The Cistercian Order has sometimes been unfairly disparaged as hostile to art, or as embracing an aesthetic so profoundly plain that the interiors of their monasteries would have seemed oases of visual repose, free from distracting artistic ornament. The legislation promulgated by many of the earliest generations of Cistercians, and the shells of surviving Cistercian abbeys, might reinforce this impression. Nonetheless, despite legislative prohibitions against colourful, figurative decorations in glass, manuscripts or sculpture which were enacted by the middle of the twelfth century, Cistercian monks lived and worshipped in a visually lush environment. Their churches, typically emptied of original furniture, windows and pavements after the Reformation or the French Revolution, would once have been carpeted with patterned tiles and the windows filled with decorative glass. Their liturgical readings were furnished by colourful illuminated manuscripts, the texts of which were highlighted with giant painted initials, and their charters were guaranteed with delicately wrought figurative seals. Monasteries sometimes received manuscripts enhanced with complex painted figural scenes from wealthy non-Cistercian patrons, or noble postulants to the Order. Furthermore, by two centuries after the Order’s foundation, enthusiasm for strict aesthetic asceticism had waned in many houses, where monks and nuns installed elaborate representational stained-glass panels, embroidered lavish figurative vestments and commissioned luxurious liturgical manuscripts for personal use. Thus while the Cistercians’ artistic legislation may have set the Order apart from the mainstream, by and large the art which characterised it did not.

As with Cistercian architecture, Cistercian art is typified by a certain degree of uniformity engendered by the Order’s well-developed bureaucracy, the lively exchange of monks, manuscripts and correspondence between houses and the artistic legislation intended to delimit some artistic production. Yet from the earliest days of the Order, the pioneer monks of Cîteaux embraced the artistic models provided by their local environment and the aesthetic heritage of the individual monks attracted to its houses from all over Europe. They also, by choice or necessity, bought and were given artworks made by artists who were not Cistercians. Both phenomena led to such artistic diversity that it is difficult to identify a ‘Cistercian’ type or style of art.