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About Gargoyles
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Middle Age Art
Medieval art had little sense of its own art history, and
this disinterest was continued in later periods. The Renaissance
generally dismissed it as a "barbarous" product of the "Dark Ages",
and the term "Gothic" was invented as a deliberately pejorative one,
first used by the painter Raphael in a letter of 1519 to characterise
all the had come between the demise of Classical art and its
supposed 'rebirth' in the Renaissance.
The term was subsequently adopted and popularised in the mid 16th
century by the Florentine artist and historian, Giorgio Vasari,
who used it to denigrate northern European architecture generally.
Illuminated manuscripts continued to be collected by antiquarians,
or sit unregarded in monastic or royal libraries, but paintings
were mostly of interest if they had historical associations with
royalty or others.
As in the Middle Ages themselves, other objects have often survived
mainly because they were considered to be relics.
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WebMaster Daymean Lewis • Last Updated August 2014
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