Zoomorphic Reliefs of the Portal

Monsters swarm obsessively in the imagination and iconography of the Middle Ages, vigorously contesting the transition to a renewed love for the anthropomorphic figure. At the dawn of the Romanesque begins the struggle that will later see these creatures vanquished by the superior light of reason and human dignity. The School of Como, the most precocious of the Romanesque schools, especially cultivated this taste for the monstrous and terrifying.