Conflict, Commerce, and an Aesthetic of Appropriation in the Italian Maritime Cities, 1000-1150 [1 ed.] 9789004360808, 9789004335653

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Conflict, Commerce, and an Aesthetic of Appropriation in the Italian Maritime Cities, 1000–1150

The Medieval Mediterranean Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400–1500

Managing Editor Frances Andrews (St. Andrews) Editors Tamar Herzig (Tel Aviv) Paul Magdalino (St. Andrews) Larry J. Simon (Western Michigan University) Daniel Lord Smail (Harvard University) Jo Van Steenbergen (Ghent University) Advisory Board David Abulafia (Cambridge) Benjamin Arbel (Tel Aviv) Hugh Kennedy (soas, London)

volume 112

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mmed

Conflict, Commerce, and an Aesthetic of Appropriation in the Italian Maritime Cities, 1000–1150 By

Karen Rose Mathews

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: Pisa Griffin (Pisa, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo). ©Author’s photo. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2017052796

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0928-5520 isbn 978-90-04-33565-3 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-36080-8 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgments vii List of Illustrations viii Introduction: Visualizing Conflict and Commerce in the Maritime Cities of Medieval Italy 1 Conflict and Commerce in the Medieval Mediterranean 1 Visualizing the Relationship between Conflict and Trade Through an Aesthetic of Appropriation 4 1 Local Traditions and Norman Innovations in the Artistic Culture of

Southern Italy 24 Introduction 24 Local Traders and Norman Warriors in Southern Italy 25 Forging an Amalfitan International Style: The Art Patronage of the Local Elite 28 Norman Architectural Patronage and the Spolia Aesthetic 43

2 Emulation of and Appropriation from Byzantium in Venetian Visual

Culture 72 Introduction 72 Conflict, Trade, and the Venetian Presence in the Eastern Mediterranean 73 Appropriated Relics from Byzantium 76 Relics, Spoils, and Spolia in Venetian Art and Architecture 79

3 The Interplay of Islamic and Ancient Roman Spolia on Pisan

Churches 110 Introduction 110 Conflict and Commerce in Eleventh and Twelfth-century Pisa 111 The Signification of Ancient Spolia and Contemporary Muslim Spoils on Pisan Churches 114

4 Rivalry with Pisa and Spolia as Plunder of War in Medieval Genoa 156

Introduction 156 Crusade Campaigns and Commercial Compensation 157 Spolia as Plunder in the Art and Architecture of Genoa 160 The Aesthetic of Appropriation and Competition with Pisa 178

vi

c ontents

Conclusion: Shifting Significations of the Spolia Aesthetic 193 Select Bibliography 197 Primary Sources 197 Secondary Sources 199 Index 229

Acknowledgments This project had its genesis in a lecture I presented at the Seattle Art Museum in 2007 entitled “The Traveling Culture of Ceramics,” which introduced me to the Pisan bacini and set me on a research path that subsequently expanded to incorporate all the Italian maritime republics. Over the intervening years that I have spent working on this project, I have profited from the g­ enerosity and scholarly expertise of various colleagues in the United States and abroad. I would particularly like to thank Sharon Kinoshita and Brian Catlos, co-­ directors of the Mediterranean Seminar, who have been steadfast supporters and have provided numerous venues for the presentation and discussion of this research, including an neh Summer Institute in Barcelona in 2010 and a Mediterranean Studies Research Project Workshop in 2012. I would also like to thank Justine Andrews, Catherine Barrett, Dorothy Glass, Michelle Hobart, Eva Hoffman, Silvia Orvietani Busch, David Perry, and Jenny Schaffer, who have all generously shared their expertise on the medieval Mediterranean, spolia studies, and Italian medieval art and history. My home institution, the University of Miami, has been indispensable in providing the necessary resources to complete this project. I am particularly grateful to the staff of the Otto Richter Library for their assistance as well as my art historical colleagues Rebecca Brienen and Perri Lee Roberts for their unwavering support. My thanks go to Marcella Mulder of Brill for her editorial assistance, to the anonymous readers for their comments and suggestions, and to Nikki DeLuca for her help with the index. In Pisa, Piera and Carlo Alberto Orvietani graciously extended their hospitality on my numerous visits there, and Graziella Berti and Marcella Giorgio shared their extensive knowledge of the Pisan bacini. Giusi Zanichelli served as a kind host and guide during a preliminary visit to Campania. I would also like to thank the following individuals and institutions for their generosity in providing visual materials for this book project: Marcella Giorgio, Graziella Berti, Rebecca Müller, Ghigo Roli, Joel Zysman, Antonio Braca and Vincenzo D’Antonio of the Soprintendenza abap di Salerno e Avellino, the Abbazia S. Maria di Farfa, Antonella Fumo of the Procuratoria di San Marco, Hannah Calich, gis Services, Otto Richter Library, University of Miami, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, and Art Resource.

List of Illustrations Map 1

Key locations along the Mediterranean Sea x

Table I.1

Range of spolia interpretations 6

Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8

The Farfa Casket (Monastery of Santa Maria di Farfa) 31 Ivory pen box (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) 33 Ivory pen box, inscription on circular ends 34 Cathedral of Amalfi, bronze doors 39 Cathedral of Amalfi, bronze doors, figural panels 40 Cathedral of Salerno, general exterior view 46 Cathedral of Salerno, inscription over main portal 49 Cathedral of Salerno, Roman lintel over main portal 50 Cathedral of Salerno, interior nave with spoliate columns 51 Cathedral of Salerno, ancient Roman sarcophagus used as tomb of Gregory vii 53 Cathedral of Salerno, bronze doors 61 Cathedral of Salerno, bronze doors, figural panels 62 Cathedral of Salerno, Salerno Ivories, Sacrifice of Isaac and the Blessing of Abraham (Salerno, Museo Diocesano) 65 Cathedral of Salerno, Salerno Ivories, The Calling of Peter and Andrew (Salerno, Museo Diocesano) 66 Murano, Santi Maria e Donato, general exterior view 82 Santi Maria e Donato, interior nave 83 Venice, Basilica of San Marco, interior 86 San Marco, main portal mosaics 91 San Marco, Chapel of San Clemente, mosaics depicting Mark’s theft 92 San Marco, Pala d’oro 94 San Marco, Pala d’oro, detail of enamels 96 Cathedral of Torcello, general exterior view 99

list of illustrations 2.9 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 3.1 3.2

ix

Cathedral of Torcello, interior view to east 100 Cathedral of Torcello, apse mosaic with Virgin Mary 102 Cathedral of Torcello, west wall mosaics 103 Torcello, Santa Fosca, general exterior view 105 Santa Fosca, interior view 106 Venice, San Pietro di Castello, Chair of Saint Peter 107 Pisa, San Piero a Grado, general exterior view 116 San Piero a Grado, detail of bacini decoration, Andalusi green and brown ware 117 3.3 San Piero a Grado, view of exterior north side 118 3.4 San Piero a Grado, interior view 119 3.5 Aachen, Palace Chapel, Ambo of Henry ii 121 3.6 Pisa, Santa Maria Assunta (Duomo), general exterior view 127 3.7 Duomo, detail of bacini decoration, Egyptian lusterware 129 3.8 Pisa Griffin (Pisa, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo) 130 3.9 Duomo, west façade inscription celebrating the Pisan expedition against Palermo 132 3.10 Roman frieze with dolphins (Pisa, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo) 134 3.11 Duomo, ancient Roman inscriptions on exterior 136 3.12 Duomo, sarcophagus of Buschetto on west façade 140 3.13 Pisa, San Sisto, general exterior view 148 3.14 San Sisto, detail of bacini decoration, Egyptian lusterware 149 3.15 Pisa, Sant’Andrea, general exterior view 150 3.16 Sant’Andrea, detail of bacini decoration, Tunisian green and brown ware 151 4.1 Genoa, Santa Maria di Castello, general exterior view 162 4.2 Santa Maria di Castello, Roman lintel 163 4.3 Santa Maria di Castello, Muslim funerary stele 164 4.4 Cathedral of Genoa (San Lorenzo), Portal of San Giovanni 166 4.5 The Sacro Catino (Genoa, Cathedral Treasury) 168 4.6 San Lorenzo, interior fresco decoration 171 4.7 San Lorenzo, interior fresco decoration 172 4.8 Genoa, San Donato, general exterior view 179 4.9 San Donato, Roman lintel 180 4.10 San Donato, bacini decoration on campanile, Tunisian tin-glaze ware 181 4.11 Genoa, Santo Stefano, general exterior view 182 4.12 Santo Stefano, Roman sarcophagus used as a lintel 183

Map 1

Majorca

Bougia

Minorca

Tunis

Kairouan

Bona

Sardinia

Palermo Reggio

al-Mahdiyya

Carthage

Farfa Civitate Rome Ostia MontecassinoBari Pozzuoli Nocera Salerno Amalfi Paestum Corfu Cephalonia Corinth

Durazzo

Key locations along the Mediterranean Sea. Courtesy of Hannah Calich, gis Services, Otto Richter Library, University of Miami

Madinat al-Zahra Córdoba Almería

Denia

Tortosa

Corsica

Murano Venice Torcello Genoa Portovenere Ravenna Noli Porto Pisano Luni Meloria Pisa

Crete

Chios

Alexandria Cairo

Myra Rhodes

Constantinople

Jerusalem

Jubayl

Antioch

Introduc tion

Visualizing Conflict and Commerce in the Maritime Cities of Medieval Italy The maritime cities of Italy announced their presence in the Mediterranean, a political and economic arena already dominated by Muslim powers and the Byzantine Empire, through a combination of military campaigns and commercial exchange. This book will explore how participation in trade and warfare defined a distinct Mediterranean identity and visual culture for the cities of Amalfi, Salerno, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice in the eleventh to the mid-twelfth century. Each of these Italian locales formulated a unique visual manifestation of the relationship between commerce and conflict through the use of spolia or reused architectural elements, objects, and styles from past and foreign cultures. This aesthetic of appropriation with spolia as its central visual element was multivalent, mutable, and culturally inclusive, capable of incorporating multiple and disparate references from various peoples and places across the sea; it was thus the ideal visual medium to manifest the identity of the inhabitants of these Italian cities as warriors, traders, and influential forces in Mediterranean economics, politics, and culture. In the creation and ornamentation of public architectural monuments, each city forged a spoliate aesthetic characterized by heterogeneous assemblages of appropriated luxury objects and building elements to reference the Mediterranean cultures that inspired the greatest antagonism, fear, admiration, or emulation.

Conflict and Commerce in the Medieval Mediterranean

It was in the time period immediately before and after the First Crusade that these seafaring cities formulated a Mediterranean identity that combined commerce and conflict.1 In the eleventh century, the republics of Pisa and Genoa initiated a number of military campaigns against Muslim territories; their readiness to fight for the faith encouraged their early and eager participation in the First Crusade. Venice and Amalfi, however, chose to engage in commerce 1 For recent studies on the significance of the First Crusade, see Susan Edgington and Luis García-Guijarro, eds., Jerusalem the Golden: The Origins and Impact of the First Crusade (Turnhout, 2014); Peter Frankopan, The First Crusade: The Call from the East (Cambridge, MA, 2012); Nikolaos Chrissis, Crusading in Frankish Greece: A Study of Byzantine-Western Relations and Attitudes, 1204–1282 (Turnhout, 2012), xxvii–xxix. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004360808_002

2

Introduction

rather than warfare at this time, resulting in their limited engagement in or complete absence from the Holy Land expeditions. The First Crusade, then, solidified the presence of Italian merchants and warriors in Mediterranean waters and demonstrated for the maritime cities the efficacy of a symbiosis between warfare and trade. The sea was no longer the sole dominion of Muslim and Byzantine fleets, but a liquid frontier where relationships between cultures in commerce and war were in a constant state of redefinition with communication providing new opportunities for identity formation.2 The Italian cities entered into the fierce competition for control of key commercial networks and strategic ports in this volatile and fluid space where all interactions with trading partners and military adversaries were contingent and subject to continual renegotiation.3 In such a complex and contentious environment, proficiency in conducting trade and prosecuting war became essential components for each city’s identity formation in relation to one another and to other powers in the Mediterranean; the two endeavors could be simultaneous or consecutive, and could vary in the priority given to one or the other at a particular time. All the cities participated in commerce across the Mediterranean with Muslim and Christian trading partners alike, but a sharp demarcation existed in terms of the Mediterranean cultures towards which conflict was directed. The cities of Pisa and Genoa channeled their military aggression towards Muslim polities particularly in the western Mediterranean, while the city of Venice and the Norman rulers of southern Italy targeted Byzantium with large-scale military campaigns and opportunistic raids.4 Thus the primary adversary for each city 2 Claire Norton, “Blurring the Boundaries: Intellectual and Cultural Interactions between the Eastern and Western; Christian and Muslim Worlds,” in The Renaissance and the Ottoman World, eds. Anna Contadini and Claire Norton (Farnham, 2013), pp. 3–21, at p. 4; Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, “Liquid Frontiers: A Relational Analysis of Maritime Asia Minor as a Religious Contact Zone in the Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries,” in Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia, eds. Andrew Peacock, Bruno De Nicola, and Sara Nur Yildiz (Farnham, 2015), pp. 118–41, at p. 119. 3 Mike Carr, “Trade or Crusade?: The Zaccaria of Chios and Crusades against the Turks,” in Contact and Conflict in Frankish Greece and the Aegean, 1204–1453: Crusade, Religion and Trade between Latins, Greeks and Turks, eds. Nikolaos Chrissis and Mike Carr (Farnham, 2014), pp. 115–34, at p. 115; Sharon Kinoshita, “Locating the Medieval Mediterranean,” in Locating the Middle Ages: The Spaces and Places of Medieval Culture, eds. Julian Weiss and Sarah Salih (London, 2012), pp. 39–52, at pp. 40–43; Preiser-Kapeller, “Liquid Frontiers,” p. 123; Norton, “Blurring the Boundaries,” pp. 5, 20. 4 Mike Carr, “Between Byzantium, Egypt and the Holy Land: The Italian Maritime Republics and the First Crusade,” in Edgington and García-Guijarro, Jerusalem the Golden, pp. 75–87, at p. 84.

Visualizing Conflict and Commerce in the Maritime Cities

3

differed, but the focus on that one specific culture indicated its significance as an exemplar and a foil in an ongoing process of self-definition. Each city and territory then viewed the interconnection between commerce and conflict in a unique way, formulating a highly flexible approach to the nexus of war and trade that suited its individual needs and changed over time to address current political and economic interests. Though the emphasis could shift from one to another over time, both endeavors remained paramount for the definition of a communal identity in all these territories. One form of conflict that was essential to the civic identity of Italian maritime cities was crusade, or religiously motivated warfare. From the spiritual perspective, crusade enhanced the reputation of the Italians as militant Christians who fought in the service of God. Holy war also had significant political ramifications, as crusading credentials could be parlayed into ecclesiastical privileges from the pope and advantageous commercial concessions from secular rulers.5 Participation in crusade ventures also forged a distinctive collective identity and civic pride for locales torn apart by internal dissention or menaced by external threats.6 Conducting commerce and crusade simultaneously, however, could present a troubling conflict of interest. Though the economic and political benefits of crusade were substantial, military aggression in the form of crusading ventures also had great potential to hinder trade, creating a negative correlation between conflict and commercial expansion.7 Thus, when warfare was religiously motivated and cultures defined in stark binaries, crusaders from the Italian maritime cities found themselves in a paradoxical situation. Eager to maintain their economic connections with Muslim territories, they continued trading in defiance of papal embargoes, but still wished to be characterized as holy warriors fighting against enemies of the faith.8 Conflict that was not religiously based, however, could be a highly effective means for the Italian cities to pursue a variety of political and economic agendas and employ a more multifaceted approach to their engagement with the peoples across the Mediterranean. Freed from the restrictive category of 5 John Bryan Williams, “The Making of a Crusade: The Genoese anti-Muslim attacks in Spain, 1146–1148,” Journal of Medieval History 23, no. 1 (1997), 29–53, at p. 44; Maria Luisa Ceccarelli Lemut, Pisa e l’Oriente latino dalla i alla iii crociata (Pisa, 2010), p. 18. 6 Elena Bellomo, “Gerusalemme, Terrasanta e crociata nelle memorie agiografiche veneziane (1116–c.1135): note circa le translationes dei santi Nicola e Isidoro,” Quaderni di storia religiosa 17 (2010), 63–85, at pp. 76–77; Marc von der Höh, Erinnerungskultur und frühe Kommune: Formen und Funktionen des Umgangs mit der Vergangenheit im hochmittelalterlichen Pisa (1050–1150) (Berlin, 2006), p. 85. 7 Michel Balard, Croisades et Orient latin (XIe–XIVe siècles) (Paris, 2001), p. 190. 8 Carr, “Trade or Crusade?” addresses these conflicting motivations in the context of the Zaccaria family of Genoa.

4

Introduction

sectarian violence, conflict deployed in a tactical and strategic fashion could achieve the same ends as crusade while being directed against a wider variety of competitors and adversaries. This form of warfare could secure long-term commercial agreements and short-term gains in the form of plunder. Conflict could generate new markets as well as redefine relationships with established trading partners. It could also serve as an aggressive opening gambit to challenge powerful rivals in a fluid economic environment.9 The concrete manifestations of violence—punitive raids, territorial conquest, plunder, and prisoners of war—were essential elements in the Italian cities’ transformation into commercial powers in the Mediterranean; violence, then, could be an effective catalyst for initiating and perpetuating maritime trade.

Visualizing the Relationship between Conflict and Trade Through an Aesthetic of Appropriation

The relationship between war and commerce was so fundamental for these Italian merchant powers that it featured prominently in their public visual culture. It will be argued here that a distinctive artistic style based on an aesthetic of appropriation developed in these cities to depict the complementarity of these two endeavors. Visual displays on public monuments that incorporated artistic materials and forms from other cultures and featured the interplay of spolia and spoils of war effectively manifested joint warrior and trader identities in the artistic production of Pisa, Amalfi, Genoa, Salerno, and Venice. In analyzing the fluid and mutable relationship between conflict, trade, spolia, and plunder, the extensive scope and complexity of spolia studies provide an effective interpretive framework. The extraordinary recent growth of this field has engendered a reconsideration of some of the topic’s key concepts.10 Current debates have addressed the term “spolia” itself, with Michael Greenhalgh 9 10

Andrew Cowell, The Medieval Warrior Aristocracy: Gifts, Violence, Performance, and the Sacred (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 55–59. Some of the most recent volumes dedicated to this topic include Jon Frey, Spolia in Fortifications and the Common Builder in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2016); Stefan Altekamp, ed., Perspektiven der Spolienforschung 1: Spoliierung und Transposition (Berlin, 2013); Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney, eds., Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine (Farnham, 2011); Thomas Schattner and Fernando Valdés Fernández, eds., Spolien im Umkreis der Macht: Spolia en el entorno del poder (Mainz, 2009); Dietrich Boschung and Susanne Wittekind, eds., Persistenz und Rezeption: Weiterverwendung, Wiederverwendung und Neuinterpretation antiker Werke im Mittelalter (Wiesbaden, 2008).

Visualizing Conflict and Commerce in the Maritime Cities

5

arguing against the use of the term at all, colored as it is by its original understanding as spoils of war; he suggests that the more neutral “reuse” should be employed instead.11 In the case of the material reused in the architecture of the Italian maritime republics, however, the elision between spolia and spoils of war was at times deliberate, and the appropriated objects on civic monuments were meant to be understood as plunder in many cases, whether they were taken as booty during a military campaign or acquired through other more peaceful means.12 The ambiguity of the term spolia, then, works well in the urban contexts addressed here where visual displays often underscored the violent seizure of precious objects from an adversary of war. Another ongoing debate in the field concerns the meaning of spolia, with opinions divided into two opposed extremes; one camp argues that spolia are the products of pragmatism with rarely any symbolic meaning, while the other sees deep cultural and political significance in instances of reuse. Instead of adhering to these stark binaries, I propose a spectrum of responses to spoliate artworks, differentiated by the level of knowledge the patron, artist, or viewer possessed about the appropriated object itself. As indicated in Table I.1, the reception of spolia followed different paths depending upon whether the viewer knew the origin of the material or was ignorant of or indifferent to the provenance of the reused objects. In both modes, there was a range of different perceptions through which spolia could be assessed from practical, aesthetic, and symbolic perspectives. Lack of knowledge did not prohibit a variety of viewer responses, but it is the premise of this book that concrete information about the origins of spolia was the key to unlocking and exploiting the full interpretive potential of reused and appropriated objects. Patrons and viewers of architectural monuments decorated with spolia in the Italian maritime cities assessed and interpreted these structures with a deep sense of Mediterranean knowing. They knew where these objects originated because they were often the ones responsible for procuring them in the first place. As such, they could deploy spolia to demonstrate their interest in knowing and being known by the cultures around the sea. Mediterranean knowing was an important prerequisite for Mediterranean belonging and the conscious and motivated use of spolia enriched by a deep understanding of the Mediterranean context allowed for a diverse array of interpretations for this aesthetic of appropriation. 11

12

Michael Greenhalgh, “Spolia: A Definition in Ruins,” in Brilliant and Kinney, Reuse Value, pp. 75–95, at pp. 78–79. See also Dale Kinney, “Spolia as Signifiers,” Hortus Artium Medievalium 17 (2011), 151–65, at pp. 151–54, for her response to Greenhalgh’s argument. See particularly Rebecca Müller, Sic hostes Ianua frangit: Spolien und Trophäen im mittelalterlichen Genua (Weimar, 2002), and the discussion in Chapters 3 and 4 below.

Aesthetic

• movement—circular • local culture • destabilized cultural categories • shared culture of objects • visual connections across media • mobility

Symbolic

Ignorance of/Lack of interest in origin

Range of spolia interpretations

• convenience • quality of craftsmanship • high quality and material materials • ready to use • high quantity— collection • ecological reuse • varietas

Practical

Table I.1

• detailed information • high quality about craftsmanship materials and material • vetustas— old = well • informed varietas made • vetustas—antiquity • antique • procurement • exoticism/foreignness across great distances • temporal and spatial understanding of beauty • fragment

• movement—linear • past or foreign cultures • stable cultural categories • intentionality • continuity between past and present • cumulative cycling • tension between first and second contexts (synchro-diachronic understanding) • function/loss of function • triumphalism • spoils of war • appropriation • typology • cultural appreciation versus military antagonism • hybridity • pseudo-spolia (borrowing of forms and styles from other cultures)

Practical

Aesthetic

Knowledge of origin Symbolic

SPOLIATE OBJECT

6 Introduction

Visualizing Conflict and Commerce in the Maritime Cities

7

Even with no knowledge of the origin of the object on the part of the viewer, spolia still had the power to resonate on practical, aesthetic, and symbolic levels.­Greenhalgh’s revisionist approach to the study of spolia in particular emphasizes their practical nature, arguing that almost all reuse of materials was opportunistic.13 Such an argument might make sense in the city of Rome, for example, where extensive ancient spoliate material was readily available for convenient reuse. In most other instances and contexts, however, spolia use was neither easy nor practical, as patrons and artists had reused materials conveyed over long distances with great effort and expense only to have to engage in extensive retrofitting to harmonize disparate architectural elements.14 The question of practicality must be assessed, then, on a case-by-case basis, and the medieval Italian examples studied here combined pragmatic and symbolic modes. In the city of Pisa, for example, the extensive Roman remains facilitated the reuse of ancient Roman materials, but many of the reused ancient stones on the cathedral came from Rome and Ostia and traveled long distances to arrive in Pisa.15 Venetian and Genoese ships transported building materials from the Levant to their home cities, with great diligence but limited success as much of this material never arrived at its destination. Greenhalgh’s insistence on documentation to prove an intentional or symbolic reuse of building materials is problematic for a number of reasons.16 On the most basic level it ignores the documentary value of the monuments themselves. The sheer number of medieval structures across the Mediterranean that employ a spolia aesthetic would argue for a greater catalyst than practicality in the reuse of these materials. And though scant documentary material exists to allow scholars to assess concrete motivations for reuse, we should not conflate our modern ignorance of the circumstances under which spolia 13

14 15

16

Greenhalgh, “Spolia: A Definition in Ruins,” pp. 82–88. Other scholars have addressed this practical understanding of spolia use including Frey, Spolia in Fortifications, pp. 9, 15–16; Kinney, “Spolia as Signifiers,” p. 151, and Hugo Brandenburg, “The Use of Older Elements in the Architecture of Fourth- and Fifth-century Rome: A Contribution to the Evaluation of Spolia,” in Brilliant and Kinney, Reuse Value, pp. 53–73, at pp. 60–61. Beat Brenk, “Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne: Aesthetic Versus Ideology,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987), 103–09, at pp. 104–06. See especially Giovanna Tedeschi Grisanti, “Il reimpiego di materiali di età classica,” in Il Duomo di Pisa, ed. Adriano Peroni, 3 vols. (Modena, 1995), 1:153–64. This topic will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3 below. See, for example, Greenhalgh, “Spolia: A Definition in Ruins,” pp. 87, 90. Maria Fabricius Hansen, “The Use of Spolia in Early Christian and Medieval Christian Churches,” in Altekamp, Perspektiven der Spolienforschung, pp. 85–96, at p. 85, objects to the primacy Greenhalgh gives to documentation.

8

Introduction

were used with medieval lack of knowledge. The Mediterranean-wide circulation of goods—including building materials, luxury objects, and everyday commodities—would point to a knowledgeable user base that activated the movement of the objects themselves. The life histories of spolia may be lost to us, but medieval viewers must have been well-informed, discerning, and highly motivated in their perception of spoliate decoration on civic monuments. If practicality can only explain some instances of material recycling, then the extensive reuse of ancient and foreign objects in the architecture of the Italian maritime cities could be based on a more symbolic and metaphorical understanding of spolia.17 The symbolism of spolia could range from the concrete to the abstract, with the most tangible understandings of spolia associated with their physical beauty and material worth. Without any knowledge of the origin of the material, medieval viewers could still appreciate the aesthetic aspects of spolia. Indeed, these are the very characteristics mentioned in documentary sources, with medieval writers categorizing spolia according to the type of material, its color, polish, preservation, size, form, and structure.18 Spolia were considered beautiful because of the brilliance, singularity, and variety of the materials. The beauty of the material resonated with viewers regardless of whether they knew the stone’s provenance or age. An extraordinary quantity of reused materials could also elicit an aesthetic response, seen especially in the vast column collections employed in medieval structures. Hundreds of heterogeneous columns and capitals adorned the interiors of buildings like Saint Peter’s in Rome and the Great Mosques of Córdoba and Kairouan.19 The sheer quantity of reused material was worthy of note, attesting to the wealth and power of the patron and the efficiency and organization of the economic infrastructure mobilized to procure and transport so much building material. Such an accumulation of disparate objects gained meaning as a comprehensive collection when brought together and displayed 17

18

19

Maria Fabricius Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation: Prolegomena to an Understanding of Spolia in Early Christian Rome (Rome, 2003), had argued most forcefully for a symbolic, metaphorical understanding of spoliate elements in the religious structures of Rome. Thomas Weigel, “Spolien und Buntmarmor im Urteil mittelalterlicher Autoren,” in Antike Spolien in der Architecktur des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, ed. Joachim Poeschke (Munich, 1996), pp. 117–54, at p. 122. For the columns in the Mosques of Córdoba and Kairouan, see Antonio Peña, “Análisis del reaprovechamiento de material en la Mezquita Aljama de Córdoba,” pp. 247–72, and Christian Ewert, “Spolien, ihre islamischen Nachschöpfungen und ihre Musterschemata in den Hauptmoscheen von Córdoba und Qayrawan,” pp. 287–304, both in Schattner and Valdés Fernández, Spolien im Umkreis der Macht.

Visualizing Conflict and Commerce in the Maritime Cities

9

in a new context.20 The dizzying array of supports in the Great Mosque of Córdoba, for example, impressed the viewing public and displayed the mastery of the collector in the high quality and vast quantity of its spoliate objects assembled in one monument. On a more abstract level, the use of spolia manifested a concept of beauty or aesthetic that highlighted variety, diversity, heterogeneity, and eclecticism. The architectural commissions of the Emperor Constantine are notable for their consistent display of an aesthetic governed by varietas, seen in the juxtaposition of disparate elements on the Arch of Constantine and the mismatched collections of spoliate columns and capitals employed in the religious architecture sponsored by the emperor in Rome.21 It has been argued that the scarcity of quality materials or the chance discovery of ancient pieces in storehouses occasioned this new type of disparate assemblage, making a virtue out of a necessity. Compelling evidence to the contrary can be found in an ancient colonnade in Roman Corinth studied by Jon Frey. Already in the first century ad, Roman builders reused a colonnade from the Archaic Greek period (sixth century bc) and juxtaposed it with a newly built Roman colonnade.22 In a time period when adherence to the strictures of the classical orders would have been essential, patrons and builders consciously chose heterogeneous visual displays that redefined the relationship of architectural elements within the classical tradition. Other scholars have posited that the variety in early Christian architecture represented a new mentality towards beauty, one not only apparent in the visual arts but in literary works as well. Mary Carruthers devotes a chapter of her book, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, to the concept of varietas and shows how the ideas of variety, diversity, mixture, and multiplicity were all

20

21

22

See Karen Mathews, “Holy Plunder and Stolen Treasures: Portable Luxury Objects as War Trophies in the Italian Maritime Republics, 1100–1400,” in More Than Mere Playthings: The Minor Arts of Italy, ed. Julia Fischer (Newcastle, 2016), pp. 59–83, at pp. 76–77, for this idea of spoliate assemblages as collections. See Brenk, “Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne”; Dale Kinney, “The Concept of Spolia,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Malden, ma, 2006), pp. 233–52, at p. 240; eadem, “Spolia,” in Saint Peter’s and the Vatican, ed. William Tronzo (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 16–47, at p. 29; Jás Elsner, “From the Culture of Spolia to the Cult of Relics: The Arch of Constantine and the Genesis of Late Antique Forms,” Papers of the British School of Rome 68 (2000), 149–84. Jon Frey, “The Archaic Colonnade at Ancient Corinth: A Case of Early Roman Spolia,” American Journal of Archaeology 119, no. 2 (2015), 147–75, at pp. 170–71.

10

Introduction

considered positive elements in medieval visual and textual works.23 Variety enhanced dignitas and ornateness while relieving tedium, delighting viewers and readers with the unexpected juxtaposition of heterogeneous parts that created a new harmony or unity. The appreciation of varietas displayed the polyfocal perspective of the audience whose wonder was increased by having so many disparate elements upon which to focus; a varied artwork encouraged multiple, distinct responses as each viewer/reader synthesized variety and diversity in a unique way.24 Maria Fabricius Hansen in The Eloquence of Appropriation makes a similar argument about the heterogeneous colonnades in medieval Roman churches. Hansen argues that variety was the intention of early Christian builders who shared a worldview that appreciated the variatio of rhetoric.25 This new aesthetic developed at a time of rupture with the classical past and established new visual modes that continued to be employed throughout the Middle Ages. In opposition to the order, symmetry, and harmony of ancient architecture, the medieval aesthetic of variety focused on the paratactic display of disparate parts, creating an amalgam, assemblage, or wondrous mix that confounded and delighted the eye simultaneously.26 In the absence of concrete information about the origin of spoliate objects, symbolic understandings of spolia could also focus on their circulation and the processes that caused the finished works and raw materials to move.27 As styles, 23

Mary Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2013), pp. 135–64, at pp. 155–64. 24 Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty, pp. 151–55. See also Patricia Cox Miller, “‘Differential Networks’: Relics and Other Fragments in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6, no. 1 (1998), 113–38, at p. 114. 25 Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation, pp. 174–77. She reiterates these ideas in her article “The Use of Spolia.” It does not appear that Carruthers was familiar with Hansen’s publication. 26 Kinney, “Spolia as Signifiers,” p. 151; Fabio Barry, “Disiecta membra: Ranieri Zeno, the Imitation of Constantinople, the Spolia Style and Justice at San Marco,” in San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice, eds. Robert Nelson and Henry Maguire (Washington, dc, 2010), pp. 7–62, at p. 26; William Tronzo, “Mixed Media—Admirabiles mixturae,” in Immagine e ideologia: studi in onore di Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, eds. Arturo Calzona, Roberto Campari, and Massimo Mussini (Milan, 2007), pp. 207–12. 27 See Kathleen Ashley and Véronique Plesch, “The Cultural Processes of ‘Appropriation’,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32, no. 1 (2002), 1–15, and Claire Sponsler, “In Transit: Theorizing Cultural Appropriation in Medieval Europe,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32, no. 1 (2002), 17–39, for more theoretical discussions of this topic. Heather Grossman and Alicia Walker, “Introduction,” Medieval Encounters 18 (2012), 299–314; Gerhard Wolf, “Migration and Transformation: Islamic Artefacts in the Mediterranean World,” in Islamic Artefacts in the Mediterranean World: Trade, Gift Exchange

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objects, people, and raw materials traversed the Mediterranean, they created new foci of interaction and exchange. Such multidirectional movement shifts the emphasis from origins and encourages the study of “routes not roots,” as Finbarr Flood notes.28 Alternative models of interchange, displacement, and translation replace the concept of a dominant originating culture influencing a passive, receptive one. This approach reintegrates into art historical discourse a vast number of objects whose provenance cannot be readily identified and provides an explanation for the extraordinary visual similarities of artworks produced across the Mediterranean.29 An analysis centered on circulation destabilizes cultural categories—ethnic, religious, geographical—and defines identity as a nexus of social relations. Flood highlights the permeability and porosity between cultures that allowed for the exchange of people, goods, and ideas.30 The objects moving from one territory to another become active agents in their own life histories and play a central role in defining identity as they create new juxtapositions of things and relationships between peoples. Mobility, then, breaks down boundaries while demonstrating the contingent nature of identity for both people and objects in a Mediterranean framework. The dissolution of cultural boundaries thus allows for the recontextualization of objects in both international and local realms. The shared culture of objects and a common visual vocabulary highlight the similarities across and Artistic Transfer, eds. Catarina Schmidt Arcangeli and Gerhard Wolf (Venice, 2010), pp. 7–8; Heather Grossman, “Syncretism Made Concrete: The Case for a Hybrid Moreote Architecture,” in Archaeology in Architecture: Studies in Honor of Cecil L. Striker, eds. Judson Emerick and Deborah Deliyannis (Mainz, 2005), pp. 65–73; Anna Contadini, “Translocation and Transformation: Some Middle Eastern Objects in Europe,” in The Power of Things and the Flow of Cultural Transformations, eds. Liselotte Saurma-Jeltsch and Anja Eisenbeiß (Berlin, 2010), pp. 42–64; Eva Hoffman, “Translation in Ivory: Interactions across Cultures and Media in the Mediterranean during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Siculo-Arabic Ivories and Islamic Painting, 1100–1300, ed. David Knipp (Munich, 2011), pp. 100–19; Contadini, “Translocation and Transformation”; Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, “From Secular to Sacred: Islamic Art in Christian Contexts,” in Secular Sacred, 11th–16th-Century Works from the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, ed. Nancy Netzer (Chicago, 2006), pp. 115–19, all address this theme in relation to various Mediterranean contexts. 28 Finbarr Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton, 2009), p. 3. 29 Oleg Grabar, “The Shared Culture of Objects,” in Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204, ed. Henry Maguire (Washington, dc, 1997), pp. 115–29, at p. 126; Eva Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century,” Art History 24, no. 1 (2001), 17–50, at pp. 18, 21. 30 Flood, Objects of Translation, p. 5.

12

Introduction

Mediterranean material culture.31 As people interacted with one another and objects moved by means of commerce, gift, and plunder, a repertoire of shared forms, styles, and techniques developed in multiple production centers. Objects of a particular medium shared visual similarities, seen for example in the extraordinary popularity of green and brown ceramics, a type of ware produced throughout the Mediterranean for centuries.32 Shared motifs could also travel across media, and Eva Hoffman has demonstrated how artists employed the ornamental motif of animals within roundels in textiles, ceramics, and ivory sculpture and painting. A shared visual culture created an extensive corpus of transvalued objects, works that were universally prized for their beauty, material, and craftsmanship.33 At the opposite extreme to this pan-Mediterranean visual culture is the highly localized understanding of objects as they reached new destinations. In this model, the object’s circulation was arrested and it became assimilated into local artworks and culture. The work’s origin was completely irrelevant as its new function and context predominated; what mattered, then, was what the object meant and the work it performed in its new setting. The force of the local could be so strong that it colonized the recent addition, obliterating its history and naturalizing its indigenous presence and signification.34 The function, visibility, meaning, and appreciation of an object could change dramatically in a secondary setting, and its openness and indeterminacy allowed for the accrual of additional meanings over time. The new context, then, was not some stable endpoint, but a place where reused objects could still shift in signification through subsequent redefinitions. In this fluid and ongoing process, the provenance of the piece paled in significance to the myths, stories, and understandings that it accumulated during its travels; ignorance of origins became a virtue in some cases, creating a tabula rasa on which to inscribe new significations.35 31 32

For this see Grabar, “Shared Culture of Objects,” and Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability.” The catalogue Le vert & le brun: de Kairouan à Avignon, céramiques du Xe au XVe siècle (Marseille, 1995) documents the widespread production and consumption of green and brown pottery across the Mediterranean. 33 Flood, Objects of Translation, p. 11; Grabar, “Shared Culture of Objects,” pp. 125–26. 34 Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York, 2010), pp. 180–83. See also Grossman, “Syncretism Made Concrete”; Stefania Gerevini, “The Grotto of the Virgin in San Marco: Artistic Reuse and Cultural Identity in Medieval Venice,” Gesta 53, no. 2 (2014), 197–220, at pp. 219–20; Lamia Balafrej, “Saracen or Pisan? The Use and Meaning of the Pisa Griffin on the Duomo,” Ars Orientalis 42 (2012), 31–40, at pp. 31–33, 37, for this idea of local identity. 35 Gerevini, “Grotto of the Virgin,” p. 218; Ashley and Plesch, “Cultural Processes,” p. 10.

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If all these interpretive possibilities existed without concrete information about an object’s origin, then a distinct provenance for spoliate material could deepen its significance and specify the level of intentionality for the act of appropriation. In the practical reuse of spolia, the object’s age enhanced its attraction and usefulness. Ancient Roman building materials, for example, were prized in part because they were well-made. Knowing that columns, capitals, architraves, etc. were quarried and carved by Roman masons was a guarantee of quality and an assurance that the medieval building supported by venerable ancient materials would stand the test of time. Spolia procured from great distances complemented reused objects from the distant past, and textual references noted the foreign provenance of materials, their conditions of procurement, and the great effort involved in their long-distance transport.36 There was a thriving trade in spolia in Rome and Constantinople, and the widespread distribution of objects from these two centers across the Mediterranean would point to commerce as the general means of acquisition in the Middle Ages. The building boom of the twelfth century stimulated an international market for architectural elements and the economic value and prestige associated with ancient or foreign objects placed them in the realm of luxury goods.37 The Venetian doges sent vessels across the Mediterranean in search of exotic and beautiful marbles, and Islamic sources report the acquisition of monolithic columns so large that only jinn (genies) could move them.38 The logistical complexity and financial cost of appropriating objects thus enhanced the prestige of the patron and the splendor of the architectural commission. When the provenance of an object was known, the reused materials accrued greater symbolism as they connected cultures across space and time.39 Spolia were practical because they were old and well-made, but their antiquity also made them beautiful, to be admired and valued for their vetustas or patina of age. Ancient fragments could be prized as antiques, ­remainders 36 37

38

39

Joachim Poeschke, “Architekturästhetik und Spolienintegration im 13. Jahrhundert,” in Poeschke, Antike Spolien, pp. 225–48, at p. 226. Arnold Esch, “Spolien: Zur Wiederverwendung antiker Baustücke und Skulpturen im mittelalterlichen Italien,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 51 (1969), 1–64, at pp. 26–30. See also Brenk, “Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne,” pp. 107–08; Dale Kinney, “Spoliation in Medieval Rome,” in Altekamp, Perspektiven der Spolienforschung, pp. 261–86, at p. 261. See Chapter 2 below for the state-sponsored procurement of marble in Venice. See Michael Greenhalgh, Marble Past, Monumental Present: Building with Antiquities in the Mediaeval Mediterranean (Leiden, 2009), p. 463, and Gülru Necipoglu, “The Süleymaniye Complex in Istanbul: An Interpretation,” Muqarnas 3 (1985), pp. 92–117, at pp. 102–05, for Islamic structures. Kinney, “Introduction,” in Brilliant and Kinney, Reuse Value, pp. 1–11, at p. 3.

14

Introduction

and ­reminders of a distant past. They were venerable by virtue of their survival, having evaded the ravages of time.40 The appropriation of ancient Roman spolia could also emphasize rupture or continuity with the ancient past. Antiquity was known through fragments, synecdoches that represented the entirety of ancient Rome. The conscious reuse of ancient fragments on medieval structures could be understood as displaying a cumulative notion of history that retained the memory of the past, but also manifested separation and difference; juxtaposing old and new reconstituted antiquity as a whole, or acknowledged the great conceptual distance between past and present.41 Knowledge of the original context of the object allowed spolia to resonate with deeper symbolism by highlighting the previous life history of an architectural element before its reuse in a medieval context. The oscillation of the object’s significance between past and present functions contributed to the visually and conceptually compelling nature of spolia.42 A similar argument can be made about divergences of place and space. Alongside ancient spolia, medieval architectural structures displayed objects from contemporary foreign cultures whose use compressed distance rather than time. As was the case with ancient spolia, medieval audiences could appreciate appropriated foreign objects for their inherent beauty.43 Expensive, 40

41

42

43

Kinney, “Spolia as Signifiers,” pp. 151, 159–60, citing Jean Baudrillard, “Subjective Discourse or the Non-Functional System of Objects,” in The Object Reader, eds. Fiona Candlin and Raiford Guins, (New York, 2009), pp. 41–63, at pp. 41–42, 46. Cox Miller, “‘Differential Networks’,” pp. 112–19; Mathews, “Holy Plunder and Stolen Treasures,” p. 76; William Tronzo, ed., The Fragment: An Incomplete History (Los Angeles, 2009); Jason Moralee, “The Stones of St. Theodore: Disfiguring the Pagan Past in Christian Gerasa,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 14, no. 2 (2006), 183–215, at pp. 203–05. Scholars have employed a variety of different terms to characterize this shift of function and signification in new contexts; See Julia Hegewald, “Towards a Theory of Re-use: Ruin, Retro and Fake Versus Improvement, Innovation and Integration,” in Re-use—The Art and Politics of Integration and Anxiety, eds. Julia Hegewald and Subrata Mitra (Los Angeles, 2012), pp. 30–54, at pp. 31–33, for the concept of “new life re-use”; James Young, Cultural Appropriation and the Arts (Malden, ma, 2008), p. 36, refers to this phenomenon as “innovative content appropriation,” while Alicia Walker, The Emperor and the World: Exotic Elements and the Imaging of Middle Byzantine Imperial Power, Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries c.e. (Cambridge, 2012), p. xxi, addresses a range of approaches to the borrowing of motifs, styles, and objects from other cultures. Her term “expropriation” encompasses this often radical shift in meaning in an object’s secondary context. Kinney, “Spolia as Signifiers,” p. 159, notes Umberto Eco’s concept of spolia as “synchro-diachronic” objects, that is, artworks that are simultaneously contemporary and historical. Karen Rose Mathews, “Other Peoples’ Dishes: Islamic Bacini on Eleventh-century ­Churches in Pisa,” Gesta 53, no. 1 (2014), 5–23, at p. 23; Anna Contadini, “Sharing a Taste?:

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luminous, and exotic materials like rock crystal and ivory were both beautiful and rare. The quality of workmanship and the techniques employed also augmented their worth, as Europeans did not possess the technical knowledge to produce objects like carved crystals or lusterware ceramics in the twelfth century. Raw materials from distant lands, augmented by exotic natural wonders like ostrich eggs and peacock feathers, were held in high esteem when combined in finely wrought artworks.44 References to distant time and space coalesced in spoliate assemblages juxtaposing ancient Roman objects with contemporary foreign material; this type of reuse foregrounded the acquisition and deployment of things “not made by us.” Certain objects could register both types of conceptual distance simultaneously. The ancient Roman columns and capitals reused so extensively in the civic monuments of the Italian maritime cities in some cases had a double provenance. They advertised their antiquity but also alluded to the wide array of ports across the Mediterranean from which they were acquired and transported to Italy.45 They were both ancient and foreign and their eventful biographies encouraged viewers to travel across space and back in time when contemplating these spoliate objects. Knowledge of origin thus contributed to an informed varietas, where the juxtaposition of ancient and foreign objects became even more visually compelling. The assemblage of columns and capitals from the far corners of the Roman Empire and the potential triumphal associations of material from a Roman past and an Islamic present triggered political and cultural associations that enhanced the symbolism of spolia in public architectural contexts.46 Detailed information about the origin of spoliate objects allowed for a wide variety of interpretive possibilities and a complex interplay of meaning Material Culture and Intellectual Curiosity around the Mediterranean, from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Century,” in The Renaissance and the Ottoman World, eds. Anna Contadini and Claire Norton (Farnham, 2013), pp. 23–61, at p. 28; Finbarr Flood, “An Ambiguous Aesthetic: Crusader Spolia in Ayyubid Jerusalem,” in Ayyubid Jerusalem: The Holy City in Context, 1187–1250, eds. Robert Hillenbrand and Sylvia Auld (London, 2009), pp. 202–15, at pp. 203, 213–14. 44 Nile Green, “Ostrich Eggs and Peacock Feathers: Sacred Objects as Cultural Exchange between Christianity and Islam,” Al-Masāq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 18, no. 1 (2006), 27–66; Aleksander Pluskowski, “Narwhals or Unicorns? Exotic Animals as Material Culture in Medieval Europe,” European Journal of Archaeology 7 (2004), 291–313; Avinoam Shalem, The Oliphant: Islamic Objects in Historical Context (Leiden, 2004), Chapter 6 “Function and Meaning,” pp. 80–106; idem, Die mittelalterlichen Olifante (Berlin, 2014). 45 Greenhalgh, Marble Past, Monument Present, p. 156. 46 The combination of ancient and foreign spolia is discussed in detail in Chapter 3.

16

Introduction

between original and secondary contexts. Instead of emphasizing circulation and diffuse movement between numerous Mediterranean centers, knowledge of origins established a concrete and linear movement between first and second contexts. A spoliate object could be prized because it was Roman, Islamic, or Byzantine, or because it had traveled extensively across time and space to reach its new destination in medieval Italy. The interpretation of spoliate works in this configuration, then, relied on relatively stable cultural categories, where the concept of ancient Rome, for example, evoked a variety of positive cultural associations, including military might, imperial grandeur, longevity, artistic sophistication, building prowess, and Mediterranean dominance.47 The culture of the object’s secondary context could define itself in relation to the originary culture in terms of similarity, difference, or the many shades of gray in between, selecting shared qualities one wished to enhance or highlighting stark distinctions between the past and present or distance and proximity. The broadest range of interpretive possibilities thus characterized spoliate artworks whose provenance could be determined with certainty. The use of spolia could emphasize continuity and similarities between the multiple cultures referenced, visualizing a shared appreciation of the material objects put on display. An object’s functionality enhanced this continuity as building materials served the same function in both contexts, and analogous architectural forms and construction techniques unified cultures across time and space. The concept of cumulative cycling also displayed continuity as a spoliate object accrued new and deeper meaning while retaining its original signification and symbolism.48 Complex, composite artworks like the Ambo of Henry ii or the polychrome stone decoration on the Basilica of San Marco augmented their symbolic power through the accumulation of cultural references, adding new resonances and meaning like a constellation of stars.49

47

48

49

Salvatore Settis, “Continuità, distanza, conoscenza: tre usi dell’antico,” in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana, ed. Salvatore Settis (Turin, 1986), 3:375–486; Arnold Esch, “On the Reuse of Antiquity: The Perspectives of the Archaeologist and of the Historian,” in Brilliant and Kinney, Reuse Value, pp. 13–31. For this idea of accumulation, see Troels Myrup Kristensen, “The Life Histories of Roman Statuary and Some Aspects of Sculptural Spoliation in Late Antiquity,” in Altekamp, Perspectiven der Spolienforschung, pp. 23–46, and Ilene Forsyth, “Art with History: The Role of Spolia in the Cumulative Work of Art,” in Byzantine East, Latin West: Studies in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann, eds. Doula Mouriki et al. (Princeton, 1995), pp. 153–58. For the Ambo of Henry ii, see Karen Rose Mathews, “Expressing Political Legitimacy and Cultural Identity through the Use of Spolia on the Ambo of Henry ii,” Medieval Encounters 5, no. 2 (1999), 156–83; see also Forsyth, “Art with History,” pp. 156–58.

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The juxtaposition of new and old, foreign and local elements could also highlight the tension between contexts and the incongruity of the object in its secondary setting. An object could undergo a significant change in function as it took its place in a new decorative ensemble, shifting from a functional to a decorative object or serving an entirely new purpose altogether. The use of a lapis lazuli head of the Empress Livia on a figure of Christ in the Herimann Cross or the crowning of Pisa Cathedral with a bronze griffin from al-Andalus that was originally an incense burner or a mechanical toy called attention to the spoliate object through the jarring juxtaposition of the transplanted artwork and its new physical setting.50 The central visual element in these disparate ensembles was the discordant pairing of heterogeneous parts forming collections of disiecta membra. Disharmony could highlight visual appeal, compelling the viewer to look and wonder at the discrepant objects assembled in paratactic displays. The seam between old and new, foreign and local, was the visual focus, establishing a typological relationship between the borrowed object and its secondary cultural setting; the new context superseded the old, triumphing over the despoiled buildings and cultures from which artifacts were taken.51 This idea of triumph predominated in a particular subset of spolia, namely plunder or spoliate objects acquired through violent appropriation. Though much of the spolia that decorated civic monuments in the Italian maritime cities was purchased, many objects were actually stolen, and documentary sources devoted concerted attention to this more belligerent and antagonistic form of acquisition.52 In some instances, the object taken was unremarkable, and what mattered most was the act of appropriation itself. Violent appropriation was a form of symbolic communication that set in motion myriad social processes defining relations between people and objects. Changes in ownership and the way in which those transformations were orchestrated characterized both current and former possessors of an appropriated object and created rivalrous resources where one group’s ownership precluded that of another.53 50

51 52

53

Forsyth, “Art with History,” pp. 153–54. Avinoam Shalem, Islam Christianized: Islamic Portable Objects in the Medieval Church Treasuries of the Latin West (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), pp. 130–31, addresses this loss or shift of functionality, as does Balafrej, “Saracen or Pisan?” pp. 36–37. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, p. 181. See in general Flood, Objects of Translation, Chapter 4, “Looking at Loot,” pp. 121–35. See also Antje Krug, “Spolien als Trophäen,” in Schattner and Valdés Fernández, Spolien im Umkreis der Macht, pp. 33–44, for the connection between spolia and trophies in antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Mark Busse and Veronica Strang, “Introduction: Ownership and Appropriation,” in Ownership and Appropriation, eds. Veronica Strang and Mark Busse (Oxford, 2011), pp. 1–19,

18

Introduction

The act of violent taking increased the value of the plunder and its worth was heightened further when the former owner was a worthy adversary of high status. Appropriation thus defined cultural interaction in stark contrasts— winner and loser, triumph and humiliation, possessor and dispossessed. Stealing was designed to injure, create a sense of loss or absence, subordinate a victim, and appropriate its identity; as such, it was a highly intentional and confrontational act that foregrounded the inequality of a social relationship.54 The quandary posed by such acts of appropriation was their ephemeral nature, as the force of their symbolic communication was only temporary. The means through which the signification of violent taking could be concretized and perpetuated was public display, and this was precisely what elevated the propagandistic and political value of spolia and spoils in architectural contexts. The collection and exhibition of appropriated objects in heterogeneous and rich decorative ensembles served various interrelated functions. These collections embodied the memory of past violence and held out the promise of potential future aggression, serving as a warning to adversaries.55 They enhanced their new host city with manifestations of civic splendor and magnificence, directing surplus wealth or ill-gotten gains towards a common, public good. Most importantly, however, as Tonio Hölscher has argued, appropriation transformed ephemeral military victories into political power, enhancing the force of the theft with concrete, permanent visual reminders.56 Appropriated objects could be active agents, then, in the creation and perpetuation of political hegemony, making it appear eternal and immutable. The intertwining and ambiguity of spolia and spoils of war thus added great symbolic resonance to the objects and materials that the Italian maritime cities plundered or purchased across the Mediterranean. At times, foreign objects­ at pp. 11–12; Margaret Miles, Art as Plunder: The Ancient Origins of Debate about Cultural Property (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 83–84; Cowell, The Medieval Warrior Aristocracy, pp. 60–61. 54 Marilyn Strathern, “Sharing, Stealing and Borrowing Simultaneously,” in Strang and Busse, Ownership and Appropriation, pp. 23–41, at p. 30; Dale Kinney, “Rape or Restitution of the Past?: Interpreting Spolia,” in The Art of Interpreting, ed. Susan Scott (University Park, PA, 1995), pp. 52–67, at p. 58; Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, p. 179; Cathleen Fleck, “Crusader Spolia in Medieval Cairo: The Portal of the Complex of Sultan Ḥasan,” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 1, no. 2 (2014), 249–99, at p. 268. 55 Cowell, The Medieval Warrior Aristocracy, p. 55; Mathews, “Holy Plunder and Stolen Treasures,” pp. 75–76. 56 Tonio Hölscher, “The Transformation of Victory into Power: From Event to Structure,” in Representations of War in Ancient Rome, eds. Sheila Dillon and Katherine Welch (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 27–67, at pp. 27–30, 40.

