The Gothic sculptors of the 12th c. naturally took up of their own accord the tradition that aimed to expound for Christians, on church façades, the great themes of their faith. The multiplication of portals on western and transept façades allowed them to broaden their perspectives and aim to present a coherent and synthetic doctrinal whole; though it was really only at Chartres and Amiens that this aim could be realized, since elsewhere the programmes were disturbed by the fact that it was necessary to re-use elements initially provided for earlier programmes (thus at Paris or Reims). Each portal was deeper than it had been before: it included a tympanum that provided the central theme; on its vast surface, the single scene of the Romanesque period was replaced by rows of superimposed scenes in which multitudes of chararacters were lined up: the legibility of the whole lost a great deal. The multiplication of arch mouldings allowed the main theme to be supplemented and enriched by statuettes often sheltered under canopies. For the embrasures, the Gothic masters at first followed the Romanesque form of ressauts with reflex angles in which were lodged columns associated with statues ( Saint-Denis, Chartres…); then the backgrounds became smooth, the statues, still associated with columns, more autonomous, their bodies more natural, their feet resting on small consoles while small canopies crowned their heads. Beneath these statues, the bases were ornamented with complementary scenes ( Senlis, Amiens) or geometrical decorations inspired by Antiquity (Mantes, Rouen), or even with hangings evoking those with which façades were covered on Feast days. Very quickly too, programmes overflowed this traditional framework and occupied the buttresses both on the façade ( Amiens) and on the side elevations ( Reims). Enthusiasm for the human figure meant that statues were also associated with columns on cloister supports (Châlons) or at the entrances to chapter houses (Boscherville, Cambrai). By contrast, the historiated capital disappeared in favour of more or less realistic foliage. Very soon, the gables encasing the portals were also enriched by sculptures ( Laon) and the great iconographical themes were moved onto these when, to improve the internal lighting of the nave, the traditional historiated tympanum of the portal was replaced by a glazed tympanum.

Romanesque tympana had mainly been dedicated to apocalyptic themes. In the Gothic period, Christ surrounded by the tetramorph is hardly found except at Chartres and Saint-Loup-de-Naud, while the Ascension appears only at Chartres and Étampes. Everywhere else, starting with Saint-Denis, the Last Judgment is retained, but in its Gothic version: Christ has conquered death, and the instruments of the Passion are the trophies of this victory; the Apostles are no longer the Judge’s assessors, they have descended to the embrasures as witnesses and kneel as intercessors alongside Christ, the Virgin and St John; on the trumeau, Christ the redeemer treads on the asp and the basilisk; the wise and foolish virgins and the combat of virtues and vices remind men that they have the freedom to accept or refuse the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice. The 12th c. was a great Marian century; traditionally, the Virgin offered her son, seated frontally on her knees, for the adoration of the Magi or the faithful ( Chartres and Paris). But rapidly another theme was substituted for this; since the Virgin was not soiled by sin, she could not suffer the death that was its consequence. At Byzantium, Christ came himself to gather his mother’s Soul. In the West, scenes of the Dormition were associated with scenes of the Assumption to heaven by angels and the Coronation by Christ himself; this theme, appearing in c.1170 at Senlis and Cambrai, was followed by most of the great Gothic façades. Their third portal was often devoted to the saints of the diocese. However, façades presenting a coherent iconographical programme are rare, with the exception of Amiens and Chartres.

From 1140 to 1270, the style evolved considerably. To begin with, artists borrowed from other disciplines like goldsmithry and illumination; then gradually sculpture acquired real autonomy and became capable of influencing other artistic expressions. From the start it sought to observe Nature, the anatomical reality of bodies and the psychology of the persons represented; this was because creation proved the existence of God. The hieratic style of the royal portals of Chartres and Saint-Denis were succeeded by that of Senlis, full of life, and that of the antiquizing workshops of the end of the century at Laon and Sens. Very soon however, at Paris, another tendency asserted itself: that of immobile characters, impassible and clothed in garments with broad folds falling vertically. After 1240, the court style characterised by smiles, almond eyes and undulating locks and moustaches imposed itself in the workshops of Paris and Reims (the Smiling Angel).

