Romanesque and Gothic Art: Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting
General Features of Romanesque Architecture
- The architectural contribution is fundamental in the Romanesque, contingent upon the sculpture and painting.
- Almost all the elements of Romanesque architecture (ashlar walls, columns and pillars, arches, barrel vaults) can be found in the previous styles, but now appear with a new spirit, importing more space to their formal appearance.
- Most of the buildings are religious buildings, churches, cathedrals, and monasteries.
- Although there are plenty of civilian buildings, urban palaces and, above all, castles.
Plant Layout and Building Types
The Plant
- During the Romanesque, the Latin cross plant was generalized, consisting of one or more longitudinal aisles, the transept, the crossing is located at the intersection of both, and to top it off, forming the head, the apses or semicircular chapels.
- When the ships are more than one on each side and extend, wrapping the chancel area and choir altar for the clergy, leading to the ambulatory. In these cases, the most monumental churches, in the aisles may have an open gallery with arches to the nave, which is called the rostrum.
- Around the ambulatory, radiating chapels may be small, and sometimes also in the arms of the transept, known by the name of apses.
- At the foot, the bell towers are usually lifted, flanking the main facade, but may also appear on the head, arms, on the cruise, or even isolated.
- Similarly, at the foot may be a small transept, called the narthex if you are in church or court if protruding from the facade.
General Characteristics of Romanesque Sculpture
Precedents
- The precedent of Romanesque sculpture is to be found in the trials and pre-Romanesque sculpture. Oriental Greco-Roman carries some experience but transformed by Christian elements.
- In the Romanesque period, little sculpture had grown, especially the monumental, who had been instrumental in the Greco-Roman world, having been forgotten by both the ancient sculptural tradition, the classical tradition, preferring the small dimensions, such as ivory or gold, for what is original and apart from it.
Stylistic Evolution of the Relief
- During the Romanesque, what interests the sculptors is the intellectual aspect, the message, not naturalism, not a faithful representation of reality.
- Why the figures are simple, flat relief, with-fitting clothes and simple and parallel folds, disproportionate, usually elongated artificially, no volume, arranged in very simple compositions, often juxtaposed, with no perspective, no atmosphere, no funds, no expression, hieratic, without movement, without relating the various figures of the scenes together, etc.
- The Romanesque sculpture appears in the eleventh century, with the first copies of works in ivory, metal, textiles, and miniatures.
Sculpture of a Decorative Nature and Purpose of Teaching
- The role of Romanesque sculpture is to decorate the temples, for this reason, it is subject to the architecture and statuary not conceived as exempt. In this sense, it fulfills the “framework law”, having to adjust the figures to the architectural structure.
General Characteristics of Romanesque Painting
Source
- In painting and Byzantine mosaics.
- As the Romanesque base of each country, especially the Romanesque miniatures.
Techniques
The Fresco
Painting on fresh lime plaster. The most used (mural painting).
The Tempera
In the painting on wood of the front of the altar, after a history of altarpieces.
Thumbnails
Continue a long tradition in the light of Christian manuscripts and books.
General Features of Gothic Architecture
The Two New Constructors’ Obsessions
The Vertical
The vertical lift, high altitude, and incredible thinness of Gothic architecture, symbolizing the desire to ascend to God.
The Brightness
With the Gothic architectural innovations, the wall loses its structural role, being replaced by the glass, as the new construction system pushes concentrated at particular points, transforming the walls into outer coverings, not media.
Main Buildings
The Cathedral
- The Cathedral presides over the city, is its most representative building and its nucleus, contrasting sharply with the rural church or Romanesque monasteries.
- Three to five ships, mainly.
- The ship stands out slightly and is more focused than in the cathedrals Romance.
- At the top, we must distinguish between the presbytery and the choir, ambulatory, which can now be doubled, and the radiating chapels, usually polygonal.
Major Construction Elements
The arch and dome condition the rest of the work in Gothic architecture.
The Pointed Arch
Less side thrust than half a point, usually is decorated with tracery in the bays, the so-called Gothic tracery.
The Vault, Nerves, or Ogival
Main element of style, which revolutionized architecture and will build to considerable heights.
Supports for Lateral Thrust
- The pillar includes the vertical thrust, but not enough, there are the obliques.
- The flying buttress or pier, which is a kind of outer arch having a decorative function but mostly constructive, being in charge of collecting oblique forces and leading them to the buttresses.
- The abutment, the Gothic is isolated, free, not attached to the wall, is responsible for moving the thrust of the building to the ground.
- The pinnacle, though it is mainly a decorative element to the abutment crown also has a constructive role by helping to counteract the lateral thrust with vertical thrust.
Gothic Industrial Features
Precedents
- The record of Gothic painting are to be found in the western Romanesque paintings, frescos, altar frontals, and illumination of books on everything, and mainly in painting and Byzantine mosaics, especially icons.
