The church of San Martín stood in the village of Fuentidueña in north-central Spain, a region largely uninhabited, though claimed intermittently by Christian and Muslim forces, from the eighth through the eleventh century. Little is known about the building's history. By the nineteenth century, the apse--a term that most often describes a semicircular space terminating at the east end of a church, where the altar is situated--was the only part of the church surviving in fair condition. In 1957 the Spanish government agreed to lend it permanently to The Cloisters. The apse is covered by a barrel vault and a half-dome, with three small windows piercing the exterior wall. Flanking the window zone are two columns fronted with figures: on the left, Saint Martin, bishop of Tours (ca. 316-397), and on the right, the Annunciate Angel and Mary. Below a triumphal arch are two attached columns whose capitals depict the Adoration of the Magi (left) and Daniel in the Lions' Den (right). To accommodate the reconstructed apse, which comprises 3,300 stone blocks, the former Special Exhibition Room was partially demolished. The new gallery, which opened to the public in 1961, was designed to simulate a single-aisle nave with no projecting transepts, a plan characteristic of twelfth-century Segovian architecture.
