The saint above the door: hagiographic sculpture in twelfth-century Uncastillo

Abstract

Over the course of the twelfth century, six fine Romanesque churches were built in the town of Uncastillo, Aragon. Three of these churches display carved hagiographic scenes on the tympana above their principal entrances, a highly unusual placement for saints’ lives during this period. Though the subject matter responds to a broad interest in hagiographic imagery across post-conquest Aragon, its prominent location and recurrence in multiple churches were both motivated by political and social factors shaping the kingdom at this time. On the one hand, the hagiographies’ allegorical evocations of the Christian conquest speak to the relevance of Aragon's territorial expansion to the town's inhabitants. On the other, the sculptures’ placement above the church portal – the focal point of the community – responds to the contemporary experience of urbanization in Uncastillo, which resulted in the town's organization into six different neighborhoods. Considering the hagiographic tympana with respect to sculptural traditions, reconquest rhetoric, and patterns of urban settlement and development, I argue that Uncastillo's experiments with form and iconography aspired to cohere urban communities during a dynamic period of social transformation.

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