia), Heidelberg
School 259
Richmond (Britain) 108
Richmond (Lesotho) 296
Richmond (US), Civil War site 214
Richter, Gerhard 281
Richtoven, Ferdinand von 247
Ridar 198
Riemenschneider, Tilman 170
Rietveld, Gerrit (1888-1964) 278, 279
Rievaulx 162, 163
Rif tribes 189
Riga 107, 154, 156, 157, 160,
220, 222, 225
contemporary art 273
museum 272
studio programmes 273
Rijeka 185
Rila 184
Rimabánya, wall painting 116
Rimini 122, 122
patrons and projects 123
Ringsaker 108
Ringsted, wall painting 116
Río Azul 54
Río Bec 98
Río Claro 98
Rio de Janeiro, artistic activity
153, 218, 219, 268, 269, 269
Río de la Plata 218
Rio Frente 269
Río Grande 54
Río Magdalena 56
Río Seco 27
Rio Tinto mines 64
Río Viego, pottery 54, 54
Río Viejo 98
Riom, stained glass 118
Ripoli 110
Ripon 102, 103
Rippoll 234
Rishtan, arts and crafts 302
Risinium 66
Rivera, Diego (1886-1957) 217,
266, 267
Riyadh 128
architecture 301
museums 298
Robbins 55
Rocamadour 110
Rochdale 163
Rochefort 168
Rochester 108, 108
Rock art 16, 17, 18, 18, 19, 20-21,
20-21, 23, 24, 26, 28, 43, 53
Africa 36, 36, 37, 72, 73, 126,
126
Bedolina rock carving 30
Caribbean 99
Pan’gudae engravings 88
and raw materials 30
Sasanian 81, 81
traditions 31
Rock Eagle 97
Rock shelters 20-21
Rococo movement 157, 179
Roda, temple 134
Roda da Ribagorça 110
Rodez, wall painting 118
Rodin, Auguste (1840-1917) 236
Roebling, John A. 212, 213
Rogalin 159
Rogers, Richard 277
Rogozen, Achaemenid objects 58,
58
Rokhuadh 81
Rolling Bay 55
Roman Catholic
church in
Asia 193
Caribbean 216
Central America 216
Eastern Europe 282
Germany 230
Italy 182
SE Europe 184, 184, 185
Southeast Asia 207
Western Christendom 104
culture
archbishoprics 158
attitudes to art 154, 155, 171
Byzantine art 106
patronage 158, 181
priests’ colleges 181
Jesuit centres 158, 168, 181
Oratorians 181
see also Reformation
Roman Empire 52, 58
art 68, 70, 71
colony and empire 66, 67
control of Egypt 74
cultural authority 236
culture 12, 67
disintegration 70, 70, 94, 102
and environment 69
floor mosaics 71
frontier 73, 76
Hellenic influence 66, 66
partition of Armenia 80, 81
sarcophagi 71
trade 69, 81
Roman Republic 65
Romanesque style 110
Romania 185, 220
architecture 238, 282
diaspora of artists 283
nationalism and neovernacularism
239
Romano, Giulio 171, 180
Romanov, Mikhail 160
Romanov dynasty 194, 282
Romanticism 219, 220, 220, 221,
222, 223, 226, 226, 228, 231, 272
Rome 64, 65, 67, 68
alabaster 109
ancient sites 182
art academy 187
art centre 154, 180, 181, 182,
288
art collections 183, 231
Arte Povera 288, 289
artistic capital 183, 183
artistic influence 173, 236,
236, 270
artists’ club 288, 288
artists’ travels 187
artworks 65, 69, 71
auctioneers 316
book production 103, 104,
114
bronze doors 111
building materials 53
Christendom’s capital 181
churches 70, 104, 110, 121
city 66, 66, 67
controlled from Paris 220
Counter-Reformation 180
cultural centre 122, 288, 289
cultural/political influence 65,
102, 110, 157
ecclesiastical remains 102
excavations 183
French Academy 176, 177
glass-making 71
growth of city 66
looting 52-3
monuments and works 182,
183, 237
museums 183
music 180
Mussolini and the rebuilding
289
palace complex 104, 180
Pantheon 74, 103
patrons and projects 66, 123,
181, 182
printing 180
renovation/restoration/
preservation 183
sack of 154, 175
sculpture 114
stone deposits 69
trade 76, 85, 131
university 120
urban development 186
Vatican 180, 182
Romero, Carlos Orozco (1896-
1984) 267
Romney 163
Romsey 108
Roncesvalles 111, 118
Ronchamp 270, 271, 285
Ronzano 110
Roosevelt, Franklin D. 263
Roquepertuse 64
stone carving 59
Rorke’s Drift 296, 297
Rosales, Eduardo (1836-73) 234
Rosario 219
Roscoff 109, 111
Roscommon 112
Roscrea 112
Rosenborg palace 156, 157
Rosenkians Ferry 96
Rosetta 195
Rosetta Stone 245, 245
Roshen monastery 185
Roskilde 154, 157, 273
ecclesiastical centre 116
wall painting 116
Roslin, Alexander (1718-1793) 157
Rossi, Karl 224-225
Rosso Fiorentino (1494-1540) 175
Rostock 230
Rostov 160
metalwork 224, 224, 225
Rothenburg, ecclesiastical centre
116
Rotorua
indigenous art 315
Maori art 259, 312
Rotterdam 168, 228
architecture 278, 279, 279
art centre 278
art event 316
artistic institutions 229
artists 166
Constructivism 270
shipyard 166, 220
Roudnice nad Labem, wall
painting 116
Rouen 71, 103, 110
archbishopric 104
art centre 154
ecclesiastical centre 116
porcelain 177
stained glass 110, 116
Rousseau, Henri 233
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 173
Rovaniemi 272
Roy, Jamini (1887-1972) 248, 304
Royal Academy of Arts 165, 227
Royal College of Art 277
Rozdot 158
Rozwi 191
Rubens, Sir Peter Paul (1597-1640)
162, 162, 168-169, 175, 182
Rudi 185
Rudolph II, emperor 155, 156, 187
Rugendas, Johann Moritz 218, 219
Ruha 128
Rukupo, Raharuhi (c.1800-1873)
259
Rungléo, megalithic art 29
Runzhou 136
Ruoqiang 302
Rupar
coins 84
early urbanism 25
Ruralism 276
Rus, and Byzantium 106-107, 107
Rusaddir 64
Rusape, mission art school 296
Rusazu 66
Ruse 130, 185
Rusguniae 66
mosaics 76, 77
Rusinol, Santiago (1861-1931) 234
Ruskin, John 221, 227, 237
Russell, Charles 214
Russia 160-161, 222, 224-225, 274-
275
culture
archaelogy 247
art centres 225
art movements 223, 275
art schools/museums 298
art and social tensions 13,
224-225
artistic influence 307
artists’ homes 224
artists’ travels 225
official artistic influence
223
patronage 225
pre-Revolutionary to PostSoviet
art 275
rise of Moscow 160
Socialist Realism 283, 283
Union of Artists 274
diaspora of artists 283
politics
and Central Asia 196, 246,
246
Communism 298, 302
European Western 160
expansion 161, 161, 244
and Napoleon 224
and Poland/Lithuania 158,
158
serfdom 225, 225
and the Soviet Union 13,
274-275
Postglacial 21
religion
Eastern Orthodox 154
Orthodox principalities 106
trade
North Netherlands 167
routes 102, 195, 224, 225
Russian empire 159, 161, 220,
224
architecture 238
borders 196, 282
expansion 244
under threat 244
Rustamids 124, 129
Rustenburg, art school 296
Rutak 302
Ruthenia 158
Ruthwell 103
Ruzhou, kiln site 137
Ryazan’ 160, 224
Rydzyna 159
Rye Harvest (Malevich) 274
Ryggen, Hannah 273
Rytwiany 159
Rzeszów 159
S. Francesco 120
S. Lorenzo 123
S. Maria ad Martyres 103
SS Peter and Paul, Kozhevniki
church 107
Sa el-Hagar 38
Sa Huynh culture 90, 90, 91
Saadi (poet) 197
Saami 156
Saarbrucken 281
Saarinen
Eero 265, 299
Eliel 221
Saatchi, Charles 277
Sabadell 234
Sabah, museum 299
Sabara 153
Sabbioneta 180, 181
Sabratha 65, 68, 70, 71
mosaics 76, 77
Sabzevar, minaret 130
Sachetti, Juan Bautista 179
Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach, Grand
Duchy 231
Sacremento 212
Sadang-ri 204
Sa’dian dynasty 189
Safavid empire 192, 192, 197
border 196
patronage 196
trade and culture 194-195
West Asia 194-5
Saffarid rulers 132
Safi 290
Saga 302
Sagaing
arts and crafts 310
Kaunghmudaw pagoda 206,
206
Sagalassus 78
Sagrada Familia (Gaudí) 235
Sagrera, Guillem (d.1454) 119, 119
Sagua la Grande 266
Saguntum 64
Sahagún 110, 118
Sahara 70, 71, 188, 189, 290
Berber dynasty 124
rock art 24, 36, 37
trade patterns 240
Sai, temple 37
Said, Maahmoud (1897-1964) 291
INDEX
344
Plës 225, 255
Pliny 122
Pljevija 185
Pl/ock
metalwork 108
religions 154, 158, 159
Plovdiv 130, 185
Plymouth 163, 164
Poblet 110
ecclesiastical centre 118
Podensac 285
Podhorce 159
Podolski 158
Poesia (journal) 288, 288
Poggio a Caiano 122, 123, 181
Pohrebyszcze 158
Poissy 270, 285, 285
Poitiers
cathedral 110
ecclesiastical remains 102
literary centre 103
pilgrimage route 111
print-making 118
Polana Baiceni, Thraco-Getic
hoard 58
Poland 169, 170
architecture 282
Catholic 104, 106
Christendom 105
diaspora of artists 283
and Electorate of Saxony 173
High Modernism 283
Latin rite 106
and Lithuania 158-9
multiethnicity 158
North Netherlands trade 167
Occidentalism 159
Orientalism 159
and Russia 160
Sarmatism 159
Stanisaw Poniatowski
collection 187
Poland-Lithuania 154
Polawy 159
Polenov, Vasely (1844-1927) 224-5
Poligny, ecclesiastical centre 116
Polke, Sigmar 281
Pollentia 66
Polo, Marco 10
Polo de Allande, megalithic art 29
Polock 158, 159
Polotsk 108
Poltava 160, 282, 282, 283
Polybius 65
Polynesia 23, 51, 53, 92, 93, 94, 95,
144, 144, 145, 209, 313
Pomaria 124
Pomerania 156, 158, 170, 222,
230
Pompasa 110
Pompeii 64, 66, 66, 67, 68, 182,
183
Pomuigusok 88
Poncé 110
Pondicherry, trade centre 192
Ponferrada 118
Ponghwang 89
Pont d’Ambon 20
Pont-Aven, art colony 220, 232,
233
Pontefract, castle 116
Pontianak, mosque 254
Pontigny 110
Pontus 66, 69, 80, 81
kingdom 58
Poole 109, 163
Poona, textiles 207
Pop Art 273, 277, 286
Pope, Alexander 164
Pöppelmann, Matthäus Daniel 172
Populism 216
Populonia 64
Porcelain
Asia 193
British 164, 227
Central Asia 303
Chinese 136, 139, 141, 200,
202-203
French 177, 177, 221, 232
Japan and Korea 205
Russian 160, 161
Song 130
Porcuna 64
Porec 71
Pori 272
Porphyry 38, 74, 229
Port Arthur (China) 250
Port Arthur (USA) 262
Port aux Choix 55
Port Elizabeth, art gallery 296
Port Guinea 243
Port Hedland, rock art 50
Port Hope, paintings 214
Port Moresby 312, 313, 313
Port of Spain 267
Port Sunlight (housing) 221
Port-au-Prince 266
Port-Vila, Pacific art 312
Portable art 16-17, 16-17, 18-19,
18-19, 20-21, 20-21, 33, 58, 69,
97, 286
Portalegre 154
Porter 55
Pórtici 182
Portland 212, 265
Portland Bill, coins 58
Porto 154
Porto Alegre 152, 153, 219, 268,
269
Porto Seguro 152, 153
Porto-Novo, arts and crafts 294
Portoferraio 180
Portrait of the Duce (Dottori) 289
Portrait of a Man (van Eyck) 117
Portraits
Italian 123
medals 122, 123
Netherlands 166
Portsmouth 163
Portugal 18, 178-179, 234-235,
286-287
culture
architecture 235
artistic influences 12, 179,
188, 287
artistic patronage 155
monumental art 235
painting and sculpture 118,
179
portable art 234, 286
settlements in Africa 190,
191
politics
Miguelista upheavals 234
and North Africa 188, 189
Peninsular War 234
and SE Asia 143
trade
in Asia 192, 192
South Netherlands 169
trade routes 154, 178, 190,
234
travel routes 190
World Crafts Council 316
Portzamparc, Christian de 285
Posada, José Guadalupe (1851-
1913) 217
Poseidon, Kouros dedication 35
Poseidonia 34, 64, 65
Posen 230
Post, Frans 153
Postglacial period 20-21, 20-21
Post-modernism 272, 300
Postyen 238
Poto-Poto, tourist/modern art 292,
293
Potosí 152, 153, 218, 219
art centre 153
depiction of silver mountain
153
Potsdam 280
Pottery
countries
Aegean 60
African 36, 71, 72, 72, 73,
102
Attic 60, 61
British 227
Caribbean 99, 99
Central Asia 45, 133, 247,
303
Chinese, 46, 46, 47, 87, 139,
147, 200, 202, 306
East and Central Africa 292
Egyptian 75
Etruscan 65
European 102, 283
France 177
Graeco-Roman 68
Ice Age 18, 18
India 249
Italian terracotta 65
Japanese 46, 48, 48, 88,
140, 299
Korean 48, 48, 193, 204
Mesoamerica 54
Mesopotamian 129
Mycenaean 32, 33
Neolithic 306
Netherlands 166
North Africa 24, 76, 76, 76,
188, 188, 240, 240, 290,
291, 291
North America 26, 55, 97
Ottoman 194, 195
Pacific and Indonesia 51,
92, 93, 93, 93, 95, 256
Phocaean 71
Scandinavia and the Baltic
States 272
South American 27, 56-57,
100-101
South Asia 198
Spanish 64
Sub-Saharan Africa 36,
126-127, 190
West Africa 294
general
clay figurines 29, 48, 49, 54
earthenware 164
fritted 130
greyware 54
kiln sites 136, 137, 138,
140, 141, 200, 202, 204,
205, 206, 250, 252
Lapita 23, 50, 51, 51, 51,
92, 93, 93
lustre ware 131
masks 48, 72
Mimbres 96, 97
Nok figures 72, 72
pilgrim flask 76
polychrome bowl 240
slip decoration 76, 133,
133
stoneware 164
terracotta cart 45
workshops 69
stoneware 89
West Asia 130
see also ceramics, porcelain
Poussin, Nicholas (1594-1665)
