The Heritage Alliance is delighted to welcome The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture (CRSBI) as a new member. The CRSBI is a complete online record of all the surviving Romanesque sculpture in Britain and Ireland, at more than 5000 sites.
Launched with British Academy support in 1988, CRSBI is a born-digital project which is using a customised interactive IT system to construct a fully illustrated, searchable, scholarly website of the Romanesque architectural sculpture surviving at over 5000 locations. Now a Charitable Incorporated Organisation [CIO], CRSBI is governed by a distinguished Board of Trustees and supported by a body of invited academic specialists.
CRSBI provides a unique window on the aesthetics, beliefs, daily life, preoccupations, humour and technical skills of the artists and people of this creative and formative era from the late 11th century to the late 12th century.
The work of recording and photography is done by a team of volunteers, all experienced students or scholars of Romanesque sculpture. Each piece is photographed, briefly described or defined, measured where applicable and uploaded to the website, with a brief introduction to the building. All site reports are then checked by an expert editor before publication. Every entry is freely available and includes information on the historical and architectural context of the building, a first-class photographic record, and a scholarly description of the sculpture. The work continues and many sites are already available on its website which is updated regularly. Information on the status of fieldwork is provided in the ‘news’ section on the website.