The Medieval Matisse

(LEFT) Romanesque Painter - German - Wooden ceiling (detail) - 1225-50 - (RIGHT) Henri Matisse - The Painter's Family - Oil on canvas. 143 x 194 cm - (56.3 x 76.3 in) France. 1911, State Museum of New Western Art, Moscow (click photo for larger image)This pictured featured on the left shows a section from the painted wooden ceiling of a former Benedictine monastery church. It represents the “Fall of Mankind” and is an exquisite example of the Romanesque painting style and approach. The filled space exemplifies “horror vacui”—a Latin phrase meaning “fear of open spaces”—which is used as an international art term to describe the tendency to fill up every inch of space in a work of art. This convention is characteristic of most medieval art. In Christian theology, “the fall of mankind” refers to the transition of the first man and woman from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience. It was and remains a very important theme in religious art. On the right we have a work by Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Now, Matisse—the father of Fauvism and considered to be the most important French painter of the 20th century—was among those Modern artists looking to break free from the academic standards that had been in place since the Italian Renaissance. So, he looked to pre-Renaissance art for inspiration, and you can see that he found it! He discovered a love for the bright colors, mixed patterns, and filled spaces of the medieval tradition—and similar applications of these conventions run throughout his highly influential ouevre. Matisse was inspired by the appearance of the earlier Resources work of art—not by its subject matter or its cultural significance. And many of his contemporaries and later artists followed suit. His result here can aptly be described as joyful—in part because the early days of modernism were joyful, optimistic, upbeat.