Abstract Within the history of the ancient Servants’ convent built on Mount Orfano in Rovato (Brescia, Italy) in the mid-15th century, we present the documents related to the private chapel erected on the northern side of the Church of Observance of the Annunciation of Mary. The oratory was commissioned by a wealthy patron at the end of the century and was a significant architectural intervention, with stone columns supporting the ribbed vault and robust buttresses. The chapel also had a complex cycle of frescoes dedicated to the Virgin Mary, painted by Nicolò and Liberale from Verona, depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments, resulting from a careful recovery of ancient styles. Because of its artistic value, the friars transferred the polyptych altarpiece there, with the Annunciation and Saints Augustine and Philip Benizi, carved and painted by Antonio and Bartolomeo Vivarini in 1452. The chapel, which was demolished in the mid-17th century, was an expression of the early Renaissance, rich in late medieval elements, and few pictorial fragments remain, sufficient to document the high quality of the decorative apparatus and the artistic renewal introduced in the late 15th century.
Abstract Starting from the clipeus of the facade of the cathedral of San Giorgio in Ferrara, the contribution proposes some reflections on the motif of images in clipeus in the Middle Ages, questioning whether it is not an element of discontinuity. Through many examples, known and less known from the Po Valley area, the reflection moves around the problem of the persistence of motifs considered classical during and after the Middle Ages.
Abstract Renaissance humanists, as well as their thirteenth- and fourteenth-century predecessors looked for their inspiration in the works of classical authors. That was true also of numerous late medieval humanists from Dalmatia and Croatia who produced texts in a variety of genres. What I would like to present in this article is an overview of what intellectuals in Dalmatia/Croatia knew about Antiquity and in what way did they use this knowledge. The basis for analysis will be mainly narrative sources of historiographic and legal origin. It seems that there existed certain differences in knowledge between Split and Zadar as the main centres of intellectual activity in Dalmatia, with authors having at their disposal different sets of sources. For the authors from Split and its region, history starts with the legend of Troy, with a strong accent on the period of Emperor Diocletian. According to the Korčula Codex, intellectuals in Zadar were interested in a broader picture of the past, including the history of the Persians and Jews.
Abstract Rome has always had a privileged relationship with antiquity, with different nuances in the Middle Ages. Citizens, elites, and foreign rulers reused classical elements in architecture, art, and epigraphy as symbols of prestige, wealth, and legitimacy. Ancient materials and inscriptions were reemployed not only for decoration but also for their symbolic power: phrases and terms from classical literature circulated in Rome long before the Renaissance. Ancient heritage thus became a tool of authority and self-determination, especially for the Commune, which claimed continuity with Rome’s past, but also for ecclesiastical power, which exploited it for prestige. Medieval epigraphic practices anticipated Renaissance models, and their study reveals diverse medieval attitudes toward antiquity and the roots of later classical revival.
The idea of classicism in art and culture was never totally absent from the minds of Middle Age knowledgeable men, either from a more religious and symbolical outlook, or from a more aesthetically and artistically approach. Classical culture - philosophical, geographical or architectural - was never fully discarded in this far more divided and conflictual world. Examples are not only the surviving fragments of classical texts, such as those from the architectural treaty of Vitruvius, but also the idea of the lost Roman Empire, that Charlemagne tried to “revive” but with a new double intent: as a Sacred (Christian) Empire, and as a gathering of Latin and Germanic populations, joining history, tradition and his own cultural origins. The use of “classical” elements, orders and proportions, and - mainly - the powerful meaning of pure forms in architecture - such as the circle or any related centralized plan - lingered on throughout times. Inspired by the Imperial tombs of Augustus, Adrian or Diocletian (just to quote the most momentous), the centralized churches addressed here, tried to bridge the gap between the pagan tradition of the mausoleums, and the Christian appropriation of the symbolism of the Triumph over Death that the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem embodied.
The question of early medieval renaissance (Justinian, Liutprandean, Carolingian, Ottonian) is based on the possibility of defining any phenomenon of return, even indirect and coherent, to ancient culture as a renaissance. A return to ancient art does not necessarily imply a recovery of the idealized naturalism associated with classical culture. The affirmation of Christianity not only did not erase the forms of pagan art but brought about a regeneration of classical art, that is to say a rebirth intended to create a Christian equivalent to the pagan tradition. An important result of this phenomenon was that the successive returns to the paleo-Christian roots often determined a renaissance without however the necessary implications linked to a conscious re-appropriation of the forms of pagan art. Classical art continued to be considered a reservoir both of materials to be physically appropriated and of models to be re-proposed in new artifacts.
The construction of new cathedrals was essential in Count Roger’s political strategy at the end of the 11th century. The plant often adopted has been traced by historiography to the model of Cluny II, already landed in Normandy. The construction of the abbey cathedral of Catania took place in 1091: Roger summoned the Breton monk Angerio from Calabria, appointing him abbot. The building, altered by natural disasters, maintains the eastern portion in the Norman conformation: transept with attached structures, presbytery area and scalar apses with crypt. Talking about Cluny’s model is perhaps inappropriate, while undoubtedly nordic is the expedient of narrow passages between the apses for liturgical purposes. The crypt is a striking monumental reuse: a pre-existing space, adapted to the conservation of the relics of Saint Agatha, whose repatriation took place in 1126. A low choir was set up between the sanctuary and the eastern portion of the aisles, in turn marked by supports composite: rectangular piers with two columns flanked side by side. This ambitious project was the first step in a programmatic renaissance, sought in the recovery of classical elegance and in the experimentation of innovative characters, which led to the prestigious royal architecture.
