Title

Temptation of Christ by the devil. Mural painting from San Baudelio de Berlanga

Anonimous

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Object history

“Our astonishment upon entering the interior was very great...” this is how Manuel Aníbal Álvarez and José Ramón Mélida illustrated, in an article published in 1907, the surprise they felt when they saw the mural complex of the hermitage of San Baudelio de Berlanga. A singular artistic treasure -discovered by Teodoro Ramírez, member of the Commission of Excavations of Numancia-, of which Elías Romera had already made a first description. Located in the village of Casillas de Berlanga, the building was sober on the outside, 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, in addition to wondering how such an exceptional ensemble could have gone unnoticed until then, carried out a joint study of the building and its paintings, with the intention 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 of attention to the richness of the mural ensemble, 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: attempts of robbery loomed over the hermitage. Strange movements that had taken place around the monument were denounced, which encouraged a lively controversy in the press, and a denunciation that unfolded a long dossier followed in the courts of justice. The neighbors of Casillas de Berlanga, owners of the property on which the hermitage was erected, had sold the group of paintings to the Italian merchant Leon Levi for 50,000 pesetas; they were advised in the operation by Francisco Marina Encabo, property registrar of Almazán (Soria). The operations of taking off and extraction of the paintings were carried out in a clandestine way, but after the warning received by the Civil Guard of Berlanga, the operation was stopped and the paintings were requisitioned until the complaint was solved and the opportune solution in the courts to this operation.

The Provincial Commission of Monuments of Soria awakened, from the first moment, the interest of its representatives in the Cortes, of the academicians of the Royal Academies of Fine Arts of San Fernando and of History, as well as of the General Direction of Fine Arts, in order to avoid the despoiling of the paintings. The art historian and senator Elías Tormo denounced the facts before the Senate on July 21, 1922: “...Mr. Levi, who is already well known in the art world, was the first to denounce this act. Levi, who is already known in many great stories, in many regrettable stories of the depreciation of the artistic treasure in Spain, because he is the same one who, with a carte blanche from Emperor Frederick, a carte blanche that he estimated at about one million francs, acquired the famous and splendid Monforte altarpiece, which is today one of the glories of the Berlin Museum” (Santonja, 2005). For its part, the local and national press tried to make society aware of what had happened and of the need to preserve the 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 that the owners enjoyed when disposing of their goods, even those of historical-artistic value, were topics that filled the pages of the newspapers when discussing the sale of the paintings of San Baudelio (Martínez Ruiz, 2008, pp. 213-276).

The record of letters sent by the Provincial Commission of Monuments of Soria, the trips to Madrid, in order to obtain the attention of the high authorities, as well as the visits to the hermitage, 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 September 12, 1923, in which the paintings separated from the walls of the hermitage were restored to their original place. During the long administrative and judicial process, Leon Levi let it be known, and even declared it to journalists, that he had important contacts that would allow him to bend in his favor the action of the judges. Finally, after a long process, a sentence of the Supreme Court of February 25, 1925 marked a milestone in the history of artistic plundering in Spain: “...that the appellants, owners of the San Baudelio hermitage, have been able to freely sell the mural paintings of the same and Mr. Leon Levi to acquire them and, from now on, to dispose of them lawfully...”. Shortly afterwards, the mural paintings were transferred to various canvases and left Spain (Martínez Ruiz, 2013, pp. 19-36).

That sentence fell like a cold shower on those who had tried to prevent the export of the paintings. The judges' interpretation of the facts caused real surprise. Among other things, the decision was based on property rights, even though the hermitage was declared a national monument; it was considered that the paintings were not considered antiques as defined by the Law of July 7, 1911; it was considered that the mural group was independent of the building, based on the fact that the paintings had been detached from it; not even the removal process was understood as damage or detriment to the artistic group. The General Director of Fine Arts himself, Joaquín Pérez del Pulgar y Campos, Count of Las Infantas, expressed his bewilderment to the president of the Provincial Commission of Monuments of Soria, Santiago Gómez Santa Cruz, on August 21, 1926: “What a wretched affair this matter of the paintings of San Baudelio! I believe, although it may seem immodest, that if I had been in the Directorate, the file would not have been opened with so much babbling and so little continuity of criteria and action on the part of the official defenders of our Artistic Treasure, and that certainly contrasts with that of you in the Monuments Commission, and the determined will of the buyers who, by whatever means, and God knows what means, and God knows what means, have been used to buy the paintings. The decided will of the chamarileros buyers that by whatever means, and God knows what they have been, have managed to obtain this accursed sentence from the highest of the Nation's Courts” (Martínez Ruiz, 2008, p. 271).

