Cracked by fire, spalled by weather, battered by iconoclastic liberales, and now, fortunately, protected by a glassed-in porch, the alabaster facade of Santa María de Ripoll is the greatest single work of Romanesque sculpture in Spain. Even in its degraded state it remains mesmerizing, not only for the aesthetic vividness of its figures and emblems but for its narrative completeness. There are more than a hundred separate scenes, and the better- preserved figures, such as the out-leaning, stocky, fiercely intense Pantocrator surrounded by angels above the doorway, are of the tersest formal beauty, every line is as intent on its job as the curl of a whip or the forking of a twig. What is especially interesting about it, as storytelling, is its power as a political statement. This is the earliest surviving Catalan work of sculpture to set forth metaphors of the foundation of Catalunya itself--the retreat of its people to the mountains and valleys before the Saracen armies and then the vision of return and of the expulsion of the Moors. In the two bands of panels on either side of the entrance arch, one sees the Biblical story of Exodus: Moses guiding his people to the promised land, the rain of manna, the striking of fire. Then there is the removal of the Ark of the Covenant and the founding of Jerusalem; Daniel's vision of the Jews set free by the Messiah; and much more besides. For "Jews," read "Catalans"; for "Egyptians," "Saracens"; for "Moses," by implication "Guifré the Hairy"; while the presence of stern stalwarts like Joshue (whose battle against Amalec at Rafidim takes up the large panel on the right of the door) could only have been understood by a twelfth-century viewer as prophetic of the noble valor of the counts of Barcelona. And, of course, one also sees the Catalans working at their promised land: the inner face of the doorway arch bears scenes of labor, month by month--casting bronze in January, tilling in March, picking fruit in May, pruning in June, harvesting in July, butchering a deer in November, and so on.
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