The Paintings from Sant Joan in Boí is a group of Catalan
Romanesque paintings exhibited at the
National Art Museum of Catalonia
The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (, English: "National Art Museum of Catalonia"), abbreviated as MNAC, is a museum of Catalan visual art located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Situated on Montjuïc hill at the end of Avinguda de la Reina Ma ...
in
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
.
[MNAC/MAC 15796, 15822, 15862, 15951-15956, 200423-
200441 and 200817]
Description
The paintings from
Sant Joan
Sant Joan (official name; English: Saint John) is a municipality on Majorca, Spain, situated in the center of the island in the comarca of Pla de Mallorca. The town Sant Joan, formerly known as Sant Joan de Sineu, was founded in 1300. It is bord ...
in
Boí
Boí ( es, Bohí) is a village in the province of Lleida, in Catalonia, Spain. It lies at the centre of the valley and municipality of Vall de Boí in the comarca of Alta Ribagorça.
The village lies just to the south of the Aigüestortes i Esta ...
make up what is considered one of the finest groups in Catalan Romanesque painting. The paintings have been dated to around 1100, established indirectly on the basis of the architecture of the building and from comparison with the paintings in other churches in the valley of Boí:
Sant Climent and
Santa Maria in Taüll. Their study has led to comparison with those of
Saint Martin de Vicq (
Nohant
Nohant-Vic () is a commune in the Indre department in central France.
It is located near La Châtre, on the D943, approximately southeast of Châteauroux and consists of two villages, Vic and Nohant, extended along the road.
Geography
The co ...
-
Vicq,
Indre
Indre (; oc, Endre) is a landlocked department in central France named after the river Indre. The inhabitants of the department are known as the ''Indriens'' (masculine; ) and ''Indriennes'' (feminine; ). Indre is part of the current administ ...
, central
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
) from the second half of the twelfth century, in which has been found not so much a certain interdependence but the use of common, possibly Carolingian European models.
Of the whole, what remains is basically the painting from the aisles and the arches separating the nave and the aisles, enough to reveal a rich iconographic programme with ample references to the story of the
Redemption.
Exemplary scenes are depicted from the lives of saints, of which the most important fragment is the ''Lapidation of Saint Stephen'', a vast repertory of animals of a moralistic nature (mainly on the intradoses of the arches) and a scene with minstrels, something very unusual, which in this case must be taken as being in praise of the Lord. There was also a representation of the Day of Judgement from which the surviving fragments of Paradise, Hell and the apocalyptic dragon came.
The paintings from Boí must be considered an example of an underlying French influence in Catalonia which was different from the Italian influence that was to dominate the Romanesque pictorial scenario in Catalonia after the paintings of the
Pedret Circle.
References
External links
The artwork at Museum's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Paintings from Sant Joan in Boi
Catalan paintings
Paintings in the collection of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya
1100 in Europe