The History of Art Survey

Lecture 24

Romanesque Architecture

Gardner  452-465

 

Romanesque Period: 1050-1200

 

17-

 

1     St.-Sernin, c 1070-1120,                                                                                Toulouse

2     St.-Sernin, plan                                                                                             Toulouse

3     St.-Sernin, int                                                                                                Toulouse

5     Speyer Cathedral, plan, begun 1030                                                           Speyer

4     Speyer Cathedral, int. nave vaults, 1082-1106                                           Speyer

       Speyer Cathedral, reconstruction of nave c. 1030-60                                Speyer

       Drawing, Speyer Cathedral,

8     SantıAmbrogio                                                                                               Milan

7     SantıAmbrogio, plan                                                                                     Milan

6     SantıAmbrogio, int., 11th - early 12th                                                        Milan

 *    Master Wolvinius, det of Paliotto (golden altar) Sant ³Ambrogio,          Milan ea 9th

9     St.-Etienne, west facade, 1067                                                                      Caen

10   St.-Etienne, interior, c 1115-1120,                                                               Caen     

11   St.-Etienne, plan 11th, 13th, 14th,,                                                              Caen

12   Durham Cathedral, nave, begun c 1093,                                                     Durham

13   Durham Cathedral, plan and transverse section,                                      Durham

14   Cathedral  (1063- ); Baptistery (1153); Bell Tower (1174-),                     Pisa

15   Cathedral, int, begun 1063,                                                                          Pisa

16   San Giovani, Baptistery, dedicated 1059,                                                    Florence

17   San Miniato al Monte, west facade, 1062,                                                  Florence

18   San Miniato al Monte, nave, 1062 and 12th c,                                           Florence

 

 

Romanesque Europe

 

Romanesque is an early 19th century term for architecture of late 11th and 12th centuries.  It was coined to describe structures with tunnel and groin vaults based on round arches, like those of ancient Rome.  That is, those between the timber medieval and the pointed arch Gothic.  Today it is used for the period between 1050 and 1200.  Its the first period since Classical Greece with an esthetic style rather than a political or geographic designation.

 

The political, social and economic system that governed early medieval society was called feudalism.  The rulers were warrior lords of the early Middle Ages, settled as land holding barons or liege lords.  They granted tenure on land to some vassals, who swore allegiance to them and rendered military service in return for access to land and promise of protection.  Vassals could allot plots of their fiefs to others and become lesser lords with their own vassals.  ³Peasants sustained all by their work.  they tilled the soil to gain a place to live and food to eat. Some accumulated enough wealth to buy their freedom.  Most remained subservient to their lords, tied to the land.²  (454)  It was an agricultural life focused upon a manor, or estate. 

 

The Romanesque period saw a significant increase in trade, fostered by pilgrims and Crusaders, that encouraged the growth of towns and cities.  Independent towns were based on charters, ³public documents feudal lords granted, enumerating the communitiesı rights, privileges, immunities, and exemptions beyond the feudal obligations they owed the lords.²  Many Romanesque towns rose on the sites of ancient Roman colonies, often on navigable rivers.  They were the nuclei of networks of maritime and overland commerce and the location of merchants, traders, moneylenders, artisans, and free peasants.

 

I am not seeing a major event of the moment other than the 1051-4 final, official break between the Orthodox and Catholic churches.  The return of vaulting may be the major technical gradient.

 

Gregorian Reforms

 

Gregory VII (Hildebrand) was Pope from 1073-1085.  He is best known for his ³Gregorian Reforms² which completed the reform movement begun at Cluny in 910 to wrest control of the church from secular feudal lords.  Cluniac monasteries answered to Rome not local authorities and Gregory fought successfully to separate the churches as well.  He demanded that appointment of bishops be from Rome not local authorities and any taxing of them go to Rome not local authorities.  Also attacked by his reforms, following Cluny was simony (selling church offices) and lay investiture by which local rulers appointed bishops and archbishops.  En route to doing this he had to excommunicate Henry IV of Holy Roman Empire (who recanted and was reinstated).  The result was the churchıs greatest power, in the succeeding century or so, as a unifying Christendom in Europe, where previously there were locally controlled and quite various churches. 

