Almost a 12 months after Spain’s Supreme Courtroom dominated that the Nationwide Artwork Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) should return the Sijena Monastery murals to the Royal Monastery in Aragon, in northeastern Spain, the Barcelona museum nonetheless hasn’t let go of the disputed—and delicate—Thirteenth-century artworks.
The ruling, in Might 2025, adopted greater than a decade of authorized battles between the Aragonese authorities and MNAC. The Sijena murals—sometimes called the “Sistine Chapel of Romanesque artwork”—have been faraway from the monastery in 1936, after it was set on fireplace throughout the Spanish Civil Battle. They have been restored by MNAC, transferred to canvas, and have been on view there, controversially, since 1961. The museum was in a position to reconstruct the misplaced elements on the murals utilizing pictures taken earlier than the hearth.
A museum spokesperson informed The Artwork Newspaper that the murals nonetheless haven’t been returned attributable to “technical arguments.” The museum is anxious that shifting them to an atmosphere that isn’t climate-controlled (as they at present are, in a sealed part of MNAC’s Oval Corridor, which can be used as an occasion house), will additional harm them, as would transporting them the 150 miles from Barcelona to Villanueve de Sijena.
A video on MNAC’s web site exhibits how the mural are put in on semicircular arches in a “house which evokes the structure of the place initially occupied by the work.” They depict scenes from the Previous and New Testomony, in addition to a geneology of Christ, and have been stylistically influenced by each English miniature portray in addition to Byzantine artwork.
