Title

Head of Saint Christopher

Generic classification

Object

Date

Century

Cultural context / style

Dimensions

Material

Technique

Iconography / Theme

Provenance

Current location

Inventory Number in Current Collection

Object history

This head, in polychrome wood and of large dimensions, probably represents San Cristobal; it was found by the architect and historian José Gudiol in Sahagún (León). Gudiol himself, together with Walter W. S. Cook, published references to this sculpture, together with another head also in polychrome wood, although in a worse state of conservation, both coming, as they affirmed, from Sahagún; it was in his book: Romanesque painting and imagery, in the 1980 edition - such pieces did not appear in the first edition of this publication of 1950-. In the aforementioned text, the scholars pointed out: "We are going to consider, as the culmination of the imagery in the province of Leon, two gigantic male heads of polychrome carving that, without mutual relation, neither stylistic nor chronological, were preserved until a few years ago in the monastery of Santa Maria de Sahagun. I photographed the first one (fig. 443), around the thirties, in the house of an antique dealer from Valladolid, who presented it as his finding in the back room of the aforementioned Leonese monastery: it would be about 45 centimeters high and, although in bad condition, broken and moth-eaten, it was a magnificent example from the end of the 12th century. I discovered the photograph of the second head (fig. 444) in the file of Alejandro Ferrán [Ferrant], a distinguished architect and restorer of so many Spanish monuments: after the photograph that we published, it was a polychrome carving 80 centimeters high preserved in Santa María de Sahagún. Its stylistic resemblance to the works of the sculptors of the portico of the cathedral of León suggests a date for this impressive bearded head close to 1275" (Cook and Gudiol, 1980, p. 333). The truth is that the great monastery of Sahagún was not Santa María, but the Benedictine monastery of Saints Facundo and Primitivo, a center that reached great importance, especially during the Middle Ages; The other monastery in the town is that of Santa Cruz, of Benedictine Mothers, which received certain works from that one, as did other nearby monasteries and churches, since the consequences of the ecclesiastical disentailment in the 19th century ended up spoiling the great center of Saints Facundo and Primitivo, whose ruins were declared a historic-artistic monument in 1931.

In 1989, R. Steven Janke made a study of this sculpture in the book coordinated by Dorothy Gillerman on Gothic Sculpture in America, in its first volume; at that time the work already belonged to the Rhode Island School of Design Art Museum, Providence. The piece had arrived at this institution after passing through the hands of José Gudiol. Some years later, Franco Mata pointed out that the sculpture described by Gudiol and Cook, fig. 444 of the 1980 edition of his book on Romanesque Painting and Imagery, was the same work studied by Janke and conserved in Providence (Franco Mata, 2011, pp. 119-122); something that is not at all surprising given the close relationship between the studies of Gudiol and Cook with the commercialization of certain pieces that left Spain. José Gudiol was a multifaceted figure, an architect by training, he became an outstanding historian, but he also forged an interesting private art collection and, likewise, acquired works to be sold to collectors and museums; therefore, his activity as a dealer was intimately linked to his work as an art historian, for which he also had the collaboration of Walter W. S. Cook (Socias Batet, 2013). In 1959 this head of San Cristóbal was acquired by the institution where it is currently preserved: Rhode Island School of Design Art Museum, Providence.

Description

The head is almost a metre long, dimensions that tend to reinforce the idea that it could be Saint Christopher, as R. Steven Janke and A. Franco Mata have pointed out. A saint who was highly venerated on the Jacobean route because, as the bearer of Christ, he was entrusted with the protection of pilgrims. Janke, in Gothic Sculpture in America. I The New England Museums, studied this work in detail and considered it to be from the beginning of the 13th century, basing his opinion on the stylistic similarities with some statues on the jambs of the central doorway of the north transept of Chartres cathedral. This is how she noticed it in his small forehead, prominent eyes, and also in his curly hair, beard and moustache (Janke, 1989). Franco Mata, on the other hand, points out greater similarities with sculptures from Strasbourg Cathedral, which leads the researcher to date the piece to the mid-13th century (Franco Mata, 2011). It is difficult to know what the complete sculptural ensemble would have been like, perhaps he was carrying the baby Jesus on his shoulder, and perhaps there were characters holding on to his belt, as is the case in other representations of the saint on the Jacobean route; what is certain is that it was a monumental sculpture. Something that would fit very well with the description of Saint Christopher in the Golden Legend (c. 1262): “Christopher, of Canaanite origin, grew to be twelve cubits tall in adulthood; his stoutness and giant-like appearance struck terror into those who saw him” (Vorágine, 1984).

Locations

• ca. 1950

  municipality

  Sahagún (León), Sahagún (Spain)

• ca. 1950 - 1959

  private collection

  José Gudiol Ricart, Barcelona (Spain) *

• 1959 - present

  museum

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