Durham Cathedral

The Beginnings

The story of Durham Cathedral really begins further up on the East coast of England, on the little island of Lindisfarne. This site is important in the history of art, for it was here that the Benedictine community produced the Lindisfarne Gospels (before 721), one of the great illuminated manuscripts of the world. Less happily, Lindisfarne was also the first part of England to be attacked by Vikings (793) and in 875 further attacks led them to leave the island. Carrying with them the remains of their venerated Saint Cuthbert (died 687), the monks led a peripatetic existence until they settled in Durham in 995. There they built a church of some kind, the ‘white church’ of the tenth century, of which no trace remains.

The next significant date is 1066, the year of the Norman invasion led by William the Conqueror. Under the Normans, the Church in England was reconstructed: dioceses were redrawn, and bishoprics and other top jobs were, in many cases, given to Norman nobles. This colonial occupation also put Saxon England in close touch with international currents of thought and culture. And so churches and castles based on Norman models were constructed, and earlier Saxon constructions were destroyed to make way for them. The style of architecture the invader-occupiers brought with them was Romanesque (known as Norman in England), characterised by massive, heavy constructions, monumental and grave. The churches had much in common with fortresses, prompting the art historian Ernst Gombrich to call the style ‘Church Militant’. For churches were indeed conceived as fortresses, from which religious communities fought against the forces of evil.

Bishops

Durham now fell under the control of the new bishop Walcher (1071-80), a Lotharingian appointed by William I.  The first great building was the Bishop’s castle (which survives; Rochester in Kent is another example of castle and cathedral close together, and in both cases the castle looks over a river). The church was at this time run by secular canons, and Walcher planned to replace them with Benedictine monks from the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow.

In 1080 Bishop Walcher was killed by native Northumbrians, apparently angered with him and his entourage at their ineffective response to invasions by Scots. The next Bishop was William of Calais (1080-96; also known as William of St Carilef), who installed Benedictines to run the church and set about the construction of communal buildings for them around a cloister (these were on the south side of the present Cathedral and very little remains). In 1092 the Saxon church was demolished and in 1093 work began on what was to become one of the great Romanesque cathedrals of Christendom, the Cathedral we see today. Bishops in those days were expected to raise the funds for such projects themselves, and often ended funding them personally. William – who was exiled for political reasons for some years – was succeeded as Bishop by Ranulph Flambard (1099-1128), who oversaw building to its completion ‘usque testudinem’, up to the roof. The entire building, then, took forty years, a timespan comparable to Cluny (1088-1130, 42 years) and Santiago de Compostela (1078-1122, 44 years).

Durham

Like any other cathedral, Durham served several purposes. It was the seat, or cathedra of the Bishop, the church where the monks sang their offices, and the shrine of the relics of St Cuthbert, whose great reliquary-coffin was placed behind the high altar upon nine columns, tall enough to allow prayers to be conducted below. Unlike churches on the pilgrim route, like St Sernin of Toulouse, pilgrim-tourists do not seem to have been encouraged: there was no ambulatory to allow easy access to the relics, and no crypt to accommodate popular devotion. Vistors and congregants found themselves shut off from the choir, the space reserved for the monks, by a great screen and would have seen very little of the hours of the day celebrated by the community.

Design

Durham’s design was based on the great churches known to the conquerors, like Jumièges and St Etienne at Caen. But it is significantly larger than these, and the same length as Old St Peter’s in Rome, which was clearly used as a distant model. Its plan is typical of the period: a West End, flanked by two towers, leads to a nave and two aisles. There are eight bays, marked by a stately rhythm of alternating compound piers and simpler cylindrical columns. These lead us to the Crossing, the central space where the nave meets the choir, marked by a central tower. To either side of the Crossing are the arms of the Latin Cross, the north and south transepts.  Beyond the Crossing the choir stretched for four bays, leading to the Eastern apse. The aisles on either side of the choir also led to eastern apses.  The Elevation is in three parts: an arcade, a gallery over the aisles (also sometimes called triforium or tribune), and an upper clerestory, to let in the light. Characteristic of the Norman style (as the Romanesque is called in England) is the absolute clarity with which all the modules, stories and sections are articulated. That is to say, it is immediately clear where one section ends and another begins, and how they are related to each other.

