Daniel Mitsui in an Essay entitled "HORROR VACUI" explodes the notion that the medieval mind of the early middle ages was not as "advanced" as the modern and explains that medieval art of the early middle ages was subtle and complex and not dark, stupid and barbaric.
"The condescending notion that mediaeval artists saw the world in linear perspective but were too crude to learn how to paint it is extremely silly. Mediaeval artists painted the world exactly as they saw it. And no accusation of crudity can be fairly leveled at them. These men built the cathedrals at Rheims and Amiens and Chartres. They designed and built them without any notion of trigonometry or calculus; without so much as graph paper. These were not men who had difficulty imagining three-dimensional spaces abstractly; they were far better at it than modern men who need AutoCAD to design a rectangular prism of steel and glass. "
"The condescending notion that mediaeval artists saw the world in linear perspective but were too crude to learn how to paint it is extremely silly. Mediaeval artists painted the world exactly as they saw it. And no accusation of crudity can be fairly leveled at them. These men built the cathedrals at Rheims and Amiens and Chartres. They designed and built them without any notion of trigonometry or calculus; without so much as graph paper. These were not men who had difficulty imagining three-dimensional spaces abstractly; they were far better at it than modern men who need AutoCAD to design a rectangular prism of steel and glass. "
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