 

Other important elements of the Reforms was the imposition of celibacy on priests, an idea of prominence in the East but not at all standard in the West before this.  And, according to Whitney Chadwick, there was also a marginalizing of women within the church. 

 

 

Romanesque Architecture

 

Towns became centers of ecclesiastical influence.  Bishops and archbishops built walls and large numbers of churches.  The rise of these churches was based somewhat on the rise of urban centers and somewhat on ³widely felt relief and thanksgiving that the conclusion of the first Christian millennium in he year 1000 did not bring an end to the world, as many had feared.  [Y1K]   Pilgrimage and the Crusades had an impact, and also the destruction caused by invading armies destroying churches, particularly in France and Italy.  ³Architects of the time seemed to see their fundamental challenge in terms of providing a building that would have space for the circulation of its congregations and visitors and that would be solid, fireproof, well lighted, and acoustically suitable.² (454)  Timber roofs were susceptible to fire.  In the 9th and 10th centuries marauders from famously torched many. 

 

Concrete construction was forgotten, but cut stone was developed, and became the determining technique.  Timber roofs held on longest in Italy.  ³Ton a certain extent, Romanesque architecture can be compared to the Romance languages of Europe, which vary regionally but have a common core in Latin, the language of the Romans.²  (454)

 

 

1     St.-Sernin, c 1070-1120,                                                   Toulouse

 

Southern France, Romeıs Gaul, was the empireıs most Romanized province, filled with remains even today.  Particularly Provence.   Saint Saturninus was the martyred, first bishop of Toulouse.  The church in their honor was begun in 1070 by the counts who were major sponsors of the Crusades.  The city was a major stop on the pilgrimage route coming from Santiago de Compostela in Spain.  The size of the church is an indication of the size of the trade on the pilgrimage routes. 

 

Though the twin towers of the western facade were never completed, the exterior of the church is still largely intact.  The crossing tower is Gothic and later.  The structure is a ³complex interplay of rectangular, polygonal, and rounded forms² on a basilican base.  It goes beyond the Carolingian and Ottonian ³in the arrangement of geometric volumes on the church exterior.² (455) 

 

One of the chief design characteristics of the Romanesque is its emphatic segmentation and compartmentalization of designs.  Like the Scholastic theology of its era, Romanesque design includes a major organizing interest in systematic classification and enumeration.  Designs are given strong outlines and divided clearly into segments which are themselves divided elementally.  Within each segment the individual parts stand in clear separation. 

 

In architecture this means distinct division of walls into horizontal stories and vertical bays, separation and articulation of major functional elements such as the narthex from nave from transept from choir.  It is most clearly demonstrated here in the distinct separation of each of chapels from the body of the church and the clear articulation of each arch and even the separation of one archivolt (vousoir wedge) from another by the Arabian ablaq alternation of material and color.  It means seeing a church form that emphasized its seperate elements and their combination.  

 

 

2     St.-Sernin, plan, c 1070-1120,                                          Toulouse

 

The plan resembles Santiago de Compostelaıs and other pilgrimage churches.  ³[Builders provided space for curious pilgrims, worshipers, and liturgical processions alike.  They increased the length of the nave, doubled the side aisles, extended the aisles around the eastern end to make an ambulatory, and attached a series of radiating chapels (for the display of relics) opening directly onto the ambulatory and the transept.  In addition, upper galleries, or tribunes, over the inner aisle and opening onto the nave..,accommodated overflow crowds on special occasions.² (455) 

 

The bracketed dates for Saint-Sernin trace the length of its building, which was spread over the entire time.  Though its actual date of commencement is controversial there are recorded the visits of Pope Urban II in 1096 to dedicate its high altar, and Calixtus II in 1119 to dedicate an altar or ³perhaps the uncompleted building.² (Conant, 99)  Some major elements, such as the great crossing tower, were centuries later.  The westwork, and so the main entrance, was never completed.  Conant speaks of the ³strangulation of the interior perspective² that resulted from the thickening of the crossing piers necessary to support the tower.  Imagine the size of the bell towers that must have been envisioned for the west at some points.