175, 175, 182
Poverty Point 26, 27, 96
Powers, Hiram 213
Poznan
architecture 159, 230
art centre 154, 282
religion 158
Pozsony 185
Praaspa 80
Prabhasa, temple 134
Praeneste 64, 65, 67
bronzes 65
Prague 109
architecture 283
art centre 186, 187
art collection 172, 282
art colony 282
Art Nouveau 220
art review magazine 282
art vandalism 187
artistic influences 173
artists’ trave 187
arts centre 154, 156, 170, 281
Bazaar of Modern Art 283
Biennial 316
court centre 154
Czech Eight 282
ecclesiastical centre 116
manuscript painting 112
town planning 238
Praha Sarka, wild boar 59
Prambanan 206
temple 142, 143, 254, 310
Prampolini, Enrico (1894-1977)
289
Pratolino 181
Prazsmár 185
Pre-Raphaelites 226, 227, 237
Preah Koh, temple 142
Predmostí 16
Preii Nokor 206
Prejmer 185
Premostratensians, Jászó
monastery 185
Preobrazhenski monastery 185
Preslav 106
Pressburg 238
Preston, Margaret (1875-1963) 314
Pretirua, community art centres
297
Pretoria
art museum 296
art school 296, 297
Preuilly 110
Previati, Gaetano (1852-1920) 288
Priene 62, 78
town-planning 60
Primaticcio, Francesco 175
Primitivism 216, 217
Prince Ruper 96
Princess Khovanskaia and Mlle
Khrushcheva (Levitsky) 160
Principe I 190
Princzów 158
Printing
Asia 192, 193
China 12, 95, 136, 137, 139,
147, 200, 200, 202, 250, 251
France, 174, 177
Germany 170
Italian centres 180
Italy 171
Japan and Korea 204
with movable type 194
Northern Europe 116
Russian 160
Southern Europe 118
see also paper-making
Printmaking
European 147, 154, 154
Germany 170, 171
Italy 171
Japan and Korea 309
lithography 251, 309
map-making 167
Netherlands 166, 166, 167
Northern Europe 116
silkscreening 309
South America 269
South Netherlands 168, 169
Southern Europe 118
Switzerland 170
tinted 183
West Africa 294
woodblock 192, 193, 204, 205,
252, 253, 309, 309
Pristina 185
Pritzker Architecture Prize 299, 316
Prizren 185
Proconnesian, sarcophagi 68
Proconnesus 35, 68
marble 107, 107
Prokudin-Gorski, Sergei
Mikhailovich (1863-1943) 247
Prome 254, 255
Prostejov 154
Prouvé, Jean 285
Provence 120, 121
and the Papacy 118
Provins 110
Prowosze 158
Prüm 103
Prussia 160, 169, 230
North Netherlands trade 167
and Poland/Lithuania 158,
158, 159
Przedbórz 158
Przemysi 158
Pseira 33
Pskov 106, 157, 160, 224, 225
Ptah, god of artists 38
Ptoion Mt, temples 60
Ptolemaic empire 52, 62, 66, 73,
74
Ptolemais 62, 76
Ptolemais Hermiou 74
Ptolemy 74
Ptolemy II 62
Ptolemy Soter 62
Ptolemy XII 75
Pucará 56, 57, 57, 100
Puebla, art movements 216, 217,
266
Pueblo Bonito 96
Puente-la-Reina 111
Puerto Montt 100
Puerto Real 234
Puerto Rico 99, 99
artists 216
World Crafts Council 317
Pugin, A. W. N. (1812-52) 213, 227,
227
Puigcerdà, wall painting 118
Puita River 57
Pukuoka 308
Pulatthinagara, stupa 134
Pulguk-sa, temple 89
Pulicat, textiles 198
Pultus 158
Pumpelly, R. 247
Pumpu 100
Pundravardhana 134
Pungarabato 98
Pungnam-ni 88
Punic
settlements 64-65
Wars 65
Punjab 80, 81
Punta Arenas 219
Punta Pedras 100
Punwon-ri 204, 205
Pura 63
Puri
folk art 249
miniatures 198
painting 248
temple 134
Purísima del Rincón, art
movement 216
Purushapura, Buddhist/Kushan art
83
Pusan 252, 308
Pushkalavati, coins 84
Puskalavati, Kushan art 82
Puso-sansong 89
Pusok-sa, Buddhist temple 89
Puteaux 285
Puteoli 64, 67
Putian
kiln site 137
painting 200
Putna 185
Putumayo River 56, 100
Puzhou 136
Pylos 32, 33
Pyongyang 46, 86, 89, 89, 306,
307
textiles 308
Pyramids 25
Nile Valley 38, 72
South American 57, 95, 101
Pyrgi 64
Pyrgos, pottery 283
Pyrgoteles (gem-cutter) 63
Pythias of Priene 63
Qaanaaq 96
Qadesh 32
Qadisiya 128
Qajars
patronage 301
and West Asia 244-245
Qala of the Bani Hammad, textiles
124, 125
Qala Bist, mosque 134
Qaramanli mosque, tiles 188
Qarawiyyin mosque 188, 188,
240
Qarmations 132
Qasim al-Jalizi, Sidi 188
Qasimbazar, textiles 198
Qasr al Hayr East 128
Qasr al Hayr West 128
Qatna 32
Qayin 131
Qayrawan 240
Qazvin 195
Ilkhanid monuments 131
Qi 86
Qiang culture 86
Qianzhou 136
Qiao Zhongchang 136
Qiemo 302
Qift 38
Qilalukan 96
Qin 86
Qin dynasty 86, 86, 87
terracotta cavalryman 86
Qin Shihuangdi, emperor 52, 86,
87
Qing dynasty 196, 200, 202
Qingdao 250
Qingliangang 307
Qingzhou 87, 136
art collection 137
Buddhist shrines 307
silk production 137
Qionglai Xian, kiln site 138
Qiongzhou, kiln site 137
Qishan, archaeology 307
Qishicun, kiln site 200
Qixian 86
Qotbi, Mehdi (1951-) 291
Quagadougou 126
Quanzhou 1300-1500 139
kiln site 137
maritime trade
textiles
Quarenghi, Giacomo 161
Quarries 69, 159, 168, 170, 182,
182, 213
Quarton, Enguerrand (d. after
1466) 119, 119
Quartzite 38, 39
Quchan, lustre ware 131
Que 43
Quebec City 212, 213
paintings 214
Quedlinburg 108, 172
Queen Charlotte Islands 55
Queensland 18
Quelap 100
Quelepa 98, 99
Quetta 298
art centre 304
Quezon City 299
UNESCO project 316
Quhrud 131
Quierzy 104
Quift 38
Quilon 198, 248
Quimbaya 100, 100
Quimper
porcelain 177
stained glass 110, 116
Quincy, Massachusetts 213
Quintanilla de las Viñas 102
Quiongzhou, kiln site 136
Quiotepec 54
Quipu 101
Quiriguá 54, 98
Quito 100, 152, 218, 268
art academy 153, 219
Jesuit workshop 153
sculpture school 152, 153
Quivira 96
Qujialing culture 46
Qum 195, 244
Qumm, lustre ware 131
Qurtubah 102
Qus, Mamluk monument 131
Qusayr 240
Qusayr Amra 128
Quseir 188
Qutb Minar 134
Qutb-ud-din-Aibak 134
Raab 185
Rabat 67, 240, 290
architecture 124, 125, 290
Rabatak 83
Radauti 185
Radkan, lustre ware 131
Radoo, textiles 296
Radzyó Podlaski 159
Raetia 66, 69
Ragusa 104, 107
architecture 185
Railways 214, 214, 221, 224, 225,
227, 232, 244, 246, 253
Rajahmundry 198
INDEX
347
Egyptian 74
English 118
Etruscan 64-65, 65
European 110, 112, 170,
170, 186, 283
Finland 273
French 175, 284
Graeco-Roman 67, 68, 70
Greek 12, 35, 60, 61, 64-65,
66
Greek revival 213
Hellenistic 62-63
India 45, 84, 85, 85, 134
Ionian 35
Italian 65, 121, 123, 181,
182, 236, 237
Japan and Korea 140, 141,
204, 205, 252, 309
London monuments 165,
277
Mediterranean 67, 68
Mesopotamian 40, 41
Minoan 33
Netherlands 279
North America 55
Northern Europe 116, 117
Pacific 145, 145
Portugal 235
Russian 13, 274
South American 56-57, 152,
153
South Netherlands 168,
169, 169
Southeast Asia 91, 206,
207, 255, 310
Southern Europe 114, 118
Spanish 64, 235, 286, 287
Sub-Saharan 126, 190, 190,
243
Swedish 157
Viking 109
West Africa 294, 295
Western Mediterranean 64-
65
general
antique 164, 171, 180
artistic cross-currents 154
bas-relief 16, 18
clay 24
equestrian 121, 123
figural 293
mythological 180
narrative themes 35
open air parks 270
orientalizing 35
quarries 74
relief carving 40, 106
Romantic 226
terracotta decorative 170
three dimensional 21
New Zealand 209
see also Wood carving
Scupi 106
Scythians 34, 35, 58, 58, 84
animal-style objects 58, 59
royal burials 58
Sea of Azoz 106, 160
Sea of Marmara 32, 35, 107
Seaggu-ni 49
Seals
Achaemenid 78, 78, 79
Aegean 33
Central Asia 44, 45
cylinder 40
Seattle 262, 263
world fair 215
Sebastea 107, 246
Sebastopol see Sevastopol
Seben 185
Secessionism 276, 282, 283
Sechín, temple 26, 27, 27
Sechura Desert 57, 101
Secular sites 102
Sedeinga, temple 37
Sedrata 124
Segesta 64, 65
Segesvàr 185
Segovia 154, 178
castle 118
wool production 234
Segu 191
Seibal 98
Seichur 244
Seidler, Harry (1923-) 314, 314
Seilles 104
Seip 55, 97
Seistan 78
Selamangleng, temple 142
Selbal 54
Selcuk, mosque 131
Seleucia
Achaemenid 78
Parthian mint/architecture 80
Seleucid kingdom 62-63, 63, 84
Seleucus Nicator 62
Self-Portrait (Ren Xiong) 251
Seligenstadt 104
Selima, Reyimu 302
Selimiye Barracks 245
Selinus 64, 65
Seljuk Empire 130, 132
Turks 106, 131
Semna, fort 37, 37
Sendai 204, 252, 308
Senegal 243, 290
World Crafts Council 316
Senia 66
Senlis 110
Sennar 72, 191
Senones peoples 65
Sens 103, 107
architecture 110
ecclesiastical centre 116
Senya 88
Senzeille 168
Seoul 141, 306, 307
in the 20th century 309
architecture 192
arts centre 140, 192, 204, 252,
299, 308
Sepik River, pottery 50
Seraing 228
glass-making 229
Seram 143
Serbia 184, 220
architecture 238
church art 107
nationalism and neovernacularism
239
Postglacial 20
Sergeac 176
Sergel, Johan Tobias (1740-1814)
156, 157
Sergiyev Posad 160
monastery 225
toy-making 224, 224
Seringapatam 198
Serlio, Sebastiano 154
Sermermiut 96
Serov, Valentin (1865-1911) 224,
225
Serowe, museum 296
Serpent Mound 96
Serpent Mount 55
Serviac 71
Sesibi, temple 37
Sess Kilgreen, megalithic art 29
Seto, pottery 140
Seunapura, temple 134
Seurat, Georges 221
Sevastopol (Sebastopol) 225
art studio 224, 224
British acquisition 244
Severskaya Stanitsa, Dacian
phalerae 58
Seville 129, 234
alabaster 109, 111
architecture 178
art centre 154, 179
Costumbrismo 234, 234, 235
mosque 124, 125
palace 110
paper-making 125
print-making 118
South Netherlands trade 169
textiles 234
university 114, 115
Sèvres 177, 177, 221, 232
Sevruguin, Antoine 245
Sevso, silver treasures 70
Seychelles, World Crafts Council
316
Seymour, Edward 162
Seyou, Fere 127
Sfax 76, 124
Sforza, Ludovico 123
Sha’ar Hagolan 21
Shabona, pottery 36
Shadow Procession 316
Shaftesbury 108
Shahdad 40, 41
Shahi, Ilkhanid monument 131
Shahpur, folk art 249
Shahr-i Qumis 80
Shahrisabz
arts and crafts 302
shrine 133
textile centre 246
Shakado, figurines 48, 49
Shalfak, fort 37
Shalu, art centre
Shamanism 19, 46, 57, 193
Shamash, god 42
Shan principalities 206
Shanbiaozheng 86
Shandong, Monk Mending Clothes
137
Shang dynasty 47, 47, 306
Shangdu,
Shanghai 46, 47, 86, 87
after Opium Wars 251
art event 316
art schools 306, 399
arts and crafts 251
cultural centre 306
museums 251, 307
painting 202, 250
printing 250
School 251
Shangjing, kiln site 137
Shanhaiguan 138
Shantou, kiln site 200, 250
Shanzhou 136
silk production 137
Shaoxin, paper production 137
Shaoxingfu, paper production 137
Shapu I 81
Shaqadud, pottery 36
Sharaku (print designer) 205
Shark teeth 97
Shash 132
Shatial, inscriptions 83
Shaw, Robert 247
Shayaam nMbul aNgoong (king)
191
Shazhou 136
Shebo 91
Sheeler, Charles (1883-1965) 263
Sheffield
art gallery 276
Arts and Crafts 226
cutlery/silverware 165
Sheikh Abd El-Aurna 39
Shells 16, 24, 41, 49, 51, 97
middens 88
Shenyang 46, 202, 306
museum 307
Shenzhen 307
Sherborne 108
s’Hertogenbosch, painting 117
Shethane Lake 96
Shexian, printing 192, 200, 202,
250
Shibam 129
Shibanid khans 196, 197
Shiga 204
Shigar 83
Shigaraki, pottery 140
Shigasato, figurines 49
Shigatse 302
art centre, 200, 250
Shigirsky 21, 21
Shijiahe culture 46
Shikashima 88
Shikhan Dheri 82
Shikoku 49, 88, 89, 140, 141, 204,
205, 252
Shilla kingdom 89
Shilluk 191
Shiloh 97
Civil War site 214
Shimoyama 89
Shinam-ni 49
Shinto
arts 140
religion 192
Shiraz 81, 83, 129, 132, 133, 195,
196, 244
metalwork 131
museum 298
Shishkin, Ivan (1831-98) 224
Shitao (1642-1707) 203
Shizhaizhan 86
Shizhashan, archaeology 307
Shkeder 185
Shomu, emperor 141
Shoreham 163
Romantic site 220
Shotorak, Kushan art 82
Shouzhou 306
silk production 136
Shrines
Aegean 60
Central Asia 132, 133, 196, 197
hero 63
Japan and Korea 204, 204
southern Europe 111, 111
Sub-Saharan Africa 243
West Asia 131
Shroud of St Potentien 107
Shu 86
Shucheng, art collection 137
Shunsho (print designer) 205
Shuruppak, early urbanism 25
Shustar 131
Shuzhou
kiln site 136
silk production 137
Siam 254
Chakri dynasty 254
sculpture 255
trade 207, 255
Siavonga, artists’ workshop 296
Siberia
Ice Age 16, 18
Russian control 160
shared cultures 46
trade routes 197
Sibiu 185
Sicca 66
Sicilia 69
Sicily 34, 34, 64-5, 103
Arab-Islamic culture 124
art and trade 67, 68, 69
Byzantine 102
captured by Normans 110
castles 114
kingdom 106
late Roman Art 71
Mediterranean world 64-5
