The period between the third en fourth centuries was of profound change. Western Europe became fragmented and the east was consolidated as the Byzantine Empire. We can see the results of the profound shifts in the social, political and religious underpinnings and the building blocks that sketched what would become early modern Europe.((www.onassisusa.org)
Greek pottery is one of the most spectacular and familar crafts of classical antiquity. Their function as containers and purveyors of messages needs consideration, while the scenes themselves provide a mighty subject that ranges the whole field of art, society, religion and mythology. J. Boardman, The History of Greek Vases, London 2001.
The twelfth century was in many repects an age of fresh and vigorous life. The epoch of crusades, of the rise of towns, and of the earliest bureaucratic states of the West, the culimination of romanesque art, the revival of roman law and Greek science and the origin of universities. (Ch. H. Haskins, The Renaissance of the twelfth century. Cambridge (MA) 1927)