Cels pintats en les arquitectures de la Corona d’Aragó: sobre els repertoris iconogràfics dels Regnes de València i Mallorca (segles XIII-XV)

Identifier:  TDX:3180

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX3180

Authors:  Valls Fusté, Maria del Mar

Abstract:
This doctoral thesis focuses on studying, promoting and showcasing medieval painted ceilings, a source of knowledge that is increasingly popular into cultural studies. The Iberian lands that used to be part of the Crown of Aragon, especially in the Kingdoms of Valencia and Mallorca, comprise the geographic focal point ranging between the 13th and 15th centuries. As an expanding political entity open to the Mediterranean, the coffered ceilings produced in their centres reveal an interesting, original range of structures and decorations, with an interconnected yet idiosyncratic artistic language. This study is limited to Valencia and Mallorca because of the need to turn up works that thus far have barely been integrated into the academic and tourist circuits to reveal the wood heritage bequeathed and interpret its iconographic codes, a reflection of the shared cultural reality. With the goal of comprehensiveness, the discourse is fed by questions that view ceilings as architectural structures, support for art and symbolic looking glasses. Thus, they are brought into dialogue with the spatial dimension they cover, in either churches or homes. Their contemporary (re)discovery, associated with an intermittent historiography, is grounded in the restorative processes perpetrated in the 19th century. The documentation on amputations, aggressive alterations and destruction and despoilment processes enables us to update the corpus and more precisely sketch an output that was clearly massive.