Dr. Kim H. Veltman
Narrative, Perspective and the Orders of the Church
2.Cycles
10.Conclusions
The development of Renaissance perspective has been explained in various ways. Some have seen it as a rebirth of methods developed by the ancient Greeks and Romans1. Those who believe that it originated in the fifteenth century have explored a number of reasons: that it was linked with a shift from a finite to an infinite world view. Panofsky, for instance, held that a finite world view implied a commitment to heterogeneous and anisotropic space, whereas a belief in infinity brought with it a commitment to homogeneous and isotropic space2. Some have searched for the origins of perspective in late mediaeval theories of optics3; others have claimed that it was linked with a rediscovery of Ptolemy's Geography4; that it was connected with practical and theoretical problems of architecture5; that it was linked with astronomy through projection problems of planispheres, astrolabes and armillary spheres6; or that it was a product of new social conditions introduced by the advent of mass production methods and the decline of specialized skills7. All these explanations are useful but share a common assumption: that a theory of perspective preceded the practice of perspective. Unfortunately the evidence points to the contrary: namely that the practice of perspective preceded its theoretical formulation.
It is generally accepted that Ambrogio Lorenzetti produced a single vanishing point in his Annunciation (Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale) of 1344 (although the lines are not absolutely accurate); that Brunelleschi produced a geometrical demonstration of this principle in his panel of the baptistery of Florence (c.1415-1425), although it was not until 1435 that Alberti made a first attempt to codify these principles in his De pictura. Some forty five years later, when Piero della Francesca made a first catalogue of basic examples in his De prospectiva pingendi, all the instances he recorded were images that had been explored in painting practice from the time of Giotto onwards. In short, the perspective treatises of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were not explorations of new spatial horizons. They were summaries of problems that had been solved in painting practice in the period from 1300 onwards. What sparked these practical efforts which formed the basis of Renaissance theory? Some scholars have suggested in passing that the answer lies in narrative. This essay explores that suggestion. It takes as a starting point Kaftal's erudite repertoire of saints and cycles, explores correlations between numbers of cycles and those cycles which are proto-perspectival or perspectival in the strict sense of the term. It is claimed that those cycles which are spatial are linked in a not casual way with particular orders of the church, notably the Carmelites, Franciscans and Dominicans and to a lesser extent the Benedictines, Augustinians, Vallombrosans and the Servites. It goes on to claim that the spatial innovations introduced by these orders had profound implications both for the nature of picture making and the viewing of pictures; that their explorations of space were linked with new treatments of time which were in turn linked with a new understanding of both allegory and metaphor; that these developments in sacred art need to be seen in relation to parallel developments in secular art in order to understand the context that set Western art on its unique path.
Since this is a preliminary report, the reader's attention is drawn to several problems of method. First, while an effort has been made to examine a number of major perspectival cycles at first hand, in many cases claims are made on the basis of a limited repertoire of photographs provided in Kaftal's study8. Hence, while the statistics in the appendices indicate clear trends, the numbers of cycles should not be taken as final. Second, parallels between cycles of saints and particular orders of the church, are problematic. True, there are documented instances where an order played a decisive role in the process. The Dominicans at Santa Maria Novella refused to have a cycle of Saint Francis in their church . Hence, Francesco Sassetti was forced to go the Vallombrosan church of Santa Trinità to have a cycle of his namesake painted by Ghirlandaio. Even so, the role of patrons and artists cannot be overlooked.
Ironically, these cycles, with their new experiments in space, which began in the context of poor friars, depended on the support of powerful and wealthy families: not infrequently the new rich. This is reflected in the names of the chapels where the cycles occur: e.g. the Scrovegni and Ovetari chapels in Padua. In Florence, Santa Croce alone has chapels of the Bardi, Baroncelli, Castellani, Medici, Peruzzi, Pulci, and Rinuccini families. Elsewhere in the same city there are other chapels: the Brancacci in Santa Maria del Carmine; Sassetti in Santa Trinità; Gondi, Strozzi and Tornabuoni in Santa Maria Novella etc. This principle is equally evident in Milan, Rome, Siena and other major Italian centres. The rich patrons are often portrayed in these cycles: sometimes their role goes beyond this9. In addition to such rich individuals, there were also wealthy guilds. A significant subset of saints with numerous cycles were patron saints of guilds or professions (cf. appendix 10). Alternatively it helped to be a patron saint of one's town: among saints who lived after the year 1000, not connected with specific orders, five of the eleven saints depicted in cycles are in this class (cf. appendix 12). Being a patron saint helped acquire patronage.
The artists who produced the cycles were sometimes directly linked with a specific order: Fra Angelico was a Dominican; Fra Filippo Lippi was a Carmelite. So too with lay artists. Filippo Lippi's son Filippino tended to work for the Dominicans: at Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome and Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Pinturicchio tended to work for the Franciscans: e.g. his cycle with the Life of Saint Bernardine in Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome. When he was working on the Piccolomini chapel in Siena (1501-1507) he lived as a guest of the Franciscan monks in San Francesco. Even so he produced a cycle in the Augustinian church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, and produced a cycle with the Life of Christ in the Capella Baglioni in Santa Maria Maggiore in Spello. Benozzo Gozzoli was even more complex. He began as an assistant of the Dominican, Fra Angelico; painted the Life of Saint Francis in Montefalco (1452) and subsequently used a similar style in his cycle with 17 scenes from the Life of St. Augustine (c.1462) in San Gimignano. The same Gozzoli produced the famous cycle of frescoes from the Old Testament in the Camposanto at Pisa (1468-1484). With such artists who moved between Dominican, Franciscan and Augustinian orders, attempts to identify characteristics of Franciscan art, or of another order must remain tentative. Nonetheless, we shall suggest below that there exist significant contrasts between the major orders.
There are many facets of the problem that cannot be entered into within the context of an essay. Renaissance cycles of saints were an outgrowth of mediaeval cycles10 of the Life of Christ, particularly in the great churches of Rome: Old Saint Peter's, San Giovanni in Laterano, San Paolo fuori le mure, and Santa Maria Maggiore. In the later Middle Ages the Life of Christ inspired examples from Monreale to Wienhausen; from the church of San Francesco in Assisi to the Arena chapel in Padua. This continued in the Renaissance: from regional masterpieces such as the Collegiata of San Gimignano to the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Even so traditional symbolic parallels between Old and New Testaments limited the number of scenes depicted, and while particular episodes from the Life of Christ became stock themes for perspective: notably the Annunciation and the Last Supper, the Renaissance brought a shift in attention from the Life of Christ to lives of the saints. Nor are these series of images limited to frescoes. There were related traditions in manuscript illustration11. A detailed study would need to explore relations between cycles of the Life of Christ and the lives of the saints in various media.
George Kaftal's monumental Iconography of the Saints is divided into four volumes dealing with Central and Southern Schools, Tuscany, North West Italy and North East Italy. In the case of each saint he identifies the images connected with that saint, whether there be cycles associated with the saint, how many scenes are involved, as well as bibliographical material. There are some 635 cycles connected with 182 individual saints (see appendix 1). Of the 101 saints with one cycle there are only two with perspectival cycles, namely, Saints Mamas and Sabinus. Almost all the perspectival cycles occur in the case of saints with more than one cycle. As the number of cycles increases, the proportion of perspectival cycles increases also.
It is useful to identify different categories of saints and periods when they lived (see appendix 2-3). Viewed chronologically, the largest group (c.61 %) of saints with fresco cycles lived between the 2nd and the 9th centuries. This group inspires some 65 proto-perspectival and 33 perspectival cycles. If one includes late mediaeval saints who lived from 10th to the 12th centuries (another 9% on their own) then mediaeval saints comprise about 70% of the total. If one follows the school that sees the 13th to the 15th centuries as the latter Middle Ages then the amount would rise to 89 %. By contrast, 1st century saints comprise about 11%, statistics which rather cast into doubt general claims that the Renaissance turned its back on the Middle Ages and focussed attention exclusively on Antiquity. Indeed, as will claimed below (in section seven), one of the great contributions of the Renaissance lay precisely in discovering that the Mediaeval period was an integral part of an historical continuity.
In terms of categories the largest group of 58 saints involves members of orders, and hermits (c. 30%) and of these about two-thirds were individuals who lived between the 13th and 15th centuries. Of this group, 12 saints inspired proto-perspectival cycles (cf. appendix 4-5); while 9 of these saints inspired perspectival cycles (cf. appendix 6-7) and account for approximately one quarter of all perspectival cycles. But as will be shown presently the indirect influence of the orders was much greater. They awakened a new interest in both Christ's contemporaries (Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalen, John the Baptist, the Apostles), and in mediaeval saints. In this way the orders contributed to almost all the perspectival cycles of the time.
This essay is chiefly concerned with drawing attention to connections between the orders and perspective, identifying some differences in treatment in the individual orders and noting the principal themes of the perspectival cycles. It cannot address in detail a deeper question: why narrative and perspective became connected as they did. Nonetheless, by way of introduction, some preliminary consideration of this problem is necessary. The question of causality is very difficult: did they develop perspective because they were narrative minded or were they more narrative minded because they discovered perspective? Narrative and perspective were so interdependent that both were true, just as was probably the case in Antiquity where a parallel debate has raged between Gombrich and Hanfmann12.
Storytelling involves episodes, which need to be recognized as separate events. The most obvious solution is to put each scene into a separate frame but, as we know from comic books, even in the case of simple stories this generates a much greater number of scenes than could conveniently be shown where cycles of saints generally occur: i.e. doors, altars, walls or ceilings of churches. Another solution is to use spatial elements to isolate individual episodes. This proved to be one of the chief incentives for spatial elements in Italian art from the time of Cavallini onwards: they served to isolate one scene from the next. In the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries these isolated spatial elements were integrated to form increasingly larger homogeneous spaces. In the fourteenth century the use of a single landscape to coordinate various isolated scenes was explored in a fresco of the Life and Legends of the Anchorites, which formed part of the great cycle in the Camposanto at Pisa; was pursued in the Stories from the Thebaid (Uffizi) and Paolo Uccello's Scenes of Hermetic Life (now Florence, Accademia), and subsequently in the North by Memling, who applied it to a townscape such that various buildings within a town served to identify different episodes of his Life of Christ and Life of the Virgin. This use of a town- or land-scape was adapted by Botticelli and his colleagues on the walls of the Sistine chapel. It led to exploration of how one might employ a pure landscape in which to place different episodes of a story, as in Bellini's Ecstasy of Saint Francis (New York, Metropolitan); an approach which Cranach pursued in his Garden of Paradise (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), when he depicted seven different scenes from the book of Genesis in a single wooded garden. These new aspects of perspective in a landscape continued to challenge artists such as Poussin and Claude until the latter seventeenth century, and were taken up anew by Romantic artists such as Caspar David Friedrich in the nineteenth century.
For the period that concerns us, however, the connections between narrative and perspective mainly involved mastery of a surprisingly small number of architectural forms: particularly the room, apse, vault, and colonnaded archway. No one has yet studied the history of these individual spatial elements in practice and theory mainly because systematic access to photographs of the cycles has been lacking. This is an area where developments in computerized images offer enormous new possibilities. Once the major cycles exist in digitized form we shall be able to trace the development of these individual spatial elements and relate them to particular stories, authors, artists, regions and periods, which will revolutionize our whole approach to both iconography and the elusive problems of style. In the past there have been learned articles in obscure journals which have identified how an isolated motif in one painting recurs elsewhere. In the future these recurrences will become part of a master databank by means of which we can trace the entire history of that motif and relate it to other contexts.
