The art of Europe, also known as Western art, encompasses the history of visual art in Europe. European prehistoric art started as mobile Upper Paleolithic rock and cave painting and petroglyph art and was characteristic of the period between the Paleolithic and the Iron Age. Written histories of European art often begin with the Aegean civilizations, dating from the 3rd millennium BC. However, a consistent pattern of artistic development within Europe becomes clear only with Ancient Greek art, which was adopted and transformed by Rome and, with the Roman Empire, was carried across much of Europe, North Africa and Western Asia.Boardman, John ed., The Oxford History of Classical Art, pp. 349-369, Oxford University Press, 1993,
The influence of the art of the Classical period waxed and waned throughout the next two thousand years, seeming to slip into a distant memory in parts of the Medieval period, to re-emerge in the Renaissance, suffer a period of what some early art historians viewed as "decay" during the Baroque period,Banister Fletcher excluded nearly all Baroque buildings from his mammoth tome A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method. The publishers eventually rectified this. to reappear in a refined form in Neo-ClassicismMurray, P. and Murray, L. (1963) The Art of the Renaissance. London: Thames & Hudson (World of Art), p. 9. . "...in 1855 we find, for the first time, the word 'Renaissance' used — by the French historian Michelet — as an adjective to describe a whole period of history and not confined to the rebirth of Latin letters or a classically inspired style in the arts." and to be reborn in Post-Modernism.Hause, S. & Maltby, W. (2001). A History of European Society. Essentials of Western Civilization (Vol. 2, pp. 245–246). Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning, Inc.
Before the 1800s, the Christian church was a major influence on European art, and commissions from the church provided the major source of work for artists. In the same period, there was also a renewed interest in classical mythology, great wars, heroes and heroines, and themes not connected to religion. Most art of the last 200 years has been produced without reference to religion and often with no particular ideology at all, but art has often been influenced by political issues, whether reflecting the concerns of patrons or the artist.
European art is arranged into many stylistic periods, which, historically, overlap each other as different styles flourished in different areas. Broadly the periods are: Classical, Byzantine, Medieval, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical, Modern, Postmodern and New European Painting.
Prehistoric art
European prehistoric art is an important part of the European cultural heritage. Prehistoric art history is usually divided into four main periods: Stone Age, Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. Most of the remaining artifacts of this period are small sculptures and cave paintings.
Much surviving prehistoric art is small portable sculptures, with a small group of female Venus figurines such as the Venus of Willendorf (24,000–22,000 BC) found across central Europe;Sandars, 8-16, 29-31 the 30 cm tall Löwenmensch figurine of about 30,000 BCE has hardly any pieces that can be related to it. The Swimming Reindeer of about 11,000 BCE is one of the finest of several Magdalenian carvings in bone or antler of animals in the art of the Upper Paleolithic, though they are outnumbered by engraved pieces, which are sometimes classified as sculpture.Hahn, Joachim, "Prehistoric Europe, §II: Palaeolithic 3. Portable art" in Oxford Art Online, accessed 24 August 2012; Sandars, 37-40 With the beginning of the Mesolithic in Europe figurative sculpture greatly reduced,Sandars, 75-80 and remained a less common element in art than relief decoration of practical objects until the Roman period, despite some works such as the Gundestrup cauldron from the European Iron Age and the Bronze Age Trundholm sun chariot.Sandars, 253-257, 183-185
The oldest European cave art dates to 40,800 years ago and can be found in the El Castillo Cave in Spain. Other cave painting sites include Lascaux, Cave of Altamira, Grotte de Cussac, Pech Merle, Cave of Niaux, Chauvet Cave, Font-de-Gaume, Creswell Crags, Nottinghamshire, England, (Cave etchings and bas-reliefs discovered in 2003), Coliboaia cave from Romania (considered the oldest cave painting in central Europe) and Magura, Belogradchik, Bulgaria. Rock painting was also performed on cliff faces, but fewer of those have survived because of erosion. One well-known example is the rock paintings of Astuvansalmi in the Saimaa area of Finland. When Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola first encountered the Magdalenian paintings of the Altamira cave, Cantabria, Spain, in 1879, the academics of the time considered them hoaxes. Recent reappraisals and numerous additional discoveries have since demonstrated their authenticity, while also stimulating interest in the artistry of Upper Palaeolithic peoples. Cave paintings, undertaken with only the most rudimentary tools, can also furnish valuable insight into the culture and beliefs of that era.
The Rock art of the Iberian Mediterranean Basin represents a very different style, with the human figure the main focus, often seen in large groups, with battles, dancing, and hunting all represented, as well as other activities and details such as clothing. The figures are generally depicted rather sketchily in thin paint, with the relationships between the groups of humans and animals more carefully rendered than individual figures. Other, less numerous groups of rock art, many engraved rather than painted, show similar characteristics. The Iberian examples are believed to date from a long period, perhaps covering the Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and early Neolithic.
