Early Trecento Research Articles

Cultural Encounter, Race, and a Humanist Ideology of Empire in the Art of Trecento Venice

Cultural Encounter, Race, and a Humanist Ideology of Empire in the Art of Trecento Venice

Meditations on the Life of Christ: The Short Italian Text by Sarah McNamer

Reviewed by: Meditations on the Life of Christ: The Short Italian Text by Sarah McNamer Emma Louise Barlow McNamer, Sarah, Meditations on the Life of Christ: The Short Italian Text (The William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante and Medieval Italian Literature, 14), Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2018; hardback; pp. clxxx, 264; R.R.P. US$65.00; ISBN 9780268102852. The William and Katherine Devers Series, founded in 1995, explores the works of Dante and his contemporaries as points of convergence for the interweaving lines of inquiry of the medieval Italian cultural tradition. As noted by Daragh O'Connell and Beatrice Sica ('Literary Cultures in/and Italian Studies', Italian Studies, 75 (2020), 125–39), recent scholarship in the field has shown an inclination to look beyond the canon in favour of examining potential alternative canons and 'minor' authors and texts, contributing to a reframing of cultural authority in the early Italian literary tradition. Given this trend, it is entirely clear why the series editors have invested in Sarah McNamer's book: while the unattributed Latin text of the Meditationes vitae Christi was highly influential during the medieval period, McNamer proposes a previously unstudied Italian text, allegedly authored by one of the Poor Clares of Tuscany, as the original text of the Meditations, thus complicating not only its textual history, but the history of medieval Italian literature more broadly. This book constitutes an exciting and compelling new perspective on a significant text. The preface to this volume states that it will present the Italian testo breve with an English translation and commentary, as well as a detailed exposé of the ramifications of the Italian text in terms of 'the development of prose narrative in the early Trecento; the role of women as writers and readers in the invention of genres and devotional practices; the part played by the Franciscans in the cultivation of affective piety; the rise and risks of vernacular theology; and the history of emotion' (p. xviii). The presentation of the text, translation, [End Page 243] and commentary is exemplary, and McNamer makes illuminating observations regarding the vital role of Franciscans and of women in medieval devotion, and the ways in which prose narrative developed in fourteenth-century Italy. However, the compact nature of the initial paratextual argument leaves the question of medieval vernacular theology and its relationship to affective states comparatively underdeveloped, and McNamer's frequent redirections to her contemporaneous article published in Archivum Franciscanum Historicum (111.1–2 (2018), 65–112) do not quite counterbalance this shortcoming. The book is presented in two main sections. The first 180 pages contain an introduction that presents the reasoning behind offering a critical edition of this testo breve, alongside a paratextual argument. There is a textual history that accounts for the newly 'discovered' (p. xxviii, n. 13) testo breve as well as the Italian and Latin texts already known to scholars, following a meticulous close reading of particular textual interpolations. The 'authorship' section posits an author of Franciscan affiliation and a woman, based on analysis of textual referents as well as contextual information regarding literacy and social practices, while the 'date and place of composition' section gives a detailed provenance of the testo breve, dated to c. 1300–1325 (p. cxx). This is followed by a catalogue of the manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian MS Canon. It. 174), a linguistic analysis by Pär Larson, which argues that the text is Tuscan but copied by Venetian copyists, and notes on editorial principles and quirks of the translation. The second section contains the 'critical edition' of the testo breve, divided into its thirty-one chapters. The facing-page English translation is sound and notes on the text prove highly useful in understanding the text's devotional uses and contexts. However, references to the author's close comparative reading of the text with one purportedly later Italian version (the testo minore, a longer text that most closely resembles the testo breve) is revealed only in snippets, rather than comprehensively. While McNamer acknowledges that producing a comparative critical edition is against the intention of the monograph (pp. xxxiii–xxxiv), some confusion remains regarding the accuracy of the term 'critical edition' in reference...

