medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From: "John B. Dillon" <[log in to unmask]>
> Don't be too sure. I suspect they'll be back.
yeah, those buggers are nothing, if not persistent.
Hatred, when combined with Self Righteousness, generates a lot of sustaining
energy, and these folks are definitely "full of it".
>>>That fresco, BTW, is readily visible in S. Petronio's Bolognini Chapel.
>>> I spotted its "Machomet" legend and detail the very first time I visited
the basilica.
> >
>> that may have been the artist's intention.
>> or the intention of his patrons.
>> sometimes happens, in middlevil art.
>> or, even in "Renaissance" art.
> My thought, too. But to whom?
at this date, and in that particular context, the patron, probably.
be my guess.
>And on what occasions? Chapels that are open today were frequently closed in
the later MA and the "Renaissance".
yes, we're probably not dealing here with the sort of "art" directed to the
General Public, like portal sculpture or larger mosaic/fresco programs.
> This one, endowed not too long after construction had begun on the
huge patronal monument of which it is a part, is outfitted not only with
vivid scenes of the afterlife but also with images of Petronius engaging
in his lifetime in essentially civic-patronal acts. One might suppose
both an ongoing audience of members of the Bolognini family (whose very
surname suggests an intimate association with their city) and an at
least occasional audience of Bologna's civic leadership. There's a
substantial literature in which one could look for an answer, but I
haven't the time. Does anyone on this list know?
certainly not i.
which won't stop me for a moment from pontificating with a few
off-the-top-of-my-head near-profundities (i call them "AlGores" --"Close, but
no Cigar").
every place is _sui generis_, of course, but some places are more _sui
generis_ than others.
one of the things i have noticed with interest over the last few decades of
perusing the art hysterical literature is that it seems to be providing us
with more and more *specific* information about why, how and under what
circumstances, precisely, many "works of art" were created.
of course, this has always been one of the primary aims of the discipline, but
sometimes i think that some kind of "tipping point" has been reached --that
there have been enough Giants banging on enough typewriters over enough
decades that us Dwarves can actually begin to peek above the clouds... (i
won't push this metaphor further unless there is a general demand.)
the *best* art history has always striven to do this and, in the hands of the
best art historians, has suceeded to a remarkable degree.
but --what i'm getting at-- now we have reached a place where enough
preliminary spadework has been done, enough original source material has been,
if not published, at least catalogued and summarised, that the present
generation of scholars doesn't have to re-invent the wheel, at least not from
scratch.
listmember Jim Bugslag's remarkable scholarly work on the iconography of the
choir windows in Chartres cathedral comes immediately to mind:
in the late 1920s the remarkable, erudite, local scholar Canon Yves Delaporte
wrote his "definitive" monograph on the cathedral windows, published legible,
detailed photographs of most all of them, and proposed (with evidence)
iconographic interpretations for a very, very substantial percentage of the
thousands of scenes in those windows.
While Delaporte's work remains the foundation and touchstone for all
subsequent work on the windows, obviously it has been subjected to much
expansion and revision by scholars during the intervening decades, beginning
with Delaporte himself, Louis Grodecki, and a baker's half dozen others
including, most recently, those associated with the vast Corpus Vitrearum
project and "independent" scholars like Jim.
at the same time, the relative and absolute chronology of the cathedral
building itself has been the subject of lively (and, unfortunately, sometimes
vitriolic) debate, most notably in the '50s and early '60s, reaching something
of a peak in the late '70s - early '80s.
while there is not universal agreement on all points [duh] --and not by a long
chalk, on some-- at least the basic outlines have been laid out and the
alternative interpretations of the facts as we can now reconstuct them are
pretty clear.
Jim's work, as i dimly understand it, has taken off from these shoulders --and
others, including the vast literature on family genealogies amassed by local
French scholars over a period of several centuries-- and seems to be on the
verge of being able to document a rather remarkable new general thesis
concerning the overall iconographic "program" of the upper windows of the
choir (as well as other windows and sculpture, here and there around the
place).
while his "thesis" is indeed "new" and "remarkable" it is, rather like the
General Theory of Relativity, "obvious", once someone actually gets round to
pointing it out :
the Cathedral --including its windows-- was the work of the Canons ;
the Canons were, significantly, the sons of the most prominent families of the
region (and beyond), and this in a period when the "extended family" was a
[perhaps *the*] supremely important element in the structure of society ;
the family coats of arms of known Canons being idtentifiable in the windows,
we may assume that it was, therefore, they --those specific Canons-- who
determined the subject matter of the windows, especially the upper windows of
the nave and choir, where their stalls were, and where they could sit on
important ocassions and gaze up upon their own work ;
not surprising then that the iconography of the windows reflect, not just the
kind of "eternal" themes which we (I) tend to see in most all medieval
iconography, but, in addition, elements which are very, very specific,
*temporally specific* --*directly* related to the membership of the Chapter at
the moment the windows were going in.
as i say, this is really a "DUH" "discovery", once it is actually thought of
and fleshed out with some good, ole fashioned Scholarship.
if i may drift back to the point at hand, i wouldn't be at all surprised to
find (in the literature devoted to the subject) that the choice of scenes and
the specific iconography of the frescos in the Bolognini Chapel was *directly*
related to the tastes and preferences of the very, very particular folks who
commissioned them.
> > http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-24-2002-20970.asp
> >
> >
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/06/24/wfresc24.xml
>
> The key word here was _combining_. These accounts are devoid of visuals.
yes, and, thanks to my dilligent efforts, we no longer have the pretty good
.jpg from the AoG site.
best from here,
christopher
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