c. 950–1050

Ottonian art

Under the Saxon emperors, the Ottonians, the tenth and early eleventh centuries produced an art of great gravity and powerful expression. Golden books from the island of Reichenau, bronze doors from Hildesheim and the Gero Cross in Cologne build the bridge from Charlemagne to the Romanesque.

An emperor between heaven and earth

The young emperor sits on a throne, and a hand reaches down from a circle above to place the crown on his head: the Hand of God. Around him hover the four creatures of the Evangelists, angel, eagle, lion and ox, holding a white band across his chest as if laying the Gospel on his heart. Beneath the throne crouches a figure, the Earth, bearing his footstool. Kings stand on either side, and below them warriors and bishops. Behind it all glows gold.

This is how Otto III had himself portrayed around the year 1000 in the Gospel book presented to him by the monk Liuthar of Reichenau. With his outstretched arms the emperor recalls Christ. No other medieval ruler portrait places a human being so close to God. The book is now in the Cathedral Treasury at Aachen.

Heirs of Charlemagne

After the Carolingian empire fell apart, the dukes of Saxony took over the kingship in the East. In 936 Otto I was crowned in Charlemagne’s Palatine Chapel at Aachen, and in 962 the pope crowned him emperor in Rome. The Ottonians saw themselves as renewers of Charlemagne’s empire, and with it of the Roman Empire, which is why the art of their age has also been called an “Ottonian Renaissance”.

The key patrons were not only the emperors themselves but their relatives and confidants in high church office: archbishops in Cologne and Trier, bishops in Hildesheim, abbesses in Essen and Quedlinburg. Many were highly educated and travelled with the court to Italy.

A princess from Byzantium

In 972 Otto II married Theophanu, a niece of the Byzantine emperor, in Rome. Their marriage charter, written in gold on purple-painted parchment decorated with animal medallions, is among the most splendid documents of the Middle Ages; it is now in the state archive at Wolfenbüttel. With Theophanu came Byzantine silks, ivories and models to the court. How great her personal influence on art was is disputed. What is certain is that Ottonian painters looked not only back to Charlemagne but also towards Constantinople.

Gold on Reichenau

The most famous books of the period were made on the island of Reichenau in Lake Constance, though scholars now also consider Trier as the place of origin for some of them. Their painters almost entirely dispensed with space and landscape. Figures stand against gold or coloured bands, with large eyes and hands that speak louder than their faces. In the scene of Christ washing Peter’s feet, an enormous pointing finger makes the meaning clear. The pictures do not tell a story like a film; they show what a story means.

For Archbishop Egbert of Trier the Codex Egberti was made around 980, with more than fifty pictures of the life of Jesus. Gospel books and pericope books in purple and gold followed for Otto III and Henry II. Ten Reichenau manuscripts have been on UNESCO’s Memory of the World register since 2003.

Christ dies

In Cologne Cathedral hangs an oak crucifix almost two metres high, given by Archbishop Gero around 965 to 970; tree-ring dating confirmed this early date in 1976. The Gero Cross does not show Christ upright and alive, triumphant over death, as had been usual until then. His head has sunk onto his chest, his eyes are closed, his body hangs heavily from the arms. It is the oldest surviving large crucifix north of the Alps and one of the earliest images of the dead Christ in the West.

At about the same time, around 980, the Golden Madonna was made in Essen, a wooden figure entirely covered in thin gold sheet. Mary sits enthroned with the Child on her lap, holding an apple. She is regarded as the oldest fully three-dimensional figure of the Virgin in Western art. She was probably commissioned by Abbess Mathilde, a granddaughter of Otto the Great.

Bronze in Hildesheim

Bernward, Bishop of Hildesheim and once tutor to Otto III, had seen Rome. In 1015 he had two bronze door leaves cast for his church, each almost five metres high and in a single piece. On the left, reading from top to bottom, they tell the story from Paradise to Cain’s murder of Abel; on the right, from bottom to top, the life of Christ up to the Resurrection. The scenes answer each other: the Fall stands beside the Crucifixion, Eve beside Mary. When God confronts Adam and Eve, Adam passes the blame to Eve and Eve to the serpent, with gestures anyone can understand without words.

A little later came the Bernward Column, a bronze column modelled on Trajan’s Column in Rome, around which the life of Jesus winds in a spiral. Bernward’s church of St Michael and Hildesheim Cathedral have been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1985.

Why it still matters

Ottonian art is less familiar than the Gothic, but it has something that surprises many people: an expressive force that feels almost modern. Standing before the Reichenau pictures, with their large eyes and eloquent hands, one thinks of the twentieth century rather than the year 1000. And much of what defines the Romanesque, monumental sculpture, bronze casting, churches with clearly ordered spaces, was prepared here. With the building of Speyer Cathedral from 1030 under the Salian emperors, the next era begins.