French, Pathenay
Two Elders of the Apocalypse, mid 12th century
Limestone, 77.4 x 99 x 25.9 cm (30 1/2 x 39 x 10 3/16 in.)
A pair of full-length standing men, referred to as Two Elders of the Apocalypse, from a French church facade. These figures have been carved in high relief on a limestone slab with a small break in the stone vertically down the center and a prominent horizontal break at the level of the bottom of the men’s torsos. Overall the figures reveal the effects of time and outdoor conditions: the right hand of each has been broken off and the carved detail has been smoothed in many areas, thus making it difficult to discern the identity of some elements. Both men wear close-fitting caps, or perhaps crowns on their head and wear long dress-like garments that drape horizontally across their upper torso, cross over their right shoulders and arms and seem to fall behind them. The lower part of their garments are a combination of loosely draped horizontal folds and vertical draping extending down to their ankles. Both are barefoot. The man at our left has more distinctly carved facial features than at the right. His eyes and eye sockets are clearly seen as is his prominently protruding, long thin nose, slightly parted lips, mustache and closely trimmed beard. Fabric or possibly hair, falls beneath the cap on top of his head and frames his face. The facial features of the elder on our right are much less distinct, His eye sockets are partially obliterated, much of his nose has been broken off, yet his tightly closed lips and prominent pointed beard stand out. Each elder holds a rolled sheath of uncertain content in their right hand, that terminates in graduated, V-shaped layers at the bottom of the sheath. The rolled sheath on our left extends from the elder’s shoulder down to his knees, and on the right from the elder’s waist to his knees. A small rounded vessel rests on top of the sheath at our left. The elder at our left stands barefooted on an animal, possibly a lion, with the side of his left foot in the animal’s mouth and three clearly delineated toes protruding from the animal’s mouth. The elder’s crossed left foot stands on the beast’s rump. At the right, the elder’s feet are entrapped by a sinewy monster that grabs the elder’s right foot with his claw-like fingers, his wide-open mouth menacing in front of the man’s detailed long left toes.
Spanish Cloister
Commentary
Medieval art occupied only the margins of American collecting taste at the turn of the nineteenth century. When Mrs. Gardner acquired these three sculptures in 1916, they were among the most impressive examples of monumental medieval sculpture yet seen in America. The acquisition helped establish Gardner at the forefront of medieval collecting, blazing a trail that William Randolph Hearst, Raymond Pitcairn, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. would soon follow.
Often compared to statues at Chartres, these sculptures from Parthenay (a town in Poitou) possess qualities that define twelfth-century religious art. Static yet vividly compelling, the monumental figures express the timelessness of Christian theology while evoking the realism of everyday life. Facial expressions are minimized, lending an imposing, otherworldly allure, yet the soft modeling of the lips, eyebrows and curling locks of hair suggests real human qualities. Their stately character befits the crowned personages portrayed: Christ, on his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, and the Elders witnessing the Revelations of the Apocalypse.
Controversy, too, lent the sculptures a certain notoriety. All came from the facade of a feudal lord’s courtly church, Notre-Dame-de-la-Couldre, a site long important to French patrimony. Their acquisition by no less a connoisseur than Mrs. Gardner launched a frenzy of interest in Romanesque Parthenay. Soon more sculptures flooded the market, including several removed illegally as well as some outright forgeries. Mrs. Gardner’s own dealer, Georges Demotte, was pursued in the Paris courts, where eventually a sculptor in Demotte’s service admitted embellishing several unspecified statues. Before the affair could be resolved, the sculptor was found dead, the victim of an apparent suicide; soon afterward, Demotte, too, was mysteriously killed in a hunting accident. These bizarre episodes caused suspicions about the Gardner sculptures to linger until the 1940s, when scientific analysis finally demonstrated that the lower halves of the Elders were forgeries, while the magnificent busts and the entire Entry into Jerusalem relief were authentic. Today there is no hesitation in counting these works among the most important Romanesque sculptures in America. They speak as much to the excellence of medieval carvers as to modern passions for the art of the Middle Ages.
Source: Robert Maxwell, "Christ Entering Jerusalem, Two Elders of the Apocalypse," in Eye of the Beholder, edited by Alan Chong et al. (Boston: ISGM and Beacon Press, 2003): 21.
Often compared to statues at Chartres, these sculptures from Parthenay (a town in Poitou) possess qualities that define twelfth-century religious art. Static yet vividly compelling, the monumental figures express the timelessness of Christian theology while evoking the realism of everyday life. Facial expressions are minimized, lending an imposing, otherworldly allure, yet the soft modeling of the lips, eyebrows and curling locks of hair suggests real human qualities. Their stately character befits the crowned personages portrayed: Christ, on his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, and the Elders witnessing the Revelations of the Apocalypse.
Controversy, too, lent the sculptures a certain notoriety. All came from the facade of a feudal lord’s courtly church, Notre-Dame-de-la-Couldre, a site long important to French patrimony. Their acquisition by no less a connoisseur than Mrs. Gardner launched a frenzy of interest in Romanesque Parthenay. Soon more sculptures flooded the market, including several removed illegally as well as some outright forgeries. Mrs. Gardner’s own dealer, Georges Demotte, was pursued in the Paris courts, where eventually a sculptor in Demotte’s service admitted embellishing several unspecified statues. Before the affair could be resolved, the sculptor was found dead, the victim of an apparent suicide; soon afterward, Demotte, too, was mysteriously killed in a hunting accident. These bizarre episodes caused suspicions about the Gardner sculptures to linger until the 1940s, when scientific analysis finally demonstrated that the lower halves of the Elders were forgeries, while the magnificent busts and the entire Entry into Jerusalem relief were authentic. Today there is no hesitation in counting these works among the most important Romanesque sculptures in America. They speak as much to the excellence of medieval carvers as to modern passions for the art of the Middle Ages.
Source: Robert Maxwell, "Christ Entering Jerusalem, Two Elders of the Apocalypse," in Eye of the Beholder, edited by Alan Chong et al. (Boston: ISGM and Beacon Press, 2003): 21.