The iconography of a marble capitalfrom the destroyed Romanesque clois -

ter at Notre-Dame-des-Doms, Avignon,now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, has neverbeen fully identified.1 Carved on three of itsfour sides, the capital measures 29·8 cm.(height) × 25 cm. (width across the top) ×19 cm. (width across the base).2 Proceedinground it from left to right (Fig. 1, a-d), thefirst face shows a bearded man who sits ona low throne and plays a harp; in front ofhim, a bird perches on a decorative frondand leans towards the harp. On the nextface, a woman riding a horse clutches aspherical object in her right hand. On thelast face, a standing female figure appearsto lead the horse with her right hand whilesupporting a large bird on her left. The

bearded man has been identified as Davidthe Psalmist.3The horse-and-rider imageryhas been postulated as the Virgin Journey -ing to the Visitation, or Constantine Welcomedby the Church.4 In this Note it will be arguedthat the imagery represents Abigail goingto David, which takes place at I Samuel (IKings) 25.18 and again at 25.42.

The capital once formed part of a trap -ezoidal cloister of about 295 m. square,which was bounded to the west by thetwelfth-century cathedral apse and to theeast by a cliff.5 There is mention of acanons’ cloister at Notre-Dame-des-Domsc. 1123, though for stylistic reasons it iswidely agreed that the cloister with whichwe are concerned cannot have existedbefore c. 1150.6 Six colonnettes and twenty

* I am grateful to Victoria Avery and the FitzwilliamMuseum’s Department of Applied Arts for allowingme to examine this object. For help of various kinds,I am indebted to Berthold Kress and Kristine Tanton.For engaged reading of drafts, thanks are due to JeanMichel Massing.

1. Following its accession at the FitzwilliamMuseum (inv. M.1-1964), the capital was publishedby M. R. Taylor, ‘A Marble Capital from the ToulouseRegion’, Burlington Magazine, cvi, 1964, p. 539. It was first connected with the cloister of Notre-Dame-des-Doms by A. Borg, ‘A Further Note on a MarbleCapital in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge’,Burlington Magazine, cx, 1968, pp. 312–18; and subse-quently discussed by J. Thirion, ‘Le décor sculpté ducloître de la cathédrale d’Avignon’, Monuments etmémoires de la Fondation Eugène Piot, lxi, 1977, pp. 87–164 (135–36).

2. Because of discrepancies in the existing litera-ture, I have taken new measurements and given themhere. These are maximum lengths.

3. Borg (as in n. 1), p. 315.4. Ibid., pp. 315–16; Thirion (as in n. 1), pp. 135–

36.5. Knowledge of the cloister’s 12th-century aspect

comes primarily from accounts of its demolition,

which took place during the French Revolution andthe subsequent Restoration. C.-A. Fransoy, Fragmenthistorique sur l’église métropolitaine d’Avignon, Avignon1819, p. 31, states that the cloister contained 52arcades, each supported by marble columns of variouscolours. Jean-Baptiste Guérin, the architect whooversaw the project, drew up a ground plan of thecathedral grounds in 1823 in which he recorded thesurface area of the former cloister. This plan is repro-duced by Thirion (as in n. 1), p. 91. Other analyses of the cloister architecture can be found in L.-H.Labande, ‘L’Eglise Notre-Dame-des-Doms d’Avignondes origines au XIIIe siècle’, Bulletin archéologique duComité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, xxiv, 1906,pp. 282–365, esp. 340–60; H.-A. von Stockhausen,‘Die Romanischen Kreuzgänge der Provence: I. Teil:Die Architektur’, Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissen-schaft, vii, 1933, pp. 135–90, esp. 162–63; G. Barruol,‘L’Eglise Notre-Dame-des-Doms d’Avignon au XIIe

siècle’, Congrès archéologique de France, cxxi, 1963, pp.44–58, esp. 57–58. The most comprehensive history ofthe cloister is given by Thirion (as in n. 1), pp. 88–95.

