The Byzantine and Romanesque age
Glittering mosaics in Ravenna and Venice and massive Romanesque churches shaped Italy’s early Middle Ages.
After the fall of the Western Empire, Italy was divided among many rulers: Goths, Byzantine emperors, Lombards, Frankish kings, popes and later Normans. The country never became a unified whole during the Middle Ages, but it lay at the crossroads between East and West. That is why Byzantine golden splendor and the Romanesque style of northern Europe met here. The common denominator was the Church, the great patron of art in almost every part of the country. The popes in Rome were both spiritual leaders and secular princes.
Ravenna, for a time the capital of both the Goths and the Byzantines, has the best-preserved mosaics from the 5th and 6th centuries. The figures stand frontally against a golden background, solemn and timeless. Later Venice took up the same tradition in St Mark’s Basilica, and in Sicily the Norman kings had Byzantine masters cover their churches with gold. Mosaic became an art for eternity, shimmering in candlelight. The most famous mosaics are still where they were first installed.
From around the year 1000, large new churches were built in the towns, which were growing ever richer through trade. In Pisa, Modena, Florence and Milan a Romanesque style emerged, with thick walls, round arches and sculpted portals. Each region developed its own variant, from the marble-striped façades of Tuscany to the brick churches of Lombardy. Stonemasons began to sign their work, and for the first time we know the names of individual masters. Many of these churches are still in daily use.