Dante's Veltro between History and Interpretation: A Material-Culture Reading of "non ciberà terra né peltro" (Inf. 1.103)

Dante's Veltro between History and Interpretation:A Material-Culture Reading of "non ciberà terra né peltro" (Inf. 1.103) David Ruzicka The enigmatic prophecy in the opening canto of the Commedia, in which the Virgil character foretells the advent of a savior—a "veltro" who will save Italy—is one of the most notoriously obscure passages in medieval literature.1 Questi non ciberà terra né peltro,ma sapïenza, amore e virtute,e sua nazion sarà tra feltro e feltro.2 (Inf. 1.103–5) The only thing we can say with certainty about these lines is that for seven centuries they have stubbornly resisted interpretation. Could it be, that if this crux has proved so recalcitrant, it is because everyone who has sought to untie the knot has made some fundamental mistake? Might all of this exegetical labor have been predicated upon the same unexamined assumption? In this essay, I suggest that this is indeed what has happened, and that what has thwarted commentators' attempts to understand this crucial moment in the poem has been their reluctance to contextualize Dante's works within the social norms and the material culture of the world in which they were written.3 What is indisputable, however, is that these three lines of poetry exhibit a carefully crafted symmetry. Through Dante's use of assonance [End Page 1] and the parallel positioning of two pairs of words coupled by a conjunction—"terra né peltro" and "feltro e feltro"—the riddle's first line finds an echo in its last. While the trinity of nouns in the central line ("wisdom, love, and virtue") are abstract, belonging to a lexicon that is moral and psychological, and possibly theological, the nouns in lines 103 and 105 can be read as denoting visible, material objects. The fact that they have so rarely been read in this light, I will argue, largely explains the riddle's intractability. Prior to composing the Commedia's prologue canto, Dante had not used the term "peltro"—and he would never do so again. Its origins lay in "spiauter," a term used for the zinc imported from India to Europe in the Middle Ages.4 The word had probably entered into the vernacular in Italy from the French "peautre" or the English "pewter."5 Yet it is not the etymology of the word that concerns us here, but rather the history of the thing it denotes. On the whole, the poem's exegetes have avoided the question of the function and value of "pewter" in the socio-historical context of Dante's Italy. If we take philology to be the study of how language is employed by "human beings who exist in history," what follows will be a rigorously philological reading.6 Somewhat surprisingly, line 103 has almost never been regarded as problematic.7 In the view of the commentary tradition, if Virgil's riddle is impenetrable it is because of the difficulties posed by line 105. There seems to be little chance of a consensus emerging with respect to how we should adjudicate between the many competing interpretations of feltro e feltro. But agreement about what Dante meant when he wrote "non ciberà terra né peltro" is nearly universal. Since the first commentaries of the early Trecento, the line has invariably been viewed as stating that the savior symbolized by the "veltro" will covet neither land nor wealth. In a commentary which began to circulate only three years after Dante's death, Graziolo Bambaglioli read the reference to "peltro" as indicating the contempt of the "veltro" for "auro et argento." He was followed by Jacopo della Lana (1324–1328) and the author of the Ottimo Commento of 1338, both of whom glossed "peltro" as "moneta"; Dante's son Pietro suggested "pecunie," again meaning "money."8 This would be the line taken in all of the Trecento commentaries.9 For the next six centuries, with only one exception, every commentator who expressed an opinion on what Dante meant by the word "peltro" (a total of forty-two commentaries in the Dartmouth collection) gave one or [End Page 2] more of the following: "oro et argento"; "ricchezze"; "tesoro"; "lucre"; "pelf"; "moneta"; or "denaro...

Countenances as Lightning. The Materiality of the Noli me tangere Fresco in Assisi

The materiality of Assisi's early trecento Noli me tangere fresco in the lower basilica's Magdalen Chapel warrants reconsideration. In this painting, of the Magdalen reaching toward the resurrected...

Пропорция в монументальных остроконечных алтарях художников позднего дученто и раннего треченто

Пропорция в монументальных остроконечных алтарях художников позднего дученто и раннего треченто

Dante in the Italian Renaissance of Art

Much of Renaissance art reflects a Dantesque worldview. Addressed here is Dante’s link to early trecento art; to burgeoning pious art patronage resulting from Purgatorio’s salvific promise; to rising individualism resulting in growing civic identity, the cult of artistic fame, the art of portraiture, and biography as an early art historical methodology; and to an enduring fascination with antiquity, all made palatable and patriotic for later generations by glosses widely known in Commedia incunabula.

