A Companion to Medieval Art by Conrad Rudolph

Author:Conrad Rudolph
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2011-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

Phase IV, The Age of Modernism

Even though his work belongs largely to the third phase, the influence of Meyer Schapiro is felt most in this final phase with the legacy that he was to impart with his publications and through his many students. Beginning in 1935 with a study on Moissac, Forsyth has summarized Schapiro’s approach as being very much based on the belief that form and meaning were inseparable.46 He lacks many of the entrenched views prior to the outbreak of World War II.47 Both world wars were adversely to affect scholarship on Romanesque sculpture, especially in Europe, but also with positive results for its future study in America where interest increased. France was naturally to retain its pre-eminent role in scholarship on the subject after World War II, and was also to hold onto its slightly entrenched Franco-centric view. The focus once again was the ongoing issue of the origins of the style, and numerous studies both reinforced the belief of a French genesis and its gradual movement throughout the rest of the country.

This was also a period of controversy in France with various official and unofficial theories forwarded as to the origins of monumental sculpture in terms of place and dispersal, with Francis Salet, head of the Société française d’archéologie, playing a central role.48 Despite the series of disputes and controversies, Lyman has documented how this was a period in which Romanesque sculpture entered popular acceptance and was no longer under the sole control of the scholar.49 It was also at this time that a number of studies began to use the socio-historical approach that was first developed in relation to history by such scholars as Georges Duby. The need and value of having a complete documentary and photographic record of all Romanesque sculpture was first proposed by Focillon and its aims remain as valid today as when they were first stated well over half a century ago. The publication in 1954 by Jean Baudry of the first volume in a regional survey of French Romanesque sculpture titled Bourgogne Romane began one of the foremost surveys of this subject, which has since moved outside its national borders with the publication in 1999 of volume 88 on Westphalia. It has paved the way for a similar series of hardcopy publications in the United States50 and the more recent large-scale electronic undertaking in Britain of the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland which was founded by George Zarnecki some 20 years ago. All of these undertakings are adding significantly to our understanding of this sculpture and in many ways continue the role of the antiquarian started some 300 years ago.

More recent French research by scholars such as Baylé, Boss-Favre, Cabanot, Durliat, Fain, Gould, Vergnolle, and Wirth has focused on the general as well as the regional nature of the sculpture and is now being driven from a greater understanding of what exactly has survived and how it can be viewed in relation to the broader picture.51 These

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