The Transculturation of Exile 89 Chapter 3 The Transculturation of Exile: Visual Style and Identity in the Frescoes of the Aula Maxima at St. Isidore’s (1672) As you enter the Aula Maxima, or great hall, at St. Isidore’s Irish Franciscan College, your attention is immediately drawn to the four large portraits of the friar scholars along the eastern wall, from left to right: Luke Wadding (founder of the college), Anthony Hickey (Wadding’s assistant), John Colgan (student and master of studies at St. Anthony’s, Louvain, and editor of the Acta Sanc­ torum, 1645), and John Punch, (professor at St. Isidore’s) (figs. 3.1–3.4). Each wears the brown Franciscan habit and sandals and is seated at a desk, where texts are open for both reading and writing; at least three of them hold a pen in hand. Each is in a book-lined cell, where we can read some of the titles on the spines of the books that fill their shelves. Atop each portrait we can see a Latin epigram painted in italics, surrounded by a decorative golden border, also painted to give the illusion of a frame. Below each portrait is a biography of each sitter painted in Roman capitals that gives the illusion that they were cut into marble. The colors that predominate are the muted tan of the vellum of the book spines and the grey green of the walls, relieved only by the light com- ing from the windows depicted in Wadding’s and Hickey’s portraits and cast in shadows in those of Colgan and Punch. The light focuses attention on their faces.1 Facing the scholar friars, on the western side of the room, we find four parallel portraits of friar bishops: Maurice O’Fihely (like Wadding, a great scholar of Duns Scotus); Hugh MacCaughwell (the teacher of Anthony Hickey); Flaithrí Ó Maolchonaire (Florence Conry), founder of the Franciscan College of Louvain where Colgan studied); and Thomas Fleming (student, professor, and guardian at Louvain)2 (figs. 3.5–3.8). Their surroundings are more elabo- rate than those in the portraits of the friars on the opposite wall. The floors in the bishops’ portraits are marble as opposed to wood; the windows are draped with velvet curtains. Atop each table covered in cloth stands the bishop’s miter. While the open texts surrounding O’Fihely and MacCaughwell distinguish them for scholarship, one text lies open on Conry’s desk, and Fleming holds a 1 A restoration of the Aula Maxima at St. Isidore’s was completed in 2015 that substantially brightened the colors. The plates for this book were taken in 2007. 2 I am grateful to Mícheál Mac Craith for pointing out this pairing of portraits. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004335172_005 90 Chapter 3 Figure 3.1 Emanuele da Como, Luke Wadding (Aula Maxima, S. Isidoro, Rome).