Late Medieval Italian Art and its Contexts: Essays in Honour of Professor Joanna Cannon 9781783270903, 9781787448391, 178327090X

Citation preview

LATE MEDIEVAL ITALIAN ART AND ITS CONTEXTS

LATE MEDIEVAL ITALIAN ART AND ITS CONTEXTS • ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF

PROFESSOR JOANNA CANNON

edited by donal cooper and beth williamson

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Contributors 2022 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2022 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978 1 78327 090 3 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 78744 839 1 (ePDF) The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Cover image: Giotto, Madonna with the Laughing Child, fresco, c. 1290–95, Assisi, Basilica of San Francesco, photograph by http://www.frammentiarte.it.

CONTENTS List of Illustrations ix List of Contributors xix Acknowledgements xxiii List of Abbreviations xxv

1

Introduction: Circling Giotto 1



Donal Cooper and Beth Williamson

2

Holy Wood / ‘sacra tavola’: Saint Dominic and the Memory of Miracles in Bologna 11



Jessica N. Richardson

3

The Sculpted Saint: A Statue of Saint Francis in Siena 33



John Renner

4

5

Guccio di Mannaia and the Concept of a ‘Franciscan’ Chalice 51 Glyn Davies ‘Speculum sine macula’: The Trittico di Santa Chiara in Trieste as an Object of Clarissan Devotion 69 Michaela Zöschg

vi

CONTENTS

6

7

8

9

The Siena Connection: A Franciscan Provincial Minister between Tuscany and Assisi at the Dawn of the Trecento 89 Donal Cooper Simone Martini’s ‘Treaty with the House of Santa Fiora’ in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico: Its Date and Significance 111 Thomas de Wesselow Crisis and Charity in Fourteenth-Century Florence: Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Saint Nicholas Panels for San Procolo 133 Janet Robson Father of Light: Giotto and the Beatific Vision in the Baroncelli Chapel 159 Virginia Brilliant

10 Painter-Illuminator Workshops and the Church of San

Giorgio a Ruballa: The Case of Bernardo Daddi and Pacino di Bonaguida 181



11

Bryan C. Keene Patterns of Holiness: A Virgin Lactans in a Franciscan Context 203 Beth Williamson

12 A New Angle on Simone Martini’s Holy Family 229

James Alexander Cameron

13 Artistic Appropriation, Institutional Identity, and Civic

Religion in Fourteenth-Century Siena: The Byzantine Treasury of the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala 249



Stefania Gerevini

CONTENTS

14 Visual Religious Education in Late Medieval Florence:

Zanobi Perini, the Leggenda di Santo Tobia, and the Misericordia 271



Federico Botana

15 Saints and Status in Late Medieval and Early

Renaissance Florence 289



Sally J. Cornelison

Select Bibliography 307 Publications by Joanna Cannon 355 compiled by Eowyn Kerr-Di Carlo and Imogen Tedbury Index 361 Tabula Gratulatoria 371

vii

.

ILLUSTRATIONS

FRONTISPIECE Joanna Cannon framed by the Arca di San Pietro Martire, Sant’Eustorgio, Milan, 2018. Photo: Susie Nash.

COLOUR PLATES I

II III IV V VI VII

Tavola di San Domenico, detail, front, two fragments, Saint Dominic flanked by friars. Tempera on wood (fir), mid-thirteenth century, Chapel of Saint Dominic, Santa Maria e San Domenico della Mascarella, Bologna. Photo: courtesy of the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali, Polo Museale dell’Emilia Romagna. Arca of Saint Dominic, detail, Miracle of the Loaves by Saint Dominic. Carved marble and mosaic inlay, c. 1267, San Domenico, Bologna. Photo by author. Saint Francis. Carved marble, early fourteenth century, San Francesco, Siena. Photo by author, reproduced by permission of the Seminario Arcivescovile di Siena. Chalice by Guccio di Mannaia. Silver-gilt with translucent enamels, h. 22 cm, c. 1290, Museo del Tesoro, Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi. Image: Stefan Diller, www.assisi.de. Trittico di Santa Chiara. Tempera and gold on wood, c. 1300–20 (central panel) and c. 1328–30 (wings), Trieste, Civico Museo Sartorio, inv. no. 14/3408. Photo: © Trieste, Civico Museo Sartorio. Trittico di Santa Chiara, detail of central panel. Tempera and gold on wood, c. 1300–20, Trieste, Civico Museo Sartorio, inv. No. 14/3408. Photo: © Trieste, Civico Museo Sartorio. Ugolino di Nerio, Virgin and Child with Saints. Tempera and gold on panel, c. 1320, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, inv. no. 1962.148. Image courtesy of the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA.

x

ILLUSTRATIONS

VIII South transept of the Lower Church, Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi, with frescoes by Pietro Lorenzetti, c. 1317–25. Photo: Archivio fotografico del Sacro Convento, Assisi. IX New Fresco, here attributed to Simone Martini and dated to 1331, Sala del Mappamondo, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Photo: Lensini. X Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Saint Nicholas Gives Dowries to Three Maidens and The Choice and Consecration of Saint Nicholas as Bishop of Myra. Tempera and gold on panel, c. 1332, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence. Photo: Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence. XI Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Saint Nicholas and the Grainships and Saint Nicholas Resuscitates a Boy Strangled by the Devil. Tempera and gold on panel, c. 1332, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence. Photo: Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence. XII Giotto, Baroncelli Polyptych. Tempera and gold on panel, c. 1334–35 (in later frame), Baroncelli Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence. Photo: Eugene a/Wikimedia Commons. XIII Bernardo Daddi, Polyptych with The Crucifixion and Saints Laurence, Andrew, Bartholomew, George, Paul, Peter, James the Major, and Stephen (and reconstructed predella), 1348, The Courtauld Gallery, London, Gambier-Parry bequest, P.1966.GP.82. Photo and hypothetical reconstruction by author. XIV Pacino di Bonaguida (attr.), Initial D: Saint George and the Dragon, from Gradual (fol. 185v), c. 1335–40, Osteria Nuova di Bagno a Ripoli, San Giorgio a Ruballa. Photo by author, reproduced with generous permission from the Soprintendenza and Arcidiocesi di Firenze. XV Italian, panel from a reliquary diptych. Gilded glass, gilded and painted wood, 13 × 9.2 × 1.6 cm, 1330s–40s, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Founders Society Purchase, 1994.43. Photo: Detroit Institute of Arts. XVI Simone Martini, Christ Discovered in the Temple. Tempera and gold on panel, 1342, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Image courtesy of National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery. XVII Simone Martini, Christ Discovered in the Temple (reverse), 1342, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Image courtesy of National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery. XVIII Encolpion. Gold, enamel, and precious stones, Byzantine, twelfth century, Santa Maria della Scala, Siena. Photo by author, reproduced courtesy of Comune di Siena (no further reproduction permitted). XIX Medallion with Christ Pantokrator. Gold and enamel, Byzantine, late eleventh or twelfth century, Santa Maria della Scala, Siena. Photo by author, reproduced courtesy of Comune di Siena (no further reproduction permitted). XX Unknown illustrator and Zanobi Perini, the Baptism of Christ, 1407–9, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze II.II.445, fol. 23r. Photo by permission of the Ministero dei beni e delle attività e del turismo / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.

ILLUSTRATIONS

XXI Zanobi Perini(?), the Wedding Banquet of Tobias, 1408, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze II.II.445, fol. 52r. Photo by permission of the Ministero dei beni e delle attività e del turismo / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. XXII Reliquary bust of Saint Zenobius by Andrea Arditi. Enamelled and gilded silver, 1331, Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence. Photo: Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore.

FIGURES

1

1.1 1.2

2 2.1

2.2

2.3

2.4

3

3.1 3.2

Introduction: Circling Giotto  Donal Cooper and Beth Williamson Inspecting an ivory triptych with John Lowden, Louvre-Lens, 2014. Photo: Susie Nash. 2 Looking at the back with Dillian Gordon, Ashmolean Museum, 2015. Photo: Susie Nash. 9 Holy Wood / ‘sacra tavola’: Saint Dominic and the Memory of Miracles in Bologna  Jessica N. Richardson Tavola di San Domenico, back (two of three panels), Saint Dominic flanked by friars. Fourteenth or fifteenth century, Chapel of Saint Dominic, Santa Maria e San Domenico della Mascarella, Bologna. Photo courtesy of the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali, Polo Museale dell’Emilia Romagna. 15 Modesto Zacconi, drawing showing the two painted sides of the Tavola di San Domenico, in Tommaso Bonora, Cenni storici sulla tavola detta di S. Domenico (Bologna, 1883). Photo: Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio, Bologna. 17 Tavola di San Domenico, fragment with friars. Tempera on wood (fir), mid-thirteenth century, Museo domenicano, Convento di Santa Sabina all’Aventino, Rome. Photo: courtesy of the Curia Generalizia del Convento di Santa Sabina all’Aventino, Museo domenicano. 18 Nicola Pisano and workshop, Arca of Saint Dominic, 1267 (with later additions), full view of front. San Domenico, Bologna. Photo by author. 20 The Sculpted Saint: A Statue of Saint Francis in Siena  John Renner Saint Francis. Carved marble, early fourteenth century, San Francesco, Siena (upper half). Photo by author, by permission of the Seminario Arcivescovile di Siena. 36 Marble statue of Saint Francis photographed above the former main portal of San Francesco, Siena, before 1913. Photo: after E. Carli, L’arte nella Basilica di S. Francesco a Siena (Siena, 1971). 38

xi

xii

ILLUSTRATIONS

3.3 3.4 3.5

4 4.1 4.2

4.3

4.4 4.5

5 5.1

5.2

5.3

Saint Thomas Aquinas. Carved wood, c. 1323, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena. Photo by author, by permission of the Ministero della Cultura, Direzione Regionale Musei della Toscana. 39 Saint Francis. Carved marble, early fourteenth century, San Francesco, Siena (view from below). Photo by author, by permission of the Seminario Arcivescovile di Siena. 45 Simone Martini, Saints Anthony of Padua and Francis. Fresco, c. 1315–19, Saint Martin Chapel, Lower Church, Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi. Photo: Gerhard Ruf and www.assisi.de. 47 Guccio di Mannaia and the Concept of a ‘Franciscan’ Chalice  Glyn Davies Chalice, Avignon. Silver-gilt, h. 17.2 cm, c. 1305–34, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Photo: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 53 Chalice, attributed to Pace di Valentino, Siena. Silver and semiprecious stones, h. 17.4 cm, c. 1265–75, Museo della Cattedrale, Pistoia. Image by permission of the Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e del turismo – Opificio delle pietre dure di Firenze – Archivio dei restauri e fotografico. 54 Enamels on the foot of a chalice, attributed to Tondino di Guerrino, Siena. Silver-gilt with translucent enamels, h. 21.7 cm, 1341–42, Cloisters Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 63 Chalice, by Bartolomeo di Tommè, Siena. Silver-gilt with translucent enamels, h. 20.7cm, c. 1370–95, Musée des Beaux Arts, Lyon. Photo: Alain Basset, © Lyon MBA. 64 Chalice, by Tondino di Guerrino and Andrea Riguardi, Siena. Silver-gilt with translucent and champlevé enamels, h. 20.9cm, 1315–25, British Museum, London. Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum. 66 ‘Speculum sine macula’: The Trittico di Santa Chiara in Trieste an Object of Clarissan Devotion  Michaela Zöschg Arma Christi. Manuscript illumination from the Passional of Abbess Kunigunde. Ink and pigments on parchment, c. 1310–20, National Library, Prague, MS XIV. A. 17, fol. 10r. Photo: © Prague, National Library. Scenes from the Life of Christ. Tempera and gold on wood, c. 1360–80, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne, inv. no. WRM 6. Photo: © Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln: Wolfgang F. Meier. Way to Calvary and Abbess Kunigunde worships Christ’s side wound. Manuscript illuminations from the Passional of Abbess Kunigunde. Ink and pigments on parchment, c. 1310–20, National Library, Prague, MS XIV. A. 17, fol. 7v. Photo: © Prague, National Library.

as

79

81

83

xiii

ILLUSTRATIONS

5.4 5.5

6 6.1

6.2 6.3

7 7.1

7.2

7.3 7.4 7.5

7.6

Foldable tetraptych (‘outer side’). Tempera on wood, c. 1350–60, Muzeum Narodowe Warszawa, Warsaw, inv. no. 24. Photo: © Zbigniew Doliński/Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie. Foldable tetraptych (‘inner side’). Tempera on wood, c. 1350–60, Muzeum Narodowe Warszawa, Warsaw, inv. no. 24. Photo: © Zbigniew Doliński/Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie.

85 85

The Siena Connection: A Franciscan Provincial Minister between Tuscany and Assisi at the Dawn of the Trecento  Donal Cooper Initial A: The Last Judgement, from Franciscan Antiphonary, c. 1270–90, Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milan, MS Gerli 15, fol. 1v. Photo by author, by permission of the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense. 97 Tomb marker for Jacopo del Tondo (senior), dated 1300, San Francesco, Siena. Photo by author, by permission of the Seminario Arcivescovile di Siena. 97 Fra Jacopo del Tondo’s autograph signature. Archivio di Stato di Siena, Diplomatico Convento di San Francesco, 17 August 1328. Photo: Archivio di Stato di Siena. 101 Simone Martini’s ‘Treaty with the House of Santa Fiora’ in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico: Its Date and Significance  Thomas de Wesselow West wall of the Sala del Mappamondo, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Photo: courtesy of the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività culturali e del Turismo. Polo museale della Toscana. Foto Archivio Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena. 112 City by the Sea. Tempera on panel, here identified as part of the ‘Castle Series’ and dated to c. 1311, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena. Photo: courtesy of the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività culturali e del Turismo. Polo museale della Toscana. Foto Archivio Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena. 114 Author’s reconstruction of the west wall of the Sala del Mappamondo, showing hypothetical location of the ‘Castle Series’ panels. 115 Author’s reconstruction of the original composition of the New Fresco. 117 Simone Martini, Beato Agostino Novello. Tempera and gold on panel, c. 1324, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena. Photo: courtesy of the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività culturali e del Turismo. Polo museale della Toscana. Foto Archivio Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena. 120 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory of Good Government, fresco, 1337–40, Sala della Pace, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Photo: courtesy of the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività culturali e del Turismo. Polo museale della Toscana. Foto Archivio Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena. 121

xiv

ILLUSTRATIONS

7.7

Simone Martini, frontispiece to Servius’s commentary on Virgil, c. 1342. Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, MS A 79 inf. Photo: Archivi Alinari, Florence. 126

8

Crisis and Charity in Fourteenth-Century Florence: Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Saint Nicholas Panels for San Procolo  Janet Robson 8.1 Giotto and workshop, Saint Nicholas Resuscitates a Boy Strangled by a Demon. Fresco, c. 1300–1305, Saint Nicholas Chapel, Lower Church, Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi. Photo: Archivio fotografico, Sacro Convento di San Francesco, Assisi. 140 8.2 Master of the Dominican Effigies, Angel Pouring Grain into the Market at Orsanmichele, in Domenico Lenzi, Specchio umano, c. 1335. Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, MS Tempi 3, fol. 7r. Photo: Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, courtesy of the MiC (no further reproduction permitted). 149 8.3 Giotto, Banquet of Herod, fresco, c. 1320–28, Peruzzi Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence. Photo: akg-images. 152 8.4 Duccio, Christ on the Road to Emmaus. Tempera and gold on panel, scene from the Maestà, c. 1308–11, Museo del Opera del Duomo, Siena. Photo: akg-images. 155 8.5 Master of the Dominican Effigies, The Expulsion of the Poor from Siena and The Poor of Siena Received in Florence, in Domenico Lenzi, Specchio umano, c. 1335, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, MS Tempi 3, fols. 57v–58r: Photo: Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, courtesy of the MiC (no further reproduction permitted). 157

9

Father of Light: Giotto and the Beatific Vision in the Baroncelli Chapel  Virginia Brilliant 9.1 Baroncelli Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence, with frescoes by Taddeo Gaddi, c. 1328–34, and polyptych by Giotto, c. 1334–35. Photo: Scala/FEC-Ministero della Cultura/Opera di Santa Croce. 160 9.2 Giotto, God the Father and Angels. Tempera and gold on panel, c. 1334–35, The San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego (detached pinnacle from the Baroncelli Polyptych). Photo: Album: Alamy Stock Photo. 163 9.3 Baroncelli Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence, view of Baroncelli family tomb, dated 1328. Photo: Sailko/Wikimedia Commons. 164 9.4 Stigmatization of Saint Francis and Saints, stained glass, c. 1328–34, Baroncelli Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence. Photo: Sailko/Wikimedia Commons. 167 9.5 Reconstruction of the Baroncelli Polyptych. Photo montage: Virginia Brilliant and Donal Cooper after Monika Cämmerer. 169

xv

ILLUSTRATIONS

10

Painter-Illuminator Workshops and the Church of San Giorgio a Ruballa: The Case of Bernardo Daddi and Pacino di Bonaguida  Bryan C. Keene 10.1 Maso di Banco (attr.), The Virgin and Child with Angels and Saints Matthias the Apostle and George, 1336/7, Osteria Nuova di Bagno a Ripoli, Church of San Giorgio a Ruballa. Photo: Eugene a/Wikimedia Commons. 10.2 Taddeo Gaddi, Crucifix, c. 1355–60, Osteria Nuova di Bagno a Ripoli, Church of San Giorgio a Ruballa. Photo by author, with generous permission from the Soprintendenza and Arcidiocesi di Firenze. 10.3 Pacino di Bonaguida (attr.), Initial C: The Elevation of the Host, from Gradual (fol. 148), c. 1335–40, Osteria Nuova di Bagno a Ripoli, Church of San Giorgio a Ruballa. Photo by author, with generous permission from the Soprintendenza and Arcidiocesi di Firenze. 10.4 Master of the Dominican Effigies, Initial V: The Assumption of the Virgin, from Antiphonary (fol. 158), c. 1335–40, Museo del Tesoro di Santa Maria dell’Impruneta. Photo by author, with generous permission from the Soprintendenza and Arcidiocesi di Firenze. 10.5 Bernardo Daddi, The Assumption of the Virgin. Tempera and gold on panel, c. 1337–38, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Robert Lehman Collection, inv. no. 1975.1.58. Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

11 11.1

11.2

11.3

11.4 11.5

184

185

195

199

200

Patterns of Holiness: A Virgin Lactans in a Franciscan Context  Beth Williamson Pietro Teutonico, reliquary diptych. Gilded glass, gilded and painted wood, 17.3 × 11.2 cm (each wing), 1320s(?), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 17.980.982. Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 207 Relics contained within Pietro Teutonico, reliquary diptych. Gilded glass, gilded and painted wood, 18.4 × 11.1 cm (each wing), 1320s(?), Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, 46.2. Diagram by author. 211 Relics contained within Pietro Teutonico, reliquary diptych. Gilded glass, gilded and painted wood, 20.3 × 24.4 cm (open), 1320s(?), National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1936, inv. no. 3651-D3. Diagram by author. 212 Relics contained within Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 17.980.982 (see Fig. 11.1). Diagram by author. 213 Relics contained within reliquary diptych. Gilded glass, gilded and painted wood, 29.1× 16 cm (open), 1330s–40s, formerly Museo Diocesano dell’arte sacra, Volterra. Diagram by author. 214

xvi

ILLUSTRATIONS

11.6 11.7

11.8

12 12.1 12.2 12.3

13 13.1 13.2 13.3

13.4

14 14.1

Relics contained within reliquary diptych. Gilded glass, gilded and painted wood, 13 × 10 cm (each wing), 1330s–40s, Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta, Fumone. Diagram by author. 220 Relics contained within Pietro Teutonico, panel from reliquary diptych, gilded glass, gilded and painted wood, 14.2 × 8.8 cm, 1320s(?), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, inv. no. P 154. Diagram by author. 221 Relics contained within Institute of Arts, Detroit, Founders Society Purchase, 1994.43 (see Plate 15). Diagram by author. 223 A New Angle on Simone Martini’s Holy Family  James Alexander Cameron The Reunification of the Virgin and Christ in the Temple, vault boss, 1320s, Tewkesbury Abbey, Gloucestershire. Photo by author. 233 Christ Among the Doctors and the Reunification of the Holy Family in the Temple, 1340s, Meditationes Vitae Christi, BNF, Paris, Ital. 115, fol. 52r. Photo: © BNF. 234 Simone Martini, Christ Discovered in the Temple, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 1342, detail of Mary’s face viewed at acute angle from right. Photo by author, reproduced by courtesy of National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery. 241 Artistic Appropriation, Institutional Identity, and Civic Religion in Fourteenth-Century Siena: The Byzantine Treasury of the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala  Stefania Gerevini Reliquary of Saint John Chrysostom. Gilded silver, Byzantine, fourteenth century, Santa Maria della Scala, Siena. Photo by author, courtesy of Comune di Siena (no further reproduction permitted). 252 Façade of the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, Siena. Photo by author. 256 Pendant Icon. Painting on wood, golden filigree mount, Byzantine, fourteenth century(?), Santa Maria della Scala, Siena. Photo by author, courtesy of Comune di Siena (no further reproduction permitted). 266 Girolamo Macchi, drawing of the Camaurum of the Virgin. Archivio di Stato di Siena, Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, Chiesa, Sante Reliquie e Memorie, D 120, fol. 412v [31v]. Photo by author, courtesy of Archivio di Stato di Siena (no further reproduction permitted). 266 Visual Religious Education in Late Medieval Florence: Zanobi Perini, the Leggenda di Santo Tobia, and the Misericordia  Federico Botana Zanobi Perini, Salome, 1408, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze II.II.445, fol. 36v. Photo by permission of the Ministero dei beni e delle attività e del turismo / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. 273

xvii

ILLUSTRATIONS

Zanobi Perini, Chiesa di Santo Giovanni Battista, 1407–9, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze II.II.445, fol. 41r. Photo by permission of the Ministero dei beni e delle attività e del turismo / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. 274 14.3 Zanobi Perini(?), Tobit Blessing Tobias, the Meeting of Tobias and Raphael, and Tobias Finding the Fish, 1408, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze II.II.445, fol. 48r. Photo by permission of the Ministero dei beni e delle attività e del turismo / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. 275 14.4 Unknown painter, Wedding Banquet of Tobias, detail of the Story of Tobit and Tobias. Fresco, c. 1350–70, Museo del Bigallo, Florence. Photo: Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence. 281 14.2

15

Saints and Status in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Florence  Sally J. Cornelison 15.1 Saint Zenobius Chapel, Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence. Photo: Sailko/Wikimedia Commons. 15.2 Second finger of Saint John the Baptist, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence. Photo: Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore. 15.3 Jaw fragment of Saint John the Baptist, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence. Photo: Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore. 15.4 Right index finger of Saint John the Baptist, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence. Photo: Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore. 15.5 Crypt altar, Saint Zenobius Chapel, Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence. Photo: Pufui PcPifpef/Wikimedia Commons.

290 297 297 298 302

The editors, contributors and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and individuals listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publishers will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

CONTRIBUTORS FEDERICO BOTANA wrote his PhD on the representation of the Works of Mercy in Medieval Italy, which he converted into a book (2012). Since then, he has expanded his research into the fifteenth century, focusing mainly on illuminated manuscripts. His publications include an article on the Benci Aesop in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, and his recent monograph, Learning through Images in the Italian Renaissance: Illustrated Manuscripts and Education in Quattrocento Florence (2020). He has also lectured extensively on Italian medieval and Renaissance art. VIRGINIA BRILLIANT is Director of Old Masters at Robilant+Voena. She obtained her PhD from The Courtauld in 2005 and has held curatorial positions at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco until 2018. She has published widely on Old Master paintings and the history of collecting in America, including the first comprehensive scholarly catalogue of the Ringling Museum’s Italian, Spanish, and French paintings, and has organised major exhibitions on Paolo Veronese, Peter Paul Rubens, and various themes in medieval art. JAMES ALEXANDER CAMERON is a freelance lecturer and researcher of English church architecture, and organised the conference Towards an Art History of the Parish Church at The Courtauld in 2017. He took Joanna Cannon’s Masters’ course Artists and Friars in 2010/11, and continued as her doctoral student 2011–15, researching sedilia in the English Church. DONAL COOPER is Associate Professor in History of Art at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Jesus College. He completed his PhD on Franciscan church interiors at The Courtauld in 2000 and the artistic patronage of the Franciscan Order is a consistent theme in his subsequent research on Italy and the wider Mediterranean. His co-authored book with Janet Robson, The Making of Assisi (2013), won the Art Book prize in 2014. Recent work focuses on digital visualisations to reconstruct the

xx

CONTRIBUTORS

historic aspects of Italian church interiors, and he is Co-Investigator on the Florence 4D mapping and modelling project. SALLY CORNELISON is Professor of Art History and Director of the Florence Graduate Program in Italian Renaissance Art at Syracuse University. She is the author of Art and the Relic Cult of St Antoninus in Renaissance Florence (2012) and the contributing co-editor of Mendicant Cultures in the Medieval and Early Modern World: Word, Deed, and Image (2016) and Images, Relics, and Devotional Practices in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (2005), in addition to a number of articles and book chapters that concern the visual culture of saints, relics, ritual, and the sacred art of Giorgio Vasari. GLYN DAVIES is the Head of the Curatorial team at the Museum of London. For many years, he was a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Between 2002 and 2009 he was a member of the Concept Team for the redisplay of the V&A’s Medieval and Renaissance Galleries, and was co-author of the book Medieval and Renaissance Art: People and Possessions (2009). In 2016, he co-curated the exhibition Opus Anglicanum: Masterpieces of English Medieval Embroidery. He has published widely on medieval sculpture, goldsmiths’ work, and textiles. He is currently working on a major project to transfer the Museum of London to a new site at West Smithfield. THOMAS DE WESSELOW is an independent researcher, having formerly held posts at the National Gallery, London, and at King’s College, Cambridge. He has published a variety of articles relating to Early Italian and Renaissance art and medieval mappaemundi. He is the author of The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection (2012). STEFANIA GEREVINI is Assistant Professor of Medieval Art History at Bocconi University (Milan), and Research Fellow of the British School at Rome. Her research concerns the artistic applications of light and transparency, focusing on the uses and meanings of rock crystal; and the nexus between aesthetics and politics, with emphasis on the artistic interactions between Byzantium and Italian merchant cities. Her research has been published in edited volumes and journals, including Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Gesta, and the Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz. Her current monograph project investigates the relationship between art and crisis through study of the fourteenth-century renovation of the basilica of San Marco, Venice. BRYAN C. KEENE (he/él/they/elle) is a curator and educator whose work promotes diversity and equity for the study and display of premodern visual arts, as well as the advocacy of LGBTQIA2+ histories and communities.

CONTRIBUTORS

He is Assistant Professor of Art History at Riverside City College and was formerly Curator of Manuscripts at the Getty Museum. He was a contributing curator and author to the exhibition and catalogue Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300–1350 (2012– 13). He is the editor of Toward a Global Middle Ages: Encountering the World through Illuminated Manuscripts (2019), co-editor of New Horizons in Trecento Italian Art (2021), and co-author of The Fantasy of the Middle Ages: An Epic Journey through Imaginary Medieval Worlds (2022). EOWYN KERR-DI CARLO is an Associate Lecturer in Technical Art History at West Virginia University and is completing her PhD at The Courtauld. Before undertaking doctoral research, Eowyn worked as a paintings conservator and received an MA and CAS in Art Conservation from Buffalo State College. For six years, she was Adjunct Professor at the American University of Rome, lecturing on medieval art history, historical painting techniques, and conservation practices. She held fellowships from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for the V&A’s Medieval and Renaissance Galleries and the North Carolina Museum of Art. JOHN RENNER is an independent scholar and lecturer on Franciscan art and patronage. He received his PhD from The Courtauld in 2016 for a study of the varied functions and meanings of images of Saint Francis displaying his stigmata. Subsequent research and publications have explored the nexus between art and theology in the decoration of Franciscan churches in central Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. JESSICA N. RICHARDSON is Lecturer in History of Art at the University of York. She received her PhD at The Courtauld, and has held positions at CASVA, Villa I Tatti, and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz. Her publications include the co-edited books Remembering the Middle Ages in Early Modern Italy (2015), The Aesthetics of Marble from Late Antiquity to the Present (2021), and the special issue of RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics titled Fashioned from Holy Matter 75/76 (spring/autumn 2021). She is currently completing a monograph on the prehistory and making of miraculous images in Bologna, c. 1100–1650. JANET ROBSON (†) was a leading scholar of narrative iconography and Franciscan patronage in late medieval Italy. She completed her PhD on images of Judas Iscariot at The Courtauld in 2001; publications drawn from her thesis include her study of Pietro Lorenzetti’s fresco of Judas at Assisi in the Art Bulletin (2004). Her co-authored book with Donal Cooper, The Making of Assisi (2013), won the Art Book prize in 2014. Her chapter here stems from the project on images of Saint Nicholas she developed during her Fellowship at the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti in 2010–11.

xxi

xxii

CONTRIBUTORS

IMOGEN TEDBURY is Curator of Art at the Queen’s House, Greenwich. She is the author of several articles on the reception of Sienese Trecento and Quattrocento painting, the subject of her PhD (2018), and Modern Portraits for Modern Women (2020), a book about portraits of pioneers in women’s higher education. She is currently writing the catalogue of the earlier Italian paintings in the Norton Simon Museum with Sir Nicholas Penny. BETH WILLIAMSON is Professor of Medieval Culture at the University of Bristol. She completed her PhD on the image of the Virgin Lactans in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy at The Courtauld in 1996. Central Italian visual culture has remained a strong strand of her subsequent research, and is the subject of her monographs The Madonna of Humility and Reliquary Tabernacles in Fourteenth-Century Italy, as well as the book that she co-edited with Joanna Cannon, Art, Politics, and Civic Religion in Central Italy, 1261–1352. She also researches the intersections of visual and aural culture, with interests in music and sound, and on sensory and bodily experience. She is currently working on an interdisciplinary project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, on late medieval English religious culture, entitled ‘Describing Devotion’. MICHAELA ZÖSCHG is Curator of Medieval Art and Design in the Department of Decorative Art and Sculpture at the V&A in London. Previously, she held the position of Project Curator for Medieval Sculpture and European Textiles at The Burrell Collection in Glasgow and was part of the curatorial team delivering the exhibition Opus Anglicanum: Masterpieces of English Medieval Embroidery at the V&A (2014–16). Alongside her museum work, Michaela is currently completing a PhD project, entitled ‘“in signum viduitatis et humilitatis”: European Queens and the Spaces, Art and Inhabitants of their Clarissan Foundations, c. 1250– 1350’, at The Courtauld.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many friends and colleagues of Joanna Cannon have helped us to realise this volume in her honour. We are especially grateful to Susie Nash, Laura Jacobus, Dillian Gordon, and Caroline Campbell. The project has been more protracted than any of us could have anticipated, but our editor at Boydell and Brewer, Caroline Palmer, has supported it at every stage with both enthusiasm and perseverance. The book’s visual apparatus has been enhanced by additional funding from the Universities of Bristol and Cambridge, while the text was greatly improved by the thorough and thoughtful comments of the anonymous reader. Our principal thanks go to our contributors for their readiness to contribute and meet our many demands and deadlines with patience and good humour.

ABBREVIATIONS ASFi Florence, Archivio di Stato ASPi Pisa, Archivio di Stato ASSi Siena, Archivio di Stato ASV Archivio Segreto Vaticano BMF Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana BMLF Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana BMRF Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Riccardiana BNCF Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale BNF Bibliothèque Nationale de France BPFM Florence, Biblioteca Provinciale dei Frati Minori FAED Francis of Assisi: Early Documents FF Fontes Franciscani MOPH Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum historica NA Notarile Antecosimiano PL Patrologia Latina

INTRODUCTION: CIRCLING GIOTTO DONAL COOPER AND BETH WILLIAMSON

J

oanna Cannon’s impact on the study of late medieval Italian art has been profound. Her influence is felt as a scholar through the seminal publications in her bibliography and as a teacher who has trained numerous researchers active in the field, both as university academics and museum curators, across Europe and North America. This book is offered by her doctoral students as a celebration of Joanna’s remarkable career and achievements, and in gratitude for her dedication and generosity to her field, her students, her colleagues, and her friends. Joanna’s scholarship is driven by a historically contextualised approach that, to a great extent, can be seen continued within the work of her students. This is coupled with a determined focus on the visual and material qualities of the objects under her examination. A close attention to the object – whatever that object might be: altarpiece, wall painting, votive panel, portable diptych, manuscript, metalwork, or ivory (Fig. 1.1) – has always been a fundamental tenet of Joanna’s research and teaching. Her concern with materiality is amplified by a commitment to analysing the physical characteristics of works of art by means of technical analysis, and to understanding the creative processes and working practices of artists. A further interest concerns the multifarious and changing ways in which viewers experienced the art of late medieval Italy. This wide range of ways of looking indicates the comprehensive nature of Joanna’s research, and helps to explain why she has been such a keenly sought-out collaborator by colleagues within art history and also in adjacent fields. Joanna’s interests and approach were shaped by the fertile academic environment of The Courtauld Institute of Art and the wider University of London in the 1970s, where the study of medieval art and architecture flourished under the interdisciplinary aegis of Peter Kidson (the legendary

1

2

DONAL COOPER AND BETH WILLIAMSON

FIG. 1.1  INSPECTING AN IVORY TRIPTYCH WITH JOHN LOWDEN, LOUVRE-LENS, 2014. PHOTO: SUSIE NASH.

‘PK’ to Joanna and her contemporaries).1 Having already spent three years at the Institute as an undergraduate, she took her PhD on ‘Dominican Patronage of the Arts in Central Italy: The Provincia Romana c. 1220–c. 1320’ with Julian Gardner, who continued to supervise Joanna after departing The Courtauld to establish the History of Art department at the University of Warwick in 1974. From today’s perspective, surveying a field in great part shaped by Joanna’s research, it takes some effort to remember how unusual it then was to adopt an institution rather than an artist or ‘school’ as the focus of an art historical project. Julian Gardner’s own thesis, on the patronage of popes and cardinals in and around Rome in the second half of the thirteenth century, led the way.2 In terms of mendicant artistic patronage, the closest precedents and parallels at the time were in the German historiography and addressed the better-known Franciscans.3 Joanna’s project was immensely challenging in depth and breadth, cataloguing Dominican houses scattered across three modern provinces and requiring the author to marshal dense documentary evidence alongside panels, frescoes, decorative arts, manuscripts, and architecture. Her fieldwork had a pioneering quality: the material was often poorly published if at all, the monuments sometimes neglected or semi-derelict. Joanna’s innovative approach attracted the attention of the great French medievalist André Vauchez, who was then completing his own 1 For Joanna’s own account of her time as a student at The Courtauld, see the opening sections of her Professorial Lecture ‘Engaging with Sienese Painting’ delivered at the Institute’s Vernon Square premises on 21 February 2019, available online at https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=R7ik2bOOaNA&t=7s (Accessed 2 February 2022). 2 Julian Gardner, ‘The Influence of Popes’ and Cardinals’ Patronage on the Introduction of the Gothic Style into Rome and the Surrounding Area, 1254–1305’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1969. 3 Joanna’s Dominican research paralleled but also anticipated the surveys of Franciscan material by Dieter Blume, Wandmalerei als Ordenspropaganda: Bildprogramme im Chorbereich franziskanischer Konvente Italiens bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts (Worms, 1983) and those prepared for the series of Umbrian exhibitions marking the eighth centenary of the birth of Saint Francis in 1982; see for example Francesco d’Assisi: chiese e conventi, ed. Carlo Pirovano, exh. cat. Auditorum San Domenico, Narni (Milan, 1982).

INTRODUCTION

ground-breaking work on Italian sanctity and canonisation.4 Vauchez, as director of medieval studies at the École Française de Rome, provided a crucial intellectual hub through the ‘Circolo medievistico’ seminar series he chaired. This chimed with Joanna’s choice of Rome as a base, from where she could fan out to explore Central Italy. Joanna’s Italian fieldwork and studies in London paralleled those of her friend and colleague Dillian Gordon, another of Julian Gardner’s Courtauld doctoral students researching Umbrian medieval painting; the two English scholars were frequently mistaken for one another on their Italian travels by custodians, archivists, librarians, and more than one art historian. Gordon would later move to the National Gallery as Curator of Early Italian Paintings, and their partnership would lead to one of Joanna’s most significant scholarly discoveries, the thirteenthcentury devotional diptych uniting the Stoclet Man of Sorrows and a previously unpublished panel of the Virgin and Child, being acquired for the Gallery’s permanent collection in 1999.5 While studying for her PhD, Joanna also worked as assistant to Edward B. Garrison, the independent scholar of early Italian panel painting. The task of working in Garrison’s collection cemented her knowledge of thirteenth-century painted panels and sharpened her own connoisseurship, a skill that retained its value in Joanna’s subsequent research and teaching. After Garrison’s death in 1981, Joanna curated the invaluable collection of photographs and research materials that he had previously given to The Courtauld. Together with Constance Hill, Conway Librarian, she supervised the updating of Garrison’s seminal work on Italian Romanesque panel painting and its transfer to a searchable CD-ROM format.6 The most significant and lasting connection from Joanna’s time as a student at The Courtauld was meeting a young scholar of Byzantine manuscripts called John Lowden. Joanna and John married in 1980 and they would teach as colleagues at The Courtauld over four decades. John’s evolving range of interests from Byzantium to medieval Paris has mirrored and complemented Joanna’s own, and their insights and expertise have informed and enriched each other’s research throughout their careers. 4 André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age (Rome, 1988); published in English as Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1997). 5 Master of the Borgo Crucifix, London, National Gallery, inv. no. NG 6573; Joanna Cannon, ‘The Stoclet “Man of Sorrows”: A Thirteenth-century Italian Diptych Reunited’, The Burlington Magazine 141 (1999), 107–12. 6 Published by The Courtauld Institute of Art as Edward B. Garrison, Giovanni Freni, Achim Timmermann, Joanna Cannon, and Constance Hill, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index. A New Edition on CD-ROM with Revised Bibliography and Iconclass (London, 1998). This material will soon be made accessible, in digital form, through the Conway Library pages of The Courtauld website. For the significance of the Garrison collection, see Jessica N. Richardson, ‘Images, Manuscripts and Hagiolatry: Edward B. Garrison and the Study of Late-Medieval Italian Art’, immediations: The Courtauld Institute of Art Journal of Postgraduate Research 2, no. 1 (2008), 78–95.

3

4

DONAL COOPER AND BETH WILLIAMSON

By the time Joanna completed her PhD in 1980 she was already teaching at The Courtauld. Her post was part time and would remain so throughout her career, although her selfless contributions to Masters and undergraduate teaching, PhD supervision, and the Institute’s administration easily eclipsed those of some of her full-time colleagues. Path-finding articles on Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti established Joanna’s reputation as an international authority on Sienese art and demonstrated the necessity of analysing the artworks concerned through the eyes of their mendicant patrons.7 Her abiding concern with facture and materials led to a deepening interest in technical analysis, and important collaborations in this area followed with her Courtauld colleagues Susie Nash in the Renaissance Section, Caroline Campbell in the Institute’s Gallery, and Caroline Villers and later Aviva Burnstock in the Conservation Department.8 The multiple threads in Joanna’s research came together in her book on the Tuscan holy woman Margherita of Cortona published in 1999 and in Italian translation the following year.9 This project had begun as a collaboration with André Vauchez during Joanna’s time as a student in Rome. Vauchez had introduced her to a set of watercolour copies of medieval frescoes depicting Margherita’s life and miracles preserved in the Vatican, which Joanna would go on to identify as unique records of a lost narrative cycle by the Lorenzetti brothers. The book was published under both their names, but the final text, with the exception of the opening sections, was Joanna’s. Here Joanna immersed her reader in the world of a late medieval Tuscan hill-town and showed how artistic commissions and freshly conceived imagery shaped perceptions of a new, as yet uncanonised ‘saint’ through an interlocking set of iconographic choices and patronal negotiations. This richly told study combined contextual readings of tomb sculpture and cult images with a compelling reconstruction of the lost narrative cycle by the Lorenzetti brothers in Margherita’s shrine church, weaving together explorations of function, setting, belief, and 7 Joanna Cannon, ‘Simone Martini, the Dominicans and the Early Sienese Polyptych’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 45 (1982), 69–93; Cannon, ‘Pietro Lorenzetti and the History of the Carmelite Order’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987), 18–28. 8 Joanna co-directed, with Aviva Burnstock and Caroline Campbell, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded project investigating technical aspects of the works of the Master of the Fogg Pietà / Maestro di Figline; she also co-organised (with Susie Nash and Jo Kirby at the National Gallery) the conference European Trade in Painters’ Materials to 1700 held at The Courtauld Institute and the National Gallery, London in 2005, the proceedings of which were published in 2010 as Trade in Artists’ Materials: Markets and Commerce in Europe to 1700, ed. Jo Kirby, Susie Nash, and Joanna Cannon. Joanna sat on the Board of the Caroline Villers Research Fellowship Trust established in Caroline Villers’ memory. 9 Joanna Cannon and André Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany (University Park, PA, 1999); Cannon and Vauchez, Margherita da Cortona e i Lorenzetti (Rome, 2000). The Italian edition also included a chapter by Céline Pérol on the historical evidence for Margherita’s cult in late medieval Cortona.

INTRODUCTION

identity with extensive analysis of attribution and authorship. Although the material was complex and the argument subtle, Joanna – as ever – was concerned to present her narrative in transparent, jargon-free prose, which drew one reviewer impressed by ‘this admirable study’ to note that it ‘has the additional virtue of reading more like a good detective novel than a scholarly monograph’.10 The Cortona book completed, Joanna’s thoughts turned to the challenge of publishing her doctoral dissertation. This would be no straightforward ‘book of the thesis’: the original dissertation had already stretched the envelope of a conventional PhD, Joanna’s thinking had advanced significantly in the intervening years, and the scholarly landscape it engaged with had been transformed (in no small part by Joanna herself). With the encouragement of her editor at Yale University Press, Gillian Malpass, Joanna conceived a monograph of unprecedented scope and ambition within the field of mendicant artistic patronage, into which she poured insights and expertise accumulated over her entire career. The project evolved over more than a decade and the end result was the magisterial Religious Poverty, Visual Riches which appeared in late 2013, its publication marked by a memorable launch party at The Courtauld themed in Dominican (or Sienese) black and white.11 A volume as rich and multi-faceted as Religious Poverty is hard to summarise, but one of its distinctive qualities is the manner in which its overarching themes emerge from an ensemble of case studies that could easily have been publications in their own right, in particular the chapters on the Dominican houses in Florence and Pisa. These topographically specific sections intersect with thematic treatments of different aspects of the Dominican church interior, notably the division between the church of the friars (the ecclesia fratrum) and the church of the laity (the ecclesia laicorum). The argument embraces and advances recent work on the experience of space and ritual, of liturgy and devotion. Joanna’s canvas captures more fully than any other yet attempted the visual riches and spatial intricacies of the mendicant church interior, from crucifixes to choir stalls, altarpieces to illuminated manuscripts, frescoes to funerary monuments. The transformation of Joanna’s PhD dissertation into the Religious Poverty volume helps us to measure the ways in which she has advanced the broader study of late medieval Italian art. Thanks to Joanna, our understanding of the mendicant orders as artistic patrons is much deeper and more nuanced than it would otherwise have been. Her thesis was a remarkable gathering of primary material but the book went much further, and the reader may 10 Katherine Ludwig Jansen, ‘Review of Joanna Cannon and André Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999)’, Studies in Iconography 22 (2001), 169–72. 11 Religious Poverty, Visual Riches: Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New Haven and London, 2013).

5

6

DONAL COOPER AND BETH WILLIAMSON

sometimes feel as though they have joined up as a Dominican novice at one of the Order’s Tuscan convents. No longer faceless friars defined by their habits, the Dominican convents emerge as complex communities, combining corporate concerns and sincere piety with local rivalries and individual ambitions – multiple agendas expressed and mediated through their artistic patronage. While Religious Poverty confirmed Joanna’s status as the international authority on the artistic patronage of the Dominican Order, in other publications she has similarly refined our understanding of commissions by the Carmelites, Augustinians, Servites, and Franciscans. Joanna’s approach can be situated within the broader disciplinary turn in art history towards patronage studies evident since the 1970s, but it should be recognised that her concept of the ‘patron’s share’ is much more ambitious than this characterisation might suggest, encompassing a friar’s daily devotions, ritual practice, liturgical observances, and theological training as formative factors for an artwork’s design and meaning. Alongside the mendicant orders, the city of Siena and its art has been a recurring theme in Joanna’s teaching and research. Building on earlier work by John White, Andrew Martindale, Christa Gardner von Teuffel, and Henk van Os,12 Joanna’s bibliography includes a series of significant publications on Sienese altarpiece design, culminating in her 2010 study of the veneration of the Virgin’s foot, which can be said to have truly uncovered the full resonance of Duccio’s signature prayer at the base of the Maestà for Siena Cathedral.13 Joanna was one of the first scholars to fully appreciate how the appeal and prestige of Sienese art rivalled Giotto’s in the eyes of contemporaries, even for patrons beyond the Italian peninsula. We look forward with eager anticipation to see how these and other themes coalesce in the major exhibition on medieval Siena that Joanna is now preparing together with Caroline Campbell and Stephan Wolohojian, scheduled to open at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in late 2024 before travelling to the National Gallery in London in spring 2025. The scholars whose work lies between these covers constitute a narrowly defined group compared to the wide array of researchers taught, guided, or inspired by Joanna: all the authors here were supervised by her in their doctoral studies at The Courtauld, where Joanna taught from her first appointment in 1977 until her retirement in 2019. Most of us were also supervised by Joanna as Masters students, and our approaches had already 12 John White, Duccio: Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop (London, 1979); Christa Gardner von Teuffel, ‘The Buttressed Altarpiece: A Forgotten Aspect of Tuscan Fourteenth Century Altarpiece Design’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 21 (1979), 21–65; Henk van Os, Sienese Altarpieces 1215–1460: Form, Content, Function. Vol. 1: 1215–1344 (Groningen, 1984); Andrew Martindale, Simone Martini: Complete Edition (Oxford, 1988). 13 Cannon, ‘The Creation, Meaning, and Audience of the Early Sienese Polyptych: Evidence from the Friars’, Italian Altarpieces, 1250–1550: Function and Design, ed. Eve Borsook and Fiorella Gioffredi Superbi (Oxford, 1994), pp. 41–79; Cannon, ‘Kissing the Virgin’s Foot: Adoratio before the Madonna and Child Enacted, Depicted, Imagined’, Studies in Iconography 31 (2010), 1–50.

INTRODUCTION

been shaped by her transformative teaching on the intensive nine-month options she ran for The Courtauld MA, first the tightly focused ‘Early Sienese Painting’, and later the more expansive ‘Artists and Friars’ and ‘Seeing Sienese Art’. Over 100 Masters dissertations arising from these MA options and supervised by Joanna can be found in The Courtauld Library.14 Many of these dissertations are considerable scholarly contributions and it was tempting, when first contemplating a volume celebrating Joanna’s career, to propose editing a selection of these for publication.15 Equally, we were aware of numerous friends and admirers across many different areas of medieval and Renaissance studies who would have jumped at the chance to contribute to a Festschrift in Joanna’s honour. This book could very easily have been a multi-volume set. In the interests of a manageable publication, we therefore took the difficult decision to restrict contributions to Joanna’s doctoral students, those who have undoubtedly benefited in the most sustained fashion from her pedagogy and wisdom. A few of her doctoral supervisees were not able to contribute to this volume, and, as Joanna continues in active supervision, there are more who have begun their doctorates since we conceived this project and commissioned the essays, but the contributors gathered together here represent the large majority of her PhD students. Imogen Tedbury and Eowyn Kerr-Di Carlo, whose doctoral studies with Joanna were at an early stage when the project began, kindly agreed to contribute by compiling the list of Joanna’s publications. Imogen now has her PhD and Eowyn is at a much more advanced stage. It is with much sadness that we record one absence, keenly felt by us all, from amongst those who did contribute: Janet Robson died in 2018, shortly after completing the chapter on Ambrogio Lorenzetti published here.16 Those of us who appear in this volume know that to have studied for our doctorates with Joanna has been one of life’s strokes of good fortune, and a debt that can never be adequately repaid. All of us know well the combination of scholarly rigour, faultless guidance, and great personal kindness that is the hallmark of Joanna’s PhD supervision. Some of us (both editors included) came to The Courtauld from first degrees in other disciplines, and so owe our formation as art historians to Joanna. We began our postgraduate studies at a time when ‘research skills’ were not taught within the MA curriculum, nor, indeed, as part of the PhD. Nonetheless, 14 Electronic catalogue entries for recent Courtauld MA dissertations (from around 2014 onwards) include the supervisor’s name, so a flavour of the range of work that comes out of Joanna’s MA teaching can be found by searching for her name in The Courtauld Library catalogue. 15 A selection of earlier MA dissertation work supervised by Joanna was published in the volume Art, Politics, and Civic Religion in Central Italy 1261–1352, ed. Joanna Cannon and Beth Williamson (Aldershot, 2000). 16 Donal Cooper, ‘Janet Robson (1959–2018)’, The Burlington Magazine 161 (2019), 265–6. We are very grateful to Laura Jacobus for her generous assistance with sourcing the images for Janet’s essay.

7

8

DONAL COOPER AND BETH WILLIAMSON

the training that we received, as part of the holistic experience of studying for the MA and PhD with Joanna, was second to none. We were shown what it meant to carry out primary research and how to conceive research questions. We were shown how to use the resources at our disposal, how to make the most of London’s opportunities, and how to take our studies into Italian archives, or into American museum conservation departments. We were taught how to understand and how to critically analyse the literature within our field, and also how to access material from other disciplines that might further our studies. A responsible and wide-ranging crossdisciplinarity has always guided Joanna’s own research, and this filters through into the research of those whom she supervised. Most importantly, we were taught to look, to look hard and look well, and to see beyond the first impressions that a work of art might present – and always, of course, to look at the back! (Fig. 1.2) All of us have had the experience of looking at works of art with Joanna first hand in galleries and museum stores in London, and many of us have also had the experience of travelling with Joanna, looking with her at works of art in their original locations, or in galleries or museums abroad. These collaborative processes of looking, and asking questions, have, for all of us, shaped the way that we conduct our research, and the ways that we consider the objects of our study. Even when Joanna is not explicitly teaching, she embodies the pedagogical practices and personal qualities to which we all aspire, and one continues to learn whenever one is in her company. The model of Joanna’s teaching is one that all of us have absorbed, providing in turn a benchmark of excellence for those of us who teach or supervise which we endeavour to reproduce, however imperfectly, for our own students. The title of this introduction – ‘Circling Giotto’ – is a play on Vasari’s famous story of Giotto’s ‘O’, where the painter drew a perfect circle freehand as a demonstration of artistic perfection. As one would expect in a collection of essays focused on late medieval Italian art, Giotto’s presence is implicit throughout. But the essays rarely focus on Giotto directly; instead, the volume collectively can be said to circle around him, shedding new light on his contemporaries and rivals, his precursors and followers, and developments in other media and other centres. The title is also a homage to ‘Giotto’s Circle’, the research seminar that Joanna established at The Courtauld Institute in 2004 and which she continues to chair today. Many of the essays published here have their origins in talks presented at Giotto’s Circle and have benefited from the seminar’s convivial and constructive criticism. With characteristic generosity, Joanna sought to include researchers working on Italian medieval topics at other British universities, as well as scholars in the field visiting the UK. Now in its eighteenth year, Giotto’s Circle has helped to ensure the continued vitality of what are sometimes called ‘Trecento studies’ as a distinct research field in Anglophone scholarship. The seminar’s emphasis on introducing new graduate researchers into an expert and supportive network offers

9

INTRODUCTION

FIG. 1.2  LOOKING AT THE BACK WITH DILLIAN GORDON, ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, 2015. PHOTO: SUSIE NASH.

powerful testimony of Joanna’s broader sense of responsibility beyond her own research to her field and its future.17 The expansive vision of late medieval Italian art reflected in the essays collected here is manifestly Joanna’s own. The themes that underpin the volume mirror the major preoccupations of Joanna’s research and publications, as her students have developed her ideas and approaches in their own work, extending her influence further throughout the field. The dominant themes are tightly entangled within the volume and within individual essays, and as editors we found that any configuration of the chapters into sub-groupings impoverished rather than clarified the connections between them. The essays are thus arranged in roughly chronological order, beginning fittingly with Jessica Richardson’s study of the earliest images of Saint Dominic. Readers will quickly notice multiple interconnections across the volume. Over half the essays engage with the artistic patronage of the mendicant orders, an area of research that Joanna pioneered in the 1980s and ’90s. Within this group a tighter kernel of contributions grapples with the ramifications of conflicts within the Franciscan movement for that Order’s artistic production, an area which remains one of the most challenging in mendicant studies. Other essays prioritise the civic context for artworks, both secular and sacred, and notably in Siena and Florence. Devotional practice, especially through the close analysis of portable and hand-held imagery, is another recurring theme. Joanna’s interest in workshop organisation, often traversing 17 https://courtauld.ac.uk/research/whats-on/giottos-circle/ (accessed 9 August 2021).

10

DONAL COOPER AND BETH WILLIAMSON

materials and media, is pursued by several authors. Goldsmiths’ work, enamel, gilded glass, manuscript illumination, and marble sculpture are all represented alongside panel and fresco painting, reflecting the breadth of Joanna’s interests and the range of projects she encouraged and supervised. No appreciation of Joanna would be complete without mentioning her dedication to her family. Those of us who had MA seminars on Fridays will remember her preparing to go to her mother’s home for the Shabbat meal; everyone knows her devotion to her own family, to her husband John, and to their children, Gregory and Caroline. All of us grieved with her and for her when Caroline died, far too early, in 2015. For some of us Joanna provided a model for how to combine an academic career with raising a family. Knowing now, as we do, how hard this is, we look back in awe at the amount of time that she was able to give to her students, at how she read our written work with such care, how she led evening research seminars and weekend colloquia at The Courtauld, and how she did all of this with an endless energy, positivity, and kindness. Writing and editing this book, we have often been reminded of the advice proffered by Humbert of Romans – Dominican Minister General and a lead protagonist in Joanna’s PhD and second book – to the budding preachers in his Order. ‘Have a good model to look at’, Humbert enjoined his readers: ‘We see this in painters, who paint better when they follow a good model which they keep before their eyes.’18 Speaking for all the authors, we have kept Joanna’s scholarship before our eyes and we have undoubtedly ‘painted’ better with its example to guide us. In another artistic analogy, Humbert observed that it ‘is harder to paint a picture which needs a lot of different colours than one which only requires a few’.19 It is difficult to summarise here Joanna’s substantial and lasting contributions to so many different debates and areas of enquiry. Harder still is to express adequately what she means to us and many others, but we hope that the essays collected together here capture in refracted light something of the varied and vibrant colour she has brought to her field, and to her colleagues, students, and friends.

18 English translation taken from Early Dominicans: Selected Writings, ed. Simon Tugwell (New York, 1982), p. 293. On Humbert, see Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches, pp. 26–7. 19 Early Dominicans, p. 204.

HOLY WOOD / ‘SACRA TAVOLA’: SAINT DOMINIC AND THE MEMORY OF MIRACLES IN BOLOGNA JESSICA N. RICHARDSON

A

pervasive theme in Joanna Cannon’s many contributions to the study of medieval art is the relationship between form and function, set against both the wider spiritual concerns of the period and networks of patrons at specific sites and over large geographic areas. This focus led her to question deep-rooted assumptions about early Italian art and has transformed our understanding of what images might signify to multiple audiences over time. Inspired by her scholarship, I approach a category of medieval images that has been relatively little studied: painted panels that also claim to be relics or reliquie dipinte. Such a classification relates to a panel’s association with a holy individual or a miraculous event, or even the belief that it was fashioned from a sacred tree.1 For example, two thirteenth-century images of Saint Francis attributed to the Maestro di San Francesco (c. 1260) and to Cimabue (c. 1280), both today in the Museo della Porziuncola, Assisi, have been linked through their respective During my PhD studies, Joanna Cannon assigned me the task of re-organizing The Garrison Collection of photographs of Italian Romanesque painting housed at The Courtauld Institute of Art. It was then that I first became fascinated by the panel painting that forms the centre of this study. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 1 For an example of the latter, see Sally J. Cornelison, ‘When an Image is a Relic: The St Zenobius Panel from Florence Cathedral’, in Images, Relics, and Devotional Practices in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. Sally J. Cornelison and Scott B. Montgomery (Tempe, AZ, 2006), pp. 95–113.

2

12

JESSICA N. RICHARDSON

inscriptions to the wooden bier upon which the saint’s dead body rested and to the wood-lid of his first tomb.2 The panels are thus ‘contact’ relics – the boards believed to have once supported and covered Saint Francis’s corpse.3 Equally important, their sacral value stems also from the images of Saint Francis painted on the ‘holy’ surfaces and, in the case of the former, a lengthy text that has been attributed to the saint himself.4 Created in the early history of the Franciscan Order, the two panels provide important evidence for the representational strategies used in the promotion of ‘new’ saints (that is, images created within living memory of the holy person depicted), such as Francis – who died in 1226 and was canonized just two years later, in 1228 – as has been discussed by Joanna Cannon, amongst others.5 Yet in these instances, the depiction of Saint Francis together with the inscription point to the sacral value of the support, which is offered not only as a relic of the saint, but serves to validate his very image. The calibrated interplay between painted surface and material creates a series of mutually reinforcing associations brought about through representation and substantiated by its very matter, wood. This chapter focuses on the so-called tavola di San Domenico (Plate I), a painted wooden panel that fits the above class of objects, a class which challenges some of our long-standing categorizations and opens new perspectives on the nature and function of early panel painting. This 2 On the image by the Maestro di San Francesco, see Enrica Neri Lusanna, ‘Maestro di San Francesco’, in L’arte di Francesco: capolavori d’arte italiana e terre d’Asia dal XIII al XV secolo, ed. Angelo Tartuferi and Francesco D’Arelli, exh. cat. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (Florence, 2015), pp. 198–9, cat. no. 17, with bibliography. On the original inscription that might reference this function, see Ruth Wolff, ‘Auctoritas und Berührung: Die Porziuncola-Tafel des Franziskusmeisters und der Franziskus- und Christuszyklus in der Unterkirche von San Francesco in Assisi’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 58 (2016), 131–55. On the image attributed to Cimabue: Angelo Tartuferi, ‘Cimabue’, in L’arte di Francesco, pp. 202–3, cat. no. 19, with bibliography. For the now lost inscription, see Marino Bigaroni, ‘La tavola-coperchio della cassa mortuaria di San Francesco’, Frate Francesco 74, ns 1 (2008), 97–124, at p. 99. 3 The term ‘contact relic’ is a modern one. For discussion, see Jean-Claude Schmitt, Le corps des images: essais sur la culture visuelle au Moyen Âge (Paris, 2002), pp. 273–94; Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York, 2011), pp. 136–9. Bynum also discusses cases when ‘what modern art historians would call “iconography” or “image of ” could become the thing itself ’. However, her examples in this instance would seem still to fall under the category of images that contain relics, not ‘reliquia dipinta’, p. 29. See also note 70 below. 4 Wolff, ‘Auctoritas und Berührung’, esp. pp. 136–44. 5 Joanna Cannon, ‘Dating the Frescoes by the Maestro di S. Francesco at Assisi’, The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982), 65–9; Klaus Krüger, Der frühe Bildkult des Franziskus in Italien: Gestalt- und Funktionswandel des Tafelbildes im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1992); Chiara Frugoni, Francesco e l’invenzione delle stimmate: una storia per parole e immagini fino a Bonaventura e Giotto (Turin, 1993), esp. pp. 296–303 (for the two panels); Julian Gardner, ‘Stone Saints: Commemoration and Likeness in Thirteenth-Century Italy, France and Spain’, Gesta 46 (2007), 121–34; and Joanna Cannon, ‘Redating the Frescoes by the Maestro di S. Francesco at Assisi’, in Survivals, Revivals, Rinascenze: studi in onore di Serena Romano, ed. Nicolas Bock, Ivan Foletti, and Michele Tomasi (Rome, 2017), pp. 437–49.

HOLY WOOD / ‘SACRA TAVOLA’

particular case also highlights the difficulties of limiting the study of such images to the moment of their first creation. The wooden panel, originally over 5.7 m long and 44 cm high and composed of three horizontal planks – a wide central panel and two narrower planks affixed to its upper and lower edges – is a veritable unicum in early Italian painting. It was included under ‘miscellaneous shapes’ in Edward B. Garrison’s 1949 catalogue of Italian Romanesque panel painting and all but forgotten until Joanna Cannon’s significant discussion of the work in her article ‘Dominic “alter Christus”?’.6 The panel is believed to be the very table upon which Saint Dominic ate and where he performed a miracle, the Multiplication of Loaves of Bread. Furthermore, it contains one of the earliest representations of Saint Dominic: Dominic died in Bologna in 1221 and scholars have dated the image most recently to the period around his canonization in 1234.7 Yet the tavola di San Domenico is of interest not only on account of its relic-status, its early date and iconography, its unusual shape, and the fact that it is a rare survival of monumental painting from thirteenthcentury Bologna. The panel also raises important questions concerning the relationship between sacred matter and representation, as well as about site-specific devotion and the potential tensions between body and imagerelic or, more precisely, between two organic substances, the bones of the saint and the wood upon which his image was painted. In what follows, it will be argued that in this reliquia dipinta the interaction between the humble material of wood and the image painted on its surface reveals insights into the institutional appropriation of the tangible memory of Saint Dominic’s presence in Bologna. 6 Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), p. 222, no. 606 and Edward B. Garrison, Giovanni Freni, Achim Timmermann, Joanna Cannon, and Constance Hill, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index. A New Edition on CD-ROM with Revised Bibliography and Iconclass (London, 1998). There is no bibliography for this painting in Garrison’s handwritten notes (Garrison Collection, The Courtauld Institute of Art). Joanna Cannon, ‘Dominic “alter Christus”? Representations of the Founder in and after the Arca di San Domenico’, in Christ among the Medieval Dominicans: Representations of Christ in the Texts and Images of the Order of Preachers, ed. Kent Emery, Jr and Joseph P. Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN, 1998), pp. 26–48, at p. 34. 7 For this dating, see Silvia Giorgi, ‘Maestro padano, San Domenico moltiplica i pani’, in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica, exh. cat. Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna (Venice, 2000), pp. 145–9, cat. no. 30; Fabio Bisogni, ‘Gli inizi dell’iconografia domenicana’, in Domenico di Caleruega e la nascita dell’ordine dei frati predicatori: atti del XLI Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 10–12 ottobre 2004 (Spoleto, 2005), pp. 613–38, at pp. 616–17; Fabrizio Lollini, ‘Cenni sull’iconografia di San Domenico nell’arte bolognese: l’arca e altri casi tra XIII e XIV secoli’, in España y Bolonia: siete siglos de relaciones artísticas y culturales, ed. José Luis Colomer and Amadeo Serra Desfilis (Madrid, 2006), pp. 65–76, at p. 66. For the most recent discussion of the panel, see Giovanni Paltrinieri and Loris Rabiti, La chiesa parrocchiale di Santa Maria e San Domenico della Mascarella in Bologna. Otto secoli di fede e di storia nel cuore della città universitaria (San Lazzaro di Savena, 2013), pp. 47–66. After completing this chapter, I became aware of the tesi di laurea magistrale by Eleonora Tioli (2019), which I was unable to consult.

13

14

JESSICA N. RICHARDSON

THE ‘RE-DISCOVERY’ OF THE TAVOLA DI SAN DOMENICO Since 1953, the tavola di San Domenico has been housed in the twentiethcentury chapel of Saint Dominic, the third chapel in the right aisle of Santa Maria della Purificazione e di San Domenico on Via Mascarella in Bologna (hereafter, the Mascarella), the site of the first Dominican residence in Bologna.8 The panel is recorded there from at least the fifteenth century and there is no evidence to suggest that this was not its original location.9 Study of the thirteenth-century image, however, is complicated by the complex physical history of the object and its current fragmented state. Our first explicit description of this painting dates from the second half of the nineteenth century, when it was ‘re-discovered’. At that date only the opposite side of the panel was known to contain an image, a muchdamaged later painting (of possibly the fourteenth or fifteenth century, or even later) that depicted the very same subject, the Miracle of the Loaves (Fig. 2.1). The rediscovery of the Duecento painting occurred during the pastoral visit to the Mascarella in 1881, when Monsignor Angelo Cavazzo requested that a precious relic, the ‘sacra Tavola’ of Saint Dominic, be re-located to a more venerable space, where it could be visited ‘by every class of persons, and in particular by the Dominicans resident in Bologna’.10 Thus the said panel was moved from the second chapel of the right aisle, where it had been located since 1823.11 This prompted the occasion to closely examine its material and painted surfaces. The type of wood (fir) was determined, and its measurements taken.12 It was noted that previously (in 1823) the panel had been reinforced with iron struts and cut into three pieces, joined by blades and iron hinges that allowed it to be folded into a cavity above the altar. The division of the panel into three pieces was determined by the composition of the then-known later painting (Fig. 2.1). This painting, much damaged even at the end of the nineteenth century, was recorded at that time to date from the first half of the fifteenth century and described in detail. It contains a representation of a long table with Saint Dominic, nimbed and blessing at the centre. On either side sit six tonsured friars ‘in gestures of wonder and piety’. In front 8 The church was previously dedicated solely to Santa Maria della Purificazione and San Domenico was added to the title in 1926. The site is commonly known as Santa Maria della Mascarella or ‘the Mascarella’. The current display of the panel followed the reconstruction of the church after its partial destruction by allied bombing in 1943 and 1944. See Paltrinieri and Rabiti, La chiesa parrocchiale, pp. 20, 30, 137–48. 9 For the earliest mention of the panel, see note 46 below. 10 Tommaso Bonora, Cenni storici sulla tavola detta di S. Domenico che conservarsi nella chiesa priorale e parrocchiale di S[ant]a Maria della Purificazione in via Mascarella (Bologna, 1883), p. 12. On the site and its dedication, see Giuseppe Fornasini, La chiesa priorale e parrocchiale di S. Maria e S. Domenico detta della Mascarella in Bologna (Bologna, 1943) and, most recently, Paltrinieri and Rabiti, La chiesa parrocchiale. 11 Bonora, Cenni storici, p. 11. 12 Bonora, Cenni storici, p. 13.

MUSEALE DELL’EMILIA ROMAGNA.

DOMINIC, SANTA MARIA E SAN DOMENICO DELLA MASCARELLA, BOLOGNA. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE MINISTERO DEI BENI E DELLE ATTIVITÀ CULTURALI, POLO

FIG. 2.1  TAVOLA DI SAN DOMENICO, BACK (TWO OF THREE PANELS), SAINT DOMINIC FLANKED BY FRIARS. FOURTEENTH OR FIFTEENTH CENTURY, CHAPEL OF SAINT

16

JESSICA N. RICHARDSON

of the table and facing the saint are two angels of whom ‘we only see the head, torso and wings, as the table is here more eroded than in other parts’ (today these figures are only faintly visible). At either end of the table two separate, indecipherable, and extremely damaged figures are represented.13 After the 1881 pastoral visit, when preparing to return the table-image to its chapel, traces of paint were found on its opposite side – referred to then as the ‘reverse’ – and ‘under a layer of white paint’ a ‘new image’ was revealed, whose design and style provided sufficient evidence ‘to assure its considerable antiquity’ (Plate I).14 Following the discovery of this older painting, a pamphlet was published in 1883 that included drawings of both painted sides (Fig. 2.2).15 The newly discovered image on the ‘reverse’ represents a relatively larger Saint Dominic, nimbed and at the centre of a table, flanked by friars. Rather than twelve friars (as on the later ‘front’), there were ‘around forty’ (thirty-nine today), and originally more (fortyeight, nine of which are lost).16 These friars, tonsured and cowled in the black and white Dominican habit, are depicted, in pairs, within an arcaded setting of faux-painted marble columns that support shallow arches decorated with vegetal motifs. Each friar rests one arm obliquely on the table, which is populated with bowls, jugs, bread, and knives. Furthermore, the much damaged lower border contains fragments of a mostly illegible inscription that can be shown to be part of the original painting through palaeographical analysis and examination of the congruencies between the painted letters and images, visible to the naked eye.17 Whilst study of the painted surfaces is complicated by their poor physical state, the current display in the church offers the opportunity to compare the two sides.18 These were separated in the 1930s and the surviving parts are now located below and on either side of the altar in the modern chapel in which the painting has resided since 1953, with the exception of two pieces, one in San Domenico (Bologna) and another in Santa Sabina, Rome (Fig. 2.3).19 13 It was postulated that the figure on the left is a bishop saint, noting also the presence of an animal, and that at the right is the Virgin; see Bonora, Cenni storici, pp. 13–14. 14 Bonora, Cenni storici, pp. 14–16, where it is dated to the thirteenth century or the beginning of the fourteenth century. 15 Bonora, Cenni storici, p. 16. The later image is labelled as ‘front’ and the earlier image as ‘reverse’, a decision that surely reflected how the panel had been displayed. The drawing is reproduced in Hyacinthe-Marie Cormier, La bienheureuse Diane d’Andolò e les bienheureuses Cécile et Aimée fondatrices du couvent de sainte-Agnès de l’ordre des frèresprêcheurs à Bologne (Rome, 1892). 16 Bonora, Cenni storici, p. 15, and see note 19 below. 17 Bonora, Cenni storici, p. 15: ‘…mi a sede hic prius aptavit mensam qui ri … ravit hunc (?) scripto … suis migrare … gis sic dedit augeri sic…’ 18 The later painting was remounted on canvas in 1923; see Fornasini, La chiesa priorale, p. 22 n. 1. The panels currently displayed in the Mascarella were restored in 1993. 19 After the separation of the two sides, and prior to 1931, the left part of the Duecento painting was further cut into two pieces: one, which no longer contains images, is in San Domenico, Bologna. The other was photographed by Felice Croci, active as a photographer in Bologna, 1911–34 (Garrison, Romanesque Painting, p. 222, no. 606, Image 1). This latter piece was subsequently divided into three parts: one, with five friars, is in

DETTA DI S. DOMENICO (BOLOGNA, 1883). PHOTO: BIBLIOTECA COMUNALE DELL’ARCHIGINNASIO, BOLOGNA.

FIG. 2.2  MODESTO ZACCONI, DRAWING SHOWING THE TWO PAINTED SIDES OF THE TAVOLA DI SAN DOMENICO, IN TOMMASO BONORA, CENNI STORICI SULLA TAVOLA

FIG. 2.3  TAVOLA DI SAN DOMENICO, FRAGMENT WITH FRIARS. TEMPERA ON WOOD (FIR), MID-THIRTEENTH CENTURY, MUSEO DOMENICANO, CONVENTO DI SANTA SABINA ALL’AVENTINO, ROME. PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE CURIA GENERALIZIA DEL CONVENTO DI SANTA SABINA ALL’AVENTINO, MUSEO DOMENICANO.

HOLY WOOD / ‘SACRA TAVOLA’

Since its rediscovery, the thirteenth-century painting on the ‘reverse’ of the tavola di San Domenico has received scant attention. Joanna Cannon, in her 1998 article, was the first to include it within a larger analysis of images of Saint Dominic and his miracles.20 Shortly afterwards, in 2000, it featured in the exhibition and accompanying catalogue Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna.21 Subsequent comments have been limited to its style and iconography, whilst the wider implications of the image and its possible functions remain largely unexplored. This is surprising considering that the recently proposed date could call into question the early Dominican Order’s relationship to images of its founder and, more specifically, to panel painting.22 These topics, however, are not the main focus of this chapter. Instead, there are two proposals I would like to make, both relating to the status of the object and to how it might have functioned in Bologna within – or rather, in relation to – the Dominican community. The first is that the earlier painting on the panel was not a Dominican commission. By this, I mean that it was not commissioned by the Dominican Order or intended for a solely Dominican audience. The second proposal is that the object as a whole, in all its parts (the wooden table and its two painted surfaces) should be read in relation to the most renowned Dominican monument in Bologna, the tomb or Arca of Saint Dominic (Fig. 2.4). Here, I refer not just to the Arca’s earliest and most widely celebrated sculpture by Nicola Pisano and his workshop from the thirteenth century (1265–67), but also to the additions to the monument undertaken in the second half of the fifteenth century, by Nicolò dell’Arca (1469–73) and, later, Michelangelo (1495).

the chapel of Saint Dominic (left wall), the Mascarella; one was framed and donated, in 1961, to Santa Sabina, Rome (Fig. 2.3); and the other (containing a single friar) is lost. On the image at Santa Sabina, see Jessica N. Richardson, ‘Pittore bolognese’, in Il Convento di Santa Sabina all’Aventino e il suo patrimonio storico-artistico e architettonico, ed. Manuela Gianandrea, Manuela Annibali, and Laura Bartoni (Rome, 2016), pp. 173–4, cat. no. 13. In summer 2022, just before this article went into print, I examined the painting at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence. I kindly thank Sandra Rossi and Lucia Maria Bresci for this opportunity. Whilst I look forward to the publication of their analysis, the present contribution has not changed as a result. 20 Cannon, ‘Dominic “alter Christus”’, p. 34. 21 Giorgi, ‘Maestro padano’, pp. 145–9. 22 Bisogni, ‘Gli inizi dell’iconografia domenicana’, pp. 616–17, and Lollini, ‘Cenni sull’iconografia di San Domenico’, pp. 66–7. On the earliest thirteenth-century central Italian panel paintings of Saint Dominic, see Joanna Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches: Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New Haven, 2013), pp. 93–9.

19

FIG. 2.4  NICOLA PISANO AND WORKSHOP, ARCA OF SAINT DOMINIC, 1267 (WITH LATER ADDITIONS), FULL VIEW OF FRONT. SAN DOMENICO, BOLOGNA. PHOTO BY AUTHOR.

HOLY WOOD / ‘SACRA TAVOLA’

THE CONTESTED LOCATION OF A MIRACLE Silvia Giorgi concludes, on stylistic grounds, that the early painting on the tavola di san Domenico was executed c. 1230–40 and she situates it in relation to the festivities surrounding Saint Dominic’s canonization on 3 July 1234.23 Although not explicitly stated, the supposition is that it provided visual testimony for one of Dominic’s early miracles, performed at the friars’ first residence in Bologna, Santa Maria della Mascarella, in 1218. By relating the image to Dominic’s canonization, the unstated assumption is that the painted table-relic played a role in the Order’s memory of the founder’s first residence in the city, promoting the miracle at that site.24 Building on the idea of the panel’s importance to the early Dominicans, Fabio Bisogni suggested that it was likely displayed on the wall of the refectory at the Mascarella, hidden from public view and accessible only to the friars.25 However, there are two problems with these hypotheses. First, according to thirteenth-century hagiographical texts, the location of Saint Dominic’s Miracle of the Loaves was not fixed but varied (and the Mascarella is not mentioned in these accounts); second, all evidence indicates that by 1219 the friars in Bologna had altogether left the Mascarella to take up residence at the larger and more centrally located site, San Nicolò delle Vigne, which was re-consecrated as San Domenico in 1251.26 By at least the mid-thirteenth century (1241), and very likely even prior to the arrival of the Dominicans in Bologna, the Spanish canons of Roncisvalle were resident at Santa Maria della Mascarella.27 As the earliest image on the panel postdates the friars’ move to San Nicolò delle Vigne, it could not have been painted for a Dominican community active at the Mascarella. The painting’s relation to the Order and the ‘location’ of Saint Dominic’s Miracle of the Loaves, however, are complex. To investigate these questions we must turn to the thirteenth-century hagiographic sources. Saint Dominic’s miraculous multiplication of bread is first recorded in the 1233 written testimony for his canonization. The ‘eyewitness’ account, 23 Giorgi, ‘Maestro padano’, p. 145. Previously, the panel has been dated to the ‘thirteenth century’, see Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting, p. 222. Joanna Cannon, ‘Dominican Patronage of the Arts in Central Italy: The Provincia Romana, c. 1220–c. 1320’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1980, p. 175, suggested that that it may date from before the Council of Lyon in 1274. 24 Giorgi, ‘Maestro padano’, p. 145. 25 Bisogni, ‘Gli inizi dell’iconografia domenicana’, p. 617. 26 Venturino Alce, ‘Documenti sul convento di San Domenico in Bologna dal 1221 al 1251’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 42 (1972), 5–45, and Venturino Alce, Il Convento di San Domenico in Bologna nel secolo XIII (Bologna, 1973). 27 On the site’s early history, see Francesco Calzoni, Storia della chiesa parrocchiale di Santa Maria in Via Mascarella e dei luoghi più cospicui che si trovano nella de lei giurisdizione (Bologna, 1785), and Fornasini, La chiesa priorale, 9–15. Calzoni (p. 20 n. 1) transcribed a now-lost document attesting to the canons’ presence at the site in 1241. On the canons of Roncisvalle, see Fornasini, La chiesa priorale, pp. 31–6, and Paltrinieri and Rabiti, La chiesa parrocchiale, pp. 79–94.

21

22

JESSICA N. RICHARDSON

provided therein by Fra Buonviso da Piacenza, placed the miracle not at the Mascarella, but at San Nicolò delle Vigne.28 Just over a decade later in his Legenda sancti Dominici (c. 1244), Constantine of Orvieto wrote, drawing again on an ‘eyewitness’ testimony, that the miracle was performed at the Dominican residence in Rome, San Sisto.29 The miracle appears in at least three later thirteenth-century sources in which it is said to have taken place either at San Sisto or San Nicolò delle Vigne.30 The impression then, as Joanna Cannon astutely observed, is that the miracle, whether in Bologna or Rome, ‘was widely disseminated in the Order’s memory’ and linked with Dominic’s presence at the earliest Dominican foundations. As Cannon also notes, it is likely that ‘an oral tradition existed which had grown up independently of written sources’.31 Cannon and others, moreover, have drawn attention to the significance of the image of the miracle on the saint’s tomb at San Domenico (Plate II).32 Yet what are the implications of a second, coeval and possibly even earlier, monumental representation of the same event? How are we to understand the tavola representing Saint Dominic at table with over forty friars belonging to another church in Bologna, Santa Maria della Mascarella? Were the canons of Roncisvalle, some of whom might have remembered the early friars at their church, merely capitalizing on a developing tradition and an emerging popular cult in the city? Did these canons decide that they too could lay claim to the miracle through the ‘creation’ of a relic of the saint that contained a representation of the very event allegedly performed upon it? There is a long, if at times confused, tradition concerning Saint Dominic’s first arrival in Bologna. According to Jordan of Saxony (d. 1236), 28 For the text of the ‘Testimonium fratris Bonivisus’, see ‘Acta canonizationis S. Dominici’, ed. Angelus Maria Walz, Monumenta historica sancti patris nostri Dominici, Fasc. II, Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum historica (hereafter MOPH) 16 (Rome, 1935), pp. 91–194, at pp. 140–1, no. 22. For an English translation, see ‘Testimony of Brother Buonviso (August 9)’, in Early Dominicans: Selected Writings, ed. Simon Tugwell (New York, 1982), pp. 72–3. See also the testimony of Friar Rodolfo of Faenza, in ‘Acta canonizationis’, p. 149, no. 30, and Tugwell, Early Dominicans, pp. 76–7. 29 Constantine of Orvieto, Legenda sancti Dominici, ed. Heribert Christian Scheeben, Monumenta historica, MOPH 16, pp. 263–352, at pp. 312–13, no. 37. 30 Humbert of Romans, ‘Legenda maior sancti Dominici [1254]’; for the Latin text see Humberti di Romanis, Legendae sancti Dominici, ed. Simon Tugwell, MOPH 30 (Rome, 2008), pp. 486–7, no. 36 (locating the miracle at San Sisto); Gerhard of Frachet, Vitae fratrum [1260, approved], Part 2, Chapter 20, Vitae fratrum Ordinis Praedicatorum, ed. Benedict Maria Reichert, MOPH 1 (Leuven, 1896), p. 80 (at San Nicolò delle Vigne); Sister Cecilia, Miracula [1280s], ‘Die “Miracula beati Dominici” der Schwester Caecilia’, ed. Angelus Maria Walz, Archivium Fratrum Praedicatorum 37 (1967), 5–45, at pp. 25–7, no. 3 (at San Sisto). For further texts related to this miracle, see Luigi Canetti, L’invenzione della memoria: il culto e l’immagine di Domenico nella storia dei primi frati predicatori (Spoleto, 1996), pp. 199–200 n. 238. 31 Cannon, ‘Dominic “alter Christus”’, p. 35. On the oral tradition in relation to the early texts concerning Dominic’s life and miracles, see also Cannon, Religious Poverty, p. 93. 32 Cannon, ‘Dominic “alter Christus”’, pp. 35–6; Lollini, ‘Cenni sull’iconografia di San Domenico’, pp. 66–7.

HOLY WOOD / ‘SACRA TAVOLA’

Dominic sent two friars to the city in 1218, and it is believed that he first visited the community himself in that same year on his way from Rome to Spain.33 He later returned to take up residence in 1219, the year in which the young Order moved from Santa Maria della Mascarella to San Nicolò delle Vigne. However, based on both conflicting accounts and the lack of documentation, Simon Tugwell has questioned whether Dominic ever actually met his brethren at the Mascarella in 1218, thus challenging the possibility of the miracle’s occurrence at the site.34 Although, in the end, Tugwell points to the historical viability of Dominic’s visit to the church in that year, he nonetheless remarks that ‘All the same, a table venerated as a relic … hardly count[s] as solid evidence for something that must have happened, if at all, in 1218.’35 It is not my intention to take issue with whether, when, or exactly where the miracle took place, but a simple fact remains, a fact that Tugwell – like, as we shall see, all of our early modern sources – does not mention; this particular table-relic contained images, and its earliest painted side situates it in the very period when the various traditions surrounding the Miracle of the Loaves were first being recorded. Thus, the early image on the tavola provides strong evidence that a claim was being made for the miracle at the Mascarella, in the thirteenth century. This claim was surely reinforced by the now illegible inscription running along the lower border of the image, a point to which I shall return. It is significant, moreover, that the only other monumental thirteenth-century depiction of the miracle is on the Arca di San Domenico (Plate II, Fig. 2.4).36

THE TAVOLA, THE BODY OF SAINT DOMINIC, AND THE EARLY ARCA The marble relief representing the Miracle of the Loaves is located on the right short side of Saint Dominic’s tomb (Plate II).37 Saint Dominic, at the centre, is seated and flanked on either side by three friars; in the foreground, before the saint, two small figures, dressed as acolytes, present 33 Jordan of Saxony, ‘Libellus de principiis Ordinis Praedicatorum’, ed. Heribert Christian Scheeben, Monumenta historica, MOPH 16, p. 51, no. 55. 34 Simon Tugwell, ‘Notes on the Life of St Dominic’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 65 (1995), 5–169, at pp. 57–80 (for the complex history according to the sources) and 142–5 (for Tugwell’s conclusions on the events). 35 Tugwell, ‘Notes on the Life of St Dominic’, p. 76. 36 The miracle is represented, however, in thirteenth-century manuscripts, for example, in the Bolognese gradual of c. 1270, illuminated by Jacobellus of Salerno, today in Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, MS Ludwig VI 1 (83.MH.84), fol. 38r: http://www.getty. edu/art/collection/objects/3157/jacobellus-of-salerno-initial-i-saint-dominic-enshrineditalian-about-1270/ (accessed 4 June 2021), and in a Bolognese(?) gradual in Gubbio, Archivio Comunale, Corale C, fol. 76v, see Cannon, Religious Poverty, p. 131, Fig. 112. 37 The literature on the thirteenth-century Arca is vast, see Barbara W. Dodsworth, The Arca di San Domenico (New York, 1995), with bibliography.

23

24

JESSICA N. RICHARDSON

baskets containing bread. The detail of two figures delivering bread, either young boys or angels, is found in the written accounts of the miracle, and would become the standard visual representation of the event.38 Indeed the later image on the ‘front’ of the tavola follows this visual tradition (Fig. 2.1), although there, unlike the Arca, twelve and not six friars are represented, an even more pronounced allusion to Christ at the Last Supper.39 Serena Romano suggested that the selection of this particular miracle for the Arca was made to emphasise ‘Bologna’s precedence within the Order over its [Roman] rival, S. Sisto’. She further remarks that perhaps the miracle was chosen also in light of the presence in Bologna of Suor Cecilia, who had been resident at San Sisto and who was later to provide a written account that cited the Roman church as the site of the miracle.40 Whilst certainly plausible, the decision to include this scene could have been motivated as well by a claim being made for the location of the miracle at another site within Bologna itself, Santa Maria della Mascarella. The fact that the thirteenth-century image on the tavola does not include angels, a feature that became standard after the Arca, suggests that it was conceived independently from the monument’s marble relief and that it may even predate it. Furthermore, it is certainly not coincidental that the tavola shares a detail with Constantine of Orvieto’s 1246–7 account of the miracle at San Sisto, Rome: ‘at that time there were around forty friars present in the convent’.41 It is possible that Constantine was informed about the painted panel or, alternatively, that the image drew on his text or on an oral tradition from which it stemmed. If the tavola’s earliest images predate the Arca, which seems likely also based on their style,42 they would be the first known depiction of the miracle. In either case, the painting’s early date shows the complex dynamics at work in the formation of textual 38 For example, the mid-fifteenth-century panel by Giovanni Francesco da Rimini (Palazzo Mosca – Musei Civici, Pesaro) and the sixteenth-century panel (Florentine, c. 1500–49; Collection of Maurice de Rothschild, Paris) that, significantly in relation to the current study, contains an inscription proclaiming that it is a piece of the table upon which the miracle occurred ‘con XXXX frati’. For an image of the latter painting, see Fondazione Federico Zeri, University of Bologna, invent. no. 84281: http://catalogo. fondazionezeri.unibo.it/scheda.v2.jsp?locale=it&decorator=layout_resp&apply=true&tipo_ scheda=F&id=86932&titolo=Anonimo+-+Anonimo+fiorentino+-+sec.+XVI+-+San+Do menico+e+i+frati+ricevono+il+pane+dagli+angeli+-+insieme#lg=1&slide=0 (accessed 4 June 2021). For the full inscription see note 69 below. 39 On the reference to the Last Supper in relation to the Arca, see Cannon, ‘Dominic “alter Christus”’, p. 36. For the Eucharistic significance, see Serena Romano, ‘The Arca of St Dominic at Bologna’, in Memory and Oblivion (Proceedings of the XXIXth International Congress of the History of Art, Amsterdam, 1–7 September 1996), ed. Wessel Reinink (Dordrecht, 1999), pp. 499–513, at p. 508. 40 Romano, ‘The Arca’, p. 509. On this point, see also Serena Romano, ‘Review of Anita Fiderer Moskowitz, Nicola Pisano’s Arca di San Domenico and its Legacy (1994)’, Speculum 71 (1996), 183–4, at p. 184. For the miracle, see note 30 above. 41 Constantine of Orvieto, Legenda sancti Dominici, pp. 312–13, no. 37. 42 Giorgi, ‘Maestro padano’, p. 145. See also Bisogni, ‘Gli inizi dell’iconografia domenicana’, p. 617, for further comments on an early date based on its iconography.

HOLY WOOD / ‘SACRA TAVOLA’

and visual traditions surrounding the Miracle of the Loaves. It also raises important questions concerning how the ‘painted relic’ related to the burgeoning cult of Saint Dominic in thirteenth-century Bologna and to the treatment of the body of the saint at his shrine. The official account of Saint Dominic’s death and burial, drawn from Dominican documentation and meticulously analysed by Cannon, can be summarized as follows. Dominic, who died at San Nicolò delle Vigne in 1221, requested a modest burial, and his body was first placed in a simple wooden sarcophagus, under a marble slab in the floor of the church behind the choir, away from the populace and out of public view. This did not, however, stop the laity from visiting the site, leaving their offerings and annoying the friars, who present themselves as uninterested in promoting the cult of the body of their founder. Eventually, however, the friars conceded to move the body into a newly constructed, freestanding, unadorned marble structure beyond the screen, in the nave of the church, in 1233 – just one year before the canonization.43 Then, as is now well known, it was decided to erect a more elaborate, freestanding, carved marble structure in the nave, which was completed by Nicola Pisano and his workshop in 1267, the year in which the saint’s remains were transferred amidst great civic ceremony.44 By this date we also know that the friars were actively encouraging, and even mandating, images of their founder in Dominican churches. What we have then, as Cannon has compellingly argued, is an official decision to promote the cult of Saint Dominic through images, one that was motivated by popular devotion to the saint’s body and the site of his burial, but also by judicious judgement in relation to wider events both within and outside the Order, particularly the growing cult of Saint Francis promoted at his tomb in Assisi and, above all, through his images.45 Yet could the Dominican friars’ initial change in attitude towards the laity at their Bologna convent also have been motivated by other forces outside the Order, that is, outside San Nicolò delle Vigne (later San Domenico), and from within the city itself? Could the decision of the Dominicans to make the body of their founder more accessible at San Nicolò relate in any way to the possibility that there was a rival – a wooden relic with an image of the saint and one of his miracles – 43 Jordan of Saxony, ‘Libellus’, pp. 87–8, no. 129; Cannon, Religious Poverty, pp. 91–2. 44 See Dodsworth, The Arca, pp. 150–3 (doc. nos 18–21), for transcriptions of documents related to the translation of the body to the new tomb in 1267. At that time, the podestà of Bologna received one of the keys to the tomb of the saint, see Tommaso M. Alfonsi, L’arca di S. Domenico (Noceto, 1927), p. 36. 45 Cannon, ‘Dominican Patronage of the Arts’, pp. 74–108; Joanna Cannon, ‘Dominican Shrines and Urban Pilgrimage in Later Medieval Italy’, in Architecture and Pilgrimage 1000–1600, ed. Paul Davies, Deborah Howard, and Wendy Pullan (Farnham, 2013), pp. 143–63; and Cannon, Religious Poverty, p. 93. See also Romano, ‘The Arca’, p. 504, where it is stated that the ‘1267 Arca is thus a powerful witness to political change within the Order and a revised attitude towards images’. For Cannon’s rethinking of the relationship between the two Orders’ earliest images of their founders in relation to the Arca, see Cannon, ‘Redating the Frescoes’, pp. 437–9.

25

26

JESSICA N. RICHARDSON

accessible at another site, that is, the painted table at the Mascarella? Whilst admittedly such a claim cannot be proven, later events make clear that the table was jealously guarded by the Mascarella, and that it was viewed as a ‘public’ monument. Moreover, the Dominican friars were not only aware of it, but they considered it advantageous to possess it, testifying to its importance as a cult object that was beyond their direct control.

THE SACRA TAVOLA: THEFT, RECOVERY, AND DISPLAY In his chronicle, begun around 1493, Girolamo Albertucci de’ Borselli (d. 1497) first recorded the friars’ arrival at the Mascarella in 1218. Then, under the year 1219, after a description of the Miracle of the Loaves: Some say that this miracle occurred in Santa Maria della Mascarella because preserved there is a wooden table on which the angels distributed the bread. It is believed that Saint Dominic had performed this miracle twice, both in Santa Maria della Mascarella and in San Nicolò. In the second place the friars there claimed that angels had also brought figs in addition to bread.46

This is both the first known written reference to the miracle taking place at the Mascarella and to the ‘tabula lignea’. Here the wooden table is used as evidence for the miracle at the Mascarella. Furthermore, the two angels are mentioned twice, a detail included in both the representations on the Arca and the later painted side of the panel (Plate II and Fig. 2.1). In a near coeval chronicle by Fileno dalla Tuata, we again find mention of the Dominicans’ arrival at the Mascarella in 1218 ‘where the miracle of the table took place’.47 Most revealing, however, is the entry of 14 November 1497: The friars of San Domenico with [the help of] some of the parish [chapella] of the Mascarella found a way to obtain a certain tavola which was used by the blessed Dominic, when he

46 Girolamo Albertucci de’ Borselli, Cronica gestorum ac factorum memorabilium civitatis Bononie / edita a fratre Hyeronimo de Bursellis (ab urbe condita ad a. 1497); con la continuazione di Vincenzo Spargiati (AA. 1498–1584), ed. Albano Sorbelli, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XXIII, parte 2 (Città di Castello, 1912–29), p. 20: ‘Aliqui dicunt quod in Sancta Maria de Mascarella hoc miraculum factum, eo quod ibi reservatur tabula lignea super qua panes ab angelis oblati sunt. Creditur scilicet bis a beato Domincio [sic] hoc miraculum factum, et in Sancta Maria de Mascarella et in Sancto Nicolao. In hac secunda vice dixerunt fratres qui viderunt, quod angeli non solum panes, sed etiam ficus attulerunt’. See also, Girolamo Albertucci de’ Borselli, Bologna anno per anno: Cronica medievale di Fra’ Gerolamo Borselli (1497), trans. from Latin by Tiziano Costa (Bologna, 1988), n.p. (under year 1220). On the confusion concerning the date of the miracle at the Mascarella in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sources, see the excellent discussion in Tugwell, ‘Notes on the Life of St Dominic’, pp. 69–80. 47 Fileno dalla Tuata, Istoria di Bologna: origini–1521, I, ed. Bruno Fortunato (Bologna, 2005), p. 20 (transcription of Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, MS BU 1438, fol. 14r).

HOLY WOOD / ‘SACRA TAVOLA’

was alive, for eating, and God showed miracles on this tavola. Knowing this, other people of the Mascarella rose up and it was returned by force, as more than 400 men were armed, and taken back to the Mascarella with a great procession, and it was put in a chapel in the Mascarella with a grada.48

These two sources reveal that in Bologna, by at least the late fifteenth century, the location of the Miracle of the Loaves not only was a topic of discussion, but was contested. Albertucci de’ Borselli situated the miracle at both the Mascarella and San Nicolò delle Vigne, even inserting the detail of the dried figs in the version ‘claimed’ by the friars – and indeed ‘ficibus siccis’ are described in the 1233 testimony of Fra Buonviso.49 Tuata’s recording of the Dominicans’ unsuccessful theft reinforces also the idea that the ‘tabula lignea’ was the direct source for the Mascarella’s claim. The story of the unsuccessful theft suggests too that by possessing the table the Dominicans had sought to eradicate the memory of the miracle at the Mascarella. Yet Tuata’s account, close in time to the events he described, offers more: its return invited civic celebration, and a new arrangement within the church behind an iron grating.50 Fortunately, we also have an ‘eyewitness’ account of the panel’s display before the ‘theft’. Leandro Alberti (1541) wrote that until 1496 the tavola was suspended from a beam (trave) in the church’s roof, and that it was displayed by the citizens ‘for the city in memory of the miracle’.51 It is possible that a redisplay in 1496 could have allowed greater access to the panel and thus provided a better opportunity for the theft just one year later. Whilst we may never know for certain how the tavola was displayed in the thirteenth-century church, finding a suitable place for such a long object must have posed problems. Its suspension, from a beam, by at least 48 Fileno dalla Tuata, Istoria di Bologna, pp. 396–7 (MS BU 1438, fol. 234v): ‘A dì 14 dito li fra de san Domenego con alchuni dela chapella dela Mascharela aveno modo de avere un çerta tavola dove el beato Domenicho quando era in vita manzava suso in dita ghiexia, et Idio mostrò çerti miracholi in la dita tavola; di che sapendo questo li altri dela chapella se livorno e fulli fata rendre per força, che se armorno più de quatroçento huomini e reportarla ala Mascharela con gran procesione, e dipoli li feno una chapela in la Mascharela con una grada’. 49 ‘Acta canonizationis’, p. 141, no. 22. 50 Dalla Tuata, Istoria di Bologna, pp. 396–7. Celso Faleoni later claimed the intervention of Giovanni II Bentivoglio, the city’s de facto head of government (r. 1463–1506), in its return: Memorie historiche della chiesa bolognese e suoi pastori. All’eminentiss. e reuerendiss. signor card. Nicolo Ludovisio (Bologna, 1649), p. 517. Antonio Masini described the tavola’s new setting more precisely as located ‘to the left of the high altar’: Antonio Masini, Bologna perlustrata, I (Bologna, 1666, anastatic reprint, Bologna, 1986), p. 32. 51 Leandro Alberti, Historie di Bologna (Libro Primo della deca prima delle Historie di Bologna) (Bologna, 1541; anastatic reprint, Bologna, 1970), n.p.: ‘Intesa tanta cosa per la Città in memoria del miracolo, sospesero li Cittadini alli travi della chiesa quella Tavola, sopra la quale fu posto il pane dagli angeli, La quale rimase sospesa infino all’anno 1496 come io essendo Fanciullo più volte la veddi, avanti fosse riposta in più honorevole luogo in detta Chiesa, come hora si vede’.

27

28

JESSICA N. RICHARDSON

the late fifteenth century, begs a fundamental question: was the image, or rather, were the images on the table’s two sides, visible? And related to this, when and why was it decided to paint the panel’s second side? If the later image dates from before the theft, was the tavola, at least at one point in its history, displayed as a double-sided object? Giovanni Paltrinieri and Loris Rabiti date the later painting to the Trecento and propose that it could have been executed in conjunction with modifications that took place at the site in the 1330s.52 Perhaps the work undertaken at the Mascarella at that time could have occasioned the decision to hang the panel from the ceiling. The installation of the tavola against a wall behind an iron grating after the 1497 theft poses further questions related to its visibility, its status as a relic, and the significance of its two painted surfaces. Such a move could have motivated the ‘varnishing’ of the earliest painting, an act perhaps taken to preserve the early record of the miracle, authenticated by the early image and its inscription. Such a display, and also the decision to conceal the earlier work, might reveal something about the later value ascribed to that painting. Rather than viewing these acts in unfavourable terms – the negation of the Duecento painting by covering it – these obliterations might instead provide insight into the sacred nature of the early painting, hinting at the perceived relationship between the wooden table and the painted image with its inscription: substance and support formed part and parcel of the same ‘relic’. The thirteenth-century painting – both the image and inscription – might have served not only to authenticate the miracle, but also to announce its presence on that very side of the panel. The evidence, moreover, suggests that early modern writers did not have access to the early painting.53 There is no direct mention of an image on the holy tavola until, so far as I am aware, the last decade of the eighteenth century.54 This then might suggest that by the fifteenth century at least, the particular association between the early image and the material object, that had initially served to define the relic, was no longer necessary to validate its status.

52 Paltrinieri and Rabiti, La chiesa parrocchiale, p. 57. The deteriorated state of this image makes attributions based on style impossible. Cannon suggests a date of ‘perhaps before the end of the fifteenth century’ in ‘Dominic “alter Christus”?’, p. 34; see also p. 45 n. 68. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting, p. 222, refers to ‘several extensions on canvas, painted probably in 15th C., imitating 13th C. style’. 53 Neither Antonio Masini nor Carlo Cesare Malvasia – both keen commenters on early cult objects as records of early painting in Bologna – mentioned the image. Francesco Cavazzoni commented on the table, but did not refer to a painting: Corona di gratie e gratie favori et miracoli della gloriosa Vergine … (1608), Bologna, Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio, MS B298, fols. 71–2. 54 Giovambattista Melloni, Vita di S. Domenico, fondatore dell’Ordine de’ Predicatori (Naples, 1791), p. 44 n. 10, noted that ‘sopra la qual tavola si vede dipinto il miracolo’. Calzoni, Storia della chiesa, p. 16, where it is described as a ‘Mensa, o sia Tavola di San Domenico’.

HOLY WOOD / ‘SACRA TAVOLA’

RELIC-BODY / IMAGE-TOMB: THE MIRACLE AND THE FIFTEENTH-CENTURY ARCA How are we to make sense of this tavola-cum-contact relic-cum-image, itself the ‘site’ of a miracle? And how might it enrich our understanding of late medieval devotional practices and early Italian panel painting? Additionally, what are the wider implications of the sacral nature of this particular reliquia dipinta and how might it contribute more broadly to our understanding of the relationship between object, relic, and image, between sacred matter and representation? The city of Bologna’s participation in the cult of Saint Dominic is documented from an early date. For example, the podestà of Bologna, Uberto Visconti, was present at the opening of Saint Dominic’s tomb in 1233, as testified by several witnesses for his canonization.55 Moreover, in 1245, Saint Dominic is listed, together with Saint Petronius (the city’s fifth-century bishop) in an official communal record and, by 1306, Dominic was declared one of the city’s patron saints.56 Indeed Mario Fanti rightly observed that by the fourteenth century Saint Dominic was the only real contender to Saint Petronius as primary patron of Bologna.57 Saint Petronius, as is well known, eventually prevailed as the city’s patron, attested to by the decision to construct the civic basilica in his honour at the end of the fourteenth century.58 Yet in the fifteenth century, the Arca of Saint Dominic was increasingly viewed as a key civic monument. The surviving 1469 contract with Nicolò ‘de partibus Apulie’ (thereafter honorifically called ‘dell’Arca’) shows that the city, with the firm support of the ruling Bentivoglio family and together with the Dominicans, played a role in financing the new additions to the monument and in selecting its imagery. The saints recorded in the commission reveal a civic iconography.59 This is evidenced by the inclusion of saints not connected to the Dominicans, but crucial to Bologna (and buried within its walls), such as Saint Petronius, and the early Bolognese martyrs, SS Vitale and Agricola. Furthermore, when Michelangelo was asked to complete the unfinished monument upon the death of Nicolò dell’Arca in 1494, the figure of the Dominican saint Thomas Aquinas listed in the original contract was replaced by that 55 Tugwell, Early Dominicans, pp. 69, 70, 71, 73, 81. 56 See Alfonso D’Amato and Venturino Alce, Bologna domenicana (Bologna, 1961), pp. 21‒2. 57 Mario Fanti, La Fabbrica di S. Petronio in Bologna dal XIV al XX secolo: storia di una istituzione (Rome, 1980), p. 33. 58 On the early civic cult of Saint Petronius see, for example, Massimo Giansante, ‘Petronio e gli altri: culti civici e culti corporativi a Bologna in età comunale’, in L’eredità culturale di Gino Fasoli, ed. Francesco Bocchi and Gian Maria Varanini (Rome, 2005), pp. 357–77. See also Jessica N. Richardson, ‘Medieval Column Crosses in Early Modern Bologna’, in Remembering the Middle Ages in Early Modern Italy, ed. Lorenzo Pericolo and Jessica N. Richardson (Turnhout, 2015), pp. 193–229. 59 The contract of 20 July 1469 is transcribed in Dodsworth, The Arca, pp. 166–75 (doc. no. 43).

29

30

JESSICA N. RICHARDSON

of Saint Procolus, an early patron of Bologna, who was buried also within its walls.60 Based on this and the other saints represented in this particular zone of the monument, Randi Klebanoff convincingly argues that the fifteenth-century Arca is ‘a fundamental monument of civic self-fashioning in Renaissance Bologna’.61 It is within the context of the civic cult of Saint Dominic that we should insert the record of the late fifteenth-century theft of the table-relic from the Mascarella. The descriptions of this event attest to tension, not only between the Dominicans and the canons at the Mascarella, but also between the Dominicans and the city. For, as noted, the citizens of Bologna are recorded to have played a role in the return of the tavola to the Mascarella from San Domenico, in procession, with the help of 400 armed men.62 Rather than a Dominican commission, the tavola di San Domenico should be understood in relation to the wider cult of Saint Dominic in Bologna and, more specifically, to his cult at two sites, Santa Maria della Mascarella and San Nicolò delle Vigne, later San Domenico. Moreover, the tavola is possibly not only the oldest monumental image of Saint Dominic, but also the earliest representation of the Miracle of the Loaves, which was an important event in the early Order’s memory. Whether the wooden table actually affected the Dominican friars’ attitude towards the cult of their founder and towards images (which would assume that the earliest painted side predates the Arca and was visible in the mid-1260s), the tavola stands as evidence for a veritable tension that existed in the second half of the thirteenth century, in Bologna, between relic and body, between the wooden table at which Dominic ate and performed a miracle and the actual bones of the saint. Indeed, it is significant that the Miracle of the Loaves appears in the painting on the table and in the monument surrounding the saint’s tomb. With the strengthening of the civic cult around the Arca from the mid-fifteenth century and the recorded theft of the tavola by the Dominican convent a few decades later, we witness the Order’s desire to obliterate the memory of the location of the miracle through possession of the wooden relic, highlighting its relevance in this period. Even more, the history of the wooden object, as presented in the written sources beginning in the fifteenth century – as a table, not as an image – might lead us to conclude something about its material value. 60 Randi Klebanoff, ‘Sacred Magnificence: Civic Intervention and the Arca of San Domenico in Bologna’, Renaissance Studies 13 (1999), 412–29, at p. 420. Barbara Dodsworth suggested instead that Saint Procolus replaced Saint Vincent Ferrer, the other saint stipulated in the contract that was never executed: Barbara Dodsworth, ‘Dominican Patronage and the Arca di San Domenico’, in Verrocchio and Late Quattrocento Italian Sculpture, ed. Steven Bule, Alan Phipps Darr, and Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi (Florence, 1992), pp. 283–90, at p. 286. On Michelangelo’s three statues, see Martha L. Dunkelman, ‘What Michelangelo Learned in Bologna’, Artibus et historiae 35 (2014), 107–35. 61 Klebanoff, ‘Sacred Magnificence’, p. 429. 62 See note 48 above.

HOLY WOOD / ‘SACRA TAVOLA’

It would seem that the importance of the early image, as such, was most significant in the thirteenth century. For this is the period when the table likely made the shift from a humble wooden object (used for meals) to a relic of Saint Dominic, the surface upon which he ate and the setting of one of his miracles. The representation of an ostensibly routine event, friars at a meal in the presence of Saint Dominic, together with the lower inscription, helped to establish these links.

OBJECT, IMAGE, RELIC Elaborating upon the long-standing discussion on the relationship between image and relic, Erik Thunø remarks that: ‘Whereas the organic, untouchable relic served as a token of authenticity and sacred power, the manufactured image could emphasize and manipulate the significance of the relic in whatever way it desired.’63 He notes, in addition, that ‘the image may … also manipulate and recharge the latter with new significance according to issues prevalent in their new context’.64 Panel paintings could ‘manipulate’ and ‘recharge’ relics in various ways, either indirectly through their subject matter and their proximity to them, or through direct contact. They could, for example, contain relics, either visible – such as crucifixes or tabernacles that have small openings in their frames which reveal them – or invisible.65 What distinguishes the tavola di San Domenico and the two panels of Saint Francis mentioned at the opening of this chapter is their intimate nature: these paintings do not merely enhance the power of a given relic, they are themselves relics, the wood from which, or rather upon which, they are created.66 These paintings do not frame or contain relics; the very 63 Erik Thunø, ‘From Holy Fragment to Material Artifact and Back: On Relic and Image in Early Medieval Visual Culture’, in The Interrelationship of Relics and Images in Christian and Buddhist Culture, ed. Akira Akiyama and Kana Tomizawa, Bulletin of Death and Life Studies 5 (2009), pp. 42–58 (at pp. 42–3). On the image / relic relationship in the West, see the excellent discussion in David F. Appleby, ‘Holy Relic and Holy Image: Saints’ Relics in the Western Controversy over Images in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries’, Word & Image 8 (1992), 333–43. 64 Thunø, ‘From Holy Fragment to Material Artifact’, p. 43. 65 For an example of the latter, see ‘Imagine antica’: Madonna and Child of Santa Maggiore in Florence. Studies and Restoration, ed. Marco Ciatti and Cecilia Frosinini (Florence, 2003), esp. the essay by Susanna Conti, ‘The Discovery of Relics and Textile Fragments in the Panel of Santa Maria Maggiore’, pp. 69–76. 66 It is worth recalling the sacred value of wood itself, as a relic, but also as a carved image. For the latter, see John T. Paoletti, ‘Wooden Sculpture in Italy as Sacral Presence’, Artibus et historiae 13 (1992), 85–100, and Christina Neilson, ‘Carving Life: The Meaning of Wood in Early Modern European Sculpture’, in The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices, Cultural Logics, c. 1250–1750, ed. Christy Anderson, Anne Dunlop, and Pamela H. Smith (Manchester, 2015), pp. 223–39. On the sacred properties of wood as image, see also Donal Cooper, ‘Projecting Presence: The Monumental Cross in the Italian Church Interior’, in Presence: The Inherence of the Prototype within Images and Other Objects, ed. Robert Maniura and Rupert Shepherd (Farnham, 2006), pp. 47–67; Anne F. Harris,

31

32

JESSICA N. RICHARDSON

substance from which they are made was considered a relic.67 Within this context, inscriptions are crucial also in defining this function. The thirteenth-century inscription once found in the lower border of the tavola di San Domenico surely referenced the miracle performed by Saint Dominic.68 Yet, unlike the coeval examples discussed, this image provided a powerful allusion to the object’s function not only through the meta-picture of the table, but through its ‘narrative’, the miracle that took place on its very surface, which strengthened its value as a locus sanctus. Here then the image, irrespective of the text, exposed and established the object’s sacred presence. What is equally striking about this case, moreover, is that at some point in its history the object functioned as a relic in its own right, independent of the initial painting and inscription that first served to define it. This was possible, I would suggest, on account of its form. For, contrary to what Patrick Geary noted about the ‘bare relic’, a ‘bone or a bit of dust’ that ‘carries no fixed code or sign of its meaning’, the long shape of the panel announced itself as a table.69 It is thus different from the other examples of reliquia dipinta mentioned in that its very shape provided its raison d’être. Such an association roughly corresponds to what Caroline Walker Bynum describes as an image that ‘depicts itself as a physical image as well as depicting what it reveals’.70 Yet this particular painting reveals itself in a double sense, the object as both the table and site of a miracle. The second and later painted side of the tavola merely reinforced this function, a function revealed first in the thirteenth-century painting. That the early image survives may be an accident of time, but the very act of hiding it might also point to its own sacred status: that it had become part and parcel of its holy substance, painted not long after the miracle and the death of Saint Dominic. In this way the early painting on the tavola di San Domenico offers a new perspective on the importance of the painted image in relation to the relic, on how image could become relic.

‘Hewn’, in Inhuman Nature, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Washington, DC, 2014), 17–38. These topics form one of my current research projects. 67 Bynum, Christian Materiality, p. 29, who does not include any of the examples discussed in this chapter. 68 For a transcription of what remained in the nineteenth century, see note 17 above. 69 Patrick J. Geary, Furta sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, 1990), p. 5. It is worth recalling the sixteenth-century panel of the Miracle of the Loaves (see note 38 above) that contains the following inscription: ‘Questo è un pez[z]o dela tavola dove ritrovandosi / il p. S. Domenico con XXXX frati sonza [sic] pane per / cibarli fatta oratione doi angeli ne portoro/no abondatemente [sic]’. 70 Bynum, Christian Materiality, p. 41.

THE SCULPTED SAINT: A STATUE OF SAINT FRANCIS IN SIENA JOHN RENNER

S

culpture is not a medium generally associated with early Franciscan art. Joanna Cannon has shown how the Dominicans used sculpted imagery on their founder’s tomb as part of a strategy to promote his cult in the second half of the thirteenth century.1 The Friars Minor, on the other hand, spread the visual image of their founder almost exclusively through frescoes and panel paintings;2 and some of the earliest sculpted This chapter derives from a case study in my doctoral thesis for The Courtauld Institute of Art, ‘The Founder’s Image: Studies in the Representation of St Francis in Central Italian Art c. 1250–c. 1350’ (2016), supervised by Joanna Cannon. Earlier versions were delivered at a graduate symposium and a conference (Art, Architecture and the Friars, 23 May 2014) at The Courtauld. I should like to record my thanks to participants for their comments, and to the editors of this volume for their help in preparing it for publication. It is presented in deepest respect and everlasting gratitude for Joanna Cannon’s inspirational guidance, exemplary scholarship, and unfailing generosity. 1 Joanna Cannon, ‘Dominican Patronage of the Arts in Central Italy: The Provincia Romana, c. 1220–c. 1320’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1980, pp. 169–82; Joanna Cannon, ‘Dominic “Alter Christus”? Representations of the Founder in and after the Arca di San Domenico’, in Christ among the Medieval Dominicans: Representations of Christ in the Texts and Images of the Order of Preachers, ed. Kent Emery and Joseph P. Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN, 1998), pp. 26–48; Joanna Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches: Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New Haven and London, 2013), pp. 99–100, 132–5. 2 Caroline Bruzelius has observed that ‘Franciscans in particular focused on painting, while the Dominicans favored sculpture, particularly in the form of the monumental tombs for the order’s saints’: Caroline Bruzelius, ‘The Architecture of the Mendicant Orders in the Middle Ages: An Overview of Recent Literature’, Perspective 2 (2012), 365–86, at p. 371. Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago and London, 1994), p. 384, has gone so far as to say that the Order ‘rejected three-dimensional sculpture’. See, however, the important re-evaluation of early Franciscan sculpture by Enrica Neri Lusanna, ‘I Francescani e la scultura’, in L’arte

3

34

JOHN RENNER

representations of Saint Francis are not in Franciscan churches but on cathedral façades in France and Spain, among the elect in Last Judgement scenes.3 Any reader of Franciscan texts, though, must be struck by their vivid and frequent use of sculptural imagery to portray the founder of the Order and his most distinctive attributes, the stigmata. Saint Francis’s body was imagined as having been melted and imprinted like wax, moulded like clay, hammered like metal or chiselled like stone.4 Saint Francis is described by his most important thirteenth-century biographer, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, as coming down from the mountain of La Verna, after his transformative vision of the Christ-Seraph, ‘bearing with him the likeness of the Crucified, depicted not on tablets of stone or on panels of wood carved by hand, but engraved on parts of his flesh by the finger of the living God’.5 In his final years ‘he was squared like a stone to be fitted into the construction of the heavenly Jerusalem, and like a work of malleable metal he was brought to perfection by the hammer of many tribulations’.6 These are metaphors, to be sure, drawing on a longstanding tradition of comparing saints to ‘living statues’, and freighted with biblical allusions intended to reveal the eschatological significance of Saint Francis’s life. But it was central to the Order’s purpose that they should be understood not just as figures of speech but as describing a corporeal reality. Francis had been physically changed on La Verna: the side wound and the nails had quite literally been carved and modelled in his flesh to transform him into an image of the crucified Christ.7

di Francesco: capolavori d’arte Italiana e terre d’Asia dal XIII al XV secolo, ed. Angelo Tartuferi and Francesco D’Arelli, exh. cat. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (Florence, 2015), pp. 115–29 (with mention of the Sienese statue on p. 123). 3 Julian Gardner, ‘Stone Saints: Commemoration and Likeness in Thirteenth-Century Italy, France, and Spain’, Gesta 46 (2007), 121–34, esp. pp. 126–7, Figs 7–9. 4 For close analyses of early descriptions of the stigmata see Ottaviano Schmucki, The Stigmata of St Francis of Assisi: A Critical Investigation in the Light of Thirteenth-Century Sources (Saint Bonaventure, NY, 1991) and Chiara Frugoni, Francesco e l’invenzione delle stimmate: una storia per parole e immagini fino a Bonaventura e Giotto (Turin, 1993). 5 Bonaventure, Legenda maior, 13:5: ‘descendit angelicus vir Franciscus de monte, secum ferens Crucifixi effigiem, non in tabulis lapideis vel ligneis manu figuratam artificis, sed in carneis membris descriptam digito Dei vivi’, in Fontes Franciscani, ed. Enrico Menestò, Stefano Brufani, and Giuseppe Cremascoli (Assisi, 1995) (hereafter FF), p. 893; translation from Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short (hereafter FAED), II (New York, 2002), p. 634. 6 Bonaventure, Legenda maior 14:3 (FF, p. 900): ‘tamquam lapis in supernae Ierusalem aedificio collocandus et tamquam ductile opus sub multiplicis tribulationis malleo ad perfectionem adductus’; translation adapted from FAED II, p. 642. 7 The idea of Francis as an image (imago or effigies) of Christ, a leitmotif in Bonaventure’s writing, is analysed in Hans Belting, ‘Saint Francis and the Body as Image: An Anthropological Approach’, in Looking Beyond: Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art & History, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton, NJ and University Park, PA, 2010), pp. 3–14. As Jacqueline Jung notes in the same volume, ‘it was not into any image of the crucified Christ that the saint transformed, but quite precisely into a sculpted one’: Jacqueline E. Jung, ‘The Tactile and the Visionary: Notes on the Place of Sculpture in the Medieval Religious Imagination’, pp. 203–40, at p. 223.

THE SCULPTED SAINT: A STATUE OF SAINT FRANCIS

Stone and malleable metal, as it happens, are the materials in which Saint Francis is sculpted in a life-size statue which now stands, on a modern pedestal, against the end wall of the right transept of the church of San Francesco in Siena (Plate III; Fig. 3.1).8 The statue is weathered and damaged by long exposure to the elements but it still shows striking naturalism in its details: the furrowed brow, the deep-set eyes (with apparent traces of polychromy), and the expressive, rather mannered hands, with their carefully observed fingernails and veins.9 The saint is bearded and barefoot, with his weight on his right foot and his left leg slightly bent, the knee flattening the folds of his habit, which fall in long lines, gathered by the cord around his waist. A metal rod is fixed into the top of his head, to which a new metal halo has recently been added. Lead bosses represent the stigmata. With his right hand the saint holds open a cavernous tear in his habit to expose the side wound, which is carved into the stone between his ribs. In his left hand he holds a book, inscribed with words from his Rule. The statue rewards mobility from the beholder, offering different facets as one walks around it. The intense gaze, the deeply framed side wound, the inscription on the book, the nailed limbs: each comes into focus in turn. Francis tilts his head forward and a little to his right, looking down, his lips parted as if about to speak. Taking inspiration from Joanna Cannon’s studies of how artworks functioned in the visual and devotional culture of mendicant convents,10 this chapter will attempt to recover something of what the saint might be saying, and to whom. The statue has generally been overlooked in surveys of Italian Gothic sculpture. Long attributed to Ramo di Paganello, a contemporary of Giovanni Pisano, and dated to the final years of the thirteenth century,11 it was reappraised as a later work during the twentieth century,12 until Antje Middeldorf Kosegarten’s fundamental article of 1994 argued convincingly 8 The statue is c. 170 cm high. 9 The main areas of loss are the nose, the little finger and part of the palm of the right hand, the index finger of the left hand, and most of the toes on the left foot. The head appears at some stage to have been broken off at the base of the neck and reattached. 10 Exemplified most recently and fully in Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches. See also Joanna Cannon, ‘The Creation, Meaning, and Audience of the Early Sienese Polyptych: Evidence from the Friars’, in Italian Altarpieces 1250–1550: Function and Design, ed. Eve Borsook and Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi (Oxford, 1994), pp. 41–79, and Joanna Cannon, ‘Giotto and Art for the Friars: Revolutions Spiritual and Artistic’, in The Cambridge Companion to Giotto, ed. Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona (Cambridge and New York, 2004), pp. 103–34. 11 Guglielmo Della Valle, Lettere senesi di un socio dell’Accademia di Fossano sopra le belle arti, I (Venice, 1782), p. 279; Luigi De Angelis, Dell’albero di S. Francesco vicino alle mura di Siena (Siena, 1827), pp. 66–7; Vittorio Lusini, Storia della Basilica di S. Francesco in Siena (Siena, 1894), p. 137. 12 Pietro Toesca, Il Trecento (Turin, 1951), p. 292 n. 62, assigned it to the late fourteenth century; Enzo Carli, L’arte nella Basilica di S. Francesco a Siena (Siena, 1971), pp. 33–4, pushed it into the early fifteenth century, suggesting Francesco da Valdambrino as possible author.

35

36

JOHN RENNER

FIG. 3.1  SAINT FRANCIS. CARVED MARBLE, EARLY FOURTEENTH CENTURY, SAN FRANCESCO, SIENA (UPPER HALF). PHOTO BY AUTHOR, BY PERMISSION OF THE SEMINARIO ARCIVESCOVILE DI SIENA.

on stylistic grounds that it was a work of the early fourteenth century: ‘the first marble statue of Saint Francis’.13 Middeldorf Kosegarten’s broader reassessment of Sienese sculpture of the period suggests that the author is to be sought among the group of masters who came to prominence after the departure from the city of Giovanni Pisano in 1297, carrying on his work on the cathedral façade but in a different idiom: one that has been seen as, in part, a reaction to Giovanni’s Gothic rhetoric.14 13 Antje Middeldorf Kosegarten, ‘Die erste Marmorstatue des heiligen Franziskus’, Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 46/47 (1994), 495–505. Her dating (c. 1300–10) is now widely accepted (see, for example, Gardner ‘Stone Saints’, p. 129 and Neri Lusanna, ‘I Francescani e la scultura’, p. 123), though I would extend the range into the second decade of the century. 14 See Antje Middeldorf Kosegarten, Sienesische Bildhauer am Duomo Vecchio: Studien

THE SCULPTED SAINT: A STATUE OF SAINT FRANCIS

The statue’s original location is unknown, but until the early twentieth century it stood above the main entrance to the church, on the façade (Fig. 3.2).15 The chronicler Sigismondo Tizio, writing in 1517, recorded its installation there, on top of the grand new portal commissioned by the guardian of the convent, Fra Luca da Montepulciano.16 That was the finishing touch to a building programme that had started almost two centuries earlier, on 13 March 1326, with the laying of a foundation stone for a new basilica that was begun to the east of the existing church of San Francesco and would extend westwards as far as its façade, gradually incorporating and ultimately replacing the smaller thirteenth-century church.17 Tizio noted ruefully that Fra Luca’s relocation of the statue exposed the marble Francis to the wind and rain, adding the valuable information that before this indignity it had stood for a long time (diu) inside the church, ‘a little above the basin of holy water by the wall’: that is, presumably, on or near the counter-façade, by the entrance.18 Tizio’s testimony can now be supplemented by an earlier reference to the statue, discovered by Donal Cooper: a will of 29 September 1408 in which the testator, a member of the Ricasoli family, asks to be buried ‘in the tomb which is in the said church of the order of the Friars Minor of Saint Francis

zur Skulptur in Siena 1250–1330 (Munich, 1984), pp. 113–28 and Antje Middeldorf Kosegarten, ‘Scultori senesi intorno al 1300 e la pittura romana ed assisiana’, in Roma anno 1300, ed. Angiola Maria Romanini (Rome, 1983), pp. 87–92. On 28 November 1310 the ruling Nine ordered that only ten (named) masters working on the cathedral, headed by Camaino di Crescentino, should be retained by the Opera del Duomo, in order to keep costs under control: the document is transcribed in Gaetano Milanesi, Documenti per la storia dell’arte senese, I (Siena, 1854), pp. 175–6. For this period see also Roberto Bartalini, Scultura gotica in Toscana: maestri, monumenti, cantieri del Due e Trecento (Milan, 2005), pp. 67–87; Scultura gotica senese, 1260–1350, ed. Roberto Bartalini (Siena, 2011); and Alessandro Bagnoli, ‘Introduzione’, in Marco Romano e il contesto artistico senese fra la fine del Duecento e gli inizi del Trecento, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli, exh. cat. Museo Civico Archeologico e della Collegiata, Casole d’Elsa (Milan, 2010), pp. 14–37 (esp. pp. 27–35). Both Bartalini (Scultura gotica in Toscana, p. 67) and Bagnoli (p. 30) use the term ‘antigiovannea’ to describe the style of Sienese sculptors working in the years after 1300, though neither mentions the statue in San Francesco. 15 Carli, L’arte nella Basilica, p. 31 and Figs 6, 11. 16 Sigismondo Tizio, Historiarum Senensium, VIII (1515–20): Siena, Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, MS B III: entry recording Fra Luca’s death, 8 February 1517, quoted by Lusini, Storia della Basilica, p. 137 n. 2, and Carli, L’arte nella Basilica, p. 32. 17 The foundation stone was laid by the cardinal legate, Giovanni Gaetano Orsini: Lusini, Storia della Basilica, pp. 77–8. For the building history of San Francesco see Mauro Mussolin, ‘La chiesa di San Francesco a Siena: impianto originario e fasi di cantiere’, Bullettino senese di storia patria 106 (1999), 115–55. The western façade of the thirteenthcentury church was still apparently intact (and statue-less) when it was depicted by Sano di Pietro in the mid-fifteenth-century panel of Saint Bernardino Preaching before the Basilica of San Francesco (Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena). 18 Tizio, Historiarum Senensium (as note 16 above): ‘… Francisci simulacro marmoreo, quod diu intus steterat paulo supra aquae benedictae labrum, secus parietam …’ Both Lusini, Storia della Basilica, p. 138 and Carli, L’arte nella Basilica, p. 33, understood Tizio to mean that the statue stood ‘sulla pila dell’acqua benedetta a man destra … appena entrati in chiesa’.

