Capital with vintage, heads (planets?) and birds

An example of the richly varied decoration of the cloister, which, in its unified basic structure differentiates one capital from the other primarily through details, this capital features the wine harvest with various sculpted heads placed in rosettes.

It is structured in a similar way to most of the other Corinthian-based cloister capitals: It is decorated with a row of acanthus wreaths, a lipped calathos, an abacus slab with abacus flowers and an impost block decorated with a leafed frieze. Above the garlands two growing stems cross each other and lead upwards into the acanthus leaves.

The northern mass of the double capital shows three rosettes on each of the three sides, out of whose centre small heads project. The male and female couples have been construed by various historians as the sun, the moon, and the planets.

On the northern capital three scenes of the wine harvest are set, which – as in capital S11Sh60 – allude to the allegory of the workers in the vineyard and, as allegorical representations, are common themes of medieval architectural sculpture.

vintage vineyard workers allegory planets moon sun couples rosettes heads harvest wine