Fresco Decoration Research Articles

The Drawn Garden: Historical, Iconographical and Representative Analysis through Time of the “Villa Di Livia” in Rome

“Villa di Livia” at Prima Porta is an archaeological complex located in the suburban area of Rome. This villa was built in 39-38 B.D. at the behest of Livia Drusilla Claudia, the wife of Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus. The discovery of this complex took place in 1863 and brought to light several archaeological finds: one of particular aesthetic value are the frescoes with naturalistic motifs, where the attention to detail, the pictorial technique and the variety of flora and fauna make it one of the most famous examples of Roman garden motif painting. The aim of this research is to analyse the wall fresco decoration of the Villa. The investigation is historical, iconographic-representational and symbolic, in order to understand -on the one hand- the origin of these frescoes and the motivations that led to the choice of this particular type of representation and -on the other hand- to study the decorative, perspective and colouring techniques. The work will try not to exclude the analysis of the fact that the architecture and the decorative apparatus are -currently- in different locations, which is certainly a benefit from the point of view of restoration and conservation, but may have an impact on the perception of the frescoes.

False Religion and Hypocrisy in Signorelli's Antichrist

This article discusses the iconography of Luca Signorelli's Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist (c.1502–3) in the Cappella Nuova at the cathedral of Orvieto. A combined investigation of the Antichrist's subject matter, Signorelli's literary and visual sources, as well as his discarded drawings for the entire fresco decoration of the Cappella Nuova, brings fresh insights to the thematic intentions of the artist and his advisers. Signorelli's entire view of eschatology marked a renewed interest of Italian artists in the apocalyptic sublime. It also signified a revival of the medieval tradition of the Antichrist as the arch-hypocrite, and his reign as an apocalyptic age of hypocrisy. At the same time, the artist's treatment of the subject matter indicates an ambiguous stance toward religious hypocrisy characterized by a suppression of the anti-clerical and millenarian aspects of the Antichrist myth.

Kyiv’s Saint Sophia Cathedral: An Outline of the Research History

The paper focuses on the history of the research of Sophia of Kyiv from its first measurements made at the beginning of the 19th century to the present day. Listed are the research problems that emerged at each stage of research, whether slved, unresolved, or polemic. The reconstruction models of Sofia, proposed at different time periods, reflect the ideas of the the original appearance of the temple are reviewed and compared. The results of the research of the Saint Sophia, which changed the traditional conceptions about the order of execution of its mosaics and fresco decorations are analyzed, as well as the publications on the excavations that revealed the previously unknown parts of the catherdral

Johann Lucas Kracker: új kutatási eredmények

Johann Lucas Kracker: új kutatási eredmények

Anton Martin Lublinský, that is Karl Dankwart : a few words about the painting Martin Středa as defender of Brno and its author

The painting Martin Středa as defender of Brno (Moravian Gallery in Brno) is the most monumental representation of the Jesuit Martin Středa / Stredonius (1587–1649), who won fame and the eternal gratitude of the citizens of Brno for his active participation in the defence of the city during the four-month siege by the Swedish army in 1645. Older authors saw Michael Willmann as the author of the painting. However, Milan Togner attributed this work to Anton Martin Lublinský (1636–1690). As it turns out today, the author of this monumental work was Karl Dankwart († 1704) – the author of numerous fresco decorations and oil paintings and court painter to the Polish king John III Sobieski. The authorship of this Silesian artist of Swedish origin is supported both by formal analogies and the provenance of the painting from the former Jesuit conventin Brno. Dankwart's painting of Father Středa was probably a part of the gallery of full-figure portraits of the founders and benefactors of the convent. We can assume that the picture was not the only work that Dankwart produced for the Jesuits of Brno.

