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C r e i g h to n G i l b e rt
How Fra Angelico & Signorelli Saw the
End of the
p
World
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How Fra Angelico and Signorelli Saw the End of the World
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How Fra Angelico and Signorelli Saw the End o f t h e W o r l d C r e i g h to n e . G i l b e rt
p
The Pennsylvania State University Press • University Park, Pennsylvania
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Disclaimer: Some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gilbert, Creighton E. How Fra Angelico and Signorelli saw the end of the world / Creighton E. Gilbert p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 0-271-02140-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Signorelli, Luca, 1441?–1523. End of the world. 2. Signorelli, Luca, 1441?–1523—Criticism and interpretation. 3. Angelico, fra, ca. 1400–1455—Criticism and interpretation. 4. Mural painting and decoration, Renaissance—Italy—Orvieto. 5. Judgment Day in art. 6. Cappella della Madonna di San Brizio (Duomo di Orvieto) I. Signorelli, Luca, 1441?–1523. II. Title. 623.S5 A66 2001 759.5'09'024—dc21
2001021479
Copyright © 2003 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 : Benozzo Gozzoli, Portrait of a Friari, drawing. Chantilly, Musée Condé, recto It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.
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to James Ackerman and Craig Smyth and in memory of H. W. Janson for help proffered when it signified
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List of Illustrations ix Introduction xi
The Place as a Precondition 1
Planning the Frescoes 23
Intermission, 1448–1499 61
Signorelli Paints the Inner Bay 71
The Imagery of the Outer Bay 117 Envoi 157 Notes 161 Bibliography 189 Index 195
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Unless otherwise noted, location of the works below is the Cappella Nuova of Orvieto Cathedral in Orvieto, Italy, and the work is by Luca Signorelli.
. 1 . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
The Damned (detail of central area of Fig. 45) Reliquary of the “Corporal,” Orvieto Cathedral, Cappella del Corporale Orvieto Cathedral, general view. Copyright Alinari / Art Resource, New York Orvieto Cathedral, plan as of 1450 Orvieto Cathedral, plan showing original curved apse and additions, to 1450 Orvieto Cathedral, façade. Copyright Alinari / Art Resource, New York Pier with reliefs of antetypes of Christ, Orvieto Cathedral façade Detail of Fig. 7, lower left section View into the Cappella Nuova Giotto, Last Judgment. Padua, Arena Chapel Fra Angelico, Last Judgment. Florence, Museo di San Marco Fra Angelico and Signorelli, Vault of Cappella Nuova Fra Angelico, Prophets (detail of Fig. 12) Fra Angelico, Last Judgment. Berlin, Gemäldegalerie Barna, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, left half. San Gimignano, Collegiata Barna, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, right half. San Gimignano, Collegiata Fra Filippo Lippi, Martyrdom of the Baptist, detail of left corner. Prato, Cathedral Benozzo Gozzoli, Sheet of drawings. Chantilly, Musée Condé, verso Fra Angelico, Christ Judging (detail of Fig. 12) Dome with Last Judgment mosaic. Florence, Baptistery Attributed to Francesco Traini, Last Judgment. Pisa, Campo Santo
. Nardo di Cione, Last Judgment. Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel . Heaven (detail of Fig. 22, left wall) . Ascent to Heaven (detail of Fig. 14) . Scheme of the altar wall, after Vischer . Scheme of the left wall, after Vischer . Scheme of the right wall, after Vischer . Self-portrait of Signorelli with Fra Angelico (detail of Fig. 78) . Benozzo Gozzoli, Portrait of a Friar, drawing. Chantilly, Musée Condé, recto . Benozzo Gozzoli, Petrarch, Dante, and Giotto. Montefalco, San Francesco, choir, wainscot . Fra Angelico, Last Judgment, Ascension, and Pentecost. Rome, Galleria Nazionale . Pietro Baroni, Pietà and Saints . Pier with Last Judgment, Orvieto Cathedral façade (detail of Fig. 6) . Giovanni Dalmata, Last Judgment, lunette of tomb of Pope Paul II. Rome, Saint Peter’s . Shop of Mino da Fiesole, Last Judgment, lunette of tomb of Cardinal Ammanati. Rome, Sant’ Agostino, cloister . Bishop saint, in window embrasure of altar wall . Archangel Michael, in embrasure of side window in altar wall . Archangel Gabriel, in embrasure of side window in altar wall . Archangel Raphael with Tobias, in embrasure of side window in altar wall . Archangel Phanuel/Uriel, in embrasure of side window in altar wall . Ascent of the Blessed, altar wall . Assembly of the Blessed at Josaphat, side wall
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. Anonymous Italian, c. 1500, Last Judgment, woodcut. . Giovanni di Paolo, The Blessed (detail of Last Judgment). Siena, Pinacoteca . Assembly of the Damned at Josaphat, side wall . Limbourg Brothers, Hell, page in Très Riches Heures. Chantilly, Musée Condé. Copyright Giraudon / Art Resource, New York . Bertoldo, Battle, bronze. Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello . Descent into Hell, altar wall . Nardo di Cione, detail of Fig. 22, right wall . Anonymous Florentine, 1497, Choice of Heaven or Hell, woodcut. . Dante and scenes in cantos 1–4 of Purgatorio, wainscot . Virgil and scenes of visits to Hell, wainscot . Claudian and scenes from De Raptu Proserpinae . Salutati and scenes from Purgatorio, cantos 5–8, wainscot . Detail of Fig. 51, scene from Canto 2 of Purgatorio . Hercules Defeating Cacus, and grotesque ornament (detail of Fig. 54) . Scene from Canto 11 of Purgatorio . Charity and Envy . Scene from Canto 8 of Purgatorio (detail of Fig. 54) . Raphael, Faith, Hope, and Charity. Rome, Pinacoteca Vaticana . Diana and Calisto . Devils and the Lustful . Monochromes on altar wall wainscot, right side . Death of Achilles . Perseus and Phineus . Stories of Perseus and Hercules, drawings, in Libellus de Imaginibus Deorum, Vat. Reg. Lat. 1290 . Court of Pan. Formerly Berlin, Kaiser Friedrich Museum . Scheme of entrance wall (after Vischer) . Raising of the Dead
. Raising of the Dead, Orvieto Cathedral façade, bottom section (detail of Fig. 33) . Limbourg Brothers, Raising of the Dead, in Très Riches Heures. Chantilly, Musée Condé . Pietà with Saints Faustino and Pietro Parenzo . Pietà, altarpiece, Cortona, Museo Diocesano . Martyrdom of Saint Faustino . Martyrdom of Saint Pietro Parenzo . Raphael, Mass of Bolsena, fresco. Vatican, Stanza d’Eliodoro . Anonymous Riminese, fourteenth century, Last Judgment, fresco. Ravenna, Santa Maria in Porto . Deeds of Antichrist . Wohlgemuth, Deeds of Antichrist, woodcut, in Liber Chronicarum by H. Schedel. 1493. . Filippino Lippi, Resurrection of Drusiana, fresco. Florence, Santa Maria Novella . Filippino Lippi, Simon Magus (detail from Dispute of Simon and Saint Peter). Florence, Santa Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel . Self-Portrait of Signorelli with an Associate. Orvieto, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo . Five Signs of the End of the World and the Fire from Heaven, entrance wall. Copyright Alinari / Art Resource, New York . Five Signs of the End of the World (detail of Fig. 83) . Filippino Lippi, Saint Thomas Confuting Heretics, fresco. Rome, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva . Fire from Heaven, entrance wall, left half . Youth with Oak-Leaf Crown and scenes in roundels . Judith, keystone of the arch “” in Fig. 27 . Man in Turban . Bald Man and scenes in roundels . Niccolò Rosex da Modena, Apelles, engraving . Captives Judged (detail of Fig. 90) . Maenad Among Men (detail of Fig. 90) . Filippino Lippi, Death of Virginia (detail). Paris, Louvre . Botticelli, The Story of Lucretia. Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
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a new approach to understanding a famous mural cycle of the Italian Renaissance depicting the end of the world. The cycle is located in the Cappella Nuova (today often called the San Brizio Chapel) in the cathedral of the town of Orvieto in central Italy. The fresco paintings of the Orvieto mural cycle have been discussed in many books, so a new book is obligated to offer the reader something different. This Introduction devotes itself chiefly to those differences. It will emerge that a good deal of helpful material has been left out of existing books, and that some errors have therefore resulted. First, however, the claim that the mural cycle is famous must be justified; in that endeavor, two witnesses are brought, both very well known themselves: one from the culture of the Renaissance, and one from our own culture. The earlier witness is Giorgio Vasari, author of the Lives of the Artists (1550; second revised edition 1568), the work that is the undisputed primary basis for what we know about most of the artists it presents. With regard to the mural cycle that is the subject of the present volume, Vasari’s key comment is in his Life of Luca Signorelli, the painter who executed most of the cycle, finishing in or about 1503. (Like most modern writers on the work, Vasari has little to say about the contribution of the painter who started the project in 1447, Fra Angelico.) Vasari introduces Signorelli with high general praise: “He was an excellent painter, held in his
time to be famous, and his works prized, to an extent that no one else has been in any period . . . because he showed the way activity is performed in nudes, and showed, with great difficulty and a very good method, that they can be made to seem alive.”1 But this praise, though presented in a general way, relates only to the artist’s Orvieto cycle; Signorelli’s other nudes were both few and immobile. When Vasari’s account comes to this project, he enlarges on the same aspects: [Signorelli] was hired by the administrators of the Cathedral of Santa Maria in Orvieto, and finished the whole chapel of Our Lady,2 begun by Angelico, in which he did all the stories of the end of the world. It is a most beautiful, strange and willful invention in its variety, of so many angels, demons, earthquakes, fires, ruins, and a great part of the miracles of Antichrist, where he showed the great invention and familiarity he had about nudes, with many foreshortenings, imagining strangely the terror of those days. In this way he stimulated all those who came after him, to execute the difficulties painted, in following that style.3 He then proceeds to say that the mural cycle and many other works “so spread his [Signorelli’s] fame” that the pope called on the artist to paint in the Vatican. That is an error, however, for the paintings Vasari then mentions were much earlier. (Signorelli did not get any more grand commissions after Orvieto.) Vasari shortens this assertion in his second edition, and adds a new
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Image not available
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The Damned (detail of central area of Fig. 45)
point that all later observers found true: that Michelangelo “always praised” the Orvieto work “very highly, and used some of his inventions in his own work” on the same theme, the Last Judgment. Naturally this factor has remained important in Signorelli’s fame. Vasari cites just one other work of Signorelli’s as much praised, and that briefly: the Court of Pan, owned by Lorenzo de’ Medici the Magnificent, ruler of Florence. This is the artist’s only other large-scale work with a group of nudes, which in this case are motionless. Both works were most unusual in their place and time in including female nudes with the males, which was possibly a factor in their usefulness for later artists. Vasari first wrote that the Pan was produced “with
much anticipation among those who wanted to see [Signorelli’s] works, and it was much commended.” He cuts this sentence down to the brief final phrase in his second edition.4 The result of the two changes, this and the added report about Michelangelo, is almost exclusive attention to the Orvieto cycle, and so it has remained. However, as suggested below, the Pan was important in bringing Signorelli the Orvieto job. The surprising modern witness is Sigmund Freud, who on page one of perhaps his most read book, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life,5 tells a story about himself: on a train in 1898, he fell to talking with another traveler, who had also been in Italy. Freud asked whether he had gone to Orvieto and seen the famous frescoes there by—
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and then he could not remember the artist’s name. Later, when he checked and found that the artist’s name was Signorelli, his main interest was in figuring out why he had “blocked it,” as we now would say.6 From there he moved on to broad theories, and in the present context it is tempting, even if absurd, to see psychoanalysis as therefore owing its birth to Signorelli. More realistically, the background making the incident possible was that Freud had been educated into a broad humanistic culture. In a later generation, a psychologist probably would have lacked that particular point of departure to induce the question Freud asked himself. The point here, too obvious to Freud for him to mention it, was that the Signorelli frescoes were a destination for educated tourists. Today, indeed, daily busloads of visitors come to Orvieto for the sole purpose of seeing them. Even for people who had not heard of the frescoes until then, they are offered as a principal reason for visiting Italy. Elementary textbooks on art history always cite them, most often reproducing one segment, “The Damned” (Fig. 1). The tangle of desperate nudes grappled by devils, painted with sharp muscular stress, reflects Vasari’s reaction and seems just right for Freud’s. In Freud’s time and since, the normal way to find out more about the cycle has been to read about it in monographs on Signorelli. Monographs—books on the whole work of an individual artist—have been the most handy and reliable source for such information. Monographs on Signorelli always have one chapter of twenty-five pages or less devoted to his Orvieto project. By common consent, there are five or six reliable monographs on Signorelli: Maud Cruttwell (1899), Girolamo Mancini (1903), Mario Salmi (1924), Leopold Dussler (1927), and Pietro Scarpellini (1964), and a very short one by Margherita Moriondo (1966). All have the same title, simply Luca Signorelli, or a close variant,7 In
the absence of newer work, all continue to be used. Two previously rare types of writing on Signorelli have become frequent since about 1970, and especially in the 1990s. Their significance is more as an indication of the artist’s widening fame than as a new understanding of him, although at times they do offer new observations. One type consists of short texts in well-illustrated books, of the coffee-table type or smaller. Usually these claim no more than to restate for a wider readership what had been published before, and they are likely to repeat old errors and sometimes create new ones. As for the other type, which is at the opposite extreme, graduate students in the United States, Britain, Germany, and Australia have submitted dissertations on particular segments of the topic of Signorelli, such as his painting in specific time spans, his narrative process as seen from certain critical viewpoints, his drawings, certain documents, and connections with liturgical forms. These presentations by beginning scholars under supervision, seeking admission to academia, commonly present new observations and approaches but are rarely published in full. Instead, those that are received positively generally have revised versions of their most interesting parts published as articles in specialized journals. The one dissertation that has been published in full, and the articles, are cited in this book, but the unpublished remaining writings are not, both because they are not easily accessible and because they have not been used as bases for inferences here. The latter factor also applies to the omission of references to the short texts in illustrated books. In both cases there are exceptions. A note here summarizes both types.8 A number of books frankly address only one part or one aspect of the work, such as the Dante illustrations, or the Antichrist scene and apocalyptic analogies.9 Like the many learned articles
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that also take up partial questions, these often present hypotheses that are subject to debate. The most ambitious and important work of this type is a book published in 1996 to mark the cleaning of the frescoes.10 Although in this case too the title suggests a general work, the content is different. It presents more than twenty essays by as many scholars, who have quite properly been permitted to disagree with each other. In addition, quite a few of the essays are not about the mural cycle itself, but have to do with such things as scientists’ reports on conservation problems and nearby groups of paintings. Indeed, because there is no full-length study of the mural cycle, the inquiring reader still uses the chapters in the monographs, along with their more recent equivalents in the illustrated books. If one reads all these chapters, an exercise that is understandably rare, the effect is surprising: there have been few changes since 1899. The reader is offered a lively description of these represented scenes, and the cycle is broken into manageable parts with praise for them all. Signorelli’s distinctive style is frequently pointed out. The description has a rhetorical flavor, and is intended to confirm readers in the view that the work is of high quality. The latter, and more specific, element works toward the goal that seemed to be the main purpose of art-historical work in the earlier decades and that is still given an important role even though it is no longer fashionable. That goal is to make correct attributions—that is, to identify the artist of any painting. The data used are works of known authorship, such as the Orvieto cycle, established by documents. A corollary aim is to date the artist’s works, using works with known dates, of which again the cycle is an example. The artist’s distinctive style in the cycle is thus defined in such writings for use in these cases. The monographs’ chapters on the cycle of course do not have to argue that this cycle is Signorelli’s
and that it defines him; they only seek to tease out what is essential. Although not all do so, the monographs’ chapters themselves may explore some related secondary questions: the internal chronology of the cycle during the period, some four and a half years, from its start to its finish; and the role of assistants in executing some parts. It has not been possible to reach agreement on these issues, which helps to explain the reappearance of newer books of the same type. The separation of master and pupil depends almost entirely on judgments about quality in manual execution, which may be subjective. Where one student sees a pupil, another may see the master on a bad day, or may just disagree that a given area is bad at all. The internal chronology is similarly subjective. It tends to presume that the artist’s evolution is linear, not allowing for backing and filling. Such irregular shifts might be especially likely in a mural, however, with references intended from one segment to another for thematic reasons even if painted at different times. Cumulatively with this, there is subjectivity in the choice of factors thought to be critical for the linear development, such as shift from linear to brushier work, or more to less emphasis on detail. Such factors have often been the same ones thought to mark the large evolution of art in the era. Internal chronology is also less possible to establish firmly in a short span like this, in contrast to the whole career of forty-odd years of a painter such as Signorelli.11 There is also the question of how important such judgments are, when used for a purpose other than the original one of comparison with undecided cases outside the cycle. When the entire cycle was under the firm control of the master, whether a figure was executed by one or another assistant may not be of great consequence, and likewise when the execution took place with little interruption, from segment to
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segment, it may not be possible to date the process with respect to differences in style. If there were firm information on these matters, it would be helpful to introduce it, even if judged not very important. But the uncertainty and slightness of effect on the final product has led to the decision here to downplay drastically the major components of monographs, the arguments on authorship by master and pupils, and the short internal chronology. These matters are brought in when a point can be supported by evidence, generally not stylistic—such as whether it was common at the time to assign pupil artists small-scale border elements and the like, or technical information, such as the plaster ground of one segment overlapping another and thus being of later date. This volume deals instead with matters that the monograph chapters have addressed only to a small degree or not at all. It is hoped that, in the process, the results presented here can be accepted as more reliable than the proposals about stylistic variables, favored by monograph writers. Because the monograph chapters on the Orvieto cycle do not themselves involve attribution pros and cons, the lively descriptions are their chief content. They thus face at once the problem of the vast scale of the work, with its hundreds of very individual figures. How could it be described without confusion? All the writers solved the problem in the same way, suggested by the conditions in the chapel. They settled on successive descriptions of the imagery in sections defined by the architecture. The long side walls of the chapel are each divided into two equal parts by half columns. To these four units are added one of similar scale, at the far end, with the altar and windows, and another one, at the entrance end, with wall segments at either side of the entrance. The vault, with its sets of arches, provides eight more smaller units. The monograph writers all make the same decision about the order in which these units
should be described. They invariably set up a tour walking around the walls. (The vault, which is always given shorter comment, may precede or follow this.) The tour may be clockwise—as in Cruttwell, who explains she will “work gradually around the walls”—or counterclockwise, the usual choice. It always begins with the story of Antichrist, on the side wall at the viewer’s left on entering, for the natural reason that this is clearly shown by the relevant texts to have been the earliest event. It then usually works past the entrance door, turns the corner to move along the other side wall, with the Raising of the Dead and the Assembly of the Damned, crosses the altar wall, where the souls descend toward hell and rise toward heaven, and finally reaches the Assembly of the Blessed on the wall where it began, next to Antichrist. Salmi correctly and revealingly calls this a cronistoria, a chroniclehistory. The same formula appears in other writings, ranging from guidebooks to specialized studies on the theory of narrative cycles. This formula always encourages, and never does anything to displace, a fallacy that then becomes a structural component of the studies. The central theme of the chapel imagery is the Last Judgment, a powerful subject that has a long and steady tradition in imagery, here fully maintained. There are many segments, but they do not follow one on another, as a narrative. The Assembly of the Damned and the Assembly of the Blessed are events simultaneous with each other, and effectively so, in images, with the judging that sorts them. This unit of imagery fills the whole inner half of the chapel, both the altar wall and the adjacent halves of both side walls, as far outward as the half columns mentioned, and it fills the entire vault. It therefore fills more than half of the area painted, indeed about two-thirds, since the paintable surface of the altar wall, broken by windows, is larger than the corresponding surface of the entrance wall, cut by the entrance
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arch. This smaller outer segment of the chapel does present a narrative chronicle, which is an innovation in Last Judgment cycles. The scale of the chapel provided this extra space, which was filled with what an anonymous contemporary writer, whose text will be discussed in detail below, called the “horrible preamble” of the Judgment: the deeds of Antichrist and more. The quoted term will be used here. The frescoes show this series of events, although the order around the walls does not match the order in the texts used. The fallacy of the monographs was to continue the narrative pattern offered here into the inner bay with the actual Judgment, so that the damned are seen assembled before Christ judges them, and the saved are assembled still later, as we have the scenes pointed out to us. The authors of the monographs were well aware of Last Judgment imagery and in general have not taken their narrative accounts to the logical conclusion by stating the relationship just described. Rather, they tend not to give a title to the whole cycle—but only to the parts—which is contrary to the natural and usual approach of starting with the former and then proceeding to the latter. Scarpellini uses the name “Last Judgment” once, in parentheses, but gives the segments headings set in type like chapter titles. They are in the usual order, and the Assembly of the Blessed is noted as in the “last” wall area. Moriondo offers the name only after discussing all the segments in a summary comparing this cycle with the next one discussed. Dussler properly speaks of the cycle of “Last Things,” but he calls the last segment, the Assembly of the Blessed, an “epilogue” to the one discussed just before, the “Rise of the Blessed to Heaven.”12 In the approach he uses, however, in which these are viewed as separate scenes, the time sequence should be the opposite. This problem is resolved if the Last Judgment is understood as a single scene, where one moment is shown in simulta-
neous parts, while also, in a typical Renaissance device, dramatic time is presented by showing some interchangeable members of a chorus in an earlier phase of the movement common to them, and other members in a later phase. These puzzles, particularly absence of a name for the cycle, might result from the authors’ understanding that their approach has an oxymoronic relationship with the standard formulation of the Last Judgment, which is represented here. The different kind of description in the present volume is the result of taking the theme fully into account. The narrative sequence is quite appropriate for the smaller portion in the outer bay, met when first entering. Each scene corresponds to a segment framed by a column or a corner of the room, and the scenes as noted are incidents in a narrative series. The inner bay, however, consists entirely of a single grand image: the traditional Last Judgment. Its focus is at the top and center, with the Judging Christ, and from there it spreads out and down symmetrically. Opposite walls play against each other thematically, with the saved and the damned embodying the decisions shown in Christ’s gestures of condemning and blessing. As for the columns and corners internal to this image, the artists, both Angelico and Signorelli, sometimes let the imagery jump over them or flow past them while still finding elegant ways to exploit them. This is easy to see when the tradition of earlier Last Judgments is recalled in observing this one. But in the monographs, that happens slightly or not at all, which is why they are not followed here.13 Why have the monograph writers not been able to recognize all this—and specifically the way the parts of the frescos relate to one another—and why did they present the sequence wrong? There may be several reasons for this. First because the central image of the Blessing Christ is by Fra Angelico it was excluded from the descriptions in the Signorelli monographs.
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Second, the schema in the mural cycle has been modified from the traditional one (as happened regularly within the tradition), notably in the displacement of the Raising of the Dead scene. But certainly the broadest and primary misleading factor, also a major cause of the two factors just mentioned, is the architectural element. The subdivision by columns, the extension to the vaults, and (in degree at least) the movement around corners had not been elements in earlier Last Judgments. What is fascinating is the way the artists handled this new problem, and that is something the monographs do not realize. In fact, the monographs omit any discussion of the architectural ambient of the cycle. Taking the wall areas as scenes and treating the segments in sequence, as the monographs do, deals with them as if they were paintings that could be hung anywhere. In some cases this treatment is surely the result of working with photographs of the segments, which entirely removes them from the important context of place. In the present volume, however, context is a major element and consideration. Books on single mural cycles, like this one, are a small but well-formulated category in art history.14 They usually include information about context that takes varied forms but is generally quite brief. Eve Borsook’s book on Giotto’s Peruzzi Chapel murals discussed the patrons and other people in the situation, the clergy and the rulers of the city, though not the architecture. The latter may have seemed to be entirely ordinary. The best-known monograph on the Sistine ceiling, that by Charles de Tolnay, discusses the architecture in a preliminary section; other factors of context are cited throughout the study at key points. For the present volume, consideration of the architecture called for much more—indeed, a whole chapter. The chapel is very exceptional in scale—notably in height and the way it connects
to the church, as well as in having two bays. The search for the reason for the chapel’s truly extraordinary character takes us to the earlier construction of the church and to its administration. The social history of Orvieto, notably its special relationship to heretical movements, then becomes involved. Closer reading of the archives elicits an astonishing observation, that the chapel had no dedication either to a saint or to a patron family. The chapter on these surprising matters comes first, because it precedes the murals in chronology, and it is able to make much use of scholarship on the city, on heresy, and on the architecture. Those studies, however, have tended to remain isolated from one another, as studies of the murals have been from all of them. The standard social history of the town of Orvieto in this period never mentions the cathedral church, and the standard architectural history of the cathedral building does not mention that the chapel is in any way unusual. An excellent book on all the art-historical aspects of Orvieto Cathedral (Carli 1965) treats the murals again in isolation, producing a chapter much like those in the monographs. Thus, instead of merely citing the relationships among these factors, the present volume newly defines the light that each factor sheds on the others. Here too the bulk of the wordage of this book is without a background in preceding investigations. This apparent improvement nevertheless produced a negative problem. On the one hand, no more monographs of the traditional kind seem to be needed, but, on the other hand, professional readers opening a book about the murals may expect precisely that, and be disconcerted when they find something different. Instead of a few pages on context and then a description of the paintings, the reader of this book is faced with an entire chapter on the chapel architecture and related matters. Eager to find out about the paintings themselves, he or she might wonder what
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the connection is, why this opening chapter is there at all. This is why it has seemed necessary to explain the reason for this opening chapter and to outline its contents. The coherent connection is, simply, chronology. The city precedes the cathedral, which in turn precedes the chapel, and the chapel precedes the murals. More critical is that the murals are the way they are because of these prior givens—and that is a new observation. This is a major issue for the reader, because the same need to go beyond the usual governs the later chapters for still other reasons. After the chapel was built, the commission for the murals followed. Documents give rich information on this process, and these documents have always been utilized, mainly for extracting the dates and names of artists. There is also a separate scholarly literature of high quality on the documents themselves that goes back to the major work of Luigi Fumi of 1891 and even earlier. (Yet even the latest study of 1996 omits some key records; see Chapter 5, notes 88 and 91 below.) The key record of the commission to Angelico in 1447 was of course published very early, in 1877, and it is regrettable that the 1891 work, which was often assumed to be complete, intentionally omitted mention of it. The commission makes clear that it was the artist who chose the theme of the Last Judgment—which is surprising, but less so, when it is recalled that the chapel was lacking a dedication. In this context too it has never been realized that Angelico left a drawing for the whole inner bay presenting the standard Last Judgment. The reference has been taken to describe a drawing of the vault only. This in turn casts new light on what Signorelli did when he came to paint the cycle. The present volume also brings out for the first time the importance of a series of popes for what happened at Orvieto. The current interest in patron and social studies has not taken this into account. Between the work of Angelico (1447)
and Signorelli (from 1499), the most ambitious image of a Last Judgment in a nearby locus was on the tomb of Pope Paul II. It is shown that this pope had ties to Orvieto, and the tomb image itself is also here brought forward from remarkable art-historical inattention. Connections emerge with other popes too, from Pius II to Paul III. The last chapters of this volume have to do with an element that has been much discussed, but with much-debated findings. This is the wainscot area, which surprisingly has imagery taken from secular poetry and similar sources. The present volume takes a separate approach to the inner and outer bays, as in the case of the larger paintings above, but also makes observations about the interrelationship among several of the wainscot images. Earlier suggestions have included cases of doubtful titles of single scenes that are unrelated to those nearby. In the process of making a distinction between the inner and outer bays, this book brings in another approach that is absent from the monographs. Like discussions of many Renaissance complexes, the monographs tend to treat the work monolithically, presuming that the final product is identical to a plan made at the start. This treatment is usually not pointed out, however, for that would recall the fact that history is often shifting. Here, however, it is argued that the cycle is better understood by locating changes in the project at various points along the way. The usual view is a tribute to the artists, who evidently sought to evoke unity in the look of the work when complete. This volume follows the shifts in the project in that it uses a genetic approach. With its basis in the chronology, it repeatedly introduces new factors, sometimes stopping also to explore the bases for those factors. In the end, the monographs reflect the power of the final unified message, and that power of the message is the raison d’être here too.
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In the early 1990s the frescoes underwent their most notable physical change in more than a century, in a full-scale conservation program. This program became the focus of the public’s attention to the cycle for a time, for understandable reasons: the closing of the chapel to visitors for several years, and our culture’s general fascination with technical processes. The visual and communicative qualities of the work, however, were hardly affected, as is clear from comparing new photographs with the scarcely different older ones. It seems symptomatic that in the commemorative publication (Testa 1996) the technical and the other papers almost never
interrelate; the latter could have been written earlier, and some no doubt were. The conservation, which was excellent, was needed because the damp walls were a risk to the paintings, and it also removed dirt and grime. It revealed, too, a few quite small details of the work that had been hidden, the chief ones being a head on the altar wall among the figures en route to hell, and an arm of an otherwise destroyed figure on the entrance wall. These will be noted below in context. Primarily, the fact of the conservation is to be celebrated as a sign of modern appreciation of the familiar Renaissance masterpiece.
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The Place as a Precondition p he paintings that are the theme of this book were done on masonry walls and so are virtually immovable. That is a normal arrangement for paintings of that culture, the Italian Renaissance. The walls themselves have their own characteristics, which were among the givens when the paintings were produced; they are the walls (and vault, or ceiling) of a room called a chapel, in a church called a cathedral, in a small town on a hill. Visitors are deeply aware of these contingencies, but viewers of photographs and other reproductions often are not. Books about these paintings generally give some appropriate information on the town, and a little on the cathedral, but usually do not stop to talk about the nature of the chapel where the paintings are. Because it is a very unusual chapel, puzzling and perhaps unique, that is unfortunate; any assumptions that people have about what chapels are, even if true, are not applicable to the Orvieto chapel. It was in the thirteenth century that the town of Orvieto acquired the character that it largely retains today. The cathedral was built around the end of that century and the early part of the next one. In the thirteenth century the population increased greatly, commercial and professional specialties came into being, and government developed, manifested in a monumental city hall.1 Orvieto, some ninety miles north of Rome, shares these qualities with such nearby hill towns as Viterbo, Volterra, Cortona, Todi, Spoleto,
and, the largest, Siena and Perugia. Today all show an urban fabric that has remained in place since that earlier period. Further evolution focused on water-level towns, such as Florence and Pisa. The wealth of the towns attracted predators— generally military clans that took control that was limited only by fights with other clans. The towns also became subject to larger neighbors, such as papal Rome to the south and Florence to the north. A few of the largest retained independence for some generations more. Siena did so with the same sort of mercantile government, for the most part, and Perugia did so alternating between clan rule and papal control. The rest were overshadowed by these greater powers, each in a slightly different way. Orvieto was ruled during most of the fourteenth century and the first half of the fifteenth by the Monaldeschi clan, whose branches often fought each other in a competition that included assassinations. Yet, between bursts of violence, placid local affairs retained their importance. An unusual factor is that the relationship with the papacy was perhaps stronger than it was in any of the other towns mentioned. Competing groups defined themselves either as allied with the papacy or as champions of autonomy. In the thirteenth century, popes often lived in Orvieto more or less permanently, a fact that is reflected in a grand thirteenth-century papal residence. There is a similar residence in Viterbo (the nearest of
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these towns to Rome), and both Viterbo and Perugia (the largest of the group), still show tombs of popes of that era who happened to die there. Urban IV (r. 1261–64) spent most of his reign in Orvieto and never entered Rome. Today it is natural to assume that popes were always in Rome, apart from the Avignon period, but they actually often preferred these other towns. Rome had stronger baronial clans and a less pleasant climate in the warmer months than the towns, over which the popes also always wanted to reassert their feudal lordship. Around 1460 the papacy did permanently gain effective control of Orvieto, and the Monaldeschi subsided into the role of leading citizens. At this general period, northern and central Italy were consolidating into fewer and larger political units. Religious heresy played an important role in Orvieto in the thirteenth century, compared with all the other towns. It was part of a larger movement of the era, known by various names. The heretics were often called Albigensians, from the town of Albi in southern France, and the Dominican order grew up to fight them chiefly under that name. Scholars today most often speak of the Cathari, or “pure,” a term used by the people themselves.2 They were “Patari” in Milan, and in Orvieto then and later they were known as “Manicheans.” That last term was picked up from the name Saint Augustine had used for the heretics of his time a millennium earlier, and it is not unsuitable. In both cases the faith was dualistic, identifying good and evil with soul and body respectively. It followed for the Manicheans, then, that Christ, who was totally good, could not have lived in a body. As an offshoot of that, they denied the Catholic doctrine in which, in any Mass, the priest’s ritual transforms bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood. Wholly good people at death go at once to heaven, as souls, while the less good must be reborn as bodies. This denies the Catholic doctrine of purgatory as
a place where the souls of the moderately good or bad spend time after death, to be cleansed. It also denies the Last Judgment, at the end of time, when, Catholic doctrine says, bodies are resurrected and sent definitively to hell or heaven, still as bodies. Still other related doctrines of the Manicheans, such as the evil of sex and of animal food, have less connection with our present topic. All this, to be sure, is learned chiefly from the writings of the enemies of the Cathari. Yet because the wall paintings in Orvieto were also produced by the orthodox, this may not distort our reading of their references to heresy. Outside southern France the Cathari flourished in various Italian towns. However, among eleven such towns singled out in a recent survey, nine are north of the Apennines; Florence is the tenth; and the last, 190 kilometers still farther south, is Orvieto.3 The town was thus both isolated from other such centers and the only town within Rome’s sphere of influence. One could then expect Orvieto to be a flash point of conflict between the heretics and the papacy, exceeding the general level, and that is just what happened. Orvieto was in the midst of a virtual civil war in 1199, and the current pope, the redoutable Innocent III, sent an envoy to take control, a lay Roman patrician named Pietro Parenzo. Parenzo was assassinated, reportedly by a Manichean, with a hammer blow to the head. It is not surprising that he was immediately viewed as a saint and that later his body and relics were preserved in the Orvieto Cathedral. Parenzo’s biography was entered into the local catalogue of Masses for special days and is our main source on these matters.4 The power of this set of events even three hundred years later is evoked in the inclusion of the assassination in Signorelli’s cycle of paintings (Fig. 75). Orvieto’s moment on the world stage comes two generations later, in 1264. The fame today of the Miracle of Bolsena is largely due to Raphael’s
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fresco depicting the miracle in the Vatican (c. 1512), commissioned by Pope Julius II (Fig. 76). Up to that time, the miracle had retained its importance in religious contexts. The story is about a priest who was saying Mass in the small town of Bolsena, on the shores of the lake of the same name, and found himself doubting the truth of the miracle of bread and wine becoming Christ’s Body and Blood. He was then amazed to see blood drip from the consecrated bread (called “the Host” in church terminology) onto the “corporal,” a small white linen cloth placed under the chalice and paten (the cup and plate for the bread and wine) for Mass. The “corporal” therefore became a sacred relic,5 and since 1338 it has been encased in a remarkable reliquary box on which a set of narrative scenes in enamel show what happened next (Fig. 2). The enamel, a masterpiece of that art, also includes a series of scenes of Christ’s life, but it focuses on eight scenes reporting the miracle.6 The first shows the Mass just as Raphael would later present it. In the other seven, we begin with the report being given by the priest—who has traveled the twelve miles to Orvieto, the nearest city—to Pope Urban IV. We then continue with the pope instructing the bishop of Orvieto to go to Bolsena to get the relic, the bishop doing so, the pope (in two scenes) venerating the relic when it reaches Orvieto, his showing it to the people, and finally Saint Thomas Aquinas kneeling before the pope, to present to him the liturgical text for the new holy day Corpus Christi (“Body of Christ”) the pope had established.7 The relic today still occupies a focal place in Orvieto Cathedral. It was transferred to the town from Bolsena probably not because Orvieto was the nearest sizable place, having a bishop, but because the pope was resident. It is generally assumed without a debate that the miracle and the response to it were simple products of the concern at the time to fight the heresy about the
Image not available
. Reliquary of the “Corporal,” Orvieto Cathedral, Cappella del Corporale
Mass and the miracle of the transformed bread and wine, so that it might have happened anywhere. But it is more likely that it was a particularly Orvietan event, relating to the local force of that heresy. The resulting emphasis on the Body of Christ might seem to conflict with our conventional impression that the religious Middle
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Orvieto Cathedral, general view
Ages focused on the spirit and disdained thisworldly perception of material things. It is in keeping, however, with a separate familiar convention that tells us how the new Franciscan movement of that century admired nature and moved toward Renaissance attitudes. In Orvietan history, the next grand event is the construction of the cathedral, the building that would house our frescoes. It got under way in the 1280s after long discussions.8 The cathedral is extraordinarily ambitious in scale relative to the town’s scale and resources (Fig. 3). Especially in height, it far surpasses the cathedrals of Viterbo and Perugia, larger papal towns. In those, the
cathedral fits readily within the urban silhouette, but Orvieto stretches above its neighbor buildings in a way that is famous in cathedral towns of France and Germany as well as in the largest central Italian cities, Florence, Siena, and Pisa. It seems evident that this grandeur and proportion embody the special extent of churchly energy in the town, exceeding the town’s local civic energies. In the past, writers linked this effect with the Miracle of Bolsena and the subsequent pilgrimages to Orvieto. Recently, however, the presence of the popes has been called the primary reason.9 In early records, which are rich, it is true that
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there is little about pilgrims or the miracle, but on the other hand, the actual beginning of construction, around 1290, virtually coincides with the tail end of papal sojourns. Papal presences had been frequent, from Urban IV’s stay (1262–64), to the longest, by Martin IV (1281–84), but after that were limited to the fifteen months of Nicholas IV (1290–91) and the five months of Boniface VIII (1297).10 Papal absence seems not to have affected the energetic pace of the cathedral’s construction, completed around 1308 with no pause and with unusual speed. After that the rich work on the façade’s sculptures and mosaics continued steadily, at a time when the interest in the Bolsena factor does become clear. The plan of the cathedral (Figs. 4 and 5) is almost peculiarly plain compared with others of its period. Before the later additions, it presented one very large rectangle modified slightly by the small semicircular exedra of the apse (Fig. 5) and the rows of even smaller semicircular chapels along the sides.11 Inside, the rectangle was simply divided into the standard nave and an aisle on each side. In addition to the exceptional smallness of the side chapels, what is odd here is the absence of any cross arm. Such cross arms are consistently present in Europe in large churches of this era, and large chapels often open onto them. The buildings thus show a cruciform perimeter; the cross arms are the transepts. The only way a transept might be claimed to be present in the original structure at Orvieto is with respect to height. The aisles, in the normal way, are only half as high as the 33-meter-high nave between them, except in their final bay toward the altar end. There they rise to the same height as the nave, in a bay that is also longer than the others. These two bays, one on each side of the building, thus are differentiated spaces. They might be called nonprojecting transepts12 or, more modestly, in relation to the transeptal chapels to be discussed later, they could be regarded as transep-
tal bays. Thus the church, a rectangle at ground level, was cruciform at roof level. In between, at the top of the aisles, it presented a cross inside a rectangle, a form that the Middle Ages explored in reliquaries of the true cross.13 Studies that seek to explain this remarkable structure have most often suggested that it borrowed the model of a great church in Rome, the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. An impressive support for this view is a document of Orvieto in 1290. In this, an official of Pope Nicholas IV, then present in the town, instructed local officials that their church ought to be “noble and serious (solempnis) on the model of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.”14 The churches do share the same grand scale and the specifics of a timber roof—not unusual at the time in Italy—and semicircular apse.15 However, beyond this it is more difficult to match them. The Roman basilica offers no analogy to Orvieto’s most distinctive details just considered: the small chapels and the missing cross arms. These cross arms in Rome are admittedly unusually short, but they were added to the church in a remodeling by this same Nicholas IV, reflecting a clear intent to show a standard cruciform profile.16 Nicholas certainly could have omitted them and built a straight external wall, more cheaply than providing the slight extension. The absence of anything similar in Orvieto must be seen as a negative relation to the Roman model rather then a reference to it. (It has been suggested that the transepts in Rome were short because of a drop in the ground level at that point, implying that otherwise they would have been of greater and normal length.17) One might then understand the pope’s wish to have the Orvieto church be “on the model” (ad instar) of the one in Rome as being focused on the overall qualities of nobility and seriousness—just what his text specifies. It indeed has such qualities. The idea that the copying of buildings in the Middle Ages normally takes such a generalized
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Image not available
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(above) .
Orvieto Cathedral, plan as of 1450
(right) . Orvieto Cathedral, plan showing original curved apse and additions, to 1450
form is well established. Yet while this reading has been adopted by some scholars with respect to this instance,18 others have naturally been tempted by the rare document to seek likeness of visual detail, in another art-historical tradition. The generalized likeness is consistent with the name given to the Orvieto church in early documents in some cases: not simply Santa Maria but Santa Maria Maggiore, like the one in Rome. Visually, the buildings also differ in that the Roman structure does not have the small chapels in exedra form. These chapels in Orvieto have drawn attention as oddities, and a model for them in a Roman secular building of the time has been proposed by several writers. That model is the papal palace of the Lateran, connected with the church of the same name.19 Old views of this now-lost palace show the external aspect of such a row of small exedrae, which could well have inspired the Orvieto builder. The effect is certainly quite like what one sees on the exterior of
Orvieto Cathedral when one approaches from the side.20 That is what a pope would see when he emerged from his Orvieto palace and walked toward the cathedral across a short space. But from inside the cathedral it is a bit more difficult to claim a likeness. That would require thinking that the visual model from the Lateran had extended its influence to produce the second row of exedrae on the other side. Inside, moreover, the exedrae as series of cups of space strongly proclaim their function as chapels.21 That was mildly implicit from the outside, but inside thecathedral it is reinforced because they echo the semicircular apse—a chapel too, not to be found in the same outside view or in the Roman model. The semicircle of the apse can claim to be the prime starting point for the rows of smaller semicircular spaces, the central statement that they reflect to left and right. One might think that this design sequence was the result of a desire to make these chapels so unusually small, as part
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of the emphasis on rectangular simplicity. Standard chapels of the period would have been larger; these at Orvieto can be so modest partly because their semicircular enclosing walls allow some of the furniture to extend into the central space without seeming awkward. Even when viewed from the outside, the rows of chapels diverge from the Roman precedent in a visually strong way, another clue that their reason for being is not to be found there. The Roman series runs along the entire length of the building wall, but the exedrae in Orvieto fill only its central segment, leaving the last bays at both ends blank and flat. (The last bay at the altar end corresponds to the transeptal bay inside.22) If it is thought that the inspiration came from the Roman structure, there have been alterations, evidently for a reason. The suggestion arises that there are connections between all these special choices in Orvieto: the simple plan so outside the norms of a big church, the absence of cross arms, and the omission of exedrae at the ends of the walls. One might hypothesize that all these choices are connected with a plan by the builder to counterbalance the simple main form with external attachments of some elaboration later, to be attached where omissions had left space available to fit them—for indeed such attachments did get built later, in the form of large transeptal chapels, a special kind of cross arm. Among those chapels is the one that concerns us, that would then receive the paintings of Angelico and Signorelli: the Cappella Nuova. The only novelty in this hypothesis is the idea that these modifications were envisioned from the start. (There were also modifications that plainly had not been so envisioned—in particular a bigger apse, with a choir in it, which entailed tearing down the original small apse exedra.) The most spectacular elaboration soon added was the unique and very rich façade treatment, combining large fields of mosaic above and
sculpture below (Fig. 6). To be sure, this had not needed, for its implementation, the special simplicity of the primary scheme just described. All it needed was a flat surface that could be filled with imagery, a surface that was consistent with that simplicity. Yet it may be regarded, like the other elaborations, as intended from the start and thus as one component of the same large concept, partly because it resembles the others and partly because some sort of rich treatment is normal in such façades in this period. This façade is unique, however, in that narrative or quasinarrative figuration completely covers it from top to bottom. It uses two kinds of materials, both tending to flatness: mosaic in the upper threequarters and a special variant of low-relief sculpture below. Writers studying the building have tended to view the two in isolation from each other and have given the mosaics much less attention, partly no doubt because today what we see is largely a restoration of the nineteenth century. The splendid sculpture has been intensely analyzed. Some of the many problems opened up as a result may be clarified, it is suggested, if it is viewed as part of the whole façade, downplaying somewhat the division into two media. Mosaics had been common on church façades in the region for more than a century when this work began. Major examples survive at the Spoleto cathedral (1207) and at San Miniato, Florence, both representing Christ in Glory, and at San Frediano, Lucca (c. 1250), with the Ascension of Christ. All fill only a small part of the top center of the façade, and the rest is not ornamented, beyond handsome slabs of colored marble and architectural membering. The planar effect is strong. From about 1300 Rome shows grander projects, with Nicholas IV’s Santa Maria Maggiore, already introduced, and Saint Peter’s, with its famous Navicella by Giotto. Both stretch across wider surfaces and present narratives, but
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Orvieto Cathedral, façade
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still leave the lower area around the doors without figure imagery. In style, they mark a shift from an entirely Byzantine formulation seen in the earlier façades mentioned to the modern Italian approach famous at the same time in the work of Giotto. Quite apart from these buildings, other grand churches at the time show sculpture covering their lower façades. It may extend upward, but more sparsely. The richest case in the same geographical area is at the cathedral of Siena. It is commonly named as the model for Orvieto,23 both for that reason and because the Orvieto sculpture plainly shows a Sienese style. The Sienese project also includes mosaics, if only in a small area, and carved vine-leaf scrolls on the columns at the sides of Siena’s main door are quite similar to those that fill the carved panels at Orvieto, framing all the scenes. Yet in the major ways the two façades are very different. Siena’s façade is dominated by very large individual statues, like cathedral façades in Florence and Gothic France; it offers no source for Orvieto’s most distinctive decision, which was to fill the whole lower façade with large panels of marble filled in turn with complex narrative cycles, in very low relief. The Orvieto decorations with mosaic and sculpture were not likely to have been planned without each paying attention to the other. To view them in relation may, in particular, clarify the basis for the unique kind of sculpture. The use of mosaic in this way at Orvieto was not at all innovative, so one may think that it came first in the planning, and that the sculpture developed in relation to it, rather than the reverse. A concern that the sculpture should relate comfortably to the mosaic above could indeed evoke qualities we find: both the allover surface of narrative and the pictorial and planar effect. In this context various other possible inquiries that might go far afield from the central matter here are opened.
These include the large bronzes between the mosaic and the planar marbles, and the rough surfaces of the latter near the top.24 It is possible that later during the project the costlier mosaic gave way to stone below for budgetary reasons.25 Or one might begin with the fact that both mosaic at the top and the sculpture below are quite traditional and that it is the blend that is novel. Sculpture below might have been advised as being safer against damage and vandalism.26 When the cathedral is approached from a distance at first, the mosaic is more magnetic because of its glittering color and gold and its larger scale of imagery. Its relation to the far smaller scale of figures below is not unlike that found in the period in painted altarpieces, with large saints above and small narrative predellas below—a new formula in the region around 1300 that was first common in Siena and found helpful in teaching doctrine. To be sure, just as the sculpture wins when we come close, at its level, so too it gained the favor of the builders. The mosaics remained unfinished for centuries, and came to look old-fashioned. The Orvieto sculpture, still the most intricate and vivid part of the cathedral decoration a century after it was carved, seems in some ways to foretell the wall paintings of Angelico and Signorelli. This happens in two of the four segments, on the second pier (between the left door and the central one) and the fourth (to the right of the right door, at the corner of the building). The first and third are devoted to rather common themes: the Creation story from Genesis and the Life of Christ, respectively. They do show more incidents from those stories than average, as the small scale permits. The fourth panel shifts from narrative to a single big image, the Last Judgment (Fig. 33). This subject, if not so common, did have a standard formulation, seen both here and later in the chapel frescoes by Angelico and Signorelli. Its only unusual quality is the sculptural
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. Pier with reliefs of antetypes of Christ, Orvieto Cathedral façade
Image not available
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Detail of Fig. 7, lower left section
medium, common for the subject in France at the time (with quite different details) but quite rare in Italy. Before concluding with the very strange second pier, this may be the point to notice the exceptional records evincing admiration for this whole cycle. Although the statements are few, the existence of any at all is unusual for such a small town. The first report of this kind is in the autobiographical chronicle of Pope Pius II, who visited in 1460. The pope was from Sienese terri-
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tory and thus a nearer neighbor to the Orvietans than any pope in memory had been; this connection, which continued in his family, will reappear in this study. A constant traveler, Pius gives us brief accounts of the many places where he stopped, no doubt much helped by the local informants pleased to boast. Works of art are mentioned only rarely in these reports, and these reliefs are given more space then any other painting or sculpture.27 Pius II begins by praising the cathedral for yielding to none in all Italy in size, materials, art, and “memorable form.” The high and wide façade was carved by excellent masters from Siena, he says, and “the faces,” both of men and animals, “seem alive in the white marble.” (He copies that phrasing from Virgil’s Aeneid.) The work “allows one to see the resurrection of the dead, the judgment by the Savior, the punishment of the damned, the rewards of the chosen.” That series of four topics, in fact, notes every section of the rightmost panel, which is also the standard set for a normal complete Judgment scene at the time. His allusion to animals evidently refers to a different panel of the series, quite probably the scene at the left of God creating the animals, which is at eye level. As has been observed,28 the text is exceptional in 1460 in showing appreciation of work of the previous century. At the time, art from the trecento in general appeared to be outdated, with rare exceptions. Such appreciation is thus even more surprising when the same sculpture is praised again by a travel guidebook author, Leandro Alberti, in 1549, in this case too the only work of art of Orvieto so noticed.29 After calling the cathedral “very sumptuous,” Alberti goes on: “In its façade are excellent marble figures done by the hands of singular sculptors. Among these is the story in which the supreme craftsman, God, draws out Adam’s rib to form Eve, done with such artifice that it would seem almost impossible for human skill to improve.” The
only other element of the church Alberti mentions is the alabaster windows, and although his book reports on many works of art, these sculptures receive probably his most detailed and most enthusiastic comments. He enjoys the rhetorical device of calling God an artist, forming Eve, in parallel with what the sculptors did, but must also be credited with having looked. It is not surprising that this author found this work more to his taste than such other works in the cathedral as the mosaics, the trecento frescoes in the interior, and even Gentile da Fabriano’s Madonna (to be discussed later), which could seem more archaic because it is less classical. But the silence about Signorelli’s work is more puzzling. One of the four marble panels remains to be discussed: the second panel from the left, with its rare theme (Fig. 7). The easiest part of this panel to understand is the vertical row of figures along its center line, all enclosed in a vine scroll. To reach the Virgin at the top, it starts with a bearded man reclining in sleep, at the base (Fig. 8). This sleeping man allows the vertical series to be identified as the Tree of Jesse, based on the opening lines of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, where Christ’s ancestors are named. At both sides of the “tree” small narratives have been rightly understood to be a wide range of Old Testament scenes, each chosen as an analogue with a scene from the life of Christ that is carved at the corresponding place on the adjacent third panel. Yet some of the scenes have proved quite hard to name. Even more puzzling is the third and last set of images on the panel, where the sleeping Jesse is flanked by two rows of mostly bearded figures (Fig. 8). The solution was happily provided by scholars in the 1930s when they found identical sets of images in an unexpected context: in fresco cycles in various areas of the Balkans. These scenes often included inscriptions naming the unusual subjects.30 The early studies reported a few such
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cycles, but more were then added, and today no less than eighteen of them are known, in Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania. The earliest, in Serbia, are of the 1260s. The assumption that the scenes are Old Testament analogues (or “types,” in the terminology of theologians) of Christ’s life is fully confirmed. The surprise is the identity of the rows of figures at the base. They are sages of the ancient classical world, including Plato, Aristotle, and the Eritrean sibyl, as well as various others less famous. They too offer a model for Signorelli. The presence of many such cycles in the Balkans from an early date, and only one in western Europe, in Orvieto, has reasonably led most observers to infer that this imagery originated in the Balkans and that the Orvieto cycle derives from that base. Yet Michael Taylor, perhaps the one scholar who has studied the subject in most detail, has argued to the contrary. He finds the basis for this iconography in Western intellectual currents, most notably in the revival of admiration for Aristotle by Thomas Aquinas and others. The assertion that the Old Testament events match Christ’s career was in general an old idea. It had long been used by theologians to prove both the reasonableness of retaining the Old Testament as a sacred text in Christianity (because it prophesies the New) and, more directly to the point here, the truth of the story of Christ’s actions (because they had been prophesied). The latter argument implicated as a major aspect, with many others, Christ’s incarnation as a man with a body. The iconography can be read as support for this view, against the Cathari heretics, in the way it reports Christ’s ancestors from Jesse on. Taylor proposes that the presence of Aristotle is an echo of the idea that Aristotle and Christianity are compatible, which Thomas Aquinas and others argued strongly; grouping Aristotle and other pagans with the Hebrew prophets of Christ would do this vividly. Orvieto would be a natu-
ral place for this set of attitudes to converge, and not only because of the special role there of the Cathari. Thomas Aquinas was resident at Orvieto at the time of Urban IV as a reader for the local Dominican monastery. (The view that he was teaching at a theological school there along with the important translator of Aristotle, William of Moerbeke, is no longer credited.31) The chronology, however, makes this claim of Western origin doubtful. This western Aristotelianism, previously limited to academic circles, emerges as a wider current only in the 1260s, just at the time of the Miracle of Bolsena, and the iconography is already present in the same decade in rural Serbia, an unlikely speed of transmission. It is also puzzling that if this is the actual sequence the imagery would never recur in the West, but appear there only once. Moreover, the East already had its own older tradition of orthodox rebuttals of anti-Body heresies, taking a generally similar form. Imagery of Christ’s human ancestry in the Theodore psalter, a rich Byzantine manuscript of 1066, has been interpreted as making a case against heresy.32 An epigram by the Byzantine prelate John Mauropous, also in the eleventh century, anticipates another aspect of this imagery, in including a prayer:33 If perchance you wish to exempt certain pagans from punishment, my Christ, May you for my sake spare Plato and Plutarch, For both were very close to your laws, in both teaching and way of life. After the decline in Byzantium of the earlier iconoclastic battles, the great concern in the area about heretical doctrine focused on the Bogomils, whose doctrines were the basis of those who went west with the Cathari and who were so much attached to the Balkans that in the West such heretics were dubbed “Bulgarians.”34 This suggests why in the Balkans countervailing ortho-
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dox imagery might well be active, in just the form that is repeatedly found there. The single offshoot in the West, in Orvieto, may have a link to the East in the person of Pope Nicholas IV. Long before his involvement in 1290 with the founding of Orvieto Cathedral, on the model of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, Nicholas had worked in the Balkans.35 In 1270 he had been the head of Franciscan activities in that region, and from there he had gone to Constantinople as an envoy from the current pope to negotiate reunion between the Eastern and Western churches. This work shows a main focus on what was proper Christian doctrine, and in the Balkans he could hardly have missed the fresh large frescoes designed to make the case against heresy. When in Orvieto, the local concern with heresy would have reminded him of them, in particular when he was overseeing the form of the cathedral. In the present context, the pagan figures on the panel have a relevance that seems not to have been explored. Signorelli’s later frescoes on a Christian theme inside the church are accompanied below by a set of chiefly pagan portraits of people that, presumably, imply these persons’ correlation in some way with Christian doctrine. The very active discussion of these figures (extended later in this study) has rightly associated them with the humanism of Signorelli’s time, which asserted the possible contributions of other religions to Christian truth. Yet this may not be so new, when it is noticed that something similar had appeared conspicuously on the same building almost two hundred years earlier, a situation that hardly seems to have been taken into account. When each set of pagan images has been considered separately, as usual, they may have seemed more odd than they actually are. In the Balkan fresco cycles about a dozen such sages commonly appear, with labels giving their names. Taylor notes that “a sibyl, Plato and Aristotle appear in almost all of them; Plutarch,
Pythagoras and Homer in many; and Thucydides, Sophocles, Solon, Socrates and possibly Euripides in some.”36 Six more appear once or in a few cases. The strangest of these figures on the Orvieto panel is Plato, who is accompanied by the astonishing attribute of a skeleton in a coffin. Signorelli’s Last Judgment presented skeletons as a change from the usual formulas for the theme, as will be seen. He doubtless had additional reasons, but he cannot have been unaware of this locally accepted precedent. In recent times, before the work of Taylor and others, the identity of these bearded figures on the Orvieto façade had been entirely lost. Was it still retained in Signorelli’s time? One cannot be sure, but the view that it was seems to be supported by the fact that the analogous Balkan frescoes, with their names inscribed, were still being produced then and later. Nearer Orvieto, Siena Cathedral included inscribed statues of Plato, Aristotle, and the Eritrean sibyl, alluding to a somewhat similar iconographic theme; these works of about 1300 were very visible in 1500. There is a separate connection between Orvieto and the Balkan frescoes that is perhaps even more surprising.37 The best preserved of the latter—a group in Romania of about 1525–50—are on the outsides of churches, which they completely cover. Such a procedure seems unique. André Grabar argued, in an elegant study, that its source was in fresco cycles in Serbia of the early fourteenth century, also on church exteriors but only their façades.38 Orvieto shares with the survivors in Romania both themes, of the Tree of Jesse with pagans and of the Last Judgment, and also the format that in Orvieto seemed inexplicable: the total coverage of the façade with smallscale figurative narratives. Absent in the West otherwise, this then makes it even more attractive to see a link eastward. Orvieto differs from the Balkan cases in the media: mosaics above and sculpture below. However, it is precisely the
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media in Orvieto that did have Western traditions behind them. To summarize, one may see in Orvieto, quite possibly under the stimulus of the much interested Pope Nicholas IV, adoption of a Balkan scheme both in iconography with an antiheretical statement and in design with narratives all over the façade. What the Orvietans and their artists contributed as something new was the special sculptural style. These little scenes, strongly tied to flat planes, may have been separately inspired by a local source in classical antiquity. (This possibility, which calls for closer study, was offered in note 24 above.) In 1330 the façade sculpture was complete and the mosaics were being projected. Almost at the same moment, work was begun on the next major job, the larger choir. It was vaulted in 1337.39 Not only was this first change in the original simple plan important enough to require tearing something down, but it was to remain the largest during the centuries considered in this study (Fig. 5). As usual, the records are full with respect to payments and committee votes but say nothing at all about the broad reason for this critical step. One may only infer that reason from general circumstances and from another action of 1337. As for the general factor, choirs have the special role of being the locus of activity by the clergy, in Masses and other ceremonies. It seems likely that such activities were now believed to need more room because more people were involved. The local population was not growing, nor was there any change in liturgy, but the Bolsena relic may well have been calling for increased attention.40 In the sixteenth century the procession of Corpus Domini, in honor of the miraculous “corporal,” was the chief annual event in the town.41 It may have brought more outsiders. It is relevant that Pope Urban’s initial proclamation of the Feast of Corpus Domini in 1263 did not
gain broad adoption in Europe at first, but became universal in the early fourteenth century. It was thus natural that in 1337 the cathedral authorities commissioned the extraordinarily elaborate enamel reliquary to hold the “corporal,” and it was being carried in the procession around town in 1338.42 By exception, the reliquary was not ordered by the lay committee in charge of cathedral projects and finances, the body that will become familiar in connection with Angelico and Signorelli. Instead, we learn from the inscription on the reliquary that it was ordered by clerics, beginning with the bishop, who was a member of the ruling Monaldeschi family. The other contributors, specified by names and titles, were the archpriest (the cathedral’s second-ranking cleric), four canons, and the papal chaplain, all of whom shared the enormous cost of 1,374 florins. The artists—Master Ugolino and his associates (socios)—are also named in the inscription. Here again we find a quantity of very small narratives. The set of eight recounting the story of the miracle, described earlier, tie the viewer’s experience closely to the familiar local context. In the scene in which the pope emerges from the city to venerate the arriving “corporal,” there is an astonishing panorama of the town of Orvieto on its cliff, with its churches and lay buildings. It can only be compared at the time to Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s view of Siena in its town hall, part of his good-government frescoes of 1338–40. The cityscape is often praised as a uniquely real such image in its era, but the Orvieto view is actually much closer to the reality. The thirty-two small scenes comprise the eight devoted to the miracle, just mentioned, and twenty-four of the life of Christ. The latter, as is always noticed, follow closely the model available in Siena in Duccio’s great altarpiece for the cathedral there, of 1308–11. They thus reinforce the indications of cultural dependence on Siena seen in the sculpture. However, the choice of
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subjects shows its own changes and preferences. The base offers eight scenes of Christ’s infancy and adult career, while the sixteen above have to do with Christ’s Passion, a normal arrangement in the period. Yet the Passion is not at all usual, in that it focuses almost entirely on the early part of the passion story, from the entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to the Crucifixion and the Lamentation over the Body. There is just one scene of the Resurrection, whereas Duccio had given many scenes of the later events. The choice at Orvieto seems again to show the concern with the Christ as a man with a body who died after being hurt, with the minimum citation possible of the unique return to life. It seems appropriate to a casket containing the relic of his blood, and again shows the local sensitivity to this theme. The reliquary was certainly designed to make an impression in the annual procession. For the rest of the year it soon gained a very special place on its own altar, which it occupies still today, in its own chapel. This chapel’s construction was begun by 1350 and finished by 1356,43 with the same speed that other construction in the cathedral had also shown. The chapel is not only much larger than the quite small exedra chapels, which were the only ones in the original structure. It has two bays, making it double the depth of standard chapels of this period everywhere. If the grand reliquary were placed on an altar in one of the very small chapels, it would certainly seem out of proportion, and placing it on the high altar would compete with many other required functions. If this implies that the new large chapel was planned in relation to this cult, long before its construction began in 1350, the same deduction can be made from another factor that has already been noted and that takes us back to the original cathedral project of 1290. That is the omission of exedrae on the side walls of the building just at the point where this new chapel
of 1350 was then placed. Its actual construction was even a little wider than had been allowed for in that way, and required demolition of one exedra (Fig. 5). There could have been several diverse reasons for this, but one obvious factor may be sufficient to explain it. In the interim, added buttresses had been introduced in this area to support the high nave vault, and they were used to define the side walls of the new chapel, fixing its width. The room with the reliquary on its altar is certainly meant to be read as a chapel. A door into this room from the main church space defines the shift of context (Fig. 4). Inside, the space is a bit narrower and much lower than the transeptal bay from which we enter. It is narrower because of the buttresses mentioned, and lower because the height is that of all the side aisle bays other than this transeptal one. Yet it is a “super chapel,” as is marked not only by its double depth but also by its exceptionally long narrative cycle of frescoes. (These, from the later fourteenth century, record the Bolsena miracle again on one wall, and, on the other, analogous miracles involving the bread and the wine.) This construction gave the cathedral a highly visible annex on one side. Such annexes to churches appear elsewhere too in this culture. Examples range from the much earlier circular buildings on one side of Saint Peter’s in Rome, to the funeral chapel of the cardinal of Portugal on the side of San Miniato, Florence, in the mid-fifteenth century. A series of annexes is attached to a side wall at Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice. The exterior at Orvieto, however, differs from this recurring type in a major way. The other annexes insist on their separateness from the church by their difference in architectural style, evocative of a square or circle with its own center and thus independence. Orvieto’s chapel shows the same striped walls as the rest of the cathedral and analogous gable and roof pitch, leaning on its larger neighbor.
