Title

The Holy Women at the Tomb of Christ

Anonimous

Generic classification

Object

Date

Century

Cultural context / style

Dimensions

Material

Technique

Iconography / Theme

Provenance

Current location

Inventory Number in Current Collection

Object history

12th century Chapel of San Baudelio de Berlanga, Casillas de Berlanga (Soria)

1922 Léon Levi

1926 Gabriel Dereppe, London, to transfer the paintings to a new support.

1927 New York, sold in that year to the Museum of Boston

Description

The scene comes from the cycle of the life of Christ located in the upper part of the walls of the Mozarabic hermitage of San Baudelio de Berlanga (Casillas de Berlanga, Soria), built at the end of the 11th century and occupying the left half of the available space of the wall bordering the entrance, constituting the final episode. The orientation of the wall, to the NE and to the light of dawn, was surely taken into account when deciding the themes of the decoration of this part of the hermitage, which began on this same wall with the Healing of the Blind Man and the Resurrection of Lazarus (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), someone whose eyes are opened in the light of Grace and a resurrection that serves as a prefiguration of that of Christ himself, opening and closing the cycle with similar themes. The scene of the three Marys before the tomb was opposite the Last Supper (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts), both sharing a clear Eucharistic symbolism.

As in the rest of the murals in the upper zone of the walls, the space presents a background divided horizontally in bands of contrasting color on which the figures are superimposed. The scene is divided into three approximately equal parts thanks to a construction that protects the tomb of Christ from which three columns of torso shaft with bases and capitals with vegetal decoration are shown. They allude to the columns of the Hellenistic period that formed part of the main altar of the Basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican until their destruction in the 16th century, when they were moved to other parts of the basilica and were considered to be elements from the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, constituting a model of relatively frequent use in the Romanesque, as shown in the Puerta de platerías in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. The columns support two segmental arches on which there is a decoration of shaded ashlars and turrets similar to those shown in other episodes of the same cycle such as the Entry of Christ into Jerusalem (Indianapolis Museum of Art) or the aforementioned healing of the blind man, as well as the figures of Saint Baudelius and Saint Nicholas of Bari in the presbytery of the same hermitage and even the famous Elephant (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, deposited in Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado).

To show that the representation is the last of the cycle, its reading is from right to left, unlike the rest of the scenes. On the far right is shown the three holy women heading towards the tomb of Christ, their heads covered with a headdress, a long tunic and a cloak with which they cover their hands in the Byzantine manner, to hold the perfume knobs. In the center and turned to the left appear the soldiers in charge of guarding the tomb, they wear chain mail, cover their heads with pointed helmets and carry shield and spear. To the left appears the angel in a seated position, covering part of the column with his body and with his face resting on his left hand, a typical gesture of pain with which St. John the Evangelist is frequently represented on Calvary in the 12th and 13th centuries.

This is one of the most interesting details of the painting and one that does not seem to have been taken into account since it indicates that the holy women have not yet reached the tomb and have to overcome the soldiers guarding the entrance. The angel's gesture leaves no doubt, the resurrection has not yet occurred, which increases the drama of the scene by apparently leaving the whole program without conclusion. The absence of the resurrection of Christ in the cycle of the walls of the nave allows us to suppose that on the vault of the presbytery a Christ in majesty appeared as the culmination of the whole iconographic program.

The cycle constitutes one of the masterpieces of Romanesque painting in the peninsula, both for the quality of the drawing, as can be seen in the figures of the three Marys, which far from being an image repeated three times show subtle differences in their folds, and for the tone of each composition, festive in the Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem, solemn in the Last Supper and dramatic in this arrival of the holy women at the tomb. The colors are repetitive and not excessively varied, but the talent of the painters has more than made up for this deficiency.

The oldest critics believed that the cycle with hunting scenes in the lower part of the walls was previous to the cycle of scenes of Christ, but nowadays it is thought that two workshops worked at the same time in the first half of the 12th century and that they would have been active in Catalonia and Aragon before working in Castile.

Locations

• ca. 1129 - 1926

  hermitage

  Hermitage of San Baudelio de Berlanga, Soria (Spain)

• 1926

  private collection

  Gabriel Dereppe, París / Londres / Nueva York *

• 1927

  dealer/antiquarian

  , New York (United States) *

• 1927 - present

  museum

  Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (United States)