After the death of St Louis, sculpture became more autonomous and less monumental and, in liaison with the evolution of religious mentalities, iconographical themes were renewed. Though great portals were still executed, they became more narrative and their legibility suffered greatly ( Rouen). The isolated statue spread to the interior of buildings; apostolic processions clung to piers as at Jumièges, devotional statues multiplied; Virgins standing with the weight on one leg (the “Gothic slouch”), graciously holding the Child who played with a rabbit, a bunch of grapes or the clasp of his mother’s garment, multiplied to satisy the refined taste of the clientele. But art also had to take part in the glorification of the ruler, symbol of the State; at Vincennes as at the Louvre, the royal family was everywhere commemorated by statues, the language of the emblem appeared. The funerary statue too took part in this exaltation of the monarchy. The idealized faces of previous decades were replaced by genuine portraits of the deceased ( Beauneveu’s Gisant de Charles V). The misfortunes of the time (war, epidemics, famine) meant that death became a subject of anguish. Instead of the idealized dead person lying on his gravestone as he would appear on the day of resurrection, there was the horror of the degradation of the flesh ( Tomb of Cardinal La Grange at Avignon); the weepers who surround the monument recall the sorrow expressed during the funeral procession (tombs of the dukes of Burgundy). In the last centuries of the Middle Ages, this very fear of the misfortunes of the time multiplied devotional statues, including those of the anti-plague saints Roch and Sebastian; this also explains the vogue of themes linked to Christ’s death: Christ in bonds, Crucifixion, Deposition from the cross, Virgins of pity, Entombments (Chaource, Saint-Mihiel). These subjects were translated into stone, but also into wood. The taste of the time for miniaturization explains the vogue for great altarpieces in which all the episodes of the Passion were minutely recounted. Produced all over the place, these works were sometimes the object of a veritable export industry ( Brabant).

The sculpture of the time of the cathedrals, intimately linked to architecture, was succeeded at the end of the Middle Ages by a much more varied output, with renewed themes, in which realism replaced idealization. The new conditions of production explain why humble rural churches could house great works of art at this time.

Gothic art was born in the Île-de-France, a region that had previously been less conspicuous than others for its artistic inventiveness, but which then profited from the establishment of Capetian power and its centralizing tendencies, from peace and returning prosperity, in a place that became the commercial and intellectual crossroads of Europe. With the birth of the university, a lay education developed, in which the desire for an encyclopedic knowledge replaced the former meditation on sacred texts, theology rediscovered Greek logic and abandoned the monasteries for the debates of the towns, and literature opened itself up to the vernacular tongue, courtly love and Nature.

Among the initiators of the new artistic current was the abbot of Saint-Denis, Suger, who found in his reading of Pseudo- Dionysius the inspiration for an aesthetic marked by a fascination with light and the hierarchy of forms. Thus in 1140 he rebuilt his abbey church, breaking down the divisions between the radiating chapels, which threw the light of their windows onto the choir. This conquest of light was underpinned by architectural techniques ceaselessly perfected: intersecting ribs to lighten the vaults and better distribute the thrusts, the pointed arch, whose effectivenes was quickly seen by the rational spirit of the Cistercians, flying buttresses, which allowed the hollowing out of walls and the opening up of large windows.

