2015 Western Medieval Art

Pope St. Leo the Great (440–461) commissioned a New and Old Testament cycle and Prophets and Apostles to decorate the walls of St. Peter’s Basilica and St. Paul’s Outside the Walls. These paintings became a reference model over the coming centuries, especially between 12th and 13th century. After the Gregorian Reform, that system of images was imitated in many churches in Rome as well as in the dependent territories of the Holy See, thus starting the figurative tendency known as Renouveau Paléochrétien — as Hélène Toubert called it.
The reference to a pictorial model from the Early Christian age was a markedly symbolic operation, that is to say, such a reference suggested a close connection with the traditional values. This idea is even stronger in pictorial cycles made outside Rome, so that art became the privileged way to spread a specific meaning: the cultural and political belonging to the Holy See.
At the eastern end of the Patrimonium Petri there was the March of Ancona, a region that popes and emperors vied for its control since the assignment by Charlemagne to Pope Adrian I. One of the most important towns of the March of Ancona was Ascoli Piceno, where there are only a few frescoes dated back to the second half of the 12th century: the fragmentary New Testament cycle in Sant’Ilario and the Prophets in Sant’Angelo Magno. My paper will argue that both those frescoes recall the iconography of St. Leo’s painted cycles in Rome and reproduce the formal point of view that can be found in Rome: the painted architectonic frame that separates the episodes of the Passion of Christ is a poor translation of the frame in stucco present in the painted cycle in St. Paul’s and probably in St. Peter’s Basilica, whereas the Prophets in Sant’Angelo Magno are stylistically similar to the Elders of the Apocalypse painted in the presbytery of the roman church of San Giovanni a Porta Latina.
Therefore, it is possible to recognize in both painted cycles two important cases of Renouveau Paléochrétien, as they are figurative evidence of the way in which Rome was capable to exercise its power also in its peripheral domains.

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The Valley of the Loir is a region in central France situated in the northern part of the Loir-et-Cher department in close proximity to the city of VendÔme, formerly attributed to the dioceses of Chartres and Le Mans. Within one part of the river, on the spot less than 50 km long, fragments of Romanesque wall painting are present in more than 20 churches. Such a high concentration of art in the region was caused by the many routes of pilgrimage from the north crossing the Loir river.
The subject of this research are the little-known to Russian art historians monuments of wall painting of the 12th century, among which the most intact and significant are Saint-Gilles in Montoire, Notre-Dame in Areines, Saint-Julien in Douy, Saint-Jacques-des-Guérets and Saint-Julien in Poncé-sur-le-Loir. Interest in this issue is due to the fact that both the region as a whole as well as individual art ensembles are not studied enough. The greater number of frescoes were discovered by the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. By that time, owing to the efforts of the first restorers and enthusiasts, the most substantiated and complete studies had been carried out and published.
Our investigations, based on the stylistic and iconographic analysis of the 12th century wall paintings of the Valley of the Loir and neighbouring lands, make it possible to unveil certain common trends in the development of arts in the region during the century. Synthesis of the stylistic borrowings from traditions of Carolingian and Ottoninan art, with influences introduced by foreigns painters, leads to an immensely authentic result. Iconographic schemes, usually drawn from Early Christian sources, acquire new intonations and unconventional forms, often distant from their origins. The second task of this research, of no small importance, is comprehension of the phenomenon of the existence of arts on the background of vita rustica. The relatively fully intact state of certain painting cycles makes it possible to study the problem of compiling programmes that meet the requirements of both parish and pilgrims.

