le Christ et les apôtres à Oreilla

Le Christ et les apôtres à Oreilla (Christ and the Apostles at Oreilla) is attributed to Mestre Alexandre, a significant Catalan painter active around 1200 who worked across the Cerdanya region of the Pyrenees. This mural or panel fragment depicts Christ surrounded by his apostles in a composition derived from Byzantine prototypes but rendered in the distinctive Catalan Romanesque visual idiom. Mestre Alexandre's work represents a bridge between the monumental Romanesque traditions of Catalonia and the emerging Gothic style that would transform European painting.

Painted in egg tempera on panel (or as fresco secco), the work features the strong linear contours and flat color fields characteristic of Catalan Romanesque painting. The frontal arrangement of figures and hieratic poses follow Byzantine compositional models, while the palette of ochres, blues, and reds reflects locally available pigments.