Christ in Majesty. Sculpted in the early 1000s AD into a white marble lintel over a doorway to the abbey church at Saint-Génis-des Fontaines, Pyrénées-Orientales, Occitanie, France. The lintel is the earliest known Romanesque sculpture in France to be dated by its inscription, with the date of its creation, 1019-1020 AD, indicated by two lines of Latin recording that the monastery was founded in the 24th year of the reign of ‘King Robert’ (Robert II, who ruled the Franks from 996 to 1031 AD).
Saint-Génis-des-Fontaines, Pyrénées-Orientales, Occitanie, France: Christ in Majesty, seated within a pearled mandorla or aureola frame supported by archangels, is cut into the white marble lintel over the doorway to the church that once served the Benedictine abbey jointly dedicated to saints Genesius and Michael. The lintel is the earliest known Romanesque sculpture in France to be dated by its inscription, with the date 1019-1020 AD indicated by two lines of Latin. The inscription records: “In the 24th year of the reign of King Robert, William, abbot by the grace of God, commissioned this work in the monastery called the Fountains, in honour of Saint Genesius the hermit.” ‘King Robert’ refers to Robert II, who ruled the Franks from 996 to 1031 AD. The abbey in the eastern Pyrenees was founded in about 780 AD, during the reign of Charlemagne. It was destroyed by the Normans in the 9th century, but was rebuilt and enlarged, with a richly sculpted Romanesque marble cloister added in the late 1200s. Foundation stones laid in the 8th century are visible within the former abbey church, which today retains its dedication to St-Michel (St Michael). The monastery declined and in the early 1500s, it united with a Catalan abbey near Barcelona. The monks rejected French domination after the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees, but the French Revolution caused its final fall, with the buildings and land nationalised in 1796. Although the abbey church became a parish church in 1846, the cloister was dismantled, with much of it sold to an antiques dealer. Some columns and piers ended up either in the Louvre Museum in Paris or the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the USA. Determined campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s eventually saw all parts of the cloister returned to the village and re-installed in their original locations.
Size: 2832px × 4256px
Location: Former abbey church, Saint-Génis-des-Fontaines, Pyrénées-Orientales, Occitanie, France
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
Keywords: 1000s, 11th, abbatiale, abbey, ad, ages, architecture, art, bare, beard, bearded, benedictine, blessing, carved, carving, ce, century, christ, christian, christianity, church, , dated, door, doorway, eglise, eyes, feet, france, franks, french, genesius, hand, ii, inscription, kerr, king, lintel, majesty, marble, mediaeval, medieval, michel, middle, monastery, monastic, occitania, occitanie, pyréées-orientales, raised, reign, religion, religious, robert, romanesque, saint, saint-énis-des-fontaines, sculpted, sculpture, sculptured, south, southern, southwest, southwestern, stare, staring, terence, west, western, white
