Convivium

Interest in the well-known so-called oldest medieval map of Rome, a drawing in the Chronologia Magna di Paolino Minorita executed in the first half of the fourteenth century, has until now focused mainly on its representation of the historical city itself. This article seeks instead to draw attention to the codicological and theoretical context of the map, i. e. the historical interest of its commissioner in the chronological and topographical order of history. The author, Paolino Minorita, explains in his prologues the values of the grata pictura (a compilation of data in chronological order that allows an overview) and the mapa duplex, which comprises visual and verbal signs. Seen from this perspective, the map becomes an epistemological instrument of the historiographer and helps us to understand why the first (at least the first known) medieval map of Rome was drawn in this context.

The Christ Enthroned in Santa Pudenziana, understood as a visual echo of Imperial images or pagan gods, has always been considered in the context of the decoration of the entire apse mosaic. This study, in contrast, focuses specifically on the face and figure and their resemblance to images of Jupiter Serapis. In the environment of early fifth-century Rome, the similarity cannot be accidental. Archeological investigations have demonstrated that the Serapis image was present all over the city; at the same time, Christian authors viewed Serapis as an incarnation of the devil. This paradox is clarified by considering it in the period after the destruction of the Alexandria Serapeum in 391: a notion then circulating was that Serapis had foreseen his own death in the triumph of Christianity. An extreme interpretation is found in Jerome’s words: “Iam et Aegyptius Serapis factus est Christianus”. Christ would therefore have adopted the visage of his converted enemy. This reasoning leads to assigning an earlier date to the Santa Pudenziana Christ - between 402 and the Sack of Rome in 410. The apocalyptic aura the mosaic projects is not that of the besieged city, but, on the contrary, is a statement of the eschatological triumph of Christianity.

The mid-fourteenth-century papal palace in Avignon built by Benedict xii and Clement vi included several chapels intended to replace churches in Rome that were important for papal processions. Two of these chapels adjacent to the great assembly halls have preserved their original fresco paintings. One chapel is dedicated to St Martial, a provincial saint who was believed to be a follower of St Peter and a contemporary of the apostles. Held to have Christianized Aquitania, Martial was an ideal prefiguration for the popes in Avignon. The other chapel was dedicated to St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist and thus supplanted the importance of Rome’s St John Lateran. The painter of the surviving frescoes, Matteo Giovanetti, depicted complex architecture in perspective construction and developed fictitious rooms and places that are more illusionistic than any pictures before them; they include impressive scenic landscapes. Indeed, these frescoes seem to widen the small chapels and to open their walls. Giovanetti therefore must be regarded as an important pioneer in illusionistic painting.

Under the walls of the eighteenth-century Monte Oliveto convent in Airola, near Benevento, lies the monastic church of St Gabriel; its foundation has been dated at 960-970. Among the paintings recently discovered in the church, of particular interest is a Transfiguration in the right apse. Beyond the liturgical implications associated with its placement, the Airola version has distinctive figurative detail with strong symbolic significance. Between the apostles who attend the Vision is evidence of three tents, which refer to Peter’s proposal that, in the Gospels, remains unheeded (Matthew 17, 1-8; Mark 9, 2-8; Luke 9, 28-36). This article examines the exceptional nature of this subject, which is highly significant in terms of both theology and doctrine. More generally, it also offers a formal and iconographic analysis of the paintings of St Gabriel, taking into account both the Byzantine origin of the Transfiguration and other subjects depicted (e.g., St Theodore Slaying the Dragon and St Nicholas and the Three Officers), and the stylistic language reflecting the local pictorial tradition of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

In one of his earliest monographs, Hans Belting recognized the painted crypt of the Abbot Epyphanius (824-842) in the monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno as the most important cycle in early medieval South Italy. Belting developed an interpretation of the murals, their style, and content, by tracing connections over a wide geographical perspective. Though challenged over the years and eventually generally rejected, his reading of the crypt remains thought provoking. A response to the questions involved, this paper focuses on a specific image in the crypt, the Annunciation visible on the sides of the fenestella confessionis. This faded mural is one of the earliest Annunciations extant in which the protagonists are flanking an opening, as became conventional later in the Middle Ages. The appearance of this kind of Annunciation is considered here by reconstructing the east-west circulation of theological concepts during the Iconoclastic controversy; by identifying the textual imagery derived from these concepts; and by analyzing the translation from textual to visual as a result of influencing the religious mentality.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a number of new relics and other holy objects enriched the cultic landscape of Venice. The many pilgrims gathering at the lagoon before embarking for the Jerusalem and Palestine regarded these sacred items as foreshadowing the devotional experience they expected to have in the Holy Land. San Marco came to figure in this expectation only gradually: even if many visitors manifested their admiration for the basilica’s beauty and its sacred treasures, not until the fifteenth century did San Marco’s specific “holy topography”, an internal network of holy attractions, take shape. Based on recent evidence, the present article describes the emergence of new forms of worship for a number of holy icons, namely the Cristo del Capitello, the Virgin Aniketos, and the Nicopea.

The interior of a small tomb discovered in 1991 in Lycia is entirely decorated with late fourth- to early sixth-century frescoes arranged in a program of two hierarchically differentiated tiers. The lower contains two panels representing processions of the deceased (probably male) and his kin; ushered by one angel or several, the group enters an elevated sphere where Christ and saints await them. Four archangels holding staffs ascend through scintillating stars from each corner of the deep blue vaulted ceiling toward the summit. The fresco program shows two modes of epiphany: one attainable through liturgical enactment; the other through contemplation. Visio Dei was a serious concern of theologians and other intellectuals at the time. From the Cappadocian Fathers until the Pseudo-Dionysius, they find shadow and darkness as the ultimate eschatological topos. The motif of a starry night sky thus became the symbol of the mystagogical topos that expands beyond the astral sphere.

