ROMANESQUE ART. — The term “Romanesque” designates that particular moment in European artistic culture, spanning the 11th–12th centuries, which lies between the manifestations of Ottonian art (v.) and the various strands of the Carolingian legacy (v.) on one side and the first clear expressions of Gothic art (v.) on the other.
It is linked to the special vitality characteristic of that age throughout Europe. As commercial and spiritual exchanges intensified, the arts too saw a more intimate and complex interweaving of themes and motifs inherited from classical antiquity and of Eastern contributions—whether Byzantine, Arab, or Sasanian. Culture, the feeling for beauty, and the cult of beauty spread everywhere, while art, understood above all as an expression of originality, was invigorated by a new naturalistic spirit. This, far from opposing it, actually favored the internationalization of culture, so that the various currents traveling along the same routes as merchants and pilgrims often intersected in almost unforeseeable encounters. New vital centers of convergence and dissemination arose, which, enriched by fresh contributions, took on new force of expansion in the varied expressions of taste; currents capable of abruptly overcoming or surpassing what in traditional modes of expression often amounted only to the dead weight of custom. It is in this intense reciprocal movement, in this warm cultural life that knew no national boundaries, in this harmony of spirits evident in the shared goals pursued, that one of the happiest moments in the life of the great European nation is to be found.
It is no wonder that at the same time purely decorative forms of the most unmistakably Arab character appear in Spain, England, Sicily, and northern Lazio; that in France, at Pisa, and in Apulia the same architectural forms derived from Asia Minor are encountered; that Lombard architects reached as far as Scandinavia or Roman sculptors were summoned to London to carve the tombs of English kings, while those who erected churches in Burgundy or along the Rhine faced problems similar to those of builders in Milan and Bari.
Yet the deeper one investigates these problems, the more this intense spiritual and cultural life appears to have been guided by a clear and consequential evolutionary logic. Nevertheless, in the artistic manifestations of the Romanesque period any discussion of priority is utterly futile, whether it be more or less overtly chauvinist. What counts is always the power and felicity of expression, the complete realization in beauty of those vital impulses that shook consciences in the Romanesque period and that, first in vague and confused ways and then with steadier step and clearer direction, helped shape the laws of Gothic art in northern Europe and, in Italy, the forms that would later be illumined by new beauty during the Renaissance. In this sense France and Italy were the liveliest and most interesting centers. In France, in fact, these new vital impulses seem stronger than elsewhere, further shaped by the advent of the Capetians (987) and by the rise of feudalism born of the disintegration of Carolingian administration. It was a time when pilgrimages to the Holy Land and then the Crusades revealed to so many French the splendor of the Eastern world. When these Frenchmen returned home, they felt the need to renew their own lives; cities were rebuilt, castles, churches, and above all monasteries arose. And while architectural forms often show reminiscences of what had been seen in Syria and Asia Minor, poets recounted marvelous tales set against the mirage of
Issoire. Without doubt, especially in the second half of the 11th century and the first half of the 12th, France was the most vital architectural center in all Europe. This remained true even if, in certain respects, Spain—above all Catalonia—seemed to precede it in time. In England, by contrast, the forms of Normandy quickly took root, almost accentuating their initial traits. More closely bound in its austere architectural organisms, which display typically Romanesque features, was German architecture, particularly in the Rhineland—where the cathedrals of Mainz, Speyer, and Worms offer typical examples. In some respects they also recall the contemporary Lombard architecture.
A similar evolution characterized the sculpture of the Romanesque age, in the sense that French works often surpassed in quality those of other northern European regions. Indeed, during the 11th century, although production was fairly abundant, it seems that sculptors struggled to extract human forms from the marble, still marked by naïveté and roughness. Yet the sense of composition was already harmonious, and sculpture, with its eminently decorative aims, subordinated any attempt at naturalistic representation even in scenes drawn from the Bible and the New Testament. But in the 12th century the plastic forms, already aligned in different French regions with the taste and spirit of architecture—think of the Christ in Glory adorning the ambulatory apse of St-Sernin in Toulouse and the other sculptures of that church, as well as those of the cloister of the Abbey of Moissac and of Saint-Pierre in Moissac, or those of Notre-Dame-la-Grande in Poitiers and the portal of St-Trophime in Arles or that of Chartres Cathedral—grew increasingly inclined toward the elegance, the projections, the soaring lines, and the spirituality of Gothic forms. Then, in the anthropomorphic monsters of the gargoyles, in the dragons chasing one another up the facades of cathedrals, in the minute carvings of friezes and cornices with vegetal motifs—though often enlivened by a vivid spirit—one can also discern the thoroughly Romanesque taste for the complex game of overcoming seemingly insoluble technical difficulties, but perhaps even more for translating into image what until then had been the object of age-old barbaric terrors.
In England as in Spain, Romanesque sculpture, apart from the development of certain now-traditional regional elements, is largely indebted to the spread of French plastic taste. In some respects the same can be said of Germany. Here, however, certain works—such as the wooden doors of the church of St Maria im Kapitol in Cologne—bear witness that in wood sculpture Germany was initially by no means behindhand.
