Josep Maria Rovira-Brull: Coca from Mataró
The Mataró Cog. This is the name of one of Europe's oldest ships, built in the Middle Ages and preserved in the Maritime Museum Prins Hendrik in Rotterdam. This ex-voto (offering to the gods) was built in 1450. It came from the hermitage of Sant Simó, in El Maresme, but it is now believed that it may have come from a small maritime temple in Calella. The vicissitudes that led to its arrival at the US art market, where it was auctioned in 1929 and acquired by a German antique dealer who brought it to the hands of a Dutch millionaire who, finally, deposited it in the Museum where it is currently preserved, are unknown.
This ex-voto represents, more specifically, a medieval merchant ship identified as the "cog" of the North Sea, a type of ship used for transporting goods and troops by the English and Normans from the 12th century to the beginning of the 14th century. The vessel had a crew of one hundred to one hundred and fifty men. Its rigging was round and it is estimated that it had a single mast. All of this is perfectly represented in The Mataró Cog, whose meticulously crafted and exquisitely beautiful construction allows us to illustrate what Mediterranean ships, predecessors of those of the Discovery, were like.
It was Josep Maria Rovira-Brull, who commemorated, in the eighties, after the archaeological study carried out on the ex-voto to confirm its origin, such an important object for nautical history in a series of lithographs entitled '15th Century Cog.' Rovira-Brull thus captured in this lithograph the typical characteristics of his work: namely, a crazy and delirious surrealism, a high social content that often borders on satire, and an impeccable technique that make the brilliant Mataró native an artist who deserves his place among the great surrealists of the last century.
