I first encountered the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s beguine cradle in 1960, when I was a junior at the University of Michigan and went to Detroit to see the highly touted exhibition “Flanders in the Fifteenth Century: Art and Civilization.” Although I had visited the medieval collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this was the first special exhibit devoted to the art of the Middle Ages I had ever seen. Because my trip to Detroit occurred fifty-six years ago, I can be forgiven, I think, for having only a vague memory of this encounter. I remember wondering why a doll’s bed, even one for the baby Jesus, figured in such a show, but, like the curators themselves, I was interested primarily in the paintings, especially those of Rogier van der Weyden, Jan van Eyck, and Hieronymus Bosch. In contrast, when I take students to the Met today, encounter with the beguine cradle is one of the high points of the tour (Fig. 1). The questions it raises now bear almost no relation to what curators and viewers experienced in 1960, when the crib visited Detroit, and it draws me and my students to another, much less-studied crib that is displayed quite close to the beguine cradle. The difference between what I and others thought we saw in 1960 and what we see today provides a window onto changes in the field of art history over the past half century. The catalogue for the Detroit exhibit was organized, like the exhibit itself, according to medium or some sort of understanding of type, with “paintings” the largest group by far.1 Next in numerical importance came “sculpture,” which seems to have meant carvings in wood, for the categories “metalwork” and “goldsmith’s work” included figures we would today call sculpture. The beguine cradle was located in “furniture.” The category of “devotional object,” which was put on the art historical map in a way that fired popular imagination by Henk van Os in the exhibit “The Art of Devotion” in Amsterdam in 1994–95, was in no way thought of.2 Throughout the Detroit catalogue, material trumps use or form as a principle of organization. But the matter described is not the matter of the recent “material turn” or “thing theory.” It is acted upon, not actor, not even a participant in its own shaping. It is striking to read, from this distance, the description in the Detroit catalogue of the cradle itself. The entry opens by relating it to cribs for actual babies in the fifteenth century and cites a surviving cradle perhaps used by the house of Burgundy. Although the Grand Béguinage in Louvain is mentioned as the provenance, there is no explanation of who the religious women known as beguines were, although we are given details about the musical instruments played by the angels on the bedposts. The only specific reference to women is the note that cribs were “sometimes given to nuns at the time they took their vows.”3 Such—to put it a little baldly—were the days before women’s history!4 But today, the significance for women is
1960年，我第一次见到大都会艺术博物馆(Metropolitan Museum of Art)的贝古尼摇篮，当时我在密歇根大学(University of Michigan)读大三，当时我去底特律观看了备受吹捧的展览“15世纪的佛兰德斯:艺术与文明”(Flanders in the fifteen Century: Art and Civilization)。虽然我曾参观过波士顿美术博物馆的中世纪藏品，但这是我所见过的第一个专门展出中世纪艺术的展览。因为我的底特律之行发生在56年前，所以我对这次遭遇只有模糊的记忆，我想这是可以原谅的。我记得我很奇怪为什么一个娃娃的床，甚至是婴儿耶稣的床，会出现在这样的展览中，但是，就像策展人自己一样，我主要对绘画感兴趣，尤其是那些Rogier van der Weyden, Jan van Eyck和Hieronymus Bosch的画。相比之下，当我今天带学生去大都会博物馆参观时，与贝古摇篮的邂逅是这次参观的高潮之一(图1)。它现在提出的问题与1960年的策展人和观众所经历的几乎没有关系，当时这个摇篮参观了底特律，它把我和我的学生吸引到另一个研究得少得多的摇篮，它离贝古摇篮很近。我和其他人认为我们在1960年所看到的与我们今天所看到的之间的差异，为过去半个世纪艺术史领域的变化提供了一扇窗口。底特律展览的目录就像展览本身一样，是根据媒介或对类型的某种理解来组织的，其中“绘画”是迄今为止最大的一类其次是“雕塑”，这似乎是指木雕，因为“金属制品”和“金匠的作品”类别包括我们今天称之为雕塑的人物。贝古尼摇篮位于“家具”中。1994年至1995年在阿姆斯特丹举办的“奉献的艺术”展览中，亨克·范·奥斯(Henk van Os)以激发大众想象力的方式，将“奉献对象”这一类别放在艺术史地图上，这是万万没想到的在整个底特律目录中，材料胜过使用或形式作为组织原则。但所描述的问题不是最近的“物质转向”或“物论”的问题。它是行动的对象，而不是演员，甚至不是塑造自身的参与者。从这么远的距离读到底特律的摇篮目录上对摇篮本身的描述，真是令人吃惊。文章一开始就把它和15世纪的婴儿床联系起来，并引用了一个可能是勃艮第家族使用的幸存的摇篮。虽然鲁汶的大b吉纳日(Grand b guinage)被提到是起源，但没有解释被称为贝吉尼的宗教妇女是谁，尽管我们得到了天使在床柱上演奏乐器的细节。唯一特别提到女性的注释是，婴儿床“有时会在修女宣誓时送给她们”。说得直白一点，那是妇女历史之前的时代!但今天，对女性的意义是我的学生提出的第一个问题。指引他们找到答案是很容易的，尽管答案本身可能令人困惑。自20世纪80年代以来，我们有了克里斯蒂安·克拉皮什-祖伯、乌林卡·鲁布莱克、杰弗里·汉伯格、托马斯·伦茨、彼得·凯勒和艾米·鲍威尔等人的作品，他们通过研究灵修物品来探索宗教女性的生活，有时会把这些物品及其经常出现的幻象放在非常突出的位置
