The Romanesque Arch
A visual language for Europe

These paintings are the result of many strands coming together, reflecting, I hope, the words of the Medieval scholar, Helen Waddell who saw the architecture of this period as "The stark simplicity of reverence".

At a time like the present it is salutary to reflect on an earlier period in our long common European history, when, after centuries of assault from the violence of an earlier barbarism, Christendom emerged, for the first time as a civilisation.

That time stretched from the advent of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 to the creation, in the twelfth century, of a universal Papal monarchy, premised on the dialogue between Roman Law, Latin philosophy and a renovated monastic idealism, which sought to attain harmony with the secular power of the universal Empire whose model was Rome. That time of our common past can be called the era of the 'romanesque', an era in which an architecture, rooted in that of Rome, but articulated by the spirit of Christianity, inspired the building of cathedrals, churches and monasteries across Europe from the Atlantic fringe to the central plain in which the kingdoms of Hungary and Poland had recently been baptised.

As the beauty of those edifices rose across Europe, the poets began to sing of love and courtesy, making sweeter and brighter the old tribal chants of pride and courage, transforming the lays of Roland and of Arthur into the joyful melodies of the troubadours.

As, once again, we are threatened by the return of that darkness which ruled Europe after the fall of Rome, it is refreshing to contemplate these images from the springtime of the spirit which we call the 'romanesque', and so, in our own perplexity, find that Christian virtue refreshed in our hearts.
Charles Stephens, Birkbeck College

The arch – along with the vertical pilaster or half-column is at once the most basic and the most expressive architectural elemment available to the masons and designers of 11th and 12th century Europe. Its versatility is infinite. It might be used as an open form, so that the individual stones of the arch transmit the static forces of the walls above them outwards, on to jambs and embrasures, enabling the wall to be perforated with portals, windows, and vents. Equally, it might be used as a solid form – a curved masonry bridge set within or against the wall, repeated beneath the roof parapet to form an arched corbel table, or set above a doorway as a blind arcade. Used in combination with suppporting shafts and capitals, the arch transforms what would otherwise be a smooth uninterrupted surface into lively, rhythmically articulated architecture.

The origins of this approach to architectural articulation – of what since the early 19th century has been known as Romanesque – are diffuse, and, as its name implies, are to be sought in the architecture of the Roman Empire. However, although the essential components of Romanesque architecture are Roman, their combination is not. New ways of relating arches to their supports – of integrating the elevation of a building with its section – begin to appear at the beginning of the 11th century. Their earliest expression – in Catalonia, Lombardy, Saxony, Burgundy, the Loire Valley and Champagne – give notice of one of the most striking characteristics of Romanesque architecture, its great geographical range. Romanesque architecture became the architecture of Latin and Germanic Europe, an architecture which by the early 12th century could be found all the way from Sweden to Portugal.

This geographical spread was matched by what, from an historical perspective, is a somewhat surprising quality – tremendous regional variety. Romanesque architecture is far less consistant, or unified, than 13th century Gothic or modernism, for example – so much so that some scholars have questioned whether the notion of a Romaneque style is sustainable. The preferrd materials, sculptural embellishments and spatial configurations which mark out the Romanesque architecture of Apulia are very different to those of, say, Lombardy. This regional diversity is at its most extreme in France where, as Janet Treloar's watercolours make beautifully clear, the attitudes to architectural colour and geometric composition visible at Vézelay and Lérins are very different indeed. Nonetheless, the expressive qualities of the architecture are astonishingly similar, and enough evidence exists that architects across Europe shared techniques and understood that regional forms were not exclusive for the idea of a Romanesque style to be both valid and vital – a style breathtakingly brought to life here.
John McNeill, Hon. Secretary, British Archaeological Association

"Thus, after the year 1,000 or some three years later, there was a great activity in the world, and especially in Italy and the Gaules, in the building of churches. Even if there were already a great number of them, the Christian people vied with one another to build them more and more beautiful. It seemed as though the whole earth, liberated from imperfection, draped itself in the white mantle of new churches."
Raoul Glaber of the Abbey of St Bénigne de Dijon, monk and chronicler, 11th/12th century.