Collections and Critiques

On exhibit at the Fogg Museum this week are casts of a part of a series of stone capitals, which, set upon marble shafts, supported the apae and ambulatory of the Abbey Church of Cluny in Burgundy. They were preserved at the time of destruction of the Abbey Church, and are now in the Municipal Museum at Cluny.

The casting was done by workmen sent from the Trocadero Museum in Paris, under the direction of Lerecule, a man of 82 years of age who has been in the work for over half a century.

The capitals were one of the most interesting parts of the sculptured decoration of the great Abbey Church of Cluny and have been the centre of an archeological controversy with regard to their dating. It now appears from internal evidence and from texts that they were carved during the early years of the construction of the building, that is, after 1088, when the work was begun, and before 1095 when the first dedication, by Pope Urban II, occurred. Originally they had square impost blocks with a spreading moulding, the lower corners of which were laid immediately above the upper corners of the capitals. The convincing proof that these are works of the first period of building is to be seen on the cast of a capital of the Four Rivers where the surfaces of the leaves and fruits of one of the trees are carved in a way which would be impossible after the impost block was set in place. Many archeologists have believed that the beautiful carving of these capitals indicated a date well advanced in the twelfth century and that the capitals must, therefore, have been sculptured long after they were set in place. The bit of carving to which attention has just been called and similar passages on other capitals prove that this is not the case and that the capitals are to be regarded as masterpieces of the eleventh and not of the twelfth century.

The casts are the property of the Fogg Museum but were made in connection with studies and excavations at the site of the Abbey Church which have been undertaken by Mediaeval Academy of America.