Ceiling

This wooden ceiling, made in the medieval Kingdom of Castile (modern-day central Spain), is decorated with animated scenes depicting hunts, riders, groups of animals, floral and vegetal décor, and coats of arms. Known in Spanish as an alfarje, the ceiling is composed of several elements: three master beams, transverse beams with double panels between them, and six corbels (the wall brackets supporting the master beams). The most prominent and visible features of the ceiling are the two long panels composed of pine boards, placed just below the ceiling beams, which span the length of each wall of the gallery. While all elements of the ceiling are painted, only the lower register of this double band is adorned with figural imagery. On this band, the alternation of coats of arms with a repeating group of four lively tableaux produces a rhythmic cadence of hunting scenes around the perimeter of the room. The artist chose to portray each scene within a simple yet fantastic wild landscape. The rocky formations that appear in each section, combined with the unusual trees and plants that frame the human and animal characters, create a delightful and ethereal environment made even stranger by the unnaturally limited color palate. The first scene depicts a crowned rider on a white horse triumphantly holding up a sword. The second shows a rider in red and green robes, also on a white horse, with a bow and arrow which he points at a lion crouching behind a tree. The third represents two birds and a fox or wolf staring at a hare attempting to climb a tree trunk, and the fourth scene finds a pair of hounds in pursuit of a large, blue-winged goose.

Two coats of arms alternately separate each scene along the lower band of the frieze. The first represents a bull on a red field supported by two winged cherubs, while the other displays a golden castle on a blue field supported by two beasts. The coats of arms have not been identified, but the device of a castle with three towers is a variation on the royal arms of the Kingdom of Castile and a common heraldic motif in the region of central Spain, where this ceiling was originally installed.

The colors that dominate the panels are blue, red, dark green, ochre, and brown; black and white are used around the perimeter of each vignette. While the ceiling has suffered from some repainting, the palette is consistent with and typical of Spanish ceilings of the period. The beams are covered in dense floral ornamentation, scrolls and ribbons, and these wrap around the animal and hunting scenes as well. The painted elements, including the intricate floral and vegetal designs covering the beams, the winged angels holding up the coats of arms, and the color scheme are reminiscent of a nearby ceiling at the Convent of Santa Fe in Toledo from the same period, around 1500.

As a broader category, decorated wooden ceilings—painted or not—were a staple of the architectural legacy of al-Andalus, the name given to Muslim-ruled Iberia, which endured from the eighth through fifteenth centuries. By the time this ceiling was produced, Castile had long been a Christian territory. However, Muslim craftsmen active in Castile sometimes worked for Christian patrons, and the inheritance of centuries of Islamic artistic tradition can be seen in the technical and decorative aspects of most artistic production in Spain. Each scene on the frieze, for instance, is surrounded by a black frame in the shape of a polylobed arch ornamented with elongated white pearls. This decorative element can be traced back to other monumental medieval ceilings and is not limited to painting. In fact these arches, which are similar to polylobed arches seen in Andalusi architecture, were also such a common component of Eastern Mediterranean ornament (especially under the Islamic Abbasid dynasty, 750-1258) that it is impossible to locate the motif to a single point of origin. The religious identity of the craftspeople who produced this ceiling is unknown, but regardless of their religious affiliation, the rich history of Muslim Spain should not be ignored in seeking to understand the decorative choices made by artisans and patrons.

Hunting— one of the primary subjects depicted on this type of painted ceiling— was an elite and exclusive passion of a growing noble class of Spaniards. Hunting scenes are often associated with a wider interest in hunting as a privileged social performance and the literary topos of the metaphorical hunt of a lover chasing their beloved. However, the hunts displayed here may be more closely related to a different literary tradition replete with hunting metaphors and motifs which gained popularity in the late Middle Ages. Stemming from a long tradition of bestiaries and fables, these stories appealed to a wide audience and involved anthropomorphic animals tracing a moralizing lesson, but they were also full of humor, antics, and adventures. The medieval tales of Roman de Renart, for example, had a fox protagonist often entangled in rivalry with his wolf antagonist. The Libro de los Gatos (Book of Cats) and the Fables of Aesop included popular tales that scholars have identified on the painted ceiling panels of Teruel Cathedral and the monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos in the province of Burgos, both from the fourteenth century. While it may be difficult to establish direct correlations with specific scenes from these fables on the Illescas frieze, it does seem likely that an audience familiar with hunting would be able to not only identify the fervor of the hunt within its world, but also discern underlying themes dealing with human and animal characters involved in metaphorical, moralistic, and spiritual hunts.

