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(Peter Barnet) In 1957, the apse of the church of San Martín
at Fuentidueña became a long-term loan to the Metropolitan Museum.
The apse at Fuentidueña really conveys the best characteristics of Romanesque architecture
that one finds throughout Europe. The stone has a great warmth to it, and there's a real
massive solidity to the walls which those of us who love Romanesque architecture respond
to and I think you see it very much here in Fuentidueña.
(George Wheeler) This is a both an aesthetic object, an interesting
piece of architecture and a historical document. And so we really value the apse in all of
those areas.
(Jerrilynn Dodds) Today the vestiges of the Church of San Martín
de Fuentidueña appears like a romantic ruin on top of a hill. It has towers, half ruined,
jutting into the relentlessly blue sky of Castile. It has a wall that clings to this
steep escarpment, above the modern city.
(Peter Barnet) With Fuentidueña we're very fortunate to have film footage of the dismantling
of the apse, the very careful process that resulted in the apse coming here and then
documenting it being reconstructed here in New York.
Adding the apse from Fuentidueña to the Cloisters, which opened in 1938 and already existed as
a very complete and successful museum, was really a great completion of this jewel of
the Metropolitan Museum.
Opening Title: The Fuentidueña Apse
The Cloisters is the Metropolitan Museum's branch devoted to the art and architecture
of the Middle Ages which opened to the public in 1938 but had its beginning with the purchase
of a collection known as the Barnard collection that belonged to a sculptor and dealer named
George Gray Barnard who had amassed a large group of mostly architectural elements from
the Middle Ages... but did not include a major element from an ecclesiastical building.
And then in 1925 John D. Rockefeller Jr. enabled the Metropolitan Museum to buy the Barnard
collection. He gave the land for the Cloisters and Fort Tryon Park in which the Cloisters
sits in northern Manhattan on a very high site overlooking the Hudson River, and Rockefeller
also paid for the construction of the new museum.
People enjoyed coming to this wonderful site and having a sense of what it was like to
be in a medieval building and to look at medieval art in an environment that suggests the way
works of art were seen and appreciated in the Middle Ages. There's really no other museum
like that.
An apse is a projection at the end (usually the East end), the liturgical end, of medieval
church buildings and was a fairly standard element of medieval architecture...distinguished
usually by its curved shape and often by a half-domed vault, and that's where the altar
is, it's where the focal point of the function of the church is, the service is performed.
The Romanesque Period, beginning in the 11th century, moving mostly through the 12th century,
was the period when monumental buildings made of stone really reemerged as a major form
for European art and architecture. And the apse at Fuentidueña is a marvelous example
of the Romanesque period of the 12th century.
From the very beginning, the founders of the Cloisters hoped that a large apse such as
the one we see here from Fuentidueña could be part of the complex of buildings, part
of the Cloisters museum.
And in fact, they were interested in the apse from the church of San Martín at Fuentidueña,
which was attached to a very badly damaged and neglected building in Spain.
(JERRILYNN DODDS Dean of the College, Sarah Lawrence College):
Fuentidueña is on this extraordinary precipice in the heart of old Castile. Old Castile is
considered by many to be the very heart of Spanish identity.
You have to imagine the eleventh century Iberian Peninsula as a place that was completely fragmented.
In the north, there're these feisty little Christian kingdoms who are fighting for sovereignty
between themselves. In the south are a number of Islamic kingdoms, who are sometimes allied
with the Christian kingdoms, sometimes fighting against them. And in the middle is this broad
swath of land, which is uninhabited, a real wild no man's land. A strategic location on
the road between the old lands of old Castile in the north and the new lands of Castile
to the south.
Then at the end of the eleventh century, a great king, Alfonso VI, manages to conquer
Toledo, which was a great prize for his kingdom, the kingdom of Castile and León. Now, how
do you resettle a piece of land like this in the eleventh century?
First, you donate pieces of that land to monasteries, because a monastery, once it establishes itself,
is a good place to begin a settlement. Monks can provide local authority; they can provide
a certain amount of security. And then settlers come with grants of land and grow up around
this.
These villas would be found on high plateaus overlooking fertile plains. Fuentidueña is
the perfect example of this. You can imagine how this frontier represented a kind of opportunity.
Spain didn't have the same kind of feudalism they had in France. One could find a new piece
of land and start a completely new future for oneself, in a place like the frontier
of Castile. And it's probably in the end of the twelfth century that the churches of Fuentidueña
were built, by the emperor Alfonso VII.
Now, the churches of Fuentidueña are in the Romanesque style, a style which was becoming
extremely fashionable throughout the north of Spain.
