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Building the Virgin's House: the Architecture of the Annunciation in Central and Northern Italy 1400-1500 Alasdair Stamford Fl

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Building the Virgin's House: the Architecture of the Annunciation in Central and Northern Italy 1400-1500 Alasdair Stamford Fl Building the Virgin’s House: The Architecture of the Annunciation in Central and Northern Italy 1400-1500 2 Volumes Volume One Alasdair Stamford Flint PhD University of York History of Art October 2014 2 Abstract This thesis examines the architectural settings constructed by painters for their depictions of the Annunciation, seeking to understand how and why painters employed them. The first, fundamental function of pictorial architecture was to organise the scene, demarcating the spaces allotted to each of the protagonists, often through the use of a central architectural dividing element such as a wall or a column. At the same time it constructed the narrative, and provided concrete metaphors for the Immaculate Conception, with the passage of the Holy Spirit through an arch acting as a stand-in for its entrance into Mary herself. Having established these compositional essentials, painters were then able to use architecture to add further resonances to their images, employing it to expound upon the character of Mary and the intense holiness of the Annunciation itself. Echoes of explicitly sacred places and spaces – tabernacles, cloisters, and chapels – could, for example, serve to imbue Mary’s house with a sanctity entirely suited to an event which represented the moment at which Christ appeared on earth. Finally, architecture could promote an audiences’ direct, meditative engagement with the scene portrayed by placing it in contemporary, recognisable architectural settings, thereby collapsing the distance between the remote biblical event and the viewer’s present. These works with realistic and recognizable buildings existed on a continuum (no painting lacked imagined, fantastical, and ideal elements in its pictorial architecture) with Annunciations that contained buildings that were to varying extents fantastical or imaginary. Instead of aiming the to allow the viewer to connect directly with the Annunciation, their inclusion was at least in part as a strategy to distance the events portrayed from them, emphasising the sanctity of the episode. Overall, this study aims to reinsert architecture into the center of our understanding of these Annunciations, demonstrating that it was far from just background decoration but was instead fundamental to both the conception and reception of these works. It is hoped that having proved the central importance of architecture in these works, this study will encourage a reassessment of architecture’s role in Italian Renaissance painting more generally. 3 Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................... 2 Contents……………………………………………………………………………3 List of Illustrations ......................................................................................... 5 Acknowledgements ..................................................................................... 11 Declaration .................................................................................................. 12 Introduction A Miraculous Announcement ...................................................................... 13 Pictorial Architecture and the Annunciation ................................................ 14 Chapter One: Access Introduction: Three Types of Access ........................................................... 23 Mary’s Space .............................................................................................. 26 The Architectonic Character of the Porch and its Significance ................... 30 The Porch of Ezekiel ................................................................................... 35 Narrative Beginnings: Gabriel’s Ingress ...................................................... 39 Mary’s Architectural Placement and Contemporary Expections of Young Women ........................................................................................................ 42 Miraculous Entry: The Holy Spirit ................................................................ 47 Sight to Insight: The Spectator .................................................................... 53 Conclusion .................................................................................................. 60 Chapter Two: Mary's House Introduction ................................................................................................. 63 A Throne for the Virgin: The Origins of Mary’s House ................................ 65 The Development of Mary’s House in the Fourteenth Century ................... 67 The Impact of the Introduction of Single Point Perspective on the Depiction of Mary’s House 1420-1440 ........................................................................ 75 A New Magnificence: Mary’s House 1440 – 1500 ...................................... 81 A Palace for Mary: The Interior ................................................................... 84 A Palace for Mary: The Exterior .................................................................. 91 The Semiotics of Architecture: How Architecture Signifies Mary’s Status and Virtures ....................................................................................................... 98 Mary in the Countryside: The Annunciation and the Villa ......................... 100 A Room of her Little House: The Problem of Mary’s Poverty .................... 108 Conclusion: Buildings Speak ..................................................................... 117 Chapter Three: Sacred Spaces Introduction: Defining the Sacred .............................................................. 120 The Tabernacle ......................................................................................... 123 The Chapel ................................................................................................ 129 The Church ............................................................................................... 133 The Cloister ............................................................................................... 139 Sacred Entrances ...................................................................................... 144 Excursus: The Annunciation in Sacred Spaces ........................................ 147 4 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 153 Chapter Four: Architectural Time and Place Introduction ............................................................................................... 155 Mary and the City 1: Civic Annunciations .................................................. 156 Mary and the City 2: Meditating Upon the Annunciation ........................... 162 Architectural Time and Timelessness: Using Architecture to Combine the Eternal and the Temporal Within an Image .............................................. 168 Imaginary Architecture .............................................................................. 173 Part-Imagined Buildings: Extraordinary Palaces ....................................... 176 The Splendour of Holiness: Sacred Architectural Decoration in Imaginary Domestic Spaces ..................................................................................... 179 Otherworldly Spaces: Imaginary Structures .............................................. 186 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 190 Conclusion The Functions of Mary’s House ................................................................ 191 Architectural Annunciations ....................................................................... 193 Appendix One: Accounts of the Annunciation ........................................... 195 Bibiliography .............................................................................................. 198 5 List of Illustrations • Figure 1: Botticelli, The Annunciation, fresco, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, 243 x 555 cm, 1481 • Figure 2: Unknown, Annunciation, Santissima Annunziata, Florence, fresco, c. 1330-1360 • Figure 3: Columns, San Martino della Scala, Florence • Figure 4: Anon., The Annunciation, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, fresco, c. 1390 • Figure 5: Piero della Francesca, The Annunciation, fresco, S. Francesco, Arezzo, c. 1457, 329 x 193 cm • Figure 6: Duccio, The Annunciation, predella, tempera on poplar, National Gallery, London, 43 x 44 cm, 1311 • Figure 7: Pietro Lorenzetti, Annunciation, Pieve di Santa Maria, Arezzo, tempera on wood, c. 1320 • Figure 8: Lorenzo Monaco, Annunciation, Santa Trinita, Florence, tempera on wood, c.1424 • Figure 9: Domenico Veneziano, The Annunciation, predella, tempera on wood, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 27 x 54 cm, c. 1445 • Figure 10: Pietro Cavallini, The Annunciation, mosaic, Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome, c.1297 • Figure 11: Cloister, L’Abbazia di Torri, c. 1250 • Figure 12: Porch, Padua Baptistery, 1281 • Figure 13: Signorelli, The Annunciation, tempera on wood, Pinacoteca di Volterra, Volterra, 283 x 205 cm, 1491 • Figure 14: Master of the Judgment of Paris, The Annunciation, tempera on wood, Courtauld Gallery, London, 54 x 38 cm, c. 1430 • Figure 15: Fra Filippo Lippi, The Annunciation, fresco, • Duomo di Spoleto, Spoleto, 1469 • Figure 16: Pesellino, The Annunciation, tempera on wood, Courtauld Gallery, London, 38 x 26 cm, c. 1450 • Figure 17: Piero della Francesca, Polyptch of Saint Anthony: The Annunciation, tempera on wood, Galleria Nazional dell’Umbria, Perugia, 122 x 194 cm, 1468 • Figure 18: Biagio d’Antonio,
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