• COLLOQUIA MEDIEVALIA •

The Three Rs of Romanesque Art

a lecture by
Linda Seidel from the University of Chicago

Thursday, November 30th, 2006
at 4:00 p.m.
in 229 Nolte Center
315 Pillsbury Drive S.E., Minneapolis

Reception immediately following in Nolte 235

Abstract:

REGARDING ROMANESQUE:
Art (ca. 1100) seen through a progressive lens

Nearly two hundred years ago, archeologists began to describe country churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in terms that differentiated them from the thirteenth and fourteenth century cathedrals around which the great capital cities of the continent had been built. Whereas the later structures had long been either scorned or admired as paradigmatic examples of Gothic workmanship, the earlier ones had escaped definition and, as a group, lacked a proper name. Ever since, however, study of the architecture and attendant arts known as Romanesque has labored under an appellation and point of view that were by-products of the Romantic prejudices of the early nineteenth-century. And, in the last few years, the period name, which has weighed heavily on scholarship as an unduly pejorative and often inappropriate term, has come under persistent criticism from scholars as a worn out distraction.

In a recent paper, I based an argument for a more productive understanding of the period name on a reconsideration of the circumstances surrounding its selection; these include insufficient appreciation of its non-architectural associations. In this paper, I continue that pursuit, realigning enthusiasms of Romantic writing on Romanesque with realities on the ground, and pointing out ways in which historiography, in illuminating the excesses of a relatively recent moment, serves as a useful instrument with which to gain enhanced perspective on a more distant one.