Pre-Romanesque art and architecture
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Pre-Romanesque art is the roughly 400 year period in Western European art from about the Carolingian Renaissance in the 8th century, to the 12th century. The period overlaps chronologically with Migration Period art (the native art of Germanic peoples), but examines the process of the absorption of classical Mediterranean and Christian forms with Germanic forms, that would eventually lead to the rise of monumental Romanesque art in the 12th century.
Carolingian art
The Carolingian Renaissance saw a great new interest in Mediterranean art forms as Charlemagne sought to vie with the monuments of authority he saw at the papal palace, the Lateran, in Rome. He revived large-scale bronze casting and mosaic decorations. A foundry at Aachen cast the doors for the palace chapel in imitation of Roman design, while mosaics in the church dome were reminicent of Early Christian churches in Rome. He had marbles and columns brought from Rome, while a she-bear from southern Gaul was to emulate the Roman she-wolf.
The most numerous surviving works of the Carolingian renaissance are illuminated manuscripts. Under Charlemagnes order, revised Gospels and litugirical works were prepared, as were teaching materials such as historical, literary and scientific works from ancient authors. The earliest known manuscript is a Gospel commisioned by Charlemagne called the Godescalc Evangelistary (781-783), which contains Roman letters decorated with interlace in the Hiberno-Saxon style, and the Lorsch Gospels (778-820). Sculptors provided book covers in carved ivory, with the help of goldsmiths, with the themes and style largely derived from late antiquity.
With the end of Carolignian rule artistic production halted for about three generations. By the later 10th century the Cluny reform movement jump started art production again, and new Pre-Romanesque styles were began to appear throughout Germany, England, France, Italy and Spain.
Ottonian art
German art from this period is also called Ottonian, after three Saxon emperors named Otto, who consolidated the Empire under the Saxon dynasty (919-1024), although it also extends chronologically to include the Franco-Salian emperors Conrad II (r. 1024-1039) and Henry III (r. 1039-1056).
Ottonian monasteries produced magnificant illuminated manuscripts during this period, the result of patronages to the church by noble princes. Corvey produced some of the first manuscripts followed by the scriptorium at Hildesheim after 1000. The most famous Ottonian scriptoria was at the island monastery of Reichenau on Lake Constance.