Trecento Painting

This essay examines and discusses a hitherto unpublished drawing reproducing a fresco in Siena, now lost but traditionally attributed to Simone Martini by sources ranging from Ghiberti to Della Valle. The drawing, from the collection of the art historian Jean-Baptiste Seroux d’Agincourt housed in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, prompts discussion regarding the painting’s iconography and style.

A heavily repainted wooden Crucifix in the parish church of Ussita (near Visso, Macerata) is here published and attributed to a 14th-century Umbrian sculptor, known as the Maestro della Madonna del Duomo di Spoleto (Master of the Spoleto Cathedral Madonna). The three figures painted on the wooden cross are assigned to a painter also from Spoleto, the Fossa Master.

This article explores the way Renaissance men and women sought protection against plague by investigating examples commissioned by one representative group of worshippers, confraternities. Scholars have often assumed that during epidemics, individualistic self-interest triumphed over collective civic identity, as wealthy citizens deserted in droves and ties of family and friendship dissolved in the face of the overwhelming need to save one's own skin. Examining these images, I ask, how does the confraternity position itself in relation to its own members and to the rest of society? What chains of intercession are mobilized, and for whose benefit? Three case studies provide a pan-Italian perspective: an altarpiece of the plague Virgin of Mercy by Barnaba da Modena from Genoa, a processional banner for a Perugian flagellant confraternity by Benedetto Bonfigli, and a painting of the new plague saint Roch by Bartolomeo della Gatta for the confraternity palace in Arezzo.

The essay examines the early career of the Bolognese painter Lippo di Dalmasio (ca. 1350s-1410), documented as a resident of the Tuscan city of Pistoia in the 1370s and 1380s, and seeks to cast light on his most ambitious work to survive in Pistoia, the Madonna of Humility between Sts. Dominic and Catherine and Two Donors (ca. 1380) in S. Domenico. Through close examination of the iconographical and stylistic sources of the S. Domenico Madonna, this study promotes a deeper understanding of Lippo’s practices and of the Pistoiese artistic milieu in which Emilian and Tuscan pictorial conventions met and coalesced. Such an episode also contributes to the wider discussion on the diffusion of the Virgin of Humility theme which was prominent in the devotional images of both Bologna and Pistoia after 1350. In addition, the essay raises questions about the use of regional stylistic labels and, in doing so, offers fresh material to the broader debates surrounding the rich network of artistic exchange within and between the urban centres of trecento Italy.

Le pareti della Camera d'Amore, che trova posto all'ultimo piano del mastio nel castello di Sabbionara d'Avio, vennero decorate nel Trecento con un ciclo di affreschi di tema profano. In gran parte danneggiati, nel corso del Novecento diversi studiosi hanno provato ad affrontarne le problematiche, quali la datazione, l'iconografia e l'attribuzione. Questo articolo tenta, attraverso una serie di nuovi confronti, di suggerire una nuova proposta di datazione e di confermare, in maniera ormai certa, l'orizzonte culturale da cui il Maestro del ciclo sarebbe provenuto.

The walls of the Camera d'Amore, which is located in the last floor of the keep in the castle of Sabbionara d'Avio, were decorated in the XIV century with a cycle of secular frescoes. Now mostly damaged, in the XX century several studies have tried to face issues like date, iconography and attribution. According to different comparisons, this paper tries to suggest a new dating solution and to confim, now beyond any doubt, the cultural horizon from which the Master of Avio should have come from.

This essay investigates reactions to the recurring disaster of bubonic plague by analysing a series of miniatures in the chronicle of Lucchese apothecary Giovanni Sercambi. Completed in 1400, the richly illustrated manuscript (Lucca, Archivio di Stato, ms. 107) records seven epidemics, from the Black Death to the century’s end. Demons or angels are shown unleashing the disease on helpless humanity. Amongst the earliest visual evocations of the experience of plague, the drawings offer key insights into early modern responses to this most fearsome of disasters, articulating contemporary understandings of plague’s supernatural causes and terrestrial effects, and the emotional regimes elicited in response. Examined individually and as unfolding sequence, set against and interacting with the surrounding text, the miniatures fulfil a range of commemorative, hortatory and cathartic functions.

