Romanesque Art and Architecture

Welcome to our talk about Romanesque art and architecture the second half of our story here just to see if you're awake up Pop Quiz can you locate the timum the lentil the tro the arch Vols and the jam figures I certainly hope so we are looking at a region of France known as altun on the border of the Holy Roman Empire let's take a look at this work this is from a church that was begun in 11:20 sometimes these churches are going to have a range of dates like you see here 1120 to 11:35 because they take a long time to build I say just remember the first number don't worry about the span if when we get to the gothic Cathedrals there's something unique uh for example the Cathedral at clone took 600 years to build that's something that you can choose to remember individually but generally the first number is the one that I'm very happy with so this church here a commission by Bishop ettien debage uh consecrated in in about 1132 construction beginning in 11:20 this is a story of uh the last judgment okay so this is um a figure then from the New Testament the central figure in the typon logically is Christ uh but let's take a look at a detail and see what's going on more carefully so we've got Christ in a modified mandorla and look at the very odd pose that he has it's not quite a blessing gesture it's not quite a a orent gesture somewhere in between but what you do notice is that Christ's head is not only centered in a Halo like structure he's also emitting rays of light from his head so this is indicating that this is this moment then of of judgment and and uh transition if you will we've got um surrounded by these interesting uh elements here on on four sides one two three four sort of composite like creatures here um and then we've got the blessed and the damned on either side here so as Christ gives judgment then the Blessed on one side and then the Damned are on the other and then there's all the folks that are lined up below waiting for this event to happen on the far left we've got an angel who's uh lifting somebody up to to Heaven here so you can can see um that kind of interaction this is a detail of a tium and a portal structure at the Metaline deas uh in modern day France started about 11:20 as well this is a moment of Ascension where Christ's body is dead and his soul is rising to live with God the Father in Heaven this uh city of aasay is important in the story of the Middle Ages the launching place for three separate sets of Crusades so here we see the image from the New Testament of Christ foretelling the twel apostles that they're going to receive the power of the Holy Spirit become witnesses to the truth of the gospel and then spread the word throughout the rest of the land again we see Christ in the center and this time he's got this very interesting kind of a of a turned pose you definitely get this sensation of a body under a garment which is something that we don't always see notice now that we've got a lot more depth in the relief carving in the archal here and here are the apostles that surround him and they too have this kind of odd legs ascan POs to them and we've got some scale issues these guys are bigger these guys are smaller and it isn't like we saw with those pediment structures in ancient Rome where they accommodated the form to fit in the lower portion of the pediment this is nothing quite like that but the infidels are all lined up across the bottom the ones who are not going to make it into heaven um because of their lack of of conversion and so they're going to be judged harshly in this incident uh moving on to the city of ARL ARL a very famous town in the Post history of postmodern art this is what one of the places that van go and Goan Retreat to but this is uh now in the medieval period far far before that happens can you hear the trash truck outside my window isn't that elegant all right so the interesting thing here about the uh church at St Tropi is that we've got a portal that is now plunging forward it is projecting okay so most of these portals sort of have this cave mouth like feeling like you're being sucked into the Vortex of the church here this sticks out and in some ways it is reminiscent of a Roman Temple front so remember we've got still got lots of Roman influence here hence the name so we've got this nice pediment up here a series of concentric archal some with just patterning details some plain some with figures that dip back into space here is our tium our trumo our lentil but we've also got these frontal Bays these large blocks of stone that jut out forward to us here this is the church's Western entrance a projecting portal looking a whole lot like a Roman Arch but other it is attached to the building and it's the only thing the only kind of decoration on what is otherwise a straightforward facade the themes here are strictly Christian uh related to other R romanes portals that we've already seen before us here Christ surrounded by angels and the four evangelists and so then here is a closeup of that image and I bet you could talk for half an hour on what you see right here all the descriptive terminology that you have learned on to how to describe what's going on in this narrative so it's been a about a thousand years since we've seen uh any kind of threedimensional sculpture and this is a a hint that the fact that it can can still exist in some capacities here we are at the U facade the West facade of a cathedral