Gothic Sculpture Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Unlike the international historiographic production, the art historiography in
Portugal has not yet focused profoundly on the iconographic theme generally known as
green man, despite its presence being substantial in Portuguese medieval art. With this
dissertation we aim to analyze this theme, starting from the most global methodology
possible in terms of chronology within the limits of the Late Middle Ages, and
geography within the border of the national territory of Portugal. Firstly, we felt the
need to illustrate the typological plurality of this big family, constituted by the theme of
the green man, since it raises many issues and is still being discussed and defined. As
such, the present iconography ends up adopting a diversity of names according to what
is represented and how it is represented.
We chose to guide our investigation in a way that would enable us to produce a
chronological evolution of the mentioned iconography, in the territory that is today
considered Portugal, through the collection of samples throughout the whole country.
The former task was guided by the purpose of understanding the genesis of the theme of
the green man in this territory, and to understand if we can see if there was an
importation, or not, and if there was, from which geographical areas, monastic orders or
aesthetic movements. With this exercise we attempted to establish what were the places
in which the green man was represented more frequently: within the sacred space or
within the available space in the media in which it was imprinted, and what symbolic
implications these diverse locations have in the multiple contexts where the green man
was represented. We came to the conclusion that the foliate mask, as it is also called, is
not so much a marginal iconography as one would possibly consider at first glance. A
posteriori, by observing this built diachrony, we easily notice the divergence between
typologies of representation in the transition between the epitome of the Romanesque
art and the beginning of the gothic art, as well as the new locations within the sacred
space, and in other media, in the years of the Gothic. We concluded, with this spatial
examination, that the green man behaves in a slightly different manner in the symbolic
field, between the chronologies that we usually call the Romanesque and the Gothic.
We tried, in an equal manner, to apprehend the difference operated in these two
artistic phases in the international conjuncture, and with this contextual perspective we
propose to find the distinctions between the Portuguese examples and the foreign ones,
in terms of preferences, regionalisms, chronological differences, and eventually,
specific innovations of the territory where we decided to site our work. To reach the
goal, we opted for restricting our analysis of the iconography in six paradigmatic cases
of study, which enabled us to better explore the various questions we proposed to
answer in a more practical manner. Finally, we concluded, through these case studies,
that the foliate head in Portugal ‘wears’ a very particular presence and expression,
ending up adapting itself to the specificities of the art and architecture in this country.
Keywords: green man, green beast, monster, iconography, symbology of space,
architectonic sculpture