 

The structure is 359 feet in length.  To understand what the churchıs presence on the Pilgrimage routes meant, we can compare that to Saint Michaelıs of Hildesheim, which was an important, royally-patronized construction, is less that two hundred and fifty feet, including its two choirs.

 

The design is ³extremely regular and geometrically precise.²  The crossing square, with its massive piers, served as the module.  Bays were half its width.  Aisle bays were a quarter its area.  It is a ³crisply rational² version of the concepts originated in the Carolingian. 

 

It was pointed out earlier that the standard church was oriented toward the east, that is, entered on the west and looking down the nave toward the altar in the east, where the priest saying the mass faced in the general direction of Jerusalem.  A look at this plan reveals the thickening of the piers in the western bays intended to support great towers that were never constructed. 

 

The Romanesque is marked by the proliferation of distinct geometric units demarcating the main functional elements of the plan and elevation.  This tendency toward rational compartmentalization or segmentation is first noticeable in Ottonian art and brought to a climax in the Romanesque.  As Erwin Panofsky points out in his essay on Gothic architecture and scholasticism, it is a system of rationality distinctively related to the major philosophical trend of the day, toward systematic enumeration and categorization.

 

The proliferation of chapels radiating from the east of the transept and choir are striking.  Our text says they were to hold the churchıs treasure of relics.  It was these actual pieces  of saints and artifacts identified with saints and miracles that the pilgrims came to see, and hoped to be cured by or to benefit from seeing.  And it was the wealth they spent in the town and primarily at the church that called forth the size and splendor of the churches structure.  Pilgrimage churches were major economic engines, as our record of the instantaneous rebuilding of Chartres so-strikingly demonstrated.  The radiating chapels were the economic engines of the designs. 

 

Churches competed for possession of the most holy relics and so the greatest prestige and numbers of pilgrims.  Vézelay housed the bones of Mary Magdalene, Autun had those of Lazarus, Saint-Sernin had those of Saint Saturninus, Santiago those of the apostle James.  The presence of revered relics enriched the churches and gave the worshipers opportunities for piety.  The routes linking the most important pilgrimage churches became the major routes of commercial trade and travel as well. 

 

 

3     St.-Sernin, int., c 1070-1120,                                           Toulouse

 

Beneath the timber and tile of Saint-Serninıs exterior, like that of most Romanesque churches in France, were stone vaults.  Typical of the early Romanesque, Saint-Serninıs nave vault is a banded barrel.  The church elevation weaves vaults together, lower ones supporting the uppermost.  Here groin vaults (marked by crossing groins, on the plan) on the outer side aisles buttress the inner aisleıs second-story tribune, where doubled groin vaults (over the two stories) buttress the barrel of the nave.  All the vaults are coordinated with bay module and marked on the piers with moldings that diagram their interconnections.   Engaged columns depict this interconnection on the bodies of the compound piers.  Each bay is thus marked on the barrel vault by a decorative transverse arch.

 

These articulations are purely decorative and provided as a rationalization of the designıs structure, to make it both thinkable and measurable.  They have no structural function, though they do express and diagram the structural functions they articulate.

 

Besides looking down the bay, we can look in another view at the bay or ganization: a super scale arcade supports a tribune divided into two smaller arches below the wall of the barrel.  Within the aisles we see the bayıs articulated by the artificial ribs of the barrel or the groins of the the indivisual side aisle bays.

 

The result is a muscular skeleton, quite a different effect than the flat walls of the Early Christian basilica (e.g., 11-8) or the spatial ambiguity of the Byzantine church, that was still visible as late as the Ottonian, as seen at Saint Michaelıs of Hildesheim (16-24).  It is this muscularity that inspired the designation Romanesque.  This segmentation is as visible on the exterior as the interior.

