Ottonian Art

Ottonian art is a style in pre-romanesque German art, covering also some works from the Low
countries, northern Italy and eastern France. It was named by the art historian Hubert Janitschek
after the Ottonian dynasty which ruled Germany and northern Italy between 919 and 1024 under
the kings Henry I, Otto I, Otto II, Otto III and Henry II. With Ottonian architecture, it is a key
component of the Ottonian Renaissance (circa 951–1024). However, the style neither began nor
ended to neatly coincide with the rule of the dynasty. It emerged some decades into their rule and
persisted past the Ottonian emperors into the reigns of the early Salian dynasty, which lacks an
artistic style label of its own. In the traditional scheme of art history, Ottonian art follows
Carolingian art and precedes Romanesque art, though the transitions at both ends of the period
are gradual rather than sudden. Like the former and unlike the latter, it was very largely a style
restricted to a few of the small cities of the period, and important monasteries, as well as the
court circles of the emperor and his leading vassals.

After the decline of the Carolingian Empire, the Holy Roman Empire was re-established under
the Saxon Ottonian dynasty. From this emerged a renewed faith in the idea of Empire and a
reformed Church, creating a period of heightened cultural and artistic favour. It was in this
atmosphere that masterpieces were created that fused the traditions from which Ottonian artists
derived their inspiration such as models of Late Antique, Carolingian, and Byzantine origin.
Surviving Ottonian art is very largely religious, in the form of illuminated manuscripts and
metalwork, and was produced in a small number of centres for a narrow range of patrons in the
circle of the Imperial court, as well as important figures in the church. However much of it was
designed for display to a wider public, especially of pilgrims.

The style is generally grand and heavy, sometimes to excess, and initially less sophisticated than
the Carolingian equivalents, with less direct influence from Byzantine art and less understanding
of its classical models, but around 1000 a striking intensity and expressiveness emerge in many
works, as a solemn monumentality is combined with a vibrant inwardness, an unworldly,
visionary quality with sharp attention to actuality, surface patterns of flowing lines and rich
bright colours with passionate emotionalism.

Following late Carolingian styles, presentation portraits of the patrons of manuscripts are very
prominent in Ottonian art, and much Ottonian art reflected the dynasty's desire to establish
visually a link to the Christian rulers of Late Antiquity, such as Constantine, Theoderic, and
Justinian as well as to their Carolingian predecessors, particularly Charlemagne.

The term Ottonian art was not coined until 1890, and the following decade saw the first serious
studies of the period; for the next several decades the subject was dominated by German art
historians mainly dealing with manuscripts, apart from Adolph Goldschmidt's studies of ivories
and sculpture in general. A number of exhibitions held in Germany in the years following World
War II helped introduce the subject to a wider public and promote the understanding of art media
other than manuscript illustrations. The 1950 Munich exhibition Ars Sacra sacred art in Latin
devised this term for religious metalwork and the associated ivories and enamels, which was re-
used by Peter Lasko in his book for the Pelican History of Art, the first survey of the subject
written in English, as the usual art-historical term, the minor arts, seemed unsuitable for this
period, where they were, with manuscript miniatures, the most significant art forms. In 2003 a
reviewer noted that Ottonian manuscript illustration was a field that is still significantly under-
represented in English-language art-historical research.

Manuscripts
Ottonian monasteries produced most if not all of the most magnificent medieval illuminated
manuscripts. They were a major art form of the time, and monasteries received direct
sponsorship from emperors and bishops, having the best in equipment and talent available. The
range of heavily illuminated texts was very largely restricted unlike in the Carolingian
Renaissance to the main liturgical books, with very few secular works being so treated.

In contrast to manuscripts of other periods, it is very often possible to say with certainty who
commissioned or received a manuscript, but not where it was made. Some manuscripts also
include relatively extensive cycles of narrative art, such as the sixteen pages of the Codex Aure
of Echternach devoted to strips in three tiers with scenes from the Life of Christ and his parables.
Heavily illuminated manuscripts were given rich treasure bindings and their pages were probably
seen by very few; when they were carried in the grand processions of Ottonian churches it seems
to have been with the book closed to display the cover.

Gero Codex (now Darmstadt), the earliest and grandest of the group, copy those in the
Carolingian Lorsch Gospels. This is the first stylistic group of the traditional Reichenau school.
The two other major manuscripts of the group are the sacramentaries named for Hornbach and
Petershausen. The Annunciation to the shepherds from the Pericopes of Henry II, Liuthar group
of the Reichenau school

A number of important manuscripts produced from this period onwards in a distinctive group of
styles are usually attributed to the scriptorium of the island monastery of Reichenau in Lake
Constance, despite an admitted lack of evidence connecting them to the monastery there. C.R.
Dodwell was one of a number of dissident voices here, believing the works to have been
produced at Lorsch and Trier instead. Wherever it was located, the Reichenau school specialized
in gospel books and other liturgical books, many of them, such as the Munich Gospels of Otto III
(c. 1000) and the Pericopes of Henry II (Munich, Bayerische Nationalbibl. clm. 4452, c. 1001–
1024), imperial commissions. Due to their exceptional quality, the manuscripts of Reichenau
were in 2003 added to the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register.