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The frescoes in the lower church of the Sacro Speco at Subiaco closed the complex architectural history that during the 13th century, from the time of Pope Innocent III (1198–1216), saw the growth of the sanctuary created around the cave where St. Benedict of Norcia retired in the early 6th century.
The cycle with stories of the saint, signed by Magister Conxolus, has so far been considered by the critics only for its stylistic and formal characters in connection with the paintings in Rome and Assisi during the nineties of the 13th century. Starting from these acquisitions, the paper will analyse the selection and the display of the stories — one of the first cycle about the life of Benedict on such a large scale by the middle years of the Middle Ages, their iconography and their reading direction in relation to the holy stairs leading to the cave and in the broader context of the debate on new religious orders after the Council of Lyons (1274).
From this perspective, one can see significant parallel with the friars and, in particular, with the Franciscans who, just few years before, had glorified their founder in the famous basilica of Assisi. The similarities with the pictorial cycle of the upper church of San Francesco, in fact, seem to go beyond the stylistic point of contact already identified by the critics to include broader issues. The foundation of two churches also in Subiaco and the decoration of the lower church with the celebration of the founder at a time shortly after the frescoes in Assisi, can not fail to reveal a comparison — and perhaps of an antagonism — that existed between two entirely different types of common life: the traditional monasticism and new orders.
Moreover, the reinterpretation of the architectural phases of the cloister, a necessary prerequisite to the reading of the paintings, can propose a different reconstruction of the relationship between the two churches by assuming a change to the sanctuary path and to the system of access to the chapel of St. Gregory.

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In the art of medieval Soldaja a special place is occupied by pieces of fresco paintings of different buildings in the city. Every survining fresco of Soldaja presents a unique phenomenon. A fresco painting partly survided only in “Temple with an arcade”. There are archive materials about painting in the temple of the Twelve Apostles, in chapels on the lower storey in the so-called Georgievskaja and Dozornaja towers and Consular fortress. Fragments of fresco paintings were discovered in a temple on the area of Barbakan, in chapels on the first tier of the tower of Jacopo Torsello, in the temple on the south-west area of Posad, in the temple of Paraskeva, in the monastery of St. Panteleimon on the south slope of mountain Perchem, and in the monastery in the natural boundary of Dimitraki. Among the surviving frescos of Genoese Soldaja, related to the painting of the Italian Renaissance, we will mention the following.
The fresco of “Temple with an arcade” was discovered in 1958 during repair work. In spite of its debatable character, it is possible to consider that the fresco is related to traditions of Italian painting of the 14th and first half of the 15th centuries.
A fresco painting of the chapel on the lower storey of the Georgievskaja tower is preserved only in a few small fragments. It is possible to assert from the archival data that an image of Deisis and a medallion with an image of Lamb with a labarum were placed here.
A fresco on the arch in the court of the Consular fortress was revealed during restoration in the 1970s. At present, it is not very clear. Judging from the archival data, it was an image of Christ, sitting on a throne.
The fresco of a chapel in the cistern of the Dozornaja tower is now preserved in a few small fragments. According to archival data, the image of the Mother of God of Mercy was probably placed here.
Frescos of the church of the Twelve Apostles were known from the beginning of the 19th century and are interpreted as the “Last Supper”. Already by the middle of this century they were poorly distinguished and their reconstruction, undertaken by D. M. Strukov, is no more than a hypothesis.

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The paper is dedicated to the visual diagrams of the Latin Middle Ages at a time of prosperity in the 13th century, which is a very distinctive type of book miniature. In particular, this work covers the collection of diagrams known as the ‘Mirror of Theology’, acknowledged to be the most promi­nent visual representation of Catholic didactics of the time.
Our focus is on a miniature with a schematic drawing of a cherub. It is not only an image, but at the same time is also a table, where the main points of the ‘Six-winged Cherub’ tract by Alan of Lille (De sex alis) are written in. The emergence and development of this iconography can be traced through several manuscripts. By the detailed analysis of each of the miniatures, we sought to understand and trace how exactly the coexistence and interrelation of word and image is expressed in these pieces. Furthermore, we attempted to compare this iconography to other didactic visual diagrams belonging to Speculum Theologiae and present it as a part of the set of miniatures rather than a separate illustration.
In order for this paper to be accomplished, for the first time in the Russian language bibliography, the tables of the above-mentioned manuscript were read and translated. The way in which the illustrations were composed was analysed, including how exactly the images and texts correspond with each other, and how they take their, at times, interchangeable and, at times, irreducible places.
Visual diagrams raise a wide plethora of questions and issues in the scientific community. Unfortunately, there are no fundamental works that would cover and analyse all issues related to the diagrams of ‘Mirror of Theology’ in Russian or in international historiography. This is what determines the high relevancy of the chosen topic.

