sculpture in spain

In the Galician region, the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela should be recognized as an artistic center for its sculpture due to its old portals and its admirable Pórtico de la Gloria. The reliefs on the two portals of the transept (today on the South one, since the North one was destroyed in the 18th century and remade in Renaissance style) show influence from the Toulouse school and date from the years 1137-1143. But the reliefs and statues of the famous Portico, due like the entire factory to the inspired master Mateo and completed in 1188, reveal an independent artistic genius superior to all the schools of his time. The sculpture work of the Portico was developed in the three doors of this corresponding to the three naves of the temple and formed by the respective round and flared arches, which insist on a series of Romanesque columns. Its artistic composition is, briefly summarized, as follows: under the columns, different monsters symbolizing moral vices appear as subjugated and oppressed. In the mullion of the central door (the only one that has it and on which the lintel rests with its tympanum) the seated statue of the Apostle Santiago is fixed and at the same height on the first body formed by the set of the other little columns the statues of all the apostles and many prophets, each one with his book or his phylactery where some sentence alluding to the character was inscribed. The tympanum shows the image of Christ seated on his throne, with the four evangelists on his sides, youthful in appearance and with their own attributes, leaving the rest of the tympanum full of figures of angels and saints. In the archivolts of said central arch, twenty-four figures stand out representing the mysterious elders of the Apocalypse to complete the idea of heaven. While in the archivolts of the left side arch other figures represent the limbo of the Holy Fathers and in the right, purgatory and hell.

It is not possible to find another monument from that time where such a beautiful and orderly composition came together, with such sobriety and relative calm of attitudes and at the same time with such an expressive technical execution. In imitation of him or due to his influence, other porticos and portals of churches were carved in the 13th century, the one that most closely follows him, although with a more accentuated Gothic form and of inferior merit, is the so-called Paraíso de la catedral de Orense. The 12th century statues in the Holy Chamber of Oviedo also appear to be of Compostela affiliation.