37

38

JOHN RENNER

in Siena by the marble figure of Saint Francis’.19 Assuming that this refers to our statue, the will confirms that it was inside the church as far back as the early fifteenth century, though we have no information about where the Ricasoli tomb was located. It is quite possible, as Mauro Mussolin has argued, that the thirteenth-century church was still largely extant and in use at that date, with the protracted building work on the new church going on around it.20 It is worth noting that the Dominicans had a sculpture of one of their saints made in the early fourteenth century for, presumably, their convent in Siena. The life-size wooden figure of Thomas Aquinas (Fig. 3.3), now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, has lost its gesso and polychromy and is badly worm-eaten; like the FIG. 3.2  MARBLE STATUE OF SAINT FRANCIS PHOTOGRAPHED marble Saint Francis, though, ABOVE THE FORMER MAIN PORTAL OF SAN FRANCESCO, SIENA, Aquinas is holding an open book, BEFORE 1913. PHOTO: AFTER E. CARLI, L’ARTE NELLA BASILICA DI S. which presumably once bore FRANCESCO A SIENA (SIENA, 1971). an extract from his theological works.21 The context for that figure is also lost; but there are two documented examples from the early fifteenth century of wooden figures of Saint Francis at the entrances of choir enclosures in Franciscan churches in Ferrara and (probably) Bologna.22 A similar position or liminal function cannot be ruled out for 19 For this document, see Chapter 6 by Donal Cooper in this volume, p. 105 note 78. 20 Mussolin, ‘La chiesa’, pp. 126–7. 21 The figure of Thomas Aquinas (166 cm high), by an unknown Sienese sculptor, is dated c. 1323 (the year of his canonisation) by Alessandro Bagnoli in Scultura dipinta: maestri di legname e pittori a Siena, 1250–1450, ed. Alessandro Angelini, exh. cat. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena (Florence, 1987), pp. 49–51, cat. no. 9; see also Marco Romano, pp. 222–5. The figure shares many stylistic similarities with the marble Saint Francis, notwithstanding differences in material and condition: e.g. the way the slim figure is elongated in slight contrapposto, left leg bent; the narrow shoulders under a voluminous hood; the depth of carving around the neck and in the folds of cloth; the heavily lidded oval eyes and parted lips; and the corrugated ridge of the tonsure. 22 Noted by Donal Cooper, ‘Experiencing Dominican and Franciscan Churches in

FIG. 3.3  SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS. CARVED WOOD, C. 1323, PINACOTECA NAZIONALE, SIENA. PHOTO BY AUTHOR, BY PERMISSION OF THE MINISTERO DELLA CULTURA, DIREZIONE REGIONALE MUSEI DELLA TOSCANA.

40

JOHN RENNER

our statue. On the other hand, a conventual location such as the chapter house or cloister – as has sometimes been suggested on the basis of its inscription with the Franciscan Rule23 – seems unlikely, on the evidence of Tizio’s chronicle and the Ricasoli will. The rebuilding of the church left those areas of the convent largely unaffected until their remodelling in a classical style in 1517, compromising the frescoes by Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti that adorned them.24 There would have been little reason to move it from the convent before then, especially to a church in the process of demolition and reconstruction. It was probably inside the church of San Francesco from the start. At any rate, the relocation outside in the early sixteenth century may have saved it, despite Tizio’s fears. The interior of the church was gutted by fire in 1655 with the loss of most of its rich array of furnishings and artworks.25 Reconstructed in the baroque style after the fire,26 San Francesco suffered further in the nineteenth century when it was deconsecrated and used as a barracks, before being thoroughly stripped and ‘restored’ from the 1880s, giving it the neo-Gothic, barn-like appearance it retains to this day.27 For almost 400 years, through most of this turbulent history, the statue stood undisturbed above the imposing Renaissance doorway, until the façade was remodelled again at the beginning of the twentieth century. The portal was then removed and the stone Saint Francis was brought back into the church, where it now stands in the transept, between two confessionals. To understand more about how the statue might have been viewed we must rely on the clues legible within the stone itself. It comes with its own textual commentary: the message on the open book (Fig. 3.1). The inscription reads: REGULA ET VITA SANCTI FRANCISCI HEC Renaissance Italy’, in Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy, ed. Trinita Kennedy, exh. cat. Frist Center for the Visual Arts (Nashville, 2014), pp. 47–61 (at p. 56). Neither figure survives. 23 Gardner, ‘Stone Saints’, p. 130; Middeldorf Kosegarten, ‘Die erste Marmorstatue’, p. 498. On (painted) images of saints and founders in fourteenth-century mendicant chapter houses and cloisters, see Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches, pp. 177–99. 24 The dated inscription recording the remodelling of the cloister arcade by Girolamo Piccolomini is transcribed in Lusini, Storia della Basilica, p. 143 n. 1. 25 It may have been then that what was perhaps the most notable monument in the original church, the tomb-shrine of the Sienese comb-seller and mystic, the Blessed Pietro Pettinaio, was definitively lost. Two weeks after his death in 1289, the ruling Council of the Nine voted two hundred lire to erect ‘unum sepulchrum nobile’ for his body in San Francesco, and the commune sponsored an annual celebration of his feast well into the fourteenth century: see, most recently, Carlo Agricoli, Pier Pettinaio nella Siena duecentesca (Siena, 2014) (on the tomb, pp. 233–90) and Lucy Donkin, ‘Following the Footsteps of Christ in Late Medieval Italy: Pietro Pettinaio’s Vision of St Francis’, Word & Image 32 (2016), 163–80. 26 Described in Daniela Arrigucci, ‘La ricostruzione della basilica di San Francesco dopo l’incendio del 1655: gli interventi di Benedetto Giovannelli Orlandi e di Pietro Giambelli’, Bullettino senese di storia patria 112 (2006), 564–79. 27 See Jader Bertini, Notizie intorno ai restauri artistici fatti nel tempio di S. Francesco in Siena dal 1883–1894 (Siena, 1894) (included as an appendix to Lusini, Storia della Basilica).

THE SCULPTED SAINT: A STATUE OF SAINT FRANCIS

EST SCILICET DOMINI JESU CHRISTI SANCTUM EVANGELIUM OBSERVARE VIVENDO IN OBEDIENTIA SINE PROPRIO ET IN CASTITATE (‘The Rule and Life of Saint Francis is this: to observe the Holy Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ by living in obedience, without anything of one’s own, and in chastity’). These are (slightly adapted) the opening words of the Rule written by Francis and approved by Pope Honorius III in 1223, the so-called Regula bullata.28 Earlier images of Saint Francis had generally alluded to the Regula bullata only indirectly, in the form of closed books which might represent the Rule or the Gospels. The ambiguity was probably deliberate, since the Rule (as its opening words imply) was essentially nothing more, in the intention of its author, than an injunction to live by the Gospel. When the Rule is explicitly depicted, as in the fresco of The Approval of the Rule in the Upper Church nave at San Francesco, Assisi, Saint Francis tends to be the humble supplicant, receiving instructions from the hands of the pope.29 By contrast, the Sienese statue shows Francis unequivocally as the author of the Rule. The subtle shift in the wording underlines the message. The official text begins: ‘regula et vita minorum fratrum’ (‘the rule and life of the Friars Minor’); here it becomes the ‘regula et vita sancti Francisci’. The change cannot have been made lightly, given the totemic nature of this text. It seems to imply two things: firstly, that Saint Francis is the origin, even the living embodiment, of the Rule; and secondly, that he is speaking to a wider audience than just his friars. By the early fourteenth century, as that original audience would have been well aware, the Rule had become a highly controversial subject: the interpretation of its central tenets lay at the heart of the increasingly bitter disputes that were dividing the Order between the mainstream ‘Community’, or ‘Conventuals’, and the dissident ‘Spirituals’, or fraticelli.30 The injunction to observe the Rule ad litteram and sine glossa became a slogan for the Spirituals, whose main centres were in Provence and Tuscany.31 As Anna Ini has shown, the Spirituals could count on a degree 28 For the text of the Regula bullata see FF, pp. 171–81. 29 This scene is discussed extensively in Donal Cooper and Janet Robson, The Making of Assisi: The Pope, the Franciscans and the Painting of the Basilica (New Haven and London, 2013), pp. 205–6; and by Chiara Frugoni, Quale Francesco? Il messaggio nascosto negli affreschi della Basilica superiore ad Assisi (Turin, 2015), pp. 260–74. 30 See John R.H. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order: From its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford, 1968), pp. 188–204, and David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (University Park, PA, 2001), esp. pp. 43–65 (and for helpful clarification of the terminology of ‘Spirituals’, ‘Conventuals’ etc. see pp. vii–x, 39–41). 31 Francis himself had forbidden his friars, in his Testament, to place any gloss on the words of the Rule given to him by Christ. But living simply ‘according to the Gospel’ proved impractical for a rapidly growing order, and less than four years after the saint’s death Pope Gregory IX (in the bull Quo elongati of 28 September 1230) declared the Testament non-binding on Francis’s successors. Competing commentaries on the Rule, and further papal bulls attempting to draw a line under the increasingly fractious debates,

41

42

JOHN RENNER

of sympathy and backing in Siena; in 1308 a petition arguing their case was sent from ‘the population of Siena’ to Pope Clement V,32 and while the extent of Spiritual feeling among the friars should certainly not be exaggerated, two statements in support of the ‘Frati Spirituali della povera vita’ are recorded as having been made in the convent of San Francesco.33 In 1312 a group of around eighty rebel friars from the Franciscan custodies of Siena, Florence and Arezzo (advised by a Sienese canon, ‘Martino’) took matters into their own hands; they seized the convents at Arezzo, Asciano and Carmignano, expelled their guardians and vowed to live in conformity with the Rule.34 Papal pressure was relentless, however, and on 24 May 1314 a solemn declaration of excommunication of thirty-seven Tuscan fraticelli was read out in Siena Cathedral. Their leader (‘the principal head, author and inventor of much evil, disobedience and scandal’)35 was named as Fra Giacomo (Jacobus) da San Gimignano – to whom renewed attention is now being paid as the putative author of the Meditationes vitae Christi, long attributed to Bonaventure.36 The next six names on the list were Sienese friars, including two from the powerful Piccolomini family.37 The rebels, defeated, fled to Sicily.38 To erect a statue of Saint Francis inscribed with the opening words of the Rule in these troubled years was therefore, at the very least, to

were issued throughout the rest of the thirteenth century: see Rosalind B. Brooke, The Image of St Francis: Responses to Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 77–101, and Bert Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before the Council of Trent (Leiden, 2004), pp. 120–40. 32 Anna Ini, ‘Gli spirituali in Toscana’, in Eretici e ribelli del XIII e XIV sec.: saggi sullo spiritualismo francescano in Toscana, ed. Domenico Maselli (Pistoia, 1974), pp. 233–52 (p. 235 n. 7). The relevant documents are transcribed in Anna M. Ini, ‘Nuovi documenti sugli spirituali in Toscana’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 66 (1973), 305–77. 33 Ini, ‘Gli spirituali’, p. 238. See also Chapter 6 by Donal Cooper in this volume. 34 Ini, ‘Gli spirituali’, p. 237. 35 ‘Fratrem Iacob de Sancto Geminianio, tamquam principale caput et auctorem, et inventorem multorum malorum, et inobedientiae ac scandalorum’: cited, with a list of the rebels, in Lusini, Storia della Basilica, pp. 76–7. 36 Proposed by Dávid Falvay and Péter Tóth, ‘L’autore e la trasmissione delle Meditationes vitae Christi in base a manoscritti volgari italiani’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 108 (2015), 403–30. See also Dávid Falvay and Péter Tóth, ‘New Light on the Date and Authorship of the Meditationes Vitae Christi’, in Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe: Diverse Imaginations of Christ’s Life, ed. Stephen Kelly and Ryan Perry (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 17–105. For a different view of the authorship, see Sarah McNamer, ‘The Author of the Italian Meditations on the Life of Christ’, in New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall, ed. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, John J. Thompson, and Sarah Baechle (Notre Dame, IN, 2014), pp. 119–37. New documentary evidence is introduced into the debate by Donal Cooper, ‘Fra Jacopo in the Archives: San Gimignano as a Context for the Meditations on the Life of Christ’, in The ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi’ Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Text and Image, ed. Holly Flora and Péter Tóth (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 17–42. 37 Ini, ‘Gli spirituali’, pp. 239, 245. 38 Ini, ‘Gli spirituali’, pp. 246–52; for the later history of the Spirituals in Tuscany see Sandra Poggi, ‘I fraticelli in Toscana’, in Eretici e ribelli del XIII e XIV sec., pp. 253–83.

THE SCULPTED SAINT: A STATUE OF SAINT FRANCIS

demonstrate a boldness about entering an area of live controversy. All friars, whatever their sympathies, might have been heartened by such a clear and unapologetic restatement of the foundational values of the Order. Those on the Spiritual wing, though, would doubtless have disapproved of doing so in an extravagant piece of marble statuary.39 They might also have noted the ample sculpted habit, falling in heavy folds to the floor. The friars’ dress was one of the external symbols of allegiance in the bitter dispute over the vow of poverty; vilitas in clothing was enjoined by the Order’s constitutions, but there were degrees of lowliness.40 Pope John XXII (r. 1316–34) – who became the most ruthless suppressor of the rebel friars as he lost patience with the interminable disputes over the Rule – complained that the Spirituals insisted on going about in ‘short, tight, unusual and squalid habits’, in defiance of their superiors.41 That the sculpted saint is literally garbed in robes of orthodoxy suggests an attempt to reclaim the Rule for the mainstream of the Order, and to do so through the personal authority of Saint Francis himself. Seen against this background, the statue begins to look like a rappel à l’ordre by the Community. Nonetheless, while the troubled historical circumstances of the early years of the fourteenth century may well have played a part in the commissioning of this sculpture (and would certainly have coloured its reception), it would be reductive to read it in exclusively political terms. The formal and material qualities of the statue speak a language that is as much metaphorical and allusive as it is didactic. If the open book addresses the viewer, the open robe does so just as insistently. The codex and the rent in the cloth – the Rule and the wound – are both proffered by Saint Francis; but the beholder is especially prompted towards the side wound by the downward turn of the saint’s head to his right, reminiscent of the way that Christ looks down over his bleeding torso on contemporary crucifixes.42 The eye is drawn to the 39 See the denunciations of the Order’s laxness and extravagance in everything from buildings to dress by Ubertino da Casale, the leading Spiritual spokesman at the Council of Vienne (1311–12), detailed in Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, pp. 115–34. 40 The 1260 Constitutions of Narbonne, drawn up under Bonaventure’s direction, state: ‘Cum regula dicat quod fratres omnes vestimentis vilibus induantur, statuimus ut vestimentorum vilitas attendatur in pretio pariter et colore’: Constitutiones generales Ordinis Fratrum Minorum. I: saeculum XIII, ed. Cesare Cenci and Georges Mailleux, Analecta Franciscana 13 (Grottaferrata, 2007), p. 71. By the early fourteenth century general chapters of the Order were stressing that vilitas was a matter for the superiors, not for individual friars, to define; e.g. Assisi, 1316: ‘Ordinamus quod hec vilitas attendatur iudicio prelatorum’: Constitutiones generales Ordinis Fratrum Minorum. II: saeculum XIV/1, ed. Cesare Cenci and Georges Mailleux, Analecta Franciscana 17 (Grottaferrata, 2010), p. 63. 41 From the bull Quorundum exigit, 7 October 1317. John XXII was eventually to brand the Rule a lie by declaring that the Franciscans did own property, whatever they might claim; and furthermore, that the belief (held by every Franciscan) that Christ and his apostles owned nothing was heretical. See Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, pp. 196, 275–7. 42 On Christ’s gaze from sculpted crucifixes, his open mouth echoing the open wound in his side, see Peter Dent, ‘A Window for the Pain: Surface, Interiority and Christ’s Flagellated Skin in Late Medieval Sculpture’, in Flaying in the Pre-Modern World: Practice

43

44

JOHN RENNER

deeply sculpted opening and then into its shaded hollows, only fully visible from a position under the direct gaze of the saint (Fig. 3.4). The wound itself is portrayed as a horizontal groove between the prominent ribs. It is framed by the rent in Francis’s habit, drawn open by his right hand (now missing its little finger and part of the palm). A visual focus of remarkable intensity is created in the nexus of glance, gesture and the pointed oval of the rent cloth, framing and sacralising the wound like a mandorla. In shape it recalls a magnified version of Christ’s own side wound: the quasi-vaginal opening in the sacred body which Franciscan mystics like James of Milan imagined as a site of adoration, entry, exploration, and rebirth.43 The gesture of ostentatio vulneris relates Francis to the figure of the Risen Christ in scenes of the Incredulity of Thomas, where Jesus parts his robe to allow the apostle to touch his wounded side;44 or, as Middeldorf Kosegarten pointed out, to thirteenth-century German Deesis groups where Christ displays the wound to the rapt gaze of the Virgin.45 Saint Francis is first represented performing a similar action in a fresco in the Upper Church at Assisi of a posthumous miracle, the Dream of Pope Gregory IX,46 showing how the pope’s doubts about the side wound were overcome when Saint Francis appeared to him while he slept, and filled a vial with blood.47 This gesture of bodily self-revelation – exposing the wound by pulling apart a rent in the habit – reappears in Simone Martini’s and Representation, ed. Larissa Tracy (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 208–39, esp. pp. 237–8; and Dent, ‘Looking Up in Judgement: How to See the Early Modern Statue through the Late Medieval Crucifix in Italy’, in Public Statues across Time and Cultures, ed. Christopher P. Dickenson (New York and Abingdon, 2021), pp. 121–46, esp. 128–32. See also Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches, pp. 163–73, for how sculpted crucifixes were viewed in mendicant churches. 43 As described in his Stimulus amoris, dateable to the early 1290s, especially the headily mystical Chapter 14, which is reprinted, with English translation by Hugh Eller, in Franciscan Christology: Selected Texts, Translations and Introductory Essays, ed. Damian McElrath (Saint Bonaventure, NY, 1980), pp. 98–107. On the implications of the side wound as a point of entry into Christ’s body see Flora Lewis, ‘The Wound in Christ’s Side and the Instruments of the Passion: Gendered Experience and Response’, in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane H.M. Taylor (London, Toronto and Buffalo, NY, 1997), pp. 204–29, and Martha Easton, ‘The Wound of Christ, the Mouth of Hell: Appropriations and Inversions of Female Anatomy in the Later Middle Ages’, in Tributes to Jonathan J.G. Alexander: The Making and Meaning of Illuminated Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts, Art & Architecture, ed. Susan L’Engle and Gerald B. Guest (London, 2006), pp. 395–409. 44 A contemporary Sienese example is to be found among the Passion scenes on Duccio’s Maestà (1308–11) now in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena. 45 For example, those in the cathedrals of Mainz and Naumberg; see Middeldorf Kosegarten, ‘Die erste Marmorstatue’, p. 501 (citing Mainz). 46 The miracle is told by Bonaventure, Legenda maior: miracula, 1:2 (FF, pp. 913–14; FAED II, p. 651). For the fresco see Cooper and Robson, Making of Assisi, pp. 144–5, and Frugoni, Quale Francesco, pp. 391–4. 47 A relief sculpture of the scene, probably from a lost tomb made around 1300 and clearly modelled on the fresco at Assisi, is still in San Francesco, Siena: see Antje Middeldorf Kosegarten, ‘Beiträge zur sienesischen Reliefkunst des Trecento’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 12 (1966), 207–24 (at pp. 216–21).

FIG. 3.4  SAINT FRANCIS. CARVED MARBLE, EARLY FOURTEENTH CENTURY, SAN FRANCESCO, SIENA (VIEW FROM BELOW). PHOTO BY AUTHOR, BY PERMISSION OF THE SEMINARIO ARCIVESCOVILE DI SIENA.

46

JOHN RENNER

fresco of a standing Saint Francis in the entrance arch to the Saint Martin Chapel at Assisi, dated to the second decade of the fourteenth century (Fig. 3.5).48 Removed from a narrative context, as it is both in Simone’s fresco and our statue, the gesture is an emphatic demonstration of Francis’s conformity to the crucified Christ.49 The sculptor’s representation of the stigmata in Francis’s hands and feet is highly distinctive. These nailmarks gave artists more of a problem than the side wound. Painters usually resorted to simple black or red dots; sculptors often drilled small holes. Neither method was a very satisfactory rendering of the textual sources, which described the stigmata in the saint’s hands and feet not as piercings in his flesh but as outgrowths from it. Each retelling added further, tactile detail. Thomas of Celano’s Tractatus de miraculis, for instance, written between 1250 and 1252, has this description of the sight that greeted the townsfolk of Assisi who flocked to see the saint’s body at his death: They observed the blessed body adorned with the stigmata of Christ: not the holes of the nails, but the nails themselves, in the middle of his hands and feet, marvellously fashioned by divine power from his own flesh, in fact, grown in the flesh itself. From whatever point they were pressed, simultaneously, as if a single tendon, they pulsed at the opposite end. They also saw his side stained red with blood.50

In representing the stigmata by lead bosses inserted into the marble, the sculptor of the Sienese statue found a direct, material way to reproduce the phenomena described in the texts. This is metal imitating flesh (the body of Francis) that in turn imitated metal (the nails of the Crucifixion). The medium embodies the message, assimilating the stigmata not just to the wounds of Christ but also to their instruments, the arma Christi.51 48 The motif was quickly taken up in the circle of Simone Martini: e.g. the small panel of Saint Francis in the Pinacoteca, Siena, inv. no. 49, attributed to Lippo Memmi; see Simone Martini e ‘chompagni’, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli and Luciano Bellosi, exh. cat. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena (Florence, 1985), cat. no. 13. Stylistic similarities between the statue and various figures by Simone Martini are noted by Antje Middeldorf Kosegarten, ‘Simone Martini e la scultura senese contemporanea’, in Simone Martini: atti del Convegno, Siena 27–28 March 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), pp. 193–202; and Gardner, ‘Stone Saints’, p. 130. 49 The description of Francis as ‘quasi alter Christus’ (‘like another Christ’) would shortly begin to appear in Franciscan hagiography; the first instance occurs in the Actus beati Francisci et sociorum eius, a compilation of anecdotes probably written in the Marches between 1327 and 1337: ‘verissimus servus Dei Franciscus, quia in quibusdam fuit quasi alter Christus datus in mondo’ (FF, p. 2098). 50 Thomas of Celano, Tractatus de miraculis beati Francisci, 4:5 (FAED II, p. 403); ‘Cernebant beatum corpus Christi stigmatibus decoratum, in manibus videlicet et pedibus non clavorum puncturas, sed ipsos clavos ex eius carne virtute divina mirifice fabrefactos, immo carni eidem innatos, qui dum a parte qualibet premerentur, protinus quasi nervi continui ad partem oppositum resultabant. Latus quoque videbant sanguine rubicatum’ (FF, p. 649). This passage is repeated almost word for word by Bonaventure (Legenda maior, 15:2; FAED II, pp. 645–6). 51 The device may have been suggested by the mimetic ‘nails’ in the Crucifixion scene of

FIG. 3.5  SIMONE MARTINI, SAINTS ANTHONY OF PADUA AND FRANCIS. FRESCO, C. 1315–19, SAINT MARTIN CHAPEL, LOWER CHURCH, BASILICA OF SAN FRANCESCO, ASSISI. PHOTO: GERHARD RUF AND WWW.ASSISI.DE.

48

JOHN RENNER

Beyond mimesis, though, it also evokes the most common metaphor used for the stigmata: as seals. The idea that human souls were like soft wax, receiving the imprint of God’s seal, was a well-worn trope in Christian theological and mystical writing;52 but it gained new force in the case of Francis, whose ‘sealing’ left uniquely physical evidence on his body. Dante famously called the stigmata the ultimate seal (‘l’ultimo sigillo’) of Francis’s sanctity.53 He took the image from Bonaventure, who used several words to liken the stigmata to seals – bulla, sigillum, signum, signaculum – conveying a spectrum of meaning, citation and association.54 The lead ‘nails’ on the statue are literally bullae: ‘bosses’ or ‘studs’, in the original meaning of the Latin word,55 which came to denote the lead seals attached to papal documents and thereby, synecdochically, the documents themselves: papal bulls. For Bonaventure the stigmata of Saint Francis were precisely comparable: ‘the stigmata of our Lord Jesus Christ were imprinted on him by the finger of the living God, as the seal (bulla) of the Supreme Pontiff, Christ, for the complete confirmation of the Rule and the commendation of its author’.56 The sculpted saint is portrayed, one might say, as Franciscus bullatus. The metaphor is further recalled in the distinctive pointed oval form of the rent in the cloth around his side wound, shaped like a seal (sigillum, signaculum), the stone folds resembling the raised ridges of molten wax pushed out by the impress of a matrix.57 The mimetic lability of the material Nicola Pisano’s Pisa baptistery pulpit (signed and dated 1260). It reappears in a Franciscan context in the tomb of Guarnerio degli Antelminelli in San Francesco, Sarzana, c. 1328, by the Pisan sculptor Giovanni di Balduccio. Here the sculptor has inserted identical lead ‘nails’ into the palms of a bust-length Saint Francis on the side of the sarcophagus and of the Man of Sorrows on the front: see Peter R. Dent, ‘The Body of Christ in FourteenthCentury Tuscan Sculpture’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute, University of London, 2005, p. 74. 52 Twelfth-century uses of seal imagery in religious literature are discussed by Rachel Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (New York, 2002), pp. 244–88. 53 Paradiso, Canto XI, line 107: ‘nel crudo sasso intra Tevero e Arno / da Cristo prese l’ultimo sigillo, / che le sue membra due anni portarno’. 54 In two paragraphs alone of the Prologue to the Legenda maior, Bonaventure refers to Saint Francis as the Angel of the Sixth Seal (sexti sigilli), bearing the seal of the living God (signum Dei vivi), and as the seal of the likeness of the living God (signaculum similitudinis Dei viventis), quoting Revelations and Ezekiel respectively (FF, pp. 778–9). Bonaventure’s sermons on Saint Francis also make extensive play with the language of sealing; e.g. one delivered in Paris on 4 October 1266 on a text from Haggai 2:23: ‘ponam te quasi signaculum’: Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Doctoris Seraphici S. Bonaventurae … Opera Omnia, IX (Quaracchi, 1901), pp. 573–5 (‘De S. Patre Nostro Francisco, Sermo 1’); trans. in FAED II, pp. 731–6. 55 It is only in this sense that the word occurs in the Vulgate. 56 Bonaventure, Legenda maior 4:10 (FAED II, p. 559); ‘impressa sunt ei stigmata Domini Iesu digito Dei vivi tamquam bulla summi Pontificis Christi ad confirmationem omnimodam regulae et commendationem auctoris’ (FF, p. 813). See also Legenda maior 15:8, where Francis’s body is ‘sacer … thesaurus, bulla Regis altissimi consignatus’ (FF, p. 910) (‘a sacred … treasure, marked with the seal of the Most High King’: FAED II, p. 648). 57 The imagery of Franciscan seals is explored by Ruth Wolff, ‘The Sealed Saint:

THE SCULPTED SAINT: A STATUE OF SAINT FRANCIS

can be seen as an analogue for the transfiguration of Saint Francis by the ‘enkindling of his soul…with a seraphic ardour’, in Bonaventure’s phrase, ‘as if the liquefying power of fire preceded the impression of the seal’.58 The lead bullae and stone sigillum translate terms for the stigmata that would have been familiar to every friar into material, even tactile, form – at once mimetic and metaphorical. It may not be possible to recover the original context of the statue in San Francesco, but we can imagine the sheer physical presence of this stone saint with his lead stigmata, looking down over the deep-gouged gash in his side like a crucified Christ, and holding open the book of the Rule as if it were another window onto his inscribed and sculpted body. I have argued in this chapter that the Sienese statue of Saint Francis communicates to its viewers by means of its materials, the physical quality of its surfaces and the naturalism in its details, rather than simply by direct reference to established models or textual sources, important though those might be for a full understanding of its messages. In this way the statue confirms its place, I believe, as a key document in the creation of a new kind of art in the early fourteenth century, reflecting the growth of an affective and empathetic spirituality in clerical and lay viewers alike. Jacqueline Jung has drawn attention to the role of sculpted images, ‘which appealed to the sense of touch more directly and vividly than any other medium’, in moulding imaginative perception in the later Middle Ages.59 This form of response to images was especially highly developed in Franciscan circles in the early fourteenth century, reinforced and mirrored by devotional writings such as the Meditationes vitae Christi and the Stimulus amoris.60 As Joanna Cannon has taught us, it is above all in the practices and beliefs of the friars and their congregations that we should locate the meaning of artworks in mendicant convents. In that context the Sienese statue can be seen as an affirmation of the fundamental significance of the Rule of Saint Francis, sealed by the miraculous stigmata. The statue makes the Order’s founder visibly, even tangibly, present, so as to impress the stigmata on the mind of the beholder as emphatically as they were on the body of the saint. Representations of Saint Francis of Assisi on Medieval Italian Seals’, in Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, ed. Noël Adams, John Cherry, and James Robinson (London, 2008), pp. 91–9. See also Ruth Wolff, ‘Auctoritas und Berührung: Die Porziuncola-Tafel des Franziskusmeisters und der Franziskus- und Christuszyklus in der Unterkirche von San Francesco in Assisi’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 58 (2016), 131–55, where the painted stigmata on a thirteenth-century panel of Saint Francis are interpreted as seals (pp. 138–9). 58 Bonaventure, Legenda minor 6:2 (FAED II, p. 710): ‘tamquam si ad ignis liquefactivam virtutem praeambulam sigillativa quaedam esset impressio subsecuta’ (FF, p. 1001). 59 Jung, ‘The Tactile and the Visionary’, p. 206. 60 On the role of these influential works in training the imaginative perception in latemedieval devotion see Michelle Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago and London, 2011), pp. 141–78, and Chapter 5, by Michaela Zöschg, in this volume.

49

GUCCIO DI MANNAIA AND THE CONCEPT OF A ‘FRANCISCAN’ CHALICE GLYN DAVIES

T

he role of the mendicant orders in the development of central Italian painting during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries has been a recurring subject of debate within art history; indeed, Joanna Cannon’s research has shed much light on this area. Her work on issues of poverty, the development and dissemination of new forms, and Sienese altarpiece design has been highly influential. Alongside these art historical debates, liturgical historians have similarly examined the Franciscan Order’s contribution to developments in liturgy during the same period. It is perhaps strange, then, that rather less attention has been paid to the liturgical vessels produced for mendicant use in general, and the Franciscans in particular. This observation must be tempered by the acknowledgement that one object has provoked much discussion. The extraordinary status of the chalice (Plate IV) created by the Sienese goldsmith Guccio di Mannaia for the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi on behalf of Pope Nicholas IV has long been acknowledged, and indeed its reputation continues to increase. In 2014, for example, following a campaign of restoration and scientific study of the chalice, a monograph was produced dedicated to this single object, one of the most celebrated pieces of the goldsmith’s art to have been produced in the later Middle Ages.1 The chalice bears two inscriptions, the first naming Guccio as the This essay is offered to Joanna in gratitude for her constant support, advice and engagement with my research on Sienese goldsmiths’ work over many years. I should also like to thank Michaela Zöschg for her generous assistance with image permissions. 1 Il calice di Guccio di Mannaia nel Tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi: storia e restauro, ed. Flavia Callori di Vignale and Ulderico Santamaria (Vatican City, 2014). The earlier bibliography on the chalice is too extensive to list here, but a summary of recent work includes: Julian Gardner, The Roman Crucible: The Artistic Patronage of the Papacy

4

52

GLYN DAVIES

chalice’s maker, while the second names the patron, Pope Nicholas IV.2 Unlike the gifts of liturgical apparatus given by Nicholas to the Basilica at Assisi immediately after his coronation as Pope, which seem to have been objects already in existence, the specifically Franciscan character of the chalice’s iconography as well as the inclusion of an image of Nicholas himself as Pope strongly suggest that it was a commission specifically undertaken for presentation to San Francesco.3 In this respect, it is similar to the embroidered altar decoration presented by Nicholas to the Basilica in 1289, a gift that was commemorated in its own bull, Excimatur ab intimis.4 Although undocumented, it is possible that the gift of the chalice might have followed a similar timetable. Guccio’s chalice is the earliest surviving example to present a new type of form, more vertical, more architectural in inspiration and making extensive use of figurative enamels, in a definitive split from the types of chalices in use during the thirteenth century. Thirteenth-century chalices were for the most part rather plain, and their form was remarkably consistent across much of western Europe. Such chalices were low, with wide cups, and circular, almost conical, feet. There was no stem, simply a knop. A number of examples of such chalices survive in Italy, one of the most important (since it can be dated with some confidence) being another chalice at the Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi, which has always been credited as that used by Saint 1198–1304 (Munich, 2013), pp. 164–7; Opere firmate nell’arte italiana. Medioevo. Sezione: Siena e artisti senesi. Gli orafi, ed. Maria Monica Donato, special issue of Opera Nomina Historiae, Giornale di cultura artistica, 5–6 (2011–12), pp. 19–26, cat. no. 1.S.1; Irene Hueck, ‘Die Entwicklung des gotischen Messkelchs in Italien und seine Darstellungen in der Malerei’, in Zeremoniell und Raum in der frühen italienischen Malerei, ed. Stefan Weppelmann (Petersberg, 2007), pp. 52–9; Arnolfo di Cambio: una rinascita nell’Umbria medievale, ed. Vittoria Garibaldi and Bruno Toscano, exh. cat. Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia (Milan, 2005), pp. 180–1; Assisi non più Assisi: il tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco, ed. Giovanni Morello, exh. cat. Museo di Sant’Eustorgio, Milan (Milan, 1999), pp. 154–5; Elisabetta Cioni, Scultura e smalto nell’oreficeria senese dei secoli XIII e XIV (Florence, 1998), pp. 8–57; Pierluigi Leone de Castris, ‘Sull’enigma dello stile di Guccio’, in Oreficerie e smalti in Europa fra XIII e XV secolo: atti del convegno di studi Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 7–8 novembre 1996, ed. Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 2, ser. 4 (Pisa, 1997), pp. 13–19; Marina di Berardo, ‘Guccio di Mannaia’, Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale, ed. Angiola Maria Romanini, VII (Rome, 1996), pp. 146–50; Elisabetta Cioni, ‘Guccio di Mannaia e l’esperienza del gotico transalpino’, in Il gotico europeo in Italia, ed. Valentino Pace and Martina Bagnoli (Naples, 1994), pp. 311–23. 2 For further discussion of the inscriptions, see Il calice di Guccio di Mannaia nel Tesoro, pp. 109–26, and Opere firmate nell’arte italiana, pp. 19–26, cat. no. 1.S.1. 3 The gifts given in 1288 included a number of silver liturgical vessels. See Donal Cooper and Janet Robson, The Making of Assisi: The Pope, the Franciscans and the Painting of the Basilica (New Haven, 2013), p. 36. 4 The embroidery, which does not survive, depicted both narrative scenes from the life of Saint Francis, and figures within barbed quatrefoil frames. For discussions, see Cooper and Robson, The Making of Assisi, pp. 36–9, and Chiara Frugoni, ‘Gli affreschi della Basilica Superiore di Assisi: una committenza di Papa Niccolò IV?’, in Arbor ramosa: studi per Antonio Rigon da allievi, amici, colleghi, ed. Luciano Bertazzo et al. (Padua, 2011), pp. 215–23.

GUCCIO DI MANNAIA AND A ‘FRANCISCAN’ CHALICE

Francis himself.5 This chalice, apparently of middling quality, has a plain knop, and a scalloped decoration on the foot. A rather more humble example survives as part of the Volto Santo cult image in Lucca. The end point of development at the grandest end of the scale for such plain chalices is represented by an example bearing the town mark for Avignon, in the period 1305–34, now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Fig. 4.1).6 This chalice has a stem, an elaborate raised petal decoration on the foot, stamped quatrefoils around the edge of the base, and a knop with decorative ‘fins’. In Italy, however, a more gothic type had already evolved by the late thirteenth century, in the sense that these ‘gothic’ chalices took inspiration from contemporary architecture and woodwork to produce a more vertical form. A transitional work survives, in the form of a chalice in Pistoia attributed to the Sienese goldsmith Pace di Valentino (Fig. 4.2).7 This chalice has an undulating foot with FIG. 4.1  CHALICE, AVIGNON. SILVER-GILT, H. 17.2 twelve roundels, a hexagonal stem, a somewhat CM, C. 1305–34, VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, flattened knop with projecting circular LONDON. PHOTO: © VICTORIA AND ALBERT decorations, and a more upward thrust in its MUSEUM, LONDON. overall design. All these characteristics would be picked up in later central Italian chalices. More unusual are the extensive use of filigree decoration, the equally extensive use of pierced work, the lack of figurative decoration, and the concentration on repetitions of twelve.8 5 The chalice is mentioned as such in the medieval inventories of the church: Leto Alessandri and Francesco Pennacchi, ‘I più antichi inventari della sacristia del Sacro Convento di Assisi (1338–1473)’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 7 (1914), 67–107 and 294–340, at p. 295. For a discussion, see Irene Hueck, ‘Pace di Valentino und die Entwicklung des Kelches im Duecento’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 16 (1982), 259–78, at p. 259. 6 Elisabeth Taburet-Delahaye, ‘L’orfèvrerie au poinçon d’Avignon au XIVe siècle’, Revue de l’Art 108 (1995), 1–22, at p. 13. 7 For which, see the discussions by Hueck, ‘Pace di Valentino’; Cioni, Scultura e smalto nell’oreficeria senese, pp. 20–3; and Hueck, ‘Die Entwicklung des gotischen Messkelchs’, pp. 53–4. The chalice has recently been restored, for which see Ori, argenti, gemme: restauri dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure, ed. Clarice Innocenti, exh. cat. Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Florence (Florence, 2007), pp. 107–13. 8 It seems likely that the filigree style of decoration was in use more widely during the thirteenth century. For example, the 1264 inventory of the Dominican convent of San Romano in Lucca lists four chalices ‘ad filum’, probably decorated in a similar manner, see Joanna Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches: Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New Haven and London, 2013), p. 114.

53

54

GLYN DAVIES

Given the prestige of the commission for the Guccio chalice, and the fact that it is the earliest of its type to survive, it has sometimes been supposed that it is in fact the very first chalice of this kind to have been produced.9 This can only remain a hypothesis. What is clear, however, is that over the next forty years, the type exemplified by the Assisi chalice developed into a common Sienese form, initially for chalices in silver. By the 1320s, this form had become fixed – the foot composed of a sexfoil superimposed onto a six-pointed star, with six enamelled plaques, a moulding where the foot joins the stem, a hexagonal stem, a flattened spherical knop, with six more enamelled plaques, and a calyx mirroring the form of the foot. The style remained popular for another hundred years and was produced by Sienese goldsmiths for a number of sites FIG. 4.2  CHALICE, ATTRIBUTED TO PACE DI outside Siena, such as the chalice made in 1373 VALENTINO, SIENA. SILVER AND SEMI-PRECIOUS by Michele di Tommè for the soprastanti of the STONES, H. 17.4 CM, C. 1265–75, MUSEO DELLA 10 CATTEDRALE, PISTOIA. IMAGE BY PERMISSION OF THE church of Santa Margherita in Cortona. The type acquired a wider currency in central Italy, MINISTERO PER I BENI E LE ATTIVITÀ CULTURALI and examples of this basic chalice form were E DEL TURISMO – OPIFICIO DELLE PIETRE DURE DI produced in other centres such as Florence, FIRENZE – ARCHIVIO DEI RESTAURI E FOTOGRAFICO. Lucca and Pisa. However, contemporary documentary references indicate that this type of chalice was nevertheless especially associated with the work of Sienese goldsmiths.11

THE ‘GUCCIO-TYPE’ AND THE ROMAN RITE The combination of the Franciscan mother house, a papal commission, and the extraordinary form of the Guccio chalice, has tempted historians 9 See, for example, Marco Collareta, Calici italiani (Florence, 1983), pp. 3 and 6. 10 Now in the Museo Diocesano, Cortona. See Da Jacopo della Quercia a Donatello: le arti a Siena nel primo Rinascimento, ed. Max Seidel, exh. cat. Santa Maria della Scala, Opera della Metropolitana, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena (Milan, 2010), pp. 428–31; Tesori d’arte dei Musei Diocesani, ed. Pietro Amato, exh. cat. Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome (Turin, 1986), pp. 118–19; and Joanna Cannon and André Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany (University Park, PA, 1999), p. 218. 11 Glyn Davies, ‘“Omnes et singuli aurifices”: Guild Regulations and the Chalice Trade in Central Italy c. 1250–1500’, in The Historian’s Eye: Essays on Italian Art in Honor of Andrew Ladis, ed. Hayden Maginnis and Shelley Zuraw (Athens, GA, 2009), pp. 33–44; Glyn Davies, ‘The Chalice in Central Italy 1250–1500: Making, Ownership, Use’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2014, pp. 132–52.

GUCCIO DI MANNAIA AND A ‘FRANCISCAN’ CHALICE

into speculation over the relationship of this innovative object to Franciscan ideas about the liturgy. The most important contributions on the relationship between church metalwork and the liturgy in an Italian context are those of Marco Collareta. In a series of publications, Collareta has maintained a consistent interest in explaining problems of form and iconography through reference to ritual practice.12 The catalogue of chalices he produced for the Bargello in 1983 is exemplary in this respect. In a brief but fascinating introductory essay, Collareta makes a series of inferences about the liturgical significance of the form represented by the Assisi chalice, while making very few actual claims: he notes, for example, that Guillaume Durand, author of the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, had been a papal official, and hence was close to papal ceremonial.13 Durand was the most significant liturgist of the late thirteenth century, and the Rationale was the most important and influential discussion of the liturgy during the Middle Ages. Guccio di Mannaia’s chalice emerged from the same papal milieu at about the same time – Collareta’s implication is that the two must therefore reflect similar liturgical ideas. He makes the distinction between the idea of visione in vicino and visione da lontano of the chalice – that the main aspects of the form of the chalice could be seen from a distance, while the details of its iconography must have been aimed at the celebrant and acolyte who were the only people close enough to actually study them. Collareta suggests that the central moment for the form and appreciation of the chalice was its elevation (again described by Durand).14 Having observed a link between the rites of the papal court and Guccio’s chalice, Collareta then invokes the important liturgical trend of the spread from the papal court, via the Franciscans, of the Missale secundum usum Romanae curiae.15 The Guccio chalice was made for the Franciscan mother church, thus tying it even more closely into this story. The direction of Collareta’s argument is that the spread of the Guccio-type chalice was linked to the spread of the Roman rite, and that the Franciscan Order was its main proponent. This final, audacious conclusion is never actually stated by Collareta, although it is implicit throughout his analysis. More recently, however, historians have used this implicit assumption in 12 Relevant publications include: Marco Collareta, La croce del Pollaiuolo (Florence, 1982); Collareta, Calici italiani; Antonella Capitanio and Marco Collareta, Oreficeria sacra italiana (Florence, 1990); Marco Collareta, Basilica del Santo: le oreficerie (Padua, 1995). 13 Collareta, Calici italiani, p. 5. For Durand’s role in the curia, see Guillelmi Duranti Rationale Divinorum Officiorum I–IV, ed. Anselmus Davril and Timothy Thibodeau, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis CXL (Turnhout, 1995), p. vii: ‘capellanus et subdiaconis domini papae, auditor generalis causarum ipsius palatii’. 14 Collareta, Calici italiani, pp. 5–6. These ideas are repeated by Cioni, Scultura e smalto nell’oreficeria senese, p. 20. 15 Collareta, Calici italiani, pp. 5–6. While describing the rather different forms of Lombard chalices, Collareta notes (p. 10) that while Guccio’s type of chalice was dominant, others did exist (just as the Roman rite dominated pre-Tridentine Italy, but not to the exclusion of other rites). Again, Collareta links the Guccio chalice to the Roman rite, without explicitly making the argument.

55

56

GLYN DAVIES

a much more bald manner. For example, Francesca Pomarici has chosen to analyse the chalice made for the Dominican Pope Benedict XI (now in the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia) as a direct rejection of the alleged ‘Franciscan’ gothic style of Guccio di Mannaia’s Assisi chalice.16 The idea of linking the development of a new type of chalice to the role played by the Franciscans in disseminating the Roman rite is clearly a very tempting one. The liturgy of the papal curia under Innocent III was stripped-down and simplified, and seems to have grown out of Innocent’s own thinking about the Mass.17 Its adoption by the Franciscans underlines the close links between the papacy and the Order in the thirteenth century.18 However, there is no real evidence on which to hang the theory that the Guccio chalice was developed in response to the needs of the Roman liturgy, and that the two – the chalice form and the Roman liturgy – were then disseminated by the Franciscans. This type of chalice was very quickly popular with a wide range of ecclesiastical establishments, from mendicant foundations, to monasteries, to parish churches and chantry foundations. Although several high-profile examples of the 1320s and 1330s (including not only surviving chalices but also those referred to in documents) can be linked to Franciscan churches, there is no reason to associate the spread of this form particularly with the Franciscan Order. Nor is it at all obvious why the ‘Gucciesque’ chalice should be any more suitable for the Roman rite than other forms. If the moment of the elevation of the chalice – a secondary elevation following the elevation of the consecrated wafer – were one of the driving forces in arriving at a new design for chalices, then why produce a form that in its increased verticality is inherently more unstable than thirteenth-century chalice forms? Furthermore, given that the papal rite would form the basis of the postTridentine missal, it is surprising that the Guccio-inspired chalice fell so completely out of favour during the sixteenth century. Collareta explains this by arguing that following the Council of Trent when the Roman rite became the only possible rite, the situation had become completely different. For Collareta, this new unity of approach is the point of initiation for the new style of Renaissance chalice.19 But this contention hinges on the improbable notion that the Guccio-inspired form of chalice was 16 Francesca Pomarici, ‘De Opere Romano’, in Bonifacio VIII e il suo tempo: anno 1300 il primo Giubileo, ed. Marina Righetti Tosti-Croce, exh. cat. Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia, Rome (Milan, 2000), pp. 117–20. 17 Innocent III’s own text on the Mass is published in PL 217, cols 773–916. For the ordinal of the papal curia, see Stephen van Dijk and Joan Walker, The Ordinal of the Papal Court from Innocent III to Boniface VIII and Related Documents, Spicilegium Friburgense 22 (Fribourg, 1975). 18 Stephen van Dijk and Joan Walker, The Origins of the Modern Roman Liturgy: The Liturgy of the Papal Court and the Franciscan Order in the Thirteenth Century (Westminster, MD, 1960). 19 Collareta, Calici italiani, p. 6.

GUCCIO DI MANNAIA AND A ‘FRANCISCAN’ CHALICE

somehow a ‘campaigning’ type, suitable only for a transitional liturgical period. Finally, by the early years of the fourteenth century, chalices emulating the innovations of Guccio’s Assisi chalice were certainly in the possession of non-Franciscan institutions, as both documents, and the inscriptions and iconographies of a number of surviving central Italian chalices, demonstrate. As with attempts to provide straightforwardly functional liturgical explanations for other aspects of medieval church art and architecture, there seems here to be something of a disconnect.20

FRANCISCAN CHALICE DESIGN If the ‘Gucciesque’ chalice is to be linked to the Franciscans, then it should follow that the Franciscans were among its early adopters, most likely inspired by the example of their mother house. At least seven surviving central Italian chalices can be said confidently to have been made for Franciscan houses, most of them dating to the earlier part of the fourteenth century. The Guccio chalice type can only meaningfully be called ‘Franciscan’ in the sense of fashion, rather than of functionality, and this is an important point, recalling Caroline Walker Bynum’s famous distinction between Franciscan attitudes and spirituality that might be shared with other groups, and ‘uniquely Franciscan’ attitudes and spirituality.21 What then, was the nature of the Franciscan chalice in Italy from the late thirteenth century? One of the key points is that Franciscan legislation limited the potential for display in terms of the size of the chalice and its use of precious materials. In 1292, it was decreed that no chalice in use by the Order should weigh more than two and a half marks (i.e. approximately 611.9g). This restriction was certainly being abused by the early fourteenth century, if we are to believe the complaints of Ubertino da Casale in his text Sanctitas vestra; and indeed, the 1430 inventory of Assisi reveals chalices signed by the well-known early fourteenth-century Sienese goldsmiths Duccio di Donato and Tondino di Guerrino that both weighed over 700g (probably when weighed along with their patens).22 The chalice made by 20 See, for example, Kees van der Ploeg, Art, Architecture and Liturgy: Siena Cathedral in the Middle Ages, Medievalia Groningana 11 (Groningen, 1993), pp. 21–3, and Kees van der Ploeg, ‘How Liturgical is a Medieval Altarpiece?’, in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art 61 (Washington, DC, 2002), pp. 102–21. 21 Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘Franciscan Spirituality: Two Approaches’, Medievalia et Humanistica 7 (1976), 195–7. 22 For the 1292 legislation, see Michael Bihl, ‘Statuta generalia ordinis edita in capitulis generalibus celebratis Narbonae an. 1260, Assisi an. 1279 atque Parisiis an. 1292’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 34 (1941), 13–94 and 284–358, at p. 52. For a discussion of Ubertino’s allegations, see Donal Cooper and Janet Robson, ‘“A Great Sumptuousness of Paintings”: Frescos and Franciscan Poverty at Assisi in 1288 and 1312’, The Burlington Magazine 151 (2009), 656–62, at pp. 659–60. For the Assisi inventory, which describes these two chalices as weighing ‘25 unciarum’ each, see Alessandri and Pennacchi, ‘I più

57

58

GLYN DAVIES

Guccio di Mannaia for San Francesco weighs 1.27kg (together with its paten); however, as Cooper and Robson have pointed out, ‘in Assisi, the friars were duty bound to place papal edicts before the Franciscan Rule’.23 It is also true to say that when weights are provided in inventories for the chalices in Franciscan convents, none are of the extremely large weights that can be found in other institutions, such as the large chalice made in 1307 by Duccio di Donato for the Chapel of the Nine in Siena, for which he received 10kg (30 libre) of silver, although some of this undoubtedly must have been intended as payment for the work.24 Other orders, such as the Dominicans, were less concerned with such issues, as is demonstrated by the presence at the convent of San Domenico, Perugia in 1417 of a large silvergilt chalice weighing 1kg 845g (‘5 librarum 5 unciarum et dimidia’).25 As Joanna Cannon has shown, the Dominicans do not seem to have legislated on the size or weight of their liturgical vessels, and in fact the Order seems from its earliest days to have fostered a taste for liturgical furnishings that were more elaborate than was strictly necessary.26 The second way in which chalices associated with Franciscan houses were distinguished from others was iconographically. The implications of the new ‘Gucciesque’ chalice for the ways in which imagery would be incorporated have received surprisingly little attention.27 Instead, the scholarly focus has tended to be on the novel technical aspects of Guccio’s chalice, or on his prescient incorporation of French gothic style into a more Tuscan idiom.28 Nevertheless, with Guccio’s Assisi chalice the stage was set for Tuscan chalices to become the bearers of detailed iconographic programmes. So much so, in fact, that it may be worth dubbing the type the ‘figured chalice’, as it became the norm for chalices to feature a repertoire of individual figures of saints within a series of discrete plaques and frames antichi inventari’, p. 317. All of the weight conversions in this essay are based on Ronald Zupko, Italian Weights and Measures from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 145 (Philadelphia, 1981). For discussions of the chalices in the context of these goldsmiths’ careers, see Cioni, Scultura e smalto nell’oreficeria senese, p. 159. 23 Cooper and Robson, The Making of Assisi, p. 660. 24 Duccio was given 30 libre of silver that year ‘per uno chalicie per l’altare de Signiori Nove’, see Cioni, Scultura e smalto nell’oreficeria senese, p. 157 n. 3, and Elisabetta Cioni, Il reliquiario di San Galgano (Florence, 2005), p. 331. The chalice is known only from this document, along with a second payment of 2 lire. Duccio’s chalice does not appear in the 1443 inventory of the Chapel (ASSi, Concistoro xxviii, Inventari di Palazzo, no. 2521), when the largest chalice in use was a new object, weighing nearly 2kg. 25 For this inventory, see Francesco Santi, ‘Ritrovamento di oreficerie medioevali in S. Domenico di Perugia’, Bolletino d’Arte 40, ser. 4 (1955), 354–8, at p. 357. 26 Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches, pp. 112–16. 27 Two of the more notable discussions (although brief) of chalice iconography, discussed at more length elsewhere in this chapter, are Collareta, Calici italiani, pp. 3–6, and Leonard Amico, ‘Fourteenth-century Sienese Chalices’, unpublished Masters dissertation, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, 1979, pp. 7–9. 28 See, for example, Cioni, Scultura e smalto nel’oreficeria senese, esp. pp. 8–10, and the essays in Il calice di Guccio di Mannaia nel Tesoro.

GUCCIO DI MANNAIA AND A ‘FRANCISCAN’ CHALICE

distributed around the foot, stem, knop and calyx. Even the thirteenthcentury chalices with the highest degree of figurative decoration, such as the chalice signed by Hugo d’Oignies in northern France in 1228, which is decorated with ten niello plaques around its foot, cannot compete in the fullness of their figurative repertoire with those made in central Italy between about 1290 and 1360.29 Many of the characteristics that would become typical of the iconographic strategies of the central Italian chalice can be found fully developed in Guccio’s putative ‘prototype’ at Assisi. The chalice is notable for the sheer number of figurative enamel elements it bears: in addition to the eight main quatrefoil panels of the foot, and the eight main roundels on the knop, the chalice features eight further smaller enamels between each of the quatrefoils, with another eight small roundels above them, eight triangular enamels at the foot of the stem, sixteen triangular enamels at the top and bottom of the knop, as well as further enamel decoration on the stem and calyx. Later chalices would often make use of similar additions to the ‘standard’ repertoire of foot and knop enamels, but no other contemporary chalice is so rich in imagery. On the Guccio chalice, each group of enamels fulfils a different iconographic function. The main enamels of the foot depict the Crucifixion, flanked by enamels of the Virgin Mary and John the Evangelist; then, proceeding anti-clockwise, Saint Clare, Pope Nicholas IV, the Virgin and Child, Saint Anthony of Padua, and Saint Francis receiving the stigmata. In other words, the main image of the Crucifixion indicates the ‘front’ of the chalice. The Virgin and Saint John to either side are standard elements. The Virgin and Child plaque indicates the reverse of the chalice, on an axis with the Crucifixion. The remaining images are given over to Franciscan saints, with the emphasis placed on Francis and Clare (by placing them immediately next to the Crucifixion group) – a reasonable strategy, given the importance of these two saints as the founders of the Franciscan order, and their links to Assisi. The inclusion of the donor, Pope Nicholas IV, is unusual, although as has sometimes been noted, Nicholas was fond of including portraits of himself in works that he commissioned.30 The roundels that appear on the foot of the Guccio chalice between each of these main quatrefoils form a different series. They depict the symbols of the Evangelists and other animals such as a lion and a deer or fawn. 29 For Hugo’s chalice, see Autour de Hugo d’Oignies, ed. Robert Didier and Jacques Toussaint, exh. cat. Musée des Arts Anciens du Namurois, Namur (Namur, 2003), pp. 200–3. 30 A point noted by Dora Liscia Bemporad, ‘Oreficerie e avori’, in Il tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupré dal Poggetto (Florence, 1980), pp. 87–151, at p. 123. For Pope Nicholas IV’s patronage at Assisi, see also Cooper and Robson, The Making of Assisi, pp. 36–9. For his patronage more generally, see Julian Gardner, ‘Pope Nicholas IV and the Decoration of Santa Maria Maggiore’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 36 (1973), 1–50.

59

60

GLYN DAVIES

Other circular enamels on the foot depict birds of prey, while a final group of triangular enamels around the top of the foot depicts prophets, sibyls and angels. The knop has eight circular enamels depicting Christ, flanked by SS Peter and Paul, and five other apostles, one of whom is identifiable as Saint Andrew. The calyx bears panels depicting eight angels (conceived as pairs), while the stem is decorated with panels showing birds of prey beneath trefoil arches. The iconographic strategies seen in the Assisi chalice would become the starting point for almost all later Tuscan chalices featuring enamel decoration. It is perhaps surprising, therefore, that few scholars have paid much attention to the programme as a whole. The fullest attempt at a general interpretation was that offered in the catalogue of the exhibition The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi in 1999.31 Here, it was argued that the iconography ‘appears to turn on the theme of Christ’s incarnation and death, and on the propagation of his message of salvation through the Gospels and, from the perspective of Franciscan spirituality, the preaching and life of the saint from Assisi and of his followers’. This explanation is somewhat limited. Christ’s incarnation and death are supplied through the enamels of the Virgin and Child and the Crucifixion; the Gospels are referred to by the presence of the Evangelists; and the preaching and life of Saint Francis are referred to by depicting the saint receiving the stigmata. However, there is little sense that this is an intended ‘programme’ of communication, and in fact this explanation of the iconography omits much of the other imagery.

ICONOGRAPHIC PROGRAMMES ON CHALICES An analysis of the images on chalices of this period can be undertaken in a manner similar to the ways in which one might consider a painted altarpiece. The images of Guccio di Mannaia’s chalice (and the images on the central Italian chalices that followed it) are in many ways quite separate from one another, each enamel experienced as a discrete iconographic event. Certain standard groups of figures allowed the artist to fill large sections of the space available for imagery – the Evangelists being the most obvious example. Apart from certain key scenes such as the Crucifixion and the Stigmatisation of Saint Francis, the images are non-narrative, and concentrate on the depiction of bust-length figures of saints and prophets with the necessary attributes to make them identifiable. These characteristics, which would be followed by many subsequent chalices, immediately call to mind the contemporary development of painted altarpieces and especially polyptychs in Tuscany in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.32 Narrative images have almost no place on Tuscan chalices in this period. 31 The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi, ed. Giovanni Morello and Laurence Kanter, exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (New York, 1999), p. 182. 32 For the contemporary development of painted polyptychs in Siena, see Joanna

GUCCIO DI MANNAIA AND A ‘FRANCISCAN’ CHALICE

In his important but unpublished 1979 MA thesis, Leonard M. Amico noted that chalice imagery sometimes makes a distinction between the ‘front’ and the ‘back’, a distinction which is self-evident from any consideration of the layout of images on chalices, but which has gone unremarked in most of the literature.33 Amico was unaware of the fact that the chalice’s ‘front’ is more than a merely notional concept: it is important during use that the priest keeps track of the part of the chalice’s lip that has been used for the taking of communion, as this area needs special attention during the ablution. The use of a cross or crucifixion to mark the spot from which the priest should drink has been the most common way of doing this since the thirteenth century.34 In the case of the Guccio chalice, the front is indicated through the presence of the Crucifixion enamel on the foot. The primacy of this face is further emphasised by placing an image of the blessing Christ in the knop directly above. On both the knop and the foot, the enamels to either side of these images have been conceived as flanking elements: the Virgin and John the Evangelist on either side of the Crucifixion face inwards and grieve, while Saints Peter and Paul to either side of the Blessing Christ form an obvious pair. Having accepted that the Crucifixion is the central image of the whole chalice, the placement of Saints Francis and Clare in the same register to flank the Virgin and John gives them a prominent but subordinate position, suitable for the founders of the Franciscan movement and the patrons of the Franciscan houses of Assisi. The figures of Saint Anthony of Padua and Pope Nicholas are thus located at the back of the chalice in a more subordinate position; but they are still on the main register of images (formed from the largest enamels), and they are placed to either side of the Virgin and Child, an image conceived as a suitable pendant to the Crucifixion of the chalice’s front. The artist resisted the temptation to create a secondary focus with those saints facing towards the image of the Virgin and Child. Instead, they gaze straight out of their frames at the viewer. These images at the back of the chalice were not visible when the chalice was in use – only the images of the foot as far back as Saints Francis and Clare would have been visible to the celebrant during the Mass. The chalice is an object made in the round, but unlike other centrally planned objects such as pulpits, it is usually designed with a primary viewpoint in mind.35 In the case of the Guccio chalice, the view Cannon, ‘Simone Martini, the Dominicans and the Early Sienese Polyptych’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 45 (1982), 69–93, and Henk van Os, Sienese Altarpieces 1215–1460: Form, Content, Function. Vol. 1: 1215–1344 (Groningen, 1984). 33 Amico, ‘Fourteenth-century Sienese Chalices’, p. 8. 34 I am grateful to the Reverend Dr Alun Ford for his advice on this point. For this use in contemporary liturgical practice, see the explanatory video produced by the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqJ1MpqOKoA&feature=relmf u%3E (accessed 6 June 2021). 35 See, for example, Anita Moskowitz’s ‘kinetic’ interpretation of Nicola Pisano’s Pisa

61

62

GLYN DAVIES

from the rear is a secondary viewpoint, and the view of the chalice from other angles does not form an important focus of the design. The saints chosen for representation on central Italian chalices during the fourteenth century were, for the most part, traditional ‘old’ saints, such as Peter, Paul, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, the Magdalene, and SS Laurence and Stephen.36 Saint Francis was easily the most popular of the ‘new’ saints to appear on central Italian chalices in this period. He appears on at least sixteen surviving examples dating between the 1280s and the mid-fifteenth century.37 His popularity in this way is unsurprising, given the emphasis placed on him as an alter Christus by the Franciscan Order. In most cases, when Francis appears, he is placed immediately next to either the enamel depicting the Virgin Mary or that depicting John the Evangelist. In other words, he is given as much prominence as it was possible to give a saint on the same register as the Crucifixion, and the enamel depicting Francis would have been visible to the celebrant while the chalice was held with the front facing towards him. In the chalice from the Franciscan community of Sassoferrato, now at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, Francis appears in the knop immediately above the Crucifixion enamel of the foot (shown in Fig. 4.3).38 This beautiful chalice, plausibly the work of the Sienese goldsmith Tondino di Guerrino, was presented to the convent by the papal penitentiary Peter of Sassoferrato, most likely in 1341–42.39 Seven of the surviving chalices depicting Francis were surely made for Franciscan houses. Even when the original Franciscan provenance is not known, a chalice like that today at the Museo d’Arte Sacra in Camaiore (Lucca) (previously at the collegiate church of Santa Maria Assunta), is undoubtedly Franciscan: not only does Francis himself feature, but also Saints Anthony of Padua, Louis of Toulouse, and Elizabeth of Hungary.40 However, Francis also appears on chalices that were made for pulpit in Anita Fiderer Moskowitz, Italian Gothic Sculpture c. 1250–c. 1400 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 30–1. 36 For a discussion, see Davies, ‘The Chalice in Central Italy’, pp. 165–77. 37 Davies, ‘The Chalice in Central Italy’, p. 171. 38 The enamel in question was incorrectly identified by Elisabetta Cioni as representing Anthony of Padua, but was correctly identified by Barbara Drake Boehm: Cioni, Scultura e smalto nell’oreficeria senese, pp. 336–58 and Barbara Drake Boehm, ‘Chalice of Peter of Sassoferrato’, in Mirror of the Medieval World, ed. William Wixom, exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (New York, 1999), cat. no. 173, pp. 145–7. 39 There are two inscriptions, which read: + FRA / T[R]IS P / ETRI PEnIT / EnTI / ARII. [New line] + DOMI / nI PA / PE (on the stem above the knop); and + LOCISAS / SIFERATI / nOn VEN / DATVR / nEC DI / STRATVR (below the stem). For a full discussion of the patron and the provenance, see Boehm, ‘Chalice of Peter of Sassoferrato’, in Mirror of the Medieval World, ed. Wixom, cat. no. 173, pp. 145–7; for further discussions, see Cioni, Scultura e smalto nell’oreficeria senese, pp. 336–58; Benedetta Montevecchi, ‘Oreficeria Toscana nelle Marche’, in Marche e Toscana: terre di grandi maestri tra Quattro e Seicento, ed. Silvia Blasio (Pisa, 2007), pp. 261–76, at pp. 262–3; and Davies, ‘The Chalice in Central Italy’, esp. pp. 261–70. 40 For this chalice, which dates to the second half of the fourteenth century, see the catalogue entry by Antonella Capitanio in Oreficeria sacra a Lucca dal XIII al XV secolo, ed. Clara Baracchini (Florence, 1993), I, pp. 155–8, and cat. no. 16, pp. 164–5, and Giuliana Grillotti, ‘Un calice con smalti nel museo di Camaiore’, in Oreficerie e smalti traslucidi

GUCCIO DI MANNAIA AND A ‘FRANCISCAN’ CHALICE

63

FIG. 4.3  ENAMELS ON THE FOOT OF A CHALICE, ATTRIBUTED TO TONDINO DI GUERRINO, SIENA. SILVER-GILT WITH TRANSLUCENT ENAMELS, H. 21.7 CM, 1341–42, CLOISTERS COLLECTION, THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK. PHOTO: © THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART.

non-Franciscan churches. An early fifteenth-century chalice, signed by the Sienese goldsmith Tommaso di Vannino, survives in the church of San Flaviano, Montefiascone.41 The appearance of Saint Flaviano on the foot suggests that the chalice was made for this church; indeed, Francis is the only Franciscan saint to appear on the object. Another example is the mid fifteenth-century Florentine chalice in the Museo Civico e Diocesano in Colle Val d’Elsa, which was almost certainly made for the Cathedral.42 In this case, we know that Francis was not the name saint of the chalice’s commissioner, and so the motivations for his inclusion would simply seem to be devotion to him and the fact that an alter Christus would be a suitable figure to incorporate into a Eucharistic object. By way of contrast, Saint Dominic is much less common on surviving chalices, appearing on only three central Italian chalices from this period known to me. Perhaps the most interesting is the example inscribed by the Sienese goldsmith Bartolomeo di Tommè, known as Picinus, towards the end of the fourteenth century (Fig. 4.4).43 The chalice, which also features Saint Thomas Aquinas among its enamels, was made for a

nell’antica diocesi di Lucca, ed. Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti, et al. (Florence, 1986), pp. 74–84. The chalice is briefly mentioned in the context of Sienese influence in Cioni, Scultura e smalto nell’oreficeria senese, p. 140 n. 242. 41 For the chalice, see Opere firmate nell’arte italiana, pp. 278–82, cat. no. 27.S.1; catalogue entry by Andrea Pedrocchi in Il ’400 a Roma: la rinascita nelle arti da Donatello a Perugino, ed. Maria Grazia Bernardini and Marco Bussagli, exh. cat. Museo del Corso, Rome (Milan, 2008), II, p. 192, cat. no. 69; and Il Quattrocento a Viterbo, ed. Roberto Cannatà, exh. cat. Museo Civico, Viterbo (Rome, 1983), pp. 361–98. 42 For this chalice, see Maria Accàscina, ‘Oreficeria italiana nel Victoria and Albert Museum’, Emporium 77/462 (1933), 336–44; Rovigo Marzini, Colle di Val d’Elsa e i suoi valori (Siena, 1938), p. 50; Colle di Val d’Elsa nell’eta dei granduchi medicei: ‘la terra in città et la collegiata in cattedrale’, ed. Pietro Nencini et al., exh. cat. Duomo, Cripta della Misericordia, Sant’Agostino and San Pietro, Colle di Val d’Elsa (Florence, 1992), p. 10; and Panis Vivus: Arredi e testimonianze figurative del culto eucaristico dal VI al XIX secolo, ed. Cecilia Alessi and Laura Martini, exh. cat. Museo Civico, Siena (Siena, 1994), pp. 113–15. 43 Now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, inv. no. L. 689. See Elisabetta Cioni’s catalogue entry in Da Jacopo della Quercia a Donatello, ed. Seidel, pp. 432–3, cat. no. F. 2, and Opere firmate nell’arte italiana, pp. 239–43, cat. no. 23.S.1.

64

GLYN DAVIES

Dominican patron, who is depicted kneeling at the foot of the cross in the Crucifixion enamel, although there has been some disagreement over the exact identity of this Brother Giacomo Turchi, who is named in an inscription.44 Other than the figure of Pope Nicholas on Guccio di Mannaia’s chalice at Assisi, this seems to be a unique surviving example of a donor figure on a central Italian chalice. It is notable that prominence is also given to the donor’s name saint, James (who is placed immediately next to the Crucifixion scene), and it therefore appears that Giacomo was able to influence the iconography of the chalice to a strong degree. It is hard to offer strong reasons for the relative rarity of chalices depicting Dominic. It may be significant that the other surviving examples are also on chalices that must have been made for Dominican convents, the Benedict XI chalice at Perugia discussed earlier, and the fourteenth-century Pisan chalice with FIG. 4.4  CHALICE, BY BARTOLOMEO DI TOMMÈ, the arms of Bishop Simone Salterelli at the SIENA. SILVER-GILT WITH TRANSLUCENT ENAMELS, British Museum, which probably comes from H. 20.7 CM, C. 1370–95, MUSÉE DES BEAUX ARTS, LYON. the church of Santa Caterina in Pisa.45 It may PHOTO: ALAIN BASSET, © LYON MBA. be that Francis was a more popular figure on chalices for non-Franciscan institutions than Dominic was for non-Dominican ones.46 The concept of emulation has been an important one in understanding the patterns of patronage employed by mendicant houses in the commissioning of altarpieces during the fourteenth century.47 A similar process can be proposed for the rapid proliferation of Sienese-made 44 Catalogue entry by Elisabetta Cioni in Da Jacopo della Quercia a Donatello, ed. Seidel, p. 432, and Elisabeth Taburet-Delahaye, ‘Un calice de Bartolommeo di Tommé, dit Pizino, au musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon’, Bulletin des musées et monuments Lyonnais 7 (1984), 159–78, at p. 164. 45 For the Salterelli chalice, see Irene Hueck, ‘Il calice Salterelli di Londra e l’oreficeria gotica pisana’, in Oreficerie e smalti in Europa fra XIII e XV secolo: atti del convegno di studi Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 7–8 novembre 1996, ed. Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 2, ser. 4 (1997), 31–6, and Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches, pp. 158–60. The chalice is currently being researched by Gail Solberg for a forthcoming publication. 46 Joanna Cannon, ‘Dominic “Alter Christus”? Representations of the Founder in and after the Arca di San Domenico’, in Christ among the Medieval Dominicans, ed. Kent Emery and Joseph P. Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN, 1998), pp. 26–48. 47 The concept has been notably employed by Joanna Cannon, ‘The Creation, Meaning, and Audience of the Early Sienese Polyptych: Evidence from the Friars’, in Italian

GUCCIO DI MANNAIA AND A ‘FRANCISCAN’ CHALICE

chalices in Franciscan houses during the early years of the century. To take an obvious example, the Sienese goldsmith Tondino di Guerrino (active from about 1320–42) is known from documents to have produced a large chalice and paten for San Francesco, Assisi, and another, inscribed with his name and that of his business partner Andrea Riguardi for the convent at La Verna.48 We have already seen that he most likely was the goldsmith responsible for the chalice at the Franciscan convent of Sassoferrato. He was also responsible (again in partnership with Andrea Riguardi) for making the extraordinary chalice now at the British Museum, London (Fig. 4.5) which was also clearly intended for a Franciscan house, since the saints depicted include Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata, Saint Louis of Toulouse and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary.49 The original destination of this chalice has been the subject of some debate. For Pierluigi Leone de Castris, the presence of Louis of Toulouse, the Hungarian connection suggested by the enamel of Elisabeth of Hungary, and the presumed date of c. 1317–20 suggested a ‘Franciscan–Angevin’ character to the chalice, which he was tempted to link to the commission for Simone Martini’s Louis of Toulouse; thus forming a double commission for San Lorenzo, Naples.50 Elisabetta Cioni has more cautiously followed the same line of argument, but given the lack of hard information on the chalice’s early history, it seems unwise to take such speculation too far, especially given the fact that the enamel of Saint Louis does not include the fleurs-de-lys that one might expect.51 However, it may be worth noting that this is not Altarpieces 1250–1550: Function and Design, ed. Eve Borsook and Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi (Oxford, 1994), pp. 41–79, esp. pp. 52–61. 48 For the Assisi chalice, see Alessandri and Pennacchi, ‘I più antichi inventari’, pp. 66 and 31; for the La Verna chalice, see Cioni, Scultura e smalto nell’oreficeria senese, p. 160 n. 21. See also Opere firmate nell’arte italiana, pp. 57–8, cat. no. 4.S.4, and p. 60, cat. no. 4.S.5.2. 49 Again, the scholarship on this chalice is extensive. Recent works, with earlier bibliography, include: Cioni, Scultura e smalto nell’oreficeria senese, pp. 162–77; Masterpieces of Medieval Art, ed. James Robinson (London, 2008), pp. 26–7; Opere firmate nell’arte italiana, pp. 45–50, cat. no. 4.S.1; Davies, ‘The Chalice in Central Italy’, pp. 255–73. 50 Pierluigi Leone de Castris, ‘Tondino di Guerrino e Andrea Riguardi, orafi e smaltisti a Siena (1308–1338)’, Prospettiva 21 (1980), 24–44, at p. 27. Note that the original location of Simone Martini’s Saint Louis of Toulouse is itself the subject of debate. For a provenance from the church of Santa Chiara, Naples, see Julian Gardner, ‘Saint Louis of Toulouse, Robert of Anjou and Simone Martini’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 39 (1976), 12–33, at p. 33. For the arguments in favour of San Lorenzo, see Francesco Aceto, ‘Le memorie angioine in San Lorenzo Maggiore’, in Le chiese di San Lorenzo e San Domenico: gli ordini mendicanti a Napoli, ed. Serena Romano and Nicholas Bock (Naples, 2005), pp. 67–94, pp. 79–85. For the third alternative of the cathedral of San Gennaro, see Diana Norman, ‘Politics and Piety: Locating Simone Martini’s Saint Louis of Toulouse Altarpiece’, Art History 33 (2010), 596–619. 51 Cioni, Scultura e smalto nell’oreficeria senese, p. 166. Nothing is known of the chalice’s history before it appeared on the London art market at S.J. Phillips Ltd in 1960. Louis of Toulouse appears on a number of other fourteenth-century chalices, including the chalice from Sassoferrato in New York; a chalice in Camaiore, near Lucca (for which see Grillotti, ‘Un calice con smalti nel museo di Camaiore’); and a chalice by the Sienese

65

66

GLYN DAVIES

the only occasion when a chalice by Tondino di Guerrino can be linked to a painting commissioned from Simone Martini. Another chalice inscribed with Tondino’s name, formerly at Sant’Agostino, Siena, was produced for the Tolomei family, patrons of the altar of the Blessed Agostino Novello, and there are reasons for believing that both the chalice and Simone Martini’s Vita panel of the Beato may have been part of the same series of commissions that created the altar arrangements.52 It does, however, seem certain that the British Museum chalice is not one of those known from archival sources – for example, the chalice signed by Tondino and Andrea at the convent of La Verna – because the inscription does not match any recorded on those chalices. Although Franciscan commissions can be shown to have formed an important element of Tondino’s business, he was by no means exclusively engaged on such projects. FIG. 4.5  CHALICE, BY TONDINO DI GUERRINO AND In addition to the chalice at Sant’Agostino, ANDREA RIGUARDI, SIENA. SILVER-GILT WITH TRANS- Siena, mentioned above, he also produced LUCENT AND CHAMPLEVÉ ENAMELS, H. 20.9CM, 1315– three other chalices for the same destination; 25, BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON. PHOTO: © TRUSTEES two chalices and patens for the Dominicans OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. of Perugia (along with Andrea Riguardi); and a chalice for Pistoia Cathedral dated 1328, in addition to receiving commissions for a number of liturgical objects for the Chapel of the Nove.53 During this formative period, therefore, although Tondino was certainly executing a number of impressive chalices in the new ‘Gucciesque’ style for Franciscan patrons, he was also taking commissions for similar objects from secular churches and chapels, in addition to convents of the other mendicant orders such as the Dominicans and Augustinians. The physical differences between these chalices would have been limited to size and the choice of saints appearing in the enamel plaques that decorated them.

goldsmith Antonio di Cecco di Guglielmo now in Lyon (for which see Elisabetta Cioni, cat. entry in Seidel, Da Jacopo della Quercia a Donatello, pp. 434–5). 52 Davies, ‘The Chalice in Central Italy’, pp. 85–7. 53 For Tondino’s career, the most complete and recent discussions are: Elisabetta Cioni, ‘Nuove acquisizioni sulla bottega “dei Tondi”: un documento e alcuni smalti’, Opera Nomina Historiae 2/3 (2010), 151–218, and Davies, ‘The Chalice in Central Italy’, pp. 245–73.

GUCCIO DI MANNAIA AND A ‘FRANCISCAN’ CHALICE

CONCLUSION The links between the Franciscan Order and the development of the new type of chalice popularised in central Italy by Sienese goldsmiths during the early years of the Trecento are both profound and subtle. There is no evidence that the new chalice form was truly more suitable for the Roman liturgy being promoted by the Franciscans than earlier forms. The early patronage and use of such chalice forms at the Franciscan mother house at Assisi almost certainly guaranteed that other Franciscan convents would follow in commissioning similar chalices. However, the new forms were appealing in themselves, and it should not be surprising that such chalices were quickly in use in a variety of types of churches and religious institutions. Nevertheless, it is true to say that the Franciscans of central Italy adopted this chalice type early, and that some of the finest examples were made for their use. What marked Franciscan chalices out from others above all was their willingness to depict groups of recently created Franciscan saints, in contrast to the more traditional groups of saints often found on chalices used at other institutions. This trend can only have been encouraged by the concept of Francis as an alter Christus, and it can be no coincidence that in several of the examples discussed here he is depicted receiving the Stigmata, rather than simply bearing an attribute like the other saints. It was precisely Francis’s similarity to Christ that made his image so suitable for adorning the object most central to the Eucharistic liturgy.

67

‘SPECULUM SINE MACULA’: THE TRITTICO DI SANTA CHIARA IN TRIESTE AS AN OBJECT OF CLARISSAN DEVOTION MICHAELA ZÖSCHG

I

n 1895, the Triestine physician Antonio Lorenzutti gave a precious fourteenth-century painted triptych with foldable wings on permanent loan to his local town museum. The object had been given to him by the Benedictine nuns of San Cipriano in Trieste, as a thank-you for the free medical services he had provided for their community over the years. In 1907, Lorenzutti’s family bequeathed the triptych to the municipality of Trieste; currently displayed in the Civico Museo Sartorio, it still forms part of the city’s art collections (Plate V).1 This essay is part of a wider project that investigates the role between narrative panel paintings and the religious life of medieval Clarissan nuns. The topic grew out of my doctoral dissertation, written at The Courtauld Institute of Art and entitled ‘In signum viduitatis et humilitatis: European Queens and the Spaces, Art and Inhabitants of their Clarissan Foundations, c. 1250–1350’. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Joanna Cannon for her generous guidance and unfaltering trust in the project, and for the wise counsel on both professional and personal matters she has offered on many occasions. I am very grateful to Donal Cooper, Beth Williamson, Christian Nikolaus Opitz and John Renner for their insightful feedback and many improvements to this text, and to Laura Llewellyn and Hanns-Paul Ties for helping with some last-minute literature emergencies. A special thank you goes to Amy Neff, whose scholarship on Franciscan narrative has informed many of the thoughts and ideas contained in this essay, and whose generous offer to comment on an earlier draft has helped much to strengthen my arguments. 1 The triptych (inv. no. 14/3408) is painted in tempera on wood, has a gold ground

5

70

MICHAELA ZÖSCHG

Since its transition from female monastic clausura to museum context, the triptych has played an important part in the historiography of Venetian Trecento panel painting. Its wings, especially, believed to be early works by Paolo Veneziano, have received a considerable amount of attention, and have mostly been discussed in the context of his workshop production and artistic development.2 Most scholars now date the wings to c. 1328–30, and very plausibly argue that they were added to the slightly older central panel, painted c. 1300–20, in a second stage of development.3 In addition, iconographic studies have mainly focused on the images depicted on the wings and linked them to the early history of the Benedictine nuns of San Cipriano in Trieste, from where the triptych emerged at the end of the nineteenth century.4 Before moving to the premises of the church of San Cipriano in 1458,5 the community, then operating under the name of Santa Maria della Cella, went through a (tempera with gold leaf on panel), and is decorated with chrysography and punch marks. The central panel measures 133.5 × 110 cm, and the wings measure 132 × 55 cm each. The literature on the triptych is extensive and cannot be given here in full. For a comprehensive listing, see Valeria Poletto, ‘Oro e pittura a Venezia attorno all’anno 1300: consuetudini di bottega tra incisione e granitura’, in Rabeschi d’oro: pittura e oreficeria a Venezia in età gotica, ed. Andrea De Marchi and Cristina Guarnieri, special issue of Arte Veneta 71 (Milan, 2014), pp. 87–8 n. 39. The most important studies for the context of this essay are: Maria Walcher Casotti, Il trittico di S. Chiara di Trieste e l’orientamento paleologo nell’arte di Paolo Veneziano (Trieste, 1961); Marisa Bianco Fiorin, ‘1: Trittico di S. Chiara’, in Pittura su tavola dalle collezioni dei civici musei di storia ed arte di Trieste, ed. Marisa Bianco Fiorin, exh. cat. Trieste, Museo Civico Sartorio (Milan, 1975), n.p.; Laura Ruaro Loseri, ‘La pittura su tavola, il Trecento e Trieste’, in Pittura su tavola, pp. 21–37; Carla Travi, ‘Il Maestro del Trittico di Santa Chiara: appunti per la pittura veneta di primo Trecento’, Arte Cristiana 80 (1992), 81–96; Francesca Flores d’Arcais, ‘Il Trittico di Santa Chiara e la pittura a tempera su tavola del Trecento a Trieste’, in Medioevo a Trieste: istituzioni, arte, società nel Trecento: atti del convegno, Trieste, 22–24 novembre 2007, ed. Paolo Cammarosano (Rome, 2009), pp. 353–77. 2 For the attribution to Paolo Veneziano, followed by most scholars, see Evelyn Sandberg Vavalà, ‘Maestro Paolo Veneziano’, The Burlington Magazine 57 (1930), pp. 160–83 (at p. 177). 3 Travi, ‘Il Maestro’; Luisa Tognoli Bardin, ‘Master of the Santa Chiara Triptych’, in The Martello Collection: Paintings, Drawings and Miniatures from the XIVth to the XVIIIth centuries, ed. Miklós Boskovits (Florence, 1985), pp. 90–3; Filippo Pedrocco, Paolo Veneziano (Milan, 2003), pp. 48–50; Miklós Boskovits, ‘Paolo Veneziano: riflessioni sul percorso (parte I e II)’, Arte Cristiana 97 (2009), 81–90 and 161–70, esp. p. 86 n. 9. Some scholars maintain that the central panel was made at the same time as the wings, but by an older artist: Walcher Casotti, Il trittico di Santa Chiara; Bianco Fiorin, ‘1: Trittico di S. Chiara’, n.p.; Flores d’Arcais ‘Il trittico di Santa Chiara’, pp. 353–71, esp. p. 360. 4 The use of innovative Byzantine devotional images on the wings has also been noted: Hans Belting, Das Bild und sein Publikum im Mittelalter: Form und Funktion früher Bildtafeln der Passion (Berlin, 1981), pp. 74, 99, 271, 308 (cat. no. 34). For the history of the community of San Cipriano, see: Walcher Casotti, Il trittico di S. Chiara; Ruaro Loseri, ‘La pittura su tavola’; Bianca Maria Favetta, ‘Preliminari ad una ricerca storica sul monastero di San Cipriano a Trieste’, in Comunità religiose di Trieste: contributi di conoscenza, ed. Laura Ruaro Loseri (Udine, 1979), pp. 71–86; Lucia Pillon, ‘Il monastero della Cella di Trieste dalle origini alla metà del XV secolo’, Metodi e ricerche 1 (1980), 23–40. 5 Favetta, ‘Preliminari ad una ricerca storica’, p. 74.

‘SPECULUM SINE MACULA’: THE TRITTICO DI SANTA CHIARA

period of relative institutional fluidity.6 A ‘Cella dominarum Sancte Marie’, probably a semi-religious group, mentioned in the documents in 1265, was transformed into a monastic house by the Triestine bishop in 1278, and from at least 1282 belonged to the Ordo Sanctae Clarae, the female branch of the Franciscan Order as instituted by Pope Urban IV (r.  1261–64).7 This institutional shift – the reasons for which are unknown – caused serious differences between the community of Santa Maria della Cella and the Triestine bishop, which were only settled in the years around 1330.8 Maria Walcher Casotti suggested that the scenes on the triptych’s right wing, in particular the one in the middle register showing how Saint Clare and Saint Agnes present a group of young women to a bishop saint, may be connected to the community’s reconciliation with the Triestine Episcopal See. The left wing, depicting saints who were particularly venerated in Trieste, presumably anchored the triptych within the town’s local religious landscape.9 So several aspects of the Trittico di Santa Chiara suggest that all parts of the object were made specifically for this Triestine community of female religious, during the time when they identified as Poor Clares. These include: its provenance from the Benedictine nunnery of San Cipriano/ Santa Maria della Cella; the community’s Franciscan affiliation at the time when both central panel and wings were painted; and, last but not least, the triptych’s iconography, which not only includes images of Saint Clare of Assisi on both central panel and wings but, as briefly mentioned, perhaps also alludes to events connected to the community’s history. Although some questions regarding the iconography and especially the patronage of the Trittico di Santa Chiara’s wings still await further exploration, in the context of this essay, I will not add anything further to the already existing scholarship on the wings. Instead, I would like to concentrate on the comparatively neglected central panel,10 and ask how it may be understood in its presumed original form, without wings, and as an object linked to the devotional practices of a community of Clarissan nuns. This approach owes a large intellectual debt to Joanna 6 For the following, see the literature given in note 4 above. 7 For the institutionalisation of the Poor Clares Order in the thirteenth century, see Lezlie S. Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi: Female Franciscan Identities in Later Medieval Italy (Leiden/Boston, 2008); Bert Roest, Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares between Foundation and Reform (Leiden/Boston, 2013), esp. pp. 62–7. 8 In 1367, the Cella community then appears for the first time as belonging to the Benedictine Order. Favetta, ‘Preliminari ad una ricerca storica’, p. 73. 9 Walcher Casotti, Il trittico di S. Chiara, esp. pp. 6–16. For a description of all scenes depicted not only on the wings, but also on the central panel, see Bianco Fiorin, ‘1: Trittico di S. Chiara’, n.p. 10 Except for Travi, ‘Il Maestro del Trittico’, who tries to sharpen the stylistic profile of the central panel’s artist, and Rina Paolucci, ‘Le storiette dell’evangelo della parte centrale del trittico di S. Chiara’, La porta orientale 4 (1934), 453–83, who focuses on the iconography of the triptych’s central panel, albeit without considering its original function and context.

71

72

MICHAELA ZÖSCHG

Cannon’s scholarship, and relates to many of the themes she has explored over the course of her career. The arguments I put forward in this chapter particularly tie in with her quest for a more differentiated understanding of artworks made for late medieval mendicants,11 and with her explorations of the relationship between artworks and devotional practice.12 They also touch upon her interest in Franciscan women, whose visual representations in Trecento art she has studied in the context of the cult of female saints.13 • The central panel of the Trittico di Santa Chiara is divided into thirty-six small compartments, arranged in six rows with six scenes each. Set against golden backgrounds, they show an extraordinarily detailed sequence from the Life of Christ, leading the viewer from the Annunciation to the Virgin in the upper left corner via the Infancy, Ministry, Passion and Resurrection of Christ to the scene of his Ascension. The Death and Ascension of the Virgin, the Death of Saint Clare and the Stigmatisation of Saint Francis conclude the cycle in the lower right corner. Most of the scenes were once accompanied by red inscriptions in Latin; some of these are now abraded, or completely lost.14 In both its composition and style, the Triestine panel is connected to a group of other Northeastern Italian panel paintings showing small-scale stories from the lives of Christ and the Virgin. These have survived in comparatively high numbers, especially in Venice, Rimini and Bologna, and seem to have been particularly popular in the context of personal devotion.15 Formally and iconographically, they are linked to Byzantine panel paintings such as multi-scene calendar icons and icons connected to the Feast Cycle,16 Eastern objects whose images and narratives Italian artists and makers had increasingly adapted for the devotional needs of a 11 Most recently in Joanna Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches: Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New Haven and London, 2013). 12 For example, Joanna Cannon, ‘Kissing the Virgin’s Foot: Adoratio before the Madonna and Child Enacted, Depicted, Imagined’, Studies in Iconography 31 (2010), 1–50. 13 Joanna Cannon and André Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany (University Park, PA, 1999); Joanna Cannon, ‘Beyond the Limitations of Visual Typology: Reconsidering the Function and Audience of Three Vita Panels of Women Saints c. 1300’, in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art 61 (Washington, DC, 2002), pp. 290–313. 14 For a transcription, see Bianco Fiorin, ‘1: Trittico di S. Chiara’, n.p. 15 Victor M. Schmidt, Painted Piety: Panel Paintings for Personal Devotion in Tuscany, 1250–1400 (Florence, 2005), esp. pp. 223–6. 16 See, as a comparison, the mosaic icon now in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence: Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557), ed. Helen C. Evans, exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (New Haven and London, 2004), pp. 219–20, cat. no. 129 (entry by Arne Effenberger). For an early painted example kept at the Monastery of Saint Catherine, Mount Sinai, see Kurt Weitzmann, ‘Byzantine Miniature and Icon

‘SPECULUM SINE MACULA’: THE TRITTICO DI SANTA CHIARA

Western audience during the thirteenth century.17 It is well known that the Franciscan Order played a crucial role in these processes of translation, and many of the narrative panel paintings, including the Triestine example, therefore show Franciscan imagery alongside the Marian and Passion narratives inspired by the Byzantine tradition.18 The presence of Saint Clare on many of these panels further suggests that such objects were especially widespread within female Franciscan communities.19 The Triestine panel, however, surpasses most of its Italian and Byzantine counterparts in dimensions and in the number of scenes.20 Its unusually large size would have lent itself particularly well to collective use, perhaps displayed on an altar in the Triestine monastery’s nuns’ choir, one of the most important spaces of the Clarissan nuns’ devotional life.21 We know nothing about the architecture of Santa Maria della Cella at the time, and Painting in the Eleventh Century’, in Studies in Classical and Byzantine Manuscript Illumination, ed. Herbert L. Kessler (Chicago/London, 1971), pp. 271–313, esp. p. 295. 17 Hans Belting, ‘Die Reaktion der Kunst des 13. Jahrhunderts auf den Import von Reliquien und Ikonen’, in Il medio Oriente e l’Occidente nell’arte del XIII secolo: atti del XX Congresso internazionale di storia dell’arte, ed. Hans Belting (Bologna, 1982), II, pp. 35–54. 18 See the examples given in William R. Cook, ‘La rappresentazione delle stimmate di San Francesco nella pittura veneziana del Trecento’, Saggi e Memorie di Storia dell’Arte 20 (1996), 9–34. For the relationship between the Franciscan and Byzantine art of the period, see Anne Derbes, Picturing the Passion in Late Medieval Italy: Narrative Painting, Franciscan Ideologies, and the Levant (Cambridge, 1996); Anne Derbes and Amy Neff, ‘Italy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Byzantine Sphere’, in Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557), ed. Evans, pp. 449–61. For the important role the Dominican Order also played in such processes of translation, see Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches, esp. pp. 356–9. 19 See, for example, a panel with fifteen scenes, including Saint Clare and the Stigmatisation of Saint Francis, now in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena (inv. no. F.1965.1.020.P), or a panel with eight scenes, including Saint Clare and Saint Francis, now in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond (inv. no. 55.11.1–2). For the use of such narrative panel paintings in the context of the Poor Clares, see also Schmidt, Painted Piety, pp. 223–6; Cimabue and Early Italian Devotional Painting, ed. Holly Flora, exh. cat. The Frick Collection, New York (New York, 2006), esp. pp. 25–31 (with a focus on Central Italian examples); Emanuele Zappasodi, ‘Sorores reclusae’: spazi di clausura e immagini dipinte in Umbria fra XIII e XIV secolo (Florence, 2018), pp. 94–5 (with a brief mention of the Triestine triptych). 20 The only contemporary Italian panel painting known to me that surpasses the Triestine panel in size and number of scenes is Duccio’s Maestà for the high altar of Siena Cathedral; see Peter Seiler, ‘Duccio’s Maestà: The Function of the Scenes from the Life of Christ on the Reverse of the Altarpiece: A New Hypothesis’, in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, pp. 251–77 (including some of the larger Venetian examples in his discussion). See also an eleventh-century icon from the Monastery of Saint Catherine’s, Mount Sinai, with images of the Virgin and thirty-six scenes from the Life of Christ (Michigan Inventory Number 106): The Sinai Icon Collection: http://vrc.princeton. edu/sinai/items/show/6457 (accessed 6 June 2021), also briefly discussed in Weitzmann, ‘Byzantine Miniature and Icon Painting’, pp. 301–3. 21 For the plentiful documentary evidence of altars in female mendicant nuns’ choirs, see Carola Jäggi, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter: die Kirchen der Klarissen und Dominikanerinnen im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Petersberg, 2006), pp. 247–52. For the wide range of artworks that were used in medieval nuns’ choirs in the context of devotional practice, see Krone und Schleier: Kunst aus mittelalterlichen Frauenklöstern, ed. Jutta Frings and Jan Gerchow, exh. cat. Essen, Ruhrlandmuseum, and Bonn,

73

74

MICHAELA ZÖSCHG

it is therefore not possible to determine whether the panel was displayed within Clarissan clausura or in a publicly accessible part of the monastic buildings.22 However, apart from its size, some aspects of its iconography point, as I will argue in this chapter, towards its use by the nuns of Santa Maria della Cella themselves. A wide array of written and visual evidence attests to the detailed use of narrative imagery in the devotional life of late medieval Clarissan nuns.23 Instructive texts such as Saint Bonaventure’s De perfectione vitae ad sorores made extensive use of visual metaphors when offering the enclosed sisters advice on how to strive for Franciscan virtues such as humility and poverty, or on how to assiduously apply oneself to prayer.24 And devotional literature such as the Meditationes vitae Christi, a detailed account of the Life of Christ specifically designed to assist a Clarissan nun in her daily meditations, encouraged readers to immerse themselves into the stories, and to emotionally identify with, and imitate, the main characters of the story.25 Some of the surviving manuscripts of the Meditationes vitae Christi, such as for example Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Ital. 115 and Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 410, both probably made for female Franciscan owners, are accompanied by extensive image cycles. These go, as the studies by Holly Flora and

Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich, 2005), esp. pp. 400–22. 22 For the implications strict enclosure had for Clarissan art and architecture, see the still fundamental study: Caroline Bruzelius, ‘Hearing Is Believing: Clarissan Architecture, ca. 1213–1340’, Gesta 31 (1992), 83–91. Regarding the difficulty of allocating mobile panel paintings to the enclosed or publicly accessible parts of a female monastic community, see Jäggi, Frauenklöster, pp. 280–92. 23 For an overview on the use and function of artworks in a Clarissan context, apart from Jäggi, Frauenklöster and Zappasodi, Sorores reclusae, see also Jeryldene Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality: The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 1996). 24 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, ‘De Perfectione Vitae ad Sorores seu de Forma Perfectionis Religiosorum’, in Doctoris Seraphici S. Bonaventurae, Opera Omnia, VIII (Quaracchi, 1898), pp. 107–27. The text has been translated in: Writings on the Spiritual Life: Works of St Bonaventure, X, ed. F. Edward Coughlin (Saint Bonaventure, NY, 2006), pp. 135–95. 25 John of Caulibus, Meditations on the Life of Christ, trans. and ed. Francis X. Taney, Sr, Anne Miller and C. Mary Stallings-Taney (Asheville, NC, 2000). The authorship and date of the Meditationes vitae Christi are at the centre of ongoing scholarly debates. While Sarah McNamer has argued that its original text was written in the mid-fourteenth century, in Italian, and possibly by a nun, Dávid Falvay and Peter Tóth recently proposed that it was authored by a spiritual Franciscan friar, Jacopo da San Gimignano, favouring the traditional dating in the years around 1300: Sarah McNamer, ‘The Author of the Italian Meditations on the Life of Christ’, in New Directions in Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall’s 80th Birthday, ed. Kathryn KerbyFulton, John J. Thompson, and Sarah Baechle (Notre Dame, IN, 2014), pp. 119–37; Dávid Falvay and Péter Tóth, ‘L’autore e la trasmissione delle Meditationes vitae Christi in base a manoscritti volgari italiani’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 108 (2015), pp. 403–30 (both with further literature). For significant new contributions to this debate, see The ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi’ Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Text and Image, ed. Holly Flora and Péter Tóth (Turnhout, 2021).

‘SPECULUM SINE MACULA’: THE TRITTICO DI SANTA CHIARA

Renana Bartal have shown, far beyond mere illustrations for the text.26 Instead, they offer their readers alternative routes to enter the stories, and to memorise, reconstruct, re-enact and re-invent the images on the pages in their minds.27 The extensive cycles of wall paintings preserved in the nuns’ choirs of Clarissan monastery churches such as San Pietro in Vineis in Anagni and Santa Maria Donna Regina in Naples must have fulfilled similar roles: here, stories taken from the lives of saints and the Passion unfolded around the nuns in the space where they prayed and meditated, their position on the walls additionally adding to the immersive experience for which many of the devotional texts call.28 The Triestine panel, leading the viewer through Christ’s life in thirtythree steps, from the Annunciation to the Ascension, belongs, I believe, to the same Clarissan ‘web of images’.29 Conceptually, it is closely related to these texts and images, even though in its iconography and style, the closest point of comparison is perhaps provided by an image cycle in a late thirteenth-century prayer book known as the Supplicationes variae, now in the Bibliotheca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence.30 This manuscript, which has been extensively studied by Amy Neff, was – like our panel – made in 26 For the Paris manuscript (193 images) see Holly Flora, The ‘Devout Belief of the Imagination’: The Paris ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi’ and Female Franciscan Spirituality in Trecento Italy (Turnhout, 2009). For the Oxford manuscript (154 images), see Holly Flora, ‘Empathy and Performative Vision in Oxford Corpus Christi College MS 410’, Ikon: Journal of Iconographic Studies 3 (2010), 169–78; Renana Bartal, ‘Repetition, Opposition, and Invention in an Illuminated Meditationes Vitae Christi: Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 410’, Gesta 53:2 (2014), 155–74; Renana Bartal, ‘Ducitur et Reducitur: Passion, Devotion and Mental Motion in an Illuminated Meditationes Vitae Christi Manuscript’, in Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, ed. Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai, and Hanna Vorholt (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 369–80; Holly Flora, ‘Fashioning the Passion: The Poor Clares and the Clothing of Christ’, Art History 40 (2016), 464–95; and Renana Bartal, ‘Lost and Found in the Meditationes Vitae Christi, Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410’, in Illuminating the Middle Ages: Tributes to Prof. John Lowden from his Students, Friends and Colleagues, ed. Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin (Leiden, 2020), pp. 291–308. 27 For the complex relationship between images, imagination, meditation and memory in the Middle Ages, see Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge, 1998), and, with an emphasis on the Meditationes Vitae Christi, Michelle Karnes, Imagination, Meditation and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago and London, 2011). 28 For San Pietro in Vineis, see Margret Boehm, Wandmalerei des 13. Jahrhunderts im Klarissenkloster S. Pietro in Vineis zu Anagni: Bilder für die Andacht (Münster, 1999); for Santa Maria Donna Regina: The Church of Santa Maria Donna Regina: Art, Iconography and Patronage in Fourteenth-century Naples, ed. Janis Elliott and Cordelia Warr (Aldershot, 2004), in particular the contributions by Cathleen Fleck and Adrian Hoch. See also Jäggi, Frauenklöster, pp. 255–72, and Zappasodi, ‘Sorores reclusae’, pp. 163–255, with further examples of wall paintings in nuns’ choirs. 29 I am borrowing this phrase from Lina Bolzoni, who in a study of the same title emphasises the manifold and complex interrelations between written texts, spoken sermons and painted images in the context of the Dominican Order. Lina Bolzoni, The Web of Images: Vernacular Preaching from its Origins to St Bernardino da Siena, trans. Carole Preston and Lisa Chien (Aldershot, 2004). 30 Florence, Bibliotheca Medicea Laurentziana, Plut. 25.3. The digitised manuscript can be consulted online: http://teca.bmlonline.it (accessed 6 June 2021).

75

76

MICHAELA ZÖSCHG

the Veneto, and owned by somebody with close links to the Franciscans, possibly a male lay member of its Third Order.31 It contains a collection of prayers, offices, sermons and contemplative texts (many of which belong to a Franciscan body of thought) and, at the very end, forty-five full-page tinted drawings.32 These show, as does the panel in Trieste, thirty-three scenes from the Life of Christ (albeit with a slightly stronger focus on the Passion narrative), followed by twelve non-narrative images of a more devotional character.33 Amy Neff has argued that the number thirty-three, equal to the number of years Christ spent on earth, may imply that the book’s owner was particularly encouraged to contemplate the historical figure of Jesus, and to engage with the events surrounding his life on earth34 – a purpose also very fitting for the thirty-three scenes on the Clarissan panel in Trieste. Such meditation on the historic figure of Jesus is, however, not the only mode of contemplation the Triestine panel offered its Clarissan viewers. In contrast to the continuous narrative in the Supplicationes variae, the mental pilgrimage through Christ’s life is abruptly interrupted in the sequence’s twenty-eighth compartment. Here, the viewer encounters an image of the Veronica. This famous cloth relic was believed to bear a direct impression of Christ’s face, created when he wiped the sweat and blood from his face on his way to Calvary (Plate VI).35

31 Amy Neff, A Soul’s Journey: Franciscan Art, Theology, and Devotion in the Supplicationes variae (Toronto, 2019), discussing the Triestine triptych in relation to the Supplicationes variae on pp. 119, 130, 185. Among Neff ’s many publications on the manuscript, in the present context I would highlight: Amy Neff, ‘Byzantium Westernized, Byzantium Marginalized: Two Icons in the Supplicationes Variae’, Gesta 38 (1999), 81–102; Amy Neff, ‘“Palma dabit palmam”: Franciscan Themes in a Devotional Manuscript’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 65 (2002), 22–66. 32 For a list of the texts, see Neff, A Soul’s Journey, pp. 202–9. 33 Neff, A Soul’s Journey, p. 295 n. 20, also notes this parallel in numbers. I am very grateful to the author for sharing her thoughts on the connections between the Supplicationes variae and the Triestine panel. It is noteworthy that the iconography of the scenes in the manuscript and on the panel overlaps only partially. While the Supplicationes variae illuminations have a stronger focus on Christ’s Passion, the Triestine panel uses more scenes to narrate episodes related to Christ’s Ministry. A detailed comparison between the two image cycles both as regards iconography and style, still a desideratum, may further enlighten our understanding of the role of narrative for Franciscan devotion. 34 Neff, ‘“Palma dabit palmam”’, p. 62; Neff, A Soul’s Journey, p. 82. 35 André Chastel, ‘La Veronique’, Revue de l’art 40–1 (1978), 71–82; Ewa Kuryluk, Veronica and her Cloth: History, Symbolism, and Structure of a ‘True’ Image (Cambridge, MA and Oxford, 1991). In the later Middle Ages, several such textile acheiropoieta (miraculous portraits not made by human hands) of Christ were believed to exist, with various legends on how they came into being attached to them: The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation: Papers from a Colloquium Held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome and the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1996, ed. Herbert L. Kessler and Gerhard Wolf (Bologna, 1998); for the present context especially see the essay by Gerhard Wolf, ‘From Mandylion to Veronica: Picturing the “Disembodied” Face and Disseminating the True Image of Christ in the Latin West’, pp. 153–79. See also Hans Belting, Bild und Kult: eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990); Il volto di Cristo, ed. Giovanni Morello and Gerhard Wolf, exh. cat. Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (Milan, 2000); Gerhard Wolf, Schleier und Spiegel: Traditionen des Christusbildes und die Bildkonzepte der Renaissance (Munich, 2002).

‘SPECULUM SINE MACULA’: THE TRITTICO DI SANTA CHIARA

The image follows the Veronica’s established visual formula of the neckless face of Christ against a white linen cloth.36 In the manner of a trompe l’oeil, the textile is rendered as affixed to the compartment’s frame with five nails, three at the top, and one at each side; this suggests that it asks not to be understood as part of the same reality as the Passion scenes that surround it, but rather, as part of the viewers’ world.37 Christ’s face, gazing directly at the viewer, seems to belong to yet another realm: only the tips of the two elegantly curled locks and of the beard protrude from the halo, giving the impression of an immaterial head floating in front of a golden background. The Veronica on the Triestine panel thus oscillates between at least three layers of reality and time: the reality of the Passion story in the picture, the reality of the cloth pretending to be part of the viewer’s world (and perhaps veiling something that lies ‘behind’), and the reality of Christ’s face, on the one hand alluding to the trace left by his human body on the cloth, but in its abstraction also alluding to his divine, eternal nature. To a certain degree, this oscillation between image and object is inherent to all Veronica images;38 in this case it is, however, additionally heightened by the image’s position within the Passion narrative. When the Triestine panel was painted, the now familiar legend of the Veronica’s creation on the road to Calvary was still a very recent invention. The painting in Trieste is in fact one of the earliest images of the Veronica that links it to the Passion story, and it is unique in inserting the relic into the narrative at exactly the point where the legend situates its creation: between the scenes of the Carrying of the Cross and the Crucifixion.39 At the twenty-eighth station, the image seems to ask the Clarissan nuns to pause in their mental pilgrimage through Christ’s human life, and to contemplate his divine nature through a face-to-face encounter with his true likeness, authenticated by the visual formula of the Veronica. The fact that the image is inserted just before the narrative reaches its climax in the Crucifixion additionally heightens its devotional power. This unusual combination of narrative and icon has no immediate points of comparison in contemporary painting. While, for instance, the conceptually very close Supplicationes variae also includes an image of 36 Wolf, ‘From Mandylion to Veronica’, p. 156. 37 For the medieval concept of trompe l’oeil, see Klaus Krüger‚ ‘Mimesis als Bildlichkeit des Scheins – Zur Fiktionalität religiöser Bildkunst im Trecento’, in Künstlerischer Austausch – Artistic Exchange, Tagungsakten (XXVIII Internationaler Kongress für Kunstgeschichte, Berlin 15.–20. Juli 1992), ed. Thomas W. Gaethgens (Berlin, 1993), II, pp. 423–36. 38 Christiane Kruse, ‘Vera Icon – oder die Leerstellen des Bildes’, in Quel Corps? Eine Frage der Repräsentation, ed. Hans Belting, Dietmar Kamper, and Martin Schulz (Munich, 2002), pp. 105–29. 39 In his Bible en françois, a thirteenth-century compilation of extracts from the Old and New Testaments as well as apocryphal sources, Roger d’Argenteuil narrates that the imprint was generated on the way to Calvary, when a woman – only later would she be known as Saint Veronica – gave the Lord her cloth or veil out of compassion. This legend would only gain currency in images in the years around 1300: Kuryluk, Veronica, p. 123; Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, II, Die Passion Jesu Christi (Gütersloh, 1968), p. 89.

77

78

MICHAELA ZÖSCHG

the Holy Face, here it is not part of the manuscript’s Passion narrative, but rendered in the section at the end, together with standing saints and other devotional images such as the Man of Sorrows. By contrast with the Triestine panel, in this manuscript cycle Christ’s human nature and his history on earth are clearly separated from images focusing on a saintly world and the realm of his divine nature.40 The few other fourteenth-century examples where the Veronica is linked with the Passion take yet another approach, by including the Holy Face among the arma Christi, an assembly of the instruments relating to Christ’s martyrdom.41 The earliest surviving example is probably a full-page illumination in a Passional made in the second decade of the fourteenth century for Kunigunde of Bohemia (1265–1321), Abbess of the female Benedictine monastery of Saint George in Prague (Fig. 5.1).42 By contrast to the Triestine panel, the arma Christi appear here on a page inserted after illuminations illustrating the Life of Christ; through their isolation, they assume a timeless quality, which enabled the reader to contemplate Christ’s human nature and suffering, but also to imagine and experience an encounter with his divine and eternal nature.43 The combination of Passion narrative and Veronica image on the Triestine panel assumes a similar function: While the narrative scenes encourage the viewer, as we have seen, to undertake a mental pilgrimage through Christ’s life on earth, with the aim of contemplating his human nature, the Veronica may have reminded her of his divinity, and of his godly existence out of time. A second, slightly later instance of a combination between Passion narrative, Veronica and the arma Christi can be found on a panel with twenty-seven scenes from the Life of Christ, now in the Wallraf-Richartz40 Neff, ‘“Palma dabit palmam’”, p. 63; Neff, A Soul’s Journey into God, pp. 164–7. However, the Supplicationes variae’s narrative sequence is also interrupted by an iconic image. On fol. 366r, an image of the Virgin and Child Enthroned is inserted between the scenes of the Massacre of the Innocents and Christ among the Doctors. Hans Belting has suggested that it should be read as shorthand for the Holy Family’s idyllic stay in Egypt, and that it invites the viewer to meditate upon the intimacy between mother and child. Belting, Das Bild und sein Publikum, pp. 78–9. This function as a substitute for a section of the narrative parallels the use of the Holy Face on the Trieste panel as an alternate visualisation of a section of the Passion narrative, and further strengthens the links between the manuscript illuminations and the panel painting. On the combination of narrative and iconic images in panel paintings for devotional use, see also Cimabue, ed. Flora, pp. 25–31. 41 Robert Suckale, ‘Arma Christi: Überlegungen zur Zeichenhaftigkeit mittelalterlicher Andachtsbilder’, Städel-Jahrbuch 6 (1977), 177–208. See also the contributions in The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture: with a Critical Edition of ‘O Vernicle’, ed. Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown (Farnham, 2014). 42 Prague, National Library, MS XIV. A.17, fol. 10r. The digitised manuscript can be consulted online: http://www.manuscriptorium.com/apps/index. php?direct=record&pid=AIPDIG-NKCR__XIV_A_17____2GWPZB8-cs#search (last accessed 6 June 2021). For the manuscript and further literature, see Gia Toussaint, Das Passional der Kunigunde von Böhmen: Bildrhetorik und Spiritualität (Paderborn, 2003). 43 Suckale, ‘Arma Christi’, p. 187.

FIG. 5.1  ARMA CHRISTI. MANUSCRIPT ILLUMINATION FROM THE PASSIONAL OF ABBESS KUNIGUNDE. INK AND PIGMENTS ON PARCHMENT, C. 1310–20, NATIONAL LIBRARY, PRAGUE, MS XIV. A. 17, FOL. 10R. PHOTO: © PRAGUE, NATIONAL LIBRARY.

80

MICHAELA ZÖSCHG

Museum in Cologne. It originates from the Clarissan monastery of Sankt Klara in Cologne, and was painted in the years around 1360–80 (Fig. 5.2).44 In this example, the arma Christi assume a similar, yet different function to the Veronica on the Triestine panel. Arranged in a larger, central compartment with a depiction of Christ on the Cross as its central focal point, they are surrounded by narrative scenes from the Infancy, Passion and Resurrection of Christ. Here, however, the stories are not arranged chronologically, but require the viewer to draw upon her imagination and memory to re-construct and re-arrange the events in her mind.45 It is no coincidence that almost all the Veronica images I have introduced so far come from a female monastic context. Jeffrey Hamburger and, more recently, Alexa Sand have shown that the history of this image and its veneration is closely intertwined with the spirituality of both monastic and lay women.46 In their writings, mystics such as Gertrud of Helfta or Mechthild von Hackeborn verbalised their longing and desire for an unmediated, face-to-face encounter with their bridegroom, Christ,47 and from about 1230 onwards, images of the Holy Face often occurred in illuminated devotional manuscripts geared towards a female audience.48 In every instance, the visual formula of the Veronica seems to have guaranteed a true likeness of the Face of Christ, and an imprint of Christ’s gaze, with whom the viewer could engage in direct contact. According to Hamburger, this devotion to Christ’s face was connected to a broader concern with concepts of imago and imitatio, image and imitation49 – themes that are, as we have seen, central not only for a proper understanding of the Veronica image, but for a proper understanding of the function of images in the context of Franciscan devotional practice. In this perspective, the Veronica on the Triestine panel holds a threshold position: on the one hand, it is bound to the Passion narrative through its position within the story and facilitates re-enactment and imitatio for the nun in front of it, and at the same time, Christ’s portrait and gaze function as tools to contemplate his divinity, and offer her a glimpse into the mirror of things to come in the afterlife. To better understand this twofold orientation, it is helpful to return once more to the Passional of Kunigunde in Prague, where the narrative progression of the Passion story 44 Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, inv. no. WRM 6. The panel measures 74 × 93 cm. Frank Günter Zehnder, Katalog der Altkölner Malerei (Cologne, 1990), pp. 116–20; Petra Meschede, Bilderzählungen in der kölnischen Malerei des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts: eine Untersuchung zum Bildtypus und zur Funktion (Paderborn, 1994), pp. 20–33. 45 Suckale, ‘Arma Christi’; Meschede, Bilderzählungen, pp. 28–33. 46 Jeffrey Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York, 1998), pp. 317–82; Alexa Sand, Vision, Devotion and SelfRepresentation in Late Medieval Art (New York, 2014), pp. 27–83. For women and the Veronica, see also Barbara Baert, ‘The Gendered Visage: Facets of the Vera Icon’, Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerpen (2000), 10–43. 47 Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary, p. 322. 48 For a wide range of examples, including the famous image in the Psalter of Yolande of Soissons, see Sand, Vision, Devotion and Self-Representation, pp. 27–83. 49 Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary, p. 322.

WOLFGANG F. MEIER.

BILDARCHIV KÖLN:

PHOTO: © RHEINISCHES

INV. NO. WRM 6.

CORBOUD, COLOGNE,

MUSEUM & FONDATION

WALLRAF-RICHARTZ-

ON WOOD, C. 1360–80,

TEMPERA AND GOLD

THE LIFE OF CHRIST.

FIG. 5.2  SCENES FROM

82

MICHAELA ZÖSCHG

is interrupted in a strikingly similar way to that found in the Triestine panel (Fig. 5.3). Inserted between the depiction of the Way to Calvary on fol. 7 verso, and before the Crucifixion scene on the next page, Abbess Kunigunde is shown kneeling in front of Christ, who is presenting his side wound to her. In this instance, the manuscript illuminator adapted the well-established formula of the Noli me tangere to convey an intimate and personal encounter between Kunigunde and Christ. The accompanying inscription instructs her to contemplate Christ’s wound, thus asking for a similar pausing in the story as does the image of the Veronica on the panel in Trieste. While, however, in the case of the Passional the donor figure becomes part of the story through her representation within the cycle, the Veronica on the Triestine panel offers a more complex way of immersion. By answering Christ’s gaze with their own, bodily eyes, the Clarissan viewers outside the panel could become a part of the story, perhaps even imagine themselves stepping into the Passion sequence and transforming themselves into one of the women witnessing the story of Christ’s Passion.50 Thus, the inclusion of the Veronica strengthens the painting’s immersive qualities, so typical for the use of images in Franciscan/Clarissan devotional practice. By looking at the Triestine panel in connection with the other examples cited, it appears that the early veneration of the Holy Face not only was particularly popular with monastic and lay women, but seems to have gained particular currency specifically with female Franciscans. It is noteworthy that not only do the Triestine and Cologne panels originate from Clarissan monasteries, but that Abbess Kunigunde, the owner of the Prague Passional, had a Clarissan background as well. She had entered the convent of the Poor Clares in Prague in 1276, when she was just eleven years old. In 1291, however, she was forced to leave the monastery in order to be married to Duke Boleslaw II of Masovia. When the marriage was annulled in 1302, Kunigunde returned to Prague, where she was installed as abbess of Saint George, a position traditionally held by members of the Bohemian Royal family. It was in her new role as a Benedictine that she commissioned the Passional but it has rightly been stressed that the manuscript’s contents show a strong Franciscan trait and that Kunigunde’s spirituality had been profoundly shaped by her time as a Clarissan nun under the immediate supervision of her great-aunt, Agnes of Bohemia.51 50 For the concept of gaze in the context of medieval devotional practice and meditation, see Thomas Lentes, ‘Inneres Auge, äußerer Blick und heilige Schau: ein Diskussionsbeitrag zur visuellen Praxis in Frömmigkeit und Moraldidaxe des späten Mittelalters’, in Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter: politisch-soziale Kontexte, visuelle Praxis, körperliche Ausdrucksformen, ed. Klaus Schreiner (Munich, 2002), pp. 179–220. 51 Toussaint, ‘Das Passional’, pp. 48–51; Jennifer Vlček Schurr, ‘The Dedication Illustration of the “Passional of Abbess Cunegund” – and Questions of Identity’, in Art and Identity: Visual Culture, Politics and Religion in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Sandra Cardarelli, Emily Jane Anderson, and John Richards (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2012), pp. 193–218.

FIG. 5.3  WAY TO CALVARY AND ABBESS KUNIGUNDE WORSHIPS CHRIST’S SIDE WOUND. MANUSCRIPT ILLUMINATIONS FROM THE PASSIONAL OF ABBESS KUNIGUNDE. INK AND PIGMENTS ON PARCHMENT, C. 1310–20, NATIONAL LIBRARY, PRAGUE, MS XIV. A. 17, FOL. 7V. PHOTO: © PRAGUE, NATIONAL LIBRARY.

84

MICHAELA ZÖSCHG

Agnes herself had founded the Clarissan monastery in Prague around 1231.52 As an important early propagator of the Order in Central Europe she was in direct contact with Saint Clare of Assisi, and it is interesting to note in the given context that in her correspondence with Agnes, Saint Clare repeatedly emphasises the importance both of Christ’s face and of its veneration. She fittingly describes his face as a mirror, underlining how through continuous contemplation of his features, a transformation of the believer can be achieved:53 Place your mind in the mirror of eternity; place your soul in the splendour of glory; place your heart in the figure of the divine substance; and, through contemplation, transform your entire being into the image of the Divine One himself.54

In her fourth letter to Agnes, Clare expands on this theme: … because the vision of him [Christ] is the splendour of everlasting glory, the radiance of everlasting light, and a mirror without tarnish. Look into this mirror every day, O queen, spouse of Jesus Christ, and continually examine your face in it, so that in this way you may adorn yourself completely … . Moreover, in this mirror shine blessed poverty, holy humility, and charity beyond words, as you will be able, with God’s grace, to contemplate throughout the entire mirror.55

Clare’s veneration for the Holy Face finds visual expression in yet another work of art from a Clarissan context with remarkable similarities to the Triestine panel, a small tetraptych from the Poor Clares monastery in Wrocław (Silesia), now in the National Gallery in Warsaw (Figs. 5.4, 5.5).56 Made around 1350–60 by either an artist from Cologne or by a Silesian artist familiar with Rhenish art, it may serve as a final example 52 Christian-Frederik Felskau, Agnes von Böhmen und die Klosteranlage der Klarissen und Franziskaner in Prag: Leben und Institution, Legende und Verehrung, 2 vols (Nordhausen, 2008). For the early history of the Order of Poor Clares, see Roest, Order and Disorder (with further literature). 53 For thorough analyses of the following passages, see Timothy J. Johnson, ‘Visual Imagery and Contemplation in Clare of Assisi’s “Letters to Agnes of Prague”’, Mystics Quarterly 19 (1993), 161–72; Joan Mueller, A Companion to Clare of Assisi: Life, Writings, and Spirituality (Leiden and Boston, 2010), pp. 165–6. 54 ‘… pone mentem tuam in speculo aeternitatis, pone animam tuam in splendore gloriae, pone cor tuum in figura divinae substantiae et transforma te ipsam totam per contemplationem in imagine divinitatis ipsius’; Joan Mueller, Clare’s Letters to Agnes: Texts and Sources (Saint Bonaventure, NY, 2001), pp. 76–7. 55 ‘… quae cum sit splendor aeternae gloriae, candor lucis aeternae et speculum sine macula. Hoc speculum cottidie intuere, o regina, sponsa Iesu Christi, et in eo faciem tuam iugiter speculare … . In hoc autem speculo refulget beata paupertas, sancta humilitas et ineffabilis caritas, sicut per totum speculum poteris cum Dei gratia contemplari’; Mueller, Clare’s Letters, pp. 92–5. 56 Warsaw, Muzeum Narodowe Warszawa, inv. no. 24. Each panel measures 22 × 14 cm. Mateusz Kapustka, ‘Das Entfalten der Lektüre von imitatio: ein Passionsaltärchen aus dem mittelalterlichen Klarenstift in Breslau als performatives Bilderwerk’, in Frauen – Kloster – Kunst: neue Forschungen zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters; Beiträge zum Internationalen Kolloquium vom 13. bis 16. Mai 2005 anlässlich der Ausstellung ‘Krone und Schleier’, ed.

