Cleveland Museum of Art

Capital with Addorsed Quadrupeds

Date

late 1100s-early 1200s

Medium

limestone

Culture

Southwest France, Languedoc, Toulouse (?), late 12th to early13th Centuries

Department

Medieval Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Monstrous images were prevalent in the decoration of religious buildings during the Middle Ages. Such images must have impressed, perhaps even terrified, the monks and visitors who spent much of their time within the cloister or church, a place of prayer, contemplation, and reflection. Scholars have speculated how such images would have been received by the people given the ubiquity of monsters in medieval society. The carved monsters, often symbolizing vice and retribution for sin, were possibly designed to provoke a range of emotional responses including laughter, wonder, surprise, fear, and shock. This striking imagery must have had a strong impact, which in turn led Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), the spiritual head of the Cistercian order, to admonish their use as distracting from prayer. A quadruped is an animal with four feet; the specific animal shown here is unidentified.

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.