Fragment of a Capital with Scenes from Mary’s Infancy (early 1100s): Art, History and Details

Fragment of a Capital with Scenes from Mary’s Infancy (early 1100s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is The Cathedral of Monopoli (Italian).

The work and its context

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

This sculpture relates stylistically with architrave figures from the facade of Monopoli’s cathedral. It is especially similar to a capital there featuring the prophet Daniel. The figure pouring water on the left probably represents an attendant in the Birth of the Virgin. The remaining figures depict the subject of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. Their exquisite sculptural character gives this fragment major importance in the study of Romanesque sculpture in Apulia.

Object facts

• Title: Fragment of a Capital with Scenes from Mary’s Infancy
• Date: early 1100s
• Creator attribution: The Cathedral of Monopoli (Italian)
• Culture: South Italy, Apulia, early 12th Century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: fine-grained limestone
• Dimensions: without base: 26.7 x 33 x 22.9 cm (10 1/2 x 13 x 9 in.)
• Collection: MED - Romanesque
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1955.556

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Milliken, William. "A Romanesque Capital from Apulia." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 43, no. 10 (December 1956): 218-221.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

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.