‘SPECULUM SINE MACULA’: THE TRITTICO DI SANTA CHIARA

FIG. 5.4  FOLDABLE TETRAPTYCH (‘OUTER SIDE’). TEMPERA ON WOOD, C. 1350–60, MUZEUM NARODOWE WARSZAWA, WARSAW, INV. NO. 24. PHOTO: © ZBIGNIEW DOLIŃSKI/MUZEUM NARODOWE W WARSZAWIE.

FIG. 5.5  FOLDABLE TETRAPTYCH (‘INNER SIDE’). TEMPERA ON WOOD, C. 1350–60, MUZEUM NARODOWE WARSZAWA, WARSAW, INV. NO. 24. PHOTO: © ZBIGNIEW DOLIŃSKI/MUZEUM NARODOWE W WARSZAWIE.

for devotion to the Veronica in fourteenth-century female Franciscan circles. It consists of four wooden panels showing scenes from the Life of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the Passion of Christ on either side. They are connected to each other by hinges, which allows for them to be folded and unfolded, and for the images to be contemplated and meditated upon in different constellations. As in the Cologne example, the scenes are not arranged in a chronological sequence, and the nuns would have used it in the form of a winged altarpiece, or as a book, the movement of their Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Carola Jäggi, Susan Marti, and Hedwig Röckelein (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 105–12, 427, 480–2 (with further reading).

85

86

MICHAELA ZÖSCHG

bodies and hands forming an integral part of the devotional exercise.57 When the piece is closed, a Crucifixion scene and an image of the Holy Face flanked by the kneeling figures of Saint Francis and Saint Clare form the outermost layers; when it is completely opened, they are transformed into the centrepiece of one side (Fig. 5.4). Here, the Crucifixion with Mary and Saint John the Baptist is directly juxtaposed to the Veronica adored by Saint Francis and Saint Clare, not only contrasting Christ’s human and divine natures with each other, but further playing with allusions of Franciscan imitatio, offering the nuns not only Mary and Saint John as potential role-models, but also the figureheads of their Order.58 The exemplary figures of Saint Francis and Saint Clare are also included in the Triestine panel, anchoring the panel further within its presumed original Clarissan context. At the very end of the narrative cycle, after the viewer’s eye has wandered over thirty-three (or rather, thirty-two) scenes related to the life of Christ, and she has paused in her way to immerse herself in the contemplation of the Veronica, her journey through the story ends with three images not directly related to the Life of Christ: the Death of the Virgin, the Death of Saint Clare, and the Stigmatisation of Saint Francis (Plate VI). The first two of these scenes are clearly conceived as pendants, their compositions deliberately echoing one another. Considering that Saint Clare had a particularly strong identification potential for the Clarissan nuns viewing the panel, this visual alignment of the Virgin Mary and Saint Clare allowed the nuns to imagine their heavenly reward, as did the Stigmatisation of Saint Francis, showing the ultimate merging between the body of the Order’s founder and Christ as the endpoint of the narrative. In the prologue to the Meditationes vitae Christi, Francis and Clare are represented as important role models for the meditation on the life of Christ, and their endpoint promises the Clarissan viewer the ultimate transformation – in Clare’s case, her soul is received by the Virgin Mary, and in Francis’ case, his whole being is transformed by being literally touched by Christ.59 • The different strands of use and function that I have tried to sketch in this chapter show that the Trittico di Santa Chiara is a unique survival on many levels. It is not only, as previous scholarship has highlighted, one of 57 For folding artworks and their role for medieval devotional practice, see Schmidt, Painted Piety, esp. pp. 281–302; Roland Krischel, ‘Handelnde Bilder: Zur Kinetik des Klappbildes in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit’, in Mobile Eyes: peripatetisches Sehen in den Bildkulturen der Vormoderne, ed. David Ganz and Stefan Neuner (Munich, 2013), pp. 243–73. 58 Kapustka, ‘Das Entfalten der Lektüre’, also linking the object to Saint Clare’s letters to Agnes of Bohemia. 59 Bartal, ‘Repetition, Opposition, and Invention’, p. 157.

‘SPECULUM SINE MACULA’: THE TRITTICO DI SANTA CHIARA

the most important pieces of Venetian panel painting in the first decades of the fourteenth century. In its original inception as a panel-painting without wings, perhaps to be used by the Clarissan nuns of Santa Maria della Cella in their nuns’ choir, it is also a highly important and hitherto overlooked witness of Franciscan devotional imagery within a specific female Franciscan context. In its highly unusual combination of narrative with the iconic visual formula of the Veronica, it offered the nuns various entry points into their practice; the Holy Face acts as a mirror in which the spouse of Christ could take a reflective pause in her spiritual journey and contemplate God’s humane and divine nature before reaching the climactic scene of the Crucifixion. The end of the story then promises her reward. In common with the Virgin Mary and Saint Clare, the end of the Clarissan nun’s life would mean reunion with her heavenly spouse. As Saint Francis was united with Christ in the miraculous moment of the Stigmatisation, she would encounter, as Saint Clare puts it, ‘the splendour of everlasting glory, the radiance of everlasting light, and a mirror without tarnish’.

87

THE SIENA CONNECTION: A FRANCISCAN PROVINCIAL MINISTER BETWEEN TUSCANY AND ASSISI AT THE DAWN OF THE TRECENTO DONAL COOPER

D

uring the febrile summer of 1311 the long-standing tensions within the Franciscan movement over the correct observance of poverty exploded into open polemic. In 1309 Pope Clement V had invited the Order to address accusations that the observance of the Franciscan rule, and its central tenet of poverty, had collapsed. The Pope hoped to prepare the ground for a resolution of the Order’s internal divisions at the Church Council he had called at Vienne, but the debate became increasingly acrimonious as both sides – the rigorist faction or so-called ‘Spirituals’ on the one hand, and the establishment or ‘Community’ on the other – dug in and traded accusations. For Ubertino da Casale, the leading voice amongst the Spirituals, some of the most notorious abuses lay in This chapter has its ultimate root in a term essay written in 1996 for Joanna Cannon’s ‘Early Sienese Painting’ MA course and is dedicated to her in gratitude for a quarter century of guidance and inspiration. During my research I have received generous assistance from Machtelt Brüggen Israëls, Caroline Bruzelius, Andrea De Marchi, Chiara Demaria, Lucy Donkin, Gabriele Fattorini, Philippa Jackson, Wolfgang Loseries, Diana Norman, and Carl Brandon Strehlke, while Charles Bowen and Philip Muijtjens provided expert help in translating Ubertino’s Latin. As with all my work on Assisi, this essay draws greatly from my shared research and many conversations with the late Janet Robson.

6

90

DONAL COOPER

the Order’s architecture.1 In his Declaratio, composed in Avignon probably in August 1311, Ubertino castigated the friars of the Tuscan province with characteristic fury and sarcasm: For there are very few houses in the Order where there are not such excesses, and they know [this] very well, those who are promoters of such excesses, and who call themselves promoters and patrons of the Order and who debase the Order’s rules through such things. And since no buildings may be erected without the authority of the Provincial Ministers, [and] since there is no province in the Order in which there are not multiple excesses in buildings, they put forward a single minister to be properly punished for such things, because if we know of nothing in the Order, still we know well that those corrupt in these things are praised. And although the case of [the Tuscan Provincial Minister] Fra Jacobo de Tundo may be cited, who was punished like this on account of [his] excesses, still [he was] not properly but [only] superficially punished by the Minister General, and instead was made Provincial Minister for the [Umbrian] province of Saint Francis by its chapter, even though someone may be greatly lax in life and not above censure, as explained in the Rotulus. So too Fra Manfredo Bonfi, Fra Giovanni of Siena, Fra Andrea de’ Tolomei, Fra Illuminato of Florence and many others in the same province [of Tuscany] and in many other provinces could be cited as examples, into which [provinces] the doers of such things are sent out by the Minister General himself to be lords of the provinces and patrons of the houses, which are therefore built excessively.2

The barrage of tracts issued by both sides on the eve of the Council of Vienne offers fleeting but remarkably frank glimpses of an Order in 1 For a masterful account of the Vienne debates, see David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after Saint Francis (University Park, PA, 2001), pp. 111–58 (on Ubertino’s critique of Franciscan building practice and the Community’s response, see pp. 121–3). 2 Franz Ehrle, ‘Zur Vorgeschichte des Concils von Vienne’, Archiv für Litteratur- und Kirchen-Geschichte des Mittelalters 3 (1887), 1–195, at pp. 163–4: ‘Nam paucissima loca sunt in ordine, ubi non sint tales excessus, et optime sciunt, qui sunt promotores talium excessuum et ipsos vocant promotores ordinis et patronos et talibus comictunt regimen ordinis. Et cum nulla edificia possint fieri sine dispositione provincialium ministrorum, cum non sit provincia in ordine in qua non sint multi excessus edificiorum, ostendant ipsi unum ministrum qui pro talibus sit digne punitus, quia nullum in ordine scimus, sed vitiosos in hiis bene novimus exaltatos. Et licet possit poni verbi gratia de fratre Jacobo de Tundo, qui propter excessus huiusmodi fuerat, licet non digne sed superficietenus punitus per generalem, tamen factus provincialis minister in provincia sancti Francisci de capitulo suo, cum tamen aliquis [alias?] sit multum relaxatus in vita et non integre fame, sicut in rotulis est expressum. Item frater Manfredus Bonfi, frater Iohannes de Senis, frater Andreas de Tholomeis, frater Illuminatus de Florentia et plures alii in eadem provincia et in pluribus aliis provinciis possent poni exempla, in quibus actores talium per ipsum generalem dimittuntur domini provinciarum et patroni locorum, que sic excessive edificaverunt.’ English translation by Charles Bowen; the Rotulus was one of Ubertino earlier salvoes in the debate, written in the winter of 1310–11, edited by Ehrle, ‘Zur Vorgeschichte’, pp. 93–137.

THE SIENA CONNECTION: A FRANCISCAN PROVINCIAL MINISTER

turmoil.3 Amongst the diatribes, the passage from Ubertino’s Declaratio is notable for its willingness to name names as the author calls out specific abuses of authority. The list of culprits also confirms that individual friars could be personally associated with particular architectural projects. The Tuscan network that Ubertino sketches doubtless draws on his own deep familiarity with the region, from his time as a youthful friar at the Florentine convent of Santa Croce in the 1280s to his more recent travels as chaplain to the papal legate, Cardinal Napoleone Orsini, in 1306–9.4 Although Santa Croce is not named, Ubertino’s readership would have readily made the connection between his critique of the Tuscan hierarchy and the rebuilding of the Order’s Florentine church on an enormous scale from 1295 onwards.5 Elsewhere in his text, Ubertino draws an implicit contrast between the latest generation of Franciscan churches and the modest chapels restored by Saint Francis, which were ‘small and unadorned, but so strong that they look as though they could last up to the day of Judgement’.6 Santa Croce, by some margin the largest Franciscan church in Tuscany, clearly caused serious controversy within the Order, the memory of which endured for many decades. Writing near the end of the Trecento, Fra Bartolomeo da Pisa remembered the punishment that awaited one of the project’s main proponents amongst the Florentine Franciscans, Fra Giovenale degli Agli.7 According to a vision experienced by an unnamed friar, Fra Giovenale was to be beaten over the head with two hammers for all eternity, a grim echo perhaps of the constant rhythm of noise and labour that must have reverberated around the building-site of Santa Croce for the better part of a century.8 3 Both the nature of the debate and our ability to reconstruct it are considered in Donal Cooper and Janet Robson, ‘“A Great Sumptuousness of Paintings”: Frescos and Franciscan Poverty at Assisi in 1288 and 1312’, The Burlington Magazine 151 (2009), 656–62. 4 Paolo Vian, ‘“Noster familiaris solicitus et discretus”: Napoleone Orsini e Ubertino da Casale’, in Ubertino da Casale: atti del XLI Convegno Internazionale, Assisi 18–20 ottobre 2013, ed. Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani (Spoleto, 2014), pp. 217–98, esp. 242–9. 5 For the strains that Santa Croce’s rebuilding placed on the Order, see Sylvain Piron, ‘Un couvent sous influence. Santa Croce autour de 1300’, in Économie et religion. L’expérience des ordres mendicants (XIIIe–XVe siècle), ed. Nicole Bériou and Jacques Chiffoleau (Lyon, 2009), pp. 321–55, esp. pp. 331–2 for Ubertino’s list. Piron notes (see also the table on p. 341) that the Florentine named in the Declaratio, Fra Illuminato de’ Caponsacchi, was guardian at Santa Croce in 1297–99 and custodian there in 1302–3 and again in 1310–11. Julian Gardner, Giotto and his Publics: Three Paradigms of Patronage (Cambridge, MA, 2011), pp. 49–50, links Ubertino’s text and Santa Croce more forcefully, arguing that those named were mostly at Santa Croce, ‘a building which was certainly in Ubertino’s gun sights’. 6 Ehrle, ‘Zur Vorgeschichte’, p. 169: ‘…que valde parve sunt et non curiose, et tamen ita fortes, quod videtur, quod usque ad diem iuditii durarent’; cited by Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, p. 121; Cooper and Robson, ‘“A Great Sumptuousness of Paintings”’, p. 659. 7 Bartolomeo da Pisa, De Conformitate Vitae Beati Francisci ad Vitam Domini Iesu, ed. Collegium Sancti Bonaventurae, Analecta Franciscana IV (1906), p. 440; V (1912), p. 108. On Giovenale, who completed his novice’s training at Santa Croce in 1298 and served twice as its guardian in the 1320s, see Piron, ‘Un couvent sous influence’, pp. 331–2. 8 According to Bartolomeo (Analecta Franciscana V, p. 108) ‘Frater Iuvenalis de Aliis,

91

92

DONAL COOPER

Among Joanna Cannon’s many innovative contributions to the study of artistic patronage in late medieval Italy has been her concern to look beyond the collective veneer of religious orders, to attribute agency to individual friars and to trace prosopographical networks between different convents in parallel to their artistic commissions. This approach underpinned her early article on Dominican polyptychs, which argued compellingly that five high altarpieces were commissioned in the early Trecento by host convents in anticipation of provincial chapter meetings, a pattern strongly suggestive of an audience of leading friars deeply engaged in artistic commissions and acutely aware of the latest developments across their province.9 For the specific example of Simone Martini’s polyptych for Santa Caterina, Pisa, Cannon drew attention to Fra Jacopo Donati, a prominent friar in the Pisan house who paid for the completion of the convent’s cloister, was a frequent delegate to Dominican provincial chapters, and may have been familiar with Simone’s work from his spell as Pisan ambassador at the Neapolitan court of Robert of Anjou.10 Taking its methodological cue from Joanna Cannon’s work on the Dominicans, this essay seeks a fresh perspective on a pivotal period in the history of the Franciscan Order and its artistic patronage by reconstructing the biography of one the friars singled out for notoriety in Ubertino’s text, Fra Jacopo del Tondo (or Tundo). While acknowledging the importance of Santa Croce as both an architectural project and the principal administrative centre of the Order’s Tuscan province, it shifts our focus away from Florence. Four of the five friars condemned by Ubertino were Sienese, and the importance of Siena as an early nodal point for Franciscan networks has probably been underestimated.11 If de Florentia, qui fuit unus de principalioribus fratribus ad fundandum ecclesiam Sanctae Crucis de Florentia, habet pro purgatorio istam poenam, sicut ipse reseravit cuidam fratri, quod usque ad diem iudicii semper sunt duo mallei, qui eius caput percutiunt’. On the likely link between Giovenale’s punishment and the ‘eternal enterprise of mendicant construction’, see Caroline Bruzelius, Preaching, Building, Burying: Friars and the Medieval City (New Haven, 2014), pp. 19, 192 n.1. 9 Joanna Cannon, ‘Simone Martini, the Dominicans and the Early Sienese Polyptych’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 45 (1982), 69–93, linking high altarpiece commissions with Dominican provincial chapters in Siena (1306), Perugia (1308, 1316), Pisa (1320), Florence (1321), and Orvieto (1322). 10 Cannon, ‘Simone Martini, the Dominicans’, p. 93. 11 The Sienese Franciscans remain relatively understudied compared to their confrères in Florence, partially because the surviving documents are divided between Siena and Rome, partially because so much material – both artistic and archival – was lost to the devastating fire that ravaged the church and convent in 1655. Scholars are still reliant on Luigi de Angelis, Dell’albero di S. Francesco vicino alle mura di Siena (Siena, 1827); Vittorio Lusini, Storia della Basilica di S. Francesco in Siena (Siena, 1894); Enzo Carli, L’arte nella Basilica di S. Francesco a Siena (Siena, 1971). Ubertino is known to have been in Siena in 1307 to lift the interdict that Cardinal Napoleone had imposed on the city. The ceremony was held on 16 September in the Franciscan convent and repeated the following day in the Palazzo Pubblico, after Ubertino had preached to a large crowd. Among the witnesses in the chapter house at San Francesco was ‘fratre Manfredo’, almost certainly the ‘frater Manfredus Bonfi’ later named in the Declaratio, see ASSi, Diplomatico Riformagioni, 16

THE SIENA CONNECTION: A FRANCISCAN PROVINCIAL MINISTER

Jacopo’s transfer to Umbria – detailed in Ubertino’s Declaratio – cemented contacts between Santa Croce and Assisi, its most decisive artistic result may have been the arrival later in the decade of the leading Sienese artists Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti in the Lower Church to fresco the Saint Martin chapel and complete the transept scheme begun by Giotto and his workshop.

FRA JACOPO IN PUBLISHED SOURCES What do we know about Fra Jacopo del Tondo? His tenure as Tuscan Provincial Minister must have lasted only a few months in 1310 before the Minister General Gonsalvo of Spain orchestrated his transfer to Umbria.12 Ubertino’s Declaratio underscores the story, noting Jacopo’s relative youth and censure by the Minister General: And in the Tuscan provincial chapter [the Minister General, Gonsalvo] instituted many rulings on property and simony, faults into which several brothers had fallen alarmingly, as well as reports on these complaints, and he praised those friars by name in the most horrible way [Ubertino’s sarcasm again]; and while the listeners waited for [Gonsalvo] to punish them, as would have been fitting, he [only] punished one of them, incapable and young, lapsed and inexperienced, and appointed him Provincial Minister of another province, about whom his province now cries out horribly, and this is the [Umbrian] province of Saint Francis.13

But Jacopo is known from a range of published Franciscan sources as well as Ubertino’s invective and these paint a very different picture of a pious September 1307, cited by Ernst Knoth, Ubertino von Casale: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Franziskaner an der Wende des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts (Marburg, 1903), p. 61 n. 6. In 1302 ‘frater Manfredus Bonfi’ is named ‘guardianus fratrum minorum de Ovili de Senis’, see ASSi, Diplomatico, Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, 18 July 1302. Fra Giovanni da Siena was already Siena custodian in 1297 and an inquisitor by 1301, see Piron, ‘Un couvent sous influence’, p. 331 n. 44. Fra Andrea de’ Tolomei can be identified as the ‘Andreas senensis / de Senis’ recorded at Santa Croce in 1300 before studying at Paris and was later guardian of the Florentine house in 1334; see Daniel Lesnick, Preaching in Medieval Florence: The Social World of Franciscan and Dominican Spirituality (Athens, GA, 1989), p. 191; Piron, ‘Un couvent sous influence’, p. 331 n. 44. 12 Fra Jacopo’s Tuscan ministership fell between those of Fra Antonio da Arezzo (still Provincial on 13 November 1309) and Fra Pace or Pacifico (possibly also Sienese, Provincial by 27 October 1310); for the sequence and supporting documents, see Cesare Cenci, ‘Costituzioni della provincia toscana tra i secoli XIII e XIV’, Studi Francescani 79 (1982), pp. 407–8. 13 Ehrle, ‘Zur Vorgeschichte’, p. 174: ‘Et in capitulo provinciali Tuscie [minister generalis] fecit legi multa instrumenta proprietaria et simoniaca, in quibus plures fratres horrende lapsi fuerant, et verba contra illa vitia, et illos fratres ex nomine horribilissime sublimavit; et dum audientes expectarent quod ipsos, ut digni erant, exemplariter puniret, punivit unum ex eis, ministrum provincialem instituit alias multum insufficientem et iuvenem, lapsum et inexpertum, de quo iam horriblia sua provincia clamat, et hec est provincia sancti Francisci’.

93

94

DONAL COOPER

and educated friar.14 The Irish Franciscan historian Luke Wadding discussed Fra Jacopo at two points in his Annales Minorum, compiled in the early seventeenth century with the benefit of earlier documentation. Under the year 1285, Wadding noted that Jacopo of Siena, with the surname ‘de Tundo’, joined the Franciscan Order while studying at Bologna. This learned and wise man would later gain a Master’s degree in theology at the University of Paris and serve as Provincial Minister for Tuscany and Umbria.15 Wadding also notes that Jacopo compiled a chronicle of the Order from the time of Saint Francis up to 1329, a text that Wadding himself had often used.16 Jacopo’s second mention in the Annales concerns this text, which Wadding cites as his source for the disobedience of the Tuscan friars after 1307.17 In Wadding’s separate compendium of Franciscan authors, Jacopo is described as a ‘man of great devotion and spirit’ and his history is given a title, the Breva Chronica Ordinis Minorum.18 Unfortunately, Jacopo’s own chronicle is either lost or unidentified, so we cannot place his account of this fraught period alongside Ubertino’s caustic version. Some further detail is provided in Fra Niccolò Papini’s history of the Order’s Tuscan province, L’Etruria Francescana, published in 1797. In a list of Provincial Ministers, Papini records that Fra Jacopo came from a Sienese noble family, served as Provincial for Umbria as well as Tuscany, and died around the middle of the fourteenth century.19 In addition, Papini reports that Jacopo was documented in Assisi as Provincial Minister in 1311 at the release of the heretical friar Francesco da Borgo San Sepolcro.20 On the basis of manuscript inventories, Papini also attributed to Jacopo a collection of Lenten sermons, various sermons for the dead, and other works that were conserved in the library of the Franciscan convent at Siena before the devastating fire of 1655.21 Padre Bonaventura Bartolomasi repeated this information in his list of Provincial Ministers for the Umbrian province, published in 1824, where Jacopo’s term of office is pegged to 1311 on the basis of the Assisi document cited above.22 In Vittorio Lusini’s 1894 study 14 The most informed summary of the sources for this ‘grosso e misterioso personaggio’ is given by Cenci, ‘Costituzioni’, p. 408. 15 Luke Wadding, Annales Minorum, II (Lyon, 1628), p. 507. 16 ‘Jacobus de Tundo, alias de Senis’ is cited amongst a list of sources for John of Parma’s trial in c. 1262 by Benedetto Bonelli, Prodromus ad opera omnia S. Bonaventurae ordinis fratrum minorum (Bassano, 1767), col. 21 n. (g). 17 Wadding, Annales Minorum, III (Lyon, 1635), p. 59. 18 Luke Wadding, Scriptores Ordinis Minorum (Rome, 1650), p. 186: ‘IACOBUS de SENIS, cognomento de Tundo, sacrae Theologiae Magister, vir magnae devotionis, et spiritus, scripsit Brevia Chronica Ordinis Minorum. Floruit circa annum 1330’. 19 Niccolò Papini, L’Etruria francescana o vero raccolta di notizie storiche interessanti l’ordine de’ FF. Minori Conventuali di S. Francesco in Toscana, I (Siena, 1797), p. 10. 20 Papini, L’Etruria francescana, p. 10. 21 These works are not readily identifiable in the 1481 catalogue of the library compiled before it was consumed in the 1655 fire, transcribed by Papini himself (pp. 117–64) and subsequently by K.W. Humphreys, The Library of the Franciscans of Siena in the Late Fifteenth Century (Amsterdam, 1978). 22 Bonaventura Bartolomasi, Series Chronologica Historica Ministrorum Provincialium et

THE SIENA CONNECTION: A FRANCISCAN PROVINCIAL MINISTER

of San Francesco, Siena, ‘Fr. Giacomo del Tondo, dottor della Sorbona, da Siena’ is named as guardian (the Franciscan equivalent of prior) under the years 1328 and 1345.23 More recently Fra Jacopo has attracted sporadic attention from art historians. In her 2002 analysis of the iconography of the virtues and vices deployed in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Martyrdom of the Franciscans from the chapter house of San Francesco, Siena, Maureen Burke noted Jacopo’s Parisian training as contextual support for what she saw as the scheme’s ‘French flavour’, namely its resemblance to cathedral sculpture and possible derivation from the Somme le roi.24 The complexity of Ambrogio’s iconography led Burke to posit an intellectual collaboration between the artist and a sophisticated patron, with the convent’s guardian a likely candidate, either in the person of Jacopo del Tondo or Fra Francesco Altimanno Ugurgieri, another master of theology listed as guardian in 1330.25 In 2009, Janet Robson and I flagged Jacopo’s potential role as a patron at Assisi, a suggestion amplified by Julian Gardner in 2011.26 Gardner emphasized Jacopo’s probable role at Santa Croce to underline similarities between Giotto’s fresco scheme for the Bardi chapel and the decoration of the Lower Church by the same artist and his workshop, characterizing Jacopo as ‘a Santa Croce friar’.27 As we will see, expanding our range of sources to include published references hitherto missed by the literature, together with new archival discoveries, adds a good deal of detail to Jacopo’s biography, shifting our attention away from Florence towards his native Siena. Of crucial importance for our reconstruction of Jacopo’s biography and network is an act of donation found at the back of a thirteenth-century antiphonary now in the Biblioteca Braidense in Milan.28 This records that on 26 January 1315 the book was given to the Clarissan nuns of Santa Petronilla in Siena by Fra Jacopo, minister of the Province of Saint Francis, and his brother Lippo, sons of the deceased Jacopo del Tondo.29 Commissariorum Generalium Qui Seraphicum S.P.N. Francisci Provinciam dictam quoque de Umbria (Rome, 1824), p. 15. 23 Lusini, Storia della Basilica, p. 266. 24 S. Maureen Burke, ‘The “Martyrdom of the Franciscans” by Ambrogio Lorenzetti’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 65 (2002), 460–92, see especially p. 491. 25 Burke, ‘The “Martyrdom of the Franciscans”’, p. 468. 26 Cooper and Robson, ‘“A Great Sumptuousness of Paintings”’, 661 n.53; Gardner, Giotto and his Publics, pp. 49–50, 95. 27 Gardner, Giotto and his Publics, p. 61; echoed by Serena Romano, ‘Giotto, Francesco, i francescani’, in Francesco e la rivoluzione di Giotto, ed. Engelbert Grau, Raoul Manselli, and Serena Romano (Milan, 2018), p. 177. 28 Miniature a Brera, 1100–1422: manoscritti della Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense e da Collezioni private, ed. Miklós Boskovits with Giovanni Valagussa and Milvia Bollati (Milan, 1997), pp. 98–101 (entry by Renata Semizzi). 29 Miniature a Brera, p. 98: ‘Anno domini m° ccc xv° xxvj° die januarii. Istud antiphonarium dederunt monasterio sancte Petronille de Senis frater Jacobus minister provincie sancti Francisci et Lippus eius germanus, olim domini Jacobi de Tundo filii, ad laudem et cultum perpetuum divini Nominis, sub hac conditionem quod vendi

95

96

DONAL COOPER

The colophon confirms not only that Jacopo was still provincial minister of Umbria (known as the Province of Saint Francis) at the start of 1315 but that he also had ties with a Clarissan community in his native Siena during his Umbrian ministership.30 The antiphonary itself can be dated to the latter decades of the thirteenth century, but opinion regarding its place of origin is divided, with stylistic analogies in both Tuscan and Umbrian illuminations (Fig. 6.1), leaving open the possibility that the book was brought from Umbria to Siena by Fra Jacopo.31 The donation to Santa Petronilla was made jointly with his brother Lippo and their father is also named as Jacopo. This clarifies that an epitaph bearing the legend AN[N]O D[OMI]NI M CCC SEP[U]LCRUM D[OMI]NI IACHOBI DE TUNDO now immured in the right nave wall of San Francesco, Siena once marked the tomb of our friar’s father (Fig. 6.2).32 These dealings with Santa Petronilla indicate that Fra Jacopo maintained an interest in Sienese affairs during his time in Umbria. The only document that records him there is the parchment, already known to Papini, dated 29 October 1311 and composed in the papal palace beside the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi. Here ‘fratre Jacobo de Senis provinciali ministro’ witnessed the release of Fra Francesco da Sansepolcro called ‘propheta’ by the inquisitor Ranieri del Porrina, Bishop of Cremona.33 Fra Francesco had earlier been condemned for adhering to the sect of the free spirit but could now reside in the Sacro Convento owing to his ill health. Another passing reference to Fra Jacopo’s Umbrian sojourn is found in the 1319 papal investigation of the Umbrian inquisition, which interrogated one vel alienari non possit’ (fol. 252v); Semizzi (p. 100) was, however, baffled by Jacopo’s name and office. The colophon had earlier been published in Colophons de manuscrits occidentaux, ed. Bénédictins du Bouveret, III (Fribourg, 1973), p. 71, no. 8003, and the link with Fra Jacopo del Tondo was made by Cenci, ‘Costituzioni’, 408 n. 130 (but with the year mistakenly copied as 1313). 30 For this nunnery, founded by 1223 and under the Clarissan rule by 1247, see Bruno Chiantini and Pietro Staderini, Santa Petronilla: eventi storici e vicende dalle origini alla Parrocchia dei nostri giorni (Roccastrada, 1995). If the Braidense colophon observed the Sienese rather than the Umbrian calendar, the date may be 1316 in the modern reckoning. 31 Semizzi found analogies in both Sienese and Perugian illumination, see Miniature a Brera, pp. 100–1. 32 For this tomb marker (measuring only 41 × 10.5 cm), see Silvia Colucci, Sepolcri a Siena tra medioevo e rinascimento: analisi storica, iconografica e artistica (Florence, 2003), pp. 193–4. The link between Fra Jacopo and this tomb was made by Gardner, Giotto and his Publics, p. 176 n. 5, without realizing the immediate family connection (‘probably a relation’). 33 Cooper and Robson, ‘“A Great Sumptuousness of Paintings”’, 661 n. 53; also cited by Cenci, ‘Costituzioni’, 408 n. 129. The document is Perugia, Archivio di Stato, Corporazioni religiose soppresse, San Francesco al Prato, pergamene, no. 57; fully transcribed by Livarius Oliger, De Secta Spiritus Libertatis in Umbria saec. XIV. Disquisitio et documenta (Rome, 1943), pp. 49–51, 143–6. The document was already known to Papini (see above note 20), who gave Padre Felice Ciatti’s unpublished Annales Ordinis Fratrum Minorum (Rome, Archivio Generale dell’Ordine dei Frati Minori Conventuali, Convento dei SS Apostoli, MS 104, vol. I) as his source. Ciatti (d. 1642) was from Perugia and would have known the original from his convent’s archive.

FIG. 6.1  INITIAL A: THE LAST JUDGEMENT, FROM FRANCISCAN ANTIPHONARY, C. 1270–90, BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE BRAIDENSE, MILAN, MS GERLI 15, FOL. 1V. PHOTO BY AUTHOR, BY PERMISSION OF THE BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE BRAIDENSE.

FIG. 6.2  TOMB MARKER FOR JACOPO DEL TONDO (SENIOR), DATED 1300, SAN FRANCESCO, SIENA. PHOTO BY AUTHOR, BY PERMISSION OF THE SEMINARIO ARCIVESCOVILE DI SIENA.

98

DONAL COOPER

Fra Filippo da Montenero, a former inquisitor who had been appointed ‘per frater Jacobum de Senis olim Ministrum Generalem’.34 To judge from the two archival snippets that survive from Fra Jacopo’s Umbrian ministry, he took an interest in the activities of the local inquisition.35

FRA JACOPO IN THE SIENESE ARCHIVAL RECORD Fra Jacopo has left a much deeper impression in the Sienese archival record, with a string of documents indicating his pre-eminence amongst the city’s Franciscan community. He features prominently in the 1322 testament of Nello de’ Pannocchieschi, the Maremma lord notoriously associated with the murder of Pia de’ Tolomei, immortalized by Dante’s Divine Comedy.36 Fra Jacopo and his fellow friar Pietro de Monterio are named four times as councillors for the will’s executors. Through this document Nello promised to fund the construction of the high altar chapel of the new church of San Francesco in Siena, a project already envisaged in 1307 although its foundation stone would only be laid by Cardinal Giovanni Gaetano degli Orsini in 1326.37 Nello bequeathed the impressive sum of 1,000 Sienese lire for the construction of the chapel for the high altar and an honourable tomb for himself either in the floor or on the wall of the chapel, with any remaining money to be spent ‘in ornamentis dicti altaris maioris’ – this work should be executed as the aforementioned councillors Fra Jacopo and Fra Pietro saw fit.38 The Tondi family tree in this period can be reconstructed from unpublished sources in the Sienese and Vatican archives and confirms Jacopo’s social stature. Of particular value are the seventeenth-century Italian synopses compiled for the Abbot Galgano de’ Bichi from now-lost 34 Luigi Fumi, ‘I Registri del Ducato di Spoleto (Archivio Segreto Vaticano–Camera Apostolica)’, Bollettino della Regia Deputazione di Storia Patria per l’Umbria 7 (Perugia, 1901), p. 83 (presumably the offices of Provincial Minister and Minister General are confused here); cited by Cenci, ‘Costituzioni’, 408 n. 130. 35 On links between Franciscan inquisitors and the Order’s artistic patronage, see now Julian Gardner, ‘Painters, Inquisitors, and Novices: Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi, and Filippo Lippi at Santa Croce’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 60 (2018), 222–53. 36 Dante Pilgrim encounters Pia in Canto V of Purgatorio (133–6): ‘Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia; / Siena mi fé, disfecemi Maremma: / salsi colui che’innanellata pria / disposando m’avea con la sua gemma’. The identification of Pia’s unnamed husband with Nello was already made in the fourteenth century, see Commento alla Divina Commedia d’Anonimo fiorentino del secolo XIV, ed. Pietro Fanfani, II (Bologna, 1868), p. 91. Given its Dantesque interest, Nello’s testament was edited as early as 1859: Gaetano Milanesi, ‘Documenti intorno alla Pia de’ Tolomei ed a Nello de’ Pannocchieschi suo marito’, Giornale storico degli archivi toscani 3 (1859), 17–45 (the will and codicil transcribed at pp. 30–45). See also Michele Bacci, ‘Aspetti della committenza testamentaria di opere d’arte nella Siena del Due e Trecento’, Bullettino Senese di Storia Patria 110 (2003), pp. 144–5. 37 Land was acquired to extend the church in 1307, see Alfredo Liberati, ‘Chiese, monasteri, oratori e spedali senesi’, Bullettino Senese di Storia Patria 65 (1958), p. 145. 38 Milanesi, ‘Documenti intorno alla Pia de’ Tolomei’, p. 31.

THE SIENA CONNECTION: A FRANCISCAN PROVINCIAL MINISTER

parchments then in the family’s archive.39 The first mention of Fra Jacopo’s father, Jacopo di Tondo di Guccio, dates from 1229 and concerns arrangements for his betrothal.40 According to Sienese tradition, Jacopo di Tondo the elder played a significant role in the victory over the Florentines at the battle of Montaperti on 4 September 1260.41 On 2 October that year we learn of Jacopo senior’s eldest son Arrigo in a document relating to the latter’s betrothal.42 A document of 1284 makes dowry arrangements for Arrigo’s daughter Isabella and is the last record of Jacopo senior alive.43 The first mention in the Bichi transcriptions of ‘Fra Iacomo figliuolo del quondam Messer Iacomo del Tondo da Siena dell’ordine de’ Frati Minori’ is dated 13 September 1302. Fra Jacopo is here named as an arbiter for a dispute between his brother Arrigo and the latter’s sons Pietro and Cecco regarding the dowry settlement of Arrigo’s second wife.44 The agreement was drawn up in the Franciscan convent in Siena in the chapel of the infirmary.45 Fra Jacopo reappears on 3 October 1320 as a witness for his nephew Cecco d’Arrigo.46 The document that immediately follows in Abbot Bichi’s edition of the Tondi parchments is dated 3 August 1300 but this date must be incorrect.47 It guarantees that Arrigo di Jacopo del Tondo and his family should enjoy all the spiritual benefits of the Franciscan Order in life and in death due to the devotion that Arrigo bore to the Order.48 The document was composed in Assisi ‘nel luogo sagro del Beato Francesco’ and granted by the Minister General Michael of 39 ASSi, MS B-81, Spogli di pergamene delle famiglie Tondi (1102–1586), Marsili (1304– 1555), Tolomei (1223–1637), see pp. 1–321. 40 ASSi, MS B-81, p. 38, no. 47 (31 January 1229). 41 For this tradition, see Ubaldo Cagliaritano, Mamma Siena: dizionario biograficoaneddotico dei senesi, II (D–G) (Siena, 1971), p. 347. The role of Jacopo del Tondo senior as gonfaloniere of the ‘terzo di Città’ during the battle is emphasized in the late fifteenthcentury chronicle of Paolo di Tommaso Montauri, ‘Cronaca senese’, in Cronache senesi, ed. Alessandro Lisini and Fabio Iacometti, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XV, parte 6 (Bologna, 1931–36), pp. 203, 206, 216. 42 ASSi, MS B–81, p. 52, no. 61 (2 October 1260). 43 ASSi, MS B–81, p. 62, no. 67 (9 October 1284); the following entry (no. 68, 14 April 1290) already names ‘Arrigo e Simone figliuoli del quondam Messer Iacomo de Tondo de Rossi’. The 1300 date on Jacopo’s tomb must therefore refer to the institution of the sepulchre rather than the year of his death. 44 ASSi, MS B–81, pp. 73–80, no. 74 (13 September 1302). 45 ASSi, MS B–81, p. 79: ‘Il detto lodo fù dato, e pronunciato in Siena nella cappella dell’infermaria de’ Frati Minori; presenti Fra Fino di Guido, Fra Mino di Meio, e Fra Guccio d’Altimanno de Frati Minori’. 46 ASSi, MS B–81, pp. 89–92, no. 83 (2 October 1320): ‘Rogato in Siena … presenti Fra’ Iacomo di Messer Iacomo del Tondo …’ 47 ASSi, MS B–81, p. 92, no. 84 (3 August 1300); Bichi edited the Tondo parchments in chronological order but here the preceding document (no. 83) is dated 2 October 1320 and the following (no. 85) 14 October 1326. The year 1300 could be a transcription error or reflect an incomplete date in the original (now-lost) parchment. 48 ASSi, MS B–81, p. 92, no. 84: ‘Fra Michele dell’ordine de Frati Minori Ministro Generale del detto ordine ammette alla participazione di tutti i beni spirituali, che si facessero da tutti i frati del suo ordine per tutto il mondo Arrigo di Messer Iacomo del Tondo, e tutta la sua famiglia in vita, et in morte, e ciò per la devozione che detto Arrigo

99

100

DONAL COOPER

Cesena. Michael’s lengthy ministership ran from 1316 to 1329, but he was only occasionally based in central Italy.49 He was in Siena on 26 October 1321 and oversaw the controversial General Chapter celebrated at Perugia in June 1322.50 It is tempting, however, to date the letter of privilege rather earlier to the summer of 1316, immediately after Fra Jacopo’s term as Umbrian provincial, when Michael is known to have been in Assisi to oversee the revision of the Order’s constitutions.51 Whatever the year, the day the grant was issued – 3 August – was highly significant. This was the day after the feast of the Perdono when pilgrims to Assisi could gain the plenary indulgence granted to Saint Francis at the Porziuncola.52 Very likely Arrigo, perhaps with other members of the Tondi family, had made the pilgrimage to Assisi that year. In 1327, Fra Jacopo was given a prominent role in his brother Arrigo’s testament, composed on 19 April in the ‘cappella interiori’ of San Francesco, with responsibility for agreeing bequests to close family members.53 In August that same year, Fra Jacopo was named as custodian of San Francesco in an agreement between the friars and Andrea, Rector of San Pietro alle Scale in Siena, stipulating terms for conducting burials in San Francesco; the document bears Jacopo’s signature in his own hand (Fig. 6.3).54 On 8 June 1331, Fra Jacopo featured amongst the witnesses for two acts concerning family members rogated at San Francesco. He was now named as an inquisitor for Tuscany and the witnesses also included his secretary, or ‘socio’, one Fra Francesco di Ghino da Montieri.55 On 16 February 1345 Fra Jacopo appeared alongside the inquisitor Fra Andrea de’ Tolomei (another Sienese friar shamed by Ubertino in 1311) and Fra Francesco Altimanni as witnesses to the agreement by their guardian Fra portava al detto ordine. Dato in Assisi nel luogo sagro del Beato Francesco sotto il di 3 Agosto 1300’. 49 For Michael’s biography, see Carlo Dolcini’s entry in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 74 (2010), pp. 154–7. 50 Livarius Oliger, ‘Litterae confraternitatis a Gundisalvo de Vallebona a.1307 et Michaele de Caesena a.1321 Societati Disciplinantium Senensi concessae’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 13 (1920), 292–3. 51 Michael Bihl, ‘Formulae et documenta e cancellaria Fr. Michaelis de Cesena, O.F.M. ministri generalis 1316–1328’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 23 (1930), 111–12, argued that Michael would have resided at Assisi between late June and mid-August. 52 Pilgrims can obtain the Perdono indulgence between midday on 1 August and midnight the following day. For its relevance to the Basilica, see Donal Cooper and Janet Robson, ‘Imagery and the economy of penance at the tomb of St Francis’, in Architecture and Pilgrimage, 1000–1500, ed. Paul Davies, Deborah Howard, and Wendy Pullan (Farnham, 2013), pp. 165–86. 53 ASSi, B–81, pp. 101–4, no. 86 (19 April 1327); ‘Fra’ Iacomo del quondam Messer Iacomo del Tondo fratello di detto testatore dell’Ordine de’ Minori’. 54 ASSi, Diplomatico San Francesco, 27 August 1328: ‘fratrem Jacobum domini Jacobi de Tundo custodem senensem ordinis fratrum minorum’. 55 ASSi, MS B–81, pp. 110–13, nos 90–1 (both dated 8 June 1331); both ‘Rogato nel luogo de Frati Minori di Siena … presenti il reverendo uomo Fra’ Iacomo di Messer Iacomo del Tondo Inquisitore dell’Eretica Pravità in Toscana, Fra’ Francesco da Montieri del quondam Ghino socio di detto Inquisitore…’

THE SIENA CONNECTION: A FRANCISCAN PROVINCIAL MINISTER

FIG. 6.3  FRA JACOPO DEL TONDO’S AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE. ARCHIVIO DI STATO DI SIENA, DIPLOMATICO CONVENTO DI SAN FRANCESCO, 17 AUGUST 1328. PHOTO: ARCHIVIO DI STATO DI SIENA.

Paolo da Massa to observe the interdict then imposed on Siena.56 On 29 October that year Fra Jacopo and three other friars were entrusted with the delicate matter of retrieving the body of Gaddo, count of Elci, from the Cistercian monks of San Galgano for burial in San Francesco.57 The document was composed in the presence of the guardian Fra Paolo and sixty-two other friars in the chapter house of San Francesco. The beginning and end of Jacopo’s documented career can be bookended with unpublished notarial acts that survive from Volterra and Pisa now in the Florentine state archives. In 1301 Fra Jacopo del Tondo, son of Jacopo, is recorded as guardian of San Francesco, Siena, overseeing arbitration regarding the division of land and property at Cedri in the diocese of Volterra.58 An even earlier document relating to the same legal settlement from 1298 rogated in the Sienese convent names ‘discreto viro fratre Jacobo de Senis guardiano fratrum dicti loci senensis’.59 While Jacopo’s family name is absent, the fact that he plays the same role in the arbitration of a property dispute provides a confident identification. A final oblique reference comes in 1352 when one Fra Pietro di Bonacorso from Vico is named in Pisa as deputy for the inquisitor ‘fratris Jacobi de Tundo’.60 If we accept Wadding’s claim that Jacopo joined the Order as a student in Bologna in 1285, the Sienese friar must have been active into his eighties. 56 ASV, Fondo Veneto I, 16084. 57 ASSi, Diplomatico San Francesco, 29 October 1345; cited in De Angelis, Dell’albero, p. 44. 58 ASFi, Diplomatico, Volterra, Comune, 13 June 1301 (two copies); the presiding judge in this dispute had been ‘electus et nominatus a reliogioso e honesto viro fratre Jacobo olim domini Jacobi del Tondo cive senensis tunc guardiano conventus fratrum minorum civitatis senensis’. 59 ASFi, Diplomatico, Volterra, Comune, 2 June 1298. 60 ASFi, Notarile Antecosimiano 11063, fols 35v–36r (rogated ‘in claustro Sancti Francisci de Pisis’).

101

102

DONAL COOPER

The documentary record indicates an active and lengthy career as minister and inquisitor at provincial level and as custodian and guardian in Siena. As an educated friar from a noble family, he rose quickly through the Order’s ranks, and was probably still in his thirties when elected to the ministry of the Tuscan province – Ubertino listed Jacopo’s youth as one of the qualities that rendered him unsuitable for office. Alongside his official duties, Jacopo played a leading role in the affairs of the Tondi lineage, acting as arbiter and executor for his brothers and their families. Order and family interests blur at several points. The donation of the antiphonary to the Clarissan nuns of Santa Petronilla was made in conjunction with his brother Lippo. It was surely Jacopo’s connections at Assisi that secured privileges for Arrigo and his relatives from the Minister General on the feast of the Perdono indulgence. What of Wadding’s characterization of Jacopo as a man of great devotion? Contemporary evidence for this emerges in the hagiography of Blessed Pietro Pettinaio (d. 1289), the pious combmaker and Franciscan tertiary who was venerated as a saint by the Sienese.61 Pettinaio’s tomb in San Francesco, Siena does not survive but seems to have been an impressive monument built with communal support and Pietro was sufficiently well-known for Dante to include him in the Divine Comedy.62 According to an admiring passage in the autobiographical prologue to the Arbor Vitae, Ubertino had known Pettinaio in the 1280s, citing him amongst his major spirtual influences.63 The accounts of Pettinaio’s life and miracles do not mention Ubertino, but do give a prominent role to Fra Jacopo del Tondo. Pettinaio’s vita survives in two vernacular versions from the early sixteenth century, both of which claim to be translations from a Latin text composed in the early Trecento by Fra Pietro da Monterio, the same friar cited repeatedly alongside Fra Jacopo in Nello de’ Pannocchieschi’s 1322 testament.64 One of the Italian translations, recently studied by Lucy Donkin, opens with a letter dated 1336 in which 61 For example, in a sermon that may have been preached at Pettinaio’s funeral in 1289: Cesare Cenci, ‘“San” Pietro Pettinaio presentato da Fr. Bindo da Siena’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 99 (2006), 189–211. For Pettinaio’s cult, see Carlo Agricoli, Pier Pettinaio nella Siena duecentesca (Siena, 2014). 62 The blessed is named by Sapia Salvani in Canto XIII of Purgatorio (125–9): ‘ch’a memoria m’ebbe / Pier Pettinaio in sue sante orazioni’. On Pettinaio’s tomb, see Agricoli, Pier Pettinaio, pp. 233–96. 63 In the ‘Prologus primus’ of the Arbor vitae (likely added by Ubertino several years after he composed the main text in 1305), the author recalled meeting the ‘vir Deo plenus Petrus de Senis, pectenarius’ when he was in Tuscany ‘sub titulo studii’ (1285–89); see Antonio Montefusco, ‘Autoritratto del dissidente da giovane. Gli anni della formazione di Ubertino nel primo Prologo dell’Arbor vitae’, in Ubertino da Casale: atti del XLI Convegno Internazionale, Assisi 18–20 ottobre 2013, ed. Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani (Spoleto 2014), pp. 27–82. 64 On Fra Pietro da Monterio’s authorship, see Lucy Donkin, ‘Following the Footsteps of Christ in Late Medieval Italy: Pietro Pettinaio’s Vision of St Francis’, Word & Image 32 (2016), 163–80, at p. 163.

THE SIENA CONNECTION: A FRANCISCAN PROVINCIAL MINISTER

Pietro da Monterio explains that he had finished the work after a long interval.65 Pietro also recalls that the initial impetus for starting the vita had come from Fra Filippo Orlandi and Fra Jacopo del Tondo.66 At the very end of the legend, Fra Jacopo appears again as the source of a post mortem miracle worked by Beato Pietro for a local notary Ser Neri, who is said to be Jacopo’s friend.67 Jacopo, described as a ‘studious man devoted to the honour of this Saint’, is said to have recorded Ser Neri’s account with his own hand in the book of Pettinaio’s miracles that was held in the cupboard of the convent.68 The revival of Pettinaio’s cult in the 1320s has been read as a calculated response by the Sienese Franciscans to the crisis years of the 1310s, an attempt to promote a rigorist figure who was relatively free of direct ‘Spiritual’ connections.69 At the same time it has been seen in the context of a general consolidation of beati cults amongst the mendicant orders in Siena.70 But we should perhaps be careful of overinstrumentalizing the phenomenon: the sources remind us that Ubertino and the Spirituals did not have a monopoly over piety and that leading friars in the Siena hierarchy were sincerely devoted to the memory of the humble combmaker.71

65 BPFM, Fondo Giaccherino, MS I.G.2, fol. 186r. The letter is addressed ‘al reverendo in Christo Padre Fra Bartolomeo Ture da Siena maestro in sacra teologia et naturale philosophia, et predicatore egregio del ordine minori[ti]co della provincia di Toscana’ by ‘Fra Piero di Jacopo di messer Rinieri da Monterio del medesimo ordine, provincia et citta benche sia nominato da Monterio’. For discussion of the textual tradition, see Donkin, ‘Following the Footsteps’, pp. 163–4. The Giaccherino manuscript remains unedited, for a description see Dionisio Pulinari da Firenze, Cronache dei Frati Minori della Provincia Toscana, ed. Saturnino Mencherini (Arezzo, 1913), pp. XXIV–XXVIII. 66 BPFM, Fondo Giaccherino, MS I.G.2, fol. 186r: ‘Io sia stato pregato … particularmente da venerabili padri fra Jacopo da Tonda et fra Philippo Orlandi da Siena, ch’io componessi la prefata leggenda accosenti a prieghi di tali padri …’ Lusini, Storia della Basilica, pp. 78, 265, records ‘Fr. Pietro da Monteroni, confessore del B. Pier Pettinaio’ as guardian in 1319 and 1326. For further references to Fra Filippo, see Cenci, ‘“San” Pietro Pettinaio presentato da Fr. Bindo da Siena’, p. 204 n. 54. 67 BPFM, Fondo Giaccherino, MS I.G.2, fol. 218v. According to this account ‘uno chiamato Ser Neri notaio da Siena’ had a property dispute miraculously resolved after Beato Pietro appeared to him in a dream. The notary then went ‘al loco de frati minori con gaudio et allegrezza, et trovato prima uno suo amico, cioè, il venerabile padre fra Jacopo da Tonda vechio et narrossi per gran miracolo tutto lo ordine di questa cosa’. 68 BPFM, Fondo Giaccherino, MS I.G.2, fols 218v–19r: ‘Il quale ordine el decto fra Jacopo come homo studioso et devoto dello honore di questo sancto con la propria mano lo scrisse nel quaderno dei miracoli di questo sancto. Il quale si riserva nello armadio del convento et io di poi con li altri soprascricti miracoli lo ho inserto qui’. 69 As speculated by Michele Pellegrini (echoing Raoul Manselli), ‘Pietro Pettinaio, beato’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 83 (2015), p. 538. 70 André Vauchez, “La commune de Sienne, les Ordres Mendiants et le culte des saints. Histoire et enseignements d’une crise (novembre 1328, avril 1329)”, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Moyen-Age, Temps modernes 89 (1977), pp. 757–67. 71 On the historiographical tendency to conflate Franciscan mystics with Franciscan Spirituals, see Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, pp. 107, 315–46.

103

104

DONAL COOPER

FRA JACOPO AS ARTISTIC PATRON Returning to the nub of Ubertino’s criticism, there are several indications that Jacopo was actively involved in the patronage of art and architecture. His father’s tomb epitaph of 1300 is the earliest to survive from San Francesco and is associated in antiquarian sources with the family’s altar dedicated to Saint James.72 This was restored immediately after the devastating fire of 24 August 1655 as recorded in a now-lost inscription of 1668 which described the former tomb and its altar as ‘antiquissimum’.73 In Francesco Bossi’s 1575 Apostolic Visitation the altar of Saint James was connected with the Tondi family and bore an altarpiece painted on panel with the Virgin and other saints, probably a polyptych by Giovanni di Paolo dated 1436.74 The surviving tomb slab suggests that this chapel was founded for Fra Jacopo’s father, Jacopo di Tondo di Guccio, and must have been situated in the thirteenth-century church before being absorbed into the new building underway from 1326, probably in the early Quattrocento.75 Furthermore, if the location of the Tondi altar in the new church (recorded by Bossi as the third chapel on the right, set against a section of nave wall that was reused from the earlier building) was also its original location in the first San Francesco, it would have been in a 72 Colucci, Sepolcri a Siena, pp. 193–4; ASSi, MS D-15, Galgano Bichi, Sepolti nella chiesa di S. Francesco di Siena et altre memorie esistenti in detto luogo (1717), fol. 221, no. 20: ‘Accanto al detto altare di S. Jacomo nel muro in cornu epistolae, si vede una pietra longa due palmi in circa, e larga un quinto con la seguente iscrittione: + Anno Dni. MCCC. Sepulcru. Dni. Jacobi de Tundo’; ASSi, MS D-6, Giovanni Antonio Pecci, Raccolta universale di tutte le iscrizioni, arme e altri monumenti si antichi come moderni esistenti nel terzo di Camollia fino a questo presente anno MDCCXXXI. Libro terzo, fol. 35r (no. 179): ‘Accosto l’altare de Tondi, dove si vede l’arma di detta famiglia a mano sinistra si legge una piccola pietra del tenore appresso’. On the Tondi altar, see also Gabriele Fattorini, ‘Lorenzo Marrina, Domenico Beccafumi e il monumento funebre del rettore Giovanni Battista Tondi per la chiesa dell’ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala a Siena’, Prospettiva 159/160 (2015), 132–59, at p. 157 n. 13. 73 Lusini, Storia della Basilica, p. 240: ‘antiquissimum sepulcrum una cum ara restituerunt’. 74 See Siena, Archivio Arcivescovile, MS 21, fol. 670r: ‘Icona erat cum figura Beate Mariae Virginis, et aliorum sanctorum in tabula una et supradicti fratres dixerunt esse domus et familie de Tondis’. Fabio Chigi recorded the Giovanni di Paolo altarpiece at the start of the seventeenth century: ‘Il 3º [altare a destra] di casa Tondi di Giovanni di Pavolo 1436’, see Pèleo Bacci, ‘L’Elenco delle pitture, sculture e architetture di Siena compilato nel 1625–26 da Mons. Fabio Chigi poi Alessandro VII’, Bullettino senese di storia patria n.s. 10 (1939), p. 318. Recent analysis suggests that it was destroyed in the 1655 fire, see Dóra Salley’s entry in Da Jacopo della Quercia a Donatello. Le arti a Siena nel primo Rinascimento, ed. Max Seidel, exh. cat. Santa Maria della Scala, Opera della Metropolitana, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena (Milan, 2010), p. 214. 75 On the church’s complex building history, see Mauro Mussolin, ‘La chiesa di San Francesco a Siena: impianto originario e fasi di cantiere’, Bullettino senese di storia patria 106 (2001), 115–55; Claudia Märtl, ‘“Eine der schönsten Kirchen der Toskana”. Zur Baugeschichte von San Francesco in Siena im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert’, in Kunst-Kontexte: Festschrift für Heidrun Stein-Kecks, ed. Hans-Christoph Dittscheid, Doris Gerstl, Simone Hespers (Petersberg, 2016), pp. 109–17. Mussolin, p. 127, speculated that the old church stood until the 1460s.

THE SIENA CONNECTION: A FRANCISCAN PROVINCIAL MINISTER

more prominent location in the smaller church, potentially close to the nave screen.76 Nello de’ Pannocchieschi’s will of 1322 indicates that Fra Jacopo and his long-time associate and probable friend Fra Pietro da Monterio were closely engaged in the project to rebuild San Francesco, for which Nello’s testament would provide funds for the cappella maggiore and high altar.77 This was certainly an active period of artistic patronage by the Sienese Franciscans as the community embellished its cloister and continued to commission works for its existing church. These included the remarkable sculpted figure of Saint Francis, treated in detail by John Renner in this volume and documented in the church in 1408 (see Chapter 3, Plate III; Fig. 3.1).78 The large heptaptych by Ugolino di Nerio now in the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown datable to c. 1320 has been associated with the high altar of San Francesco, Siena (Plate VII).79 The Williamstown polyptych has no documented provenance but its notable width must have been intended for a high altar and the presence of Saint Francis and the freshly canonized Louis of Toulouse indicate a Franciscan commission.80 Many of the major Tuscan houses already have identifiable high altarpieces from the early Trecento, several of them by Ugolino, so the choice of possible contexts for the Williamstown polyptych is relatively short.81 Amongst

76 The cornice line and fenestration of the thirteenth-century church, built c. 1246–55, are now embedded in the southern nave wall, visible from the adjacent cloister, see Lusini, Storia della Basilica, pp. 26–27; Mussolin, ‘La chiesa di San Francesco’, pp. 119–22, figs 3a, 3b, 6. Agricoli, Pier Pettinaio, p. 248, argues that the Tondo tomb marker is still in its original location. 77 It may be significant that Fra Jacopo’s assistant or socio in 1331 seems to have been from the same small Maremma town of Montieri as Pietro, see above note 55. 78 This statue can now be placed in the church at the start of the Quattrocento by the will of Bettino di Bindoccio de’ Ricasoli, who requested burial ‘in ecclesia ordinis fratrum minorum Sancti Francischi de Senis adpud fighuram marmoreum Sancti Francischi’; ASV, Fondo Veneto I, 16165 (29 September 1408). 79 First suggested by Christa Gardner von Teuffel, ‘The Buttressed Altarpiece: A Forgotten aspect of Tuscan Fourteenth Century Altarpiece Design’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 21 (1979), p. 48 n. 68; accepted by Cannon, ‘The Creation, Meaning and Audience of the Early Sienese Polyptych: Evidence from the Friars’, in Italian Altarpieces 1250–1550: Function and Design, ed. Eve Borsook and Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi (Oxford, 1994), p. 54; Giovanni Giura, San Francesco di Asciano: opere, fonti e contesti per la storia della Toscana francescana (Florence, 2018), p. 129, Diana Norman, Siena and the Angevins, 1300–1350: Art, Diplomacy, and Dynastic Ambition (Turnhout, 2018), p. 170. The Williamstown heptaptych was purchased for the Clark Institute in 1962 having earlier been in the Chalandon collection in France; its earlier provenance is unknown. 80 On the tradition of seven-field polyptychs for high altars in the Order’s Tuscan province, see Giura, San Francesco di Asciano, pp. 124–132. The Williamstown altarpiece is 341.4 cm wide. 81 On Ugolino’s Franciscan polyptychs, see Cannon, ‘The Creation, Meaning and Audience’, pp. 52–61. Siena, however, is not the only possibility. For example, San Francesco, San Miniato has no high altarpiece associated with it and the church’s location in the contrada of Sant’Andrea, adjacent to the contrada of Santo Stefano, could account for the inclusion of those saints on Ugolino’s polyptych. On the terzieri and contrade of San Miniato in the Middle Ages, see the discussion by Francesco Fiumalbi at: http://

105

106

DONAL COOPER

the other saints on the main tier, Peter and Paul are a common pairing on Franciscan high altarpieces (and in Siena Peter would carry the extra resonance of the local parish, San Pietro a Ovile); Andrew and Stephen are more unusual and may reference important parish churches in the terzo of Camollia.82 We may remember that Nello’s will of 1322 stipulated that any money left over from the cappella maggiore and his tomb should be spent ‘in ornamentis dicti altaris maioris’.83 The relationship between Nello’s bequest and the vastly larger church begun in 1326 is not altogether clear. His will speaks only of a new high altar chapel rather than a new church and it may be that the ambitious project begun in 1326 was not yet fully elaborated in early 1322.84 Fra Jacopo’s greatest impact as an artistic patron, however, may well have been at Assisi. One of the outstanding puzzles for scholars of the Basilica is why Giotto and his workshop were surplanted by the Sienese masters Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti in the 1310s as the fresco decoration of the Lower Church transept progressed from north to south. Martini frescoed a gallery of saints for the Angevin-sponsored side altar of Saint Elizabeth in the north transept and an extended cycle of Saint Martin of Tours for the chapel dedicated to that saint on the south side of the nave. Lorenzetti executed a fresco above the shrine of Francis’s first companions in the north transept and the entirety of the south transept with a cycle of Christ’s Passion, the Stigmatization of smartarc.blogspot.com/2020/05/terzieri-e-contrade-di-san-miniato-nel-300.html (accessed 4 January 2022). 82 On the parochial organization of Siena, see Michele Pellegrini, Chiesa e città: uomini, comunità e istituzioni nella società senese del XII e XIII secolo (Rome, 2004), esp. the plans on pp. 463–71. The presence of these two saints is likely to be a local inflection and key to tracing the panel’s provenance, see also above, note 81. Giura, San Francesco di Asciano, p. 138 n.129, notes the prominence of Saint Andrew for the Sienese Franciscans, with the chapel immediately to the left of the high altar in the present church formerly dedicated to the apostle. 83 Milanesi, ‘Documenti intorno alla Pia de’ Tolomei’, p. 31. Giura, San Francesco di Asciano, p. 129, posits a direct relationship between Nello’s will and Ugolino’s altarpiece. It may be relevant that the same combination of six saints on the Clark altarpiece reappears on the knop of a late fourteenth-century Sienese enamelled chalice now in the V&A, London (237–1874), signed FRATE IACHOMO TONDUSI DE SENA ME FECIT (probably to be identified with the elderly Carthusian goldsmith ‘frate Iacopo’ encountered by Lorenzo Ghiberti c. 1416). The base of the chalice bears two coats of arms, a niello plaque with the shield of the Rocchi family and an enamelled plaque with another armorial displaying a brace of wheat sheaves (or ‘pannocchie’) on a blue ground, hitherto unidentified but possibly a simplified version of the Pannocchieschi stemma. For a full description (mistaking Saint Andrew for Moses) and relevant bibliography, see: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O123977/chalice-chalice-di-tondo-giacomo/ (accessed 1 January 2022). 84 If Ugolino’s heptaptych was painted for the high altar of the Siena church, it would have been replaced by the polyptych painted by Andrea Vanni in 1398–1400. Vanni’s commission is recorded in the Historiae Senenses by Sigismondo Tizio (d.1528), reproduced by Lusini, Storia della Basilica, p. 102. A large panel of the Virgin and Child Enthroned in San Francesco and often attributed to Vanni is probably the central section of this otherwise lost polyptych, see Carli, L’arte nella Basilica, p. 23.

THE SIENA CONNECTION: A FRANCISCAN PROVINCIAL MINISTER

Saint Francis, and fictive altarpieces for the chapels of Saints John the Evangelist and John the Baptist (Plate VIII). The activity of both painters at Assisi is fixed by most scholars to c. 1315–19, with a possible extension into the 1320s for Pietro.85 At present, the best explanation for Simone’s arrival is a hypothetical meeting between the artist and the patron of the Saint Martin chapel, Cardinal Gentile da Montefiore, when the prelate is thought to have paused briefly in Siena in April 1312 on his ill-fated journey across central Italy with the papal treasure.86 If the Cardinal did tarry in Siena, he may have met Simone at work on his monumental Maestà fresco for the Palazzo Pubblico. Gentile had disbursed 600 gold florins that March for the chapel that he was having made in the Basilica at Assisi (‘per una capella che fa fare in San Francesco’) which scholars unanimously 85 For full discussion of the dating arguments and earlier bibliography see the entries by Maria Monica Donato (Simone Martini) and Alessandro Volpe (Pietro Lorenzetti) in La Basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi (Mirabilia Italiae 11), ed. Giorgio Bonsanti (Modena, 2002), IV (Testi: schede), pp. 343–52, 399–407, 424–6, 428. The Ghibelline take-over of Assisi in September 1319 (followed by the sack of the Basilica’s treasury in March 1320) is often taken as a terminus ante quem for the painting of the transept but Carl Brandon Strehlke, ‘Francis of Assisi: His Culture, His Cult, and His Basilica’, in The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi, ed. Giovanni Morello and Laurence B. Kanter, exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Milan, 1999), pp. 23–51, at pp. 46–48, notes that Lorenzetti worked for the Ghibelline bishop of Arezzo Guido Tarlati between 1320 and 1323 and may have been in favour at Assisi in those years. Andrea De Marchi, ‘Partimenti assisiati: il Maestro di Figline e la sua bottega’, in Medioevo: le officine, atti del convegno di Parma (22–27 settembre 2009), ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan, 2010), pp. 623–34, argues persuasively that Lorenzetti frescoed in Assisi in two phases to either side of the Arezzo commission. A later date c. 1326–27 for all of Lorenzetti’s Assisi works suggested by Michela Becchis, Pietro Lorenzetti (Milan, 2012), pp. 90–91, remains a minority view. The dating of Simone’s Assisi frescoes is tied to technical analysis of his monumental Maestà in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico, executed in several phases bracketing Simone’s activity in Assisi, which led Alessandro Bagnoli, La Maestà di Simone Martini (Milan, 1999), pp. 66–72, to date the Saint Martin chapel as early as 1312–15. It also depends on whether Simone’s depictions of the new Franciscan saint Louis of Toulouse at Assisi could predate Louis’s official canonization in 1317; this question is considered in detail by Diana Norman, ‘Sanctity, Kingship and Succession: Art and Dynastic Politics in the Lower Church at Assisi’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 73 (2010), 297–334, at p. 307. 86 This suggestion was first made by Ferdinando Bologna, Gli affreschi di Simone Martini ad Assisi (Milan and Geneva, 1965), p. 7: ‘quell’anno il cardinale fosse in rapporti con Siena, dove Simone, già ventottenne, doveva essersi fatto conoscere come pittore’. The relevant documents for Cardinal Gentile’s treasure-laden journey from Assisi to Lucca, via Perugia and almost certainly Siena, were published by Franz Ehrle, ‘Zur Geschichte des Schatzes, der Bibliothek und des Archivs der Päpste im vierzehnten Jahrhundert’, Archiv für Litteratur- und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelaltars I (1885), 1–48, 228–364, at pp. 233–5. Perugian records confirm that Montefiore was in Assisi on 20 March 1312 and in Perugia on the 26–27 March, when he was given safe-passage by the local authorities to transport the treasure to Siena (‘usque ad civitatem Senarum’) and twenty soldiers as escort. The treasure was bound for Avignon but would only reach Lucca where Gentile died on 27 October. Direct testimony of a Sienese sojourn is lacking, but Irene Hueck, ‘Simone attorno al 1320’, in Simone Martini: atti del convegno, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), p. 54 n. 8, drew attention to a petition by Gentile that was read before the city’s Grand Council on 13 April. As Hueck observes, any stay in Siena must have been brief, as the Cardinal was already in Lucca on 7 June.

107

108

DONAL COOPER

identify as the Saint Martin chapel in the Lower Church.87 The sum, however, is generally judged too high to be intended only for Simone’s fresco decoration, leading to the general assumption that building work on the chapel was still underway. The supposition that the foundation’s architecture was unfinished is reinforced by the choice of the Saint Louis chapel opposite for the Cardinal’s burial once his body was conveyed back to Assisi, presumably as a pragmatic and proximate alternative.88 Even if we assume a Sienese rendezvous between Cardinal Gentile and Simone, there are likely to have been other factors at play. Diana Norman has suggested an important role for the dowager queen of Naples, Mary of Hungary, alongside Gentile, the Cardinal’s executors and the Franciscan Order in Simone’s Assisi commissions.89 But there has been no attempt to explain why the Assisi friars also called for Pietro Lorenzetti during these same years, whose work encompassed a large section of the Lower Church’s core programme, and not only altars and chapels associated with specific patrons. Fra Jacopo would have been well placed to summon Sienese compatriots whose work he must have known well. Immersed in his family’s affairs, Jacopo would have been in frequent contact with his native city and likely travelled there during his Umbrian ministry. Jacopo was installed as Umbrian Provincial by the summer of 1311 and was still in office in early 1315; he probably remained so until the summer of 1316, when we know that a new minister was elected at the provincial chapter celebrated at Assisi that year.90 Moreover, by 1313 full legal control over the Basilica rested in Jacopo’s hands as Provincial Minister of the Provincia Sancti Francisci. These powers were granted by the General Chapter celebrated in Barcelona in May that year, a gathering that Jacopo was – according to the Order’s constitutions – obliged to attend.91 Perhaps 87 Adrian S. Hoch, ‘A New Document for Simone Martini’s Chapel of St Martin at Assisi’, Gesta 24 (1985), 141–6. 88 As argued by Hoch, ‘A New Document’, pp. 143–4. On the Saint Louis chapel, see Norman, ‘Sanctity, Kingship and Succession’, pp. 302–10. 89 Norman, Siena and the Angevins, pp. 167–9, 232. 90 Fra Francesco Damiano, younger brother of the Blessed Chiara of Montefalco, was elected by a provincial chapter celebrated at Assisi in summer 1316, see Cesare Cenci, ‘Constitutiones Provinciales Provinciae Umbriae anni 1316’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 56 (1963), 16–18. Bartolomasi, Series Chronologica, p. 16, claimed that Jacopo had already been succeeded by 1314 by ‘Mag. Fr. Franciscus Vienne de Tuderto’, who was also Provincial in 1320. This seems to be an error, or a confusion with Damiano, and Bartolomasi swiftly amended the year 1314 to 1318 in a revised list of 1827, eventually published by Giuseppe Abate as Bonaventura Bartolomasi, ‘Series Chronologico-Historica’, Miscellanea Francescana 32 (1932), 201–26, at p. 207. 91 The Sacro Convento had been placed under the direct authority of the Minister General by the Paris General Chapter in 1292, but at Barcelona it was decided ‘quod locus sacer de Assisio reducatur ad curam Ministri et Provincie Sancti Francisci’, although the Minister General was allowed to undertake special visitations; see Donal Cooper and Janet Robson, The Making of Assisi: The Pope, the Franciscans and the Painting of the Basilica (New Haven and London, 2013), p. 247 n. 82. Under the Order’s constitutions ratified at the Padua General Chapter in 1310, each province was to send its minister with

THE SIENA CONNECTION: A FRANCISCAN PROVINCIAL MINISTER

the Sienese friar himself lobbied for this change in Franciscan law to strengthen his authority at Assisi. Even after his ministership ended, we can detect Jacopo’s hand at Assisi behind the spiritual privileges granted to the Tondi family by the new Minister General Michael of Cesena. The Sienese turn in the Basilica during the 1310s doubtless had multiple causes, but this active and well-connected patron would have stood at the centre of discussions.

CONCLUSIONS The example of Fra Jacopo del Tondo is revealing on several counts. Through him we gain a more individualized view of the so-called ‘community’, the establishment of the Franciscan Order that resisted Ubertino’s verbal onslaught prior to the Council of Vienne.92 In certain respects Jacopo matches the characterization of educated friars from good families that increasingly monopolized the higher offices of the Order. He may well have studied in Paris, although we should probably doubt Wadding’s much later claim that Jacopo was a full Master of Theology as he is never granted the title ‘magister’ in contemporary documents.93 We have lost the writings attributed to him, but their titles suggest a figure of some learning deeply interested in the history of the Order. The documentary traces that Jacopo has left can scarcely be said to amount to a rounded biography, but they indicate his status as an eminent and increasingly senior friar in the Sienese community, one of a small group responsible for major works on their church and entrusted with difficult tasks facing the convent. At the same time Jacopo continued to involve himself with family matters, acting as arbiter for their disputes and inheritances.94 Franciscan and family interests could often intersect, as the friar facilitated the broader devotion of the Tondi lineage to the Order and its Sienese house. Within the wider field of mendicant art and architecture, Jacopo’s case again suggests the importance of what may be called second-tier patrons. Studies of patronage in late medieval Italy have tended to emphasize the role of popes, princes, queens, and cardinals, but in the case of the a secretary, one of the province’s custodians, and another friar chosen by the provincial chapter: ‘Ad generale capitulum conveniat minister, quilibet cum uno tantum honesto socio, et custos, electus a custodibus, et unus discretus, a capitulo provinciali electus’, see Constitiones generales Ordinis Fratrum Minorum. II: saeculum XIV/1, ed. Cesare Cenci and Romain Georges Maillaux, Analecta Franciscana 17 (2010), p. 40. However, the collection of formula letters prepared for Michael of Cesena includes an ‘absolutio ministri, qui non venit ad capitulum generale’, see Bihl, ‘Formulae et documenta’, p. 156. 92 For a valuable analysis of this often anonymous group, see Michael Cusato, ‘Whence “The Community”?’, Franciscan Studies 60 (2002), 39–92. 93 Doubted by Cenci, ‘Costituzioni’, p. 408 n. 128: ‘(non è vero!)’. 94 For the enduring importance of family links at Santa Croce, see Piron, ‘Un couvent sous influence’, pp. 344–6.

109

110

DONAL COOPER

religious orders it would often have been figures at a provincial level who had the authority and opportunity to oversee time-consuming architectural projects and artistic schemes. As Janet Robson and I argued for the Upper Church, the senior Assisi-based friars had the theological training and connections to lead the nave decoration beneath the broader umbrella of Nicholas IV’s facilitating bulls.95 A similar dynamic may well have been at work in the Lower Church in the 1310s. Just as the Dominican Fra Jacopo Donati was likely responsible for Simone Martini’s commission for the Santa Caterina polyptych in Pisa, so the Franciscan Fra Jacopo del Tondo would have been ideally placed to call the Sienese master and his compatriot Pietro Lorenzetti to Assisi.

95 Cooper and Robson, The Making of Assisi, pp. 48–50.

SIMONE MARTINI’S ‘TREATY WITH THE HOUSE OF SANTA FIORA’ IN SIENA’S PALAZZO PUBBLICO: ITS DATE AND SIGNIFICANCE THOMAS DE WESSELOW

I

t is now over a third of a century since a fourteenth-century fresco, generally known as the New Fresco (Plate IX), was discovered at the heart of Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico, in the centre of the west wall of the building’s main council-chamber, the Sala del Consiglio, now generally known as the Sala del Mappamondo (Fig. 7.1).1 This remarkable work was This chapter derives from my PhD thesis, undertaken at The Courtauld Institute of Art under the supervision of Joanna Cannon and funded by the British Academy. It is a great pleasure to be able to publish it here in gratitude for all the help and encouragement Joanna has given me over the years. A more dedicated and conscientious teacher it would be difficult to imagine; as a young MA student, I was immediately inspired by her passion for the art of medieval Siena, a passion I hope she sees reflected here. Further research was facilitated by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship, part-funded by the Isaac Newton Trust, held at the University of Cambridge, and a post-doctoral research post held at King’s College, Cambridge. I should also like to thank these institutions for their support. 1 The bibliography relating to the New Fresco is extensive. See initially: Enzo Carli, La pittura senese del trecento (Venice, 1981), pp. 259–60; Michael Mallory and Gordon Moran, ‘Guidoriccio da Fogliano: A Challenge to the Famous Fresco Long Ascribed to Simone Martini and the Discovery of a New One in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena’, Studies in Iconography 7–8 (1981–82), 1–11; Max Seidel, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 1. Ricerche storiche e iconografiche sui castelli dipinti nel Palazzo Pubblico di Siena’, Prospettiva 28 (1982), 17–41; Luciano Bellosi, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 2. Duccio e Simone Martini pittori dei castelli senese “a l’esemplo come erano”’, Prospettiva 28 (1982), 41–65; Palazzo Pubblico di Siena: vicende costruttive e decorazione, ed. Cesare Brandi

7

112

THOMAS DE WESSELOW

FIG. 7.1  WEST WALL OF THE SALA DEL MAPPAMONDO, PALAZZO PUBBLICO, SIENA. PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE MINISTERO DEI BENI E DELLE ATTIVITÀ CULTURALI E DEL TURISMO. POLO MUSEALE DELLA TOSCANA. FOTO ARCHIVIO PINACOTECA NAZIONALE DI SIENA.

evidently whitewashed not long after it was painted, since it occupies an area of wall covered from 1345 onwards by Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s longlost Mappamondo, the world-map which gave the room its popular name.2 (Milan, 1983), pp. 215–19; Joseph Polzer, ‘Simone Martini’s Guidoriccio da Fogliano: A New Appraisal in the Light of a Recent Technical Examination’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen (1983), 103–41; Chiara Frugoni and Odile Redon, ‘Accusé Guidoriccio de Fogliano, défendez-vous!’, Mediévales 9 (1985), 119–31; Michael Mallory and Gordon Moran, ‘New Evidence Concerning “Guidoriccio”’, The Burlington Magazine 128 (1986), 250–9; Andrew Martindale, ‘The Problem of Guidoriccio’, The Burlington Magazine 128 (1986), 259–73; Joseph Polzer, ‘Simone Martini’s Guidoriccio Fresco: The Polemic Concerning its Origin Reviewed, and the Fresco Considered as Serving the Military Triumph of a Commune’, RACAR 14 (1987), 16–69; Hayden Maginnis, ‘The Guidoriccio Controversy: Notes and Observations’, RACAR 15/2 (1988), 137–44, at p. 144; Andrew Martindale, Simone Martini: Complete Edition (Oxford, 1988), pp. 40, 209–10; Piero Torriti, ‘La parete del Guidoriccio’, in Simone Martini: atti del convegno, Siena 27–28 March 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), pp. 87–95; Pierluigi Leone de Castris, Simone Martini: catalogo completo dei dipinti (Florence, 1989), p. 140; Giulietta Chelazzi Dini et al., Pittura senese (Milan, 1997), pp. 50–1; Thomas de Wesselow, ‘The Decoration of the West Wall of the Sala del Mappamondo in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico’, in Art, Politics and Civic Religion in Central Italy, 1261–1352, ed. Joanna Cannon and Beth Williamson (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 19–68, at pp. 31–3; Marco Pierini, Simone Martini (Milan, 2000), pp. 171–80. 2 On the Mappamondo, see Marcia Kupfer, ‘The Lost Wheel Map of Ambrogio

SIMONE MARTINI’S ‘TREATY WITH THE HOUSE OF SANTA FIORA’

Before this, however, the fresco had already been deliberately damaged: as the restoration campaign in 1980–81 revealed, at some stage the figures had been pelted with stones and then cancelled out with a thick layer of blue paint, leaving visible only the hill-top town on the right.3 And one further layer of over-painting – Sodoma’s 1530 fresco of Saint Ansanus on the left-hand side of the wall – means that only part of the image is now recoverable. The New Fresco that we see today is a resurrected fragment, an abused masterpiece that was buried and forgotten by the very government that commissioned it. The unique, strangely mute composition of the work and its negative treatment by the Sienese themselves make the New Fresco a particularly intriguing object of historical study. It also sits right at the heart of several debates about the iconographic self-representation of the Sienese commune and the development of Sienese art in the early fourteenth century, a field that Joanna Cannon’s work has done so much to illuminate. Unfortunately, however, its interpretation has so far been dogged by controversy. As is well known, the New Fresco has been embroiled in the dispute that surrounds the famous fresco above it, the equestrian portrait known as the Guidoriccio, due to links with the so-called ‘Castle Series’, a documented set of depictions of Sienese territories displayed in the same room.4 All previous interpretations of the New Fresco, therefore, have been assumed to have a bearing on the so-called ‘Guidoriccio problem’, and there can be no doubt that this has hindered the proper evaluation of the image. This chapter should be understood as part of a broad re-interpretation of the whole west wall of the Sala del Mappamondo, a new account of the wall’s decoration that breaks the link between the frescoes and the Castle Series and is thus conducted outside the established terms of reference. I have argued elsewhere that the Castle Series was not a fresco programme but consisted of pictures on panel, two of which survive in the Pinacoteca of Siena (e.g., Fig. 7.2; and cf. Fig. 7.3),5 and that the Guidoriccio can best be understood as a separate Lorenzetti’, Art Bulletin 78 (1996), 286–310, and Thomas de Wesselow, ‘Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s “Mappamondo”: A Fourteenth-Century Picture of the World Painted on Cloth’, in European Paintings on Fabric Supports in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. Caroline Villers (London, 2000), pp. 55–65. 3 For the condition of the New Fresco and the damage inflicted on it, see Giuseppe Gavazzi, ‘Technical Report on the Guidoriccio Fresco’, The Burlington Magazine 128 (1986), 256–9, and Seidel, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 1’, pp. 22–3. 4 The Guidoriccio controversy has generated a vast bibliography. For the main arguments and general accounts, see de Wesselow, ‘The Decoration’; Thomas de Wesselow, ‘The “Wall of the Mappamondo”: The Trecento Decoration of the West Wall of the Sala del Mappamondo in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2000; Diana Norman, Painting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena (London, 2003), pp. 95–7; and Timothy Hyman, Sienese Painting (London, 2003), pp. 61–5. 5 See de Wesselow, ‘The Decoration’, pp. 33–7; and de Wesselow, ‘The “Wall of the Mappamondo”’, pp. 119–91. For alternative views on the Castle Series see Seidel, ‘“Castrum

113

114

THOMAS DE WESSELOW

FIG. 7.2  CITY BY THE SEA. TEMPERA ON PANEL, HERE IDENTIFIED AS PART OF THE ‘CASTLE SERIES’ AND DATED TO C. 1311, PINACOTECA NAZIONALE, SIENA. PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE MINISTERO DEI BENI E DELLE ATTIVITÀ CULTURALI E DEL TURISMO. POLO MUSEALE DELLA TOSCANA. FOTO ARCHIVIO PINACOTECA NAZIONALE DI SIENA.

funerary tribute to the condottiere, Guidoriccio da Fogliano, painted in 1352 by Lippo Memmi.6 These conclusions are quite independent of my interpretation of the New Fresco, which is to say that my analysis of the New Fresco’s date and historical significance (unlike the analyses of other pingatur in palatio” 1’; Bellosi, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 2’; and Mallory and Moran, ‘New Evidence’. For alternative interpretations of the two landscape panels in the Pinacoteca of Siena, see, e.g., Federico Zeri, ‘Richerche sul Sassetta’, Quaderni di emblema 2 (Bergamo, 1973), pp. 22–34, at pp. 28–33; Uta Feldges, Landschaft als Topographisches Porträt: der Wiederbeginn der europäischen Landschaftsmalerei in Siena (Bern, 1980), pp. 68–82; Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca nazionale di Siena, 3rd edn (Genoa, 1990), pp. 81–4; and Avraham Ronen, ‘Due paesaggi nella Pinacoteca di Siena già attribuiti ad Ambrogio Lorenzetti’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 50 (2006), 367–400. 6 See de Wesselow, ‘The Decoration’, pp. 25–31; de Wesselow, ‘The “Wall of the Mappamondo”’, pp. 71–116; and Thomas de Wesselow, ‘The Guidoriccio Fresco: A New Attribution’, Apollo 154 (2004), 3–12. For alternative views regarding the Guidoriccio, see Seidel, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 1’; Bellosi, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 2’; Mallory and Moran, ‘New Evidence’; Martindale, ‘The Problem’; and Pierini, Simone Martini, pp. 170–81.

SIMONE MARTINI’S ‘TREATY WITH THE HOUSE OF SANTA FIORA’

FIG. 7.3  AUTHOR’S RECONSTRUCTION OF THE WEST WALL OF THE SALA DEL MAPPAMONDO, SHOWING HYPOTHETICAL LOCATION OF THE ‘CASTLE SERIES’ PANELS.

scholars) has no bearing on my interpretation of these other images – and vice versa. A full understanding of the New Fresco does require some consideration of its relation to the Castle Series, as we will see, but this is secondary and comes after its initial interpretation and dating. Moreover, the present study takes its departure from my previously published opinion that the New Fresco represents a treaty rather than an act of submission and that the hill-fort depicted on the right can be identified as Santa Fiora, the feudal seat of one branch of the famous Aldobrandeschi family of counts. Briefly, my reasons for making this identification are as

115

116

THOMAS DE WESSELOW

follows: the citadel of Santa Fiora is perched on a rocky promontory, as is the ‘new town’; the east wall of Santa Fiora’s rocca corresponds closely to the near wall of the painted castle, and the orientation of the castle is generally consistent with the representation of the castle in the painting; there is record of a church, San Leonardo, built near the rocca, in roughly the location indicated in the fresco; and the buildings on the extreme right, tucked down behind the fortress itself, appear to be representative of the lower town or borgo, which lies at the foot of the south-western cliffs.7 Previous attempts to identify the ‘new town’ as Giuncarico and Arcidosso are without any topographical justification and are unduly influenced by arguments about the Guidoriccio and Castle Series.8 Accordingly, I have suggested that the fresco should be renamed ‘The Treaty with the House of Santa Fiora’, reckoning that in its original state it probably showed a representative of this noble clan – the figure on the right – saluting a figure of Sienese authority, possibly a personification of the commune, who would have been flanked by nine others, representing the commune’s government of the Nine, one of these being the figure we now see on the left (Fig. 7.4). It remains, though, to decide precisely when this image would have been commissioned, what its significance would have been at the moment of its commissioning and why it was subsequently defaced and then completely obliterated. These are the questions I shall address here. Lastly, I presuppose in this chapter an attribution of the work to Simone Martini, an attribution I have justified on previous occasions.9 Of course, the New Fresco has been ascribed in the past to several other 7 Thomas de Wesselow, ‘The Form and Imagery of the New Fresco in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico’, Artibus et Historiae 30 (2009), 195–217, which develops and amends the argument presented in my PhD thesis (de Wesselow, ‘The “Wall of the Mappamondo”’, pp. 226–9). For the Aldobrandeschi, see Gino Ambrogi, Arcidosso e i Conti Aldobrandeschi (Rome, 1928); Gaspero Ciacci, Gli Aldobrandeschi nella storia e nella ‘Divina Commedia’, 2 vols (Rome, 1935); Luciana Marchetti, ‘Aldobrandeschi’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, II (Rome, 1960), pp. 93–100; Simone Collavini, ‘Honorabilis domus et spetiosissimus comitatus’: gli Aldobrandeschi da conti a principi territoriali (Pisa, 1998); and Gli Aldobrandeschi: la grande famiglia feudale della Maremma Toscana, ed. Mario Ascheri and Lucio Niccolai (Arcidosso, 2002). For a recent assessment of the architectural development of the Santa Fiora rocca, see Michele Nucciotti, ‘Il palazzo comitale ducale di Santa Fiora (sec. XII–XVIII): archeologia, ruolo storico e architettura’, in Gli Sforza di Santa Fiora e Villa Sforzesca: feudalità e brigantaggio: Atti del Convegno, Castell’Azzara, 17 May 2014, ed. Maurizio Mambrini (Arcidosso, 2015), pp. 225–39. 8 For the argument concerning Giuncarico, see Seidel, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 1’, pp. 30–2. The implausibility of Seidel’s identification has been demonstrated on a number of occasions: see Mallory and Moran, ‘New Evidence’, pp. 252–5; Martindale, ‘The Problem’, pp. 265–6; de Wesselow, ‘The “Wall of the Mappamondo”’, pp. 219–22; and de Wesselow, ‘The Form and Imagery’, pp. 206–7. For the Arcidosso identification, see Mallory and Moran, ‘New Evidence’, pp. 252–5; for its refutation, see de Wesselow, ‘The “Wall of the Mappamondo”’, pp. 219–22; and de Wesselow, ‘The Form and Imagery’, pp. 206–7. 9 See, for the moment, de Wesselow, ‘The Decoration’, p. 33, and de Wesselow, ‘The “Wall of the Mappamondo”’, pp. 194–208.

SIMONE MARTINI’S ‘TREATY WITH THE HOUSE OF SANTA FIORA’

FIG. 7.4  AUTHOR’S RECONSTRUCTION OF THE ORIGINAL COMPOSITION OF THE NEW FRESCO.

artists, most notably Duccio, whose candidacy has been championed by Luciano Bellosi, as I discuss below. Further stylistic analysis in relation to Simone’s work is a necessary component of my dating arguments, and this will help substantiate the attribution on which it is based. Crucially, too, the historical argument I present here is incompatible with the Duccio attribution and supports the ascription of the fresco to Simone Martini.

THE EARLY DATING AND THE DUCCIO ATTRIBUTION If the hill-fort represented is Santa Fiora, and if the fresco commemorates a treaty between Siena and the Aldobrandeschi, then it might seem that all we need to do to ascertain the date of the work is to look in the history books and identify an appropriate treaty between 1310, the year in which the palace was first occupied, and 1345, the year in which Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Mappamondo was installed in place of the fresco. During this period, though, Siena made treaties with the counts of Santa Fiora on two separate occasions, first in 1317 and then again in 1331, and either of these dates could have prompted the creation of the New Fresco. As it happens, the dates of these treaties correspond, more or less, to the two dates already advocated for the New Fresco: 1314 and 1331.10 Apart from the doubtful connections made with the Castle Series documents, these dates have been defended and attacked on stylistic grounds. In order to decide

10 These dates derive from the documented depiction of Giuncarico as part of the Castle Series in 1314 and the similar depiction of Arcidosso in 1331. Neither of these documentary connections is plausible, because the topographical arguments are unconvincing, because the iconography does not represent the capture of a town, and because the Castle Series is best interpreted as a collection of panel paintings (for references regarding these arguments, see above, note 8).

117

118

THOMAS DE WESSELOW

between the two options, I shall take account primarily of the historical circumstances surrounding the treaties of 1317 and 1331, but I shall also give due consideration to the stylistic evidence. Let us look first of all at the 1317 option. In April 1317, Siena concluded ‘pace perpetua’ with Enrico d’Ildebrandino and his brothers, counts of Santa Fiora.11 This treaty followed a serious conflict over certain territories in the southern Maremma, which the Aldobrandeschi had opportunistically wrested from Sienese control in 1315.12 The counts were forced to agree terms once Siena recaptured Roccastrada, a key strategic fortress. But despite this significant gain (or reacquisition of what was rightfully theirs), the Sienese did not have things entirely their own way during the negotiations: to guarantee peace, they had to cede back to the Aldobrandeschi, in return for Roccastrada, the important city of Grosseto. Apparently, at the time, they thought the price worth paying.13 However, this exchange of territories could hardly have been regarded, or been portrayed, as a major diplomatic victory.14 It seems to have been intended by the Nine as a provisional measure, a means of temporarily quelling the Aldobrandeschi, and, despite the wording of the document, was not envisaged by the Sienese as the final chapter in their struggle to subdue the counts. In this context, it would seem highly unlikely that the Sienese government would have commissioned a proud pictorial celebration of the treaty. The scale and location of the fresco proclaim a highly significant event, not a mere treaty of convenience – not a failure, but not a great success, either. From a historical point of view, then, it would seem implausible to date the New Fresco to 1317. On the other hand, such a dating would comply reasonably well with the opinion of a number of scholars regarding the stylistic ‘moment’ of the work. For many – influenced, no doubt, by their allegiance to the traditional view of the Guidoriccio – ‘a point that seems unquestionable is the dating in the second decade of the Trecento’.15 This widespread belief stems from arguments composed by Luciano Bellosi in 11 ASSi, Capitoli 2, Caleffo Assunta, fols 358r–59r. On the treaty of 1317, see Agnolo di Tura, ‘Cronaca senese attribuita ad Agnolo di Tura del Grasso detta la Cronaca Maggiore’, in Cronache senese, ed. Alessandro Lisini and Fabio Iacometti, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XV, parte 6 (Bologna, 1931–36), pp. 253–564, at p. 365; Ambrogi, Arcidosso, p. 57; and Ciacci, Gli Aldobrandeschi, I, pp. 336–7, and II, p. 310. 12 See Ambrogi, Arcidosso, p. 57, and Ciacci, Gli Aldobrandeschi, I, pp. 336–7. 13 Ciacci, Gli Aldobrandeschi, I, p. 337, notes that Roccastrada was ‘tanto più strategicamente importante per la sorveglianza e la sicurezza de’ suoi possessi maremmani’. 14 Vincenzo Buonsignori, Storia della Repubblica di Siena (Siena, 1856), I, p. 126, refers to it as a treaty, ‘dopo che con scambievoli danni aveva ciascuna parte peggiorata la propria condizione’ (‘after which, having exchanged injuries, each party worsened its own condition’; author’s translation). 15 Giovanna Ragionieri, Duccio: catalogo completo (Florence, 1989), p. 142: ‘un punto che non sembra discutibile è infatti la datazione nel secondo decennio del Trecento’; see also Polzer, ‘Simone Martini’s Guidoriccio Fresco’, p. 19.

SIMONE MARTINI’S ‘TREATY WITH THE HOUSE OF SANTA FIORA’

1982, arguments designed to complement Max Seidel’s identification of the scene as a representation of the 1314 submission of Giuncarico.16 Apart from his attribution of the work to Duccio, a judgement that automatically implies a date before 1318, the year of Duccio’s death, Bellosi proffers two main reasons for placing the New Fresco in the second decade of the century.17 First, he argues that the rocky outcrop on which the ‘new town’ rests is stylistically archaic and cannot have been painted later than the second decade of the fourteenth century.18 I have argued elsewhere that this is misleading: the New Fresco can be seen to represent, rather, one of the earliest examples of a cliff-face idiom that was relatively common in the fourteenth century (see, for example, the top right-hand scene in Fig. 7.5) and remained current long into the fifteenth century.19 Secondly, Bellosi appeals to the evidence of the figures’ costumes. Two brief comparisons with lay figures depicted in 1314 and 1317 would be enough, he hoped, to convince everyone that to suppose a dating of the figures beyond the middle of the second decade of the Trecento already involves some strain and that it is, in any case, impossible to place it around 1330 …20

At a remove of over six and a half centuries, though, working from very patchy visual sources, it is difficult to see how trends in fashion can be pinpointed so confidently. As Andrew Martindale observed, in response to Bellosi, this line of argument from fashion does not lead to the conclusion that the ‘new town’ could not be dateable to 1331. Over such a short period – less than twenty years – the costume if dated to 1331 might as easily supplement the evidence as run counter to it.21

The difficulties involved become readily apparent when the arguments are analysed. Bellosi claims that the hats depicted in the New Fresco are not elaborate enough for a date around 1330, but there are plenty of similar examples in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Sala della Pace frescoes of 1337–40 (Fig. 7.6). The wide, elbow-length sleeves of the figure on the left are also said to support an early date, but those of the count on the right are of a completely different form. As this demonstrates, different individuals could effect different habits of dress (compare the evidence 16 Bellosi, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 2’, pp. 41–9. 17 For the documentary evidence concerning Duccio’s death, see John White, Duccio: Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop (London, 1979), pp. 197–8. 18 Bellosi, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 2’, p. 42. 19 De Wesselow, ‘The “Wall of the Mappamondo”’, p. 204. 20 Bellosi, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 2’, p. 49: ‘che già supporre una datazione delle nostre figure oltre la metà del secondo decennio del Trecento si dovrebbe fare qualche sforzo e che è, communque, impossibile collocarle intorno al 1330 …’ (author’s translation). 21 Martindale, ‘The Problem’, p. 270 n. 77.

119

120

THOMAS DE WESSELOW

FIG. 7.5  SIMONE MARTINI, BEATO AGOSTINO NOVELLO. TEMPERA AND GOLD ON PANEL, C. 1324, PINACOTECA NAZIONALE, SIENA. PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE MINISTERO DEI BENI E DELLE ATTIVITÀ CULTURALI E DEL TURISMO. POLO MUSEALE DELLA TOSCANA. FOTO ARCHIVIO PINACOTECA NAZIONALE DI SIENA.

of the Sala della Pace), and if the left-hand gentleman is, as Bellosi says, ‘a lot older’ (‘ben più anziano’) than his companion, then it would be understandable if he were dressed in a more old-fashioned manner.22 Lastly, what chronological significance can be drawn from the cut of the collars, when those of the two figures in the fresco differ so markedly from each other and when Ambrogio’s procession of citizens, once again, displays every variation from collarless smocks, which barely cover the shoulder, to coats with high collars, which look virtually like neck-braces? Male attitudes to fashion in this period were apparently more flexible than Bellosi was willing to admit, and so the sartorial evidence has to be used with extreme caution. It helps little with the dating of the New Fresco, whose figures are dressed in differing styles that, on the available evidence, could have been worn either in 1317 or in 1331.

22 Bellosi, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 2’, p. 45.

SIMONE MARTINI’S ‘TREATY WITH THE HOUSE OF SANTA FIORA’

121

FIG. 7.6  AMBROGIO LORENZETTI, ALLEGORY OF GOOD GOVERNMENT, FRESCO, 1337–40, SALA DELLA PACE, PALAZZO PUBBLICO, SIENA. PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE MINISTERO DEI BENI E DELLE ATTIVITÀ CULTURALI E DEL TURISMO. POLO MUSEALE DELLA TOSCANA. FOTO ARCHIVIO PINACOTECA NAZIONALE DI SIENA.

SANTA FIORA, SIMONE MARTINI, AND THE PEACE OF 1331 There is no positive reason, therefore, to accept the New Fresco as a work of 1317. On the other hand, if the identification of the ‘new town’ as Santa Fiora is upheld, there is a very strong reason indeed to believe that it was painted by Simone in 1331. We have documentary proof that Simone visited three contado towns – Casteldelpiano, Arcidosso and Scansano – in late August/early September of that year.23 He must have been engaged in making topographical sketches, since Casteldelpiano and Arcidosso were subsequently painted as part of the Castle Series. Arcidosso is only 7 km up the road from Santa Fiora, and the main route between Arcidosso and Scansano would have passed by or through the feudal seat of the 23 ASSi, Biccherna 397, fol. 123v: ‘Maestro Simone dipegnitore die avere adì VI di settenbre per VII dì che stete in servigio del Chomune chon un chavallo e uno fante ala tera d’Arcidoso e di chastello del Piano e di Schançano, e avene puliçia da Nove, mesi a scita nel dì f. 33 a ragione di venticinque soldi al dì, lib. 8 s. 15’; published in Pèleo Bacci, Fonti e commenti per la storia dell’arte senese (Siena, 1944), p. 160.

122

THOMAS DE WESSELOW

Aldobrandeschi. It is highly likely, then, that Simone visited Santa Fiora in 1331, providing him with the necessary opportunity to observe its topography and possibly to record the likenesses of the main buildings. Needless to say, Simone is the only artist known to have visited and sketched places in this area. And he did so in connection with the major diplomatic settlement of 1331. Siena’s treaty with the Aldobrandeschi in 1331 was very different from the previous one of 1317, taking place within an entirely different political context. Militarily, Siena’s strength must have seemed greater than at any time since the Battle of Montaperti in 1260. Under the continuing leadership of Guidoriccio da Fogliano, the Sienese army had made great gains in the contado and in 1328 had fought off the imperial threat headed by Castruccio Castracani. Now, in quick succession and after more than a century of struggle, they had gained several decisive victories over the last of the feudal nobility to hold sway against their rule.24 The 1331 treaty with the counts of Santa Fiora must itself be understood within this historical context. Having mounted a successful campaign against the counts in the Maremma and having taken Scansano, Casteldelpiano and the vital stronghold of Arcidosso, the Sienese could enforce their own terms. They decided this was the moment, once and for all, to solve the ‘Aldobrandeschi problem’. The negotiations, conducted in the autumn of 1331, were lengthy and complex. Although the diplomatic initiatives were precipitated by the capture of Arcidosso on 12 August, it was over a month and a half before the parties started negotiating.25 On 3 October, Counts Conticino di Guido and Enrico d’Enrico were appointed procurators for their three relatives, Count Enrico d’Ildebrandino and Counts Guido and Stefano, sons of Ildebrandino Novello.26 Three days later, a preliminary peace settlement was made,27 and then negotiations began in earnest, the conditions of the agreement being debated by the Nine and by the General Council.28 Eventually a deal was reached, and the treaty was signed on 18 November ‘in palatio comunis Senarum, in consistorio dominorum Novem’ (‘in the palace of the Commune of Siena, in the hall of the Lords Nine’),29 the culmination of an unprecedented 24 For the campaign against the Aldobrandeschi in 1331, see Ambrogi, Arcidosso, pp. 57–61, and Agnolo di Tura, ‘Cronaca senese’, p. 503. 25 It seems that the Sienese were too preoccupied with their war against Pisa to reach a speedy settlement with the counts; see Agnolo di Tura, ‘Cronaca senese’, p. 505: ‘li Sanesi, avendo guerra con Massa e co’ Pisani, non attendevano ai detti conti’. There is a record, though, that on 26 August, two weeks after the capture of the town, two hostages were released by the Sienese, having been held for a ransom of 1,000 florins each (see Ambrogi, Arcidosso, p. 62). 26 ASSi, Capitoli 2, Caleffo Assunta, fols 360v–361r. 27 ASSi, Capitoli 2, Caleffo Assunta, fols 361r–362r. 28 See Ambrogi, Arcidosso, pp. 62–3. 29 ASSi, Capitoli 2, Caleffo Assunta, fols 362r–369r; ASSi, Capitoli 1, Caleffo Vecchio, fols 885r–892v. For the latter, see Il Caleffo Vecchio del comune di Siena, ed. Giovanni Cecchini, IV (Siena, 1984), pp. 1735–53.

SIMONE MARTINI’S ‘TREATY WITH THE HOUSE OF SANTA FIORA’

effort to bring the Aldobrandeschi under Sienese control. It must have been a solemn and momentous occasion. The two procurators of the counts of Santa Fiora would have been ushered into the Sala dei Nove – ‘in consistorio dominorum Novem’ – through the door in the west wall of the Sala del Consiglio. There, they met with the syndics of the commune of Siena (and her dependencies) in the presence of witnesses and committed themselves to the treaty. The sheer volume of paperwork signed on that day (seven individual acts, filling roughly seven and a half folios in the Caleffo Assunta, one of Siena’s registers of public acts) attests to the scale and importance of the diplomatic activity that had been undertaken (the 1317 treaty, by contrast, consisted of only two acts, covering roughly one folio of the Caleffo Assunta). By the end of proceedings, the counts had sworn eternal friendship with the commune of Siena, had concluded a specific peace accord and had confirmed those pacts which they had had with Siena in the past (including, of course, the treaty of 1317). They had also sold to the commune Casteldelpiano, Buriano and half of Arcidosso, while promising not to refortify Scansano. The Sienese had had to make certain minor concessions and pay a sizeable sum for the two towns (9,500 florins), but the treaty was a triumph, as it enshrined in law the de facto gains they had achieved by military means. The power of the counts had been fatally diminished, and Siena’s control of the contado had been greatly enhanced. The treaty of 1331, therefore, provides a suitable context for the commissioning of the New Fresco. In 1331 it may have seemed to the Sienese as if the contado was at last under their (relative) control and that a new era of peaceful co-existence with the contado lords might be dawning. It was not conceived by the Sienese as a pragmatic compromise, like that of 1317, but as a binding constraint on the rebellious tendencies of the Aldobrandeschi. Thus, if painted in 1331, the New Fresco would not merely have been the commemoration of a notable treaty; it would have symbolised Siena’s dominion of all the contado lands. And this perhaps helps explain the location of the work and the strange emphasis on the depiction of Santa Fiora itself. As I reconstruct it, the Castle Series was a collection of panel paintings forming a sort of map of Sienese territories that hung on the wall directly below the New Fresco (Fig. 7.3). Boasting its own topographical portrait, the fresco would inevitably have been viewed in relation to the pictorial contado beneath, making its significance clear: Siena’s treaty with the House of Santa Fiora sealed her control of all these subject territories. The Nine, meanwhile, who had overseen the triumph, were depicted (probably anonymously) above the door into their room, which until 1466 was on

123

124

THOMAS DE WESSELOW

the left-hand side of the wall, not on the right.30 This adequately explains the off-centre position of the fresco. Is the evidence of the painting’s style concordant with a 1331 date? Concern has sometimes been expressed about the slender proportions of the figures,31 but they are not significantly different from those of Simone’s Beato Agostino Novello (Fig. 7.5)32 or from the Saint Ansanus of the 1333 Saint Ansanus Altarpiece.33 The architecture in the New Fresco has no direct parallel in Simone’s work of the 1330s, but there is no reason to suppose that the depiction of Santa Fiora could not post-date the side-scenes of the Beato Agostino Novello panel. The view that it is not as ‘advanced’ as earlier townscapes and landscapes such as these not only depends upon a dubious model of naturalistic progress, but also ignores the particular function of the work and the deliberate revival of a compositional format in which landscape acted not as a spatial ambient but as a symbolic stage. The shallow space of the New Fresco, in fact, recalls the composition of the central panel of the Saint Ansanus Altarpiece: this Annunciation is often noted for its ‘old-fashioned’ lateral composition, in which the figures are disposed along the foremost picture-plane in front of an abstract ground, and precisely the same schema is adopted in the figural section of the New Fresco.34 30 For the alteration of the doorway into the Sala dei Nove from the Sala del Mappamondo, see Ubaldo Morandi, ‘Documenti’, in Palazzo Pubblico, pp. 413–36, at p. 428 (doc. no. 379); de Wesselow, ‘The Decoration’, pp. 23–24; and de Wesselow, ‘The “Wall of the Mappamondo”’, pp. 66, 68–9. 31 See, for example, Martindale, ‘The Problem’, p. 270. 32 For the Beato Agostino Novello panel, see Alessandro Bagnoli and Max Seidel, ‘Cat. no. 7: Il Beato Agostino Novello e quattro suoi miracoli’, in Simone Martini e ‘chompagni’, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli and Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), pp. 56–72; Martindale, Simone Martini, pp. 32–4, 211–14; and Pierini, Simone Martini, pp. 158–63. 33 For the Saint Ansanus Altarpiece, see Miklós Boskovits, ‘Sul trittico di Simone Martini e di Lippo Memmi’, Arte Cristiana 74 (1986), 69–78; Joseph Polzer, ‘Symon Martini et Lippus Memmi me Pinxerunt’, in Simone Martini: atti del convegno, pp. 167–73; Martindale, Simone Martini, pp. 41–3, 187–90; and Pierini, Simone Martini, pp. 182–8. The attribution of this figure, of course, is debatable, since the altarpiece was painted by both Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi. However, in the light of my analysis of their individual stylistic characteristics in relation to the attribution of the Guidoriccio (see de Wesselow, ‘The Guidoriccio Fresco’, and de Wesselow, ‘The “Wall of the Mappamondo”’, pp. 99–116), I am confident that the figure of Saint Ansanus was designed by Simone rather than Lippo. 34 À propos the comparison with the Saint Ansanus Altarpiece, Pierluigi de Castris (who favours attributing the New Fresco to Simone in the second decade of the Trecento) has expressed the opinion that ‘ogni confronto con opere certe di Simone dopo il 1330 – prima fra tutte l’Annunciazione degli Uffizi – appare improprio, e così anche con i grandi polittici … databili nel decennio precedente’ (De Castris, Simone Martini, p. 140). But, if such comparisons do seem inappropriate, it is not because these pictures are necessarily chronologically separated from the New Fresco; rather, their contents have nothing whatsoever in common with the subject matter of the fresco (Bellosi, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 2’, p. 45, for one, stresses the difficulty of comparing secular works with religious ones), and, hence, there are no convenient comparisons to be made. It should be remembered, too, that the Saint Ansanus Altarpiece was painted jointly with Lippo Memmi.

SIMONE MARTINI’S ‘TREATY WITH THE HOUSE OF SANTA FIORA’

The most significant correspondence to be found, though, is that between the trees to the right of the rocca in the New Fresco (Plate IX) and those in Simone’s Virgilian allegory, the frontispiece for Petrarch’s copy of Virgil, painted c. 1342 (Fig. 7.7).35 This provides us with a strong argument for the late dating of the New Fresco. Earlier in his career, Simone seems to have experimented with various different ways of depicting foliage, and he was still experimenting in the Beato Agostino Novello panel. It would seem legitimate to suppose that he developed his Virgil frontispiece formula sometime after 1324, the probable date of the Beato Agostino Novello painting, and that the New Fresco, which employs this formula, was painted between that date and 1335, the year in which he moved to Avignon.36 Can we deduce a more precise date for the creation of the fresco? Peace was concluded in mid-November 1331, but the negotiations had been in progress since early October. Since it was clear from the start that the outcome would be a diplomatic seal on the military success already achieved, the commission for the New Fresco could well have been given before the deal was finally agreed. Simone is likely to have visited Santa Fiora, as we have seen, in late August/early September. Perhaps the pictorial commemoration of the treaty was conceived by him then; perhaps it was only envisaged on his return.37 A later, retrospective date for the work does not seem likely. Fresco painting could still have been carried out in October and November, providing the weather held good, so it seems sensible to connect the work itself with the period of the negotiations. It so happens that on 30 October 1331, Simone Martini is documented as having been loaned three florins by the Sienese government, a sum which he returned on 8 November.38 This may imply that he was employed during this period by the government, and the transaction could well have been connected with work on the New Fresco. Perhaps he was loaned money to acquire materials in advance of payment. If so, we can imagine the freshly executed painting in place for the signing of the treaty on 18 November. 35 For the Virgil frontispiece, see Martindale, Simone Martini, pp. 50–1, 191–2; De Castris, Simone Martini, p. 124; and Pierini, Simone Martini, pp. 194–7. 36 On Simone’s move to Avignon, see John Rowlands, ‘The Date of Simone Martini’s Arrival in Avignon’, The Burlington Magazine 107 (1965), 25–6. 37 We should consider the interesting possibility that Simone himself was responsible for suggesting the creation of the New Fresco. Since he appears not to have been commissioned to sketch the town in situ (it is not mentioned as one of the towns he was paid to visit), the idea to do so may have been his own. Did he decide to record the likeness of the town out of mere curiosity, an initiative that was then rewarded with the commission for the New Fresco? Or did the artist perhaps sketch the town’s main buildings with a view to commemorating the treaty in a splendid fresco? 38 ASSi, Biccherna 397, fol. 18r: ‘Maestro Simone dipegnitore die’ dare a di xxx d’ottobre iij fiorini d’oro e quagli gli prestamo, demo in mano di Ventura del maestro Mino. De deti denari avemo avuti a dì viij di novembre iij fiorini d’oro e quagli e gli schontiamo nel paghamento che gli fece Ghigliotto’ (quoted in Bacci, Fonti e commenti, p. 161).

125

FIG. 7.7  SIMONE MARTINI, FRONTISPIECE TO SERVIUS’S COMMENTARY ON VIRGIL, C. 1342. BIBLIOTECA AMBROSIANA, MILAN, MS A 79 INF. PHOTO: ARCHIVI ALINARI, FLORENCE.

SIMONE MARTINI’S ‘TREATY WITH THE HOUSE OF SANTA FIORA’

Displayed above the Castle Series – itself a powerful sign of Siena’s territorial ascendancy – ‘The Treaty with the House of Santa Fiora’ would have provided a potent message for Counts Conticino and Enrico as they passed beneath it into the room where they were to sign away a substantial part of their patrimony. It proclaimed, in a thoroughly legalistic manner, that the House of Santa Fiora was a willing participant in a fair and equitable treaty. In a certain fashion, the imagery seems to have been intended to preserve their dignity, but it is hard to imagine the procurators turning round for a second look as they strode away from the scene of their humiliation.

EXPUNGING THE ALDOBRANDESCHI The terms of one of the accords they had just signed, the ‘Instrumentum pacis’, parallel the imagery of the picture particularly closely. It was in this capitolo that the counts of Santa Fiora swore ‘true, pure, right and permanent peace … in perpetuity’39 to all those represented by the syndics of Siena, an act that is implied by the cordial meeting in the fresco. Furthermore, a significant clause in the ‘Instrumentum pacis’ may help illuminate the subsequent treatment of the fresco. As I have said, three separate forms of ‘iconoclasm’ were inflicted on the image: the figures appear first of all to have been pelted with stones, a spontaneous act of vicarious abuse (the town was not targeted, apparently);40 then they were painted out, using broad black brushstrokes over which was laid a thick layer of azurite, an act of official censorship;41 and, finally, the remaining image was obliterated in 1345, when Ambrogio’s Mappamondo was installed in its place. This maltreatment of Simone’s masterpiece has its own story to tell. The reason for the stone-throwing is not difficult to surmise: the counts of Santa Fiora, who were, as Gino Ambrogi says, ‘ready to violate pacts as soon as they were concluded’, must have somehow violated the terms of the treaty.42 It is difficult to know exactly what event sparked the anger of the Sienese, since the documentary record is fragmentary and historical opinion confused.43 But it is perhaps worth noting that on 19 October 1334 a syndic of the commune of Arcidosso renewed a pledge of fealty to the Republic of Siena, and, on the next day, a 39 Il Caleffo Vecchio, IV p. 1744: ‘veram, puram, rectam et perpetuam pacem, finem, remissionem atque concordiam, perpetuo duraturam’. 40 See Gavazzi, ‘Technical Report’, p. 259, and Seidel, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 1’, p. 23. 41 See Seidel, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 1’, pp. 22–3. 42 Ambrogi, Arcidosso, p. 62 (‘pronti a violare i patti appena conclusi’). 43 Alfonso Ademollo, I monumenti Medio-evali e moderni della Provincia di Grosseto (Grosseto, 1894), p. 13, states that Arcidosso was besieged again in 1332, an opinion cited by Ambrogi, Arcidosso, p. 59, but this would seem to be a mistake.

127

128

THOMAS DE WESSELOW

syndic of the commune of Siena took possession of the ‘cassero, corte e possessioni di Arcidosso’ (‘keep, courts and possessions of Arcidosso’).44 This repossession of Arcidosso, legally confirmed, suggests that there were serious tensions that needed to be resolved, tensions that may well have involved the Aldobrandeschi. There may even have been a minor insurrection. Whether or not this was the occasion, sometime before 1345 certain Sienese evidently vented their anger on the image of the ‘treacherous’ count (and the unfortunate councillor next to him, who was either hit accidentally or held partly to blame).45 But why were the figures then officially expunged? And why, by contrast, was the town of Santa Fiora allowed to remain? Given the perennial antagonism between the commune of Siena and the Aldobrandeschi, it is hardly surprising that the image of the count was bombarded with stones, but the official cancellation of the parleying figures (the representatives of the Nine as well as the count) is a completely different matter. It should be interpreted, I think, as a quasi-legalistic act, connected to the specific terms of the 1331 treaty. In the event of the counts of Santa Fiora causing subsequent injury or damage to Sienese citizens or property, they were to be understood to have broken the peace accord (‘from then on, the peace with the commune of Siena is understood to have been broken by them’).46 Since the accord seems to have been symbolised by the solemn meeting depicted in the New Fresco, if it was broken, the Sienese government would surely have wished to annul its painted representation. The cancellation of the figures is a clear sign – the clearest we have – that the Aldobrandeschi were deemed to have violated the terms of the treaty. In its altered state, representing an official act of damnatio memoriae, the fresco would have spoken as eloquently of the counts’ perfidy as it did originally of their acquiescence.47 44 ASSi, Capitoli 2, Caleffo Assunta, fol. 452r. Regarding these events, Ambrogi, Arcidosso, p. 66, merely observes that they ‘dimostrano come Siena esigesse prove di devozione della terra conquistata e desiderebbe avere conferma del suo dominio’. Surely, though, the need for such proofs and the formal repossession of the castle imply more than this. 45 Mallory and Moran, ‘Guidoriccio da Fogliano’, p. 8, suggest that the figures were cancelled out in 1333 as a response to Guidoriccio’s supposed ‘disgrace’, which related to events at Arcidosso in 1331; Seidel, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 1’, p. 31, believes that they were erased because the citizens of Giuncarico admitted a sworn enemy of Siena into their town in June 1314. Neither of these interpretations is convincing. For detailed arguments against them, see de Wesselow, ‘The “Wall of the Mappamondo”’, pp. 210, 216, 221–2 (and below, note 47). 46 Il Caleffo Vecchio, IV, p. 1745 (‘ex tunc intelligatur pax rupta per eos comuni Senarum’). 47 Frugoni and Redon, ‘Accusé Guidoriccio’, pp. 125–6, point out that blue was the colour of treachery and that in 1366 Doge Marin Faliero’s image in the Palazzo Ducale of Venice was painted out for treason with the same colour. It may be noted with regard to the identification of the New Fresco commander as Guidoriccio (see above, note 45) that, whatever suspicions may have arisen concerning his conduct at Arcidosso, Guidoriccio was certainly never formally charged with treason, and therefore it is most unlikely that his image would have provoked such an official act of damnatio memoriae. On damnatio

SIMONE MARTINI’S ‘TREATY WITH THE HOUSE OF SANTA FIORA’

It would have acted as a continual reminder of their violation of the important treaty of 1331. The depiction of the counts’ feudal seat, Santa Fiora, may have been preserved as a sign of the reparation that was due to Siena. It had been agreed that, if they broke the terms of the peace, the counts would pay a penalty of 1,000 silver marks.48 As security for this sum, they were forced to put up their present and future goods and hereditary estates, Santa Fiora itself being among the latter. Siena was conceded the right to seize these possessions and sell them in order to cover the fine, including any interest and expenses incurred. By pointedly keeping the section of the fresco depicting Santa Fiora on the wall, I believe, the Sienese were seizing it ‘in effigy’, laying claim to the security the counts had pledged. Once again the intimate relation with the Castle Series panels, each of which depicted a depopulated (or virtually depopulated) landscape and testified to Siena’s legal ownership of a certain territory, elucidates the significance of the New Fresco. As is well appreciated, the Castle Series had a quasi-legal status, as shown by an official decree ordering the depiction in the Sala del Consiglio of the recently acquired town of Giuncarico in 1314.49 Stripped of its figures – itself a thoroughly legalistic act – the New Fresco was effectively transformed into a giant member of the Castle Series and thus became the pictorial embodiment of a legal claim. Siena was never actually to own Santa Fiora outright,50 but, in the wake of an Aldobrandeschi revolt, they would surely have had it in their sights and would have been legally justified in doing so. In its revised form, then, the New Fresco took on a completely altered significance. Rather than proclaim a peaceful co-existence with the counts of Santa Fiora, it now expressed Siena’s right to evict them from their feudal seat and crush their independence. Seen in this light, it becomes even more important to ask why the whole painting was whitewashed in 1345 and replaced by the Mappamondo. The fact that the hall itself had ceased to be the principal council chamber by then almost certainly played a part,51 and a desire to let Ambrogio Lorenzetti extend his magnificent programme of decoration, begun in the Sala della Pace, into the old Sala memoriae more generally in late medieval and Renaissance Italy, see Samuel Y. Edgerton, Painting and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance (Ithaca, NY, 1985) and David Freedberg, The Power of Images (Chicago, 1989), pp. 246–57. 48 Il Caleffo Vecchio, IV, p. 1745. 49 On the legal aspect of the Castle Series, see Seidel, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 1’, p. 30; Kupfer, ‘The Lost Wheel Map’, pp. 303–4; and de Wesselow, ‘The “Wall of the Mappamondo”’, pp. 124–5. 50 Siena came very close to acquiring full possession of Santa Fiora in the fifteenth century, but was thwarted when the last heiress, Countess Cecilia, married Bosio Sforza in 1439; see Paolo Cammarosano, I castelli del senese (Milan, 1985), p. 378. 51 In 1343 the Consiglio della Campana decamped to the new Sala del Consiglio Generale, which was designed to accommodate the increasing number of councillors, and which had just been built adjoining the east wing of the palace; see Edna Carter Southard, ‘The Frescoes in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico, 1289–1359: Studies in Imagery and

129

130

THOMAS DE WESSELOW

del Consiglio, in the form of a world-map, may have been crucial, too. But other considerations probably affected the decision as well. In 1343, two years before the fresco was disbanded, the Sienese were promised the richest inheritance they had ever received. In that year, the childless Count Jacomo di Bonifazio Aldobrandeschi drew up his will, in which the commune of Siena was named as his universal heir.52 It is puzzling to find an Aldobrandeschi count being so generous towards the city. Although Jacomo was not a party to the treaty of 1331, it would seem likely that the legacy was negotiated in compensation for the misdemeanours of his relatives, who would otherwise have inherited his share of the estate. Thus, the financial claim represented by the repainted New Fresco may, at long last, have been met. Moreover, by 1345 the continuing failure of the Sienese to gain possession of the castle so prominently depicted in their council hall at the head of the Castle Series may have been an embarrassment, and they may have been glad of an opportunity to erase the image. It is not without significance, perhaps, that in 1345 Siena gained further lands and money from the Aldobrandeschi53 and that Count Jacomo actually died in July 1346.54 It was not an auspicious moment for the House of Santa Fiora. In August 1345, Count Enrico d’Enrico, the procurator of 1331, was murdered, and his cousin Stefano was to die in 1346.55 The other three counts who had taken part in the infamous treaty, Enrico il Vecchio, Guido d’Ildebrandino and Conticino di Guido, had all died earlier.56 The family was debilitated and no longer posed a serious threat to the acquisitive commune. ‘By 1345’, as William Bowsky says, ‘even the once mighty Aldobrandeschi had submitted to Siena and agreed to make war and peace in whatever manner Siena wished.’57 In these circumstances, there was no longer any need Relations to Other Communal Palaces in Tuscany’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, 1978, p. 213. 52 See William Bowsky, The Finance of the Commune of Siena 1287–1355 (Oxford, 1970), pp. 66, 242 n. 48, and Castellani e castelli di Berardenga e Maremma al tempo del Buongoverno di Ambrogio Lorenzetti: una finestra aperta sul medioevo, ed. Alberto Colli (Siena, 2001), pp. 20–3. 53 See Bowsky, The Finance, p. 242 n. 48. 54 See Ciacci, Gli Aldobrandeschi, I, between pp. 336–7 (Aldobrandeschi family tree). The fact that Count Jacomo’s will was drawn up two years before implies that his death was anticipated. The Mappamondo could, in that case, have been commissioned in the knowledge that the New Fresco would soon become obsolete. 55 See Ciacci, Gli Aldobrandeschi, I, between pp. 336–7 (Aldobrandeschi family tree). 56 See Ciacci, Gli Aldobrandeschi, I, between pp. 336–7 (Aldobrandeschi family tree). Enrico il Vecchio died before August 1345, while Conticino di Guido died in 1339. N.B. Count Guido d’Ildebrandino, one of the three counts with whom Siena concluded peace on 18 November 1331, apparently died over a month earlier, on 16 October 1331 (Ciacci records his death on the Aldobrandeschi family tree, citing ASSi, Capitoli 3, Caleffo Nero, fols 115r–129v). According to Agnolo di Tura, ‘Cronaca senese’, p. 505, there had been a further battle between the Sienese, led by Guidoriccio, and the counts and their allies on 15 October. Guido’s death the next day was presumably a result of this battle. 57 William Bowsky, A Medieval Italian Commune: Siena under the Nine, 1287–1355 (Berkeley, 1981), p. 149. Elsewhere, Bowsky remarks that the will of Count Jacomo ‘marked the capitulation of the once mighty counts of Santa Fiora’ (Bowsky, The Finance,

SIMONE MARTINI’S ‘TREATY WITH THE HOUSE OF SANTA FIORA’

for Santa Fiora to be represented in the Palazzo Pubblico, and Simone Martini’s ill-fated masterpiece was finally disbanded – only fourteen years after it was painted. • No other work of art evokes as powerfully as the New Fresco the continuous conflict of the vigorous young communes of central Italy with the old feudal nobility, caught between compromise and defiance. And the ill-treatment of the work in the years after it was painted is as eloquent in this regard as the novel imagery of the original composition. Indeed, the defacement of the fresco testifies unambiguously to an episode of perceived treachery that has left little if any trace in the textual archive. There will always be debate about the value of images as historical records,58 but the New Fresco, I think, is a good example of a picture that aspires to the status of a written document. It may actually have been conceived as a wordless expression of the literal truth of the 1331 treaty.59 No doubt, Simone would be gratified to learn that, nearly seven centuries later, the fresco’s composition and the vicissitudes it underwent are still directly intelligible, despite the mutilation of the work and the changed appearance of Santa Fiora. It is a testament to the clarity and ingenuity of his conception, a conception which for too long has been obscured by layers of paint and whitewash and the ongoing controversy over the fresco above.

p. 66). William Caferro, Mercenary Companies and the Decline of Siena (London, 1998), p. 26, is more circumspect, noting that after this date, ‘the Aldobrandeschi remained powerful and continued to follow their own agenda’. However, in relative terms, their menace to the commune was now negligible. 58 For a general treatment, see Francis Haskell, History and its Images (London, 1993). 59 See de Wesselow, ‘The Form and Imagery’, pp. 212–13.