 

The nave is lit below by windows in the outer side aisles on the ground level and by the windows of the tribuneıs upper aisle, but there are no windows to light the barrel.  Thus the interior is not as well lit as Speyer Cathedral, which we shall see next (17-4).  This problem of creating a church on a vast scale and lighting it effectively was a major issue faced by the medieval architect.  The architects of the Romanesque coped with the problem successfully, those of the Gothic triumphed over it. 

 

My experience of this darker interior was not as strong as I expected from the literature, as you can see from my view of the nave interior.  Of course I took my picture on a sun filled summer day, not a dreary winter one.

 

The other major difference from the Early Christian church and from Saint Michaelıs of the Ottonian, was the two story, doubling of the naves interior viewers created by the presence of the tribune, over the inner aisle.  And yet, one is struck by the immense length of the nave that presents itself to those standing there for the service.. 

 

 

5     Speyer Cathedral, plan, begun 1030                               Speyer

 

The barrel vaulted naves of Saint-Sernin and its contemporaries were fire proof and covered vast areas stably, but they were difficult to light.  The major solution, which followed a generation later was to go back to another form developed by the Romans, the groin vault, a pair of intersecting barrels that left a high flat roof over high arches that left clerestory window space on all four faces (see 10-4, 10-68, and 10-79).  Having lost the formula for concrete the architects of the Romanesque turned to ashlar, cut, stone with heavy rubble.  Though they could only produce arches on a small scale at first, by the time of Speyer vaults, c 1082-1106, they were able to control groins spanning 45 feet.

 

 

4     Speyer Cathedral, int. nave vaults, 1082-1106              Speyer

 

Speyerıs nave and sides aisle bays are all covered by groin vaults.  Speyer was a bishopıs church and so titled a cathedral.  It was intended to be the burial place of the Holy Roman Emperors.  Its timber roof was replaced by groin vaults in 1082-1106.  This made possible the insertion of a set of small clerestory windows above the tribune.  Itıs 45-foot span, over a hundred feet above the nave (107ı), was spectacular in its day.  And as just pointed out, spectacular in part because of its enhanced lighting for the nave below as well as the vaults. 

 

Here, as at Saint Sernin, the crossing bay (width) set the module for the east end, but the nave itself was more irregular.  It took three nave bays to equal the width of the nave.  The major piers in the nave form an alternate support system: a-b-a-b-a-.  This less geometrically proportional system of organizing nave bays was to be the standard in the north of France.         

 

This alternation system was developed half a century after the churches beginning, to sit the groin vaults that replaced the original timber roof.  

 

For anyone in the nave during a service the long view down the nave is marked rhythmically by the groin articulations of the ceiling, which stand out as darker stone arches against the white plaster finish of the vaults today.  This allows them ‹as I have pointed out regularly here‹ to locate themselves within the immense space.  One can see how much more concrete that act would be here than in the somewhat darker and so less measurable Saint-Sernin.  One can also begin to appreciate the more rationally situating experience of the sahn (courtyard) of a mosque like Ibn Tulunıs or Qayrawanıs (13-18).  By the same token one can imagine how lost one would be within the undifferentiated columns and decoratively ambivalent bays of the great mosque at Córdoba. (13-12).

 

This thinking through the eyes of someone within the nave explains what we mean by the compartmentalization of the design.  One feels ones situation as being within one or another distinct segment or compartment, and locates themselves in relation to the whole by the location of that compartment.

 

 

8     SantıAmbrogio, late 11th - early 12th                             Milan

 

Art historical interest in SantıAmbrogio has focused upon three interests.  The first is that this is a particularly attractive church in one of Italyıs major cities.  The second is that it displays a number of features that typify the Romanesque as a style, in terms of what it preserves from the past and bequeaths to the future.  The third is its interesting mixture of well established Italian traditions with traditions better known in the German speaking regions north of the Alps.  We can think of each separately, but the fact of culture is that they have been brought together in a manner that reveals each as a thematic source without any conscious interest in blending.  The church as a whole is a unified whole that ‹in these three elements‹ merely reveals some of the complexity that underlies all cultural productions, since all draw from a variety of sources. 

