1 Excerpts from Artists in Renaissance Italy by John T. Paoletti and Gary M. Radke

Rome: Artists, Popes, and Cardinals

Introduction No city in Italy could boast as rich and complex a history as Rome. A fifteenth-century woodcut emphasizes its papal and imperial monuments (Fig. 1). The palace of the popes (clearly labeled palatium pape) stands on the horizon immediately to the right of Old St. Peter's Basilica, burial site of the Apostle who was the first pope. The prominent position of these structures on the Vatican hill reflects the city's domination by the papacy. Major monuments of Roman antiquity stretch across the foreground of the print, documenting the city's former grandeur. Many of these had acquired or been given Christian significance. At the far left appears a corner of the Colosseum (sacred site of Christian martyrdom), followed by the dome and portico of the Pantheon (rededicated as a church to the Virgin Mary) and the column of Trajan (an ancient monument to one of the Roman emperors whom Christians recognized as "good"). At the far right stands the huge drum-shaped Castel Sant'Angelo, originally the mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian but later endowed with fortifications by several popes. Hefty ancient walls continued to define the city's limits. Even so, Rome was but a shell of its former self. Whereas other cities repeatedly outgrew and expanded their ancient and medieval walls, Rome rattled around inside them. Huge fields of ruins stood starkly in what once had been densely populated neighborhoods; sheep and cows grazed in the remains of the imperial fora. Most of the population lived in the neighborhood at the bend on the river Tiber where the Vatican met the old imperial city. The woodcut shows a good number of houses in front of the Vatican, along with a porticoed church-like building and enormous courtyard that made up the papal hospital of Santo Spirito, an institution committed to public charity. As effective rulers of Rome, the popes, who claimed that their temporal rulership of the state had been conferred on them by Constantine before he moved the capital of the Empire to Constantinople in the fourth century, were responsible for all aspects of life in the city. Although the Roman Senate continued to exist as the official civic government, real control over the city was exercised by the pope and a few very strong factionalized feudal families such as he Colonna and the Orsini whose histories went back to classical antiquity, or so they claimed. Artistic patronage in Rome was determined by the peculiar nature of papal authority, which was both religious and secular, local and international, and by the papacy's need to respond to the political demands of the Senate and the city's leading families. The lineage of the papacy had been continuous and unbroken since Peter, the first pope, but it was non-dynastic. A pope was elected for life by the cardinals, his major subordinates within the hierarchically organized institution of the Church. Presumably celibate, a pope had no heirs to whom the office could descend. The cardinals and the popes were not always Roman or even Italian, a situation that led inevitably to power struggles between the popes and local families who sought favorable treatment from the papacy. Thus the popes had to construct an artificial lineage, associating themselves with the histories and deeds (including artistic commissions) of their predecessors, so as to underscore the continuity of he papal office and their unbroken connections with its previous holders. Given these concerns and the imposing, ubiquitous reminders of past glory, it is not surprising that art and culture in Rome were often highly traditionalist. Within these 2 traditions, however, were some of the key elements from which artists and patrons would fashion a new art. Rome boasted unsurpassed riches of ancient and Early Christian art, including vast expanses of painting and mosaic as well as imposing architectural remains.