than in Italy this is a marble that's just about life siize and we've got an attrib ution here the artist's name is Benedito anami active then in the last quarter of the 12th century what we've got here is a figure from the Old Testament this is King David who has been placed in a niche so this rounded out con concave structure with the arched top is a niche and the sculpture has been set in it so this is a freestanding sculpture it's not a relief these decor deorations above it are a relief and the decorations in the uh semi-dome here are a relief as well but this is a freestanding sculpture placed inside the niche you notice that he is stiff his arms are close to his body there's no evidence of contraposto here but it is much more realistic and LIF life than anything else that we've seen to date so this way of putting a full scale sculpture into a niche is something that we see here developed in the late Romanesque period and something that's going to really proliferate especially on the exterior of cathedrals around um around portals um in our next unit of study zooming on now to another kind of sculpture that is very unusual because of the material it is made out of this is a clearly a sculpture of the Virgin and child and is made out of wood this would have been polychrome and wood as you know is ephemeral it is eaten by bugs it can deteriorate if it gets wet so the existence of something like this is very unusual a wooden statue at then about 2 and 1/2 ft in height it's known as the Morgan Madonna because it was once owned by the very famous finer J Pont Morgan and so that that name only has to do with a wealthy person who owned it for one period of its provenance the way she is seated is known as the Throne of wisdom the selis sapani or it's a version of the theodose if you will this is a threedimensional Romanesque way of showing the concept of the theodose this is the Son of God sitting in the lap of Mary so she is is the theodus throne in a way the Throne of wisdom virgin and child in her lap Mary's lap is the Throne of Christ we uh there's still a a big resistance to sculpture in the round at this point in time so we're starting to see a few exceptions people were still very focused on that second commandment um of the Ten Commandments about not creating graven images and they wanted to just make really sure that everybody knew that this was not idol worship something like this would have been been created to place on the altar of a pilgrimage Church um perhaps a small Chapel because of its scale so wood is easy to carve it holds paint well and it was very popular at this point of time but ultimately at the end of the day we've got a rigid frontal upright non-moving motionless depiction and when you think at uh think about some of the theodos that we saw even though they were kind of flat in their portrayal you often got a lot of emotional connection between Mary and Christ because of their expression their gaze their gesture and this none of that is present here at all this next really interesting work of art is a reliquary remember these pilgrimage routes we're talking about here this is is located at the very beginning of the pilgrimage routes then in um the region of present day Belgium this is a reliquary of St Alexander Alexander was a pope Pope Alexander II and this was commissioned to contain some of his relics now remember a relic is a possession or a body part of a saint or the holy family now I don't know what kind of part body part or position went into this structure but it's certainly a fabulous thing to study it is only about a foot and a half high and when you realize the detail that went into the creation of something like this you really have to admire the artisan and there was probably a team of work of Artisans this is probably created in a workshop environment this was a commission by the um the abbis of this particular church and so it probably was for private worship although it could have been placed in one of these radiating chapels for a pilgrimage worship as well this form of St Andrew then probably not a true portrait this is an idealized image and it takes a very Roman style it almost looks like Caesar doesn't it with the way that that bronze guilt hair in circles his head almost almost like the hairstyle that you see on a coin uh depict ing Caesar here so this is silver repus a large sheet of silver is hammered from the reverse pushing out the different um parts of the face to create relief showing the eyebrows the eyes the nose the cheeks the mouth Etc you notice it's got these really cool little dragon shaped feet on the bottom that hold it um off the ground but take a look down here the front features three different Saints the back side which you cannot see has allegorical figures so let's zoom in and take a look at these little precious um uh images if you will we've got three different Saints here they are lined up across the bottom of the reliquary they are modeled after Byzantine sources they look just like the different kinds of um Byzantine icons that we were studying uh recently you know very flat conventionalized with these rigid poses but all created through the use of glass enamel technique this is a suspension of powdered glass into a flux likee liquid substance which when heated converts from a uh solid liquid back to a glass solid again and then you see that it's also encrusted with these beautiful Jewels there are pearls in parts of it