Title

Double Capital with Animals and Foliage

Generic classification

Object

Date

Century

Cultural context / style

Dimensions

Material

Technique

Iconography / Theme

Provenance

Current location

Inventory Number in Current Collection

Object history

This capital comes from the monastery of Santa María la Real de Aguilar de Campoo (Palencia). According to García (1983), the piece was probably located in the cloister of the monastery. He also attributed its authorship to a sculptor who had worked with the second master of the cloister of Silos. It was decided to transfer the piece to the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid in 1871 due to the ruinous state of the monastery. In addition to this capital, others were moved from the monastery of Santa María la Real with various themes: the Apostles, the Annunciation, the Resurrection of Lazarus, the three Marys before the tomb, bird-sirens, the Flight into Egypt, the double capital with warrior and dragon, acanthus leaves, warriorsfighting, a hunter, Samson fighting the lion, Christ triumphant, crowned horseman, Descent,Noli me tangere, Ascension of Jesus Christor the slaughter of the innocents, among others.

Subsequently, in 1934, the Government of the Spanish Republic decided to present the Fogg Museum (Cambridge, Massachusetts) with this capital, a Romanesque column from the Monastery of San Payo (Santiago de Compostela) and a collection of Iberian ceramics and bronzes (Seidel, 1973). This action was motivated by the return of the tombstone of Don Alfonso, son of Pedro Ansúrez, from Sahagún (León).

In 1908 Gómez-Moreno visited Sahagún (León) and it was there where he discovered the tombstone together with the columns of San Pablo and San Miguel, from the monastery of Saints Facundo and Primitivo de Sahagún (León). According to the historian, the tombstone had remained for decades in a private tomb in a cemetery in Sahagún (Gómez-Moreno, 1979). However, Juan Guaza, its owner, decided to sell it to E. Torres, a Madrid antique dealer, in 1926 (Martínez, 2013). The latter clandestinely exported the piece to the United States, being acquired that same year by the Fogg Museum (Franco, 1988). In 1928, when the Spanish authorities realized what had happened, they chose to denounce it publicly: "a lid of the tomb of Alfonso, son of Pero Ansúrez, [...] is no longer in its place and in Mr. Porter's recent work it appears as existing in a North American museum. There is no doubt that this is a fraudulent sale with serious damage to the national artistic wealth" (Martínez, 2013).

After hearing the news, the Fogg Museum decided to return the lauda to Spain. This act was "deserving of all praise and gratitude" by the Board of Trustees of the National Archaeological Museum, who decided to present the American institution with other pieces, among which was this capital: "the delivery of this and the acceptance of that had to be considered as a reciprocated gift, not as an exchange" (Patronato del Museo Arqueológico Nacional, 1932). Although the Board of Trustees of the National Archaeological Museum repeatedly emphasized that it was a gift and not an exchange, the fact is that the pieces received by the Fogg Museum were truly remarkable. The exchange of pieces between museum institutions occurred relatively frequently in the 20th century, it is worth remembering the export of the apse of San Martín de Fuentidueña, currently in The Cloisters (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), in exchange for some frescoes from San Baudelio de Berlanga, today in the Museo Nacional del Prado (Martínez, 2013; Merino and Martínez, 2023).

Thus it was that in 1934 the capital became part of the collections of the Fogg Museum (Cambridge, Massachusetts).

Description

Six intertwined griffins form the decoration of the capital. These animals are characterized by their pointed ears, goat's beard and beak of a bird of prey. On the other hand, the ornamentation of the crest is based on helicoidal leaves. Similar pieces can be found in Santo Domingo de la Calzada or in Burgo de Osma.

Locations

• Third quarter of the XII^th c. - 1871

  monastery

  Monastery of Santa María la Real, Aguilar de Campoo, Aguilar de Campoo (Spain)

• ca. 1871 - ca. 1933

  museum

  National Archaeological Museum, Madrid, Madrid (Spain)

• ca. 1933 - present

  museum

  Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge [Massachusetts] (United States)