{"id":7093,"date":"2015-05-02T21:44:38","date_gmt":"2015-05-02T21:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=7093"},"modified":"2015-05-02T21:44:38","modified_gmt":"2015-05-02T21:44:38","slug":"frescoes-and-keyhole-arches-saint-martin-de-fenollar-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=7093","title":{"rendered":"Frescoes and keyhole arches: Saint-Martin de Fenollar, France"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the road from Ceret in the Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es-Orientales, France, heading towards the Mediterranean, a short detour takes you to Maureillas-las-Illas and on to a chapel which you would never find if you were simply driving around.\u00a0 It’s not only off the road a short way, but it has a house built in front of it, indeed, attached to it and concealing the chapel from view.\u00a0 Pity.<\/p>\n

\"Saint-Martin
Saint-Martin de Fenollar, Maureillas-las-Illas, Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es-Orientales, France<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s the chapel of Saint-Martin de Fenollar.\u00a0 In the 1960s it was restored and is now one of France’s ‘monuments historiques’.\u00a0 The earliest record of the chapel dates it at 844 AD which makes it an example of pre-Romanesque architecture.\u00a0 Its exterior is simple and small, but the interior is much more interesting.\u00a0 There are pre-Romanesque arches, which were shaped like keyholes or horseshoes, and are sometimes called Moorish arches.\u00a0 In my header photo above, you can see that the external doorway was once keyhole shaped. Signs in the chapel say that all photography, with or without flash, is strictly forbidden.\u00a0 So I took no photos of the interior.\u00a0 I was good.\u00a0 There are, however, a few on Creative Commons which I can use to give you a reason to visit this little ‘gallery’ of 900-year-old paintings.\u00a0 Indeed, these photos reveal more colour than can actually be seen inside the dark little chapel where only a few slits let the daylight in.\u00a0 Here’s a photo from Wikimedia Commons of a keyhole arch leading to the apse inside the chapel:<\/p>\n

\"\"
\u00ab\u202fFenollar arc triomphal outrepass\u00e9\u202f\u00bb par EmDee \u2014 Travail personnel. Sous licence CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This form of arch was used in Visigothic architecture in Spain until the Muslim invasion in the eighth century AD, following which Spanish Muslim architects adopted its form for their mosques.\u00a0 In Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, an abbey of the same region, there’s some information on the wall of the church to explain the different arches:<\/p>\n

\"Arch
Arch comparison, Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, France<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However, Saint-Martin-de-Fenollar is a treasure for its remnants of 12th-century frescoes, which probably would have covered every wall top to bottom. What’s really amazing is that, before the restoration, a farmer had used the chapel for agricultural purposes and had knocked a huge hole in the eastern wall of the choir to make a door.\u00a0 The wall was covered in frescoes, which with his help became little more than rubble.\u00a0 The hole has since been filled and the remaining frescoes brought back to life.\u00a0 In the photo of the apse, above, the infill is clear around and under the window.\u00a0 We can only imagine what images had been there before. I have no photos of the interior but I have memories.\u00a0 I looked at this ‘Christ in Majesty’ on the ceiling until my neck ached.\u00a0 In the image below the colours are brilliant, but in the poor light creeping through the arrow slits and narrow windows, combined with dim electric lights illuminating the apse, the frescoes are quite dull.\u00a0 I imagine that in Romanesque times candles would have lit the images, flickering over the Biblical faces and animating them mysteriously.\u00a0 The photo below would not have looked so bright in candlelight or in minimal daylight, so we are seeing the image differently.\u00a0 It’s a Christ in Majesty, encircled by a tetramorph, from the Greek tetra<\/em>, meaning four, and morph<\/em>, shape. Around the image of Christ are the four evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.<\/p>\n

\"File:Chapelle
Christ in Majesty, in a tetramorph surrounded by the four physically flexible evangelists, Saint-Martin-de-Fenollar, France. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What a precious jewel we found by leaving the beaten track and venturing inside an otherwise unremarkable structure.<\/p>\n

My thanks to Dennis Aubrey at Via Lucis<\/a> for introducing me to this chapel.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the road from Ceret in the Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es-Orientales, France, heading towards the Mediterranean, a short detour takes you to Maureillas-las-Illas and on to a chapel which you would never find if you were simply driving around.\u00a0 It’s not only off the road a short way, but it has a house built in front of it, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Frescoes and keyhole arches: Saint-Martin de Fenollar, France”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[747,358,748,749,750,7,8,21,739,740,751],"class_list":["post-7093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-photos","tag-christ-in-majesty","tag-france","tag-frescoes","tag-keyhole-arches","tag-maureillas-las-illas","tag-photography","tag-photos-2","tag-postaday","tag-romanesque","tag-romanesque-church","tag-saint-martin-de-fenollar"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}