While sculptor George Grey Barnard is more famous for bring the Cuxa Cloister to the United States, giving rise to the Met Cloisters, he also sold a substantial collection of medieval material to Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1945. By agreement, the Barnard collection was to be kept intact for thirty years, was to be installed in connection with the French gothic and romanesque galleries, as well as five new galleries opened specifically for the collection. The galleries were lined with columns, capitals, and other architectural elements from
In Galleries 310 and 311, some elements from the Barnard collection remain on display: a Fragment from a Church Portal showing Saint Martin Cutting His Cloak to Give to a Beggar, atop two Engaged Capitals from the Church of the Priory of Pont-Loup, several corbels, and a window which was possibly made in northern Italy.
Today the galleries contain the early European paintings in the collection of John G. Johnson, bequeathed to the City of Philadelphia in 1917.
At the heart of every medieval monastery stood a cloister, an arcaded walkway surrounding a courtyard. The Museum’s cloister is modeled after a thirteenth-century example at the Abbey of Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines in the Roussillon region of southwestern France, and includes sculpture originally from the abbey, contemporary elements from the province, and early-twentieth-century reproduction carvings.
Medieval cloisters served both practical and spiritual purposes. Most were open air, often with a garden in the courtyard. A ninth-century architectural drawing known as the Plan of Saint Gall, which is considered a blueprint of the ideal monastic compound, features a large, centrally located cloister that would have been reserved for the monks. At Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines, the outer walkway held doors that opened into the dining hall, the chapter house (where the abbey was administered), and the church. In addition to functioning as a connecting space, the courtyard and its colonnade were used by the religious community for processions, services, and communal readings. The cloister also provided an area where individual monks could engage in private prayer and contemplation.
This imposing portal originally served as the main entrance to the small Augustinian abbey church of Saint-Laurent in central France, on one of the pilgrimage roads to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. It displays bold abstract patterns on round arches and capitals with complicated intertwined branches, leaves, and birds characteristic of Romanesque architecture. The style seen here was inspired by that of the most influential Benedictine monastery in Europe, Cluny, which had founded the large church of La Charité-sur-Loire near Saint-Laurent. At the suggestion of George Grey Barnard, sculptor and collector of medieval architecture and sculpture, when the portal was installed in the Museum two smaller doorways were added on either side following a design popular in the region of Saint-Laurent, although the origin of these doors remains undetermined. In the Museum the portal now faces a group of large Romanesque capitals, of which six are known to have come from the interior of the church of Saint-Laurent.
Located between the imposing Abbey Portal and Arcade Limgoes, the Romanesque Gallery features a group of large column capitals as well as two doorways from the 1100s, a pair of painted wood doors as well as a Franciscan crucifix by the Master of Montelabate.
Adjoining the hall, through two Romanesque doorways flanking the Portal from the Abbey Church of Saint-Laurent, are two small units (Galleries 302 and 303) containing medieval glass and sculpture.
This archway served as one of two passages connecting the contemplative space of the cloister to the communal area of the chapter house (a meeting room for the governing body of the monastery) of the convent of Les Grands Carmes des Arènes in Limoges, a Carmelite monastery built on top of an ancient Roman arena in the city. The archway is carved from the distinctive basalt stone used in many of the city’s medieval buildings. During the French Revolution (1789–99), the convent—continuously occupied and much expanded since its foundation in the 1200s—was closed and the nuns expelled. The convent was sold and many of the buildings demolished. The chapter house escaped destruction, and in the early twentieth century, this arch was rediscovered in its original location and eventually came to this museum.
The arch connects the Gothic to the Romanesque Hall.
From this hall open four French Gothic doorways of the 15th and early 16th centuries. Dominating the hall is the Flemish sculptural group The Crucified Christ with the Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist, and Angels with Instruments of the Passion, which would have originally stood over the entrance to the choir or altar area of a church.
This room is composed of elements from several late fifteenth-century Northern European interiors that have been assembled with modern additions to suggest the paneled rooms of the late Gothic period. Some of the paneling is said to have come from a hunting lodge in Normandy near Le Mans. The ceiling is from Lille, near France's border with Belgium, and the painted floor tiles are from an unknown French building. The wood across the hood of the fireplace is Flemish in style.
