Emmanuel Garland, Docteur en Histoire de l’Art

As a “reflection of a society (…), a means of expression of a culture and, at the same time, of a latent and a collective unconscious” (Michel Meslin), the marvelous, omnipresent in the decoration of the Romanesque churches of the Pyrenean area, is a powerful revelator which highlights certain specificities of these mountainous regions where the exchanges are partially marked by geographical and topographical constraints. It questions the relationship of man with the Creator, the power attributed to him, the fears and hopes of men, his vision of the History of Salvation, as well as the means of influencing him. Without claiming any originality (his visual transcriptions are shared with the entire Romanesque world), certain choices, certain occurrences, or even the absence of certain representations in a given valley, reflect or are conditioned by the fragmentation of space, the circulation of ideas, living conditions or local beliefs. The circulation of artists, which has become more and more evident over the decades, tends to homogenize the expression of the marvelous, as much in terms of form as in terms of support and its location in the building. The marvelous then becomes a marker in and around the church. This being the case, the spatial individualization generated by the topographical constraints resists and, in this sense, the notion of geography of the marvelous takes all its meaning.

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