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It varies from the rest of the cathedral only in its much lower roof line. What all this suggests is that this added chapel is an integral part of the cathedral itself, and specifically that it is a transept and hence not a chapel. This ambivalence between the presentation as a chapel from inside and the presentation as the building’s transept outside is remarkable. Only after 1400 did building activity resume on any scale, and it then took a form that helps to explain this oddity. In the interim, energy was mostly devoted to the large fresco cycles in the reliquary chapel, as mentioned, and in the apse. The latter replicated from the façade mosaics, then in slow process, the story of Mary, namesake of the building, culminating at the top in her Assumption and Coronation in both cases. In 1406 records begin of work on a second large chapel, which is also two bays deep, directly opposite the first one. That second chapel, the Cappella Nuova, is the one that will be our focus (Fig. 4). It would become the cathedral’s last major modification. (The connection of a document of 1396 with this work is common but seems unjustified; this will be discussed later.) The records first refer to a “very new chapel inside the old sacristy,” a sacristy that had occupied part of the area. Soon, however, greater ambition for the New Chapel required tearing down that sacristy’s wall.44 Evidently a small door in the side wall of the church had given access to the sacristy, but now the larger chapel called for a much bigger opening. This entire project was probably planned for much earlier, since between 1355 and 1361 a new sacristy had been built elsewhere, next to the Chapel of the Reliquary.45 A record of the New Chapel in 1411 tellingly identifies it as “placed opposite the Chapel of the Corporal in its likeness (ad ipsius similitudinem)”; indeed, the two are a visual match in important ways. The record of 1411 deals with the tearing down of a second, smaller,
older structure that had been in the way.46 That was the chapel “under the name of the Three Magi” owned by some of the Monaldeschi. The Monaldeschi are to receive an adjacent chapel as recompense, one “under the name of the Coronation of the Virgin,” to which their family tombs will be moved. A scene of the three magi will also be painted there “to be assigned to their name.” Dedicating chapels by assigning them a holy name, as with the Chapel of the Reliquary, was normal, so the fact that this new chapel, the Cappella Nuova, being begun at this time, was not given such a name will appear special. No record indicates why this new chapel was built, whether for a cult or for a family and its tombs, the usual reasons, just exemplified. This curious absence of such a designated purpose calls out for attention. The cathedral’s lay board paid for the chapel’s construction funds from its real estate, from alms, and from bequests to the church, as it did the expenses for the church in general. The construction may have been slow, for furnishings begin to appear only in 1447, when plans were made (which were not carried out at the time) for a stained-glass window with two musical angels. The plans were no doubt intended for the single largest window, in the center of the end wall as today, itself newly produced at that time.47 An altar was installed, two candlesticks were bought for it, and an alms box had locks bought for it.48 Another lock bought in the same year “for the tabernacle in the new chapel” is clarified later, first when we read of buying a rope for the lamp of the “Virgin of the Assumption (Assumpta) in the chapel.” Years later, this tabernacle reappears in a record specified as “of the Assumpta,” when there was worry over damage from rain and wind.49 Another later reference cites the “new chapel where the image of the Assumpta is hidden (recondita) in a cupboard,” explaining the lock, and telling us that
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the statue was usually not meant to be viewed.50 Although this tabernacle was repainted in 1490, a second one in the chapel seems to have been more emphasized, since the same document calls for making this one, with a crucifix, ornatissimum, with gold and azure blue, as well as for adding figures of Mary and John.51 However, it was the first tabernacle, the one containing the Assumpta, that was on the altar (although this is made explicit only in a record of 1622 that is concerned with removing the tabernacle). This supports, one might think, the virtually invariable opinion that the chapel was dedicated to the cult of the Assumption, but the prime basis for such a supposition must be abandoned. The literature has long alluded to a citizen’s bequest to the cathedral in 1396 to establish a Chapel of the Assumption, but when the actual text was finally published it showed that he wanted a chapel dedicated to the Coronation of the Virgin; the point seems not yet to have been absorbed in studies.52 The two cults are indeed closely related, sharing the same feast day, August 15, but the distinction between the two is found in countless other images and dedications. A Chapel of the Coronation did exist in the cathedral not long after, in 1411—the one given to the Monaldeschi, as mentioned above—and it would naturally reflect the bequest of 1396.53 Thus, the motivation for the large New Chapel—the Cappella Nuova, as it came to be known—cannot be a bequest for building a chapel for a cult of the Assumption. The statue of the Assumption in the tabernacle appears in the Cappella Nuova as an existing object; there is nothing in any record about a commission to execute it. That makes plausible the usual view that it was an older statue mentioned in older records in other places in the building. It had the special function of being carried in procession annually on Assumption Day, as it continued to be after it was removed from the Cappella Nuova in 1622. In its earlier
place it had been endowed with a silver crown in 1401, and then in 1440 with another crown bearing pearls and jewels. After being moved into the Cappella Nuova, it would appear, if anything, to have been less favored. A discussion in 1461 about a new silk and gold robe for the statue led to a negative vote; it was the consensus was that there were stronger claims on the funds.54 Then in the process of drawing up the contract for Signorelli’s frescoes in 1500, it was voted to raise the tabernacle to a higher position because the frescoes would then be more beautiful, pulcriores, and that was duly done.55 This pushing aside of the statue in favor of the frescoes would be an even more striking act if the “hidden” statue, as thought, embodied the dedication of the chapel. Reinforcement of the concern with the theme of the Assumption in the Cappella Nuova did occur in 1472, when the main window was at last glazed and painted. The image was of the Assumption, flanked by angels.56 However, the implied claim to the Assumption theme was rather weak—as evidenced by a 1502 vote to make the chapel brighter, “so that the figures in it can show up better,” by glazing the windows with clear glass; the one glazed window already there might, if the administrator so decided, “either be removed or put in a different place.” This led, the next year, to the installing of two clear windows, as noted;57 the measurements show that these were the two smaller side windows on the end wall with the altar, on either side of the Assumption window. They gave more light than the cloth they replaced. Evidently the Assumption window did escape being removed or otherwise demoted, since there is nothing about a third clear window, and nothing again about this context. The Assumption tabernacle got fresh paint in 153058 and then is not mentioned until its removal in 1622, when it lost its place to another image. This also was an old
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one brought from elsewhere in the building: a thirteenth-century Madonna panel. This Madonna panel was informally distinguished from other Madonnas by being called the Madonna of San Brizio, evidently because it had previously been in a chapel dedicated to San Brizio.59 It is notable that the Madonna had had no status as the focus of the cult in that chapel, and this remained the case for a long time at its new site in the Cappella Nuova. The Madonna of San Brizio remains on the altar of the chapel to this day. It was the arrangement in 1622 to put it there, “in the place where” the Assumpta had been, that provides proof of the latter’s previous location on that altar.60 The Assumpta was “provisionally” taken to the choir of the cathedral,61 and we next hear of it, a century and a half later, in the library, which is its home today.62 It is again hidden in a cupboard except for its annual role in the procession. In contrast to the Assumpta statue’s rather shadowy departure from the Cappella Nuova, the arrival of the Madonna of San Brizio was a great success. The “translation” was marked by a papal indulgence and musical celebrations for a week, donations of gold crowns and money, and later the grand new altar, an elaborate Baroque construction.63 The name used before in most documents, “Cappella Nuova” (New Chapel), survived, but it shared its place with and then surrendered its place to “Chapel of the Madonna of San Brizio.”64 The chapel was not dedicated to this Madonna, though; the name was simply a handy label for the location. Only in the late nineteenth century was this name in turn replaced by “Chapel of San Brizio,” which is nothing but an abbreviation of the preceding name, though its use has become so much the norm that it suggests a dedication to the saint. Yet San Brizio has never had any status in the chapel.65 The current use of the name “Chapel of San Brizio” for the Cappella Nuova might suggest
the absence of an actual dedication name. Was there, though, a dedication to the Assumpta at least during the time the statue of her was present there? There is no record of any such dedication, as there is none of any other dedication, and none of a change in name when the statue was removed. Did the statue in some other way determine the perception of the chapel’s character, as articulated by those who caused the chapel to be built and by later officials of the church? An enormous documentary record may throw light on what the chapel meant, at least to the (presumably large) extent that its name can tell us.66 The documents from 1447 to 1622, the entire time the statue was present in the chapel, have been surveyed for this purpose. There are three hundred relevant documents, a quite unusual quantity of references to a single chapel in such a span of time.67 More than half of these documents assign a name to the chapel. The simple term “cappella nuova” (new chapel) appears 153 times, and “cappella dell’ Assumpta” appears seven times, of which two are cases when a second name, the usual “cappella nuova,” is also included. Despite this vast discrepancy in numbers, one might propose that the seven rare cases have a higher status, which might become clear upon examination—for example, if those texts proved to be the ones in which formal or liturgical factors were involved, while the 153 texts were more casual. The simple name “Cappella Nuova” indeed might well evoke such a hypothesis, but that does not turn out to be what the texts tell us. The “Nuova” texts show a full range, from casual to formal, including binding legal documents based on civic decisions.68 The seven allusions to a Chapel of the Assumption can all be checked. The first is from 1465, and thus some eighteen years after the statue was installed and more than fifty years after the chapel began to be called “new.” (No other name, whether suggesting a cult or not, is found
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during those earlier years.) In this case the administrator asks the cathedral committee whether they want to hire a particular glass artist to do a window for the “cappella Assumpte.” He already has a design with figures.69 The decision was postponed. Next, in 1472, we have a memorandum that the window “in the chapel of the Assumpte” has been completed, followed by three records of payments for it using the same wording. The theme of the window, indicated in preceding records, was the Assumption.70 After eighty documents using the term “cappella nuova” only, the other name turns up in 1502 in the form “chapel of the Assumpta otherwise (alias) called the Cappella Nuova.” The issue here was whether to remove the window to gain more light.71 Finally, after another century, a quite different factor is suggested when a citizen buys the “chapel or (seu) altar of Mary Assumpta in the chapel called the Cappella Nuova.”72 Six of these references are between 1465 and 1502 (when there are thirty-odd citations of a name for the chapel altogether), and all are alike in being informal and in their concern with a window. The later five record that this window showed an image of the Assumption. (The earliest does not name any theme, but it seems likely enough that the same one used later was under consideration.) References to the chapel in other contexts, concerning its roof, frescoes, or the like, never speak of it as the Chapel of the Assumption. Evidently it is the concern about the Assumption window that is the sole source of the use of the name in relation to the chapel itself. The idea of a cult or dedication to the Assumption did not emerge from any other circumstances. It did not even always emerge from reference to the Assumption window. Other references to the Assumption window are instead accompanied only by the more usual name of Cappella Nuova. Thus the record immediately following the one of 1465 just cited speaks of the “window of the
Cappella nuova”; then in 1472 the same formula is used in three records that immediately precede the four of that year cited above.73 The name “Chapel of the Assumpta” did not become firm even in this restricted context. The double use, as “Chapel of the Assumpta and/or New Chapel,” appeared twice in the record, first in 1502, as discussed above. The second record, of 1602, casts an entirely different light on the puzzle. There the Cappella Nuova is said to have inside itself a “chapel or altar” of the Assumpta. This is in itself not a strange idea; the presence of two “little chapels” (cappellette) in the Cappella Nuova was always a factor, and this will be explored shortly. Those small chapels, however, were partly separate spaces, niches extending beyond the rectangular bounds of the Cappella Nuova. That does not apply in the case described in 1602, which involves a distinct sense of the term “chapel” often not realized. A chapel need not have any walls but, as well described by the archivist Peleo Bacci, may mean something less, perhaps only an altar with its cult image on it or perhaps some sort of frame around the image. Writers reading records of such chapels sometimes do not understand this and therefore assume the existence of chapel rooms that never existed.74 In the present case, the reference to the Chapel of the Assumpta within the New Chapel appears to refer to the altar with the tabernacle of the Assumpta on it, and perhaps also the Assumption window behind it. This lesser internal Chapel of the Assumpta might have come into existence perhaps only potentially, when the statue was moved to the Cappella Nuova in 1447. It never controlled the name or cult of the new chapel, as the dominant continuation of the latter term in the records duly indicates. Thus it did not necessarily influence the choice of a theme for the frescoes75—a negative inference that can be of basic importance later in this study. Indeed, studies have usually silently
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Image not available
.
View into the Cappella Nuova
omitted any allusion to the Assumption in discussing the theme of the fresco cycle. That was reasonable, although it might have been better to be explicit about the exclusion. The positive inference is that the name “Cappella Nuova” had no real competition, at least until centuries later. In this it is unique in Orvieto Cathedral, and apparently elsewhere; there are no analogies for such a name. Normally chapels are referred to by the name of the cult celebrated or the family that is the owner. This is the case with all other chapels in Orvieto Cathedral, several of which have been incidentally named already. Here the two little chapels within the Cappella Nuova are reported in the records by naming the
bodies of Saints Faustino and Pietro Parenzo in one case, and Mary Magdalene or the Gualtieri family in the other; other structures in the cathedral were referred to in the records as “new” when they were very new.76 What is special here is the continued use of the term for our particular chapel over three centuries. This apparently small point has a large implication. It helps to clarify what this space is all about and why it was built. Though it is not otherwise the case with chapels, other types of structures are permanently called “new,” such as bridges, as in Paris; city gates, as in Verona; and entire cities, as in Naples. Such names allude, with pride, to the improvement the named structures constitute over previously available similar structures. They signify a quantitative increase in amenity or the like, without a differentiation of function but simply more of the same. They often differ from their predecessors in location, so that, for example, the new bridge allows one to cross the river more conveniently. Chapels, instead, are normally different in cult function from previously existing chapels. In the case of the Cappella Nuova, this cult function was apparently not a big consideration, so one must ask the reason for this rather expensive enterprise, something the literature appears never to have addressed. Clues to this oddity are available once it is made articulate. Documents on the construction of the Cappella Nuova referred to the Chapel of the Reliquary, as in the early one quoted above; the Cappella Nuova is directly opposite, and similar, we are told. The location was significant enough, we are told in 1411, to require tearing down a previous building on the site: the Monaldeschi chapel was “torn down on account of the new construction of the big chapel.”77 This differs from other chapels; the unimportance of specific cults is compensated for by the importance of location.
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On the outside, the similarity of the Cappella Nuova to the Chapel of the Reliquary, opposite, is very marked. Again, it does not look like a chapel there, but like a transept arm on the basis of the same continuity with the masonry of the nave. Inside, however, it is visually a chapel, essentially because it is separated from the main church area by a partial wall broken by an entrance door (Fig. 9), just as in the opposite chapel. Yet the two structures differ seriously in that the older chapel had a standard chapel function, for the cult of the relic, but the Cappella Nuova had none. While the older chapel carried an allusion to its double character as a transept and as a chapel, in the newer chapel only the transept aspect gets its full normal development. Its title as a chapel, “Cappella Nuova,” is informal, as is evoked in 1500 by a document speaking of the “chapel popularly (publice) called the new chapel.”78 What
is unusual is that there is no corresponding formal name at all. Transepts in churches also have functions, if only of a generic kind. They offer welcome added space for church needs in general; for additional altars, crucifixes, and tombs; and for entrances to small chapels. The Cappella Nuova had all these functions, but the goal in the design was to give the building matching cross arms— that is, a real transept. This desire to give a church honorable completeness is familiar enough, except that it normally involves the façade or the crossing tower.79 There is nothing strange in its being a transept. The oddity is that the older cross arm had doubled as the relic chapel, so this one had to double as a chapel too, even if it had no normal chapel function. Building it brought honor and made things right, and so too in the next stage did the process of adorning it with frescoes.
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Planning the Frescoes p nterior construction of the Cappella Nuova was finished in 1444, when it was vaulted; a beamed roof was still to come.1 Discussion of arrangements for the altar and its image followed in 1446–47, as already discussed. Thought had been given to wall paintings long before, in 1425, when two mosaicists were at work in another part of the building and were considered for a job here too. But nothing happened at that time; perhaps the expectation that the building would be ready soon was too optimistic.2 The first return to such plans for painting that we know of appears in the records in 1446. The archdeacon of the cathedral, Galeotto dei Michelotti, who was from Perugia, received a letter from Rome suggesting a possible artist. During this period, the archdeacon was the top-ranking cleric in town after the bishop (who was often an absentee). The holder of the office is rarely found involving himself in construction issues, but Michelotti was an exception in that he became involved several times. On a visit to Rome shortly before, he had admired a stained-glass artist working for the pope, and on his return to Orvieto he recommended the artist to the cathedral’s lay committee, which was in charge of construction. On March 16 the committee accepted the idea, and soon afterward the artist, a Benedictine monk named Don Francesco di Barone Brunacci, came to town and signed a contract.3 He then immediately went back to Rome to clear up some affairs, and from there wrote on May 10 to suggest two
more artists to the committee for other work they needed done.4 One was a mosaicist, who might come for expenses. The other was a painter, whom Don Francesco describes as “that Brother of the Observance of the Order of Preachers”—the stricter branch of the Dominicans—”who is such a notable (egregius) master painter”; he “wishes to come this summer and reside in the city.” We learn all this from the précis of his letter entered into the minutes of a meeting of the committee. They responded by inviting the painter to come for discussion, but nothing happened for a year. A year later, on May 11, 1447, the committee assembled with ten other leading citizens, the procedure used for major decisions. These ten, added to the committee of four, included as the first-named Honorable (spectabilis) Gentile de’ Monaldeschi, co-ruler of the town of Orvieto with his brother Arrigo.5 The purpose of the meeting was to “deliberate to the honor of the church.” How concretely honor was at stake emerges when they observe that the walls of their new chapel are whitewashed (scialbida) but not painted. (The group’s secretary here shifts from Latin to an Italian word for which he evidently knew no dignified synonym.6) For the honor, again, of the church, the group concluded, the walls ought to be painted, and that by some “good and famous” painter. They then come to the Dominican, who is painting for the pope in the Vatican and is “famous beyond all other Italian painters.” They note that he has named his
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terms for work during the three summer months, when he would not be working for the pope, and then vote to authorize Arrigo Monaldeschi to hire the Dominican to paint the entire chapel, by working for the three months each year until the job is done. The last sentence adds: “And the said master is called Brother John.” The scribe, and perhaps the speakers, had failed to give his name before. This person was Fra Angelico, an observant Dominican then painting for the pope. To call Fra Angelico the most famous painter in Italy was not unreasonable. If caution is proper, it is for the interesting reason that such labels are hardly known for painters at the time. From our viewpoint on the era, Pisanello would probably have outshone him in esteem at that moment, but no one else. Pisanello had worked on frescoes in Rome for a pope twenty years before, but after that had been in other parts of Italy, at various courts. In Orvieto, Angelico might well not have been recognized, and even in Rome he might have been overshadowed by younger, successful visitors like Masolino.7 The patrons’ motives and attitudes are articulated sharply, and they are not what is often assumed, on less good evidence, to be the attitudes typical of such persons at the time. Yet it does not seem to have been the first time this committee had taken this approach. Don Francesco had been recommended with the argument that he was a papal artist, and twenty years earlier the predecessor committee had hired Gentile da Fabriano, who also had status as the most famous painter in Italy.8 They had taken advantage of the journey he was making from Florence to Rome to continue working for Pope Martin V. In the preceding century they had invited, as head masters of the cathedral works, first Andrea Pisano, who had succeeded Giotto in the same post at the Florence Cathedral, and then Orcagna, the most prominent artist in his time in Florence.
On June 1, 1447, Angelico is recorded in Rome as receiving the last of a series of payments for his work there.9 On June 2 in Orvieto, the committee and the other citizens met and noted that Angelico had agreed to come and should arrive before Corpus Domini, June 8.10 The group’s administrator, the camerlengo, so informs them, clearly having had word from Angelico. He then asks the committee a question, evidently propounded by Angelico in the same message. It is the first of two extraordinary points in the minutes of this meeting. It requests that provision be made and ordered for “what should be painted there.” The second extraordinary point emerges when they respond, as the minutes describe. “After they repeatedly talked it over, they determined and decided to wait for the said master painter and hear him, and then decide it, after having heard his advice.” Thus, we learn that the theme, or iconography, of the frescoes had not been set. They may have discussed some preferences in their “repeated” discussions, but, if so, apparently none was persuasive. The decision to wait for Angelico’s input may have been because of a lack of any appealing ideas, or possibly the strategy of some members to block an idea they did not like. In either case, the choice to wait for Angelico, and its being treated as natural, conflicts with a common current idea about the culture of this era: that patrons have specific ideas about subjects from the beginning of their plans to have work done, and hand them to artists to work up.11 These patrons and their predecessors on the committee had had forty years to formulate a theme since they ordered the construction of this large chapel. In the event, their concern about choosing the artist preceded not only any such formulation but also the installation of an altar. They did this in early 1447 and brought the Assumpta statue to set on the altar. Although they evidently believed that was a better place than its earlier location, still, as
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was observed, it got less attention and care in the following decades in its new location than before. The statue’s aura notably did not extend to evoking a choice of theme for the frescoes, as presumably it would have if it had been regarded as the image defining the chapel’s name and dedication. What seems peculiar in all this may perhaps cease to be so if we return to the observation that the space was not a chapel in any simple or exclusive sense, but also functioned as a cross arm or transept. Transepts in themselves do not implicate any types of themes for decoration, a negative fact about them that tends to be left unarticulated. Like their space, their walls are available for any religious need of the church altogether. One might expect that the only restriction would be that it tend to honor the patron and make clear to the viewer that it does so. The committee may be presumed to have been committed to such general aims. But like a well-intentioned rich donor or board in more recent times, it might have no specific ideas for its good works at a given time and be willing to consult a respected specialist. In the Orvieto case, that specialist, we are told, was the painter, an expert not only in fresco technique but also in religious themes. The whitewashed walls were obviously not good, in large part because they indicated cheapness. Honor, expense, and the artist’s fame come together in the minutes of the committee. Other documents of the time indeed show patrons who have specific plans that are then assigned to artists, notably in contracts. (Yet it should be noted more often that such contracts usually only assign themes in a general sense, like titles, not particular symbols or other details.12) Contracts, usually our only source for such information, are, however, an endpoint in the hiring process, which is also a factor often not considered. The minutes of this committee meeting
offer an uncommon record of what preceded a contract. In the few other similar known cases, it again emerges that the artist played either a large or a small part in the choice of theme, which then became binding in the contracts.13 Patrons are apt to respect the artist as someone qualified to choose themes, because he produces religious objects all the time. Ruler or merchant, the patron was faced with a decision outside his own expertise. Like the buyer of a package tour or a computer today, he may well be pleased to get the suggestions of the provider. Angelico arrived in Orvieto on schedule, for on June 10 there was a payment for items provided him: a flask and the like.14 Although the modern image of this artist is otherworldly, there is much to suggest that he was an efficient worker.15 The contract, signed on June 14, gives evidence of that.16 Its preamble notes, once again, that it follows upon “many talks, debates and discussions about all and each of the matters written below.” This makes it the more conspicuous that the long subsequent text says nothing at all about the subject of the painting to be done, almost invariably an item in similar contracts, and the one item the committee had voted to discuss. The next five clauses of the contract commit the painter. He is to work diligently along with three named assistants: Benozzo Gozzoli, Iovanni (sic) Antonio, and Jacopo de Poli. They had all worked with Angelico in Rome, and thus came to Orvieto with him as a team. In this period it is rare to find assistants named in contracts, an inclusion attractive to historians. It was required here because Angelico’s pay came not to him but to his order. In the more usual case of lay artists, the master paid the assistants, who therefore were not named in contracts between the master and the patron. The next clauses are standard, calling for “beautiful and praiseworthy” figures and faithful work in the judgment of any good master of
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painting. Angelico is to begin the next day, June 15, and continue during the four months from June to September (that refers to the four named months, three months in net time from midJune), and to do the same yearly until the whole, tota cappella, is completed. Seven clauses commit the administrator in the role of patron. Six agree to paying the four painters and providing their pigments, food and wine, and expenses, and to reimbursing expenses already incurred. Only the seventh clause is remarkable. It provides that “in the meantime, while the scaffoldings are being built,” Angelico “will produce the design of the paintings and figures which he is to paint in the vault of the chapel.” It clearly saves time to design while the scaffoldings rise, but this part of the agreement also means that the contract precedes the drawings. This appears to be the only known such case in the culture. Some contracts actually allude to drawings having been approved already by the patron, and most seem to imply this by naming the theme. But in the case of Angelico the theme too is absent from the contract. The two omissions, of drawings and named theme, are hardly to be regarded as unrelated. Both are evidence of full confidence in the artist even without any demonstration of what the artist intends to do. Angelico had been quite unknown to the committee members until they called him to come a month earlier, so his fame and status as the pope’s painter apparently sufficed. No doubt a general theme was set, to the extent of the type of title that contracts commonly include. But having waived viewing of any drawings, the committee could not have had much of an idea of what they would get. The theme, undetermined for forty years, began to take detailed shape in the drawings being done while the scaffolding went up. In a few more weeks the drawings began to be exe-
cuted as frescoes. Within a week after the painter arrived, then, the theme was set. After forty years, it was the actual presence of the artist that led to actual activity. The committee had asked for his input, and their decision to have him proceed without presenting drawings leads us to conclude that they accepted what he suggested. Viewing drawings before a contract was signed had been common in Orvieto before and would be so again. Recent writers have generally accepted the idea that the choice of theme originated with Angelico.17 The one oddity, perhaps even more remarkable, is that the recent literature on Angelico has not given his theme its correct name, as we shall see. How did Angelico arrive at a decision in a week, at most? No doubt he had traveled to Orvieto with some possibilities in mind, themes that might make doctrinal or aesthetic sense. Local conditions when he arrived might then have excluded some and brought forth new ones. Any new considerations added on arrival were probably not doctrinal, given the committee’s lack of focus. Likewise, the theme we have shows no particular connection to previous Orvietan concerns. The lack of modern attention to this matter may be viewed as a tribute to the power of the frescos on the walls by Angelico and Signorelli; the scenes convey a sense of being there inevitably, so that we are unlikely to ask what generated them.18 What Angelico certainly did soon on arrival was visit the chapel, where the particulars of its wall and vault surface had importance for his work. Such visits are on record when later artists came to discuss work in the same chapel; Perugino spoke with the committee after “he had seen the chapel and what was to be done in it,” and almost the same words are used about Signorelli.19 In records of works by artists who could not visit sites where their paintings would go, information about room measurements and
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directions of the light is sent to them.20 What Angelico saw was a paintable area at least twice as large as anything in his twenty-five-year career up to then. His largest previous work was probably the Crucifixion fresco at San Marco, Florence, on the thirty-foot-wide wall of the convent chapter house. In Orvieto, the two side walls are each forty feet long, with a divider in the middle, not to mention the vaults and end walls (Fig. 9). All this could hardly have failed to make a significant impression on him. Yet that need not suggest that he found the situation daunting. He had coped readily before with projects of similarly large scale, notably the series of forty-odd cell frescoes also at San Marco. But those were single images of moderate size, one per room. Here the task was to compose a single enormous unit. In the effort to reconstruct how Angelico explored the problem, we are of course greatly aided by knowing the outcome. The theme he began to paint on the Orvieto vault in June 1447 was the Last Judgment. But that fact will need to be explored, since it is astonishingly passed over or downplayed in the standard books on the artist. A special aspect of this theme at the period was its association, in painting and mosaic, with exceptionally large surfaces. It was the only theme more often represented on such a surface than on a moderate or small one; conversely, large surfaces are decorated with Last Judgments more than with any other theme.21 Large frescoes of the period not of Last Judgments seem to be one of two types, neither found very often. One type simply blows up a standard theme like the Crucifixion. Notable examples of this are Cimabue’s work in the upper church at Assisi (interestingly placed in transept arms); Angelico’s San Marco fresco just mentioned; and several, at an intermediate date, in the Campo Santo at Pisa (where there is also a huge Last Judgment). The other type is found when a unique theme is
developed for a site on a large scale, as in the chapter house of the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, which has topics celebrating the order. Neither of these two types evidently is readily evoked for someone looking at a blank large space, but the Last Judgment is. Both types would require prior concern with those themes, and in the former case, adjusting its scale upward. Angelico could have dealt with his big wall space in a different way. Most obviously, he could have subdivided the wall with a few or more painted frames, and then, as is common, the images inside the frames could be episodes in a narrative. Orvieto had frescoed walls of this kind as nearby as in the opposite Chapel of the Reliquary and in the choir, both being spaces of a size much like that of the Cappella Nuova. Angelico painted such a narrative in the smaller Chapel of Nicholas V in the Vatican. Yet at the time there was apparently a trend among innovative painters to produce larger scenes on walls, extending to their full width (though not height) without internal frames. This is seen in Masaccio’s Brancacci Chapel in Florence, in Fra Filippo Lippi’s choir in Prato, and in Piero della Francesca’s choir in Arezzo. Perhaps these were stimulated by the admired model of Giotto, which was visible in Giotto’s work in chapels at Santa Croce in Florence. The matter would need a fuller study. A number of models of large frescoed Last Judgments can be found in or associated with central Italy. For us, Giotto’s work in the Arena Chapel is the obvious point of departure (Fig. 10). Although this work was painted farther north, it was surely well known in Giotto’s own region of central Italy. Proof of this is the virtual copy after it in the small town of Tuscania, some thirty miles south of Bolsena and thus in the orbit of Orvieto. Giotto had followed a local Byzantine precedent in northern Italy by giving this unified image the
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. Giotto, Last Judgment. Padua, Arena Chapel
Image not available
entire end wall of a church, over the entrance door. He had graphically emphasized its scale by the contrast with the nearby small narrative scenes on the side walls. Artists following him offered variants on this general approach, some of which will be cited further for their relationships in details with Angelico’s work. Nardo di Cione spread a Last Judgment over all three walls of a large chapel at Santa Maria Novella, Florence, which was certainly very familiar to Angelico, who had painted for the same church. The frescoed Last Judgment at the Campo Santo, Pisa, mentioned above, was spread along a major part of the building’s very long side wall. A church’s
side wall was also used by Orcagna at Santa Croce in Florence. And as a late member of this series, shortly after 1400, a Sienese painted the theme on a church entrance wall over the door and extended the subject to the adjacent side walls; this was in San Gimignano, nearer to Orvieto than any of these others. Thus, given a large wall area and an undecided theme for it, a Last Judgment must have come to mind, and the new fashion for wide frescoes would encourage it. The Orvieto people knew the theme well because of their admired sculptured Last Judgment on the cathedral façade, and there could not have been any objection to
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repeating a theme, for the life of the Virgin appears both on the façade mosaics and in the choir frescoes. Needless to say, the theme satisfied the one general criterion that was certainly present, that of being a religious theme. It is unreasonable to imagine that in these circumstances Angelico did not think of a Last Judgment as a good option. Moreover, he had painted one himself, on a small panel—one of the very rare treatments of the theme in central Italy after 1400 (Fig. 11).22 Yet even if this is enough to settle the matter, it certainly remains possible that the theme might have been “overdetermined,” with further stimuli. One should ask whether the theme might be associated in meaning with the Assumption, with which the chapel’s altar had just been associated. The one proposal along that line known to me, however, turns out to lack foundation.23 Another recent study has associated the work (as finished by Signorelli) with the ideas of Saint Augustine.24 This is necessarily proper in a general way, because the saint’s account of the Last Judgment in the City of God, in its twenty-
second and last section, was the most detailed and authoritative description known. (Biblical authority for the Last Judgment, which was very slight, will be discussed further.) Augustine’s text was thus the point of departure for all Last Judgments, from their first known appearance in the eighth century. Angelico participates in that use, but nothing shows that he did so in any fresh way, or turned to it directly. Indeed, his imagery shows no modification of the factors that were standard in the immediately preceding tradition. He and others may have had fresh views on the matter, but if so they did not register them here. It was set up to be a large-scale devotional image, so that line of inquiry seems impossible to pursue further. Thus Signorelli’s task was set fifty years before him. After beginning on schedule on June 15, Angelico’s work proceeded with the same efficiency as in the preceding stages discussed. The scaffolding had been built by June 25, or at least had risen high enough that a worker fell from it and died a few days later.25 The record most revealing for us is that of the purchase, from a
Image not available
.
Fra Angelico, Last Judgment. Florence, Museo di San Marco
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paper vendor (cartaro) on June 17, of a gavantone, which then was “given to the master painter to make a certain drawing.”26 Drawing, it will be recalled, was one of the two initial activities called for by the contract, along with the scaffolding. The word gavantone is not found in Italian dictionaries, but three earlier Orvietan documents use it in a helpful way. A gavantonem magnum is included in an inventory of cathedral property in 1377 and is said to have on it a representation (signum) of the façade. A similar record from 1383 lists four gavantones that contain drawings of the façade, the wall gable, and the principal window. These records have generally been linked to two surviving parchment drawings of the façade, measuring respectively 107 by 77 cm and 122 by 89 cm. Finally, in 1402, payment is recorded for a gavantone of sheepskin (membrane) on which a drawing of a planned oratory is to be produced by a master newly hired.27 Angelico’s gavantone is different because it was made of paper, but apparently not because of its large size (indicated by the suffix -one) or because it showed a large project. Angelico’s gavantone was also similar to the others in that it was preserved in the building committee’s files. This first emerges in a record of 1490, when the committee wanted the painter Fiorenzo di Lorenzo to visit to see “the drawings of paintings to be done in the church.”28 It is true that several projects for paintings were then being discussed, and those for the choir presented problems,29 perhaps as serious as those for the Cappella Nuova did. It may well be that Fiorenzo was to consult on both, as the plural “drawings” might suggest, and that would have been reasonable. In any case, a record of November 25, 1499, makes it certain that Angelico’s drawing was in existence at that time. Signorelli had begun working earlier and had used Angelico’s plans, but then he had reached a point requiring a pause.30 Minutes of a meeting report that “half of the said New Chapel
had a drawing, given earlier by the venerable Fra Giovanni, who began to paint the said chapel, and now that drawing is finished, and there is no drawing of the other half.” It emerges here that Angelico had not made a drawing of the whole vault, as his contract specified (unless it had been discarded, which is not likely). At this point, in 1499, Signorelli was working under a contract to paint the two-bay vault only and had completed the two triangular segments of the inner bay, near the altar, that had been left undone by Angelico. Signorelli was supposed to proceed to the outer vault, near the door of the two-bay chapel, but without a drawing by Angelico to guide him, he could not. In compensation, however, the text informs us that Angelico had drawn “half the chapel” (dicte Cappelle nove medietas)—that is, not only the vault but also the walls of that inner half. This has been invariably misunderstood, for all studies state that his drawing showed only half the vault. The error seems to arise from noticing that the drawing’s limited coverage prevented Signorelli from continuing beyond the inner vault. That seems to suggest that it showed only that vault, but fails to notice that his contract was only for the vault and not for the walls at that time. Hence, whatever the drawing showed outside the vault would not be of immediate concern.31 The report that there was a drawing, used by Signorelli, showing the chapel’s inner half is a key to what Signorelli did later for the walls, when he got his second contract. The indication that Angelico’s drawing did involve the walls is based not only on the actual document but also on consideration of regular procedures. As will emerge, Angelico began the vault with the Judging Christ, a main detail of any Last Judgment image. To paint it, he would have had to have before him the general scheme of his whole composition, in order to be sure of assigning this segment its appropriate proportion. The client
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Image not available
.
Fra Angelico and Signorelli, Vault of Cappella Nuova
too would want a view of the whole representation and would retain it, thereby making it available to show to later artists in discussions of continuing the work. A drawing of the vault only would be useless for either function. If there is a puzzle here, it is why Angelico did not draw
the outer bay too. The likely reason will be considered later. On July 11, as the next major event, another artist was hired for the crew.32 This must have been a local man, because Angelico’s entire team was already at work. Evidently Angelico in his
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.
Fra Angelico, Prophets (detail of Fig. 12)
Image not available
systematic way was further along with plans than his three assistants could keep up with. The new man, “Master Pietro Baroni,” presents the unusual case of a master assisting another master. The record of Baroni’s hiring shows sensitivity to this, calling Angelico “head master,” a term not found otherwise in these records. The two bays of the chapel each have a vault with four triangular areas available for painting, areas that are formed by the supporting arches that cross the vaults from corner to corner (Fig. 12). It is common in Gothic construction for such arches to support the roof. Because each bay is rectangular, the four triangular fields comprise two that have acute angles at the center of the bay and two that have obtuse angles. The acute triangles have bases resting on the chapel’s side walls, while the obtuse triangles, in the inner bay, rest in one case on the altar wall and in the other
case on the transverse arch that separates this bay from the outer bay. Frescoes in such vaults, which are very common in the Renaissance culture, normally do not show narratives as the walls do. The shape makes such a choice awkward. Instead, they commonly show a portrait-like series of immobile figures, often one to a triangle. Frequently they are a set of four standard holy figures, such as the four evangelists, and have only a loose link with the theme of the walls below. Angelico’s procedure is less common, and determined the entire schema for the walls, even though he himself executed only two of his eight triangles. In the obtuse triangle over the altar wall, Angelico painted Christ seated, raising his right hand high and holding a globe in his left. He gave this figure a position in the chapel that can dominate the viewer entering the space. Crowds of angels flank him, extending
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to the narrow far corners of the triangle, where in each case on angel blows a trumpet. The second and last triangle that Angelico painted is at Christ’s left, the observer’s right (Fig. 13). An inscription at its base announces that it shows prophets (such inscriptions appear in all the remaining six triangles also, those painted by Signorelli). The prophets at the front are identifiable, Aaron with his rod (even though he is not a prophet in a strict sense) and Moses with his two tablets; David is behind them. The rest of the prophets are generic figures. They certainly include the four major prophets, and we duly see—in the figure beside David and the three in the next row—three graybeards, who would then be Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, and one younger figure, matching the standard image of Daniel. The eight in the back cannot be assigned names. The inclusion of four younger figures with the four graybeards there is not customary, and may suggest that no identifications were intended. The one unusual inclusion is John the Baptist, sharing the front row with Moses and Aaron. Being a figure of the New Testament, John is not commonly represented in any set of prophets, but a special reason for his inclusion here will appear soon.33 What sense are we to make of these two triangles of figures? The most widely circulated book in English about Angelico labels them as “Christ in Glory” (sometimes “in Majesty with Angels”) and “Prophets” (sometimes “Sixteen Prophets”) without further reference.34 One can expect such brief labels in captions of illustrations and headings of catalogue entries, but here these are the only descriptions of the themes of the frescoes in the text of the book as well. Yet in this culture there is no established church theme of sixteen prophets, and none of Christ in majesty alone with angels. If this is a novel subject, it would call for comment. The most widely circulated book in Italian uses the same titles, again without com-
ment.35 An older, standard German book did the same for the prophets, but did provide a more meaningful title for the other triangle, calling it “Christ as Judge of the World.”36 If simply regarded as labels, these titles are only baffling. If taken more seriously, they can produce misunderstanding. Another intelligent writer on Angelico, also using the same names, then finds that the paintings are nothing more than “ecclesiastical decoration, religious literature.”37 This dubious conclusion might have been avoided if the writer had had available not simply such identities for the pictures, as holy men in rows or Christ with angels, but the role of the works in the great theme in which they are integral parts. In a standard procedure, one may seek to understand these images by locating similar works of nearby dates and localities, which in the present case leads readily to a previous work by Angelico. This easily solves the puzzle, in a way that has been understood without difficulty in the literature devoted not to monographs on the artist but to the chapel. The group of Christ with angels appears in an identical way as a portion of Angelico’s Last Judgment panel in Florence of about 1430 (Fig. 11). In the center at the top we find the same Blessing Christ on a cloud with angels around him, two of whom at the base blow trumpets. Only some gestures differ, a variation accepted in the period in images of the same theme. That point is confirmed in another, later Last Judgment by Angelico (in Berlin, Fig. 14), where the gestures are the same as in Orvieto. Christ again lifts his right arm and lowers his left. Conversely, some details in this image vary from motifs found in common in the two other versions cited, in Orvieto and Florence. Only one detail in Orvieto, the globe, does not recur. Thus the fresco does not reflect specific conditions or cults of the town, but church-wide formulations of this subject.
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Image not available
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Fra Angelico, Last Judgment. Berlin, Gemäldegalerie
This match with the other paintings by the artist provides the answer to the puzzle about the theme. There is no need to claim a novel subject—a “Christ with Angels,” as the books call the work. The triangle simply shows one segment of a Last Judgment. The match with the figures in the other Last Judgments extends another earlier finding, that the large theme in Orvieto is the Last Judgment, based on its ultimate formulation, completed by Signorelli. All this tells us that this formulation was already set-
tled in June 1447, when the contract was drawn up (naming no subject) and Angelico started to paint these triangles. So it will not be a surprise that the same applies to the Sixteen Prophets in the adjacent triangle by Angelico. The same theme of seated prophets appears in the other Last Judgment panels by Angelico; the prophets sit at Christ’s left (our right), just as the prophet triangle in Orvieto is to the right of the Christ triangle. The number of prophets is different, but these all include the
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John the Baptist, that less usual prophet, each time at the front left, hands in prayer, turning to look at Christ. What seemed odd in the triangle—John’s separateness from the others—is now clear. As he looks at Christ, the focus of the prophet triangle is outside its frame. (In the two panel paintings of Last Judgments, not all the men seated with John are specifically prophets; they are holy men of various kinds. The leading prophets seen in the triangle do recur, and the major difference is that the generic ones do not reappear, being replaced by important saints of other kinds.38 It will be argued that the grand scale of Orvieto permitted all types of holy people, including prophets, to get more representatives.) We can now see why the reliable and prominent writers on Angelico gave the triangles misleading titles. Their failure to note that the images are parts of a larger image, not unique separate figurations but parts of a usual one, might at first seem forgivable in a literal way. They took titles only from what they directly saw, not from what is implicated. However, they took the opposite, and more helpful, approach in other cases—for instance, telling us that a panel in Turin is part of a larger set. What evidently distinguished the case of the triangles, and made the method fail its task of explanation, was the heavy framing system. The triangles have triple frames, the middle segment being three-dimensional. They give everything inside a powerful effect of completeness, at least in the case of the Christ. The prophets, with their tilt to one side, lack such apparent harmony. What is happening, and what was not addressed, is that the subject matter jumps the frame. John and his associates are assistant witnesses when Christ judges the world (Fig. 12). We the viewers receive two messages that conflict. One from the frames is divisive, the other, from the theme, is unifying.
If we know what the theme is, as the original audience certainly did, it will be legible here for us and we can discount the frame. If we have lost that popular knowledge, we can come to the wrong conclusion. It does seem odd to run a frame through the middle of a figurative image, but there was much precedent for doing so. Our ability to read past the frame when we know the theme may lead us to assume that this situation is less common than it actually is. Near Orvieto, a conspicuous instance is the fresco cycle by Barna in San Gimignano. (It is in the same church with a Last Judgment already cited, the one large such image nearest in date preceding the Orvieto cycle.) The many scenes are divided by painted frames that produce internal fields, generally of the same size, like a checkerboard whose units were set up before the stories were determined. There are some special exceptions, and in one of them double width is assigned to a story: Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Yet the usual painted frame appears, with the result that the left and right parts of the procession are sliced apart. At the left of the frame, Christ rides in; and at its right, citizens greet him (Figs. 15 and 16). No one has trouble with this; it is understood as a too mechanical application of the routine system. Other cultures show the same thing, even with three-dimensional frames, again with no loss of clear story-telling.39 Stories can also ignore an architectural fact in quite a different way, by continuing one scene from one wall to another at right angles, in a room. In frescoes in central Italy at this time, the Prato Cathedral cycle by Fra Filippo Lippi illustrates this arrangement neatly. In one corner, killers stone Saint Stephen, and the stones must be thought of as taking a diagonal trajectory from the killers on one wall through our space to the saint on the other. In another corner, John the Baptist’s killer hands his severed head across the
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Image not available
Image not available
. Barna, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, left half. San Gimignano, Collegiata
. Barna, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, right half. San Gimignano, Collegiata
diagonal space to Salome (Fig. 17).40 This device can also be found in other cultures and seems to give no trouble.41 Yet the imagery here on the Orvieto vault may be unprecedented, because it uses both these divisive factors at once. Between Christ and the Baptist we must jump over a frame and turn a corner too, though not a right angle. The vault structure imposes this result. Before Angelico, painters in this culture seem always to bow to the power of such frames by giving such triangles only autonomous themes, usually single figures. Angelico was under pressure to use the vaults as parts of his unified theme, as a result of the decision to choose a Last Judgment. A basic problem was the window at the center of the altar wall. This central position traditionally belongs to the Judging Christ, and to keep him at the center the only solution, a strange one, was to push him up into the vault. Angelico presented this answer with grace. He then does not try to hide the way
the frames interrupt the figuration, which would have been futile in the case of such massive forms. Instead, he enriches them with particularly active patterns, including human heads in rows, flowers, and complex geometries in perspective. Their very different language helps us to retain the unity of the two fields on either side, whose imagery is identical in the two triangles. They are like stanzas in a narrative poem, separated by a recurrent refrain. The refrain in no way blocks the continuation of the story from the stanza preceding to the one following. The most basic way in which the narrative is affirmed, leaving us undisturbed by the barriers, is the commitment to the traditional theme, which the viewer knows before entering the chapel. It has never been troublesome for anyone in the chapel, including recent writers. The problem comes when we use only photographs, which can only show segments, are almost always of one plane, and tend to use the frames as handy
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edges of each photograph. We cannot then look past the frames to anything, and we lose the effect and the theme. The frame between Christ and the prophets is not the only one that viewers are required to jump. They must do this in this vault four times, at both sides of each of four triangles. They must do so three more times at the bases of the vault as it rests on the three walls. On the wall level, they must turn two right angles. The outer bay calls for further similar shifts. Even observers who dealt readily with the vaults have at times gone astray among these further complexities in the large scenes of the walls. They have called the framed scenes independent narratives, and indeed their unity is less obvious than that of the vault. Plainly Angelico had to have a clear plan for all this. He had at his disposal a normal method of the period for doing so—with drawings. A drawing of the vault alone, as it has been supposed is described in the contract, would not help at all. The drawing of “half the chapel,” vault and walls, would. Such a general drawing would also be called for not only by the patrons’ desire to see what they would get, and by later artists’ need to understand how the project had been set up, but simply by conventions of the period, as briefly suggested above.42 These called for general drawings of iconographic wholes as a starting point, even when there were no complications about frames (as usually there were not). The apparent puzzle that only half the chapel was shown will be related below to an argument that the inner half is an entire scene, and the outer half an optional extension from it. Much about the gavantone must remain a mystery, but a fair amount can be reconstructed. Some points will emerge later from seeing what Signorelli later painted on the walls in question, in the inner bay. It will be proposed that the drawing had extended beyond the main large fields on the walls to the wainscot below, where
Image not available
. Fra Filippo Lippi, Martyrdom of the Baptist, detail of left corner. Prato, Cathedral
Signorelli’s portrait heads appear. The evidence that one person among them, Dante, was already specified by Angelico may be a surprising shift from previous understanding. The payment document for the gavantone, which has not been analyzed, tells us several things. “Item, pay Iacomo di Cartari [a cartaro is a dealer in paper] for a gavantone, bought from him and given to the master painter to make a drawing.” It cost sixteen soldi.43 To buy only one piece of paper is peculiar. It must have been unusual paper, different from what would be normally be purchased. That fits the price— more than one unskilled worker’s day’s pay, and almost as much as that of a skilled one44—and possibly seventy-five times the price of a normal piece of paper.45
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Image not available
. Benozzo Gozzoli, sheet of drawings. Chantilly, Musée Condé, verso
The high cost implies special quality and also suggests paper of large size. That fits the term gavantone, the earlier appearances of which in the Orvieto records have reasonably been related to the parchments still on file there. Mills at the period produced paper in standard sizes up to 30 by 20 inches, while one of the Orvieto parchments is 50 by 36. In one famous case in the period, a mill had an order to produce much larger sheets for an edition of a print, a situation that would not apply here.46 The usual method of getting a larger surface was to glue sheets together skillfully. Four sheets of the maximum standard
size so glued would provide a surface like that of the parchments earlier and probably be what Angelico needed for the indicated purpose. The next step in such planning would be to draw small elements, mainly figures, on paper of ordinary size. Fortunately two drawings survive that all agree relate to the planning of the triangle with Christ.47 Both, now in museums in Chantilly and Dresden, once belonged to the same owner, and both are drawn on both sides, recto and verso. They have a total of nine separate images. The draftsman, again by common consent, was Angelico’s chief assistant on the project, Benozzo Gozzoli. One of the nine images—a naked athletic youth moving briskly with a lion—clearly has a function that is not connected with Orvieto; it occupies all of the Dresden verso. As recently demonstrated, the youth was copied from a sarcophagus then in Rome, making this one of the earliest firm cases in the Renaissance of copying from classical figures.48 Benozzo is only known to have been in Rome at one phase of his life, while working for Angelico just before their one summer in Orvieto, and that tends to support a date for the drawing close to the Orvieto project. A figure at the top on the recto of the Dresden sheet, a naked putto, was meant, according to one reasonable suggestion, as a motif in a painted frame of a fresco. It is quite similar to such figures in a later work by Benozzo.49 Because it is agreed that the figure in the drawing is early, the natural inference is that it was intended for a similar frame, such as the ones in Orvieto. The Orvieto frames certainly received elaborate attention, even if they do not, as finally painted, include such figures. A third figure, occupying all of Chantilly recto, is a portrait, to be discussed shortly. The other six all involve a Blessing Christ and angels. The most prominent shows the Christ seated with right arm high as he holds a globe in his left hand. These details correspond only to
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the Christ in Orvieto, and to none of Angelico’s other variant Christs. In the drawing Christ cups the globe firmly in his palm (Fig. 18), but in the fresco the globe rests on Christ’s knee a bit insecurely, held loosely from above by his fingers (Fig. 19). The difference is that the drawing was done from the living model, and so the prop was held in a practical this-worldly fashion. The face of Christ is different in the drawing and in the fresco in a similar way. The drawing shows Christ as youthful, certainly because the model was one of the studio assistants, as was common in the period. Writers on the drawings have held that although the artist of the drawing was the shop assistant Benozzo, it nevertheless has the quality
of an original creation,50 but the suggestion that the master would then, in the fresco, copy from his assistant’s idea in the drawing is unsettling. The solution for some (though they are a minority) is to deduce that the master let the assistant Benozzo paint the fresco of Christ’s head too. However, the recent cleaning has for most writers reinforced the impression that the painted Christ is by Angelico. As a matter of social practice, it is almost inconceivable that the central image of the job would be handed to the less well paid assistant; to think so is to let a hypothesis of style eliminate all other kinds of evidence.51 An alternative and more complex scenario is that Angelico made a drawing for his Christ that has since been lost and that Benozzo admired it and
Image not available
.
