CHAPTER 2 : ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE

1. The colour.

The colour is everywhere in the Romanesque churches : on the walls, on the sculptures.

2. The iconography.

It's the iconography of a terrified faith : The Apocalypse on the tympanums.

The 12th century man believes. He believes in a God absolutely stranger which doesn't have nothing common with human people. A terrible God whose the will is incomprehensible for human mind. The byzantine figure of the Moissac tympanum is made to do this impression of terrifying power.

He believes yet that the end of the world is imminent. He believes that he can be concerned directly. He believes that the Apocalypse is for tomorrow, may be even for today.

The Gothic God will get closer to the human people. His will, by distinguishing between the good and the bad, becomes comprehensible and, on the tympanums, the Last Judgment will take the place of the Apocalypse.

The late Gothic God, in the 14th and 15th centuries will become yet more "human" : he will be The Crucified. The God reached by the death : the Sorrowful Christ.

3. The characteristics : the rejection of "realism".

The Romanesque sculpture isn't based on the "nature". The human depiction appears deformed. We have to understand the reasons of that deformation. They come  (see Focillon  Art of the West in the Middle Ages. 2 vols. New York: Phaidon, 1963) from the obedience of the sculpture to the architectural surroundings, from the architectural domination on the sculpture. This will only start  to release itself  in the Gothic age and  will reach its emancipation in the Renaissance.

3.a. First law : The submission to the architectural surroundings (Architectural factor).

The capital, the archivolt are formal surroundings in which the sculpture has to fit. To manage to do that, it has, strictly talking,  to fold up. In this way the "Trapezium Man" (below) owes his form to the cupola brick in which he fits.

(Aulnay. The Trapezium Man)

3.d. Second law : the "space-place" (Metaphysical factor).

The Aristotelian theory, in force during the Middle Ages, doesn't consider the space like an homogeneous thing, as Euclid, but made of places rigorously distinct and independent. It's not the same thing for an object to be at the top or to be at the bottom, to be on the left or to be on the right. The evidence is that the flame goes up, because its natural place is at the top, or that the stone fall because its natural place is at the bottom. It's by this theory that Aristotle explains the motion.

Several consequences result from this conception.

a. Each figure takes up a place and takes it entirely.

As a result, the figure suffers deformations without which it can't take up the place entirely. See below the posture of the old men (Moissac).

b. Each place is independent of each other (by its contents).

The capitals of the Moissac cloister come one after the other without logic. We would have waited that these capitals tell a story, because of their succession : starting by Genesis to ending by the Resurrection. It's not the case. The succession is totally non-historic.

c. Each place is independent of each other (by its form).

As a result, each figure has to fold itself at the neighboring figure (as the unequal stones of the Romanesque wall which have to adjust their form to the  forms of the other stones). Below, in Moissac, the Tetramorph figures are adjusted to the form of the divine place, and the Seraphim's figures are adjusted to the form of the Tetramorph's "places".

3.c. Third law : the hierarchic perspective (Symbolic factor).

The Middle Ages refuses the linear perspective that will be the Renaissance perspective. It refuses to dig in an illusory way (as much as in a real way) the wall which is the vector of the Romanesque architecture. But it knows the perspective. That perspective is hierarchic : in the center, at the top and in the most large place it puts the most important figure (God, e.g.). On the right, at the top, it puts the figure which is, by order of importance, just after the first (the evangelist the most close of God : saint John (the eagle, the one which looks the sun squarely). On the left, at the top : saint Matthew (the angel, the one to whom the angel has dictated his Gospel). On the right, but at the base, saint Marc (the lion, which figures the Resurrection of the Christ). On the left, at the base, saint Luke (the ox, which figures the Crucifixion). At the base, the less "noble" : the Apocalypse's old men.

(Hierarchic perspective : (left : visual perspective, Renaissance; right : hierarchic perspective, Middle Ages.

From left to right : back = smallest = less important ; front = biggest = more important)

3.d. Fourth law (1) : the submission to the frame (Plastic factor).

The Romanesque capital comes from the Corinthian capital. The figures which are carved on it, are repeating the underlying forms, the frame of this capital : fleuron, two levels of acanthus leaves,  volutes. The figures will be folded, by following this frame.

3.e. Fourth law (2) : The submission to the decorative frame (Plastic factor).

Symmetry or metamorphosis.

The geometric requirements, due to the Corinthian frame  (symmetry) are making new deformations, but especially hybrid figures emerging by metamorphosis.

There is also the consequences of a particular conception of the "Nature". God has created the World ; he has given form to the beings who inhabit that World, but the infinity of his power can't be reduced at the Creation of the familiar beings. The Nature is itself the expression of the God's power, the Nature doesn't stop create new forms. This is not the Darwinism or the Lamarckism of the 19th century, because the ideas of evolution or adaptation are not 12th century ideas. The Nature doesn't create to do better, it creates because it's an active power. So, on the edge of the manuscript pages, on the church walls, there are monsters chains, creatures who devour each other, who metamorphose themselves the one in the other in an incessant way.

4. The decoration.

Here there is no deformations. Especially on the capitals abacus or on the tympanums archivolt, there are geometric figures. The interlacing (geometric forms of the monsters chains) are the most frequents.

5. The tradition.

Just the opposite of the contemporary artist, the Romanesque artist is not turned toward the invention but rather toward the tradition. His work is to transmit. This is the consequence of that : all the knowledge, in the Middle Ages, is  given already. All the knowledge is disclosed. The Fathers of the Church have to make explicit this knowledge. The artists have to illustrate this knowledge. In the monasteries, the monks have to copy the manuscripts. The same thing, for the artists, on the churches ' walls.

But, the sculptor's work isn't restricted to do a simple reproduction. He immerses himself in the pattern and gives an adaptation of it in the stone. The Moissac tympanum may be coming from the Apocalypse de Saint-Sever. The liturgical drama is another pattern for the sculptor.

6. The painting.

Its characteristics are alike at the one of the sculpture.

6.a. Wall painting.

a. The depiction has to refuse any illusion of depth.

b. Submission to the frame.

The painting has to submit its figures at the same requirements as the sculpture.

c. Submission to the underlying (geometric).

Exactly as the sculpture.

6.b. The manuscripts.

a. The stone tone is frequent for the paper on which the monk writes or draws illuminations. All perspective representation  is exclude (in spite of the fact that it is, but rather in the 15th century, in these illuminations, that appears the first attempts of linear perspective).

b. Submission to the frame.

Here yet (see the capital letters) the figures have to fold in front of the "architecture" of the page or the margin.