The Art of Beautiful Handwriting an Area of Southeastern Europe Extending Into the Mediterranean Sea
The showtime international style since artifact
The term "Romanesque," pregnant in the fashion of the Romans, was first coined in the early nineteenth century. Today information technology is used to refer to the period of European art from the 2d half of the eleventh century throughout the 12th (with the exception of the region around Paris where the Gothic mode emerged in the mid-12th century). In certain regions, such as cardinal Italy, the Romanesque continued to survive into the thirteenth century. The Romanesque is the first international style in Western Europe since antiquity—extending across the Mediterranean and as far north as Scandinavia. The transmission of ideas was facilitated past increased travel along the pilgrimage routes to shrines such equally Santiago de Compostela in Spain (a pilgrimage is a journey to a sacred identify) or as a outcome of the crusades which passed through the territories of the Byzantine empire. There are, still, distinctive regional variants—Tuscan Romanesque art (in Italy) for example is very different from that produced in northern Europe.
Painting + sculpture + architecture
Main of Taüll, alcove painting, San Clemente in Taüll, c. 1123 (Museu Nacional d'Fine art de Catalunya – MNAC, Barcelona)
The relation of fine art to compages—especially church building compages—is fundamental in this flow. For example, wall-paintings may follow the curvature of the apse of a church as in the apse wall-painting from the church of San Clemente in Taüll, and the virtually important art course to emerge at this period was architectural sculpture—with sculpture used to decorate churches built of stone.
Many sculptors may have begun their career as stone masons, and at that place is a remarkable coherence between compages and sculpture in churches at this menstruation. The two most important sculptural forms to emerge at this time were the tympanum (the lunette-shaped space above the entrance to a church), and the historiated capital (a capital letter incorporating a narrative element unremarkably an episode from the Bible or the life of a saint). One of the most famous tympanums is on the west archway to Autun Cathedral (below) which represents—appropriately for this part of the church—the Last Judgment. An inscription (Gislebertus hoc fecit" "Gislebertus made me"), at the base of operations of the giant immobile figure of Christ at the center, records the name of the creative person or head of the workshop which produced it, though it has been suggested that it may refer to the original patron who was responsible for bringing the relics of Lazurus to Autun in the Carolingian menstruum.
Final Judgment Tympanum, c. 1130-46, Key Portal, Due west Façade, Cathedral of St. Lazare, Autun, French republic
The influence of ancient Rome
Calling of St. Peter and St. Andrew, c. 1160, Sant Pere de Rodes monstery, Spain
One influence on the Romanesque is, as the proper noun implies, ancient Roman art—especially sculpture—which survived in large quantities especially in southern Europe. This can be seen, for example, in a marble relief representing the calling of St. Peter and St. Andrew from the front end frieze of the abbey church of Sant Pere de Rodes on the Catalonian coast. The imprint of the antique tin can be seen in the deep undercutting in the drape folds, an result achieved by the Roman device of the drill, and the individualization of the faces.
Classical influence was also frequently mediated through an intermediary—most importantly Byzantine art (specially textiles and painting), but also through earlier medieval styles which had captivated elements of the classical tradition such as Ottonian art.
The Coffin Bible, c.1130-1135, Coffin St Edmunds, England, Corpus Christi College, MS two, fol. 94
The illustrations in the Coffin Bible have, for instance, been assuredly compared to Byzantine wall-paintings in a church at Asinou in Cyprus which suggests that its artist—a certain Main Hugo (having the name of the artist is unusual during this period) had seen them or a similar source. Monasteries such every bit that of Bury St. Edmunds in E Anglia in England (where the Coffin Bible was made) were important centers of product—especially for the writing and decorating of manuscripts. The Coffin Bible is a good example of the remarkable achievements of monastic scriptoria in the Romanesque period.
Monasteries were not the only centers of production. Romanesque fine art is also associated with towns that were revived and expanded during this period—for the starting time fourth dimension since the fall of the Roman empire—a result of broad economic expansion (examples include Assisi in Umbria with its Romanesque cathedral or the newly founded boondocks of Puente La Reina in northern Spain on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela).
