Crusader art and the West: thoughts on assessing the impact of art from the crusader East on medieval art in western Europe, especially in central Italy

Abstract

In attempting to address the complex issue of the impact of crusader art on the art of western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it is worth noting that this is a topic very little discussed to date.1 Furthermore there are certain important problems that are directly relevant to such a discussion which must be taken into account as research goes forward. Looking at the second point first, it is clear that although the idea and existence of what is perhaps most accurately called the art of the crusaders in the Holy Land, and also known as crusader art for short, is now widely accepted, there are still dissenting views about it. On the one hand, whereas the art of the crusaders in the Holy Land has been argued to be a major chapter in the history of medieval art in the Mediterranean world between 1098 and 1291, the older more doubtful view, first voiced before 1957, is still occasionally found.2 And even though a wide consensus about the existence of crusader art and crusader artists continues to grow and develop, the fact is that our understanding of what constitutes a work of crusader art is also changing. Indeed as we learn more about the characteristics of certain kinds of crusader art, most recently in particular, about icons and panel paintings, icons once considered Byzantine have been reinterpreted to be crusader. Certain characteristics pertaining to the overwhelming majority of works identified as crusader icon painting continue to be recognized, namely the fundamental Byzantinizing tradition that the crusader artist creates in his own idiom. But the subtlety and sophistication of the ways a crusader painter could appropriate, emulate, and also reinterpret the artistic characteristics of Byzantine originals in certain innovative ways are increasingly coming to light. One of the most notable examples of an icon formerly held to be Byzantine, but recently argued quite persuasively to be crusader, is the well-known mosaic icon of the Virgin and Child Hodegetria (bust-length) now in the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, probably done in Constantinople— chapter 34 : Crusader ar t and the Wes t —sometime shortly after 1204, that is, shortly after the crusader conquest of the city (Fig. 34.1).3 Given our new understanding of this icon, we must first signal that there are other Byzantine-looking icons like this one which are currently in the process of being reconsidered and reinterpreted from differing points of view. And we must keep these dynamics in mind as we attempt to consider the impact of crusader art on the West. The fact is that in this chapter we can only offer some preliminary discussion about this issue and raise some important questions, while the basic identification of works of art as “crusader” goes on, and some new examples of ways crusader art appears to have had an impact on the art of western Europe are proposed. Our focus here will therefore be on sharpening our understanding of what characterizes certain crusader icons, and starting to assess the impact of crusader icon painting on the medieval art of western Europe, especially central Italy.