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The paper is dedicated to the relics of the head of St. Anastasius of Persia, housed, according to the tradition, in the Tre Fontane Abbey in Rome and the Legend of Ansedonia, depicted in the cycle of frescoes from the 1220s, the remains of which can be found in the entrance gate of the above-mentioned abbey.
The research follows the work of Carlo Bertelli as well as Fernanda de’ Maffei’s of 1970. However, it is also based on the study performed by Carmela Vircillo Franclin in 2004, dedicated to the literary sources related to the St. Anastasius legend.
The transfer of the relics to Rome, to the Acque Salviae monastery, later on renamed to Tre Fontane abbey, is a milestone on the path leading to the cult of St. Anastasius. The subsequent milestone is the visit of the abbey by the Lombard king Liutprand. The Legend of Ansedonia of which the written version does not exist and the only preserved narrative evidence is its depiction in the abbey on the north-eastern and south-western walls of the entrance gate is the climax of the journey to the Victorious relics. The legend belongs to the group of autochthon legends and is a typical proof of their local use for political purposes. Only less than 35 % of the entire decoration has been preserved from the narrative cycle. Its present state allows satisfactory analysis of some of its fractions only; however, this is enhanced by aquarelles — copies made by Giovanni Eclissi, from between 1630–1640.
The privileged status of the Roman abbey lies in the fact that it represents an interface — a place where an eastern martyr was transformed into a western martyr and from where the cult of Victorious relics spread, the value of which was recognised by several political and church representatives involved in political-religious conflicts from the emergence of the cult in the first half of the 7th century up to the 13th century.
The paper aims to clarify the ideological relationship between the hagiography of St. Anastasius of Persia and the political theology from the time the legend appeared to the moment when it was used for political and ownership purposes of the Cistercian order.

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Unknown fragments of a German illuminated manuscript, which were found on Kneiphof island in 1950 and rediscovered in January 2015, were introduced and analysed as an object of art history. This paper is devoted to their attribution as sister leaves of the Bavarian translation of Speculum humanae salvationis (Spiegel menschlicher Behältnis or Mirror of Human Salvation), which had been lost from Königsberg City Library during WWII (Königsberg, Stadtbibl., Cod. S 18.2° Bl. 1ra-68vb). The paper studies their art programme and their similarity in style with miniatures of Upper German workshops in South Germany of the first quarter of the 15th century. Both the historical context of the creation of the manuscript during the third anti-Hussite crusade, and the subsequent existence of the artwork in later centuries were discussed.

 

 

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The integration of Romanesque art tradition into Byzantine culture on Apulian territory was a complex process extending over several centuries, in which the two coexisted in astonishing harmony with each other. The Norman conquest of these domains entailed social and cultural changes, and this by-turn initiated the process of consolidating the traditions of Eastern Christian and Western Christian art. The influence of the Occident started to make itself felt with the advent of church buildings on Apulian territory, whose portals were carved with monumental schemes derived from Romanesque art. It seems that the basis of this sculptural decoration was a set of images that appeared on the pages of Norman Romanesque illuminated manuscripts dating back to the early 11th and late 12th centuries.
One of the most widespread motifs is the leafy ornament composed of figures, animals and acanthus that can be observed in the splendid plastic ornamentation of basilicas in Trani, Bari and Barletta. It would be useful to look at some early examples, for it can be seen that both the general composition and single figures have a very respectable ancestry. One of these ancestors must have been a late antique mosaic with compositions similar to those found in a mosaic pavement in Antioch during the 1st century. Another possible source of borrowing may be seen in the representation of the same motif in a couple of manuscripts derived from the scriptorium of Citeaux in Burgundy in the early 12th century.
So far, then, there is no overwhelming evidence to prove that the plastic and figurative language, which appeared in Romanesque sculpture in Apulia, is a faithful copy and combination of certain ancient elements. It could be only supposed that the source of some motifs ultimately goes back to the Late Antique and early Christian pictorial prototypes, as well as to the illuminated Norman manuscripts. From these examples it will be seen that composers of Apulian sculptural decoration did not necessarily invent all of the details that they incorporated into it. They may well have collected them from other sources and combined them with modern Romanesque motifs. This may account for some of the obscurities in the decorations, because the vocabulary of one story is being used to tell another.

