Tema-57.-El-arte-romanico.

Introducción

• The Romanesque style emerged around the year 1000 with the European economic revival and spread throughout Western Europe during the 11th and 12th centuries.
• It is the artistic manifestation of the Christian faith, influencing many aspects of medieval life and linked to power.
• Romanesque art is essentially religious, with churches and monasteries as its main constructions.
• Its plastic arts are characterized by geometrism, hieraticism, and disproportion of figures.
• In the Iberian Peninsula, it developed uniquely due to the ongoing conflict with Islam, with its best artistic expressions linked to the Camino de Santiago.
• The importance of the Romanesque style lies in its recovery of the aesthetic unity lost after the fragmentation of the Roman Empire.

El Arte Románico: Contexto Histórico y Características Generales

• The term "Romanesque" was first used in 1820 by Charles de Gerville to describe all art before the Gothic style and after the fall of the Roman Empire.
• It was seen as the successor to Roman forms, similar to how Romance languages inherited Latin.
• The term now defines artistic manifestations of the Christian West between the 11th and 12th centuries.
• Besides classical Roman art, influences include Germanic styles, Ottonian art, Asturian art (in the Iberian Peninsula), and Byzantine art.
• The Romanesque style was dominant in Christian Europe between the 11th and 12th centuries, uniting various artistic productions into a new, coherent language.
• It emerged almost simultaneously in different parts of Europe (Italy, France, Spain, etc.), with specific characteristics in each area, but sharing common elements.
• The origin of the style is a debated topic in medieval art history.
• Several historical events favored the renewal and spread of culture in Europe from the 8th century: consolidation of the Capetian dynasty in France, the Christian advance against Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, expansion of Christianity, and the birth of Romance languages.
• Artistic productions did not achieve uniform formulation until the 11th century due to demographic, economic, and cultural revitalization, which allowed for new land cultivation, the re-establishment of old trade routes, and the development of pilgrimages.
• Pilgrimages and the monastic reform led by the Cluniac order were the main channels for the style's diffusion.
• The Cluny monastery (founded in 930 in France) became the center for reform and new constructive approaches.
• Developments in Italy (Como region) and Spain (Catalonia) established protoromanesque features, such as the work of the masters of Como and the vaulting of Catalan churches.
• Pilgrimages, promoted by the Cluny monastery and linked to religious fervor after the year 1000, also contributed to the style's spread, directed to the Holy Lands, Rome, Santiago de Compostela, and Mont Saint-Michel.
• The "question of the millennium," a collective hysteria at the end of the 10th century based on the false belief that the world would end in the year 1000, influenced the emergence of the new artistic style.
• This terror was reflected in art through the inclusion of monsters and iconographic elements inspired by the Last Judgment.
• After the prophecies proved false, a sense of "thanksgiving" contributed to the renewal of religious art, leading to the Romanesque style.
• It is the artistic expression of the feudal society, explaining its essentially religious, rural, and monastic character.
• Society was structured through dependency relationships, with a theological underpinning.
• The social order was preached by the Church and organized into a tripartite division: oratores (clergy), bellatores (nobility), and laboratores (serfs).
• This teocentrism was applied to architectural, sculptural, and pictorial works, with the primary function being didactic-religious, glorifying and inspiring fear of God.
• The Romanesque art began in the late 10th and early 11th centuries, with the first century considered a formative stage.
• Generally, there is an early Romanesque (11th century) in southern France, northern Spain (Catalonia), and northwestern Italy; a full Romanesque (late 11th and first half of the 12th century) with the most significant productions; and a late Romanesque (second half of the 12th and early 13th century) that introduces early Gothic solutions.