Fra Angelico, Christ Judging (detail of Fig. 12)
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Image not available
.
Dome with Last Judgment mosaic. Florence, Baptistery
here copied it.52 But this still leaves the puzzle of the lively original pen work in our drawing by Benozzo and is an artificial reconstruction of events. The factor of the gavantone has not been taken into account in this debate, and it may allow a simpler proposal. On the gavantone, the master would offer a preliminary general image of the poses of the figures, shown too small to include full details. The crew chief would next have the “intermediate” job of producing various detailed figures, somewhat larger in scale, using live models, while perhaps Angelico efficiently did something else. The master would then use these studio drawings as aids in his final stage, the painting. Benozzo’s fresh drawing can be thus a live creation without either being created by him from scratch or implying that he did the
fresco. A rational studio practice is thus here leaving its traces. On the drawing, the Christ occupies the middle of the paper, and the corners show four other figures, one in each. The usual and reasonable presumption in such cases is that the drawing in the middle was done first, on the clean paper— that is, that the draftsman would not begin in a corner. Here, at the lower right, an angel looks down and blows a trumpet; it corresponds to the one in the frescoed triangle of Christ, at the lower right (Fig. 12). While the figure is identical in many details, such as the left leg thrust forward, the head is more upright in the painting. The motif in the drawing of leaning forward over the wakening souls is marvelously alive, but in the painting might have seemed to disconnect it from the other angels. The framing gives the
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relation to the latter the chief weight. In the upper right corner of the drawing, a kneeling angel is the evident model of three slightly varied ones in the fresco, just above the trumpeter mentioned. They differ in that the drawing includes legs for the angel, giving the model who was posing a practical support, but these are absent from the painting. The drawing’s other figures also relate to the Last Judgment project in aspects still to be discussed. The planning of the Last Judgment project would of course involve the artist’s memory of his panel of the theme of about 1430 (Fig. 11).53 There was no other recent image of the theme of any ambition in the geographical region.54 Angelico in it had naturally already taken into account powerful older conventions of the subject. A basic schema seen in the earliest such works known, of about .. 800, was still the model, along general lines.55 Here it seems necessary to consider only the phases from around 1300, in the time of Giotto, the earliest artist still viewed with respect in Angelico’s time, and from the area of central Italy. Just one slightly earlier image did certainly still loom large, the huge mosaic in the Baptistery of Florence, and traces of it are found in the later works. In that Baptistery, as in all these representations, the Judging Christ is in the center and larger than the other figures (Fig. 20). At his side the trumpeting angels summon the dead to rise and be judged. This follows the chief source in Matthew 24–25: “he will send forth his angels with a trumpet . . . and they will gather his elect from the four winds” (24:31). Farther to the sides, more angels carry the objects with which Christ was tortured, known as “symbols of the Passion,” especially the cross. The importance of these to the Judgment was especially urged by the great hymn written at this time, the Dies Irae, which has been part of the liturgy ever since. The sinner who sings it asks for Christ’s mercy because it was
with the aim of redeeming us that Christ suffered on the cross, and that sacrifice ought not to be vain: “You redeemed me, suffering on the cross, and that sacrifice should not be lost.” On a level below the angels, Christ is also flanked by Mary on his right and John the Baptist on his left. Beyond them in turn sit twelve apostles, six on each side, who are part of the judging court too. Under Christ’s feet the dead emerge from their tombs (First Corinthians 15:32, “the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall arise incorruptible”). We then see them sorted: to the right of Christ are the saved, or sheep, to his left are the damned, or goats: “he will set the sheep on his right hand, and the goats on his left . . . he will say to those on his right hand . . . Come, take possession of the kingdom . . . he will say to those on his left hand, Depart from me, accursed ones, into everlasting fire” (Matthew 25:32–41). An angel guides a cluster of the good, in prayer and many in clerical costume, to a door. Beyond it, connoting the kingdom of heaven, sit three bearded patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, each with souls in his lap. All this is evidently an extrapolation of the story of Lazarus “borne away by angels into Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:22). There is such a scarcity of Bible texts about heaven that this one was precious, even if it gives no visual information about heaven. Still, the formula with the patriarchs disappears almost completely from the later images. On the goat side, we first see a motionless cluster of weeping souls, which are then hauled, beyond a small break, farther to our right, into a hell of rocks where toads, green demons, and others torture them. A single dominant Satan presides over the small, nasty creatures. The Bible contains no basis for any of this kind of image, which was actually developed in a series of medieval writings and as early as the eleventh century was visible in the great Last Judgment mosaic at Torcello.
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Image not available
.
Attributed to Francesco Traini, Last Judgment. Pisa, Campo Santo
The bilateral symmetry never diminishes: sheep, good, and heaven on the right oppose goats, evil, and hell on the left. In the Florence Baptistery and in Angelico, though not always, the sorting is in two phases. Saved and damned are motionless below Christ, prayerful or fearful, in the first stage. It is the moment of judging. Then, perhaps through a gate, they move outward to their final assignments. Giotto’s huge fresco in Padua (1305; Fig. 10), though far from his home base of Florence, was certainly well known in the area. The close copy in the Orvieto region documents that. The Padua fresco became the second great model, after the Baptistery. A notable change is that it displaces the opened tombs from the center, which spot is needed for a unique motif: the donor presenting the church to Mary. No doubt for that reason
Mary is absent from her usual place seated at Christ’s right, and the Baptist is also omitted from the matching left place. The tombs and very small emerging souls are pushed off to the right (the viewer’s left).56 Such amendments to meet occasional special demands are normal in the period. Giotto also added a vast choir of angels at the very top, and above it the old-fashioned motif of the scroll unrolled at the end of the world.57 Both are outside the standard scheme, do not affect the message, and may be adequately explained by the intrusion of the window. A change by Giotto that is of more concern here has to do with the saved and the damned. Each group is shown not in two phases but in one, and not the same phase on the two sides. The saved appear in their early assembling and praying phase, but not beyond the gate at their
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destination in paradise. (To be sure, the motif with Abraham seems to have been obsolescent.) They do lift slightly up from the ground, or at least an upper subset of saved with haloes do so, but that is the end. Conversely, the damned are shown already inside hell, and we have nothing about their preliminary assembly. They are very small in scale compared with the saved, and their actions are determined by physical force external to them, as they fall down a fiery chute, are pulled and hauled, are caught by a noose or tree limb. The saved are spirits, and their poses if anything negate physical location. This contrast may be the point of Giotto’s unique formulation, which has not been explored in the literature. The next great model in the Florence context is from about 1340. It is a fresco of disputed authorship in the great cemetery or Campo Santo in Pisa (Fig. 21). In this Judgment, inscriptions on two scrolls show the texts from Matthew 25 about the assignments of the good and the evil to the kingdom or to fire, reinforcing the symmetry. In the center the dead emerge, their tombs not boxes as before but simply square holes in the ground. Michael, in the middle, sorts busily and displaces the usual position of the cross and other Passion symbols. These, however, reappear overhead, as in some later cases. One aspect of the symmetry was to remain unique: Christ judges the goats only, and Mary shows mercy to the saved for whom justice has no room. Below Mary, the saved resemble Giotto’s, in praying groups and, in the upper rows, haloed. They include the Baptist, displaced from his usual position when Mary, his traditional counterpart, was moved to her new role. Below Christ, the damned again cluster in fear. The largest novelty in Pisa is that, next to this fresco showing the entire judgment, there is a second one of equal size given solely to the scene inside hell; there is no balancing heaven, making an extreme unbalance. The shifting approach to the
issue of balance between heaven and hell may be summarized in the monuments just discussed, alluding to the five motifs from our left to our right: (1) the saved in heaven, far left; (2) the saved assembled, near left; (3) souls emerge from tombs, center; (4) the damned assemble, near right; (5) the damned in hell, far right. The Baptistery shows the five symmetrical scenes, Giotto shows only (2), (3), and (5), and Pisa shows (2), (3), (4), and (5). Giotto’s omission of the final arrival in heaven (1) and of the early assembly of the damned (4) forced a complementarity of the early phase of the saved and the final phase of the damned. In Pisa, the immense hell forced a complementarity of the early assembly of the saved and both phases of damnation. The trend seems to be to offer violent insistence on the physicality of hell in contrast to a spaceless heaven of spirits. This is comparable to Dante’s approach. The huge separate hell in Pisa was a great success. One hundred years later it was copied in an engraving, when most art of its date was dismissed as crude and obsolete. Angelico took motifs from it in his panel of 1430. The physical would gain an effect of totality in Signorelli. The last of the series, before Angelico, by Nardo di Cione, is of the 1350s and in the main church of the Dominicans in Florence, Santa Maria Novella; Angelico would later paint for this center of his order. This Last Judgment is in a transeptal chapel of extra size, and Angelico certainly knew the work (Fig. 22).58 The fresco occupies the three walls, giving the center one to the Judging Christ, assisting saints, and tombs and the side walls respectively to the saved on our left and the damned on our right. The formula that would be followed in Orvieto first emerges here, spreading the theme around the corners.59 It seems obvious that when Angelico came to study the big walls in Orvieto, and thought of a big subject, the precedent in Florence was available to show how
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Image not available
. Nardo di Cione, Last Judgment. Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel
it would work; it is surprising that the literature has scarcely considered such a connection. Nardo had to work around a big window on the altar wall, like Giotto before him and Angelico later. The one at Santa Maria Novella does not reach as high toward the vault as the one in Orvieto, and thus leaves a bit of wall above itself to assign to imagery. It received the Judging Christ, the element that belongs to the top center, and so Nardo had no need to push the Christ up into the vault triangle, as Angelico did later, but assigned it to individual saints, in the formula standard for vault triangles. The disadvantage is that the small space squeezes the Christ, who is also in darkness over the window, making the meaning of the three-part imagery less than obvious. On the two sides of the window, on this same wall, we work down below Christ and the angels—with trumpets and sym-
bols of the Passion—to the usual sequence. Mary and the Baptist preside again over the twelve apostles. Still below, five tiers of assembling saved and damned are to be seen in the tall, narrow wall areas available. Among the saved, the top row are haloed Old Testament patriarchs (Adam, Eve, Abel, Noah, Moses), but all the others lack such dignity. They are, however, strongly individualized, and at least one is meant to be identified. This is Dante, to be considered shortly. At the base, the open tombs are again displaced from the center (where the window continues) to both sides. Again they are square holes. Underneath the whole, and its frame, the wainscot is adorned on three walls with a row of twenty monochrome heads in frames. This is a very early appearance in a Last Judgment of a formula that becomes very important in Orvieto, and one of the heads here gazes upward at the events of the Judgment; it has plausibly been suggested as a model for a similar one by Signorelli.60 The side wall to our right in Nardo’s Last Judgment is entirely devoted to a rocky hell with complex subsections, as in Pisa. The difference is that this one illustrates Dante’s Inferno in detail, starting with Charon’s boat, which will reappear in Orvieto (Fig. 49). This use of Dante’s text fully explains his portrait among the blessed. It is being assumed that Dante described hell accurately, and such favor to him by God must mean that he is saved. Dante had already appeared among the saved in this way in an earlier, large Last Judgment fresco in Florence painted by Giotto’s shop in 1338–40, just after the master’s death. In 1395 Giotto’s biographer Filippo Villani reported that in the chapel of the Bargello the artist “painted himself, and his contemporary Dante.”61 He does not mention that this is in a Last Judgment, but the location he gives, in the chapel, makes that certain. In the now very damaged work the figures cannot be identified. The grouping of Dante and the artist points forward to the appearance of
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both Dante and the artist Signorelli in the Orvieto frescoes. There are still other self-portraits in Last Judgments, as will be discussed. Artists took advantage of painting the theme to include themselves in the favored company.62 Opposite Hell, the other side wall of the chapel by Nardo, on our left, presents Heaven (Fig. 23). Nardo rejects the asymmetry of Pisa, even while borrowing so much from Pisa’s emphatic version of hell. To have an entire wall for heaven brings us back for the first time in this series to the fivepart symmetry seen in the Baptistery mosaics. This is what Angelico and Signorelli will follow. We have both the preliminary and the final phases of the fate of both sheep and goats. Nardo’s heaven does not look at all like the one in the Baptistery. There is no bosom of Abraham. The image we are offered here may be an invention driven by the available vast surface. Eleven rows of standing saints, with one row of angels above, dominate the system as a pattern, but it is not quite as uniform as it first appears. Again we have spirits and no place. Nine rows line up holy figures, a saint beside an angel in endless repetition. The lowest two rows show only women saints. Yet all this occupies only the outer thirds of the wall, as in the design of a triptych. The center third shows Christ and Mary enthroned at the top, the latter as Queen of Heaven—a composition taken from the tradition of the Coronation of the Virgin. Musical angels are below them, and below them in turn are unhaloed men and women in slightly smaller scale. These figures are often overlooked. Their role is made clear by the single mobile and offcenter element anywhere on this wall, a pair consisting of a saved soul and an angel guiding him to join the choir. They enter at a point slightly lower than the nearby line of standing saints. This footnote near our eye level, human and irregular, is the small signal that this wall relates in a continuum to the altar wall; this is a
Image not available
.
Heaven (detail of Fig. 22, left wall)
soul that has emerged from one of the tombs there. The two figures are a hinge around the corner. There is nothing similar on the hell side. As in Pisa, rocks tightly enclose hell’s empire. As is true in Orvieto, so here with Nardo it usually is not grasped that the three walls comprise one quite standard subject, the Last Judgment. In the case of Nardo, each wall has been assigned a title: Hell, Heaven, and the Last Judgment for the center wall. They are not erroneous, yet it is plain that were it not for the turning of the corners the whole would be labeled as the Last Judgment, the title given to the same group of images when found on a flat surface. Following these models available to Florentines, Angelico’s panel of 1430 (Fig. 11) was also affected by its odd shape. It appears to have been the upper part of a benchback (where the priest,
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deacon, and subdeacon sat during appropriate parts of Masses) in the choir of the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence. Hence, the panel has a relatively narrow upper half, about 60 percent of the breadth of the wider half below, roomy enough for the three clerics. Angelico made this serve him when he used the tradition of the Judging Christ above and sorted souls below. The upper part, in the pattern now virtually fixed, presents the Judge with Mary and the Baptist and other assisting saints while angels blow trumpets and hold the cross. The choir of tiny angels around Christ, a vast quantity with varied costumes, no doubt alludes to the church’s dedication to Mary of the Angels. The assisting saints show a major innovation in that they are not limited to the twelve apostles. There are thirteen on each side (a front row of seven and a back row of six, the latter neatly visible in the interstices of the front figures). We are meant to identify them individually. The range, all male, includes some patriarchs (Abel, Moses, David) and founders of monastic orders (Dominic, Francis), along with a partial set of the apostles. The change is explained by another change just below, where Angelico abandoned the system of haloed figures as leaders of the saved assembly for a new theme, as we shall see, and so the exiled haloed figures are relocated to the apostles area. Throughout this upper half, Angelico shows this talent for ordering complex message systems clearly, using brilliant small color units and simplified cubic modeling. The lower half retains the five segments seen earlier. The damned side is virtually unchanged from the pattern seen in Pisa, where the emphasis on that side had assumed much authority. In its outer part, hell is a series of pits, and in the inner part a cluster of people are violently hauled and pulled. The center segment is entirely fresh and inventive. The tombs are little squares, as before,63 but in emphatic perspective. In this they
exemplify the new fascination at just this time, among Florentine artists, with patterned floor tiles to measure recession. Also new, and not found elsewhere, is the emptiness of the tombs. No one is climbing out, as in earlier and also in later Judgments. There are tomb lids scattered in disarray, a clue that the dead had emerged and have departed. They have followed Christ’s order to line up on both sides. Angelico asserts not only rational space, usual enough in his generation, but also rational time. The scene portrays a single moment, the judging, not a sequence of events, with judging preceded by emergence from the tombs. This visual token of a sense of modernity seems not to have been explored in studies of the artist. On the saved side, the inner segment shows the good in prayer, as earlier. They kneel and gaze upward, their heads surrounded by gold rays identifying them as blessed. They are distinct in rank from the saints above, who have haloes. Angels are guiding some of the good souls outward to an area that must be called heaven, since it is in a segment of the panel complementary to hell. The identification needs emphasis because it is quite unlike earlier heavens and is further divided into two parts. The souls first come to a flowery meadow, where they dance with their angel guides in an elliptical ring. As the souls have rays, the angels have haloes, making the alternate identities quite clear. This pairing with angels is Angelico’s one inheritance from Nardo’s heaven. The elliptical movement is in perspective. Thus heaven is a physical place like hell, not a nonplace of spirits, as earlier. This image of dancers has become world famous, even while its break with precedent has passed unnoticed. No doubt its tie to our world on earth has aided in its popularity. The meadow occupies most of heaven, but another aspect of it can be barely seen in the far upper corner. An angel and a soul have levitated
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and fly through an open gate of a walled city. Though this is also new, it alludes to a rare distant tradition. The walled city is labeled as heaven in some images from the tenth century onward, most of them not Last Judgments.64 The basis is the text of Revelation 21, telling how after Christ’s judgment “the holy city, New Jerusalem,” is seen “coming down out of Heaven.” It needs no sun because God lights it, and it has gates that never shut. Angelico’s city, matching those details, has conspicuously landed, again reinforcing the physicality of his heaven. This two-part heaven has a solid basis in much older Christian writing. Salvation, according to early fathers, involved a first phase called paradise, which is a garden, and a second called heaven, the heavenly city of Jerusalem. After an early treatment by Greek theologians, the idea appears in the West in an anthem sung at funerals from the tenth century and still in use.65 Yet in Angelico’s period there are few visual parallels. A notable one of about 1425 is in a frescoed Last Judgment in faraway Abruzzi.66 Its upper area is of the usual kind, but the saved below move first into a garden, where they climb trees and pick fruits, and then into a walled city. Visually this closely matches a Florentine fresco not of the Last Judgment. This is part of the famous cycle at Santa Maria Novella of the triumph of the church painted in 1365 by Andrea Bonaiuti. Again souls in a garden climb trees and eat fruit, on one side, while on the other side Peter admits souls to the gate of the heavenly city. Writers have called this garden a preparation for heaven rather than heaven, but in either case it is part of this version of what happens to the saved. However, no precedent seems to show dancing in the garden, as Angelico does. It too is validated by at least one early Greek father, one probably known to the patron of Angelico’s panel. That patron was the notable scholar Ambrogio Traversari, the ranking cleric of the convent of Santa
Maria degli Angeli. Thereafter, the idea emerges in an Italian anthem of the fifteenth century, found in several manuscripts. It tells how “a wheel is formed in heaven of all the saints in that garden . . . they all dance for love . . . they are dressed in particolors, white and red. They have garlands on their heads, they seem young people of thirty . . . the garlands are all flowered.”67 Yet neither Angelico nor anyone else repeated this vision in later Last Judgments, a point that reinforces the idea that it had special connections with Traversari.68 Angelico thus brought to Orvieto in 1447 a powerful awareness of the theme of the Last Judgment. He had offered imaginative innovations while using ancient schemes. It can be presumed that he now did not freeze his formulas but let them interact with the new given of the chapel’s vast walls. Whatever plans he had did not come to fruition, but clues about his project are fortunately much more accessible than the studies indicate. Indeed, the studies have recognized hardly any clues to it. After Orvieto, Angelico painted three more Last Judgments on small panels. The latest of these, that of 1450, is of slight concern here.69 Perhaps its only relevance is in its heavy use of inscriptions, which include the text about sheep and goats used earlier in Pisa. It further quotes the Old Testament text (Joel 3:2) that was the standard citation for a prophecy of the Judgment, in which the Lord says he will “gather all nations into the valley of Josaphat.” This validates the common use of that name for the places where the sheep and goats assemble, and it will be adopted here. All scholars assign the other two small panels to Angelico’s period of work in Rome around 1447, which is close to the moment when he went from there to spend a summer in Orvieto. Both are commonly considered to be in part by assistants. If they antedate the summer trip,
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Image not available
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Ascent to Heaven (detail of Fig. 14)
Angelico would by a neat coincidence have found the walls there most suitable for a theme he had been working on. It is more plausible, however, that the small panels are offshoots of the trip and utilized his planning and thought for the big project. The larger of the two (Berlin; Fig. 14) is a triptych, but it has been plausibly argued that its three panels have been sawn apart and that it was first a single surface.70 Some figures at the edges have faces that are cut, which is not likely in the artist’s practice. When Angelico let his scenes jump over frames, it is clear that he left comfortable open space next to them. In the Berlin panel, most motifs are standard. Christ’s left hand is the most notable divergence. It neither dangles
(as in the earlier benchback panel) nor holds a globe (as in the Orvieto triangle) or a book (as in the other small panel, still to be considered), nor does it show fingers widely splayed, as in the latest “Josaphat” panel. This Christ holds his hand out, lifting it a bit at the wrist and showing the palm; all the fingers, but not the thumb, are parallel and touch. This hand is the only detail that finds Angelico making a change in every one of the five versions. The reason can be understood through his approach to the great theme of Judgment. With symmetry and clarity, he sets before us the total contrast of good and evil, but while these two forces are balanced neatly at left and right in the lower half, the upper half is entirely about the good. The saints flank Christ on both sides. In this upper half, evil is involved only at one small point, Christ’s condemnation of the evil with his left hand. That makes it a problem to show this concern, and Angelico apparently never found a solution that satisfied him in all these attempts. It is not surprising, then, that Christ’s left turns up one more time, as an independent study, on the Chantilly drawing (Fig. 18). This version is closest to the one on the Berlin panel, different only in being parallel to the front plane rather than in perspective. That difference may reasonably be attributed to the difference in the problem of working out the form by itself on the paper and the problem of incorporating it into the dramatic action in the painting. (Similar variations were suggested earlier for other motifs on the same drawing.) The deduction about the drawing would then be that, after its use for several motifs in the Orvieto triangle, it was retained when Angelico went back to Rome at the end of the summer. Such retention in the artist’s file would be normal in relation to likely returns to the same theme. The sheet then duly was drawn upon again when the scheme was being considered for
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still another variant painting. This scenario is confirmed by still another figure on the Chantilly drawing, heretofore not mentioned, and also by a close variant of it on the Dresden drawing. These are alternate drafts for a standing angel, once seen in a formal dalmatic costume like a deacon and once in a generic robe. (Angels commonly wear dalmatics when functioning like deacons as assistants in ceremonies.) The former figure holds two attributes. The latter has none, but positions his hands formally, the right being at elbow height and the left holding the robe somewhat lower. The Berlin panel shows an angel blending these two options, with a dalmatic but with hands in the latter position. This is a major central figure in the panel, the angel holding the cross, grasping it in just this way. This figure appears in no other versions. This survey of the artist’s Last Judgments has now accounted for all the separate images on the two drawings, except one to be discussed shortly. The Berlin panel differs from the earlier benchback version in that the upper segment is just as wide as the lower one. More space becomes available, above hell and above heaven. It is used above hell merely to add more saints and angels in Christ’s court. The space above heaven is not given a matching treatment, but offers an innovation. The dance seen in the earlier panel is revised to become vertical (Fig. 24). No longer on the meadow, it spirals up a hill, the top edge of which matches the mountain of hell opposite. It then moves into the air, and the saints finally fly toward a tiny structure, again the heavenly Jerusalem. That souls going to heaven should move upward seems so obvious to us, as it was to Plato (Republic 10.614), that it needs no explanation, and this image has not been given any. Yet before this it had not been seen. It evolves from the meadow dance, which had first given heaven a physical place. From a place one can go up, and
Angelico choreographed both kinds of dance. It is not impossible that this small panel marked the invention of the vertical one, but one may doubt that, because it is a variant (partly by assistants) of this Orvieto project. Thus it might well have been projected in that major plan, and so recorded in the gavantone. That view is consistent with the recurrence of the upward flight, for the first time, in Signorelli’s Orvieto fresco, designed with knowledge of the gavantone. Otherwise Signorelli would have reinvented it, by a remarkable coincidence. In this context an explanation also becomes available of how Angelico would have been stimulated to invent the vertical flight, over and above its being a logical idea. This involves going back to the moment when Angelico inspected the chapel and proposed the Last Judgment as its theme. At once the allocation of the theme’s standard segments would be the question. The five-part schema of the lower half of the standard treatment might seem to fit nicely, assigning the central area with the tombs to the altar wall, the two assembling scenes of the sheep and goats to the side walls of the inner bay, just around the corners from the altar wall, and finally the entries into heaven and hell to the side walls of the outer bay (Figs. 25, 26, and 27; see also Fig. 68, scheme of entrance wall). Fifty years later Signorelli realized that imagery for the three central segments, but did not put heaven and hell in the outer bay. It will be argued later that Angelico similarly had not proposed to put them there, but instead to use the walls of the outer bay for a theme separate from the Last Judgment. Precedent for such a variance was in the Baptistery of Florence and elsewhere. The outer bay may have seemed too far away from the basic focus on the Judging Christ. On Angelico’s benchback, one can readily make the connection between the judging, top and center, and the entries into heaven and hell, at the sides
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Image not available
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Scheme of the altar wall, after Vischer
below; they are directly beneath the Christ, who determines all that is happening. In the vastly larger chapel, the outer bay walls are seven meters away from the judging Christ in the vault above the altar. This may have seemed to leave the cause-and-effect relationship unclear. Whether for that reason or not, Signorelli painted the entries into heaven and hell in a new position, close under Christ. The sheep and goats assembling on his side walls in the inner bay do not turn outward to move toward heaven and hell, as in all the earlier Judgments. They turn back the opposite way and move inward toward the center, ready for the final goals there. However, to place the entries in the middle under Christ, on the altar wall, introduces a separate problem: the big window, the same that had forced the shift of the Judging Christ up into the vault. The wall surface behind the altar is reduced to two tall, narrow surfaces beside the window—the only space available for the entries into heaven and hell if they are to be assigned to this part of the fresco cycle at all. In the case of the saved, Signorelli indeed placed them on the tall, narrow wall to the left of the window
Image not available
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Scheme of the left wall, after Vischer
(Christ’s right, the good side) and, not to our surprise at this point, shows them rising up, helped by angels. But this is just the idea seen fifty years earlier in Angelico’s panel. The natural inference is that the shape of the wall surface had induced this invention in Angelico’s plan for Orvieto, repeated then in his panel and in Signorelli as hypothesized. To be sure, Signorelli’s imagery in detail is quite unlike Angelico’s on the panel; there is no spiral dance, but a simpler lifting action. If we had only these two images in isolation, as in photographs, one could deny them any connection. But that is not easy when they are the work of two artists who worked on the same project, the younger being aware of the work of the older. Signorelli’s adaptation allows us to say that Angelico had invented this idea. This conclusion derives from the previous conclusion, that Angelico’s gavantone extended down from the vault to the walls. That was based on the documentary report that it did so, and on the observation that it would be the reasonable thing. It has now become reasonable to go one more step, to see, in part, what the gavantone showed. Angelico
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Scheme of the right wall, after Vischer
had placed the way to heaven on the tall wall space on the altar wall, and made the souls rise upward, probably in the dance he showed in the Berlin panel. His innovation, like most good ideas, was effective for several distinct reasons, solving several problems. It makes heaven acceptable in the vehicle of the then very modern painting style of physical space; it works with a natural notion of getting to heaven by going up; and it fits the shape of this part of the chapel wall so naturally that it might seem to be just what the painter wanted. Although Angelico’s imagery of the saved souls rising apparently has no parallel in his time, it does have a fascinating analogue. Rogier van der Weyden’s Last Judgment in Beaune shows the usual horizontal groups of saved and damned, but there is also a vertical factor. The two verses in which Christ tells the saved to come to him and the damned to depart appear inscribed on the panel beside the seated Christ, and they are written vertically, the words to the saved working their way upward on Christ’s right and those to the damned working down on his left. Rogier’s work seems to be of just about the same
years as Angelico’s gavantone and his subsequent Judgment panels discussed above. Not long afterward, Rogier visited Italy and came under Angelico’s influence, making it tempting to argue that the work in Beaune might be a little later than is usually thought, and that it echoes Angelico’s inventive imagery. However, the idea of the vertical, a grand and simple one, may also have developed independently in both artists. Should we also imagine that Angelico showed the damned moving vertically downward? There is no evidence about them, and we can only draw inferences about this and other nearby parts of his design in a general way. The way to hell surely occupied the matching tall, narrow wall on the other side of the same window. He placed the tombs at the base, in the center, in all his panels of the theme before and after working in Orvieto, and would presumably have done so there as well. The assemblies of sheep and goats at Josaphat would be around the corner on the two side walls of the inner bay, where Signorelli places them, and as they are also placed in all Angelico’s panels. As to the vault, Angelico’s two painted triangles, of Christ judging and the prophets to his left, would necessarily be continued with apostles to his right, as they are in Signorelli. The assignment of the fourth triangle to the symbols of the Passion, as in Signorelli, is hard to doubt, because no other appropriate place for this essential element is available. A few more detailed aspects can be determined with some precision. Self-portraits of artists had an old tradition in Last Judgments (see note 62). Giotto’s in Florence was cited by an early writer, and the Orvieto façade sculpture very likely contains one by Maitani, shown with assistant sculptors. Jumping ahead, Signorelli painted himself in the cycle and showed Angelico beside him (Fig. 28). That novelty might be viewed as a courteous gesture toward his distinguished predecessor, whose ideas he
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Image not available
. Self-portrait of Signorelli with Fra Angelico (detail of Fig. 78)
used, but the question of its inclusion has hardly been explored; it seems to be taken for granted on the basis of the power of its simple presence. In view of the older tradition, it might well be that Angelico portrayed himself on the gavantone and that this detail was reused by Signorelli. There is surprising independent support for this notion. The sheet of drawings in Chantilly includes one further image not yet discussed, a portrait of a monk or friar (Fig. 29) that fills the whole of the recto. When Bernard Berenson published it, he suggested that it is a portrait of Angelico, an idea that later scholars have reported neutrally.71 This has never been possible to confirm or refute, and the proposal cannot be definitely proved, but it is striking that the place and date of the sheet of drawings is Orvieto 1447, and its other images are in most cases tryouts for
details of the chapel frescoes. The draftsman, Benozzo, was in contact there with just one friar known to us, Angelico, and if he met others the contact would have been lesser. In planning the cycle, the idea of including Angelico’s portrait would certainly have arisen because of the tradition, a point that has not been factored in. To do so would call for a portrait of him just like this,72 which would then be transferred to the gavantone and thence to Signorelli. Benozzo produced, twelve years later, a famous self-portrait in the background of his most successful fresco cycle, the chapel in the Medici Palace in Florence. In surveys of the history of self-portraits, this is presented as one of the rare earliest ones preserved and is perhaps the first to use a formula popular afterward for its location in a scene.73 If Benozzo had earlier assisted with the self-portrait of his awe-inspiring master, Angelico, this development would be more readily understood. In Signorelli’s complete project, the wainscot under the big scenes shows a row of heads in frames surrounded by little scenes from the poems of Dante and others. These will be discussed in detail at a later point, and it will be indicated that the scenes can hardly have been part of Angelico’s plan. The row of heads, however, had an older precedent in Nardo’s fresco cycle, the one from which Angelico drew most as to organization. One of Signorelli’s heads recalls one of Nardo’s quite closely, by gazing at the scene above him; this has been rightly observed by San Juan.74 The reasonable objection has been raised that Signorelli would hardly have been attentive to the work of Nardo, which by his time seemed obsolete.75 The conflict between the two good arguments is solved if we posit an intermediate similar head by Angelico, who was certainly interested in Nardo and as certainly was noticed by Signorelli. This would again imply its presence on the gavantone.
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Rows of heads in the borders of frescoes were common and appeared in two types. Often they are decorative, as in the frames around Angelico’s triangles, and Nardo’s monochrome heads also seem to have been anonymous in this way. Other such rows were portraits of important people related to the theme of the work; Angelico had produced such a major set in the wainscot under his large Crucifixion at San Marco in Florence, in the friars’ chapter house. It shows the most notable Dominicans of the past, an imagery that had a long history already in various monastic orders. Sometimes it had appeared in wainscots, sometimes in chapter houses; Angelico seems to have been the first to combine both patterns. With all those precedents, it would have been natural for him to prepare such a set of heads in Orvieto, then executed by Signorelli. Of the heads executed by Signorelli, one, that of Dante, stands out because it alone can be identified without question as a known individual (Fig. 51). This brings to mind that Dante had already appeared in Last Judgments, both in Giotto’s in Florence (where he is grouped with a self-portrait) and in Nardo’s, the two representations of the theme best known to Angelico. They both showed Dante among the blessed, for a reason suggested earlier: his authentic report on hell (represented by Nardo in the way he described it) and heaven (where he must have gone when he died). Angelico would then logically have included him too, and Signorelli after that. But one of these last two demoted Dante from paradise to the wainscot, which seems odd. It is Benozzo Gozzoli again who may help to explain this move. After he had worked with Angelico as an assistant, his first large independent project came in 1452, in the small town of Montefalco in southern Umbria not far from Orvieto. It is a Life of Saint Francis in the local Franciscan church’s apse. The scene of Francis receiving the stigmata is in the vault and
Image not available
. Benozzo Gozzoli, Portrait of a Friar, drawing. Chantilly, Musée Condé, recto
uniquely occupies two of its triangles. Christ flies as a seraph in one, while Francis kneels in the other, and rays jump the frame between them. This is the same device Benozzo had known as Angelico’s assistant in the Orvieto vault, and it shows that he retained that admiring memory. In the wainscot below is a series of portraits of eminent Franciscans, in the standard way, but that is oddly interrupted in the exact center by three portraits not connected with Franciscans at all, and without known precedent in such a context (Fig. 30). Two of them, Giotto and Petrarch, may be put aside for the moment. The third is
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Benozzo Gozzoli, Petrarch, Dante, and Giotto. Montefalco, San Francesco, choir, wainscot
Dante, in his earliest appearance in a wainscot set of portraits, followed by Signorelli’s as the second. Because both artists were familiar with Angelico’s Orvieto project, it seems likely that it is their common source, especially since Dante would be a natural inclusion in it. It can presumably be discounted that the two made the choice by coincidence or that Signorelli noticed the detail in Montefalco, the only alternative options. The inference is that Angelico had demoted Dante to the wainscot (where Benozzo shows him); why he did so may be explored in due course. Angelico’s project as he drew it can thus be reconstructed in a broad way and in various details, something that has not been done because its existence has not been considered. His drawing is known to have covered just half the chapel, its inner bay, comprising that bay’s
vault, three walls, and, it can now be added, its wainscot. One result is that Angelico was able to include every standard factor of Last Judgments while covering the inner bay only. That can explain why he made a drawing only of this half when he needed a layout to begin painting and to show the client. It also fits the fact that scaffolding for him was set up only in the inner bay, as recorded in documents to be reported shortly. Nothing in the above offers clues about any ideas Angelico may have had for the two side walls of the outer bay, but he must have thought about these spaces. As mentioned briefly above, some earlier Last Judgments combined the theme in the same visual area with quite different images. Besides the Florence Baptistery, Giotto’s Arena Chapel is a striking case: the famous narrative of Mary and Christ is on the side walls near the Judgment on the end.
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A plausible clue survives, in Angelico’s case, in a work not so far discussed. This is the other small panel of the Last Judgment besides the one in Berlin (Fig. 14). All commentators believe that this second one (Rome; Fig. 31) is of around the same time as the Orvieto trip.76 Again it is most plausible to assign it to a point just after the trip, rather than just before, and that would make it an offshoot of the Orvieto plans. This Rome panel is a true, small folding triptych. The center panel shows standard elements of the Last Judgment, including the assembling of the sheep and the goats, but it omits the final scenes in heaven and hell (as we shall see Orvieto also did in the end). The side panels have instead Christ’s Ascension
and the Pentecost, totally separate topics, which Angelico seems never to have painted before. Both are themes calling for vertical emphasis, with Christ ascending over the disciples and with the two spaces in the Pentecost story, upstairs and down, reflecting the formula for that theme in Angelico’s tradition. It had been most striking in the complex chapter house frescoes of the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, by Andrea Bonaiuti, of 1365, another segment of which was mentioned earlier. These themes are so lacking in association with the Last Judgment that it has been proposed that the two side panels did not originally accompany the central Judgment, but most students
Image not available
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Fra Angelico, Last Judgment, Ascension, and Pentecost. Rome, Galleria Nazionale
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accept them. The new point, that the triptych is an offshoot of the Orvieto plan, now permits the beginning of an explanation. In Rome, the Judgment is puzzlingly flanked by these two events. In Orvieto, the Judgment was flanked by two open spaces calling for images in a large high space. To be sure, if we hypothesize that Angelico’s idea for Orvieto was to choose these two scenes as he then did in Rome, the problem is only shifted: why did he pick them for Orvieto? The texts about the Ascension and Pentecost are adjacent in the New Testament (Acts 1 and 2) and thus in long cycles about Christ, such as Giotto’s Arena Chapel. That still does not attach them to the Last Judgment. Such an attachment does appear in a popular illustrated narrative cycle of the time, the Biblia Pauperum.77 That cycle selects forty themes connected with the Gospels as of the greatest significance, and near the end it shows in sequence the Ascension, Pentecost, the Coronation of the Virgin, and the Last Judgment, followed by only one last image, the eternal rest of the soul. The Last Judgment is subdivided here into three aspects: the judging, the damned pulled toward hell, and the saved in Christ’s bosom, recalling Abraham’s in earlier imagery of heaven. This is a rare case of including the Judgment in any temporal series. The one scene of these four in sequence that is absent from Angelico’s triptych is the Coronation. That scene had no visual presence in the chapel, unless its connection with the Assumption is treated as such, because these two contiguous events are both celebrated on the same feast day. In that case, the extension to additional related images preceding the Judgment and the Coronation would lead at once to the Pentecost and the Ascension. In this way the chapel would, after all, have frescoed stories that relate to its statue of the Assumpta. However, the omission of these two scenes from the final paintings again evokes the slight concern with the statue.
Angelico and his three assistants received their full pay for the summer in September 1447 and went back to Rome.78 They never returned, but painting activity continued in the chapel with no break for another year, a circumstance that is almost always overlooked. The local master, Pietro, who had been added to the crew in July, of course did not leave; expenditures for painting materials are recorded at short intervals until the following June. In January, a time when fresco work normally ceased because of freezing weather, there is a payment for coal for “the painter who is painting in the new chapel,” indicating that there was concern to continue. Presumably there was a brazier. A large expenditure is for scaffolding, showing that the earlier scaffolding for Angelico had not filled the chapel. The scale of the new scaffolding indicates that it was for the entire outer bay. Most of the records refer simply to “the painter,” but some give his name as Pietro di Nicola. In June 1448 he was approaching the end of his contract to work for a year and was paid everything he was owed, and there was discussion whether to rehire him.79 The decision was postponed, and he appears in the records up to January 1449, but only in scattered payments. The payment of June 1448 tells us for the first time just what Pietro had been doing: “whitening, painting and flowering” (inalbandum, et pingendum et florandum) the arches of the chapel80 (seen in Figs. 12, 13, 19, 41, 42, 45, 48). These are indeed partly covered with flowers, clarifying the term florandum, absent from dictionaries.81 The flowers were certainly Angelico’s idea. Their obvious earlier model is in the flowery frames of Gentile da Fabriano’s famous Magi altarpiece in Florence, of 1423. Angelico knew it well, having painted another altarpiece for the same chapel. In general, the thick frames of the Orvieto triangles comprise a double set of painted strips. The heavy ribs carry the large outer frames with flowers. Inside, on the plane with the figures, are
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rows of tiny heads, 132 altogether. Each type of frame is omitted in some positions. The thick, flowered ones are naturally found only when the vaults have ribs and thus are absent where six of the triangles rest their bases on the walls. (They are present on the bases of the other two triangles, which rest on the central transverse arch between the inner and outer bays.) The thin frames are absent at the bases of the four obtuse triangles. Perhaps it was felt that the figures needed all the height they could get in these low-lying shapes, and not a bit of it was sacrificed to an inner frame below them. The need for a frame could be satisfied, in the two obtuse triangles resting on the transverse arch, by the arch’s thick flowered frame just mentioned. For the other two, resting respectively on the altar wall and the entrance wall, there are no arches with ribs, but another answer was found, moving the frame down one step. It was painted at the top of the wall, at right angles to the triangle. The result is that there are two frames always on the upper oblique sides of the triangles but only one frame on each base, of which two are thick and the other six are thin, as discussed. It would have been functional and easy to use only one frame everywhere, shifting between the thick and thin in accordance with the practical exigencies just cited. But that was not done. Wherever possible, two frames were provided redundantly, continuing both of the two kinds that were used alone when that was inevitable. This suppresses attention to the shifting needs of structure at different points and asserts continuity over the whole series of articulate parts—all with an elegance the more notable as it is hardly ever perceived. Not noted in studies of Angelico, it is a neat small token of his refined design sense. It is not possible to attribute the flowers to individual artists. They are endlessly mechanical, evidently reusing a few drawings, and there are no others by known painters to compare. The little heads are a quite different case and have
been closely studied. About thirty were produced in the Signorelli phase, but the rest show the style of the Angelico shop. These are all the heads on the two upper, oblique sides of all eight triangles but on only one base, under Angelico’s prophets. Those by the Signorelli shop are on the five other bases that have heads (recalling that two bases have no thin frames with heads, namely, those whose bases rest on the central transverse arch between the two bays). Master Pietro, it can be assumed, participated in this work from the time he was hired in July 1447, but of more interest is the work he did later, after the Angelico crew had left. That certainly included all the Angelico-type frames with heads and flowers in the outer bay, which could be executed only after the second scaffolding was built, during this second phase.82 The fields inside the frames (fields later all painted by Signorelli) were of course blank. Evidently Angelico’s return was expected, and Master Pietro was getting a little ahead, using the same repeat patterns for the flowers. Along with all the ribs, it was easy to extend his work to the adjacent thin frames on the plane of the fields, on all the oblique sides of the triangles. Naturally some member of the Angelico shop, perhaps Pietro, had painted the base under Angelico’s prophets. The only oddity is that the crew did not paint a similar base under Angelico’s other triangle, with Christ. The reason clearly is that its frame, at the base, was not in the vault area but on the wall beneath. That area was a convenient place to work for those who would later paint the wall— the Signorelli crew—but had not been convenient for anyone working on the vault. The same conditions applied to the thin frames above all the Signorelli scenes beneath the four acute triangles. Because these had no ribs, Angelico’s crew had not wetted them for painting. That would have been a special job, and it made more sense to wait and combine it with work on the wall below. All this enlarges our previous under-
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Pietro Baroni, Pietà and Saints
standing of the processes of fresco work here. Separately, Master Pietro Baroni now emerges as the first artist in history with a specialty in flowers, even if probably not as designer but only as executant. He worked sixty years earlier than the artist who has been so credited, Giovanni da Udine, who provided borders in a similar way for Raphael’s frescoes. Pietro did not paint flowers only. In January 1449 he did an Annunciation in another part of the cathedral, and then in May he applied to replace Angelico as head master in the chapel.83 The committee’s discussion of this was revealing. They were unable to meet Angelico’s contracted fee, we learn, because of difficulties with the budget; income and alms had gone down. Even so, they would try to persuade him to return, and then hire Pietro to assist him. Failing this, they would do nothing, because “more concern should be had about beauty than about what is spent, just as has always been.” Nothing else followed. Among the remarkable information in this text is the simple explanation of why Angelico’s work did not continue. Money ran out.84 Books on the artist tend to say that why he left the work unfinished is unknown and to offer speculations.
It has even been said that Angelico broke his contract. Evidently the record of the committee discussion is being overlooked. It tells us that the patrons’ funds did not come from endowments or large gifts but rather depended on current receipts, which were very subject to fluctuations. Benozzo Gozzoli also applied in 1449 to succeed Angelico. Then twenty-nine years old, he had always worked as a chief assistant, but now he hoped to have his own commission, even if it would simply mean executing his former master’s scheme. By this time Angelico had left Rome and was much involved with administrative work in his own convent in Florence. The committee responded to Benozzo somewhat positively. As they had with Master Pietro, they asked that he produce a trial piece, but in Benozzo’s case they offered to subsidize it with the expensive blue pigment and the use of a house.85 The request for a trial piece is strong evidence that Benozzo had not, as sometimes argued, painted the Judging Christ or any other major figures in the triangles. Nothing came of this application either, but Benozzo’s trip did bring him work elsewhere in Orvieto. On December 28 the committee took note that he had begun an Annunciation for a woman who now wanted to cancel the order, “on account of the recent revolution in the government and events.”86 That refers to the assassination of one of the two ruling Monaldeschi brothers, Gentile, and the flight into exile of the other, Arrigo, to be recounted further later. Benozzo proposed to the committee that it might take over this unfinished work of his, paying only for the materials. The committee agreed to this bargain, asking only that the woman’s coat of arms be covered by their own. (Their device, a cross separating the four letters OPSM, Opera di Santa Maria, appears in Signorelli’s part of the chapel.) Such arms were probably often expected, and not specially mentioned except in special situations like this.
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This incident is revealing on several counts. External social events, a violent shift in local politics, had an effect on what happened to art with respect to a private person, but the cathedral activities were hardly affected by them, beyond the opportunity offered for a bargain. Social impact on the arts is a frequent theme of discussion, usually with less direct evidence and often with arguments for stronger effects. Another inference is that the committee was willing to acquire a painting even though it had had no input on its iconography. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this has already been inferred in the larger case of the chapel. Finally, the record shows Benozzo spending several months in Orvieto at this time. That would reinforce his intimate familiarity with the chapel and make it easier to understand his reuse of its devices in Montefalco in 1452, the Dante portrait in the wainscot and the narrative jumping over a frame. Benozzo never returned to Orvieto. Master Pietro, of course, stayed and had repeated contact with the chapel. The chief contact is the commission given to “Magistro Pietro” (presuming, as is usual, that this is the same man) in 1468 to work in one of the little chapels inside the Cappella Nuova, the one dedicated to Saints Pietro Parenzo and Faustino.87 This commission was for a fresco with “one figure of Christ in the pose (modum) of the Pietà and the figures of Saints Faustino and Pietro Parenzo” (Fig. 32). Master Pietro duly executed these three figures, and his
work was recently rediscovered there.88 For the next thirty years this image shared the Cappella Nuova with Angelico’s two vault triangles and nothing else, a status worth considering. The situation reinforces the transeptal character of the space, which now displayed still another unrelated cult. The fact that Signorelli then covered up this fresco with one of his own (Fig. 72), showing just the same subject, is also thoughtprovoking. Our new possibility of seeing both versions offers a test of Signorelli’s attitude toward older work, discussed for the inner bay. This time he retained the general iconographic meaning, with the three figures and the tomb, but drastically changed not only the expressive style but also the composition and the specific theme. His Pietà will be considered on its own later. The last record of Master Pietro is from 1489. He was a member of a large citizens’ committee charged with discussing whether Perugino should be invited to paint the New Chapel.89 In a small irony, Pietro thus functioned as one of the lesser decision makers about a project that he had once hoped would be given to himself. He was even a small patron, for in his will dated 1482 he named as his residuary legatee the cathedral, and specifically its camerlengo, or head of the building committee, in case of the deaths of his wife and other relatives.90 His view of the project, which may well have been representative of the townspeople, was a positive one.
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Intermission, 1448–1499 p he departure of Angelico and his crew in September 1447 was supposed to last only to the next summer, but lack of money to pay them meant that they never returned. The town was left with a large project, undertaken and just begun, with no way to proceed. The theme that had emerged, the Last Judgment, may have added to the problem. Other projects using standard narratives, like that in the cathedral choir, also had starts and stops, yet did get completed just before the chapel was. At the time, no one else chose the theme of the Last Judgment, with its outsize demands on interdependent motifs. Only Angelico’s prestige made it a feasible choice; without Angelico it may have seemed a greater problem to pursue. The theme was special not only in demanding a large scale but also in the interdependence of its references, an internal schematic complexity with symmetry that rested on meaning instead of the usual time series. It sent a message of unappealable authority from the top and of impact on the crowds below, supported by a force that was both divine and military. It is tempting to take it as a symbol of medieval social structure, specifically of feudalism, which would be articulated here through its churchly analogue.1 Conspicuous and expensive presentations like this one, suggesting sponsorship by rulers, would appear to support such an approach. Yet one of the most spectacular examples, the Baptistery in Florence, was sponsored by what was perhaps the
most impressive counterfeudal society of the time, a commercial city run by committees of merchants.2 Exalting God’s control over good and evil, this Last Judgment requires a more complex and nuanced historical reading. The many monumental Last Judgments of the early and middle fourteenth century have been seen as modifying the older symmetrical schema in individual ways. The local donor in Giotto from a new mercantile family, Pisa’s hell without a corresponding heaven, and Nardo’s assertion of a flat spiritual heaven, complementary with a heavy Dantean hell of rocky caves, have in common chiefly perhaps an appeal to earthy confirmation of beliefs, to us evoking real details, in an imagined system.3 In the next half-century such works seemed to have no major successors. Angelico’s 1430 panel on the benchback, in its modest scale, might be read as a surrender to the difficulty of reasserting the older grandeur of the subject. He uses landscape and perspective, favorite new tools of the innovative in his generation, to assert a bold modernity. So it may seem odd that after more than a century Angelico also reverts to the schematic symmetry of the Baptistery mosaics. Giving an equal slot to each element of the Judgment, he may be seen seeking the older, tight authority. These surprises might be understood in the context of the particular church for which the panel was made and of its intellectually powerful leader, Ambrogio Traversari, a devotee of Greek theology.