uh set in as as well and so here is a close-up for you to see the kind of workmanship we're talking about here so here is the enameling it's on copper okay then it is um painted and then over here we've got this piece of um of backing copper that has been heavily engraved with hatching marks and then each one of these little Stones is individually set into a bezel it's sort of a random pattern that looks odd when you're up close but when you look at it from a distance it all kind of Blends in and um and makes a very interesting and unified composition I think this kind of stuff is just about the coolest part of our study process we're going to zoom up to the Holy Roman Empire and take a look at one of the very few famous women from this time period hild theard of this is an image from her own book that she wrote and Illustrated known as the skas here she was from Trier also known as bingan hence her name Hildegard and she was a nun and in this text and images she records her experiences of receiving Visions now receiving Visions is kind of a dicey habit at this point in time because people can mistake these as being a sign of of Witchcraft or evil so hopefully you'll get some more information about Hildegard she's a really an interesting person let's go uh back up to to Britain now to England to see what's going on there in the two-dimensional Arts you know we've talked about the fact that this was a great time of fear and these churches started to took take on this protective fortified look but when you look at some of the forms of two-dimensional art you get the idea that you didn't have to scratch the surface very hard to to to see the fear that people had you Christianity was taking full hold but God was viewed as every bit as vengeful in a way and angry if you did wrong as he could have been merciful so here is a interesting image this is uh Inc and Tempa on Vellum vellum being animal skin showing you the um aversion of hell if you will we've got this composite form of the devil's head and I want to show it to you this way tip it on its side so it's like this is the head of the devil that split into half and this is his open mouth okay referred to in the text as the large hell mouth so these Jaws open uh the devil's Jaws open and inside his mouth you see all these monstrous forms devouring Sinners of all different classes so it doesn't matter if you're a rich person or a poor person if you sin you are likely to be subjected to this notice that all of the evil is contained inside this decorative border and that there is an angel who holds the key to the door okay so there is your direct reference there about man needing a mediator to separate themselves from sin and Badness and here the angel is the is the person who holds the key to that there so this kind of serene and Placid border holding this awful uh form inside uh this is like an analogy of the thick walls of of a Cathedral of the heavy Church door protecting the faithful from the evil that is outside finally I want to talk about one of the most amazing artifacts from all of art history not just from the medieval period we're zooming up to a little town on the coast of modern-day France known as beao and it is just across the harbor um just across the channel from from Hastings here and this is um the course the beo tapestry hopefully somewhere in your uh academic career career you have heard of this some teacher uh blessed you with with information about this fabulous work of art part of the problem is of course it is not a tapestry at all it's really an embroidery but what an embroidery it is it is 230 fet long it is probably the longest continuous narrative in all of art history part of it is missing there's as much as eight uh meters of it that are gone and when you learn the story of what this poor piece of art has been through it's a miracle that any of it even uh exists so who made this uh there were many different stories that came up through the years um but we know for sure that it was not made by some Queen sitting in a turret somewhere it couldn't possibly have been it was made too rapidly and there's indications that it was designed uniformly but executed by multiple people so if you can picture people sitting along this 230 ft length of uh linen you can see that it could have been uh completed more rapidly it's got about 35 different panels of information that you can break it down into and it is recording um the Battle of Hastings in 1066 the the death of King Edward the uh Invasion the the Triumph the tragedy the the death of of different people and and part of the reason that Scholars feel that it couldn't have been done by a female hand is that the battle scenes are really bloody and horrific and they just can't picture a woman embroidering somebody getting decapitated so I don't know if if that's a sexist statement or not but it certainly is interesting this is so complex there is the main narrative in the center and then there are two bands of narrative information that run along the bottom and the top this is a very clear C story there is text included in it in Latin that is very very readable and that's how we know what the different portions say but the borders contain composite fictive animals there's even a few uh nudes humans and when you scroll along far enough here but look at these statistics images of 623 humans 55 dogs 200 horses 41 ships 2,000 Latin words it really gives you an idea of the scope and scale