The most important Reichenau school manuscripts are agreed to fall into three distinct groups,
all named after scribes whose names are recorded in their books. The Eburnant group covered
above was followed by the Ruodprecht group named after the scribe of the Egbert Psalter;
Dodwell assigns this group to Trier. The Aachen Gospels of Otto III, also known as the Liuthar
Gospels, give their name to the third Liuthar group of manuscripts, most from the 11th century,
in a strongly contrasting style, though still attributed by most scholars to Reichenau, but by
Dodwell also to Trier.

The outstanding miniaturist of the Ruodprecht group was the so-called Master of the Registrum
Gregorii, or Gregory Master, whose work looked back in some respects to Late Antique
manuscript painting, and whose miniatures are notable for their delicate sensibility to tonal
grades and harmonies, their fine sense of compositional rhythms, their feelings for the
relationship of figures in space, and above all their special touch of reticence and poise. He
worked chiefly in Trier in the 970s and 980s, and was responsible for several miniatures in the
influential Codex Egberti, a gospel lectionary made for Archbishop Egbert of Trier, probably in
the 980s. However, the majority of the 51 images in this book, which represent the first extensive
cycle of images depicting the events of Christ's life in a western European manuscript, were
made by two monks from Reichenau, who are named and depicted in one of the miniatures.

The style of the Liuthar group is very different, and departs further from rather than returning to
classical traditions; it carried transcendentalism to an extreme, with marked schematization of
the forms and colours, flattened form, conceptualized draperies and expansive gesture.
Backgrounds are often composed of bands of colour with a symbolic rather than naturalistic
rationale, the size of figures reflects their importance, and in them emphasis is not so much on
movement as in gesture and glance, with narrative scenes presented as a quasi-liturgical act,
dialogues of divinity. This gestural dumb-show was soon to be conventionalized as a visual
language throughout medieval Europe. The group were produced perhaps from the 990s to 1015
or later, and major manuscripts include the Munich Gospels of Otto III, the Bamberg Apocalypse
and a volume of biblical commentary there, and the Pericopes of Henry II, the best known and
most extreme of the group, where the figure-style has become more monumental, more rarified
and sublime, at the same time thin in density, insubstantial, mere silhouettes of colour against a
shimmering void. The group introduced the background of solid gold to Western illumination.

Two dedication miniatures added to the Egmond Gospels around 975 show a less accomplished
Netherlandish version of Ottonian style. In Regensburg St. Emmeram's Abbey held the major
Carolingian Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram, which probably influenced a style with an incisive
line and highly formal organization of the page, giving in the Uta Codex of c. 1020 complex
schemes where bands of gold outline the bold, squares circles, ellipses, and rhombs that enclose
the figures, and inscriptions are incorporated in the design explicating its complex theological
symbolism. This style was to be very influential on Romanesque art in several media.

Echternach Abbey became important under Abbot Humbert, in office from 1028 to 1051, and the
pages as opposed to the cover of the Codex Aureus of Echternach were produced there, followed
by the Golden Gospels of Henry III in 1045–46, which Henry presented to Speyer Cathedral
which is now Escorial, the major work of the school. Henry also commissioned the Uppsala
Gospels for the cathedral there now in the university library. Other important monastic scriptoria
that flourished during the Ottonian age include those at Salzburg, Hildesheim, Corvey, Fulda,
and Cologne, where the Hitda Codex was made

This scene was often included in Ottonian cycles of the Life of Christ. Many show Jesus with
crossed halo twice, once asleep and once calming the storm.
METALWORK

Objects for decorating churches such as crosses, reliquaries, altar frontals and treasure bindings
for books were all made of or covered by gold, embellished with gems, enamels, crystals, and
cameos. This was a much older style, but the Ottonian version has distinctive features, with very
busy decoration of surfaces, often gems raised up from the main surface on little gold towers,
accompanied by beehive projections in gold wire, and figurative reliefs in repoussé gold
decorating areas between the bars of enamel and gem decoration. Relics were assuming
increasing importance, sometimes political, in this period, and so increasingly rich reliquaries
were made to hold them. In such works the gems do not merely create an impression of richness,
but served both to offer a foretaste of the bejewelled nature of the Celestial city, and particular
types of gem were believed to have actual powerful properties in various scientific, medical and
magical respects, as set out in the popular lapidary books. The few surviving pieces of secular
jewellery are in similar styles, including the crown worn by Otto III as a child, which he
presented to the Golden Madonna of Essen after he outgrew it.

