Title

Mural paintings of San Baudelio de Berlanga. Casillas de Berlanga (Soria)

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Object history

See the destination of the fragments of this mural set that are outside of Spain: The Last Supper and The Holy Women at the Tomb, The Apparition of Christ to Mary Magdalene and Saint Nicholas; The Falconer; The Temptation of Christ by the Devil; The Healing of the Blind Man and the Resurrection of Lazarus; The Camel; Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, and The Wedding at Cana.

‘Our amazement on entering the interior was immense...’ This is how Manuel Aníbal Álvarez and José Ramón Mélida described the surprise they felt on seeing the mural in the chapel of San Baudelio de Berlanga, in an article published in 1907. A unique artistic treasure - discovered by Teodoro Ramírez, a member of the Numantia Excavation Commission - which Elías Romera reported to the Royal Academy of History. Located in the village of Casillas de Berlanga, the exterior of the building was sober, but its interior offered the visitor one of the best examples of Romanesque mural painting in Europe, linked to an absolutely original architectural structure. The aforementioned historians, as well as wondering how such an exceptional ensemble had been able to go unnoticed until that moment, carried out a study of the building and its paintings, with the aim of having it protected as a national monument (Mélida y Álvarez, 1907, pp. 144-155). This declaration took place a few years later, by Royal Order of 24/8/1917, published in the Gaceta de Madrid on 27/8/1917.

That call for attention to the richness of the mural decoration, and the extensive photographic repertoire that accompanied the 1907 article, encouraged the interest not only of historians, but also of collectors and art dealers. In the summer of 1922 the alarm was raised: there were rumours of attempted theft at the chapel. Strange movements around the monument were reported, which led to a lively debate in the press, and a complaint that led to a long administrative file and a complicated trial in the courts of justice. What is certain, following these initial rumours, is that the residents of Casillas de Berlanga, owners of the estate on which the chapel was built, had sold the set of paintings to the Italian merchant Leon Levi for 50,000 pesetas; they were advised in the transaction by Francisco Marina Encabo, registrar of the property of Almazán (Soria). The operations to remove the paintings were carried out clandestinely, but following a tip-off from the Civil Guard in Berlanga, the operation was stopped and the paintings seized until the complaint was resolved and the operation was dealt with in court.

From the outset, the Provincial Monuments Commission of Soria aroused the interest of its representatives in the Spanish Parliament, of the academics of the Royal Academies of Fine Arts of San Fernando and of History, as well as of the General Directorate of Fine Arts, in order to prevent the paintings from being stripped of their value. The art historian and senator Elías Tormo denounced the events before the Senate on 21 July 1922: ‘...Mr Levi, who is already known in many great stories, in many lamentable stories of the depreciation of the artistic treasure in Spain, because he is the same one who, with carte blanche from Emperor Frederick, a carte blanche that he valued at close to a million francs, acquired the famous and splendid altarpiece of Monforte, which is today one of the glories of the Berlin Museum’ (Santonja, 2005). For its part, the local and national press tried to raise awareness in society about what had happened and about the need to preserve artistic treasures to avoid such losses; various problems such as the scarcity of public resources for the maintenance of the country's artistic wealth, or the freedoms enjoyed by owners when it came to disposing of their property, even those of historical and artistic value, were topics that filled the pages of the newspapers when debating the sale of the paintings of San Baudelio. (Martínez Ruiz, 2008, pp. 213-276).

The history of letters sent by the Provincial Commission of Monuments of Soria, the trips to Madrid to get the attention of the higher authorities, as well as the visits to the chapel, well reflected by the preserved documentation, constitute an eloquent testimony of the arduousness of an unequal struggle that ended with small victories, such as the Royal Order of the Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts of 12 September 1923, which ordered that the paintings removed from the walls of the chapel be returned to their original location. During the long administrative and judicial process, Leon Levi hinted, and even declared to journalists, that he had important contacts who would allow him to bend the judges' actions in his favour. Finally, after a long process, a Supreme Court ruling on 25 February 1925 marked a milestone in the history of artistic dispossession in Spain: ‘...that the appellants, owners of the hermitage of San Baudelio, have been able to freely sell the mural paintings and that Mr Leon Levi has acquired them and may henceforth dispose of them lawfully...’ Shortly afterwards, the mural collection left Spain and was transferred to various canvases. (Martínez Ruiz, 2013, pp. 19-36).

