Images and montages: the capitals of the Romanesque cloister of Sant Pau del Camp in Barcelona (12th 13th centuries)

Author(s)

Aline Benvegnú dos Santos

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2020-05-04

Examining board members

Maria Cristina Correia Leandro Pereira; Eduardo Henrik Aubert; Mario Henrique Simao D'Agostino; Daniel Jean michel Russo

• Advisor: Maria Cristina Correia Leandro Pereira

Abstract

This thesis aims to analyze the set of sculpted capitals in the cloister of the Benedictine monastery of Sant Pau del Camp, located in the city of Barcelona, probably built between the second half of the 12th century and the beginning of the 13th century. These sculpted images are mostly ornamental, not presenting many iconographic themes, nor forming a narrative cycle. Therefore, and due to the modest dimensions of the monastic building, it was considered by most scholars in Catalan Romanesque art as an inferior examplar of the Catalan late Romanesque, and a sign of decay and transition to the Gothic style. We propose to divert from such concepts - consolidated by the traditional art historiography - in order to search other ways of comprehending the logic of this capitals set inside the cloister and the meanings of the cloister itself in the monastic building, as well as their significance in the city of Barcelona. In this sense, it is imperative to understand, primarily, the social dynamics underway in the society where that building is located, whereas we believe that the sculpted images, more than being the representation of a state of things, have an active function in that community, helping it to represent itself and assert its place in that society. In addition, they build a discourse that is not guided by narrative purposes, but that develops a conception of Christian history with an emphasis on the idea of combat and with a view to the final salvation. We propose, so, to analyze such sculpted images in their semantic and syntactic multiplicities, in their visual heterogeneity and anachronism to understand how this set is not the decay of a style but a montage - or montages - of times, spaces and mediations between the terrain and the heavenly worlds. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 15/12256-5 - Between form and content of images: on circulation and model in Romanesque Catalonia
• Grantee: Aline Benvegnú dos Santos
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate