# Scenes from the Childhood of Roland [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [MEDIEVAL SCULPTOR, Italian]() - Date: 1201-1250 - Technique: Stone ## Commentary The relief is part of the frieze on the façade of the cathedral of San Donnino. The original church was said to have been founded by Charlemagne. Facts about Roland are few. Charlemagne's biographers mention him among those who died defending the rearguard of the emperor's army in 778 when it was ambushed in the pass of Roncevaux in the Pyrenees while returning from a victorious campaign against the Moors in Spain. Virtually all the rest is legend but out of it emerged the figure of the heroic knight, one of the Twelve Peers of Charlemagne, the prototype of the Christian warrior whose task was to defend the true faith against Arab paganism. The relief reads from right to left and shows the father of Charlemagne, Pépin the Short, rescuing two youths attacked by a lion, an act symbolic of his bravery. Next we see Charlemagne's daughter, Bertha, taking advantage of her father's absence out hunting \(on the right with his bow raised\) to dally with her noticeably over-eager lover, the knight Milone. In the next scene the lovers, who had fled to Italy when Bertha became pregnant, embrace in a forest. \(Bertha's condition is clearly indicated.\) Their child, the little Roland, called in Italian Orlandino, was born in a grotto near Imola and spent his childhood in Italy. We see him finally following the steps of his father who had, of necessity, become a woodcutter in order to support his family. ## Related artworks - [Allegories of the Months: April]() - [Allegories of the Months: August]() - [Allegories of the Months: December]() - [Allegories of the Months: February]() - [Allegories of the Months: January]() - [Allegories of the Months: July]() - [Allegories of the Months: June]() - [Allegories of the Months: March]() - [Allegories of the Months: May]() - [Allegories of the Months: November]() - [Allegories of the Months: October]() - [Allegories of the Months: September]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()