The case served in Spain to review the laws in force and try to correct the loopholes they presented. Leví put the set of paintings in the hands of Gabriel Dereppe, who tried to sell them to various museum institutions and private collectors. On November 17, 1927, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston bought from him two of the most interesting compositions, corresponding to the upper cycle: The Last Supper and The Marys before 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 January 25, 1952 they were acquired from him by Elijah B. Martindale and H. A. Clowes, doctor and chemist respectively, manufacturers of antibiotics in Indianapolis, to whose museum they were bequeathed in 1958: The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem and The Wedding at Cana. Clowes even offered Sánchez Cantón the transfer of the paintings of San Baudelio to the Prado Museum in exchange for two canvases by Velázquez, but Sánchez Cantón refused. In 1957, thanks to the mediation of James J. Rorimer, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, who at that time was negotiating with Franco's government the export of the Romanesque apse of San Martín de Fuentidueña 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 be offered in exchange for the Romanesque apse of San Martín de Fuentidueña (Segovia). Such an acquisition was made by the Metropolitan Museum once it had confirmation that the Franco government would agree to the dismantling and transfer of the apse to New York in exchange for the paintings, until then in the possession of the industrialists Martindale and Clowes. This was a very positive move for the New York institution, since at the same time that it obtained the Segovian monument to complete one of the rooms of The Cloisters, it ended up receiving the paintings as a donation for its own catalog from the Indianapolis collectors: Temptation of Christ by the Devil -pictorial fragment of the set that concerns us-, Healing of the Blind Man and Resurrection of Lazarus and Camel, destined to ornament the new room created with the incorporation of the apse coming from Fuentidueña, inaugurated in 1961. The Cincinnati Museum received The Falconer, from the same set, while the Prado Museum received as temporary and indefinite deposit, after the aforementioned agreement of 1957: Hare Hunting, Deer Hunting, Elephant, Bear, Soldier and Curtain (Merino de Cáceres and Martínez Ruiz, 2023, 229-262, 305-330).

Description

Fresco painting transferred to canvas. 

Although numerous historians have tried to discern the symbolism of this mural repertoire - Cook, Camón Aznar, Ortego, Frinta, Nieto, Guardia Pons... - we do not have a consensual iconographic reading of this enigmatic ensemble. The interpretations that have tried to relate the symbolic keys of the mural decoration with the architectural analysis of the building have been gaining weight. The upper part of the walls was decorated with a Christological cycle, while the lower register was illustrated with hunting scenes. Cook pointed out the similarities that existed with other complexes of the period, such as Maderuelo or Taüll, but the fact is that a pictorial cycle dedicated to hunting is not common. This same historian estimated that the master of Maderuelo would have painted the high frieze after working in Taüll and in the Vera Cruz of Maderuelo, a second painter had been in charge of the murals of the small chapel of the tribune, and the master of San Baudelio itself, the most original of the three, would have been responsible for the hunting scenes of the lower zone, at the same time, in spite of the diversity of styles (Cook, 1955). Other authors, such as Camón, considered the paintings in the lower zone to be older (Camón, 1958). Guardia Pons, however, proposed an analysis of the whole due to the same programmatic unit, even taking the chronology of the set further back in time, late X and early XI, as well as the building; so that architecture and decoration would respond to the same concerns (Guardia Pons, 2011). In any case, many authors seem to agree in giving the mural ensemble a symbolism that weaves together: hunting, war, power and secular confrontation between good and evil. The paintings of the lower part have 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 it has gained more weight the reading of both cycles, upper and lower, as a unitary whole, appreciable in the technique used and decorative motifs, in addition to framing it in a chronological horizon that could be placed towards the first quarter of the twelfth century.

Locations

• First half of the XII^th c. - 1925

  hermitage

  Hermitage of San Baudelio de Berlanga, Soria (Spain)

• 1922 - 1927

  dealer/antiquarian

  Leon Levi / Leone Levi, Venecia/Barcelona. Recorría toda la geografía española en busca de tesoros artísticos (Spain) *

• 1927 - 1952

  private collection

  Gabriel Dereppe, París / Londres / Nueva York *

• 1952 - 1961

  private collection

  Elijah B. Martindale and George H. A. Clowes, Indianapolis (United States) *

• 1961 - present

  museum

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