Title

Lion relief from San Leonardo church at Zamora

Generic classification

Object

Date

Century

Cultural context / style

Dimensions

Material

Technique

Iconography / Theme

Provenance

Current location

Inventory Number in Current Collection

Object history

When in the early years of the 20th century Manuel Gómez-Moreno visited the temple of San Leonardo, in order to undertake the Monumental Catalog of the province of Zamora, which had been entrusted to him and carried out between 1903-1905, he called attention to this relief next to the door of the gable, which was similar to another one representing a lioness: "...at the top and on wide shelves with human heads and busts pressing lute and psaltery, pose figures of a lioness, guarding perhaps her cub, before a building with canopies and arches, and a lion, having a snake coiled around its paws; they are sheltered by dust covers with round arches and flowers. Work of the 13th century in stone..." (Gómez-Moreno, p. 154). Also Fernández Duro had stopped, a few years before, in the description of this work next to the cover of San Leonardo "Two lions of bulk, almost of natural size. The one on the right, according to represents the lioness that raised San Leonardo in the desert, and in fact under the animal is seen the figure of a child, as those of Romulus and Remus are usually represented. To the left there are several figures behind a lion, which are not very well distinguished because of a covering that hides them" (Fernández Duro, 1882). Both researchers, as we can see, described two reliefs: a lion and a lioness that received the faithful at the entrance to the temple.

In those early years of the 20th century the church was exposed to evident deterioration, due to its use as a charcoal factory. In 1909 the temple seemed to be in liquidation; the bishopric authorized the delivery "to the parish priest of Trabazos of the altarpiece of the Blessed Virgin that is in the church of San Leonardo of this city that the prelate destines to the hermitage of the Soledad of this town"; that same year the Bursar of Santa María de Horta was authorized to "extract from the suppressed Church of San Leonardo the altar of San Francisco de Paula with its image and other constituents.... and place it in his Church of Santa María de Hora" (Archivo Diocesano de Zamora, new fund, 427, 1909).

Thus, until the final sale of the temple to the antiquarian Fernando Martínez, who offered 6,000 pesetas for the building in 1913, although he did not live to complete the operation, despite the advance offered of 3,500 pesetas (Sadia, 2014). It seems clear that the main purpose of the acquisition was to extract and commercialize the most interesting pieces of the temple of San Leonardo, taking advantage of the fact that the church had not been used for worship for a long time and was in a terrible state of neglect. Just three years after Martinez's operation, the antiquarian Emile Pares had this relief, which he sold in 1916 (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

The work was part of the wing dedicated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the legacy of J. P. Morgan, since the catalog that was published on that occasion states: "a large stone carving from the Church of St. Leonard at Zamora, Spain, representing the Lion of the Tribe of Judah (Christ), Saint Leonard freeing two prisoners, the Annunciation to the Virgin, and her Coronation" (Breck and Rogers, 1925, p. 63).

Shortly thereafter, in 1926, the church of San Leonardo was owned by Maximino Beato, and the Provincial Commission of Monuments of Zamora echoed rumors circulating about the projected alienation of the whole of the façade of San Leonardo: "In the last session held by this Corporation, official notice was given of the sale made or projected of the façade of the Church of San Leonardo in that city to a foreign antiquarian who proposes to dismantle it for its transfer out of Spain..." (Martínez Ruiz, 2008, p.351). When this news spread, the researcher of medieval architecture, Francisco Antón, proposed that solutions be sought to avoid its sale and foreseeable exportation, such as, for example, that it be moved to a garden. The Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando recommended to the Provincial Commission of Monuments to be extremely zealous on the subject in order to avoid another loss for the heritage, for which it was necessary to demand the owner of the temple to comply with the Law of Archaeological Excavations and to procure, in the meantime, the declaration of the temple as a national monument, in order to ensure its preservation. Little or nothing was achieved then, the denunciation of the projected sale was read in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando on October 4, 1926, after a truly tragic summer for the preservation of the country's heritage, in which the uprooting of the mural paintings of San Baudelio de Berlanga (Soria) and the dismantling of the monastery of Sacramenia (Segovia) took place, among other cases (Martínez Ruiz, 2008, I, pp. 350-353).

That declaration of San Leonardo as a historic-artistic monument did not take place until 1998, when a good part of the riches that the temple treasured had already disappeared, among them this lion and its missing partner, works that Gómez-Moreno still managed to see in their original location.

Description

These reliefs used to serve as custodians of the temples. The lion tramples a snake, symbol of Satan, while in the background Christ appears crowning the Virgin, in the presence of the archangel Gabriel, also appears St. Leonard of Aquitaine freeing two prisoners. In the upper part of the relief is a charming representation of the dome of the cathedral of Zamora. The conservation of a good part of the original polychromy of the work stands out.

Locations

• ca. 1200 - ca. 1913

  church

  San Leonardo Church, Zamora, Zamora (Spain)

• 1913 - pre. 1916

  dealer/antiquarian

  Fernando Martínez (Spain) *

• ca. 1916 - 1916

  dealer/antiquarian

  Emilio Pares, Paris (France) *

• 1916 - present

  museum

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