Romanesque Sculpture Center - The Master of Cabestany

At a time when the workshops of Languedoc and Catalonia producing Romanesque sculpture were at their most active, and when trade between Spain, Catalonia, Languedoc, and Northern Italy was well established, the Master of the Cabestany Tympanum emerged during the last third of the 12th century. He left the imprint of his strong personality on many monuments in the region. It is by reference to the tympanum of the Assumption, the sole remaining vestige of a lost portal, preserved in the parish church of the village of Cabestany, in the Perpignan plain, that this anonymous sculptor is known today. Moved by the beauty of the rediscovered tympanum of the church of Cabestany, a small town on the outskirts of Perpignan, Josep Gudiol identified him in 1944 as the Master of Cabestany, the same artist who was responsible, in addition to this tympanum, for several other masterpieces of medieval sculpture.