Main Features

There is much to marvel at in Durham Cathedral, which, seen on its rocky promontory  from the river Wear below, has the most stunning exterior of any of England’s cathedrals. Inside, building work extending over four decades leaves its trace, and it is possible to see where builders altered their plans as they went along: the design of the vaulting, for example, changes as it extends from the choir aisles to the transepts and then the naves. The wall passage in the clerestory seems to have been a later thought, and the decoration increased dramatically after 1099: by this time the building, which customarily started at the East so the monks could hold their services as soon as possible, had reached the nave. But to follow the intricacies of the design as it proceeded a more detailed guide is necessary.

Two central features in Durham stand out: the ribbed vaulting and the carved decoration. Of these, the first has received most attention in histories of architecture as it is a groundbreaking structural development.  It also holds the onlooker’s gaze, which can follow an engaged shaft up a composite pier, ascending theough gallery and clerestory and continuing in an unbroken line across the ceiling and down again, a thrilling drama in stone. From the point of view of materials, ribbed vaulting is lighter than barrel or groin vaults, and so a good solution to the great problem of all stone vaulting – how to carry the immense weight, with its downward and lateral thrust, and yet have some wallspace available for windows?  In a ribbed vault, instead of a solid mass of stone, a frame of ribs stretching diagonally between piers carries an infill of light masonry. There is some reason to believe that initially this vaulting was only intended for the Choir, to mark it as a space of unusual sanctity (again, Old St Peter’s in Rome could have been the model, with its stone ciborium over the altar; Kilpeck in Herefordshire is an example of a Romaesque church where ribs are used only in the sanctuary). Then at some point, the argument goes (though nothing is certain), it was decided to extend tibbed vaulting into the transepts and then into the nave. As the work went westwards, changes were made to the angle of the arches and the size of the columns. There were other arguments for this project besides the practical ones. Aesthetically, the ribbed vaulting suits the design of the rest of the building, with its bold geometrical shapes and criss-crossing lines. And the stone vault would have increased the value of the Cathedral as a status symbol for diocese, Church and Crown. The ribbed vaults and pointed arches of Durham look ahead to the Gothic style of the next century. Yet oddly builders of the time appeared to be less excited by them than architectural historians today, since churches with fully ribbed vaulting do not appear in England until the late twelfth century.

The ribbed vaulting is also part of the second notable feature of Durham, its decoration. It is a wonderful example of the Norman style, with its emphasis on repeated geometrical designs, simple, bold and clear. The engaged shafts, running from the floor to the vault, have already been mentioned: these add to the vertical thrust of the building, in counterpoint to the horizontal march from West to East. This horizontal movement is made more interesting by the alternation of great composite piers, where a central column has shafts and internal half-columns attached, acting as internal buttresses, and smaller cylindrical piers. This creates what are called double bays, with two sets of diagonal rib vaults between each set of composite piers, which are joined by transverse pointed arches.  Decoration renders the great stretches of stone interesting to the eye, presenting intricacy amidst the vast scale of the building: the arches have undulating patterns carved on their underside, called soffit rolls. Columns are carved with spirals, chevrons, lozenges and flutes. Elsewhere such decoration would have been common in painted walls, but in Durham it is carved into the local sandstone itself.  If this geometrical design hints at an Eastern or Arabic source, that sense becomes stronger in the interlocking arches on the inner walls of the aisle, which are echoed on the exterior. We can see these in Islamic architecture, and in English gospel books of the period.

