Another wonderful Romanesque altar frontal in MNAC, showing Christ surrounded by the apostles. Dated about 1150, tempera on wood. From a church in the old dicese of Urgell. Heavy linearity and symmetry (look at the feet!) tending - physical details like garments and bodies all become the occasion for abstract patterning, as if the pattern is the reality, and the physical object just a brief configuration as the play of line and colour goes on for ever. This play, or pull, between concrete and abstract gives much of Romanesque art itrs animating tension. I like the tilted heads - impossible not to follow the gaze from side to centre.
Video introduction produced by MNAC:
Short entry on Spain is Culture
Wikipedia entry (note: 'lack of funds' in the description is a mistranslation and should read 'lack of background')
Article: Walter W. S. Cook, 'The Earliest Painted Panels of Catalonia (II)', The Art Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Dec, 1923), pp. 31-60 on JSTOR. Article begins with a detailed account of this frontal, pages 30-32. It's a great example of detailed visual description - how pausing, looking and putting into words what we see leads to a much sharper awareness of what is happening. The eye wants to skim - particularly in a musem where there is so much to see - so sketching or describing like this is an essential discipline for slowing down and focussing.
Some lovely illustrations, and a good section on Geometrical Forms, in MNAC's excellent Guia Visual Art Romanic.