of this work of art and the history of what this thing has been through today it is on display restored in a vertical fashion underneath a hermetically sealed environment which is really important because textiles are very ephemeral and subject to bugs and such it was um commissioned by Bishop Odo in 1077 and it was then hung in on the interior walls of the the Cathedral at beo it was there for almost 300 years just hanging from the walls unbothered um it became interesting again around the 1750s in England where it was referred to uh in a in a um an encyclopedia but there wasn't much more done about it at that time by the 1790s they know that there is Revolution a foot in France and so people know that there possibility that it will be in danger the French Revolution begins the very existence of the Masterpiece is held in the balance but for the actions of one man a guy named La fosier he um saw that the people were leaving the city they were evacuating and they were covering their wagons with cloth they ran out of cloth and remembered that there was a a lot of cloth in the cathedral and they dashed in and can you imagine this thing being cut up and used to cover their wagon top wagon tops well um leoser uh knew it was happening and he grabbed the thing and saved it gave the people some other cloth in order to get away um during the um first world war it was uh removed and hidden during the second world war it was removed and hidden again because of course beo is so close to where that final um invasion in Normandy in uh on D-Day took place so this thing has had a long and storied past as far as uh details in the narrative go there are some really excellent websites there's a link on Smart history uh to a website that will tell you in detail I showed you that fun animated clip that sort of gives you the story line as well for example in the upper uh image here we've got Edward dying in his bed the giving of the Royal Crown to Herold where he is enthroned as king Herold here sitting in the center by the Archbishop of stangland then you notice at the moment that this coordination takes place there are these figures who are pointing up to the sky and it says estraya which is Latin for Star well this wasn't just any Star my friends this was the Haley Comet now you know that the Haley comet is on this regular cyclical schedule and you can do the math and count backwards and realize that Haley's Comet or Hal's Comet really did pass over this part of France during this moment in history

Welcome to our talk about Romanesque art and architecture the second half of our story here just to see if you&#39;re awake up Pop Quiz can you locate the timum the lentil the tro the arch Vols and the jam figures I certainly hope so we are looking at a region of France known as altun on the border of the Holy Roman Empire let&#39;s take a look at this work this is from a church that was begun in 11:20 sometimes these churches are going to have a range of dates like you see here 1120 to 11:35 because they take a long time to build I say just remember the first number don&#39;t worry about the span if when we get to the gothic Cathedrals there&#39;s something unique uh for example the Cathedral at clone took 600 years to build that&#39;s something that you can choose to remember individually but generally the first number is the one that I&#39;m very happy with so this church here a commission by Bishop ettien debage uh consecrated in in about 1132 construction beginning in 11:20 this is a story of uh the last judgment okay so this is um a figure then from the New Testament the central figure in the typon logically is Christ uh but let&#39;s take a look at a detail and see what&#39;s going on more carefully so we&#39;ve got Christ in a modified mandorla and look at the very odd pose that he has it&#39;s not quite a blessing gesture it&#39;s not quite a a orent gesture somewhere in between but what you do notice is that Christ&#39;s head is not only centered in a Halo like structure he&#39;s also emitting rays of light from his head so this is indicating that this is this moment then of of judgment and and uh transition if you will we&#39;ve got um surrounded by these interesting uh elements here on on four sides one two three four sort of composite like creatures here um and then we&#39;ve got the blessed and the damned on either side here so as Christ gives judgment then the Blessed on one side and then the Damned are on the other and then there&#39;s all the folks that are lined up below waiting for this event to happen on the far left we&#39;ve got an angel who&#39;s uh lifting somebody up to to Heaven here so you can can see um that kind of interaction this is a detail of a tium and a portal structure at the Metaline deas uh in modern day France started about 11:20 as well this is a moment of Ascension where Christ&#39;s body is dead and his soul is rising to live with God the Father in Heaven this uh city of aasay is important in the story of the Middle Ages the launching place for three separate sets of Crusades so here we see the image from the New Testament of Christ foretelling the twel apostles that they&#39;re going to receive the power of the Holy Spirit become witnesses to the truth of the gospel and then spread the word throughout the rest of the land again we see Christ in the center and this time he&#39;s got this very interesting kind of a of a turned pose you definitely get this sensation of a body under