Romanesque Painting

Wall painting
The technique used is fresco. It was based on the preparation of the pigments diluted in water with withwash. These pigments were applied to the wall in which a layer of plaster have been given to prepare it. The drawing was done while this matter was humid so once it was dry it acquired strength and resistance.
The same as the sculpture, painting is integrated with architecture. It does not imitate nature but it follows a rational conceptualization. Due to this images are flat, elongated and without perspective. The characters appear in order, with different sizes depending on their hierarchy. Eyes and hands are disproportionate because they are the most expressive parts of these images.
Colours are intense and brilliant (red, yellow, orange, blue) and they are distributed in bands of great contrast among them. Black colour was used to limit the images.

There are not many examples of Romanesque painting even when probably every church was not completed until its walls were painted. In Spain there are two different currents: the Byzantine and the Mozarabic. The Byzantine reached Spain through Catalonia coming from Italy or the English miniaturist who worked in Sicily, while the Mozarabic was common in all the territories of Castile and Leon.
The iconography of the painting depends on the place it occupies. It is common to find the dome of the apse with the depiction of Christ Pantocrator or the Virgin. A good example of this are the churches of Taull. In San Climent the Pantocrator appears inside the mandorle, blessing, his left hand holding a book in which it is written Egon sum lux mundi, this is, I am the Light of the World, and the alpha and omega, first and last letter of the Greek alphabet in both sides. He is sitting on a line that represents the celestial orbit, with his feet standing on a small line depicting earth. It is very stylised, with long face, hands and feet. Colours are flat and are limited by black lines. The way of trying to add some deepness to the image is with black lines. Around him appear the depictions of the Four Evangelists and, at a lower level, the Virgin and Saint, each of them in a niche very irregular. The wall is painted in bands of different colours. In Santa Maria of Taull we find a similar distribution but the top part is reserved for the Virgin with her son and, around them, the Three Wise Men.
In Castile the most important example is the Royal Pantheon in San Isidoro. In this case even the location of the paintings change because there are the vaults of a building. There is a kind of horror vacuii and every single space is full of images. A majority of them are religious, as the Pantocrator and the Angels with the Shepherds. But apart from this, there are also laic images as those of the calendar, depicting people doing the normal agrarian activities of each month. In this case colours are a bit different, with a clear dominium of the red over the rest.
Other supports
Painting on wood was especially developed in Catalonia. It frequently appeared on the front of the altars, in a kind of small altarpieces. It used the technique of the temple. Its iconography is exactly the same as that of the wall painting and so are the colours too.
It existed a painting on paper or parchment. This was different in his thematic from the others. The target readers of books were literate people so they could read the Bible and did not need any simple explanation in paintings. In these books the depictions are more complicated or even courtesan subjects will appear. These books were elaborated in monasteries.

Romanesque Sculpture

Characteristics

Romanesque sculpture has its antecedents in barbarian art, Byzantine sculpture, Greek-Latin legacy (hieratic, symbolic and supra-natural) and the late Roman sculpture at once with the paleo-christian sarcophagus, from where it took its iconography.

The works are subordinated to the architectonic frame. The places for sculptural decoration are the portal, and the capitals. Those spaces are the natural limit for monumental sculpture and relief and the depictions must accommodate to the frame.

