Title

Camel. Mural painting from San Baudelio de Berlanga (Soria)

Generic classification

Object

Century

Cultural context / style

Dimensions

Material

Technique

Iconography / Theme

Provenance

Current location

Inventory Number in Current Collection

Object history

‘Our astonishment on entering the interior was very great...’ is how Manuel Aníbal Álvarez and José Ramón Mélida illustrated their surprise at seeing the mural ensemble of the hermitage of San Baudelio de Berlanga in an article published in 1907. A unique artistic treasure - discovered by Teodoro Ramírez, a member of the Numancia Excavations Commission - of which Elías Romera had already made an initial description. Located in the village of Casillas de Berlanga, the building had a sober exterior, but its interior offered visitors one of the finest examples of Romanesque mural painting in Europe, linked to an absolutely original architectural structure. In addition to wondering how such an exceptional ensemble could have gone unnoticed until then, these historians undertook a joint study of the building and its paintings with the aim of having it protected as a national monument (Mélida and Álvarez, 1907, pp. 144-155). This declaration took place a few years later, by Royal Order of 24/8/1917, published in the Gaceta de Madrid on 27/8/1917.

That call to attention to the richness of the mural ensemble, and the extensive photographic repertoire that accompanied the 1907 article, aroused the interest not only of historians but also of collectors and art dealers. In the summer of 1922 the alarm was raised: attempts to rob the hermitage were being made. Strange movements that had taken place around the monument were denounced, which sparked a lively controversy in the press, and a complaint that led to a lengthy case being brought before the courts of justice. The residents of Casillas de Berlanga, owners of the estate on which the chapel stood, had sold the group of paintings to the Italian merchant Leon Levi for 50,000 pesetas; they were advised in the transaction by Francisco Marina Encabo, the land registrar of Almazán (Soria). The operations of taking off and removing the paintings were carried out clandestinely, but when the Guardia Civil of Berlanga warned them, the operation was stopped and the paintings seized until the complaint was resolved and the operation resolved in court.

From the outset, the Provincial Monuments Commission of Soria aroused the interest of its representatives in the Cortes, the academicians of the Royal Academies of Fine Arts of San Fernando and History, as well as the Directorate General of Fine Arts, in order to prevent the removal of the paintings. The art historian and senator Elías Tormo denounced the events before the Senate on 21 July 1922: ‘...Mr. Levi, who is already well known in the art world, was the one who stole the paintings. Levi, who is already known in many great stories, in many regrettable stories of the depreciation of art treasures in Spain, because he is the same man who, with a carte blanche from Emperor Frederick, a carte blanche which he estimated at nearly a million francs, acquired the famous and splendid Monforte altarpiece, which is today one of the glories of the Berlin Museum’ (Santonja, 2005). For its part, the local and national press tried to raise public awareness of what had happened and of the need to preserve art treasures to prevent such losses; various problems such as the scarcity of public resources for the maintenance of the country's artistic wealth, or the freedoms enjoyed by owners when disposing of their assets, even those of historical-artistic value, were topics that filled the pages of the newspapers when discussing the sale of the paintings of San Baudelio (Martínez Ruiz, 2008, pp. 213-276).

The record of letters sent by the Provincial Monuments Commission of Soria, the trips to Madrid to seek the attention of the highest authorities and the visits to the chapel, which are well documented, are eloquent testimony to the arduous nature of an unequal struggle that ended in small victories, such as the Royal Order of the Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts of 12 September 1923, which ordered the paintings removed from the walls of the chapel to be returned to their original place. During the long administrative and legal proceedings, Leon Levi let it be known, as he even stated to journalists, that he had important contacts that would allow him to bend the judges' decision in his favour. Finally, after a long process, a Supreme Court ruling on 25 February 1925 marked a milestone in the history of artistic dispossession in Spain: ‘...that the appellants, owners of the chapel of San Baudelio, have been free to sell the mural paintings there and Mr Leon Levi to acquire them and henceforth to dispose of them lawfully...’. Shortly afterwards, the mural paintings were transferred to various canvases and left Spain (Martínez Ruiz, 2013, pp. 19-36).

This judgement came as a bitter blow to those who had tried to prevent the paintings from being exported. The judges' interpretation of the events that had taken place caused real surprise. Among other things, the decision was based on property rights, even though the chapel had been declared a national monument; it was considered that the paintings did not qualify as antiques under the Law of 7 July 1911; the mural ensemble was deemed to be independent of the building, on the grounds that the paintings had been detached from it; and not even the removal process was understood as damage or harm to the artistic ensemble. The Director General of Fine Arts himself, Joaquín Pérez del Pulgar y Campos, Count of Las Infantas, expressed his bewilderment to the president of the Soria Provincial Monuments Commission, Santiago Gómez Santa Cruz, on 21 August 1926: ‘What a wretched affair this affair of the paintings of San Baudelio! I believe, although it may seem immodest, that if I had been in the Directorate, the case would not have been opened with so much stammering and so little continuity of criteria and action on the part of the official defenders of our Artistic Treasure, and which certainly contrasts with that of you in the Monuments Commission, and the determined will of the buyers who, by whatever means, and God knows what means, and God knows what means, have been used to buy the paintings. The decisive will of the Chamarilero buyers who, by whatever means, and God knows what they have been, have managed to obtain this accursed sentence from the highest court in the nation’ (Martínez Ruiz, 2008, p. 271).

