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Title

Recumbent figure by Diego García de Villamayor

Generic classification
Sculpture
Object
Sculpture
Date
ca. 1286
Century
Last quarter of the 13th c.
Cultural context / style
Gothic
Dimensions
15 3/4 x 99 5/8 x 31 7/8 in
Material
Wood
Technique
Carved
Iconography / Theme
Yacente
Provenance
Monastery of Santa María la Real, Villamayor de los Montes (Villamayor de los Montes, Burgos, Spain)
Current location
Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge [Massachusetts], United States)
Inventory Number in Current Collection
1936.11
Object history

García Fernández de Villamayor founded in 1223 (Hernando, 2002) the Monastery of Santa María la Real in Villamayor de los Montes (Burgos). Years later, his grandson, Diego García de Villamayor, ordered that his tomb be located in this Cistercian monastery. The recumbent sculpture of the deceased is stylistically consistent with a group of figures located in the cloister of the cathedral of Burgos, dated between 1250-1275. Thus, this sculpture must have been made shortly after, around 1286 (Deknatel, 1937).

The piece remained in the monastery until 1921, when it was transferred to the Diocesan Museum of Burgos in order to be exhibited in the Retrospective Art exhibition of the VII Centenary of the Cathedral of Burgos. In the exhibition catalog (1921) it was described as follows: "Recumbent statue in wood, with remains of polychrome". The publication of the catalog, as well as the diffusion of the piece proved fatal for it, since it aroused the interest of antique dealers and collectors (Merino de Cáceres and Martínez Ruiz, 2012); something that happened with numerous works of art, such as the mural paintings of San Baudelio de Berlanga (Soria).

We do not know what happened after the exhibition, but in 1932 the piece was sold to Arnold Seligman, Rey & Co. and was expatriated to the United States (Gillerman, 1989). Once there, the Fogg Museum (Cambridge, Massachusetts) acquired it in 1936 through the Alpheus Hyatt fund (Huerta, 2001) in memory of Professor Arthur Kingsley Porter.

Description

This recumbent sculpture depicts a knight: Diego García de Villamayor. The piece is carved on a single wooden board and, although it was originally polychromed, nowadays there are hardly any remains. If we pay attention to the face of the deceased, we can see that it is a young man with a rounded chin and an arched nose. A dog, symbol of fidelity, is resting under his feet. There are numerous stylistic features that refer to Burgos, such as the position of the legs. Likewise, this recumbent can be related to the sculptors of the cathedrals of northern France, especially that of Reims (Deknatel, 1937).

* The relative location of dealers, antique shops, art galleries, and collectors leads us to the places where they were based or had one of their main headquarters. However, this does not always indicate that every artwork that passed through their hands was physically located there. In the case of antique dealers and art merchants, their business often extended across multiple territories; sometimes they would purchase items at their origin and send them directly to clients. Similarly, some collectors owned multiple residences, sometimes in different countries, where they housed their collections. It is often difficult to determine exactly where a specific piece was kept during its time in their possession. Consequently, the main location of the dealer or collector is indicated. These factors should be considered when interpreting the map. Refer to the object's history in each case.
Bibliography
Citation:

Isabel Escalera Fernández, "Recumbent figure by Diego García de Villamayor" in Nostra et Mundi. Cultural Heritage from Castile and Leon around the world, Fundación Castilla y León, 2025. https://inventario.nostraetmundi.com/en/work/381

DOI
Recumbent Effigy

Fogg Museum. Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, Massachusetts).

Fogg Museum. Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, Massachusetts).

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