La Arquitectura Románica: Formas y Funciones

• The outstanding development of Romanesque architecture makes it the most important artistic expression of the style.
• Painting and sculpture are closely subordinated to it.
• It is generally an architecture rooted in Roman tradition, integrating elements of pre-Romanesque, Byzantine, and Islamic art.
• Being an eminently religious architecture, the main types are the temple (church) and the monastery.
• The decline of urbanism and the decrease in importance of civil architecture was due to the importance of agricultural activity in the feudal society compared to the decline of cities.
• The most significant examples of civil architecture were the defensive castle, walls, and manor houses.
• The Romanesque style used the round arch, column, and pillar as structural elements.
• The main type of roof is the barrel vault, which arises from the longitudinal extension of the round arch.
• This type of vault is characteristic of the Romanesque style.
• It is usually reinforced by transverse arches that rest on pillars.
• This system of roofing is used to cover the central nave, while groin vaults are used for the side aisles.
• The lantern tower (a towered dome) is located above the crossing, where the central nave and transept intersect.
• Its construction is solved through the use of squinches or pendentives.
• The essential function of this element is to illuminate the interior of the temple.
• The gallery is located above the side aisles, which becomes a common element in pilgrimage churches.
• In addition to providing greater height and luminosity to the central nave, the gallery also allowed to accommodate pilgrims.
• On the exterior, robust buttresses are erected against the wall to counteract the thrust of the vaults.
• The result is an architecture of generally dark interiors, precise volumes, and robust appearance.
• Wood, brick, and stone were used as construction materials.
• The wall usually consists of two masonry walls with the gaps filled with rubble (fragments of bricks, stones, and other building materials).
• In plan, Romanesque churches present basilical references, with Latin cross plans predominating.
• The main arm of the cross usually has three or five naves, with the central nave being higher and wider than the side ones.
• The side arm, called the transept, usually has one or three naves.
• The naves of the main arm generally end with a semicircular apse.
• It is also common to have apsidioles in the transept and a ambulatory, which allowed the faithful to walk around the high altar, enabling the passage of pilgrims and the arrangement of apsidal chapels.
• If the church was part of an abbey or monastery, there is also the cloister: a porticoed courtyard around which the monastery's rooms are located, such as the refectory, the chapter house, and the monks' cells.
• The main ornamental element of the Romanesque style is the temple's portal.
• The facade usually consists of two twin towers that flank the entrance, giving it the appearance of a fortress of the Christian faith.
• The Romanesque style created a model portal of wide diffusion continued by the Gothic style.
• It consists of a splayed structure, composed of archivolts that surround the central part, where the tympanum is located.
• The archivolts are extended by means of small columns delimited by jambs.
• The mullion divides the opening into two, which is topped with a lintel, above which the tympanum is located.
• The whole set is filled with sculptures, which respond to a specific iconographic program.
• Inside, fresco painting and the carving of the capitals of the columns were frequent.

Principales Manifestaciones

• The Burgundy region is the creative focus of the style; from here, Romanesque architecture spread throughout the rest of France and Europe.
• France: The first great Romanesque construction is the monastery of Cluny, built in three phases from the 10th century onwards.
  • This construction was characterized by its large dimensions and the luxury of its materials, and became the source of inspiration for a large number of Romanesque works.
  • This group includes the church of the Madeleine of Vézelay (11th century), with a plan of three naves in the main arm and one in the transept.
  • Pilgrimage churches abounded in Auvergne and Languedoc.
    • These are constructions with a Latin cross plan and a very developed transept; they have a barrel vault in the central nave, and a groin vault and galleries in the side aisles, as well as an ambulatory with apsidal chapels.
    • Among them, Saint Foy de Conques (11th-12th centuries) stands out, which served as a model for Saint Sernin de Toulouse (11th-12th centuries), which in turn inspired the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.
  • In Normandy, a later Romanesque style developed, which announces the new Gothic style.
    • Saint Étienne de Caen (11th century) is an example.
    • It has a wooden gable roof in its central nave.
    • The stone roof with groin vaults was used in the side aisles.
  • In Poitou, Notre Dame de Poitiers (10th-11th centuries) heads a group of churches with highly decorated portals and interiors, and not far away, in the Perigord region, the domed churches such as San Pedro de Angulema (12th century), and Saint Front de Perigeux (12th century) stand out.
• Italy: Classical forms remained very present in the Italian peninsula; Italian Romanesque reveals clear influences from Paleochristian and Roman art.
  • The facades tend to be somewhat independent of the internal structure.
  • The elements of the church (campanile, temple and baptistery) are usually independent, as in the complexes of Modena (11th century) and Pisa.
    • The latter, very well known, was built between the 11th and 12th centuries to commemorate the Pisan naval victory over the Arab armada.
  • Lombard Romanesque makes use of poor materials and rubble masonry, and characteristic elements such as the use of arches and Lombard bands (vertical moldings), very imitated in some pilgrimage churches in the rest of Europe.
  • Tuscan Romanesque uses colored marbles, while the Siculo-Norman models of Sicily combine Byzantine, Norman and Islamic art influences, as demonstrated by the cathedral of Monreale, with its extraordinary mosaics, and the cathedral of Cefalú (12th century) with an opus tesselatum from the second golden age of Byzantine art in the 12th century.
• Germany: German Romanesque shows notorious influences of Ottonian art, hence its monumental character.
  • It also presents Lombard influences.
  • It is characterized by the predominance of basilical plants with a double apse (at the head and at the foot).
  • Its towers and lanterns are of great height with polyhedral roofs, and there are abundant openings along the wall.
  • All this can be seen in the cathedrals of Mainz (11th century), Worms and Spira, both of the 12th century.
• Great Britain: British Romanesque is, in reality, an Anglo-Norman Romanesque, a consequence of the Norman invasion of 1066, by William I the Conqueror.
  • It is characterized by generally achieving a greater height than in the constructions of the rest of Europe; they are churches with a certain appearance of fortress.
  • We must remember the early use of ribbed vaults, in 1094, in Durham Cathedral (11th-12th centuries).