Nicholas IV at Santa Maria Maggiore Pope Nicholas IV (r. 1288-92), a native of Ascoli and the first member of the new reforming Franciscan order to head the Church, continued the cultural policies of Nicholas III. His major focus was Santa Maria Maggiore, the papal basilica in the neighborhood controlled by the Colonna family, who effectively adopted this non-Roman pope, a redressing of urban power after the earlier Orsini pope. Nicholas replaced the old apse at Santa Maria Maggiore with a larger, more impressive structure that included a transept, enhancing its similarities to Old St. Peter's. He lined the apse with marbles and mosaics by the Roman painter and mosaicist Jacopo Torriti (active 1270-1300 Rome) depicting the Coronation of the Virgin in a star-studded blue orb (Fig. 2). Imperially clad figures of the Virgin and Christ sit upon a golden throne softened with scarlet and blue cushions. Raising his right hand to the Virgin's head, Christ completes the coronation of his Queen of Heaven while angels steady the celestial sphere. The Latin inscription below it comes from the liturgy for the August 15 feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, the anniversary of the traditional founding of the basilica. It calls explicit attention to key elements in the representation: the Virgin's assumption to the heavenly throne, the starry realm of Christ the King, the chorus of angels, and the Virgin's royal status. This depiction of the Virgin as the Queen of Heaven can also be seen as a reference to Mary as Ecclesia, or the Church, the bride of Christ, a metaphor based on the Old Testament Song of Songs. In this role Mary/Ecclesia appears as co-ruler with God, like him capable of granting salvation. It is a powerful image of the Church controlling Christian destiny and of the popes who were its head. To the left of the central image a small figure of Nicholas in a scarlet coat and papal tiara kneels as patron before standing figures of the saints Peter and Paul, who appear to be presenting the pope to the celestial court. To the left of these saints Torriti represents the plainly clad and tonsured figure of St. Francis, an appropriate inclusion for a patron who had begun his ecclesiastical career as a Franciscan. At the right a miniaturized Cardinal Jacopo Colonna kneels before another pair of saints, John the Baptist and John the Evangelist; at the far right St. Anthony of Padua, another Franciscan, completes the Franciscan "bracketing" of the scene. Torriti's full, soft forms and the poses of his figures recall the Byzantine imperial style of the mid-1260s that had abandoned the characteristically insistent linear patterns of Byzantine art. The mosaic's lush green rinceaux (stylized, scrolling vine patterns) sprout red flowers and give roost to splendid paradisiacal birds—peacocks, cranes, and partridges. These motifs and the water flowing from river gods along the base of the mosaic suggest that late classical models also formed part of the mosaicists' repertoire. Here, in fact, the artists may have been replicating or even reusing elements from the original fifth-century apse. Obviously, neither Byzantine nor late antique models had outlived their usefulness, primarily because both were still vibrant, living traditions.

Patrons from the Papal Curia Commissions by two cardinals at their titular churches in Rome document the competitive spirit that prevailed among patrons at the papal court. Toward the end of the thirteenth century, at Santa Maria in Trastevere, Cardinal Bertoldo Stefaneschi commissioned the Roman painter 3 Pietro Cavallini (Pietro dei Cerroni; c. 1240/50-1330s) to renovate the church's mid-twelfth- century apse mosaic by the addition of a band of scenes from the life of the Virgin below it. Cavallini was an artist of considerable genius, who has been under-appreciated by many art historians—partly, no doubt, because he was largely unknown by Vasari, who credited many of Cavallini's innovations to the Florentine artist Giotto. Cavallini made his reputation working for Pope Nicholas III, restoring Early Christian frescoes in the papal basilica of St. Paul's Outside the Walls, works that disappeared when that church burned in 1823. There Cavallini's task seems to have been to replicate badly deteriorating Early Christian images, thus training himself to produce an essentially late Roman stylistic vocabulary at will. That experience allowed him to give Byzantine prototypes new vitality and a greater sense of movement, enhancing their three- dimensionality and heightening the human interaction among them. In one of the scenes at Santa Maria in Trastevere, the Birth of the Virgin (Fig. 3), Cavallini placed St. Anne (the mother of Mary), her attendants, and the infant Virgin in three tightly connected planes parallel to the picture surface: the maids preparing the child's bath far forward, the large reclining figure of St. Anne in the middle, and two more servants behind the bed. The parted curtain at the far right implies further space beyond this densely clustered composition, as does the space around the stage-like architecture and its receding diagonals. The effect is both noble and domestic. Intimate in its scale, the scene communicates dignity and solemnity through the strong vertical and horizontal lines of its architectural setting. Around the same time that Cavallini was working on these mosaics, the French cardinal Jean Cholet engaged him to create a larger and more extensive cycle of frescoes for his titular church of Santa Cecilia, also in Trastevere. Frescoes were cheaper than mosaic, but the scope of this project was larger. For the nave walls of Santa Cecilia, Cholet commissioned a now-ruined cycle of Old and New Testament scenes, directly imitative of established models that Cavallini knew intimately from the papal basilicas. The entire back wall of the church was reserved for a Last Judgment (Figs. 4, 5), a subject traditionally placed in that location to complete the cycle of Christian history begun in the biblical scenes on the side walls. Enough of the Last Judgment survives to give a solid understanding of this mature phase of Cavallini's art. Christ sits at the center of the composition, flanked to left and right by enthroned apostles. Beneath them, in areas now obscured, angels attend to persons who are about to be saved on Christ's right (the viewer's left), while on the other side devils take possession of the bodies of the damned. Cavallini's debt to the increasing naturalism of northern Gothic art of the period is evident throughout these frescoes, especially in some of the complicated curving border of the drapery folds. However, neither Gothic sources nor the Byzantine prototypes that clearly inspired the iconography of his frescoes (see, for example, the similar subject in the Florentine Baptistry, Fig. 4.4) fully explain the warmly modeled reality of his figures, the way drapery actually seems to flow volumetrically around them, the deep thrones in which each of the figures sits, the effective way that bright light from either side of the composition throws them into relief, and the remarkable coherence of his overall composition. These we must credit to Cavallini's own genius. A detail of two of the apostles shows the hard work that Cavallini put into each of these figures, with the shading of the apostles' faces suggesting three-dimensionality. Varying the size of his brush and the intensity with which he moved it on the wet plaster, Cavallini convincingly distinguishes between the right apostle's soft beard and flowing locks. Long strokes of light paint add glimmer to his hair, and highlights suggest the play of light down his arm and shoulder. Rather than merely mimicking what he found in artistic models around 4 him, Cavallini was synthesizing them, learning their lessons, and applying them in novel ways to his own work. While the multi-colored wings of the angels surrounding Christ's throne owe much to earlier prototypes, never before had an artist created such a carefully gradated meditation on tonal variation.

