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Ponderable
Apr. 3rd, 2008 07:41 pmSo in the process of working on my costume presentation, there's an issue I've been pondering a lot, and even though there isn't time to do more than touch on it in the class, I've gotten interested in it for its own sake. That issue is the medieval concept of historical authenticity / accuracy.
A lot of what I'm going to talk about in the class is how you can't necessarily take a medieval image perfectly literally; it is not necessarily (indeed, is very rarely) a documentary "snapshot" of an actual event or scene. How you have to look at the context of what is being depicted: is it a bible scene, a legend, an allegory? How until about the 14th-15th c., painters were usually more interested in an idealized or generalized vision of the world than in accurately depicting daily life. How the robes of a saint or the Virgin or a Magus may differ from what a medieval person would have actually worn.
So when you start looking at the context of images, you of course also notice that the modern concept of historical accuracy is not present. In the Maciejowski bible, the Old Testament stories are shown largely in 13th style and detail, the soldiers in mail and flat-topped helms, the masons working on Gothic arches. Similarly, there are 14th c. depictions of Plato teaching his students, all shown dressed in 14th c. clothing. Illustrations of King Arthur, likewise. So we ask ourselves: did medieval artists not know that people of the past dressed differently? Or did they not care--was it more important, more relevant to make the stories accessible, like a Shakespeare play performed in modern clothes?
Now, my general conclusion/ assumption has been that for the most part they didn't know. That is, they probably knew that some people in the past may have dressed differently from current people, because of various old statues and other remnants kicking around, and because they would have observed fashions changing in living memory (though certainly at a slower rate then than now). But of course they lacked the historical framework we have now, the ability to read dead languages and carbon-date objects, the body of cultural and stylistic knowledge to be able to say that this old statue is from Germany ca. 550 while this one is from France ca. 950. I imagine their framework was something like "stodgy," "old," "very old," "extremely darned old."
But lately I've been wondering more about where the boundaries of their awareness lay. If, as I've noted, there's a difference between the clothes in a 13th c. picture of an apostle and a 13th c. picture of a contemporary king, then doesn't that imply an awareness? Or was it more a matter of conventions passed down--'biblical prophets dress this way'--rather than knowledge of what Biblical people wore? Did they think that people in the Arthurian legends dressed just like them, or did they just prefer to paint it that way in order to make parallels to their own time? Why IS the Maciejowski bible art mostly in 13th c. vernacular? How did they see these other times in relation to their own? I feel like I should know the answer to this--I thought I did--but suddenly I'm not so sure. It's bugging me.
Now, of course this is a complex question and the type for which the answer will always be "it depends"--on when and where and who, like every historical question. I'm thinking primarily of Europe in the medieval period, before the big rediscovery of the classical body of knowledge and art. Such a concept is hard to search for in a quick way because googling "medieval concept of history" or "medieval concept of historical authenticity" gets you a lot of stuff on "medieval history" and "historical authenticity", but not the meta-topic. It's the sort of question that only really gets answered during in-depth, immersive historical research. So I thought I'd toss it out there and see what others' impressions were. I would be really interested in specific places (books, whatever) where you have seen this addressed.
A lot of what I'm going to talk about in the class is how you can't necessarily take a medieval image perfectly literally; it is not necessarily (indeed, is very rarely) a documentary "snapshot" of an actual event or scene. How you have to look at the context of what is being depicted: is it a bible scene, a legend, an allegory? How until about the 14th-15th c., painters were usually more interested in an idealized or generalized vision of the world than in accurately depicting daily life. How the robes of a saint or the Virgin or a Magus may differ from what a medieval person would have actually worn.
So when you start looking at the context of images, you of course also notice that the modern concept of historical accuracy is not present. In the Maciejowski bible, the Old Testament stories are shown largely in 13th style and detail, the soldiers in mail and flat-topped helms, the masons working on Gothic arches. Similarly, there are 14th c. depictions of Plato teaching his students, all shown dressed in 14th c. clothing. Illustrations of King Arthur, likewise. So we ask ourselves: did medieval artists not know that people of the past dressed differently? Or did they not care--was it more important, more relevant to make the stories accessible, like a Shakespeare play performed in modern clothes?
Now, my general conclusion/ assumption has been that for the most part they didn't know. That is, they probably knew that some people in the past may have dressed differently from current people, because of various old statues and other remnants kicking around, and because they would have observed fashions changing in living memory (though certainly at a slower rate then than now). But of course they lacked the historical framework we have now, the ability to read dead languages and carbon-date objects, the body of cultural and stylistic knowledge to be able to say that this old statue is from Germany ca. 550 while this one is from France ca. 950. I imagine their framework was something like "stodgy," "old," "very old," "extremely darned old."
But lately I've been wondering more about where the boundaries of their awareness lay. If, as I've noted, there's a difference between the clothes in a 13th c. picture of an apostle and a 13th c. picture of a contemporary king, then doesn't that imply an awareness? Or was it more a matter of conventions passed down--'biblical prophets dress this way'--rather than knowledge of what Biblical people wore? Did they think that people in the Arthurian legends dressed just like them, or did they just prefer to paint it that way in order to make parallels to their own time? Why IS the Maciejowski bible art mostly in 13th c. vernacular? How did they see these other times in relation to their own? I feel like I should know the answer to this--I thought I did--but suddenly I'm not so sure. It's bugging me.
Now, of course this is a complex question and the type for which the answer will always be "it depends"--on when and where and who, like every historical question. I'm thinking primarily of Europe in the medieval period, before the big rediscovery of the classical body of knowledge and art. Such a concept is hard to search for in a quick way because googling "medieval concept of history" or "medieval concept of historical authenticity" gets you a lot of stuff on "medieval history" and "historical authenticity", but not the meta-topic. It's the sort of question that only really gets answered during in-depth, immersive historical research. So I thought I'd toss it out there and see what others' impressions were. I would be really interested in specific places (books, whatever) where you have seen this addressed.