6. For the document of 1123 see E. Duprat, Cartu-laire du chapitre de Notre-Dame des Doms. I: 1060 à 1263,Avignon 1932, no. LXXVII; cited by Thirion (as in n.1), p. 88 n. 3. For discussions of date see A. K. Porter,

131

JOURNAL OF THE WARBURG AND COURTAULD INSTITUTES, LXXVI, 2013

ABIGAIL AND DAVID:

THE ICONOGRAPHY OF A ROMANESQUE CAPITAL FROM

NOTRE-DAME-DES-DOMS, AVIGNON*

Andrew H. Chen

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capitals, mostly marble, are thought to havebeen erected during a sculptural campaignof c. 1150–75.7 Of the seven historiated capi-tals in the group, two once belonged to the painter and Louvre curator FrançoisMarius Granet (1775–1849) and are now in the Musée Granet in Aix. One of them,which shows the Massacre of the Innocents(Fig. 2), is probably by the same hand asthe Fitzwilliam capital.8 The other, whichrepresents the Beheading of John the Bap-tist, the Presentation of the Head of John theBaptist to Herod, and a Head of a Bull, is

assigned to a different sculptor who pro -duced three more of the historiated capi-tals: two are now at Musée Calvet, of whichone shows Job, Bildad, Zophar, Eliphaz,Elihu and the Devil, and the other hascarvings of the Adoration of the Magi, theAnnunciation to the Shepherds, together withLivestock in the Fields and the Dream of StJoseph; the third is at the Musée d’Aquitainein Bordeaux and represents God the Fatherholding the Earth and the Scales of Justice,God the Father holding the Sun, the Creationof Adam and the Creation of Eve.9 The last

132 ABIGAIL AND DAVID

‘The Avignon Capital’, Fogg Art Museum Notes, i,1923, p. 9; Barruol (as in n. 5), p. 57; Borg (as in n. 1),p. 316; Thirion (as in n. 1), p. 163.

7. For the date see n. 13 below. Thirion (as in n. 1)catalogues these capitals as nos 1–2, 5–13, 16–18 and20–25, of which nos 18 and 20–25 are historiated; theFitzwilliam capital is no. 23. A double capital showingthe Annunciation (ibid., no. 27) is thought to postdatethe other fragments. For the colonettes see ibid., pp.94–95. In 1215, the Chapter granted funds for a con -struction project affecting the church and canonicalstructures: see for the document Duprat (as in n. 6),no. CLVIII; cited by Thirion (as in n. 1), p. 88 n. 6.This perhaps facilitated the addition to the cloister of the Gothic style vaults described by Dominique-Victor-Hyacinthe Chambaud, curator at Musée Calvet

1841–49, in his Notice sur l’église de Notre-Dame-des-Doms (1872), Avignon, Bibliothèque municipale MS2502, fol. 161 (cited by Thirion, p. 92): ‘Les voûtes dece bâtiment étaient en partie du style roman et enpartie du style ogival, un double rang de colonnesplacées intérieurement et extérieurement et ornées de chapiteaux historiés ou de figures et d’animauxfantastiques soutenaient les arcades cintrées qui éclairaient cet édifice’.

8. Borg (as in n. 1), pp. 312, 318. He suggests thatthe Fitzwilliam capital may have once belonged toGranet as well. K. Nolan, ‘Ploratus et Ululatus: theMothers in the Massacre of the Innocents at ChartresCathedral’, Studies in Iconography, xvii, 1996, pp. 95–141 (110–13), connects the Musée Granet capital withthe Fogg Museum one (discussed below, n. 10).

1a-e (above and right). Marble capital from the cloister at Notre-Dame-des-Doms, Avignon, third quarter ofthe 12th century. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum. Scenes represented on the three sculpted faces show:

David the Psalmist (a-b); Abigail going to David (b-c); Abigail’s servant leading her mistress’s horse, or possibly Ahinoam of Jezreel (d) (I Samuel 25.18 and 25.42)

a b

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of the historiated capitals from Notre-Dame-des-Doms is in the Fogg Museumat Harvard, and shows Samson Wrestling theLion, Samson Carrying the Gates of Gaza,Delilah and the Philistines Cutting Samson’sHair and Samson Destroying the House of thePhilistines.10

Several features of these capitals can be established. Both Old Testament andNew Testament subjects are present. Moreimportantly, each capital is thematicallyco herent. From that perspective, it is unlike -ly that the horse-and-rider imagery couldrepresent something other than an episodefrom the life of David. Since there is only

9. For the John the Baptist capital see Borg (as inn. 1), pp. 312–18; Thirion (as in n. 1), no. 24, pp. 139–41. The Job capital is discussed by Labande (as in n.5), p. 356; Porter (as in n. 6), p. 9; H.-A. von Stock-hausen, ‘Die Romanischen Kreuzgänge der Provence:II. Teil: Die Plastik’, Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunst-wissenschaft, viii/ix, 1936, pp. 132–33; Thirion, no. 21,pp. 130–32. On the Nativity capital see Stockhausen,p. 132; Borg, p. 315; Thirion, no. 20, pp. 127–30.

