although visitors to an art museum today might think nothing of seeing numerous landscape paintings on exhibit the idea of a work of art depicting only the natural world with no human or divine figures was once radical It was not until the 1500s that landscape was recognized as a legitimate painting genre in the West Since that time landscape painting has helped push the progress century a d By the end of that century of artistic developments moving from however the Roman Empire which idealized to realistic expressionistic and controlled most of Europe northern even abstract views of the natural world Africa and the Middle East was split The flourishing art scene of the into the western Roman Empire and the ancient Greek world revolved around eastern Roman Empire also known as the the human figure in both sculpture and Byzantine Empire By the fifth century painting Beginning around the first the western empire had fallen and Europe century b c however landscape painting entered a period known as the Middle flowered briefly in the form of wall paintings Ages which lasted nearly 1,000 years and frescoes paintings made on walls using During this time the Catholic Church watercolors on wet plaster These frescoes exerted strong influence throughout were found in the homes of wealthy Romans most of Europe and religious subjects and may actually have been copies of Greek including stories from the Bible and wall paintings created 100 or 200 years earlier legends about saints were regarded According to the Roman scholar Pliny a d as the proper focus of artwork That 23 79 Roman wall paintings depicted artwork was usually in the form of wall country houses colonnades garden or altar paintings mosaics or tapestries structures groves forests hills ponds seas in cathedrals and churches Some rivers shores whatever one wished Landscape painting prevailed in Rome until about the fourth DETAIL FROM THE MAESTÀ ALTARPIECE 1308 11 OPPOSITE BY ITALIAN DUCCIO DI BUONINSEGNA DETAIL FROM THE ANNUNCIATION C 1305 ABOVE BY GIOTTO DI BONDONE 5
Christian subjects during the Middle Ages in China where nature was viewed as sacred landscapes began to emerge as the subjects of their own paintings around the sixth century a d Many Chinese artists spent years in remote natural retreats where they observed nature They later made pictures of it from memory often in monochromatic single-color small paintings illustrated the pages of inks Although the images often appeared illuminated manuscripts as well realistic most were compilations of During the early Middle Ages artistic scenes the artist had put together in achievement reached its greatest heights order to create an idealized spiritual in the Byzantine Empire In order to representation of nature Each aspect emphasize the spiritual aspects of religion of a painting generally had symbolic many Byzantine artists rejected realistic meaning Clouds stood for changeability portrayals in favor of flat images with for example The artist attempted to strong lines and rich colors Landscapes capture a mood or feeling which might appeared only in the background where also be expressed through a poem they served as symbols A lily for inked on the scene Contact between example was not simply a plant but China and Japan led to the Japanese a representation of the Virgin Mary’s adoption of Chinese painting styles in purity Such symbols were often highly the seventh and eighth centuries By the stylized varying little from one painting 12th century however Japanese artists to the next and rarely gave an illusion of had developed their own style known as space or reality By the later Middle Ages Yamato-e YAH-mah-toh-WEH using the Byzantine style had spread to Italy vivid colors to create flat pictures of and other parts of Europe native literature or the seasons While European art revolved around As landscape continued to be the ART FROM THE BOOK OF KELLS ABOVE AND OPPOSITE AN ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT CREATED AROUND A D 800 focus of art in the East Western art was beginning to undergo its own 6