 

We can begin with the handsome facade of the basilica.  There is hardly a book on Romanesque architecture or Italian architecture that does not include it.  The warm red mass of that peaked silhouette, with its rhythmic progression of graduated arches, is quite handsomely detailed in a cream sandstone.  The resultant effect is both structurally satisfying and quite pretty.  And after all, a history of art is to a large extent a gallery of the most pleasing designs from every period.

 

I must admit to a particular fondness for it, since I went to a university whose major academic quadrangle featured a copy of that facade.  We must admit that throughout the New World of the Americas there are revival versions of major European styles, and U.S. Universities have been homes of college Gothic, in imitation of the great European universities.  ISUıs Campanile is an example of this.  The first chance I got to see the actual 900 year old original of that design I was happy to take an all night train ride to get there.  And even it turned out to be a foggy morning in which none of its crisp details stood out, I couldnıt help looking up at it again and again.  

 

The design is articulated by courses of miniature arches called corbel tables.  These are decorative devices favored locally and normally attributed to designers of the Lombard region.  On the exterior we can see them fringing the upper edge of the facade and separating first story from the second.  On the interior we can see them separating the tribune from the ground floor. 

 

 

7     SantıAmbrogio, plan, 11th - early 12th,                          Milan

 

The churchıs Italian core is recognizable in its three aisle, basilica layout and pent roof.  It is fronted by one of the latest exterior atriums to come down to us.  The combination takes us all the way back to Old Saint Peterıs (11-7) and the earliest churches.  The way the atrium obscures the outer bays of the facade suggests that it is an addition to the original conception of the facade.

 

What is significantly unusual, and rather unique here, is the covering of the nave and side aisles by a single roof, that eliminates the possibility of the clerestory windows, usual in basilican layouts.  The building is also unusual in its lack of a transept.  The plan is unrelievedly longitudinal.

 

On the exterior the design highlights an unbalanced-pair of bell towers, a surprisingly familiar sight in Medieval architecture.  Bell towers are handsome and interesting structures on their own, though having two is more a function of symmetry than a functional necessity of the church.  Still, bell towers are as expensive as they are attractive.  The result has been in a number of cases, that only one tower was constructed as part of the structures original program, and that by the time interest and funds were assembled for the second, symmetrically balancing tower there were different styles or architects interested in different designs and these won out against the will to symmetry.  Not surprisingly these distinctly different towers were the product of different times. 

 

 

6     SantıAmbrogio, interior, 11th - early 12th,                     Milan

 

From 773, our text tells us, when Charlemagne crushed the Lombards, German kings held sway over northern Italy and the two regions ³cross fertilized² each other artistically.ı  SantıAmbrogio, in Milan, was the major Romanesque monument in Lombardy and so drew important architectural designers and craft workers.  Some think that SantıAmbrogioıs structure was a model for Speyer Cathedral in the German north, whose groin vaults were added at more or less the same moment. 

 

It needs to be remembered that the Lombards themselves were a caste German-speaking warriors who conquered  northern Italy in the 6th century.  If the region remained Italian speaking, it did develop its own distinctive local dialect, and so connections with the German language cultures of the north were nothing new here.

 

SantıAmbrogioıs interior is constructed around the groin vault.  We find them over every bay of the atrium and the interior.  (If you look back over the plans of this chapter you will see diagonal crosses dotted in every bay.  These are indications of the groins.)  The groin vaults over the nave here are a new form for us, they are ribbed- groins.  Where the groins at Speyer are in cut stones fit one to another and one over another in a unified dynamic mass, rib vaults are frame structures that construct their vault through dynamic fitting together of spines or ribs, that are then filled between with light webs of non-structural stone.  At SantıAmbrogio this is visible in the contrast between the red ribs of the interior nave ceiling, against the plastered white covering of the filling shells.  Because there are no clerestory windows these each of these vaults is relatively dark.

 

The low octagonal tower over the altar, in the last bay of the nave, is another element of the design that connects it with the German speaking north, where such forms are common.  The windows of this tower are the only lights opening into the nave.  Before the advent of artificial lighting, this emphasized the bay of the altar.

