Early Medieval Art

The Tempietto sul Clitunno stands as yet another early medieval monument whose dating remains imprecise. One could easily pass over this small church, especially as good color photos prove difficult to find, but I have my own images that I offer here, in combination with some that you may find on Flickr.

Flickr offers a nice view of the exterior. The refinement of the carving in the pediment will contrast with other Longobard sculpture that we will soon encounter, and the dedicatory inscription evokes an imperial past. For its translation see The Tempietto Del Clitunno Near Spoleto: Text and Illustrations by Judson Emerick.

The painting inside, however, captures my attention. Flickr has a broader shot of the east wall. In the apex of the wall,

two angels in medallions flank a gemmed cross, also in a medallion. My photo does not show the cross clearly, but a black-and-white photo in the second volume of Emerick’s monograph does.

Christ appears in the conch of the niche,

and on the side walls, Peter

and Paul.

In the Flickr photo of the entire niche wall, you may also see palm trees on the flanking walls.

This assembly of wall paintings lacks a personalizing element, as in the Chapel of Theodotus, thereby permitting a more general interpretation. The gemmed cross recalls the actual Visigothic votive crosses from the Guarrazar Treasure. The panels of Peter and Paul recall those in the Sancta Sanctorum, which I can only find here and here. And the palm trees actually have counterparts in the Chapel of Theodotus, if you can find photos of them! The paintings of course may then be related to the pediment carvings of the exterior. Emerick suggests multiple historical circumstances, and I am tempted to suggest yet another, but I think greater value derive from a discussion of how these images relate to one another and to images elsewhere, and what these observations reveal about the function of individual images relative to the space of the church and the function of the program as a whole, especially as it relates to Rome.

I have not posted course content for quite some time. As a reminder, we were last in the duchy of Bavaria.

After some time north of the Alps, at last we return to Italy and to Rome, and yet again, to Santa Maria Antiqua, not to the palimpsest wall, but to the Chapel of Theodotus. In contrast to print resources, which abound, digital resources for the Chapel of Theodotus, more or less, do not exist. The Soprintendenza offers two smallish photos, of the Crucifixion in the niche of the main south wall and of the interior with an angle toward the west wall. Wikimedia Commons offers a larger image of the Crucifixion.

Other than these images, the internet turns up little else. Needless to say, I am eagerly awaiting the digital reconstruction of Santa Maria Antiqua. In the meantime, the next time I go to the library, I will take my own scans from Wilpert’s corpus and will make them available here.

The Chapel of Theodotus presents a complex assemblage of images. The Crucifixion in the niche references traditional imagery from the Holy Land, while a cycle of the martyrdoms of Quiricus and Julitta running along the east and then the west wall offers one of the earliest surviving exemplars of this type. The threefold appearance of Theodotus then makes the decoration of the chapel highly personal. In a general survey of early medieval art, one probably does not have the time to delve into the various interpretations of precisely what the chapel meant to Theodotus, but questions of context and placement would stimulate a fruitful discussion of the function of images in early medieval churches.

On a side note, a search of Flickr turns up a new photo of Santa Maria Antique, uploaded on the 14th of June: a view into the presbytery with the panel of the Maccabees partially visible.

On May 18th, the website of the magazine, Archaeology, posted an online feature on the Catacomb of Saints Peter and Marcellinus.  The partial collapse of the foundation of the Instituto Sacra Famiglia revealed five unexplored chambers of the Catacomb.  The article focused on a mass grave, but three photos of wall painting accompany the article.  The first, according to its caption, dates to the seventh century, and the second supposedly shows Peter and Marcellinus.  The third shows Orpheus, in a relatively familiar scene.  The article does not mention any of these images, and I cannot assert with any certainty that they come from the newly discovered chambers.  I am intrigued by the fresco labeled seventh-century and devotional.  I will look into it, but thought I would share what I have found so far!

One of my former students is traveling around Turkey this summer with his advisor. He has posted a photo of an early Byzantine wall painting found in Istanbul in the area of the Great Palace and today underneath a Travel Agency. Take a look!

The wall painting in the Church of Saint Proculus in Naturno deserves much broader familiarity, but it, like most wall painting, proves challenging to teach.  Scholars generally date the structure to the seventh century; Marese Sennhauser-Girard refers to new research dating it to tenth or eleventh, but I do not know to what research she refers.  The paintings, in turn, most likely date to the eighth century, but other possibilities certain exist.

The church and its museum (opened in 2006) have a website, which includes a select bibliography on the church.  You may find some photos on Flickr (search Naturns and Naturno), but I have taken a complete set of the wall paintings, which I now make available here.  Just click through for very large images.

The west wall shows cattle, a cowherd, and the owner in something of a procession.

The north wall, of which only the upper register survives, shows five seated figures and at the east end, an angel. 

The facing south wall has one solitary remaining in its lowest register.

The upper register begins at the far left, adjacent to the east wall, a group of five veiled women.

Behind the five veiled women appears the most curious aspect of the entire program - the scene with the Swinging Saint, who has been variously identified as Paul and Proculus, and the structure above him as a city wall and a boat.

We then come to the east wall.  In the upper zone of the triumphal arch hover two angels.