mosaics 106, 107
Norman conquest 125
Roman empire 66, 70
Western Christendom 104
Sickert, Walter Richard 276
Sicyon 35, 62
Siddhartha (Guatama Buddha)
84
Sidi Ghirib 76
Sidmouth 163
Sidon
Achaemenid 67, 68, 78
Crusader castle 130
Phoenician 32, 34, 43
Siebenburgen 185
Siedlce 159
Siena 104, 181
architecture 110, 114, 115,
120-121
artists’ travels 119
bastions 180
metalwork 109
nationalistic site 237
patronage and projects 121,
123
royal progress 154
trading centre 120
treatises 122
Sierakow 159
Sierniki 159
Sierra Leone 190, 243
arts and crafts 294
Sierra Nevada 34
Sigatoka, Lapita pottery 51
Sigena 110, 114
Siggingen
Sighisoara 185
Sigiriya
historic site 248
temple 85
Signac, Paul (1863-1935) 233
Signorini, Telemaco (1835-1901)
237
Sigtuna 109
Siguenza, ecclesiastical centre
118
Siine 190
Siirt 80
metalworking 130
Sijilmasa 126
textiles 124
Sikander, Shahzia 305
Sikandra, palace 198
Silesia 170, 230
Silk 53, 63, 69, 69, 70, 115
Byzantine 107, 107
Central Asia 132, 133
Chinese 47, 83, 87, 87, 136,
137, 200
France 177
India 248, 304
Korean 308
Northern Europe 58
panni tartarici 133
Persian 194
St Vitale mosaic 71
Shroud of St Potentien 107
Spanish production 234
tapestry technique 133
Western Islam 125
Silk Road 62, 81, 83, 83, 85, 86,
87,129, 132, 132, 141, 193,
247
Silkeborg 272
Silla dynasty 89, 95, 141, 149
Silos
metalwork 109, 110
pilgrimage route 111
Silumiut 96
Silvan, mosque 130
Silver
Aegean 33, 33, 60
Akkadian 41
Anatolian 42
British centres 164
Byzantine 107
Central America 150, 151
Central Asia 45
China 200, 202
European centres 109, 154
Greece 59
Hellenistic 62-63, 63
India 84
Japan and Korea 141, 205, 252
Mediterranean 67, 68, 68
Mesopotamian 41
Netherlands 166
North Africa 76, 76
North America 97
Northern Europe 58, 58
Roman empire 67, 69
Sasanian 81
Scandinavia and the Baltic 156
South American 56, 100, 100,
101, 152, 153, 193
South Netherlands 169
Southeast Asia 206, 206, 254,
255, 310, 311
Southern Europe 115
treasures 70, 71
West Asia 42, 81, 301
Western Mediterranean
64-65
workmanship 70
Simberg, Hugo 272
Simchol-li 49
Simferopol 195
Simla
architecture 249
artistic centre 304
Simnan 131
minaret 130
Sinai 11, 74, 188
mosaics 77
Sinan (architect) 195
Sind 79
Sinfeld 104
Singapore
architecture 254
museum 298
tourism 310
World Crafts Council 316
Singarra 80
Singchang-ni 88
Singhasari, temple 142
Sinkiang 196, 196
Sinmae-ri 49, 88
Sinnar, temple 134
Sinope 34, 66, 69, 70, 130
Greek colony 58
metalwork 78
trading centre 107
Sintra, architecture 235
Sipán 56, 57
Siphnos 33, 59
Sippar 40, 41, 42
early urbanism 25
Siqueiros, David Alfaro (1896-
1975) 266, 267
Siraf 129, 132
lustre ware 131
Sirhind 198
Sirkap 82
Sis 106
Sistan 129
Sistine Chapel 123, 180
Sitil Sierra 54
Sitio Conte 98
Sittow, Michel (c.1468-1525/6)
119, 119
Sivas 244
mosque 130, 131
Siwa 126
Siwa Oasis 38, 74
Sixtus IV, pope 123
Sizhou, silk production 136
Skagen 220
Skallerup 31
Skellefteå 272
Skopje 106
art school 282
Byzantine 130
contemporary art 283
Skovde 272
Skulls, plaster 20, 21
Slave Coast 191
Slave trade 52, 69
Abbasid 129
Africa 126, 147, 190, 191, 242,
243
Caribbean 147, 217
Garibaldi’s army 237
Northern Europe 59
Pacific 312
Roman Empire 69
Western Islam 124
Slavs 70, 102
and Byzantium 106
Slovakia, World Crafts Council 316
Slovenia, diaspora of artists 283
Slovenske Gorice 154
Sluck 159
Sluter, Claus 117
Smielow 159
Smith, George 257
Smith, Joseph 183
Smith River 96
Smithson, Robert (1938-73) 265
Smolensk 107, 225
churches 158
printmaking 154
textiles 160, 224, 224
Smolny Institute 160
Smyrna 35
Byzantine 102
carpet-making centre 244
Ottoman 184, 195
trade centre 107
Smythson, Robert (d.1614) 162
Snaketown 96
ballcourt 55
Snettisham, metalwork 59
Snów 159
Snowy River Cave 18
Soane, Sir John 237
Soba 72
Sobreda, megalithic art 29
Société Anonyme International
Exhibition (1926) 262
Society Islands 92, 93, 144, 209
Cook’s voyage 208
Socrates 61
Soest 108
Sofala 127, 190, 191
Sofia 184, 185, 224
INDEX
346
Saigon
arts and crafts 310
religious site 254
Sailendra dynasty 95, 142, 143
St Adalbert 105
St Albans 70, 108, 109, 112
ecclesiastical centre 116
St Amand 103
book production 104
St André des Eaux 110
St Andrew (Jamaica) 266
St Andrews 163
St Antonios, monastery 77
St Balthilde, convent 103
St Basil’s Cathedral 155, 160
Saint Benedict’s church, Monte
Cassino 111
St Bertin 103, 110
St Catherine’s monastery 70, 71,
71
St Chef 110
St David’s 108
St Denec, megalithic art 29
St Denis
cathedral, 102, 103, 110, 110
Charlemagne 104
St Etienne 220
St Evrault 110
St Foi, relics 105
St Francis of Assisi 120
St Francisville 212
St Gall 103, 105
abbey, chartered sites 105
abbey properties 105
book production 104
murals 108
St Germain-des-Prés 103
St Germer-de-Fly 110
St Germigny-des-Près 103
St Gilles-du-Gard 110, 111
St Guilhem le Desert 111
St Helens 163
St Ives 163
artists’ colony 276, 277
Tate Gallery 270
St Jean d’Angely 111
St Joachim Osogovski 185
St John Bigorski Gostivar 185
St Joseph 212
St Lawrence Island 55
St Louis 212, 213, 264
auctioneers 317
world fair 215
St Loup de Naud 110
St Maixent 103
St Mark’s, Venice 105, 115, 122,
180
St Martin’s Lane Academy 165
St Maurice d’Agaune 102, 110
St Michael with a Donor (Bermejo)
119
St Mullin’s 103
St Nazaire 220
St Omer 104
ecclesiastical centre 116
St Paul, USA 264
St Paulos, monastery 77
St Paul’s Cathedral, London 164
St Peter’s, Rome 70, 110, 123, 168,
180
St Petersburg 220, 222, 222
art academy 186
art movements 275
artistic influences 173, 223
city planning 224
Constructivism centre 271
court-sponsored art 160
Ethnographic Museum 247
founded 160, 161
urban development 186
World of Art group 224, 225,
225
St Philibert-de-Grand-Lieu 103
St Piat, megalithic art 29
St Quentin 104
St Riquier, book production 103,
104
St Sabina 71
St Savin 110
St Sophia, church 70
St Tropez
art colony 232, 233
Fauvism 270, 270, 284
Saint Truiden 168
St Vaast d’Arras 103
St Vitale, church 70, 71
St Wolfgang, ecclesiastical centre
116
Saint-Amand 110
Saint-Etienne 285
Saint-Floret, wall painting 118
Saint-Flour, wall painting 118
Saint-Gilles 111
Saint-Léonard 118
Saint-Louis 191
Saint-Phalle, Niki de (1930-2002)
285
Saint-Rémy 168
Saint-Romain-le-Puy, wall
painting 116
Saintes 103, 111
ecclesiastical centre 118
Saints Peter and Paul, St
Petersburg 161
Sais 38, 78
Saitobaru 89
Saivism cult 134
Saka 78
Saka culture 86
Sakai 140, 204, 205
Sakalava, post sculptures 292
Saki 89
Sakitama 89
Sakuragaoka 88
cast bronze bell 89
Sakuramachi 49
Sakuranojo 89
Sakya, art centre, 200
Sala 272
Sala Regia 180
Saladin (ruler) 131
Salaga 126
Salamanca 110, 154, 234
architecture 178
art centre 186
artists’ travels 119
San Esteban altarpiece 178
stained glass 118
university 114, 115
Salamis 60, 60
Saldae 66
Salé 124, 125
Salerno 103
archbishopric 104
bronze doors 111
university 114
Salernum 64
Salim, Jawad 301
Salinar culture 57
Salisbury
manuscript painting 112
tourist/modern art 292, 293
traditional arts 292
Salistea, Dacian phalerae 58
Sallas, megalithic art 29
Sallinen, Tyko 273
Salmas 81
Ilkhanid monument 131
Salonae 67, 68, 69
Salonika, Salsette, historic site
248
Salt Cellar (Cellini) 155
Salta 218
Saltash 220
Saluzzo, wall painting 118
Salvador 152
art centre 153
artistic activity 268, 269
Salyany 244
Salz 104
Salzberg-Reingeerg, wild boar
59
Salzburg 238
archbishopric 104
art centre 154, 186
artistic cross-currents 173
book production 103, 104,
108
Degenerate Art exhibition 281
ecclesiastical centre 116
marble quarries 170
Samaipata 100
Samal 43
Samanid rulers 132
Samar 206, 254
trade 207
Samara 160, 224, 225
Achaeminid 78
Samaria 43
Samarinda, textiles 310
Samarkand 80, 81, 83, 84, 95,
129, 132, 195, 198
Achaemenid tribute 82
archaeological survey 247, 247
architecture 197, 197
artistic centre 132, 133
arts and crafts 302
carpet merchant 247
ceramics 79, 132
manuscript centre 196
museum 246, 247, 298, 303
Registan 197
sculpture 302-303
shrine 132, 196
textiles 131, 132, 133, 133,
246
Samarr, lustre ware 131
Samarra 128
Abbasid 129
Dar al-Khilafa 128
Sambaquí tradition 57, 100
Sambhal, mosque 198
Sambor 206
Samnites 65, 65
Samoa 92, 93, 144, 312
art production 256
indigenous trade 209, 209
kava ceremony 256
Pacific art 312, 313
Pacific Sisters 312
pottery 51, 51, 92
World Crafts Council 316
Samokov 185
Samori 243
Samos 33, 35, 60
Samothrace 62
shrine 60
Samoyeds 160
Samrong Sen 51
Samsun 244
Samudra 143
Samun Dukiya, iron smelting 72,
73
Samye, art centre, 200
San Agustín 56, 56, 100
San Blas 100
San Diego 264, 265, 265
San Francisco 98, 213
art centre 262
exhibitions 264, 264
photography 212
San Francisco de Arriba 54, 98
San Gimignano 114, 121
San José 266
San José Mogote 54
San Juan 217, 217
art event 317
San Juan de Baños 102
San Juan de Ortega 118
San Leo 122, 123
San Lorenzo 26, 27
San Luis Obispo 96
San Luis Potosí, Neoclassicism
216
San Marcos 266
San Marino, Republic of 182
San Martín, General José 218, 218,
219
San Miguel 98
San Pedro de Roda 110
San Pedro della Nave 102
San peoples 126
San Sebastian 178, 220, 234
San Vincenzo 103
San Vincenzo al Volturno 102
Sana 129, 132, 188
fine arts 300, 301
Sana’a, museum 298
Sanage, pottery 140
Sanak, architecture 283
Sanandaj 301
Sanchi
caves 84, 85
historic site 248
stupas 85
Sanchidrián 234
Sandberg, Willem 279
Sandby, Paul 165
Sandomierz 158, 159
Sandrart, Joachim von (1606-88)
171
Sandwich 163
Sandy Creek, rock shelter 16
Sangam poetry 85
Sangasanga, pottery 50
Sangbast
caravanserai 133
minaret 130
Sangela 84
Sangnodae-Do 49
Sanji 127
Sanmenxia, archaeology 307
Sannai Maruyama 48
Sannathi, coins 84
Sansepolcro 181
Sansovino (architect) 180
Sant’ Angelo in Formis 110
Sant’ Antimo 110
Santa 65
Santa Ana, art movement 216
Santa Comba de Bande 102
Santa Croce sull’ Arno 236
Santa Cruz, Lapita pottery 51
Santa Cruz Islands 51
Santa Cruz (Spain), megalithic art
29
Santa Fe 57, 218, 219
262, 264, 265
Santa Fe de Bogotá, Jesuit
workshop 153
Santa Leticia 54
Santa Maria 190
Santa Maria de Melque 102
Santa Maris della Salute 158
Santa Marta 152, 153
Santa Monica 264
Santa Rita 98
Santa Rosalia 266
Santander 178, 234, 286
Santarém 100, 114, 234
Santesteban 64
Santiago (Argentina), artistic
activity 218, 219, 268, 269
Santiago de Chile 218
Santiago de Compostela
alabaster 109
architecture 110, 178
manuscripts 114
pilgrimage 111, 111, 118, 119
Santiago de Cuba 216
Santiago (Leon), archbishopric
104
Santianes de Pravia 102
Santiniketan, art school 304, 305
Santo Domingo
art academy 266
cathedral 150, 150
Santo Domingo de la Calzada 118
Sanxingdui, archaeology 307
Sanzen 89
Sao 190
archaeology 294
São Frutuoso de Montelios 102
São Gião de Navaré 102
São Luis 218
São Paulo 152, 153
art event 317
artistic activity 268, 268, 269,
269
Biennial 316
São Salvador 218, 219
Saone, Crusader castle 130
Sapi-Portuguese salt cellar 190
Sapporo 308
Saqqakhana school 301
Saqqara 38
early urbanism 25
excavations 245
Metjetji tomb 38, 38
monastery 77
stone carving 77
Tomb of Ti 23
Saragossa (Zaragoza) 70, 102,
178, 286
artists’ travels 119
festival 154
metalwork 125
print-making 118
sculpture 235
textiles 234
Sarai 133
Sarajevo 184, 185, 238
Byzantine 130
religions 282
Sarakhs 246
tomb 132
Saramana 80
Saran, megalithic art 29
Saratov 160, 224
artists’ centre 225, 225
exhibitions 275
Sarawak 254
arts and crafts 310
Iban culture 311
Sarcham, Ilkhanid monuments
131
Sarcophagi 68, 70, 71, 103
marble 102
Sardinia 32-33, 34, 34, 103, 236
art and trade 67, 68, 69
Byzantine 102
Catholicism 104
late Roman Art 71
Mediterranean world 64, 64-5
metalwork 31