 

The alternating support system, of more and less compound piers, in the nave counts two side aisle bays to every nave bay.  As with every Romanesque structure we have seen and all the Gothic ones to come, the massive piers are articulated with combinations of vertical mouldings that diagram the structures of the vaultıs support.  Unlike the ribs of the vaults, these mouldings are only decorative and not actually supports themselves.

 

What is striking here, in contrast to the taller, narrower nave of the northern churches is the greater width in proportion to height in SantıAmbrogio.  The ceiling vaults are lower, but this is less significant than the greater proportional width of the nave.  The plans in our book for SantıAmbrogio and for Speyer are of the same scale.  SantıAmbrogioıs nave is a little over 50ı wide, and Speyerıs just under 50.  But look at the nave views.  SantıAmbrogioıs nave spans more or less exactly the height of its nave crossing rib.  Saint-Sernin and Speyer have naves that reach up to twice their naveıs widths before their arches spring.

 

 

 *    Master Wolvinius, det of Paliotto (golden altar) Sant ³Ambrogio, Milan early 9th

 

The altar of SantıAmbrogio is raised well above the floor level to call attention to the martyrıs crypt below.  The alter itself is composed of panels of repousé within gem encrusted settings over the sarcophagus of Saint Ambrose, the bishop of Milan in the fourth century.  This structure is the relic of another era, but it reminds us of the importance of the remains of martyrs and saints of the church in the ongoing rituals. 

 

Gold, silver, and gems are combined together into panels within a cross in a square.  At the center is Christ, with the four evangelists in the arms of the cross, and the twelve apostles in the corner panels.  Inscriptions on the back attribute the donation of the work to the Archbishop Angilbert II, who governed the church in Milan from 824-859.  It also mentions the craftsman who constructed it, Master Wolvinius, a name which suggests Frankish origins.[1]

 

 

 

9     St.-Etienne, west facade, 1067                                        Caen

 

Romanesque has strong regional differences, throughout western Europe.  We can see this comparing Saint Sernin, with its pilgrimage road proliferation of side aisle chapels; Speyer, with its octagonal crossing tower, and SantıAmbrogio. with its long and low like early Christian layout.  Northern churches are also much more likely to reach into the air.  Saint-Etienne (the Abbey-aux-hommes) at Caen in Normandy is an example of reaching for the sky.  Normandy is the region of northern France ruled by former Vikings.  ³Almost at once, they proved themselves not only aggressive warriors but skilled administrators and builders, active in Sicily as well as in northern Europe.  With astounding rapidity, they absorbed the lessons to be learned from Ottonian architecture and went on to develop a distinctive Romanesque architectural style that became the major source of French Gothic architecture.² (461)

 

It is less astounding if you assume the local style to be the product of local architects and masons and not reformed Viking who have laid down their axes and picked up stone chisels.  The Vikings of Normandy were not an invading race or even a tribe.  They were a ruling caste, who had installed themselves over local peasants by defeating their local ruling caste.  Proof of the cultural dominance of continuing local peoples comes from the lack of any significant Scandinavian influence, much less Scandinavian impact on the language or other cultural forms.  The French Gothic whose birth they presided over was the creation of local French designers. 

 

The mistake comes from the aristocratic orientation of the hegemonic history: culture is supposed to radiate from the rulers.  A more multi-cultural or democratic history recognized culture as essentially indigenous and only to an extent adapted by the elite.  Princes and other patrons choose among the forms offered by craft workers and may suggest modifications, but the core of esthetic production is the work of the local craft producers.

 

Saint Etienne is the ³masterpiece² of Norman Romanesque. (462)  It was begun in 1067, a year after William the Conquerorıs invasion of England, and well-advanced by the time of his death in 1087.  The west facade is divided by strip buttresses into the three bays of the interior, the nave and side aisles.  The three lower stages of the towers graduate their articulation: 7 blind lancets, five (including two true) lancets, and two large divided windows above.  The spires are later additions.  The arches are all semicircular. 

