Title

Lion

Anónimo leonés

Generic classification

Object

Date

Century

Cultural context / style

Dimensions

Material

Iconography / Theme

Provenance

Current location

Inventory Number in Current Collection

Object history

This sculpture has been identified as coming from the collegiate church of San Isidoro of León by Francisco Prado-Vilar in 2023. The only documentary record until then was that it had been acquired by the musée du Louvre in 1936 from Brimo de Laroussilhe, a well-known Parisian antiquarian firm. Prado-Vilar supposes that the sculpture was recovered when, at the beginning of the 20th century, the architect Juan Crisóstomo Torbado Flórez (1867-1947) recovered the original physiognomy of the north transept façade of the Leonese church, disfigured by the addition of buildings over the centuries. Most of the sculptures that were recovered during his intervention became part of the building's lapidary, but this must have passed into private hands (who knows if Torbado's, who is known to have had some Romanesque sculpture in his collection).

Description

The sculpture shows a lion, treated in a very schematic and archaic manner for the date of ca. 1110, which can be attributed to the north transept façade of the church of the then monastery of San Isidoro of León (Prado-Vilar has rightly compared it to those of the porte des Comtes of the basilica of Saint-Sernin of Toulouse, belonging to the previous generation). There were similar lions on the south transept façade, but these, disfigured by centuries of exposure to the elements, have been replaced by contemporary recreations. The good state of preservation of the lion in question, together with its dimensions and stylistic features, led Prado-Vilar to propose that, like its counterparts on the southern façade, this lion would be located at the top of one of the buttresses of the northern façade (which, given that the lion walks to the left, must have been the right buttress).

The representation of lions in the entrances to temples is frequent in the Romanesque period. It is also documented in the Platerías façade of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela and reaches its maximum expression in the overwhelming stylobate lions of the Italian Romanesque. Independently of the fact that in some particular cases a specific iconographic meaning can be attributed to them, a generic protective character can be attributed to them.

Locations

• Early XII^th c. - Early XX^th c.

  monastery

  Royal Collegiate Church of San Isidoro of León, León (Spain)

• 1936

  dealer/antiquarian

  Brimo de Laroussilhe, Paris (France) *

• 1936 - present

  museum

  Louvre Museum, Paris (France)