This study proposes a re-identification of the subject and date of Ambrogio Lorenzetti's fresco found in the chapter house of S. Francesco, Siena.  Within the context of Franciscan missionary activities in the order's Asian missions, anomalies within the iconography, and the history and cultural context of the Sienese Franciscan establishment, the scene is identified as the martyrdom of six Franciscans in the friary of Almalyq (also Armalech) c. 1339 in the Chaghatai Khanate in Mongolia.  By 1343 when prominent Sienese were at the papal court, the Vicar of Tartary had petitioned the pope in Avignon to canonize the martyred friars.  The Virtues and Vices in the architectural setting of the fresco are further correlated with the Gift Virtues and Sins as well as to 'Somme le roi' influences found in Tuscan sources further confirming the artist's innovative iconography and the intellectual interests of the Sienese friars such as Francesco d 'Altimanno Ugurgieri.

For an audio-video animation of the manuscript with the modern transcription see the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO56v7qltNo

An edition of the anonymous labyrinthine ballade on three canons, "En la maison Dedalus" (In the House of Dedalus) from the Berkeley Manuscript.

This edition includes a modern transcription of the music, the original manuscript excerpted, poetic and literal translations of the text, reconstruction of the 11-tier labyrinth upon which the music is overlain, and pedagogical materials/explanations of the musical and poetic medieval Ballade forme-fixe.

Resumen: La hipótesis de trabajo del presente artículo plantea la posibilidad de que la doctrina mariológica de San Buenaventura haya ejercido notable influencia directa en varios de los más significativos temas iconográficos marianos en el arte italiano de la Baja Edad Media. Tras esbozar una breve síntesis biográfica para resaltar la elevada posición de dicho santo como maestro de la Escolástica, prestigioso escritor sacro, máxima autoridad de la Orden Franciscana y acreditado Doctor de la Iglesia, el autor del artículo expone las tesis desarrolladas por San Buenaventura en cada uno de sus múltiples “Discursos Mariológicos”, antes de analizar un conjunto de imágenes pictóricas representativas de diversos temas iconográficos marianos en las que se podría detectar esa probable influencia de la mariología bonaventuriana.

Abstract: The central hypothesis of this paper raises the possibility that the mariology of St. Bonaventure maybe could have exercised substantial, direct influence on several of the most significant Marian iconographic themes in Italian art of the late Middle Ages. After a brief biographical sketch to highlight the prominent position of the saint as a master of Scholastic, prestigious writer, the highest authority of the Franciscan Order and accredited Doctor of the Church, the author of this paper presents the thesis developed by St. Bonaventure in each one of his many “Mariological Discourses” before analyzing a set of pictorial images representing various Marian iconographic themes in which we could detect the probable influence of bonaventurian mariology.

Since Roberto Longhi (1934-1935, 1950) modern scholarship has got a critical grasp of the original change Bolognese painting and illumination showed as a result of the epochal turn of the new realism by Giotto in the first half of fourteenth century. Art historians have widely studied the direct expressive force of Bolognese Trecento and the role of Byzantinising and northern-european gothic influences.
My paper is intended to focus on one among the protagonists of this turning, working in the 1330s-1340s, the anonymous illuminator nicknamed l’Illustratore by Longhi himself, and suggest a new interpretation of his disruption of giottesque balance on the basis of the didactic function as mnemonic images that miniatures performed in the law manuscripts produced for Bologna University, the main European center for this kind of objects. This approach depends on the observations by Frances Yates (1969) and Jean-Philippe Antoine (1988) about the correspondence between the mental images used in religious meditation shaped as active images set in tridimensional places according to the rules of the classical and medieval artificial memory and the great change of Italian religious painting between the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries.
If one considers miniatures in legal manuscripts as a network of images supporting lawyers’ memory, it appears that the lively narrative and expressive energy of l’Illustratore properly answered the need of something striking and unusual mnemonic images should show to be memorable according to the first-century-BC Rhetorica ad Herennium.

The rebirth of realistic representation in Italy around 1300 led to the materialization of a pictorial language, which dominated Western art until 1900, and it dominates global visual culture even today. Paralleling the development of mimesis, self-reflexive pictorial tendencies emerged as well. Images-within-images, visual commentaries of representations by representations, were essential to this trend. They facilitated the development of a critical pictorial attitude towards representation. This book offers the first comprehensive study of Italian meta-painting in the age of Giotto and sheds new light on the early modern and modern history of the phenomenon. By combining visual hermeneutics and iconography, it traces reflexivity in Italian mural and panel painting at the dawn of the Renaissance, and presents novel interpretations of several key works of Giotto di Bondone and the Lorenzetti brothers. The potential influence of the contemporary religious and social context on the program design is also examined situating the visual innovations within a broader historical horizon. The analysis of pictorial illusionism and reality effect together with the liturgical, narrative and typological role of images-within-images makes this work a pioneering contribution to visual studies and premodern Italian culture.

