In art-historical writing, however, the term’s use is commonly both contracted and
expanded. It is contracted by restriction to the architecture, sculpture, and painting
produced for Christian purposes, material dating primarily from the 7th and 8th centuries,
and by the exclusion of much of the metalwork of the 6th century, relegated to the
“migrations arts.” On the other hand, the term is expanded to connote an artistic style
distinct from the developed Carolingian court styles with their more classicizing
appearance, even if the work in question dates from the early 9th century, so that some of
the best-known examples of “Merovingian illumination” date from the second half of the
8th and even from the early 9th century.
Not even one surviving intact building can be confidently termed Merovingian. The
only likely candidate is the baptistery of Saint-Jean in Poitiers, a central-plan structure
richly decorated with colored masonry patterns and elements of Roman architecture, such
as pedimental gables and “Corinthian” capitals and pilasters; but the date of the building
remains controversial, and it may well be earlier or later than the Merovingian period.
Some fragments of Merovingian masonry, like the elaborate carving and coursing of the
7th-century wall at Jouarre, clearly testify to a high level of craftsmanship. Literary
sources, especially the writings of Gregory of Tours, make it clear that many churches
were built and often richly decorated. The most famous example is the church of “La
Daurade” in Toulouse, elaborately covered with gold and figural mosaics; one of the
more intriguing is Gregory’s reconstruction of his own church of Saint-Martin at Tours
after its destruction by fire in 558, whose painted decoration Venantius Fortunatus
described at length ca. 590. Many Merovingian cathedrals and other churches, including
that of Paris, survived for centuries, being generally replaced with large Romanesque and
Gothic churches in the later Middle Ages.
In contrast to the dearth of surviving architectural works, abundant sculpture survives
from the Merovingian period. Among the best-known works are three 7th-century
sarcophagi from the monastery of Jouarre, which show a high standard of ornamental
carving and epigraphy for the tomb of Abbess Theodechilde, and elaborate and inventive
Last Judgment and theophanic Christ images on the tomb of Bishop Agilbert. The early
7th-century sculptures of the “Hypogée des Dunes,” or Memoria of Abbot Mellebaudis,
at Poitiers, an underground burial chamber and chapel, are a rich mixture of ornamental
and figural carvings, the latter including perhaps the remains of a monumental
Crucifixion group as well as fragments of carved sarcophagi. The importance of
sarcophagi as a locus for carving, and for devotion, is clearly a direct inheritance from the
late Roman and early Christian period; carved stone and plaster sarcophagi with primarily
ornamental decoration, often with apotropaic significance, were produced in great
numbers during the period.
Merovingian painting survives only in the form of manuscript illumination; all the
mural paintings attested by literary sources have been lost. It seems likely that most of the
books were produced at such great monastic scriptoria as Luxeuil and Corbie, originally
founded as part of the Irish missionary activity on the Continent in the 7th century, as
well as at Laon and other centers not yet identified. In comparison with contemporary
Irish and Anglo-Saxon illumination, the Merovingian works often seem simple and even
clumsy, dominated by simple color schemes and for the most part decorated with
zoomorphic and vegetal patterns derived from late antiquity, and especially applied to
initial letters and to framing of text pages. Whereas most decorated insular books of the
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