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or styles reused in Christian contexts were meant to be understood explicitly as spoils of war, or symbols of aggressive appropriation.57 The reuse of objects and materials in the immediate aftermath of a military campaign in a triumphal context would ensure such a reading. However, that meaning did not remained fixed or immutable nor did it apply to all appropriated material equally, so that an understanding of an object as a trophy or spoil could shift to a more conciliatory or complimentary interpretation. Conversely, objects acquired through a commercial transaction or gift were construed and displayed as if they were plunder, manifesting a new, triumphalist connotation. The openness and multivalence of spoliate objects enabled periodic reinscriptions of meaning, transforming them from spolia to spoils or shifting from plunder of one enemy to that of another.58 The fluidity that characterized the interpretation of spoliate objects also defined cultural interactions as a whole in a Mediterranean environment. The sea itself was a border or contact zone that facilitated exchange along its shores. The Mediterranean was a liquid frontier that emphasized the mutability of cultures and the kaleidoscopic and ever-changing nature of interaction between peoples. Fluid borders areas could be zones of contested space, but also frontiers where cultural identity was in a constant state of renegotiation.59 The malleability of the Mediterranean mitigated against the reification of rigid cultural boundaries and definitions. 57

58

59

Contadini, “Translocation and Transformation,” p. 57; Karen Mathews, “Plunder of War or Objects of Trade? The Reuse and Reception of Andalusi Objects in Medieval Pisa,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 4, no. 2 (2012), 233–58, at pp. 241–44; Antonio Milone, “‘Arabitas’ pisana e medioevo mediterraneo: relazioni artistiche tra xi e xiii secolo,” in Fibonacci tra arte e scienza, ed. Luigi Radicati di Brozolo (Milan, 2002), pp. 101–31, at p. 111; Finbarr Flood, “The Medieval Trophy as an Art Historical Trope: Coptic and Byzantine ‘Altars’ in Islamic Contexts,” Muqarnas 18 (2001), 41–72, at pp. 62–63. Robert Nelson, “The History of Legends and the Legends of History: The Pilastri Acritani in Venice,” in San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice, eds. Henry Maguire and Robert Nelson (Washington, dc, 2010), pp. 63–90; idem, “Appropriation,” in Critical Terms for Art History, eds. Robert Nelson and Richard Shiff (Chicago, 1996), pp. 116–28; Rebecca Müller, “Riflessioni sulla percezione di artefatti islamici nella Genova medievale,” in Genova: una capitale del Mediterraneo tra Bisanzio e il mondo islamico, ed. Alireza Naser Eslami (Milan, 2016), pp. 1–17. Mattia Guidetti, In the Shadow of the Church: The Building of Mosques in Early Medieval Syria (Leiden, 2016), p. 126; Norton, “Blurring the Boundaries,” p. 20; D. Fairchild Ruggles, “Representation and Identity in Medieval Spain: Beatus Manuscripts and the Mudejar Churches of Teruel,” in Languages of Power in Islamic Spain, ed. Ross Brann (Bethesda, md, 1997), pp. 77–106, at p. 77.

20

Introduction

Scholars of medieval Iberia have been at the forefront of studies on frontier zones, given the immediacy and complexity of interfaith interaction on the Iberian peninsula over centuries. What has become clear from the study of this and other contact zones is the mutability of basic religious categories, that is, what constituted Muslim or Christian identity. In line with the oppositional rhetoric found in medieval Christian writings, contemporary scholars have perpetuated this idea of stark religious dichotomies where Christianity and Islam were discrete, closed systems.60 Such binaries existed in the realm of ideology but along the Mediterranean porosity and permeability more often defined the interchange and dialogue between religions. The understanding of Christianity and Islam themselves was variable over time and place, demonstrating the instability of religious categories. As Finbarr Flood noted in his study of Muslim/Hindu relations, “difference was not constant … but rather was dynamic in its emphases, contingent in its expression, and variable in its meaning.”61 Nor was religion the only or most important element in the construction of identity; regional, ethnic, social, and class-based distinctions could be foregrounded in cultural exchange that excluded religion entirely as a determining factor. Rigid religious binaries in the end may have had more to do with constructing a foil against which to define local identities or create distinctions among Christian populations, for example, rather than presenting attitudes towards Muslims and Islamic culture.62 Such entrenched religious positions fostered antagonism and alienation that were, in turn, activated through military conflict. So, one manifestation of Christian/Muslim interaction was warfare, often motivated by religious difference. However, as will be argued in the chapters that follow, conflict was not necessarily always an obstacle to fruitful and peaceful exchange; in fact, it could initiate contact between peoples or encourage new modes of interaction.63 Mediterranean conflict perpetuated dichotomies along confessional lines to emphasize difference and preserve pure religious categories. This 60

Norton, “Blurring the Boundaries,” p. 4; Flood, Objects of Translation, p. 159; Jerrilynn Dodds, “Islam, Christianity, and the Problem of Religious Art,” in Art of Medieval Spain a.d. 500–1200 (New York, 1993), pp. 27–37, at p. 27; Jerrilynn Dodds, María Rosa Menocal, and Abigail Krasner Balbale, The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture (New Haven, 2008), p. 5. 61 Flood, Objects of Translation, p. 4. 62 Tehmina Goskar, “Material Worlds: The Shared Cultures of Southern Italy and its Mediterranean Neighbors in the Tenth to Twelfth Centuries,” Al-Masāq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 23, no. 3 (2011), 189–204, at pp. 194, 203; Dodds et al., The Arts of Intimacy, p. 261. 63 Flood, Objects of Translation, p. 4.

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opposition­ensured that the artistic products of the other culture were understood in a triumphal manner as spoils of war, symbols of victory and superiority over an alien adversary. Warfare based on religious and political animosity thus provided one mode of interaction between cultures and a triumphalist understanding of objects appropriated from the enemy.64 But what if, as the authors of The Arts of Intimacy posit, “religion, politics, language, and culture never quite align” and military antagonism existed simultaneously with other forms of more peaceful interchange between cultures?65 This was indeed the situation that pertained in fluid border zones where religious ideology and military conflict did not preclude artistic appreciation, economic exchange, and cultural cooperation. War and the violent seizure of artworks could be complemented by the exchange of gifts and the movement of goods through commercial transactions across the Mediterranean. Religious difference then did not necessarily define all types of relationships between cultures, and artistic exchange and the reception of material objects in new contexts could be completely divorced from religious identity.66 Just as conflict disassociated from religious motivation opened up a range of interactions among Mediterranean territories, the separation of religion and culture allowed for the appreciation of Islamic objects in Christian contexts and vice versa, where beauty, utility, technical skill, and luxury materials were the salient criteria for judgment. Religion and politics then could exist independently from economics and culture, but these various realms flowed together and separated at intervals in the permeable border zone of the Mediterranean Sea.67 By analyzing an aesthetic of appropriation in relation to the intertwined endeavors of war and trade, this study provides a unique perspective on the artistic production of the Italian maritime cities. Though the inhabitants of these mercantile centers would have interacted regularly on land and sea in political, economic, and cultural realms, comparative studies of their visual culture are 64

Mariam Rosser Owen, “Islamic Objects in Christian Contexts: Relic Translation and Modes of Transfer in Medieval Iberia,” Art in Translation 7, no. 1 (2015), 39–64, at p. 40; Mathews, “Plunder of War,” pp. 242–43, 252–53; Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability,” p. 24; Dodds, “Islam, Christianity,” p. 32. 65 Dodds et al., The Arts of Intimacy, p. 6. 66 Flood, Objects of Translation, p. 159; Rosser Owen, “Islamic Objects,” pp. 40–41; Mathews, “Plunder of War,” pp. 243–44; Dodds, “Islam, Christianity,” p. 30. 67 Dodds, “Islam, Christianity,” pp. 27–32; Francisco Prado Vilar, “Circular Visions of Fertility and Punishment: Caliphal Ivory Caskets from al-Andalus,” Muqarnas 14 (1997), 19–41, at p. 32; Ruggles, “Representation and Identity,” pp. 91–92; Dodds et al., The Arts of Intimacy, pp. 121–22, 263.

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rare. The artistic production of Venice and Genoa or Amalfi and Salerno have been addressed in tandem, most often in terms of competition and antagonism between the cities.68 An analysis of all five urban centers where commerce and military expeditions played a central role in civic life, however, can highlight the commonality of a spoliate aesthetic as a shared visual language that was used by each polity to manifest its particular understanding of integration into Mediterranean culture. The influence of mercantile mentalities on artistic production has been studied by art historians; Deborah Howard has investigated the ways in which the Venetian merchant’s experience of the East contributed to the distinctly eastern feel of Venice’s cityscape, and Jill Caskey has connected merchants to a spolia style and an appreciation of luxury commodities in Amalfi.69 Both of these studies address mercantile culture and its visual manifestations in a later medieval context, while the material analyzed here would indicate that a merchant aesthetic that viewed spoliate objects from economic and military perspectives developed far earlier in the eleventh century, as soon as these Italian maritime cities began to compete for dominance in Mediterranean trade networks. This study is also distinctive in its emphasis on the role of violence and conflict as a complement to commerce. Historians have recognized the significance and complementarity of war and trade, but art historians have 68

69

For the manifestation of competition between Venice and Genoa in visual culture, see Nelson, “The History of Legends and the Legends of History.” Gherardo Ortalli and Dino Puncuh, eds., Genova, Venezia, il Levante nei secoli xii–xiv (Venice, 2001) provide a comparative historical approach to relations between the two cities. The artistic culture of Amalfi and Salerno is most often discussed jointly in the context of ivory production; see Antonio Braca, “Gli avori ‘di Salerno’ e il loro ambito produttivo: la difficile questione della bottega amalfitana,” in The “Amalfi”-“Salerno” Ivories and the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. Francesca Dell’Acqua (Amalfi, 2011), pp. 71–97; idem, Le culture artistiche del Medioevo in Costa d’Amalfi (Amalfi, 2003). Patricia Skinner, Medieval Amalfi and Its Diaspora, 800–1250 (Oxford, 2013), addresses the interdependence of Amalfi and its neighbor Salerno. The four maritime republics (excluding Salerno) have been analyzed in a number of comparative historical studies; see Ottavio Banti, ed., Amalfi, Genova, Pisa, Venezia: la cattedrale e la città nel Medioevo, aspetti religiosi, istituzionali e urbanistici (Pisa, 1993); Ottavio Banti, ed., Amalfi, Genova, Pisa, Venezia: il commercio con Costantinopoli e il vicino Oriente nel secolo xii (Pisa, 1998); Marc’Antonio Bragadin, Storia delle repubbliche marinare (Bologna, 2010); Gino Benvenuti, Le repubbliche marinare Amalfi, Pisa, Genova e Venezia: la nascita, le vittore, le lotte e il tramonto delle gloriose città-stato che dal Medioevo al xviii secolo dominarono il Mediterraneo (Rome, 1989). Deborah Howard, Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture, 1100–1500 (New Haven, 2000); Jill Caskey, Art and Patronage in the Medieval Mediterranean: Merchant Culture in the Region of Amalfi (New York, 2004).

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generally emphasized the influence of mercantile culture on artistic production without fully acknowledging the violence that often characterized encounters between Mediterranean powers.70 Rebecca Müller in her study of spolia and war spoils in medieval Genoa has analyzed the Genoese propensity to take and display plundered objects as trophies from military adversaries and commercial competitors, and that approach is expanded here to incorporate all five Italian trading cities.71 The joint identity of merchant and warrior was essential for the Italians’ integration into trade networks and it was this combination of military and commercial endeavors that each city celebrated in its public architecture. Finally, most studies on the visual expressions of merchant culture focus on the thirteenth century and later when a vast array of visual and textual sources attest to the significance of a merchant mentality in the Italian maritime cities. Conducting such an analysis for the eleventh and twelfth centuries exposes the dearth of documentary sources but foregrounds the importance of visual materials in defining a spolia aesthetic in these five urban centers. The extensive use and display of spoliate objects and luxury commodities in public architecture demonstrate how significant it was for each city to forge a visual culture­ that focused on its participation in trade and war and its superiority over Italian competitors and foreign adversaries. In the potential that appropriated or reused objects possessed for endless redefinition, they became potent symbols of identity—civic, religious, ethnic—in their new locales; it is this quality of spolia, both medieval and ancient, that made a spoliate aesthetic so effective in the architecture of the Italian trading cities. The visual manifestations of the intertwining of commerce and conflict mirrored and defined political and commercial relations in their fluidity and variability. As open signifiers they accommodated a wide range of interpretations and meanings as the mercantile centers studied here attempted to define a civic identity based upon their participation in warfare and trade. Though Venice, Amalfi, Salerno, Pisa, and Genoa all deployed spoliate visual materials to address their integration into an international environment, each city created a unique combination of varied constituent elements to formulate its own distinct understanding of Mediterranean belonging on a local and international scale. 70

See particularly Mike Carr, Merchant Crusaders in the Aegean, 1291–1352 (Woodbridge, 2015); Carr, “Between Byzantium, Egypt and the Holy Land”; Travis Bruce, “The Politics of Violence and Trade: Denia and Pisa in the Eleventh Century,” Journal of Medieval History 32 (2006), 127–42. 71 Müller, Spolien und Trophäen.

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Local Traditions and Norman Innovations in the Artistic Culture of Southern Italy Introduction Complementarity is the concept that best defines the relationship between commerce and conflict in medieval Campania. The art patronage of the two Campanian cities of Amalfi and Salerno in particular was defined by a number of interconnected pairings of people and places. The first pairing concerns the two cities themselves. Though each had its unique history—Amalfi resisted Norman control while Salerno embraced it, Amalfi was an important commercial city early while Salerno eclipsed it by the twelfth century—the two urban centers were extraordinarily interdependent.1 The relationship between Campanians and their Norman overlords was also complex, characterized by resistance, hostility, assimilation, and cooperation. At the outset the local inhabitants may have perceived the Normans as outsiders, interlopers, and brutal aggressors, but, as the Norman presence in south Italy continued, shared political, economic, and cultural interests brought peoples together and encouraged cooperation and coexistence. The approach to commerce and conflict in Campanian territories saw the Normans and the local inhabitants playing complementary roles, as the citizens of Amalfi and Salerno concentrated on commerce while the Normans achieved great fame in religiously motivated warfare. What united them, however, was a concerted interest in art patronage and a shared visual culture characterized by an aesthetic of appropriation. The visual culture that developed in Amalfi and Salerno to manifest the connection between conflict and trade featured various types of borrowing or appropriation. Byzantine and 1 Patricia Skinner, Medieval Amalfi and Its Diaspora, 800–1250 (Oxford, 2013), pp. 183–85; Armando Citarella, “Merchants, Markets and Merchandise in southern Italy in the High Middle Ages,” in Mercati e Mercanti nell’alto Medioevo: l’area euroasiatica e l’area mediterranea (Spoleto, 1993), pp. 239–82, at p. 276; Paul Oldfield, City and Community in Norman Italy (Cambridge, 2009), p. 248; Huguette Taviani-Carozzi, “Salerno longobarda: una capitale principesca,” in Salerno nel Medioevo: le città del Mezzogiorno medievale, eds. Huguette TavianiCarozzi, Benedetto Vetere, and Alfonso Leone (Galatina, 2000), pp. 5–53, at pp. 38, 48–51.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004360808_003

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Islamic­art and material culture were primary referents in artworks created for local Campanian­patrons. These local artistic commissions consisted mainly of small-scale luxury objects, secular and religious, as well as decorative elements on important religious structures, and employed materials, techniques, and styles that circulated throughout the Mediterranean Sea. The aesthetic developed by Campanian patrons encompassed the full spectrum of interpretive possibilities for spolia, alternating between an emphasis on the origin of objects, styles, and techniques and a foregrounding of materiality and a panMediterranean repertoire of forms. The artistic patronage of the Normans was also synthetic and eclectic, following traditions established by local patrons while adding new visual and cultural elements. The Normans’ distinctive spoliate style assimilated Campanian visual modes, making an international style local, and juxtaposed them with spolia displays emphasizing romanitas and visual references to multiple Romes. In addition, the prodigious wealth of the Normans allowed them to incorporate a level of grandeur and magnificence into their artistic commissions that highlighted the concepts of sanctity, romanitas, and splendor so that their monuments might compare favorably to those of ancient, late antique, and contemporary papal Rome.2

Local Traders and Norman Warriors in Southern Italy

A concerted interest in trade and the use of warfare to achieve economic ends in particular united the inhabitants and rulers of Amalfi and Salerno beginning in the ninth century. Amalfi established a strong relationship with the Byzantine Empire that resulted in a permanent presence in Constantinople that facilitated the movement of people and goods.3 Counterbalancing their close relationship with Byzantium were equally amicable interactions with 2 Paolo Delogu, Mito di una città meridionale (Salerno, secoli viii–xi) (Naples, 1977), p. 186. 3 For this relationship in general, see Vera von Falkenhausen, “Il commercio di Amalfi con Costantinopoli e il Levante nel secolo xii,” in Amalfi, Genova, Pisa e Venezia: il commercio con Costantinopoli e il vicino Oriente nel secolo xii, ed. Ottavio Banti (Pisa, 1998), pp. 19–38; Michel Balard, “Amalfi et Byzance (Xe–XIIe siècles),” Travaux et Mémoires 6 (1976), 85–95; Armand Citarella, “La colonia amalfitana di Costantinopoli: vitale centro economico e punto d’irradiamento di arte e letteratura greca nel Mezzogiorno,” Rassegna del centro di cultura e storia amalfitana new series 9 (1999), 57–75. A recent set of articles on this topic is provided in Edward Farrugia, ed., Amalfi and Byzantium: Acts of the International Symposium on the Eighth Centenary of the Translation of the Relics of St Andrew the Apostle from Constantinople to Amalfi (1208–2008) (Rome, 2010).

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Islamic­ territories.4 Traders from Amalfi frequented Egypt under Fatimid rule, and, with the approval of the caliph, the Amalfitans were allowed to set up hostels for pilgrims and travelers in Jerusalem and Antioch in the 1040s, creating Latin Christian outposts in the Levant over a half-century before the First Crusade.5 As a result of such extensive commercial contacts, medieval Campanians established a complex trade network between Byzantium, North Africa, Egypt, and Amalfi where the Italian cities supplied agricultural products and timber to Islamic territories in return for gold; the coinage in turn was used to buy Byzantine luxury goods that were sold throughout Europe.6 Thus from the ninth century onward merchants from Campania were important components in Mediterranean exchange, distributing raw materials and manufactured goods across the sea.7 Campanian traders generally strove to perpetuate good economic relations with their Mediterranean neighbors and trading partners and only in rare instances did they engage in expeditions against Muslim adversaries. In 846–9 the Amalfitans fought against Andalusi raiders who were threatening the Tyrrhenian coast, and Pantaleon of Amalfi participated in the Pisan led attack against Tamim, ruler of the North African cities of al-Mahdiyya and Zawila, in 1087.8 In an interesting reversal of roles, however, the Norman 4 David Jacoby, “Commercio e navigazione degli Amalfitani nel Mediterraneo orientale: sviluppo e declino,” in Interscambi socio-culturali ed economici fra le città marinare d’Italia e l’Occidente dagli osservatori mediterranei, eds. Bruno Figliuolo and Pinuccia Simbula (Amalfi, 2014), pp. 89–128, at pp. 116, 123, argues for an integrated and interdependent trade network between Amalfi and Muslim and Byzantine territories in the eastern Mediterranean. 5 For relations with the Fatimids in general, see Yaacov Lev, “A Mediterranean Encounter: The Fatimids and Europe, Tenth to Twelfth Centuries,” in Shipping, Trade and Crusade in the Medieval Mediterranean: Studies in Honour of John Pryor, eds. Ruthy Gertwagen and Elizabeth Jeffreys (Farnham, 2012), pp. 131–56; Michel Balard, “Notes sur le commerce entre l’Italie et l’Égypte sous les Fatimides,” in L’Égypte fatimide: son art et son histoire, ed. Marianne Barrucand (Paris, 1999), pp. 627–33; Citarella, “Merchants, Markets and Merchandise,” pp. 257–58, and Barbara Kreutz, Before the Normans: Southern Italy in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Philadelphia, 1991), p. 31, both note a Salernitan traveling “ad Babiloniam” in 976. 6 Armand Citarella, “Patterns in Medieval Trade: The Commerce of Amalfi Before the Crusades,” The Journal of Economic History 28, no. 4 (1968), 531–55, at p. 533. Bruno Figliuolo, “Amalfi e il Levante nel Medioevo,” in I comuni italiani nel regno crociato di Gerusalemme, eds. Gabriella Airaldi and Benjamin Kedar (Genoa, 1986), pp. 571–664, at pp. 586–88, indicates his scepticism about his model. 7 See most recently Jacoby, “Commercio e navigazione,” and Skinner, Medieval Amalfi. 8 H.E.J. Cowdrey, “The Mahdia Campaign of 1087,” The English Historical Review 92, no. 362 (1977), 1–29, especially pp. 15–16, and p. 25, citing the Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum, stanza 13: “Et refulsit inter istos cum parte exercitus, Pantaleo Malfitanus inter Grecos sipantus; cum

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r­ ulers of southern Italy, famed as Christian warriors, declined to participate in the campaign citing their friendship with Tamim.9 The Normans did lead a number of military expeditions against Muslim territories, with the aims of expanding their dominion and seizing plunder. One of the most noteworthy examples of Norman territorial expansionism was the expedition against Sicily begun in the 1060s.10 Led by Robert Guiscard and his brother Roger, this prolonged campaign resulted in the conquest of the strategically important island of Sicily, a central node in maritime trade networks. The Normans were early participants in the First Crusade as well and played a significant role in the capture of Antioch and Jerusalem. As a result of the Christian victories, Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard, became Lord of Antioch in 1098.11 Local Campanians, then, were only occasional participants in campaigns against Muslims and generally left the crusading activities to their Norman overlords. The religious persuasion of the Normans’ adversaries, however, was not always

9

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forte et astuta potenti astutia est confusa, maledicti Timini versutia.” [And among them, with his contingent of brave warriors, was Pantaleon of Amalfi, a leader (sipantos) of the Greeks, the most skillful among those of us who bore arms and the most astute at repelling the stratagems of the cursed Tamim.] See also Skinner, Medieval Amalfi, p. 156; von Falkenhausen, “Il commercio di Amalfi,” p. 26. Count Roger of Sicily first fought against Tamim and then entered into an alliance with him; see Ernesto Pontieri, De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Sicilae comitis et Roberti Guiscardi ducis fratris eius, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 2nd edition, vol. 5, pt. 1 (Bologna, 1925–8) 3.8-9, p. 61, 3.17, pp. 66–67, 4.3, pp. 86–87; Kenneth Baxter Wolf, The Deeds of Count Roger of Calabria and Sicily and of his Brother Duke Robert Guiscard by Geoffrey Malaterra (Ann Arbor, 2005), 3.8-9, pp. 138–39; 3.17, p. 147; 4.3, p. 179. See also Alex Metcalfe, The Muslims of Medieval Italy (Edinburgh, 2009), p. 99; Graham Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest (Harlow, 2000), p. 172. Amatus of Montecassino, The History of the Normans, eds. Prescott Dunbar and Graham Loud (Woodbridge, 2004), v, 8–9, p. 136; Michèle Guéret-Laferté, Aimé du Mont-Cassin, Ystoire de li Normant (Paris, 2011), pp. 393–94. See also Metcalfe, The Muslims of Medieval Italy, pp. 93–96; Joshua Birk, “Imagining the Enemy: Southern Italian Perceptions of Islam at the Time of the First Crusade,” in Just Wars, Holy Wars, and Jihads: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Encounters and Exchanges, ed. Sohail H. Hashmi (Oxford, 2012), pp. 91–106, at p. 96. Rosalind Hill, Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, The Deeds of the Franks and the other Pilgrims to Jerusalem (London, 1962), p. 69; Emily Albu, The Normans in their Histories: Propaganda, Myth and Subversion (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 172–75. For the role of Bohemond in this battle, see Georgis Theotokis, The Norman Campaigns in the Balkans, 1081–1108 (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 185–99. While the northern Italian republics strove to receive advantageous commercial concessions in the Crusader States, the Normans of southern Italy became rulers of newly conquered territories with the power to bestow trading privileges on crusader contingents.

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a key m ­ otivating factor; the French knights were willing to wage war against any hostile territory where they might secure plunder and expand their landholdings. The Normans thus battled against the Byzantines, Muslims in Sicily and the Holy Land, local southern Italians, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the pope in their consolidation of power. In a definitive division of roles, then, the Normans strove to enhance their political capital in the Mediterranean while the Campanian merchant elite consolidated its economic positions. Norman rulers, however, appreciated the significance of the international commerce that brought such great wealth to their territories, and their subjects did fight in service of their faith and lord. The complementarity and interdependence of the Normans and the people they ruled in their joint pursuit of war and trade had a visual equivalent in a spolia aesthetic that combined a Campanian ­pan-Mediterranean style with a politicized use of ancient Roman materials in the religious monuments of Amalfi and Salerno.

Forging an Amalfitan International Style: The Art Patronage of the Local Elite

Two southern Italian patrons who helped define a Campanian spoliate aesthetic in the eleventh century were the father and son Maurus and Pantaleon of Amalfi.12 As members of an ancient comital family that also engaged in business ventures, these two nobles employed their wealth to pursue various philanthropic and cultural aims. Maurus the father is credited with founding two pilgrims’ hospices, one in Antioch and the other in Jerusalem.13 At the end of his life Maurus joined the Monastery of Montecassino as a monk, but before he took his monastic vows he commissioned two religious artworks: an ivory casket now in the Monastery of Farfa and a set of bronze doors for the Monastery of Montecassino. Pantaleon followed in his father’s footsteps in his participation in Mediterranean politics and interest in art patronage.14 12 Skinner, Medieval Amalfi, pp. 154–57, 218–19, and Giovanna Caputo, “Mauro e Pantaleone de Comite Maurone: l’ospedale di Gerusalemme e gli intrecci politici di Amalfi nell’xi secolo,” in Fieri iussit pro redemptione: mecenatismo, devozione e multiculturalità nel Medioevo amalfitano, eds. Giovanni Camelia and Giuseppe Cobalto (Amalfi, 2009), pp. 147–59, address the Comitemaurone family in detail. 13 Amatus, History, viii, 3, p. 188; Ystoire de li Normant, pp. 480–83; Balard, “Amalfi et Byzance,” p. 88; Andrea Cerenza, “Pantaleone comite: un grande amalfitano antico dimenticato nella sua terra,” Rassegna del centro di cultura e storia amalfitana 1 (1981), 34–65, at pp. 41–42. 14 Amatus, History, viii, 3, p. 188; Ystoire de li Normant, pp. 480–83. Pantaleon was an important figure in the Amalfitan colony in Constantinople, and involved himself in

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He distinguished himself as a member of the Pisan expedition that attacked al-Mahdiyya and Zawila in 1087. Pantaleon of Amalfi could then add fighting for the faith to the political activities he pursued as a noble merchant in Constantinople.15 He was also a generous patron to religious institutions, and his name was associated with the commissioning of several sets of bronze doors. The art patronage of Pantaleon and his father Maurus thus combined international commercial and political interests with displays of piety as monks and Christian warriors. The artistic commissions of Maurus and Pantaleon concentrated on two specific types of objects: ivory caskets and bronze doors. Ivory objects had close associations with artistic production from the Islamic world while cast bronze doors were prototypical Byzantine works, but both inserted Amalfitan art patrons into a pan-Mediterranean, shared culture of objects.16 Maurus’ first significant artistic commission was the Farfa Casket, created in the 1060s to 1070s, but certainly before 1072 (Fig. 1.1). The Farfa Casket is a relatively large box of solid ivory (37 × 17 × 21 cm), ornamented with scenes from the Incarnation and Passion of Christ.17 One of its most unusual scenes, however, represents­the Dormition or Koimesis of the Virgin Mary, an iconographic theme popular in

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ecclesiastical­politics concerning the schism that divided the Eastern and Western Churches in 1054. For an extensive discussion of Pantaleon, see Cerenza, “Pantaleone comite,” pp. 34–65; Skinner, Medieval Amalfi, pp. 218–19; Balard, “Amalfi et Byzance,” pp. 86–89. For Pantaleon’s political activities and his potential involvement in an anti-Norman alliance, see Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli, “Pantaleone d’Amalfi e le porte bizantine in Italia meridionale,” in Arte profana e arte sacra a Bisanzio, eds. Antonio Iacobini and Enrico Zanini (Rome, 1995), pp. 641–50, at pp. 642–43. For this idea of a shared culture of objects, see Oleg Grabar, “The Shared Culture of Objects,” in Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204, ed. Henry Maguire (Washington, DC, 1997), pp. 115–29. Other publications that address this idea of a Mediterranean court culture include Eva Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century,” Art History 24, no. 1 (2001), 17–50; Anthony Cutler, “Gifts and Gift Exchange as Aspects of the Byzantine, Arab, and Related Economies,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001), 247–78; and the essays in Linda Komaroff, ed., Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts (Los Angeles, 2011). Antonio Braca is the scholar who has analyzed the Farfa Casket in the greatest detail; see Antonio Braca, “La cassetta di avorio di Farfa,” in Camelia and Cobalto, Fieri iussit pro redemptione, pp. 305–25; idem, “Intorno alla cassetta di avorio di Farfa: il cimelio, il donatore e la bottega amalfitana,” in L’enigma degli avori medievali da Amalfi a Salerno, ed. Ferdinando Bologna, 2 vols. (Naples, 2008), 1:161–201; idem, Le culture artistiche del Medioevo in Costa d’Amalfi (Amalfi, 2003), pp. 87–90. See also Robert Bergman, “A School of Romanesque Ivory Carving in Amalfi,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 (1974), 163–86, at pp. 164–66, and Julie Enckell Julliard, “Entre patriciat urbain et pouvoir nobiliaire: Maurus

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Byzantine art, but not often depicted in eleventh-century European art. The casket features an extensive Latin inscription that identifies the donor and indicates the motivation for the creation of the artwork. A recent interpretation of the inscription on the casket sheds new light on Maurus the donor. Susan Boynton has translated one part of the inscription as “I am rightly called Maurus because I have associated with dark people.”18 She argues that the “dark people” in the inscription referred to Maurus’ trading partners in North Africa and Egypt, the very ones who would have been responsible for the movement of ivory from Africa to Europe. Expanding upon Boynton’s interpretation, Sarah Guérin has suggested that the term “nigr” in the inscription refers to the lands in sub-Saharan Africa from which the ivory originated following a trans-Saharan trade network.19 The ivory casket commissioned by Maurus, then, was an artwork that combined European, Byzantine, and Islamic elements to celebrate the pan-Mediterranean environment in which this wealthy Amalfitan lived and worked. The cultural references made through the casket represented all the territories incorporated into Campanian trade routes. The Latin inscription and European style of the carving highlighted the south Italian origin of the patron, while iconographic elements connected the commission to Byzantine luxury objects. The expensive, foreign material alluded to the distant origin of the ivory that may have been conveyed from Africa through Muslim commercial networks by merchants from Amalfi

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d’Amalfi et le destinataire du coffret en ivoire dit de Farfa,” Les Cahiers de Saint-Michel de Cuxa 36 (2005), 141–49. Susan Boynton, Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000–1125 (Ithaca, NY, 2006), pp. 171–72. The inscription reads: “Suscipe vas modicum divinis cultibus aptum ac tibi directum devota mente tuorum. Nomina nostra tibi, quesumus, sint cognita passim. Haec tamen hic sgribi voluit cautela salubris. lure vocor Maurus quoniam sum nigr[os] secutus; Me sequitur proles, cum Pantaleone Iohannes, Sergius et Manso, Maurus, frater quoque Pardo. Da scelerum veniam, caelestem prebe coronam.” The key word in the inscription is abbreviated “nigr” and has generally been understood as “nigra” alluding to Maurus’ sins, rather than the “nigros” Boynton employs, referring to “dark people.” Boynton translates the inscription as follows: “Take this modest vessel, appropriate for divine worship, and given to you with devout mind by your people. We ask that our names be known to you everywhere, but a salutary precaution led them to be engraved here. I am rightly called Maurus because I have associated with dark people; my children follow me, Johannes with Pantaleon, Sergius and Manso, Maurus, and their brother Pardo. Give absolution for sins, offer a celestial crown.” Sarah Guérin, “Forgotten Routes? Italy, Ifrīqiya and the Trans-Saharan Ivory Trade,” AlMasāq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 25, no. 1 (2013), 70–91, at pp. 87–91.

Figure 1.1 The Farfa Casket (Monastery of Santa Maria di Farfa). Courtesy of The Gabinetto Fotografico Soprintendenza abap Di Salerno Ed Avellino.

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themselves.20 The Farfa Casket encapsulated a variety of cultural borrowings that placed Amalfi and its merchants within a vibrant network of Mediterranean exchange where people, ideas, raw materials, and commercial goods traversed the sea. Related to the Farfa Casket is a second ivory object associated with Amalfitan patrons, the pen box or incense holder in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Fig. 1.2). The cylindrical box is generally dated to the late eleventh or early twelfth century, and bears an inscription that reads “Manso Tauro filius” (Fig. 1.3).21 The Mansone family was a prominent one in medieval Amalfi and the container can thus be associated with Amalfitan patronage through the inscription. Both the style and iconography of the box differentiate it from the Farfa Casket, as the ivory pen case has completely secular subject matter consisting of various animals arranged in pairs or locked in combat.22 The style of the figures connects this object to numerous ivory oliphants dating to the eleventh and twelfth centuries in addition to artworks in other media like Byzantine textiles and Egyptian pottery. This type of animal imagery is the epitome of a pan-Mediterranean decorative element, one that ornamented

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Robert Bergman, The Salerno Ivories: Ars sacra from Medieval Amalfi (Cambridge, MA, 1980), pp. 90–91; Antonio Braca, “Gli avori ‘di Salerno’ e il loro ambito produttivo: la difficile questione della bottega amalfitana,” in The “Amalfi”-“Salerno” Ivories and the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. Francesca Dell’Acqua (Amalfi, 2011), pp. 71–97, at pp. 77–78. For medieval commerce in ivory see Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, “Le commerce de l’ivoire en Méditerranée durant le Moyen Âge,” Bulletin archéologique du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques 34 (2008), 23–33, especially pp. 28–30, for southern Italian and Sicilian participation in the ivory trade. Anthony Eastmond, “On Diversity in Southern Italy,” in The Salerno Ivories: Objects, Histories, Contexts, eds. Francesca Dell’Acqua et al. (Berlin, 2016), pp. 97–109, at pp. 102–03; Avinoam Shalem, Die mittelalterlichen Olifante (Berlin, 2014), p. 54; Jennifer Kingsley, “Reconsidering the Medieval Oliphant: The Ivory Horn in the Walters Art Museum,” The Journal of the Walters Art Museum 68/69 (2010/2011), 9–20, at p. 9; Antonio Braca, “La produzione eburnea ‘saracena’ della bottega amalfitana,” in Camelia and Cobalto, Fieri iussit pro redemptione, pp. 327–34, at pp. 327–29; idem, “Intorno alla cassetta di avorio di Farfa,” p. 195; Valentino Pace, “Fra l’Islam e l’Occidente: il mistero degli olifanti,” in Studi in onore di Umberto Scerrato per il suo settantacinquesimo compleanno, eds. Maria Vittoria Fontana and Bruno Genito, 2 vols. (Naples, 2003), 2:609–25, at pp. 619–20; Antonio Braca, Gli avori medievali del Museo Diocesano di Salerno (Salerno, 1994), pp. 167–70. Braca, “Intorno alla cassetta di avorio di Farfa,” p. 195; idem, “Gli avori ‘di Salerno’,” pp. 89–90; Avinoam Shalem, The Oliphant: Islamic Objects in Historical Context (Leiden, 2004), p. 36.

Figure 1.2 Ivory pen box (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art). © The Metropolitan Museum Of Art; Image Source: Art Resource, ny.

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Figure 1.3 Ivory pen box, inscription on circular ends. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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artworks of various materials and origins and signaled an international artistic vocabulary.23 These two ivory objects made for Amalfitan merchant patrons at roughly the same time display different approaches to the medium of ivory carving.24 The Farfa Casket presents separate and distinct cultural references in its Latin inscription, Byzantine iconography, and material acquired from Muslim territories. This approach of juxtaposing borrowed forms and styles in a single artwork corresponds to a spolia aesthetic where knowledge of the origin of the borrowed element is essential for the creation of meaning. A central component in the understanding of the Farfa Casket is the recognition of the disparate forms, styles, and materials employed and the appreciation of their paratactic display. The pen box, on the other hand, employs what might be called a Mediterranean synthetic style, characterized by visual forms shared by various cultures that are impossible to attribute to any one production center.25 The casket foregrounds questions of origin while the pen box emphasizes circulation and movement. The discrepant styles of these two ivory objects associated with the city of Amalfi have triggered a heated debate about where they were created. Antonio Braca remains firm in his assertion that the casket and pen box were both produced in Amalfi, but carved by different artists who may have belonged to distinct workshops.26 Other scholars like Avinoam Shalem argue for a more diffuse set of production centers scattered across the Mediterranean where artists produced ivory objects with decorative animal forms.27 The little that is known about the production of these and other Mediterranean ivories from 23

Eva Hoffman, “Translation in Ivory: Interactions across Cultures and Media in the Mediterranean during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Siculo-Arabic Ivories and Islamic Painting, 1100–1300, ed. David Knipp (Munich, 2011), pp. 100–19, at pp. 102–06, and the extensive discussion of this type of imagery in Shalem, Die mittelalterlichen Olifante. 24 For a discussion and explanation of these discrepant styles, see Eastmond, “On Diversity in Southern Italy,” pp. 104, 109; Mariam Rosser-Owen, “The Oliphant: A Call for a Shift of Perspective,” in Romanesque and the Mediterranean: Points of Contact across the Latin, Greek and Islamic Worlds c. 1000 to c. 1250, eds. Rosa Maria Bacile and John McNeill (Leeds, 2015), pp. 15–58, at p. 27. 25 Shalem, Die mittelalterlichen Olifante, pp. 49, 346–65. 26 See most recently Braca, “Gli avori ‘di Salerno’,” pp. 71–97. Bergman, “A School of Romanesque Ivory Carving,” also believes that there was an ivory carving workshop established in Amalfi. 27 See Rosser-Owen, “The Oliphant,” p. 48; see also Shalem, Die mittelalterlichen Olifante, p. 50, for an international network of ivory carving centers, and Hoffman, “Translation in Ivory,” for a discussion of the animal in roundels decoration.

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the tenth to twelfth century has encouraged scholars to approach these objects from new perspectives.28 The movement of the raw material of ivory should be distinguished from the circulation of finished artworks, as the ivory itself had a readily identifiable provenance. The ivory so highly prized in the Mediterranean, western Europe, and beyond came from African elephants and moved from the interior of the continent to coastal areas, particularly the Muslim controlled territories of North Africa.29 The trajectory of uncarved ivory was a linear one through the African continent, but upon its arrival at Mediterranean shores, its path became multidirectional. There, the unique aesthetic qualities of ivory inspired its circulation and set it in motion along commercial networks that connected cultures across continents.30 Ivories, like textiles, were the ultimate transvalued objects, as their worth transcended cultural and political boundaries along the sea.31 Producers and consumers of ivories alike shared a high estimation of their monetary value and aesthetic appeal and this appreciation stimulated a wider and more intensive movement of ivory objects. This material connected people from various social strata as finished artworks were available at different levels of quality, ranging from the thick and intricately carved boxes of caliphal Spain to the caskets covered with a thin veneer of ivory with painted decoration distributed widely across the Mediterranean and western Europe.32 Ivories, too, moved between places and people through all the most common means of exchange— gift, plunder, and trade. The vectors of transmission could even vary for a single object over its long life history given the durability and portability­of ivory; an 28

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Eastmond, “On Diversity in Southern Italy,” p. 107. See also Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability,” for the emphasis on circulation rather than production. For new approaches to Mediterranean ivories that highlight movement across the Mediterranean, see Kingsley, “Reconsidering the Medieval Oliphant”; Silvia Armando, “Fāṭimid Ivories in Ifrīqiya: The Madrid and Mantua Caskets between Construction and Decoration,” Journal of Islamic Archaeology 2, no. 2 (2015), 195–228; Mariam Rosser-Owen, “Islamic Objects in Christian Contexts: Relic Translation and Modes of Transfer in Medieval Iberia,” Art in Translation 7, no. 1 (2015), 39–64. See Guérin, “Forgotten Routes,” pp. 71–74, for the trade networks that brought ivory from Africa to Europe. Kingsley, “Reconsidering the Medieval Oliphant,” pp. 13, 15–16, addresses the idea of the form of the ivory tusk itself motivating design decisions for its ornamentation. Sarah Guérin, “The Tusk: Origins of the Raw Material for the Salerno Ivories,” in Dell’Acqua et al., The Salerno Ivories: Objects, Histories, Contexts, pp. 21–29, at pp. 26–29, has also argued that ivory might have circulated across the Mediterranean as booty and tribute. Finbarr Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton, 2009), p. 11. See Knipp, Siculo-Arabic Ivories, for a discussion of painted ivories.

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ivory gift could later be appropriated as plunder or sold in the marketplace. Its transvalued status ensured an object’s continual movement, destabilizing cultural categories and defining new types of social interaction and exchange as it circulated. The portability of raw materials and artworks established and redefined relationships between people and things while disseminating artistic forms, styles, and techniques. Circulation and movement fostered artistic competition but also cooperation through the definition of a common visual language that could be employed in different ways by the varied cultures across the Mediterranean Sea. Hoffman’s pluritopic model of artistic production, characterized by multiple sites of production and consumption linked by active objects, is particularly applicable to Mediterranean ivories and allows scholars to ask more fruitful questions of this vast and disparate corpus of artworks.33 Instead of emphasizing the origin of an object or its place of production, the thousands of ivory objects traversing the Mediterranean can be defined more appropriately through a nexus of people and things. They participated in an artistic dialogue where styles and motifs migrated across media and a shared appreciation of the material united peoples and stimulated interchange between cultures. Elite Amalfitan patrons thus displayed their integration into a panMediterranean cultural network by commissioning ivory objects. The medium of ivory itself manifested a connection to the Islamic world and the African routes through which the tusks traveled to make their way to western Europe. The decoration on the ivory objects employed two different artistic styles, a spoliate aesthetic that emphasized cumulative cultural references, and an eclectic Mediterranean set of forms that symbolized assimilation and inclusion within a shared culture of objects. Local Campanian elites, whose livelihood depended upon peaceful relations with all the territories along the sea, forged an identity based on their commercial interests and defined themselves more as traders than warriors. The accumulation of cultural references in the Farfa Casket and the pluritopic multimedia style of the pen box appositely 33

Rosser-Owen, “The Oliphant,” in particular calls for new approaches to the study of oliphants and ivories as a whole. See also Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability,” p. 21. Shalem, The Oliphant, pp. 67–79, discusses the difficulties in determining provenance for the dozens of oliphants created in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Hoffman, “Translation in Ivory,” addresses similar issues in relation to the large number of Siculo-Arabic ivories created in a pan-Mediterranean context. Shalem uses the concept of an international style to formulate a cohesive grouping for the oliphants, and Hoffman makes comparisons to artistic forms in other media, especially textiles and pottery, to associate ivory caskets with Mediterranean artistic production.

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expressed the Mediterranean identity of Campanian merchants, inserting them into a circle of elite art patronage that employed luxury materials acquired through international trade. Pantaleon, son of Mauro, cannot be connected to any works in ivory, but his artistic patronage is associated with several metalwork doors from Byzantium; in fact, he appears to have been the figure who started a trend in patronage through his commissioning of doors for the Cathedral of Amalfi in approximately 1060–1 (Fig. 1.4). Pantaleon resided in Constantinople and conducted business there, and various bronze doors in the city could have served as models for his artistic commission.34 A Byzantine artist, Simeon of Syria, signed Pantaleon’s doors, and the Amalfitan quarter in Constantinople had its own foundry, so it is likely that the doors were produced there.35 The Amalfi doors consist of twenty-four panels, most of which are decorated with relief crosses displaying foliate decoration. Only the four central panels feature figural decoration with Christ on the upper left flanked by the Virgin Mary on the right and Saints Andrew and Peter arranged from left to right below (Fig. 1.5). Immediately below the figure of Andrew is a foliate cross with the dedicatory inscription of Pantaleon; the signature of the artist Simeon was located originally beneath the Saint Peter relief. Pantaleon’s dedication reads: “Hoc opus fieri iussit p(ro) redemptione anime sue Pantal(eo) filius Mauri de Panta(leone) de Maur(o) de Maurone comite.”36 Another inscription adorns the borders of the figurative panels and specifies the dedication to Saint Andrew, patron of Amalfi’s Cathedral.37 The inscriptions, combined with the imagery of the Virgin­Mary, Saint 34

For Byzantine comparanda from the eleventh century, see Antonio Iacobini, “Arte e tecnologia bizantina nel Mediterraneo: le porte bronzee dell’xi–xii secolo,” in Medioevo mediterraneo: l’Occidente, Bisanzio e l’Islam, ed. Arturo Quintavalle (Milan, 2007), pp. 496–510, at p. 502; Margaret Frazer, “Church Doors and the Gates of Paradise Reopened,” in Le porte di bronzo dall’antichità al secolo xiii, ed. Salvatorino Salomi, 2 vols. (Rome, 1990), 1:271–77, at p. 273. 35 For the inscription of the artist Simeon, see Braca, Le culture artistiche, p. 65; Iacobini, “Arte e tecnologia bizantina,” pp. 499–501; Frazer, “Church Doors and the Gates of Paradise Reopened,” p. 273. The inscribed panel has been lost but the inscription was copied in the eighteenth century and recorded by Matteo Camera in the nineteenth century. See also Braca, Le culture artistiche, pp. 64–65; Daniela Sinigalliesi, “Il restauro delle porte bronzee della costiera amalfitana,” in La porta di Bonanno nel Duomo di Pisa e le porte bronzee medioevali europee: arte e tecnologia, ed. Ottavio Banti (Pontedera, 1999), pp. 247–63, at p. 251. 36 “This work Pantaleon, son of Maurus, son of Pantaleon, son of Maurus, son of Maurus comite, had made for the redemption of his soul.” See Braca, Le culture artistiche, p. 64; Patricia Skinner, “Commercio internazionale e politica locale nell’Amalfi medioevale: le porte di bronzo e i loro donatori nell’xi secolo,” Rassegna del centro di cultura e storia amalfitana n.s. 31–32 (2006), 65–78, at p. 65. 37 Braca, Le culture artistiche, p. 64: “Hoc opus Andree memori consistit/effectu(m) Pantaleonis his/honore auctoris studiis/ut p(ro) gestis succedat gra(tia) culpis.” Herbert Bloch,

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Figure 1.4 Cathedral of Amalfi, bronze doors. Author’s photo.

Peter, and Saint Andrew as saintly intercessors, made clear that the doors were a votive offering by the donor for the redemption of his soul. Montecassino in the Middle Ages, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1986), 1:141, provides this translation: “This work stands in mindful honor of Andrew, the result of the efforts of Pantaleo, so that for his deeds grace may follow his sins.”

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Figure 1.5 Cathedral of Amalfi, bronze doors, figural panels. Author’s photo.

Other art patrons soon emulated Pantaleon’s doors for the Cathedral of Amalfi, including his father, Maurus, and Desiderius, Abbot of Montecassino. Leo of Ostia reported that when Desiderius visited Amalfi in 1065 he saw the cathedral portal and was inspired to commission a similar pair of doors for his monastery.38 Little remains of the Montecassino doors today, but two dedicatory 38

Leo of Ostia, Chronica Monasterii Casinensis, mgh ss 34, ed. Hartmut Hoffmann (Hannover, 1980), iii, 18, p. 385: “Videns autem tunc portas ereas episcopii Amalphitani, cum valde placuissent oculis eius, mox mensuram portarum veteris ecclesie Constantinopolim misit ibique illas, ut sunt, fieri fecit.” Herbert Bloch, “Origin and Fate of the Bronze Doors of Abbot Desiderius of Monte Cassino,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987), 89–102, at p. 90, translates the passage as follows: “He (Desiderius) saw then … the bronze doors

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inscriptions have been preserved that name Maurus as the patron.39 Though the Abbot of Montecassino conceived of having a set of bronze doors made for his monastic church, it was a layman, the wealthy merchant Maurus, who provided the funds for the commission. Maurus had commissioned other religious art objects as seen in his patronage of the Farfa Casket, and he had close ties to Montecassino, joining the monastery as a monk in 1071. It is likely that his son’s presence in Constantinople facilitated the commission as well.40 The significance of the Montecassino doors lies not only in their expense, but also in their eastern provenance; Maurus continued the tradition established by Pantaleon of commissioning large-scale bronze portals from Constantinople, and both lavished the family’s considerable wealth on prestigious religious institutions in southern Italy. The relationship between Amalfi and the Byzantine Empire was longstanding, as the city transformed from a Byzantine protectorate to an ally and trading partner. Amalfitan traders were already conducting business in Constantinople in the tenth century with the peak of economic interaction

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of the cathedral of Amalfi. As they greatly delighted his eyes, he soon afterwards sent off to Constantinople the measurements of the doors of the old church, along with the order to make those doors which still exist today ….” Antonio Milone, “Arte e committenza nel Medioevo amalfitano,” in Camelia and Cobalto, Fieri iussit pro redemptione, pp. 133–45, at p. 137, expresses his doubts at the veracity of Leo’s story, given the time needed to complete such complex commission. Bloch, “Origin and Fate,” p. 89; Braca, Le culture artistiche, pp. 65–66. Bloch, Montecassino in the Middle Ages, 1:160–61, reproduces and translates the two inscriptions: “Hoc studiis Mauri mu/nus consistit opuscli / gentis Melfigene reni/tentis originis arce, qui decus et generis hac / effert laude laboris. / Qua simul auxilii con / spes maneat Benedicti ac sibi caelestes / ex hoc commutet / honores.” [The gift of this work stands here thanks to the zeal of Maurus, the head of an illustrious family of Amalfi, who with the glory of this effort further enhances the renown of his house; may with this glory remain the hope for Benedict’s help, and may he receive heavenly honors in exchange for this gift.]; “Hoc fecit Maur/o, filius Panta/ leonis de comi/te Maurone, ad / laudem D(omi)ni et / salbatoris n(ost)ri / Je(s)u Chr(ist)i, ab cuius / incarnatione / anno millesim(o) se/xagesimo sexto.” [Mauro (sic) had these doors made, the son of Pantaleo, the son of count Mauro, to the glory of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in the 1066th year after his incarnation.] Iacobini, “Arte e tecnologia bizantina,” p. 496; Frazer, “Church Doors and the Gates of Paradise Reopened,” p. 273. Pantaleon has been identified as the patron of additional bronze portals in the churches of San Paolo fuori le Mura in Rome and San Michele at Monte Sant’Angelo in Gargano. See Bloch, Montecassino in the Middle Ages, 1:141–53; Margaret Frazer, “Church Doors and Gates of Paradise: Byzantine Bronze Doors in Italy,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 27 (1973), 145–62, at pp. 147–48, 158–59; Marini Clarelli, “Pantaleone d’Amalfi e le porte bizantine,” pp. 641–50; Gioia Bertelli, “La porta del santuario di S. Michele a Monte Sant’Angelo: aspetti e problemi,” in Salomi, Le porte di bronzo, 1:293–305, for these commissions.

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between Amalfi and Byzantium occurring in the late eleventh century.41 It was at precisely this time that Pantaleon and Maurus’ patronage of bronze doors from the Byzantine capital took place, and these imported Byzantine objects represented in visual terms the longevity and success of this cultural and commercial collaboration. The commissioning of bronze doors displayed the Mediterranean knowledge and sense of belonging that Campanian traders had amassed over centuries of interaction with peoples across the sea. The various sets of doors served as indices of social relationships both in Byzantium and Italy as elite Campanian families interacted with Byzantine artists and local ecclesiastical officials to create lavish decorative elements for religious structures.42 The bronze doors made in Byzantium by artists from Constantinople allowed Pantaleon and Maurus to display with pride their embeddedness in Greek culture and the high status they enjoyed through their connection to this powerful empire famed for its artistic achievements. The doors established a direct visual link to Byzantium and defined a set of relations based on mutual respect, admiration, and emulation. These two Amalfitan patrons wished to show their integration into Byzantine culture and did so in the most definitive manner possible, employing Greek artists, techniques, and luxury materials to create artworks for public religious monuments on Italian soil. Over the course of almost two decades, then, a prominent local family established a tradition of patronage characterized by luxury artistic commissions from various Mediterranean locales. Campanian patrons in particular chose to display their intimate knowledge of Byzantium through the artworks they commissioned. In this way, the merchant elite visualized its inclusion within Byzantine culture that in turn encouraged and facilitated the explicit and direct borrowing of materials, techniques, and styles. While the creation of bronze doors for southern Italian churches manifested close cultural contacts with the Greeks and celebrated the value and beauty of the material, the ivory objects displayed a more eclectic ensemble of stylistic and iconographic sources. As ivory shifted from raw material to finished artwork, its movement became less linear and more diffuse.43 Ivory sculpture could encompass highly specific and patronage driven commissions like the Farfa Casket, with its 41 Skinner, Medieval Amalfi, p. 217; Jacoby, “Commercio e navigazione,” pp. 90–94. See also the essays in Farrugia, Amalfi and Byzantium. 42 For an extended discussion of these southern Italian bronze doors, see Section 6 in Camelia and Cobalto, Fieri iussit pro redemptione, pp. 251–301. 43 See note 30 above for a discussion of the raw material of ivory and its movement across the Mediterranean.

