Fictive Spaces for Monastic Places Art and Architecture in Fifteenth-Century Florence

Abstract

Fictive Spaces for Monastic Places Art and Architecture in Fifteenth-Century Florence CHARLES R. MACK In a provocative essay in the Millennium issue of the Journal of the Society ofArchitectural Historians, Alina Payne lamented the "sad but inescapable truth that...academic disciplines have been drifting apart, carried along by the energy of their increased specialization ."1 Payne explored the widening breach between the histories ofart and architecture, evidence ofwhich, one might add, is to be found in the separate meetings and journals of the organizations dedicated either to the history of art or to the history of architecture. Payne noted, however, that the current disciplinary and philosophical separation between art and architecture had not always existed, for "a traditional sister art to painting and sculpture, architecture was officially associated with them from the time of the founding of the Accademia del disegno (1563) and was therefore also a component ofart history as presented by Giorgio Vasari in his inaugural le Vite...."2 Our understanding of the course of painting and architecture in Italy during the Renaissance is often impaired by the artificial lines we now draw between the arts. Disciplinary specialization frequently obscures our vision and prevents our seeing the projects of Renaissance artists in the homogeneous fashion in which they were originally presented. This article is dedicated toJohn W. Dixon, Jr., Professor Emeritus of both the Departments of Religion and of Art at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. In his own work as an art historian and as a scholar of religious studies, Dr. Dixon's inspired teaching and thoughtful publications exemplify the fusion ofreligion and art addressed within the present essay. The material included here was first presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southeast Chapter of the Society ofArchitectural Historians held in Lexington, Virginia, in October 2000. I would like to thank two anonymous readers for their helpful suggestions in preparing the final version of the article . 30 ARRis While it is true that in the Renaissance painters belonged to one craft guild and sculptors and builders to another, the distinctions were often blurred.3 In practice , the materials used determined occupational alignments , not what was done with them. vVhen, for instance, the Florentines appointed an architect for their great Cathedral project they found the sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio the most suitable candidate and, for his successors , chose the painter Giotto, the goldsmith Brunelleschi, and the sculptor Bernardo Rossellino.4 Florentine patrons regarded them as the best practitioners of the arts available and chose them to direct this, the major project of the Florentine commune, regardless of their specific expertise. Art and architecture were parts of a whole and it was expected that a master could function (at least as supervisor) across the disciplines. Renaissance builders and painters frequently fused their talents as complements, using architectural settings and painted illusions to heighten the visual response. Several cloister yards of fifteenth-century Florence exhibit this amalgam of architecture and art strikingly.-5 Monastic cloister yards provided the setting for a whole category of Renaissance paintings whose effect was site specific and very spatial in impact. The idea of the cloister, itself, was particularly significant in Christian religious life. In the dark days of the early Church, the days of Roman persecution, the Christian author, Tertullian, wrote of the prisons in which his fellow believers awaited martyrdom: The prison now offers to the Christian what the desert once gave to the Prophets....Let us drop the name 'prison' and call it a place of seclusion. Though the body is confined, though the flesh is detained, there is nothing that is not open to the spirit. In spirit wander about, in spirit take a walk, setting before your- selves not shady promenades and long porticoes but that path which leads to God.6 To the imprisoned Christian martyrs-to-be, Tertullian's evocations of "shady promenades" and "long porticoes" were reminders of philosophic academies. Yet such earthly settings, whether prison or academy were but physical waystations to the spiritual destination. Even with the triumph of Christianity, the idea of the physical, yet spiritually liberating, incarceration of the believer persisted, to be eventually reflected in the institutionalized concept of...