Hortus Artium Medievalium

In the east chapel of the sanctuary dedicated to Saints Victor and Corona (Stefania), near Feltre, is preserved one of the most significant episodes, in the upper Adriatic area, of sculptures entirely decorated with the technique of mastic encrustation, better known as niello or champlevé. The architectonical structure of the martyrium, which still preserves the relics of the two byzantine saints, involves three steps overlapping, of which the median one is opening at the center of the apse with an elegant loggia with capitals decorated all over with motifs finely carved and filled with mastic blacks and reds. All of these works were designed in pairs, and each one was prepared according to a specific project, focused on the arch in the middle of the eastern side with the two capitals adorned by kufic decorations: in fact, in this place there is an opening that puts in communication the interior with the founder’s tomb of the sanctuary located outside. While in the Veneto there are at least two similar sets of capitals, in the Basilica of San Marco in Venice and in San Donato in Murano, is not sufficient to draw a cross-reference with the lagoon area to explain the case of Feltre. Only looking towards the lands of the Byzantine periphery, especially Mesopotamia, Osios Loukas and more generally the Greek mainland, it’s possible to trace the matrix of this strongly characteristic lexicon that distinguishes the workers of Saint Victor.

By the end of the twelfth century the mosaic decoration in the basilica of San Marco in Venice was completed. After the demolition of the galleries (late twelfth or early thirteenth century) the walls which became visible were decorated with mosaics during the first decades of the thirteenth century. Only a part of these mosaics is preserved today. However it is possible to notice the intention to make the new cycles homogeneous with the previous ones. Several decorative patterns are used in order to make these thirteenth-century additions coherent and better connected to the more ancient mosaics. This ornamental repertoire partly recuperates patterns already used in the basilica and partly introduces new typologies of frames.

A Bathing of the Christ Child (fig. 5-6) is reconstructed from two fragments, one in the Chiostro di Sant’Apollonia of the Museo Diocesano di Venezia and the other in the Galleria Franchetti alla Ca’ d’Oro. These sculptures in the round belong to a large Nativity Cycle in pietra d’Aurisina that was carved in Venice during the second quarter of the 13th century. A number of pieces, including the Adoration of the Magi in the Seminario Patriarcale di Venezia (fig. 3) and the Dream of Joseph on the facade of San Marco (fig. 4), are still preserved. They have been compared with the same scenes on the portal of the Cathedral of St. Lawrence in Trogir (fig. 1-2), which an inscription records being carved by Radovan in 1240. The comparison between the Bathing of the Christ Child, which plays a major role in Radovan’s Nativity, and the Bathing in Venice calls for a reassessment of the connections between the portal of the Cathedral of St. Lawrence and the Nativity Cycle from San Marco. The article argues that the sculptures in Trogir and Venice were the result of concurrent but largely independent artistic developments.

Since at least 1976 and the publication of Wolfgang Wolters’ La scultura veneziana gotica (1300-1460), art historians and the general public have been familiar with the label ‘Venetian sculpture’. As often happens with winning paradigms, however, even this ostensibly straightforward label risks being misused. We might in fact succumb to the paradox of interpreting most of the sculptural production of the late-medieval period in the Northern and Central Adriatic Basin as ‘Venetian’ or as ‘influenced by Venice’. Yet, this is not always the case. By discussing four lesser-known Central Adriatic case studies, this article highlights the need to begin to speak of an ‘Adriatic sculpture’ of the late-medieval period.

The essay investigates the tomb of the Beato Pacifico in the Franciscan church of Venice, the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. The funerary monument, set up on the right transept of the church by 1437, is analysed from a stylistic and typological point of view. The author pays particular attention to the fundamental role played by the commissioner of the tomb, Scipione Bon, whose coat-of-arms are exhibited on the tomb itself and who is buried in a humble tombstone on the ground level, under the huge funerary monument. Iconographic details and the method of management of the relics of the Beato, seems to suggest a precise intervention directed by Scipione who, through his patronage, aimed to show his family undisputed prestige.