Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

The Metropolitan Museum of Art


    • Lion from a Frieze, after 1200
    Spanish; Made in Burgos, Castile-León
    Fresco, mounted on canvas

    7 x 11 ft. (226.1 x 335.3 cm)
    The Cloisters Collection, 1931 (31.38.1a)

    This fresco depicting a lion with the face of a mustached man once adorned the walls of the chapter house of the monastery at San Pedro de Arlanza in northern Spain. It and a second lion flanked the entrance of a large room—34 feet square with 12-foot ceilings—covered from floor to ceiling with paintings. The color scheme and background composition of the frescoes link it to Spanish manuscript illuminations of the time, such as the Cloisters' illustrated commentary on the Apocalypse by Beatus of Lièbana (1991.232.3).

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    This work has been published in the Museum's Bulletin or Journal. These articles may or may not represent the most current scholarship.
  • "Medieval Monuments at the Cloisters As They Were and As They Are." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 30, no. 4 (February–March, 1972).
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  • Lion from a Frieze, after 1200
    Spanish; Made in Burgos, Castile-León
    Fresco, mounted on canvas

    7 x 11 ft. (226.1 x 335.3 cm)
    The Cloisters Collection, 1931 (31.38.1a)