Roman empire 66, 70
to Savoy 182
Sardis 35
Achaemenid 78
patronage 70
Sardonyx cameo 67
Sargent, John Singer (1856-1925)
215
Sargon, Akkad founder 41
Sark, Dacian phalerae 58
Sarkhej, mosque 134
Sarmatian art 58, 59
Sarmatism 158-159, 159
Zbigniew Ossolinski with his sons
158
Sarmisegetuza 68
Sarnath
lion capital 84
museum 298
stupa 84, 85
Sárospatak 185
Sarurab, pottery 36
Sarvistan 131
Sasanian Empire 70, 80, 81, 85,
94
art style 81
Zorastrian faith 81
Sasanians 52
Sasaram, tomb 198
Satavahana dynasty 85
Satgaon, temple 134
Satinikeetan 304
Satohama 49, 88
Satrunjaya, temple 134
Sattagydia 79
Saudi Arabia 300, 301
art schools/museums 298
World Crafts Council 316
Sauleu 110
Sault Ste Marie 212
paintings 214
Saumur, château 116
Sauvigny 110
Sava, lustre ware 131
Savage, Augusta 263
Savannah, Civil War site 214
Saveh 195
Savitsky, Konstantin (1844-1905)
224, 224
Savona 122, 123
Savonlinna 272
Savoy 121, 122, 123
Savrana Belgola 134
Savrasov, Aleksey (1830-97) 224
Sawakin 240
Sawankhalok
ceramics 310
historical site 254
kiln site 206
Saxons 102
collapse of 70
Saxony 104, 169, 170, 171, 230
Sayhuite 100
Sayil 98
Sayula 98
Sázava, wall painting 116
Sbeitla 124
Scandinavia 70, 95, 102
amber 30
art museums 272
artistic diffusion 223, 272
artistic movement 157
Christendom 105
from Symbolism to
Postmodernism 272
Iron Age 58, 58
landscape and culture 272
late Roman Art 71
Norse mythology 222
Postglacial 21, 30
prominent artists 222
Scandinavia and the Baltic 156,
156, 157, 222, 222, 223, 272,
272, 273, 273
Scarborough, art movement 226
Schaffhausen 108
Schapiro, Miriam (1923-) 261
Schendel, Mira 269, 269
Scherpenheuvel 168, 169
Scheveningen
architecture 279
art colony 228, 228, 229
Schiele, Egon 280
Schiller 231
Schinkel, Karl Friedrich (1781-
1841) 157, 173, 222
Schjerfbeck, Helene 273
Schlaun, Johann Conrad 173
Schleswig 230
Schleswig-Holstein 172
Schlettstadt 104, 112
Schloss-Bruck 112
Schlüter, Andreas 172
Schmidtsdrif, Khoisan art 296
Scholars in a Garden (Ding Yunpeng)
201
Schöningen 104
School of Athens 180
School of David, Rome 236
Schwerin 170, 230
Schwind, Martin von (1804-71)
231
Scodra 66
Scone 102
Scotland
architecture 162
artistic centres 164
Catholicism 104
Christianity 154
kingdoms 102
major country houses 164
North Netherlands trade 167
patronage 116
stone axes 30
Stuart ascendancy 162
Scott, George Gilbert 227
Scott, John 315
Scotts Lake 97
Scripts 20-21
Amharic 73
Arabic 128
Brahmi 85
cuneiform 20, 25, 40, 41, 42,
245
Egyptian 36, 37
Ge’ez 73
Greek 72, 73
hieroglyphs 25, 39, 63, 74, 75
Kharoshti 85
kufic 125, 129, 301
Linear B 32
Maghrebi 125
Manichaean codex 83
Meröe 72
pictographic systems 25, 25,
40, 54, 55
pre-Maya 54, 55
Shang dynasty 47
Scrolls, illustrated 69
Scrovegni, Enrico 120
Sculpture
countries
Achaemenid 78, 78
Aegean 60
African 73, 284, see also SubSaharan
Africa
Celto-Ligurian 64-65
Central America 54-55
Central Asia 302
China 136, 137, 139, 307
INDEX
349
Roman remains 68
Syrene 77
Syria 12, 20, 32, 34, 34, 35, 40, 40,
42, 62, 66, 80
Abbasid Caliphate 129
art schools/museums 298
art style 67
fine arts 300, 301
French Mandate 300
Ottoman Possession 188, 194,
195
Roman Empire trade 69, 70
Ummayad province 128, 128
Syrian Desert 32, 188
Syrinx 80
Syro-Palestine 32
Szabadka 238
Szamisújvar 185
Szaszbuzd 185
Szczecin 154, 230
Szeged 185, 238, 282
Székesfehérvár 185
Szentendre 185
Szigetvár 195
Szombathely 185, 238
Tabarka 76
Tabas 195
minaret 130
Tabert 164
Tableau 1 (Mondrian) 278
Tabo, art centre 200
Tabon Caves 50, 90
Tabor, castle 116
Tabriz 129, 133
carpet-making centre 244, 301
Ilkhanid monuments 131
photography 245
Safavid capital 195
Tacitus, historian 69
Tadadayama 89
Tadaepo 49
Tadmekka 126
Taegong-ni 49, 88
Taehuksan-do 49
Taepyong-ni 49
Taesong-ni 88
Taganrog, Dacian phalerae 58
Taghaza 73
Tagore
Abanindranth (1871-1951) 304,
304
Gagendranath (1867-1938)
304
Rabindranath (1861-1941) 304
Tagra, pottery 36
Tahert, mosque 124
Tahiti 92
art production 256
Cook’s voyage 208, 209
Pacific art 93, 312
Tahmasp, shah 194, 199
Tahull 110
Taifang 88
Taino culture 99
Taipei 46, 299, 306, 307
auctioneers 316
Taiping, museum 298
Tairona 100, 100
Taiwan 250, 306, 307, 307
museums 298
Taiyuan 136, 200, 202, 250
museum 307
religious art 137
Tajikistan
art schools/museums 298
arts and crafts 302
Takahashi 89
Takaita 89
Takanohara 89
Takedda 127
Takehara 89
Takht-i-Bahi, Kushan art 82
Takht-i-Sangin, Kushan art 82
Takht-i-Sulayman 131
Takla Makan, archaeological
expeditions 247
Takrur 190
Talas 83, 132
Talasea, Lapita pottery 51
Talashkino, art colony 225, 225
Talaud Islands 50
Talavera, textiles 234
Talavera la Reina 178
Tale of Genji (Murasaki Shikibu)
141
Talho-ri 88
Talkhaytan Baba 132
Tallinn 156, 156, 157, 222, 224,
275
artists’ travels 119
contemporary art 273
Cubism 272
studio programmes 273
Talus Village 55
Tamar Hat 18
Tamaralipti 134
ivory 84
trade centre 83
Tamaya Mellet, pottery 36
Tamayo, Rufino (1899-1984) 267
Tamazukkuri-Uenodai 89
Tamba, pottery 140
Tambería de Inka 100
Tambov 224, 225
Tamerlane see Timur
Tampere
contemporary art 273
museum 272
Tana 133
Tana Torajaland, Granaries 310
Tanabatake, figurines 49
Tanavoli, Parviz (1937-) 298, 301
Tanda 198
Tang-Tosong 88
Tange, Kenzo 299, 309
Tangier 102, 124, 178, 190, 240,
241
architecture 290
Tangshan 307
archaeology 307
Tanis 38
Tanjavur 134
Tanjore 198
carpets 304
museum 304
painting 248
Tanque, megalithic art 29
Tanzania 16, 260
Tanzhou
kiln site 136, 137
silk production 137
Taoism 87, 207, 255
Taormina 110
pre-Islamic 124
Taos 262, 263
Taoudenni 73
Taparura
mosaics 76
textiles 124
Tapestry
Arras 174
Aubusson 154, 177
Bear and Boar Hunt 117
Beauvais 177
Gobelins 176, 176, 221
Netherlands 117, 166, 168,
169, 169
Northern Europe 117
weaving 57, 247
Tápiószentmarton, Scythian
objects 58
Taq-i Kisra 81
Taquera tradition 100
Tara, megalithic art 29
Tarakeshwar Murder 248
Tarantaise, archbishopric 104
Taranto 102
artists’ club 288, 288
Taras 34, 65
Tarentum 64, 65, 68, 69
Tareyanagi 88
Târgu Mures 185
Târgu-Jiu 271, 271
Tarifa, castle 118
Tarim, museum 298
Tarim Basin 47
Tarn 17
Tarnopol 159
Tarnów 158
art collection 159
Tarquinia 182
Tarquinii 64, 65
Tarraco 64, 66, 68, 69
Tarraconensis 66, 69
Tarragona 70, 102, 110, 110, 114,
178, 234
wall painting 118
Tarrakunah 102
Tarrato 67
Tarsus 32, 68, 78, 106
trading centre 130
Tartu 156, 157, 272
Taruga, Nok figures 72, 73
Tarut 40, 41
Tash-Kurghan 83
Tashi Lhunpo, art centre
Tashkent 81, 84, 132, 196, 196
arts and crafts 302, 303
carpet market 246
mosque 133
museum 246, 247, 298, 302,
303, 303
sculpture 302-303
textiles 132
town-planning 246
trade centre 131
Tasmania 258, 259
Tassili Sahara 126
Tassilo Chalice 102, 103
decorative style 103
Tatars 160, 161
Tatetsuki 88
Tatlin, Vladimir (1885-1953) 271,
274
Tattooing 16
implements 209
Tavant 110
Tavoy 254
Tawakkel 247
Taxco, Church of San Sebastián
and Santa Prisca 151
Taxila 63, 82
archaeology 84, 85, 303
Buddhist/Kushan art 83
ceramics 79
Dacian phalerae 58
Kushan art 82
museum 298
trade 134
Taza, metalwork 125
Tblisi 245, 275
museums 298
Tébessa
mosaics 76
textiles 124
Tebtunis 75
Tegea 60
Tegernsee 103
Teheran 80
art school 298, 301
carpet-making centre 244
fine arts 300, 301
museums 298
photography 245
Polytechnic Dar al-Funun 245
Qajar capital 244
traditional arts 301
Tehuacán 54
Teige, Karel 283
Teignmouth 163
Tejada la Vieja 64
Tekirdaq 130
Tel Abu Hawam 32
Tel Asmar, early urbanism 25
Tel Aviv
art museum 298
auctioneers 316
museum of art 300
Tel el-Ajjul 32, 42
Tel Kabri 32
Tell Asmar 40, 42
Tell Brak 40, 42
early urbanism 25
Tell el Dab’a 32
Tell el Rimah 42
Tell el ’Ubaid 40
Tell Halaf 43
Tellerup 31
Telloh 245
Temascalcingo, art movements
216
Temesvár 184, 185
Temper 55
Tempio di Clitunno 102
Temples
Aztec 150
Central Andean 57
China 136
Greek 60, 65
India 85, 134, 134, 135
Italian 65
Korea 89
Mesopotamia 40, 40, 42
Mississipian sites 97
Nile 37
Nile Valley 40-41, 41
North America 97
Pacific 145
Roman 65, 67
South Asia 198
Southeast Asia 254, 310, 311
Western Mediterranean 64-65
Templestowe, plein-air paintings
259
Tenasserim 207
Tenayuca 98
Tenby 163, 276
Ténes, textiles 124
Tenganyika L 127
Tengxian, kiln site 137
Tenochtitlán 98, 99
Aztec sculpture 99
Tentugal, ecclesiastical centre 118
Teotihuacán 53, 54, 54, 55, 98, 98
Tepe Yahya 40, 41
Tepexic 54
Teplitz 238
Tepotzotlán 98
Ter, ivory 85
Teraji 49
Terengganu, silverware 310
Termeno 110
Termez 129, 303
arts and crafts 302
textiles 132
tomb 133
Ternate 143, 143, 254
trade centre 192, 207
Terracotta see pottery
Terrassa, wall painting 118
Teso dos Bichos 56
Tessin the Elder, Nicodemus 156
Tessin the Younger, Nicodemus
157
Tête-du-Lion 19
Tétouan 124, 188, 290, 291
Teuchitlán 98
Tewkesbury 163
ecclesiastical centre 116
Texcoco 98
Textiles
countries
Abbasid 129
Achaemenid 78
Agean 33, 33, 60
Asia 192, 193, 299
Assyrian 42
Belgium 279
British 227
Central Asia 132, 133, 133,
197, 246, 246, 247, 302,
302, 303
Chinese 46, 47, 87, 139,
141, 201, 202, 250
Egypt 77
European 154, 221, 283
Flanders 168
France 176, 177, 182, 232
India 134, 135, 147, 248,
248, 249, 304
Italian production 182
Japan and Korea 140, 140,
141, 204, 204, 205, 252,
308, 309
Netherlands 166, 279
North Africa 76, 125, 188,
188, 240, 290-291, 291
North America 97, 148
Norway 273
Pacific 256, 313
Polish sashes 159
Russian 160, 224, 274, 283
Sasanian 81, 81
Scandinavia and the Baltic
States 272
South American 23, 27, 27,
56-57, 57, 100, 101, 101,
101
South Asia 134, 135, 198,
199
South Netherlands 168,
169
Southeast Asia 206-207,
254, 255, 255, 278, 310,
311, 311
Southern Africa 296, 297
Southern Europe 115, 118
Spain and Portugal 178,
234
Sub-Saharan Africa 126,
126, 243
West Africa 294, 295
West Asia 42, 80-81, 131,
194-195, 194-195, 301,
301
Western Islam 124, 125
East and Central Africa 292
general
bark cloth 92, 209, 209, 313
batik 57, 229, 255, 292, 295,
299, 310
carpet-making centres 229,
244, 301, 301, 302
carpets 124, 133, 135, 147,
176, 192, 194-195, 194-
195, 227, 245, 246, 247,
247, 303, 304
cordwain 169
costume-making
techniques 309
cotton 246
ethnic/folk 239
flax 169, 229
gift-exchanges 103
ikay 304
lace 229
silk and cotton ikat 246,
247
tie-dyed 292, 295, 304
see also Silk; Tapestry
Thabraca, mosaics 76, 76
Thailand
art schools/museums 298
arts and crafts 310
Ayutthaya city-state 206
bronze implements 51, 90
Lacquer Pavilion 255
World Crafts Council 316
Thainer, mosque 134
Thalner 198
Tham Ongbah 51
iron work 90
Thamugadi 68, 71
mosaics 76
Thana 198
Thang Long, ceramics 207
Thapong, art school 296
Thapsacus 78
Tharros 34, 64
Thasos 34, 35, 59, 60
Thatta
carpets 198
mosque 134
The Hague 168
artistic institutions 228, 229,
279
artists 166, 229
painting 117
Theadelphia 75
Theatres
German 230
Italian 181
London 162, 165
Russia 224
Thebes 35, 38, 73, 74
1500 BC 39
Achaemenid 78
architecture 60
early urbanism 25
excavations 245
Nebamun tomb 39
palace site 32, 33
religious site 38
trading centre 107
Theoderic II, count 105
Theodore of Tarsus 102
Theodulf 105
Theotokopoulos, Domenikos see El
Greco
Thera 32, 32, 33, 35
Thermae 66
Thérouanne 110
Thessalonica (Thessaloniki) 62,
67, 68, 70, 102, 131
architecture 195
art school 282
Byzantine 130
contemporary art 283
Judaism 184
pilgrimage/art centre 106, 107
trading centre 107
vault mosaics 71
Thessaly 28, 35
Theveste, mosaics 76
Thirty Years’ War 156, 171, 172, 172
Third of May (Goya) 235
Thmuis 74
Thököly, Principality 184
Thompson, John 250, 251
Thorey 67
Thorikos, theatre 60
Thornhill, James 165
Thorvaldsen, Bertel (1768/70-