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When Angelico arrived in Orvieto, the grand walls may have encouraged him toward a similar solution, as well as to return to the monumentality of Nardo and others. When his beginning and his plans were then later shown to the painters who would continue them, notably Signorelli, the problem may well have seemed archaic. Once again, their generation was not used to such models, and the task could be a peau de chagrin as well as a challenge. Much to be done was inevitable by that point, but a fresh use of some further modern tools might help to evade much else that could seem too old-fashioned. Not only older painted images, but also other products of the time, can suggest how the Last Judgment theme could retain a “medieval” value that could retain validity even while infused with new mixes. The religious drama, active in central Italy in the fifteenth century, has rarely been considered in this context. Most of the dramas are narratives, like most fresco cycles, but two Last Judgment plays survive. One of them, from Perugia, which is quite close to the medieval pattern, will be discussed later. That is not the case with the second drama, a Florentine work of “after 1444.”4 Almost the entire text of the latter presents, first, individual sinners’ pleas when they are damned for committing one after another of the seven deadly sins, and then the failure of all their efforts to win acquittal. Thus among the segments of the Judgment schema just one, that with the assembled goats at Josaphat, dominates. A focus on personal ethics and its consequences is clear as well in the sermons of the time, messages to the public that can be seen as analogous to church painting. The themes of sermons, said San Bernardino (d. 1444), should be “vices and virtues, punishment and glory.” A longer Dominican list from the same period offers as chief topics God and the devil, heaven and hell, the world, soul and body, sin, penance, and virtue.5 We are warned that we will be judged,
and lectured about our behavior. What we are not told about is theological symbolism or the systematics of the judging process and its stages, as in the grand murals. Much the same emerges when we read the book on confessions by Saint Antonino (d. 1459) often reprinted in the period, or a short list of the correct themes for paintings, deriving from Saint Thomas Aquinas and often restated at this time. They should show lives of saints, to serve as models for our lives, and reminders of Christ’s incarnation, to induce our devotion.6 The theological and liturgical forms to which art historians of this period often turn as keys are absent in this case too. To be sure, the old-fashioned factors in works like Angelico’s partly justify their approach. Records about the chapel for the years after Angelico left Orvieto, when they concern activity there at all, deal with work on the windows and roof and with frustration about the painting project. The scaffolding is clearly an irritant. In 1465 many thought it should be dismantled, the administrator tells the committee, and he asks for guidance. One respondent said it should go, since it could be replaced later if needed by a better type, with wheels. Another thought it should stay because removal would create a bad impression that “the work of painting begun would not be finished.”7 Nothing happened, and there was no follow-up in 1479 when an item on the agenda called for considering how the chapel “was to be finished with respect to painting.”8 One of the occasional larger meetings, usually called to debate major decisions, rightly labeled the chapel an “opus imperfectum” and voted to negotiate a contract with the painter Piermatteo d’Amelia. It called on him to provide a sample, as usual; nothing followed.9 Minutes in 1489 noted that it had been “forty years since it was begun, and it is the greatest disgrace (maximum vilipendium) for the committee that it is not finished.”10 A month later a second
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large meeting underlined the point, observing that “it is forty-four years or thereabouts that the scaffolding is there.” It is a dishonor, and the work should be finished to the honor of God, the Virgin, the church, and the whole city.11 This meeting was called to prepare for negotiations with Perugino, which were themselves to become a frustration over the years. In the middle of those negotiations, a meeting in winter 1493–94 again determined that “the honor of the church calls for having the figures and paintings of the new chapel finished” and gave orders for “finishing the said chapel and removing the scaffolding, nor should it be allowed to stay there continuously.”12 The completing of the painting almost seems driven by the more conspicuous matter of the disgraceful scaffolding. The committee was quite correct when they called Perugino “famosissimus,”13 as only Angelico had been labeled in earlier debates. Perugino was called “the best master in Italy” in 1500, in a letter of recommendation from Agostino Chigi, later a major patron of Raphael, to his father. He said Pinturicchio was the next best, and there was no third. The even more famous patroness Isabella d’Este gave Perugino a commission, explaining it was because she wanted works by the leading masters.14 The Orvieto committee probably spoiled their chances with him when they asked him too to provide a sample, by doing the vaults for a very small fee, before they would deal with his very high price for the whole.15 They kept trying, however, for a decade. Their efforts include a letter to Perugino in Florence from the Bishop of Orvieto, the sole appearance of that official in records of the century of work on the chapel.16 The committee’s concern about famous artists is evoked by a very different record when, in 1464, a new lock and key, replacing the older ones, are purchased for “the doors of the figure done by master Gentile in the same church.”17
This is the frescoed Madonna by Gentile da Fabriano that is still there, having survived both a Baroque remodeling in its vicinity and then the dismantling of that work. The special interest of this text is that, unlike earlier references to the fresco, it identifies the fresco by the artist’s name only, not by the religious theme or function. It needs a lock because it is precious, and the value evidently resides in the authorship. Gentile’s status in his century was mentioned above. In 1489, when the committee boasted that Perugino had “worked in the Vatican palace in Rome,”18 it might have been recalled that not only Angelico but also Gentile had been a papal painter. The phenomenon of painters’ names being cited alone by owners of their works occurs in a small number of other instances at this time.19 The political history of Orvieto took a major new turn from 1449. The murder and exile of the Monaldeschi tyrants was mentioned earlier; the individuals who brought them down were other Monaldeschi, two first cousins called Paolopietro son of Corrado and Gentile son of Luca.20 (The various branches repeated the same names; the defeated tyrants were brothers named Enrico [or Arrigo] and Gentile sons of Pietroantonio.) A traditional tool in similar fights had been to call on papal influence. Orvieto’s legal position within the papal states had more or less real importance at different moments. This time, unlike all previous occasions, the effect was that real power passed to the papacy, where it long remained, and that all the Monaldeschi were reduced to being rich landowning citizens. The exiled Gentile son of Pietroantonio failed in an effort to reenter the city. Yet after his death, his son, Pietroantonio the younger, was married to Giovanna, daughter of the chief of the winning branch, Gentile son of Luca—a reconciliation that sealed that last stage of the family’s role. The major positive result was heightened interest in Orvieto on the part of the popes. The
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Pier with Last Judgment, Orvieto Cathedral façade (detail of Fig. 6)
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special role of Pius II as a neighbor from Siena has been mentioned, as has his visit in 1459. A typical and important result was the marriage arranged between Camilla, daughter of the winning Paolopietro Monaldeschi, son of Corrado, and the pope’s nephew Jacopo Piccolomini. The Monaldeschi had married into papal families before, and this same Paolopietro’s wife was a Colonna, from Martin V’s clan. At that earlier time, however, both families shared status as feudal barons and fighters. Now, as the Monaldeschi were diminished, the Piccolomini had no significance outside their papal connection, as indeed they had never had. Despite this tie, Pius does not seem to have involved himself with Orvieto more than other towns he visited once. Nevertheless, his visit and his attention to the sculpture there, with his close reading of its Last Judgment segment (Fig. 33), may in this context have had a heightened interest locally, and then reinforced the citizens’ concern about the honor of their other Last Judgment inside the cathedral. Pius II’s successor was the Venetian Paul II (r. 1464–72). Notice is always taken of Paul II’s active patronage of visual arts, from his building of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome to his collecting of medals and other antiquities. His particular connection with Orvieto was through his title, from 1442, as abbot of Santi Severo e Martirio, three kilometers below the city walls. Ruins there still evoke its richness.21 It was one of many of his benefices and does not imply residence. Neither does the fact that his great-uncle had been the town’s papal governor in 1405–8. (Both offices were given by previous popes of their family.)22 Yet it is clear that a real connection developed. Not only did Paul serve in 1451 as godfather to Pietroantonio Mondaldeschi the younger, son of the Gentile exiled in 1449,23 but he arranged for the young man’s marriage in 1467 to the daughter of the other branch that led to family peace. He, like Pius II, was legally their
kinsman. The couple’s involvement in our chapel will appear in due course. Pope Paul II was buried in a tomb in Saint Peter’s in Rome ordered by a family member, which has rightly been called the grandest tomb of any pope in that century. It indeed opens the great series including the two smaller ones by Pollaiuolo and then Michelangelo’s and Bernini’s. Yet art history has virtually overlooked it, for an accumulation of reasons.24 The interest in this tomb here is that a Last Judgment fills the lunette over the effigy (Fig. 34). It is the largest element in the tomb, has a theme apparently unprecedented in tombs in this culture, and is the most ambitious treatment of the theme in the region during the half-century between Angelico and Signorelli. Because the sculptured Last Judgment on Orvieto Cathedral, the most conspicuous earlier one in sculpture, was so admired in its period, and because Pope Paul had surely seen it, as had Pius, it is reasonable to think it was a stimulus to the surprising choice of the same theme for his monument.25 It gives an abbreviated version of the standard schema, which will be explored below. Following this, other Last Judgments appear in the context of this papacy, and that too is little noted. These include the reverse sides of two medals, one of the pope of about 1466–67 and one, by Bertoldo, of about 1468–69, of Archbishop Filippo de’ Medici, as well as the lunette over the tomb of Cardinal Ammanati (d. 1479) in Sant’ Agostino, Rome (Fig. 35).26 Clearly the Last Judgment was of active concern in Rome at this time. The next pope, Sixtus IV (r. 1471–84), has a completely different connection with Orvieto. A member of the previously obscure Della Rovere family from north Italy, he had no tie to Orvieto before he became pope. But in 1476 he named as its bishop one Giorgio della Rovere, seeming to suggest the nepotism for which he is particularly known.27 Yet Giorgio may not have been a rela-
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. Giovanni Dalmata, Last Judgment, lunette of tomb of Pope Paul II. Rome, Saint Peter’s
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tive, as is usually assumed; he is absent from the most thorough family tree of the clan.28 Bishop Giorgio, moreover, seems to have come from Parma rather than from Genoa as the pope did.29 An explanation for his nomination of Giorgio is perhaps available on the basis of an analogy. The pope did give benefices to an unrelated family of Della Rovere from Piedmont, perhaps to give an impression that he, like them, had noble blood.30 The same may apply to Giorgio, who remained Bishop of Orvieto for decades, while the pope’s actual relatives got frequent promotions. The pope’s nephew Cardinal Giulio della Rovere (later Pope Julius II) did not mention the bishop when in 1492 he wrote to the Orvieto city council about the city’s and his own rival claims on Perugino’s services—even though Perugino’s
work in Orvieto would have been in the bishop’s cathedral.31 To be sure, the general scarcity of records of Bishop Giorgio in Orvieto may well be due to absenteeism, a normal phenomenon. The next pope, Innocent VIII, was elected with help from the cardinals of Sixtus’s family, so that it retained much power. It was the reverse, however, when the opposite party elected Alexander VI of the Borgia family (r. 1492–1503). Almost at once a bishop coadjutor was assigned to Orvieto, officially because Bishop Giorgio suffered from gout. When this coadjutor was promoted to another bishopric (in which he did not reside), he was followed in Orvieto by no less than four others in succession up to 1503. The last one is recorded on August 4 of that year as set to
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succeed Della Rovere, who would resign. Yet that did not happen, for he was still bishop in 1505, and it was not until 1511 that a new one took office “on account of Giorgio’s death.” The simple explanation is the death on August 18, 1503, of Pope Alexander, the bishop’s enemy, allowing the bishop to annul his resignation and perhaps get rid of the coadjutor. Yet, altogether, information about Giorgio della Rovere is sparse, and frustratingly so because he was bishop during the chief campaign of work in the chapel. (Writers on the chapel have, however, hardly taken note either of him or of his obscurity, and they may have been justified.) The bishop’s one spectacular moment occurred in the 1490s, unfortunately recorded only in reports that may have been biased against him. While Pope Alexander was making his control of the town firm, the bishop is said to have imported a “mob of relatives, some inclined to sedition” (perhaps the same people against whom there was rioting in 1494) crying, “Death to the outsiders.” His palace was set on fire in 1497 and he fled the town, returning only in July 1499 when a “brief peace” was made.32 The bishop surely had nothing to do with hiring Signorelli in April of that year. Absence from any records is the main indication that the church hierarchy had little involvement in the cathedral’s business throughout the entire period surveyed here; that lack finds its most conspicuous sign in this episode. Pope Alexander made a visit to Orvieto in November 1493 with sixteen cardinals. This kind of attention was unprecedented, and he was able to present himself as a friend of the city, restoring benefits that had been taken away by Innocent VIII. One of the new cardinals in attendance, Alexander’s eighteen-year-old son, Cesare Borgia, was scheduled to take over as lord of a territory that included Orvieto, and soon did so, with much effect.33 Another new cardinal was Cesare’s
good friend, the twenty-five-year-old Alessandro Farnese, who today is remembered as the later Pope Paul III, of the Council of Trent and the Titian portrait. Farnese was already important in the specific context of Orvieto. The Farnese were local barons, with their castle just west of Lake Bolsena, and from the twelfth century on had served in Orvieto as consul, podestà, captain, and rector; Guido Farnese had been bishop when the cathedral was under construction (1302–28).34 Soon thereafter the family expanded its reach, as captains for popes and for Florence and as larger landowners. The tomb of Captain Pietro Farnese (d. 1363), in Florence Cathedral, is the earliest of the famous series of monuments there of the city’s mercenary generals, such as John Hawkwood. It is therefore no surprise that the cardinal’s grandmother was a Monaldeschi and that his only brother married another. Alessandro was thus linked to the same family with whom popes had made similar alliances not long before. His sister married a member of the very great Roman baronial family of Orsini, connecting him with the Cardinal Orsini, who in 1498 served briefly as one of the coadjutor bishops in Orvieto. When the exiled Gentile Monaldeschi had tried to return in 1461, it was the future pope’s father, Luigi Farnese, who foiled the plot.35 Alessandro Farnese appears to be the only cardinal of any period with direct links to Orvieto. In fact, he was virtually a local townsman,36 and not only that, but he was a major cardinal, close to the pope, and not only that, he spent time in the town. When Alexander and Cesare Borgia proposed to take control of the town, which was new to them, Farnese was the one obvious figure connected both with them and with the town. He was at this time clearly the local person of greatest importance as well as of highest rank. Of course, he held local titles too, first as one of the cathedral’s canons and then as its archpriest, the top rank under the bishop.37
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. Shop of Mino da Fiesole, Last Judgment, lunette of tomb of Cardinal Ammanati. Rome, Sant’ Agostino, cloister
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With the pope and twenty cardinals, he returned for another visit in 1495.38 From then to the end of the Borgia clan’s reign, Orvieto’s de facto ruler to whom appeals had to be made was the pope’s son Cesare, even if he was usually at war in the Romagna, seeking to create a kind of kingdom for himself. In Orvieto, Farnese doubtless retained his special status, even though he was one of the cardinals with the smallest
income,39or possibly for that very reason. Later, as pope, he would sponsor improvements in the cathedral.40 Yet he seems never to be mentioned in the discussion of Signorelli’s work there about its patronage or its religious qualities. In 1499, after ten years of negotiation, the cathedral committee decided to cease its efforts to employ Perugino as their painter.41 During that time they had also discussed other artists, includ-
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ing lesser ones, like Pastura, in 1498.42 Pastura was the sixth painter they had deliberated on since starting with Angelico. Then Signorelli’s name appeared suddenly for the first time in 1499, in three documents of April 5. The first of these records was of one of the larger meetings of the committee with other citizens, which were called on rare important occasions. Its minutes endorse the choice of Signorelli. The official smaller committee then voted to hire Signorelli, and the contract with him completes the series.43 Signorelli, who was in town, appeared before the first group. All this is remarkably unlike the committee’s considerations of earlier artists, whose qualifications were debated for months before the artists were invited to visit Orvieto. We thus regrettably lack information on what led the committee to Signorelli. Even if some records are lost (from an archive whose record of preservation is very high44) the early stages of this search apparently took place outside the usual context of the record-keeping committee. This inference is in accord with the odd way in which the first of the three documents describes Signorelli. After pointing out that Perugino is no longer a possibility, “it is next noted that there has now come to Orvieto a certain master Luca of Cortona, a very famous painter in all Italy, as it is said, and his experience appears in many places, as stated by himself, Master Luca, and Crisostimo Fiani, and others having full information about him, he having done many very beautiful works in various cities, and especially Siena.” The lack of fit between the label “very famous” and the evidence to back it up is almost absurd. Their knowledge of the fine credentials of the artist they hired that day came primarily from the artist himself, on the same occasion when they met him, along with the statement by the very minor local artist Crisostimo45 and unnamed others. The one concrete point was about work in Siena. All this does not add up to
“famous.” The key fact is that Signorelli had already come to town, ready to work, without the committee’s involvement or knowledge of his reputation. Someone told them he was famous, someone who had been in contact with him and who presumably suggested that he come to Orvieto. This had to involve a person or persons who knew his work, regarded it as outstanding, and was also in a position to get the committee’s ear, and then its consent—thus to impose his choice. The list of citizens present at the larger assembly mentioned offers a clue. It begins with the official smaller committee and goes on with the usual prelate, lawyers, and merchants found in earlier similar assemblies, but this time the latter group begins with one Count Carletto da Corbara.46 In accounts of the period in Orvieto, this minor nobleman appears in a political role, as the town’s “usual ambassador to the pope,” managing relations between the traditional citizen leaders and their vehement new rulers, the Borgia. In September 1494 the count traveled to Rome and returned with a proposal that Cesare Borgia be named as protector. They did so unanimously, and the pope then sent them a breve of commendation. Officially this was a spontaneous idea that came from the committee.47 In 1499, when the count appears in the records as a member of this committee of citizens approving Signorelli, the Borgia regime was as much in charge as before. The indication that Corbara was there to make sure again that the citizens did what the Borgia wanted fits the earlier indications that someone or some group outside the committee had enough influence to see to it that the committee decided a certain way. The Borgia group are the only visible such persons, but in this case they were functioning like benevolent despots, pushing a solution through after many unsuccessful tries to fill the position. The solution—Signorelli—proved to be superb.
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The question that then emerges is why they chose Signorelli. Some answers will emerge when his work is explored in more detail. Signorelli did not have a good case for being called famosus, as Angelico and Perugino did. To be sure, he had worked in Rome for a pope, in a team with Perugino and others, in 1482, and soon after that in Loreto for one of Sixtus IV’s real nephews. But then his career turned less brilliant for sixteen years or so and was given over almost entirely to altarpieces in towns in the region: Perugia, Volterra, and Città di Castello.48 Around 1490 he did have one great patron: Lorenzo de’ Medici the Magnificent, in Florence, for whom he did the elegant Medici Madonna and the extraordinary Pan. Lorenzo, however, did not give him any larger projects of frescoes, as he did to artists whom we consider Signorelli’s peers, Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and Filippino Lippi.49 As for Siena, his one job there was shared with Francesco di Giorgio, and Signorelli had the less prestigious half.50 When he came to Orvieto in 1499 to discuss the cathedral project, he was in the middle of a very large project for the grand if isolated abbey at Monte Oliveto, some twentyfive kilometers from Siena in a straight line. It was the most ambitious project he had ever had to
that point, and this might well be what is referred to as his work “especially in Siena” in the minutes of the committee meeting. If Signorelli was the informant here, one would expect him to cite this rather than the lesser work of some years earlier in Siena itself, and the committee scribe, plainly not well informed about him, would then have slipped to the term “Siena” rather than “il senese,” the idiom for Sienese territory. Signorelli seems to have dropped this job half done to take on the Orvieto project, which is also a somewhat mysterious move.51 In hindsight, his success in Orvieto may cause us to overlook the oddity of that. He was, after all, offered only a small job in his first contract in Orvieto, to finish the triangles of the vault. Even the whole chapel was no greater a project than the one he left. Lacking other obvious reasons for his choice, one might again turn to the suggestion above about there being pressure to choose him. And Signorelli himself might have been under pressure from the same powerful source to choose Orvieto.52 (One recalls how, soon after, another pope pressed Michelangelo to drop a grand halffinished project in Florence.) The result, however it came to be, was a totally unexpected masterpiece.
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Signorelli Paints the Inner Bay p he contract signed on April 5, 1499, by Signorelli and the committee, called for Signorelli to paint the six still-blank triangles of the vaults.1 They would join the two that Angelico had painted long before, and so fill the roof area of the two-bay chapel with imagery. The contract paper names four witnesses, two Orvietan and two not. The former were obviously the committee’s witnesses, and one of them was the painter Crisostimo already encountered. The two outsiders were brothers, Mariotto and Francesco, sons of Urbano of Cortona. Their origin in Signorelli’s hometown of Cortona is less evocative than the fact that their father, Urbano (c. 1426–1504), was a notable sculptor who had worked since 1451 in Siena. The clear implication is that Signorelli had brought Mariotto and Francesco with him from Siena or nearby to be his assistants. That is additional evidence that he had been rather sure of being hired. No other records of these brothers seem to survive, a common fate for assistants. Signorelli was to be paid 180 ducats and to begin on May 25; the interim was doubtless to clear up affairs elsewhere. He would then work “through the whole summer as long as he could paint,” a reference to the usual suspension of fresco work in freezing weather. His work had to be “similar to the other figures which are there,” the “figures and stories to be given and assigned by the administrator.” (No “stories” in our sense were involved. “Stories” is used in other Orvieto
documents to mean nothing more than an image involving more than one figure.2) The expensive gold and blue colors, and a place to live with a bed, would also be paid for by the committee, but Signorelli was responsible for everything else, including paying his helpers. Signorelli naturally began in the inner bay, where two triangles were full but two were still blank. This is clear from the next record, on November 25,3 which notes that the whole inner vault is now done, and then from his appeals for instructions about the outer bay, for which, the text points out, there is no designum. It is the designum that had been available for the inner bay, the gavantone, that was the theme of the detailed discussion in a previous chapter of Angelico’s drawing of half the chapel. To have painted only the two inner triangles since May suggests a slow pace, because scaffolding and a design were already in place. Angelico had done as much painting and dealt with the other factors in only three months. However, Signorelli is on record as at home in Cortona in July4 and probably did not begin when he had promised. He also may have finished some time before November 25, when the committee met to consider his query. He was not being paid regularly; he had only been paid half the fee in several installments up to May 1500, and the rest in June, despite the terms of the contract that he would be paid “as he paints, pro rata.” This is not unusual, but it does mean that payment records cannot be relied on as clues to
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the dates when parts of a work were completed, as is quite often hoped by historians. Of these first two triangles by Signorelli, the one showing Mary and the apostles as assistant judges, to Christ’s right, naturally alludes to the one opposite, where the Baptist and prophets likewise assist. The latter group, by Angelico, had sixteen figures in seven rows, three people in front and then two, three, two, three, and two, with a single person at the narrow top of the triangle. All are shown clearly as individuals by this system in echelon, all have elbow room on both sides, and there is air left between the group and the frames. Signorelli’s larger figures, on the other hand, may touch the frames, and their projecting knees wear weightier fabric. They sit in just five rows, of three, four, three, two, and one. Yet the change from Angelico is rather subtle, and the figures show none of the force and stress for which Signorelli is famous. He belonged to a generation of painters with notable individual approaches—the curvilinear and elegant Botticelli, the heavily ornamental Pinturicchio, the insistently realistic Ghirlandaio, the nervous Filippino with his tremulous line—and knew them all from shared jobs or in other ways. He instead seems to offer a median version of the formal language of the time, where massive body forms shift their limbs just asymmetrically enough to be clearly alive. In the other triangle, potential action and woolly robes recur, but these figures, being angels, are thinner as they turn gracefully. The age held strong ideas about differentiating human types by gender, age, and degree of force, chiefly for reasons of dramatic exposition. The committee responded to Signorelli’s November 25 appeal in only general terms: He was to continue and to maintain the Last Judgment as the theme (something that had not been explicit in earlier surviving documents), and he would receive a new designum. However, in this
case the word designum does not mean “drawing.” Signorelli himself would be the draftsman if there were one, as later on there was. Here designum is meant as the general concept of the project, a meaning that is vivid in a record of the artist’s later years. In 1513 he borrowed money in Rome from Michelangelo saying he had come to town with a project in mind; when he did not repay the loan, Michelangelo commented that evidently his disegno had not succeeded.5 Signorelli therefore went on to paint the four triangles of the outer bay’s vault, the only work for which he had a contract at the time. It is recorded that he is at work on January 6, 1500: “pinxerit et adhuc pingat.”6 The occasion of the report is his complaint that he is working hard and being underpaid. The response was to provide him with more grain and wine than had been contracted. The committee was obviously glad to have him. The four sets of saints in the outer triangles are composed, in the case of the two tall acute triangles, much like the similar ones done before. The group of patriarchs seems to be a virtual repeat of the apostles; they recede in rows of four, three, three, and three. The group of “doctors”—that is, teachers of the church—shows similar individuals, but they form a noticeably more irregular composition. The first four are inevitably the official “four doctors of the church,” Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory, but they are linked to a fifth, who leans over the shoulder of the probable Augustine. This is a Dominican, presumably Dominic. The following row of five is strongly subdivided, into sets of two, one, and two. Behind these, two sit left of center, backed up by three more. It is tempting here to see the artist now more at ease in his formula, breaking from convention for a looser experiment. He is now confident it will still compose. The two obtuse triangles, in their low width, impose a system that is hardly more than a single
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long row. A single saint dominates each. Stephen inevitably leads the martyrs, Mary Magdalene leads the virgins. Both are flanked by emphatically symmetrical associates. Here the artist seems to have turned to the conventions of altarpieces with a central Madonna flanked by saints. Those had indeed been his chief work in the preceding decade.7 Seven of the eight vault triangles, all except the Judging Christ, carry labels. One identifies the symbols of Christ’s torture that angels hold: Signa Iudicium Indicantia. Each of the others identifies the category of saints shown. In the inner bay they are the prophets and apostles flanking Christ as assistant judges. (The label disregards Mary’s presence with the apostles.) The outer bay’s labels note the martyrs, doctors, patriarchs, and virgins. In the Last Judgments discussed, including Angelico’s benchback, Christ was invariably flanked with such seated assistant judges on both sides, headed by Mary and John the Baptist, as shown in the earlier survey. They similarly always showed angels with symbols of the Passion and with trumpets. That assembly made the top half of a standard Judgment scene complete. Here they all appear in the vault of the inner bay, painted or drawn by Angelico. It thus becomes plausible that Angelico had planned to use only the inner bay of his chapel to show the entire theme. The announcement of 1499 that the theme of the judgment should continue into the outer vault was thus an actual decision, calling for extra imagery not standard in tradition. This eventually led to the extraordinary scenes on the outer bay’s walls, that of Antichrist and the others. The initial problem was to fill the outer vault suitably, and naturally with holy figures in heaven who did not belong to the categories already used. Angelico’s benchback had increased the repertory of Christ’s assistants far beyond the twelve
apostles that were standard: twenty-six figures appear in that area. The reason, suggested in the earlier full discussion of the benchback, that he showed so many other figures in that panel— patriarchs (including Adam and Abel), prophets, martyrs (including Stephen), and doctors of the church (including Dominic)—might have been that he wanted to use the space commonly occupied by them, among the saved just below, for his new garden. In Orvieto, Angelico had set up another sort of holy expansion, giving Christ’s entire left to prophets, in the place given before to half the apostles. Assigning each of the two triangles flanking Christ to one category of saints in that case was a neat way of dealing with and then utilizing the internal frames, as well as populating these large surfaces. The selection of the category “prophets” for that honor was obvious because John the Baptist, who was a prophet, belonged on Christ’s left in the traditional arrangement of Last Judgments. Angelico’s assignment of each framed triangle to just one category of saints meant that many saints seen in the benchback were now left out. It is those that Signorelli now distributed in the newly assigned extra space, the vaults of the outer bay. This logic cannot have been used at the cathedral, however, because no one in Orvieto was aware of the benchback and its choice of saints. The recent Last Judgment on the tomb of Paul II showed apostles only, in the older form, but the still newer one of Cardinal Ammanati (Fig. 35) shows a freer variant again.8 Its ten assisting judges comprise just two apostles, Peter and Paul, with three patriarchs: Abraham, Moses, and David. (The five smaller figures are hard to identify.) Abraham has souls on his lap, in the very old formula symbolizing heaven.9 This tomb, of a prelate who died in 1479, was quite possibly known in Orvieto, because the cardinal was associated with the Siena clan of the Piccolomini and spent time in their town. The associates of the
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clan also included the Orvietan prelate Alberi, who will reappear later. Signorelli, in Rome in 1482, probably took note of this major new monument. In any case, such an extension of saints in categories in a Last Judgment was now being adopted. The placing of the several categories would not be a problem. Then as now, the Roman missal classes saints (though not prophets and patriarchs) in four broad sets, labeled apostles, martyrs, confessors (who comprise all nonmartyr male saints, generally those known for doctrine), and virgins (a title used as a brief way to allude to all female saints). In the missal, this has the great utility of making available a suitable Mass for any saint who does not have an individual one. Signorelli shows the same four sets with these labels, ranked in the same way. Apostles are nearest the altar, then, in the outer bay, the martyrs, then the doctors of the church, and the virgins nearest the outer door. These sets of saints appear in another established church text, one that also includes the patriarchs and prophets. This is the Litany, a sung prayer known since the early Christian period and sometimes called the Kyrie Eleison, from its opening words. It begs mercy from Christ first, and then in order from Mary and the angels, the patriarchs and prophets, the apostles, the martyrs, the confessors, monks, and virgins. Allowing the confessors and monks to share a triangle, Signorelli gives us exactly that series. Many of the Kyrie Eleison prayers to these groups name major individuals of the group.10 Stephen is inevitably named first among the martyrs, followed by his fellow deacons Lawrence and Vincent, then by the young soldiers Fabian and Sebastian. The first three, and the others probably, are the ones Signorelli represents in the martyr triangle, to whom he adds two bishops. (The individual names in these cases are subject to some changes, as is striking in a comparison between a missal of 1518 and a modern
one.11) Similarly, Magdalene is regularly named first among the “virgins” and is at the center of Signorelli’s female group; his others there are hard to name. The standard four doctors of the church are of course named first in the prayer to that group, as they appear in Signorelli’s front row: Saints Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory. Farther back, as in the Litany, are the founders of orders: Benedict, Francis, and Dominic. The Kyrie Eleison appears in all Books of Hours, the best-seller of prayer books in Signorelli’s time. To show these figures in the vault is not a matter of unusual learning, no more than a Madonna in an altarpiece. They are the images to choose if one wants a large number of saints. The six labels that identify each category of saints use a different collective noun in each case: Chorus of Apostles, Number of Prophets, Army of Martyrs, and the like. The Signorelli scholarship has long noticed that the first three of these copy another very common source, the Te Deum, a hymn most suitable for a Last Judgment because it defines Christ as the future judge of sinners. Today it is in every breviary, since clergy sing it at Matins every Saturday. The Te Deum had other functions too, such as being sung in the clerical procession that leaves a house of a dying person after giving Last Rites.12 Having been composed in the early Christian era, it has only two categories of saints: apostles and martyrs. When other categories emerged, similar texts invoked them with collective nouns, but these did not become standardized. A “company” of patriarchs and a “college” of confessors appear in a sermon by Saint Bernard for All Saints’ Day, which also changes the terms used for the original three sets. A “cohort” of martyrs and a “chorus” of confessors appear in a hymn included in breviaries, to be sung by the clergy at Lauds on All Saints’ Day.13 The assembling of the categories of saints is routine and may be so regarded on the vault.
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The committee evidently was pleased with Signorelli, for in April 1500 it contracted with him to paint the entire chapel. The agreement lists the walls and the elements that are external to the walls—that is, the entrance arch, the window embrasures, and the little chapel of Saints Faustino and Pietro Parenzo. As for the walls, he must now do three: the end wall with the altar and the two walls on the sides, and he must do them “according to the drawing (disegno) given by the master, and perhaps with more figures if he wishes, but not fewer than he has given us in the drawing.” On the fourth, entrance wall, he is to paint “stories as we will give him or as we will agree with him.” From this it emerges that the theme of the entrance wall had not yet been set, much as in the earlier case the theme of the outer vault had to be decided when the painter came to it. Finally he is to do the wainscot below with grillwork and creatures (ferrate e spiritelle), once more following a drawing he has prepared.14 Of some small details in this document, the oddest is the decision to “lift up” (elevando) the cupboard of the Assumption statue “so that the figures will be more beautiful.” Indeed, a master was then paid for lifting it.15 Evidently the statue blocked the view of the altar wall on which painting would be done, just as later the Baroque altar covered and destroyed some parts of it. One may surmise that the statue was to be placed in front of the window, supported on columns or the like. Yet this did not resolve the problem of a good view of this area and was to have a major effect on the imagery. Signorelli duly proceeded to work and seems to have finished at the end of 1503.16 Efforts to determine the sequence of the parts have not produced a consensus. Style comparisons, the standard tool for such inquiries, are notoriously subject to argument. Successful cases for the same period, such as the study of Raphael’s early work, benefit from help provided by comparisons with
numerous other dated works from each year, absent in this instance. Some other factors external to style are, however, useful. As the theme was not set for the entrance wall, it could not be painted right away. If he began on a wall adjacent to it—that is, on a side wall of the outer bay—he would generate a later necessity either to proceed from there first in one direction, toward the altar, and thereafter back in the opposite direction, stepping over the work done, toward the entrance wall, or vice versa. To plan in that way, creating useless labor in moving scaffolding and the like, seems unlikely. The obvious approach in the given condition would be to begin as far as possible from the entrance, to reach it last. That would mean beginning in the inner bay near the altar. This option is independently supported by data from the recent cleaning of the frescoes. On the side wall at our left, overlap of painted plaster shows the inner bay segment to be earlier.17 The Antichrist painting, the outer and thus later bay there, seems for other separate reasons to be subsequent to some events of 1502, to be explored, placing this element of the outer bay near the end of the process. The same result is evoked by a more general factor in the situation. While the theme of the entrance wall was unknown, there was rich basis for the inner bay: Angelico’s gavantone. Signorelli’s drawings, added to that at this point, were available equally for the walls of both bays, but the provision in the contract allowing Signorelli to add figures tells us that they were not considered a definitive and thus final version. To be sure, the painting of the whole chapel was speedy enough to question the presence of style evolution, something perhaps too dear to scholars. The chief importance of thinking about a sequence may be the inevitability of considering the parts in some sequence when writing and looking.
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. Bishop saint, in window embrasure of altar wall (see Fig. 25, “”)
Image not available
In Angelico’s panels of Last Judgments, the center figure of Christ at the top was linked with the open tombs below. (They omitted the traditional figure of Michael, sorter of souls, who reappears, however, in the tomb of Pope Paul II.) In Orvieto, the big window on the altar wall forced changes, notably, as discussed, pushing the Christ group up into the vault.18 Unlike the situation in Nardo’s chapel, however, the Orvieto window did leave some wall space available below itself. The Baroque altar has made this invisible and hard to estimate. However, it has been presented in a reconstruction drawing in connection with the recent conservation work. This shows a solid wall of greater height than the figure we see to its left, the standing saved soul.19 There was certainly adequate room to paint the
usual empty tombs. The view that Angelico proposed to put them there is supported by their presence in that location in all the panels of the theme he produced later. What makes this important is that Signorelli removed this motif. He took drastic and now famous action and moved the Raising of the Dead to the outer bay, where it acquired a separate enormous status. The resulting image has been rightly treated as brilliant. (Yet it is a token of the limitations of the monographic approach that this presentation has been treated as a given, with no notice of the steps used to generate it.) The shift is easily consistent with, though not required by, the view that the inner bay came first. The problem leading to the rejection of the usual locus was surely the Assumpta and its tabernacle. The arrangement in 1500 to move it higher has never been connected with the process of Signorelli’s work, even though it has been reasonably thought he was behind it. Even when it was moved up, it evidently did not seem to him that he had adequate room on the wall behind it for the resurrection of the dead souls from the tombs. Instead, he used the area for marginal enlargements of other motifs already present nearby, in particular the approach to hell.20 Angelico had not been disturbed by the Assumpta, it would seem. It was brought into the chapel early in 1447, before his work in the summer, but perhaps not in an imposing way; the lamp and its rope were ordered only as he was leaving.21 The contract also specified that Signorelli would paint the window embrasures, which perhaps were a problem. He filled those of the big central window with two bishop saints that share the weighted geometry, with a bit of mobility, of the doctors of the church above. These two bishops have traditionally been given a likely identity as Saint Costanzo and San Brizio (Fig. 36), who had local cults. Although they have no obvious role in a Last Judgment, the period was comfort-
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Image not available
Image not available
. Archangel Michael, in embrasure of side window in altar wall (cf. Fig. 25, “”)
. Archangel Gabriel, in embrasure of side window in altar wall (cf. Fig. 25, “”)
able with visual complexes showing distinct interests of patron groups. No role for these bishops in the Last Judgment scheme has been proposed in studies of the chapel, but some details give a hint. They stand on clouds, like all the holy groups in the triangles just above, and thus are in heaven too. They share the embrasures with musician angels, and these evidently form part of a group with other identical angels at right angles to them on the main wall surface, who are leading souls to heaven. Thus Brizio and Costanzo may be considered as an additional holy category in heaven, segregated like all the others by frames and turning walls. The embrasures of the two small windows on this wall evoke more complex factors. Each side of each window shows a circular painted frame,
of a kind that will reappear at the other end of the chapel, and inside it an archangel. The four seem to be in order of rank. The best place, on the saved side and near the center, goes to Michael (Fig. 37), shown as weigher of saved and damned souls. The saved soul kneels and prays, the damned one falls out of the pan like one descending to hell. Michael weighs and sorts souls in traditional Last Judgments, where his place is the one here preempted by the window. Evidently this is the basis for his presence here, and the other three angels may simply be extrapolations from his presence. They have no obvious relevance otherwise. It is easy to recognize the other two standard archangels, with their most famous attributes. Gabriel holds the scroll with Ave Maria, his salutation on the occasion of
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Image not available
Image not available
. Archangel Raphael with Tobias, in embrasure of side window in altar wall (cf. Fig. 25, “”)
. Archangel Phanuel/Uriel, in embrasure of side window in altar wall (cf. Fig. 25, “”)
the Annunciation (Fig. 38), and Raphael is with the young Tobias, whom he guided on a journey (Fig. 39). The fourth figure (Fig. 40) has been a mystery. There is no tradition with a fourth archangel like this. He subdues a devil, as Michael often does, and some have called this figure another Michael. But he has a different costume, and such a duplication would be hard to cite in the imagery of the era. Happily, a major text exists with the required scheme of four angels, of which three are the standard ones and the fourth must fend off Satan’s efforts to appear before God. That action certainly matches Signorelli’s image. This appears in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, section 4, lines 7 (the action) and 9 (this angel’s name, Phanuel; in later versions he is Uriel). The book, which has been called “perhaps the most important apocryphal biblical writ-
ing” for the early Christian era, faded from view in the Middle Ages and has been thought to have reappeared only in the eighteenth century, from Ethiopian sources. However, a Jesuit author in 1621, quoting previous European writings, reports these four angels as found in an Ethiopian Mass. If a recent suggestion can be confirmed, that Pico della Mirandola around 1490 was much interested in the Book of Enoch, this angel could be linked to the prime cultural context of the Orvieto chapel, to be explored below, in Florentine humanism.22 To be sure, it is the architectural constraint in the chapel that called for a fourth angel (as again in an eighteenth-century case in Venice at the Gesuiti, where the fourth one is labeled “Salathiel”), but one may again admire the grace with which the artist made him seem natural.
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The altar wall’s main theme elegantly straddles the big window. On Christ’s right (our left) angels guide the saved souls to heaven, pointing upward with encouragement and even pulling them (Fig. 41). The origin of this vertical move to heaven in Angelico’s project was argued at length in Chapter 2, as a design visible to us in his Rome panel. Doubt about this perhaps reflects the feeling that such an image of rising to heaven is only natural, so it may bear further comment. The wall area here is tall and narrow, and also widens toward the top along the rightward curve of the central window arch. Signorelli, if not Angelico, works with this, and correspondingly narrows the figuration at the bottom of the scene. A single soul kneels at the base, his elbow noticeably overlapping the frame and connecting with the side wall around the corner, to be discussed. A companion alongside him stands up, ready to lift off. His mobile hands are examples of Signorelli’s cubic substance in action. The pointing angels above these figures direct them both up and to the right, the more vertically the higher they themselves are. These angels and three others, heroic figures, are musicians. Between them in counterpoint one more dives down to the left, to evoke most intensely the role they all share as assistants in lifting. The meaning in their dance-like patterns is so clear that its originality hardly receives attention. Around the corner from them on the side wall of the inner bay, the saved have assembled at Josaphat (Fig. 42). This is the previous phase of the movement to heaven. (However, these walls evidently show one moment, with many individuals in the queue who have reached various points, not the same individuals seen twice in different positions at successive moments.) High on the wall, musician angels again fly in symmetry as if in a polyptych. Lower, several offer crowns to the saved souls, making the angels’ function graphic. The line of the saved forms a procession
Image not available
.
Ascent of the Blessed, altar wall (cf. Fig. 25, “”)
across the front of the scene. This is most easily inferred from those at the head of the line, at our right, who point forward and overlap the painted frame. They are about to join the two on the altar wall, just mentioned. In the entire cycle, this is Signorelli’s most explicit, if still gentle, signal of flow past a right angle. It recalls the one used by Nardo, and thus is likely to have been present in Angelico’s project. Behind these leaders, souls lift heads to observe the angels, and seem to pause. The only other people who do not look up, besides the couple in front, are a similar couple at the very back, at our left. They seem to signal the start of the pause in movement. All these people
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Image not available
.
Assembly of the Blessed at Josaphat, side wall (cf. Fig. 26, “”)
well reflect the biblical term “sheep” for the saved; their angels are herding them in the right direction. The only slight suggestion of this kind in earlier Judgments is in the work of Giotto, whose saved move steadily up a slight incline, kept in line by angels behind them. These saved are innovative in their nudity, surely unlike what Angelico had projected. All previous Judgments in this tradition contrasted the clothed saved with the naked damned, and this remained so in Paul II’s tomb, after Angelico and before Signorelli. This innovation, as such, seems not to have interested writers. Perhaps they found it only what one would expect in
1500, in the emerging High Renaissance, especially from a painter praised as an anatomist. Yet a closer look is surely warranted. At this period the saved appeared nude, outside a High Renaissance context, in the great sequence of Judgment paintings in northern Europe. Those of Jan Van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Stefan Lochner, Hans Memling, and Hieronymus Bosch are only the most outstanding. This was a time when the theme did not flourish in Italian painting. The nudity was logical in that the souls were regularly shown emerging naked from their tombs, as in the sculpture of the Orvieto façade. Mainstream theology always affirmed that they would then
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be perfect bodies, in their thirties and in full health. For the blessed, it would evidently be attractive to extend this visible status to their next stage, the sorting at Josaphat.23 The nude saved do appear in Italy before Signorelli in various less noticeable contexts, presumably under northern influence. In a very small Dominican breviary from the shop of the Venetian Cristoforo Cortese (active 1409–39), they are shown in a miniature of the Office of the Dead.24 The resurrected dead are not shown in any separate image here, and perhaps these tiny figures stand in for them, but in the Abruzzi fresco of the 1420s discussed earlier, the saved nude cross a narrow bridge to heaven. That motif can be seen in Flanders in an almost identical form and could well have a northern source, even though the Flemish work is later.25 The saved appear nude more conventionally in a large Venetian woodcut around 1500, possibly later than Signorelli (Fig. 43),26 and as with Signorelli they move toward the center of the scene. Such scattered cases, in an area that has not been the object of its own study, may indicate that others exist. All of them may have been in such secondary works, subject to varied influences. Yet Signorelli may well have responded to the great northern art of his time, a possibility that the monographic literature on him seems not to have opened up. So, certainly, did his peers, Ghirlandaio, his project-mate at the Vatican earlier, and Filippino Lippi. Flemish painting was strongly in view in Florence in the 1480s, the time of Signorelli’s visit there. The fashion famously affected the great Venetian collector Cardinal Grimani, but his link to Orvieto is hardly noticed. Grimani too visited Orvieto in 1493 and 1495 with Farnese, Borgia, and the rest. More of interest is that in 1505 he built himself a vacation house below the city walls, at the abbey of Santa Trinità.27 The act belongs to the tradition of seeking out Orvieto as a pleasant refuge from
Rome’s heat. It must have followed earlier visits that attracted him to the place, thus probably during Signorelli’s years of work. The cardinal had an art collection in his house in Venice, which was inventoried after his death, and kept his antiquities in a palace in Rome. Some of his Flemish pictures might have been there too, and accessible to such artists as Signorelli. Grimani’s Heaven and Hell by Bosch (if the cardinal’s probable ownership is accepted) are very unlike the standard schema but suggest his concern with the theme. Signorelli’s scene of the sheep is still more unusual in showing male and female couples. Their charm has been noticeable in detail photographs in books on Signorelli but has not extended to any comment in their texts. Two
Image not available
. Anonymous Italian, c. 1500, Last Judgment, woodcut.
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Image not available
.
Giovanni di Paolo, The Blessed (detail of Last Judgment). Siena, Pinacoteca
Image not available
.
Assembly of the Damned at Josaphat, side wall (cf. Fig. 27, “”)
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pairs are seen symmetrically, the couples at the far left and right already pointed out. The only pairs shown among Angelico’s sheep comprise a soul with an angel. Today the idea that in heaven we rejoin our loved ones is another commonplace, so it may have seemed to go without saying.28 Happily the context in theological writing has been studied by McDannell and Lang.29 The Gospels say that in heaven there is no marrying or giving in marriage, and early church fathers focus on each soul’s separate link to God. The images of souls gazing up evoke that approach neatly. A key text in favor of heavenly friendships, by Cicero, was opposed by Augustine in his City of God. But Augustine altered his views in a later and less-known work, a letter of consolation. In heaven, he writes, “our dead will be better known to us, and we will love them without fear of parting.” Other early Christian writers echoed this, but the solitary view long dominated. It is not surprising that humanist contexts revived Cicero’s viewpoint, through Petrarch and Erasmus most famously and between them in more detail through Valla. For Cicero, when the newly dead reach heaven their “relatives and friends cordially greet, kiss, and embrace them.” This idea gains visual form in one astonishing work before Signorelli’s, a panel painting of about 1460 by the Sienese Giovanni di Paolo. A second version by Giovanni, perhaps earlier, is known in a fragment. Some souls here are greeted by angels, as in Angelico, but others form pairs with their friends (Fig. 44). Because all are clothed, they can be identified by costume, and prove to be people who had shared a similar life on earth—friars and nuns of the same order, splendidly dressed young women, and others. A few seem to be nameable individuals. A bishop with an elderly nun has reasonably been identified as Augustine with his mother Saint Monica, and a reference to his letter would
seem to be intended, though that has not been proposed.30 Giovanni di Paolo’s composition of the Last Judgment has the five-part design but differs from Angelico’s and all others noted above in major ways. The Judging Christ is nude down to his loincloth (the anticipation of Michelangelo has been noticed, though not the precedents in medieval French and Italian sculpture), and we see below him neither Michael nor the symbols of the Passion, but quite new persons. These include the Eritrean Sibyl, famously called a prophet of the Last Judgment by Augustine and many after him. She in turn is flanked by Enoch and Elijah, the “two witnesses” of the end of the world, whose appearance at different points in other Judgments will be noticed. The dead rise from their tombs below these persons in a spectacular pattern of writhing and twisting nudes. Giovanni di Paolo is notorious for wholesale thefts of design and here must be citing an entirely different Last Judgment formula. There may be a Flemish connection.31 The nude Judging Christ has a famous forerunner in the Rohan Hours of about 1425, and the vigorous action of the rising dead has a forerunner in Rogier van der Weyden. Such citations may appear far from Giovanni’s local experience in Siena, but perhaps not. When Rogier van der Weyden visited Italy in 1449–50 he had one recorded Italian pupil, Angelo Paccagnino, who was a Sienese. The meeting of friends is less emphatic in Signorelli than in Giovanni di Paolo, and they may have an indirect common source. An attractive possibility is in the humanist ideas mentioned, starting with Petrarch. That context is always recognized as present in the Orvieto wainscot, but illogically has hardly been looked for in the major scenes above like this one. When we see the blessed sheep assembled on the good side, then guided up to Christ, we natu-
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Limbourg Brothers, Hell, page in Très Riches Heures. Chantilly, Musée Condé
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Bertoldo, Battle, bronze. Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello
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rally expect on the basis of the whole tradition to see the goats assemble and be sent to hell, opposite them. Such imagery is indeed there, but modified in a most original way. On the side wall, to Christ’s left, the damned at Josaphat (Fig. 45) constitute Signorelli’s most famous image in this project and his entire career. Forceful violence is offered with a meaning that validates it. Monstrous blue and green devils with quasi-human musculature grasp, throttle, and subdue the wretched sinners and, most notably, carry them on their backs. Just as the sheep were herded, here the goats are driven or hauled in the direction called for, to an area at the lower left where flames shoot out.32 They are a token of the mouth of hell. All the versions of the Judgment by Angelico had developed such an image, here heightened to a new intensity, in which the devils with raised pitchforks squeeze the damned into a panicked crowd. Signorelli, with an endless series of variations, develops single combat situations between a devil and a soul, although each is hardly a combat when we see it, for the souls are near defeat. The pairs consistently relate in terms of tension, clarified by gesture and muscle shape. Devils pull or press, and souls make some attempt to resist by pulling the opposite way. A kind of explanatory model is provided by two pairs that are given prominence in the center foreground. In different formats, devils pull on the souls with taut ropes, and the souls make things worse for themselves by trying to pull away. Just one precedent for this episode with the rope pullers has emerged in earlier art, in the hell scene of the very famous Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berri (1415) (Fig. 46). There two devils, each pulling a soul with a taut rope, dominate the foreground. The rest of the scene has no similarity to Signorelli’s, but it has been shown instead to allude to the very different tradition of the vision of Tundal,33 a tradition that has no rope pullers. Thus the scene in the Très Riches
Heures seems to reflect two traditions: one from Tundal, the other with rope pullers, the latter alone shared with Signorelli. Recalling the case of the nude souls, one is tempted to assign this tradition also to northern Europe. Such one-on-one combats seem to be without precedent in scenes of the damned assembled at Josaphat before Signorelli, but they were common in scenes within hell. In Angelico’s benchback, and before Angelico, each pit shows a devil attacking a soul. Signorelli’s transfer of this violence to the prior moment of assembly surely relates to his astonishing decision to show nothing of the inside of hell at all. His reasons are suggested below. One result has been to induce the error, frequent in writers, of labeling his Josaphat scene as hell; people believed that there must be one. The shifting of the combats from hell to the staging area gave Signorelli a gift, which he used with spectacular success. No longer isolated in various sections of hell, the fights build up to a swarming force. Like all painters in his culture, Signorelli had always drawn nudes, even if few of the drawings led to paintings, and had always, too, like his peers, focused on expository gesture, the best aid in making a story clear. He had never had occasion to do this in a context of violence, but he responded to the challenge at once when it was offered. If there is no direct precedent for this naked melee of torture in his era, an accessible aid was available in the bank of classical sources that the period loved. Roman battle sarcophagi dealt solely with such swarming bodies in combat; it was only necessary to omit the horses. One such sarcophagus was in the artist’s native Cortona, and anecdotes indicate that Donatello and Brunelleschi had admired it earlier.34 But that work, with its prominent centaur, seems less relevant than a second similar one. This sarcophagus, in Pisa, was so admired by Bertoldo that in 1480 he produced a large bronze
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. Descent into Hell, altar wall (cf. Fig. 25, “”)
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derived from it (Fig. 47).35 This bronze, by Lorenzo de’ Medici’s favorite sculptor, was in the Medici house in Florence. Signorelli not only would see it when he produced paintings soon afterward for the same house, but also would have known Bertoldo as a person. This connection seems not to have been pursued in monographs on Signorelli—a surprising omission in studies where style influence is a main concern. Before Bertoldo, Pollaiuolo’s engraving of the Battle of Ten Nudes had already focused on a
web-like set of muscled bodies, though not with the tight massing of the other cases. Signorelli’s design abolishes all intervening air, and the increased stress reinforces the theme of sin and retribution now introduced. The significance here of Signorelli’s Florentine experience will turn up again; no other context offered him this kind of stimulus. The scene of the damned further overlays this rectangle of struggle, derived from the sarcophagi, with a second structure. A diagonal
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push of forces, from upper right to lower left, starts from the three military angels in the sky who herd the goats the way they must go. Thrusting through the crowd, it is released when they come to the flames that are emerging from hell and are its only visual sign. The direction signals inform us that hell is farther along this vector and therefore still lower, and also around the corner on the altar wall. Yet when we turn to gaze at the imagery located there, it is not easy to conceive of it as hell, and instead we meet another unprecedented representation. This latter imagery has to be understood in the totality of the altar wall, to which it returns us. The other segment of this wall, on Christ’s right, was observed before, with its pull toward heaven. Here on his left we are no longer aided by the precedent of Angelico’s rising dancers. In this position, his panel had shown only a traditional hell with segmented pits (Fig. 14). These are labeled with names of the deadly sins, but not in any apparent order from least to greatest or from top to bottom, as is usual; they appear to be random. Movement into this hell from the staging area of the goats is inconspicuous, as in the artist’s earlier benchback. Devils push sinners into hell with pitchforks, through a cave mouth, but there is no route from it to the pits. The two segments, Josaphat and hell, are separate, as in Nardo before, in contrast to the fluid journey of the saved. Angelico might have explored other devices in his Orvieto project, but there is no evidence on that. In Signorelli’s design this juncture seems even more difficult. Beyond the flames that mark the mouth of hell, our view confronts imagery that seems to be about something else as well as being separate spatially (Fig. 48). If the literature has never addressed this as puzzling, it may well be because this new imagery is in itself very clear. It illustrates the opening cantos of Dante’s Inferno. We are given an alternate route to hell,
using Charon’s boat and the decision by Minos regarding the suitable pit for each sinner. The corresponding biblical report with flames, Matthew’s “Depart into everlasting fire,” seems to be ignored. Two quite incompatible texts of great authority about entering hell are placed side by side. The group with Charon and Minos fills the lower part of this tall, thin wall at Christ’s left. The upper part shows two more military angels engaged in herding the sinning souls, but they are the only elements in this area that correlate with the side wall showing Josaphat. Below them, land is seen as a series of platforms, each projecting farther out to us as we gaze from the top downward. They suggest the mountain of purgatory in this shape but not in any other way. The highest, most distant, and smallest platform is filled with the people of Inferno canto 3, verses 52–57. They run after a banner in a long procession, with endless variations of raised hands and bent legs. In its small scale, this group sets up an anxious vibrato. From the text, we are aware that we are inside the gate marked “Abandon all hope,” but also that the people we see are those rejected equally by heaven and by the depths of hell. The lower platforms reinforce the point that we are in the preface of hell. We next see Charon in his boat coming to the shore to embark souls (lines 82–84). These, naked like the first and with chattering teeth (lines 100–102), evoke a similar nervous agitation, if on a somewhat larger scale. Below this, Minos appears, to make his decisions (canto 5, 4–6), and we are offered a view of large souls before his court. Devils torture them while they stand there and continue to do so while leading them away. Then we encounter the bottom frame of the fresco. From knowing the text, we can assume that real hell is under it. If that is valid, the movement downward from Minos would shortly intersect with the movement diagonally down
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Nardo di Cione, detail of Fig. 22, right wall
from the flames on the side wall, and the two options for entering hell would merge, but that is not shown. The assignment of roles to Charon and Minos has one notable precedent in the tradition of Last Judgments. Nardo’s fresco has repeatedly emerged as a key model for Angelico and later instances of the theme in quite varied details. His hell is an exceptionally literal illustration of Dante’s. It shows not only the pits but also the introductory events. The procession with the banner, Charon, and Minos all appear at the top of his wall (Fig. 49), validating the motif, but the visual design is different enough from Signorelli’s to make it
unclear whether they were the direct model. More important, in Nardo the Dantean hell continues below them without interruption; there is also no adjacent alternate entry. On Nardo’s altar wall, the damned show fright, but there are no pushing devils or fire, or any spatial indicators at all. They make up a tall column of portraits. The problem that Signorelli evinces may be thought to appear only when concerns with space and time become a large matter. To us, the tall, narrow segments of Signorelli’s altar wall, on the sides of the window, seem to be a natural base for vertical scenes of action, up to heaven and down to hell. Angelico certainly
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developed the former, but there is no indication that he worked out anything corresponding for the hell side. It is conceivable that he was concerned with the difficulty that Signorelli’s work then articulates, the conflict between the New Testament and Dante, and that might have led him to drop the issue. It would then follow that the matching push-pull of the two walls, saved and damned, is Signorelli’s invention, something that writers on Signorelli seem not to have addressed. It is actually one of his most powerful formulations. A token of this is its adoption by Michelangelo, with his famous lifted saved and slowly falling damned, shearing against each other. Writers have always noticed Michelangelo’s exploitation of Signorelli in the Last Judgment, but apparently not this large instance. Some justification may be offered in that Signorelli’s descent to hell is not in the flowing form of his and Angelico’s rise to heaven, which Michelangelo then also offered for hell. The solution Signorelli offered, with a series of steps, may be regarded as an intermediate resolution of the design problem. It is entirely innovative and, for instance, is not preceded by illustrations in manuscripts of Dante. The reason is that Signorelli is presenting not Dante’s trip but the eternal nature of the entry to hell, thought to have been reported correctly by Dante. His sharp graphic presentation indeed recurs when he comes soon after to represent scenes that really are from the Divine Comedy, in his wainscot. Signorelli thus painted the entire inner bay of the chapel down to the wainscot, and showed on it the entire standard imagery of the Last Judgment, with one notable exception: the dead rising from the tombs. The power of his work needs no insistence, giving his culture’s associations with the tragic theme the new sense of strong action and earthy reality it required. It surely is surprising, then, that no parallels to his approach emerged in his generation, and few
later. Much has been written about fears of an apocalyptic end of the world in his time. Yet however genuine, these at least did not generate other Last Judgments as they have been thought to generate this one.36 This one, one may then recall, was produced by the banal situation of a fifty-year-old project required to be completed by municipal honor. Michelangelo’s turn to the work thirty years later for ideas only underlines the absence of anything intermediate in date and more modern. All this is difficult to fit into the concept that such a work should belong to its time, the more so in that it was recognized as a triumph. It may then be suggested that it does so belong, but not along the apocalyptic lines commonly proposed. This suggestion may begin with a Florentine text of 1496, the sermon by Savonarola on dying well. It is very unusual, both in the tradition of the theme and among his works, in that it includes a request to his listeners to have pictures painted of heaven and hell, which should give us pause. (Almost all proposed correlations between art and ideas in this period cannot point to any mention of pictures in the contemporary texts they discuss.) By further rare luck, there soon followed a printed edition of his sermon that included an illustration of our theme, which was copied later.37 The illustration was about going to heaven or to hell (Fig. 50). At the top, God or Christ sits surrounded by angels, and at the bottom Satan sits among devils with pitchforks. These images take most of the space and plainly derive from the standard Last Judgment. But no sheep or goats appear, or people emerging from tombs. There is just one man, to whom the sermon is addressed. He listens to Death, who offers him a choice of up or down. The time is not the end of the world (hence no Josaphat), but tomorrow or next week when this person will die. Its likeness to a Last Judgment is most surprising in omitting purgatory, which is
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. Anonymous Florentine, 1497, Choice of Heaven or Hell, woodcut.
not relevant at the end of the world (when it must cease to exist) but was the destination then assumed to be the first stage of afterlife for anyone. The omission links Savonarola to the Last Judgment more closely. Savonarola, to be sure, was an exceptional thinker, so it is important to notice that this image has antecedents long before. Heaven and hell, without the end of the world, appear in a remarkable fresco of 1412 in San Petronio, Bologna. The fortunate survival of the patron’s instructions makes clear that the upper half shows “the glory of eternal life” and that, in the lower half, the painter must show “the horrible punishments of hell, the most he can” (quantum plus potest).38 It is rightly noted that patrons’ instructions are rarely so full; no doubt the special sub-
ject explains that. It leaves the details in the end to the artist, as noted, who seems to have turned to a still earlier Bolognese panel painting. That fourteenth-century work differs in details (adding a Virgin above and Saint Michael below), but it too omits all indications about the last days.39 The choice is offered to the viewer as his own death approaches, even if he is not seen in the middle, as in Savonarola’s case. Savonarola may well have known such works, as he came from Ferrara, near Bologna. The appropriation of formulas from the Last Judgment for imagery about an individual death appears elsewhere too in this general period. In the tomb of Pope Paul II, mentioned earlier, from about 1470, Last Judgment motifs seems to intrude in quantity for the first time into the memorial of one person. The pope is seen kneeling, like a donor, among the saved. It is a real Last Judgment, but he has priority. The formula recurs in the related tomb of Cardinal Ammanati, he of the Sienese connections, and in a variant in the tomb in Rome of Bishop Coca (d. 1477). This, like Savonarola’s woodcut, excludes the last days. Above his effigy, the bishop is seen kneeling as Christ turns to bless him.40 The Last Judgment is reduced to that of one person, which recalls the theological fights about “particular judgment,” so fierce in the previous century. Motifs from Last Judgment imagery are applied to individual death even more directly in manuscripts of the period. In Books of Hours, the most popular works of the time for devotional prayer, the Last Judgment may illustrate the Office (ritual text) of the Dead. The case of a Venetian breviary from about 1430 was mentioned earlier. A study of Books of Hours reports that it initially used the Last Judgment for this purpose but later replaced it with a portrayal of the funeral.41 The Judgment then appears in another part of the book, the seven requests to Christ. The Rohan hours are a spectacular instance.