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unique, culturally diverse iconography and its connection to the pious Amalfitan Maurus. Other artworks like the ivory pen box defy simple categorization concerning their provenance and style and manifest the importance of circulation across the Mediterranean. All these commissions employed foreign styles, iconography, and techniques, but their most salient characteristic was their materiality. Bronze and ivory were expensive materials that required specialized craftsmanship and technical expertise. Their luxury status indexed monetary value and their distant origin augmented their symbolic signification. The combination of those two connotations gave these materials a rich iconography of their own that made them ideal for Amalfitan merchant patronage.44 They alluded to the network of luxury goods in which Amalfi played such a major role, a concrete assessment of value as costly commodities, and the places across the Mediterranean where traders conducted commerce. Local southern Italian patrons, then, did not make extensive use of actual spolia, but employed instead pseudo or virtual spolia, borrowing techniques, styles, and artistic forms from other Mediterranean cultures to display their international political and commercial contacts and knowledge of contemporary visual culture in the realms of their allies and trading partners, both Muslim and Christian.

Norman Architectural Patronage and the Spolia Aesthetic

In eleventh-century Campania, wealthy merchants established a trend in art patronage that displayed an eclectic mix of cultural references. When the Normans consolidated their power in southern Italy later in the century, they too began an ambitious program of artistic commissions that juxtaposed local spoliate styles with an aggressive, politicized use of spolia on major religious structures. In their guise as foreign conquerors and warriors with imperial ambitions, Norman patrons employed ancient Roman spolia to make grandiose political claims that defined their rule in relation to contemporary imperial rivals and ancient Rome. As rulers over a consolidated territory in southern Italy, however, they also used the local eclectic spolia style to demonstrate their 44

For an iconography of materials, see Thomas Raff, Die Sprache der Materialien: Anleitung zu einer Ikonologie der Werkstoffe (Munich, 1994). Shalem, Die mittelalterlichen Olifante, pp. 29–31, 124–27, discusses the iconography of ivory. See also Karen Rose Mathews, “Decorating with Things: Spolia as Material Culture in the Italian Maritime Republics, 1100–1300,” bfo-Journal 1 (2015), 4–13, at pp. 10–11, [http://bauforschungonline .ch/sites/default/files/publikationen/mathews.pdf] for a discussion of materiality.

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connection to the populations they ruled and their support of the flourishing mercantile economy in their territories. The Norman rulers of Campania, then, deployed ancient Roman spolia to address international concerns while transforming the pan-Mediterranean visual vocabulary favored by merchant patrons into a local style that united the Norman overlords with their subjects. The Cathedral of Salerno constructed by Robert Guiscard was a signature monument that combined Campanian traditions with Norman innovations. Created in the tumultuous political climate of the 1080s, the papacy, citizens of Salerno, the archbishop, and Norman rulers all played a role in the church’s creation.45 Guiscard had just conquered the city of Salerno in 1076 after a long and bitter siege. His campaign against the city incurred the wrath of the pope who had supported the local ruler Gisulf against the Normans and had excommunicated Guiscard for his actions. In the immediate aftermath of Salerno’s conquest, then, the Norman ruler sought to extend conciliatory gestures to the inhabitants of the city. The rediscovery of the relics of Saint Matthew provided the opportunity to create a climate of reconciliation and consensus in Guiscard’s new capital. The apostle’s body had come to Salerno in 954, but the relics were hidden for safekeeping and then lost.46 Archbishop Alfanus of Salerno rediscovered the body in 1080 and Guiscard commissioned a new cathedral structure to honor the city’s patron saint. Amatus of Montecassino in his L’Ystoire de li Normant noted the association between the Normans and Saint Matthew already in the mid-eleventh century, when the Archbishop John of Salerno received a vision from the saint. The apostle predicted the Norman conquest of southern Italy, indicating that they had been chosen by God and that anyone who fought against them, even the pope, would be defeated.47 Amatus also noted another incident in which

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For this time period in general, see Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard, pp. 203–09; see also Paul Oldfield, City and Community in Norman Italy (Cambridge, 2009), p. 237, for the cooperation between the new Norman rulers and the inhabitants of Salerno. See Giuseppe Talamo Atenolfi, I testi medioevali degli atti di S. Matteo l’evangelista (Rome, 1958), pp. 46–55, 101–19, and Nicola Acocella, La traslazione di San Matteo: documenti e testimonianze (Salerno, 1954), pp. 11–38, for the translatio of Saint Matthew to Salerno. Leo of Ostia, Chronica Monasterii Casinensis, ii, 5, p. 175, notes the arrival of Matthew’s relics in Salerno. See also Antonio Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno: architettura e culture artistiche del Medioevo e dell’età moderna (Salerno, 2003), p. 16. For the connection between Saint Matthew and the Normans, see Amalia Galdi, “La diffusione del culto del santo patrono: l’esempio di S. Matteo di Salerno,” in Pellegrinaggi e itinerari dei santi nel Mezzogiorno medievale, ed. Giovanni Vitolo (Pisa, 1999), pp. 181–91; Amatus, History, viii, 4, p. 190; Ystoire de li Normant, pp. 483–84.

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the ruler of Salerno, Gisulf, desecrated the cathedral and stole liturgical objects associated with Saint Matthew.48 Gisulf unlawfully took possession of Matthew’s tooth but claimed it was the tooth of a Jew. Robert Guiscard championed the saint’s cause and threatened to extract all Gisulf’s teeth if he did not return the apostle’s relic. A connection to Saint Matthew, then, allowed Guiscard to display his piety to religious authorities, establish more positive relations with the people of Salerno, and distinguish himself from the local ruler Gisulf, while providing the justification for the creation of a sumptuous new cathedral in honor of the apostle. The site chosen for the cathedral itself indicated that Guiscard wanted his church to be seen as an entirely new foundation (Fig.  1.6).49 The structure stood outside the Lombard city in an area where the Norman ruler also erected his own palace. Elevated above the rest of the city, the location gave the cathedral great visibility while providing the ideal topography for a double-leveled structure consisting of the church and a crypt below. The building campaign proceeded quickly and the cathedral was consecrated in 1084, just four years after its inception.50 The cathedral consists of a basilica plan with three aisles divided by arcades with columnar supports. The east end featured a crypt housing the relics of Saint Matthew and on the west was an atrium with arcaded porticoes that served as a pantheon or burial place for the city’s elite and members of the Norman ruling family. The plan of the church closely resembled that of the Monastery of Montecassino, completed a decade before the cathedral construction commenced. It is conceivable that artists from Montecassino also worked on Salerno’s Cathedral, as Guiscard, his wife, and Archbishop Alfanus had close connections with the monastery.51 The Norman 48 Amatus, History, viii, 29, p. 202; Ystoire de li Normant, p. 506. 49 Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno, pp. 18–21, discusses the choice of site. 50 Additional work on the structure, including the atrium and campanile, continued until the mid-twelfth century. The atrium was likely part of the cathedral’s original plan but was not completed at the time of the church’s consecration; see Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno, pp. 26–27, 51–55. 51 Mario D’Onofrio, “La basilica di Desiderio a Montecassino e la cattedrale di Alfano a Salerno: nuovi spunti di riflessione,” in Desiderio di Montecassino e l’arte della riforma gregoriana, ed. Faustino Avagliano (Montecassino, 1997), pp. 231–46, at pp. 234–36; Graham Loud, “Coinage, Wealth, and Plunder in the Age of Robert Guiscard,” The English Historical Review 114, no. 458 (1999), 815–43, at pp. 821–24; Michael Greenhalgh, Marble Past, Monumental Present: Building with Antiquities in the Mediaeval Mediterranean (Leiden, 2009), pp. 405–06. For the argument against Montecassino as a model, see Oliver Becker, “Der Dom von Salerno und die Abteikirche von Montecassino,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 41 (2007), 105–40, at pp. 105–32.

Figure 1.6 Cathedral of Salerno, general exterior view. Author’s photo.

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duke visited the monastery numerous times and gave generous gifts to the renowned institution. Emulating the basilica of the famous monastery would have associated the Norman rulers with this great Benedictine house famed for its lavish artistic patronage and championing of religious reform. The salient feature of the Cathedral of Salerno is its romanitas or Romanness, seen in the church’s plan, extensive inscriptions, and comprehensive use of ancient Roman spolia.52 Norman romanitas was informed by conscious borrowings from ancient and medieval Rome, either in the form of actual spoliate objects or the use of Roman styles and forms. Whether or not Norman patrons were cognizant of the precise medieval provenance of the ancient materials they borrowed and reused, they were interested in adorning their architectural structures with forms that evoked Roman splendor and military might. Such evocations of Rome were politically motivated and highly oppositional, portraying the Normans as successors to a great ancient empire and victors over contemporary Roman emperors. They also displayed more nuanced references to multiple Romes simultaneously, juxtaposing elements from ancient Roman culture with those from the contemporary papal and imperial city to foreground the Normans’ admiration and emulation of the Roman past. The basilica plan employed in the Cathedral of Salerno epitomized the multiple resonances that Rome had for the Normans, referring to ancient Roman basilicas as well as the early Christian churches of Rome. Guiscard’s church thus associated the Normans with an ancient Roman past, an early Christian past, and eleventh-century institutions at the forefront of Church Reform with close associations to the papacy.53 Roman spolia embodied a cumulative concept of history and served as the ideal vehicles to integrate the Normans into the cultural environment of Campania. If the building’s plan and interior decoration encompassed references to multiple Romes, the façade alluded more specifically to the power of ancient Rome and the military might of its leaders. The use of dedicatory inscriptions particularly proclaimed the association of the cathedral with ancient Roman buildings.54 The large scale of the inscription on the upper façade calls to mind 52 Greenhalgh, Marble Past, p. 408; Patrizio Pensabene, “Contributo per una ricerca sul reimpiego e il ‘recupero’ dell’antico nel Medioevo: il reimpiego nell’architettura normanna,” Rivista dell’Istituto nazionale d’archeologia e storia dell’arte 13 (1990), 5–118, at p. 6; Antonio Milone, “Memoria dell’antico nella Costa d’Amalfi,” in Braca, Le culture artistiche, pp. 315–49, at p. 318. 53 See in general D’Onofrio, “La basilica di Desiderio”; see also Pensabene, “Contributo per una ricerca,” p. 6; Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno, pp. 29–33. 54 Valentino Pace, “La Cattedrale di Salerno: committenza, programma e valenze ideologiche di un monumento di fine xi secolo nell’Italia meridionale,” in Avagliano, Desiderio­ di

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prominent texts on ancient Roman monuments, creating an entrance that resembles a triumphal arch (Fig. 1.7). The roofline inscription is especially monumental in size and highlights three themes: the honor due Saint Matthew as patron of the cathedral and the city, Guiscard’s use of his own funds to build the church, and the duke himself as a great victor over the Roman Empire with his title “maximus triumphator Romani imperii.”55 The second monumental text is placed above the central portal leading into the church and repeats the Norman’s title of duke and the dedication of the church to the Salerno’s patron saint (Fig. 1.8).56 This inscription above the Porta del Paradiso created a physical connection between epigraphy based on Roman models and the extensive Roman spolia in the Cathedral of Salerno; the lintel itself is a Roman spoil, an architrave taken from the Macellum of Pozzuoli, a market building dating to the first to second century ad in the Roman colony of Puteoli near Naples.57 The Roman style inscriptions on the cathedral façade are all medieval texts intended to resemble ancient epigraphy; as such they fall within the category of pseudo-spolia, that is the borrowing of a style from past or foreign cultures. The majuscule style of the script and the location of the texts below a gable or pediment were meant to evoke ancient temple façades or triumphal monuments. The main portal lintel combines actual and pseudo-spolia, with the actual Roman object bolstering the authority of the Roman-style epigraphy.58 The political content of the façade texts and their ancient script style conferred authority on the building and provided the visual focus for the generally unadorned west front. The epigraphs emulating Roman monumental inscriptions announced the visual model for the cathedral and set the stage for the collection of Roman materials that adorned the church interior. Montecassino, pp. 189–230, at p. 189, argues that the inscriptions were composed by Alfanus, but provides no evidence for this assertion. See Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno, pp. 21–25. 55 Delogu, Mito di una città, pp. 188–89; Becker, “Der Dom von Salerno,” pp. 132–34, 140; Pace, “La Cattedrale di Salerno,” p. 191. The text reads: “M(atheo) A(postolo) et evangelistae patrono urbis Robbertus dux R(omani) imp(erii) maxim(us) triumphator de aerario peculiari.” [To the patron of the city Matthew, apostle and evangelist, Duke Robert, greatest victor over the Roman Empire, (donated this church) with his own funds.] 56 Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno, pp. 23–25. The second text on the reused lintel states: “A duce Robberto donaris apostole templo pro meritis regno donetur et ipse superno.” [A church has been given to you, Apostle, by Duke Robert. In return, may he be granted the gift of the kingdom of heaven.] I thank my colleagues Robyn Walsh and John Kirby for their help with this translation. See also Paola Mathis, “Architrave,” in Rilavorazione dell’antico nel Medioevo, ed. Mario D’Onofrio (Rome, 2003), pp. 56–60, at p. 59. 57 Mathis, “Architrave,” pp. 56–60; Pensabene, “Contributo per una ricerca,” p. 19; Pace, “La Cattedrale di Salerno,” pp. 212–13; Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno, pp. 62–64, 99. 58 See Richard Brilliant, “I piedistalli del giardino di Boboli: spolia in se, spolia in re,” Prospettiva 31 (1982), 2–17, for his term “spolia in re” to designate pseudo or virtual spolia.

Figure 1.7 Cathedral of Salerno, inscription over main portal. Author’s photo.

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Figure 1.8 Cathedral of Salerno, Roman lintel over main portal. Author’s photo.

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The doorway with its spoliate lintel gave access to a basilica divided into three aisles by spolia columns and capitals (Fig. 1.9). These supports were encased in pillars in the Baroque period, but some of them have now been exposed to reveal the original columns. The crypt, constructed at the beginning of the building campaign, inaugurated the use of spoliate columns, and the

Figure 1.9 Cathedral of Salerno, interior nave with spoliate columns. Author’s photo.

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twelfth-century atrium features similar reused ancient materials. In all, seventytwo ancient Roman capitals and columns adorn the Cathedral of Salerno, a clear indication of a conscious and concerted interest in reused ancient materials in Guiscard’s architectural commission.59 Emulating the model established by Saint Peter’s, the Cathedral of Salerno’s collection of heterogeneous spoliate columns displayed the wealth and power of its Norman patron. Guiscard demonstrated in his patronage of the cathedral that he possessed the financial and technical means to assemble a vast quantity of high quality materials for this signature monument in his new capital city. Additional Roman spolia in the cathedral are associated with Pope Gregory vii, who came to Salerno in 1084 and died there a year later. An object known as the Cathedra of Gregory vii now resides in the apse of Salerno’s Cathedral, and served as a ceremonial chair for the pope. The two protomes adorning the chair’s supports were griffins originally but were re-carved as lions in the medieval period.60 The second object, an ancient Roman sarcophagus used for the pope’s burial, is a manifestation of what was to become a widespread medieval practice—the use of ancient Roman tombs as medieval sepulchral monuments.61 The earliest documented reuse of this kind was for the burial of Beatrice, mother of Matilda of Canossa, in 1076; her remains were interred in an ancient mythological sarcophagus placed along the façade of the Cathedral of Pisa. Pope Gregory’s tomb consisted of an ancient sarcophagus decorated with bucrania and garlands, now located in the southern apse of the cathedral (Fig. 1.10). Gregory’s burial set a precedent in Salerno that continued for centuries and dozens of sarcophagi came to adorn the atrium of the church, serving as tombs for the Norman ruling family and the city’s elite from the twelfth to the fourteenth century.62 The vast amount of Roman spolia employed in the Cathedral of Salerno raises the question of their provenance and means of acquisition. Many pieces 59 Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno, p. 95. 60 Paola Mathis, “Cattedra di Gregorio vii,” in D’Onofrio, Rilavorazione dell’antico, pp. 53–55; Pace, “La Cattedrale di Salerno,” p. 203; Angela Palmentieri, “Un tondo strigillato in porfido della Cattedrale di Salerno: sull’origine della produzione dei sarcofagi imperiali,” Prospettiva 119/120 (2005), 70–87, at pp. 71–72. 61 Silvia Tomei, “Sarcofago di Gregorio vii,” in D’Onofrio, Rilavorazione dell’antico, pp. 60–63; Pace, “La Cattedrale di Salerno,” p. 214; Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno, p. 103. 62 See particularly Maurizio Paoletti, “Sicilia e Campania costiera: i sarcofagi nelle chiese cattedrali durante l’età normanna, angioina e aragonese,” in Colloquio sul reimpiego dei sarcofagi romani nel medioevo, eds. Bernard Andreae and Salvatore Settis (Marburg, 1984), pp. 229–44, at pp. 236–40, for the reuse of ancient sarcophagi in Salerno’s Cathedral; see also Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno, pp. 103–14.

Figure 1.10

Cathedral of Salerno, ancient Roman sarcophagus used as tomb of Gregory vii. Author’s photo.

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came from nearby Paestum, Pozzuoli, and Nocera, but Rome and Ostia were also important sources, while other objects originated in locations as far away as the eastern Mediterranean.63 These ancient Roman spoils likely arrived in Salerno in the Middle Ages rather than circulating in antiquity and various hypotheses exist concerning their procurement. Given his numerous military campaigns, Guiscard would have had ample opportunity to collect ancient marble as plunder. The author of the Chronicon Amalfitanum claimed that after Guiscard’s victory at Palermo in 1071 he took iron doors and marble columns from the city and transported them to Troia as a sign of his victory.64 Based on this precedent, it has been argued that Robert Guiscard procured the extensive Roman spolia used in the cathedral during the sack of Rome in 1084. This military campaign would have provided access to abundant marble to take as plunder, but the cathedral construction began four years before the expedition and the ancient columns would certainly have been in place by then.65 Another plausible vector for acquiring Roman spolia was commerce. Ancient Roman building elements could have been purchased anywhere in the Mediterranean but the most likely source was Rome itself. Abbot ­Desiderius of Montecassino went to Rome to obtain marble columns for his basilica in the 1060s, and this could have provided a model for the Norman ruler’s acquisition of similar pieces. Leo of Ostia’s Chronica Monasterii Casinensis made clear that a market existed in Rome in the late eleventh century for procuring ancient materials and the ease with which they could be moved south via the sea made Rome a convenient source for reused marble.66 63

Tomei, “Sarcofago di Gregorio vii,” p. 61; Pensabene, “Contributo per una ricerca,” pp. 10–12, 22; Milone, “Memoria dell’antico,” pp. 319–20; Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno, pp. 95–98. 64 Ulrich Schwarz, Amalfi im frühen Mittelalter (9.-11. Jahrhundert) (Tübingen, 1978), pp. 195–224, provides an edition of the Chronicon Amalfitanum; see Chapter 33, pp. 213–14: “… movens exercitum in Siciliam [Robertus dux] properavit obseditque Panormum ditissimam Siciliae civitatem et viriliter eam expugnavit cepitque eam anno Dominicae incarnationis millesimo septuagesimo tertio. Et exinde portas ferreas et columnas marmoreas quamplures cum capitibus afferi fecit in Troiam in signum victoriae suae.” [He (Robert Guiscard) hastened to Sicily with his army and besieged Palermo, the richest city in Sicily, fought against and captured the city in the year 1073. And from there he took to Troia iron doors and the greatest number of marble columns and capitals as a sign of his victory.] Romuald of Salerno in his Chronicon repeats the information provided in the Chronicon Amalfitanum; see Cinzia Bonetti, ed., Romualdo ii Guarna, Chronicon (Cava de’ Tirreni, 2001), pp. 92–93. 65 Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno, p. 98. 66 For Desiderius, see Leo of Ostia, Chronica Monasterii Casinensis, iii, 26, 19–25, p. 394: “Ordinatis igitur, qui hec toto nisu et instantia summa perficerent, ipse interea Romam profectus est et quosque amicissimos alloquens simulque larga manu pecunias oportune

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The use of ancient spolia in Salerno’s Cathedral was a conscious act, then, and not one motivated by practicality. Local limestone was readily available, but the cathedral’s decoration prominently displays marble architectural elements procured from distant locales. Columns for the spoliate colonnade on the cathedral’s interior required particular attention as they needed to be of a similar height and width, and the placement of the spolia in prominent ­areas of the church—the entrance, central nave, and apses—demonstrated that ancient Roman building materials held a significant symbolic resonance.67 Robert Guiscard’s use of Roman spoils connected him and his church to different aspects of romanitas from distinct periods in the city’s history; the spoliate portal and classical façade referenced ancient imperial Rome, the form of the basilica and its Roman colonnade associated the cathedral with early Christian churches commissioned by lay patrons, and the cathedra and sarcophagus of Gregory vii served as a bridge between early medieval Rome and the seat of the papacy in the late eleventh century. The cathedral’s west façade in particular established the political significance of Norman romanitas. Complementing the Roman lintel were inscriptions in a classicizing style, pseudo-spolia that emulated dedicatory texts on classical monuments. Both texts imitated ancient Roman inscriptions in their orderly and uniform arrangement of majuscule letters. The façade inscription reads: “M(atheo) A(postolo) et evangelistae patrono urbis Robbertus dux R(omani) imp(erii) maxim(us) triumphator de aerario peculiari.”68 The characterization of the duke as the “greatest victor over the Roman Empire” alluded

dispensans columnas, bases ac lilia nec non et diversorum colorum marmora abundanter coemit illaque omnia ab urbe ad portum, a portu autem Romano per mare usque ad turrem de Gariliano indeque ad Suium navigiis conductis ingenti fiducia detulit.” Caecilia Davis-Weyer, Early Medieval Art, 300–1150: Sources and Documents (Toronto, 1986), p. 136, provides an English translation: “After having given orders to those who were to execute this work with the greatest dispatch, he [Desiderius] went to Rome. After consulting each of his best friends and generously and wisely distributing a large sum of money, he bought huge quantities of [ancient] columns, bases, epistyles, and marble of different colors. All these he brought from Rome to the port, from the Portus Romanus thence by sea to the tower at the Garigliano River, and from there with great confidence on boats to Suium.” Daniele Manacorda, “Amalfi: urne romane e commerci medioevali,” in Aparchai: nuove ricerche e studi sulla Magna Grecia e la Sicilia antica in onore di Paolo Enrico Arias, ed. Luigi Beschi et al., 3 vols. (Pisa, 1982), 2:713–52, at pp. 743–46, 750, discusses the role of Amalfi in the commerce of Roman antiquities in the Middle Ages, and argues that it may have been Amalfitans who transported Desiderius’ Roman building materials to his monastery. 67 Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno, p. 98; Milone, “Memoria dell’antico,” p. 322. 68 Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno, pp. 23–25; Becker, “Der Dom von Salerno,” pp. 133–34.

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to some of his most important political accomplishments near the end of this life. In 1084 Guiscard had achieved victories over two Roman empires in campaigns against Rome and Byzantine territories.69 Three years earlier, Guiscard had launched an expedition against lands along the Adriatic at a time of great political instability within the empire. The motivation for the attack was unclear, but some sources argue that the duke ultimately aimed to advance on Constantinople and conquer the Byzantine Empire.70 The Norman forces were successful in taking the island of Corfu and the city of Durazzo before Guiscard was called back to Italy. The duke returned to the campaign in 1084 and died in Cephalonia in 1085 with the grand ambition of conquering Constantinople unfulfilled. His exploits against Byzantium, the Roman Empire of greatest significance at the time, were commemorated in the cathedral inscription as military feats that elevated him to a position of superiority over the Byzantines. The other empire referenced in the epigraph was the Holy Roman Empire under the control of Henry iv. The conflict between the emperor and Pope Gregory vii had simmered for years and in 1083 the German ruler advanced on Rome.71 The pope took refuge in Castel Sant’Angelo and called upon the Normans to protect him and the city from imperial forces. By the time Guiscard finally arrived, Henry’s troops had already left the city, but Norman authors characterized the taking of Rome as a great victory against an imperial foe.72 William of Apulia specifically noted the triumph over both empires in his Gesta Roberti Guiscardi, stating: Thus the two lords of the world, that is the king of Germany and the great leader of the Roman empire, were defeated at the same time. One, rushing to arms, was defeated in battle, while the other retreated after having learned of the formidability of the Normans.73 69 Delogu, Mito di una città, pp. 189–90; Loud, Age of Robert Guiscard, pp. 214, 220–22. 70 For the Byzantine campaigns in general, see Theotokis, The Norman Campaigns in the Balkans, pp. 140–47, 171–84; Loud, Age of Robert Guiscard, pp. 210–17; Albu, The Normans and their Histories, pp. 128–35. For Guiscard’s ambition to conquer the Byzantine Empire, see Theotokis, The Norman Campaigns in the Balkans, p. 141; Loud, Age of Robert Guiscard, p. 216; H.E.J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory vii, 1073–85 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 434–35. 71 John Julius Norwich, Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy (New York, 2011), pp. 114– 17; Louis Hamilton, “Memory, Symbol, and Arson: Was Rome ‘Sacked’ in 1084?” Speculum 78, no. 2 (2003), 378–99, at pp. 383–85; Kenneth Baxter Wolf, Making History: The Normans and Their Historians in Eleventh-century Italy (Philadelphia, 1995), pp. 31, 136. 72 Norwich, Absolute Monarchs, p. 115; Hamilton, “Memory, Symbol, and Arson,” pp. 379–80, 387–89; Wolf, Making History, p. 136. 73 Francesco de Rosa, ed., Guglielmo di Puglia, Le Gesta di Roberto il Guiscardo (Cassino, 2003), Book iv, lines 566–70, p. 214: “Sic uno tempore victi sunt terrae domini duo, rex

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Robert Guiscard had defeated the German and Byzantine emperors but he had also taken control of Rome; as such he could also assume the guise of an ancient Roman emperor in his possession of the empire’s capital city. Salerno’s Cathedral and its spoliate colonnade also emulated Rome’s early medieval religious architecture in its use of the basilica form, heterogeneous spolia collections, and allusions to lavish lay patronage. The fourth and fifthcentury churches of Rome evoked the purity and simplicity of the early Church and the important role that non-ecclesiastical patrons could play in supporting religious foundations. Constantinian basilicas in particular—Old Saint Peter’s, Saint John Lateran, San Lorenzo fuori le mura—served as models because of these symbolic associations but also because of their monumental size and distinctive plan with three apses, three aisles with a taller central nave, and an expansive atrium.74 The Cathedral of Salerno’s plan was also based on a more immediate model—that of the church of Montecassino created by Desiderius. The new church constructed by the abbot specifically imitated Saint Peter’s where Desiderius had been an arch priest while making ample use of ancient spolia conveyed from Rome. Salerno Cathedral’s reliance on early Christian models came directly from Rome but was also mediated through the influential Monastery of Montecassino. A notable feature of these early church buildings in Rome was the collection of disparate columns and capitals employed as supports in the interior colonnades. Defined by an aesthetic of varietas, Saint Peter’s in particular employed an astonishing array of ancient capitals and columns arranged in seeming disregard for the uniformity of the classical orders. The disposition of the columns and capitals was not random, however, and architectural elements were paired across the nave to create a rhythm of matched supports based on the type of marble or morphology of the capital.75 This pairing of spoliate columns is seen

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Alemannicus iste, Imperii rector Romani maximus ille. Alter ad arma ruens armis superatur, at alter nominis auditi sola formidine cessit.” See Wolf, Making History, p. 134, for the English translation. See also Hamilton, “Memory, Symbol, and Arson,” pp. 387, 392. Pensabene, “Contributo per una ricerca,” p. 5; Milone, “Memoria dell’antico,” p. 325; Delogu, Mito di una città, p. 185. For the significance of these early Constantinian basilicas in general, see Hugo Brandenburg, Ancient Churches of Rome from the Fourth to Seventh Century: The Dawn of Christian Architecture in the West (Turnhout, 2005), pp. 87–102. Lex Bosman, “Spolia in the fourth-century basilica,” in Old Saint Peter’s, Rome, eds. Rosamond McKitterick et al. (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 65–80, at pp. 68, 72–73; Dale Kinney, “Spolia,” in St. Peter’s in the Vatican, ed. William Tronzo (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 16–47, at p. 29; Milone, “Memoria dell’antico,” p. 326. For the aesthetic of varietas in the Constantinian period, see Beat Brenk, “Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne: Aesthetics versus Ideology,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987), 103–09.

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in the Cathedral of Salerno’s crypt and likely characterized the organization of columns in the nave as well.76 The few supports still visible in the nave consist of a variety of precious, colored marbles and Corinthian capitals while the six crypt columns pair fluted and smooth stone shafts with composite and eastern and western Corinthian capitals. The retrospective appreciation of the early Church visualized through large-scale basilicas with spoliate colonnades was an essential element of the eleventh-century reform movement in general, as defined by one of its greatest proponents, Gregory vii. The two spoliate artworks in Salerno associated with this reforming pope created a visual bridge between early Christian and eleventh-century papal Rome while highlighting Robert Guiscard’s role as advocate for and protector of the pontiff.77 Relations between the Normans and the papacy in general were often contentious as seen in the Battle of Civitate in 1053 when Norman forces achieved a resounding victory over a papal coalition. In the wake of the pope’s defeat, Guiscard became the object of a papally sanctioned crusade. Pope Leo ix offered absolution of sins for those who agreed to oppose the Normans and relieved them of any penance they might perform for sins committed in battle.78 Both Pope Leo ix and Pope Gregory vii referred to the Normans as Agarenes, that is, the term generally used for Muslims, equating these mercenary warriors with pagans who oppressed the Church.79 Guiscard’s relationship with Gregory vii was especially complex. The pontiff excommunicated the Norman duke on several occasions between 1073 and 1080, but also employed the Normans as the “military muscle of the reform papacy.”80 In this role, Guiscard’s troops assisted the pope when Henry iv threatened the city of Rome, and escorted Gregory vii to Salerno for his 76 77

Pensabene, “Contributo per una ricerca,” pp. 16–19, 75. Pensabene, “Contributo per una ricerca,” p. 75. For a reassessment of the Gregorian Reform and the visual arts, see Dorothy Glass, “Revisiting the ‘Gregorian Reform’,” in Romanesque Art and Thought in the Twelfth Century: Essays in Honor of Walter Cahn, ed. Colum Hourihane (University Park, PA, 2008), pp. 200–18, and her more recent monograph, The Sculpture of Reform in North Italy, ca 1095–1130 (Farnham, 2010). 78 Amatus, History, iii, 23, p. 94; iii, 40, p. 100; Ystoire de li Normant, pp. 324, 333–34. Amatus, History, iii, 38, pp. 99–100, Ystoire de li Normant, pp. 332–33, also records the vision of the Archbishop of Salerno, where Matthew the Apostle came to him and prophesied the victory of the Normans over papal forces. See also Carl Erdmann, The Origin of the Idea of Crusade, trans. Marshall Baldwin and Walter Goffart (Princeton, 1977), pp. 122–24. 79 Wolf, Making History, pp. 62–67; Erdmann, The Origin of the Idea of Crusade, p. 121. 80 Loud, Age of Robert Guiscard, p. 190; Theotokis, The Norman Campaigns in the Balkans, p. 138.

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protection. The pope died soon after he arrived in Guiscard’s capital but the memory of the papal presence remained in the cathedral through the cathedra and tomb monument of Gregory vii. The chair with its re-carved lions created a fitting replica of the papal cathedra, a potent symbol of office.81 Seated in the main apse of the cathedral, the pope would preside over ceremonies within the church in a place of honor and centrality. The use of an ancient sarcophagus as the pope’s burial monument was another distinctive way to honor the pontiff as it linked ancient and medieval Rome while participating in a new trend in funerary art patronage. The ancient Roman tomb was an apt evocation of Rome for a pope who was forced to abandon his seat of power; in essence it allowed Gregory vii to be eternally in Rome though buried in Salerno. The earliest example of a medieval burial in an ancient sarcophagus predates Gregory’s death by less than a decade and Norman patrons were at the forefront of a taste for ancient funerary monuments that continued for centuries.82 As the home of the papacy in exile, Salerno could be seen as a new Rome and the city’s cathedral as a substitute for Saint Peter’s. The church possessed an apostolic dedication akin to Peter’s martyrium, and housed paraphernalia like the spoliate papal cathedra. The Duomo’s plan and spolia decoration also associated it with the early Christian churches of Rome including Saint Peter’s Basilica. The pontiff’s time of residence in Salerno was short, less than a year, but in death he graced the cathedral in perpetuity. The ultimate honor for Guiscard’s church was to serve as the burial place for a pope, once again emulating Saint Peter’s that was the location of numerous papal tombs. In the creation of the Cathedral of Salerno, the patron and builders employed an inclusive concept of romanitas that emulated early Christian basilicas of Rome and referenced the tenets of reform espoused by Gregory vii.83 As a 81 Mathis, “Cattedra di Gregorio vii,” p. 54. 82 Greenhalgh, Marble Past, p. 409; Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno, pp. 102–03. Guiscard’s brother Roger was buried in an ancient Roman sarcophagus in Mileto; see Lucia Faedo, “La sepoltura di Ruggero,” in Luigi Beschi et al., Aparchai, 2:691–706. See also József Deér, The Dynastic Porphyry Tombs of the Norman period in Sicily (Cambridge, MA, 1959), for the Norman tombs in Sicily. 83 Valentino Pace, “Campania xi secolo: tradizione e innovazioni in una terra normanna,” in Arte medievale in Italia meridionale (Naples, 2007), pp. 17–48, at p. 21. For a discussion of visual manifestations of Gregorian Reform, see Glass, “Revisiting ‘Gregorian Reform’,” p. 203, who argues that artistic activity in the time of Gregory vii was “retrospective and imitative.” Glass, “Revisiting ‘Gregorian Reform’,” p. 203, and Herbert Kessler, “A Gregorian Reform Theory of Art?” in Roma e la Riforma gregoriana: tradizioni e innovazioni artistiche (xi–xii secolo), eds. Serena Romano and Julie Enckell Julliard (Rome, 2007),

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result­of unforeseen circumstances, the great reforming pope himself arrived in Salerno,­consecrating the cathedral and honoring the city with his presence. Consequently, the associations with Rome, extending from the apostolic to the early Christian and contemporary periods, accumulated and became all the more concentrated as Salerno replaced Rome as the seat of the papacy. The symbolic force of the Roman spolia in the Cathedral of Salerno depended upon concrete knowledge of the origin of these reused materials. The recognition of their antiquity triggered an appreciation of the spolia on practical, aesthetic, and symbolic levels. Both the material and the craftsmanship were of high quality and ensured their survival over time. The Roman pedigree of the material enhanced its aesthetic appeal and utility, as these architectural spoils were prized because they were old, beautiful, and well-made. The use of ancient spolia in Salerno’s Cathedral displayed an interest of continuity with the past where Guiscard saw himself as the successor to ancient emperors and his capital city as a new Rome. Cumulative cultural references, too, characterized this spoliate aesthetic, evoking various Romes from antiquity, the early Christian period, and the eleventh century. Rome could be a model to emulate or a competitor to vanquish but the comprehensive spolia decoration in and on the cathedral—columns, capitals, sarcophagus, cathedra, lintel, inscriptions— all acknowledged ancient and medieval Rome as the culture towards which the Normans directed their political aspirations. Complementing the cathedral’s romanitas with its Norman triumphal associations were artistic commissions in ivory and bronze that followed local models of patronage. Members of the Salernitan elite, Landulfus Butrumile and his wife Guisana Sebasti, donated a set of bronze doors to the church in the late eleventh century (Fig. 1.11).84 Though the doors are generally dated to 1099, it has been suggested recently that they were created considerably earlier, corresponding to the time when Butrumile received the Byzantine honorific title of protosebastos between 1081 and 1085.85 As such, the doors would have been made at the same time that the cathedral was being constructed and complemented Guiscard’s art patronage for the church. The doors emulated pp. 25–48, at p. 26, note the vagueness of the connection between reform concepts and visual iconography. 84 Bloch, Montecassino in the Middle Ages, 1:154–55; Frazer, “Church Doors and the Gates of Paradise,” pp. 160–62; D’Onofrio, “La basilica di Desiderio,” p. 241; Pace, “La Cattedrale di Salerno,” pp. 214–16; Braca, Il Duomo di Salerno, pp. 64–73. 85 Sinigalliesi, “Il restauro delle porte bronzee,” p. 251; Antonio Braca, “La porta di bronzo di Salerno,” in Camelia and Cobalto, Fieri iussit pro redemptione, pp. 285–91, at p. 287.

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Cathedral of Salerno, bronze doors. Author’s photo.

the earlier­commissions by Pantaleon and Maurus in that they were made of bronze, created in Constantinople, and featured images of standing saints with dedicatory inscriptions about the patron. The Salerno doors have fifty-four panels, but only eight feature figural decoration. Images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, Saints Peter and Paul, the Apostles Simon and Matthew are arranged across one register, while representations of the fons vitae or fountain of life and the dedicatory inscription are immediately above (Fig. 1.12). The remaining­panels

Figure 1.12

Cathedral of Salerno, bronze doors, figural panels. Author’s photo.

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consist of foliate crosses similar to those on the Amalfi portal. The two patrons of the doors flank Saint Matthew in one bronze panel, and the inscription includes prayers to the apostle and Christ for the forgiveness of sins.86 The doors on Salerno Cathedral, then, perpetuated traditions of lay patronage established in Amalfi, as in both cases a wealthy member of the laity commissioned doors in Constantinople for a Campanian church. The decoration with crosses, panels with imagery of holy figures, and dedications to patron saints of the city emulated the earlier doors of Amalfi as well. It is likely, however, that the pious Salernitans who commissioned the doors and their Norman overlord appreciated and interpreted the doors from different perspectives. Butrumile had close connections with the Byzantine Empire and had received a title of honor from the Greeks; he, like his Amalfitan counterparts, might have understood these doors as a demonstration of his knowledge of and participation in Byzantine culture. Guiscard, for his part, might have wished to downplay the connection to Byzantium given his adversarial relationship with the empire at this time and view the doors as an example of local artistic patronage in a Campanian style. Their presence on Salerno Cathedral highlighted the importance of lay patronage for the construction and decoration of the Duomo and the collaboration between local inhabitants of the city and the new Norman conqueror in the embellishment of the city’s central church honoring Saint Matthew. A second and far more ambitious artistic commission that fused Norman and Campanian modes of patronage was the greatest ensemble of ivories created in the pre-Gothic period, the Salerno Ivories.87 Consisting of almost forty large plaques and numerous smaller pieces, the ivory ensemble in Salerno Cathedral constituted an extraordinary artistic enterprise (Figs. 1.13 and 1.14). 86 Bloch, Montecassino in the Middle Ages, 1:154–55: “Primi na(ti) culpa trahit om(ne)s / crimina multa./ Qua rogita Chr(istu)m pro /me, o Mathee, Magistru(m). / Limina querentes S(an)c(t)i, vos conspicientes / hoc opus: ‘O dona, Sal/vator, crimina plura’, / dicite, ‘Landulfo Bu/tromili Protisebasto (sic)’. Noscite me natu(m) si/mul hic, hic et genera/tum.” Bloch’s translation reads: “The first man’s guilt drags all men into many sins. Therefore, O Matthew, beseech Christ, the Master, on my behalf. And you, who seek the threshold of the Saint, behold this work and say: ‘O forgive, Savior, Landulfus Butromilis, the Protosebastos, his many sins’. Know that I was born and baptized here.” 87 Two recent volumes address the Salerno Ivories, consisting of the same articles in English and Italian; see Dell’Acqua et al., The Salerno Ivories, and Francesca Dell’Acqua et al., Gli avori medievali di Amalfi e Salerno (Amalfi, 2015). See also the exhibition catalogue edited by Bologna, L’enigma degli avori medievali, and Braca, Gli avori medievali. Bergman, The Salerno Ivories, is still the only English-language monograph on this group of carvings.

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Notwithstanding its impressive size and scope, little concrete information exists concerning the date, place of manufacture, original location, function, artists, and patron of this group of ivories.88 Art historians have attempted, then, to contextualize this sculptural group through a comparative approach to other southern Italian ivory objects. In their luxurious material and presence in Campania, the Salerno Ivories have been associated with the Farfa Casket and the ivory pen box commissioned by Amalfitan patrons. The Farfa Casket in particular features religious imagery that connects it to the Salerno carvings with their complex iconographical ensemble of Old Testament and New Testament scenes, but the two works differ markedly in style.89 The ivories in Salerno bear a closer stylistic resemblance to carved oliphants, most of which are attributed to south Italy.90 The decorative borders of the Salerno group, consisting of vine scrolls with animals, fruit, and leaves, also resemble the decoration on the doorjambs of the Porta del Paradiso in the Cathedral of Salerno, which can be dated specifically to the years 1080–5.91 Even with these iconographic and stylistic affinities to other southern Italian artworks, the Salerno ensemble is exceptional in its grand scale and ostentatious use of ivory as well as its narrative complexity. The Salerno Ivories, then, fused the Norman characteristics of grandiosity and magnificence with the rarity and luxury of ivory as a medium favored by local patrons. The unique nature of this artistic commission raises the questions of the Salerno Ivories’ function, patron, and date. Numerous hypotheses have been put forward concerning their original placement and use, with the ivories serving as decoration on a door, a reliquary casket, a pulpit, and a retable; the most

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Jill Caskey, “Miracles and Matthew: Potential Contexts for the Salerno Ivories,” in Dell’Acqua et al., The Salerno Ivories, pp. 179–89, at p. 188. 89 Bergman, The Salerno Ivories, p. 88, argues that a wave of Byzantine influence separated the Farfa Casket from the Salerno Ivories and accounts for their divergent styles. See the discussion above for the differing styles employed on the Farfa Casket and the pen box. 90 See Shalem, Die mittelalterlichen Olifante, for the most recent and comprehensive treatment of oliphants. Rosser-Owen, “The Oliphant,” p. 35, addresses the relationship between motifs on oliphants and the Salerno Ivories. David Ebitz, “Secular to Sacred: The Transformation of an Oliphant in the Musée de Cluny,” Gesta 25, no. 1 (1986), 31–38, analyzes one of the few oliphants decorated with Christian imagery. 91 Pace, “La Cattedrale di Salerno,” pp. 206–08; idem, “Fra l’Islam e l’Occidente,” p. 613. Braca, Gli avori medievali, p. 179, does not find the visual parallels convincing.

Figure 1.13

Cathedral of Salerno, Salerno Ivories, Sacrifice of Isaac and the Blessing of Abraham (Salerno, Museo Diocesano). Courtesy of Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz—Max-Planck-Institut.

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Figure 1.14

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Cathedral of Salerno, Salerno Ivories, The Calling of Peter and Andrew (Salerno, Museo Diocesano). Courtesy of Alinari/Art Resource, ny.

likely possibilities appear to be an altar frontal or an episcopal chair.92 Dates for the ivories range from the late eleventh to the late twelfth century, all based on notoriously imprecise stylistic analysis. If one accepts the eleventh-century 92 Bergman, The Salerno Ivories, pp. 102–08, hypothesizes that the ivories formed the decoration for a set of doors in Salerno Cathedral. Pace, “La Cattedrale di Salerno,” pp. 203–05, argues for their use in an altar frontal. See most recently Ruggero Longo and Elisabetta Scirocco, “A Scenario for the Salerno Ivories: The Liturgical Furnishings of the Salerno Cathedral,” in Dell’Acqua et al., The Salerno Ivories, pp. 191–209, and Francesca Dell’Acqua, “The Hidden Sides of the Salerno Ivories: Hypotheses about the Original Object, Program, and Cultural Milieu,” in Dell’Acqua et al., The Salerno Ivories, pp. 211–39, at pp. 212–17, for the function of the ivories.

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date, then Robert Guiscard emerges as the most likely candidate for the patron of the ivories.93 In this scenario, the carvings were created in the 1080s around the time of the consecration of Salerno Cathedral. In his monograph of 1980, Robert Bergman put forward the possibility of Guiscard being the patron of the ivories, but did not pursue the question of patronage in a comprehensive manner as his analysis focused on style and iconography.94 Guiscard was closely associated with the city of Salerno, it was his capital, and he expended considerable funds to construct the new cathedral in the 1080s. At that time, Salerno was the site of a confluence of significant people and events. Robert Guiscard succeeded in conquering the city of Salerno in 1076, the pope took refuge there with Guiscard’s help, and the learned Archbishop Alfanus, with his close connections to Montecassino, was already installed as Archbishop of Salerno as of 1058. This would seem to be the perfect storm of patronage, where the reforming tendencies of Gregory vii, the theological expertise of Alfanus, and the political ambition of Guiscard coalesced to create an artwork as complex and opulent as the Salerno Ivories. As a Norman leader who ruled a non-Norman population, Guiscard’s artistic commissions could assist him in gaining the approbation of the local inhabitants by highlighting his support of the Church, devotion to Saint Matthew, and generosity to Salernitan institutions. The material chosen for the Salerno carvings, ivory, was one that carried a host of positive associations. It connected the Salerno reliefs to local modes of art patronage in ivory, from the Farfa Casket created for the wealthy merchant Maurus, to the pen box in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and potentially the dozens of oliphants and caskets with a tentative attribution to southern Italy. Ivory was thus a signature material for art patronage in Campania, and 93

Guérin, “The Tusk,” pp. 26–29; Bergman, The Salerno Ivories, p. 119; Pace, “La Cattedrale di Salerno,” p. 208; Kathrin Müller, “Old and New: Divine Revelation in the Salerno Ivories,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz 54 (2010/2012), 1–30, at p. 1; Elizabeth Corey, “The Purposeful Patron: Political Covenant in the Salerno Ivories,” Viator 40, no. 2 (2009), 55–92, at pp. 56–59; Ferdinando Bologna, “Avori medievali da Amalfi a Salerno, senza enigmi,” in Bologna, L’enigma degli avori medievali, 1:21–97, at p. 44. Francesca Dell’Acqua, “‘Il grande foglio del mare’: Gli avori di Salerno e il Mediterraneo medievale,” Rassegna storica salernitana 26, no. 50 (2008), 103–24, at pp. 106–07, 115, and Braca, Gli avori medievali, pp. 171, 193, 205, argue for a twelfth-century date with Roger ii as the patron. Roger ii had established a strong tradition of artistic patronage on the island of Sicily, but seems to have had little interest in the mainland. Most recently Dell’Acqua, “The Hidden Sides,” p. 219, has pushed the dating of the Salerno Ivories even later to the 1180s–90s. 94 Bergman, The Salerno Ivories, discusses the iconography of the carvings in Chapters 1 and 2, pp. 11–75, and style and date in Chapter 3, pp. 76–91.

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it was in this region that the origin of the ivory would have been understood and appreciated as well. Guiscard himself donated an ivory casket to the Monastery of Montecassino, associating himself with the prevailing local style.95 Carved ivory circulated through Norman territories across Europe, and William the Conqueror and other Norman secular and religious leaders possessed oliphants which they donated to religious institutions.96 The use of this luxury material places the Salerno Ivories squarely within the parameters of southern Italian art patronage, but the extended cycle of religious imagery most forcefully distinguishes the Salerno panels from other Campanian ivories. The panels are generally rectangular with two scenes placed on each piece of ivory; the Old Testament scenes are oriented horizontally while the New Testament images are arranged vertically. The imagery is not comprehensive in its treatment of the biblical narratives and concentrates on a few select figures and stories. Though no one overarching theme connects the extensive Old and New Testament narratives, several complementary thematic threads combine to address Norman political and religious concerns. In the ivories, the theme of the God-given basis of Norman rule in the Old Testament scenes manifested Norman political legitimacy while the New Testament narratives foregrounded the idea of apostolicity that elevated the city’s patron saint and celebrated Salerno as a new Rome. The Old Testament panels depict scenes from Genesis and Exodus and focus on the Creation, Expulsion from Paradise, and the stories of important patriarchs.97 The images thus depict the suffering caused by humanity’s sin, but the redemption offered through the righteous leadership of figures like Abraham, Noah, and Moses. Great emphasis is placed as well on the close interaction between these divinely chosen leaders and God himself, and every Old Testament panel shows God or the hand of God interacting directly with humanity and guiding the leaders of the Chosen People. This focus on patriarchs and their close relationship with God has been interpreted as a political statement about the rule of the Normans in south Italy. Elizabeth Corey has argued that the Normans associated themselves with Abraham in particular as the model 95 Bergman, The Salerno Ivories, p. 119; Leo of Ostia, Chronica Monasterii Casinensis, iii, 58, p. 439, mentioned a “scrinium eburneum magnum” given by Guiscard to Desiderius’ monastery. 96 Rosser-Owen, “The Oliphant,” pp. 49–50; Pace, “Fra l’Islam e l’Occidente,” p. 618; Shalem, The Oliphant, pp. 104–05. 97 For an extended analysis of the Old Testament cycle, see Braca, Gli avori medievali, pp. 25–95.

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of a divinely sanctioned ruler (Fig. 1.13).98 This characterization of the Normans­ as chosen by God is echoed in Norman chronicles and biographies, particularly those of Amatus of Montecassino and Geoffrey Malaterra.99 Abraham was not a king, and Corey argues that the choice of a patriarch as a role model, rather than kings like Solomon or David, was deliberate. Abraham was the pious leader of a nation favored by God and he presented an effective prototype for Guiscard’s rule in his newly consolidated Italian territories. Graham Loud has argued that one of the reasons for Guiscard’s tense relationship with the papacy was the Norman belief that their right to rule came directly from God and not through the ecclesiastical authority of the pope.100 The close relationship established between God and the patriarchs in the Salerno Ivories could visualize the direct concession of worldly power on the Normans and divine approbation for their dominion over southern Italy. If Guiscard commissioned the ivories at the time of the cathedral construction, then the iconographic program would have been developed at a pivotal moment in relations between the Normans and the papacy. Gregory vii found himself in a dire situation where he needed Norman assistance to protect him from the Emperor Henry iv. The sanction of and covenant with God represented in the Old Testament panels celebrated the ascendant position the Normans had achieved over the papacy as of 1084. Though Gregory continued to call for the primacy of ecclesiastical authority over secular rulers concerning lay investiture from his new seat of power in Salerno, he directed this critique towards the German emperor and not his Norman host and defender, Robert Guiscard.101 The New Testament panels include a cycle of scenes from the Nativity and Infancy of Christ, Christ’s Teaching and Miracles, as well as Passion scenes. In the Salerno Ivories, the apostles play an important role, as seen in representations of Doubting Thomas, the Last Supper, and The Washing of the Apostles’ Feet. Saint Peter and his brother are particularly prominent as seen in the plaque representing their calling by Christ (Fig. 1.14). Ten small reliefs among 98

Corey, “Purposeful Patron,” pp. 79–84; see also Müller, “Old and New,” p. 9, for her objections to Corey’s argument. 99 Corey, “Purposeful Patron,” pp. 66–70. 100 Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard, pp. 207–08. 101 Corey, “The Purposeful Patron,” pp. 62, 66, argues that the pope might have seen the covenant imagery as an allusion to the oaths of fealty that Robert Guiscard had sworn to him. The openness of the iconography would allow for both readings, providing narratives justifying either secular or ecclesiastical power depending on the interests of the viewer.

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the ivories depict bust-length portraits of apostles, and Peter is readily recognizable holding his keys. The emphasis on Saint Peter in the New Testament scenes has been interpreted as a reference to Church Reform.102 The presence of the pope in Salerno at the time of the ivories’ conception and creation could explain the foregrounding of Peter, demonstrating Guiscard’s interest in supporting the papacy and highlighting the role of Salerno as the seat of papal power through the presence of Pope Gregory vii. The emphasis on the apostles also provided a connection to the apostolic patron of the cathedral, Saint Matthew. Guiscard’s devotion to Matthew served as the impetus for the Duomo’s construction as the Norman duke wished to honor the patron saint of the city whose relics had recently been rediscovered. The duke displayed his veneration of the apostle by carrying the saint’s relics with him on campaign, and the New Testament imagery that focused on Christ’s ministry and miracles would transport viewers to the apostolic age and foreground the close connection between Christ and his followers. Jill Caskey has also argued recently that miraculous healing was a theme that connected the ivories’ iconography with Saint Matthew.103 Several New Testament scenes depict Christ performing miracles of healing, exercising a thaumaturgical power that Matthew shared as well. Norman sources recount the saint’s miracles and the city of Salerno itself was famed as a center for the study of medicine; the theme of healing, then, was one that had particular resonance in Guiscard’s capital city. Caskey has hypothesized that the New Testament ivories may have been displayed in the crypt of the cathedral where Matthew’s relics were housed; pilgrims coming to Salerno in hopes of miraculous cures could have made the connection between the healing powers of Christ in the ivory scenes and those of the patron saint of the cathedral and city himself.104 Often overlooked in the scholarship on art patronage in south Italy and tainted by their reputation as morally challenged mercenaries raiding and pillaging their way through Campania, Apulia, and Sicily, the Normans facilitated their assimilation into Campanian culture by adopting and emulating the patronage traditions established by local wealthy merchants. These patrons displayed a taste for luxurious materials imported from the Muslim world and Byzantine territories that showcased their international connections 102 Corey, “Purposeful Patron,” p. 56. Müller, “Old and New,” pp. 18–23, also claims that the Old Testament imagery could allude to the Church Reform movement. See also Braca, Gli avori medievali, p. 144, for the association of the Salerno Ivories with eleventh-century reform. 103 Caskey, “Miracles and Matthew.” 104 Ibid., pp. 183, 187–89.

