Interlace (art)
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In the visual arts, interlace is a decorative element found in medieval art. In interlace, bands or portions of other motifs are looped, braided, and knotted in complex geometric patterns, often to fill a space. Interlacing is common in the Migration period art of Northern Europe, in the early medieval Insular art of Ireland and the British Isles, and Norse art of the Early Middle Ages, and in Islamic art.
Detail of elaborate interlace from the Book of Kells.
Interlace and rotational symmetry: Iron Age Torque de Foxados, Museo de Pontevedra, Galicia
Roman interlace on a floor from a private house in Gerasa, Jordan, 2nd century, mosaic, Pergamon Museum, Berlin
Roman interlaces on a mosaic floor, Villa Romana del Casale, near Piazza Armerina, Italy, unknown architect, early 4th century
Medieval art
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The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, with over 1000 years of art in Europe, and at certain periods in Western Asia and Northern Africa. It includes major art movements and periods, national and regional art, genres, revivals, the artists' crafts, and the artists themselves.
Byzantine monumental Church mosaics are one of the great achievements of medieval art. These are from Monreale in Sicily, late 12th century
Detail of The Effects of Good Government, a fresco in the City Hall of Siena by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, 1338.
Scenes of courtly love on a lady's ivory mirror-case. Paris, 1300–1330.
The jewelled cover of the Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram, c. 870, a Carolingian Gospel book.