The Antique Source for the Tempio Malatestiano's Greek Inscriptions

Abstract

In my article “Piero della Francesca's Fresco of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta before St. Sigismund: ΘEΩI AΘANATΩI KAI THI ΠOΛEI,” I proposed that the painting expresses the donor's dual self-dedication to God and to the State of Rimini.1 I further suggested that this “double dedication,” elucidated first in visual terms by Piero in 1451, was a few years later repeated in expressis verbis in two monumental Greek inscriptions mounted on the exterior flanks of the Tempio Malatestiano. These identical inscriptions say that Sigismondo dedicates the building to Immortal God and the Commune (Θeωω¯i 'αθαναα´τωi και τηη¯ι Πoλeι τoν νeωω`ν). This formula, I hypothesized, was derived from an ancient concept of dual dedication of temples and shrines of various types, offered to a god and to a deified civic body, used both in Greece and Rome and most commonly found in the Near Eastern provinces from the Late Hellenistic period forward.2 I was not able, at that time, to point to a specific antique source indisputably ...