Transitional Romanesque-Gothic Christ, 13th-14th century.Carved wood, remains of polychromy.

Transitional Romanesque-Gothic Christ, 13th-14th century.
Carved wood, remains of polychromy.
Measurements: 46.5 x 40 x 5 cm. (figure); 49.5 x 42 cm.(total).
Christ with three nails, with the head leaning on the right arm and the eyelids closed. As was usual in Romanesque carving, the anatomy lacks naturalistic pretensions. Despite the fact that in terms of period we could be looking at a Gothic piece, it remains faithful to Romanesque solutions: the body is resolved in a synthetic manner, abstracting from the elemental, magnifying the hands and heads as the parts that are mainly intended to be shown. The cloth of purity is still of considerable length, but in the following centuries it will be shortened, leaving the thighs visible. The folds are marked with vertical incisions, in accordance with the medieval solutions of Castilian carvings.
During the Romanesque period, sculpture was most often conceived as part of the architecture, as in the Gothic period. However, there were also examples of free-standing sculpture, the most frequent themes being the Crucifixion and the Virgin and Child (the pantheon of saints was still small). There were two models, the "colobium" and the "perizonium". The first is a Christ nailed to the cross, still alive, with a talar robe and four nails. It is a rare model, as it was only made in certain European territories (in Spain, only in the Crown of Aragon, especially in Catalonia, but always coexisting with the second model). The "perizonium" is also a Christ on the cross with four nails, dead or alive, but dressed in a cloth of purity. The piece presented here belongs to this second group. During the Romanesque period, four-nailed Christs were the norm, but this one has only three nails, a characteristic possibly due to the influence of external sources. The perizonium was the model that persisted, as the "colobium" was only made during the Romanesque period. They were also often polychrome pieces, whether worked in wood, metal, ivory or stone. This type of piece was designed to decorate the interiors of churches, mainly the chapel area, as they were not yet decorated with canvases.