ets and philosophers bearing texts on the sacrifice of Christ and his victory over death is
unique. On a technical level, the use of embellished reliefs suggests enamels and mosaic
work.
Stacy L.Boldrick
[See also: BERZÉ-LA-VILLE; GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE; GOTHIC ART; LE
PUY; MANUSCRIPTS, PRODUCTION AND ILLUMINATION; MOISSAC;
POITIERS; ROCAMADOUR; ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE; SAINT-CHEF;
SAINT-GILLES-DU-GARD; SAINT-SAVIN-SUR-GARTEMPE; VÉZELAY; VICQ]
Cahn, Walter. Romanesque Bible Illumination. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.
Demus, Otto. Romanesque Mural Painting, trans. Mary Whittall. New York: Abrams, 1970.
Deschamps, Paul, and Marc Thibaut. La peinture murale en France: le haut moyen âge a l’époque
romane. Paris: Plon, 1951.
Kupfer, Marcia. Romanesque Wall Painting in Central France: The Politics of Narrative. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Schapiro, Meyer. Romanesque Art. New York: Braziller, 1977.
Seidel, Linda. Songs of Glory: The Romanesque Façades of Aquitaine. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1981.
Stoddard, Whitney S. Art and Architecture in Medieval France. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
Wettstein, Janine. La fresque romane: la route de Saint-Jacques, de Tours a Léon. Études
comparatives II. Paris, 1978.
ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE
. A major aspect of the “Renaissance of the Twelfth Century” was the resurgence of
monumental sculpture in stone. Production of luxury objects had never ceased (Limoges
became a center of champlevé enameling), and wooden cult images of the Virgin and
Child were popular, especially in the Auvergne. The outstanding innovations of the
Romanesque period, however, were the proliferation of historiated capitals and the
appearance of great sculptured church portals.
The earliest attempts at façade decoration occurred in the first half of the 11th century
in the Roussillon, where traditional techniques of marble carving (altar tables and other
ecclesiastical furniture) were applied to church exteriors (Saint-André-de-Sorède; Saint-
Genis-des-Fontaines). It was not until the turn of the century that monumental portals
evolved in Languedoc, northern Spain, and Burgundy.
This sculpture is architectonic in character, international in style, and often epic in
iconography. It is an art of power, of energy in tension, imaginative, expressive, with a
love of variation and decorative effect and of geometric, stylized, and even fantastic
forms. Despite a certain homogeneity fostered by artistic exchange along trade routes and
pilgrimage roads, distinctive regional tendencies may also be discerned.
The “school of Languedoc” comprises several related styles emanating from
workshops at Toulouse and Moissac. The leading early sculptor was Bernard Gilduin,
credited
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