Pragmatic concerns of storytelling may account for the use of spatial elements such as the apse or vault, but these concerns do not explain why the spatial elements improved in their mathematical precision. One could argue for instance that by the time of Giotto most of the major spatial elements were already in place. What led to their being improved, refined and eventually, their being demonstrated in geometrical terms? Or to put it differently: if concerns of narrative can explain how one gets to Giotto, what were the incentives that led artists to move from the proto-perspectival space of Giotto to the perspectival regularities of Raphael's Stanze? Four reasons will be suggested.
One incentive was philosophical and had to do with basic goals of the orders. Eastern monasticism had emphasized an hermetic tradition that tried to ignore all aspects of the physical world and emphasized other-worldliness. By contrast, Western monasticism had a fundamentally different attitude to the physical world. The world was created by God and therefore good. One might flee from the corruption of urban life but this did not mean ignoring nature. The early orders in the west were often content to work, pray and contemplate in nature. After the year 1000 the new orders increasingly wanted to understand nature. There was a conviction that the eyes offered a means of seeing God's creation and that optics, linked as it was to geometry, was the most important of all the sciences. What Auerbach has termed creatural realism gained further significance for Saint Francis who went into the forest to contemplate. His sermons sometimes included an audience of birds. Those who wished to record his spirituality were challenged to include this new rapport with nature. Records of the visual world thus took on a new meaning.
A second incentive was intellectual and arose through Franciscan connections with universities such as Oxford. Here Roger Bacon explored theological dimensions of optics and geometry. Bacon's student, John Peckham wrote a standard textbook on optics (c.1270-1280), which served as the starting point for commentaries by Blasius of Parma in the late 14th century, who was concerned not only with what the eye sees, but also with how one records what is seen. Scholars have also explored connections between Franciscan nominalism and the rise of science13. Meanwhile, the Dominicans were more systematic and encyclopaedic in this approach, from the time of Vincent of Beauvais' enormous Fourfold Mirror (which included a Mirror of Nature) to the great Summas of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas at Paris. Nature was now both a defence against pagan ideas and a witness of God's greatness. New methods of rendering nature in a spatially convincing way, especially if consonant with the laws of optics, became important. Proto-perspectival and perspectival painting was now potentially a record of God's creation.
Saint Francis also provided a third, more fundamental incentive. In addition to accepting the reality of the created world, his vision insisted that one confront the reality of human suffering. In terms of everyday life, Saint Francis helped lepers and others who were outcasts because of their chronic disease and sickness. In terms of art this implied an explosion in the repertoire of images, for art was no longer limited to the depiction of divine beings (be they pagan gods or a Christian God), or humans in idealized contexts. The first consequences of this new approach are evidenced in depictions of the Life of Christ. The Crucifixion becomes a central theme: carved sculptures of crucifixes which are then painted make them particularly lifelike and focus specifically on the wounds caused by the nails and spear, often complete with vivid renderings of the blood. The Flagellation, the Mocking of Christ and other episodes in his suffering also become important themes. This approach soon spreads to treatment of lives of the saints. Saint Stephen is shown just as he is being stoned to death. Saint Peter Martyr is shown as the sword cuts into his skull. If we see the saints in the final moments of their own suffering we also see them as they are helping others in their suffering: feeding and clothing the poor, tending the sick, burying the dead. As a result the seven acts of charity gradually emerge as an independent topic and as this happens the outcasts of society, the mentally ill, the deformed, the poor, the lame, the diseased, the sick and the dying all become part of the artistic repertoire. So too do the spatial contexts in which they live. Whence there is now a challenge to go beyond the ideal to include everyday life: to represent hospitals, houses of the poor, shacks, indeed the whole range of possible habitations. Simple schemas for buildings are no longer sufficient, and perspective offers a solution.
Fourth there were also practical considerations which almost certainly played a role in the early period. Faced as they were with problems of legitimation, the new orders would welcome methods which could convey realistically their particular history. Perspectival painting offered something more: a means of integrating their own history within the larger history of the Church. This made it attractive both to the new orders of the Church and the new monied orders of society, who often paid for the cycles, and whose own problems of legitimation appeared to be eased if their portraits could be integrated into these stories of the orders, the lives of saints and even the life of Christ himself. This also helps to explain why so many of the cycles included saints from what would in other contexts be termed the Dark Ages. Mediaeval saints established an historical continuity with the origins of the Church at the time of Christ. Cycles using the spatial elements of perspectival painting promised to achieve this more beautifully and efficiently.
The details of this enterprise were not as obvious as one might have expected. If one looks more closely at the narrative functions of these spatial elements, one finds that they were often complex. In the Scrovegni chapel Giotto used a given spatial form such as an apse in two different scenes in order to relate them implicitly. Duccio in the Maestà developed this idea to link a series of scenes. A particular spatial element thus offered clues to the sequence of a narrative. Once these clues were in place one no longer had to rely on a strictly linear sequence. Two separate scenes could also be joined implicitly by a common vanishing point, even if the actual point were invisible. Giotto heralded this approach in his Annunciation in the Scrovegni. Masaccio used it in the Brancacci chapel and it was taken to its logical conclusions by Masolino in San Clemente and Foppa in Sant'Eustorgio. Alternatively an implicit vanishing point of a building or other spatial element served to focus attention on another part of the painting in the manner of a subtle repoussoir. Sometimes perspective could be used deliberately to separate two related, yet distinct scenes as we find in Uccello's Profanation of the Host (Urbino). Hence the spatial features which served on the one hand to visualize a given scene in the narrative sequence ironically could also subvert the linearity of that same narrative sequence. Indeed if we look at the history of these cycles as a whole, two traditions emerge: one whereby perspective inspires ever more coherent linear stories such as the Life of Saint Benedict at Monte Oliveto Maggiore with 35 sequential scenes; and a second tradition whereby perspective leads to oppositions between key moments in stories as in Raphael's Stanze.
A simple incentive for exploring the alternatives of this second tradition was provided by the buildings in which these cycles were painted. In the great narrative cycles of the early Christian church such as Old Saint Peter's and San Paolo fuori le mure, where the entire walls of the nave were available, a linear sequence of images was perfectly practical. This continued to be the case at Monreale and San Gimignano. But these were exceptions to a trend which relegated story telling to a chapel owned or subsidized by a local family. Since the chapel typically opened out of the main part of the church there were usually only three walls available, of which one was normally interrupted by an altar, frequently a window, and quite often some irregular curves due to vaults. Hence, when artists were faced with the challenge of squeezing the life of a saint into these irregular spaces, perspectival effects offered a means of creating a more subtle set of correlations between scenes. This question of context also helps to explain various instances of inverted perspective, which look wrong when viewed frontally, but function convincingly when viewed laterally as would have been the case with a renaissance individual kneeling in front of the altar.
Curiously enough most art books reproduce only individual scenes from a cycle and give no clue how the scenes relate to one another from the standpoint of a viewer in front of or in the chapel. Hence the very contexts which could help to explain why the use of perspective evolved within these narrative cycles in chapels has never been studied. Digitized images of the cycles if used in conjunction with developments in virtual reality promise many new solutions for these problems. Indeed without them a detailed analysis of the complex interplays between written stories and depicted stories is not likely to occur. For our purposes it must suffice that we explore some general lines of development in the context of the Carmelites, Franciscans, Dominicans and other orders, before suggesting how these links between narrative and perspective altered treatments of place as well as time and transformed concepts of allegory and metaphor.
From the outset the Carmelites played an important role in the development of perspectival cycles. Although the order claimed links with the Old Testament prophet Eliah, the first official approval of the original nucleus of hermits was given by the Patriarch of Jerusalem around 1210. Papal recognition followed in 1286, 1298, 1317 and again in 1326. A year after this last papal recognition the Carmelite monks of Siena commissioned Ambrogio Lorenzetti to produce his Carmine altar which he finished by 1329. This included a Madonna and Child with Angels, St. Nicholas and the prophet Elijah surrounded by Saints John the Baptist, Catherine, Thomas, James, Thaddaeus, Bartholemew, Andrew, and James Major as well as predellas showing the Dream of Sobach, Elijah's Well, Handing over the Rule, Approval of the Rule and Honorius IV approves the new Habit. For our purposes these predellas are of interest because they constitute one of the most daring proto-perspectival experiments of the time. A century later, the friars at the Carmelite church in Pisa commissioned Masaccio to paint the Pisa Polyptych which, in addition to a central panel with a Madonna and Child (now London, National Gallery) surrounded by saints, contained predellas with stories from the Lives of Saints Julian and Nicholas. These were again important early explorations of perspectival space.
Meanwhile, beginning in 1424 through 1427 or 1428, Masaccio and Masolino worked together in the Brancacci Chapel of the Carmelite church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence to produce the first fresco cycle using linear perspective in its strict sense. This cycle has various scenes including The Raising of the Son of Theophilus and Saint Peter Enthroned. While ostensibly showing a miracle performed by Peter after his release from prison, Masaccio's scene shows a contemporary church and individuals, including Masolino, Alberti and Brunelleschi, the knight Tommaso Soderini, Francesco Guicciardini's father, Colluccio Salutati, Gian Galeazzo Visconti and the poet Piero Pulci. There are also ecclesiastical figures: Carmelite friars from the church where the fresco is painted. Among these is said to be Cardinal Branda Castiglione14, whose home church was San Clemente in Rome and who was responsible for bringing Masaccio and Masolino there to produce a second perspective cycle depicting the Life of Saint Catherine (1428). This same cardinal Branda Castiglione subsequently brought Masolino with him to the town connected with his name, Castiglione d'Olona (c.1435), where Masolino produced a third cycle showing episodes in the Lives of Saints John the Baptist and Lawrence.
Also connected with the Brancacci chapel was the Carmelite monk, Filippo Lippi15, who produced his Confirmation of the Carmelite Order (1432) in the same church. Filippo Lippi was subsequently responsible for the dramatic perspectival Stories of Saints Stephen and John the Baptist in the Cathedral at Prato (1452-1465) and his Stories of the Virgin in the Cathedral at Spoleto (1467-1469). His son, Filippino Lippi16, restored and completed the cycle begun by Masaccio, Masolino and his father in the Brancacci chapel (1481-1482), before producing another of the great perspectival cycles concerning the Triumph of Saint Thomas in the Dominican church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome (1488-1493). The friars at the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence also commissioned a predella cycle of the Carmelite friar, Andrew Corsini (d.1373), who had been archbishop of Fiesole. Hence there were clear connections between the Carmelite order and the use of linear perspective in narrative cycles involving contemporaries of Christ (John the Baptist), apostles (Peter), early martyrs (Lawrence, Stephen) and recent saints in the order (Corsini). To understand how this nexus evolved it is necessary to consider the Franciscan and Dominican traditions.