Later changes

Durham today is still largely the Norman Cathedral of the late eleventh century. But there have been some changes. In c.1175-80 the Galillee Chapel was added at the Western end, a five-aisled building in a more Gothic style, which served as porch and Lady Chapel. Here is deposited another relic, the remains of the great Anglo-Saxon monk and historian the Venerable Bede.  In the thirteenth century, the eastern end of three apses was replaced with a long arm, like a second smaller transept, known as the Chapel of nine altars. This allowed several monks to say divine office simultaneously, and would have made it easier for pilgrims to circulate. The great central tower was not completed until 1500, only 40 years before Henry VIII dissolved all English monastic communities in the Reformation. Over time the wooden furnishings of the Norman church have disappeared, along with the rood screen and pulpitum which would have blocked the laity off from the clergy. Yet it is still possible to imagine standing in the great nave, with less light than today, and candles flickering across wood, textile, stone, paint and metal. The total effect of architecture goes well beyond the forms laid down in stone.

The Apse Mural of St Climent de Taüll (c.1123)

‘Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so,  Amen. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.’

This is part of the vision of St John’s Book of Revelations. It is given artistic expression in this mural painting from the apse of St Climent de Taüll, a small church in the mountainous region of the Vall de Boí in Catalonia. As we stand before it, we are confronted by image of Maiestas Domini, the Majesty of the Lord. One moment, we regard him, static, immutable, seated on a rainbow, in the immaterial realm of the divine. But the next we imagine Him swooping down from heaven towards us, the highest authority in the universe administering the justice our deeds deserve. This is not the kindly God of modern faith, but a terrifying King, the heavenly judge, the Pantocrator - ruler of all, Creator and Destroyer, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end of things. His right hand is raised in blessing, but the blessing is also a reminder of his divine power. Vast in scale, surrounded by the energy of his mandorla, crowned with a nimbus bearing a crucifer, God is regally dressed in tunic and gem-studded mantle. He stares directly at us, his feet resting on the earth as his footstool. His left arm holds open the Book, with the reminder ‘Ego sum lux mundi’, ‘I am the light of the world’. The small, illiterate, peasant community who gazed on this in their little mountain church in the twelfth century must have felt a dread which the modern viewer can only imagine.

This image is a theophany, a vision of divine truth. It does not record any specific episode but gives visible form to the invisible truths of God’s nature. Around God on the upper register are various figures and creatures, pulsing with energy as, in counterpoint to God’s frontal pose, they twist and lean and gesture to the Godhead. Revelations helps us to decipher them:

...  and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.

This is the tetramorph, the group of four beasts which medieval theologians took to represent the four evangelists. As we see it, the lion is bottom left, its feet held by an angel. This is the symbol of St Mark. The calf is on our right, again held by an angel. This is St Luke. Above these images we can read ‘St Marcus EG’ and ‘S Lucha EG’, ‘EG’ standing for ‘Evangelist’. On the row above them, we see the beast which ‘had a face as a man’ (Matthew) holding the gospel, and opposite him an angel holding an eagle, symbol of St John. The six wings are given to the Seraphim and Cherubim at the extremes of the upper image. The monks who used the church for their hours of service would have provided the chant, the processions and liturgy to make up the acts of the Church, of which this and the other church paintings formed a part. This is an important point. The images we view as ‘art’ today were only a part of the total and ongoing act of worshipping and contemplating the divine. To the monks, as they continually pondered the mysteries of the deity, the image would have held endless  levels of symbolism. Just as in their books we find annotations constantly relating one text to another, Old Testament to New, the scriptures to the patristic commentaries of the Church Fathers, so Romanesque imagery can generate multiple layers of interpretation: the four circles in which Mark and Luke are represented, for example, suggest the four wheels of the Chariot described by the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel (1:5-21); and on the summit of the arches above the painting we see a Dextera Domini, the right hand of God. This pointing hand is symbol of witness, protection and power. Next, in an axis radiating out to the viewer, is a seven-eyed Lamb of God, emblem of Christ’s sacrifice. If we turn to Revelations chapter 5, we find references to seven seals, seven eyes and seven horns, representing ‘the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth’.  With the Pantocrator, these other images – the hand, the Lamb - make up a slightly different image of the Trinity from the one we are used to. So we have the Apocalypse, the Trinity, and an Old Testament vision all superimposed before us. We also know from remaining fragments that the surrounding arches also contained the figures of Cain and Abel and the story of the poor man and Lazarus.

