Chapter House from Notre-Dame-de-Pontaut

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The chapter house was the daily meeting place in most European monasteries and convents. The monks or nuns sat on the stone bench around the walls, as business was discussed each day and a chapter of the Rule of Saint Benedict, the official code of monastic behavior, was read. The location next to Cuxa Cloister preserves the relationship of the chapter house to the cloisters in a typical medieval monastic plan. The architecture of the chapter house features typical Romanesque characteristics, notably the rounded arches, thick walls, small windows, and heavy rib vaults. The abbey at Pontaut, founded in 1115 as a Benedictine monastery, housed a Cistercian community after 1151. The abbey was damaged during religious wars of the sixteenth century. In 1791, the monastic buildings were sold to a local family, and the chapter house was converted into a stable; it was sold in 1932 and brought to New York. The plastered vaults and the floor tiles of the reconstructed chapter house are modern.

Medieval Art and The Cloisters

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of medieval and Byzantine art is among the most comprehensive in the world. Displayed in both The Met Fifth Avenue and in the Museum's branch in northern Manhattan, The Met Cloisters, the collection encompasses the art of the Mediterranean and Europe from the fall of Rome in the fourth century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. It also includes pre-medieval European works of art created during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

Metropolitan Museum of Art