Romanesque and Gothic Architecture: Styles, Features, and Evolution
General Characteristics of Romanesque Architecture
Romanesque architecture is characterized by its massiveness and solidity, with sculpture and painting playing a secondary role.
Almost all Romanesque architectural elements (ashlar walls, columns, pillars, arches, barrel vaults) existed in previous styles, but they take on a new significance in the Romanesque, prioritizing spatial formality.
Most Romanesque buildings are religious structures—churches, cathedrals, and monasteries—though civilian buildings, urban palaces, and castles also exist.
1.1. Layout and Building Types
A) The Plan
The Latin cross plan became widespread during the Romanesque period. It consists of a longitudinal nave intersected by a transept, creating a crossing. The eastern end, or head, features apses and semicircular chapels.
Larger churches often have multiple aisles flanking the nave. These aisles may continue around the chancel, forming an ambulatory. Monumental churches sometimes include a triforium, an arched gallery opening onto the nave.
Small radiating chapels, known as apsidioles, may surround the ambulatory and sometimes appear in the transept arms. Bell towers typically flank the main facade but can also be located at the head, transept arms, crossing, or even stand alone.
A smaller transept, called a narthex (if inside) or forecourt (if outside), may be found at the western end.
Besides the Latin cross, other plan types exist in Romanesque architecture, such as the Greek cross and centralized basilica.
B) Pilgrimage Churches
The most comprehensive and monumental Romanesque buildings are pilgrimage churches, situated along major pilgrimage routes like the Way of St. James. Notable examples include San Martín de Tours, Santa Fe de Conques, San Saturnino de Toulouse, and Santiago de Compostela Cathedral.
These churches were designed to accommodate large crowds of pilgrims. Their spaciousness and symbolic architecture, from the Latin cross plan to the walls, pillars, and vaults, aimed to evoke religious emotion. The church served as a place of encounter with God, fostering a climate of silence and dimness.
C) Basilica Churches
Basilica churches have three naves and a transept, which is less developed than in Latin cross churches. The head typically features three semicircular apses.
Characteristic examples include Jaca Cathedral, Zamora Cathedral, and San Martín de Frómista.
D) Rural Churches
Numerous smaller rural churches exist, built with simpler materials and varied plans. They were often dependent on lay or ecclesiastical lords and larger monasteries or cathedrals.
E) Monasteries
Often located in remote areas, monasteries have a characteristic layout centered around a cloister—an arcaded courtyard surrounded by four galleries. Other buildings, such as the church, chapter house, refectory, kitchen, and dormitories, are arranged around the cloister. Notable Spanish examples include San Pedro de Roda, San Pablo del Campo, Santa Maria de Ripoll, San Juan de la Peña, San Juan de Duero, and Santo Domingo de Silos.
1.2. Load-Bearing Elements
A) The Walls
Romanesque walls are thick and made of stone blocks, with openings kept to a minimum. Windows are small and often resemble loopholes.
B) Columns
Columns are typically cylindrical and smooth, without adhering to classical proportions. Sculptural decoration may be present, especially on door jambs.
C) The Capitals
Capitals deviate from classical orders and often feature decorative plant motifs, human figures, or real, fantastic, or monstrous animals. They may also depict biblical scenes or the lives of saints and martyrs, serving a didactic purpose in a largely illiterate society.
D) The Pillars
Pillars play a crucial role in supporting the heavy roofs. They are robust and often have a square or cruciform core. Attached columns and half-columns create compound pillars, which become increasingly complex in later Gothic styles.
1.3. Supporting Elements
Wooden ceilings were gradually replaced by stone vaults.
A) The Arches
The semicircular arch is characteristic of the Romanesque style, sometimes appearing as a stilted arch.
B) The Barrel Vaults
Barrel vaults are the most common type, often reinforced by longitudinal arches that transfer the load to pillars. These pillars are connected by transverse arches. Buttresses, or exterior piers, further enhance stability.
C) The Groin Vaults
Groin vaults, typically used in aisles, counteract the thrust of the nave vault and transfer the load to the walls and buttresses.
D) The Quarter-Barrel Vaults
Triforia, galleries above the aisles, are common in pilgrimage churches. They are covered by quarter-barrel vaults, which transfer the thrust of the central roof outwards.
E) The Quarter-Sphere Domes
Apses and apsidioles are covered with quarter-sphere domes.
F) Domes
Domes often cover the crossing, either on pendentives (if octagonal) or squinches (if circular). When raised on a tower, the dome is called a cupola.
Sculpture: Decoration and Didacticism
Romanesque sculpture primarily serves a decorative function, conforming to the architectural structure. It also communicates religious messages, with iconographic programs illustrating sermons and texts.
Two main areas feature Romanesque sculpture:
- Exterior portals, where themes often allude to sin, particularly on the tympanum. Sculptural decoration may also appear on archivolts, jambs, capitals, and the trumeau.
- Interior capitals, depicting themes of sin, temptation, or evangelical stories.