Beneath the Absolute realm of the Upper register we have the Temporal realm of five apostles and Mary. They bear witness to the vision of God above, and stand, in a fully frontal pose, in a highly stylized arcade, itself symbolising the Universal Church and the Celestial Jerusalem. Mary holds a chalice, the vessel of the Eucharist, and next to her, on the other side of the window, John holds up his book. A detail to notice is that these sacred objects are held with covered hands, a detail of liturgical practice we can see elsewhere (for example, the mosaic of Justinian at Ravenna): note the covered hands of the angels bearing the gospel and St John’s eagle in the upper register. Beneath the apostles would have been a third register, representing the lowest world,  that of earthly creatures, depicted in a highly stylized geometrical form. But of this only some faint traces of zig-zag pattern remain.

The St Climent de Taüll paintings (there are some others, and the whole church was originally covered with them) are, then, rich in imagery which unlocks for us a medieval world in which just about everything was seen through the lens of symbolism. But we can also experience them in purely formal terms. We can respond to the symmetrical face of God, with its piercing eyes and dramatic arched eyebrows, to the juxtaposition of His severe, rigid posture and the ecstatic figures around Him. The bold linearity, the expressiveness of the arabesques and curves – in God’s long hair, for example – or the ‘flying folds’ of the drapery can all speak to us across the centuries. We can sense how the figures are pushed forward by the bands of colour behind them and sense how the whole composition is transforming natural elements like limbs and heads and pulling them in the direction of geometric abstraction. Scholars have identified stylistic influences from Byzantine, Mozarabic (art influence by Arabs, who still occupied much of Spain at this time) and Islamic art. At the same time, it can seem surprisingly modern. Artists such as Picabia, Breton, Picasso and Tàpies have all drawn inspiration from the anti-naturalistic, expressive resources of Romanesque art.

St Climent de Taüll itself, as we noted earlier,  is the church of a village in the Valley of Boí, up in the Spanish Pyrenees. This small area has one of the most concentrated amounts of Romanesque art in the world. Much of it was uncovered and identified in the early twentieth century and this painting, with several others, was transferred to canvas by Italian experts and moved to Barcelona. This was partly for conservation, but mainly because American collectors were already showing an interest in purchasing it, in an early, unregulated art market, and Barcelona was anxious to preserve this extraordinary art as a part of its national heritage. The expedition sent out in 1907 to make an inventory of the surviving artefacts was commissioned by the newly founded Institute of Catalan Studies and the project formed part of a renewed interest in the Catalan heritage, comparable to the study of national traditions taking place elsewhere (the movement to record English folk music, for example).  In the original church a copy was made; this has since been moved in its turn, and replaced by video mapping. Meanwhile, the original can be seen in Barcelona’s MNAC (National Museum of Catalan Art). Few viewers will wail in dread at the sight of the Pantocrator, perhaps, but it is still hard to be indifferent to this potent reminder of the intensely emotional art of medieval master artisans: the anonymous creator of this painting is simply known as The Master of Taüll. The apse of St Climent is classified as fine art today; but it is also reminder of the power of the medieval Church over the minds and imagination of the faithful.

 

Video mapping: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lfTMf0shJw

 

Further Reading

Manuel Castiñeiras and Jordi Camps, Romanesque Art in the MNAC Collections (2008)

The Catalan language entry in Wikipedia is very helpful and detailed.

