4 - 17th & 18th Centuries

In the Late 17th Century, the population of the England grew to more than five and a half million, meaning the divide between wealth and poverty was higher than ever, with 50% of the population being wealthy, 30% being middle class, and 20% being in high poverty. (British Literature)

William Hogarth Gin Lane - This painting shows
the poverty in the 17th & 18th Centuries,
with people starving like the person on the
stairs who is nothing but skin and bone.
www.theguardian.com

This divide was the opposite of subtle, with wealthy people being able to afford comfortable, beautifully decorated furniture in their homes, often made from precious mahogany or walnut. A lot of items in a rich persons house were often veneered, or carved and filled with pearls.
This being compared to the house of a poor person, containing small furniture made from simple materials. Houses lived in by the poor were first made of wood, until the advancement of stone and brick meant that the poor could live in warmer, dryer homes. Poor people also often used rags of linen soaked in an oil for window coverings until most houses were built with glass windows.

From the mid 18th Century and the start of the Industrial Revolution, social life in England was affected as links between the North and South of the country were being made. Hackney Coach Services linked York with London, meaning many visitors from London or places in between went to visit York for Business or Social reasons, often staying in many of Yorks Inns and Lodges. This meant that wealth was being spread up and down the country as many people moved about spending money.
Other events that brought visitors from near or far to York, spreading the wealth, included visits from Royalty, which provided entertainment for the public, causing street party's and parades. The King of England visited six times between 1600 and 1645. (A History of the County of York: the City of York - P.M. Tillott (Editor))

Teniers painting of the Archduke Leopold Wilhem's
gallery of paintings. www.courtauld.ac.uk

Wealth at the time was shown through stocks and shares, but also commodities. This meant that wealthy people bought and owned things like paintings, and many of them. Paintings were great commodities as they were unique unlike prints or other items. David Teniers painted wealthy people like Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his gallery of paintings.

3 - The Renaissance & Hieronymus Bosch

Basilica of San Marco, Venice. Photo and Quotes from
Renaissance - Andrew Graham-Dixon
ISBN - 0-563-38396-8

One of  the most iconic artistic monuments made before the Renaissance movement started is the Basilica of San Marco, located in Venice. The onion-domed masterpiece was built in the late eleventh century and now well restored still 'remains a fundamentally Eastern church, a Hagia Sophia on the fringes of the Adriatic' Sea.

www.nomadicheart.com

Robyn Vincent

The inside of the Basilica is stunningly beautiful, with consideration to detail everywhere you look, 'a kind of cave or grotto dedicated to the overwhelming of the senses.' Under your feet is a very detailed patterned floor, and above and all around is artwork on the walls, ceilings and in the domes, with figures and statures of saints and angels dotting about the whole building.
The Basilica is full of art focusing on ideas of God, but not "in the figure of the mortal Christ."
These ideas in the artwork is one of the things that sparked the Renaissance and the Ideas risen from it.

www.ibiblio.org

Hieronymus Bosch was an early Dutch painter, considerably best known for 'The Garden Of Earthly Delights' work. Bosch was one of the painters known throughout The Renaissance era. 

Detail from the right panel of
'The Garden Of Earthly Delights' - 
Heironymus Bosch
ISBN 1-84013-657-X

This was a period of creative achievement, and a period of social and artistic change, because of a number of different events and inventions. I like the way that 'The Garden Of Earthly Delights' shows a split between the different social and religion types, with each wing and center depicting different bits, like the left wing showing the Garden of Eden, as a paradise with lots of animals and different shades of green. This in comparison to the right wing which depicts hell, with dark burning colours, overcrowded people, fight and death.

Renaissance - Andrew Graham-Dixon

Bosch created a lot of pieces with the idea of politics, religion and humanism, which contributed to the development of the Renaissance movement. One piece in particular which plays with the idea of religion is The Last Judgement, right. In The Last Judgement a little Christ is looking over a world that has gone bad, with people dying and being tortured, Christ judges all this, with people on his left and right and what could be took as the devil and angel on each of his shoulders. The attention to microscopic detail in Bosch's work pushes the idea more strong than ever.

2 - The Middle Ages - Medieval Britain

"York: The Mount Area"
Christian Celts - Charles Thomas
ISBN - 0-7524-2849-7

Celtic Christianity was a form of the Christian Religion in Europe, mainly Roman Britain and Ireland, during the Early Middle Ages. Celtic Christianity has been depicted in a number of different ways by different people. One idea of Celtic Christianity describes that it opposed the Catholic Church, being led by the Bishop of Rome, or the Pope. Other people claim that the movement simply rejected the authority of the Pope, and that Celtic Christianity was more one with nature, and more female friendly.

An Ogham Stone from
Inchagoill Island, part of
the lake district, Ireland

Medieval Britain and Celtic Christianity show signs of a very different civilization compared to the modern day. This difference can be seen in a number of ways, but very much so through Celtic Christian documents, like stone memorials, carvings and jewellery. The memorial to the right shows Celtic text engraved into stone. 

An example of an
 'Ogham' Inscription
on a stone pillar.

This Celtic language came from the Proto-Celtic language, a branch of an Indo-European language, which is a family of lots of relating languages. However 'it is conceivable that very occasionally people did write in British' (Christian Celts - Chales Thomas), however the problem in the modern day is decoding the words as they may have been 'scriptio continua, strings of letters not showing any word boundaries.' The same type of language is used on the stone image to the right, along with a basic Celtic Cross, which was a big image for the the Celtic movement that spread across  the UK including Ireland, and also moving across into France. 

However, even with signs of English writing, Celts still used other forms of langauge, like 'Ogham' inscriptions to the right and above. These inscriptions involved a row of lines like 'scratches'. The inscription on the stone reads upwards and each group of inscriptions represents a letter.