Romantic Period

By: Sharon White
Submitted: 2007-01-17 11:30:26
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The earliest paintings, visible records of which still remain on the continent, is the Romanic art of Western Europe which has always concentrated on serving the Christian church. Even during the Moslem occupation - a territorial, not a religious conquest-this art was generally practised in Spain until, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, fanatical Moslem puritans swept in from Africa to persecute the Christians and destroy their abominated churches. Thus the relics appertain to the Southern Pyrenees and Asturias, where the free Christians held their ground. The remnants are wooden reliquaries, altar-frontals, retables, and apse decorations. The most ancient panel, a frail and blackened altar-frontal of the ninth century, exemplifies the plan of decoration which was traditional until the early fourteenth century. This was an oblong surface divided into a large central compartment and two rows of laterally disposed niches or squares. In early panels, Christ in Majesty, or the Mother of God, enthroned in a mandorla, occupied the central, and saints or apostles the side divisions; in later work, saints of local origin were placed in the centre, with legendary scenes right and left. In the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries Christian Europe, stimulated by tempting Papal indulgences, and by the prospect of fabulous loot, combined to drive out Islam. To foster the crusade Cluny monks, welcomed by the reigning princes, built monasteries in the wake of the retreating Moslems in Le?n, Old Castile, and Navarre, where they established famous seats of learning, as at San Millar de la Cogalla in Old Castile.

Cistercians from Narbonne settled in 1150 at Poblet, near Tarragona, when the Moors retreated beyond the Ebro, and founded a mighty monastery - now desolate - peopled with scribes and illuminators. Lay specialists, artists by inheritance, appeared in the early thirteenth century. Of the easily portable relics many of the most remarkable and wellpreserved are in private collections, sometimes difficult of access. For the student, however, the chief hunting grounds will be the Museums of Barcelona, and the Episcopal Museum at Vich, forty miles north from Barcelona, into which have been gathered representative examples. In respect of apse decorations the Barcelona City Museum is unique. There may now be examined, under favourable conditions, and with the assistance of an admirable catalogue, the most important Romanic mural decorations extant in Spain. These until recently adorned the interiors of ten widely separated Romanesque churches, situated in half-forgotten, and almost inaccessible mountain villages. They were removed from the ancient walls by Italian specialists, and transported to Barcelona, where with zealous care, but with no attempt at restoration, they were reaffixed to new walls, and apses shaped to receive them. The majority are of twelfth century manufacture. The oldest, which come from Pedret, are related to eleventh-century frescoes in S. Clemente, Rome. In reproductions, many of these decorations would pass for mosaics. In the same way, one or two privately owned altar-frontals which preserve in great measure their original surface, have the appearance of enamel. In the case of frontals, at least, this quality of illusion was expressly sought. A few monasteries became rich enough to afford costly retablos of enamel upon metal, which, in the twelfth century particularly, were imported in considerable numbers.

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