An enigmatic dance in Lo Bar de Lop (Provence), a painted sermon?

Abstract

The painting from So Barn (Provence) (end of the 15th century) juxtaposes an Occitan text of thirty-three monorhymous verses with a choreutic figuration of circular or spiral-shaped impulsion. Despite the usual descriptions, the figurative argument, intimately linked to the poetic content, has little of a macabre dance and much of an eschatological admonition, making it closer to an illustrated sermon. It recalls the individual judgement of the soul when confronted with the four Afterworlds shown: Death, Judgement, Paradise and Hell, on which the Christian must reflect if he does not want to condemn himself. The iconographic motif of the dance would be emblematic of a life that was not in keeping with the spiritual values prevailing at the time. An archer death assaults the first characters (all lay people) who lead the dance. The angel psychomop places the soul of the first deceased on the scales. At the top is Paradise, with Christ pointing to the scales. And below, the mouth of hell that swallows the first damned soul.

The panel has iconographic parallels with the fresco in the Franciscan convent in Morella (Valencia, late 15th century). On the one hand, the choreographic typology of the circle: a circle of the living around a dead person who are hierarchically identified (Morella), a spiralling thrust of upper-class living people culminating in one of them lying down (Bar). Outside the circle, the Grim Reaper shoots his arrows at the dancers (Bar), and the image recalls the death arrowing the tree of life that accompanies the dance of the estates in Morella.