Title: San Isidoro exposed: the vicissitudes of research in Romanesque art
Abstract: Abstract Some forty years ago, by chance, the author's campaign of recording through drawings the earliest parts of the church of San Isidoro de León coincided with the exposure of the ground upon which that church rested, allowing observations of previous structures. Unfortunately, these observations, briefly noted in a postscript to an article of 1973, were not subsequently made public. San Isidoro has become an object of recent studies, and conclusions have been drawn that would not have been possible had the evidence uncovered by the removal of the floor been published. This article reports the drawings of the two campaigns, and the finds unexpectedly made visible in 1971. It also raises a methodological issue: observations published by myself and others that contradict the idea that the pantheon was erected in the middle of the eleventh century have in recent literature been ignored when an earlier date is favored. Finally, it questions the belief in a tradition of Spanish pantheons and treats skeptically the assumption that this tradition dictated the design of the so-called Pantheon of the Kings. The role of the Leonese palace may have been the more important. Keywords: LeónSan IsidoropantheonFernando IUrraca Fernándezpalace Notes 1Williams, "San Isidoro," Postscript, 184. 2For a brief popular report of my campaigns see Williams, "Solving a Medieval Who-done-it." The plan of the foundations of the church of Fernando and Sancha uncovered in 1971 as well as a drawing locating the vestiges of the first Romanesque church were published in the Diario de León, 12 April 2008, 58–9. 3Aspects of this study were presented in a seminar at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Madrid, 11 February 2010. 4Viñayo, Real Colegiata, 87ff. 5Díaz-Jiménez, "San Isidoro de León," 93, published the most extensive report on the excavations carried out in 1908–09 under Juan Crisóstomo Torbado, the architect-restorer of San Isidoro. Although the plan produced in Figure 4 of the article includes a southern foundation that might suggest a side porch, it must have been in fact the sleeper wall of the southern arcade of the twelfth-century church. For Torbado's campaign, see also Mélida y Alinari, "La basilica legionense." No tombs were mentioned in the early literature, but three could be seen in 1971 within and adjacent to the foundations of the Fernandine church. See Figure 8 and the Appendix. 6Fletcher and Barton, World of El Cid, 56ff.; Historia Silense, 198ff. For a review of the history of the Pantheon as cemetery see Martin, "Vie et morte dans la Panthéon". 7Arbeiter and Noack-Haley, Christliche Denkmäler, 193–203. 8The dimensions for the Leonese church were given by Gómez-Moreno (Arte románico, plan p. 103): nave length 11.6m, nave width 3.10m, aisle width 1.83m. The comparable dimensions for Valdediós: 11.6, 3.6, 1.8 (Arias, Prerrománico asturiano, 143). 9Díaz-Jiménez, "San Isidoro," 94. 10Arbeiter and Noack-Haley, Christliche Denkmäler, 298f. 11Williams, "San Isidoro," 178. 12García de Castro Valdés, Colegiata de San Pedro de Teberga. 13Boto Varela, "Morfogénesis espacial," 166f. and Figure 5. Whitehill, in Spanish Romanesque Architecture (148–9), went even further and proposed that Fernando appropriated the church of Alfonso V and added the Pantheon. However, this conclusion was at odds with the statement in the Silense, quoted by Whitehill in the next paragraph, that the church where the relics of Isidore were installed was newly built by Fernando. 14Williams, "San Isidoro," 173, n. 6. Although recorded by Georges Gaillard (Débuts, 11) without attribution, he reported to Whitehill (Spanish Romanesque Architecture, 152, n. 2) that his knowledge had come from Torbado. 15Gaillard, Débuts, 12. 16Rodríguez, Guia artística, 38. 17Martin, Queen as King, 126–8. 18Murillo Fragero, "Arqueología de la arquitectura," 22ff., plans p. 28; Fernández González, "Reflexiones sobre la evolución," 52; Seehausen, "Baugeschichte als dynastisches Konstrukt," plan p. 290. Although Seehausen claimed (205) that Whitehill showed in his study the "uncertainty" of the discoveries reported by Gaillard, Whitehill merely held out the possibility that the earlier church of Urraca Fernández's time also had transepts (152, n. 3): "Granting M. Gaillard's contention that the present transepts are twelfth century work, it seems to me possible that Doña Urraca's church may have had transepts which resembled those of Jaca and Frómista in their dimensions." 19See the comparable and contemporaneous conclusion by Salvini, "Il problema cronologico del pórtico." 20For the tombs, see the plan of Figure 7 and the Appendix. 21Williams, "San Isidoro," 176, Figures 12 and 13. The wall was extraordinarily thick with some signs that 20 cm were added to its inner side. See 177, n. 21. During Luis Menéndez Pidal's restoration of the cloister, the stepped elements were recorded in photos, and one section was left visible through an opening in the renewed Romanesque vaults by which it can still be seen today. 22Williams, "San Isidoro," 177–8. 23See Poza Yagüe, "Entre la tradición y la reforma," 16: "Nada indica que estas obras [del Panteón] no pudieran estar finalizadas en 1067 a la muerte de la reina Sancha." [Nothing indicates that these works [of the Pantheon] could not have been completed in 1067 at the death of Queen Sancha]. 