Undoubtedly a major work of Spanish Romanesque art is the fresco of a fantastic monster, recently acquired and installed in Warburg Hall at the Fogg Museum. Mounted attractively on the room's south wall, it is likely to win the most casual observer with its vigorous representation and rich color, its size and dignity. The fresco represents a species of griffin, showing the head and wings of an eagle, the neck of a serpent, and the tail of a cock. Though his body is much blurred, ferocity still lives in his eye, tension in his talons, strength in his large wings and coils. The figure ranges in color from brownish red to tawny yellow, whereas the background consists of bands of color.

Dating from the first half of the thirteenth century, this grotesque griffin originally formed part of a row of ghastly figures that decorated the walls of the Sals Capitula, or chapter house, in the ancient monastery of San Pedro de Arlanza near Burgos in north-central Spain. The hall was about thirty-four feet square by twelve feet high and the beasts nearly covered its walls. Around 1773 the hall was remodelled to permit the erection of a large staircase, and its weird, barbarous decorations were covered with plaster. In the nineteenth century, when the building had passed into private hands and fallen into neglect, the roof collapsed and the plaster began to crumble away. Fortunately, about ten years ago, the paintings were removed before they had been ruined by the weather. Two of them, a superb lion and a winged serpent, now flank the doorway of the entrance of the Cloisters, a newly opened branch of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Fogg Museum's newly acquired fresco has been transferred to a canvas and certain missing portions have been sparingly painted in. Yet, even at close range, the work unmistakably possesses the texture and rugged surface of fresco.