A new naturalism appears in the art of this period.
1300s
Beginner’s guide: Italy in the 14th century
A new naturalism appears in this period, known as the Late Gothic.
1300 - 1400
This period sees beautiful gold-filled paintings, but also the horror of the Black Death, which arrived on European shores in 1348. The pandemic ended up killing approximately half of Europe’s population. The Black Death radically disrupted society, but did the social, political and religious upheaval created by the plague contribute to the Renaissance?
Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Polykleitos, Doryphoros (Spear-Bearer) or The Canon, c. 450-40 B.C.E., ancient Roman marble copy of a lost Greek bronze, 211 cm, found in Pompeii (Archaeological Museum, Naples)
The human body
We have bodies that exist in space, and this has been a fundamental challenge for artists through history.
The figure
In ancient Greece and Rome, artists embraced the realities of the human body and the way that our bodies move in space (naturalism). For the next thousand years though, after Europe transitioned from a pagan culture to a Christian one in the middle ages, the physical was largely ignored in favor of the heavenly, spiritual realm. Medieval human figures were still rendered, but they were elongated, flattened and static—in other words, they were made to function symbolically.
Space
Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Bonaventura Berlinghieri, Altarpiece of St. Francis, c. 1235 (Church of San Francesco, Pescia, Italy)
Instead of earthly settings, we often see flat, gold backgrounds. There were some exceptions along the way, but it’s not until the end of the 13th century in Italy that artists began to (re)explore the physical realities of the human figure in space. Here, they begin the long process of figuring out how space can become a rational, measurable environment in which their newly naturalistic figures can sit, stand and move.
Florence & Siena
In Italy, there were two city-states where we can see this renewed interest in the human figure and space: Florence and Siena. The primary artists in Siena were Duccio, the Lorenzetti Brothers, and Simone Martini. And in Florence, we look to the art of Cimabue and Giotto.
Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Giotto, Lamentation, c. 1305, fresco (Scrovegni Chapel, Padua)
Whereas medieval artists often preferred a flat, gold background, these artists began to construct earthly environments for their figures to inhabit. We see landscapes and architecture in their paintings, though these are often represented schematically. These Florentine and Sienese artists employed diagonal lines that appear to recede and in this way convey a simple illusion of space, though that space is far from rational to our eyes. When we look closely, we can see that the space would be impossible to move through, and that the scale of the architecture often doesn’t match the size of the figures.
A word of caution
Be careful here! While it is tempting to think of this movement toward naturalism as “progress” it is important to remember that this art is not less good, nor even less “advanced” than what comes later in the Renaissance (you might think of Leonardo or Michelangelo). Art is always a response to the needs of the moment and for the late 13th and early 14th century, symbols of the spiritual remained potent systems for understanding.
Video \(\PageIndex{1}\): Video from TED-Ed. Speaker: James Earle.
The Black Death
by LOUISA WOODVILLE
Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): Fresco in the former Abbey of Saint-André-de-Lavaudieu, France, 14th century, depicting the plague personified as a woman, she “carries arrows that strike those around her, often in the neck and armpits—in other words, places where the buboes commonly appeared” (Franco Mormando, Piety and Plague: from Byzantium to the Baroque, Truman State University Press, 2007).
1348
The Black Death arrived on European shores in 1348. By 1350, the year it retreated, it had felled a quarter to half of the region’s population. In 1362, 1368, and 1381, it struck again—as it would periodically well into the 18th century.
The contemporary Sienese chronicler, Agnolo di Tura del Grasso, described its terror. A victim first experiences flu-like symptoms, and then sees a “swell beneath their armpits and in their groins.” Agnolo himself buried his five children with his own hands. He also lost his wife.
The plague hit hard and fast. People lay ill little more than two or three days and died suddenly….He who was well one day was dead the next and being carried to his grave,” writes the Carmelite friar Jean de Venette in his 14th century French chronicle. From his native Picardy, Jean witnessed the disease’s impact in northern France; Normandy, for example, lost 70 to 80 percent of its population. Italy was equally devastated. The Florentine author Boccaccio recounts how that city’s citizens “dug for each graveyard a huge trench, in which they laid the corpses as they arrived by hundreds at a time, piling them up tier upon tier as merchandise is stowed on a ship.
Trade was to blame
Growing stability in Europe in the late middle ages made possible extensive trade between East and West and within Europe itself. Italian city-states such as Venice and Genoa had trading ports in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black sea—trade that made these cities among the wealthiest cities in Europe. Most historians today generally agree that the plague was likely spread through Eurasia via these trade routes by parasites carried on the backs of rodents. The bacterium Yersinia pestis (and not all historians agree this was the culprit) likely traveled from China to the northwestern shores of the Caspian Sea, then part of the Mongol Empire and by the spring of 1346, Italian merchants in the Crimea, specifically the Genoese-dominated city of Kaffa (today Feodosiya in the Ukraine) brought the disease west. Rats carrying infected fleas boarded ships bound for Constantinople (today Istanbul in Turkey), capital of the Byzantine Empire. Inhabitants there were sickened by the plague by early July.
From these Greek-speaking lands, the plague spread to North Africa and the Middle East with terrible consequences; by autumn 1347, it had reached the French port of Marseilles and progressed both north and west. By early November, the Italian city-states of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice—commercial hubs for European trade—had been struck.
Most of the rest of Europe followed in short order. The disease spread along the active trade routes that northern Italian and Flemish merchants had developed. London and Bruges then communicated the disease via busy shipping lanes to the Nordic countries and the Baltic region (aided by a trading partnership known as the Hanseatic League). Western crusaders seeking to attack the Holy Land prompted innovations in shipbuilding and these larger and faster ships carried large quantities of goods over extensive trade networks— but they also carried the deadly pathogen.
“God is deaf nowadays and will not hear us”
The pandemic ended up killing approximately half of Europe’s population, indiscriminate of people’s wealth, social standing, or religious piety. Survivors “were like persons distraught and almost without feeling,” writes Agnolo, a despair echoed throughout Europe. “God is deaf nowadays and will not hear us. And for our guilt he grinds good men to dust,” wrote the late 14th century English cleric, William Langland, in his epic poem “Piers Plowman.”
With so many dead and dying, patterns that had kept medieval society stable were replaced by hostility, confusion, greed, remorse, abuse—and, at times, genuine caring. Contemporary chronicles tell of eruptions of violence, “Christians massacred Jews in Germany and other parts of the world where Jews lived, and many thousands were burned everywhere, indiscriminately,” wrote Jean de Venette, describing a ritualized attacks against Jews who became scapegoats.
Some Christians became more pious, believing that their piety might endear them to a God who they believed had sent the plague to punish them for their sins. Texts from this time describe Penitent pilgrims, at times flagellating themselves with whips, crowding the roads. Others reacted by assuming a no-holds-barred attitude toward life, giving “themselves over to pleasures: monks, priests, nuns and lay men and women all enjoyed themselves….Everyone thought themselves rich because he had escaped and regained the world,” according to Agnolo.
Economic impact
The Black Death turned the economy upside-down. It disrupted trade and put manufacturing on hold as skilled artisans and merchants died by the thousands—not to mention the customers who bought their wares. Workers’ wages skyrocketed as arable land lay fallow; landlords, desperate for people to work their land, were forced to renegotiate farmers’ wages. Famine followed. Widespread death eroded the strict hereditary class divisions that had, for centuries, bound peasants to land owned by local lords.
People struggled to understand what was happening. In Western Europe a terrified populace often turned to their Christian faith. As a result, the Church became wealthier as many of those stricken, in an effort to assure a place in heaven, willed their property to the Church. But the authority of the Church also suffered. as some pointed to the “astrological skies that revealed Saturn in the house of Jupiter” as the cause of the tragedy.
Did the Black Death contribute to the Renaissance?
The Black Death radically disrupted society, but did the social, political and religious upheaval created by the plague contribute to the Renaissance? Some historians say yes. With so much land readily available to survivors, the rigid hierarchical structure that marked pre-plague society became more fluid. The Medici family, important patrons of Italian Renaissance culture, originated in the rural area of Mugello in Tuscany and moved to Florence soon after the plague. They initially established their fortune in the wool trade and then branched out into banking. As the family achieved wealth and power, they promoted such artists as Filippo Lippi, Sandro Botticelli, and Michelangelo—not to mention producing four popes and two regent queens of France. Would such mobility have been possible without the social and economic upheaval caused by the Black Death? Historians will likely debate this question for many years.
Video \(\PageIndex{3}\): Video from the J. Paul Getty Museum
Wood panel was the support most often used for painting before canvas replaced it at the end of the 1500s. Artists applied gold ground and expensive pigments to the most splendid panel paintings.
Today art supplies are available at the touch of a finger: swipe left to choose from a rainbow of paint colors, swipe right to see precut, primed canvas or boards, and click to add brushes in a dizzying array of shapes and sizes to your basket. But imagine having to make everything from scratch! Until just before the Industrial Revolution, artists and their apprentices just about did it all: they made their own glue, extracted colors from discarded dyed clothing, fashioned their own brushes and drawing tools, and ground pigments in fresh binding media to make paint.
Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\): Joannes Stradanus, “Color Olivi” (or The Invention of Oil Painting), engraved and published by Philips Galle in Nova Reperta (“Modern Inventions”), c. 1600, engraving on paper, 20.3 × 27 cm (Art Institute of Chicago)
Today, concern about the potential loss of this kind of practical knowledge makes the reconstruction of paintings using traditional methods an important exercise for students of painting conservation. It helps us better understand how paintings were made in the past, as well as why they appear the way that they do now. Most importantly, having a hands-on understanding of artists’ materials informs the decisions that we make when conserving paintings for future generations.
What follows is a step-by-step description of my attempt to re-make a small portable triptych. I was able to study the original painting, Madonna and Child with Saints and the Crucifixion by a follower of Duccio that was in the Conservation Center for treatment. By following a fourteenth century handbook for artists, Cennino Cennini’s Libro dell’arte, I learned the various stages of making the triptych using traditional methods, including carving the wood, making gesso, water gilding, burnishing, punchwork, and egg tempera painting.
Figure \(\PageIndex{8}\): Follower of Duccio, Madonna and Child with Saints and the Crucifixion, c. 1300–1325, tempera on wood panel, 26.4 x 42.5 cm (Kress Collection, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art)
Making the wood panels
Figure \(\PageIndex{9}\): Reconstruction drawing after fresco of a woodworker’s workshop. Piero di Paccio, Noah and his Sons building the Ark, 1389–91, fresco (Composanto Monumentale, Pisa) engraving by Giovanni Paolo Losinio, Pitture a Fresco del Camposanto di Pisa disegnate da Giuseppe Rossi ed incise dal Prof. Cav. G. P. Lasinio figlio, plate 20, 1832 (Victoria & Albert Museum)
In early Renaissance Italy, specialized artisans such as woodworkers, stone carvers, and painters were members of separate guilds, which regulated their activities. Members of the Arte di Maestri del Legname, or Woodworkers Guild, prepared panels for painters, but they also made cassone, boxes, and cabinets. Painters are known to have joined the Woodworkers Guild in order to have the right to carve their own panels. Because the Madonna and Child with Saints and the Crucifixion comprises three panels and was joined with specialized hinges, it was probably carved in the workshop of a carpenter.