Saint, Hagiographer and Translator: St Jerome in the Triumphal Heavenly Procession/Translation in Štrigova (Croatia)

Fresco decoration in the sanctuary of the Church of St Jerome in Štrigova in north-western Croatia was completed in 1744 by Ioannes Baptista Ranger, the most prominent painter of the first half of the 18th century on the territory of the Zagreb Diocese. The three-foil ground plan of the sanctuary retains memory of an older-smaller church, erected before 1447, on the place that holds an enduring memory of St Jerome’s native soil, and from 1644 the church was in pastoral care of the Pauline order (Order of St Paul the First Hermit). The book Natale solum sancti Hieronymi (Native soil of St Jerome, 1752) by Joseph Bedeković was a part of a collective effort - mainly by Pauline authors, but not exclusively - to confirm Štrigova as St Jerome’s homeland, in particular in the eyes of the Bollandists, preparing at the time the volume containing the saint’s Vita. St Jerome was the hagiographer of the spiritual founder of the Pauline Order, St Paul the First Hermit. The most elaborate part of the fresco decoration is a procession in a tambour of a shallow dome that is interpreted as a Triumphal Heavenly Translation of St Jerome’s relics. They came from Bethlehem, where he was buried, to Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, where the relics of St Jerome have reposed since the 13th century. First they were found near the older Chapel of the Manger (Cappella del Presepe), where the relics of the Sacra Culla or the Holy Crib were venerated as “Bethlehem in Rome”. On that site the Sistine Chapel was later erected, and on the other side the Pauline Chapel with the icon Salus Populi Romani (copied in Štrigova). Both chapels are visible on the rear facade of the basilica, depicted as the destination of the miraculous procession.

A la sombra del éxito. El pintor Antonio Sánchez González y su actividad en la iglesia madrileña del Salvador (1801-1804)

This paper deals with the works of the painter from Tenerife Antonio Sánchez González in the church of El Salvador in Madrid, where he made a new fresco decoration for the pendentives of the transept and designed the main altarpiece. In addition to recalling his carrer, the study analyzes the situation of the artist before the War of Independence (1808) and the lawsuit that these actions motivated in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where they didn´t have the approval of the painters Gregorio Ferro and Mariano Salvador Maella or the architects Juan Pedro Arnal, Juan de Villanueva and Antonio López Aguado, among others

Roman History Themes for Andrea Doria’s Palazzo del Principe

In the fresco cycle of Palazzo del Principe, Andrea Doria’s palace in Genoa, materials belonging to a number of different facets of Antiquity, pertaining to ancient Roman history and to classical myth, were used to convey allusions to Doria’s role (as Charles V’s admiral, guarantor of the Republic of Genoa’s position in the Habsburgic power system and reformer of the Genoese state’s structure). This contribution focuses on the historical themes, investigating the ways in which illustrious heroes of ancient Rome and their gestae were presented in this context. Particular attention is paid to Perino del Vaga’s never executed project for the fresco decoration of the palace’s north facade. The hitherto partly undeciphered notes on the design indicate an extensive program illustrating Furius Camillus’s feats, both as victor of the Gauls and as saviour and “second founder” of Rome. Camillus’s deeds clearly resonated with Doria’s anti-French stance and the projection of his image as both defender and reformer of the Genoese state.

The Catholicon of the Monastery of Agios Panteleimon on the Island of Ioannina, Greece

The Catholicon of the Monastery of Agios Panteleimon on the Island of Ioannina, Greece

Greek Painters for the Dominicans or Trecento at the Bosphorus? Once again about the Style and Iconography of the Wall Paintings in the Former Dominican Church of St. Paul in Pera

The recently discovered wall paintings of the Dominican church of St. Paul are perhaps the most fascinating part of the artistic heritage of Pera, the former Genoese colony at the Bosphorus. According to the researchers analyzing the fragments discovered in 1999–2007, they follow Byzantine iconographic tradition and were executed by Greek painters representing Paleologan style close to the decoration of the Chora church. After extensive discoveries in 2012 it was made possible to describe many more fragments of fresco and mosaic decoration and to make a preliminary identification of its iconography, which appeared to be very varied in character. Many features are typical of Latin art, not known in Byzantine tradition, some even have a clearly polemical, anti-Greek character. The analysis of its iconography, on a broad background of the Byzantine paintings in Latin churches, does not answer the question if it existed and what could be the goal of creating such paintings. There is a high probability that we are dealing with choice dictated by aesthetic and pragmatic factors, like the availability of the appropriate workshop. So, the newly discovered frescoes do not fundamentally alter the earlier conclusions that we are dealing with the work of a Greek workshop, perhaps primarily operating in Pera, which had to adapt to the requirements of Latin clients. It only seems that they should be dated a little later than previously assumed (around the mid-14th century).

