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In the summer of 1969 I directed a campaign which produced plans, sections and drawings of the older parts of the Collegiate Church of San Isidoro in León for a history of that monument.1 The work centered on the Pantheon of the Kings, the mausoleum of the rulers of León-Castile in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which is attached as a kind of narthex to the west façade of the church. It is traditionally attributed to 1063, and the assured handling of architectural space and mass one encounters there has been seen as an auspicious introduction of the Romanesque style in northwest Spain. At the same time the walls and vaults of the Pantheon display the major surviving cycle of Spanish Romanesque mural painting outside Catalonia. During the six weeks of the campaign it was possible to become intimately acquainted with the complex (Fig. 1), and to complete a plan of the Pantheon and its adjacent tower and gallery, together with a plan of the tribune and tower on the next level (Figs. 2a and b). Of the longitudinal section of the complex only the Pantheon itself neared completion, although the relationship of the tribune to the Pantheon was fixed (Fig. 3). While at least one more campaign will be necessary to complete the desired visual record, the evidence which has emerged thus far so contradicts the traditional view regarding the sequence of events on the site that it merits exposure now even if conclusions must remain, in some instances, tentative. As will be seen, a date for the Pantheon within the reign of Fernando I is untenable; rather, it must be attributed to that of Fernando's successor, Alfonso VI. The fresco cycle, on the other hand, seems to have been dated too late, for there is evidence that it was installed even before the completion of the present basilica and thus well before the reign of Fernando II, to whom the paintings have been attributed on the basis of a presumed donor portrait.
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