Pulpit

Setting aside the timid intimist forays of other reliefs, or the animation of the palpitating scenes of fighting beasts, the heirs of the “Comacine” tradition chose for this work of major commitment the fixity of sphinx-like figures, redeeming in aristocratic coldness all that is popular in the iconographic material. Their supreme effort at sublimation, however, at the same time brings their artistic story to a close, on the threshold of the 12th century: Romanesque sculpture, from Wiligelmo onwards, would take the opposite path, progressively humanising its language.