 

 

11   St.-Etienne, plan 11th, 13th, 14th,,                                  Caen

 

As Speyer, the original plan here was for a timber roof, and yet the subtly alternating piers of the nave are prepared for the sort of alternating rib vaults that were eventually installed.  The six-part vaults were introduced in 1115. 

 

Our text supposes they desire for the alternating rhythm was fortuitous.  I would think it was telegraphic of an intended eventual goal.  Each of the compound elements fits a particular molding in the vault.  The only difference here, and it is quite minor, is the presence or lack of the flat pilaster behind the half round column.  Piers with the pilaster send groin ribs in three directions; piers without the pilaster project only single rib. 

 

 

 

 

10   St.-Etienne, interior, c 1115-1120,                                  Caen  

 

The three-story nave elevation, presaged by the three-story facade, opens on a side aisle, a tribune and a strong clerestory. that allows lots of light. 

 

 

12   Durham Cathedral, nave, begun c 1093,                        Durham

 

In 1066 William the Conqueror took control of England.  The fact that the language he brought with him, to significantly influence later English, was French, is enough tell us how Scandinavian this Norman ‹Guillaume le Conquérant‹was. 

 

Durham Cathedral reveals the Romanesque in an English incarnation.  Begun in the last decade of the 11th century, it was unquestionably intended to have a stone vaulted ceiling from the beginning. 

 

 

13   Durham Cathedral, plan and transverse section, Durham

 

A glance at its plan reveals strongly distinct alternating piers, and seven-part vaults.  Large columns with chevron designs alternate with compound piers.  When one considers the sophistication of the planning and the cutting of stones in these extremely complex designs they realize that they required large numbers of highly skilled caftworkers, engaged for years at a time.  The precision required is a great as in earlier architecture but the complex nature of the architectural imagery far surpassed anything earlier.   

 

Durhamıs was the first ribbed groin vault raised over a three story elevation.  On the west (completed by 1130) they are slightly pointed, which makes them the earliest examples of the structural system by which we define the Gothic. 

 

The transverse section indicates quadrant arches rather than groin vaults over the tribune.  These are the precursors of the flying buttresses of the mature Gothic.

 

 

14   Cathedral  (1063- ); Baptistery (1153); Bell Tower (1174-), Pisa

 

The collection of white marble structures in the field at Pisa is one of the finest sites to survive from Medieval Europe.  The leaning tower may be famous for its eccentricity, but the full set deserves to be recognized as a complex with no peer. 

 

The Romanesque of Italy is less adventurous structurally than the varieties of the north and far more conservative.   As in Milan, this central Italian tradition was still under the spell cast by the prestige of the Earliest Christian churches.  Old Saint Peterıs still stood in Rome, after all.

 

14   Cathedral  (1063- ), Pisa

 

The cathedral is a five aisle basilica, with a forty-foot nave with a timber ceiling  nearly ninety-feet over its floor.  It is one of the largest of all Romanesque churches, with a nave running over 300 feet in length.  With the rest of the complex it was paid for with the cityıs profit from the ³naval victory over the Muslims at Palermo in 1062.² (464)  ³documents f he time indicate that the people of Pisa ³wanted their bishopıs church not only to be a monument to the glory of God but also one that would bring credit to the city.² (464) 

 

Robert Guiscard the Norman conqueror of Sicily, began his approach to that island kingdom, then under Muslim rule, by attacking Byzantine regions of southern Italy and defeating Pope Leo IXth at Civitate. 

 

The broad transept, the crossing dome and the arcaded galleries of the facade all characterize it as Romanesque.

 

15   Cathedral, int, begun 1063, Pisa

 

The encrustation of the interior‹the overlaying of the pillars of the tribune and the wall above with panels striping its surface horizontally with deep green against the cream colored stone‹is another mark of the Romanesque and Gothic, characteristic of Tuscany.  The interior has work of several periods.  The original open timber roof is now covered by a Renaissance coffering.  The nave arcade was built over reused Roman columns.  The gallery (upper floor) is a feature from north of the Alps, and ³ultimately of Byzantine origin.²  There are pointed arches in the crossing and a tall, pointed dome, of a somewhat later date. 