Prehistoric Celtic art dates to much of Iron Age Europe and survives mainly as high-status metalwork skillfully decorated with complex, elegant, and mostly abstract designs, often featuring curving and spiral forms. There are human heads and some fully represented animals, but full-length human figures at any size are so rare that their absence may represent a religious taboo. As the Romans conquered Celtic territories, it almost entirely vanished. Still, the style continued in limited use in the British Isles, and with the coming of Christianity, it was revived there in the Insular style of the Early Middle Ages.
Ancient Minoan
The Minoan civilization of Crete is regarded as the oldest civilization in Europe. Minoan art is marked by imaginative images and exceptional artistry. Sinclair Hood described an "essential quality of the finest Minoan art, the ability to create an atmosphere of movement and life although following a set of highly formal conventions".Hood, 56 It forms part of the wider grouping of Aegean art, and in later periods came for a time to have a dominant influence over Cycladic art. Wood and textiles have decomposed, so most surviving examples of Minoan art are pottery, intricately carved Minoan seals, palace frescos (which include landscapes), small sculptures in various materials, jewellery, and metalwork.
The relationship of Minoan art to that of other contemporary cultures and later Ancient Greek art has been much discussed. It clearly dominated Mycenaean art and Cycladic art of the same periods,Hood, 17-18, 23-23 even after the Mycenaeans occupied Crete, but only some aspects of the tradition survived the Greek Dark Ages after the collapse of Mycenaean Greece.Hood, 240-241
Minoan art encompasses a variety of subject matter, much of it appearing across different media, although only some pottery styles include figurative scenes. Bull-leaping appears in painting and several types of sculpture, and is thought to have had a religious significance; bull's heads are also a popular subject in terracotta and other sculptural materials. There are no figures that appear to be portraits of individuals, or are clearly royal, and the identities of religious figures are often tentative,Gates (2004), 33-34, 41 with scholars uncertain whether they are deities, clergy, or devotees.eg Hood, 53, 55, 58, 110 Equally, whether painted rooms were "shrines" or secular is far from clear; one room in Akrotiri has been argued to be a bedroom, with remains of a bed, or a shrine.Chapin, 49-51
Animals, including an unusual variety of marine fauna, are often depicted; the "Marine Style" is a type of painted palace pottery from MM III and LM IA that paints sea creatures including octopus spreading all over the vessel, and probably originated from similar frescoed scenes;Hood, 37-38 sometimes these appear in other media. Scenes of hunting and warfare, and of horses and riders, are mostly found in later periods, in works perhaps made by Cretans for a Mycenaean market or for Mycenaean overlords of Crete.
While Minoan figures, whether human or animal, have a great sense of life and movement, they are often not very accurate, and the species is sometimes impossible to identify; by comparison with Ancient Egyptian art they are often more vivid, but less naturalistic.Hood, 56, 233-235 In comparison with the art of other ancient cultures there is a high proportion of female figures. However, the idea that Minoans had only goddesses and no gods is now discounted. Most human figures are in profile or in a version of the Egyptian convention with the head and legs in profile, and the torso seen frontally. Still, the Minoan figures exaggerate features such as slim male waists and large female breasts.Hood, 235-236
Classical Greek and Hellenistic
Ancient Greece had great painters, great sculptors, and great architects. The Parthenon is an example of their architecture that has endured into modern times. Greek marble sculpture is often described as the highest form of Classical art. Painting on pottery of Ancient Greece and ceramics offers a particularly informative glimpse into how society in Ancient Greece functioned. Black-figure vase painting and Red-figure vase painting provide many surviving examples of what Greek painting was like. Some famous Greek wood panel painters mentioned in texts are Apelles, Zeuxis and Parrhasius. No examples of Ancient Greek panel painting survive, only written descriptions by their contemporaries or by later Romans. Zeuxis lived in 5–6 BC and was said to be the first to use sfumato. According to Pliny the Elder, the realism of his paintings was such that birds tried to eat the painted grapes. Apelles is described as the greatest painter of Antiquity for perfect technique in drawing, brilliant color, and modeling.
Roman
Roman art was influenced by Greece and can, in part, be seen as a descendant of ancient Greek painting and sculpture, but was also strongly influenced by the more local Etruscan art of Italy. Roman sculpture is primarily portraiture of the upper classes, as well as depictions of the gods. However, Roman painting does have important, unique characteristics. Among surviving Roman paintings are wall paintings, many from villas in Campania, in Southern Italy, especially at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Such painting can be grouped into four main "styles" or periods and may contain the first examples of trompe-l'œil, pseudo-perspective, and pure landscape.
Almost all of the surviving painted portraits from the Ancient world are a large number of coffin-portraits of bust form found in the Late Antique cemetery of Al-Fayum. They give an idea of the quality that the finest ancient work must have had. A very small number of miniatures from Late Antique illustrated books also survive, and a rather larger number of copies of them from the early medieval period. Early Christian art grew out of Roman popular, and later Imperial, art and adapted its iconography from these sources.
Medieval