Below the angle to the right sits a figure holding a cornucopia.

At the center of the east wall, one may see within the interlace, from left to right: the dove of the Holy Spirit, the hand of God, and the Lamb of Christ.

The figure at the center faces with its head toward the choir.

As scholars have yet to make sense of these frescoes, I can only let them speak for themselves.

My research centers around the Monastery of Saint John in Muestair (CH), and my dissertation was the third completed on the church.  Marese Sennhauser-Girard wrote the first at the University of Basel in 1959.  In mine I wrote, “although Sennhauser-Girard has continued to develop her interpretation for the last five decades, she has published few of her ideas and has no such plans for the immediate future.”

Most happily I have been proven wrong, for Dr. Sennhauser has started a blog - Al-Fresko - on which she finally publishes her work.  She began in October 2006 and her most recent post dates to November 2007.  We must hope that she will return to posting.  Dr. Sennhauser has studied the frescoes for more than half-a-century, and it would be a shame for her not to share all of her insights! 

Before examining the historiated capitals at San Pedro de la Nave, a brief flashback through monuments familiar to students from the introductory survey provides some necessary background. 

The Sacrifice of Isaac found its earliest representation at the Dura Synagogue, in the panel above the Torah shrine.  (You may note the source of the image, Eikon: Image Database for Biblical Studies, at the Yale Divinity School).  When it appears on the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, the writings of Irenaeus (Against Heresies) and Tertullian (An Answer to the Jews) articulate the typological relationship of the Sacrifice of Isaac to the Crucifixion of Christ.  Finally, in the mosaics at San Vitale in Ravenna, the Sacrifice of Isaac, paired within the lunette with the Visit of the Three Angels to Mamre, which in turn are together paired with the Sacrifices of Abel and Melchisedech on the other side on the altar, becomes a prototype of the liturgy.  This brief excursion into the development of the typological potential of the Sacrifice of Isaac offers a useful prelude to an understanding of its meaning at San Pedro de la Nave.

Fragmentation characterizes the artistic legacy of John VII, and his frescoes at Santa Maria Antiqua have not escaped this fate.  Further complicating matters, other than the interactive palimpsest wall on the website of the Soprintendenza, the internet does not favor this monument.  A 1925 article by Myrtilla Avery in Art Bulletin is available through JSTOR, and like all articles in JSTOR, contains gigantic digital images, but all in black and white.  (I often turn to JSTOR as my last resort, but, as you will see, it sometimes offers the best images available.)

The Life of John VII describes in general terms his interventions at Santa Maria Antiqua, but far more interesting possibilities exist for the contextualization of this program.  First, the inscription on the apsidal links together several Old Testament passages that, according to medieval interpretation, foretell the (Adoration of the) Crucifixion depicted above, in a perfect exemplification of typology.  I found a translation of the inscription in Éamonn Ó Carragáin’s Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition (The British Library Studies in Medieval Culture), but I suspect you can find it elsewhere.

The lives of John VII and Sergius and the 82nd Canon of the Council of Trullo permit the embedding of the frescoes in a precise political context. 

Canons of the Council of Trullo

I will not rehearse the argument here, but, suffice it so say, that it requires some time to explain the theological controversy surrouding the wills of Christ and how John VII’s response to it in the program may confirm the Liber pontificalis’s assertion of his “human weakness”.

Wall painting, in general, proves the most resistant to immediate appreciation of all early medieval media.  And yet, the testimony of wall painting to the destructive power of the passage of time drew me to art history in the first place.  But the context of wall painting evokes as much as its fragments do, and on our side of the ocean we can only go so far in the re-creation of context.

How then to situate the students most effectively in the space of the wall paintings?  And how to stimulate their ability to fill in the gaps in order to envision wall paintings at the moment of their creation?

In practical terms, I use plans with the location of the studied scene highlighted.  I also show views of the entire wall, if I have them, so that students can see where to find the scene in its architectural context.  I also present multiple scenes from one church in the sequence that the worshipper would have encountered them, so that the students can associate movement through the space with a succession of images.  The rare well-written article in English also helps.  And I feel immense gratitude for computer reconstructions, such as we find in the La Pittura medievale a Roma, 312-1431 series.

But I suppose only study trips to Europe may truly solve this problem!

I stick to the traditional dating of the Maccabees panel, the full-length portraits of Saint Anne, Saint Barbara, Saint Demetrios, the lower Annunciation in the nave, and layer 6 of the palimpsest wall to the pontificate of Pope Martin.

Interactive Palimpsest Wall

Making this material accessible to undergraduates presents, however, difficulties.  The life of Pope Martin and the inscriptions on the scrolls of the Church Fathers on the palimpsest wall together create a compelling, if complex, historical context.  Students can relate to the propagandistic value of these images.  The panel of the Maccabees provides an occasion to explore a less popular Biblical account leading to a discussion of the presentation of these Old Testament figures as Christian martyrs.  And the individual devotional panels depicting various saints all have holes where worshippers once attached precious materials as votive offerings in order to enhance the intercessory powers of the saints.

These ideas fascinate, but at the same time pull the students in so many directions!