 

       Bell Tower (1174-), Pisa

 

The campanile is separate from the church, ³in standard Italian fashion,² one can see in Ravennaıs SantıApollinare in Classe.  It is the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa.  It began to tilt, even while it was under construction, as revealed by a change of direction in the upper floors.  It is currently 21 feet out of plumb.  the repetition of pillared galleries repeats a motif on the basilica facade.  It is 8 stories tall, 52ı in diameter.

 

 

      Baptistery (1153), Dioti Salvi

 

The baptistery completes the Medieval set.  It lies in the longitudinal axis of the basilica and has a pillared gallery to match it.  Its designer is one Dioti Salvi.  129[ in diameter.  Its inner conical dome is the interior ceiling.  The original design had a flat roof around the cone and two galleries of pillars matching the basilica.

 

 

16   San Giovani, Baptistery, dedicated 1059,                      Florence

 

Florence was already an independent city state in the Romanesque period.   The baptistery of San Giovani was dedicated in 1059 by Pope Nicholas II, and built over the next century.  Detached baptisteries are not standard, outside the region of Florence and Pisa, in northern Tuscany, but particularly important there.  This one is located in front of Florence Cathedral, which was built later on the location once occupied by an earlier structure.  ³On the day of a newborn childıs annointment, the citizenry gathered in the baptistery to welcome a new member into their community.² 

 

The severely simple, central planned, octagonal shape appears to be a conscious attempt to build on the model of the Pantheon in Rome.  It was built on the ruins of a Roman structure.  The octagonal, pent roofed interior space is precisely displayed on the exterior, though the designs depicted in the encrustation on its inner and outer surfaces are quite different.  Encrustation is a Tuscan characteristic that traces back to Roman times.  On the outside there is a three story design, marked by horizontally stripes on the corners and three blind arched bays to each face.  Its famous bronze doors were added in the Renaissance. 

 

If the concept of an octagonal space, more or less as tall as it was wide, seems clearly modeled on the similarly proportioned Pantheon.  There are elements of the interior gallery that seem to be modeled in response to San Vitale in Ravenna.  Thus the clear attempt to rival the most famous structures of the past seems clear. 

 

Though the Florentines long considered the baptistery to be a converted Roman structure, its simple geometric unitary space is particularly characteristic of the Romanesque.

 

 

17   San Miniato al Monte, west facade, 1062-,                    Florence

 

San Miniato al Monte is the other Florentine church from this historical moment.  It is a Benedictine abbey church, on the hill over looking Florence from the east side of the Arno river.   The ³body of the church² was finished by 1090.  The strikingly encrusted facade is circa 1200.  It is a traditional basilican plan and silhouette,  though distinctively unique in its inner organization.

 

The rich geometric encrustation of the facade is unique.  Below it depicts an arcade in blind bays articulated by raised engaged columns.  Above it depicts the outline of a classical temple, with a miniature blind arcade in the pediment.  Above and below there is a division of the  facade into separate geometric compartments as characteristic of the Romanesque, and quite different than the unified whole that characterizes the classical, which its simplicity clearly intends to recall.

 

There is a figurative mosaic set in the middle bay of the upper story.  It shows Christ enthroned between the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist (?).

 

 

18   San Miniato al Monte, nave, 1062 and 12th c,              Florence

 

The interior ceiling is still a traditional timber one.  Its nave is marked by three super bay compartments, articulated by diaphragm arches on compound piers, that stand out of an arcade composed of three nave column supported arches between each pier.  The flat walls are emphasized by encrustation of geometric forms.  With the exception of the apse half-dome, there are none of the usual vaulted forms we find in the Romanesque elsewhere. 

 

This is a design is uniquely divided in the choir, where its altar is raised well over a personıs height above the floor to reveal the crypt located a few steps below.  

 

 

 

Adendum:

 

Unremarked for some reason are the pointed cross-nave, diaphram arches of the of Pisa Cathedral.  A signal characteristic of the Romanesque is the strictly semicircular, Roman arch.  I donıt know if these are particularly late in date.

 

 


[1]Gardner 10, p365.