L’écriture dans l’image peinte romane: Questions de méthode et perspectives

This article reviews the place and the function of the epigraphic in Romanesque wall painting. Through a historiographical balance, we envisage at first the partial and limited treatment to which the historians of art have submitted the medieval inscription in the painted image and the numerous gaps in the definition of the status and the role of the monumental writing. The question of the manuscript titulus and its application in the decoration of the church shows how rich and complex were written practices in connection with images, and inserts the research on painted inscriptions in the field of the most recent works about relations between text and image. This large-scale research needs the support of numerous case studies; the analysis of inscriptions can that way take an essential position (through editing, restoring, and placing in archaeological and iconographic context) and enter into a broad reflection on medieval graphic practices. This article presents, in the form of prolegomena and methodological orientation, the major principles of this reflection.