According to an 11th-century chronicler, Europe was clothing itself in a “white mantle of churches”. This expression conveys the intense architectural and, more broadly, artistic activity being carried out in the Western world, and particularly France, from the middle of the 10th century. Steeped in the work of their Carolingian predecessors, as well as those from Antiquity, creators for over two centuries explored new avenues, now referred to by the generic term of Roman art.