The misericords and history of Barcelona Cathedral,
La Seu or Cathedral de la Santa Creu i Santa Eulalia.
La Seu has sixty two late 14th century misericords.
Click to launch a description of the misericords of Barcelona Cathedral
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History of Barcelona Cathedral
La Seu, or as it is more correctly known Cathedral de la Santa Creu i Santa Eulalia was founded as early as 343 AD, however, this basilica “only” lasted until 985, when it was destroyed by the Moors, when Al-Mansur invaded. Another cathedral was built in the Romanesque style, between 1046 and 1058. Two centuries later, the Capella de Santa Llucia was added to the foundation, and later this was incorporated into the cloisters.
In 1298, the new Gothic style cathedral was started, and the except for the chapel of St Llucia, the Romanesque cathedral was demolished. Progress was extremely slow, due in part to a civil war, and also due to the black death, which struck the city several times, it was, therefore, not until 1460 that the main building was completed. The fabulous west front was not completed until 1889, and the central tower in 1913 - both of these used the 1408 designs.
The misericords, dating from between 1394 and 1399, are both beautiful and unusual - Continental misericords very rarely have supporters, and at that time, the supporters, even in the UK, very rarely were part of the narrative. As you can see from the corpus for Barcelona Cathedral, both supporters and central misericord form a cohesive story. Similarly, it is unusual for the supporters to be human, the are far more likely to be either floral or animal.
As of February 2009, La Seu does not appear to have an official website.
RSS feed for Automated updates of the regular upgrades to misericords.co.uk
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