131

CRISIS AND CHARITY IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE: AMBROGIO LORENZETTI’S SAINT NICHOLAS PANELS FOR SAN PROCOLO JANET ROBSON

T

he Sienese artist Ambrogio Lorenzetti created two works for the church of San Procolo in Florence. One of them, a triptych of the Virgin and Child flanked by the two bishop saints Nicholas and Proculus, once bore Ambrogio’s signature and the date 1332.1 The other – the subject of this essay – now consists of two panels, each depicting a pair of scenes from the life and miracles of Saint Nicholas of Bari (Plates X and XI).2 This quartet is one of the most sophisticated and best-known narrative ensembles from the Trecento, but its context in a modest parish church For Joanna, who introduced me to Ambrogio Lorenzetti, with heartfelt thanks for her dedication, insight and generosity as teacher, supervisor, colleague and friend. My thanks are also due to the Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, Florence, where I began my research on Saint Nicholas as a Deborah Loeb Brice Fellow in 2010/11. 1 Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. nos 9411/8731/8732. Giovanni Cinelli reported seeing a Virgin in San Procolo in 1677 with the inscription AMBROSIUS LAURENTII DE SENIS 1332, probably on a lost cornice, in his revisions to Francesco Bocchi, Le bellezze della città di Firenze (Florence, 1677), p. 389. 2 Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. nos. 8348 (96.2 × 52.3 cm) and 8349 (95.8 × 52.3 cm). For useful analyses of the Saint Nicholas panels, with further bibliography, see Luisa Marcucci, Gallerie Nazionali di Firenze: i dipinti toscani del secolo XIV (Rome, 1965), cat. no. 112, pp. 161–3; Eve Borsook, Ambrogio Lorenzetti (Florence, 1966), pp. 29–30; Gianluca Amato, ‘Le Storie di San Nicola “in figure piccole” della chiesa di San Procolo a Firenze’, in Ambrogio Lorenzetti, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli, Roberto Bartalini, and Max Seidel, exh. cat. Santa Maria della Scala, Siena (Milan, 2017), pp. 182–91.

8

134

JANET ROBSON

remains underexplored. By focusing on San Procolo, its institutional links, and its lay patrons, this essay will suggest that Lorenzetti’s narratives responded to their setting and likely audience within the church, spoke to the preoccupations of Florentines in the years around 1330, and expressed the concerns of their patron, who can be identified for the first time. San Procolo is a small parish church in the ancient heart of Florence, just to the north-east of the Bargello, on the corner of Via de’ Giraldi and Via de’ Pandolfini. Probably already founded by the first millennium, in 1064 it was gifted by the Bishop of Florence to the nearby Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria, commonly known as the Badia Fiorentina. In 1622 the church was totally rebuilt and its orientation reversed, with the high altar being moved to the west end and the main door to the east; its interior was further remodelled in the eighteenth century.3 Consequently, the interior of the church gives no clues as to the original position or function of Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s panels. San Procolo remained under the control of the Badia until it was suppressed in 1778 and sold to Cardinal Salviati, in whose family’s possession it remains. At the time of writing, the church is deconsecrated and closed to the public. After San Procolo was secularised, the Saint Nicholas panels were transferred to the Badia. When that church, too, was suppressed, they entered the Galleria dell’Accademia before being transferred to the Uffizi in 1919. The earliest writers to mention Ambrogio’s work at San Procolo – and, crucially, the only ones who probably saw the works intact and in situ – are Lorenzo Ghiberti (c. 1452–55), L’Anonimo Magliabechiano (1537–42) and Giorgio Vasari (1550 and 1568). Both Ghiberti and L’Anonimo described seeing ‘una tavola’ and ‘una cappella’ painted by Ambrogio, while Vasari added the more specific information that the cappella contained ‘le storie di San Niccolò in figure piccole…’ The tavola has been almost universally identified with the triptych of the Virgin and Child with SS Nicholas and Proculus and the cappella with the Saint Nicholas panels. Some scholars have posited that the triptych may once have stood on the high altar. An inventory of the church in 1441, published by Daniela Parenti, has confirmed that the high altar was dedicated to Saint Proculus.4 In 1754 Richa described a panel on the high altar as a Virgin with SS Proculus, Nicholas, John the Evangelist and John the Baptist.5 Although the Lorenzetti triptych contains the two Saint Johns in its gables, a more likely contender for the high altarpiece (attributed by Richa to Giotto) 3 Walter and Elisabeth Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz, IV (Frankfurt, 1952), p. 690; Arnaldo Cocchi, Le chiese di Firenze dal secolo IV al secolo XX, I (Florence, 1903), p. 131. 4 See Daniela Parenti, ‘Qualche approfondimento su Lorenzo Monaco e sulla chiesa di San Procolo a Firenze’, in Intorno a Lorenzo Monaco, ed. Daniela Parenti and Angelo Tartuferi (Livorno, 2007), pp. 20–31, at p. 25. The 1441 inventory is ASFi, Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal governo francese 78, filza 351, fols. 78r–81r. 5 Giuseppe Richa, Notizie istoriche delle chiese fiorentine, divise ne’ suoi quartieri, I (Florence, 1754), pp. 238–9.

CRISIS AND CHARITY IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE

in terms of size and type is a hypothetical pentaptych painted by Pacino di Bonaguida between c. 1325 and 1330. Three panels in the Accademia, containing half-length figures of SS Nicholas (facing right), Proculus and John the Evangelist (both facing left), and a series of six predella scenes depicting the life of Saint Proculus have been associated with this work.6 Not only are the Pacino and Lorenzetti altarpieces closely linked iconographically, but they also share the oddity that Saint Proculus, the titular of the church and of the high altar, is placed on the Virgin’s left, while Saint Nicholas is given the higher status position on her right. The 1441 inventory also reveals that San Procolo had four side altars, whose patrons were the Pannocchia, Villani, Arrighi and Valori families. The Valori altar was dedicated to Saint Nicholas.7 Furthermore, a description of the Saint Nicholas altar in 1575, also published by Parenti, recorded on it an ‘icona tabule lignea’ with an image of the Virgin in the centre, with Saint Nicholas to her right side and Saint Proculus to her left.8 This provides convincing evidence that Lorenzetti’s triptych stood on the side altar of Saint Nicholas and that it was the tavola seen by Ghiberti, the L’Anonimo Magliabechiano and Vasari. In all probability, Ambrogio painted the Saint Nicholas panels around 1332 as part of the same Valori family commission, and they can be identified with the cappella noted by the same early commentators.9 The term cappella has caused some confusion in the past, with Baldinucci in the seventeenth century assuming it was a reference to frescoes. However, Marcucci points out that Vasari’s description of the cappella having stories of Saint Nicholas in ‘small figures’ must refer to a panel painting and that a cappella in fourteenth-century Tuscany could refer to

6 For a useful review of the evidence, with further bibliography, see Isabella Tronconi, cat. no. 40, Cataloghi della Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze. Dipinti, Volume primo. Dal Duecento a Giovanni da Milano, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2003), pp. 210–16. The 1441 inventory records ‘nostra Donna di legname col Bambino’ on the high altar, which Parenti, ‘Qualche approfondimento su Lorenzo Monaco’, p. 26, argues refers to the Pacino. For evidence that it was moved to the Valori altar in the early seventeenth century, after the church was reoriented and the old high altar demolished, see Parenti, ‘Qualche approfondimento su Lorenzo Monaco’, pp. 27–8. For the reconstruction of Pacino’s polyptych, see now Sonia Chiodo, ‘Stories Told through Images by Pacino di Bonaguida and the Master of the Dominican Effigies’, in ‘An Ancient and Honourable Citizen of Florence’: The Bargello and Dante, ed. Luca Azzetta, Sonia Chiodo, and Teresa De Robertis, exh. cat. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence (Florence, 2021), pp. 155–7, and Chiodo’s catalogue entry: cat. no. 14, pp. 160–1. Chiodo argues that Pacino’s polytych, equipped with a full narrative predella, must post-date Ugolino di Nerio’s high altarpiece for Santa Croce, commissioned in 1324. 7 The Pannocchia altar had a joint dedication to the Annunciation and Saint Anthony Abbot while the dedications of the Villani and Arrighi family altars are not specified. 8 Parenti, ‘Qualche approfondimento su Lorenzo Monaco’, p. 26. The description is in ASFi, Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal governo francese 78, filza 351, fol. 129r. 9 Amato, ‘Le Storie di San Nicola’, p. 188, suggests a date slightly after 1332 on stylistic grounds.

135

136

JANET ROBSON

an altar or tabernacle.10 Recent research by Joanna Cannon on side chapels in Dominican churches in central Italy has drawn attention to the shift in meaning of the term cappella through the fourteenth century: while initially the terms altare and cappella seem to have been interchangeable, later testators were providing for an ‘altare cum cappella’, with the cappella being some kind of architectural enhancement to the altar – anything from a full-blown chapel to a canopy, niche, or gable.11 The Valori ‘altare’ in San Procolo may well have been more substantial in form than the word might suggest. Although the Saint Nicholas panels must originally have been parts of a larger complex, they could not have formed a predella for the triptych because each pair of scenes is painted on a single vertically grained plank.12 Their original format is difficult to determine. Clearly they are incomplete: only the external side frames are undamaged and totally original; the top, bottom and inner side frames are all modern reconstructions.13 There may always have been only four scenes, but the possibility of others, either above or below the surviving ones, cannot be ruled out. Most scholars favour a reconstruction as a vita dossal, with the two pairs of scenes placed either side of a missing, central figure of Saint Nicholas. This hypothesis has been strengthened by the most recent restoration work on the panels: technical analysis carried out by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure has revealed the presence of three dowel holes along the vertical internal sides of each panel, indicating that dowels originally connected them to a central panel.14 An influential Sienese model may have been Simone Martini’s Beato Agostino Novello altarpiece (Fig. 7.5). Painted c. 1324–29 for the tomb/altar of the beato in Sant’Agostino in Siena, this panel also takes the form of a central portrait flanked by two pairs of narratives and, as we shall see below, some of Ambrogio’s compositions were a direct response to those of Simone.15 The hypothesis of a vita panel is perhaps strengthened by the 1441 inventory which lists the Saint Nicholas altar in San Procolo as having a ‘dossali dipinto’ as well as a ‘tavola d’altare’. 10 Marcucci, Gallerie Nazionali di Firenze, p. 162. 11 See Joanna Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches: Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New Haven and London, 2013), pp. 251–9. 12 For dimensions of the panels, see note 2. See also Marcucci, Gallerie Nazionali di Firenze, p. 162. 13 Marcucci, Gallerie Nazionali di Firenze, p. 162. 14 See Amato, ‘Le Storie di San Nicola’, p. 187. For the suggestion that the scenes were originally sections of a painted altar frontal or antependium, see Victor M. Schmidt, ‘Una proposta per le tavole di Ambrogio Lorenzetti provenienti dalla chiesa fiorentina di San Procolo’, Prospettiva 181–2 (2021), 23–30. The configuration of Ambrogio’s panels at San Procolo is the subject of ongoing research by Daniela Parenti and Chiara Demaria. The editors are grateful to Andrea De Marchi for discussion on the reconstruction of the triptych and narrative scenes. 15 The altarpiece measures 200 × 256 cm, considerably larger than the Saint Nicholas panels.

CRISIS AND CHARITY IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE

Exactly where such a dossal would have been displayed is not at all clear from any of the descriptions, but it must surely have been placed in close proximity to the altar.16 The vita panel was popularised in Duecento Italy mainly through its adoption by the Franciscans to promote Saint Francis, but it was also used for established saints, including Saint Nicholas.17 A notable Tuscan antecedent is a Saint Nicholas dossal painted in the second half of the thirteenth century, probably for the Pisan church of San Nicola, which comprises a central portrait of the saint, surrounded by four narrative scenes.18 In offering an analysis of Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Saint Nicholas vita panel in a volume honouring Joanna Cannon, I wish to pay tribute to her distinguished contributions, both as teacher and scholar, to the study of early Sienese painting. My case study is also, more specifically, inspired by Joanna’s essay, ‘Beyond the Limitations of Visual Typology: Reconsidering the Function and Audience of Three Vita Panels of Women Saints c. 1300’, in which she explored the question of whether panels of the same basic visual type are necessarily also comparable in their functions and viewership, and in the ways in which they addressed their various audiences.19

SAN PROCOLO AND SAINT NICHOLAS Images of Saint Nicholas were prominent in the fourteenth-century interior of San Procolo. Two panel paintings (the Lorenzetti triptych and the Pacino da Bonaguida polyptych) place him at least on a par with the church’s titular saint, while the third (Ambrogio’s vita dossal) focuses on him entirely. Why was Saint Nicholas of such interest to a parish church in Florence with a different dedication at this particular time? The origins of his cult lay in Byzantium, where he had been a fourth-century bishop of

16 The widths of the triptych and the hypothetical vita panel would have been similar. The three triptych panels together measure 143 cm (but it would have been wider with its original framing elements included). The two Saint Nicholas panels together measure 106 cm, so including the missing central element the dossal would perhaps have measured around 100 × 160 cm. The Beato Agostino Novello altarpiece, by comparison, measures 200 × 256 cm; this presumably reflects the relative sizes of their altar blocks. On the term ‘dossale’ (probably an altar frontal in this case), see Miklós Boskovits, ‘Appunti per una storia della tavola d’altare: le origini’, Arte Cristiana 80 (1992), 422–38. 17 For a comparison of Italian and Byzantine vita panels of Saint Nicholas, see Nancy Patterson Ševčenko, ‘The Vita Icon and the Painter as Hagiographer’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 53 (1999), 149–65, esp. pp. 152–3. 18 Now in the Prepositura di San Verano, Peccioli, the panel has a vertical format and measures 123 × 101 cm. See Cimabue a Pisa, la pittura pisana del Duecento da Giunta a Giotto, ed. Mariagiulia Burresi, exh. cat. Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa (Pisa, 2005), cat. no. 43, pp. 182–3. 19 Joanna Cannon, ‘Beyond the Limitations of Visual Typology: Reconsidering the Function and Audience of Three Vita Panels of Women Saints c. 1300’, in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art 61 (Washington, DC, 2002), pp. 291–314.

137

138

JANET ROBSON

Myra. After his death in c. 343, his miracle-working relics drew pilgrims to his tomb and during the early Middle Ages a group of disparate Greek texts gradually coalesced into the life of Saint Nicholas of Myra.20 Although the saint had been venerated in Rome since at least the seventh century, the first Latin life was not written until the late ninth century by John the Deacon.21 In 1087, a group of seafaring Pugliese merchants seized the saint’s relics and took them to Bari, where they were translated into a newly built church. Bari became a major destination for pilgrims, who were drawn by Nicholas’s reputation as a thaumaturge. This was the catalyst for the popularisation of Saint Nicholas throughout western Europe: in Italy alone, around 180 churches or chapels dedicated to him were founded in the century after the translation.22 Devotion to Saint Nicholas was broad, in part because this miracle-working bishop-saint was not regarded as the exclusive property of any one religious order or interest group. Saint Nicholas’s cult was widely diffused by means of Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend of c. 1264, which was a medieval best-seller.23 Liturgical chants, hymns and sermons also helped to popularise his stories. Florence Cathedral, which possessed a relic of the saint, was an early adopter of the cult. Nicholas’s feastday was included in a sacramentary dated 1125 and a fourteenth-century psalter/hymnal includes a composition for the hymn ‘Pange lingua Nicholai presulis’ (‘Sing praises, my tongue, to Bishop Nicholas’).24 By the time Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted his Saint Nicholas panel, he would have been working within a rich iconographical tradition.25 My own research, focusing on Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio, has uncovered twenty-two surviving narrative works painted or sculpted between the 20 For the texts in Greek with an Italian translation, see S. Nicola nelle fonti narrative greche, ed. Maria Teresa Bruno (Bari, 1985). 21 There are two published versions of John the Deacon’s vita: Niccolò Carmine Falconius, Sancti confessoris pontificis et celeberrimi thaumaturgi Nicolai acta primigenia (Naples, 1751); Boninus Mombritius, Sanctuarium seu Vitae Sanctorum, II (Paris, 1910), pp. 296–309. For an Italian translation, see Pasquale Corsi, La traslazione di San Nicola: le fonti (Bari, 1988), Appendix I. 22 Karl Meissen, Nikolauskult und Nikolausbrauch in Abendlande (Düsseldorf, 1931), pp. 108–10. 23 Over 800 manuscripts survive in Latin alone; see Sherry L. Reames, The Legenda Aurea: A Reexamination of its Paradoxical History (Madison, WI, 1985). The English version used throughout this chapter is Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints (hereafter Golden Legend), trans. William Granger Ryan, I (Princeton, NJ, 1993), pp. 21–7. 24 Ulysse Chevalier, Repertorium Hymnologicum (Louvain, 1892), lists 284 Saint Nicholas hymns, the earliest from the eleventh century. For the ‘Pange Lingua’, see BMLF, Edili 131, fols. 198r–199r. For the development of Saint Nicholas’s liturgy, drawn from the life of John the Deacon, see Charles W. Jones, The Saint Nicholas Liturgy and its Literary Relationships (Ninth to Twelfth Centuries) (Berkeley, CA, 1963). 25 Sarah Burnett, ‘The Cult of St Nicholas in Medieval Italy’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Warwick University, 2009, pp. 75–77, lists thirty-three individual scenes and thirty-one cycles across the Italian peninsula from the late twelfth to the fifteenth centuries.

CRISIS AND CHARITY IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE

middle of the thirteenth and the end of the fourteenth centuries, of which at least nine are earlier than the San Procolo panel.26 By examining Ambrogio’s panel within this context, the unusual nature of its iconographic programme becomes apparent. The narrative sequence of the panel runs anti-clockwise, starting at the top of the left panel and finishing at the top of the right panel. There are three life scenes: Saint Nicholas Gives Dowries to Three Maidens (top left); The Choice and Consecration of Saint Nicholas as Bishop of Myra (bottom left); and Saint Nicholas and the Grainships (bottom right). There is one post-mortem scene, Saint Nicholas Resuscitates a Boy Strangled by the Devil (top right). All four stories are in the Golden Legend, and appear in the same order, so at first sight the scene selection does not appear out of the ordinary. In terms of the local visual tradition, however, the picture looks very different. Ambrogio’s opening scene, Saint Nicholas Gives Dowries to Three Maidens, was by far the most commonly depicted story, with sixteen of my twenty-two works including it. But the other three scenes are much more unusual. The Choice and Consecration of Saint Nicholas was frescoed in the chapel of Saint Nicholas in the bishop’s palace in Pistoia, possibly by a Sienese artist c. 1300–10, but after Ambrogio’s version the scene does not appear again in Tuscany until Mariotto di Nardo painted the choice of Nicholas as bishop (but not his consecration) on the predella of an altarpiece for the hospital of San Matteo in Florence, c. 1415–19.27 The two scenes on the right panel are even rarer. Ambrogio’s Miracle of the Grainships has no surviving precedent and does not seem to have been depicted again until Fra Angelico painted it on the predella of his altarpiece for San Domenico, Perugia, over a century later. The only known example of the Boy Strangled by the Devil prior to the San Procolo panel is in the fresco cycle in the chapel of Saint Nicholas at Assisi, c. 1300–05 (Fig. 8.1). The scene does not appear again until the fifteenth century, in a predella scene painted by Bicci di Lorenzo, c. 1433.28 26 There are twelve single scenes and ten cycles (containing between two and nine scenes each). The nine works that predate San Procolo are (S = single scene, C = cycle): Margarito d’Arezzo, dossal, c. 1263–4 (S) (National Gallery London); Pisan artist, Saint Nicholas vita dossal, c. 1260–80 (C) (Prepositura di San Verano, Peccioli); Sancta Sanctorum, Rome, fresco, c. 1277–80 (C); San Saba, Rome, fresco, c. 1270–90 (S); Saint Nicholas chapel, San Francesco, Assisi, fresco, c. 1300–05 (C); Giotto, Santa Reparata altarpiece, Florence, c. 1295–1310 (Florence Cathedral) (S); Memmo Filipuccio, Collegiata, San Gimignano, fresco, c. 1305–20 (S); Sienese artist, Saint Nicholas chapel, bishop’s palace, Pistoia, fresco, c. 1300–10 (C); San Flaviano, Montefiascone, fresco, c. 1300–20 (C). 27 For Pistoia, see Ada Labriola, ‘Gli affreschi della cappella di San Niccolò nell’antico Palazzo dei Vescovi a Pistoia’, Arte Cristiana 76 (1988), 247–66, and Maureen C. Miller, The Bishop’s Palace: Architecture and Authority in Medieval Italy (Ithaca, NY, 2000), pp. 235–8; for Mariotto di Nardo, see Daniela Parenti, cat. no. 18, in Cataloghi della Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze. Dipinti, Volume Secondo. Il Tardo Trecento: dalla tradizione orcagnesca agli esordi del Gotico Internazionale, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Daniela Parenti (Florence and Milan, 2010), pp. 99–103. 28 It was part of an altarpiece painted for the Benedictine nunnery church of San Niccolò

139

FIG. 8.1  GIOTTO AND WORKSHOP, SAINT NICHOLAS RESUSCITATES A BOY STRANGLED BY A DEMON. FRESCO, C. 1300–1305, SAINT NICHOLAS CHAPEL, LOWER CHURCH, BASILICA OF SAN FRANCESCO, ASSISI. PHOTO: ARCHIVIO FOTOGRAFICO, SACRO CONVENTO DI SAN FRANCESCO, ASSISI.

CRISIS AND CHARITY IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE

Why is the iconographic programme of the panel so unusual, and who was responsible for devising it? At the time of the 1441 inventory of San Procolo, Bartolomeo Valori was the patron of the Saint Nicholas altar.29 Parenti notes that this could have been either Bartolomeo di Niccolò di Taldo Valori (d. 1427), or his grandson Bartolomeo di Filippo di Bartolomeo Valori (d. 1477), but she does not discuss which of Bartolomeo’s ancestors might have been Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s patron. The most likely candidate is Taldo Valori, the grandfather of Bartolomeo di Niccolò di Taldo, who died around 1344.30 A wealthy banker, Taldo was a partner in the Bardi company throughout the 1320s and 1330s and he married into the family (his second wife was Francesca de’ Bardi). He was a politician and member of the ruling elite, serving as a Prior of the commune in 1322, 1329, and 1335, and as Gonfalonier of Justice in 1340. Evidently Taldo Valori would have been a rich and powerful patron. Given that he named his younger son Niccolò, he may also have had a personal devotion to Saint Nicholas.

SAN PROCOLO, THE BADIA FIORENTINA AND THE HOSPITAL OF SAN NICCOLÒ The particular interests of Taldo Valori will be further explored later in this essay. However, they are unlikely to have been the only factors determining the iconography of the Saint Nicholas scenes. The presence of Saint Nicholas on Pacino’s polyptych for the high altar, which probably predated Ambrogio’s paintings for the church, suggests a wider interest in the saint at San Procolo, and the titular for the Valori altar may have been predetermined by the religious authorities there, or at least agreed in discussion with them. One avenue worth exploring is the relationship between San Procolo and the Badia Fiorentina. Although San Procolo was a parish church, the Badia owned it throughout most of its history and consequently enjoyed rights of patronage, including the appointment of its rector. The Benedictine Order in Italy had a strong interest in the cult of Saint Nicholas. It was the abbot of the Benedictine abbey in Bari who organised the building of the basilica in that city to house the saint’s tomb after the translation of the relics from Myra in 1087.31 A rival set of relics, brought to Venice in 1099, was also housed in a Benedictine church, San Nicolò di Lido. Some of the earliest narrative images of the saint were painted in Caffaggio, Florence, which was demolished in the late eighteenth century. The Saint Nicholas scene was sold at Christie’s, London, on 9 July 2003. 29 Parenti, ‘Qualche approfondimento su Lorenzo Monaco’, p. 30 n. 32. 30 The main source for the life of Taldo Valori is Scipione Ammirato, Delle famiglie nobili fiorentine, parte prima (Florence, 1615), p. 98. See also Mark Jurdjevic, Guardians of Republicanism: The Valori Family in the Florentine Renaissance (Oxford and New York, 2008). 31 See Corsi, La traslazione di San Nicola, pp. 35–9.

141

142

JANET ROBSON

in Benedictine churches, such as the chapel of Sant’Eldrado in Novalesa Abbey in Piedmont. In Florence, the Badia demonstrated a particular interest in Saint Nicholas even before the translation to the Benedictine house in Bari. According to a document of 8 November 1031, Abbot Pietro founded a hospital to house pilgrims, the poor and infirm; in return for the Badia granting it property and funds, ‘every single year the brothers of this monastery shall have a meal from the estate of the aforementioned hospital on the feast of Saint Nicholas’.32 A number of later documents that call the hospital San Niccolò imply its proximity to San Procolo. Fanelli has proposed, tentatively, that the two buildings may have been in the same block.33 In 1214, for example, the abbot of the Badia gave the rector of San Procolo permission to make use of the wall of the hospital to repair the church,34 while a document of 29 October 1224 refers to a concession granted by the Badia to San Procolo for the use of a wall of the hospital to store building materials.35 If these references imply that the hospital was demolished in the first quarter of the Duecento, the Paatzes believed it must have been rebuilt later because its director is mentioned in 1276.36 However, no further archival evidence relating to the hospital after that date has yet been discovered. The proximity of San Procolo and San Niccolò, both of them owned by the Badia Fiorentina, poses some intriguing questions. What exactly was the relationship between them? Did the church provide spiritual services for the hospital and its inhabitants? If San Procolo was allowed to requisition the material fabric of the hospital, did its spiritual fabric – the connection to Saint Nicholas – get subsumed along with it? All of these questions are entirely speculative, but they are worth bearing in mind when the iconography of Lorenzetti’s Saint Nicholas panels is analysed in detail. As for the Badia, its interest in Saint Nicholas was not confined to the foundation of San Niccolò. Towards the end of the Duecento, the 32 Luigi Schiaparelli, Le carte del Monastero di S. Maria in Firenze (Badia), I (Rome, 1913), p. 91 (doc. 35): ‘… per unumquemque annum fratres istius monsterii refectionem habeant de rebus prefati hospitalis in festivitate sancti Nicolai’. The significance of the link between the hospital and the church for Ambrogio’s panels has now also been noted by Amato, ‘Le Storie di San Nicola’, p. 187, and Chiodo, cat. no. 14, in ‘An Ancient and Honourable Citizen of Florence’, p. 160. 33 Giovanni Fanelli, Firenze: le città nella storia d’Italia (Rome and Bari, 1981), p. 49. Paatz and Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz, IV, p. 357, give the hospital’s location as ‘neben S. Procolo, wohl in der Richtung auf den Bargello hin’. 34 Placido Puccinelli, Cronica dell’Abbadia di Fiorenza (Milan, 1664), p. 20. See also Paatz and Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz, IV, p. 695 n. 5, for other sources. Richa, Notizie istoriche, I, p. 236, deduced from the 1214 document that the hospital of San Niccolò ‘era a muro a muro alla chiesa’. 35 Alessandro Guidotti, ‘Vicende storico-artistiche della Badia Fiorentina’, in La Badia Fiorentina, ed. Ernesto Sestan, Maurilio Adriani, and Alessandro Guidotti (Florence, 1982), p. 82 n. 18. 36 Paatz and Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz, IV, p. 357 n. 3, citing Cocchi, Le chiese di Firenze, I, p. 116; Cocchi reports that the spedalingo of the hospital at that date was a certain Ranieri, but without giving his source.

CRISIS AND CHARITY IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE

Badia was transforming its old Romanesque church into a larger, Gothic building which was consecrated in 1310. Giotto’s pentaptych for the high altar has traditionally been associated with this date but Andrea De Marchi has recently argued that it was painted between 1295 and 1300.37 The five panels of Giotto’s high altarpiece depict the half-length figures of (from left to right) Saint Nicholas, Saint John the Evangelist, the Virgin and Child, Saint Peter and Saint Benedict. The reason for the pairing of Saint Nicholas with the founder-saint of the Benedictine order seems not to have received scholarly attention. It may be worth noting that a papal bull of Alexander II c. 1067–68, in which the possessions of the monastery are confirmed, states that the Badia was built ‘in honour of holy Saint Mary and of Saint Nicholas confessor, adorned with innumerable virtues’.38 While the document’s authenticity has been questioned because it lacks the final protocol customary for bulls issued by the papal chancelry, it is almost certainly from the eleventh century: Schiaparelli argues it may have been opportunistically drafted by the monks of the Badia in the 1060s, but superseded by an updated and more detailed bull which was confirmed by Alexander II in 1070.39 Whatever the reason for Saint Nicholas’s presence on Giotto’s high altarpiece, it demonstrates the saint’s continued veneration by the Benedictine monks at the Badia going into the fourteenth century.

THE THEME OF CHARITY ON THE SAINT NICHOLAS PANEL The interests of both San Procolo and Taldo Valori should be borne in mind when considering the iconographic programme for Ambrogio’s Saint Nicholas panels. The set of narratives begins conventionally enough, on the top of the left panel, with Saint Nicholas Giving Dowries to Three Maidens, the most popular Saint Nicholas story in Italian art.40 According to the Golden Legend, Saint Nicholas was born to rich parents. After their deaths, he considered how he might best use his wealth ‘not in order to win men’s praise but to give glory to God’. Having heard that one of his neighbours, who was of noble origins but poor, was considering 37 Andrea De Marchi, ‘Geometry and Naturalness, Module and Rhythm: A Seminal Work in the Illusionistic Concept of the Gothic Polyptych’, in Giotto: The Restoration of the Badia Polyptych, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2012), pp. 31–52; see also Angelo Tartuferi, ‘La Badia Fiorentina: il polittico per l’altare maggiore’, in Giotto, l’Italia, ed. Serena Romano and Pietro Petraroia, exh. cat. Palazzo Reale, Milan (Milan, 2015), pp. 54–63. 38 ‘… in honore Sancte Marie consecratum sanctique Nycolai confessoris innumeris virtutibus decoratum’; Schiaparelli, Le carte del Monastero di S. Maria, I, p. 169 (doc. no. 65). 39 Schiaparelli, Le carte del Monastero di S. Maria, I, pp. 168–9 (the later bull is doc. no. 73). 40 According to Burnett, ‘The Cult of St Nicholas in Medieval Italy’, p. 82 n. 247, it appears in thirty-two of her sixty-two narratives of Saint Nicholas in Italy.

143

144

JANET ROBSON

prostituting his three daughters, Nicholas took some gold in a cloth and under cover of darkness threw it through the window of the man’s house. On discovering the gold the next morning, the nobleman was able to provide a dowry for his eldest daughter, and she was married. Some time later, Nicholas delivered a second bag of gold, and the same thing happened. On the saint’s third nocturnal visit, the nobleman pursued him and discovered his identity, but Nicholas made him promise to keep it a secret until after his death.41 The story was well known before the Golden Legend, having entered the western tradition through John the Deacon’s Latin vita. But the prominence of the Three Maidens in Italian art cannot be ascribed simply to the availability of texts: as Ševčenko has pointed out, the story was also very popular in Greek texts, but was rarely depicted in Byzantine art.42 In the Latin church, the story of Nicholas’s almsgiving could be used to express the new spiritual values fostered by the Franciscans and Dominicans, as they gradually formulated a religious response to the growth of the profit economy. Although Saint Francis’s personal reaction had been the complete renunciation of material possessions, the mendicant orders soon began to adopt a more sophisticated, reciprocal relationship with their urban congregations, encouraging the laity to seek salvation through virtuous uses of their wealth, principally through charitable giving. A thirteenth-century sermon by Saint Bonaventure for the feastday of Saint Nicholas epitomises the way the saint was used as a role model.43 In it, Bonaventure frequently exhorts his listeners to follow Saint Nicholas’s example (‘Blessed Nicholas teaches us: if only everyone would look to Blessed Nicholas’).44 He expounds at length on the story of Nicholas and the three maidens, and advises rich men to emulate him: through almsgiving to the poor they can convert their earthly treasure to pious use and earn treasure for themselves in heaven. In narrative art, the Three Maidens became Saint Nicholas’s signature scene, highlighting his most important characteristic as a charitable saint. In pictorial schemes where Saint Nicholas is represented by a single narrative, the Three Maidens is the one most usually chosen.45 For his version of the scene at San Procolo (Plate X, top left), Lorenzetti adopted a sophisticated narrative technique, using the exterior wall of the house to separate different moments in time. Inside the house, we see the 41 Golden Legend, I, pp. 21–2. 42 According to Nancy Patterson Ševčenko, The Life of Saint Nicholas in Byzantine Art (Turin, 1983), it appears in eighteen of fifty-six surviving Byzantine cycles. 43 ‘Beatus Nicolaus docet nos: vellem ut omnes aspicerent ad beatum Nicolaum’; Saint Bonaventure, Sermones de diversis, ed. Jacques-Guy Bougerol (Paris, 1993), pp. 468–88 (‘De Sancto Nicolao’). 44 Bonaventure, Sermones de diversis, p. 474. 45 Of eleven examples in fourteenth-century Tuscany and Lazio, eight depict the Three Maidens, while the other three show the rescue of Adeodatus.

CRISIS AND CHARITY IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE

discovery of the first gift of gold on the morning after its delivery. The father and his daughters are pictured at various moments of discovery and reaction. The father stands holding the gold bar that the saint has already delivered, showing it to his eldest daughter, who sits on the floor. The second girl still sleeps while the third is awake and starting to sit up. Small descriptive details deepen the viewer’s understanding of the story: for example, straw spilling out through holes in the mattress suggests the poverty of the household. In the street outside the house, we witness what is evidently a composite representation of the saint’s two subsequent visits. Leaning one hand on the wall, Nicholas has to stretch up on tiptoe to reach the window, which is well above head height. The saint’s dynamic pose and the two gold bars poised on the windowsill focus attention on his act of almsgiving. In the Golden Legend, Nicholas’s charity to the three maidens is immediately followed by his choice and installation as bishop of Myra, which is also the next scene on the San Procolo panel (Plate X, bottom left). The bishopric having fallen vacant, the other prelates of the region sought guidance in prayer; one bishop heard a voice telling him to choose the first man to enter the church the next morning, whose name would be Nicholas. When Nicholas arrived at the door, the bishop asked him his name, and he replied, ‘Nicholas, the servant of your holiness’. The bishops then led him in and installed him on the episcopal throne.46 In order to depict both the choice and the consecration of Nicholas, Ambrogio used continuous narrative, including two figures of Nicholas within his fictive church interior. In the foreground, the young Nicholas, still dressed as a layman, is accosted by the bishop in the nave. Rather than simply asking the young man’s name, the bishop physically seizes him, but Nicholas seems to be resisting. By introducing this dramatic piece of interaction, Ambrogio visually suggests the humility of Nicholas and his reluctance to assume office, which was a common literary topos in the lives of bishop-saints.47 The consecration of Saint Nicholas is depicted in the background, in the raised choir, which is separated from the nave by stairs and a metalwork screen. Rather than depicting Nicholas’s enthronement, Ambrogio focuses on an earlier moment in the consecration ceremony, the presentation of the episcopal insignia during the Mass. The second figure of Nicholas kneels behind the celebrant at the altar, already wearing his cope and about to receive his mitre and crosier. These vestments and insignia stress Nicholas’s authority as a bishop of the Roman Church and demonstrate how thoroughly his image had been westernised. Although the consecration of Saint Nicholas features prominently in the saint’s Latin legends, and in the liturgy for his feast, the story seems 46 Golden Legend, I, p. 22. 47 For the latter, see Cynthia J. Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Century (Berkeley, CA, 2001), p. 163.

145

146

JANET ROBSON

never to have received much attention in Italian art.48 This may reflect the fact that in the typology of sainthood the traditional dominance of holy bishops was under threat; with the exception of Louis of Toulouse (perhaps best seen as a Franciscan saint) the papacy did not open a single canonisation process for a bishop between 1266 and 1378. As André Vauchez has remarked, ‘it is as if, from the last third of the thirteenth century, the episcopal model lost favour at the upper levels of the Roman Church’.49 The consecration of Saint Nicholas was primarily of interest to ecclesiastics, and the scene appears among the frescoes in the chapel of Saint Nicholas in the bishop’s palace in Pistoia, for example. The iconographic programme of Lorenzetti’s Saint Nicholas panels for San Procolo, a parish church, has a particular emphasis on the secular clergy, members of which appear in three of its four scenes. The Miracle of the Grainships (Plate XI, bottom right) is the only scene depicting Nicholas’s life as a bishop. At a time when his province was beset by famine, Nicholas heard that several ships transporting grain from Alexandria to the Roman emperor’s granaries had put into harbour at Myra. The bishop went to the harbour and begged for some grain to help the starving. The sailors replied that the grain had all been measured at Alexandria and they must deliver it intact, but they obeyed Nicholas after he promised that their cargo would not be found short. Nicholas had the grain distributed according to need. When the ships arrived at their destination, none of the grain was found to be missing.50 There is no surviving visual precedent for this scene, and presumably Ambrogio invented its iconography, probably with recourse to the Golden Legend. Once again the artist includes several sequential moments from the narrative within a single setting, but (as in the Three Maidens scene) without using continuous narrative in the sense of repeating the figure of the key protagonist. Saint Nicholas, a haloed figure clad in a pink cope, stands on the shore making a speaking gesture. The two merchant-seamen standing in the nearest boat have concluded their conversation with the saint, judging by the fact that the oarsmen are beginning to row them back towards the imperial fleet, shown at anchor with sails furled. In one of the ships, three sailors are tipping out grain from sacks down a chute into a waiting rowing boat. In front of them in another boat two men lean back as they heave on the oars, suggesting a heavy load being brought ashore. Lorenzetti pictures the miracle itself (which in the text is discovered only later, when the fleet reaches its destination) via the intervention of two

48 Burnett, ‘The Cult of St Nicholas in Medieval Italy’, p. 84 n. 258, mentions only seven examples of the scene. 49 André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, 1997), p. 258. For his statistics, see pp. 256–60. 50 Golden Legend, I, pp. 22–3.

CRISIS AND CHARITY IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE

blue angels set against the gilded sky, who rain down streams of grain from their own celestial sacks on to the ship. I believe that this unusual choice of scene strengthens the case for Taldo Valori as Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s patron, because this tale of famine relief would have had striking personal relevance for him around 1332. In common with many other parts of Italy, between 1328 and 1330 Florence suffered a severe dearth, characterised by shortages of grain and severe price rises.51 Both the chronicler Giovanni Villani and the grain merchant Domenico Lenzi in his Specchio umano provide vivid contemporary accounts of the government’s response to this crisis.52 Communal responsibility for provisioning the city was delegated to the Sei del Biado, whose activities included buying and transporting grain at public expense and arranging for its sale at fair prices in the central grain market at Orsanmichele.53 According to Villani, who was a communal official at the time, the government ‘spent a great sum of money to supply the grain stores; they ordered grain from Sicily, having it shipped by sea to Talamone in the Maremma. From there it was brought to Florence at great risk and expense’.54 At the height of the grain crisis, in May 1329, Taldo Valori is recorded in Lenzi’s Specchio umano as a member of the Sei, dealing with a consignment of grain being shipped from Sicily by the Bardi and Peruzzi companies. The Sei had paid a deposit of 2,000 florins for this shipment in January 1329, but by May it had still not been delivered and the Sei had to negotiate with the two merchant companies to finalise the agreement, and to pay the balance due. Paradoxically, Taldo Valori was party to both sides of this deal: as well as being a member of the Sei he was also acting as the Bardi’s procurator. As Pinto has noted, this situation was not uncommon. The Sei often chose their officials from among the factors and partners of the major merchant companies that controlled the import market in cereals, precisely because of their technical and commercial expertise.55 The Master of the Dominican Effigies, in his illustrations to Domenico Lenzi’s Specchio umano c. 1335,56 may have been influenced in part by the Miracle of the Grainships. In his two illustrations of a year of 51 See John Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence (Chicago and London, 1997 [1994]), pp. 273–9. 52 Giovanni Villani Nuova Cronica, ed. Giuseppe Porta, II (Parma, 1991), pp. 670–3 (Book 11, Chapter 119); for an English translation, see Samuel K. Cohn, Jr, Popular Protest in Late-Medieval Europe: Italy, France and Flanders (Manchester, 2004), pp. 65–6; Lenzi’s Specchio umano has been published most recently as Il libro del Biadaiolo, ed. Giuliano Pinto (Florence, 1978). 53 For background on communal provisioning systems in Florence, and other Tuscan cities, see George Dameron, ‘Feeding the Medieval Italian City-State: Grain, War, and Political Legitimacy in Tuscany, c. 1150–c. 1350’, Speculum 92 (2017), 976–1019. 54 Villani, Nuova Cronica, II, p. 671; trans. Cohn, Popular Protest in Late-Medieval Europe, p. 65. 55 Il libro del Biadaiolo, p. 304 n. 2; see also ASFi, Provvisioni Protocolli 6, fols. 349r– 352v. 56 Alexandra S. Suda, cat. no. 9, in Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and

147

148

JANET ROBSON

plenty, the artist depicts a trumpet-blowing angel with a stream of grain pouring from its hands, first on to the peasants bringing in the harvest, and then on to the merchants presiding over brimming barrels of grain in the market at Orsanmichele (Fig. 8.2).

AMBROGIO LORENZETTI BETWEEN FLORENCE AND SIENA Saint Nicholas Resuscitates a Boy Strangled by the Devil (Plate XI, top right) is the only post-mortem scene on the panel and, unlike the three life scenes (which all have their origins in the early Greek vitae and were depicted in Byzantine art), this story is exclusively western and medieval. The version in the Golden Legend is the earliest known Latin text, and the scene does not appear in Italian art before the fourteenth century.57 Only the fresco in the Saint Nicholas chapel in San Francesco, Assisi (Fig. 8.1) precedes the San Procolo panel. At Assisi, both narrative and setting are reduced to the minimum. At the centre of the scene, a boy is seated on the ground before Saint Nicholas. The saint blesses him with one hand and grasps his wrist with the other to pull him to his feet. A richly dressed layman looks down at the boy and an elegant woman prays as she gazes up at a bat-winged demon (now much effaced) that flies away confounded. We can assume this is a family drama, and that the scene depicts the rescue of a child from the clutches of the Devil, but no information about how this crisis came about, or where it took place, is imparted by the artist.58 Whether or not Ambrogio Lorenzetti saw the Assisi fresco, he clearly did not use it as a model.59 His innovative composition adheres much more closely to the account in the Golden Legend, which tells of a wealthy man who celebrated Saint Nicholas’s feastday by laying on a sumptuous meal to which he invited many clerics. While they were dining the Devil, Illumination 1300–1350, ed. Christine Sciacca, exh. cat. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, 2012), pp. 52–3. 57 Golden Legend, I, p. 26. There is an earlier telling of the tale in a Norman French poem written in the mid-twelfth century by Master Wace. It survives in only five manuscripts (two in Paris, two in Oxford and one in Cambridge) and was almost certainly unknown in fourteenth-century Tuscany; Einar Ronsjö, La vie du Saint Nicolas par Wace: poème religieux du XIIe siècle (Lund, 1942), pp. 48–52, 158–67. If either Wace or Voragine used an earlier Latin source for the strangled boy story, it has not yet been discovered. 58 Understanding of the scene would originally have been aided by its inscription, although it might not have been legible from the floor of the chapel given that the fresco is just below the vault. The remains of the inscription read: S. NICHO[LAS] RESCUSITAV[IT] ISTU[M] QUE[M] DIA[BOLUS] SUFFOCAVERAT. My thanks to Elvio Lunghi for access to photographs that clarify this reading. 59 Ambrogio’s earliest dated work, the Vico l’Abate Madonna, was painted in 1319, around the time his brother Pietro was completing his Passion cycle at Assisi; Ambrogio’s whereabouts before 1319 are unknown.

FIG. 8.2  MASTER OF THE DOMINICAN EFFIGIES, ANGEL POURING GRAIN INTO THE MARKET AT ORSANMICHELE, IN DOMENICO LENZI, SPECCHIO UMANO, C. 1335. BIBLIOTECA MEDICEA LAURENZIANA, FLORENCE, MS TEMPI 3, FOL. 7R. PHOTO: BIBLIOTECA MEDICEA LAURENZIANA, FLORENCE, COURTESY OF THE MIC (NO FURTHER REPRODUCTION PERMITTED).

150

JANET ROBSON

dressed as a pilgrim, knocked on the door begging. The man sent his young son to offer alms but the beggar had gone; the boy pursued him to a crossroads where the Devil-pilgrim waylaid the child and strangled him. After finding his son’s body and taking it home, the grief-stricken father cried out to Saint Nicholas, bewailing the unjust reward he had received for honouring the saint. At that moment, the boy opened his eyes and sat up. Ambrogio created a complex, multi-episodic continuous narrative winding through the interior spaces of a house, its exterior staircase and the street beyond. Many scholars have seen his composition as a response to Simone Martini’s Beato Agostino Novello altarpiece (c. 1324–29), in particular to the Miracle of the Child who Fell from its Cradle to the lower left of the central figure (Fig. 7.5). Simone’s story begins in the first floor bedchamber (top left), where an infant tended by a nursemaid has fallen from his cradle; the bloodied babe is seen on the loggia, where his aunt makes a vow to Beato Agostino, who flies down from heaven (top right) to resuscitate the boy. In the foreground, the unharmed child is carried to the church of Sant’Agostino in fulfilment of the aunt’s vow. Simone Martini used the house as a narrative device, including only those details that are necessary for telling the story: he gives full descriptive attention to the bed and the cradle, but the house’s architecture is plain and unadorned. Ambrogio Lorenzetti, in contrast, paints a richly embellished palazzo, building up a sense of realism through the accumulation of detail. The story begins in the precociously foreshortened upper dining chamber, where the father sits at the head of the table with his clerical guests. A servant standing beside the father looks out the door, leading the viewer’s eye to the little boy standing at the top of the stairs who stretches out his hand to offer bread. The false beggar, in the elbow of the staircase, holds a traditional pilgrim’s staff and wears a goat-skin mantle. His true nature is made clear to the viewer (but not to the child) by means of his dark colour, clawed hand and bat wings. At the foot of the stair, in the street, the Devil-pilgrim and the boy are pictured a second time. The child kicks and struggles as the Devil, now revealing his taloned feet, brutally strangles him. Lorenzetti would remember this evil creature when he painted his allegories of good and bad government in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, where the figure of Crudelitas throttles an infant. Within the single space of the ground floor room, in the foreground, Lorenzetti combines at least three different narrative moments.60 The dead boy lies on the bed, watched over by the anguished figure of a woman, probably his mother. In front of the bed, the father kneels and prays to Saint Nicholas. The saint (whose figure is severely damaged) appears as a heavenly apparition on the extreme left of the picture – his position, above 60 See the closely observed analysis of this scene by Joanna Cannon in Joanna Cannon and André Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany (University Park, PA, 1999), p. 137.

CRISIS AND CHARITY IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE

the figure of the Devil-pilgrim on the staircase, disrupts the logical anticlockwise flow of the narrative. Two rays descending from Saint Nicholas’s mouth and hand slash between the Devil and the boy offering him bread, forming a dramatic counter-diagonal to the stairs, before passing through the window. Reanimated by the life-giving rays, a second figure of the child, behind the recumbent one, rises to his feet and stretches out his arms towards his saviour. In the foreground, a prominent blue-clad cleric raises both hands in amazement. As well as producing a virtuoso riposte to his fellow Sienese Simone Martini, Ambrogio is also likely to have been responding to current developments in Florentine painting. In the Banquet of Herod, c. 1320–28, in the Peruzzi Chapel in Santa Croce (Fig. 8.3), Giotto sets the story of the martyrdom of Saint John the Baptist within three consecutive interior spaces, each differentiated by its architecture. On the left, a prison cell in a tower contains the Baptist’s already decapitated body;61 in the centre a servant presents the saint’s head on a platter to Herod; on the right, the head is handed by Salome to Herodias. However, the orderly left to right flow of the narrative is subverted by a previous version of Salome in the banquet scene, in which she is is pictured asking Herod to execute the Baptist. On the left a viol player – somewhat illogically placed in front of the prison rather than on the floor of the banqueting hall – is still playing his instrument for Salome’s dance. The servant proffering the Baptist’s head separates Salome from the musician. In pushing the boundaries of complex narrative technique, it seems that both Giotto and Lorenzetti relished playing with such anomalies. Joanna Cannon has drawn attention to the fact that Ambrogio painted hagiographical narratives in Siena before his Saint Nicholas dossal. In about 1327, according to Raimondo Barbi, the artist painted a vita panel of Andrea Gallerani for San Domenico in Siena, on which the Beato’s image was ‘accompanied by representations of various miracles and charitable works’.62 The panel is lost, but Barbi listed the subjects of seven scenes and Cannon suggested that some of these events may have supplied models for adaptation and reuse in the Santa Margherita cycle in Cortona.63 The same 61 Not visible on the fresco, but its presence can be inferred from later fourteenthcentury copies of the scene, such as Agnolo Gaddi and Lorenzo Monaco’s in the Louvre. 62 Raimondo Barbi, Vita del Beato Andrea Gallerani (Siena, 1638), pp. 124–5; see Cannon and Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti, p. 66. Barbi said that the work was by ‘Antonio Laurati, fratello di Pietro sanese, amendue pittori’. Cannon argued that ‘Antonio Laurati’ was a mistake for the Latinised form of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, which would have been Ambrosius Laurentii (a similar error being made by Vasari who called Ambrogio’s brother ‘Pietro Laurati’). Previously, Barbi’s description has been linked to a Simonesque panel of Gallerani, without scenes, in San Pellegrino alla Sapienza in Siena; or to the late Duecento reliquary shutters (Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena no. 5). The scenes on the latter do not match Barbi’s descriptions, however, which are published in Pèleo Bacci, Dipinti inediti e sconosciuti di Pietro Lorenzetti, Bernardo Daddi, ecc., in Siena e nel contado (Siena, 1939), pp. 11–13. 63 Cannon and Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti, p. 152.

151

152

JANET ROBSON

FIG. 8.3  GIOTTO, BANQUET OF HEROD, FRESCO, C. 1320–28, PERUZZI CHAPEL, SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE. PHOTO: AKG-IMAGES.

argument could apply to the San Procolo panel: in particular, one of the Gallerani scenes depicted a man who was resurrected in response to a vow from his wife and daughter.64 Did that scene also make use of complex continuous narrative? The story of the strangled boy at San Procolo, as Cannon notes, appears to be the earliest surviving example in Sienese art of a resurrection miracle being conveyed by means of a prone and a revived figure set beside each other on the same bed.65 This ingenious device was rapidly adopted by Florentine artists: by Taddeo Gaddi in the Miracle of the Boy from Suessa on the armadio panels for the sacristy of Santa Croce c. 1335–38, and by Maso di Banco in his Saint Sylvester and the Dragon fresco in the Bardi di Vernio chapel, Santa Croce c. 1335–40.

64 See also Diana Webb, Saints and Cities in Medieval Italy (Manchester and New York, 2007), pp. 155–6. 65 She also notes that the Lorenzetti made repeated use of the device in healing scenes in the lost frescoes for Santa Margherita in Cortona. Cannon and Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti, p. 137 n. 8, p. 138.

CRISIS AND CHARITY IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE

CRISIS AND CHARITY What evidence is there that the four surviving Saint Nicholas scenes form a coherent iconographic programme with a particular emphasis on charity and, if so, what conclusions about the viewership, function or patronage of the vita panel can be drawn from this?66 In her 2002 essay, Joanna Cannon considered four possible functions of saints’ vita panels: promotion, commemoration, devotion and instruction.67 By the time of Ambrogio’s painting, a vita panel was a very familiar format for the promotion of a saint’s cult. The missing central portrait would have commemorated the appearance of the saint. In terms of the function of the narratives, I believe that the Boy Strangled by the Devil is of key significance. The only post-mortem story, it is distinguished from the other scenes by depicting events in medieval Italy rather than fourth-century Myra, making it much more immediate to its fourteenth-century viewers. It commemorates the continual presence of Saint Nicholas as a heavenly intercessor while its demonstration of thaumaturgical power would have been a spur to devotion, encouraging the panel’s audience to call upon him for aid in times of crisis. The instructive function of the scene is especially interesting because here it is not (as in the other scenes) the saint who is the exemplar but his lay devotees. The father demonstrates proper devotion to the saint, honouring his feastday through pious use of his wealth. He sends his child to offer bread to the stranger who comes knocking on his door, demonstrating not only his charity but also the proper Christian upbringing of his son. The provision of a meal for members of the clergy would also have been seen as an act of charity, as the religious were categorised as pauperes Christi, the poor of Christ. Taldo Valori may well have cast himself in the mould of the charitable father, particularly given that his own son Niccolò was probably still a young child at the time the painting was made.68 The exemplary theme of charity is further emphasised by Ambrogio’s innovative device of miraculous rays as the means by which Saint Nicholas resurrects the boy. This could be seen as a weakness in the composition, a necessary compensation for the fact that the saint has been placed an inconveniently long way from the child. However, I believe that by making the rays pass through the window of the house, Ambrogio was deliberately drawing on the traditional iconography of the scene opposite, Saint Nicholas and the Three Maidens, in which the saint drops his gift of gold through the window of the poor nobleman’s house. The visual 66 Chiara Frugoni, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti (Florence, 1988), p. 50, has highlighted charity as the theme of the Saint Nicholas panels. 67 Cannon, ‘Beyond the Limitations of Visual Typology’, p. 293. 68 There are no biographical dates for Niccolò di Taldo, but given that his eldest son was born in 1354, he himself could feasibly have been born c. 1319–24. For the Valori family tree, see Jurdjevic, Guardians of Republicanism, p. xii.

153

154

JANET ROBSON

parallel encourages the viewer to compare the two scenes, to contrast the actions of the poor and the wealthy father and to emulate the charity of Saint Nicholas, himself a wealthy layman at the time. The laity were encouraged to perform the seven works of mercy, one of which was feeding the hungry. A second was giving shelter to the stranger, which is alluded to in the appearance of the Devil in the guise of a pilgrim. In depictions of the works of mercy, it was common for the stranger being lodged to be shown as a pilgrim.69 The biblical principle underlying the works of mercy is that alms given to the poor and needy are given to Christ himself.70 Lodging the stranger was an important duty for the Benedictines. Chapter 53 of their Rule, ‘On the reception of guests’, instructs the monks: ‘Let all guests who arrive be received as Christ, because he will say “I was a stranger and you took me in”’.71 And let due honour be shown to all, especially those of the household of the faithful and to pilgrims.’ These texts from the Bible and from the Benedictine Rule were referenced in the foundation document for the hospital of San Niccolò, which was established to house pilgrims and the poor.72 An animal-skin costume and a staff were traditional visual attributes of a pilgrim, as can be seen from the pilgrim being welcomed by the Beato Andrea Gallerani to his hospital, on the exterior of his reliquary shutters in San Domenico, Siena.73 Gallerani’s medieval legend (which Ambrogio must have known) contains an episode in which Christ appears to him as a pilgrim seeking shelter.74 The image of Christ as pilgrim may have its prototype in the biblical story of the road to Emmaus.75 Ambrogio would have been very familiar with this scene from Duccio’s Maestà, installed on the high altar of Siena Cathedral in 1311, where Christ wears a tunic and cloak made of two different animal skins (Fig. 8.4). However, this costume is deliberately ambivalent: Christ-as-pilgrim traditionally wears goat-skins, but the goat is associated with the Devil who is frequently depicted covered in shaggy hair. Ambrogio’s Devil-as-pilgrim also strongly resembles the Devil on Duccio’s Maestà. In other words, Lorenzetti used the pilgrim costume to subvert the traditional iconography to show the Devil, rather than Christ, disguised as a pilgrim seeking charity. The theme of charity on the panel is further emphasised by the placement of the Boy Strangled by the Devil and the Miracle of the Grainships as a vertical pair. As discussed earlier, the miracle of the grain would have 69 Federico Botana, The Works of Mercy in Italian Medieval Art (c. 1050–c. 1400) (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 42, 96–7 and Fig. 40. 70 Matt. 25:31–46. 71 Matt. 25:35. 72 Schiaparelli, Le carte del Monastero di S. Maria, I, p. 87 (doc. no. 35). 73 For an illustration, see Timothy Hyman, Sienese Painting (London, 2003), p. 18. For pilgrims dressed in animal skins, see Julia Bolton Holloway, The Pilgrim and the Book: A Study of Dante, Langland and Chaucer (New York, c. 1987), pp. 3–4. 74 Webb, Saints and Cities, p. 148. 75 Luke 24:13–32.

CRISIS AND CHARITY IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE

155

FIG. 8.4  DUCCIO, CHRIST ON THE ROAD TO EMMAUS. TEMPERA AND GOLD ON PANEL, SCENE FROM THE MAESTÀ, C. 1308–11, MUSEO DEL OPERA DEL DUOMO, SIENA. PHOTO: AKG-IMAGES.

been especially topical in light of the dearth of 1328–30. To deal with that crisis, the Florentine government spent much money not only on shipping in grain but also on baking bread in communal ovens, which was rationed and sold to the poor at subsidised prices. Villani claimed that the shortages were so severe that many other Tuscan city-states, including Siena, kicked out all their beggars, but Florence ‘being pious and desirous to alleviate suffering, supported a large part of the poor beggars of Tuscany’.76 The Master of the Dominican Effigies’ illustrations of the 76 Villani, Nuova Cronica, II, p. 671: ‘Il Comune di Firenze con savio consiglio e buona provedenza, riguardando a la piatà di Dio, ciò non sofferse, ma quasi gran parte de’ poveri di Toscana mendicanti sostenne …’; English translation from Cohn, Popular Protest in Late-Medieval Europe, p. 65.

156

JANET ROBSON

Specchio umano devoted a double page to the expulsion of the poor from Siena and their arrival at the gates of Florence, where they are greeted by laymen distributing bread from baskets (Fig. 8.5). Villani openly admits that the commune acted not only to alleviate the suffering of the poor but also to ‘contain their rage’. There had been food riots in Siena and Rome in 1328. In this febrile atmosphere, when many foreigners were roaming the city begging, the dark underside to the image of Ambrogio’s murderous pilgrim may have been xenophobia and violence. These underlying fears of civil unrest were probably of great concern to Taldo Valori: according to Ammirato, he was so skilled in the pacification of disorders that he inspired a local proverb, which said that in times of political conflict, ‘God and Taldo will provide’.77 While additional scenes could, of course, also have been chosen for their charitable themes, the iconographic coherence of the surviving narratives, and the compositional links between some of them, suggests that the vita panel only ever had four scenes. The topical relevance of the scenes reinforces a dating to the period c. 1332. What does the iconography of crisis and charity on the vita panel tell us about its probable viewers? Placed on or near a side altar in the nave of a parish church, the panel is likely to have been seen and contemplated by a mixed lay and religious audience. For the laity, the scenes provide instruction in the practical types of charity that were common in the fourteenth century: giving dowries to poor or orphaned girls, distributing grain or bread to the poor, and honouring the clergy through provision of a meal on a favoured saint’s day. The priesthood, in the scenes of the consecration of Saint Nicholas and the miracle of the grainships, would be reminded of their duty to provide both spiritual and material pastoral care. Parish priests often did, in fact, give charitable aid to their parishioners in times of need.78 A notable feature throughout the panel’s scenes is the strong presence of the secular clergy and their interaction with the laity. This is especially noticeable in the scene of the strangled boy: the rich layman is seated alongside his many clerical dinner guests, a reminder to San Procolo’s congregation, perhaps, of their duty materially to support their parish church and its clergy. In the bedchamber, the prominent blueclad figure of the secular priest in his cappa clausa – who is an extratextual addition to the scene, as are the female family members – is a privileged witness of the saint’s miraculous appearance.79 But perhaps he

77 Ammirato, Delle famiglie nobili fiorentine, parte prima, p. 96. 78 For example, Arlotto Mainardi (1396–1484), parish priest of San Cresci near Fiesole, gave alms to beggars, shared his corn during shortages, endowed poor girls with dowries, and sheltered pilgrims and the sick in his house; see Botana, The Works of Mercy, p. 71. 79 For the street attire of secular clergy and its depiction in art, see Maureen C. Miller, Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe c. 800–1200 (Ithaca, NY, 2014), pp. 41–50.

CRISIS AND CHARITY IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE

157

FIG. 8.5  MASTER OF THE DOMINICAN EFFIGIES, THE EXPULSION OF THE POOR FROM SIENA AND THE POOR OF SIENA RECEIVED IN FLORENCE, IN DOMENICO LENZI, SPECCHIO UMANO, C. 1335, BIBLIOTECA MEDICEA LAURENZIANA, FLORENCE, MS TEMPI 3, FOLS. 57V–58R: PHOTO: BIBLIOTECA MEDICEA LAURENZIANA, FLORENCE, COURTESY OF THE MIC (NO FURTHER REPRODUCTION PERMITTED).

is also intended to illustrate the role of the priest in providing comfort and succour to his parishioners in times of crisis and suffering. The figure of Saint Nicholas and the themes depicted on the panel are relevant both to the concerns of the Benedictine Order and those of the lay patron, the wealthy banker and politician Taldo Valori. The personal interests of Taldo could well have dovetailed with those of the neighbouring hospital of San Niccolò and the oversight of the Badia, together driving the unique choice of iconography for the vita panel, which was brilliantly realised by an exceptionally talented artist. The end result was a highly sophisticated panel painting with local and topical significance for both the clergy and congregation of San Procolo.

FATHER OF LIGHT: GIOTTO AND THE BEATIFIC VISION IN THE BARONCELLI CHAPEL VIRGINIA BRILLIANT

T

he decorative scheme of the Baroncelli chapel in the church of Santa Croce in Florence (Fig. 9.1) – including frescoes on the walls depicting the life of the Virgin, frescoes in the vault with allegorical representations of the virtues, stained glass with images of saints, sculpture at the entrance to the chapel, and Giotto’s altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin (Plate XII) – can be said to have at least two registers of meaning.1 On one level, the iconographical programme reflects the Baroncelli family’s concerns with salvation. Overlaying this relatively straightforward reading, however, is a more complex Franciscan theology that weaves together This essay is dedicated with admiration and affection to Joanna Cannon, who set the highest standards for scholarship through the example of her own work, yet always challenged each of her students to follow their own unique interests and career paths. Her advice and encouragement, both professional and personal, are as invaluable as her scholarship. 1 For an overview of the chapel and its decorations, see Diana Norman, ‘Those who Pay, those who Pray and those who Paint: Two Funerary Chapels’, in Siena, Florence, and Padua: Art, Society, and Religion 1280–1400, ed. Diana Norman (New Haven, 1995), II, pp. 169–79. A fundamental contribution remains Julian Gardner, ‘The Decoration of the Baroncelli Chapel in Santa Croce’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 34 (1971), 89–114. On the altarpiece, see also Julian Gardner, ‘Il polittico Baroncelli per Santa Croce: gli ultimi anni a Firenze’, in Giotto, l’Italia, ed. Serena Romano and Pietro Petraroia, exh. cat. Milan, Palazzo Reale (Milan, 2015), pp. 140–53, esp. p. 144 for a review of the existing scholarship. On the Franciscan context of the iconography and commission, see the recent contributions by Simona Anna Vespari, ‘Aspetti iconografici della Cappella Baroncelli nella chiesa di S. Croce di Firenze’, Studi Francescani 115 (2018), 109–35; and Julian Gardner, ‘Painters, Inquisitors, and Novices: Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi, and Filippo Lippi at Santa Croce’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 60 (2018), 222–53.

9

FIG. 9.1  BARONCELLI CHAPEL, SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE, WITH FRESCOES BY TADDEO GADDI, C. 1328–34, AND POLYPTYCH BY GIOTTO, C. 1334–35. PHOTO: SCALA/FEC-MINISTERO DELLA CULTURA/OPERA DI SANTA CROCE.

GIOTTO AND THE BEATIFIC VISION

divine revelation, angelic visitation, and light in reference to salvation. The purpose of this chapter is to revisit these layers of meaning, and to suggest more specifically that the chapel’s iconographic scheme reflects Franciscan views on the Beatific Vision controversy, which reached its peak between 1331 and 1336, with implications for both our reading of the chapel’s imagery and the dating of its decoration. The controversy was the most prominent theological dispute of the time and centred on whether the saved attained the Beatific Vision – the full and unmediated vision of God in heaven – immediately after death, or whether this would only occur after the resurrection of the body at the Last Judgement. In a series of sermons delivered in 1331–32, Pope John XXII (Jacques Duèse, r. 1316–34) proposed that souls could not enjoy the sight of God until Judgement Day. These views met with great resistance among Dominican thinkers and also Spiritual Franciscans, who were already at odds with the Pope over the Poverty Controversy. Other Franciscans, however, agreed with John, or at least took a more nuanced view of the afterlife in which the Beatific Vision was gradually attained and perfected.2 The iconography of the Baroncelli chapel – which insists on the importance of the resurrected body – reflects the Franciscan idea of the gradual attainment of perfect vision, and of the body perfecting the vision of God, ideas moreover aligned with Bonaventure’s writings about spiritual seeing and the ascent of the soul to God beginning during life.3 2 Many treatises and documents produced during the course of the controversy are published in Marc Dykmans, Pour et contre Jean XXII en 1333: deux traités avignonnais sur la vision béatifique (Vatican City, 1975), and Anneliese Maier, Ausgehendes Mittelalter: gesammelte Aufsätze zur Geistesgeschichte des 14. Jahrhunderts, III (Rome, 1977), pp. 319–590. It should be noted that the Pope’s opponents in the matter of the Beatific Vision have, perhaps unsurprisingly, attracted more attention from scholars; those in agreement, or whose views differed slightly but were essentially aligned with the Pope have received less study. The Spiritual Franciscans went so far as to accuse John XXII of heresy; see John Weakland, ‘Pope John XXII and the Beatific Vision Controversy’, Annuale Mediaevale 9 (1968), 76–84, esp. p. 79. The virulent opposition of the Spirituals was predictable, yet it was nonetheless upheld by such powerful supporters as King Robert of Naples in a treatise composed at the end of 1332; see below, note 48. 3 While surveys of the depictions of Purgatory, the Last Judgement, and the judgement of the soul after death, for example, have been conducted, analysis of art that depicts the Beatific Vision or was informed by the controversy is limited to specific case studies. Anita Moskowitz, ‘Giovanni di Balduccio’s Arca di San Pietro Martire: Form and Function’, Arte Lombarda 96/97 (1991), 7–18, has argued that certain images of God or Christ surrounded by the celestial hierarchies constituted images of the beatific image, especially amongst the Dominicans, who had been staunch opponents of the Pope. Moskowitz went on to argue that the appearance of this very motif on the tomb of the Dominican Saint Peter Martyr, erected in the Basilica of Sant’Eustorgio in Milan between 1335 and 1339, related back to the controversy, to the Dominican position in favour of an immediate vision for the saints. Lucy Freeman Sandler, ‘Face to Face with God: A Pictorial Image of the Beatific Vision’, in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W.M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, 1986), pp. 224–35, has discussed another pictorial response to the controversy from the 1360s in the English encyclopaedia called the Omne Bonum, a miniature which illustrates the text of Benedictus Deus and presents an image of several groups of souls kneeling before the

161

162

VIRGINIA BRILLIANT

Key to placing the chapel’s scheme within these theological and historical contexts is the central pinnacle of the chapel’s Coronation of the Virgin altarpiece. Signed by Giotto, the altarpiece was dismantled and reframed in the late fifteenth century (Plate XII), and the detached pinnacle is now in the San Diego Museum of Art (Fig. 9.2). Combining several motifs deriving from the Book of Revelation, the pinnacle depicts God the Father holding a sceptre or sword, a branch of the Tree of Life, and a book open to the Alpha and Omega. Confronted with this radiant vision, some of the flanking angels shield their eyes, while others view the Father through darkened lenses. In addition to prompting further consideration of the chapel’s iconographic scheme, the details in the pinnacle are precisely the sort of anecdotal and naturalistic elements that are central to Giotto’s work; so too is the panel’s refined technique. This contribution thus lends support to the view that the chapel’s scheme, as well as the execution of the altarpiece, can be credited to Giotto himself.

THE CHAPEL’S PROGRAMME There are no documents relating to the commissions for the decorations for the Baroncelli chapel, located at the end of the south transept of the Franciscan church of Santa Croce in Florence, and so we look to the chapel itself for clues. An inscription carved on the ledge of its metalwork screen offers important information regarding its patronage (Fig. 9.3). It bears the date February 1327 (ab incarnatio; 1328 in the modern calendar) and records that five members of the Baroncelli family – Bartolo, Bivigliano, Salvestro, Vanni, and Pietro – had commissioned the chapel ‘for the cure and health of our souls and of all our dead’, and had it dedicated to ‘our Lord God and his Mother, the Virgin Mary Annunciate’.4 The coat of arms Holy Face. More recently, Beth Williamson, ‘Site, Seeing, and Salvation in FourteenthCentury Avignon’, Art History 30 (2007), 1–25, has demonstrated that frescoes by Simone Martini that were originally installed around the entrance to the Cathedral of NotreDame-des-Doms in Avignon seem to be aware of, and respond to, the debates raging around the Beatific Vision at the papal court in the early 1330s. A systematic study of images depicting the Beatific Vision, and of images made in response to the controversy, or (as with the Baroncelli Chapel) whose imagery seems to demonstrate an awareness of the complexities inherent in the debate, remains to be written. 4 ‘… a onore et reverentia del nostro Signore Iddio et della sua madre Beata Vergine Maria Annuntiata alchui onore lhavemo chosi posto nome per rimedio et salute delle nostre anime et di tutti i nostri morti’; for the inscription, see Andrew Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonné (Columbia, MO, 1982), p. 88. For further discussions of the chapel’s patronage, see also Robert J.H. Janson-La Palme, ‘Taddeo Gaddi’s Baroncelli Chapel: Studies in Design and Content’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1976, I, pp. 31–71, and Norman, ‘Those who Pay’, pp. 172–4. For the chapel’s patronage in context, see Julian Gardner, ‘The Family Chapel: Artistic Patronage and Architectural Transformation in Italy’, in Art, cérémonial et liturgie au Moyen Age, ed. Nicolas Bock and Peter Kurmann (Rome, 2002), pp. 545–64; and more recently Julian Gardner, ‘Painters, Inquisitors, and Novices’, pp. 222–53. In the Florentine calendar, the new year began on 25 March, the Feast of the Annunciation.

163

GIOTTO AND THE BEATIFIC VISION

FIG. 9.2  GIOTTO, GOD THE FATHER AND ANGELS. TEMPERA AND GOLD ON PANEL, C. 1334–35, THE SAN DIEGO MUSEUM OF ART, SAN DIEGO (DETACHED PINNACLE FROM THE BARONCELLI POLYPTYCH). PHOTO: ALBUM: ALAMY STOCK PHOTO.

of the Baroncelli, one of Florence’s leading banking families, appears in five different places: on the walls of the chapel, on the tomb adjacent to the chapel, at the apex of the entrance arch, in the stained glass window, and in the predella of the altarpiece. The chapel had probably been added to the transept some two decades before, in the 1300s, and the memorial of the Baroncelli quintet anticipates the elaborate decorative scheme that would unfold in the years after 1328 as much as it looks back to the chapel’s architecture.5 The decorative programme is unanimously dated to the following years and included the altarpiece, the frescoes on the walls depicting the life of the Virgin, frescoes in the vault with personifications of virtues, stained glass with images of Franciscan and family patron saints, and sculptures including the tomb monuments and also the Annunciation group flanking the chapel’s entrance. The altarpiece depicted the Coronation of the Virgin and effectively concluded the narrative of her life begun on the walls. It can also be assumed that the

5 Gardner, ‘The Decoration of the Baroncelli Chapel’, p. 100, has argued that the style of the chapel’s architecture indicates that its construction should be dated ‘to the early years of the century’, shortly after the transept chapels in Santa Croce were completed.

FIG. 9.3  BARONCELLI CHAPEL, SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE, VIEW OF BARONCELLI FAMILY TOMB, DATED 1328. PHOTO: SAILKO/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS..

GIOTTO AND THE BEATIFIC VISION

Baroncelli endowed the chapel’s liturgy, which would have ensured that masses for their souls would have been celebrated there on a regular basis. If the February 1328 inscription is generally seen as a terminus post quem for the chapel’s decorative scheme, scholars are divided between placing Taddeo Gaddi’s frescoes to a narrow date frame of 1328–30 (which would preclude a connection with the Beatific Vision controversy), or extending the possible window of execution into the 1330s. The dating debates are complicated by the fact that Giotto was away from Florence in Naples from 1328 until probably the end of 1333 or early 1334.6 Giotto’s absence offers a rationale for the prestigious commission for the chapel’s frescoes passing to his follower Taddeo Gaddi, but it poses questions for the dating of the altarpiece.7 The polyptych’s predella is signed OPUS MAGISTRI JOCTI (‘the work of Master Giotto’), but opinion has differed as to whether the master actively participated in executing the painting or if it was made by his workshop.8 The difficulty in attributing the altarpiece to the master has come largely from questions about its date, rather than about its quality. Given the timing of Giotto’s Neapolitan sojourn, scholars have sometimes assumed that his assistants painted the altarpiece.9 But 6 A recent review of the artist’s chronology is Serena Romano, ‘Giotto XXI Secolo’, in Giotto, l’Italia, pp. 15–31. It is usually believed that Giotto was in Naples from 1328 until 1333/4, but recently, Francesco Caglioti has argued that Giotto’s presence in Naples can only be confirmed as late as 1332, and hypothesised that the artist made a trip to Bologna in 1332–33, during which time he painted the signed altarpiece still in Bologna, among other works; see Francesco Caglioti, ‘Giovanni di Balduccio a Bologna: l’“Annunciazione” per la rocca papale di Porta Galliera (con una digressione sulla cronologia napoletana e bolognese di Giotto)’, Prospettiva 118 (2005), 21–62. Whether or not this was the case – and not all scholars agree with Caglioti – it is likely that Giotto returned to Florence as soon as he had notice of the great flood of the Arno that took place in November 1333; see Erling Skaug, Giotto and the Flood of Florence in 1333: A Study in Catastrophism, Guild Organisation and Art Technology (Florence, 2013), p. 29. Skaug notes that on 6 December 1333, Robert of Anjou issued both his last payment to Giotto and also a letter of sympathy to the Commune of Florence after the Flood, a coincidence that may suggest a connection between the two events. 7 Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi, favoured the earlier dating of c. 1328–30, followed by Vespari, ‘Aspetti iconografici’, p. 111. Norman, ‘Those who Pay’, dates Gaddi’s activity to c. 1328–34, following more fully the presumed window of Giotto’s Naples sojourn. Similar disagreement applies to Giotto’s altarpiece. Giorgia Corso’s catalogue entry for the San Diego pinnacle in Giotto e il Trecento: ‘il piu sovrano maestro stato in dipintura’, ed. Alessandro Tomei, exh. cat. Complesso del Vittoriano, Rome (Milan, 2009), pp. 173–5, dates the altarpiece to c. 1335. Angelo Tartuferi’s catalogue entry in Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300–1350, ed. Christine Sciacca, exh. cat. The J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, 2012), pp. 110–13, has dated it to c. 1325–30 (‘the most plausible suggestion is a date close to the founding of the chapel itself, in 1328’). The Giotto, l’Italia catalogue dated the altarpiece to c. 1330 (p. 140), although the accompanying essay by Julian Gardner, ‘Il polittico Baroncelli’, implies a date later in the 1330s: ‘una datazione agli ultimi anni della carriera di Giotto’ (p. 146). 8 For a review of the various attributions expressed by different scholars, see Giorgia Corso’s entry in Giotto e il Trecento, pp. 173–5. 9 See Gardner, ‘Il polittico Baroncelli’, p. 144, for a review of the various opinions, and also Erling Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico (Oslo, 1994), p. 89, for discussion.

165

166

VIRGINIA BRILLIANT

this is unlikely to be the case. More probably, the altarpiece was envisaged around 1328 along with the rest of the decorative scheme, but was the last part to be painted. From a logistical standpoint, this makes sense, as the altarpiece would have needed to be complete and ready for installation only when the scaffolding for the fresco decoration was removed. As for the issue of assistants producing the work in his absence, Giotto does not seem to have maintained a Florentine workshop while he was absent for an extended period, so this is unlikely to be the case.10 Moreover, it has been argued by Erling Skaug that Giotto’s signature on the altarpiece (in which he is identified as ‘Magister’) must postdate April 1334, when Giotto was named ‘magister’ of works at the Florentine cathedral.11 Skaug has also observed that the punch tools used to decorate the gold background and the haloes of the altarpiece were ones Giotto adopted during his time in Naples, where he would have seen the punchwork of Simone Martini and his Neapolitan followers.12 Julian Gardner has also noted that the colour palette found in the painting is unprecedented for the artist, and must be based on works that Giotto saw in Naples.13 The many innovations found throughout the work are best explained as contributions by the master, casting further doubt on the idea of its being a workshop production. So, even if Giotto conceived the altarpiece in the late 1320s, he probably painted it later, in 1334–35. Finally, it should be noted that the altarpiece had a significant influence – there are multiple echoes of it in works by Bernardo Daddi and others – which seems most likely for a work that contemporaries knew to be by the master himself.14 Altogether, the sophistication of the altarpiece’s design, from its complex figural scheme to its innovative iconography, point to Giotto having played a central role in the work’s conception and creation. More importantly for the purposes of this chapter’s argument, dating the altarpiece to 1334–35 would place its execution in the final phase of the Beatific Vision controversy, after three years of intense and public theological argument. Returning to the chapel scheme and examining its iconography in more detail, the stained-glass window (Fig. 9.4) shows a series of six saints – Peter, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Bartholomew, Sylvester, and the Franciscan saint, Louis of Toulouse. At the window’s apex is a representation of Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata. On either side of 10 See Skaug, Punch Marks, p. 89, the ideas in which are developed further in Skaug, Giotto and the Flood of Florence, pp. 37–40. 11 This was first pointed out by Erling Skaug, ‘Contributions to Giotto’s Workshop’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 15 (1971), 141–60. See also Gardner, ‘Il polittico Baroncelli’, p. 146; Skaug, Giotto and the Flood of Florence, pp. 37–40. 12 Skaug, ‘Contributions to Giotto’s Workshop’; Skaug, Giotto and the Flood of Florence, p. 54. 13 Gardner, ‘The Decoration of the Baroncelli Chapel’, 106. 14 See Tartuferi’s entry in Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance, p. 110, for an example by Bernardo Daddi, dated to c. 1335–40, which quotes the angels in the pinnacle.

FIG. 9.4  STIGMATIZATION OF SAINT FRANCIS AND SAINTS, STAINED GLASS, C. 1328–34, BARONCELLI CHAPEL, SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE. PHOTO: SAILKO/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.

168

VIRGINIA BRILLIANT

the entrance arch are statues, set on plinths, of the Archangel Gabriel (on the left) and the Virgin (on the right); an Annunciation was, of course, entirely appropriate to the chapel’s dedication to the Annunciate Virgin. Other sculpture includes the tomb monument bearing the 1328 inscription which incorporated a fresco of the Virgin and Child in its upper register, surmounted in turn by another fresco of Christ’s Resurrection.15 The chapel walls are frescoed with eleven scenes from the life of the Virgin. On the east wall (Fig. 9.1), to the left on entering the chapel, are five scenes from the Virgin’s early life. In the upper lunette are two episodes shown as one unified scene: Joachim’s Expulsion from the Temple and the Annunciation to Joachim in the Wilderness. In the next register are two scenes, divided by one of the painted twisting columns that separate the depiction of discrete events throughout the cycle: Joachim’s Meeting with Anna at the Golden Gate and the Birth of the Virgin. Further down still are two more scenes, the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple and the Marriage of the Virgin to Joseph. On the altar wall are six scenes relating to the birth of Christ. Reading from the upper lunette downwards, these show the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Annunciation to the Shepherds, the Nativity, the Annunciation to the Magi, and the Adoration of the Magi. Below these frescoes are two fictive niches, painted to look as though they contain a number of liturgical objects, which must be intended to evoke the real items with which the Baroncelli equipped the chapel. In the chapel’s vaults are further frescoes of three theological virtues and the four cardinal virtues, as well as a personification of Humility; more personifications of virtues are integrated into the window frame and the intrados of the chapel’s arches. As mentioned above, the narrative of the life of the Virgin culminates in the altarpiece signed by Giotto. This was originally a five-part polyptych with the coronation of the Virgin in the centre panel and ranks of saints and angels in the four flanking panels (Fig. 9.5).16 In the predella are medallions depicting Christ displaying his wounds (at centre), Saint Francis, displaying the wounds of his stigmatization (to the right of Christ), Saint Onuphrius (to the far right), John the Baptist, patron saint of Florence (to the left of Christ), and a bishop saint (to the far left). At some time in the late fifteenth century, probably in the late 1480s, the chapel underwent a renovation. Bastiano Mainardi, an assistant in the 15 The absence of the standing figure of Christ from the Resurrection is due to the reintegration of the newly discovered fragments in 1912, see Andrea De Marchi, ‘Relitti di un naufragio: affreschi di Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi e Maso di Banco nelle navate di Santa Croce’, in Santa Croce: oltre le apparenze, ed. Andrea De Marchi and Giacomo Piraz (Pistoia, 2011), pp. 33–71, at p. 42. The fresco is sometimes characterized as an empty tomb in the literature; see Norman, ‘Those who Pay’, p. 175. 16 For reconstructions of the altarpiece, see Monika Cämmerer, ‘Giottos Polyptychon in der Baroncelli-Kapelle von Santa Croce: Nachträge und neue Beobachtungen’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 39 (1996), 374–93, at pp. 380–1, 387; Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance, p. 112.

GIOTTO AND THE BEATIFIC VISION

FIG. 9.5  RECONSTRUCTION OF THE BARONCELLI POLYPTYCH. PHOTO MONTAGE: VIRGINIA BRILLIANT AND DONAL COOPER AFTER MONIKA CÄMMERER.

Ghirlandaio workshop, painted a fresco on the west wall of the chapel.17 At the same time, the Gothic polyptych was cut down. Its remaining pieces were placed in a rectangular frame in the classicizing style favoured throughout the Renaissance in Italy, and red seraphim were painted in the spandrels between the frame and the curved tops of the original panels. The painting retains this frame today (Plate XII).18 The pilasters separating the five main panels of the polyptych were lost, as were the pinnacles that must have been placed above the four side panels.19 The central pinnacle, 17 It is not clear what this fresco replaced. Gardner, ‘The Decoration of the Baroncelli Chapel’, p. 100, suggested that the Mainardi fresco replaced one of the same subject, as well as some kind of window, which would have been destroyed when the Pazzi chapel was erected, its walls abutting those of the Baroncelli chapel, in the second half of the fifteenth century. 18 For discussion of the reframing, which she assigns to the Ghirlandaio workshop, see Cathleen Hoeniger, The Renovation of Paintings in Tuscany, 1250–1500 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 107–12. 19 Gardner, ‘The Decoration of the Baroncelli Chapel’, p. 104, argues that there were no pilasters between the main panels, but without the pilasters, the main panels would not have sat in a reasonable relationship to the predella divisions below. Cämmerer, ‘Giotto’s Polyptychon’, provides a more convincing reconstruction.

169

170

VIRGINIA BRILLIANT

however, was saved when it was removed, and survived in an unknown location until Bernard Berenson discovered it on the Florentine art market sometime around 1920, and purchased it for the collection of his cousin, Arthur Berenson (Fig. 9.2).20 Berenson attributed the panel to Giotto, and this was subsequently affirmed by a series of scholars. It was only in 1957, however, that Federico Zeri realised that the panel had come from the altarpiece in the Baroncelli chapel.21 It is Taddeo Gaddi’s frescoes, however, that are the most striking aspect of the chapel’s decorations. They are highly accomplished in terms of their sophisticated and inventive approach to narration, figural organization, details of naturalistic and anecdotal observation, refined perspectival and illusionistic devices (for example, in the frescoes showing the Temple of Jerusalem, Fig. 9.1, and the ones of the fictive niches, respectively), and their use of light and colour. These elements suggest that although Taddeo executed the frescoes, Giotto may have had a significant hand in designing the mural scheme, and may even have intended to execute the frescoes, a plan thwarted by his being summoned to Naples, at which point he might have installed Gaddi in his stead. Thus, even if Gaddi was primarily responsible for painting the frescoes, the complex and programmatic vision of the chapel’s overall scheme is so typical of Giotto’s work that he should be considered its primary designer. Indeed, this scenario correlates well with Andrea De Marchi’s persuasive proposal that Giotto had oversight of all the fresco cycles at Santa Croce, subcontracting to other workshops when his own team was at capacity.22 As in most medieval funerary chapels, the decorative programme is geared towards addressing the devotional needs of its patrons, acknowledging their identities and expressing their hopes for salvation. In terms of their identities, despite the absence of donor portraits, the family arms are displayed throughout the chapel and the saints included in the stained glass 20 Carl Strehlke made the compelling suggestion that the panel may have been preserved in Ghirlandaio’s workshop, where a processional banner attributed to Masaccio was also kept. Alternatively, it may have been kept by the friars of Santa Croce somewhere on the premises of the convent. Carl Brandon Strehlke, ‘Carpentry and Connoisseurship: The Disassembly of Altarpieces and the Rise of Interest in Italian Art’, in Rediscovering Fra Angelico, ed. Laurence Kanter, Clay Dean, and Carl Brandon Strehlke, exh. cat. New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, 2001), p. 44. Whatever the case, the salvaging of the panel suggests that it was valued at the time as a work by Giotto. 21 Federico Zeri, ‘Due appunti su Giotto. I: la cuspide centrale del “Polittico Baroncelli”; II: la cimasa del crocefisso del Tempio Malatestiano’, Paragone 8 (1957), 75–87. A recent and very useful discussion of the panel in San Diego is John Marciari, Italian, Spanish, and French Paintings before 1850 in the San Diego Museum of Art (San Diego, 2015), pp. 32–7. 22 See Andrea De Marchi, ‘Il progetto di Giotto tra sperimentazione e definizione del canone: partimenti a finti marmi nelle cappelle del transetto di Santa Croce’, Ricerche di storia dell’arte 102 (2010), 13–24. De Marchi’s evidence focuses mainly on analysis of the fictive marble framing elements that unify the schemes of the various chapels, but the argument can be extrapolated into an overall understanding of the artist’s role in the works at Santa Croce more broadly.

GIOTTO AND THE BEATIFIC VISION

window are the name saints of the five members of the family mentioned on the inscription on the tomb.23 The name-saints of the patrons in the stained glass, the images of the theological and cardinal virtues in the vault of the chapel, and the devotion to the crowned Virgin as intercessor in heaven altogether offer a clear message, that through the exercise of virtue and the intercession of the Virgin (mankind’s primary mediator with Christ) and of the saints, the Baroncelli hoped to achieve salvation. The family’s hope for the Virgin’s intercession is underscored by her celebration throughout the chapel’s decorations. The Annunciate Virgin, to whom the chapel is dedicated, appears twice, in the sculpture at the entrance and in the fresco above the altar. The frescoes, meanwhile, offer representations of the circumstances of Mary’s birth and early life, followed by the events initiating the Incarnation of God as man, a miracle in which Mary played a crucial role and for which she was later rewarded by being received bodily into heaven and crowned its queen by her Son.24 The juxtaposition at the top of the tomb of the paintings of the Virgin and Child, i.e. Mary as the mother of Christ, and of Christ’s Resurrection, highlight the pious aspirations of the Baroncelli (Fig. 9.3): Mary would advocate for their salvation, intercede to secure the resurrection of their bodies on the day of Judgement, and help to ensure that they joined the company of saints in heaven portrayed in the chapel’s altarpiece.25

FRANCISCAN LIGHT IN THE BARONCELLI CHAPEL In addition to the devotional needs of the Baroncelli, the chapel’s programme must also have been informed by the views and interests of the Franciscans of Santa Croce. The most obvious nod to the Order can be seen in the inclusion of major Franciscan saints throughout the chapel decorations: the Order’s founder, Francis, and the highly revered Louis of Toulouse, appear in the stained glass window, while Saint Francis is shown again in the altarpiece predella. As Norman noted, the representation of Francis receiving the stigmata in the stained glass must have been dictated by the friars of Santa Croce for, according to official Franciscan texts, the seraph’s visit to Francis on Mount Verna took place on the eve of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, which of course had a special significance for the Franciscans of Santa Croce.26 Francis’s response, one 23 Norman, ‘Those who Pay’, p. 273: Saint Peter is for Pietro, SS John the Baptist and Evangelist are for Vanni (a diminutive of Giovanni), Saint Sylvester for Salvestro, and Saint Bartholomew for Bartolo (a diminutive of Bartolommeo). Gardner, ‘The Decoration of the Baroncelli Chapel’, p. 104, has suggested that Saint Louis of Toulouse was the patron saint of Bivigliano. See also Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi, p. 22. 24 Norman, ‘Those who Pay’, p. 175. 25 Norman, ‘Those who Pay’, p. 175. 26 Bonaventure’s Leggenda Major, records Francis’s vision ‘on a certain morning about the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross’, see FAED, II, p. 632. The Considerations on

171

172

VIRGINIA BRILLIANT

of assent, as described in the text, echoes that of the Annunciate Virgin to Gabriel, which might account for the close juxtaposition of those two scenes within the chapel.27 The Franciscans may also have made a contribution with regard to the extraordinarily important role that light plays throughout the chapel. For one, the pictorial light in all of the frescoes was designed to mirror the actual light from the window on the altar wall.28 This was not uncommon in Italian fresco painting of the day. But the light in the Baroncelli chapel also has additional, more unusual, sources – the light emanating from ‘supernatural’ messengers in all the scenes of Annunciation, namely to Joachim, to the Virgin, to the Shepherds, and to the Magi. In only one case is the messenger not an angel: in the Annunciation to the Magi, rather unusually, the Christ Child himself appears in the sky to the Magi, rather than the conventional star that led the three kings to Bethlehem.29 Throughout the rest of the frescoes, though, it is angels who are the bearers of revelations expressed as divine light. For example, in the Annunciation to the Shepherds, the shepherds are at once dazzled by the brilliance of angelic light and stunned by the revelation it implies, points reinforced by their poses of startled amazement. That the chapel is dedicated to the Virgin Annunciate, and twice depicts the moment of Gabriel’s revelation to Mary of God’s plan for human salvation, underscores the notion that all of the other scenes of otherworldly visions narrate comparable divine revelations. It is likely that Taddeo witnessed the partial solar eclipse that occurred in the skies above Florence on 13 May 1332, and may well have been fascinated with the physical phenomenon of eclipses, as were many people of this era who were wont to see in such portents as eclipses and comets the signs of God’s judgement.30 It is possible that his observations of this unusual event may have had an impact on the treatment of light and its effects in the Baroncelli chapel.31 In areas where angelic messengers ‘fuelled’ by light the Sacred Stigmata, later appended to the Fioretti, fixed it more precisely to the eve of that Feast. For the link with the Considerations, see Paul Hills, The Light of Early Italian Painting (New Haven, 1987), pp. 77–8; cited by Norman, ‘Those who Pay’, p. 175. 27 Norman, ‘Those who Pay’, p. 175. 28 Hills, The Light of Early Italian Painting, pp. 82–3. 29 Norman, ‘Those who Pay’, pp. 176–7. 30 R.J.M. Olson and J.M. Paschoff, ‘Comets, Meteors, and Eclipses: Art and Science in Early Renaissance Italy’, Meteorics and Planetary Science 37 (2002), 1563–78, for discussion of the impact of events like comets, meteors, and eclipses on Trecento painters. 31 The portrayal of light in the frescoes is sometimes related to a letter addressed to an Augustinian preacher Fra Simone Fidati da Cascia and signed by ‘Taddeus de Florentia’, in which the writer complains of eye damage suffered from looking at the eclipse for too long. The letter, however, dates from 1340, and it is not at all clear that Gaddi was the author, as Taddeo was a common name in Florence and painting is not discussed in the missive at all. A relationship between the letter and the frescoes was first posited by Italo Maione, ‘Fra Simone Fidati e Taddeo Gaddi’, L’arte 16 (1914), 107–19, and has proved tenacious, see for example: Alastair Smart, ‘Taddeo Gaddi, Orcagna, and the Eclipses of 1333 and 1339’, in Studies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Painting in Honor of Millard

GIOTTO AND THE BEATIFIC VISION

appear in the frescoes, Taddeo prepared the fresco surface with an unusual brown ground, now visible in the sky where the blue overpaint has peeled away, which in turn rendered the yellow tones in which the angels were painted incandescent. In, for example, the Annunciation to the Shepherds, the sense that all is illuminated by a flash of light in the night sky is conveyed not only by the startled expression and pose of the shepherd but also by the monochrome colour scheme and indistinct outlines of forms, which naturalistically mirror the eye’s experience of sudden, brilliant illumination coming from a heavenly source. Thus, his depiction of the angelic messengers may have had something to do with his direct observation of the effects of an extraordinary event like an eclipse.32 But perhaps more important was contemporary Franciscan theological discussion of the significance of light as an indicator of the presence of God and metaphor for spiritual enlightenment. Giotto and Taddeo, as well as the chapel’s Baroncelli patrons, must have been made aware of this by the friars of Santa Croce, and responded by playing with the concept of divine light throughout the decorative scheme.33 Light is a metaphor of the utmost importance in Franciscan theology and spirituality. The idea that salvation comes through a series of revelations that are themselves like a series of illuminations or enlightenments can be found in many places, including in the opening lines of Saint Bonaventure’s Soul’s Journey into God: I shall begin by invoking, through His Son Our Lord Jesus Christ, the First Principle, from Whom all enlightenment descends as through the Father of Light, and from Whom all that is given is of the best and all of Whose gifts are perfect. In this way, through the intercession of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, who bore this same God and Our Lord Jesus Christ, and through the intercession of the blessèd Francis, our guide and father, He might give illumination to the eyes of our mind to point our feet in the direction of peace, which reaches beyond perception.34

Meiss, ed. Irving Lavin and John Plummer (New York, 1997), I, pp. 403–14; Jean Michel Massing, ‘Der Stern des Giotto’, in Die Kunst und das Studium der Natur vom 14. zum 16. Jahrhundert, ed. Wolfram Prinz and Andreas Beyer (Weinheim, 1987), pp. 159–71. For a recent review of these claims, see Vespari, ‘Aspetti iconografici’, pp. 111–13. 32 See Olson and Paschoff, ‘Comets, Meteors, and Eclipses’, for discussion of the parallels between the painting and the light effects of a real eclipse. 33 See Hills, Light of Early Italian Painting, pp. 75–8. 34 ‘In principio primum principium, a quo cunctae illuminationes descendunt tanquam a Patre luminum, a quo est omne datum optimum et omne donum perfectum, Patrem scilicet aeternum, invoco per Filium eius, Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, ut intercessione sanctissimae Virginis Mariae, genitricis eiusdem Dei et domini nostri Iesu Christi, et beati Francisci, ducis et patris nostri, det illuminatos oculos mentis nostrae ad dirigendos pedes nostros in viam pacis illius, quae exuperat omnem sensum’; Doctoris Seraphici S. Bonaventurae, Opera Omnia, ed. Studio et cura PP. Collegii a S. Bonaventurae, V (Quaracchi, 1891), p. 295. English translation by Simon Wickham Smith,

173

174

VIRGINIA BRILLIANT

The reference to the Father of Light moreover calls to mind the altarpiece pinnacle (Fig. 9.2), in which the vision of God the Father is so radiant that even the angels cannot bear the sight and shield their eyes from the radiant face of God the Father either with their arms or by looking at him through darkened lenses. A number of scholars have identified the objects held by some of the angels as mirrors,35 yet it is unclear why they would seek to reflect God’s image back to God. The objects are also not silvered or gilded in a manner consonant with contemporary depictions of mirrored surfaces, but are rather shown as slightly greyed disks.36 Moreover, the shaded, dimmed vision of God seen through a darkened lens is indeed logically much more consistent with the action of the other angels, who shield their eyes, similarly to dull the overwhelmingly bright vision. Helpful in understanding the imagery of the lenses is the famous passage in Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 13:12–13, which states, ‘Now we see only puzzling reflections through a glass, but then we shall see face to face. My knowledge now is partial; then it will be whole, like God’s knowledge of me. In a word, there are three things that last forever: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of them all is love.’37 Saint Paul’s analogy of the human experience of God on earth with viewing him through a glass or mirror which obscures his visage might thus have resonated with the real-life experiences of fourteenth-century Italians.38 Significant advancements in glass production and optical technology were making mirrors and eyeglasses more readily available and capable of shaping an individual’s daily visual experience in dramatic ways, particularly where producing reflections, correcting vision, and magnification were concerned.39 Moreover, glass played an important role in contemporary 2005, available online at: https://faculty.uml.edu//rinnis/45.304%20God%20and%20 Philosophy/ITINERARIUM.pdf (accessed 1 September 2021). 35 For an interpretation of the objects as mirrors, see Herbert Kessler, ‘Speculum’, Speculum 86 (2011), 14–21. 36 For examples, see Kessler and also Paula M. Hancock, ‘Transformations in the Iconography of the Mirror in Medieval Art’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Emory University, Atlanta, 1988. 37 ‘Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate: tunc autem facie ad faciem. Nunc cognosco ex parte: tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum. Nunc autem manent, fides, spes, charitas: tria haec; major autem horum est charitas.’ 38 Complicating the understanding of Paul’s passage is the fact that the translation has been interpreted in various ways. A useful review is Edward Peter Nolan, Now through a Glass Darkly: Specular Images of Being and Knowing from Virgil to Chaucer (Ann Arbor, MI, 1990). Some translate the passage as ‘through a glass darkly’, ‘in a mirror dimly’, or as ‘puzzling reflections in a mirror’. Although Nolan argues that a literal translation points to Paul’s passage referring to a mirror rather than a sheet of glass, he also notes that many translators have opted to use the word glass instead for its lyrical beauty and because it may in fact bring the reader closer to Paul’s original meaning. Whatever the nature of the glass itself, the point worth bearing in mind is that the glass has the ability to obscure the image of God, to render him an enigma or riddle of sorts. 39 A valuable study is Sarah Dillon, ‘Trecento Visuality and the Visual Arts: The Role of

GIOTTO AND THE BEATIFIC VISION

devotional objects, especially reliquaries, in which it at once revealed and concealed the relic, allowing the faithful the chance to see but not touch, thus mediating the experience and essentially denying or at least delaying the beholder some aspect of it.40 At least in this regard, even regular glass was not simply, uncomplicatedly assisting in enhancing vision, but was instead mediating it, and restraining the viewer’s fullness of experience. And although they are not documented until the fifteenth century, coloured or clouded lenses for eyeglasses do seem to have existed in the late Middle Ages, and were the precursors of modern sunglasses; they were also made and used as such in the ancient world, for the Emperor Nero was said to have used a concave emerald stone to watch gladiatorial games, shielding his eye from bright sun, as a sort of sunglass monocle.41 Angels were understood not to be affected by light in the same way as humans, but were instead thought to be mediators of divine light on its way to mankind. Thus, by shielding their eyes and holding glass lenses up to the face of God, Giotto’s Baroncelli angels seem to remind viewers of the idea that God is the Father of Light and that the angels are tasked with filtering that light to human beings, who in this life cannot face the light in all its fullness head-on.42

THE BEATIFIC VISION AND GIOTTO’S GOD THE FATHER The preoccupation with light throughout the chapel, and especially the question of access to it raised by the pinnacle panel, may relate to the most prominent theological dispute of the time, the Beatific Vision controversy, which was constituted by a series of episodes contemporaneous to the chapel’s decoration. The controversy over the Beatific Vision began in Avignon on All Saints Day in 1331, when Pope John XXII preached two sermons stating that the souls of the saints at present rest ‘under the altar’ (Revelation 6:9), where they may contemplate Christ’s humanity, but only at the time of the Resurrection and Last Judgement will they be raised Glass and the Influence of Optics on Italian Art of the Fourteenth Century’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, City University of New York, 2013. 40 See Dillon, ‘Trecento Visuality’. 41 Vincent Ilarti, Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes (Philadelphia, 2007), p. 79. Also, for a shipment of a pair of glasses for riding horseback in the snow, which must also have been sunglasses of a kind, shielding the wearer’s eyes from the potentially blinding glare of the sun off the white snow, see p. 127. Although there is excellent work published on Renaissance eyeglasses, from technological developments to their discussion and representation in texts and the visual arts, a survey of sunglasses remains to be written. 42 For the role of the angels in mediating divine light, see Meredith J. Gill, Angels and the Order of Heaven in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 60–99, also Barbara Bruderer Eichberg, Les neuf choeurs angéliques: origine et évolution du thème dans l’art du Moyen Âge (Poitiers, 1997).

175

176

VIRGINIA BRILLIANT

above the altar to enjoy the perfect vision of God, the divine essence ‘face to face’.43 By Epiphany 1332, John seems to have asserted (his sermons survive only in fragments) that the final damnation of the wicked and full revelation of Christ’s divinity would be delayed until the Last Judgement.44 Throughout the first decades of the fourteenth century, John’s position on the Beatific Vision seems to have been aligned with the view that had been the agreed theological position since 1241 – that angels, saints, and glorified souls, i.e. those who had been cleansed in Purgatory, could enjoy the Beatific Vision prior to the universal Last Judgement. For example, John’s bulls of canonization, including one for Thomas Aquinas, note that the saints see God ‘face to face’.45 What changed John’s mind is a question beyond the scope of this study, but the important point is that according to contemporary chronicles, his views on the matter in the early 1330s ‘scandalised many’,46 and debate about the issue was soon raging throughout Western Europe. The Pope’s opinions were rejected by the theologians at the universities of Oxford and Paris, and the French king, Philip IV, soon sided with the Parisian scholars.47 Another ruler, Robert of Anjou, king of Naples, would also join in the debate, writing a treatise in 1332 that rejected the Pope’s viewpoint.48 Sermons preached in opposition to the Pope – which in some cases resulted in their preachers being accused of heresy and imprisoned – raised concerns that the Pope’s ideas of a delayed full vision in effect denied Purgatory and indeed any sort of post-mortem experience, as well as profaning the saints and diminishing their intercessory capacity.49 Consensus eventually grew around an intermediary position, which allowed a vision of the divine after death and before the end of time, but which was only complete or perfected when the soul was reunited with the body. On his deathbed in 1334 John retracted his views, agreeing that after death, ‘the holy souls see God and the divine essence face to face and as clearly as their condition as souls separated from their bodies

43 The classic studies are Decima Douie, ‘John XXII and the Beatific Vision’, Dominican Studies 3 (1950), 154–74, and Vladimir Lossky, The Vision of God (New York, 1983); an excellent discussion of the controversy with extensive bibliography on the subject is Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body (New York, 1995), pp. 279–317. The treatment of the controversy here is drawn from these sources, especially Bynum. 44 See Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, p. 283. 45 Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, p. 284. 46 Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, p. 284. 47 Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body; Douie, ‘John XXII’; and Weakland, ‘Pope John XXII and the Beatific Vision’, all summarize the main events of the controversy and give its timeline. 48 For Robert’s treatise, composed at the end of 1332, see Marc Dykmans, La vision bienheureuse: traité envoyé au pape Jean XXII par Robert d’Anjou, roi de Jerusalem et de Sicile (Rome, 1970). 49 For the appeals to devotional and pastoral concerns, see Dykmans, Pour et contre Jean XXII, pp. 40–54, and Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, p. 284.

GIOTTO AND THE BEATIFIC VISION

allows’.50 On 29 January 1336, Jacques Fournier, recently elected as Pope Benedict XII, issued the bull Benedictus Deus, which defined as doctrine the main issues at the centre of the controversy, confirming that pure souls (saints and those cleansed in Purgatory) see the divine essence ‘face to face … plainly, clearly and openly’ but also allowed for the idea that this vision is further perfected at the end of time, when the body and soul are reunited.51 The Dominicans led the campaign of arguments in complete opposition to John XXII, joined by Franciscans already at odds with the Pope in the matter of poverty who predictably chose to oppose him on this issue also.52 Other Franciscans took a middle path in the matter, one more friendly to the papacy, and one closer to the compromise position settled on in Benedict XII’s 1336 resolution of the matter. For example, the Minister General of the Franciscan Order, Guiral Ot (Geraldus Odonis), delivered a disputation in Paris in 1333 in which he supported the Pope but nuanced the discussion, suggesting that there might be three kinds of vision, the most perfect of which was delayed until the Last Judgement.53 Ot’s views were quite well aligned with Bonaventuran theology, in which union with God is a process of spiritual ascent begining in this life and continuing through the next. They gained traction within Franciscan circles, especially amongst more mainstream factions who were aligned with the Minister General and were not already up in arms against the Pope in the matter of poverty.54 The image of God the Father in the pinnacle of the Baroncelli altarpiece, with the Alpha and Omega, the sword and the Tree of Life, clearly makes reference to the vision of God that would be revealed at the Apocalypse 50 Douie, ‘John XXII’, p. 157; Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, p. 285. 51 For the text of Benedictus Deus, see Xavier Le Bachelet, ‘Benoît XII’, in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, II (Paris, 1910), cols. 657–8. 52 Vocal Dominican opponents of the Pope included the English friar Thomas Waleys, who was accused of heresy whilst preaching at Avignon and imprisoned for opposing the Pope; see Thomas Käppeli, Le procès contre Thomas Waleys (Rome, 1936), and Marc Dykmans, ‘A propos de Jean XXII et Benoît XII: la libération de Thomas Waleys’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 7 (1969), 115–30. John’s position was generally opposed by the Dominicans at the universities of Oxford and Paris, the latter bringing the French monarch, Philip of Valois, around to their side, despite direct appeals from the Pope to the king; see Weakland, ‘Pope John XXII and the Beatific Vision’, pp. 80–1. The French Dominican Durand of Saint-Pourçain, from whom John commissioned an opinion he hoped would support his own arguments, instead wrote a treatise trenchantly opposing the Pope’s view; see Josef Koch, Durandus de S. Porciano, O.P.: Forschungen zum Streit um Thomas von Aquin zu Beginn des 14. Jahrhunderts (Münster, 1927), and Paul Fournier, ‘Durand de Saint-Pourçain, théologien’, Histoire littéraire de la France 37 (1938), 1–38. The Dominican position is extensively discussed by Christian Trottmann, La vision béatifique: dès disputes scolastiques à sa définition par Benoît XII (Rome, 1995). 53 For Ot’s disputation, see Anneliese Maier, ‘Die Pariser Disputation des Geraldus Odonis’, in Ausgehendes Mittelalter, pp. 327–33, and for discussion, see William Duba, ‘The Beatific Vision in the “Sentences” Commentary of Gerald Odonis’, Vivarium 47 (2009), 348–63. 54 See Duba, ‘The Beatific Vision’.

177

178

VIRGINIA BRILLIANT

and Last Judgement. According to John XXII and to the Franciscan thinking on the matter held by Ot and his adherents, full vision of that God required that the soul be reunited with the body, which for mankind would only be possible at the end of time. In the meantime, the angels must act as mediators between that light and mankind, a role to which their gestures, shielding their eyes, as well as their holding glass of some kind up to God the Father, alludes. This image of the sight of God, particularly when juxtaposed with the Coronation of the Virgin, can thus be seen as a sort of metaphor for moderate Franciscan views on the Beatific Vision and the attainment of heaven as a whole. These ideas can be, in turn, related back to the chapel’s dedication to the Annunciate Virgin. Bonaventure, following a standard tradition in Mariology, associates the Assumption with the Annunciation.55 According to readings of Canticles 3:11, Mary was thought to have ‘crowned’ Christ with a human body at the Annunciation, and Bonaventure appropriated this interpretation in a Palm Sunday sermon, where he describes a triple crown given to Christ.56 The crowns are all bodily in nature – first of these, given to him by his mother, was a ‘diadem’ of flesh; the second is Christ’s crown of thorns, relating to the humiliation and suffering of his Passion; and the third crown, according to Bonaventure, indicates his resurrection glory, the resurrection of his body, a just divine response to his Incarnation and Passion. Mary too is crowned. Just as Christ took his own body from her flesh at the Annunciation, so at the Assumption, when Christ takes his mother bodily into heaven, he ‘crowns’ her again, this time with her own resurrected body.57 Mary’s Coronations in the Baroncelli altarpiece could thus be seen as yet another emblem in the chapel of the Christian hope of the resurrection of both of soul and body, but especially of the body, which Franciscan belief, in line with the papal stance in those years, asserted was essential to perfecting the vision of God experienced by the saved in eternity.58 At the very least, the fact that Giotto’s depiction of the angels in the San Diego pinnacle suggests that God and his light cannot be viewed in his entirety in this life seem to nod at the fact that questions of who could see God partially or fully, and when, were in the air in the years in which the works were painted. Furthermore, Giotto, who was in the entourage of Robert of Anjou in Naples when the King was writing 55 Rebecca S. Beal, ‘Bonaventure, Dante and the Apocalyptic Woman Clothed with the Sun’, Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society 114 (1996), 209–28, at p. 213. 56 ‘Sermo 20 [Dominica in Palmis]’, section 11, part II, lines 190–201, edited in Sancti Bonaventurae, Sermones Dominicales, ed. Jacques Guy Bougerol (Grottaferrata, 1977); quoted and discussed in Beal, ‘Bonaventure’, pp. 213–14. 57 Bonaventure, ‘Sermo 20’; discussed in Beal, ‘Bonaventure’, pp. 213–14. 58 See the discussion above for Ot’s view on the attainment of the vision of God being a process perfected at the end of time, a ‘stepped’ model of ascent which mirrors Bonaventure’s paradigm of the soul’s journey to God being one of ascent but through distinct stages each successive of which allows more access.

GIOTTO AND THE BEATIFIC VISION

his opinions on the matter in 1332, must have been aware of both sides of this highly politicized debate. His vision of God, the Father of Light, and the implications about who might have access to it, and when, suggest that full vision comes only for reunited bodies and souls at the end of time. Nonetheless it allows for many steps in between, just as most theologians had prior to the controversy, and just as Ot had done in what was both a defence of the Pope and a nuancing of the argument. • The imagery of the altarpiece shows the resurrection of both the Virgin’s body and her soul, together with an image of God the Father as the Father of Light, a vision which could be enjoyed by blessed souls in heaven but which could only, according to the Pope and at least some Franciscans, as discussed above, be appreciated fully once the body and soul are reunited in the general resurrection at the end of time. Thus, in the context of the Beatific Vision controversy, Giotto’s altarpiece articulates the chief pious aspiration of the chapel as a whole, that is, the full and complete salvation of the Baroncelli, in a manner consistent with Franciscan engagement with the primary theological debate of the decade in which it was made.59 It is, at the same time, thanks to the brilliance of Giotto that all of the decorative elements in the chapel come together to support this understanding of salvation, whereby human beings strive to see God, the Father of Light, both on earth and again in heaven. Yet even on earth, the chapel tells us, humans may have moments of divine light, and thus glimpses of divine revelation; the chapel itself, by revealing this message, is thus its own light-filled revelation, evoking all that we need to know, and can at present see, of our own salvation and the manner of its attainment.

59 See, for example, the Bardi di Vernio chapel, discussed in Roberto Bartalini, ‘“Et in carne mea videbo Deum meum”: Maso di Banco, la cappella dei Confessori e la committenza dei Bardi’, Prospettiva 98–9 (2000), 58–103.

179

PAINTER-ILLUMINATOR WORKSHOPS AND THE CHURCH OF SAN GIORGIO A RUBALLA: THE CASE OF BERNARDO DADDI AND PACINO DI BONAGUIDA BRYAN C. KEENE

T

he space around medieval church altars at times involved various audiences – from both clerics and members of the laity – who observed or handled objects in a range of media in the performance of the liturgy. This theme of access to works of art and the relationship between media and use has been a strong undercurrent in the scholarly and pedagogical work of Joanna Cannon, with whom I shared a memorable, indeed careeraltering, conversation about Bernardo Daddi and painters of illuminated manuscripts. That discussion was the catalyst for a journey – of a long bus ride and dizzying hike – to a remote parish church in the hills of Tuscany that is associated with an impressive array of fourteenth-century objects, I am extremely grateful to Don Daniel Diac of the church of San Giorgio a Ruballa for his generosity of spirit and of time, allowing me to study the objects discussed in this essay. Thanks are also due to Mons. Timothy Verdon of the Arcidiocesi di Firenze and Dott. Maria Pia Zaccheddu of the Soprintendenza of Florence for their assistance on and support of this project, and to Donal Cooper and Beth Williamson for their guidance on this chapter. My gratitude extends as well to Mark Mark Keene for his enduring support of my choir book journeys and for always finding the correct path to often remote ecclesiastical structures. Above all, I thank Joanna Cannon for directing me to a field of study that has brought great joy to my life, and for her constant support and guidance. Joanna, you are a model of collaboration, excellence, and grace.

10

182

BRYAN C. KEENE

some of which are still there and some of which can be traced back to it. These objects are the subject of this essay. The polyptych with The Crucifixion and Saints, presently in The Courtauld Gallery (Plate XIII), was arguably the last great commission undertaken by Bernardo Daddi and his workshop.1 Beneath the central panel is an inscription indicating the artist’s name and the date 1348,2 providing a chronological point of reference for the commission and indicating a terminus point for Daddi’s career, as he died on 8 August of that year, likely as a result of causes related to the Black Death.3 The painting once adorned an altar within the intimate space of the parish church of San Giorgio a Ruballa (Osteria Nuova di Bagno a Ripoli), founded by at least 1273 and renovated around 1337.4 The glimmer of the Trecento interior is almost completely lost, now overshadowed by the Baroque stucco work of Giovan Martino Portogalli (1707) and the architectural redesign by Niccolò Matas (1863).5 Yet three early Trecento works are still 1 Joanna Cannon, ‘Viewing Two Paintings by Bernardo Daddi’, The British Art Journal 2 (Winter 2000/2001), 68–70. The Courtauld Gallery, London, The Samuel Courtauld Trust (Gambier-Parry bequest, P.1966.GP.82), Bernardo Daddi (active c. 1312–48), polyptych with The Crucifixion and Saints Laurence, Andrew, Bartholomew, George, Paul, Peter, James the Major, and Stephen, 1348; central panel: 155.8 × 52.4 cm; side panels (each): 138.2 × 82.8 cm. The primary bibliography for this altarpiece includes the following: Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Sect. 3, III, The Works of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1930), pp. 3, 13, 8, 80–1, pl. XIX1–12; Offner, Corpus, Sect. 3, IV, Daddi, his Shop and Following (New York, 1934), i, pp. 123–4, 137, 143; Offner, Corpus, Sect. 3, V, Master of San Martino alla Palma, Assistant of Daddi, Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece (New York, 1947), pp. 60–1, 63, 65, 87, 88 n. 1, 105–6, 115, 117–21, 125, 131, 139, 146, 150, 153, 211, 227, 240 n. 1; Offner, Corpus, Sect. 3, VIII, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1958), pp. 4, 38 n. 1, 49–58, pl. IX, IXa–e, 137, 189, 190 n. 1, 202, 207; Richard Offner with Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. Sect. 3, III, The Works of Bernardo Daddi, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Mina Gregori (Florence, 1989), pp. 324–39; Enrica Neri Lusanna, ‘Daddi, Bernardo’, Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner (Oxford, 1996), VIII, p. 442; Richard Offner with Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Sect. 3, V, Bernardo Daddi and his Circle, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Mina Gregori (Florence, 2001), pp. 174, 197, 209, 242, 255, 272, 285–7, 309, 330 n. 2, 333, 347, 349, 463, 493, 522 n. 1. 2 ANNO . D[OMI]NI . M . CCC . XLVIII . BERNARDUS . PINXIT . ME . QUEM FLORENTIE . FINSIT. 3 For documents concerning Bernardo Daddi’s life and death, see: Offner, Corpus, Sect. 3, III, The Works of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1930), pp. iii–v, 1–3; Offner, Corpus, Sect. 3, IV, Daddi, his Shop and Following (New York, 1934), pp. v–xiv; Offner, Corpus, Sect. 3, V, Master of San Martino alla Palma, Assistant of Daddi, Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece (New York, 1947), pp. 9–22; Offner, Corpus, Sect. 3, VIII, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1958), pp. i–xx, 3–5. 4 Gabriella Di Cagno, ‘Il patrimonio storico artistico del Comune di Bagno a Ripoli’, in Il medioevo nelle colline a sud di Firenze, ed. Italo Moretti and Andrea Baldinotti (Florence, 2000), pp. 41–130, at pp. 65–7; Giuliana Tonini, ‘Argomenti maseschi: la cappella di San Bartolomeo in Santa Maria sopra Porta e due patronati Bardi di Vernio’, Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi, Firenze: Annali 1 (1984), 7–25. 5 Other Baroque masterpieces still in situ include Matteo Rosselli’s The Immaculate Conception (seventeenth century); Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani’s The Martyrdom of Saint George (seventeenth or eighteenth century); Giovanni Domenico Ferretti’s The Virgin with Suor Domenica in Paradise (eighteenth century).

THE CASE OF BERNARDO DADDI AND PACINO DI BONAGUIDA

housed within. The first is a large devotional panel with the Maestà: The Virgin and Child with Angels and Saints Matthias the Apostle and George, dated with a partially abraided inscription to 1336 or 1337 and thought to be the work variously of Maso di Banco, Orcagna, Bernardo Daddi or an artist in his shop, or an anonymous painter conventionally referred to as the Maestro di San Giorgio a Ruballa (Fig. 10.1).6 Next is a choir book assigned to the workshop of Pacino di Bonaguida and stylistically dated to the 1330s – (Plate XIV).7 The third is a monumental crucifix accepted as a work by Taddeo Gaddi, dated c. 1355–60 by comparison to his other late works (Fig. 10.2).8 These painted devotional objects are well-known to scholars, who have for over a century and a half addressed the potential historical circumstances surrounding each commission in relation to the church of San Giorgio a Ruballa, the environs of Bagno a Ripoli, and to Tuscan Trecento art more generally. Yet this material has not been considered in relation to the nexus of the artists’ workshops in question nor to the circumstances surrounding the commissions, which I propose here were the result of a coordinated 6 Maso di Banco (attributed; active 1336–46), Maestà: The Virgin and Child with Angels and Saints Mathias the Apostle and George, 1336/7, 225 × 192 cm. As will be demonstrated below, scholars have long debated the authorship of this panel. The most recent source to attempt to sort out the long history of attributions is L’eredità di Giotto: Arte a Firenze 1340–1375, ed. Angelo Tartuferi, exh. cat. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (Florence, 2008), pp. 104–5, cat. no. 7, entry by Ugo Feraci. 7 Gradual with the proper and common of saints (covers entire liturgical year), Pacino di Bonaguida (attributed; active c. 1303–47), c. 1335–40; 43 × 28.5 cm. The manuscript comprises 286 folios (with two numeration systems: pencil inscriptions in Arabic numerals from fols. 1–284 and original Roman numerals from fols. 1–266, excluding fols. 114–23 and fol. 127); two folios are missing (between fols. numbered 281 and 282; fols. 282–3 added later); the manuscript lacks an incipit page. There are nine musical staves per page and each stave measures 2.1 cm. The relevant bibliography includes: Mostra del Tesoro di Firenze sacra (Florence, 1933), p. 141; Offner, Corpus, Sect. 3, VI (Glückstadt, 1956), pp. 236–7, Pl. LIIb; Offner, Corpus, Sect. 3, vol. VII, The Fourteenth Century: The Biadaiolo Illuminator, Master of the Dominican Effigies (New York, 1957), p. 48 n. 2; Mostra di arte sacra antica dalle diocesi di Firenze, Fiesole e Prato, exh. cat. Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (Florence, 1961), p. 4, cat. no. 13; Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Sect. 3, IX, The Painters of the Miniaturist Tendency (Florence, 1984), p. 52 n. 178; Cristina De Benedictis, ‘Pacino di Bonaguida’, Dictionary of Art, VIII, ed. Jane Turner (Oxford, 1996), p. 744; Gabriella Di Cagno, ‘Il patrimonio storico artistico del Comune di Bagno a Ripoli’, p. 67; Costanza Barlondi, ‘La Madonna del 1336 a San Giorgio a Ruballa: un dipinto problematico’, unpublished Masters dissertation, Università degli studi di Firenze, 2003/2004, pp. 7–8; Bryan C. Keene, ‘Many Voices, Many Hands: Artist Collaboration and Workshop Practice in Early FourteenthCentury Illuminated Choir Books from Florence’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2018, p. 284; Bryan C. Keene, ‘Pacino di Bonaguida: A Critical and Historical Reassessment of Artist, Oeuvre, and Choir Book Illumination in Trecento Florence’, immediations, The Courtauld Institute of Art Journal of Postgraduate Research 4, no. 4 (2019), 21–47. 8 Taddeo Gaddi, Crucifix, about 1355–60, 280 × 192 cm. Evelyn Sandberg Vavalà, La croce dipinta italiana e l’iconografia della Passione (Verona, 1929), pp. 893, 901; Andrew Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonné (Columbia, MO and London, 1982), pp. 66, 158, 232, 236, 240; Di Cagno, ‘Il patrimonio storico artistico del Comune di Bagno a Ripoli’, p. 66.