Assisi: Narrative Realism

Introduction One of the earliest documented assimilations of the newly naturalistic style of painting first seen in Rome occurred in the hilltown of Assisi, birthplace of St. Francis. St. Francis's canonization in 1228 virtually demanded that a church in his honor—as a focus for devotion to the most popular of Italian saints—be built in his home town of Assisi. The issue of ownership of property such as churches and convents had already divided the Franciscans within Francis's own lifetime. On the one side were the Spiritualists, who wished to maintain the vow of absolute (or apostolic) poverty upon which Francis had founded his order. On the other side were the Conventualists, for whom the success of the order in terms of its numerous communities throughout the Christian world indicated the need for permanent established churches and convents. In order to satisfy Francis's vow of poverty and yet meet the need for a cult church for Francis's relics and a home church for the Franciscan order, the papacy became the nominal patron and "owner" of the Basilica of San Francesco; the church was by deed a papal basilica, not a Franciscan church. The close relationship between the Franciscans and the papal hierarchy ensured that the church containing the mortal remains of a man who zealously abjured physical wealth and comforts was one of the most lavishly conceived structures of its time, although St. Francis's tomb, unlike the tomb of any other monastic founder during this period (see Fig. 9.6), was hidden from view under the building. (It was only recovered in the nineteenth century and now rests in a specially constructed crypt.) Poverty and simplicity rarely prevailed at a shrine controlled by the papacy. Preparations for the construction of the Basilica of San Francesco (Fig. 6) began even before Francis's canonization in 1228. Pope Gregory IX built a papal residence within the adjoining monastic complex, and a papal throne sits within the church's apse. The aisleless, double-storied structure of the church (Fig. 3.2) was immediately recognizable as a palatine chapel, an architectural form given one of its best-known expressions at about the same time in Paris in Louis IX's splendid Sainte Chapelle (1240s). Bundles of thin colonettes and finely carved crocket capitals demonstrate an up-to-date knowledge of key features of the French kings' coronation church at Reims as well. Thus although San Francesco is ostensibly a Franciscan site—the home church of the order—it must also be seen as a princely papal site, with all that this implies for its decoration. The architecture itself is rather simple, with large expanses of wall providing large surface areas suitable for elaborate fresco cycles (see Fig. 3.1). The present proliferation of chapels in the lower church was added over time. Both the lower and upper churches were laid out basically in the form of a tau, the T-shaped cross which had inspired Francis's own design of his friars' habits. The broad, low bays of the nave and the stubby transepts culminate in a shallow five- sided apse, whose number recalls the five wounds of the crucified Christ and by extension Francis's own stigmata. From a functional point of view the nave of the upper church at Assisi was separate from the apse and transepts since, as in most medieval monastic churches, a large 5 screen, now removed, created a barrier at the end of the nave beyond which most laypeople were not allowed to pass. The areas beyond this—the choir stalls and apse with the high altar—were for the privileged use of the friars.

