Museums of Girone: Art and the Jews

Early Romanesque crucifix

Girone's Art Museum, housed in a 10th c. abbott's mansion that looks like a fortress, tells a clear story from the primitive beginnings of Romanesque art. The early Romanesque was as stylized as Byzantine art, even anti-anatomical--for example, on his crucifix Christ stands fully clothed and wide-eyed.

Unlike Madrid, medieval Catalunya had little exposure to artistic trends of Europe, so a slow trickle of European influence becomes evident only with the gothic style, which gradually took on volume and depth. Alabaster madonnas look almost French, and the beautiful expressiveness of the local artists is unique.

Gothic alabaster monk

But the retables (large altar montages of sacred painting) have a genius of their own, with their brilliant storytelling. There is St. Feliu's martyrdom, with his boyish face and sardonic superiority, St. Catherine, sweet and wide-eyed undergoing terrible tortures, St. Esteve being squirted in the eye wit the Virgin's breast milk, all with a special expressivity rarely seen in the Louvre. Even the Baroque, in its painted statues, shows the strong Catalan character. The late academic painting had perfection without that Catalunyan exuberance, beautiful but not as driven by this gorgeous land.

A mere three staff members observed us through closed circuit tv, and then afterwards recommended the nearby restaurant housed in a gothic priory. Next to it was a walled-in garden. On our way to the museum through the Jewish quarter we had seen men of different colors and states of dress entering furtively--the medieval garden must have been a soup kitchen.

Among St. Catherine's trials

The restaurant was a vaulted space and served reasonably priced excellent Catalan fare. My tortilla (omelette) was a bread-like brown (from the eggplant) and deeply flavorful, as was the ratatouille-flavored rice and squid with caramelized onion.

Italian influence of volume

And then we returned to the Calle to visit the Jewish museum. Among the scattered stories told in Catalunya, the best articulated seems to be that of the Spanish Jews who were driven out in 1492 by Isabelle and Ferdinand. Like the Parisian museum of Jewish Art and Culture, this one told stories with medieval illuminations and a few artifacts, recounting the happy memories of the bustling neighborhood, albeit with the occasional massacre. It is housed in a former synagogue and details the considerable contributions made by Jews: intellectual, financial, artisanal, and scholarly. In fact, faced with conversion or exile, many of Girone's Jews chose conversion, though that was not true of another Jewish quarter we visited in Besalu, where the Jews were closed off, under a hot sun, as early as 1415 and eventually fled. The exhibitions gave evidence that Jewish women, despite their cultural constraints, had traded and bought and sold and participated in a busy society.

St. Feliu visited in prison by angels

A migraine struck me full force and I went out to the garden and sat at its edge, where a corridor of coolness seeped up from adjoining leafy galleries, and where the voices of neighbors were so loud and expressive I thought I'd stumbled across a theatical performance.

The next day, in Besalu, we saw an old Miqvah, the Jewish ritual bath, of which none remain in Girone. It had been authenticated by a rabbi from Perpignan, and another from Paris! But all was closed off--celebrated as an historical city, Besalu still does not open its buildings except to its own guided tours. Though we waited in the heat for a tour in Spanish, the guide said it was too hot for her to go out only for 2 people!

Baroque St. Roca