The Romanesque and Gothic Periods

Romanesque architecture and art flourished in Germany, and the cathedrals in basilica form at Worms, Mainz, and Speyer typify the characteristic divisive style of the period.  Little remains of Romanesque fresco painting, of which Regensburg and Salzburg were major Germanic centers.    With the diffusion of the French Gothic style throughout Europe, notable contributions were made by the Germans.  The magnificent sculpture of the portals for the cathedrals at Bamberg, Strasbourg, and Naumburg was executed during the first half of the 13th cent.  French influence is most strongly revealed in the cathedral of Cologne (c.1250).  Modifying the French emphasis on decoration, however, the Germans built simpler, unadorned piers and evolved a more unified, spacious form of church.  This style may be seen in the Church of St. Sebald (c.1370), Nuremberg, or in the cathedral (c.1470) at Munich.

Fig's 1 & 2.  "Founded in 1147, the Cistercian Maulbronn Monastery is considered the most complete and best-preserved medieval monastery complex north of the Alps.Surrounded by fortified walls, the main buildings were constructed between the 12th and 14th centuries. The monastery's church, built in the transitional Romanesque-Gothic style, had significant influence on the spread of Gothic architecture over much of northern and central Europe. The water management system at Maulbronn, with its elaborate network of drains, irrigation canals and reservoirs, is exceptional." - (from UNESCO's World Heritage List)

Romanesque art and architecture flourished throughout western Europe from about 1050 to about 1200, although its first manifestations occurred before the year 1000, and its influence remained strong in some areas of Europe well into the 13th century. Unlike Carolingian art and architecture and Ottonian art and architecture, from which it drew many forms and elements, Romanesque was a truly pan-European movement.

By the beginning of the 11th century, European civilization had become stable and prosperous under the aegis of the Christian church, through whose network of abbeys the new artistic order was established and spread. An unprecedented building activity stimulated the development of innovative architectural techniques and styles, which in turn demanded new forms of pictorial and sculptural decoration.

Fig. 3  Worms Cathedral, Rheinland, Germany (1150-81).

The resultant flowering of Romanesque art, once thought of merely as a transitional phase between Early Christian art and architecture and Gothic art and architecture, is now considered to be a distinct and important phase of European art.

ARCHITECTURE
The word Romanesque originally meant "in the Roman manner."  This description is at least partly applicable to Romanesque ecclesiastical architecture, not only in the use of the Roman round arch, but also in the adoption of the major forms of antique Roman vaulting (see arch and vault).  The simplest and most widely employed type of vault was the barrel vault, which is nothing more than the prolongation of the soffit, or undersurface, of an arch. More complex was the so-called groin vault, a structure formed by the intersection at a right angle of two barrel vaults.

Most Romanesque churches retained the basic plan of the Early Christian basilica: a long, three-aisled nave intercepted by a transept and terminating in a semicircular apse crowned by a conch, or half-dome.  Whereas Early Christian structures employed thin, flat walls to support thin roofs and wooden ceilings, however, the masonry structure of Romanesque churches assumed far more complicated configurations, in which heavy piers and arched openings divide the interior into well-defined spatial areas, while large masses of clearly separated geometric forms impart to the exterior an aura of grandeur and power. The greatest breakthrough of Romanesque architecture, however, occurred in interior vaulting.  Groin vaults had long been used in the lower side-aisles of the nave, but the thin walls of pre-Romanesque churches could support only wooden ceilings and roofs.  By redesigning and reinforcing the walls, Romanesque builders were able to span the wide and often lofty nave with a solid barrel vault and thus create completely vaulted structures.

France
Fully vaulted churches eventually became standard in France, the most creative center of Romanesque architecture and the birthplace of one of the most beautiful features of medieval architecture, the ambulatory with radiating chapels. An ambulatory is a semicircular aisle curving around the apse that opens out onto small chapels, generally five in number. With the invention of the ambulatory, the previously solid rear wall of the main apse gave way to a gracefully curving open arcade. On the exterior these various elements resulted in an imposing pyramidal grouping. This whole complex of architectural forms at the east end of medieval churches is known as the chevet.