I chose to carve the three panels out of cottonwood (Populus tremulus) because it is in the same family as the most commonly found wood in Italian paintings, poplar (Populus alba), and shares many of the same properties. The panels are rectangular and flat, and the central panel has a recessed, or carved out, simple frame. It was a fun challenge only using hand tools, some of which I bought in Florence and others that were handed down to me by my father, who was also a woodworker.
Figure \(\PageIndex{10}\): Left: shaping the three poplar panels for reconstruction; right: central panel with the carved-out frame (photographs by author)Figure \(\PageIndex{11}\): Tools used to shape wood (left to right): block plane, sole plane, ruler, mallet, flat chisel, straight gouge, curved gouge, awl, rasp, and cabinet scraper (photograph by author)Figure \(\PageIndex{12}\): Splayed hinges on the back of the original triptych (left) and reconstruction (right). Photographs by author
The back of the original triptych was bare of paint and showed how the gangherrelle hinges that joined the panels had been drawn through them, bent, and hammered into the back of the wood. I was able to obtain traditional hinges made in Florence for my triptych and quickly realized that seeing this type of hardware in early Italian paintings signifies important characteristics, such as the triptych’s function as a portable devotional object that could be closed and transported. Two candle burns on the back of the left wing confirmed that this triptych was likely used as a private altar.
The X-radiograph of the Madonna and Child triptych revealed the woven pattern of a textile, probably linen, layered between the wood and the gesso on each of the three panels (gesso is a layer of gypsum and glue that seals the wood and provides a smooth, bright white surface for drawing and painting on). This is just as Cennini instructed artists to do in Il libro dell’arte. So, a couple of days before I was ready to apply the gesso, I dipped three pieces of linen in warm glue and used my fingers to smooth them over the front of the panels. The textile helps to protect the paint layers from the wood when the wood expands or shrinks due to changes in humidity, but it also results in a specific craquelure (a network of fine cracks) pattern on the front: straight lines that are perpendicular to the grain of the wood.
Figure \(\PageIndex{13}\): Detail of X-radiograph of the left panel showing the pattern of a woven textileFigure \(\PageIndex{14}\): Reconstruction with one wing closed showing the linen glued onto the flat areas. Photograph by author
Gesso
Gesso is a layer of gypsum and glue that seals the wood and provides a smooth, bright white surface for drawing and painting on. It can take months to make: soaking the gypsum in water hydrates the molecules, making it into a moldable material that hardens, but does not shrink, upon drying.
Figure \(\PageIndex{15}\): Left: making gesso, slaking and filtering the gypsum; center: scraping the gesso into a cake; right: the dried gesso cakes (photographs by author)
I mulled the dried gesso cakes with warm glue, so that the consistency was like that of a thin pancake batter. Then I applied a total of twelve coats of gesso, allowing each to dry until they felt cool to the touch, and making sure to sand and scrape the surface smooth between each coat. It was hard to resist touching the silky smooth surface, but I had to! The grease from my fingers would have made gilding and painting more difficult later on.
Figure \(\PageIndex{16}\): Smoothing the dried gesso on the central panel with a cabinet scraper (photograph by author)
Transferring the drawing
Figure \(\PageIndex{17}\): Left: detail of the Christ child in a visible photograph; right: infrared reflectograph showing changes to the position of the child’s legs, drapery, and possibly the foot
Some drawing was visible under the paint by looking at the painting with a specialized infrared camera. The artist probably drew the image directly onto the prepared panel with a brush in a liquid medium, such as ink, without a preparatory drawing. Changes in the position of the Christ child’s leg and drapery, or pentimenti, are further evidence of an improvisational drawing. A closer look reveals broad strokes of ink wash in the Madonna’s drapery. This type of drawing had an important function: the colors applied over wash appeared darker without mixing large amounts of dark pigments into the colors.
For my triptych, I adapted a method of transferring drawings to canvas, walls, and copper plates for painting and engraving that has been used by artists for centuries. But rather than using a drawing, I printed out an image of the painting that was the exact size as the triptych. I rubbed charcoal on the back of the printer paper, and laid it gently down so that the charcoal side was on top of the gesso. I then used a sharp tool to outline the composition, and the pressure transferred the charcoal to the panels. I fixed the loose charcoal powder by going over it again with diluted black ink and gum arabic.
Figure \(\PageIndex{18}\): Front: reconstruction with the transferred drawing; back: the original triptych (photograph by author)
Gilding and punchwork
Many Late Gothic Italian paintings are instantly recognizable by their richly gilded and incised surfaces. This appearance connects them to their Byzantine precursors, icons. The brightly colored paint and gold leaf mimic the solid gold, silver, jewels, and other precious metals and stones described by Paul the Silentiary in 563 C.E. in his poem about the liturgical furnishings of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (today Istanbul).
After I prepared the areas that I wanted to gild with clay bole, I brushed the bole with water and laid the sheets of gold leaf down with a gilder’s tip (a type of brush) and knife. The sheets are usually all about the same size and slightly overlap each other so that no bole shows through. Sometimes you can see this overlap in paintings from the early Renaissance and can estimate the size of the gold leaf sheet that was originally used.
Figure \(\PageIndex{19}\): The reconstruction at three stages: with the drawing (center panel), with the bole (right), and after gilding (left). Photograph by authorFigure \(\PageIndex{20}\): Gilder’s punches. Photo by author
One of the tricky parts of gilding is the ambient temperature and humidity in your workspace—Cennini advises that gilding should take place when it is “damp and rainy.” Humidity increases the working time because the bole (after gilded) dries more slowly and allows extra time for burnishing, as well as incising and punching the gilt surface. When you try to punch into a gilt bole that is too wet, the gold can break, and if it’s too dry the bole can flake off.
The only punchwork on my triptych was a simple round shape, but the other tooling in the haloes and borders was all hand-drawn, which requires a lot of time to execute. And I happened to be working on my reconstruction indoors in the summer, which means air conditioning and dry air (not the damp atmosphere advised by Cennini): not a lot of time to work! So I experimented with incising the decorations in the bole prior to gilding to see if they would still be visible. Fortunately this worked and I was able to incise first, lay down the gold leaf, and then burnish the gold to a high polish.
Figure \(\PageIndex{21}\): Left: detail of the halo of Mary on the Crucifixion panel in the original; center: detail of halo incised in bole; right: halo after gilding in the reconstruction (photos by author)
Preparing and applying paint
Madonna and Child with Saints and the Crucifixion is painted in egg tempera, a water-based paint medium that has a durable, opaque finish with a slight sheen. Because it dries quickly, the paint must be applied in quick, short strokes and built up for coverage. These hatch marks of overlapping color are characteristic of tempera paintings developed during the Late Gothic and into the Italian Renaissance.
Figure \(\PageIndex{22}\): Punchwork visible in the halo, and hatchmarks visible in Christ’s face (detail), Taddeo Gaddi, Saint Julian, 1340s, tempera on wood, gold ground, 54 x 36.2 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Egg tempera is prepared by first grinding powdered pigments (azurite, earth colors, red lead, vermilion, red lake, and lead white) in a small amount of water. This paste is then scooped into a small sea shell and tempered with the egg yolk.
Figure \(\PageIndex{23}\): Painting the triptych with traditional pigments while looking at the original in the background as a guide for the choice of pigments and their application. Photograph by author
Working quickly in small batches of color, I followed Cennini’s instruction for painting, first laying in mid-tones of color followed by highlights (mixing color with white) and shadows (mixing with small amounts of black or brown). This surprisingly simple method was complicated by the artist’s use of pure red lake glazes (pigment made from from organic dyestuffs, instead of minerals) in areas of deep shadow, such as the blue drapery of the Cardinal saint and the Christ child’s drapery. Instead of mixing colors to achieve a darker color (which would have resulted in a muddy mess), red paint was glazed over blue to add depth and intensity.
Figure \(\PageIndex{24}\): Glazes of red lake paint in areas of shadow in the blues make them appear more vivid and the forms more sculptural. Photo by author
Conclusion
Having worked with these materials translates to better understanding why this painting looks the ways it does now, and also how to care for it in the future. One of the most obvious differences to me is the brilliance of the colors in the reconstruction. Because I was able to study the original and chose the same pigments, I have a new appreciation for the range of colors that might have been desired in the fourteenth century. The intensity of color and brilliance of the gold must have been dazzling when surrounded by candles. Above all, I have come away in awe of the skill and knowledge required to make the Madonna and Child triptych.
Figure \(\PageIndex{25}\): Reconstruction (left) of the Madonna and Child with Saints and the Crucifixion (right). Photo by author
Cennino Cennini, Il libro dell’arte, trans. Daniel V. Thompson (New York: Dover Publications, 1933)
Looking at Paintings: A Guide to Technical Terms / eds. Tiarna Doherty and Anne T Woollett (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2009)
Jo Kirby and David Bomford, Italian Painting before 1400 (London: The National Gallery, 1989)
Skaug, Erling. Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: Attribution, Chronology, and Workshop Relationships in Tuscan Panel Painting: with Particular Consideration to Florence, c.1330–1430 (Oslo: IIC, Nordic Group, the Norwegian section, 1994)
Florence
Florence in the Late Gothic Period (1300s)
In the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Florence’s population doubled. Bankers and merchants replaced the old noble families as the center of power.
1300s
Beginner's guide
The city-state of Florence in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries was a city on the rise (until the black death).
Florence in the Late Gothic period, an introduction
Figure \(\PageIndex{26}\): View of Florence (detail), Unknown Artist, Madonna della Misericordia, 1342 (Museo del Bigallo, Florence)
Boom times in Florence
The city-state of Florence in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries was a city on the rise. Urbanization was experienced by all Italian cities at this time and Florence’s population doubled in size. But more than almost any other town, Florence saw an explosion in international trade and innovations in finance. A new class of bankers and merchants replaced the old noble families as the center of power, developing a complex, barely democratic social structure that hung in a careful balance.
Figure \(\PageIndex{27}\): View of the Palazzo Vecchio, 1299-1310, designed by Arnolfo di Cambio
Art and architecture helped define the relationships between individuals and the bewildering array of civic, professional, and religious institutions that made up the fabric of Florentine society. Thanks to the city’s newfound wealth, impressive communal building projects were undertaken, like the building of a new seat of government, the Palazzo della Signoria.
Church and state
During this building boom, church and state were anything but separate. Public funds were used to erect many of the religious centers, including the cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore. Subsidies were even given over to the large new churches needed to accommodate growing audiences for the sermons of the mendicant orders (monks that had forsaken worldly possessions and that lived and preached in the cities). The largest of these mendicant behemoths were the Franciscan church of Santa Croce and the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella.
Figure \(\PageIndex{28}\): View of the nave of the church of Santa Croce in Florence
Guilds and private patrons, too
Happily, the decoration of buildings throughout the city fell to a widening range of patrons. Professional guilds (somewhat like our trade unions) were often in charge of decorating public spaces with painting and, increasingly, architectural sculpture. Groups of priests, nuns, and confraternities (organizations of laypeople that gathered to perform acts of charity or sing hymns) hired artists to create devotional images and lavish books of hymns. For the first time, wealthy individuals and families could even purchase the rights to use and decorate chapels within a church.