Las Artes Figurativas: Escultura Monumental y Pintura Mural

La Escultura Románica

• The origin of Romanesque sculpture poses a problem because the aniconism of the Germanic world caused the loss of the sculptural technique of ancient classicism, and in the absence of examples, the masters of the Romanesque resorted, as a source of inspiration, to the Germanic goldsmith works and to the miniatures and ivories of Byzantium.
• The development of sculpture reveals a certain delay in relation to architecture.
• In the early moments, the passage from small-scale works to larger productions is observed.
• It is not until the end of the 11th century when it can begin to speak of Romanesque sculpture, properly speaking.
• If during the 11th century sculpture was totally adapted to architecture, in the 12th century the size became more voluminous, moving away from the flatness of the previous century and gaining in expressiveness and naturalism.

Características generales

• The 11th and 12th centuries saw a great development of the plastic arts, which had been in decline since the end of the Roman Empire.
• The purpose of the Romanesque figurative arts is religious and didactic, so that content prevails over formal beauty.
• Allusions to sin and condemnation are constant, since their purpose is to teach the faithful through fear.
• In terms of typologies, we find both free-standing sculpture and relief.
• The former is scarce and represents two fundamental themes: the crucified Christ and the Virgin with the Child.
• Romanesque sculpture was fundamentally a monumental sculpture linked to architecture, although wood carving for devotional images was also present.
• The reliefs are concentrated on the portals of the facades, both in the tympanum, where the main theme appears, which is usually the Last Judgment, and in the archivolts and jambs, where genealogies of kings and musical angels are usually arranged.
• The capitals of the columns, in particular those of the cloisters, are also decorated in relief
• These are historiated and instructive capitals that narrate scenes of the most varied kind, mainly dealing with the themes of sin and the demon, as in San Martín de Frómista.
• Romanesque sculpture manifests an absolute predominance of stone and wood as materials, so the technique consists of direct carving, on the building block itself, in the case of stone.
• The church and the abbot did not leave the themes to chance; the figurative art of the Romanesque is an intellectual art that lacks creative freedom.
• The thematic is totally religious, hence the importance that the figure of the theologian acquires at this time.
• In the iconographic programmes of the Romanesque we can find different levels of reading:
  • A simpler one, oriented to the faithful, with a clear didactic intention.
  • And another much more complex and symbolic one, to whose artists and also receivers can be presupposed a wide theological formation.
• The Last Judgment is the main theme of the Romanesque, which testifies to the fear of condemnation.
  • It features the Pantocrator (God Almighty in the attitude of Judge), as Maiestas Domini (Majestic Christ or Christ in Majesty), where Christ appears seated on his heavenly throne, crowned, blessing with his right hand raised while holding the Book in his left hand, on his knee.
  • He is usually surrounded by a mandorla or mystical almond as a sign of glorification, and is accompanied by the tetramorphs, symbolic representation of the four evangelists: San Mateo as the angel, San Marcos as the lion, San Juan as the eagle, and San Lucas as the bull.
  • Examples include Maiestas Domini of the church of Santiago, in Carrión de los Condes (Palencia), and Maiestas Domini of the crypt of Saint Sernin de Toulouse, both of the 12th century.
• Another common theme is the Virgin with the Child, who sometimes appears in majesty as Maiestas Mariae (Majestic Virgin), which presents the Virgin seated on her throne, crowned, holding the Child on her lap, who is shown in an attitude of blessing.
  • Both figures are rigid, without any communication between mother and son.
  • The Romanesque Child Jesus is not a child, he is God.
• A somewhat less frequent theme is the crucified one.
  • It is a Christ with four nails, in which the feet appear separated, which attenuates the sensation of suffering.