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Earlier, the rareness of monumental Last Judgments in the fifteenth century was puzzling in the context of the Orvieto project, but it may seem less so when this shifted allusion is taken into account. Perhaps the absence of a standard imagery involving the death of one person was viewed as a problem and the Last Judgment was pressed into service at first. If this is so, it may follow that any viewer of a rare actual scene of the Last Judgment, like Signorelli’s, might respond with concern about his own death and immediate fate. That pattern would relate strongly to the emphasis of sermons of the time on themes of heaven and hell and on a person’s ethics. In this way one can think of the Orvieto frescoes as being in the mainstream of their culture and more readily understand their success. Signorelli’s energy correlated with needs of his viewers. Yet that can only add to the surprise (already strong without it) evoked by the portion of the imagery of the inner bay not yet discussed. This is the wainscot below (see Figs. 25, 26, and 27), which the contract stipulated should to be given over to “grillwork and creatures.”42 The decorative system it shows would soon acquire its standard name, “grotesque.” As is always understood, the term “grotesque” derives from the ornament used in ancient Roman painting rediscovered in the 1480s in “grottos” that soon became popular. The painter Pinturicchio, Signorelli’s friend, signed a contract in 1502 to do frescoes depicting the life of Pope Pius II for the Piccolomini in Siena that provided for the ornament to be “grotesque,” perhaps the first use of that term. Most of Signorelli’s peers, Perugino and Filippino Lippi as well as Pinturicchio, were using such decoration by 1500, as a study focusing on Signorelli’s employment of it has observed.43 Signorelli came to this fashion late, first in his large cycle in the abbey near Siena. His much more emphatic adoption of it in Orvieto
immediately afterward may reflect his sense that the Orvieto project was different from anything he had ever done, with classical overtones. When he does take on the grotesque, his approach is different from that of the other artists. The squirming organisms he paints relate to scenes above, notably the congested damned. Among the other artists, Filippino is most similar, while Pinturicchio produces neat and linear patterns. The portrait heads and narratives from poetry also included in the wainscot work are today its most interesting aspects. They were not mentioned in the contract, so perhaps they were lastminute additions, but they may have been regarded as mere decoration, especially the heads. Heads in rows were traditional in wainscots, like those of Angelico, mentioned earlier, and those of Nardo, who was certainly influential on Angelico. They had appeared earlier in Orvieto, in the Chapel of the Reliquary opposite. The heads there, like most, were anonymous, beads on a chain to enliven the frame area. One might call them typical of the Renaissance (including the Tuscan trecento) in that they make the frame human. The variant from anonymous heads—that is, the portraits of significant people—had appeared earlier44 (as already discussed), notably in Angelico’s work and then in Benozzo Gozzoli’s cycle of 1452. From this it was deduced that such heads were probably also included in Angelico’s Orvieto project and in his gavantone. From the inclusion of Dante as one of those portrayed, in Benozzo’s cycle45 and also here in Signorelli’s, it was argued that his head, at least, could be identified as one of those of the gavantone. A further support for this view was that Dante separately belonged to Last Judgments, as seen in Nardo. Angelico would have demoted Dante from a place among the saved to the wainscot, still on the saved side, and let him take a place in the row of heads. Later it will be argued that the row in
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Image not available
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. Dante and scenes in cantos 1–4 of Purgatorio, wainscot (cf. Fig. 26, “,” “,” “,” “,” “”)
. Virgil and scenes of visits to Hell, wainscot (cf. Fig. 27, “,” “,” “,” “,” “”)
Angelico’s project may also have included Giotto, also found earlier in that artist’s Last Judgment in Florence and again in the Benozzo wainscot of 1452. These two works were, after all, the same ones that seemed to make it likely that Dante was so included. The wainscot today presents six heads besides Dante; others have been lost. The identity of all, other than Dante, has been the theme of vigorous disagreement among writers on the chapel. All the heads were hidden behind choir benches about 1740, following the destruction of others that were behind the new altar and on the entrance wall.46 When the benches were removed in 1845, the heads attracted great interest, focusing on the literary factor. The names for the heads proposed by a writer in 1866 became accepted, partly out of convenience, though the writer was soon much criticized by another local scholar on
this and other matters, and some of his names are quite implausible.47 That Dante’s is one of the heads (Fig. 51) is clear to all, and not only because the portrait type is the same as in many other images, though even this head was identified wrongly in the eighteenth century. The portrait is surrounded by four roundels with little scenes in monochrome illustrating scenes from cantos 1–4 of the Purgatorio. These of course include Dante as one of the characters, and he is the same person as in the portrait, with the same costume. Virgil is another such character in the same scenes, and he too has the same face and costume as another of the wainscot portraits, on the opposite wall of the chapel directly facing Dante (Fig. 52).48 The four monochrome roundels with him likewise illustrate a single short passage in book 6 of his Aeneid. The subjects have always been recog-
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nized (even when the head of Virgil was erroneously identified as someone else). In the top scene, the Sibyl shows Aeneas the golden bough he will need to pass to the underworld (lines 136–39); here she holds it as her attribute, though in the text she merely tells him where to seek it. She points to a cave entrance, at whose mouth naked figures sit and gesticulate. These evidently refer to a later moment, lines 274–75: “Before the entrance itself, in the first opening of hell, Mourning and Cares have sat down.” The scene thus blends several aspects of the beginning of the journey. The other three scenes all illustrate a short series of lines in Aeneas’s speech to the Sibyl begging her to let him enter. He does this by citing earlier heroes who had made the trip: “Orpheus was able to summon the shade of his wife” (line 119); then: “what of great Theseus, why recall Hercules” (lines 122–23). We are shown Orpheus in one roundel playing his lute before Pluto and Proserpina, to get their permission to rescue his wife Eurydice, but then, on their way out, losing her to devils in another roundel. The last scene shows Theseus and Hercules subduing the dog Cerberus at the cave entrance. Although the subjects shown have been plain to every writer, it is not always observed that the only point bringing them together is this passage in the Aeneid. That doubtless has made possible the frequent failure to see Virgil in the portrait. Recent literature, however, has tended to notice the factor of costume that makes him clearly the subject. A third portrait on the wainscot, next to Virgil, is surrounded by four scenes that are all from the story of Pluto and Proserpina (Fig. 53). That has always been plain, but it has not always helped in identifying the subject of the portrait. Ovid is the most famous poet who tells the story of Pluto and Proserpina, so it was natural that his name was first proposed in 1866 and that Ovid has been a popular choice as subject of this portrait since.
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. Claudian and scenes from De Raptu Proserpinae (cf. Fig. 27, “,” “,” “,” “,” “”)
There is also a long tradition in favor of Claudian, a late-classical poet whose poem On the Rape of Proserpina is the longest account of the Pluto and Proserpina story. Comparison of the particular scenes in the roundels with both texts decisively favors Claudian.49 At the top, three jealous goddesses, Venus, Minerva, and Diana, entice Proserpina to leave her safe house to pick flowers. Meanwhile, at the bottom, Pluto emerges from an eruption of the volcano Mount Etna, and we see a giant pinned underneath. Pluto carries Proserpina off in a third roundel, at the right, while a repentant Minerva tries to stop him by using the Gorgon’s head with its snaky locks. Finally, at the left, Ceres hunts for her daughter, traveling in her chariot drawn by dragons. Ovid’s text makes no mention of motifs that are major elements in three of these scenes. He does not speak of the three goddesses who visit
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Proserpina, or of Minerva’s use of the Gorgon head, or of Ceres’s chariot with dragons. He seems to present her on foot. If one reads Ovid only, these discrepancies could seem to be the painter’s additions, and that may have been what happened. However, all these details are in Claudian, as are all the other details shown in the roundels. Claudian’s poem was not finished, and his story stops just where the scenes do. Ovid goes on to a grand resolution of the drama, where it is agreed that Proserpina shall spend alternate half-years on earth and in Hades. Claudian is today not well known, and he was never as famous as Ovid, but in the Renaissance he was much more familiar than he is today. Ovid is the natural answer for anyone who starts by checking the most famous version of the story, which it is natural to do if one looks at the scenes and works back, as scholars must. But the artist or planner worked in the opposite direction. He started with a desire to show the story and looked for the best account. This was not Ovid’s brief report, which was included with many other stories in his Metamorphoses. A clue to the version likely to be considered the standard one is found in a comment by Chaucer in his Merchant’s Tale (about 1390): [Proserpina] . . . gadered floures in the mede, In Claudian ye may the story reade, How in his grisly carte he [Pluto] . . . [took her] . . . (verses 983–85) Not only was the poem known, but the poet was honored in Signorelli’s culture in central Italy. A number of fresco series of portraits of poets produced there include Claudian as well as Dante, but not Ovid.50 Claudian owes this status to a myth that he was Florentine, so that Florentine humanists called him a forerunner of their modern series of great poets. In painting, the phenomenon emerges about 1380 in Florence’s
Palazzo Vecchio, the city hall. The program was set up by the chancellor, Coluccio Salutati, the first Florentine figure to assert that humanism was important for people in public life. The cycle included three groups to be honored, two being from ancient Rome. These began with the first consul of Rome, Brutus, who was followed by others from the period of the republic. The second showed men of the Roman Empire, and the third group comprised five Florentine poets, Claudian first and Dante second. Salutati also helped the chronicler Filippo Villani assemble his group biography of notable Florentines, the first such text in what became a long tradition. It includes the same five poets starting with Claudian, to whom Villani then adds Salutati himself, and one other. Salutati was also added later to the set of paintings in the Palazzo Vecchio. A variant set of paintings was produced for the great hall of Florence’s Guild of Notaries and Judges. A document of 1406 tells of adding Salutati and Claudian to a series done earlier. Autobiographical writings of the Florentine Marco Rustici, about 1447–48, offer another version still. He writes of a version of the same poets, beginning with Claudian and including Salutati. These are then seen in drawings in the margins of his manuscript, the only visual survivor of this tradition today. The obvious suggestion arises that this repeated formula was a model, at least in part, for what Signorelli did. (It has never been brought up in the studies of the Orvieto series.) Signorelli shows all three poets—Dante, Virgil, and Claudian—with laurel wreaths. They sit behind windows, using the sills as desks. All have open books before them, the nearest pages of which lift up a bit, giving them an active part. Signorelli used that motif with books in other works. Virgil and Claudian both rest a hand on the book to keep it open while they turn to each other as if conversing. Dante has two books open and is absorbed in one, while two other books sit
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. Salutati and scenes from Purgatorio, cantos 5–8, wainscot (cf. Fig. 26, “,” “,” “,” “,” “”)
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closed. The scenes surrounding both Virgil and Claudian, crowded and agitated, with emphatic expressive action, all directly echo the big scene of the damned directly over them on the wall. Dante’s scenes, on the other hand, show mostly mild interaction and are concerned with setting up little subgroups with space between, to show several episodes. These echo the big scene above with the blessed. The difference in the two walls might be interpreted, in one frequent art-historical approach, as indicating different dates in Signorelli’s process of work. But it may be as likely that it is purposeful, to make each wall a harmonious whole different from the other. It is also suitable to Dante’s status as a Christian who belongs among the blessed, of whose ranks he is a
kind of footnoted member. Conversely, Virgil and Claudian, under the damned, were pagans, and Dante’s authority reiterated that Virgil must reside in hell, if in a mild upper area. Claudian was at times claimed to have been a Christian convert, but this view was not fully established. Just as the latter two are a pair under the damned, so too Dante shares with another portrait his place under the blessed. The man in that portrait (Fig. 54), as a bookish person, also has a book on his sill, like the other three, but in other ways he is made to be very different. The most obvious factor is that, whoever he is, the monochrome roundels that surround him cannot illustrate any book by him. That is because they show scenes from Dante’s work, specifically Purgatorio
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. Detail of Fig. 51, scene from Canto 2 of Purgatorio (cf. Fig. 26, “”)
5–8. The story here spills from the Dante segment rightward, just as the scene of the blessed above moves its figures to the right, toward the entrance to heaven. The man in this portrait likewise turns to the right and up, and his sights are set on heaven like those of the saved, if we are allowed to read him as seeing what we see. Yet this does not suffice to identify him for us, and that question may be postponed for the added evidence that other sources provide. Of the scenes here, that from Purgatorio 6 has special interest. In that canto the text chiefly consists of a diatribe on the decadence of Italy. That would be hard to illustrate, and it is not attempted. Yet attention is suggested by one detail in it, about civic feuds. Those named are of “the Montagues and Capulets, Monaldi and Filippeschi” (lines 106–7). The former names in fact
are the original kernel of the story of Romeo and Juliet, suggesting the extraordinary reverberation of Dante’s slight allusions. In the present context, that applies as well to the second pair of names. The feud cited is in Orvieto, in which these Monaldi, the same as the Monaldeschi often encountered before, were soon to suppress the other family entirely. A Monaldeschi of the late sixteenth century published a family history, and quotes this entire section of Dante’s text. That the family was called evil was not as important as the fact that Dante had proved their importance. The same Dante text then surely had importance also for the painting of the chapel, where Purgatorio 1–8 is uniquely included (though this seems not to have been noticed in Signorelli studies). It will appear later that the Monaldeschi contributed a large amount of money to pay for the work in the chapel. This monochrome would have been an oddly subdued acknowledgment. It may be convenient here to take note of one other unusual detail in the Purgatorio roundel series. Canto 2 speaks of an angel coming to shore in a fast little boat, con un vasello snelletto. Yet the image shows no boat, and the angel is holding a small dish (Fig. 55). In fact, the word vasello has “little dish” as its chief meaning, while “boat” more often appears as vascello. Still, there is no doubt that Dante meant “boat.” The mistake is revealing, as mistakes often are, in this case, the procedures used to produce the picture. Whoever drew this image had the text only, and no access to any prior illustration of the scene. Moreover, because no better informed person oversaw the work, the painter was left to his own limited best resources. Without doubt, at some later point someone better informed did see this, but then it was decided not to make a correction; evidently it was not important enough to matter. It is rare to get inside a process to this extent. Clearly the eight scenes of the Purgatorio signal the most important poem being illustrated. The
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eight compare with four scenes each of the Aeneid and of Claudian. Besides, they are unique in any church context. Then the series goes on even further, to show cantos 9, 10, and 11. To do this, the imagery continues around the corner on to the altar wall, just as higher up the saved move around the same corner to approach heaven. The part of the Aeneid chosen and the work of Claudian do share with the Purgatorio an identical rare theme that is clearly the reason they were chosen. They are not only all about the underworld, but can also be more narrowly defined as accounts of journeys made thither by a living person who then returns to earth. That is true both of Dante, who wrote a report of his trip, and of others who simply had the experience: Proserpina, Aeneas, and even Hercules, Theseus, and Orpheus. They evidently owe their inclusion to being cited by Aeneas when he makes these journeys of theirs an argument for making one himself. In just that way Dante in turn cited Aeneas’s journey as a model for his own at the beginning of the Divine Comedy. Still further, the texts chosen all show that the dead have been found to be happy, requiring the choice of Purgatorio over the more common visual theme of the Inferno. The souls in Purgatory are happy, contenti, since they know they will reach heaven. They reflect Dante’s own name for his poem, Commedia. Aeneas found the Elysian fields, and Proserpina ruled Hades as queen. This all seems relevant to the strange issue of how, uniquely, they got into a cathedral, but still more material needs to be gathered before trying to explain that. The man portrayed as a writer, next to Dante and surrounded by the scenes from Purgatorio 5–8 (Fig. 54), is actually writing, unlike all the others observed. He is thus an author but he has no laurel. The absence of the poet’s wreath worn by the three others must be intentional. This man also differs from the others in that he has white
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. Hercules Defeating Cacus, and grotesque ornament (detail of Fig. 54)
hair, signaling old age. His gaze upward toward the scene of heaven evokes the idea that he was a believing Christian, like his neighbor Dante, in contrast to the two pagan writers opposite on the side of the damned. It also seems likely that his writing was also about the underworld. All this narrows the possible hypotheses, but not enough to the point of a name. Yet one other clue here seems to have been ignored. Not only do the four scenes from Purgatorio surround this writer, forming a cross scheme, above, below, and to the sides, but there are also four other monochrome roundels, very tiny ones, in the diagonals between the first four. These show very clear scenes, commonly understood in the literature, of Hercules defeating the hydra, the bull, the lion, and Cacus (Fig. 56), four of his standard labors. They have the same
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vibrating zest of drawing that Signorelli gives his figures of larger scale. Yet why they are here seems not to have been the subject of curiosity. Because the other three portraits are all surrounded by scenes from the author’s writings that identify those authors for us, and the scenes here from Purgatorio 5–8 cannot do that, it seems reasonable to think that the Hercules scenes might replace them in that way. No other raison d’être seems to be on offer. There is one author, and apparently only one, who wrote a book with the labors of Hercules as its theme: Coluccio Salutati, a devout Christian who lived to be seventy-six, consistent with his unique white hair. He left the book incomplete, which explains the unfinished page on the sill. His appearance prior to Signorelli in painted cycles of writers, the ones also showing Dante and Claudian, his neighbors here, was noted above (with a purpose now revealed). This may be useful to counteract the natural tendency to react to all this by thinking someone like Salutati would not form part of the same category of people to be represented that the great poets do. His title, Four Books on the Labors of Hercules, is also a neat fit for the four little roundels. Of much greater concern is that the title does not match the contents of the book well. Only its third book presents the labors, giving a summary list of thirty-one. The fourth and longest book concerns, instead, descents to the underworld. Salutati recounts the journeys by Hercules, Orpheus, Theseus, and Aeneas, a list that exactly matches the roundels with Virgil. (In an early draft he reported Castor and Pollux too, but then dropped them. They are replaced by Amphiarios, who, however, Salutati writes, did not so much descend as be dropped.) The most recent student of the wainscot has duly noticed that this work of Salutati corresponds to it.51 He shows that “the scheme of the descents into hell . . . can be explained though the reading of book 4 of Salu-
tati” and specifies details. Others had made the point more briefly, but none mentioned the small Hercules roundels, much less identified the portrait as Salutati. Nonetheless, their findings are supportive here. It is more difficult to understand the wainscot images on the altar wall (Fig. 25), and that is only in part because of destruction.52 At the center, under the big window, the imagery (as known from early descriptions) showed a similar scheme, a portrait surrounded by four scenes. At the sides, however, the system shifted to show scenes only, again in monochrome. On each side there were six scenes in two vertical sets of three each. On both sides the lowest scene of the inner set, toward the center, is lost, as is the entire central set of a portrait with four scenes (apart from a fragment of one scene). These vertical sets of three scenes comprised, in the inner sets nearer the center, a rectangular scene in the middle with circular ones above and below it. Conversely, the outer sets near the corners showed a circular scene in the middle with rectangles above and below. This scheme evidently alludes to the pattern discussed for the side walls, with rectangular portraits between invariable circular scenes. Here, where portraits are absent, some of the scenes are rectangular. This retains a trace of the previous pattern, maintaining a continuity of two shapes even when there is a shift from including portraits to excluding them. The scheme, which seems not to have been noticed, again evokes a concern for having patterns that unify the whole. The frames of the vaults were seen to have been designed in the same way. The parts now lost were fortunately reported by an attentive viewer shortly before they were sacrificed in 1715 to the new larger altar.53 That viewer’s text was only published in 1996, so that fresh data is now available on the missing sections. A check of the way he describes the sur-
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Scene from Canto 11 of Purgatorio (cf. Fig. 25, “”)
viving parts shows that his descriptions are accurate, though his identifications of subjects are often wrong. (He did not recognize Dante.) When the new evidence is integrated with the old, entire groups of the wainscot images can be given more valid readings, helping to remove some entrenched errors. The scenes in the wainscot on the altar wall that are easiest to identify are the outer sets of three, near the ends. The set on the left shows, as mentioned, scenes from cantos 9, 10, and 11 of Purgatorio, continuing from the earlier cantos around the corner on the side wall. Though the series continues, the pause between cantos 8 and 9 is meaningful, and utilized by the designer. The move around the corner coincides with the change from Dante’s horizontal walk, in antepurgatory, to his entrance to purgatory proper,
where he climbs the mountain. In the episode from canto 9 chosen, he seeks admission, and in the canto 10 scene he passes through the gate. We are shown a bit of the inside of purgatory only in canto 11, the last scene. This emphasis on the preliminary phase matches what occurs elsewhere in the chapel. Only the entrance to Dante’s hell, completed by the incident with Minos, is seen just above the lower frame of the scene of the damned descending, as discussed. In the wainscot below that frame we shall see something of the parts of hell to which Minos consigns souls, but in this case too just the first bit of it. This drastic change from the prime focus on hell and its horrors in earlier Last Judgments has, surprisingly, not been addressed in the literature. It is analogous to the way the classical visits to the underworld were treated in the selections from
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Claudian and Virgil. In the former, Proserpina is shown only aboveground. She is queen of hell in one of the stories from Virgil, but the other three show heroes at hell’s entry seeking to visit or, in Orpheus’s case, to exit. An explanation of this hesitation to show the inside of hell is perhaps available in Salutati’s discussion of the descents. His book 4 opens by asking whether we really know there is a hell, apparently referring to the lack of any account of it in scripture. He replies that our best aid to gaining salvific knowledge on the matter is from the poets, such as Claudian. This seems to offer a full answer to the puzzle of the wainscot segment of the fresco cycle—replacing the standard image of hell with the reports of the poets. Indeed, it would also explain the inclusion in the chapel of the visit to purgatory, taken from Dante’s poem, which Salutati does not mention. It would be a new extrapolation in Orvieto. To be sure, Salutati notes, the poets’ data on the matter is limited, as they cannot prophesy. Even if sometimes inspired, they can only describe the past, without full certainty. And they work with allegorical veils; we shall see this aspect shortly. The scene from Purgatorio 11 shows only one incident from the canto, unlike all the rest after canto 1. This might evoke closure, but it does not explain the specific choice, starting at line 73, within this survey of the worst sinners, the proud. We see Dante bend to talk with souls carrying heavy loads (Fig. 57). One soul, Dante writes, “twisted and saw me,” a detail Signorelli makes vivid. The speech the soul thereupon makes includes the famous comment on the fame of Giotto, the only mention of a painter in the Divine Comedy. It is attractive to think Signorelli was drawn to that point and chose this single motif for that reason. It might even have stimulated him to extend his series to canto 11. Giotto’s figurative presence in the wainscot has, however, a more ordinary possible explana-
tion. The tradition that artists include their selfportraits in Last Judgments was discussed earlier.54 Giotto (or more precisely his workshop) had done so in the Last Judgment in the Bargello—of course on the side with the saved, as usual, which is also the side where this rectangle appears in Orvieto. The chronicler Villani had mentioned this Giotto self-portrait and added one other fact, that it was along with a portrait of Dante. Here in Orvieto the allusion to Giotto is bracketed with the portrait of Dante and scenes from his work in this part of the wainscot. One other case of paired portraits of Dante and Giotto was noted above, that by Benozzo Gozzoli painted soon after he had worked in Orvieto, and in a wainscot, one where the two men seem quite irrelevant to the theme, the life of Saint Francis. It was argued that he might have taken the notion of a Dante portrait from a similar portrait on Angelico’s gavantone, known to him, showing Dante in the wainscot. By extension, it seems plausible that he might also have taken his adjacent head of Giotto from the same source, in which Angelico had shown the older artist also among the saved. In that case we would have Signorelli echoing the gavantone too, with Dante and with a figurative allusion to Giotto. When it is considered that this scene is the only one actually inside purgatory that we are given, it may be linked to the only scene of the wainscot actually inside hell (at least in any literal form), the one where Orpheus plays and sings. That scene matches the one of canto 11 in that both celebrate artists, a quality in which they are also alone. That can plausibly be called intentional. It also recalls Salutati’s point that what we learn about the underworld is from poets. This completes the vertical set of three scenes at this corner of the altar wall. Still moving to the right, we meet the second analogous set of such monochromes, nearer the center of the wall (see
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Fig. 25). The statements offered by the images are in a different key, not narrative. The top roundel is agreed to be a clear figure of the allegory of Charity (Fig. 58). She is seen in the standard way, suckling a child and flanked by two others with flaming torches. These two motifs symbolize Charity’s double character: love for one’s neighbor and for God.55 She is shown in the same way, in slightly earlier works, by Pollaiuolo, in his painted set of virtues in Florence for the law court of the merchants, and on both his papal tombs, for Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII. The latter of these two monuments in Rome was finished in 1497. Signorelli’s Charity tramples on a prone female figure who bites herself. This is a known if less common symbol of the vice Envy, one of those often taken to be complementary to Charity.56 If these identities are clear, it is not clear why they are on this wainscot. The literature has generally taken care of the simple identities and not asked that other question. The same has been true of the monochromes that are viewed next. Yet it does not seem likely that these are isolated or autonomous images. As soon as the matter is articulated, it seems likely that they are related to the Last Judgment and to the nearby images. In this case one would seek some continuity to this Charity from Purgatorio 11, the last previous image, if we continue to go from left to right. That indeed fits, for after dealing with Pride on canto 11, Dante turns next to Envy, and he discusses it in complement with Charity. (He had discussed Pride in complement with Humility, a common formula.) The text of Dante, it turns out, is still being illustrated on the wainscot but shifts from literal narrative to the veil of allegory, if an easy one. One might argue that the preceding scene from canto 11 had already made a similar shift, if we claim that its true theme is not what is shown but instead the allusion to Giotto. Such a shift seems to be supported not only by Salutati’s cited remark, that poets inform us
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Charity and Envy (cf. Fig. 25, “”)
about the underworld through veils of allegory. That might indeed suffice to explain what happens here. Still more suggestive, however, is what Dante said a little earlier, in Purgatorio 8, lines 19–20. This passage has understandably fascinated learned commentators of all periods and so has become famous. It is one of two similar passages; the other, in Inferno 9, line 61, will be discussed shortly. In Purgatorio 8 the lines follow a description of two angels with green wings, an odd motif. Dante tells us to be watchful here, for “the veil is so thin that it is easy to penetrate it.” Signorelli’s image (Fig. 59) shifts from all preceding presentations of canto 8, in illustrated Dante texts, by making these angels dominate the scene.57 Thus we viewers are also told to watch for the allegory. All commentators have concurred that what the angels symbolize is the virtue Hope. Being one of the three theological virtues in the standard set, which in purgatory are combined with the other set of four civil virtues, Hope prepares us to meet another of the three,
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(above) . Scene from Canto 8 of Purgatorio (detail of Fig. 54; “” in Fig. 26) (right) . Raphael, Faith, Hope, and Charity. Rome, Pinacoteca Vaticana
Charity. Thus, when we come to the second segment of purgatory, with Charity and Envy, we are prepared to be given their images in allegorical form. The set of three monochromes with Charity at the top has lost the third and lowest one, but the newly available description gives a full report. It confirms the present reading nicely, for it turns out to have shown the third and last theological virtue, Faith. Faith was shown “figured as a woman wearing a laurel, a chalice in her hand, and adored by two small boys, one on each side.”58 The chalice is used only as a symbol of faith, in European allegory, so that the writer’s identification of this image is clearly correct.59 The two boys are unusual but are assigned to Faith in 1504 in an image of her that again is a monochrome in a roundel, the only one besides
Signorelli’s known to me. This is in Raphael’s set of three theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity (Fig. 60). This unique match between Raphael’s Faith and the Faith of Signorelli, as known from the newly published description, seems to support neatly an earlier proposal that Signorelli’s Charity was a model for Raphael’s in that same set.60 While Purgatorio presents Hope in canto 8, through allegory, and Charity in cantos 12–14, presented allegorically in Orvieto, there is hardly any mention in the text of Faith. However, the set of three as a group appears, again allegorically, in Purgatorio 29.121–26. This is the account of the earthly paradise at the top of the mountain, and we are alerted to their presence through their symbolic colors. Green is again the color for Hope. The scheme in Orvieto, then, draws the
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roles of three virtues from separate passages in the Purgatorio, which seems unique in the wainscot iconography but would hardly be surprising.61 This vertical set of three monochromes, with Charity at the top and Faith at the bottom, includes a larger scene in the middle, a rectangle (Fig. 61). It has been given a variety of readings, but all have isolated it from the Last Judgment theme and the nearby monochromes. The present approach would obviously imply that it is matched to a passage in Purgatorio somewhere between canto 13 (with Charity and Envy, who are painted above it) and canto 29 (with Faith, who is painted below it) but in a nonliteral way. The image has six figures, each with individual gestures or attributes. This greatly narrows the possibilities and offers many clues. The small winged boy can only be Cupid. He is seen disciplined by a woman, who must be his mother, Venus. The motif is found around Sig-
norelli’s time, notably in small bronze reliefs.62 We are thus in a context of classical myth. Another woman’s attribute is a banner with an ermine, always a symbol of chastity or purity.63 The one person who could be so tagged and who also shares a classical context with Venus is her fellow goddess, Diana. We have then a polarity of the chaste and the erotic—which readily fits Purgatorio, where contrasts of each virtue and the corresponding sin are in fact a main theme, as seen with Charity and Envy. They simply work through the vehicle of a classical allusion here. In fact lust, the deadly sin luxuria, is contrasted with chastity in the final section of Purgatorio (cantos 25–26). All the sections include exemplifications of the virtue and vice in question in the form of very elliptical references to famous stories, some from classical myth. In the section on Chastity and Lust there is just one classical example of their polarity, and it contrasts Diana and Venus.
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Diana and Calisto (cf. Fig. 25, “”)
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The reference, which we are expected to recognize and expand as in all other cases, reads: “Diana stayed in the wood, and expelled Elice, who had felt Venus’s poison” (25.130–32). Chastity exiles the victim of Lust. This is somewhat easier to recognize when “Elice” is replaced by the more usual name “Calisto,” the same person. The story is the one seen in a famous work by Titian. Dante tells a later part of her story, again elliptically, in Paradiso (31.32–33). It refers to a “zone,” the north, which “Elice covers daily, circling with her son whom she loves.” Elice and the son are now a constellation—the bear, or big and little dipper— which circles the north only. We are required to fill in the rest of the story, using the same procedure we need a few lines earlier (Purgatorio 25.129) in an easier example, to realize that the Virgin Mary’s chastity at the Annunciation is signaled by nothing more than her brief phrase “I know no man” (Virum non cognosco). Calisto’s story is most famously and more fully recounted in the Metamorphoses of Ovid (2.409–532). Calisto, one of Diana’s virginal nymphs, was out hunting with her bow (arcum, line 414) when she was raped by Jove. When her pregnancy was noticed, Diana expelled her from the wood (nemus, 455) that Dante’s line emphasized. Yet Jove’s betrayed wife, Juno, remained furious (saeva, 470) and turned Calisto into a bear. Years later her full-grown son, Arcas, a hunter, attacked her with his spear (telus, 489). (The years between pass in one line, favoring the early and late phases.) To this murder Jove responds by turning mother and son into the constellation, as in Dante’s second passage, while Juno continues her vengeance by restricting them to the north. The monochrome shows all the dramatis personae of all the phases of the story, and no one else (other than Cupid as Venus’s associate). Diana, identified by her chaste ermine, is speak-
ing to Calisto, identified by her bow. Her son Arcas, close by her, is identified by his spear. Juno gesticulates in her fury, while Venus appears as the correct allegory of Lust, named by Dante as the complement to chastity that an illustration to Purgatorio needs. To use Salutati’s approach, the myth from the poem is used by the painter to show the work of vices and virtues through a veil. The one factor that is not explained in this series of monochromes by this reading is Signorelli’s choice of only some ledges and cantos of Purgatorio, but he did work that way. In the scenes introducing the Inferno he completely skipped canto 2. Moving to the right again on the wainscot of the altar wall, the next group is the almost totally lost central group. The recent conservation has shown that the familiar scheme with a square author portrait and four surrounding roundels recurred here, just as described by the early writer Clementini. He called the portrait and the roundels the classical poet Statius accompanied by scenes of “souls tormented by punishments, scourges, and others” from his epic the Thebaid.”64 A tiny fragment of such a scene of punishment has now been recovered. This proposal that the portrait was of Statius gains support from evidence its proponent Clementini could not know. Dante makes Statius a character in Purgatorio, introducing him in canto 21 and keeping him present to the end in canto 33. It would thus be logical to find him on the wainscot, to the right of and thus later than the figurations of cantos 12–14 (top), 25–26 (middle), and bottom (29–31) just surveyed. Clementini offers a different justification for Statius being here, pointing out that the Thebaid too reports on the underworld, like Dante, Virgil, and Claudian. (One might add that there are few other candidates left.) Statius’s most prominent relevant passage (4.543–645) describes not a journey but a vision. Souls fight one another;
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Devils and the Lustful (cf. Fig. 25, “”)
they are not scourged, as Clementini says Signorelli’s are. (The preserved fragment is too small to tell which is the case in the fresco.) The writer’s citation is oddly mistaken. He first wrongly cites the second book of the Thebaid as the passage about the underworld, and then gives a quotation neither from that book nor from the correct book 4, but partly from book 8 and partly from Lucretius. The former passage concerns the judging of the souls, and the latter, ironically, argues that the underworld is an illusion of ours. The error may be helpful for our needed understanding of the writer’s working method.65 Moving still to the right on the wainscot of the altar wall, we are now under Minos and the descent toward hell, from Inferno 4. Once again there are the two vertical sets of three mono-
chromes each, first the one under the side window and then the one close to the right corner (Fig. 25). In this area the main vector is not toward the right but downward, as the sequences of damned souls from Charon down had established. Within the Minos group shown, just above the base line of the main figuration and its molding, the lowest figure is a green devil tormenting a sinner who offers slight resistance (Fig. 48). As before, it seems that we are meant to jump over the molding and continue down into the wainscot area, for the first imagery found when we do so is a repeat of that same grouping. Three devils, in a rectangular monochrome, torment three souls with knife, knout, and scourge (Fig. 62). The previous kind of rightward movement, along the wainscot, would not bring us to this
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. Monochromes on altar wall wainscot, right side (cf. Fig. 25, “,” “,” “,” “,” “”)
monochrome as the first we would encounter after the Statius set, for it is not in the nearest vertical set of three but in the farther one, in the corner. However, it is the first met in a downward progress from Minos, because it is a half notch higher than the top scene of the other set. The latter is displaced downward by the side window. (Fig. 25 does not show this difference in height of the two vertical sets.) A downward gaze, from Minos to this wainscot scene, also shifts us from color to monochrome as we pass the molding. One might consider that to be a denial of their association. But the contrary is indicated from the text of Dante at just this point. Here (Inferno 5.28) he reaches a place “mute of all light” (d’ogni luce muto). It brings us into the second circle of hell, with the lustful sinners. The painter has elegantly let the formal conditions of the wall system rein-
force the tone of his story—in both senses, literal and figurative. There is another shift when we jump the molding. Unlike any of the sinners above, one of those punished here is female. This is also unique among all the monochromes in this area. Dante’s text on the lustful, not unexpectedly, likewise assigns women a role rarely met in his other circles. The monochrome then seems to belong as a scene of this lustful circle, and again is not to be explained (as has commonly happened) in isolation from others of the set. Dante gives names to three male lustful sinners, Achilles, Paris, and Tristan, and four females, Semiramis, Dido, Cleopatra, and Helen, apart from telling the story of Paolo and Francesca. In this area the monochrome at the top of the inner row (Fig. 63, left), under the side window, is the second highest, a half-unit lower than the one just described (Fig. 62). The theme of Hercules defeating the centaur is always properly named. Signorelli’s fighting pairs usually show a clear loser, often prone, but here they are in tension. The energy conceals the artifices of the formal design. The right angle between the centaur’s upper body and lower horizontal segment, present in the usual way, is made to connote stress, complementary to the forward bend of Hercules’ body. That quality is reinforced in that the centaur is held upside down by upright Hercules, a formal emblem of victory given formal abstraction by being shown from the back. The up and down positions and the view from the back insistently restate a schema of reversal. The labors of Hercules in the Renaissance are a favorite allegory of reason overcoming one or another kind of evil. In a letter of 1477, Ficino wrote that “reason in us is named Hercules,” a text rightly cited as exemplary by Chastel.66 His defeat of the lion always means overcoming anger, but other victories receive shifting labels. To make the centaurs mean lust is well estab-
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lished, if not invariable, on the basis of the story of Hercules suppressing their drunken rape at a wedding. Fulgentius, whose early medieval mythography was printed in Florence in 1490, said that centaurs “connote men made bestial by carnal lust.”67 The suppression of lust by reason is thus a ready reading of this monochrome, which then would again label neatly the theme of lust and its complement in canto 5. In it Dante defines precisely what the lustful do that is wrong: they “make reason submit to desire” (line 39). Hercules with the centaur makes desire submit to reason, and in the design system of this monochrome shows this to be a reversal. It is surely relevant to the choice of such imagery that
Poliziano, the learned poet of the Medici court, taught Michelangelo in 1491–92, when the sculptor was a sixteen-year-old beginner, the text about the lustful centaurs, “heated by wine and love,” defeated by Hercules. The result was the marble relief of the battle of the centaurs.68 Under this roundel, a rectangular monochrome presents the end of a fight, with a man on the ground overcome by three others (Fig. 64). Unlike any of the twenty-three monochromes seen on the wainscot so far, this one presents only nude human beings. In other scenes nudity had connoted the souls in purgatory, but these are not such, so far as anyone has suggested or as seems possible to associate with
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Death of Achilles (cf. Fig. 25, “”)
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any story. This culture used nudity, in contexts that otherwise exclude it, for scenes of combat, and that seems to be the reference here.69 The theme has consistently been called the story of Oionos. The label goes back to the not very reliable identifications of the eighteenth-century observer and has shown great power of retention. The tale is so obscure in the written sources that one may think it has not been checked, for it does not fit the imagery very well, and the title may have survived because no other seemed ever to be available. Though the story is part of the Hercules legend, it is absent from the standard texts on him by Ovid and Boccaccio, the sources most used in this period, as well as from Salutati’s book on Hercules. Its sole classical base is Apollodorus’s compendium of myths, available only in Greek manuscripts until 1555, and even then of such limited interest that a second printing came only in 1599. The one classical allusion to it, in Plutarch’s Moralia, is an abbreviated version that could not have provided the motifs of the wainscot painting.70 Oionos, the story goes, went to help his friend Hercules in a task and happened to be annoyed by a barking dog. He threw stones at it, and its angry young owners killed Oionos “with clubs” (skutalois). Hercules killed them in turn. The picture shows no Hercules, no dog, and just one stick, hardly a club, wielded by the most distant of the attackers. Again no link to other monochromes or the Last Judgment is offered. It is easier to infer why the early observer might have liked this suggestion.71 The procedure of moving forward with the text of Dante again seems to offer a better option. When he gave three examples of men damned for lust, he cited two by their names only. Only Achilles gets more; he is presented as “the great Achilles, who fought with love up to the end” (lines 65–66). The story thus elliptically cited, in the fashion seen before, is not in the Iliad but in the popular medieval romance of Troy, as Dante
commentators have regularly explained.72 Achilles, falling in love with a Trojan princess, was lured into the city to meet her and there ambushed and killed, precisely, then, “fighting to the end.” The standard Dante commentary of Signorelli’s time, by Landino, expands the account to say he came with one friend and was killed by Paris and twenty companions.73 The monochrome may be proposed to represent this, abbreviated to a few active figures in a way accepted at the time. The narrative is a lesson of the same point that desire subdues reason.74 One of the medieval writers on Achilles drew the inference here that he exemplifies “those from whom love takes away reason (senno).”75 Desire drew Achilles to be killed. The destroyed roundel at the bottom of this set of three was reported to show “Hercules wounding Pluto with a three-pointed weapon,”76 but the identification as Hercules is hardly possible, because tridents belong to Neptune only. (The early writer seems to have believed that Hercules was the subject of this set of three scenes.77) Whether Pluto was rightly named is not possible to check, but a good argument for thinking he was so is the presence of unquestioned Pluto images elsewhere on the wainscot, with Proserpina and Orpheus. A resemblance between them and this figure would be a likely enough basis for the writer to have called this figure Pluto too (and no other emerges), and it would then be probable. Yet no story seems to exist with Pluto wounded by anyone, Neptune or another. That makes it all the more interesting that the sole mention of Pluto by Dante has him being overcome as if by a sea tempest, and that this takes place in a passage of the Inferno just subsequent to those that have been noted. We have moved to the next circle beyond the lustful, that of the gluttonous. The travelers find Pluto babbling a famous nonsense line and then collapsing, in the same way in which “swollen sails fall when the
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Perseus and Phineus (cf. Fig. 25, “”)
mast breaks” (Inferno 6.115, continued in 7.1). The force that collapses the sail—that is, a sea storm, is being called the equivalent of what collapses Pluto, and the way to personify or allegorize a sea storm is to show Neptune on the attack. A god punishes the figure of Gluttony, as Hercules above punished Lust. For us today the figuration seems troublingly indirect, but it seems to match the other cases here without difficulty. The final adjacent set of three additional vertical monochromes, at the corner (Fig. 63, right), was initiated at the top with the lustful men and women already described, attacked by demons. The theme of the two scenes below has always been easily understood, but again has all the
more escaped connection with the context of the chapel. The ease of reading their autonomous content indeed may have encouraged a general lack of concern about this other factor. They show Perseus and Andromeda, familiar at the time from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (4.840–5.234). In the upper scene is the very popular image of Andromeda tied to the rock, prey to a dragon, which Perseus attacks with his sword. The lower one shows the less well known sequel, when their marriage feast is invaded by the bride’s previous suitor, Phineus, whom Perseus turns to stone by displaying the gorgon head (Fig. 65). It seems not to have been remarked that the two incidents match Ovid’s division of his account
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. Stories of Perseus and Hercules, drawings, in Libellus de Imaginibus Deorum, Vat. Reg. Lat. 1290
between his books 4 and 5, confirming that his text is the source used. Signorelli’s one divergence from Ovid is to show Perseus coming toward Andromeda on his winged horse, Pegasus. In Ovid he flies to her on winged sandals. The motif of riding the horse, as Lee showed in a special study, comes from the compendium of myths of Pierre Bersuire. This fourteenth-century text was copied in many manuscripts with variants.78 The riding of the horse remained a rare option in illustrations and seems to be represented otherwise only in French manuscript illustration up to this time. Nothing in Signorelli is in conflict with Bersuire’s account. That Signorelli utilized this convenient book is confirmed in a remarkable way. One of the
few Italian-language manuscripts of Bersuire, a unique variant, is richly illustrated. One scene shown in this fifteenth-century volume (Fig. 66, bottom) was copied closely in Signorelli’s scene of the invaded wedding banquet (Fig. 65).79 The entry of the invaders at the right, that table toppling at the left, and even the broken dishes in front recur. The oddity is that the Bersuire illustration does not represent this story at all. It is about the other invaded wedding mentioned above, the one where Hercules repelled the centaurs. That was the story that Signorelli turned into an emblem in the other adjacent set of monochromes, with Hercules subduing a centaur. The text about the carnal centaur, as mentioned above in that connection, was published in 1490 in Florence in another variant version of Bersuire, but it was not illustrated. How Signorelli happened to appropriate the composition of the centaur wedding story, as presented in the manuscript, for his Perseus wedding story is clear. The same page of the manuscript with this Hercules/centaur illustration also has the text with information on the Perseus myth. (Its illustration shows a quite different part of the Perseus legend.) When Signorelli looked up Bersuire on Perseus for ideas, the illustration offered no help. Yet on the very same page (Fig. 66) luck offered him a composition he could use, by shifting its subject to Perseus. That this consultation of the book involved the painter himself, not only a humanist adviser, is proved by the use of the design system. What further emerges is the general use of Bersuire for the wainscot. It remains to understand why the Perseus myth was chosen in the first place. Once again the same procedure offers an answer, as we move to the next segment of the Inferno, beyond the gluttonous of canto 7. In the next circle, of the angry, the three furies initially block the gate of the city of Dis to the travelers. Troubled that they may fail to keep Dante and Virgil out, they cry:
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Let Medusa come, then we will turn him to stone. . . . It was a mistake that we did not avenge Theseus’ attack. (lines 52, 54) Though Perseus is not mentioned, we meet the petrifying gorgon head, which is precisely the central activating motif and the weapon in Signorelli’s wedding scene. The Furies would like to activate it, as Perseus had there. His action is the classical equivalent of their wish to block the travelers. The context is the step from the introductory part of hell to its depths. They cite Theseus as having forced his way into Hades, the act shown by Signorelli in a monochrome in the Virgil set. Earlier, when crossing the frame below Minos, our eye passed a major stage on the way to hell where light and color disappeared. Here is another such stage, and though Dante did pass it, we do not. There are no monochromes of what comes later, the circles of hell that Nardo and Angelico had shown in their Last Judgments.80 Beyond the first step below Minos, the imagery as it shifts to the figurative image with the Gorgon head shows a reversal from the literal text, the Furies’ desire to use it for evil, to Perseus’s good use. It is also just here, when Dante is barred at the gate of Dis, that he suddenly addresses his readers: O you who have sound minds, See the teaching that is hidden Under the veil of the strange verses. (lines 61–63) We are urged—as in the one other case cited from Purgatorio 9, Dante’s only other such formulation—to read allegorically. And Signorelli here gives allegorical images from his literal text. This very possibly is also the context of his bring-
ing in the horse Pegasus, whose role as a symbol of poetry, now familiar, perhaps emerges about this time.81 The adoption of Dante for the Last Judgment in painting had been firmly settled long before Signorelli. He is very new in shifting it, in the parts beyond the entrance to hell, from literal illustration to figurative allusion. He had done the same in presenting the Purgatorio, which does not belong to the Last Judgment though it had been included in a few, each as odd and distinctive as this. Behind all this must be a devotee of the Divine Comedy, prepared to manipulate it. The use made of the Comedy has always been obvious, but not this aspect with figurative images from it. At this time the Comedy was widely available. Manuscripts were numerous, but from the 1470s it was printed, multiplying its accessibility a thousandfold. The first edition printed with a commentary was in 1481, Landino’s, whose approach became dominant, as already noted. All editions from then to 1500, six of them, include his notes.82 In Orvieto in 1499 it can hardly be questioned that this was the text employed. Landino’s opinion, hardly original, has been formulated by Trinkaus: “A great and true poet was also a theologian.”83 The examples Landino provides of such poets are Virgil and Dante. He also, as is hardly surprising, gives much importance to the distinction between literal and figurative meanings. The point naturally emerges most distinctly when he comments on Inferno 9, on the verses about the teaching under the veil. His way of doing this is to gloss the allusion to Theseus just preceding.84 He extends this discussion in a way that could not have been presumed and that is of special interest here: “A most subtle allegory was written by Coluccio Salutati, a very learned Florentine and the teacher of Leonardo Bruni, in that, when the poets imagine Hercules, Aeneas, Theseus, Perithoos, Amphiaraos, and
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Orpheus to have gone down to hell, he shows that in them were expounded various kinds of things to be desired.” He proceeds first to his own specialty, the theory of active and contemplative life, but then reverts to Salutati: “Our Coluccio has it that the speculative good and the knowledge of the truth are expressed in Homer through Hercules and in Virgil through Aeneas.” If above it could be agreed without difficulty that the Orvietans in 1499 were using Landino, and also that the wainscots illustrated Dante in a figurative classical way, it can hardly not be that these readers found Landino’s comment on the veiled meaning in Dante of particular interest, and hence that they were made aware of the admired Salutati. Here Landino gives Salutati’s book on Hercules in a nutshell, obviating the difficulty that its full text existed in few copies. He also gives a clue to how Salutati’s thought could survive through intermediate generations. He does this by labeling him “teacher of Leonardo Bruni.” It would seem that Salutati needed to be identified, but not Bruni. Bruni had, to be sure, fully realized the permeation of Florentine public life by humanism that Landino then continued to embody. The figurative monochromes of the wainscot thus refer to a Florentine background of humanism with a theological sense. That same local background was seen to be the model for the portraits of poets there; Claudian, Dante, and Salutati had been repeatedly portrayed in Florence in civic contexts. The same humanist background also set up Salutati’s interest in descents into hell by classical poets, recalled by Landino. The latter’s world was that of Lorenzo “the Magnificent,” with Bertoldo beside him and a role for Signorelli. Everything in the wainscot, including its artist, seems to relate to the same background there. What it does not tell is how the only full realization of this strain of Renaissance expression turned up in the Orvieto Cathedral of all places, under a Last Judgment.
