L’exhibitionniste estropié de Saint-Jean de Boí (XIIe siècle)

Abstract

Many elements of the rich iconographic program inside the Church of St. John of Boí, in the Catalan Pyrenees, are preserved. A bestiary nicely pictures a world where the closest meets with the most distant and unknown. Among those images, a male character catches attention not only because of his left leg, amputated, extended with a peculiar wooden prosthesis, but, especially, because the man ostensibly shows off his penis without the slightest embarrassment, targeting it with one or two hands in the direction of the main nave of the church. In this article we try to understand and interpret this character.