The Franciscan tradition17 is of interest for several reasons. The Franciscan tertiary order has among its members Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Giotto, Michelangelo, Christopher Columbus, and Galileo. More cycles were produced of the Life of Saint Francis than of any other saint (34 as compared with 24 in the case of both Peter and Anthony Abbot, the other two most popular saints in the cycles). These cycles began in the last years of his life with a painting from the Roman school in San Gregorio del Sacro Speco in Subiaco (1223-1228). At least twelve of the thirty four cycles employed proto-perspectival space. Notable examples include the Umbrian Giottesque altar in San Francesco in Assisi (1275-1300); a cycle by the Master of the Gondi Chapel in San Francesco in Pistoia (c.1300-1350) and a version by a member of the Veronese school in San Fermo Maggiore in Verona (c.1350). At least three cycles have carefully developed perspectival space: a predella cycle in Pesaro by a member of the school of Francesco del Cossa; the cycle in the church of San Francesco in Montefalco (1452) by Benozzo Gozzoli and the series produced by Ghirlandaio in the Sassetti chapel of Santa Trinità (1480). In addition to these cycles, there are at least 66 other images recorded by Kaftal. Striking are the number of scenes recorded in these images and cycles: 41 scenes from his life and 14 posthumous scenes in the case of Tuscany alone. (By contrast, St. Peter has 25 scenes from life and 3 posthumous scenes in Tuscany). More striking is that Saint Francis has more allegorical scenes than any other saint: 7 in Central and Southern Italy; 12 in Tuscany; 1 in North West and 4 in North East Italy (see below section 8).
The Franciscan movement brought a proliferation both of Lives of Saint Francis, and cycles of lives of other members of the order. Together these account for 73 cycles (i.e c.11.5% of all cycles produced). It is useful to view a chronological list of these individuals with their accompanying number of cycles (appendix 11a). Some of the highlights of these cycles deserve mention. They include Simone Martini's predellas of the Life of Louis of Anjou (1317) now in Naples; Ambrogio Lorenzetti's frescoes in the monastery of San Francesco in Siena concerning the Martyrdom of Seven Franciscans (1336-1337); Andrea da Bologna's cycle of the Life of Saint Catherine of Alexandria (not to be confused with the Dominican Saint Catherine of Siena, although the two were often deliberately positioned opposite one another on altarpieces,) in the lower church of San Francesco in Assisi (1368); Donatello's Life of Saint Anthony in San Antonio, Padua (1447-1449); a cycle by a member of the Bolognese school with the Life of Odoric of Pordenone in San Francesco in Udine (1434); Bonfigli's Life of Louis d'Anjou in Perugia (1454-1477); Lorentino d'Angelo's cycle of the Life of Anthony of Padua in San Francesco in Arezzo (1482) and Pinturicchio's18 Life of Saint Bernardine in the Franciscan convent of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome (1485-1490).
Impressive as these 73 cycles of Saint Francis and sixteen of his followers were, a more profound contribution of the Franciscan order to artistic developments lay elsewhere. The great cycles of the early church had focussed on parallels between Old and New Testament, a heritage that continued in the mosaics of Monreale and the stained glass windows of Chartres, and the Sainte Chapelle. The choice of scenes was thus limited to those which involved ready parallels. The Franciscans continued this tradition and also introduced a new set of parallels between the life of Christ and the life of Saint Francis, episodes which were clearly documented and firmly dated. There are three examples of this within the complex of San Francesco at Assisi. In the nave of the lower church there are five scenes from the Life of Christ opposite five scenes from the Life of Saint Francis attributed to Giunta Pisano (c.1236) or the Master of Saint Francis. On the ceiling of the transept there are key scenes from the Life of Saint Francis such as his receiving the stigmata amidst a series of over twenty scenes from the Life of Christ painted by Lorenzetti and his followers. In the upper church at Assisi there are 16 scenes from the Old Testament on the upper part of the right wall of the nave balanced by 16 scenes from the New Testament showing the Life of Christ on the upper part of the left wall. Below these scenes from the Old and New Testaments are 28 frescoes from the Life of Saint Francis mainly by Giotto, thus making very explicit parallels between Christ and Saint Francis. The Franciscans at Assisi thus made these comparisons part of a much larger iconographic programme.
Particular emphasis was given to the story of the cross. On the rear, outer wall of the church at Assisi there is a fresco showing Francis following Christ, both carrying a cross. This emphasis on the cross explains the name of the Franciscan church in Florence, Santa Croce, and the cycle depicting the Legend of the True Cross by A. Gaddi in the Alberti-Alemanni chapel of that church (c.1380), which inspired Cenno a Francesco Cenni's version in San Francesco in Volterra (1410); Piero della Francesca's version in San Francesco in Arezzo and eight less well known cycles of the same theme. Although technically steeped in legend, the story of the cross created a sense of historical continuity by linking Old Testament events at the time of Adam; a meeting of Solomon with the Queen of Sheba (c.1000 B.C.); a dream of Constantine (c.318 A.D.) and a battle of Heraclius with the Persian King Cosroe (613 A.D.). Sacred events of the Old Testament with a traditionally symbolic value were now linked with chronologically documented secular events.
If sacred and secular realities now went hand in hand, so too did mystical and realistic experiences. The stigmata of St. Francis were portrayed with the same vividness as his encounters with birds and other events in his daily life. In the Fioretti there is an extraordinary way in which mystical concepts are considered in visual terms. Silvester speaks with God as one friend speaks with another. Brother Bernard, with his subtely of intellect flies to the light of divine Wisdom like an eagle, that is, as John the Evangelist19. Representing apocalyptic visions of John the Evangelist becomes another dimension of the artistic programme at Assisi.
The identification of the life of Christ with the life of Saint Francis extended beyond these two individuals. Hence, just as Christ had worked closely with his disciples, Saint Francis worked very closely with his companions. Sometimes this analogy between Christ's disciples and Francis' companions is obvious. In the church of San Francesco at Montefalco, Benozzo Gozzoli, in addition to his cycle of twelve scenes from the Life of Saint Francis, in the arc of the intrados paints tondos of Saint Francis and his first twelve companions: Egidio, Illuminato, Angelo, Ginepro, Giovanni, Sabatino, Bernardino, Agostino, Silvestro, Filippo, Barbaro and Leone. Is it a coincidence, moreover, that the various cycles of Franciscans involve Francis and twelve male friars? (See appendix 11a). With respect to other Franciscan saints, the church of San Francesco in Assisi contains chapels and cycles devoted to Anthony of Padua and Louis of Anjou. In addition, there are depictions of Saints Roch, Rufino and Vittorino, Clare, Elisabeth of Hungary, Rose of Viterbo and Catherine of Siena. There is also a chapel and cycle devoted to saint Anthony Abbot, often considered the father of western monasticism.
If there was a development of cycles concerning the companions of Francis, then there should be a parallel development of interest in Christ's contemporaries, disciples and followers. This is exactly what happened. The lower church at Assisi contains a chapel dedicated to John the Baptist with stories from the Life of John the Baptist, a chapel of Mary Magdalen with stories from her life, while the upper church contains stories from the Life of the Virgin Mary. The lives of these three contemporaries of Christ inspire some of the most famous proto-perspectival and perspectival cycles of Renaissance art. For instance, in Santa Croce, Giotto paints the Lives of the two Saint Johns (the Baptist and the Evangelist) in the Peruzzi chapel (c.1317-1327); Taddeo Gaddi paints stories from the Life of the Virgin Mary (1332-1338) in the Baroncelli chapel and a generation later Giovanni da Milano paints Stories of Mary and Mary Magdalen (1365) in the Rinuccini chapel in the sacristy of the same church. Masolino paints The Life of Saint John in Castiglione d'Olona (1435). Donatello uses four scenes from The Life of St. John the Baptist in the old sacristy of San Lorenzo. The Carmelite monk, Filippo Lippi, paints a Life of John the Baptist in the cathedral at Prato (1452-1465) and a Life of the Virgin in the cathedral of Spoleto (1466-1469). In the Tornabuoni chapel of the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, Domenico Ghirlandaio makes the combined stories from the Life of John the Baptist and the Life of the Virgin the subject of his most famous cycle (1486-1490). A generation later in the Strozzi chapel of the same church Filippino Lippi adds two other scenes from the Life of Saint John, including the Resurrection of Drusiana (1504). Episodes from the lives of these saints also occur in other contexts. Already with Ambrogio Lorenzetti, The Birth of the Virgin (1342) had become an important theme of proto-perspectival space. This was also true for the Annunciation from the time of Giotto onwards, and by the fifteenth century this theme inspired some of the most memorable perspectival spaces, with painters such as Domenico Veneziano, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Crivelli, Foppa, and Leonardo. The Dormition of the Virgin and Coronation of the Virgin were two other episodes that emerged as independent themes, frequently with a careful use of perspectival space.
A similar pattern is evident in the treatment of Christ's disciples. The upper church of San Francesco includes a series of scenes from the Life of Saint Peter. As we have seen this was the theme of the first perspectival fresco cycle by Masaccio and his colleagues in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine (c.1425-1427) and indeed inspires a total of 24 cycles, second only to St. Francis himself. In the lower church of Assisi there are paintings of the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as well as the apostles, Andrew, James and Paul. In the Oratorio dei Pellegrini there is a cycle devoted to James the More. In all the theme of the apostles inspired 100 cycles, including the famous cycle of Saints Peter, Paul, James and John by Mantegna in the Ovetari chapel of the Eremitari church in Padua (1449-1452).
The Franciscan order emphasized the virtue of charity. Accordingly we find chapels in the lower church of Assisi devoted to two saints who epitomize the concept of giving: Nicholas of Bari and Martin. The lives of these saints inspire a further 36 cycles including 9 proto-perspectival examples with artists such as Ambrogio Lorenzetti (c.1332) and at least one perspectival series by Massacio in the Pisa Polyptych (c.1426). Giving and sacrifice are closely related. Hence we also find in the lower church of Assisi chapels devoted to two of the proto-martyrs of the early church: Lawrence and Stephen. These in turn inspire a further 29 cycles, with 11 proto-perspectival and at least three perspectival cases, including the Life of St. Lawrence by Fra Angelico in the chapel of Nicholas V in the Vatican (1445-1449) and the Life of Saint Stephen by Filippo Lippi in the cathedral at Prato (1452-1465). The Martyrdom of St.Lawrence is also the theme of one of Donatello's most daring sculptural spatial experiments in the pulpit of San Lorenzo in Florence. Also connected with the theme of sacrifice are Saint Sebastian (a knight) and Catherine of Alexandria (a virgin), two other martyrs to whom chapels and cycles are dedicated in the lower church of San Francesco at Assisi. These saints in turn inspire a total of 29 cycles including 12 proto-perspectival examples and Masolino's famous perspectival Life of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in San Clemente in Rome (c.1428).
In Assisi we also find depicted other saints for whom there are no chapels or cycles (on the premises) including Saint Blaise, (a martyr); St. George, (a knight), as well as Agatha, Agnes, Cecilia, Lucy and Ursula (virgins). These inspire a total of 41 cycles elsewhere, including 8 proto-perspectival and 2 perspectival cycles. At Assisi there are also depictions of the four doctors or fathers of the western church (Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory the Great and Jerome), who inspire a total of 23 cycles elsewhere of which 4 are proto-perspectival and no less than 13 are perspectival.
In rare cases important saints are not represented in Assisi but occur instead in the Franciscan church of Santa Croce in Florence. Examples are Saint Helen, connected with the legend of the true cross; Saint Silvester, as well as Saint Benedict, founder of the Benedictines, and Saint John Gualbert, founder of the Vallombrosan order. Saint Christopher is another exception. Cycles of his life are found in the Augustinian church of the Eremitani and the Dominican church of San Domenico in Arezzo.