  • The arms remain rigid, adhering to the cruciform frame, without showing the physical weight of gravity, and on the head he wears the royal crown as corresponds to his condition as "king of kings".
  • It can be covered with a loincloth, which goes from the waist to the knees, or with a long tunic.
  • The figure shows no suffering whatsoever; it is a Christ who, alive or dead, rises above all that is human.
  • The best example is the Christ in Majesty of Batlló, from the region of Olot, a 12th century work that wears a splendid Byzantine tunic.
• Other minor themes, which can be found in portals, capitals and corbels, are sin, which takes on a repulsive form, lust, for example, under the image of a woman whose genitals are gnawed by snakes and toads, and the demon, represented by animalistic forms of ridiculous and funny appearance.
  • There is no lack of geometric and vegetal motifs in the sculptural ensembles.
  • The abundance of images of sexual content in the temples has led to questioning the lack of creativity, traditional thought about Romanesque art, on the part of the artists.
  • Monsters had a great appeal for people who lived in Romanesque times.
  • They were monsters born by hybridization, impossible beasts, belonging to the realm of the fantastic.
  • There are two interpretative theories about the appearance of these monstrous figures: the stylistic theory of the iconographers, who see only the forms in themselves, defends that monsters have no meaning, that is, they constitute only decorative motifs; and the theory of those who seek moralising symbolic meaning and maintain that the monster expresses esoterically the religious or moral life.
  • It seems undoubtable that the monsters served as part of the programme of ecclesiastical catechism, destined to an illiterate population to which the fear of sin was inculcated through the imagery of hell.
  • Possibly the symbolic content of such a bestiary arose from an apocalyptic mentality, although some lines of research maintain that such terrors did not exist or, at least, that they were not as deep as they have been made to believe.
• From the aesthetic point of view, it is an antinaturalistic sculpture, characterized by the strong geometrization, hieraticism and disproportion of the forms.
  • There is a line of research that maintains that the antinaturalism of Romanesque sculpture does not respond to a lack of technique, but to an intentional deformation of reality under a profound symbolic sense.
  • If this theory is true, Romanesque sculpture would have an undoubted value of "modernity".
  • This antinaturalism is compensated by the great expressiveness of the figures, achieved from primitive elements of great intensity and depth, such as the realization of large bulging eyes or the gestures of the hands.
  • The works tend to be arranged in friezes, which brings with it ispocephalic figures.
  • Use is made of the law of the frame, that is, the representations are determined by the architectural frame and their forms are adapted to it.
  • There is a certain sensation of fear of emptiness (horror vacui); the images and small decorative motifs try to cover the totality of the sculptural space.
• All these productions were made by workshops of a guild character, composed of anonymous artisans, who performed their work in a itinerant way, and completely subordinated to the client, fundamentally the Church.
  • For this reason, with few exceptions, we do not know the names of the artists.
  • It is thought that these artisans lacked creative freedom, because they had to adjust to rigorous iconographic programmes.
  • And it is that in the artistic works of the Romanesque period a distinction is made between the creator in the intellectual sense of the term, that is, the theoretical artist, and the practical artist, whether painter, master builder or stonecutter, who was the expert in the practical craft.
• One of the first to break with that idea of itinerant and anonymous craftsman was the maestro Mateo (12th-13th centuries), settled towards the end of the 12th century in Compostela, in a more or less permanent way, and of whom numerous news have been preserved, which already announces a certain change of mentality.