1844) 157, 222, 223
Thrace 28, 35, 58
Thracia 58, 59, 66, 69
dynastic tombs 58
South sphere 58
Thraco-Getic, burials and hoards
58, 58
Thuburbo Maius 71
Thugga, mosaics 76
Thule 96
Thupelo, artists’ workshop 296
Thurburbo Maius, mosaics 76
Thurii 65
Thuringen 104
Thuringia 170, 172, 230
Thysdrys, pottery 76
Ti-n-Torha, pottery 36
Tiahuanaco 101, 101
indigenous art 153
Tianjin 250
museums 307
Tianlong Shan, shrine 306
Tianlongshan, religious art 136
Tianshan 302
Tiberias 71
Tibesti 73, 126, 188, 291
Tibet 47, 138-139, 201, 203, 251
art centres 138, 200, 202, 250
art schools/museums 298
artistic influence 139, 307
arts and crafts 302, 302, 303
Mahakala deity 139
Renaissance 139, 201
Ticino 173
Tidore 143, 143, 254
Tie dye, Central Andean 57
Tiefenbronn 117
Tientsin 250
Tiepolo, Giambattista (1696-1770)
173, 182
Tiflis 129, 132, 133, 224, 225
Kavkazsky Muzei museum 245
museums/carpets 244
trading centre 107
Tigawa, temple 85
Tigranocerta 80
Tigzirt 76
Tikal 54, 54, 55, 98
Tikhvin 160
Tikopia, Lapita pottery 51, 92
Til Barsip 43
Tillya-tepe 41
Kushan art 82
Tiltekin, pottery 36
Tim, tomb 132
Timbuktu 126, 188, 190, 240
Timgad 71, 76
Timor 50, 91, 142, 143, 206, 254,
310
Timur (aka Tamerlane) 95, 132,
132, 247
Timurid empire 132, 133, 192, 193,
195, 196
Tin
Assyrian 42
eastern Mediterranean 32
Egyptian 38, 39
Roman empire 67, 69
South American 56
West Asia 42
INDEX
348
art academy 282
art event 316
Biennial 316, 316
Byzantine 130
town-planning 238
trade centre 195
Sogam-ni 88
Soganli 106
Sogdian Rock 79, 84
Sogdiana 63, 80, 81, 82, 82, 83
Sogong-ni 49
Sögüt 130
Sohar 132
Soignies, sculpture 117
Soinhofen 170
Soissons 104
Sojas, Ilkhanid monuments 131
Sokchong-dong 88
Sokkuram Cave, seated Buddha
140
Soknopaiou Nesos 75
Sokoto 188, 240
caliphate 243
Soktal-li 49
Solano, José Gutiérrez (1886-1945)
287
Solar, Xul 268, 268
Solesmes, ecclesiastical centre
116
Solferino 237
Solikamsk 160
Solin 71
Solokha, Scythian burials 58
Solomon Islands
50, 51, 92, 312, 312
art production 256, 257
artistic traditions 93
canoe house 257
Solre-Saint-Géry 168
Sol’vychegodsk 160, 160
Somnathapura 134
Somov, Konstantin (1869-1939) 225
Sonargaon, textiles 198
Sondershausen 230
Song-Do 49
Songgung-ni 49
Songhay 126, 127, 190
Songjiang, painting 200, 202
Songsan 88
Songzhou, silk production 136
Sopatma, trade 134
Sophene 80
Sopocani 106
Sopohang, masks 49
Sopron 238
Sora 66
Sora-ri 88
Sorède 110
Sørenson, Henrik 273
Sorolla, Joaquín (1863-1923) 234
Sorrento, archbishopric 104
Soto
Jésus 268, 269
megalithic art 29
Sots art 275
Souliiac 110
Soulme 168
Sounion, temples 60
Sousse 124
South Africa
arts and crafts 296, 297
community art centres 297
Dutch 191
European artistic influence
243
San peoples 11
World Crafts Council 316
South America 22, 23, 56-57, 95,
100-101, 147, 152-153, 218-219,
268-269
Arte Popular 269
artisitic activity 153, 218, 219,
219, 268
artistic centres 152
cultural traditions 56, 57, 100
exploration 218, 219
Ice Age 17, 19
indigenous art centres 153
Late Intermediate period 101,
101
materials and means 152
Middle Horizon period 100,
101
modernization 219
national image 219
Postglacial 20
revolution 218
South Asia 44-45, 84-5, 134-135,
198-199, 248-249, 304-305
art and society 198
Japanese expansion 308
materials, techniques and
evidence 198
minor dynasties 198
South Korea 307, 308, 308
20th Century 308
cultural influences 309
museums 298
World Crafts Council 316
South Netherlands 168, 168, 169,
169
South Pacific, Japanese
imperialism 308
Southeast Europe 184-5, 238-9
Southampton 102, 163, 220
alabaster 109
Southeast Asia 11, 12, 50, 85, 90-
91, 142-143, 206-207, 254-255,
310-311
17th century kingdoms 206
archaeological finds 92
arts and crafts 310
Bronze Age 90, 90
Funan empire 91
Indianized states 142
rise of Islam 143
trade 84, 90-91, 91, 142, 143,
206, 207, 229, 254
Southern Africa 296-297
arts and crafts 296, 297
Southern Europe 94, 110-111, 114-
115, 118-119
art production 110
artists’ travels 119
raw materials 115
trade
and artistic influence 111
and ideas 114
and transmission 115
Southwell 112
Souvigny, ecclesiastical centre
118
Souza, Francis Newton (1924-
2002) 305
Soweto
art school 296
community art centres 297
Space Age 19
Spain 15, 17, 18, 20-21, 34, 178-
179, 234-235, 286-287
culture
architecture 235
art academies/schools 234
artistic influences 12, 119,
179, 179, 188, 234, 286-
287, 290
artistic patronage 119, 155,
178
bishop’s grave wrappings
115
Generation of ’98’ 286
genre paintings 234
Islamic 111, 118, 119, 128
monumental art 235
painting and sculpture 119,
179
portable art 234, 286
retables 118, 119
schools of painting 234,
234
tourist mecca 234
Umayyad architecture 125
politics
Carlist Wars 234
and Central America 150,
150, 151, 151
Civil War 286, 287
Fascism 286
and Napoleon 220, 234
and North Africa 188, 189
North African colonies 290,
291
Peninsular War 234
political impotence 234
Reconquista 111, 114, 124
Spanish-American War 286
Treaty of Tordesillas 192
Visgothic 70
War of Succession 179
trade
in Asia 192
loss of American 234
Netherlands 167, 169
trade routes 150, 154, 178,
234
World Crafts Council 316
Spalato, Judaism 184
Spalatum 102
Spanish Habsburg lands 182
Spanish Morocco 290
Sparta 35, 61, 62, 63, 68, 70
floor mosaics 71
shrine 60
Spear Hill, rock art 50
Speer, Albert 281
Spence, Basil 277
Spencer, Baldwin 314
Spencer, Stanley 276
Speyer 104
ecclesiastical centre 116
Spice Islands 178
Spice trade 68, 69, 69, 70
pepper-pot 70
Spider God, South American 57
Spies, Walter 311
Spigno 110
Spina 64, 65
Celtic colony 59
Greek colony 58
Spirit Cave, pottery 50
Spiro 96, 97
Spoletium 64
Spoleto 110
Spondylus shell 101
Spring Creek 18
Spring Green 262, 263
Squavakie Hill 55
Sravasti, archaeology 84
Sri Lanka 68, 69, 82, 84, 305
World Crafts Council 316
Srinagar 132, 247
coins 85
diamonds 134
miniature painting 198
Sringeri, temple 134
Srirangam
historic site 248
temple 134
Srisailam 134
Srivijaya 91, 91, 142, 143
Srivijaya empire 142, 142
St-Marc 266
St-Samson, megalithic art 29
Sta Elia di Nepi 110
Stabiae 64
Stabroek 218
Staithes 276, 276
Stakhr 81
Stalinabad, museum 298
Stampa 270
Stanislawow 159
Starnina, Gherardo 119
Starobelsk, Dacian phalerae 58
Starved Rock 96
Stavelot 168
literary centre 103, 108
metalworking 110
Stazagora, Dacian phalerae 58
Steenwinckel, Hans van (c.1550-
1601) 157
Stefánsson, Jón 273
Stein, Gertrude (1874-1946) 284,
284
Stein, Aurel 247, 247
Steinfurth 104
Stele
Assyrian 43
Central Andean 57
diorite 42
Egyptian funerary 39
Geto-Dacian 58
Italian 65
Naram-Sin 41
Northern Europe 59
South American 101
Stella, Joseph 263
Stellenbosch, art school 296, 297
Stencils, hand 17-18, 18, 20, 21
Step House 55
Step Pyramid 38
Steppe art 58, 59, 80
Sterbak, Jana 265
Sterns Creek 55
Stettin 156, 157, 170, 220, 222,
230
Degenerate Art exhibition 281
Stewart Gardner, Isabella 214
Sthanvisvara 134
Still Life with Fruit and Toad (Bustos)
216
Stirling 164
castle 116, 154
Stockholm 154, 156, 220, 222
academy 222, 223
architecture 157, 271, 272, 273
art centre 273
artistic influences 173, 223
cultural influence 156
Exhibition (1930) 272, 273
IASPIS programme 273
Moderna Museet 270, 273
patronage centre 156
urban development 186
Stockton 220
Stoke-on-Trent
Art Deco 276
ceramic centre 164
Stone
countries
Aegean 33, 33, 60
Central America 55, 98
India 84, 248, 304
Japan and Korea 49
North Africa 76
North America 55, 148
Northern Europe 59
Scandinavia and the Baltic
156
South American 27, 100
South Netherlands 168,
168, 169
Southeast Asia 254, 255
general
buildings 52
industrial Britain 165
monolithic sculptures 56
vessels 33, 71, 78, 78
kinds of
Bentheim 166
chalcedony 97
granite 23, 213
greenstone 49, 144, 257,
258
hard 30, 35, 38
jade 23, 44, 46, 46, 47, 54,
55, 98, 99, 133, 200, 202,
250
jadeite 30, 48
limestone 14, 20-21, 23, 37,
37, 38, 41, 72, 75, 152
obsidian 49, 51, 54, 55, 98
pipestone 97
sandstone 37, 38, 39, 72,
84, 159, 168, 259
serpentine 17
soapstone 26, 27, 152, 297
soft 35
techniques
abrasion 35
carving 248, 254, 256, 296,
310
engraved 16, 18, 20
painted 16
Plateresque 150
three dimensional carving
16, 21
tools 53
Stone City 262, 263
Stonehenge 23
Stones
engraved 18, 20-21
hard 16
Stour Valley 226
Strada, Jacopo 171
Strakonice, wall painting 116
Stralsund 156, 157, 173, 222
Strasbourg 103, 154, 170
architecture 177
ecclesiastical centre 116
museum 285
stained glass 110
Strassburg 112, 170, 230, 230
Strathclyde 102
Strathcona Sound 96
Stratos 60
Strauss, Richard 230
Stravanger 108, 273
Streeton, Arthur (1867-1943) 259
Strehlitz 230
Stroganov family 160
Structuralism 19
Studenica 106
Study in Gouache (Fathy) 290
Stupas see Buddhism
Sturts Meadows 21
Stuttgart 154, 230
academy 172, 281
industrial 220
Italianate designs 236, 237
National Socialism 281
Style moderne see Art Nouveau
Su Shi 136, 137
Suakin 188, 190
Sub-Saharan Africa 94, 126-127,
146, 189, 190-191, 242, 243,
290
Subeibe, Muslim castle 130
Subiaco 114
Suceava 154, 185
Sucevit,a 185
monastery 184, 185
Sucre 153, 268
Sudan 37, 191
Sudbury (Ontario) 263
Sueves, empire 70
Suez 128, 240, 241, 241
Sufetula, textiles 124
Sufi religion 188
Suga-ri 49, 88
Suger, Abbot 110
Sugitani 88
Sugizawadai 49
Sui dynasty 87, 95
Sukhothai 138
historical site 254, 310
kiln site 206
Sukhothai empire 207
temple 142
Sukhumi 224, 225
Suksang-ni 88
Suku Okamoto 88
Sukuk, temple 142
Sukuma, post sculptures 292
Sulawesi 143
Süleyman, sultan 180, 195
Sulis Minerva, temple 67
Sultanabad 244
carpet-weaving 245
lustre ware 131
Sultanganj, sculpture 85
Sultaniya, Ilkhanid monuments
131
Sulu 143
Sumatra 16, 50, 142, 142, 143,
206
architecture 278, 311
arts and crafts 310
Dong Son culture 90
funerary effigies 254
trade 91, 91, 207
Sumba 142, 143, 206, 254, 310
Sumbawa 142, 143, 206
Bronze Age 90
cotton 207, 310
Sümeg 185
Sumer 40, 40, 41
Sumiyoshi painters 205
Sundsvall 272
Sungai Lang, Dong Son culture 90
Sungir 14, 16
Sunium 35, 35
Suoxian 302
Suprematism 274
Suprematist work 279
Surabaya 254
gold work 310
Surabeya 254
Surah 198
Surakarta 206, 254
batik 310
Surakhany 244
Surat 192, 207, 248, 248
Surcea, Dacian phalerae 58
Surikov, Vasily (1848-1916) 225
Surkh Kotal, Kushan art 82
Surkotada, early urbanism 25
Surrealism 261, 267, 270, 270, 273,
275, 278, 278, 279, 283, 284,
285, 287, 288
Surt, textiles 124
Surugacho (100 Famous
Prints/Hiroshige) 253
Sus 129
Susa 40, 41, 42, 43, 62
artistic centre 78
early urbanism 25
excavations 245
palace 79
Parthian mint/architecture 80
Sasanian mint 81
Umayyad mosque 128
Susiana 81
Susong-ni 88
Sutherland, Graham 277
Sutton Hoo 102, 103
Suva, Pacific art 312, 313
Suwayamma 89
Suwon 204
Suzhou 136, 200, 306
art school 299
gardens 200, 201, 201, 202
museum 307
painting centre, 251
silk production 200, 202, 250
Svalafeld 104
Svartsjo 154
Svayambhunatha 134
Svishtov 185
Swabian Jura
Swahili 190-1
portals 292
Swan, James G. 214
The Swan, No. 17 (Klint) 272
Swansea 226, 276
Swatow 250
Swaziland, arts and crafts 296
Sweden 156, 156, 160, 169, 222
architecture 272
art in a globalized world 273
artistic influence 156, 157, 157,
222-223
arts movement 220, 272, 273
Bernadotte dynasty 223
Catholic 106
exchange programmes 273
Lutheran 154
museums 272
North Netherlands trade 167
World Crafts Council 316
Swieta Lipka 158, 159
Swift Creek 55
Swimming Ducks (Hong Se-sop)
253
Swinton, ceramic centre 164
Swiss Confederacy 121, 122, 123,
182
borders 170
Switzerland 170, 171, 231, 280,
280, 281, 281
architecture 171
artistic workshops 170
Modern movement 280
World Crafts Council 316
Sybaris 34, 65
Sydney
architecture 259, 314, 314