24Bredekamp and Seehausen, "Das Reliquiar," 158–9; Seehausen, "Wege zum Heil," 22; Seehausen, "Baugeschichte," 204. 25Martin, Queen as King, 47–8, Figure 11. See also note 59 below. 26Bredekamp and Seehausen, "Das Reliquiar," 156; Seehausen, "Wege zum Heil," 5; Seehausen, "Baugeschichte," 203. 27Seehausen, "Baugeschichte," 203. 28Seehausen, "Baugeschichte," Figure 9, 205. 29Cazes and Cazes, Saint-Sernin, Figures 76, 138, 318. 30Williams, "Emergence of Spanish Romanesque," 192; Martin, Queen as King, 79; Herráez, Valdés, and Cosmen, "Escultura de San Isidoro." It was the similarity of capitals in the Pantheon to some in Saint-Sernin that led Marcel Durliat to question the contemporaneity of the Fernandine church and Pantheon (L'Art roman en Espagne, 17–18). 31Cazes and Cazes, Saint-Sernin, Figure 144. Compare Durliat, Sculpture romane de la route, Figures 45, 51 and Gómez-Moreno, Arte románico, pl. LX. 32Cazes and Cazes, Saint-Sernin, 62; Durliat, Sculpture romane, 100. 33Martin, Queen as King, Figure 28. 34Cazes and Cazes, Saint-Sernin, Figures 132, 174, 212. 35Williams, "Emergence of Spanish Romanesque," 185–8. 36Fletcher and Barton, World of El Cid, 55; Historia Silense, 197. 37See, however, the skepticism of Krüger, "Fürstengrablegen in Nordspanien," 62: "Contrary to what has been put forward […], the existence of a specifically Hispanic tradition of burial in western annexes of the church, the prototype of which would have been the panteón of Sta. María de Oviedo, seems questionable. Indeed, the single nave one bay panteón at Oviedo is the only one of its type." 38Gómez Moreno, Catálogo, 182 39See, for example, Cod. 94, Bibl. de la Colegiata de San Isidoro, from the second quarter of the seventeenth century. 40In the "Visita Abacial" of 1718, Cod. 102, Bibl. Colegiata de San Isidoro, fols. 23v and 50r. 41For an overview of the burials in the Pantheon see Martín López, "Las inscripciones del Panteón." See also note 63. 42Williams, "San Isidoro," 179–80. See also Martin, Queen as King, 84; Martin, "Chronicling the Iberian Palace," 123ff. 43For belief that the tribune was not contemporaneous with the Pantheon see Bango, "Espacio para enterramientos," 105; Fernández, "Reflexiones sobre la evolución," 51. I learned of the reversal of the spiral staircase from Andrés Seoane Otero, the supervisor of the works. 44Martin, "Chronicling the Iberian Palace," 128. 45Lucae Tudensis, Chronicon mundi, 275. 46Boto, "Morfogénesis espacial," 169–70, Figures 5 and 6. In the sixteenth century, Alfonso's pantheon was thought by the canons to be located to the immediate north of the sanctuary of the actual church, where the Trinity chapel sits. See Pérez Llamazares, Historia de la Real Colegiata, 375f. 47Lucae Tudensis, Chronicon mundi, 275. 48Grabar, Martyrium. 49Grabar, Martyrium, 545–59. 50After a survey of Asturian examples, César García de Castro concluded "[…] consideramos sin fundamento y resultado los prejuicios interpretativos las teorías que asignan sentido funerario a las estructuras occidentales asturianas de la Alta Edad Media […]" ("Las estructuras occidentales," 165). He did not include Sta. María del Rey Casto in his study because it was not part of a towered porch. 51Gil Fernández, Moralejo, and Ruiz de la Peña, Crónicas asturianas, 139 [… etiam in occidentali parte huius uenerande domus edem ad recondenda regum adstruxit corpora …]. 52Selgas, Monumentos ovetenses, 68–78, plan p. 73. 53Carvallo, Antigüedades, I: 307–8. 54Morales, Viage por orden del rey, 88–9. 55García de Castro Valdés, Arqueología Cristiana, 398–404. 56Collins, "Julian of Toledo," 44–5: "It is particularly interesting that the bodies of dead [Visigothic] kings attracted no special interest … A king would die and be buried virtually anywhere." 57Bango, "Espacio para enterramientos." 58Bango, "Espacio para enterramientos," 100. 59Bango, "Espacio para enterramientos," 102. The Pantheon of Alfonso V is termed a "replica" of the one in Oviedo. 60Bango, "Esapacio para enterramientos," 105: "En las primitivas reparaciones del suelo del panteón se ha podido comprobar que los muros de la banqueta enlazaban continua y perfectamente con los del primitivo templo prerrománico, lo que testimonia incontravertiblemente el proyecto original de la estructura de este cementerio en la linea de la tradición ovetense." [With the early repairs of the floor of the pantheon it was possible to see that the walls of the socle joined perfectly with those of the primitive pre-Romanesque church, which shows incontrovertibly that the original project for building the cemetery followed the Oviedan tradition.] Just when and in what form the "primitivas reparaciones" of the Pantheon were recorded is not specified. 61García de Castro, "Estructuras occidentales," 165. 62Martin, Queen as King, 129ff. 63Xavier Dectot recently acknowledged (Tombeaux des familles royales, 126) the pantheon's significant architectural role and called attention to its low height in comparison to the tribune it carries: "La fonction du niveau inférieur est avant tout architecturale, ce dont on peut juger au moins d'après l'arcature de la tribune et qui explique sa hauteur plus faible." [The function of the lower level is essentially architectural, at least as one can judge from the arched opening [into the church] of the tribune, and thus the low height [of the Pantheon].] 64Sánchez Ameijeiras, "Eventful Life;" Suárez González, "Del pergamino a la piedra?"
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 3
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot