Conclusion
This
book has studied the acquaintance of the Middle Ages with
works
of antique art and architecture by writing a `biography'
of
surviving and rediscovered antiquities based on
written
and archaeological evidence. Its obvious conclusion is
that
much more antique material was available during the Middle
Ages
than at any time up to the nineteenth century. If the
preoccupations
of this book were to be extended into our own
day,
the delicious irony of the giddy carousel of discovery and
destruction
would be even clearer: antiquities were both
resurrected
and, in re-use, hidden again in the population
expansion
of the Middle Ages, while the antiquarianism of the
Renaissance
and its influence ensured the protection of but a
few
choice pieces (e.g. rarely mosaics). Antique remains in our
towns
are today a rarity; in the countryside, they are visible
only to
the practised eye, so that it seems strange that only
200
years ago Tozzetti could see so much in his native Tuscany
(Cristofani
1980, appendix with modern references to the sites,
and the
material found at them).
Yet
archaeology was born (or so we are told) in the middle of
the
eighteenth century - since when, in the course of a
veritable
population explosion, more material has been destroyed
than
ever before. Even the feeding of an increased population by
changed
agricultural methods assures the destruction of what it
pleases
archaeologists to call our `heritage'; rescue
archaeology
is the result. Little quantification has been done
for
recent times and, naturally, none at all for the Middle
Ages;
but the rate of destruction even of earth barrows is
alarming:
Lawson (1981, 1) points out that of 923 recorded
barrows
in East Anglia, no more than 468 survive. We may assume
a
similar rate of destruction during the mediaeval population
expansion,
and it produced similar results: particularly in the
economically
active centres of N. France and N. Italy, old
enceintes
were destroyed and new ones were built. Much was lost
in the
process - as at Florence, which is alarmingly short of
ancient
remains.
Progress
destroyed antiquities before culture (one of the
fruits
of progress?) sought to conserve them, and a topsy-turvy
world
was therefore the result. For example, those Gallic
centres
once rich in antiquities were generally in two
categories:
those in a key strategic position but without
vigorous
prosperity, such as Narbonne or Langres (both of which
retained
their walls into the last century); and those centres
such as
Toulouse and Bordeaux which have always been prosperous,
and
where any antiquities have come from small remaining
sections
of the enceinte: their richness underlines how many
antique
pieces in re-use must already have been extracted in
earlier
centuries. The great majority of important towns in Gaul
and
Italy lost the remaining sections of their town walls in the
course
of urban expansion during the nineteenth century, when
the
need for defence and protection within them had passed for
good.
For Gaul, indeed, the greatest part of our knowledge of
sculpture
comes from material found in the course of such
demolitions,
and now stored in immense quantities in the museums
of
cities such as Narbonne, Sens and Langres. If Lallier's
publication
(1846) of antiquities found in the walls at Sens is
any
guide, then his interest was in a good, clean, modern town:
the
old walls offer no more than ruins ... and, up to now,
new
constructions have not found the secret of greater
attractiveness
... We no longer possess our old Gallo-Roman
enceinte,
but nor yet do we have comfortable houses, with
several
openings freely open to the air and light (1846, 36)
Similar
motives may have prompted the great waves of
construction
of the later Middle Ages when, for example at
Auxerre,
the new work was presented as the removal of the
squalor
of the old (Caviness 1973, 205 and n. 3).
The
availability of antiquities to the Middle Ages does not,
however,
necessarily mean that they were continuously admired,
studied
or imitated: and it is doubtful whether the type of
evidence
presented here can do more than suggest that artists
and
architects had the opportunity to use actual examples of
antique
work instead of following only
traditions. Indeed,
scholars
deny the ready availability of antiquities even in
Byzantium:
Kitzinger believes that it is `not necessary that
those
artists had first-hand knowledge of works of art actually
made in
the period between Alexander the Great and the emperors
of the
Flavian dynasty' (1981, 667), while Mango states that
`Byzantine
art does not exhibit a single instance of such
intimate
contact with specific antique models as we find, though
transposed
in subject matter, in the portal of Rheims cathedral
or in
the work of Nicola Pisano' (1963, 71). Were Nicola and the
Rheims
master exceptions, or can other examples of `intimate
contact'
with the antique be found in the richer soils of Italy
and
Gaul?
Whatever
the answer, it is clear that the Middle Ages are of
crucial
importance for scholars studying the interest in the
antique
of later centuries, because it was mediaeval attitudes
to
antiquities that governed what was available to the
Renaissance.
Any investigation of mediaeval cities and their
approach
to their own antiquities (which must be more detailed
than
was possible in this book) would reveal at the very least a
suitable
frame within which to picture the exertions of a
Donatello
or a Raphael; it might conclude that the groundwork
for
Renaissance appreciation of the antique had been prepared by
the
Longobards, by Charlemagne and by Frederick II, and large
quantities
of material made available by the population
expansion
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.