The Romanesque Portal as Performance

Romanesque portals are more than simple reflections of biblical, liturgical, paraliturgical or exegetical texts. They are in themselves texts - performative texts. Imageladen portals acted as a stage or backdrop to both liturgical and daily life, and their carvings combined scripturally based and theologically complex rhetoric with vernacular images in ways that affected and modulated the kinaesthetic experience of onlookers. Well-known examples such as Ripoll, Malmesbury, Autun, Moissac, Conques or the portals at the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela are here reconsidered in the light of their performative value - a value that is fundamental to the ontology of Romanesque portals.