Art -- Europe; Europe -- Description and travel; Europe -- History
It was he that was primarily responsible for the beginnings of many of
these admirable arts. From his capital at Aix, where he had gathered all
the art and learning he could glean from western Europe, went out the
influences that persisted long beyond his day and that of his
ill-fortuned dynasty. The Scandinavian tribes and the Celts of Gaul had
always been craftsmen in metals, particularly bronze, and Charlemagne
used them under the direction of his Roman and Byzantine artificers,
developing an art that was neither one nor the other, but a new
Christian mode of expression. When toward the close of the tenth century
the young Princess Theophano came from the Bosporus as the bride of Otho
II, she brought with her other artists, with a treasure of Byzantine
craftsmanship in weaving, metals, enamels, and ivory carving; and a new
impulse was given, so that, under the direction of a crescent
Christianity, a local and racial art developed along many lines and
extended itself through the whole region and into France, Normandy,
England, and Germany as well. From Aix, Archbishop Willigis and Bishop
Bernward carried into Germany the art of metal working as they had
learned it, one to Mainz, the other to Hildesheim, where their works
still remain. To Dinant, Huy, and Liége the same impulse was given that
later extended through Brabant and Flanders. In France the beginnings
seem to have been at the hands of St. Eloi at Limoges and Abbot Suger of
St. Denis, but it was all within the area to which our attention is
confined.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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