Sunlight reveals beautiful veining and complex web-like natural patterns in the thin sheets of traditional alabaster filling the round-arched Romanesque windows of the 1000s AD church of Santa María, once the hub of a Benedictine Aragonese royal nunnery in the Pyrenean village of Santa Cruz de la Serós in Huesca, Aragon, Spain.
Santa Cruz de la Serós, Huesca, Aragon, Spain: sunlight streaming through a medieval Romanesque church window reveals delicate and intricate web-like natural patterns in yellow-brown, ultra-thin sheets of alabaster, a traditional material in Europe before glass came into widespread use. This round-arched window pierces the eastern apse of the Iglesia de Santa Maria and is one of several using translucent alabaster to fill the church’s austere 11th century interior with subdued and diffused daylight. Alabaster is a fine-grained veined or marbled rock of two types, either a hard calcite or a white gypsum. Although gypsum alabaster was most widely used in medieval Europe, both types are soft, easy to work, light coloured and translucent. Alabaster was quarried by the ancient Egyptians and was also used by the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans, either for architectural coverings or for sculpting vases and statues. It was used to cover windows in early Christian, Byzantine and Romanesque buildings and has been popular for centuries in Spain, Italy, England and Germany, especially for monumental sculpture. The church of Santa María was built as the heart of a Benedictine nunnery used as a “family monastery” by the House of Aragon. It was first mentioned in the year 1070, although the nunnery was probably founded earlier. Some female members of the royal family ruled it as abbesses, while others, including daughters of the first King of Aragon, Ramero I, entered it as nuns. The nunnery’s domestic buildings have now vanished and the church stands alone in this small village in the Pyrenean foothills. It is one of the earliest examples of Aragonese Romanesque architecture.
Size: 2832px × 4256px
Location: Santa Cruz de la Serós, Huesca, Aragon, Spain
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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