Romanesque art for beginners

How to read the labels Historical what the old sources say. Later tradition what later writers added. Modern modern practice and my own notes.

Around the year 1000, Europe’s population and economy grew, and so did religious devotion. Pilgrims walked hundreds of kilometers to visit the relics of saints, and new churches rose along their roads. Their thick walls, round arches and carved doorways give us the style we call Romanesque, a world where saints and monsters share the same stone.

Three layers

Historical What buildings, objects and texts of the time show. Later tradition What later centuries read into them. Modern How people use these images today.

Pilgrims and relics

Historical The great pilgrim roads led to Rome, Jerusalem and Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Relics, the bones, clothing or belongings of holy people, were believed to bring healing and blessing. At the abbey of Sainte-Foy in Conques, in southern France, a gold and jeweled reliquary statue of the child martyr Saint Foy sits enthroned. Its core dates to the late ninth or tenth century, and it held the saint’s skull. Art, relic and devotion were one object.

The church as a picture book

Historical Romanesque portals put a carved tympanum, a half-moon panel, above the door. At Vézelay, about 1120 to 1132, Christ sends his apostles to preach to all the peoples of the earth, including fantastic races from medieval travel lore: people with huge ears, dog-headed men and tiny people climbing onto horses with ladders. At Autun, the sculptor Gislebertus carved a Last Judgment with long, thin, terrifying demons weighing souls.

Inside, the tops of columns, called capitals, were carved with Bible scenes, lions, griffins and knotted beasts.

Cuxa Cloister, about 1130 to 1140. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (25.120.398 to .954). Image: Open Access, public domain (CC0).

The Met Cloisters rebuilt parts of the cloister of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, in the French Pyrenees, from about 1130 to 1140. Walk around it, even online, and look at each capital: lions with one head and two bodies, monkeys, monsters swallowing people.

Historical Not everyone approved. Around 1125, Bernard of Clairvaux, a leading monk of the strict Cistercian order, complained in a letter about the “ridiculous monstrosities” of cloister capitals, which distracted monks from reading. His complaint is wonderful evidence of how much people enjoyed them.

Painted churches

Master of Pedret, The Virgin and Child in Majesty and the Adoration of the Magi, about 1100. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (50.180a-l). Image: Open Access, public domain (CC0).

Historical Romanesque churches were painted from floor to vault. This apse from a church in Catalonia, painted about 1100 by an artist known as the Master of Pedret, shows the Virgin and Child enthroned in an almond-shaped glory, with the Magi bringing gifts. The bold outlines and flat bands of color were meant to read clearly in dim light, across a whole church.

The Throne of Wisdom

Virgin and Child in Majesty, about 1175 to 1200. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (16.32.194a, b). Image: Open Access, public domain (CC0).

Historical Wooden statues like this one at the Met, from about 1175 to 1200, are called the Sedes Sapientiae, the Throne of Wisdom. Mary sits upright and frontal, and Christ, who embodies divine wisdom, sits on her lap as if she were his throne. Such statues were carried in processions and sometimes held relics.

Telling stories in thread

Historical The so-called Bayeux Tapestry, really an embroidery about 70 meters long made in the decades after 1066, tells the Norman conquest of England like a strip cartoon, with a comet, Halley’s, blazing in the sky as an omen.

The esoteric angle

Historical Romanesque demons are some of the most vivid in European art. They were teaching images: warnings of judgment, and reminders that evil could be defeated. They are evidence of fear and faith, not portraits of spirits. My Demons course explores where those ideas came from.

Later tradition Nineteenth-century writers sometimes read carved symbols as secret pagan or esoteric codes left by master builders. There is little evidence for that. Many “mysteries” of the cathedrals are modern stories.

Modern Many people love these monsters today for their humor and strangeness. I do too, and I like to remember that medieval viewers laughed at them as well.

Try it yourself

Find a good photo of a Romanesque portal, such as Vézelay or Autun. Start at the top and work down. Describe what is in each zone: Christ, angels, the saved, the damned, the monsters. Who is largest? Where does your eye land first? Then imagine it painted in bright color.

Before and after

Before this: Early medieval art.

After this: Gothic.

See every movement in order on the art movements timeline, or learn to look step by step in the free Art History for Beginners course.