The name Romanesque is a nineteenth-century invention meaning 'Roman-Like' The term was originally used in speaking architecture and refers to the resemblance of the typical buildings of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries in Europe to the thick-walled, vaulted masonry structures of the ancient Romans. Romanesque arhictecture with its heavy masonry , round arhes, vaulted covering and logical marking-off of the subdivisions of structure , was varied by means of changes in proportions and surface treatment. The rebirth of monumental sculpture made possible the decoration of the portals of churches. The large smooth surfaces of the architevtre also lent themselves to interior decoration i fresco . Popular themes included the Ascension of Christ , the Last Judgement and the Apocalyptic Vision.
After the breakdown of the Roman economy and culture, skilled architects and organizations of trained artisans no longer existed. Consequently, attempts at large-scale building, usually restricted to churches, produced structures that were often crude and of relatively modest proportions.One characteristic of Romanesque style is the tendency to subdivide figures and compositions , rather than to emphasize the relationships of part to part; emphasis on symmetry and on line; a disregard for normal proportions of bodies ; and an emphasis on decoration and pattern for their own sake.An outstanding achievement of Romanesque architects was the development of an a r chitecture of stone vaulted buildings. A major reason for the development of vaulting was the need to replace the highly flammable wooden roofs of the pre-Romanesque structures. In the later Romanesque style, especially as practiced in France, the use of m assive walls and piers as supports for the heavy stone vaults resulted in a typical building plan that treated the entire structure as a complex composed of smaller units called bays. Bays became a characteristic and distinguishing feature of the Romanesque style. Massiveness in stone structures is another major characteristic of Romanesque architecture.
While some artists and build ers of the twelfth century continued to work in the Romanesque style, others experimented with a new style, now called the Gothic. First apparent in architecture, it is characterized by the use of ribbed vaults and pointed arches, increasingly skeletal co n struction, and tracery. We see a new feature called the flying buttress, which enables the builders to build to greater heights than previously possible. Sculptors experimented also, trying out a new form called the statue-column in many of the portals de s igned for the new Gothic buildings. The planners of iconographical programmes grew more inventive, sometimes relating groups of three sculptured portals to one another through their subject matter. Painters, metalsmiths and other artists who made small ob jects also used elaborate symbolism, such as typological parallels between Old and New Testament subjects. The same artists, esp ecially those who worked in two-dimensional media like painting and enamelling, began to emphasize line, whether outline or contour line, in their work. This emphasis parallels the clear definition of structural elements in Early Gothic architecture, with its projecting wall shafts, ribs and horizontal mouldings.
During the twelfth century, a new style of building developed alongside the Romanesque. First developed in the Ile-de-France, the region around Paris, the new style was termed \lquote in the French manner\rquote . Only later, when sixteenth-century Renaissa nce writers on architecture looked back disdainfully at the work of their predecessors, was style called Gothic, the name by which we know it now. The implication was that this style, with its pointed arches, ribbed vaults and elaborate decoration, looked so unattractive and barbaric that it must have been designed by the Goths, the people who destroyed much of the civilization of ancient Rome. In spite of the original reference, the name has struck, and is no longer derogatory.
High Gothic is the name usually given to the style of art and arhcitecture in thirteenth-century Europe. Its greatest glory is the French cathedral with its embellishments of stained glass and sculpture. During the same period , manuscript painters brought their art to a high degree of perfection.
The High Gothic style of the thirteenth century is one of poise, especially in architecture. The simple three-storey wall elevation of Chartres Cathedral provided a model followed by many master masons of the period. With the conquest of height achieved through hard-won expertise in engineering, builders refined architectural proportions to give structures even greater apparent height. The Rayonnat style, named for the radiating bar tracery of its rose windows, appeared about the middle of the century in France.
In comparison with the patterns of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, fewer great arhictectural enterprises were undertaken in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Although architects and masons were still kept busy building for the wealthy , people were often interested in smaller projects, such as scupltural groups, manuscripts , panel paintings and tapestries.Buldings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, while still decorated , were less frequently planned with such elaborate schemes of sculptureor glass as were High Gothic structures.
People also began to recognize the individual achievements of artists and architects to a much greater extent . Although the makers of earlier Gothic art and architecture were by no means all anonymous, the identification oby name of an individual is the exception rather than te rule during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries . The surviving evidence of contracts , payrolls, guild rosters and other late Gothic documents indicates, however, that the recordin of artist's names with their works became much more important than it had been in earlier centuries.
Whereas the cruciform basilican cathedral with sculptured portals and stained glass windows was the chief building type of the High Gothic period, buildings with different functions are more characteristic of the two following centries . Some of these buildings are ecclesiastical, while others are secular.