Romanesque art

the long version

Andreas Petzold examines medieval European art in the broader context of its relationship to the art of Byzantium and Islam, tracing the influences among these cultures through trade and the Crusades. He views Romanesque art in terms of the social structures that organized the medieval world - church, princely court, peasant society - discovering on the way the important role of women as artists and patrons, the complex relationships among religious and secular institutions, and the ways that sculpture, architecture, painting, and other art forms developed in style and technique to express a world no longer Classical but not yet Gothic.