Frederic Chordá, El Abside de Sant Climent de Taüll (Madrid, 2012). Stresses the multiple possible significations of the image.

Development of Christian Church Architecture

Outline of a vast subject: The Development of Christian Church Architecture


For more, I recommend this lovely book, well worth tracking down (I came across it in the Deanery second-hand booksale: Principles and Elements of Medieval Church Architecture in Western Europe


Architecture is probably the hardest bit of art history to get into, because seeing a photo of a building and actually moving around in it are categorically different experiences, and there's all the technical vocab to get comfortable with. But I remember worthily crunching through Pevsner at about 16, then going into Winchester Cathedral and actually seeing it - not a mass of fancy stone, but a structure of arcades and transepts and aisles and all the rest of it. The jargon is tedious but it opens things up. Today we have naming of parts. And naming connects to vision. a botanist can see things in a garden that I, in the same sense, can't. Reading about a church building - the plan, the elevation, the whatnots and bits and pieces - can be maddening until, click, your mind has generated a 3-D space and you can actually feel something of it. Also, fear of flying is well known, although the science of jet planes is (I'm told) pretty sound. But I've never heard of anyone afraid of entering a medieval cathedral, standing right underneath hundreds of tons of stone vaulting, put up there by medieval masons who were really just working it out as they went along and hadn't a qualification between them. (Yet pretty darned advanced physics was in the system somewhere. I wonder how they spoke about lateral thrust in the twelfth century, or compression.) Then again, if they've stayed up that long, one might think, coming back to the vaults. After all, they don't look that heavy.  And cathedral smashes are a rare news event (no doubt because the powerful Church Lobby keeps them out of the media). Pevsner does not write about architecture in this way, which is why is famous and must be crunched through.

Moissac Tympanum



Image: Web Gallery of Art

The tympanum at Moissac, c.1115-1135, depicts Christ in majesty surrounded by the tetramorph, the symbols of the four evangelists. Beyond the tetramorph are accompanying angels. The other figures are the twenty-four elders beholding Christ, as described in St John's Revelations. The posts below show elongated figures of Peter (left) and Isaiah (right), while the central trumeau combines the figures of st Paul, Jeremiah and various fabulous beasts. Below are some links which should aid further exploration of this Romanesque masterpiece.

Superb images and brief text on paradoxplace

Andrew Tallon of Vassar College has produced some outstanding photographic resources, enabling the viewer to zoom in on details. See the bottom of his homepage.

A video of the Moissac portal led me to this wonderful blog on the Romanesque sculpture and architecture of the route to Santiago, The Joining of Heaven and Earth

Moissac is included in a useful chapter on Romanesque in the online World History of Art

Meyer Schapiro wrote a detailed study of the Moissac sculptures for his 1935 doctoral thesis. This work is available in two articles on JSTOR: 'The Romanesque sculpture of Moissac, Part I (1)' deals with the programme of capital sculptures in the cloister. The tympanum is described in detail in the second article, 'The Romanesque Sculpture of Moissac, Part 1 (II)'.  Both can be conveniently read in book form in Meyer Schapiro and David Finn (photos), The Romanesque Sculpture of Moissac (1985). Schapiro's Charles Eliot Norton lectures on various sites are published as Meyer Schapiro, Romanesque architectural sculpture (2006).

Romanesque Altar Frontal: Frontal d'Ix

This is the 'Frontal d'Ix', a painted (tempera) wooden (pine) altar frontal (fancy word for this: antependium) from the small Romanesque Church (single nave, round apse) dedicated to St Martin, in the village of La Guingeta d'Ix. It was made sometime around the middle of the twelfth century, and presently adorns the first room of the Romanesque galleries in MNAC. It's in fact one of the oldest pieces in that collection, having been given by a private collector in 1889 (the first exploratory trip to the Pyrennean churches was undertaken in 1907).

St Martí, La Guingeta d'Ix. Wikimedia.

