This volume helps us understand and even experience the manifold aspects of Romanesque artistic composition.

The nineteen papers collected in this volume explore a notable phenomenon, that of retrospection in the art and architecture of Romanesque Europe. They arise from a conference organized by the British Archaeological Association in 2010, and reflect its interest in how and why the past manifested itself in the visual culture of the 11th and 12th centuries. This took many forms, from the casual re-use of ancient material to a specific desire to re-present or emulate earlier objects and buildings. Central to it is a concern for the revival of Roman and early medieval forms, spolia, selective quotation, archaism and the construction of histories. The individual essays presented here cover a wide range of topics and media: the significance of consecration ceremonies in the creation of architectural memory, the rise of pictorial concepts in 12th-century chronicles, the creation of history in the Paris of Hugh of St-Victor, and the appeal of the works of Bernward of Hildesheim and of Hrabanus Maurus in the centuries after their deaths. There are studies of buildings and the ideological purpose behind them at Tarragona, Ripoll, Cluny, Pannonhalma (Hungary), La Roccelletta (Calabria), and Old St Peter's, comparative studies of Trier, Villenauxe and Glastonbury, and of Bury St Edmunds, Rievaulx and Canterbury, and wide-ranging papers on the tantalizing evidence for an engagement with an overseas past in Ireland, an Anglo-Saxon past in England, and a Milanese past among the aisleless cruciform churches of Augustinian Europe. The volume concludes with an assessment of the very concept of Romanesque.

In the renaissance also architecture from c. 800–1200 was regarded as a useful source of inspiration for contemporary building, sometimes by misinterpreting these medieval architecture as roman structures, sometimes because that era was also regarded as a glorious ‘ancient’ past.

This book was inspired by the records made by Carolyn Heighway during the thirty years when she was archaeological consultant at Gloucester Cathedral. The survival of so much of the abbey of 1089 is remarkable, and often not appreciated by the casual visitor since it is ingeniously overlaid by Gothic alterations. Since 2000, surveys have been produced which enable accurate plans and elevations to be made which clarify the late 11th and early 12th century appearance of the building; deductions have also been made from archaeological observations. Since there are almost no documents for the abbey before the 15th century which relate to construction matters, the building itself is primary evidence, and archaeology is an important element. The book is lavishly illustrated with photographs, plans and measured drawings including accurate reconstructions; comparative scale plans of Worcester and Tewkesbury are also included. The late 11th-12th century church is described in detail, along with the surviving claustral buildings. There is a chapter on polychromy and on the surviving 11th-12th century sculpture, and a full bibliography. The whole is set in context by Malcolm Thurlby, who comments on the wider sources and associations.