medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From: "John B. Dillon" <[log in to unmask]>
> Christopher Crockett wrote:
> > at this date, and in that particular context, [visible to ] the patron,
probably.
> Well, to members of his family at least. The frescoes were commissioned in
Bartolomeo Bolognini's will of 1408.
fair enough.
i live and work in the 11th-12th c., so the very idea of having documents
which talk with any specificity at all about commissioning art works --or even
just talk about them in any but the most general fashion-- is a pretty alien
concept.
> <huge snip, having nothing to do with the intrinsic merits of the
material being snipped>
yeahrite.
> The choice of the Paradise, Inferno, and Journey of the Magi frescoes
was dictated by the will. Who decided that the bearded guy with the
Arab headgear should be labeled "Machomet" and who determined the
particular choice of scenes from Petronius' life, which are both
ecclesiastical and civic in reference, is neither clear to my unlearned
self nor evident from the following Grove outtake:
> http://www.artnet.com/library/03/0324/T032494.asp
my very, very limited experience with these kinds of commissions is really of
no use, but the ones i've seen usually go into a reasonable amount of detail
about the general form of the work, the materials to be used, the dates things
are supposed to be finished by and the amounts which are to be paid when
various parts of the work is done.
i have seen *some* more or less specific "iconographic" detail spelled out,
but it was also common to say something like "X is to carve a statue of Our
Lady for the parish church of Y, which is to look just like the one which is
on the high altar of the Cathedral of Chartres..."
a bit like land deeds which might lay out the property lines with "from the
great oak tree near the bend in the stream to the middle of the public way,
close upon the interesection with the high road..."
*every*body knew where all that stuff was, and what the statue of the Virgin
on the cathedral's high alter looked like, so why waste time, ink and
parchment going into tedious detail?
i'm sure however that there *were* contracts/commissions which did indeed go
into such detail --like i said, some things were more _sui generis_ than
others.
> A guess would be the Chapter in consultation with the Bolognini family.
mmmmm.... perhaps, but the role of the Chapter in the details of the creation
of the furnishings of a *private* family chapel (if that is what it was) would
be quite limited, i should think --to "censorship", if necessary, perhaps.
except, of course for the member(s) of the [extended] family who were then in
the chapter.
and there surely would have been quite a few of those --all the noble folks in
a given city/region were related, after all. or, if some were not, then that
kinship group would constitute an alternative "faction" within the Chapter.
a cathedral Chapter was, among other things, an institution created by and for
the prominent families of the region/city.
generating genealogical family trees from the charter evidence (virtually the
only source of knowledge available) i can just *barely* make out some of the
family connections within the Chapter of Chartres in the 11-th-12th cc. ; but
doing that for a document-rich environment like and early 15th c. Italian city
would be a piece of cake, i should think.
or, at least it *could* be done --which i'm not really sure is the case at all
with Chartres in my period. (curiously enough, doing it for the 13th c. and
even later, is actually *harder* than doing it for the 11th-12th c., because a
change in the juridical form of the charters meant that the name-rich witness
lists of the early charters were no longer used when courts and notaries came
into prominence in their own right.)
> Or the Bolognini family in consultation with the Chapter. Depends (in
part, at least) on who actually controlled the funds.
well, i thought you were saying that those were part of the will commissioning
the work.
for sure, the Piper would play the tune which the guy with money wanted.
>Who, apart from the above (and from the cleaning staff), might have been
expected to see these frescoes is what interests me more.
again, trying the *very* risky business of extrapolating from my earlier
Chartrain experience to this later Italian one, my guess would be that "family
chapels" were used, well, by the family.
not just for such things as weddings, christenings (maybe), and funerals but
for the important function of commemorative masses/"anniversaries", especially
if the chapel happened to be endowed with its own chaplains.
where present, these chaplains would, of course, be subject to the Chapter's
authority, but they would probably have their own seperate endowment and not
be supported by a prebend (or part of a prebend) of the cathedral proper.
so, i would think, the primary "audience" for the frescos would have been
members of the family --and, if they were visible at all (through whatever
grill might be present) to the hoi and the poloi at large, they might have
served the purpose of "planting the [family] flag" and demonstrating its
"conspicuous consumption", enhancing the family's prestige among one and all.
> Here's a scene from the Journey of the Magi (expandable jpeg):
> http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/g/giovanni/modena/returnma.html
i really *like* that technology for displaying images.
unusual iconography.
the Magi, traveling by *boat*??
From: Marjorie Greene <[log in to unmask]>
> How about the artist himself?
how about her?
>How much say did he have in the very specific details of the art he was
creating?
viday soupra, re _sui generis_.
>This is very much a rhetorical question as there is no possible definitive
response.
mmmmm... at this late period, in Italy (and, probably, in Germany at the same
time), the considerable documents generated (and surviving) certainly allow us
--if not in each and every individual case, but in general-- to answer this
question.
sometimes, the contract might be very, very specific.
sometimes, considerably less so.
obviously, the closer you get down to the "stylistic" level --rather than just
the "iconographic" one-- the more the artist's "personality" might come into
play.
>But I do wish art historians would speculate more on this point.
oh, there's plenty of "speculation" --much of it worthless, at least for the
earlier period i live in.
>
Marcia Kupfer's book (Romanesque Wall Painting in Central France: The Politics
of Narrative; Yale Publications in the History of Art)
say, i've got a copy of that.
my period, my region.
must read it sometime.
>is the sort of work I'd like to see more of. She links the subjects with the
hot-button theological topics of the day, one of which was simony (linked with
Judas) and nicolaitism, both of which were huge problems at the time of the
painting process.
yes, this is the sort of "time specific" linkages which i alluded to earlier.
like, how about toying with the idea that the multiplicity of apocalyptic
scenes we find on "romanesque" portal tympan all over france between 1125 and
1155 might be due to a quite specific wave of Millenialism ? (Landes?)
we [I] tend to look at these monuments as a mass, rather than trying to see
them one at a time (_sui generis_, again, my new phrase for the day).
of course, one can carry this idea a bit too far --in the late 19th century
one writer speculated that the seated archivolt figures on the portal of the
royal collegial abbey of St. Mary's of Etampes were members of the important
council which was held there in 1130 (to accept Innocent II as Pope, for
France).
well, the date is just a *smidgin* early (by about 15 years) and we now "know"
that they are the court of Heaven, playing their viols and holding their jugs
of whatever.
but the basic idea --"time specific" iconography-- is not all that weird.
one just has to be careful in the application of it, is all.
>I'm ghastly tired of descriptions of column types and the measurements of the
circumference of same, blah, blah...
well, the tedious descriptive/archeological stuff has its place, too --as i
said earlier, the debate which raged for several decades about the relative
and absolute chronology of the building of Chartres is an important stepping
stone for Jim's work on the windows.
after all, Montfaucon thought that the column figures on the portals of St.
Denis and St. Germain-des-Prez were Merovingian kings and queens,
*contemporary* with the carving itself.
now we "know" that they are mid-12th c.
*how* do we know that??
by a bunch of tedious archeological work, tedious comparasons with other
(perhaps datable) monuments, etc.
and --for me the capstone of the methodology-- the marvelous analytical tool
of Stylistic Analysis, which, properly applied, provides us with as sure a
knowledge of the relative (and absolute) chronology of these monuments as any
tedious archeological feuilletonism.
and, it's a hellofa lot more fun, too.
best from here,
christopher
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