These wooden frontals are apparently unique to the Catalan territories, and were made between the tenth and twelfth centuries - the Romanesque period in short. They seem to have been made in three workshops - the Seu d'Urgell, Ripoll and Vic. Those made for the larger and richer churches and monasteries often have precious materials (gold, silver, ivory, jewels, enamels) inlaid into them. A smaller church like St Martin made do with painted wood (though remains of metal strips have been found in this one). Planks of wood were joined together with nails, then covered with a layer of plaster. The drawing was then made, often incised, and finally the whole area was painted. This one is typical in having the widest board in the centre - the logical place for the Saviour, or the Virgin, or the patron saint of the Church. Look at the corners of the frontal and you can see clearly the iron clasps - presumably used to link this to the side panels of the altar, which have disappeared.

The love of geometrical pattern and decoration is immediately apparent. It's interesting that the four sides around the iconographic images use different motifs. At the top there's a band of strikingly 3D-effect cubes, or interlocking zigzag straps, however you want to see them, picking up on the reds and blues in the middle. Going clockwise, we see vegetal motifs on the right, and at the bottom the so-called 'rinceaux' or foliage pattern. Up the left side, medallions, alternating vegetal and animal images. Behind them is a world of kells, mosaics, miniatures - the whole medieval vision of endless symmetrical patterns, stretching from Ireland to Byzantium.

Now to the subject matter, starting in the centre with the Maiestas Domini - the Majesty of the Lord, the motif of the Saviour enthroned. The figure is very similar to the one in the Seu d'Urgell frontal (see below): elongated face, long thin nose and wide-open eyes, beard and treatment of hair, and taches or red spots on cheeks and forehead all match up. The Christ of Ix does look rather less grim and more cheerful, though. He is seated at the intersection of two coloured circles, which make up the globe mandorla, a motif we can trace back to Carolingian times. He is wearing a red tunic, with a fringed blue mantle. Heavy linear folds following the logic of pattern rather than anatomy. Again, the nimbus bears a crucifer, which goes slightly over the edges and above the mandorla. Left hand rests on the Book, right hand raised in blessing. Unlike Urgell, this right hand is also carrying a small round object. Very likely it symbolises the world (some manuscripts helpfully name it, 'mundus'), but it could also be the Host (suitable to have the symbol of the Eucharist on an altar) - and I don't see why the interpreting viewer couldn't flip between these two significations. The Alpha and Omega letters remind us of the Saviour's rule over the beginning and end of the world. No tetramorph (as in Vézelay etc.) but a deep red background decorated with floral motifs - another similarity to the Seu d'Urgell frontal.

Now we can look at the sides, starting with the right. The equivalent space in the Seu d'Urgell frontal is a single plane, but here it is divided into four frames, each containing two figures. We can spot St Peter at once with his gigantic key (I like the way this breaks out of his space into the frame, forming a parallel with the two blessing hands and the codex if we read across to the left). Next frame along in the top row is St Martin, in his iconic act of dividing his robe with a beggar. This scene has the scholars vexed, though: St Martin (of Tours) is usually shown on horseback when he does this, not standing; the 'beggar' doesn't exactly look in need of more wardrobe here; and the staff linked to a chain over his right shoulder suggests he is a captive, which points to stories in other saints' lives but not St Martin. A conflation of some kind? The precise coherence of the elements seems to have become obscured by time. Also obscure, if they were ever known, are the identities of any of the other figures. They are obviously apostles, but who is who seems to be anyone's guess. As with the Urgell frontal, they all look towards Christ (though not with the same pronounced tilt); again, they're differentiated by being bearded and beardless, and have the same rather block-like faces. Notice too the pearl-like decoration around the edges.