The first use of a chevet occurred during the rebuilding of the abbey church of Saint Martin in Tours shortly before 1000. In its final form Saint Martin's established the model for the so- called pilgrimage churches erected (c.1000-c.1150) along the roads that took medieval pilgrims to the tomb of Saint James at Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. As an architectural type, the pilgrimage church features a well-developed chevet, such as that of Saint Sernin (c.1080-1120) in Toulouse, along with an extremely tall two-story nave crowned by a barrel vault. Above the lofty ground-story arcade, twin arches open out into an upper gallery situated above the groin vaults of the side aisles, and thin colonnettes, or shafts, rising from the pavement to the main barrel vault divide the nave into a series of separate sections, or bays. At the interior's east end, the gaps between the slender columns of the apsidal arcade offer intriguing vistas opening out into the ambulatory and the lighted chapels beyond.

Complementing the striking interiors of these churches are imposing exteriors in which towers play an important role. In Italy, bell towers, or campaniles, were almost always built as independent structures, as exemplified by the Leaning Tower of Pisa (1174-c.1350). In northern Europe, on the other hand, towers had been integrated with the main body of the church since pre-Romanesque times. Along with bell towers and stair towers, northern churches often incorporated towers built over the crossing, that area where the nave and the transept intersect. Some of these crossing towers, such as that at the smaller pilgrimage church of Sainte Foy (1050-1120) in Conques, are called lanterns because their windows illuminate the area in front of the sanctuary with a pool of light.

All of these architectural elements were brought together and magnified in one of Europe's most magnificent structures, the third church built for the Burgundian abbey of Cluny.  Generally referred to as Cluny III (completed in 1130), this church was largely destroyed in the early 19th century, but its appearance can be accurately reconstructed from early views. Cluny III's nave consisted of five, rather than the traditional three, aisles, and the central, barrel-vaulted aisle rose to a dizzying height of 29.29 m (96 ft).  Intercepting the nave were two equally lofty transepts, and towers crowned both crossings and each arm of the main transept. In direct anticipation of Gothic practice, pointed arches were used throughout the ground-story arcade and the side aisles. Above the blind arcade of the second story rose a third story, known as a clerestory; each of its bays was pierced by three round-headed windows. Aside from providing ample light for the interior, these windows signaled a daring innovation in medieval construction, because before Cluny III the security of the barrel vaults depended on the solid masonry of the upper walls or on the abutment of a gallery. So daring was this technique that some of the vaults in Cluny III fell in 1120, although they were repaired in time for the general consecration of the church in 1130.
 

Fig. 4  Durham Cathedral, Durham, UK.

 
Normandy and England
Among the many and diverse regional styles of Romanesque that flourished throughout western Europe during the 11th and 12th centuries, the most significant in terms of structural innovation was Norman architecture. Working mainly in Normandy and (after 1066) England, Norman architects solved the problem, posed by Cluny III, of sustaining a high vault atop a windowed clerestory. The Norman architects discovered that by supporting the vault with a grid of thin diagonal arches, or ribs, they could lessen the outward pressure of the vault's masonry and thus balance heavy vaults on lighter walls.

Rib vaulting was first employed (c.1104) consistently in the Norman Durham Cathedral in England, and from then on, rib vaulting became standard in Normandy. Because most of the other Anglo-Norman structures were built on too vast a scale to permit high vaults, Durham remained an anomaly in England; in France, however, the introduction of rib vaulting marked a crucial step in the development of Gothic architecture.

Germany
German builders had been in the forefront in the early development of towers and in the elaboration of the immense western entrance facades known as westworks. The culminating monuments of German Romanesque architecture are the Rhineland cathedrals of Mainz (12th-13th centuries), Speyer (begun 1030), and Worms (1150-81). When the nave of Speyer Cathedral was finally vaulted (c.1125), its height surpassed even that of Cluny III.

Italy The profuse external embellishment of German Romanesque churches, as well as their retention of "old-style" apses, link them with contemporary structures of northern Italy, and particularly with the products of Lombard architecture. With few exceptions, however, the main internal areas of the larger churches throughout Italy continued to be covered by wooden ceilings or open rafters--in most instances, the present high vaults date from a later period. A distinguishing feature of Tuscan Romanesque architecture is the surprisingly classical character of its architectural details. For example, in the noble interior of the largest Tuscan Romanesque church, the Cathedral of Pisa (1063-1272), the marble columns are all crowned with capitals of antique Roman form.

