Portico de la Gloria by Master Mateo by Mary Elizabeth Podles

Column: A Thousand Words

Portico de la Gloria by Master Mateo

by Mary Elizabeth Podles

The Portico de la Gloria was originally the main entrance to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela (Figure 1), the end point of one of Christendom's principal pilgrimage routes. In the Middle Ages, wealthy European pilgrims traveled to the Holy Land to walk in the footsteps of Jesus; the comfortably well-off crossed the Alps to St. Peter's in Rome; and the rest of Europe went on foot to visit the remains of St. James at Compostela.

The portico itself (Figure 2) is enclosed in a porch-like narthex, and has three entrances opening onto the central nave and the two flanking aisles. Above the left-hand door are carvings depicting the Last Judgment; on the right are saints and Old Testament figures; and in the center sits Christ in Majesty surrounded by the instruments of the Passion, the Evangelists, and the souls of the blessed. Above and around him sit the twenty-four Elders of the Apocalypse, and at his feet,
St. James.

THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:


Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of A Thousand Words: Reflections on Art and Christianity (St. James Press, 2023). She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a contributing editor for Touchstone.

Print &
Online Subscription

Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!

Online
Subscription

Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!

bulk subscriptions

Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.

Transactions will be processed on a secure server.


more on art from the online archives

32.4—July/August 2019

Sojourner Knight

on Single-Mindedness in Durer's Ritter, Tod, und Teufel by Anthony Costello

33.2—March/April 2020

Christ Chapel at Hillsdale

An Architectural Sign of Mere Christianity by Michael Ward

30.3—May/June 2017

St. Luke the Evangelist

by Mary Elizabeth Podles


more from the online archives

32.6—November/December 2019

Strategic Christians

The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis by Alan Jacobs by Jesse Russell

34.1—January/February 2021

Whose Wife Shall She Be?

Jesus' Astonishing Other Teaching on Marriage by James Ware

33.1—January/February 2020

Do You Know Your Child’s Doctor?

The Politicization of Pediatrics in America by Alexander F. C. Webster

calling all readers

Please Donate

"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand

"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor

Support Touchstone

00