“Every month some unknown treasure comes to light, and I myself have constantly had the pleasant experience of discovering important paintings, hitherto unnoticed, even in quite accessible churches and monasteries.”

Ch. R. Post, A History of Spanish Painting, Cambridge, I, 1930.

The recomposition of the cycle

The distribution and the nature of the paintings from Saint Catherine’s Chapel in La Seu d’Urgell are in keeping with the changes in Catalan apse painting in the 13th century. The narrative spirit becomes increasingly important, as can also be seen in the cycle of Saint Thomas Beckett in Santa Maria in Terrassa or the central apse in Sant Esteve in Andorra dedicated to the Passion of Christ.

The Saint Catherine group was divided into four registers. In the top one there was a theophanic image, almost certainly a Christ in Majesty, of which only the bottom of the mandorla can be seen in old photographs. In the second register the cycle of the saint appeared, the ends of which had already disappeared when the paintings were found in the 1920s. In the third register was the Last Supper, of which only ten apostles were conserved, and at the bottom there was a fourth register with decoration of curtains, of which nothing remains either.