Yeah, my thoughts exactly. But is the obvious discrepancy in accepted quality of public art linked to regions or the time period? Or just the platform for the

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. But is the obvious discrepancy in accepted quality of public art linked to regions or the time period? Or just the platform for the art? I.e. some illustration in a book that is copied by a novice in some monastery probably has a lower minimum standard than something like a public mosaic in a large house. For example, this mosaic in Hagia Sophia dates from 1261 and is pretty nice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Deesis_mosaic_Hagia_Sophia.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Deesis_mosaic_Hagia_Sophia... Anyway, after reading of the state of roman and greek civilazations in the antique period and observing art like in the linked article I get often the feeling that the medieval period in europe really was quite dark to the point were it skews our perception of the achievements of prior ages. Against this background renaissance does not seem like an amazing birth of human achievement but actually the period where the european civilization just got it's shit together once again.