183

FIG. 10.1  MASO DI BANCO (ATTR.), THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ANGELS AND SAINTS MATTHIAS THE APOSTLE AND GEORGE, 1336/7. OSTERIA NUOVA DI BAGNO A RIPOLI, CHURCH OF SAN GIORGIO A RUBALLA. PHOTO: EUGENE A/ WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.

185

THE CASE OF BERNARDO DADDI AND PACINO DI BONAGUIDA

FIG. 10.2  TADDEO GADDI, CRUCIFIX, C. 1355–60, OSTERIA NUOVA DI BAGNO A RIPOLI, CHURCH OF SAN GIORGIO A RUBALLA. PHOTO BY AUTHOR, WITH GENEROUS PERMISSION FROM THE SOPRINTENDENZA AND ARCIDIOCESI DI FIRENZE.

effort on the part of the parish to equip its sanctuary with a suite of liturgical objects. The aforementioned paintings on panel and parchment have traditionally allowed for considerations of authorship, attribution, and anonymity in the fourteenth century, especially when examining the art historically fraught relationship between Daddi and Maso, but also by extension to the shops and oeuvres associated with Pacino and Gaddi. This chapter will therefore first provide a brief assessment of the scholarly landscape concerning the ensemble of works presently housed at the church of San Giorgio a Ruballa, and will then offer the first critical analysis of the choir book attributed to Pacino di Bonaguida (and more generally

186

BRYAN C. KEENE

called ‘Pacinesque’). The final section will explore the relationship between Bernardo Daddi and painters of manuscripts. The intimacy of viewing works by Daddi, Pacino, and others at San Giorgio a Ruballa will serve as a counterpoint for the spatial relationship and experience of other works by these shops at larger ecclesiastical institutions and civic monuments in Florence proper, a lesson that Joanna Cannon’s students learn well when studying with her.

SAN GIORGIO A RUBALLA: SPATIAL CONSIDERATIONS, RECONSTRUCTIONS, AND UNRESOLVED CHALLENGES IN ATTRIBUTION The parish church of San Giorgio a Ruballa, part of the vicariate of Antella a Ripoli in the Florentine contado, was first mentioned in archival documents in 1273 in reference to a rector there.9 By 1306 the Bardi family of Florence emerged as patrons of the church and they continued to have an active presence there throughout the fourteenth century.10 In March 1328, Maria Nera, the mother of Pilastro di Cione dei Pilastri, left one quarter of her patronage of the church of San Giorgio a Ruballa to the Cistercian monks of the Badia a Settimo, near Florence.11 This act demonstrates the growing governance of the Cistercians in the area.12 In 1337, renovations were underway at San Giorgio, partially supported by the Bardi family, as indicated by an eighteenth-century inscription on the counter-façade wall.13 The ensuing decade appears to have been a fruitful period of artistic commission for the church’s patrons, a statement based largely on the presence there today of works of art attributed to some of the great names in Florentine art whose shops flourished leading up to and following the death of Giotto di Bondone (c. 1266/67–1337). Furthermore, the dates on the Maestà (1336 or 1337)14 and Bernardo Daddi’s polyptych 9 ASFi, Diplomatico, Cistercensi, 11 September 1273. Giuliana Tonini, ‘Argomenti Maseschi: la cappella di San Bartolomeo in Santa Maria Sopra Porta’. 10 See Tonini, ‘Argomenti Maseschi: la cappella di San Bartolomeo in Santa Maria Sopra Porta’, pp. 16, 24 n. 52. 11 ASFi, Repertorio Strozziano di Memorie Ecclesiastiche, sezione III, IX bis, fol. 264; ASFi, Diplomatico, Cistercensi, 11 November 1313. 12 Marco Gamannossi, L’Abbazia di San Salvatore a Settimo: un respire profundo mille anni (Florence, 2013). 13 The inscription can be transcribed as follows: D.O.M. / ECCLESIA HAEC IN HONOREM / S. GREGORI MARTYRIS DIOTA / ET E RUDI ET PERVETUSTA AN. MCCCXXXVII / IN MELIOREM FORMAM REDACTA / TANDEM FRANCISCO MM. PETRO / ET LINDULFO CAROLI PETRI DE BARDIS / EX COMITATIBUS VERNII ADIUVANTIBUS / QUI JURE PATRONATUS AD RECTORIS / ELECTIONEM CONCURRANT / AN. MDCCVII ORNATA EST. For information on the art and architecture in the environs of Bagno a Ripoli, see Gabriella Di Cagno, ‘Il patrimonio storico artistico del Comune di Bagno a Ripoli’. 14 Along the engaged frame, likely original, is the abraded inscription [MCC]C[XX] XVI[?], leading scholars to date the work to either 1336 or 1337.

THE CASE OF BERNARDO DADDI AND PACINO DI BONAGUIDA

(1348) provide a temporal range for considering the evolving context of devotion and liturgy at the church of San Giorgio a Ruballa following Giotto’s death.15 Works of art lead eventful lives: changing historical contexts and circumstances of display result in movement, alteration, and adaptation. Scholars accept that the Pacinesque choir book and Taddeo Gaddi’s Crucifix have remained at the church of San Giorgio a Ruballa since their arrival in the fourteenth century (when, presumably, the objects were created in the respective workshops in Florence and then transported into the countryside).16 The gradual exhibits signs of wear and damage from humidity, and the Crucifix was likely cut down at the cimasa, the side terminals, and the base. The most peripatetic object of the group under consideration is Bernardo Daddi’s polyptych, which was present in the church of San Giorgio a Ruballa until 1821 and is next recorded with a dealer by 1827 before passing into the Bromley collection in London, then the Gambier-Parry collection at Highnam Court (Gloucester) by 1862, and finally bequeathed to the Courtauld collection in 1966.17 Eight full-length standing saints stand beneath polylobed arches on either side of the central scene: (at left) SS Laurence, Andrew, Bartholomew, George, (at right) Paul, Peter, James the Major, and Stephen. The original shape of the altarpiece once accommodated a predella (Plate XIII), which Richard Offner proposed included The Virgin and Child with Angels at the centre (formerly Miss R. Lawrence Jones Collection, London) flanked by additional panels showing saints: Saint Gregory and an Evangelist (formerly New York, Stanley Simon collection); SS Margaret and Agnes (Strasbourg, Musée de la Ville, no. 204); and SS Lucy, Catherine, John the Evangelist, and Nicholas of Bari(?) (The Alana Collection, Newark, Delaware; sold New York, Christie’s, 25 January 2012, lot 6).18 This ensemble of a polyptych, monumental crucifix, 15 The artistic climate at San Giorgio a Ruballa is similar to the one found at the Franciscan church of Santa Croce in Florence, for which Bernardo Daddi frescoed the Pulci Chapel with Scenes from the Life of Saint Lawrence; Taddeo Gaddi frescoed the Baroncelli Chapel and may have provided stained glass windows for various other chapels; Maso di Banco frescoed the Bardi di Vernio Chapel with Scenes from the Life of Saint Sylvester; and Pacino di Bonaguida’s shop fulfilled the commission for two graduals and possibly other sets of stained glass windows. 16 The gradual was documented at San Giorgio in 1864 and the Crucifix was discussed there in an 1883 publication. Fernando Rondoni, Catalogo generale dei monumenti e degli oggetti d’arte del regno, Provincia di Firenze, Commune di Bagno a Ripoli Frazione di Ruballa, chiesa parrocchiale di San Giorgio (Florence, 1864), no. 4; G.B. Cavalcaselle and J.A. Crowe, Storia della pittura in Italiana dal secolo II al secolo XVI, II (Florence, 1883), p. 434; Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi, pp. 66, 158, 232, 236, 240. For a recent assessment of the Crucifix and relevant bibliography, see Di Cagno, ‘Il patrimonio storico artistico del Comune di Bagno a Ripoli’, p. 66. 17 Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, Italienische Forschungen, II (Berlin, 1827), p. 223; Luigi Passerini, Del ritratto di Dante Alighieri che si vuole dipinto da Giotto nella cappella del Potestà di Firenze (Florence, 1865), p. 18; Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, III (London, 1854), p. 372. 18 Predella panel with The Virgin and Child with Angels, 21.7 × 48.8 cm; predella

187

188

BRYAN C. KEENE

and choir book (possibly part of a larger set of liturgical manuscripts) would have engaged the modest rural congregation with visual splendours that closely mirrored contemporaneous tastes in Florence. The gabled Maestà was likely the product of private patronage, as indicated by the presence of a kneeling and tonsured supplicant who is presumably the donor (Enrica Neri Lusanna suggests that the individual may be Bartolo de’ Bardi, rector at the parish church who was also oversaw Maso di Banco’s frescoes at Santa Croce).19 The inclusion of Saint George suggests that the panel was always intended for the church of San Giorgio, yet the presence of Saint Matthias led Guido Carocci to propose that the painting was originally housed at the nearby church of San Matteo a Gavignano.20 Saints Matthias and Matthew are distinct individuals, and thus scholarly consensus supports the Maestà’s early provenance at its current location. The artist behind the impressive panel – preserved with minor retouchings – remains the subject of some debate, which should be briefly summarised and assessed before returning to the liturgical context at San Giorgio a Ruballa. The earliest of the panel’s attributions was to Bernardo Daddi, by G.B. Cavalcaselle and J.B. Crowe (1883), whose opinions were followed by Georg Vitzthum and others, including Richard Offner (although he considered the work ‘the least Daddesque of Daddi’s circle’).21 Roberto Longhi christened the Maestro di San Giorgio a Ruballa to indicate a follower of Maso di Banco, but Miklós Boskovits argued instead that the panel was an early work by Maso, a position supported by Carlo Volpe, Enrica Neri Lusanna, Angelo Tartuferi, and Ugo Feraci.22 Still others, panel with Saint Gregory the Great and an Evangelist, 22 × 35.5 cm; predella panel with SS Margaret and Agnes, 21.9 × 38 cm; predella panel with SS Lucy and Catherine of Alexandria, 21 × 38.6 cm; predella panel with Saint John the Evangelist, 20.9 × 17.7 cm; predella panel with Saint Nicholas of Bari(?), 21 × 18.2 cm. Offner, Corpus, Sect. 3, VIII, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1958), pp. 4, 38 n. 1, 49–58, pl. IX, IXa–e, 137, 189, 190 n. 1, 202, 207; The Property of a European Collection (formerly Brussels, Van Gelder Collection), New York, Christie’s, 25 January 2012, lot 6; The Alana Collection, Newark, Delaware, USA, vol. III, Italian Paintings from the 14th to the 16th Century, ed. Sonia Chiodo and Serena Padovani (Florence, 2009), pp. 49–55. 19 Enrica Neri Lusanna, ‘Maso di Banco e la cappella Bardi di San Silvestro’, in Maso di Banco: la cappella di San Silvestro, ed. Cristina Acidini Luchinat and Enrica Neri Lusanna (Milan, 1998), pp. 17–50, at p. 36 n. 108. 20 Guido Carocci, I contorni di Firenze: illustrazione storico-artistica (Florence, 1888), p. 151. 21 Georg Graf Vitzthum, Bernardo Daddi (Leipzig, 1903), p. 9; Offner, Corpus, Sect. 3, IV, Daddi, his Shop and Following (New York, 1934), pp. i, 123–4, 137, 143; Richard Offner, ‘Four Panels, a Fresco and a Problem’, The Burlington Magazine 54 (1929), 224–45, reprinted in Offner, A Discerning Eye: Essays on Early Italian Painting by Richard Offner, ed. Andrew Ladis (Philadelphia, 1998), pp. 167–88. 22 Miklós Boskovits, ‘Orcagna in 1357 – and in Other Times’, The Burlington Magazine 113 (1971), 239–51; Roberto Longhi, ‘Un esercizio sul Daddi’ [1950], reprinted in ‘Giudizio sul Duecento’ e ricerche sul Trecento nell’Italia centrale (Florence, 1974), pp. 82–5; Longhi, ‘Stefano Fiorentino’ [1951], reprinted in ‘Giudizio sul Duecento’, pp. 64–82; Longhi, ‘Qualità e industria in Taddeo Gaddi’ [1959], reprinted in ‘Giudizio sul Duecento’, pp. 85–101;

THE CASE OF BERNARDO DADDI AND PACINO DI BONAGUIDA

following a proposal first made by Bernard Berenson, have supported an attribution to Andrea di Cione (known as Orcagna), among them Roberto Bartalini, Gert Kreytenberg, Daniela Parenti, and Luciano Bellosi.23 In the groundbreaking study on punch work – or sphragiology – by Erling Skaug, the author explicitly avoids taking a position on the debate, but notes that the punches and tooling style in the San Giorgio a Ruballa panel coincide with Daddi’s style in the 1330s, rather than that of Maso or Orcagna.24 The implications of Skaug’s work will be further expounded upon below in relation to itinerant painter-illuminators. Comparative examples that suggest Daddi’s authorship include the 1333 Maestà in the Galleria dell’Accademia (inv. 1890 n. 6170) and the little-studied Maestà from the church of San Giusto in Signano (Scandicci), both of which follow a similar arrangement of figures and overall panel shape to the San Giorgio picture. The historical circumstance surrounding Bartolo de’ Bardi’s supervision of Maso’s work on the frescoes for the Chapel of Saint Sylvester in the church of Santa Croce in Florence in 1336 is one potential link between the San Giorgio a Ruballa picture and Maso. On the other hand, the apparent stylistic differences between the fresco cycle and the gabled panel in question have been parsed out by Orcagna supporters, who argue that the San Giorgio Maestà is the earliest work by this artist who was likely training with Maso. The present author can accept an attribution to Maso di Banco, on the stylistic grounds just discussed, but acknowledges that the painter must have been working closely with Bernardo Daddi at this stage in his career, even if simply guided by a composition provided by Daddi. The implications underlying any of these Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento 1375–1400 (Florence, 1975), p. 195 n. 47; Carlo Volpe, ‘Il lungo percorso del “dipingere dolcissimo e tanto unito”’, in Storia dell’arte italiana, ed. Federico Zeri (Turin, 1983), pp. 229–304; Neri Lusanna, ‘Maso di Banco e la cappella Bardi di San Silvestro’, pp. 17–44; Boskovits, ‘More on the Art of Bernardo Daddi’, in A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, ed. Richard Offner, Sect. 4, VIII, 2nd edn (Florence, 1989), pp. 33–54; Boskovits, ‘Some Further Thoughts on Bernardo Daddi’, in A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, ed. R. Offner, Sect. 3, V, 2nd edn (Florence, 2001), pp. 9–22; Cataloghi della Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze. Dipinti, Volume Primo. Dal Duecento a Giovanni da Milano, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2003), p. 65; Angelo Tartuferi, Giotto (Florence, 2005), pp. 14–15; L’eredità di Giotto, pp. 104–5, cat. no. 7, entry by Ugo Feraci. 23 Alessandro Conti, ‘Maso, Roberto Longhi e la tradizione offneriana’, Prospettiva 73/74 (1994), 32–45; Roberto Bartalini, ‘Maso, la cronologia della cappella Bardi di Vernio e il giovane Orcagna’, Prospettiva 77 (1995), 16–35; Bartalini, ‘“Et in carne mea videbo Deum meum”: Maso di Banco, la cappella dei Confessori e la committenza dei Bardi’, Prospettiva 98–9 (2000), 58–103; Gert Kreytenberg, Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: ein universeller Künstler der Gotik in Florenz (Mainz, 2000), pp. 29–30 n. 5; Daniela Parenti, ‘Studi recenti su Orcagna e sulla pittura dopo la “peste nera”’, Arte cristiana 89 (2001), 325–32. See also David Wilkins, Maso di Banco: A Florentine Artist of the Early Trecento (New York, 1985), p. 205; Joachim Poeschke, Italian Frescoes, the Age of Giotto, 1280–1400 (New York, 2005), pp. 266–7. 24 Erling Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: Attribution, Chronology, and Workshop Relationships in Tuscan Panel Painting, with Particular Consideration to Florence (Oslo, 1994), I, pp. 105, 116, 119, and II, Table 5.3.

189

190

BRYAN C. KEENE

attributions only further nuance the complexity of artist networks and working relationships in the early Trecento. As mentioned above, by the 1330s the Bardi were partially responsible for funding the renovations taking place at the church of San Giorgio and the Pilastri assisted in transferring some of the ecclesiastical oversight to the Cistercians of the Badia a Settimo. The Crucifix by Taddeo Gaddi has been dated stylistically to c. 1355–60, and yet one wonders whether the Maestà and Crucifix were commissioned together – c. 1336/7 – as an ensemble to adorn a screen or beam in the church. As Andrea De Marchi has argued, this practice of jointly commissioning objects for such structures was widespread in central Italy at the time.25 Such a situation is plausible within the realm of patronage at the church, especially given the close proximity in date between the gabled panel and choir book, discussed below. It is worth noting that although Skaug includes the Crucifix in his study of punches, he does not comment on a possible date or range.26 In sum, a network of families and monks, together with Florentine artist shops, defined the religious and cultural panorama of this civic area in Tuscany.

RUBRICS, CHOIRS, AND THE ALTAR: A PACINESQUE GRADUAL The choir book housed at the church of San Giorgio a Ruballa27 – a gradual, containing the sung portions of the Mass – joins a group of nearly fifty choral manuscripts, at least seventy-five leaves and cuttings from dispersed music manuscripts, and thirty-seven known additional religious codices thought to have been produced by the shop of Pacino di Bonaguida (c. 1303–c. 1347).28 This vast corpus of codices was made

25 See Andrea De Marchi, ‘“Cum dictum opus sit magnum”: il documento pistoiese del 1274 e l’allestimento trionfale dei tramezzi in Umbria e Toscana fra Due e Trecento’, in Medioevo: immagine e memoria: atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Parma (23–28 settembre 2008), ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan, 2009), pp. 603–21. 26 Skaug, Punch Marks, I, p. 94, and II, Table 5.2. 27 The manuscript comprises 284 folios (with two numeration systems: pencil inscriptions in Arabic numerals from fols. 1–284 and original Roman numerals from fols. 1–266, excluding fols. 114–23 and fol. 127); two folios are missing (between fols. numbered 281 and 282; fols. 282 and 283 were added later); the manuscript lacks an incipit page. 28 For the most recent publication, and bibliography, on Pacino di Bonaguida, see Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300–1350, ed. Christine Sciacca, exh. cat. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, 2012), in particular Bryan C. Keene, ‘Introduction’ and ‘Preparing the Soul for Heaven through Text and Song: Liturgical Manuscripts’, pp. 1–7, 93–7, 326–33. For a complete assessment of the liturgical manuscripts produced by the shop associated with Pacino, see Keene, ‘Many Voices, Many Hands’; Bryan C. Keene, ‘Pacino di Bonaguida (cat. nos. 7–8)’, in The Burke Collection of Italian Manuscript Paintings, ed. Sandra Hindman and Federica Toniolo (London, 2021), pp. 88–103; and Bryan C. Keene and Nancy Turner, ‘The Impruneta Antiphonary: Reframing the Collaborative Process in Works Attributed to

THE CASE OF BERNARDO DADDI AND PACINO DI BONAGUIDA

for every major religious order, including the Augustinians, Benedictines, Carmelites, Cistercians, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Vallombrosans, as well as for private individuals and collegiate churches in Florence, Fiesole, Impruneta, Pistoia, Prato, and environs. For almost a century, scholars of art and music have compiled a significant oeuvre associated with Pacino, an artist whose identity is known from two archival documents and from a polyptych that bears an inscription with his name and a partial date.29 Stylistic analysis has formed the basis for attributing works of art on panel, parchment, and in glass to the artist, who is believed to have been the head of a well-organised workshop and the most prolific Florentine illuminator in the first half of the fourteenth century. Recent technical analysis, however, has convinced the present author that this perceived workshop was likely two (or more) separate shops (or compagni, that is a consortium of masters, discepoli, lavoranti), given the variation in painterly techniques and use of materials found in works produced between about c. 1300 and c. 1330 versus those from around 1330–50 (all of which can be grouped based on comparisons with several dated manuscripts or panel paintings).30 In relation to manuscript illumination, this notion of Pacino’s highly productive shop overshadows the intricacies of production and collaboration during the first half of the Trecento, since numerous

Pacino di Bonaguida’, presented at Revealing the Early Renaissance Symposium, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (23 March 2013) and in preparation for publication. 29 The polyptych with The Crucifixion and SS Nicholas, Bartholomew, Florentius, and Luke (Florence, Galleria dell’Accademia, 1890 n. 8568) bears the inscription SYMON [P]R[ES]B[I]TER FLOR[ENTI] FEC[IT] PI[N]GI H[OC] OP[US] A PACINO BONAGUIDE AN[N]O D[OMI]NI MCCCX … (the partial date is traditionally read as between 1315 and 1320). The two archival documents are ASFi, Archivio dei contratti di Firenze, rogiti di ser Gianni Ricevuti, protocollo dal 1298 al 1328 [20 February 1303] and ASFi, Archivio delle arte: matricole dell’arte de’ medici, speçiali e merciai, Cod. VIII. See Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance, pp. 285–303 (and additional bibliography). For a reconsideration of the polyptych’s date, see Keene, ‘Many Voices, Many Hands’. 30 Several scholars – from Boskovits to Labriola and others – have acknowledged a similar division of works by the so-called Pacinesque illuminators. For technical analysis of several Pacinesque works, see Yvonne Szafran and Nancy Turner, ‘Techniques of Pacino di Bonaguida, Illuminator and Panel Painter’, in Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance, pp. 335–55; Catherine Schmidt Patterson, Alan Phenix, and Karen Trentleman, ‘Scientific Investigation of Painting Practices and Materials in the Works of Pacino di Bonaguida’, in Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance, pp. 361–71; Roy S. Berns, ‘Image Simulation of the Blue Background in Pacino di Bonaguida’s Chiarito Tabernacle Using Color and Imaging Sciences’, in Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance, pp. 371–5; Stella Panayotova and Nancy Turner, ‘Cat. No. 78, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS McClean 201.4, The Last Communion of St Mary Madgalene’, in Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. Stella Panayotova, exh. cat. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (London, 2016), pp. 282–3; Nancy Turner, ‘“Incarnation” Illuminated: Painting the Flesh in Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts’, in Colour, pp. 271–9. See also Keene, ‘Pacino di Bonaguida: A Critical and Historical Reassessment’, and now Bryan C. Keene, ‘Pacino di Bonaguida (c. 1303–1347), the Master of the Dominican Effigies, and Associates: Miniatures from the Laudario of Sant’Agnese’, in The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts: A Handbook, ed. Stella Panayotova (Turnhout, 2020), pp. 326–36.

191

192

BRYAN C. KEENE

individuals often contributed to large-scale book projects, and indeed to panel paintings or fresco campaigns.31 The San Giorgio a Ruballa Gradual can be dated stylistically to the second half of the 1330s, based on comparison to other dated or dateable manuscripts, likely around the time or shortly after the renovations were underway in 1337.32 In this decade, several illuminators generally grouped under the aegis and orbit of Pacino di Bonaguida – together with renowned scribes such as Francesco di Ser Nardo da Barberino and the painter-illuminator known as the Master of the Dominican Effigies – produced over thirty decorated copies of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Francesca Pasut and others have convincingly provided art historical and palaeographic evidence for dating this corpus of Dante manuscripts to the mid-1330s, and the illuminations closely resemble those in the San Giorgio a Ruballa gradual, thereby allowing a date of c. 1335–40 for the choir book.33 Alessandro Conti attributed the gradual to a Pacinesque illuminator that he christened the Maestro di Piteglio, named for a two-volume gradual once possibly at the Pieve di Santa Maria Assunta in Piteglio (now in the Museo Parrochiale in Popiglio, MS 62), above Pistoia.34 Conti saw similarities between the narrative compositions (seven shared Christological scenes between the manuscripts),35 the bar and scrolling vines in the margins, and the simple orange frame around some of the historiated initials.36 The present author, however, has suggested 31 Keene, ‘Many Voices, Many Hands’. 32 The manuscript was restored in 1933 but several of the miniatures still suffer from damage from rubbing or as a result of humidity or touch. 33 Francesca Pasut, ‘Florentine Illuminations for Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Critical Assessment’, in Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance, ed. Sciacca, pp. 154–69, 206–15, cat. nos. 42–4; Sandro Bertelli, La tradizione della ‘Commedia’ dai manoscritti al testo. I: i codici trecenteschi (entro l’antica vulgata) conservati a Firenze (Florence, 2011), pp. 42, 84–6; Francesca Pasut, ‘“In the shadow of Traini?”: le illustrazioni di un codice dantesco a Berlino e altre considerazioni sulla miniatura pisana del Trecento’, Predella (Primitivi pisani fuori contesto) 27 (2010), 55–78; Francesca Pasut, ‘Pacino di Bonaguida e le miniature della Divina Commedia: un percorso tra codici poco noti’, in Da Giotto a Botticelli: pittura fiorentina tra Gotico e Rinascimento: atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Florence, Università degli Studi e Museo di San Marco, 2005, ed. Francesca Pasut and Johannes Tripps (Florence, 2008), pp. 41–62; Paolo Trovato, ‘Intorno agli stemmi della ‘Commedia’ (1924–2001)’, in Nuove prospettive sulla tradizione della ‘Commedia’: una guida filologico-linguistica al poema dantesco, ed. Elisabetta Tonello and Paolo Trovato (Florence, 2007), pp. 612–49; Francesca Pasut, ‘Codici miniati della Commedia a Firenze attorno al 1330: questioni attributive e di cronologia’, Rivista di studi Danteschi 6 (2006), 379–409; Francesca Pasut, ‘Il “Dante” illustrato di Petrarca: problemi di miniatura tra Firenze e Pisa alla metà del Trecento’, Studi Petrarcheschi 19 (2006), 115–47; Marisa Boschi Rotiroti, Codicologia trecentesca della ‘Commedia’: entro e oltre l’antica vulgata (Rome, 2004), pp. 77–88. 34 Alessandro Conti, I dintorni di Firenze: arte, storia, paesaggio (Florence, 1983), p. 148. 35 The scenes that Conti noted are: David Lifting up his Soul to God the Father; The Nativity; The Adoration of the Magi; The Resurrection; The Ascension; The Elevation of the Host; The Assumption of the Virgin; and All Saints. 36 The eleven historiated initials in the San Giorgio a Ruballa gradual are found on: fol. 3r – Initial A: David Lifting up his Soul to God the Father [Dominica I de Adventus]: Ad

THE CASE OF BERNARDO DADDI AND PACINO DI BONAGUIDA

elsewhere together with Getty Museum manuscripts conservator Nancy Turner that the green pigment – which has become fugitive over time – used for trees, foliate designs, and draperies in the Popiglio manuscript is indicative of a specific Pacinesque hand who often frames miniatures with silhouetted and compartmentalised diamonds when collaborating with other illuminators (as in the Laudario of Sant’Agnese or the fivevolume Impruneta Antiphonary, both of which can be dated stylistically to about 1340).37 Neither this green nor this frame style are present in the San Giorgio a Ruballa Gradual,38 which exhibits a uniform appearance in style rightly connected by Conti to the San Remigio Antiphonary but also to one volume of the Santa Maria del Carmine Graduals (Museo di San Marco, Cod. 570 (D)). The gradual’s rubrics have been entirely overlooked in scholarship, primarily because the manuscript has not been studied in person in several decades.39 The instructions contained within the rubrics provide te levavi; fol. 20r – Initial P: The Nativity, In die ad missam introitus: Puer natus est; fol. 27v – Initial E: The Adoration of the Magi, In Epiphania Domini: Ecce advenit dominator Dominus; fol. 119r – Initial R: The Resurrection, Dominica Sancte Resurrectionis Introitus: Resurrexi et adhuc tecum sum; fol. 136r – Initial V: The Ascension, In vigilia ascensionis: Viri galilei quid admiramini; fol. 140r – Initial S: Pentecost [In Festo Pentecoste]: Spiritus Domini replevit; fol. 148 – Initial C: The Elevation of the Host, Feria Va de corpore Christi introitus: Cibavit eos ex adipe; fol. 185v – Initial D: Saint George and the Dragon, In Sancti Georgis martiris introitus: Dei miles egregious; fol. 191 – Initial D: Saint John the Baptist, In die ad missam introitus: De ventre matris; fol. 197v – Initial G: The Assumption of the Virgin [In Assumptione Beata Mariae Virginis]: Gaudeamus omnes in Domino; fol. 204 – Initial G: All Saints, In die ad missam introitus: Gaudeamus omnes in Domino. 37 Keene and Turner, ‘The Impruneta Antiphonary’; Bryan C. Keene, ‘A Framework for Viewing Trecento Italian Workshop Practices: The Saint Francis Cycle at Assisi and Manuscript Illumination’, in Encountering the Renaissance: Celebrating Gary Radke and 50 Years of the Syracuse University Graduate Program in Renaissance Art, ed. Molly Bourne and Victor Coonin (Ramsey, NJ, 2016), pp. 353–64; Keene, ‘Pacino di Bonaguida: A Critical and Historical Reassessment’; Keene, ‘Pacino di Bonaguida (c. 1303–1347), the Master of the Dominican Effigies’. 38 When painting the trees in The Resurrection initial on fol. 119r of the San Giorgio a Ruballa Gradual, the illuminator laid a dark green-black ground and applied lighter green strokes for the leaves. A similar approach was used in the Laudario of Sant’Agnese and the Impruneta Antiphonary by a Pacinesque illuminator whose miniatures are framed with a string of diamonds in these and other collaborative commissions. This artist also does not use the chemically produced mosaic gold pigment, more often utilised for garments and haloes by the Pacinesque hand who worked with the now-fugitive greens and who framed illuminations with silhouetted and compartmentalised diamonds. 39 As indicated by the register of readers at the church of San Giorgio a Ruballa. The rubrics closely mirror those in a gradual by the same shop now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (01.6454). Both manuscripts mention fratres, sacerdotes, and ministris, as well as including notes about candles and the position of the celebrant on the altar. The litany of saints in both manuscripts is identical, except for the inclusion of Saint Raphael in the San Giorgio a Ruballa gradual. Although the Boston gradual does not provide any additional clues for its early provenance – despite the fact that previous scholars misread the names of SS Augustine and Zenobius in the litany as Augustinus Çenobi and thus suggested an Augustinian provenance – one surmises that it was made for monastic use or perhaps for a parish church under the oversight of a monastic site (as is the case at San Giorgio a Ruballa). For more on the Boston gradual, see the catalogue entry on

193

194

BRYAN C. KEENE

a glimpse into the book’s use and perhaps the make-up and organisation of the ecclesiastical choirs in the broader pieve of Antella near Florence.40 On fol. CXIIII, for example, the rubric specifies that two choirs alternate singing the Agios Theos, sanctus Deus chant (Dein[de] chori alt[er]nati respo[n]dent). Next, the first choir begins in unison singing the refrain (Ita t[ame]n q[uo]d primus chor[us] semp[er] incipit). Then two brothers of the second choir sing the versicle Quid ultra debui facere following the rubric Postea duo f[rat]res de secondo choro cantat[e]. V[ersus]. On folio CXXV, the rubric indicates that prior to the Kyrie, sacerdotes and ministris begin to hear confession ‘in the usual place’ (in loco consueto) and that they then ascend the altar (et ascendit postuno dum ad altare).41 The rubric on folio CXXVI indicates singing in choro, in the choir or as a choir. Candles are also mentioned in various rubrics, in relation to the movements of priests, ministers, and choir members and the altar. The presence of two choirs also suggests the possibility that additional choir books once existed. Both choirs may have been able to sing from a single volume, but the gradual in question is rather small and can best be viewed by a small group of singers (although it should be pointed out that at this time, music and liturgy were learned by heart and thus the choir book also functioned as a record of practice). The historiated initial C on folio 148 for the Feast of Corpus Domini (Fig. 10.3) contains a scene of the medieval altar based on a standardised image type utilised elsewhere by this illuminator workshop: a tonsured

the manuscript by Bryan C. Keene in Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, William P. Stoneman, Anne-Marie Eze, Lisa Fagin Davis, and Nancy Netzer (Chicago, 2016), pp. 184–5. The litany in the San Giorgio a Ruballa gradual is found on fols. 123v–124r and can be transcribed following the spelling and abbreviations in the manuscript, shown in brackets: S[an]c[t]a Maria ora pro nob[is]. S[an]c[t]a Dei / genitris ora pro nob[is]. S[an]c[t]a Vi[r]go / virginu[m] ora pro nob[is]. S[an]c[t]e Micha/el ora pro nob[is]. S[an]c[t]e Gabriel or[a] p[ro] / nob[is]. S[an]c[t]e Raphael ora pro nob[is]. / Om[ne]s sancti beatorum Sp[irit]uum ordines or[an]t p[ro] n[o]b[is]. / S[an]c[t]e Ioh[an]es Baptista ora pro nobis. / Om[ne]s s[an]c[t]i p[at]riarche et p[ro]ph[et]e orate pro nob[is]. / S[an]c[t]e Petre ora pro nob[is]. S[an]c[t]e Paule ora p[ro] n[obis]. / S[an]c[t]e Joh[n]es or[a]. Om[ne]s s[ancti], ap[ostoli], et eva[ng]eli or[a]t[e] p[ro] n[obis]. / S[an]c[t]e Stephane ora p[ro] nob[is]. S[an]c[t]e Laure[n]ti or[a]. / S[an]c[t]e Vi[n]ce[n]ti or[a]. Om[ne]s s[an]c[t]i martires, or[a]t[e] p[ro nobis.] / S[an]c[t]e Gregori ora p[ro] nob[is]. S[an]c[t]e Ma[r]tine or[a]. / S[an]c[t]e Augustine ora p[ro nobis]. S[an]c[t]e Çenobi or[a]. / S[an]c[t]e Nicholae or[a]. Om[ne]s S[an]c[t]i confessores or[ate]. / S[an]c[t]a Maria Magdalena or[a]. S[an]c[t]a Agnes / or[a]. S[an]c[t]a Agatha or[a]. Om[ne]s s[an]c[t]i et s[an]c[t]e dei / orat[e]. 40 For an important discussion about the use of choir books in the ecclesia fratrum up to 1300, see Joanna Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches: Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New Haven and London, 2013), pp. 119–37. For a recent assessment of artistic output at the oratory of Santa Caterina all’Antella, specifically those followers inspired by Bernardo Daddi, the Master of the Dominican Effigies, and Orcagna, see L’Oratorio di Santa Caterina all’Antella e i suoi pittori, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2009). 41 Quo incepto sacerdos de vestiario cum ministris rediens facit confessione debitam in loco consueto et ascendit postuno dum ad altare.

195

THE CASE OF BERNARDO DADDI AND PACINO DI BONAGUIDA

FIG. 10.3  PACINO DI BONAGUIDA (ATTR.), INITIAL C: THE ELEVATION OF THE HOST, FROM GRADUAL (FOL. 148), C. 1335–40, OSTERIA NUOVA DI BAGNO A RIPOLI, CHURCH OF SAN GIORGIO A RUBALLA. PHOTO BY AUTHOR, WITH GENEROUS PERMISSION FROM THE SOPRINTENDENZA AND ARCIDIOCESI DI FIRENZE.

celebrant wearing a chasuble raises the host while another tonsured male attendant holds a candle to balance the candlestick at the opposite end of the altar table (adorned with a golden chalice and service book, covered by a white and blue striped cloth, and with a patterned textile as an altar frontal). The remaining historiated initials also derive from stock imagery, except for the one showing Saint George and the dragon (Plate XIV), which Richard Offner suggested was inspired by the sculpted relief above the Porta di San Giorgio in Florence.42 In sum, the present gradual was a 42 Richard Offner with Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine

196

BRYAN C. KEENE

fairly modest commission given to the most active workshop in Florence at the time and it would have aided in activating spiritual devotion at San Giorgio a Ruballa, specifically in relation to the surrounding altarpieces and liturgical furnishings.

BERNARDO DADDI AND PAINTERS OF MANUSCRIPTS: THE NEXUS OF FLORENTINE WORKSHOPS The relationship between Bernardo Daddi and manuscript illumination has been suggested and hinted at for some time, including seminal discussions by Richard Offner, who insisted that the artist’s ‘lyricism suited a miniature rather than a monumental Giottesque mode’ and that his style embodied a so-called miniaturist tendency in painting (related to small-scale narrative scenes found on monumental crucifixes, vita panels, and indeed in manuscripts).43 Miklós Boskovits, Cristina De Benedictis, Francesca Pasut, Ada Labriola, Gaudenz Freuler, and others have drawn comparisons between Daddi’s many predella panels and devotional diptychs or triptychs and manuscript illuminator workshops.44 Most references to Daddi’s influence on manuscript illuminators examine how narrative scenes unfold (often with stock figures) and with regards to depicting the human figure with monumentality on a small scale. What follows is an assessment of a few of these illuminators who operated in Daddi’s orbit, with the aim of demonstrating the innovations and individuality of painters of manuscripts, who did not simply routinely copy compositions by Daddi, as is often discussed. One contentious scholarly conundrum relates to an illuminator known as the Maestro Daddesco, christened by Mario Salmi.45 This association,

Painting, Sect. 3, VI, Close Following of the S. Cecilia Master (New York, 1956), p. 236 n. 8. 43 Offner, Corpus, Sect. 3, III, The Works of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1930), pp. iii–v; Offner, Corpus, Sect. 3, V, Master of San Martino alla Palma, Assistant of Daddi, Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece (New York, 1947), pp. i–iv, 55–63; Offner, Corpus, Sect. 3, VIII, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1958), pp. iv–xx. 44 Richard Offner with Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Sect. 3, V, Bernardo Daddi and his Circle, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Mina Gregori (Florence, 2001), pp. 10–12; Cristina De Benedictis, ‘Postille daddesche’, in Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Ugo Procacci, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi Duprè dal Poggetto and Paolo dal Poggetto (Milan, 1977), I, pp. 146–51; Francesca Pasut, ‘Il “Dante” illustrato di Petrarca’; Ada Labriola, ‘Alcune proposte per la miniature fiorentina del Trecento’, Arte Cristiana 93 (2005), 14–26; Ada Labriola, ‘Pacino di Bonaguida’, in Dizionario biografico dei miniatori italiani. Secoli IX–XVI, ed. Milvia Bollati (Milan, 2004), pp. 841–3; Gaudenz Freuler, ‘Qualche riflessione sulla miniature fiorentina della seconda metà del Trecento’, in L’eredità di Giotto, ed. Tartuferi, pp. 77–85, 214–23; Gaudenz Freuler, Italian Miniatures from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century (Milan, 2012), pp. 532–61; Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance. 45 Mario Salmi, ‘La miniatura fiorentina medioevale’, Accademie e biblioteche d’Italia 20 (1952), 8–23.

THE CASE OF BERNARDO DADDI AND PACINO DI BONAGUIDA

however, is fraught with proponents and opponents in current scholarship. Some have accepted Salmi’s notion that the Maestro Daddesco was inspired or influenced by Daddi while Giuletta Chelazzi Dini and Miklós Boskovits contend that the anonymous artist preceded Daddi, considering the date of 1315 in a colophon from one volume of a gradual made for the Badia a Settimo and the first signed work by Daddi (1328 in the Gallerie degli Uffizi). Thus the Maestro Pre-Daddesco, coined by Chelazzi Dini, is at times the preferred sobriquet for this artist. Problematic art historical naming conventions aside, the present author supports Marica Tacconi’s assessment that the Maestro Daddesco’s involvement in the Badia a Settimo choir books likely coincided with or slightly preceded the painterilluminator’s commission for service books for Florence Cathedral, making the artist a clear contemporary of Daddi and recipient of patronage for several of the same religious institutions.46 Another painter-illuminator often discussed in relation to Bernardo Daddi is the Master of the Dominican Effigies, the eponymous artist of a panel showing Christ and the Virgin Enthroned, Attended by Seventeen Dominican Saints and Beati housed in a private monastic chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence and dated c. 1336.47 Following a standard Tuscan workshop practice, the Master of the Dominican Effigies applied a metal punch around the inner contour of the painting’s engaged frame.48 The specific motif used reveals the artistic sphere in which this master operated. Skaug’s studies on punch work indicate that these particular punches were most often used by Bernardo Daddi and his shop.49 According to Skaug, punch tools could be localised within an individual workshop but they could also be lent to or exchanged with other artists, either to other masters when establishing a joint partnership – with a so-called compagno (or partner) – or to itinerant day labourers, or lavoranti.50 Considering the Master of the Dominican Effigies as an 46 Giuseppe Bertelli first published the Badia a Settimo choir books in 1970 with an attribution to the Maestro Daddesco, and in the over four decades since that time, scholars have grappled with how best to assess the career and style of Salmi’s so-called Maestro Daddesco in relation to the books produced for this Cistercian church in the environs of Florence and a relatively small group of additional books for sacred services. For the Maestro Daddesco’s commission for Florence Cathedral, see Marica Tacconi, ‘The Maestro Daddesco and the Cathedral of Florence: A New Manuscript’, The Burlington Magazine 142 (2000), 165–70. For a new look at the Maestro Daddesco, see Keene, ‘Many Voices, Many Hands’; Keene, ‘Pacino di Bonaguida: A Critical and Historical Reassessment’; Bryan C. Keene, ‘Maestro Daddesco (cat. no. 10)’, in The Burke Collection, pp. 116–25. 47 See Laurence B. Kanter, ‘Maestro delle Effigie Domenicane’, in Dizionario Biografico dei miniatori Italiani, pp. 498–500. For recent and additional bibliography, see Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance, pp. 52–3, cat. no. 9, entry by Alexandra Suda, and pp. 54–6, cat. no. 10, entry by Christine Sciacca; Keene, ‘Pacino di Bonaguida: A Critical and Historical Reassessment’; Bryan C. Keene, ‘Master of the Dominican Effigies (cat. no. 9)’, in The Burke Collection, pp. 104–15. 48 See Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance, pp. 54–7, no. 10. 49 See Skaug, Punch Marks, I, pp. 127–30, 5.6; II, 5.6. 50 See Skaug, Punch Marks, and Erling Skaug, Giotto and the Flood of Florence in 1333: A

197

198

BRYAN C. KEENE

itinerant lavorante is useful, especially since the artist appears to have occasionally borrowed from Daddi in the 1330s and early 1340s and by the late 1340s to have used Taddeo Gaddi’s punches (for example The Courtauld Gallery polyptych with The Virgin and Child with Saints, dated 1345, is attributed to the Master of the Dominican Effigies and includes two of Gaddi’s punches and four unique to the anonymous artist).51 The numerous choir books produced by the Master of the Dominican Effigies often feature a miniature showing The Assumption of the Virgin (Fig. 10.4), in which Mary lowers her girdle to Saint Thomas the Apostle, the overall composition of which appears to derive from Daddi’s altarpiece (1337–38) for the Cappella della Sacra Cintola in Prato’s Duomo (Fig. 10.5).52 The Master of the Dominican Effigies was therefore the closest maestro daddesco, if in proximity and collaboration alone, yet the painter-illuminator had a unique style for rendering faces with compact brushstrokes, for creating three-dimensional architectural space with almost mathematical precision, and for carefully organising tightly packed compositions.

Study in Catastrophism, Guild Organization, and Art Technology (Florence, 2013). 51 See Skaug, Punch Marks, I, p. 130; II, 5.6. The Master of the Dominican Effigies and Bernardo Daddi also share similar designs for textile patterns, as explored by Brigitte Klesse, Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), p. 213 no. 89. The fact that the Master of the Dominican Effigies borrowed Taddeo Gaddi’s punches is significant if one considers the hitherto unacknowledged phenomenon that the two artists produced commissions in the environs of the Tuscan town of Poppi around 1340. Here, Taddeo Gaddi frescoed a room in the Palazzo Pubblico with scenes from the life of Saint John, while the Master of the Dominican Effigies illuminated a gradual for the nearby Vallombrosan abbey of San Fedele a Strumi. Taddeo Gaddi modelled his scenes on Giotto’s frescoes in the Peruzzi Chapel at the church of Santa Croce in Florence, especially for those of the Life of Saint John the Evangelist. See Alessandro Brezzi, Gli affreschi di Taddeo Gaddi nel Castello dei Conti Guidi di Poppi: le storie della Vergine, di San Giovanni Evangelista, e di San Giovanni Battista (Poppi, 1991). The miniatures in the San Fedele a Strumi choir book (Poppi, Biblioteca Comunale, Cod. I) are at times attributed to Jacopo del Casentino, an artist whose oeuvre as an illuminator is often conflated or confused with the Master of the Dominican Effigies. For a discussion about Jacopo del Casentino with reference to the Master of the Dominican Effigies, see Daniela Parenti and Sara Ragazzini, Jacopo del Casentino e la pittura a Pratovecchio nel secolo di Giotto (Florence, 2014); Richard Offner, with Karla Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Sect. 3, II, The Fourteenth Century: Elder Contemporaries of Bernardo Daddi, ed. Miklós Boskovits, with Mina Gregori (Florence, 1987), pp. 308–13; Keene, ‘A Framework for Viewing Trecento Italian Workshop Practices’. 52 See, for example, the antiphonaries from Impruneta (Museo del Tesoro, Cod. VI, fol. 158) and Poppi (Biblioteca Comunale, Cod. I, fol. 114v). Richard Offner cites documents in the Archivio Storico Pratese that refer to payments by the Comune for a ‘tabula pro altari Cinguili Beate Marie’ in 1337–38, certainly referring to Daddi’s altarpiece. The pinnacle is preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Robert Lehman Collection, 1975.1.58) and the predella panels are located in the Museo Civico in Prato (no. 5). See Offner, Corpus, Sect. 3, VIII, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1958), p. 202 and Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance, pp. 326–33, cat. no. 55, entry by Bryan C. Keene.

FIG. 10.4  MASTER OF THE DOMINICAN EFFIGIES, INITIAL V: THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN, FROM ANTIPHONARY (FOL. 158), C. 1335–40, MUSEO DEL TESORO DI SANTA MARIA DELL’IMPRUNETA. PHOTO BY AUTHOR, WITH GENEROUS PERMISSION FROM THE SOPRINTENDENZA AND ARCIDIOCESI DI FIRENZE.

200

BRYAN C. KEENE

FIG. 10.5  BERNARDO DADDI, THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN. TEMPERA AND GOLD ON PANEL, C. 1337–38, THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK, ROBERT LEHMAN COLLECTION, INV. NO. 1975.1.58. PHOTO: © THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART.

ARTISTIC NETWORKS: FINAL THOUGHTS The vast output of large polyptychs and small-scale devotional paintings by Daddi’s workshop in Florence in the first half of the fourteenth century (including the signed and dated 1338 triptych at The Courtauld Gallery) is perhaps only rivalled by the numerous illuminated liturgical and literary manuscripts associated with artists grouped under the aegis of Pacino di Bonaguida. Objects produced by both shops could be found at nearly every major religious house or civic monument in the city, including the churches of Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, and Santa Maria del Carmine, as well as Orsanmichele (in the last three instances with the Master of the Dominican Effigies, Pacino’s frequent collaborator). Beyond Florence, Daddi and Pacinesque artists provided commissions for churches in Prato, Impruneta, and Bagno a Ripoli, among others. Additionally, Pacino’s orbit of collaborators also included the Maestro Daddesco and the

THE CASE OF BERNARDO DADDI AND PACINO DI BONAGUIDA

Master of the Antiphonary of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas, and these shops also fulfilled commissions for liturgical manuscripts destined to be used in the presence of altarpieces by Daddi and Taddeo Gaddi, respectively (the Duomo in Florence and the Church of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas in Pistoia). The 1330s and 1340s were particularly fruitful decades for this network of painter-illuminators, confirming Boskovits’s assertion that these workshops were concerned with regulating competition following Giotto’s death and thus developed new means of collaboration (which the present author sees as including the exchange of punches, the borrowing of stock poses likely from model books, or by forming compagnie that employed lavoranti as needed). The consortium of artists involved exchanged metal punches and shared designs for textiles simulated on altarpieces and in liturgical manuscripts over a span of at least two decades (through the 1330s and ’40s), as evidenced by stylistic analysis of a handful of datable objects by both shops. These numerous surviving examples in both media at the basilicas or parish churches just mentioned suggest that there was a great demand at the time for the complementary products that each shop provided, but synchronic relationships between the commissions by each atelier are not always possible given the limited number of dated objects. There may be numerous reasons why patrons gravitated towards these artists at this moment. These might include, on the one hand, the general demand for devotional objects in the wake of the flood of 1333, as posited by Erling Skaug, and on the other hand the competitive drive fuelled by other shops (some Florentine and others arriving from elsewhere, like Siena or Pisa), based on Richard Goldthwaite’s characterisation of Florentine artistic production.53 To demonstrate the latter point, one might consider a recently rediscovered volume of a gradual commissioned for the church of San Lorenzo in Florence (now New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 549). Pia Palladino has noted that a Pacinesque illuminator began the commission around 1340 (compared stylistically with other contemporaneous, dated Pacinesque manuscripts); an unidentified follower of Bernardo Daddi appears to have continued the unfinished project around 1350; and finally, the Sienese illuminator Lippo Vanni completed this and related volumes between 1363 and 1370.54 Numerous additional choir books begun by the Pacinesque shop were completed or added to in the second half of the fourteenth century, some 53 Skaug, Giotto and the Flood of Florence in 1333; Richard Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History (Baltimore, MD, 1982). 54 The related volumes feature illuminations by the Pacinesque hand and by Lippo Vanni, and these are still housed in the Archivio del Capitolo di San Lorenzo (Cor. E and Cor. F). It is clear to the present author that Lippo Vanni adapted framing conventions and border designs from the Pacinesque shop. See Pia Palladino’s entry in Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance, pp. 136–9, no. 31. See also Laura Alidori Battaglia and Marco Battaglia, ‘The Liturgical Manuscripts of San Lorenzo before the Medici Patronage: Artists, Scribes, and Patrons’, in San Lorenzo: A Florentine Church, ed. R.W. Gaston and Louis A. Waldman (Florence, 2017), pp. 155–83.

201

202

BRYAN C. KEENE

by itinerant Pisan artists, others by Sienese illuminators (Lippo included), and still others by the next great school of illuminators: the Santa Maria degli Angeli scriptorium. At least during the first half of the Trecento, then, the faithful throughout the Florentine contado could worship in the presence of sacred objects created by this nexus of workshops, and despite its location in the countryside, the church of San Giorgio a Ruballa would have been especially well furnished with an impressive suite of paintings on panel and parchment.

PATTERNS OF HOLINESS: A VIRGIN LACTANS IN A FRANCISCAN CONTEXT BETH WILLIAMSON

T

he Detroit Institute of Arts houses a small wooden panel (13 × 9.2 × 1.6 cm), originally one half of a fourteenth-century Italian reliquary diptych (Plate XV). The gilt wooden frame encloses a rectangular piece of verre églomisé, or gilded glass, which depicts the Virgin Mary, enthroned, and nursing the Christ Child on her knee. Surrounding this central image of the Virgin Lactans are painted decorative leaf forms, in gold, on red or black backgrounds. In between these leaf forms are clear glass windows, through which sections of parchment are visible behind. There are small openings in the parchments themselves, which reveal tiny relic fragments underneath. The relics are accompanied by identifying texts written in red ink on the relevant parchment.1 The object entered the DIA collection in 1994, having been purchased at auction in that year, and remains almost completely unpublished, save for the sale catalogue of the dealer from which the Detroit Institute of Art acquired the piece, and a brief notice in the DIA Views magazine in December 1994 following its acquisition.2 The Detroit reliquary panel is not featured in any of the main published studies on gilded glass reliquaries, nor in studies of gilded glass more widely.3 It is mentioned in an unpublished 2005 Masters dissertation from The Courtauld Institute by Irene Galandra (and supervised by Joanna Cannon),4 but otherwise it has received almost no scholarly attention. This essay is offered to Joanna – a wonderful teacher, mentor, and friend – with thanks, admiration, and love. 1 These are often known by the French term authentiques, or the Latin term cedulae. 2 DIA Views magazine, December 1994, back cover. 3 See, for example, Silvana Pettenati, I vetri dorati graffiti e i vetri dipinti (Turin, 1978). 4 Maria Irene Galandra, ‘A Fourteenth-Century Reliquary Diptych from Volterra:

11

204

BETH WILLIAMSON

The Detroit gilded glass offers a suitable topic for a Festschrift essay for Joanna Cannon, for reasons pertinent both to Joanna’s own interests and to my own development as an academic researcher. First, it presents the opportunity for a close study of an individual object, with particular attention both to its physical and material characteristics, and also to its iconographical particularities: these are both key interests in Joanna’s work. Secondly, many of the surviving examples of gilded glass panels of this period seem to have been produced for use in a Franciscan context. Some of them are still in locations associated with the Franciscan Order, or have a secure Franciscan provenance.5 Joanna Cannon is one of the foremost scholars of the art of the mendicant orders, and although her work is particularly associated with the Dominican Order, she has also published important studies on material related to the other mendicant orders, and has helped enormously to expand the field of scholarly interest around the connections between the mendicant orders and early Italian art more generally. Finally, in terms of my own research interests, both my MA dissertation and my PhD dissertation (each carried out under Joanna’s supervision) dealt with the iconography of the Virgin Lactans.6 It is therefore a pleasure to return to this type of image for a study in Joanna’s honour. In this essay, then, I will investigate the Detroit panel through a series of related lenses: first, I will consider its context by looking at the wider group of surviving gilded glass reliquary diptychs, and, in doing so, consider the possible date, stylistic affinities, and localization of the Detroit panel; secondly, I will consider the historical context of these diptychs, and the selection and placement of relics within them; thirdly, I will examine the specific array of relics in the Detroit panel and what it can tell us about the object’s likely provenance; finally, I will focus on the Detroit panel’s depiction of the Virgin Lactans, an image type which is unusual both within the group of gilded glass reliquary diptychs, and also within the context of Franciscan art more generally. In so doing I will hope to provide some further context for this understudied object, and some avenues for further research.

Setting and Technique in the Context of Contemporary Gilded Glass’, unpublished MA dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2005. 5 Dillian Gordon, ‘The Mass Production of Franciscan Piety: Another Look at Some Umbrian verres eglomisés’, Apollo 140 (1994), 33–42, at p. 33. 6 Beth Jackson, ‘The Madonna Lactans: A Reappraisal’, unpublished MA dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1992; Beth Williamson, ‘The Virgin Lactans and the Madonna of Humility: Image and Devotion in Italy, Metz and Avignon in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, unpublished PhD Dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1996.

A VIRGIN LACTANS IN A FRANCISCAN CONTE XT

GILDED GLASS RELIQUARY DIPTYCHS: STYLE, DATE, AND ATTRIBUTION It is noted in many studies that the production of gilded glass in medieval Italy was overwhelmingly an Umbrian phenomenon.7 Many of the gilded glass reliquaries that have been examined so far have been localized to Umbria, and have been dated to the early to mid fourteenth century.8 The technique of gilded glass is described by Cennino Cennini, the Florentine artist who wrote the Craftsman’s Handbook in the 1390s.9 In short, the technique consists of scratching a design in gold leaf on the reverse of a piece of glass. Cennino advises the artist to apply a leaf of heavy dull gold to the back of a prepared piece of glass. Having laid the glass on a black cloth, the artist should then draw, using a finely pointed needle, creating different levels of shadow by the different depths of the needle’s penetration through the gold: the deepest shadows are made by piercing through the gold to the glass, and less deep shadows by not allowing the needle to pierce so far. After the design is finished, the remainder of the gold is rubbed away to create the background, which is then painted in with a coloured or black paint pigment in oil. Cennino describes this technique as being ‘for the embellishment of holy reliquaries’, suggesting that it was particularly known in this context in fourteenth-century Italy.10 There survive over thirty gilded glass reliquary diptychs, or wings of diptychs, triptychs, or fragments that were very probably from diptychs.11 Some of these are in museum collections in Europe, North America, and Australia, but several are still in Franciscan possession, at San Francesco and Santa Chiara in Assisi, and at Santa Maria degli Angeli just outside Assisi. Others have a demonstrable Franciscan provenance, having been

7 The main published studies on gilded glass are: Emma Zocca, ‘Vetri umbri dorati e graffiti’, L’Arte 10 (1939), 174–84; Georg Swarzenski, ‘The Localization of Medieval Verre Eglomisé in the Walters Collection’, Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 3 (1940), 54–68; Irene Hueck, ‘Ein umbrisches Reliquiar im Kunstgewerbemuseum Schloss Köpenick’, Forschungen und Berichte. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 31 (1991), 183–8; Gordon, ‘The Mass Production of Franciscan Piety’, based upon Gordon’s unpublished doctoral dissertation: ‘Art in Umbria c. 1250–c. 1350’, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1979, Chapter IX, ‘Umbrian Gilded Glasses’; Cristina De Benedictis, Devozione e produzione artistica in Umbria: vetri dorati dipinti e graffiti del XIV e XV secolo (Florence, 2010). 8 Although Swarzenski determined that several of the surviving examples of verre églomisé known to him were localizable to Northern Italy, he nonetheless stated that ‘by far the greater part of all the églomisé panels preserved originated in the district south of the Appenines. Contrary to what might be expected, the great center here was not somewhere in Tuscany, such as Florence or Siena, but in Umbria.’ Swarzenski, ‘The Localization of Medieval Verre Eglomisé’, p. 63. Hueck, Gordon, and De Benedictis all agreed on the importance of Umbria in the production of these gilded glass reliquaries. 9 Cennino d’Andrea Cennini, The Craftsman’s Handbook: ‘Il libro dell’arte’, trans. Daniel V. Thompson (New York, 1954), pp. 112–14. 10 Cennino, The Craftsman’s Handbook, p. 112. 11 De Benedictis, Devozione e produzione artistica. The Detroit panel, which is the subject of this essay, is not featured in De Benedictis’s study.

205

206

BETH WILLIAMSON

moved to museums directly from Franciscan convents.12 Still others whose provenance is less clear nonetheless have an obvious Franciscan connection because of their inclusion of images and/or relics of saints that were of particular interest to the Franciscan Order. The surviving reliquary diptychs have been arranged by various art historians into a number of stylistic groups. One of the tasks in analysing the Detroit Virgin Lactans is to decide where it fits stylistically in relation to the other surviving examples. In 1940 Georg Swarzenski grouped together five reliquary diptychs then in Baltimore,13 New York (Fig. 11.1),14 Volterra (current location unknown),15 Vienna (a single wing),16 and London (now Melbourne),17 which he said were ‘almost identical’.18 He concluded that at that point it had not been possible to link the group with any particular school or master, but only to see a general character in the group that localized them to a region between Umbria and the Adriatic coast, in the southern Marches or the Abruzzi. He dated all the reliquaries in this group to about 1400. Other scholars have subsequently re-localized and re-dated these reliquaries. In 1982 Cristina De Benedictis associated two gilded glass panels from Santa Chiara that once formed a diptych19 with some items of gilded glass still in the Umbrian town of Todi. These pieces in Todi seem to correspond with items mentioned in an inventory of 1327 of the possessions of the Franciscan house of San Fortunato in that town.20 They were listed in the inventory as having been made by one ‘Petrus Teutonicus’. Pietro Teutonico, to give him his Italian name, was a German friar originally from Freiburg, who entered into the community at San Francesco in Assisi 12 Gordon, ‘The Mass Production of Franciscan Piety’, p. 33. 13 Walters Art Museum, inv. no. 46.2. https://art.thewalters.org/detail/40815/diptychreliquary-the-crucifixion-and-the-nativity/ (accessed 23 August 2021). 14 Metropolitan Museum, inv. no. 17.190.982. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/ search/464781 (accessed 23 August 2021). 15 Seen in the Duomo, ‘preserved in a later triptych with paintings of the Umbro-Tuscan school, c. 1500’: Swarzenski, ‘The Localization of Medieval Verre Eglomisé’, p. 66. This diptych was stolen from the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Volterra in 1984. See De Benedictis, Devozione e produzione artistica, p. 25. 16 Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. no. P 154. 17 Given by Swarzenski as ‘London, formerly Henry Oppenheimer Collection, sold at Christie’s, 1936’. Now Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, Felton Bequest, 1936, inv. no. 3651-D3, see Hugh Hudson, ‘From Assisi to Melbourne: Friar Pietro Teutonico’s Nativity; Crucifixion Reliquary Diptych in the National Gallery of Victoria’, in Interpreting Francis and Clare of Assisi from the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Constant J. Mews and Claire Renkin (Mulgrave, N.S.W., 2010), pp. 242–54, and illustrations on pp. 180–1. 18 Swarzenski, ‘The Localization of Medieval Verre Eglomisé’, p. 66. 19 These are now separated and mounted on stems with knops, like chalices or monstrances. 20 Cristina De Benedictis, ‘I codici miniati del convento di S. Fortunato di Todi e i cardinali Bentivenga e Matteo d’Aquasparta’, in Francesco d’Assisi: Storia e Arte, Documenti e Archivi. Codici e Biblioteche. Miniature, ed. Roberto Rusconi, exh. cat. Palazzo Comunale, Perugia; Palazzo Comunale, Todi; Palazzo Trinci, Foligno (Milan, 1982), 97–203. Gordon had, herself, also made this suggestion in her unpublished PhD of 1979.

A VIRGIN LACTANS IN A FRANCISCAN CONTE XT

FIG. 11.1  PIETRO TEUTONICO, RELIQUARY DIPTYCH. GILDED GLASS, GILDED AND PAINTED WOOD, 17.3 × 11.2 CM (EACH WING), 1320s(?), THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK, 17.980.982. PHOTO: © THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART.

in 1288, and is documented there until 1331.21 The Todi documentation therefore offers important evidence not only for the date but also the attribution of the corpus. In 1991 Irene Hueck mentioned the Baltimore diptych in a study that focused primarily upon the two roundels of gilded glass – one depicting a Virgin and Child, the other a Crucifixion – that are now mounted in a later gilded ostensory in the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin.22 She linked the Baltimore reliquary diptych, along with the other members of Swarzenski’s group, with an additional diptych in Florence,23 and with other pieces of gilded glass and wings of diptychs.24 Hueck did 21 De Benedictis, ‘I codici’, pp. 202–3. 22 Inv. no. F. 2039. Hueck, ‘Ein umbrisches Reliquiar’. 23 Museo Nazionale del Bargello, inv. no. 45v. 24 These include: a tabernacle–reliquary in Gubbio comprising a painted wooden triptych into which four small gilded glass panels have been inserted; two gilded glass panels in

207

208

BETH WILLIAMSON

not mention the diptych in Volterra, which Swarzenski had included in his original group of five. For Hueck the diptychs in Swarzenski’s original group, plus her additions, were to be seen as productions of the first half of the fourteenth century, and Umbrian.25 Hueck saw the Santa Chiara panels as stylistically related to the reliquaries in Baltimore, Florence, Melbourne, New York, and Vienna. Given the affinities between the Santa Chiara panels and the gilded glass documented in Todi in 1327, Hueck surmised that all these reliquaries could be dated around the start of the second quarter of the fourteenth century. Hueck further pinpointed a terminus post quem of 1317 since, as she noted, many of them contain a relic of Saint Louis of Toulouse (d. 1297), and should therefore be dated after his canonization in 1317. She suggested that this group of reliquaries might have been created as part of a single campaign to supply all the major houses of the Franciscan Order with a set of relics, including a relic of their new saint, in order to cement and spread his cult.26 Hueck designated these reliquaries the ‘Ludowicus Group’ because of the peculiarity of the spelling of Saint Louis’s Latin name in the texts labelling the relics. In this group of reliquaries ‘Ludovicus’, is written ‘Ludowicus’, and ‘Evangelista’ is written ‘Ewangelista’, which, Hueck suggested, might indicate a German scribe. She ventured that Pietro Teutonico, the German friar mentioned in the Todi inventory, might have been responsible for providing the relics, authenticating them and writing the labels identifying the relics. She cast doubt upon whether the gilded glass itself – the fragments in Todi, the Santa Chiara panels, and the associated reliquaries in Baltimore, Florence, Melbourne, New York, and Vienna – was the work of Pietro Teutonico.27 However, as Dillian Gordon pointed out in 1994, even if the spellings in the relic labels of the ‘Ludovicus Group’ lead to the supposition that a German speaker, such as Pietro Teutonico, might have been responsible for the ‘administrative’ business of authenticating and labelling the relics, there is actually no reason why Pietro Teutonico could not also have been the maker of the gilded glasses.28 I will here follow De Benedictis and Gordon, and use the name of Pietro Teutonico to designate that early group of gilded glass reliquaries, originally brought together by Swarzenski, and expanded by Hueck (Assisi, Santa Chiara; Baltimore; Gubbio; Melbourne; New York; Volterra; Vienna). Having revived the idea that Pietro Teutonico might also have been responsible for the production of these gilded glasses as well as taking charge Santa Chiara in Assisi that seem once to have been a diptych but are now separated and mounted on stems with knops, like chalices or monstrances; and two crosses from Assisi, one from Santa Chiara, and another from Santa Maria degli Angeli. 25 Hueck, ‘Ein umbrisches Reliquiar’, pp. 183–8. 26 Hueck, ‘Ein umbrisches Reliquiar’, p. 187. 27 Hueck, ‘Ein umbrisches Reliquiar’, p. 187. 28 Gordon, ‘The Mass Production of Franciscan Piety’, p. 36.

A VIRGIN LACTANS IN A FRANCISCAN CONTE XT

of the distribution and authentication of the relics, Gordon looked again at their style. She suggested that there were at least three distinct styles and divided the group stylistically into several sub-groups. Like Hueck, Gordon saw the two sides of the Berlin ostensorium as having been produced by two different artists. She suggested that the first artist of the Berlin reliquary (the maker of the Virgin and Child roundel) was probably identifiable with Pietro Teutonico, and that he was also responsible for the Baltimore, Melbourne, New York, and Vienna reliquaries from the ‘Swarzenski’ group. Like Hueck, Gordon did not mention the Volterra diptych that Swarzenski had included in his original group of five, except in a footnote, when discussing another Todi inventory,29 though she had discussed it in her doctoral dissertation of 1981.30 Gordon considered the artist of the Crucifixion on the Berlin ostensorium as one of a number of artists, working after Pietro Teutonico, who collaborated to create a group of gilded-glass reliquaries that followed on from the models that he had established. The inference, Gordon argued, is that the reliquaries produced by Pietro Teutonico stimulated a demand that could not be met by a single friar, and that another workshop was set up in Assisi to produce similar objects.31 Cristina De Benedictis’s 2010 catalogue of Umbrian gilded glass provides a recent study of all the known reliquary panels of this sort (except the Detroit wing, which is not included).32 She divides them into work associated with Pietro Teutonico, and then work associated with other artists who would fit into Gordon’s second group: a group of artists collaborating together, creating a group of reliquaries that follow on from the models established by Pietro Teutonico.33 For De Benedictis the works associated with Pietro Teutonico are identical with those that Gordon associated with that name,34 with the addition of one further diptych, now in Fumone (Fig. 11.6),35 and a few other pieces.36 To assess the Detroit panel, then, we need to decide where it fits. Is it stylistically related to the early Pietro Teutonico reliquaries, or is it to 29 Gordon, ‘The Mass Production of Franciscan Piety’, p. 42 n. 23. 30 Gordon, ‘Art in Umbria’, p. 149. 31 Gordon, ‘The Mass Production of Franciscan Piety’, p. 40. 32 De Benedictis, Devozione e produzione artistica. 33 De Benedictis’s earlier article established a career and corpus for Pietro Teutonico: Cristina De Benedictis, ‘Percorso di fra Pietro Teutonico: devozione e artigianato’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 44 (2000), 106–35. 34 The first Berlin roundel, of the Virgin and Child; the panels in Santa Chiara, Assisi; the diptychs in Baltimore, Melbourne, New York, and Vienna; a double-sided reliquary tondo in Gubbio; and a crucifix in Santa Maria degli Angeli. 35 De Benedictis, Devozione e produzione artistica, cat. no. 16, p. 84 (with illustration on p. 84). 36 Two crosses at Santa Chiara in Assisi; a hexagonal ‘tempietto’ at Santa Maria degli Angeli in Assisi; a fragmentary roundel in the Vatican; the diptychs incorporated into the painted wooden tabernacle in Gubbio; a tabernacle at La Spezia; and two diptychs in Turin that De Benedictis characterises as closely based upon the Pietro Teutonico examples. For these see De Benedictis, Devozione e produzione artistica, pp. 68–70; p. 71; p. 77; pp. 42–3, and p. 88; p. 90; and pp. 123–4, respectively.

209

210

BETH WILLIAMSON

be placed somewhere in the second group identified by Gordon? Irene Hueck analysed the differences between the two roundels now mounted in the Berlin monstrance, and observed that the Crucifixion was drawn by a different artist from the Virgin and Child roundel, and in a softer style, using a different technique. The roundel with the Virgin and Child conforms to the description of the technique given by Cennino Cennini (see above), but Hueck saw the Crucifixion roundel as having been created using a different technique, painted rather than scratched, with the composition having been sketched out with a brush first. Gordon agreed that this second artist was a completely distinct personality, with a ‘much softer style’, and a different technique.37 She linked the Virgin and Child roundel with Pietro Teutonico, who seemed to be using the ‘classic’ style of gilded glass described by Cennino Cennini, while the artist of the Crucifixion roundel, and the other later artists, were using the softer, more painterly style. De Benedictis agreed, and identified the painter of the Berlin Crucifixion as someone working in a style linked with that of Puccio Capanna, a painter from Florence who lived and worked in Assisi between 1341 and 1347.38 De Benedictis designated Puccio Capanna the chief artistic personality whom she associated with the gilded glasses created after the Pietro Teutonico group.39 The Detroit Virgin and Child is stylistically closer to the softer style that De Benedictis associates with Puccio Capanna and that ‘second wave’ of gilded glasses, with their more ‘painterly’ shading. It therefore seems right not to link the Detroit panel with the earliest group of diptychs associated with Pietro Teutonico, but rather to place it somewhere with the slightly later examples. What, then, are the dates of these groups of diptychs? Pietro Teutonico was recorded until 1331 at San Francesco in Assisi, and became Bishop of Lipari and Patti in Sicily in 1346, where he seems to have remained until he died in 1354.40 So the widest date range for the production of these reliquaries by Pietro Teutonico is probably 1288 to 1331, corresponding to his dates in Assisi. However, these dates can be refined further. As we have seen, many of them contain a relic of Saint Louis of Toulouse, who was canonized in 1317 (see Figs. 11.2, 11.3, 11.4, 11.5, 11.7), so this is thought to be a terminus post quem for these reliquaries. Several also contain a relic of the Virgin Mary’s veil (see, for example, Fig. 11.5), which was given to San Francesco in Assisi by Tommaso Orsini after 11 March 1320, so 1320 is suggested as a further terminus post quem.41 Therefore, it seems most likely that the first group of reliquary diptychs and gilded glasses that have been associated with the name of Pietro

37 Gordon, ‘The Mass Production of Franciscan Piety’, p. 36. 38 De Benedictis, Devozione e produzione artistica, p. 76. 39 De Benedictis, Devozione e produzione artistica, pp. 47–57. 40 De Benedictis, ‘I codici’. 41 Gordon, ‘The Mass Production of Franciscan Piety’, p. 35.

- Luke – - Andrew - John & Paul -

- Cosmas & Damian - Vincent & Anastasius -

Crucifixion

- Bread of the table of Christ - Sepulchre of Christ -

Image of John the Baptist

- Laurence - Innocent - Vincent -

Image of saint

- Illegible - Vestment of John the Baptist - Stephen -

Image of Paul

Image of Francis

- Egidius - John Chrysostom - Hylarius -

Image of martyr saint

- Nicholas - Martin - Benedict -

Image of a bishop saint (St Nicholas? St Martin?)

- Katherine - Cecilia - Margaret -

- Cord & tunic of Francis - Louis of Toulouse - Anthony -

- Veil & tunic of Clare - 11000 Virgins -

Nativity

- Vestment & room of Virgin Mary - Mary Magdalene -

Image of Clare

- Hair of Helen - Cordula -

Image of virgin saint

- Constanza - Ursula -

Image of crowned female martyr (Katherine?)

WALTERS ART MUSEUM, BALTIMORE, 46.2. DIAGRAM BY AUTHOR.

FIG. 11.2  RELICS CONTAINED WITHIN PIETRO TEUTONICO, RELIQUARY DIPTYCH. GILDED GLASS, GILDED AND PAINTED WOOD, 18.4 × 11.1 CM (EACH WING), 1320s(?),

Image of Louis of Toulouse

- Illegible - Bartholomew - Philip & James -

Image of deacon saint

- Peter - Paul - Andrew -

Image of Peter

- Wood of the True Cross -

- Katherine - Agatha - Margaret -

- Veil & tunic of Clare - Helen -

Nativity

- Flesh of the foot of Francis, & his tunic - Louis of Toulouse -

- Hair & sepulchre of the Virgin - Cecilia -

Image of John the Baptist

- Anastasia - 11,000 Virgins - Agnes - Constantia -

- Table of Christ - Crib of Christ - Sepulchre of Christ -

Man – symbol of Evangelist Matthew

- Luke - Timothy - Matthew - Barnabas -

- Clement - Sebastian - Fabian - Urban -

Bull – symbol of Evangelist Luke

- Christopher - Blaise - Vincent - Valentine -

- James - Bartholomew - Philip - John -

- Stephen - Laurence - Innocent - Maurice -

Lion – symbol of Evangelist Mark

Foliate design

Crucifixion (with Francis kneeling at the cross)

- Wood of the True Cross - Robe of Christ -

Foliate design

- Peter & Paul - Andrew -

- Ursula - Euphemia - Lucina -

Foliate design

Bull – symbol of Evangelist John

Image of Paul

NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA, MELBOURNE, FELTON BEQUEST, 1936, INV. NO. 3651-D3. DIAGRAM BY AUTHOR.

FIG. 11.3  RELICS CONTAINED WITHIN PIETRO TEUTONICO, RELIQUARY DIPTYCH. GILDED GLASS, GILDED AND PAINTED WOOD, 20.3 × 24.4 CM (OPEN), 1320s(?),

Image of Louis of Toulouse

- Leonard - Isidore - Egidius -

Foliate Design

- Nicholas - Benedict - Hylarius - Martin -

Image of Peter

- Cord & Tunic of Francis - Louis of Toulouse -

- Hair & sepulchre of the Virgin Mary -

- Veil & tunic of Clare Anastasia

Nativity

- Mary Magdalene - Katherine - Agnes -

Lion – symbol of Evangelist Mark

- Barbara - Euphemia - 11,000 Virgins -

Image of crowned saint (Margaret?)

- Cecilia - Agatha - Margaret - Ursula -

Man -Symbol of Evangelist Matthew

Image of Francis

- Bartholomew - Philip - Matthew -

Image of Saint

- Peter & Paul (?) (partially obscured) - Andrew - James -

Image of Paul

- Luke - Thomas - Timothy - Barnabas -

- Wood of the Holy Cross - Crib of Christ -

- Valentine - John & Paul - Fabian & Sebastian -

Crucifixion

- Table of Christ - Bread of the table of Christ - Sepulchre of Christ -

FIG. 11.4  RELICS CONTAINED WITHIN METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK, 17.980.982 (SEE FIG. 11.1). DIAGRAM BY AUTHOR.

Bull – symbol of Evangelist Luke

- Leonard - Isidore - Egidius -

Image of crowned martyr

- Nicholas - Martin - Benedict -

Eagle -symbol of Evangelist John

Image of Clare

- Blaise - Christopher - Denis - Vincent -

Image of John the Baptist?

- Stephen - Laurence - Innocent - Clement -

Image of Peter

- Room of the Virgin - Catherine - Lucy -

- Nicholas Louis of Toulouse -

- Mary Magdalene - Vivian -

Enthroned Virgin and Child, with kneeling Franciscan Friar

- Veil, vestment, hair & tomb of the Virgin Mary -

Foliate design

- Hair, tunic, cord & heart of Clare -

Foliate design

- Cecilia - Agatha - Elizabeth -

Foliate design

Foliate design

Foliate design

- James major - James minor - Bartholomew -

- Peter - Paul - Philip -

Foliate design

- Andrew - Cross of Andrew -

- Crib of Christ - Table of Christ (of the Last Supper) - Robe & Shroud of Christ -

- Matthew - Stephen -

Crucifixion

- True Cross - Tomb of Christ - Stone from where Christ ascended into Heaven -

Foliate design

- Cyrus - Christopher - Blaise -

Foliate design

- Lawrence - Eustace - Fabian -

Foliate design

DIOCESANO DELL’ARTE SACRA, VOLTERRA. DIAGRAM BY AUTHOR.

FIG. 11.5  RELICS CONTAINED WITHIN RELIQUARY DIPTYCH. GILDED GLASS, GILDED AND PAINTED WOOD, 29.1 × 16 CM (OPEN), 1330s–40s, FORMERLY MUSEO

Foliate design

- Alexius - Petronilla - Ursula - Matthias - Martha - Fermus -

Foliate design

- Tunic, hair & blood of Francis - Tunic of Anthony -

Foliate design

A VIRGIN LACTANS IN A FRANCISCAN CONTE XT

Teutonico were created during the years 1320–31, after the relics of Saint Louis of Toulouse and of the Virgin’s veil would have been available, and when we know Fra Pietro was still in Assisi.42 Gordon suggested that the second group of diptychs were probably produced slightly later, but with an overlap shortly after 1320.43 The Detroit reliquary, by virtue of its general technique, looks as though it fits within the larger, more diverse, second group of reliquaries, and is likely to date to the 1330s or 1340s.

SELECTIONS OF SAINTS AND PATTERNS OF PLACEMENT Not only was the medium of gilded glass particularly popular in Umbria, but it also seems to have remained largely a Franciscan phenomenon. There may be several reasons why this medium appealed to the Order. One is that gilded glass is relatively quick to make, compared with enamel or metalwork, so that it was regarded as useful for a project of this sort, which seems to have aimed to produce a large number of reliquaries to be sent to Franciscan houses across the province. Gilded glass is also cheaper than enamel, which also might have appealed to Franciscan sensibilities, while still having impressive aesthetic properties.44 Claudia Bolgia has suggested that gilded glass appealed to the Franciscans because of its associations with Rome, and early Christianity.45 The community at Assisi had brought Roman artists, including Jacopo Torriti, and others who had worked in Rome, such as Cimabue, to Assisi to carry out the wall paintings in San Francesco. Therefore, it may well be that this new Franciscan project of disseminating gilded glasses out from the Order’s mother-house at Assisi into communities across Central Italy looked again to Rome for inspiration. The Roman associations might have been especially desirable in order to maintain and further those direct links with the papacy that the Franciscans had claimed since the foundation of the Basilica at Assisi (a papal basilica) and which had been cemented in the election of the first Franciscan pope Nicholas IV (1288–92). The Franciscan Order seems to have been engaged in a campaign to produce a visually unified set of reliquaries which, in the choice of the medium of gilded glass, was both recognizably Franciscan 42 As Carlo Bertelli observed, relics of Saint Louis of Toulouse did not become available until the translation of the body in November 1319, so the tightening of the date range for the production of this first group of reliquaries to 1320–31 seems even more likely. Carlo Bertelli, ‘Vetri e altre cose della Napoli Angioina’, Paragone 263 (1972), 89–106, at pp. 94–5; Gordon, ‘The Mass Production of Franciscan Piety’, p. 42 n. 17. 43 Gordon, ‘The Mass Production of Franciscan Piety’, p. 40. 44 Claudia Bolgia, ‘Mosaics and Gilded Glass in Franciscan Hands: “Professional” Friars in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Italy’, in Patrons and Professionals in the Middle Ages. Proceedings of the 2010 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Paul Binski and Elizabeth A. New (Donington, 2012), pp. 141–66, at p. 155. 45 Bolgia, ‘Mosaics and Gilded Glass’, p. 155.

215

216

BETH WILLIAMSON

and ‘Roman’ (or at least ‘Romanizing’). Many of the relics included in these reliquaries, besides those of Franciscan saints, were early Roman saints, apostles, protomartyrs, and female virgin saints, such as Peter, Paul, James, Andrew, Lawrence, Stephen, Ursula, Agnes, and Cecilia. It may be that these established saints, with associations to the early church in Rome, were chosen partly to extend the ‘Romanizing’ tendencies of the reliquaries’ visual appearance, but also to lend the authority of antiquity to the much newer Franciscan saints who appeared in their midst. Gordon argued that the similarities in the reliquaries attributable to Pietro Teutonico ‘smack of mass production’.46 This is the case not only in respect of their overall design and dimension, iconography, and style, but also in the selection of relics, and in the ways that they are laid out in the reliquaries (see Figs. 11.2, 11.3, 11.4, and 11.7 for the relic arrangements in the four reliquaries considered by Gordon: Baltimore, Melbourne, New York, and Vienna).47 She noted that glasses depicting the Nativity tend to hold relics of the Virgin and primarily female saints, including Saint Clare, alongside those of Saint Francis and the other Franciscan saints, such as Louis and Anthony. She pointed also to patterns in the positioning of these relics: those of Saint Francis (usually from his cord and habit) are placed in all four examples near the bottom left of the Nativity or Virgin valves of these diptychs. Those of Saint Clare, usually from her veil, are always at the bottom right. Relics of female saints are placed on the right of the Nativity or Virgin panels, relics of the male saints are on the left. Among these, relics of Egidius (the sixth-century hermit saint, more widely known in English as Saint Giles) are always on the bottom left. Egidius was an abbot as well as a hermit and his relics in the Baltimore, Melbourne, and New York diptychs are labelled ‘Egidii abbatis’. There are also patterns in the arrangements of relics in the Crucifixion valves: relics of the Passion or True Cross are always, unsurprisingly, on this side, while relics of the Apostles Peter, Paul, and Andrew are generally to be found at the top left.48 Further patterns can be discerned in the core Pietro Teutonico group beyond those mentioned by Gordon. All four examples from this group place relics of Saints Nicholas, Martin, and Benedict within the same relic field at the top left of the Nativity panel (joined by Hilarius in the Melbourne panel). Where Laurence and Innocent are included (such as, for example, in Baltimore, Melbourne, and New York) they always appear together, on the right of the Crucifixion. However, looser patterns and differences are also seen. Let us take Laurence and Innocent as examples. In Melbourne 46 Gordon, ‘The Mass Production of Franciscan Piety’, p. 41. 47 The panels of gilded glass in the Baltimore diptych have almost certainly been remounted incorrectly at some point and it is likely that the Nativity scene was originally on the left valve and the Crucifixion on the right, following the pattern of the other diptychs in the group: https://art.thewalters.org/detail/40815/diptych-reliquary-thecrucifixion-and-the-nativity/ (accessed 13 September 2022). 48 Gordon, ‘The Mass production of Franciscan Piety’, p. 41.

A VIRGIN LACTANS IN A FRANCISCAN CONTE XT

and New York Laurence and Innocent are accompanied by Stephen (with Maurice, in the case of Melbourne, and Clement in the case of New York). But in Baltimore, Laurence and Innocent are accompanied by Vincent, and Stephen appears above them, together with a relic of John the Baptist. In Melbourne and New York, Vincent appears together with Blaise and Christopher, but in Melbourne Vincent, Blaise, and Christopher are also accompanied by Valentine. In New York, however, Vincent, Blaise, and Christopher are accompanied by Denis, while Valentine appears together with John and Paul and with Fabian and Sebastian. There are general similarities in the ways that this quartet of diptychs treats the relics of female saints. As we have seen, the veil of Saint Clare is always in or near the bottom right of the Nativity panel. Besides Saint Clare, in their Nativity wing, each of these diptychs choose, besides Saint Clare, from a repertoire of female saints, in various combinations. All of them include Mary Magdalene, Catherine, Cecilia, Ursula, and Margaret. Most include Agatha, Agnes, and the 11,000 Virgins. Others that appear in this area of the diptychs include Euphemia, Barbara, Helena, Anastasia, Elizabeth, Lucy, Constance, and Cordula. The Volterra diptych (see Fig. 11.5) follows some of these patterns already identified: relics of the Virgin and Saint Catherine, relics of Christ, relics of the Apostles Peter and Paul, of James and John, of Saint Louis, of Cecilia and Agatha, of Saint Christopher and Saint Lawrence, all appear in places that match at least two, and in some cases three, or even all four, of the core group of Baltimore, Melbourne, New York, and Vienna. However, Volterra also departs in several respects from that core group. As well as depicting an Enthroned Virgin and Child rather than a Nativity opposite the Crucifixion, some of the selections and arrangements of relics also differ. Whereas it is usual to place Saint Louis together with Saint Francis at the bottom left of the Nativity panel, this placement is abandoned in the Volterra Enthroned Virgin and Child. Saint Nicholas is placed with Saint Louis, and Saint Francis, with Saint Anthony, is swapped up to the top left, where Saint Nicholas is usually placed in the early core group. In Volterra, the relic of Saint Clare is moved up a little higher, rather than being at the very bottom right of the Virgin and Child panel. Besides these migrations, the number of relics of important Franciscan saints is expanded. There are normally two relics of Saint Francis: in Baltimore, New York, and Vienna we see the cord and tunic of Saint Francis; in Melbourne the tunic is accompanied by a relic of the flesh of the foot of Francis. In Volterra, though, we have pieces of the tunic, the hair, and the blood of Saint Francis. Likewise, it is normal to have relics of the veil and tunic of Saint Clare (Baltimore, Melbourne, New York, Vienna). In Volterra, however, we have pieces of the hair, the tunic, the cord, and the heart of Saint Clare. In general, in the Volterra diptych, there are often more relics packed into some of the relic chambers than in the other diptychs, and there are one or two relics that do not appear elsewhere in the group, such as the Shroud,

217

218

BETH WILLIAMSON

some stone from the place where the Ascension of Christ took place, and the cross upon which Saint Andrew was martyred. As Gordon pointed out, the patterns change in the work of the second group of artists. In fact, many of the gilded glasses that have been placed into this second group are fragmentary, and no longer have relics. However, one wing of a gilded glass diptych from this later group survives within a wing of a second, later painted diptych in Baltimore.49 Like the earlier Pietro Teutonico diptychs this gilded glass panel, depicting the Crucifixion, places relics associated with Christ’s Passion in the upper frame of the glass (in this case wood from the True Cross, and a stone from Christ’s tomb). Again, like the early Pietro Teutonico diptychs, it places the Apostles Peter, Paul, and Andrew together to the left. Here, though, the Evangelist Luke is placed together with Peter, Paul, and Andrew, rather than in the lower field of the glass. Crucially, ‘Evangelist’ is not spelt with a ‘w’, as in the Pietro Teutonico diptychs. This is another reason to see this gilded glass in Baltimore inv. no. 37.1686 as representing the work of a different workshop from the one which produced the early Pietro Teutonico diptychs: it departs from those in the Teutonico group by placing the relics of the 11,000 Virgins in the Crucifixion wing (rather than with the Nativity, as in the earlier diptychs). Another feature of this glass in Baltimore inv. no. 37.1686 is that the relic labels insistently and repeatedly state that relics are ‘the bones of ’ the saints – ‘de ossib[us] xi milia virginis’ or ‘de ossib[us] s[an]c[ti] andree ap[osto]li’ – whereas the early Pietro Teutonico diptychs tend simply to use the formulation ‘of Peter Apostle’ or ‘of Nicholas, bishop’, or just the names of the saints. These differences of practice in the placement of relics, and their labelling, reinforce the conclusion reached by stylistic analysis that this gilded glass panel in Baltimore, embedded in a painted panel, was probably produced by a different workshop from the original Pietro Teutonico workshop in Assisi. De Benedictis associates it with Puccio Capanna.50 A further example of a reliquary diptych from the second group is another diptych in New York.51 In this diptych the whole design and layout is different from the pattern set up in the Pietro Teutonico reliquaries. In this case, each diptych wing is divided into four quarters, with a rectangular gilded glass image of a saint in each quarter, and a relic of 49 Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, 37.1686, c. 1355–70. https://art.thewalters.org/ detail/1458/wing-of-a-reliquary-diptych-with-the-crucifixion-and-saints/ (accessed 15 August 2021). See De Benedictis, Devozione e produzione artistica, pp. 72–3. Henceforth this gilded glass will be referred to as Baltimore inv. no. 37.1686; ‘Baltimore’ alone designates Baltimore inv. no. 46.2. 50 De Benedictis, Devozione e produzione artistica, p. 72. 51 Metropolitan Museum, inv. no. 17.190.922. A high-resolution image is available at: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/464716 (accessed 15 August 2021). De Benedictis, Devozione e produzione artistica, p. 104. This diptych will, henceforth, be referred to as ‘New York inv. no. 17.190.922’; ‘New York’ alone will refer to New York inv. no. 17.190.982.

A VIRGIN LACTANS IN A FRANCISCAN CONTE XT

that saint beneath, above, or beside the image in each case. On the left there are images and relics of the Virgin and Child and the Crucified Christ at the top, and beneath them Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and Saint Agnes (the relics and inscriptions beneath these latter two images have slipped and are no longer visible). The images of the Virgin and Child and Elizabeth are accompanied by donor figures of Franciscan friars. The right wing depicts, at the top, relics and images of Saint John the Baptist and the Man of Sorrows (accompanied by a relic of Christ’s sepulchre). Below them there are relics and images of the Stigmatization of Saint Francis and Saint Louis of Toulouse. Examining these relatively rare instances of gilded glass reliquaries from the ‘second group’, which still have their relics, enables us to see that both stylistically and in terms of the selection and arrangement of relics, some examples in the second group of reliquaries followed, developed, and loosened the broad parameters established by the first. Others, though, changed the design more radically. That said, even the reliquaries produced under the auspices of Pietro Teutonico are not all immune from this process of development and change. Differences in design, and in the arrangement of relics, can be seen even among reliquaries that are associated with the Pietro Teutonico group. For example, a further diptych that was not mentioned by Swarzenski, nor by Gordon or Hueck, but which De Benedictis added to the early Pietro Teutonico group, is now at the Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta in Fumone. This was once at the now-destroyed convent of San Francesco in that city.52 Its gilded glass panels exhibit a quite different design from the other Pietro Teutonico diptychs (Fig. 11.6). The central, rectangular images of the Nativity and the Crucifixion have been adapted in Fumone into a roundel, and an additional outer frame of images and decorative panels, and some additional relics, is placed around the inner rectangle. In the overall design of the diptych wings itself the Fumone diptych is close to the early Pietro Teutonico diptychs. Its Nativity and Crucifixion images are compositionally and stylistically comparable with those of the rest of the Pietro Teutonico group, allowing for the circular shape of the image fields in this diptych. As we have seen, an analysis of the positions of the relics in these diptychs demonstrates that even among that group of diptychs attributed to the hand of Pietro Teutonico on compositional and stylistic grounds there are closer and looser connections between individual diptychs.53 In the same way that Baltimore, Melbourne, New York, Vienna, and Volterra differ from one another in some respects but present broadly similar arrangements, Fumone deploys a similar set of relics to those we 52 De Benedictis, Devozione e produzione artistica, pp. 44, 45, 84; De Benedictis, ‘Percorso di fra Pietro Teutonico’, pp. 120, 122, and colour illustrations (Figs. 12, 13, 14) on pp. 114, 115, 116. 53 See above, pp. 216–18.

219

- Hair, cord and tunic of Francis(?) (partly obscured) - Martin(?) - ? confessor (partly obscured) -

- Tomb of Virgin Mary, her sister Mary, and her mother Anne - Agnes -

- Illegible -

- Cecilia? - Mary of Egypt - Elizabeth - Lucy - Christina? -

- Illegible (abbot?) - Leonard - Hair and garment of ? (partly obscured) -

Vine designs

- Anthony - Dionysius Areopagite - Silvester - Eusebius - Illegible -

Nativity

- Mary Magdalene - Katherine - Margaret - Barbara -

Image of Virgin Mary

- John Chrysostom - Gregory - Basil - Maurice -

- Hair, veil and tunic of Clare - Dorothy - Euphemia? (partly obscured) -

- Hair of the Virgin Mary, her veil and her garment -

Image of an angel?

Dragon designs

Image of Peter

Image missing

Dragon designs

Symbol of Evangelist Mark

- Christopher - Clement - George - Hippolytus -

- Peter & Paul - Andrew - James - Bartholomew -

- Wood of the True Cross -

- John the Baptist - John - Innocent -

- Cyrus & John - Maurice - Nereus & Achilleus -

Vine designs

- Cosmas & Damian - Agapitus - Quatuor Coronati -

Crucifixion

- Matthew - Simon - Philip - Barnabas -

Redeemer Christ

- ? (partly obscured) – - Cesarius? - ? pope (partly obscured) - Demetrius - Mercurius -

- Laurence - Stephen? (partly obscured) - Vincent - Blaise -

- Garment, crib, sponge, table, sepulchre of Christ -

Image missing

Dragon designs

Symbol of Evangelist John

MARIA ASSUNTA, FUMONE. DIAGRAM BY AUTHOR.

FIG. 11.6  RELICS CONTAINED WITHIN RELIQUARY DIPTYCH. GILDED GLASS, GILDED AND PAINTED WOOD, 13 × 10 CM (EACH WING), 1330s–40s, COLLEGIATA DI SANTA

Image of Francis

Dragon designs

Image missing

221

A VIRGIN LACTANS IN A FRANCISCAN CONTE XT

FIG. 11.7  RELICS CONTAINED WITHIN PIETRO TEUTONICO, PANEL FROM RELIQUARY DIPTYCH, GILDED GLASS, GILDED AND PAINTED WOOD, 14.2 × 8.8 CM, 1320s(?), KUNSTHISTORISCHES MUSEUM, VIENNA, INV. NO. P 154. DIAGRAM BY AUTHOR.

have been used to seeing, arranged in similar ways: relics of the Virgin Mary, and Saint Catherine, Saint Margaret, and Mary Magdalene at the top of the Virgin panel; Saint Francis at the bottom left of the Virgin, and female martyrs at the right of the Virgin panel; Peter, Paul, and Andrew at the top left of the Crucifixion; Laurence, Blaise, and Vincent at the right of the Crucifixion, and other male martyrs at the bottom of the Crucifixion panel. In Fumone, the main image field in each wing is reduced from a rectangular panel to a roundel, but there are ten, rather than eight, relic chambers in each wing. It packs in a greater number of relics than the others, both by virtue of its greater number of chambers, but also by placing more relics than normal in many of them.54 There is damage to 54 The image of the Crucifixion differs from others of the group in its complexity also, as it incorporates text scrolls in the hands of the Virgin and Saint John. The text that is visible on the Virgin’s scroll reads ‘POSUIT’, though there is an indication of more text after that, and possibly before. John’s scroll reads ‘DABIT’, and it looks as though there is more text before that too, possibly ‘-IS’, so perhaps ‘QUIS DABIT?’.

222

BETH WILLIAMSON

the parchment in the relic chamber that houses Francis’s relics in this diptych, and it is hard to see whether a relic of Saint Louis is present there. If it is not, the Fumone reliquary would represent a major departure from the others in this respect, all of which feature the new Franciscan saint. The Fumone reliquary includes some relics that are not present in any other of the Pietro Teutonico group, including early popes such as Saint Gregory, and the ‘Quatuor Coronati’ (four early soldier martyrs). One of these unusual saints, not found in any of the other early diptychs, is Saint Agapitus (below the Crucifixion, in the second field from the left, together with Cosmas and Damian and the ‘Quatuor Coronati’). This is extremely interesting for our purposes as the only other surviving gilded glass diptych known to me in which Agapitus features is the Detroit wing.

RELIC CHOICES AND THE ORIGINS OF THE DETROIT PANEL Before we analyse the significance of the relic of Agapitus in the Detroit reliquary panel, however, let us consider how the Detroit Virgin panel compares with the other diptychs in terms of the arrangement of its relics. Between the gilded wooden frame and the main image field showing the Enthroned Virgin Lactans, this panel has an inner frame of relic chambers beneath clear glass windows (Plate XV; Fig. 11.8). These alternate with squares of foliate designs painted on the glass. There are two relic chambers in the top and the bottom fields of the frame and three each in the side fields. In some respects, the Detroit reliquary panel conforms with aspects of the relic selection and arrangement seen in the Virgin panels of the reliquaries in the Pietro Teutonico group. For instance, it includes relics of female saints and martyrs such as Cecilia, Agnes, Barbara, and the 11,000 Virgins, which dominate the right-hand side, following the pattern of the Pietro Teutonico group.55 It also includes a relic of the Virgin, as is quite normal. However, unlike the Pietro Teutonico group diptychs, this relic of the Virgin appears to the bottom left, and not the top right. The relic of the Virgin in Detroit is specifically of the room wherein the Annunciation took place – ‘d[e] cella ubi fuit ann[un]tiata bea[te] v[ir]g[ini]s’ – whereas in the Pietro Teutonico group the relics of the Virgin are more usually from her hair, her garments, or her sepulchre.56 55 The original contents of the top right chamber are unclear. Here the parchment has slipped and the inscriptions are now largely masked by the gilding, but it is possible to read a ‘v[ir]g[inis]’ abbreviation after the first of the two names (perhaps ‘Katherine’?) suggesting that these too were female saints. 56 Though Baltimore inv. no. 46.2, from the Pietro Teutonico group, includes a relic of the Virgin’s chamber (‘De camera eia’). See Fig. 11.2.

223

A VIRGIN LACTANS IN A FRANCISCAN CONTE XT

FIG. 11.8  RELICS CONTAINED WITHIN INSTITUTE OF ARTS, DETROIT, FOUNDERS SOCIETY PURCHASE, 1994.43 (SEE PLATE 15). DIAGRAM BY AUTHOR.

In the Pietro Teutonico reliquaries, the left-hand side of the Virgin panel is often populated with male bishops and abbots. This is the case in Baltimore, Melbourne, New York, and Vienna (Figs. 11.2, 11.3, 11.4, and 11.7). In each of those reliquaries we see Saint Nicholas, Saint Martin, Saint Benedict, and Saint Egidius in this area; in Melbourne, New York, and Vienna we also see Saint Isidore. In the Detroit panel, by contrast, there is a mixture of male and female saints on this side: the top and middle cavities contain relics of Eulalia, Balbina, and Clare, with Egidius to the lower left of the Virgin. This is Egidius’s normal place in the core group of Pietro Teutonico reliquaries. However, on the Detroit panel this relic is labelled ‘sancti fratris Egidii’ rather than ‘Egidii abbatis’. Instead of the hermit Saint Egidius, this must be Beato Egidio of Perugia (d. 1262), one of Saint Francis’s early followers who was known as a saint in local Umbrian sources.57 His relic’s location to the bottom left of the Virgin 57 Another gilded glass diptych, now in the Museo Diocescano in Spoleto, includes in its right wing, above the image of the Crucifixion, a relic labelled ‘de sanguine sancti

224

BETH WILLIAMSON

echoes the placement of the Saint Giles relics in the other examples, as if aligning Beato Egidio with his officially sainted namesake would cement the claims to sanctity of the more recent Franciscan figure. It is possible that Beato Egidio stands in for other Franciscan saints who seem to be absent from the Detroit panel: there is no relic of Saint Louis, which normally appears in Pietro Teutonico diptychs to the bottom left of the Nativity, usually together with one or more relics of Saint Francis.58 The Detroit reliquary includes relics of Peter, Paul, Andrew, and James at the top of the Virgin panel. These are all common in the Pietro Teutonico group, but not in that position: in Baltimore, Melbourne, New York, and Fumone they appear to the top left of the Crucifixion, and in Volterra these relics are also in the Crucifixion panel. In the Pietro Teutonico reliquaries Saint Clare is usually found in the bottom field, beneath the Virgin. In that area the Detroit reliquary features, as we have seen, on the left the room in which the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary took place, and on the right more male saints: Blaise, Eustace, and Agapitus. So what, then, is the significance of Agapitus appearing here, in the Detroit panel? The only other gilded glass reliquary that includes a relic of Agapitus is the one in Fumone (Fig. 11.6) which, as we have seen, also differs from the mainstream of the gilded glass reliquaries in several other respects, including the design of its central imagery, and also in the arrangement of the relics, even when featuring saints who are seen in other more ‘standardized’ reliquaries. Donal Cooper and Janet Robson point out that Agapitus is an obscure saint whose cult was unknown in Umbria.59 He was featured among the sixteen saints, paired in four registers, that climb either side of the archivolt of the counter façade of the Upper Church of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi.60 In the Upper Church, Cooper and Robson argue, Agapitus can be explained only as a reference to Nicholas IV and the Colonna. He was patron saint of Palestrina, and titular of that town’s cathedral, of which Nicholas IV had been cardinal Egidii de Perusio’. Egidio’s shrine was located in the crypt of San Francesco al Prato, the main Franciscan church in Perugia. For this reliquary see De Benedictis, Devozione e produzione artistica, p. 115. On the cult of this uncanonized Beato, who was nevertheless already named ‘sanctus’ by Angelo Clareno in c. 1325, see the essays collected in Frate Egidio d’Assisi: atti dell’incontro di studio in occasione del 750º anniversario della morte (1262–2012), Perugia, 30 giugno 2012, ed. Società internazionale di studi francescani (Spoleto, 2014). For Egidio’s shrine, see most recently Donal Cooper and Alberto Maria Sartore, ‘Un contesto per il polittico perugino di Taddeo di Bartolo (1403): San Francesco al Prato’, in Taddeo di Bartolo, exh. cat. Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia, ed. Gail E. Solberg (Milan, 2020), pp. 71–87. 58 As in Baltimore inv. no. 46.2, Melbourne, New York, and Vienna. It might conceivably be that a relic of Saint Louis once appeared the top right chamber of the Detroit reliquary, where the parchment has slipped and the inscriptions are thus illegible. 59 Donal Cooper and Janet Robson, The Making of Assisi: The Pope, the Franciscans and the Painting of the Basilica (New Haven, 2013), p. 44. 60 He is paired with the deacon Saint Lawrence. Cooper and Robson, The Making of Assisi, Fig. 39.

A VIRGIN LACTANS IN A FRANCISCAN CONTE XT

bishop before his election to the papacy. The inclusion of Saint Agapitus in the decoration of the Upper Church at Assisi also honoured the Colonna, who were secular lords of Palestrina. Agapito was an important family name in the Palestrina branch of the Colonna family. For these reasons, Cooper and Robson argue convincingly, the inclusion of Saint Agapitus towards the start of the mural programme of the Upper Church at Assisi demonstrates a ‘desire to please a philo-Colonna audience’ and fixes the decoration of the nave within the date range 1288–97.61 But what might Agapitus be doing in these reliquary tabernacles in Fumone and Detroit? The date of their production is much later than the pontificate of Nicholas IV and the period during which the Colonna family wielded particular influence in Assisi and Umbria. As we have seen, the earlier gilded glass reliquaries are probably to be dated in the 1320s and 1330s, during the Avignon papacies of John XXII or Benedict XII. Despite the fact that there were relics of Saint Agapitus at Assisi, among those that Nicholas IV had donated to the Basilica,62 Agapitus was obviously not considered important enough to be included in the first group of gilded glass reliquaries produced in the workshop of Pietro Teutonico, alongside the other relics that were being systematically dispersed from Assisi, such as those of Francis, Clare, Louis, Anthony, and the others who appear regularly such as Nicholas, Martin, Benedict, Egidius, Agatha, Catherine, and Margaret, etc. He appears only in these reliquaries in Fumone and Detroit, both of which depart from the early Pietro Teutonico reliquaries in several other respects. If Agapitus was not one of the key saints whose relics were being routinely included in this wider project of producing reliquaries in and around Assisi, maybe the presence of this rather obscure saint in the Fumone and Detroit diptychs indicates something about the demands of particular patrons in the houses for which they were destined. Perhaps they were both destined for Franciscan houses in the area around Palestrina, in the area of Italy where Agapitus was regarded as important in his own right. Fumone is not far from Palestrina, and its castle was the main papal stronghold in Latium. It may be that the Fumone reliquary was made to be sent to the Franciscan house in Fumone and that it had a relic of Agapitus included among the large number of other relics that it houses in order to appeal to local devotional interests in the area for which it was destined. The object’s provenance from southern Lazio is a relative outlier, far from the centre of production in Assisi, which reinforces the sense that the inclusion of Agapitus was not a coincidence, but a specific choice for a house in that area. With this in mind, it seems likely that the Detroit reliquary, which also includes a relic of Saint Agapitus, could also have

61 Cooper and Robson, The Making of Assisi, p. 43. 62 Cooper and Robson, The Making of Assisi, p. 42.

225

226

BETH WILLIAMSON

been produced for a house in the area surrounding Palestrina, the only area of Italy in which the cult of Agapitus had any strength at this date.

THE FRANCISCAN CONTEXT OF THE VIRGIN LACTANS Finally, let us look at the iconography of the Detroit panel. It is difficult to compare it directly with the other gilded glasses, since virtually every other reliquary with a surviving Virgin and Child wing – even the Fumone reliquary – depicts the Nativity. The only other diptych that departs from the formula of pairing the Nativity with the Crucifixion is, as we have seen, that in Volterra, which depicts an Enthroned Virgin and Child, with a kneeling Franciscan friar, opposite the Crucifixion. In a similar way, the Detroit diptych uses the composition of the Enthroned Virgin and Child, specifically the Virgin Lactans, so perhaps this, too, was created as a result of a special commission for an individual patron or for a particular Franciscan house that had reason to want something iconographically distinct? The image of the Virgin Lactans was one that evoked the humanity of both Christ and his mother. It showed, incontrovertibly, that Christ had become human, and had needed the sustenance of his human mother, just like any other baby. This conception of the Virgin’s motherhood, as represented by the Virgin Lactans, either in text or images, was becoming popular and widespread in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century. Megan Holmes, in an examination of a later, fifteenth-century painting by Filippo Lippi, the novitiate altarpiece for Santa Croce in Florence, examined the significance of the Lactans image for the Franciscans. She noted that the Virgin Lactans was evoked widely, and given many and diverse meanings in biblical commentaries, prayers, and sermons. She suggests that there was a strong interest among the Franciscans in the humanity of Christ and the Virgin Mary, and that the idea of the Virgin Lactans, as a concept that evoked that humanity very strongly, was a popular focus for devotional texts and sermons, particularly when used as a symbol for the Virgin’s care for all humanity.63 Holmes quotes the sermon of Bonaventure, for example, in which he declares ‘it is delightful … and sweet to see and to hear the Mother of kindness, she who is delightful to everyone, who offers milk and honey to her children [as if they were] her Child, with the results that the honey has the taste of the Divine and the milk the taste of humanity’.64 The humanity of Christ and the Virgin, evoked here in connection with the Virgin’s milk, was a key element in the affective piety that was such a strong current in fourteenth-century 63 Megan Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi: The Carmelite Painter (New Haven, 1999), pp, 191–213. 64 Bonaventure’s ‘Sermon on the Nativity’, quoted in Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi, p. 204.

A VIRGIN LACTANS IN A FRANCISCAN CONTE XT

devotion. The Virgin Lactans appears as a vehicle for meditating on such concepts in the Franciscan Meditations on the Life of Christ. There is even a narrative image of the Virgin Lactans in an Italian fourteenth-century manuscript of this text, but, Holmes points out, there is no evidence that this particular manuscript of the text circulated in a specifically Franciscan context. In fact, she suggests, the image of the Virgin Lactans – as opposed to the concept of the Virgin Lactans, as evoked in texts – was relatively infrequent in Franciscan contexts.65 This makes it all the more remarkable that the Detroit panel eschews the Virgin of the Nativity, used in almost every other example of the gilded glass reliquary type, in favour of the Virgin Lactans. Megan Holmes, again in connection with the novitiate altarpiece at Santa Croce, suggests that the image of the Virgin Lactans might, in that particular context, have been understood as suitable for novices, registering the guidance and nurture that the novices could have expected to receive from their brothers as they entered the Order.66 She notes that the Franciscan Order was established around less hierarchical grounds than the Benedictines, or the Dominicans. Ministers were appointed to perform spiritual and practical nurturing, more to administer to the needs of the novices, and not so much to be masters or to exercise discipline. Mothers’ milk had long been established in monastic contexts as a metaphor for the guidance of souls, especially of the young and inexperienced. According to the 1223 Rule of Saint Francis, the friars were to take on the roles of ‘mothers’ and ‘sons’ to each other within the hermitage or convent. Francis stipulated that the friars ‘are bound to love and care for one another as brothers, according to the means God gave them, just as a mother loves and cares for her son’.67

CONCLUSIONS It might be suggested, then, that the Detroit reliquary panel was not only commissioned, like the others of its general kind, to provide a Franciscan house with a collection of relics, but that it might have been requested by a community, or by an individual, with a particular concern for the general spiritual guidance that the friars were to offer to one another, especially perhaps to the novices among the group. The inclusion of Agapitus amongst the relics selected for inclusion in this unusual Virgin Lactans panel would suggest that that house might have been one in the region close to Palestrina, such as Tivoli, or Anagni. Or it could be that a request 65 Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi, p. 205. 66 Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi, pp. 202–3. 67 English translation in St Francis of Assisi. Writings and Early Biographies: English Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St Francis, ed. Marion A. Habig (Quincy, IL, 1991), pp. 61–2.

227

228

BETH WILLIAMSON

to include Agapitus was made by a leading member of the community that was to receive the reliquary, perhaps someone who came originally from the region in which Agapitus was venerated. In a similar way it would seem likely that, after the first wave of these reliquaries had emerged from Assisi, adjustments and alterations began to be made to the ‘standard’ pattern of relic selection and arrangement, and iconography, to suit the wishes of those who were to receive them. The patron or commissioner of the Detroit panel seems to have made a deliberate choice – an unusual one in the context of the art of the Franciscan Order – to adopt the Virgin Lactans in the place of the Virgin of the Nativity. Like the later novitiate altarpiece at Santa Croce in Florence, it may be that this unusual visual reference to the Virgin Lactans was made in the context of a community’s concern for the spiritual and emotional guidance that should be offered to novices in their care. However, unlike such an altarpiece, which might have been intended to provide edification and food for thought to the whole community, it is perhaps more likely that this little reliquary panel, part of a diptych that would have been no more than 13 cm high, would have been held and used principally by an individual, perhaps by a Minister, or Master, responsible for the care of novices. As with all the other gilded glass reliquary diptychs, the presence of the relics would have reminded the user, and his community, of the saints that were important to the Order, including the Virgin Mary and Christ, but also key Franciscan saints, and those whose relics were held at Assisi, as well the early Christian saints and martyrs of Rome. The Virgin Lactans image might have spoken more directly to a specific responsibility that leaders within the Order had to educate and nurture young friars and to offer care to one another. It may be that it was in this context – a Minister with pastoral responsibility wishing for the guidance and support of the Virgin Mary to help him fulfil his duties of care to his brothers – that the decision was taken to alter the iconographic pattern that had been established in almost all of the previous reliquary diptychs. In doing so, this example of the type eschewed the standard, scriptural image of the Virgin of the Nativity, in which the Virgin Mary is depicted as Mother of Christ, in favour of the devotional image of the Virgin Lactans, in which she is depicted as Mother of All.

A NEW ANGLE ON SIMONE MARTINI’S HOLY FAMILY JAMES ALEXANDER CAMERON

A

longside a deep understanding of iconography, Joanna Cannon’s work has always privileged the close examination of objects with repeated attention to their original design, intended function, and subsequent use. The painted panel depicting Christ, Mary, and Joseph, signed by the Sienese painter Simone Martini in 1342 and now held in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (Plate XVI) has proven an enigma that repays such repeated examination. Owing to the inscription FILII QUI[D] FECISTI N[OBIS SIC] finely painted on the Virgin’s open book, the biblical scene that the panel represents is one of its few certainties.1 Simone has visualised the following exchange of speech recorded in Luke’s Gospel between the twelve-year-old Christ and his parents in the Temple after he has been missing for three days: … and his mother said unto him ‘Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee, sorrowing.’

It is my pleasure to thank Joanna Cannon for commenting on an earlier version of this essay that I presented during my participation in her MA course in 2010–11. The essay was first developed during my most enjoyable tenure as a volunteer at the Walker Art Gallery Liverpool in 2010, an opportunity granted to me by Xanthe Brooke to whom I am very grateful. Susanna Avery-Quash has generously read and commented upon this paper, allowing me to include here her unpublished proposal connecting the panel to the patronage of Napoleone Orsini, presented in a lecture at the National Gallery in 2001 (the typescript is held in the Walker archives). Michaela Zöschg, Meg Bernstein, Donal Cooper, and Beth Williamson have also been very helpful in preparing the essay for this volume. 1 Different abbreviations have been cited, but the inscription is difficult to transcribe perfectly, due to its miniature nature and partial abrasion. ‘Filii’ and ‘Qui’ are most visible; the following two words appear to have been broken up or abbreviated to fit on the two lines underneath. ‘Sic’ may be included on the foreshortened right-hand page, but the two lines below this are illegible.

12

230

JAMES ALE XANDER CAMERON

And he said unto them ‘How is it that you sought me? Did you not know I would be in my father’s house?’ And they understood not the saying which he spoke to them.2

This fixes the narrative of the painting between the commonly depicted episode of Christ Disputing with the Doctors, and the lesser-represented Return of the Holy Family to Nazareth. What is remarkable about Simone’s painting is the manner in which he has dramatised the first recorded speech of Jesus Christ, not shying away from how he sternly rebuked his earthly parents. Simone’s depiction of a wholly unhappy Holy Family, arguably unique in the history of Christian art, suggests that it was an exceptional, bespoke commission for a particular client. This paper will synthesise the many theories that have been made about the textual sources and patronage of the Liverpool panel with an as-yet unremarked visual quirk in the painting. What will be interpreted as an intentional manipulation of the viewer’s gaze will be aligned with the playful approach to perception and cognition that characterised the more sophisticated examples of Trecento painting, confirming Simone’s enduring capacity for innovation in his artistic output.

CHRIST’S ‘HARD WORDS’ AND THEIR EARLY FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CONTEXT It is important at the outset to recognise the status of the painting as a complete object. Although it exhibits a number of holes in the sides and rear, these are attributable to modern mountings: the gold burnishing of the four edges, lack of hinge marks, and the self-contained inscription SYMON DE SENIS ME PINXIT SVB AD MC [CC] XL II on the frame strongly suggest that the work as we see it now is in its complete, original form.3 This is contrary to an expectation that framed narrative scenes are usually dismembered parts of larger works, such as folding diptychs or triptychs.4 Instead, it is better to consider the object along the lines of the late medieval Andachtsbild, where scenes from sacred history become independent of larger narratives and assume 2 Luke 2:48–50. 3 This alone would not limit its consideration as part of an ensemble. As Schmidt has shown, works such as the Orsini polyptych and Niccolo Buonaccorso’s panels of the life of the Virgin may not have been originally joined together: Victor M. Schmidt, ‘Portable Polyptychs with Narrative Scenes: Fourteenth-Century De Luxe Objects between Italian Panel Painting and French Arts somptuaires’, in Italian Panel Painting in the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art 61 (Washington, 2002), pp. 395–419, at pp. 403–6. Furthermore, the signature has almost certainly been retouched, see note 48 below. 4 Andrew Martindale, ‘Novelty in Simone Martini: Problems of Interpretation’, in Romanesque and Gothic: Essays for George Zarnecki, ed. Neil Stratford (London, 1985), pp. 153–7, at p. 156.

A NEW ANGLE ON SIMONE MARTINI’S HOLY FAMILY

sophisticated intellectual roles in personal devotion.5 The panel’s verso is painted with a marbled pattern surrounded by an illusionistic frame that further suggests its properties as a standalone object (Plate XVII).6 It is in remarkably good condition, the largest loss being the Virgin’s robe, which has succumbed to so-called ultramarine sickness, losing its original vivid blue and drapery patterns.7 Its provenance is problematic: there is no clear record of the painting before its arrival in England in 1802, although it may have belonged to the Riccardi family in Florence shortly before that date.8 The date of 1342 means that it was certainly painted when Simone was resident in Avignon, making it the painter’s final extant and dated work before his death in 1344. In an article published in 1967, Don Denny was the first art historian to offer an in-depth analysis of the panel’s peculiar iconography.9 He demonstrated how Simone’s depiction of Christ with his parents is distinct from the mainstream visual tradition. In the preceding moment of Christ Among the Doctors, a scene common to many Christological cycles, his parents are usually in a liminal position between the main action and the edge of the image, such as can be seen in the fresco by Giotto in the right transept of the Lower Church in Assisi. In this iconography, the pathetic nature of Christ’s sorrowing parents is often in contrast with Christ’s hierarchical, frontal pose, but no disagreement or family conflict is explicitly represented. With the Return of the Holy Family to Nazareth – 5 Sixten Ringbom, Icon to Narrative (Åbo, 1965); Jeffrey Hamburger, ‘The Visual and the Visionary: The Image in Late Medieval Monastic Devotions’, Viator 20 (1989), 161–82, republished in The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York, 1998), pp. 111–18. The panel measures 49.5 × 35.1 cm. 6 Julian Gardner, ‘The Back of the Panel of Christ Discovered in the Temple by Simone Martini’, Arte Cristiana 78 (1990), 389–98. 7 Nicola Christie, ‘National Museums and Galleries Liverpool Conservation Division: Technical Examination Report’, unpublished conservation report, 20 February 2008, Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, object file for inv. no. 2787, p. 3. 8 The Liverpudlian banker William Roscoe purchased the painting at Christie’s in London on 12 May 1804 from Colonel Matthew Smith, who seems to have acquired it in the 1802 Christie’s sale of Frederick Augustus Hervey’s collection, recently arrived from Rome. Roscoe sold his collection in 1816 and from 1819 many of his pictures, including the Simone, were on display in the Liverpool Royal Institution. From there the Roscoe pictures moved to the Walker Art Gallery, at first (1893) on long-term loan and later (1948) as part of the Walker’s permanent collection. An annotation referring to the panel in a copy of the 1816 sale catalogue of Roscoe’s collection held by the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie in The Hague reads: ‘The Marquis Riccardi when in Liverpool went to the Royal Institution – on seeing this painting … said “This was stolen from my father’s library” .’ The year of the annotation is unknown but presumably postdates the public display of the painting in 1819. The Walker Art Gallery was alerted to this note by Dutch colleagues in 1989. For further detail on the picture’s provenance, see Giles Waterfield et al., Art Treasures of England: The Regional Collections (London, 1998), p. 329; Xanthe Brooke, ‘Roscoe’s Italian Paintings in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool’, in Roscoe and Italy: The Reception of Italian Renaissance History and Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Stella Fletcher (London, 2012), pp. 65–93, at pp. 68–72. 9 Don Denny, ‘Simone Martini’s The Holy Family’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 30 (1967), 138–49.

231

232

JAMES ALE XANDER CAMERON

also found in the same Giotto cycle in Assisi, where Christ happily returns between his earthly mother and father – Denny demonstrated how it is always his humility and obedience that are emphasised.10 It would appear that the pictorial tradition skips the action surrounding the speech acts of Luke’s Gospel entirely, and medieval comparanda for the narrative moment that Simone painted are very rare indeed. A boss from the high vault added to the nave of Tewkesbury Abbey (Gloucestershire) in the 1320s has an unusual scene of a crowned Mary affectionately joining hands with the young Jesus (Fig. 12.1).11 This unusually tender treatment could be attributed to the dedication of the Abbey to Saint Mary and the scene’s significance as one of the Joys of the Virgin. In an early illustrated copy of the Meditationes Vitae Christi (Paris, BNF, Ital. 115, fol. 52r), the moment of reunification is shown separately from the traditional Christ Among the Doctors scene. Here, Christ and the Virgin meld into one in a strikingly symmetrical embrace, while the caption above exhorts the reader to be moved by the ‘great sweetness and love’ (Fig. 12.2).12 In contrast to these loving embraces that clearly encourage devotional empathy on the part of the viewer, Simone’s Christ, with crossed arms, sternly affirms his divine paternity over his earthly parents.13 Where the Virgin is apparently depicted as a hierarchical equal to Christ at Tewkesbury and in the Paris Meditationes, Simone’s painting relegates her to a small rounded cushion on the ground. This position for the Virgin is clearly not inspired by the setting of the Biblical narrative, and instead directly symbolises her subordination to the child she bore, absolutely unlike any other visual depiction of the Finding in the Temple. The obvious comparison for Mary’s seated posture is with the Madonna of Humility, a popular piece of late medieval devotional imagery, in the early development of which Simone played an important part.14 Although the Liverpool seated Virgin is to some extent at odds with the later tradition of the Madonna of Humility as an approachable intercessor,15 this would be in line with Simone’s tendency 10 Denny, ‘Simone Martini’s The Holy Family’, pp. 140–1. 11 Paul Frankl, Gothic Architecture, revised by Paul Crossley (New Haven, 2000), p. 189; Richard K. Morris, ‘Tewkesbury Abbey: The Despenser Mausoleum’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 93 (1974), 142–55; C.J.P. Cave, ‘Roof Bosses in the Nave of Tewkesbury Abbey’, Archaeologia 29 (1929), 73–84, at pp. 80–1. 12 Holly Flora, The ‘Devout Belief of the Imagination’: The Paris ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi’ and Female Franciscan Spirituality in Trecento Italy (Turnhout, 2009), p. 80; Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Princeton, 1961), p. 422; see also now Le Meditationes Vitae Christi in volgare secondo il codice Paris, BnF, it. 115. Edizione, commentario e riproduzione del corredo iconografico, ed. Diego Dotto, Dávid Falvay, and Antonio Montefusco (Venice, 2021), esp. p. 374. 13 Denny, ‘Simone Martini’s The Holy Family’, pp. 140–1. 14 Denny, ‘Simone Martini’s The Holy Family’, pp. 145–6. For a review of previous literature, especially the issue of the search for Simone’s lost prototype, see Beth Williamson, The Madonna of Humility: Development, Dissemination and Reception, c. 1340–1400 (Woodbridge, 2009). 15 Williamson, The Madonna of Humility, p. 121.

