This post is based on an exchange with Trish Worth on our post “The Capitals of Conques” last week. She wonders what the original builders would think with the current unpainted versions of their masterpieces. “We find them beautiful, but they probably wouldn’t. But then some of your commenters have said they don’t like the […]
Note: This is a repost of an article we did about two years ago. PJ and I were looking through Facebook and saw pictures of our friends Valérie, Patrick, and their beautiful daughter Zoélie. Valérie’s artwork is spectacular and I only wish that I could post a link to her more recent creations. And I […]
I’ve always been fascinated by the site of the exterior light coming into the church from the old doors and am always on the prowl for these shots. The first one that I shot was at Lavaudieu. The church in this little Auvergnat town was the third we had shot in the day and after […]
During the Romanesque period, the arts were pressed into service by the church as a medium of mass-communication with which to address an ever-increasing but largely illiterate public. The teachings of the church, the hierarchy of society, and the relationship of the church and the secular world provided the subject matter. But that said, how […]
If I were the photographer I wanted to be, would it be Helmar Lerski, whose faces burn into one’s soul with a “harsh and beautiful light”? Would I be Edouard Boubat, who made the ordinary marvelous? Certainly I would have thought that faces would be my subject, looking for the elusive and dangerous soul. But […]
In early October last year, PJ and I returned to Conques for two days. While there, we saw something that took us back to the origins of this great pilgrimage church. In the late morning, I was photographing the tympanum over the west portal. This sculpture has the same subject as many similar works, the […]
The hundreds of posts on this blog should convince even the most casual reader of the creative genius displayed by the Romanesque builders. The buildings themselves, the sculptural and painted adornments, their positions in towns and in the country all attest to a fervor both religious and creative. Even the spatial orientation was important, almost […]
“Stillness crieth out that something Great is nigh.” We seek connections every day, among our family, our friends, our colleagues, and sometimes even complete strangers. We seek connection with each other, and with life itself. We are surrounded with the tools of connection more now than ever before. The web, email, cell phones, texting, Twitter, […]
The Rue de la Ferronnerie is a small, two-block long street in Paris on the right bank, less than a quarter of a mile southeast of the Église Saint-Eustache. On that street on May 13, 1610, François Ravaillac of Angoulême committed tyrannicide. A fervent Catholic, he confessed himself and received from a monk a small […]
After the fifth century collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, Europe was assailed by a series of invasions from Germanic tribes. Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Huns, and Franks swept into what is now Italy, France, and Spain. These invasions were actually migrations of entire peoples and they settled in the conquered lands, adopting local […]
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