The kind of architecture you use becomes a very significant choice. At a time when Castilian
Christians were beginning to want to separate themselves from the wonderful, messy diversity
of the Iberian Peninsula, people who lived among Muslims and Christians and Jews, if
they wanted to create a separate identity that was uniquely Christian, they could look
to this Romanesque style. Romanesque architecture and sculpture was the perfect way of expressing
this kind of new identity.
Romanesque might have come to Spain from France, but in Spain, it was transformed; transformed
to take advantage of these warm stone colors and this harsh sun that cuts into the stone
with these knife-like shadows, so dark and so dramatic.
Romanesque architecture had ¬sculpture, figural sculpture, with these expressive, emotional
images of biblical themes and cosmic judgments. Not only capitals with figures, there're corbels.
Corbels are these little brackets that go around the outside of the apse.
When you look more closely, you can see that they hold other images of the life of the
Middle Ages. You might find a lady or a knight, a lord, or an acrobat.
In a way, the corbels show the church's attempt to draw all the life of the Middle Ages under
its cloak. And they're, for us, a kind of precious clue about life beyond the sacred
life that appears in documents and on a large part of the church decoration.
Perhaps one of the reasons that the Romanesque architecture of Fuentidueña is so good, one
of the reasons it's so forceful, and one of the reasons there's so much of it, is that
there were many quarries very close at hand.
There was limestone, dolomite and sandstone, all within a stone's throw of Fuentidueña.
And yet, there's kind of an anomaly here. On this high, austere plain, where the fortification
of Fuentidueña is found, was a little chapel, the Chapel of San Martín. We wonder why the
Chapel of San Martín was here. And most of all, we wonder why its apse, the part of the
building that's at the Metropolitan Museum today, was made with such extraordinary ashlar
masonry, this big blocky masonry—expensive, finely cut...you needed incredible craftsmen
to do it. Our best guess, about now, is that the Chapel of San Martín was originally attached
to a fortification or a castle, and that that fortification was made of a different kind
of material that decomposed over time. It's sort of a testament to the nature of the construction
of San Martín de Fuentidueña, how beautifully constructed it was, how expensively constructed
the apse was, that it has survived, when the rest of the fortification or castle to which
it was attached has disappeared.
Fuentidueña was founded sometime at the end of the eleventh century; the apse of San Martín
represents the high moment of this settlement, sometime in the twelfth century; however,
by the end of the thirteenth century, its importance wanes. By the seventeenth century,
this proud fortification on top of this plateau where the Church of San Martín once stood
was in ruins. And the nave ceased to be used as a church at all. It begins to be used by
the community as a cemetery, and that's because that nave, which had been more rudely built,
had almost entirely fallen in. The place where i¬¬t stood still serves as a cemetery today.
(Peter Barnet): The Metropolitan Museum first became interested
in acquiring the Fuentidueña apse in 1935, but the negotiations stretched on for decades.
Two major wars intervened, and the Met's tenacious Director James Rorimer restarted negotiations
in earnest in 1951.
The Met made the case that if the apse were moved to New York City, it would be well cared
for at The Cloisters and accessible to millions of visitors.
Ultimately, a number of Spanish government officials, even the Pope all weighed in on
the decision.
The apse became a long-term loan to the Metropolitan Museum in 1957.
In exchange, John D. Rockefeller Jr. provided funds to restore the church's cemetery, as
well as the whole parochial church of San Miguel in Fuentidueña, and the Museum loaned
six important Romanesque frescoes originally from the monastery of San Baudelio de Berlanga,
which are on long-term loan to the Prado Museum in Madrid.
One of the curators at the Metropolitan Museum, Carmen Gómez-Moreno, was in fact the daughter
of distinguished Spanish Medieval art historian, Manuel Gómez-Moreno, who had helped to declare
the Church of San Martín a national monument, and was then involved with the decision to
make the loan arrangement with the Museum.
Carmen Gómez-Moreno oversaw the process of carefully documenting and dismantling the
apse at Fuentidueña on site in Spain.
(CARMEN GÓMEZ-MORENO Assistant Curator, Medieval Art, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art) (captioned):
That is my father, Manuel Gómez-Moreno. And that is the architect, Alejandro Ferrant.
This architect had been doing a beautiful job in all the reconstructions
so he knew very well how to do that and also he had a team of workers that went
with him wherever he went —eleven or twelve, but then they hired quite
a number of people from-- locals.
(Salvador Carretero Gonzá*** Local worker, 1957 dismantling project):
These men came and they were looking for workers and four of us took the work.
