Frieze panel - Confronted fantastical animals. Southern Burgundy Cluny circle.

Frieze panel carved in pale limestone, depicting a group of two confronted fantastical animals, identified here as a griffin and an asp, in a composition that may evoke a psychomachy, that is to say a symbolic struggle between Good and Evil. With its dense and vigorous composition, this fantastical bestiary is characteristic of the height of Romanesque art. The upper register is occupied by a group of two confronted fantastical animals, carved in high relief against a hollowed ground: an asp to dexter and a griffin to sinister. The whole strongly suggests an origin in Southern Burgundy, in the second quarter of the 12th century, within the orbit of workshops belonging to the Cluniac circle.

This magnificent relief belongs to the broad tradition of the French Romanesque bestiary, yet its formal language sets it apart from the more narrative southern centers and brings it closer to the Centre-East, and more particularly to Southern Burgundy, more precisely to areas marked by the influence of Cluny. Several elements support this attribution. The composition is characterized by a tightly structured arrangement of forms, in which the two fantastical creatures occupy almost the entire sculpted field with an evident rhythm. The bodies unfold in supple curves and continuous coils, according to a logic that is less descriptive than rhythmic. These strongly profiled and highly rhythmic silhouettes recur in a group 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 first the works of Cluny abbey and its sphere of diffusion. For the abbey of Cluny, one may cite the frieze panels of the narthex triforium FA896.29.1-6, as well as certain capitals from the abbey of Mozac, another Cluniac site.
Complete dossier available on request.
Consulted works:
· Contribution à l’histoire de la sculpture des maisons romanes de Cluny, Neil Stratford in Bulletin Monumental, t. 153, n° 3, 1995, p. 221-242.
· Corpus de la sculpture de Cluny. Tome 1. Les parties orientales de la grande église Cluny III, Neil Stratford, Paris, 2011.
· La mythologie revisitée chez les sculpteurs romans en Bourgogne, Neil Stratford, in Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 147e année, n° 3, 2003, p. 1243-1265.
· La Bourgogne romane, Christian Sapin, Chantal Arnaud et Walter Berry, Dijon, 2006.
· Bourgogne Romane, Raymond Oursel, 1986