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and their involvement in political and economic affairs across the Mediterranean. By the time the Normans arrived in the eleventh century, Campanian merchants had been involved in international trade for centuries; their level of Mediterranean knowledge and belonging was high, secure as they were in commercial, social, and political networks across the sea. Their artistic patronage celebrated these connections in the use of luxury materials whose monetary value was recognized universally in the territories where they traded. The commissions of Campanian merchants also foregrounded the artistic sophistication of Byzantium as these works employed Byzantine craftsmen, styles, techniques, and forms transmitted directly from the empire’s capital. So, references to social inclusion and wealth derived from Mediterranean commerce defined artworks created for these southern Italian traders, intent as they were on maintaining the international connections so essential to their livelihood. Unlike the Campanian elite, the Normans were outsiders to Mediterranean politics and their territorial ambitions and aggressive military campaigns disrupted the very social and economic networks their new subjects assiduously protected and nurtured across the sea. In their artistic patronage, the Normans displayed their absorption into local and pan-Mediterranean culture by employing the same materials, techniques, and styles as the merchant elite. The use of ivory and bronze in art objects housed in the cathedral display an aesthetic appreciation of luxurious materials and fine craftsmanship. Another facet of Norman visual culture, however, was less inclusive, defining these foreign warriors through opposition to and superiority over past and foreign cultures. The use of ancient Roman spolia placed the Normans in an illustrious lineage of great rulers and created a visual link to antiquity. Their romanitas could be triumphalist, hailing victories over imperial foes, or more conciliatory, creating connections with Christian Rome and the papacy. Though Norman rulers employed different types of spolia to manifest social and economic integration or political domination in the Mediterranean, they were consistent in their channeling of enormous wealth to monumental and extravagant artworks that highlighted the magnificence of the ruler and the splendor of the cities under his control. The eclectic and synthetic artistic style devised by Norman patrons accumulated cultural references that emphasized continuity with the past, but asserted the centrality of the Normans in contemporary politics and culture.

chapter 2

Emulation of and Appropriation from Byzantium in Venetian Visual Culture Introduction Venice, like the Campanian mercantile cities, had a longstanding presence in the Mediterranean beginning in the ninth century, as the city’s merchant warriors conducted trade and supplied the fleet for Byzantine military expeditions. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Venice created a distinctive nexus of commerce, military conflict, and art patronage in which the Byzantine Empire played a dominant role. Though the Venetians traded throughout the Mediterranean, their commercial interests focused on the eastern part of the sea and Byzantium in particular. From the ninth to the eleventh century, Venetian interaction with the Greeks had been characterized by admiration, emulation, and cooperation similar to that shown by the Campanians and particularly the citizens of Amalfi. However, a relationship with Byzantium that had been unfailingly positive and profitable for centuries became overtly antagonistic in the twelfth century, as Venice was no longer content to be the obedient subordinate of the Greeks and strove to achieve parity with this great empire. In this time period, the Venetian attitude towards their Byzantine allies and former overlords thus came to resemble that of the Normans, who sought to conquer and possess the empire they so admired. Venetian visual culture conveyed the shifting and volatile nature of this relationship with Byzantium through various types of appropriation. Relics stolen from the Byzantine Empire were incorporated into architectural contexts replete with spolia, combining appropriated Byzantine building materials with styles, techniques, and craftsmen brought from the Greek capital and the provinces. Objects appropriated through theft were combined with commercial goods in visually dense spoliate decorative ensembles to display the source of Venice’s increasing dominance in the eastern Mediterranean: military prowess and extensive maritime trade. These relic thefts and the decoration of the churches that housed them took place at a critical period of Venetian identity formation as the city redefined its relationship with Byzantium, transforming itself from a subordinate to a superior.1 Venice based its Mediterranean 1 Agostino Pertusi, “Venezia e Bisanzio: 1000–1204,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 33 (1979), 1–22, at p. 17. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004360808_004

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b­ elonging on peaceful commerce with all cultures along the sea, particularly Muslim territories on the eastern shores. Its Mediterranean knowing, its essential self-image, however, was defined through the lens of Byzantine culture. Venetian ambivalence towards this great empire manifested itself in visual displays that juxtaposed spoils from military conflicts with cultural appropriations based on Venice’s respect and admiration of Byzantine art. Byzantium was the culture that mattered in Venice and the form and decoration of Venetian churches displayed the city’s interest in equaling and ultimately surpassing the Greeks in economic prosperity, sanctity, and grandiose architectural constructions.

Conflict, Trade, and the Venetian Presence in the Eastern Mediterranean

Though Venice’s relationship with Byzantium was central for the city’s economic and political ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean, the Venetians also conducted trade with and military campaigns against Muslim polities beginning in the ninth century. If one takes the story of the translatio of Saint Mark’s relics at face value, the two merchants responsible for the relic theft were trading in Alexandria in defiance of the papal prohibition on commerce with Muslim territories. This and subsequent trade bans paradoxically provide the most compelling evidence for flourishing commercial relations with Muslim lands across the Mediterranean.2 At the same time as the relic theft, the Venetians were participating with the Byzantines in expeditions in the eastern Mediterranean to keep Muslim powers from establishing a presence along

2 For the papal boycotts and bans on trade with Muslim territories, see David Jacoby, “The Supply of War Materials to Egypt in the Crusader Period,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 25 (2001), 102–32; Sophia Menache, “Papal Attempts at a Commercial Boycott of the Muslims in the Crusader Period,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 63, no. 2 (2012), 236–59. See also Thomas Madden, “Venice, the Papacy and the Crusades before 1204,” in The Medieval Crusade, ed. Susan Ridyard (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 85–95, at pp. 88–89; Donald Nicol, Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 24, 37; Maria Nallino, “Il mondo arabo e Venezia fino alle crociate,” in Venezia del Mille (Florence, 1965), pp. 163–81, at pp. 166–67. The late eleventh/early twelfth narrative of the theft of Mark’s relics, the Translatio Santi Marci, refers to the prohibition on visiting Muslim lands that was in place when the Venetian merchants traveled to Alexandria and stole the saint’s body in 827; see Giorgio Fedalto and Luigi Andrea Berto, eds., Chronica/Chronache (Rome, 2003), pp. 468–85, at pp. 472–73, 482–83.

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the Adriatic.3 After a long hiatus, Venice resumed military expeditions against Muslim territories in the context of the First Crusade. The Venetians came late to the campaigns in the Levant, a circumstance that has been interpreted as a lack of crusader zeal.4 They certainly had much to lose by alienating their trading partners through crusade initiatives; the Emperor Alexius I Comnenus, for example, attempted to discourage them from participating in the Holy Land campaigns. Venetian merchants also frequented Islamic ports, particularly those of Egypt, on the eve of the First Crusade, but Venice had already combined military campaigns against and lucrative commercial exchange with Muslim territories in the past with no negative repercussions. An equilibrium was achieved then between obedience to the pope in conducting crusade and ignoring the economic boycott against Muslim territories advocated by the papacy, balancing religious devotion and material gain.5 Venice’s close relationship with Byzantium developed early in the Middle Ages as the city was first a Byzantine province, then a protectorate and a perennially staunch ally.6 The two powers established a reciprocal relationship by the ninth century in which Venice assisted the empire in naval expeditions and received important economic concessions in return. Venice obtained its first significant trade privileges in Byzantium in a chrysobull, or imperial decree, of 992, which gave it advantages over its Italian commercial rival Amalfi. The document that cemented Venetian presence in Constantinople, however, was the chrysobull granted by Alexius Comnenus in 1082, conceded in the context of military campaigns against the Normans.7 In 1080 the Norman Duke Robert 3 For these early Venetian expeditions against Muslims in the Mediterranean, see John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, ed. Luigi Andrea Berto (Bologna, 1999), pp. 124–27, 132–35, 170–71; Esther Pastorello, ed., Andreae Danduli Ducis Venetiarum Chronica per extensum descripta: aa 46–1280 d.C. (Bologna, 1938), pp. 146, 150, 152–54, 157–59, 202 [hereafter Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta]; Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, pp. 27, 34; Nallino, “Il mondo arabo,” pp. 163, 171–74. 4 See particularly Donald Queller and Irene Katele, “Venice and the Conquest of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,” Studi veneziani 12 (1986), 15–43. See also Elena Bellomo, “Gerusalemme, Terrasanta e Crociata nelle memorie agiografiche veneziane (1116–c.1135): note circa le translationes dei santi Nicola e Isidoro,” Quaderni di storia religiosa 17 (2010), 63–85, at pp. 70–71. 5 Thomas Madden, Venice: A New History (New York, 2012), pp. 180–81; Christopher Marshall, “The crusading motivation of the Italian city republics in the Latin East, 1096–1104,” in The Experience of Crusading, Volume One: Western Approaches, eds. Marcus Bull and Norman Housley (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 60–79, at pp. 60–2. 6 See in general Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, for an exhaustive study of this relationship. 7 Dafni Penna, The Byzantine Imperial Acts to Venice, Pisa and Genoa, 10th–12th Centuries (The Hague, 2012), pp. 26–34; Marco Pozza and Giorgio Ravegnani, I trattati con Bisanzio, 992–1198

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Guiscard had turned his attention to the Byzantine Empire and sought to capture Byzantine territories along the Adriatic coast and perhaps even conquer the capital of Constantinople itself.8 Both the Byzantines and the Venetians saw this aggression as a threat to their territories and the two allies cooperated to thwart the Norman expedition. In recompense for their service to the empire, the Venetians received far-ranging and highly advantageous commercial privileges in Byzantium that included great freedom of trade, a permanent colony in the capital, and exemption from various taxes and duties. Through the chrysobull of 1082, Venice enjoyed a virtual monopoly on commerce with Byzantium and eclipsed its Italian maritime rivals. At the death of Alexius Comnenus in 1118, the Venetian republic was intent upon renewing these privileges, but the new emperor, John ii Comnenus, was reluctant to confirm them. In retaliation against the ruler’s recalcitrance, the Venetian fleet conducted several punitive raids on Byzantine islands in the Aegean and Ionian Seas as well as mainland territories. The Venetians attacked Rhodes, Corfu, Chios, and Cephalonia in the course of these offensives, and took saints’ relics as plunder of war.9 In contrast to Venice’s successful model of conducting military campaigns against Muslim polities to assist allies and receive trade privileges, this more aggressive policy saw the Venetian fleet threaten commercial partners in order to coerce them into renewing concessions. The pillaging of Byzantine territories appeared to have had its intended effect, as the Byzantine emperor issued a chyrsobull in 1126 that essentially renewed the agreement of 1082.10 For the next twenty years the two powers maintained an equilibrium that was once again disrupted by the Normans at

(Venice, 1993), pp. 27–45; Giorgio Ravegnani, “Il commercio veneziano nell’Impero bizantino,” in Amalfi, Genova, Pisa e Venezia: il commercio con Costantinopoli e il vicino Oriente nel secolo xii, ed. Ottavio Banti (Pisa, 1998), pp. 55–75, at pp. 55–57; David Jacoby, “Italian Privileges and Trade in Byzantium before the Fourth Crusade: A Reconsideration,” Anuario de estudios medievales 24 (1994), 349–69, at pp. 349–52; Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, pp. 59–62. See Peter Frankopan, “Byzantine Trade Privileges to Venice in the eleventh century: the chrysobull of 1092,” Journal of Medieval History 30, no. 2 (2004), 135–60, for a redating of the chrysobull. 8 Guiscard’s campaign and his imperial ambitions are discussed in detail in Chapter 1 above. 9 Jonathan Riley-Smith, “The Venetian Crusade of 1122–4,” in I comuni italiani nel regno crociato di Gerusalemme, eds. Gabriella Airaldi and Benjamin Kedar (Genoa, 1986), pp. 339–50, at p. 339; Silvano Borsari, Venezia e Bisanzio nel xii secolo: i rapporti economici (Venice, 1988), p. 18. 10 Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, p. 80; Penna, The Byzantine Imperial Acts, pp. 35–38; Pozza and Ravegnani, I trattati con Bisanzio, pp. 47–56.

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the time of the Second Crusade. In the tradition of his Norman predecessors, King Roger ii of Sicily undertook an expedition against Byzantium. Once again the Byzantines requested Venice’s assistance with the promise of financial reward. When besieging the Norman controlled island of Corfu, however, the two allies turned on one other; the Venetians seized the emperor’s flagship, the Byzantines accused Venice’s warriors of acting like pirates, and a centurieslong partnership disintegrated.11 In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, then, Venice’s relationship with Muslim powers was stable and mutual beneficial, if not always peaceful; the modus vivendi established allowed for commerce and conflict to exist in a delicate counterpoise. It was Venice’s interaction with Byzantium that was volatile and in flux, as a fruitful political and economic partnership gave way to commercial competition and aggressive attacks on the maritime republic’s former ally. The Venetians at this time constructed the Greek empire as a foreign and antagonistic culture from which they appropriated cultural artifacts to define themselves as superior to their former masters.

Appropriated Relics from Byzantium

The centerpiece of Venice’s aesthetic of appropriation was the display of relics stolen from Byzantium in the city’s religious structures. The Venetian tradition of pious larceny began in the ninth century with the translatio of Mark’s relics from the Muslim controlled city of Alexandria, a theft recorded for posterity in an eleventh-century text. Both the furtum and its accompanying narrative e­ stablished a template for subsequent translationes as well as the moral ­justification for the illicit activities that generally accompanied such thefts.12 The perpetrators of Mark’s relic theft were two merchants from Venice who 11 Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, p. 87; Borsari, Venezia e Bisanzio nel xii secolo, p. 18. Greek sources indicate that Byzantine opinion turned against the Venetians because of their arrogance; see Ravegnani, “Il commercio veneziano,” pp. 57–58, who notes that the theft of the relics of Saint Stephen was considered proof of the Venetians’ arrogant attitude. See also Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, pp. 88–90. Byzantine authors such as John Kinnamos characterized the Venetians as malicious and stubborn; see Charles M. Brand, ed. and trans., Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus by John Kinnamos (New York, 1976), p. 130. Niketas Choniates used even harsher words to describe the Venetians, particularly the doge Enrico Dandolo; see Harry J. Magoulias, ed. and trans., O City of Byzantium, Annals of Niketas Choniates (Detroit, 1984), pp. 97, 295. 12 Fedalto and Berto, eds., Chronica/Chronache, pp. 468–85, provide an edition and translation of the Translatio Sancti Marci. See also the earlier edition by Norman McCleary, “Note storiche ed archeologiche sul testo della ‘Translatio Sancti Marci’,” Memorie storiche

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had sailed to Alexandria for commercial purposes. There the merchants saw the effects of the cruel Muslim ruler whose rapacity for marble threatened the church where Mark’s body resided. The thieves ingratiated themselves with the shrine’s custodian and smuggled the body out of the church as the saint exuded a strong and beautiful odor. A novel element in the translatio narrative was the camouflaging of the body of Saint Mark with pork to deter the Muslim customs officials from investigating Venetian merchandise. Having secured their prize, the traders returned to Venice. There the doge personally welcomed the merchants upon their arrival and then constructed a special chapel for Mark’s remains within the ducal church. In the saint’s close connection to the doge and his seat of power, Mark became the symbol of the Venetian state and the patron saint of the city. Additional relic translationes following the example of Saint Mark’s theft took place during the first half of the twelfth century across the eastern Mediterranean. The Venetians first stole the remains of Saint Nicholas from Myra in 1100 and recorded their exploits in a translatio narrative.13 In what was to become the standard Venetian modus operandi, the relic seekers ransacked the church and tortured the custodians in the search for holy bodies. They then compensated the guardians of the shrine for the damage inflicted, and returned home in triumph with their sacred plunder. Once in Venice, the relics of Saint Nicholas were placed in the church of San Nicolò di Lido.14 In quick forogiuliesi 27–29 (1931–33), 223–64. See also Patrick Geary, Furta sacra: Theft of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, 1990), pp. 88–94. 13 The translatio took place in the early twelfth century and was recorded by an anonymous monk from the Venetian Monastery of San Nicolò di Lido in the Historia de translatione, written around 1116; Anonymous Monk of Lido, Historia de translatione sanctorum magni Nicolae terra marique miraculis gloriosi eiusdem avunculi alterius Nicolai, Theodorique martyris pretiosi, in Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens occidentaux, vol. 5 (Paris, 1895), pp. 253–92 [hereafter Historia de translatione]. Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, p. 222, also records the theft of Nicholas’ relics. For a general discussion of this and the subsequent translationes of other saints from the east, see Giorgio Cracco, “Santità straniera in terra veneta (Secc. xi–xii),” in Les fonctions des saints dans le monde occidental (IIIe-XIIIe siècle): actes du colloque (Rome, 1991), pp. 447–65. 14 Giorgio Cracco, “I testi agiografici: religione e politica nella Venezia del Mille,” in Storia di Venezia: dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, 9 vols. (Rome, 1992), 1:923–61, at p. 947; Antonio Niero, “Reliquie e corpi dei santi,” in Culto dei santi a Venezia, eds. Silvio Tramontin et al. (Venice, 1965), pp. 181–208, at p. 195; Hannelore Zug Tucci, “Negociare in omnibus partibus per terram et per aquam: il mercante veneziano,” in Mercati e mercanti nell’alto medioevo: l’area euroasiatica e l’area mediterranea (Spoleto, 1993), pp. 51–79, at p. 77. For the structure, see Richard Goy, Venice: An Architectural Guide (New Haven, 2010), pp. 466–47.

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succession, other saints joined Mark and Nicholas in Venice’s Christian pantheon. The Venetians appropriated Saint Stephen the Protomartyr’s remains from Constantinople in 1110, and housed them in the Monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore.15 Isidore arrived next, taken from the island of Chios in 1125, and was honored with a chapel in the Basilica of San Marco.16 In the last of these twelfth-century furta sacra, Venetian mariners brought Saint Donatus from Cephalonia in 1125 as well as Saint Anianus from Alexandria in 1128.17 The Venetians’ commercial and political interests in the eastern Mediterranean gave them ready access to the treasure trove of relics there, and the idea of movement from east to west permeated the twelfth-century translatio narratives.18 The texts all concurred that the east had had its opportunity to house and venerate these relics properly, but failed in its duty to safeguard such holy treasures. It was justifiable, then, that the relics should travel west to receive the devotion they deserved. Venice portrayed itself as the heir to the east, challenging Constantinople in the twelfth century through the sanctity of the holy bodies it possessed.19 Only Mark and his disciple Anianus were taken from Muslim controlled territories; all the other thefts came at the hands of eastern Christians. Patrick Geary has noted that the mechanisms for moving relics “depended on the type of relationship the recipient desired to establish

15

Flaminio Corner, ed., Ecclesiae Venetae antiquis monumentis nunc etiam primum editis illustratae ac in decades distributae, viii (Venice, 1749), pp. 96–110, provides an edition of Stephen’s translatio, entitled “De translatione S. Prothomartyris Stephani de Constantinopoli in Venetias” [hereafter De translatione S. Prothomartyris]. Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, p. 227, also describes the relic theft. See also Francesco Veronese, “Una devozione nata sul mare: la translatio di Santo Stefano da Costantinopoli a Venezia,” in Dio, il mare e gli uomini, ed. Luciano Fanin (Verona, 2008), pp. 123–54, and Cracco, “I testi agiografici,” pp. 951–54, for the translatio of Stephen, though the two authors do not agree on the date of the text. 16 Cerbano Cerbani, Translatio mirifici martyris Isidori a Chio insula in civitatem Venetam, Jun. 1125, in Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens occidentaux, vol. 5, (Paris, 1895), pp. 321–34. Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, p. 234, also records the theft of Isidore’s relics. 17 See Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, pp. 222, 227, 229, 234, 236, for references to relics. See also Antonio Rigon, “Devozione di lungo corso: lo scalo genovese,” in Genova, Venezia, il Levante nei secoli xii–xiv, eds. Gherardo Ortalli and Dino Puncuh (Venice, 2001), pp. 395–412, at pp. 399–400; Cracco, “I testi agiografici,” p. 954. 18 De translatione S. Prothomartyris, p. 103; Cerbani, Translatio mirifici martyris Isidori, p. 327. 19 Cerbani, Translatio mirifici martyris Isidori, p. 327. See also Rigon, “Devozione di lungo corso,” pp. 400, 405; Cracco, “I testi agiografici,” p. 954.

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with the previous owner.”20 Relic theft, then, defined Venice’s relationship with Byzantium in an overwhelmingly hostile manner, with violent appropriation symbolizing political and cultural supersession. The saints also had significant connections to commerce as merchants were responsible for the first, precedent-setting theft of Mark. Holy bodies could be understood as commodities even though the relic itself had little intrinsic worth. Value needed to be determined and negotiated in the new context, and the very act of theft indicated that the relics were worth stealing.21 The Venetians also conducted financial transactions in the case of the thefts of Nicholas and Stephen. Presented as recompense for damage during the search for the saints’ remains, Venice’s warriors offered one hundred gold bezants to Nicholas’ custodians and five hundred to those who guarded Stephen’s body.22 Though relics were invaluable, that is intrinsically valueless but also beyond valuation, they could be assigned concrete monetary worth and circulate in the commodity realm as they moved across the Mediterranean. The translatio narratives highlighted the violent seizure of sacred property from the Byzantines in an antagonistic and aggressive manner. The theft of relics enhanced their symbolic value and elevated the standing of the aggressor through such an audacious act. The status of the victim was also a significant factor and plunder seized from a formidable enemy made the transfer of prestige all the more meaningful.23 The relic thefts were designed to humiliate the Venetians’ arch enemy, demonstrating how simple it was to relieve the Byzantines of their sacred treasures and how unfit they were to possess such holy bodies. These audacious thefts tipped the balance of power in Venice’s favor. In causing harm to their enemy, the Venetians enhanced their status and subordinated symbolically a great Mediterranean empire.

Relics, Spoils, and Spolia in Venetian Art and Architecture

Though the Venetian furta sacra were recorded in historical and hagiographical sources, there was always the danger that the act of theft and the relics 20

21 22 23

Patrick Geary, “Sacred Commodities: The circulation of medieval relics,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 169–91, at p. 189. Geary, “Sacred Commodities,” pp. 186–87; Cracco, “Santità straniera,” p. 451. Historia de translatione, p. 268; De translatione S. Prothomartyris, p. 103. Andrew Cowell, The Medieval Warrior Aristocracy: Gifts, Violence, Performance, and the Sacred (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 54–55, 59–60.

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taken as spoils would be forgotten over time. Public display of the stolen saints, however, could perpetuate their memory and the violence that brought them to ­Venice.24 Thus, once these Byzantine trophies of war arrived in Venice, they were incorporated into architectural contexts that featured other material appropriations from Byzantium to concretize the political power gained at the Greeks’ expense. Just as saints’ relics were stolen from the east to be displayed ostentatiously in Venice, Venetian churches accumulated and juxtaposed styles, techniques, and materials from the Byzantine Empire in order to i­ dentify ­Venice as a political equal and worthy successor to this formidable Mediterranean power. Byzantine spolia and relics as spoils of war were mutually reinforcing in establishing the concept of translatio imperii.25 The appropriated architectural elements from Byzantium authenticated the relics by providing a fitting and honorable setting for the holy remains taken from territories under Byzantine control. The saints themselves, almost all venerable early Christian martyrs, sanctified the structures in which they were housed through their holy presence. The Byzantine style churches of Venice with their eastern saints recreated Byzantium on Venetian soil, celebrating the movement of appropriated objects from east to west, while adding specifically western elements to the structures to display the superiority of their new resting place. At a time when Venice was attempting to redefine its relationship with Byzantium, stolen relics and Byzantine spolia visualized a new Mediterranean identity for the city that combined wealth from maritime trade with military conflict to enhance political legitimacy and challenge Byzantine cultural supremacy. Several Venetian churches were chosen to house the stolen relics so assiduously catalogued in translatio narratives and historical chronicles, but few of these religious structures retain their medieval appearance. All traces of medieval structures at San Giorgio Maggiore and San Nicolò di Lido have disappeared as both were remodeled in the Baroque period. The only extant twelfth-century church associated with a translatio from the same century is

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Tonio Hölscher, “The Transformation of Victory into Power: From Event to Structure,” in Representations of War in Ancient Rome, eds. Sheila Dillon and Katherine Welch (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 27–67, at pp. 30–32, 35. David Perry, Sacred Plunder: Venice and the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade (University Park, pa, 2015), pp. 149–50. For spolia and relics as spoils working in tandem, see Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen, “Spolia as Relics? Relics as Spoils?: The Meaning and Function of Spolia in Western Medieval Reliquaries,” in Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond, eds. Cynthia Hahn and Holger Klein (Washington, dc, 2015), pp. 173–92, at pp. 174–76, 187, 192.

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Santi Maria e Donato on the island of Murano.26 Andrea Dandolo discussed the translatio of Saint Donatus in his Chronica, noting that the Venetians took the bishop’s body from Cephalonia in 1125 during a Holy Land crusade.27 Immediately after the arrival of the saint’s relics, renovation of the Murano structure began and Saint Donatus joined the Virgin Mary as patron of the church. The church of Santi Maria e Donato honored an eastern saint in a hybrid architectural structure combining spoliate decoration and Byzantine forms, enhanced by western European visual elements.28 The building is made of brick and the exterior ornament features patterned brickwork similar to decoration on Middle Byzantine churches (Fig.  2.1). Marble decorative elements create a visual contrast with the brick and consist of reused ancient and medieval objects. The exterior apse facing the lagoon possesses the densest decoration with two superimposed arcades of brick with columns and capitals of marble. Triangular forms decorated with vegetal patterns are combined with marble relief plaques that may have ornamented an earlier church on the site. The basilica plan interior is divided into three aisles by spolia columns and capitals, leading to the apse decorated with a gold-ground mosaic of the Theotokos (Fig. 2.2).29 The Virgin Mary is identified as the Mother of God through a Greek inscription, while a Latin text decorates the arch above the apse. Though the mosaic in situ probably dates to the thirteenth century, it is likely a faithful copy of the twelfth-century apse decoration. On both the interior and interior, European Romanesque forms and decorative elements counterbalanced eastern architectural traditions, creating an eclectic mix of styles and materials. Latin texts accompany Greek mosaics and Byzantine style brick and marble decoration adorns a basilica plan church. 26

Deborah Howard, The Architectural History of Venice, revised edition (New Haven, 2002), pp. 13–14; Goy, Venice: An Architectural Guide, pp. 449–50; Ennio Concina, A History of Venetian Architecture (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 42–45; Alessandra Boccato, Chiese di Venezia (Verona, 2010), pp. 279–82; Giovanna Valenzano, “L’architettura ecclesiastica tra xi e xii secolo,” in Storia dell’architettura nel Veneto: l’altomedioevo e il romanico, ed. Jürgen Schulz (Venice, 2009), pp. 90–193, at pp. 134–37. 27 Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, p. 236. Saint Donatus was Bishop of Evorea in Epirus, Greece; see William Granger Ryan, trans., Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1993), 2:59–61, for his vita. 28 Boccato, Chiese di Venezia, p. 279. 29 An ancient sarcophagus was also used as a paving stone in the church and is now placed in the chapel of Santa Filomena; see Myriam Pilutti Namer, “Reimpiego e rilavorazione di materiali antichi nella Venezia medievale: alcuni esempi,” in Riuso di monumenti e reimpiego di materiali antichi in età postclassica: il caso della Venetia, ed. Giuseppe Cuscito (Trieste, 2012), pp. 159–77, at pp. 169–72.

Figure 2.1 Murano, Santi Maria e Donato, general exterior view. Courtesy of Joel Zysman.

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Figure 2.2 Santi Maria e Donato, interior nave. Courtesy of Joel Zysman.

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Santi Maria e Donato thus was meant to look Byzantine, but with western embellishments and improvements. This counterbalance between east and west in the structure’s form connects it to the relics it contains. As a saint stolen from Greek territories by Venetian crusaders and brought to the west so that he might receive proper veneration there, the cult of Saint Donatus was enhanced and renewed on western soil. This and other Venetian churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries display an aesthetic of appropriation consisting of a complex interplay of reused building elements and stolen relics, spolia and spoils. The dialogue between the two types of appropriated objects addressed key concerns for defining a Venetian Mediterranean identity, alluding to issues of provenance and pedigree, means of acquisition, and symbolic signification. Like the relationship between a relic and its reliquary container, the architectural spolia and plundered relics were mutually reinforcing, authenticating one another as treasures from the east.30 The holiness of the relic sanctified the church as its reliquary, and the spoliate columns, capitals, and sculpted panels could be understood as contact relics in their proximity to Donatus’ remains. As most relics were only displayed on important feast days, the spolia could act as a substitute for the hidden body of the saint, demonstrating that the church was a reservoir of great sanctity. Saint Donatus, however, was not well known in the west, and the theft of his relics indicated to a new western audience that he was a saint worth stealing. The spoliate decoration on the church of Santi Maria e Donato could play a similar role of authentication. The origin of the spolia in the east, as well as their age and beauty, attested to the legitimacy of the relic they surrounded.31 From this perspective, the relic came to be defined by its container and the ornate Byzantine style setting for Donatus’ remains enhanced the saint’s sanctity and worth.32 The juxtaposition of spolia and spoils highlighted the tension between their means of acquisition while celebrating Venice’s two main maritime activities: military campaigns and international commerce. The relics were war plunder, 30

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Westermann-Angerhausen, “Spolia as Relics? Relics as Spoils?” pp. 174, 180, 192; Jás Elsner, “From the Culture of Spolia to the Cult of Relics: The Arch of Constantine and the Genesis of Late Antique Forms,” Papers of the British School at Rome 68 (2000), 149–84, at pp. 158–60, 162, 169. Westermann-Angerhausen, “Spolia as Relics?” pp. 176, 180. See Conrad Rudolph, The “Things of Greater Importance”: Bernard of Clairvaux’s Apologia and the Medieval Attitude Toward Art (Philadelphia, 1990), pp. 66–69, 280–81, for Bernard of Clairvaux’s understanding of the legitimating power of precious reliquaries. Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York, 2010), pp. 178, 183.

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taken from a Byzantine enemy during a raid on hostile territories. The saint’s body then was a trophy of war, a symbol of Venetian victory over a powerful and threatening enemy.33 By extension, the architectural spolia could also be construed as plunder, and the entire church with its Byzantine materials, styles, and forms was transformed into a victory monument. The spoliate building materials, however, were more likely the products of commerce than plunder of war, and their role as commodities could also enhance the understanding of Donatus’ relics.34 The generous compensation provided by the Venetians for other stolen relics indicated their significance as commercial objects and the actual monetary value of spolia and spoils elevated their symbolic worth. The potent combination of eastern objects, both purchased and stolen, appositely displayed the intertwining of conflict and commerce on which the Venetians based their prosperity and fame in the twelfth century. The structure that most effectively indexed Venice’s assimilation and adaptation of Byzantine culture, however, was the Basilica of San Marco. Though the exterior was completely transformed in the thirteenth century, the interior preserves its eleventh and twelfth-century decoration and clearly displays the role Byzantium played as a cultural and artistic model (Fig. 2.3).35 The first San Marco was built soon after Mark’s relics arrived in Venice in 829 ad and a subsequent rebuilding took place after a fire destroyed the structure in 976. The church that stands today is a product of the eleventh century and the patronage of three successive doges—Domenico Contarini (1043–71), Domenico Selvo (1071–84), and Vitale Falier (1084–95).36 The basilica reveals its cultural debt to Byzantium in both its form and decoration. San Marco derived its plan from one of the most famous churches in Constantinople, the Apostoleion or the church of the Holy Apostles.37 Founded by Constantine and remodeled 33 34

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For this idea in general see Perry, Sacred Plunder. Thomas Dale, “Sacred Space from Constantinople to Venice,” in The Byzantine World, ed. Paul Stephenson (London, 2010), pp. 406–27, at pp. 411, 424, discusses sacred commodities in the context of the Fourth Crusade. See Fulvio Zuliani, “Nuove proposte per la veste architettonica della San Marco contariniana,” in Storia dell’arte marciana: l’architettura, ed. Renato Polacco (Venice, 1997), pp. 153–63, for a discussion of the structure’s appearance before the thirteenth century. For a detailed archaeological analysis of San Marco’s early building history, see Roberto Cecchi, La basilica di San Marco: la costruzione bizantina del ix secolo, permanenze e trasformazioni (Venice, 2003). See most recently Tassos Papacostas, “The medieval progeny of the Holy Apostles: Trails of architectural imitation across the Mediterranean,” in Stephenson, The Byzantine World, pp. 386–405; See also Charalambos Bouras, “Il tipo architettonico di San Marco nella prospettiva degli edifici di Costantinopoli del periodo alto e mediobizantino,” in Polacco,

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Figure 2.3 Venice, Basilica of San Marco, interior. Courtesy of the Procuratoria di San Marco.

Storia dell’arte marciana: l’architettura, pp. 164–75, at pp. 169–72; Otto Demus, The Mosaic Decoration of San Marco, Venice (Chicago, 1988), pp. 87–88. .

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by ­Justinian, the Apostoleion was the product of imperial patronage and the dynastic burial church for the imperial family. It was also a martyrium dedicated to all the apostles that employed a centralized Greek cross plan often associated with commemorative structures. So, in its dedication, imperial patronage, and role as a burial church, the Apostoleion was the ideal model for the eleventh-century ducal basilica, built as a burial chapel for the doges and a repository for the remains of the Evangelist Saint Mark.38 The Historia de translatione, the translatio narrative of Saint Nicholas, indicated that contemporary viewers recognized the reference to a Byzantine model, as the author noted that San Marco was “similar to the church constructed in honor of the twelve apostles in Constantinople.”39 The Byzantine model, however, required considerable adaptations to accommodate western liturgical practices and incorporate a crypt to house the relics in the doge’s possession. The materials used in the construction of the eleventh-century basilica resembled those employed by other contemporary Venetian structures as well as churches in the capital and provinces of the Byzantine Empire. The main material was brick with marble interior supports and decoration on both the exterior and interior of the structure. The columns employed in the main church and crypt of San Marco are late antique examples of Proconnesian marble, stone that originated from island of Marmara near Constantinople.40 The capitals are far more varied in their appearance, date, and provenance; ancient and sixth-century Byzantine examples are interspersed with eleventh-century Byzantine capitals and medieval Venetian copies. Though many of the capitals and the marble decorative panels in situ in the galleries employed Proconnesian marble, not all were obtained in Constantinople. Similar capitals to those used in San Marco ornament structures across the Mediterranean and the Venetians could have acquired the building materials through plunder or trade anywhere during their extensive travels.41 The reuse of Byzantine capitals and columns 38

39 40

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This concept of apostolicity connects the Basilica of San Marco with the Cathedral of Salerno, begun two decades after the construction of the ducal chapel; see Concina, A History of Venetian Architecture, p. 28, for this comparison. See also Demus, The Mosaic Decoration of San Marco, p. 2, for the collection of apostolic relics at San Marco. Historia de translatione, p. 284: “… consimili constructione artificiosæ illi ecclesiæ quæ in honorem duodecim Apostolorum Constantinopolis (sic) est constructa.” Simonetta Minguzzi, “Aspetti della decorazione marmorea e architettonica della basilica di San Marco,” in Marmi della basilica di San Marco: capitelli, plutei, rivestimenti, arredi, eds. Irene Favaretto et al. (Milan, 2000), pp. 29–121, at p. 41. Lucilla De Lachenal, Spolia: uso e reimpiego dell’antico dal iii al xiv secolo (Milan, 1995), p. 207; Minguzzi, “Aspetti della decorazione,” p. 41; Joachim Kramer, “Zur Herkunft der Spolienkapitelle,” in Corpus der Kapitelle der Kirche von San Marco zu Venedig, ed. ­Friedrich

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thus evoked simultaneously Venice’s Mediterranean knowing and belonging. The distinctive carving style of early Byzantine capitals made them readily recognizable, visualizing the dominant culture the Venetians strove to emulate. The potential acquisition of Byzantine materials at various Mediterranean ports referenced Venice’s integration into international trade networks and the widespread circulation of luxury commodities like architectural spolia. Documentary evidence indicates that the Venetians began scouring the Mediterranean in the ninth century in search of precious marbles to incorporate into San Marco’s decoration. Venetian chronicles noted how the Doge Giustiniano Parteciaco assisted the Byzantine emperor in a campaign against Muslims on the island of Sicily in 817 and returned home with great plunder that included beautiful columns and splendid marbles for the decoration of San Marco.42 Other documents made similar claims for the eleventh-century building campaign where Venetian rulers ordered that materials be sought throughout the Mediterranean so that the Basilica of San Marco could be fittingly adorned with the most lavish and exotic marbles. At the same time, then, that Venice’s merchant warriors traversed the sea to participate in military campaigns, they collected the holy bodies of saints and marble architectural elements to ornament the churches that housed the relics. The plundering of saints’ relics and purchasing of precious building materials were complementary enterprises that created a nexus of the holy and the beautiful in Venice’s central religious monument.43 The Basilica of San Marco in the eleventh century already possessed a comprehensive collection of marble ornamentation well before the addition of the precious and colorful decorative assemblage that covers the structure today. Though building materials appear to have been gathered from all over the Mediterranean, Byzantine objects, techniques, and forms were the most prevalent and associated Venice visually with earlier and contemporary Byzantine models. Very little ancient Roman spolia is employed in San Marco, Deichmann (Wiesbaden, 1981), pp. 1–7, at p. 7. Numerous documents in Ferdinando Ongania, Documenti per la storia dell’augusta ducale Basilica di San Marco in Venezia dal nono secola sino alla fine del decimo ottavo dall’Archivio di Stato e dalla Biblioteca Marciana in Venezia (Venice, 1886), address the gathering of precious marbles from all over the Mediterranean to decorate San Marco; see Minguzzi, “Aspetti della decorazione,” p. 66, citing Ongania, Documenti, pp. 1–2, 6–7; Pilutti Namer, “Reimpiego e rilavorazione,” pp. 167–69. 42 Ongania, Documenti, document 8, pp. 1–2; Minguzzi, “Aspetti della decorazione,” p. 66; Michael Greenhalgh, Marble Past, Monument Present: Building with Antiquities in the Mediaeval Mediterranean (Leiden, 2009), p. 425. 43 Greenhalgh, Marble Past, p. 426; Wladimir Dorigo, Venezia romanica: la formazione della città medioevale fino all’età gotica (Venice, 2003), p. 186.

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though the basilica’s builders would have had ready access to Roman building materials at a number of nearby sites.44 Rather, a conscious choice was made to use Byzantine marble capitals and columns to make the ducal basilica a fitting monument for the “beloved daughter of Byzantium.”45 In the late eleventh century, then, the use of Byzantine forms may have indexed the collaborative relationship between Venice and the Byzantine Empire, where the Venetians were loyal supporters and subordinates, and their artworks displayed admiration for and emulation of the cultural products of Byzantium. In the aftermath of the First Crusade, however, Venetian attitudes towards their erstwhile ally began to change as they characterized Byzantium in ideological terms. Constructed as a foreign adversary and powerful enemy by the Venetians, the Greeks became unidimensional and essentialized.46 Byzantium needed to be clearly defined so that Venice could establish its identity through comprehensive knowledge of a powerful Mediterranean rival. The political tension and military conflict between Venice and Byzantium manifested itself in the Venetian seizure of triumphal spoils, but it was also displayed visually through a wholesale and more peaceful appropriation of Byzantine culture— artistic media, techniques, craftsmen, and materials.47 Political antagonism then did not preclude cultural cooperation and admiration, and while the Venetians fought to achieve supremacy over the Greeks, they marveled at the beauty and quality of Byzantine art and imitated it openly in their public religious monuments. Venice thus neutralized its great rival politically while 44

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Pilutti Namer, “Reimpiego e rilavorazione,” pp. 161–66, and Lorenzo Calvelli, “Il reimpiego epigrafico a Venezia: i materiali provenienti dal campanile di San Marco,” in Cuscito, Riuso di monumenti, pp. 179–202, both discuss ancient spolia incorporated into the campanile of San Marco, but this material was not visible. Guido Tigler, “The Sculpture,” in St. Mark’s: The Art and Architecture of Church and State in Venice, ed. Ettore Vio (New York, 2001), pp. 152–84, at p. 156; Minguzzi, “Aspetti della decorazione,” pp. 29, 63. Anthony Cutler, “Everywhere and Nowhere: The Invisible Muslim and Christian SelfFashioning in the Culture of Outremer,” in France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades, eds. Daniel Weiss and Lisa Mahoney (Baltimore, 2004), pp. 253–81, at p. 262; Jerrilynn Dodds, María Rosa Menocal, and Abigail Krasner Balbale, The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture (New Haven, 2008), p. 6; Jerrilynn Dodds, “Islam, Christianity, and the Problem of Religious Art,” in Art of Medieval Spain a.d. 500–1200 (New York, 1993), pp. 27–37, at p. 27, all discuss this idea of rigid religious and political categories in different Mediterranean contexts. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, p. 179; D. Fairchild Ruggles, “Representation and Identity in Medieval Spain: Beatus Manuscripts and the Mudejar Churches of Teruel,” in Languages of Power in Islamic Spain, ed. Ross Brann (Bethesda, md, 1997), pp. 77–106, at pp. 79, 92; Dodds, “Islam, Christianity,” pp. 30–32.

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i­nstrumentalizing the visual culture of Byzantium. Artistic borrowings in this contentious political climate took on connotations of willful appropriation, and supersession combined with aesthetic appreciation as the city’s merchant warriors began to attack Greek territories and plunder holy relics which they deposited in Venetian churches of Byzantine inspiration. This new attitude can be seen in San Marco’s twelfth-century decoration that continued to employ Byzantine forms and iconography, but incorporated local styles and subject matter heralding Venice as a superior to Byzantium in its connection to the holy.48 The mosaic decoration that covers the basilica’s interior vaults displays most forcefully the structure’s reinterpretation of Byzantine models. Though much restoration work and redecoration has been undertaken on the vault decoration of San Marco, most of the mosaics in the central body of the church date to the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Doge Domenico Selvo inaugurated the mosaic campaign in 1071 and commissioned artists from Byzantium to decorate San Marco.49 A small number of mosaics date to this period, including the images of standing saints and apostles with the Virgin Mary on the main portal and the four saints below the sixteenthcentury Pantocrator in the main apse (Fig. 2.4). The vast majority of mosaics in San Marco, however, date to the first half of the twelfth century and comprised a unique mosaic program that synthesized Byzantine models and western innovations.50 San Marco features numerous visual references to the church’s patron saint and the mosaic decoration of two chapels depicts scenes from the life, martyrdom, and translatio of Saint Mark.51 The San Pietro chapel to the left of the main apse represents Mark’s life and death while the San Clemente chapel on the right hand side contains images of the theft of Mark’s relics from Alexandria and the solemn ceremony that celebrated the arrival of the saint’s remains in Venice and their placement in San Marco (Fig. 2.5). The textual source of the Translatio Santi Marci, written in the eleventh century, provided the narrative on which the Byzantine mosaicists could base their formulation of this non-traditional iconography. Still other aspects of San Marco’s mosaic decoration, generally dated to the twelfth century, diverge from standard Byzantine 48 Demus, The Mosaic Decoration of San Marco, pp. 5–6. 49 Demus, The Mosaic Decoration of San Marco, p. 3; Thomas Dale, “Inventing a Sacred Past: Pictorial Narratives of St. Mark the Evangelist in Aquileia and Venice, ca. 1000–1300,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 48 (1994), 53–104, at p. 62. 50 Demus, The Mosaic Decoration of San Marco, pp. 62–63. 51 Dorigo, Venezia romanica, p. 185, has noted that the mosaics in the Basilica of San Marco were far more concerned with narrating events than presenting religious dogma.

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Figure 2.4 San Marco, main portal mosaics. Courtesy of the Procuratoria di San Marco.

i­magery and incorporate new subject matter, seen particularly in the dome dedicated to the life of John the Evangelist and the inclusion of Virtues and Beatitudes in the Ascension imagery of the central dome.52 In other cases 52 Demus, The Mosaic Decoration of San Marco, pp. 39–46, 62.

Figure 2.5 San Marco, Chapel of San Clemente, mosaics depicting Mark’s theft. Courtesy of the Procuratoria di San Marco.

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the new visual solutions were not entirely satisfactory, as seen in the sparsely decorated dome on the south side of the church that includes four standing saints surrounding a central medallion with a cross amid a vast expanse of gold ground. The use of gold-ground mosaic on the upper walls and panels of patterned marble on the lower section, then, made San Marco resemble such lavishly decorated imperial structures as San Vitale in Ravenna and Hagia Sophia. Byzantine artists, however, faced the challenge of accommodating a Byzantine mosaic program to an architectural structure that was a cultural hybrid. As the mosaic campaign continued and local artists joined mosaicists from Byzantium, San Marco’s iconography became even more eclectic.53 The decorative ensemble of marble and mosaic created a structure that looked Byzantine and exalted eastern saints while incorporating new forms and iconography to locate visual traditions from the east in a western setting. In San Marco, the concept of the hybrid provides an effective interpretive tool for understanding the meaning of cultural borrowings from Byzantium. A hybrid artwork juxtaposes visual references to multiple cultures but they do not blend.54 The Byzantine and local elements needed to remain discrete to foreground the eastern appropriations. The inspiration came from Greek culture, but the Venetians improved upon it with their additions, adaptions, and recontextualizations that in essence completed and superseded the Byzantine model.55 Among the liturgical furniture in the Basilica of San Marco, the artwork that most clearly displayed Venice’s emulation and appropriation of Byzantium was the Pala d’Oro, or golden altar frontal, commissioned in 1105 by the Doge Ordelafo Falier (r. 1102–1118) (Fig. 2.6).56 An earlier silver and gold pala 53

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Joachim Poeschke, Italian Mosaics, 300–1300, trans. Russell Stockman (New York, 2010), p. 314. Dorigo, Venezia romanica, p. 186, notes that due to the heightened tension in Venetian-Byzantine relations in the early twelfth century it was difficult to find Byzantine mosaicists to work on the basilica’s wall decoration. The term “hybrid” is often used interchangeably with “eclectic” or “syncretic,” but I wish to emphasize the distinct characteristics of the constituent parts even after they have come together in a hybrid synthesis. For recent discussions of hybridity and the use, or overuse, of this term, see Mariam Rosser-Owen, “Mediterraneanism: How to Incorporate Islamic Art into an Emerging Field,” Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012), 1–33, at pp. 8–9, and William Tronzo, “Restoring Agency to the Discourse on Hybridity,” in Die Cappella Palatina in Palermo: Geschichte, Kunst, Funktionen: Forschungsergebnisse der Restaurierung, ed. Thomas Dittelbach (Künzelsau, 2010), pp. 579–585. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, p. 181. See David Buckton and John Osborne, “The Enamel of Doge Ordelaffo Falier on the Pala d’Oro in Venice,” Gesta 39, no. 1 (2000), 43–49, for recent literature on the Pala d’Oro. See also Nicol, Byzantium and Venice, pp. 65–66.

Figure 2.6 San Marco, Pala d’oro. Courtesy of the Procuratoria di San Marco.

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had been created in the late tenth century by the Doge Pietro Orseolo, but Doge Falier had a completely new golden frontal made by Byzantine craftsmen. Falier followed Venetian tradition in commissioning a western type of artwork that employed materials, techniques, and artists from the east to display Venice’s cultural debt to Byzantium.57 The Pala d’Oro that exists today is the product of multiple decorative campaigns; the panels on the lower part of the Pala alone date to the early twelfth century.58 Like the mosaic decoration in San Marco, the Pala employed Byzantine techniques to represent hybrid Byzantine and Venetian subject matter. The enamel technique was preeminently Byzantine, and the Pala’s panels were made in Constantinople at a time when enamelwork in Byzantium had achieved a high level of technical virtuosity. It is unlikely, however, that a Byzantine patron would have commissioned an object like an altar frontal, as this type of object conformed to western modes of artistic patronage. Some of the inscriptions on the enamels are in Greek, others are in Latin, once again a concession to a European patron who wished to have figures labeled in a local language.59 The iconography of the panels, too, combines eastern and western elements. The subject matter of the Pala’s central axis is Byzantine in derivation with the Hetimasia at the top, Christ Pantocrator in the middle, and the Virgin Mary below. The scenes from the Life of Christ at the top of the Pala were also of Byzantine origin as was the image of the Empress Irene to the right of the Virgin Mary. The episodes from the life of Saint Mark on the short ends of the Pala, however, are particularly Venetian in their iconography (Fig. 2.7).60 This choice of 57 Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, discusses the relationship between the Pala and Constantinople on two occasions; see p. 180 and particularly p. 225. 58 Falier commissioned the first set of enamels, a second set was brought from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, and Doge Andrea Dandolo provided the Gothic framework and gemstones that surround the enamel plaques. For the three phases, see Wolfgang Volbach, “Gli smalti della Pala d’oro,” in La Pala d’oro, eds. Hans Hahnloser and Renato Polacco (Venice, 1994), pp. 1–71, at pp. 3–4; Patricia Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity: The Venetian Sense of the Past (New Haven, 1996), pp. 36–37; Margaret Frazer, “The Pala d’Oro and the cult of Saint Mark in Venice,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 32, no. 5 (1982), 273–79, at p. 273; Sergio Bettini, “Venice, the Pala d’Oro, and Constantinople,” in The Treasury of San Marco, Venice (Milan, 1984), pp. 35–64, at pp. 39–44. 59 The different languages of the inscriptions are discussed by Renato Polacco, “La Pala d’oro di San Marco dalla sua edizione bizantina a quella gotica,” in Storia dell’arte marciana: sculture, tesoro, arazzi, ed. Renato Polacco (Venice, 1997), pp. 368–79, at pp. 373–75. 60 Bettini, “Venice, the Pala d’Oro,” p. 48, argues that the scenes from the Life of Saint Mark formed part of the thirteenth-century additions to the Pala, while Polacco, “La Pala d’oro,”

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Figure 2.7 San Marco, Pala d’oro, detail of enamels. Courtesy of the Procuratoria di San Marco.

subject matter clearly addressed Venetian interests and celebrated the city’s patron saint and his life, death, and miraculous journey from Alexandria to Venice. Mark was also represented among the Evangelists at the very center of the Pala, so depictions of Venice’s apostolic protector featured prominently in the frontal’s iconography just as they did in the mosaic program of the basilica. Another Venetian addition is the plaque representing Doge Ordelafo Falier to the left of the Virgin Mary, with the Byzantine Empress Irene to her right. The pairing of doge and empress is an odd one, and various scenarios have been presented concerning the original arrangement of these portrait enamels on the Pala. Doge Falier wears a ceremonial costume and bears regalia that would identify him as a high official of the Byzantine court. During his reign Venice’s fleet cooperated with the Byzantines against the Normans, but the Venetians

p. 370, states that they were elements of the original decoration. See Dale, “Inventing a Sacred Past,” pp. 63–67, for a detailed discussion of the Saint Mark narrative on the Pala.

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also perpetrated their most audacious theft in taking Stephen’s relics from the imperial capital itself. Doge Falier’s imperial dress was an example of spolia in re, or a borrowing of Greek forms, that manifested Venice’s more aggressive stance towards the empire and the idea of Venice being Byzantium’s equal.61 The architecture and decoration of San Marco, then, employed styles, techniques, and craftsmanship that were all Byzantine, but reconfigured them to address specifically Venetian interests. Built initially to emulate great Byzantine monuments, the tenor of the decoration changed at the turn of the twelfth century to reflect a more hostile and competitive attitude towards Byzantium. Objects and materials purchased in Constantinople and other ports were juxtaposed with holy bodies plundered from Byzantine lands; combined trade goods and war plunder displayed the basis for Venice’s claim to supremacy over the Greeks—military and economic dominance in the eastern Mediterranean. The basilica’s golden, encrusted interior became a monumental reliquary container for Mark’s remains, a tangible reminder of the transfer of power and sanctity from Constantinople to Venice. The Basilica of San Marco proclaimed the translatio imperii to Venice as artists did not simply copy or borrow visual forms and material objects but aggressively appropriated and reinvented the culture of Byzantium.62 Venetian artists employed canonical Byzantine subject matter, materials, and styles to ensure that the cultural borrowings from the Greeks were unmistakable. The visual legacy of Byzantium needed to be clearly defined so that Venetian improvements, reinventions, and subtle shifts in function were readily recognizable. In the linear movement from Byzantine to Venetian cultural settings, knowledge of the dominant originating culture was strictly demarcated so that viewing audiences saw and understood the division between Byzantine tradition and Venetian innovation.63 In devising a 61

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For the twelfth-century enamels on the Pala, see Volbach, “Gli smalti della Pala d’oro,” pp. 5–38. The plaque with the representation of the doge is quite controversial. For the debate and a recent argument about the original form of the enamel, see Buckton and Osborne, “The Enamel of Doge Ordelaffo Falier,” pp. 43–49. For the concept of spolia in re, see Richard Brilliant, “I piedistalli del giardino di Boboli: spolia in se, spolia in re,” Prospettiva 31 (1982), 2–17. See Stefania Gerevini, “The Grotto of the Virgin in San Marco: Artistic Reuse and Cultural Identity in Medieval Venice,” Gesta 53, no. 2 (2014), 197–220, at pp. 218–19, for a similar argument concerning the Grotto of the Virgin in San Marco’s Treasury. Eva Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century,” Art History 24, no. 1 (2001), 17–50, at pp. 21, 26, notes the cultural dominance of Byzantium, but like Dodds, “Islam, Christianity,” p. 27, she indicates that this unidirectional movement from a dominant to a receiving culture was not the standard model for Mediterranean cultural interaction.

