istoryworld
Romanesque
Vézelay is a pilgrimage church (the monks here have on show the bones of Mary Magdalene), and many of the Romanesque churches of France are on the great pilgrimage routes which develop at this period - particularly those leading to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. An innovation of architectural significance in French Romanesque relates to the pilgrims. The ambulatory, a passage behind the altar following the curve of the apse, makes possible the addition of several small chapels to contain relics. The pilgrims can ...
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The roots of Chinese culture
Most of the elaborate bronze vessels made in Shang times are for use in temples or shrines to ancestors. The richly decorated urns are for cooking the meat of the sacrificed animals. The most characteristic design is the li, with its curved base extended into three hollow protuberances - enabling maximum heat to reach the sacrificial stew. The bronze jugs, often fantastically shaped into weird animals and birds, are for pouring a liquid offering to the ancestor - usually a hot alcoholic concoction brewed from ...
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Muslim North Africa
The Arabs continue rapidly westwards along the coast of North Africa, capturing Cyrenaica in 642 and Tripoli in 643. But these remain largely ineffective outposts. For nearly three decades the Arabs make little progress in subduing the indigenous Berber inhabitants of this coastal strip. The turning point comes in 670 with the founding of a new Arab garrison town at Kairouan, about sixty miles south of the Byzantine city of Carthage. From this secure base military control becomes possible. Carthage is destroyed (yet again) in ...
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Edward I and Wales
Llywelyn is forced to sign a treaty on November 9 at Conwy. It strips him of nearly all his territories, reducing the principality to the area of Snowdon. Anglesey is allowed him on lease from the king of England, but the rest of Wales is now to be administered by English agents - a role which they fulfil with such brutality that there is a widespread uprising, headed by Llywelyn, in 1282. Edward reacts as forcefully as before, with another invasion of Wales during which ...
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The vaulted stone roof
The vault, like the dome, is among the technical achievements of Roman architecture, but the Romans are content to cover their large rectangular buildings (or basilicas) with wooden roofs. This remains the case with the first Christian churches, based on the Roman basilica. And it is still the case with all rectangular Romanesque churches until the last few decades of the 11th century. Before that time naves are either covered with flat wooden ceilings or are open up to the timbers of the roof. The ...
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International Gothic
The style can be traced back to Italian artists of the early 14th century, such as Simone Martini. It reaches its mature form at the end of the century. The Wilton Diptych, painted in about 1395-9 and now in London's National Gallery, is often quoted as an outstanding example. Against gilded backgrounds a kneeling king, Richard II, is presented by three saints to the Virgin and Child and a host of blue-robed angels. The stillness of the scene, and the beauty of the robes and ...
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Italian Gothic
More typical of Venetian Gothic is the exquisite Ca' d'Oro, built betwen 1421 and 1440. There is a wonderful contrast and harmony between the wall with its nine inset windows on the right (stone with an occasional pattern of space) and the three tiers of balconies with their filigree arches on the left (space with an occasional pattern of stone). This design blends the Gothic with other influences, deriving from Venice's connections with the Byzantine and Muslim east. The result is a beauty, purely Venetian, ...
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American sculpture
The sculpture of the American continent makes a powerful start. The style is primitive but the scale is monumental. Figures of this kind, introduced by America's first civilization (that of the Olmecs at San Lorenzo and La Venta) will have a lasting influence through 2000 years of central American culture.
Two Anglo-Afghan Wars
In January 1842 the British garrison of some 4500 troops withdraws from Kabul, leaving Shah Shuja to his fate (he is soon assassinated). Most of the retreating British and Indian soldiers are also killed during their attempt to regain the safety of India. A British army recaptures Kabul during the summer of 1842, more as a gesture of defiance than as a matter of practical policy - for the decision is subsequently taken to restore Dost Mohammed to his throne. He returns from India in ...
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Easter Island
The famous statues on Easter Island are first described in 1722, the year in which the Dutch admiral Jacob Roggeveen visits and names the island on Easter Day. They must have been carved over a long period, for there are about 600 of them, between 10 and 20 feet high, with the largest weighing some 50 tons. They may have been created at any time between the first arrival of people on the island, probably in about500, and the visit of the Dutch in the ...