Paintings of the period indicate that the woods in fifteenth-century rooms were originally blond or medium brown. The surviving wood in this room, however, has either darkened with age or been given a darker finish to suit a later taste. The paintings also show that rooms were enlivened and made more comfortable with fabrics. In Northern Europe, red was an especially popular color for bed hangings and pillows.
In planning the installation of this room around 1930, the Museum's director, Fiske Kimball, increased the height of the ceiling to provide more wall space.
This chapel is composed of elements from two buildings that were part of a large religious community at Aumônières near Dijon in central France that was administered by the Knights of Saint Anthony. This nursing order, which was founded in the eleventh century, established many hospices. The community at Aumônières was one of the earliest, and grew to include a hospice, law court, and farm. Today almost nothing survives of the original structures at Aumônières, which were severely damaged in the wars of the fifteenth century.
In the Museum's installation, the stone entrance portal with the T-shaped cross associated with Saint Anthony at the top and the rose window over the altar are from the façade of the community church at Aumônières. The stone ribs of the four-part groin vault also probably came from this church. Old photographs indicate that this vaulted ceiling would have risen approximately twenty-five feet above the floor, almost twice as high as in the Museum.
Another building at Aumônières, the chapel of the hospice, was the source of the two large windows and the stone piers and brackets incorporated in the reconstruction of the chapel's exterior façade. The altar is from a church in Norroy, France, and the recessed niche and the small doorway are twentieth-century additions in the Gothic style.
The stained glass was acquired by the Museum to fill the empty window frames from Aumônières. Two elements of the glass are especially noteworthy: the fragment of Saint Nicholas in the center of the rose window, which dates from 1320, and the three panels from the life of Saint John the Baptist in the middle of the triple window from the early sixteenth century.
While elements from the château of Pagny dominate this hall, including an altarpiece, choir screen, sculpture, and a coat-of-arms, the tall Renaissance hall also features a number of other elements including stained glass and stone and wooden doorways.
This screen is the central interior element from the chapel of the château of Pagny, and one of the finest architectural structures surviving from the French Renaissance. During the 1530s, the chapel was embellished in successive redecoration campaigns by Philippe Chabot de Brion, admiral of France and governor of Burgundy, and his uncle by marriage, Cardinal Claude de Givry, archbishop of Langres. The coats of arms over the central archway are those of the cardinal; Chabot; and Françoise de Longvy, wife of Chabot, niece of Givry, and the heiress of Pagny. The statues placed atop the screen at left and right represent Saints Claude and Philip. At center are the Virgin Mary and Saint John. Originally, a stone sculpture of Christ on the cross stood on the column capital at the top of the arch.
This elaborate altarpiece depicts scenes from Jesus’s life. The Crucifixion in the center is flanked by carvings of scenes from the Passion (the events of Jesus’s final days on Earth) with insets of moments prefiguring Jesus’s suffering. On the predella (base), paintings emphasize the idea of Communion (the ritual of sharing bread and wine in Jesus’s memory). Priests would have stood beneath these scenes when celebrating Mass at the altar.
Antwerp workshops followed a standardized formula for these impressive altarpieces. Using prefabricated components and depicting similar themes meant these altarpieces were not exorbitantly expensive. This one was purchased for the chapel at the château of Pagny in Burgundy in the 1530s. Its gilded figures would have lent a note of brilliant color to the stony chapel. Its origin was largely forgotten until its acquisition by the museum, where it was reunited with the choir screen from the same chapel.
The wooden wall paneling in this gallery bears two dates, 1577 and 1583, and comes from a destroyed Franciscan monastery in Le Puy, France. Its upper registers hold vignettes of fantasy architecture created with perspectives so complex that they suggest the woodcarver intended to amaze viewers with virtuoso renderings of space. Since the paneling has been moved several times, the exact placement and order of the carved scenes are unknown. However, the current, intimate installation of the woodwork recalls the special rooms collectors created in the 1500s, called “cabinets,” in which they displayed remarkable objects of art, nature, and science—much like the pieces exhibited in this space today.
The paneling was removed from the monastery and was installed at the château de Cussac, in which it remained during the 19th century.
