Art in Middle Earth.

[Mithalwen]

Galadriel - I managed to cut the reference to Eorl the Young in the tapestries and not repaste - and a good point about Vaire (and Miriel) though strictly speking they are not in Middle Earth...

I don't know if the painting being a renaissance art necessarily holds... there has beem painting since early man daubed clay on his cave walls and while I suppose things like the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry and the Book of Kells might fall into my category of decorative art it is surely not the case that people suddenly picked up paint brushes in 15th century Florence and became so spectacularly good about it. Medieaval art doesn't have perspective and a lot of it is devotional but it exists... There is some very ancient art in non european cultures - Indian and Oriental for example.

Ooh just found a reference into "images of men long dead" in Rath Dinen in "The Siege of Gondor" though the nature of the images - painted, sculpted or engraved is unclear. So Gondorians practised funerary art.

I can see hobbits decorating things - they liked bright colours and I can imagine they might make that cheery pottery that looks so appealing if you go on holiday to the Medditeraranean and merely gaudy in a paler Northern light. But there is a difference between having beautiful things that are functonal to making things for primarliy aesthetic reasons...