Design Post The Fall Of The Roman Empire

[Guest Amie]

At the end of the roman empire a great merging of culutres took place. How do u feel that this merging influenced subsequent design?

[Hamilcar Barca]

The Ostrogoths basicly came to spread their influence across the former Roman provinces following the fall of the Western Empire in 476AD, this led to the so called dark ages, a time which became notoriously popular for so-called gothic style architecture and such (even though the goths did not invent this). It wasn't really until the Renaissance that a sudden interest in Classical architecture and design came about again.

[Fatboy]

Much is often made of how after the fall of the Empire, artistic standards dropped engulfing the European world in these " Dark Ages ". While in the former provinces of northern Europe this is certainly accurate there was not the case in the vast majority of the Western Empire, and obviously not in the still functioning Eastern Empire. The Visigoths in Spain and the Vandals in North africa were both relatively civilised and aped Roman culture quite competently. In Italy, under a string of particularly able Ostrogothic leaders, the Roman state was functioning as well as it had for generations with minimal disruption to the native way of life.

The decline in figurative art particularly was not a result of the collapse of artistic skill but rather a change of mentality. The Byzantines, by now long the centre of Meditteranean culture were drifing away from any attempt to accurately represent reality in their art in favour of the surreal style more in keeping with their pious mystical mindset. The physical world came a poor second to the spiritual world in the Byzantine mind and this is reflected in their art. No attempt is made to show the world as it is apparent to the human eye, which is seen as unimportant, rather to show the true nature of the cosmos as they believed it to be. The bizarre reverse perspective often seen in medieval art is a product of this artistic movement and spiritual mentality.

Later Medieval drawings may often seem childlike when for instance, soldiers are depicted as being several times larger then a castle which they are supposed to be attacking. This though is a product of this representative style. The actual dimensions of the particular castle are of no importance to the artist. Of course by this stage the technical ability to produce anything more accurate really had been lost in much of Europe, but the point is that the technical artistic skills of antiquity were discarded by choice, over time, rather than lost in a sudden and spectacular plunge into savagery and chaos.

This is not to deny the Dark Ages though. In much of Northern Europe the Dark Ages was everything it was cracked up to be..... dark . The Dark Ages never truly came to Italy though, or almost any of the Mediteranean world.

I suppose the point of no return was the advent of Iconoclasm in the East in the 8th Century. Byzantium may have been losing its intellectual, moral and political primacy over the West, but it was still the artistic capital of Europe and would remain so for a long time to come. The iconoclastic storm forever cut the link between early medieval and classical art. By the time the dust had settled the techniques really had been lost.

The pre-eminent Islamic cultures, keepers of so much classical knowledge slowly eroding in Europe, of course rejected figurative art completely ( iconoclasm of course quite likely being a result of Islamic influence ), and so the artistic traditions of antiquity were doomed.

 

As far as architecture and building, well I get the impression that the actual technological knowledge lost was negligible. From Theodorics magnificent mausoleum in the immediate aftermath of the " fall of the west " ( which I mantain was nothing of the sort, but thats a whole different argument ) to the magnificent Basilicas and Cathedrals of the early medieval world, the ability to construct great buldings never dissapeared. Rather the drastic decline in administrative ability and available recourses reduced their frequency ( or more accurately variety ), and even then only temporarily. Architecture became much more focused and specifically aimed at religious buildings( though not exclusively of course ). Ever more impressive and extreme domes and arches became the aim of the game. Creating a breathtaking demonstration of Gods majesty ( etc. ) was of more interest than practical stuff like Aqueducts and even paved roads.

From Charlemagne's time, as the West began to lose its Byzantine influence, it finally began to head truly in its own direction, leading eventually to the Gothic style, with its obvious northern influences on the long standing Romanesque design.

 

I think any merging of cultures came a very poor second to the continent wide adoption of Christianity and the later rise of Islam in the direction of art and culture in the centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire.

[Hamilcar Barca]

Thanks for explaining more indepth Fatboy