This exhibition is a tribute to the most brilliant and internationally renowned sculptor of Catalan Romanesque art, the Master of Cabestany—considered by some to be a true Picasso of the twelfth century—and to his masterpiece, the lost portal of Sant Pere de Rodes, in Port de la Selva (1160–1170).
Many questions remain unanswered regarding the astonishing life of the Master of Cabestany—between Tuscany, the Midi, Catalonia, and Navarre—as well as regarding the sources and original intentions of his art. These issues will be addressed by the exhibition.
The emergence of a number of works from this ensemble and the MNAC’s acquisition of four of them have made it possible to host this ambitious, far-reaching exhibition, which seeks to reassess the originality and “modernity” of this itinerant artist within the context of European Romanesque art, and to draw attention to the extraordinary artistic significance of the Benedictine abbey of Sant Pere de Rodes and its long and turbulent history. The monastery, in which nature is inseparable from art, has become a contemporary myth in the history of Romanesque art.
The exhibition will bring together more than one hundred works of sculpture, painting, illuminated manuscripts, drawings, and documents from museums in Catalonia, Spain and abroad, libraries, and archives (Cluny, Toulouse, Avignon, Paris, Pisa, Cremona, Rome, Turin, and London), with the particular distinction of including previously unpublished works and documents. In a single space, visitors will encounter Romanesque works of art, Roman sarcophagi, reused or harshly fragmented pieces, travellers’ accounts, reports on the dismantling of the monastery, and testimonies to the gradual recovery of the site’s memory.
All of this will allow reflection on a series of fascinating themes related to the construction of the myth of the abbey of Rodes—the myth-making power of the landscape, its early links with Rome, the role of the monastery as a pilgrimage destination—as well as on the surprising “retrospective” art of the Master of Cabestany, who sought inspiration in Late Roman sarcophagi. His major work, the extraordinary western marble portal of Sant Pere de Rodes, sadly destroyed in the first third of the nineteenth century, will be one of the central themes of the project.
This exhibition will immerse visitors in a series of narratives that will take them on a journey into the past, and it will be divided into three main sections. The first will address the destruction and dispersal of the portal in the nineteenth century and the subsequent emergence of contemporary awareness about cultural heritage. The second section will explain the golden age of the medieval monastery through its connections with Rome, the creation of legendary narratives, and the making of a marble portal, for which a new reconstruction proposal will be presented. Finally, the exhibition will offer a reflection on the Master of Cabestany’s ancient sources of inspiration and the retrospective character of his art and technique, displaying other examples from the eleventh and twelfth centuries brought from across Europe, placed alongside Roman sarcophagi and reliefs.