(Fernando Pérez Díez, Mayor of Fuentidueña): He's 68 years old now, and he was 18 years
old then. They took it 50 years ago, in '57.
(Salvador Carretero Gonzá***) Since they started with the first stone, we
were there until they finished.
(Carmen Gómez-Moreno): I never in my life had put together anything of that of that
sort, or-- I had never had to handle a bunch of stoneworkers
or anything. My worry was that-- snows all the time. It
had to be finished before December.
(Victoriano Carrero Gonzá***, Local worker, 1957 dismantling project):
This one was like the owner, she bossed everyone around.
When she came, everyone stood at attention.
(Salvador Carretero Gonzá***): When we brought down the huge image of the
saint made out of stone, there was a big spider
and you should have heard her scream! And Mr Sadí, who was in charge of the crew
said, "And you're afraid of one spider, but not
of men!"
(Carmen Gómez-Moreno): You see, that is part of the mounting for
the vault. They made a whole vault,
so it would adjust completely to the shape of the apse
to hold the thing together while they were taking the stones down.
There is where I am inside, when they built it.
That was a beautiful thing. It was so well made.
Ferrant: he was terribly meticulous. He knew how to move things so he knew exactly
what had to be done. So they started numbering every single stone
very clearly on all the visible sides and then when they started removing them they
had numbers on-- everywhere.
Every stone had four numbers and that number coincided with the following
number so you knew which stone came next to it,
on either side and back-- there couldn't be any confusion.
Oh, they were also taking notes of everything they were taking down, you know? He had lists
and lists and lists, with all the numbers.
Everything was made there-- all the crates were made there
They brought all the you know, blocks of wood of all kinds of sizes
and then every case had all the numbers of all the stones that were inside.
So when they needed a stone here in the reconstruction, they just had to go to the crate where it
was, and they found it easily. They placed them in an orderly way, you know?
So it was practically a baby could put it together.
(Salvador Carretero Gonzá***): This is the crate with the saint
The people arrived there. The crate with the saint was the biggest
While they were contemplating it, someone took a picture of them.
(Carmen Gómez-Moreno): So it was a work of a magician the way it
was packed. The stones, proper, they had no problem
but then the ones with carvings-- the architect didn't want them to rub against
anything. So they invented a thing that the pieces were
actually hanging they made a little carving so it sort of fitted
into the same thing in the wood and it hung and the same goes for the big
sculptures. They could move them and nothing happened
to them even if you threw them a great distance because you never knew what a boat is going
to do with those things. That was done with all the capitals, with
everything carved --and so all the carving was preserved so
precisely.
It was such a difference between the things they used there very efficiently
and here, everything was very modern and very expensive
done by very clever people, just using the essentials
in a very clever way, and very well done.
I think that they send some stones cut from some mountain around,
to complete that part that was missing, so it would be of the same kind as the rest.
(Fernando Pérez Díez): The church of San Miguel was restored when
they took this one away (other two chime in)
Within a year or less after they took the other one away, they fixed this church up
If they hadn't fixed it up, it would be in the same ruin as the Church of San Martín,
very deteriorated.
(Carmen Gómez-Moreno): When it was finished— packed and loaded,
I said, "I don't want to see anymore." I just left.
It went by road, and trucks and it was a very narrow road on this mountain.
That part was pretty scary. And as a result of all that, they got an apse
but I got a sort of a stomach ulcer. (laughs)
(Peter Barnet): 3,300 blocks and sculptural elements weighing
284 tons were shipped from Spain on the freighter "Monte Navajo" which arrived in New York City
on February 13, 1958.
All of the blocks were treated with a preservative, and the 2-year reconstruction began.
All of the blocks were treated with a preservative, and the 2-year reconstruction began, overseen
by Met curator Margaret Freeman.
To protect the most delicate elements, casts were made of some of the exterior sculptures
and these reproductions are what you see outside, while the originals are displayed inside.
The final stone was put in place in January of 1960: the head of the large-scale figure
of Saint Martin.
This is a detail that I think is very important and really crystallizes the whole process:
is that the sculpture of Saint Martin, the namesake of the church at Fuentidueña, had
been missing its head for decades. The head had been knocked off, and in fact
the local people knew where it was in a house in the village, and in the process the head
was joined to the pieces that came from the loan and we now see the figure with its original
head.
(Peter Barnet): Bringing these Medieval, mostly Mediterranean
monuments from Spain and France to New York presents many conservation challenges. Fortunately
we have a staff of conservators and specialists who are able to look at this and from time
to time we can treat the stone and consolidate it to make sure that it's preserved.