Several recent inquiries have offered names of people in Orvieto that might explain this. That of Bishop della Rovere seems to have no basis at all, and to depend on the presumption that a bishop might control things. That of Archdeacon Alberi is only a little more likely. Alberi was acquainted with humanists in Rome (though there is no basis for the statement that he was a humanist too), and he commissioned a modest fresco cycle in the cathedral from the workshop of Signorelli, to adorn the library he donated. But other evidence is lacking. Alberi was not a person of ideas, wealth, or status, as far as can be seen.85 Another text, never brought forward, may be more promising. In 1494 the city fathers of Orvieto sent an invitation to the Roman humanist Pomponius Laetus to come to the city to lecture.86 This invitation brings to mind the invitations by committees earlier to famous painters, though here there is nothing to show what Laetus would do. Laetus (who evidently did not come, and died the next year) was certainly the most famous humanist teacher in Rome. An archaeologist and an editor, he seems to have been a mesmerizing lecturer to the young. Older scholarship cited him most often regarding his love of pagan rites. His revival of these led Pope Paul II to arrest him for heresy. More recently the emphasis has reasonably changed to his scholarship. Someone with power in Orvieto wanted him, and soon afterward someone wanted poets and poetry, mostly classical, painted in Orvieto Cathedral, an equally unusual event. A connection between these two analogous circumstances, each exceptional, would seem plausible. Fortunately, it is possible to name one person who both had power in Orvieto and especially admired Laetus, an unlikely combination. All lists of Laetus’s distinguished pupils include Alessandro Farnese, the future Pope Paul III, whom we have met as the only Orvietan among the cardinals of the Borgia group. Farnese visited with the
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pope in 1493, and his teacher Laetus was invited in 1494. The unlikelihood of the invitation without a special stimulus lends weight to the suggestion that Farnese urged the approach to his teacher. Farnese did not start out to become a churchman. His parents (as his first biographer reports) sent him in 1487, at age nineteen, to Laetus’s class.87 Then he went to study Greek in Florence, where the reigning authority was Poliziano, Lorenzo the Magnificent’s court poet, the one who coached Michelangelo about the myth of the centaurs. Already in 1484 Poliziano had asked Farnese to forward a message to Laetus.88 A packet of Farnese’s letters of 1487–89, our chief source about him in those years, includes one to Laetus.89 Then in 1489 his Greek teacher asked him to be godfather to his son.90 In Florence he had social status ranking with the Medici. Both Lorenzo and a sister of Farnese had married into the noble Orsini family of Rome, as Lorenzo’s eldest son did also. So it is no surprise to find Lorenzo writing in 1489 to his ambassador in Rome to recommend Farnese for a job in the papal administration, not an ecclesiastical post but a diplomatic one. Lorenzo writes that Farnese’s Greek and Latin studies make him doctissimus, and that he is to be admired both for his own attributes and for being from the right family.91 In other letters, Farnese discussed points of Latin philology with Lorenzo’s son Giovanni, his fellow student and the future Pope Leo X. Still other letters of his praise Annius of Viterbo, who is today recalled for classical fakes, and Paolo Cortesi. The latter is best known today for his later book about the proper arrangements for cardinals. At this earlier time, in 1489, Cortesi wrote a dialogue on learned men in which he named Farnese as one of the interlocutors, and he placed the scene in the Farnese family castle on Lake Bolsena.92 It is necessary to underline the concerns of the young Farnese, combining Greek and Latin studies with social rank, since he
is not easy to recognize in the later Pope Paul III of the Council of Trent. Not only did Farnese at this time uniquely combine admiration for Laetus, the status to get someone invited to Orvieto, and an official appointment in the cathedral where the wainscot would shortly be painted. He is also the one person to emerge who could connect the Orvietans and Signorelli. When Signorelli was invited, he was chosen almost immediately, with little real basis for being called famous. One other portion of his recent career was a high point, however. At the court of Lorenzo de Medici about 1490, Lorenzo had two paintings of Signorelli’s, the extraordinary classical Court of Pan and a Madonna. The latter includes in a background scene a very original classical group of musical shepherds. These evidently refer to Virgil’s shepherd songs, or eclogues, which were believed to have prophesized Christ in pagan literary context. These paintings are undated, and the earliest information on them is Vasari’s report that Signorelli gave them to Lorenzo.93 This must have been a “gift” to a superior according to the feudal formula, obligating a reciprocal gift if the recipient is pleased. No doubt Lorenzo was. There is no otherwise recorded contact between Signorelli and Florence until after Lorenzo’s death in 1492. Signorelli separately had enough status in his home town of Cortona to be named to the city council on many occasions, and it has been suggested that this status derived from his known contacts with the Medici and with Florence, which controlled Cortona.94 This view gains an unnoted support from an earlier writer’s suggestion that the occasion of Signorelli’s offering Lorenzo the two paintings may have been the latter’s three-day visit to Cortona in 1488, an extraordinary event for the town.95 They have commonly been dated to 1488–90 on account of their style, as well as with reference to the date of Lorenzo’s death.96 Yet it seems implausible that Signorelli would have been prepared at that
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Court of Pan. Formerly Berlin, Kaiser Friedrich Museum
moment with two paintings so distinct from his other work. A revised version of this scenario might be that, at the moment of the visit, Lorenzo saw work of the town’s leading artist— in itself a likely event—and invited him to his court in Florence, with the hope of commissions. On arrival, Signorelli would paint these uniquely Medicean works, very likely with hints from someone like Poliziano. In this case, the paintings would have been done about 1489, just when Farnese was also at the court. The young scholar of Greek could not overlook the Pan (Fig. 67), the single best token of humanism in
painting in this generation by any artist.97 Along with Poliziano, the other young star of the group of Florentine philosophers was Pico della Rirandola. If confirmation is available for the suggestion (see note 22) that his esoteric interests included the apocryphal book of Enoch, otherwise not known to have been read at this time, there would be an explanation there for the source in Enoch of the four Orvieto archangels, and an additional link between the Orvieto project and Neoplatonic Florence. In 1498 the Orvietans finally gave up their hope that Perugino would paint their chapel. We
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have seen them in 1499 replacing him with Signorelli, with rare speed of decision. In their new need for a painter who could be labeled famous, a recommendation by the powerful Farnese would unquestionably have been weighty. In turn, a memory of the Pan by Farnese would surely have sufficed to make him promote its artist as a candidate in the crisis. It would not hurt that the Pan evoked just that humanistic imagery that was congruent with Farnese’s own pleasure. In this scenario a second powerful name should be mentioned, that of Cardinal Grimani, whose connections both with connoisseurship and with the Borgia group in control of Orvieto have been observed. It would be logical to see him seconding a proposal by Farnese. This reconstruction also offers an explanation for another factor that has so far escaped explanation—that is, why Signorelli quickly dropped his big project at Monte Oliveto near Siena, with only the small inducement of the vaults in Orvieto. That would happen naturally if the monks at Monte Oliveto felt pressure from church powers to release him, and separately if Signorelli felt he could count on getting the full commission in Orvieto. Cardinal Farnese was one of the few people who could have managed both arrangements. The later years of Farnese have left one or two quite odd traces of his still remembering Signorelli.98 Once Signorelli went to work at Orvieto, the novel wainscot imagery emerged quite soon.99 What was novel was not so much the representation of the classical stories depicted, which were not unusual at the time, but rather the link between them and the Purgatorio.100 In the humanistic Florentine context of Landino, they appear together. Farnese emerges as a candidate, with no apparent disadvantages, to have been the person behind this project, at least behind the general idea of such an unusual combination. He is also the only visible candidate for identification
as the person who worked out the details, being the only known practiced student of classical philology in Orvieto. Is this a reasonable speculation? The report that the young cardinal was not wealthy up to 1502 might suggest that he was not very busy either.101 At least any vigorous negation of this idea might serve to stimulate a search for another. The frescoes of the chapel’s inner bay, which are the theme of this chapter, fall into two dissimilar groups. The first one, on the vault and the large wall areas, shows the Last Judgment in a scheme then standard, while the second, on the wainscot, shows an unprecedented set of literary portraits and scenes from epic poems. The chapter, devoted like the rest of this book to reconstructing for the first time the cycle’s stages of production, correspondingly has two differing parts, and both have required novel emphases. In the relatively simple case of the wainscot, the problem was to determine the unifying reason for the choices of the numerous scenes, a matter that had not been addressed. The answer seems to emerge in Salutati’s idea that we learn about the underworld from the poets. That led to another question: how it was possible to place this subject in a church? Here the answer emerged in the figure of Farnese, a trained humanist who was also a locally influential prelate. In the more complex case of the vault and the wall scenes, the equally novel focus was on Signorelli’s use of Angelico’s older arrangements. After this has been explored, a different problem seems to be generated, in the context of these two artists’ almost polar unlikeness in style— Angelico being famous for gentle piety, Signorelli for tough physicality. This issue is a subjective one, because readings of style vary greatly, so that only tentative thoughts on the question can be offered in concluding this chapter. In one view, it might be maintained that the Renaissance was capable of disregarding individ-
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ual styles when handling a theme with a strong tradition of presentation. One might argue that Michelangelo’s Last Judgment shows something of this kind. Alternatively, once the question has come to the surface, one might decide that the two artists’ styles are not so unlike after all, even apart from their common adherence to basic Renaissance criteria of realism. When we see a precedent for Signorelli’s scene of the damned in Angelico’s scene of hell, and conversely how the graceful dance in Angelico’s heaven is easy to
associate with the relaxed procession of the saved by Signorelli, we might deduce that the two masters have more in common than had been supposed. Such a view might also be in a context of pointing out the period’s great concern for dramatic exposition of events, to which the artists adjust their styles, much like skilled actors moving from one role to another. The findings of this chapter thus bequeath meaningful problems to future observers who may work with different factors of the imagery.
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The Imagery of the Outer Bay p n 1499 the Orvieto Cathedral committee in charge of construction had been able to provide their new artist, Signorelli, with a good deal of guidance for the inner bay, based mainly on what Angelico had left behind. Angelico’s two triangles on the vault (which have always been conspicuous to viewers and scholars) were the glaring token of a work barely begun, and his gavantone offered a schema for a Last Judgment that made sense, being partly traditional and partly novel. The novelties introduced were a response in part to the special condition of the walls and in part to quite other forces, including the artist’s own notions. The outer bay was not provided for at all. That is explicit in the document of 1499 when Signorelli asks to be told what is wanted for that bay and the response is that he should continue with the Last Judgment. This seems reasonable to us, from the result. But there was no precedent for what might be presented there, beyond the one scene of the Raising of the Dead. The inner bay already showed a complete set of the other standard imagery, but this one required component by not being included there quite probably led to the more general decision to continue with the Last Judgment imagery in this whole outer area. Murals of Last Judgments normally shared their rooms with other themes, as in the case of Giotto, and it is likely that Angelico assumed that the program here would be of that kind, showing the Last Judgment only in the
inner bay. But that was now contraindicated. Even though the conversation of 1499 applied only to the vault, it would tend to affect the whole. The second contract, dated April 27, 1500, provided for Signorelli to “cover with figures” (storiare) all the available surfaces of vaults and walls, as well as window embrasures and one of the two small chapels. He is to follow “the drawing given by the master, though also with more figures as he will think best, though not with fewer than he has given in the drawing.”1 The themes had thus been established, but not the compositions, at least not in a way prohibiting revisions. The artist could play with these, specifically by adding figures; here one is allowed to think the committee felt the pride in Signorelli’s drawing that has been the pleasure of observers from Vasari to the present. An additional clause establishes that the artist is also to cover the entrance wall with stories, “according as we will give him or will be in agreement with him.” For this area there was no specific theme yet, which means there was no overarching plan for the entire work. Those concerned were quite ready to continue in stages, to allow painting of some stories to start without settling on the last ones. This is contrary to usual postulates about how Renaissance mural projects were planned, postulates that are based on less full evidence. To be sure, it was not normal to call for extensions of a theme that was already complete,
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Scheme of entrance wall (after Vischer)
or nearly so, in traditional terms. The rare and unique scenes on the walls of the outer bay, to be explored shortly, have a brilliance and boldness in relating design to theme that have received special attention in each case and been recognized by all, but the fact that the design plan actually developed in stages over a period of time has generally been overlooked; instead, viewers have tended to see the chapel decoration as a whole as a single statement, designed all at once. The outer vault, the first subunit the committee looked at, usually gets little attention, except to link it with the inner vault, which is not in error. The outer vault’s frames had even been painted by Angelico’s assistant Master Pietro. Its larger figures of saints are easily extrapolated from the ones shown in earlier Last Judgments, as well as from familiar church texts, as already discussed. No similar easy extension prepares us for the big wall scenes, other than the Raising of the Dead. The scene with the raising of the dead also appears to have had a special Orvietan interest
connected with the old fight against heresy, which will be investigated below. The outer bay’s three walls show four scenes, the two large ones on the side walls, the Raising of the Dead and Antichrist, opposite each other (Figs. 27, “B,” and 26, “A”), and two small scenes on the entrance wall (Fig. 68), on either side of the entrance opening. Unlike the inner bay, but like most Renaissance murals, these are narrative scenes that have a before-and-after relationship to each other. But the chronology does not have a smooth relationship to the locations on the walls. The Raising of the Dead is evidently the latest event, immediately preceding the Judgment itself. Guidebooks and the scholarship duly encourage the viewer to reach this scene last of the four in moving around the chapel, thus placing the Fire from Heaven next to last, since it is adjacent to the Raising of the Dead scene, around the corner on the entrance wall. That in turn is preceded, in these books, by the other small scene on the entrance wall, the Five Signs. Preceding the Five Signs, we are asked to work back by turning the other corner to the side wall opposite the Raising of the Dead, to find the Antichrist story, the earliest incident of the narrative; indeed, all the books start there. However, the texts utilized by the artist begin with the Five Signs. From that event, then, we should move to the Antichrist, then reverse course and jump over the Signs to the Fire scene, to reach the Flesh scene last. Even specialized inquiries about narrative processes of this period, surely overwhelmed by the visual assurance of the paintings, seem to fail to notice this. A possible explanation for the discrepancy— time sequence misaligned with space sequence— might cite the good analogy of the Sistine ceiling, where essentially the same thing occurs. The space sequence in that case interchanges the times of two events, it is usually agreed, because the surface areas are of different sizes and one
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event required more figures. This need was accommodated at the expense of the sequence. If that happened in Orvieto, where indeed the two interchanged scenes occupy areas of very different sizes, the solution would be simple. Yet the opposite seems to be true. The small area given the Five Signs is crowded, and the figures are given reduced scale. Conversely, the Antichrist scene is spread out and includes many secondary incidents. A more plausible explanation for the interchange at Orvieto connects it with the known fact that the decision about the themes came in two stages and that there were drawings for the two big side wall scenes, only, at the time of the contract. In this hypothesis, the subjects of the two scenes on the side walls, the Antichrist and the Raising of the Dead, were already settled at the time of the contract as we see them, and included in the drawings. When the decision was later made about the entrance wall, the motifs chosen turned out to include one episode earlier and one later than the account of Antichrist, but, in this view, that was not regarded as a problem. The tolerance for such shifts exemplified in the slightly later Sistine program, of 1508, as mentioned, would fit such a reading. To be sure, this view requires the presumption that the two side-wall scenes we now see are the same as those originally assigned to those spaces. It does not leave room for the possibility that the set of four was more actively reworked when the entrance scenes were decided. It could have been, if the painting on the side walls were not too far along, but the very fact that we now have the irregular sequence makes it highly unlikely that the arrangement was revised, so that again returns us to the original hypothesis. Attention to this matter seems warranted not only because it adds to our ability to reconstruct events but also because it addresses the way scholars, as noted in the introduction, move for-
ward from the Raising of the Dead to treat even the inner bay units as a narrative series, ending with the Blessed at Josaphat. The document of 1499 contains another clause that has drawn much attention. In making the motion to continue with themes of the Judgment, which passed unanimously, the committee member supported his case by remarking that this would be according to (prout) what had been previously (alias) advised orally (oretenus) by the town’s esteemed theologians (venerabiles magistros sacre pagine huius civitatis).2 Writers in English often give a literal translation of the words magistri sacre pagine as “masters of the sacred page,” but others cite the original phrase. This indicates that it has not been well understood and makes it sound significant. “Sacred page” is simply the Bible, given a name with a bit of extra flourish,3 and its “masters” are all those with educational qualifications to use the Bible. Such qualifications are widespread. Thus, in a fourteenth-century biography a saint is described as triumphing in debate over 214 “magistros de sacra pagina.”4 A recent specialist writes that we know that Signorelli received advice from these masters, which is not the case; only the committee received it. Another finds that the advice would be what guided the iconographic choice. Yet the advice, so far as we know, is indicated only as a choice of the general theme, the Last Judgment, as against something else. The masters all opted for this choice, speaking to the committee, which had the final say and voted in favor. One might reconstruct a meeting in which a group of “masters” offered this as a group decision, but a more plausible reconstruction might be that committee members, once again faced with such an issue, asked questions of various such persons. There is nothing that connects them with the chapel at any point after the committee vote. Writers who have emphasized this text have passed over the limitations signaled in the terms alias, previously, and oretenus, orally.
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Raising of the Dead (cf. Fig. 27, “”)
The latter evokes the reverse of any detailed plan, suggesting instead the generality that the committee reports. Less attention has been paid to another line in the record, one that offers a stronger basis for locating the source of decisions about the details in the paintings. It is in the contract, which specifies that the work will be done either “according as we will give it to him or will come to an agreement with him.”5 Thus, not only is there an opportunity for the artist to make a contribution, but the decision remains open as to whether it, or the other option giving the committee all the power, will prevail. It brings to mind the deci-
sion to consult Fra Angelico, which seemed so unusual, and it also gives the artist the freedom to add figures if he so desires. The first theme chosen was certainly the Raising of the Dead, the only one absent from the inner bay though required by tradition. This scene (Fig. 69) has received less attention than the nearby Damned and Antichrist scenes, perhaps because of its relatively lower level of physical energy. It does, however, show many innovations in the treatment of the theme, which are surely connected to the uniquely large area to which it has been assigned and probably also to the artist’s option of adding figures. Among the
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innovations are two symmetrical groups of three figures each at center left and center right. The figures are embracing and are readily perceived as old friends from life on earth now reunited. Nothing like this seems to have been included in earlier images of the Raising of the Dead episode of a Last Judgment. It is astonishing that no note has been taken of this novelty in Signorelli. The inspiration obviously comes from the Blessed scene (Fig. 42), the one most like the scene of the Raising of the Dead in every respect with regard to composition and extent of action. It has been noted that the greeting of friends in the Blessed scene—there too a novelty with respect to meetings of couples, such as husband and wife—had a basis in theological writing.6 Here it may be startling that the greeting is extended to this earlier moment before the saved and the damned have been sorted. None of Signorelli’s damned greet each other. Are we perhaps meant to take it that among those being resurrected here, it is those who will be saved who are meeting, and the rest are to be damned? In any case, the image was being addressed with some thought. It is not only an added motif that is novel in Signorelli’s Raising of the Dead. The absence of a standard element, the tombs, is also novel. The dead rise instead from bare earth, apparently for the first time in any monumental Italian Last Judgment. Tombs were conspicuous in such obvious earlier models as the sculptures on the Orvieto Cathedral façade (Figs. 33 and 70) and in all of Angelico’s versions. The variant with bare earth is, however, quite compatible with theology,7 and before Signorelli there is one major visual context where it is common: in the fifteenth-century painting in Flanders and adjacent regions. Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Memling, and Stefan Lochner all show it, as do others. The earliest such image I have seen is in the Limbourg brothers’ famous Très Riches Heures (1415) of the Duke of Berri (Fig. 71). This
Image not available
. Raising of the Dead, Orvieto Cathedral façade, bottom section (detail of Fig. 33)
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. Limbourg Brothers, Raising of the Dead, in Très Riches Heures. Chantilly, Musée Condé
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miniature also anticipates Signorelli in showing the Raising of the Dead as a scene separate from the Last Judgment, a true rarity that I have located otherwise only in two image sets from several centuries earlier.8 The Last Judgment is presented in a standard way in a preceding unit.9 If Signorelli saw a work of this type, it would surely have attracted him, in offering a solution to his problem of giving the Raising of the Dead its own locus. That he did see a solution is further supported in that the miniature and his fresco have other similarities. The miniature shows just two bodies in the process of emerging from the earth, in addition to a partial third in the background. One of the two, in right profile, helps himself up by leaning on his right elbow while raising and bending his left leg. The other gazes upward while supporting himself on the ground with one hand, with his opposite leg bent, while his whole body leans toward the supporting hand. All these details recur in a grouped pair among Signorelli’s most prominent figures. The second of the two poses has interested scholars of the Limbourg brothers because it recurs in another scene of the Très Riches Heures, where the figure is Adam, and in an earlier work of theirs of 1402, with the same identity, and because it is the best evidence in their work of any interest in classical antiquity. Moreover, in 1412, another Franco-Flemish Last Judgment shows it, in the chief illustration of a breviary.10 This last instance is of still more interest here. Beneath the Last Judgment and ten lines of text, a separate scene in the lower margin, a bas de page, presents hell, to which damned souls descend, in two-thirds of its breadth, and in the left third presents purgatory, from which one soul rises. Perhaps the rising soul signals purgatory being closed down. Last Judgments of course never show purgatory, because its role ends when the world does, and therefore this depiction of purgatory has been called a unique
exception. In any case, these motifs in the lower margin are the closest analogy to Signorelli’s wainscots, with figurative purgatory and hell under a Last Judgment. A hypothesis that the resurrection from bare earth was inaugurated in the Très Riches Heures (or reinvented after much earlier such images had been forgotten) may be supported in that the related 1412 scene shows tombs, if very modest ones; they might, then, be viewed as a transitional form. Signorelli’s damned being pulled by ropes also had a unique precedent, as discussed above, in the Très Riches Heures, which also involved the most prominent foreground figures on their page. The history of the manuscript’s ownership, however, excludes any chance that Signorelli had seen it. Still, the varied and close analogies might lead one to wonder whether he saw a close copy of the manuscript, which might well have existed.11 This context returns us to Cardinal Grimani, both a visitor to Orvieto and a major collector of Flemish painting, especially manuscripts. One could reasonably speculate that Grimani and his good colleague the Orvietan cardinal Farnese talked about the largest problem of the fresco cycle—where to locate the Raising of the Dead scene—and that Grimani might have offered a solution by showing the artist a manuscript he owned. The literature seems not to have explored any connections with northern painting in Orvieto, or another major invention in the Raising of the Dead scene: the skeletons. The skeletons seem totally unprecedented. They appear in two groups here, one at the right front where several clamber up from the earth, and one farther back at the far right, where a group seems to be entering the stage space. The groups have in common that they are just arriving, and this associates them with an initial moment of the Raising of the Dead, which is consistent with the texts to be mentioned shortly. The presence of the skeletons
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has been noted only in brief descriptions, perhaps because it is assumed that the artist’s passion for anatomy explains them adequately, or simply because there is less interest in this milder scene. Yet these figures have a larger role than any of Signorelli’s other novelties here. Bynum has surveyed imagery of the raising of the dead over the centuries and says these are the earliest skeletons to appear.12 She cites only two other cases. One is an engraving of 1554 that includes a long text quoting Ezekiel 37:6, the famous prophecy that the dry bones will be brought back to life and gain sinews and flesh. Bynum does not cite the skeletons in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, whose most involved patron, Pope Paul III, had been Cardinal Farnese. Michelangelo’s motifs of Charon and Minos in this scene are regularly assigned to his awareness of Signorelli, but that precedent is less often observed with regard to the skeletons. In 1553 Michelangelo’s biographer Condivi took note of these dead, who “according to the prophecy of Ezekiel, have only their bones”13 (a source citation is unusual for him). The reoccurrence of the Ezekiel verse in the engraving of 1554 suggests that the artist believed the motif needed such support. At the same time it suggests that the source is sufficient, and theological exposition is not involved. This passage in Ezekiel has always been one of the principal texts for the Last Judgment, so the earlier absence of skeletons is perhaps surprising. The numerous rare motifs in this Raising of the Dead distinguish this scene from the segments of the inner bay, where standard patterns prevail, even if with some rather less emphatic novelties. This difference from the previous presentations reinforces the basic novelty of giving the scene such importance. A stimulus for that might be the adjacent imagery just below, in the little chapel with the bodies of the saints (Fig. 27, “M”). Signorelli’s contract called for painting that chapel, yet not the matching little chapel on the
opposite wall (Fig. 26, under “A”). The latter clearly was not part of the Judgment complex. The scene under the Raising of the Dead also has a separate devotional context, and yet it seems connected with the larger theme and its concerns. The little chapel was owned by the cathedral and thus under the committee’s jurisdiction, while the one opposite was sold, at least later. When painted by Master Pietro in 1468, this little niche chapel containing the bodies of Parenzo and Faustino became the one part of the chapel covered with painting, apart from Angelico’s vault triangles The holy relics it housed made it a destination for worshipers and no doubt brought alms. Master Pietro’s fresco Christ in the Mode of the Pietà has an inscription calling Parenzo and Faustino those “for whose interceding merits God chose this city.” Because these saints became the town’s patrons, they were of concern to the committee, which in the same year, 1468, had a wooden casket made for the bodies.14 The contract of 1500 required Signorelli to repaint the chapel, and he too shows Faustino and Parenzo flanking the dead Christ, but the latter is now more naturalistically lying on the ground in front of the tomb rather than upright inside it (Fig. 72). In a rare procedure, possibly connected with the ongoing water problems, a new party wall was constructed in front of the old fresco, leaving air between. This allowed the older fresco to survive, and be recently rediscovered. It is not clear why a new fresco was required. The idea that the old one was too damaged to be salvaged is not convincing, because the Christ survives in full and retouching in such cases is found elsewhere in the cathedral. A desire to make the chapel look homogeneous would match some expressions of the period, even if Angelico’s work was plainly exempt. In the event, unity of style overcomes a partial shift of program and recalls a frequent, perhaps rash, assumption in writings on the
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Pietà with Saints Faustino and Pietro Parenzo (cf. Fig. 27 in arch marked “”)
chapel that unity of meaning can be assumed throughout, with little other basis than unity of style. It may be that the water problem was the whole reason for this arrangement. Signorelli’s design of the recumbent Christ and two mourning women is identical, in mirror image, to one he did for an altarpiece in Cortona, finished in February 1502.15 The general agreement that the altarpiece is the earlier version seems reasonable. What is not generally observed is that the subject matter is changed. The altarpiece (Fig. 73) has the standard theme of the mourning at the foot of the cross, and there are small background scenes showing previous and later moments: the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. Here in the fresco the figure of Christ is recumbent in front of the tomb, an uncanonical and apparently unique arrangement. The one small background scene, represented as a monochrome relief sculpture on the tomb, shows the
preceding moment of carrying Christ to the tomb, which is consistently followed, in Passion imagery, by his being lowered into the tomb. Signorelli’s modification here, from his standard design in the altarpiece, addresses the difficulty of the low, wide rectangle with a grace that has allowed it to be overlooked. He is also able to keep close to the motif of the superseded fresco in making the body and the tomb the two foci. The two saints also recur, but now in full length. They also get increased emphasis by the adding of little scenes of their martyrdoms, on the principle of a predella. Following the legends recorded in the Orvieto service book, Faustino is shown thrown from a bridge into the river Tiber, and Parenzo is killed by an Orvietan heretic with a hammer blow (Figs. 74 and 75). The two roundels, like all the others on the wainscot level, are in monochrome and nicely use the side walls of the niche. Again the design
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Pietà, altarpiece, Cortona, Museo Diocesano
unity is retained during the extension of the thematic material. Most Italian cities have local saints, whose relics they often venerate, as here. Most are early bishops, like San Brizio, but some are martyrs.
Faustino was martyred in Rome, and there is no indication of how his body got to Orvieto. As a much more recent martyr, Parenzo is unusual, as evidenced by the unusually detailed account of him in the local book.16 If we may judge from a
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Image not available
Image not available
. Martyrdom of Saint Faustino (cf. Fig. 27, on left wall in arch marked “”)
. Martyrdom of Saint Pietro Parenzo (cf. Fig. 27, on right wall in arch marked “”)
procession that accompanied the provision of the new casket in 1468, his cult was growing in the late fifteenth century.17 In Signorelli’s fresco, as in the earlier one, the two honored saints have only a secondary role, flanking the Christ. It is normal for such saints to yield in this way in altarpieces, but almost always it is the Virgin Mary to whom they yield. The rare choice of the dead Christ certainly points to the special importance here of the Feast of Corpus Christi, in the chapel opposite and in the town generally. The attention to the body of Christ here certainly relates to the awareness that Parenzo was martyred by the heretics who denied the incarnation of Christ. Parenzo’s mission from the pope to suppress the heretics of Orvieto was recorded earlier. That this concern should remain alive centuries after the Manicheans had faded away is remarkable, yet it did, as Raphael’s fresco of the Miracle of Bolsena clearly shows (Fig. 76).
Raphael’s fresco, ordered by Pope Julius II (1509–12), is one of a set of four filling the walls of a reception room in the Vatican. The other three show Saint Peter, the first pope, freed from prison by an angel, the invader Heliodorus expelled from the Temple in Jerusalem, and Attila’s invasion of Rome repulsed. All three have analogous casts of characters: each time evil military personnel (including Peter’s prison guards) have attacked the pope, or his Old Testament analogue, the high priest in the temple of Jerusalem, but are then defeated by angels or airborne saints. These persons, presenting one recurrent theme, account for all those in all three frescoes who have identities with names, with the notable exception of the figure of Julius II as witness in the Heliodorus scene. However, the Bolsena scene does not match. Its presence requires anyone who wants to assign a single label to the four frescoes to use generic terms, like divine aid to the church. Why is this scene
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Raphael, Mass of Bolsena, fresco. Vatican, Stanza d’Eliodoro
included here? To be sure, the Bolsena scene does show both soldiers and a priest at an altar, like the high priest of Jerusalem. But their moral standing is the opposite of the other three: the priest is evil, in his doubt about the truth of the Mass, and soldiers are good, supporting the pope. (The soldiers in the scene are usually considered merely decorative accessories.) The scene also features a prayerful, observing pope, similar to the one in the Heliodorus scene. In this way, the Bolsena scene is complementary to the other three, focusing not on the alarming attack and its supernatural defeat but on the happy resolution of a threat by bad clergy. The church establishment and its troops handle it. This formulation,
which seems not to have been addressed, calls for further inquiry. So far, it indicates the special role of the Bolsena scene and its reference. A divine miracle had defeated the heresy about the Body and Blood. It is always noted that Pope Julius visited Orvieto in 1506 and paid homage to the cloth “flecked with the blood of Christ,” just as Raphael shows it.18 The Manicheans, as the Orthodox named these heretics (or Cathari, in their own terms) had fallen from their peak two hundred years before 1500, but why their views still troubled the orthodox is less puzzling if one focuses on variant names ranging from “Manichean,” the generic term for “dualist” over a thousand years, to “Waldensian,”
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the name of one of the surviving sects that shared some if not all their views. In 1367 the inquisition still condemned a “Cathar” in Piedmont who was in contact with a group in Bosnia and in 1412 had burned the remains of a man who had traveled there to adopt the “faith of the heretics.” In the 1440s Pope Nicholas V accused the royal court of Bosnia of being Manichean, and in 1462 three Bosnian nobles were sent to Rome to renounce their “Manichean errors.” They had to abjure the principle of two gods, supremely good and evil.19 Pope Pius II, whose visit to Orvieto has been noted, wrote a geography of Europe around 1460 in which he described the Bosnian heretics as Manichean dualists. In 1487 Pope Innocent VIII issued a bull to suppress the Waldensians. In 1512 in Paris, Alfonso Rizzi, a Dominican from Naples who was the royal confessor, published a book called Eruditiones to refute the Waldensian denial of the existence of purgatory. It is thus less surprising that in Orvieto the tradition of this argument was still alive in 1700, when in the earliest description of Signorelli’s frescoes the killers of Parenzo were described as “Manichean.”20 If the Miracle of Bolsena had refuted Manichean views on Christ’s bodily existence, the orthodox doctrine of the Last Judgment refuted the same heretics’ denial of the resurrection of the dead. Any image of that resurrection in a Last Judgment would assert that refutation, but Signorelli’s introduction of the skeletons does so more emphatically. After the skeletons appear entering the scene, other dead, who have taken on flesh, are shown, as in Ezekiel. Signorelli had to paint this scene on one of four available surfaces on the walls of the outer bay, and it seems not a coincidence that he chose the bay just above Parenzo’s tomb. The question should be raised whether other aspects of the chapel’s imagery refer to the refutation of the Manicheans. They rejected the idea of purgatory, which here makes an almost unique
appearance in a Last Judgment. However, the limitation in the chapel to the preface to Purgatory, at least with respect to literal images, makes such a correlation doubtful. To be sure, any Last Judgment is, as such, in opposition to their heresy. Yet this one in general relates closely enough to standard Judgments far from Orvieto that the idea of such an intention has little support. Perhaps it was present without needing to offer extra insistence. A somewhat stronger case may be made that such refutation of heresy was a factor using the tomb of Pope Paul II. The Last Judgment in its top section was mentioned earlier as the first on a tomb and as the most ambitious representation of the theme in the generation just preceding Signorelli (Fig. 34). Signorelli certainly knew the work, which had recently been conspicuously installed in Saint Peter’s in Rome. The upper part is standard, but the separation of the sheep and goats, below, has some unusual details. It is probably not surprising that the pope is among the blessed, far at the side, kneeling in the donor pose. The damned are pulled toward hellfire by a devil with a rope; the devil shows three faces, perhaps to be identified as Dante’s three Furies at the gate of Dis. Three damned souls are shown individually. One is a woman, who is perhaps a token of the lustful, as at Orvieto. The most emphasized, a man in the foreground, has a sword and a book, unique attributes for a damned soul and most famous as the attributes of Saint Paul, who is here seen holding them in the upper area of the sculpture near Christ. This damned soul is in a position symmetrical with that of Pope Paul, so that he seems to be intended as a kind of counter-Paul. The only damned souls who normally hold books are heretics, or other falsifiers of the word,21 and that reference seems certain here from the inscription on the tomb. It praises the pope, among other things, for repressing heretics,22 which is surpris-
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ing because heretics were rare at the time. That a heretic should also have a sword could be supported by citing Dante, who describes the archheretics Arius and Sabellius as “like swords to the scriptures” (Paradiso 13.127). The tomb inscription does not specify what heretics Paul repressed “with arms.” It is unlikely that it refers to his imprisonment of Pomponius Laetus, the humanist, but it might refer to his campaign against the king of Bohemia. In any case, the tomb provides the Orvieto project with a model for infusing heresy into a Last Judgment image.23 Apart from the scene of the Raising of the Dead, Signorelli found a simple way to meet the patrons’ requirement that he cover the outer bay walls with themes “not outside the matter of the Judgment.” A base was readily available in writings of the time for extending the theme to related topics. Obviously, such additional “matter” would precede the Judgment, since nothing at all is simultaneous or later. Among texts addressing this theme, one may first cite a pamphlet printed about 1496 in Italy in at least two editions. Its title, very long as is common for the era, advertises: “These are the authorities of the holy doctors of the advent of Christ in the Judgment, with the horrible preamble and evil of this most evil man Antichrist.” In fact, the pamphlet is mainly about the life of the Antichrist, which is presented in twenty-two woodcuts, followed by only one of the Last Judgment.24 As a result, the pamphlet is usually cited in the abbreviated form “Antichrist,” although this has led to some less desirable inferences. All the more remarkable is that the pamphlet’s title actually describes its contents as being about the Judgment, with the portion about Antichrist being only its “horrible preamble.” Perhaps there was a desire to validate the portion of the text that actually was about what preceded the Judgment. The same topic, about the Antichrist as preface to the Judgment, appears in religious drama of
the period. Some half-dozen manuscripts of such plays survive. The only Italian one, from Perugia, believed to have been written about 1320–30 but apparently performed later as well, is also commonly called “the Antichrist play.” However, in this case the emphasis is reversed. Antichrist only gets the introductory lines 1–96, and the remainder, in lines 97–432, actually does describe the Last Judgment.25 The portion titled “Antichrist,” here indeed only a “preamble,” appears not with the full biography in the pamphlet but in just two incidents: the murder of the two witnesses who righteously opposed him, Enoch and Elijah (lines 37–66), and Saint Michael’s killing of Antichrist in revenge (lines 67–96). These choices match exactly what is in a fresco of about 1330 in Ravenna, surviving only in photographs (Fig. 77).26 It shows the central segment of a standard Last Judgment’s top half but omits the rows of assistant judges. Where the judges had been, we see the same two incidents about Antichrist: the murder of Enoch and Elijah, and Saint Michael killing the Antichrist. The fresco’s iconography has been called “unique,” but that is true only with respect to visual works. McGinn has offered an attractive explanation of the choice of only these two scenes.27 They depict those events in the life of Antichrist that make him a false analogue of Christ specifically in his role as judge. In the first scene, Antichrist is seated and condemns the witnesses, Enoch and Elijah; his false judging is then punished in the second scene, with Saint Michael. As in the play, the Antichrist here is a secondary attachment to the main Last Judgment, exactly its “horrible preamble.” The same pattern is spectacularly the case in the first chapter of the Golden Legend, on Advent. The term “advent” here means the Second Coming, which is the context of the Judgment. Unlike the pamphlets and the drama, this work had an extraordinarily wide circulation, first in manuscript form for almost two centuries, then
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Anonymous Riminese, fourteenth century, Last Judgment, fresco. Ravenna, Santa Maria in Porto
after it was first printed in 1473. Up to the year 1500 it had at least 123 additional printings, four every year for twenty-eight years. These included the usual Latin editions, and translations into six other languages, which may be unique for the time. Eight of these printings were in Italian, and nine Latin printings appeared in Italy, making it highly accessible there.28 It would hardly have been unknown to the Orvieto clergy and laymen there concerned with such questions in 1500. A substantial portion of its first chapter deals with “things that go before the day of judgment.” There are three such things, and they coincide with the three scenes of Signorelli’s outer bay walls other than the Raising of the Dead. The story of Antichrist is the second (Fig. 78). Signorelli illustrates that story in episodic fashion, much as with the motifs in the cantos of the Purgatorio; open spaces separate clusters of fig-
ures. The order of the Golden Legend text makes them easy to follow. The author explains that Antichrist tries to deceive people in four ways: by expounding scripture falsely, performing miracles, offering gifts, and torturing people. In the fresco Antichrist appears front and center orating to a large crowd. Farther back in the center he brings a corpse back to life, the most standard kind of miracle. At center left, money is handed out to his listeners, and at the far left people are killed. The choice of these four activities to characterize Antichrist has a long history, which is already present in a theological handbook of 1265.29 Conversely, the handbook contains nothing about the Antichrist’s life as depicted in the twenty-two woodcuts in the pamphlet. At the right, Antichrist’s listeners overlap with another group of people who react differently; the group is probably to be regarded as marking a separate episode. Clerics are debating before a lay
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audience, presumably about the meaning of these events. (The people killed by the Antichrist also include clerics quite prominently.) This scene extrapolates beyond the Golden Legend text but arguably is validated by a biblical text about the end of the world, which will be cited in connection with the entrance wall. Quite separate in space from these people, and farther back, is a grand building, which is always understood as the Temple of Jerusalem, being invaded by soldiers. The Antichrist biography, as in the 1496 pamphlet, has him entering the temple and being enthroned there, but that we do not see. The Golden Legend also reports this incident, but only in the form of a quotation of a
standard commentary on the prophet Daniel. Signorelli’s soldiers invading the temple evidently derive from Daniel’s own text. The Golden Legend quotes that prophet’s report that Antichrist will bring “abomination and desolation to the temple.” Daniel’s next line makes this visual, telling us that “arms shall stand on his part, and they shall defile the sanctuary.” Mark and Luke quote Daniel’s “abomination and desolation,” and Mark (13:14) links it to the end of world. The fresco, then, shows all four of Antichrist’s actions seen in the Golden Legend, front and center, and adds, to the rear or at the side, two extensions. They are this one based on Daniel,
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Deeds of Antichrist (cf. Fig. 26, “”)
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who is quoted in the Legend, and the one with the debating clerics, whose links to the world’s end will be explored below. The fresco shows just two more stories, ones not found or even implied in the Legend. The first shows Antichrist condemning the witnesses Enoch and Elijah to death, just in front of the temple and to the right. The other, at the left, shows the Archangel Michael destroying Antichrist, who falls to the earth in flames. That is, he presents precisely the same two incidents seen in the Ravenna fresco and in the Perugia play of the Last Judgment, as their sole annexes, or “preambles,” to the Last Judgment theme.30 Thus everything in the fresco of Antichrist appears in such annexes to the Last Judgment, either in these central Italian sources or in the Golden Legend’s chapter on Advent. They were all very accessible in the culture as such annexes. This matches the committee’s desire that everything here should still pertain to the matter of the Judgment. Nothing depends on the autonomous story of Antichrist as found in his biography.31 This requires emphasis, because recent studies have argued that the Antichrist fresco is the central one of the cycle, and then that it evokes not only the Last Judgment but also the Apocalypse. A reviewer, if dubious about the first claim, is persuaded that “apocalyptic visions” were prominent in Orvieto at the time.32 However, the fresco cycle contains nothing apocalyptic at all, in the basic sense of material found in the Book of the Apocalypse. That biblical book was very familiar, not least from Dürer’s woodcut cycle of 1498, whose imagery has no analogy with Signorelli’s. None indeed has been claimed. The idea is evidently based in part on our generalized use of the term “apocalypse” to allude to violent destructive events that overturn ordinary living. The only comparable concerns reported at the time from Orvieto are excited reactions to remarkable weather and the like, which were
believed to foretell events a few years ahead, not the end of the world. This was part of a common syndrome, as with comets thought to foretell the death of kings.33 To link this to Antichrist and the Apocalypse is dubious, and such events were not the chief concern of Orvietans. A better candidate for that role would be the Borgia takeover of their town and its finances. Some details in the organization of the Antichrist fresco suggest that Signorelli was coping with problems that were not present in the inner bay and that perhaps affected the novelty of the image. Specifically, it is the only scene without a thick painted cornice at the top, and it has been plausibly argued that this omission has to do with the unique presence of elaborate figuration near the top of the scene, the temple.34 It has also been noted, further, that because Signorelli was at pains to reinforce a unified look in the chapel, especially through the painted frames, this scene must belong to a late phase of the work, close to 1503; otherwise he could have supported unity by treating other cornices in a similar way thereafter. Signorelli prepared the temple technically in a way different from the figures, here and elsewhere (with an exception to be noted in note 47). While the contours of the latter, when drawn in his preparatory cartoons, were set with quick, slashing lines that penetrate the plaster, those of the temple show dotted lines from a painstakingly pounced cartoon. This is consistent with the proposal that in executing this unusual motif he turned for help to the works of other artists, most likely Bramante.35 This in turn is in accord with the unusual number of borrowings in this scene from still other sources not seen before. The instance most often noticed is the central group of a devil whispering in Antichrist’s ear, recycled from a woodcut in the famous Nürnberg chronicle of 1493 (Fig. 79).36 It is striking that Signorelli ignored the numerous other motifs in this woodcut presenting Antichrist,
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some of which showed events he included. These include Antichrist’s audience, seated in the woodcut, and demons pulling Antichrist down from heaven. Signorelli also ignored, no longer to our surprise, the biographical aspect of the woodcut, the preaching of the two witnesses against Antichrist. Signorelli’s whole design suggests why the central whispering motif may have pleased him especially. The entire fresco, it was argued, differs from the rest of the narratives in the cycle in being episodic. The central group of the two close heads pulls it together at the center like a knot. It also does so in a narrative sense, evoking an origin for Antichrist’s schemes in the devil’s words. It has always had impact, recently evoked in the use of the detail on the dustjackets of books. The small background episode of Antichrist bringing a corpse back to life also involves a borrowing, from quite a different source that seems not to have been observed. Antichrist processes to the left, at the head of a clutch of followers in profile. The group meets another one of mourners arriving from the left. In their midst, a man on a litter sits up with thankful prayers, having just been resuscitated by Antichrist. The whole package is copied from the Resurrection of Drusiana by John the Evangelist, a large fresco by Filippino Lippi, of 1502, in Santa Maria Novella in Florence (Fig. 80). There too the bearded healer, heading a crowd, lifts his hand in benediction, and the dead person on the litter responds in the same way.37 Signorelli, it will be suggested, was in personal contact with Filippino and need not have gone to Florence in 1502 to see the fresco. He could have been shown drawings. To be sure, the preliminary drawings of Filippino’s composition that survive show schemes unlike the final one in the fresco, with the litter moving the other way, or on a diagonal.38 Thus, what Signorelli saw was something closer to the deci-
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. Wohlgemuth, Deeds of Antichrist, woodcut, in Liber Chronicarum by H. Schedel. 1493.
sive final form that we have in the painting, some version from in or near 1502. A smaller motif in the Antichrist fresco exploits another work by Filippino. This is the head of one of the men listening to Antichrist’s speech in the foreground. We see a profile with a sharp nose, with a distinctive hat, presented as that of a modern citizen, unlike other nearby listeners in their generic classical robes. He is regularly said to be Dante, not taking into account Dante’s presence elsewhere in the chapel. Instead, he had appeared exactly as a main figure in Filippino’s fresco of Saint Peter disputing with
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Filippino Lippi, Resurrection of Drusiana, fresco. Florence, Santa Maria Novella
Simon Magus, in the Brancacci Chapel in the Carmine in Florence (Fig. 81). He is the protagonist Simon Magus himself, whom Signorelli copies down to the details of down-drawn lips and ear flaps. The one notable change is in the color of the headband, from green to the same red as the rest of the hat, perhaps due to the use of a drawing. Simon Magus is certainly a most suitable listener to Antichrist. Augustine, writing on heresy, said that Simon too claimed to be Christ.39 His most famous act was to fall from heaven when his evil power failed, as we see Antichrist doing in
Signorelli’s fresco (Fig. 78). He too, again according to Augustine, denied the resurrection of the body, making him a forerunner of the Cathari. A medieval tradition identifies heretics as Antichrists.40 Yet the most conspicuous separate episode in this fresco is external to the Antichrist theme. It is the group of two men at the left, one a Dominican, the other in modern dress, unlike the historical costumes of the people in the Antichrist episodes. This formula of modern, standing men at the side, as observers of a historical narrative, is first worked out systematically
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about 1480 in Rome, in the fresco cycle of the Sistine Chapel walls, in which Signorelli had a part. The two men here have usually been identified since the eighteenth century as a self-portrait of Signorelli with Angelico, the only Dominican known to have been involved in the project. The identification as Signorelli relies mainly on the appearance of the same person as one of two portrayed on a tile, still in Orvieto (Fig. 82). An inscription on the back identifies its subjects as Signorelli and one Nicola Franci, there called the chamberlain at the date of the chapel frescos. The latter identification is quite possibly wrong, because the name given is not correct for the chamberlain at that time.41 At one time the tile was called a nineteenth-century fake, but this idea, offered by Roberto Longhi, has since been disproved by the finding of earlier mentions of it in archives. The work is now generally accepted as by Signorelli and as a self-portrait, in relation both to the inscription and to the similar portrait in the Antichrist fresco. This view is sometimes rejected, but on weak grounds. Another image, the woodcut that Vasari prefaced to the biography of Signorelli in his Lives in 1568, has been offered as a better candidate to show him. But that overlooks the fact that the woodcut copies Signorelli’s portrait of another man, Vitelozzo Vitelli. In any case, the claimed identities of the Vasari woodcuts are notoriously unreliable. And it is not the case, as claimed, that narrative fresco cycles do not include portraits of artists in this era. Notable such portraits in or linked to Umbria are by Pinturicchio (at Spello), Perugino (Collegio del Cambio, Perugia), and, in 1508, by Raphael (School of Athens). Raphael there stands beside Sodoma, the artist who had begun the frescoes he finished, a suggestive analogy to the Orvieto pair. Furthermore, the proposal that the Dominican in the Orvieto fresco might be one of the Orvieto theologians from whom “Signorelli
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. Filippino Lippi, Simon Magus (detail from Dispute of Simon and Saint Peter). Florence, Santa Maria del Carmine, Brancacci Chapel
received advice” exaggerates their role, which did not include advice to the artist, so far as any evidence goes. It also extrapolates again by promoting one of that group to a special status. More notable is that these doubts have overlooked the established tradition of artists’ selfportraits specifically in Last Judgments, from the time of Giotto and earlier. We seem to have here an image in that tradition, seen earlier in Orvieto on the façade and of course later in Michelangelo.42 This tradition suggests further that Angelico’s project here would probably have called for his self-portrait. That nicely fits the existence of a portrait probably of him made in Orvieto—the drawing by his crew chief
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. Self-Portrait of Signorelli with an Associate. Orvieto, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
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Benozzo Gozzoli (Fig. 29)—and would explain its raison d’être. The inclusion of an Angelico self-portrait in the gavantone would have moved Signorelli to follow suit. He would have been inspired to group Angelico with himself by the precedent of Maitani with his associates in the façade sculpture.43 The tile showing Signorelli and a young man would belong to this tradition, if as suggested (see note 41) the latter is an associate of Signorelli’s on the project. We know that Raphael came to Orvieto and studied the frescoes, making a drawing after a figure of Signorelli’s on the entrance wall.44 His adoption of the formula of a self-portrait with an associate, specifically his predecessor in the fresco cycle including the School of Athens, would thus be natural. The earlier self-portraits in Last Judgments, such as Maitani’s, understandably place the artist
among the blessed.45 Maitani and his associates are modestly at the extreme edge of that group, near the frame to our left. If Angelico planned a self-portrait in the chapel, it would certainly have followed that model and have been visible in that location on the gavantone to Signorelli. However, Signorelli’s scene of the Blessed alters precedent, with respect to Angelico’s, by making the blessed nudes. The self-portrait, of course wearing modern clothes, could hardly stay among them. The proposal here is that Signorelli moved it to the minimum extent possible, to the same left edge position in the nearest adjacent fresco, still on the Blessed wall. That would be the Antichrist scene, and give the result that in fact we have. Twelve years after working in Orvieto as Angelico’s crew chief, Benozzo Gozzoli in 1459 produced his most imposing work: the fresco cycle in the Medici Chapel in Florence. It
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includes a self-portrait as a figure in the crowd, near the left edge of a large scene. This location became a formula for self-portraits, and Benozzo’s is regularly shown as the earliest.46 This seems to conflict with his traditional reputation as a not very original artist (a view, to be sure, also challenged). It would be more simply explained if it, like others of his motifs mentioned, again reflects the example he learned from Angelico.47 Of the four large scenes on the walls of the outer bay, three were novel, all except the Raising of the Dead. They all involved tremendous requirements of invention to show this “horrible preamble” of the Judgment. The Antichrist scene
on the side wall is twice the size of the other two new ones, both on the entrance wall. It therefore called for the most effort, which, I suggest, is reflected in its frequent recourse to ideas from other artists, more fully incorporated here than in any other part of the work. The smaller scenes on the end wall seem to have been approached with more confidence; they show Signorelli reverting to the brilliant tokens of bodily force he had developed for the Damned. These two scenes, the Five Signs and the Fire from Heaven (Fig. 83), are absent from the Perugia play and other sources. They seem to appear only in the Golden Legend, among accessible
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Five Signs of the End of the World and the Fire from Heaven, entrance wall (Fig. 68, “,” “”)
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. Five Signs of the End of the World (detail of Fig. 83)
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accounts of the preamble, and there they form a set with the Antichrist episodes. The fame and wide circulation of this text seem to make it certain that it is the source here. Even someone having in mind another source for the three stories (which has not emerged) would have this text in mind too. Some writers have found the psychological tone of the Antichrist fresco to be very different from the text. That could be debated, but does not rule out that text as the basis for the narrative. The first “thing,” preceding the Antichrist story, concerns the Five Signs of the end of the
world (Fig. 84). (The third, following Antichrist, is the Fire scene.) The author of the Legend credits the Gospel of Luke and the Apocalypse (The Revelation to John) as his sources. The first three of the Signs appear in both texts. In the fourth and fifth, where they diverge, Signorelli uses these from Luke. (It will be recalled that in 1499 Fra Bartolommeo was instructed to make this passage in Luke the base for his Last Judgment fresco.) The first three signs—the black sun, the bloody moon, and the falling stars—duly appear here in the sky, on the observer’s right. The fourth and fifth signs in the Apocalypse are the
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heavens rolling away like a scroll (seen in Giotto’s Last Judgment) and moving islands.48 Luke’s fourth and fifth signs are the “pressing of the lands” and the sea rising over the mountains. Signorelli deals elegantly with the impossible cue that asks to show mountains visible under water, by putting boats on top of mountains, forcing us to infer that the sea had been there earlier. A similar formula, which the artist may have noticed, had been used in scenes of the end of Noah’s flood, leaving the ark on a mountain. The Legend explicates the difficult phrase about “pressing” to mean that the lands underwent “greatest tribulations.” One may take these to be the tribulations that Luke had described just before in the same chapter, where people are told to flee and are led away as captives, while no stone is left on another. These are precisely the motifs Signorelli shows us, with people running from a ruined colonnade, a nearby building showing cracks, and soldiers tying people up. At the end of this chapter Luke shifts to address the reader, saying: “When these things begin to pass, look up.” Signorelli duly adds, under the images of the five signs, a cluster of larger figures whose only role is looking up at them. His pleased use of this text seems not to have been noted. An old man in a turban who is accompanied by two other graybeards points upward, while three soldiers in response turn their eyes up. Besides three more figures in the background, shown only as heads or parts of heads, there is one more in the foreground who responds to these circumstances by pointing to a text in an open book. This figure is commonly called a sibyl but is identified as male by the costume (not to mention the lack of any relevant sibyls in this context).49 The oddest part of his attire is the trousers, given emphasis even though they show only a short way up from his left ankle, under a robe. His sandals, with many thongs, are equally odd. Both appear worn also
by figures in Filippino Lippi’s Resurrection of Drusiana (Fig. 80), the fresco discussed just above as a model for an episode in the Antichrist fresco. The sandals are worn by the litter-bearers. These men do not wear robes, and hence show more leg, with more cords around the trouser legs, producing an overall look somewhat different from Signorelli’s figure. Filippino had used these costume motifs before, in his fresco cycle at Santa Maria Minerva sopra Minerva in Rome, of the life of Thomas Aquinas (Fig. 85). They are shown worn by one of the heretics over whom Aquinas triumphs, identified by inscription as Apollonarius. In her monograph on this cycle of frescoes, Geiger has rightly cited the source of the costume as the ancient statues of barbarians on the arch of Constantine in Rome, thus further reinforcing the male identity.50 The captive barbarians are a natural basis for Filippino’s litterbearers in Florence, laborers in a classical age, but the heretic in his Rome fresco is the closer model for Signorelli’s figure with the book. Filippino’s heretic, like the others grouped with him as Aquinas’s defeated opponents, has tossed his book to the ground. Both the trousered men with books, Filippino’s and Signorelli’s, stand as if they would move to the right, with left arm bent and right arm forward, while their heads swivel the opposite way. Remarkably, the likeness in the two cases extends to a second person at the left with whom the trousered one is conversing, and in both cases the representation is limited to a bit of profile head cut off by the frame. The copying is clear. Filippino’s heretic, Apollinarius, was a fourth-century figure who denied Christ’s human nature, like the Manicheans whom Aquinas refuted. How Signorelli was led to all these motifs of Filippino’s will be explored shortly. This group of Signorelli figures, checking a book and looking up at the five signs, relates as a whole to an episode in the Antichrist scene
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Filippino Lippi, Saint Thomas Confuting Heretics, fresco. Rome, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva
around the corner (Fig. 78). There we also saw commentators, as a separate group, checking books and pointing up. The two groups in the two frescoes also share, exceptionally in both cases, the factor of not being textually based in the narrative to which the fresco is dedicated, the Five Signs or the Deeds of Antichrist. They are the only such groupings, aside from the portraits of Signorelli and Angelico. It is as if the theologians who explicate the event are being given their own presence. In the case of the Five Signs, they have an indirect textual basis in the phrase where Luke tells us to look up. The group in the Antichrist lacks even that. It can, then, be proposed as being generated by the other one
around the corner. The further inference is that, as already proposed for other reasons, the Antichrist scene was planned later. The Fire scene follows the Deeds of the Antichrist in the text of the Golden Legend, as the last of the three events before the Judgment. It is given very brief treatment there. The one detail evoking a visual effect is a reference to its height, recalling the “look up” of the other scene. Signorelli makes much of this height, with the fiery red streaks coming from the very top in the sky, sent down by demons. The fire burns three groups of people below, who bend like hoops and collapse (Fig. 86). These details can be considered pictorial inventions filling out the slight
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text. They are certainly meant to be associated with the fall of Antichrist. He too is attacked by lines of force from above, which destroy both him and his followers on the ground. In both cases they collapse in foreshortening, a technical painter’s trick of well-established effectiveness in evoking the shock of destruction. It may be that the linking of the two scenes of destruction is meant to bring to mind the chronological continuum between the Antichrist scene and the Fire scene, separated here on the chapel walls by the Five Signs anterior to both. It is similar to a device near the group of Minos at the other end of the chapel, with tortured sinners above and below the molding. There too narrative continuity was given weight in that way. It should be asked why the two narrow scenes of the Fire and the Five Signs are placed where they are, in view of this suggestion that they were not wholly plausible in their positions. A look at the givens facing Signorelli when he began may offer a clue. As we face the entrance door (Fig. 83), the wall segment at our right is 20 percent wider than the one at the left, measured at the top of the arch, a factor that seems not to have been discussed. The narrower wall seems to be a good match for the Fire scene, with its single vertical thrust. Every other element of the chapel walls involves upper and lower figure groups, with airy space between. The force of the upper group here on the lower one is continuous and insistent, with fire streaks much fiercer than the thin ones in the Antichrist scene. Simultaneously, the narrow wall squeezes the forms from both sides, pushing them out at us like paste from a tube. The fact that observers do not notice the different widths of the wall segments is a tribute to the skill of the painter, who once again is seen working to impose a regular order in his design patterns on the less regular givens. The same proves to be the case in the wainscot, which, as in the inner bay, is filled with
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. Fire from Heaven, entrance wall, left half (cf. Fig. 68, “”)
squirming grotesques with allusions to classical myths (Figs. 87 and 90; see also Fig. 56). Again the units on the side walls are occupied by square portraits in the centers and surrounded by circular scenes in monochrome. Yet the specifics have changed, in ways that are generally discounted. The result has been unfortunate: an unexamined presumption that the iconographic puzzles in the scenes can be solved by treating them as showing the same themes that are in the wainscot of the inner bay. To be sure, some of the changes in the outer bay are the result of the architectural requirements. Each of the two portraits on the side walls in the outer bay is surrounded by only three
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monochromes rather than four. The place of the fourth, as well as of an entire additional set of portraits-with-monochromes, is taken by the two niches in the walls, the openings to the little chapels. At the tops of these arched openings Signorelli painted keystones, each with a monochrome figure. Again this is different from the inner bay and is generated by the niches, though not required by them. As Angelico had in the rich frames of the vaults, here Signorelli created decorative motifs that work with the specifics of the building. The keystone over the chapel of the martyrs shows a nude Judith with the head of Holofernes. The opposite figure is lost. Other differences from the inner wainscot, however, seem not to be explained by such conditions. On the entrance wall, the surviving portrait uniquely has a circular frame and has no narratives around it.51 It will be suggested that the portrait belongs not to the series of writers at all, but to a set of heads, also in round frames, on the opposite, altar wall: the four archangels. On the side walls, the two portraits lack the laurel wreaths that emphatically define poets in the inner wainscot, yet they have consistently been identified as also poets. That seems contraindicated, because one of the two here signals his identity by an oak wreath, and the other has nothing on his bald head. All the monochrome scenes surrounding these two portraits of the outer bay show nude figures only, which must be a conscious difference from the inner bay; in the inner bay, nudity generally pertained only to souls in hell or purgatory, who shared scenes with clothed figures, or, once, to a scene of combat. In the outer bay here, two circular scenes and a third half-circle show combat, which may have generated this approach, but now the nudity is extended to the remaining two scenes that do not show any combat at all. It may almost be considered another difference from the inner bay that the proposals to name the
portraits here have met much greater difficulty and strain. Even more, efforts to link the suggested poets with the scenes around them, as episodes from their works, have failed. The oakwreathed figure has usually been called Lucan, ever since the first hypotheses of the nineteenth century, but there is no association between Lucan and oak wreaths, and the problem thus posed seems not even to have been broached.52 The bald man has traditionally been called Homer, again since the nineteenth century, though he obviously is not blind.53 The scenes around him match nothing in the Iliad or Odyssey, as the “Lucan” scenes match nothing in Lucan’s epics. The one concrete proposal for the “Homer,” that the monochromes fit the description of the shield of Achilles, does not hold up when checked. One recent proposal has offered to call the bald man Cicero, but also has not found a match in his writings for the scenes. To be sure, though the idea has not been offered, the scenes here may not be related to the portraits at all, just as in the inner bay there is no relationship between Salutati and his scenes. Indeed, it appears upon further investigation that there is no such relationship in either of the sets of the outer bay, thus again separating it from the majority procedure in the inner bay. The departure from laurel wreaths—that is, from poets— may be offered as an initial basis for thinking the system is different here, just as the walls above, in the outer bay, shift to a narrative set. The “Lucan” figure offers ample clues to his identity. Besides the oak wreath, there is his youth, always noted in the literature and setting him apart from all the other portraits. Because he is depicted without a book, he evidently is not the author of one, but he holds a scroll instead (Fig. 87). Classical lore firmly associates oak wreaths with civic merit. The principal text establishing this is Pliny’s Natural History, whose chapter on plants begins with oak trees.54 One
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need not suppose that the Orvietans consulted Pliny, for the other relevant text is Virgil’s Aeneid, which offers the principal text about men who have been awarded oak leaves. That text is in book 6, in the visit to the underworld, the same episode illustrated by Signorelli in the adjacent roundels to the left of this portrait. During his visit, Aeneas is offered prophecies about his descendants and is shown their souls awaiting rebirth. They include his son Silvius, then Procas, Capys, Numitor, and Silvius Aeneas. Of these we read (lines 771–72):
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What youths! See what strength they show, And have their temples shaded by the civic oak. These men all succeeded Aeneas as kings of Alba Longa, before the emergence of Romulus and Remus, who founded Rome.55 If this offers a group of names for oak-crowned youths—the only one in a leading text, and, what is more, in relation to a visit to the underworld, our focus in this wainscot— it remains to ask which one Signorelli shows and why. Virgil first explains that the young kings are awaiting return to earthly bodies; it is the chief point about them. They are “souls to whom bodies are owed” (lines 713–14). After a long explanation of the theory of metempsychosis (724–51), the individuals who exemplify it appear, the oak-crowned youths. This must be considered the best analogue available in any famous classical poetry for the Christian resurrection of the dead, painted just above. It would be odd if such a classical parallel were not sought out, as in the inner bay the wainscot shows the underworld in poetry under the Christian saved and damned. This might seem to be the full basis for identifying our figure, but the youthful kings’ civic virtue, which merited them the oak crown, is also being treated as relevant. It is hardly to be discounted that the portrait is adjacent not only
. Youth with Oak-Leaf Crown and scenes in roundels (cf. Fig. 27, “,” “,” “”)
to the Raising of the Dead above, and to the Virgil scenes of the underworld to its left, but also to the figure of Judith on the nearby keystone (Fig. 88), between him and the Virgil scenes. Judith, nude like all the nearby monochrome figures, is famous as the heroine who saves her people from the enemy. She duly holds her attribute, the head of Holofernes, whom she killed.56 The concern with civic heroes as a distinct motif will reappear still again in the opposite wainscot, under the Antichrist scene. Virgil listed five oak-crowned youths. Is Signorelli’s the portrait of one of them, or a generic hero? These people are hardly on record outside this passage of the Aeneid. Virgil comments on them in brief terms: Silvius, Aeneas’s son, is “king and ancestor of kings”; Procas is the “glory of the Trojan line”; Capys and Numitor have no epithets, but Silvius Aeneas, the last, is “notable equally for piety and arms.” None is more linked to the resurrection of the dead than the others,
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Judith, keystone of the arch “” in Fig. 27
but Silvius Aeneas receives slightly more attention than the rest. A second odd point reinforces his special status. His name, the most distinct point we have about him, recurs in one other famous person in history: Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the Sienese Pope Pius II, whose visit to Orvieto in 1460 was of interest earlier. In the following decades, he certainly continued to be remembered in the region through his nephew, cardinal bishop of Siena before he too became pope in 1503 and, before then, long the highestranking prelate in the area. In 1502, the likely year of Signorelli’s image, he commissioned Signorelli’s friend Pinturicchio to paint the great fresco cycle of his uncle Enea Silvio’s life for his library in the Siena cathedral.57 It was there that grotesques were specified for the decorative frames. The cardinal’s entourage included the archdeacon of Orvieto Cathedral, who paid in 1502 for a more modest library in that building, frescoed by Signorelli’s shop and including a portrait of Pius II. Although there is little basis for the idea that the archdeacon provided the iconographic scheme for our big chapel, an elegant
allusion here to the most important Piccolomini would easily arise.58 Around the portrait of the oak-crowned youth were painted three monochrome scenes, as mentioned. One is lost, but the eighteenth-century observer described it with precision: “A woman with a baby in her arms, fleeing from a man.”59 The two surviving scenes both show fights between pairs of nudes. In the upper one there are four such fights, and they are over. Three of the losers are kneeling or on the ground, and the fourth is slung over the back of the winner.60 The lower monochrome shows two such pairs. While again one loser is pinned to the ground, one fight is still in progress. The two circular monochromes show images that are more like each other than any found elsewhere among the chapel’s sets of monochromes They may show an extended view of the parts of the same event, rather than two distinct episodes as elsewhere. An analogous case is the monochrome under Minos, on the altar wall, which extends the scene of demons torturing the damned that is shown in color above it. It has been usual to call the single combats illustrations of Lucan’s epic on the Civil War between Pompey and Caesar, though it shows no such incidents.61 What excludes this view is the new information offered in the early description of the lost third roundel of this set. The early observer called her Ino, whose story is told by Ovid (Metamorphoses 4.519–30) and by others. A daughter of Cadmus, the mythical founder of Thebes, she fled with her baby when her insane husband pursued her with intent to murder and ended by jumping into the sea. This writer’s descriptions are reliable, even if his identifications are often wrong. In this case he seems right, because no other story fits the action in question. Ovid’s quite brief allusion to Ino is not likely to have been the foundation for what is used here, even if today it is the best known account.
