Cluny and the Origins of Burgundian Romanesque Sculpture

The role of individual sculptors in creating the ambulatorycapitals in the largest basilica in Christendom at Clunyremains a mystery. The unresolved issue of individual creativityleaves open three important questions about thispowerful abbey which controlled hundreds of monasteriesthroughout Europe in the eleventh century: What was thespecific artistic context - the origin, training and career pathof the major sculptors who worked at the mother churchat the start of construction? What was the relationship, intime and influence, between the focal ambulatory capitalsand similar sculptures at numerous local sites? And whatrole did artists play in determining the form and meaningof Cluny sculptures and related monuments? This booktraces the career of a sculptor who worked on the earliestcapitals in the abbey church at Cluny. It documents hisartistic preferences at previous Burgundian projects, gatheringa variety of evidence intended to be on the one handprecise, complex and subtle, and on the other convincinglyrepetitious. The findings are supported with high-resolutionphotographs taken at telling angles from high laddersand scaffolding. This version of the creative process at themother church, in which the Cluniac brothers picked a localtalent to carry out one of the most important sculpturalcommissions in Europe, differs markedly from the standardone based largely on presumed but undocumentedartistic priorities of the monks. Prevailing theory assumesthe monks had an international perspective when it cameto art as they tried to establish at Cluny a new Rome as thecenterpiece of their monastic empire.