art works 258, 258
auctioneers 316
Heidelberg School 259
indigenous art 314
Opera House 314, 314
Sydney Cove 258
Syene 72, 73, 74
Sylvester II (aka Gerbert of
Aurillace) 105
Symbolic art 80
Symbolism 225, 228, 229, 232,
272, 272, 287, 288
Syr Darrya River 129
Syracuse 34, 69, 111
architecture 64, 65
excavation 182
Hellenistic monarchy 65
patronage 66
pre-Islamic 124
INDEX
351
Unique Forms of Continuity
(Boccioni) 279
United Kingdom 220
Universities 112
Upjohn, Richard 213
Upolu, Lapita pottery 51
Upper Gelderland 168
Upper Palatinate 172
Uppsala 154, 156, 157, 220, 222,
272, 273
Ur 22, 25, 41, 41, 42, 43
early urbanism 25
excavations 245
Royal Cemetery 41
Standard of 41, 41
tablets 78
ziggurat 40
Ur-Nammu, Third Dynasty founder
41
Urartu 43
Urbina 180
Urbino 122
art centre 154
artists’ travels 119
patrons and projects 123, 181
Urbino, Duke of 180
Urbs Vetus 65
Urewera Mural (McCahon) 315
Urfa 195
mosque 130
Urgel 103
Urgench 129, 196
arts and crafts 302
inscriptions 83
tomb 132, 133
Urgut, arts and crafts 302
Urkan e-Rub 18
Urnes 109
Uronarti, fort 37
Uruguay 57
artistic activity 219, 219, 268,
268, 269, 269
World Crafts Council 317
Uruk 40, 41, 42, 43, 80, 81
alabaster trough 24
early urbanism 25
excavations 245
tablets 78
Urumchi (Urumqi) 83, 86, 138,
247, 302
Uruzgan, inscriptions 83
USA
African art history 295
architecture 212, 213
art and exploration 212
art institutions 262
artistic influence 13, 270, 270,
290, 291
artists’ travels 213, 236, 262,
263
the Depression 263
education and institutions 213
exhibitions of East European
art 283
intervention policies 266
path to modernization 262
socialist art 261
War (1812) 212
World Crafts Council 317
Ushak 195
Usküb 195
Uspjenskaya Stanitsa, Dacian
phalerae 58
Utamaro (1753-1806) 205, 308
Utatlán 98
Uthina 66
pottery 76
Utica 64, 66, 67
Utopia, indigenous art 314
Utrecht 103, 109, 168, 228
archbishopric 104
architecture 166, 270, 278,
279
artistic cross-currents 154
artists 166, 167
ecclesiastical centre 116
manuscript painting 112, 117
Utz 97
Utzon, Jørn (1918-) 314
Uvarova, Countess P. S. 245
Uvea, Lapita pottery 51
Uxmal 98
Uzbekistan 192
art schools/museums 298, 303
arts and crafts 302, 302
patronage 196
peoples 194, 198
and Russian expansion 244-45
Uzès, panel painting 118
Uzgend, tomb 132
Uzunköprü 130
Vaasa 272
Vabkent 132
Vace, Bronze situlae 58
Vadodara, art school 298
Vadora, museum 298
Vadstena 154
Vaduz 230
Vaishali, jewellery 84, 85
Vaisnavis cult 134
Vakataka dynasty 85, 85
Valdivia 27, 153, 218, 219
wood carving 152
Vale de Fachas, megalithic art
29
Vale de Rodrigo, megalithic art
29
Valence 154
wall painting 118
Valence-sur-Baise 71
Valencia (South America) 100
Valencia (Spain) 124, 154
architecture 235
art event 316
art school 179, 286, 287
artists’ travels 119, 187
folklore painting 234
Impressionism 234, 235
Life of St George 118
metalwork 109, 114, 125
paper production 234
print-making 118
sculpture 235
textiles 178, 234
Valencia de Don Juan, castle 118
Valenciennes
104, 110, 177
painting 117
Valencioid tradition 100
Valerian, emperor 81
Valladolid 114, 115, 154, 178, 234
art centre 186
Valleia 182
Valley of the Kings 39
Valley of Mexico (Velasco) 217
Valley of the Queens 39
Valliserana 56
Vallodolid, ecclesiastical centre
118
Valparaiso 153, 218, 219
Valpedo, Giovanni Pelizza da
(1868-1907) 288
Valsømagle 31
Valverde 154
Van 43, 107, 195
van der Mey, J. M. 278
van der Vlught, L. C. 278
van Doesburg, Theo (1883-1931)
278
Van Dyck, Sir Anthony (1599-1641)
162, 169, 175
van Elk, Ger 279
van Eyck, Jan (d.1441) 117, 117,
119, 119
Van Gameren, Tylman 158
Van Gogh, Vincent (1853-90) 228,
228, 229, 233
Van Horne, Sir William 214
van Mander, Karl 187
Van Ruisdael, Jacob 230
Vanbrugh, John (1664-1726) 164,
165
Vanci 134
Vancouver 212
exhibitions 264, 264
indigenous arts 212
Vancouver Island 55
Vandals 70, 76, 76, 77
Vanderlyn, John 212
Vandiveer Hayden, Dr Ferdinand
214
Vanimo, pottery 50, 92
Vantongerloo, Georges 278
Vanua Levu, indigenous trade 209
Vanuatu 51, 51, 92, 208
Vaphlo 33
Varakhsha 83
Varallo 181, 182, 182
Varanasi
coins 84, 85
monolithic pillars 84
museum 298, 304
painting 304
trade 134
Vardar River 35
Vardhamana Mahavira 84
Varese 182, 182
Vargas, Luis 268
Varma, Raja Ravi (1860-1906) 249
Varna 102, 130, 184
Vasari, Giorgio 181
Vasio 67
Vasnetsov, Apollinary (1856-1933)
225
Vasnetsov, Viktor (1848-1926) 225
Vaucelles 112
Vavu ‘U 209
Vega de Guadancil, megalithic art
29
Veh Ardashir 81
Veii 64, 65
Vejrum 109
Velasco, José María (1840-1912)
217, 217
Velázquez, Diego (1599-1660) 179
Velikiy Ustyug 160, 160, 275
Ven 104
Venafrum 66
Vence 284, 285
Vendôme 110
Veneria 66
Veneti peoples 65
Venetian Republic 121, 123, 180,
181, 184
territories 173, 184
trade and culture 120, 122
Venetsianov, Aleksey (1780-1847)
224, 225
Venezuela 56, 100
artistic activity 219, 268, 269,
269
Bolívar’s campaigns 218
World Crafts Council 317
Vengi 134
Venice
architecture 110, 121, 122,
154, 180, 182
art centre 186
art collections 154, 181, 182,
187, 236
artistic influence 173, 236
artists’ travels 187
Biennale 316, 316
bronze doors 111
Byzantine art 107
Guggenheim museum 270
industrial 220
ivory-work 109
literary centre 103
mosaics 115
music 180
painted/sculpted cycles 181
painters of veduta 236
patrons and projects 121, 122,
123, 154, 181
printing 180, 181
religion, archbishopric 106
trade
gems 111
routes 115
South Netherlands 169
trade centre 102, 107, 111,
114, 120, 122, 131, 194
Venicea, Catholicism 104
Venta de la Perra 17
Venturi, Robert 265
Venus of Galgenberg 17
Venusia 66
Veramin, lustre ware 131
Vercelli 110, 114
Verden 103, 104
Verdun, architecture 177
Veretye Culture 21, 21
Vergina 60, 62
Verlikii Ustiug 160
Vermeer, Jan (1632-75) 167, 167
Vernay, Jean-Baptiste (1786-1833)
217
Vernet, Horace (1789-1863) 232
Verona 64, 102, 121, 180, 236
architecture 110, 114, 123, 181
art academy 182
industrial 220
literary centre 103
patronage 154, 181
ruins 122, 182
South Netherlands trade 169
Versailles 157, 166, 172, 173, 176,
177, 179
palace complex 186
UNESCO project 316
urban development 186
Verulamium 67, 68, 69
Verviers, glass museum 279
Veselovsky, N. I. 247, 247
Vesuvius Mt 220, 221
Veszprern 185
Vézelay, pilgrimage centre 110,
111, 111, 111
Via Hadriana 74
Viborg 108, 156, 157
Viboro 222
Vicarello 67
Vicenza 154, 180, 181
murals 110
Vicksburg, Civil War site 214
Vicoforte di Mondovi 181
Victor Emanuel II 237, 237
Victor Emanuel II with Garibaldi at the
Gates of Teano (Aldi) 237
Victoria
Aboriginal paintings 314
goldfields 259, 259
Vidisha
coins 84
temple 134
Vidor 54, 98
Vieira da Silva, María-Elena (1908-
92) 286, 287
Vienna 68, 195
academy 172, 186, 282
architecture 172, 270, 280
art collection 172, 186, 187,
187, 282
Art Nouveau 220
art review magazine 282
artistic centre 154, 184
artistic cross-currents 173, 236
artists’ travels 187
book production 170
capital city 238
Degenerate Art exhibition
281
ecclesiastical centre 116
influence in Hungary 185
Italianate designs 237
Judaism 184
manuscript painting 112
memorial 281
metalwork 109, 112
painting on porcelain 203
Secession style 239, 283
town-planning 238
urban development 186
World Fair 245
World Fair (1873) 239
Vienne 103
archbishopric 104
ecclesiastical centre 118
Vientiane 254
pagoda 206
timber 207
Viet Khe, Dong Son culture 90
Vietnam 90-91
art schools/museums 298
bronze implements 51
Mahayana Buddhism 206
Nguyen dynasty 254
tourism 311
wooden mask 255
World Crafts Council 316
Vigan, architecture 206
Vigeland, Gustav 273
Vigevano 122, 123
Vignes Jaunes, megalithic art 29
Vijaya 206
Vijayanagara
kingdom 135, 198
temples 134, 135
Tiruvengalanatha temple 135
Vikings 105
Abbasid trade 129
and Byzantium 106
main routes 104
sculpture 109
Vikramasila 134
Viktring, stained glass 110, 116
Vilarinho, megalithic art 29
Vilcas Huamán 100
Villa Filosofiana mosaic 69
Villa Madama 180
Villa Rotonda, replicas 159
Villa Savoye (Le Corbusier) 285
Villafranca del Biezo 118
Villanovan art 34
Villanueva, Carlos Raúl (1900-
1975) 269
Vilna 222, 224, 224, 225
Vilnius 154, 156, 157, 223, 272
art schools 282
contemporary art 273
studio programmes 273
Vilvoorde 168
Viñaque art 101
Virgil 67
Virgin Is 99
Viru culture 57
Vis I 21
Visby 108
castle 116
Vischer, Peter 170
Visconti family 121
Viseu 154
Visigoths, kingdom 70, 70
Vitebsk 160, 271, 275
Viterbo 114
Viti Levu
indigenous trade 209
Lapita pottery 51
Vitruvius (architect) 122, 154
Vivarium 103
Viye 191
Vizagapatam 198
Vizaknafurdo 238
Vladimir 106, 160, 225
textiles 224, 224
Vladivostok 224
Vo Toan (architect) 290
Vogelherd 16
ivory carvings 17
Volci peoples 65
Voldtofte 31
Volendam, art colony 228, 228
Volgograd, WWII memorial 275
Vologda 154, 160, 161
textiles 224, 224, 225
Vologesias, Parthian architecture
80
Volos 32, 33, 282
Volsinii 64
Voltaire 173
Volterra 110, 114, 181
museum 182
Volturno 237
Volubilis 68
von Guérard, Eugène (1811-1901)
258, 259, 259
Vonones I, gold drachm 80
Vorkuta 160
Vorticism 276
Vries, Adriaen de (1545-1626) 156,
157, 171
Vrubel, Mikhail (1856-1910) 225
Vulcanists 220, 221
Vulci 64, 65
Vyatka 160, 224, 225
artists’ colony 225
Vyshny Volochëk 225, 225
Vyssí Brod, ecclesiastical centre
116
Waalwijk, architecture 279
Wad ben Naqa 72
Wadi Wassa, pottery 36
Wadia 191
Wadjet, cobra goddess 38
Wahhabi
clerics 195
reformers in Arabia 244
Waifu 140
Wakamatsu 140
Wakayama 205
Waki 89
Walakpa 55
Walata 126, 188, 190, 240
Walberswick 220, 276, 276
Waldalgesheim, metalwork site 59
Waldendenburg, Degenerate Art
exhibition 281
Wales
artistic centres 164
major country houses 164
Walewice 159
Walker, Horatio 214
Walkunder Arch, rock shelter 16
Wall paintings see frescoes
Wallachia 184, 184, 185, 185
Walloon 168
Wallpaper 192, 192, 193, 203
Walo 191
Walpole, Horace 164
Walters, Gordon 315
Walvis Bay 190
Wambu 191
Wanås 273
Wandu 191
Warangal, temple 134
Ward, James 226
Wareham 163
Wargata Mina 21
Wargata Mina Cavern, rock art 50
Wari Willka 101
Warka 80, 81, 245
Warrnambool, reciprocal portraits
258
Warsaw 160, 224
architecture 158, 158, 159, 283
art review magazines 282
artistic centre 282
artistic cross-currents 173
artists’ travels 187
Formists 282
industrial 220
Palace of Culture and Science
283
urban development 186
Wartburg 108
Wartburg Castle 231
Warwick, stained glass 116
Warwick (Australia) 259
Washington DC 212, 212, 213,
262, 264, 265
Wasit 128, 128
Wasserburg
Wat see Buddhism, temples
Water Newton 71
Waterford 109, 163
Waterloo, Musée Wellington 229
Watom, Lapita pottery 51
Watson, Homer 214
Wattasids 190
Watteau, Jean-Antoine (1684-
1721) 177
Watts’ Chapel and Pottery 220, 221
Wau-ri 88
Waywaka 27, 27, 57
Wedgwood, Josiah 165
Weeden Island 55, 96
Wegrów 159
Wei 86, 91
Weifang 306
Weihaiwei 250
Weimar
academy 172
architecture 230
Bauhaus site 280
Degenerate Art exhibition
281
religion 282
Weingarten 108
Weissenberg 103
Weizhou 136
silk production 137
Well-Governed Town (Lorenzetti) 120
Wellington
architecture 315
indigenous art 315
Maori art 259
Pacific art 313
Wells 112
ecclesiastical centre 116
Welsh
INDEX
350
Western Mediterranean 64-5
Tinga Tinga, tourist/modern art
292, 293
Tingbao, Yang (architect) 307
Tingis 64, 67, 69
Tinguely, Jean (1925-91) 260, 285
Tinmal 125
Tinnis 129
Tinos 282
pottery 283
Tintagel, amphorae 71
Tintern Abbey 226
Tio 191
Tipasa, mosaics 76
Tirana 130, 185
Biennial 316, 316
Tirani 104
Tiraoa 195
Tiraz factories 129
Tire 130
Tirebon 206
Tirgoviste 154, 185
Tiruvannamalai 134
Tiruvarur 134
Tiruvengalanatha temple 135
Tiryns 32, 32, 33
Tismana 185
Tissarakshita, Queen of Ashoka (A.