10. See Thirion (as in n. 1), no. 18, pp. 121–25;Porter (as in n. 6), pp. 2–15; Stockhausen (as in n. 9),pp. 127–29; Borg (as in n. 1), p. 315; L. Seidel, ‘Capitalwith Scenes from the Life of Samson’, cat. no. 45 inThe Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, ed. S. K. Scher,Providence 1969, pp. 127–33; eadem, ‘RomanesqueSculpture in American Collections. X. The Fogg Art

Museum. II. The Rhône Valley, Provence, Languedoc,Western and Northern France’, Gesta, xi, 1972, pp.62–63; eadem and W. Cahn, Romanesque Sculpture inAmerican Collections, 2 vols, New York and Turnhout1979–99, i, pp. 160–62; K. McClintock, ‘Capital,Scenes from the Life of Samson’, cat. no. 51 in Medi -eval Art in America: Patterns of Collecting 1800–1940, ed. E. B. Smith, University Park, PA 1996, pp. 212–13; Nolan (as in n. 8); C. Smith, ‘The Human Archi-tect and Architecture Made by Human Hands’, inBefore and After the End of Time: Architecture and theYear 1000, ed. eadem, New York 2000, p. 38; and D.Carrabino, cat. no. 40 in Harvard Art Museum Hand-book, ed. S. Wolohojian, Cambridge, MA 2008, p. 40,who dates it c. 1150–75.

ANDREW H. CHEN 133

c d

e

Marble capital from the cloister at Notre-Dame-des-Doms, Avignon. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum (see facing page for identifications)

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one female rider in the chapters of theBible devoted to him, the story of Abigailjourneying to convince David not to killher husband Nabal, who had treated hisembassies harshly (I Samuel 25.9–11),inevi tably suggests itself.11

Representations of this episode in theart of the period are extremely rare.12

Apart from the Fitzwilliam capital, I amaware of only two surviving examples ofAbigail going to David in Romanesque art,as miniatures in each of the PamplonaBibles.13 The first of these, from the Bibleof King Sancho el Fuerte, in Amiens, showsa seated Saul greeting Abigail, who isaccompanied by a donkey carrying a

wineskin (Fig. 3a). (Saul’s appearance heremay seem unexpected given that it has noreal basis in the text, but it helps to main-tain narrative continuity with preceding andsubsequent scenes.) The image from theSecond Pamplona Bible, now in Augsburg,shows Abigail with two donkeys, one ofwhich is carrying a ram (Fig. 3b). Bothminiatures appear below abbreviations of I Samuel 25.18: ‘Then Abigail made hasteand took two hundred loaves, and twovessels of wine, and five sheep readydressed, and laid them upon asses.’14

While the illuminations in the PamplonaBibles are not directly related to the Fitz -william composition, they are valuable in

134 ABIGAIL AND DAVID

11. For further discussion of the biblical episode see J. D. Levenson, ‘I Samuel 25 as Literature and asHistory’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, xl, 1978, pp. 11–28; S. L. McKenzie, King David: A Biography, Oxford2000, pp. 96–97.

12. I have consulted the Princeton Index of Chris-tian Art, ARTstor, the Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, Iconclass 2100, and the Warburg Institute’s Photo-graphic Collection. I wish also to thank KristineTanton for checking her corpus of inscribed Roman -esque capitals.

13. For general information about the PamplonaBibles see F. Bucher, The Pamplona Bibles: A FacsimileCompiled from Two Picture Bibles with Martyrologies

Commissioned by King Sancho el Fuerte of Navarra(1194–1234): Amiens Manuscript Latin 108 and HarburgMS. 1, 2, Lat. 4o, 15, 2 vols, New Haven, CT 1970; seealso G. Bartz, G. Hägele, L. Karl and I. Schäfer, DiePamplona-Bibel: die Bilderbibel des Königs Sancho elFuerte (1153–1234) von Navarra. UniversitätsbibliothekAugsburg, Sammlung Oettingen-Wallerstein, Cod. 1, 2,Lat. 4o15. Kommentarband zum Faksimile, Reinbeckand Berlin 2005, esp. pp. 99–100.

14. The text reads: ‘Festinavit igitur abigail et tulitducentos panes et duos utres vini et quinque arietescoctos et imposuit super asinos.’ Transcriptions anddescriptions of these two miniatures can be found inBucher (as in n. 13), pp. 229–30.