What may appear as a variant on name dropping has a distinct purpose. It establishes conclusively that the Franciscans at Assisi and Santa Croce did much more than propagate interest in Franciscan saints (appendix 11a). They dealt with almost every saint outside the orders about whom cycles would be made: contemporaries of Christ, apostles, popes, bishops, virgins and knights (cf. appendix 9). There are six exceptions: Erasmus, Mamas, Quiricus and Julitta, Sabinus and Zenobius. Taken together these inspire only 2% of the known cycles, a statistic which becomes more dramatic if we consider its corollary: about 80% of all the cycles dealt with Franciscans or saints associated with the this order; about 12% involved members of three other orders (Dominicans, Benedictines and Augustinians); approximately 3% were associated with the founder of the Antonine order, and a further 3% with smaller orders such as the Carmelites, Vallombrosans and the Servites. Hence about 98 % of all cycles of saints were connected directly or indirectly with the orders of the church.
The use of perspective by the Order of Preachers20 is no less striking. It was in the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence that Masaccio produced what is generally acknowledged to be the first fresco in perspective, the Trinity (c.1425), even before he produced his cycle of the Life of St. Peter for the Carmelites. In the cloisters of the same church Uccello produced his cycle showing scenes of The Flood from the Old Testament. In the Tornabuoni chapel of this church Domenico Ghirlandaio21 (1449-1494), also painted his perspectival cycle of the Lives of the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist. In the adjacent Strozzi chapel, Filippino Lippi painted his scenes from the Lives of John the Baptist and Philip, the Apostle.
A few hundred yards away in San Marco, the Dominican Fra Angelico helped to create two specifically Dominican approaches to art: one meditative and mystical22; the other which could be called historical and textual. The first of these he explored in the 44 cells on the second floor of the convent where he depicted the Life of Christ. In the Franciscan cycle at Assisi the various scenes of Christ's life were represented in chronological order and the frescoes functioned as a pictorial version of a book. By contrast, in San Marco the numerical order of the rooms seems to make nonsense of the narrative sequence, as is evidenced by the scenes in the first five cells: Noli me tangere, Entombment, Annunciation, Crucifixion, and Nativity. The reason is simple. They are not intended to be read in sequence. Each scene is meant to be an individual meditation. In Assisi the Life of Christ was parallelled with a Life of Saint Francis. In San Marco almost every scene from the Life of Christ has one or more Dominican friars. In some cases saints from other orders are included. For instance, in the Coronation of the Virgin, Saint Francis is represented. In ordinary perspectival paintings human figures often become miniature spots in a geometrical framework, which explains why perspectival effects were so often relegated to a secondary position in the predella panels of altars. In Assisi, Giotto tackled this problem by carefully adjusting the size of figures in scenes which relied heavily on objects from the man made environment for their spatial effects or by placing the figures in a carefully controlled landscapes. In San Marco, Fra Angelico keeps evidence of man made buildings to a minimum, and instead uses spatial representations of bare rock landscapes in which to place his figures. As a result perspective here focusses our attention on divine and human figures who dominate the scenes. Fra Angelico's later cycle in the chapel of Nicholas V in Rome (1445-1449) makes much greater use of man made buildings but even in these he skillfully keeps the figures dominant and minimizes geometrical effects of perspective.
In addition to the cells at San Marco designed primarily for individual contemplation, Fra Angelico produced a number of other frescoes and altars intended to be viewed in public. This second group continues to evidence his contemplative, mystical inclinations, but also displays an interest in chronology and history that is absent in the cells. In the capitular room on the ground floor of San Marco, for instance he painted a large fresco of a Crucifixion with Attendant Saints. The saints to the left of Christ are those who were actually present (i.e. the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalen, Martha, John the Baptist and Mark) plus early martyrs (Saints Cosmas and Damian and Lawrence and Stephen). The saints to the right of Christ include founders of major orders: Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Francis, Benedict, Bernard, and John Gualbert as well as Dominicans (Dominic, Peter Martyr, and Thomas Aquinas). The semicircular border depicts 10 prophets and sibyls each of which has a scroll with a Latin quote. The lower border contains 17 portraits of all Dominicans who had been popes, cardinals, bishops, saints and masters of theology up to that time. Hence instead of simply depicting an event in the year 33 A.D., Fra Angelico relates it to 10 persons who predicted it from c.1000 B.C. onwards, 5 individuals who witnessed it, 4 persons who became martyrs as a result in the first three centuries after it, plus 27 members of orders who link this event with the present. A single fresco thus becomes a collage of individuals who put a particular event into the context of an historical continuity that spans nearly 2,500 years (c.1000 B.C. to 1440 A.D.).
Popular accounts frequently cite Gregory the Great as saying that pictures serve as books to the illiterate23. In the Franciscan order, Giotto's paintings in the upper church at Assisi continue this tradition insomuch that the images focus on clear episodes in order to convey some meaning on their own. At the same time they are based explicitly on the Greater Legend of Saint Bonaventure, and each of the frescoes has beneath it a Latin caption. In the Dominican order, Fra Angelico takes this approach considerably further. His images are typically linked with a Latin quote, even in cases where one would have expected an image to be self explanatory. The pelican feeding its young with its own blood was one of the most common emblems for Christ's sacrifice on the cross. In the case of the Crucifixion in the capitular hall at San Marco, Fra Angelico depicts this emblem directly above Christ and beneath it he adds the caption: "I am made similar to the pelican of solitude", (Similis factum sum pelecano solitudinis). On Christ's cross he writes the phrase: Jesus Christ King of the Jews in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. In the Annunziata silver chest with its Life of Christ, each scene is provided with a quote from both the Old and New Testament. Each of the frescoes in the cells has a Latin quote. Fra Angelico's assistant Benozzo Gozzoli adopts the same method: both the cycles of Saint Francis in Montefalco and Saint Augustine in San Gimignano have a Latin description for each scene. (Interestingly enough postcards and art books typically omit these captions or have such poor reproductions that they are illegible anyway). Hence Fra Angelico and his followers assume literacy in their viewers, for without reading Latin one cannot understand the range of their allusions. This is one reason why the images can be termed textual.
This emphasis on texts manifests itself in other ways. Often his saints are holding a book. Sometimes the book is opened at a specific text which can be read. This is also evident in other painters as in Traini's Triumph of Thomas Aquinas (Pisa, Santa Caterina) which shows the saint with his text, flanked by Aristotle and Plato holding their books. We are able to read the titles and sometimes a passage from these books. (In other orders this is frequently not the case. When Botticelli paints his Saint Augustine in Ognissanti, we see a book but on closer scrutiny we find that the text is merely a set of scribbles). The Dominican interest in texts that can be read is reflected also in the choice of a scene. In the Naming of Saint John the Baptist in San Marco we are shown precisely that moment where his father, Zachary, who is dumb, is writing his son's name. In the Lives Of Saint Peter and Mark Fra Angelico focusses specifically on Mark's recording Peter's sermons, once again emphasizing the written record. Occasionally this textual concern is also linked with an interest in providing historical context. In the Chapel of Nicholas V in Rome there is a scene showing Saint Lawrence before Valerianus. Above the emperor's head is a Latin inscription identifying who he is. In the space beneath his feet is written: A.D. CCLIII to inform the viewer that the depicted event occured in 253 A.D. This emphasis on written documents and historical context in connection with perspective may be said to be another aspect of the Dominican approach.
Yet another innovation in the Dominican tradition apparently undermines this concern by representing persons at the time as if they were actually there at an historical event. The presence of Dominican and other saints at the Crucifixion in the capitular hall could again be cited. And there are more striking examples. From the time of Assisi onwards the Last Supper was a regular episode in cycles of the Life of Christ. Artists such as Lorenzetti also made it an independent theme in panel painting. One of Giotto's students, Taddeo Gaddi, transformed this theme when he produced a life size fresco of the Last Supper which covered the entire end wall of the refectory of the Franciscan convent linked with Santa Croce in Florence. Hence each time the monks sat down for a meal they were reminded of the last time that Christ dined. This idea became fashionable in Florence: Castagno painted a version in the Benedictine convent of Sant'Apollonia (c.1445-1450). Ghirlandaio painted one version for the Vallombrosan convent of Badia Passignano (1476, connected with the Benedictines); another for the Umiliati friars in Ognissanti, (1480, also connected with the Benedictines); a third at the Villa Demidoff in San Donato near Florence (1480-1481 destroyed 1530) and a fourth fresco of the Last Supper in the small refectory of the Dominican convent of San Marco (c.1480-1485). (Of these only the Dominican version is accompanied by a Latin text). Perugino painted another version in the convent of Saint Onofrio of the Franciscans said to be of Foligno in Florence (1490) and Andrea del Sarto a further version for the Vallombrosan monks at San Salvi (1519) in the same city. Leonardo produced the most famous version of this theme in the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan (1495-1497). Vasari tells us that Leonardo used a portrait of the prior as the basis for his Judas. This approach was taken much further a generation later (c.1536) when the monks of San Marco (Florence) commissioned Giovanni Antonio Sogliani to paint a full size fresco for the end wall of their large refectory with Providence, showing angels miraculously bringing bread to Saint Dominic and his companions, who are sitting around a table and number twelve just as the apostles in the Last Supper. Saint Dominic and his fellow friars at table are wearing their Dominican robes. Hence, when the friars sat down to dinner, they were not only reminded that Christ had dined before them. They saw a picture showing themselves re-enacting Christ's meal. This could well seem like blasphemy, but it was obviously not seen as such by the Dominican friars. And ironically this approach was taken up a few years later in a very different context when Luther's friend, Cranach, painted a Last Supper with direct portraits of Luther, Melanchthon and other protestant reformers. Involved was a new approach to allegory to which we shall return below in section nine.
If we look at Dominican cycles as a whole, we find that saints for whom cycles were made was one quarter that of the Franciscans (5 as opposed to 20), yet involved twice as many perspectival cycles (see appendix 11a-b). In smaller orders the founder was practically the only person represented (cf appendix 11e). Among the Franciscan cycles, nearly half dealt specifically with Francis. This was not the case with the Dominicans where three of the five individuals represented (namely Peter Martyr, Vincent Ferrer, and Catherine of Siena) had more cycles than the founder of the order.
As with the Franciscans, the Dominicans had some fresco cycles in chapels commissioned by different patrons. Fra Angelico's two most famous series were fresco cycles in San Marco (Florence) and in the chapel of Pope Nicholas V in Rome. Foppa's Life of St Peter Martyr was in the Portinari chapel of Sant'Eustorgio in Milan. Filippo Lippi's Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas was in the Caraffa chapel of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. Nonetheless, there were differences between the two orders in terms of media used. While the Franciscans began with predella cycles, there was a trend towards fresco cycles. By contrast, the Dominicans continued to favour altars with predella cycles using perspective. Besides Fra Angelico's altars now in Florence (San Marco), Paris and Perugia, there were: Antonio Vivarini's Life of Peter Martyr (Berlin,Dahlem, c.1450-1460) and the predellas with the Life of Saint Vincent Ferrer by Giovanni Bellini (Venice, SS. Giovanni and Paolo); another series of the same saint by Francesco Cossa and Ercole de'Roberti in the Vatican c.1475-1477) and a Life of Saint Catherine in Santa Maria di Castello (Genoa, c.1480). A series of four Dominican saints on panels24 was commissioned for the Dominican church of San Domenico in Modena (c.1450-1475). These included Sermons of Saint Dominic (formerly Rome, Galleria Lazzaroni) attributed to Agnolo degli Erri; a Life of Peter Martyr (now in Parma), usually attributed to Simone Lamberti plus a Life of Thomas Aquinas (now New York, Metropolitan) and a Life of Saint Vincent Ferrer (now Vienna, Kunsthistorisches, Museum) by Bartolomeo degli Erri. Only the Dominicans appear to have planned such coordinated lives of their principal saints.
