Diocesan Museum of Jaca

Church of St John the Baptist (Ruesta)

Romanesque art transports us to the most genuine culture of the 11th and 12th centuries. This is a sober type of art: it is not ornamental, lacking aesthetic beauty, and with no intention of pleasing our senses. It is rather a form of expression of the human soul, of an intellectual type, which tried to get in touch with what is Holy. It is the most earnestly Christian art style. In the past, Romanesque art was considered as the manifestation of simple people. Nevertheless, we can now witness a growing interest for this type of art.

In the Diocesan Museum of Jaca -also called Museum of Medieval Sacred-Art- the contents of the museum and the building itself compete for our attention. In the Cathedral of Jaca (designed in the 12th century) we find the crowning point of and the key to the Spanish Romanesque art. With regards to the actual museum, it is regarded as a most significant cultural meeting point.

The history of the Museum of Medieval Sacred Art (Diocesan Museum of Jaca) dates back to the finding of the first Romanesque paintings in the Church of Urriés, in 1962. Brought from the most remote places of the district of Jaca, mural frescoes from a great number of churches were recovered thanks to the museum; some of these frescoes had been abandoned or left at inaccessible spots. These were Romanesque or Gothic paintings done on mortar surfaces, which were later hidden behind the retables built with the harboring of new renaissance trends.

The Museum keeps works from Bagüés; Ruesta, Navasa y Susín; Urriés, Orús, Sorripas, San Salvador and San Ginés de Jaca, and Cerésola; Ipas; Osia and Concilio, Ordovés and Huértalo (mural paintings and medieval carvings), apart from several pieces that are characteristic of the cathedral. Listing all the pieces which are part of the Diocesan Museum of Jaca (from the 11th to the 16th century) would take too long. This is why we have preferred to select some of the Romanesque paintings according to their extraordinary interest within the European Romanesque Period.

First of all we should mention the paintings made as decoration for the Church of St Julián and St Basilisa in Bagüés (Zaragoza) between 1080 and 1096. This is a spectacular set which fairly deserves to be considered "the Sistine Chapel of Romanesque painting", as it clearly merits this epithet over the Mausoleum of Kings of San Isidoro, in Leon, the current holder of such designation. The paintings ambitiously depict images telling the history of humanity, starting with the creation of Adam and Eve and their fall in the earthly Paradise, the arrival of The Savior and His Sacrifice at the Cross, to conclude with His glorious Ascension to Heaven.

The set of mural paintings used to decorate the front apse of the church of St John the Baptist in Ruesta (Zaragoza) -a significant spot in the stretch of the Road to Santiago going through the North of Aragón- is a remarkable example of the artistic rank reached by the pictorial workshops of the Romanesque time. These paintings where discovered in 1963 and they decorated the oven vault of the front apse with a monumental seated pantocrátor (an image of a majestic God in the action of blessing), encircled by a mandorla (the characteristic almond-shaped circle) and surrounded by the seven lamps of the Apocalypse. Worshipping Him we can see the four Evangelists represented by their respective symbols within touching circles and two seraphs at each side of the vault. Inside the apse cylinder, with a central window in the middle which directs light towards the altar, the imagery used is somewhat unusual for this part of the temple. At the left side of the observer, the side of the Holy Gospel, there was a Calvary from which some remainders are left, and at the right, six apostles were painted representing the twelve of them.

This is the best preserved part, where we can distinguish the particular stylistic characteristics of each author. While in these paintings the unknown "maestro de Ruesta" (Master of Ruesta) shows an incipient sign of humanism with the flash from the face of the protagonists, he conveys a greater severity in the face of an pantocrátor discovered underneath the one we see today. It is believed that both versions were the work of the same painter.

The Parish church of la Asunción in Navasa, a town near Jaca, is the origin of an ornamental painting which has drawn the attention of Romanesque art scholars. It covered the whole front apse of the church, even though today it is shown fragmented in six dissimilar pieces, as it hasn't been completely preserved. Two large-size fragments from the apse vault were kept which represent the seated pantocrátor, blessing with His right hand and with a book on His left which we can read: "Ego sum primus et novisimus" and the symbols of two Evangelists: Lucas and John, together with the Archangel Raphael and the prophet St John the Baptist. On the lower part of the apse, several scenes taken from Jesus Christ's childhood, the epiphany and the escape to Egypt, the best kept picture. Using a fresco technique with some oil touches, the so-called "Maestro de Navasa" completed a most beautiful work of art in which the blue hues in the background show the refined taste of this genius of colour living during the fourth quarter of the 12th century. In the scene of the Epiphany, he tried to identify human youth, middle-age and old-age with each of the kings, while in the scene of the escape to Egypt, two trees with round tops serve as background to a representation of the Virgin on her steed carrying little Jesus in her arms.

All this confirms the idea that, contrary to popular belief, there was a time in Aragón fertile in mural paintings which could stand comparison with other traditions in Catalonia or Castille-León.