Settling in the Carpathian Basin in 567-568 after the long trek from inner Asia, the pastoral Avars promoted the spread of late antique and early medieval Mediterranean cultures in general and, notably, Byzantine visual culture. Conversely, Avar culture itself underwent deep transformation as a result of diplomatic, political, and cultural encounters. These observations derive not only from Byzantine literary and material evidence, but also from analysis of a series of copper-based alloy cast belt ornaments and a gilt silver belt fitting of the mideighth century from the Carpathian Basin. These items all bear the portrait of a triumphant emperor of the late Roman type. This particular iconography was revived in eighth-century Constantinople by the emperors of the first Iconoclastic period, who sought appropriate visual tools expressing imperial power and superiority. In the course of a Byzantine diplomatic mission, a gift decorated with this imagery was sent to a member of the Avar elite to affirm, by visual means, that the recipient was a client of the Byzantine emperor.

Reliquaries of the Byzantine periphery (Armenia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Rus, Serbia, Wallachia, and Moldavia) have received insufficient study but deserve consideration as an innovative group. Reliquaries and shrines from these states took two forms: first, whole bodies - often uncorrupted - of foundational national figures, either ecclesiastical or political, usually placed in front of templon beams in monastery or city churches; second, circulating fragments displayed in complex arrays. The bodies were often safeguarded in fixed institutional settings in the oldest of reliquary forms: the sarcophagus. The fragments, however, were contained in reliquaries of the newer forms suggesting Western and Byzantine trends. Relics allowed the creation of the notion of a sacred state and divinely sanctioned sovereignty - both by establishing a geography of newly created power founded on holy bodies put in “place ” in sacred institutions, as well as accomplishing the power transfer of the imperium into these peripheral states through the institution and growing force of imperial cults, including those of the True Cross and of the Virgin.

The typikon of Constantinople’s Pantocrator monastery provides information about the church’s topography, architecture, mosaics, and paintings, as well as about some of its icons. The Eleousa church, in contrast, cannot be seen just as a monastic church: it has a secular clergy, and its entrance doors seem to be outside the monastic precinct. Very little information is available about the decoration of both churches and about the mausoleum dedicated to saint Michael that lies between them. A few scenes are mentioned, but only in relation to their lighting. Possible locations for these scenes are suggested, but in an unexpected way - and not without some points of comparison: the Last Supper and the Washing of the Feet were situated in the sanctuary. More individual images are quoted, but even if they are generally called eikones, only some of them are what today would be called icons, i.e., representations of holy figures and scenes on wood panels. Most of these eikones are painted on walls or on pillars, principally on the pillars framing the sanctuary where, in fact, are proskyneseis.

The pavement in Constantinople’s Christ Pantocrator church is a particularly rich example of Byzantine medieval mosaic floor decoration. It was made around 1118-1136 at the end of the construction of the church commissioned by John ii Comnenus. The iconography presents the feats of Samson, a cycle of zodiac signs, animals including a hunting scene and fishes, the seasons, and diverse vegetation. The iconography is characteristic of the medieval Romanesque mosaic pavements in the West. This study attempts to understand the cultural motives for these choices.

Just behind the colonnade of Hagia Sophia’s south gallery on the wall of the southeast pier and now concealed beneath a thin layer of plaster, a panel of mosaic shows a monumental cross with flaring ends embellished with pearls. Scholars have largely overlooked this panel. Its background - almost certainly of gold - is made of tesserae laid in parallel horizontal rows, each one slightly separate from the adjacent rows. This kind of pattern is a characteristic of Middle Byzantine Hagia Sophia: it is a prominent feature in parts of the poorly preserved geometric borders of Emperor Alexander’s panel in the north gallery. Thus, the panel can be considered to be an example of this distinctive ninthand tenth-century mosaic technique.

Analysis of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Czech environment enables study of the specifics of sacred architecture in post-Reformation Europe and, more broadly, of the problem of the “confessionalization” of Early Modern architecture. Several sacred buildings, both Catholic and non- Catholic, were founded with special reference to the remarkable environment of Rome, which, in the sixteenth century, enjoyed renewed vitality as a central source of artistic and religious work. As such, Rome, for various reasons, inspired the churches of two religious groups: Catholics and the Unity of Brethren, a unique denomination in Czech lands. The most remarkable example serves the Unity of Brethren (later called “Rome of the Unity of Brethren” church in Mladá Boleslav, seat of one of the bishoprics). At the same time, ties to Roman prototypes are observed among Catholics in the case of Olomouc, the seat of bishops of Moravia, where “confessional architecture” became a special tool of the Counter-Reformation.

Picasso’s famous Harlequin, once in the Staechelin collection and now in the Kunstmuseum, Basel, was painted in 1918 after the artist’s return from his sojourn in Rome, Naples, and Pompeii. The figure stands alone facing the viewer, holding his black mask in his left hand and showing his “true” face. Behind him a cloth hangs on a rope. As an iconographic theme, the harlequin was very dear to Picasso, who painted him many times in various attitudes and styles. The unique feature in this version is the cloth, which never appears in Picasso’s other Harlequin paintings. The present study proposes that it could be a subtle reference to the iconographic themes of the Veronica and the Acheiropoietes. The former could well have been familiar to Picasso from examples in Spain. The latter he may have encountered in Italy - possibly in medieval copies in Rome’s Lateran and elsewhere in Latium.