Stone sculpture
During the Early Middle Ages, little use was found for the highly developed, ancient art of stone sculpture, and the skills needed to craft such pieces became a lost art for a time. It was only during the Romanesque period of the 11th and 12th centuries that this technique once again experienced a renaissance in the form of architectural sculpture, both on the exteriors of church buildings as well as for their interior furnishings. Sculptures were needed to ornament portals, capitals, wall compositions, choir screens, baptismal fonts, sacrament houses and funerary monuments. At first, reliefs were the most commonly used form, and involved the projection of figures from a surrounding flat surface. During Gothic times, stone sculpture continued to be bound to architecture; however, the figures increasingly began to detach themselves from the surrounding surfaces and could, for example, be found standing on consoles in front of columns or in portal recesses. Even though medieval stone sculptures were usually polychrome, only traces of this have survived to the present day, as can be seen from the Tympanum from St. Pantaleon of the relief depicting the Raising of St. Lazarus.
Tympanum from St. Pantaleon: Christ in Majesty between the Virgin Mary and St. John, St. Pantaleon and Archbishop Bruno, Cologne, c. 1150 – 1175, limestone, 109 x 173 x 29 cm, Inv. No. K 118, © Rheinisches Bildarchiv
Siegburg Madonna,
Cologne, third quarter of the 12th cent., limestone, h. 41 cm, inv. no. K 10 a, b, © Rheinisches Bildarchiv
Tympanum Relief from St. Cecilia: Coronation of St. Cecilia between her Bridegroom Valerianus and his Brother Tiburtius, Cologne, c. 1160-1170, limestone, 128 x 236 cm, Inv. No. K 275, © Rheinisches Bildarchiv
Arch Segment with Dragon and Human Head, Cologne, presumably after 1219, limestone, 59 x 25 cm, inv. no. K 125e, © Rheinisches Bildarchiv
