«If today we found Sant Climent de Taüll, no one would tear off anything, not even an centimeter»

2023-09-13 09:50:50

Last July, a couple of news programs before the summer slumber, researchers from the University of Barcelona (UB) Milagros García and Juan Antonio Olañeta reported on an astonishing find: the discovery in a private collection in Switzerland of fragments of paintings Romanesque murals torn from three churches in the Catalan Pyrenees. Works that had been lost more than 50 years ago and that came with an extra surprise: dthe unpublished fragments, never before documented, which would have been torn from the church of Sant Iscle and Santa Victòria de Surp, in Rialb. A bull and a lion. San Lucas and San Marcos. The haphazard and bumpy journey of Catalan Romanesque, summarized in two pieces that could have ended up adding to the precious stores of The Cloisters that they were sold to the highest bidder after passing through the Basel Art Museum, as it seems to have happened.

Three months after that, the discovery of Olañeta and García will star in one of the conferences of the marathon and very dense congress on Romanesque mural painting that will meet at the MNAC of Barcelona to thirty international experts. The idea, defended by the museum’s director, Pepe Serra, is to take advantage of the singularity of its collection of Romanesque art, unique in terms of complexity, installation and restoration, to open new debates and explore technical, scientific, aesthetic and ethical issues associated with the paintings. An example? “If we found Sant Climent de Taüll today, no one would tear off anything, not even an centimeter,” says Serra.

“The demands for transparency, for social, ethical and moral issues that exist today did not exist when these paintings were recovered,” he adds in relation to the expeditions to the Catalan Pyrenees at the beginning of the 20th century during which the paintings were removed. «The context was different and thanks to the efforts of a group of people we have the paintings here. Otherwise, they would be in the United States or burned in the war,” he adds. Manuel Castiñeiras, Professor of History of Medieval Art at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), former head of the MNAC Romanesque Art Collection and one of the brains of the congress that begins this Wednesday and will last until Friday, September 15.

This paradox involves a series of conferences that will analyze the context of painting taken from a European and Mediterranean context and in which figures of the stature of Giorgio Bonsanti, responsible for the restoration of Fra Angelico’s frescoes in the Florentine convent of San Marco; John Eliades director of the Byzantine Museum of Nicosia; and Elizabeth Bolman, professor at the University of Cleveland and specialist in the wall paintings of the Egyptian monastery of Saint Anthony. «We did not want to hold an art history conference; That is to say, it is not a congress to retrace the history of Romanesque painting in Catalonia. That’s already done. The most interesting thing was talk about the problem of this type of works. that the majority are dismembered works, They are in several museums, several collections,” explains Castiñeiras.

build bridges

Hence, he adds, the need to build bridges and establish complicities. “We have the problem, but Cyprus, Greece, Egypt and Italy also have it, so it was important to share the experience with all these people,” says Serra. Among the topics to be discussed, the incorporation of new fragments to the groups of Taüll, Burgal and Boí; the rescue and protection of the Romanesque mural paintings of the Boí valley; the ‘stacco’ and ‘strappo’ techniques in a museum context; the different cases of mural painting torn off in Maderuelo and Berlanga, Paris, Emmaus, Milan, Rome and Verona…

A complete review with which the MNAC continues with the programming of the ‘More Romanesque’ project, commemorating the centenary of the removal and museumization of the paintings that, in addition to the congress and the reintegration of fragments into the paintings of Sant Climent de Taüll, Sant Pere del Burgal and Sant Joan de Boí, contemplates the opening of a new room with works by the Cabestany master.

There is also a surprise there, since at four marble fragments From the portal of Sant Pere de Rodes that the museum acquired at the end of last year, new pieces that have emerged since then could be incorporated. “As a result of the purchase, you kick it and a Cabestany head comes out,” Serra ironically says. What’s more: the project has grown so much and so much new material has come to light that the new space dedicated to the maestro from Cabestany, whose inauguration was scheduled for the month of November, is delayed until next spring.