The Body of Eve in Andrea Pisano's "Creation" Relief Author(S): Jack M
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The Body of Eve in Andrea Pisano's "Creation" Relief Author(s): Jack M. Greenstein Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 90, No. 4 (Dec., 2008), pp. 575-596 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20619639 . Accessed: 17/11/2013 21:10 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Art Bulletin. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 209.129.16.124 on Sun, 17 Nov 2013 21:10:54 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Body of Eve in Andrea Pisano's Creation Relief Jack M. Greenstein are so Few themes fraught with social, moral, and political cleaned surface at close range partly compensates for itspoor as significance the Creation. To this day, the Genesis stories state of preservation.3 Carved and installed during the tenure of God man and woman are and as creating read, misread, by of Giotto di Bondone (1267/75-1337) capomaestroof the the faithful as confirming the positions of their church about campanile project, 1334-37, it had been set well above eye personal behavior and proper social order. Little surprise, level in the lowest register of themain, west facade of the bell then, that the history of Creation exegesis and iconography is tower, where it was second from the north in a row of seven often mined by scholars to reveal the fundamental attitudes historiated panels, next to the Creation ofAdam.4 The panels and ideologies of past societies. to the south were not the usual scenes of the Fall and Expul As of members their society and church, Renaissance artists sion, but Adam and Eve atWork and then four of their descen shared the fundamental attitudes and beliefs of their contem dants: Jabal, the firstshepherd; Jubal, the firstmusician; Tub poraries. But these "professional visualizer[s] of the holy alcain, the firstblacksmith; and Noah, the firstwinemaker.5 stories" also had artistic commitments tech was on regarding style, The cycle continued the other facades with hexagonal and which most other of as nique, expressive means, interpreters panels Lorenzo Ghiberti put it "the discoverers of not of Genesis did share.1 These commitments conditioned the arts":6 Gionitus, the firstastronomer; Building, Medicine; not themanner in only which theyworked but also the way Hunting, Weaving, Phoroneus, the inventor of law; and Daeda that they read the biblical texts, interpreted the earlier im lus, the inventor of flight,on the south face; then, on the east and understood the world that or ages, they depicted. face, Navigation Commerce, Hercules, the bringer of civiliza were Naturalistically rendered human figures the primary tion; Agriculture,Theatrics', and Architecture,and finally,on the expressive vehicle of Italian Renaissance art. In addition to north face, Sculpture and Painting. This cycle of themechan the sensuous of art appeal corporeal beauty, they gave much ical, practical, and civil artswas complemented in the register outer of itsmeaning. Artists fashioned the appearance of the above by diamond-shaped panels of the Planets, Virtues, human to serve as an index for what was on body going Liberal Arts, and Sacraments. within. The narrative or of was com There is no record the of subject, istoria, painting contemporary naming sculptor of bodies posed that moved among themselves and with the Creation ofEve or of the other six hexagonal panels on the to the viewer both to thematter at west facade. sources state regard perform hand and Early that Giotto, "the most sover to how the felt it. In display figures about sculpture, the virtu, eign master in painting of his time," was designer of the or of of was strength character, notable and holy personages tower, and also indicate that Pisano, the sculptor of the embodied in statues with an upright, contrapposto stance, bronze doors (1330-36) of the Baptistery across the street which made visible the work of the muscles the from the succeeded as cor arranging campanile, Giotto capomaestro, limbs to hold the even when itwas cloaked body erect, with rected structural flaws in the sections of the tower built by This as a drapery. conception of the human body vehicle for Giotto, and revised his design for the upper stories.7 In his more than met the was summarized in themost showing eye Commentariiof about 1447, Ghiberti ascribed both the design common tenet of Renaissance art: the movements of the and the carving of the "the first two reliefs [istorie]" on the the movements of the soul. but to body express campanile, only these two, Giotto, "inventor and dis The Creation of Eve presented a special challenge to this coverer of so much doctrine, that had been buried since Renaissance of conception artistic expression. The standard around the year 600," the artist