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Dutch and English houses
Dutch prosperity in the 17th century results in a very satisfying design of town house. Merchants are eager to have their homes and premises in the limited space fronting the canals of Dutch towns. With numerous middle-class competitors for the available land (as opposed to the small number of noblemen holding power and wealth in other areas of Europe), the typical Dutch town house, several stories high, has a narrow brick façade and generous areas of glass - made possible by the new design of ...
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The spread of printing
During the early decades, German printing predominates. More books are published in Germany than anywhere else (by 1500 there are printers in some sixty German towns); German printers carry the craft secrets abroad; and foreign printers come to Germany to study as apprentices. The earliest typography is therefore in the black-letter style of contemporary German manuscripts. But by the end of the century the most fashionable and influential printing is being done in Italy, with a corresponding change in appearance.
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Act of Supremacy
More refuses the oath because it implies denial of the pope's supremacy. Imprisoned from May 1534 in the Tower of London, he is tried in Westminster Hall in July 1535 (ten days after the beheading of John Fisher on the same charge of treason). Found guilty, and returned to the Tower, More declares on the scaffold that he dies 'the king's good servant, but God's first'. He and Fisher, and a group of Carthusian monks who make the same stand, become England's first Catholic martyrs.
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The Phoney War
In France and Britain the immediate aftermath of the declaration of war is a return to the defensive tactics of World War I. The French rush troops to the Maginot Line, an elaborate complex of concrete fortifications connected by underground railway lines, which has been constructed along the Franco-German border between 1929 and 1938. (It is named after André Maginot, minister of war from 1929 to 1931.)France's border with Belgium, running northwest to the sea, is not similarly protected. So, as in World War I, ...
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Italian Gothic
The most impressive Italian contribution to the story of Gothic architecture is in secular buildings. In 1298 the authorities in Siena publish regulations for the city's central piazza, the semicircular Campo. The height and style of the surrounding houses are to be carefully regulated. Over the next few decades the commune builds the town hall, the Palazzo Publico, on the straight side of the gently sloping semicircle (the great tower is completed in 1348). The other sides fill in, as decreed, to provide a sense ...
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Aachen or Aix-la-Chapelle
Five years after the coronation in Rome, Leo III is again with Charlemagne at a religious ceremony. But this time it is in Germany. He is consecrating Charlemagne's spectacular new church in Aachen, begun just nine years previously in 796. The French name of Aachen, Aix-la-Chapelle, specifically features this famous building - a small but richly decorated octagonal chapel which Charlemagne has consciously modelled on another famous imperial church, Justinian's San Vitale in Ravenna.
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Henry II
In the centre, at court, the royal administration is strengthened by several significant innovations - among them the development of the exchequer. This is a regular meeting of the nation's finance committee, held round a table with a chequered pattern of squares. The squares are used as an abacus for instant calculations of revenue. Often chaired by the king himself, and attended by the great officers of state, this committee is a more professional and centralized method of government than the relatively impromptu arrangements of ...
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Ajanta, Ellora and Elephanta
Ajanta is entirely Buddhist. The great columned cave temple of Elephanta, on an island near Bombay and dating from the 5th to 8th century AD, is exclusively Hindu - devoted to Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu. But the many cave temples of Ellora, spanning a longer period (from the 4th to 13th century), include shrines sacred to Buddhists, to Hindus and to Jains. Ellora is a sloping site, which offers the opportunity for another architectural element. Open forecourts are carved here from the rock, with gateways ...
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The architecture of empire
As well as setting in place the administrative structure of the empire (and adopting Zoroastrianism as the state religion), Darius proves himself the greatest builder of the Achaemenid dynasty. In 521 he moves his capital to Susa, building there an audience hall and a palace. An inscription found at Susa reveals his pride in his far-flung empire of craftsmen. In 518 he moves them all - stone cutters, masons, carpenters, sculptors - some 250 miles (400 km) to the southeast, to start work on an ...
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Romanesque
The capitals of columns, carved with nothing more exotic than acanthus leaves in the classical tradition, provide one area in which the Romanesque sculptor lets his imagination run wild. In abbey cloisters of the period (and abbots are among the main patrons of art in the Romanesque centuries) the tops of the pillars are often alive with vivid biblical scenes or endearingly grotesque monsters, cunningly carved to make the most of the available shape. This tradition of sculpture, reaching its peak in the 11th and ...
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