Ivory Carving
Much very fine small-scale sculpture in ivory was made during the Ottonian period, with Milan
probably a site if not the main centre, along with Trier and other German and French sites. There
are many oblong panels with reliefs which once decorated book-covers, or still do, with the
Crucifixion of Jesus as the most common subject. These and other subjects very largely continue
Carolingian iconography, but in a very different style.

A group of four Ottonian ivory situlae appear to represent a new departure for ivory carving in
their form, and the type is hardly found after this period. Situlae were liturgical vessels used to
hold holy water, and previously were usually of wood or bronze, straight-sided and with a
handle. An aspergillum was dipped in the situla to collect water with which to sprinkle the
congregation or other objects. However the four Ottonian examples from the 10th century are
made from a whole section of elephant tusk, and are slightly larger in girth at their tops. All are
richly carved with scenes and figures on different levels: the Basilewsky Situla of 920 in the
Victoria & Albert Museum, decorated with scenes from the Life of Christ on two levels, the
Situla of Gotofredo of c. 980 in Milan Cathedral, one in the Aachen Cathedral Treasury, and one
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York All came from the milieu of the Ottonian court:
an inscription says that Archbishop Gotfredus presented the Milan example in anticipation of a
visit by the Empero, also referred to in the London example which was possibly from the same
workshop The latest and most lavish is the Aachen example, which is studded with jewels and
shows an enthroned Emperor, surrounded by a pope and archbishops. This was probably made in
Trier about 1000.

Sculpture
Very little wood carving has survived from the period, but the monumental painted figure of
Christ on the Gero Cross (around 965–970, Cologne Cathedral) is one of the outstanding
masterpieces of the period. Its traditional dating by the church, long thought to be implausibly
early, was finally confirmed by dendrochronology. The Golden Madonna of Essen about 1000,
Essen Cathedral, which was formerly the abbey is a virtually unique survival of a type of object
once found in many major churches. It is a smaller sculpture of the Virgin and Child, which is in
wood which was covered with gesso and then thin gold sheet. Monumental sculpture remained
rare in the north, though there are more examples in Italy, such as the stucco reliefs on the
ciborium of Sant' Ambrogio, Milan, and also on that in San Pietro al Monte, Civate, which relate
to ivory carving of the same period, and some stone sculpture.

Originally a ducal family from Saxony, the Ottonians (named after their first King Otto I the
Great) seized power after the collapse of Carolingian rule in Europe and re-established the Holy
Roman Empire. Ottonian rule was accompanied by renewed faith in the idea of imperium (Latin,
roughly translated as “power to command”), referring to the sovereignty of state over
individual). This coincided with a period of significant church reform. Both combined to create
the Ottonian Renaissance (circa 951-1024), a period of heightened cultural and artistic fervor and
achievement.
The Ottonian Dynasty desired to confirm a sacred Roman imperial lineage that connected them
to the Christian rulers of Late Antiquity such as Theodoric and Justinian and to their Carolingian
predecessors, particularly Charlemagne. Ottonian art reflected this desire, fusing traditions and
influences from late Roman, Byzantine, and Carolingian art.

The style is generally grand and heavy, sometimes to excess, and initially less sophisticated than
the Carolingian equivalents. Additionally, the Ottonian style exhibits no direct influence from
Byzantine art and less understanding of its classical models. Surviving paintings from this period
exist predominantly in illustrations from illuminated manuscripts and a small number of mural
and fresco fragments. In fact, illuminated manuscripts are the best source of painted imperial
portraiture from the Ottonian Renaissance.

Ruler Portraits
Ottonian ruler portraits usually combine ancient Roman elements with contemporary medieval
ones. Portraits are most frequently found in the dedicatory prefaces of illuminated manuscripts.
Ottonian art eschews naturalism for a more abstract style, focusing on symbolism to convey
deeply philosophical and theological concepts.

A portrait of Otto II enthroned depicts the emperor wearing a bejeweled crown in lieu of a laurel
wreath and a large disc bearing the cross in place of an imperial orb. However, his upright
posture and general pose with one raised hand somewhat recalls the Colossus of Constantine,
which sat in the Basilica Nova in the fourth century. Likewise, his attire slightly resembles a
Roman toga, a sartorial mainstay among emperors and senators of ancient times. In a departure
from classical art, however, Otto and the figures who flank him appear flat. Further, their scale is
hierarchical, which organizes size in relation to importance. Otto is the largest of the five figures
depicted. Lastly, the architectural space that surrounds the emperor fails to convey a sense of
naturalistic recession into space.

