Frieze Panel - Romanesque Burgundy. Cluniac Influences.

Sculpted limestone frieze panel featuring a group of two confronting fantastical animals, identified here as a griffin and an asp, in a composition that may evoke a psychomachy, id is a symbolic battle between Good and Evil. With its dense, nervous composition, this fantastic bestiary is characteristic of the apogee of Romanesque art. The upper register is occupied by a group of two fantastic animals facing each other, treated in high relief on a hollowed-out background: an asp to the dexter and a griffin to the sinister. The ensemble leads us to propose, with a high degree of probability, an origin in southern Burgundy, in the second quarter of the 12th century, in the wake of the workshops of the Cluniac circle.

This magnificent relief is part of the vast current of French Romanesque bestiary, but its formal language invites us to distance it from the great southern centers of the most narrative and to bring it closer to the Center-East, and more particularly to southern Burgundy, and more precisely, to the areas marked by Cluniac influence. There are several reasons for this. The composition is characterized by a highly structured tightening of the forms, with the two fantastical creatures occupying almost the entire sculpted field with an obvious rhythm. The bodies develop into supple curves and continuous coils, following a logic that is less descriptive than rhythmic. These highly-profiled, rhythmic silhouettes can be found in a number of Romanesque works from southern Burgundy, where animal decoration is frequently treated as an emblematic, almost heraldic form, rather than as a narrative scene. Among the most convincing comparisons are works from Cluny and its sphere of distribution. For the Cluny abbey, the frieze panels of the triforium of the nave FA896.29.1-6, but also certain capitals from Mozac abbey, another Cluny site.
Full file on request.