Romanesque Apse

Title

Romanesque Apse

Artist

Sarah Loft

Medium

Photograph - Photograph

Description

This is a photograph of the apse of the Spanish Chapel at the Cloisters Museum in New York City.

Per Wikipedia: The Cloisters is a museum in Upper Manhattan, New York City specializing in European medieval architecture, sculpture and decorative arts, and is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Its early collection was built up by the American sculptor, art dealer and collector George Grey Barnard, and acquired by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in 1925. Rockefeller extended the collection and in 1931 purchased the site at Washington Heights and contracted the design for the Cloisters building.

Per Wikipedia: The Fuentidueña chapel is the museum's largest room, and is entered through a broad oak door flanked by sculptures which include leaping animals. Its centerpiece is the Fuentidueña Apse, a semicircular Romanesque recess built between about 1175 to 1200 at the Saint Joan church at Fuentidueña, Segovia. By the 19th century, the church was long abandoned and in disrepair.

It was acquired by Rockefeller for the Cloisters in 1931, following three decades of complex negotiation and diplomacy between the Spanish church and both countries' art-historical hierarchies and governments. It was eventually exchanged in a deal that involved the transfer of six frescoes from San Baudelio de Berlanga to the Prado, on an equally long-term loan. The structure was disassembled into almost 3,300 mostly sandstone and limestone blocks, each individually cataloged, and shipped to New York in 839 crates.
It was rebuilt at the Cloisters in the late 1940s. It was such a large and complex reconstruction that it required the demolition of the former "Special Exhibition Room". The chapel was opened to the public in 1961, seven years after its installation had begun.

The apse consists of a broad arch leading to a barrel vault, and culminates with a half-dome. The chapel includes, in the dome, a large fresco dating to between 1130–50, from the Spanish Church of Sant Joan de Tredòs. The fresco's colorization resembles a Byzantine mosaic and is dedicated to the ideal of Mary as the mother of God.

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August 26th, 2019

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