{"title":"Encounter: Holy Beds","authors":"C. Bynum","doi":"10.1086/687150","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/687150","url":null,"abstract":"I first encountered the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s beguine cradle in 1960, when I was a junior at the University of Michigan and went to Detroit to see the highly touted exhibition “Flanders in the Fifteenth Century: Art and Civilization.” Although I had visited the medieval collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this was the first special exhibit devoted to the art of the Middle Ages I had ever seen. Because my trip to Detroit occurred fifty-six years ago, I can be forgiven, I think, for having only a vague memory of this encounter. I remember wondering why a doll’s bed, even one for the baby Jesus, figured in such a show, but, like the curators themselves, I was interested primarily in the paintings, especially those of Rogier van der Weyden, Jan van Eyck, and Hieronymus Bosch. In contrast, when I take students to the Met today, encounter with the beguine cradle is one of the high points of the tour (Fig. 1). The questions it raises now bear almost no relation to what curators and viewers experienced in 1960, when the crib visited Detroit, and it draws me and my students to another, much less-studied crib that is displayed quite close to the beguine cradle. The difference between what I and others thought we saw in 1960 and what we see today provides a window onto changes in the field of art history over the past half century. The catalogue for the Detroit exhibit was organized, like the exhibit itself, according to medium or some sort of understanding of type, with “paintings” the largest group by far.1 Next in numerical importance came “sculpture,” which seems to have meant carvings in wood, for the categories “metalwork” and “goldsmith’s work” included figures we would today call sculpture. The beguine cradle was located in “furniture.” The category of “devotional object,” which was put on the art historical map in a way that fired popular imagination by Henk van Os in the exhibit “The Art of Devotion” in Amsterdam in 1994–95, was in no way thought of.2 Throughout the Detroit catalogue, material trumps use or form as a principle of organization. But the matter described is not the matter of the recent “material turn” or “thing theory.” It is acted upon, not actor, not even a participant in its own shaping. It is striking to read, from this distance, the description in the Detroit catalogue of the cradle itself. The entry opens by relating it to cribs for actual babies in the fifteenth century and cites a surviving cradle perhaps used by the house of Burgundy. Although the Grand Béguinage in Louvain is mentioned as the provenance, there is no explanation of who the religious women known as beguines were, although we are given details about the musical instruments played by the angels on the bedposts. The only specific reference to women is the note that cribs were “sometimes given to nuns at the time they took their vows.”3 Such—to put it a little baldly—were the days before women’s history!4 But today, the significance for women is","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/687150","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60552784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
At first glance fols. 29v–31r in the Book of Kells appear to be unfinished, particularly when seen in relation to the exuberant decoration found throughout much of the rest of the book. This paper argues, based on visual analysis and codicological reasoning, that these pages were in fact intentionally made to look unfinished and that they served as a visual commentary on the text they accompany, the genealogy of Christ according to Matthew. A close reading of the “undecoration” of these pages raises broader questions about the place of the genealogy of Christ in early medieval exegesis and sheds new light on the tradition of the famous Chi-Rho pages. In addition, these pages indicate an iconographic association between ornament and Christ’s Incarnation that can be seen in the Book of Kells and related works. Finally, the “unfinished” borders of the Matthean genealogy can be interpreted as having a prefatory function, providing cues to the beholder about the role of the decoration of the Book of Kells and the proper way to read the Gospel text.
