Engaged Capitals (1400s): Art, History and Details

Engaged Capitals (1400s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This capital belongs to a surviving group including other architectural fragments that once decorated the cloister of the Abbey of Larreule. A cloister was a covered walkway or arcade, usually around all four sides of a square area of grass (the "cloister garth"). The seclusion of the cloister was the monks’ exclusive domain, off limits to others. Here, the monks were supposed to pray, study, meditate, and exercise in privacy and solitude. Such cloister capitals served both to instruct the monks and as a focus for their devotions. Other capitals in this series are installed in the Jardin Massey at Tarbes, near the original abbey. An arch from Larreule has been assembled with other associated French capitals at The Cloisters in New York.

Object facts

• Title: Engaged Capitals
• Date: 1400s
• Culture: Southern France, Abbey of Larreule, near Tarbes, 15th century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: limestone
• Dimensions: Overall: 39.4 x 39.4 x 54 cm (15 1/2 x 15 1/2 x 21 1/4 in.)
• Collection: MED - Gothic
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1916.2052

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Accessions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 4, no. 2 (1917): 26-37.

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.