Penitence and Crusade in the Assumption Chapel of the Real Monasterio de Las Huelgas, Burgos

Abstract

This study aims to interpret the visual qualities of the Assumption Chapel, located in the Cistercian monastery of Santa Maria La Real de Las Huelgas, Burgos. Rejecting the “mudejar” paradigm often used to explain the chapel’s connections to Andalusi architecture, the article instead considers its relationships to a group of twelfth- and thirteenth-century domed churches in Iberia and the French Pyrenees, as well as to Las Huelgas’s adjacent, late-Romanesque cloister. In so doing, it situates the Assumption Chapel in a broader context of monuments related to penitence and crusade in the Holy Land and Iberia. It also considers the chapel’s form and function in the light of Las Huelgas’s ritual topography. Most broadly, this study shows how seemingly incongruent visual languages—in this case Romanesque and Andalusi—can comprise a coherent program of imagery.