“Di una pretesa scuola napoletana”: Sowing the Seeds of the Ars nova at the Court of Robert of Anjou

The presence of two famous exponents of the French and Italian ars nova in Naples in 1318–respectively Petrus de Sancto Dionysio and Marchetto da Padova–substantiates Nino Pirrotta's hypothesis that the Angevin capital was an important center of musical culture in the early Trecento and a setting for avant-garde debates. It also aids in reconstructing the elusive biography of the Paduan musician and clarifies the much debated dating of his Pomerium. Pirrotta ultimately abandoned his Neapolitan hypothesis for lack of evidence, a difficulty caused and aggravated by the thorough destruction of Angevin chancery documents during the Second World War. Evidence has been found, however, in indirect sources, such as literary texts, works of local history, and documentary transcriptions and summaries that predate the archival losses. In addition to placing the two prominent musicians at the Angevin court in Naples, these sources confirm the presence there of minstrels (evidence for secular music within the court's recreational sphere), vouch for the continuity of the institution of the royal chapel (evidence for sacred music at court, clearly connected to the liturgy), and testify to Robert of Anjou's catalytic patronage of the arts and his passion for music in general. Thus Naples regains its status as a capital on the map of 14th-century music.

History of Italian Renaissance Art, 5th ed.

History of Italian Renaissance Art, 5th ed.

Studies in late Dugento and early Trecento painting who is Duccio?: Part I

This study focuses on the meaning of Duccio's certain early masterpiece begun in 1285, his Rucellai Madonna: its iconography, style, spatial structure and ornament, to serve as the basis of a more extended examination of his artistic career and sphere of influence, to be examined in a later publication. It also comments on its relationship to two works of art not far removed in time, the tiny Madonna of the Three Franciscans in the Siena Pinacoteca, and especially the round stained glass window from Siena Cathedral that has been attributed to both Duccio and Cimabue.

Visualizing Brunetto Latini's Tesoretto in early Trecento Florence

In the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, writers and readers were presented with a rapid multiplication of texts that required the invention of new visual imagery: the most famous examples in the Trecento are Dante's Commedia and Boccaccio's Decameron.1 Our interest is heightened further when a text is illustrated rarely, or once only. Such is the case with the only extant illustrated manuscript of Brunetto Latini's Tesoretto (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Strozzi 146) from the early Trecento.2 This particular exemplar features a cycle of imagery that was carefully planned in relation to the text. The interplay of words, illustrations, and initial lettering across the pages of Strozzi 146 is rich and complex, demonstrating that late medieval Italian readers were as adept as their northern European counterparts at negotiating the page with its ‘systemic rivalries’.3

Giotto and the "Things Not Seen, Hidden in the Shadow of Natural Ones"

In this essay I argue - on the basis of several well-known scenes in the Arena Chapel (Joachim Among the Shepherds, Annunciation to Anna, Raising of Lazarus, Kiss of Judas, Last Judgment) - that Giotto's celebrated wit, or ingegno, consisted in far more than the shrewd humor attributed to him by Trecento sources. In analogy to the Plinian artistic virtue of ingenium (the ability to suggest more than is depicted), Giotto's wit was also the specifically pictorial resourcefulness that enabled him to use the devices of a newly-perfected illusionism (foreshortening, lost profiles, effects of illumination) to evoke realities. In support of this interpretation, I refer Cennino Cennini's definition of painting as an art of cloaking the unseen in the shadow of appearances, to the dematerialization of the surface of representation achieved by early Trecento modeling practices. The Arena Chapel as a whole may be viewed as a theater of illusion for the staging of the individual beholder's journey towards salvation. I suggest that Giotto's visualizations of the invisible had a fruitful afterlife; we should be attentive to their persistence in the art of the Quattro- and Cinquecento, since they play an especially powerful (though frequently overlooked) part in the animation of narrative sequences.

The Sienese Trecento painter Bartolo di Fredi

This study follows the stylistic evolution of Bartolo di Fredi, who studied with Niccolo di Ser Sozzo, and was influenced by the giants of the early Trecento: Martini, da Siena, and Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Bartolo mined his rich Sienese artistic heritage for its most valuable characteristics, which he transformed into his own unique and appealing style.

Perspective and the Spectator's Pattern of Circulation in Assisi and Padua

Late Duecento and early Trecento pictorial space is usually treated as a naive early step in the process of learning to depict volume correctly. This article proposes, however, that the techniques of perspective were indeed being explored at this time and were used for purposes in addition to that of the creation of illusionistic space. Evidence for this lies in the use of certain so-called errors in perspective - seemingly illogical directions of recession - in combination with other devices, to influence the spectator's pattern of circulation when viewing a mural cycle. To demonstrate this thesis, the upper church of S. Francesco in Assisi and the Arena Chapel in Padua, both being of great importance in that earliest phase of what John White called the rebirth of pictorial space, as well as other murals, are analyzed from the point of view of the spectator walking through the building to see the entire program - rather than that of the reader, who sees only isolated scenes illustrated in a book.