This ceiling likely decorated a royal palace in the town of Illescas (Palacio Real de Illescas), once an important royal center, near the Spanish city of Toledo. The palace may have even been the site where in 1525-26, after the battle of Pavia, the Hapsburg emperor Charles V held then-king of France, Francis I, hostage. Some sources claim this ceiling was in the very room where the French monarch was held captive (Champollion-Figeac 1847, 330). While impossible to substantiate, the story has been repeated since at least the nineteenth century and reiterated when the owner of the building sold the ceiling to a dealer in Madrid in 1928. The ceiling then sold to German antiquarian Adolph Loewi, who owned this and at least two other similar examples in Venice before the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired it in 1929. After a period on display at the Museum’s Fifth Avenue Building, it was installed at The Cloisters in a room built to accommodate it (Gallery 19, previously called the Spanish Room and today known as the Merode room). It has resided there since 1936. In its current context, this work is a singular example of late medieval domestic architectural ornamentation.

The history of how dozens of these fascinating structures ended up in American collections is complicated. William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951), an American business magnate and media mogul, amassed more of these architectural ensembles than any other single collector during the first decades of the twentieth century. Throughout the 1920s, 1930s, and into the 1940s, Hearst built a mammoth private estate in San Simeon, California, which he referred to as La Cuesta Encantada, or Enchanted Hill (known today as Hearst Castle). He purchased over one hundred ceilings for this extraordinary artistic and architectural undertaking—the majority of which were Spanish. Supplied in large part by the dealer Arthur Byne and his wife, Mildred Stapley Byne, these ceilings were installed under the supervision of architect Julia Morgan in dozens of rooms. In fact, one of the ceilings Hearst purchased but never installed in his home, entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection in 1956: this sixteenth-century example sold to Hearst via Arthur Byne (acc. no. 56.234.35) is now on display at The Met in Gallery 495 in the Department of Islamic Art. While the Illescas ceiling was not a part of Hearst’s collection, it testifies to the broader popularity of this specific and unusual collecting interest at a particular moment in time.

Further Reading:

Luis Araus Ballesteros, "An Interconnected World: Mudéjar Artisans and the Aristocracy in 15th-Century Castile," in Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe: Cultural Negotiations and Artistic Translations in the Middle Ages and 19th-Century Historicism. Ed Giese Francine. Leiden: Brill, 2021.

Bernard Bevan,"Early Mudéjar Woodwork." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 57, no. 333 (1930): pp. 271–78.

Jody G. Brotherston, Arthur Byne's Diplomatic Legacy: The Architect Author and Entrepreneur in Spain. Second Edition. United States of America: Lope De Vega Press, 2023.

Ana Carrasson Lopez de Latona, "Nuevas aportaciones sobre la pintura del alfarje mudejar del Monasterio de Santo Domingo de Silos (Burgos)," Patrimonio cultural de EspanÞa 1 (2009): pp. 291-302.

Daniela Cecutti, "Adolph Loewi e Il Commercio Di Tappeti Orientali a Venezia Fra Otto e Novecento." MDCCC 1800 1, no. 1 (July 1, 2012).

Aimeì Louis Champollion-Figeac, Captiviteì Du Roi François Ier. Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1847.

Diego Loìpez de Arenas and Ma Angeles Toajas Roger. Breve Compendio De La Carpinteriìa De Lo Blanco Y Tratado De Alarifes: Sevilla, 1633. Madrid: Visor Libros, 1997.

Isabel Mateo Gómez, "El Artesonado del monsterio de Silos." Congreso Internacional sobre la Abadiìa de Santo Domingo de Silos Loìpez Santidrian Saturnino and Fernaìndez Floìrez Joseì Antonio, ed. 2003.Silos Un Milenio: Actas Del Congreso Internacional Sobre La Abadiìa De Santo Domingo De Silos. Burgos: Universidad de Burgos-Abadiìa de Silos: pp. 255-296.

Antonio Naval Mas, Arte De Aragoìn Emigrado En Coleccionismo USA (Siglos Xii-Xvi). Huesca, Spain: Prames, 2015.

James J. Rorimer, The Cloisters the Building and the Collection of Mediaeval Art in Fort Tyron Park. New York: George Grady Press, 1938.

Batyah Shtrum, Melanie Brussat, Miguel Garcia, Timothy Hayes, and Stephanie Massaux. "The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s ‘Spanish Ceiling’ Project: Interpretation and Conservation."　Journal of Architectural Conservation　16, no. 3 (November 2010): pp. 29–50.

Maria del Mar Valls, "The painted ceiling of Santa Maria de Llíria and its dancing images," Early Music Vol. 47 No. 1 (2019): pp. 25-40.


Catalogue entry by Cristina Aldrich, Mari a and Jan Vilcek Curatorial Fellow, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, 2022-2023

　

[ Adolph Loewi, Inc. American, Venice (sold 1929)]

Rorimer, James J. "Reports of the Departments." Annual Report of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 69 (1938). p. 25.

Lief, Zola. "The Cloisters." The Compleat Collector 3, no. 7 (May 1943). p. 4.