Double Capital with Birds

Double Capital with Birds

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Birds, pinecones, and leaves enliven this large capital, set over paired shafts. The cloister from which it comes was built as the wealth of the community increased through the visit of pilgrims en route to Santiago de Compostela. On the way, they stopped to venerate the relics of Saint Gaudens, a local shepherd boy who was martyred in the fifth century by the Visigoths, with his mother, Saint Quitterie. Sculpture from the cloister was sold as building material in the wake of the French Revolution. Part of the cloister was reconstructed at Saint-Gaudens in the 1980s.

Medieval Art and The Cloisters

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.