In addition to the Carmelites, Franciscans and Dominicans, two other major orders require mention: the Benedictines and Augustinians. The Benedictines were similar to the Franciscans insomuch that almost half the cycles were devoted to their founder, Benedict. Ten other saints were treated of which six had one cycle, three had two cycles and one had three cycles (see appendix 11c). The Augustinian pattern was different again. Three saints inspired only one cycle each (appendix 11d), while almost equal attention was given to Nicholas of Tolentino (6 cycles) and Augustine (7 cycles). Even so almost all the major perspectival cycles concerned Augustine and occured in churches named after the saint (appendix 15). Other orders, represented mainly in terms of their founders included (in chronological order): the Antonines, Camaldolese, Vallombrosans, monks of Great Saint Bernard, Cistercians, Confraternity of Mary, Vallombrosan nuns, Celestines and Olivetan Oblates (appendices 11f and g). It would be misleading to insist that each of these orders developed individual styles and more appropriate to explain their variations in style in terms of artists from different regions and schools.
The Jesuits were of course another order who became very much concerned with perspective from the 1630's onwards. Initially this was in the context of a new type of scientific encyclopaedia developed by authors such as Ens, Bettini and Kircher. These works focussed on an early version of special effects involving light, mirrors and anamorphosis. With the advent of Jesuit dramas,the traditional narrative function of perspective moved to the stage which became as it were a live version of the traditional fresco cycles. Fathers Dubreuil (1642-1649) popularized these principles in a three volume text. A generation later Father Pozzo painted the illusionistic ceiling in Sant'Ignazio which showed Saint Ignatius Loyola Entering into Heaven amidst allegorical representations of the Four Continents (c.1685). In the cycles of saints of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the methods of perspective had been used increasingly to focus on external appearances, surfaces of things. By using it for an abstract subject in which the figures became enveloped by Divine light, Pozzo was attempting to redirect its function to an interior type of meditation, but in a public context that made the whole church into the equivalent of a stage set. This impression was enhanced by a fictive dome (1685) which brought a twist to the methods originally evolved in the context of poor friars and rich patrons. For now perspective was a means of depicting grand domes which one could not afford to construct; an economical idea which spread throughout Europe and beyond after Pozzo published his methods (1693-1700) in what became one of the standard texts of the eighteenth century. Pozzo's text also described the use of perspective in stage sets. And as perspective became a backdrop for an acted narrative, its narrative functions were increasingly forgotten. But this is another story.
The evolution of spatial elements such as apses, vaults and colonnades in these cycles of saints, which were subsequently codified in the perspective treatises, was but one aspect of a much larger process. For as the spatial elements became more convincing they became increasingly related to specific buildings, towns and landscapes, which should be no surprise since perspective was partly an outgrowth of practical surveying experience. This process was evidenced on all fronts. It will be recalled that Brunelleschi's first demonstration of perspective involved an actual building. Yet it was particularly in the cycles of saints that these connections became apparent: views of the town in which they are painted regularly enter the scenes. In Ghirlandaio's cycles in the Tornabuoni chapel of Santa Maria Novella, various buildings and streets are reminiscent of Florence. In his Life of Saint Francis in Santa Trinità these allusions are even clearer. A scene with the Resurrection of a Child of the Spini Family contains both the Palazzo Spini and the church of Santa Trinità. Another scene with the Confirmation of the Franciscan Rule clearly has a background with the Piazza della Signoria and the Palazzo Vecchio. A third scene showing Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata, shows both the Monte della Verna, where the event happened and the town of Pisa complete with its tower. The conquest of space brings with it a commitment to representing specific places.
A growing awareness of time is another aspect of this larger process. The temporal element enters in a number of ways. Paintings which are spatially convincing are usually the very ones where the artist carefully records the year, month and sometimes even the day on which the work was completed. As mentioned above, in the Chapel of Nicholas V, Fra Angelico added a date when the emperor Valerian summoned Saint Lawrence. What would once have been a symbolic scene now functions as a documented event which has as much to do with secular Roman history as with the legendary deeds of a saintly individual. We have also noted a tendency evidenced in Piero della Francesca's Story of the True Cross to depict a series of episodes from different periods which implicitly confirm the continuity of the historical record: in his case events that spanned from the time of Adam to the year 613 A.D. Another manifestation of this trend was an interest in saints from the entire mediaeval period.
More significant was an increasing preference for episodes with serious documentary evidence that linked a given scene to a specific place and time. For instance, in the cloisters of San Francesco at Montepulciano the fresco of Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata has a caption which gives the year, month, day and even the hour of the event. The Stanze of Raphael are perhaps the most famous case in point. Here one of the earliest scenes showing the Expulsion of Heliodorus, is based on a passage in Maccabees in the Old Testament. Parallel with this are other scenes from Antiquity recording secular historical events including Solon addressing the Athenians and the Death of Archimedes in 212 B.C. There are events such as The Liberation of Saint Peter connected with the time of Christ. There are scenes from the early centuries of Christianity such as the Baptism of Constantine or Leo I blocks the Invasion of Attila the Hun. In addition there are ninth century events which are precisely dated: the Oath of Leo III which occured on 23 December, 800; the Coronation of Charlemagne on 25 December 800; the Fire in the Town, which occured in the year 847 according to the Liber Pontificalis and the Naval Victory of Leo IV in 849. More recent events include the Mass at Bolsena in 1263. Hence Raphael's Stanze use perspective to represent spatially scenes in specific places and times. Moreover, by carefully choosing a series of events ranging from the sixth century B.C. through the thirteenth century A.D., Raphael uses these seemingly isolated scenes to create a sense of historical continuity. Individual scenes from different stories are thus integrated to create a single hi-story of the Church.
This growing nexus between perspectival space, geographical place and historical time is taken further in the hall of geographical maps in the Vatican. Both side walls have a systematic series of maps of Italy produced by A. Danti (1580) and designed by the Reverend Egnazio Danti who, as cosmographer to the Medici in Florence, was also responsible for the room of maps in the Palazzo Vecchio. The maps in the Vatican are more than maps in the usual sense. Each map shows a region and includes inserts with views of major cities or towns. The location and dates of major battles from the time of Hannibal to the fifteenth century are also included. The ceiling of the same hall in the Vatican contains scenes from the lives of the major saints each of which is correlated with the appropriate map. Above Milan, for instance, there is a scene from the Life of Saint Ambrose. Above Assisi there is a scene from the Life of Saint Francis and so on. Some of these record the dates of specific events in the lives of these saints. The ceiling thus becomes a temporal-spatial encyclopaedia of the major saints of the Church from the time of the apostles to the sixteenth century and in a sense marks a logical conclusion of the links between space, place and time introduced by the interplay of narrative and perspective. It also demonstrates the extreme consequences of perspective's subversion of the linear cycle of narrative. In order to link the major regions of italy with its major saints, one cannot tell the complete story of each saint's life. Indeed each life becomes reduced to a single representative incident and this, when placed in the mannerist context of virtues, allegorical figures and grotesques, is in danger of acquiring a merely anecdotal character. Paradoxically when the spatial tools of perspective have been perfected to allow contextual links with real places and times, the stories told are frequently reduced to events out of context. Hence, perspective which seemed an answer to the needs of storytelling, in a sense killed the visual narrative. And curiously enough this occured in the same generation as Pierre de la Ramée (Ramus), whose innovations in logic Ong has associated with the decline of dialogue in the Renaissance.
A more detailed study would add several provisos to the claim that the study and depiction of mediaeval saints played a significant role in the evolution of new concepts of space and time with an increased historical awareness. In the case of Saint Francis the cycles were often based on the Greater Legend of Saint Bonaventure, which was sensitive to historical accuracy. This was not always the case. For instance, the Golden Legend of Jacobus da Voragine was an important source for some cycles of saints. It was also a work frequently notable for its historical imprecision, as protestant thinkers such as Flaccius Illyricus did not hesitate to point out. In such cases attention to historical precision came more from protestant reactions to catholic depictions rather than from the initial representations, which makes it tempting to see an allegorical interpretation of the saints in the catholic tradition as being in opposition to a literal, historical treatment in the protestant tradition. This would, however, again be too simplistic because it was precisely in the protestant north that the allegorical treatment of religious figures found some of its most radical expressions, as in the case of Cranach depicting his reformer friends as Christ's apostles (cf. below section 9). Paradoxically the new approaches to the literal which emerged in this period went hand in hand with a new awareness of allegory and both owed their development to catholic and protestant contributions.
To understand these complex shifts in relations of space, place and time, it is necessary to look beyond the limits of sacred art with its cycles of saints. Or rather it is necessary to take into account other developments whereby sacred and secular25 art became interdependent and gradually inextricably connected in the context of the city states of Italy. Siena offers a first and particularly dramatic example of these trends. The Palazzo Pubblico contains the famous Sala della Pace with its Allegories of Good and Bad Government, which are important early experiments in a secular context of links between space, place and time. In the townscape we can recognize clearly the cathedral, and architectural features of other actual buildings in Siena. In the landscape Siena's sea port of Talamone is visible. We are told that the allegories reflect political ideas of a Dominican monk Remigio de'Girolami and we know that the frescoes were executed by the same Lorenzetti brothers who were responsible for some of the early proto-perspectival cycles of saints for the Carmelite, Franciscan and the Servite orders in Siena, Assisi and Florence. The same two brothers are also associated with two panels which have been described as the first examples in Italy of pure landscapes.
These emergent connections between space, place and time are even more apparent in the adjacent room where Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted a Mappamondo (1344), which probably represented the possessions of the Sienese state. In this same room is the much disputed fresco26 with Guido Riccio da Fogliano and the castle of Montemassi in the background. Whether or not it was painted by Simone Martini need not concern us. Several important facts remain. We have documentary evidence that Martini was commissioned to paint the castle of Giuncarico in Maremma in this room in 1314. There is an act of payment for his painting of the castles of Montemassi and Sassoforte in 1330. There is a record that he was sent out to paint from life (dal vero) the castles of Arcidosso and Casteldipiano. In this same room Simone Martini painted his famous Maestà which brought a religious theme into a secular context. In this same room the artist Lippo Vanni depicted his monochrome Battle of Val Chiana (1363) with its representations of a series of castles in places some twenty miles from Siena most of which can be found on a modern map: Farnatella (now Farnetella), Travale, Guardavalle, Scrufiano (Scrofiano), El Castello di Torrita (Torita di Siena), El Castello di Rugumagno (Rigomano), L'Apparita di Lucignano (Lucignano), L'Amorosa (Fattoria dell'Amorosa), Asina Lunga (Sinalunga) and Bettolle. There is a further fresco of a battle that occured on 8 september 1479: Victory of the Sienese over the Florentines at Poggibonsi (painted 1480). On the walls of the same room are life size frescoes of Bernardine of Siena, Dominic and other saints connected with the orders.
