Romanesque Art: The Mystical and The Holy
Kids know from an early age that images have power. They draw what they want to be when they grow up, what they value, who they are. I loved all illustrated books and stacked them next to my bed so I could dive into their magic world under cover of night. (My parents always knew I was up too late.) Many artistic eras were (and are) influenced by this beautiful, child-like mindset. They made work out of curiosity and left space to wonder. They held imagery up as worship. And most of all, they put to paper what they valued and what they found holy.
Romanesque art is an example of a people allowing themselves to revere the fantastical and depict the holy. Artists working in this time period (roughly 1000AD to the 12th century) were influenced by Byzantine Iconography and the overall emphasis on the monastery/the monastic way of life. In fact, so devoted was this artistic era to the pursuit of a spiritual art form that it soon became the first artistic style to encompass all of Catholic Europe. But it wasn’t just the holy these artists focused on — they were also greatly influenced by the dark turn slowly being taken by the Catholic church.

The Romanesque period consisted of multiple different art forms — architecture, sculpture, and Biblical illuminations being the most prominent. Art creation became somewhat of a cycle: Biblical illuminations were created depicting Roman Catholic interpretations of scripture. The people came to sacred buildings (hence the architecture) to see/hear these scriptures, and were told to value relics (or sculptures). As sacred buildings increased, the demand for relics did too. Medieval Roman Catholicism with it’s influence on hell, death, and the atoning of sins fed the need for Romanesque art like a fire.

With the increase in relics, came a rise in cultish mysticism. People began to see these objects as magical — imbued with healing powers. These cults often focused on death/dying as an offshoot of the messages being perpetuated by the Church. In Romanesque: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Rolf Toman states, “If one considers all Romanesque forms of art — churches, all the ornamenta ecclesiae, from the stone architectural sculpture complete with scenes of the Judgement and Hell , to the golden Madonnas holding the Child destined to die for our salvation, and from crucifixes to relics and the ceremonial equipment with which the death of Christ on the Cross is commemorated — the impression of a great cult of death is overpowering.”

The aesthetics of Romanesque art allowed for the work to communicate complex messages in simple terms. Paintings used mostly primary, bright colours. Illuminated Bibles were heavily decorated while frescoes were simpler and held less depth. Figures in frescoes were usually contorted to fit the confined spaces used to frame compositions (ie. doorways, columns, and other architectural features) while stained glass allowed artists to truly capitalize on a space and create something monumental.

Larger Romanesque sculptural works like the above piece — The Shrine of the Three Kings in Cologne Cathedral by Nicholas of Verdun — were often embossed and depicted simple Biblical stories such as The Nativity, Creation, The Fall, etc.

Romanesque architecture (later morphing into Gothic Architecture) was characterized by thick stone walls, towers, rounded archways, and simplistic design. While structures in this style were mostly comprised of churches and monasteries, aesthetic influence extended to houses, civic halls, castles, and more. The goal of all of these aesthetic preferences, from paintings to architecture, was to communicate the Catholic rhetoric of the time: repent and you will avoid death and damnation.

Like children rely on picture books for the story of their world, Medieval common folk relied on Romanesque artwork to explain their way of life. Their perception of what is holy and what is mystical, fantastical, and magic became impossibly muddled as they began to put their hope in icons, relics, and spaces. These works, to this day, have the uncanny ability to evoke a childlike sense of awe and, at times, dread as one imagines the fervor with which these people feared the unknown.
Art is a powerful tool. It can be wielded by culture, belief systems, political movements, and more. But at its heart, it is a creative expression of universal truths and an exploration of impossible theories. We must always keep our eyes open as we push forward into the worlds we create.
Sources:
Toman, R., & Bednorz, Achim. (2004). Romanesque : Architecture, sculpture, painting (English ed.). Köln: Könemann.