That sentence came as a shock to those who had tried to prevent the export of the paintings. The judges' interpretation of the events caused real surprise. Among other things, the decision was based on property rights, even though the chapel had been declared a national monument; it was considered that the paintings did not fall under the category of antiquities typified by the Law of 7 July 1911; it was considered that the mural as a whole was independent of the building - on the grounds that the paintings had been detached from it -; not even the process of removal was understood to be damaging or detracting from the artistic ensemble. The Director General of Fine Arts himself, Joaquín Pérez del Pulgar y Campos, Count of Las Infantas, expressed his bewilderment to the president of the Provincial Monuments Commission of Soria, Santiago Gómez Santa Cruz, on 21 August 1926: ‘What an unfortunate business this is about the paintings of San Baudelio! I have a feeling, although it may seem immodest, that if I had been in charge, the case would not have been opened with so much stammering and so little continuity of criteria and action on the part of the official defenders of our Artistic Treasury, and that certainly contrasts with that of you in the Monuments Commission, and the determined will of the junk buyers who, by whatever means, and God knows what they have been, have managed to get this damn sentence from the highest court in the nation’ (Martínez Ruiz, 2008, p. 271).

The case served in Spain to review the laws in force and try to remedy the loopholes they presented. Leví placed the set of paintings in the hands of Gabriel Dereppe, who dispersed them among various museum institutions and private collectors. On 17 November 1927, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston bought two of the most interesting compositions, from the upper cycle: The Last Supper and The Holy Women at the Tomb. In 1941, according to the monograph published by José Gudiol for an exhibition held in Toledo (Ohio), the rest of the paintings were still in Dereppe's hands. On 25 January 1952 they were acquired from him by Elijah B. Martindale and H. A. Clowes, a doctor and a chemist respectively, and manufacturers of antibiotics in Indianapolis, to whose museum they bequeathed The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem and The Wedding at Cana in 1958. Clowes even offered Sánchez Cantón the possibility of transferring the paintings of Saint Baudelio to the Prado Museum in exchange for two Velázquez canvases, which Sánchez Cantón refused. In 1957, thanks to the mediation of James J. Rorimer, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which at that time was negotiating with Franco's government the export of the Romanesque apse of San Martín de Fuentidueña (Segovia) to The Cloisters, several fragments of paintings were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, specifically six panels with hunting scenes. The purpose of the operation was to offer the Romanesque apse of San Martín de Fuentidueña (Segovia) in exchange. The Metropolitan Museum made the acquisition once it had confirmation that Franco's government would agree to the dismantling and transfer of the apse to New York in exchange for the paintings, which until then had been in the hands of the industrialists Martindale and Clowes. A negotiation that ended very positively for the New York institution, since at the same time as it obtained the Segovian monument to complete one of the rooms of The Cloisters, it ended up receiving as a donation for its own catalogue, from the Indianapolis collectors, the paintings of the set: Temptation of Christ by the Devil, Healing of the Blind Man and Raising of Lazarus and The Camel, which were destined to adorn the new room created with the incorporation of the apse from Fuentidueña, inaugurated in 1961. The Cincinnati Museum received The Falconer, and Saint Nicholas, from the same set, while the Prado Museum received it as a temporary and indefinite deposit, following the aforementioned agreement of 1957: Hare Hunt, Deer Hunt, Elephant, Bear,Soldier and Curtain(Merino de Cáceres y Martínez Ruiz, 2023, 229-262, 305-330).

Description

Despite the fact that numerous historians have tried to discern the symbolism of this mural repertoire — Cook, Camón Aznar, Ortego, Frinta, Nieto, Guardia... — we do not have a consensual iconographic reading of this enigmatic ensemble. Interpretations that have sought to relate the symbolic keys of the mural decoration to the architectural analysis of the building have gained weight. The upper part of the walls was decorated with a Christological cycle, while the lower part was illustrated with hunting scenes. Cook pointed out the similarities with other sites of the period, such as Maderuelo or Taüll, but the truth is that a pictorial cycle dedicated to hunting is unusual. This same historian believed that the master of Maderuelo would have painted the upper frieze after working in Taüll and in the Vera Cruz of Maderuelo, a second painter would have been in charge of the murals of the small chapel of the tribune, and the master of San Baudelio himself, the most original of the three, would have been responsible for the hunting scenes in the lower area, at the same time, despite the diversity of styles (Cook, 1955). Other authors, such as Camón, considered the paintings in the lower area to be older (Camón, 1958). Guardia Pons, however, proposed an overall analysis due to the same programmatic unity, even taking the chronology of the whole further back in time, to the end of the 10th and beginning of the 11th centuries, as the building; so that architecture and decoration would respond to the same concerns (Guardia Pons, 2011). In any case, many of the authors seem to agree in attributing a symbology to the mural complex in which the following are interwoven: hunting, war, power and the secular confrontation between good and evil. The paintings in the lower part have even been interpreted as an echo of the territorial confrontations that took place between different bishops with the aim of reaffirming their dominion. In recent years, the reading of both cycles, upper and lower, as a unitary whole has gained more weight, appreciable in the technique used and decorative motifs, in addition to framing it in the chronological horizon of the first quarter of the 12th century.