The left side has the same four images. Second from the right on the top is St Martin again. No mysteries here - he is clearly depicted as a bishop with a crozier. I take it that what looks like a sore spot on his crown is the tonsure - the same detail distinguishes St Peter in the Urgell piece. And he gets his name in red letters, to the left of his halo. All the other figures are anonymous apostles. One detail I find oddly delightful is that St Martin is the only one in the whole work wearing shoes! The separate scenes are unified by the geometrical format, underlined by the simple alternation of red and yellow backgrounds. across the middle is an inscription - partial erasure, intricate letter decoration and shorthand abbreviations make it a challenge, but it has been deciophered as 'Sol et Lux Sanctorum Maneo in Praeclara Honorum' which I think means something like 'I dwell in the bright sun and the light of the beautiful saints' but gentle correction welcomed.

There's a strong feeling among experts that this Frontal and the one from Seu d'Urgell came from the same workshop. Parallels to many of the motifs have been found in manuscripts, and there are close similarities to sculptures in the monastery of Ripoll. These details are explored in humbling detail by Walter Cook in his 1923 article. Cook didn't have absolutely all the details to hand when he wrote, as the provenance of the piece only came to light in 1944  - but the article is a model of detailed description and iconographic research.



Seu d'Urgell Frontal

Sources.
Mostly plundered from the Catalan Viquipedia entry

The Earliest Painted Panels of Catalonia (II)

Walter W. S. Cook, 'The Earliest Painted Panels of Catalonia (II)', The Art Bulletin , Vol. 6, No. 2 (Dec., 1923), pp. 31-60 (especially 32-38). 

Blog entry on Seu d'Urgell Frontal

                  

Romanesque Altar Frontal from Seu d'Urgell

Another wonderful Romanesque altar frontal in MNAC, showing Christ surrounded by the apostles. Dated about 1150, tempera on wood. From a church in the old dicese of Urgell.  Heavy linearity and symmetry (look at the feet!) tending - physical details like garments and bodies all become the occasion for abstract patterning, as if the pattern is the reality, and the physical object just a brief configuration as the play of line and colour goes on for ever. This play, or pull, between concrete and abstract gives much of Romanesque art itrs animating tension. I like the tilted heads - impossible not to follow the gaze from side to centre.

Video introduction produced by MNAC:


Short entry on Spain is Culture

Wikipedia entry (note: 'lack of funds' in the description is a mistranslation and should read 'lack of background')

Article: Walter W. S. Cook, 'The Earliest Painted Panels of Catalonia (II)', The Art Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 2  (Dec, 1923), pp. 31-60 on JSTOR. Article begins with a detailed account of this frontal, pages 30-32. It's a great example of detailed visual description - how pausing, looking and putting into words what we see leads to a much sharper awareness of what is happening. The eye wants to skim - particularly in a musem where there is so much to see - so sketching or describing like this is an essential discipline for slowing down and focussing.

Some lovely illustrations, and a good section on Geometrical Forms, in MNAC's excellent Guia Visual Art Romanic.

Gregorian Chant: Four Antiphons of the Virgin Mary

The last four melodies in Rutter's Eleven Gregorian Chants are Four Antiphons of the Virgin Mary, compositions from between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries which closed the office of Compline (the last Office of the day). An Antiphon is the root of 'Anthem' (Old English antefne), meaning a song of praise or devotion. The Marian antiphons are anthems sung to the Virgin Mary, using independent texts without psalms. Here are some links to Gregorian notation and performances. These Marian hymns can also be found gathered here.
Alma Redemptoris Mater

Written by Hermannus Contractus (Herman the Cripple, 1013-54). Like the others below, this is given int he longer version known as 'Solemn Tone'. Opening with a long melisma, this is sung at the Advent to Candlemas. There are some comments by musicologists and other information here.



Ave Regina caelorum (Candlemas to Holy Week). The Marian hymns were used as the basis for many arrangements in the Renaissance and later. There is a useful gathering here of some of these polyphonic versions.



Regina caeli laetare (Easter Even to Pentecost). See this site for different versions and performances.



