Spanish or Southern French, mid-12th century | Capital with four griffins

A closely related capital with four lions, carved in the same granular reddish marble as the present lot, is held in the Cleveland Museum of Art (inv. no. 68.210). It is likely that the present capital with griffins formed part of the same edifice as the Cleveland capital. The latter is said to have come from the Pyrenées and has been tentatively catalogued as either northwestern Spanish (Navarre?) or southern French (op. cit.).

RELATED LITERATURE
W. Cahn, Romanesque Sculpture in American Collections, vol. II, Turnhout, 1999, pp. 169-170, no. 16