{"title":"Ornament and Incarnation in Insular Art","authors":"Benjamin C. Tilghman","doi":"10.1086/687152","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/687152","url":null,"abstract":"At first glance fols. 29v–31r in the Book of Kells appear to be unfinished, particularly when seen in relation to the exuberant decoration found throughout much of the rest of the book. This paper argues, based on visual analysis and codicological reasoning, that these pages were in fact intentionally made to look unfinished and that they served as a visual commentary on the text they accompany, the genealogy of Christ according to Matthew. A close reading of the “undecoration” of these pages raises broader questions about the place of the genealogy of Christ in early medieval exegesis and sheds new light on the tradition of the famous Chi-Rho pages. In addition, these pages indicate an iconographic association between ornament and Christ’s Incarnation that can be seen in the Book of Kells and related works. Finally, the “unfinished” borders of the Matthean genealogy can be interpreted as having a prefatory function, providing cues to the beholder about the role of the decoration of the Book of Kells and the proper way to read the Gospel text.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/687152","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60552800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Inscriptions were a significant—and significantly visual—form of religious, political, cultural, and social display in the early Byzantine period, but scholars have paid little serious attention to the ways in which viewers read and looked at inscribed prose texts that are composed primarily of formulaic phrases. This article analyzes one such Christian inscription, the Greek dedicatory text written in mosaic in the apse of the main church of the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, in its religious, political, and visual contexts. By comparing the text with similar inscriptions and other types of texts in the region, including saints’ lives, legal papyri, and the liturgy, and by reading and seeing the text as part of the famous mosaic of the Transfiguration with which it is paired, the article demonstrates the visual and verbal powers of the formulaic inscription, uncovering embedded layers of meaning. The text acted simultaneously as a sacred and a political seal on the building, protecting the faith of the Church and “branding” the monastery church as part of the larger religious agenda of the emperor Justinian. Analysis of the contemporary reception of the apse mosaic suggests that the inscription was read in the period as inextricable in content, form, and visual function from the mosaic image.
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An unconventional portrayal of the serpent of the Temptation in the Florence codex of the Cantigas de Santa María (Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, MS B.R. 20) manifests significant developments in the visual and epistemic norms of late medieval Castile. The satanic serpent’s black face and stereotyped African features link to cultural traditions well beyond Iberia, most notably the topos of the “Ethiopian,” which blended the actual and fantastical in deeply symbolic ways. Most crucial to the reading of the motif in the cantiga were the Ethiopian’s long-standing associations with sin and diabolism, rooted in early monastic Christianity but preserved in later medieval monastic and romance literature as well as in visual images found in Iberian contexts. Yet the otherwise conventional femininity of the serpent’s head must have connected still more specifically to medieval stereotypes of black women as hypersexual, distasteful, and dangerous. Iberian awareness of these stereotypes, attested by the caricatured black women of medieval Castilian exempla, poetry, and historical texts, surely facilitated recognition of the complementary binaries central to this cantiga, in that Satan’s blackness and sensuality invert Eve’s whiteness and erstwhile purity, foreshadowing her capitulation to the darkness of sin and sex as an antitype of the faultless Virgin. The innovative image thus reveals both its artist’s sensitivity to broad European cultural trends and the resonance of skin color in a region where both color and race would soon become inescapably concrete concerns.