233

A NEW ANGLE ON SIMONE MARTINI’S HOLY FAMILY

FIG. 12.1  THE REUNIFICATION OF THE VIRGIN AND CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE, VAULT BOSS, 1320s, TEWKESBURY ABBEY, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. PHOTO BY AUTHOR.

to engage creatively with an existing, multivalent motif rather than create a new image with a single iconographical interpretation.16 Denny, following the iconographical method that dominated art history during the mid-twentieth century, sought to find a textual source for Simone’s unique visual treatment of the episode from Luke. He noted that the mainstream exegetical tradition of the Finding in the Temple was very similar to the popular visual depictions of Christ amongst the Doctors, in that it glossed over Christ’s shockingly stern response entirely.17 An exception to this was the twelfth-century Cistercian abbot Joachim of Fiore, who directly compared Mary’s question to the voice of Synagogue, and saw Jesus’ reply as emphasising his divinity, and refuting his earthly parentage.18 As Denny noted, Joachim’s text was a major influence on the Arbor Vitae Crucifixae Jesu Christi composed c. 1305 by the radical Franciscan writer Ubertino da Casale, a contemporary of Simone.19 This text has a lengthy treatment of the Finding in the Temple, where Ubertino compares Christ’s response to other ‘hard words’ (such as his ‘Woman, what have I to do with you?’ at the Wedding at Cana, John 2:4) that prioritise his divine parentage over his earthly parents, thus emphasising the spirit over the flesh. 16 Williamson, The Madonna of Humility, pp. 29–69. 17 Denny, ‘Simone Martini’s The Holy Family’, pp. 142–3. 18 Denny, ‘Simone Martini’s The Holy Family’, p. 143. 19 Denny, ‘Simone Martini’s The Holy Family’, pp. 143–4. For the Arbor Vitae, see the essays gathered together in Ubertino da Casale nel VII Centenario dell’Arbor Vitae Crucifixae Iesu (1305–2005): atti del Convegno di Studi, La Versa 15 settembre 2005, ed. Gabriele Zaccagnini, Studi francescani 104 (2007).

FIG. 12.2  CHRIST AMONG THE DOCTORS AND THE REUNIFICATION OF THE HOLY FAMILY IN THE TEMPLE, 1340s, MEDITATIONES VITAE CHRISTI, BNF, PARIS, ITAL. 115, FOL. 52R. PHOTO: © BNF.

A NEW ANGLE ON SIMONE MARTINI’S HOLY FAMILY

On the basis of his reading of Simone’s painting in light of Ubertino’s text, Denny concluded that the panel was made in the context of enduring ‘Spiritual’ Franciscan sympathies in Provence. The so-called Spirituals, with their belief that the Order should maintain their founder’s example of absolute poverty, were opposed to the mainstream Conventual Franciscans who took a more practical attitude towards money and possessions.20 In the 1310s Ubertino authored a lengthy exposition of the Spiritual position for Pope Clement V.21 In 1322 he delivered, probably in person to Pope John XXII, a more measured defence that nonetheless still lauded usus pauper – the concept of ‘poor use’ that restricted friars’ ownership of possessions – as an intrinsic part of the Franciscan vow of poverty.22 From a ‘Spiritual’ perspective, an image representing the divine Christ circumscribing the authority of his earthly parents might have offered comfort to their resistance to Pope John, who came down firmly against absolute poverty in 1324. Yet this Franciscan Spiritual dimension presents us with a paradox. How could a viewpoint sympathetic to the Spirituals, dedicated to absolute poverty, accentuate their argument through a bespoke object covered in gold leaf? As it is not associated with a more expansive Christological cycle, Simone’s painting is essentially an Andachtsbild: a narrative episode recast as a subject of devotion. This means it was unlikely to be used in a didactic manner, and was instead intended for personal contemplation. Later authors have attempted to place the Liverpool panel in a more general devotional context more suited to a small, de luxe object. Henk van Os rejected Denny’s specific connection with Ubertino’s text, and instead sought connections within general Marian piety, particularly Mary’s prayer when searching for the Christ Child in the Meditationes Vitae Christi.23 The trend towards investigating the panel in the context of private devotion to the Madonna was continued by Victor Schmidt, who drew parallels with a similar prayer in Bonaventure’s Lignum Vitae and suggested that the picture may have been commissioned as a devotional aid to a Clarissan nun.24 Both these interpretations assume that Mary 20 David Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after St Francis, (University Park, PA, 2001). For further discussion of the conflicts between Spiritual and Conventual factions, and their ramifications for Franciscan artistic patronage, see also Chapters 9, 6, and 3 by Brilliant, Cooper, and Renner respectively in this volume. 21 Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, pp. 111–36. 22 Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, pp. 261–77. 23 Henk van Os, Marias Demut und Verherrlichung in der sienesischen Malerei (The Hague, 1969), pp. 117–18; Meditations on the Life of Christ, trans. Francis Taney, Anne Miller, and C. Mary Stallings-Taney (Asheville, NC, 2000), pp. 53–5. 24 Victor M. Schmidt, Painted Piety: Panel Paintings for Personal Devotion in Tuscany, 1250–1400 (Florence, 2005), pp. 193–9; Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St Francis, trans. Ewert Cousins (London, 1978), pp. 132–3. For an overview of the dating of the Meditationes, see Flora, The ‘Devout Belief of the Imagination’, pp. 27–31; Dávid Falvay and Péter Tóth, ‘New Light on the Date and Authorship of the Meditationes Vitae Christi’, in Devotional Culture in Late Medieval

235

236

JAMES ALE XANDER CAMERON

is the focus of devotion in this painting, but the complicated and tense atmosphere between the figures suggests more than straightforward Marian piety.25 A particular issue is that, unlike a regular devotional image of the Madonna and Child, there is neither an outward gaze at the onlooker that invites engagement with the divine nor a close connection between mother and son to create an empathetic bond. Instead, the gazes of mother and child are locked in stalemate, the gestures of the parents inviting us to choose a side in this family dispute.

IN SEARCH OF A PATRON: THE CASE FOR NAPOLEONE ORSINI Denny’s demonstration that the panel is a visual unicum strongly suggests a personal dimension to the commission.26 Andrew Martindale proposed that the patron of the Liverpool panel was Pope Clement VI, born Pierre Roger, who ascended to the papal throne in Avignon in the year painted on the frame. However, Martindale could only speculate that the unusual subject matter might allude to a family incident in Clement’s life on his journey to the papacy that was not otherwise recorded.27 In an unpublished lecture, given in 2001 on the occasion of the loan of the Liverpool panel to the National Gallery, Susanna Avery-Quash suggested a stronger candidate: Cardinal Napoleone Orsini, for whom Ubertino di Casale served as personal chaplain.28 Napoleone was a well-documented England and Europe: Diverse Imaginations of Christ’s Life, ed. Stephen Kelly and Ryan Perry (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 17–105. 25 It has been remarked that the terre-verde showing through only the Virgin’s face could be related to devotional use, although the damage could have occurred under later ownership. Christie, ‘National Museums and Galleries Liverpool Conservation Division: Technical Examination report’, p. 3. 26 C. Jean Campbell, ‘“Symone nostro senensi iocundissima”: The Court Artist, Heart, Mind and Hand’, in Artists at Court: Image Making and Identity 1330–1550, ed. Stephen Campbell (Boston, 2004), pp. 34–5. 27 Andrew Martindale, Simone Martini: Complete Edition (Oxford, 1988), p. 190; Martindale, ‘Novelty’, in Simone Martini, p. 146. It has also been observed that Clement’s nephew, also called Pierre (b.1329), would have been 12 in that year, the age of Christ at the time of the episode as stated by Luke, and thus it could have been commissioned as a gift to him; Edward Morris and Martin Hopkinson, Walker Art Gallery: Foreign Catalogue (Liverpool, 1977), p. 114. Avery-Quash objects to this on the basis that the young Pierre would have turned 13 in 1342, although the youthful Christ could still have had relevance to the boy even in the absence of a precise correspondence in age. Susanna Avery-Quash, ‘Simone Martini’s Christ Discovered in the Temple’, typescript of unpublished lecture delivered at the National Gallery, 2001; Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, object file for inv. no. 2787, p. 11. 28 A summary of Avery-Quash’s lecture was published in National Gallery News, March 2001. Avery-Quash’s proposal is briefly summarised in Brooke, ‘Roscoe’s Italian Paintings’, pp. 70–2. Napoleone was cautiously suggested as a possible patron by Joel Brink, ‘Francesco Petrarca and the Problem of Chronology in the Late Paintings of Simone Martini’, Paragone (September 1977), 3–9, at p. 8. For the relationship between the two men, see Paolo Vian, ‘“Noster familiaris solicitus et discretus”: Napoleone Orsini

A NEW ANGLE ON SIMONE MARTINI’S HOLY FAMILY

enthusiast for the art of painting and the patron of many of the finest artists of the time.29 Simone Martini’s Passion polyptych featuring the Orsini coat of arms, now divided among various European museums, was first linked to Napoleone via Ubertino’s writings by Brink.30 More recently the supplicant bishop in the Antwerp Deposition has been more firmly identified as a portrait of Napoleone through his keen contemplation of the nail through Christ’s feet, a relic that he is recorded to have owned.31 Napoleone is also painted as a supplicant in the Saint Nicholas chapel off the right transept of the Lower Church in Assisi which implies an important role in inaugurating one of the most influential series of frescoes of the Trecento.32 The chapel on the opposite side of the Lower Church was originally intended to be Napoleone’s burial chapel, and features a mural altarpiece by Pietro Lorenzetti, which would make him one of the artist’s earliest patrons.33 He appeared in a fresco cycle in the church of Cortona attributed to the Lorenzetti brothers, now known only through seventeenth-century watercolour copies, which depicted his visitation to the town in connection with the potential canonisation of Beata Margherita.34 A poem by Petrarch tells us that Napoleone, in the year of his death and the date of the Liverpool panel, commissioned a lost ‘speaking portrait’ from Simone.35

e Ubertino da Casale’, in Ubertino da Casale: atti del XLI Convegno internazionale, Assisi 18–20 ottobre 2013, ed. Società internazionale di studi francescani (Spoleto, 2014), pp. 217–98. 29 For an overview of the cardinal’s patronage and private interests see Carl Willemsen, Kardinal Napoleone Orsini 1263–1342 (Berlin, 1927), pp. 146–56. For a consideration of his interest in contemporary Italian painting see Joanna Cannon and André Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany (University Park, PA, 1999), p. 209 n. 94. 30 Joel Brink, ‘Simone Martini’s Orsini Polyptych’, Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Antwerp, 1976), pp. 7–23, at pp. 18–19. Brink’s conclusions regarding the links between the Orsini polyptych and Ubertino’s writings are far more general than those for the Liverpool panel and not as convincing. His identification of the nun in the Entombment as Clare of Montefalco, the Umbrian mystic closely associated with Napoleone, has similarly not gained wide acceptance; see Schmidt, Painted Piety, pp. 256–60. 31 Schmidt, Painted Piety, p. 258; Elisabeth Mognetti and Marianne Lonjon, ‘Le panneau double-face du Maitre des Anges Rebelles: recherches sur l’image et la forme’, in Hommage à Michel Laclotte: études sur la peinture du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance, ed. Pierre Rosenberg, Cécile Scailliérez, and Dominique Thiébaut (Milan and Paris, 1994), pp. 35–49, at p. 47 n. 27. 32 Serena Romano, ‘Le botteghe di Giotto: qualche novità sulla cappella di San Nicola nella basilica inferiore di Assisi’, in Medioevo: le officine, atti del convegno Parma (22–27 settembre, 2009), ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan, 2010), pp. 584–96. Lunghi’s proposal that the Orsini remained the patrons of the entire scheme of the Lower Church has gained little support: Elvio Lunghi, ‘La perduta decorazione trecentesca nell’abside della chiesa inferiore del S. Francesco ad Assisi’, Collectanea Francescana 66 (1996), 479–510, at pp. 499–504. 33 Schmidt, Painted Piety, p. 257. 34 Cannon and Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti, pp. 206–9. 35 Martindale, Simone Martini, p. 184.

237

238

JAMES ALE XANDER CAMERON

He died in Avignon on 24 March 1342 aged 79.36 These multiple cases of Napoleone as an individual fascinated by painting, and the independent connections that have been made by scholars between works associated with his patronage and the writings of Ubertino da Casale, make him a strong candidate for this exceptional work. Furthermore, it could be argued that the way Napoleone accommodated his sympathies with the Spiritual Franciscan movement with his status as a cardinal overrides the apparent contradictions between the engagement with their ideas and the form of the panel as a luxury object of private devotion. Napoleone was an active protector of the Franciscan Spirituals during the long period of controversy and schism within the Order in the early fourteenth century, demonstrating his support by choosing Ubertino as his chaplain, and also through his keen promotion of female saints connected with the movement or sympathetic to its beliefs.37 Avery-Quash related the choice of biblical episode to Napoleone’s own biography. She argued that, as a member of the Orsini clan, Napoleone’s various affiliations with the Spirituals would have been in opposition to his family’s traditional support of the Guelf cause and the authority of the Pope. Considered in this biographical key, the notion of Jesus having to deliver harsh words to his loving parents in the context of a family quarrel could be associated with Napoleone’s own dilemma in having to go against the traditional authority of the papacy and his own family in his sympathies for the Franciscan Spirituals.38 Avery-Quash’s interpretation would bridge the gap between the arguments for affective spirituality and Denny’s connection with a specific dogmatic text. Also, its ‘Spiritual’ subtexts do not suffer the usual paradox of promoting the adherence to evangelic poverty through lavish works of art that appear to be made of solid gold.39 It is plausible that Napoleone, who was not a Franciscan himself, could have commissioned this precious object that represented a deeply personal meaning. It could also be added to Avery-Quash’s argument that this duality is symbolised in the figure of Christ in the painting, whose lavish robe does not disguise the hitherto unremarked fact that he is barefoot, something that is given strong emphasis by the visual parallel with Joseph’s shoes.40 36 Unlike France, Avignon largely used Nativity Style for the beginning of the New Year, changing the year on 25 December rather than the more common 1 January or 25 March. This means that it is likely that the Liverpool panel was completed sometime after 25 December 1341, and presumably, but not necessarily, before Napoleone’s death on 24 March 1342. For the complexities of the medieval calendar across Europe, see A Handbook of Dates for Students of British History, ed. C.R. Cheney, revised by Michael Jones (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 8–14. 37 For a summary of the relationship between Ubertino, Napoleone, and these female mystics see Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, pp. 315–46. 38 Avery-Quash, unpublished lecture, p. 13. 39 For instance, Marianne Lonjon, ‘Précisions sur la provenance du retable dit “de Colle di Val d’Elsa” de Lippo Memmi’, Revue du Louvre 56 (April 2006), 31–40. 40 The Spiritual Franciscans, in accordance with the original rule of Saint Francis, were particularly committed to going unshod; Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, p. 119. Christ is

A NEW ANGLE ON SIMONE MARTINI’S HOLY FAMILY

Ubertino’s influence on the Liverpool panel could not have been direct, as he was certainly dead by 1342, and he only served as chaplain to Napoleone from 1305 until 1309, when the latter left Italy for Avignon.41 However, Ubertino would have had contact with Napoleone when he too was called to France in 1312, until he largely disappeared from the historical record after 1325 (before being referred to as deceased in a papal letter of 1341).42 While the case for Napoleone as patron for the Holy Family remains circumstantial, the picture’s complexities would have matched his taste for sophisticated, innovative imagery. Indeed, the Liverpool panel is arguably even more sophisticated than scholars have recognised in the way that it goes far beyond the representation of the Gospel text, into what would seem to be a complex visual, temporal, and psychological interplay with its viewer.

THE NEW ANGLE ON THE LIVERPOOL HOLY FAMILY Avery-Quash’s proposed interpretation of Napoleone’s dilemma being represented within the panel can be reassessed in the light of fresh observations concerning its pictorial composition. The painting has usually only been contemplated frontally. To borrow Andrew Martindale’s characterisation, this gives us a triangle of ‘eternally revolving glances’ between the three family members.43 Joseph is bringing the Christ child back to his mother, whereupon she delivers the words from her book. Christ holds a book similar to that of Mary, and we can assume that it may contain his ‘hard words’ that the learned owner of the painting knows he will subsequently deliver to his mother.44 His crossed arms show us the danger of a dry iconographical analysis: although this gesture is often present in images of adoring angels, there is little doubt that, here, Simone intends the meaning of the pose as that of a defiant, stroppy teenager.45 also prominently barefoot in the Giottesque Return to Nazareth at Assisi, but here Joseph, in line with the above interpretation of the equality of the Holy Family, is also unshod. The issue of Christ depicted barefoot in the context of Franciscan dress is an issue beyond the scope of this essay but, as far as I am aware, has not been given specific attention by scholars. 41 Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, pp. 100, 112. 42 Burr, The Spiritual Franciscans, pp. 262 (for Napoleone hosting Ubertino in Avignon) and 277 (for Ubertino’s disappearance from the historical record and likely date of death). 43 Martindale, Simone Martini, p. 42. 44 Although Martindale, Simone Martini, p. 190, says that the painting is not about Christ’s harsh reply, as his book is closed, this is an unnecessarily absolute reading, as recognised by John Pope-Hennessy, ‘The Veil of Scepticism’, Times Literary Supplement, March 24–30 (1989), p. 311. 45 See, for example, the angels in Simone’s Death of Saint Martin, in the Saint Martin Chapel at Assisi, or for wider context, the Wilton Diptych. Many paintings in the Sienese tradition of the Presentation of the Virgin, probably based on an example by the Lorenzetti for the façade of the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala also use this motif

239

240

JAMES ALE XANDER CAMERON

However, one aspect of the panel, on close inspection, does not appear to hold up to the high quality of the rest of the work. Although Joseph’s face was considered by the mid-nineteenth-century connoisseur Gustav Waagen as ‘certainly one of the finest that art ever produced’, the face of Mary does not seem as beautiful and well-observed.46 It is difficult to deny, once it has been pointed out, that she looks rather cross-eyed, her face elongated sideways (Plate XVI). Indeed, Mojmír Frinta, arguing that the punchmarks of the work did not date from Simone’s Avignon period, used the shortcomings in Mary’s design – including how her arm ‘inorganically’ comes out of her tunic – to dispute the master’s hand in the painting.47 The consistency of craquelure across the picture surface suggests that Mary’s appearance is not due to incompetence or restoration. Rather, it may be due to the device of anamorphosis.48 For, when one views the panel from an oblique angle from the right, Mary’s face resolves into an altogether more logical composition (Fig. 12.3). Her eyes, rather than casting a glance over Christ’s head, now form a low, piercing gaze directly into his eyes. Furthermore, other aspects of the panel seem suited for this viewing position, which the reader is invited to try out with the reproduction of the panel in this book. Rather than the ‘triangle’ of gestures, Mary’s arm now appears more anatomically convincing, as a gesture echoing Joseph’s. Their exchange alludes to the words that follow the Gospel text in her book: ‘behold, your father and I have sought thee, sorrowing’. The Virgin’s dress tumbles toward the viewer, much as Gabriel’s cloak falls over the fictive marble of Simone’s Uffizi Annunciation, rather than awkwardly towards the side. Joseph’s drapery also takes on a new vividness of modelling from this angle, forming a tunnel towards the central point of this new composition, between the parents’ hands. The viewer now stands almost behind Christ confronting his loving earthly parents, as if the panel’s audience is adopting his position. for the newly emancipated child Mary; Denny, ‘Simone Martini’s The Holy Family’, pp. 139–40. Barasch notes the crossed hands on the chest are rather ambiguous with a variety of meanings in the work of Giotto: Moshe Barasch, Giotto and the Language of Gesture (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 72–87. 46 Gustav Waagen, Art Treasures of Great Britain, III (London, 1854), p. 232. This is a remarkable statement, coming as it does from a time before widespread admiration for the Italian primitives. 47 Mojmír Frinta, ‘Unsettling Evidence in some Panel Paintings by Simone Martini’, in La pittura nel XIV e XV secolo: il contributo dell’analisi tecnica alla storia dell’arte, ed. Henk van Os and J.R.J. Asperen de Boer (Bologna, 1985), pp. 211–25, at p. 214. 48 Frinta, however, is entirely correct in observing that there is no craquelure across the surface of the signature on the bottom part of the frame, and I agree this must have been retouched, if not completely faked as Frinta implies. Aside from my following argument for anamorphosis, Simone’s authorship may be further upheld by the fact that the panel conforms to an interrelated series of measurements within Simone’s output: Joel Brink, ‘From Carpentry Analysis to the Discovery of Symmetry in Trecento Painting’, in La pittura nel XIV e XV secolo, pp. 345–72, at p. 348.

241

A NEW ANGLE ON SIMONE MARTINI’S HOLY FAMILY

FIG. 12.3  SIMONE MARTINI, CHRIST DISCOVERED IN THE TEMPLE, WALKER ART GALLERY, LIVERPOOL, 1342, DETAIL OF MARY’S FACE VIEWED AT ACUTE ANGLE FROM RIGHT. PHOTO BY AUTHOR, REPRODUCED BY COURTESY OF NATIONAL MUSEUMS LIVERPOOL, WALKER ART GALLERY.

The artist may have left some clues towards the importance of taking up this particular viewpoint. The slanting white lines across the green ground at the base of the painting may be one (Plate XVI), and the lighting of the fictive frame around the marbling on the reverse may be another (Plate XVII).49 The frame on the back is lit from the left, which could allude to a viewing angle from the right for the front of the panel. 49 For the fictive marbling, see Gardner, ‘The Back of the Panel of Christ Discovered in the Temple’, p. 389.

242

JAMES ALE XANDER CAMERON

Parallels for this synchronicity between direction of light source on the back and the oblique viewing angle on the front can be discerned in a set of panels by Pietro Lorenzetti. The Crucifixion in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 2002.436) and Christ before Pilate in the Vatican Pinacoteca (inv. no. 168) show no traces of original hinge marks, but, like the Orsini polyptych, are thought by Victor Schmidt to have been part of a folding series of four or six Passion scenes.50 Like the Liverpool Holy Family, they have fictive marbled backs in a painted frame, with light illuminating the left and top sides.51 Both panels, like that of Simone, could be viewed frontally, but are also suited to an angled viewing from the right-hand side: the architectural setting of Christ before Pilate is foreshortened in this direction, while the figures in the Crucifixion are grouped in planes diagonally across the picture field, facing towards the bottom right corner. Although the relationship of the lighting of the back is reversed in comparison to the Liverpool panel, each artist appears to be consistent within the work in drawing a metaphor between light and vision with the front and the back of the panel. Optical considerations of this kind would be in character for advanced Trecento artworks. The theory of intromission, the idea that eyes gather rays sent out by objects rather than the eyes themselves sending out rays, was propounded by the thirteenth-century English Franciscans Roger Bacon and John Pecham.52 This new science of optics was brought to the papal curia by Pecham in 1277, and there has been much speculation as to how it influenced Trecento artists.53 The careful use of light and coordination between the fronts and backs of these fictively framed works fits with a culture keenly aware of the interaction between light, objects, and the beholder’s eye.54 50 Schmidt, Painted Piety, pp. 288–9; Carlo Volpe, Pietro Lorenzetti (Milan, 1989) pp. 164–5; Keith Christiansen, ‘Paul Delaroche’s Crucifixion by Pietro Lorenzetti’, Apollo 157 (February 2003), 8–14. 51 The back of the Vatican panel is reproduced upside-down in Schmidt, Painted Piety, p. 299, and Schmidt, ‘Portable Polyptychs with Narrative Scenes’, pp. 401–2, which disguises the rational link between front and back. I would like to thank Keith Christiansen of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for sending me an uncropped picture of the back of the Vatican panel which confirmed this. 52 David Lindberg, ‘Lines of Influence in Thirteenth-Century Optics: Bacon, Witelo, and Pecham’, Speculum 46 (1971), 66–83. 53 Samuel Y. Edgerton, ‘Review of David Lindberg, John Pecham and the Science of Optics: Perspectiva Communis’, Art Bulletin 54 (1972), 349–50; Paul Hills, The Light of Early Italian Painting (New Haven, 1987), pp. 64–5; Samuel Y. Edgerton, The Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry: Art and Science on the Eve of the Scientific Revolution (Ithaca, NY and London, 1991), pp. 47–87; Donal Cooper, ‘Preaching amidst Pictures: Visual Contexts for Sermons in Late Medieval Tuscany’, in Optics, Ethics, and Art in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: Looking into Peter of Limoges’s Moral Treatise on the Eye, ed. Herbert L. Kessler and Richard G. Newhauser (Toronto, 2018), pp. 29–46. 54 For the consideration of fronts and backs in the study of altarpieces, see Julian Gardner, ‘Fronts and Backs: Setting and Structure’, in La pittura nel XIV e XV secolo, pp. 297–322.

A NEW ANGLE ON SIMONE MARTINI’S HOLY FAMILY

The anamorphosis postulated in these paintings could not have been achieved through mathematical schema, as appears to have been pioneered by Leonardo da Vinci and as subsequently expounded in pictorial treatises.55 However, it is well known that Trecento artists often deliberately painted images with the intention that they would be viewed from an oblique angle, as suggested by their precocious and ambitious experimentation with pictorial space before the development of an artificial system by Alberti.56 What were once perceived to be artistic shortcomings in the painted architecture in Duccio’s Royal Collection triptych have been re-evaluated as evidence for the painter’s sensitivity to the angled position of its open doors.57 Simone himself shows a keen understanding of the relationship of his painting to the spectator in a number of works, starting with the predella of the Saint Louis of Toulouse panel in Naples where all the architectural features respond to a viewer standing in the centre, and the Saint Martin chapel at Assisi, where the architecture within the narratives assumes that the viewer is standing facing the altar.58 It might be tempting to argue that, even though it does not have hinges, the Holy Family was designed to flank another panel, either a companion made at the same time or a pre-existing object.59 However, the status of the picture as the central part of the narrative of the Finding in the Temple between the discovery among the Doctors and the Return to Nazareth, makes it difficult to interpret it as having any function as part of a hypothetical narrative sequence, and an explanation should be found that understands it as an essentially complete work of art. The different factors considered thus far – the peculiar narrative moment of the subject, the singular web of gazes and gestures between the three 55 Lyle Massey, Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies: Anamorphosis in Early Modern Theories of Perspective (University Park, PA, 2007), pp. 37–71. 56 John White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space, 3rd edn (Ithaca, NY and London, 1987), pp. 23–112. 57 Joanna Cannon and Viola Pemberton-Pigott, ‘The Royal Collection Duccio: A Triptych Reconsidered’, Apollo 156 (2002), 10–18, at pp. 12–16. Many of us who were fortunate enough to be taught by Joanna Cannon in the Early Italian rooms of the National Gallery remember her observations about the right wing of Duccio’s triptych there (NG 566). She suggested that the eyes of Saint Aurea, and her right hand, have been painted in such a manner as to make contact with the gaze of the person opening and closing the triptych, and to bless them as they open or close it. 58 Hayden B.J. Maginnis, The World of the Early Sienese Painter (University Park, PA, 2001), p. 181; Hayden B.J. Maginnis, Painting in the Age of Giotto: A Historical Reevaluation (University Park, PA, 1997), p. 107; White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space, pp. 83–5. 59 The circumstances of it accompanying a pre-existing panel could account for the simultaneous modern and archaic aspects of the picture: the intense psychology married with the eschewing of setting for gold ground. David Wilkins has made an interesting connection between Italian domestic piety during the Middle Ages and the continuing tradition of the krasny ugol (beautiful corner) in Russian homes, where groupings of icons in the corner of rooms tacitly form triptychs: David Wilkins, ‘Opening the Doors to Devotion: Trecento Triptychs and Suggestions concerning Images and Domestic Practice in Florence’, in Italian Panel Painting in the Duecento and Trecento, p. 390 n. 41.

243

244

JAMES ALE XANDER CAMERON

figures, and the potential anamorphosis in key passages of the painting – can be accommodated together within a more radical suggestion: that the panel was intended to have multiple viewing angles which introduce a temporal dimension to the viewer’s experience of the image, ideally through a performative re-enactment of the dialogue between Mary and Christ. Although this argument must ultimately depend on an intuitive examination of the surviving painting, it would accord with recent trends in the study of Trecento painting. Assumptions, inherited ultimately from Vasari, that the art of this period was concerned with a progression towards greater naturalism have been superseded by scholarly considerations of a number of artworks that have ambivalent notions of space and perspective, and that require the viewer to make a judgement regarding their appearance.60 The perspectival framing devices in some monumental frescoes of the period may have been designed to guide the spectator’s eye around the scenes in the correct order rather than to evoke naturalism for its own sake, and show the late-medieval artist’s creative use of pictorial space to engage, rather than simply deceive the spectator.61 The manipulation of spatial conventions and the regard for in visio perception is exemplified in Orcagna’s Strozzi altarpiece which, through its paradoxical treatment of space, flips Christ between the human and divine. He is, at the same time, seated on earth before the grounded saints, and enthroned in a heavenly realm.62 The Strozzi altarpiece is recognised by Maginnis in his re-evaluation of the Trecento as a prime example of the ‘Mannered Style’ of the mid-century which was characterised by artistic experimentation with the effects of spatial paradox.63 Similarly Klaus Krüger has demonstrated how many Trecento works of art operated in an ambiguous dichotomy between illusionism and the affirmation of the work’s material presence; he particularly analyses Sienese works with ‘immanent reflexivity’ in their pictorial representation.64 Simone may have helped to inaugurate this style with his 1333 Uffizi Annunciation which presents us with a dilemma in the spatial relationship between the saints on one plain, who belong to our world, and the ethereal narrative between Gabriel and Mary, which exists in another.65 60 Maginnis, Painting in the Age of Giotto, pp. 7–63. 61 Janetta Benton ‘Perspective and the Pattern of Circulation in Assisi and Padua’, Artibus et Historiae 10 (1989), 37–52. For a treatment of Giotto’s conscious use of spatial distortion in monumental panel painting to accommodate an oblique viewing angle, see Antonio Natali, ‘Lo spazio illusivo’, in La ‘Madonna di Ognissanti’ di Giotto restaurata (Florence, 1992), pp. 51–5. 62 Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton, 1951), pp. 9–13; Gert Kreytenberg, ‘Image and Frame: Remarks on Orcagna’s Pala Strozzi’, The Burlington Magazine 134 (1992), 634–8. 63 Maginnis, Painting in the Age of Giotto, p. 190. 64 Klaus Krüger, ‘Medium and Imagination: Aesthetic Aspects of Trecento Panel Painting’, in Italian Panel Painting in the Duecento and Trecento, pp. 57–81, at p. 75. 65 Maginnis, Painting in the Age of Giotto, pp. 127–9.

A NEW ANGLE ON SIMONE MARTINI’S HOLY FAMILY

Taking this idea of perceptual dilemmas in artworks further, we should remember that the Liverpool panel, with its attractive verso, was an object designed to be turned over in one’s hands, and that the viewing angle is decided not by its location, but entirely by the person holding it.66 It may be that the frontal perspective from which it is usually viewed is only one of several potential viewing angles.67 The spatial and material ambivalence of the panel poses a choice between earthly powers and the divine. If one chooses to stand behind Christ, one is rewarded with a more resolved exchange between the figures, but at the price of experiencing the arduous task of the young Jesus.68 The panel then confronts the viewer with Christ’s loving earthly parents, who now visualise the pathetic text ‘Thy father and I have sought thee, sorrowing’, underlining the significance of the tough response he made. It is up to the viewer to deliver and meditate upon Christ’s ‘hard words’ in telling his parents he had more important things to attend to. Such spiritual role-playing has been noticed as a part of general spirituality and interaction with panel paintings, suggested by texts such as the Meditationes Vitae Christi.69 It also echoes contemporary scholastic debates on vision, recalling how Aquinas gave the intellect primacy in judging an object: an in visio perception, where aesthetic perception becomes a dialogue between the viewer and the object. 70 If, as Avery-Quash has argued, the patron of the Liverpool panel was indeed Napoleone Orsini, the intended viewer would have had the appetite to engage in this psychological jousting between image and audience, with 66 For the importance of touching and handling in medieval devotional art see Francesca Geens, ‘“Ungs très petiz tableaux à pignon, qui cloent et ouvrent, esmaillez dehors et dedens”: A Study of Small Scale, Folding, Pieces of Goldsmiths’ Work in Fourteenth Century Europe’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2002) pp. 178–88. 67 An English parallel is presented by the discussion around the great thirteenth-century painted ceiling of the nave of Peterborough Cathedral, which has been identified as a pictorial scheme with two separate viewing angles informed by the optical interests of Robert Grosseteste. When viewed from an oblique angle, the diamonds containing allegorical figures appear to converge into an open-beam roof, see Folke Nordström, ‘Peterborough, Lincoln, and the Science of Robert Grosseteste: A Study in Thirteenth Century Architecture and Iconography’, Art Bulletin 37 (1955), 241–72. Nordström’s thesis has received some criticism; see the editor’s introductory remarks in Conservation and Discovery: Peterborough Cathedral Nave Ceiling and Related Structures, ed. Jackie Hall and Susan M. Wright (London, 2015), p. 15, and the essay in the same volume by Paul Binski, ‘Iconography and Influences’, pp. 89–101, at p. 94. 68 This idea of Mary as ‘the wrong answer’ may seem startling but is in the Joachite tradition in which Ubertino was working. Joachim of Fiore likened Mary to Synagogue in his exegesis of the Holy Family’s reunion; see Denny, ‘Simone Martini’s The Holy Family’, p. 143. 69 Schmidt, Painted Piety, p. 259; David Jeffrey, ‘Franciscan Spirituality and the Growth of Vernacular Culture’, in By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought, ed. David Jeffrey (Ottawa, 1979); Pierluigi Leone de Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003) pp. 327–8. 70 Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, trans. Hugh Bredin (New Haven, 1986), pp. 82–3; Umberto Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge, MA, 1988), pp. 49–63.

245

246

JAMES ALE XANDER CAMERON

iconography which may well have spoken to the kind of dilemmas of allegiance that he had personally faced in his curial career and private devotional life.

CONCLUSION This analysis of the Liverpool Holy Family can provide no new certainties. It may be strengthened in the future if the painting’s provenance can be extended before the nineteenth century, and a clearer association made with the Orsini family or with Avignon.71 Many of the arguments regarding influence also assume that there is a connection between the image and a pre-existing text, extant or lost. However, what this essay suggests is that familiar paintings can still be read in new ways if we approach them as material objects rather than flat images to be reproduced in books. The interactive properties outlined above must necessarily remain speculative, but they would accord with Simone’s consistent concern with novelty and innovation. It is likely too that these features would have arisen in close dialogue with a patron. Remarkably personal commissions, with sophisticated visual allegory, are characteristic of Simone’s Avignon output. As well as the Orsini polyptych, the frescoes for the cathedral porch have been linked to the requirements of the patron Jacopo Stefaneschi, with complex metaphors between seeing and the Beatific Vision.72 Meanwhile, the Petrarch frontispiece (Fig. 7.7) is a particularly impressive example of Simone responding to the great poet’s complicated requirements, using the central act of ‘unveiling’ Virgil to link his own art of painting to that of poetry through the representation of sight and visual revealing.73 71 In support of the reported claim by the Marchese Riccardi (see above, note 9), Avery-Quash and Brooke have drawn attention to entry no. 142 in the 1752 inventory of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence which describes a ‘quadretto in asse antico alto sol: 12 e largo s. 9 rappresenta la Madonna a sedere con Gesu Bambino ed un santo in fondo dorato con caratteri greci’. A very tenuous link can be drawn back from the Riccardi to the Orsini: the family resided in the former Palazzo Medici (now Palazzo Medici-Riccardi) which they had acquired in the seventeenth century along with some of its contents; while in 1469 the palace’s then owner Lorenzo de’ Medici had married Clarice Orsini: see Avery-Quash, unpublished lecture, pp. 13–14. Another path from Liverpool back to Florence may have been William Roscoe’s own interests in the history of the Medici: he wrote a biography of Lorenzo de’ Medici (published in 1795) and for this project had asked his friend William Clarke to transcribe relevant documents in the Riccardi library, from where the Marchese said the picture had been stolen (although this would appear to jar with the recorded 1804 purchase at Christie’s); see Brooke, ‘Roscoe’s Italian Paintings’, p. 69. Calculating the Florentine soldo as 2.918 cm, however, gives dimensions (35 × 26.3 cm) which are somewhat smaller than the panel in Liverpool (49.5 × 35.1 cm). 72 Beth Williamson, ‘Site, Seeing and Salvation in Fourteenth-Century Avignon’, Art History 30 (2007), 1–25; Andrew Martindale, ‘Simone Martini and the Problem of Retirement’, in Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture Presented to Peter Lasko, ed. David Buckton and T.A. Heslop (Stroud, 1994), pp. 283–8, at p. 286. 73 Joel Brink, ‘Simone Martini, Francesco Petrarca and the Humanist Programme of

A NEW ANGLE ON SIMONE MARTINI’S HOLY FAMILY

It was recorded in the sixteenth century that Simone went to Avignon under the protection of a cardinal, which would suggest that the painter held a post as a court artist, required to entertain through both his verbal and visual wit.74 C. Jean Campbell eloquently defines the iocundissima (agreeable nature) that Petrarch credited to Simone as representing how he could work in a reciprocal relationship with his patron.75 With this in mind, we should allow that the remarkable qualities of the Liverpool Holy Family may be credited as much to the cultivated taste and demands of its commissioner – quite possibly the extraordinary connoisseur and patron of the arts Napoleone Orsini – as to the artistic invention of Simone Martini.

the Virgil Frontispiece’, Mediaevalia 3 (1977), 83–117, at pp. 106–8; Martindale, Simone Martini, p. 155. 74 Andrew Martindale, The Rise of the Artist in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (London, 1972), pp. 40–1. 75 Campbell, ‘“Symone nostro senensi iocundissima”’.

247

ARTISTIC APPROPRIATION, INSTITUTIONAL IDENTITY, AND CIVIC RELIGION IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY SIENA: THE BYZANTINE TREASURY OF THE HOSPITAL OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA STEFANIA GEREVINI

O

n 27 September 1427, San Bernardino delivered one of his thundering sermons on the Piazza del Campo in Siena. As was customary with his preaching style, he dotted the sermon with local Sienese references, which, in this instance, included a colourful metaphor about the relative roles of the city cathedral and of its main charitable institution: I remind you that this [hospital] is one of the eyes of your city, while the other eye is the episcopal see; they are very well placed next to each other. The right eye is the episcopal see, and the left is the hospital: the nose is the piazza that lies between them. You can see that it is elongated, like a nose. Oh, citizens, do take care of this hospital! … And if my mind does not err, both these institutions are dedicated to the Virgin I first encountered the treasury of Santa Maria della Scala during my PhD in Byzantine art history, which Prof. Joanna Cannon co-supervised with Prof. Antony Eastmond. I am immensely grateful to Joanna for introducing me to the arts of Siena during an eye-opening trip in 2007, and for being a most rigorous, supportive, and generous mentor ever since.

13

250

STEFANIA GEREVINI

Mary, and the city [itself] is called ‘of the Virgin’, therefore turn your minds to her glory.1

The hospital that San Bernardino evokes in his sermon is Santa Maria della Scala, which, as he implicitly suggests through his eye metaphor, was one of the key civic institutions of medieval and Renaissance Siena. The hospital, as the passage indicates, occupied vast premises in front of the city cathedral and episcopal residence. Founded in the eleventh century, by Bernardino’s times the hospital was equipped with its own church, dedicated to the Virgin Annunciate, and prided itself on a set of precious relics and reliquaries of the Passion of Christ, of the Virgin Mary, and of saints. This holy collection was largely the result of a single acquisition made in Venice in 1359, when Santa Maria della Scala purchased an illustrious group of relics and reliquaries of Byzantine provenance from the merchant Pietro di Giunta Torrigiani.2 By 1427, when Bernardino delivered his sermon, the Byzantine relics had become the focus of a major and well-established public cult in Siena, contributing to the prestige of Santa Maria della Scala and to its civic status. But how was the integration of the Byzantine treasury into the highly specific Sienese civic cult achieved, what purposes did the Byzantine relics fulfil in Siena, and what correlations existed between their use in the Italian city-state and their original meaning in Byzantium? Addressing these questions, this chapter contributes to two lively scholarly debates; the first concerned with the role of relic cults and civic pageantry in the highly factious civic communities of late medieval Italy, and the second with the mechanisms and meaning of artistic appropriation in the same context. These areas of study owe much to Joanna Cannon’s work. Emphasising the pivotal role of the visual arts in shaping medieval perceptions of sanctity and in mediating the interactions between individuals, social communities and holy patrons, her publications have profoundly invigorated scholarly debates 1 ‘Io vi ricordo che quello è uno degli occhi de la vostra città, e l’altro occhio è el Vescovado: stanno molto bene a lato l’uno all’altro. L’occhio dritto è el Vescovado, e ’l sinistro è lo Spedale: el naso è la piazza che è in mezzo. Vedi che è longhetta come è il naso. Doh, cittadini, procurate a quello Spedale! … E s’io procuro bene, tutt’e due queste Case so’ della Vergine Maria, e la città si chiama de la Vergine Maria, e però a sua gloria ponete lo’ mente’. Bernardino da Siena, Prediche Volgari sul Campo di Siena. 1427, ed. Carlo Delcorno (Milan, 1989), II, p. 1206 (14 Settembre). 2 Prior to the acquisition of the Byzantine group of relics in 1359, Santa Maria della Scala does not appear to have possessed a noteworthy collection of holy tokens. An exception is represented by the reliquary tabernacle discussed in Dillian Gordon, ‘A Sienese Verre Eglomisé and its Setting’, The Burlington Magazine 123 (1981), 148–53. Another painted tabernacle with relics, preserved at the Walters Art Museum, has also been tentatively associated with the hospital in Virginia Brilliant, ‘A Framework for Devotion in Trecento Siena: A Reliquary Frame in the Cleveland Museum of Art’, Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture 4 (2014), 66–94. These and other Sienese reliquary tabernacles have recently been the object of focused study: Beth Williamson, Reliquary Tabernacles in Fourteenth-Century Italy: Image, Relic and Material Culture (Woodbridge, 2020).

THE BYZANTINE TREASURY OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA

on civic religion in medieval Italy and beyond.3 In addition, her work has offered significant contributions to discussions about artistic interactions between Byzantium and the West in the Middle Ages, exploring – amongst other topics – the significance of Byzantine visual language for the Carmelite Order, and the complex imbrications between Byzantine and western practices of veneration to images of the Virgin.4

THE BYZANTINE RELICS OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA AND SIENESE CIVIC RELIGION In 1359, the chapter of the hospital appointed its syndic, Andrea di Grazia, as legate for the acquisition of a group of Byzantine reliquaries from Pietro di Giunta Torrigiani, a Florentine merchant residing in Venice and trading with Constantinople. Santa Maria della Scala’s newly acquired treasury consisted of an extensive group of relics of the instruments of the Passion of Christ encased in diminutive containers made of gold or gilded silver, some decorated with enamel (e.g. Plate XVIII); a set of Marian relics – her veil, her bonnet, her girdle, and a more unusual reliquary of the cama[u]rum (headcover); and numerous fragments of bones of apostles, saints and martyrs, mostly decorated with silver incised bands or bezels or contained in embossed silver capsellae (e.g. Fig. 13.1).5 The majority of the hospital’s Byzantine relics and reliquaries, which were created at different times between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, have survived to this day, with the exception of the containers of the Marian relics.6 3 In addition to several articles, see Joanna Cannon and André Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany (University Park, PA, 1999), and Joanna Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches: Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New Haven and London, 2013). 4 Joanna Cannon, ‘Pietro Lorenzetti and the History of the Carmelite Order’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987), 18–28, and Joanna Cannon, ‘Kissing the Virgin’s Foot: Adoratio before the Madonna and Child Enacted, Depicted, Imagined’, Studies in Iconography 31 (2010), 1–50. 5 The most complete study of the treasury of Santa Maria della Scala is L’Oro di Siena: il tesoro di Santa Maria della Scala, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Milan, 1996). The treasury was previously studied by Paul Hetherington, ‘Byzantine Enamels on a Venetian Book Cover’, Cahiers Archéologiques 27 (1978), 117–45. See also Paul Hetherington, ‘A Purchase of Byzantine Relics and Reliquaries in Fourteenth-Century Venice’, Arte Veneta 37 (1983), 9–30; Daniela Gallavotti Cavallero, Lo Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala in Siena: vicenda di una committenza artistica (Siena, 1985), pp. 80–107; Karin Krause, ‘Immagine-Reliquia: da Bisanzio all’Occidente’, in Mandylion: Intorno al Sacro Volto, da Bisanzio a Genova, ed. Gerhard Wolf, Colette Dufour Bozzo, and Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti (Milan, 2004), pp. 209–35, at pp. 226–30. On Pietro Torrigiani, see the CIVES database: Petrus Torisano, Cives Veneciarum, http://www.civesveneciarum.net/dettaglio.php?id=3071, version 56/2017-02-01 (accessed 7 June 2021). 6 While most relics have survived inside their Byzantine containers, the pignora of the Virgin have not. Currently, some fragments of textile are preserved in an eighteenthcentury reliquary casket, where contemporary parchment labels identify them as the veil, headcover and girdle of the Virgin. I was unable to inspect the textiles first hand.

251

252

STEFANIA GEREVINI

FIG. 13.1  RELIQUARY OF SAINT JOHN CHRYSOSTOM. GILDED SILVER, BYZANTINE, FOURTEENTH CENTURY, SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA, SIENA. PHOTO BY AUTHOR, COURTESY OF COMUNE DI SIENA (NO FURTHER REPRODUCTION PERMITTED).

In addition to the material evidence provided by extant artefacts, which will be discussed in the last section of this chapter, our knowledge of the treasury benefits from the survival of two documents relating to the collection. The first is the original contract stipulating their transfer to the hospital, drafted in Venice in 1359. The second is a seventeenth-century copia notarile (a copy certified by a notary) of an earlier text, composed in 1357. This document was drafted in Constantinople just before the exportation of the items to the West, and illuminates the final moments of the objects’ lives in Byzantium. It takes the form of an official letter of authentication, by which Peter Thomas, a learned Dominican friar and powerful papal nuncio, certified that the objects had been bought at auction by Pietro Torrigiani in Constantinople, that they were true relics, and that they had formerly been Byzantine imperial belongings, which made the transaction between the tradesman and Santa Maria della Scala a very momentous occurrence.7 7 Both documents are published in full in Giovanna Derenzini, ‘Le Reliquie da

THE BYZANTINE TREASURY OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA

Predictably, the arrival of the set of Byzantine relics in 1359 was not a private affair for the hospital, but a major public event. According to the fourteenth-century Sienese chronicler Donato di Neri, the relics arrived from the sea, shipped all the way from Venice to the port of Talamone on the Tyrrhenian coast. The hospital’s treasury was then carried to Siena in cortege ‘with great devotion and celebration’, and received with a grand welcome party organised by the commune within the city walls. The ceremony, which involved a public ostension of the relics, cost the impressive sum of 1,625 florins – more than half of the amount spent a few decades earlier on the making of Duccio’s Maestà.8 Following the arrival of the relics in the city, the Consiglio Generale also decided that they deserved a suitable treasure house, and ordered the building of a new chapel on the premises of the hospital.9 The chapel, which still survives in spite of numerous alterations, was built on the ground floor of the rector’s palace, in the space immediately adjacent to the hospital church. Decorated by the artists Meo di Pero and Cristoforo di Bindoccio, it was partly sponsored by the Opera del Duomo, and reached completion in 1370. Its decorative programme, which comprises images of the four Sienese patron saints, Ansanus, Savinus, Crescentius and Victor, further affirmed the civic meaning of the Byzantine relics, by integrating them within a local network of holy protectors whose cult was actively promoted by the cathedral in the same decades.10 The chapel served as a repository for the new treasury until the mid-fifteenth century, when another room, furnished with a painted, built-in reliquary cupboard, was decorated by Vecchietta to the south-east of the hospital’s church.11 Costantinopoli a Siena’, in L’Oro di Siena (Milan, 1996), pp. 67–78. On Peter Thomas, see Philippe Mézières, The Life of Saint Peter Thomas, ed. Joachim Smet (Rome, 1954), and Frederick J. Boehlke, Jr, Pierre de Thomas: Scholar, Diplomat and Crusader (Philadelphia, 1966). 8 Official deliberation in ASSi, Consiglio Generale 164, fol. 35r. Donato di Neri, ‘Cronaca Senese’, in Cronache senesi, ed. Alessandro Lisini and Fabio Iacometti, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XV, Part 6 (Bologna, 1931–36), p. 590. The event is also mentioned in another Sienese chronicle, which, however, appears to contain factual mistakes: Anonymous, ‘Cronaca Senese’, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XV, Part 6, p. 159. The price of Duccio’s Maestà is provided by Agnolo di Tura, ‘Cronaca Senese’, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XV, Part 6, p. 313. On the reliability of this account, see Jane Immler Satkowski, Duccio Di Buoninsegna: The Documents and Early Sources (Athens, GA, 2000), pp. 97–9, with further bibliography. 9 ASSi, Consiglio Generale 165, fols 9v–10r. Extensive passages are quoted in Isabella Gagliardi, ‘Le Reliquie dell’Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala (XIV–XV secolo)’, in L’Oro di Siena, pp. 51–2 (however, the archival reference provided in the present chapter should be followed, as it amends an oversight in Gagliardi’s citation). 10 The date of completion of the chapel, which remains largely unpublished, is inscribed on a painted scroll on the arch separating the first and central bays. For a brief introduction, see Gallavotti Cavallero, Lo Spedale, pp. 105–7. On the cult of the Sienese holy patrons, see Raffaele Argenziano and Fabio Bisogni, ‘L’Iconografia dei Santi Patroni Ansano, Crescenzio, Savino e Vittore’, Bullettino senese di storia patria 97 (1990), 84–115, and Raffaele Argenziano, ‘Corpi Santi e immagini nella Siena medievale: i Santi Patroni’, Bullettino senese di storia patria 110 (2004), 214–39. 11 Henk van Os, Vecchietta and the Sacristy of the Siena Hospital Church: A Study in

253

254

STEFANIA GEREVINI

Upon the arrival of the Byzantine relics in Siena, the public authorities also ordered that the newly acquired treasury should become the focus of a new religious and civic festivity: following the city’s well-established tradition of devotion to the Virgin Mary, it was decided that the relics should be associated with the feast of the Annunciation, celebrated annually on 25 March.12 The choice of 25 March is likely to have reflected a complex set of religious, institutional and political developments, which will be discussed in more detail below. However, the significance of the feast day for the city and the hospital should be noted from the start. The date 25 March marked the beginning of the calendar year in Siena and, as an important Marian festivity, it was a symbolic day for the whole city.13 In addition, the Virgin was the patroness of Santa Maria della Scala and of its church, which had recently been enlarged, in 1354.14 The Annunciation was the only liturgical occasion when the relics of Santa Maria della Scala were publicly exhibited, and no other holy images or objects from other institutions appear to have been involved in these celebrations. 15 On the day, the population of Siena, led by its ecclesiastical and political authorities, gathered in the Piazza del Renaissance Religious Symbolism (The Hague, 1974). On the reliquary cupboard, see also Ashley Jane Elston, ‘Storing Sanctity: Sacristy Reliquary Cupboards in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kansas, 2011, pp. 113–58. 12 ASSi, Consiglio Generale 165, fols. 9v–10r, 30 January 1360. The celebrations are also discussed in Gabriella Piccinni, ‘L’Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala e la Città di Siena nel Medioevo’, in L’Oro Di Siena, pp. 39–47, and in Gagliardi, ‘Le reliquie’. 13 Adriano Cappelli, Cronologia, cronografia e calendario perpetuo dal principio dell’era cristiana ai nostri giorni: tavole cronologico-sincrone e quadri sinottici per verificare le date storiche (Milan, 1978), p. 15. 14 The hospital erected its first church in 1257, see Luciano Banchi, I Rettori dello Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala di Siena (Bologna, 1877), pp. 11–13, cited in Daniela Gallavotti Cavallero and Andrea Brogi, Lo Spedale Grande di Siena: fatti urbanistici e architettonici del Santa Maria della Scala: ricerche, riflessioni, interrogativi (Florence, 1987), p. 103. This building was subsequently enlarged in 1354, a few years prior to the acquisition of the Byzantine relics: ASSi, Spedale, 515, fol. 15, cited in Gallavotti Cavallero and Brogi, Lo Spedale Grande di Siena, p. 105. Establishing the exact date of the dedication of the hospital church to the Virgin Annunciate is arduous, as documents generally refer to it, simply, as ‘the church’ or ‘the oratory’. A terminus ante quem is provided by a record of 1366–67, where the chapel of the relics is described as ‘next to the [church of the Virgin] Annunciate’ (‘a lato a la Nunziata’). ASSi, Spedale, 516, fol. 85v, cited in Gallavotti Cavallero, Lo Spedale, p. 418. Although it is possible that the purchase of the relics in 1359, and the establishment of the new ceremonials, may have prompted the dedication of the church to the Virgin Annunciate, this is more likely to have occurred earlier – either upon the erection of the church in 1257, and as a mark of distinction from the cathedral, or in 1354, on the occasion of the enlargement of the church. 15 In the late sixteenth century, the hospital relics were also associated with Easter celebrations. Starting in 1567, a procession also took place yearly in Siena on the Dominica in albis, which involved a painted image or relic from a different ecclesiastical establishment each year. The hospital contributed one of its relics several times between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries: Girolamo Bassi, Origine della solenne processione solita farsi ogni anno per la Città di Siena (Siena, 1806), pp. 29–50.

THE BYZANTINE TREASURY OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA

Duomo, in front of Santa Maria della Scala. There, the bishop offered the Byzantine tokens to the veneration of the community, exhibiting them from a pulpit built on the façade of the hospital shortly after their arrival.16 The pulpit is lost, but its position between the two portals that provided access to church and hospital in the Middle Ages may be reconstructed with reasonable certainty from archival sources.17 The pulpit was positioned between the portal on the right of the photograph (Fig. 13.2), and the walled-in entrance that is still visible under the Sienese balzana at the centre of the image. So numerous was the audience of the event that in 1379 the loggia del vescovado, a nearby building, was pulled down to make more space in the piazza for the display of the relics.18 In the same year, the façade of the hospital was also lined with a row of murelli, low stone benches that are still extant, and that provided the magistrates and noblemen of Siena with suitable seating during the public ceremonies of 25 March. 19 When the new ceremony was inaugurated in 1360, the hospital façade had already been the object of an important artistic campaign, which had turned it into the ideal setting for a ceremony dedicated to the Virgin. The rector Tese de’ Tolomei (1314–39) had had the façade levelled and filled, and, probably in 1337, four scenes from the life of the Virgin were commissioned to be painted on it. The frescoes were most likely destroyed in 1720. 20 Art historical debate on their sequence, iconography, and authorship has been long and intense, and an examination of the specific terms of this discussion, already scrutinised by Maginnis and Norman, falls beyond the scope of this chapter.21 What is important for our concerns is that these paintings were executed by artists of the calibre of Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti and, possibly, by Simone Martini, engaged in some of the most significant public commissions of those years; and that the scenes, which most likely represented the Nativity of the Virgin, her Presentation in the Temple, her Betrothal and the Return of the Virgin to her Parents, and – possibly a later addition – the Assumption, 16 The pulpit was built upon commission of the Consiglio Generale: ASSi, Consiglio Generale 165, fol. 9v, 30 January 1360, also cited in Gagliardi, ‘Le Reliquie’, p. 52. 17 See the drawing executed by Girolamo Macchi (1648–1734), archivist of Santa Maria della Scala, in ASSi, Girolamo Macchi, Origine dello Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala di Siena, MS D-113, fols 59v–60r. 18 ‘La loggia del vescovado di Siena … si guastò; e questo si fè per avere magior piaza per mostrare l’arliquia’. Donato di Neri, ‘Cronaca Senese’, p. 636. 19 ASSi, MS D-107, fol. 93v; MS D-113, fol. 12v. MS D-108, fol. 123r (pencil numbering). 20 ASSi, MS D-108, fol. 281v (pencil numbering). 21 Hayden B.J. Maginnis, ‘The Lost Façade Frescoes from Siena’s Ospedale di S. Maria della Scala’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 51 (1988), 180–94; Diana Norman, Siena and the Virgin: Art and Politics in a Late Medieval City State (New Haven, 1999), pp. 87–103; and Alessandra Caffio, ‘I perduti affreschi della facciata dell’ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala a Siena’, in Ambrogio Lorenzetti, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli, Roberto Bartalini, and Max Seidel (Milan, 2017), pp. 363–74.

255

256

STEFANIA GEREVINI

FIG. 13.2  FAÇADE OF THE HOSPITAL OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA, SIENA. PHOTO BY AUTHOR.

were arranged along the façade of the hospital, above the two portals and the relics’ pulpit, offering a suitable painterly backdrop to the ceremonies of the Annunciation. 22 The rituals of 25 March could rely, then, on an elaborate artistic and religious setting. The population of Siena would assemble in the cathedral square, where they also met in the summer for the celebrations of the chief Marian feast of the Assumption.23 Behind them, the Christological and Marian iconography of the cathedral façade reaffirmed the bond between the Sienese community and their patroness, the Virgin Mary.24 On the opposite side of the piazza, 22 A visual reconstruction of the façade of the hospital in the mid-Trecento, complete with the frescoes under discussion, was published in Enrica Boldrini and Roberto Parenti, Santa Maria della Scala: archeologia e edilizia sulla piazza dello Spedale (Florence, 1991), Fig. D, p. 46. 23 The Assumption was grandly celebrated in Siena under the aegis of the commune at least since the early thirteenth century. For more details, see Andrea Campbell, ‘A Spectacular Celebration of the Assumption in Siena’, Renaissance Quarterly 58 (2005), 435–63, at pp. 439–41, and Diana Norman, Siena and the Virgin, pp. 1–2. 24 On the cathedral façade, see La facciata del Duomo di Siena: iconografia, stile, indagini storiche e scientifiche, ed. Mario Lorenzoni (Milan, 2007). The appointment of the Virgin Mary as official patroness of Siena is associated with the battle of Montaperti (1260), though the origins of this tradition have recently been submitted to careful scholarly

THE BYZANTINE TREASURY OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA

the façade of the hospital offered its viewers an articulate mise-enscène that reiterated the special relationship between the Virgin and Siena and promoted messages of civic harmony and order. The representatives of the state were lined up at ground level; the bishop, religious authority and intercessor for the city to the Virgin, stood on the pulpit, performing his ministry. At the apex of this highly dramatic scene, the Virgin herself looked down from the frescoes, renewing her special protection and care for Siena; and, below her, the Byzantine relics, tangible signs of the presence and benevolence of the Virgin, of Christ and of the Saints, were exhibited to the audience in all their might, and employed to bestow a solemn blessing on the entire city. The provisions made for the reception, storage and annual display of the Byzantine relics in Siena indicate that, although the holy tokens technically represented the private belongings of the hospital, they were nevertheless understood by the Sienese as important assets for the whole civic community. This was far from unusual in medieval communities, and the deployment of relics as agents of social cohesion and sources of political legitimation in Italian city-states has received considerable scholarly attention.25 However, several recent studies have also shed light on the ability of relics and religious artworks to coalesce multiple – and at times conflicting – group identities, and to function as tokens of social or political resistance against dominant power hierarchies.26 As I will argue, this was the case for the Byzantine relics of Santa Maria della Scala, whose scrutiny; see Diana Webb, Patrons and Defenders: The Saints in the Italian City-States (London and New York, 1996), pp. 251–75; Norman, Siena and the Virgin, pp. 3–4; and Gerald Parsons, Siena, Civil Religion, and the Sienese (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 1–31. For a radically sceptical perspective, see Edward B. Garrison, ‘Sienese Historical Writings and the Dates 1260, 1221, 1262 Applied to Sienese Paintings’, in Studies in the History of Medieval Italian Painting, IV (Florence, 1960–62), pp. 23–58, and, more recently, Bridget Heal, “‘Civitas Virginis”? The Significance of Civic Dedication to the Virgin for the Development of Marian Imagery in Siena before 1311’, in Art, Politics, and Civic Religion in Central Italy, 1261–1352, ed. Joanna Cannon and Beth Williamson (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 295–305. 25 Scholarship on these topics is vast. For a comparative introduction, see Edina Bozóky, La politique des reliques de Constantin à Saint Louis: protection collective et légitimation du pouvoir (Paris, 2007). On the role of saints in Italian cities, the standard reference remains Webb, Patrons and Defenders. On relics in late medieval Italy, see the essays by Giovanni Freni and Lily Richards in Art, Politics, and Civic Religion in Central Italy, 1261–1352, ed. Joanna Cannon and Beth Williamson (Aldershot, 2000). See also Images, Relics, and Devotional Practices in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. Sally J. Cornelison and Scott B. Montgomery (Tempe, AZ, 2006), and Art and Identity: Visual Culture, Politics and Religion in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Sandra Cardarelli, Emily Jane Anderson, and John Richards (Newcastle, 2012). 26 See, amongst others, Kiril Petkov, The Anxieties of a Citizen Class: The Miracles of the True Cross of San Giovanni Evangelista, Venice 1370–1480 (Leiden, 2014); also (with reference to images) Jane Garnett and Gervase Rosser, Spectacular Miracles: Transforming Images in Italy, from the Renaissance to the Present (London, 2013). On the tensions experienced by citizens in medieval towns, see Gervase Rosser, ‘Urban Culture and the Church 1300–1540’, in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, I, ed. David Michael Palliser, Peter Clark, and M.J. Daunton (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 335–70.

257

258

STEFANIA GEREVINI

public display on the feast day of the Annunciation not only confirms the well-known imbrications between religion and politics in Siena, but reveals the dramatic tensions that agitated the city in the mid fourteenth century, and the strategies available to civic institutions to address them.

THE RELICS IN THE CITY: COMPETING CLAIMS The purchase of the Byzantine relics by Santa Maria della Scala in 1359 occurred at a crucial time in the history of the hospital and of the entire city of Siena. Santa Maria della Scala had been founded, probably in the eleventh century, in front of the cathedral and as an emanation of its chapter, and it functioned as a hospital, as a charity institution, and as a hostel for pilgrims.27 Caring for the material and spiritual health of the sick and the poor, the hospital performed a function, at once religious and political, which neither secular authorities nor regular ecclesiastical hierarchies had the means and infrastructures to address directly. It contributed to normalising situations of social and political instability, especially during waves of famine and epidemics. Also, providing hospitality to pilgrims travelling through Siena on their way to Rome, it represented an important asset for the city to attract travellers from the Via Francigena.28 As an effect, control over the hospital, its activities and its patrimony – steadily growing thanks to pious donations and bequests – was a constant preoccupation of both the political and the religious authorities of the city of Siena. The medieval history of Santa Maria della Scala is indeed customarily framed as one of intermittent influences and continuously redefined balances between the hospital itself, which tried to affirm its autonomy while simultaneously working to establish its role as the third pole of the civic and religious life of Siena, and the commune and cathedral, which endeavoured to exert their control over the hospital.29 Santa Maria della Scala achieved administrative independence from the Sienese ecclesiastical authorities fairly early in its history. Between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries, lay brethren involved in the 27 The earliest documentary reference to the hospital dates from 1090: ASSi, Diplomatico Opera Metropolitana, 29 March 1090, edited in Antonella Ghignoli, Carte dell’Archivio di Stato di Siena: Opera Metropolitana, 1000–1200 (Siena, 1994), pp. 87–90 n. 31. 28 On the different functions of the hospital, see Gabriella Piccinni and Laura Vigni, ‘Modelli di assistenza ospedaliera tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna: Quotidianità, amministrazione, conflitti nell’ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala a Siena’, in La Società del bisogno: povertà e assistenza nella Toscana medievale, ed. Giulio Pinto (Florence, 1989), pp. 131–74. 29 Renato Lungarini, ‘L’hôpital Santa Maria della Scala: une institution siennoise’, trans. Didier Boisseuil, Médiévales 54 (2008), 99–111; Michele Pellegrini, ‘L’ospedale e il Comune, immagini di una relazione privilegiata’, in Arte e Assistenza a Siena: le copertine dipinte dell’ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, ed. Gabriella Piccinni and Carla Zarrilli (Pisa, 2003), pp. 29–45.

THE BYZANTINE TREASURY OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA

charitable activities of the hospital gradually replaced the cathedral canons in the governance of the institution, and Santa Maria della Scala obtained full administrative and financial autonomy in 1194–95, when Pope Celestine III granted the hospital the right to elect its rector autonomously from the cathedral chapter.30 In the early thirteenth century, no monetary subsidy appears to have come from either the cathedral or the commune to the hospital. Providing for its needs predominantly through alms and (conspicuous) bequests, and through the donations of its rector and oblates, the hospital laid the foundations of its own economic strength and stability.31 The importance of Santa Maria della Scala grew steadily during the thirteenth century, as confirmed by the permission, granted in 1257 by Pope Alexander IV to its oblates, to erect an oratory and to celebrate mass on the premises of the hospital.32 As scholarship has long recognised, however, the decreasing religious subordination of the hospital to the bishopric was counterbalanced by growing interferences of the commune in its governance and daily running.33 Starting from 1262, the city statutes meticulously regulated the economic, fiscal and administrative relationship between the commune and the charitable institution.34 In 1305, a statement of formal respect towards communal authorities was added to the statutes of the hospital.35 In addition, in 1309, the commune ordered that the city emblem should be affixed to the exterior walls of the hospital – an act of submission that the hospital resisted until 1339 – and that a committee of nine members (three for each Terzo of the city) elected by the government should audit the hospital each year.36 Almost simultaneously, however, such governmental interferences were compensated by Pope Clement V’s declaration that the hospital should be directly and exclusively dependent on the authority of the apostolic see.37 The status of Santa Maria della Scala, hovering between financial strength and independence on one side, and subordination to the 30 For a detailed discussion of these events, see Michele Pellegrini, La comunità ospedaliera di Santa Maria della Scala e il suo più antico statuto: Siena, 1305 (Ospedaletto, 2005), pp. 24–35. 31 Gallavotti Cavallero, Lo Spedale, pp. 57 and 60 (for donations in kind already offered by the commune to the hospital in 1227, in the form of conspicuous quantities of bricks for building purposes). 32 See above, note 14. 33 Piccinni, ‘L’ospedale’; Pellegrini, La comunità, pp. 57–78. 34 Lodovico Zdekauer, Il Constituto del Comune di Siena dell’Anno 1262 (Milan, 1897), pp. 31–6 (Distinctio I, nos 21–39). 35 Pellegrini, La Comunità Ospedaliera, pp. 65–7. 36 Salem Elsheik, Il Costituto del Comune di Siena Volgarizzato nel 1309–1310 (Siena, 2002), I.9 and VI.21, cited in Michele Pellegrini, ‘La norma della pubblica pietà: istituzioni comunali, religione e pia loca nella normativa statutaria Senese fino al costituto volgare del 1309’, in Siena nello Specchio del suo Costituto in Volgare del 1309–1310, ed. Nora Giordano and Gabriella Piccinni (Pisa, 2014), pp. 292–4. 37 Pellegrini, ‘La norma della pubblica pietà’, p. 292.

259

260

STEFANIA GEREVINI

commune on the other, was not yet settled in the mid fourteenth century, when the circumstances became yet more intricate.38 The repeated waves of the Black Death striking Siena in 1348 and over the following decades put the hospital at centre stage of the social, political and religious life of Siena. Also, the conspicuous legacies resulting from the 1348 plague epidemic considerably enriched the patrimony of the hospital, making its role and control an even more delicate issue.39 The purchase of the set of Byzantine relics and reliquaries by Santa Maria della Scala, and the decision made by the public authorities and by the hospital to celebrate the treasury on 25 March, should be approached against this background of civic transformation, and in the context of the rapidly developing role of the hospital vis-à-vis other institutions in town. As recalled above, and as confirmed by Bernardino in the fifteenth century, the Virgin was the patroness of Santa Maria della Scala. More specifically, its church was dedicated to the Virgin Annunciate, and its chapter met twice every year on the two chief Marian feast days, the Assumption and the Annunciation.40 Capitalising on the symbolic power of public festivals in order to enhance the status of individual institutions or social groups was not unusual in late medieval Siena. The Carmelite community, for example, associated itself with the novel and increasingly popular feast of the Corpus Christi, using it to promote their status vis-à-vis other, more established orders in the city.41 In this context, Santa Maria della Scala’s desire to celebrate the Annunciation solemnly in the mid fourteenth century seems coherent with its enhanced civic role in the fourteenth century and with the struggles for civic recognition and independence that it enacted in the same period. In addition, the choice of 25 March for the solemn exhibition of the Byzantine treasury may have been determined by liturgical considerations and by the dynamics of competition and collaboration between religious bodies in town. By the fourteenth century, the feast of the Assumption, the liturgy of the Passion and of Easter, and the ritual commemoration of the Invention and Exaltation of the Cross – celebrated on 3 May and 14 September respectively – were performed in Siena following a wellestablished tradition focused on the cathedral. On these occasions, the 38 Michele Pellegrini, ‘Le “Limosine di Messer Giovanni”: società, demografia e religione in una fonte Senese del Trecento’, in Uomini Paesaggi Storie: studi di storia medievale per Giovanni Cherubini, ed. Duccio Balestracci et al. (Siena, 2012), II, pp. 997–1016. 39 Samuel K. Cohn, Jr, Death and Property in Siena, 1205–1800. Strategies for the Afterlife (Baltimore, MD and London, 1988), p. 21. For a comparative analysis, see Samuel K. Cohn, Jr, The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death: Six Renaissance Cities in Central Italy (Baltimore, MD, 1992). 40 Renato Lugarini, Il capitolo dell’ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala: Aspetti istituzionali e riflessi documentari (Siena, fine XII–XIV secolo) (Pisa, 2011), p. 41. For a brief description of the activities of the chapter, see Lungarini, ‘L’hôpital’, pp. 103–5. 41 Machtelt Israëls, ‘Altars on the Street: The Wool Guild, the Carmelites and the Feast of Corpus Domini in Siena (1356 –1456)’, Renaissance Studies 20 (2006), 180–200.

THE BYZANTINE TREASURY OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA

metropolitan church appears to have mobilised its own relics: a crossshaped reliquary of the True Cross was displayed on the high altar during Passion week and on 3 May, while a ‘tabula’ (possibly an icon or table reliquary), also containing wood from the True Cross, was exhibited annually on 14 September.42 Arguably, there would have been little interest on the part of the cathedral in diverting the celebrations towards the hospital on those days; in turn, the hospital could probably not compete with the authority of the metropolitan church for Easter celebrations. On the other hand, both the thirteenth-century ordo officiorum and the fourteenth-century constitutions of the cathedral of Siena suggest that the feast-day of the Annunciation – albeit a major liturgical event (festum duplex) – involved less elaborate rituals in the cathedral, offering an ideal opportunity to set up new celebrations focused on the hospital.43 Also, the Annunciation often fell, in practice, during Easter week or in its proximity, thus enabling the hospital to capitalise on – but not to interfere with – the cathedral’s paschal liturgy.44 The late medieval devotional culture of the community of Santa Maria della Scala may also have provided specific incentives for celebrating the Byzantine treasury on 25 March. The laudes sung by the brotherhoods of the hospital in the fourteenth century put into words their passionate devotion to the instruments of the Passion and to the crucified Christ. These sung prayers, often in the form of a spoken dialogue between the Virgin and her Son on the Cross, or of a monologue of the Virgin, 42 Odoricus (Senensis), Ordo officiorum ecclesiae senensis, ed. Giovanni Crisostomo Trombelli (Bologna, 1766), p. 145 (Holy Week), p. 321 (Invention of the Cross) and p. 364 (Exaltation of the Cross). These and other relics preserved in the Sienese cathedral are discussed in Raffaele Argenziano, Agli inizi dell’iconografia sacra a Siena: culti, riti e iconografia a Siena nel XII secolo (Florence, 2000), pp. 70–8, esp. p. 76 for relics of the True Cross. While an extensive collection of relics – many of them identical to those of the hospital – is attested in the cathedral of Siena in the fifteenth century, the lack of inventories from the early fourteenth century makes it difficult to establish when these were acquired, and whether the acquisition of Byzantine tokens was a response to the cathedral or functioned instead as a trigger for the acquisition of relics by the metropolitan church. On the cathedral relics, see Wolfgang Loseries, ‘Presentation of Relics in Late Medieval Siena: The Cappella delle Reliquie in Siena Cathedral’, in Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary Study of Relics and Relic Veneration in the Medieval Period, ed. James Robinson, Lloyd de Beer, and Anna Harnden (London, 2014), pp. 56–65; Elston, Storing Sanctity, pp. 73–112; and Monika Butzek, Gli inventari della sagrestia della Cattedrale Senese e degli altri beni sottoposti alla tutela dell’operaio del Duomo, 1389–1546 (Florence, 2013). 43 Cathedral canons received double prebend for attending service on the day of the Annunciation; see Constitutiones sacri capituli metropolitanae ecclesiae Senensis, ed. Luca Bonetti (Siena, 1579), p. 82. Unfortunately, these regulations do not offer specific insights into the liturgy of the Annunciation, while they give precise instructions for the rituals of the Assumption on 15 August. 44 The Annunciation was believed to have occurred on the same day as the death of Christ: Henri Leclercq, ‘Annonciation (Fête de L’)’, in Dictionnaire d’archéologie Chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. Fernand Cabrol, I, part 2 (Paris, 1905), cols 2241–55, at cols 2247–8. For the calculation of Julian and Gregorian Easter Sunday, see: https://www.staff.science. uu.nl/~gent0113/easter/easter_text2a.htm (accessed 1 January 2022).

261

262

STEFANIA GEREVINI

dramatise the correlations between the Passion and the Annunciation: the Virgin, at the feet of the Cross, remembers the sweet moments of the Angel’s announcement, as she is caught by despair before the disfigured body of her Son.45 In this context, the laudes evoke the Annunciation as the beginning of the Incarnation, and therefore as a prefiguration of the events of Christ’s death and resurrection, further justifying that both the relics of the Passion and of the Virgin be included in the celebrations of the feast on the 25 March. The importance of the Byzantine relics for the hospital’s strategies of civic and religious self-promotion can hardly be overestimated. It is only thanks to the Byzantine tokens that the feast of the Annunciation was aggrandised and focused on the hospital, and that the opportunity arose for the institution to see its civic role publicly recognised with the elaborate civic pageantry. Yet, the Annunciation was not a private affair of Santa Maria della Scala. The feast was established by the Consiglio Generale, and the celebrations involved the representatives of the government of Siena, implicitly claiming the Byzantine tokens as a civic treasury.46 This indicates a degree of compromise and accommodation between the competing poles of authority in the civic space. In addition, it suggests that the rituals of 25 March may have had propagandist aims that were oblique to those of the hospital, and that a brief analysis of the Sienese political environment in the mid century may contribute to clarify. After a long period of stability, lasting since the beginning of the fourteenth century, Siena witnessed dramatic social conflicts and political changes in the central decade of the century. The long-lived Government of the Nine, which had ruled over Siena since 1287, and which had greatly contributed to fostering the civic cult of the Virgin with major artistic commissions, fell in 1355.47 Intriguingly, the anniversary of the revolt, led by the Salimbeni and Tolomei magnate families, coincided with 25 March.48 On this date, Emperor Charles IV, who had been recognised as the signore of Siena a few months prior, removed the Nine from their seat upon popular request, and appointed a new group of magistrates 45 See several examples in Roberta Manetti, Laudario di Santa Maria della Scala (Florence, 1993). 46 The Sienese Concistoro mentions the Annunciation among the feasts nei quali la Signoria esce da Palazzo, ‘for which the governors leave the communal palace’, likely also indicating that a procession took place on the day. Fabrizio Nevola, ‘Cerimoniali per Santi e Feste a Siena’, in Siena e il suo territorio nel Rinascimento, ed. Mario Ascheri (Siena, 2000), p. 172 n. 12. 47 The standard reference work on the regime of the Nine remains William M. Bowsky, A Medieval Italian Commune: Siena under the Nine, 1287–1355 (Berkeley, 1981). On the new regime, the Twelve, see Stefano Moscadelli, ‘Apparato burocratico e finanze del Comune di Siena sotto i Dodici (1355–1368)’, Bullettino Senese di storia patria 89 (1982), 29–118, and Valerie Wainwright, ‘Conflict and Popular Government in Fourteenth Century Siena: il Monte dei Dodici’, in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana tardo comunale (Monte Oriolo, 1983), pp. 57–80. 48 See Donato di Neri, ‘Cronaca Senese’, p. 578, and the fourteenth-century Anonymous, ‘Cronaca Senese’, pp. 149–50.

THE BYZANTINE TREASURY OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA

known as the Government of the Twelve. 49 Arguably, the political break would be present in the minds of the Sienese in 1359, only four years after the event, and it seems possible that the association of the new relics with the Annunciation, and the increased pomp with which the feast day was celebrated, may have had some connections with the governmental overturn. After all, the transfer and re-enshrinement of relics and muchvenerated images often represented an opportunity to legitimate new political regimes in the medieval West.50 And the convergence between cult of the Virgin and political legitimation was certainly not new to Siena, as is powerfully reminded by such public commissions as Simone Martini’s Maestà in the Palazzo Pubblico.51 As the Twelve abandoned the model of the formally independent government and associated themselves with the sovereignty of the emperor, the power bases of Siena were being radically revised. Also, social discontent was rampant in the city throughout the decade, partly as an effect of the mid-term negative impact of the Black Death on the demography and distribution of wealth in town.52 Associating the recent political turn with the Annunciation, the ceremonials of 25 March effectively offered the new government an opportunity to navigate this difficult situation, by renewing the placement of the political authorities under the auspices of the Virgin, and by advocating her endorsement. The Byzantine relics, which represented the focus of the civic pageantry of 25 March, are likely to have strengthened the political and religious messages of the feast-day. Their sacredness possibly provided a sign of the divine endorsement of the new government as well as a guarantee of protection for the community. In addition, their antiquity and preciousness, which were much emphasised in the documents of 1357 and 1359, may have indirectly sanctioned the (spurious) claims of the government of the Twelve to historical and religious continuity by their direct connection with an ancient past.53 What ‘past’ did the Byzantine tokens express, though?

49 Gerrit Jasper Schenk, ‘Enter the Emperor: Charles IV and Siena between Politics, Diplomacy, and Ritual (1355 and 1368)’, Renaissance Studies 20 (2006), 161–79. See also Giuseppe Martini, ‘Siena da Montaperti alla Caduta dei Nove’, Bullettino senese di storia patria 68 (1961), 75–128. 50 For comparative evidence, see for example Bozóky, La politique des reliques, pp. 119–69. 51 Literature on the Maestà is vast. The most recent monograph dedicated to the altarpiece is Alessandro Bagnoli, La Maestà di Simone Martini (Siena, 1999). 52 See above, note 39. 53 The antiquity (‘antiquitas’) of the relics is put forward as proof of their authenticity in the text of 1357, while the contract of 1359 stresses that several of the relics and reliquaries had allegedly belonged to Constantine: L’oro di Siena, pp. 72, 75.

263

264

STEFANIA GEREVINI

THE REINVENTION OF THE BYZANTINE RELICS AS A PUBLIC TREASURE IN SIENA This chapter has aimed to give some justice to the elaborate process of incorporation and integration of the group of Byzantine relics and reliquaries in Siena. Its final section re-examines their reception from the perspective of cultural translation. Considering the material objects more closely, it aims to assess whether the re-employment of the Byzantine relics and reliquaries as Siena’s civic banners, and as the hospital’s treasury, was consistent with their usage, function and significance in Byzantium. In other terms: how much did the use made of them in Italy confirm their original connotations and identity? In what measure, instead, did it follow specifically Sienese cultural patterns and intentions, reinventing the meaning of the holy tokens? As the pages above have suggested, the fundamental meaning of the set of sacred items was successfully transferred from imperial Constantinople to Siena. The relics were primarily imported because they were Byzantine imperial tokens, as it appears from the emphasis put on their provenance in the document of authentication of 1357, and in the contract of 1359. Once in the city, their venerability and preciousness were sanctioned with grand welcome ceremonies, with sumptuous artistic commissions, and with the establishment of the new feast day of the Annunciation. In some cases, the use of the relics in Siena is even reminiscent of Constantinopolitan ceremonials: a(nother) relic of the girdle of the Virgin, for example, is known previously to have been the focus of the ceremonies held on 25 March each year at the Church of the Virgin Chalkoprateia in Constantinople.54 However, a close inspection of the Byzantine corpus suggests that the Sienese acquisition also involved a process of active reinterpretation and powerful re-reading, as much as it was an episode of understanding and cultural acceptance. In sharp contrast with their public display in Siena, the first, basic, observation that the Byzantine reliquaries of Santa Maria della Scala provoke in their viewers is that they are very small. The relics of the Passion consist of millimetric splinters of stone, wood, and cloth enclosed in diminutive golden or silver-gilt reliquary boxes or crosses, the biggest of which measures less than 10 cm in height.55 The same may be said of the material remains of saints: with the exception of the more sizeable rib of Saint Andrew and arm of Saint Bartholomew, the splinters are only a few centimetres long (2–5 cm). Some of them come with elaborate 54 Robert F. Taft and Annemarie Weyl Carr, ‘Annunciation’, in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. Alexander Kazhdan (New York and Oxford, 1991), I, p. 107; Jean Ebersolt, Sanctuaires de Byzance (Paris, 1921), 58. The location of the relic in Constantinople may, however, have changed in later centuries. See John Wortley, ‘The Marian Relics at Constantinople’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 45 (2005), 171–87, at pp. 186–7. 55 See the cross-shaped reliquary in L’oro di Siena, pp. 111–12, cat. no. 5.

THE BYZANTINE TREASURY OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA

reliquaries, whilst others are decorated very simply, such as a bare piece of bone enclosed within two metal caps at the two ends. The size of these objects, as John Shepard has also remarked, would seem more suitable for private devotion than for public display.56 This impression is reinforced by the heterogeneous quality of execution of the reliquaries: some of them, including a twelfth-century bejewelled and enamelled encolpion (Plate XVIII), are splendidly embellished.57 However, the decoration of other items, particularly saints’ relics, consists of plain metal caps with sloppy inscriptions, surely not the kind of ornament one would expect from the paraphernalia of public ceremonies. Another physical feature worth noting is that most of the reliquaries are equipped with chain-rings, which seem to be original (Plates XVIII, XIX; Figs. 13.1, 13.3). The items were most likely worn as pendants in Byzantium, and one of them, a small wooden pendant-icon with filigreeframe, seems to bear the traces of ‘devotional wear-and-tear’, for it has no painting left in the central area on either sides, as if it had been frequently held between two fingers, and repeatedly touched and rubbed as a sign of devotion and in search of protection (Fig. 13.3).58 Further evidence of the private, devotional nature of the Byzantine set of relics is provided by a description of the reliquary of the headcover of the Virgin Mary (camaurum), which may now be lost.59 Don Girolamo Macchi (1648–1734), archivist of the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, provided a detailed description and drawing of the artefact (Fig. 13.4). In his words, We found a round jewel, or reliquary, mounted in fine gold, and [decorated] with large authentic pearls and precious stones; on one side, there is the [image of] the Virgin Mary, standing, with Our Lord in her arms, and [it is made] of white ivory; and on the rear of the same [object] there is a cross, also [made] of ivory. The contracts say that this is the camauro of the blessed Virgin Mary, which she wore on her head, but we did not open it as we did not know how.60 56 Jonathan Shepard, ‘Imperial Constantinople: Relics, Palaiologan Emperors, and the Resilience of the Exemplary Centre’, in Byzantines, Latins, and Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean World after 1150, ed. Jonathan Harris, Catherine Holmes, and Eugenia Russell (Oxford, 2012), pp. 61–92, at pp. 78–9. 57 The bejewelled encolpion is described in L’oro di Siena, pp. 107–10, cat. no. 4. 58 Described in L’oro di Siena, pp. 118–20, cat. no. 8; the damage caused to the paint by repeated stroking was also noted by Krause, ‘Immagine-Reliquia’, p. 229. 59 The relics of the Virgin are presently preserved in an eighteenth-century casket. Although the casket contains a parchment label that reads ‘headcover of the Blessed Virgin Mary’ (‘infula B.M.V.’), the ivory reliquary has never been published, and I was unable to see it inside the casket when visiting the hospital. 60 ‘Si trovò un reliquiario tondo o gioiello circondato al intorno di oro finissimo, e con perle grosse buone e pietre preziose, da una parte ci è la B[eata] V[ergine] M[aria] ritta con No[st]ro Signore in collo, e di avorio bianco, e dietro al med[esim]o parim[en]te una croce di avorio, e li contratti dicono che sia il camauro della B[eata] V[ergine] M[aria] che portava in testa, il quale non si aprì per non sapersi il modo.’ ASSi, Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, Chiesa, Sacre Reliquie e Memorie, N.120, fol. 397r. The object is also

265

FIG. 13.3  PENDANT ICON. PAINTING ON WOOD, GOLDEN FILIGREE MOUNT, BYZANTINE, FOURTEENTH CENTURY(?), SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA, SIENA. PHOTO BY AUTHOR, COURTESY OF COMUNE DI SIENA (NO FURTHER REPRODUCTION PERMITTED).

FIG. 13.4  GIROLAMO MACCHI, DRAWING OF THE CAMAURUM OF THE VIRGIN. ARCHIVIO DI STATO DI SIENA, OSPEDALE DI SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA, CHIESA, SANTE RELIQUIE E MEMORIE, D 120, FOL. 412V [31V]. PHOTO BY AUTHOR, COURTESY OF ARCHIVIO DI STATO DI SIENA (NO FURTHER REPRODUCTION PERMITTED).

THE BYZANTINE TREASURY OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA

Here, we are faced with an object whose appearance and size clearly reveal it as a devotional jewel for private devotion. One, moreover, which could not be opened, and whose actual function as a reliquary could not be ascertained, leaving us with the impression that it might have been, rather than a reliquary sensu stricto, an example of a Byzantine devotional pendant. When one considers the inscriptions on some of the objects, the hypothesis of a private usage for the majority of these reliquaries becomes unquestionable. The collection includes a niche-shaped, silver gilt reliquary of Saint John Chrysostom (7.5 × 3.1 × 1.7 cm) that carries two inscriptions: an identifying text along the side, and a longer epigram inscribed on the back (Fig. 13.1). The epigram reads: ‘Before the golden mouth of Chrysostom, my mind is paralysed and my word is unworthy’.61 The text, written in the first person and referring to a personal experience of faith, points to the original function of the capsella as an object of private devotion. The enamelled epigram running along the borders of the twelfth-century bejewelled encolpion discussed above hints at a private usage, too: the editing and translation of the text pose several interpretative problems, but it is written in the first person, and explicitly states that the pendant would be worn on the chest (στέρνοις φέρων) (Plate XVIII).62 An evident discontinuity exists in the use and understanding of the Byzantine relics and reliquaries of Santa Maria della Scala at either end of their journey across the Mediterranean. The small size and the jewel-like mounts of most of the reliquaries, as well as the votive inscriptions on some of the items, indicate that they were originally meant for the usage of an individual. Certified as imperial possessions in the authentication drafted in Constantinople in 1357, they may have belonged to the collections of devotional jewels of one or more members of the imperial family, who may have inherited some of the older reliquaries, such as the eleventh- or early described, both textually and visually, on fol. 412v (see here, Fig. 13.4). See also ASSi, MS D-113, fol. 11. 61 +Πρòς τò / χρυσοῦν / μοι στόμα / τοῦ Χρυσο/στόμου / καὶ / νοῦσ ἀπράκ/τει καὶ λό/γοσ οὺκ ἄ/ξιος. On the side: Ὂλβιον χρυσοῦν λείψανον Χρυσοστόμου / ἒν ἀργύρω κρύπτεται τῶ διαχρύσ[ω], which may be translated as ‘The blessed golden relic of Chrysostom is hidden in gilded silver’. The texts are published in Hetherington, ‘A Purchase’, pp. 16–17, and L’oro di Siena, pp. 115–17, cat. no. 7. See also Gallavotti Cavallero, Lo Spedale, p. 89. 62 The enamelled epigram, arranged along the four sides of the rear of the reliquary, is partly lost. The sequence of the verses and their translation have been the subject of some scholarly debate. I subscribe to Hetherington’s edition: Λειμῶνα παθῶν τοῦ θεοῦ στέρνοισ φέρων / [λέ]γοντα δεινῶν πράξεων ἀκαρ[π]ί[αν] / − − − − αισ τοῦ παναρίστου βίου / − − [ Ἐ]δὲμ λαβεῖν με λειμῶνα θέλ[ω] (‘Wearing on the breast the flowers of Christ’s Passion, which tell of the terrible deeds done to Christ, I wish to win for myself the meadows of Paradise’); Hetherington, ‘A Purchase’, pp. 6–7. For a different edition, see L’oro di Siena, 108. On epigrams and the staging of individual identities in late Byzantium, see Ivan Drpić, ‘The Patron’s “I”: Art, Selfhood, and the Later Byzantine Dedicatory Epigram’, Speculum 89 (2014), 895–935; and Drpić, Epigram, Art, and Devotion in Later Byzantium (Cambridge, 2016).

267

268

STEFANIA GEREVINI

twelfth-century enamelled pendant with an image of Christ Pantokrator (Plate XIX).63 They might also have commissioned directly, or received as gifts, some of the more recent artworks, like the reliquary of Saint John Chrysostom discussed above. Having inherited a group of private belongings that had likely been accumulated over time by one or more individuals, the Sienese nevertheless engaged them as the prime components of a public treasury. Initially portable and mobile, the objects were permanently deposited in a purposebuilt chapel and presumably removed from sight, hidden in an altar or tabernacle.64 No longer the focus of the private devotion of an individual, who would wear them, hold them, and look at them separately and from a close distance, the reliquaries were instead presented as a group to the regulated worship of the civic community of Siena, and embedded in an elaborate artistic, architectural, and urban staging that conferred entirely new meanings upon them. Originally intended to be touched, there is no evidence that the relics could be stroked or kissed by the congregation on the day of the Annunciation, or that the reliquaries would be opened to reveal their contents. Most likely, the community only glanced at the reliquaries fleetingly, as they were held up by the bishop for the solemn blessing.65 The process of inclusion of the set of Byzantine relics into the Sienese civic cult was, then, one of significant cultural reinvention. The hospital bought the relics because they were Byzantine and imperial, but, of the articulate cultural connotations that the objects carried with them, these two features were the only ones to be retained, preserved, and enhanced in Siena, while other, more specific characters – their private ownership and their function as devotional jewels, their individual iconographies and contents, their different material connotations, their heterogeneous chronologies – were muted. From a modern standpoint, it is difficult to establish whether such a process of semantic and functional adaptation was conducted knowingly by the Sienese, or whether it was due, in part at least, to a lack of familiarity with Byzantine art and/or devotional practices. The diminutive size of the reliquaries and their inscriptions would seem fairly explicit hints to their original private usage. Furthermore, when they acquired the relics, the Sienese presumably had full access to the bull of authentication drafted 63 L’oro di Siena, pp. 105–6, cat. no. 3. 64 For an insightful discussion of the rituals of underground enshrinement of reliquaries in late antiquity, see Ann Marie Yasin, ‘Sacred Installations: The Material Conditions of Relic Collections in Late Antique Churches’, in Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond, ed. Cynthia Hahn and Holger A. Klein (Washington, DC, 2015), pp. 133–51. 65 On this subject, see Stefania Gerevini, ‘Invisible, in Full View: The Byzantine Relics of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena’, in Visibilité et présence de l’image dans l’espace Ecclésial: Byzance et Moyen Age Occidental, ed. Sulamith Brodbeck and Anne-Orange Poilpré (Paris, 2019), pp. 195–231.

THE BYZANTINE TREASURY OF SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA

by Peter Thomas in Constantinople, and could have easily deduced from the text, which was written in Latin, the original context of use of the relics. The document, however, emphasised the antiquity, sacredness, and imperial associations of the collection over its specific function, perhaps amplifying the worth of the relics in the eyes of the Sienese, and helping to offset their unimpressive scale. In addition, there exists evidence that artefacts known to have belonged to important individuals enjoyed much appreciation by subsequent owners in medieval times, and that they were easily transferred from private to institutional treasuries.66 This is likely to have been the case in Siena, where the private usage of the Byzantine reliquaries by members of the imperial family may have increased, rather than challenged, the status of the collection in Siena.

CONCLUSIONS Whether or not their transformation of function was effected consciously, once in Siena the Byzantine relics and reliquaries were re-created as a unified and organic corpus that fulfilled a range of intersecting, but often conflicting, institutional and civic aims. The story of these artefacts speaks of the cultural and religious interconnectedness of the Christian Mediterranean in the later Middle Ages, and of the rich semantics of the holy in Italian communes. However, as I hope to have demonstrated, it also puts in sharp focus the rampant social frictions and power shifts concealed behind the ‘rhetoric of communitas’ of medieval civic religion.67 And it illuminates the difficulties and enigmas posed by the study of cases of encounter and exchange between different cultural, religious, and artistic communities. A testimony to the permeable nature of cultures – and at the same time a reminder, perhaps, of their incommensurability and irreducible distance – a study of this relic collection encourages a reconsideration of the meaning and value of material artistic borrowing, and of its role and potential in the creation, redefinition, and promotion of cultural and institutional identities.

66 A widely known example is the Eleanor of Aquitaine vase in the Louvre, which was inscribed with its provenance history upon commission of Abbot Suger in the mid-twelfth century; see George T. Beech, ‘The Eleanor of Aquitaine Vase, William IX of Aquitaine, and Muslim Spain’, Gesta 32 (1993), 3–10. 67 On the ‘rhetoric of communitas’, see Nicholas Terpstra, ‘Civic Religion’, in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity, ed. John Arnold (Oxford, 2014), pp. 148–65, at p. 151.

269

VISUAL RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN LATE MEDIEVAL FLORENCE: ZANOBI PERINI, THE LEGGENDA DI SANTO TOBIA, AND THE MISERICORDIA FEDERICO BOTANA

T

he work of Joanna Cannon has considerably enriched our understanding of the varied functions of religious images in late medieval Italy. My contribution to her Festschrift intersects with her work, as I explore the multi-layered relationship between visual hagiography and lay religious education (something she did masterfully in her inspirational study on Margherita of Cortona).1 This chapter is about two illustrations in a manuscript of the Leggenda di Santo Tobia (a vernacular version of This essay is an output of the research project ‘Visual Pedagogy in Renaissance Tuscany’, which I conducted at the School of History, Queen Mary, University of London in 2013– 16, financed by the Leverhulme Trust. I would like to express my gratitude to the Trust and the School, as well as to the Archivio dell’Arciconfraternita della Misericordia, the Fondazione Montedomini, the Archivio di Stato, and the department of manuscripts at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence. I am also indebted to Dillian Gordon, Ada Labriola, and Nerida Newbigin for their feedback on different aspects of BNCF II.II.445. 1 See Joanna Cannon and André Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany (University Park, PA, 1999), and Joanna Cannon, ‘Beyond the Limitations of Visual Typology: Reconsidering the Function and Audience of Three Vita Panels of Women Saints c. 1300’, in Italian Panel Painting in the Duecento and the Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art 61 (Washington, DC, 2002), pp. 291–314 (esp. p. 300).

14

272

FEDERICO BOTANA

the Book of Tobit) copied and illustrated in 1408 by a Florentine youth, Zanobi di Pagolo di Agnolo Perini, for his own edification (Plate XXI, Fig. 14.3).2 The manuscript is bound into a miscellany, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Fondo Nazionale MS II.II.445 (hereafter BNCF II.II.445), which contains other texts copied by Zanobi in the years 1407–9, as well as his own illustrations (Figs. 14.1, 14.2, 14.3, Plate XX), in addition to those executed by another illustrator (Plate XXI).3 This is not the only such example of a miscellany produced by a teenager that has come down to us; Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana MS 1655 was copied and illustrated in 1399 by Romigi d’Ardingo di Corso de’ Ricci when he was sixteen or seventeen years old.4 The illustrations in these miscellanies have received virtually no scholarly attention. Yet they are very important testimonies; they formed part of a vast corpus of images, of which very little survives, created by individuals with no artistic training, and shared by the majority of people living in urban centres. In the case of Zanobi’s miscellany, as I shall demonstrate, it bears witness to the attitude of a youth to well-known works of art. More importantly, the illustrations of the Leggenda contribute to our understanding of how visual hagiography was employed in the religious education of the young. The images appear to have been inspired by the Story of Tobit and Tobias, a fresco cycle painted c. 1350–70 in the domus residentiae of the compagnia of Santa Maria della Misericordia.5 According to documentary evidence, this confraternity took care of abandoned children; I shall propose in this essay that the fresco, like the text of the Leggenda, served to provide the young charges of the Misericordia with religious and moral instruction.6 But I shall also argue that the prominent 2 Three different versions of the Leggenda have been published as follows: ‘Libro di Tobia e Tobiuzzo’, in Domenico Cavalca, Volgarizzamento delle vite de’ Santi Padri secondo l’edizione di Firenze. Anno M.DCC.XXXI, ed. Domenico-Maria Manni (Verona, 1799), I, pp. 7–27 (the closest version to the Vulgate and the same as in BNCF MS II.II.445; hereafter version 1); Storia di Tobia e Sposizione della Salveregina, ed. Gaetano Poggiali (Livorno, 1799) (hereafter version 2); Leggenda di Tobia e di Tobiolo, ed. Michele Vanucci (Milan, 1825) (hereafter version 3). 3 See Giuseppe Mazzatini, Inventari dei manoscritti delle biblioteche d’Italia, IX (Forlì, 1899), pp. 128–9. 4 I discuss this manuscript at length in my book Learning through Images in the Italian Renaissance: Illustrated Manuscripts and Education in Quattrocento Florence (Cambridge, 2020). The manuscript was produced as a miscellany and includes one of the earliest vernacular versions of the Genesis. See Salomone Morpurgo, I manoscritti della Reale Biblioteca Riccardiana di Firenze: manoscritti italiani (Rome, 1900), pp. 608–9. 5 On the history of the Misericordia, see John Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence (Oxford and New York, 1994), and Philipp Earenfight, ‘The Residence and Loggia della Misericordia (Il Bigallo)’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of New Jersey, 1999, pp. 36–66. On the fresco, see William R. Levin, ‘Studies in the Imagery of Mercy in Late Medieval Italian Art’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, 1983, pp. 33–4, and Earenfight, ‘The Residence’, pp. 238–90. 6 See William R. Levin, ‘Lost Children, a Working Mother, and the Progress of an Artist at the Florentine Misericordia in the Trecento’, Enarratio: Publications of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 6 (1999), 34–94 (esp. pp. 46–55).

FIG. 14.1  ZANOBI PERINI, SALOME, 1408. BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE CENTRALE DI FIRENZE II.II.445, FOL. 36V. PHOTO BY PERMISSION OF THE MINISTERO DEI BENI E DELLE ATTIVITÀ E DEL TURISMO / BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE CENTRALE DI FIRENZE.

FIG. 14.2  ZANOBI PERINI, CHIESA DI SANTO GIOVANNI BATTISTA, 1407–9. BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE CENTRALE DI FIRENZE II.II.445, FOL. 41R. PHOTO BY PERMISSION OF THE MINISTERO DEI BENI E DELLE ATTIVITÀ E DEL TURISMO / BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE CENTRALE DI FIRENZE.

FIG. 14.3  ZANOBI PERINI(?), TOBIT BLESSING TOBIAS, THE MEETING OF TOBIAS AND RAPHAEL, AND TOBIAS FINDING THE FISH, 1408. BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE CENTRALE DI FIRENZE II.II.445, FOL. 48R. PHOTO BY PERMISSION OF THE MINISTERO DEI BENI E DELLE ATTIVITÀ E DEL TURISMO / BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE CENTRALE DI FIRENZE.

276

FEDERICO BOTANA

place of the story of Tobias in the ‘youth culture’ of early quattrocento Florence was not only due to its origin in the scriptures. Tobias, who undertakes a long journey from which he returns with a considerable fortune and a beautiful young wife, was an ideal role model for the mercantile youth of late medieval Florence.

ZANOBI DI PAGOLO DI AGNOLO PERINI AND HIS OUTPUT In the colophon to the first text in BNCF II.II.445, the Vita of Santo Giovanni Battista, Zanobi wrote that he lived in the popolo of San Lorenzo, in the gonfalone of the Lion d’Oro, in the quartiere of San Giovanni – he probably grew up in one of the houses on the Borgo San Lorenzo, which later became the property of his nephews.7 His father, Pagolo, was a biadaiuolo (a merchant in grain), and so was Agnolo, his grandfather.8 Agnolo served as priore for the Lion d’Oro in 1387, and Pagolo took the same charge in 1425.9 Though there are no documents to attest to the precise date of birth of Zanobi, he was probably born sometime between 1388 and 1393. Zanobi’s parents, Pagolo and Margherita, were married in 1383, and the eldest son for whom we have a birth date record was born in February 1387.10 This boy was christened with the name of his grandfather, Agnolo, which strongly suggests that he was the eldest son. There are also records of birth dates for three further brothers: Cristofano (1393), Gherardo (1403) and Ristoro (1407).11 Therefore, Zanobi’s birth most likely occurred between those of Agnolo and Cristofano. Zanobi would have thus been between fifteen and nineteen years old in 1408 when he started producing the manuscripts bound into BNCF II.II.445. Despite his young age, Zanobi was a prolific copyist; in 1408 he was compiling texts for another miscellany (BNCF, Fondo Magliabechiano Class VII, MS 375), which includes poems, fables, and catechetical texts, as well as his own illustrations.12 Zanobi also left to posterity a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana MS 1024); this manuscript is not dated, but the handwriting is considerably more fluent than in his miscellanies, suggesting that he wrote it later.13 The colophon 7 BNCF II.II.445, fol. 41r; for the houses, ASFi, Catasto 1015 (San Giovanni, Lion d’Oro, 1480, 1), fol. 123r (heirs of Cristofano di Pagolo Perini). 8 ASFi, Manoscritti 600, ins. 5 (Carte Pucci, IX, 5). 9 ASFi, Manoscritti 600, ins. 5; Tratte 600 (Tratte de’ Signori e Collegi dal 1417 al 1428), fol. 148r. 10 For the marriage, see BNCF MS Magliabechiano Cl. XXVI, 142, fol. 160; for Agnolo, see ASFi, Tratte 79 (Libro di età 1378–1456), fol. 121r (Lion d’Oro): ‘Agnolo di Pagholo d’Agnolo Perini a di 20 febraio mcccLxxxvi’ (ab incarnatio; 1337 modern calendar). 11 ASFi, Tratte 79 (Libro di età 1378–1456), fols 128r, 136r, and 154r (all Lion d’Oro). 12 See Mazzatini, Inventari dei manoscritti dei biblioteche d’Italia, XIII (Forlì, 1905–6), pp. 80–3. 13 See Morpurgo, I manoscritti della Reale Biblioteca Riccardiana, pp. 17–18.

VISUAL RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN LATE MEDIEVAL FLORENCE

of the Vita di Santo Giovanni includes a sign like those featuring in account books of merchant companies, which Zanobi claims is ‘his sign’ (Fig. 14.2).14 So in 1409, when he completed the Vita, Zanobi was already working in trade, probably together with his father in one of the family’s botteghe on the Borgo San Lorenzo.15 BNCF II.II.445 is written in mercantesca (mercantile cursive hand) and composed of eighty-two original paper folios measuring 30.5 by 22 cm.16 In addition to the Vita di Santo Giovanni Battista and the Leggenda di Santo Tobia, it comprises the following entries: prayers, a miracle of the Virgin Mary, the story of Balaam and his ass (Numbers 22), a poem on the feast of John the Baptist, Aesop’s fable Of the Ant and the Cicada, sonnets by Dante and Petrarca, and De’ fatti di Roma (known in English as the Seven Sages of Rome).17 These texts are not assembled in the order they were copied; whilst the colophon of the Vita di Santo Giovanni includes the date 25 May 1409, that of the Leggenda includes 20 June 1408, the prayers 4 February 1408 (ab incarnatio; 1409 modern calendar), and the Festa is dated 9 February 1407 (ab incarnatio; 1408 modern calendar).18 However, the oldest foliation, including both Roman and Arabic numerals, was penned by Zanobi and is continuous throughout the manuscript, even on blank folios (some of which are now missing), suggesting that all the entries were assembled in their present order by Zanobi.19 The manuscript contains twelve illustrations. The Vita di Santo Giovanni is accompanied by five coloured pen-and-ink drawings representing: the

14 BNCF II.II.445, fol. 45: ‘e questo sie il suo segno’. On merchant signs, see Gertrude R.B. Richards, Florentine Merchants in the Age of the Medici (Cambridge, MA, 1932), p. 312. 15 Most Florentine males usually began working in trading companies and shops in their early teens, but they generally did not start their own business ventures until their twenties, unless legally emancipated by their fathers. For the family botteghe, see ASFi, Catasto 1015 (San Giovanni, Lion d’Oro, 1480, 1), fol. 123r (heirs of Cristofano di Pagolo Perini). 16 BNCF II.II.445 is assembled as follows: three modern flyleaves (i–iii); seven bifolia (fols iv–13; 2 blank); three bifolia (fols 14–19); eight bifolia (fols 20–35); six bifolia (fols 36–47; 6 blank); six bifolia (fols 48–59; 6 blank); two bifolia (fols 60–63); nine bifolia (fols 64–80; 9 blank); three modern flyleaves (vi–viii). 17 BNCF II.II.445, fols 1–41 (Vita), 48r–53r (Leggenda), 60r (prayers), 60r–61r (miracle), 61v (Balaam), 64r–65r (Festa), 65v–66r (fable), 66r–67r (sonnets), 68r–72v (Fatti). The first entry roughly corresponds to the Vita di San Giovanni Battista in Manni, Volgarizzamento delle vite de’ Santi Padri, III (Vite di alcuni Santi scritte nel buon secolo della lingua Toscana), pp. 185–265. The Festa di San Giovanni was published in I manoscritti italiani della Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze, ed. Adolfo Bartoli, II (Florence, 1881), pp. 283–91. For the last entry, see Hans Runte, Keith Wikeley, and Anthony Farrell, The Seven Sages of Rome and the Book of Sindbād: An Analytical Bibliography (New York, 1984), pp. 128–36. Zanobi’s version is different from those cited in this study. 18 BNCF II.II.445, fols 41r, 48r, 60r, and 64r. 19 Two bifolia were removed from the centre of quire 5, between fols 53 and 54 (corresponding to fols 54 and 59 in the original foliation), and six from the centre of quire 6, between fols 61 and 62 (corresponding to fols 66 and 79 in the original foliation). Both sections only include blank folios. See note 17, above.

277

278

FEDERICO BOTANA

Annunciation to Zacharias, Saint John in the Desert, the Baptism of Christ (Plate XX), the Decollation of the Baptist, and an intriguing centrally planned building consisting of a dome supported by Corinthian columns on the first folio prefacing the text. The style of these illustrations is reminiscent of that of late fourteenth-century Florentine masters, especially Mariotto di Nardo and Bicci di Lorenzo.20 The Vita also includes five uncoloured pen-and-ink drawings: a figure of Salome dancing accompanied by the caption ‘quella mala fanciulla che ballava chosi bene’ (‘that bad girl who danced so well’) (Fig. 14.1), two drawings of the head of the Baptist on a platter, a depiction of the tomb of the Baptist flanked by devotees praying, and another centrally planned building, this one accompanied by the caption ‘chiesa di Santo Giovanni profeta’, which I shall discuss below (Fig. 14.2). The Leggenda di Santo Tobia includes two illustrations executed in different styles. The first represents Tobit Blessing Tobias, conflated with the Meeting of Raphael and Tobias, and Tobias Finding the Fish in the River Tigris (Fig. 14.3); and the second illustration represents the Wedding Banquet of Tobias (Plate XXI). The folio on which the Banquet was executed also includes marginal pen-and-ink decoration in the same hand as the line drawings in the Vita di Santo Giovanni. The line drawings in the Vita di Santo Giovanni are, in all likelihood, by Zanobi. First of all, they are in the same pen and ink as the text and exhibit the same graphic characteristics as his handwriting. That Zanobi is their maker is particularly evident in the centrally planned building, the podium of which is decorated with dots like those in the penultimate line of the colophon of the Vita and his trading sign (Fig. 14.2). Zanobi appears also to have made additions to the Baptism of Christ after it was completed by the illustrator of the Vita (Plate XX). Some of the figures’ contours were clumsily reinforced, and the birds in the foreground and the vegetal motifs in the background are strikingly similar to those decorating the folio of the Wedding Banquet of Tobias (Plate XXI). The first illustration of the Leggenda, Tobit Blessing Tobias (Fig. 14.3), is likely to be by Zanobi too, though it was executed with a thinner pen than the marginal drawings of the Vita. The Blessing follows the style of the illustrator of the Vita, but the profiles of Tobit and Tobias are similar to that of Salome, notably their receding chins and grinning mouths. The Blessing was coloured just with washes; by contrast, the illustration that follows, the Banquet, was finished in dense pigments which have peeled off in some areas (Plate XXI). This illustration is stylistically different from the former; yet that it was also executed by Zanobi is conceivable, as he could have imitated 20 On Mariotto, see Sonia Chiodo, ‘Mariotto di Nardo: note per un “egregio pictore”’, Arte Cristiana 87 (1999), 91–104; on Bicci, see Miklós Boskovits, ‘Per Bicci di Lorenzo disegnatore’, in Aux quatre vents: A Festschrift for Bert W. Meijer, ed. Anton W. Boschloo et al. (Florence, 2002), pp. 19–23.

VISUAL RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN LATE MEDIEVAL FLORENCE

another artist, or – a hypothesis that would explain the thick paint – it was started by him and reworked later by a third illustrator.

THE LEGGENDA DI SANTO TOBIA AND THE MISERICORDIA The version of the Leggenda copied by Zanobi is a faithful translation of the apocryphal Book of Tobit in the Vulgate (the story needs to be summarised here for the sake of our argument).21 Tobit was a pious man of the tribe of Nephtali. He was taken captive to Nineveh together with his brethren, whom he assisted with alms and good works, especially burying the dead after the Assyrian king Shalmanaser prohibited Jewish burials. But Tobit was then blinded by swallow droppings that fell in his eyes and became impoverished as a result; so he sent his son, Tobias, to the city of Rages in Media to recuperate ten silver talents that Tobit had lent in the past to one of his kindred, Gabellus. Tobias undertook his journey with his loyal dog and a young and beautiful travelling companion, Azarias, who was none other than the Archangel Raphael. The angel had been sent by God in disguise to help Tobit and, at the same time, also to help Sarah, a young maiden in Media who had married seven times, with each husband being killed on their wedding night by the demon Asmodeus. When Tobias and Raphael reached the river Tigris, Tobias went into the water to wash his feet, but was attacked by a fish. Raphael instructed Tobias to kill the fish and to extract and keep its heart, liver, and gall, all of which were believed to have medicinal properties. Raphael then told Tobias that when they reached Media he was to ask for permission to marry Sarah, daughter of the wealthy Raguel; he also explained to Tobias how to exorcise Asmodeus by burning the fish’s heart on his wedding night. Tobias successfully married Sarah; he returned to Nineveh with his young wife and half of Raguel’s possessions, and cured Tobit’s blindness with an unguent made from the fish’s gall. In addition to BNCF II.II.445, four manuscripts of the Leggenda di Santo Tobia produced in Tuscany in the period between the mid fourteenth and the early fifteenth century have survived.22 The only one of these manuscripts created to contain illustrations is BNCF, Fondo 21 The only notable difference is the omission of Tobit’s prophecy of the destruction of Nineveh, included in the version published by Manni (see note 3, above). 22 BNCF Palatino 1 (mid fourteenth century), version 2, published by Poggiali in 1799; BNCF II.IV.56 (1390), version 4, unpublished; BNCF Magl. Cl. XXI, 174 (1408), version 1, published in Manni’s 1799 edition; BMRF MS 683, fols 159–63 (early fifteenth century), version 3, published by Vanucci in 1825. See note 3, above, for full bibliographical references. On Palatino 1, see Federico Botana, ‘The Frescoes of the Allegory of Mercy and the Story of Tobit and Tobias in the Bigallo: New Viewpoints’, in Politiche di misericordia tra teoria e prassi: confraternite, ospedali e Monti di Pietà (XIII–XVI secolo), ed. Pietro Delcorno (Bologna, 2018), pp. 97–118. On BNCF II.IV.56, see Carlo Delcorno, La tradizione delle ‘Vite dei Santi Padri’ (Venice, 2000), pp. 94–101. On BMRF MS 683, see Il

279

280

FEDERICO BOTANA

Palatino, MS 1. This manuscript, datable to c. 1350, includes a historiated initial and twenty-three empty spaces for miniatures never executed.23 There are grounds to suggest that Pal. 1 is one of the two manuscripts of the Leggenda recorded in an inventory of the confraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia in 1369.24 Moreover, the only fresco cycle on the life of Tobit known to have been painted in Italy before 1408, the Story of Tobit and Tobias, is to be found in the bottega of the domus residentiae of the Misericordia (today the Museo del Bigallo).25 The cycle is now in very poor condition, and can only be dated to a twenty-year period, 1350–70.26 It was originally divided into eighteen scenes, six of which were destroyed in 1777 to build a new staircase.27 In one of the latter was, in all likelihood, the scene depicting Tobias Finding the Fish. But two scenes representing the Wedding Banquet of Tobias have survived in the Bigallo scheme (Fig. 14.4).28 In terms of composition, the illustration in Zanobi’s manuscript (Plate XXI) is remarkably similar to these scenes. In the illustration, as in the fresco, the banqueting table is placed in parallel to the picture ground under an awning. Sarah’s father, Raguel, is in both instances represented as a dignified bearded man sitting at the left end of the table, which in both the fresco and the illustration is covered in a cloth with a pattern of lozenges (which is difficult to see in reproductions). Cutlery, plates, and drinking vessels are similarly distributed on the tablecloth. In both instances we can see a servant by an end of the table carrying a platter – in the fresco he appears on the left,

viaggio dei tre monaci al paradiso terrestre, ed. Giuliana Ravaschietto (Alessandria, 1997), pp. 1–3. 23 For a description, see Luigi Gentili, Codici palatini, I (Rome, 1889), p. 1. 24 ASFi, Compagnia poi Magistrato del Bigallo 724 (Libro 3rzo di lasciti e allogagioni della Compagnia della Misericordia, 1368–98), fol. 86r (19 February 1368, ab incarnatio; 1369 modern style): ‘due libri della legienda [sic] di Santo Tobia, l’uno verde e l’altro rosso’. Palatino 1, in addition to the Leggenda, includes an exposition of the Salve Regina, which, as I argue in ‘The Frescoes of the Allegory of Mercy and the Story of Tobit’, pp. 99–100, constitutes further evidence associating the manuscript with the Misericordia. 25 Levin, ‘Studies in the Imagery of Mercy’, pp. 33–4; Earenfight, ‘The Residence’, pp. 238–90. Scenes from the life of Tobit, now lost, were painted in juxtaposition with scenes from the life of Job on the facade of the Lateran Hospital in Rome, and are known from watercolour copies, from which they can be dated to the second quarter of the fifteenth century. See Stephan Waetzoldt, Die Kopien des 17. Jahrhunderts nach Mosaïken und Wandmalereien in Rom (Vienna, 1964), pp. 42–3, cat. nos. 276–81, and Figs. 153–8. 26 It was already in poor condition before the 1966 flood, when it suffered irreparable damage (it was then detached from its original support). Levin (‘Studies in the Imagery of Mercy’, p. 33) accepts c. 1360 as proposed by Hanna Kiel, Il Museo del Bigallo (Florence, 1977), p. 119, whereas Earenfight, ‘The Residence’, pp. 284–6, suggests c. 1370. I am inclined to accept the earlier dating. 27 Each scene measures approximately 80 × 80 cm. On the staircase, see Howard Saalman, The Bigallo: The Oratory and Residence of the Compagnia del Bigallo e della Misericordia in Florence (New York, 1969), pp. 27–35, and Earenfight, ‘The Residence’, p. 276. 28 The first banquet scene includes Raphael leaving to collect the ten silver talents from Gabellus (Tobit 9:1–6); the second his return (Tobit 9:8).

VISUAL RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN LATE MEDIEVAL FLORENCE

281

FIG. 14.4  UNKNOWN PAINTER, WEDDING BANQUET OF TOBIAS, DETAIL OF THE STORY OF TOBIT AND TOBIAS. FRESCO, C. 1350–70, MUSEO DEL BIGALLO, FLORENCE. PHOTO: GALLERIE DEGLI UFFIZI, FLORENCE.

and in the illustration on the right. Tobias’s dog is larger in the illustration; however, the dog appears under the table facing Raguel’s feet, as in the fresco. In the illustration are depicted only Raguel, Tobias, Sarah, Raphael, and at the right end of the table a man who probably represents Gabelus. The lesser number of figures may be explained by the limited capability of the illustrator; yet the compositional similarities strongly suggest that the illustration was modelled on the first scene representing the Wedding Banquet in the fresco. Moreover, in Zanobi’s Tobit Blessing Tobias, the youth is represented standing with his arms crossed in sign of obedience, as he appears in the scenes in which he is in the company of his father (Fig. 14.3).29 It is therefore reasonable to assume that Zanobi’s rendition of Tobias Finding the Fish was modelled on the lost scene.30 29 Upper register, scenes 2–4. 30 I present the evidence in ‘The Frescoes of the Allegory of Mercy and the Story of Tobit’.

282

FEDERICO BOTANA

The bottega of the Misericordia originally opened onto the exterior like a loggia (it was walled up only in the eighteenth century).31 At the time, it would have been possible for passers-by to enter the bottega and to look closely at the Story of Tobit and Tobias.32 Other illustrations in BNCF II.II.445 attest to a strong sense of belonging to the quartiere of San Giovanni, which may explain why Zanobi’s Banquet was modelled on the Misericordia’s fresco. The Baptism of Christ (Plate XX), for instance, evokes the relief representing the subject on the south bronze door of the baptistery (Andrea Pisano, 1329–36); and in Zanobi’s drawing of Salome dancing, the position of her arms is the same as in the corresponding bronze relief on the door. More interestingly, the centrally planned building drawn by Zanobi seems to be an idealised representation of the baptistery, usually referred to by contemporaries as ‘chiesa di Santo Giovanni’, as in Zanobi’s caption, and believed at that time to be an ancient Roman temple originally dedicated to Mars (Fig. 14.2).33 So we can assume that Zanobi looked at monuments in his neighbourhood, drawing them later at home from memory, but also interpreting them under the influence of prevalent myths and other cultural factors, letting his imagination run loose. In addition, Zanobi probably had a personal connection with the Misericordia. Two of his relatives appear in the list of members compiled by the confraternity in the late fourteenth century; and a nephew and a grandnephew of Zanobi joined the confraternity in the fifteenth century.34 Zanobi could therefore have taken part in some of the activities of the Misericordia. Only one confraternity of youths, the compagnia di San Matteo, is known to have existed in Florence in the late fourteenth 31 Saalman, The Bigallo, Figs. iv and ix, and Plate 12; and especially Barbara M. Affolter, ‘Un inventario di masserizie e cosa della Compagnia del 1369’, in Dentro la Misericordia: spazi e arredi della Confraternita da un inventario del 1369, ed. Barbara M. Affolter and Laura Rossi (Florence, 2016), pp. 43–6. 32 The bottega served as an entrance hall to the confraternity; the capitani had at some point to place a bench against a door giving access from the bottega to the fondachetto where documents and money were kept. See Affolter, ‘Un inventario’, pp. 44, 47. 33 Gerhard Straehle, Die Marstempelthese: Dante, Villani, Boccaccio, Vasari Borghini (Munich, 2001) pp. 13–98. The tell-tale clue is the stairs on the dome, which are the same in the representation of the baptistery in the Allegory of Mercy, painted in 1352 in the Misericordia’s bottega, and which, in reality, do not run along the full height of the dome as in these representations. I explain this in more detail in Learning through Images. 34 Archivio dell’Arciconfraternita della Misericordia di Firenze, 646 (Santa Maria Novella), fol. 12r, Giovanni di Guido Perini (inscribed in 1365), fol. 40r, Caterina moglie fu di Giovanni Perini (inscribed in 1388); 645 (San Giovanni), fol. 14r, Giovanni di Pagolo Perini (inscribed in 1490) and Girolamo di Cristofano Perini (inscribed in 1499). The Perini living in the quartiere of Santa Maria Novella were not biadaiuoli (like Zanobi’s father) but beccai (butchers); however they shared the same coat of arms, which indicates they belonged to the same family (bipartite azure and or with two facing rampant lions in the same colours but inverted). For Zanobi’s arms, see BMRF MS 1024, fol. 99r; for those of the Perini beccai see ASFi, Fondo Ceramelli-Papiani 3685. Zanobi’s nephews could have joined before the 1490s; in 1425 the Misericordia was merged with the Bigallo and new members were not inscribed in the registers until 1489, when the merging was annulled by the Signoria.