The Cement of Fiction: Giovanni Boccaccio and the Painters of Florence

On reading the Decameron, historians of art are often struck by one particular fact: no less than six of Boccaccio's hundred tales center upon painters who also figure in the history of art. Of these the most famous is Giotto who appears on the sixth of the Decameron's ten days of story telling. The eighth and ninth days are enlivened by the pranks of Bruno and Buffalmacco and the misfortunes of their chief target, Calandrino. It is now the scholarly custom to treat Boccaccio's painters separately, so that Giotto's tale has become the province, by and large, of those concerned with the historiography of art while the stories about Bruno and Buffalmacco have attracted, by and large, those concerned with literary criticism.1 Here, however, I shall treat all six tales together. Such a reading is encouraged by the resources of art history, which reveal the accuracy with which Boccaccio presents his Florentine painters of the early Trecento, the everyday circumstances of their lives, and the nature of their profession. The resources of art history

Masaccio's Early Career as a Sculptor

Leonardo aside, most observers would agree that Masaccio and Mantegna were the most influential painters of the Italian quattrocento. Mantegna established new directions in wall and ceiling painting that have been perpetuated for centuries; his impact on printmaking was fundamental; and his figures were ineradicably impressed upon the memories of a regiment of painters who followed him. But Mantegna does not belong to the very beginning of the new Renaissance style for which he was an outstanding spokesman. He had the advantage of the pursuits and elaborations of a full generation of innovative painters including Uccello and Piero della Francesca and was thereby able to start at a point far beyond the beginning. The situation Masaccio had faced more than a generation earlier was quite different since the tradition immediately available to him offered little for the new direction he was to take in painting. Certain aspects of his mature style, if we may speak of an artist who died before he reached the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight as having a mature style, can be traced back to early trecento masters whose spatial solutions and figure compositions prepared the way for Masaccio at least in a generic way. Masaccio's solutions are too drastic, however, to allow the claim that there is anything like a gradual evolution from, say, Giotto. Because his position is basic for the development of the painting style in which Mantegna and Leonardo, inter alios, operated, the life of Masaccio –though abortive in actual years – has long engaged the attention of scholars.

Masaccio's Early Career as a Sculptor

Leonardo aside, most observers would agree that Masaccio and Mantegna were the most influential painters of the Italian quattrocento. Mantegna established new directions in wall and ceiling painting that have been perpetuated for centuries; his impact on printmaking was fundamental; and his figures were ineradicably impressed upon the memories of a regiment of painters who followed him. But Mantegna does not belong to the very beginning of the new Renaissance style for which he was an outstanding spokesman. He had the advantage of the pursuits and elaborations of a full generation of innovative painters including Uccello and Piero della Francesca and was thereby able to start at a point far beyond the beginning. The situation Masaccio had faced more than a generation earlier was quite different since the tradition immediately available to him offered little for the new direction he was to take in painting. Certain aspects of his mature style, if we may speak of an artist who died before he reached the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight as having a mature style, can be traced back to early trecento masters whose spatial solutions and figure compositions prepared the way for Masaccio at least in a generic way. Masaccio's solutions are too drastic, however, to allow the claim that there is anything like a gradual evolution from, say, Giotto. Because his position is basic for the development of the painting style in which Mantegna and Leonardo, inter alios, operated, the life of Masaccio –though abortive in actual years – has long engaged the attention of scholars.

The Christchild as Devotional Image in Medieval Italian Sculpture: A Contribution to Ambrogio Lorenzetti Studies

Sienese sculpture of the Trecento appears to have derived all its essential stimuli from two very different sources: One is the sculpture of Nicola and Giovanni Pisano; the other, painting. Several years ago Ulrich Middeldorf and Manfred Wundram traced Andrea Pisano's artistic origins back, in part, to Sienese painting.1 More recently Antje Kosegarten pointed out Giotto's influence on early Trecento sculpture in Siena.2 I myself was able to localize and date a group of Sienese-Umbrian sculptures of the second half of the Trecento by relating them to Sienese paintings attributable to followers of the Lorenzetti.3