Engaged Capitals

About this artwork

This capital belongs to a surviving group including other architectural fragments that once decorated the cloister of the Abbey of Larreule. A cloister was a covered walkway or arcade, usually around all four sides of a square area of grass (the "cloister garth"). The seclusion of the cloister was the monks’ exclusive domain, off limits to others. Here, the monks were supposed to pray, study, meditate, and exercise in privacy and solitude. Such cloister capitals served both to instruct the monks...