在《Santa Cantigas de Santa》的佛罗伦萨手抄本María (Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, MS B.R. 20)中，对诱惑蛇的非传统描绘体现了中世纪晚期卡斯蒂利亚视觉和认知规范的重大发展。魔鬼蛇的黑脸和刻板的非洲特征与伊比利亚以外的文化传统有关，最引人注目的是“埃塞俄比亚”的主题，它以深刻的象征方式将现实与幻想融合在一起。对于解读这首诗的主题来说，最关键的是埃塞俄比亚人与罪恶和恶魔的长期联系，这种联系根植于早期的修道院基督教，但在中世纪后期的修道院和浪漫文学以及伊比利亚语境中的视觉形象中得到了保留。然而，在其他方面，蛇头的传统女性气质肯定更具体地与中世纪对黑人女性的刻板印象联系在一起，这些刻板印象是性欲过剩、令人厌恶和危险的。伊比利亚人对这些刻板印象的认识，在中世纪卡斯蒂利亚的例子、诗歌和历史文本中被漫画化的黑人女性中得到了证明，这无疑促进了对这首诗的核心互补二元的认识，撒旦的黑色和性感颠倒了夏娃的白色和昔日的纯洁，预示着她向罪恶和性的黑暗投降，成为完美无瑕的处女的原型。因此，这幅创新的图像既揭示了艺术家对广泛的欧洲文化趋势的敏感性，也揭示了肤色在一个很快就会成为不可避免的具体问题的地区的共鸣。
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In the early 1990s Hans Belting’s Likeness and Presence initiated a consideration of the history of medieval art “in the era before art.” This book attempted to reconsider the binaries between the beautiful and the functional, the aesthetic and the cult image. These investigations, however, relied on beauty and neo-Kantian aesthetics to define art, circumventing the contemporary history of art and its discourses. While arguing for the validity of “non-art” as an object of investigation, I posit that this scholarship reified the very modernist myths from which it sought to distance itself by accepting such paradigms. In medieval studies, the years following—until now—have seen research into sensual experience, moving from the focus on visuality in the early 2000s to the present’s concern with the soundscape. Parallel to this trend is a growing neoformalism, a return to the alleged fundamentals of paleography, style, and iconography. While seeming to be wholly opposite projects, I contend that these threads evidence a concerted return to modernity’s bureaucratization of the senses and a faith in the transcendental signifier.
上世纪90年代初，汉斯·贝尔廷(Hans Belting)的《像与存在》(Likeness and Presence)引发了人们对“在艺术之前的时代”的中世纪艺术史的思考。这本书试图重新考虑美与功能、审美与崇拜形象之间的二元对立。然而，这些研究依赖于美和新康德主义美学来定义艺术，绕过了当代艺术史及其话语。在论证“非艺术”作为研究对象的有效性的同时，我认为这种学术通过接受这种范式来试图与现代主义神话保持距离，从而使其具体化。在中世纪的研究中，直到现在，我们看到了对感官体验的研究，从21世纪初对视觉的关注转向了现在对音景的关注。与这一趋势并行的是一种日益增长的新形式主义，即回归所谓的古文字、风格和肖像学的基本原理。虽然看起来是完全相反的项目，但我认为这些线索证明了对现代性感官官僚化和对超验能指的信仰的一致回归。
{"title":"Medieval Art after Duchamp: Hans Belting’s Likeness and Presence at 25","authors":"Roland Betancourt","doi":"10.1086/684413","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/684413","url":null,"abstract":"In the early 1990s Hans Belting’s Likeness and Presence initiated a consideration of the history of medieval art “in the era before art.” This book attempted to reconsider the binaries between the beautiful and the functional, the aesthetic and the cult image. These investigations, however, relied on beauty and neo-Kantian aesthetics to define art, circumventing the contemporary history of art and its discourses. While arguing for the validity of “non-art” as an object of investigation, I posit that this scholarship reified the very modernist myths from which it sought to distance itself by accepting such paradigms. In medieval studies, the years following—until now—have seen research into sensual experience, moving from the focus on visuality in the early 2000s to the present’s concern with the soundscape. Parallel to this trend is a growing neoformalism, a return to the alleged fundamentals of paleography, style, and iconography. While seeming to be wholly opposite projects, I contend that these threads evidence a concerted return to modernity’s bureaucratization of the senses and a faith in the transcendental signifier.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2016-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/684413","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60466296","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Miri Rubin justly concluded that “most remaining traces” of medieval atrocities against Jews “represent the position of Christian authorities—chroniclers, preachers, town officials—who were almost always writing in defence or celebration of the events.” The exceptions to this rule, however, are illuminating. This article explores images produced for Christians that condemn Christian acts of violence against Jews. Although these are few in number, their existence complicates our understanding of medieval anti-Semitism. The first part of the essay investigates an episode in a fourteenth-century French chronicle, the pillage of the Jews of Paris in 1380. The second part examines depictions of the fable of the murdered Jew, which date from the late thirteenth through the fifteenth century. Both narratives—one drawn from a historical event, the other grafted onto an ancient fable—portray the Jew as the innocent victim and the Christian as the treacherous assailant. In so doing, they reverse the better-known paradigm of the Jew as the evil aggressor who attacks innocent Christian boys or the consecrated host. This essay considers the circumstances that enabled some Christians to view with sympathy the figure of a vulnerable, attacked Jew and proposes that sometimes class interests trumped religious prejudice.
{"title":"Complicating Medieval Anti-Semitism: The Role of Class in Two Tales of Christian Violence against Jews","authors":"D. Wolfthal","doi":"10.1086/684418","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/684418","url":null,"abstract":"Miri Rubin justly concluded that “most remaining traces” of medieval atrocities against Jews “represent the position of Christian authorities—chroniclers, preachers, town officials—who were almost always writing in defence or celebration of the events.” The exceptions to this rule, however, are illuminating. This article explores images produced for Christians that condemn Christian acts of violence against Jews. Although these are few in number, their existence complicates our understanding of medieval anti-Semitism. The first part of the essay investigates an episode in a fourteenth-century French chronicle, the pillage of the Jews of Paris in 1380. The second part examines depictions of the fable of the murdered Jew, which date from the late thirteenth through the fifteenth century. Both narratives—one drawn from a historical event, the other grafted onto an ancient fable—portray the Jew as the innocent victim and the Christian as the treacherous assailant. In so doing, they reverse the better-known paradigm of the Jew as the evil aggressor who attacks innocent Christian boys or the consecrated host. This essay considers the circumstances that enabled some Christians to view with sympathy the figure of a vulnerable, attacked Jew and proposes that sometimes class interests trumped religious prejudice.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2016-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/684418","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60466404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The recent discovery of a thirteenth-century mural cycle in the cardinal’s residence at SS. Quattro Coronati in Rome invites a reconsideration of the relationship between art and knowledge in medieval Italy. Covering the walls and vaults of a large hall, the frescoes constitute a large-scale pictorial “encyclopedia” that comprises allegorical representations of thematic groups associated with secular knowledge. This is a largely uncharted category of monumental art in thirteenth-century Rome. My article situates the paintings in their complex historical circumstances marked by the increased cultivation of science at the papal court and the broader cultural phenomenon of late medieval encyclopedism. I offer an analysis of the frescoes, focusing on the ways in which individual groups of images reinforce the larger themes of the iconographic program. The unknown painters at SS. Quattro Coronati brought together diverse bodies of knowledge and, through pictorial strategies of framing and spatial design, created the effect of a unified whole. Through their distinctive scale and format, the murals produce a cumulative viewing experience that operates in its own way as a metaphor for encyclopedism. The painted hall was designed to draw attention to the relationship between vantage point and knowledge as a way of inviting viewers to reflect on the limitations of human knowledge vis-à-vis God’s perfect knowledge. In this way, the SS. Quattro Coronati frescoes offered a sophisticated response to the epistemic changes of the period and asserted a new role for mural painting as a medium for the transmission of scientific concepts and ideas.
