The Awakening of EndymionBeauty, Time, and Eternity in Romanesque Sculpture, and its Photographic Afterlife

  1. Francisco Prado-Vilar
Revista:
Codex aquilarensis: Cuadernos de investigación del Monasterio de Santa María la Real

ISSN: 0214-896X

Ano de publicación: 2019

Título do exemplar: Belleza, persuasión y retórica en el arte medieval

Número: 35

Páxinas: 223-252

Tipo: Artigo

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Outras publicacións en: Codex aquilarensis: Cuadernos de investigación del Monasterio de Santa María la Real

Resumo

Focusing on a series of extraordinary photographs of the sarcophagus lid of Alfonso Ansúrez (d. 1093), I delve in this essay into its formal, iconographic and performative aspects as I follow its geographical and temporal iterations in the first decades of the twentieth century. It traveled from the municipal cemetery of Sahagún, where it had been reused as the tombstone of a local townsman, sailing across the Atlantic to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, and then returning to Spain to become a stellar exhibit in the recently renovated National Archaeological Museum in Madrid. Each of these photographs records a unique intersubjective encounter between the figures carved on the lid, especially Alfonso’s marble embodiment, represented in the moment of his glorious resurrection following classical models of the myth of Endymion, and the persons on the other side of the lens. Notable among them were the art historian Ricardo de Orueta, who was Director General of Fine Arts in the government of the Spanish Republic, and the eminent Harvard medievalist Arthur Kingsley Porter. Made available to many eyes/I’s through their photographs, the sepulchral slab acquired a new aesthetic life and a pathway into the mainstream historiography of the Romanesque. An analysis of the photographs serves to reveal essential aspects of the work presenting it as an important case study to investigate the dialectics of death and resurrection, both in the context of Christian dogma and within the art historical discussions around the question of the Nachleben der Antike, inspiring a theoretical inquiry into the significance of artworks as they exist and acquire meaning through the confluence of the time of nature, the time of life, the time of history, and the time of eschatology.

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Fonte de datos: Dialnet