who, in his view, "brought medieval iconography of Eve risingweightlessly fromAdam's about the new art, [and] left behind the coarseness of the side, half formed but living and moving as iffully made, was Greeks. ... Giotto saw what others did not add to art. He with the to hardly compatible Renaissance commitment the brought about the natural art and the gracefulness [of art] naturalistic of the human the bib with representation body. Yet, it."8 After describing Giotto's works in painting and lical of God the firstwoman a story constructing from rib mosaic, he explained that the first campanile panels demon extracted from Adam's which this was side, iconography sup strated thatGiotto also most expert in sculpture, for "in did not offer the kind of saw pressed, affective and significant my age I themeasures [provvedimenti]of his hand in the narrative istoria that Renaissance artists and viewers most prized. aforesaid excellently designed reliefs [istorie]"9 as Calvin without For, John conceded, providential interpre Although the Creation reliefs are widely recognized as "this method of woman seem tation, forming may ridiculous, among the best and most naturalistic of the campanile cycle, and . that Moses is in dealing fables."2 modern scholars discount Ghiberti's attribution of them to The Creation Eve Andrea Pisano is of by (ca. 1295-1348/9) Giotto. Giotto, it is pointed out, was not a sculptor; Pisano's an of how this was met. A to early example challenge hexagonal revisions the former's design for the tower included greatly marble from the of Florence it is panel campanile Cathedral, expanding the sculptural program, which was not completed now exhibited in the remodeled Museo beautifully dell'Opera until the early quattrocento; and the Creation reliefs are sty del where the to its Duomo, opportunity inspect recently listically congruous with reliefs that were designed, carved, This content downloaded from 209.129.16.124 on Sun, 17 Nov 2013 21:10:54 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ART BULLETIN DECEMBER 2008 VOLUME XC NUMBER 4 576 rea ecuted it. The centers on the close connec and installed by Pisano after Giotto's death.10 For these present analysis in how sons, there iswide agreement, despite Ghiberti's attribution, tion between style and meaning the campanile panel: Creation were carved under Eve is characterized the naturalistic treatment of her that the panels by Pisano, working through to after his de and what it reveals about the of the Giotto's supervision and, according some, body art, understanding the civic of the and Renaissance signs.11 subject, program campanile, Since the fundamental study by Julius von Schlosser in notions of woman. as an 1896, the campanile cycle has been interpreted ency of the activities needed to clopedic compendium productive The Iconographic Traditions for the Creation of Eve human life in the maintain society and improve postlapsarian The Bible opens with two accounts of the Creation, drawn the the world.12 Schlosser cited panegyric by twelfth-century from different sources. Genesis l:l-2:4a, called the Priestly or German monk as indicative of the reas P-text modern tells the of the Theophilus, positive by scholars, story hexameron, arts in the twelfth and sessment of the that began century the Creation of the world heaven and earth in six days by continued into the Renaissance. Braunfels's daz of the command "Let there be." Wolfgang successive fiats divine speech, account of the urban artistic context in which the zling Light, day, and night are created on day one, the firmament was is no but there isno on program developed longer accepted, on day two,dry land, the surrounding seas, and the plants doubt that the the values and of the on program expressed pride day three, the stars and planets day four, and the fish and Italian Marvin that the city-state.13 Trachtenberg explained fowl on day five. On the sixth day, the creatures of the land two highly unusual omission of the Fall and the Expulsion, are called forth from the earth: first,God creates the cattle, crucial to the of marked the work of subjects story salvation, the beasts, and every creeping thing, then the creatures who Adam and Eve and the arts invented by their descendants as would have dominion over them: the firstcreative activities of human beings, rather than as the consequences of sin.14 Subsequent scholarship refined and And he [God] said: Let us make man to our image and extended these fundamental interpretations, especially by likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the arts a clarifying how the program accorded the productive sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and thewhole creature that moveth the role in human salvation.15 earth, and every creeping upon Given the lack of firm documentation and the imprecision earth.