Casket with troubadours, c. 1180, 21 x fifteen.6 x xi cm, from the court of Aquitaine, Limoges, France (The British Museum)
Romanesque art is for the nigh part religious in its imagery, just this is partly a matter of what has survived, and there are examples of secular art from the menstruation. Unusual is a casket in The British Museum, a product of Limoges craftsmanship, which is made of woods with champlevé enamels attached to it (produced by heating powdered glass set into groves hollowed out of bronze plate). This is decorated with scenes to practice with ladylike love inspired by troubadour poets from Provence.
Metalwork
Stavelot Triptych, c. 1156-8, gilt and enamel, 48 ten 66 cm open (The Morgan Library and Museum)
The stardom between the fine and decorative arts is one that emerges merely in the Renaissance and does not use at this earlier period. If anything the well-nigh highly valued works of art during the Romanesque period were objects of metalwork fabricated from precious metals that were frequently produced to house relics (characteristically the trunk part of a saint, or—in the instance of Christ who, the true-blue believe ascended to heaven—objects associated with him such equally fragments of the so-chosen true cross on which Christ was thought to have been crucified).
An example of this is the reliquary known equally the Stavelot Triptych. It consists of a central console flanked past side wings that can be closed, a design format derived from Byzantine art but fabricated at the Benedictine monastery of Stavelot in the Mosan region in present day Kingdom of belgium in the mid-twelfth century. The triptych was commissioned past the abbot, a man called Wibald, whom we know travelled extensively and who caused, during a trip to Constantinople, the ii Byzantine enamel plaques incorporated into the center of the triptych that contain what were believed to exist fragments of the true cross.
A wall painting from San Clemente in Catalonia
The apse wall-painting from the church of San Clemente is a good example of the Romanesque way. The church building is situated in a remote valley in northern Catalonia (north-east Spain today) and is typical of the handsome stone-built churches which sprung up in this region in the Romanesque period. The painting would accept been painted onto fresh plaster practical to the walls of the church (it was transferred for safekeeping to the Museum of Catalan Art in Barcelona early on in the twentieth century). The painting is dominated by the giant effigy of Christ in a mandorla (a halo effectually the torso of a sacred person), represented equally he will appear at the cease of fourth dimension equally described in the Volume of Revelation.
Master of Taüll, apse painting, Sant Clement in Taüll, c. 1123 (Museu Nacional d'Fine art de Catalunya – MNAC, Barcelona)
Mary (detail), Main of Taüll, apse painting, Sant Clement (Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya – MNAC, Barcelona)
Christ is represented characteristically out of scale to the other figures to indicate his status. His head is distorted, elongated and highly geometric, and he has piercing hypnotic eyes. To either side of him are written the Greek letters "alpha" and "omega" (the beginning and the stop), and with ane mitt he gestures in blessing, while the other holds an open book with the words Ego sum lux mundi (I am the low-cal of the world) inscribed on information technology. Below him is an equally elongated and distorted effigy of the Virgin Mary who holds a chalice with Christ's blood, a representation of the Holy Grail which predates the primeval written clarification of the subject. Her presence in the scheme is symptomatic of the growing cult of the Virgin Mary at this menses.
Information technology would exist only every bit much a mistake to regard the lack of naturalism constitute in this painting every bit indicating lack of creative competence as it would be in a work by Picasso. Rather it indicates that its artist (whose real name we do not know) is not interested in replicating external appearances only rather in conveying a sense of the sacred and communicating the religious teachings of the church. Picasso (who was brought upward in Barcelona) greatly admired Catalonian Romanesque, and it is significant that later in his life he kept a poster of this painting in his studio in southern France. We live in a world saturated with images simply in the Romanesque menses people would rarely encounter them and an image such as this would have fabricated an immense impression.
Additional resources:
Romanesque art on The Metropolitan Museum of Fine art's Heilbrunn Timeline of Fine art History
Romanesque fine art at the National Museum of Catalan art (video)
Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:
More than Smarthistory images…
Source: https://smarthistory.org/a-beginners-guide-to-romanesque-art/
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