hen the Muslims pushed into Southern Spain and Eastern Europe. The current city of Istanbul, located in the isthmus of land between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, was originally named Byzantium, renamed for the Christian leader King Constantine, Constantinople, and finally became Istanbul when it was taken by the Muslims. Christian art of the era ordinarily has little perception of depth, in both sculpture and painting with two-dimensional holy Christian figures having. Often the figures were also viewed from the side with subject size being determined more by theme than by spatial relationship within the art. Another thing to keep in mind when looking at the Middle Ages is that most of the population could not read, that churches, and art in the churches guided the people in worship. Painting, sculpture and stained glass were visual documentation that all people could understand in communicating the stories of the early Christain Church. Church and state were essentially under the same control and only clergy and royal families could read and owned books. The invention of printing during the Renaissance would put books into the hands of the middle class. Narcissistic self-worship continues throughout western art and culture. Historians consider medieval Europe a deviation, as the realist form was replaced with a standardized, stylized one. Fundamentally, there was not much difference from Classical art, the image was still human and the image of God’s only the method of portrayal was different. The medieval images reflected societal culture of the day, which was less rational than reason based as were the Greek/Romans.The end of the Middle Ages sometimes referred to as the High Middle ages was broken into two specific styles. The Romanesque which was from about 1050 to 1200 A.D.E. Romanesque sculptures, paintings, and architecture was modeled after the Greek and Romans. The style was symmetrical and well balan...
