The alabaster from Beuda (Girona, Catalonia, Spain), a marker material for Gothic sculpture in southern France unveiled by multi-isotopic analyzes (S, O, Sr)

Within the framework of a research program dedicated to the sourcing of the alabaster of medieval and renaissance sculptures in France, eleven artworks were studied in an area between Perpignan, Toulouse and Narbonne. Mineralogical and isotopic analyses (S, O, Sr) demonstrate that these gothic artworks from the 14th and 15th centuries were carved in a gypsum alabaster coming from a unique source, in south Catalonia, in the township of Beuda near Gerone. This alabaster was highly appreciated in the early 14th century in Catalonia and afterwards all over the Crown of Aragon. It has then spread in a large part of the Iberic peninsula. It met also the favour of sculptors beyond the Pyrenees toward north in the various territories that formed in the middle of the 14th century the royal Languedoc attached to the French Kingdom. While alabasters from other provenances (England, Alps.) supplied neighboured Aquitania and Provence, the alabaster from Beuda appears as a marker of these gothic sculptures linked to the emergence of a specific artistic production in the south of France.