Romanesque Patrons and Processes by Camps, Jordi; Castiñeiras, Manuel; McNeill, John;

Short description:

This volume explores the making of art and architecture in Latin Europe and the Mediterranean between c. 1000 and c. 1250, with a focus on patronage, design and instrumentality.

Long description:

The twenty-five papers in this volume arise from a conference jointly organised by the British Archaeological Association and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. They explore the making of art and architecture in Latin Europe and the Mediterranean between c. 1000 and c. 1250, with a particular focus on questions of patronage, design and instrumentality.

No previous studies of patterns of artistic production during the Romanesque period rival the breadth of coverage encompassed by this volume – both in terms of geographical origin and media, and in terms of historical approach. Topics range from case studies on Santiago de Compostela, the Armenian Cathedral in Jerusalem and the Winchester Bible to reflections on textuality and donor literacy, the culture of abbatial patronage at Saint-Michel de Cuxa and the re-invention of slab relief sculpture around 1100. The volume also includes papers that attempt to recover the procedures that coloured interaction between artists and patrons – a serious theme in a collection that opens with ‘Function, condition and process in eleventh-century Anglo-Norman church architecture’ and ends with a consideration of ‘The death of the patron’.

Table of Contents:

Contents: Advisory panel; Notes on contributors; Preface; Chapter abstracts; Colour plates; Function, condition and process in eleventh-century Anglo-Norman church architecture; Matilda and the cities of the Gregorian Reform; Romanesque Cathedrals in Northern Italy – building processes between bishop and commune; Episcopal patronage in the reform of Catalan Cathedral canonries during the first Romanesque period: A new approach; The role of kings and bishops in the introduction of Romanesque art in Navarre and Aragon; From Peláez to Gelmírez: the problem of art patronage at the Romanesque Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela; Patronage, Romanesque architecture and the Languedoc; The Armenian Cathedral of Saints James in Jerusalem: Melisende and the question of exchange between East And West; Grandmont and the English Kings: An example of patronage in the context of an ascetic architectural trend; The Hospital, England and Sigena: A footnote; Henry of Blois, St Hugh and Henry II: The Winchester Bible reconsidered; Patrons, institutions and public in the making of Catalan Romanesque art during the Comital period (1000–1137); The artistic patronage of Abbot Gregorius at Cuixà: Models and tributes; A Limousin Ciborium in medieval Catalonia; The Jaca ivories: Towards a revaluation of eleventh-century female artistic patronage in the Kingdom of Aragon; The Aemilian casket reliquary: A product of institutional patronage; Patronage at the Cathedral of Tarragona: Cult and residential space; An Anglo-Norman at Terrassa? Augustinian Canons and Thomas Becket at the end of the twelfth century; Agency and the re-invention of slab relief sculpture at San Isidoro de León c. 1100; Patron and liturgy: The liturgical setting of the Cathedral Church of San Martino in Lucca after 1070 and the Gregorian Reform; The ‘Literate’ Lay donor: Textuality and the Romanesque patron; Remarks on patron inscriptions with restricted presence; The twelfth-century patrons of the Bridekirk font; The scope of competence of the painter and the patron in mural painting in the Romanesque period; The death of the patron: Agency, style and the making of the Liber Feudorum Maior of Barcelona; Index