A journey through Romanesque art , livre ebook

Victoria Charles and Klaus H. Carl




A JOURNEY THROUGH
ROMANESQUE
ART
© 2024, Confidential Concepts, Worldwide, USA
© 2024, Parkstone Press USA, New York
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ISBN: 979-8-89405-051-5
Contents
THE ROMANESQUE SYSTEM OF ARCHITECTURE
Art in France and Italy
ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE
Stone Sculpture
The Externsteine
Sculpture in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
Central Germany
Southern Germany
France
Vézelay
Moissac
Italy
THE ART OF WOODWORKING AND GOLD, SILVER AND BRONZE CASTING
PAINTING
ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS
GLASS PAINTING
MURAL AND PANEL PAINTING
Germany
France
Italy
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Nave, Abbey Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, Codalet (France), c. 1035.
THE ROMANESQUE SYSTEM OF ARCHITECTURE
Widely spread all over Christian Europe, the Romanesque style was the first independent, self-contained and unified style. It is the art of Europe from approximately 1000 CE to the rise of the Gothic style in the 13th century. Architecture dominated Romanesque art, and all other artistic movements such as painting and sculpture, which often demonstrated dramatic motifs, were subordinated. The Romanesque style is predominantly a certain use of forms, which branches out into different peculiarities. Nonetheless, most Romanesque structures have certain essential features in common, according to which a system of Romanesque architecture can be established.
In England, France, and Germany we see basilicas rising up. That of San Apoilinare Nuovo at Ravenna (504 CE), built by Theodoric, is one of the finest examples of early Romanesque style. The columns are uniform, and are surmounted by a block which represents the ancient architrave, and is sufficient to support the arches. The triforium is adorned with figures, and the remaining space up to the roof is filled with windows which correspond with arches and are separated by figures. The apse, as in the Roman basilica, contains the bishop’s throne, and is surrounded by tiers of seats for the presbytery.
In the year 800 CE, the Frankish King Charles who had for more than twenty years been the actual ruler of Italy as well as of all Frankish lands, returned to his northern capital at Aachen with the title of Emperor. But it was more than the name of Emperor that Charles brought back with him from Italy to his capital in the north: art and culture first find a real home in Teutonic lands through him. The art that he found in Rome and Ravenna he carried home to his imperial city of Aachen. There we see theatres, palaces, aqueducts, Christian basilicas, and baths; his palaces have long since perished, but his court chapel, now the cathedral of Aachen, stands as a lasting memorial of his greatness.
The mosaics which formerly adorned it have perished; but excellent modern imitations have now been put in their place. Of the magnificent palace of Charles little now remains. The coronation hall was decorated with a hundred columns brought from Italy; within were paintings from the history of his life. On the walls of his palaces, historical events from the Old and New Testaments were for the first time arranged side by side. Roman and early Christian art was spread far and wide by the influence of Charles and his successors.
We have to travel far north into Germany, to the northern limit of the mountainous district of Central Europe, the fantastic, precipitous chain of the Hartz, to the quaint old town of Quedlinburg, the cradle and home of the famous Emperor Henry the Fowler. Here he dwelt peacefully in his youth, till, suddenly raised to the imperial throne. While he lay ill, the wild Hungarians advanced their frontier further and further into Germany. With wise self-control, he bought of them a nine years’ peace, to prepare for the struggle. After his great victory had been gained, a period of peace ensued, in which the moral effect of the struggle showed itself in the general development of the country, of which art was one of the most precious fruits.
The Emperor founded churches, abbeys, and convents, in those days the usual centres of higher culture. Then villages grew into walled towns. The middle class — the chief element of national life and liberty in Germany as elsewhere — began to grow up and flourish.
The church of Quedlinburg is of the eleventh century. How much nearer to us than the Aachen Minster does this basilica already appear, even only regarded externally, with its two massive towers with round-arched windows built over the vestibule. Three porticos, also of the round arched form, re-echo in a series of small arches supported by columns the beautiful curve. In the vestibule, there stands instead of the fountain a piscina, from which believers sprinkle themselves, symbolic of inward purification. Below are the minor round arches supported alternately by pillars and columns. The clerestory again repeats them in long galleries of columns.
Instead of the glittering mosaics on the walls, we here see solemn and more natural figures painted on a blue ground. The dignity of the Byzantine style, degenerated into fossilization, is already transfigured by German feeling. The column capitals in solid cube manifest here and there fantastic forms. The cross vault is freer for eye and feeling than the flat — the widened altar-niche gives room for a larger number of priests. Under it, as now common, a sepulchral church for the sarcophagus — in this case that of Henry I. Next to it a relic chest, of ivory, with scenes from the life of Christ, still awkward, but worked with naive pious feeling.