(GEORGE WHEELER Consulting Scientist, Department of Scientific
Research, The Metropolitan Museum of Art): This is an old building, and an old building
erodes, it has interaction with man that produces scratches and dings and losses so I think
that this this building has actually held up fairly well with that regard.
This is what's referred to as a dolomitic limestone which is made of a material called
calcium magnesium carbonate, a stone that's very porous-- it imbibes liquids very easily
and that leads to a strong susceptibility for deterioration.
The main conservation challenges for the building in Spain resulted from the the use of the
apse and the nave as a burial area and the bodies that were buried there of course ultimately
decay and in that decayed process produce salts that are damaging to the building stone.
So these salts infiltrated through the soil, and into the building stone and you could
see on the exterior walls a a good deal of spalling and scaling and deterioration. So
that produced significant damage in Spain.
The climates from Fuentidueña and New York City are relatively similar in that the number
of freezing cycles, the number of excursions below either zero degrees Celsius or thirty-two
degrees Fahrenheit are approximately the same. The amount of rainfall is actually fairly
similar.
The challenge here is that it's exposed to an urban environment.
Urban environments have concentrations of sulfur dioxide in the air and have episodes
of acid rain.
The second challenge of course is the continuing fragility of the stone as a natural material.
When confronted with a building like this, we employ different analytical techniques
to try to understand how the environment has impacted the buildings. So looking at the
building, stone by stone...to say how is this stone doing this year and how is that stone
doing. So typically we would use a technique called x-ray diffraction which tells us about
the minerals that are in the stone as well as the the salts that may be present. We can
examine samples from the building with scanning electron microscopy to determine the impact
of biological growth and the presence of salts within the pores of the stone. As far as conservation
methods are concerned we've made some advances over the last fifty years or so in the kind
of materials we use for things such as consolidation. So how do we make a stone stronger so it resists
the salts, resists the freezing water, resists the acid rain. So that's maybe the one advancement
that we've been able to move ahead with conservation treatments. To be honest, many of the techniques
have been around for hundreds of years. The best way to clean this building is to simply
spray it with fine mists of water and that's something that's gone back for perhaps millennia.
If you look at some of the window openings you'll notice that the walls appear rather
thick. This building is constructed by a technique which is a cavity wall construction. So it
actually has two walls with a air cavity in between. The entire wall is not as thick as
it appears if you look through that opening but there are two layers -- an inner and an
outer layer -- with a back-up in between.
This stone contains a little bit of a mineral called yellow jasper which is just a version
of quartz that gives it that wonderful warm and yellow color. I think it's one of the
real attractive features of this building. To cut this stone it's so soft you can actually
cut it with a saw which is unusual for building stone so they would've carved these into or
shaped these into blocks even with something like a typical saw we would use for wood today
and then texture the surface with a point or a tooth chisel. Well you notice that raking,
that diagonal raking across the surface of the stone right on top of the capital? That's
a good example of a-- drawing a scraping kind of a tool across the surface.
Some of the carved capitals show tremendous detail and care in carving.
Probably the things that are best preserved and to me are the most attractive are these
band courses that course through the upper levels of the building. The way the light
plays across these cavities and protuberances is really one of the gorgeous things about
this building.
What I love is to watch the sun rise in the East and just warm up the eastern elevation
of this building, and watch the sun play across the surface and the deep shadows that occur
because of the texture in the stone created by the carving.
(Peter Barnet): The Cloisters really is a jewel at the northern tip of Manhattan,
a short trip uptown from the Metropolitan Museum's main building.
Without the monuments at The Cloisters, to really give a sense of Medieval space, Medieval
building techniques, Medieval stone-carving techniques, I think the public would really
not be able to appreciate Medieval art as fully as they can.
The Cloisters' mission to teach visitors of all ages, school groups and adults about the
Middle Ages and about the architecture of the period is carried out by a very active
group of education volunteers, who lead groups through and, here in Fuentidueña, teach about
the characteristics and the function of Romanesque architecture through this apse.
The apse is framed by a 70 foot-long gallery that helps us imagine how an apse might have
appeared at the end of a Romanesque church. This is one of the great public spaces in
The Cloisters. The superb acoustics work wonderfully for performances, and it's the perfect venue
for The Cloisters' celebrated concert series of early music and Medieval liturgical dramas.
This is a magical setting. Whether you're listening to music, or attending a gallery
talk, or just quietly enjoying the apse, I feel these are moments when the Middle Ages
really comes to life for our visitors.