Byzantine Traits in the Wall Paintings of the Church of Sant’Angelo in Formis

Abstract

This article is a part of the project that aims at studying the traits of style and images in the works of art created by Byzantine painters or by artists strongly influenced by them in various territories of the Byzantine world at the turn of the 11 th and 12 th centuries. The methods used in the work are cultural and historical, iconographical and stylistic analysis. The church of Sant’Angelo in Formis near Capua was rebuilt and embellished in the time of abbot Desiderius during the 1070s. Its wall paintings were made by South-Italian artists that either adopted their skills from Byzantine painters, probably, from those who worked for Desiderius in the basilica of St Benedict in Montecassino, or followed Byzantine models. However, the style of the wall paintings, which manifests some similarity to Byzantine works of art, is par excellence Romanesque. Byzantine influence is much more evident in their iconography. Thus, the composition in the apse reminds of illustrations to the Gospel Prologues. The image of the Last Judgment in the western wall, in spite of a number of differences, is more similar to the mosaic of the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello or to the miniatures of the Tetraevangelion (BN, gr. 74), than to works of Western art. The Old Testament scenes, which were not placed in pendant to those from the New Testament, as it was often done, but quite separately from them, are based on the Byzantine (illustrations of the Octateuchs) or Early Christian, most often Roman models. Sometimes the layouts used for the New Testament scenes are not the ones that were most widespread; nevertheless, we may find their counterparts in Byzantine art, especially among the miniatures and works of applied arts. In many cases the border between Byzantine sources, motifs common both for Eastern and Western art, and details harking back to the Early Christian tradition can hardly be established.