Architectural Fragment: Head (of an Angel?)

The scratched surfaces of the back and left side of this fragment indicate that the head was, at some point in its history, decapitated from a body sculpted in relief on a flat surface. Standing just under four feet high, that original figure of an angel once looked downward and slightly to the left, perhaps smiling at a visitor to Cluny’s church. The figure’s rounded eyes and thin, straight mouth bordered by two parenthesis-like smile lines resemble those of other sculpted angels and holy figures at the twelfth-century monastery of Cluny. We can only guess that this fragment was once the head of an angel; what the whole figure originally looked like and where it belonged in the church must remain open questions.