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churches with frescoes depicting biblical events, and even the most remote
Pyrenean valleys could boast lavish masterpieces. However, by the nineteenth
century many of these churches had either been ruined by later renovations or
lay abandoned, prone to theft and damage. Not until 1919 was a concerted
effort made to remove the frescoes to the museum, where they could be better
preserved and displayed.
Six remarkable sections present the
frescoes
in a reconstruction of their
original setting, so you can see their size and where they would have been
placed in the church buildings. Full explanatory notes (in English) cover the
artistic techniques, interpretation and iconography of the paintings, which for
the most part have a vibrant, raw quality, best exemplified by those taken from
churches in the Boí valley in the Catalan Pyrenees. In the apse of the early
twelfth-century church of Sant Climent in Taüll, the so-called
Master of
Taüll
painted an extraordinarily powerful
Christ in Majesty
, combining a
Byzantine hierarchical composition with the imposing colours and strong
outlines of contemporary manuscript illuminators. Look out for details such as
the leper, to the left of the Sant Climent altar, patiently allowing a dog to lick
his sores. Frescoes from other churches explore a variety of themes, from
heaven to hell, with the displays complemented by sculptures, altar panels,
woodcarvings, religious objects and furniture retrieved from the mouldering
churches themselves.
The Gothic collection
The evolution from the Romanesque to the Gothic period was marked by a
move from murals to painting on wood, and by the depiction of more natural-
istic figures in scenes showing the lives of the saints, and later in portraits of
kings and patrons of the arts. In the early part of the period, the Catalan and
Valencian schools particularly were influenced by contemporary Italian styles,
and you’ll see some outstanding altarpieces, tombs and church decoration. Later
began the International Gothic or “1400” style in which the influences became
more widespread; the important figures of this movement were the fifteenth-
century artists
Jaume Huguet
and
Lluís Dalmau
.Works from the end of this
period show the strong influence of contemporary Flemish painting, in the use
of denser colours, the depiction of crowd scenes and a concern for perspective.
The last Catalan artist of note here is the so-called
Master of La Seu d’Urgell
,
represented by a number of works, including a fine series of six paintings
(Christ, theVirgin Mary, Saints Peter, Paul and Sebastian, and Mary Magdalene)
that once formed the covers of an organ.
The Renaissance and Baroque collections
Many of the
Renaissance
and
Baroque
works on display have come from
private collections bequeathed to the museum, notably by conservative politi-
cian Francesc Cambó and Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza. Selections from these
bequests rate their own rooms in the Renaissance and Baroque galleries, while
other rooms here trace artistic development from the early sixteenth to the
eighteenth century.Major European artists displayed include Peter Paul Rubens,
Giovanni BattistaTiepolo, Jean Honoré Fragonard, Francisco de Goya, El Greco,
Francisco de Zurbarán and Diego Velázquez, though the museum is of course
keen to play up Catalan works of the period, which largely absorbed the
prevailing European influences – thus Barcelona artist
Antoni Viladomat
(1678–1755), whose twenty paintings of St Francis, executed for a monastery,
MONTJUÏC
|
Museu Nacional
d’Art de Catalunya