#ottonian

[vulturesouls]

The Townley Brooch

Gold and enamel, 975-1025 AD (circa), Ottonian or Byzantine.

British Museum

[medievalistsnet]

How Church Leaders Helped Defend Medieval Germany

David Bachrach on how church leaders played a crucial role in defending medieval Germany, organizing fortifications and mobilizing communities under the Ottonian rulers.

Read here

[desolatus]

Brooch, C. 970–1030

Ottonian

Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917

[tuxedolascribalblogger]

[bergakkerrising]

Jungulf Mott The družina return the ancestral sword to the ancient draugr, 2020 Pen & ink, charcoal, and coloured pencil on paper

[servus-immaculatae]

Bamberg Apocalypse 1000-1020 A. D. Reichenau Island, Lake Constance

The Last Judgement

[armthearmour]

A winged spear head, Carolingian (French) or Ottonian (German,) ca. 9th-10th century, housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

[italianartsociety]

by Rachel Hiser Remmes

The third installment of Medieval Materiality tracks Italian materials on their journey away from Italy as they become reappropriated into artworks in other medieval cultural milieus. This process, known as spoliation, whereby, in this case, Roman - and Italian - materials were taken from their sites in situ and moved to other kingdoms before they became reused in new artworks, was common across the medieval world. By incorporating pieces from prior civilizations, patrons hoped to present themselves through the lens and glory of previously successful rulers. This mentality can be see in two of the most famous artworks to incorporate spolia, which were produced during the Carolingian and Ottonian eras, respectively: Charlemagne’s imperial chapel at Aachen (d. 805) and Henry II’s Golden Ambo (early 11th century), which was, perhaps not so coincidentally, installed in Charlemagne’s chapel at Aachen.

Charlemagne wanted to look back to the glory of the ancient Romans as he built a new empire, the Carolingian Empire, under the model of the Roman imperial glory. By taking the physical materials that had once housed those great leaders, Charlemagne was physically continuing their tradition. Similarly, Henry II looked back to the glory of the Carolingian Empire two hundred years later by not only mimicking Charlemagne’s reappropriation of Roman materials, and thus the Roman Empire, but by also placing his illustrious ambo in the chapel of the great Charlemagne, whose glory he hoped to espouse.

References:

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/medieval-world/carolingian1/a/palatine-chapel-aachen

Garrison, Eliza. Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture, The Artistic Patronage of Otto III and Henry II (Florence: Taylor & Francis, 2012).

Aachen Chapel, Aachen, Germany, d. 805, roman columns.

Golden Ambo of Henry II, early 11th century, mixed media, using Roman spolia.