Археологические данные о росписи гражданской постройки XIV в. на Владычном дворе в Великом Новгороде

Археологические данные о росписи гражданской постройки XIV в. на Владычном дворе в Великом Новгороде

The Affect of Images: Signorelli, Morto da Feltro, and Moving Creativity in the Art of Grotesques c. 1500

This paper discusses the affect of images, focusing on the notion in the art and theory of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that movement in painting corresponds with (emotional) movement in the spectator and with the imagination or creativity of the artist. It addresses the work of Signorelli, Morto da Feltro, Pinturicchio, and Sodoma (c. 1500) and, in particular, their grotesques. This art form, which became remarkably prolific in fresco decorations of the villas and palaces of the sixteenth century, was appreciated as a figuration of movement, understood both literally in terms of the grotesque’s composition as a figura serpentinata and metaphorically as generated by the turbulent imagination of the artist. It is argued that grotesques constituted a field within the visual culture of the time that, due to its marginality and its investigation of metamorphosis and monstrosity, challenged the boundaries between image and spectator and explored the creative power of the artist.

The synthronon and locus inferior (αρχιερατικός θρόνος) of the metropolitan of Pozega. Liturgical furniture and wall paintings of the Orahovica Monastery

The paper discusses the appearance of the synthronon, the position of the locus inferior (????????????, or ?????????? ??????, the episcopal throne in the nave, donje mesto) of the Metropolitan of Pozega at the Orahovica Monastery, fresco paintings inspired by the purpose of the throne in front of the sanctuary, and the views it incorporated. The synthronon is in fact a series of niches. The locus inferior has not survived; based on the fresco program, the author places it between the southwestern pillar and the southern wall. The fresco decoration of the locus inferior - one of the largest in Serbian art - is both centered on the topoi of the throne program and unique. Christ and the apostles from the apostolic Deisis draw on the teaching about Christ as the eternal leader of the liturgical community and the apostolic roots of the church and the office of bishop; by emphasizing the presence of St. Andronicus and St. Titus beside the seat, the program incorporates the tradition of the apostolic lineage of the church among the Slavs and in the Metropolitanate of Pozega.

Le Cappelle Pepoli in San Domenico a Bologna: storia e arte di un mausoleo famigliare mancato

This essay focuses on the reconstruction of the historical and artistic vicissitudes of the Pepoli chapels in the church of San Domenico in Bologna, using archival and chronicle sources, and comparing sculptural and painting decorations.In the first part Ilaria Negretti investigates the Pepoli family’s commission, highlighting the construction and changes of their six chapels and of the family mausoleum from the age of Taddeo Pepoli (1337) to the damnatio memoriae - due to the unsuccessful policy of Taddeo’s sons, Giovanni and Giacomo -, till the rehabilitation of the family’s memory obtained by Guido Pepoli and his heirs in 1551.In the second part Paolo Cova focuses on the style of the fresco decoration of the San Michele Chapel commissioned by the Pepoli family, representing saint Thomas Aquinas and saint Antony the Great. Technical and stylistic features of these frescoes, in combination with historical events and documentary sources, allow to refer the frescoes to Jacopo Benintendi called ‘Il Biondo’ (the father of Cristoforo Benintendi), active from 1347 to 1350, and to identify the patronage of the Pepoli family. The presence of this painter together with foreign artists working at the reliefs of Taddeo’s Tomb at the same time, proves that the Pepoli’s aim was to transform the left transept of the church into a proper family mausoleum.

„Akit a sors kiemelt a többi festő közül” Schervitz Mátyás (†1771) budai Festő oltárképei

