From Jumieges to Landevennec. Remarks on the circulation of models in the mid eleventh century

The presence of the same little man seated in a rinceau on a capital at Notre-Dame de Jumieges, sculpted in the 1040s, and on a tau of morse ivory found in the excavations at Landevennec brings up questions of the means of transmission of models from one region to another and from one support to another. The vegetal ornamentation of the tau also recalls that of the sculpture at Jumieges and designs in Norman manuscripts of the first half of the eleventh century. The illuminations of the cartulary of Landevennec, made between 1047 and 1053, confirm the presence in western Brittany of models that did not belong to the local culture, but which in any case are reinterpreted through its eyes. This cultural opening up should probably be seen in relation to the introduction of monastic reform in Cornouaille under the impetus of Count Alain Canhiard (1019-1058).