Medieval Art Quotes

“[Medieval] Art was not just a static element in society, or even one which interacted with the various social groups. It was not simply something which was made to decorate or to instruct — or even to overawe and dominate. Rather, it was that and more. It was potentially controversial in ways both similar and dissimilar to its couterpart today. It was something which could by its force of attraction not only form the basis for the economy of a particular way of life, it could also come to change that way of life in ways counter to the original intent. Along with this and because of this, art carried a host of implications, both social and moral, which had to be justified. Indeed, it is from the two related and basic elements of justification and function — claim and reality — that Bernard approaches the question of art in the Apologia.”
― Conrad Rudolph

“The forest, far from the mundane and familiar world of the city, provides the appropriate setting for exceptional figures, both holy and mythic. Here, as in the world landscapes, figures and settings are truly matched; and as Reindert Falkenburg and myself have argued, the remoteness and grand scale of the forest or the earlier mountain wilderness signal the sanctity of or gravity of the human scene, however small in scale, which the discerning viewer must seek out and read as significant.”
― Larry Silver, Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Prints and Drawings

“Compared to the routine, more coarse, carving of the Apostles and Elders, the monstrous rout seems to have been produced by a more expert sculptor, suggesting a scale of value that did not elevate the Divine archetype over the debased animal.”
― Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art