French Romanesque architecture

appeared in France at the end of the 10th century, with the development of feudal society and the rise and spread of monastic orders, particularly the Benedictines, who built many important abbeys and monasteries in the style. It continued to dominate religious architecture until the appearance of French Gothic architecture in the Île-de-France between about 1140 and 1150.
Distinctive features of French Romanesque architecture include thick walls with small windows, rounded arches; a long nave covered with barrel vaults; and the use of the groin vault at the intersection of two barrel vaults, all supported by massive columns; a level of tribunes above the galleries on the ground floor, and small windows above the tribunes; and rows of exterior buttresses supporting the walls. Churches commonly had a cupola over the transept, supported by four adjoining arches; one or more large square towers, and a semi-circular apse with radiating small chapels. Decoration usually included very ornate sculpted capitals on columns and an elaborate semi-circular sculpted tympanum, usually illustrating the Last Judgement, over the main portal. Interior decoration often included murals covering the walls, colored tiles, and early stained glass windows. Late in the 12th century, the rib vault began to appear, particularly in churches in Normandy and Paris, introducing the transition to the Gothic style.

Characteristics

Plan

At the beginning of the eleventh century, inspired by the appearance of the style in northern Italy, Romanesque architecture spread west across southern France as far as Catalonia and Spain, and then north up the valley of the Rhône
river. In the early Romanesque period, churches followed the traditional form of a Roman basilica, particularly the plan of the Byzantine Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. They had a single long nave, usually without a transept, which ended in a hemispherical apse. They usually had at least one bell tower, sometimes separated from the nave.
In the later Romanesque period, in the last third of the 11th century, new building techniques were introduced which allowed taller and wider churches. Two new plans became common. The first was the Benedictine plan, used in Cluny Abbey and the other new Benedictine monasteries. It featured three naves, with a transept at the crossing, and ranks of small chapels on either side of the apse on the east end. A modified plan appeared in the new abbeys and churches designed to welcome pilgrims traveling to shrines in Spain. These new churches were designed to accommodate large numbers of visitors, and included an ambulatory, or walkway, leading to several small chapels radiating in a semicircle from the apse. The ambulatory allowed visitors to easily access any of the chapels, without disturbing the service in the nave. They often had multiple towers over the entrance and wings of the transept, and sometimes a dome over the crossing point of the transept and nave. Saint-Front de Périgueux, modeled after St Mark's Basilica in Venice, is an example.

Arches and vaults

Rounded arches were the most common and most distinctive feature of the Romanesque style, though near the end of the period, pointed arches began to appear, particularly in Normandy. Builders began to experiment with vaulted ceilings, first in the crypt below the church, and then in the nave. The earliest types were the simple barrel vault, which rested upon rows of massive columns. Later churches used the voute d'arête or groin vault, two barrel vaults combined at right angles, which were stronger but required great skill to construct. Later in the period, the voute en berceau briséé or rib vault was introduced, which carried the thrust of the weight of the roof outwards and downwards, through thin ribs, to supporting columns and buttresses.
As the naves became higher and higher, with the weight pressing down and outward on the walls, the walls had to be supported by massive masonry buttresses on the outside. Because of the need for thick, solid walls, the windows were few and small in size. The ground floor had rows of massive columns, which supported the vaults of the roof. The walls were divided by thin colonettes, which also provided support to the roof.
The domes were either supported by an octagonal base or a circular base, composed of barrel arches meeting at right angles.
The six-part rib vault, a key innovation in the transition to Gothic architecture, had been introduced in England in about 1100, and made its first appearance in France in the reconstruction of the naves of the church of the Abbey of Saint-Étienne, Caen, The Abbey of Sainte-Trinité, Caen, in about 1120. It also appeared in Burgundy and in an experimental version at the Abbey of Vézelay at about the same time. These vaults allowed ceilings that were lighter and stronger, and carried the weight outwards to columns and buttresses, so the supporting walls could be higher and thinner, with larger windows.