It might seem mere chance that the room with this interplay of sacred and secular art, is the same room which evidences new links between space, place, and time, with depictions of battles that are historical events in places that can be found on a map. That it should be adjacent to the room where Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted his Allegories of Good and Bad Government, or that it should be two rooms away from the room of the Balia, can hardly be a coincidence. The room of the Balia contains frescoes of the Four Evangelists, and various Virtues as well as Busts of Emperors and Warriors by Martino di Bartolomeo (1407-1408). These serve as frames for the main fresco cycle by Spinello Aretino (1408) showing scenes from the Life of Pope Alexander III, who was clearly a local hero: he came from the Sienese family of the Bandinelli and may have been the founder of the new Cathedral. What concerns us is his significance as a pope, involving clearly documented events from the period 1159 to 1177 depicted in these frescoes: namely the historical encounters between Alexander III and the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, which marked one of the milestones in the struggles between church and state27. Another key moment in these struggles was the murder of Thomas à Becket in the Cathedral at Canterbury (1170). His bones were brought to Venice and he (along with King Canute of Denmark) was canonized by Alexander III at the Congress of Venice in 1177. That this event should be included in the frescoes confirms the comprehensive way in which these seemingly disparate events were understood. For our purposes these frescoes are the more significant because they again evidence connections between: a) proto-perspectival space; b) events in a specific place and c) occuring at a clearly documented time. Hence it is no coincidence that these milestones in the struggles of church and state are recorded in the same rooms which evidence a new interplay of sacred and secular art.
These connections between sacred and secular, between space, place and time also developed elsewhere. Three years after Simone Martini produced his Maestà in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, Lippo Memmi painted a related Maestà in what is now the Sala di Dante of the Museo Civico in San Gimignano. This room offers further examples of interplay of sacred and secular art. In addition to the Maestà, there are frescoes concerning the intervention of Scolaio Ardingelli in debates between the clergy and the Comune in 1292: i.e. the struggles between church and state at a local level. There is also a scene relating to an historical event: Charles d'Anjou's victory at Poggibonsi (1271) and ensuing privileges for San Gimignano. In an adjacent room there are the profane scenes by Memmo di Filipuccio.
Siena and San Gimignano are but two instances that help us to understand later developments such as a fashion for recording decisive battles in public places, as in the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence with battles by Michelangelo (Cescina), Leonardo (Anghiari) and the later series by Vasari. To analyse these scenes, or attempt a history of relations between sacred and secular art in the context of city halls and their equivalents, is clearly not our purpose. They have been mentioned here as a reminder that the important shifts in the treatment of space, place and time evidenced in fresco cycles of saints, particularly those connected with the major orders, are one manifestation of a larger context. A converse problem: how the orders played an important role in these changing relationships between church and state on the one hand and sacred and secular art on the other, is equally beyond the scope of this essay.
Implicit in these developments are further questions. Perspective tended to link the place where the scene was painted with the space of the scene represented. This linked the time when the scene was painted with the time of the scene painted. From a modern viewpoint this resulted in anachronisms. Today a scene from the Life of Saint Peter would attempt to reconstruct architecture and costumes of the first century. This is partly because modern photography uses perspective such that the time when the scene was photographed is the same as the time of the scene photographed. The Renaissance may not have had cameras but they did have camera obscuras, and so our modern alternatives were available to them. Indeed Brunelleschi's first perspectival demonstration involved a variant on the camera obscura and a picture which potentially had the same temporal relationship as a photograph produced by a camera: i.e. in which the time when the scene was represented is the same as the time represented in the scene. It is noteworthy that Brunelleschi deliberately avoided this possibility. He added a mirror on the upper part of his painting which reflected passing clouds such that the represented scene did not stay fixed with a given coordinate of space and time in the manner of a photograph. Alberti's perspectival window made it possible to produce pictorial records which integrated time and space as in a photograph. But this tended not to happen. Instead as has been shown, most of the great perspectival paintings were in cycles of saints, where anachronism prevailed. Hence, while it may look completely familiar, perspective as used in the Renaissance links time and space very differently than we do today. Why this should be so deserves to be studied even if it is again beyond the scope of this paper. For our purposes it must suffice to explore one of the positive consequences of this different approach to time and space in the context of literature.
We have shown that the mastery of space was accompanied by a new commitment to representing events at a given time and in a specific place. Fra Angelico's Crucifixion with Attendant Saints in the capitular hall of San Marco offers a case in point. We know that the scene occured in 33 A.D. on the hill of Golgotha just outside of Jerusalem, and Fra Angelico's realistic depictions of the figures makes the event look more convincing. As we have noted, however, at least four of the saints on the left are martyrs who died in between the second and the fifth century A.D. The figures on the right are founders of orders who lived from the fourth through the fourteenth centuries. Therefore these could not have been present at the crucifixion and we cannot read the fresco literally. Indeed there is a paradox. The more vividly artists depicted their scenes which combined members of their orders with episodes from the life of Christ, an apostle or an early martyr, the more necessary it became to interpret the event allegorically rather than literally.
This phenomenon can apply equally in cases which represent carefully documented events within the history of an order. Ghirlandaio's Confirmation of the Franciscan Rule cited earlier, offers a case in point. This event which occured on 29 November, 1223 was painted with the Piazza della Signoria in the background as it looked around 1480. At first sight this makes the painting far more vivid and interesting than the gold or cloth backgrounds of a mediaeval painting. If we look more closely, problems of the interpretation arise. For if the painting is taken as the equivalent of a snapshot of 1480, then it is fully anachronistic that someone who died in 1226 should be present and moreover entirely misleading that an historical event that took place in Rome with the bull Solet annuere of Honorius III should be represented as happening in Florence. This misleading aspect is compounded by the fact that the bystanders in this event clearly include portraits of famous individuals living in 1480: Lorenzo the Magnificent; Piero, Giovanni and Giulio de Medici; Francesco Sassetti and Angelo Poliziano. In short the picture only makes sense if it is taken allegorically rather than literally.
Hence the very connections between space, place and time that accompanied the advent of perspective brought to light the anachronisms of the scenes and thus challenged viewers into a new type of allegorical interpretation of art. The closer perspective came to recording a specific place in the now the more obvious became the discrepancy between this space in the now and the scene from the past for which it served as backdrop. It was noted earlier that the the Life of Saint Francis, which was so closely connected with developments in realism, was also the life for which there were the greatest number of allegorical interpretations. We are now in a position to understand why. The nexus of space, place and time includes allegory, or to be more precise, a recognition that paintings cannot be taken literally and require interpretations at different levels. If we are right then it was no accident that Dante, who was a Franciscan tertiary, should have articulated his distinction between four kinds of interpretation precisely in the decade that Giotto finished his cycles in San Francesco at Assisi and in the Scrovegni chapel at Padua. If Giotto's paintings appear on the surface as a conquest of realism: they are really about the death of literalism in the sense of interpreting paintings as direct records of the scenes in question. This is why the Dominican refectory of San Marco showing Saint Dominic and his friars sitting at table as if at the Last Supper is not blasphemous. And once this is understood, it is no surprise that precisely the individual who was so keen on a literal interpretation of the Bible (solam scripturam) should have had no qualms with his artist friend Cranach representing him as a member of the Last Supper. Even Luther had learned that even if one was committed to taking texts literally, pictures were different. Luther in a painting of the Last Supper was obviously neither an apostle nor pretending to be. He was simply acting piously as if he were an apostle. But acting as if without using the terms like or as is today termed metaphor. Perspective, precisely because it created visual illusions that were as if without the interjections of simile, brought into focus the importance of metaphor.
This was another trend that had its parallels in secular art such that we find princesses depicted as if they were the goddess Diana, a tendency which spread from painting to real life if one thinks of the shepherdesses in the mock village connected with Chantilly in the eighteenth century or of ornamental hermitages elsewhere. But these again are paths of fashion beyond the scope of this essay.
Our claims have been several. We have shown that the cycles of saints were linked closely with seven orders of the Church. Of these the Carmelites played an important initial role. Orders such as the Benedictines, and Augustinians played a noticeable role, while that of the Vallombrosans and Servites was minor. A basic role was played by the Franciscans and Dominicans. This was partly because a number of cycles involved members from these orders. It was mainly because these orders inspired a new attention to other saints: contemporaries of Christ, apostles, early martyrs, mediaeval saints (popes, bishops, knights and virgins) and even modern saints. As such the orders defined the horizons of 98% of all the individuals who were included in the cycles. Some particular characteristics of the Franciscan and Dominican cycles were identified. We stressed that these findings were tentative, that a thorough study would require systematic access to the cycles and require the aid of digitized images and computers. We noted that the cycles of saints were one manifestation of a larger picture which included secular cycles: that the important struggles between church and state of the time played their part in the changing relationships between sacred and secular art and that these too were a factor in the new links between space, place and time.
We argued that these new links between space, place and time were also intimately connected with the mastery of perspectival space; in other words that the advent of perspective brought with it a new approach to both geography and history. Even so, we noted that the Renaissance solution to questions of time and space was different from that in modern photography and suggested that these developments which theoretically promised to produce a perfect copy of the original and hence a complete illusion, were paradoxically necessary for the discovery that a painting cannot be taken literally. Hence what is often termed the conquest of realism might more accurately be described as the discovery of allegory or the recognition of metaphor as a central aspect of the human condition.
From all this emerge two conclusions of considerable import. Historians have often presented a very different picture: as if there had been an enlightened culture in Antiquity which was forgotten in the Dark Ages and then revived in Renaissance. The evidence of the saints confirms that the story is very different. If the period from 1200 through 1500 A.D. involved a rediscovery of Antiquity, it was paradoxically even more so a discovery of the Middle Ages. The cycles of mediaeval saints sponsored by the orders brought into focus the historical continuity of events linking predictions of pagan sibyls and Old Testament prophets, the life of Christ with the present. And ironically the cycles of saints produced in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries demonstrated that terms such as Renaissance with their connotations of cyclical patterns were ultimately misnomers. These centuries were part of a continuity in historical time and space. This new awareness of history, of the uniqueness of events might have led to a new literalism. There were fronts where this occurred, but as we have shown there were other developments. Which leads to a second conclusion: the study of medieaval saints in the Renaissance inspired new horizons of the imagination; opening a new chapter on the road from the letter of the law to its spirit; from slavish following to humane interpretation; from the literal to the metaphorical.
FOOTNOTES
1. E.g., John White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space, London: Faber and Faber, 1957.
2. Erwin Panofsky, "Die Perspektive als symbolische Form", Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg 1924-1925, Leipzig, 1927.
3. Alessandro Parronchi, Studi su la dolce prospettiva, Milan: Martello, 1964.
4. Samuel Y. Edgerton, The Renaissance Rebirth of Linear Perspective, New York: Basic Books, 1975.
5. Miklos Boskovits, "Quello ch'e dipintori oggi dicono prospettiva", Actae historiae artium, Budapest, VIII, 1962, pp. 241-260; IX, 1963, pp. 139-162.
6. Kim H. Veltman, Linear Perspective and the Visual Dimensions of Science and Art, Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1986. (Leonardo da Vinci Studies, I).
7. Leonard Goldstein, The Social and Cultural Roots of Linear Perspective, Minneapolis: MEP Publications, 1988, (Studies in Marxism, vol. 22).
8. George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art, Florence: Sansoni, 1952-1985, 4 vol.(1. Iconography of the Saints in the Central and Italian Schools; 2. Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting; 3. Iconography of the Saints in North West Italy; 4. Iconography of the Saints in North East Italy).