a garment which is something that we don&#39;t always see notice now that we&#39;ve got a lot more depth in the relief carving in the archal here and here are the apostles that surround him and they too have this kind of odd legs ascan POs to them and we&#39;ve got some scale issues these guys are bigger these guys are smaller and it isn&#39;t like we saw with those pediment structures in ancient Rome where they accommodated the form to fit in the lower portion of the pediment this is nothing quite like that but the infidels are all lined up across the bottom the ones who are not going to make it into heaven um because of their lack of of conversion and so they&#39;re going to be judged harshly in this incident uh moving on to the city of ARL ARL a very famous town in the Post history of postmodern art this is what one of the places that van go and Goan Retreat to but this is uh now in the medieval period far far before that happens can you hear the trash truck outside my window isn&#39;t that elegant all right so the interesting thing here about the uh church at St Tropi is that we&#39;ve got a portal that is now plunging forward it is projecting okay so most of these portals sort of have this cave mouth like feeling like you&#39;re being sucked into the Vortex of the church here this sticks out and in some ways it is reminiscent of a Roman Temple front so remember we&#39;ve got still got lots of Roman influence here hence the name so we&#39;ve got this nice pediment up here a series of concentric archal some with just patterning details some plain some with figures that dip back into space here is our tium our trumo our lentil but we&#39;ve also got these frontal Bays these large blocks of stone that jut out forward to us here this is the church&#39;s Western entrance a projecting portal looking a whole lot like a Roman Arch but other it is attached to the building and it&#39;s the only thing the only kind of decoration on what is otherwise a straightforward facade the themes here are strictly Christian uh related to other R romanes portals that we&#39;ve already seen before us here Christ surrounded by angels and the four evangelists and so then here is a closeup of that image and I bet you could talk for half an hour on what you see right here all the descriptive terminology that you have learned on to how to describe what&#39;s going on in this narrative so it&#39;s been a about a thousand years since we&#39;ve seen uh any kind of threedimensional sculpture and this is a a hint that the fact that it can can still exist in some capacities here we are at the U facade the West facade of a cathedral than in Italy this is a marble that&#39;s just about life siize and we&#39;ve got an attrib ution here the artist&#39;s name is Benedito anami active then in the last quarter of the 12th century what we&#39;ve got here is a figure from the Old Testament this is King David who has been placed in a niche so this rounded out con concave structure with the arched top is a niche and the sculpture has been set in it so this is a freestanding sculpture it&#39;s not a relief these decor deorations above it are a relief and the decorations in the uh semi-dome here are a relief as well but this is a freestanding sculpture placed inside the niche you notice that he is stiff his arms are close to his body there&#39;s no evidence of contraposto here but it is much more realistic and LIF life than anything else that we&#39;ve seen to date so this way of putting a full scale sculpture into a niche is something that we see here developed in the late Romanesque period and something that&#39;s going to really proliferate especially on the exterior of cathedrals around um around portals um in our next unit of study zooming on now to another kind of sculpture that is very unusual because of the material it is made out of this is a clearly a sculpture of the Virgin and child and is made out of wood this would have been polychrome and wood as you know is ephemeral it is eaten by bugs it can deteriorate if it gets wet so the existence of something like this is very unusual a wooden statue at then about 2 and 1/2 ft in height it&#39;s known as the Morgan Madonna because it was once owned by the very famous finer J Pont Morgan and so that that name only has to do with a wealthy person who owned it for one period of its provenance the way she is seated is known as the Throne of wisdom the selis sapani or it&#39;s a version of the theodose if you will this is a threedimensional Romanesque way of showing the concept of the theodose this is the Son of God sitting in the lap of Mary so she is is the theodus throne in a way the Throne of wisdom virgin and child in her lap Mary&#39;s lap is the Throne of Christ we uh there&#39;s still a a big resistance to sculpture in the round at this point in time so we&#39;re starting to see a few exceptions people were still very focused on that second commandment um of the Ten Commandments about not creating graven images and they wanted to just make really sure that everybody knew that this was not idol worship something like this would have been been created to place on the altar of a pilgrimage Church um perhaps a small Chapel because of its scale so wood is easy to carve it holds paint well and it was very popular at this point of time but ultimately at the end of the day we&#39;ve got a rigid frontal upright non-moving motionless depiction and when you think at uh think about some of the