Title

Christ in Majesty, from Santa Marta de Tera

Generic classification

Object

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Century

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Inventory Number in Current Collection

Object history

The parish church of Santa Marta de Tera is one of the jewels of Romanesque architecture in the province of Zamora. This relief was discovered for the academic community by Manuel Gómez-Moreno in 1903, when he traveled through the lands of Zamora in order to make the Monumental Catalog of the province of Zamora. The work, of which he included an image in the catalog, indicated that it was “cornered and dirty at the foot of the church”. The scholar considered that the sculpture was very close to the work of the sculptors of the Puerta del Perdón of San Isidoro de León (Gómez-Moreno, 1927).

As we have been able to document, the work was sold in 1927, since that year the chapter of Astorga (the diocese to which Santa Marta de Tera belonged), on September 19, 1927, at the request of the bishop of that diocese, agreed to sell “a stone with the image of the Savior that was in the parish church of Santa Marta de Tera”, for which, according to the prelate's report, “a price of some importance” was offered. In addition, in this agreement, the dispossession was justified on the grounds of the urgent and costly reforms that the temple needed (Archive of the Cathedral of Astorga). In fact, a few years later, in 1931, regarding the cut made in the altarpiece of the church, an operation denounced by the master of Santa Marta de Tera, he pointed out: “It reveals this distrust also because about three years ago an object quite appreciated by tourism disappeared from the church...” (Martínez Ruiz, 2018).

In 1968 its presence in the United States was already documented, even without mentioning its place of origin (Cahn, 1968); it would be in 1969, on the occasion of an exhibition held in Providence, when it appeared in the catalog as a work from Santa Marta de Tera (Scher, 1969, Poza Yagüe, 2010). Undoubtedly, the photograph published in the Monumental Catalog of the Province of Zamora by Manuel Gómez-Moreno, was key to awaken the interest of the dealers, but also to recover its memory and recognize its original location decades later.

Description

Made in a limestone slab of rectangular shape, Christ in Majesty appears seated, in rigorous frontality. He wears tunic and chasuble, with his right hand he blesses and carries in his left hand the book in which is read EGO SVM MVNDI.

Locations

• Unknown date

  church

  Santa Marta de Tera, Santa Marta de Tera (Spain)

• pre. 1968 - present

  museum

  Rhode Island School of Art Museum of Art. Providence. Rhode Island (United States)