The group was discovered in 1907 in an expedition organised by the Institut d’Estudis Catalans to the Pyrenees to study medieval art. It is one of the most important 12th century European Romanesque sculpture groups, considering its exceptional artistic qualities and the fact that few monumental wooden sculptures on this scale have survived. The detailed study of the anatomy of the body of Christ, and the restrained movement of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus make it clear that the artist in question was sufficiently gifted to express the pathos of the moment in an astonishingly modern sculptural idiom.