A more personal spirituality
But art was not all about public displays of wealth or works of communal beautification. Faith and spirituality became more deeply personal even as they became more public. More than in previous centuries, images played an important role in focusing a person’s devotion to Christ, Mary and the saints—in imagining their lives or picturing how they might appear in all their heavenly glory. In fact, images didn’t just maintain relationships within Florentine society, they built imagined relationships between viewers and the sacred figures they portrayed. This affected more than just the amount of art people needed; it affected what they wanted it to look like. And in the course of the fourteenth century, what they wanted it to look like would change dramatically.
The Italo-Byzantine style
Figure \(\PageIndex{29}\): Coppo di Marcovaldo and his son Salerno, Crucifixion, 1274 (Pistoia Cathedral)
Like the art of most Italian cities at the time, thirteenth-century art in Florence was heavily influenced by Byzantine art (the art of the Byzantine Empire). Images from this period are in fact often described as “Italo-Byzantine,” a label that reflects how artists such as Coppo di Marcovaldo (and many more artists whose names we don’t know) adapted the foreign style into something altogether Italian.
In painting, this meant emulating the way figures were strongly outlined against glittering gold backgrounds like those seen in Byzantine icons and mosaics. These ornate images seem to directly engage the viewer by pressing whatever is being depicted by the artist to the surface of the painting or mosaic. Figures are formed out of abstract but expressive shapes designed to identify various body parts or items of clothing while creating beautiful patterns. In narrative images, each story plays out across the field of representation instead of within it, eliminating the need for a sense of depth.
A new style emerges
Figure \(\PageIndex{30}\): Cimabue, Santa Trinita Madonna (Madonna and Child Enthroned), 1280-90, tempera on panel (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
During the late thirteenth century, artists in a handful of Italian cities began to move away from the Italo-Byzantine style. The Roman artist Pietro Cavallini created frescoes and mosaics featuring solid, monumentalizing figures; the sculptor Nicola Pisano studied ancient Roman sculpture; Sienese artists seem to have broken new ground in exploring perspective.
Meanwhile, back in Florence, Cimabue’s paintings showed more interest in depicting space and modeling figures with gradations of light and shade. These ideas spread as artists travelled throughout Italy and southern France in search of work, creating a network of artistic centers that all exerted influence on one another.
Giotto
As the new century opened, the painter Giotto di Bondone observed many of these currents and forged them into something distinctively Florentine and enormously influential.
Figure \(\PageIndex{31}\): Giotto di Bondone, The Ognissanti Madonna, 1306-10, tempera on panel, 128 x 80 1/4″ or 325 x 204 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
Where earlier works of art engage us with the embellished splendor of the heavenly, Giotto’s paintings capture our attention by representing holy figures and stories as if in a majestic but earthly realm. Bold modeling of draperies and the bodies beneath them gives his figures greater volume and a sense of sculptural relief. Clever kinds of perspective create the illusion that a space is opening up in front of the viewer, as if we might be peering onto a stage.
Figure \(\PageIndex{32}\): Giotto, Meeting at the Golden Gate, c. 1305 (Arena (Scrovegni) Chapel, Padua)
Perhaps just as importantly, Giotto was a master of visual storytelling—a skill evident in his most important surviving project, the frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua (c. 1305). Here the monumentality of the figures, the quiet dignity of their movements, and the way architectural and landscape settings seem to echo the action all conjure up a solemn aura of the sacred. Like many of the narrative paintings attributed to Giotto, the scenes use closely observed human gestures and careful composition to enhance the drama and emotion of the moment depicted.
Figure \(\PageIndex{33}\): Maso di Banco, Pope Sylvester’s Miracle, c. 1340 (Bardi Chape, Santa Croce, Florence)
Art after Giotto
Giotto had an enormous workshop full of students and assistants, making it hard to tell which works he painted and which were by his pupils. Even more confusingly, his style was so immediately influential that it is still difficult to say who his formal students were. What we do know is that, in the years immediately after his death, the artists who were the most “Giottesque” received the lion’s share of the important commissions for new projects. The success of artists like Bernardo Daddi, Maso di Banco, and Taddeo Gaddi demonstrates that wealthy patrons were on board with Giotto’s new vision for art.
Sometime around mid-century, though, certain artists began to drift from the clear, spare art of Giotto’s school. Many experimented with visually crowded compositions or with complex subjects represented through elaborate symbols and schemes. Some even seem to have purposefully echoed the ornamental, formal art of the Italo-Byzantine period. This has led art historians to wonder whether these changes in style were caused by Florence’s collective despair after the outbreak of the bubonic plague—a sickness that wiped out over half the city’s population in one year alone (1348).
Figure \(\PageIndex{34}\): Andrea Bonaiuti, Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas, c. 1365-67, Guidalotti Chapel (Spanish Chapel) (Santa Maria Novella, Florence)
Most scholars now think the situation was more mixed than this theory might lead us to believe. In fact, late fourteenth-century art is hard to generalize. This is partly because no single workshop dominated the art of Florence as much as Giotto and his school had in previous decades. But it is also because artists of the time were skilled at adapting their own style to the specific tastes of each patron and to the context and function of each image.
Overall, however, Florentine art from 1348 to 1400 did not experience the same kind of major stylistic shift that characterized Giotto’s years on the scene. Rather, the fundamental influence of Giotto continued into the early 1400s. In the end, the long fourteenth-century was Giotto’s century.
Figure \(\PageIndex{36}\): Domenico di Michelino, Dante holding the Divine Comedy, 1465 (Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence)
When you think of Hell, what images fill your imagination? Your mind might first conjure up a monstrous satanic figure, and then you may further fill in the picture with other beastly devils that roam around torturing damned sinners, who in turn cry out with pain and regret.
And how about the better parts of the Christian afterlife; how do you imagine them? Perhaps the saved are singing songs of joy, angels are fluttering about, and throngs of holy men and women converse and worship God. To some degree, such imaginings have their origins in the Bible. However, in the Christian West, conceptions of the afterlife evolved quite a bit over the centuries. One important late medieval figure who played a key role in shaping the cultural concepts of life after death—even to the present day—is Dante Alighieri, the Florentine poet who was born in the 1260s and died in 1321.
In his epic poem known as the Divine Comedy, Dante creates a fictional version of himself who travels through the farthest reaches of hell (Inferno), purgatory (Purgatorio) and paradise (Paradiso). Many details that he describes along this journey have left a lasting impression on the Western imagination for more than half a millennium. In fact, the rather stereotypical images of the afterlife I described earlier are all represented in his work. But Dante also found novel ways to portray already well-formed concepts, thus further solidifying them while also reshaping them into new guises that would become familiar to countless generations that followed.
Because of Dante’s image-driven descriptions, many artists have sought to illustrate his text through a wide variety of media. Almost immediately after his work was completed, illuminators created images to accompany manuscripts of his masterpiece. More than forty illuminated manuscripts of the Divine Comedy were created before the advent of the printing press (in the late 15th century). When the potential for faster reproductions of books—including illustrated books—became a reality, Dante’s imagination, sometimes intertwined with the imagination of an artist rendering a visual interpretation of his words, reached an even larger audience than before. We will look here at two outstanding examples of how Dante’s words fed the creative imagination of visual artists before and shortly after the invention of the printing press.
Figure \(\PageIndex{38}\): Florence Baptistry (Battistero di San Giovanni), 1059-1128
The influence of art on Dante’s world
Before looking at Dante’s influence on the visual arts, however, we need take a little step back in time. The relationship between Dante and the arts was a reciprocal one; images he had seen also greatly influenced his literary vision. Were there any sights, sounds or works of art you saw as a child that you can still easily call to mind today? If you were writing a fictional story that relied heavily on your own imagination, could you see yourself drawing from these vivid sensorial experiences and making them a part of that story? This was the case for Dante.
Figure \(\PageIndex{39}\): Mosaic (detail) of the Satan in the Last Judgment on the ceiling of the Florence Baptistry, 13th c.
Florence was full of artistic marvels well before the Renaissance. Incredible works of art and architecture filled the city well before Dante’s birth in late medieval times. The Florence Baptistery (illustrated above), which Dante fondly referred to in his Comedy as his “bel (beautiful) San Giovanni,” is one such example, which the poet would have known well, even from the days of his youth. The ceiling inside the baptistery is covered with mosaic images that still dazzle visitors today. There are many indications that Dante too was dazzled by the sight. Quite a few correspondences can be discerned between certain descriptions in the Comedy and particular images within this baptistery—indeed, too many to be mere coincidence. For example, at the end of the Inferno, when Dante’s fictional self reaches the deepest part of Hell and encounters “the emperor of the dolorous kingdom” (Satan), Dante’s description is strikingly specific. Satan has three mouths, and “In each of his mouths he was breaking a sinner/ with his teeth in the manner of a scutch, so that he made the three suffer at once” (translation by Durling and Martinez)—just like the image of Satan inside the Florence Baptistery. The link to this mosaic image is just one example of how the visual arts passed from Dante’s memory through his imagination and onto the pages of his epic poem.
After a childhood and adolescence no doubt filled with sights of Florentine artistic wonders, Dante’s familiarity with the visual arts matured. In Purgatorio XI his understanding of various forms of visual arts and artists is especially evident. Through a conversation between his fictional self and the manuscript illuminator Oderisi da Gubbio, Dante discusses the fading glory of artists, always eclipsed by another’s greatness. He writes that just as Franco Bolognese surpassed his master Oderisi in illumination, and Giotto surpassed Cimabue in painting—in poetry, a certain unnamed poet (that is, Dante) just may have outdone Guido Cavalcanti and Guido Guinizelli.
Dante implies that there are similarities between the written word and the painted picture, as he directly associates these mediums and their practitioners with one another. Certainly, poets like Dante learned from and were influenced by artists, and as we will now see, visual artists were also greatly affected by poets such as this great Florentine.
The Yates-Thompson Codex
Among the dozens of illuminated manuscripts of the Divine Comedy, one of the most outstanding is known as the Yates-Thompson Codex, which is located in the British Library. It was originally carried out for Alfonso V, the king of Aragon, Naples and Sicily, either as a gift or under his commission. The manuscript was produced in Siena in the 1440s, and two illuminators worked on the 112 framed miniatures.
Figure \(\PageIndex{40}\): Priamo della Quercia or Vecchietta (?), illustration of Dante, Inferno, Yates Thompson MS 36, f. 10r, 1444-c. 1450 (The British Museum)
In the illumination from the fifth canto (in epic poetry, a canto is a division similar to a chapter) of the Inferno pictured here, Dante (in blue) and his guide, the ancient Roman poet Virgil (in red), pass through the circle of the lustful. The artist captures three distinct moments from this canto in one image. The first moment is shown in the upper left corner in the form of the snarling beast. This is Minos, who determines where in Hell a sinner will be sent, and who briefly impedes Dante’s journey until Virgil rebukes him and the two move onward.
