IKON

This paper refers to nine illustrated broadsheets in the Zagreb Archdiocese Valvasor Collection of prints. They are centered around the marriages of the Emperor Leopold I. and created in the period 1666-1682. The emperor married three times and along with concomitant events these marriages were presented to the public by illustrated broadsheets of an allegorical- symbolic nature. These illustrated broadsheets are typical examples of Baroque communication strategies, targeted for special occasions and the needs of the highest source: the imperial court.

Parigi, 1783: al Salon l’apparizione di un ritratto di Maria Antonietta “in camicia” desta scandalo. L’autrice, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, ha voluto rendere omaggio alla sua protettrice attraverso un’immagine inedita, moderna e informale, lontana dalle convenzioni del ritratto d’apparato previste per l’iconografia monarchica. Nella difficoltà, la sovrana ”austriaca” si allea con la sua artista. Nascono così immagini che mediano tra l’ufficialità richiesta dalla tradizione di corte e una visione aggiornata sui nuovi modelli culturali previsti per la donna nell’autunno del Secolo dei Lumi. Come ha acutamente osservato Federico Zeri, “l’intelligenza della formula ritrattistica raggiunta da Élisabeth” non si chiude con la fine dell’Ancien Régime, ma ha una sua eredità che rivive nel mondo ottocentesco dell’imperatrice Eugenia e nei ritratti regali di Franz Xaver Winterhalter. I suoi dipinti trasmettono anche l’aspetto più poetico dell’immaginario asburgico: il sogno letterario di Ludovico II di Baviera non è forse lontano dalla creazione di un’iconografia da moderna eroina ottocentesca per la cugina Elisabetta, l’imperatrice “Sissi”. È soprattutto a partire da questi anni, l’età della regina Vittoria, che anche la fotografia diventa mezzo importante per fissare un ritratto dei sovrani che sia “pittorico” ma attuale. E nel Novecento il sogno vittoriano si rinnova nel percorso fotografico di Cecil Beaton per la famiglia Windsor. Nel ricordo dei dipinti sette e ottocenteschi l’obiettivo registra immagini ufficiali impregnate di “rêverie” romantica e di modelli di comportamento sempre più vicini all’universo borghese. Così, Elisabetta II osserva incantata la culla del primogenito come in un dipinto dell’Impressionismo francese...

In 1778 Élizabeth Vigée Le Brun completed the first portrait of Marie Antoinette in a way to content the queen in search of her official image: an iconography that simultaneously manages to bring out the true majesty of the sovereign and her youth. In the following ten years Le Brun produced several images of her royal patron until the great representation of Marie Antoinette and her children (1787). Already in 1783 another portrait had caused a scandal at the Salon in Paris: it was the painting of Marie Antoinette en gaulle and in the context of an official event which featured revolutionary iconography. Contrary to the attacks on the extravagant life of the queen, the artist had chosen to represent her apart from any schematic image, dressed in a soft muslin shirt and with a large feathered hat, simply intent on tying some flowers with a ribbon: iconography which seemed to catch an instant of private habits of Marie Antoinette, who loved to retire in the oasis of the private garden of the Petit Trianon. It is a formula of portraiture, modern and with great impact, destined to be successful over time. Among the great sovereigns of Europe, the perfect model for Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873) is certainly Sissi: through his portraits the artist contributes to the myth of universal beauty of the young Empress. The road opened by Élizabeth Vigée Le Brun regarding the informal portrait of the sovereign, is now ready for permanent open space. Federico Zeri identified the reflections of the pictorial formula developed by Élizabeth Vigée Le Brun also in photography, especially the Anglo-Saxon photography. From 1930 to 1979 Sir Cecil Beaton photographed members of the British royal family. In the object glass of Beaton the ladies of the court had become new stars. It had become necessary for the future queen to withdraw from high-ranking schemes and to approach a bourgeois rhetoric. In the painting The Cradle by Berthe Morisot, Elizabeth is no longer literary heroine nor princely lady, but a real woman. And maybe this would not have been possible if nearly two hundred years before the artist did not realized that sometimes a queen may lay down the crown and go to pick flowers in the garden.

This paper probes the cult of Franz Joseph I from the perspective of the Slovenian painting, sculpture and contemporary literature. The deification of the living ruler in the Western World, where a universal benefactor and saviour is portrayed as a god-made man, one who participates in divinity and exercises a divine kingship on Earth, has origins in the Roman period. In visual art as well as in literature, the motifs with its specific meaning implicitly supported the cult of Franz Joseph. While painters and sculptors were using his physical appearance to immortalize him through portraits and monuments, writers and poets focused on syntax and metaphorical meanings wrapped in rhymes and stories to express his charismatic personality. Austrian court artists, writers and historians represented a high-profile public figure as a military hero, as a father of the nation having emphasized political symbolism (insignias), having referred to his Habsburg ancestors and to other European rulers. On the basis of less known examples of portraits, monuments and texts dedicated to Franz Joseph, this survey analyses iconographic context, function of different types of depictions and also demonstrates the analogies between the centre and the periphery.