9. In the case of Francesco Sassetti in the church of Santa Trinità, the question of patronage was studied in a pioneering work by Aby Warburg, Bildniskunst und florentinisches Bürgertum, Leipzig: H. Seemann Nachf., 1902. For a more recent study on the same topic see: Eve Borsook, Johannes Offerhaus, Francesco Sassetti and Ghirlandaio at Santa Trinita, Florence. History and Legend in a Renaissance Chapel. Doornspijk: Davaco Publishers, 1981.
10. There are, of course, classical precedents to narrative cycles. For an excellent introduction see: Sir E. H. Gombrich, Means and Ends. Reflections in the History of Fresco Painting, London: Phaidon, 1976. On the question of mediaeval cycles see: John Osborne, Early Mediaeval Wall paintings in the Lower Church of San Clemente, Rome, London: Garland, 1984. (Ph.D., Courtauld Institute, University of London, 1979); Otto Demus, Romanesque Mural Painting, New York: Harry Abrams, 1968. An important late mediaeval example is discussed by G. Matthiae, Pietro Cavallini, Rome: De Luca Editore, 1977. For a standard history of fresco cycles in the Renaissance see: Eve Borsook, The Mural Painters of Tuscany, From Cimabue to Andrea del Sarto, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.
On the relation of these cycles to mediaeval art in general see: Robert Oertel, Early Italian Painting to 1400, London : Thames and Hudson, 1966; Alastair Smart, The Dawn of Italian Painting, 1250-1400, London: Phaidon, 1978 and John White, Studies on Late Mediaeval Italian Art, London: Phaidon Press, 1984.
11. For an introduction see: Otto Pächt, Buchmalerei des Mittelalters. Eine Einführung, München: Prestel Verlag, 1984. For a specific example see: Meditations on the Life of Christ. An Illustrated Ms. of the Fourteenth Century. Paris B.N. Ms. Ital. 115, trans. Isa Ragusa, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961. Sometimes the scenes in a fresco cycle were recorded in manuscript form. For an example concerning Cavallini see John White, as in note 1 above, pp. 48-51.
12. See E. H. Gombrich, Art And Illusion, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960, p.129. For evidence that perspective increased narrative see the important dissertation by Lewis B. Andrews, A Space of Time. Continuous Narrative and Linear Perspective in Quattrocento Tuscan Art, Ph.D., Columbia University, 1988. For other evidence that perspective could also subvert narrative see the author's: "Space, time and perspective in print culture", Canadian Journal of Communications, Ottawa, 1991 (in press). For an excellent recent study which provides an important classification of different types of narrative cycles in terms of the directions in which the stories are presented, see: Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, The Place of Narrative. Mural Decoration in Italian Churches, 431-1600, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991.
13. For links between the Franciscans and new developments in science see: Sebastian J. Day, Intuitive Cognition: A Key to the Significance of the Later Scholastics, St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1947, (Franciscan Institute Publications, Philosophy Series, n.4); Philip Boehner, "Notitia Intuitiva of Non Existents according to Peter Aureoli, OFM (1322)," Franciscan Studies, St. Bonaventure N.Y., vol. 8, 1948, pp.388-416; Damascene Webering, Theory of Demonstration according to William of Ockham, St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, (Franciscan Institute Publications, Philosophy Series, n.10); H. Shapiro, Motion, Time and Place according to William of Ockham, St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1957; E.A. Moody,"Empiricism and Metaphysics in Medieval Philosophy", Philosophical Review, Ithaca, N.Y., vol. LXVII, 1958, pp.145-163. I am grateful to Professor Robert Kolb (Concordia) for these references. For a recent statement see: Klaus Bergdolt, "Bacon und Giotto. Zum Einfluss der franziskanischen Naturphilosophie auf die bildende Kunst am Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts", Medizinhistorisches Journal, Stuttgart, Band 24, Heft 1-2, 1989, pp. 25-41.
14 See, for instance, Ornella Casazza, Masaccio and the Brancacci Chapel, Florence: Scala, 1990 which accepts the interpretation of Peter Meller, "La cappella Brancacci. Problemi ritrattistici e iconografici": Acropoli, III, 1961, pp.186 ff. and IV, pp. 273 ff. A discussion with my former teacher, Father Leonard Boyle, has revealed that this interpretation is highly unlikely. At the time, San Clemente was connected with the Ambrogian order.
15. Robert Oertel, Fra Filippo Lippi, Vienna: Schroll, 1942.
16. Alfred Scharf, Filippino Lippi, Vienna: Anton Schroll, 1950.
17. Among more recent studies of Franciscan art with particular reference to Assisi are: Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971; Hans Belting, Die Oberkirche von San Francesco in Assisi. Ihre Dekoration als Aufgabe und die Genese einer neuen Wandmalerei, Berlin: Gebrüder Mann, 1977; Lorraine Carole Schwartz, The Fresco Decoration of the Magdalen Chapel in the Basilica of Saint Francis at Assisi, PhD, Indiana University, 1980; Janettta Rebold Benton, Influences of Ancient Roman Wall Painting on Late Thirteenth Century Italian Painting: A New Interpretation of the Upper Church of S. Francesco in Assisi, Ph.D., Brown University, 1982; James H. Stubblebine, Assisi and the Rise of Vernacular Art, New York: Harper and Row, 1985; Hans Belting und Dieter Blume, Malerei und Stadtkultur in der Dantezeit: Die Argumentation der Bilder, München: Hirmer Verlag, 1989. A standard work for reproductions of the cycles at San Francesco remains: Joachim Poeschke, Die Kirche San Francesco in Assisi und ihre Wandmalereien, Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 1985.
18. Enzo Carli, Il Pintoricchio, Siena: Monti dei Paschi, 1960.
19. San Francesco, I Fioretti di San Francesco, ed. Luigina Morini, Milan: Rizzoli, 1979, particularly p. 61.
20. For a standard work on the history of the Dominican order which also provides a list of major Dominican churches see: R. P. Mortier, Histoire des maitres généraux de l'ordre des frères précheurs, Paris: Picard, 1913-1920, 8 vol. For a list of modern locations see: Catalogus generalis Ordinis Praedicatorum, Aniceti Fernandez iussu editas, Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1967.
21. Ghirlandaio's work extended well beyond a strictly Dominican context. He produced two other perspectival representations of the Last Supper in Ognissanti and in the abbey of Passignano near Florence. His early frescoes included perspectival scenes from the Life of Saint Fina (a patron saint of San Gimignano) in the Collegiata of San Gimignano (c.1475) and the Life of Saint Peter in the Sistine Chapel in Rome ((1481-1482); a life of Saint Paul of Nola in the Franciscan church of Santa Croce (c.1483) and a perspectival cycle of the Life of Saint Francis in the Camaldolese church of Santa Trinità.
22. Cf. Giacinto D'Urso, La spiritualità del Beato Angelico, Siena: Edizioni Cantagalli, 1984.
23. On the question of Gregory the Great see: Sancti Gregorii Papae I, cognomemto Magni, Opera Omnia, ed. J.P. Migne Paris: Garnier, 1896, tomus tertius, pp. 1128-1129 (sect.1100-1101).(J.P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 77.) For an introduction to the different traditions which favoured or prohibited images see: Rosario Assunto, " La tradizione monoteistico-aniconica nel mondo semitica e cristiano": Enciclopedia universale dell'arte, Venice: Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, vol. VII, 1958, pp.154-155.
24. A. M. Chiodi, "Bartolomeo degli Erri e i polittici domenicani", Commentari, Florence, 1951. Cf. "Simone Lamberti" in : Dizionario enciclopedico dei pittori e degli incisori italiani, Turin: Mondadori, vol. VI, 1983, p.335.
25. For an introduction to the secular traditions of image making and connections to history see: H.Ludwig Hempel and Eugenio Battisti, "Storiche figurazioni, Il mondo occidentale": Enciclopedia universale dell'arte, Venice: Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, vol. XIII, 1965, pp.22-34.
26. On the question of identifying the castles see Italo Moreti, "Simone Martini a Montemassi", Prospettiva, Siena, n.23, ottobre 1980, pp. 66-72; Max Seidel, "Castrum pingatur in palatio 1. Ricerche storiche e iconografiche sui castelli dipinti nel Palazzo Pubblico di Siena", Prospettiva, Siena, n.28, gennaio 1982, pp. 17-41; Luciano Bellosi, "Castrum pingatur in palatio 2. Duccio e Simone Martini pittori di castelli senesi a l'esempio come erano", Prospettiva, Siena, n.28, gennaio 1982, pp. 41-65
27. Cf. Gabriel le Bras, Storia della chiesa dalle origini ai nostri giorni: vol.XII/2 Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche della cristianita medievale, Turin: Edizioni S.A.I.E., 1974; vol. XIV/1-3 La chiesa al tempo del grande schisma e della crisi conciliare 1378-1449, Turin: Edizioni S.A.I.E., 1967.
APPENDICES
Appendix 1. Correlation between number of cycles per saint, individual number of saints, and total number of cycles, related to proto-perspectival cycles and perspectival cycles.
CYCLES PER SAINT SAINTS CYCLES PROTO PERSPECTIVE
1 101 101 2
2-4 45 118 7 9
5-9 18 126 22 22
10-19 15 208 65 22
20-29 2 48 12 6
30-39 1 34 12 3
___ ___ __ __
182 635 118 64
Appendix 2. Categories and general chronology of all the individual saints depicted in the cycles.
Century 1st 2nd-9th 10-12th 13-15th 1st-15th
RELIGIOUS
Contemporaries of Christ 3 3
Apostles 13 13
Popes, Bishops 4 41 2 2 49
Doctors 4 4
Orders, Hermits 14 10 34 58
MILITARY
Knight 27 2 29
LAY
Virgin 18 1 1 20
King, Ruler 6 6
__ __ __ __ __
20 110 15 37 182
Appendix 3. All cycles of saints listed in terms of the above categories and general chronology.
Century 1st 2nd-9th 10-12th 13-15th 1st-15th
RELIGIOUS
Contemporaries of Christ 32 32
Apostles 101 101
Popes, Bishops 4 119 2 2 127
Doctors 23 23
Orders,Hermits 55 15 126 196
MILITARY
Knight 64 4 68
LAY
Virgin 64 2 1 67
King,Ruler 21 21
___ __ __ __ ___
137 346 23 129 635
Appendix 4. Categories and general chronology of individual saints depicted in proto-perspectival cycles.
Century 1st 2nd-9th 10-12th 13-15th 1st-15th
RELIGIOUS
Contemporaries of Christ 2 2
Apostles 5 5
Popes, Bishops 5 5
Doctors 4 4
Orders, Hermits 2 1 9 12
MILITARY
Knight 3 3
LAY
Virgin 3 3
King, Ruler 2 2
__ __ __ __ __
7 19 1 9 34
Appendix 5. Categories and general chronology of all proto-perspectival cycles involving saints.
Century 1st 2nd-9th 10-12th 13-15th 1st-15th
RELIGIOUS
Contemporaries of Christ 4 4
Apostles 18 18
Popes, Bishops 28 28
Doctors 4 4
Orders,Hermits 12 2 23 37
MILITARY
Knight 10 10
LAY
Virgin 10 10
King, Ruler 7 7
__ __ __ __ __
22 71 2 23 118
Appendix 6. Categories and general chronology of individual saints depicted in perspectival cycles.