Principales producciones escultóricas

• In France, the two creative centers were Burgundy, around Cluny, and Languedoc, in the pilgrimage churches.
  • The best examples are the churches of Saint Pierre de Moisac (12th century), the cathedral of Autunn (12th century), the Madeleine of Vézelay (11th century) and Saint Sernin de Tolousse (12th century).
  • The masterpiece of French Romanesque is the Royal Portico of Chartres Cathedral, a work of transition to the Gothic period, of the 12th century.
• In the case of Italy, as with architecture, classical forms were never forgotten.
  • Great sculptural works were made on portals such as that of San Zeno de Verona (12th century), with a strong classical flavor.
• Romanesque sculpture in Germany denotes a strong influence of the technique of Germanic goldsmithing applied even to stone; however, goldsmithing works are the most significant in the country.
  • A good example is the bronze reliefs of the church of San Miguel de Hildesheim (11th century).

La Pintura

• The origin of painting poses the same problems as sculpture, although it is believed to arise from Byzantine and Paleochristian influence.
• In the same way as with Byzantine and early Christian pictorial productions, Romanesque painting was put at the service of architecture.
• The buildings were covered with colour, both inside and outside, especially in parts such as porticoes and capitals, as it collaborated in the general conception of the building as a symbol of the house of God and recreation of the Celestial Jerusalem.
• As with sculpture, from the 12th century onwards there was a greater concern for the representation of detail and volumes.

Características de la pintura románica

• The main techniques of Romanesque painting were mural painting, painting on wood and miniatures.
• Mural painting was done in fresco; for this purpose the wall required a previous preparation consisting of a layer of lime and sand plaster, followed by a second thinner layer of plastering (based on sand, lime and marble dust).
• Subsequently the colour was applied, following a dotted sketch on the wall; the colours could be dissolved in water -in fresco- or in egg casein -tempera, very fast drying, but more durable-.
• Painting on panel was less abundant; with it the frontals that covered the altars on their front part were decorated.
• The miniatures were the illustrations of the manuscripts.
• The Beatos, commentaries on the Book of Revelation, which had been abundant before the arrival of the Romanesque period, survived.
• The theme of the painting was subject to Byzantine rules, which are specified in three fundamental themes: the manifestatio, which expresses the existence of divinity and its power, as is the case of the Majestic Christ and the Majestic Virgin, these themes are located in the most important part of the church: the apse; the testificatio, these are characters who attest to the truth of the dogma, usually the apostles, who are hierarchically placed below the previous theme; Finally, the narratio, narrative themes that manifest the importance of divinity, such as the miracles of Christ, which occupy a secondary place.
• Images of nature are not common in Romanesque painting; the landscape is completely dispensed with, with the exception of specific elements of interest to understand the meaning of the scene, such as the tree of life in representations of original sin.
• Nor are there human images treated individually, but as a generic concept of humanity, which appear in everyday scenes, works or actions representative of a theocentric society where only those chosen by God, the saints, are represented individually.
• From the aesthetic point of view, Romanesque painting presents the same characteristics as sculptural sculpture; to it we must add the peculiarities of the pictorial technique, such as: the existence of a predominance of line over color; the use of flat and bright colors that fill the delimitations made by thick lines; the use of flat and bright colors that fill the delimitations made by thick lines, as if it were a stained glass or an enamel, this intense chromatism served to counteract the somberness of the interior environments; and the bidimensionality, achieved by the total absence of luminous effects, volume, perspective and landscape setting.

Principales ejemplos

• Closely linked to the workshops of Cluny and under the Byzantine influence of Montecasino, in France, we find the 11th century paintings of the crypt of Auxerre and Berzé la Ville.
• Of a more local character are the paintings of Saint Savin sur Gartempe (11th-12th centuries), most of them in very good condition.
• To these examples should be added the paintings of the crypt of Tavant (12th century) and the chapel of Vicq (11th century), in Berry.
• In Italy, painting was dominated by the influences exerted on it by Byzantine formulas, to the point of recognizing a maniera italo-bizantina, of very stylized forms, which will give rise, in time, to the Florentine naturalism of the 13th century.
  • Its most significant examples are the paintings of San Vicente de Galliano (11th century), in Lombardy.

