Mural paintings from the apse of Sant Sadurní in Osormort

The presentation of the new museum building has for the first time enabled us to exhibit all the fragments of the mural paintings from the apse of Sant Sadurní in Osormort, which it had been impossible to exhibit together due to the lack of height in the rooms of the old building. The painter of this mural group, known by the name of the Master of Osormort, also did the paintings in the church of Sant Martí in El Brull and in Sant Joan in Bellcaire (Baix Empordà). Stylistically speaking, he is characterised by the expressions on the faces of the figures, with very large eyes and a penetrating gaze. Stylistic analysis has also made it possible to distantly relate this master to the painter who decorated the Aragonese church of Bagüés and the crypt in the abbey of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, in Poitou, a region linked commercially at that time with Catalonia. The decoration of the ceiling of the apse was centred upon the figure of the Virgin surrounded by the symbols of the Tetramorph, of which only the bottom part has been conserved, where we can see the vesica piscis and the feet of the Virgin besides the lower extremities of the lion of Saint Mark and the ox of Saint Luke. Below the apse ceiling are the standing figures of the twelve apostles. Beneath the apostles we see the cycle of the creation of Man and the original sin: the creation of Adam, Adam at the gates of Paradise, the warning not to eat from the forbidden tree, the original sin and the expulsion from paradise. The original colours of these mural paintings have been altered because in 1936 they were damaged during the Civil War when the Baroque altar in front of them was set alight. Although the church of Sant Sadurní in Osormort was built during the second half of the 11th century, these mural paintings were done during the second half of the 12th century.