theodos that we saw even though they were kind of flat in their portrayal you often got a lot of emotional connection between Mary and Christ because of their expression their gaze their gesture and this none of that is present here at all this next really interesting work of art is a reliquary remember these pilgrimage routes we&#39;re talking about here this is is located at the very beginning of the pilgrimage routes then in um the region of present day Belgium this is a reliquary of St Alexander Alexander was a pope Pope Alexander II and this was commissioned to contain some of his relics now remember a relic is a possession or a body part of a saint or the holy family now I don&#39;t know what kind of part body part or position went into this structure but it&#39;s certainly a fabulous thing to study it is only about a foot and a half high and when you realize the detail that went into the creation of something like this you really have to admire the artisan and there was probably a team of work of Artisans this is probably created in a workshop environment this was a commission by the um the abbis of this particular church and so it probably was for private worship although it could have been placed in one of these radiating chapels for a pilgrimage worship as well this form of St Andrew then probably not a true portrait this is an idealized image and it takes a very Roman style it almost looks like Caesar doesn&#39;t it with the way that that bronze guilt hair in circles his head almost almost like the hairstyle that you see on a coin uh depict ing Caesar here so this is silver repus a large sheet of silver is hammered from the reverse pushing out the different um parts of the face to create relief showing the eyebrows the eyes the nose the cheeks the mouth Etc you notice it&#39;s got these really cool little dragon shaped feet on the bottom that hold it um off the ground but take a look down here the front features three different Saints the back side which you cannot see has allegorical figures so let&#39;s zoom in and take a look at these little precious um uh images if you will we&#39;ve got three different Saints here they are lined up across the bottom of the reliquary they are modeled after Byzantine sources they look just like the different kinds of um Byzantine icons that we were studying uh recently you know very flat conventionalized with these rigid poses but all created through the use of glass enamel technique this is a suspension of powdered glass into a flux likee liquid substance which when heated converts from a uh solid liquid back to a glass solid again and then you see that it&#39;s also encrusted with these beautiful Jewels there are pearls in parts of it uh set in as as well and so here is a close-up for you to see the kind of workmanship we&#39;re talking about here so here is the enameling it&#39;s on copper okay then it is um painted and then over here we&#39;ve got this piece of um of backing copper that has been heavily engraved with hatching marks and then each one of these little Stones is individually set into a bezel it&#39;s sort of a random pattern that looks odd when you&#39;re up close but when you look at it from a distance it all kind of Blends in and um and makes a very interesting and unified composition I think this kind of stuff is just about the coolest part of our study process we&#39;re going to zoom up to the Holy Roman Empire and take a look at one of the very few famous women from this time period hild theard of this is an image from her own book that she wrote and Illustrated known as the skas here she was from Trier also known as bingan hence her name Hildegard and she was a nun and in this text and images she records her experiences of receiving Visions now receiving Visions is kind of a dicey habit at this point in time because people can mistake these as being a sign of of Witchcraft or evil so hopefully you&#39;ll get some more information about Hildegard she&#39;s a really an interesting person let&#39;s go uh back up to to Britain now to England to see what&#39;s going on there in the two-dimensional Arts you know we&#39;ve talked about the fact that this was a great time of fear and these churches started to took take on this protective fortified look but when you look at some of the forms of two-dimensional art you get the idea that you didn&#39;t have to scratch the surface very hard to to to see the fear that people had you Christianity was taking full hold but God was viewed as every bit as vengeful in a way and angry if you did wrong as he could have been merciful so here is a interesting image this is uh Inc and Tempa on Vellum vellum being animal skin showing you the um aversion of hell if you will we&#39;ve got this composite form of the devil&#39;s head and I want to show it to you this way tip it on its side so it&#39;s like this is the head of the devil that split into half and this is his open mouth okay referred to in the text as the large hell mouth so these Jaws open uh the devil&#39;s Jaws open and inside his mouth you see all these monstrous forms devouring Sinners of all different classes so it doesn&#39;t matter if you&#39;re a rich person or a poor person if you sin you are likely to be subjected to this notice that all of the evil is contained inside this decorative border and that there is an angel who holds the key to the door okay so there is your direct reference there about man needing a mediator to separate