La Representación y el Papel de la Mujer

• Due to the fact that Romanesque art was eminently religious, Christianity permeated everything.
• For this reason, we find two female figures who occupied a very important part of medieval iconography, Mary and Eve.
• In essence, the value given to woman was dual, or she was a saint or a sinner.
• In this way, avarice and lust, the capital sins that the Church combated with greater zeal, were represented in the form of a woman.
• In turn, during the 13th century, there was an exaltation of Mary, which increased, in which the new religious orders of Franciscans and Dominicans participated.
• This is a different vision of the woman, the function of mother, the purest, which leads us directly to the great Marian invocations and the representation of the Maiestas Mariae.
• On the other hand, we know that medieval women dedicated part of their lives to spinning, weaving and embroidering.
• All of them useful and creative works.
• For this reason, we can affirm that the majority of the thread artists, who worked the magnificent pieces that have been preserved to our days, were women.
• From their hands came true works of art, such as fabrics dedicated to liturgical vestments and ornaments of the churches, even destined to the funerary furnishings of relevant characters.
• The majority of these works are anonymous.
• Among the most beautiful preserved Romanesque embroideries there are a few that tradition knows them with female names, such as the embroidery of the Countess Guisla, which is preserved in the monastery of Sant Martí del Canigó that would correspond to an altar towel that could be dated to the 11th century.

La España Románica: Arquitectura, Escultura y Pintura

• Spanish Romanesque presents peculiar characters with respect to the rest of Europe due to the historical circumstances of the peninsula and the fact of having been one of the most important centers both in the gestation of the Romanesque forms and in their evolution and dissolution of these.
• This different evolution is directly related to the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula and the maintenance of a series of Christian resistance nuclei in the northern zone, which were progressively expanding as the "reconquest" advanced.
• This fact explains that only fully Romanesque artistic manifestations are preserved in the northern half of the territory: the current province of Cuenca, on the Alarcón line, was the southernmost limit of this style in Europe.
• This particular situation provided the Hispanic Romanesque with its infinite variety and richness, since the style was configured in a context of constant struggle with another culture, possessor of another religion, and of an aesthetic as powerful as the oriental one.
• In this sense, Spanish Romanesque art was shown as a belligerent art, oriented to reaffirm the Christian and European identity against the Muslim enemy and its oriental aesthetic; but, in turn, Romanesque art was nourished by all that Islamic culture, since the contact between the two areas favored a continuous exchange that ended up manifesting itself in the decoration, in the themes and in the techniques used.

Arquitectura

• In the peninsular territory, the Romanesque style developed from two fundamental centers: the Camino de Santiago and Catalonia.
  • Given its importance, we will dedicate a separate section to it.
• The first Spanish Romanesque developed in Catalonia at the end of the 10th century, largely as a consequence of the influence exerted by the Carolingian Empire in the Hispanic March.
  • The first constructions of this Catalan proto-Romanesque were the monastery of Ripoll, from the 11th century, and the small Pyrenean churches of Tahull, belonging to the 12th century.
  • This style is characterized by a broad influence of Lombard Romanesque, as shown in the use of rubble masonry, the use of corbels and Lombard semi-circular arches (blind arches), Lombard bands, niches and windows reminiscent of the Italian galleries; in addition, the towers acquire a certain independence with respect to the rest of the church, which reminds us of the Italian campaniles.
• The 12th century was, above all, the century of the popularization and nationalization of Romanesque through the different regional schools.
  • The rural churches, built in areas of repopulation, were Romanesque.
  • They are characterized by the poverty of their materials (brick, wood and scarce use of stone) and by the construction of numerous porticoes of Mozarabic influence; the porticoes were used as a meeting place for the municipal councils.
  • In Castile and León, the church of San Esteban (12th century) stands out, in Segovia, with an extraordinary bell tower and a beautiful portico.
  • The Romanesque of the Duero Valley is of great originality, due to its elegant lanterns on pendentives of Byzantine influence, such as the Old Cathedral of Salamanca and the Cathedral of Zamora.
  • Other buildings, such as the collegiate church of Santillana del Mar, in Cantabria, close the chapter of Castilian Romanesque of the 12th century.
  • In Galicia, the Romanesque churches denote the Compostela influence.
• In Navarre and Aragon, some constructions such as the funerary hermitage of Eunate and the funerary chapel of Torres del Río (both from the 12th century), with an octagonal plan, were linked to the Camino de Santiago; the first one also has a polygonal apse, and the second one, with a semicircular apse, and both manifest oriental influences, specifically, from the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem -model of all circular and polygonal temples of Christianity during the Middle Ages-.