‘Reflexivity is the name of the game they say when it comes to modern and especially to postmodern art. This study tells a different story. Péter Bokody’s book goes back to where it all began: to Italian Trecento painting which marks the beginnings of the realistic mode. Realism means, among many other things, that one medium can embed another medium. If it does so it will enhance its realistic potential, strengthen the meaning of the whole scene and, finally, it makes a meta-statement: about the power of images, the different qualities of the artforms or even about stylistic options.’
Wolfgang Kemp, University of Hamburg

'Bokody’s book combines visual sensitivity, methodological variety, historical erudition and theoretical sophistication. His work encourages us to think with more precision and flexibility about the concepts of "realism" and reflexivity as applied to the achievements of Giotto and his contemporaries and in relation to subsequent generations of artists. Bokody provides fresh insights for all those who study, admire and teach this material.'
Joanna Cannon, Courtauld Institute of Art, London

'Engagingly written, this study will add significantly to our understanding of Giotto and his circle (including Lorenzetti, Gaddi and Daddi) in the dynamically changing world of fourteenth century Italy. Although primarily concerned with images within images in panel and mural painting, the work goes beyond its initial parameters and looks at such concepts as realism, spatial relations, illusionism, meta-painting, self-reflexivity, time and reception in Italian art. It is a study which exposes the viewer to new ideas and details that could easily be passed and whose iconography is significant in understanding the work in its entirety.'
Colum Hourihane, Independent Scholar, UK

La advocación y la iconografía de la Virgo Dolorosa se basan en la meditación sobre Los Siete Dolores de María. De esos Siete Dolores nuestra Ponencia considerará solo el 5º: María asistiendo a su Hijo durante su crucifixión y muerte en el Calvario. Fundaremos nuestra reflexión en el análisis comparativo de obras de arte y textos patrísticos y teológicos que tratan dicho tema.  Algunos cuadros italianos del Trecento revelan el comportamiento de María en las escenas de la Crucifixión en dos situaciones esenciales: la resignada entereza de María permaneciendo de pie junto a la cruz; y su desmayo, producido por el insoportable dolor de ver a su Hijo muriendo cruelmente crucificado. Por otro lado, testimonios coincidentes de varios teólogos medievales confirman esa misma doble experiencia dramática de María. De ahí se infiere que los artistas medievales que interpretan el tema se inspiran en esas o similares fuentes teológicas.

This paper (which complements two previous works of our authorship) proposes to interpret the bouquet of lilies in medieval images of The Annunciation in two essentially intertwined dogmatic meanings, related to Christology and Mariology. Contradicting conventional “explanations” of such flower in this Marian scene, we found our proposal in many and consistent testimony of some prestigious Church Fathers and medieval theologians, glossing the biblical sentence Ego sum flos campi et lilium convallium. Such lyrical expression is seen by those authors as a clear metaphor that identifies Christ, the incarnate Son of God, and that, as such, also refers to Mary, in whose virginal womb the Son of God's incarnation is produced. Thus, based on the solid patristic and theological tradition on this biblical sentence, we dare to interpret the bouquet of lilies in paintings of the Annunciation (illustrated here by nine paintings of the Italian Trecento) as a double metaphor, which means both the supernatural human incarnation of God the Son and the virginal divine motherhood of Mary.

The mariological thesis of the conceptio per aurem, according to which the Virgin Mary would have conceived Jesus Christ trough the ear at the instant of hearing the angel's heavenly message announcing her that she would be mother of the Son of God incarnate without losing her virginity, has received so far very few academic studies rigorously grounded in primary sources. In fact the references to this theory in the specialized literature are very scarce and, when a scholar evokes it, he almost always only alludes to it, without providing documentary evidence. However, as the nine Italian paintings discussed here reveal, this theory was illustrated by subtle visual metaphors in many medieval paintings, which were inspired by a strong literary tradition. In addition a pleiad of Church Fathers and medieval theologians testify, by explicit statements, that such a theory enjoyed remarkable acceptance among teachers of Christian thought. Based on many patristic and theological texts, this paper attempts two main purposes: firstly, to expose the various theoretical formulations proposed by these thinkers; then to try to highlight the dogmatic meanings that underlie this astonishing thesis.

