Romanesque art is the art of Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 12th century, or later depending on region. The preceding period is known as the Pre-Romanesque period. The term was invented by 19th-century art historians, especially for Romanesque architecture, which retained many basic features of Roman architectural style – most notably round-headed arches, but also barrel vaults, apses, and acanthus-leaf decoration – but had also developed many very different characteristics.

In southern France, Spain, and Italy there was an architectural continuity with the Late Antique, but the Romanesque style was the first style to spread across the whole of Catholic Europe, from Sicily to Scandinavia. Romanesque art was also greatly influenced by Byzantine art, especially in painting, and by the anti-classical energy of the decoration of the Insular art of the British Isles. From these elements was forged a highly innovative and coherent style.

Outside Romanesque architecture, the art of the period was characterised by a vigorous style in both sculpture and painting. The latter continued to follow essentially Byzantine iconographic models for the most common subjects in churches, which remained Christ in Majesty, the Last Judgment, and scenes from the life of Christ. In illuminated manuscripts more originality is seen, as new scenes needed to be depicted. The most lavishly decorated manuscripts of this period were bibles and psalters. The same originality applied to the capitals of columns, which were often carved with complete scenes with several figures. The large wooden crucifix was a German innovation at the very start of the period, as were free-standing statues of the enthroned Madonna. High relief was the dominant sculptural mode of the period.

Colours were very striking, and mostly primary. Presently, these colours can typically only be seen in their original vividness in samples of stained glass and well-preserved manuscripts. Stained glass became widely used, although few survive today.^{[citation needed]} In an invention of the period, the tympanums of important church portals were carved with monumental schemes, often Christ in Majesty or the Last Judgement, but treated with more freedom than painted versions, as there were no equivalent Byzantine models.

Compositions usually had little depth and needed to be flexible to be fit into the shapes of historiated initials, column capitals, and church tympanums; the tension between a tightly enclosing frame, from which the composition sometimes escapes, is a recurrent theme in Romanesque art. Figures often varied in size in relation to their importance. Landscape backgrounds, if employed at all, were closer to abstract decorations than realism – as in the trees in the "Morgan Leaf". Portraiture hardly existed.^{[citation needed]}

During this period, Europe grew steadily more prosperous, and art of the highest quality was no longer confined, as it largely was in the Carolingian and Ottonian periods, to the royal court and a small circle of monasteries. Monasteries continued to be extremely important, especially those of the expansionist new orders of the period, the Cistercian, Cluniac, and Carthusian, which spread across Europe. But city churches, those on pilgrimage routes, and many churches in small towns and villages were elaborately decorated to a very high standard – these are often the structures to have survived, when cathedrals and city churches have been rebuilt. No Romanesque royal palace has really survived.

The lay artist was becoming a valued figure – Nicholas of Verdun seems to have been known across the continent. Most masons and goldsmiths were now lay, and lay painters such as Master Hugo seem to have been in the majority, at least of those doing the best work, by the end of the period. The iconography of their church work was no doubt arrived at in consultation with clerical advisors.

Precious objects in these media had a very high status in the period, probably much more so than paintings – the names of more makers of these objects are known than those of contemporary painters, illuminators or architect-masons. Metalwork, including decoration in enamel, became very sophisticated. Many spectacular shrines made to hold relics have survived, of which the best known is the Shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne Cathedral by Nicholas of Verdun and others (c. 1180–1225). The Stavelot Triptych and Reliquary of St. Maurus are other examples of Mosan enamelwork. Large reliquaries and altar frontals were built around a wooden frame, but smaller caskets were all metal and enamel. A few secular pieces, such as mirror cases, jewellery and clasps have survived, but these no doubt under-represent the amount of fine metalwork owned by the nobility.