the famous Plan of Saint-Gall, a detailed layout of buildings for a monastery in
Switzerland designed ca. 820, and probably reflecting building ideas more widely current
throughout France as well as other parts of the Carolingian world. Not all ecclesiastical
buildings were basilicas. The famous octagonal palace chapel built by Charlemagne at
Aix-la-Chapelle in the 790s is not in France, but a contemporary central plan structure
was erected by Archbishop Theodulf of Orléans at Germignydes-Prés, and Charles the
Bald built a magnificent palace chapel in the Aix-la-Chapelle tradition at Compiègne,
consecrated in 877.
Few Carolingian mural paintings survive in France, but the extensive decorations in
Switzerland, Italy, and Germany support the evidence of the crypt of the church of Saint-
Germain at Auxerre that mural painting was produced in large amounts and achieved a
high level. A special feature of Carolingian mural decoration is the use of mosaic at Aix-
la-Chapelle (Aachen) and probably at Compiègne. The late 8th- or early 9th-century
mosaic apse from Theodulf’s oratory at Germigny has an unusual subject, the Ark of the
Covenant as described in the Old Tes-
A Seraph, superimposed on the text of
the Sanctus, Drogo Sacramentary. MS
lat. 9428, fol. 15. Courtesy of the
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
tament, with statues of winged cherubim. Such an unprecedented subject for treatment in
a major apse surely reflects the contemporary debate about images in the Christian
church and stems directly from the patron’s special interests.
Some of the most famous works of Carolingian art are illuminated manuscripts, which
survive in large numbers and are often nearly perfectly preserved. Best known are the
groups of books that can be closely associated with rulers, especially Charlemagne and
Charles the Bald, and that appear to have been produced by scribes and painters directly
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