The case was used in Spain to review the laws in force and to try to close the loopholes in them. Leví placed the group of paintings in the hands of Gabriel Dereppe, who attempted to sell them to various museum institutions and private collectors. On 17 November 1927 the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston bought from him two of the most interesting compositions from the upper cycle: The Last Supper and The Marys before the Tomb. In 1941, according to the monograph published by José Gudiol for an exhibition held in Toledo (Ohio), the rest of the paintings were still in Dereppe's hands. On 25 January 1952 they were acquired from Dereppe by Elijah B. Martindale and H. A. Clowes, a physician and chemist respectively, manufacturers of antibiotics in Indianapolis, to whose museum they were bequeathed in 1958: The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem and The Wedding at Cana. Clowes even offered Sánchez Cantón the loan of the paintings of Saint Baudelius to the Prado Museum in exchange for two canvases by Velázquez, but Sánchez Cantón refused. In 1957, thanks to the mediation of James J. Rorimer, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, who at the time was negotiating with Franco's government the export of the Romanesque apse of San Martín de Fuentidueña to The Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired several fragments of paintings, specifically six panels with hunting scenes. The purpose of the operation was to be offered in exchange for the Romanesque apse of San Martín de Fuentidueña (Segovia). This acquisition was made by the Metropolitan Museum once it had confirmation that Franco's government would agree to dismantle and transfer the apse to New York in exchange for the paintings, hitherto held by the industrialists Martindale and Clowes. This was a very positive move for the New York institution, as at the same time as it obtained the Segovian monument to complete one of the rooms in The Cloisters, it ended up receiving the paintings as a donation for its own catalogue from the Indianapolis collectors: Temptation of Christ by the Devil, Healing of the Blind and Resurrection of Lazarus and Camel - a pictorial fragment of the mural ensemble in question - destined to adorn the new room created with the addition of the apse from Fuentidueña, inaugurated in 1961. The Cincinnati Museum received The Falconer, from the same group, while the Prado Museum received as a temporary and indefinite deposit, following the 1957 agreement: Hare Hunting, Deer Hunting, Elephant, Bear, Soldier and Curtain (Merino de Cáceres and Martínez Ruiz, 2023, 229-262, 305-330).

Description

Camel.

Although numerous historians have tried to discern the symbolism of this mural repertoire - Cook, Camón Aznar, Ortego, Frinta, Nieto, Guardia Pons... - there is no agreed iconographic interpretation of this enigmatic ensemble. The interpretations that have sought to relate the symbolic clues of the mural decoration to the architectural analysis of the building have been gaining ground. The upper part of the walls was decorated with a Christological cycle, while the lower register was illustrated with hunting scenes. Cook pointed out the similarities with other complexes of the period, such as Maderuelo or Taüll, but it is true that a pictorial cycle dedicated to hunting is not common. This same historian estimated that the master of Maderuelo would have painted the high frieze after working in Taüll and the Vera Cruz in Maderuelo, a second painter would have been in charge of the murals in the small chapel of the tribune, and the master of San Baudelio itself, the most original of the three, would have been responsible for the hunting scenes in the lower area, at the same time, despite the diversity of styles (Cook, 1955). Other authors, such as Camón, considered the paintings in the lower area to be older (Camón, 1958). Guardia Pons, however, proposed an analysis of the whole due to the same programmatic unity, even taking the chronology of the ensemble further back in time, towards the end of the 10th and beginning of the 11th century, as well as the building; so that architecture and decoration would respond to the same concerns (Guardia Pons, 2011). In any case, many authors seem to agree in giving the mural ensemble a symbolism that weaves together: hunting, war, power and secular confrontation between good and evil. The paintings in the lower part have come to be interpreted as an echo of the territorial clashes that took place between different bishops in an attempt to reassert their dominion. In recent years, the interpretation of the two cycles, upper and lower, as a unitary whole, appreciable in the technique used and decorative motifs, as well as framing them within a chronological horizon that could be placed around the first quarter of the 12th century, has gained more weight in recent years.

Locations

• First half of the XII^th c. - 1925

  hermitage

  Hermitage of San Baudelio de Berlanga, Soria (Spain)

• 1922 - 1927

  dealer/antiquarian

  Leon Levi / Leone Levi, Venecia/Barcelona. Recorría toda la geografía española en busca de tesoros artísticos (Spain) *

• 1927 - 1952

  private collection

  Gabriel Dereppe, París / Londres / Nueva York *

• 1952 - 1961

  private collection

  Elijah B. Martindale and George H. A. Clowes, Indianapolis (United States) *

• 1961 - present

  museum

  The Cloisters. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (United States)