Romanesque Painting

Revision on Romanesque Painting

1. Romanesque Painting
Revision

2. Introduction
•Romanesque painting, the
same as sculpture, is at the
service of architecture
•It has a marked didactic
character
•The most common location is
inside the churches,
decorating walls.
•The themes are, almost
exclusively, religious.

3. Techniques and supports
–On wall, mainly in
apses: fresco
–On wood: altar frontals
–In codex: miniature
–In clothes: tapestry

4. Wall painting
•Characteristics:
–There is a hierarchy of the
characters:
–Christ or the Virgin appear
in the middle, in bigger size
–Around them angels or
Evangelists
–Other saints in a lower
position
–Natural elements: animals,
plants, near the floor

5. Wall painting
•Images are not friendly:
the main iconography is
that of the Pantocrator or
the Christ depicted as a
judge in a threatening way
•Images look at the front
•They are not naturalistic
•Full of conventionalism
•Deformations and too
stylised features.

6. Wall painting
•The technique used is
fresco
•Colours are flat, without
shades or differences of
tonality
•They do not use
perspective
•Images are limited by
thick black lines
•To give the impression of
deepness they draw
parallel lines

7. Iconography
•The Pantocrator is always blessing: his right hand make
this signal
•With the left hand He holds a book in which it can be read:
Ego sum lux mundi (I am world’s light)
•In both sides appear the letters alpha and omega, first
and last letters of the Greek alphabet symbolizing that
Christ is the beginning and the end of everything.

8. Iconography
•This Christ is normally sitting on a band that symbolizes
the sky
•His feet stand on a ball that is the depiction of the earth
•The colour of the face is depicted with coloured circles
•Eyes are enormous and inexpressive
•Hands are too long, the same as other features
•It is a powerful good, not a pitiful one

9. Iconography
•The Virgin appears
always with her Son
•It is the heir of the
Byzantine Teokokos
•They appear inside the
mandorle, the same as
the Pantocrator
•The Child is blessing
•Virgin is the throne for
her Son.

10. Colours
•They can vary depending on the school.
•In Spain we distinguish two schools:
–Catalan (Taull): ochre, green and blue, apart
from white and black
–Castilian: it has French influence and red is
more frequent
Catalonia
Castille

11. Wall painting
•Even when the apse is the main area for
painting, with its bands of different colours
there is not the only location:
–Painting may appear in vaults, as in the Royal
Pantheon of San Isidore in Leon
–It can appear in walls
–Columns and, especially
capitals can be painted too

12. Wall painting
•When scenes are not in the
apse, but in the vaults, the
distribution may change and
also the subjects depicted too
There are other minor
religious scenes, such as
this of the angels
anouncing Christ was
born to the shephers.
There is not a centre and
the images appear all
around.
They are naïf references
to nature.

13. Wall painting
Painting may invade
any place, from the
vaults to the inner part
of the arches.
There is a hyerarchich
organisation: main
scenes on the vaults
and natural elements
(plants, flower) in
secondary parts.
There is a kind of
horror vacuii.
In vaults there is not a clear direction, as in apses, and due to it images may
appear in all the positions.

14. Wall painting
In this image of San Isidore we can see the distribution of characters, the
different location of the images and their possition (the Tetramorphe group
aroun the mandorle, e.g.)

15. Wall painting
•Apart from the
religious images,
other kind of subjects
may appear
•This is the depiction
of the works done by
medieval peasants,
distributed along the
year in an original
calendar.

16. Frontals
•It is normally oil painting on wood
•Subjects are always religious, the same as those
of the apses
•The distribution of characters is always
symmetrical
•Images are divided into squares of different size
depending on the category of the characters.

17. Miniatures
•They were done in scroll
•Subjects can be:
–Religious
–Secular:
•Daily scenes
•Court scenes

18. Tapestry
•It is made of wool
•It was used to decorate the walls
•Images are normally related to court life