Fountain from the Monastery of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa

Gallery 304, European Art 1100-1500, third floor (Knight Foundation Gallery)

Main Building

Fountain from the Monastery of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa

1125-1150

Artist/maker unknown, French

The impressive fountain in the center of this gallery is from the twelfth-century Abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa in the Roussillon region of France. It was the largest and most important monastery in the province and designed in the Romanesque style, a term coined in the nineteenth century to describe early medieval art and architecture derived from ancient Roman examples and characterized by rounded arches, vaults, and geometric forms. Six columns support an upper basin ornamented with a continuous arcade that mirrors the architectural colonnade of the cloister. Water flows out through five spouts into a reproduction of the fountain’s lower basin. Fountains such as this, located at the center of a cloister, would have been used by the monks to bathe, shave, and wash clothes.

The two capitals installed within this cloister’s interior arches, made from pink marble like the fountain, may also have come from the abbey of Cuxa; they bear decoration similar to capitals from the abbey and other religious foundations in the area. Other capitals and architectural elements from Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa were acquired by American sculptor George Grey Barnard around 1906–7 and were subsequently purchased in 1925 for The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These were reconstructed into a cloister at the heart of The Cloisters museum in Fort Tryon Park in New York City.

Gallery 304, European Art 1100-1500, third floor (Knight Foundation Gallery)

Object Details

Title:

Fountain from the Monastery of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa

Date:

1125-1150

Artist:

Artist/maker unknown, French

Medium:

Marble

Dimensions:

Height: 64 1/4 inches (163.2 cm)

Classification:

Architecture (including fragments)

Credit Line:

Gift of Mrs. William W. Fitler in memory of her husband, 1930

Accession Number:

1930-79-1

Geography:

Made in Roussillon, France, Europe

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Gallery 304, European Art 1100-1500, third floor (Knight Foundation Gallery)

Main Building

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