The first experiments were carried out in a fever of emulation: at Sens, from 1140, the sexpartite vault was combined with alternation of strong and weak springing on the pillars, as at Notre-Dame, Paris (1163); Noyon (1150–1235) inaugurated a quadruple elevation – arcades, tribunes, blind arcading and high windows; at Chartres (after 1194) the adoption of a quadripartite vaulting and the disappearance of tribunes marked a decisive step forward: it determined the structures of Reims (finished in 1275) and Amiens, which marked the apogee of the rayonnant style. But at Beauvais in 1284 the collapse of the vaults of the choir punished the excesses of an ever more vertiginous search for verticality. After 1260 activity shifted towards the East ( Metz), Normandy (Saint-Ouen at Rouen), Burgundy and the Midi ( Narbonne, Clermont-Ferrand, Limoges, Toulouse). There, churches with a single nave were often preferred. After a period of latency, in the early 14th c. Gothic became flamboyant, with exuberant decoration on the outside and a new monumentality on the inside (Saint-Séverin and Saintt-Germain l’Auxerrois at Paris, basilica of Saint-Nicolas-de-Port).

These new architectural forms found varying expressions in Europe: England, where intersecting ribbed vaults had become general from the late 11th c., at Durham, then at Peterborough and Gloucester, preferred compartmentalized plans to the French unification of interior volumes, while retaining at Canterbury a model based on Sens. Soon its originality showed itself in forms called “decorated”, at Wells (from 1185) or Lincoln (c.1192). The inventiveness of artists was deployed in spectacular systems of vaulting (transept crossing at Ely) which led in the mid 14th c. to the style called “curvilinear”, whose effects of curves and counter-curves were later contradicted by the perpendicular style, which allowed the opening up of immense bays (Gloucester).

One of the first buildings of German Gothic was Magdeburg cathedral (1209). Opus francigenum penetrated local traditions, asserted itself in the nave of Strasbourg (1240), and found new formulations at Cologne, Halberstadt or Ratisbon. The Cistercian spirit had been determinative for the building of hall-churches, of which the nave of Marburg is a fertile example, and which was the manifestation of German originality: there, in an edifice of rectangular plan, without ambulatory or transept, the central body and side-aisles culminate at the same height.

In Spain, Gothic was at first indebted to France, as at Toledo, Burgos or León. But it asserted its autonomy in the choice of volumes simplified with the help of single naves.

In Italy, the influence of the mendicant orders determined the development of Gothic architecture as in the upper basilica at Assisi (consecrated in 1253) and the Umbrian area generally, though Romanesque resistance was still vigorously manifested, as at Siena cathedral or at Sant’Antonio in Padua (1236–1270). In Italy, architectural works in the pure Gothic style were rare and later than French models; Cistercian architecture had better luck, as in the abbeys of Fossanova, Casamari and San Galgano.

These new definitions of space had enormous consequences for decoration. The window, which had the complex task of illuminating as well as decorating, supplanted mural painting. Stained glass became a major art which, in the 13th c., conditioned the graphic and chromatic choices of the other media. After the success, e.g. at Chartres in c.1200, of bays divided into a multitude of historiated panels, and then the alternation of tall coloured figures standing out on a grisaille background (Saint-Urbain at Troyes, c.1270), the evolution of architecture led in the 14th c. to the employment of silvered yellow and engraved glass, which allowed subtle colour harmonies.

One of the most obvious manifestations of the Gothic spirit can be seen in the ambo of Klosterneuburg (1181), where Nicholas of Verdun renewed in Enamel the antique forms of deep, supple draperies, easy movements and clear logical structures, translating an erudite and systematically organised thought. More than other arts, that of goldsmiths’ work served the taste of a society that was becoming courteous and mannerist ( châsse of St Taurinus at Évreux, 1240–55), before being renewed by the technique of cloisonné enamel on gold and of translucent enamels ( corporal of Bolsena in Orvieto cathedral).

