Reading a lot!

Today I am going to start reading about Religious art. Last week I went to the library and got a book about Christian art and I’ve read in it over the weekend and I though it was really interesting. It’s not just all about the history of it but about the symbols that appear in different religious art pieces. It is kind of like a dictionary of Christian art and I think that I am going to find it helpful for annotating images.

Notes/ things that interest me and got my attention while reading Chapter 9 “Medieval Christendom” (World Art of History, 2009):

-          The book just talks about acoustic and how well the stone echoes the singer – it’s an amazing thing – almost every church I’ve been in in my life has this great acoutisc and a single stone vault and I think it’s great how it all began such a long time ago; and it’s the same with the little chapel and altar enclosed to the single stone vault so a few priests could say mass at the same time – it’s in almost every church these days unless it’s only a small one then not but the ones we call classical or of extreme beauty they all have that

-          “Dignified” is such a perfect word to describe Romanesque style – I always wondered what that word was and the feeling you get when you enter such building

-          “Romanesque portal” – the entrance of a church (where every person entering the church would enterd under the all-seeing judge), Christ was always shown in the middle and the other men/women shown around him were much smaller, favourite subject to portray was the Last Judgement

-          Architecture wise they developed two different styles: the tunnel and the transverse (series of tunnel vaults places transversely) and then they started combining the two and made a new style called “Groin” vaults

-          Rib vaults were practically easier to built than Groin vaults as they were built first as the supporters of the rest of the building instead of being built after the rest of the building which made the construction with the Groin vaults much more complicated + rib vaults also had aesthetic reasons why architects started using them instead of Groin vaults because it Rib vaults let in more light and it took of the forbidding appearance that the darkness and sterness gave the older buildings

-           St Denis was the first church built in the Gothic style (around 1144 AD)

-          Churches with a lot of stained glass had extra support to make the building stable; it was called “flying buttresses” and were built outside of the building and stabilised the few columns on the inside

-          English and German architects developed the Gothic style further and especially Germany expanded scale and richness of detail (Cologne Cathedral was one of the tallest and longest Gothic churches although it was finished in 1880 after 600 years taking to complete it)