Figure \(\PageIndex{41}\): Detail of a miniature of the lustful being carried about by a wind with Paolo and Francesca on the far right, in illustration of Canto V, Yates Thompson 36, f. 10, 1444-c. 1450 (The British Museum)
Next, just to the right of Minos, Virgil explains the mysterious group of people who are tossed about by a whirlwind, and he identifies individual figures among them. Third, on the far right, a couple facing left converses with the Dante and Virgil. They are there as a visual reference to the extended dialogue between Dante and one pair of lustful sinners, Paolo and Francesca. At the end of the canto Dante faints with pity, and in the center of this image he is shown on his knee—preparing, it seems, to fully lose consciousness.
In a number of illustrated accompaniments to the Divine Comedy, there are no images to complement Paradiso, and for understandable reasons. While Inferno and Purgatorio describe physically tangible experiences, the Paradiso is elusive and philosophical. The very spaces through which Dante and his paradisiacal guide Beatrice travel defy physical properties. The illuminator for these scenes, Giovanni di Paolo, however, was well up for this task and executed a masterful set of images to accompany this most difficult part of the Comedy. Rejecting natural physical laws, Dante and Beatrice are shown throughout these illustrations as if they are hovering above the ground, as they are in this image, which illustrates the second canto.
Figure \(\PageIndex{42}\): Priamo della Quercia or Vecchietta (?), illustration of Dante, Inferno, Yates Thompson MS 36, f. 132r, 1444-c. 1450 (The British Museum)Figure \(\PageIndex{43}\): Detail, cosmic symbol, Yates Thompson, MS 36, f. 132r
In this image, located directly beneath Dante and Beatrice on the far left is the representation of a simile Beatrice uses to explain the workings and shaping of the universe by divine intelligence, which she compares to a coppersmith using his hammer to mold his product. In the center is a reference to a question Dante poses about why there are spots on the moon. Beatrice explains that it is not due to lesser degrees of light among the the planets and stars in the heavens but to the casting of shadows onto the earth, which are reflected back upon the moon. She suggests an experiment with three specifically arranged mirrors and a light to prove the point, which is likewise illustrated. To the right of light is an illustration of a third simile that Beatrice uses in this same canto; she compares the stripping of Dante’s intellect through higher reasoning to the stripping of the color and coldness of snow beneath warm rays. Thus the three similes run along the lower half of the illumination. On the upper right is a cosmic symbol that represents the circles within the celestial sphere through which Dante will pass during his journey toward God in the ultimate paradise.
Botticelli’s drawings
In his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari wrote; “since Sandro was also a learned man, he wrote a commentary on part of Dante’s poem, and after illustrating the Inferno, he printed the work.” Either Vasari was a bit misinformed, or he was implying something regarding the profound interrelations between the texts and images when he said that Sandro Botticelli “wrote a commentary.” In fact, in the 1480s—the same decade when he painted his most infamous works, Primavera and The Birth of Venus—Botticelli undertook the task of drawing not only the Inferno but the entire Divine Comedy.
Figure \(\PageIndex{44}\): Sandro Botticelli, Drawing for Dante’s Divine Comedy, 1480-95, gouache, brown ink over metal point on parchment (Staatliche Museen, Berlin)
His delicate handling of line, so well known in his paintings, is also evident in these drawings, which had originally accompanied the text, but have since been broken up and are now located in the Vatican and the Museum of Prints and Drawings in Berlin. Many of the earliest printed sets of illustrated editions of Dante’s Divine Comedy followed Botticelli’s drawings, and it is possible that the prints attributed to Baccio Baldini were planned and intended as a mass-produced extension of the master’s work.
Figure \(\PageIndex{45}\): Detail, Sandro Botticelli, Inferno, Canto XXXIV, 1480s, silverpoint on parchment, completed in pen and ink (Staatliche Museen, Berlin)
From the beasts of Hell—such as the now familiar three-headed Satan chewing sinners—to the journey through paradise, Botticelli proves himself a careful reader and a thoughtful illustrator. The horrors of the dark underworld are truly horrifying, and the wonders of the celestial realm, wonderful. Botticelli’s approach in picturing the mysterious spheres of the heavens is especially memorable. He deliberately chose not to illustrate the intangible elements that surround Dante and Beatrice, a choice that in fact furthers one’s sense of the journey’s ineffability. Principally featuring these two characters within a perfectly rounded circle, we see the unseeable through the gestures and expressions of these two figures. For example in the image pictured here, an illustration of canto seventeen, we see Dante’s reaction to a prophecy that he will be exiled from his hometown—as, in fact, he already had been at the time of his writing.
Figure \(\PageIndex{46}\): Sandro Botticelli, Fifth planetary sphere (heaven of Mars); Cacciaguida prophesies Dante’s exile, but also his eternal fame, drawing, c.1480-95
There is no right approach to illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy, and in the first two centuries of the book’s history alone, there were a good number of excellent reader-illustrators. Of course, in the centuries to follow, and up to the present day, many more artists can be added to this list. No doubt this masterpiece of writing has played an important role in the creation of a great many outstanding works of art.
Figure \(\PageIndex{47}\): Cimabue, Maestà or Santa Trinita Madonna and Child Enthroned, 1280-90, tempera on panel, 385 x 223 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
The Virgin Mary with the Christ Child seated on a throne
By the late 1200s, large paintings featuring the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child seated on a throne were a common sight in Italian churches. Larger-than-life panels with this theme, a kind of image that came to be known as a Maestà (meaning “majesty”), were adaptations of traditional Byzantine icons for use in devotion in Western Europe.
Figure \(\PageIndex{48}\): Gallery view with Duccio’s Rucellai Madonna (left) and Giotto’s Ognissanti Madonna (right), Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Among the most famous examples are Duccio’s Rucellai Madonna and Giotto’s Ognissanti Madonna. Such paintings may have adorned altars, but they could also have been placed on a beam or wall in the center of a church, perhaps like the painting shown in a fresco depicting the Verification of the Stigmata in the nave of the Upper Church at Assisi.
Figure \(\PageIndex{49}\): Left: The Verification of the Stigmata, 1288-1297, Assisi, Upper Church, Basilica of San Francesco; right: detail of the painting displayed on a beam.
Displayed in this way, large Marian images (images of the Virgin Mary) would have been seen by the crowds gathered to hear Mass. Monumental Maestà panels could also be commissioned by lay confraternities—organizations of laypeople who performed acts of piety and service, and gathered to sing hymns of praise to the Virgin. Wherever they might be placed within a church, these imposing, gilded paintings were objects of intense devotion.
Figure \(\PageIndex{50}\): View of Cimabue’s Maestà with viewers.Figure \(\PageIndex{51}\): Enthroned Madonna and Child, c. 1250/1275 tempera on panel,124.8 x 70.8 cm (National Gallery of Art)
Santa Trinita Madonna
At an unknown date, probably around 1280, the Florentine artist Cimabue painted a celebrated Maestà for the church of Santa Trinita in Florence. Now housed in the city’s Uffizi Gallery, this massive painting—over twelve feet tall and seven feet wide (12’8’’ x 7’4’’)—features Mary gazing out at the viewer. She gestures toward the child with her right hand, while Christ raises his hand in a priestly pose of blessing, an adaptation of the ancient Byzantine icon type (known as the “Hodegetria”) in which the Virgin Mary points to Christ as the way to heaven.The Byzantine icons that inspired Cimabue and other artists of his day also often included angels posed on either side of the throne, usually shown in much smaller scale than Mary to emphasize her importance (a good example is the painting of the Enthroned Madonna and Child in the National Gallery of Art).
In the Santa Trinita Madonna and other Maestà panels he painted, however, Cimabue makes the angels much larger, and stacks them around the throne so that they seem to be occupying the same space as Mary and Christ. The angels also become interlocutors between the viewer and the holy figures; six of the angels look out toward us directly, while the two in the center gaze at Christ, modeling the pious focus a viewer would imitate.
Figure \(\PageIndex{52}\): Cimabue, Maestà or Santa Trinita Madonna and Child Enthroned (detail), 1280-90, tempera on panel, 385 x 223 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
Set against a gleaming gold leaf background, Mary and Christ sit on a monumental throne fashioned of intricately carved wood and studded with gems. This throne has often been celebrated by art historians as an example of how Cimabue experimented with perspectival effects. The curved steps of the throne lead the eye back into the fictional space Cimabue creates, making it seem as though the figures occupy real space. The large throne also allows Cimabue to place the Virgin and the eight angels that surround her at the top of the composition, foreshortening the front parts of the throne and bringing them closer to the viewer, creating the illusion of depth on the painting’s flat surface.
The four figures below
But Cimabue’s most striking and novel element is the inclusion of four bust-length, haloed figures beneath Mary and Christ, enclosed within the arches of the throne’s base. This arrangement foreshadows a trend seen in later altarpieces called a predella—a lateral band of smaller images placed below a larger image. Placed in the foreground, these figures seem to be closer to the viewer than Mary and Christ, further enhancing the sense of three-dimensionality within the painting.
Figure \(\PageIndex{53}\): Cimabue, Maestà or Santa Trinita Madonna and Child Enthroned (detail), 1280-90, tempera on panel, 385 x 223 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)Figure \(\PageIndex{54}\): Cimabue, Jeremiah (detail), Maestà or Santa Trinita Madonna and Child Enthroned, 1280-90, tempera on panel, 385 x 223 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
In the Santa Trinita Madonna, the men at the base of Mary’s throne are the heroes and prophets Jeremiah, Abraham, David and Isaiah, identified by the scrolls they hold displaying biblical texts associated with each of them (from Jeremiah 31:22; Genesis 22:18; Psalms 131:11; Isaiah 7:14). These figures from the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) are included because they each—according to Christian theology—foretold or made possible the coming of Christ (Jeremiah and Isaiah prophesized the coming of the Messiah via a virgin, and Abraham and David were believed to be direct ancestors of the Virgin and Christ). Isaiah and Jeremiah look upwards towards Mary, and each holds an open palm towards the viewer. David gestures similarly, looking towards Abraham, who holds his scroll with both hands and gazes outward from the picture plane. The inclusion of these four men below Mary’s throne glorifies the prophetic heritage and priestly genealogy of Mary and her son.
Figure \(\PageIndex{54}\): Santa Trinita, Florence
The Vallombrosans at Santa Trinita
By including these specific figures, Cimabue was perhaps responding to a request from the painting’s commissioners. The church of Santa Trinita was built by a religious reform order called the Vallombrosans, men who lived in community and practiced strict acts of fasting and penance. Founded in the eleventh century by the Florentine knight Giovanni Gualberto, the Vallombrosans sought to bring monastic life back in line with the values of Saint Benedict of Nursia, the founder of western Christian monasticism. In celebrating Saint Benedict, members of the order he founded (the Benedictines), emphasized Old Testament prophets in their literary and artistic traditions. A sixth century text, the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, which includes a biography of Saint Benedict, highlights Saint Benedict’s own prophetic gifts. In the Dialogues, Benedict is compared specifically to King David, legendary author of the Psalms. David is also important in the life of Giovanni Gualberto; his biographers describe how on his deathbed, the saint repeated unceasingly the famous prayer words “of David” from Psalm 23. In Cimabue’s painting, David is the most prominent of the figures below Mary; in contrast to the subdued colors worn by Jeremiah, Isaiah and Abraham, David wears a bright red mantle and a crown. David’s clothing echoes the slightly paler scarlet robes worn by Mary and Christ, and his kinship to Christ himself is reinforced by his position directly beneath the Christ Child.