Media and Techniques
- The Gothic painting involves major changes from the Romanesque painting due to the replacement of the walls and windows, representing the search for other media and techniques.
- At first, the role is almost entirely of stained glass and lighting of books with miniatures, evolving into a more advanced stage of Gothic painting on the table.
- The techniques used in painting are varied, according to media: painting on wood in the temple, with egg binder or glue, allow its application with fine brushes, achieving great detail and more vivid colors and bright, and from the fifteenth century, also the oil, with oil as a binder of color, allowing the repainting, and fresh where the murals are still important.
The Stained Glass
The technique of stained glass began in France in the twelfth century, are mounted glass, colored with blue, red, yellow, and green in the molten glass paste or later on a leaded frame, making the effect of a transparent mosaic. His point was the thirteenth century, with the great cycles of Chartres, Reims, and León. Subsequently develops parallel to the painting, wider color gamut, replacing isolated characters loo narrative representations, etc.
The Altarpiece
- The Gothic altarpiece is the ultimate support, evolving, going from one table to two “diptych,” three “brochure” or a lot, “polyptych.” Sometimes the side boards were hinged to close the set, in this case, its outer surface is painted with shades of gray, “grisaille” that resemble sculptures.
- The altarpiece to the mid-fourteenth century was simply a series of panels painted with illustrative and descriptive sense of the life of the saint, holding the effigy of the center and around in small boxes, scenes from his life.
- But in the second half of the s. XIV the altarpiece painting is formed, is rigid, with multiple tables, with a sort of architectural base and iconographic uniform distribution. Your organization is as follows:
- In the predella or bank, bottom of lower height, painted busts of saints.
- In the central body is represented the main theme of the work.
- In the streets or vertical zones are set scenes or complementary secondary theme, arranged in horizontal divisions bodies or boxes are decorated with a framework trobolado Gothic tracery and auction, usually flamboyant.
- At the grooves, small tables painted with saints in some retablos, and other fine columns or pillars. In both cases topped with pinnacles with Cardin, decorative foliage from the leaves.
- The ridges or spikes are the top auctions in the streets. In the central painting, almost without exception, Calvary, in the remaining issues are not fixed.
Renaissance Architecture in Italy
General Features
- Faced with opposition Gothic forms forms and principles of classical architecture, but it is not a free copy more of the same, but an interpretation of the laws underlying the classical art, is part of the orders and Other Greek and Roman architectural elements, but changing its proportions, etc.
- Take the foundation of basic geometric shapes clearly visible: circle, square, cube, etc., Showing special concern for the mathematical proportions of buildings, both in structures and in establishing plants simple relations of length, height, and depth, collected from detailed modules and mathematical calculations, and there is a balance between plant size and height, not dominate the vertical over the horizontal.
The Architects of the Quattrocento (XV Century)
- Florence is the most important center of this period, under the patronage of the Medici.
- It is characterized by: scientific studies based on the perspective and the idea of proportion, the second half of the century is characterized by the abundant and fine decoration.
The Architects of the Cinquecento (Sixteenth Century)
- The capital of the art goes from Florence to Rome under the patronage of the Pope (Julius II, Leo X, and Sixtus V).
- To demonstrate the growing power of the church and state are used to classicism, are used more rigorously the classical orders, it is a solemn and monumental art but avoids all dehumanized colossal, dominating measure, the balance, and proportion; decreases, almost disappearing, the petite former decoration, preferring a style inspired by the monumental impact of the architectural elements, use of triangular and semicircular pediments in combination, it forces the use of centralized plants domed symbol of divine order in the universe.
Renaissance Sculpture in Italy
General Features
- The feeling appears first in classical sculpture in architecture, as in Gothic Europe.
- In the Trecento in Siena and Pisa, Nicholas and John Pisano convey and naturalistic and modern art. It is in Italy where this early outbreak appears due to the abundant remains of Roman sculpture were kept there.
- Use materials such as marble and bronze, which reaches great perfection.
- The protagonists are a man and nature, accentuating the naturalism, the operational representation of reality, but sometimes it idealizes, attempting to create ideal models that express the human ideal as conceived in the Renaissance. Also important is the concern about the expressiveness of the figures.
- In the round busts are made, full-length figures, burial grounds, and equestrian statues, nor the relief is neglected, using the same work in high, medium, and low, to give the illusion of depth.
- Finally, note that the Renaissance sculpture is characterized by the proportion, symmetry, and the canon, though still mainly Christian religious symbolism is subordinated to the pursuit of beauty, with a focus on the formal beauty of the figures, and studying same anatomy through nudes and portraits. Mythological themes also recur.
The Sculpture of the Quattrocento (XV Century)
- The Quattrocento is a century Florentine sculpture, controlling himself and all the techniques and styles.