Romanesque art was the dominant style across much of Western Europe from roughly 1000 to 1200, the first pan-European style to follow the fragmentation after Rome's fall, spreading along pilgrimage routes and through the reforming monastic orders, especially the Cluniacs. Its architecture is defined by thick load-bearing walls, round arches, barrel and groin vaults, and small windows that produced dim, fortress-like interiors, as seen at Sainte-Foy in Conques and Durham Cathedral. Sculpture, largely absent from Early Medieval church exteriors, returned in force on tympana and capitals, rendering biblical scenes and monstrous beasts in stylized, often elongated forms suited to their architectural settings rather than naturalistic proportion. The style gave way in the mid twelfth century to Gothic architecture's pointed arches and rib vaulting, first in the Ile-de-France.
Facts
Founded In PlaceWestern Europe, especially France, along the Cluniac pilgrimage routes 1 Key PrincipleThick masonry walls, round-arched openings, barrel and groin vaulting, and stylized, non-naturalistic figural sculpture applied to architectural surfaces such as tympana and capitals. 2 Connections
Associated With
Expressed In
Influenced
Romanesque architectural forms directly preceded and shaped the development of Gothic architecture in medieval Europe.
Movement Members
An 11th-century embroidered work contemporary with and stylistically grouped under the Romanesque period.
A celebrated example of Pisan Romanesque architecture.
12th-century Romanesque embroidered hanging.
A defining monumental Romanesque illuminated bible.
Sources
1. Gardner's Art Through the Ages
Fred S. Kleiner (after Helen Gardner), Cengage Learning
2. Smarthistory
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