Elevations

The walls were divided into vertical sections, separated by thin columns of colonettes which supported the vaults of the roof. The ground level of the nave was usually flanked by columned arcades. These were usually surmounted by tribunes, or a galleries, where the faithful could gather to watch the ceremony in the nave below. The level above the tribune usually had a row of windows bringing light into the interior.
The tribunes provided greater width and support to the wall, which meant that churches could be higher. In some churches in the Auvergne region, the tribune rose up two levels, which meant that little light came into the nave. In Normandy, the tribune was often replaced by a triforium, a narrow walkway. In Aquitaine, the churches had a single wide nave, which allowed more light to enter. Taller churches required heavy stone buttresses placed against the exterior walls to support the weight of the roof. This problem was not resolved until the Gothic period, when the introduction of the rib vault transferred the weight of the roof to the flying buttresses outside the walls.

Facades

The exterior decoration of the early Romanesque churches was simple, usually composed of vertical stripes of carved stone joined at the top by a band of simple arcs ; or a frieze of arcs, and, at the chevet, a series of toothlike niches. The columns often had cubic carved capitals. Exterior decoration was usually either vegetal, such as carved acanthus leaves or palm fronds, or geometric forms. Occasionally sculpture with simplified human forms with biblical texts appeared on the lintels.
However, with the construction of new abbeys and pilgrimage churches, the facades became much more theatrical. The facade of the Église Notre-Dame la Grande, Poitiers, is one of the best surviving examples of a Romanesque pilgrimage church facade. It does not have a sculpted tympanum over its portal; instead, the whole facade serves as a theater of biblical scenes; a frieze of sculptures over the portals represents the stories of the original sin and redemption; a multitude of small sculptures around the doors depicts fabulous animals and other biblical themes.

Portals

The portal, or entrance, of the Romanesque church received the most elaborate and dramatic sculptural decoration. It was designed as the Porta Coeli or "Doorway to heaven", a depiction of biblical stories and images in stone, which in earlier churches had been shown on the sculpture of the altar. The usual themes of the portal were the Biblical Day of Judgement, promising Redemption for good Christians, and the Apocalypse for the others. Each church was different; at Moissac. the figure of Christ was surrounded by the four Evangelists, and the group was encircled by the twenty-four figures of the Apocalypse. The portal of Toulouse cathedral featured the Ascension of Christ, while the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy illustrated the contrasts between hell and the virtuous life of Sainte-Foy.
While the portals of cathedrals traditionally faced west, on Romanesque churches they often were oriented toward the main street or square of the town. In the Cathedral of Cahors it faced north, onto the ancient main street; in Toulouse and Moissiac it faced south, onto the street that led to the center of the town.
One of the most famous sculptural works of the French Romanesque period is Moissac Abbey, a modest-sized abbey which had been a dependency of Cluny since 1047. It was commissioned by the Abbot Roger between 1115 and 1131. It is 5.63 meters in diameter, and is composed of twenty-eight blocks of stone, which were sculpted and then assembled. It depicts the Apocalypse as described in the Bible by Saint John. Christ is seated on a throne in the center, surrounded by a lion, a bull, an eagle in flight, and a human face, which in turn surrounded by twenty-eight seated wise men, who will make the Last Judgement.

Towers and domes

Bell towers and domes were another distinctive feature of the Romanesque. In the early monastery churches the bell tower Was often separate from the church. In the later period, large abbey churches, like Cluny, had two towers at the portal end, a tower where the transept crossed the nave, and towers on the ends of transept.
The main domes or cupolas were usually placed at crossing of the nave and the transept, and symbolized the heavens. They were often supported by four arches forming a square and supported by four massive pillars' which symbolically represented the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The pillars held up a Voûte d'arêtes, or cross vault, where the barrels vaults of the nave and transept met at right angles. The curving triangular surfaces of these vaults, which joined the six or eight sides of the cupola to the four pillars, were called squinches', or pendentives, and were often decorated with the faces of the Four Evangelists, who were considered the symbolic link between the heavens and earth, or with angels or other Biblical figures.