Reconstrucción virtual 3D del coro del Convento de Santa Clara de Toro (Zamora): la recuperación de un ámbito medieval de devoción femenina mediante el registro fotogramétrico y técnicas de renderización

Abstract

<p>The Convent of Santa Clara in Toro (Zamora) was founded in the mid-13^th century. After destruction during the Castilian civil struggles of the last years of this century, its fabric was rebuilt and it was inhabited again by the Clarissan nuns, who still occupy it.  Its architecture corresponds for the most part to its early-14^th century rebuilding, even though it is concealed by works carried out from the 16^th to the 18^th centuries, so that it is apparently a Baroque complex.  In the 1950s, in the choir of this Medieval hidden structure, a set of wall paintings of the mid-14thcentury was brought to light (one of the most important set of wall paintings of the early Gothic period ever found in Castile), but they were immediately detached from the walls and sold. It was only after a combination of circumstances that they came back to Toro to be installed in another building, the church of San Sebastián de los Caballeros, transformed into a museum. As a consequence of all these operations, the arrangement and sense of these wall paintings was lost. The virtual three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction, based on a deep analysis and criticism of historical sources and on a close inspection and photogrammetric recording of the original room once occupied by the wall paintings, enables us to place them back in their original context through the use of rendering techniques, so recovering one of the most exciting spaces of female devotion of the Castilian 14thcentury.</p>