Out of the Dark Ages

For the past century, it has been usual to see the Frankish kingdom of Charlemagne as the dynamic and creative power which, in the late 8th and 9th centuries, reinvented and shaped the cultural map of Europe, establishing paradigms that determined architectural and artistic practice until the 12th century. However, this view overlooks the critical role played by the powers in Italy - the Lombard king and dukes and the Pope - who developed cultural strategies and ways of deploying the visual arts that would prove decisive for Charlemagne when he annexed the Lombard kingdom to his own realm. This well-illustrated book re-evaluates the cultural dynamics of Europe in the post-Roman period, setting Italy at the centre of the phenomenon of the visual promotion of state-formation. It identifies and analyses some of the most significant architectural, artistic and material outcomes of the complex movements of people, ideas and patterns between regions and places, across the Mediterranean to Byzantium and Islam, which were so striking a feature of the age.