Illumination continued to attract the most prestigious artists. The crusades gave them a better knowledge of the Byzantine style which nourished the renaissance of the 1200′s, e.g. in the Psalter painted for Queen Ingeborg. The precise and mannered drawing style of the time of Louis IX contrasts with the harsher forms of German painters, on whom the Romanesque heritage left a lasting mark. Italian artists preferred painting on wood and in fresco, rather than illumination. They displayed their autonomy from the time of Cimabue and especially Giotto (1266–1337), who freed himself from Byzantine influence to rediscover the values of Latin monumentality: his taste for architectural and natural spaces, conveyed on a simplified palette, and his knowledge of bodies and faces combined with the Franciscan spirit to announce a new Humanism. This spectacular Italian renaissance fertilized the art of Europe when Jean Pucelle borrowed its perspective, or when Simone Martini and Matteo Giovanetti went to Avignon to work on the decorations of the papal palace. It was then that the conditions for an international style came together: from Paris to Prague, from Flanders to Spain, an ever more realistic vision of life led to the emergence of Flemish art, in which devotion and the expression of the true was served by the technique of oil painting, where the superimposition of coats of transparent varnish undertook to make the inner world glow. Thus the brothers van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memling, who, at the dawn of the Renaissance, preceded Dürer’s attempted synthesis of Nordic attention to minute detail and the Italian sense of space.

The evolution of sculpture led from the statue-columns of the first Gothic portals, where Biblical heroes were set in architectural monumentality, to the bourgeois portraits of the waning Middle Ages. It is the history of a patient emancipation, helped by the observation of antique examples, from architecture and from a mystique of eternity. From the childish grace of the angels who awaken the Virgin on the portal of Senlis (1175–85) to the tragic power of the prophets who surround Klaus Sluter’s “Well of Moses” at Dijon, it was humanity that awoke in stone. And this stone was now able to express the sweetness of life, and above all the sadness of death: because it was to the sculptor more than to other artists that funerary art, so important in that age obsessed by suffering and death, was entrusted.

The fever of construction was described by contemporaries, who, at the dawn of the 11th c., saw abbeys and churches arise on an extreme diversity of plans, according to the functions expected of them, regional traditions, the requirements of sites, financial resources or genius loci. Among the most fertile experiments we must evoke the inventiveness of Lombardy, its precocious ambulatories (Ivrea), its treatment of external walls in series of blind arcades, or of Catalonia (stone vaulting of St Martin at Canigou), and, in imperial territory, the maturing of Ottonian constructions towards a new monumentality ( Speyer). To facilitate the liturgy, particularly in the pilgrimage churches, the chevet with ambulatory and radiating chapels represents the major invention of Romanesque architecture, which must be defined by its functionality, the clear hierarchization of spaces (porch, nave, transept, choir, crypt), the external legibility of internal volumes, the choice, for openings, of arches, usually semicircular and divided in two to multiply the effects of light and shade. The great preoccupation of architects was with vaults, for which they experimented with many solutions: barrel vaults, whether or not upheld by transverse ribs, which ensured the continuity of the nave without permitting its direct illumination, groined vaults in the side-aisles to support the weight of the galleries, half-dome to cover the apses, cupolas on pendentives or squinches at the crossings or even over the naves (Angoulême), half-barrel vaults of the galleries that buttress the nave, construction in rubble or precise bonding… It was an experimental art, which in France incorporated belfries, in Italy separate campanili, in Normandy imposed twin-towered façades, at Cluny multiplied aisles and chapels, at Cîteaux chose the severity of flat chevets, the clarity of orthogonal forms, the architectonic efficacity of pointed arches. In the interior, the rhythm of the bays, the composed articulation of the pillars, the mouldings of the arches, the often indirect diffusion of light fashioned a space intended for prayer.