Figure \(\PageIndex{55}\): Cimabue, Abraham and David (detail), Maestà or Santa Trinita Madonna and Child Enthroned, 1280-90, tempera on panel, 385 x 223 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
Cimabue’s placement of David and the other figures at the base of Mary’s throne was a completely original visual element, and may have been part of the artist’s efforts to create a new spin on the Maestà in celebration of the Vallombrosans, creating their own “signature” Madonna. Painted at an unknown date in the late thirteenth century, the Santa Trinita Madonna was commissioned at a time when many different religious orders such as the Franciscans and Dominicans were competing for the loyalty of Florence’s wealthy citizens and their offerings. The building of lavish and spacious churches embellished with paintings commissioned by renowned artists were part of these groups’ efforts to keep ahead in the rivalries. The spectacular and innovative Maestà that Cimabue created would certainly have brought new attention and prestige to the Vallombrosans at Santa Trinita.
Video \(\PageIndex{4}\): Cimabue, Santa Trinita Madonna and Child Enthroned, 1280-90, tempera on panel, 151 1/2 x 87 3/4″ / 385 x 223 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
Video \(\PageIndex{5}\): Cimabue, Santa Trinita Madonna and Child Enthroned, 1280-1290, tempera on panel, 151 1/2 x 87 3/4″ / 385 x 223 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence); Giotto, The Ognissanti Madonna and Child Enthroned, 1306-10, tempera on panel, 128 x 80 1/4″ / 325 x 204 cm, painted for the Church of Ognissanti, Florence (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
Giotto
Giotto, The Ognissanti Madonna and Child Enthroned
Video \(\PageIndex{6}\): Giotto, The Ognissanti Madonna and Child Enthroned, 1306-10, tempera on panel, 128 x 80 1/4″ / 325 x 204 cm (Uffizi, Florence), painted for the Church of Ognissanti, Florence
Video \(\PageIndex{7}\): Giotto di Bondone, St. Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata with predella scenes of the Dream of Innocent III,The Pope Approving the Rule of the Order, and St. Francis Preaching to the Birds, c. 1295-1300, tempera and gold on panel, 3.13 x 1.63 m (originally in the Church of San Francesco, Pisa), original frame inscribed: “OPUS IOCTI FIORETINI.”
The Renaissance does not have a start date. Its origins are often located around 1400 but as early as the late 1200s we see changes in painting and sculpture that lay the foundation for what we will come to recognize as the Renaissance. Some scholars call this early period the “Late Gothic”—a term which refers to the late Middle Ages, while other people call it the “Proto-Renaissance”—the beginnings of the Renaissance. In any case, a revolution is beginning to take place in Italy the early 1300s in the way people think about the world, the way they think about the past, and the way they think about themselves and their relationship with God.
Giotto
The artist who takes the biggest step away from the Medieval style of spiritual representation in painting in the early 14th century is Giotto.
Giotto is perhaps best known for the frescoes he painted in the Arena (or Scrovegni) Chapel. They were commissioned by a wealthy man named Enrico Scrovegni, the son of a well-known banker (and a banker himself). According to the Church, usury (charging interest for a loan) was a sin, and so perhaps one of Enrico’s motivations for building the chapel and having it decorated by Giotto was to atone for the sin of usury. The chapel is known as the Arena Chapel since it is on the site of an ancient Roman arena (or amphitheater) that later became the property of Scrovegni, whose palace abutted the chapel (the palace was torn down in the nineteenth century, though parts of the arena remain).
Figure \(\PageIndex{60}\): Enrico Scrovegni assisted by a priest, presents the chapel to the Virgin Mary and two other figures (detail), Giotto, Last Judgment, c. 1305, fresco cycle (Arena (Scrovegni) Chapel, Padua, Italy)
Commissioning works of art for churches was a common way of doing “good works” which could help you earn your way into Heaven. We can see Enrico himself in the fresco of the Last Judgment on the west wall of the Arena Chapel—he is shown on the side of the blessed (or the elect, those whom Christ has chosen to go to Heaven). He is depicted kneeling, presenting the chapel to the Virgin Mary and two other figures (variously identified).¹
The photo at the top of the page gives us a sense of what it feels like to be a tourist visiting the Arena Chapel. Because frescoes are painted directly on the wall, they can’t easily be moved and put in a museum. Most frescoes are therefore still in the spaces that the artists created them in and that the patrons commissioned them for. Having the work of art in its original context helps us to understand its meaning for the people of the 14th century.
Looking at the photo, you can see that there are numerous separate images in the chapel. The frescoes tell the story of the lives of Mary (beginning with her parents, Joachim and Anna) and Christ on the long walls. By the altar, Giotto painted the Annunciation, and at the other end, on the entrance wall, the Last Judgment.
Rather like a comic book without words, Giotto tells the story of Christ and his parents through pictures. Most of the population of Europe was illiterate at this time and so couldn’t read the bible for themselves (Bibles were rare and expensive in any case—there was no printing press and so each was copied by hand). People learned the stories of the Bible—stories that would help them get to heaven—by hearing the words of the priest in the church, and by looking at paintings and sculptures.
¹In one interpretation, the nearest figure is the Annunciate Virgin, the middle figure Saint Mary of Charity (so the two important roles Mary plays in the chapel), and the last figure is the Angel Gabriel. Another source identifies these additional figures as St. John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalene. These figures have also been identified as the Virgin Mary, the Virgin of Charity and the Virgin Annunciate.
Video \(\PageIndex{12}\): Giotto, The Entombment of Mary, 1310, tempera on poplar, 75 x 179 cm (Gemäldegalerie, Kaiser Friedrich-Museums-Verein, Berlin)
Figure \(\PageIndex{68}\): View of the Piazza del Campo, Siena
Siena: A city overlooked?
For centuries, Siena’s role in the history of European art was underappreciated. This is partly because its moment of greatest influence occurred just before the Renaissance, a period commonly associated with the nearby city of Florence (both Florence and Siena were independent city-states in Italy at this time—see this map). But history—even art history—is written by the victors. So when Siena’s position of power faded while Florence remained one of the financial and artistic centers of Europe, the achievements of Sienese artists slid slowly into the background.
Art historians now know that the development of style in these two city-states was closely intertwined. The artists of one inevitably influenced the other, even in later periods. It is not an exaggeration to say that, at the height of its artistic flourishing, Siena was unsurpassed in its fame for producing celebrated painters.
Figure \(\PageIndex{69}\): Siena Cathedral
An international city
By the early fourteenth century, Siena was a wealthy and cosmopolitan city. Several large international banks were run by wealthy Sienese families. Merchants based in Siena traded goods in several foreign countries, particularly France. The city’s location on the Via Francigena, the main pilgrimage route to Rome, meant that pilgrims from all over Europe streamed through its streets. These pilgrims would have been greeted by one of the most impressive cityscapes in Italy at the time. Spread out over three hills, the skyline was dominated by the enormous cathedral and by the central seat of government, the Palazzo Pubblico.
Figure \(\PageIndex{70}\): Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. The representatives of the Sienese government, “The Nine,” met here.
Communal oversight of the arts
Like many cities today, the Sienese were acutely aware of how art and architecture shaped the city’s identity in the eyes of both natives and visitors. The communal government was controlled by the “Nove,” or the Nine, a rotating group of representatives chosen from the city’s leading families. The Nove dominated art patronage during the period, helping to decide the layout of the city and its largest buildings, selecting committees to oversee large public projects, and subsidizing the decoration of churches.
Sienese art of the period was communally oriented in a few other ways. The central government and various churches hired local Sienese artists, almost exclusively, to produce the most important paintings. Such a preference for native sons hints at a general pride in the city’s painters, known throughout Italy for the quality of their work (this was not the case with sculpture). There were also a few examples of large works of art created for private individuals. Compare this to Florence at the time, where rich citizens often bought the right to decorate family chapels in large churches and where painters from other cities were sometimes awarded prestigious commissions.
Duccio
Figure \(\PageIndex{71}\): Duccio di Buoninsegna, Rucellai Madonna, 1285-86, tempera on panel, 177 x 114″ / 450 x 290 cm (Uffizi, Florence)
In fact, the most famous Sienese artist of the fourteenth century may have first made a name for himself in Florence. The earliest recorded work by Duccio, an artist who is often called the father of Sienese painting, was commissioned for the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.
This nearly fifteen-foot tall altarpiece depicting the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child introduced Duccio’s innovative style to a wider audience. Like previous artists, Duccio was interested in creating beautiful patterns and shapes. We can see the love of surface decoration in the undulating arrangements of fabric or even in the faces of his figures. Yet he also used soft modeling with light and shade to give a sense of mass in the figures’ delicate but real bodies. Duccio’s ability to combine elegant lines and patterns with a fragile naturalism became a hallmark of Sienese painting.
Figure \(\PageIndex{72}\): Duccio, Maestà (front, central panel), 1308-11 (Museo dell’Opera Metropolitana del Duomo, Siena)
The Maestà
The Santa Maria Novella altarpiece must have won Duccio fame in his own city of Siena, for he soon became a favorite painter of the commune. In 1308, he was asked to create a massive painting for the main altar in the middle of the Cathedral. The front of the altarpiece depicted the Madonna and Child sitting on a throne and surrounded by saints and angels, a subject known in Italian as a Maestà. Originally, the main scene was at the center of a set of stories and figures, all united in an elaborate wooden structure of frames covered in gold leaf. The back of the altarpiece was painted with a series of scenes from the life of Christ. Unfortunately, these panels are now dispersed in many museums. In these panels, Duccio demonstrated his unsurpassed skills of visual storytelling, capturing the imagination of contemporary viewers with his vivid depictions of the gospel stories that were so central to the faith of Siena and its visitors.
Figure \(\PageIndex{73}\): Duccio, Maestà (reconstruction of back), 1308-11 (Museo dell’Opera Metropolitana del Duomo, Siena)
Cathedral altarpieces
It is hard to overestimate how important Duccio’s altarpiece was for the citizens who worshiped in front of it and for the artists who studied it. The city had long ago dedicated itself to the Virgin Mary, believing her to be their special protector. In an age where painted images gave faithful viewers a channel of access to celestial figures, the Maestà became the central representation of Siena’s powerful patron as the queen of heaven.
The work’s role as a devotional and artistic well for the city was most eloquently honored in four altarpieces painted for the chapels surrounding Duccio’s painting. Each altarpiece depicted a scene involving Mary, so that the story of her life would have unfolded as your eye travelled along the chapels. Over the course of two decades, one altarpiece was commissioned from each of the leading Sienese painters of the day, transforming the heart of the Cathedral into something like a gallery of the great Sienese artists. This is a perfect illustration of the city’s tendency to blend devotional piety and civic pride in large artistic projects.
