IMC 2018: Sessions

Mainland Europe's connection with Britain and Ireland became arterial during the art-historical period dubbed Romanesque, a pejorative term coined by antiquaries, dismissing the pan-European architectural styles of the 11th and 12th centuries as 'sub-Roman'. Though adumbrated by classical forms, Romanesque architecture was innovative, notably as a matrix for carved ornament. A post-conquest building boom in Britain combined with a shift in liturgical practice to produce a skilled workforce and an increasingly articulated and perforate masonry architecture: columnar and arcuated, its inter-connecting nodes of focal interest- arcades, capitals, imposts, voussoirs, doorways- called for distinctive carved embellishment. What survives, be it figural, foliate or geometric, on buildings and on furniture, ranges from the unsophisticated to the exquisite, the finest rendered with the delicacy of carved ivory and metalwork. The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland (CRSBI) is using interactive digital technology to construct a scholarly database of the stone carving created during the century following the Norman Conquest. Launched with British Academy support, CRSBI, an illustrated online record of the Romanesque sculpture surviving at over 5000 sites, is both searchable and free to use. These papers, by contributors to the database, demonstrate its research potential.