nique, and the bulk of the material, executed in base metals, was used widely throughout
the military class. In contrast, the Polychrome Style, developed in eastern Europe by the
4th century, used red garnets, glass, and other colored gems set onto gilt backgrounds as
small separate cells, or cloisons, often surrounded with gold granulation and filigree.
Patterns are primarily abstract or geometric, and the emphasis on precious materials
ensures that this class of objects has royal and aristocratic associations. The greatest
French examples of this technique are the sword fittings and other objects from the tomb
of Clovis’s father, Childeric I, last pagan Frankish king, a tomb excavated at Tournai in
1653 and usually dated to 481. Here, the color is restricted to the red garnets, now set
closely together to make whole fields of red divided only by thin sheets of gold. This
polychrome cloisonné style continued well into the 6th century in such luxury objects as
the disc brooches founded in the tomb of the Christian Queen Arnegund (probably died
ca. 565) excavated in the church of Saint-Denis.
Style I and Style II metalwork focuses upon animal forms. Style I clearly developed in
northern Europe, perhaps in Scandinavia and England, in the early 6th century and spread
rapidly across France and the Continent. It primarily used compact animals and animal
parts, which were treated in a progressively more abstract and decorative manner. Style II
now seems likely to have developed in Lombard Italy in the late 6th century, whence it
rapidly spread northward into Germany and France. It essentially involves the
combination of animal forms with complex ribbon-interlace patterns of Mediterranean
origin. Both animal styles were used not only in the decoration of commonplace objects
in base metals but also in combination with polychrome cloisonné techniques in a series
of objects of stunningly inventive virtuosity, examples of which are again provided from
Arnegund’s burial. Ultimately, such decorative styles were adopted for Christian art in
reliquaries and other sacred objects of high status.
Lawrence Nees
Gold disk fibula. First half of 7th
century. From Neiderbreisig. New
York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Gift of J.P.Morgan, 1917. Courtesy of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1170