Mátyás Schervitz (Buda ? – Buda 1771) was a popular and highly esteemed artist in Buda-Víziváros in his time, as his epitaph also proves. The painter of Illyrian origin occurs by a variety of name forms in the sources: Scherviz, Scherwiz, Scherwitz, Scheravitz, Scheravics, Seravits, Scherevitsch, Scherevitz, Scherowitz, Schibiz, Szeravics, Xeravich. The hypothetical dates of his birth and death proposed by his first monographer Arnold Schoen (Mathias Tarvitz, c. 1701–1771, St Anne Parish Church of Upper Víziváros) can only be questioned in theory by the more recently discovered works painted in 1768–69, for the registers of the Franciscan Church of St Francis’s Wounds – to which the family presumably belonged – are latent at present. The painter Schervitz became a registered citizen of Buda in 1741. He received several minor assignments (such as flag painting, gilding, marbling, ephemeral triumphal arches) and some greater jobs (paintings for the high altars of the St Catherine Church in Tabán and the St Elisabeth Church in Víziváros, and the fresco in the sanctuary of the Újlak church) in Buda, but these works have perished over the centuries. The ruined St Elisabeth altarpiece of the Capuchins of Víziváros (1760) is known from a photo. A documented work by his hand is the fresco decoration of the library room at the Ráday mansion in Pécel dated 1763. The St Ivo altarpiece of the Óbuda parish church (1759) was added to the oeuvre after style critical analyses, similarly to the sanctuary frescoes in the Church of St Francis’s Wounds (1756). The key to the altar painting style of Mátyás Schervitz is provided by the altarpieces (St Anne, St Francis Seraphicus) in the former Franciscan church of Dunaföldvár painted in 1768 and certified with archival data. His Immaculate Conception with Adam and Eve in the same church was also identified by its style. With their help, the picture of the bye-altar showing the Stigmatization of St Francis in the former Franciscan church of Zombor (1769) and the high altar picture (1756), as well as the altarpiece of St Margaret of Cortona (1756) in the church of St Francis’s Wounds in Víziváros can now be safely attributed to him. These works help us recognize Schervitz’s brushwork on the altarpiece of the high altar in the former Dominican church of Pest (c. 1760) showing the founder of the order St Dominic receiving the Rosary from the Virgin. The Guardian Angel altarpiece in the Franciscan church of Vác can also be recognized as his work. Research presumes that the artist working at such high level of quality was educated in Vienna; the clue to identifying his master lies perhaps in his faultless presentation of architectural space. Mátyás Schervitz applied the conventional baroque oil painting technique (canvas support built from several pieces, yellow ground, patch painting). His anatomical knowledge was excellent, his rendering of space virtuosic, his figures are lively, proportionately built and markedly characterized. He did not sign any of his so-far known works.

A pétervásárai Keglevich-kastély dísztermének freskói

The artist who painted the rococo frescoes on the walls and ceiling of the Keglevich mansion in Pétervására was Jakab Beller as the signature on the wall of the entrance “J. Beller pinx.” indicates. Very few of the works by Beller – most frequently called in the sources “the painter of Gyöngyös” – survive. Apart from the Pétervására frescoes, only the signed and dated picture of the high altar in the St Urban church of Gyöngyös can safely be attributed to him. Further information can be had in sources about his activity in the 1760s and ‘70s: about decorating the rooms of the one-time inn of Gyöngyöspüspöki commissioned by bishop Ferenc Barkóczy (1760) and the ordinary painting work done in Colonel Sámuel Haller’s house in Gyöngyös, about helping with portraits, painting decors, gilding frames, painting window shutters, etc. Thus Beller’s oeuvre is full of hiatuses, but his biography can still be enriched with newly explored data. The pertinent entries in the parish register of the St Bartholomew parish of Gyöngyös reveal that Beller married Maria Anna Gergelyi on 12 April 1761. They had four children between 1764 and 1770. Kristóf Quadri from Lugano, the architect of the Keglevich mansion in Pétervására was godfather to some of them. This close relationship might reinforce the hypothesis that Beller and Quadri were compatriots. Beller died in Gyöngyös on 6 March 1777, at the age of 42. It is not known when and where he had come from, and his schooling is still in obscurity. His name is not included in the lists of students at the Vienna Art Academy. His set of motifs is mostly based on the illustrative material of then circulated publications, books, prints. Count Gábor I. Keglevich (1710–1769) began having a country house built in his estate at Pétervására around 1760; the ceremonial hall was probably decorated in the 1760s. The popular graphic sheets had a great role in the design of the mythological themes required by the owner, as precedents to all of them can be tracked down among the prints. The assembly of Olympian gods depicted on the ceiling adopted a ceiling composition by Simon Vouet only known in an engraving. It used to adorn the library of Hotel Séguier in Paris preserved for posterity by a print series (Porticus Bibliothecae Illustriss. Seguierii Galliae Cancellarii) published by Michel Dorigny in 1640. In the vault arches of the ceremonial hall there are scenes of construction in rococo cartouches (Building of Troy, Semiramis founding a city) whose visual models can be traced to a 17th century illustrated edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Adapted by Isaac de Benserade and illustrated by Sébastien Le Clerc and Francois Chauveau, the Metamorphoses d’Ovide en rondeaux (Paris 1676) was later published in Nuremberg (1689) and Augsburg (1690), too. On the shorter walls of the hall pairs of mythological female figures are depicted. On the east wall Vertumnus and Pomona, on the opposite wall presumably Diana and Callisto can be seen. A shadow of doubt is cast on the identification of the latter by the prototype, the composition about Vertumnus and Pomona by Abraham Bloemaert transferred onto the copperplate by Jan Saenredam (1605). The figural ornaments (and presumably the stage-set like rococo architecture) on the side walls was painted by Beller after 18th century prints from Augsburg. The figures of Lucrezia, Minerva, Semiramis and Heliogalabus are from sheets in the album of etchings published by Johann Georg Hertel. The etcher was Balthasar Sigmund Setletzky and the compositions were drawn by noted Augsburg artists such as Gottfried Bernhard Göz and Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner. The most original figures are the contemporaries in the four corners of the hall on painted galleries. The figures traditionally identified with member of the Keglevich family and household felicitously conjure up the time when the painting was created. Taking stock of the figural representations, one finds a conspicuous overrepresentation of “female themes”. Pomona fighting shy of love, Lucrezia accepting death for honour, wise Minerva and heroic Semiramis, who founded a city are all symbolic figures of female virtues. Maybe Count Keglevich wished to commemorate the virtues of his wife Josefa Königsacker in this way, or, like in Edelény, perhaps the supporter of the fresco decoration was not a patron but a patroness.

