Portal, Sculpture, and Audience of the Romanesque Cathedral Sainte-Marie d'Oloron

This dissertation reexamines the Romanesque sculptures of the cathedral Ste.-Marie d'Oloron, located in Bearn in the southwestern French Pyrenees. The west portal of Ste.-Marie, virtually the sole remnant of the Romanesque cathedral, is of under-appreciated significance to an understanding of the origins and development of Romanesque sculpture, especially portal sculpture. The clues that the portal offers remain virtually uninterpreted, however-in large part because of the restoration of the portal during the 19th -century. Uncertainty about the authenticity of the portal sculptures has both impeded their study and devalued much of the previous literature on the subject. Reconsideration of the physical and documentary evidence of restoration permits new conclusions about the state of the portal's preservation. A core group of remarkable sculptures survives the restoration virtually untouched. Recovery of the cathedral's authentic Romanesque sculptures necessitates a new reckoning of Ste.-Marie's place in Romanesque art. The sculptures' form and style indicate a new date, as well as new models for the organization and development of Oloron's sculpture workshop. The workshop's close relationships to sculptors working in the orbit of Jaca and to early ateliers at St.-Sernin de Toulouse can now be affirmed. New perspectives also emerge on Ste.-Marie's direct contributions to sculpture workshops at Lacommande and Uncastillo, among other sites. Finally, recovery of the authentic portal sculptures and the fortuitous recent rediscovery of a "lost" work make possible new interpretations of the motives and meanings that underlie the cathedral's ambitious decorative program. It appears that the portal, the threshold between sacred and profane community spaces, mediated this fundamental opposition through its decoration. A new formal reading of the profane subjects depicted in the cathedral's decoration generates insight into the portal's social and ontological strategy, and the sacred themes represented in Ste.-Marie's sculpture can now be seen to embody the liturgical milieu of the portal, especially its consecratory locus in the liturgy of dedication. These functional reinterpretations of Ste.-Marie's portal decorations suggest new avenues for reinterpretation of other early Romanesque sites and their meaning.