最近在罗马Quattro Coronati的红衣主教住所发现了一幅13世纪的壁画，这引起了人们对中世纪意大利艺术与知识之间关系的重新思考。壁画覆盖了一个大厅的墙壁和拱顶，构成了一个大型的绘画“百科全书”，其中包括与世俗知识相关的主题群体的寓言表现。在13世纪的罗马，这是一个很大程度上未知的纪念性艺术类别。我的文章将这些绘画置于复杂的历史环境中，其标志是教皇宫廷科学的不断发展和中世纪晚期百科全书的更广泛的文化现象。我对壁画进行了分析，重点关注单个图像组如何强化图像学项目的更大主题。SS. Quattro Coronati的无名画家汇集了不同的知识体系，并通过框架和空间设计的图像策略，创造了统一整体的效果。通过其独特的规模和格式，壁画产生了一种累积的观看体验，以自己的方式作为百科全书的隐喻。彩绘大厅的设计是为了引起人们对有利位置和知识之间关系的关注，作为一种邀请观众反思人类知识与-à-vis上帝完美知识的局限性的方式。通过这种方式，Quattro Coronati的壁画对这一时期的认知变化做出了复杂的回应，并确立了壁画作为传播科学概念和思想的媒介的新角色。
{"title":"The Painting of Knowledge in Thirteenth-Century Rome","authors":"M. Hauknes","doi":"10.1086/684415","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/684415","url":null,"abstract":"The recent discovery of a thirteenth-century mural cycle in the cardinal’s residence at SS. Quattro Coronati in Rome invites a reconsideration of the relationship between art and knowledge in medieval Italy. Covering the walls and vaults of a large hall, the frescoes constitute a large-scale pictorial “encyclopedia” that comprises allegorical representations of thematic groups associated with secular knowledge. This is a largely uncharted category of monumental art in thirteenth-century Rome. My article situates the paintings in their complex historical circumstances marked by the increased cultivation of science at the papal court and the broader cultural phenomenon of late medieval encyclopedism. I offer an analysis of the frescoes, focusing on the ways in which individual groups of images reinforce the larger themes of the iconographic program. The unknown painters at SS. Quattro Coronati brought together diverse bodies of knowledge and, through pictorial strategies of framing and spatial design, created the effect of a unified whole. Through their distinctive scale and format, the murals produce a cumulative viewing experience that operates in its own way as a metaphor for encyclopedism. The painted hall was designed to draw attention to the relationship between vantage point and knowledge as a way of inviting viewers to reflect on the limitations of human knowledge vis-à-vis God’s perfect knowledge. In this way, the SS. Quattro Coronati frescoes offered a sophisticated response to the epistemic changes of the period and asserted a new role for mural painting as a medium for the transmission of scientific concepts and ideas.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2016-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/684415","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60466124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Between 1370 and 1384 Ugolino di Prete Ilario, a local artist, honored the long-standing Marian devotion in Orvieto by painting in the cathedral tribune one of the most comprehensive monumental narratives ever created of the life of the Virgin. In the sixteenth century Giorgio Vasari, attributing the murals to Ambrogio Lorenzetti, praised them for their composition, invention, and handling of historical scenes, but modern scholars have paid them little notice. Comparisons with other monumental Marian and Christological programs before 1350, however, especially Lorenzo Maitani’s reliefs on the cathedral facade, support Vasari’s acclaim. Because of the large size of the tribune, several episodes seldom seen outside illuminated manuscripts appear, whereas other, customary scenes either are omitted or contain something exceptional. Some of these variants depend on textual sources, which extend beyond the usual canonical, noncanonical, and legendary texts to include devotional manuals, writings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Bridget, and the local cycle of liturgical dramas. Most remarkably, the frescoes convey both a substantial reverence for St. Joseph several decades before his cult gained widespread acceptance and a precocious local devotion. Joseph, officially declared the patron saint of Orvieto only in the seventeenth century, not only participates in several traditional scenes that usually omit or marginalize him but is present in each of the uncommon scenes, where he is vital to the story. The rare scene of Joseph in his workshop subtly discloses Joseph’s divinely ordained role as paterfamilias, “artisan of the soul,” and counterpart of, and collaborator with, the heavenly father.