Master of the Registrum Gregorii. Otto II Enthroned (c. 985).: Ottonian art was created to
confirm a direct Holy and Imperial lineage as a source of legitimized power linked from
Constantine and Justinian.

Wall Paintings
Although it is clear from records that many churches were decorated with extensive wall
painting, surviving examples are extremely rare, usually fragmentary, and in poor condition. As
a result, their dates of production are uncertain, especially since many have been restored. Most
surviving examples are clustered in south Germany, although there are also important examples
from northern Italy. There is a record of bishop Gebhard of Constance hiring lay artists for a
now-vanished cycle at his newly founded Petershausen Abbey (983). Laymen may have
dominated the art of wall painting, perhaps basing their designs on monastic illuminations. The
artists seem to have been nomadic, regularly moving throughout Europe.
The church of St. George at Oberzell on Reichenau Island has the best-known surviving example
of wall paintings. However, much of the original work has been lost, and the remaining paintings
to the sides of the nave have suffered from time and restoration. The largest scenes show the
miracles of Christ in a style that shows both specific Byzantine elements and similarity with
Reichenau manuscripts such as the Munich Gospels of Otto III. They are therefore usually dated
around 980–1000. Indeed, the paintings are one of the foundations of the case for Reichenau
Abbey as a major center of manuscript painting.

Jesus and the Gadarene Swine (tenth century): Nave fresco in St George, Oberzell, Reichenau
Island.

Ottonian architecture first developed during the reign of Otto the Great (936-975) and lasted until
the mid-11th century. Surviving examples of this style of architecture are found in Germany and
Belgium. Their architecture was inspired by Carolingian and Byzantine architecture and
foreshadows Romanesque architecture in some features, including alternating columns and piers
in regular patterns. Ottonian religious architecture diverges from the model of the central-plan
church, drawing inspiration instead from the longitudinally oriented Roman basilica .They
adopted the Carolingian double-ended variation on the Roman basilica, featuring apses at both
ends of the nave rather than just one. Churches make generous use of the round arch , have flat
ceilings, and display the Ottonian appreciation of mathematical harmony by using modular
planning.

Originally a ducal family from Saxony, the Ottonians (named after their first king Otto I the
Great) seized power after the collapse of Carolingian rule in Europe and re-established the Holy
Roman Empire. Ottonian architecture first developed during the reign of Otto the Great (936 –
975 CE) and lasted until the mid-11th century. Surviving examples of this style of architecture
are found today in Germany and Belgium.

Ottonian architecture chiefly drew its inspiration from Carolingian and Byzantine architecture
and represents the absorption of classical Mediterranean and Christian architectural forms with
Germanic styles. Some features foreshadow the development of Romanesque architecture, which
emerged in the mid-11th century. Its balance and harmony are a remarkable reflection of the high
regard in which the Ottonians held the mathematical sciences. This is evident in the modular
planning, which bases the measurements of each component of the interior on a single square
unit multiplied or divided accordingly.

Barring a few examples influenced by the octagonal Palatine Chapel built by Charlemagne in
Aachen, Ottonian religious architecture tends to diverge from the model of the central-plan
church, drawing inspiration instead from the Roman (Western) basilica. This typically consisted
of a long central nave with an aisle at each side and an apse at one end. When adopted by early
Christians, the basilica plan assumed a transept perpendicular to the nave, forming a cruciform
shape to commemorate the Crucifixion. Plan of the church. Arrow on left marks the entrance,
followed by the Nave with an aisle on either side, followed by the Crossing with a transept on
either side, followed by the Choir, Apse, Ambulatory, and finally the Chapels.

Plan of a typical Western basilican church: The arrow at the left marks the entrance to the
church. Main seating for worshipers is located in the nave, while the aisles were originally used
to accommodate large crowds on feast days. As churches began collecting relics (housed in the
chapels) that attracted pilgrims, churches added the ambulatory. This connects the aisles to the
chapels behind the choir, where clergy members perform their rituals.

The Ottonians adopted the Carolingian double-ended variation on the Roman basilica, featuring
apses at the east and west ends of the church rather than just the east. Most Ottonian churches
make generous use of the round arch, have flat ceilings, and insert massive rectangular piers
between columns in regular patterns, as seen in St. Cyriakus at Gernrode and St. Michael’s at
Hildesheim.
Plan of St. Cyriakus at Gernrode: This plan shows the apse at both the west and east ends of the
church, with a single transept dividing the nave from the east apse. The black circles and
rectangles between the nave and each aisle mark the alternating columns (circles) and piers
(rectangles).
St. Cyriakus, interior : The painted ceilings were added during the 19th-century renovation,
which also lined most of the walls with cut stone panels. The original Ottonian walls featured
rough quarry stone masonry.