MEDIEVAL SCULPTOR, Spanish
(active late 12th century)

St James

1180-1200
Stone
Cathedral of Santiago, Compostela

This relief is the tympanum of a doorway in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. It represents St James 'the Moor-slayer', the patron saint of the Reconquest (a period of approximately 781 years in the history of the Iberian Peninsula, after the Islamic conquest in 711–1492 to the fall of Granada, the last Islamic state on the peninsula, in 1492).