Da Cabestany alla Toscana: tempi e vettori del percorso artistico di una maestranza “itinerante”

The figure of the Cabestany Master is still highly debated. Some scholars consider this Romanesque sculptor as a precise individual, while others refers to him as a historiographic myth. Several hypotheses have been proposed on fundamental questions concerning the artist and his workshop: did his training take place on Catalan or Tuscan models? What reasons pushed him to cross the regional borders and move within a horizon that can be defined as Mediterranean? Taking into account his three most significant works (the tympanum of Cabestany, the capital with Daniel within the lions of Sant’Antimo, The Apparition of Christ from Sant Pere de Rodes), in which the diverse stages of the master’s maturity are detectable, and highlighting some chronological fixed points provided by documents, this paper offers a new reflection on his route, along with the idea of the provision of marble as the possible trigger for the artist’s voyage to Italy.