Figure \(\PageIndex{74}\): Simone Martini, The Annunciation, 1333, tempera on panel, 72 1/2 x 82 5/8″ or 184 x 210 cm. (Uffizi, Florence)
Simone Martini
Perhaps the best known of these four altarpieces is the Annunciation by Simone Martini. Building on the legacy of Duccio, Simone was also influenced by the elongated, swaying figures and elaborate architectural forms of northern European art. On the other hand, his paintings show a bit more of the kind of careful observation of the world around him that we might associate with Giotto, the leading Florentine artist at the time. Thanks to this eclectic but refined mixing of new styles, Simone’s reputation and influence spread throughout Europe, a legacy carried on by a large workshop of assistants and students.
The Lorenzetti brothers
Two of the other three artists hired to paint altarpieces behind the Maestà were actually brothers: Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. While the Lorenzetti brothers worked in the Sienese style, they absorbed the art of Giotto more fully than Simone Martini and his followers did. Weighty, massive figures covered in heavy drapery populate their works, a sure sign of their familiarity with Florentine painting. Even more than Giotto and his school, both Ambrogio and Pietro experimented with using different kinds of perspective to give an illusion of depth in the spaces their figures occupy.
Figure \(\PageIndex{75}\): Detail, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory of Good Government, Effects of Good Government in the City and the Country, c. 1337-40, fresco, Sala della Pace (Hall of Peace) also known as the Sala dei Nove (the Hall of the Nine), 7.7 x 14.4 meters (room), Palazzo Pubblico, Siena
Good and bad government
Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s artistic innovation is best captured in one of the most groundbreaking works of the late medieval period: his wall paintings in the Palazzo Pubblico. The elaborate murals were designed to remind the Nove of the consequences of good and bad governance. The scenes are particularly known for their large, sensitively depicted landscapes and cityscapes. No other monumental celebration of everyday urban and rural life survives from the period, making these scenes a turning point in the history of art.
After the Black Death
As in Florence, perhaps half of Siena’s population died of the plague in 1348. Scholars think the Lorenzetti brothers were two of the Black Death’s victims. Since Simone Martini had died a few years earlier in Avignon, this meant all four of Siena’s greatest artists were now dead.
Art continued to lie at the center of the city’s image of itself and its religious life. For the remainder of the century, artists such as Bartolomeo Bulgarini worked in the style forged by their forbears, though with less international acclaim. As scholars have emphasized in recent decades, Sienese art was later reinvigorated during the Renaissance, incorporating an array of new artistic styles into their own strong traditions. Still, to this day the city looks back to the early fourteenth century as a golden age for Sienese art.
During this period, and for hundreds of years, Italy was not a unified country, but rather was divided into many small countries we call city-states. Florence, Siena, Milan, Venice—these were essentially independent nations with their own governments—and they were at war with each other. These city-states also had independent cultures with their own distinct styles in painting and sculpture. Siena had a unique style that emphasized decorative surfaces, sinuous lines, elongated figures and the heavy use of gold. Duccio was the founder of the Sienese style and his work was quite different from the Florentine painter Giotto. Giotto emphasized a greater naturalism—creating figures who are more monumental (large, heavy and with a greater sense of accurate proportion) and a greater illusion of three-dimensional space.
Here is a contemporaneous description of the procession that brought this painting to Siena Cathedral (or Duomo):
At this time the altarpiece for the high altar was finished and the picture which was called the “Madonna with the large eyes” or Our Lady of Grace, that now hangs over the altar of St. Boniface, was taken down. Now this Our Lady was she who had hearkened to the people of Siena when the Florentines were routed at Monte Aperto, and her place was changed because the new one was made, which is far more beautiful and devout and larger, and is painted on the back with the stories of the Old and New Testaments. And on the day that it was carried to the Duomo the shops were shut, and the bishop conducted a great and devout company of priests and friars in solemn procession, accompanied by the nine signiors, and all the officers of the commune, and all the people, and one after another the worthiest with lighted candles in their hands took places near the picture, and behind came the women and children with great devotion. And they accompanied the said picture up to the Duomo, making the procession around the Campo, as is the custom, all the bells ringing joyously, out of reverence for so noble a picture as this. And this picture Duccio di Niccolò the painter made, and it was made in the house of the Muciatti outside the gate aStalloreggi. And all that day persons, praying God and His Mother, who is our advocate, to defend us by their infinite mercy from every adversity and all evil, and keep us from the hands of traitors and of the enemies of Siena.
English translation: Charles Eliot Norton, Historical Studies of Church-Buildings in the Middle Ages: Venice, Siena, Florence (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880), 144-45; Italian text: G. Milanesi, Documenti per la storia dell’arte senese (Siena: 1854, I), 169.
Video \(\PageIndex{15}\): Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Virgin and Child with Saints Dominic and Aurea, c. 1315, tempera on wood, 42.5 x 34.5 cm (National Gallery, London)
Ambrogio Lorenzetti
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory and Effects of Good and Bad Government
Video \(\PageIndex{16}\): Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory of Good Government, Effects of Good Government in the City and the Country, and Allegory and Effects of Bad Government in the City and the Country, c. 1337-40, fresco, Sala della Pace (Hall of Peace) also known as the Sala dei Nove (the Hall of the Nine), 7.7 x 14.4m (room), Palazzo Pubblico, Siena
Video \(\PageIndex{18}\): Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, 1342, tempera on panel, 257 x 168 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
Video \(\PageIndex{19}\): Pietro Lorenzetti, Birth of the Virgin, c. 1342, tempera on panel, 6′ 1″ x 5′ 11″, for the altar of St. Savinus, Siena Cathedral (now in Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena)
Figure \(\PageIndex{82}\): Simone Martini, Saint Louis of Toulouse, c. 1317, tempera, gold, and gems (lost) on panel, 121.6 × 74.2 inches (Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples)
The youthful and determined gaze of Saint Louis of Toulouse, a famous Franciscan saint, stares out from the shimmering gold background of a ten-foot tall altarpiece by Simone Martini. The painting is the most famous work surviving from the vibrant Angevin court of Naples and is currently located in the city’s Museo di Capodimonte. This royal panel preserves a fascinating history of dynastic succession and a connected world in fourteenth-century Southern Italy.
Figure \(\PageIndex{83}\): Family Tree of Louis of ToulouseFigure \(\PageIndex{84}\): Map of Italy, 1300–1360 C.E.
A reluctant prince turned bishop
Louis was born a prince. He was the second son of Charles II of Anjou, the heir to the Kingdom of Naples. After his father became King in 1285, Louis and two of his brothers were held hostage under the Spanish King Ferdinand III of Aragon for seven years. While in captivity in Catalonia, the Angevin princes were tutored by Franciscans friars and Louis realized that it was his destiny to become a monk. This plan was derailed, however, when his older brother (Charles Martel) died unexpectedly and Louis found himself the next in line to inherit the throne of Naples (and become titular King of Jerusalem—a formal title without any real authority). Determined to live a spiritual rather than royal life, he negotiated with his father to become Bishop of Toulouse and elected to pass inheritance rights to his younger brother Robert.
The main panel of Simone Martini’s altarpiece depicts this story of succession. It shows a double coronation—two angels hold an ornate crown above Saint Louis’s head while Louis extends a nearly identical crown over the head of his brother, who kneels submissively to his right.
Figure \(\PageIndex{85}\): Simone Martini, Saint Louis of Toulouse (detail), c. 1317, tempera, gold, and gems (lost) on panel, 121.6 × 74.2 inches (Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples)
In the painting, Saint Louis wears a silvery miter (the pointed headdress of a bishop). His heavily decorated gloves, cope, and crozier further indicate his status as Bishop of Toulouse. Under his magnificent church gear, he wears a far less luxurious garment: the rough wool habit of a Franciscan monk (worn by Franciscan monks and nuns as a sign of their vow of poverty). This detail demonstrates that Louis’s early ambition to join the order was successful. The young prince professed his Franciscan vows just a few days before he was ordained as Bishop of Toulouse in 1296. Although he went to France to assume official ecclesiastical duties, he ultimately chose to step down from his position after only six months and died on his return trip to Rome to resign before the Pope. Reports that his remains could perform miracles began to circulate almost immediately after his death, and his family campaigned heavily for his sainthood. He was canonized (officially recognized as a saint) in 1317 by Pope John XXII.
Figure \(\PageIndex{86}\): St. Francis and scenes from his life, 1240s–1260s, panel (Bardi Chapel, Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence)
A Franciscan Saint
The Franciscans were a popular mendicant order following the teachings of Saint Francis, the order’s founder. Francis inspired a large number of monastic houses across Europe and many works of art were made to commemorate his faith and miracles, such as the scenes we find in the Bardi Chapel in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence. Simone Martini’s painting of Saint Louis parallels early paintings of Saint Francis, depicting him specifically as a Franciscan saint. Positioned frontally and wearing a Franciscan habit, the Angevin prince’s waist is belted with a simple chord tied in three knots to symbolize his monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
Figure \(\PageIndex{87}\): Simone Martini, predella of Saint Louis of Toulouse, c. 1317, tempera, gold, and gems (lost) on panel, 121.6 × 74.2 inches (Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples). From left to right: 1. Meeting with Pope Boniface VIII; 2. Double scene of Louis’s ordination as Bishop of Toulouse and his profession of Franciscan vows; 3. Louis serves a meal to the poor at the Franciscan convent of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Rome; 4. Louis’s funeral in Marseilles in 1297; 5. A posthumous miracle in which Louis revived a stillborn infant.
The similarities with Franciscan altarpieces do not end at Louis’s clothing. On the predella are episodes from Louis’s saintly life. Although paintings of Francis included anywhere from four to twenty apron scenes, Louis here only has five. They show (from left to right) his deal with the Pope to allow him entry into the Franciscan Order, his vow profession and ordination, an act of charity, his funeral in 1297, and a posthumous miracle in which he resurrected a stillborn infant. This small number of scenes indicates that he was probably a new saint when the panel was made. In fact, Simone Martini is often credited with inventing the iconography for the stories himself. This means the work was likely created around 1317 when Louis was canonized.
Figure \(\PageIndex{88}\): Simone Martini, detail of fleur-de-lis, Saint Louis of Toulouse, c. 1317, tempera, gold, and gems (lost) on panel, 121.6 × 74.2 inches (Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples)
Angevin Heraldry
Figure \(\PageIndex{89}\): Simone Martini, detail of fleur-de-lis on the back, Saint Louis of Toulouse, c. 1317, tempera, gold, and gems (lost) on panel, 121.6 × 74.2 inches (Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples; photo: Claire Jensen)
The exact circumstances of Simone Martini’s altarpiece creation are unknown, but it seems that it was paid for by Louis’s family. The frame, which is original to the work, serves as a monumental Angevin crest. Decorated with gilded plaster fleur-de-lis (a stylized lily composed of three petals bound together at the base) on a textured blue background, the frame perfectly reproduces the coat of arms of the French Kings who controlled Naples in the later Middle Ages. The blue and gold lily motif is found throughout the work: embroidered in crests on Louis and Robert’s clothing, delicately punched into the border of the gilded background, and even painted on the reverse side of the frame.