Iconography was determined by a contemplative mysticism which favoured Images of the majesty of Christ and the Virgin, the main biblical and evangelical cycles, and translated into paradoxical terms angels and demons, vices and virtues, ecstasy and grotesque deliriums, the combats of the inner life: the Romanesque world was contrasting, visionary, hybrid like the monsters on its capitals. One of the most important centres of the renaissance of stone sculpture was in Rousillon: the lintels of Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines and Saint-André-de-Sorède (c.1020) inaugurate, in a very flat relief close to engraving, the favoured theme of Romanesque tympana ( Christ in Majesty surrounded by apostles). In the 12th c., these tympana displayed theophanic visions illustrating the Apocalypse ( Moissac), the Last Judgment ( Conques, Autun), Pentecost ( Vézelay), while sculpture decorated arch mouldings and window embrasures ( Verona) and invaded façades with a riot of motifs (Poitou). In Burgundy the artists of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire reinterpreted Corinthian capitals, introducing into them a narrative figuration which attained a mastered classicism at Cluny and found its chosen ground in the ornamentation of cloisters (Silos). Some sculptors are known to us (Niccolo at Ferrara, or Matthew at Compostella), many were itinerant, all remained subject to church authority.

The interiors of churches were resplendent with polychromy: painted walls and vaults, curtains, tapestries, stained glass, pavement mosaics and the scintillation of liturgical objects contributed to this brilliance. For textiles, we may evoke above all the so-called Bayeux Tapestry, which celebrates in a vast narrative frieze the conquest of England by William the Conqueror, and is precious evidence of a historic panorama on a subject of contemporary politics. Stained glass, too fragile, is badly preserved and no important traces of it survive before the early 12th century. It is characterised by thick panes, wide borders and highly developed ornamental backgrounds, in which stylized flora mingle with fantastic fauna. The expressive sign-language of the Ascension of Le Mans, the monumental Crucifixion of Poitiers, the pale blue of Notre-Dame-de-la-Belle-Verrière at Chartres, or the erudite compositions of the choir of Saint-Denis are the finest examples of it.

Mural painting was upheld by an ancient tradition never interrupted. Their greater or lesser perviousness to Byzantine pictorial techniques marks the principal line of differentiation between the schools. Very potent in Italy (Sant’Angelo in Formis), Byzantinism fascinated the artists of Monte Cassino, who diffused it in the West, particularly at Cluny (Berzé-la-Ville). Catalonia stands out by its taste for vivid colours and for insistent contours which call for an original plastic sense (Tahull, Pedret). Western France, more conditioned by the Carolingian inheritance, preserves important cycles, at Saint-Sav where the barrel of the nave traces out the immense panorama from Creation to the story of Moses. Beyond the stylistic peculiarities specific to each region, Romanesque painting is characterised by the imperialism of geometry (bodies, faces, group compositions inscribed in simple combinations of circles, lozenges, triangles, tangential or interlocking, which provide the organisation of the main lines), a great economy of means, in the chromatic register as in the repertoire of objects or decor, an accentuation of gestures and movements to reinforce expressivity, the use of symbolic and graphic codes that are reduced to essentials.

The spiritual and intellectual revival enhanced the prestige of illumination, which ornamented mainly Bibles and liturgical books. England, with the school of Winchester which favoured borders ornamented with exuberant acanthuses, and that of Canterbury which excelled in nervous drawings, kept up fertile exchanges with Normandy. In the 12th c., this long experience led to English supremacy (St Albans, Bury St Edmunds). Italy specialized in the production of monumental Bibles. Mozarabic Spain, which promoted a violent polychromy in the illustration of Beatus’s Commentary on the Apocalypse, profoundly influenced the workshops of the midi (Saint-Sever). The diversity of schools is attested by the distance between the painter of the Limoges Sacramentary (c.1100), with his wild drawing and dazzling alliances of gold, ultramarine and pearl grey, and that of the Cîteaux Moralia in Job (1111) where the bodies writhe in the service of a joyful zest.

Enameling played a major role, particularly in the decoration of Reliquaries and liturgical objects ( cross, altar-frontals), not neglecting more secular destinations (funerary effigy of Geoffrey Plantagenet, coffers or jewels). In the Plantagenet domain, an output that might be called industrial repeated, for export, the animated drawings of lives of popular saints (Valeria, Thomas Becket) on the sides of reliquaries holding their relics. The Mosan lands, more determined by Byzantine influence, preferred more theological programmes and more elite destinations (portable altar of Stavelot).