SCULPTURE
After the fall (AD 476) of the Roman Empire the practice of decorating buildings with large reliefs ceased for almost 600 years. The revival of monumental relief sculpture as a major form of art is one of the outstanding achievements of the Romanesque period. Often highly stylized and at times verging on the abstract, Romanesque reliefs were used chiefly to embellish the church portals.

France
The first sculptured doorway of truly monumental size was the now-destroyed entranceway of Cluny III, whose style and magnitude are reflected in the still-extant portal of the Burgundian church of Sainte Madeleine at Vezelay (1120-32). In the Vezelay reliefs, the variety in subject matter that characterizes the decorative art of Romanesque churches is apparent in the wide range of secular as well as religious themes. Above the two openings of the doorway, within the tympanum, a huge seated Christ erupts through the inner arch of small boxes, and energizing rays descend from his outstretched hands onto the apostles below. Even though this central motif follows an established convention in Christian art for representing the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, there is little that is conventional in the surrounding reliefs.

The keen interest in far-off countries engendered by the First Crusade (1095-99) is reflected in the lintels over the doors and the boxes surrounding the tympanum, whose reliefs depict the fabulous races with which medieval writers peopled distant lands. Among the exotic foreigners displayed are dog-headed men of India, porcine-faced Ethiopians, and at the extreme outer end of the right lintel a family of big-eared Panotii comprised of a mother in a topless gown, a father clothed in leaves, and a child who has shut himself up in his huge ears like a clam.

The Apocalypse from Revelations, the mystical last book of the New Testament, supplied many of the images found on French Romanesque portals. Particularly vivid in execution are the sweeping panoramas of the Last Judgment found at Sainte Foy in Conques and Saint Lazare in Autun, which include graphic depictions of the tortures of the damned. On the other hand, the sculptors of west central France often omitted the tympana and distributed sculptured areas over the upper parts of the facade; at the Cathedral of Angouleme, for example, the whole of the towering west facade above the doorway is covered with saints and dancing angels surrounding an ascending Christ.

Throughout France, human figures and fantastic animals of every sort were used to decorate the interior capitals of churches and cloisters. One of the few French Romanesque sculptors known by name, the famous Gislebertus, carved (c.1130-35) such figures for almost all the interior capitals of Saint Lazare in Autun. Although his figures are even flatter and more linear in style than those at Vezelay, Gislebertus feelingly conveyed in his Flight into Egypt the tender care with which Mary places a protective arm over the little Christ Child. On either side of this scene, lush vegetation supplants the usual conventionalized leaves of the Corinthian type of capital.

Italy Sculpture in the Romanesque period was confined largely to reliefs. No freestanding, life-size human figures were created, and only a few smaller figures executed in the round are extant.

Striking examples of the latter figural type appear on the bishop's throne (c.1150) in the southern Italian church of San Nicola of Bari, which probably was carved to commemorate an Italian victory over the Saracens. The victorious Christian soldier in the center of this group lends only token support to the seat of the chair, whose main weight rests on the shoulders of two half-naked Saracens who are loudly protesting the burden they have to bear. The strongly plastic qualities of the figures' sturdy, squat bodies is a recurring characteristic in Italian Romanesque sculpture.

The most important and prolific sculptural centers in Italy, however, were those of the northern Italian region known as Lombardy. In contrast to French Romanesque sculptures the Lombard Romanesque school was dominated by three well-known personalities: Wiligelmo da Modena (fl. early 12th century), the founder of the school; Nicolo of Verona (fl. 12th century); and Benedetto Antelami (fl. late 12th-early 13th centuries).