Figure \(\PageIndex{90}\): Simone Martini, detail of morse in wood, glass and tempera paint, Saint Louis of Toulouse, c. 1317, tempera, gold, and gems (lost) on panel, 121.6 × 74.2 inches (Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples; photo: Claire Jensen)
The morse (an ornate broach used to fasten a cope) made out of painted wood and glass on Louis’s chest is an ingenious addition by Simone Martin. It resembles actual objects but it is also seen here as a political symbol.
Figure \(\PageIndex{91}\): Left: Simone Martini, detail of morse in wood, glass and tempera paint, Saint Louis of Toulouse, c. 1317, tempera, gold, and gems (lost) on panel, 121.6 × 74.2 inches (Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples; right: Morse with Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata, mid-14th century, made in Siena, Italy, gilded copper, translucent enamel, silver, parchment, glass gems, 12.9 x 12.9 x 4 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Look closely and you’ll see the signature French lilies on the right and the cross of Jerusalem on the left—projecting Louis’s dual status as heir to the throne of Naples and titular King of Jerusalem in the later Middle Ages. The same divided crest appears on Robert’s blue robes, signaling that he inherited both titles when his brother renounced his right to rule.
Figure \(\PageIndex{92}\): The same crest worn by Saint Louis of Toulouse and Robert of Anjou. Simone Martini, detail of Saint Louis of Toulouse, c. 1317, tempera, gold, and gems (lost) on panel, 121.6 × 74.2 inches (Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples)Figure \(\PageIndex{93}\): Simone Martini, detail of Arpad family crest, Saint Louis of Toulouse, c. 1317, tempera, gold, and gems (lost) on panel, 121.6 × 74.2 inches (Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples)
The gold border of Louis’s cope curiously includes another crest not represented on Robert’s vestments: the horizontal red and gold stripes of his mother Margaret’s Arpad family of Hungary. The omission of the Hungarian crest for Robert makes sense. When the third brother inherited the Kingdom of Naples, the title King of Jerusalem, and the Angevin holdings in France in 1309, he did not gain any of his mother’s territories. The Hungarian crown passed instead to his nephew, Charles Robert, the son of the original Angevin heir and Louis and Robert’s older brother, Charles Martel.
Figure \(\PageIndex{94}\): Simone Martini, detail of Simone’s signature, Saint Louis of Toulouse, c. 1317, tempera, gold, and gems (lost) on panel, 121.6 × 74.2 inches (Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples)
Simone Martini and International Objects in Naples
Political alliances between Naples and Tuscany made it possible for one of the most famous artists from Siena to create the work. Although it was surely meant to be displayed in Naples, Simone Martini included his own origins in the composition. In the spandrels of the predella are divided letters that read, “SYMON DE SENIS ME PINXIT” (translation: Simone of Siena painted me). This sense of foreign presence was important for the Angevins because Naples was a wealthy center of global trade thanks to its Mediterranean coastal location. The royal family enhanced their capital’s cosmopolitan legacy by commissioning famous artists from elsewhere—like Simone Martini, Giotto, and Pietro Cavallini—to work for them. They also accumulated an impressive collection of objects from far-flung places, expressed by the decorative items we see in the Saint Louis painting.
Figure \(\PageIndex{95}\): Decorative items. Simone Martini, Saint Louis of Toulouse, c. 1317, tempera, gold, and gems (lost) on panel, 121.6 × 74.2 inches (Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples). The crimson velvet with gold octagons is 13th-14th century, Iranian, probably Tabriz, silk and metal thread (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Using his famous talent for capturing realistic detail, Simone Martini painted Louis’s cope as crimson velvet patterned with gold octagons from the Persian city of Tabriz. Draped over the lion-headed throne is another luxurious red cloth; one side in a red and black checked Sienese wool and the other in shiny Tartar silkimported from Mongol-held lands in Central Asia. Robert’s blue garment is also made of Tartar silk, an accurate choice given the Anjou family’s documented collection of Mongolian textiles. The floor is additionally covered by an Anatolian carpet, a knotted wool rug with geometric patterns from western Turkey. All of these international objects would have been available in the Mediterranean port city of Naples, making the painting an impressive record of Angevin wealth and mercantile connections.
Southern Italy and Robert of Anjou
In spite of its many innovations, the coronation subject is not unique. In fact, the closest art historical precedents are mosaics depicting the Norman Kings from the eleventh and twelfth centuries on the nearby island of Sicily. Perhaps the Angevins specifically chose this model to promote their power in a way that was recognizable in Southern Italy. They lost control of the island in a war known as the Sicilian Vespers in 1282 and subsequently made many failed attempts to regain it.
Figure \(\PageIndex{96}\): King William II crowned by Christ, c. 1180–90, mosaic on the north wall of sanctuary, Cathedral of Monreale, Sicily (photo: SNappa2006, CC BY 2.0)
By commissioning an altarpiece from Simone Martini that depicts a divine coronation on a gold background, the Angevin family projected a sense of historical continuity with their Norman predecessors in southern Italy. In a mosaic in the Cathedral of Monreale (Sicily), Christ is enthroned like Louis and places a crown on the head of King William II as two angels fly around him. For the Angevins, the sacred nature of their rule was even more personalized. Embodying a concept known as beata stirps (Latin for blessed lineage), God, acting through Louis, approved Robert’s rule of southern Italy. Robert reinforced his blessed lineage by counting multiple saints in his extended family—including his father’s uncle, Saint Louis IX of France, and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary on his mother’s side. When Robert died in 1343 without a male heir, he went against the tradition of only male succession and insisted that the throne be passed to his granddaughter Joanna, so as to preserve the sacred bloodline of the Angevin rulers in Naples.
Figure \(\PageIndex{97}\): Simone Martini, detail of Robert of Anjou, Saint Louis of Toulouse, c. 1317, tempera, gold, and gems (lost) on panel, 121.6 × 74.2 inches (Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples)
This depiction of Robert looks like other portraits of him, indicating that artists followed a specific prototype. We do not know whether these portraits were based on first-hand observation though. His slim face, long nose, downturned mouth, and pointed chin is repeated in nearly every royal image of Robert from the fourteenth century.
Figure \(\PageIndex{98}\): King Robert enthroned with Virtues and Vices (detail), Anjou Bible, folio 3v, made in Naples c. 1340 (KU Leuven Maurits Sabbe Library, Belgium)Figure \(\PageIndex{99}\): Gigliato of Robert the Wise, minted in Naples c. 1309–1345, billon (copper alloy containing gold and silver), 3.94 grams, 12 x 26.9 millimeters (Yale University Art Gallery)
A prominent example is found in a page from the Anjou Bible made in Naples. In the illuminated manuscript, Robert appears older, but with identical features and similarly framed in a monumental Angevin crest. He is also enthroned on the lion-headed (and clawed) throne that his brother occupies in the Simone Martini panel. The lion throne is used again in the image stamped on the gigliato (pronounced jil-yato), the official coin of the Kingdom of Naples during Robert’s rule. Maybe the King specifically repeated these elements to reinforce his legitimacy as Louis’s divinely sanctioned replacement.
Regardless of Robert’s motives, at least one thing is certain: Simone Martini’s magnificent altarpiece of Saint Louis of Toulouse projects a legacy of sacred Angevin succession, a record of international exchange, and the story of a Franciscan saint who gave up his right to rule the Kingdom of Naples.
A Capodimonte blog post “L’Italia chiamò” about the Louis of Toulouse altarpiece by Sarah Kozlowski (available in English if you scroll down).
Julian Gardner, “Saint Louis of Toulouse, Robert of Anjou and Simone Martini,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 39. Bd., H. 1 (1976), pp. 12–33.
Diana Norman, “Politics and Piety: Locating Simone Martini’s St Louis of Toulouse Altarpiece,” Art History 33, no. 4 (2010), pp. 596–619.
Diana Norman, “The Sicilian Connection: Imperial Themes in Simone Martini’s St. Louis of Toulouse Altarpiece,” Gesta 53, no. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 25–45.
Katharina Weiger, “The portraits of Robert of Anjou: self-presentation as political instrument?” Journal of Art Historiography, no. 17 (2017).
Pisa, Pistoia and Rome
1300 - 1400
Nicola Pisano, Pulpit, Pisa Baptistery, and Giovanni Pisano, Pulpit, Sant’Andrea church, Pistoia
Video \(\PageIndex{21}\): Nicola Pisano, Pulpit, Pisa Baptistery, 1260, Pisa (Italy) and Giovanni Pisano, Slaughter of the Innocents,1301, Marble, Pulpit, Sant’Andrea church, Pistoia (Italy)
Jules Lubbock - Pisa Pulpit: ‘Judge by the correct law!’ from HENI Talks on Vimeo.
It is now over seven hundred years since the Italian Gothic sculptor Giovanni Pisano set chisel to stone. Though long regarded as his masterpiece, the Pisa Pulpit fell out of favour in the 20th century.
The rise of photography had given a new generation of historians outside of Italy access to the work, but photos failed to convey the pulpit’s complexity. Basing their opinions on two-dimensional reproductions, critics thought the carvings to be distorted and the narrative scenes grossly cluttered.
Art Historian Jules Lubbock examines a plaster cast of the pulpit in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collections and argues that it was the critics who were ill-judged. As an inscription on the pulpit implores: ‘You who marvel, judge by the correct law!’
Figure \(\PageIndex{100}\): View from the cloister of Santa María of Pedralbes, founded 1326, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain (photo: julie corsi, CC BY 2.0)
In the hubbub of Barcelona, just outside the city center, the delightful late Gothic monastery (or monestir in Catalan) of Santa María of Pedralbes offers a cool, calm respite—especially in the summer. While the overall space itself is impressive, one of the most spectacular is a chapel filled with brilliantly colored frescoes that present narrative scenes from the life of Jesus and Mary, accompanied by saints and angels. The murals demonstrate Bassa’s engagement and adaptation of Tuscan artists like Giotto and Simone Martini, and so speak to the dynamic networks of cultural exchange happening throughout the Mediterranean at the time.
Why are these murals here and who paid for them?
Elisenda de Moncada i de Pinós, Queen of Aragon between 1322 and 1327, established the Franciscan nunnery for Poor Clares at Pedralbes in 1326. Both Queen Elisonda and King Jaume II were important patrons of art and architecture. After King Jaume II’s death, Elisonda dressed in the Clarissan habit but took no official vows, and lived near Pedralbes in a new palace. Like other queens on the Iberian Peninsula, Elisonda had vast funds at her disposal (the result of matrimonial law). Her mother came from the wealthy Pinos family, while her father was an important administrator of the area who had worked under Jaume II. When she died, she was buried at Pedralbes, and her tomb is adorned with an effigy sculpture of her. She left her remaining matrimonial wealth to the nuns.
