Columnar Figure of an Apostle (c. 1180): Art, History and Details

Columnar Figure of an Apostle (c. 1180) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This figure of an apostle, probably Saint John the Evangelist, attached to its supporting column, came originally from the cloister of the Church of Notre-Dame-en-Vaux at Châlons-sur-Marne. A cloister was a covered walkway usually around all four sides of a square area of grass (the "cloister garth"). The seclusion of the cloister was the exclusive domain of the monks or clergy and off-limits to others. Here, the monks were able to pray, study, meditate, and exercise in privacy and solitude. This figure illustrates the transition in style from Romanesque to Gothic taking place in ecclesiastical buildings across northern France during the late 1100s.

Object facts

• Title: Columnar Figure of an Apostle
• Date: c. 1180
• Culture: France, Champagne, Châlons-sur-Marne
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: limestone
• Dimensions: Overall: 97.8 x 24.1 cm (38 1/2 x 9 1/2 in.)
• Collection: MED - Romanesque
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1919.38

Collection credit

General Income Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• W. M. M. "French Gothic Sculpture in the Museum." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 6, no. 1 (1919): 6-2.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• Wixom, William D. Treasures from Medieval France. [Cleveland]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1967.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.