Lovely promise and quick ruin are seen nowhere better than in Gothic architecture.
Years ago, when I was in Siena for the first time, I saw the works of Duccio, whose deeply emotional painting from the thirteenth century has never left me.
I was born in Den Bosch, where the painter Hieronymus Bosch named himself after. And so I've always been very fond of this painter who lived and worked in the 15th century.
I wanted to keep a Gothic cathedral alive in my heart.
Seeing that picture, for me, was like Chartres Cathedral.
During the Middle Ages they understood that words accompanied by imagery are much more memorable. By making the margins of a book colorful and beautiful, illuminations help make the text unforgettable. It's unfortunate that we've lost the art of illumination.
We can hardly imagine a state of mind in which all material objects were regarded as symbols of spirtual truths or episodes in sacred history. Yet, unless we make this effort of imagination, Medieval art is largely incomprehensible.
I loved medieval architecture when I was very small; I don't know why.
I adore the tapestries at the Musee de Cluny in Paris!
Yet for my part, deeply as I am moved by the religious architecture of the Middle Ages, I cannot honestly say that I ever felt the slightest emotion in any modern Gothic church.
Scribal culture and Gothic architecture were both concerned with light through, not light on.
There is a spell in mediaeval Art which has had power to bewitch some people into trying, or wishing to try, or fancying that they wish to try or making believe to fancy that they wish to try, to bring back the Middle Ages.
In another life I would be a medievalist. I loved Chaucer, far more than Shakespeare.
And it has some weight, I mean, the whole history of the gargoyles, that's some wonderful stuff.
Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the mediaeval churches.
We think of medieval England as being a place of unbelievable cruelty and darkness and superstition. We think of it as all being about fair maidens in castles, and witch-burning, and a belief that the world was flat. Yet all these things are wrong.
I developed a passion for the Middle Ages the same way some people develop a passion for coconuts.
If you look at an illuminated manuscript, even today, it just blows your mind. For them, without all the clutter and inputs that we have, it must have been even more extraordinary.
From medieval tapestries, we know that slingers were capable of hitting birds in flight. They were incredibly accurate.
Artists should work together like the artists of the Middle Ages.
Even if you haven't seen 'The Seventh Seal,' you've seen it. The influence is so vast and insidious, every image of a black-robed, white-faced Death is a rip or parody of 'The Seventh Seal.'
Most early Icelandic paintings are landscapes.
Maimed but still magnificent... Europe's mightiest medieval cathedral.
For us, when we think about the Middle Ages, it's sort of this rarefied, distant time that we have no connection to, especially if you grew up in America.
Stained glass enabled the modern world.
