At 11.16 19/10/97, you wrote:
>What period are the paintings from that are attributed to him [St. Luke]?
Although the first mentions of the legend of St. Luke as a painter pertain
to the earlier 8th century (a passage of Andrew of Crete), the first
documents on images attributed to the Evangelist and actually venerated by
people are from the 11th century and concern sacred icons venerated in
Constantinople (the Virgin Hodigitria) and Rome (the Lateran acheiropiitos,
the Virgin of San Sisto). Such icons long constituted the model to imitate
for a great number of locally rooted cultic phaenomena. St. Luke's icons
continued to multiplicate in the 12th century, while in the late 13th and
14th centuries new cults consisting in images attributed to the Evangelist
appeared also outside Rome, in communal towns as Spoleto (the Sacra Icone in
the cathedral, 1295), Florence (Our Lady of Impruneta, before 1340), Bologna
(Our Lady of the Guardia, late 14th century), Venice (the Nicopeia in San
Marco), Padua (Our Lady of Constantinople in Santa Giustina, 15th century),
Loreto (the image of the Virgin in the Santa Casa), Fermo (Cathedral).
Copies of the Roman originals were spread also outside Italy: in the late
14th and 15th centuries icons venerated as Luke's works are witnessed in
Prague, Czestochowa, Freising, and some German monasteries. The greatest
multiplication of St. Luke's icons occurred, however, in post-Tridentine
times, when the referrence to the legend constituted a 'topos' in
constructing the hagiographic background of miraculous images venerated in
Catholic shrines.
Michele Bacci
Scuola Normale Superiore
Pisa (Italy)
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