The study presents an icon by the seventeenth-century Cretan painter Theodoros Poulakis, with subject All Saints and The Last Judgement, which is today in the church of the Taxiarchs in the village of Grammeno, not far from Ioannina. In this icon the artist makes a break with the past, by reworking the established iconographic models in order to introduce new elements that reflect theological and philosophical issues debated in spiritual and intellectual circles of his time. After a brief description of the specific work, we shall endeavour to demonstrate that this icon should be identified as the hitherto lost work of the same subject by the artist, which used to be in the Eleousa Monastery on the Island (Nesi) of the lake in Ioannina. We shall elaborate on the reasons that led us to link our icon with the work All Saints, which is referred to extensively in Theodoros Poulakiss' first will, drawn up on Corfu in 1664. Discussed too is the commissioner of the icon, who in our opinion is Stephanos Tzigaras, a lettered man and scion of an aristocratic family of Ioannina. Last, mentioned also are other works by Poulakis now in Epirus, through which we attempt to trace the painters' relations with other Epirots settled in Venice and Corfu.
Datable to 1525/28, Jacopo Palma il Vecchios' Bathing Nymphs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum up to now has been interpreted either as an episode from the Ovidian myth of Diana and Callisto or as a merely evocative representation of female beauty in a vaguely bucolic mood, but both approaches fail to be truly convincing. Disseminated with subtle allusions to antique statues and engravings realized by Palmas' sixteenth century Venetian and central Italian contemporaries as well as to the debate of the so-called Paragone between painting and sculpture, his panel (transferred to canvas) may instead be based on a passage of Jacopo Sanazzaros'enormously popular Arcadia describing the iconography of a fictitious relief with an amorous assault of some lascivious satyrs on a group of nymphs who escape from their persecutors swimming across a river. As a reconversion into figurative art of a well-known Renaissance exphrasis it is thus also the subject of the Vienna Bathing Nymphs to enrich the latters' theoretical implications mostly assigned to its formal language.
This study investigates the origins, evolution and dissemination of the iconography of Philip Neri receiving the Holy Spirit in the Catacombs of St. Sebastian. The miraculous episode, which took place when Neri was still a layman, caused the enlargement of his heart and stirred severe palpitations, signaling his fervent call to the apostolate. The contextualization of the saints' biographies, along with the canonization proceedings and lesser-known sources, demonstrate that this imagery begins to emerge during the eighteenth century, gradually gaining prominence and ultimately becoming intertwined with liturgical celebrations and worship.
This essay is a contribution to the debate regarding the dating of the cycle of the frescoes in the chapel of Saint Nicola in Tolentino, which is attributed to Pietro da Rimini. The hypotheses made until now date the painting of the frescoes between 1310 to 1348 to stand around 1325 of the process of canonization. Observing the iconography of the representations of the post mortem miracles in several paintings made from the end of the thirteenth century to the beginning of the following, it can be noted that until the first decade of the fourteenth century the saints are represented with their feet on the floor and larger than the other characters in the scene. Later, from the middle of the second decade of the fourteenth century onwards, the saints are represented smaller and in the air. We can note that in the scenes frescoed in the chapel of Tolentino saint Nicola appears bigger than the rest of the figures and with his feet on the floor. We can guess therefore that the painting in chapel was probably realized shortly after the middle of the second decade. This hypothesis could help to shed light on the development of artistic language of the young Pietro da Rimini for which there are no chronological references.
The success of the painter Giacomino da Ivrea, active in the mid-15th century between Piedmont, Aosta Valley and Savoy, lies in his ability to translate certain iconographic novelties in a popular and immediate manner: for the bishop of Aosta, Ogier Moriset, he proposed the Apostolic and Prophetic Creed in mural painting; for the bishop of Ivrea, Giacomo Pomerio, he divulged the trigram of the Name ofJesus as described in those years by Bernardine of Siena during his crowded public sermons.