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If a planner of the chapel’s imagery wanted to tell this story, which is part of the great Theban epic leading to Oedipus, one would again expect him to turn to a text that has that as its main theme.62 In that case he would probably have used Statius’s Thebaid, the best-known such work. The introductory lines of the Thebaid announce its theme and tell how, among other calamities, Ino “had no fear of the Ionian Sea when she fell with her son” (1.13–14). The very first line recalls the more famous myth of her father, Cadmus, who founded the city with the dragon seed and thus generated the “fraternal fights.” The fights began when the warriors killed one another one by one as soon as they emerged from the earth, as the product of that seed. Statius fleshes out these opening allusions in book 4. The seer Tiresias is asked to clarify the later calamities of Thebes, and to do so he calls up from the underworld the ghosts of these ancestors, and they duly respond to his call. We see Cadmus and his wife; their sons who “press each other, fight each other, assault each other with the anger of living men, . . . with thirst to destroy each other” (557–60); and shortly afterward Ino, “pressing her sweet infant to her breast” (562–64). The dramatic actions in the three roundels, of the men we see trying to destroy one another, and the mother we read about in the lost one, fleeing, fully match Statius’s lines about Cadmus’s sons and daughter cited. The group has in common with the oakcrowned youth, in the image between them, that their central situation is of returning from death and from the underworld, either as summoned spirits in the first case or, in the case of the youth, to a second life. Despite those differences, these are evidently the best analogues classical lore has to offer to the Christian Raising of the Dead painted above them, and thus like the rest of the wainscot cycle show that poetry can parallel holy writ.
Statius was proposed earlier as perhaps the subject of the lost wainscot portrait on the altar wall, again as claimed by the eighteenth-century observer; if that is so, we are being shown the poet and scenes from his poem at separated points of the fresco cycle. That same formula had conspicuously been used, in a less remote way, with the scenes from Purgatorio 5–11, and, if the hypothesis just offered is correct, again with the oak-crowned youth sung by Virgil. The basic figuration of the inner bay, in this case with Statius, would have extensions here in the outer bay. This arrangement can be compared to the entire scheme of the Last Judgment in the inner bay with its preambles in the outer. Two more small monochrome scenes in circles appear under the Raising of the Dead, in the small chapel with the saints’ bodies. These are the predella-like martyrdom scenes of the two saints, already mentioned (Figs. 74 and 75).63 They are extensions of the standing figures of the two saints, who in turn are extensions of the Pietà group (Fig. 72). Here too, just as he had with Angelico, Signorelli takes the portrait-like figures from the preceding project, by Master Pietro, but the monochrome scenes are a newly added element.64 This group of images makes it certain that the chapel can contain imagery that has a theme distinct from the Last Judgment, as well as from the poetic focus of the inner wainscot. The separate iconographic meaning of the niche with the Pietà has perhaps been too obvious to be articulated. An occasion was lost to consider that the imagery of the outer wainscot might also have a distinct scheme. To be sure, the difference in reference was easier to see in the former case. The standing full-length saints do not ask to be bracketed with the waist-length portraits in square frames. The oak-crowned youth does imply a link to the laureled poets, one imposed, I suggest, by Signorelli’s effort to present unity of design.
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Image not available
.
Man in Turban (cf. Fig. 68, “”)
Faustino, falling to his death in the water, is on the same level as the monochrome of Ino running to jump into the sea. However, the eighteenth-century description does not mention any water in her case, and the scene may have shown only her flight on land.65 Turning the corner to the right, we look at the wainscot on the entrance wall, which shows two heads like those of the poets but in circular frames. The one next to the oak-crowned youth, under the Fire scene, was almost destroyed in the seventeenth century when a tomb was installed, but recent restoration has recovered a small part of it.66 The one clear form is the sleeve of the figure’s left arm. The white inner garment has no analogue in the chapel. Because the right arm apparently did not show, the pose may be reconstructed turning toward the right. The figure
would then look across the corner at the next figure, the oak-crowned youth, who in fact is looking toward it. This is a reasonable reconstruction, because Virgil and Claudian, the next similar figures on the same wall as the oakcrowned youth, also look at each other (Figs. 52 and 53). On the opposite side, instead, the two outer figures among the four portraits, the Salutati and the one on the entrance wall to be considered next, look upward and away, while the two inner ones, Dante and the bald man, follow in each case the direction of the gazes of the figures nearest them just mentioned, thus, away from each other. The surviving portrait figure on the entrance wall, under the Five Signs, also is framed in a circle (Fig. 89). This figure differs from all the portraits on the side walls in other basic ways. There are no surrounding monochromes. Instead of sitting as if at a table, he actively pokes himself out of his frame, placing himself in lost profile to look up. (This motif appears in some of the tiny portraits in the vault frames.) He also has a different headdress, a turban. Both the gaze and costume link him emphatically to the area up to which he looks, the lower part of the Five Signs group. There too, it has been noted, upwardlooking is called for, and a figure wears a turban; another looks up in the Fire scene, with much the same sleeve. This head in the circle is, then, in continuation of the scene above, in the way the figures below Minos are, on the altar wall, setting up continuity down into the wainscot area. The basis for all this, again, is the text of Luke telling us to look up. The continuation of the admonition down to the lower level matches Luke’s shift from narrative to direct address, in that we in the chapel are being called on to notice the end of the world ourselves, in case we had missed it. This continuity from the scene to a framed head appears in one other place, already noticed:
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on the altar wall, where Michael and the other archangels (Figs. 37, 38, 39, and 40) are a continuation of the Judgment scenes. These alone among such heads also have the circular frames we see here at the other end of the chapel, and these are signals telling us to understand them in the same way, not like the portrait heads in the square frames that fill the side walls. Turning the corner again, the wainscot under the Antichrist scene presents the last of the portraits, the bald man with a book (Fig. 90). He is not Homer, who was regularly shown as blind in this culture.67 Having no wreath, he is not a laureate poet, but having a book, he seems to be a writer, as all the other men with books are in the series. He lacks any attribute to help in naming him, such as the oak crown opposite was. But we are assisted in identifying him by another kind of art-historical tool, the fact that he is copied from a type that appears in other works of the period. The earliest instance of the type is in the same fresco of Thomas subduing heretics, by Filippino Lippi in Rome, which was already noticed as the source for the costume of a nearby figure in Signorelli’s cycle, the one with the trousers and sandals. Filippino’s figure so costumed was one of a group of heretics, and a second of that group (Fig. 85) is a model for the present portrait of the bald man. Baldness itself is rare in the imagery of this culture. (One painter of the time who often uses baldness, however, is Girolamo Genga, a pupil of Signorelli.) Filippino’s bald man leans his head forward in the identical profiled slant and has much the same costume, which Signorelli alters only by shifting a round pin to a knot. The same head alone without the bust recurs as Cicero, one of the authors the Signorelli workshop portrayed about 1502 in the library of Orvieto Cathedral. This is a version in mirror image, in a circular frame.68 Finally, he appears in full length, just like Filippino’s original version,
Image not available
. Bald Man and scenes in roundels (cf. Fig. 26, “,” “,” “,” “”)
in an engraving of about 1508 by Niccolò Rosex da Modena (Fig. 91). This version is labeled as a portrait of Apelles, the famous ancient Greek painter, and is accompanied by geometrical forms as attributes.69 The drapery forms follow Filippino’s fresco closely. Because the two other versions, both by Signorelli or his shop in Orvieto, show only the head, or a little more, it might appear logical to relate the later engraving directly to Filippino’s original version only, discounting any source for it in the heads. Yet there may be reason to think that Niccolò, in producing the latest version, was indebted to the intermediate version by Signorelli. Also about 1508, he engraved a nude Judith, inscribed with her name.70 She is the only one in Italy of this period other than Signorelli’s monochrome found in this same outer bay of the chapel. Niccolò was
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Niccolò Rosex da Modena, Apelles, engraving
also producing many engravings of grotesque ornaments like Signorelli’s—designs that were, to be sure, favored by other artists too. If it is then allowed to hypothesize that the engraver was picking up these motifs from Signorelli’s chapel, their only shared locus previously, it would require supposing that Signorelli’s bald man had first appeared in a full-length version by him, in a drawing. As Signorelli was copying Filippino’s full-length figure of the heretic, that would not be strange. We would then think of Niccolò in contact with Signorelli in his Orvieto period, when he also picked up the motif of the Judith. There is a separate surprising support for the proposal that Signorelli first copied the figure from Filippino in full length. The oddest factor in Niccolò’s engraving is that he names the figure
Apelles, a painter. Apelles was a classical artist held in awe; Sodoma, the painter who finished Signorelli’s abandoned fresco cycle near Siena, named his son Apelles. Yet in this era there is no other recorded image of Apelles. Indeed, there are few full-length images of painters. Yet we have seen two such in the outer bay of the chapel, just above the bald man who is a version of this figure; they are Signorelli’s self-portrait, and Angelico with him. It seems too good a coincidence that Signorelli’s bald man has close relationships, both to artist portraits (painted just above him) and separately to the Apelles engraving (with the same head), when the latter compared works separately have a tight link to each other (as full-length portraits of painters, which are very unusual at the time). This redoubled linking was evidently caused by something. It could be explained easily if one hypothesized that there had been one more element, now lost, that was linked to them all. It would be natural for Signorelli to have drawn a copy of Filippino’s frescoed heretic, as suggested above, since he both admired Filippino and was exploring ways to represent heretics, a new field for him. Once completed and taken to Orvieto, the drawing would be on hand for more than one use, in the Antichrist scene with its standing figures of heretics and of artists, and below for the bald head. If the figures of standing artists, when initially sketched, retained something more like the costume of Filippino’s heretic and of Signorelli’s drawing from him than they now show, as might easily happen, they would be precisely what Niccolò drew and engraved: a standing artist adapted from Filippino’s original figure. The equally rare nude Judith shows that Niccolò could have been ready to pick up sources in Orvieto, and the Apelles figure would be another. The hypothesis is perhaps more complicated in the telling than in action, but it is repeatedly grounded on a series of firm factors.
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The bald man so far is unidentified, but three other versions of his head have proved to have names—the Filippino heretic, Cicero, and Apelles—so one might think he is one of these. But the bald man is not Apelles, because he has a writer’s rather than a painter’s attribute. And although Cicero was certainly a writer, the claim made for him started with the clearly wrong postulate that the same head (as seen in the library) implicated the same identity. The Apelles disproves that inference. That argument also suggested that the monochrome roundels here illustrated scenes from Cicero’s Philippics, but no specific parallels are available—the same difficulty as with the proposal for Homer. To be sure, this does not prove that the head is not Cicero, but he has no indicated role in relation to other images in the schema of the chapel, something that always seems to be involved. The head might show a fourth unknown person, but the one remaining clue offered by its previous versions, that it shows a heretic, seems to have much in its favor. The bald man in the wainscot appears just under a scene all about heresy. (The equation of heretics with Antichrists is a tradition going back to Augustine.71) This would make him a direct extension or footnote of the large scene above, much as the oakcrowned youth is from the scene above him, of the Raising of the Dead. It is conspicuous that in exploring the theme of heresy Signorelli repeatedly takes motifs from Filippino Lippi, which he rarely does otherwise, and that the motifs are from a wide range of Filippino’s works. This occurred above, in the Simon Magus, from Filippino’s early Brancacci series, and again above in the scene of Antichrist resuscitating a dead man, from the very recent cycle at Santa Maria Novella. A costume detail was taken from the same source, and that same detail and the figure wearing that costume were copied in the Five Signs scene from Filippino’s
Rome fresco cycle of Aquinas. The latter is also the source of the bald man here. Apart from the images of heretics, he seems to follow Filippino only in the lively grotesque ornament. He will shortly be found doing so once more, in a figure adjacent to the bald man. Art historians have commonly discussed such borrowings, though none of these has been. They are usually linked to proposals about travel by the borrowing artists, in years when their locations are undocumented, to see the works being cited. In this case such a reconstruction seems quite cumbersome, evoking a whole Filippino tour. However, the borrowings could have taken place all at once, with personal contact. In that scenario, Signorelli would have talked to Filippino, whom he can be presumed to have known, about the challenging project for these new scenes about heresy. Filippino would have responded helpfully by referring to several solutions he had worked out from time to time for similar aims. He would have accompanied these remarks with drawings, perhaps kept in his stock (he certainly did keep drawings), which Signorelli could take or copy. This conversation would have taken place in 1502, when the Santa Maria Novella fresco by Filippino, the latest of the sources, was assuming its final form, and also the year when the Antichrist fresco can quite probably be dated. Signorelli was away from Orvieto for months in that year and could easily have passed time in Florence, where Filippino was at work.72 A friendly talk about heresy imagery is the implication. Filippino was the artist with the more assured career at the time, but he could also have welcomed motifs from Signorelli.73 The particular heretic in Filippino’s Aquinas fresco that is the base of Signorelli’s bald man is labeled by Filippino as “Sabellius.” Aquinas is shown triumphing over six heretics, all of whom are given names. The list is taken from one in
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Thomas’s Summa against the non-Christians.74 Was Signorelli especially interested in the heresy of Sabellius, so that he copied his head? The idea is natural, but involves some difficulties. The nature of Sabellius’s doctrine—the heresy that God the Father is not of another substance from the Son and the Holy Ghost, that is, that the Trinity is a unity—seems not to resonate with the themes of the Orvieto chapel. It can also be noted that there do not seem to be any images in this culture of Sabellius alone. As in Thomas’s text, he invariably turns up as a name in a group, as if to pad it out, unlike the more prominent Arius.75 This permits the alternative reading that Signorelli wanted a head to personify heresy quite generally, and picked the one among Filippino’s figures that seemed most evocative. Indeed, in Filippino’s set this is the most striking and isolated character type. The case recalls the situation with the oak-crowned youth directly opposite, who may represent a specific young Roman king who was resurrected but perhaps is not a particular one from the set of names. The wainscot once showed, near the bald man, a monochrome figure in the keystone of the arch over the small chapel. It corresponded to the Judith in that position opposite. Several writers have suggested that this lost figure was David. In 1502 Michelangelo’s David was under way in Florence, the city that might well have been on Signorelli’s mind at the time. In the same Florentine context, David and Judith had been viewed as a pair, often in a political context. The most obvious case was in the Medici palace, for which Signorelli had done two paintings. There Donatello’s David was in the front courtyard, with an inscription about freeing the people, and his Judith was in the back courtyard, with an inscription about overcoming tyranny. The statues are not a pair in a strict sense, but David and Judith so presented could also be found in Florence.76 In the Orvieto keystones, a pairing with
David might help to explain Judith’s exceptional nudity, if the David were nude as well. It seems likely enough that he was, like the nudes of Donatello and Michelangelo and all the nearby monochrome figures in the outer bay. No added basis for the identity of the lost figure with David has been offered, but one connected with the motifs of politics and tyranny will be offered shortly. The portrait of the bald man, the heretic, is surrounded by three monochrome scenes, once again. The most complex scene, the one at our left (Fig. 92), shows a group in such elaborate detail that it must be presumed that a specific scene is being represented. The figures’ nudity cannot be realistic, but must be a convention of art. This can more easily emerge in monochromes, which suggest relief sculpture, which in turn suggest Roman sarcophagi and other admired classic references. The denuding of Signorelli’s Blessed was no doubt a reinforcing factor in extending nudity from fighting scenes to wider contexts. Michelangelo’s Cascina cartoon is a contemporary token of this extension, to a scene not about fighting even though it is about fighters (the artist rationalized the nudity by having them in swimming, a novelty). Raphael’s Massacre of the Innocents is another, and the same is the case here. We see two captives, hands tied behind their backs, guarded by two men with weapons. (The incident in the Iliad proposed as the subject does not involve tied hands or captivity at all.) Behind them, another man makes a gesture of speaking, addressed to still another who is standing on a box. The latter is apparently the one who will decide what to do with the captives. He turns to the side toward two older men, who could offer counsel on the matter, and at the same time stretches his hands toward the captives, showing them to be the subject of the query. One more man in the foreground, seen from the back, has no obvious role beyond watching and may be an onlooker, like us
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Image not available
. 90)
Captives Judged (cf. Fig. 26, “”; detail of Fig.
or the nearby figure under the Five Signs. The guards’ weapons are pilae, spear points mounted on long shafts, reinforcing the classical implications. Botticelli gave one to Athena, guarding a centaur, in his Pallas and the Centaur for a Medici house. This very precise scene indeed cannot be found in Homer or Cicero. The most delimiting factor for an identification is that the captives are two. It is common to find stories of single prisoners or of large groups, but this is clearly a special case. The monochrome at the top of the set shows five figures (Fig. 93). In the center, a woman is under violent stress, and in reaction four men surrounding her lift their arms, perhaps to keep her in bounds or calm her. The woman’s pose could well suggest running, and then the two men in front might be trying to stop her, but the
Image not available
. Fig. 90)
Maenad Among Men (cf. Fig. 26, “”; detail of
two men behind would be difficult to explain. Just such a female figure is frequent in images of this time. However, in such images she is not running, but under intense stress as if vibrating. The formula has been the theme of a classic short article calling her “The Maenad Under the Cross.”77 Florentine artists around 1500 were shown to have taken the pose from classical sources, such as sarcophagi, to show Mary Magdalene, not moving but expressing despair. A vivid instance is the figure of Virginia learning she is to be murdered by her father, in a narrative panel by Filippino Lippi (Fig. 94). Botticelli showed her in much the same way, if less vividly isolated, in a panel of the same subject.78 These two narratives of Virginia are both pendants of panels about the far more famous Lucretia. The two stories share a textual source in
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. Louvre
Filippino Lippi, Death of Virginia (detail). Paris,
Livy’s History of Rome (Lucretia in 1.58, Virginia in 3.46)79 Signorelli’s stressed figure is indeed Lucretia, who expressed her desperation precisely in the company of four men. After Tarquin raped her, she sent for her husband and father, who quickly came, each with a friend. The last point is important because the husband’s friend was Junius Brutus. Botticelli’s Lucretia panel (Fig. 95) shows Lucretia with the four men; one reacts with lifted arms, like Signorelli’s men. The quite frequent images in the period of Lucretia’s suicide usually show accompanying men, sometimes two (husband and father) or three (with Brutus) but perhaps most often four.80 A long search has not unearthed any other image of the period of a distraught women with four men. It may still emerge, but would be a less established story than this one, which fits well on all points. The actual suicide is the most frequent moment chosen in the images, but Botticelli shows the preceding moment, in which she expresses her anguish, and so does Signorelli in
the monochrome. The choice is validated by a remarkable text, the Declamatio Lucretiae, written by none other than Coluccio Salutati. Today this writing is less noted than others by him, but it was the reverse in the fifteenth century. Fifty manuscripts of it were listed in a study of 1971 (including just five later ones, from the sixteenth century), and one more can be added.81 This is an amazingly high number, as one may judge from an authoritative comment that the thirty-four manuscripts of one of the works of Ficino, the chief philosopher at the Medici court, are “extraordinary, a number not attained by any other work of his.”82 Salutati’s text consists entirely of a debate between Lucretia and two of the men, who try to dissuade her from suicide, and her responses. It ends when she finishes her speech. Thus the distinct value of this phase of the story before her death is established.83 Botticelli’s image of this moment is seen on one side of a wide panel. The center shows the next incident in the story. Junius Brutus vows revenge and calls for the expulsion of the rapist Tarquin and his whole royal family. The establishment of the Roman republic followed, with Brutus as one of the two initial consuls. The point that the central meaning of the story is political, about freedom from royal tyranny, has always been plain. Botticelli underlines this, placing in the center, above Brutus, a statue of David with the head of Goliath. To our left he adds a narrative relief sculpture of Judith killing Holofernes. Both are naturally in monochrome. This cluster—Lucretia and the four men, Judith and the probable David—recurs in Signorelli’s wainscot. After these events, Livy next tells of a threat to the new republic. The exiled Tarquins failed in an effort to return by force, in which they had enlisted Brutus’s own two sons. The consul followed the law by condemning the two sons to death, which is what the left roundel shows. Livy
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and Plutarch describe it; the latter reports how the father asked the sons to defend themselves, and how when they were silent “he turned to the lictors,” who seized the youths and “bound their hands behind them.”84 The incident is no longer famous today, as Lucretia’s suicide is, but was a major motif in Signorelli’s culture. Brutus was the chief model of the just judge. He appears as such in the public imagery of Florence (in the judgment hall of the wool guild), Siena (in the guild loggia, with the sons’ two severed heads as his attribute), and Padua (in the Sala Dei Giganti, today in a sixteenth-century version, where two predella-like scenes show respectively the four men gazing at the dead Lucretia and the consul as witness to his sons’ execution). In Siena he recurs about 1530 in a cycle by Beccafumi in the city hall, again with the two heads. Close to the Siena compositions is a woodcut illustration in a volume published in Rome in 1494, Priscorum heroum Stemmata, by Thomas Ochsenbrunner. In Rome’s city hall, on the Capitoline, a fresco by Ripanda of 1506–7 showed him watching his
sons being beheaded, and in 1586 in the same building the theme was repeated on a larger scale. The frequency of these images seems not to have been registered by art historians, so that another, like this of Signorelli’s, fails of recognition. The ethics of Brutus’s action were debatable. It is approved as just by a speaker in one work of Boccaccio’s because it preserved liberty, while in another the consul is attacked for inhuman cruelty.85 The chancellor Scala, in late fifteenth-century Florence, in the Medici ambient, said Brutus acted contrary to nature. Machiavelli, on the other hand, approved his act as needed to solidify the republic.86 Even as it later faded from view, the story gained its grandest echo in 1789 in Jacques-Louis David’s monumental painting, an innovative episode of the bodies of the sons delivered to Brutus’s house. In 1997 one could still find the New York Times naming Brutus as a liberator from tyranny. This occurs in a long excerpt from an earlier speech by Senator Robert Byrd, who had praised “Lucius Junius Brutus, who” after long rule by kings “made the Romans
Image not available
.
Botticelli, The Story of Lucretia. Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
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swear that they would never again subject themselves.” In this case too there seems to be no other event that matches the image shown, this time of a judge turning to consult about the fate of two bound prisoners. The doubling of this identity with that of Lucretia and the four men nearby seems decisive. Botticelli’s panel, with Lucretia and the four men at the right and Brutus at the center, shows Tarquin attacking Lucretia at the left. As in other images of the theme, for instance Titian’s, he bends toward her and clutches a dagger. That is evidently what we also see in Signorelli’s third and last monochrome of this set, a half-circle cut by the entrance to the little chapel. It shows a warrior advancing with a spear, evidently ready to attack the person who would occupy the other half of the roundel. There is a single message shared by these three roundels about Lucretia and Brutus, by the presumed David in the keystone nearby, by the Judith in the opposite keystone, and by the oakcrowned youth near her wearing the crown of civic heroes. All honor those who fight or act in behalf of their nation or city. All these images are clustered in one part of the chapel, in the wainscots on the side walls of the outer bay, in an assemblage of heroes who share this quality taken from varied sources. They do not have a further message relating, for instance, to the Last Judgment (with one exception, the oak-crowned youth), and that is the one factor that creates doubt. To suggest a shift here to a different subject calls for good support, despite the repeated evidence leading the same way. To be sure, the wainscots did allow for variation. Even in the inner bay, the recurrent theme from the poems, of brief visits to the underworld with returns to earth, leaves a space that does not fit exactly the theme of Last Things. Perhaps this separation can be wider in the outer bay, which starts out as a slightly loose annex to the main subject.
The reading of these images as praise for civic heroes gains support from a small element of the fresco cycle not yet mentioned.87 The vault triangle that abuts the entrance door, the one with the virgin saints, includes in the far ends of its two lower corners two identical coats of arms, those of the Monaldeschi family, which means that its members claim status as patrons of the chapel (Fig. 83). The coats are part of a system that also shows the arms of the Cathedral Board of Works between them, at the top of the entrance wall. The Monaldeschi did not claim the chapel as their own, but their help is documented in two money gifts from separate family members, the only relatively large sums known to have been offered. Giovanna, widow and heiress of Pietroantonio Monaldeschi, got a receipt from the administrator on February 29, 1500, for one hundred florins received from her on account of the bequest of her late husband “for the painting and ornamentation of the new chapel in the said church.”88 The date precedes by just under two months Signorelli’s second contract, the one for the entire chapel. The first area he painted under that contract was certainly the vault of the outer bay, including the triangle with the virgin saints. The money had been owed since the husband’s death, so it seems plausible that the decision to hand it over after delay at this time matched the indication that it would now actually be needed, as the work got under way. It might well have appeared imprudent to give it earlier, during the long, dragging negotiations with Perugino. The other bequest was by Achille Monaldeschi, a fifth cousin of Giovanna but still counted as a member of the same branch. His will of 1494 assigned one hundred florins with quite similar phrasing, to be obtained from the sale of land “for the painting and ornaments of the new chapel” to be paid “within two years of his death.”89 He is reported to have died in 1497.
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The cathedral accounts record receipt of the one hundred florins “for a bequest made in the will of the said master Achille” in July 1505.90 Some have found it puzzling that the payment of the bequest was so long delayed, and some have inferred that the money could not have been used for the paintings, despite Achille’s instructions, in view of the much earlier completion of, and full payment to Signorelli for, his work. However, a second document puts a different light on the matter. A record in a different account book of the cathedral, apparently also of 1505, notes the receipt from Achille’s widow of twenty florins “for part of the bequest of the said Achille.”91 It has been overlooked that it is a partial payment, which means that the bequest was paid in installments. The other record of July 1505, receipting the entire bequest and thus the complete gift, is therefore a summing up of such installments now complete and proves that the other installments must have been paid earlier. Hence, any delay after the testator’s death was shorter, and quite probably at least part of the money was available for the painting. The two Monaldeschi bequests together covered a considerable portion of the fee due Signorelli in his larger second contract, 575 florins, and so merited inclusion of the coat of arms. The surfaces in the triangle on which they are painted seem to be part of the original work, not added later, and so tell us that when it was executed in 1500 both bequests were at least partly paid or ensured. This intervention has not been observed in studies of the chapel. Pietroantonio had been a member of the committee in the 1480s and so would have appreciated the importance of such money. One might speculate that he and his wife recruited Achille to make a similar gift, thus ensuring that the family contribution would be substantial. But the most interesting aspect of their role, at least with respect to the former couple, is on
record in a different form. The widow Giovanna arranged for a plaque inscribed with an appreciation of Pietroantonio to be installed just outside the chapel entrance, at the left, and therefore also next to the family’s own chapel. The inscription read: “His father having been exiled by tyranny, he nonetheless conducted himself with equanimity, and had care for the republic, with other patricians, with such integrity and faith that no one surpassed him in public charity.”92 Praise of character and deeds are conventional enough in such memorials. What separates this one is its opening point that Pietroantonio’s behavior was in spite of the evil done to his father Gentile by “tyranny.” Certainly what is on record about local history hardly validates that charge. Gentile’s exile had if anything marked the end of tyranny by the family, followed by a more collegial government by committees of citizens and churchmen. The plaque’s account of Pietroantonio’s later life is consistent with the latter point. However that may be, his widow’s expression about him sets up a distinct analogy with the series of civic heroes painted in the chapel. To be sure, it seems an outrageous hyperbole, albeit not very surprising, to equate Pietroantonio’s career with the way the consul Brutus, and the others, first suffered under tyranny and in the end responded by doing civic good. Yet, along with the coats of arms, it seems to clarify the stimulus for the civic imagery inside the chapel. That all this has little or nothing to do with the Last Judgment gives pause. Yet that is also true of the imagery of Faustino and Parenzo, and even more so of the opposite Chapel of Mary Magdalene, not part of Signorelli’s commission.93 The civic images may have been assigned to the wainscot of the outer bay because of this analogy with these other images external to the Judgment, next to them. Almost all the civic images, being in monochrome, are thereby bracketed with the
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illustrations of the poems, which are also distinct from the Last Judgment and a factor not contemplated in Angelico’s plan. The sole full-color figure among the civic images, the oak-crowned youth, may be the exception that tests the rule. Unlike the others, the youth has a double association: with the civic motifs and with the Raising of the Dead above him. In that aspect he evokes the extension of the latter theme into the world of classical poetry. Possibly this served as an entry point for the other civic representations.94 Renaissance culture permitted such intrusions into thematic sets when a partial patron subsidized them, though this is a concept contrary to expectation. A vivid instance of 1455 is on record, another rare case when committee minutes allow us to learn what took place before a contract was signed. In a debate about the choice of saints for an altarpiece, one member intervened to offer to pay part of the cost if his patron
saint would be included, and it was done. A standard analysis of the painting’s iconography would never have come to that true explanation.95 A still further relevant point about Giovanna and her husband is the fact, mentioned earlier, that their marriage had been arranged by the husband’s godfather, the future Pope Paul II. At that time the relevant factors were Paul’s link to an abbey near Orvieto and the reconciliation of the two Monaldeschi branches. Here it can be added that the couple would later have been in a good position to know about the pope’s tomb, with its unusual Last Judgment. Its introduction of the fight against heresy would be relevant. Thus the allusive interplays of the culture, from formal to social, systematic and casual, add up to more than the sum of the parts. At the end the fresco cycle turns out to have been the fruit of an array of human drives and interests, pressed into a united strength by the designer’s hand.
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evidence of a response to the frescoes in the Cappella Nuova is from 1503, the year the work on the mural cycle was completed. It is a drawing by Raphael of a foreshortened figure copied from the most emphatic one in Signorelli’s Fire from Heaven scene. On one level this immediate response is not remarkable. A few years earlier, Raphael had copied another Signorelli, drawing from a figure in a Signorelli altarpiece in the town of Città di Castello. Now, in 1503, at the age of twenty, he was a virtually equal collaborator with Signorelli’s personal friend Pinturicchio in the great fresco cycle in Siena about Pope Pius II. In fact, the drawing in question is on the same sheet with a composition sketch by the young artist for that cycle.1 One may reasonably infer, therefore, that on a trip from Siena, probably to his current base in Perugia, Raphael detoured through Orvieto to have a look at the new work by the other senior master of this coterie. These two copies of Signorelli support the hypothesis, offered above, that Raphael produced a third copy, also involving a foreshortened figure in the Orvieto cycle, when he painted his roundels of Faith and Charity. In any case, Raphael’s adoption of this element is in accord with Vasari’s later report that Signorelli’s cycle was especially good in such motifs as its “many foreshortenings” and that it thereby “stimulated those who came after.” This early copying is even more impressive when it is noted that the second firm case of
copying is by Michelangelo, as also reported by Vasari. Besides the imagery of Michelangelo’s Charon and Minos, invariably pointed out, it extends to others, such as the rising sequence of saved souls and the self-portrait. The two great masters may be defined by the divergent forms of their responses: Raphael to visual motifs (which Vasari would also emphasize), and Michelangelo to iconographic ones. Michelangelo did not repeat Signorelli’s forms, despite sharing with the older artist the focus on muscular action that no doubt first drew his attention to Signorelli’s figures. The iconographic aspect received more attention. The firm knowledge that these artists observed Signorelli supports hypotheses that the same thing happened in other cases. This has been discussed above in the case of the engraver Niccolò da Modena, with the argument that his three quite separate, if nonvisual, reuses of Signorellian motifs indicate that he had gone out of his way to look at the Orvieto cycle. Because Orvieto is on a hill and not on the way to anywhere, one must go there on purpose, and Raphael is a precedent that shows this did happen. Even though Niccolò’s nude Judith and full-length portrait of a painter do not look like Signorelli’s, and his grotesques look like those of other artists as much as Signorelli’s, the accumulation of analogies, some unique, suggests that the analogies are significant. After Michelangelo, the cycle continued to be interesting to artists faced with a similar challenge,
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an assignment to produce a big mural about the Last Judgment. One special case is in the work of the Torresani brothers, who produced such a mural in the small town of Rieti not far from Orvieto in 1552–56.2 In what seems to be the only case after Signorelli, the brothers devoted a triangle in the vault of their chapel to the Blessing Christ and continued with other segments like the Orvieto model. They had only one bay and made modifications to suit, and their pictorial approach is not Signorellian at all, although the connection has rightly been noted as clear. A similar situation appeared in a grander case, when Federico Zuccari took on the job of completing the Last Judgment in the dome of Florence Cathedral, left unfinished by Vasari at his death. Two drawings by Zuccari of details from the Orvieto cycle prove that he made a research visit to Orvieto as part of his preparation.3 The constraints of the dome shape, and the previous work on the project, probably prevented him from making Michelangelo’s Last Judgment his model, as one would otherwise have expected him to do. That choice did become the norm thereafter, and Signorelli’s work disappeared from this kind of imitation. If Signorelli’s examples were considered at all, they may well have been rejected on theological grounds, as suggested by passages in a book of advice about good and bad art published in 1582 by the cardinal archbishop of Bologna, Gabriele Paleotti. Even though the book was not completed, and therefore is not likely to have had much direct effect (except on recent art historians), some passages are relevant here.4 Paleotti’s allocation of four chapters to the evils of grotesque ornament—more attention than to any other theme in the book—is unexpected, but it is less surprising that he objects to the presence in church imagery of Plato (as on the Orvieto façade) and Orpheus (as in Signorelli’s wainscot). Classical antiquity was believed to be dangerous, which is contrary to the culture seen in the Cappella Nuova.
That was apparently the end of appropriating iconographic motifs from the Orvieto cycle, but the copying of single pictorial details had a revival long afterward, again most visible to us with renowned artists. A study of the drawings by Cézanne after old masters permits the observation that, among those after these masters’ drawings, there are more after Signorelli than after anyone else—five. All are based on two drawings related to the Orvieto project.5 More recently, Jackson Pollock, in his twenties, copied poses of figures from the cycle, specifically after angels from the Assembly of the Blessed.6 (Like Cézanne, Pollock worked from reproductions in books.) To be sure, he did this only while under the tutelage of his teacher Thomas Benton, a devotee of fifteenth-century painting. At the same time, the twentieth century has seen another basis for fascination with Signorelli: the ideology of sex from Freud on. Besides the case of Freud himself, cited in the Introduction, there is the interest in homosexual contexts, as illustrated with E. M. Forster7 and Paul Cadmus.8 It seems that various ages find their own bit of Signorelli to adopt.9 This is in accord with the habit the monographs have of presenting each segment of the chapel as a separate unit, paying little attention to the whole. The modern viewers mentioned, with their dependence on books containing reproductions, remind us that still another angle on the frescoes has had great power, that of the historians. They begin with the local erudite writers of the eighteenth century: Clementini, for his precious reports of now lost details, and Della Valle, both for his grand scale engravings that first expanded awareness of the work and for his archival materials that shed light on the local context.10 These two historians saw the Cappella Nuova as a historical monument of Orvieto and dedicated a new kind of civic pride to presenting it. The cathedral committees had expressed their civic pride by
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building a cathedral and commissioning artists; Clementini and Della Valle, among others, used their archival sources to produce a new monument, honoring Orvieto in their scholarship. Della Valle’s engravings brought painters to Orvieto from distant places. The German Nazarene artist Johann Friedrich Overbeck wrote in 1813 from Orvieto to a painter friend in Rome that Signorelli was among the masters of the first class, as much so as Raphael.11 This was the first time Signorelli had been moved up from a position in a chain of progress, where Vasari had already put him, to a status on his own, not to mention one so high. This treatment is part of the historicism then emerging as a scholarly approach, rejecting the notion that art progresses, but is also related to a preference the Nazarenes had for Angelico’s portion of the cycle, something in which they remained alone. The combination of a sense of history and an admiration for the cycle soon led to the first efforts at restoration of the frescos, by visiting Russian painters in 1845.12 Then 1879 brought the first scholarly monograph on Signorelli, by the German Robert Vischer. Monographs on Renaissance artists were not uncommon by that time, but there were few on artists that worked before the High Renaissance. Among those artists, Signorelli was the leader here too, as with the series of engravings after his work, almost a hundred years before. There is nothing surprising in the observation that each age has defined its own favorite Signorelli. Most works of art that continue to be regarded as of the highest quality produce such effects. (In this instance one era, the seventeenth century, is missing; it is distinguished chiefly for having destroyed some parts of the Orvieto cycle.) The only general conclusion to be drawn is apparently that the next age will discover still another Signorelli.13 Yet it might still be urged that this book should offer conclusions from its
own new approach, the focus on the production process in the chapel. A call for conclusions at the end of a book is usual and natural, when the book consists of arguments based on points of evidence, as this one does. Yet it is also true, if rarely brought forward, that such books as this in many cases do not present explicit conclusions, an omission that easily passes unnoticed if not made articulate. In particular this can happen when the text, as in this case, is a narrative. Described events follow each other and then end. If those events seem to embody a single strong purpose, a conclusion will decide that it has been achieved or not. If, however, the events are an organic life, as that of a person, they may move through phases under varied external influences until they eventually stop, as with the person’s death, and it is acceptable that there was no meaningful conclusion. One expects a completed work of art to exemplify the former of these two possibilities, the achievement of purpose, or its failure. This fresco cycle, however, perhaps surprisingly, has turned out when its production is investigated to be involved in a long series of unrelated accidental shifts, pulling it each time in another direction. There is to begin with (since one must begin somewhere) the unusual circumstance of the call for a transeptal chapel without the standard function of chapels. There is the accident that the painter called on to paint its walls, Fra Angelico, successfully proposed a theme that was of interest to him but that had no previous local significance. When Angelico left his work unfinished, his successor after a long interval amended and adjusted the project in ways that seem to have been unplanned before, particularly in monumentalizing the episode of the Raising of the Dead. The rest of the outer bay was first assigned a theme at this time, a completely novel set of images. Quite separately, the wainscot at this point was enriched from being a
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line of heads to a unique new statement, apparently called for and perhaps designed by a powerful local individual. A smaller insertion, of the imagery of civic virtue, was inserted separately at the same point. Each of these events has been reported in its own segment of this book, and conclusions about it drawn, but a general conclusion may be no more appropriate than it would be in a person’s life affected by changing forces. Perhaps a methodological conclusion is appropriate, that one should be wary of seeking single conclusions. This pattern is familiar in other contexts, among them in monuments of architecture. We know that at Chartres one tower of the cathedral was built centuries after the other and presents a different period’s style, and we are not made uncomfortable as to our feelings about the building. If a similar observation has not been made about Orvieto, is it because completed monuments of painting make that more difficult? It may instead result from another element of the production not listed above, one in which Signorelli’s artistic personality played almost the only role, as it did not in the choice of themes. As has been noted at various points, Signorelli often asserted unity in the work, notably in the use of frameworks and ornament. It seems likely that he was seeking to hide the project’s patchy evolution and has had great success. That success seems due in part to Signorelli’s particular approach to the painting of form that is implied, though not stated, by Vasari, his earliest commentator. Vasari’s judgment on this fresco cycle was quoted at the beginning of this book. Perhaps more important is the writer’s choice of the place he assigns to Signorelli in his book, as the last artist presented in the second of his three parts. In this part, as the author had explained in his preface, he deals with the masters of the fifteenth century, who are admirable for
their realism, especially in the drawing of figures. They lack, however, something that Vasari admires as a new skill in the later artists of part three, in the sixteenth century, the soft grace that lets them blend the figures with their airy world in an easy symbiosis. Signorelli, at the end of the second phase, is near enough to the third to have been able to influence it more than almost any other artist of his time, by convincing the viewer of the movement and energy of his figures. He does this more in the Orvieto cycle than he ever does elsewhere, assisted, one may guess, by the special stimulus of the energetic theme. Yet the figures are still hard and wooden in surface. That hard solidity, which is yet capable of releasing energy, is also no doubt what has attracted modern artists, from Cézanne to Beckmann, Benton, and Cadmus, suggesting in them a trace of archaism. Its other benefit is that it makes the figures congruent with the firm and heavy frames, giving the whole a unity that the later artists tended to discard. We are thus surrounded in the chapel by a huge ring of such figures asserting their vitality even at the point of death or while returning from it, equally so at all points around us. To be sure, when we register this hedge of bodies all around, we may be led to notice a refined shift in presentation between the two bays. It is only in the more inventive outer bay (in which, also, Vasari saw everything he found to admire in the cycle) that this row of bodies is, as well, positioned not in a narrow forward stage but in a deeper space. That is the case everywhere in this bay, shown here by the foreshortened figures and there by the remote temple attacked by Antichrist. So Signorelli registers his ongoing thought and evolution, only slightly exposed within his imposing singularity of assertion. One may be confident that he will offer more new perceptions to the next observers.
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Introduction 1. Vasari 1966, 2:633. 2. Vasari errs in calling this a Chapel of Our Lady, and this statement never seems to recur anywhere else. That designation is a token of how puzzling the chapel’s lack of any normal dedication, to be discussed, must have seemed. 3. Vasari 1966, 2:637. 4. Vasari 1966, 2:636 n. 1. 5. Rothgeb, 116, reports that only one other book by Freud rivals this one in “number of German editions and number of foreign languages into which it has been translated.” 6. Freud’s explanation centers on the word “Signorelli,” not the look of the paintings. To us this may seem surprising, because the latter may seem to relate well to Freudian concern with the extremes of human experience and with the body as their vehicle. In his first account, an 1898 article, Freud calls the theme of the cycle a “very slight factor” in his “block” (Freud 1955–74, 3:392) and even omits that phrase in his book the next year, where he modifies his account of his chat with the fellow-traveler. He had earlier written that he had recommended Orvieto to the traveler, but this time he only reported asking whether he had been there.
However, Freud reverses field in the next chapter of his book, which is about suppression of another word in connection with death and sex. There he adds a footnote to say he is “not fully convinced of the lack of an inner connection” between “the theme of the frescoes” and his block. These shifts are suggestive. Freud’s reaction is not discussed in Signorelli monographs, but here it is one example of this book’s added materials. 7. Some of these are cited throughout this book on particular points. Any not cited again do not appear in the bibliography. 8. The illustrated books are all titled Luca Signorelli or a near equivalent, with or without the name of the chapel as a subtitle. Following older books by Enzo Carli in 1946 and by Mario Salmi in 1953, they include books by Carlo Carrà (undated, about 1968), Antonio Paolucci in 1991, Jonathan Riess in 1995, and Dugald McLellan in 1999. With the notable exception of the distinguished artist Carrà, these authors have also produced more serious writings cited in this book. Riess’s volume is notable for departing from the traditional way of naming the sequence of the chapel frescoes, discussed in this Introduction, in
favor of one essentially like that argued here, even if the type of publication makes his description inevitably brief and unexplained. A short list of old and new errors in these books, for the use of nonspecialist readers, is in note 13 below. Of the dissertations, that by Gloria Kury of 1974 on the early paintings of the artist was fully published. Those by Jonathan Kanter of 1989 on the later paintings (including a chapter on the chapel similar to those described here), by Tom Henry of 1994 on the paintings of the 1490s, and by Claire Van Cleave of 1995 on the drawings led to related articles, which are cited here. That by Götz Kraft of 1980 was photocopied in a few copies, in a system standard for German dissertations; it offered a theory of the artist’s narrative, and that by Sara James of 1994 discussing liturgy is on microfilm, but neither has had other public circulation. That by Dugald McLellan of 1992, though unpublished, made available unknown documents cited here; see Chapter 5, nn. 88 and 91, and Bibliography. 9. These numerous publications are cited below in association with the aspects of the work they discuss.
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10. Testa 1996. The articles in this book discussed in the present one, and individually cited in the bibliography, include those of Andreani, Barroero, Bertorello, Castelli, Cieri Via, Clementini, Dacos, Davanzo, Kanter, Mencarelli, Paoli, Testa, Van Cleave, and the present writer. 11. Hence the lack of agreement about attributions is equally present here. A rare token of this uncertainty is available in two studies on the issue by the same author, with changed views on the internal chronology, not noted as such (Kanter, dissertation of 1989 noted above, and article of 1996). 12. Scarpellini, 40–52; Moriondo, 18–22; Dussler, xxxi–xl. The most extreme such case, perhaps, is in the guidebook Umbria of the Touring Club Italiano (1978, 459–63), where the single segments are helpfully diagrammed and marked from A to G in an illustration marked “scheme of the frescoes.” It may also be the most surprising case because users of the book might be expected to want to know what the theme is. In the usual guidebook this lapse might be put down to ignorance in a nonscholarly book, but this particular guide is well known for the input of scholars and its use by them. The theme is also totally omitted in the standard monographs on Angelico, to be surveyed below. 13. The recent illustrated books on the chapel mentioned above modify the monograph pattern in part, and for the better. That by Carli cites the theme of the Last Judgment at the start but then retains the usual sequence of
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images. That by Carrà does so as well, while erroneously saying the chapel was dedicated to San Brizio. That by Riess erroneously says it was dedicated to the Assumption, which may diminish acceptance of his major improvements. Notable among these is Riess’s changed sequence of scenes, the same as the one presented here and in the brief guide by McLellan. One only regrets that these authors do not build on this foundation, but continue to treat the segments separately, unmindful of the continuity past columns and around corners of single scenes. This omission again must diminish the persuasiveness of the reading, as does Riess’s firm and also erroneous report that no document reports any plans for the walls by Fra Angelico. Riess’s inclusion of comments on the role of heresy in Orvieto is also valuable, although his fuller discussion of that theme in his book on the Antichrist scene has rightly been called doubtful. 14. The term “monograph” is also applied to such books, notably in French usage. In that context the distinction made between this book and monographs would be unclear. However, that less common usage would be a problem only if the matter is not noted. Chapter 1 1. Waley is the standard citation for the period up to 1300. Political in focus, Waley’s book never mentions the cathedral. There is no similar study for the later centuries. Perali has much valuable material, including the connections with art.
2. Lambert, especially sections 2:4 and 3:7, is the standard study. Wakefield and Evans, especially sections 23–25, 47–53, and 56–60, make sources conveniently available. 3. Lambert, 115. 4. Natalini, 155–56. 5. Pastor, 6:595–96n, provides materials about the earliest preserved documents. 6. Carli, 123–28, with excellent illustrations, figs. 245–49. 7. The attribution of this liturgy to Saint Thomas is not generally accepted today. It did have a plausible basis in the fact that he was living in the Dominican convent in Orvieto at the time. The original role of the Dominicans as soldiers against the Albigensian heretics would involve him in these concerns. 8. Bonelli 1972. 9. Middeldorf Kosegarten, 17. A careful recent study (Freni, 123) notes that “no reliable source mentions the celebration of the feast in Orvieto before 1337,” but also that “it would surely have been celebrated in Orvieto after 1317” as part of the “really wide diffusion” of the feast throughout Christendom. However, unless the cloth relic only arrived in the town about 1317, and the account of its having arrived fifty years earlier is hence to be regarded as a myth—a hypothesis that no one seems to offer—the object on which the feast depended had been present since the earlier occasion in 1264 and was at all times a natural basis for a pious cult just as later. Having more basis than elsewhere, such a celebration could be expected earlier there than in most
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places. The stimulus of the unusual significance of heresy in Orvieto seems not to have been considered in this connection. Once it is accepted that celebrations took place from 1317 without appearing in known records for the next twenty years, it is difficult to take a similar lack of records to signify the absence of celebrations earlier. One may also reconsider a local chronicle of the early fifteenth century, which describes a Corpus Domini celebration as having taken place in connection with the foundation of the cathedral in 1290. Even if this account expresses “idealized memory . . . rather than [a] faithful narration,” as recent writers have argued (Freni, 137 n. 49), it is arguably more likely to be the idealization of something rather than a complete invention, and might then be linked to the role of the relic chapel in the plan of the cathedral, as discussed in the present study. 10. Bonelli 1988, 16 n. 7. 11. Gillerman, 300. 12. Gillerman, 303. 13. A Byzantine reliquary of this kind is reproduced in The Glory of Byzantium, no. 35. 14. Gillerman, 303 n. 16, is among many who quote the line. 15. Gillerman, as in the preceding note, is among those who note the timber roof as a likeness. This is valid materially and conceptually, but not visually, because the ceiling in Rome is flat and the one in Orvieto is pitched with open trusses. 16. Krautheimer, 312. 17. Krautheimer, 312. 18. Cf. Carli, 15, who also cites Bonelli’s similar view.
