El cáliz revelado. The chalice revealed

El cáliz revelado ya está publicado en Tirant lo Blanch.
El cáliz revelado presenta las investigaciones realizadas en los últimos seis años desde la línea de investigación Arqueología del diseño del Grupo de Investigación y Gestión del Diseño de la UPV. Tales investigaciones abordan un nuevo estudio iconológico del cáliz de la corona aragonesa con interesantes descubrimientos que permiten entender y conocer mejor la reliquia custodiada en la Catedral de Valencia.
Las investigaciones están planteadas de forma metódica con una aproximación innovadora, por cuanto conecta diferentes ramas del conocimiento como la propia Historia del Arte, la Orfebrería, la Numismática o la Paleografía, ofreciendo una visión nueva de una investigación histórica, basándose en análisis iconológicos, aportando otras formas de ver y entender el Arte. La obra va dirigida al gran público con múltiples esquemas que ayudan a la comprensión de los conceptos más complejos y las citas bibliográficas en las que se sustentan las afirmaciones e hipótesis. Se trata, en definitiva, de hacer partícipe al lector de las nuevas revelaciones que el estudio iconológico arroja sobre una de las reliquias más reconocidas en el mundo tanto por creyentes como por curiosos y seguidores del grial.

The book The chalice revealed available at Tirant lo Blanch in spanish.

An in depth research on the iconologic study on the Holy Chalice of the Cathedral of Valencia was leaded by me at the Archeology of Desin research line at the Design Research and Management Group at the Universitat Politècnica de Valencia in Spain. Although several studies have been developped in the level of pre-iconographic research, in this book are presented several evidences that go further in the iconologic research and allow to propose an interpretation of the compositive sense and the artistic resources used in the configuration of the Holy Chalice. An interdisciplinar vision from design patterns, numismatics, diplomatic documents and the Middle Ages History centered on the Navarre-Aragon dinasty have dropped enough and visually convincing data to settle a relationship among the Holy Chalice, the Aragon coin of King Sancho Ramírez dinasty with the Biblical stump of Jesse as symbols of the divine power on the Earth.

Coincidence of the coin design and the chalice. G. Songel 2017.

Latest research findings: early reference to Holy Chalice in a manuscript of the XI century.

It is an acrostic in the text of the Reliquary of San Juan de la Peña monastery, written in the XI century for the coronation of Pedro I of Aragón. They are words composed with the letters of the text following geometrical schemes that mentions Calis Lapis Exilis Domini, over the reliques that were kept in the monastery in Huesca (Spain). The geometrical scheme was discoverd as a deduction from similar composition on the kings and emperors´ symbols of that age, so as the visual labyrinths where the names of authors or sponsors of the copy were hidden. The most direct geometrical connection was the popes signals called Bene Valete where the letters were composed around letter N.

It means that we have an implicit citation and a direct reference to the Chalice of precious stone from Our Lord was in Huesca, following the laurentinian tradition. In fact, another of the acrostics mentions Pope Sixtus with Saint Lawrence and Huesca, or characters like Donato Abbate or Pope Urbani II itself. 

This text has been analyzed by experts in Middle Age codex due it is inserted in a Glossarium of the XI century. The astonishing fact was that the picture of this text was not published until now. This codex is in the archive of the Real Academia de la Historia (Royal Academy of History) in Madrid. Having access to the original and digital copies, I managed to analyze the composition of the pages following the law discovered by German graphic designer Tschichold in the 50s of the XX century. Another of the astonishing discoverings is that the grid that organize text columns, contains exactly the design of Holy Chalice as we know it today. This fact would confirm that the chalice was already composed on the original cup on XI century as we argued in former iconographic research.

All those discoverings are explained at the book The chalice revealed.