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totalizing and reductive view of the Greeks and a rigid binary between east and west, Venice could display its intimate knowledge of its former ally while celebrating the triumph of the west through the appropriation of Byzantine culture. Two additional churches on the island of Torcello dating to the eleventh and twelfth centuries also juxtapose Byzantine visual idioms with local artistic vocabulary. The isolation of Torcello facilitated the preservation of two medieval structures, the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta and the church of Santa Fosca.64 Torcello had close ties with Byzantium in the early Middle Ages and in the tenth century the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitos described the island as an “emporion mega” or great trading center.65 By the eleventh century the island’s economic importance had waned but Byzantine influence remained strong in the cultural realm. The Byzantine artistic forms employed in the cathedral and Santa Fosca originated from two distinct places and times; visual references from Byzantine controlled Ravenna in the sixth century were combined with those from the Middle Byzantine period in the capital and provinces of the empire to create a unique assemblage of new, old, imperial, provincial, and local artistic vocabulary. The Cathedral of Torcello had been in existence as early as the seventh century, but was substantially rebuilt in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. (Fig. 2.8).66 In 1008, Orso Orseolo was named Bishop of Torcello and he and his father, the Doge Pietro ii Orseolo, collaborated on the cathedral’s renovation. The project had at its disposal, then, the financial resources and artistic connections of the doge, as members of the ducal family strove to reconstruct and embellish the church.67 The structure’s form followed a basilica plan with three aisles separated by Proconnesian marble columns and a combination of

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Recent studies on the art and architecture of Torcello include Gianmatteo Caputo and Giovanni Gentili, eds., Torcello: alle origini di Venezia tra Occidente e Oriente (Venice, 2009); Valenzano, “L’architettura ecclesiastica,” pp. 100–08; Lech Leciejewicz, Torcello: ­nuove ricerche archeologiche (Rome, 2000). Renato Polacco, La Cattedrale di Torcello (Venice, 1984), discusses both the cathedral and the church of Santa Fosca. 65 Michela Agazzi, “L’architettura della basilica alla svolta del 1008,” in Caputo and Gentili, Torcello, pp. 50–59, at p. 50; Leciejewicz, Torcello, p. 92. 66 Polacco, La Cattedrale di Torcello, pp. 9–37; Howard, Architectural History of Venice, pp. 9–11; Goy, Venice: An Architectural Guide, pp. 458–62; Agazzi, “L’architettura della basilica,” pp. 50–59. 67 John the Deacon, Istoria Veneticorum, pp. 212–13; Agazzi, “L’architettura della basilica,” p. 55; Ennio Concina, Venezia: le chiese e le arti, 2 vols. (Udine, 1995), 1:114.

Figure 2.8 Cathedral of Torcello, general exterior view. Author’s photo.

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Figure 2.9 Cathedral of Torcello, interior view to east. Courtesy of Cameraphoto Arte Venice/Art Resource, ny.

newly-carved and spoliate capitals dating to the sixth century (Fig. 2.9).68 Additional spolia in the basilica included an ancient Roman sarcophagus placed beneath the altar that housed the remains of Saint Heliodorus. Heliodorus was the first Bishop of Altino and therefore a local saint, but his relics received the same honor as eastern saints like Mark and Donatus in their enclosure within a spoliate tomb. Byzantine artists decorated the apses, vaults, triumphal arch, and west wall with mosaics in two campaigns in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, while 68

Alessandra Guiglia Guidobaldi, “Reimpiego di marmi bizantini a Torcello,” in Arte profana e arte sacra a Bisanzio, eds. Antonio Iacobini and Enrico Zanini (Rome, 1995), pp. 603–32, at pp. 603, 609–12; Boccato, Chiese di Venezia, pp. 267–68.

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the side walls and surfaces above the nave arcades remain unadorned.69 The decoration of the central apse on the east end features the Theotokos, or Virgin Mary as Mother of God, following the Byzantine tradition (Fig. 2.10). The Virgin’s hand pointing to Christ associates her with the Hodegetria, a manifestation of Mary depicted frequently in a variety of Byzantine artistic media. The figure of the Virgin in the apse has numerous parallels with mosaic decoration in the Byzantine capital and the provinces in the eleventh and twelfth ­centuries. The scene of the Annunciation above the central apse in the triumphal arch, with the angel Gabriel on one side of the arch greeting the Virgin on the other side, is common in Middle Byzantine church decoration and once again points to Byzantine artists as the designers of the cathedral’s iconographic program. Most Middle Byzantine churches would have had a central cupola that displayed an image of Christ Pantocrator, but Torcello’s Cathedral had no dome so the Pantocrator image was moved to the south side apse. The vault immediately in front of the apse featured an image of the Lamb of God in a medallion supported by angels in a representation that is almost identical to vault mosaics in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna.70 A large-scale representation of the Last Judgment dominates the west wall with scenes divided into six registers (Fig. 2.11). The Crucifixion crowns the wall with the Anastasis or Harrowing of Hell immediately below. In the third register, a type of Byzantine Deesis where Christ in Majesty is flanked by the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist forms the central focus of a heavenly host composed of apostles and angels. The remainder of the west wall depicts the Last Judgment as angels blow their trumpets on either side of the Hetimasia, or throne where the Cross is placed. Below angels weigh the souls of ­humanity and separate the elect from the damned on each side of a central doorway over which is placed an image of the Virgin Mary, the ultimate intercessor for humankind. The mosaics decorating the Cathedral of Torcello, then, are Byzantine in inspiration and execution but display creative adaptations of the iconography and arrangement to suit a Latin basilica plan church and Italian patrons.71 69

Robin Cormack, “Viewing the Mosaics of the Monasteries of Hosios Loukas, Daphni and the Church of Santa Maria Assunta, Torcello,” in New Light on Old Glass: Recent Research on Byzantine Mosaics and Glass, eds. Chris Entwistle and Liz James (London, 2013), pp. 242–53, at p. 250; Poeschke, Italian Mosaics, pp. 37–38; Clementina Rizzardi, “La ­decorazione musiva: Torcello e la cultura artistica mediobizantina,” in Caputo and Gentile, Torcello, pp. 60–85, at pp. 70–79. 70 Boccato, Chiese di Venezia, p. 272; Agazzi, “L’architettura della basilica,” p. 58. 71 Rizzardi, “La decorazione musiva,” p. 67; Irina Andreescu-Treadgold and Julian Henderson, “How does the Glass of the Wall Mosaics at Torcello contribute to the study of trade in the 11th century?” in Byzantine Trade, 4th–12th Centuries: The Archaeology of Lo-

Figure 2.10

Cathedral of Torcello, apse mosaic with Virgin Mary. Courtesy of Scala/Art Resource, ny.

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Cathedral of Torcello, west wall mosaics. Courtesy of Cameraphoto Arte Venice/Art Resource, ny.

The Virgin Mary presides over the apse but the Pantocrator has been shifted from the dome to a side chapel. Like the apse mosaic in Santi Maria e Donato, the Virgin’s title of Mother of God is written in Greek, but she is surrounded by Latin inscriptions.72 The narrative scenes normally arranged along all the walls of a central plan Byzantine church have been condensed into tightly packed registers on the interior west wall. The Torcello mosaics borrow freely from motifs employed in churches in the capital of Constantinople as well as in the provinces while also referring to a local Italo-Byzantine past. Visual references to Ravenna and the extraordinary array of ecclesiastical structures erected cal, Regional and International Exchange, ed. Marlia Mundell Mango (Farnham, 2009), pp. 393–417, at pp. 396–401. 72 Boccato, Chiese di Venezia, p. 270; Rizzardi, “La decorazione musiva,” p. 68.

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there in the fifth and sixth centuries allude to Byzantine artistic inspiration that was more distant chronologically but considerably closer geographically; Italo-Byzantine architecture played a mediating role between Byzantine styles and subject matter and Venetian interpretations and modifications of its artistic models. The small martyrium of Santa Fosca on Torcello also follows the Venetian tradition of adapting and transforming Byzantine architecture. The church was built to house the relics of an early Christian martyr brought from Tripoli in the tenth century by a Venetian merchant named Vitale. Santa Fosca’s church dates to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and consists of a Greek cross plan surmounted by a conical roof (Fig. 2.12).73 The east end was altered to create a miniature basilica in a similar arrangement to San Marco, with three aisles separated by spoliate arcades allowing for the performance of the western liturgy (Fig. 2.13). Santa Fosca, then, shares characteristics of Venetian architecture in its use of brick and marble supports but has none of the mosaic decoration that was so prevalent in structures like Santi Maria e Donato, San Marco, and the Cathedral of Torcello. The west end, too, underwent modifications in the early twelfth century as the Greek cross was transformed into an octagon through the addition of a porch. The octagonal shape of the structure calls to mind the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, a Muslim structure created in the seventh century ad that came into Christian possession with the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099. Deborah Howard has noted the visual references to the Dome of the Rock in Santa Fosca and the meanings these allusions might have had for medieval Venetians.74 They could convey crusader zeal for warriors who arrived too late to participate in the conquest of Jerusalem and could recreate the holy city on Venetian soil, associating this martyrium in Torcello with the most hallowed site in Christendom that was the focus of both pilgrimage and crusade. The church’s form could also reference the Dome of the Rock as a Muslim building and would be one of the few artworks in twelfth-century ­Venice that alluded to Islamic culture. As Howard has argued, the use of Islamic forms in Santa Fosca could serve to glorify Venice’s trade with Muslim territories 73

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See Valenzano, “L’architettura ecclesiastica,” pp. 120–31; see also Giovanni Lorenzoni, “Santa Fosca di Torcello nell’ambito architettonico orseoliano,” pp. 123–31, and Joan Richardson, “Elementi bizantini nell’architettura delle chiese di San Marco, di Santa Fosca di Torcello e del duomo di Jesolo,” in Polacco, Storia dell’arte marciana: l’architettura, pp. 176–83, at pp. 180–82, for the structure’s date. For a general discussion of the church, see Boccato, Chiese di Venezia, pp. 275–76; Concina, Venezia: le chiese e le arti, 1:120–23; Polacco, La Cattedrale di Torcello, pp. 39–44. Deborah Howard, “Venice and Islam in the Middle Ages: Some Observations on the Question of Architectural Influence,” Architectural History 34 (1991), 59–74, at pp. 63–65.

Figure 2.12

Torcello, Santa Fosca, general exterior view. Author’s photo.

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Figure 2.13

Santa Fosca, interior view. Author’s photo.

and demonstrate the Venetians’ knowledge of and admiration for Islamic ­civilization.75 Another Venetian artwork that may have had a similar resonance is the Chair of Saint Peter located in the church of San Pietro di Castello (Fig.  2.14).76 The cathedra is made of marble and sandstone with a Muslim ­funerary stele serving as a backrest. The relief features Arabic inscriptions from 75 76

Ibid., p. 71. See, most recently, Stefano Carboni, “Moments of Vision: Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797,” in Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797 (New York, 2007), pp. 12–35, at pp. 13–14, and catalogue entry 87, p. 325; Deborah Howard, Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture, 1100–1500 (New Haven, 2000), pp. 98–99; Staale Sinding-Larsen, “St. Peter’s Chair in Venice,” in Art the Ape of Nature: Studies in Honor of H.W. Janson, eds. Moshe Barasch and Lucy Freeman Sandler (New York, 1981), pp. 35–50.

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Venice, San Pietro di Castello, Chair of Saint Peter. Author’s photo.

the Qur’an and has been dated tentatively to the late eleventh or early twelfth century. It has been claimed that the stele came to Venice from the Levant during the Crusades, but there is no concrete evidence indicating when it actually arrived in the city.77 Andrea Dandolo mentioned a marble chair housed in the church of San Pietro, indicating that it was in Venice in the mid-fourteenth century, but no other documentary sources referred to the cathedra before then. If it does date to the twelfth century, it would be the only Islamic object in Venice that could be connected to a Venetian crusade expedition.78

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Venice and the Islamic World, p. 325. Comparanda for the Chair of Saint Peter exist in other Italian churches. San Sisto in Pisa and Santa Maria di Castello in Genoa both displayed Muslim grave markers in prominent locations; both monuments will be addressed in detail in subsequent chapters.

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In the eclectic artistic production of late eleventh and twelfth-century Venice, allusions to Islamic culture were quite rare. As Venice constructed its notion of the east and the culture that epitomized it, Venetian artists and patrons chose not to reference Islamic territories. The maritime republic engaged in both crusade against and trade with Mediterranean Muslims, but this intensive interaction did not engender extensive use of Muslim spolia, artistic styles, techniques, or materials. The city’s visual culture displayed neither a belligerent triumphalism towards nor cultural appreciation of Islam in its public monuments. Given the significant role that Islamic visual culture played in the artistic production of other maritime republics, its absence in Venice begs an explanation.79 The equilibrium Venice had achieved in its interaction with Muslim polities, with a long history of peaceful diplomatic relations and lucrative trade with Islamic lands, perhaps had become so normative that it merited little notice. The sheer ubiquity of Islamic merchandise passing through Venice, ranging from the most quotidian items to luxury goods, may have rendered it so commonplace that it no longer had a strong symbolic charge. Though this lack of interest in Islamic visual forms may never be fully explained, what is clear is that defining a relationship with Islamic territories in architectural decoration was not a central component in Venetian civic identity or visual culture in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.80 Rather, it was Byzantium with which the Venetians vied for cultural and political supremacy in the Mediterranean. Amongst the spoils from their twelfthcentury crusading campaigns, the Venetians returned home with virtually nothing from the Holy Land; what they did bring back to Venice was a collection of holy martyrs, confessors, and bishops stolen from the Greeks. The eastern saints appropriated from Byzantine lands manifested a shift from east to west that allowed Venice to eclipse its former master as a site of pilgrimage and Christian devotion. Once in Venice, the saints required an architectural setting worthy of their sanctity, and churches were built in a Byzantine style to house the holy relics. These Byzantine borrowings included centrally planned domed churches constructed of brick with stone accents, gold-ground mosaic and marble decoration, and luxurious liturgical objects, all of which were created by Greek artisans. The Venetians not only appropriated Byzantine saints, styles, materials, and techniques, but also improved upon them with the addition of specifically Venetian cultural references. Venice’s ­reinterpretation 79 80

This topic will be addressed in Chapters 3 and 4 below. Mike Carr, “Between Byzantium, Egypt and the Holy Land: The Italian Maritime Republics and the First Crusade,” in Jerusalem the Golden: The Origins and Impact of the First Crusade, eds. Susan Edgington and Luis García-Guijarro (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 75–87, at p. 85.

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of Byzantine art employed holy relics and artworks from Byzantium as a conceptual core, but augmented them with local saints, decorative motifs, and architectural forms to create a unique, Venetian visual culture. The result was a better Byzantium constructed on Venetian soil, where the eastern saints were displayed with honor worthy of their status in churches that redeployed Byzantine enamels, mosaics, and architectural spolia. The aesthetic of appropriation that developed from this laser-like focus on the Byzantine Empire depended upon concrete knowledge of the originating culture. Venetians first needed to display their familiarity with Byzantium before they could visualize their city’s mastery over the Greek empire and their creative adaptations of Byzantine art. The Venetians constructed an image of Byzantium that was totalizing and unchanging, one that concretized an antagonistic relationship and justified violent appropriations from this powerful adversary. Thus, the overwhelming majority of artworks in Venice employed Byzantine art as their cultural inspiration, and served to define Venice’s ambivalent and tumultuous relationship with the Greek empire. Venice highlighted military conflict with the Greeks in their public religious monuments to display and perpetuate political power over its rival. The foregrounding of warfare belied the fact that the retaliatory raids on Byzantine territories were essentially economic in motivation, aimed at securing favorable trade concessions in the empire. The taking of relics as plunder of war, combined with Byzantine artworks and building elements purchased across the Mediterranean, formed the spoliate aesthetic that visualized Venice’s ambivalence towards Byzantium. When acquiring spolia and spoils of war, then, Venetians consciously targeted Byzantium, a culture and an empire that was familiar but one that also engendered extensive competition and antagonism. In contrast, the city’s interaction with the Muslim Mediterranean played a marginal role in Venetian visual culture, as Venice had ostensibly established a stable relationship with its Muslim political allies and trading partners that required neither wholesale redefinition nor seemingly any visual references in public architectural structures. The Venetians’ mastery of the seas as both merchants and warriors served as the basis for their claim of superiority over the Byzantine Empire. As a result, Venice formulated its eastern Mediterranean ambitions in counterpoise with Byzantium, and the city’s visual culture reflected its ambivalent relationship with this great empire in the appropriation, translocation, and reformulation of Byzantine culture.

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The Interplay of Islamic and Ancient Roman Spolia on Pisan Churches Introduction Pisa’s entrance into the Mediterranean in the early eleventh century was an aggressive and militant one as the city’s fleet took to the sea to wage war against Muslim polities. Though generally couched in religious and political terms, these attacks served primarily to enhance the Pisan republic’s economic prospects by protecting the coastline and port, clearing shipping lanes of pirate vessels, and receiving commercial concessions and cash payments through peace treaties. While the Campanian cities and Venice established close economic and political ties with Byzantium and conducted war and trade in the eastern Mediterranean, Pisa directed its military aggression and commercial interests towards North Africa and al-Andalus. In the eleventh century the Pisans defined themselves through conflict with the Islamic world, but in the following century they based their identity on economic endeavors, particularly mercantile exchange with the Muslim territories that had previously been political foes. The symbiosis achieved between warfare and commerce, where conflict could encourage trade or be instrumentalized to ensure compliance with pre-existing commercial agreements, demonstrated the Pisans’ multifaceted view of the Islamic polities they encountered as the city developed into a Mediterranean maritime power. The spoliate aesthetic visualizing this symbiosis consisted of the extensive use of Muslim ceramics (bacini) and other luxury objects combined with reused ancient Roman building elements in the city’s architectural commissions. Pisan civic identity differed from that of the Italian cities addressed in the previous two chapters in the insignificance of Byzantine culture on the one hand and the centrality of the Muslim world and ancient Rome on the other. The juxtaposition of Islamic and Roman spolia connected the city’s Roman heritage, its romanitas, to relations with the Islamic world in order to proclaim the source of Pisa’s wealth and fame. Medieval Pisans constructed their specific image of Roman antiquity based on a high level of knowledge of this ancient culture. This relationship was unquestionably adulatory, as the Pisans imitated ancient Rome to demonstrate their status as worthy successors to this great empire. Pisa’s relationship with the Islamic world was more ambivalent, and a range of meanings was possible for the Muslim spolia that © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004360808_005

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featured so ­prominently on the city’s religious structures. Triumphalist appropriation from the Islamic world referenced military aggression whereas the acquisition of numerous objects through trade manifested an aesthetic and economic appreciation of Muslim goods. The spoliate style devised in Pisa was particularly comprehensive, encompassing all types of practical, aesthetic, and symbolic reuse. Its deployment in the city’s visual culture focused on multivalent appropriations from past and foreign cultures to show how Pisa’s Mediterranean identity combined emulation of ancient Rome with complex and at times conflictual relationships with territories across the sea.

Conflict and Commerce in Eleventh and Twelfth-century Pisa

The Pisan offensives against Muslim territories in the eleventh century began with an expedition in Calabria in 1005 and continued with raids on Sardinia (1015), Bona (1034), Palermo (1063), and al-Mahdiyya and Zawila (1087), culminating in the attack on the Balearic Islands in 1113–15.1 These campaigns ensured the safety of the Tyrrhenian coast while combatting piracy and freeing Christian captives held in Muslim jails. Having already established their reputation as warriors in these eleventh-century campaigns, the Pisans were eager participants in the First Crusade, sending an imposing fleet to the Levant in 1098.2 The Archbishop of Pisa, Daibert, was elected Patriarch of Jerusalem and thus played an important role in the administration of the new Crusader States.3 1115 marked the last of the great military campaigns carried out by 1 Silvia Orvietani Busch, Medieval Mediterranean Ports: The Catalan and Tuscan Coasts, 1100 to 1235 (Leiden, 2001), pp. 166–68; Ottavio Banti, “Pisa e l’Islam,” in Arte Islamica: presenze di cultura islamica nella Toscana costiera, eds. Mariagiulia Burresi and Antonino Caleca (Pisa, 1995), pp. 31–33, at p. 31. See also Catia Renzi Rizzo, “I rapporti Pisa-Spagna (Al-Andalus, Maiorca) tra l’viii e il xiii secolo testimoniati dalle fonti scritte,” in Atti xxx Convegno internazionale della ceramica, xxxi Convegno internazionale della ceramica (Albisola, 1999), pp. 255–64, at p. 258; Travis Bruce, “The Politics of Violence and Trade: Denia and Pisa in the Eleventh Century,” Journal of Medieval History 32 (2006), 127–42, at pp. 133–34; and more recently idem, La Taifa de Denia (Toulouse, 2013). 2 For the Pisan participation in Holy Land crusades in general, see Maria Luisa Ceccarelli Lemut, Pisa e l’Oriente latino dalla i alla iii crociata (Pisa, 2010). 3 For Daibert, see Michael Matzke, Daiberto di Pisa: tra Pisa, papato e prima crociata (Pisa, 2002), Chapter 5, pp. 175–230; idem, “Pisa, l’arcivescovo Daiberto e la I crociata,” in Pisa e il Mediterraneo: uomini, merci, idee dagli Etruschi ai Medici, ed. Marco Tangheroni (Milan, 2003), pp. 145–49; Craig Fisher, “The Pisan Clergy and an Awakening of Historical Interest in a Medieval Commune,” in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, ed. William Bowsky (Lincoln, ne, 1966), pp. 143–219, at p. 159.

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Pisa, the incursion against the Balearic Islands to stop pirate raids originating in Majorca.4 The Balearics had great economic and strategic significance as natural ports and transit centers, and minimizing the threat of piracy was essential to maintaining the flow of ships and merchandise. From a military and political perspective, then, this time period could be characterized as one of great violence and antagonism, where conflict was often defined in religious terms. But these initiatives also resulted in the Pisans’ achieving security and status in the Mediterranean so that they could pursue maritime commercial activities.5 From a Pisan perspective, conflict and trade were not contradictory but rather complementary, as the potential for commerce encouraged territorial expansion into the Mediterranean and military campaigns opened up new markets.6 In the course of the twelfth century, Pisa secured a number of trade agreements with Mediterranean territories. The first recorded pact was with the Crusader States in 1108 in recompense for Pisan assistance to Bohemond of Antioch in his Levantine campaigns.7 The Latin territories in the Levant, though, never developed into a significant focus of Pisan commercial exchange as other ­Italian maritime powers had arrived earlier and inserted themselves more forcefully into trade networks. The Pisan government was quick to establish diplomatic and trade relations with the Byzantine Empire as well, and a chrysobull issued by Emperor Alexius i Comnenus in 1111 laid the 4 William Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia c. 1095–c. 1187 (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 166–70; Giovanna Petti Balbi, “Lotte antisaracene e ‘militia Christi’ in ambito iberico,” in ‘Militia Christi’ e crociata nei secoli xi–xiii (Milan, 1992), pp. 519–545, at pp. 539–42; Orvietani Busch, Medieval Mediterranean Ports, pp. 20–21, 166–67; Giuseppe Scalia, “Pisa all’apice della gloria: l’epigrafe araba di S. Sisto e l’epitafio della regina di Maiorca,” Studi medievali 48, third series (2007), 809–28, at p. 816; Renzi Rizzo, “I rapporti Pisa-Spagna,” pp. 258–59. 5 Marco Tangheroni, “Sui rapporti commerciali tra Pisa e la Tunisia nel medioevo,” in L’Italia ed i paesi mediterranei: vie di comunicazione e scambi commerciali e culturali al tempo delle repubbliche marinare (Pisa, 1988), pp. 75–90, at p. 85; David Abulafia, “The Pisan Bacini and the Medieval Mediterranean Economy: a Historian’s Viewpoint,” Chap. 13 in Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, 1100–1400 (London, 1987), pp. 287–302, at p. 288, is more reserved in his assessment of the importance of Pisa in Mediterranean trade. 6 Ottavio Banti, “I rapporti tra Pisa e gli stati islamici dell’Africa settentrionale tra l’xi e il xiv secolo,” in Le ceramiche medievali delle chiese di Pisa: contributo per una migliore comprensione delle loro caratteristiche e del loro significato quale documento di storia (Pisa, 1983), pp. 9–26, at pp. 11–12; Bruce, “Politics of Violence,” pp. 127–28; Orvietani Busch, Medieval Mediterranean Ports, p. 166. 7 Michel Balard, Croisades et Orient latin (XIe–XIVe siècles) (Paris, 2001), pp. 198, 200.

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g­ roundwork for a Pisan presence in Constantinople.8 Though Pisa’s position in the ­Byzantine capital appeared promising, the Amalfitans and the Venetians had been active in the empire for centuries by this time, and their integration into the fabric of Byzantine society ensured that they received more advantageous trade privileges. In contrast to the Crusader States and the Byzantine Empire, Egypt proved to be a highly lucrative market where Pisans enjoyed privileged status throughout the twelfth century.9 The city of Alexandria rivaled the Levant as a central node in Mediterranean commerce; Pisa’s merchants frequented that city and had permanent establishments there and in the capital of Cairo as well. It was in the west, however, that Pisan traders concentrated their commercial interests. There Pisa fought battles that gave its citizens bargaining power in negotiating commercial agreements, and the Tuscan city developed particularly strong relations with North Africa.10 The city’s merchants established commercial outposts in Tunis and Bougia, and throughout the Middle Ages the goods that circulated through the maritime routes along the Tyrrhenian Sea to North Africa formed the basis of the city’s wealth.11 Thus, Pisa’s engagement in 8

9

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Dafni Penna, The Byzantine Imperial Acts to Venice, Pisa and Genoa, 10th–12th Centuries (The Hague, 2012), pp. 101–14; Michel Balard, “Pisa e l’Oriente bizantino,” in Tangheroni, Pisa e il Mediterraneo, pp. 229–33, at p. 229; David Jacoby, “Italian Privileges and Trade in Byzantium before the Fourth Crusade,” Anuario de estudios medievales 24 (1994), 349–69, at pp. 351–52, 357–58. Michel Balard “Notes sur le commerce entre l’Italie et l’Égypte sous les Fatimides,” in L’Égypte fatimide: son art et son histoire, ed. Marianne Barrucand (Paris, 1999), pp. 627–33, at pp. 628–29; David Jacoby, “Les Italiens en Égypte au xiie et xiiie siècles: du comptoir à la colonie?” in Coloniser au Moyen Âge, eds. Michel Balard and Alain Ducellier (Paris, 1995), pp. 76–89, at p. 78. Ottavio Banti, “Pisa, Tunisi e il Maghreb fra il xii e il xv secolo,” in Tunisia e Toscana, ed. Vittorio Antonio Salvadorini (Pisa, 2002), pp. 31–50, at pp. 34–35; Karen Rose Mathews, “Other Peoples’ Dishes: Islamic Bacini on Eleventh-century Churches in Pisa,” Gesta 53, no. 1 (2014), 5–23, at p. 17; see in general Daniela Amaldi, “I documenti arabi dell’Archivo di Stato di Pisa,” in Burresi and Caleca, Arte Islamica, pp. 35–50, for these agreements. Banti, “I rapporti tra Pisa e gli stati islamici,” pp. 10, 16, 22–24; Graziella Berti, “Pisa and the Islamic World: Import of ceramic wares and transfer of technical know-how,” in Il mare, la terra, il ferro: ricerche su Pisa medievale (secoli vii–xiii), eds. Graziella Berti, Catia Renzi Rizzo, and Marco Tangheroni (Pisa, 2004), pp. 73–92, at pp. 73–76. For treaties with the Balearic Islands, see Gary Doxey, “Diplomacy, Trade and War: Muslim Majorca in International Politics, 1159–81,” Journal of Medieval History, 20 (1994), 39–61, at pp. 43– 44, 53. For Pisan relations with Bougia in particular see Djamil Aïssani and Dominique Valerian, “Rapporti tra Pisa e Béjaïa (Bugia) in età medievale: un contributo essenziale alla ­costruzione della ‘mediterraneità’,” in Tangheroni, Pisa e il Mediterraneo, pp. 235–43.

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conflict and commerce in the eleventh and twelfth centuries tells a tale of two different Mediterraneans. In the east, Pisan penetration and influence were negligible due to greater competition from other Italian mercantile powers. In the western Mediterranean, however, the formula of combined military attacks and commercial integration into Mediterranean markets was extraordinarily successful. The citizens of Pisa were known, then, in their dual role as merchants and warriors and it was this persona that they sought to highlight and celebrate in the central architectural monuments of their city.

The Signification of Ancient Spolia and Contemporary Muslim Spoils on Pisan Churches

At the same time that the Pisans were pursuing these economic and military ventures in the Mediterranean, they developed a particular type of decoration in their civic architecture: the use of bacini or ceramic bowls from the Islamic world combined with ancient Roman building elements or spolia. The vast majority of the Pisan churches built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries featured this combination of decorative forms, forging a distinctive Pisan aesthetic that referred simultaneously to foreign and past cultures. Many scholars have noted Pisa’s predilection for associating itself with ancient Rome and this romanitas pisana manifested itself in a variety of ways in the civic life of the city. The thousands of Islamic ceramics employed as architectural decoration on Pisan churches have been the focus of significant research as well, as the city featured the most extensive use of this decorative motif anywhere in the medieval world. However, these two cultural references are rarely addressed in tandem and studied in terms of the meanings the juxtaposition of contemporary Islamic and ancient Roman cultures might have had for medieval Pisan audiences. Spolia in general, but Islamic and Roman appropriated objects in particular, played an essential role in formulating a unique visual culture in Pisa that manifested the glory of Pisa as a second Rome and the wealth the city accrued through the taking of plunder from and pursuing trade with Muslim territories in the Mediterranean. Churches in Pisa began to feature bacini decoration in the first decades of the eleventh century, and the Pisan bacini are some of the earliest manifestations of this type of decoration in western Europe; the sheer number of eleventh-century structures with bacini decoration in Pisa has no European Bruce, “Politics of Violence,” p. 137, addresses the trade agreement between Pisa and Valencia.

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parallel.12 The basins in Pisa are by far the most thoroughly studied group of medieval architectural ceramics due to an extensive conservation effort undertaken in the 1970s and 1980s. By removing the original ceramics and replacing them with replicas, scholars were able to conduct detailed analyses of vessel profiles, clay bodies, glazes and pigments, and the means with which the bacini were attached to the buildings. The secure dating of Pisan churches and the detailed analysis of the provenance of their bacini make medieval Pisa an ideal setting for the interpretation of ceramics as architectural decoration. Over twenty churches in the city feature bacini decoration and a representative sample of eleventh and twelfth-century structures will be discussed here.13 The church of San Piero (Pietro) a Grado, dating to the late tenth or early eleventh century, lies outside the city of Pisa on the road leading to Pisa’s port on the Tyrrhenian Sea (Fig.  3.1). This location gave the structure particular prominence, encouraging travelers, merchants, and pilgrims to visit the church. The pilgrim audience came to San Piero because of its association with Saint Peter, who is believed to have disembarked at Pisa on his way from Antioch to Rome.14 The popularity of the pilgrimage to the basilica and the wealth generated by pilgrims elevated San Piero to the level of the second most significant church in the diocese after the cathedral. San Piero has the largest collection of bacini of all the Pisan Romanesque structures, originally boasting 222 pieces of ceramics on its exterior walls, placed above and below blind arches along the roofline. The sixty-four that remain today originated from Egypt, Tunisia, 12

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The Abbey of Pomposa is the only other structure that rivals the Pisan churches in terms of its date; for Pomposa see Sauro Gelichi and Sergio Nepoti, “I ‘bacini’ in Emilia ­Romagna, Veneto e Friuli Venezia Giulia,” in Atti xxvi Convegno internazionale della ceramica (Albisola, 1996), pp. 51–66, at p. 56. The church of San Paragorio in Noli (Liguria) also has mid-eleventh century bacini, slightly later than the earliest Pisan examples; see Alessandra Frondoni, “Il restauro dei bacini di S. Paragorio a Noli (sv),” in Atti xxvi Convegno internazionale, pp. 271–82, at pp. 271–73. A comprehensive catalogue of Pisan bacini can be found in Graziella Berti and Liana Tongiorgi, I bacini ceramici medievali delle chiese di Pisa (Rome, 1981). More recently, Graziella Berti and Marcella Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate usate come “bacini” (Florence, 2010), have updated the research on these ceramics and provided a cd with images of all the individual basins. Stefano Sodi, “San Piero a Grado e la via maritima dell’evangelizzazione della Tuscia ­costiera,” in Nel segno di Pietro: La Basilica di San Piero a Grado da luogo della prima ­evangelizzazione a meta di pellegrinaggio medievale, eds. Maria Luisa Ceccarelli Lemut and Stefano Sodi (Pisa, 2003), pp. 11–18, at p. 12; Berti and Tongiorgi, I bacini ceramici medievali, p. 22; Fabio Redi, “La Basilica di S. Piero a Grado: gli scavi e la cronologia,” in Terre e paduli: reperti, documenti, immagini per la storia di Coltano, ed. Renzo Mazzanti (Pontedera, 1986), pp. 221–28, at p. 221.

Figure 3.1

Pisa, San Piero a Grado, general exterior view. Author’s photo.

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Figure 3.2

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San Piero a Grado, detail of bacini decoration, Andalusi green and brown ware. Photo from Graziella Berti and Marcella Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate.

Sicily, Morocco, and Spain (Fig. 3.2).15 The bacini on San Piero are more h ­ eavily concentrated on the north side of the structure where the main entrance is located; this side of the building also faced the road that conveyed people and goods between Pisa and the port (Fig. 3.3).16 The embellishment of the north wall demonstrates the highly conscious application of bacini decoration on church structures, serving as the main decorative focus on the most visible side of the building. 15

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Graziella Berti, “La decorazione con ‘bacini’ ceramici,” in Ceccarelli Lemut and Sodi, Nel segno di Pietro, pp. 157–73; Mariagiulia Burresi, “L’edificio,” in La Basilica di San Piero a Grado, eds. Stefano Sodi and Mariagiulia Burresi (Pisa, 2010), pp. 35–68, at pp. 42–44. Berti and Tongiorgi, I bacini ceramici medievali, p. 22.

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Figure 3.3

San Piero a Grado, view of exterior north side. Author’s photo.

San Piero also possessed a great variety of Roman spolia, with local and imported ancient material adorning both the interior and exterior of the ­structure.17 All the Roman spolia on the exterior are concentrated on the north wall, with a display of ancient inscriptions and architectural fragments that came ­predominantly from Luni, in Liguria. On San Piero’s north wall, then, we see an early example of Islamic ceramics and Roman spolia working together as a comprehensive decorative ensemble.18 On the interior, the twenty-four columns and capitals that divide the nave and the side aisles are all Roman spolia (Fig. 3.4). The colonnade displays an extraordinary array of materials, orders, and types, indicating a provenance from different ancient structures

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San Piero was built over several superimposed ancient Roman structures, and there would have been ample Roman building materials for reuse; see Fabio Redi, “Le strutture edilizie della basilica di San Piero a Grado dalle origini al secolo xv,” in Ceccarelli Lemut and Sodi, Nel segno di Pietro, pp. 99–116, at p. 99; Stefano Sodi, “Le vicende storiche,” in Sodi and Burresi, La Basilica di San Piero a Grado, pp. 5–33, at pp. 11, 14. Doriana Cattalini, “Il reimpiego del materiale classico nell’edificio romanico,” in Ceccarelli Lemut and Sodi, Nel segno di Pietro, pp. 135–55, at p. 136.

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San Piero a Grado, interior view. Author’s photo.

and sites.19 San Piero has a highly unusual capital that dates to the Augustan period; decorated with the bodies of two sphinxes joined to one head on each face of the capital, this piece is identical to capitals from the Auditorium of 19

Ibid., pp. 135, 137–39, 143.

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Maecenas in Rome.20 The sphinx capital, then, was clearly a Roman import, and the spoliate objects at San Piero combined pieces from nearby Luni with exotic and prestigious acquisitions from the capital of the Roman Empire. The spoliate decoration on San Piero visualized two themes central to the Mediterranean identity of Pisa: the authentication of the apostolic relics housed in the church and the sea as a conceptual and physical link to other cultures. As a manifestation of Mediterranean belonging, the spolia could function symbolically whether the Roman or Islamic origin of the appropriated objects was recognized. The Muslim bacini, for example, could convey significant meaning on a purely aesthetic level, augmenting the sanctity of the church with the sheer number of vessels adorning the structure. The luminous surfaces and colorful glazes of the pottery and the warm, golden stone of the walls would have made San Piero resemble a monumental reliquary encrusted with gems.21 The use of bowls to imitate gemstones is also seen on a roughly contemporary monument—the Ambo of Henry ii, created between 1002 and 1014 (Fig.  3.5). On this monumental pulpit, Roman agate and glass bowls as well as rock crystal plates and cups are arranged to form a large crux gemmata in the central panel.22 The Ambo of Henry ii monumentalized smallscale liturgical objects made of gold and covered with precious stones, and the church of San Piero could be seen as a reliquary container on an even grander scale. The jewel-like bacini themselves were visually arresting with their wide 20

21 22

Maria Cecilia Parra, “Marmi romani, marmi pisani: note sul reimpiego,” in Tangheroni, Pisa e il Mediterraneo, pp. 105–11, at p. 109. For the Auditorium of Maecenas, see Amanda Claridge, Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (Oxford, 1998), pp. 294–97. I thank Carol Neuman de Vegvar for this observation. Anna Contadini, “Sharing a Taste?: Material Culture and Intellectual Curiosity around the Mediterranean, from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Century,” in The Renaissance and the Ottoman World, eds. Anna Contadini and Claire Norton (Farnham, 2013), pp. 23–61, at pp. 28–30; Eliza Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture: The Artistic Patronage of Otto iii and Henry ii (Farnham, 2012), pp. 93–97; Karen Rose Mathews, “Expressing Political Legitimacy and Cultural Identity through the Use of Spolia on the Ambo of Henry ii,” Medieval Encounters 5, no. 2 (1999), 156–83, at p. 159. Dale Kinney, “Ancient Gems in the Middle Ages: Riches and Ready-mades,” in Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine, eds. Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney (Farnham, 2011), pp. 97–120, discusses the various meanings of ancient gems reused in medieval contexts, and Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen, “Spolia as Relics? Relics as Spoils?: The Meaning and Function of Spolia in Western Medieval Reliquaries,” in Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond, eds. Cynthia Hahn and Holger Klein (Washington, dc, 2015), pp. 173–92, at pp. 174–80, analyzes enamels as fabricated gems, serving as a substitute for precious stones on medieval metalwork objects.

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Figure 3.5

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Aachen, Palace Chapel, Ambo of Henry ii. Courtesy of Foto Marburg/Art Resource, ny.

a­ rray of ­glazing techniques and bright colors, creating a rich, encrusted, shining ­exterior that announced that there was something extraordinary and holy inside. As was the case with the church of Santi Maria e Donato on Murano discussed in the previous chapter, the container and the contained existed in a symbiotic relationship.23 Saint Peter’s visit to the church elevated San Piero’s status as a popular pilgrimage site, and the monumental reliquary studded with ceramic basins and bright white Roman marble advertised the sanctity of the location and its connection to a saint from the apostolic age.

23

Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York, 2010), pp. 180, 183.

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Two bacini on San Piero represent boats and thus directly reference the maritime commerce that brought the pottery to Pisa (Fig. 3.2).24 The ­polychromatic basins on the port-oriented church advertised and celebrated Pisa’s naval prowess and the city’s integration into commercial networks in the first decades of the eleventh century. Saint Peter and the objects decorating the church built in his honor all came to Pisa via maritime routes; it was the proximity to the sea that established the connection to the apostle.25 Pilgrims would arrive at the shrine in the same way that Saint Peter did, and access to the Mediterranean gave the church great prominence and encouraged pilgrimage to the cult site. San Piero’s fame in the eleventh century rested on its advantageous location between the port and the city of Pisa and its multilayered spoliate decoration advertised the sanctity within the church and its connection to an apostolic saint. It was the Mediterranean as a mercantile space that was paramount for Pisa in the eleventh century, and the reuse of Roman and Muslim objects on San Piero foregrounded their role as commercial goods. On the church of San Piero a Grado, then, the combination of Roman and Muslim spolia celebrated the importance of the sea as a conduit for sanctity as well as trade. San Piero’s dedication and subsequent fame derived from the legend claiming that Saint Peter’s ship landed at the Pisan port and the saint dedicated a stone altar in the church. Knowledge of the Romanness of San Piero—its location, ancient foundation, and Roman spoliate decoration— authenticated the legend of the apostle’s presence in the church. The site on which the church was built had ancient origins; archaeological excavations have uncovered Roman structures below an earlier church.26 The altar claimed to be the one dedicated by Saint Peter still stands in the church today, and was thus a contact relic of the apostle and first Bishop of Rome. The ancient ­Roman building materials found thick on the ground at San Piero and the prestigious imports brought in from Rome itself provided the appropriate ancient context for Peter’s visit and the contact relics he left in Pisa. The spolia were 24

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Graziella Berti, Guillermo Rosselló Bordoy, and Ezio Tongiorgi, “Alcuni bacini ceramici di Pisa e la corrispondente produzione di Maiorca nel secolo xi,” Archeologia medievale 13 (1986), 97–115, at pp. 109–11. Stefano Sodi, “S. Piero a Grado e la via maritima,” pp. 11–18, and idem, “‘Ad Pisanum litus appulsus’: l’evangelizzazione di Pisa e il mare,” in Tangheroni, Pisa e il Mediterraneo, pp. 127–31, addresses the idea of maritime routes facilitating the movement of saints and their relics. Stefano Bruni, “L’area di San Piero a Grado prima della costruzione della basilica: ipotesi in forma di appunti sui dati archeologici,” in Ceccarelli Lemut and Sodi, Nel segno di P­ ietro, pp. 81–98; Sodi, “Le vicende storiche,” p. 14.

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t­ angible ­reminders of Pisa’s Roman past and the fame of the city in antiquity that brought such an illustrious visitor to the city by way of the sea. Ancient spolia were plentiful in Pisa and the neighboring region of Liguria, and it was certainly convenient and cost effective to reuse local materials. In addition, however, Pisan builders and patrons purchased rare and distinctive Roman objects to ornament their churches. The highest quality spolia came from Rome and the most prestigious churches in Pisa used these choice materials. San Piero announced its elevated status with its rich Roman spoliate decoration, acquired at no small expense in the capital itself and transported along the Tyrrhenian Sea to Pisa’s port. As was the case with the Cathedral of Salerno, Roman spolia could allude to multiple Romes—the ancient R ­ oman foundation of Pisa, the apostolic Rome of Saint Peter, and the contemporary eleventh-century city that was the commercial hub for trade in ancient marbles. The principal means that the medieval Pisans employed for acquiring ancient Roman building materials was likely maritime commerce. The sheer amount and homogeneity of reused Roman materials in Pisa would make it unlikely that they were plunder, as it would have been difficult to collect numerous matching columns and capitals when taking war spoils. The objects from Rome and Ostia reused on San Piero were probably acquired at those locations. There is definitive evidence of trade in ancient stones provided in the foundation document of the church of San Michele in Borgo in Pisa. Dating to the 1040s, the text features the monastery’s abbot, Bonus, speaking about his church construction project. He proclaimed “I built the church that everyone sees now and went all the way to Rome in search of columns for the same church and had them brought by sea in a ship at our own expense.”27 Just over a hundred years later, a document from 1158 records a financial transaction between the Archbishop of Pisa and two Roman citizens concerning the purchase of stone.28 Pisan religious officials were not alone in acquiring ancient Roman objects in Rome; architectural patrons like Desiderius of Montecassino 27

28

“Edificavi in ipsa turre Ecclesiam que nunc videtur ab omnibus et perrexi ad Romam per columnas ipsius Ecclesie et comparavi et feci eas venire in navim per mare de nostro pretio….” See Doriana Cattalini, “Un capitello da Roma a San Piero a Grado,” Prospettiva 31 (1982), 73–77, at p. 74, for the latin text. Arnold Esch, “L’uso dell’antico nell’ideologia papale, imperiale e comunale,” in Roma antica nel Medioevo: mito, rappresentazioni, sopravvivenze nella ‘Respublica Christiana’ dei secoli ix–xiii (Milan, 2001), pp. 3–25, at p. 19; Salvatore Settis, “Continuità, distanza, conoscenza: tre usi dell’antico,” in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana, ed. Salvatore Settis, 3 vols. (Turin, 1986), 3:375–486, at pp. 389–90, citing Natale Caturegli, Regesto della chiesa di Pisa (Rome, 1938), p. 320, n. 460.

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in the eleventh century and Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis in the twelfth century both mention travel to Rome to purchase columns for their ecclesiastical building projects.29 Like the ancient Roman materials, the ceramics on San Piero could have arrived in Pisa via the Mediterranean in three ways: as plunder, gifts, or commercial goods.30 Of these options, acquisition through trade is the most likely. Graziella Berti has made the strongest case for the Pisan bacini being objects of trade, noting that the arrival of Islamic ceramics predated Pisan military campaigns and continued well after hostilities ceased in the early twelfth century.31 The bulk, weight, and lack of precious material made bacini unlikely booty as well. The descriptions of war plunder in medieval Pisan texts listed a variety of luxury objects but never mentioned ceramics. Thus, though no documentary evidence addresses commerce in ceramics in the Mediterranean until the later Middle Ages, the sheer number of ceramic wares in Pisa, originating from a wide array of production centers, would argue for their understanding as commercial goods. If the monetary value of ancient Roman spolia would have been readily recognizable to those who visited the church or passed by it on the way to and from the port, then the role of bacini as commodities would have been even more apparent. The sixty-four basins that survive from the eleventh ­century originate from numerous Mediterranean production centers, i­ndicating that Pisa had direct or indirect commercial interaction with several distinct l­ocales.32 29

30 31

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For Desiderius, see Leo of Ostia, Chronica Monasterii Casinensis, mgh ss 34, ed. Hartmut Hoffmann (Hannover, 1980), iii, 26, 19–25, p. 394, and the text and translation provided in Chapter 1. For Suger, see Erwin Panofsky, ed. and trans., Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art Treasures, 2nd edition (Princeton, 1979), De consecratione ii, 15–25, p. 90. Mathews, “Other Peoples’ Dishes,” pp. 16–18; Bruce, La Taifa de Denia, pp. 163–64. Berti, “Pisa and the Islamic World,” pp. 83–84; Abulafia, “The Pisan Bacini,” pp. 287–88; Claire Déléry, “Using Cuerda Seca Ceramics as a Historical Source to Evaluate Trade and Cultural Relations between Christian Ruled Lands and Al-Andalus, from the Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries,” Al-Masāq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 21, no. 1 (April 2009), 31–58, at pp. 47–48. Berti has even noted that some ceramics used as bacini were defective, strengthening the argument that they were not luxury objects; see Graziella Berti, “Le rôle des bacini dans l’étude des céramiques à lustre métallique,” in Le calife, le prince, et le potier: les faïences à reflets métalliques, eds. François Amigues and André Bazzana (Paris, 2002), pp. 220–27, at p. 221. Graziella Berti and Catia Renzi Rizzo, “I porti della Toscana ed il loro ruolo negli scambi commerciali del Mediterraneo tra x e xiii secolo,” Arqueología medieval (2005), 161–79, at p. 175; Graziella Berti “I ‘bacini’ islamici del Museo Nazionale di San Matteo—Pisa: vent’anni dopo la pubblicazione del Corpus,” in Studi in onore di Umberto Scerrato, eds.

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Given the lack of an explicit connection between military campaigns and ceramics as plunder, it is most likely that these basins were acquired across the Mediterranean or in centralized commercial depots like Sicily or the B ­ alearic Islands. So, as merchants, sailors, pilgrims, and warriors came to Pisa and viewed San Piero, the hundreds of Islamic ceramics on the church would have indexed commerce rather than war. Enhancing their connection to maritime commerce was the possible function of the bacini as mementoes of voyages and exotic ports of call frequented by merchants. The Pisans enjoying the shining and colorful effects of the basins on the church may have been the very people responsible for acquiring these goods in the first place and they would have had a concrete understanding of the provenance, characteristics, and value of such commodities.33 The organization of the ceramics in an ordered fashion across the church exterior may have been a schematic way of systematizing space and plotting the locales visited by Pisan ships. Though the earliest cartographic instruments, the portolan chart and text, did not appear until the late twelfth century, the arrangement of the bacini on façades, like ports on a navigational chart, could represent an early manifestation of a mapping mentality that perceived visual imagery through the lens of circulation, movement, and the charting of time and space.34 The bacini provide evidence for Pisan Mediterranean trade well before any documentary sources, and together with the Roman spolia they epitomized a mercantile mentality that could appreciate artworks for their aesthetic qualities and monetary worth.

33

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Maria Vittoria Fontana and Bruno Genito (Naples, 2003), pp. 121–51, at p. 146; Déléry, “Using Cuerda Seca Ceramics,” pp. 47–48; Olivia Remie Constable, Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian Peninsula, 900–1500 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. xxi, 167–68. Numerous basins on San Piero were manufactured in Tunisia, but the limited archaeological data concerning Tunisian pottery makes it difficult to know the exact location of production centers; see Karen Rose Mathews, “Pisan Bacini and the Churches of Pisa,” in A Companion to Medieval Pisa, eds. Karen Mathews, Stefano Bruni, and Silvia ­Orvietani Busch (Leiden, forthcoming), for a discussion of these challenges. See also Mariam ­Rosser-Owen, “The Oliphant: A Call for a Shift of Perspective,” in Romanesque and the Mediterranean: Points of Contact across the Latin, Greek and Islamic Worlds c. 1000 to c. 1250, eds. Rosa Maria Bacile and John McNeill (Leeds, 2015), pp. 15–58, at p. 32. Patrick Gautier-Dalché, Carte marine et portulan au XIIe siècle: Le liber de existencia riveriarum et forma maris nostri Mediterranei (Pise, circa 1200) (Rome, 1995), has published what is believed to be the earliest extant medieval navigational text, created in Pisa at the end of the twelfth century. The topic of a mapping mentality and its visual manifestation in the artistic production of the Italian maritime republics is one I am addressing in a book-length study.

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The spoliate decoration on San Piero could thus attest to the veracity of Saint Peter’s visit and highlight connections to the sea on multiple levels. The beauty of the church’s decoration made it an apposite container for objects associated with such an illustrious saint. The rich Roman context enhanced with reused ancient materials provided the conceptual stratigraphy for the apostle’s sojourn in Pisa, establishing the historical setting through the ancient foundation of the site. The sea was the conduit that brought Peter to Pisa and made San Piero such a significant strategic location in a continuum that extended from antiquity to the medieval period. The varied decorative elements on this port church could have been appreciated as commodities that came to Pisa via Mediterranean commerce. Their placement on San Piero could evoke the circulation of peoples and goods across the sea, or serve as reminders of particular ports visited or voyages and transactions undertaken by Pisan merchants. The church, with its extensive decorative elements acquired throughout the Mediterranean, stood as a potent symbol of Pisa’s wealth and prestige that was based on knowledge of and participation in Mediterranean cultural, political, and economic networks. The Cathedral of Pisa featured a similar spoliate aesthetic to that of San Piero but deployed its combination of reused Muslim and Roman objects to manifest a different relationship between conflict and commerce. In contrast to San Piero, the Duomo displays a comprehensive array of Roman spolia accented by strategically placed Muslim objects in order to emphasize ancient Rome as the model for Pisa’s fame and prosperity in the eleventh century.35 As the religious center of the city, the Duomo was the province of the clerical elite and its decoration gave priority to a Roman past that was admired and emulated by ecclesiastical administrators and communal leaders. The Duomo was also a civic monument and it combined this clerical fascination with the Roman past with decoration that celebrated Pisa’s glorious medieval present defined by successful commercial and military exploits. The Duomo and the church of San Piero shared spoliate visual elements but the combination of ancient and foreign spolia on the Duomo proclaimed the Pisans’ Mediterranean ambitions from a historicizing perspective, based on extensive knowledge of the cultures referenced through the decoration. The Cathedral of Pisa, or Santa Maria Assunta, was begun in 1063 and substantially completed in 1116 (Fig. 3.6). Following its consecration by Pope ­Gelasius ii in 1118, new work was begun to lengthen the nave and renovate 35

Antonio Milone, “‘Arabitas’ pisana e medioevo mediterraneo: relazioni artistiche tra xi e xiii secolo,” in Fibonacci tra arte e scienza, ed. Luigi Radicati di Brozolo (Milan, 2002), pp. 101–31.