When in 1140 Suger at Saint-Denis initiated the reconstruction of his abbey church in terms of light and unified space, Gothic humanism filtered into Romanesque abstraction. Both would cohabit for a long time to come, particularly in Germany and Italy.

The second Hagia Sophia was destroyed by fire during the Nika Revolt against Justinian I (Jan. 532). Rebuilding was started immediately, under the direction of the architects Anthemios of Tralles and Isidore of Miletos, and the new cathedral was inaugurated on 27 Dec. 537. An account of the construction and the technical difficulties that had to be overcome is given by Prokopios. In large part, Justinian’s church is still standing.

It is a domed basilica, that is, a combination of longitudinal and centralized planning, nearly square (78 × 72 m excluding the two narthexes), its nave covered by a dome 100 Byz. feet (31 m) in diameter and two semidomes, but at the same time clearly separated by rows of columns into three aisles, with galleries over the lateral aisles and narthex. The original dome collapsed in 558 and was rebuilt by Isidore the Younger some 7 m higher than the first one. The church, rededicated on 24 Dec. 562, was the subject of a descriptive poem by Paul Silentiarios.

The architectural conception of Anthemios and Isidore differed in some respects from the present form of the building. The dome, which may have continued the curvature of the pendentives, produced a more overwhelming impression from inside than the current steeper dome. The north and south tympanums appear to have been pierced by large windows, thus affording a more brilliant illumination. The exterior was unencumbered by buttresses. The liturgical fixtures are known in their post-562 form. They included a gold altar table surmounted by a ciborium; a projecting chancel screen of 12 columns; and, joined to the latter by an enclosed passage (solea), a lofty ambo. Most of these features as well as the top row of seats of the synthronon in the apse were sheathed in silver revetments.

The church was surrounded by subsidiary structures. To the west lay a colonnaded atrium with a fountain at its center; to the north the larger of two baptisteries (the smaller, still extant, being at the southwest) and, at the northeast corner, a circular sacristy (skeuophylakion); the south side was flanked by the patriarchal palace (built 565–77), a multistory building whose main apartments communicated with the south gallery of the church. The rooms situated at the south end of the west gallery, which preserve remnants of mosaic decoration, served as offices (sekreta) attached to the patriarchal complex. At the southeast corner of the church a raised passage connected Hagia Sophia to the Great Palace.

Hagia Sophia was naturally the liturgical center of the capital. Administratively it was joined to three other nearby churches, namely St. Irene, the Theotokos of the Chalkoprateia, and St. Theodore of Sphorakios; all four churches were served by the same clergy, whose establishment was limited by Justinian to 425, but which increased to 525 in the next century. Hagia Sophia also played an essential part in imperial ceremonial and had two rooms (metatoria) reserved for the emperor’s use. The itinerary of imperial processions in and out of Hagia Sophia is minutely described in the De ceremoniis.

The most important structural alterations of the church during the Byz. period were the following. Repairs after the earthquake of 869 may have included the rebuilding of the tympanums in their present form. In 989 the main west arch collapsed together with the west semidome and a portion of the dome; they were rebuilt by the Armenian architect Trdat. In 1317 massive exterior buttresses were added on the north and east sides of the building. In 1346 the east arch collapsed, bringing down the east semidome and one-third of the dome and destroying the ambo underneath; the damage was repaired by 1353 with the restricted means that were then available.