Salve Regina




Sources and Further Reading
History and background to Marian Antiphons
Entry by Richard Taruskin from Oxford History of Western Music

Romanesque Art: Apse of St Pere d'Urgell

Apse of St Pere, Seu d'Urgell. MNAC, Barcelona. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

This is the first monumental fresco to confront the visitor to the Romanesque Collection in MNAC. It is the decoration of the apse of the church of St Pere, which forms part of the Cathedral complex of the Seu d'Urgell (the church is now St Miquel). The painting dates from the first half of the twelfth century.

Subject  The subject matter is, characteristically, a theophany - that is, a vision in which divine majesty is revealed. Christ appears in a mandorla (mystical almond shape), manifesting the Maiestas Domini (the Majesty of the Lord). Around him are the creatures making up the Tetramorph, the symbols of the Four Evangelists: to the right of the mandorla we see the eagle (St John) and the ox (St Luke). It is notable that Christ is standing, not enthroned - imagery which goes back to Early Christian models. This fact, together with the pleats of the drapery and the vertical elongation of the figure, have led some to suggest that the subject is the Ascension. But other elements of the iconography point to the Second Coming, when Christ returns at the end of the world to judge the living and the dead. We notice that Christ holds the Book of Life in his left hand, and has his right hand raised in blessing. Beneath the horizontal band, the fragmentary inscription comes from a Latin liturgical hymn concerning the Last Judgement.

On the lower level, Mary and the Apostles stand in pairs. They are identified in Latin shorthand (S Petus: Sanctus Petrus, S Iohs: Sanctus Johannis etc.) and by their attributes. From the left: St Andrew carrying the cross (on which he was crucified); St Peter with the keys to heaven; St Mary, holding a crown in her covered left hand (identifying her as the Queen of Heaven; the covered hand reminds me of the covered left hand of Justinian and attendants in the S Vitale Ravenna mosaic); St John holding his gospel with a similarly covered hand; on the right, we can just identify Paul from his name.

Style  Romanesque art was formed from a diversity of stylistic influences, and we can see several of them here. The scene of Theophany itself derives from Early Christian art of late antiquity. Here, the modelling of the figures, and the loosely geometrical approach to the drapery, point to the art of Provence, which was strongly influenced by classical models. The white background of the upper part is characteristic of southern and central France, while a similar image has been identified in a manuscript from St Mary of Lagrasse, dated to the time of Abbot Robert (1086-1108). The lands of this community included Urgell in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Observations One of the striking features of this painting is the interlaced geometrical schemes, especially in the beautiful central band where the pattern gives an impression of depth: this takes us to another stylistic source, the geometrical art of the barbarians and the early Middle Ages (the Celtic patterns in the Book of Kells, for example). The love of pattern is shown in the mandorla, in the semicircular configuration where Christ's feet extend (he is either taking off or coming in to land), and around the window openings. The band around the central window, punctuating the white horizontal line of the inscription, helps to join the separate spaces (as the trumeau abuts the lintel at Moissac). Deep browns and reds give a unifying tone to the whole composition, while among the vivid colours we notice the blue of Mary's mantle, made from lapis lazuli. Faces are elongated and - by modern realist standards - inexpressive. Yet the large eyes, with their deep mirada fuerte, give them a compelling intensity; and the painter has clearly tried to differentiate them with different beards, hair colour etc. (We think of the row of elders on the lintel of the tympanum at Moissac - first apparently identical, but each given a distinctive posture). We notice the love of symmetry when we look across the pairs of figures beneath, and see the disposition of hands being mirrored. The bodies seem to face outward to the viewer, while feet and hands indicate they are turned slightly inwards towards each other: the pictorial plane is ambiguous. There is a blend of space and intricate detail, animation and stillness, creating the drama of theophany, the transcendence from the earthly to the spiritual realm.

Sources
Most of the above is derived from the Guia art romanic published by MNAC.

Wikipedia netry on St Miquel de la Seu d'Urgell

Further bibliography on Ars Picta