ROMANESQUE PAINTER, Spanish
(active c. 1200)

Lion wall painting

c. 1200
Fresco transferred to canvas, 220 x 330 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Displaced fragments survive from the decoration of chapterhouses, as in the late twelfth-century wall-paintings from the chapterhouse of the monastery of San Pedro de Arlanza, near Burgos in northern Spain. This chapterhouse may also have functioned as a funerary chapel; its wall-paintings have fantastic animals for their enigmatic theme, probably inspired by English bestiary illustrations. They include the famous stylised lion with an anthropomorphic head, now in the Cloisters, New York.