Fluted Column Decorated with a Figure Holding a Scroll (Prophet or Donor?)
Unknown · c. 1150-1175
A short fluted column, just under a metre tall, has a small standing figure carved in relief against its shaft, holding an unfurled scroll. The classical fluting and the marble, probably from Carrara, show how closely sculptors in Provence looked at the Roman monuments still standing around them. The figure with the banderole could be an Old Testament prophet, whose scrolls carry their prophecies, or perhaps a donor who paid for the work; the museum leaves the question open. Look at how the carver made the figure share the surface with the flutes rather than interrupt them.
The column comes from the cloister of the cathedral of Notre-Dame-des-Doms in Avignon, one of the richest Romanesque cloisters of Provence. The western gallery was pulled down as early as 1671. The remaining three galleries became national property at the Revolution and their materials were sold at auction on 7 July 1798 to an Avignon goldsmith acting for a group of buyers, who demolished them over the following two years. The fragments were dispersed from 1798 onwards, and this column reached the Louvre through a donation made in 1914 with a life interest reserved by the donor.
Did You Know? The cloister this column came from was sold at auction in 1798 for its building stone and demolished within two years.
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