The marble and opus sectile decoration of the vertical surface of the walls is relatively well preserved. The mosaic decoration of Justinian’s church appears to have been largely nonfigural and much of it still survives in the vaulting of the narthex, side aisles, etc. The summit of the dome was occupied by a huge cross in a medallion. After Iconoclasm a program of figural mosaics was undertaken and part of it is preserved: an enthroned Virgin in the apse, two archangels in the bema arch, prophets and church fathers in the tympana. Narrative scenes are known to have existed in the gallery vaults (Baptism, Pentecost, Isaiah’s vision). Other preserved mosaics may be regarded as individual insets. They include a 10th-C. panel of the Virgin and Child flanked by Constantine I and Justinian I in the southwest vestibule; the enthroned Christ with a prostrate emperor (Basil I or Leo VI) at his feet in the lunette above the “Imperial Door”; the imperial portraits ( Alexander—P.A. Underwood, Constantine IX with Zoe, John II Komnenos with Irene) and the Deesis (late 13th C.) in the gallery. The Pantokrator in the main dome (which was restored in 1355) has disappeared. In 1989 the mosaics on the eastern arch, comprising the figures of John V Palaiologos, the Virgin Mary, and John the Baptist, as well as a Hetoimasia came to light.

In 1453 Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque (Ayasofya Camii). Apart from the addition of four minarets, it underwent several repairs, the most important in 1573 and the following years, then in 1847–49, the latter carried out by the Swiss architects Gaspare and Giuseppe Fossati.

He is the best-known named Florentine artist of the generation preceding Cimabue. His one signed work, the Madonna del Bordone (1261), confirms, together with a few other paintings attributed to him, the growing importance of Florence as a centre for panel painting during the second half of the 13th century.

Madonna del Bordone, was done in Tempera on wood, signed and dated (1261), in the Chiesa dei Servi of Siena, where he was prisoner after the Battle of Montaperti to which he had taken part.

Coppo is said to have been captured at Montaperti and required to paint the Madonna del Bordone to secure his release. This would explain the employment of a Florentine artist in a Sienese church in the year following the Sienese victory at Montaperti, but the story, often cited as fact, is purely traditional. Discussions of Coppo’s painting within the context of the Servite Order, in whose church it stood, and of its conjectural political meaning (Corrie, Mina) point to specific circumstances that may have influenced the commissioning and appearance of the work.

Coppo’s Madonna, executed with great technical proficiency, combines motifs from Italy, Byzantium and northern Europe. The Virgin sits on a lyre-backed throne, her feet resting on a cushion raised on a footstool. The upper half of her body is seen frontally; she looks out at the spectator and supports the Child on her left arm. This iconography derives from the Byzantine Hodegetria icon type, but here the half-length Byzantine formula has been adapted for use in a full-length, enthroned Virgin.

The Child turns to his right, his right hand raised in blessing, his left hand holding a scroll. He sits on an elaborately folded white cloth, which the Virgin supports with her left hand, while holding his foot with her right. Two diminutive full-length angels hover in the gold background above the throne.

The throne-back, cushions and kerchief are meticulously patterned, while elaborate mordant gilding on the garments of the Virgin and Child picks out the angular outlines of major folds and the fall of drapery between them.

The heads were painted in the following year by a local artist, who added a sfumato style influenced by that of Duccio di Buoninsegna, but different from Coppo’s art. X-Ray analyses have shown the original heads to be characterized by Coppo’s typical, rather sketchy manner of painting.

It is a 50 cm by 70 m long.  It is made up of eight conjoined sections of different lengths. The scenes at the end of the tapestry are damaged and some are lost. The latter is also used for all the linear detail and the lettering. No trace of any construction lines or of tracing from a cartoon remains on the tapestry. The colours (which are not used naturalistically) are terracotta, blue-green, a golden yellow, olive green, blue, a dark blue or black (used for the first third of the tapestry) and a sage green. Later repairs were carried out mainly in light yellow, greens and oranges. The Tapestry is annotated in Latin.Since the earliest known written reference to the tapestry is a 1476 inventory of Bayeux Cathedral, its origins have been the subject of much speculation and controversy. In 1476 it was listed in the cathedral inventory, at which time it was ‘hung round the church on the day of the Relics and throughout the octave’. First published in 1729, it was put on permanent display as a whole in 1842.

