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The Spanish Connection: The Winchester Bible and Spain

Rural Aragon in winter: the view from the Castillo de Loarre. Photograph courtesy of the author.

Rural Aragon in winter: the view from the Castillo de Loarre. Photograph courtesy of the author

It is a common misconception that people living during the Middle Ages rarely traveled. In fact, many did—to go on a pilgrimage, to trade commercial goods, or to forge political ties in far-off lands. Artists also traveled, taking their own styles, techniques, and ideas with them. Yet, because so little information about medieval artists has survived, especially from the earlier Middle Ages, we know little about their itineraries from when they did venture out into the world. The Met's exhibition of the Winchester Bible, however, allows me to highlight one fascinating instance in which we actually can track the movement of a specific workshop of painters from Winchester in southern England to a monastery in Aragon, northern Spain. That's quite a distance to cover!

Evidence of this impressive journey was discovered shortly after World War II by the art historian Otto Pächt. As he perused the pictures of a book on Spanish art, he was immediately struck by the unbelievably strong resemblance between a series of wall paintings at the convent of Santa María de Sigena and several of the initials of the Winchester Bible, a manuscript he knew well. But how on earth could this be?

Santa María de Sigena was founded between 1188 and 1208 by Queen Sancha of Castile, the wife of Alfonso II of Aragon, as a religious house for women of aristocratic families. The convent's complex of buildings includes a chapter house, a space in which the nuns held regular meetings. This was a single room surmounted by a series of wide arches. The walls and spandrels were covered with frescoes depicting Bible stories, while the undersides of the arches displayed portrait-like images of biblical figures. In 1936, a fire badly damaged the paintings, causing their color to fade dramatically, but they were soon removed, restored, and displayed at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. (The gallery recreating the chapter house may be visited virtually through Google Art Project.)

"Portrait" of the Patriarch Joseph, from the chapter house of Santa María de Sigena, 1196-1208. Fresco transferred to canvas. Museu Nacional d’Art, Barcelona. Image Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Patriarch Joseph, from the chapter house of Santa María de Sigena. Paintings from the Chapter House in Sigena: From the Genealogy of Christ according to Luke, from Jannai to Naüm (detail), 1196–1208. Santa María de Sigena, Spain. Fresco transferred to canvas; 12.3 ft. x 27 1/2in. (377.5 x 70 cm). Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Permanent loan from the community of nuns of the Order of Saint John of the monastery of Santa Maria de Sigena, 1940 (068705-005). Photograph courtesy of Bruce White

Pächt carefully compared the Winchester illuminations with the wall paintings and concluded that the resemblance between the English Bible and the Spanish convent was so strong that one of the Winchester artists must have journeyed all the way to Spain with a team of assistants. This was a significant discovery. In addition to providing concrete evidence of how far artists could travel for work, it gave credence to the idea that medieval painters trained to work in a variety of formats and media, from the small-scale tempera paintings of a manuscript to fresco murals.

The primary shared feature that Pächt noted was the paintings' style. The way in which the figures of the wall paintings are rendered bears a strong resemblance to the rendering of those of the Winchester Bible. Of the six artists identified to have worked on the Winchester Bible, Pächt hesitated to identify a specific lead artist, though he seems to have had a preference for the Master of the Morgan Leaf, whose work is currently on view at the Met. Overall, the use of a distinctly Byzantine-inspired style characterizes both the manuscript and the chapter house. In this respect, the Sigena images also exhibit a close relationship to mosaics created by Byzantine artists at the Cathedral of Monreale in Sicily, suggesting that the workshop had also traveled there to view the mosaics firsthand.

Hannah and Elkanah by the Morgan Leaf Master, with under drawing by the Master of the Apocrypha Drawings. Opening of the Book of I Samuel (Book of Kings): Fuit, from the Winchester Bible, folio 88r, ca. 1150–80. Winchester Cathedral Priory of St. Swithun. Tempera and gold leaf on parchment. Lent by the Chapter of Winchester Cathedral. Image Courtesy of the Chapter of Winchester Cathedral

Hannah and Elkanah by the Master of the Morgan Leaf with underdrawing by the Master of the Apocrypha Drawings. The Winchester Bible: Opening for the Book of Genesis: In Principio (5r); Opening for the Book of I Samuel (Book of Kings): Fuit (88r); Opening for the Book of 2 Samuel (Book of Kings): Factum (99v) (detail), ca 1150–80. Made in Winchester, England. Tempera and gold leaf on parchment; 23 9/16 x 16 9/16 x 2 3/8 in. (59.9 x 42.1 x 6.1 cm). Opening: 23 9/16 x 27 1/2 in. (59.9 x 69.9 cm). Lent by the Chapter of Winchester Cathedral

David’s warriors, by the Morgan Leaf Master. Frontispiece for 1 Samuel (?) with Life of David. from the Winchester Bible, folio 148r, ca. 1150–80. Winchester Cathedral Priory of St. Swithun. Tempera and gold leaf on parchment. Lent by the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Image Courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York

David's warriors, by the Master of the Morgan Leaf. The Morgan Leaf, from the Winchester Bible: Frontispiece for 1 Samuel (?) with Life of David (v.) (detail), ca. 1150–80. Made in Winchester, England. Tempera and gold on parchment; 22 15/16 x 15 9/16 in. (58.3 x 39.6 cm). Lent by the J. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York

In addition to style, particular details of many of the Old Testament scenes in Sigena are only seen in the English art of this time period, suggesting the artists' training took place in England. A striking example is the depiction of Cain slaying his brother Abel (Genesis 4:1–16). The type of murder weapon used by Cain is not mentioned in the Bible. Yet, in the picture at Sigena, Cain kills his brother with the jawbone of an ass—an interpretation that first emerged in England and did not spread through the rest of Europe until the later Middle Ages.

Another distinctively English element is a detail, again not derived from the biblical text, which appears among the Sigena frescoes. Directly next to the scene "Moses Receiving the Tablets of the Law," we see a group of geese dangling by their beaks from the branches of a tree. The scene has parallels with bestiaries, a type of book popular during the Middle Ages, describing, among other things, various types of real and imaginary animals. These texts were both didactic and moralizing, and it was not uncommon to find their subjects depicted in religious art. The image from Sigena comes from an English legend about the barnacle goose, which says that the bird did not hatch from an egg, but, in fact, grew on a tree. Outside of Sigena, the only other contemporary examples of this image were found in England, for example in this early thirteenth-century bestiary now in the British Library.

We do not know how or why painters based in southern England ended up decorating the chapter house of a convent in Spain. Most likely, they did not simply fancy a change of climate. Rather, international royal connections may have facilitated their travel in some way since Winchester was the center of the English court and Sigena was founded by a queen of Aragon. Maybe the artists traveled as part of a diplomatic mission. Perhaps their travels also included a visit to Sicily. Whatever route they traveled, the appearance of their work in Spain points to an arduous and perhaps exciting journey across Europe.

The international character of this endeavor was echoed in its twentieth-century rediscovery. Pächt, working out of London at the Warburg Institute, relied on the documentary work of Catalan scholar Josep Gudiol, whose photographs of the chapter house taken before the 1936 fire proved essential to studying Sigena. Incidentally, Gudiol's work also assisted in the installation and study of the early thirteenth-century frescoes from San Pedro de Arlanza now at The Cloisters. As at Sigena, the monumental paintings of this Castilian monastery were removed from their original location (which is also believed to have been a chapter house) and sold to various collections. In this instance, Gudiol's drawings enabled scholars to understand the original appearance of the Arlanza chapter house.



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