Mediaeval Art and America

Author(s): C. R. Morey
Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 7 (1944), pp. 1-6
Published by: The Warburg Institute
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750375
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 MEDIAEVAL ART AND AMERICA

By C. R. Morey

American taste was introduced to mediaeval art by the cult of Italian prim
duction was made on a note of apology, the occasion being the exhibition of th
in 1867, when the catalogue described its early Italian pictures as "illustrative of t
civilization." But the curiosity which these paintings finally aroused, after the co
what unwillingly accepted by Yale, led on to a dilettante connoisseurship on t
much like that which impelled the Roman amateurs of Cicero's day to seek
less-known classic examples of Greek sculpture wherewith to enhance the ex
their private galleries. Out of this collectors' interest, in turn, there arose wh
earliest American scholarship in the history of art-a scholarship that still m
position to which it was brought by Bernhard Berenson. And the Jarves colle
a real sense of research in mediaeval art in this country, still retains a pre-
American galleries of Italian painting so far as concerns its mediaeval categor
Mediaeval art from the lands north of the Alps, and Byzantine art, were more
eyes of our collectors and museum-buyers, or to enlist the research of our studen
the acquisition-dates of our mediaeval ivories, these began to come across t
eighties of the past century, but the buying was limited mostly to the ivorie
style, of the I4th century. These were relatively cheap in the European market, a
since the dealers made no bones about increasing the supply in proportion t
member a Whole set of ivories that was sold at the auction of a collection abo
through which the technique of a single modern carver could be traced, th
subjects of the'pieces ranged from the 13th through the I6th century and from I
The mirror-cases, triptychs, and plaques of I4th-century style were sought after
ated quaintness, the sole quality which 19th-century taste was wont to discov
The ivories of earlier periods were not so quaint and much harder to get. Th
in America was no doubt inspired by English interest, and this in turn by th
from ivories in European museums which Westwood assembled in the fifties
South Kensington Museum. The moulds he made for these casts were sometim
in his travels about the Continent, and this may account for a strange type of forg
ally appears on this side of the Atlantic, namely, a cast in metal from a mould m
are at least two of these in this country, both from ivories in Milan; one, a
private collection, the other, a fine plaque in gold, is in the morgue of one of our
The acquisition of the earlier and rarer mediaeval ivories belongs to the more sop
of the 2oth century, which has enriched American galleries with such pieces
Madonna and Saints of Dumbarton Oaks, or the 9th-century plaque of the
Walters Gallery.
Such well-informed and selective taste was responsible for the trend towards i
scripts, the chief objective of the Morgan Library, which has become by shre
of the great collections of the world, unique in fact in some divisions of the field
virtue of its series of Coptic manuscripts, and its two examples of illustrate
Commentary on the Apocalypse, one of which is the best representative of t
peculiar cycle of book-decoration,the other of its end. There are other good collec
manuscripts in America, three of them distinguished-one in Baltimore, at t
another in Princeton, recently given by Mr. Robert Garrett, and the colle
Library in New York. They have each their unica: Mr. Garrett can claim
illustrated copy of the "Heavenly Ladder" of St. John Climacus; the Walter
illuminated Greek menologion in America; and the Public Library the only
illumination, in the Gospel-book of Landevennec.
Enamels and goldsmiths' work were not seriously sought by our collector
Walters, and Dumbarton Oaks collections began to take form, but it is perhap
metalwork that America possesses its most noteworthy mediaeval works of art, a
I

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 2 C. R. MOREY

of scholars. The silver plat

frequently cited metal w
mediaeval silver-work is
of the Communion of th
top-flight of Carolingian
placed the gold book-cov
angels.
Monumental sculpture, frescoes and architectural fragments constitute the latest category of
mediaeval art to be added to our museums and private collections, and the pioneer in this sort of
acquisition was the sculptor George Gray Barnard, whose miscellaneous collection came finally to
rest in the Cloisters Museum of the Metropolitan. The sculpture in our museums ranges in quality
from the sentimental Madonnas of the I4th century to some fine high Gothic statues, and some
exceptionally interesting pieces of the I2th century, such as the heads from Saint-Denis recently
freed from their restorations by Marvin Ross at the Walters Gallery. The mediaeval frescoes and
paintings are mainly the wall-paintings and altar-frontals that have come to us from Spain, and
which fascinate the observer with their poignant gaucherie at the Baltimore and Boston museums, the
Cloisters, Toledo, and elsewhere. The installation of actual rooms or courts from mediaeval
structures has introduced a picturesque note into the plan of many museums, such as the Penn-
sylvania Museum and Worcester, and nearly all of our larger collections, notably the Fogg, have
acquired excellent examples of Romanesque and Early Gothic capitals, which figure in our collec-
tions to a greater extent than in Europe. They are also, by reason of their lesser size, more instructive
of mediaeval style to the observer, than the monumental fragments, since the latter are apt to lose
their quality when detached from the buildings to which they were once attached and scaled.
The colour that once enlivened the present sober surfaces of mediaeval architecture survives in
stained glass, well represented in our larger museums, and sometimes by unexpectedly important
pieces in the smaller ones, such as the roundel of the Martyrdom of St. George at Princeton, which
was once in the choir of Chartres. The most surprising wealth of material in a mediaeval field is
to be found in American textile collections; there are early pieces from Egypt in Dumbarton Oaks
which are outstanding examples of reference among scholars, and a whole history of the art in the
Middle Ages could be illustrated by items in the Meyer and Untermeyer and other collections,
and the textiles of the Boston and New York museums. If we include the Unicorn tapestries in the
Cloisters, American documentation of this mediaeval art becomes distinguished indeed.
The Cloisters represent the maturity of American museum planning towards the evocation of
the mediaeval scene. What the planners of the Cloisters had in mind was the reconstruction, from
authentic elements, of a Romanesque and Gothic ensemble which would range, as real mediaeval
ensembles usually do, from the I2th to the I5th century. The rugged height of Fort Tryon park
provided a typical monastic site, and the cloisters, halls, and details of five French monasteries
furnished the core of the architectural complex, which was brought to consistency by judicious
copying of necessary elements from other South French abbeys. New masonry was selected to
recall in colour the tones of the Midi, but held to an unobtrusive neutrality throughout the interior,
that full relief might be given to the exhibits. In the landscaping, most difficult of all mediaeval
aspects to recapture, a great deal of diligent research resulted in a convincing lay-out of monastic
orchards, and even included a garden of medicinal herbs conforming to a Carolingian list of the
year 812.
The growth of public interest in mediaeval art has been well reflected in three great recent
exhibitions: the "Art of the Dark Ages" at Worcester in 1937, the fine show of the "Art of the
Middle Ages" at Boston, and the exhibition of Coptic art at the Brooklyn Museum. The Boston
exhibition was a very revealing one, showing a high quality in its items and a selective taste that had
proceeded far beyond the quest for the quaint of the 19th century. At Brooklyn one was confronted
by the surprising fact that the field of Coptic art, which most trans-Atlantic museums outside of
Cairo would find it difficult to illustrate with any completeness, could be documented by a small
number of American collections in almost every phase, the exhibits varying from the little ivory
pyxis from Dumbarton Oaks that represents the initial stage of Christian art in Egypt, to the late

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 MEDIAEVAL ART AND AMERICA 3
Coptic manuscript lent by the Morgan Library. It was at
appeared in mediaeval exhibitions which marks a signific
ship in the history of mediaeval art.
At Worcester the outstanding exhibits were the mosa
along with Baltimore, the Fogg, the Louvre, and Princeton,
of Antioch in Syria; and also the copies of the mosaics o
had been uncovered and restored by Thomas Whittemor
approach, the introduction into mediaeval studies of that
the backbone of scholarly research in ancient art. In thi
taken the initiative and the lead. In France the outstandin
been those of Crosby at Saint-Denis, of Forsyth at Saint-Mar
discoveries of Conant at Cluny, sponsored by the Media
mosaics of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople under the patie
is an event, in the eyes of mediaevalists, no less importa
from the Parthenon. The excavation of Antioch in Syria, fro
first towards an early mediaeval objective, namely the ex
the Hellenistic city, and the reconstruction of that Antioch
that was a very crucible out of which emerged the pris
undertakings mark the beginning of a new and more s
especially to its East Christian and Byzantine phase. Hitherto
style have been written around a limited corpus of hac
was new only in the a priori theory which it undertook to e
pretation of data that were all too familiar and too few. The
towards multiplying source material, chiefly in the fields of
with the aid of field-work and a very necessary gleaning of
mediaeval literature. In architecture the beginning has alread
corpus of the early Christian basilicas of Rome. From all
and a sounder concept of the evolution of Byzantine style
Significant of this trend are the new research centres dev
Institute has now been in operation for several years, wit
venience of American Byzantists. At Chicago, Wellesley
study of Byzantine manuscripts, and in the last of thes
university and the Institute for Advanced Study has asse
graphs, including an almost complete set from the min
libraries at Mt. Athos, collected by Kurt Weitzmann in t
this research in manuscripts have already begun to appea
psalters, Willoughby's writings on New Testament illus
manuscripts of the Prophets, and Miss Der Nersessian's m
Walters' Menologion.
The most recent symptom of this trend, showing both the
in this country, and the position which Washington seem
studies, is the opening, preceding by a few months that of t
collection at Dumbarton Oaks, presented to Harvard Un
been planned from its inception as a centre of research in Ea
collateral fields, and will undoubtedly prove a weighty facto
mediaeval scholarship in that direction. With this new-fo
Chicago, Princeton, Vassar, Wellesley and the Byzantine I
for the successful prosecution, on this side of the Atlanti
source-material out of which will emerge sometime as t
definitive history of Byzantine art.

Mediaeval art is then well domesticated in the United

collections, and the curricula and research programmes of ou

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 4 C. R. MOREY
How far has its influence enter
in the future?
In architecture, indeed, we h
always existed in church-build
inherited quite as normally as
civic and private building, an
and plan, and new possibilities
Gothic." It always seemed to m
when he introduced it to his s
in its application to collegiate
of continuing in English arch
however remote its origin ma
the eyes of presidents and trus
much damage to its irregular
this and all applications of Go
"Gothic" architects to concern
commonplace in architectural
The Romanesque revival initi
"Victorian Gothic." It is com
Romanesque rather than the
collections. The Romanesque,
romantic nostalgia of Americ
further appeal that seems to m
satisfied the American sense o
Romanesque building embodie
of mediaeval style that is often
for an expression of latent forc
The Romanesque had too its
city can exhibit an armoury th
turrets, even as our stadium
towers at its entrance. The sam
in much of the stained glass ado
after effects of massed colour a
followed, of time and acciden
modern imitators, to achieve a
makers of to-day and yesterday
could reach to the clear renderi
pre-conceived formula of colour
For most contemporary artists,
a modern content for which th
an imitation, extending only
and the figures that carry thei
mediaeval nor modern. I am rem
made for one of the portals of
grace of Gothic line, and conc
ultimate effect is irreligious; th
and the undeniable rhythm of
strains of an Invitation to the Dance.
The instance just mentioned reveals the futility of modern evocations of mediaeval style, if an
more serious purpose is intended than a mere aesthetic amusement. What will not rise again
such resurrections is the content of mediaeval art, utterly disparate from that of our time.
The comparison of mediaeval and modern art is one of opposites; the one was an art of asp
tion, the other is one of revolt. Mediaeval art raised its structure upon a solid foundation of colle

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 MEDIAEVAL ART AND AMERICA 5

faith, and unquestioned values. The very universality o

the forms in which the concepts of Christianity were cast
out the Middle Ages and throughout the mediaeval wo
its analysis of experience was at bottom emotional; to the
that were canonized by Plato, the virtues of courage,
Ages added, and preferred, the Christian virtues of t
It is this emotional content that gives an air of vital inqu
-the dynamic vitality that keeps the eye racing through
the saints of Romanesque facades into tortured movem
the stately symmetry of the Byzantine, and interrupts t
of eccentricity. But it was an emotion conscious and c
and equilibrium by a stable faith.
Modern art, in contrast, is on the whole an art of disill
the ruins of abandoned shibboleths, seeking a footing
in its moments of sincerity to express the modern ex
obvious aspects thereof, since the purpose and directio
artist than to anyone else. Hence its emphasis on the
especially on those more sinister ones of economic stress
artist, writer, musician, to conscious or unconscious satir
greatest American buildings one may see, embodied po
that reduces the modern individual to unimportance;
of our most recent music reveals on the one hand the ho
of present-day existence, and on the other a sense o
personality in imposing and undeniably powerful dist
painting seeks its subjects by preference in the squalo
or eschews content altogether to take refuge from ideas
The very externals of mediaeval style which our mo
transformed, as one might expect, into a vocabulary o
1" used to underline the towering steel bones of our effi
becomes Romanesque masses, expressing no longer th
power. The glass that once in mediaeval windows delin
really effective medium of modern expression; the blurr
well our contemporary confusion of thought, and our un
These are modes of transition, of the clearing-away of
modern style. When this last stage shall have arrived
have had its day, and become a part of the history it
history of art teaches us aright, that in sloughing off th
those firm foundations of tradition on which every styl
to construct its future. There have been, after all, but tw
the western world, and one or the other, or perhaps s
the long run to be the determinant of any humanism th
that produced the art of Greece, regulating life and the
view of environment, envisioning the human being as a c
and master of, his world. The other was the mediaev
revelation and guidance, following less the reasoning of t
producing in consequence an art fraught with feeling, po
frailty, but confident as well of its ultimate transfigura
But both these ideals, and both these arts, insisted on t
personality, and on its power of moral judgment, and co
the human figure plays for the most part a merely passi
scape, or the vehicle of arbitrary design. The physical
fact so importantly before our eyes that the human v
are obscured. Man is too much, in our thinking, the

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6 C. R. MOREY

progress and popularizat

may be by reason of pit
have sprung up to dilute
process, or a function o
machinery of existence: a
control; a less tangible b
pressures, beyond the po
individuals that serve it
tell us the virtues of cou
brought into sinister reli
of them in terms of pol
force the visible means th
not perhaps the ideals and
They also, if history is a
for ever live by bread alo
to get his bread. The pol
moral reaction will follo
will play its part in the f
more clear as the disaster
not, in such evocation of
"mediaeval" in our parla
existence, nor to cruditi
these we shall grasp, if
mediaeval art. In this on
literature, the mediaeval
life than material satisf
man, and the belief that
aspects, rather than its qu
our museums and colleg
courses. But most of all t
of the cathedral to the m
the modern scene, an elem
civilization, in a new an
religious, or faith in mor
way of life; but faith at l

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