Figure 3.6

Pisa, Santa Maria Assunta (Duomo), general exterior view. Author’s photo.

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the façade in 1120.36 For the eleventh-century structure, the Pisans employed a foreign architect, Buschetto, who is believed to have been Greek in origin; this choice of architect clearly reflected Pisa’s international ambitions.37 The building’s size and elaborate decoration completely overshadowed the other Romanesque churches in Pisa, making a clear statement of its central role in the life of the city. The Duomo also differed from other Pisan churches in that it displays only one bacino in its decorative program, an Egyptian lusterware bowl located on the southern nave wall (Fig. 3.7).38 Though the cathedral did not employ bacini extensively in its decoration, it did display several Islamic objects on its exterior, the most celebrated of which is the Pisa Griffin (Fig. 3.8).39 The griffin is a large-scale bronze sculpture that originally stood above the eastern apse, and is likely Andalusi work of the tenth or eleventh century.40 Surprisingly little is known about this secular artwork despite its large size and unusual iconography. No medieval references to the sculpture exist and its presence in Pisa is only attested in the early sixteenth century.41 The griffin must have arrived in Pisa sometime between the eleventh and fifteenth century, though its placement on the cathedral is generally dated 36

Adriano Peroni, ed., Il Duomo di Pisa, 3 vols. (Modena, 1995), 2:6–7; Franco Paliaga and Stefano Renzoni, Le chiese di Pisa: guida alla conoscenza del patrimonio artistico (Pisa, 1999), pp. 90–103. See in general the recent volume on the Cathedral of Pisa, Gabriella Garzella, Antonino Caleca, and Marco Collareta, eds., La Cattedrale di Pisa (Pisa, 2014). A fire in 1595 caused great damage to the Romanesque structure and has made it difficult to reconstruct its original appearance; see Gianfranco Malafarina, Il Duomo di Pisa: The Cathedral of Pisa (Modena, 2007), p. 6. 37 Malafarina, Il Duomo di Pisa, p. 6. 38 Berti and Tongiorgi, I bacini ceramici medievali, p. 65; Peroni, Il Duomo di Pisa, 1:79. 39 The literature on the griffin is extensive, and the object has been featured in numerous international exhibitions. Some of the most recent references to the griffin include Contadini, “Sharing a Taste?” p. 36; Lamia Balafrej, “Saracen or Pisan? The Use and Meaning of the Pisa Griffin on the Duomo,” Ars Orientalis 42 (2012), 31–40; Karen Rose Mathews, “Plunder of War or Objects of Trade? The Reuse and Reception of Andalusi Objects in Medieval Pisa,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 4, no. 2 (2012), 233–58, at pp. 237–38, and n. 23. 40 Clara Baracchini and Antonino Caleca, “Presenze islamiche nell’arte a Pisa,” in Burresi and Caleca, Arte Islamica, pp. 51–63, at pp. 52–53; Anna Contadini, Richard Camber, and Peter Northover, “Beasts that Roared: The Pisa Griffin and the New York Lion,” in Cairo to Kabul: Afghan and Islamic Studies presented to Ralph Pinder-Wilson, eds. Warwick Ball and Leonard Harrow (London, 2002), pp. 65–83, at pp. 67–68. Marilyn Jenkins, “New Evidence for the History and Provenance of the So-Called Pisa Griffin,” Islamic Archaeological Studies 1 (1978), 79–85, at p. 80, puts forward a hypothesis of North African provenance. 41 Balafrej, “Saracen or Pisan?” p. 31.

Figure 3.7

Duomo, detail of bacini decoration, Egyptian lusterware. Author’s photo.

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Figure 3.8

Pisa Griffin (Pisa, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo). Author’s photo.

to the time of the structure’s consecration in 1118. Given this time frame, most scholars have argued that this luxury metalwork object formed part of the plunder from the Balearic campaign in 1113–15. Its display on the eastern apse afforded this battle trophy great visibility as the city’s inhabitants approached the cathedral from the east and entered through the south transept door. Another object displayed on the cathedral with an indisputable provenance from al-Andalus is a marble Corinthian capital.42 It originally adorned the roof 42

Anna Contadini, “Translocation and Transformation: Some Middle Eastern Objects in Europe,” in The Power of Things and the Flow of Cultural Transformations, eds. Liselotte Saurma-Jeltsch and Anja Eisenbeiß (Berlin, 2010), pp. 42–64, at pp. 50–53; Baracchini and Caleca, “Presenze islamiche,” pp. 51–53. See in particular the article by Ugo Monneret de

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of the north transept as a pendant to the griffin on the east. The sculptor Fath signed the work, and the style of the capital associates it with similar objects from tenth-century Córdoba or Madinat al-Zahra. It could have arrived in Pisa as plunder from military campaigns against Almería in 1089 or the Balearics in the early twelfth century, though no documentary evidence exists for its date of arrival or means of acquisition.43 A third Muslim object known only through textual sources is a set of wooden doors originally mounted on the north end of the façade. The fourteenth-century chronicler Ranieri Sardo stated that the doors were plunder from Majorca and came to Pisa after the Balearic expedition. The doors were destroyed in a fire in 1595, but Sardo’s claim has great plausibility given the frequency with which doors were taken as spoils of war in the medieval Mediterranean.44 The understanding of the doors and the other Islamic objects on the cathedral as plunder was deepened by the juxtaposition of these foreign spoils with triumphal inscriptions on the façade (Fig. 3.9). On the left side of the façade, three poetic inscriptions flank the north portal with the Majorcan doors.45

43 44

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Villard, “Le chapiteau arabe de la Cathédrale de Pise,” Comptes-rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 90e année, n. 1 (1946), 17–23. Contadini, “Translocation and Transformation,” p. 52; Monneret de Villard, “Le chapiteau arabe,” p. 23. Ottavio Banti, ed., Cronaca di Pisa di Ranieri Sardo (Rome, 1963), p. 24: “In del millecentosedici li Pisani reconno [di Maiolica] le porte del legno che sono in duomo….” [In the year 1116 the Pisans took from Majorca the wooden doors that are on the Duomo.] For doors as spoils, see Julia Gonnella, “Columns and Hieroglyphs: Magic Spolia in Medieval Islamic Architecture of Northern Syria,” Muqarnas 27 (2010), 103–20, at pp. 108–09; Beat Brenk, “Türen als Spolien und Baureliquien: Nova construere, sed amplius vetusta servare,” in Künstlerischer Austausch=Artistic Exchange: Akten des xxviii. Internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte, ed. Thomas Gaehtgens (Berlin, 1993), pp. 43–51; Rebecca Müller, Sic hostes Ianua frangit: Spolien und Trophäen im mittelalterlichen Genua (Weimar, 2002), pp. 204–05. Ottavio Banti, Le epigrafi e le scritte obituarie del Duomo di Pisa (Pisa, 1996), pp. 21–22, 24, 26, provides the text of the inscriptions. See also idem, “Le iscrizioni della Cattedrale,” in Garzella et al., La Cattedrale di Pisa, pp. 111–19. Antonio Milone, “Schede dell’esterno,” in Peroni, Il Duomo di Pisa, 1:337–39, 342, edits and translates the inscriptions on the cathedral façade. For an analysis of the texts, see Fisher, “Pisan Clergy,” pp. 161–77; Marc von der Höh, Erinnerungskultur und frühe Kommune: Formen und Funktionen des Umgangs mit der Vergangenheit im hochmittelalterlichen Pisa (1050–1150) (Berlin, 2006), pp. 219–33, 315–64; Mathews, “Plunder of War,” p. 237. The website entitled “In Piazza in Chiesa e a Palazzo: Pisa e l’Islam nel Medioevo” provides documentation and videos concerning the cathedral inscriptions and their relationship to the city’s military campaigns; see http:// pisaeislam.humnet.unipi.it.

Figure 3.9

Duomo, west façade inscription celebrating the Pisan expedition against Palermo. Author’s photo.

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I­ nscribed on the large panel to the left of the door is a poem celebrating Pisan military campaigns against Reggio in 1006, Sardinia in 1015–6, and Bona in 1034. Immediately below the large panel is a smaller inscription that serves as an epitaph for an unnamed “Queen of Majorca.” The text states that she was taken as a hostage and brought to Pisa, likely after the expedition against the Balearic Islands in 1113–15. The third poem, in a place of great prominence between the north and central portals, records the construction of the cathedral and its connection to the campaign against Palermo in 1064. These inscriptions incorporated almost all the Pisan naval expeditions conducted against Muslim territories in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries and exalted them as great victories for the Pisan commune.46 The cathedral, then, was a triumphal monument for Pisa’s citizens, and the inscribed texts and Islamic objects displayed on the church worked together to reiterate themes of victory and conquest over Muslim territories. Not only was the Cathedral of Pisa decorated with high quality Islamic objects, but its Roman spoliate decoration was exceptional as well. The Duomo reused ancient columns and capitals, some of which came from well-known architectural structures in Rome.47 The cathedral’s decoration also incorporated architectural elements—cornices, corbels, and friezes—on both the exterior and interior, at times reusing them in novel ways. A frieze decorated with dolphins and shells came from the Basilica of Neptune in Rome, and formed part of the presbytery screen in the choir (Fig. 3.10).48 The side with the Roman reliefs faced inward and medieval artisans added marble intarsia decoration 46

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The only expedition not mentioned in the texts was the al-Mahdiyya/Zawila campaign, but this was a military victory most closely associated with the church of San Sisto, to be discussed below. See Milone, “‘Arabitas’ pisana,” p. 121; Scalia, “Pisa all’apice,” p. 824. Two distinctive Corinthian capitals reused in the Duomo, for example, came from the Porticus of Octavia, while another group of three ancient capitals, decorated with s­ culpted eagles and lightning bolts, originally adorned another famed Roman monument, the Baths of Caracalla; see Giovanna Tedeschi, “I reimpieghi,” in Garzella et al., La Cattedrale di Pisa, pp. 121–27; Parra, “Marmi romani,” p. 109. The capitals and columns in the Pisan Duomo are an eclectic mix of ancient and medieval objects, with some ancient capitals reworked in the medieval period; see Adriano Peroni, “Spolia e architettura nel Duomo di Pisa,” in Antike Spolien in der Architektur des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, ed. Joachim Poeschke (Munich, 1996), pp. 205–23, at pp. 205–06, 208, 211, 213–14. For the topic of reworking ancient sculpture in the Middle Ages, see Mario D’Onofrio, ed., Rilavorazione dell’antico nel Medioevo (Rome, 2003). Giovanna Tedeschi Grisanti, “Il reimpiego di materiali di età classica,” in Peroni, Il Duomo di Pisa, 1:153–64, at p. 156. For the Basilica of Neptune, see Claridge, Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide, p. 207.

Figure 3.10

Roman frieze with dolphins (Pisa, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo). Author’s photo.

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to the exterior face. Adjacent to the Porta San Ranieri, on the exterior south transept of the cathedral, a relief from Ostia with two boats and a lighthouse was inserted along a blind arch.49 The most original display of Roman spolia can be seen on the exterior of the cathedral, where numerous ancient inscriptions and architectural fragments were embedded into the walls, surrounded by ancient sarcophagi. The sheer volume of ancient spoils, consciously applied and forming a central part of the decorative program of the Duomo, is impressive as no other medieval structure employs inscriptions and sarcophagi to this degree.50 Reused ancient marble inscriptions and Roman architectural reliefs covered the exterior of the ­cathedral on three sides; the façade had no ancient inscriptions, only medieval triumphal texts. All these spoliate objects were inserted and arranged in a seemingly random and haphazard fashion. Inscriptions are often upside down or placed sideways but the writing on them is always clearly legible. Their placement may appear random, but the content was not, as the inscribed stones often featured imperial references—the titles “imperator” and “caesar” as well as the names of individual rulers, including Hadrian, Trajan, and Antoninus Pius (Fig. 3.11).51 Though it is not known whether these ­inscriptions would have been read, they were placed in easily visible locations on the cathedral ­exterior. Roman spolia were most heavily concentrated around the south ­transept and the Porta San Ranieri, which was the main entrance to the cathedral from the town.52 The placement of the Roman inscribed texts on the exterior of the cathedral, then, was seemingly directed towards the citizens of Pisa who came to the church along the via Santa Maria and entered through the south transept door. The secular content of the texts and political associations with Roman rulers underscored the civic function of this entrance to the cathedral. 49 50

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Tedeschi Grisanti, “Il reimpiego di materiali,” 1:160–61; Parra, “Marmi romani,” pp. 109–10. Adriano Peroni, “Architettura e decorazione,” in Peroni, Il Duomo di Pisa, 1:13–147, at p. 13, notes that only the near contemporary Duomo of Modena might compare to Pisa’s ­Cathedral. Maria Cecilia Parra, “Rimeditando sul reimpiego: Modena e Pisa viste in parallelo,” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa series 3, 13, no. 2 (1983), 453–83, has also made the comparison to Modena Cathedral. The cathedral’s builders displayed a clear preference for texts from Rome and Ostia; see Tedeschi Grisanti, “Il reimpiego di materiali,” 1:161. For the ideological understanding of ancient texts as spolia, see Robert Coates-Stephens, “Epigraphy as Spolia: The Reuse of Inscriptions in Early Medieval Buildings,” Papers of the British School at Rome 70 (2002), 275–96, at p. 296. Tedeschi Grisanti, “Il reimpiego di materiali,” 1:163–64; Settis, “Continuità, distanza, conoscenza,” 3:395.

Figure 3.11

Duomo, ancient Roman inscriptions on exterior. Author’s photo.

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Accompanying the ancient Roman texts were medieval funerary inscriptions carved into the cathedral walls dating from the twelfth to the fourteenth century.53 The inscribed names served to identify those interred in the numerous burial monuments placed along the exterior of the cathedral. The inscriptions provide names, titles, and occupations, indicating that aristocrats, members of the Pisan consular government, artisans, and even the builders of the cathedral itself received burial in this prestigious location. These funerary texts are by far the most unplanned and opportunistic examples of writing on the Pisan Duomo. They were not part of the original decorative scheme of the cathedral but added in a cumulative manner over centuries. However, their placement mirrors that of the ancient Roman inscriptions in their concentration on the south and east exterior walls; the inscribed names and their accompanying tombs flanked the main entrance and encircled the holiest part of the church, the eastern apse.54 The cathedral with its extensive and varied epigraphic decoration was a document or text that could be viewed and read simultaneously by visitors to the structure.55 The emphasis on the textual distinguished the Duomo from other churches in Pisa and formulated the built environment as a documentary source that enhanced the authority of the clerical elite and the leaders of the Pisan commune. The Cathedral of Pisa was a speaking monument, adorned with over one hundred inscriptions that gave voice to personnages from the Roman past and Pisan present.56 Clerical authors were responsible for the composition of the façade inscriptions while the city’s elite created the funerary texts that encircle the church. The written word, then, was completely entwined with political authority on a church that was the central civic monument in Pisa. The display and reception of the Duomo inscriptions as texts, then, demonstrated a stance towards history where the medieval texts overwrote and revised the ancient ones to narrate Pisa’s role as the heir to ancient Rome.57 The medieval epigraphs, however, also derived considerable 53

54 55 56 57

For the funerary inscriptions, see Ottavio Banti, “Le iscrizioni della Cattedrale,” in Garzella et al., La Cattedrale di Pisa, pp. 111–19; Cinzia Nenci, “Le iscrizioni sepolcrali: una schedatura preliminare,” in Peroni, Il Duomo di Pisa, 1:165–68. Nenci, “Le iscrizioni sepolcrali,” p. 167, provides a diagram that shows the profusion of burials in these two areas. Milone, “‘Arabitas’ pisana,” p. 112. Banti, “Le iscrizioni della Cattedrale,” in Garzella et al., La Cattedrale di Pisa, p. 111; Nenci, “Le iscrizioni sepolcrali,” pp. 165–66. Stefano Riccioni, “Rewriting Antiquity, Renewing Rome: The Identity of the Eternal City through Visual Art, Monumental Inscriptions and the Mirabilia,” in Rome Re-imagined: Twelfth-century Jews, Christians and Muslims Encounter the Eternal City (1), eds. Louis

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­authenticity and authority through proximity to the ancient inscription fragments. The mingling of these two types of documents on both flanks of the cathedral indicated that ancient and medieval texts formed a conceptual and formal unit. The meaning of the inscriptions, however, did not depend solely on their legibility; for an illiterate audience these texts could have symbolic signification as images and ornament. They could be seen as verbal artifacts, images that proclaimed the power of the word.58 They could also be purely decorative, appreciated for the beauty of the epigraphy and the visual variety they provided across the vast expanse of perimeter wall. The physical presence of the word itself could be talismanic or protective and the cathedral was cloaked in inscriptions that demarcated the boundary between sacred and profane. The understanding of words as symbols persisted despite the fragmented state of the epigraphic panels. It has been argued in the case of other reused Roman inscriptions that the texts needed to be disfigured so that they could be purified of their connections to a pagan past.59 On Pisa’s Cathedral one monumental Roman inscription was broken up into five pieces and displayed in various locations. Its fractured state contrasted with the integrity of the new medieval inscriptions, creating a palimpsest that juxtaposed old and new texts.60 The trace of ancient Rome displayed in the fragmented inscription was never again to be made whole or reconstituted. However, in the case of Pisa’s Duomo, the fragmentation of Roman inscriptions could simply have provided the opportunity to multiply references to an ancient past, stressing continuity rather than rupture. Using these disparate broken parts as a tangible visible foundation, medieval Pisa defined itself as a second Rome, the rightful successor to this once great empire. The second significant manifestation of romanitas on the Duomo was the array of ancient sarcophagi that encircled its periphery, comprising one of

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Hamilton and Stefano Riccioni (Leiden, 2012), pp. 27–51, at p. 51; Gregor Kalas, Restoration of the Roman Forum in Late Antiquity: Transforming Public Space (Austin, 2015), p. 17. Patricia Cox Miller, “‘Differential Networks’: Relics and Other Fragments in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6, no. 1 (1998), 113–38, at p. 136; Gianfranco Agosti, “Contextualizing Nonnus’ Visual World,” in Nonnus of Panopolis in Context: Poetry and Cultural Milieu in Late Antiquity with a Section on Nonnus and the Modern World, ed. Konstantinos Spanoudakis (Berlin, 2014), pp. 141–74, at p. 155. See in general Jason Moralee, “The Stones of St. Theodore: Disfiguring the Pagan Past in Christian Gerasa,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 14, no. 2 (2006), 183–215. Tedeschi Grisanti, “Il reimpiego di materiali,” 1:163; Moralee, “The Stones of Saint Theodore,” p. 203.

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the most comprehensive collections in a medieval context.61 The earliest evidence for reusing Roman sarcophagi for medieval burials in Pisa is provided by the famous tomb of Beatrice, mother of Matilda of Canossa.62 The date of 1076 for Beatrice’s death would indicate that burials of this sort began in the late eleventh century in Pisa. Originally placed on the façade of the cathedral, the sarcophagus was moved to the interior of the structure and then outside again to the southern wall of the apse. There it would have stood with dozens of other sarcophagi housing the remains of the city’s elite. The architect Buschetto was buried in a reused ancient sarcophagus, the only Roman tomb located on the façade (Fig. 3.12).63 A verse epitaph commemorated the architect above a strigilated sarcophagus placed prominently on the northern side of the cathedral’s west front. It was in the building campaign of Buschetto that all the Roman spolia came to adorn the church, so it is entirely fitting that the figure responsible for “Romanizing” the Pisan Duomo would be buried in an ancient spoil himself. This impressive collection of ancient reused tombs possessed monetary, political, and social value for medieval Pisans. They were luxury commodities, circulating across the Mediterranean and available to wealthy buyers.64 This monetary worth was complemented by symbolic value; like the saints’ relics so assiduously collected in Venice, they could be assigned a price but were also beyond valuation as survivors from the ancient past. Their incorporation into pre-existing monuments increased the value of their new context through the sheer accumulation of such precious antiques.65 Like the Venetian relics or Islamic pottery on San Piero, their status and meaning changed as they transformed from active commercial objects to immobile artworks 61

62 63 64

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Fulvia Donati, “Il reimpiego dei sarcofagi: profilo di una collezione,” in Il Camposanto di Pisa, eds. Clara Baracchini and Enrico Castelnuovo (Turin, 1996), pp. 69–96, at p. 71. The cathedral stood near a Roman cemetery that would have provided access to a variety of ancient burial monuments. Nenci, “Le iscrizioni sepolcrali,” pp. 165–66; Donati, “Il reimpiego dei sarcofagi,” pp. 71–72, 78. Parra, “Marmi romani,” p. 106; Donati, “Il reimpiego dei sarcofagi,” p. 72. Janet Huskinson, “Habent sua fata: Writing Life Histories of Roman Sarcophagi,” in Life, Death and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi, eds. Jás Elsner and Janet Huskinson (Berlin, 2010), pp. 55–82, at p. 57; see Karen Rose Mathews, “Decorating with Things: Spolia as Material Culture in the Italian Maritime Republics, 1100–1300,” bfo-Journal 1 (2015), 4–13, at pp. 8–10, [http://bauforschungonline.ch/sites/default/files/publikationen/mathews.pdf] for a similar collection of sarcophagi in Genoa. Salvatore Settis, “Collecting Ancient Sculpture: The Beginnings,” Studies in the History of Art 70 (2008), 12–31, at p. 17.

Figure 3.12

Duomo, sarcophagus of Buschetto on west façade. Author’s photo.

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a­ ffixed ­permanently to a religious monument.66 Though their movement was arrested, they continued to accrue meaning to enhance the social and political prestige of their owners. The political significance of reused sarcophagi lay in their ability to evoke ancient Rome, complementing the profuse manifestations of romanitas on the Pisan Duomo. The circle they formed around the cathedral created an additional ring or layer of Romanness that extended beyond the body of the church walls into Pisan civic space. They indexed a relationship to the Roman past that was paradoxical but also mutually validating. The preservation and reuse of ancient tombs symbolized triumph over the ancient past but the ostentatious display of such beautiful and high quality objects betrayed medieval admiration for the greatness of imperial Rome and its political and cultural accomplishments.67 The reuse of a sarcophagus preserved it and saved it from ruin as well, giving it a new medieval significance while the tomb itself transferred the aura of Roman greatness to the person buried within it. This garland of sarcophagi around the Duomo, then, enhanced the civic understanding of Pisa as a second Rome, but added an individual and personal significance to this communal, collective identity. Roman sarcophagi accrued social value in their essential role as containers for the dead. Their reuse in Pisa showed continuity with the ancient past in perpetuating the funerary function of the objects. Sarcophagi, however, were not simply passive vessels for the deceased; as their name implies, they consumed their contents, blurring the boundary between container and contained. The tombs transferred the prestige and power of ancient Rome onto individuals within Pisan society, providing fitting burials for such illustrious personages as Buschetto and Beatrice, or elevating the status of non-elites with their proximity to the romanitas that the Pisan Cathedral and the ancient sarcophagi embodied.68 The human flesh within the vessel decayed, but the sarcophagus itself assumed the individual’s identity and served as an eternal monument to the deceased.69 Though the sarcophagi were ultimately transferred from the cathedral to the Camposanto in the later Middle Ages, the permanent memory of the Pisans buried around the Duomo remained in their names inscribed on the cathedral walls. The epigraphs created a tangible link to the ancient inscriptions on the walls, just as the ancient sarcophagi complemented the extensive Roman spolia on the interior and exterior of the Duomo.70 66 67 68 69 70

Huskinson, “Writing Life Histories,” p. 73; Mathews, “Other Peoples’ Dishes,” p. 19. Settis, “Collecting Ancient Sculpture,” p. 14. Huskinson, “Writing Life Histories,” p. 63; Settis, “Collecting Ancient Sculpture,” p. 19. Huskinson, “Writing Life Histories,” pp. 57, 77. See Nenci, “Le iscrizioni sepolcrali,” pp. 165–68, for the medieval inscriptions.

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All these visual manifestations of romanitas on the Pisan Duomo share remarkable similarities with the Cathedral of Salerno. Begun within two decades of one another, both used inscriptions, ancient columns, capitals, and sarcophagi, combined with objects and materials originating in the Islamic world, as central decorative elements. The same spoliate materials were deployed in far greater quantity on Pisa’s Cathedral which was the central civic monument for the city while the Normans had numerous, lavishly decorated churches ­erected throughout their extensive domains. The significance of romanitas differed in both cases as well. Pisa’s relationship with ancient Rome was one of admiration and emulation; the city displayed this interest in being a “Roma altera” through the extensive use of spolia, but also through its governmental systems and literary works. Ancient imperial Rome was the focus of Pisan romanitas, while the Norman understanding of the concept was multifaceted and diachronic, fusing ancient, early Christian, and contemporary evocations of the Roman capital city and empire. Pisa assumed the role of successor to ancient Rome as an extension of a once great empire that no longer existed, stressing continuity with the past. The Norman approach to the many Romes referenced in their architectural structures, however, was one of triumph and conquest as they defeated adversaries who claimed to be successors to the ancient Roman emperors. In contrast to the Cathedral of Salerno, Pisa’s Duomo was a celebration of ancient Rome and evoked the continuation of the empire’s customs, traditions, and visual forms in the medieval city. It is this romanitas pisana that is most frequently discussed in the scholarship on medieval Pisa, as allusions to ancient Rome permeated Pisan culture and politics. Pisa was quite early in its establishment of an independent ­commune with representatives identified as consuls in the late eleventh century.71 The city’s government was based on that of ancient Rome, and textual sources compared the Pisans to Roman citizens. When Pope Innocent ii sought refuge in Pisa in 1133, escaping the tumultuous political climate of Rome, Bernard of Clairvaux wrote that “assumitur Pisa in locum Romae,” that is, Pisa had taken Rome’s place because Rome was wherever the pope resided.72 Pisa emulated ancient Rome in its mastery of the seas, and though the Tuscan city

71

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Giuseppe Scalia, “‘Romanitas’ pisana tra xi e xii secolo: le iscrizioni romane del Duomo e la statua del console Rodolfo,” Studi medievali 13, series 3 (1972), 791–843, at pp. 813–14; H.E.J. Cowdrey, “The Mahdia Campaign of 1087,” The English Historical Review 92, no. 362 (1977), 1–29, at p. 12; Fisher, “Pisan Clergy,” pp. 143–44. Settis, “Continuità, distanza, conoscenza,” 3:434; von der Höh, Erinnerungskultur, p. 412. This idea is one that pertained to Gregory vii’s exile in Salerno as well.

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could not claim outright control the Mediterranean, by the twelfth century it had established a dominant position in Mediterranean maritime commerce. Cultural manifestations of romanitas abounded as well, supported by Pisa’s history as a Roman foundation.73 The medieval city was literally built upon Roman ruins, and churches like the cathedral and San Piero were erected directly above earlier Roman structures. Pisa’s connection with Rome was longstanding, beginning in the third century bc when its port served as a base for Roman military operations.74 It officially became a city in the first century bc under the name Colonia Opsequens Iulia Pisana. Documents and archaeological data attest to numerous Roman structures in the city, including temples, shops, buildings for public entertainment, a triumphal arch, residential structures, and kilns for ceramic production.75 Pisan builders made use of these local Roman materials, but more importantly they imported materials from the capital itself. Sarcophagi, capitals, columns, inscriptions, and relief sculpture originating in Rome were acquired to adorn various churches in the city, demonstrating how the economic prosperity of medieval Pisa enabled the far-reaching references to the empire of ancient Rome through these prestigious imports. The cathedral’s extensive collection of ancient Roman spoliate inscriptions was complemented by medieval epigraphic decoration on the façade that lauded the great Pisan victories against Muslim territories, compared the architect Buschetto to Ulysses and Daedalus, and likened the Duomo to an ancient temple. Against the background of extensive Roman spolia on the Duomo, the Islamic objects punctuated the decoration on each side of the structure.76 On the façade, the wooden doors brought from Majorca stood immediately next to the ancient sarcophagus and inscription marking the burial of Buschetto. The bronze Griffin presided over the eastern apse, highly visible from the road that led to the cathedral from the city center. The marble capital from al-Andalus stood on the north, and the south flank displayed the only bacino used on the cathedral. Every face, then, featured a singular, distinctive Islamic object among the Roman spolia. The quality of the Islamic objects provided 73

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See Scalia, “‘Romanitas’ pisana,” for this cultural emulation of ancient Rome. See also Gabriella Garzella, “‘Istius ecclesie primordia’: il contesto storico della fondazione,” in Garzella et al., La Cattedrale di Pisa, pp. 15–23, at pp. 20–22; Tedeschi, “I reimpieghi,” pp. 126–27. For Roman Pisa, see Marinella Pasquinucci, “Pisa romana,” in Tangheroni, Pisa e il Mediterraneo, pp. 81–85. Pasquinucci, “Pisa romana,” p. 81. Peroni, “Spolia e architettura,” p. 206.

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some indication of their means of acquisition; objects like the bronze griffin, marble capital, and wooden doors were more likely to be war spoils because of their expensive and rare materials and high quality workmanship. Pisan texts that describe plunder taken in military campaigns indicate the types of objects most frequently taken as spoils of war—gold, silver, and other metalwork objects, gems and pearls, textiles, and small-scale precious artworks made of ivory and crystal.77 They were rare or unique in their original contexts, and they maintained this singular status in their new Christian milieu. In their secondary setting, however, their function shifted dramatically as these luxury objects transformed from being functional to purely decorative works. In the case of ancient Roman spolia, slight changes in function occurred, but for the most part ancient columns and capitals served as structural supports, and architraves formed the lintels of doorways. This reuse stressed continuity with the past and a knowledge of ancient architectural components and their organization. In contrast, the reused Islamic objects underwent a decisive transformation as they moved from a secular realm to a religious one and lost all functionality. While Roman capitals served as architectural supports in their new medieval context, the Islamic capital moved into the realm of ornament atop the cathedral. This new divergent function emphasized rupture and discontinuity, augmenting the visual appeal of Islamic objects while calling attention to their incongruity. The Islamic spolia on the Duomo did not need to be purged or cleansed of religious meaning as was the case with some Roman objects, but they could not be integrated seamlessly into Christian decorative schemes either.78 Foreign spoils, then, were meant to be seen as individual, exceptional objects, whose sole function was their ostentatious display on the city’s most notable religious structure.79 This eclectic juxtaposition of ancient and Islamic spolia created a distinctive decorative style that distinguished Pisa from its political and cultural rivals and emphasized its uniqueness among maritime powers in the Mediterranean. A number of motivations—politico-religious, civic, and economic—appear to have determined the choice of this aesthetic for the religious monuments of Pisa. Two celebratory poems dating to the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, the Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum and the Liber Maiolichinus, were composed by the city’s clerical elite and included numerous allusions 77

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Cowdrey, “The Mahdia Campaign,” p. 28, stanzas 70–71; Giuseppe Scalia, ed. and trans., Gesta triumphalia per Pisanos facta (Florence, 2010), pp. 1–39, at p. 18; Michele Lupo Gentile, ed., Gli Annales Pisani di Bernardo Maragone (Bologna, 1936), p. 8. Settis, “Collecting Ancient Sculpture,” p. 18. Mathews, “Decorating with Things,” pp. 4–13; Contadini, “Sharing a Taste?” p. 136.

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to ancient Rome; the Carmen connected Pisan military triumphs to those of Rome while the Liber highlighted Pisa’s status as a “Roma altera,” or a second Rome.80 The anonymous author of the Carmen compared the successful medieval expedition against al-Mahdiyya in 1087 to ancient Rome’s victories over Carthage, stating: Inclitorum Pisanorum scripturus istoriam, antiquorum Romanorum renovo memoriam; nam extendit modo Pisa laudem admirabilem, quam olim recepit Roma vincendo Cartaginem.81 The Pisans were thus heirs to Rome in their victorious battles against North African territories and the defeat of Muslim enemies celebrated in the Carmen followed the model of ancient Rome. The political-religious message conveyed in this victory poem was one of supremacy, supersession, and victory over foreign peoples identified as pagans, barbarians, or non-believers. The combination of Roman and Islamic spolia on the Duomo carried similar connotations, mingling symbols of ancient and contemporary rivals and blurring the boundaries between past and present. The supersession of an ­ancient culture provided the impetus and inspiration for the conquest of a contemporary one.82 This ensemble of appropriated objects, then, was ­synchro-diachronic in that the spolia were simultaneously historical and contemporary, defining difference and similarity across time and space.83 The ­visual efficacy of this intermingling was predicated upon an intimate 80

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Carlo Calisse, ed., Liber Maiolichinus, De gestis Pisanorum illustribus (Rome, 1904), 778–80, p. 35, refers specifically to Pisa as a second Rome: “Si bene belligeras pensent nova secula Pisas/ Per mare per terras geminas extendere vires,/ Hoc Pise faciunt Romam quod utramque deceret.” Fisher, “Pisan Clergy,” p. 202, provides the following translation: “If the current age would well consider warlike Pisa extending her double power over sea and lands, [they would realize that] Pisa is accomplishing what would be fitting for another Rome.” See also Liber Maiolichinus, p. 133, for a later addition to the Liber that makes the connection of Pisa to Rome even more explicit; Scalia, “‘Romanitas’ pisana,” pp. 805–06, discusses this passage from the Liber, and von der Höh, Erinnerungskultur, pp. 150, 309, 399–412, addresses in detail Pisa’s borrowings from Roman antiquity. Cowdrey, “The Mahdia Campaign,” p. 24; Fisher, “Pisan Clergy,” pp. 191–92, provides the following translation: “I, who am about to write the history of the illustrious Pisans, call up remembrance of the ancient Romans. For now Pisa extends the wondrous praise, which in times past Rome received by conquering Carthage.” Baracchini and Caleca, “Presenze islamiche,” p. 51; Milone, “‘Arabitas’ pisana,” pp. 110–11; von der Höh, Erinnerungskultur, pp. 149–52. Dale Kinney, “Spolia as Signifiers,” Hortus Artium Medievalium 17 (2011), 151–65, at p. 159, citing Umberto Eco.

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­familiarity with the c­ ultures represented in the decorative program. The characterization of Pisa as a new Rome and the analogy of Roman victories in North Africa with the Pisan campaign against al-Mahdiyya resonated most deeply for an audience steeped in knowledge of ancient Rome and the contemporary Islamic world. Viewers could appreciate the composite spolia decoration on San Piero, for example, from a purely aesthetic perspective, or recognize the disparate objects displayed on the church as Mediterranean commercial goods. The spoliate decoration on the Pisan Duomo, however, made far more grandiose claims about Pisan Mediterranean identity, and the origins of the individual objects needed to be recognized to ensure the appreciation of the complex interplay of objects across space and time. The cathedral was a singular monument in Pisa, and its role as the central civic structure in the city, associated with the patronage of the city’s secular and ecclesiastical leaders, heightened its exceptional quality and made it the ideal location for the display of spolia and spoils that demonstrated Pisan civic pride. The Pisan Duomo was a triumphal, funerary, and politico-religious monument, and the vast quantity and high quality of spoliate decoration conveyed meaning in both textual and visual formats. This structure manifested Pisan integration into the Mediterranean by comparing Pisan mastery of the sea to that of Rome while displaying the city’s interaction with contemporary cultures in political, cultural, and economic realms. Though the Pisan Duomo was the city’s signature structure, dozens of other churches built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries employed a spolia aesthetic combining Roman and Muslim spoils. Generally monastic foundations, these churches were closely associated with the secular realm through their lay rather than clerical patronage. As urban structures playing economic, juridical, and philanthropic roles in the city, they manifested a different approach to the reuse of Muslim and Roman spolia, with Islamic bacini decoration as the dominant visual element on the exterior, interspersed with a small number of Roman objects. An aesthetic, then, that foregrounded commercial objects from the Islamic world would have had great appeal for the Pisan laity who commissioned and frequented these structures and participated in Mediterranean mercantile ventures and military campaigns. The churches of San Sisto and Sant’Andrea both date to the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries and feature this mixed spoliate decoration.84 San Sisto is the earliest, constructed in 1087–8 to commemorate the Pisan victory over the

84

Several other Pisan churches also incorporate Muslim and Roman spolia into their decoration, including San Zeno, San Silvestro, San Frediano, Santo Stefano extra Moenia, San Paolo a Ripa d’Arno, and San Luca.

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North African cities of al-Mahdiyya and Zawila (Fig. 3.13).85 The church of San Sisto was unique in Pisa in its role as a votive structure, constructed by the citizens themselves.86 San Sisto has a large number of bacini dating the eleventh century on the church proper; twelfth-century bacini decorate the campanile (Fig. 3.14).87 Originally the church featured 129 pieces, but now only fifty-two remain with one bacino still in situ. The ceramics on San Sisto’s façade and side walls, all placed above blind arches immediately below the roofline, consist of products from North Africa, Sicily, Egypt, and Spain.88 San Sisto does not have any ancient Roman architectural decoration on its exterior, but the interior is adorned with a number of Roman columns and capitals. Within the church as well is a work of Muslim sculpture, a funerary stele of Abu Naṣr ʿAbd Allah ibn Aghlab al-Murtaḍā, governor of the Balearic Islands from 1076 to 1094. It is not clear when this Andalusi work arrived in Pisa, but it may have been brought to the city in the aftermath of the Balearic campaign of 1113–15.89 Sant’Andrea originally stood outside the city walls in the district of ­Forisportam, located along the via Aurelia that led to Rome (Fig. 3.15).90 Two laymen, the brothers Signorectus and Bonus, founded the church in the late eleventh century though the structure that stands today dates to the early 85

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Mathews, “Plunder of War,” pp. 239–44, 252–54; eadem, “Other Peoples’ Dishes,” pp. 12–16; Baracchini and Caleca, “Presenze islamiche,” p. 54; Abulafia, “The Pisan Bacini,” p. 290; Gabriella Garzella, “Il Tempio di S. Sisto in Corte Vecchia nell’assetto urbano di Pisa medioevale,” in Momenti di storia medioevale pisana: discorsi per il giorno di S. Sisto, eds. Ottavio Banti and Cinzio Violante (Pisa, 1991), pp. 189–98, at p. 189. For the important role that Pisa’s citizens played in the creation and administration of the church, see Fabio Redi, Pisa com’era: archeologia, urbanistica e strutture materiali (secoli v–xiv) (Naples, 1991), pp. 317–18; Garzella, “Tempio di S. Sisto,” pp. 192–93, 197. Berti and Tongiorgi, I bacini ceramici medievali, pp. 49–50. The façade features one fragmentary lusterware bowl below an arch, the only exception to the general placement above the blind arches. Berti and Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate, analyze the Pisan bacini according to site of manufacture; for the Egyptian bacini, see pp. 48–49, Spanish products pp. 42–47, and Tunisian ceramics pp. 35–41. Moroccan stamped ware is mentioned by Abulafia, “The Pisan Bacini,” p. 291. Mathews, “Plunder of War,” p. 240. This is an artwork that I have addressed in detail in other publications; see Mathews, “Plunder of War.” See also Carmen Barceló, “L’epitafi del rei mallorquí Ibn Aglab conservat a Pisa,” Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica Lul·liana 66 (2010), 279–98; Scalia, “Pisa all’apice,” p. 812; José Barral, “Encontrada la lauda del emir al-Murtaḍā, primer rey independiente de las Islas,” Anuario Ibiza Formentera 12 (1994), 119–26; Maria Giovanna Stasolla, “L’iscrizione araba della chiesa di San Sisto,” Studi Maghrebini 12 (1980), 99–102. Cinzio Violante, “Les origines des fondations victorines dans la cité et au diocèse de Pise,” Provence historique 16 (1966), 361–76; Paliaga and Renzoni, Le chiese di Pisa, pp. 35–36; Berti and Tongiorgi, I bacini ceramici medievali, pp. 70–71.

Figure 3.13

Pisa, San Sisto, general exterior view. Author’s photo.

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Figure 3.14

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San Sisto, detail of bacini decoration, Egyptian lusterware. Photo from Graziella Berti and Marcella Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate.

twelfth ­century. The stone structure features blind arches below the roofline on the side walls of the nave, the walls of the lateral aisles, and the eastern end; a similar arrangement of arches also decorates the brick campanile. Bacini ornamented the space beneath each arch, creating one of the most extensive displays of ceramic decoration on a twelfth-century Pisan church. Of the 190 original bacini on the church and campanile only fifty-eight remain today. The church can be seen as a laboratory for the study of late eleventh and early twelfth-century ceramics from the Islamic world, as it features an extraordinary array of pottery types originating from various Mediterranean production centers in Egypt, Sicily, Tunisia, Spain, Morocco, and the Near East (Fig. 3.16).91 91

Berti and Tongiorgi, I bacini ceramici medievali, pp. 70–82. Sant’Andrea also incorporates wares from southern Italy and Byzantium.

Figure 3.15

Pisa, Sant’Andrea, general exterior view. Author’s photo.

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Sant’Andrea, detail of bacini decoration, Tunisian green and brown ware. Photo from Graziella Berti and Marcella Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate.

The interior decoration of Sant’Andrea features an ancient Roman colonnade, while the exterior has a sculpted panel with rosette decoration inserted into the steps leading up to the façade of the church.92 These urban monastic or collegiate churches stood in marked contrast to the massive cathedral in Pisa; they were generally modest in size and made of relatively humble materials, usually brick or local stone, and their founders were laypersons rather than the clerical elite. The main (in some cases exclusive) exterior decorative elements of these buildings were Islamic bacini encircling the structures with a colorful and shining array of ceramics. The Islamic 92

Paliaga and Renzoni, Le chiese di Pisa, p. 36.

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pottery was applied in a highly systematic way—arranged under or above blind arches, following rooflines, or dispersed across façades—that would argue for a thoughtful and purposeful application of the basins. Roman spolia were reserved for the interior or used sparingly in locations of symbolic significance and great visibility. A spoliate aesthetic dominated by Muslim objects, then, was the predominant decorative style chosen by lay patrons for these neighborhood religious structures. As was the case with San Piero a Grado, the decoration of the city’s public religious structures with luxury commodities, both ancient Roman and Islamic, manifested a particular aesthetic mentality that highlighted the multivalence of spolia. They were the ideal choice for ornamenting these urban churches as they visualized the intertwined relationship between conflict and commerce. The eleventh century was the time period when Pisan ships began to venture into the Mediterranean. The city’s merchant warriors engaged in battle with Muslim territories but also negotiated treaties to facilitate trade. The Pisans who fought against and traded with the Muslims of the western Mediterranean would have appreciated the rich symbolism of the bacini decoration adorning numerous churches in the city, as they might have been the very people who acquired the ceramics. Their perception of the Islamic basins was informed by their commercial transactions and participation in military campaigns, endeavors through which they acquired direct knowledge of the Islamic world. These reused objects, combined in dense assemblages of color, texture, and precious material, could have been understood and appreciated from the perspectives of economic value, aesthetic appeal, and rich cultural associations. In the recognition of architectural spolia as commodities, medieval Pisans highlighted the connection between the magnificence and grandiosity of the city and successful commercial ventures. The Pisan military campaigns of the eleventh and twelfth centuries have been characterized as commercial conquests, where raids and battles against other Mediterranean territories paved the way for peaceful, international exchange.93 Pisa was above all a mercantile power, more interested in expanding its trading network than its physical territories. Trade made the city wealthy and enabled the laity to invest in civic architecture projects. The decoration of urban religious structures with luxury commodities appositely expressed the pride of Pisa’s citizens in their trading prowess and public art patronage. Vasari characterized the Pisan Duomo as a monument to trade, decorated with infinite spoils that the Pisans brought 93

Michael Greenhalgh, Marble Past, Monumental Present: Building with Antiquities in the Mediaeval Mediterranean (Leiden, 2009), p. 414.

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from the sea.94 In Vasari’s time that may have been the case, but in the eleventh century it was these urban lay foundations that truly served as monuments to commerce, clothed as they were with the fruits of international Mediterranean trade. This was the time when maritime commerce, military expeditions, and the establishment of the commune all developed simultaneously, and the extensive use of luxury objects from the contemporary Islamic world combined with vestiges of the Roman past formed the visual vocabulary that encapsulated the extraordinary achievements of the Pisan republic. If spolia could be appreciated from the perspective of commerce, then they also possessed the ability to index more antagonistic relations with Muslims in the western Mediterranean. Both ancient Roman and contemporary Muslim spolia could have been understood as spoils or plunder.95 Ancient Roman spoils could have been appropriated from across the entire Mediterranean, as the territories the Pisans targeted in their military campaigns had all been part of the Roman Empire. Michael Greenhalgh has argued, for example, that the set of monolithic columns used as supports in the church of San Sisto may have come from North Africa.96 Like the columns procured by the Venetians in various Mediterranean ports, the spoliate colonnade in San Sisto was the product of two different cultures and historical periods. These columns could reference both ancient Roman and Muslim cultures, coalescing place and time as objects from antiquity acquired in medieval Islamic territories. The spoliate decoration on San Sisto also lent itself to a triumphalist reading, as the church was built to commemorate the Pisan victory over two North African cities in 1087.97 The Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum, written to commemorate this triumph, notes that plunder from the campaign was used to embellish the cathedral and build the church of San Sisto. On this votive church, then, the Islamic basins collected particularly from North Africa and al-Andalus could visualize the symbiotic relationship between commerce and conflict. The motivation for the attack on al-Mahdiyya and Zawila in 1087 was the thwarting of pirate raids launched from these two cities that were so detrimental to trade. The victorious campaign also garnered considerable 94

Philip Jacks, ed. and trans., Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (New York, 2006), p. 18; Peroni, “Spolia e architettura,” pp. 208–09; Maria Cecilia Parra, “Remeditando sul reimpiego,” p. 457. 95 Greenhalgh, Marble Past, p. 153; Antonio Milone, “Il Duomo e la sua facciata,” in Peroni, Il Duomo di Pisa, 1:191–206, at pp. 192–93. 96 Greenhalgh, Marble Past, p. 156. 97 This is a topic I have addressed extensively elsewhere; see Mathews, “Other Peoples’ ­Dishes,” pp. 12–19, and “Plunder of War?” pp. 241–44, 252–53.

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e­ conomic advantages for Pisa, demonstrating that conflict could advance and enhance commercial activities.98 Though it is unlikely that much of the Islamic or Roman spolia was war plunder, these appropriated objects could still index military conflict and serve as triumphal monuments. They were symbols of Christian victories and civic pride, as the city’s prestige increased through its successful military campaigns against Muslims.99 While serving as triumphal symbols they could be appreciated simultaneously from an aesthetic perspective; they were objects made of luxury materials and fine craftsmanship with no overt Islamic symbols that precluded their reuse in a Christian context. These Islamic and Roman spoils manifest the extraordinary multivalence of appropriated objects, maintaining an association with their original context even when placed on a Christian structure, and announcing their monetary and propagandistic value in their ostentatious display. The polysemy of the Islamic bacini in particular made them the ideal visual form to convey the significance of commerce and conflict for medieval Pisans. Their demonstrable provenance from the Islamic world recalled places where Pisa’s citizens fought great battles and acquired commercial goods. Whether placed on the façades of churches or used as tableware in middle-class and elite homes, these basins could be symbols of commercial success and military triumph, mirroring the complementary endeavors of Pisa’s merchant warriors. Medieval Pisans, then, manifested a high tolerance for ambiguity in formulating and displaying a Mediterranean identity in public architecture. They pursued holy war campaigns against and conducted trade with Muslim territories, with military expeditions expanding opportunities for trade or protecting commercial interests; these undertakings were mutually reinforcing in the eleventh and twelfth centuries when the Tuscan city began its integration into a Mediterranean network. The visual culture of Pisa presented a specific ­perspective on the city’s place in the Mediterranean and relations with other territories along the sea in its potent mix of ancient Roman spolia and ­contemporary Muslim objects. This juxtaposition alluded to Pisa’s glorious ­ancient past but also its accommodation to contemporary realities in ­Mediterranean politics where Muslims could be adversaries and trading partners. Pisa developed this spolia aesthetic early in the eleventh century and continued to employ artifacts from both the Islamic world and ancient Rome 98 99

Alasdair Grant, “Pisan Perspectives: The Carmen in victoriam and Holy War, c.1000–1150,” English Historical Review 131, no. 552 (2016), 983–1009, at pp. 992–93. Milone, “‘Arabitas’ pisana,” p. 112; Jenkins, “New Evidence,” pp. 79–80; Scalia, “Pisa all’apice,” pp. 822–23.

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in a comprehensive way for centuries. The Pisan use of bacini as decoration was the most extensive in all of Europe, creating a distinctive branding for the city that set it apart from its neighbors and competitors. Pisa made far greater use of Islamic objects than any of the other maritime republics and the overwhelming majority of the bacini came from the western Mediterranean, that is, from their closest trading partners. In the combination of ancient Roman spolia and contemporary Islamic objects, Pisan artists and patrons displayed their knowledge of past and foreign cultures and formulated an aesthetic of appropriation that conveyed the dynamic interplay between war and trade in the western Mediterranean.

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Rivalry with Pisa and Spolia as Plunder of War in Medieval Genoa Introduction Of all the maritime republics it was Genoa that experienced the most profound watershed moment as a result of the First Crusade. The city established a communal government whose actions were recorded in civic chronicles written by Caffaro di Caschifellone. Genoa sent both privately funded and state sponsored fleets to the Holy Land and its warriors were protagonists in some of the most important battles of the First Crusade. Genoa’s Mediterranean t­ rajectory differed from that of the other maritime republics in its late entrance into ­economic networks, the diverse nature of its commercial and political connections, and steadfast commitment to crusade ventures. The Ligurian city only began to assert its presence along the sea in the twelfth century and faced stiff competition in every lucrative market as a result. Such challenging economic circumstances may have fostered an expansive approach to mercantile endeavors, where Genoa cast its commercial net widely and did not concentrate its interests in one territory. This competitive environment may also have encouraged the Genoese to define their Mediterranean identity in terms of adherence to crusade, distinguishing them from their Italian rivals who strove to maintain an equilibrium between conflict and commerce. The visual culture of Genoa reflected the city’s transformation as a new and aggressive participant in Mediterranean affairs with the construction of several urban churches in the first half of the twelfth century. These religious structures displayed an aesthetic of appropriation that highlighted crusading against and competition with political and commercial rivals through the display of war plunder, laudatory inscriptions, narrative imagery, and ancient Roman and Islamic spolia. The distinctive aspect of the Genoese spoliate ­aesthetic was the overwhelmingly bellicose nature of the imagery that initially celebrated the triumph over Muslim enemies. The multivalence of spolia, however, allowed for their reinscription with new meanings that referenced Genoa’s conflict with another potent adversary and commercial rival—the ­republic of Pisa. The spoliate decoration on Genoese civic monuments was insistently contemporary, alluding to both Muslim and Christian enemies as Pisan military aggression and commercial competition threatened Genoa © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004360808_006

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far more than any offensives from Muslim territories in the twelfth century. In their interaction with both of these adversaries, the Genoese displayed a combination of military antagonism and cultural admiration that resembled Venice’s relationship with Byzantium and that of Pisa with the Islamic territories of the western Mediterranean. The conflation of spolia and spoils of war, however, necessitated knowledge of the culture from which the objects were appropriated. Thus, the symbolic resonance of Genoa’s spoliate decoration ­relied on recognition of appropriated styles, objects, and relics as originating in Pisa, al-Andalus, or the Holy Land.

Crusade Campaigns and Commercial Compensation

The Genoese were already active in the Mediterranean in the early eleventh century, collaborating with Pisa to expel Mujāhid, the ruler of Denia, from Sardinia in 1015 and to attack the cities of al-Mahdiyya and Zawila in North Africa in 1087. However, Genoa truly emerged as a Mediterranean power at the turn of the twelfth century with its participation in the First Crusade.1 The first state-sponsored fleet departed Genoa for the Holy Land in 1100, but an earlier private expedition led by the Embriaco family played a pivotal role in the events leading up to the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099. Genoa continued to send fleets to the Levant in the first decade of the twelfth century but, by the 1120s, Genoese military concerns in the Mediterranean had turned to the west, where they remained for most of the century. The city’s last great holy war was the set of expeditions against the Andalusi cities of Minorca, Almería, and Tortosa in 1146–8.2 Genoa initially achieved substantial victories in these campaigns that reaped great rewards in the form of treasure and captives. By 1148, however, the benefits derived from the attacks on Andalusi territories 1 Luigi Belgrano, ed. Annali genovesi di Caffaro e de’ suoi continuatori dal mxcix al mccxciii (Genoa, 1890), p. 5; Martin Hall and Jonathan Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa and the Twelfth-­century Crusades (Farnham, 2013), pp. 49–56; John Dotson, “The Genoese Civic Annals: Caffaro and his Continuators,” in Chronicling History: Chroniclers and Historians in Medieval and R ­ enaissance Italy, eds. Sharon Dale, Alison Williams Lewin, and Duane Osheim (University Park, PA, 2007), pp. 55–85, pp. 58–59. 2 Belgrano, Annali genovesi, pp. 33–36; Hall and Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa, pp. 69–71. For the crusading motivations of the Genoese on this campaign, see John Bryan Williams, “The ­Making of a Crusade: The Genoese anti-Muslim attacks in Spain, 1146–1148,” Journal of Medieval H ­ istory 23, no. 1 (1997), 29–53, at pp. 44–46; Jonathan Phillips, The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (New Haven, 2007), pp. 252–66; William Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c.1095–c.1187 (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 94–96, 172–77.

