The Fuentidueña Apse (Excerpts), 1957 & 1959

The twelfth-century Romanesque apse at The Met Cloisters comes from the church of San Martín in Fuentidueña, Spain. This short film presents rare footage of the apse at its original site in the Castilian countryside, where dismantling the structure required meticulously numbering and crating each of its nearly 3,300 stone pieces. Reassembly in New York City began in 1958 and was completed in 1961. The Spanish government (and even the Pope) advised on the elaborate agreement: in exchange for a long-term loan of the apse, The Met secured funds to restore a local cemetery and a church in Fuentidueña, and loaned several significant frescoes to the Prado.

As part of The Met’s 150th anniversary in 2020, each month we will release three to four films from the Museum’s extensive moving-image archive, which comprises over 1,500 films, both made and collected by the Museum, from the 1920s onward. This includes rarely seen artist profiles and documentaries, as well as process films about art-making techniques and behind-the-scenes footage of the Museum.

New films every week: https://www.metmuseum.org/150/from-the-vaults

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