VISUAL RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN LATE MEDIEVAL FLORENCE

century; however, as demonstrated by Richard Trexler, children and youths participated in the activities of adult confraternities.35 They sang laude, and also played parts in laude dramatiche (and later in sacre rappresentazioni), and marched in processions together with adult confraternity members during the celebration of the feast of John the Baptist (described in a poem copied by Zanobi).36 Moreover, there is conclusive evidence that from at least 1368 the Misericordia lodged children in the residence on Piazza San Giovanni. In the nineteenth century, Luigi Passerini claimed that the confraternity had provided shelter to children who were abandoned by their parents, or who had simply lost their way in the streets of Florence, but his supporting evidence was inconclusive.37 Passerini’s claim was, to a great extent, based on the fresco known as the Consignment of Abandoned Children and Orphans to Natural and Adoptive Mothers, painted in 1386 by Ambrogio di Baldese and Niccolò di Piero Gerini on the facade of the Misericordia, which represents captains of the confraternity ushering children onto the baptistery square, where they are met by women.38 However, a few years ago, in the Misericordia’s documents surviving from the period 1368– 1412, William Levin discovered evidence that the confraternity provided lodgings in the residence to the persons employed to take care of its fanciuli smarriti (lost children).39 The first to take the charge was Mona Santina, mother of Ambrogio di Baldese, who painted the Consignment of Abandoned Children, and who replaced his mother as a carer to the children in 1390.40 In 1400, Ambrogio was in turn replaced by a Giovanni di Iacopo, who in the first documentary mention is referred to as lasagnarius (pasta maker), and in the second as a battiloro (a workman specialising in hammering gold into gold leaf).41

35 Richard C. Trexler, ‘Ritual in Florence: Adolescence and Salvation in the Renaissance’, in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. Charles Trinkaus and Heiko Oberman (Leiden, 1974), pp. 200–64 (at pp. 204, 206). For San Matteo, see Trexler, ‘Ritual’, p. 206; Henderson, Piety and Charity, p. 466 n. 119. 36 Trexler, ‘Ritual’, pp. 222, 224. For the poem, see Cesare Guasti, Le feste di San Giovanni Battista in Firenze: descrite in prosa e in rima per i contemporanei (Florence, 1884). 37 Luigi Passerini, Storia degli stabilimenti di beneficenza e d’istruzione elementare gratuita della città di Firenze (Florence, 1853), pp. 448, 458–9, 461, 902–3. 38 On the fresco, see William R. Levin, ‘Advertising Charity in the Trecento: The Public Decorations of the Misericordia in Florence’, Studies in Iconography 17 (1996), 215–309 (at pp. 221–33), and Levin, ‘Lost Children’, pp. 43–6. The fresco was detached from the facade in 1777 and two large fragments are today kept in the Museo del Bigallo, where it can also be appreciated in full in an eighteenth-century watercolour. The fresco is painted in Gerini’s style, but the figures are more expressive than in other works by Gerini, suggesting that Ambrogio was largely responsible for its execution. 39 Levin, ‘Lost Children’, pp. 46–55. 40 Levin, ‘Lost Children’, pp. 46–55 (pp. 70–1 and 83–4 for the documents). 41 Levin, ‘Lost Children’, pp. 47–8 (pp. 70 and 72 for the documents).

283

284

FEDERICO BOTANA

TOBIAS AND YOUTH CULTURE IN LATE MEDIEVAL FLORENCE Zanobi’s interest in Tobias may have been inspired by the Misericordia and its involvement with children. The oldest youth confraternity whose activities are documented was founded in 1411; it was dedicated to the Archangel Raphael and the Nativity, but became known just as ‘Il Raffa’.42 Like other youth confraternities, Il Raffa provided its members with religious instruction and participation in devotional activities. 43 The adolescent Tobias walking hand-in-hand with Raphael became the favourite visual theme of Il Raffa, and was represented on its altarpieces and processional banners.44 Tobias and his travelling companion, Raphael, were emblematic of childhood and youth. But the presence of such a rare pictorial subject, the Story of Tobit and Tobias, in the bottega of the Misericordia has so far been explained only on the grounds that Tobit was the second dedicatee of the Misericordia and, above all, that he was an exemplary practitioner of the work of mercy of burying the dead – the Misericordia, like most confraternities, dedicated much of its resources to providing its members with last rites and burial.45 However, only one of the twelve surviving scenes shows Tobit burying the dead; by contrast, five scenes illustrate events occurring during Tobias’s travels with Raphael, and so, probably, did three of the six that were destroyed.46 The Archangel was (and still is) invoked for his curative powers and was also venerated as a protector of children, as attested to by two fifteenth-century panel paintings depicting the Archangel with Tobias as a young child.47 But the story of Raphael and Tobias, I believe, had other uses for children and youths: namely teaching them moral and religious precepts. This could have been one of the functions of the fresco depicting the Story of Tobit and Tobias in the 42 Konrad Eisenbichler, The Boys of the Archangel: A Youth Confraternity in Florence, 1411–1785 (Toronto, 1998). The date of foundation appears in the oldest extant statutes (1468), ASFi, Capitoli delle Compagnie Religiose Sopresse 752, fol. 2r. 43 ASFi, Capitoli delle Compagnie Religiose Sopresse 752, chaps. 6–9. See also Trexler, ‘Ritual’, pp. 242–5; Eisenbichler, The Boys of the Archangel, pp. 129–37. 44 Eisenbichler, The Boys of the Archangel, p. 167; on the altarpieces, see Lisa Venturini, Francesco Botticini (Florence, 1994), pp. 45–9, and Anabel Thomas, ‘Neri di Bicci, Francesco Botticini and the Augustinians’, Arte Cristiana 81 (1993), 282–92, at p. 290. 45 Levin, ‘Studies in the Imagery of Mercy’, pp. 34–5; William R. Levin, The Allegory of Mercy at the Misericordia in Florence: Historiography, Context, Iconography, and the Documentation of Confraternal Charity in the Trecento (Dallas and Oxford, 2004), pp. 76–7; and Earenfight, ‘The Residence’, p. 287. 46 For reconstruction proposals, see Earenfight, ‘The Residence’, pp. 276, 278, 281–2, and Botana, ‘The Frescoes of the Allegory of Mercy and the Story of Tobit and Tobias’. 47 Two examples painted in the mid-fifteenth century by Bicci di Lorenzo: the first also includes a female donor figure holding out a swaddled child for protection (Villa I Tatti, Biblioteca Berenson, Fototeca, neg. 103322–1); another version, with no donors, is today in the Keresztény Museum in Esztergom. Also, in a painting of Tobias and the Angel by Andrea di Giovanni (San Biagio at Petriolo), the donors are a man and a woman with a small child.

VISUAL RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN LATE MEDIEVAL FLORENCE

Misericordia, as well as one of the functions of the two manuscripts of the Leggenda di Santo Tobia owned by the confraternity. The Leggenda is likely to have been considered an edifying text for the young – in the twelfth century, Matthew of Vendôme wrote a version of the Book of Tobit in Latin verse to serve as a school text for children.48 The Leggenda is written in colloquial language and includes more passages in direct speech than the version in the Vulgate, which would have made the text particularly effective for engaging the lesser-educated, including children. The relationship between father and son is central to the story. Tobias is educated by Tobit in the fear of God; he follows the example of his father and grows into a virtuous young man. Basic moral principles are mentioned in key passages. Notably, at the beginning of the narration, the good works of Tobit are described in detail: how he visited his kindred imprisoned in Nineveh (assisting them materially and spiritually), how he shared with them his possessions, and how he buried the dead, risking his own life, after the Assyrian king Shalmanaser prohibited Jewish burials.49 Before he instructs Tobias to travel to Media, Tobit offers him what sounds like a summary of catechetical education: always to respect the Ten Commandments, always to help the poor and give alms (he includes a list of reasons for so doing), never to allow pride to dominate his thoughts, to eat his bread with the hungry and the needy (but to avoid sharing food and drink with sinners), to clothe the poor with his own garments, and to abstain from ‘all vices of the flesh’ and to have sexual intercourse only with his wife.50 In the first scene of the fresco, Tobias appears distributing alms in the company of his father, whilst in the second he helps Tobit to bury a dead Jew during the night, and in the third he is listening to Tobit expounding on religious precepts.51 But in addition to moral edification, Zanobi would have probably been interested in other aspects of the story. It was suggested by Gertrude Achenbach that paintings of Tobias and the Angel were actually ex-votos commissioned by parents whose young sons were working abroad, as was often the case with teenagers, who soon after joining a trading company were sent off to work in a foreign branch to learn the business.52 This 48 Eugenio Garin, Il pensiero pedagogico dello umanesimo (Florence, 1958), p. 95; for the text, Matthieu de Vendôme, Thobias, ed. Friedrich A.W. Mueldener (Göttingen, 1855). 49 BNCF II.II.445, fol. 48r–v (Tobit 1:9–2:8). 50 BNCF II.II.445, fol. 49v (Tobit 4:1–20). 51 The upper register is in particularly poor condition and the actions of Tobias can only be appreciated close-up from a ladder or in black and white photographs (Polo Museale Fiorentino, Gabinetto Fotografico, Bigallo, negs. 349016–18). 52 Gertrude M. Achenbach, ‘The Iconography of Tobias and the Angel in Florentine Painting of the Renaissance’, Marsyas 3 (1943–45), 71–86, at p. 76. For example, Filippo degli Strozzi left Florence at thirteen to work for his cousins, starting in Palermo, and travelled in Spain and probably to Bruges before the age of seventeen. See Ann Crabb, The Strozzi of Florence: Widowhood and Family Solidarity in the Renaissance (Ann Arbor, MI, 2000), pp. 105–8, and Richard Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore, MD, 2009), pp. 84–5.

285

286

FEDERICO BOTANA

proposal was challenged by Hans Gombrich, who argued that Raphael as a healer was the main subject of these pictures.53 However, in support of Achenbach’s proposal, Alison Wright noted that in a painting executed c. 1487 by Francesco Botticini for the Doni family an adolescent with a purse conspicuously hanging from his waist appears in the place of a donor figure.54 Zanobi is unlikely to have travelled abroad; but as a biadaiuolo he probably ventured into the countryside to conduct business for his family. Yet there is another aspect of the Leggenda that must have been attractive to Zanobi: most of the story consists, in fact, of the adventures of a lucky youth. This was not the only such story copied by Zanobi into BNCF II.II.445. The Miracle of the Virgin tells us about a young teenager, who despite the reticence of his parents, leaves home to see the world and becomes the favourite page of a king and a queen who love him dearly, to the extent that the other pages became envious and decide to kill him, but the Virgin intervenes to save him.55 Likewise, the adventures of Tobias culminate in great success: he returns home with the remedy to cure his father, and also with a beautiful young wife and a substantial dowry provided by his father-in-law, the wealthy Raguel, who names Tobias his sole heir.56 In BNCF II.II.445, Raphael tells Tobias before he meets Sarah ‘you must have all his [Raguel’s] possessions and you must want to catch her [Sarah] as a wife, so ask her father, and he will give her to you as a wife’ [my italics] – the emphasis on financial gain is here stronger than in the Vulgate, where it is simply implied that it is God’s will that Tobias becomes the owner of Raguel’s fortune.57 This would have been an inspirational passage for an ambitious young merchant, we can have little doubt.

CONCLUSION I hope to have demonstrated that BNCF II.II.445 offers us a rare glimpse into the culture of a Florentine youth at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Miscellanies illustrated by scribe-readers are fascinating objects; in BNCF II.II.445 we discover much about Zanobi’s interests and his appreciation of the visual culture that surrounded him. This manuscript, I have argued, sheds light on a larger world: that of the children and youths 53 Ernst H. Gombrich, ‘Tobias and the Angel’, in Harvest, Volume 1 (Travel) (1948), 63–7, at p. 66. 54 Alison Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers: The Arts of Florence and Rome (New Haven and London, 2005), p. 253; on the painting, see Venturini, Botticini, pp. 121–2. 55 BNCF II.II.445, fols 60v–61r. 56 BNCF II.II.445, fol. 51v (Tobit 8:24). 57 BNCF II.II.445, fol. 50v: ‘ttu dei avere tuto il suo avere et cchonvientela pigliare per moglie, adunque adimandala al suo padre e daratela per moglie’. Tobit 6:12–13: ‘tibi debetur omnis substantia eius et oportet te eam accipere coniugem/ pete ergo eam patre eius et dabit tibi eam uxorem’.

VISUAL RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN LATE MEDIEVAL FLORENCE

who frequented the Misericordia of Florence, especially as to how a biblical story and its pictorial representation taught them religious precepts. The success of the Book of Tobit as a didactic tool depended, nonetheless, on the fact that it was (and still is) a fascinating and engaging story. Italian late medieval and Renaissance sources are generally silent on the subject of children drawing.58 However, children and adolescents liked to draw then as they do nowadays; in addition to the numerous doodles that can be appreciated in medieval manuscripts, a few Italian fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Latin-grammar schoolbooks contain naive illustrations in all likelihood drawn by their users, and it is quite likely that there were many other such books, given the poor rate of survival of objects handled by children.59 Paper miscellanies are also fragile objects, and Zanobi and Romigi de’ Ricci were probably not the only teenage-amateur illustrators in Florence in the early 1400s. Did the children of the Misericordia draw? Drawing was not a resource reserved just for painters and sculptors; minor craftsmen (potters, ironmongers, carpenters, and so forth) needed to possess a minimum mastery of drawing. In the surviving documents of the Misericordia, Passerini discovered records of monthly payments to craftsmen which, he believed, were for the keeping of youngsters placed into apprenticeship by the confraternity, even if this cannot be proved.60 Zanobi could have been inspired to draw by observing the youths of the Misericordia – perhaps he even met the other illustrator of BNCF II.II.445 through the confraternity. In addition to providing care to the fanciuli smarriti of the Misericordia, the painter Ambrogio di Baldese executed artistic commissions and decoration jobs for the confraternity, and this illustrator could have been an acquaintance of Ambrogio, if not an apprentice.61 Ambrogio’s young charges must have seen him at work, and it is reasonable to assume that a few served as occasional assistants. This would have been a good way of keeping these children occupied and educating them at the same time. 58 An exception is the humanist and pedagogue Maffeo Vegio (1404–58), who dedicated a chapter of De liberorum educatione et eorum claris moribus to drawing. For Vegio, learning to draw is not a means of acquiring knowledge since it relates to the mechanical and not the liberal arts, but inculcates in children the means for judging the quality of paintings and sculptures. See Maphei Vegii Laudensis oratoris ac poetae celeberrimi opera… (Lodi, 1613), III.4, p. 181. However, if we take into account the fact that apprentices often joined workshops aged ten or eleven, another source is Cennino Cennini’s Libro dell’Arte, Book 1, Chapter 4; English translation in Cennino d’Andrea Cennini, The Craftsman’s Handbook: ‘Il Libro dell’Arte’, trans. Daniel V. Thompson, Jr (New York, 1954), p. 3. 59 Paul F. Gehl, A Moral Art: Grammar, Society and Culture in Trecento Florence (Ithaca, NY, 1993), pp. 261, 265–6; Federico Botana, ‘Family Wisdom in Quattrocento Florence: The Benci Aesop (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale MS II.II.83)’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 75 (2012), 53–92 (esp. pp. 83–4); and esp. Botana, Learning through Images. 60 Passerini, Storia, pp. 458–9. 61 Levin, ‘Lost Children’, pp. 46–7.

287

SAINTS AND STATUS IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY RENAISSANCE FLORENCE SALLY J. CORNELISON

A

s the heads of the Greek and Latin Churches sought to unite their respective institutions during the Council of Florence in 1439, they and their entourages were treated to elaborate, public displays of the Florentines’ devotion to two of their most important patron saints: John the Baptist, and the early Christian bishop, Zenobius (d. c. 424). On 26 April the council participants attended the translation of Saint Zenobius’s relics from the crypt of the medieval cathedral of Santa Reparata to a chapel dedicated to him in the east tribune of the new cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (Fig. 15.1).1 Slightly less than two months later, the same prestigious cohort witnessed the annual celebration of the Baptist’s feast on 23 and 24 June.2 The April and June events were celebrated with a great deal of pomp, and the visiting ecclesiastical dignitaries must have departed I should like to express my sincere gratitude to Joanna Cannon, who is a model scholar, teacher and individual. This study expands upon and revises some of the conclusions I reached in the PhD thesis I wrote under Joanna’s excellent and patient supervision and first presented at the annual meeting of the College Art Association in 2003. 1 Clemente Mazza, La vita di San Zanobi cittadino et vescovo fiorentino (Florence, 1559), pp. 47r–52r. See also Anna Benvenuti, ‘Un momento del concilio di Firenze: la traslazione delle reliquie di San Zanobi’, in Firenze e il concilio del 1439, ed. Paolo Viti, I (Florence, 1994), pp. 191–220; Sally J. Cornelison, ‘Art and Devotion in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence: The Relics and Reliquaries of Saints Zenobius and John the Baptist’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1998, pp. 78–82; Alessandro Bicchi and Alessandro Ciandella, Testimonia sanctitatis: le reliquie e i reliquiari del Duomo e del Battistero di Firenze (Florence, 1999), pp. 34–6; and Amy R. Bloch, ‘The Sculpture of Lorenzo Ghiberti and Ritual Performance in Renaissance Florence’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University, 2004, pp. 31–4. 2 Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 282–3; Girolamo Mancini,

15

290

SALLY J. CORNELISON

FIG. 15.1  SAINT ZENOBIUS CHAPEL, SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE, FLORENCE. PHOTO: SAILKO/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.

their host city with the impression that the Florentines accorded a similar amount and kind of attention to both of their saintly protectors. One would never arrive at the same conclusion today. Since 1975, Saint Zenobius’s traditional feast of 25 May has been observed on 10 May, when its celebration is efficiently, if ahistorically, bundled with that of Florence’s other sainted (arch)bishop, Antoninus Pierozzi (1389–1459).3 The very modest recognition of Zenobius on that day, which consists of special masses and the display of the saint’s head reliquary (Plate XXII) near the Saint Zenobius Chapel, largely passes unnoticed.4 The feast of Saint ‘Il bel S. Giovanni e le feste patronali di Firenze descritte nel 1475 da Piero Cennini’, Rivista d’arte 6 (1909), 185–227, esp. 195–6. 3 Saint Antoninus’s feast was moved to 10 May from its traditional date of 2 May. For the connection between the cults of Antoninus and Zenobius, see Bicchi and Ciandella, Testimonia sanctitatis, p. 45 and Sally J. Cornelison, ‘Tales of Two Bishop Saints: Zenobius and Antoninus in Florentine Renaissance Art and History’, Sixteenth Century Journal 38 (2007), 627–56. 4 Bicchi and Ciandella, Testimonia sanctitatis, p. 45, and see also pp. 42–3 for the placement of a wreath around the Saint Zenobius column near the Florentine baptistery on the feast of the saint’s translation on 26 January. For the column, see also Sally J.

SAINTS AND STATUS IN FLORENCE

John, in contrast, is celebrated from morning to night each 24 June with a procession, complete with a corps of drummers and the choreographed movements of costumed flag-bearers, Mass in the cathedral, a rousing game of calcio storico, and an impressive display of fireworks over the river Arno. The discrepancies in the degree to which each saint’s feast is presently celebrated in Florence have long found a parallel in the historical and art historical literature, which unequivocally privileges the place the civic patron, John the Baptist, occupied in Florentine devotions over that of the episcopal patron, Zenobius.5 Indeed, more often than not, the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century artistic and architectural projects related to the cult and relics of Zenobius are regarded as moderately and temporarily successful attempts to equate his status in the city with that of Christ’s Precursor.6 This chapter seeks to challenge and complicate our understanding of how the cults of Saints John and Zenobius functioned and were regarded in relation to each other. It is indebted to Joanna Cannon’s foundational explorations of sanctity in medieval Italy and the ways in which saints and their cults were presented and shaped through texts, rituals, and works of art and architecture. Indeed, her judicious methods of inquiry and keen observations are as relevant for the study of sacred art in the Florentine Quattrocento as they are for the primary subjects of Joanna’s research: thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Tuscany and Umbria. In this essay, we shall see that, rather than serving as Florence’s ‘number two’ saint after Saint John’s ‘number one’, Zenobius filled particular and vital – and certainly not secondary – roles as the most effective miracle-worker in the city’s pantheon of saints and as the patron of the Florentine bishopric. Those roles are reflected and promoted in the design and decoration of his chapel in Florence Cathedral, which complemented, rather than competed with, the cult of Saint John at the baptistery. Together, the two saints and their relics and reliquaries exemplified a type of cohesive and formidable front of saintly power that was not uncommon, but the dynamics of which remain under-explored in the literature on the visual and ritual culture of medieval and early modern Europe.

Cornelison, ‘When an Image Is a Relic: The St Zenobius Panel from Florence Cathedral’, in Images, Relics, and Devotional Practices in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. Sally J. Cornelison and Scott B. Montgomery (Tempe, AZ, 2005), pp. 95–113, esp. pp. 95–9. 5 For example, see George W. Dameron, Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante (Philadelphia, 2005), p. 195. 6 Anna Benvenuti, ‘S. Zanobi: memoria episcopale, tradizioni civiche e dignità familiari’, in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana del Quattrocento, ed. Donatella Rugiadini (Monte Oriolo, 1987), pp. 79–115, esp. pp. 82–4; Margaret Haines, ‘Il principio di “mirabilissime cose”: i mosaici per la volta della Cappella di San Zanobi in Santa Maria del Fiore’, in La difficile eredità: Architettura a Firenze dalla repubblica all’assedio, ed. Marco Dezzi Bardeschi, A-Letheia 5 (Florence, 1994), p. 38; Bloch, ‘The Sculpture of Lorenzo Ghiberti’, pp. 23–39.

291

292

SALLY J. CORNELISON

ZENOBIUS AND THE FLORENTINE PANTHEON OF SAINTS Cities and their citizens depended upon holy persons like Zenobius and John the Baptist to protect their collective interests and well-being, and there were myriad ways in which local saints’ cults functioned on institutional and popular levels and were promoted visually and ritually. For example, Saint John the Baptist is also the patron saint of Genoa, where his precious ashes are housed in an elaborate Renaissance chapel in the cathedral of San Lorenzo.7 However, far more of Genoa’s fifteenth- and sixteenth-century marble overdoor reliefs (soprapporte), most of which have sacred subjects, depict Saint George, another of the Ligurian city’s patrons, than represent Saint John.8 Devotions to patron saints sometimes shifted and were amplified, as in Padua, where from the thirteenth century the cult of the Franciscan powerhouse preacher, Anthony of Padua, overshadowed those of the city’s traditional patrons, Prosdocimus, Justina and Daniel.9 Like communes, individuals commended themselves to multiple saints. Giorgio Vasari, for instance, invoked the intercession of God and the Virgin Mary and Saints Peter, Paul, John the Baptist, Donatus and George at the beginning of his Ricordanze.10 In other words, Vasari cast a wide, and personally relevant, spiritual net by appealing to the highest of Christian powers, to the patron saints of the cities in which he experienced his greatest artistic and literary successes (Rome and Florence), the patron of the city of his birth (Arezzo), and his name saint. Vasari’s expansive appeal echoes the incipits of many late medieval and early modern Florentine records, which call for the combined intercession of saints such as the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, Zenobius, and Reparata, the Syrian virgin-martyr to whom Florence’s early cathedral was dedicated.11 Those multiple invocations find visual corollaries in paintings such as the double-sided polyptych attributed to Giotto’s workshop of c. 1305 that may have originally served as Santa Reparata’s high altarpiece.12 7 For the chapel, see Gianni Bozzo, ‘La cappella di San Giovanni Battista’, in Cattedrale e chiostro di San Lorenzo a Genova, ed. Gianni Bozzo (Genoa, 2000), pp. 60–82. 8 Madeline Ann Rislow, ‘Dynamic Doorways: Overdoor Sculpture in Renaissance Genoa’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kansas, 2012, pp. 39–73; Madeline Rislow, ‘Sacred Signs: Genoese Portal Sculptures in the Dominican Church of Santa Maria di Castello’, in Mendicant Cultures in the Medieval and Early Modern World: Word, Deed, and Image, ed. Sally J. Cornelison, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, and Peter Howard (Turnhout, 2016), pp. 183–222, at p. 190. 9 For this and other shifts in local hierarchies of saints, see Diana Webb, Patrons and Defenders: The Saints in the Italian City-States (London and New York, 1996), pp. 135–97, esp. p. 138. 10 Archivio Vasari, Arezzo, MS 31, fol. 1; http://www.memofonte.it/home/files/pdf/vasari_ ricordanze.pdf (accessed 6 June 2021). 11 Webb, Patrons and Defenders, pp. 103–6, esp. p. 105; Dameron, Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante, p. 203. 12 Giotto: bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi, exh. cat. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (Florence, 2000), pp. 135–7; Julian Gardner, ‘Giotto

SAINTS AND STATUS IN FLORENCE

On its front, the panel depicts the Virgin Mary flanked by Saints Minias, Zenobius, and Zenobius’s saintly deacon and subdeacon, Eugenius and Crescentius. On the reverse, Saints Reparata, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, and Nicholas appear to either side of a central Annunciation scene. If the Giottesque painting did once decorate Santa Reparata’s high altar, there would have been a certain degree of iconographical cohesiveness between it and the Saint Zenobius altar located directly below it in the medieval cathedral’s crypt, as the crypt altar’s front probably was decorated with a mid thirteenth-century dossal that likewise features the images of Zenobius, Eugenius, and Crescentius.13 Saint Zenobius’s hagiography is fairly typical for an early Christian confessor. He converted to Christianity to follow a religious calling and escape an unwanted marriage, after which he embarked upon an exemplary ecclesiastical career in which he combated heresy, cultivated a friendship with Saint Ambrose of Milan (d. 397) and helped to establish the early Florentine church.14 According to his vitae and contemporary chronicles, Zenobius resurrected the dead, exorcised demons, healed the sick, and was bishop of Florence when it was miraculously saved from marauding barbarians.15 Two feast days are associated with the saint in Florence’s liturgical calendar, the first of which is the 26 January anniversary of the translation of Zenobius’s relics from the basilica of San Lorenzo to Santa Reparata that, according to legend, occurred in the early fifth century.16 The second is the aforementioned feast of his nativity on 25 May, which was celebrated with processions and special masses. On that day civic and guild officials, as well as the members of the Florentine studio and lay confraternities – the laudesi Company of Saint Zenobius in particular – made offerings in the saint’s honour.17 Divine in America (and Elsewhere)’, in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art 61 (Washington, DC, 2002), pp. 161–81, esp. pp. 164–9. 13 For this painting, see Cornelison, ‘When an Image is a Relic’, pp. 102–4; Maureen C. Miller, ‘The Saint Zenobius Dossal by the Master of the Bigallo and the Cathedral Chapter of Florence’, Haskins Society Journal 19 (2007), 65–81; ‘Fatta dell’olmo della piazza’: il restauro del Paliotto di San Zanobi, ed. Marco Ciatti and Chiara Rossi Scarzanella (Florence, 2016). 14 For the various vitae of Saint Zenobius, see Acta Sanctorum, Maii Tomus Primus, VI (Paris and Rome, 1866), pp. 40–69; Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, II (Brussels, 1898–9), p. 1301 nos. 9014–18; Benvenuti, ‘S. Zanobi’, pp. 80–2. 15 Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica, ed. Giuseppe Porta, I (Parma, 1990), p. 93 (Book 2, Chapter XXIV). See also Webb, Patrons and Defenders, pp. 167–8. 16 Bicchi and Ciandella, Testimonia sanctitatis, pp. 42–3; Giovanni Leoncini and Alessandro Bicchi, ‘Il culto dei santi in cattedrale’, in La cattedrale come spazio sacro, ed. Timothy Verdon and Annalisa Innocenti, I (Florence, 2001), pp. 299–304; Dameron, Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante, pp. 196, 198. 17 Bicchi and Ciandella, Testimonia sanctitatis, pp. 43–5. For the Compagnia di San Zanobi, see Blake McDowell Wilson, Music and Merchants: The Laudesi Companies of Republican Florence (Oxford and New York, 1992), pp. 60–2, 70–3, 197–201, 235; Blake Wilson, ‘Music, Art, and Devotion: The Cult of St Zenobius at the Florentine Cathedral

293

294

SALLY J. CORNELISON

Offices were celebrated at the Saint Zenobius altar in the cathedral on the feast of All Saints, on that of the early Florentine martyr, Saint Minias, and on Christmas day.18 Moreover, previously unpublished documents show that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries several individuals arranged for masses to be celebrated in their respective memories at the same altar; they no doubt counted on Zenobius’s proven intercessory record to ensure their salvation.19 Saint Zenobius’s thaumaturgic powers did not diminish in the centuries following his death in the early fifth century, and, from the late ninth century, the locus of many of the miracles he effected was his place of burial in the crypt of Santa Reparata.20 In January of 1331 Saint Zenobius’s remains were exhumed from the altar below which they had long been buried. At that time, a piece of the saint’s skull was placed in a gilded and enamelled silver reliquary bust made by the Florentine goldsmith Andrea Arditi (Plate XXII).21 The bust was one of Florence’s premier ritual objects for, in addition to being displayed on Zenobius’s feast days, it was carried in the most important religious processions along with several other potent during the Early Renaissance’, in‘Cantate Domino’: musica nei secoli per il Duomo di Firenze, ed. Timothy Verdon and Annalisa Innocenti (Florence, 2001), pp. 17–36; Franklin Toker, ‘On Holy Ground: Architecture and Liturgy in the Cathedral and in the Streets of Late-Medieval Florence’, in La cattedrale come spazio sacro: saggi sul duomo di Firenze, ed. Timothy Verdon and Annalisa Innocenti, II (Florence, 2001), pp. 544–59, at p. 547. 18 Cornelison, ‘Art and Devotion in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence’, p. 34; Dameron, Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante, p. 198. 19 ASFi, Carte Strozziane, ser. IIa, LVI, fols 67v–68r: [1340] ‘Donna Lagia figlia q. domini Lapi Clerici de Adimaribus vedova q. Lippi q. Naddi de Bonizis populi S. Petri Celerum per suo testamento lasciò che si spendesse f. 124 a bene pe[r] la[s]cito de’ canonici di S. Reparata in terre o case con condizione che i detti canonici tenessino in perpetuo in detta chiesa un prete cappellano al quale si applichino l’entrate de detti beni comperati e sia tenuto ogni giorno dir messa all’altare di S. Zanobi, e gli offizi divini in detta chiesa all’hora solite per l’anima sua’; [1363] ‘Donna Ioanna figlia q. Bencivennis Giamori populi S. Petri Scheredi vedova q. Averardi de Medicis per suo testamento lasciò che si spendessino f. 280 in beni stabili per un Cappellano che continuamente stia e celebri messa e gl’offizi divini nella chiesa di S. Reparata cioè all’altare di S. Zanobi, e sia tenuto ogn’anno fare un annuale per l’anima sua’; [1445] ‘D. Iacobus q. Ioannis de Ugolinis canonicus cathedralis ecclesie Florentie fece testamento per il quale lasciò et instituì in detta chiesa due cappellani perpetue una sotto il titolo di S. Niccolò Vescovo e Confessore all’altare di S. Zanobi posta in detta chiesa e l’altra sotto il titolo di S. Agnese Vergine e Martire all’altare di S. Maria Vergine posto vicino all’entrare di detta chiesa’. 20 For the location of the relics of Saint Zenobius in Santa Reparata, see Franklin Toker, ‘Excavations below the Cathedral of Florence, 1965–1974’, Gesta 14 (1975), 17–36, at pp. 31–2; Bicchi and Ciandella, Testimonia sanctitatis, p. 31. Florence Cathedral was also home to a porphyry column associated with the saint against which people suffering from headaches placed their heads, see Giuseppe Maria Brocchi, Vite de’ santi e beati fiorentini, I (Florence, 1742), p. 90. 21 Villani, Nuova Cronica, II, p. 732 (Book 11, Chapter CLXIX); Dameron, Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante, p. 226. Dameron has linked this renewal of devotions to Zenobius to contemporary grain shortages. For the head reliquary, see also Claudio Strocchi, ‘Lo smalto traslucido a Firenze: prime osservazioni sulla bottega di Andrea Arditi’, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 18 (1988), 137–50 and Sally J. Cornelison, ‘A French King and a Magic Ring: The Girolami and a Relic of St Zenobius in Renaissance Florence’, Renaissance Quarterly 55 (2002), 437–41.

SAINTS AND STATUS IN FLORENCE

relics such as the arm of Saint Philip and, from the late Trecento, relics of Saint John the Baptist that belonged to the baptistery.22 Indeed, it was the Saint Zenobius head reliquary, and not the baptistery’s relics of Saint John, that preceded the Madonna of Impruneta in procession when that sacred image was brought to Florence during times of acute political or climatic crisis.23 It is not difficult to imagine that its viewers found the striking head-shaped reliquary, with its stern visage, fixed stare, slightly parted lips, gleaming silver and gold surface, silk mitre and colourful enamels far more visually compelling than the presumably artistically modest painted image of the Virgin Mary or the less personable architectural reliquaries that contained the respective relics of Saints Philip and John the Baptist.24 The Saint Zenobius reliquary bust did not have to leave the confines of Florence Cathedral to effect miracles, as was the case on 30 June 1394, when the relatives of a possessed woman brought her there in search of Saint Zenobius’s intercession. As soon as they came within sight of the church, the demon that occupied the woman’s body caused her to throw herself on the ground as she screamed, bit and tore at the clothes of anyone who attempted to calm her. It required the strength of twelve people to transport her to the cathedral’s sacristy and the added force of four more to pin her down on what was presumably the vesting table. The head reliquary was removed from a small chamber, perhaps a relic cupboard, in which it was stored (‘cavando fuori la testa di san Zenobio d’un cotal camerino’) and placed on the woman’s head while two priests prayed and anointed her with holy water. The healing effects of the bust were immediate, for the violent woman became like a lamb (‘come agnello’) and fell asleep on the floor. When she awoke, she was in complete control of her faculties.25

MIRACLES, RELICS AND THE FLORENTINE CULT OF THE BAPTIST In contrast to Zenobius’s often-proven thaumaturgic abilities, the miracles Saint John the Baptist is reported to have effected on behalf of the Florentines are few and far between. According to the late medieval chronicler Giovanni Villani, the patronal connection between Florence and the Baptist dated from the late antique period, when the baptistery, 22 Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1980), pp. 353–6; Sally J. Cornelison, ‘Art Imitates Architecture: The Saint Philip Reliquary in Renaissance Florence’, Art Bulletin 86 (2004), 642–58, esp. pp. 651–3; Megan Holmes, The Miraculous Image in Renaissance Florence (New Haven and London, 2013), pp. 31–2, 79–80, 123–6. 23 Holmes, The Miraculous Image, pp. 119–26. 24 The painting, which dates from the late thirteenth century, was repainted in 1758. For images of the Madonna of Impruneta, see Holmes, The Miraculous Image, Figs. 80 and 96. 25 Casimiro Stolfi, Leggende di alcuni santi e beati venerati in S. Maria degli Angeli di Firenze (Bologna, 1864), pp. 164–9.

295

296

SALLY J. CORNELISON

which Villani and his contemporaries believed to have once been an ancient temple dedicated to Mars, was reconsecrated in the name of Saint John.26 The chronicler credited the Baptist with preventing a tower that had been destabilised during the conflict between the rival Guelph and Ghibelline political factions from toppling onto the baptistery in 1253,27 and, in the late fourteenth century, another chronicler wrote that Florence was saved from Radagasius and his army of Goths on the feast of Saint John in the year 401.28 As with Zenobius, the Florentines celebrated more than one feast day associated with Saint John the Baptist, namely his nativity on 23 and 24 June, his martyrdom (decollation) on 29 August and, from 1402, the feast of the baptism of Christ on 13 January, which was popularly known as the festa del perdono.29 The latter feast marked a three-day period during which sins were forgiven and debtors received a brief respite from the obligation of paying back their creditors. The baptistery was the primary site where the feast was celebrated, but the Calimala Guild, whose members were the caretakers of San Giovanni, did not acquire the first of Saint John’s relics in the city, his second finger (Fig. 15.2), until May of 1393.30 During the same month, the guild purchased fragments of his neck and jaw from the Venetian widow of a Florentine (Fig. 15.3),31 and by 1420 the Florentine collection of the Baptist’s relics had grown to include his thumb and right index finger (Fig. 15.4).32 With the exception of the 26 Villani, Nuova Cronica, I, p. 89 (Book 2, Chapter XXIII). For the origins of the Baptist’s cult in Florence see also Joshua E. Glazer, ‘From Dossale to Macchina: The Silver Altar of Saint John the Baptist and its Symbolic Function in Florence’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2008, Chapter 1 and Stefanie Solum, Women, Patronage, and Salvation in Renaissance Florence (Farnham, 2015), pp. 81–91. 27 Villani, Nuova Cronica, II, p. 319 (Book 7, Chapter XXXIII). 28 Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, Cronaca fiorentina di Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, ed. Niccolò Rodolico, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XXX, parte 1 (Città di Castello, 1903), p. 14. 29 For the celebrations in June, see Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, pp. 240–78 and Heidi L. Chrétien, The Festival of San Giovanni: Imagery and Political Power in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1994). For the feast of the Baptist’s decollation, see Allie Terry, ‘Donatello’s Decapitations and the Rhetoric of Beheading in Medicean Florence’, Renaissance Studies 23 (2009), 609–38, esp. pp. 616–17. For the festa del perdono see Cornelison, ‘Art and Devotion in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence’, pp. 182–3. 30 Cronica volgare di anonimo fiorentino dall’anno 1385 al 1409 già attribuita a Piero di Giovanni Minerbetti, ed. Elina Bellondi, Rerum italicarum scriptores, XXVII (Città di Castello, 1915), p. 172; Luisa Becherucci and Giulia Brunetti, Il Museo dell’Opera del Duomo a Firenze, II (Milan, 1970), pp. 248–9; Cornelison, ‘Art and Devotion in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence’, pp. 158–61; Bicchi and Ciandella, Testimonia sanctitatis, p. 108. 31 Becherucci and Brunetti, Il Museo dell’Opera del Duomo a Firenze, II, pp. 237–8, 255–6; Cornelison, ‘Art and Devotion in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence’, pp. 161–5; Bicchi and Ciandella, Testimonia sanctitatis, pp. 105–6, pp. 108–12. 32 Becherucci and Brunetti, Il Museo dell’Opera del Duomo a Firenze, II, pp. 239–41, 256–7; Cornelison, ‘Art and Devotion in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence’, pp. 138–56, 177–90; Bicchi and Ciandella, Testimonia sanctitatis, pp. 94–6, 112–13.

FIG. 15.2  SECOND FINGER OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST, MUSEO DELL’OPERA DEL DUOMO, FLORENCE. PHOTO: OPERA DI SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE.

FIG. 15.3  JAW FRAGMENT OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST, MUSEO DELL’OPERA DEL DUOMO, FLORENCE. PHOTO: OPERA DI SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE.

298

SALLY J. CORNELISON

FIG. 15.4  RIGHT INDEX FINGER OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST. MUSEO DELL’OPERA DEL DUOMO, FLORENCE. PHOTO: OPERA DI SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE.

thumb relic, which Cardinal Piero Corsini donated to Santa Maria del Fiore, all of these sacred objects were kept in the baptistery.33 As we have seen above, the reliquaries made for them in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries were not body-part reliquaries like the Saint Zenobius bust, but instead were architectural ostensories inside which the sacred bone fragments were visible.34 These reliquaries were paraded through the streets of Florence on major feast days and several times a year they were displayed, often with other important relics, on the baptistery’s silver altar, where they attested to the saint’s presence and intercessory power in the city.35 33 For the Corsini relic, see Becherucci and Brunetti, Il Museo dell’Opera del Duomo a Firenze, II, pp. 239–41; Cornelison, ‘Art and Devotion in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence’, pp. 138–56; Bicchi and Ciandella, Testimonia sanctitatis, pp. 94–6. 34 None of the early Baptist reliquaries from the baptistery survives intact. 35 For the processional display of the Baptist’s relics, see above note 22. Anton Francesco Gori’s description of the baptistery records their display on the silver altar along with some mosaic panels, also donated by Nicoletta Grioni: ‘I due quadretti che si espongono fuori con il dossale d’Argento furono donati con uno molto maggiore dell’effigie di S. Giovani Battista che oggi è guasto, con piu Reliquie come di sotto si dirà da madonna Niccoletta Grioni nobile Veneziana l’anno 1394 a questa Chiesa li quali furono già dell’Imperatore di Costantinopoli. Sono questi quadretti lavorati di così minuto mosaico, ch fuori che dalle persone pratiche sono stimati dipinti, sono lodati, e pregiati per la sottigliezza del lavoro.’ Gori’s text is preserved in BMF, MS A. 199. I (Battistero di Firenze, sec. XVIII), fol. 38v, a variation of which is published in Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più

SAINTS AND STATUS IN FLORENCE

Whereas the authenticity of Saint Zenobius’s relics apparently was never questioned, concerns were voiced about the legitimacy of one of the Florentine relics of Saint John. These doubts in all likelihood stemmed from the antiquity of the saint in question, as well as from an unfortunate incident that occurred in the 1350s, when a recently acquired relic of the arm of Saint Reparata was discovered to be a fake.36 The fragment of the Baptist’s jaw came under particular scrutiny in 1423 as it was exhibited from a temporary pulpit that had been set up in the Piazza San Giovanni on the saint’s feast. An Augustinian friar who was a relative of the Venetian woman from whom the Calimala had acquired the relic thirty years earlier was in attendance that day. He confessed that, long before the jaw fragment arrived in Florence, he, too, had doubted its authenticity. His misgivings about the relic, however, were quelled when he took it to Rome and placed it against the jawless skull of Saint John the Baptist housed in the church of San Silvestro in Capite.37 The future Florentine relic fitted perfectly to the head and the friar returned to Venice, where he assured his family that it was genuine.38 The Augustinian friar’s story apparently also put an end to the Florentines’ questions regarding the authenticity of their relic. His account is recorded in a document dated 16 January 1427 that the Florentine antiquarian and provost of the baptistery, Anton Francesco Gori (1691– 1757), copied from Senator Carlo Strozzi’s (1587–1670) transcriptions of now-lost Calimala records.39 An antiquarian contemporary of Gori’s,

eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori, ed. Karl Frey (Munich, 1911), p. 367 (doc. no. 15). See also Cornelison, ‘Art and Devotion in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence’, p. 168; Leoncini and Bicchi, ‘Il culto dei santi in cattedrale’, p. 304 and Glazer, ‘From Dossale to Macchina’, pp. 52–3, 288–9. 36 For the false relic of Saint Reparata, see Matteo Villani, Cronica con la continuazione di Filippo Villani, ed. Giuseppe Porta, I (Parma, 1995), pp. 347–9 (Book 3, Chapters XV– XVI), and Robert Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, VII (Florence, 1965), p. 116. 37 For the head of Saint John the Baptist at San Silvestro and its Florentine connections, see Giovanni Giacchetti, Historia della venerabile chiesa e monastero di S. Silvestro de Capite di Roma (Rome, 1629), p. 23; J.S. Gaynor and Ilaria Toesca, San Silvestro in Capite (Rome, 1963), p. 33; Cornelison, ‘Art and Devotion in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence’, pp. 177–8, 191, 193–6; and William E. Wallace, ‘Friends and Relics at San Silvestro in Capite, Rome’, Sixteenth Century Journal 30 (1999), 419–39. 38 BMF, MS A. 199. I (Battistero di Firenze, sec. XVIII), fols 83v–84v; Giuseppe Richa, Notizie istoriche delle chiese fiorentine, divise ne’ suoi quartieri, V (Florence, 1757), pp. xlvii–xlviii. See also Bicchi and Ciandella, Testimonia sanctitatis, p. 109. 39 Fire destroyed a significant portion of the Calimala archive in the eighteenth century. For the history of the archive and Strozzi’s and Gori’s transcriptions from its records, see Richard Krautheimer and Trude Krautheimer-Hess, Lorenzo Ghiberti (Princeton, 1982), pp. 362–5, esp. p. 362, and Margaret Haines, ‘Documentation on the Gates of Paradise: Through a Glass Darkly’, in The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Renaissance Masterpiece, ed. Gary M. Radke (Atlanta, GA, 2007), pp. 81–5, esp. p. 82. Rolf Bagemihl, ‘The Gates of Paradise and the Calimala Guild: Transcription and Reconstruction of the Original Documentation Regarding the Creation of the Doors’ (2005), pp. 5–8, which the Mellon Foundation commissioned for the Ghiberti Workshop it sponsored on 1–3 February 2006, is also very informative.

299

300

SALLY J. CORNELISON

Giuseppe Richa (1693–1761), published a modified redaction of the document in his multi-volume survey of Florentine churches.40 Richa did not relate another episode that Gori transcribed, which concerns the relic of the Baptist’s jaw but that has not been noted in the literature. Dated January 1423 and written by a certain Giovanni Paolo, the rector of the church of San Michele Visdomini, this document states that in 1393 a Brother Andrea, who served as the head of the Hospital of Bonifazio in Via San Gallo, and a group of other Florentines were tasked with transporting the jaw fragment from Venice to Florence.41 On the return trip they kept their holy cargo safely secreted away, but as they approached Bologna a possessed person who lived in the Emilian city began to scream out that the glorious Saint John was exorcising the demon that inhabited his or her body. The travelling Florentines placed the Baptist’s jaw on the afflicted person’s head, simultaneously casting out the demon and attesting to the relic’s authenticity and power. At the time that this miracle is reported to have occurred, the Bolognese were in the process of building a grand, new church in honour of their fifth-century local bishop-saint, Petronius, who had replaced no less a holy figure than the apostle Peter as Bologna’s principal patron.42 Many other Italian cities also claimed early bishops as their patron saints, including Naples (Saint Januarius), Modena (Saint Geminianus), Arezzo (Saint Donatus), and Verona (Saint Zeno). In Florence Zenobius symbolised the foundation of the early Christian church in the city, effected many miracles, and was buried in Florence Cathedral. Even so, the history of his cult has been relegated to a decidedly inferior position with regard to that of the Baptist. Although Saint John was a ‘foreign’ martyr whose relics were absent from Florence until a relatively late date, he had an unparalleled saintly pedigree in that, according to tradition, he was conceived without sin and he was both Christ’s Precursor and part of the intercessory triumvirate that comprised the Deësis.

AN INTERCESSORY COMPLEMENT The impulse to rank two saints as different as John the Baptist and Zenobius obscures the beneficial roles each played in Florentine sacred tradition, for together they covered most of the city’s spiritual bases – civic, episcopal, and popular – and nowhere was this more evident than 40 Giuseppe Richa, Notizie istoriche, V, pp. xlvi–xlvii. 41 BMF, MS A. 199. I (Battistero di Firenze, sec. XVIII), fols 84v–85v; for a full transcription and English translation of this hitherto unpublished passage see the appendix at the end of this chapter. All of the relics of Saint John the Florentines acquired in 1393 were kept at the Hospital of Bonifazio, a charitable institution administered by the Calimala guild, prior to being translated to the baptistery on 6 June of that year. See Cornelison, ‘Art and Devotion in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence’, pp. 165–8. 42 Webb, Patrons and Defenders, pp. 173–80.

SAINTS AND STATUS IN FLORENCE

at Florence’s cathedral and baptistery. Franklin Toker has proposed that the dedication of twelve of the cathedral’s fifteen tribune chapels to the apostles and the decision to place Saint Zenobius’s chapel at their centre was done to elevate the early Christian bishop to the status of a ‘Universal Apostle’.43 The connection cathedral officials drew between Zenobius and the apostles is clear, but the authors of the first plan for the Saint Zenobius Chapel also had Saint John the Baptist in mind when they determined its location. That is, in 1428 a committee whose members included Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi stipulated that the central chapel in the cathedral’s east tribune was the most appropriate one to serve as the saint’s place of burial because it was on an axis with the church’s main entrance.44 That central entrance in turn was aligned with the east portal and high chapel of the baptistery so that the relics of Saint Zenobius in the cathedral were situated directly opposite those of the Baptist, which were stored inside the baptistery’s freestanding altar. Margaret Haines has noted that the committee’s preference for this chapel surely was guided by their desire to promote Saint Zenobius as a patron and protector who was on a par with Saint John the Baptist. Haines also suggested that a late Quattrocento plan to cover the vault of the Saint Zenobius Chapel with mosaics was intended to create a decorative bond between the chapel and the baptistery’s medieval, mosaic-covered dome.45 The location of the Saint Zenobius Chapel opposite the baptistery and its high chapel recalled the previous placement of the saint’s relics in Santa Reparata’s crypt, which likewise was on an axis with the baptistery.46 Indeed, this example of spatial and functional continuity between Santa Reparata and Santa Maria del Fiore, something that Toker has stressed in his publications,47 was taken a step further in 1431 when a crypt, the only one in the new cathedral, was constructed below the Saint Zenobius Chapel.48 It was to the altar in that crypt that the small marble urn containing Saint Zenobius’s headless, fragmented remains was translated during the Council of Florence in April of 1439. Cathedral documents stipulate that the crypt’s altar was to be modelled after the one in the baptistery (Fig. 15.5), thus creating a further parallel between the Saint 43 Toker, ‘On Holy Ground: Architecture and Liturgy’, p. 552; Franklin Toker, ‘Arnolfo di Cambio a Santa Maria del Fiore: un trionfo di forma e di significato’, in La cattedrale e la città: saggi sul duomo di Firenze, ed. Timothy Verdon and Annalisa Innocenti, I (Florence, 2001), pp. 227–41, at pp. 235, 239. 44 Giovanni Poggi and Margaret Haines, Il Duomo di Firenze: documenti sulla decorazione della chiesa e del campanile tratti dall’archivio dell’opera, II (Florence, 1988), p. 175 (doc. no. 898). 45 Haines, ‘Il principio di “mirabilissime cose”’, pp. 38–54. See also Benvenuti, ‘S. Zanobi’, pp. 82–4, and Toker, ‘Arnolfo di Cambio a Santa Maria del Fiore’, pp. 239–40. 46 Franklin Toker, On Holy Ground: Liturgy, Architecture, and Urbanism in the Cathedral and the Streets of Medieval Florence (London and Turnhout, 2009), pp. 41, 69, 74. 47 See details of publications by Toker cited in notes 17, 20, and 43. 48 Poggi and Haines, Il Duomo di Firenze, II, p. 177 (doc. no. 902); Cornelison, ‘Art and Devotion in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence’, pp. 63–4.

301

302

SALLY J. CORNELISON

FIG. 15.5  CRYPT ALTAR, SAINT ZENOBIUS CHAPEL, SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE, FLORENCE. PHOTO: PUFUI PCPIFPEF/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.

Zenobius Chapel and San Giovanni and, by association, between the saints to whom the respective altars were dedicated.49 In an article on the Succorpo, the late fifteenth-century chapel built to house the relics of Saint Januarius in Naples Cathedral, Diana Norman noted how the belief that ‘the presence of the unified body of the patron saint of the city must be more effective than a body fragmented and dispersed’ was the probable motive for reuniting that early sainted bishop’s body, which had long been kept at the rural abbey of Montevergine, with the relics of his head and blood in the cathedral.50 In 1442, a similar unification of the separated remains of a sainted bishop occurred in Florence when the Saint Zenobius head reliquary was placed inside a historiated bronze shrine that Lorenzo Ghiberti had made for the Saint Zenobius Chapel.51 With the saint’s head relic in the upper chapel and the 49 Poggi and Haines, Il Duomo di Firenze, II, p. 176 (doc. no. 900). For the appearance of the baptistery altar, which was destroyed in 1731, see Glazer, ‘From Dossale to Macchina’, pp. 219–26. 50 Diana Norman, ‘The Succorpo in the Cathedral of Naples: “Empress of All Chapels”’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 49 (1986), 323–55, at p. 336. 51 The reliquary is visible below the altar in Fig. 15.1. For the documents related to

SAINTS AND STATUS IN FLORENCE

marble urn containing the rest of his remains in the crypt altar, the Saint Zenobius Chapel provided an architectural, artistic, and liturgical balance for the baptistery and the prestigious collection of relics of Saint John contained within its altar. Situated at opposite ends of Florence’s cathedral complex, they formed a core of saintly presence and power in the sacred heart of the city. It was common for the two to be paired ritually, as they were on the feast of Saint Zenobius, when masses took place in the saint’s chapel in the cathedral, as well as in the baptistery.52 Those masses appear to have been celebrated versus populum, which meant that the celebrant in the baptistery stood behind the altar in its chapel, known as the scarsella, and faced east towards the cathedral and the Saint Zenobius Chapel.53 The celebrant in the Saint Zenobius Chapel reciprocated by standing behind its similarly freestanding altar and facing west into the cathedral’s crossing and nave and towards San Giovanni – reinforcing liturgically the axial relationship that existed between the two altars.54 A parallel between the two Florentine patrons also existed in the Sala dei Gigli at Florence’s Palazzo della Signoria, where a marble statue of the young Saint John the Baptist by Benedetto da Maiano (1472–5) stands above the room’s entrance and opposite Domenico Ghirlandaio’s frescoed image of Saint Zenobius enthroned (1482).55 This visual pairing of the two saints underscores their combined importance as chief intercessors who worked on behalf of Florence and those who governed it.56 Furthermore, the Sala dei Gigli images reiterate within a secular context the spatial and functional unity that characterised the treatment of their relics at the cathedral and baptistery, which were located at the opposite end of the Via Calzaiuoli from the civic palace.

CONCLUSIONS In his life of Saint Zenobius of 1475, Clemente Mazza lamented that the episcopal saint’s feast day no longer received the attention that it deserved.57

the shrine’s completion, see Poggi and Haines, Il Duomo di Firenze, II, p. 192 (doc. nos 957–63). 52 Bicchi and Ciandella, Testimonia sanctitatis, p. 34; Bloch, ‘The Sculpture of Lorenzo Ghiberti’, pp. 60–1; Dameron, Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante, p. 198. 53 Ferdinando Leopoldo del Migliore, Firenze città nobilissima illustrata (Florence, 1684), pp. 97–8; Cornelison, ‘Art and Devotion in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence’, p. 63; Glazer, ‘From Dossale to Macchina’, pp. 213–32, 251. 54 Cornelison, ‘Art and Devotion in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence’, pp. 61–4. 55 Nicolai Rubinstein, The Palazzo Vecchio, 1298–1532: Government, Architecture, and Imagery in the Civic Palace of the Florentine Republic (Oxford and New York, 1995), pp. 60–3; Melinda Hegarty, ‘Laurentian Patronage in the Palazzo Vecchio: The Frescoes of the Sala dei Gigli’, Art Bulletin 78 (1996), 264–85; Jean K. Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio: Artist and Artisan (New Haven and London, 2000), pp. 226–30. 56 Rubinstein, The Palazzo Vecchio, p. 62; Hegarty, ‘Laurentian Patronage’, p. 273. 57 Mazza, La vita di San Zanobi, p. 18r–v.

303

304

SALLY J. CORNELISON

Contemporaries also claimed that the Medici family’s ascendency had diluted the civic importance of the annual rites held in Saint John’s honour on 24 June.58 But the decoration of the Sala dei Gigli in the Palazzo della Signoria shows that Florence’s faith in its saints ran strong in the late Quattrocento. Indeed, the thaumaturgic reputation of Zenobius and his relics was such that in the early 1480s the ailing king Louis XI of France requested that a relic of the saint’s episcopal ring be sent to him, and, at the end of the same decade, the Calimala sought to acquire the left arm of Saint John for the baptistery.59 The continued relevance of the cults of both saints is also evident in Fra Girolamo Savonarola’s sermons of the 1490s, in which the controversial preacher invoked Zenobius’s and John the Baptist’s favour, as well as that of his predecessor as prior of the convent of San Marco, Antoninus Pierozzi, who was canonised several decades later in 1523.60 Zenobius, Antoninus, and John, who is represented as a child,61 appear together with other Florentine intercessors in Fra Bartolomeo’s Saint Anne Altarpiece (1510–12) that was intended for the Palazzo della Signoria’s Sala del Gran Consiglio.62 This unfinished painting celebrates the network of saints upon which Florence had long relied for protection – and the potent and symbiotic cults and relics of SS Zenobius and John the Baptist at the cathedral and baptistery were at the epicentre of this intercessory cohort.

APPENDIX: THE JAWBONE OF JOHN THE BAPTIST WORKS A MIRACLE IN BOLOGNA, JANUARY 1423 BMF, MS A. 199. I. (Battistero di Firenze, sec. XVIII), fols 84v–85v. This account is preserved in an eighteenth-century transcription by Anton Francesco Gori, copied in turn from an earlier transcription made in the previous century by Senator Carlo Strozzi from the original document in the archives of the Calimala Guild, destroyed by fire in the 1700s. Poi andando per la detta reliquia a Vinegia il ven[er]abile Frate Andrea primo Spedalingo dello Spedale di messer bonifazio di via Sancto gallo con certi altri nostri fiorentini in sua compagnia sicome piaque a nostri magnifichi Signori fiorentini che erano a quello tempo nobili, e virtuosi 58 Solum, Women, Patronage, and Salvation, p. 89. 59 Cornelison, ‘Art and Devotion in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence’, p. 191–3; Cornelison, ‘A French King and a Magic Ring’, pp. 343–69. 60 Cornelison, ‘Tales of Two Bishop Saints’, pp. 636–7; Sally J. Cornelison, Art and the Relic Cult of St Antoninus in Renaissance Florence (Farnham, 2012), p. 84. 61 For the representation of the child Baptist, see Stefanie Lee Solum, ‘Lucrezia’s Saint: The Child Baptist and Medici Redemption in Fifteenth-Century Florence’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2001, Chapter 1; and Solum, Women, Patronage, and Salvation, esp. pp. 81–108. 62 For the saints in the painting and related bibliography, see Cornelison, Art and the Relic Cult of St Antoninus, pp. 84–5, 103.

SAINTS AND STATUS IN FLORENCE

signori consoli dell arte de mercatanti. E che essendo i detti Frate Andrea et sua compagnia a la tornata che facevano in verso Firenze, Giunti in bologna venendo per loro cammino e non facendo alcuno sentore come avevano la detta masciella del glorioso san giovanni batista non permesse il Signore idio che detta reliquia passasse cosi occultamente per la detta citta di bologna. Esendo una persona indemoniata in detta citta di bologna incominciò il demonio a gridare per la lingua di detta persona et dicendo udite udite i[o] non posso più stare più stare [sic] qui inperoche alle merita del glorioso batista mi cacciorno et la sua benedetta reliquia passa per questa città. E udite le voci et strida della detta persona indemoniata ciaschuno si maravigliava di dette parole e conchiudendo l’effetto fu che la detta persona indemoniata si trovò dove il detto venerabile et honorato cherico Frate Andrea e sua compagnia erono con la detta reliquia. E posta in capo alla detta persona indemoniata per la grazia di Dio et del glorioso batista fu liberata. E per questo modo fu certificata essere vera la detta masciella del glorioso Johanni batista nella detta citta di bolognia. E di cio laudando idio et il beato batista Johanni di tante grazie e beneficii. E la chiarezza che io prete giovanni pauli ho predetto come della predetta materia sie che a me fu fatto noto e manifesto da chi si trovò nella detta città di bologna persona degna di fede per la gratia di Dio. La sopradetta iscritta et ricordanza et chiarezza della reliquia di Sancto Iohanni batista io prete giovanni sopradetto fatta a dì 16 di gennaio 1423. [And then going to collect the said relic in Venice, the venerable Brother Andrea, first rector of the Hospital of Messer Bonifazio in Via San Gallo, with certain other Florentines in his party, in keeping with the wishes of our magnificent Florentine Lords, who at that time were noble and virtuous lord consoles of the Merchant’s Guild. And as the said Brother Andrea and his company made their way back to Florence, they reached Bologna on their journey without giving the slightest sign that they had with them the said jaw of the glorious Saint John the Baptist, but the Lord God would not allow the said relic to pass the said city of Bologna so clandestinely. Being that there was a possessed person in the said city of Bologna, the demon began to scream in the voice of the said person, saying ‘Hear hear! I cannot remain here any longer because I am being cast out by the merit of the glorious Baptist and his blessed relic passes by this city.’ And hearing the voices and shriek of the said possessed person, everyone marvelled at the said words and, concluding the consequence that the possessed person found him/herself where the said venerable and honoured cleric Brother Andrea and his party were with the said relic. And [when it was] placed on the head of the said possessed person, by the grace of God and of the glorious Baptist s/he was liberated. And in this way it was confirmed that the said jaw of the glorious John the Baptist in the said city of Bologna was authentic. And thus praising God and the blessed baptist John, for the many graces and benefits. And the clarity that

305

306

SALLY J. CORNELISON

I, Father Giovanni Paolo have previously said in the previous material that has been noted and manifested to me by one in the said city of Bologna, a person worthy of trust by the grace of God. I, the aforementioned Father Giovanni, produced the writing and record and clarification of the relic of Saint John the Baptist on 16 January 1423.]

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Il ’400 a Roma: la rinascita delle arti da Donatello a Perugino, ed. Maria Grazia Bernardini and Marco Bussagli, exh. cat. Museo del Corso, Rome (Milan, 2008) Accàscina, Maria, ‘Oreficeria italiana nel Victoria and Albert Museum’, Emporium 77/462 (1933), 336–44 Aceto, Francesco, ‘Le memorie angioine in San Lorenzo Maggiore’, in Le chiese di San Lorenzo e San Domenico: gli ordini mendicanti a Napoli, ed. Serena Romano and Nicholas Bock (Naples, 2005), pp. 67–94 Achenbach, Gertrude M., ‘The Iconography of Tobias and the Angel in Florentine Painting of the Renaissance’, Marsyas 3 (1943–45), 71–86 Acta Sanctorum, 67 vols (Antwerp, 1643–1883; repr. Brussels, 1902–70) Ademollo, Alfonso, I monumenti medioevali e moderni della provincia di Grosseto (Grosseto, 1894) Affolter, Barbara M., ‘Un inventario di masserizie e cosa della Compagnia del 1369’, in Dentro la Misericordia: spazi e arredi della Confraternita da un inventario del 1369, ed. Barbara M. Affolter and Laura Rossi (Florence, 2016) Agnolo di Tura, ‘Cronaca senese attribuita ad Agnolo di Tura del Grasso detta la Cronaca Maggiore’, in Cronache senesi, ed. Alessandro Lisini and Fabio Iacometti, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XV, parte 6 (Bologna, 1931–36), pp. 253–64 Agricoli, Carlo, Pier Pettinaio nella Siena duecentesca (Siena, 2014) The Alana Collection, Newark, Delaware, USA, vol. III: Italian Paintings from the 14th to the 16th Century, ed. Sonia Chiodo and Serena Padovani (Florence, 2009) Alberti, Leandro, Historie di Bologna (Libro primo della deca prima delle Historie di Bologna) (Bologna, 1541; anastatic reprint, Bologna, 1970) Albertucci, Girolamo Borselli de’, Cronica gestorum ac factorum memorabilium civitatis Bononie / edita a fratre Hyeronimo de Bursellis (ab urbe condita ad a. 1497); con la continuazione di Vincenzo Spargiati (AA. 1498–1584), ed. Albano Sorbelli, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores XXIII, parte 2 (Città di Castello, 1912–29)

308

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Albertucci, Girolamo Borselli de’, Bologna anno per anno: Cronica medievale di Fra’ Gerolamo Borselli (1497), trans. from Latin by Tiziano Costa (Bologna, 1988) Alce, Venturino, ‘Documenti sul convento di San Domenico in Bologna dal 1221 al 1251’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 42 (1972), 5–45 Alce, Venturino, Il Convento di San Domenico in Bologna nel secolo XIII (Bologna, 1973) Gli Aldobrandeschi: la grande famiglia feudale della Maremma Toscana, ed. Mario Ascheri and Lucio Niccolai (Arcidosso, 2002) Alessandri, Leto, and Francesco Pennacchi, ‘I più antichi inventari della sacristia del Sacro Convento di Assisi (1338–1473)’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 7 (1914), 67–107 and 294–340 Alfonsi, Tommaso M., L’Arca di S. Domenico (Noceto, 1927) Amato, Gianluca, ‘Le Storie di San Nicola “in figure piccole” della chiesa di San Procolo a Firenze’, in Ambrogio Lorenzetti, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli, Roberto Bartalini, and Max Seidel, exh. cat. Santa Maria della Scala, Siena (Milan, 2017), pp. 182–91 Ambrogi, Gino, Arcidosso e i Conti Aldobrandeschi (Rome, 1928) Amico, Leonard, ‘Fourteenth-century Sienese Chalices’, unpublished Masters dissertation, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, 1979 Ammirato, Scipione, Delle famiglie nobili fiorentine, parte prima (Florence, 1615) ‘An Ancient and Honourable Citizen of Florence’: The Bargello and Dante, ed. Luca Azzetta, Sonia Chiodo, and Teresa De Robertis, exh. cat. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence (Florence, 2021) Anonymous, ‘Cronaca Senese’, in Cronache Senesi, ed. Alessandro Lisini and Fabio Iacometti, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XV, parte 6 (Bologna, 1931–36), pp. 38–172 Appleby, David F., ‘Holy Relic and Holy Image: Saints’ Relics in the Western Controversy over Images in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries’, Word & Image 8 (1992), 333–43 Argenziano, Raffaele, Agli inizi dell’iconografia sacra a Siena: culti, riti e iconografia a Siena nel XII secolo (Florence, 2000) Argenziano, Raffaele, ‘Corpi Santi e immagini nella Siena medievale: i Santi Patroni’, Bullettino senese di storia patria 110 (2004), 214–39 Argenziano, Raffaele, and Fabio Bisogni, ‘L’Iconografia dei Santi Patroni Ansano, Crescenzio, Savino e Vittore’, Bullettino senese di storia patria 97 (1990), 84–115 The Arma Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture: with a Critical Edition of ‘O Vernicle’, ed. Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea DennyBrown (Farnham, 2014) Arnolfo di Cambio: una rinascita nell’Umbria medievale, ed. Vittoria Garibaldi and Bruno Toscano, exh. cat. Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia (Milan, 2005)

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

L’arte di Francesco: capolavori d’arte italiana e terre d’Asia dal XIII al XV secolo, ed. Angelo Tartuferi and Francesco D’Arelli, exh. cat. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (Florence, 2015) Arrigucci, Daniela, ‘La ricostruzione della basilica di San Francesco dopo l’incendio del 1655: gli interventi di Benedetto Giovannelli Orlandi e di Pietro Giambelli’, Bullettino senese di storia patria, 112 (2006), 564–79 Art and Identity: Visual Culture, Politics and Religion in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Sandra Cardarelli, Emily Jane Anderson, and John Richards (Newcastle, 2012) Art, Politics and Civic Religion in Central Italy, 1261–1352, ed. Joanna Cannon and Beth Williamson (Aldershot, 2000) Assisi non più Assisi: il tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco, ed. Giovanni Morello, exh. cat. Museo di Sant’ Eustorgio, Milan (Milan, 1999) Autour de Hugo d’Oignies, ed. Robert Didier and Jacques Toussaint, exh. cat. Musée des Arts Anciens du Namurois, Namur (Namur, 2003) Avery-Quash, Susanna, ‘Simone Martini’s Christ Discovered in the Temple’, typescript of unpublished lecture delivered at the National Gallery, 2001, Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, object file for inv. no. 2787 Bacci, Michele, ‘Aspetti della committenza testamentaria di opere d’arte nella Siena del Due e Trecento’, Bullettino senese di storia patria 110 (2003), 137–58 Bacci, Pèleo, Dipinti inediti e sconosciuti di Pietro Lorenzetti, Bernardo Daddi, ecc., in Siena e nel contado (Siena, 1939) Bacci, Pèleo, ‘L’Elenco delle pitture, sculture e architetture di Siena compilato nel 1625–26 da Mons. Fabio Chigi poi Alessandro VII’, Bullettino senese di storia patria n.s. 10 (1939), 297–337 Bacci, Pèleo, Fonti e commenti per la storia dell’arte Senese (Siena, 1944) Baert, Barbara, ‘The Gendered Visage: Facets of the Vera Icon’, Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerpen (2000), 10–43 Bagemihl, Rolf, ‘The Gates of Paradise and the Calimala Guild: Transcription and Reconstruction of the Original Documentation Regarding the Creation of the Doors’ (2005) Bagnoli, Alessandro, La Maestà di Simone Martini (Siena, 1999) Bagnoli, Alessandro ‘Introduzione’, in Marco Romano e il contesto artistico senese fra la fine del Duecento e gli inizi del Trecento, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli, exh. cat. Museo Civico Archeologico e della Collegiata, Casole d’Elsa (Milan, 2010), pp. 14–37 Banchi, Luciano, I Rettori dello Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala di Siena (Bologna, 1877) Barasch, Moshe, Giotto and the Language of Gesture (Cambridge, 1987) Barbi, Raimondo, Vita del Beato Andrea Gallerani (Siena, 1638) Barlondi, Costanza, ‘La Madonna del 1336 a San Giorgio a Ruballa: un dipinto problematico’, unpublished Masters dissertation, University of Florence, 2003/2004

309

310

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bartal, Renana, ‘Ducitur et Reducitur: Passion Devotion and Mental Motion in an Illuminated Meditationes Vitae Christi Manuscript’, in Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, ed. Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai, and Hanna Vorholt (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 369–80 Bartal, Renana, ‘Repetition, Opposition, and Invention in an Illuminated Meditationes Vitae Christi’: Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 410’, Gesta 53.2 (2014), 155–74 Bartal, Renana, ‘Lost and Found in the Meditationes Vitae Christi, Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 410’, in Illuminating the Middle Ages: Tributes to Prof. John Lowden from his Students, Friends and Colleagues, ed. Laura Cleaver, Alixe Bovey, and Lucy Donkin (Leiden, 2020), pp. 291–308 Bartalini, Roberto, ‘Maso, la cronologia della cappella Bardi di Vernio e il giovane Orcagna’, Prospettiva 77 (1995), 16–35 Bartalini, Roberto, ‘“Et in carne mea videbo Deum meum”: Maso di Banco, la cappella dei Confessori e la committenza dei Bardi’, Prospettiva 98–9 (2000), 58–103 Bartalini, Roberto, Scultura gotica in Toscana: maestri, monumenti, cantieri del Due e Trecento (Milan, 2005) Bartolomasi, Bonaventura, Series Chronologica Historica Ministrorum Provincialium et Commissariorum Generalium Qui Seraphicum S.P.N. Francisci Provinciam dictam quoque de Umbria (Rome, 1824) Bartolomasi, Bonaventura, ‘Series Chronologico-Historica’, Miscellanea Francescana 32 (1932), 201–26 Bartolomeo da Pisa, De conformitate vitae beati Francisci ad vitam Domini Iesu, ed. Collegium Sancti Bonaventurae, Analecta Franciscana IV (1906); V (1912) La Basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi (Mirabilia Italiae 11), ed. Giorgio Bonsanti, 4 vols (Modena, 2002) Bassi, Girolamo, Origine della solenne processione solita farsi ogni Anno per la Città di Siena (Siena, 1806) Battaglia, Laura Alidori, and Marco Battaglia, ‘The Liturgical Manuscripts of San Lorenzo before the Medici Patronage: Artists, Scribes, and Patrons’, in San Lorenzo: A Florentine Church, ed. R.W. Gaston and Louis A. Waldman (Florence, 2017), pp. 155–83 Beal, Rebecca S., ‘Bonaventure, Dante and the Apocalyptic Woman Clothed with the Sun’, Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society 114 (1996), 209–28 Becchis, Michela, Pietro Lorenzetti (Milan, 2012) Becherucci, Luisa, and Giulia Brunetti, Il Museo dell’Opera del Duomo a Firenze, 2 vols (Milan, 1970) Beech, George T., ‘The Eleanor of Aquitaine Vase, William IX of Aquitaine, and Muslim Spain’, Gesta 32 (1993), 3–10

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bellosi, Luciano, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 2. Duccio e Simone Martini pittori dei castelli senese “a l’esemplo come erano”’, Prospettiva 28 (1982), 41–65 Belting, Hans, Das Bild und sein Publikum im Mittelalter: Form und Funktion früher Bildtafeln der Passion (Berlin, 1981) Belting, Hans, ‘Die Reaktion der Kunst des 13. Jahrhunderts auf den Import von Reliquien und Ikonen’, in Il medio Oriente e l’Occidente nell’arte del XIII secolo: atti del XX Congresso internazionale di storia dell’arte, ed. Hans Belting (Bologna, 1982), II, pp. 35–54 Belting, Hans, Bild und Kult: eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990) Belting, Hans, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago/London, 1994) Belting, Hans, ‘Saint Francis and the Body as Image: An Anthropological Approach’, in Looking Beyond: Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art and History, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton/University Park PA, 2010), pp. 3–14 Bemporad, Dora Liscia, ‘Oreficerie e avori’, in Il tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupré dal Poggetto (Florence, 1980), pp. 87–151 Benton, Janetta, ‘Perspective and the Pattern of Circulation in Assisi and Padua’, Artibus et Historiae 10 (1989), 37–52 Benvenuti, Anna, ‘S. Zanobi: memoria episcopale, tradizioni civiche e dignità familiari’, in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana del Quattrocento, ed. Donatella Rugiadini (Monte Oriolo, 1987), pp. 79–115 Benvenuti, Anna, ‘Un momento del concilio di Firenze: la traslazione delle reliquie di San Zanobi’, in Firenze e il concilio del 1439, ed. Paolo Viti, 2 vols (Florence, 1994), I, pp. 191–220 Berardo, Marina di, ‘Guccio di Mannaia’, in Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale, ed. Angiola Maria Romanini, VII (Rome, 1996), pp. 146–50 Bernardino da Siena, Prediche Volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, ed. Carlo Delcorno, 2 vols (Milan, 1989) Berns, Roy S., ‘Image Simulation of the Blue Background in Pacino di Bonaguida’s Chiarito Tabernacle Using Color and Imaging Sciences’, in Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300–1350, ed. Christine Sciacca, exh. cat. The J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, 2012), pp. 371–5 Bertelli, Carlo, ‘Vetri e altre cose della Napoli Angioina’, Paragone 263 (1972), 89–106 Bertelli, Sandro, La tradizione della ‘Commedia’ dai manoscritti al testo. I: i codici trecenteschi (entro l’antica vulgata) conservati a Firenze, ed. Paolo Trovato (Florence, 2011), pp. 42, 84–6 Bertini, Jader, Notizie intorno ai restauri artistici fatti nel tempio di S. Francesco in Siena dal 1883–1894 (Siena, 1894)

311

312

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston-Area Collections, ed. Jeffrey Hamburger, William P. Stoneman, Anne-Marie Eze, Lisa Fagin Davis, and Nancy Netzer (Chicago, 2016) Bianco Fiorin, Marisa, ‘1: Trittico di S. Chiara’, in Pittura su tavola dalle collezioni dei civici musei di storia ed arte di Trieste, ed. Marisa Bianco Fiorin, exh. cat. Trieste, Museo Civico Sartorio (Milan, 1975), n.p. Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, 2 vols (Brussels, 1898–1901) Bicchi, Alessandro, and Alessandro Ciandella, Testimonia sanctitatis: le reliquie e i reliquiari del Duomo e del Battistero di Firenze (Florence, 1999) Bigaroni, Marino, ‘La tavola-coperchio della cassa mortuaria di San Francesco’, Frate Francesco 74, n.s. 1 (2008), 97–124 Bihl, Michael, ‘Formulae et documenta e cancellaria Fr. Michaelis de Cesena, O.F.M. ministri generalis 1316–1328’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 23 (1930), 106–71 Bihl, Michael, ‘Statuta generalia ordinis edita in capitulis generalibus celebratis Narbonae an. 1260, Assisi an. 1279 atque Parisiis an. 1292’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 34 (Florence, 1941), 13–94 and 284–358 Binski, Paul, ‘Iconography and Influences’, in Conservation and Discovery: Peterborough Cathedral – Nave Ceiling and Related Structures, ed. Jackie Hall and Susan M. Wright (London, 2015), pp. 89–101 Bisogni, Fabio, ‘Gli inizi dell’iconografia domenicana’, in Domenico di Caleruega e la nascita dell’ordine dei frati predicatori: atti del XLI Convegno storico internazionale, Todi 10–12 ottobre 2004 (Spoleto, 2005), pp. 613–38 Bloch, Amy R., ‘The Sculpture of Lorenzo Ghiberti and Ritual Performance in Renaissance Florence’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University, 2004 Blume, Dieter, Wandmalerei als Ordenspropaganda: Bildprogramme im Chorbereich franziskanischer Konvente Italiens bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts (Worms, 1983) Bocchi, Francesco, Le bellezze della città di Firenze (Florence, 1677) Boehlke, Frederick, J., Jr, Pierre de Thomas. Scholar, Diplomat and Crusader (Philadelphia, 1966) Boehm, Barbara Drake, cat. entry ‘Chalice of Peter of Sassoferrato’, in Mirror of the Medieval World, ed. William Wixom, exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (New York, 1999), pp. 145–7 Boehm, Margret, Wandmalerei des 13. Jahrhunderts im Klarissenkloster S. Pietro in Vineis zu Anagni: Bilder für die Andacht (Münster, 1999) Boldrini, Enrica, and Roberto Parenti, Santa Maria della Scala: archeologia e edilizia sulla piazza dello Spedale (Florence, 1991) Bolgia, Claudia, ‘Mosaics and Gilded Glass in Franciscan Hands: “Professional” Friars in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Italy’,

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

in Patrons and Professionals in the Middle Ages: Proceedings of the 2010 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Paul Binski and Elizabeth A. New (Donnington, 2012), pp. 141–66 Bologna, Ferdinando, Gli affreschi di Simone Martini ad Assisi (Milan and Geneva, 1965) Bolton Holloway, Julia, The Pilgrim and the Book: A Study of Dante, Langland and Chaucer (New York, c. 1987) Bolzoni, Lina, The Web of Images: Vernacular Preaching from its Origins to St Bernardino da Siena, trans. Carole Preston and Lisa Chien (Aldershot, 2004) Bonaventurae, Doctoris Seraphici S., Opera Omnia, ed. studio et cura PP. Collegii a S. Bonaventura, 10 vols (Quaracchi, 1882–1901) Bonaventurae, Sancti, Sermones Dominicales, ed. Jacques Guy Bougerol (Grottaferrata, 1977) Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St Francis, trans. Ewert Cousins (London, 1978) Bonaventure, Saint, Sermones de diversis, ed. Jacques-Guy Bougerol, 2 vols (Paris, 1993) Bonelli, Benedetto, Prodromus ad opera omnia S. Bonaventurae ordinis fratrum minorum (Bassano, 1767) Bonora, Tommaso, Cenni storici sulla tavola detta di S. Domenico che conservarsi nella chiesa priorale e parrocchiale di S[ant]a Maria della Purificazione in via Mascarella (Bologna, 1883) Borsook, Eve, Ambrogio Lorenzetti (Florence, 1966) Boschi Rotiroti, Marisa, Codicologia trecentesca della ‘Commedia’: entro e oltre l’antica vulgate (Rome, 2004) Boskovits, Miklós, ‘Orcagna in 1357 – and in Other Times’, The Burlington Magazine 113 (1971), 239–51 Boskovits, Miklós, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento 1375– 1400 (Florence, 1975) Boskovits, Miklós, ‘Sul trittico di Simone Martini e di Lippo Memmi’, Arte Cristiana 74 (1986), pp. 69–78 Boskovits, Miklós, ‘Appunti per una storia della tavola d’altare: le origini’, Arte Cristiana 80 (1992), 422–38 Boskovits, Miklós, ‘Per Bicci di Lorenzo disegnatore’, in Aux quatre vents: A Festchrift for Bert W. Meijer, ed. Anton W. Boschloo et al. (Florence, 2002), pp. 19–23 Boskovits, Miklós, ‘Paolo Veneziano: riflessioni sul percorso (parte I e II)’, Arte Cristiana 97 (2009), 81–90 and 161–70 Botana, Federico, The Works of Mercy in Italian Medieval Art (c. 1050–c. 1400) (Turnhout, 2011) Botana, Federico, ‘Family Wisdom in Quattrocento Florence: The Benci Aesop (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale MS II.II.83)’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 75 (2012), 53–92

313

314

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Botana, Federico, ‘The Frescoes of the Allegory of Mercy and the Story of Tobit and Tobias in the Bigallo: New Viewpoints’, in Politiche di misericordia tra teoria e prassi: confraternite, ospedali e Monti di Pietà (XIII–XVI secolo), ed. Pietro Delcorno (Bologna, 2018), pp. 97–118 Botana, Federico, Learning through Images in the Italian Renaissance: Illustrated Manuscripts and Education in Quattrocento Florence (Cambridge, 2020) Bowsky, William, The Finance of the Commune of Siena 1287–1355 (Oxford, 1970) Bowsky, William, A Medieval Italian Commune: Siena under the Nine, 1287–1355 (Berkeley, 1981) Bozóky, Edina, La politique des reliques de Constantin à Saint Louis: protection collective et légitimation du pouvoir (Paris, 2007) Bozzo, Gianni, ‘La cappella di San Giovanni Battista’, in Cattedrale e chiostro di San Lorenzo a Genova, ed. Gianni Bozzo (Genoa, 2000), pp. 60–82 Brezzi, Alessandro, Gli affreschi di Taddeo Gaddi nel Castello dei Conti Guidi di Poppi: le storie della Vergine, di San Giovanni Evangelista, e di San Giovanni Battista (Poppi, 1991) Brilliant, Virginia, ‘A Framework for Devotion in Trecento Siena: A Reliquary Frame in the Cleveland Museum of Art’, Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture 4 (2014), 66–94 Brink, Joel, ‘Simone Martini’s Orsini Polyptych’, Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Antwerp, 1976), 7–23 Brink, Joel, ‘Francesco Petrarca and the Problem of Chronology in the Late Paintings of Simone Martini’, Paragone (September 1977), 3–9 Brink, Joel, ‘Simone Martini, Francesco Petrarca and the Humanist Programme of the Virgil Frontispiece’, Mediaevalia 3 (1977), 83–117 Brink, Joel, ‘From Carpentry Analysis to the Discovery of Symmetry in Trecento Painting’, in La pittura nel XIV e XV secolo: il contributo dell’analisi tecnica alla storia dell’arte, ed. Henk van Os and J.R.J. Asperen de Boer (Bologna, 1985), pp. 345–72 Brocchi, Giuseppe Maria, Vite de’ santi e beati fiorentini, 3 vols (Florence, 1742–52) Brooke, Rosalind B., The Image of St Francis: Responses to Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 2006) Brooke, Xanthe, ‘Roscoe’s Italian Paintings in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool’, in Roscoe and Italy: The Reception of Italian Renaissance History and Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Stella Fletcher (London, 2012), pp. 65–93 Bruzelius, Caroline, ‘The Architecture of the Mendicant Orders in the Middle Ages: An Overview of Recent Literature’, Perspective 2 (2012), 365–86 Bruzelius, Caroline, ‘Hearing Is Believing: Clarissan Architecture, ca. 1213–1340’, Gesta 31 (1992), 83–91

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bruzelius, Caroline, Preaching, Building, Burying: Friars and the Medieval City (New Haven, 2014) Buonsignori, Vincenzo, Storia della Repubblica di Siena, 2 vols (Siena, 1856) Burke, S. Maureen, ‘The “Martyrdom of the Franciscans” by Ambrogio Lorenzetti’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 65 (2002), 460–92 Burnett, Sarah, ‘The Cult of St Nicholas in Medieval Italy’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Warwick University, 2009 Burr, David, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century after St Francis (University Park, PA, 2001) Butzek, Monika, Gli inventari della sagrestia della Cattedrale Senese e degli altri beni sottoposti alla tutela dell’operaio del Duomo, 1389–1546 (Florence, 2013) Bynum, Caroline Walker, ‘Franciscan Spirituality: Two Approaches’, Medievalia et Humanistica 7 (1976), 195–7 Bynum, Caroline Walker, The Resurrection of the Body (New York, 1995) Bynum, Caroline Walker, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York, 2011) Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557), ed. Helen C. Evans, exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (New Haven and London, 2004) Cadogan, Jean K., Domenico Ghirlandaio: Artist and Artisan (New Haven and London, 2000) Caferro, William, Mercenary Companies and the Decline of Siena (London, 1998) Caffio, Alessandra, ‘I perduti affreschi della facciata dell’ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala a Siena’, in Ambrogio Lorenzetti, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli, Roberto Bartalini, and Max Seidel (Milan, 2017), pp. 363–74 Cagliaritano, Ubaldo, Mamma Siena: dizionario biografico-aneddotico dei senesi, 5 vols (Siena, 1971–76) Caglioti, Francesco, ‘Giovanni di Balduccio a Bologna: l’“Annunciazione” per la rocca papale di Porta Galliera (con una digressione sulla cronologia napoletana e bolognese di Giotto)’, Prospettiva 118 (2005), 21–62 Il Caleffo Vecchio del comune di Siena, ed. Giovanni Cecchini et al., 5 vols (Siena, 1931–91) Il calice di Guccio di Mannaia nel Tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi: storia e restauro, ed. Flavia Callori di Vignale and Ulderico Santamaria (Vatican City, 2014) Calzoni, Francesco, Storia della chiesa parrocchiale di Santa Maria in Via Mascarella e dei luoghi più cospicui che si trovano nella de lei giurisdizione (Bologna, 1785) Cammarosano, Paolo, I castelli del senese (Milan, 1985)

315

316

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cämmerer, Monika, ‘Giotto’s Polyptychon in der Baroncelli-Kapelle von Santa Croce: Nachträge und neue Beobachtungen’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 39 (1996), 374–93 Campbell, Andrea, ‘A Spectacular Celebration of the Assumption in Siena’, Renaissance Quarterly 58 (2005), 435–63 Campbell, C. Jean, ‘“Symone nostro senensi iocundissima”: The Court Artist, Heart, Mind and Hand’, in Artists at Court: Image Making and Identity 1330–1550, ed. Stephen Campbell (Boston, 2004), pp. 33–46 Cannon, Joanna, ‘Dominican Patronage of the Arts in Central Italy: The Provincia Romana, c. 1220–c. 1320’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1980 Cannon, Joanna, ‘Dating the Frescoes by the Maestro di S. Francesco at Assisi’, Burlington Magazine 124 (1982), 65–9 Cannon, Joanna, ‘Simone Martini, the Dominicans and the Early Sienese Polyptych’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 45 (1982), 69–93 Cannon, Joanna, ‘Pietro Lorenzetti and the History of the Carmelite Order’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987), 18–28 Cannon, Joanna, ‘The Creation, Meaning, and Audience of the Early Sienese Polyptych: Evidence from the Friars’, in Italian Altarpieces 1250–1550: Function and Design, ed. Eve Borsook and Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi (Oxford, 1994), pp. 41–79 Cannon, Joanna, ‘Dominic “Alter Christus”? Representations of the Founder in and after the Arca di San Domenico’, in Christ among the Medieval Dominicans, ed. Kent Emery and Joseph P. Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN, 1998), pp. 26–48 Cannon, Joanna, ‘The Stoclet Man of Sorrows: A Thirteenth-Century Italian Diptych Reunited’, The Burlington Magazine 141 (1999), 107–12 Cannon, Joanna, ‘Viewing Two Paintings by Bernardo Daddi’, The British Art Journal 2 (Winter 2000/2001), 68–70 Cannon, Joanna, ‘Beyond the Limitations of Visual Typology: Reconsidering the Function and Audience of Three Vita Panels of Women Saints c. 1300’, in Italian Panel Painting in the Duecento and the Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art 61 (Washington, DC, 2002), pp. 291–314 Cannon, Joanna, ‘Giotto and Art for the Friars: Revolutions Spiritual and Artistic’, in The Cambridge Companion to Giotto, ed. Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona (Cambridge/New York, 2004), pp. 103–34 Cannon, Joanna, ‘Kissing the Virgin’s Foot: Adoratio before the Madonna and Child Enacted, Depicted, Imagined’, Studies in Iconography 31 (2010), 1–50 Cannon, Joanna, ‘Dominican Shrines and Urban Pilgrimage in Later Medieval Italy’, in Architecture and Pilgrimage 1000–1600, ed. Paul Davies, Deborah Howard, and Wendy Pullan (Farnham, 2013), pp. 143–63

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cannon, Joanna, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches: Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New Haven and London, 2013) Cannon, Joanna, ‘Redating the Frescoes by the Maestro di S. Francesco at Assisi’, in Survivals, revivals, rinascenze: studi in onore di Serena Romano, ed. Nicolas Bock, Ivan Foletti, and Michele Tomasi (Rome, 2017), pp. 437–49 Cannon, Joanna, and Viola Pemberton-Pigott, ‘The Royal Collection Duccio: A Triptych Reconsidered’, Apollo 156 (2002), 10–18 Cannon, Joanna, and André Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany (University Park, PA, 1999) Cannon, Joanna, and André Vauchez, Margherita da Cortona e i Lorenzetti (Rome, 2000) Capitanio, Antonella, and Marco Collareta, Oreficeria sacra italiana (Florence, 1990) Cappelli, Adriano, Cronologia, cronografia e calendario perpetuo dal principio dell’era cristiana ai nostri giorni: tavole cronologico-sincrone e quadri sinottici per verificare le date storiche (Milan, 1978) Carli, Enzo, L’arte nella Basilica di S. Francesco a Siena (Siena, 1971) Carli, Enzo, La pittura senese del trecento (Venice, 1981) Carocci, Guido, I contorni di Firenze: illustrazione storico-artistica (Florence, 1888) Carruthers, Mary, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge, 1998) Castellani e castelli di Berardenga e Maremma al tempo del Buongoverno di Ambrogio Lorenzetti: una finestra aperta sul medioevo, ed. Alberto Colli (Siena, 2001) Cataloghi della Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze. Dipinti, Volume primo. Dal Duecento a Giovanni da Milano, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2003) Cataloghi della Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze. Dipinti, Volume secondo. Il Tardo Trecento: dalla tradizione orcagnesca agli esordi del Gotico Internazionale, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Daniela Parenti (Florence and Milan, 2010) La cattedrale e la città: saggi sul duomo di Firenze, ed. Timothy Verdon and Annalisa Innocenti, 2 vols (Florence, 2001) Cavalca, Domenico, Volgarizzamento delle vite de’ Santi Padri secondo l’edizione di Firenze. Anno M.DCC.XXXI, ed. Domenico-Maria Manni, 4 vols (Verona, 1799) Cavalcaselle, G.B., and J.A. Crowe, Storia della pittura in Italiana dal secolo II al secolo XVI, 11 vols (Florence, 1883–1908) Cave, C.J.P., ‘Roof Bosses in the Nave of Tewkesbury Abbey’, Archaeologia 29 (1929), 73–84

317

318

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cenci, Cesare, ‘Constitutiones provinciales provinciae Umbriae anni 1316’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 56 (1963), 12–39 Cenci, Cesare, ‘Costituzioni della provincia toscana tra i secoli XIII e XIV’, Studi Francescani 79 (1982), 369–409 Cenci, Cesare, ‘“San” Pietro Pettinaio presentato da Fr. Bindo da Siena’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 99 (2006), 189–211 Cennini, Cennino d’Andrea, The Craftsman’s Handbook: ‘Il Libro dell’Arte’, trans. Daniel V. Thompson, Jr (New York, 1954) Chastel, André, ‘La Veronique’, Revue de l’art 40–1 (1978), 71–82 Chelazzi Dini, Giulietta, et al., Pittura senese (Milan, 1997) Chevalier, Ulysse, Repertorium Hymnologicum (Louvain, 1892) Chiantini, Bruno and Pietro Staderini, Santa Petronilla: eventi storici e vicende dalle origini alla Parrocchia dei nostril giorni (Roccastrada, 1995) Chiodo, Sonia, ‘Mariotto di Nardo: note per un “egregio pictore”’, Arte Cristiana 87 (1999), 91–104 Chiodo, Sonia, ‘Stories Told through Images by Pacino di Bonaguida and the Master of the Dominican Effigies’, in ‘An Ancient and Honourable Citizen of Florence’: The Bargello and Dante, ed. Luca Azzetta, Sonia Chiodo, and Teresa De Robertis, exh. cat. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence (Florence, 2021), pp. 155–9. Chrétien, Heidi L., The Festival of San Giovanni: Imagery and Political Power in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1994) Christiansen, Keith, ‘Paul Delaroche’s Crucifixion by Pietro Lorenzetti’, Apollo 157 (February 2003), 8–14 Christie, Nicola, ‘National Museums and Galleries Liverpool Conservation Division: Technical Examination Report’, unpublished conservation report, 20 February 2008, Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, object file for inv. no. 2787 The Church of Santa Maria Donna Regina: Art, Iconography and Patronage in Fourteenth-century Naples, ed. Janet Elliott and Cordelia Warr (Aldershot, 2004) Ciacci, Gaspero, Gli Aldobrandeschi nella storia e nella ‘Divina Commedia’, 2 vols (Rome, 1935) Cimabue a Pisa: la pittura pisana del Duecento da Giunta a Giotto, ed. Mariagiulia Burresi, exh. cat. Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa (Pisa, 2005) Cimabue and Early Italian Devotional Painting, ed. Holly Flora, exh. cat., The Frick Collection, New York (New York, 2006) Cioni, Elisabetta, ‘Guccio di Mannaia e l’esperienza del gotico transalpino’, in Il gotico europeo in Italia, ed. Valentino Pace and Martina Bagnoli (Naples, 1994), pp. 311–23 Cioni, Elisabetta, Scultura e smalto nel’oreficeria senese dei secoli XIII e XIV (Florence, 1998) Cioni, Elisabetta, Il reliquiario di San Galgano (Florence, 2005)

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cioni, Elisabetta, ‘Nuove acquisizioni sulla bottega ‘dei Tondi’: un documento e alcuni smalti’, Opera Nomina Historiae 2/3 (2010), 151–218 Cocchi, Arnaldo, Le chiese di Firenze dal secolo IV al secolo XX, I (Florence, 1903) Cohn, Samuel K., Jr, Death and Property in Siena, 1205–1800: Strategies for the Afterlife (Baltimore, MD and London, 1988) Cohn, Samuel K., Jr, The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death: Six Renaissance Cities in Central Italy (Baltimore, MD, 1992) Cohn, Samuel K., Jr, Popular Protest in Late-Medieval Europe: Italy, France and Flanders (Manchester, 2004) Collareta, Marco, La croce del Pollaiuolo (Florence, 1982) Collareta, Marco, Calici italiani (Florence, 1983) Collareta, Marco, Basilica del Santo: le oreficerie (Padua, 1995) Collavini, Simone, ‘Honorabilis domus et spetiosissimus comitatus’: gli Aldobrandeschi da conti a principi territoriali (Pisa, 1998) Colle di Val d’Elsa nell’eta dei granduchi medicei: ‘la terra in città et la collegiata in cattedrale’, ed. Pietro Nencini et al., exh. cat. Duomo, Cripta della Misericordia, Sant’Agostino and San Pietro, Colle di Val d’Elsa (Florence, 1992) Colophons de manuscrits occidentaux, ed. Bénédictins du Bouveret, 6 vols (Fribourg, 1965–82) Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. Stella Panayotova (London, 2016) Colucci, Silvia, Sepolcri a Siena tra medioevo e rinascimento: analisi storica, iconografica e artistica (Florence, 2003) Commento alla Divina Commedia d’Anonimo fiorentino del secolo XIV, ed. Pietro Fanfani, 3 vols (Bologna, 1866–74) Conservation and Discovery: Peterborough Cathedral Nave Ceiling and Related Structures, ed. Jackie Hall and Susan M. Wright (London, 2015) Constitutiones generales Ordinis Fratrum Minorum. I: saeculum XIII, ed. Cesare Cenci and Georges Mailleux, Analecta Franciscana 13 (2007) Constitutiones generales Ordinis Fratrum Minorum. II: saeculum XIV/1, ed. Cesare Cenci and Georges Mailleux, Analecta Franciscana 17 (2010) Constitutiones sacri capituli metropolitanae ecclesiae Senensis, ed. Luca Bonetti (Siena, 1579) Conti, Alessandro, I dintorni di Firenze: arte, storia, paesaggio (Florence, 1983) Conti, Alessandro, ‘Maso, Roberto Longhi e la tradizione offneriana’, Prospettiva 73/74 (1994), 32–45 Conti, Susanna, ‘The Discovery of Relics and Textile Fragments in the Panel of Santa Maria Maggiore’, in ‘Imagine antica’: Madonna and Child of Santa Maggiore in Florence. Studies and Restoration, ed. Marco Ciatti and Cecilia Frosinini (Florence, 2003), pp. 69–76

319

320

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Il Convento di Santa Sabina all’Aventino e il suo patrimonio storico-artistico e architettonico, ed. Manuela Gianandrea, Manuela Annibali, and Laura Bartoni (Rome, 2016) Cook, William R., ‘La rappresentazione delle stimmate di San Francesco nella pittura veneziana del Trecento’, Saggi e Memorie di Storia dell’Arte 20 (1996), 9–34 Cooper, Donal, ‘Projecting Presence: The Monumental Cross in the Italian Church Interior’, in Presence: The Inherence of the Prototype within Images and Other Objects, ed. Robert Maniura and Rupert Shepherd (Farnham, 2006), pp. 47–69 Cooper, Donal, ‘Experiencing Dominican and Franciscan Churches in Renaissance Italy’, in Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy, ed. Trinita Kennedy, exh. cat. Frist Center for the Visual Arts (Nashville, 2014), pp. 47–61 Cooper, Donal, ‘Preaching amidst Pictures: Visual Contexts for Sermons in Late Medieval Tuscany’, in Optics, Ethics, and Art in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: Looking into Peter of Limoges’s Moral Treatise on the Eye, ed. Herbert L. Kessler and Richard G. Newhauser (Toronto, 2018), pp. 29–46 Cooper, Donal, ‘Janet Robson (1959–2018)’, The Burlington Magazine 161 (2019), 265–6 Cooper, Donal, ‘Fra Jacopo in the Archives: San Gimignano as a Context for the Meditations on the Life of Christ’, in The ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi’ Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Text and Image, ed. Holly Flora and Péter Tóth (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 17–42 Cooper, Donal, and Janet Robson, ‘“A Great Sumptuousness of Paintings”: Frescos and Franciscan Poverty at Assisi in 1288 and 1312’, The Burlington Magazine 151 (2009), 656–62 Cooper, Donal, and Janet Robson, ‘Imagery and the Economy of Penance at the Tomb of St Francis’, in Architecture and Pilgrimage, 1000–1500, ed. Paul Davies, Deborah Howard, and Wendy Pullan (Farnham, 2013), pp. 165–86 Cooper, Donal, and Janet Robson, The Making of Assisi: The Pope, the Franciscans and the Painting of the Basilica (New Haven and London, 2013) Cooper, Donal, and Alberto Maria Sartore, ‘Un contesto per il polittico perugino di Taddeo di Bartolo (1403): San Francesco al Prato’, in Taddeo di Bartolo, exh. cat. Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia, ed. Gail E. Solberg (Milan, 2020), pp. 71–87 Cormier, Hyacinthe-Marie, La bienheureuse Diane D’Andolò e les bienheurerses Cécile et Aimée fondatrices du couvent de sainte-Agnès de l’ordre des frères-prêcheurs à Bologne (Rome, 1892) Cornelison, Sally J., ‘Art and Devotion in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence: The Relics and Reliquaries of Saints Zenobius and John the

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baptist’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1998 Cornelison, Sally J., ‘A French King and a Magic Ring: The Girolami and a Relic of St Zenobius in Renaissance Florence’, Renaissance Quarterly 55 (2002), 437–41 Cornelison, Sally J., ‘Art Imitates Architecture: The Saint Philip Reliquary in Renaissance Florence’, Art Bulletin 86 (2004), 642–58 Cornelison, Sally J., ‘When an Image is a Relic: The St Zenobius Panel from Florence Cathedral’, in Images, Relics, and Devotional Practices in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. Sally J. Cornelison and Scott B. Montgomery (Tempe, AZ, 2005), pp. 95–113 Cornelison, Sally J., ‘Tales of Two Bishop Saints: Zenobius and Antoninus in Florentine Renaissance Art and History’, Sixteenth Century Journal 38 (2007), 627–56 Cornelison, Sally J., Art and the Relic Cult of St Antoninus in Renaissance Florence (Farnham, 2012) Corsi, Pasquale, La traslazione di San Nicola: le fonti (Bari, 1988) Crabb, Ann, The Strozzi of Florence: Widowhood and Family Solidarity in the Renaissance (Ann Arbor, MI, 2000) Cronica volgare di anonimo fiorentino dall’anno 1385 al 1409 già attribuita a Piero di Giovanni Minerbetti, ed. Elina Bellondi, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XXVII (Città di Castello, 1915) Cusato, Michael, ‘Whence “The Community”?’, Franciscan Studies 60 (2002), 39–92 D’Amato, Alfonso, and Venturino Alce, Bologna domenicana (Bologna, 1961) Da Jacopo della Quercia a Donatello: le arti a Siena nel primo Rinascimento, ed. Max Seidel, exh. cat. Santa Maria della Scala, Opera della Metropolitana, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena (Milan, 2010) Dameron, George W., Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante (Philadelphia, 2005) Dameron, George, ‘Feeding the Medieval Italian City-State: Grain, War, and Political Legitimacy in Tuscany, c. 1150–c. 1350’, Speculum 92 (2017), 976–1019 Davidsohn, Robert, Storia di Firenze, 8 vols (Florence, 1956–68) Davies, Glyn, ‘“Omnes et singuli aurifices”: Guild Regulations and the Chalice Trade in Central Italy c. 1250–1500’, in The Historian’s Eye: Essays on Italian Art in Honor of Andrew Ladis, ed. Hayden Maginnis and Shelley Zuraw (Athens, GA, 2009) Davies, Glyn, ‘The Chalice in Central Italy 1250–1500: Making, Ownership, Use’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2014 De Angelis, Luigi, Dell’albero di S. Francesco vicino alle mura di Siena (Siena, 1827)

321

322

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

De Benedictis, Cristina, ‘Postille daddesche’, in Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Ugo Procacci, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi Duprè dal Poggeto and Paolo Dal Poggetto (Milan, 1977), I, pp. 146–51 De Benedictis, Cristina, ‘I codici miniati del convento di S. Fortunato di Todi e i cardinali Bentivenga e Matteo d’Aquasparta’, in Francesco d’Assisi: Storia e Arte, Documenti e Archivi. Codici e Biblioteche. Miniature, ed. Roberto Rusconi, exh. cat. Palazzo Comunale, Perugia; Palazzo Comunale, Todi; Palazzo Trinci, Foligno (Milan, 1982), 97–203 De Benedictis, Cristina, ‘Pacino di Bonaguida’, in Dictionary of Art, VIII, ed. Jane Turner (Oxford, 1996), p. 744 De Benedictis, Cristina, ‘Percorso di fra Pietro Teutonico: devozione e artigianato’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 44 (2000), 106–35 De Benedictis, Cristina, Devozione e produzione artistica in Umbria: vetri dorati dipinti e graffiti del XIV e XV secolo (Florence, 2010) Delcorno, Carlo, La tradizione delle ‘Vite dei Santi Padri’” (Venice, 2000) Della Valle, Guglielmo, Lettere Senesi di un socio dell’Accademia di Fossano sopra le belle arti, 3 vols (Venice, 1782–86) Del Migliore, Ferdinando Leopoldo, Firenze città nobilissima illustrata (Florence, 1684) De Marchi, Andrea, ‘“Cum dictum opus sit magnum”: il documento pistoiese del 1274 e l’allestimento trionfale dei tramezzi in Umbria e Toscana fra Due e Trecento’, in Medioevo: imagine e memori, atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Parma (23–28 settembre 2008), ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan, 2009), pp. 603–21 De Marchi, Andrea, ‘Parimenti assisiati: il Maestro di Figline e la sua bottega’, in Medioevo: le officine, atti del convegno di Parma (22–27 settembre 2009), ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan, 2010), pp. 623–34 De Marchi, Andrea, ‘Il progetto di Giotto tra sperimentazione e definizione del canone: partimenti a finti marmi nelle cappelle del transetto di Santa Croce’, Ricerche di storia dell’arte 102 (2010), 13–24 De Marchi, Andrea, ‘Geometry and Naturalness, Module and Rhythm: A Seminal Work in the Illusionistic Concept of the Gothic Polyptych’, in Giotto: The Restoration of the Badia Polyptych, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2012), pp. 31–52 Denny, Don, ‘Simone Martini’s The Holy Family’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 30 (1967), 138–49 Dent, Peter R., ‘The Body of Christ in Fourteenth-Century Tuscan Sculpture’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2005 Dent, Peter, ‘A Window for the Pain: Surface, Interiority and Christ’s Flagellated Skin in Late Medieval Sculpture’, in Flaying in the Pre-Modern World: Practice and Representation, ed. Larissa Tracy (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 208–39

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dent, Peter, ‘Looking Up in Judgement: How to See the Early Modern Statue through the Late Medieval Crucifix in Italy’, in Public Statues across Time and Cultures, ed. Christopher P. Dickenson (New York and Abingdon, 2021), pp. 121–46 Derbes, Anne, Picturing the Passion in Late Medieval Italy: Narrative Painting, Franciscan Ideologies, and the Levant (Cambridge, 1996) Derbes, Anne, and Amy Neff, ‘Italy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Byzantine Sphere’, in Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557), ed. Helen C. Evans, exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (New Haven and London, 2004), pp. 449–61 Derenzini, Giovanna, ‘Le reliquie da Constantinopoli a Siena’, in L’oro di Siena: il tesoro di Santa Maria della Scala, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Milan, 1996), pp. 67–78 de Wesselow, Thomas, ‘Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s “Mappamondo”: A Fourteenth-Century Picture of the World Painted on Cloth’, in European Paintings on Fabric Supports in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. Caroline Villers (London, 2000), pp. 55–65 de Wesselow, Thomas, ‘The Decoration of the West Wall of the Sala del Mappamondo in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico’, in Art, Politics and Civic Religion in Central Italy, 1261–1352, ed. Joanna Cannon and Beth Williamson (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 19–68 de Wesselow, Thomas, ‘The “Wall of the Mappamondo”: The Trecento Decoration of the West Wall of the Sala del Mappamondo in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2000 de Wesselow, Thomas, ‘The Guidoriccio Fresco: A New Attribution’, Apollo 154 (2004), 3–12 de Wesselow, Thomas, ‘The Form and Imagery of the New Fresco in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico’, Artibus et Historiae 30 (2009), pp. 195–217 Di Cagno, Gabriella, ‘Il patrimonio storico artistico del Comune di Bagno a Ripoli’, in Il medioevo nelle colline a sud di Firenze, ed. Italo Moretti and Andrea Baldinotti (Florence, 2000), pp. 41–130 Dijk, Stephen van, and Joan Walker, The Origins of the Modern Roman Liturgy: The Liturgy of the Papal Court and the Franciscan Order in the Thirteenth Century (Westminster, MD, 1960) Dijk, Stephen van, and Joan Walker, The Ordinal of the Papal Court from Innocent III to Boniface VIII and Related Documents, Spicilegium Friburgense 22 (Fribourg, 1975) Dillon, Sarah, ‘Trecento Visuality and the Visual Arts: The Role of Glass and the Influence of Optics on Italian Art of the Fourteenth Century’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, City University of New York, 2013 Dodsworth, Barbara, ‘Dominican Patronage and the Arca di San Domenico’, in Verrocchio and Late Quattrocento Italian Sculpture, ed. Steven Bule, Alan Phipps Darr, and Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi (Florence, 1992), pp. 283–90

323

324

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dodsworth, Barbara W., The Arca di San Domenico (New York, 1995) Dolcini, Carlo, ‘Michele da Cesena’, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 74 (2010), pp. 154–7 Donato di Neri, ‘Cronaca Senese’, in Cronache Senesi, ed. Alessandro Lisini and Fabio Iacometti, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XV, parte 6 (Bologna, 1931–36), pp. 565–685 Donkin, Lucy, ‘Following the Footsteps of Christ in Late Medieval Italy: Pietro Pettinaio’s Vision of St Francis’, Word & Image 32 (2016), 163–80 Douie, Decima, ‘John XXII and the Beatific Vision’, Dominican Studies 3 (1950), 154–74 Drpić, Ivan, ‘The Patron’s “I”: Art, Selfhood, and the Later Byzantine Dedicatory Epigram’, Speculum 89 (2014), 895–935 Drpić, Ivan, Epigram, Art, and Devotion in Later Byzantium (Cambridge, 2016) Duba, William, ‘The Beatific Vision in the “Sentences” Commentary of Gerald Odonis’, Vivarium 47 (2009), 348–63 Dunkelman, Martha L., ‘What Michelangelo Learned in Bologna’, Artibus et historiae 35 (2014), 107–35 Dykmans, Marc, ‘A propos de Jean XXII et Benoît XII: la libération de Thomas Waleys’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 7 (1969), 115–30 Dykmans, Marc, La vision bienheureuse: traité envoyé au pape Jean XXII par Robert d’Anjou, roi de Jerusalem et de Sicile (Rome, 1970) Dykmans, Marc, Pour et contre Jean XXII en 1333: deux traités avignonnais sur la vision béatifique (Vatican City, 1975) Dykmans, Marc, Le cérémonial papal de la fin du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance (Brussels, 1977) Earenfight, Philipp, ‘The Residence and Loggia della Misericordia (Il Bigallo)’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of New Jersey, 1999 Early Dominicans: Selected Writings, ed. Simon Tugwell (New York, 1982) Easton, Martha, ‘The Wound of Christ, the Mouth of Hell: Appropriations and Inversions of Female Anatomy in the Later Middle Ages’, in Tributes to Jonathan J.G. Alexander: The Making and Meaning of Illuminated Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts, Art & Architecture, ed. Susan L’Engle and Gerald B. Guest (London, 2006), pp. 395–409 Ebersolt, Jean, Sanctuaires de Byzance (Paris, 1921) Eco, Umberto, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, trans. Hugh Bredin (New Haven, 1986) Eco, Umberto, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge, MA, 1988) Edgerton, Samuel Y., ‘Review of David Lindberg, John Pecham and the Science of Optics: Perspectiva Communis’, Art Bulletin 54 (1972), 349–50 Edgerton, Samuel Y., Painting and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance (Ithaca, NY, 1985) Edgerton, Samuel Y., The Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry: Art and Science on the Eve of the Scientific Revolution (Ithaca, NY and London, 1991)

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ehrle, Franz, ‘Zur Geschichte des Schatzes, der Bibliothek und des Archivs der Päpste im vierzehnten Jahrhundert’, Archiv für Litteratur- und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelaltars I (1885), 1–48, 228–364 Ehrle, Franz, ‘Zur Vorgeschichte des Concils von Vienne’, Archiv für Litteratur- und Kirchen-Geschichte des Mittelalters 3 (1887), 1–195 Eichberg, Barbara Bruderer, Les neuf choeurs angéliques: origine et évolution du thème dans l’art du Moyen Âge (Poitiers, 1997) Eisenbichler, Konrad, The Boys of the Archangel: A Youth Confraternity in Florence, 1411–1785 (Toronto, 1998) Elsheik, Salem, Il Costituto del Comune di Siena volgarizzato nel 1309–1310 (Siena, 2002) Elston, Ashley Jane, ‘Storing Sanctity: Sacristy Reliquary Cupboards in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kansas, 2011 L’eredità di Giotto: Arte a Firenze 1340–1375, ed. Angelo Tartuferi, exh. cat. Galleria dell’ Accademia, Florence (Florence, 2008) La facciata del Duomo di Siena: iconografia, stile, indagini storiche e scientifiche, ed. Mario Lorenzoni (Milan, 2007) Falconius, Niccolò Carmine, Sancti confessoris pontificis et celeberrimi thaumaturgi Nicolai acta primigenia (Naples, 1751) Faleoni, Celso, Memorie historiche della chiesa bolognese e suoi pastori. All’eminentiss. e reuerendiss. signor card. Nicolo Ludovisio (Bologna, 1649) Falvay, Dávid, and Péter Tóth, ‘New Light on the Date and Authorship of the Meditationes Vitae Christi’, in Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe: Diverse Imaginations of Christ’s Life, ed. Stephen Kelly and Ryan Perry (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 17–105 Falvay, Dávid, and Péter Tóth, ‘L’autore e la trasmissione delle Meditationes vitae Christi in base a manoscritti volgari italiani’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 108 (2015), 403–30 Fanelli, Giovanni, Firenze: le città nella storia d’Italia (Rome and Bari, 1981) Fanti, Mario, La Fabbrica di S. Petronio in Bologna dal XIV al XX secolo: storia di una istituzione (Rome, 1980) ‘Fatta dell’olmo della piazza’: il restauro del Paliotto di San Zanobi, ed. Marco Ciatti and Chiara Rossi Scarzanella (Florence, 2016) Fattorini, Gabriele, ‘Lorenzo Marrina, Domenico Beccafumi e il monumento funebre del rettore Giovanni Battista Tondi per la chiesa dell’ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala a Siena’, Prospettiva 159/160 (2015), 132–59 Favetta, Bianca Maria, ‘Preliminari ad una ricerca storica sul monastero di San Cipriano a Trieste’, in Comunità religiose di Trieste: contributi di conoscenza, ed. Laura Ruaro Loseri (Udine, 1979), pp. 71–86 Feldges, Uta, Landschaft als Topographisches Porträt: der Wiederbeginn der europäischen Landschaftsmalerei in Siena (Bern, 1980)

325

326

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Felskau, Christian-Frederik, Agnes von Böhmen und die Klosteranlage der Klarissen und Franziskaner in Prag: Leben und Institution, Legende und Verehrung, 2 vols (Nordhausen, 2008) Flora, Holly, The ‘Devout Belief of the Imagination’: The Paris ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi’ and Female Franciscan Spirituality in Trecento Italy (Turnhout, 2009) Flora, Holly, ‘Empathy and Performative Vision in Oxford Corpus Christi College MS 410’, Ikon: Journal of Iconographic Studies 3 (2010), 169–78 Flora, Holly, ‘Fashioning the Passion: The Poor Clares and the Clothing of Christ’, Art History 40 (2016), 464–95 Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300– 1350, ed. Christine Sciacca, exh. cat. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, 2012) Flores d’Arcais, Francesca, ‘Il trittico di Santa Chiara e la pittura a tempera su tavola del Trecento a Trieste’, in Medioevo a Trieste: istituzioni, arte, società nel Trecento: atti del convegno, Trieste, 22–24 novembre 2007, ed. Paolo Cammarosano (Rome, 2009), pp. 353–77 Fontes Franciscani, ed. Enrico Menestò, Stefano Brufani, and Giuseppe Cremascoli (Assisi, 1995) Fornasini, Giuseppe, La chiesa priorale e parrocchiale di S. Maria e S. Domenico detta della Mascarella in Bologna (Bologna, 1943) Fournier, Paul, ‘Durand de Saint-Pourçain, théologien’, Histoire littéraire de la France 37 (1938), 1–38 Francesco d’Assisi: chiese e conventi, ed. Carlo Pirovano, exh. cat. Auditorum San Domenico, Narni (Milan, 1982) Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short, 4 vols (New York, 1999–2004) Francis of Assisi, St. Writings and Early Biographies: English Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St. Francis, ed. Marion A. Habig (Quincy, IL, 1991) Franciscan Christology: Selected Texts, Translations and Introductory Essays, ed. Damian McElrath (Saint Bonaventure, NY, 1980) Frankl, Paul, Gothic Architecture, revised by Paul Crossley (New Haven, 2000) Frate Egidio d’Assisi: atti dell’incontro di studio in occasione del 750º anniversario della morte (1262–2012), Perugia, 30 giugno 2012, ed. Società internazionale di studi francescani (Spoleto, 2014) Freedberg, David, The Power of Images (Chicago, 1989) Freuler, Gaudenz ‘Qualche riflessione sulla miniature fiorentina della seconda metà del Trecento’, in L’eredità di Giotto: Arte a Firenze 1340– 1375, ed. Angelo Tartuferi, exh. cat. Accademia, Florence (Florence, 2008), pp. 77–85, 214–23 Freuler, Gaudenz, Italian Miniatures from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century (Milan, 2012) Frinta, Mojmír, ‘Unsettling Evidence in Some Panel Paintings by Simone Martini’, in La pittura nel XIV e XV secolo: il contributo dell’analisi

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

tecnica alla storia dell’arte, ed. Henk van Os and J.R.J. Asperen de Boer (Bologna, 1985), pp. 211–25 Frugoni, Chiara, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti (Florence, 1988) Frugoni, Chiara, Francesco e l’invenzione delle stimmate: una storia per parole e immagini fino a Bonaventura e Giotto (Turin, 1993) Frugoni, Chiara, ‘Gli affreschi della Basilica Superiore di Assisi: una committenza di Papa Niccolò IV?’, in Arbor ramosa: studi per Antonio Rigon da allievi, amici, colleghi, ed. Luciano Bertazzo et al. (Padua, 2011), pp. 215–23 Frugoni, Chiara, Quale Francesco? Il messaggio nascosto negli affreschi della Basilica superiore ad Assisi (Turin, 2015) Frugoni, Chiara, and Odile Redon, ‘Accusé Guidoriccio de Fogliano, défendez-vous!’, Mediévales 9 (1985), 119–31 Fulton, Rachel, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (New York, 2002) Fumi, Luigi, ‘I registri del Ducato di Spoleto (Archivio Segreto Vaticano – Camera Apostolica)’, Bollettino della Regia Deputazione di Storia Patria per l’Umbria 7 (Perugia, 1901), 57–123, 285–314 Gagliardi, Isabella,‘Le reliquie dell’Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala (XIV–XV secolo)’, in L’oro di Siena: Il tesoro di Santa Maria della Scala, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Milan, 1996), pp. 59–66 Galandra, Maria Irene, ‘A Fourteenth-Century Reliquary Diptych from Volterra: Setting and Technique in the Context of Contemporary Gilded Glass’, unpublished MA dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2005 Gallavotti Cavallero, Daniela, Lo Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala in Siena: vicenda di una committenza artistica (Siena, 1985) Gallavotti Cavallero, Daniela, and Andrea Brogi, Lo Spedale Grande di Siena: fatti urbanistici e architettonici del Santa Maria della Scala: ricerche, riflessioni, interrogativi (Florence, 1987) Gamannossi, Marco, L’Abbazia di San Salvatore a Settimo: un respire profundo mille anni (Florence, 2013) Gardner, Julian, ‘The Influence of Popes’ and Cardinals’ Patronage on the Introduction of the Gothic Style into Rome and the Surrounding Area, 1254–1305’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1969. Gardner, Julian, ‘The Decoration of the Baroncelli Chapel in Santa Croce’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 34 (1971), 89–114 Gardner, Julian, ‘Pope Nicholas IV and the Decoration of Santa Maria Maggiore’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 36 (1973), 1–50 Gardner, Julian, ‘Saint Louis of Toulouse, Robert of Anjou and Simone Martini’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 39 (1976), 12–33 Gardner, Julian, ‘Fronts and Backs: Setting and Structure’, in La Pittura nel XIV e XV secolo Il Contributo dell’analisi tecnica alla storia dell’arte, ed. Henk van Os and J.R.J. Asperen de Boer (Bologna, 1985), pp. 297–322

327

328

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gardner, Julian, ‘The Back of the Panel of Christ Discovered in the Temple by Simone Martini’, Arte Cristiana 78 (1990), 389–98 Gardner, Julian, ‘The Family Chapel: Artistic Patronage and Architectural Transformation in Italy’, in Art, cérémonial et liturgie au Moyen Age, ed. Nicolas Bock and Peter Kurmann (Rome, 2002), pp. 545–64 Gardner, Julian, ‘Giotto in America (and Elsewhere)’, in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art 61 (Washington, DC, 2002), pp. 161–81 Gardner, Julian, ‘Stone Saints: Commemoration and Likeness in ThirteenthCentury Italy, France, and Spain’, Gesta 46 (2007), 121–34 Gardner, Julian, Giotto and His Publics: Three Paradigms of Patronage (Cambridge, MA, 2011) Gardner, Julian, The Roman Crucible: The Artistic Patronage of the Papacy 1198–1304 (Munich, 2013) Gardner, Julian, ‘Il polittico Baroncelli per Santa Croce: gli ultimi anni a Firenze’, in Giotto, l’Italia, ed. Serena Romano and Pietro Petraroia, exh. cat. Palazzo Reale, Milan (Milan: 2015), pp. 140–53 Gardner, Julian, ‘Painters, Inquisitors, and Novices: Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi, and Filippo Lippi at Santa Croce’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 60 (2018), 222–53 Gardner von Teuffel, Christa, ‘The Buttressed Altarpiece: A Forgotten Aspect of Tuscan Fourteenth Century Altarpiece Design’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 21 (1979), 21–65 Garin, Eugenio, Il pensiero pedagogico dello umanesimo (Florence, 1958) Garnett, Jane, and Gervase Rosser, Spectacular Miracles: Transforming Images in Italy, from the Renaissance to the Present (London, 2013) Garrison, Edward B., Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949) Garrison, Edward B., ‘Sienese Historical Writings and the Dates 1260, 1221, 1262 applied to Sienese Paintings’, in Studies in the History of Medieval Italian Painting, IV (Florence, 1960–62), pp. 23–58 Garrison, Edward B., Giovanni Freni, Achim Timmermann, Joanna Cannon, and Constance Hill, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index. A New Edition on CD-ROM with Revised Bibliography and Iconclass (London, 1998) Gavazzi, Giuseppe, ‘Technical Report on the Guidoriccio Fresco’, The Burlington Magazine 128 (1986), 256–9 Gaynor, J.S., and Ilaria Toesca, San Silvestro in Capite (Rome, 1963) Geary, Patrick J., Furta sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, 1990) Geens, Francesca, ‘“Ungs très petiz tableaux à pignon, qui cloent et ouvrent, esmaillez dehors et dedens”: A Study of Small Scale, Folding, Pieces of Goldsmiths’ Work in Fourteenth-Century Europe’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2002

