PRE-ROMANESQUE PERIOD 500 – 1100

The pre-Romanesque art emerged in the end of Late Antiquity connecting it with the Romanesque period. After the turbulences of the Migration period and the invasion of the Lombards in Italy, the countries started a restructuration process. The Romanesque is an art-historical style of the Early Middle Ages. In Western Europe emerged the Frankish empire, where subsequently various dynasties reigned one after the other. From these dynasties derived the various styles of art, referred to as Merovingian, Carolingian or Ottonian. Stylistically the pre-Romanesque art is inspired by Antiquity. In the field of construction the architects adopted the Roman way of building, the "Romanesque" style. The style changed step by step. From this period survived mainly examples from architecture. Women had the possibility to participate in the religious life of convents. There they were permitted to work in the scriptoriums and thus were involved in the production of art. Very often Mary was depicted on tympanons as mother, holding the child Jesus. This motif becomes the essential topic in art. Dealing with the Old and the New Testament, bookpainting, too, got increasingly important from the Early Middle Ages on