There is no doubt that Renaissance influences reached Rab through the work of architects and stonemasons, but the Gothic still continued to dominate in the architecture. The island’s elite sought to present itself through fashionable houses, investments in churches or tombs in a manner that they had observed elsewhere in the Adriatic region. However, this does not imply that such architecture or decoration had for them any meaning different from the Gothic. We can be justifiably doubtful of that because there are very few traces of humanism in the life of Rab’s nobility or its notable commoners - as far as can be concluded from the available sources. Their written culture was not impregnated by humanist ideas or ideals. Apart from the lack of financial means and the gradual falling out of important economic and social networks, one of the reasons for the absence of humanist and Renaissance practices could have been the political and social situation: using humanism as an element of self-identification, as was the case in Italy or in more developed Dalmatian cities, would not have improved the position of the island’s elite since the centre of power lay in.
Although the motif of a monkey is widely present in different medieval arts, and we can trace its development and changes in its form, symbolism, and narrative from the medieval to renaissance period in visual arts, it is not common on pottery. Our research focuses on the monochrome renaissance sgraffito cup from Sv. Ivan Kornetski in Croatia with the depiction of a monkey with a drinking vessel. To understand its interpretation, we will tackle changes in its narrative throughout history and according to its context.
The church of Santa Maria Assunta in Adria, known as “Tomba”, houses a terracotta Dormitio Virginis attributed to the so-called “Maestro del sepolcro Fava” and dated between 1440 and 1445. This essay sheds new light on the sculpture by reconstructing its original patronage and context, focusing on its liturgical function. Through a material and iconographical approach, combined with documentary evidence, I argue that it was the central part of a larger altarpiece originally located on the church’s main altar. In the same years, the sculptor Michele da Firenze executed another large terracotta altarpiece for the main altar of Adria Cathedral, of which the Tomba was subsidiary. Therefore, the patronage choices made by the bishops of that period, who promoted the renovation of the two sacred buildings and adorned them with these altarpieces, reveal the leading role played by the clay technique in Polesine during the fifteenth century.
The article presents a little known Legenda Minor of the scriptorium of Tommaso Caffarini da Siena, which is a synthesis of the major version of Saint Catherine’s life. The manuscript can be attributable to Cristoforo Cortese, the leading illuminator in the first half of the XV century in Venice. The essay places this codex in its proper context, thanks to an examination of forgotten works by Cortese, and other works not yet attributed to him, and highlights his ability to embody different stylistic trends during his career.
Il crescente ricorso dell’archeologia a un’ampia gamma di analisi scientifiche non solo permette di acquisire dati di differente natura, utili all’analisi interdisciplinare, ma può anche fornire nuovi percorsi di ricerca per verificare e implementare le attuali conoscenze specialistiche sulla cultura materiale, a cominciare dalle classificazioni tipologiche e dalle cronologie dei manufatti. Queste restano un imprescindibile presupposto per una solida analisi e interpretazione di temi e contesti, in relazione a significati e situazioni mutevoli e più in generale nella ricostruzione della progressione storica. In questo contributo si valutano potenzialità e limiti e anche le variabili da considerare nell’uso di genetica e statistica anche per una migliore seriazione tipologica della cultura materiale barbarica, in particolare quella longobarda in Italia.
This article is an overview of the sets of places of power in urban and suburban/rural contexts in the micro-area of the island of Krk, Croatia. First, the concept of places of power is terminologically and methodologically defined, mostly leaning on the definitions set in the essay collection “Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages” (2001) and placed in the Eastern Adriatic context. The established concept is then tested on the most important points in townscapes and landscapes of the island of Krk from the period of Antiquity to the early middle ages.
This article examines the three axial stained glass windows of the choir of Chartres Cathedral which form a vast Marian program by considering its different possible meanings: the links with the cult of the Virgin and more particularly with the disappeared Romanesque and Gothic statues, the involvement of the donors in this cult and the priestly role of the Virgin. The assumption of a transposition of the Romanesque statue’ forms into monumental sculpture and stained glass windows has already been supported on many occasions, but the installation of a new statue in the choir around 1220 has hardly been taken into account in this discussion. The general characteristics of the two cult statues allow us to assume that the first was sought to be evoked in the sculpture and stained glass windows of the 12th century and the second in the stained glass windows of the 13th century. The Eucharistic interpretation of the axial windows has also been considered, but it has been challenged with strong arguments. The article proposes a new argumentation for this hypothesis based on several iconographic clues, in particular the omnipresence of the Virgin wearing a chasuble, which suggests that she was given a priestly status.
By drawing attention to the frequent anteriority of most of the various processes chosen and implemented in Byzantine environments, from present-day Turkey to Serbia and Sicily, this paper raises a legitimate question. Indeed, the authors suggest that the major protagonists of the Italian pictorial “renaissance” - Giotto and before him Cavallini - were largely dependent on Byzantine experiments in the precise field of architectural representations. These later formed an essential part of the naturalistic framework of the Italian painting “renaissance” from the 1290s. These architectures - previously experienced in several Byzantine paintings and mosaics - contributed greatly to the true spatial depth that plays an essential role in the pictorial programs of what is still presented today by many specialists as an authentic revolution engaging in the paths of modernity.
The new glazed pottery production in the late Middle Ages is linked to the political changes that took place after the Lombard age and is inspired by the renewal of social organisation and the economic impulse that characterised the centuries after the 11th. Glazed ceramics represented a real ‘renaissance’ both from a technical point of view, with the use of lead or tin oxide glazes giving the vase a higher quality finish than the previous production, and from the decorative point of view, for the variety of geometric and phytomorphic patterns that embellish the vessels, making them almost artistic products. In the present contribution we will analyse glazed ceramics dating back to 13th century from archaeological site of Sant’Ilario a Port’Aurea in Benevento, which is an early medieval monastic complex. The found pottery has vitreous coverage of good quality and rich decoration and could testify the presence of a highly qualified local craftsman.