Escultura

• As in architecture, sculpture was impregnated with the rich background of pre-Romanesque Hispanic arts (Visigothic and Asturian art).
• In the 11th century, date of the first essays of Romanesque sculpture, the Catalan Pyrenean workshops that developed around Ripoll and the northern slope of the Pyrenees stood out.
• The facade of the Catalan monastery of Santa María de Ripoll (finished in the mid-12th century) is a composition that covers, in the form of parallel bands, the totality of the facade; with this arrangement it denotes the influence of Italian Romanesque in the region.
• Also, although its chronological framing is difficult, given the itinerant character of the workshops that arose along the Camino de Santiago, work was done in Jaca, Frómista, Sahagún and Santiago de Compostela.
• During the 12th century, sculpture acquired characters of naturalism and lengthening of the canon that were reflected, above all, in the works that decorate Santiago de Compostela, whose influence can be felt in the western portal of the basilica of San Vicente, in Ávila, and in the Cámara Santa de Oviedo.
• The sculpture, which had developed in such a rich and complex way throughout the area of the northern kingdoms and Castile, disappeared quite quickly in the last manifestations of Romanesque, popularized and impregnated with Cistercian ornamental poverty.
• There remained some important examples in the province of Guadalajara, as demonstrated by the mensarios (representations of the months of the year) of the church of Beleña, or the capitals of the portal of the church of Millana.

Pintura

• Possibly Spain is where the best vestiges of Romanesque painting are found, both for its quality and for the abundance of examples, either in mural painting or painting on panel.
• The stylistic influences that Spanish Romanesque painting received are fundamentally of three types:
  • Italo-Byzantine.
  • French.
  • Local, conformed by all the peninsular pre-Romanesque substratum.
• We distinguish two pictorial schools, the Catalan and the Castilian.
  • The Catalan school is perfectly represented in the examples of the churches of Tahull, specifically, with the Maiestas Domini of Sant Climent, and the Maiestas Mariae of Santa María -both paintings transferred to the Museum of Art of Catalonia-.
    • In both works the Italo-Byzantine influence predominates.
    • In San Clemente, a work of the 12th century, the Christ in Majesty marked by the frontality and the hieraticism, characteristic of Romanesque sculpture, very highlighted by the rich coloring that accompanies it is represented.
    • In Santa María, a work realized in 1123, the apse is dominated by the representation of the Virgin enthroned with the Child, accompanied by the scene of the adoration of the Kings.
  • The Castilian school shows a greater creative freedom and is linked to the Camino de Santiago; its landscape elements and anecdotal themes are genuine.
    • Apart from the Camino de Santiago we find, belonging to the 12th century, the paintings of Santa Cruz de Maderuelo, with the theme of the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) -today in the Prado Museum-, and San Baudelio de Berlanga, exceptional for its profane iconography -currently also in the Museo del Prado-.
    • Direct heirs of peninsular art are the paintings that collect Islamic influences, among which stand out those of the Segovian church of San Justo, and those belonging to the so-called circle of Toledo, with examples such as San Román, both from the 12th century.
    • Possibly, the last manifestation of European Romanesque painting, belonging to the final Romanesque of the 13th century, is found in the apse of the church of Valdeolivas, in the province of Cuenca.

Arte y Religión en el Camino de Santiago

• The origins of the cult of Santiago are unknown, but it seems that, around the year 814, some relics attributed to the apostle were found in the current city of Santiago de Compostela.
• At the end of the 9th century its cult extended throughout Christian Europe, giving rise to a whole network of pilgrimage routes that still endure today.
• During the 11th to 13th centuries, the Camino de Santiago constituted an economic and cultural route of enormous importance for the Iberian Peninsula, facilitating the arrival of feudalism from France.
• With time, Santiago became the most important pilgrimage center of the Middle Ages, reaching such a peak that it came to compete with other emblematic pilgrimage centers such as Jerusalem and Rome.
• The Camino de Santiago was dotted with churches and religious hospices, so it became one of the main vehicles for the diffusion of culture and Romanesque art.
• The Order of Santiago, of a military nature, founded in 1158, was responsible for the safety of the pilgrims.
• The pilgrimage was collected and ordered in the Codex Calixtinus -or Liber Sancti Iacobi-, a work of the 12th century collected in five books attributed to Pope Calixto II, which was compiled by the cleric Aymeric Picaud.
• The first constructions of the road date from the 1