French legend maintained the tapestry was commissioned and created by Queen Matilda, William the Conqueror’s wife, and her ladies-in-waiting. Indeed, in France it is occasionally known as “La Tapisserie de la Reine Mathilde” (Tapestry of Queen Matilda). However, scholarly analysis in the 20th century shows it probably was commissioned by William’s half brother, Bishop Odo.

Bayeux Tapestry, detail of section depicting the Battle of Hastings. The main character of the tapestry is William the Conqueror. William was the illegitimate son of Robert the Magnificent, Duke of Normandy, and Herleva (or Arlette), a tanner’s daughter. She was later married off to another man and bore two sons, one of whom was Bishop Odo. When Duke Robert was returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he was killed. William gained his father’s title at a very young age and was a proven warrior at 19. He prevailed in the Battle of Hastings in October 1066 and captured the crown of England at 38. William knew little peace in his life. He was always doing battle, putting down rebel vassals or going to war with France. He was married to his distant cousin Matilda of Flanders. The story is told in discrete scenes, which are not divided vertically. Except at moments of heightened tension, the narrative portion of the tapestry is bordered top and bottom by bands of decoration that are sometimes ornamental.  There is no  individual portrayal. The scenes are supplemented and explained by a running test executed mainly in square capitals.

The tapestry begins with a panel of King Edward the Confessor, who has no son and heir. Edward appears to send Harold Godwinson, the most powerful earl in England to Normandy to tell William that he, Edward, who was growing old and had no successor, had decided that William should succeed him as king of England upon his (Edward’s) death. Harold is to go to Normandy and give this information to William. Harold gets lost and arrives at the wrong location in Normandy and is taken prisoner by Guy, Count of Ponthieu. Harold convinces the Count he is on a mission to bring a message to William which leads to the sending of two messengers from William to demand his release. The Count Guy of Ponthieu quickly releases him to William. William, perhaps to impress Harold, invites him to come on a campaign against Conan II, Duke of Brittany. On the way, just outside the monastery of Mont St. Michel, two soldiers become mired in quicksand, and Harold saves the two Norman soldiers. William’s army chases Conan from Dol de Bretagne to Rennes, and he finally surrenders at Dinan. Harold gives the message to William that he is to succeed Edward upon his death. William gives Harold arms and armour (possibly knighting him) and has Harold take an oath on saintly relics to honor Edward’s wish and allow William to take the throne. Harold leaves for home and meets again with the old king Edward, who appears to be remonstrating with Harold. Edward shortly thereafter dies, and Harold violates his oath to William and has himself crowned king. It is notable that in the Bayeux Tapestry, the ceremony is performed by Stigand, whose position as Archbishop of Canterbury was controversial.

A star with streaming hair then appears: Halley’s Comet.Comets, in the beliefs of the Middle Ages, warned of impending doom.

The Bayeux Tapestry is an important primary source for English history. It was embroidered for a sophisticated audience, some of whom had witnessed the events portrayed. The structure of the story reflects the tradition of English heroic poetry (e.g. the late 10th-century Battle of Maldon) encompassing the story of a choice between two evils by two heroes, Harold and William, neither of whom is explicitly condemned in the narrative. The viewthat the tapestry tells a religious story, the centrality of which is Harold’s oath-breaking, has been rejected by most scholars, and it is now seen as a secular, heroic monument made for a hall rather than a church.

Bayeux tapestry, detail of section depicting Bishop Odo Blessing the…The Bayeux Tapestry has been much used as a source for illustrations of daily life in early medieval Europe. It depicts a total of 1515 different objects, animals and persons . Dress, arms, ships, towers, cities, halls, churches, horse trappings, regal insignia, ploughs, harrows, tableware, possible armorial changes, banners, hunting horns, axes, adzes, barrels, carts, wagons, reliquaries, biers, spits and spades are among the many items depicted  .