- Monastery cloisters, where subjects are more intellectual.
1.4. Iconographic Themes
A) Tympana
Two common themes are:
- The Pantocrator (Christ in Majesty) with the Tetramorphs (symbols of the Four Evangelists) and elders of the Apocalypse.
- The Last Judgment, presided over by the Pantocrator, surrounded by the Tetramorphs, elders, apostles, Virgin Mary, and angels. The righteous are depicted on Christ’s right, the damned on his left, often with depictions of hell and the devil.
B) Cloister Capitals
Capitals often feature plant motifs, real and fantastic animals, and figurative scenes. These scenes can be decorative, allegorical, or narrative, depicting religious stories, lives of saints, biblical scenes, or even everyday life.
1.5. Free-Standing Sculpture
Free-standing Romanesque sculpture is less common, primarily consisting of crucifixes and Virgin and Child figures, with exceptions like the Descent from the Cross of St. John of the Abbesses.
General Features of Gothic Architecture
1.1. Two Obsessions
A) Verticality
Gothic architecture emphasizes height and slenderness, symbolizing the aspiration to reach God.
B) Light
With Gothic innovations, walls lose their structural role and are replaced by glass. The new construction system concentrates loads on specific points, allowing walls to become mere exterior cladding.
1.2. Main Buildings
A) The Cathedral
The cathedral dominates the cityscape, contrasting with Romanesque rural churches and monasteries.
+ The Plan
Gothic cathedrals typically have three to five naves. The transept projects slightly and is more defined than in Romanesque cathedrals. The eastern end includes the presbytery, choir, ambulatory (sometimes double), and radiating chapels, which are usually polygonal.
+ The Elevation
Gothic cathedrals emphasize height, particularly in the central nave, contrasting with the horizontality of Romanesque architecture. The clerestory, a third level with large stained-glass windows, replaces the triforium and provides abundant light.
Towers are tall and divided into several sections, often topped with spires or needles decorated with tracery.
B) Civil Architecture
Civil architecture, especially palaces, saw significant development in the Gothic period.
Major Construction Elements
The arch and vault are fundamental to Gothic architecture.
A) The Pointed Arch
The pointed arch exerts less lateral thrust than the semicircular arch and is often decorated with tracery.
B) The Rib Vault
The rib vault revolutionized architecture, enabling the construction of soaring heights.
+ Elements
Ribs, or intersecting arches, distribute the thrust to four points. Webbing fills the spaces between the ribs.
+ Types
- Quadripartite vault
- Sexpartite vault (most common)
- Octopartite vault
- Tierceron vault (with secondary ribs)
- Star vault (with complex rib patterns)
- Fan vault (characteristic of English Gothic)
C) The Compound Pier
Compound piers consist of multiple shafts, or colonnettes, that correspond to the ribs of the vaults.
D) Lateral Thrust Supports
While piers support vertical loads, other elements manage lateral thrust.
- Flying buttresses are exterior arches that transfer thrust to the buttresses.
- Buttresses are freestanding piers that transmit the load to the ground.
- Pinnacles, while primarily decorative, also contribute to stability by adding weight to the buttresses.
1.4. Decor
Gothic buildings are characterized by their rich ornamentation.
A) Elements
- Tracery, geometric or flame-like patterns, decorates openings.
- Naturalistic plant motifs adorn capitals, friezes, and archivolts.
- Animal representations, both real and fantastic, are also common.
- The human figure, discussed in the section on Gothic sculpture, follows the same naturalistic style.
B) Areas of Decoration
- Capitals, though less prominent than in Romanesque architecture.
- Altarpieces, evolving from Romanesque altar frontals.
- Choir stalls, intricately carved.
- Portals and large openings, including tympana, archivolts, jambs, trumeaux, gables, and stained-glass windows.
- Rose windows, large circular windows in the main facade and transept.
Gothic Sculpture
1.1. Stylistic Evolution
and general characteristics
– In Gothic art sculpture will be a very fruitful and evolving from the stylistic point of view:
+ At the end of the twelfth century during the transition phase leading away from the hieratic and the front of the Romanesque.
+ In the thirteenth century is catching an elongated shape, folds and decorations very simple, triangular face, smile and a certain stereotypical mannerisms.
+ In the second half of XIV figures are elongated, slender canon, and finely curved, slightly sinuous in the sense discussed in the flamboyant architecture, clothes are folded into many folds, is the “international style”.
+ Finally, in the fifteenth century, experienced a reaction to this art form and succeed mannered solid and heavy types, greater realism.
– Other features:
+ Increased naturalism of the figures, which come to life, looking more human, with attitudes and gestures increasingly realistic and expressive, leaving betray his emotions. In the end the figures appear individualized features.
+ In compositions with several figures they communicate with each other.
+ Now is a narrative art, not symbols.
+ The subject remains fundamentally religious.
+ The architecture does not determine the artistic value of the sculpture.