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[2] among whom the name of Godefroid de Claire stands out.[2][3][4][5][6] Abbot Wibald (ruled 1130–58) was one of the greatest patrons of the arts in the 12th century; and the remaining fragments from the retable (altar screen) at Stavelot are also high points of mediæval art,[4][7][8] with
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Much of the finest Mosan metalwork commonly dated to the mid-12th century and later has been attributed on stylistic grounds to Godefroid of huy or his workshop and connected to the patronage of Wibald of Stavelot. There is, however, no firm evidence for these conclusions.
Romanesque, §VI: Metalwork grove
Wibald enjoyed great political influence and contributed significantly to the growth of artistic activity in the Meuse area in the middle of the 12th century. Over 400 of his letters have survived, but they contain little information about his patronage. In a famous letter of 1148 he corresponded with a certain aurifaber G about an unfinished work, but this Master ‘G’ cannot be identified with Godefroid of Huy, as some scholars have suggested. Wibald had a head reliquary made for the relics of Pope Alexander I (c. 105–c. 115 AD), which were placed inside on Good Friday (13 April) 1145; it consisted of a silver gilt repoussé bust on a portable altar (Brussels, Musées Royaux A. & Hist.; see [not available online]). Wibald also commissioned three costly retables for the abbey church of Stavelot. One (untraced) had gold reliefs with scenes of the Passion paid for in part by Frederick I Barbarossa and Manuel I. The other two were of silver. One was dedicated to St Remaclus (d 670–76) and contained his reliquary, as can be seen from a drawing of 1661 (Liège, Archvs Etat). All that remains of it are two round champlevé enamel plaques (Frankfurt am Main, Mus. Ksthandwk; Berlin, Tiergarten, Kstgewmus.) and two inscriptions (Stavelot, Trésor). The other, a triptych (New York, Pierpont Morgan Lib.; see [not available online]) with illustrations from the legend of the True Cross, was probably made by order of Wibald to house two small Byzantine Triptychs with relics of the True Cross and Holy Nails, presumably gifts from Manuel I Komnenos to Wibald in 1155–6. The Maasland Triptych (New York, Pierpont Morgan Lib.), which Wibald most likely had made, was clearly based on Byzantine prototypes and later served as an example for several other reliquaries of the True Cross (c. 1160, New York priv. col.; c. 1160, Liège, Sainte-Croix
Landscape painting - Grove
The first writer to discuss the aesthetics of landscape was Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, who in his Trattato dell’arte della pittura (Libro VI, vol. lxii; Milan, 1584) gave a somewhat overwhelming and confused account of different categories of landscape, which nonetheless drew distinctions of lasting importance between ‘privileged places’, enriched with noble architecture, wild landscapes, with forests, rocks and stones, and ‘places of delight’ with fountains, fields and gardens. Clearer distinctions were created by 17th-century theorists, and Roger de Piles established the categories of heroic, or ideal landscape, and pastoral, or rustic landscape. Heroic landscape was the more elevated, yet as a whole landscape remained low in the hierarchy of the genres, placed by André Félibien higher only than fruit and flower paintings. The ideas were developed in northern Europe by such theorists as Karel van Mander, Samuel van Hoogstraten and Gérard de Lairesse. The categories developed in this period persisted, with variations, until the 19th century.
In the 18th century, however, landscape was enriched by new aesthetic ideals; Edmund Burke’s treatise on the Sublime was widely influential, and such theorists as William Gilpin and Uvedale Price created another ideal, the Picturesque, a category between the Sublime and the Beautiful. In 1817 the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris founded a new Prix de Rome for paysage historique, but nonetheless the traditional academic hierarchy perished in the 19th century. Writings on landscape, for example those by John Constable and John Ruskin, were concerned rather with the problems of naturalistic landscape. From the early years of the 20th century there was a great deal of critical writing on landscape. Initially, the writers tended to concentrate on development of style and of a modern attitude to nature in landscape painting. Kenneth Clark’s Landscape into Art (1949), which discusses such landscape themes as fantasy and naturalism, remains the best short introduction to the subject