1370年至1384年间，当地艺术家乌戈利诺·迪·普雷特·伊拉里奥(Ugolino di Prete Ilario)在奥维多大教堂的祭坛上画了一幅关于圣母生平的最全面的纪念性叙述画，以纪念圣母长期以来对圣母的忠诚。在16世纪，乔治·瓦萨里(Giorgio Vasari)将这些壁画归功于安布罗吉奥·洛伦泽蒂(Ambrogio Lorenzetti)，称赞他们的构图、发明和对历史场景的处理，但现代学者很少注意到他们。然而，与1350年之前其他玛丽安和基督的纪念项目相比，尤其是洛伦佐·麦塔尼在大教堂正面的浮雕，支持瓦萨里的赞誉。由于论坛的大尺寸，一些很少在彩绘手稿外看到的情节出现了，而其他的，习惯场景要么被省略，要么包含一些特殊的东西。其中一些变体依赖于文本来源，这些文本超出了通常的正典，非正典和传奇文本，包括灵修手册，圣伯纳德的克莱尔沃和圣布里奇特的著作，以及当地的礼拜戏剧循环。最引人注目的是，这些壁画既表达了对圣约瑟夫几十年前的崇敬，也表达了当地对他的早熟的崇拜。约瑟夫，直到17世纪才被正式宣布为奥维托的守护神，他不仅参与了几个通常被忽略或边缘化的传统场景，而且出现在每个不常见的场景中，他对故事至关重要。约瑟夫在工作室的罕见场景巧妙地揭示了约瑟夫作为家长的神圣角色，“灵魂的工匠”，与天父的对应物和合作者。
{"title":"The Exceptional Role of St. Joseph in Ugolino di Prete Ilario’s Life of the Virgin at Orvieto","authors":"S. James","doi":"10.1086/684417","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/684417","url":null,"abstract":"Between 1370 and 1384 Ugolino di Prete Ilario, a local artist, honored the long-standing Marian devotion in Orvieto by painting in the cathedral tribune one of the most comprehensive monumental narratives ever created of the life of the Virgin. In the sixteenth century Giorgio Vasari, attributing the murals to Ambrogio Lorenzetti, praised them for their composition, invention, and handling of historical scenes, but modern scholars have paid them little notice. Comparisons with other monumental Marian and Christological programs before 1350, however, especially Lorenzo Maitani’s reliefs on the cathedral facade, support Vasari’s acclaim. Because of the large size of the tribune, several episodes seldom seen outside illuminated manuscripts appear, whereas other, customary scenes either are omitted or contain something exceptional. Some of these variants depend on textual sources, which extend beyond the usual canonical, noncanonical, and legendary texts to include devotional manuals, writings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Bridget, and the local cycle of liturgical dramas. Most remarkably, the frescoes convey both a substantial reverence for St. Joseph several decades before his cult gained widespread acceptance and a precocious local devotion. Joseph, officially declared the patron saint of Orvieto only in the seventeenth century, not only participates in several traditional scenes that usually omit or marginalize him but is present in each of the uncommon scenes, where he is vital to the story. The rare scene of Joseph in his workshop subtly discloses Joseph’s divinely ordained role as paterfamilias, “artisan of the soul,” and counterpart of, and collaborator with, the heavenly father.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2016-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/684417","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60466823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Encounter: The Mosaics in the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai","authors":"J. Elsner","doi":"10.1086/684414","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/684414","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2016-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/684414","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60465988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The fourteenth-century northern French manuscript Besançon MS 579 contains an extensively illuminated copy of the Middle French Antichrist and Last Days play known as the Jour du Jugement. Its illumination and mise en page shape the Jour in MS 579 as a book-based experience that capitalizes on the theatrical genre. The visual program works toward the creation of a spiritually profitable book, defined through the marriage of