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The Marble Tempest: Material Imagination, the Echoes of Nostos, and the Transfiguration of Myth in Romanesque Sculpture
Abstract
The essay begins with a multisensorial immersion in the figural orchestration of a marble column from the north portal of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela (known as the Porta Francigena, ca. 1105), which features episodes of the struggle of Ulysses with the sirens and other sea monsters, inspired by Roman sarcophagi and interpreted through the lens of Christian allegory. Taking nostos (journey of return of heroes in ancient epic) as a critical concept for the study of Nachleben der Antike (Afterlife of Antiquity), the article proceeds by developing a series of in-depth analyses of other sculptures that originally formed part of this façade, but are now reused and decontextualized in other parts of the cathedral, including such famous pieces as the "Woman with the skull". The analysis delves in their classical sources, traces their iconographic and formal transformations, and explores their phenomenological effects as they were perceived by pilgrims arriving in the square set before this portal. Literary references to authors such as Virgil, Lucretius, or Ausonius, alongside theoretical engagements with the work of thinkers such as Aby Warburg and his Mnemosyne project, or Michel Serres and his liquid history, serve to elucidate the iconographic program, chronographic structure, and material poetics of the Porta Francigena, which here emerges as a key work in the corpus of medieval art.
This paper explores the chiastic sign ⊗ in Romanesque art showing its investment in the form of the crown of the saints (e.g., the corona on the golden statue of Sainte Foy at Conques); in the mirroring of celestial and terrestrial music (Paris, BnF, MS Lat. 776, fol. 1v); and in the chiastic step of Christ, the Archangel Michael, and the apostles (sculptures and the Beatus MS at Santo Domingo de Silos). The pirouetting step present in the art at Santo Domingo de Silos is interpreted here as the expression of the imbrication of human and divine. This entwining channels caritas: the love for one’s neighbour through which the faithful can return to the divine at the end of time. A powerful confirmation of these ideas about the interdigitation of human and divine through the practice of caritas is offered by the poetry and music for the feast of the Mandatum (The Washing of the Feet).
Using the evidence of Aquitanian chants, this article explores the possibility that a twelfth-century relief panel of the Annunciation today in the interior of Conques was originally designed for the West facade, where it completes the composition of the divine plan of Salvation. This hypothetic reconstruction also uncovers the important role of the patron saint, Sainte-Foy, and how she is promoted as second after Mary and efficacious intercessor.
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