Much of the painted and gilded wall paneling in this room comes from the Hôtel Lauzun, a town house in Paris named after the duke of Lauzun, who owned the property in the 1680s. Designed by architect Charles Chamois (c. 1610-after 1684), the house was built for Charles Gruyn, who made a fortune supplying King Louis XIV's cavalry. Gruyn's cipher, a combination of his initials with those of his wife, Geneviève de Mouy, is visible on the door at right. The city of Paris acquired the building in 1928.
The paneling installed here is probably from several different rooms in the house. Decorative painted panels like the ones here that depict dogs barking at the heads of various game animals can still be seen in the house in Paris. Although the decoration of Hôtel Lauzun is undocumented, the designs have been attributed to Michel Dorigny (1616-1665), a painter associated with some of the most lavish Parisian domestic interiors.
The ceiling, from a small country house on the outskirts of Paris, was painted by Pierre Dupuis (1610-1682) in 1678. In the center, appearing as the patron of music, is Apollo, the sun god of classical mythology and the favorite symbol of Louis XIV (who was known as the Sun King); in the corners, oval medallions contain figures representing the four seasons.
The furnishings and paintings displayed here evoke the opulent Louis XIV style and date from various moments in his long reign, from 1643 to 1715.
This grand salon was the centerpiece of the magnificent château that Marin de la Haye built at Draveil, about twelve miles south of Paris. De la Haye purchased the property in 1720, only two years after he had obtained the lucrative office of royal tax collector. Provided with sufficient means to establish himself in society, De la Haye transformed the simple house he found at Draveil into a large château with spacious and varied gardens. At the axial center of the house was the grand salon, which he used as the state room for formal receptions. To demonstrate his wealth and status, the salon was decorated with immense mirrors, carved and gilded paneling, and sculpted reliefs. The room opened through three round-headed doors onto a balcony that overlooked the celebrated park. When De la Haye died without direct heirs, Draveil passed to various private owners, the last of whom sold the woodwork of the grand salon to the Parisian art dealer from whom the Museum purchased it in 1928.
This reception room was located at the front of the house on the first floor, overlooking a street called the rue Royale. Created to link what is now the Place de la Concorde with the church of the Madeleine, the rue Royale was then on the western edge of the city. The house's façade is part of a comprehensive scheme for the street that Ange-Jacques Gabriel designed in 1759. In 1781 Louis Le Tellier acquired the land for numbers 9, 11, and 13. Each of the properties he built was composed of two lodgings, one on the street and another behind on a courtyard.
All three Le Tellier houses had similar plans and decorative details executed by the same craftsmen, including Louis Fixon the Younger, who provided the decorative wood panels and the plaster reliefs over the doors and mirrors.
In the Museum, the salon preserves its original, slightly asymmetrical proportions. The mantlepiece and the floor are not original to the room but are appropriate in date and style. The ceiling rosette is a recent cast of one in the salon of the Le Tellier house at 11, rue Royale.
Certain decorative elements, like the crowns and the archer's bows, are traditional in French ornamental design. Other motifs—the nereids supporting an urn and the women playing flutes—are derived from ancient art and reflect the fashionable Neoclassical taste. With its harmonious proportions and fine carving, the room is comparable to some of the simpler interiors in royal residences such as the Petit Trianon at Versailles.
This room and its furnishings were given to the Museum in 1939 by Eleanore Elkins Rice. Designed as an elegant setting for Mrs. Rice's distinguished collection of eighteenth-century French furniture and decorative arts, the room was originally installed in her New York town house. The woodwork of painted and gilded oak is based on designs by French architect Jacques-Ange Gabriel (1698-1782).
The room has been the subject of several paintings that are also in the museum's collection, including pieces by Sir John Lavery and William Ranken.
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Kimball, Fiske. “The Barnard Collection.” The Philadelphia Museum Bulletin 40, no. 205 (1945): 51–62. https://doi.org/10.2307/3794827.
Taylor, Francis Henry. “Late Gothic Architecture in the Museum.” Bulletin of the Pennsylvania Museum 25, no. 131 (1930): 3–9. https://doi.org/10.2307/3794449.
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