2010, from Autobiography, in my iPad application Horvatland
My first surprise was to realize that, in contrast to the sculptural heritage of Greece, Egypt, India or Cambodia, the Romanesque masterpieces are not gathered in a few famous shrines, or preserved in some prestigious museum of a capital city. Many of them are to be found in country churches that get hardly a mention in the guidebooks and are rarely visited by tourists. It is true that in a few of the more renowned sanctuaries, like Vézelay or Conques, the coach parks are full and the back streets are lined with souvenir stalls. But elsewhere, as beneath the pink colonnades of the cloister at Elne, or in the half darkness of the crypt at Parize-le-Chatel, I could remain alone with the sculptures for hours at a time. To get access to some of the small churches of Saintonge or Auvergne, I had to borrow the keys from the curate, while, in others, I felt obliged to walk about on tiptoe so as not to disturb the meditation of a monk or the worship of an old woman, prostrated in front of the altar in exactly the same position as the worshippers eight hundred years ago.
1996-1997, Saint-Parize-le-Châtel, Bourbonnais Nivernais, France, detail of carved capital (e)