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were questionable. The moral victories achieved in this holy war were offset by the great expense required for its prosecution and Genoa descended into an economic decline as a result.3 The Genoese crusade initiatives reaped both spiritual and material ­rewards, the latter consisting of plunder and commercial concessions in Mediterranean ports. The short-term gains from the First Crusade, plunder of war, were easily quantifiable, but the long-term economic advantages—territorial and commercial concessions—were far more lucrative but required constant vigilance. Bohemond of Antioch granted Genoa privileges in his territories in 1098 and the King of Jerusalem and other rulers followed suit in the early twelfth ­century.4 The Embriaco family established its own fiefdom in Jubayl and G ­ enoa’s other aristocratic families created a virtual monopoly on trade with the Levant. But when military campaigns ended and the Christian ­rulers of the Crusader States no longer required Genoese assistance in providing troops and protecting the coasts, they attempted to limit the concessions they granted. Genoa’s civic authorities battled for decades to have their advantageous privileges restored, appealing to the pope on several occasions to force the Levantine rulers to comply with established agreements.5 The vigor with which the Genoese pursued their case against the Crusader States indicated the importance of trade in the Levant for their city. After Genoa’s last crusading venture in 1146–8, the city entered into a series of diplomatic and commercial agreements with rulers and territories around the Mediterranean. In 1155 Genoa concluded its first treaty with the Byzantine Empire through which the city received annual gifts from the emperor similar to those granted to Pisa in 1111.6 The cartularies of Giovanni Scriba 3 Hilmar Krueger, “Post-war Collapse and Rehabilitation in Genoa (1149–62),” in Studi in onore di Gino Luzzatto (Milan, 1950), pp. 117–28; Hall and Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa, p. 18. 4 Hall and Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa, pp. 24–25, 169–70; Quentin van Doosselaere, Commercial Agreements and Social Dynamics in Medieval Genoa (Cambridge, 2009), p. 34; Michel Balard, Croisades et Orient latin (XIe–XIVe siècles) (Paris, 2001), pp. 195, 199–200. 5 Belgrano, Annali genovesi, pp. 109, 121: “Boiamundus uero concessit eis priuilegium in ­Anthiochia, ut continetur in registro…,” and “… ibique rex Balduinus Ianuensibus priuilegia, sicut promiserat et scripta sunt in registro ianuensi, indictione xi firmauit et fecit.” See Hall and Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa, pp. 29, 123, and p. 115 for the English translation: “Bohemond gave them [the Genoese] rights in Antioch, as is recorded in the register, in the year of our Lord 1098, in the month of July.” See also Marina Montesano, “Genova e la Terrasanta: la fondazione del mito,” in Gli Annali di Caffaro (1099–1163), ed. Gabriella Airaldi (Genoa, 2002), pp. 31–48, at pp. 37–38; Elena Bellomo, A servizio di Dio e del Santo Sepolcro: Caffaro e l’Oriente latino (Padua, 2003), pp. 63–64. 6 Belgrano, Annali genovesi, pp. 41–42; Hall and Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa, pp. 75, 195–96.

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d­ etailing commercial contracts for the years 1155–64, however, demonstrated the ­limited scope of Genoese commerce with Byzantium.7 The Genoese arrived in this market late and faced such stiff competition from other Italian contingents that they wisely sought their economic fortunes elsewhere. Egypt was another important eastern Mediterranean market for the Genoese, and documents a­ ttest to the city’s merchants trading there as of 1060.8 Crusading initiatives by both Muslims and Christians disturbed these positive commercial relations on occasion as evidenced by Egyptian authorities arresting all the Genoese in Cairo in 1103 seemingly because of their participation in the First Crusade. The tension between crusading campaigns and trading initiatives may also have caused civil unrest in Genoa in the late eleventh century. It has been argued that there were two main factions in the city, one that wanted to participate in the crusades and the other that felt that the Christian offensives in the Levant would harm the good trading relations the Genoese had enjoyed with Egyptian ports and cities.9 By the mid-twelfth century, the city’s economic penetration into Mediterranean markets had increased exponentially, and the Genoese had a commercial presence in the Crusader States, the Byzantine Empire, Egypt, Tunisia, Sicily, and al-Andalus. Like the Pisan republic, Genoa’s trade with western Mediterranean territories was significant, accounting for over one third of the city’s ­maritime commerce. Well before the military offensives against Minorca, ­Almería, and Tortosa, Genoese ships were visiting Andalusi and Maghrebi ­harbors. Genoa had signed a non-aggression pact with the King of Morocco in 7 Trade with the Greeks totaled only six percent of Genoese commercial ventures during this time period; see Sandra Origone, “I commerci genovesi a Costantinopoli e nel vicino ­Oriente nel secolo xii: temi di un confronto,” in Amalfi, Genova, Pisa e Venezia: il commercio con Costantinopoli e il vicino Oriente nel secolo xii, ed. Ottavio Banti (Pisa, 1998), pp. 39–53, at p. 43. 8 Balard, Croisades et Orient latin, pp. 190, 195, 209; idem, “Notes sur le commerce entre l’Italie et l’Égypte sous les Fatimides,” in L’Égypte fatimide: son art et son histoire, ed. Marianne ­Barrucand (Paris, 1999), pp. 627–33, at pp. 628–31; David Jacoby, “Les Italiens en Égypte au XIIe et XIIIe siècles: du comptoir à la colonie?” in Coloniser au Moyen Âge, eds. Michel Balard and Alain Ducellier (Paris, 1995), pp. 76–89, at pp. 78–80. 9 van Doosselaere, Commercial Agreements, p. 31; Origoni, “I commerci genovesi,” p. 39; Benjamin Kedar, “Mercanti genovesi in Alessandria d’Egitto negli anni sessanta del secolo xi,” Miscellanea di studi storici 2 (1983), 21–30, at pp. 29–30; Elena Bellomo, “‘Galeas … armatas strenue in Syriam direxerunt’: la prima crociata e il regno gerosolimitano del xii secolo nella cronachistica genovese sino al Duecento,” in Mediterraneo medievale: cristiani, musulmani ed eretici tra Europa e Oltremare (secoli ix–xiii), ed. Marco Meschini (Milan, 2001), pp. 103–30, at p. 106.

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1138, and a decade later the King of Valencia approached the Genoese to broker a diplomatic agreement that included commercial concessions.10 The western half of the Mediterranean provided greater opportunities than the east, where there was the possibility of significant financial reward but also greater risk. Thus, in the first half of the twelfth century Genoa began to formulate its own understanding of the relationship between conflict and trade. Crusade could open up trading opportunities but at times military and economic interests worked at cross-purposes. The city developed a diversified approach to Mediterranean trade, where some commercial opportunities derived from crusade ventures and others flourished despite Genoese holy war campaigns. Such ­diversification distinguished Genoa from its commercial rivals, who generally concentrated their efforts on one side of the sea or the other. The eclectic ­approach of the Genoese in their choice of trading partners formed the basis for an equally diverse selection of pan-Mediterranean cultural references in the city’s civic monuments.

Spolia as Plunder in the Art and Architecture of Genoa

Genoese holy war campaigns and economic interests encompassed the e­ ntirety of the Mediterranean, with a significant emphasis on the Crusader States and al-Andalus. In the western Mediterranean, however, Genoa fought to enter markets where Pisa already enjoyed a longstanding presence, and the Ligurian city was in almost constant conflict with its Tuscan neighbor ­during the twelfth century. In Genoese visual culture from this time period, then, ­architectural decoration on the city’s civic monuments displayed a Mediterranean identity that emphasized the republic’s status in the Crusader Levant, its victories in al-Andalus, and competition with Pisa for ascendancy in the western part of the sea. Genoa highlighted its participation in the First Crusade with the acquisition and display of important relics, and these objects and other appropriated artworks brought from Andalusi campaigns were characterized as plunder of war. The decorative forms and styles on Genoese churches resembled the Pisan spoliate aesthetic to an extraordinary degree, 10 Belgrano, Annali genovesi, pp. 61–62; Hall and Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa, p. 91. Hall and Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa, p. 14; Document 9, pp. 190–91, transcribes the agreement. See also ­Olivia Remie Constable, “Genoa and Spain in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Notarial Evidence for a Shift in Patterns of Trade,” The Journal of European Economic History 19 (1990), 635–56, at pp. 640–41; Geo Pistarino, “Genova e l’Islam nel Mediterraneo occidentale (secoli xii–xiii),” Anuario de estudios medievales 10 (1980), 189–205, at pp. 193–95.

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and the ­emulation of Pisan art and architecture could be understood as a form of cultural appropriation in its own right, visualizing the intense competition and rivalry between the two republics. One of the earliest structures built in Genoa after the First Crusade was the church of Santa Maria di Castello, located on the hill of Castello overlooking the Genoese harbor (Fig. 4.1).11 The church that stands today dates to the 1130s and served as a co-cathedral with the church of San Lorenzo. The twelfth-century church was a three-aisled basilica of modest size with Roman spolia capitals and columns as supports. Santa Maria di Castello also features a large, strigilated Roman sarcophagus now housed in a chapel on the left side aisle, though it is unclear when it was placed in the church.12 The highest quality spoliate work, a third-century Roman cornice, served as the door lintel, enlivening the otherwise unadorned west entrance (Figure 4.2).13 Santa Maria also possesses Islamic spolia in the form of two inscribed panels attached to the wall of the nave (Fig. 4.3).14 Both appear to be funerary steles, and the one l­egible panel contains passages from the Qur’an. The panels have been inserted in the walls so that the text is upside down; this is probably more of an indication of an inability to read the script rather than a denigration of the Qur’anic text on 11

For the church of Santa Maria di Castello in general, see Costantino Gilardi and Sara Badano, Genoa: Santa Maria di Castello (Genoa, 2014); Ennio Poleggi, Santa Maria di C ­ astello e il romanico a Genova (Genoa, 1973); Clario Di Fabio, “Santa Maria di Castello,” in Medioevo restaurato: Genova 1860–1940, ed. Colette Dufour Bozzo (Genoa, 1990), pp. 249–68; Gianni Bozzo, “Le ragioni di un restauro,” in Cinque chiese e un oratorio: restauri di edifici religiosi dal xii al xviii secolo per Genova capitale europea della cultura 2004, ed. Gianni Bozzo (Genoa, 2004), pp. 13–19; Fulvio Cervini, Liguria romanica (Milan, 2002), pp. 105–11. 12 Gilardi and Badano, Genoa: Santa Maria di Castello, p. 51; Colette Dufour Bozzo, Sarcofagi romani a Genova (Genoa, 1967), pp. 51–52. 13 Poleggi, Santa Maria di Castello, p. 80; Rebecca Müller, Sic hostes Ianua frangit: Spolien und Trophäen im mittelalterlichen Genua (Weimar, 2002), pp. 26–32, 189–90. The church of Santi Cosma and Damiano displays a similar reused Roman architrave as the lintel of the main entrance; see Silvana Venturini, “Santi Cosma e Damiano,” in Dufour Bozzo, Medioevo restaurato, pp. 105–14; Dufour Bozzo, Sarcofagi romani, pp. 52–53; Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, pp. 193–94. 14 See most recently Rebecca Müller, “Riflessioni sulla percezione di artefatti islamici nella Genova medievale,” in Genova: una capitale del Mediterraneo tra Bisanzio e il mondo i­ slamico, ed. Alireza Naser Eslami (Milan, 2016), pp. 1–17, at pp. 2–3; eadem, “Genova vittoriosa: i trofei bellici,” in Genova e l’Europa mediterranea: opere, artisti, committenti, c­ ollezionisti, eds. Piero Boccardo and Clario Di Fabio (Milan, 2004), pp. 89–107, at p. 92; Clario Di Fabio, “Il materiale e maestranze della cattedrale romanica,” in La Cattedrale di Genova nel Medioevo, secoli vi–xiv, ed. Clario Di Fabio (Milan, 1998), pp. 110–13, at p. 110; Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, pp. 86, 207–09.

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Genoa, Santa Maria di Castello, general exterior view. Author’s photo.

the steles themselves. Scholars have attempted to identify the two panels as spoils from the Genoese campaigns in the Holy Land but the style and form of the inscribed panels associate them rather with objects from al-Andalus. If they were spoils or war, they could have been brought to Genoa after the

Figure 4.2

Santa Maria di Castello, Roman lintel. Author’s photo.

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Figure 4.3

Santa Maria di Castello, Muslim funerary stele. Courtesy of Rebecca Müller.

c­ ampaigns in Almería and Tortosa in the 1140s, a date that corresponds well with the ­construction of the church. The church of Santa Maria di Castello had a longstanding association with the Embriaco family, as their compound was immediately adjacent to the sanctuary.15 Guglielmo Embriaco and his brother Primo made their name in the late eleventh century as crusaders who led a private fleet to the Holy Land.16 In ­recompense for their service to the city, the Embriaco family r­eceived 15

16

Gabriella Airaldi, Blu come il mare: Guglielmo e la saga degli Embriaci (Genoa, 2006), pp. 101–02; Steven A. Epstein, Genoa & the Genoese, 958–1528 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1996), p. 86; Poleggi, Santa Maria di Castello, pp. 22, 33, 40, 66. For the expedition undertaken by the Embriaco brothers in general, see Belgrano, Annali genovesi, pp. 110–11; Hall and Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa, pp. 116–17. See also Airaldi, Blu come il mare, pp. 29–31; Franco Cardini, Studi sulla storia e sull’idea di crociata (Rome, 1993), p. 71.

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t­ erritorial concessions in the Holy Land that served as a base for commercial dealings.17 Thus members of one of the city’s most prominent families played the role of holy warriors and merchants in the Levant and art patrons in the construction of Santa Maria di Castello. The Embriachi fought against Muslims in the Holy Land and secured territories in the Crusader States from which they could oversee Mediterranean commercial operations. The family church of the Embriachi created a direct connection between the combined ­endeavors of crusade and commerce and a spoliate aesthetic in the artistic production of twelfth-century Genoa. The Cathedral of San Lorenzo also features this composite decorative scheme that combines ancient Roman and Islamic objects. The Genoese Duomo was substantially rebuilt after a fire damaged the structure in the late thirteenth century. The interior layout and the north and south doors on the exterior, however, retain their twelfth-century form and appearance. The north door, or portal of San Giovanni, is of particular significance in its close ­association with the façade of Santa Maria di Castello in style, date, and materials (Fig. 4.4).18 The doorway was probably constructed immediately after the Castello church in the 1140s and consists of an entranceway surmounted by a rounded arch, with a reused Roman cornice as a lintel.19 The doorway framed the entrance to a chapel that housed one of the most important relics in the cathedral—the ashes of John the Baptist. The Genoese likely brought the ashes from the Holy Land after the ­campaign against Antioch in 1098. The earliest documentary source attesting to their presence in Genoa dates to the thirteenth century; the Legenda ­translationis ­beatissimi Johannis Baptistae Genuam, written by Jacopo da Varagine, d­ escribed in detail the translatio of John the Baptist’s ashes from their ­resting place in Myra to Genoa.20 The striking similarity of the Legenda to ­other ­twelfth-­century translationes has led scholars to ­surmise that there was an earlier text on the acquisition of the Baptist’s r­elics that served as a model for 17 Airaldi, Blu come il mare, pp. 115–27; Cardini, Studi sulla storia, p. 81; Bellomo, A servizio di Dio, pp. 26–27, 110–12. 18 Henrike Haug, “La Cattedrale di Genova nel xii secolo: i portali,” in La Cattedrale di San Lorenzo a Genova=The Cathedral of Saint Lawrence in Genoa, eds. Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti and Gerhard Wolf, 3 vols. (Modena, 2012), 1:47–58, at pp. 47–49; Clario Di Fabio, “La fabbrica della cattedrale protoromanica fino al portale nord, ai transetti e alle navate (circa 1118–35),” in Di Fabio, La Cattedrale di Genova, pp. 60–68, at p. 65; Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, pp. 26–32. 19 Haug, “I portali,” 1:47; Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, pp. 190–91. 20 Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda translationis beatissimi Johannis Baptistae Genuam, in ­Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens occidentaux, vol. 5 (Paris, 1895), pp. 229–35.

Figure 4.4

Cathedral of Genoa (San Lorenzo), Portal of San Giovanni. Author’s photo.

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da Varagine’s ­description.21 In the Legenda, da Varagine first noted the burning of the relics of John the Baptist by Julian the Apostate so that they could not be venerated and then detailed the extensive travels of the saint’s ashes before they ended up in a church in Myra associated with Saint Nicholas.22 The Genoese stopped there on their way back home so that they could procure the relics of Saint Nicholas, but sailors from Bari had already taken Nicholas’ remains. Further investigation in the church revealed John the Baptist’s ashes which the Genoese took to their ships and divided like plunder amongst themselves. A great storm then arose that threatened the fleet and a priest among the army made it known that the Baptist wanted his ashes collected in one place, not scattered among the combatants. Once this was done, the sea calmed and the Genoese returned home in great triumph and deposited the relics in the cathedral. Papal privileges to Genoa provide additional evidence for the presence of the ashes in the city and the genesis of the cult of John the Baptist in the twelfth century. In 1133 Innocent ii elevated Genoa to the rank of an archbishopric, ­addressing this privilege in two bulls.23 In the second document, the pope enumerated the various feast days on which the new archbishop could wear the pallium and one of them was the feast of John the Baptist. The possession of the Baptist’s ashes thus enhanced the prestige of the city and the importance of the cathedral as a religious and civic monument. The relics from the outset were understood as plunder, rightfully claimed as a result of Christian victories in the Holy Land by Genoese warriors. The ashes were also holy remains of the highest order, relics of a companion of Christ who announced his coming and baptized him. The fact that they were stolen, fruits of a furtum sacrum or pious theft, further elevated the status of the relics. They continued a tradition established early in the Middle Ages by the Venetians’ seizure of Mark’s relics from Alexandria in the ninth century, but the theft of the Baptist’s relics predated Venice’s plundering of Byzantine territories for holy bodies in the early twelfth century. As was often the case with these furta sacra, the saint sanctified the theft by performing miracles; the Genoese in turn honored John the Baptist by housing his relics in the cathedral. The citizens of Genoa further elaborated 21

22 23

Valeria Polonio Felloni, “L’arrivo delle ceneri del Precursore e il culto al Santo a G ­ enova e nel Genovesato in età medievale,” Quaderni franzoniani: semestrale di bibliografia e c­ ultura ligure 13 (2000), 35–65, at p. 45; Gianluca Ameri, “Il tesoro di San Lorenzo nel ­Medioevo,” in Calderoni Masetti and Wolf, La Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, 1:157–66, at p. 158. This is the same church later ransacked by the Venetians in their search for Nicholas’ remains. Felloni, “L’arrivo delle ceneri,” p. 42; Ameri, “Il tesoro,” 1:158.

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Figure 4.5 The Sacro Catino (Genoa, Cathedral Treasury). © Ghigo G. Roli—www.ghigoroli.com.

the area around the saint’s altar with a bronze lamp of Muslim provenance, an object that was likely plunder from the Almería and Tortosa campaigns of 1147–8. The spoliate decoration on the portal of San Giovanni announced the presence of prestigious spoils of war inside the cathedral and defined a fitting architectural space for the relics of John the Baptist. Another object in the cathedral associated with plunder from the Holy Land campaigns is a green glass plate known as the Sacro Catino (Fig.  4.5).24 The 24

For the Sacro Catino in general, see Rebecca Müller, “Il ‘Sacro catino’: percezione e ­memoria nella Genova medievale,” in Intorno al Sacro Volto: Genova, Bisanzio e il ­Mediterraneo (­ secoli xi–xiv), eds. Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti et al. (Venice, 2007), pp. 92–104, and

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Sacro Catino garnered considerable attention in the Middle Ages, though not from Genoa’s twelfth-century chroniclers. It was William of Tyre who described the Genoese acquisition of the object which the city’s crusaders thought was an emerald.25 The basin could be of ancient Roman provenance but is most likely medieval Islamic glass. When the Sacro Catino arrived in Genoa in the twelfth century, it was characterized as plunder from the Holy Land, and was understood to be an Islamic object. It fascinated the Genoese because of its extraordinary color and monetary worth, and the warriors of Genoa selected it for their plunder “in lieu of a large sum of money” according to William of Tyre.26 The significance of the object shifted dramatically in the thirteenth ­century when legends began to associate the Sacro Catino with the plate used at the Last Supper or the basin that collected Christ’s blood at the ­Crucifixion.27 Originally a medieval Muslim object prized for its costly ­material, the basin was then transformed into a Passion relic, an ancient, sacred object that transcended monetary value. Other spoils from the Holy Land included architectural elements taken as plunder from the First Crusade. According to Caffaro, the Genoese ­crusaders appropriated twelve columns from a structure in Syria that was identified as the house of Judas Maccabeus: … et columpnas xii marmoreas, que in palatio Iude Machabei adhuc erecte stabant, in terram deposuerunt, et in quadam naue illas collocauerunt, que xv palmi uoluebant, et diversis colloribus collorate errant,

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­ aniele Calcagno, “Il sacro catino specchio dell’identità genovese,” Xenia ­antiqua 10 (2001), D 43–112. See also Bellomo, A servizio di Dio, pp. 107–08. The Sacro Catino has also been connected, rather unconvincingly, to Guglielmo Embriaco; see Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, pp.  195–204, at pp. 199 note 61, 201; Gabriella Airaldi, Guerrieri e mercanti: storie del m ­ edioevo genovese (Turin, 2004), p. 198. Guillaume de Tyr Chronique, Corpus Christianorum 63, 2 vols., ed. R.B.C. Huygens, 1:471; William of Tyre, A History of Deeds done Beyond the Sea, eds. and trans. Emily Atwater Babcock and A.C. Krey (New York, 1943), p. 437; Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, pp. 61–62. Guillaume de Tyr Chronique, 1:471: “In hoc eodem oratorio repertum est vas coloris viridissimi, in modum parapsidis formatum, quod predicti Ianuenses smaragdinum reputantes pro multa summa pecunie in sortem precipientes, ecclesie sue pro excellenti obtulerunt ornatu.” Babcock and Krey, William of Tyre, p. 437, provide the following English translation: “In the same chapel was found a vase of brilliant green shaped like a bowl. The ­Genoese, believing it was of emerald, took it in lieu of a large sum of money and thus acquired a splendid ornament for their church.” Müller, “Il ‘Sacro catino’,” pp. 96–97.

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rubei scilicet et uiridi atque ialni; ita nempe quasi in speculo homines speculabantur.28 The columns were multicolored, beautiful, and luminous according to ­Caffaro’s description, exceptional spoils likely destined for the cathedral. They never ­arrived in Genoa, however, as the ship carrying the columns sank off the Syrian coast. Though these beautiful objects associated with biblical history were lost, they provide concrete evidence for architectural elements being taken as war booty in the twelfth century. Their varied color, luxury material, and illustrious provenance made the columns suitable plunder, on par with the relics brought back to Genoa by the city’s crusaders. A last group of decorative elements in the cathedral referenced the G ­ enoese military campaigns against the Andalusi cities of Minorca, Almería, and ­Tortosa of 1146–8. Later city chroniclers indicated that a bronze lamp taken as plunder from Almería hung in the cathedral chapel dedicated to John the Baptist.29 Thus spoils from the slightly later Andalusi campaigns complemented plundered relics from the crusade in the Holy Land. Visual r­eferences to the Almería and Tortosa campaigns can also be seen in fresco fragments on the south wall of the cathedral’s nave. The paintings depicted scenes from the ­Andalusi crusade, but now only small sections of the inscription, a decorative border, and part of a battle scene remain (Figs. 4.6 and 4.7).30 The inscription 28 Belgrano, Annali genovesi, p. 121. Hall and Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa, pp. 122–23, provide the following translation: “They laid out on the ground 12 marble columns which were still upright in the palace of Judas Maccabaeus, and stowed them together in a ship. These were 15 spans in circumference and colored in such a variety of shades, reds and greens and yellows that people gazed at them as if they were looking in a mirror.” See also ­Michael Greenhalgh, Marble Past, Monument Present: Building with Antiquities in the Mediaeval Mediterranean (Leiden, 2009), pp. 386–87; Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, p. 102; Thomas Weigel, “Spolien und Buntmarmor im Urteil mittelalterlicher Autoren,” in Antike Spolien in der Architecktur des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, ed. Joachim Poeschke (Munich, 1996), pp. 117–54, at pp. 124–25. The Maccabees were an important Old Testament prototype for Christian crusaders, so seizing columns from a house associated with Judas Maccabeus provided a material connection to these Old Testament warriors; see Nicholas Morton, “The Defence of the Holy Land and the Memory of the Maccabees,” Journal of Medieval History 36, no. 3 (2010), 275–93, at p. 277, for the columns. 29 Agostino Giustiniani, Annali della repubblica di Genova, ed. Vincenzo Canepa, 2 vols. (­Genoa, 1854), 1:187; Ameri, “Il tesoro,” 1:158; Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, pp. 63, 205–07. 30 Calderoni Masetti and Wolf, La Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, 1:340–43, Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, pp. 69–71; Clario Di Fabio, “Le capsule eburnee arabo-normanne di Portovenere e documenti per l’arte islamica a Genova nel Medioevo,” in Le vie del Mediterraneo: idee, uomini, oggetti (secoli xi–xvi), ed. Gabriella Airaldi (Genoa, 1997), pp. 31–46, at

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Figure 4.6

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San Lorenzo, interior fresco decoration. © Ghigo G. Roli—www.ghigoroli.com.

fragment reads: “[In vigi]lia sancti Silvestri capta est To[rtosa] … ni de porta.”31 The first section refers to the capture of the city of Tortosa on December 30, 1148, and the second likely indicated the consuls elected in the city at the time of the campaign, one of whom was Giordano di Porta. Even the small portions of the fresco that remain point to the bellicose nature of the imagery, as two figures with helmets advance from the left of the

31

pp. 37–38; idem, “Pitture, oreficerie, e mercato suntuario tra Genova e Spagna fra xii e xiv secolo,” in Genova e la Spagna: opere, artisti, committenti, collezionisti, eds. Piero Boccardo et al. (Milan, 2002), pp. 17–29, at pp. 17–20. Calderoni Masetti and Wolf, La Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, 1:340–33, transcribe the inscriptions. The names of the consuls are taken from the Annales; see Hall and Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa, pp. 70–71. The inscription probably read: “On the day of the vigil of San ­Silvestro Tortosa was captured, during the consulate of Guglielmo Burrone, Ansaldo Mallone, ­Enrico Guercio, Ogerio Vento, Lanfranco Pevere and Giordano di Porta.”

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Figure 4.7

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San Lorenzo, interior fresco decoration. © Ghigo G. Roli—www.ghigoroli.com.

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picture frame, with the warrior in front holding a weapon. On the right side a host of spear tips indicates the massing of an army for battle. Such m ­ artial ­imagery on the interior of a church is unusual in Romanesque art, though battle scenes and chivalric representations appear on exterior façades. Their presence inside the cathedral points to the civic and political role the structure played in Genoa, a city without a city hall or central secular structure.32 The frescoes complement other visual materials that refer to these military campaigns, such as the lamp in the chapel of John the Baptist, but they are unusual in their narrative and representational form. They present a rare instance in the twelfth century of what could be characterized as “Crusader art,” or an ­artistic representation that specifically depicted a holy war campaign.33 In the aftermath of the First Crusade, one might expect to find ample ­visual documentation of this extraordinary experience on the part of returning ­crusaders. It is therefore quite surprising that there was no consistent iconography established in the early twelfth century that codified a visual vocabulary for crusade. One window at the Monastery of Saint-Denis, now lost, was ­believed to represent scenes from the First Crusade, though the window likely dated to the mid-twelfth century.34 The tympanum at the Monastery of ­Vézelay has also been connected to crusade endeavors, as this religious institution was the site where the Second Crusade was preached. Recently, however, art historians have downplayed crusade associations in favor of other, more ­local, 32

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Marco Folin, “La Cattedrale di San Lorenzo: autoritratto in pietra della società genovese,” in Calderoni Masetti and Wolf, La Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, 1:9–31, at pp. 9, 15–16; Haug, “I  portali,” 1:53–55; Clario Di Fabio, “La chiesa di un comune senza palazzo: uso civico e decorazione ‘politica’ della Cattedrale di Genova fra xii e xiv secolo,” in Medioevo: la chiesa e il palazzo (Milan, 2007), pp. 302–16, at pp. 302–11. For the study of Crusader art in general, see the numerous publications of Jaroslav Folda on this topic: Jaroslav Folda, Crusader Art (Aldershot, 2008); idem, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187 (Cambridge, 1995); idem, “East Meets West: The Art and Architecture of the Crusader States,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Malden, ma, 2006), pp. 488–509. See also Bianca Kühnel, Crusader Art of the Twelfth Century: A Geographical, an Historical, or an Art Historical Notion? (Berlin, 1994), and Jerrilyn Dodds, “Remembering the Crusades in the Fabric of Buildings: Preliminary Thoughts about Alternating Voussoirs,” in Remembering the Crusades: Myth, Image, and Identity, eds. Nicholas Paul and Suzanne Yeager (Baltimore, 2012), pp. 99–124. Elizabeth Brown and Michael Cothren, “The Twelfth-century Crusading Window of the Abbey of Saint-Denis: Praeteritorum Enim Recordatio Futurorum est Exhibitio,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49 (1986), 1–40. See also Phillips, The Second ­Crusade, pp. 122–24.

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­significations.35 In his article entitled “Picturing the Crusades,” Colin Morris cites additional imagery including equestrian figures and Islamic motifs in ­Romanesque churches as alluding to crusade initiatives, but the generic nature of the motifs would make any unitary meaning difficult to establish.36 Figures on horseback, for example, could also refer to general chivalric themes, and Islamic forms and objects in Christian art and architecture would have had a wide range of significations. The Duomo frescoes, then, are distinctive in their explicit narrative ­imagery of holy war, and complement the far more allusive and ambiguous spoliate ­decorative program. Artworks visualizing crusade were virtually nonexistent in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, and the narrative, ­representational format accompanied by extensive inscriptions makes the Genoese frescoes even more exceptional. They are by far the most unequivocal ­manifestation of communal pride in the expeditions carried out by Genoese warriors and can be seen as the visual equivalent of Caffaro’s textual narrative of the Almería and Tortosa campaign. The images likely date to the time ­period right after the Andalusi battles, c. 1150, which was precisely the time when ­Genoa’s official historian, Caffaro, was composing his account of the event, and it has been argued that the text provided the narrative basis for the frescoes.37

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Adolf Katzenellenbogen, “The Central Tympanum at Vézelay, Its Encyclopedic Meaning and Its Relation to the First Crusade,” Art Bulletin 26 (1974), 141–51, and Dodds, “Remembering the Crusades,” pp. 99–103, associate the iconography of the tympanum and the monastery in general to the crusades. For other interpretations of the Vézelay tympanum, see Kirk Ambrose, The Nave Sculpture at Vézelay: The Art of Monastic Viewing (­Toronto, 2006), pp. 28–33; Peter Low, “‘You Who Were Once Far Off’: Enlivening Scripture in the Main Portal at Vézelay,” Art Bulletin 85, no. 3 (2003), 469–89; Barbara Abou-El-Haj, “­Audiences for the Medieval Cult of Saints,” Gesta 30, no. 1 (1991), 3–15, at pp. 7–9; Michael Taylor, “The Pentecost at Vézelay,” Gesta 9, no. 1 (1980), 9–15. Colin Morris, “Picturing the Crusades: The Uses of Visual Propaganda, c. 1095–1250,” in The Crusades and Their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton, eds. John France and William Zajac (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 195–216. See also Linda Seidel, Songs of Glory: The Romanesque Façades of Aquitaine (Chicago, 1981). Caffaro’s text, Ystoria captionis Almerie et Turtuose, was an eyewitness account as he led the expedition against the Balearics in 1146. For the text, see Belgrano, Annali genovesi, pp. 79–89; Antonio Ubieto Arteta, Caffaro, De captione Almerie et Tortuose (Valencia, 1973), provides the most recent edition of the Ystoria with a brief historical introduction. See also Marina Montesano, Caffaro, Storia della presa di Almería e Tortosa (1147–9) (Genova, 2002), for an Italian translation of the text with commentary; Hall and Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa, pp. 36–40, 127–35, discuss the text and provide an English translation. For the relationship between the frescoes and Caffaro’s narrative, see Clario Di Fabio, “La presa di

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Complementing these representations in the Duomo are inscriptions c­ oncerning Genoa’s military expeditions on one of the city’s gates. The Porta Soprana was a gate in the circuit of city walls constructed by the Genoese in 1155 to protect themselves from Frederick Barbarossa.38 The gateway possesses two inscribed stone panels, one addressing the creation of the walls themselves, and the other referring to Genoese military campaigns against Muslim adversaries. The inscription about Genoa’s Mediterranean warfare reads: Marte mei p(o)p(u)li fuit hactenus, Affrica mota/post Asie partes et ab hinc Yspania tota,/Almariam cepi Tortosamq(ue) subegi,/septimus annus ab hac et erat bis quartus ab illa./Hoc ego munimen cu(m) feci Ianua pridem/undecies centeno cum tociensque quino/anno post partu(m) venera(n)de Virginis almu(m).39 The text refers to Genoa’s victory in al-Mahdiyya in North Africa in 1087 and the First Crusade, but then addresses the recent expeditions against Almería and Tortosa. The inscription was likely composed and put in place on the city gate at the same time as the frescoes with images of the Andalusi campaigns in the cathedral, and together they formed a concerted celebration of Genoese successes against Muslim enemies at a time of great turmoil in the city.40 This rare concordance of written and visual crusade narratives is even more remarkable given the political crisis that the Spanish campaigns ­precipitated. They were far from overwhelming successes and the costs of the Tortosa ­campaign in particular bankrupted the city. Surrounded by war plunder, these images of Genoese military might in the cathedral reaffirmed the l­egitimacy of Genoa’s cause and the validity of the city’s formula for success in the Minorca, Tortosa e Almeria: pittura ad affresco, storia e celebrazione civica nella ecclesia comunale,” in Di Fabio, La Cattedrale di Genova nel Medioevo, pp. 88–91, at p. 91. 38 Belgrano, Annali genovesi, p. 51; see also Richard Face, “Secular History in twelfth-­century Italy: Caffaro of Genoa,” Journal of Medieval History 6 (1980), 169–84, at pp. 178–79; Colette Dufour Bozzo, La porta urbana nel Medioevo: Porta Soprana di Sant’Andrea in Genova, immagine di una città (Rome, 1989), pp. 291–96; Cervini, Liguria romanica, pp. 139–44; Airaldi, Guerrieri e mercanti, p. 83. 39 Augusta Silva ed., Corpus Inscriptionum Medii Aevi Liguriæ iii (Genoa, 1987), #216, pp. 130–31. See also Dufour Bozzo, La porta urbana, p. 304; Di Fabio, “Le capsule eburnee,” p. 38. Williams, “Making of a Crusade,” p. 42, translates the inscriptions as follows: “By the war of my people, Africa was moved. Then parts of Asia and all of Spain. I took Almería and Tortosa. In the seventh year from one and the eighth from the other I Genoa built this wall.” 40 Di Fabio, “Le capsule eburnee,” pp. 36–38; Williams, “Making of a Crusade,” pp. 40–41.

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­ editerranean—the complementarity of crusade and trade. The celebration M of the victories at Almería and Tortosa through plunder of war, visual representations, and narratives sources may have served to unite the Genoese in the face of dire financial difficulties and political tensions and restore their faith in the government that supported the campaigns in the first place.41 However, the recourse to such a triumphalist visual ensemble may have signaled the r­ ecognition that the Iberian crusade did not reap the same benefits as the expeditions of a half century earlier. Genoa’s Italian competitors in Mediterranean commerce had ceased holy war initiatives at least twenty years b­ efore the Andalusi campaign, and were profiting from their peaceful commercial exchange with Muslim territories. It was only in the mid-twelfth century that Genoa followed the lead of the other maritime republics and no longer ­foregrounded crusader ideology, but instead engaged in conflict with predominantly Christian adversaries to further commercial ends. The Genoese Cathedral displays spoliate decoration akin to that on the Pisan Duomo, combining appropriated objects from past and foreign ­cultures and displaying them like trophies on the church’s interior and exterior. Both structures were civic and political monuments in cities lacking a central ­administrative building, and their triumphal decoration celebrated military victories over Muslim adversaries.42 The visual ensembles ornamenting these two cathedrals differed significantly in terms of the placement, quantity, and symbolism of the spoliate elements. The triumphal imagery on ­Pisa’s Cathedral adorns the exterior of the structure, while Genoa’s crusading narratives are c­oncentrated on the interior. The Pisan Duomo is a heavily inscribed ­monument, covered with ancient and medieval texts; no such extensive ­epigraphic decoration adorns the Genoese church, though it does possess ­significant ­apostolic relics absent in Pisa.43 The quantity of spolia is far higher in Pisa, particularly in the case of ancient reuse. Genoese patrons certainly could have employed ancient materials procured locally or purchased in international markets, but they chose to emphasize contemporary relations with Muslim territories rather than a connection to a Roman past. This interaction with Muslim enemies is far more focused in Genoa, made concrete and ­specific 41 Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, pp. 70–71; Di Fabio, “Le capsule eburnee,” p. 38. 42 Folin, “La Cattedrale di San Lorenzo,” 1:15–16; Carlo Tosco, “La Cattedrale di Genova: un’architettura sulle vie del Mediterraneo,” in Calderoni Masetti and Wolf, La Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, 1:41–46, at pp. 41–44; Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, pp. 43–46. 43 Genoa’s Cathedral does appear to have served a similar funerary function to that of the Pisan Duomo and it displays a small number of inscriptions on its exterior walls related to burials along the church’s perimeter.

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through references to identifiable military campaigns. Their prosecution of war in the Holy Land and al-Andalus was clearly defined as a crusade, whereas the campaigns mentioned in the Pisan Cathedral inscriptions did not have such a strong ideological charge.44 Thus participation in crusade and artworks specifically depicting these campaigns distinguished a Genoese a­ esthetic from that of its maritime rivals. The early and enthusiastic participation of Genoa in the First Crusade ­enhanced the reputation of the city as well as that of individual crusaders like the Embriachi. This time period too saw the creation of the Genoese commune in tandem with holy war campaigns, and the newly consolidated government actively pursued commercial concessions in the Crusader States to establish a Genoese mercantile presence there. At the beginning of the twelfth century, then, commerce, crusade, and commune all worked together to e­ nsure the prestige and prosperity of the city. The cathedral’s spoils directly referenced these Levant campaigns through the presence of the Sacro Catino, columns from Syria, and the ashes of John the Baptist. These objects derived value from their intrinsic beauty and foreign provenance. Procured in distant lands, they were prized because of their connection to the medieval Levant as well as ­biblical history. These relics were objects from antiquity taken as plunder from a contemporary Muslim enemy, and their symbolic and monetary worth bridged past and present. Like the more quotidian bacini, the aesthetic ­appreciation of the glass plate known as the Sacro Catino focused on its beauty, perceived value, and the elevation of the object from a domestic utensil to a precious spoil worthy of display in the cathedral treasury. Its loss of functionality elevated its status as an art object. In the mid-twelfth century, Genoese warriors augmented the cathedral’s collection of war spoils with the appropriation of the Andalusi bronze lamp displayed in the chapel of John the Baptist. The cathedral’s patrons also ­commissioned the fresco decoration depicting the Almería and Tortosa ­campaigns at this time. The civic identity based on crusader zeal that served the city so well at the beginning of the century was perpetuated in the midcentury artistic program; bellicose, martial imagery hailing the Genoese as warriors of the faith complemented actual plunder from military campaigns.45 Though Genoese visual culture remained remarkably consistent over this fiftyyear span, the earlier political and economic benefits derived from c­ onflict 44 45

The triumphal inscriptions on the Pisan Duomo, for example, do not mention Muslims or any religious basis for the conflict; they simply note the location of the victorious battle. Jonathan Phillips, “Caffaro of Genoa and the Motives of Early Crusaders,” in Religion as an Agent of Change, ed. Per Ingesman (Leiden, 2016), pp. 75–104, at pp. 94–96.

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with Muslim territories had now transformed into liabilities. The Andalusi campaigns resulted in economic ruin, and the city’s Italian competitors were already actively trading with Muslims while Genoa continued to fight them. The Genoese commune received a double financial blow in its outlay of funds for an unsuccessful crusade and its exclusion from lucrative Mediterranean commerce. The aesthetic of appropriation related to the Andalusi e­ xpeditions perhaps no longer served as a celebration of but rather a justification for ­crusading ventures at a time when the other Italian maritime republics were reformulating their synthesis of conflict and commerce in a way that foregrounded peaceful trade.

The Aesthetic of Appropriation and Competition with Pisa

In addition to the Duomo and Santa Maria di Castello, other Genoese urban churches combine ancient Roman and Islamic spolia in a manner similar to Pisan architectural decoration. San Donato was founded in the eleventh c­ entury and renovated a century later (Fig. 4.8). Like Santa Maria di C ­ astello, San Donato has a reused Roman cornice serving as a lintel over the entrance, and ancient capitals and columns flank the central nave on the i­ nterior (Fig. 4.9).46 It differs from the Castello church, however, in the use of bacini decoration on its octagonal bell tower (Fig. 4.10). The one ceramic basin that remains belongs to a common type of Tunisian pottery, cobalt and manganese, that is generally dated to the second half of the twelfth century.47 Another ­Romanesque church in Genoa that shares this spoliate decoration is Santo Stefano, which originally formed part of a monastic complex located outside of the medieval city walls. The structure dates to the twelfth century, though it underwent significant restoration in the early twentieth century (Fig. 4.11). Instead of a Roman spoliate lintel, Santo Stefano has an ancient R ­ oman ­sarcophagus ­surmounting the 46

47

For San Donato in general, see Marco Frati, Teresa Torregrossa, and Carlo Tosco, “La chiesa di San Donato a Genova: dalla fabbrica romanica ai restauri stilistici in epoca moderna,” Quaderni dell’Istituto di storia dell’architettura, new series 39 (2002), 249–58; Clario Di Fabio, “San Donato,” in Dufour Bozzo, Medioevo restaurato, pp. 115–48; Cervini, Liguria romanica, pp. 113–18. The lintel is discussed in Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, pp. 192–93. For an overview of bacini decoration in Liguria, see Fabrizio Benente and Alexandre Gardini, “I bacini ceramici della Liguria,” in Atti xxvi Convegno internazionale della ceramica (Albisola, 1996), pp. 67–99; San Donato’s bacini are discussed at pp. 70–71. Graziella Berti and Marcella Giorgio, Ceramiche con coperture vetrificate usate come “bacini” (Florence, 2010), p. 39, and Graziella Berti and Liana Tongiorgi, I bacini ceramici medievali delle chiese di Pisa (Rome, 1981), pp. 207–11, discuss cobalt and manganese ceramics in detail.

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Figure 4.8

Genoa, San Donato, general exterior view. Author’s photo.

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Figure 4.9

San Donato, Roman lintel. Author’s photo.

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Figure 4.10

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San Donato, bacini decoration on campanile, Tunisian tin-glaze ware. Author’s photo.

north doorway on the façade (Fig. 4.12).48 Ceramic decoration originally filled the blind arches of the gabled roofline. None of the original ceramics remain, but the cavities on the façade indicate that b­ acini formed part of the church’s twelfth-century decorative scheme.49 Following the model established in Pisan religious structures, small, modest urban churches in Genoa were ornamented 48

49

For Santo Stefano see Enrico Basso, Un’abbazia e la sua città: Santo Stefano di Genova (sec. x–xv) (Turin, 1997), pp. 14–34; Rita Cavalli, “Santo Stefano,” in Dufour Bozzo, Medioevo restaurato, pp. 365–404; Cervini, Liguria romanica, pp. 97–104. Benente and Gardini, “Bacini ceramici della Liguria,” p. 78. For other twelfth-century churches with bacini decoration in Genoa, see Anna Dagnino, “San Giovanni di Prè,”

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Genoa, Santo Stefano, general exterior view. Author’s photo.

with Islamic bacini juxtaposed with a few, high quality Roman architectural elements. One of the most striking characteristics of Genoese architectural decoration of the twelfth century is its uncanny similarity to the artistic production of Pisa. In both cities, decorative programs on civic churches combined ancient and ­Islamic spolia, incorporating reused sarcophagi, architraves, columns, and capitals with Islamic funerary steles, bacini, and an assortment of bronze objects. Structures in Pisa and Genoa made extensive use of public inscriptions; epigraphic panels adorned the Pisan Cathedral and the city gates, and the portals of Genoa’s city walls also displayed laudatory texts about military triumphs.50 in Dufour Bozzo, Medioevo restaurato, pp. 149–92, and Benente and Gardini, “Bacini ­ceramici della Liguria,” pp. 69–71. 50 Silva, Corpus Inscriptionum, #216, pp. 130–31. See also Haug, “I portali,” 1:50–51, 54; D ­ ufour Bozzo, La porta urbana, pp. 303–04; Williams, “Making of a Crusade,” pp. 40–42. The

Figure 4.12

Santo Stefano, Roman sarcophagus used as a lintel. Author’s photo.

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Victories over Muslim enemies, then, were central elements in each republic’s self-definition. An emulation and appropriation of the Pisan spoliate style, however, also indexed Genoa’s fierce and ongoing competition with its commercial rival along the Tyrrhenian Sea. A spolia aesthetic clearly ­appeared in Pisa first, as the earliest Pisan examples predated Genoese architectural structures by over a century. The distinctive Pisan decorative mode that employed bacini and Roman spolia in tandem thus had a long history in the Tuscan city before being appropriated by its Ligurian neighbor. The ­quantity and quality of the appropriated objects also differ in the Pisan and Genoese architectural structures using this composite spolia style. The Pisan Duomo alone employed more ancient Roman spolia than all the Genoese twelfth-century churches combined and featured a large number of high quality objects imported from the Roman capital. The use of bacini decoration in Genoa and Pisa showed similar characteristics, though the number of churches displaying bacini was considerable lower in Liguria, with twenty churches in the region compared to at least the same number in the city of Pisa. The appearance of bacini decoration was also later, with only one church from the eleventh century displaying ceramics, San Paragorio a Noli, located in the area around Savona.51 Most Ligurian bacini, then, date to the twelfth century or later, while in Pisa a significant number of eleventh-century structures displayed ceramic decoration. In the twelfth-century churches of Genoa featuring bacini, the number of basins used was quite small and they were generally placed high up on bell towers. Finally, there were significant differences in the types of ceramics employed in Pisa and Genoa. Both cities imported and displayed Muslim ceramics from a variety of production centers, but Byzantine ceramics, for example, were more prevalent in Liguria than in Pisa.52

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Porta Aurea in the Pisan city walls also had commemorative inscriptions celebrating the city’s campaign against the Balearic Islands in 1113–15; see Ottavio Banti, Epigrafi pisane anteriori al secolo xv (Pisa, 2000), p. 22; Marc von der Höh, Erinnerungskultur und frühe Kommune: Formen und Funktionen des Umgangs mit der Vergangenheit im hochmittelalterlichen Pisa (1050–1150) (Berlin, 2006), pp. 219–33. The website “In Piazza in Chiesa e a Palazzo” also addresses the gate inscriptions: http://pisaeislam.humnet.unipi.it/en/pi/ porta-aurea/. The recent restoration of San Paragorio’s bacini is discussed by Alessandra Frondoni, “Il restauro dei bacini di S. Paragorio a Noli,” pp. 271–82, and Giuseppe Rando, “I bacini di S. Paragorio, il distacco e il restauro,” pp. 283–87, both in Atti xxvi Convegno internazionale della ceramica. Genoa’s commercial presence in the Byzantine Empire was negligible in the twelfth century, but it is possible that Byzantine pottery might have been procured in ports other

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In their acquisition of Islamic luxury objects, Genoa seems to have been on par with Pisa in terms of the number and quality of examples. Both cities displayed doors from Muslim structures on their churches and used funerary steles as architectural decoration. The Pisan Duomo had its celebrated bronze griffin, while the Cathedral of Genoa displayed a bronze lamp in the chapel of John the Baptist. Their Muslim spoils did differ slightly in terms of provenance; the Pisans did not bring any plundered art objects back from the Holy Land after the First Crusade, whereas the Genoese acquired the Sacro Catino in the early twelfth century. Both cities, however, possessed objects from al-Andalus, the fruits of campaigns against Spanish Muslims in the Balearics in 1113–15 and Almería and Tortosa in 1147–8.53 Genoa’s civic trophies, then, combined ­Andalusi artworks with objects and Holy Land relics that emphasized Genoese participation in the First Crusade. Though the architecture of both Genoa and Pisa employed a similar aesthetic of appropriation displaying ancient Roman and contemporary ­ ­Muslim objects that alluded to their dual role as warriors and merchants, the spolia style had different significations in each city. A distinction can be seen, for example, in the concept of romanitas and its connection to the perception of ancient Roman spolia. Pisa was a significant Roman city, filled with remnants of its ancient past. Pisan patrons and builders cloaked their churches in romanitas, combining local materials with newly purchased Roman ­objects. ­Clerical authors characterized the city as a second Rome, a successor to the great ancient empire in its form of governance, military prowess, and architectural decoration. The city’s victories over foreign enemies emulated Rome’s defeat of Carthage and Pisa saw itself, not medieval Rome, as the heir to this great civilization. Genoa, however, could make no such claims to an illustrious Roman past. It was an ancient city of modest size and importance, and did not possess

53

than Constantinople. For the privileges granted to Genoa by the Byzantine emperor, see Belgrano, Annali genovesi, pp. 41–42. Alexandre Gardini, “La ceramica bizantina in Liguria,” in La ceramica nel mondo bizantino tra xi e xv secolo e i suoi rapporti con Italia, ed. Sauro Gelichi (Florence, 1993), pp. 47–77, at pp. 69, 74–75, and Sandra Origone, Bisanzio e Genova (Genoa, 1992), pp. 31–50, 87–88, both address commercial relations with Byzantium in the twelfth century. See Sauro Gelichi, “La ceramica bizantina in Italia e la ­ceramica italiana nel Mediterraneo orientale tra xii e xiii secolo: stato degli studi e proposte de ricerca,” in Gelichi, La ceramica nel mondo bizantino, pp. 9–46, for a general overview of Byzantine ceramics in Italy. Karen Rose Mathews, “Plunder of War or Objects of Trade? The Reuse and Reception of Andalusi Objects in Medieval Pisa,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 4, no. 2 (2012), 233–58, at pp. 237–44.

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the opulent and large-scale Roman structures found in Pisa. As such, the vast majority of ancient Roman spolia in the city came from other locations, purchased by the Genoese throughout the Middle Ages.54 Genoese authors made no references to the city’s ancient past; Genoa’s history writing began with the First Crusade and there was no need to go back in time to discover the origins of the city’s fame and glory. Given this emphasis on contemporary history in Genoa’s chronicles, the Roman spolia on Genoese religious structures could rather allude to medieval Christian and more particularly papal Rome and ­Genoa’s close relationship with the papacy and the curia.55 While Pisa generally supported the emperor in the Guelph/Ghibelline factionalism that divided medieval Italy, Genoa remained loyal to the pope. The city provided refuge for the pope in times of political turmoil and in return received extensive privileges from numerous pontiffs that enhanced the status of the Genoese church, frequently to the detriment of Pisa. In 1120, for example, Genoa was successful in reducing Pisan ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Corsica, and in 1133 the pope elevated the Genoese Cathedral to the level of an archbishopric. The Rome that mattered in Genoa, then, was twelfth-century papal Rome, the center of the Latin Church, and not that of distant antiquity. As was the case with the Cathedral of Salerno, the ambiguity and multivalence of Roman spolia facilitated allusions to different Romes, both past and contemporary. Thus, ancient Roman appropriated objects, when combined with Islamic spolia, could allude most forcefully to the Genoese as loyal supporters of the pope who fought against Muslims in service of the Church and the Christian faith. By the twelfth-century, Genoa’s crusading credentials were well established, and the spoliate decoration on the city’s public monuments were ­intended to be bellicose in nature, conflating spolia and spoils in a v­ isual ­manifestation of holy war. Plunder abounded in the texts of Caffaro and there was an explicit connection made in his writings between crusade and the taking of war spoils. Caffaro described the columns pillaged from the palace of Judas Maccabeus as plunder, and later authors also mentioned objects ­taken in other Genoese campaigns—the bronze lamp in the cathedral and the bronze doors on the church of San Giorgio.56 In Genoa an equation was made b­ etween 54

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Lucia Faedo, “Riflettendo sui contesti: il contributo dell’archeologia alla conoscenza di San Lorenzo e delle sue vicende,” in Calderoni Masetti and Wolf, La Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, 1:33–40, at pp. 37–38; Dufour Bozzo, Sarcofagi romani, pp. 10–12; Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, p. 14. Haug, “I portali,” 1:49, citing Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, pp. 40–42. For the bronze doors on the church of San Giorgio, plundered from the Mosque of Almería, see Giustiniani, Annali, 1:187; Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti, “Bronzi islamici fra ­Genova

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spolia and spoils of war, and the combination of the two displayed the dedication of the Genoese to holy war and their pride in successful campaigns against Muslim forces.57 Historians and art historians alike have noted the celebratory and triumphalist tone of Genoa’s twelfth-century architectural decoration, where spolia served as trophies acquired through service to the Church and commune.58 In Pisa there was a certain ambiguity to the perception of appropriated Islamic objects, where some may have been war plunder but the thousands of M ­ uslim ceramics in the city manifested the centrality of pan-Mediterranean commerce.59 Genoa’s imported ceramics were neither numerically nor visually significant, therefore objects like the Sacro Catino or the reused funerary steles in Santa Maria di Castello played a larger role in the formation of a Genoese civic identity. It might be argued, too, that in the mid-twelfth century Pisa and Genoa were at two different stages of development in achieving their political and economic ambitions in the Mediterranean. By this time Pisa had not engaged in warfare against Muslim foes for thirty years and had trade agreements in place with a number of territories around the sea. Genoa, however, had just completed its Iberian crusade in 1148 and was in the process of constructing a commercial network on par with that of Pisa. A militant and triumphant understanding of spolia as spoils more accurately reflected a Genoese mindset concerning its Mediterranean neighbors at this time. This confrontational and war-like approach pertained not just to Genoa’s Muslim foes but to the city’s greatest competitor in international trade, the republic of Pisa. Throughout the twelfth century, a bellicose Genoa not only fought Muslims but engaged in incessant battles with Pisa over myriad issues: freedom of trade, counteracting piracy, ecclesiastical privileges, and ­possession of strategic Mediterranean islands.60 Both cities were competing for control of commercial routes in the western Mediterranean, but Pisa’s presence in

57 58 59

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e Pisa,” in Forme e storia: scritti di arte medievale e moderna per Francesco Gandolfo, eds. Walter Angelelli and Francesca Pomarici (Rome, 2011), pp. 325–34, at pp. 325–26; Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, pp. 63, 85, 204–05. Phillips, “Caffaro of Genoa,” pp. 82, 92–93, 96. See particularly Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, and eadem, “Genova vittoriosa,” while Bellomo, A servizio di Dio, p. 83, makes a similar argument in her study of Caffaro. See Mathews, “Plunder of War,” and eadem, “Other Peoples’ Dishes: Islamic Bacini on Eleventh-century Churches in Pisa,” Gesta 53, no. 1 (2014), 5–23, for the various interpretations of Islamic spolia in Pisa. For an overview of the Pisan/Genoese rivalry in the twelfth century, see Ruth Gertrude Reinert, “Rivalry between Genoa and Pisa from 1100 to 1285,” ma Thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1935. See also Hall and Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa, pp. 12–13.