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gehl, Paul F., A Moral Art: Grammar, Society and Culture in Trecento Florence (Ithaca, NY, 1993) Gentili, Luigi, Codici palatini, 3 vols (Rome, 1889) Gerevini, Stefania, ‘Invisible, in Full View: The Byzantine Relics of Santa Maria Della Scala in Siena’, in Visibilité et présence de l’image dans l’espace ecclésial. Byzance et Moyen Age Occidental, ed. Sulamith Brodbeck and Anne-Orange Poilpré (Paris, 2019), pp. 195–231 Ghignoli, Antonella, Carte dell’Archivio di Stato di Siena. Opera Metropolitana, 1000–1200 (Siena, 1994) Giacchetti, Giovanni, Historia della venerabile chiesa e monastero di S. Silvestro de Capite di Roma (Rome, 1629) Giansante, Massimo, ‘Petronio e gli altri: culti civici e culti corporativi a Bologna in età comunale’, in L’eredità culturale di Gino Fasoli, ed. Francesco Bocchi and Gian Maria Varanini (Rome, 2005), pp. 357–77 Gill, Joseph, The Council of Florence (Cambridge, 1959) Gill, Meredith J., Angels and the Order of Heaven in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 2014), Giorgi, Silvia, ‘Maestro padano, San Domenico moltiplica i pani’, in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica, exh. cat. Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna (Venice, 2000), pp. 145–9, cat. no. 30 Giotto: bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi, exh. cat. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (Florence, 2000) Giotto, l’Italia, ed. Serena Romano and Pietro Petraroia, exh. cat. Palazzo Reale, Milan (Milan: 2015) Giotto e il Trecento: ‘il piu sovrano maestro stato in dipintura’, ed. Alessandro Tomei, exh. cat. Complesso del Vittoriano, Rome (Milan, 2009) Giura, Giovanni, San Francesco di Asciano: opere, fonti e contesti per la storia della Toscana francescana (Florence, 2018) Glazer, Joshua E., ‘From Dossale to Macchina: The Silver Altar of Saint John the Baptist and Its Symbolic Function in Florence’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2008 Goldthwaite, Richard, The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History (Baltimore, MD, 1982) Goldthwaite, Richard, The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore, MD, 2009) Gombrich, Ernst H., ‘Tobias and the Angel’, Harvest, Volume 1 (Travel) (1948), 63–7 Gordon, Dillian, ‘Art in Umbria c. 1250–c. 1350’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1979 Gordon, Dillian, ‘A Sienese Verre Eglomisé and its Setting’, The Burlington Magazine 123 (1981), 148–53 Gordon, Dillian, ‘The Mass Production of Franciscan Piety: Another Look at Some Umbrian verres eglomisés’, Apollo 140 (1994), 33–42

329

330

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grillotti, Giuliana, ‘Un calice con smalti nel museo di Camaiore’, in Oreficerie e smalti traslucidi nell’antica diocesi di Lucca, ed. Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti et al. (Florence, 1986), pp. 74–84 Guasti, Cesare, Le feste di San Giovanni Battista in Firenze: descrite in prosa e in rima per i contemporanei (Florence, 1884) Guidotti, Alessandro, ‘Vicende storico-artistiche della Badia Fiorentina’, in La Badia Fiorentina, ed. Ernesto Sestan, Maurilio Adriani, and Alessandro Guidotti (Florence, 1982), pp. 49–231, 273–90 Guillelmi Duranti Rationale Divinorum Officiorum I–IV, ed. Anselmus Davril and Timothy Thibodeau, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis CXL (Turnhout, 1995) Günter Zehnder, Frank, Katalog der Altkölner Malerei (Cologne, 1990) Hahn, Cynthia J., Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Century (Berkeley, CA, 2001) Haines, Margaret, ‘Il principio di “mirabilissime cose”: i mosaici per la volta della Cappella di San Zanobi in Santa Maria del Fiore’, in La difficile eredità: Architettura a Firenze dalla repubblica all’assedio, ed. Marco Dezzi Bardeschi, A-Letheia 5 (Florence, 1994) Haines, Margaret, ‘Documentation on the Gates of Paradise: Through a Glass Darkly’, in The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Renaissance Masterpiece, ed. Gary M. Radke (Atlanta, GA, 2007), pp. 81–5 Hamburger, Jeffrey, ‘The Visual and the Visionary: The Image in Late Medieval Monastic Devotions’, Viator 20 (1989), 161–82 Hamburger, Jeffrey, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York, 1998) Hancock, Paula M., ‘Transformations in the Iconography of the Mirror in Medieval Art’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Emory University, Atlanta, 1988 A Handbook of Dates for Students of British History, ed. C.R. Cheney, revised Michael Jones (Cambridge, 2000) Harris, Anne F., ‘Hewn’, in Inhuman Nature, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Washington, DC, 2014), 18–38 Haskell, Francis, History and its Images (London, 1993) Heal, Bridget, ‘“Civitas Virginis”? The Significance of Civic Dedication to the Virgin for the Development of Marian Imagery in Siena before 1311’, in Art, Politics, and Civic Religion in Central Italy, 1261–1352, ed. Joanna Cannon and Beth Williamson (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 295–305 Hegarty, Melinda, ‘Laurentian Patronage in the Palazzo Vecchio: The Frescoes of the Sala dei Gigli’, Art Bulletin 78 (1996), 264–85 Hemsoll, David, ‘Simone Martini’s St John the Evangelist Re-examined: A Panel from an Early Portable Triptych’, Apollo 147 (1998), 3–10 Henderson, John, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence (Oxford and New York, 1994)

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hetherington, Paul, ‘Byzantine Enamels on a Venetian Book Cover’, Cahiers Archéologiques 27 (1978), 117–45 Hetherington, Paul, ‘A Purchase of Byzantine Relics and Reliquaries in Fourteenth-Century Venice’, Arte Veneta 37 (1983), 9–30 Hills, Paul, The Light of Early Italian Painting (New Haven, 1987) Hoch, Adrian S., ‘A New Document for Simone Martini’s Chapel of St Martin at Assisi’, Gesta 24 (1985), 141–6 Hoeniger, Cathleen, The Renovation of Paintings in Tuscany, 1250–1500 (Cambridge, 1995) Holmes, Megan, Fra Filippo Lippi: The Carmelite Painter (New Haven, 1999) Holmes, Megan, The Miraculous Image in Renaissance Florence (New Haven and London, 2013) The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation: Papers from a Colloquium Held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome and the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1996, ed. Herbert L. Kessler and Gerhard Wolf (Bologna, 1998) Hudson, Hugh, ‘From Assisi to Melbourne: Friar Pietro Teutonico’s Nativity; Crucifixion Reliquary Diptych in the National Gallery of Victoria’, in Interpreting Francis and Clare of Assisi from the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Constant J. Mews and Claire Renkin (Mulgrave, N.S.W., 2010), pp. 242–54 Hueck, Irene, ‘Pace di Valentino und die Entwicklung des Kelches im Duecento’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 16 (1982), 259–78 Hueck, Irene, ‘Simone attorno al 1320’, in Simone Martini: atti del convegno, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), pp. 49–54 Hueck, Irene, ‘Ein umbrisches Reliquiar im Kunstgewerbemuseum Schloss Köpenick’, Forschungen und Berichte. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 31 (1991), 183–8 Hueck, Irene, ‘Il calice Salterelli di Londra e l’oreficeria gotica pisana’, in Oreficerie e smalti in Europa fra XIII e XV secolo: atti del convegno di studi Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 7–8 novembre 1996, ed. Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, ser. 4, 2 (1997), 31–6 Hueck, Irene, ‘Die Entwicklung des gotischen Messkelchs in Italien und seine Darstellungen in der Malerei’, in Zeremoniell und Raum in der frühen italienischen Malerei, ed. Stefan Weppelmann (Petersberg, 2007), pp. 52–9 Humphreys, K.W., The Library of the Franciscans of Siena in the Late Fifteenth Century (Amsterdam, 1978) Hyman, Timothy, Sienese Painting (London, 2003) Ilardi, Vincent, Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes (Philadelphia, 2007) Images, Relics, and Devotional Practices in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. Sally J. Cornelison and Scott B. Montgomery (Tempe, 2006)

331

332

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

‘Imagine antica’: Madonna and Child of Santa Maggiore in Florence. Studies and Restoration, ed. Marco Ciatti and Cecilia Frosinini (Florence, 2003) Ini, Anna M., ‘Nuovi documenti sugli spirituali in Toscana’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 66 (1973), 305–77 Ini, Anna, ‘Gli spirituali in Toscana’, in Eretici e ribelli del XIII e XIV sec: saggi sullo spiritualismo francescano in Toscana, ed. Domenico Maselli (Pistoia, 1974), pp. 233–52 Israëls, Machtelt, ‘Altars on the Street: The Wool Guild, the Carmelites and the Feast of Corpus Domini in Siena (1356 –1456)’, Renaissance Studies 20 (2006), 180–200 Jackson, Beth, ‘The Madonna Lactans: A Reappraisal’, unpublished MA dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1992 Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ, 1993) Jäggi, Carola, Frauenklöster im Spätmittelalter: Die Kirchen der Klarissen und Dominikanerinnen im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Petersberg, 2006) Jansen, Katherine Ludwig, ‘Review of Joanna Cannon and André Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999)’, Studies in Iconography 22 (2001), 169–72 Janson-La Palme, Robert J.H., ‘Taddeo Gaddi’s Baroncelli Chapel: Studies in Design and Content’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1976 Jeffrey, David, ‘Franciscan Spirituality and the Growth of Vernacular Culture’, in By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought, ed. David Jeffrey (Ottawa, 1979), pp. 143–60 John of Caulibus, Meditations on the Life of Christ, trans. and ed. Francis X. Taney, Sr, Anne Miller, and C. Mary Stallings-Taney (Asheville, NC, 2000) Johnson, Timothy J., ‘Visual Imagery and Contemplation in Clare of Assisi’s “Letters to Agnes of Prague”’, Mystics Quarterly 19 (1993), 161–72 Jones, Charles W., The Saint Nicholas Liturgy and its Literary Relationships (Ninth to Twelfth Centuries) (Berkeley, CA, 1963) Jung, Jacqueline E., ‘The Tactile and the Visionary: Notes on the Place of Sculpture in the Medieval Religious Imagination’, in Looking Beyond: Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art & History, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton and University Park, PA, 2010), pp. 203–40 Jurdjevic, Mark, Guardians of Republicanism: The Valori Family in the Florentine Renaissance (Oxford and New York, 2008) Kanter, Laurence B., ‘Maestro delle Effigi Domenicane’, in Dizionario biografico dei miniatori Italiani. Secoli IX–XVI, ed. Milvia Bollati (Milan, 2004), pp. 498–500 Käppeli, Thomas, Le procès contre Thomas Waleys (Rome, 1936) Kapustka, Mateusz, ‘Das Entfalten der Lektüre von imitatio: ein Passionsaltärchen aus dem mittelalterlichen Klarenstift in Breslau als

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

performatives Bilderwerk’, in Frauen – Kloster –Kunst: neue Forschungen zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters; Beiträge zum Internationalen Kolloquium vom 13. bis 16. Mai 2005 anlässlich der Ausstellung ‘Krone und Schleier’, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Carola Jäggi, Susan Marti, and Hedwig Röckelein (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 105–12, 427, 480–2 Karnes, Michelle, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago and London, 2011) Keene, Bryan C., ‘Introduction’ and ‘Preparing the Soul for Heaven through Text and Song: Liturgical Manuscripts’, in Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300–1350, ed. Christine Sciacca, exh. cat. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, 2012), pp. 1–7, 93–7, 326–33 Keene, Bryan C., ‘A Framework for Viewing Trecento Italian Workshop Practices: The Saint Francis Cycle at Assisi and Manuscript Illumination’, in Encountering the Renaissance: Celebrating Gary Radke and 50 Years of the Syracuse University Graduate Program in Renaissance Art, ed. Molly Bourne and Victor Coonin (Ramsey, NJ, 2016), pp. 353–64 Keene, Bryan C., ‘Many Voices, Many Hands: Artist Collaboration and Workshop Practice in Early Fourteenth-Century Choir Books from Florence’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2018 Keene, Bryan C., ‘Pacino di Bonaguida: A Critical and Historical Reassessment of Artist, Oeuvre, and Choir Book Illumination in Trecento Florence’, immediations, The Courtauld Institute of Art Journal of Postgraduate Research 4, no. 4 (2019), 21–47 Keene, Bryan C., ‘Pacino di Bonaguida (c. 1303–1347), the Master of the Dominican Effigies, and Associates: Miniatures from the Laudario of Sant’Agnese’, in The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts: A Handbook, ed. Stella Panayotova (Turnhout, 2020), pp. 326–36 Keene, Bryan C., ‘Maestro Daddesco (cat. no. 10)’, in The Burke Collection of Italian Manuscript Paintings, ed. Sandra Hindman and Federica Toniolo (London, 2021), pp. 116–25 Keene, Bryan C., ‘Master of the Dominican Effigies (cat. no. 9)’, in The Burke Collection of Italian Manuscript Paintings, ed. Sandra Hindman and Federica Toniolo (London, 2021), pp. 104–15 Keene, Bryan C., ‘Pacino di Bonaguida (cat. nos 7-8)’, in The Burke Collection of Italian Manuscript Paintings, ed. Sandra Hindman and Federica Toniolo (London, 2021), pp. 88–103 Keene, Bryan C., and Nancy Turner, ‘The Impruneta Antiphonary: Reframing the Collaborative Process in Works Attributed to Pacino di Bonaguida’, presented at Revealing the Early Renaissance Symposium, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (23 March 2013), forthcoming Kessler, Herbert, ‘Speculum’, Speculum 86 (2011), 1–41 Kiel, Hanna, Il Museo del Bigallo (Florence, 1977)

333

334

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Klebanoff, Randi, ‘Sacred Magnificence: Civic Intervention and the Arca of San Domenico in Bologna’, Renaissance Studies 13 (1999), 412–29 Klesse, Brigitte, Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967) Knoth, Ernst, Ubertino von Casale: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Franziskaner an der Wende des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts (Marburg, 1903) Knox, Lezlie S., Creating Clare of Assisi: Female Franciscan Identities in Later Medieval Italy (Leiden/Boston, 2008) Koch, Josef, Durandus de S. Porciano, O.P.: Forschungen zum Streit um Thomas von Aquin zu Beginn des 14. Jahrhunderts (Münster, 1927) Krause, Karin, ‘Immagine-Reliquia: da Bisanzio all’Occidente’, in Mandylion: intorno al ‘Sacro Volto’, da Bisanzio a Genova, ed. Gerhard Wolf, Colette Dufour Bozzo, and Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti (Milan, 2004), pp. 209–35 Krautheimer Richard, and Trude Krautheimer-Hess, Lorenzo Ghiberti (Princeton, 1982) Kreytenberg, Gert, ‘Image and Frame: Remarks on Orcagna’s Pala Strozzi’, Burlington Magazine 134 (1992), 634–8 Kreytenberg, Gert, Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: ein universeller Künstler der Gotik in Florenz (Mainz, 2000) Krischel, Roland, ‘Handelnde Bilder: Zur Kinetik des Klappbildes in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit’, in Mobile Eyes: peripatetisches Sehen in den Bildkulturen der Vormoderne, ed. David Ganz and Stefan Neuner (Munich, 2013), pp. 243–73 Krone und Schleier: Kunst aus mittelalterlichen Frauenklöstern, ed. Jutta Frings and Jan Gerchow, exh. cat. Essen, Ruhrlandmuseum, and Bonn, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich, 2005) Krüger, Klaus, Der frühe Bildkult des Franziskus in Italien: Gestalt- und Funktionswandel des Tafelbildes im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1992) Krüger, Klaus‚ ‘Mimesis als Bildlichkeit des Scheins – Zur Fiktionalität religiöser Bildkunst im Trecento’, in Künstlerischer Austausch – Artistic Exchange, Tagungsakten (XXVIII Internationaler Kongress für Kunstgeschichte, Berlin 15.–20. Juli 1992), ed. Thomas W. Gaethgens (Berlin, 1993), II, pp. 423–36 Krüger, Klaus, ‘Medium and Imagination: Aesthetic Aspects of Trecento Panel Painting’, in Italian Panel Painting in the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art 61 (Washington, DC, 2002), pp. 57–81 Kruse, Christiane, ‘Vera Icon – oder die Leerstellen des Bildes’, in Quel Corps? Eine Frage der Repräsentation, ed. Hans Belting, Dietmar Kamper, and Martin Schulz (Munich, 2002), pp. 105–29 Kupfer, Marcia, ‘The Lost Wheel Map of Ambrogio Lorenzetti’, Art Bulletin 78 (1996), 286–310

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kuryluk, Ewa, Veronica and her Cloth: History, Symbolism, and Structure of a ‘True’ Image (Cambridge, MA and Oxford, 1991) Labriola, Ada, ‘Gli affreschi della cappella di San Niccolò nell’antico Palazzo dei Vescovi a Pistoia’, Arte Cristiana 76 (1988), 247–66 Labriola, Ada, ‘Pacino di Bonaguida’, in Dizionario biografico dei miniatori italiani. Secoli IX–XVI, ed. Milvia Bollati (Milan, 2004), pp. 841–3 Labriola, Ada, ‘Alcune proposte per la miniature fiorentina del Trecento’, Arte Cristiana 93 (2005), 14–26 Ladis, Andrew, Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonné (Columbia, MO and London, 1982) Le Bachelet, Xavier, ‘Benoît XII’, in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, II (Paris, 1910), cols 653–704 Leclercq, Henri, ‘Annonciation (Fête de L’)’, in Dictionnaire d’archéologie Chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. Fernand Cabrol, I, part 2 (Paris, 1905), cols 2241–55 Leggenda di Tobia e di Tobiolo, ed. Michele Vanucci, (Milan, 1825) Lentes, Thomas, ‘Inneres Auge, äußerer Blick und heilige Schau: ein Diskussionsbeitrag zur visuellen Praxis in Frömmigkeit und Moraldidaxe des späten Mittealters’, in Frömmigkeit im Mittealter: politisch-soziale Kontexte, visuelle Praxis, körperliche Ausdrucksformen, ed. Klaus Schreiner (Munich, 2002), pp. 179–220 Leoncini, Giovanni and Alessandro Bicchi, ‘Il culto dei santi in cattedrale’, in La cattedrale come spazio sacro, I, ed. Timothy Verdon and Annalisa Innocenti, 2 vols (Florence, 2001), pp. 299–304 Leone de Castris, Pierluigi, ‘Tondino di Guerrino e Andrea Riguardi, orafi e smaltisti a Siena (1308–1338)’, Prospettiva 21 (1980), 24–44 Leone de Castris, Pierluigi, Simone Martini: catalogo completo dei dipinti (Florence, 1989) Leone de Castris, Pierluigi, ‘Sull’enigma dello stile di Guccio’, in Oreficerie e smalti in Europa fra XIII e XV secolo: atti del convegno di studi Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 7–8 novembre 1996, ed. Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 2, ser. 4 (Pisa, 1997), pp. 13–19 Leone de Castris, Pierluigi, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003) Lesnick, Daniel, Preaching in Medieval Florence: The Social World of Franciscan and Dominican Spirituality (Athens, GA, 1989) Levin, William R., ‘Studies in the Imagery of Mercy in Late Medieval Italian Art’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, 1983 Levin, William R., ‘Advertising Charity in the Trecento: The Public Decorations of the Misericordia in Florence’, Studies in Iconography 17 (1996), 215–309 Levin, William R., ‘Lost Children, a Working Mother, and the Progress of an Artist at the Florentine Misericordia in the Trecento’, Enarratio: Publications of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 6 (1999), 34–94

335

336

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Levin, William R., The Allegory of Mercy at the Misericordia in Florence: Historiography, Context, Iconography, and the Documentation of Confraternal Charity in the Trecento (Dallas and Oxford, 2004) Lewis, Flora, ‘The Wound in Christ’s Side and the Instruments of the Passion: Gendered Experience and Response’, in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane H.M. Taylor (London/Toronto/Buffalo, 1997), pp. 204–29 Liberati, Alfredo, ‘Chiese, monasteri, oratori e spedali senesi’, Bullettino senese di storia patria 65 (1958), 137–52 Il libro del Biadaiolo, ed. Giuliano Pinto (Florence, 1978) Lindberg, David, ‘Lines of Influence in Thirteenth-Century Optics: Bacon, Witelo, and Pecham’, Speculum 46 (1971), 66–83 Lindberg, David, ‘Science as Handmaiden: Roger Bacon and the Patristic Tradition’, Isis 78 (1987), 518–36 Lollini, Fabrizio, ‘Cenni sull’iconografia di San Domenico nell’arte bolognese: l’arca e altri casi tra XIII e XIV secoli’, España y Bolonia: siete siglos de relaciones artísticas y culturales, ed. José Luis Colomer and Amadeo Serra Desfilis (Madrid, 2006), pp. 65–76 Longhi, Roberto, ‘Un esercizio sul Daddi’ [1950], reprinted in ‘Giudizio sul Duecento’ e ricerche sul Trecento nell’Italia centrale (Florence, 1974), pp. 82–5 Longhi, Roberto, ‘Qualità e industria in Taddeo Gaddi’ [1959], reprinted in ‘Giudizio sul Duecento’ e ricerche sul Trecento nell’Italia centrale (Florence, 1974), pp. 85–101 Longhi, Roberto, ‘Stefano Fiorentino’ [1951], reprinted in ‘Giudizio sul Duecento’ e ricerche sul Trecento nell’Italia centrale (Florence, 1974), pp. 64–82 Lonjon, Marianne, ‘Précisions sur la provenance du retable dit “de Colle di Val d’Elsa” de Lippo Memmi’, Revue du Louvre 56 (April 2006), 31–40 Loseries, Wolfgang, ‘Presentation of Relics in Late Medieval Siena: The Cappella delle Reliquie in Siena Cathedral’, in Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary Study of Relics and Relic Veneration in the Medieval Period, ed. James Robinson, Lloyd de Beer, and Anna Harnden (London, 2014), pp. 56–65 Lossky, Vladimir, The Vision of God (New York, 1983) Luchinat, Cristina Acidini, and Enrica Neri Lusanna, eds, Maso di Banco: La cappella di San Silvestro (Milan, 1998) Lugarini, Renato, Il capitolo dell’ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala: Aspetti istituzionali e riflessi documentari (Siena, fine XII–XIV secolo) (Pisa, 2011) Lungarini, Renato, ‘L’hôpital Santa Maria della Scala: une institution siennoise’, trans. Didier Boisseuil, Médiévales 54 (2008), 99–111 Lunghi, Elvio, ‘La perduta decorazione trecentesca nell’abside della chiesa inferiore del S. Francesco ad Assisi’, Collectanea Francescana 66 (1996), 497–510

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lusini, Vittorio, Storia della Basilica di S. Francesco in Siena (Siena, 1894) Maginnis, Hayden, ‘The Guidoriccio Controversy: Notes and Observations’, RACAR 15/2 (1988), 137–44 Maginnis, Hayden B.J., ‘The Lost Façade Frescoes from Siena’s Ospedale di S. Maria della Scala’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 51 (1988), 180–94 Maginnis, Hayden, Painting in the Age of Giotto: A Historical Reevaluation (University Park, PA, 1997) Maginnis, Hayden, The World of the Early Sienese Painter (University Park, PA, 2001) Maier, Anneliese, Ausgehendes Mittelalter: gesammelte Aufsätze zur Geistesgeschichte des 14. Jahrhunderts, III (Rome, 1977), pp. 319–590 Maione, Italo, ‘Fra Simone Fidati e Taddeo Gaddi’, L’arte 16 (1914), 107–19 Mallory, Michael, and Gordon Moran, ‘Guidoriccio da Fogliano: A Challenge to the Famous Fresco Long Ascribed to Simone Martini and the Discovery of a New One in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena’, Studies in Iconography 7–8 (1981–82), 1–11 Mallory, Michael, and Gordon Moran, ‘New Evidence Concerning “Guidoriccio”’, The Burlington Magazine 128 (1986), 250–9 Mancini, Girolamo, ‘Il bel S. Giovanni e le feste patronali di Firenze descritte nel 1475 da Piero Cennini’, Rivista d’arte 6 (1909), 185–227 Manetti, Roberta, Laudario di Santa Maria della Scala (Florence, 1993) I manoscritti italiani della Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze, ed. Adolfo Bartoli, 4 vols (Florence, 1879–85) Maphei Vegii Laudensis oratoris ac poetae celeberrimi opera… (Lodi, 1613) Marchetti, Luciana, ‘Aldobrandeschi’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, II (Rome, 1960), pp. 93–100 Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, Cronaca fiorentina di Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, ed. Niccolò Rodolico, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XXX, parte 1 (Città di Castello, 1903) Marciari, John, Italian, Spanish, and French Paintings before 1850 in the San Diego Museum of Art (San Diego, 2015), pp. 32–7 Marco Romano e il contesto artistico senese fra la fine del Duecento e gli inizi del Trecento, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli, exh. cat. Museo Civico Archeologico e della Collegiata, Casole d’Elsa (Milan, 2010) Marcucci, Luisa, Gallerie Nazionali di Firenze: i dipinti toscani del secolo XIV (Rome, 1965) Martindale, Andrew, The Rise of the Artist in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (London, 1972) Martindale, Andrew, ‘Novelty in Simone Martini: Problems of Interpretation’, in Romanesque and Gothic: Essays for George Zarnecki, ed. Neil Stratford (London, 1985), pp. 153–7 Martindale, Andrew, ‘The Problem of Guidoriccio’, The Burlington Magazine 128 (1986), 259–73 Martindale, Andrew, Simone Martini: Complete Edition (Oxford, 1988)

337

338

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Martindale, Andrew, ‘Simone Martini and the Problem of Retirement’, in Medieval Architecture and its Intellectual Context, Studies in Honour of Peter Kidson, ed. Eric Fernie and Paul Crossley (London, 1990), pp. 283–8 Martini, Giuseppe, ‘Siena da Montaperti alla Caduta dei Nove’, Bullettino senese di storia patria 68 (1961), 75–128 Märtl, Claudia, ‘“Eine der schönsten Kirchen der Toskana”: Zur Baugeschichte von San Francesco in Siena im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert’, in Kunst-Kontexte: Festschrift für Heidrun Stein-Kecks, ed. HansChristoph Dittscheid, Doris Gerstl, and Simone Hespers (Petersberg, 2016), pp. 109–17 Marzini, Rovigo, Colle di Val d’Elsa e i suoi valori (Siena, 1938) Masini, Antonio, Bologna perlustrata, 3 vols (Bologna, 1666, anastatic reprint, Bologna, 1986) Massey, Lyle, Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies: Anamorphosis in Early Modern Theories of Perspective (University Park, PA, 2007) Massing, Jean Michel, ‘Der Stern des Giotto’, in Die Kunst und das Studium der Natur vom 14. zum 16. Jahrhundert, ed. Wolfram Prinz and Andreas Beyer (Weinheim, 1987), pp. 159–71 Masterpieces of Medieval Art, ed. James Robinson (London, 2008) Matthieu de Vendôme, Thobias, ed. Friedrich A.W. Mueldener (Gottingen, 1855) Mazza, Clemente, La vita di San Zanobi cittadino et vescovo fiorentino (Florence, 1559), pp. 47–52 Mazzatini, Giuseppe, Inventari dei manoscritti delle biblioteche d’Italia, 115 vols (Forlì, 1887–) McNamer, Sarah, ‘The Author of the Italian Meditations on the Life of Christ’, in New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall, ed. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, John J. Thompson, and Sarah Baechle (Notre Dame, IN, 2014), pp. 119–37 The ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi’ Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Text and Image, ed. Holly Flora and Péter Tóth (Turnhout, 2021) Le Meditationes Vitae Christi in volgare secondo il codice Paris, BnF, it. 115. Edizione, commentario e riproduzione del corredo iconografico, ed. Diego Dotto, Dávid Falvay, and Antonio Montefusco (Venice, 2021) Meiss, Millard, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton, 1951) Meissen, Karl, Nikolauskult und Nikolausbrauch in Abendlande (Düsseldorf, 1931) Melloni, Giovambattista, Vita di S. Domenico, fondatore dell’Ordine de’ Predicatori (Naples, 1791) Meschede, Petra, Bilderzählungen in der kölnischen Malerei des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts: eine Untersuchung zum Bildtypus und zur Funktion (Paderborn, 1994)

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mézières, Philippe, The Life of Saint Peter Thomas, ed. Joachim Smet (Rome, 1954) Middeldorf Kosegarten, Antje, ‘Beiträge zur sienesischen Reliefkunst des Trecento’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 12 (1966), 207–24 Middeldorf Kosegarten, Antje, ‘Scultori senesi intorno al 1300 e la pittura romana ed assisiana’, in Roma anno 1300, ed. Angiola Maria Romanini (Rome, 1983), pp. 87–92 Middeldorf Kosegarten, Antje, Sienesische Bildhauer am Duomo Vecchio: Studien zur Skulptur in Siena 1250–1330 (Munich, 1984) Middeldorf Kosegarten, Antje, ‘Simone Martini e la scultura senese contemporanea’, in Simone Martini: atti del Convegno, Siena 27–28 March 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), pp. 193–202 Middeldorf Kosegarten, Antje, ‘Die erste Marmorstatue des heiligen Franziskus’, Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 46/47 (1994), 495–505 Milanesi, Gaetano, Documenti per la storia dell’arte senese, 3 vols (Siena, 1854–56) Milanesi, Gaetano, ‘Documenti intorno alla Pia de’ Tolomei ed a Nello de’ Pannocchieschi suo marito’, Giornale storico degli archivi toscani 3 (1859), 17–45 Miller, Maureen C., The Bishop’s Palace: Architecture and Authority in Medieval Italy (Ithaca, NY, 2002) Miller, Maureen C., ‘The Saint Zenobius Dossal by the Master of the Bigallo and the Cathedral Chapter of Florence’, Haskins Society Journal 19 (2007), 65–81 Miller, Maureen C., Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe c. 800–1200 (Ithaca, NY, 2014) Miniature a Brera, 1100–1422: manoscritti della Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense e da Collezioni private, ed. Miklós Boskovits with Giovanni Valagussa and Milvia Bollati (Milan, 1997) ‘Die “Miracula beati Dominici” der Schwester Caecilia’, ed. Angelus Maria Walz, Archivium Fratrum Praedicatroum 37 (1967), 5–45 Mognetti, Elisabeth, and Marianne Lonjon, ‘Le panneau double-face du Maitre des Anges Rebelles: recherches sur l’image et la forme’, in Hommage à Michel Laclotte. Etudes sur la peinture du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance, ed. Pierre Rosenberg, Cécile Scailliérez, and Dominique Thiébaut (Milan and Paris, 1994), pp. 35–49 Mombritius, Boninus, Sanctuarium seu Vitae Sanctorum, 2 vols (Paris, 1910) Montefusco, Antonio, ‘Autoritratto del dissidente da giovane: gli anni della formazione di Ubertino nel primo Prologo dell’Arbor vitae’, in Ubertino da Casale: atti del XLI Convegno Internazionale, Assisi 18–20 ottobre 2013, ed. Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani (Spoleto, 2014), pp. 27–82

339

340

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Montevecchi, Benedetta, ‘Oreficeria Toscana nelle Marche’, in Marche e Toscana: terre di grandi maestri tra Quattro e Seicento, ed. Silvia Blasio (Pisa, 2007), pp. 261–76 Moorman, John R.H., A History of the Franciscan Order: From its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford, 1968) Morpurgo, Salomone, I manoscritti della Reale Biblioteca Riccardiana di Firenze: manoscritti italiani (Rome, 1900) Morris, Edward, and Martin Hopkinson, Walker Art Gallery: Foreign Catalogue (Liverpool, 1977) Morris, Richard K., ‘Tewkesbury Abbey: The Despenser Mausoleum’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 93 (1974), 142–55 Moscadelli, Stefano, ‘Apparato burocratico e finanze del Comune di Siena sotto i Dodici (1355–1368)’, Bullettino senese di storia patria 89 (1982), 29–118 Moskowitz, Anita Fiderer, ‘Giovanni di Balduccio’s Arca di San Pietro Martire: Form and Function’, Arte Lombarda 96/97 (1991), 7–18 Moskowitz, Anita Fiderer, Italian Gothic Sculpture c. 1250–c. 1400 (Cambridge, 2001) Mostra del Tesoro di Firenze sacra (Florence, 1933) Mostra di arte sacra antica dalle diocesi di Firenze, Fiesole e Prato, exh. cat. Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (Florence, 1961) Mueller, Joan, Clare’s Letters to Agnes: Texts and Sources (Saint Bonaventure, NY, 2001) Mueller, Joan, A Companion to Clare of Assisi: Life, Writings, and Spirituality (Leiden and Boston, 2010), pp. 165–6 Mussolin, Mauro, ‘La chiesa di San Francesco a Siena: impianto originario e fasi di cantiere’, Bullettino senese di storia patria 106 (1999), 115–55 Natali, Antonio, ‘Lo spazio illusivo’, in La ‘Madonna di Ognissanti’ di Giotto restaurata (Florence, 1992), pp. 51–5 Neff, Amy, ‘Byzantium Westernized, Byzantium Marginalized: Two Icons in the Supplicationes Variae’, Gesta 38 (1999), 81–102 Neff, Amy, ‘“Palma dabit palmam”: Franciscan Themes in a Devotional Manuscript’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 65 (2002), 22–66 Neff, Amy, A Soul’s Journey: Franciscan Art, Theology, and Devotion in the Supplicationes variae (Toronto, 2019) Neilson, Christina, ‘Carving Life: The Meaning of Wood in Early Modern European Sculpture’, in The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices, Cultural Logics, c. 1250–1750, ed. Christy Anderson, Anne Dunlop, and Pamela H. Smith (Manchester, 2015), pp. 223–39 Neri Lusanna, Enrica, ‘Maso di Banco e la cappella Bardi di San Silvestro’, in Maso di Banco: la cappella di San Silvestro, ed. Cristina Acidini Luchinat and Enrica Neri Lusanna (Milan, 1998), pp. 17–50

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Neri Lusanna, Enrica, ‘I Francescani e la scultura’, in L’arte di Francesco: capolavori d’arte Italiana e terre d’Asia dal XIII al XV secolo, ed. Angelo Tartuferi and Francesco D’Arelli, exh. cat. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (Florence, 2015), pp. 115–29 Neri Lusanna, Enrica, ‘Maestro di San Francesco,’ in L’arte di Francesco: capolavori d’arte italiana e terre e d’Asia dal XIII al XV secolo, ed. Angelo Tartuferi and Francesco D’Arelli, exh. cat. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (Florence, 2015), pp. 198–200 Nevola, Fabrizio, ‘Cerimoniali per Santi e Feste a Siena’, in Siena e il suo territorio nel Rinascimento, ed. Mario Ascheri (Siena, 2000) S. Nicola nelle fonti narrative greche, ed. Maria Teresa Bruno (Bari, 1985) Nolan, Edward Peter, Now through a Glass Darkly: Specular Images of Being and Knowing from Virgil to Chaucer (Ann Arbor, MI, 1990) Nordström, Folke, ‘Peterborough, Lincoln, and the Science of Robert Grosseteste: A Study in Thirteenth Century Architecture and Iconography’, Art Bulletin 37 (1955), 241–72 Norman, Diana, ‘The Succorpo in the Cathedral of Naples: “Empress of All Chapels”’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 49 (1986), 323–55 Norman, Diana, ‘Those who Pay, those who Pray and those who Paint: Two Funerary Chapels’, in Siena, Florence, and Padua: Art, Society, and Religion 1280–1400, ed. Diana Norman, II (New Haven, 1995), pp. 169–79 Norman, Diana, Siena and the Virgin: Art and Politics in a Late Medieval City State (New Haven, 1999), pp. 87–103 Norman, Diana, Painting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena (London, 2003) Norman, Diana, ‘Politics and Piety: Locating Simone Martini’s Saint Louis of Toulouse Altarpiece’, Art History 33 (2010), 596–619 Norman, Diana, ‘Sanctity, Kingship and Succession: Art and Dynastic Politics in the Lower Church at Assisi’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 73 (2010), 297–334 Norman, Diana, Siena and the Angevins, 1300–1350: Art, Diplomacy, and Dynastic Ambition (Turnhout, 2018) Nucciotti, Michele, ‘Il palazzo comitale ducale di Santa Fiora (sec. XII– XVIII): archeologia, ruolo storico e architettura’, in Gli Sforza di Santa Fiora e Villa Sforzesca: feudalità e brigantaggio (Atti del Convegno, Castell’Azzara, 17 May 2014), ed. Maurizio Mambrini (Arcidosso, 2015), pp. 225–39 Odoricus (Senensis), Ordo officiorum ecclesiae senensis, ed. Giovanni Crisostomo Trombelli (Bologna, 1766) Offner, Richard, ‘Four Panels, a Fresco and a Problem’, The Burlington Magazine 54 (1929), 224–45 Offner, Richard, A Discerning Eye: Essays on Early Italian Painting by Richard Offner, ed. Andrew Ladis (Philadelphia, 1998)

341

342

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Offner, Richard, with Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting (New York, 1930–65) with continuations by Miklós Boskovits, Mina Gregori, Andrea De Marchi, and Sonia Chiodo (Florence, 1965–) Oliger, Livarius, ‘Litterae confraternitatis a Gundisalvo de Vallebona a.1307 et Michaele de Caesena a.1321 Societati Disciplinantium Senensi concessae’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 13 (1920), 292–3 Oliger, Livarius, De Secta Spiritus Libertatis in Umbria saec. XIV. Disquisitio et documenta (Rome, 1943) Olson, R.J.M., and J.M. Paschoff, ‘Comets, Meteors, and Eclipses: Art and Science in Early Renaissance Italy’, Meteorics and Planetary Science 37 (2002), 1563–78 Opere firmate nell’arte italiana. Medioevo. Sezione: Siena e artisti senesi. Gli orafi, ed. Maria Monica Donato, special issue of Opera Nomina Historiae, Giornale di cultura artistica, 5–6 (2011–12) L’Oratorio di Santa Caterina all’Antella e i suoi pittori, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2009) Oreficeria sacra a Lucca dal XIII al XV secolo, ed. Clara Baracchini, 2 vols (Florence, 1993) Ori, argenti, gemme: restauri dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure, ed. Clarice Innocenti, exh. cat. Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Florence (Florence, 2007), pp. 107–13 L’Oro di Siena. Il tesoro di Santa Maria della Scala, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Milan, 1996) Os, Henk van, Marias Demut und Verherrlichung in der sienesischen Malerei (The Hague, 1969) Os, Henk van, Vecchietta and the Sacristy of the Siena Hospital Church: A Study in Renaissance Religious Symbolism (The Hague, 1974) Os, Henk van, Sienese Altarpieces 1215–1460: Form, Content, Function. Vol. 1: 1215–1344 (Groningen, 1984) Paatz, Walter and Elisabeth, Die Kirchen von Florenz, 6 vols (Frankfurt, 1940–54) Palazzo Pubblico di Siena: vicende costruttive e decorazione, ed. Cesare Brandi (Milan, 1983) Paltrinieri, Giovanni, and Loris Rabiti, La chiesa parrocchiale di Santa Maria e San Domenico della Mascarella in Bologna. Otto secoli di fede e di storia nel cuore della città universitaria (San Lazzaro di Savena, 2013) Panayotova, Stella, and Nancy Turner, ‘Cat. No. 78, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS McClean 201.4, The Last Communion of St Mary Madgalene’, in Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. Stella Panayotova (London, 2016), pp. 282–3 Panis Vivus: Arredi e testimonianze figurative del culto eucaristico dal VI al XIX secolo, ed. Cecilia Alessi and Laura Martini, exh. cat. Museo Civico, Siena (Siena, 1994)

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Paoletti, John T., ‘Wooden Sculpture in Italy as Sacral Presence’, Artibus et historiae 13 (1992), 85–100 Paolo di Tommaso Montauri, ‘Cronaca senese’, in Cronache senesi, ed. Alessandro Lisini and Fabio Iacometti, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XV, parte 6 (Bologna, 1931–36), pp. 173–252, 689–835 Paolucci, Rina, ‘Le storiette dell’evangelo della parte centrale del trittico di S. Chiara’, La porta orientale 4 (1934), 453–83 Papini, Niccolò, L’Etruria francescana o vero raccolta di notizie storiche interessanti l’ordine de’ FF. Minori Conventuali di S. Francesco in Toscana, I (Siena, 1797) Parenti, Daniela, ‘Studi recenti su Orcagna e sulla pittura dopo la “peste nera”’, Arte Cristiana 89 (2001), 325–32 Parenti, Daniela, ‘Qualche approfondimento su Lorenzo Monaco e sulla chiesa di San Procolo a Firenze’, in Intorno a Lorenzo Monaco, ed. Daniela Parenti and Angelo Tartuferi (Livorno, 2007), pp. 20–31 Parenti, Daniela, and Sara Ragazzini, Jacopo del Casentino e la pittura a Pratovecchio nel secolo di Giotto (Florence, 2014) Parsons, Gerald, Siena, Civil Religion, and the Sienese (Aldershot, 2004) Passerini, Luigi, Storia degli stabilimenti di beneficenza e d’istruzione elementare gratuita della città di Firenze (Florence, 1853) Passerini, Luigi, Del ritratto di Dante Alighieri che si vuole dipinto da Giotto nella cappella del Potestà di Firenze (Florence, 1865) Pasut, Francesca, ‘Codici miniati della Commedia a Firenze attorno al 1330: questioni attributive e di cronologia’, Rivista di studi Danteschi 6 (2006), pp. 379–409 Pasut, Francesca, ‘Il “Dante” illustrato di Petrarca: problemi di miniatura tra Firenze e Pisa alla metà del Trecento’, Studi Petrarcheschi 19 (2006), 115–47 Pasut, Francesca, ‘Pacino di Bonaguida e le miniature della Divina Commedia: un percorso tra codici poco noti’, in Da Giotto a Botticelli: pittura fiorentina tra Gotico e Rinascimento: atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Florence, Università degli Studi e Museo di San Marco, 2005, ed. Francesca Pasut and Johannes Tripps (Florence, 2008), pp. 41–62 Pasut, Francesca, ‘“In the shadow of Traini?”: le illustrazioni di un codice dantesco a Berlino e altre considerazioni sulla miniatura pisana del Trecento’, Predella (Primitivi pisani fuori contesto) 27 (2010), 55–78 Pasut, Francesca, ‘Florentine Illuminations for Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Critical Assessment’, in Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300–1350, ed. Christine Sciacca, exh. cat. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, 2012), pp. 154–69, 206–15, nos. 42–4 Patterson, Catherine Schmidt, Alan Phenix, and Karen Trentleman, ‘Scientific Investigation of Painting Practices and Materials in the Works of Pacino di Bonaguida’, in Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance:

343

344

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Painting and Illumination, 1300–1350, ed. Christine Sciacca, exh. cat. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, 2012), pp. 361–71 Patterson Ševčenko, Nancy, ‘The Vita Icon and the Painter as Hagiographer’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 53 (1999), 149–65 Pedrocco, Filippo, Paolo Veneziano (Milan, 2003) Pellegrini, Michele, ‘L’ospedale e il Comune, immagini di una relazione privilegiata’, in Arte e Assistenza a Siena: le copertine dipinte dell’ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, ed. Gabriella Piccinni and Carla Zarrilli (Pisa, 2003), pp. 29–45 Pellegrini, Michele, Chiesa e città: uomini, comunità e istituzioni nella società senese del XII e XIII secolo (Rome, 2004) Pellegrini, Michele, La comunità ospedaliera di Santa Maria della Scala e il suo più antico statuto: Siena, 1305 (Ospedaletto, 2005) Pellegrini, Michele, ‘Le “Limosine di Messer Giovanni”: società, demografia e religione in una fonte Senese del Trecento’, in Uomini Paesaggi Storie: studi di storia medievale per Giovanni Cherubini, ed. Duccio Balestracci et al. (Siena, 2012), II, pp. 997–1016 Pellegrini, Michele, ‘La norma della pubblica pietà: istituzioni comunali, religione e pia loca nella normativa statutaria Senese fino al costituto volgare del 1309’, in Siena nello specchio del suo costituto in volgare del 1309–1310, ed. Nora Giordano and Gabriella Piccinni (Pisa, 2013), pp. 249–94 Pellegrini, Michele, ‘Pietro Pettinaio, beato’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani 83 (2015), pp. 536–9 Petkov, Kiril, The Anxieties of a Citizen Class: The Miracles of the True Cross of San Giovanni Evangelista, Venice 1370–1480 (Leiden, 2014) Pettenati, Silvana, I vetri dorati graffiti e i vetri dipinti (Turin, 1978) Piccinni, Gabriella, ‘L’Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala e la città di Siena nel medioevo’, L’Oro di Siena:. il tesoro di Santa Maria della Scala, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Milan, 1996), pp. 39–47 Piccinni, Gabriella, and Laura Vigni, ‘Modelli di assistenza ospedaliera tra medioevo ed età moderna. Quotidianità, amministrazione, conflitti nell’ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala a Siena’, in La società del bisogno: povertà e assistenza nella Toscana medievale, ed. Giulio Pinto (Florence, 1989), pp. 131–74. Pierini, Marco, Simone Martini (Milan, 2000) Pillon, Lucia, ‘Il monastero della Cella di Trieste dalle origini alla metà del XV secolo’, Metodi e ricerche 1 (1980), 23–40 Piron, Sylvain, ‘Un couvent sous influence: Santa Croce autour de 1300’, in Économie et religion: l’expérience des ordres mendicants (XIIIe–XVe siècle), ed. Nicole Bériou and Jacques Chiffoleau (Lyon, 2009), pp. 321–55 Poeschke, Joachim, Italian Frescoes: The Age of Giotto, 1280–1400 (New York, 2005)

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Poggi, Giovanni, and Margaret Haines, Il Duomo di Firenze: documenti sulla decorazione della chiesa e del campanile tratti dall’archivio dell’opera, 2 vols (Florence, 1988) Poggi, Sandra, ‘I fraticelli in Toscana’, in Eretici e ribelli del XIII e XIV sec.: saggi sullo spiritualismo francescano in Toscana, ed. Domenico Maselli (Pistoia, 1974), pp. 253–83 Poletto, Valeria, ‘Oro e pittura a Venezia attorno all’anno 1300: consuetudini di bottega tra incisione e granitura’, in Rabeschi d’oro: pittura e oreficeria a Venezia in età gotica, ed. Andrea De Marchi and Cristina Guarnieri, special issue of Arte Veneta 71 (Milan, 2014) Polzer, Joseph, ‘Simone Martini’s Guidoriccio da Fogliano: A New Appraisal in the Light of a Recent Technical Examination’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen (1983), 103–41 Polzer, Joseph, ‘Simone Martini’s Guidoriccio Fresco: The Polemic Concerning its Origin Reviewed, and the Fresco Considered as Serving the Military Triumph of a Commune’, RACAR 14 (1987), 16–69 Polzer, Joseph, ‘Symon Martini et Lippus Memmi me Pinxerunt’, in Simone Martini: atti del convegno, Siena 27–8 March 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), pp. 167–73 Pomarici, Francesca, ‘De Opere Romano’, in Bonifacio VIII e il suo tempo, ed. Marina Righetti Tosti-Croce, exh. cat. Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia, Rome (Milan, 2000), pp. 117–20 Pope-Hennessy, John, ‘The Veil of Scepticism’, Times Literary Supplement (24–30 March, 1989), p. 311 Puccinelli, Placido, Cronica dell’Abbadia di Fiorenza (Milan, 1664) Pulinari da Firenze, Dionisio, Cronache dei frati minori della provincia di Toscana, ed. Saturnino Mencherini (Arezzo, 1913) Il quattrocento a Viterbo, ed. Roberto Cannatà, exh. cat. Museo Civico, Viterbo (Rome, 1983) Ragionieri, Giovanna, Duccio: catalogo completo (Florence, 1989) Ragusa, Isa, and Rosalie B. Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Princeton, 1961) Reames, Sherry L., The Legenda Aurea: A Reexamination of its Paradoxical History (Madison, WI, 1985) Richa, Giuseppe, Notizie istoriche delle chiese fiorentine, 10 vols (Rome, 1754–62) Richards, Gertrude R.B., Florentine Merchants in the Age of the Medici (Cambridge, MA, 1932) Richardson, Jessica N., ‘Images, Manuscripts and Hagiolatry: Edward B. Garrison and the Study of Late-Medieval Art’, immediations: The Courtauld Institute of Art Journal of Postgraduate Research 2 (2008), 78–95 Richardson, Jessica N., ‘Medieval Column Crosses in Early Modern Bologna’, Remembering the Middle Ages in Early Modern Italy, ed.

345

346

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lorenzo Pericolo and Jessica N. Richardson (Turnhout, 2015), pp. 193–229 Ringbom, Sixten, Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up in Fifteenth-century Devotional Painting (Åbo, 1965) Rislow, Madeline Ann, ‘Dynamic Doorways: Overdoor Sculpture in Renaissance Genoa’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kansas, 2012 Rislow, Madeline, ‘Sacred Signs: Genoese Portal Sculptures in the Dominican Church of Santa Maria di Castello’, Mendicant Cultures in the Medieval and Early Modern World: Word, Deed, and Image, ed. Sally J. Cornelison, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, and Peter Howard (Turnhout, 2016), pp. 183–222 Roest, Bert, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before the Council of Trent (Leiden, 2004) Roest, Bert, Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares between Foundation and Reform (Leiden/Boston, 2013) Romano, Serena, ‘Review of Anita Fiderer Moskowitz, Nicola Pisano’s Arca di San Domenico and its Legacy (1994)’, Speculum 71 (1996), 183–4 Romano, Serena, ‘The Arca of St Dominic at Bologna’, in Memory and Oblivion (Proceedings of the XXIXth International Congress of the History of Art, Amsterdam, 1–7 September 1996), ed. Wessel Reinink (Dordrecht, 1999), pp. 499–513 Romano, Serena, ‘Le botteghe di Giotto: qualche novità sulla cappella di San Nicola nella basilica inferiore di Assisi’, in Medioevo: le officine, atti del convegno di Parma (22–27 settembre 2009), ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan, 2010), pp. 584–96 Romano, Serena, ‘Giotto XXI secolo’, in Giotto, l’Italia, ed. Serena Romano and Pietro Petraroia, exh. cat. Palazzo Reale, Milan (Milan, 2015), pp. 15–31 Romano, Serena, ‘Giotto, Francesco, i francescani’, in Francesco e la rivoluzione di Giotto, ed. Engelbert Grau, Raoul Manselli, and Serena Romano (Milan, 2018), pp. 87–181, 205–8 Rondoni, Fernando, Catalogo generale dei monumenti e degli oggetti d’arte del regno, Provincia di Firenze, Commune di Bagno a Ripoli Frazione di Ruballa, chiesa parrocchiale di San Giorgio (Florence, 1864) Ronen, Avraham, ‘Due paesaggi nella Pinacoteca di Siena già attribuiti ad Ambrogio Lorenzetti’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 50 (2006), 367–400 Ronsjö, Einar, La vie du Saint Nicolas par Wace: poème religieux du XIIe siècle (Lund, 1942) Rosser, Gervase, ‘Urban Culture and the Church 1300–1540’, in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, ed. David Michael Palliser, Peter Clark, and M.J. Daunton (Cambridge, 2000), I, pp. 335–70 Rotiroti, Marisa Boschi, Codicologia trecentesca della ‘Commedia’: entro e oltre l’antica vulgata (Rome, 2004)

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rowlands, John, ‘The Date of Simone Martini’s Arrival in Avignon’, The Burlington Magazine 107 (1965), 25–6 Ruaro Loseri, Laura, ‘La pittura su tavola, il Trecento e Trieste’, in Pittura su tavola dalle collezioni dei civici musei di storia ed arte di Trieste, ed. Marisa Bianco Fiorin, exh. cat. Trieste, Museo Civico Sartorio (Milan, 1975), pp. 21–37 Rubinstein, Nicolai, The Palazzo Vecchio, 1298–1532: Government, Architecture, and Imagery in the Civic Palace of the Florentine Republic (Oxford and New York, 1995) Rumohr, Carl Friedrich von, Italienische Forschungen, 3 vols (Berlin, 1827–31) Runte, Hans, Keith Wikeley, and Anthony Farrell, The Seven Sages of Rome and the Book of Sindbād: An Analytical Bibliography (New York, 1984) Saalman, Howard, The Bigallo: The Oratory and Residence of the Compagnia del Bigallo e della Misericordia in Florence (New York, 1969) Salmi, Mario, ‘La miniatura fiorentina medioevale’, Accademie e biblioteche d’Italia 20, nos. 1–2, pp. 8–23 Sand, Alexa, Vision, Devotion and Self-Representation in Late Medieval Art (New York, 2014) Sandberg Vavalà, Evelyn, La croce dipinta italiana e l’iconografia della Passione (Verona, 1929) Sandberg Vavalà, Evelyn, ‘Maestro Paolo Veneziano’, The Burlington Magazine 57 (1930), pp. 160–83 Sandler, Lucy Freeman, ‘Face to Face with God: A Pictorial Image of the Beatific Vision’, in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W.M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, 1986), pp. 224–35 Santi, Francesco, ‘Ritrovamento di oreficerie medioevali in S. Domenico di Perugia’, Bolletino d’Arte 40, ser. 4 (1955), 354–8 Satkowski, Jane Immler, Duccio Di Buoninsegna: The Documents and Early Sources (Athens, GA, 2000) Schenk, Gerrit Jasper, ‘Enter the Emperor: Charles IV and Siena between Politics, Diplomacy, and Ritual (1355 and 1368)’, Renaissance Studies 20 (2006), 161–79 Schiaparelli, Luigi, Le carte del Monastero di S. Maria in Firenze (Badia), 2 vols (Rome, 1913–90) Schiller, Gertrud, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, II, Die Passion Jesu Christi (Gütersloh, 1968) Schmidt, Victor M., ‘Portable Polyptychs with Narrative Scenes: Fourteenth-Century De Luxe Objects between Italian Panel Painting and French Arts somptuaires’, in Italian Panel Painting in the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art 61 (Washington, DC, 2002) pp. 395–419 Schmidt, Victor M., Painted Piety: Panel Paintings for Personal Devotion in Tuscany, 1250–1400 (Florence, 2005)

347

348

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Schmidt, Victor M., ‘Una proposta per le tavole di Ambrogio Lorenzetti provenienti dalla chiesa fiorentina di San Procolo’, Prospettiva 181–2 (2021), 23–30 Schmitt, Jean-Claude, Le corps des images: essais sur la culture visuelle au Moyen Âge (Paris, 2002) Schmucki, Ottaviano, The Stigmata of St Francis of Assisi: A Critical Investigation in the Light of Thirteenth-Century Sources (St Bonaventure, NY, 1991) Scultura dipinta: maestri di legname e pittori a Siena, 1250–1450, exh. cat. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena (Florence, 1987) Scultura gotica senese, 1260–1350, ed. Roberto Bartalini (Siena, 2011) Seidel, Max, ‘“Castrum pingatur in palatio” 1. Ricerche storiche e iconografiche sui castelli dipinti nel Palazzo Pubblico di Siena’, Prospettiva 28 (1982), 17–41 Seiler, Peter, ‘Duccio’s Maestà. The Function of the Scenes from the Life of Christ on the Reverse of the Altarpiece: A New Hypothesis’, in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art 61 (Washington, DC, 2002), pp. 251–77 Shepard, Jonathan, ‘Imperial Constantinople: Relics, Palaiologan Emperors, and the Resilience of the Exemplary Centre’, in Byzantines, Latins, and Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean World after 1150, ed. Jonathan Harris, Catherine Holmes, and Eugenia Russell (Oxford, 2012), pp. 61–92 Simone Martini: atti del Convegno, Siena 27–28 March 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988) Simone Martini e ‘chompagni’, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli and Luciano Bellosi, exh. cat. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena (Florence, 1985) Skaug, Erling, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: Attribution, Chronology, and Workshop Relationships in Tuscan Panel Painting, with Particular Consideration to Florence, 2 vols (Oslo, 1994) Skaug, Erling, Giotto and the Flood of Florence in 1333: A Study in Catastrophism, Guild Organization, and Art Technology (Florence, 2013) Smart, Alastair, ‘Taddeo Gaddi, Orcagna, and the Eclipses of 1333 and 1339’, in Studies in Late Medieval and Renaissance Painting in Honor of Millard Meiss, ed. Irving Lavin and John Plummer (New York, 1997), I, pp. 403–14 Solum, Stefanie, Women, Patronage, and Salvation in Renaissance Florence (Farnham, 2015) Solum, Stefanie Lee, ‘Lucrezia’s Saint: The Child Baptist and Medici Redemption in Fifteenth-Century Florence’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2001 Southard, Edna Carter, ‘The Frescoes in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico, 1289– 1359: Studies in Imagery and Relations to Other Communal Palaces in Tuscany’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, 1978

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Stolfi, Casimiro, Leggende di alcuni santi e beati venerati in S. Maria degli Angeli di Firenze (Bologna, 1864) Storia di Tobia e Sposizione della Salveregina, ed. Gaetano Poggiali (Livorno, 1799) Straehle, Gerhard, Die Marstempelthese: Dante, Villani, Boccaccio, Vasari Borghini (Munich, 2001) Strehlke, Carl Brandon, ‘Francis of Assisi: His Culture, His Cult, and His Basilica’, in The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi, ed. Giovanni Morello and Laurence B. Kanter, exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Milan, 1999), pp. 23–51 Strehlke, Carl Brandon, ‘Carpentry and Connoisseurship: The Disassembly of Altarpieces and the Rise of Interest in Italian Art’, in Rediscovering Fra Angelico, ed. Laurence Kanter, Clay Dean, and Carl Brandon Strehlke, exh. cat. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (New Haven, 2001) Strocchi, Claudio, ‘Lo smalto traslucido a Firenze: prime osservazioni sulla bottega di Andrea Arditi’, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 18 (1988), 137–50 Suckale, Robert, ‘Arma Christi: Überlegungen zur Zeichenhaftigkeit mittelalterlicher Andachtsbilder’, Städel-Jahrbuch 6 (1977), 177–208 Swarzenski, Georg, ‘The Localization of Medieval Verre Eglomisé in the Walters Collection’, Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 3 (1940), 54–68 Szafran, Yvonne, and Nancy Turner, ‘Techniques of Pacino di Bonaguida, Illuminator and Panel Painter’, in Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300–1350, ed. Christine Sciacca, exh. cat. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, 2012), pp. 335–55 Taburet-Delahaye, Elisabeth, ‘L’orfèvrerie au poinçon d’Avignon au XIVe siècle’, Revue de l’Art 108 (1995), 1–22 Taburet-Delahaye, Elisabeth, ‘Un calice de Bartolommeo di Tommé, dit Pizino, au musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon’, Bulletin des musées et monuments Lyonnais 7 (1984), 159–78 Tacconi, Marica, ‘The Maestro Daddesco and the Cathedral of Florence: A New Manuscript’, The Burlington Magazine 142 (2000), 165–70 Taft, Robert F., and Annemarie Weyl Carr, ‘Annunciation’, in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. Alexander Kazhdan (New York and Oxford, 1991), I, pp. 106–7 Tartuferi, Angelo, Giotto (Florence, 2005) Tartuferi, Angelo, ‘La Badia Fiorentina: il polittico per l’altare maggiore’, in Giotto, l’Italia, ed. Serena Romano and Pietro Petraroia, exh. cat. Palazzo Reale, Milan (Milan, 2015), pp. 54–63 Tartuferi, Angelo, ‘Cimabue’, in L’arte di Francesco: capolavori d’arte Italiana e terre d’Asia dal XIII al XV secolo, ed. Angelo Tartuferi and Francesco D’Arelli, exh. cat. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (Florence, 2015), pp. 115–29 Terry, Allie, ‘Donatello’s Decapitations and the Rhetoric of Beheading in Medicean Florence’, Renaissance Studies 23 (2009), 609–38

349

350

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Terpstra, Nicholas, ‘Civic Religion’, in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity, ed. John Arnold (Oxford, 2014), pp. 148–65 Tesori d’arte dei Musei Diocesani, ed. Pietro Amato, exh. cat. Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome (Turin, 1986) Thomas, Anabel, ‘Neri di Bicci, Francesco Botticini and the Augustinians’, Arte Cristiana 81 (1993), 282–92 Thunø, Erik, ‘From Holy Fragment to Material Artifact and Back: On Relic and Image in Early Medieval Visual Culture’, in Bulletin of Death and Life Studies 5, ed. Akira Akiyama and Kana Tomizawa (2009), pp. 42–58 Toesca, Pietro, Il Trecento (Turin, 1951) Tognoli Bardin, Luisa, ‘Master of the Santa Chiara Triptych’, in The Martello Collection: Paintings, Drawings and Miniatures from the XIVth to the XVIIIth centuries, ed. Miklós Boskovits (Florence, 1985), pp. 90–3 Toker, Franklin, ‘Excavations below the Cathedral of Florence, 1965–1974’, Gesta 14 (1975), 17–36 Toker, Franklin, ‘Arnolfo di Cambio a Santa Maria del Fiore: un trionfo di forma e di significato’, in La cattedrale e la città: saggi sul duomo di Firenze, ed. Timothy Verdon and Annalisa Innocenti, 2 vols (Florence, 2001) Toker, Franklin, ‘On Holy Ground: Architecture and Liturgy in the Cathedral and in the Streets of Late-Medieval Florence’, in La cattedrale come spazio sacro: saggi sul duomo di Firenze, II, ed. Timothy Verdon and Annalisa Innocenti, 2 vols (Florence, 2001), pp. 544–59 Toker, Franklin, On Holy Ground: Liturgy, Architecture, and Urbanism in the Cathedral and the Streets of Medieval Florence (London and Turnhout, 2009) Tonini, Giuliana, ‘Argomenti maseschi: la cappella di San Bartolomeo in Santa Maria sopra Porta e due patronati Bardi di Vernio’, Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi, Firenze: Annali I (Pisa, 1984), 7–25 Torriti, Piero, ‘La parete del Guidoriccio’, in Simone Martini: atti del convegno, Siena 27–28 March 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), pp. 87–95 Torriti, Piero, La pinacoteca nazionale di Siena, 3rd edn (Genoa, 1990) Toussaint, Gia, Das Passional der Kunigunde von Böhmen: Bildrhetorik und Spiritualität (Paderborn, 2003) Trade in Artists’ Materials: Markets and Commerce in Europe to 1700, ed. Jo Kirby, Susie Nash, and Joanna Cannon (London, 2010) Travi, Carla, ‘Il Maestro del Trittico di Santa Chiara: appunti per la pittura veneta di primo Trecento’, Arte Cristiana 80 (1992), 81–96 The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi, ed. Giovanni Morello and Laurence Kanter, exh. cat. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1999)

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Trexler, Richard C., ‘Ritual in Florence: Adolescence and Salvation in the Renaissance’, in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. Charles Trinkaus and Heiko Oberman (Leiden, 1974) Trexler, Richard C., Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1980) Trottmann, Christian, La vision béatifique: dès disputes scolastiques à sa définition par Benoît XII (Rome, 1995) Trovato, Paolo, ‘Intorno agli stemmi della ‘Commedia’ (1924–2001)’, in Nuove prospettive sulla tradizione della ‘Commedia’: una guida filologicolinguistica al poema dantesco, ed. Elisabetta Tonello and Paolo Trovato (Florence, 2007), pp. 612–49 Tuata, Fileno dalla, Istoria di Bologna: origini–1521, 3 vols, ed. Bruno Fortunato (Bologna, 2005) Tugwell, Simon, ‘Notes on the Life of St Dominic’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 65 (1995), 5–169 Turner, Nancy, ‘“Incarnation” Illuminated: Painting the Flesh in Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts’, in Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. Stella Panayotova (London, 2016), pp. 271–9 Ubertino da Casale nel VII Centenario dell’Arbor Vitae Crucifixae Iesu (1305–2005): atti del Convegno di Studi, La Versa 15 settembre 2005, ed. Gabriele Zaccagnini, Studi francescani 104 (2007) van der Ploeg, Kees, Art, Architecture and Liturgy: Siena Cathedral in the Middle Ages, Medievalia Groningana, 11 (Groningen, 1993) van der Ploeg, Kees, ‘How Liturgical is a Medieval Altarpiece?’, in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art 61 (Washington, DC, 2002), pp. 102–21 Vasari, Giorgio, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori, ed. Karl Frey (Munich, 1911) Vauchez, André, ‘La commune de Sienne, les Ordres Mendiants et le culte des saints: Histoire et enseignements d’une crise (novembre 1328, avril 1329)’, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Moyen-Age, Temps modernes 89 (1977), 757–67 Vauchez, André, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age (Rome, 1988) Vauchez, André, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, 1997). Venturini, Lisa, Francesco Botticini (Florence, 1994) Vespari, Simona Anna, ‘Aspetti iconografici della Cappella Baroncelli nella chiesa di S. Croce di Firenze’, Studi Francescani 115 (2018), 109–35 Il viaggio dei tre monaci al paradiso terrestre, ed. Giuliana Ravaschietto (Alessandria, 1997) Vian, Paolo, ‘“Noster familiaris solicitus et discretus”: Napoleone Orsini e Ubertino da Casale’, in Ubertino da Casale: atti del XLI Convegno Internazionale, Assisi 18-20 ottobre 2013, ed. Società Internazionale di Studi Francescani (Spoleto, 2014), pp. 217–98

351

352

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Villani, Giovanni, Nuova Cronica, ed. Giuseppe Porta, 3 vols (Parma 1990–91) Villani, Matteo, Cronica con la continuazione di Filippo Villani, ed. Giuseppe Porta, 3 vols (Parma, 1995) Vitzthum, Georg Graf, Bernardo Daddi (Leipzig, 1903) Volpe, Carlo, ‘Il lungo percorso del “dipingere dolcissimo e tanto unito”’, Storia dell’arte italiana, ed. Federico Zeri (Turin, 1983), pp. 229–304 Volpe, Carlo, Pietro Lorenzetti (Milan, 1989) Il volto di Cristo, ed. Giovanni Morello and Gerhard Wolf, exh. cat. Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (Milan, 2000) Waagen, Gustav, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, 3 vols (London, 1854) Wadding, Luke, Annales Minorum, 8 vols (Lyon, 1625–54) Wadding, Luke, Scriptores Ordinis Minorum (Rome, 1650) Waetzoldt, Stephan, Die Kopien des 17. Jahrhunderts nach Mosaïken und Wandmalereien in Rom (Vienna, 1964) Wainwright, Valerie, ‘Conflict and Popular Government in Fourteenth Century Siena: il Monte dei Dodici’, in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana tardo comunale (Monte Oriolo, 1983), pp. 57–80 Walcher Casotti, Maria, Il trittico di S. Chiara di Trieste e l’orientamento paleologo nell’arte di Paolo Veneziano (Trieste, 1961) Wallace, William E., ‘Friends and Relics at San Silvestro in Capite, Rome’, Sixteenth Century Journal 30 (1999), 419–39 Waterfield, Giles, et al., Art Treasures of England: The Regional Collections (London, 1998) Weakland, John, ‘Pope John XXII and the Beatific Vision Controversy’, Annuale Mediaevale 9 (1968), 76–84 Webb, Diana, Patrons and Defenders: The Saints in the Italian City-States (London and New York, 1996) Webb, Diana, Saints and Cities in Medieval Italy (Manchester and New York, 2007) Weitzmann, Kurt, ‘Byzantine Miniature and Icon Painting in the Eleventh Century’, in Studies in Classical and Byzantine Manuscript Illumination, ed. Herbert L. Kessler (Chicago/London, 1971), pp. 271–313 White, John, Duccio: Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop (London, 1979) White, John, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space, 3rd edn (Ithaca, NY and London, 1987) Wilkins, David, ‘The Meaning of Space in Fourteenth-Century Tuscan Painting’, in By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought, ed. David Jeffrey (Ottawa, 1979), pp. 109–21 Wilkins, David, Maso di Banco: A Florentine Artist of the Early Trecento (New York, 1985) Wilkins, David, ‘Opening the Doors to Devotion: Trecento Triptychs and Suggestions concerning Images and Domestic Practice in Florence’, in Italian Panel Painting in the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art 61 (Washington, DC, 2002), pp. 371–94 Willemsen, Carl, Kardinal Napoleone Orsini 1263–1342 (Berlin, 1927) Williamson, Beth, ‘The Virgin Lactans and the Madonna of Humility: Image and Devotion in Italy, Metz and Avignon in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, unpublished PhD Dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1996 Williamson, Beth, ‘Site, Seeing and Salvation in Fourteenth-Century Avignon’, Art History 30 (2007), 1–25 Williamson, Beth, The Madonna of Humility: Development, Dissemination and Reception, c. 1340–1400 (Woodbridge, 2009) Williamson, Beth, Reliquary Tabernacles in Fourteenth-Century Italy: Image, Relic and Material Culture (Woodbridge, 2020) Wilson, Blake, ‘Music, Art, and Devotion: The Cult of St Zenobius at the Florentine Cathedral during the Early Renaissance’, in ‘Cantate Domino’: Musica nei secoli per il Duomo di Firenze, ed. Timothy Verdon and Annalisa Innocenti (Florence, 2001), pp. 17–36 Wilson, Blake McDowell, Music and Merchants: The Laudesi Companies of Republican Florence (Oxford and New York, 1992) Wolf, Gerhard, ‘From Mandylion to Veronica: Picturing the “Disembodied” Face and Disseminating the True Image of Christ in the Latin West’, in The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation: Papers from a Colloquium Held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome and the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1996, ed. Herbert L. Kessler and Gerhard Wolf (Bologna, 1998), pp. 153–79 Wolf, Gerhard, Schleier und Spiegel: Traditionen des Christusbildes und die Bildkonzepte der Renaissance (Munich, 2002) Wolff, Ruth, ‘The Sealed Saint: Representations of Saint Francis of Assisi on Medieval Italian Seals’, in Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, ed. Noël Adams, John Cherry, and James Robinson (London, 2008), pp. 91–9 Wolff, Ruth, ‘Auctoritas und Berührung: Die Porziuncola-Tafel des Franziskusmeisters und der Franziskus- und Christuszyklus in der Unterkirche von San Francesco in Assisi’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 58 (2016), 131–55 Wood, Jeryldene, Women, Art, and Spirituality: The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 1996) Wortley, John, ‘The Marian Relics at Constantinople’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 45 (2005), 171–87 Wright, Alison, The Pollaiuolo Brothers: The Arts of Florence and Rome (New Haven and London, 2005) Writings on the Spiritual Life: Works of St Bonaventure, X, ed. F. Edward Coughlin (Saint Bonaventure, NY, 2006) Yasin, Ann Marie, ‘Sacred Installations: The Material Conditions of Relic Collections in Late Antique Churches’, in Saints and Sacred Matter: The

353

354

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond, ed. Cynthia Hahn and Holger A. Klein (Washington, DC, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2015), pp. 133–51 Zappasodi, Emanuele, ‘Sorores reclusae’: spazi di clausura e immagini dipinte in Umbria fra XIII e XIV secolo (Florence, 2018), Zdekauer, Lodovico, Il constituto del comune di Siena dell’anno 1262 (Milan, 1897) Zeri, Federico, ‘Due appunti su Giotto. I: la cuspide centrale del “Polittico Baroncelli”; II: la cimasa del crocefisso del Tempio Malatestiano’, Paragone 8 (1957), 75–87 Zeri, Federico, ‘Richerche sul Sassetta’, Quaderni di emblema 2 (Bergamo, 1973), pp. 22–34 Zocca, Emma, ‘Vetri umbri dorati e graffiti’, L’Arte 10 (1939), 174–84 Zupko, Ronald, Italian Weights and Measures from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 145 (Philadelphia, 1981)

PUBLICATIONS BY JOANNA CANNON COMPILED BY EOWYN KERR-DI CARLO AND IMOGEN TEDBURY

I

n over fifty publications spanning six decades, Joanna Cannon’s research addresses the intersection between art and spirituality through the consideration of visual and material evidence. Examinations of form and function are woven together through the careful examination of relationships between past use and material present. More unusually, Cannon also enters into dialogue with her own earlier publications, revisiting former publications when new evidence emerges, as in her essays on the Maestro di San Francesco at Assisi (1982 and 2017). Her reviews of books and exhibitions are presented with the same care and deceptive simplicity as her other publications, exemplifying her commitment to dialogue with her fellow scholars; in this bibliography they are included as works in their own right. The works are listed by date of publication, with the oldest shown first. ‘Panorama geografico, cronologico, e statistico sulla distribuzione degli studia degli ordini mendicanti: Inghilterra’, in Le scuole degli ordini mendicanti (secoli XIII–XIV): atti del XVII Convegno di studi sulla spiritualità medievale, 1976 (Todi, 1978), pp. 93–126 ‘Dominican Patronage of the Arts in Central Italy: The Provincia romana, c. 1220–c. 1320’, unpublished PhD thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1980 ‘Dating the Frescoes by the Maestro di S. Francesco at Assisi’, The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982), 65–9 ‘Simone Martini, the Dominicans and the Early Sienese Polyptych’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 45 (1982), 69–93

356

PUBLICATIONS BY JOANNA CANNON

‘Pietro Lorenzetti and the History of the Carmelite Order’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987), 18–28 ‘Bernardo Daddi Triptych’ and ‘Fra Angelico Predella’, in 100 Masterpieces from The Courtauld Collections: Bernardo Daddi to Ben Nicholson, ed. Dennis Farr (London, 1987), pp. 16–17, pp. 20–1 ‘The Creation, Meaning, and Audience of the Early Sienese Polyptych: Evidence from the Friars’, in The Italian Altarpiece 1250–1550: Function and Design, ed. Eve Borsook and Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi (Oxford, 1994), pp. 41–79 ‘Marguerite et les Cortonais: iconographie d’un “culte civique” au XIVe siècle’, in La religion civique à l’epoque médiévale et moderne (Chrétienté et Islam), ed. André Vauchez (Rome, 1995), pp. 403–13 ‘Pietro et Ambrogio Lorenzetti’ and ‘Simone Martini’, in Dictionnaire encyclopédique du Moyen Âge chrétien (Paris, 1996) ‘Coppo di Marcovaldo’, ‘Guido da Siena’, and ‘Edward B. Garrison’, in The Dictionary of Art (London, 1996) ‘Il ciclo murale di Margherita attraverso le copie ad acquerello’, in Margherita da Cortona: una storia emblematica di devozione narrata per testi e immaginistoria emblematica di devozione narrata per testi e immagini, ed. Laura Corti and Riccardo Spinelli (Milan, 1998), pp. 21–32, pp. 154–5 ‘Dominic alter Christus? Representations of the Founder in and after the Arca di San Domenico’, in Christ among the Medieval Dominicans, ed. Kent Emery Jr and Joseph P. Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN, 1998), pp. 26–48 ‘The Stoclet Man of Sorrows: A Thirteenth-Century Italian Diptych Reunited’, The Burlington Magazine 141 (1999), 107–12 with André Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese Art and the Cult of a Holy Woman in Medieval Tuscany (University Park, PA, 1999) with André Vauchez (and a contribution by Céline Perol), Margherita da Cortona e i Lorenzetti (Rome, 2000) [revised edition of Margherita of Cortona, 1999] ‘Popular Saints and Private Chantries: The Sienese Tomb-Altar of Margherita of Cortona and Questions of Liturgical Use’, in Kunst und Liturgie im Mittelalter: Akten des internationalen Kongresses der Bibliotheca Hertziana und des Nederlands Instituut te Rome, 28–30 September 1997, ed. Nicholas Bock, Sible de Blaauw, Chrisoph Luitpold Frommel, and Herbert Kessler, Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana, Beiheft zu Bd. 33 (Munich, 2000), pp. 149–62 with Caroline Villers, ‘Introduction’, in The Fabric of Images: European Paintings on Textile Supports in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. Caroline Villers (London, 2000)

PUBLICATIONS BY JOANNA CANNON

with Beth Williamson, ed., Art, Politics, and Civic Religion in Central Italy, 1261–1352: Essays by Postgraduate Students at The Courtauld Institute (Aldershot, 2000) ‘Viewing Two Paintings by Bernardo Daddi’, The British Art Journal 2 (2001), 68–70 with Viola Pemberton-Pigott, ‘The Royal Collection Duccio: A Triptych Reconsidered’, Apollo 486 (2002), 10–18 ‘Beyond the Limitations of Visual Typology: Reconsidering the Function and Audience of Three Vita Panels of Women Saints c. 1300’, in Italian Panel Painting in the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art 61 (Washington, DC, 2002), pp. 290–313 ‘Sources for the Study of the Role of Art and Architecture within the Economy of the Mendicant Convents of Central Italy: A Preliminary Survey’, in L’economia dei conventi dei frati minori e predicatori fino alla meta del Trecento: 31º Convegno internazionale di studi francescani, Assisi, 2003 (Spoleto, 2004), pp. 215–63 ‘Giotto and Art for the Friars: Revolutions Spiritual and Artistic’, in The Cambridge Companion to Giotto, ed. Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona (Cambridge and New York, 2004), pp. 103–34, pp. 255–66 ‘Afterword’, in Images, Relics, and Devotional Practices in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. Sally Cornelison and Scott Montgomery, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Tempe, AZ, 2006), pp. 235–45 ‘Panem petant in signum paupertatis: The Image of the Quest for Alms among the Friars of Central Italy’, in Armut und Armenfürsorge in der italienischen Stadtkultur zwischen 13. und 16. Jahrhundert: Bilder, Texte und soziale Praktiken, ed. Philine Helas and Gerhard Wolf (Frankfurt am Main, 2006), pp. 29–53, p. 402, pp. 420–9 ‘Sainteté visualisée, sainteté anglicisée: les travaux d’André Vauchez chez les historiens de l’art et les historiens britanniques’, in Hommage international à André Vauchez (Paris, 2007), pp. 25–34 ‘Bernardo Daddi Triptych’, The Courtauld Gallery Masterpiece (London, 2007), pp. 16–17 ‘Il piede della Vergine nella pittura senese del Duecento e primo Trecento’, in Presenza del Passato: Political Ideas e modelli culturali nella storia e nell’arte senese, Convegno internazionale, Siena 4 maggio 2007 (Rome and Siena, 2008), pp. 61–70 [Italian translation of ‘Duccio and Devotion to the Virgin’s Foot’, 2012] ‘Diptych with the Virgin and Child and the Man of Sorrows’, in Byzantium 330–1453, ed. Robin Cormack and Maria Vassilaki, exh. cat. Royal Academy of Arts, London, 25 October 2008–22 March 2009, pp. 442–3 ‘Maestro di Figline/Maestro della Pietà Fogg, San Francesco e San Filippo’, in Giotto e il Trecento, ed. Alessandro Tomei, exh. cat. Complesso Vittoriano, Rome, 6 March–29 June 2009 (Milan, 2009), pp. 188–90 ‘Panem petant in signum paupertatis: l’image de la quête des aumônes chez les frères d’Italie centrale’, in Économie et religion: l’expérience des ordres

357

358

PUBLICATIONS BY JOANNA CANNON

mendiants (XIIIe–XVe siècle), ed. Nicole Bériou and Jacques Chiffoleau (Lyon, 2009), pp. 501–33 [French translation of ‘Panem petant’, 2006] ‘Kissing the Virgin’s Foot: Adoratio before the Madonna and Child Enacted, Depicted, Imagined’, Studies in Iconography 31 (2010), 1–50 with Susie Nash and Jo Kirby, ed., Trade in Artists Materials: Markets and Commerce in Europe to 1700 (London, 2010) ‘An Enigmatic Italian Panel Painting of the Crucifixion in the Narodni Galerie, Prague’, in Image, Memory and Devotion: Liber Amicorum Paul Crossley, 2, ed. Zoë Opačić and Achim Timmerman (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 157–80 ‘Duccio and Devotion to the Virgin’s Foot in Early Sienese Painting’, in A Wider Trecento: Studies in 13th- and 14th-century European Art Presented to Julian Gardner, ed. Louise Bourdua and Robert Gibbs (Leiden and Boston, 2012), pp. 39–61 ‘Dominican Shrines and Urban Pilgrimage in Later Medieval Italy’, in Architecture and Pilgrimage 1000–1500: Southern Europe and Beyond, ed. Paul Davies, Deborah Howard, and Wendy Pullan (Aldershot, 2013), pp. 143–63 Religious Poverty, Visual Riches: Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New Haven and London, 2013) ‘Redating the Frescoes by the Maestro di S. Francesco at Assisi’, in Survivals, Revivals, Rinascenze: studi di amici, allievi, colleghi in onore di Serena Romano, ed. Nicolas Bock, Ivan Foletti, and Michele Tomasi (Rome, 2017), pp. 437–49 ‘The Writer as Viewer: Recollecting Art in the Text of the Meditationes Vitae Christi’, in The ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi’ Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Text and Image, ed. Holly Flora and Péter Tóth (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 199–233 ‘Simone Martini and the Possibilities of the Polyptych’, and ‘Panels from Two Polyptychs by Simone Martini in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Orvieto’, in Simone Martini in Orvieto, ed. Nathaniel E. Silver (Boston, 2022)

BOOK AND EXHIBITION REVIEWS ‘James Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1979)’, The Burlington Magazine 123 (1981), 168 ‘Dieter Blume, Wandmalerei als Ordenspropaganda. Bildprogramme im Chorbereich franziskanischer Konvente Italiens bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts (Worms, 1983)’, The Burlington Magazine 127 (1985), 34–5 ‘Luciano Bellosi, La Pecora di Giotto (Milan, 1985)’, The Burlington Magazine 130 (1988), 701–2

PUBLICATIONS BY JOANNA CANNON

‘Anita Fiderer Moskowitz, The Sculpture of Andrea and Nino Pisano (Cambridge and New York, 1986)’, Renaissance Quarterly 43 (1990), 417–20 ‘Robert Gibbs, Tomaso da Modena (Cambridge, 1989)’, History 76 (1991), 492 ‘Orsanmichele a Firenze/Orsanmichele Florence, ed. Diane Finiello Zervas, 2 vols. (Modena, 1996)’, The Burlington Magazine 141 (1999), 113–14 ‘Diana Norman, Siena and the Virgin: Art and Politics in a Late Medieval City State (New Haven and London, 2000)’, The Burlington Magazine 142 (2000), 505–6 ‘Hayden B. Maginnis, The World of the Early Sienese Painter (University Park, 2001)’, Art History 25 (2002), 262–4 ‘Visions of Holiness: Art and Devotion in Renaissance Italy, ed. Andrew Ladis and Shelley E. Zuraw (Athens, GA, 2001)’, The Burlington Magazine 145, 374–5 ‘The Era of the Great Painted Crucifix: Giotto, Cimabue, Giunta Pisano and their Anonymous contemporaries’, Renaissance Studies 16 (2002), 571–81 ‘Louise Bourdua, The Franciscans and Art Patronage in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge and New York, 2004)’, The Burlington Magazine 148 (2004), 550–1 ‘D’or et d’ivoire: Paris, Pise, Florence, Sienne 1250–1320, Louvre-Lens, 2015’, The Burlington Magazine 157 (2015), 727–8 ‘Megan Holmes, The Miraculous Image in Renaissance Florence, New Haven and London, 2013’, The Burlington Magazine 157 (2015), 482 ‘Diana Norman, Siena and the Angevins (1300–1350): Art, Diplomacy, and Dynastic Ambition, Turnhout, 2018’, The Medieval Review (online journal) (2020)

359

INDEX Achenbach, Gertrude  285–6 Agapitus, Saint  224–6, 228 relics of  222, 224–6, 227–8 Agnes, of Bohemia  82, 84 Agnes, of Rome, Saint  71 relics of  216, 217, 219, 222 Alberti, Leandro  27 Alberti, Leon Battista  243 Albertucci de’ Borselli, Gerolamo  26, 27 Aldobrandeschi family, Counts of Santa Fiora  115, 118, 122, 127–9, 130 treaty with Siena in 1317  118, 122 treaty with Siena in 1331  117, 118, 122–3, 125, 130, 131 Alexander II, Pope  143 Alexander IV, Pope  259 Altimanni, Fra Francesco   100 see also Ugurgieri, Fra Francesco Altimanni Ambrogio di Baldese  287 and Niccolò di Piero Gerini, Consignment of Abandoned Children and Orphans to Natural and Adoptive Mothers, Florence, Santa Maria della Misericordia, façade 283 Ambrose of Milan, Saint  293 Amico, Leonard M.  61 Ammirato, Scipione  156 Anagni 227 San Pietro in Vineis  75 Andrea di Grazia  251 Anthony of Padua, Saint  59, 61, 62, 292 relics of  216, 217, 225

Arditi, Andrea, reliquary bust of St John the Baptist  290, 294, 295, 298, 302 Assisi  46, 61, 67, 93, 94, 95, 99, 100, 101, 102, 225, 228 Basilica of San Francesco  93, 96, 106, 107–10, 206, 209, 210, 215–16, 218, 224–5 chalice by Guccio di Mannaia 51–67 Saint Francis cycle (Upper Church)  41, 44 Saint Martin Chapel by Simone Martini  46, 93, 106–8, 243 Saint Nicholas Chapel  139, 148, 237 tomb of Saint Francis  25 transept decoration by Giotto  93, 95, 106, 231–2 transept decoration by Pietro Lorenzetti  93, 106–7, 108 transept decoration by Simone Martini 106 Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli 205 Museo della Porziuncola, Saint Francis, by Cimabue  11, 31–2 Museo della Porziuncola, Saint Francis, by the Maestro di Francesco  11, 31–2 Porziuncola 100 Santa Chiara  205–6, 208

362

INDE X

Augustinian Order  6, 66, 191 Avery-Quash, Susanna  236, 238, 239, 245 Avignon, Cathedral of Notre-Damedes-Doms 246 Bacon, Roger  242 Badia a Settimo, Florence  186, 190, 197 Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, gilded glass reliquary diptych (inv. no. 46.2)  206, 207, 208, 209, 216, 217, 219, 223, 224 Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, wing of a diptych, containing a gilded glass reliquary wing (inv. no. 37.1686) 218 Barbi, Raimondo  151 Bardi, Bartolo de’  188, 189 Bardi family  141, 186, 190 banking company  141, 147 Bardi, Francesca de’  141 Baroncelli family  159, 162, 163, 165, 168, 171, 173, 179 chapel, Florence, Santa Croce 159–79 Bartal, Renata  75 Bartalini, Roberto  189 Bartolomasi, Padre Bonaventura  94 Bartolomeo, Fra, St Anne Altarpiece 304 Bartolomeo da Pisa, Fra  91 Bartolomeo di Tommé (Picinus), chalice 63 Bellosi, Luciano  117, 118–9, 120, 189 Benedict XI, Pope  56 Benedict XII, Pope (Jacques Fournier)  177, 179, 225 Benedictine Order  141, 143, 154, 157, 191, 227 Rule of Saint Benedict  154 Bentivoglio family  29 Berenson, Arthur  170 Berenson, Bernard  170, 189 Berlin, Kunstgewerbemuseum, ostensory with gilded glass roundels  207, 209, 210 Bernardino of Siena, San  249–50, 260 Bicci di Lorenzo  139, 278 Bichi, Abbot Galgano de’  98–9

Bisogni, Fabio  21 Bolgia, Claudia  215 Bologna  300, 304–6 San Domenico  16, 21, 22, 25, 26, 30 San Domenico, Arca of Saint Dominic  19, 23–4, 26, 29–30 San Nicolò delle Vigne (reconsecrated as Bologna, San Domenico in 1251)  21, 25, 30 Santa Maria della Purificazione e San Domenico della Mascarella (‘the Mascarella’)  14, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26–27, 28, 30 tavola di San Domenico 11–32 Bonacorso, Fra Pietro  101 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Saint  34, 48, 161, 178 De perfectione vitae ad sorores 74 Soul’s Journey to God (Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum) 173 Lignum Vitae 235 sermon for feastday of Saint Nicholas of Bari  144 sermon on the Nativity  226 Boskovits, Miklós  188, 196, 197, 201 Bossi, Francesco  104 Botticini, Francesco  286 Bowsky, William  130 Brink, Joel  237 Brunelleschi, Filippo  301 Buonviso da Piacenza, Fra  22, 27 Burke, Maureen  95 Bynum, Caroline Walker  32, 57 Campbell, C. Jean  247 Cannon, Joanna  1, 11, 12, 13, 19, 22, 25, 33, 35, 49, 51, 58, 71–2, 92, 113, 136, 137, 151–2, 153, 181, 204, 229, 250, 271, 291 Carmelite Order  6, 191, 251, 260 Carocci, Guido  188 Casotti, Maria Walcher  71 Cavalcaselle, G.B.  188 Cavazzo, Angelo  14 Celestine III, Pope  259 Cennini, Cennino d’Andrea  205, 210 Cimabue  11, 215 Cioni, Elisabetta  65 Cistercian Order  186, 191 Clare of Assisi, Saint  71, 84, 87 relics of  216, 217, 223, 224, 225

363

INDE X

Clarissan Order  69–87 Clement V, Pope  42, 89, 235, 259 Clement VI, Pope (Pierre Roger)  236 Collareta, Marco  55, 56 Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Life of Christ panel from monastery of Sankt Klara in Cologne  78, 80, 82, 85 Colonna family  224, 225 Constantine of Orvieto  22, 24 Constantinople  251, 252, 264, 267, 269 church of the Virgin Chalkoprateia, relic of the Virgin Mary’s girdle 264 Conti, Alessandro  192 Cooper, Donal  37, 58, 224, 225 Corsini, Cardinal Piero  298 Cortona Church of Santa Margherita  4, 54, 151, 237 Museo Diocescano, chalice by Michele di Tommè  54 Cristoforo di Bindoccio  253 Crowe, J.B. 188 Daddi, Bernardo  166, 181–202 altarpiece for the Cappella della Sacra Cintola  198 Maestà, Galleria dell’Accademia 189 Maestà, Church of San Giusto in Signano (Scandicci)  189 Polyptych with The Crucifixion and Saints  182, 186–7 predella panels  187 triptych (1328)  197 triptych (1338)  200 Dante, Divine Comedy  48, 98, 102, 192, 276 De Benedictis, Cristina  196, 206, 208, 209, 210, 218, 219 De Marchi, Andrea  143, 170, 190 Denny, Don  231, 232, 233, 235, 236, 238 Detroit, Institute of Arts, wing of a gilded glass reliquary diptych 203–28 Dini, Giuletta Chelazzi  197 Dominic, Saint canonization 21 cult of  25, 29, 30

death and burial  13, 25 images of  11–32, 63–4 miracles 11–32 tomb (Arca of Saint Dominic)  19, 23–4, 26, 29–30 Dominican Order  2, 6, 19, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 38, 58, 66, 92, 144, 177, 191, 204, 227 Donati, Fra Jacopo  92, 110 Donato di Neri  253 Donatus, Saint  292, 300 Donkin, Lucy  102 Duccio di Buoninsegna  117, 119 Maestà  6, 154, 253 Triptych (Royal Collection, London) 243 Duccio di Donato, chalice for Chapel of the Nove, Siena  57, 58 Durand, Guillaume  55 Egidio of Perugia, Beato  223–4 Egidius, Saint  216, 223, 224, 225 Fanti, Mario  29 Feraci, Ugo  188 Flora, Holly  74–5 Florence ‘Badia Fiorentina’ (Benedictine monastery of Sant Maria)  134, 141–3, 157 pentaptych for the high altar, by Giotto 143 baptistery  282, 291, 295–6, 298, 301, 303, 304 Bargello, Museo Nazionale del, gilded glass diptych  207, 208 Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Fondo Nationale MS II.II.445 (Miscellany containing the Leggenda di Santo Tobia, by Zanobi di Pagolo di Agnolo Perini) 271–87 Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore  138, 166, 197, 201, 289–90, 291, 295, 301 Saint Zenobius Chapel  289, 290, 291, 293, 294, 301–3 Cathedral of Santa Reparata  289, 292–3, 294 compagnia di San Matteo, 282–3

364

INDE X

Florence (cont’d) confraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia  280–85, 287 fresco cycle, Story of Tobit and Tobias, 272, 280–2 Council of, 1439  289 hospital of Bonifazio  300 hospital of San Matteo  139 hospital of San Niccolò  142, 154, 157 Orsanmichele  147, 200 Palazzo della Signoria, Sala dei Gigli 303–4 fresco of Saint Zenobius, by Domenico Ghirlandaio 303 marble statue of Saint John the Baptist, by Benedetto da Maiano 303 San Procolo  133–157 Santa Croce  91, 93, 95, 171, 200 Baroncelli Chapel  159–79 Bardi Chapel  95 Bardi di Vernio chapel  152, 188, 189 Peruzzi Chapel  151 Santa Maria del Carmine  200 Santa Maria Novella  197, 200 San Michele Visdomini  300 Francesco da Borgo San Sepolcro, Fra  94, 96 Francesco di Ghino da Montieri, Fra 100 Francesco di Ser Nardo da Barberino 192 Francis of Assisi, Saint  60, 86, 87, 90, 91, 100, 144 as alter Christus  62, 63, 67 cult of  25, 137 death and canonization  12 relics of  216–7, 219, 221, 224, 225 Rule of  41–3, 49, 227 Stigmata  34, 35, 43–4, 46, 48–9 Stigmatisation  34, 86, 87, 171–2 tomb of  25 Franciscan Order  2, 6, 12, 33–49, 51–67, 71, 73, 76, 80, 82, 87, 89–110, 137, 144, 161, 171–3, 177–9, 191, 204–6, 208, 215, 226–8 see also Clarissan Order ‘Conventuals’  41, 89, 235

Rule  41–3, 49, 227 ‘Spirituals’  41–3, 89, 90, 103, 161, 235, 238 Freuler, Gaudenz  196 Frinta, Mojmír  240 Fumone, Collegiata di Santa Maria, gilded glass reliquary diptych  209, 219, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226 Gaddi, Taddeo  172, 173, 185, 198, 201 armadio panels (Santa Croce, Florence) 152 Baroncelli Chapel frescoes  159–79 crucifix (Church of San Giorgio a Ruballa)  183, 187, 190 Galandra, Irene  203 Gardner, Julian  2, 95, 166 Gardner von Teuffel, Christa  6 Garrison, Edward B.  3, 13 Geary, Patrick  32 Gentile da Montefiore, Cardinal  107–8 Ghiberti, Lorenzo  134, 135, 301, 302 Giacomo (Jacobus) da San Gimignano, Fra 42 Giorgi, Silvia  21 Giotto di Bondone  8, 93, 106, 134, 165, 166, 170, 173, 179, 186, 201 Badia pentaptych  143 Bardi Chapel frescoes  95 Baroncelli Chapel altarpiece  162, 163, 165–6, 168, 169–70, 175, 177–9 God the Father and Angels (pinnacle of the Baroncelli Chapel altarpiece)  162, 178 Peruzzi Chapel frescoes  151 polyptych of Santa Reparata  292–3 transept frescoes, Lower Church, San Francesco, Assisi  93, 95, 106, 231–2 Giotto’s ‘O’  8 Giovanni da Paolo, Tondi polyptych 104 Giovanni di Jacopo  283 Giovenale degli Agli, Fra  91 Goldthwaite, Richard  201 Gombrich, Hans  286 Gonsalvo of Spain, Franciscan Minister General 93

365

INDE X

Gordon, Dillian  3, 208–10, 215, 216, 218, 219 Gori, Anton Francesco  299–300 Guccio di Mannaia see Mannaia, Guccio di Guerrino, Tondino di  57, 62 chalice, for San Francesco, Assisi 65 chalice, for Tolomei family (formerly at Sant’Agostino, Siena) 66 chalices, for Sant’Agostino Siena 66 chalices, for Dominicans of Perugia 66 chalice, for Pistoia Cathedral,   66 liturgical objects for Chapel of the Nove, Siena  66 Guerrino, Tondino di(?) chalice, for Franciscan community at Sassoferrato  62 with Andrea Riguardi chalice, for convent of La Verna 65 chalice (for a FranciscanAngevin church, possibly San Lorenzo Naples?), 65 Guidoriccio da Fogliano  114, 122 Haines, Margaret  301 Hamburger, Jeffrey  80 Hill, Constance  3 Holmes, Megan  226, 227 Hueck, Irene  207, 208, 209, 210 Hugo d’Oignies, chalice  59 Humbert of Romans, Dominican Master General  10 Ini, Anna  41 Innocent III, Pope  56 Jacopo (Jacobo) del Tondo (or Tundo), Fra, see Tondo, Fra Jacopo del James of Milan, Stimulus Amoris 49 Joachim of Fiore  233 John the Baptist, Saint  289, 292, 300, 301, 304 cult of  291 feast of  283, 289, 290–91, 304 miracles  295, 300

relics of  295, 300, 303, 304 John XXII, Pope (Jacques Duèse)  43, 161, 175–6, 177, 178, 225, 235 Jordan of Saxony  22 Jung, Jacqueline  49 Kidson, Peter  1–2 Klebanoff, Randi  30 Kosegarten, Antje Middeldorf  35–6 Kreytenberg, Gert  189 Krüger, Klaus  244 Kunigunde of Bohemia, Abbess  78 Labriola, Ada  196 Leggenda di Santo Tobia see Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Fondo Nationale MS II.II.445 Lenzi, Domenico, Specchio umano, illustrated by Master of the Dominican Effigies  147, 155 Leone de Castris, Pierluigi  65 Levin, William  283 Lippo Vanni  201–2 London, National Gallery, Stoclet Man of Sorrows 3 Longhi, Roberto  188 Lorenzetti, Ambrogio Andrea Gallerani vita panel  151–2 Mappamondo  112, 117, 129–30 Martyrdom of the Franciscans 95 Saint Nicholas Panels  133–57 Sala della Pace frescoes  119–20 triptych, Virgin and Child, with Saints Nicholas and Proculus  133, 134, 137 Lorenzetti, Pietro  4, 108, 110, 237 Christ Before Pilate 242 Crucifixion 242 transept frescoes, Lower Church, San Francesco, Assisi  93, 106–7, 237 Lorenzetti, Ambrogio and Pietro Santa Margherita frescoes  4, 151, 237 Santa Maria della Scala façade frescoes (lost)  255 San Francesco (Siena) frescoes  40 Lorenzutti, Antonio  69 Louis of Toulouse, Saint cult of  208 relics of  208, 210, 215

366

INDE X

Louis XI, King of France  304 Luca da Montepulciano, Fra  37 Lusini, Vittorio  94–5 Macchi, Don Girolamo  265 Madonna of Impruneta  295 Maestro Daddesco  196–7, 201 Maestro di Piteglio  192 Maginnis, Hayden  244 Mainardi, Bastiano  168–9 Mannaia, Guccio di  51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57–8 chalice for Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi  51–67 Margherita of Cortona, Saint  4, 237, 271 Martindale, Andrew  6, 119, 236, 239 Martini, Simone  4, 93, 107, 151, 166, 230, 232–3, 247 Annunciation (Saint Ansanus Altarpiece)   124, 240, 244 Avignon Cathedral porch frescoes 246 Beato Agostino Novello  66, 119–20, 121, 124, 125, 136, 150 Frontispiece for Petrarch’s copy of Servius’s commentary on Virgil  125, 246 Guidoriccio  113, 116 Holy Family 229–47 Maestà  107, 263 ‘New Fresco’/’Treaty with the House of Santa Fiora’  111–31 Passion polyptych (‘Orsini polyptych’ 237 Polyptych (formerly Santa Caterina Pisa)  92, 110 Saint Louis of Toulouse   65, 243 Saint Martin Chapel, San Francesco, Assisi 44, 46, 93, 106–8, 243 Santa Maria della Scala façade frescoes (lost)  255–6 ‘speaking portrait’ for Cardinal Napoleone Orsini (lost)  237 transept frescoes, Lower Church, San Francesco, Assisi  106 Mary of Hungary, Queen of Naples 108 Mary, Virgin  87, 178, 179 relic of veil at San Francesco, Assisi  210, 215 Maso di Banco  183, 185, 189

Bardi di Vernio chapel (Chapel of Saint Sylvester)  152, 188, 189 Master of the Antiphonary of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas  201 Master of the Dominican Effigies  192, 198–200 Christ and the Virgin Enthroned, Attended by Seventeen Dominican Saints and Beati 197 Illustrations to Domenico Lenzi’s Specchio umano  147–9, 155 Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Saints 198 Matthew of Vendôme  285 Mazza, Clemente, Life of Saint Zenobius 303 Meditationes vitae Christi  42, 49, 74, 86, 227, 232, 245 Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, gilded glass reliquary diptych  206, 208, 209, 216, 217, 219, 223, 224 Meo di Pero  253 Michael of Cesena, Franciscan Minister General  99–100, 109 Michelangelo  19, 29 Michele di Tommé, chalice (Santa Margherita, Cortona)  54 Milan, Biblioteca Braidense, Antiphonary  95–6, 102 Montaperti, Battle of, 1260  99, 122 Naples Cathedral, Succorpo Chapel  302 San Lorenzo  65 Santa Maria Donna Regina  75 Neff, Amy  75, 76 Neri Lusanna, Enrica  188 New York, Metropolitan Museum gilded glass reliquary diptych (inv. no. 17.190.922)  218 gilded glass reliquary diptych (inv. no. 17.190.982)  206, 208, 209, 216, 217, 219, 223, 224 Nicholas of Bari/Myra, Saint  133, 153 cult  137–9, 141, 143 relics  138, 141 Nicholas IV, Pope  51–2, 59, 110, 215, 224, 225 Nicolò dell’Arca  19, 29

367

INDE X

Norman, Diana  108, 171, 255, 302 Offner, Richard  187, 188, 195, 196 Orcagna (Andrea di Cione)  183, 189 Strozzi altarpiece, Florence, Santa Maria Novella  244 Orlandi, Fra Filippo  103 Orsini, Giovanni Gaetano degli  98 Orsini, Napoleone  91, 236, 237, 238, 245, 247 Orsini, Tommaso  210 Os, Henk van   6, 235 Osteria Nuova di Bagno a Ripoli, Church of San Giorgio a Ruballa 181–202 choir book (gradual), by Pacino di Bonaguida  181–202 crucifix, by Taddeo Gaddi  183, 187, 190 Maestà: Virgin and Child with Angels and Saints Matthias the Apostle and George, attr. Maso di Banco  183, 186, 187–8, 189, 190 Ot, Guiral (Geraldus Odonis), Franciscan Master General  177, 178, 179 Paatz, Walter and Elizabeth  142 Pacino di Bonaguida  183, 185, 186, 190, 191, 192, 200 choir book (gradual), Church of San Giorgio a Ruballa 181–202 polyptych, with Saints Nicholas, Proculus, and John the Evangelist  135, 137, 141 Palestrina  224, 225, 226, 227 Palladino, Pia  201 Paltrinieri, Giovanni  28 Pannocchieschi, Nello de’  98, 102, 105, 106 Paolo da Massa, Fra  100–101 Papini, Niccolò  94, 96 Parenti, Daniela  134, 135, 141, 189 Passerini, Luigi  283, 287 Pasut, Francesca  192, 196 Pecham, John  242 Perugia, General Chapter of the Franciscan Order, 1322  100 Petrarch  237, 247

Petronius, Saint  29, 300 Pettinaio, Blessed Pietro  102, 103 Philip, Saint, arm relic of  295 Philip IV, King of France  176 Piacenza, Fra Buonviso da  22 Piccolomini family  42 Pierozzi, Saint Antoninus  290, 304 Pietro de Monterio, Fra  98, 102–3, 105 Pilastri family  186, 190 Pinto, Giuliano  147 Pisano, Nicola, Arca of Saint Dominic  19, 23–4, 26, 29–30 Pomarici, Francesca  56 Porrina, Ranieri del, Bishop of Cremona 96 Prague, National Library, Passional made for Kunigunde of Bohemia  78, 80 Puccio Capanna  210, 218 Rabiti, Loris  28 Renner, John  105 Reparata, Saint  292 Richa, Giuseppe  300 Robert of Anjou, King of Naples  92, 176, 178 Robson, Janet  58, 95, 110, 224, 225 Romano, Serena  24 Rome, San Sisto  22, 24 Salmi, Mario  196–7 Salterelli, Bishop Simone  64 Sand, Alexa  80 Santa Fiora  115–16 Sassoferrato, Peter of  62 Savonarola, Fra Giovanni  304 Schiaparelli, Luigi  143 Schmidt, Victor  235, 242 Seidel, Max  119 Servite Order  6 Ševčenko, Nancy  144 Siena Cathedral  6, 250 Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, 249–69 façade frescoes  255–6 relic collection  249–69; public display on feast of the Annunciation 254–8, 261–2, 268

368

INDE X

Siena (cont’d) Palazzo Pubblico Chapel of the Nove: chalice for, by Duccio di Donato  58; liturgical objects for, by Tondino di Guerrino 66 Sala del Consiglio: Maestà by Simone Martini  107, 263; ‘Castle Series’  113, 115–18, 122, 123, 127, 129; Guidoriccio by Simone Martini  113, 116 Sala della Pace, frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti 119–20 Piazza del Campo  249 Pinacoteca Nazionale ‘City by the Sea’ and ‘Castle by a Lake’ 113–14 wooden statue of Saint Thomas Aquinas 38 San Domenico, shutters of the reliquary of Blessed Andrea Gallerani 154 San Francesco  35, 37–8, 100, 105 high altar chapel  98 marble statue of Saint Francis 33–49 Martyrdom of the Franciscans by Ambrogio Lorenzetti 95 Saint James chapel, associated with the Tondi family 104–5 tomb of the Blessed Pietro Pettinaio 102 Tondi family chapel, polyptych by Giovanni da Paolo 104 San Pietro alle Scale  100 Santa Petronilla  95, 96, 102 Skaug, Erling  166, 189, 190, 197, 201 Stefaneschi, Cardinal Jacopo  246 Strozzi, Senator Carlo  299 Supplicationes variae 75–8 Swarzenski, Georg  206, 207, 208, 209, 219 Tacconi, Marica  197 Tartuferi, Angelo  188

Teutonico, Pietro  206–7, 208–210, 215, 216, 218, 219, 222, 223, 224, 225 Tewkesbury Abbey  232 Thomas of Celano, Tractatus de miraculis 46 Thomas, Peter  252, 269 Thunø, Erik  31 Tizio, Sigismondo  37 Toker, Franklin  301 Tolomei, Fra Andrea de’  90, 100 Tolomei, Pia de’  98 Tolomei, Tese de’  255 Tommaso di Vannino, chalice (for San Flaviano, Montefiascone?)  63 Tondo (or Tundo), Fra Jacopo (or Jacobo) del  89–110 Breva Chronica Ordinis Minorum 94 Tondo, Lippo del, brother of Fra Jacopo del Tondo  95, 96 Tondo, Pietro and Cecco del, sons of Arrigo del Tondo, nephews of Fra Jacopo del Tondo  99 Tondo di Guccio, Jacopo del, father of Fra Jacopo del Tondo  95, 96, 104 at battle of Montaperti  99 tomb and epitaph in San Francesco, Siena  96, 104 Tondino di Guerrino see Guerrino, Tondino di Torrigiani, Pietro di Giunta  250, 251, 252 Torriti, Jacopo  215 Trent, Council of  56 Trexler, Richard  283 Trieste Civico Museo Sartorio, Trittico di Santa Chiara, 69–87 San Cipriano  69, 70, 71 Santa Maria della Cella  70, 71, 73, 74, 87 Tuata, Fileno dalla  26–7 Tugwell, Simon  23 Turchi, Brother Girolamo  64 Turner, Nancy  193 Ubertino da Casale  57, 89, 91, 92, 94, 100, 102, 103, 104, 109, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239 Arbor Vitae  102, 233

369

INDE X

Declaratio  90–91, 93 Sanctitas vestra  57 Ugolino di Nerio, heptaptych (possibly for San Francesco, Siena)  105 Ugurgieri, Fra Francesco Altimanni 95 see also Altimanni, Fra Francesco Urban IV, Pope  71 Valentino, Pace di, Pistoia chalice  53, 54 Vallombrosan Order  191 Valori family  135, 136, 141 Valori, Taldo  141, 143, 147, 153, 156, 157 Vasari, Giorgio  244, 292 Vauchez, André  2, 3, 4, 146 Vecchietta 253 Veneziano, Paolo  70 Venice  72, 141, 250-3, 299-300, 304-5 Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, wing of a gilded glass reliquary diptych  206, 208, 209, 216, 217, 219, 223 Vienne, Council of  89, 90, 109 Villani, Giovanni  147, 155, 156, 295, 296 Visconti, Uberto  29 Vitzthum, Georg  188 Volpe, Carlo  188

Volterra, Cathedral (formerly, current location unknown), gilded glass reliquary diptych  206, 208, 209, 217, 219, 224 Voragine, Jacobus de, Golden Legend  138, 139, 143–6, 148 Waagen, Gustav  240 Wadding, Luke  94, 101, 102, 109 Warsaw, National Gallery, tetraptych from Wrocław  84 White, John  6 Wright, Alison  286 Zanobi di Pagolo di Agnolo Perini  272, 276, 277, 278, 285, 286, 287 Zenobius, Saint  289, 292, 300 altar of, Florence, cathedral, crypt  293, 294, 301 cult of  291 feast of  294 intercession of  294, 295, 304 miracles  293, 294 relics  291, 294, 301, 304 translation  289, 293 reliquary, by Andrea Arditi  290, 294–5, 298, 302 Zeri, Federico  170

TABULA GRATULATORIA Joanne Allen Frances Andrews and Louise Bourdua Tim Ayers Luca Baggio Jessica Barker Renana Bartal Nicolas Bock Péter Bokody Claudia Bolgia Federico Botana Alixe Bovey Virginia Brilliant Caroline A. Bruzelius Aviva Burnstock James Alexander Cameron Caroline Campbell Emma Capron Andrew Chen Roberto Cobianchi Minta H. L. Collins Donal Cooper Sally Cornelison Rebecca W. Corrie Glyn Davies Paul Davies David D’Avray and Julia Walworth Andrea De Marchi Peter Dent Anne Derbes Richard Deutsch Thomas de Wesselow Bob Dieschburg Lucy Donkin Sally Dormer Kathleen Doyle Anne Dunlop Antony Eastmond Janis Elliott Giosuè Fabiano Dominic Ferrante Jr. Holly Flora Jill A. Franklin Gaudenz Freuler Alexandra Gajewski Denva Gallant Julian Gardner and Christa Gardner von Teuffel Stefania Gerevini Robert J. Gibbs Dillian Gordon Lindy Grant Sarah M. Guérin and Nicholas Herman Erik Gustafson Jeffrey F. Hamburger Catherine Harding Sandy Heslop

Paul Hills Kayoko Ichikawa Machtelt Brüggen Israëls Laura Jacobus Liz James Bryan C. Keene Trinita Kennedy Eowyn Kerr-Di Carlo Julian Luxford Robert Maniura Anthony McGrath Helen McIldowie-Jenkins Morag McLintock Asa Mittman Julia I. Miller Lisa Monnas Haude Morvan Norman Muller Zuleika Murat Susie Nash Amy Neff Scott Nethersole Tom Nickson Diana Norman Paula Nuttall and Geoffrey Nuttall Zoë Opačić John Osborne Luca Palozzi Christopher W. Platts John Renner Jessica N. Richardson Bryn Robbins Janet Robson (†) and Peter Sidhom Serena Romano Gervase Rosser Victor M. Schmidt Christine Sciacca Nathaniel Silver Judith B. Steinhoff Carl Brandon Strehlke Imogen Tedbury Anabel Thomas Nancy M. Thompson Michele Tomasi Giovanna Valenzano André Vauchez Rose Walker Scarlett Walsh Cordelia Warr Sarah S. Wilkins Beth Williamson Paul Williamson Stephan Wolohojian Lucy Wrapson Michaela Zöschg

BOYDELL STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE ISSN 2045–4902 Series Editors Professor Julian Luxford Professor Asa Simon Mittman This series aims to provide a forum for debate on the art and architecture of the Middle Ages. It will cover all media, from manuscript illumination to maps, tapestries, carvings, wall-paintings and stained glass, and all periods and regions, including Byzantine art. Both traditional and more theoretical approaches to the subject are welcome. Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to the editors or to the publisher, at the addresses given below. Professor Julian Luxford, School of Art History, University of St Andrews, 79 North Street, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, UK Professor Asa Simon Mittman, Department of Art and Art History, California State University at Chico, Chico, CA 95929-0820, USA Boydell & Brewer, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK Previously published titles in the series are listed on the following pages.

ALREADY PUBLISHED The Art of Anglo-Saxon England Catherine E. Karkov English Medieval Misericords: The Margins of Meaning Paul Hardwick English Medieval Shrines John Crook Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture: Liminal Spaces Edited by Elina Gertsman and Jill Stevenson The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-Century Europe Kirk Ambrose Early Medieval Stone Monuments: Materiality, Biography, Landscape Edited by Howard Williams, Joanne Kirton and Meggen Gondek The Royal Abbey of Reading Ron Baxter Education in Twelfth-Century Art and Architecture: Images of Learning in Europe, c.1100–1220 Laura Cleaver The Art and Science of the Church Screen in Medieval Europe: Making, Meaning, Preserving Edited by Spike Bucklow, Richard Marks and Lucy Wrapson Motherhood and Meaning in Medieval Sculpture: Representations from France, c.1100–1500 Marian Bleeke Graphic Devices and the Early Decorated Book Edited by Michelle P. Brown, Ildar H. Garipzanov and Benjamin C. Tilghman Church Monuments in South Wales, c.1200–1547 Rhianydd Biebrach Tomb and Temple: Re-imagining the Sacred Buildings of Jerusalem Edited by Robin Griffith-Jones and Eric Fernie

Art and Political Thought in Medieval England, c.1150–1350 Laura Slater Insular Iconographies: Essays in Honour of Jane Hawkes Edited by Meg Boulton and Michael D.J. Bintley English Alabaster Carvings and their Cultural Contexts Edited by Zuleika Murat A Critical Companion to English Mappae Mundi of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries Edited by Dan Terkla and Nick Millea Designing Norman Sicily: Material Culture and Society Edited by Emily A. Winkler, Liam Fitzgerald and Andrew Small Stone Fidelity: Marriage and Emotion in Medieval Tomb Sculpture Jessica Barker Reliquary Tabernacles in Fourteenth-Century Italy: Image, Relic and Material Culture

Beth Williamson

Imagining Anglo-Saxon England: Utopia, Heterotopia, Dystopia Catherine E. Karkov The Rood in Medieval Britain and Ireland, c.800–c.1500 Edited by Philippa Turner and Jane Hawkes The Ashburnham Pentateuch and its Contexts: The Trinity in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages Jennifer Awes Freeman

PLATE I (TOP)  TAVOLA DI SAN DOMENICO, DETAIL, FRONT, TWO FRAGMENTS, SAINT DOMINIC FLANKED BY FRIARS. TEMPERA ON WOOD (FIR), MID-THIRTEENTH CENTURY, CHAPEL OF SAINT DOMINIC, SANTA MARIA E SAN DOMENICO DELLA MASCARELLA, BOLOGNA. PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE MINISTERO DEI BENI E DELLE ATTIVITÀ CULTURALI, POLO MUSEALE DELL’EMILIA ROMAGNA.

PLATE II (BOTTOM)  ARCA OF SAINT DOMINIC, DETAIL, MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES BY SAINT DOMINIC. CARVED MARBLE AND MOSAIC INLAY, C. 1267, SAN DOMENICO, BOLOGNA. PHOTO BY AUTHOR.

WWW.ASSISI.DE.

STEFAN DILLER,

ASSISI. IMAGE:

OF SAN FRANCESCO,

TESORO, BASILICA

C. 1290, MUSEO DEL

ENAMELS, H. 22 CM,

TRANSLUCENT

SILVER-GILT WITH

MANNAIA.

GUCCIO DI

CHALICE BY

PLATE IV (RIGHT)

ARCIVESCOVILE DI SIENA.

FRANCESCO, SIENA. PHOTO BY AUTHOR, REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF THE SEMINARIO

PLATE III (LEFT)  SAINT FRANCIS. CARVED MARBLE, EARLY FOURTEENTH CENTURY, SAN

PLATE V (TOP)  TRITTICO DI SANTA CHIARA. TEMPERA AND GOLD ON WOOD, C. 1300–20 (CENTRAL PANEL) AND C. 1328–30 (WINGS), TRIESTE, CIVICO MUSEO SARTORIO, INV. NO. 14/3408. PHOTO: © TRIESTE, CIVICO MUSEO SARTORIO.

PLATE VI (BOTTOM)  TRITTICO DI SANTA CHIARA, DETAIL OF CENTRAL PANEL. TEMPERA AND GOLD ON WOOD, C. 1300–20. TRIESTE, CIVICO MUSEO SARTORIO, INV. NO. 14/3408. PHOTO: © TRIESTE, CIVICO MUSEO SARTORIO.

PLATE VII (TOP)  UGOLINO DI NERIO, VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH SAINTS. TEMPERA AND GOLD ON PANEL, C. 1320, CLARK ART INSTITUTE, WILLIAMSTOWN, MA, INV. NO. 1962.148. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE CLARK ART INSTITUTE, WILLIAMSTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS, USA.

PLATE VIII (BOTTOM) SOUTH TRANSEPT OF THE LOWER CHURCH, BASILICA OF SAN FRANCESCO, ASSISI, WITH FRESCOES BY PIETRO LORENZETTI, C. 1317–25. PHOTO: ARCHIVIO FOTOGRAFICO DEL SACRO CONVENTO, ASSISI.

LENSINI.

SIENA. PHOTO:

PUBBLICO,

PALAZZO

MAPPAMONDO,

1331, SALA DEL

DATED TO

MARTINI AND

TO SIMONE

ATTRIBUTED

FRESCO, HERE

PLATE IX  NEW

FLORENCE.

PHOTO: GALLERIE DEGLI UFFIZI,

GALLERIE DEGLI UFFIZI, FLORENCE.

AND GOLD ON PANEL, C. 1332,

STRANGLED BY THE DEVIL. TEMPERA

NICHOLAS RESUSCITATES A BOY

AND THE GRAINSHIPS AND SAINT

LORENZETTI, SAINT NICHOLAS

PLATE XI (RIGHT)  AMBROGIO

UFFIZI, FLORENCE.

FLORENCE. PHOTO: GALLERIE DEGLI

C. 1332, GALLERIE DEGLI UFFIZI,

TEMPERA AND GOLD ON PANEL,

SAINT NICHOLAS AS BISHOP OF MYRA.

THE CHOICE AND CONSECRATION OF

DOWRIES TO THREE MAIDENS AND

LORENZETTI, SAINT NICHOLAS GIVES

PLATE X (LEFT)  AMBROGIO

PLATE XII (TOP)  GIOTTO, BARONCELLI POLYPTYCH. TEMPERA AND GOLD ON PANEL, C. 1334–35 (IN LATER FRAME), BARONCELLI CHAPEL, SANTA CROCE, FLORENCE. PHOTO: EUGENE A/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.

PLATE XIII (BOTTOM)  BERNARDO DADDI, POLYPTYCH WITH THE CRUCIFIXION AND SAINTS LAURENCE, ANDREW, BARTHOLOMEW, GEORGE, PAUL, PETER, JAMES THE MAJOR, AND STEPHEN (AND RECONSTRUCTED PREDELLA), 1348, THE COURTAULD GALLERY, LONDON, GAMBIER-PARRY BEQUEST, P.1966.GP.82. PHOTO AND HYPOTHETICAL RECONSTRUCTION BY AUTHOR.

PLATE XIV (TOP) PACINO DI BONAGUIDA (ATTR.), INITIAL D: SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON, FROM GRADUAL (FOL. 185V), C. 1335–40, OSTERIA NUOVA DI BAGNO A RIPOLI, SAN GIORGIO A RUBALLA. PHOTO BY AUTHOR, REPRODUCED WITH GENEROUS PERMISSION FROM THE SOPRINTENDENZA AND ARCIDIOCESI DI FIRENZE.

PLATE XV (BOTTOM) ITALIAN, PANEL FROM A RELIQUARY DIPTYCH. GILDED GLASS, GILDED AND PAINTED WOOD, 13 × 9.2 × 1.6 CM, 1330s–40s, DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS, DETROIT, FOUNDERS SOCIETY PURCHASE, 1994.43. PHOTO: DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS.

ART GALLERY.

LIVERPOOL, WALKER

NATIONAL MUSEUMS

COURTESY OF

LIVERPOOL. IMAGE

ART GALLERY,

1342, WALKER

(REVERSE),

IN THE TEMPLE

CHRIST DISCOVERED

SIMONE MARTINI,

PLATE XVII (RIGHT)

GALLERY.

WALKER ART

LIVERPOOL,

MUSEUMS

OF NATIONAL

IMAGE COURTESY

LIVERPOOL.

ART GALLERY,

1342, WALKER

GOLD ON PANEL,

TEMPERA AND

IN THE TEMPLE.

CHRIST DISCOVERED

SIMONE MARTINI,

PLATE XVI (LEFT)

PLATE XVIII (TOP) ENCOLPION. GOLD, ENAMEL, AND PRECIOUS STONES, BYZANTINE, TWELFTH CENTURY, SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA, SIENA. PHOTO BY AUTHOR, REPRODUCED COURTESY OF COMUNE DI SIENA (NO FURTHER REPRODUCTION PERMITTED).

PLATE XIX (BOTTOM) MEDALLION WITH CHRIST PANTOKRATOR. GOLD AND ENAMEL, BYZANTINE, LATE ELEVENTH OR TWELFTH CENTURY, SANTA MARIA DELLA SCALA, SIENA. PHOTO BY AUTHOR, REPRODUCED COURTESY OF COMUNE DI SIENA (NO FURTHER REPRODUCTION PERMITTED).

BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE CENTRALE DI FIRENZE.

PERMISSION OF THE MINISTERO DEI BENI E DELLE ATTIVITÀ E DEL TURISMO /

BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE CENTRALE DI FIRENZE II.II.445, FOL. 52R. PHOTO BY

PLATE XXI (RIGHT)  ZANOBI PERINI(?), THE WEDDING BANQUET OF TOBIAS, 1408,

ATTIVITÀ E DEL TURISMO / BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE CENTRALE DI FIRENZE.

II.II.445, FOL. 23R. PHOTO BY PERMISSION OF THE MINISTERO DEI BENI E DELLE

BAPTISM OF CHRIST, 1407–9, BIBLIOTECA NAZIONALE CENTRALE DI FIRENZE

PLATE XX (BELOW)  UNKNOWN ILLUSTRATOR AND ZANOBI PERINI, THE

PLATE XXII  RELIQUARY BUST OF SAINT ZENOBIUS BY ANDREA ARDITI. ENAMELLED AND GILDED SILVER, 1331, SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE, FLORENCE. PHOTO: OPERA DI SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE.