‘Explaining the origins of the nation’ – why the Sixena Monastery frescoes are important to Catalonia

The Sixena Monastery fresco paintings have made a lot of headlines over the past weeks, as these singular pieces of Romanesque artworks are at the centre of a legal case, touching on questions of national identity and art custodianship, that has reached as high as Spain’s Supreme Court. 

The religious murals were originally part of a convent in the Aragonese village of Villanueva de Sigena, close to the border with Catalonia, but have been on display in Catalonia’s National Art Museum (MNAC) since the 1960s. 

They were first brought to Catalonia some three decades prior, after art historian Josep Gudiol found their remains after the monastery was burned down by anti-clerics during the Spanish Civil War. 

Aragon have been fighting to have them returned to their original site for years, while many in Catalonia argue that the appropriate conditions offered by the MNAC museum is the best place for the paintings.

But why are the 12th and 13th century Romanesque frescoes so important to Catalonia?

Albert Velasco, an art historian at the University of Lleida, explains to the Catalan News Agency that the monastery where the artworks come from is an important one in the historical context of the old Crown of Aragon. 

“Medieval art was a very important part of political and cultural discourse in Catalonia because the origins of the nation were in the medieval period,” Velasco points out.

In the early 20th century, Catalonia began collecting examples of medieval art, including paintings, sculptures, and pieces of gold, and much of this was put on display in the MNAC when it opened in the 1930s. 

“The monastery was the place where the kings were buried and where they had their archives,” Velasco outlines. The monastery is “a very important example of the Catalan links with Aragon and with the rest of the territories that were part of the Crown of Aragon.”

“For these reasons, the museum became a very important point of explaining the origins of the nation,” according to the art historian.  

How did the Sixena paintings end up in Catalonia?

The Spanish Civil War, from 1936-1939, was “a disaster for the Monastery of Sixena,” Velasco says, “because the paintings were burned” and “badly damaged.” 

Art historian Josep Gudiol Ricart reached out to the Catalan government in the 1930s and asked them to finance their recovery, and thus they were brought to Barcelona. 

Critics of Catalonia’s custodianship of the Aragonese paintings say that this transfer was done without the permission of the religious authorities who were the rightful owners of the damaged monastery. Velasco points out, though, that without the intervention of Gudiol and Catalonia, the precious artworks may have been lost forever. 

“The efforts Gudiol made to preserve the paintings are not a theft,” the historian argues. “It's a very important operation of preservation,” he feels, an operation that was undertaken during a wartime context, and one Velasco says was appreciated by the art world internationally at the time.

The most important thing for Velasco is that the frescoes are preserved properly, “because we have the obligation to save these paintings for the generations of the future.”