Burgundian Romanesque Style

Burgundian Romanesque style, architectural and sculptural style (c. 1075–c. 1125) that emerged in the duchy of Burgundy in eastern France and marked some of the highest achievements of Romanesque art (q.v.).

The architecture of the Burgundian school arose from the great abbey church at Cluny (the third abbey church built on that site), which was constructed from 1088 to about 1130 and was the largest church built during the European Middle Ages. It represented a huge elaboration of the early Christian basilica plan and served as a close model for the other great Cluniac churches of Burgundy: La Madeleine at Vézelay (c. 1104), Paray-le-Monial (c. 1109), Saulieu (c. 1119), Beaune (c. 1120–40), and Autun (c. 1130–40). Variations of its plan were also adopted for great Romanesque pilgrimage churches built at Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Certain features that appeared at Cluny and at some other Burgundian churches, notably Vézelay—tall proportions, the use of pointed arches in the barrel vaults instead of the rounded arch characteristic of the Romanesque, grouped piers, and embryonic forms of rib vaulting and flying buttresses—constituted some of the basic structural elements of Gothic architecture, without, however, the Gothic aesthetic. The design of these churches does, however, show a certain concern with the expressive effects of height that was to become an essential ingredient of Gothic architecture.

Sculpture of the Burgundian school was produced entirely under the direction of the Cluniac order. Carved in high relief and largely confined to the capitals of columns and to the tympana of the great western doors of churches, the sculpture is among the finest in the history of art. Its subject matter is typically Romanesque—the Last Judgment, the Apocalypse, and other metaphysical subjects. The distinctive characteristic of Burgundian sculpture is its calm, majestic severity, achieved by extreme elongation and angularity, drastic flattening, and hierarchical size of figures and by the swirling lines of endless flattened pleats of drapery. See also Cistercian style.