OTTONIAN ART. — Ottonian art is defined as the Germanic art of the tenth century and of the first twenty-five years of the eleventh century and, with many qualifications, as that art influenced in territories in direct contact with the Germanic world.
It coincides with the initial formation of a German national state and with the period in which the three Ottos and subsequently Henry II of Saxony wore the crown as kings of Germany and emperors. Ottonian art is therefore chronologically connected, on the one hand, with the spread of the most advanced forms of Carolingian culture and art and, on the other, with the decisive emergence, in the individual territories, of the characteristic features of Romanesque art. As with Carolingian art, the principal centers of development of Ottonian art were above all the great monasteries in direct relation with the court. However, Ottonian art, unlike Carolingian art—which, together with the contributions of Byzantine art, forms its richest cultural substratum—is not exclusively courtly in character. In it, in fact, there appears as an essential and catalyzing element of those earlier and refined cultures, above all, the life-giving impulse of the youthful energies of new peoples entering the world of Western Christian civilization with a fresh wealth of enthusiasm that spontaneously leads to forcefulness of expression. This is clear not only in the plastic and pictorial forms but also in the architectural ones, at a time when the number and dimensions of buildings grew extremely rapidly in the German territories, especially in Saxony, in the regions along the Rhine, and, though to a lesser extent, in southern Germany. Almost all the sacred buildings that arose in this period were subsequently enlarged or transformed; nevertheless, their original features can often still be discerned, at least in the ground plan. Among them, in southern Germany, are S. Erasmo in Regensburg, the three churches on the island of Reichenau, and the church of S. Michele in Hildesheim; in the Rhineland, the collegiate church of Essen, the cathedral of Trier, and the Capitolium of Cologne, while the cathedrals of Würzburg, Bamberg, Mainz, Worms, Speyer, and Strasbourg belong, at least in their oldest cores, to the Ottonian period.
The surviving works of painting and sculpture from this period are rather scarce. Testimonies to Ottonian painting are found in the frescoes of the church of S. Giorgio on the island of Reichenau, datable to the beginning of the eleventh century; in the paintings in the choir of the church of Goldbach near Überlingen; and in other later works that are already decidedly Romanesque, such as the Last Judgment of Burgfelden in Württemberg. At Reichenau, an important school of manuscript illumination also flourished at that time, creating major works such as the Egbert Codex, now in Trier; the Gospel Book of Otto III; that of Henry II; and that of Echternach (Gotha). Other important centers of manuscript illumination at that time were the monasteries of Trier and Regensburg. The scant surviving evidence of sculptural activity from the period displays the same features evident in contemporary painting, as do the sculptures of the portal of
Hildesheim and various bronze works, especially in northern Germany.