medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From: John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>
> On Tuesday, August 16, 2005, at 12:54 pm, chris crockett wrote:
>> what does "all'inizio" mean?
> > what i think it does?
> Yes. "at the beginning".
mmmm... my Eyetalean is better than i thought.
>Now then, how long in years is the "beginning" of a 100-year period? Twenty
years? Thirty??
a Ticklish Technical issue in Art Hystorical circles.
depends upon the language, perhaps.
in Engerlisch "at the beginning of the 12th c." would mean, well, pretty early
on, certainly within the first decade or, at most, two.
not seen all that much, i believe, being oversuffiently vague --the French are
particularly notorious for their wonderful, weasly Vagueness, while the more
Germanic the literature is, generally speaking the more precision is to be
found (not to equate or confuse precision with accuracy).
"early 12th c." might stretch that "beginning" concept a bit, to the first
third or so, but no more.
there are certain Watershed Moments in any Stylistic Sequence which might
supply a terminus or two, but in most the distinction between 1090 and 1110
would be a difficult one to justify, so a somewhat vaguer "c. 1100" might be
more appropriate than an "at the beginning of the 12th c.", though "c. 1100"
wouldn't stretch much beyond 1110, i should think.
my guess is that basically what the guy means by "all'inizio" is that he
hasn't really a clue (it's just a damned website after all) and that there's
nothing surviving in the documentary/epigraphical/whatever sources which
allows him to narrow the termini down any better than that.
he thinks its 12th c. --as do i-- because it displays some rather advanced
features.
but, to my Francophile eye, those features are *quite* advanced, well beyond
the "inizio" of the century.
which is why i say that *if* it were a French building, a "c. 1150" guess
would be morebetter.
"c. 1150" meaning, in my as yet unpublished book, "1145-1155" or, perhaps, at
a stretch, "1140-1160" --"the middle decades of the 12th c." if i were feeling
particulary literary and were being paid by the word.
unless those latter were, somehow, rather firm termini, in which case i might
take a leaf out of the helpful convention used by English charter editors and
say "1145x1155" --the "x" meaning "between these two *fixed* termini".
anyway, i don't see how the portals on that particular facade (i don't have
the url anymore) could be "all'inizio" of the 12th c., with those acanthus
forms and, above all, the clearly uncomfortable (if not outright Lame)
adaptation of a "capital frieze", which latter, as far as i know, would have
been a transalpine importation.
i don't know of any true narrative capital friezes in Italy (they are not
really all that common in France) --though, as i have repeatedly suggested
without false modesty, my knowledge of All Things Eyetalean is somewhat less
than spotty.
which is why the interesting links which you supply to monuments la bas are
always of interest, John.
a real service to the List, almost as useful as the Phylistine Sts
themselves.
c
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