Resumen: La tesis mariológica de la conceptio per aurem, según la cual la Virgen María habría concebido a Jesucristo por el oído en el momento de escuchar del ángel el mensaje celestial anunciándole que, sin perder su virginidad, sería madre del Hijo de Dios encarnado, ha merecido hasta ahora muy pocos estudios académicos rigurosamente fundados en fuentes primarias. De hecho, en la literatura especializada son muy escasas las referencias a tal teoría y, cuando algún estudioso la evoca, casi siempre se contenta con aludir a ella, sin aportar pruebas documentales. Sin embargo, tal como lo revelan las nueve pinturas italianas aquí analizadas, esa teoría fue ilustrada mediante sutiles metáforas visuales en muchas obras pictóricas medievales, las cuales se inspiraron en una sólida tradición literaria. Además una pléyade de Padres de la Iglesia y teólogos medievales testimonia, mediante afirmaciones explícitas, que semejante teoría gozó de notable aceptación entre los maestros del pensamiento cristiano. Basándose en numerosos textos patrísticos y teológicos, este artículo intenta dos objetivos esenciales: exponer, ante todo, las distintas formulaciones teóricas propuestas por esos pensadores; y además, tratar de poner en luz los significados dogmáticos que subyacen bajo esa sorprendente tesis.

La delizia di Belfiore - non più esistente ma originariamente ubicata nella periferia nord di Ferrara - ha rappresentato uno dei capitoli più rilevati del mecenatismo della casata tra Tre e Quattrocento. Famosa soprattutto per avere ospitato il celebre studiolo di Leonello, Belfiore fu oggetto di un’importante campagna decorativa negli anni immediatamente successivi la fondazione ad opera del marchese Alberto V d’Este (1388-1393). Stando a quanto rendicontato da Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti nel suo De Triumphis religionis, il ciclo abbelliva il muro di fondo della loggia di facciata del palazzo ed aveva per protagonista il marchese Alberto. La rilettura della fonte ha permesso l’individuazione di tre episodi narrativi principali e una loro interpretazione sulla base di quanto posposto nelle camerae pictae a soggetto venatorio di pieno Trecento di ambito avignonese e transalpino, quindi con quelle messe in opera nelle corti del nord Italia tra anni Ottanta e Novanta. Il contributo muove poi dall’idea che il ciclo trecentesco (forse incentrato sul tema della caccia d’amore) non solo sia stato fondamentale per l’aprirsi della decorazione di tardogotica a Ferrara, ma soprattutto che la sua messa in opera sia l’espressione lampante dei rapporti precoci e intensi intrattenuti dalla corte ferrarese con il mondo della curia pontificia negli anni che videro il succedersi dei governi di Nicolò II e del di lui fratello Alberto.

This paper explores relationships between funerary laws and mourning practices as well as the expression of emotions by women within male-prescribed frameworks. Materially, it focuses on two paintings whose representations and significance for women differed: one a memorial image possibly connected with burial, the other probably in the lay church of an Augustinian convent.

This essay examines the iconography of Mary sewing or doing other needlework in a domestic interior, a theme developed in the Lorenzetti circle and in other 14th-century Italian art such as small paintings by Niccolò di Buonaccorso, Benedetto di Bindo, Vitale da Bologna, and Tomaso da Modena, which were perhaps intended for private devotions, particularly for women. Sometimes found with a Holy Family or Madonna of Humility scene, such innovative Marian imagery created a theme of sewing, knitting or spinning with strong theological metaphors and similitudes found also in mendicant sermon literature and ‘Mariale’, which paralleled Joseph’s carpentry work. Sources include Bartholomaeus de Anglicus’s "De proprietatibus rerum," Sienese Dominican Giovanni da San Gimignano’s "Liber de exempla et similitudinibus," the apocryphal "Protoevangelium of James," Jacopo da Voragine’s sermons, the "Meditations on the Life of Christ," and the "Vita Christi" by Sienese Augustinian hermit Michele Beccucci da Massa, among others. Broader contexts include the mechanical arts, professional and household occupations for women, and comparable textile-working activities. Interior scene details from an Anatolian animal carpet and plaid bed cover in a Lorenzetti "Holy Family" at the Abegg-Stiftung, Riggisberg, to furniture and bobbins of thread that transform sacred scenes into pioneering realistic domestic settings.