Mural paintings of the Tower of San Miguel das Penas

Anonymous
Circa 1500

The keep consists of three floors plus a basement. The remains of the wall paintings with heterogeneous motifs can be found on the first and second floors. Both floors are now open-plan, but they may have been divided by wooden partitions that may also have contained paintings that would have completed the sense of what is partially preserved today. 

The first floor is made up of four panels corresponding to each of the sides of the rectangle of the tower, plus a fifth one that chamfers and corresponds to the chimney flue. In both floors, we call the section A the one in front of the entrance and from there the rest of the sections are named clockwise. In turn, the openings in Panels A and B have windows in whose embrasures there are also pictorial representations. The decorative motifs are vegetal and geometric, with a reduced colour palette consisting of red, blue, black and ochre, applied pure and unmixed. The geometric motifs appear especially in the upper part of the wall, where the repeated pattern is a chequered pattern of black and grey tones. In the lower part of panels A and B, the recurring motif is an acanthus flower in reddish tones.

Some of the edges of the openings, both windows and doors, have preserved the borders, also with geometric decoration in grey tones, which used to border them. However, the most interesting paintings on this floor are undoubtedly figurative and can be found on the side walls of the window embrasures, such as the one in panel A, which depicts a hunter pointing his crossbow at a tree laden with birds, and especially the one in panel B, where there is a very naturalistic representation of a man accompanied by a bird.

The wall paintings on the first floor are very different from those on the first floor, since on the one hand they are monochrome, painted only in red, and on the other hand, the motifs are not vegetal or geometric, but rather schematic figurative scenes, but very naturalistic, in which the central theme is hunting on horseback, except in panel B where the mythological theme of the Judgement of Paris, which triggered the Trojan War, appears. The entire decoration of this room is finished off at the bottom with a border of geometric motifs in red and yellow tones.

TECHNIQUE

Temple

SUPPORT

Wall cladding

DIMENSIONS

LOCATION

Tower of San Miguel das Penas

PARTS OF THE SET