themselves from sin and Badness and here the angel is the is the person who holds the key to that there so this kind of serene and Placid border holding this awful uh form inside uh this is like an analogy of the thick walls of of a Cathedral of the heavy Church door protecting the faithful from the evil that is outside finally I want to talk about one of the most amazing artifacts from all of art history not just from the medieval period we&#39;re zooming up to a little town on the coast of modern-day France known as beao and it is just across the harbor um just across the channel from from Hastings here and this is um the course the beo tapestry hopefully somewhere in your uh academic career career you have heard of this some teacher uh blessed you with with information about this fabulous work of art part of the problem is of course it is not a tapestry at all it&#39;s really an embroidery but what an embroidery it is it is 230 fet long it is probably the longest continuous narrative in all of art history part of it is missing there&#39;s as much as eight uh meters of it that are gone and when you learn the story of what this poor piece of art has been through it&#39;s a miracle that any of it even uh exists so who made this uh there were many different stories that came up through the years um but we know for sure that it was not made by some Queen sitting in a turret somewhere it couldn&#39;t possibly have been it was made too rapidly and there&#39;s indications that it was designed uniformly but executed by multiple people so if you can picture people sitting along this 230 ft length of uh linen you can see that it could have been uh completed more rapidly it&#39;s got about 35 different panels of information that you can break it down into and it is recording um the Battle of Hastings in 1066 the the death of King Edward the uh Invasion the the Triumph the tragedy the the death of of different people and and part of the reason that Scholars feel that it couldn&#39;t have been done by a female hand is that the battle scenes are really bloody and horrific and they just can&#39;t picture a woman embroidering somebody getting decapitated so I don&#39;t know if if that&#39;s a sexist statement or not but it certainly is interesting this is so complex there is the main narrative in the center and then there are two bands of narrative information that run along the bottom and the top this is a very clear C story there is text included in it in Latin that is very very readable and that&#39;s how we know what the different portions say but the borders contain composite fictive animals there&#39;s even a few uh nudes humans and when you scroll along far enough here but look at these statistics images of 623 humans 55 dogs 200 horses 41 ships 2,000 Latin words it really gives you an idea of the scope and scale of this work of art and the history of what this thing has been through today it is on display restored in a vertical fashion underneath a hermetically sealed environment which is really important because textiles are very ephemeral and subject to bugs and such it was um commissioned by Bishop Odo in 1077 and it was then hung in on the interior walls of the the Cathedral at beo it was there for almost 300 years just hanging from the walls unbothered um it became interesting again around the 1750s in England where it was referred to uh in a in a um an encyclopedia but there wasn&#39;t much more done about it at that time by the 1790s they know that there is Revolution a foot in France and so people know that there possibility that it will be in danger the French Revolution begins the very existence of the Masterpiece is held in the balance but for the actions of one man a guy named La fosier he um saw that the people were leaving the city they were evacuating and they were covering their wagons with cloth they ran out of cloth and remembered that there was a a lot of cloth in the cathedral and they dashed in and can you imagine this thing being cut up and used to cover their wagon top wagon tops well um leoser uh knew it was happening and he grabbed the thing and saved it gave the people some other cloth in order to get away um during the um first world war it was uh removed and hidden during the second world war it was removed and hidden again because of course beo is so close to where that final um invasion in Normandy in uh on D-Day took place so this thing has had a long and storied past as far as uh details in the narrative go there are some really excellent websites there&#39;s a link on Smart history uh to a website that will tell you in detail I showed you that fun animated clip that sort of gives you the story line as well for example in the upper uh image here we&#39;ve got Edward dying in his bed the giving of the Royal Crown to Herold where he is enthroned as king Herold here sitting in the center by the Archbishop of stangland then you notice at the moment that this coordination takes place there are these figures who are pointing up to the sky and it says estraya which is Latin for Star well this wasn&#39;t just any Star my friends this was the Haley Comet now you know that the Haley comet is on this regular cyclical schedule and you can do the math and count backwards and realize that Haley&#39;s Comet or Hal&#39;s Comet really did pass over this part of France during this moment in history

Transcript for:Romanesque Art and Architecture

Transcript for:
Romanesque Art and Architecture