Formally, it is disconnected from the real world. It is symbolic and allegoric, looking for the expression of the religious content. Images are intentionally deformed trying to impress emotionally; simple and stylised images, sometimes geometrical or even abstract; it refuses the depiction of the naked human body and all the images are covered by clothes; there is not a canon nor any proportion neither equilibrium between mass and weight; images are rigid, hieratic, full of solemnity and elongated to stress their spiritual character. Technically they appear to be primitive, with a certain archaism; there is not movement; composition and scenes are in the same plan, without forming groups. It lacks of volume and images are flat and symmetric, with a dominance of frontality . This plastic is directed to the mind, with a great intellectual charge, due its didactic aim.
Themes and iconography
It is inspired and determined by the church. There is a hierarchy of the subjects that can be seen in the spaces occupied by the images, with different visual relevance. The inspiration comes from the pre-Romanesque miniature and the Byzantine ivories that suggest models, attitudes and compositions. Themes are taken from the Old Testament or the hagiographies or saints biographies. These moral lessons were completed with allegories of the sins, vices and virtues, trying to imbue the plastic with ideas or concepts that impress the popular conscience.
The portal is the chosen place for the main scene: in the tympanum we can see the Pantocrator or Christ as a judge, involved in the mystical mandorla, surrounded by the four evangelist or their symbols (lion is Mark, the angel is Mathew, the ox is Luke and the eagle John). The Last Judgement is frequent and the twenty-four wise men of the Apocalypse may appear completing the scene.
Other subjects are the Virgin or the Christmon, a symbol depicting the Holy Trinity. In addition to this, the jambs are the place for elongated sculptures of saints or other motives while the archivolts are decorated with geometric motives or human figures adapted to the frame.
In addition to the big sculptural programmes of the doors and the capitals of the cloisters, there are exempt images in polychrome wood or ivory. There are two main depictions: Christ on the Cross or Maiestas Domini and the Virgin with the Child.
Christs are represented in the cross and they are characterized by their rigid hieratic gesture, their composition and their geometrical disposition, with four nails, very open eyes and serene attitude, far from any sufferance or pain.
The Virgin with the Child has the similar formal characteristics. It may appear as Theotocos (God’s mother with the Son, who adopts an adult’s gestures) or as a throne for God (Theotronos) or also as Kiriotissa (Virgin in the throne, rigid and with the son in her lap, not looking at her, of Byzantine influence).
In conclusion, Romanesque sculpture has an allegorical character and strong expression. The dominium of the didactic over any other aspect influences in its apparent technical simplicity and formal primitivism. The role of the church is determinant so it is also the mystic and religious content that separate this art expression from the worries about perfect beauty. The supernatural world is the expressive atmosphere of the Romanesque, far away from terrene and natural world. Hieratic and solemn images justify the expression of immutability of Christian faith. Technically Romanesque sculpture evolved towards a greater naturalism and dynamic composition so that the new expressivity will fit with the new social, economic and cultural context that appeared with the Gothic.

Romanesque Architecture

Romanesque architecture presents a great regional variety determined by the traditions of each European territory it developed in. It was founded on the subtract of Roman antiquity, with which German countries influences were mixed. At the beginning there were different styles, known as pre-Romanesque but about the 11th century there is a certain unification of the style.
Basically, it is religious architecture, with dominance of the church in which we can find the two characteristics that gave solidity to the movement: monumentality, creating wide spaces and durability, doing something eternal, linked to the divininity.

Church
The plan of the building is Latin cross, with three or five naves, being the central one higher and wider than the lateral. The transversal nave is called transept and the intersection point is the crossing. In pilgrimage churches the apse tended to be surrounded by an ambulatory in which pilgrims could spend the night. In the façade it is normal to find high towers, the same as over the crossing. At the feet of the church is the nartex. The plan of the church may vary and be substituted by central plans.
The elevation of the building presents naves of different high, being the main one the central. When the central nave has two floors, the second one is called tribune and has a corridor overlooking the central nave. Over the crossing is common to find a tower, sometimes polygonal, called ciborium.
The foundations of the buildings tend to be solid and deep because the strong walls of the building demand it. Walls are thick and reinforced in the outside by buttresses. This need for supports made difficult to open windows. At the same time, the existence of such a wall demand a lot of decorative elements, such as pilasters, blind arches, Jaca’s taqueado, or modillions.

