pre-Romanesque art

The pre-Romanesque period in European art spans the years from the emergence of the Merovingian kingdom around 500 AD (or from the Carolingian Renaissance in the late-8th century) to the beginning of the Romanesque period in the 11th century. While the term is typically used in English to refer primarily to architecture and monumental sculpture, this article will briefly cover all the arts of the period. The primary theme during this period is the introduction and absorption of classical Mediterranean and Early Christian forms with Germanic ones, which fostered innovative new results. This in turn led to the rise of Romanesque art in the 11th century. In the outline of Medieval art pre-Romanesque was preceded by what is commonly called the Migration Period art of the "barbarian" peoples: Hiberno-Saxon in the British Isles and predominantly Merovingian on the Continent. In most of western Europe, the Roman architectural tradition survived the collapse of the Roman empire. The Franks of the Merovingian polity continued to build large stone buildings like monastery churches and palaces. The unification of the Frankish kingdom under Clovis I (r. 481–511) and his successors corresponded with a period of building churches, and especially monastery churches, as these were now the power-houses of the Merovingian church. Two-hundred monasteries existed south of the Loire when St Columbanus, an Irish missionary, arrived in Europe in 585.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Pre-Romanesque art and architecture”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

pre-Romanesque art is art style of Europe between the fall of Rome and the 11th century, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 7 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