The Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) has opened an exhibition reinforcing the legacy of the Master of Cabestany and the history of Sant Pere de Rodes with around 100 works, including unpublished pieces from the monastery's lost portal. Costing 1.2 million euros, the show runs until June 29 and pairs with an immersive experience at the monastery starting April 17.
The MNAC features an ambitious exhibition on the Master of Cabestany, whom curator Manuel Antonio Castiñeiras calls “the most modern of the ancients”, and the Sant Pere de Rodes monastery in Port de la Selva (Girona). It gathers sculptures, paintings, manuscripts and documents from institutions like Cluny, Toulouse, Pisa, the Vatican and Museu Marès, featuring unpublished items such as a recent figurative relief, three male heads, the Titulus Crucis cartela and a door frame fragment from the western portal built between 1160 and 1170 using reused marbles from Carrara (Italy) and Proconnesus (Turkey). A hypothetical reconstruction of the portal, measuring 10.10 meters high by 6.25 meters wide in three levels, is also shown. Highlights include a 2,000-kg Roman sarcophagus from Pisa museum (270-280 BC), a Vatican census book listing Sant Pere de Rodes and the Museu Marès sculpture Appearance of Jesus to his disciples on the Sea of Galilee, carved from recycled Carrara marble. Director Pepe Serra describes it as “a tribute to the artist and the monastery”. Structured in three sections, it covers the 19th-century destruction of the portal, the monastery's golden age with Roman ties and the artist's retrospective inspirations. Sant Pere de Rodes joins the Generalitat's Los ojos de la historia project from April 17.