Cover systems evolved from the wood lintelled covers to stone made barrel vaults, that are divided by fajon arches. Where two barrel vaults cross transversally it appears a rib vault. Apses are covered with a quarter of sphere vaults. Domes standing of squinches or trumps can be used too.
Internal support system: weighty covers are sustained by the walls and strong pillars and columns. The classical Romanesque pillar has a central-squared-body to which different columns are linked complicating its section. In the outside there are buttressed corresponding with the internal pillars. The capitals are full of relieves, narrating Biblical passages.
The façades or portals are at the feet of the church and in both sides of the transept. They are normally limited by towers. These façades are coincident with the internal distribution of the building. It is common to be formed by several arches decorated, the same as the tympanum inside them.
The cloisters are characteristic of the monasteries. It is an squared courtyard with a covered gallery sustained by semicircular arches.
Romanesque architecture symbolised the house of God. There are elements linked to both, human and divine. In general, circular parts such as the axis or the vaults are considered more perfect because of their shape. The relation among apse, nave and tower represent the union of the holy and human worlds. The nave is an squared construction with four angles, symbol of the earth (four elements, four seasons, four cardinal points).
Apart from that, the Romanesque symbolism is related to the light too. The church has its head oriented toward the East, the place from where the sun shines. In the same way, the altar in the apse is Christ’s light that illuminates the humans to rescue them from the dark.

Other buildings
Other important Romanesque building was monastery. It was organised as an small celestial city and consisted of different dependencies: church, cloister, monks’/nuns’ houses, hospital, refectory or dinning room, capitulary room for meetings, scriptorium for working in manuscript copying, library.

Castles were the most important of civil constructions. They were essential in this period due to the lack of security of the moment. They were built in areas easy to defend and frequently in mountains from where it was easy to observe the surroundings. Walls were strong and there was a protective wall all around the circuit ending in crenelations at the top. Inside there were different dependencies organised around a courtyard. The residence of the lord of the castle was the homage tower.

A construction directly related to pilgrimage were bridges. They were built to make it easier to pilgrims to continue with their journey. Normally they were a bit elevated in the middle.

Geography

France

Romanesque appeared in France, around Cluny abbey. From there it expanded following the pilgrimage routes, mainly Santiago. It has several styles: in Provence they used domes and façades decorated with arches; in Auvergne they have long choir, and side aisles around the semicircular sanctuary forming an ambulatory in which radiating chapels were open. In Burgundy buildings were barrel-vaulted and with three aisles. In Normandy there are Lombard influences with groined vaults supported by flying buttresses and façades with two flanking towers.

Italy
Italian provinces developed a great diversity of architectural styles. Lombardy was known by its groined vaults of heavy proportions. In central Italy decorative elements were classical: Corinthian capitals, coloured marble, open arches, colonnades and galleries and façades with sculptures. In the South Romanesque combined with Byzantine and Arabic influences, using mosaics and interlaced pointed-arches.

It was common to find separate buildings: the cathedral, the campanile or bell tower and the baptistery in three separe buildings.

Germany
Churches were planned on large scale and they were very high. They had an apse at each end and there was frequent to find round or octagonal towers in them.

England
Before the 10th century churches were made of wood and stone buildings were of small proportions until the Norman style replaced the Saxon style in 11th century. Buildings are long and narrow, with heavy walls and piers, rectangular apses, double transepts and deeply recessed portals. The naves were covered with flat roofs, later replaces by vaults, and side aisles were covered with groined vaults.

Spain
The first Romanesque appeared in Catalonia, influenced by Lombardy and France. The rest of Spain received this style through the pilgrimage. Catalan churches present an exterior of ordered volumes, decorated with Lombard bands and blind arches and galleries. The inside is divided into three naves with a small narthex and the hear presents triple apse.
Santiago’s route was important for the expansion of Romanesque art. The pilgrimage churches had a plan with three to five aisles and a transept in which there were radial chapels. Inside there is a tribune and it has ambulatory. Sometimes buildings can be polygonal, influenced by the Temple who was inspired in Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulchre.
In Castile and Leon there is an important influence of pilgrimage routes and the churches are identified with the spirit of the Reconquist. Buildings are simple and small, in contrast with the Muslim architecture.