page_title: Romanesque art
section_title: Architectural sculpture
hierarchical_section_title: Romanesque art / Sculpture / Architectural sculpture
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Vézelay (Yonne - France), Basilique Sainte-Marie-Madeleine - Tympan central du narthex (1140-1150). English: Vézelay (Yonne - France), Basilica of Saint Magdalene – Central tympan of the Saint Magdalene narthex (1140-1150).
context_page_description: Romanesque art is the art of Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 12th century, or later, depending on region. The preceding period is known as the Pre-Romanesque period. The term was invented by 19th-century art historians, especially for Romanesque architecture, which retained many basic features of Roman architectural style – most notably round-headed arches, but also barrel vaults, apses, and acanthus-leaf decoration – but had also developed many very different characteristics. In Southern France, Spain and Italy there was an architectural continuity with the Late Antique, but the Romanesque style was the first style to spread across the whole of Catholic Europe, from Sicily to Scandinavia. Romanesque art was also greatly influenced by Byzantine art, especially in painting, and by the anti-classical energy of the decoration of the Insular art of the British Isles. From these elements was forged a highly innovative and coherent style.
context_section_description: With the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the tradition of carving large works in stone and sculpting figures in bronze died out, as it effectively did (for religious reasons) in the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) world. Some life-size sculpture was evidently done in stucco or plaster, but surviving examples are understandably rare. The best-known surviving large sculptural work of Proto-Romanesque Europe is the life-size wooden Crucifix commissioned by Archbishop Gero of Cologne in about 960–965, apparently the prototype of what became a popular form. These were later set up on a beam below the chancel arch, known in English as a rood, from the twelfth century accompanied by figures of the Virgin Mary and John the Evangelist to the sides. During the 11th and 12th centuries, figurative sculpture strongly revived, and architectural reliefs are a hallmark of the later Romanesque period.
caption: The tympanum of Vézelay Abbey, Burgundy, France, 1130s, has much decorative spiral detail in the draperies.
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