Romanesque Patrons and Processes: Design and Instrumentality in the Art and Architecture of Romanesque Europe

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 across Latin Europe and the Mediterranean.

 

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. Individual essays range of 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. Another important feature of the volume are those papers that attempt to recover the procedures that coloured interaction between artists and patrons – a serious theme in a collection that opens with ‘Function, Conditionality and Process in Anglo-Norman Architecture’ and ends with a consideration of ‘The Death of the Patron’.

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