Nearly a year after Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) must return the Sijena Monastery murals to the Royal Monastery in Aragon, in northeastern Spain, the Barcelona museum still hasn’t let go of the disputed—and delicate—13th-century artworks.
The ruling, in May 2025, followed more than a decade of legal battles between the Aragonese government and MNAC. The Sijena murals—often referred to as the “Sistine Chapel of Romanesque art”—were removed from the monastery in 1936, after it was set on fire during the Spanish Civil War. They were restored by MNAC, transferred to canvas, and have been on view there, controversially, since 1961. The museum was able to reconstruct the lost parts on the murals using photographs taken before the fire.
A museum spokesperson told The Art Newspaper that the murals still haven’t been returned due to “technical arguments.” The museum is concerned that moving them to an environment that is not climate-controlled (as they currently are, in a sealed section of MNAC’s Oval Hall, which is also used as an event space), will further damage them, as would transporting them the 150 miles from Barcelona to Villanueve de Sijena.
A video on MNAC’s website shows how the mural are installed on semicircular arches in a “space which evokes the architecture of the place originally occupied by the paintings.” They depict scenes from the Old and New Testament, as well as a geneology of Christ, and were stylistically influenced by both English miniature painting as well as Byzantine art.
