The medieval imagination produced some of the most tender images of Western art as well as the most grotesque. Images of a sainted mother cradling her child existed within the same milieu, if not the same artistic program, as those of a monstrous Hellmouth. This course examines the imaginative, playful, frightening, and sometimes contradictory art and architecture of the Romanesque and Gothic periods in Western Europe, from around the year 1000 to 1500. We will consider and discuss a number of issues relevant across art history—such as the role of the artist, theories of vision and color, marginal art, materiality, and cross-cultural interaction—within a medieval context.