The Master of Cabestany
Those of you who are kind enough to follow my uploads (and read my detailed captions!) may remember that I already wrote a couple of times in the past about one of the greatest mysteries of society in the Middle Ages, one almost no one talks about: how were the “careers” of expert craftsmen organized?
Let me take one example to clarify what I mean: when you go to some Romanesque church famous for, say, its sculpted tympanum, such as Moissac or Conques in France (there are of course examples in other countries!), you marvel at the technical and artistic maturity of the artist who spent years sculpting those masterpieces, at the depth of his inspiration and the trueness of his faith, sometimes even at his humor, his audacity: what a master sculptor that guy was! But where was that master sculptor schooled? With whom and where did he train? Certainly, achieving such mastery as one can witness in Moissac or Conques took years (decades?) of practice, and earlier pieces could and should be found elsewhere, recognizable traces of a budding craftsmanship which would, one day, blossom into the full-blown wonder that you are currently beholding?
Yet, no such traces can be found anywhere. It is as if the master had just been born, instantly armed with the whole extent of his expertise and hired in a leap of faith (and without a résumé!) by patrons and sponsors to sculpt the tympanum that would become his one masterpiece...
Even more puzzling: after the master completed that masterpiece, he obviously enjoyed a tremendous reputation and could pick the projects he wanted, right? True, in some cases, one can imagine that by the time he completed his chef-d’œuvre, the master was tired and could not go on and undertake another such project; in some cases, he may have been near death. But surely not in all cases! Then, how come no further works by the same master can ever be found? How is it that he was seemingly born fully mature and in full possession of his masterful expertise, without any discernible schooling or training, and then vanished into thin air once his (truly) once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece had been finished? I have come to accept that I shall not, at least in this lifetime, know the answers to those questions.
The so-called “Master of Cabestany” is, at least in part, a welcome exception. His name is not known to us, unlike the very few who signed their work with a So-and-so me fecit mention, but his career can be traced to many churches he worked on during the second half of the 12th century. Revealed in the 1930s with the unearthing of a Romanesque tympanum during works on the parochial (and otherwise uninteresting) church of the village of Cabestany in the département of Aude (province of Roussillon, southern France), he was thus christened “The Master of Cabestany”. His works have been tracked throughout Europe, thanks to his very specific and original manner, as we will see. As of this day, more than 120 pieces have been attributed to the Master or people working with him (as sculptors of that caliber were always accompanied in their travels by an entourage of pupils and apprentices), most of them in the Languedoc and Roussillon provinces, but also in Catalogna and Navarre in modern-day Spain, as well as in Italy’s Tuscany. If no true “early works” have been found (his career in his younger years thus remains a mystery), the pieces that have been attributed to him do cover several decades and can reasonably account for what we can describe as a full “professional life”.
The Assumption of the Virgin Mary.
Note that the town of Cabestany created a museum of Romanesque sculpture centered around our anonymous Master. It presents plaster and resin castings of many of his works. I is quite interesting, but the lighting is so bad that I had to forgo any shooting there.
The Master of Cabestany
Those of you who are kind enough to follow my uploads (and read my detailed captions!) may remember that I already wrote a couple of times in the past about one of the greatest mysteries of society in the Middle Ages, one almost no one talks about: how were the “careers” of expert craftsmen organized?
Let me take one example to clarify what I mean: when you go to some Romanesque church famous for, say, its sculpted tympanum, such as Moissac or Conques in France (there are of course examples in other countries!), you marvel at the technical and artistic maturity of the artist who spent years sculpting those masterpieces, at the depth of his inspiration and the trueness of his faith, sometimes even at his humor, his audacity: what a master sculptor that guy was! But where was that master sculptor schooled? With whom and where did he train? Certainly, achieving such mastery as one can witness in Moissac or Conques took years (decades?) of practice, and earlier pieces could and should be found elsewhere, recognizable traces of a budding craftsmanship which would, one day, blossom into the full-blown wonder that you are currently beholding?
Yet, no such traces can be found anywhere. It is as if the master had just been born, instantly armed with the whole extent of his expertise and hired in a leap of faith (and without a résumé!) by patrons and sponsors to sculpt the tympanum that would become his one masterpiece...
Even more puzzling: after the master completed that masterpiece, he obviously enjoyed a tremendous reputation and could pick the projects he wanted, right? True, in some cases, one can imagine that by the time he completed his chef-d’œuvre, the master was tired and could not go on and undertake another such project; in some cases, he may have been near death. But surely not in all cases! Then, how come no further works by the same master can ever be found? How is it that he was seemingly born fully mature and in full possession of his masterful expertise, without any discernible schooling or training, and then vanished into thin air once his (truly) once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece had been finished? I have come to accept that I shall not, at least in this lifetime, know the answers to those questions.
The so-called “Master of Cabestany” is, at least in part, a welcome exception. His name is not known to us, unlike the very few who signed their work with a So-and-so me fecit mention, but his career can be traced to many churches he worked on during the second half of the 12th century. Revealed in the 1930s with the unearthing of a Romanesque tympanum during works on the parochial (and otherwise uninteresting) church of the village of Cabestany in the département of Aude (province of Roussillon, southern France), he was thus christened “The Master of Cabestany”. His works have been tracked throughout Europe, thanks to his very specific and original manner, as we will see. As of this day, more than 120 pieces have been attributed to the Master or people working with him (as sculptors of that caliber were always accompanied in their travels by an entourage of pupils and apprentices), most of them in the Languedoc and Roussillon provinces, but also in Catalogna and Navarre in modern-day Spain, as well as in Italy’s Tuscany. If no true “early works” have been found (his career in his younger years thus remains a mystery), the pieces that have been attributed to him do cover several decades and can reasonably account for what we can describe as a full “professional life”.
The Assumption of the Virgin Mary.
Note that the town of Cabestany created a museum of Romanesque sculpture centered around our anonymous Master. It presents plaster and resin castings of many of his works. I is quite interesting, but the lighting is so bad that I had to forgo any shooting there.