Century 1st 2nd-9th 10-12th 13-15th 1st-15th
RELIGIOUS
Contemporaries of Christ 1 1
Apostles 2 2
Popes, Bishops 5 5
Doctors 4 4
Orders, Hermits 1 9 10
MILITARY
Knight 4 4
LAY
Virgin 3 3
King, Ruler 1 1
__ __ __ __
3 18 9 30
Appendix 7. Categories and general chronology of all perspectival cycles of saints.
Century 1st 2nd-9th 10-12th 13-15th 1st-15th
RELIGIOUS
Contemporaries of Christ 2 2
Apostles 4 4
Popes, Bishops 9 9
Doctors 13 13
Orders,Hermits 8 21 29
MILITARY
Knight 3 3
LAY
Virgin 2 1 2
King,Ruler 2 2
__ __ _ __ __
6 37 21 64
Appendix 8. All cycles of saints of whom there are proto-perspectival or perspectival cycles listed in terms of the above categories and general chronology.
Century 1st 2nd-9th 10-12th 13-15th 1st-15th
RELIGIOUS
Contemporaries of Christ 31 31
Apostles 62 62
Popes, Bishops 77 77
Doctors 23 23
Orders, Hermits 40 3 85 128
MILITARY
Knight 31 31
LAY
Virgin 36 36
King, Ruler 14 14
__ __ __ __ __
93 221 3 85 402
Appendix 9. A more detailed version of the list in appendix 6 identifying individual saints other than those in orders.
CATEGORY SAINT CYCLES PROTO PERSPECTIVE
1st c.
RELIGIOUS
Contemporaries of Christ
John the Baptist 16 2
Mary Magdalen 15 2 2
__ __ __
31 4 2
Apostles
Andrew 7 1
James the More 14 4 1
John the Divine 18 4
Mark 10 3
Peter 24 6 3
__ __ __
62 18 4
2nd-9th c.
RELIGIOUS
Popes, Bishops
Blaise 10 3
Lawrence 14 5 2
Martin 6 3
Nicholas of Bari 19 8 2
Sabinus 1 1
Silvester 8 2
Stephen 15 7 1
Zenobius 4 3
__ __ __
77 28 9
Doctors
Ambrose 3 3
Augustine 7 1 4
Gregory the Great 2 1
Jerome 11 2 6
__ __ __
23 4 13
MILITARY
Knight
Christopher 7 2 1
Erasmus 4 1
George 7 1 1
Mamas 1 1
Sebastian 12 6
__ __ __
31 10 3
LAY
Virgin
Catherine of Alexandria 17 6 1
Cecilia 4 1
Ursula 5 2 1
Margaret 10 1 1
__ __ __
36 10 2
King, Ruler
Quiricus & Julitta 3 1
Helen 11 6 2
__ __ __
14 7 2
Totals
__ __ __
274 81 35
Appendix 10. A subset of the above list in terms of saints who are also patron saints or protectors.
1st c.
RELIGIOUS
Contemporaries of Christ
John the Baptist Patron of merchants of French cloth (Calimala guild), Florence
Apostles
Mark Patron of retail merchants of cloth (Baldrigai guild), Florence
Matthew Patron of money changers (Arte del Cambio), Florence
2nd-9th c.
RELIGIOUS
Popes, Bishops
Cosmas and Damian Patrons of doctors
Lawrence Patron of bakers
Nicholas of Bari Patron of schoolchildren
Stephen Patron of wool merchants (Arte della Lana), Florence
Zenobius Patron of Key, Lock and Cauldron Makers, Florence
MILITARY
Knight
Christopher Protector against storms
Erasmus Protector of sailors
George Patron of armourers, sword makers (Florence)
Sebastian Protector agasinst plague.
Appendix 11. Chronological lists of saints in major orders, their cycles, including proto-perspectival cycles and perspectival cycles.
11a Franciscan Saint CYCLES PROTO PERSPECTIVE
Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) 34 12 3
Gerard of Villemagna (1174-1277) 3
Clare (1193-1253) 2
Anthony of Padua (1195-1231) 9 2 1
Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231) 1
Rose of Viterbo (c.1233-1252) 2
Blessed Giles ( -1262) 1
Louis of Anjou (1275-1295) 3 1 1
Margaret of Cortona (1247-1297) 2
Joan of Signa ( -1308) 1
Clare of Montefalco (1268-1308) 1
Odoric of Pordenone (1286-1331) 1
Roch (c.1300-1400) 2
Thomas of Tolentino (c.1260-1321) 2
James of Padua ( -1321) 2
Peter of Siena ( -1321) 2
Demetrius L. of Tafelico (-1321) 2
Bernardine of Siena (1380-1444) 8 1 2
Blessed John Capistran (1386-1456) 1
__ __ __
73 16 7
11b Dominican Saint
Dominic (1170-1221) 7 2 2
Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274) 3 2
Peter Martyr (1206-1252) 8 1 4
Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419) 8 1 4
Catherine of Siena (1380-1444) 5 1 2
__ __ __
31 5 14
11c Benedictine Saint
Benedict (480 -543) 16 6 5
Severinus ( -481) 1
Placidus ( -540) 1
Leonard ( -560) 2
Maurus ( -584) 1
Gregory the Great (540-604) 2
Giles ( -725) 3
Thomas Becket ( -1170) 1
Leo Bembo ( -1187) 2
Juliana of Collalto (1186-1282) 1
Urban V (1310-1370) 1
__ __ __
31 6 5
11d Augustinian Saint
Augustine* (354-430) 7 1 4
Nicholas of Tolentino (1245-1306) 6 2
Bd. Augustine Novello ( -1309) 1
Bd. Julia of Certaldo (1300-1367) 1
Bd. Peter or John Becket (d.c.1420) 1
__ __ __
16 3 4
11e Founding Saint
Antonine
Anthony the Great (c.250-356) 24 6 3
Camaldolese
Romuald (c.973-1027) 1
Vallombrosan
John Gualbert (985-1073) 3 2
Great St. Bernard
Bernard (996-1141) 1
Cistercian
B. of Clairvaux (1091-1153) 3
Confraternity of Mercy
Andrew Gallerani ( -1251) 1
Vallombrosan Nuns
Humilitas (1226-1310) 1
Celestine
Peter Celestine (c.1215-1296) 1
Olivetan Oblates
Francesca Romana (1384-1440) 3
__ __ __
38 8 3
11f Saints in Other Orders
Vallombrosan
B. degli Uberti ( -1132) 1
Servite
Peregrinus of Forli ( -1340) 1
Carmelite
Andrew Corsini (1302-1373) 1
__ __ __
3 2
Totals 185 37 29
Totals of appendices 9 plus 11 459 118 64
* Note. Since Augustine is both a father of the church and founder of an order he is only counted once.
Appendix 12. Other Saints after 1000 A.D.
SAINT DATES DESCRIPTION CYCLES
Peregrine (conf. 1004) Patron of Gualdo Tadino 1
Godard ( -1038) Bishop of Hildesheim 1
Nicholas,Pilgrim ( -1038) Patron of Trani 1
Raynerius ( -1094) Patron of Pisa 2
Galganus Guidotti ( -1161) Knight of Montesiepi 2
Homobonus ( -1197) Patron of Cremona 1
Fina ( -1253) Patron of S.Gimignano 2
Hildebrand ( -1270) Bishop of Fossombrone 1
Tuscana ( -1370) Nurse of K.of St.John 1
Panacea (1369-1383) Virgin 1
L. Giustiniani (1381-1455) Patriarch of Venice 1
__
14
Appendix 13. Examples of major Franciscan cycles.
CITY CHURCH TOPIC ARTIST DATE
Arezzo S.Francesco True Cross P. d.Francesca 1453-64
Assisi S.Francesco Francis M. of St. Cecilia 1295-1325
Assisi S.M. d. Angeli Francis I. da Viterbo 1393
Bassano S.Francesco Anthony the Great Veneto school 1380-1400
Bologna S.Francesco Francis F. da Rimini 1330-1340
Florence S.Croce Francis Giotto 1317-27
Lodi S.Francesco Bernardine Gian Giacomo da Lodi 1477
Montefalco S.Francesco Francis Benozzo Gozzoli 1452
Montefalco S.Chiara Clare,Catherine,Virgin School of Giotto 1333
Montefalco S.Fortunato Francis T. d'Assisi 1512
Naples S.G.Carbonara Francis ----------- 1400-1450
Narni S.Francesco Francis P.A. Mezzastris c.1452
Pescia S.Francesco Francis B. Berlinghieri 1235
Pisa S.Francesco Francis Giunta Pisano 1240-45
Pistoia S.Francesco Francis Puccio Capanna 1300-50
Prato S.Francesco Anthony Abbot N. di Pietro Gerini c.1395
Rome S.M. Aracoeli Bernardine Pinturicchio 1485-90
Udine S.Francesco Odoric School of Friuli 1434
Verona S.Fermo Maggiore Francis Veronese school c.1350
Volterra S.Francesco True Cross C.di F. Cenni 1410
Appendix 14. Examples of major Dominican cycles.
CITY CHURCH TOPIC ARTIST DATE
Bolzano S.Domenico Nicholas Bolognese 1300-1400
Castelvetrano S.Domenico Vincent Ferrer Sicilian school 1400-1500
Florence S.MariaNovella Baptist,Virgin Mary Ghirlandaio 1486-1490
Florence S.Marco Christ Angelico 1436-1450
Genoa S.Maria Castello Catherine of Siena Ligurian school c.1480
Gubbio S.Domenico Vincent Ferrer Tommaso Nelli 1410-1434
Milan S.M. delle Grazie Catherine of Siena Montorfano 1490-1495
Milan S.Eustorgio Peter Martyr Foppa 1464-1468
Naples S.Pietro Martire Peter Martyr Imparato,C.Mercurio 1590-1664
Rome S.M. sopra Minerva Thomas Aquinas Filippino Lippi 1488-1493
Siena S.Domenico Catherine of Siena Sodoma 1526
Taggia S.Domenico Catherine of Siena Ludovico Brea 1488
Taggia S.Domenico Thomas Aquinas Ligurian school 1500-1525
Venice SS.Giovanni e Paolo Vincent Ferrer Giovanni Bellini 1464-1468
Appendix 15. Examples of major Augustinian cycles.
CITY CHURCH TOPIC ARTIST DATE
Cremona S.Agostino Augustine G.P. da Cemmo 1498-1500
Fabriano S.Agostino Augustine Umbro-Marchigian c.1350
S.Gimignano S.Agostino Augustine Benozzo Gozzoli 1465
Gubbio S.Agostino Augustine O. Nelli c.1420
Padua Eremitani Augustine, Apostles Mantegna 1449-1455
Rimini S.Agostino John The Divine Riminese School 1300-1350
Rome S.M.del Popolo Saint Jerome Pinturicchio 1485-11489
Siena S.Agostino Bd. Agostino Novello Simone Martini 1328
Acknowledgments
This paper was written with the support of a Canada Research Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, while the author was a visiting Professor at the University of Siena in the spring term of 1990. Preliminary versions were given in Rome at the Istituto Svizzero and Siena in connection with celebrations for the 750th anniversary of the university. I thank Father D'Urso and Dr. Paolo Civai for their help and Professor Brian McGuiness, who patiently read through the typescript and gave suggestions.
Siena 19 March 1991.