The article deals with the perception of imperial persona of Francis I (II) of Austria in Croatia and Dalmatia around 1818 when Emperor visited the two regions of today’s Croatia. There are two principal sources of interpretation of the reign and importance of this ruler: the written and the visual. Until recently, Francis and his co-ruler count Metternich were in Croatian historiography generally considered in negative terms. This text offers a revision of these views. Following the already traditional Habsburg propaganda of the Imperial liberalitas, Francis was in 1818 received by his subjects in Croatia and Dalmatia as a long-awaited Emperor, with new epigraphic, commemorative monuments (triumphal arches, sculptures, pyramids) and, most frequently, with literary compositions in poetry, drama and prose. The examples of such gestures are taken from Zagreb, Zadar, Split and Dubrovnik. Although Francis’ Imperial epithets were various, the author focuses on the Italian variant, nuovo Tito, explaining the connections of the Imperial propaganda with its artistic response at the end of the 18^th century.

This paper analyses the course of changes that followed the arival of new beneficiaries in a church of St Peter. At first it was a part of a Templar estate on the Lands of St Martin. With the abolition of the Templar order most of the Templars joined the Hospitallers. Upon the latters’ takeover of the church, the existing architecture was used as a medium for the expression of the new owner’s ideas mostly through the legend of St Ladislaus represented on the north nave wall. The architecture and architectural sculpture were retained as a framework for the display of the ideas of the new owners closely cooperating with the new rulers of the country and their interests. The church, built with one purpose in mind, was reused for a new cycle of ideological and artistic display – from the Romanesque to the Gothic, from the plain (or plain decorative) to figurative representation, from the Templars to the Hospitallers, from the Arpadian to the Angevins.

This study analyses the miniatures representing royal portraits in the Book of Franchises and Privileges of the Kingdom of Majorca (ARM, codex num. 1). This codex was commissioned in1334 by the jurats, on behalf of the Universitas of the city and kingdom of Majorca, an organism which represented the body of inhabitants under royal rule. It differs from other codices covering similar legal matters, in its extension and sumptuous pictorial program, in the specific way the monarchs are portrayed and in the symbolic value bestowed upon it by its addressees. The miniatures represent the kings on the action of swearing in the continuity of the privileges that their predecessors had granted the citizens of the Kingdom of Majorca. These images were created based on common iconographic models in their geographical context, even though some significant elements were added to them. The royal portraits, with variations, refer precisely to the same episode: when each new king vowed to maintain the privileges that their predecessors had granted to their subjects. These miniatures portray the king the way the subjects wanted him to be.

The island of Krk was the last island of the North Adriatic to become part of the great dominion of the Most Serene Republic of Venice. This article deals with Antonio Vinciguerra, the Secretary of the Republic, who was sent to Krk as its representative in the crucial moment in 1480. He played an important role in the takeover of the island. Vinciguerra was immediately appointed as a proveditor, the role he held for almost a year. We learn of his acts from his manuscript entitled Cronica di Veglia. Symbolic “colonization” of the urban space was a common practice of the Venetian Republic, and the text demonstrates the role of an important figure as the initiator of the gradual and subtle changes in the appearance of the city which would soon boast numerous signs of the Venetian hegemony, such as lions of St Mark.

The paper compares the pseudo-sculptural decoration of the Virgin’s throne depicted at the beginning of the fourteenth century in San Francesco, Rieti and San Francesco, Lodi. It is argued that in Rieti these details represent ministering angles, and they have a theological orientation. In Lodi, however, on the upper part of the funerary monument of Antonio Fissiraga, a representation of St George slaying the dragon can be seen. St George is represented more as a mighty warrior than a saint, especially in contrast to a similar pseudo-sculptural detail from the St John Baptistery in Varese. It appears that in Lodi the decorative details of the Virgin’s throne relate more to the donor, Antonio Fissiraga, signore de Lode, than to the Virgin Mary. In this sense the fresco represents a shift from the theological allusions towards the political ones. Furthermore, the funerary monument of Antonio with its pseudo-sculptural details introduces the sculpted monuments of the signori, exemplified by the monument of Cangrande della Scala in Verona.

Monuments dedicated to the sovereigns in the public space of Zagreb are considered not only works of public art but also symbols of ideological values. Careful analysis of their settings, processes of their removal and the changes that the monument underwent should be included in the interpretation of the monuments and their wider context. Monuments dedicated to the sovereigns possess the power of urban icons, even in times when they are hidden from the public eye by decisions of ‘higher power’.

Barbara Baert, To touch with the gaze. Noli me tangere and the iconic space, Leuven, 2011

Mixed Metaphors: The Danse Macabre in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Sophie Oosterwijk and Stephanie Knöll, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011