2a-d (above and right). Massacre of the Innocents (Matthew 2.16–18). Marble capital from the cloister at Notre-Dame-des-Doms, Avignon, third quarter 12th century. Aix, Musée Granet. (PHOTOGRAPH © BERNARD TELAY)

a b

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that they provide textually secure parallelsfor an unusual iconography. The PamplonaBibles are massive volumes, the Bible ofKing Sancho containing 871 extant scenes,the Second Pamplona Bible 976.15 It hasbeen shown that most of the miniatureswere based on a model which is now lost,but some of the less canonical figurations,including those of I Samuel 25.18, wereprobably invented.16 I would suggest thatthe scene on the Fitzwilliam capital wassimilarly improvised.

Some features of the capital’s imagerycan now be elucidated. David is shownwithout a crown because he met (and even-tually married) Abigail before becomingking. The identification of the rider figureas Abigail also implies that the object in herhand is a food article, perhaps a loaf ofbread. It is the only indication of the rathermore substantial luggage described in thepassage just quoted.17 The main disagree-ment between text and sculpture is that thecapital features a horse rather than an ass

(asinus), but this probably indicates, quitesimply, that the artist resorted to a familiarequestrian formula and did not considerthe details of the biblical source.

Yet the imagery of the capital need notbe constrained to I Samuel 25.18, for itconforms just as readily to verse 42: ‘AndAbigail arose, and made haste, and gotupon an ass, and five damsels went withher, her waiting maids, and she followedthe messengers of David, and became hiswife.’ If the second woman is leading thehorse, she may be one of Abigail’s fivemaids. Alternatively, her prominence on thecapital may suggest that this woman is notan anonymous servant but rather Ahinoam,the other wife of David mentioned by thenarrator of I Samuel 25, almost in the samebreath, in the next verse: ‘Moreover Davidtook also Ahinoam of Jezreel: and they were both of them his wives.’ One need notnecessarily decide on this count; the imagemay be polysemous.

The Fitzwilliam capital is particularly

15. Bucher (as in n. 13), pp. 19, 34.16. Ibid., p. xiii; O. K. Werckmeister, review of

Bucher’s Pamplona Bibles in Art Bulletin, lv, 1973, p.444.

17. Just possibly her meagre luggage, and her direction of travel away from him on the capital, couldsuggest she has left David and is heading back toNabal (I Samuel 25.35–36).

ANDREW H. CHEN 135

2a-d (above and left). Massacre of the Innocents (Matthew 2.16–18). Marble capital from the cloister at Notre-Dame-des-Doms, Avignon, third quarter 12th century. Aix, Musée Granet. (PHOTOGRAPH © BERNARD TELAY)

c d

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interesting in view of its focus on Abigail.Intelligent, beautiful and conciliatory, sheis one of the only sympathetic charactersamong the women represented in thesurviving fragments from the cloister atNotre-Dame des-Doms.18 The episode ofher going to David was the beginning of theend for her mismatched marriage to Nabal,a powerful but foolish chieftain, and thestart of her acquaintance with the soon-to-be King of Israel. David, through hiseventual marriage to Abigail, became the

leader of the Calebites, the most powerfulclan in Judah; their betrothal figuredcrucially in David’s claims to the throne ofJudah.19 It may or may not be coincidentalthat in twelfth-century southern France,some women were powerful individuals, notonly as heiresses and dowagers but also aslords in their own right.20 The apparentinvention of this iconography suggests thepossibility of some deeper link between the imagery and its social contexts.

136 ABIGAIL AND DAVID

18. On medieval misogyny see R. H. Bloch, Medi -eval Misogyny and the Invention of Western RomanticLove, Chicago and London 1991.

19. J. D. Levenson and B. Halpern, ‘The PoliticalImport of David’s Marriages’, Journal of Biblical Literature, ic, 1980, pp. 507–18; McKenzie (as in n.11), p. 114.

20. For bibliography on social context in southernFrance during this period see C. Johnson, ‘MarriageAgreements from Twelfth-Century Southern France’,in To Have and to Hold: Marrying and its Documentationin Western Christendom, 400–1600, ed. P. L. Reynoldsand J. Witte, Jr., Cambridge 2007, pp. 215–59. Bloch(as in n. 18), pp. 165–97, takes a somewhat more critical view of dowaging.

3a (left). Abigail going to David (here greeted by Saul), from the Bible of King Sancho el Fuerte (Pamplona1197), Bibliothèques d’Amiens Métropole MS 108 C, fol. 89v. 3b (right) Abigail going to David, from the

Second Pamplona Bible (c. 1200). Augsburg, Universitätsbibliothek MS 1. 2.4o.15, fol. 105r

Trinity College, Cambridge / Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz

a b

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