Santa Maria del Mar Architecture and Flemish Descent Painting
Santa Maria del Mar Architecture
Santa Maria del Mar architecture is characterized by sober and constructive rationality, with a predominance of walls and scarce windows, which causes the architectural elements to atrophy, avoiding elements such as flying buttresses. It features a hall church plan—that is, naves and churches of three aisles at the same height (fourteenth century). A beautiful example of this architectural tendency is built in the maritime district in the center of Barcelona by Berenguer de Montagud. It undoubtedly stands out for its harmony and all its system of vaults.
The plant features three naves without a transept, with open chapels and no ambulatory. The buttresses and sobriety stand out for their elegance and the great height of the octagonal pillars that divide the naves, giving monumental elegance in square sections that permit a sense of spaciousness and covered cross-vaults with harmony. The very large windows of the clerestory are composed of trapezoidal sections. On the exterior, two flanking towers accent the facade; they are octagonal and follow the traditional prismatic form of Cistercian monastery towers.
The Portal of Santa Maria
The sacramental door provides access to the boroughs. Its iconography features Christ presided in the tympanum by Master Ro, accompanied by the four tetramorphs while writing. The archivolts contain the twenty-four elders, along with seraphim and angels. In the central mullion appears the figure of a bishop. The disposition takes the form of pointed archivolts framing the tympanum itself, prolonging thefiguration into the mullion and the jambs. On the plastic solution, three authors participated: one created the eardrum, another the lintel, and a third the archivolts, originating from France and relating to the iconography of Amiens with common aspects: iconic sculpture without expressiveness and a classic tendency in the folds, where rectilinear cloths are resolved with formulas.
The depiction presents a hieratic and tense Christ. From an expressive viewpoint, there is an absence of feelings and a distant, cold sensation. Only the lintel shows greater naturalism in the representation of the figures of the apostles.
The Descent from the Cross by Rogier van der Weyden
Rogier van der Weyden, a disciple of Robert Campin, is a more complex author than Jan van Eyck. His work possesses expressive strength, clarity of composition, and the roundness and simplicity of their images, converted thus into authentic icons that made his work very appreciated by a wide and varied audience, enjoying recognized fame in his lifetime. A very good example of this is his very famous composition, The Descent from the Cross.
The theatricality is recreated in interior spaces and dispenses with the landscape, making the work concise and direct. It is well studied and balanced by a central axis marked by the cross, from which the young John and Joseph of Arimathea lower Christ. The structure is closed, delimited at the extremes by the figures forming parentheses (Saint John and one of the three Marys in dynamic, standing attitudes flanking Christ, alongside another of the Marys, Nicodemus, the Virgin, and the other Mary). The first and other figures are arranged symmetrically, repeating postures: the first is clothed, the other nude; one is standing, the other fainting and dying, both with rigid arms.
An oval arrangement marks the central axis that closes the entire structure. The expressive drama of the characters surges from exaggerated, gloomy, and scenographic elements. The cloths work on the basis of hard, sharp-crested folds, oriented to define the distinct aesthetic of the Flemish world. The table work would occupy the central triptych commissioned by one of the guilds of archers of Leuven. Later, Mary of Austria acquired it, and it ultimately entered the royal collection.