Tagore) 304
Titian (c.1485/90-1576) 155, 178,
180, 180, 181, 181, 214, 237
Tito Bustillo 19
Tivissi 64
Tivoli 67, 110, 181
Tizapán el Alto 98
Tjeribon 254
Tlacopan 98
Tlalpan 98
Tlanjin, museum 298
Tlemcen 126, 188
mosque 125
pilgrimage route 240
textiles 124
Tlingit
land-otter mask 214
Totem Poles 213
Tnoniná 54
Tobago 99
Tobna, textiles 124
Tobol’sk 160
museum 298
Tochi Valley, inscriptions 83
Todai-ji 205
Todi 110, 114, 181
Togari-ish 49
Togiak 96
Togidubnus, king 67
Togo 243
World Crafts Council 316
Tohari ichibanwari 89
Tohwa-ri 88
Toirae-ri 88
Tojin 89
Tok-kala, inscriptions 83
Tokaido 252
Tokat 195
mosque 131
Tokmak, arts and crafts 302, 303
Tokoname, pottery 140
Tokugawa shogunate
headquarters 205
shrine 204
Tokyo 204, 252, 253
art school 299
cultural centre 192, 308, 309
National Stadiums 299
Neolithic culture 46
Nihonga painting 309
Tolbaga, bone figurine 16
Toledo 70, 71, 102, 109, 114
architecture 114, 178
art centre 154, 179
artists’ travels 119
Islamic 129
museum 262, 262
paper-making 114, 125
pre-Islamic city 124
stained glass 118
textiles 234
Tolentino 114
Toling, art centre 200
Tollantzinco 54
Tolosa 64, 234
Tolsá, Manuel 216
Tolstoy, Leo 224
Tolstaya Mogila
pectoral 58, 59
Scythian burials 58
Toltec peoples 98, 98, 99
Toma 88
Tomar 110, 154, 178
ecclesiastical centre 118
Tomatlán 98
Tombs
Aegean 33, 60, 61
Central Asia 132, 133, 133
China 86, 87, 306
decorated 52, 57, 62-63, 65
Egyptian 75
Etruscan 182
Italian 121, 123, 181
Japan and Korea 89, 89
North African 188, 188
South Asia 198
Southeast Asia 143
West Asia 43
Tomi, Greek colony 58
Tomsk 224
Tonalá 54, 98
Tonga 92, 93, 144
art production 256
Cook’s voyage 208, 209, 209
dance apron 209
indigenous trade 209, 209
Pacific art 312, 313
pottery 51, 51, 92
Tong’an, kiln site 137, 138
Tongatapu 209
Lapita pottery 51
Tongchuan, kiln site 136
Tongking 254
Tongnae 49
Tongsam-dong, masks 49
Toniná 98
Tonmere 154
Toolesboro Mounds 55
Toorop, Jan (1858-1928) 228, 229
Toprak-kala, inscriptions 83
Toprakkale 43
Toqay-Timurids 196
Toquepala Cave 20
Torajaland
effigies 254, 254
Granaries 310
Toran 81
Torcello 110
Torgau 170, 171
Torihama 49, 49
Toro 88
Torone 32
Toronto 212, 262, 262, 264, 264,
317
Torres-García, Joaquín 268, 269
Torrigiano, Pietro 163
Torriti, Jacopo (fl.1270-1300)
115
Torrs, metalwork 59
Tortosa 114, 154
panel painting 118
Torun 158
ecclesiastical centre 116
Torupgaarde 31
Torwa 190
Tosa painters 205
Toscanos 34
Tosong-ni 49
Toul, ecclesiastical centre 116
Toulouse 64, 71, 102, 104
alabaster 109, 112, 118
architecture 177
art centre 154, 285
cathedral 110
literary centre 103, 118
shrine 111, 111
university 112, 114
Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri (1864-
1901) 221, 233
Toumba tou Skourou 32
Toungoo 254
Tourism 317
African tourist art 243, 295,
297
Pacific cultural centres 257,
312, 313, 313
Southeast Asia 310, 310
West Asia 244, 301
Tournai 168, 228
carpet centre 229
metalwork 108, 112
tapestry 117
Tournant, megalithic art 29
Tours 102, 174
Tours
archbishopric 104
artistic centre 105, 175
book production 103, 104
Chateau d’Oíron 285
ecclesiastical centre 116
metalwork 109, 109, 112
murals 110
pilgrimage route 111
Tower Hill 259
Town Creek 96, 97
The Town (Vieira da Silva) 286
Townsville 312
Towosahgy 97
Toy-making 224, 224
Toyama 308
Tozeur, textiles 124
Trade
and art 109, 243
and artistic influence 111
and culture 120, 154
fairs/markets 224, 224, 225
and industry 107
long-distance 30
maritime 32, 71, 71, 85, 86, 91,
91, 118, 124, 139, 146, 196
mercantile 198
Trade routes 52-53
Abbasid 129
Aegean 32, 60
African 190, 191
Baltic 156
Byzantine art 106
Central America 98, 150
Central Asia 83, 196, 196, 197,
246
Chinese 86, 87, 139, 252
Egyptian 75
English 163
European 102, 102, 103, 109,
111, 111, 113, 154, 156
Hansa alliances 156
India 85, 134
Italian 120, 122, 180
Japan and Korea 140, 141,
204, 252, 308
Mediterranean 34, 67, 102
North Africa 188, 240, 241
Norther Europe 58
Roman Empire 69
Russian 197, 224
Saharan 73, 124, 125, 126, 126,
188, 189, 190, 191, 240,
241, 243, 290
Scandinavia 156
South American 57, 101
South Asia 134, 198
South Netherlands 169
Southeast Asia 91, 91, 142,
143, 206, 207
Southern Europe 114, 115,
118
West Asia 41, 42, 131, 194
Western Islam 124, 125
Western Mediterranean 64-65
see also Caravanserais; Silk
Road
Tragurium 66
Traill, Jessie 314
Trajan, emperor 66, 122
Trajan’s Canal 74
Trani 110, 180, 181
Tranquebar, printing 192
Trans-Siberian Railway 224
Transcaspia 247
Transcaspian Railway 246
Transcaucasia, Russian expansion
244
Transoxania 129, 132, 196, 197
Transylvania 154
religious architecture 184-5,
185
Trapani 154
Trapezus 62, 70
Traprain Law 71
Treaty of Gulistan 244
Treaty of Turkmanchay 244
Trebizond 67, 71, 224
Byzantine 130
carpet-making centre 244
Greek colony 58
monastery 106
trading centre 107, 131, 195
Trebonsice, wall painting 116
Trempealeau 55
Trengganu 143
Trent 154, 181
Trento 114, 180
Tres Zapotes 26, 54
Tresguerras, Francisco (1759-1833)
217
Tressini, Domenico 161
Tretyakov, Pavel (1832-98) 225
Treviso 121
university 120
Trichinopoly, painting 248
Trier 69, 70, 102, 172
Archbishop of 105
architecture 108, 109
art centre 186
book production 104
ecclesiastical centre 116
floor mosaics 71
Trieste
alabaster 111
art colony 282
murals 110
shipyard 220
town planning 238
Trikala, textiles 283
Trincomalee 198
Trindhoj 31
Trinidad 99, 99, 218
artists 217
Trinity (Masaccio) 122
Tripoli
Crusader castle 130
textiles 124
trade centre 131, 240
Tripoli (Libya), architecture 290
Tripoli (Syria)
Ayyubid Sultanate 106
Ottoman 195
Tripoli (Tripoli)
Ottoman city 188, 194
trade centre 126, 188, 190
Tripolitania 69
Trivento, archbishopric 104
Trocadero 234
Troia 110
Troki 158
Tromsø 272, 273
Trondheim 108, 109, 156, 157,
222
art college 273
Troost, Paul 281
Troppau 238
Trouville 270
Troy 32, 33, 35, 41, 42, 212
artistic finds 41
excavations 245
Troyan monastery 185
Troyes 70, 103, 112, 174
architecture 110
ecclesiastical centre 116
museum 385
royal progress 154
Trujillo 152, 153, 218, 219
Trundholm
bronze sun chariot 31
metalwork 31
Tryavna 185
Trzemeszno 108
Tsaparang, art centre 200
Tsaritsyn 160
Tshultrim Rinchen (1698-1774)
203
Tsitsihar 202, 250
Tsuchihashi 89
Tsukamo 48, 49
Tsurpu, art centre 200
Tsutaya Jusaburo (publishers) 205
Tsuzak 89
Tuamotu Islands 208, 209
Tübingen, ecclesiastical centre
116
Tuburon Hills 55
Tucacas 100
Tuccí 66
Tudela 114, 154
ecclesiastical centre 118
Tudmur 80
Tukolor empire 243
Tula 160, 225
industrial 220
metalwork 224, 224
Toltec capital 98, 98, 99
Tularosa Cave 55
Tulaytulah 102
Tulczyn 159
Tulip Chest (Csók) 239
Tulmaitha, textiles 124
Tulum 98
Tumbes 152, 153
Tunacunnhee 55
Tunis 126, 129
architecture 125, 189, 290
artistic centre 188, 290, 241
conquered by Charles V 155
crafts 291
madrasa 125
royal progress 154
Spanish garrison 188
textiles 124, 240
trade centre 124, 188, 190,
240
Western style art 240
Zaytuna mosque 240
Tunisia 64, 195
architecture 290, 290
aristic cross-currents 125, 290
Blue Koran 125
ivory 125
Muslim raids 124
Muslim/Jewish refugees 188
World Crafts Council 316
Tunjur 190
Tunnae-ri 88
Tupusuctu 66
Turbat-i Jam 133
Turfan 87, 132, 196, 247, 302
Turi 100
Turiasso 66
Turin 102, 104, 121
architecture 173, 288
art collections 181, 182, 187
artistic influence 173, 236,
288
artists’ travels 187
bastions 180
churches 123
Futurism 288
industrial 220
murals 110
museums 182
panel painting 118
ruins 122
urban development 186
Turkestan 196, 246, 247
archaeological survey 247
tomb 133
Turkestan Archaeological Society
247
Turkey 300, 301
art schools/museums 298
fine arts 301
naval threat 180, 180
Ottoman 189
Roman alphabet 301
and southeast Europe 184, 185
Turkmenistan 196, 302
art schools/museums 298
tribal weaving 247
Turko-Mongolian peoples 130,
132, 196
Turks & Caicos Is 99
Turku 154, 157, 220, 222, 222,
272, 273
Turner 55
Turner, J. M. W. (1775-1851) 226,
228
Turner Prize 277, 316
Turnstone Beach 96
Turoe, stone carving 59
Turones 102
Turquoise 38
Turtle Mound 96
Turyvannamalai 134
Tus 83
lustre ware 131
Tuscania 110
Tuscany 120, 180
Romanesque style 122
South Netherlands trade 169
Tutankhamun, king 39, 39
Tutbury 109, 116
Tuticorin 198
Tutrakan 130
Tututepac 98
Tver’ 160, 160, 224
Tweespruit, mission school 296
Tybrind Vig 20, 21, 28
Tykocin 158, 159
Tylissos 33
Tyndaris 66
Tyras, Greek colony 58
Tyre
Achaeminid 68, 71, 78, 80
Crusader castle 130
Islamic 128
Phoenician 34, 43
trading centre 107, 132
Tyrol 121, 170
Tyrrhenian Sea 64
trading route 120, 122
Tyumen’ 224
museum 298
Tywrów 159
Tzara, Tristan (1896-1963) 283
Tzinzuntan 98
Uai Bobo, pottery 50
Uaxactún 54
Ubayama 49
Ubeda 154
wool production 234
Ubud, museum 299
Uch 198
Uch Turfan 196, 196
Ucubi 66
Udaipur, miniature paintings 198
Udayagiri
monastery 84
Udayagiri
temple 85
Udayapura, temple 134
Ufa 160, 224
artists’ centre 225, 225
Uffizi 182
Ugarit 32, 32, 41, 42
gold bowl 42
Uijan 198
Ujaini, coins 84
Ujamaa
artists’ workshop 296
tourist/modern art 292, 293
Ujazd 159
Ujjain, trade 134
Ujung Pandang, arts and crafts
310
UK, World Crafts Council 316
Ukraine 161
Orthodox 158
pottery 283
Ulan-Batar 298
Ulan-Ude 298
Ulladulla, Aboriginal drawings
258
Ullastret 64
Ulm 170, 281
ecclesiastical centre 116
Ulu Leang, pottery 50
Uluburun 32
wreck 33
Ulugh Beg (Timurid ruler) 197
Ulundi, museums 296
Ulysses, fresco 67
Umami 89
Umanoyama 89
Umayyad Caliphate 102, 124, 125,
128, 128, 129
Umboi, Lapita pottery 51
Umea, art college 273
Umm al Marra 40
Umm an Nar 40, 41
Umma, early urbanism 25