Although all three were influenced somewhat by contemporary French sculpture, their work expresses a distinctly Lombardic quality of heaviness and earthiness that is immediately apparent in the powerfully bovine figures of Adam and Eve in Wiligelmo's Genesis reliefs (1107-1110) at Modena. Wiligelmo's sturdy style was refined further in Nicolo's sculptures (c.1138) for the portal of San Zeno in Verona, where the civic pride of the independent northern Italian communes is reflected in the local cavalry represented on the tympanum. Antelami, whose career extended into the early years of the 13th century, was the most forward looking of the three Lombard sculptors. His masterpieces, the figures (c.1190) of David and Ezekiel set into niches on the facade of the cathedral of Fidenza, are actually carved in relief, although they give the impression of being freestanding statues. Their ponderous forms and noble monumentality clearly presage the sculptural works of Michelangelo.

Meuse Valley Very little stone sculpture was produced in Belgium and Germany during the Romanesque period, but both countries excelled in metalwork. In the Meuse Valley region of Belgium and northern France, the so-called Mosan school of metalwork produced (1107-12) an early masterpiece in the bronze baptismal font executed by Renier de Huy (fl. 12th century) for a church in Liege. In contrast to Burgundian expressionism and Lombardic ponderousness, Renier's figures are tinged with the graceful naturalism usually associated with classical art. Whether or not Renier had actually studied Hellenistic reliefs, as some experts have argued, his work demonstrates the wide range of styles represented in Romanesque sculpture, which excluded neither naturalism nor idealized beauty.

PAINTING
Frescoes The interiors of nearly all Romanesque churches originally were decorated, either entirely or in part, with frescoes (see fresco painting). Among the pictorial subjects chosen for the walls and vaults, the most important and most frequently occurring theme is the so-called Maiestas Christi, a conventional representation of the transcendental deity that was reserved for the half-dome of the apse. The Maiestas fresco (c.1123), on the apsidal vault of the Catalan church of San Clemente de Tahull, is the best-preserved Romanesque representation of this theme and follows a long-established convention in portraying Christ seated on a rainbow with his right hand raised in blessing. Also traditional is the enclosure of the scene within an oval frame known as a mandorla, the symbol of divine glory. But the artist of Tahull has wholly transformed this time-honored image into highly schematized patterns, almost caricaturing the features of Christ. In the subdued light of the sanctuary, however, it is precisely this totally unrealistic interpretation of the deity that best expresses the all-pervading presence of the Lord. At Tahull, as in many other Romanesque pictorial works, the discarding of any reference to the actual appearance of things enabled the artist to achieve the maximum spiritual intensity.

Manuscript Illumination
Because time and climate have destroyed or badly damaged most Romanesque frescoes, illuminated manuscripts provide the principal source of present-day knowledge of Romanesque painting. Romanesque illuminators, like the sculptors of the Last Judgment portals, made use of the vivid imagery of the Apocalypse. A collection of commentaries (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris) on the Apocalypse, illuminated (1028-72) at the abbey of Saint-Sever-sur-Ardour, in southern France, includes a highly original illustration of the passage that describes how winged locusts with human faces torment humankind with the poisonous stings of their scorpion tails. In a memorable representation of this scene, the Saint-Sever artist depicted creatures, urged on by Satan, angrily lashing out at their victims.

The powerful expressionism of these Apocalypse scenes gives way to a more elegant beauty in the large ornamental initials with which Romanesque manuscripts abound. Like the sculptured capitals in the Romanesque churches, these fantastically ornate letters often include human figures, as well as dragons and other creatures. Often the figures assume the very shape of the initials, as in a copy of Pope Gregory I, the Great's Moralia (Bibliotheque Municipale, Dijon), made (1111) at the abbey of Citeaux in France.
 

Fig. 5  Panel from Saint Lazare in Autun, France,
carved by Gislebertus (c.1130-35).

 

DECORATIVE ARTS
Pre-Romanesque artists excelled in the field of illuminated manuscripts. In England an important school of manuscript illumination arose as early as the 7th century at Holy Island (Lindisfarne). The work of the school, exemplified in the Lindisfarne Gospels (late 7th century, British Museum, London), is characterized by geometric interlace designs in capital letters, borders, and often entire pages, which are called carpet pages. The designs are frequently enlivened with representations of grotesque human figures, birds, and beasts. The Celtic manuscript style exerted a strong influence on subsequent schools of Romanesque miniature painting in continental Europe. In Carolingian manuscripts, for example, the intricate Celtic motifs are frequently employed in conjunction with classic decorative elements and figures derived from the manuscripts of late antiquity.