Frescoes in San Francesco Many of the artists responsible for the early decoration of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi had connections with papal Rome, either as natives of the city or as artists who had worked there. The most important of these was the Florentine Cimabue, who was in Rome by 1272. Assisted by his workshop, he was largely responsible for the apse and transept decoration of the upper church (see Fig. 1.3). Befitting Francis's special devotion to the Virgin, the apse presents apocryphal stories of her death and afterlife flanking the centrally placed papal throne. One of these, the Coronation of the Virgin, repeats the imagery seen in Roman basilicas and may also indicate the papal presence in this building. Five scenes from the lives of the saints Peter and Paul in the south transept, now largely ruinous, also underscored the Franciscans' Roman and papal associations by reproducing the same subjects and virtually the same compositions as the papal frescoes in the courtyard of Old St. Peter's. Frescoes of the Crucifixion in both transepts provided a model of sacrifice closely emulated by Francis and his followers. Frescoes painted on the nave walls in the upper church pair Old Testament stories on the right side with the life of Christ on the left, repeating the subject and compositional order of narratives of the major Early Christian basilicas in Rome and expanding upon subject matter also treated in stained glass windows in the apse and transepts. In the nave scene of the Kiss of Judas (Fig. 7) we see how Roman-trained artists adopted Early Christian and Byzantine prototypes with their sense of emotional gravity, solid figural mass, and modeled drapery forms revealing the body beneath them to enliven stories from the life of Christ. Since at least the sixth century, Byzantine art had shown Judas striding towards his master to kiss his cheek. Here Judas is dressed in a sulphurous yellow robe that marks him as Christ's traitor. Christ, the great law giver of Early Christian iconography, holds a scroll in his left hand, and stares forward, ready to accept his fate. He extends his right arm (largely hidden by Judas's body) in a standardized gesture of address towards St. Peter whom he chastises for cutting off the ear of the high priest's servant, whom Christ subsequently heals. Though a murderous crowd of soldiers and religious leaders presses in around them, and lances, torches, and lanterns jut into the sky, Christ's. placid facial expression blunts much of the drama, calling attention instead to his divinely inspired cooperation with his captors, a theme emphasized by Bonaventure in the Lignum vitae (The Tree of Life), a Franciscan devotional tract of c.1259-60. This fresco emphasizes that Christ was the ready victim and gracious healer even in the face of violent death. On the opposite wall the scene of Esau Before Isaac (Fig. 8), like Cavallini's work in Rome at this same time, structures the narrative in successive stages of receding architectural volumes. Neat crisp folds wrap around the reclining figure of Isaac, evoking the images of majestic classical prototypes. The tremulous and hesitant gesture of the blind and blankly staring Isaac as he gradually realizes that he has been duped into giving the birthright to Jacob rather than to his first-born, Esau, marks an important moment in the depiction of psychological awareness and emotional intensity, a naturalistic development very different from the frescoes of the transept and apse of the building and especially well-suited to the crowds of laypeople who filled this part of the church. Below the Old and New Testament scenes are other stories obviously directed toward the 6 ever-growing crowd of pilgrims visiting San Francesco: an extensive cycle of the life of St. Francis stretching around the entire lower part of the nave and entrance walls. Although it is not clear by whom and when they were painted—suggested dates range from the 1290s well into the fourteenth century—recent studies show that the painting techniques are distinctly Roman, quite close to Pietro Cavallini, and extremely different from the broader manner of Giotto, to whom they have often erroneously been attributed. The twenty-eight scenes present the story of the saint in a straightforward and highly accessible manner. An inscription from Bonaventure's official biography of Francis, the Legenda Maior, accompanies each scene beneath its painted molding. The frescoes have a noticeably institutional emphasis, repeatedly illustrating St. Francis's respect for Church authority by presenting the episodes of his life before popes and cardinals. Francis's sanctity is recognized through an extended depiction of his death, funeral rites, and canonization. Avoiding poetic and mystical images, these frescoes are overtly didactic, intended to tell an officially sanctioned version of the saint's life. The frescoes closest to Cavallini's style occur early in the cycle and demonstrate the same spatial richness and narrative intelligence that we saw in Rome. Each bay (Fig. 9) contains