Eastern view of nave, Church of St Cyriacus, Gernrode (Germany), 959-1000.


Western door, Church of St Cyriacus, Gernrode (Germany), 959-1000.


South-East façade, St Michael’s Abbey Church of Hildesheim, Hildesheim (Germany), 1010-1033.
Far more richly adorned is the Cathedral of St. Michael in Hildesheim, with its six picturesque towers. The church dates from the eleventh century, founded by the learned and art-loving Bishop Bernward. Two of the towers surmount the widened cross-shaped choir; two at the entrance, where there is a second cross nave with a choir; two smaller ones on the gable sides of the cross wings. The perspective of the choir is grandly beautiful. On the bronze doors are sixteen reliefs, by Bernward’s own hand, which already show emancipation from Byzantine tutelage. The short figures, it is true, are rather unwieldy, with the upper part of the body standing out. One wing of the door is devoted to the Fall of Man, the other to the Redemption.
The commercial prosperity of Germany in the Middle Ages, before the rise of the Hanseatic League, centred in the towns of the beautiful Rhine Valley. Between Cologne and Strasburg, we find countless examples of churches and cathedrals in the Romanesque style, which the Germans had made their own, and developed into the original and characteristic architecture which we find at its best in the double-apsed cathedrals of Mayence, Treves, and Spires. In the two greatest towns of the river, indeed, the cathedrals belong to another style. Just as in the eighteenth-century Germany abandoned herself in art, literature, language and manners, to the servile imitation of France: so, in the thirteenth century, no sooner did the Gothic style spring up in the Frankish lands of what is now Northern France, than the German Romanesque style was abandoned.
The general plan of these churches is the same: double apses, supported on each side by small circular or polygonal towers, with steep pointed roofs; at the intersection of the nave and transepts a hexagonal or octagonal dome; arcaded galleries under the eaves of the roof of the apses, sometimes continued along the whole length of the straight side — a feature which we shall find to be characteristic of the Lombard style, to which it bears so great a resemblance. A very perfect example of the style is the church at Gernrode, a little town in the Hartz mountains, near Quedlinburg, which shows very well one curious feature of German churches — the gallery which joins the two towers, and rising considerably above the roof of the church forms with the apse a striking facade. The chief decoration is bestowed on the doorways and the capitals of the columns. The latter are generally cubic, and are boldly, though often roughly, carved with natural and fantastic designs.
All the greater buildings have grown up slowly, and the original designs have been added to from time to time as the works went on. To find one complete in design we will go up from the Rhine into the volcanic mountains of the Eifel, and there, amid the wooded hills by the blue waters of the lake, we find the beautiful church of the Abbey of Laach, with its varied and picturesque towers and its simple but graceful ornament. Though comparatively small, its effect is as striking and dignified as any of the larger cathedrals.
Art in France and Italy
In the volcanic region of the Auvergne, at the foot of the Puy de Dome, lies the little town of Clermont, where in 1075 a Council of the Church was held in which Pope Urban II. proclaimed the crusade. Peter the Hermit, who had done more than anyone to stir the enthusiasm of Europe for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the infidel, was a native of Amiens. The enthusiasm extended far beyond its original object: churches and cathedrals were built with renewed vigour, and possibly on their voyages to the Holy Land the crusaders’ eyes were opened to new artistic possibilities.
The most characteristic