Hercules, Ceres and Proserpine in the decorative cycle at Palazzo Sampieri-Talon in Bologna

In examining the fresco decorations of the Palazzo Sampieri-Talon in Bologna, the final collective work by Ludovico, Agostino and Annibale Carracci, with later additions by Guercino, the article concentrates on the yet unresolved reconstruction of its iconographic programme. The proposed interpretation is based on Claudian’s Alexandrine poem De raptu Proserpinae .

Problematic of Humidity Degradation of Plaster with Indoor Fresco Decoration in Romanesque Rotunda in Znojmo

The paper is based on measured and approximated data of internal climate in Romanesque rotunda in Znojmo. It deals with degradation of indoor plaster with fresco decoration due to air humidity. The most probable conditions of internal climate are shown and evaluated in psychometrics chart. Therefore, it is possible to assume ways of plaster degradation from the obtained thermal-moisture conditions of the indoor climate.

Archaeological excavations at Gamzigrad - Romuliana in 2007-2008

Archaeological excavations at Gamzigrad - Romuliana in 2007-2008

Bedroom Politics: The Vexed Spaces of Late Medieval Public Making

AbstractIn the Secret History of Domesticity, Michael McKeon explores the process through which the private and public realms were wrought by tracing changes in literary, architectural, and pictorial forms. One example is the Curtain Lecture, illustrated in 17th‐century prints, in which earlier expressions of wifely authority, familiar from the topos of the woman‐on‐top, have been reduced to bedroom rants to oblivious husbands. This essay extends the geographical purview of McKeon’s framework to painted fresco decorations in a late 14th‐century bedroom in Florence, the Sala della Castellana in the Palazzo Davizzi‐Davanzati. Secrecy, seduction, betrayal, blackmail, suicide and revenge are themes from a 13th‐century chivalric romance played out in a narrative frieze in which a verdant landscape with castellated structures is set within a continuous arcaded loggia. The female protagonists, and the threat of female authority and desire, are associated with the crenellated buildings in the frescoes, and thus the old order of magnates who had been expelled from Florence, but whose feudal values were making a resurgence. The loggia instead echoes recent urban developments designed to foster loyalties to new and more egalitarian forms of political representation. Bedrooms were not yet private spaces, but the frescoes anticipate the later English pamphlets by deflecting anxieties about masculine authority and loyalty onto the figure of the aggressive and philandering wife, thereby underscoring emerging but still entangled family and civic allegiances.