three scenes framed by twisted columns and fictive marble corbels that recall the mosaic-encrusted medieval cloisters at the papal basilicas in Rome. In the frescoes at Assisi the corbels splay left and right as though the viewer is standing at the center of each bay. This unified point of view extends to the arrangement of individual scenes within each triad. In the second bay, for example, the overall composition pivots around the gap—both physical and psychological— separating St. Francis and his father in their confrontation in the main square of Assisi. On the right the embarrassed bishop of Assisi covers Francis's nakedness after the saint had stripped himself of his clothing; on the left his indignant father, barely restrained by worried onlookers, lurches forward to strike his apparently mad son for selling bolts of cloth from their shop to feed the poor. The bifurcated composition opens a dramatic space for the appearance of the hand of God reaching down diagonally towards the outstretched arms of the saint. In the scenes at the left and right the painter has also placed the architectural settings at a diagonal, so that they seem to point inwards toward the central bay. At the left Francis kneels in the ruinous church of San Damiano, whose walls are crumbling and roof beams partly exposed. On the altar stands the crucifix that commanded him to repair the church. In the right panel Pope Innocent III, identified even in his sleep by his papal robes and tiara, dreams of Francis upholding the porch of the papal basilica of St. John Lateran, which tips perilously. In the inscription below the fresco, taken from Bonaventure's officially authorized Legenda Maior, the pope says of Francis, "Truly this is he who by his work and teaching shall sustain the church of Christ," thereby underlining the notion of Francis as an alter Christus and appropriating his work (and that of the Franciscan order) for the institutional Church. The style of the frescoes is particularly well suited to their task. Impressively naturalistic and illusionistic, they communicate with unprecedented eloquence. Francis himself had urged his followers to imagine their religious experience in visual, tangible terms. In the scene of the Crib at Greccio (Fig. 10) we see Francis constructing the first Nativity scene before the altar of the little church at Greccio for a Christmas Eve mass in 1223 (see Contemporary Voice, "St. Francis and the Christ Child"). In this painting the friars in the rear of the choir enclosure open their mouths wide as if singing the Christmas liturgy; the clergy and a townsman near the altar canopy bend to get a closer look; town leaders bear witness by their sober presence; and a group of women, normally not given entrance to this sacred part of the church, crowd forward through a 7 central doorway. The broad solidity of their bodies seems to occupy actual space—an impression greatly enhanced by rear views of a pulpit and crucifix that lean out into the nave. Candles, festoons, and other small details of clothing and architecture help to make the scene visually compelling. The time and degree of collaboration required to produce a decorative program as complex as that of the church of San Francesco make it difficult to specify who may have been responsible for any particular section. In many ways that is as it should be. Artists at Assisi were not asked to produce highly individual or idiosyncratic works; rather, they were working together with their Franciscan and papal patrons to create a broad, visual biography for Francis of Assisi. Whereas previous generations of worshipers had focused much of their devotion on local Early Christian martyrs, the thirteenth century turned for inspiration to Francis and other contemporary preaching saints, such as the Spaniard St. Dominic. Both Francis and Dominic inspired enthusiasm for a renewed, more accessible religious experience. The search for means to express these new and vivid ideas, though linked to the great traditions of the Church, proved extremely fertile ground for artistic experimentation.

Fig. 1: View of Rome from Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum, 1493, Woodcut

Fig. 2: Jacopo Torriti, Coronation of the Virgin, c. 1294, Sta. Maria Maggiore, Rome, Mosaic 8

Fig. 3: Pietro Cavallinin, Birth of the Virgin, c. 1290, Sta. Maria in Trastevere, Rome, Mosaic Fig. 4: Pietro Cavallinin, Last Judgment, c. 1290, StaCecilia in Trastevere, Rome, Fresco

Fig. 5: Pietro Cavallinin, Last Judgment, c. 1290, StaCecilia in Trastevere, Rome, Fresco

Fig. 6: Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi, Begun 1228 9

Fig.7: Roman Master, Kiss of Judas, c. 1290, Upper Fig. 8: Isaac Master, Esau Before Isaac, c. 1290, Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi, Fresco Church, San Francesco, Assisi, Fresco

Fig. 9: Fig. 8: Assisi Master, Scenes from Life of St. Francis, c. 1290, Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi, Fresco 10

Fig. 10: Fig. 8: Assisi Master, Crib at Greccio, c. 1290, Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi, Fresco