Title

Portal from the church of San Vicente de Frías (Burgos)

Anonimous

Generic classification

Object

Century

Cultural context / style

Dimensions

Material

Technique

Provenance

Current location

Inventory Number in Current Collection

Object history

In 1836, the portico on the front of the church of San Vicente de Frías (Burgos) collapsed, and later, in 1904, the tower collapsed. The collapse entailed notable losses, since the tower dragged with it part of the naves, its small portico and a magnificent Romanesque doorway (Cadiñanos, 1978, pp. 61-73). The doorway lay abandoned among the remains of the tower for quite some time, until in the 1920s there was someone who showed interest in those stones. It was in 1923 when rumors circulated about its sale. The Provincial Commission of Monuments of Burgos then tried to gather information about what had happened. Archbishop Juan Benlloch y Vivó made the parish priest of Frías go to Burgos, so that he himself could clarify before the president of the commission what had happened. According to his own statements, indeed “some stones from a doorway had been sold, but they were of little value and had been abandoned for a long time”. The Provincial Commission of Monuments was then aware of what had happened, and so stated in its minutes of June 26, 1923. The controversy arose when rumors reached the General Directorate of Fine Arts, a year later, of the possible export of a cover from Burgos. At that time, in May 1924, little could be done about it. The only thing to do was to determine which doorway it was and to find out what action the provincial administration had taken in this regard. The Provincial Commission of Monuments of Burgos informed the Directorate General of Fine Arts that the Romanesque doorway was “of some archaeological interest”; after the collapse of the tower, when the rubble was removed, “the somewhat mutilated remains of the doorway were piled up in the open air where they have been suffering the inclemency of the weather, and were later sold”. They did not offer more details about the artistic value of the work, since the members of the commission affirmed that the rubble that formed the remains when they had the opportunity to see them did not allow them to appreciate their qualities, nor could they find out who had been the persons responsible for the sale. The General Directorate of Fine Arts did not consider it appropriate to continue the investigations and thanked the Provincial Commission of Monuments for its efforts (Martínez Ruiz, 2008, t.1, pp. 81-84).

Documentation from the Brummer Gallery antiques house offers clues as to the fate of the cover after the sale. The firm acquired the sculptural remains of Frias from Pares (the documentation probably refers to the antique dealer Émile Pares), the purchase price was $4,239.68 and in April 1923 they were sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for $55,000: “...parts of a large Romanesque arch coming from the chapel of the Duke of Frias. Sold to Metropolitan Museum April 27, 1923 for $55,000” The shipment, according to the Brummer Gallery record, was made in collaboration with Seligmann, Rey & Co, New York and Henry Daguerre, Paris. Also noted: Purchased from Pares, acquisition price: $4,239.68. (Watson Library, H007).

Eighty stones from the original doorway were therefore incorporated into a reconstruction on the north wall of the Cuxa cloister at The Cloisters, the medieval art section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The reinstallation had to overcome several problems, such as the fact that some of the ashlars had been reused and came from older buildings. The church would correspond to a late Romanesque style, but the temple that has come down to us today is the result of several periods, as a result of various extensions and renovations. Luciano Huidobro lamented in 1932, when speaking of the temple of Moradillo de Sedano (Burgos), of the sad memory of the front of Frías, contemporary of that one; he affirmed that the few fragments that still remained of San Vicente de Frías could only be contemplated thanks to the photograph facilitated by A. Kingsley Porter, and the memories of the rubble that a few saw in the village before its exportation (Huidobro, 1932, p. 257).

Locations

• Early XIII^th c. - 1923

  church

  Church of San Vicente Mártir, Frías (Spain)

• 1923

  dealer/antiquarian

  Raimundo Ruiz, Madrid (Spain) *

• 1923

  dealer/antiquarian

  Joseph Brummer, New York (United States) *

• 1923 - present

  museum

  The Cloisters. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (United States)