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Recent research into Tuscan painting of the 13th century (previously not always available for study, for example, miracle-working icons) has significantly increased the number of monuments of this period.
At the beginning of the century, icons in Tuscany were often copies of imported art, such as small relief images and miniatures. After the fourth crusade the situation changes when icons by Greek artists begin to appear in Tuscany. Around the second quarter of the century Byzantine icons begin to be copied in great numbers, but the style and manner of these images could be very different as they depended on the original imagе.
From the middle of the century a rapid improvement of icons’ pictorial qualities takes place, but at the same time their deviation from the Greek prototypes begins. The diversity of icons allows us to identify different schools and artists.
In the history of art, with its focus on the problems of dating and authorship, a stylistic method of analysis is usually used. At the moment, this method has exhausted itself because the icon is inseparable from the religious function. That is why in this research we intend to combine the cultural and religious studies with the aspect of the painting’s development itself. The rapid stylistic departure from the Byzantine imagery of Tuscan art had its own reasons, which were based on a specific attitude to the sacred image in Italy and the nature of the icon worship.
A famous and miraculous icon and its derivatives; the icon for various religious functions; the icon as a copy; the icon as an imitation of another icon, all of these aspects are not only different areas of culture but are the different aspects of artistic life of the icon, a different story of its glorification and reflection in different periods of time. This complicated way of researching allows us to understand specific facts and to justify the dependence of one image from another, and the means to restore the chronology and to trace the painting of the monument in its original life.

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In Northern Latium (Italy), not far from Rome, there is a valley called Suppentonia, an isolated beautiful natural place where an otherworldly atmosphere reigns. It is because of that feature, those hermits, who first settled inside its previously excavated grottoes, chose it for their secluded life. According to the local tradition, some of them (Saint Anastasius, Saint Nonnosus) would have become the leaders of later important monastic communities of the area.
This paper aims to investigate the process of occupation of pre-existing grottoes — dug in pre-Roman times for living and funerary purposes — by 6th century anchorites, their way of life and the
continuity of attendance in those places. The research has focused on the grotto of Saint Leonard, a three-room-artificial cave, looking to be a church used for common celebrations by the ascetics who temporarily left their hermitages to share the cult. As a matter of fact, some liturgical furniture (two altars, niches, a holy water font) is still kept, and by comparing it with other similar artifacts in the Roman area, it has been possible to date it back to the 6th century. Furthermore, several traces of Christian paintings are still preserved on its side walls, testifying its liturgical use. Following their stylistic features, it has been said the earlier decorations date from the 11th century, a moment that is highly probable because of the general renaissance of ascetism experienced in all Western Europe. That happened after the crisis of the monastic system due to the enormous political and economic power of great abbeys, which caused a detachment of many monks who wanted to rediscover the purity of the monastic phenomenon origins. Later, the grotto was still kept in use, as testified by the panel depicting a gigantic Saint Leonard, probably painted in the 14th century, which gives its name to the place.
This study also examines the oral tradition about the legendary meeting between pope Gregory the Great (591–615) and Langobardic queen Teodolinda (589–624) in the grotto of Saint Leonard
itself, demonstrating there is no real historic proof of it in contemporary sources, but being important for the comprehension of the strategic value of that area for the defense of early 7th century
Rome.

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