Renaissance ana Medieval Art

The exhibition features the casts of the monuments of Roman and Gothic art, Northern and Italian Renaissance. Several stands in the room are dedicated to decorative art.

The Medieval part of the exhibition features a number of items created in the transitional period between the Ancient times and the Middle Ages, mainly in the territory of the Eastern Roman Empire. Certain examples of monumental and applied art of Western Europe starting from the late Carolingian times and ending with late Gothics are also exhibited here.

The culture of the Middle Ages differed from that of the antiquity. It was the time when the Byzantium and Western Europe were dominated by the monotheistic Christian religion. The church held a special place in the structure of the feudal society and defined the direction of its spiritual pursuits. It also was the main customer of the medieval artists. Medieval art showed a different view of a man and his place in the world. People were considered God's creations and slaves destined to perish. The art of the Middle Ages proclaimed new moral and spiritual values and based on them its esthetics that established the supremacy of spirit over matter and strived to give universal assessment of the whole "God's universe". The majority of extant artistic monuments dated back to the Middle Ages are religious, and secular works are mostly lost. Therefore, the image of that epoch that we have today is in many respects incomplete.

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