French Romanesque Art

Emerging from the long dark age of savagery which followed the collapse of the Roman empire, the Christian Church began once more to assert herself. Craftsmen of the eleventh and twelfth centuries covered France with what one of them called `the white ornament of churches.' Since the most impressive buildings still standing were Roman, it was natural that they should follow the Roman pattern, at least in their earlier works - hence the name, Romanesque. The people who turned to the Church for a message of hope had no access to books; they learned the great stories of sacred history from the stone statuary and symbolic carvings that adorned the churches - here, Jonah stepping from the whale's jaws, there, an angel dragging Adam out of Eden by his beard. A superbly filmed account of some of the finest Romanesque sculpture and architecture in France.

© 1998-2008 The Roland Collection & Pira Intl.