Figure \(\PageIndex{101}\): Ferrer Bassa, frescoes of the Chapel of Saint Michael, Santa María of Pedralbes, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, 1343/1346–1348 (public domain)
At one point, the monastery of Pedralbes had many murals animating its interior after its construction. Unfortunately, many of them have suffered the ravages of time and are now faded, fragmentary, or destroyed. The chapel of Saint Michael is an exception. Its murals remain largely intact, testifying to the former glory of the other murals in the monastery’s space. They were created by the Catalan artist, Ferrer Bassa. He was hired in 1343 by Francesca de Saportella i de Pinos, the abbess of the monastery, who also happened to be the queen’s niece, to produce the chapel’s murals. At some point he stopped working, but picked up the work again in March 1346. [1]
The contracts detail what Bassa was supposed to include in the murals. One explicitly details the chapel’s iconography, as well as materials.
It is agreed between the lady abbess of Pedralbes and Ferrer Bassa that the said Ferrer shall paint in fine colours, with oil, the Chapel of St. Michael, which belongs to the lady abbess, and here portray the Seven Joys of Mary, Mother of Jesus, amply and with all the figures that are necessary. He will also portray Seven Stories of the Passion of Jesus Christ. . . . The first, when Jesus was arrested; the second, when he was judged before Pilate, veiled, scourged and taunted; the third, when he was nailed to the cross; the fourth, when he died on the cross, with the two thieves, Mary and the other Marys, John, and the centurion with the other Jews; the fifth, when he was brought down from the cross; the sixth, when he was laid in the Monument; the seventh, the lamentation with Mary and John.
St. Michael, St. John the Baptist, St. James, St. Francis, St. Mary(sic) Clare, St. Eulalia, St. Catherine and the deacon St. Antoninus of Pamiers must also appear. Also a Majesty with two angels over the door, inside the chapel. And all the images must have diadems and embellishments in fine gold.
And beneath the aforesaid stories and images, there will be curtains by way of drapery on the walls. [2]
The contract indicates that the abbess of Pedralbes played an important role in determining the materials Bassa should use and what should be depicted on the chapel’s walls. Saportella’s desire for Bassa to “paint in fine colours, with oil” indicates that she wanted a high-quality mural painting. In reality, however, the mural is a mixture of techniques (oil, fresco secco, and buon fresco).
The life of Mary and Jesus
Figure \(\PageIndex{102}\): Ferrer Bassa, frescoes of the Chapel of Saint Michael, Santa María of Pedralbes, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, 1343/1346–1348 (public domain)
But do the stipulations of the contract match what we see in the chapel? Indeed, Bassa did paint the scenes requested from the life of Mary and Jesus.
Figure \(\PageIndex{103}\): Ferrer Bassa, Pietà, fresco, Chapel of Saint Michael, Santa María of Pedralbes, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, 1343/1346–1348
In each scene, Bassa varied the poses of his figures and their expressions to add drama and emotion. In the Pietà, at the base of the cross, Mary stoops to cradle Jesus’ face, touching her cheek to his. Mary Magdalen kisses Christ’s bloodied hand. Saint John raises his right hand to his teary face as he looks down at Christ. Others in the scene wring their hands, turn away in sadness, or tear at their hair. All the figures are positioned around the diagonal, prone body of the deceased Jesus. Bassa modeled all the figures with light and shadow to create convincing three-dimensional bodies, and they appear to have weight and stand or sit firmly on the ground. Bassa also attempted to show convincing human anatomy (look, for example, at Christ’s chest and abdomen), adding to his figures’ naturalism and increasing the emotional resonances of the unfolding narratives.
The figures appear crowded, and the compressed composition adds to the drama by focusing on the essential figures and elements. There is no deep recession into space. Instead, Bassa placed all the figures in the foreground, and the bodies overlap to suggest spatial depth. There are few extraneous motifs. The landscape is indicated by scattered plants in the immediate foreground, a rocky outcropping on which the drama unfolds, and a darkened background. It appears more like a stage setting than Golgotha (the hill atop which Jesus was crucified).
Figure \(\PageIndex{104}\): Ferrer Bassa, Saint Francis and Saint Clare, fresco, Chapel of Saint Michael, Santa María of Pedralbes, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, 1343/1346–1348 (public domain)
Besides the narrative scenes revolving around Jesus and Mary, we see a variety of standing saints and angels. To the right of the Triumph of the Virgin, Saint Francis and Saint Clare stand in their coarse-hair habits, which Franciscan monks and nuns wore as a sign of their vow of poverty. Their presence in the chapel makes sense, because after all this was a space for Franciscan nuns. Saint Francis founded the religious order in 1209, and Clare was the first female Franciscan nun. Franciscans arrived early on the Iberian Peninsula, and Franciscanism spread rapidly throughout the peninsula in the thirteenth century.
Figure \(\PageIndex{105}\): Ferrer Bassa, saints, fresco, Chapel of Saint Michael, Santa María of Pedralbes, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, 1343/1346–1348 (public domain)Figure \(\PageIndex{106}\): Ferrer Bassa, St. Barbara, fresco, Chapel of Saint Michael, Santa María of Pedralbes, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, 1343/1346–1348 (public domain)
Many other saints stand with their respective attributes on the walls, such as Saint Barbara who holds a tower. She was an early Christian martyr who lived as a chaste virgin (which would have appealed to nuns who had taken similar vows). Barbara was locked in a tower by her father to protect her, but he ultimately killed her for practicing Christianity. The inclusion of saints like Barbara also undoubtedly reflects the increasing popularity of stories about the lives and miracles of saints, most famously collected in the Golden Legend (compiled around 1260 by Jacobus de Voragine).
Bassa’s figures resonate with a heightened emotionality, a choice that was likely due to the influence of Franciscanism. The Franciscans, more so than other religious orders, wanted people to identify with Jesus’ and Mary’s humanity by encouraging Christian devotees to appeal to their emotions. The Franciscan Pseudo-Bonaventure’s Meditations on the Life of Christ encapsulates this new approach to religious experiences, asking readers to visualize Christ’s life as if they were there, and to engage in a more physical type of prayer involving kneeling, praying, crying, reading, looking, and touching.
A Catalan artist in a global era
Bassa’s frescoes share a number of similarities with late Gothic Tuscan artists in Italy. Giotto’s earlier fourteenth-century Scrovegni chapel presents a similar narrative cycle to Bassa’s chapel, albeit on a larger scale for the wealthy patron who commissioned it. We see scenes from the life of the Virgin and Jesus, divided into narrative vignettes. Giotto’s figures are also modeled with light and shadow, and their expressions and poses add emotion and drama to his scenes as well. Bassa’s perspectival systems and figures like his kneeling angels look similar to paintings by Sienese painters, such as Simone Martini, Duccio di Buoninsegna, and Pietro Lorenzetti. Simone’s kneeling angels in his Maestà look similar to Bassa’s, and Lorenzetti’s Crucifixion in S. Francesco in Siena also provides a parallel to Bassa’s Chapel of St. Michael.
Figure \(\PageIndex{107}\): Left: Simone Martini, Maestà, fresco, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, Italy, 1315–1321; right: Ferrer Bassa, Maestà, fresco, Chapel of Saint Michael, Santa María of Pedralbes, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, 1343/134–1348
But what do these similarities mean? What do they tell us?
The Iberian Peninsula was a dynamic place in the fourteenth century, with artists from what is today France and Italy arriving in the area, as well as Catalan artists traveling elsewhere. The Kingdom of Aragon (especially in the areas of Barcelona and Valencia), had early connections with Italy, which might explain the desire for Italianate influences at Pedralbes. Still, the circumstances under which Bassa would have encountered Giotto’s Arena Chapel or Sienese paintings remains unclear.
Figure \(\PageIndex{108}\): Left: Giotto, Pietà, fresco, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy, c. 1305; Right: Ferrer Bassa, Pietà, fresco, Chapel of Saint Michael, Santa María of Pedralbes, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, 1343/1346–1348
Some scholars feel that he must have traveled to the Italian Peninsula to see them first hand. Even if this were the case, we still have more questions: did he simply recall these artworks from memory? Did he carry a sketchbook? Simone Martini also worked at the papal court at Avignon (in southern France), so perhaps Bassa viewed the Sienese artist’s frescoes there. Other documentary evidence indicates that King Peter IV of Aragon (known as “the Ceremonious”) commissioned Bassa to create an altarpiece for the Ciutat of Mallorca in the mid-fourteenth century. [3] The Kingdom of Mallorca had connections to Italy, and this is especially clear in some of the art that remains from this time like altarpieces as well as illuminated manuscripts. We know of several Italian artists who worked on the island, including the Sienese stained-glass maker Matteo di Giovanni. Perhaps Bassa studied artworks found on the island? No matter the circumstances, Bassa’s adaptation and selective borrowing from Tuscan artists more generally suggests an inventive artist who combined different ideas and practices that he came into contact with during his life.
Ferrer Bassa
Bassa is known to have illuminated manuscripts, and painted altarpieces and frescoes. He worked for kings, queens, and nobles. In Barcelona, he had a thriving workshop. He likely died after contracting the bubonic plague (also known as the Black Death) that broke out in 1348, and which killed about 40–60% of the population in Europe.
Figure \(\PageIndex{109}\): Circle of Ferrer Bassa, Virgin and Child, with the Crucifixion and the Annunciation, and the Coronation of the Virgin and the Presentation in the Temple, c. 1340–48, tempera and gold leaf on panel, 127.6 x 184 x 4 cm (The Walters Art Museum)
While the murals of the Chapel of St. Michael have documentation, most of Bassa’s works do not. Some of the works currently attributed to Ferrer Bassa could possibly be those of his son, Arnau Bassa, because the two collaborated. The legacy of Ferrer Bassa’s Italianate adaptations lived on among other artists associated with his workshop, including his son. Even though most of the murals at Pedralbes have not survived well, we are fortunate to have his murals in the monastery because they powerfully demonstrate the ongoing, dynamic processes of cultural and visual exchange occurring on the Iberian Peninsula.
Notes:
Recently, some scholars have suggested that the murals might not belong to Ferrer Bassa, or the very least the authorship of the murals might be researched further.
Peter IV of Aragon had a number of different titles, including Count of Barcelona (where he was known as Peter III) and King of Valencia (where he was known as Peter II).
Rosa Alcoy, “Clarisse, monarchia e mondo francescano nella Capella di San Michele nel Monastero de Pedralbes ed oltre,” Ikon 3 (2010), pp. 81–94
Rosa Alcoy, “Gothic painting in the Catalan-speaking lands between the 14th and 15th centuries,” Catalan Historical Review 8 (2015), pp. 29–44
Arcadi Espada, Un Experto Descarta Que El Mural Gótico De Pedralbes Sea De Ferrer Bassa (Spain, 1996)
Sagué i Guarro Mariàngela, Ferrer Bassa : Les Pintures De La Capella De Sant Miquel Al Monestir De Pedralbes (Barcelona: Montserrat Mateu Taller Editorial, 1993)
Núria Sabaté, Monasterio De Santa María De Pedralbes: Pinturas Murales (Barcelona: Laia Libros, 2003)
Tanya Adele Szrajber, “The Murals of Ferrer Bassa in the Chapel of St. Miquel at Pedralbes” (PhD Dissertation, 1984)