Un episodio de la fiebre... (Blanes) 219
Undae-ri 49
Undi 191
Ungchon 88
Unggi 49
Ungjin 89
INDEX
352
Catholicism 104
states 102
Welwyn Garden City 276, 276
Wenxian 86
Wenzhou 250
kiln site 137
Werden 103, 108
Wessex 102, 104, 105
Catholicism 104
West Africa 95, 126, 242, 290, 294-
295
colonial impact on arts 147,
294
masquerades 295
post colonial 295
West Asia 40-41, 42-43, 78-79, 80-
81, 130-131, 194-195, 244-245,
300-301
Achaemenid Persian empire 78
architecture 300, 300, 300
art 40, 41, 42, 43
artistic traditions 301
colonial rule 300
eastern culture 80
and Egypt 128-9
fine art 300
international borders 300
Parthian empire 80, 80, 81
patronage 196
Sasanian empire 80-81, 81
trade and culture 194-195
see also Byzantine empire;
Fatimid Caliphate; Seljuk
empire
West Indies Company 167
West Prussia 230
West Wales 102
Weston, Edward 263
Westphalia 170, 172, 230
architecture 173
Wettersfelde, Scythian objects 58
Wexford 109, 163
Weymouth 163
Whalebone, figurines 20
Wharton Hill 16
Whistler, James McNeill (1834-
1903) 215, 227
Whitby 103
jet centre 164
White Castle 212
White Cube (gallery) 277
White Mts, New Hampshire 213
Whiteread, Rachel (1963-) 277,
277
Whithorn 103
Whydah 191
Wiener Neustadt, ecclesiastical
centre 116
Wiertz, Antoine 228
Wiesbaden 230, 281
Wilde, Oscar 227
Willendorf 16, 17
William the Conqueror 109
Williamson 96
Willington 259
Willumsen, J. F. 272, 272
Wilno 156, 157, 158, 159
Wilson, Richard 165
Wilton 164
Wimar, Charles 214
Winchelsea 163
Winchester 102, 102, 111
ecclesiastical centre 116
manuscripts 108, 112
metalwork 109, 112
palace complex 104
Winckelmann, Joachim 157, 173
Windhoek, museum 296
Winnebago tribe 212
Winnica 158, 159
Winnipeg 264
Winnipeg Lake, paintings 214
Winterveld, textiles 296
Winterville 97
Wismar 170
Witaszkovo, Scythian objects 58
Witebsk 158
Wittenberg 154
book production 170
Witz, Konrad (1400/10-1445/6) 171
Wivenhoe, architecture 276
Wloclawek 158
Wlodzimierz 158
Wolfenbüttel 154
Wolfers, Philippe 221
Wolin 109
Wolmirst 104
Wolof 190
Wolpa 158
wooden synagogue 159
Wolsey, Cardinal 163
Wolverhampton 220
Wood
carving 21, 71
Celtic 59
Central Asia 302, 303
East and Central Africa 292,
292, 293, 293
European 28, 109, 170, 170
India 248, 304
Maori 258
North Africa 76
North America 148
Northern Europe 58, 59,
116, 117
Pacific 256
Russian 161, 224, 224
South America 152
Southeast Asia 206, 254,
255, 255, 310, 311, 311
Southern Africa 296
Southern Europe 118
Sub-Saharan Africa 126,
190, 191
West Africa 147, 294, 294
Christian panels 103
Nile Valley products 39, 75
South Netherlands trade 168,
168, 169
stool and foot rest 242
work
Aegean 60
Chinese 200, 200, 201,
202, 203, 307
North African 291
West Asia 301, 301
Wood, Christopher 277
Woods, Lake of the 214
Woolley, Sir Leonard 40
Worcester 163, 164
Work (Madox Brown) 226
World Chronicle (Paris) 112
World Crafts Council 316, 316,
316, 317
World Heritage organizations 316-
317, 317
sites in Asia 298, 299
sites in peril 317
World War I 245, 270, 276, 280,
282, 284, 300
World War II 263, 264, 265, 270,
273, 275, 277, 285, 300, 308, 310
Worms
ecclesiastical centre 116
major church 112
palace complex 104
Wornie 158
Worpswede 220, 221
Metaphysical painting 270
Modern painting 280, 280
Worth (fashion designer) 233
WPA (Works Progress
Administration) 262, 263
Wren, Christopher 164
Wright 55
Wright, Frank Lloyd (1867-1959)
263, 264, 265
Writing see script
Wrocl/aw 154, 158, 230, 283
ecclesiastical centre 116
public spirit 230
Wroxeter, coins 58
Wu 86, 205
Wu School 205
Wuari see Huari
Wuchang 138, 200, 202, 250
Wuhan 47
museum 307
Wuhu 250
Wuji, silk production 137
Wukszta 158
Wuolvinus Alter 104
Wupatki 96
Wuppertal 281
Württemberg 170, 230
Würzburg 103
architecture 173
art collection 172
artistic cross-currents 173
artists’ travels 187
book production 104
ecclesiastical centre 116
sculpture 170
urban development 186
Wutaishan, religious art 136
Wutuoling 88
Wuxi 87, 250
gardens 200
painting 202
Wuxing, painting centre, 202
Wuzhou 136, 250
print centre 137
Wyoming 212
Xacalla 54
Xaltocan 98
Xanadu
Xanathi, textiles 283
Xanthus 78
Xenocrates (historian) 61
Xeste 3 house 32
Xia dynasty 47
Xiamen 192, 250, 306, 307
Xi’an 47, 86, 86, 87, 138, 200,
202, 250, 306, 307
Xiangzhou 136
Xianyang 86, 87, 307
Xicallanco 98
Xico 98
Xicun, kiln site 137
Xigazê 250
Xinglongwa culture 46
Xingtai, early urbanism 25
Xingzhou 136
Xinjiang 250
arts and crafts 302, 303
Manichaean codex 83
Xinle culture 46
Xiuhquilpan 54
Xiuning, printing 192, 200, 250
Xochicalco influence 98
Xochimilco 98
Xu 86
Xuancheng, printing 200, 202,
250
Xuanzang (Buddhist pilgrim) 85
Xuanzhou 136
Xuzhou 87, 307
Yaguajay 266
Yagul 98
Yaizhou 138
Yajiri 89
Yaka 191
Yakke-Parsan 83
Yakut 224
Yakuts 161
Yalangtush Bi Alchin 197
Yamaguchi 140, 141
Yamasaki, Minoru 265
Yamatai 88
Yamato polity 89
Yamghan, shrine 196
Yamhad 42, 42
Yan 86
Yan’an 306, 307
art school 298
Yanchokrak Melitopol, Dacian
phalerae 58
Yangbajin 302
Yangdong-ni 88
Yangling 86
Yangpyong-ni 49, 88
Yangsan 88
Yangshao
archaeology 306
culture 46, 46
Yangul-li 49
Yangzhou
archaeology 307
painting 251
paper production 137
printing 202, 250
silk production 136
Yantaga 49
Yantai 250
Yaoundé, arts and crafts 294,
295
Yaozhou, kiln site 137
Yapese empire 144, 145, 208
Yarkand 132, 196, 196, 302, 303
archaeological survey 247, 247
Buddhist/Kushan art 83
Yarkhoto 247
Yarmouth 163
Yarmukian figurines 21
Yaroslavl’ 106, 160, 224
Yarumela 54
Yasi 196, 246
Ahmad Yasavid’s tomb 132
archaeological survey 247
Yasidharapura, temple 142
Yatra (M. F. Husain) 305
Yaxchilán 54, 98
Yaxuná 54
Yayoi culture 88-89
Yayoi-cho 88
Yazd 129, 195
carpets 301
lustre ware 131
Yaze 49
Yazilikaya, excavations 245
Yean-ni 88
Yeavering 102
Yekaterinburg 160, 224
museum 298
Yekaterinodar 224, 225
Yelets 133
Yellow River 46
Yelwa, archaeology 294
Yemen 129, 301
art schools/museums 298
Yeniseysk, museum 298
Yepoti 91
Yermak, route of 161
Yezo 140, 204
Yi (Choson) Dynasty 141
Yichang 250
Yin Shan, Buddhist shrine 306
Yinan, archaeology 306
Yingtianfu, silk production 137
Yintaowen culture 46
Yirrkala, indigenous art 314
Yixing
kiln site 200, 202, 250, 251
teapots 203
Yizhou, silk production 136, 137
Yodong 89
Yogyakarta
arts and crafts 298, 310
museum 298
temple 142, 254
Yokohama 252, 308
art event 316
Yoksam-dong 49
Yombon 50
Yonggangni 88
Yongsangong 49
York 69, 70, 102, 103
alabaster 109, 112
archbishopric 104
art destroyed 163
artistic centre 164
ecclesiastical centre 116
stained glass 108, 116
Yoruba 126, 190, 191
Yosemite 213
Yosemite tribe 212
Yoshida 89
Yoshigo 48, 49
Yoshinogari 88, 89
Yoshizuka 89
Yotkan 247
Yotodoki 89
Young Man Leaning against a Tree
(Hilliard) 163
Youngfu, kiln site 137
Youzhou 136
Ypres 168
painting 117
Ystad 272
Yu xian, kiln site 138
Yuanling 306
Yuanmou, archaeology 307
Yucatán 99
Yucuita 54
Yucunudahui 54
pottery 54
Yue 86
Yuezhou
kiln site 136, 137
silk production 136
Yugoslavia 239
art styles 282
Yulin, religious art 137
Yun, O (1946-85) 309
Yun Du-so, self-portrait 205
Yungang, Buddhist caves 87, 306,
307
Yunnanfu
Yunzhou, silk production 137
Yupik tribe 212
Yushu 302
Yuxi xian, kiln site 138
Yväskylä, art gallery 273
Zaachila 98
Zabid 129
Zabludow 158
Zacatecas, art movement 216, 266
Zacoalco 54
Zadracarta 62
Zagorsk 154
Zágráb, wall painting 116
Zagreb 184
architecture 185, 283
art colony 282
Zaire 292
Colonie Belge 293
Zaire (previously Congo) 278
Zakynthos 60
Zama 64
Zaman, Muhammad (fl.1649-1704)
194
Zambia 292
arts and crafts 296
Zamboanga, arts and crafts 310
Zambujeiro, megalithic art 29
Zamora 109, 110, 111, 234
alabaster 118
Zamos´´c 154
architecture 158, 158, 159
Zamostje 21, 21
Zamoyski, Jan 158
Zanbil 42
Zancle 65
Zandane, textiles 133
Zandvoort, art colony 228, 228
Zanzibar 127
trading post 242
wood carving 292, 292, 292
Zaporozh’ye 160
Zara Yaqob 127, 127
Zaragoza see Saragossa
Zaramo, post sculptures 292
Zarand, minaret 130
Zaranj 83, 129
Zaria 191
arts and crafts 294, 295
Zariaspa 80
Zavara 131
minaret 130
Zay 302
Zaytunah mosque 188
Zbaraz 159
Zbigniew Ossolinski with his sons 158
Zd’ar u Blovic, wall painting 116
Zealand 156, 157, 222
bronze sun chariot 31
Danish Bronze Age 31
Zedes, megalithic art 29
Zeila 126, 190
Zen religion 141, 205
Zenderoudi, Hussein 301
Zenjan, carpets 301
Zenodoros 66
Zeugma 71, 80
Zeus, Great Altar of 63
Zhang Daqian (1899-1983) 307
Zhao 86
Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322) 139
Zhaxilhüno, art centre
Zhdanov, Andrei 275
Zhe School style 205
Zhejiang 306
Zhendingfu, silk production 137
Zhengzhou 46, 47, 306, 307
early urbanism 25
Zhenjiang 250
Zhongdu 200
Zhou dynasty 47, 47, 86
Zhoukoudian 18
Peking man 306
Ziapur, Jalil 301
Ziaret 131
Zibo, kiln site 137
Zichem, stained glass 110, 116
Ziegler and Co, textiles 245
Ziggurats 25, 40, 41, 42
Zimbabwe 127, 260
arts and crafts 296
palette 16
sculpture 190
stone carving 296
World Crafts Council 316
Zimmermann, Dominikus 173
Zirovnice, wall painting 116
Ziwiye 42, 43
Ziyaragah 133
Zizhou, silk production 137
Zofiówka 159
Zoldhalomputza, Scythian objects
58
Zolkiew 159
Zonguldak 130, 244
Zorn, Anders (1860-1920) 223, 223
Zoroastrian faith 81, 132
Zseliz, wall painting 116
Zuccabar 66
Zuchau 109
Zulu 191
Zundert 228
Zurbarán, Francisco de (1598-
1664) 179, 214
Zurich 109, 154, 231
academy 172
architecture 171
auctioneers 316
Dada movement 280, 280, 283,
283
experimental art 270, 270
metalwork 170
Protestantism 171
Surrealism 283
wall painting 116
Zutphen 168
Zuzan 81
Zwetti, ecclesiastical centre 116
Zwolle, painting 117
Zydaców 158
Zytomierz 158