text, illuminations, and the theatrical form. I describe the strategies by which the manuscript is designed to engage a reader-viewer with its eschatological theme, including considerations of iconography, image placement, and the relationship between visual and sonic elements in the play. The essay then addresses the role of theater qua theater in the design of this play-within-a-book. I account for the clarity of genre in Besançon 579 as a component of its argument, considering how the subject of Antichrist and the form of an illuminated play combine to make reading an exercise in discernment and to comment on the role of art in preparing for Judgment. The combination of an Antichrist play, the manuscript medium, and the explicitly theatrical terms of the text’s presentation renders the manuscript a durable production of the Jour designed to offer a means of preparation for the Judgment described in the drama. The theatrical genre itself becomes a subject of reflection in conjunction with the themes of the play and its stated project of spiritual aid for the spectator, here recast as reader-viewer.
14世纪的法国北部手稿《besanon MS 579》包含了中世纪法国《反基督者》和《末日》戏剧《审判日》(Jour du judgement)的大量插图副本。它的照明和页面上的点缀塑造了MS 579中的Jour，作为一种基于书籍的体验，利用了戏剧类型。视觉程序致力于创造一本精神上有益的书，通过文本，照明和戏剧形式的结合来定义。我描述了手稿设计的策略，以吸引读者-观众与它的末世论主题，包括考虑图像学，图像放置，以及视觉和声音元素之间的关系在剧中。然后，本文论述了戏剧作为戏剧在书中戏剧设计中的作用。我解释了《besanon 579》中体裁的清晰性，作为其论点的一个组成部分，考虑到敌基督的主题和照明戏剧的形式如何结合起来，使阅读成为一种洞察力的练习，并评论艺术在准备审判中的作用。敌基督的戏剧，手稿媒介，以及文本呈现的明确的戏剧条款的结合，使手稿成为《日》的持久生产，旨在为戏剧中描述的审判提供准备手段。戏剧类型本身成为了一个反思的主题，与戏剧的主题和它对观众的精神援助项目相结合，在这里被重塑为读者-观众。
{"title":"Judgment on Parchment: Illuminating Theater in Besançon MS 579","authors":"Beatrice E. Kitzinger","doi":"10.1086/684416","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/684416","url":null,"abstract":"The fourteenth-century northern French manuscript Besançon MS 579 contains an extensively illuminated copy of the Middle French Antichrist and Last Days play known as the Jour du Jugement. Its illumination and mise en page shape the Jour in MS 579 as a book-based experience that capitalizes on the theatrical genre. The visual program works toward the creation of a spiritually profitable book, defined through the marriage of text, illuminations, and the theatrical form. I describe the strategies by which the manuscript is designed to engage a reader-viewer with its eschatological theme, including considerations of iconography, image placement, and the relationship between visual and sonic elements in the play. The essay then addresses the role of theater qua theater in the design of this play-within-a-book. I account for the clarity of genre in Besançon 579 as a component of its argument, considering how the subject of Antichrist and the form of an illuminated play combine to make reading an exercise in discernment and to comment on the role of art in preparing for Judgment. The combination of an Antichrist play, the manuscript medium, and the explicitly theatrical terms of the text’s presentation renders the manuscript a durable production of the Jour designed to offer a means of preparation for the Judgment described in the drama. The theatrical genre itself becomes a subject of reflection in conjunction with the themes of the play and its stated project of spiritual aid for the spectator, here recast as reader-viewer.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2016-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/684416","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60466694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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