An extremely beautiful manuscript of this period, exhibiting exceptional skill and imagination, is the Utrecht Psalter (830?-835, University Library, Utrecht, the Netherlands).  After Carolingian times the Celtic interlaces fell into disuse as Byzantine influence increased during the Ottonian era. Regional schools of manuscript illumination in southern and western Europe developed characteristically distinct styles, as seen, for example, in a copy of the Beatus Apocalypse (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris), made in the mid-11th century at the monastery of Saint Sever in southern France. By the early 12th century, manuscript illumination in the northern countries had come to share common characteristics similar to those seen in contemporary sculpture. In Italy, Byzantine influence remained as dominant in miniature painting as in wall painting and mosaic.

Pre-Romanesque and Romanesque metalwork, a highly developed art form, was used primarily to create the utensils of the church rituals. Many of these pieces are still preserved in the treasuries of the larger European cathedrals outside France; the French cathedrals were looted during the French Revolution. Other metalwork of these periods includes early Celtic filigree jewelry and silverware; later German and Italian goldsmiths' work and silverware, inspired by imported Byzantine metalwork; and notable enamels, especially those in the cloisonné and champlevé techniques, produced in the regions of the Mosel and Rhine rivers. Two famous metalworkers of the 12th century were Roger of Helmarshausen, a German noted for his bronze work, and the Flemish enamelist Godefroid de Claire.

The best-known example of Romanesque textile work is the 11th-century embroidery called the Bayeux Tapestry.  Other examples, such as church vestments and hangings, have been preserved, but the most prized textiles in Romanesque Europe were imported from the Byzantine Empire, Spain, and the Middle East, and were not the product of local skills. In the USA, the finest collections of Romanesque art are exhibited at The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City; the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio; and Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland.

HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE
The international scope of Romanesque art is apparent in the broad range of influences it assimilated and transformed. Echoes of Carolingian and Ottonian illumination can be detected in many Romanesque manuscripts, and the sophisticated art of the Byzantine Empire had a widespread impact on all forms of Romanesque painting. In architecture, the dome and the horseshoe arch were introduced from the Near East and from Islamic art and architecture, and in the south of France, Roman triumphal arches provided the inspiration for the triple portals of the church of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard (c.1140-c.1150).

In 12th-century Sicily a melange of Saracenic, Byzantine, and Norman Romanesque styles resulted in a series of extraordinarily exotic monuments; at the opposite end of Europe, the wooden stave churches of Norway preserved in their carved decorations the animal art of the barbarian era.

Romanesque art bore within it the seeds of later artistic trends. Rib vaulting was only one of several Norman Romanesque elements that played important roles in the evolution of Gothic architecture.  In Italy, Romanesque sculpture laid the groundwork for the first monument of the dawning Renaissance, the pulpit of Nicola Pisano (1260) for the Pisa Baptistery. Finally, the classical spirit of Renier's Liege reliefs was splendidly revived (c.1181) by the Mosan goldsmith Nicholas of Verdun.  His later works, however, are so similar to contemporaneous Gothic sculpture that they can no longer be considered truly Romanesque.

Fig. 4  The Bayeux Tapestry, London, UK.
 

Bibliography:
Atroshenko, V. I., and Collins, Judith, The Origins of the Romanesque (1986); Conant, K. J., Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture: 800 to 1200, 4th ed. (1978); Decker, Hans, Romanesque Art in Italy (1959);
Dodwell, C. R., Painting in Europe: 800-1200 (1971); Gantner, Joseph, and Pob, Marcel, The Glory of Romanesque Art (1956);
Grabar, A., and Nordenfalk, C., Romanesque Painting from the 11th to the 13th Century (1957);
Kubach, Hans, Romanesque Architecture, rev. ed. (1988);
Knstler, Gustav, ed., Romanesque Art in Europe: Architecture and Sculpture (1973); Palol Salellas, Pedro de, Early Medieval Art in Spain (1967);
Schapiro, Meyer, Romanesque Art (1977);
Swarzenski, Hans, Monuments of Romanesque Art: The Art of Church Treasures in North-Western Europe.