Abstract Nineteenth-century readings of ornamental plenitude as an expression of “fear of emptiness” dismiss the style as a naïve rhetorical mannerism devoid of meaning. In contrast, in this article I introduce the dense ornamental systems of Romanesque sculptural programs and the later Gothic development as deeply embedded in the theological conceptualizations of creation out of nothing—an active opposition to privation through an infinite creative plenitude that bridges the gap between nothing and something. This conceptual framework rehabilitates the term “horror vacui” by positing ornamentation as a signification of ex nihilo in aliquid, serving as an interpretive lens that underpins the establishment of a creationist culture and worldview by the Church. Reconsidering the relation between conceptual and aesthetic innovations sheds new light on the architectural revolution of the twelfth–thirteenth centuries, when the most characteristic feature of Romanesque fullness, namely, horror vacui, shifted to Gothic expansion, namely, amor infiniti. This reading offers a contribution to a better understanding of ornamental plenitude as an agency for the perceptual inversion that facilitated theophany.
Danielle Omessi Moisa (Wed,) studied this question.