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this economic network had preceded that of Genoa by decades. For much of the Middle Ages Genoa was locked in a perpetual battle with Pisa concerning economic supremacy in the western Mediterranean and jurisdiction over the ­islands of Sardinia and Corsica. Popes in the eleventh century had granted the Pisans extensive privileges in Corsica, and, when the Pisan Cathedral became a metropolitan in 1092, Corsican bishoprics were granted as suffragans.61 Pope Gelasius II traveled to Pisa and Genoa in 1118 and consecrated the cathedrals of both cities; he also reaffirmed Pisan prerogatives in Corsica which caused a violent reaction by the Genoese. Genoa’s ships attacked Pisan territories and threatened the city itself, and Pope Callixtus ii rescinded ­Pisa’s right to consecrate Corsican bishops in 1121. Pope Honorius ii reinstated Pisan suffragans in Corsica in 1126, noting that the constant warfare between ­Genoa and Pisa had encouraged far more aggressive behavior on the part of the ­Muslims in the Mediterranean.62 The conflict continued between the two maritime powers, however, and each conducted sea and land attacks, committed acts of ­piracy, and took prisoners and plunder from the other’s ships and land bases. Finally in 1130 Innocent ii brokered a truce between the warring r­epublics that ­ultimately led to a permanent peace and the elevation of Genoa to an archbishopric in 1133.63 Genoa thus became an equal to Pisa in ecclesiastical honors, and the two cities divided the island of Corsica between t­ hemselves, with each being granted three suffragan dioceses in accordance with its archiepiscopal status. Not surprisingly, Pisan and Genoese primary sources differed markedly in their recounting of these events. The anonymous Gesta Triumphalia and the 61

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For an extensive discussion of the conflict between Pisa and Genoa over ecclesiastical control of Corsica, see Craig Fisher, “The Pisan Clergy and an Awakening of Historical Interest in a Medieval Commune,” in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History iii, ed. William Bowsky (Lincoln, NE, 1966), pp. 143–219, at pp. 145–53, 188–91; see also Silio Scalfati, “Pisa e la Corsica,” in Pisa e il Mediterraneo: uomini, merci, idee dagli Etruschi ai Medici, ed. Marco Tangheroni (Milan, 2003), pp. 203–07; Giuseppe Scalia, “La consecrazione della cattedrale sullo sfondo del contrasto con Genova per i diritti metropolitani sulla Corsica,” in Nel ix centenario della metropoli ecclesiastica di Pisa, eds. Maria Luisa Ceccarelli Lemut and Stefano Sodi (Pisa, 1995), pp. 131–41, at p. 134. Giuseppe Scalia, ed. and trans., Gesta triumphalia per Pisanos facta (Florence, 2010), p. xxi. See Sylvia Schein, “From ‘Milites Christi’ to ‘Mali Christiani’: The Italian Communes in Western Historical Literature,” in I comuni italiani nel regno crociato di Gerusalemme, eds. Gabriella Airaldi and Benjamin Kedar (Genoa, 1986), pp. 681–89, at p. 683, for a similar argument being made about the Italian maritime republics in the thirteenth century. Hall and Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa, pp. 13, 64–65; Müller, Spolien und Trophäen, p. 40; Reinert, “Rivalry between Genoa and Pisa,” pp. 9–10.

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Annales pisani of Maragone presented the Pisan perspective, which criticized the Genoese for being envious of Pisa’s ecclesiastical privileges. The author of the Gesta stated that the Genoese acted with diabolical envy, guided by stupidity and insanity.64 They preyed like pirates (velut pirate nequissimi) upon Pisan ships wherever they might find them, taking riches and Pisan captives. Pisa retaliated with an offensive on the feast day of San Sisto in 1119 and achieved a great victory at Portovenere.65 In the Annales pisani, Maragone noted the victory at Portovenere as well as the Pisans chasing away Genoese ships at the mouth of the Arno in 1121, but then his account remained silent about ­Genoa for another forty years. After 1119 the Genoese were the aggressors in this ­conflict, harassing Pisan shipping in the Mediterranean and threatening the Tuscan city’s political and economic security. Genoese historical texts, in contrast, were far more loquacious about events in the 1110s to 1130s, as the historian Caffaro personally played a significant role in the incidents he narrated. The city’s chronicles did not indicate the basis of Genoese opposition to Pisa’s position in Corsica, but the island’s strategic ­location as a stopping point along trade routes and its rich natural resources would have made it attractive to Genoa.66 Starting in 1119, Caffaro provided an entry in the Annals for almost every year in the ensuing decade that recorded raids on Pisan ships and offensives against Pisan controlled castles and towns. The size of the fleets that Genoa sent against Pisa during this conflict was considerable; the number of ships and soldiers that attacked the Porto Pisano in 1119, for example, was identical to that of the expedition against Almería and Tortosa. The plunder taken from the Pisans was enormous as well. From one ship alone, the Genoese took 10,000 librae in merchandise, whereas the debt that the city owed to its creditors in 1154 was 15,000 librae.67 Caffaro’s account was also notable in its discussion of negotiations with Pope Callixtus ii ­concerning the ­revoking of Pisan privileges. The pope called Pisan and ­Genoese representatives to Rome to discuss the matter, but Genoa’s delegation (including ­Caffaro) arrived first and distributed extraordinary sums of money to the

64 Scalia, Gesta Triumphalia, pp. 20–22. 65 The Gesta triumphalia addresses in detail the battle between Pisa and Genoa at Portovenere; see Scalia, Gesta triumphalia, pp. l-li, 22–26. The Annales Pisani also make a brief reference to the victory; see Michele Lupo Gentile, ed., Gli Annales Pisani di Bernardo Maragone (Bologna, 1936), p. 9. 66 Reinert, “Rivalry between Genoa and Pisa,” p. 3. 67 See Belgrano, Annali genovesi, pp. 16–24, 38, for the conflict with Pisa; Hall and Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa, pp. 58–59, 61–63, 72.

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pope, the ­papal curia, and influential laymen in the city of Rome.68 A group of e­ cclesiastical officials met to decide the matter and they ruled against Pisa. Caffaro recounts with some delight that the Pisan Archbishop dashed his mitre and ring to the ground, exclaiming that he would no longer serve this pope, and walked out of the assembly. Though the matter was decided in G ­ enoa’s favor, this did not end the conflict with Pisa, and it took another ­decade to reach a settlement where Genoa enjoyed the same ecclesiastical status as Pisa and the island of Corsica was divided equitably between the two cities. In the first half of the twelfth century, then, Genoa continued to conduct holy war campaigns against Mediterranean Muslims, but the greatest o­ bstacle to its commercial expansion in the western part of the sea was Pisa. The ­conflated spolia/spoils decorating Genoese religious structures as symbols of military triumph could have alluded simultaneously to Pisan and ­Muslim competitors and enemies.69 Emulation and competition prompted the ­Genoese use of Pisan architectural and decorative styles, which included the combination of Roman and Islamic spolia, as well as bacini decoration. In the ­appropriation of a Pisan style, Genoa could define itself as an equal to a city with long and illustrious artistic traditions. Appropriation also established a relationship of supersession, and just as Pisa saw itself as taking up the mantle of ancient Rome, Genoa could displace the Tuscan city in its predominant role in the western Mediterranean trade network. The combination of Islamic and Roman spolia in Genoa, then, referred to contemporary concerns—the city’s relationship with the pope, battles against and trade with Muslim territories, and competition with Pisa. Genoa was the only maritime republic to target another Italian city as its ­rival. Its adversary, then, was not a foreign or ancient culture, but a neighbor and commercial competitor. The two cities were quite familiar with one ­another, but their relationship deteriorated in the early twelfth century, shifting from one of cooperation based on common political interests to that of conflict and economic competition. Like the relationship between Venice and Byzantium, Genoa was no longer content to follow Pisa’s lead in the ­aftermath of the First Crusade. The appropriation of a Pisan spoliate style 68 Belgrano, Annali genovesi, pp. 18–21; Hall and Phillips, Caffaro, Genoa, pp. 12–13, 103–05; Face, “Secular History,” pp. 176–77. 69 Robert Nelson, “The History of Legends and the Legends of History: The Pilastri Acritani in Venice,” in San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice, eds. Henry Maguire and Robert Nelson (Washington, dc, 2010), pp. 63–90, at pp. 64, 79, 82–83, notes a similar phenomenon in the rivalry between Venice and Genoa in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

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in Genoese civic a­ rchitecture displayed a mixture of admiration and triumphalism as G ­ enoa challenged Pisa for ecclesiastical privileges, commercial ­market share, and p ­ olitical recognition on the Mediterranean. This Pisan style, a­ lready ­established and concretized in the early eleventh century, was a readily r­ecognizable Mediterranean aesthetic, worthy of emulation in its rich and complex juxtaposition of ancient Roman and contemporary spolia. The bacini decoration in particular had the distinct advantage of referencing two cultures in a Genoese context; as Islamic spolia they indexed Genoa’s military ­campaigns against Muslims, and as pseudo-spolia, or borrowed artistic styles, they ­displayed the Ligurian city’s supersession of an Italian enemy. The military antagonism counterbalanced by cultural appreciation that generally ­characterized relations between the maritime republics and foreign cultures was now used to define interaction between cities on the Italian peninsula. Conflict with the Islamic world gave Genoa legitimate crusading credentials but Pisa was clearly the greatest obstacle to Genoese commercial expansion. Genoa’s original contribution to a spolia aesthetic consisted of its insistent references to crusade. Holy Land relics brought back to the city were displayed as spoils in the cathedral, demonstrating how service to the pope and the conquest of Islamic territories were complementary initiatives.70 The Genoese also celebrated their military victories in representational imagery, a visual ­approach to depicting the relationship between commerce and conflict that was completely absent in Pisa. The narrative frescoes in the Duomo portraying the Andalusi campaigns were exceptional examples of Crusader art that demonstrated Genoa’s need to glorify the city’s military campaigns despite the financial difficulties they caused. Though the Genoese borrowed a Pisan spoliate aesthetic, the Ligurian city infused this appropriated style with a distinct political and cultural significance that referenced its relationship with the ­papacy and Islamic territories while distinguishing Genoa from its Tuscan rival. In its political and commercial endeavors as well as its visual culture, Genoa maintained a delicate balance between pan-Mediterranean and local interests. The Genoese enjoyed a reputation as committed holy warriors in the Crusader States, and received advantageous commercial concessions that allowed them 70

For this idea of relics as spoils, see Jás Elsner, “From the Culture of Spolia to the Cult of Relics: The Arch of Constantine and the Genesis of Late Antique Forms,” Papers of the British School of Rome 68 (2000), 149–84; Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen, “Spolia as Relics? Relics as Spoils?: The Meaning and Function of Spolia in Western Medieval Reliquaries,” in Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond, eds. Cynthia Hahn and Holger Klein (Washington, dc, 2015), pp. 173–92.

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to establish thriving trade outposts in the Levant. The Holy Land campaigns were essential for Genoa’s identity formation in the early twelfth century, and relics like the ashes of John the Baptist and the Sacro Catino created visual ­connections to biblical lands. Genoese crusading ventures in the western Mediterranean were more ambivalent enterprises, as military campaigns did not always guarantee economic prosperity, and the Ligurian city had to counter the aggression and hostility of its maritime rival Pisa in the west. The spoliate decoration on the city’s churches could reference Genoese successes against Muslim adversaries while appropriating the decorative style formulated by its Italian rival to assert its own Mediterranean identity. As of the early twelfth century, Genoa was not yet integrated into Mediterranean networks. In its search for a civic style that manifested its belonging among cultures along the sea, it turned to a Pisan aesthetic that so forcefully displayed Pisa’s Mediterranean knowledge and integration. The inclusive, ­pluritopic style employed by the Campanians, for example, was predicated upon centuries of involvement in Mediterranean commerce and politics. This was an aesthetic that was far too allusive, referential, and subtle for the G ­ enoese newcomers. Instead, a Genoese civic style needed to establish relationships between cultures that were unidirectional, linear, and unequivocal. Thus ­Genoa defined its visual culture in terms of violent and aggressive appropriation that combined holy plunder seized in crusade campaigns with styles and forms from a rival republic. Genoa eventually joined the rest of the ­maritime republics in peaceful trade with the Muslim controlled Mediterranean, but in the first half of the twelfth century the dual nature of the Genoese as traders and crusaders most effectively characterized their Mediterranean identity.

Conclusion

Shifting Significations of the Spolia Aesthetic In the eleventh to mid-twelfth century, the interdependence of trade and war existed in a delicate but transitory equilibrium for the Italian maritime cities. The lasting achievement of the military campaigns of this time period was the establishment of these mercantile centers as essential participants in Mediterranean commercial exchange. What the cities fought for so aggressively came to fruition as they firmly asserted their presence in markets across the sea, exchanging goods with Muslim territories and Byzantium alike. Ultimately, the Italian mercantile cities were so successful that their fiercest competition came from one another as they vied with increasing hostility for supremacy in Mediterranean trade. The strategic use of violence, then, remained an effective means to open markets, protect financial assets and sovereign territories, and eliminate competitors. The aesthetic of appropriation employed in these mercantile centers, with its multicultural references, luxurious and exotic materials, and conflation of time and place in alluding to past and foreign cultures simultaneously, manifested a civic identity for each city based on a sense of Mediterranean belonging. The openness of spolia allowed each city to reference the cultures and locales with the most symbolic significance; the Byzantine Empire, Muslim territories, and ancient Rome all featured prominently in defining a unique visual culture for each Italian town. The maritime republics displayed their Mediterranean belonging and connection to other cultures by using materials goods acquired along the sea as architectural decoration. This was an ­inclusive and ­cumulative aesthetic that celebrated the fluidity and permeability of ­cultural boundaries in the Mediterranean. The beauty and availability of ­spolia, combined with a seemingly boundless potential for redefinition and r­ einscription with new meanings, made them the ideal visual form to ­represent the Italian cities’ knowledge of and integration into a dynamic Mediterranean environment. The second half of the twelfth century brought some level of continuity but also significant change for the maritime republics and their place in this multicultural network. The merchants of Amalfi all but disappeared from maritime commerce but remained involved in local inland trade.1 Norman Sicily under King Roger ii and his successors became a flourishing kingdom, and Roger 1 Patricia Skinner, Medieval Amalfi and its Diaspora, 800–1250 (Oxford, 2013), addresses this shift in focus of Amalfitan trade.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004360808_007

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continued the military offensives against the Byzantine Empire undertaken by his predecessors while attempting to expand his territory into North Africa as well.2 Pisa and Genoa continued to fight incessantly over their commercial positions in the western Mediterranean until the late thirteenth century when the Genoese defeated the Pisan fleet at the Battle of Meloria in 1284; from that time forward Pisan mercantile interests remained almost exclusively in the western part of the sea. In the thirteenth century as well, a three-way competition developed between Pisa, Genoa, and Venice in eastern Mediterranean markets—Byzantium, the Crusader States, and Egypt—where alliances constantly shifted as each city sought to improve its own position at the expense of the others. It was this intense competition and fratricidal rivalry without any mitigating spiritual endeavors that altered the general perception of the Italian merchants, transforming them from “milites Christi” to “mali christiani.”3 In the art patronage of the Italian trading cities, the spolia aesthetic continued to play a central role, but instead of indexing Mediterranean relations, it ­became increasingly associated with local Italian concerns. The multivalence of spolia allowed for new readings of previously appropriated objects while new spolia/spoils came to adorn the civic monuments of these republics. In Pisa, for example, the use of bacini persisted until the fifteenth century, but the types of ceramics employed as decoration on the city’s churches shifted from Muslim products to locally produced Pisan wares; bacini thus became manifestations of local pride rather than international commerce.4 Pisa ­continued to display 2 Alex Metcalfe, The Muslims of Medieval Italy (Edinburgh, 2009), pp. 162–65; Charles Dalli, “Bridging Europe and Africa: Norman Sicily’s Other Kingdom,” in Bridging the Gaps: ­Sources, Methodology and Approaches to Religion in History, ed. Joaquim Carvalho (Pisa, 2008), pp. 77–93; David Abulafia, “The Norman Kingdom of Africa and the Norman Expeditions to Majorca and the Muslim Mediterranean,” Anglo-Norman Studies 7 (1985), 26–49. 3 Sylvia Schein, “From ‘Milites Christi’ to ‘Mali Christiani’: The Italian Communes in Western Historical Literature,” in I comuni italiani nel regno crociato di Gerusalemme, eds. Gabriella Airaldi and Benjamin Kedar (Genoa, 1986), pp. 681–89; David Abulafia, “Trade and Crusade, 1050–1250,” in Cross-cultural Convergences in the Crusader Period: Essays Presented to Aryeh Grabois on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, eds. Michael Goodich et al. (New York, 1995), pp. 1–20, at p. 17. 4 For these local ceramics, known as “maiolica arcaica,” see Graziella Berti, Pisa: Le “maioliche arcaiche,” secc. xiii–xv (Museo Nazionale di San Matteo) (Florence, 1997), pp. 276–84; ­Marcella Giorgio, “Centri di produzione di maiolica arcaica in Toscana: Pisa, Lucca e ­Camaiore,” in Storie [di] Ceramiche 2: Maioliche “arcaiche,” ed. Marcella Giorgio (Florence, 2016), pp. 11–20; eadem, “La maiolica arcaica e le invetriate depurate di Pisa: nuove acquisizioni e approfondimenti alla luce dei più recenti scavi urbani (2000–2007),” in v Congresso nazionale di archeologia medievale, eds. Giuliano Volpe and Pasquale Favia (Florence, 2009), pp. 569–75.

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its admiration of romanitas in the extensive use of ancient Roman sarcophagi for elite burials, but by the thirteenth century the city’s civic identity had been completely disengaged from visual references to the Muslim world.5 Genoa’s bellicose understanding of spolia as spoils of war became even more insistent as the Genoese began to seize plunder from their I­ talian maritime rivals, Pisa and Venice. War plunder was displayed prominently on the city’s churches and manifested the complete conflation of spolia and spoils, where these appropriated objects symbolized the supersession by the ­Ligurian city of the two greatest threats to its trading interests in the eastern and western Mediterranean.6 Initially Venice maintained its insistent focus on the Byzantine Empire in the cultural realm, but with the Venetian conquest of the ­Byzantine ­capital in 1204, the transfer of sanctity and power from East to West had reached its culmination.7 As Venice’s relationship with the empire no l­onger had such deep ­political or cultural significance, the Venetians reinscribed new meanings onto the Byzantine artifacts decorating the Basilica of San Marco so that they addressed their ongoing and bitter rivalry with Genoa.8 In the Norman realms, the island of Sicily developed into a site of intensive artistic patronage. The architectural commissions of King Roger ii and his successors featured an artistic style that was grandiose, luxurious, and replete with an eclectic array

5 Fulvia Donati, “Il reimpiego dei sarcofagi: profilo di una collezione,” in Il Camposanto di Pisa, eds. Clara Baracchini and Enrico Castelnuovo (Turin, 1996), pp. 69–96; Fulvia Donati and ­Maria Cecilia Parra, “Pisa e il reimpiego ‘laico’: la nobiltà di sangue e d’ingegno, e la p ­ otenza ­economica,” in Colloquio sul reimpiego dei sarcofagi romani nel medioevo, eds. Bernard ­Andreae and Salvatore Settis (Marburg, 1984), pp. 103–19. 6 Rebecca Müller, “Genova vittoriosa: i trofei bellici,” in Genova e l’Europa mediterranea: ­opere, artisti, committenti, collezionisti, eds. Piero Boccardo and Clario Di Fabio (Milan, 2004), pp. 89–107; eadem, Sic hostes Ianua frangit: Spolien und Trophäen im mittelalterlichen G ­ enua (Weimar, 2002); Karen Mathews, “Holy Plunder and Stolen Treasures: Portable Luxury ­Objects as War Trophies in the Italian Maritime Republics, 1100–1400,” in More Than Mere Playthings: The Minor Arts of Italy, ed. Julia Fischer (Newcastle, 2016), pp. 59–83, at pp. 69–70. 7 Fabio Barry, “Disiecta membra: Ranieri Zeno, the Imitation of Constantinople, the Spolia Style and Justice at San Marco,” pp. 7–62, and Holger Klein, “Refashioning Byzantium in Venice, ca. 1200–1400,” pp. 193–225, both in San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice, eds. Robert Nelson and Henry Maguire (Washington, dc, 2010). 8 Henry Maguire, “Venetian Art as a Mirror of Venetian Attitudes to Byzantium in Decline,” in Istanbul Üniversitesi 550. yıl, Uluslararası Bizans ve Osmanlı Sempozyumu, ed. Sümer Atasoy (Istanbul, 2004), pp. 281–94; Robert Nelson, “The History of Legends and the Legends of History: the Pilastri Acritani in Venice,” in Nelson and Maguire, San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice, pp. 63–90; Mathews, “Holy Plunder,” p. 73.

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of cultural references that epitomized the spolia aesthetic and visualized an embeddedness in Mediterranean court circles.9 Thus, a spoliate style continued to resonate in the artistic patronage of the Italian trading cities for centuries as the aesthetic and symbolic appreciation of objects from past and foreign cultures endured. The spolia aesthetic, in its beauty, variety, adaptability, and polysemy referenced appositely the dual ­nature of the inhabitants of these Italian cities as warriors and maritime merchants. As the competition in Mediterranean commerce escalated between the Italians themselves, visual symbols that could concretize and advertise political power became all the more desirable. An aesthetic of appropriation proved particularly suitable in the elision it facilitated between the spoils of war and spolia that were juxtaposed on public monuments in competitive trophy collections. The Italian maritime republics developed and deployed the spolia style in civic architecture at a pivotal moment in the history of these cities, providing their merchant warriors with a flexible but powerful visual vocabulary to display mercantile prowess, political might, cultural integration, and knowledge of their neighbors, competitors, adversaries, and trading partners across the Mediterranean Sea. 9 William Tronzo, The Cultures of His Kingdom: Roger ii and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo (Princeton, 1997); Beat Brenk, “Arte del potere e la retorica dell’alterità: la cattedrale di C ­ efalù e San Marco a Venezia,” Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Herziana 35 (2003/2004), 81–100; Francesca Dell’Acqua, “Parvenus eclettici e il canone estetico della varietas: riflessioni su ­alcuni dettagli di arredo architettonico nell’Italia meridionale normanna,” Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Herziana 35 (2003/2004), 49–79.

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Index Aachen, Ambo of Henry ii 16, 16n49, 120 Adriatic Sea 56, 74, 75 Aesthetic of appropriation (spolia aesthetic) 1, 4, 5, 7, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28, 35, 37, 60, 76, 84, 109, 110, 111, 126, 146, 152, 154, 155, 156, 160, 165, 178, 184, 185, 191, 193, 194, 196 Disharmony/incongruence 17, 144 Eclecticism 9, 25, 37, 42, 43, 71, 81, 93, 108, 144, 160, 195 Heterogeneity 1, 8, 9, 10, 17, 18, 52, 57 Juxtaposition 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 25, 35, 43, 47, 73, 80, 84, 93, 97, 98, 110, 114, 131, 138, 144, 154, 182, 191, 196 Mixture/assemblage 1, 9, 10, 15, 43, 81, 88, 98, 146, 152, 154 Agarenes 58 al-Andalus 17, 26, 110, 128, 130, 143, 147, 153, 157, 159, 160, 162, 170, 174–78, 185, 191 Almería 131, 157, 159, 164, 168, 170, 176, 177, 185, 186n56, 189 Balearic Islands 111, 112, 125, 130, 131, 133, 147, 184n50 Majorca 112, 131, 133, 143 Minorca 157, 159, 170 Córdoba 8–9, 131 Great Mosque 8–9 Madinat al-Zahra 131 Tortosa 157, 159, 164, 168, 170–71, 174, 175–77, 185, 189 Amalfi 1, 4, 22, 23, 24–26, 28, 30, 32, 35, 40, 41, 42, 43, 63, 72, 74, 113, 193 Cathedral 38, 40 Bronze doors 28, 29, 38, 40, 42, 63, Amatus of Montecassino, L’Ystoire de li N ­ ormant 44, 69 Antiques 6, 13, 139 Apostolic saints 59, 68, 69–70, 85–87, 87n36, 90, 96, 101, 120–22 Andrew 38–39, 69 John the Baptist 101, 165–68, 170, 173, 177, 185, 192 John the Evangelist 91 Mark 73, 73n2, 76–77, 78, 79, 85, 87, 90, 95, 96, 97, 100, 167

Matthew 44, 45, 48, 55, 61, 63, 67, 70 Paul 61 Peter 38–39, 61, 69, 70, 115, 121, 122, 123, 126 Simon 61 Thomas 69 Appropriation 1, 4, 5, 6, 13, 14, 17–19, 21, 24, 72, 73, 76, 79, 80, 84, 89, 90, 93, 98, 109, 111, 155, 156, 161, 177, 178, 184, 185, 190, 192, 193, 196 Bacini 110, 114–15, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122, 124, 125, 128, 139, 143, 146, 147, 149, 151–52, 154–55, 177, 178, 181, 182, 184, 187, 190, 191, 194 As commodities (see commodities) As mementoes of voyages 125 Defining a Pisan aesthetic 114, 155 Islamic origin 115–16, 124, 149, 154 Bari 167 Basilica plan churches 45, 47, 81, 98, 101 Battle of Civitate 58 Battle of Meloria 194 Beatrice (mother of Matilda of Canossa) 52, 139, 141 Bernard of Clairvaux 84n31, 142 Bernardo Maragone, Annales pisani 144n77, 189 Bohemond of Antioch 27, 112, 158 Buschetto (see Pisa, Cathedral) Byzantine emperors 76, 88, 158 Alexius I Comnenus 74, 75, 112 Constantine 9, 57, 85 Constantine Porphyrogenitos 98 John ii Comnenus 75 Justinian 87 Byzantine Empire/Byzantium 1, 2, 26, 98, 110, 112–13, 158–59, 167, 190, 193, 194 Admiration of 25, 38, 41–42, 60, 63, 70–71, 73–75, 85, 88–89, 93–95, 96, 108–09, 157 Antagonism towards 28, 56–57, 72–73, 75–76, 79–80, 85, 89–90, 97, 109, 157, 195 Cultural production 24–25, 26, 29–30, 32, 35, 38, 42, 63, 71, 72–73, 80–81, 84,

230 Byzantine Empire/Byzantium (cont.) 85, 87–90, 93, 95, 97–98, 100–01, 103–04, 108–09, 184, 195 Byzantine Empress Irene 95–96 Caffaro di Caschifellone 156, 169–70, 174, 186, 189–90 Annals of Genoa 189 Ystoria captionis Almerie et Turtuose 174n37 Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum 26n8, 144–45, 153 Carthage (see also North Africa) 145, 185 Cephalonia 56, 75, 78, 81 Ceramics 12, 15, 32, 37n33, 110, 114–15, 118, 121, 122, 124, 125, 143, 147, 149, 151, 152, 178, 181, 184, 187, 194 Cobalt and manganese 178, 178n47 Green and brown ware 12, 12n32 Lusterware 15, 128, 147n87 Used as bacini (see bacini) Used as tableware (original function) 17, 144, 154, 177 Chios 75, 78 Chrysobull 74, 75, 112 Church Reform 47, 58–59, 70, 70n102 Circulation/mobility 6, 8, 10–12, 16, 25, 35–37, 43, 54, 68, 79, 88, 113, 125, 126, 139 Permeability of Mediterranean borders 11, 20–21, 193 Civic identity and pride 3, 18, 22, 23, 108, 110, 146, 154, 177, 187, 193, 195 Manifested in artistic production 5, 8, 15, 17, 114, 126, 135, 137, 141, 142, 144, 146, 152, 156, 160, 167, 173, 176, 182, 185, 191, 192, 194, 196 Collection 6, 8, 9, 17, 18, 48, 52, 57, 88, 108, 115, 139, 139n64, 143, 177, 196 Collector 9 Cologne, Herimann Cross 17 Commercial exchange/commerce/trade (see also commodities) 12, 13, 19, 21, 27, 28, 29, 32, 36, 38, 43, 54, 71, 73, 79, 88, 110, 122–23, 124, 143, 152, 153, 156, 158, 165, 187, 189, 192, 193, 194 Relationship to conflict 1–5, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 37, 72–73, 75, 76, 80, 84–85, 87,

Index 110–12, 114, 126, 152–54, 156, 157–58, 160, 165, 176–78, 191, 192, 193 Rivalry among Italian cities 74, 112, 156–57, 160, 161, 176, 178, 184, 187, 190–91, 193–95, 196 With Byzantine Empire 2, 26, 41, 42, 72, 74–75, 78, 109, 112–13, 158–59 With Muslim territories 2, 26, 30, 73–74, 77, 104, 108, 110, 113, 124–25, 152, 159–60, 176, 187, 190 Commodities 8, 11, 13, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 32, 43, 72, 79, 85, 88, 97, 108, 111, 112, 113, 117, 122, 124, 125, 126, 139, 146, 152, 154, 193 Bacini as commodities 124–26 Relics as commodities 79 Spolia as commodities 85, 88, 126, 139, 152 Commune Genoa 177, 178, 187 Pisa 133, 137, 142, 153 Conflict (see also crusade) 2, 3–4, 19, 22, 56, 193 Relationship to commerce (see commercial exchange, relationship to conflict) With Byzantine Empire 2, 28, 56, 71, 73, 75–76, 80, 90, 97, 109, 194 With Muslim territories 1, 2, 20–21, 24, 27, 28, 29, 54, 71, 73–74, 75, 88, 104, 109, 110–11, 112, 114, 124–25, 131, 133, 145–46, 152, 153–54, 156, 157–8, 160, 165, 170, 173–75, 176, 177–78, 182, 186, 187, 190, 191–92, 194 With other Italian republics (see commercial exchange, rivalry among Italian cities; Pisa, Genoese rivalry) Constantinople 13, 25, 29, 38, 41, 42, 56, 61, 63, 74, 75, 78, 85, 87, 95, 97, 103, 113 Amalfitan quarter 38 Apostoleion 85, 87 Hagia Sophia 93 Corfu 56, 75, 76 Crusade 3, 58, 81, 104, 186–87, 190–92 First Crusade 1–2, 26, 27, 74, 89, 111, 156–58, 159, 160, 161, 164, 165, 169, 170, 173, 175, 177, 185, 186, 190 Fourth Crusade 85n34, 195

231

Index Relationship to commerce 3–4, 74, 108, 154, 158, 159, 160, 165, 176, 177–78, 186, 192 Reluctance to participate in crusade 74, 159 Second Crusade (including Iberian/Andalusi crusade) 76, 157, 158, 160, 170, 173–77, 187, 190–92 Crusader art 173–74, 191 Crusader States 27n11, 111, 112, 113, 158, 159, 160, 165, 177, 191, 194 Antioch 26, 27, 28, 115, 158, 165 Jubayl 158 Daibert (Archbishop of Pisa, Patriarch of Jerusalem) 111 Durazzo 56 Egypt 26, 30, 74, 113, 115, 147, 149, 159, 194 Alexandria 73, 76–77, 78, 90, 96, 113, 167 Cairo 113, 159 Embriaco family (Embriachi) 157, 158, 164, 165, 177 Farfa (monastery) 28 Farfa Casket 29–32, 35, 37, 41, 42, 64, 67 Fatimid Empire 26, 26n5 Fons vitae (fountain of life) motif 61 Fragment 6, 13, 14, 135, 138 Frederick Barbarossa 175 Furta sacra (see also relics) 72, 73, 76–79, 80, 81, 84–85, 88, 90, 97, 109, 165–68, 170 Genoa 1, 2, 4, 7, 22, 23, 156–60, 167, 169, 175, 176, 177–78, 186, 188, 192, 194, 195 Cathedral of San Lorenzo 57, 161, 165–75, 176, 177, 178, 191 Andalusi bronze lamp 168, 170, 177, 182, 185, 186 As a civic and political structure 173 Ashes of John the Baptist 165–68, 177, 192 Elevation to the rank of archbishopric 167, 188, 189–90 Fresco decoration 170–74, 175, 177, 191 Portal of San Giovanni 165, 168

Sacro Catino 168–69, 177, 185, 187, 192 Emulating Pisan aesthetic 182–87, 191–92 Other twelfth-century churches with spolia decoration in Genoa 161n13, 181n49 Porta Soprana 175 Rivalry with Pisa 156, 187–91, 187n60, 194, 195 San Donato 178 Santa Maria di Castello 107n78, 161–65, 178, 187 Santo Stefano 146n84, 178–82 Geoffrey Malaterra, De Rebus Gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae Comitis et Roberti Guiscardi Ducis fratris eius 69 Gesta Triumphalia 144n77, 188–89 Giovanni Scriba 158 Greek cross plan church 87, 104 Guisana Sebasti 60 Hetimasia 95, 101 Hodegetria 101 Holy Land 2, 28, 74, 81, 108, 156, 157, 162, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169, 170, 177, 185, 191, 192 Jerusalem 26, 27, 28, 104, 157 Dome of the Rock 104 King of Jerusalem 158 Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV 28, 47, 56–57 Conflict with Robert Guiscard 55–57 Conflict with the papacy 56–59, 69 Holy Roman Empire 56 Hybrid/hybridity 6, 81, 93, 93n54, 95 Inscriptions/epigraphy Ancient Roman inscriptions 48, 118, 135, 138, 141, 142–43, 176 Arabic inscriptions 106–07, 147, 161–62 Funerary texts 106–07, 137, 141, 147, 161–62 Legibility 138, 161–62 Medieval inscriptions 30, 32, 35, 38, 40–41, 47–48, 55–57, 60, 61, 63, 81, 95, 103, 131–33, 137, 170–71, 174, 175, 176, 182 Significance 55–57, 95, 137–38, 141, 156

232 Islamic cultural production (see also Islamic spolia) 20, 21, 25, 29, 30, 104, 106, 108, 114, 174 Islamic spolia (see also bacini) 16, 108, 110, 128, 131, 133, 139, 142, 143–45, 152, 156, 161, 169, 178, 182, 185, 186, 187, 190, 191 Andalusi bronze lamp 168, 170, 177, 182, 185, 186 Chair of Saint Peter 106–07, 107n78 Combined with Ancient Roman spolia 15, 110, 114, 118, 120, 122, 126, 133, 143–46, 152, 153, 154, 156, 165, 178, 182, 185, 186, 190 Fath capital 130–31, 143–44 Muslim funerary steles 106–07, 147, 161–64, 182, 185, 187 Pisa Griffin 17, 128–30, 143–44, 182, 185 Pseudo or virtual spolia 43, 191 Sacro Catino 168–69, 177, 185, 187, 192 Ivory 15, 28, 29, 32, 37n33, 60, 63, 64, 67, 68, 70, 71, 144 Circulation versus origin 12, 30, 35–37, 43 Raw material versus finished artworks 30, 37, 42 Ivory pen box (Metropolitan Museum) 32–37, 43, 64, 67 Jacopo da Varagine, Legenda translationis beatissimi Johannis Baptistae G ­ enuam 165, 167 Landulfus Butrumile 60, 63 Lay patronage 41, 55, 57, 63, 146, 151, 152, 153 Leo of Ostia, Chronica Monasterii Casinensis 40, 44n46, 54, 68n95, 124n29 Liber Maiolichinus 144, 145, 145n80 Long-distance transport of building materials 7, 13 Luni 118, 120 Magnificence/splendor 13, 18, 25, 47, 64, 71, 152 Maiolica arcaica (local Pisan pottery) 194 Mansone family (Amalfi) 32 Marmara (source of Proconnesian marble) 87, 98 Martyrium 59, 87, 104

Index Materials/materiality 4, 5, 21, 25, 43, 47, 48, 52, 54, 55, 60, 64, 70, 80, 81, 87, 97, 108, 118, 124, 126, 142, 151, 165, 169, 170, 193 Craftsmanship 6, 12, 43, 60, 71–72, 89, 95, 97, 154 Origin of materials 5, 6, 7, 8, 13–16, 25, 35, 36, 37, 41, 43, 47, 52–54, 60, 68, 84, 87–88, 115–16, 118–19, 120, 122, 124, 130, 143, 146, 147, 149, 154, 157, 168, 177, 185 Practical reuse of building materials 6–8, 13, 55, 60, 89, 111, 123 Raw materials 10, 11, 15, 26, 32, 36–37, 42 Symbolism of materials 6, 8–9, 10–19, 28, 36, 55, 67–68, 85, 152, 176 Maurus of Amalfi 28, 29, 30, 30n18, 40, 41, 41n39, 42, 43, 61, 67 Mediterranean Cultural interaction 1, 2, 3, 11, 19–20, 22, 32, 35–36, 37, 42, 43, 71, 109, 146, 191, 193–94, 196 Eastern Mediterranean (Levant) 7, 26, 54, 72–73, 74, 77–78, 97, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 157, 158, 159, 160, 165, 177, 192, 194, 195 Economic interaction 1, 2, 3, 8, 11, 13, 15, 18, 21, 22, 26, 43, 54, 71, 72, 73, 88, 108, 109, 112–13, 114, 122, 124–26, 139, 143, 146, 149, 153, 156, 158–60, 165, 176, 178, 187, 189, 190, 192, 193, 196 Political interaction 1, 2, 3, 4, 16, 18, 20, 23, 28, 71, 79–80, 89, 108, 110, 112, 142, 146, 152, 154, 156–57, 158, 175, 187–88, 190, 192 Visual culture Shared culture of objects 7, 11–12, 16, 25, 28–30, 32, 35, 37, 43–44, 71, 87–88, 131, 160, 191 Western Mediterranean 2, 110, 114, 152, 153, 155, 157, 159, 160, 187, 188, 190, 192, 194, 195 Mediterranean belonging 5, 23, 120, 193 Mediterranean identity 1, 38, 80, 84, 111, 120, 146, 154, 156, 160, 192 Mediterranean knowing/knowledge 5, 42, 71, 73, 88, 192 Middle Byzantine churches 81, 98, 101 Montecassino Desiderius (Abbot) 40–41, 54, 123

233

Index Monastery 28, 45, 57, 67–68 Support from Robert Guiscard 68 Mujāhid, ruler of Denia 157 Muslim Mediterranean territories (see also al-Andalus; Egypt; Fatimid Empire; North Africa; Sicily) 2, 15, 20, 35, 37, 76, 78, 108, 109, 146, 152, 157, 188, 193, 195 As adversaries 1, 2, 20, 26, 27–28, 58, 73–74, 75, 88, 108, 110, 111, 114, 133, 143, 145, 152, 153–54, 156, 159, 165, 175, 176–78, 184, 186–87, 190–92 As trading partners 2, 3, 25–26, 30, 43, 70, 73, 88, 110, 114, 152, 153, 154, 165, 176, 178, 190, 192, 193 Myra 77, 165, 167

Military campaigns/crusades 24, 26–27, 44, 70 Relationship with the papacy (see papacy) North Africa 26, 30, 36, 110, 113, 128n40, 145–47, 153, 157, 175, 194 Bona 111, 133 Bougia 113, 113n11 Morocco 117, 149, 159 Tunisia 115, 125n33, 149, 159, 178 al-Mahdiyya and Zawila 26, 29, 111, 133n46, 145–46, 147, 153, 157, 175 Kairouan, Great Mosque 8, 8n19 Tunis (see Carthage for the ancient city) 113 Tripoli 104

New Testament figures and imagery (see also apostolic saints) Anastasis 101 Annunciation 101 Ascension 91 Christ (Pantocrator) 17, 38, 61, 63, 69, 70, 95, 101, 167, 169 Christ’s Ministry and Miracles 69, 70 Crucifixion 101, 169 Deesis 101 Dormition 29 Incarnation of Christ 29 Lamb of God 101 Last Judgment 101 Last Supper 69, 169 Nativity and Infancy of Christ 69 Passion of Christ 29, 69 Virgin Mary 29, 38, 61, 81, 90, 95, 96, 101, 103 Washing of the Apostles’ Feet 69 Nocera 54 Noli, San Paragorio 115n12, 184 Normans Artistic patronage 25, 28, 43–71, 142, 193–94, 195–96 As outsiders 24, 67, 71 As successors to ancient Roman emperors (see Rome, ancient Roman Empire) Divine sanction of rule 68–69 Hostility towards Byzantium 2, 28, 56, 72, 74–76, 96, 193–94 Hostility towards the Holy Roman Empire 28, 56

Old Testament imagery 68–69, 175 Oliphants 32, 37n33, 64, 64n90, 67–68 Orso Orseolo (Bishop of Torcello) 98 Ostia 7, 54, 123, 135, 135n51 Paestum 54 Pantaleon of Amalfi 26, 28–29, 38, 40, 41, 41n40, 42, 61 Papacy (see also popes) 3, 158, 167 Relations with Genoa 158, 167, 186, 188–89, 191 Relations with Pisa 126, 142, 188–90 Relations with the Normans 25, 28, 44, 47, 55, 58–60, 69, 70, 71 Relations with Venice 73–74 Papal embargoes 3, 73 Pilgrimage/pilgrims 26, 28, 70, 104, 108, 115, 121, 122, 125 Piracy/pirates 76, 110, 111–12, 153, 187, 188, 189 Pisa 1, 2, 4, 7, 23, 26, 29, 110–14, 117, 122–26, 131, 137, 138, 142, 143, 145, 152–54, 156–61, 187–92, 194 Camposanto 141 Cathedral (Santa Maria Assunta) 17, 52, 98, 126–44, 146, 151, 152, 176–77, 182, 184, 185 Ancient Roman spolia 133–43 As a document or text 137 Bronze Griffin 17, 128–30, 143–44, 182, 185 Buschetto 128, 139, 141, 143 Combination of ancient and Islamic spolia 110, 114, 126, 143–46 Inscriptions 131–33, 135–38

234 Pisa (cont.) Islamic spolia 128–33 Marble Corinthian capital (Fath capital) 130–31, 143–44 Porta San Ranieri 135 Sarcophagi 52, 135, 138–42, 195 Wooden doors from Majorca 131–33, 143–44 Genoese rivalry 178–91 Other Pisan churches with bacini decoration 146n84 Porta Aurea (Pisan city walls) 184n50 Porto Pisano (Port) 189 San Michele in Borgo 123 San Piero a Grado 115–26 San Sisto 146–47, 153–54, 181 Muslim funerary stele 147 Sant’Andrea 146, 147–51, 181 Lay patronage 147 Urban churches combining Roman and Islamic spolia 152–54 Plunder 4, 6, 27, 28, 36, 84–85, 87, 88, 108, 109, 114, 123, 130–31, 144, 152, 156, 160, 167, 170, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 192, 194 Economic significance 12, 37, 75, 85, 88, 97, 124–25, 153, 158, 169, 177 Symbolic significance (war trophy) 5, 17–18, 19, 21, 23, 54, 73, 79–80, 84–85, 89, 90, 131–33, 146, 153–54, 157, 162, 168–69, 175–76, 177, 190–91, 195, 196 Pomposa Abbey 115n12 Popes (see also papacy) Callixtus ii 188, 189 Gelasius ii 126, 188 Gregory vii 52, 55, 56, 58, 59, 67, 69, 70, 142n72 Honorius ii 188 Innocent ii 142, 167, 188 Leo ix 58 Portolan chart and text 125 Portovenere 189, 189n65 Pozzuoli 48, 54 Macellum of 48 Prisoners of war 4, 188 Queen of Majorca 133 Qur’an 107, 161 Ravenna 98, 103 San Vitale 93, 101

Index Reggio (Calabria) 133 Relics 79, 87–88, 100, 108–09, 139, 157 as plunder of war 75, 80, 84, 88, 90, 109, 177, 191n70 Contact relics 120, 122 Holy Land relics 160, 165–70, 185, 19, 192 Saint Mark 73, 76, 85, 90 Saint Matthew 5, 44, 70 Taken from Byzantine territories 76n11, 77, 78, 81, 84, 85, 97 Taken from Muslim territories 73, 76, 78, 85, 90, 104 theft (see furta sacra) Reliquaries 64 Architecture as reliquary 84, 97, 120–21 Reuse 1, 5–9, 12–15, 14n42, 47, 52, 81, 84, 110, 118, 122, 126, 133, 135, 146, 154, 161n13, 165, 176, 182 Practical 7, 13, 54, 111, 123 Symbolic 8, 13, 19, 23, 60, 87–88, 111, 138, 139, 141, 144, 152, 197 Rhodes 75 Robert Guiscard (Norman duke; ruler of Salerno) 27, 44–45, 47, 48, 52, 54, 55–57, 58, 59, 60, 63, 67–68, 69, 70, 75, 75n8 Rock crystal 15, 120 Roger (Norman Count of Sicily) 27, 59n82 Roger ii of Sicily 67n93, 76, 193, 195 Roman Corinth 9 Romanesque style 81, 115, 128, 173, 174, 178 Romanitas 25, 47, 55, 59–60, 71, 110, 114, 138, 141–43, 185 Rome Ancient monuments as models 48, 100–01, 143 Ancient Roman Empire 14, 16, 43, 47, 55, 57, 60, 68, 110–11, 123, 126, 141–42, 143, 193 Emperors 60, 135, 142, 167, 186 Normans as successors 43, 47, 60, 71, 142 Pisa as successor 110, 114, 137, 138, 141, 142–43, 145, 146, 185, 190 Ancient Roman spolia Architraves/lintels 13, 48, 51, 55, 60, 144, 161, 161n13, 165, 178, 182 Capitals 8, 9, 13, 15, 51–52, 57–58, 60, 81, 84, 87–88, 89, 100, 118–20, 123, 133, 133n47, 142, 143, 144, 147, 161, 178, 182

Index Columns/colonnade 8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 45, 51, 52, 54–55, 57, 58, 60, 81, 84, 87–88, 89, 98, 118, 123–24, 133, 142–43, 144, 147, 151, 153, 161, 169–70, 177, 178, 182, 186 Combined with Islamic spolia 15, 110, 114, 118, 122, 126, 143–46, 152–55, 156, 165, 178, 181–82, 184–85, 190–91 Inscriptions (see inscriptions/ epigraphy) Medieval recarving 52, 59, 133n47 Reliefs 81, 133–34, 135, 143 Sarcophagi 52, 55, 59, 60, 81n29, 100, 135, 138–42, 143, 161, 178, 182, 195 Early Christian city and monuments 47, 57, 59, 60, 123 Medieval Rome (seat of the papacy) 10, 25, 47, 55–60, 71, 122–23, 142, 185–86, 189–90 Monuments Arch of Constantine 9 Auditorium of Maecenas 119–20 Basilica of Neptune 133 Castel Sant’Angelo 56 Saint John Lateran 57 Saint Peter’s 8, 52, 57, 59 San Lorenzo fuori le mura 57 Sack of 1084 54 Source for building material 7, 13, 54, 57, 120, 122–24, 133, 143, 184 Saint Anianus 78 Saint-Denis, Monastery 124, 173 Abbot Suger 124 Saint Donatus 78, 81, 84, 85, 100 Saint Heliodorus, Bishop of Altino 100 Saint Isidore 78 Saint Nicholas 77–79, 87, 167 Saint Stephen the Protomartyr 76n11, 78, 79, 97 Salerno 1, 4, 22, 28, 44, 45, 52, 54, 58–59, 60, 67, 68, 69, 70 Cathedral 44–70, 123, 142, 186 Ancient Roman spolia 43, 47–55, 57–58, 59–60 Archbishops of Salerno Alfanus 44, 45, 67 John 44 Atrium 45, 45n50, 52, 57 Bronze doors 60–63

235 Cathedra of Gregory vii 52, 55, 58–60 Crypt 45, 51–52, 58, 70 Inscriptions 47–48, 55–57 Porta del Paradiso 48, 64 Relics of Saint Matthew 5, 44, 70 Tomb of Pope Gregory vii 52, 55, 58–59 Tombs of the Norman ruling family 45, 52 Gisulf (ruler of Salerno) 44, 45 Medical school 70 Relationship with Amalfi 22, 22n68, 24, 25 Salerno Ivories 63–70 Function 64–66 Material (see also ivory) 64, 67–68 New Testament imagery 68, 69–70 Old Testament imagery 68–69 Sardinia 111, 133, 157, 188 Sardo, Ranieri 131 Sicily 27, 28, 67n93, 70, 76, 88, 117, 125, 147, 149, 159, 193, 195 Palermo 54, 111, 133 Simeon of Syria 38 Spain (Iberian peninsula) 20, 36, 117, 147, 149, 176, 187 Muslim Spain (see al-Andalus) Spolia (see also aesthetic of appropriation; Rome, ancient Roman spolia; bacini; commodities; Islamic spolia; plunder; reuse) As active agents 11, 18, 37, 139 As international luxury objects 1, 8, 13, 21–23, 38, 42–43, 71, 88, 110, 130, 139, 144, 152–54, 170, 185 As synchro-diachronic objects 6, 14n42, 98, 145, 153 Defining social relations 11, 17, 36–37, 42, 71, 139, 141 Ignorance of origin 5–8, 10, 12, 37, 120–21 Knowledge of origin 5, 6, 8, 14–16, 35, 42–43, 60, 63, 84, 97, 109, 110, 122, 126, 144, 146, 155, 157 Meaning in primary and secondary contexts 6, 8–9, 11–13, 14, 15–19, 21, 79, 139, 144, 154, 191 Pseudo or virtual spolia (spolia in re) 6, 43, 48, 48n58, 55, 191 Range of interpretations 5–6, 8, 12, 16, 19–20, 23, 110, 142, 174, 187

236 Sub-Saharan Africa 30, 36–37 Tamim (ruler of al-Mahdiyya) 26–27 Theotokos 81, 101 Translatio imperii 80, 97 Translationes (see furta sacra) Troia 54 Tyrrhenian coast/Sea 26, 111, 113, 115, 123, 184 Variety/varietas 6, 8–10, 15, 32, 57, 58, 118, 138, 196 Vasari, Giorgio 152–53 Venetian doges 13, 77, 87 Andrea Dandolo 74n3, 77n13, 78n, 81, 95n, 107 Domenico Contarini 85 Domenico Selvo 85 Giustiniano Parteciaco 88 Ordelafo Falier 93, 95, 96–97 Pietro Orseolo 95 Pietro ii Orseolo 98 Vitale Falier 85

Index Venice 1, 2, 4, 7, 13, 22, 23, 72–80, 81, 84, 85, 87, 88–90, 93, 95–98, 104, 107–09, 110, 113, 139, 153, 157, 167, 190, 194, 195 Basilica of San Marco 16, 78, 85–98, 104, 195 Mosaic decoration 90–93 Pala d’Oro 93–97 Murano, Santi Maria e Donato 80–85, 121 San Giorgio Maggiore 78, 80 San Nicolò di Lido 77, 80 San Pietro di Castello 106–07 Chair of Saint Peter 106–07, 107n78 Torcello 98 Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta 98–104 Santa Fosca 98, 104–06 Vetustas 6, 13 Vézelay 173, 174n35 Western liturgy 104 William of Apulia 56 William of Tyre 169 William the Conqueror 68