19. Bonelli 1988, 12. 20. Gillerman, 307, also citing earlier writers. 21. If we agree that the Roman secular building was the model, we must privilege the visual likeness and disregard the functional difference. If we accept the Roman model for the Orvieto ceiling, as above, we must think in the opposite way. This may have occurred, but the phenomenon complicates the hypothesis. 22. Bonelli’s reconstruction of the flank, reproduced by Gillerman, fig. 7, makes this graphically clear. 23. Harding, 126. 24. If the designer was proceeding as here suggested, he would have had to think about the shift in media, and aspects of the work suggest that this happened. Both the need to mark the boundary between the media, and the opposite need to produce a unifying flow, appear to be articulated. The former appears in the bronze sculptures, the sole strongly threedimensional element, positioned at the boundary, and the latter appears in the roughness of carving at the top of the reliefs. They resemble in effect the glitter of the tiny mosaic units. Following White’s much admired proposed explanation of the rough effects, that the reliefs were simply never finished, contrary arguments have been offered (Schlee, 120), claiming that the rough cutting was applied over finished carvings. The continuing activity of building and decoration at the cathedral in the following years also may cast doubt on the idea that these panels were left incomplete.
If the reason offered here for using such low relief is accepted, there remains the problem of a visual model that might have evoked this specific style. One may be proposed in a nearby earlier art, the classical Roman pottery called Aretine ware. As here, it shows graceful figures against large blank planes. Admiration for this ware is evinced in a remarkable text of 1282 (Ristoro d’Arezzo, 137), reporting that “sculptors and draftsmen” admired the new finds of these ancient fragments. That detail virtually entails a search for reflection of the style soon afterward. This topic, which requires further study, was initiated with my seminar students at Leiden University in 1972–73. 25. Harding, 124, indicates that the mosaic cost 418 percent as much as a fresco cycle in the church. The sculpture would cost a good deal more than the frescoes. 26. In 1307, just before the sculpture project started, there was a problem of stones thrown at the building that left “many figures and windows and doors broken” (Fumi, Duomo, 213). Mosaic would probably have been still more vulnerable. In December 1981 vandals damaged some of the sculpture. 27. Pius II, 1:286. 28. Riess, Antichrist, 9–11, also notes praise of the cathedral building by Pope Alexander VI, in a letter from Orvieto of November 30, 1493. The letter is even more exceptional in offering specific praise of the façade, called “lo pus bell frontispici que temple al mon tinga” (Borgia, 711). Preceded by
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Pius II’s praise and followed by that of Leandro Alberti, noted below, this evokes a perhaps unique recurrence of praise for trecento sculpture in this time. 29. Alberti, 1553 edition, 56r. The author’s dedication is dated January 19, 1550, and he identifies an item of February 24, 1550, as a postscript (223r). Other items are identified as being written in 1549 (289r, 300r). The author (1479– 1552) presumably used travel notes collected over a long period. 30. Taylor’s work supersedes earlier proposals, although some of his inferences may be debated. 31. Weisheipl, 149–63. 32. The Glory of Byzantium, no. 53, quoting earlier studies. 33. Quoted and translated by Geanakoplos, 395. 34. Lambert, 56. Wakefield and Evans, 168–69, cite, among others, a comment of 1266 that “throughout France these persons are called Bulgarian heretics.” 35. Schiff, 11. 36. Taylor, 135. 37. Dragut, passim. An account in the June 21, 1998, New York Times travel section, with large color illustrations, has made this material much more accessible. I am indebted for much help to Szombor Jekely. It was solely the likeness as to small, allover imagery on the exteriors that first stimulated this inquiry; when it was pursued, the likeness in iconography appeared, an equally rare one. The connection seemed thus to gain much support. 38. Grabar, 365–82. 39. Bonelli 1972. 40. It is sometimes believed that a papal decree of 1318 making the
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feast obligatory everywhere enhanced the Orvieto cult of the relic beyond a much slighter earlier presence. However, the feast had earlier been celebrated in various individual places, and Orvieto would be a likely one. The new decree would probably increase pilgrimages. 41. For Alberti, 56r, writing in 1549, the procession is the one activity in Orvieto that calls for notice. 42. Carli, 123–28, gives an excellent account. 43. Bonelli 1972. 44. Studies of the stages of the cathedral’s construction do not seem to mention this older sacristy. We learn of it only through its demolition (Andreani, 422, docs. 3, 5). 45. Fumi, Duomo, 171. 46. Andreani, 422, doc. 20. 47. Andreani, 424, docs. 36, 38, 40–42. 48. Andreani, 424, docs. 35, 37, 43. 49. Andreani, 424, doc. 35; 426, doc. 69; 429, doc. 126. 50. Andreani, 435, doc. 226. That it was hidden thoroughly may be suggested when elsewhere (Andreani, 429, doc. 143; 432, doc. 196) bodies are described as recondite in a coffin. 51. Andreani, 432, doc. 192. 52. Andreani, 422, doc. 2. Fumi, usually very reliable, had reported with no source (as he sometimes did) that the bequest was for a chapel “in onore della Vergine Assunta” and says his basis was a formal “decree,” but none has been found (Fumi, Duomo, 171).
53. Andreani, 423, doc. 20. This record of 1411 assigns to the Monaldeschi as a chapel, in return for the one they are losing, an “altar under the title of the Coronation of the Virgin” and renames it for the Magi in honor of the Monaldeschi patrons. It is puzzling that the authorities had assigned the title “Coronation” even though they had not obtained the money bequeathed in 1396 for a chapel with that dedication (Andreani, 423, doc. 22). Perhaps they had counted on the money and given the name in advance but when they were not paid took the occasion to remove the name. 54. Fumi, Statuti, 21 n. 1. 55. Andreani, 435, doc. 226; 436, doc. 237, a payment of two and a half lire for “elevando tabernaculum Assumpte.” Some writers have misinterpreted this to mean that the tabernacle was removed. 56. Andreani, 436, docs. 149–59. 57. Andreani, 437, docs. 241–42. 58. Andreani, 439, docs. 272–75. This too was done after much delay, nine years after it was first voted. 59. Andreani, 441, doc. 319. 60. Andreani, 442, doc. 323. 61. Andreani, 442, doc. 324. 62. Andreani, 445, doc. 387. 63. Andreani, 441–44, docs. 317–29, 362, 363. 64. “Cappella Nuova” seems to have been still the usual name in 1729, an astonishing run from 1400 (Andreani, 445, doc. 382). The new name is standard from 1739, and the name had been used earlier for the altar (Andreani, 445, doc. 379). Earlier still there is a
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joint title, “Chapel of the Madonna di San Brizio called the Cappella Nova” (Andreani, 444, doc. 376, in 1724). 65. In 1910 the form was “the chapel dedicated to San Brizio,” with no justification, the earliest official use I have noted. It is a curious point that the excellent editor, summarizing a document, begins to use the name “of San Brizio” when discussing records of 1685 (Andreani, 443, doc. 343) and then continues that approach. Such anachronism can have real and wrong effects, as when a serious scholar (Baldini, 108) says that Fra Angelico painted the chapel “dedicated to San Brizio”; another (Pope-Hennessy, 33) summarized records by saying Angelico was to paint “the chapel of the Madonna of San Brizio.” He then says Angelico worked “in the chapel of San Brizio, where the Corporal . . . was preserved,” and, later (p. 214) varying the same point, that the artist worked in “the chapel of the Corporal, or of the Madonna of San Brizio, in the south transept, which had not yet been painted.” The Chapel of the Corporal is the one opposite, in the north transept, painted in the preceding century. The confusions, not unique, may reflect the chapel’s lack of any dedication at all, which is so uncommon that one is supplied even if wrong. Unofficially, “Chapel of San Brizio” appears in John Addington Symonds’s life of Michelangelo in 1893, presumably not for the first time. 66. Andreani, 424–42, docs. 35–324.
67. Andreani, 426, observes that from 1321 the series is “almost uninterrupted.” 68. These include the contracts for the frescoes of Signorelli and others, discussed in detail below. 69. Andreani, 429, docs. 125–26. 70. For the four references, see Andreani, 430, docs. 155–57 and 159; for the theme, see doc. 152. 71. Andreani, 437, doc. 241. 72. Andreani, 441, doc. 302. 73. Andreani, 429, doc. 426; 430, docs. 150–52. 74. Bacci, 279–350. Gilbert 1991, n. 32, cites a misreading of “chapel,” which led to a scholar’s creation of a nonexistent chapel room. 75. A similar caveat applies to the dedication and name of the cathedral. Trustworthy sources (as Enciclopedia Cattolica, s.v. “Orvieto”) report that the modern name, Santa Maria Assunta, was present from the beginning in 1290. Most early formal references read “Santa Maria Maggiore,” including Pope Nicholas’s letter cited earlier and Signorelli’s contracts. In a breve of Pope Sixtus IV (r. 1471–84) the cathedral is that which “Nicholas IV began to build under the title (vocabulo) of the Glorious Mother of God Mary the Virgin” (Sannella, 84). Formal titles of 1758 (Testa, 473) and 1845 (Andreani, 446, doc. 392) call it “S. Maria della Stella,” so “Assunta” must be later than that. 76. The chief one is a chapel built in the 1460s on the nave floor, like a shed, with a bequest from a Bishop Monaldeschi. Fumi (Duomo, 427–37) presented this well, with early documents calling
it “cappella nuova” in 1463 (xv, xvi), while in 1465 it is the “chapel commonly called of the Madonna della Tavola” (xx, again in 1480, xxiv). Some later accounts have taken this Monaldeschi bequest to be for our chapel. 77. Andreani, 423, doc. 20. 78. Andreani, 435, doc. 226. 79. The phenomenon of unfinished churches inducing civic shame seems common and would repay study. In many cases, completion came centuries later, as in Cologne, famous for the crane left on the roof for centuries and seen in many views. It became a marker of the city. In Florence, one would cite façades of major churches added in the nineteenth century, at Santa Croce and the Cathedral, or never, as at San Lorenzo. Chapter 2 1. Fumi, Duomo, 171, while surveying these events, notes the consistent use of the term “nuova.” 2. Andreani, 423, doc. 30. 3. Fumi, Duomo, 224–24, docs. 42–43. The committee liked the master’s low price but still stipulated that his work must be “perfecta et utile et bona.” 4. Andreani, 424, doc. 34. Fumi omitted this record from his publication, which was long the standard reference, and it received little attention in the earlier studies. 5. Andreani, 424, doc. 45. 6. Oddly, the form to which he had recourse is not the one standard in Italian, which is scialbada. A Latin cognate, also derived from albus, white, exists, but all this was evidently beyond the scribe’s ken.
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7. Only one of the tourist sites in Rome recorded by a visitor in 1450, Giovanni Rucellai, was a contemporary work in fresco; it was by Masolino. To be sure, its fame may not have extended to the artist, whose name Rucellai did not mention (Gilbert 1988, 134). 8. Christiansen, 3–4, reports in his brief biography on Gentile and the pope. Gilbert 1988, 198, documents the status of Gentile and Pisanello as the most famous artists of the time in Italy. 9. Orlandi, 189. 10. Andreani, 424, doc. 46. 11. Hollingsworth, 3, may typify both this widespread view and the paucity of evidence for it. She summarizes in her introduction: “It was the patron who was the real initiator . . . he played a significant part in determining both form and content . . . it was the patron, and not the artist, who was seen by his contemporaries as the creator of the project.” Elsewhere, more correctly in my view, she speaks of patrons’ wish to show their wealth or power but seems to hold that they must initiate both that and the thematic content, not allowing that the former goal might be achieved by engaging a prestigious artist to work up a theme. 12. Glasser, the standard study, is actually based on close study of a very few cases, but they are acceptable as typical. 13. Gilbert 1998 explores these cases and many similar ones, along with a wide range of patron-artist interactions with respect to themes. 14. Andreani, 424, doc. 48.
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15. Gilbert 1975 explores this character trait. 16. Andreani, 424–25, doc. 49. 17. Testa and Davanzo, in Testa 1996, 35, with citation of similar views offered in 1986 by a Dominican writer. They believe this is explained by Angelico being a theologian, and they evidently assume that special explanation is needed because consultation with painters about themes would not otherwise occur. Yet this hypothesis is negated, apart from other points, in that Angelico was not, and was not regarded as, a theologian. The Orvietans identify him simply as a friar, which would imply only literacy. They decided to consult him as an outstanding painter. In any case, if theological skill had been their focus, they had experts on hand who could have developed a theme at any earlier point. These included the archdeacon, who had been involved in these arrangements to find artists and who was a doctor of law (presumably canon law), as they noted in 1446 (Fumi, Duomo, 225, doc. 44). 18. A large exception is the active literature about one scene, Signorelli’s Deeds of Antichrist, and a variety of references to events around 1500 have been cited to explain it. It is the cycle as a whole whose inspiration has not been a major subject of attention. 19. Andreani, 431, doc. 181; 434, doc. 214. 20. Verheyen, 21, notes that “questions of dimensions, size of the figures” played a large role in the negotiations between artists and Isabella d’Este, who was probably the best-documented art
patron of the Renaissance. A letter to Isabella from the painter Francia (Luzio, 564) is a good example. 21. The standard study of frescoes of this period, by Borsook, notes in passing (p. xxxii) the high positive correlation between Last Judgments and large surfaces as a given. Her instances, however, extend only through the first half of the fourteenth century, after which time she turns to a survey of the use of such surfaces for unique themes. 22. A recent comment (Testa and Davanzo, in Testa 1996, 36–37 n. 16), which makes use of a recent more detailed study, Baschet, speaks of the theme as continuing in the fifteenth century. However, of the twelve cases cited, only two are in central Italy: that in San Gimignano cited here (the date 1413 given is not firm) and one to be discussed later, that of 1445–51 in Terni, too late to have been considered by Angelico. (Of the rest, one is in the far southeast, in the Abruzzi, and all the rest are in the north beyond the Apennines. The Genoa area alone accounts for seven of these nine.) Omitted from Baschet’s list are two large mid-fifteenthcentury Judgments in Siena that are in a different context: as elements in cycles of the twelve articles of the Creed (cf. H. van Os, Vecchietta and the Sacristy of the Siena Hospital Church, The Hague, 1974, figs. 28, 45). Angelico’s series of five Judgments are thus isolated in his lifetime and region. It may reasonably be inferred that the Last Judgment is not a theme that a patron there would be likely to propose. Another small Sienese
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Last Judgment of the same period, by Giovanni di Paolo, will be discussed below. Its iconography differs from the norm. 23. It starts, as is not surprising, from the usual but unfounded belief that from 1396 the chapel had been planned to be dedicated to the Assumption. It then finds a doctrinal link in the area of eschatology between the cult of the Virgin and the Last Judgment. The latter does of course involve that topic—the theology of the end of the world—but no relationship between this and the Assumption is offered, nor is any obvious. The Assumption took place in historical time. Mary, with many other persons, has a role in the Last Judgment, but in the chapel her role is only the traditional one. Because this proposal has not been published, it is cited here anonymously, as a matter of fairness; a published proposal may be assumed to include all the proponent’s best arguments, but one not yet so presented may not do so. Yet the idea of explaining the chapel by some relationship between the Judgment and the Assumption would arise so naturally that it seemed to call for any possible consideration. 24. Paoli, in Testa 1996, 65–75. 25. Andreani, 425, docs. 54, 55. 26. Andreani, 425, doc. 52. 27. Fumi, Duomo, 36, docs. 16, 17; 433, doc. 1. 28. Andreani, 432, doc. 191. 29. Mencarelli, in Testa 1996, 91. 30. Andreani, 435, doc. 223. 31. The document contains an error in saying Signorelli has been hired not only to paint but also to “finish” the chapel, and this may
explain the misreading cited. As will be discussed in more detail, at this time in November 1499 he had a contract for the vaults only, agreed to in the previous April (Andreani 434, doc. 220). The contract to finish the chapel was drawn up the following April (Andreani, 435, docs. 225, 227). A possible reason for the scribe’s error in November is that by then committee members whose discussion the scribe was recording had taken for granted that Signorelli would get the rest of the job, so they might well have talked in that sense. 32. Andreani, 425, doc. 57. 33. The Baptist is entitled to be called a prophet, having foretold Christ’s mission, and he appears in theological writings as “the last prophet.” However, images of sets of prophets rarely include him, while those of saints include him often (Metsch, 10, on the prophet; 144–59, with other saints). 34. Pope-Hennessy, 33, 214–15, plates 124–25. 35. Baldini, cat. 107. 36. Schottmuller, xxx (“The theme was the last things”), 152–56 (captions), 234–35 (catalogue entry). 37. Argan, 109. 38. Among the prophets (so labeled) identifiable in the triangle, only Aaron does not recur in the panels. In iconographic tradition in general he was a minor figure. Although his rod is distinctive, a recent writer who did identify Moses and David here did not note his presence. An approach that sought a special direction of cult in the Orvieto imagery might cite him (and Christ’s globe) as the
exceptional details that could offer clues toward its discovery. He has a front seat, but he may only have his frequent role of reinforcing the importance of his neighbor Moses. 39. Such scenes as the Adoration of the Magi are consistently cut in two by architectural systems in French Gothic ivories of the fourteenth century, objects produced with industrial uniformity. 40. Filippo Lippi’s schema here closely follows that used for the same subject by Masolino, in his cycle at Castiglione Olona. In Masolino’s case one might argue that the beheading on the other wall is a different scene, but several factors, in addition to the Lippi imitation, favor the view that it is part of the one scene continuous with the banquet. From Giotto on, the two events had traditionally been shown in one scene. The corner shows no frame line, of the kind present at the outer sides of both episodes. Within the space a line at the top inner edge of the floor is continuous in both. A column near but not quite at the corner might suggest that Masolino wanted to keep the angle from being disturbing, yet not deny it. 41. Outstanding instances are the Parthenon frieze and the mosaics at Daphni. 42. Drawings of whole narrative compositions by Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio exemplify the procedure. They show stick figures, evidently as initial steps in a design process. These are followed by more-detailed drawings of figures and parts of compositions. AmesLewis, 139–44, associates these drawings with earlier ones by Angelico’s assistant Gozzoli.
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43. Andreani, 425, doc. 52. 44. According to calculations by Goldthwaite, 436, 438, in 1447 a skilled craftsman in Florence received 19.6 soldi a day, and an unskilled worker earned 11 soldi. 45. In Florence in 1471 the painter Baldovinetti paid 5 soldi per quire when he bought 16 quires (of 24 or 25 sheets each) of paper of the reale size, about 18 × 24 inches. It was specified as the cheapest available, da straccio—as we might say, scratch paper (Kennedy, 246). The huge difference between this price and that of the gavantone evidently includes difference in paper quality and a price increase in the intervening years, suggested by Ames-Lewis, 22. The price of the Orvieto sheet probably included the papermaker’s skilled labor in gluing several sheets together and perhaps sizing it. 46. Landau and Parshall, 16–17. 47. Degenhart and Schmitt, 1:2, no. 399. 48. Bober and Rubenstein, no. 76. 49. Degenhart and Schmitt, 1:2, no. 399. 50. Berenson (no. 532) gave the youthfulness of the face, which for him was incompatible with the ideality of Angelico’s style, as a major reason for assigning the drawing to Benozzo. 51. In the workshop of Raphael in Rome, assistants on fresco cycles did produce both drawings and related segments of paintings, which might encourage such a proposal in this earlier case. However, with Raphael this is in the context of undertaking many simultaneous jobs. Angelico, quite
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the opposite, had nothing else to do in Orvieto. He was fifty or less, undertook fairly long journeys to Orvieto, and at the same period produced four fresco projects in Rome promptly, all circumstances suggesting that his health was good. 52. Degenhart and Schmitt, 1:2, no. 398. 53. Florence, Museo di San Marco, 105 × 210 cm. Its unique shape is explained below. 54. See note 22 above. Angelico may have known just one frescoed Last Judgment of the fifteenth century, the one already mentioned in San Gimignano, doubtfully dated 1413 and attributed to Taddeo di Bartolo. 55. Brenk provides a thorough survey from the earliest images to the twelfth century. Regrettably there is nothing similar for the subsequent period. Mâle, Religious Art, 365–89, presents an excellent survey for France in the thirteenth century. 56. Most of the figures emerge from tombs, but the very tiniest emerge directly from the earth. The mix of two arrangements seems to be unique, absent even from the closely derived Last Judgment at Viboldone; it may have added to the physicality and claims to reality in Giotto’s work, and perhaps also have made maximum use of the squeezed space for expressive goals. Later images, including Signorelli’s, dropped the formula with tombs to show all the souls issuing from the earth, but it seems unlikely that they were influenced by Giotto, whose figures of this kind seem to have
been ignored in the modern scholarly literature too. 57. “Heaven passed away as a scroll that is rolled up” (Revelation 6:14). A much earlier example is in Herrad of Landsberg’s Hortus Deliciarum of circa 1180 (edition of 1977, plate 68), where it is in an otherwise standard Last Judgment. In Giotto this is one of several isolated cases where a motif from Revelation is seen in a schema otherwise entirely based on Matthew and Corinthians, the usual texts. Mâle (Religious Art, 356–64) accurately observed that the textual reference used for the Last Judgment made a major shift from Revelation to Matthew and Corinthians around 1200. The recurrent references of our own age to the later imagery as “apocalyptic” appear to reflect a generalized “new age” fascination with such texts that at times blanks out the absence of any specific motifs from that source in the works. 58. While the chapel recalls the one in Orvieto in its position and in being much bigger than the church’s other chapels (except the one matching it in the other transept), it should be stipulated that the church in Florence, unlike Orvieto, does have a normal transept also, beyond which the chapel simply extends the structure still further outward. There is no fusion here of transept and chapel functions like that seen in Orvieto. 59. The use of three walls has a partial precedent before Nardo in the Baptistery of Florence (as well as at Viboldone, near Milan, certainly unknown to Signorelli). The Last Judgment in the dome of the Baptistery occupies three segments
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of its octagonal structure, and that pattern might well have inspired Nardo. The center segment in the Baptistery too shows Christ judging and the tombs below, while the two sides are devoted to the saved and the damned. However, the shift from wall to wall is not a right angle, as in the later chapels. It is of just forty-five degrees, and visually may hardly be noticed because we view the mosaics from far below. We are not inside the angled space and do not need to turn our heads. Hence it is not surprising that the segments have never been given separate titles. The dome mosaics, unlike almost all other work of their era, continued to be admired even in Angelico’s time, making the influence suggested plausible. The fifteenth-century comment by Corella is most accessible in Gilbert 1988, 176. 60. San Juan, 236–37; her study is a rare case of attention to Nardo’s work as a model for any motif in Orvieto. 61. Villani, 450. On the date 1395, see Meiss, in Brieger et al., 1:40 n. 31. For a different approach, see Elliott. Meiss, 80, cites Villani’s remarks on Dante’s reports of the afterworld being viewed as true and as aided by the Holy Spirit. 62. Early examples survive in England, circa 1250, where the artist W. de Brailes also included his signature nearby (Alexander, fig. 238), and in Germany, where the master carries his chisel as he issues from his tomb (Gerstenberg, 37). I am indebted to Walter Cahn for both citations. In the sculptured Last Judgment on the façade
at Orvieto, a man in unusual modern costume with a T-square appears among the saved, and it is generally and reasonably accepted that he too is the artist, the head master Maitani. Two younger men in modern dress with him may be his assistants (Middeldorf Kosegarten, frontispiece). Signorelli’s reflection of this formula will be discussed later. 63. A motif unique in Last Judgments is the presence among the little square tombs of a single grand sarcophagus in the center, the identity of which seems not to have been discussed. It may well be the tomb from which Christ rose at the Resurrection. Angelico showed that in his fresco of the Resurrection at San Marco, cell 8. 64. Gatti Perer’s survey of images of the Heavenly Jerusalem clarifies its rather rare application to Last Judgments, 135–36, naming Angelico’s as the latest. 65. Danielou thoroughly surveys the texts of the Greek writers. For the anthem, see Sicard, 135. 66. Lehmann-Brockhaus, 395–97, notes that the work has no analogies in style in its region and plausibly links it to artists of the Marches and Umbria, notably Ottaviano Nelli. Heaven includes the obsolescent three patriarchs with souls in their laps, as in the Florence Baptistery and the Last Judgment of the Abbey of Pomposa, circa 1350; the author notes other cases in the Abruzzi. The bridge over which souls enter the garden points to use of the twelfth-century monk Albericus’s vision of the underworld (summarized by LeGoff, 188) as the textual source. It makes another rare
appearance in a manuscript in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1221, folio 153r, reproduced by Kren, fig. 143. See also Chapter 4, note 25. 67. The commentary by the Greek father Theodoret, circa 400, on Paul’s ascent to the third heaven (Migne, Patrologia Graeca 82: col. 448), reports dancing souls. Supino 1909, 81–82, cites the hymn; I am indebted to Alfred Torisano for a fuller account of it (Gilbert 2000). 68. Studies of the fresco in the Spanish chapel have assigned the garden a status as preparatory to heaven (Offner and Steinweg, 38) or as the earthly paradise at the top of the mount of Purgatory (Polzer, 263–68), not as itself a part of heaven. These did not take into account the similar imagery in Angelico and in the Abruzzi. In all three cases the figures are enjoying the garden, not seeking to leave it for the heavenly city. The idea of the two parts of heaven, with its early textual basis, seen in the two Last Judgment images, might well have been borrowed in the Spanish chapel for the theme newly created there. 69. Florence, Museo di San Marco, a segment of the silver cupboard door; Baldini, cat. 116. 70. Baldini, cat. 111; 101 × 117 cm. 71. Berenson, 2:48. 72. The strict frontal portrait is contrary to the well-known monopoly of profiles in painted Florentine portraits of this date, yet it recurs twice in other portrait drawings by Benozzo. These are both of small children (Degenhart
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and Schmitt, cat. 400, 427, Uffizi 101 and 20) and so might well have been subjects connected personally with the artist, as Fra Angelico also was. 73. It is sixth in chronological order in a survey of self-portraits from the fourteenth century on (Masciotta). The earlier ones consist of two doubtful cases, by Taddeo di Bartolo and Masaccio, Ghiberti’s two bronze self-portraits, and one by Fra Filippo Lippi that remained idiosyncratic. Benozzo shows for the first time among surviving works a formula that later becomes standard, where the artist is at the outer edge of a crowd of onlookers in a large scene. Raphael’s School of Athens offers a classic later example. In Orvieto, Signorelli’s self-portrait with Angelico (Fig. 28) belongs to this type, allowing the hypothesis that the gavantone by Angelico might already have used it. In that case it would have been the model for Benozzo, as other motifs in Angelico’s chapel design have proved to be. Angelico in turn could easily have received a suggestion for it in Orvieto, from the self-portrait by Maitani in the sculptured Last Judgment there. Maitani too stands at the edge of a crowd near the frame. 74. See note 60 and related text above. 75. Dacos, in Testa 1996, 227 n. 9. 76. Baldini, cat. 110, 56 × 74 cm. 77. A. Henry, 113–24. 78. Andreani, 425, docs. 69–71. 79. Andreani, 426, docs. 77–89. 80. Andreani, 427, docs. 90–99.
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81. The corresponding English word “flourish,” however, has this as a secondary meaning in English dictionaries. Rifiorire, meaning “to restore” a painting (Tommaseo, sense 9), does not involve flowers and probably should not be linked. The word is exemplified in Rubinstein, 66 n. 66. 82. Payments in December for “making the scaffolding” (Andreani, 427, docs. 77–78) refer to labor for three days and to twelve beams. 83. Andreani, 427, docs. 96–97, 100. 84. The board “at present has reduced income and alms and cannot meet the expenses of Master Giovanni who began to paint” (Andreani, 427, doc. 100). 85. Andreani, 427, docs. 101, 103. 86. Andreani, 428, doc. 107. 87. Andreani, 429, doc. 143; Testa, “La cappellina,” in Testa 1996, 269–71. A signed painting by the master Pietro, originally in Perugia, is in the museum of Kiev (Testa 1996, 273 n. 19), and several other works have recently been attributed to him. 88. The use of the term to specify how to depict Christ, “ad modum Pietatis,” strongly suggests that a known formula was being invoked. Christ is shown standing in the tomb. That this is what “modum Pietatis” meant is supported by the use of the similar term “figura Pietatis in sepulcro” in the document of commission for a work in Bologna, of almost the same date, 1469, which shows this same motif (Bottari, 93). Today the term ‘Pietà” evokes the quite different arrangement by Michelangelo
in his Pietà in Saint Peter’s, Rome. The document ordering that work calls for “una Pietà . . . cioè una Vergine Maria vestita, con Cristo morto in braccio.” Study is needed to show whether the term had changed meaning by 1498, the year of Michelangelo’s work, or whether both terms were in use simultaneously (see Michelangelo 1875, 613). 89. Andreani, 431, doc. 181. 90. Rossi, 290–92, a document that is not included in more recent publications of the Orvieto records. Chapter 3 1. In France, the home of feudalism, the entrance doors of cathedrals are often found adorned with Last Judgments, which might fit such a reading. On them, see Sauerländer, 26–28. The schema in these seems to have in common with the Italian mural images an ultimate source in Byzantium. Variants in France from that source do not seem to have been widely influential in Italy. See also Chapter 2 note 55. 2. Money offerings received from the faithful by the clergy in the Baptistery were then deposited with a special committee of a guild of merchants, who were skilled in finance and by this civic service gained a proud public status with a benevolent quality. It was the guild that made decisions about hiring artists and others (Paolucci, 281). The situation in Orvieto was rather similar. 3. This survey is selective and omits some large murals. Among these are the relatively remote one at Santa Maria Donna Regina, Naples, about 1320, and the frag-
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mentarily preserved murals at Santa Cecilia, Rome, by Cavallini, and Santa Croce, Florence, by Orcagna. The one at San Gimignano of about 1413, often attributed to Taddeo di Bartolo, follows Nardo’s design in general. Some variants in it will be noted. 4. Text in Belcari, 119–24. It was reported in 1472 that this play was performed annually (Newbegin, 30). 5. O’Malley, 68. Coulton, 39, reports a quite similar list required as the topics for sermons in England around 1300. 6. Gilbert 1992, 24. 7. Andreani, 429, doc. 126. 8. Andreani, 430, doc. 160. 9. Andreani, 431, doc. 177. 10. Andreani, 431, doc. 179. 11. Andreani, 431, doc. 181. 12. Andreani, 433, doc. 211. 13. Andreani, 431, doc. 181. 14. Canuti, 2:239, on Chigi; and 2:208–36, on Isabella. 15. Andreani, 431, doc. 183. 16. Andreani, 433, doc. 205. The existence of this letter is known only from the record of the messenger’s fee. 17. Fumi, Duomo, 396. 18. Andreani, 431, doc. 181. 19. A Florentine patron of this time lists works in his collection identified by artist’s name only (Gilbert 1988, 134–35). Three letters in 1480 allude to damage in a room in the ducal palace of Mantua identified only as “la sala del Pisanello.” In the 1960s this clue led to the rediscovery there of Pisanello’s frescoes, a spectacular find that was slow in coming because no one knew the room was there; see Paccaganini.
20. Perali, 120–23, also for the events discussed below. Sansovino, 58–65, is helpful on the family. 21. Perali, 128. On the abbey, see, further, Fiocca and Libera. 22. Perali, 128. 23. Monaldeschi, 137v. Monaldeschi is notoriously unreliable, and Perali, who is sounder, makes the pope the godfather of Gentile himself, not of his son (128). However, the pope (b. 1417) was of the same age-group as Gentile (coruler from 1437) and probably younger, so this time Monaldeschi’s version is preferable. 24. Among these reasons is the problem that the tomb was created by two second-rank sculptors whose work is difficult to distinguish and the fact that it has been cut in pieces, some of which were taken to the Louvre and the remainder of which are in the grottoes below Saint Peter’s, a site that is not conducive to easy examination. Surveys of sculpture of the period, and a recent monograph on the sculptor Giovanni Dalmata, almost pass over the lunette, the tomb’s largest element. The one full presentation remains Gnoli, 175—despite a remark in 1908 (De Nicola, 338) that the tomb is “the most grandiose work of fifteenth-century sculpture in Rome.” 25. The connection is all the more likely in that the pope’s nephew, Cardinal Marco Barbo, who commissioned the tomb, also held the same abbacy near Orvieto (Gualdo, 249). 26. Draper, 82–85, is helpful on the medals. Both show only the central part of the Judgment schema. The focus of the pope’s
medal is the Christ in a vast court of assisting saints and angels, with the symbols of the Passion. The archbishop’s medal adds, and gives primary attention to, the Raising of the Dead. Much the same applies to the tomb of Cardinal Ammanati, an adopted member of the Piccolomini clan (well reproduced in Courtauld . . . Archives, figs. 24–49). 27. Eubel, 2:260 and 3:323, gives data on Bishop Giorgio and also on his many coadjutors, discussed below. Pope Sixtus’s breve noted above, Chapter 1, note 75, offers indulgences for the Feast of Corpus Christi in Orvieto Cathedral. 28. Litta 9: dispensa 147, 1866. 29. Monaldeschi, 15. Fumi 1877, 42, reports that the people brought in when the bishop was attacked were from Parma. 30. Uginet, 334, points out the lack of kinship between the pope and Cardinal Domenico della Rovere. 31. Fumi, Duomo, 400, doc. 114. The cardinal asserts that he has always shown affection for Orvieto, which makes the city council seem ungrateful if they think of replacing Perugino with anyone else, even if they must wait until the master finishes the cardinal’s job. It seems odd that these remarks did not include mention of any affection toward the bishop, if the latter had indeed been one of his own family. 32. Fumi 1877, 11, 19, 42, 45, 68. 33. Yriarte, 73–76. 34. See Nasalli Rocca. The fresco cycles that Farnese commissioned later, while he was pope, to
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record the glorious history of his family, both in Rome at Palazzo Farnese and at their villa at Caprarola, include events in the life of Bishop Guido. One shows him supervising the building of Orvieto Cathedral (Cheney, 261). 35. Monaldeschi, 139r. 36. Perali, 170, dubs Pope Paul “domicello orvietano,” which one may render as “petty Orvietan lord.” 37. Yriarte, 73, describes Farnese as “long since canon” at the time of the visit. Fumi 1877 speaks of him as having been “archpriest,” as does PiccolominiAdami, 295, adding that Farnese later renounced the office in favor of one Bernardino da Acquapendente. Perali, 170, also refers to his having been archpriest. None cites a source, which would presumably be in cathedral records, but because such a nomination would have been likely the reports are quite believable. 38. Yriarte, 93–94. This was from May 28 to June 5, when the pope was fleeing from French invasion (Pastor, 5:470–71). 39. Pastor, 6:92, describes Cesare’s activities. Fumi 1877, 47, says Farnese began to be rich in 1502. 40. Ricetti 1998, 87, says all of Antonio da San Gallo’s work for the cathedral in 1536–37—projects in the choir, pavement, and roof— were “directly commissioned by the pope,” even though the records of working detail all involve the cathedral committee. He notes that in 1537 the pope gave the committee 300 scudi. Under the preceding pope, Clement VII, the work in the city
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by papal architect Sangallo had involved public works such as the well of Saint Patrick, called “of his holiness” (to be discussed below), and not the cathedral. 41. Andreani, 433–34, doc. 217. 42. Andreani, 433, doc. 214. 43. Andreani, 434, docs. 218–20. 44. The three reports of April 5, 1499, are from a book used to record such matters from 1484 to 1526. The administrator’s personal notes were kept in another series of books, one used from 1484 to 1500 and a new one from 1500 to 1522. The only records not kept in those books were of disbursements, in a file called Camerlenghi. All these are part of a series “almost interrupted from 1321” (Andreani, 416). 45. Crisostimo is known from very small sums paid him per diem for painting in the cathedral from 1493 to 1495 (Fumi, Duomo, 402–4). 46. Corbara is a village some twelve miles southeast of Orvieto. At this period an Imperia da Corbara, presumably a relative of this count, married a Monaldeschi, son of the Achille who will appear in connection with the chapel. 47. Yriarte, 75–76; Fumi 1877, 74, on the unanimous vote; Yriarte, 17, on the breve. 48. Gilbert 1996, 699–704, gives a full if succinct survey. 49. Lorenzo’s big fresco projects were at his villas, at Poggio a Caiano (by Filippino) and at Ospedaletto (by the four painters mentioned). Their virtually total loss has left a skewed sense of his patronage; it appears to have been dominated by single paintings, and
the most famous ones cited, by Botticelli, were not his property. The significance of the omission of Signorelli from the Ospedaletto project is evoked by a memorandum of the time, making that work a base for recommending artists (Gilbert 1988, 161–62). 50. Francesco was assigned the main wall narratives in this chapel, in Sant’ Agostino, Siena, for the Bichi family, and Signorelli was assigned the monochrome lunettes above (Francesco di Giorgio, nos. 95–96). For its altarpiece, Francesco did the main central figure in sculpture, which presumably paid better, and Signorelli did a background for it, the side saints, and the predella. Francesco seems to have let assistants do much of the fresco work, which suggests that he was busy with more significant projects, while Signorelli did his part personally. 51. Filippino temporarily dropped a fresco project in Florence, the Strozzi chapel, for one in Rome. Besides a higher fee, this may well have involved pressure from the Medici in favor of the patron of the work in Rome, an important cardinal. 52. In such a scenario, the Borgia would also have pressed the Abbot at Monteoliveto to release Signorelli. They certainly would have had that power and behavioral tendency. This hypothesis is not something abstract. At other points Alexander VI and Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere (see above, Chapter 3, note 31) brought pressure on the Orvietans to postpone their claims on Perugino and Pinturicchio, thereby leaving them free to work for these prelates (Fumi,
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Duomo, 400, doc. 114, of 1492; 402, doc. 127, of 1493). Chapter 4 1. Andreani, 434, doc. 220. 2. Fumi, Duomo, 230–32, docs. 112, 120, 122, specify that payments for two angels in a standard glass window are “ad rationem figurarum et non ad rationem ystorie”— that is, so much per angel and not per window. 3. Andreani, 434, doc. 223. The record of November 25 also includes the slip of the pen (discussed in Chapter 2, note 31), which states that he had already been hired to finish the chapel. 4. Mancini, 134. 5. Michelangelo 1967, 7: “non riuscendo . . . el suo disegno.” 6. Andreani, 435, doc. 224. 7. Just before these designs, Signorelli executed another low, wide triangle, the one in the inner bay with the symbols of the Passion (Fig. 12, between the tall triangles of the apostles and prophets). Angelico had left a design for it, which Signorelli evidently followed. Angelico had recast the image in a way that suited its special shape. In earlier tradition, the objects are seen in a widely spaced pattern, and one angel held each. Here the large symbols, cross and column, themselves dominate the center, and courts of angels on either side support them. This became a model for the subsequent low, wide triangles of the outer bay, where the chief saints replace the larger symbols, setting up a return to the usual altarpiece scheme. 8. Sciolla, 90–91, discusses the work briefly. Courtauld Institute
Illustration Archives, 2, part 2, 24–49, provides a fine series of detail photographs. 9. Abraham with souls in his bosom appears in another quattrocanto Last Judgment, the fresco at Loreto Aprutino of about 1425. This work, unusual in many ways, will be discussed below. 10. They are here cited from Breviarium, 156–57, with the heading “Litaniae Sanctorum.” 11. Missals print the Kyrie Eleison in full in the text for Holy Saturday. Saint Joseph, not present in 1518, appears among the prophets in 1846. 12. Article “Mourants” in Migne 1846, 15:715. This article also prints the Kyrie. 13. Bernard, 3:388; Breviarium Romanum, Regensburg, 1901, Pars Aestiva, 798. A minutely complex woodcut labeled “the figure of eternal life,” whose upper part is identical with standard Last Judgment images, appears in a Florentine booklet of 1494 (followed by several reprints). A thorough text accompanies it, and tells us that the assisting saints, indistinguishable in the tiny image, are the saints, “patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, virgins and confessors,” and innumerable others. The list matches the vaults precisely. The iconographic literature seems not to have noted this very rare instance of an image supplied with a full text to explain it (accessible in Rosenwald, 50–51, 56–57). This set of saints was evidently quite commonplace, but that is not so for art historians in modern culture. By a familiar syndrome, a difficulty encountered in understanding a detail can, when solved, generate
conviction that it is a central factor in the imagery. It seems more likely that it is a marginal one. 14. Andreani, 435, doc. 226. An argument has been made that the right-hand wall was painted first, on the basis of a line in this document: “Imprimis, that he is obligated to paint the whole chapel on the right side.” Such a clue to the internal chronology would be enticing but surprising, because contracts do not specify in what order parts of a job are to be done. By this reasoning, the artist would presumably have been directed to do next the parts named next, after “imprimis,” but those are the window embrasures and the small internal chapel, an unlikely leap in the former case. What negates the argument is the following clause directing him to paint “the three walls, the two on the sides and the altar wall,” although (if the argument was right) one of those had been done already. The first line quoted calls, rather, for painting the whole chapel on the right side of the church. “Imprimis” signals that this first clause of general import is followed by the others breaking the work into details; as in other documents in this archive, the time value of “first” relates to the parts of the contract, not the sequence of painting. Then, in the first of clauses specifying details, the contract seeks to ensure that the work includes elements that might not strictly be in the chapel: the embrasures and the small chapel; the third clause calls for painting all the chapel walls. This is a normal legal document, without the kind of reference that would be so much more interesting to us. It
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certainly could be objected that a previous paragraph in this document mentions the chapel as on the left side of the church. One should indeed expect consistency within the same document, even though it is known that in churches left and right were ambiguous, depending on the viewpoint—from the altar for the clergy, but from the door for the public. However, this text switches between two languages, and the location of the chapel is at the left in the Latin section, and at the right in the Italian part. The Latin part consists of the minutes of the committee meeting, which then incorporated a full copy of the contract in Italian that had previously been given to the artist. Thus there are two documents, with different contexts. I am indebted to Dario Covi for discussing these points. 15. The word “elevando” has sometimes been read to mean that the statue was to be removed, but it can also mean “lifted up.” The meaning “lifted” in this case is certain because of the second document that pays a master two and a half lire for the procedure (Andreani, 436, doc. 237). A master is too skilled a person to be brought in merely for removal, and the fee is much too high for such a task. Dismantling an entire scaffolding cost less than one lira at the time (doc. 238). The “lifting” presumably required building a new base. 16. The only records of payment to Signorelli under his second contract—the one for the whole chapel—are, with one exception, in the administrators’
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annual summary reports, usually submitted in June when their terms ended (Andreani, 436–38, docs. 233, 246, 247, 253, 263). They show the total paid him in the year then ending, noted in some cases as having been in installments. The exception is the final payment for the balance due (residuum) on December 5, 1504, so the work had been finished, but how much earlier? The committee could be a slow payer; it finished paying for the vaults, done under the first contract, only after the second contract had been signed. One must give up hope of being able to deduce exactly when the artist moved from scene to scene. The contract contains provisions to pay him as he proceeded, but such payments, if made, are not in this record. For the date of completion, the best evidence is the dunning letter to the town council of April 14, 1504, from the Duke of Urbino (Andreani, 438, doc. 254), urging that Signorelli be paid for the “balance of the work done” (resto dell’opera fatta). If we may assume Signorelli had tried milder appeals before turning to this powerful figure in Rome, and that the latter arrangement took some working out, we are taken back at least to February, and thence to the cold season, when fresco work was not usually done. (The first contract provided for work in the summer and “as long as can be painted”; Andreani, 434, doc. 220.) Thus, completion would have been in autumn 1503. It has been argued, on the other side, that the duke was seeking payment only for what had already been done, which need not have been the
whole. However, a plea to pay an installment due while work was ongoing does not seem to match the term “balance” (resto, the remainder). Further, in June 1504 Signorelli did a quite separate job for the committee, to be discussed below, and in December 1504 he received the small fee of 19 florins in some—not fully clear—connection with it, just when he was also at last getting his final pay for the chapel (Andreani, 438, doc. 257bis, 262). It would seem normal for him to have taken on this other job when the main one had been completed and payment was being awaited. It would seem less so if the larger job was still in process, for then completion of the latter would be further put off, along with the bigger fee for it. 17. Bertorello, in Testa 1996, 331, 333, urges caution on many points because of the limited evidence, but he is firm that the Blessed scene was done before the Antichrist scene. 18. This central window was built only in 1447, simultaneous with the project for Angelico’s work (Andreani, 424, doc. 36). Quite likely the thought was to make the painting more visible (Davanzo and Marchetti, in Testa 1996, 28). The position of the Blessing Christ makes clear that Angelico was taking the window into account in his plan. 19. Testa 1996, 44. 20. The recent restoration has had its most splendid result in a newly recovered figure in this area, exactly in the center of the wall. The proposal to call the figure Cain goes too far and, in my opinion, lacks any firm basis. A
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damned soul is seen biting its own hand, and another figure may be standing over it. The very same formulation is found twice among the damned at Josaphat, where figures are caught in the flames. This new figure would be another of the same category. The diagonal division on the altar wall was noted above, between the rising saved and the descending damned. The rise begins narrowly at the base and widens toward Christ, thus including both the bishop saints in the central window embrasures. The descending damned take wider space toward the bottom, extending at the base beyond the center toward our left. The new figure is in that area, and for that reason too seems to be one of the army of the damned. 21. Andreani, 424, doc. 35; 426, doc. 68. 22. The Book of Enoch is available in English translations in Charles 1913 (these lines at pp. 211–12), the standard edition, and more accessibly in Reddish, 168. Charles (1912, ix) reports its disappearance until the eighteenth century, and the shift to the name Uriel; he judges its importance in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, article “Enoch.” Lapide 1621, 958, cites the Mass naming the four angels, and Hamilton, 35, speaks of Pico’s interest. Signorelli’s three standard angels do not follow Enoch’s descriptions of them at all; the presumption would be that he made use of the text only for the new figure that lacked any established type. 23. Bynum, 255. Saint Ambrose, who is pictured in the vault above, said everyone should
enter heaven without clothing, as a token of virtuous purity (Migne 1857–66, 14:522). 24. Mariani Canova, Ms. 3, 69–67, fig. Ms. 3c. 25. Harthan, plate 147. This miniature is also tiny, on a page 4 3/8 by 3 inches. See also Chapter 2, note 66. 26. Tolnay, fig. 274. This 15inch-high woodcut is exceptionally ambitious, and it was circulated in several states. Because of this, and because it is Italian and multiple, Signorelli could well have known it. The loincloths of the nudes are treated much like his. Yet its uncertain date may mean that it follows Signorelli, whose Orvieto mural cycle inspired other artists, as will be discussed. 27. Yriarte, 74; Paschini, 18, 43; Perali, 129. 28. In anticipation of his own death in 1996, Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago discussed “the world to come” in an interview. Asked whether he thought he would be reunited with friends, he replied: “I do. I’ve always believed that, and that is part of our tradition” (New York Times Magazine, December 1, 1996, 114). 29. McDannell and Lang, 60, 64, 124, 132, 144. 30. Zeri, 20–21, proposes the identifications as Augustine and his mother. His bibliography includes that of the other version in Siena. 31. A clue to the background of Giovanni’s unusual motif can perhaps be seen in nearby San Gimignano, where Enoch and Elijah play a similar role in the Last Judgment of circa 1413, mentioned at various points. However,
in other respects the San Gimignano fresco is standard. 32. The flames at the corner make it clear that hell is the next stage after what we see here; the souls are driven toward the flames. Yet this scene is popularly labeled “Hell,” evidently because Signorelli never shows hell itself, contrary to our expectations, and because this scene is so violent. 33. Meiss, 176, makes the comparison and discusses Tundal. 34. Bober and Rubinstein, 144. 35. Bober and Rubinstein, 188; Draper, 133–45. 36. In this area of study, it is a curiosity that Signorelli’s frescoes are often said to represent the Apocalypse and related literature, usually in popular contexts. Thus a reviewer in passing alludes to the “frescoes through which Signorelli had expressed the deeds of Antichrist,” extrapolating from one segment to the whole cycle (Ateneo Veneto, 32 [1994], 181), and a bookseller promotes an illustrated book on the cycle by saying that it is “based on the book of Revelation.” Revelation in fact only glances briefly at the end of the world and the Last Judgment (20:12–13), contrary to the general perception. The Gospel of Matthew and the First Letter to the Corinthians are the basis for ideas about the Last Judgment, in the standard tradition used by Signorelli. The Apocalypse follows its account of the destruction of satanic power by peace in the world, not by the end of the world. The blurred impression seems to be based in part on phrases repeated from Matthew in Revelation (6:12–13), partly on the
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story of the preaching of Antichrist (not in Revelation at all but indirectly linked to it) and partly on the excited stress seen in Signorelli, which is easy to associate with any fascination over “end times.” 37. Weinstein, 88–104. 38. Supino 1938, 1:180–84. Frati, 214–16, publishes the instructions in full. Later in Bologna, in 1490, Costa’s Triumph of Death can be linked to this formula. 39. Well reproduced by Cavendish. It is not really surprising that this author labels the image a Last Judgment. 40. Clark, 22. In Florence in 1499 Fra Bartolommeo was commissioned to fresco a Last Judgment with donor portraits over a tomb in a cemetery and to base it on Luke 21:25–33, “the gospel read on the first Sunday in Advent” (Borgo, 478). These verses, about the five signs preceding the Judgment, are discussed in the next chapter. 41. Harthan, 29. 42. Andreani, 435, doc. 226. 43. Dacos, in Testa 1996, 223–31. 44. A little-noted row of notable clerics fills the lower frames of frescoes of the Lorenzetti school, circa 1339, at Santa Maria dei Servi, Siena. See Kaftal, cols. 144, 417, 536, 796, 837, 848. Still earlier, about 1250, in a chapel in Santi Quattro Coronati, Rome, a row of prophets’ heads in circular frames runs under an abbreviated Last Judgment fresco (Paeseler, 363, fig. 297). 45. Some have thought that the puzzle of the presence of Giotto,
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Dante, and Petrarch in Gozzoli’s row of heads might be explained through Dante’s being a member of the third order of Saint Francis. This account is first recorded, faintly, in the later fifteenth century (Moorman, 223–24). It could not apply to Petrarch, who was in clerical orders. 46. Andreani, 445, docs. 384 and 386, on the benches installed in 1740; doc. 362, on the new altar in 1715; Barroero, n. 35, on the tomb of 1717. 47. Fumi, Duomo, 377, reports the removal in 1845. Luzi, 167–94, reasonably began with the firm identity of Dante and the status of other laureled figures as poets. Seeking to identify them, he turned to Dante’s list of the four greatest poets in Inferno 4 and assigned those names and Virgil’s to five portraits on the wainscots, in most cases with no explanation of how he decided which portrait got which name. This left him shy one name for the seventh and last portrait still visible in his time (he disregarded the two already destroyed). Having left the one on the entrance wall unassigned, Luzi called this figure Empedocles, because among a list of twenty more good poets in the same passage in Dante, Empedocles was the one who “expected the world to return to chaos,” the situation shown above this head. Luzi was certainly affected by the intense Dante revival of the Risorgimento, to find in his verses all kinds of answers. Some have suggested that an oral tradition was behind Luzi’s identifications, but the invisibility of the heads for an entire century, up to 1845, and his own statement
that the names are “my conjecture” (167), makes that most unlikely. His identifications remained unchecked and nearly unchallenged for almost a century, partly because no other names were conspicuously offered with better evidence, and partly because it was handy to have any names at all. 48. The first person to describe the chapel—Clementini, in 1714— had already realized that this was Virgil (457), and so did Perali (153), rejecting the usual label as Horace, but they were overlooked. Several others since have also made the same correct inference independently and are sometimes credited as its discoverers. 49. It was again Clementini in 1714 who first named Claudian (457). 50. This material, previously scattered in many publications, has been well assembled by Donato, 27–42. 51. Castelli, 219. 52. Testa 1996, 44, for the first time presents a drawing that clarifies the original layout on the altar wall. 53. Gerolamo Curzio Clementini (1658–1716, resident in Orvieto from 1680) has already been mentioned for details from his text. 54. In Chapter 2, notes 61 and 62 and related text. 55. Freyhan, 68. 56. The imagery of vices is far less stable in tradition than that of virtues. Envy is involved with biting and being bitten in Ripa, 360–61, who generally is a compiler of earlier motifs. For Envy to bite her own hand as here may be
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a condensed form of such variables. Envy is made to be the opposite of Charity by Giotto in 1305, in the Arena Chapel, as well as by Dante, and later in a set of engravings of 1499 reproduced by Mâle 1922, 339. 57. See the corpus of Dante illustrations in Brieger et al., 2 (“Illustrations”): 348–51. 58. Clementini, in Testa 1996, 458. 59. This culture never seems to show Faith without a chalice, or any other figure with one. Her laurel here seems unique. In this wainscot the many laurels always indicate poets (including those worn by Virgil in the adjacent monochromes of Purgatorio). It is possible that Faith gets the laurel here because she appears as a singer in her only appearance in the Divine Comedy (Purgatorio 29.128). The two other virtues also sing there, but Signorelli’s images of them are tied to their other, nonsinging appearances. 60. Gilbert 1986, 109–24. 61. The fact that Signorelli shows Charity with a corresponding vice, but none with Hope or Faith, matches the way they are treated in the text of the Comedy. This suggests close attention by the planner here along the lines proposed above. 62. An example in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., is reproduced in Studies in the History of Art 22 (1989), 185. 63. The ermine on a banner is especially common in illustrations of the Triumph of Chastity, the first of Petrarch’s Triumphs. 64. Clementini, in Testa 1996, 457. Boccaccio’s Genealogy of the
Gods, the standard source for classical myth in Signorelli’s time, on an opening page (6r) quotes Statius (Thebaid 4.503–17) apropos descents to the underworld. 65. Andreani, 457 n. 16, points out the error and its correction. Perhaps it arose if the writer, aware that Statius had reported on the underworld somewhere in his poem, did not have access to a copy of the poem. Asking for help, he might have obtained a wrong citation, perhaps because his request had been too vague, and elicited an answer not related to his specific concern with the poet’s vision of combat. This would explain his similar, puzzling error of identifying the Salutati portrait as of Roberto de’ Bardi, never accepted thereafter. Bardi was a minor scholastic professor whose collection of Augustine’s sermons was his sole work. The one biography of him, twenty lines in Filippo Villani’s group biography of Florentines, circa 1395, is repeated by Clementini here almost verbatim, and Landino had also repeated it in the introduction to his commentary on Dante’s Divine Comedy (Testa and Davanzo, in Testa 1996, 41). Clementini was not familiar with Dante, as evidenced by his failure to recognize any of the Purgatorio scenes, so his source was presumably Villani. Villani’s account of Florentine poets (also including Dante and Claudian, discussed earlier) was unpublished in Clementini’s time but may have been gaining attention, as it was printed not long afterward. The remarkable coincidence is that Villani’s material on Bardi immediately fol-
lows the longer biography of Coluccio Salutati on the very same page. The unique and unconvincing proposal that Bardi was the subject of the portrait is more acceptable if it could be a slip for the nearby Salutati—the correct name, whose proximity cannot be an accident. Clementini might have provided the person helping him with the page number. That would be a reasonable explanation for the emergence of Bardi. In this case, it would follow that Salutati’s identity would still have been in memory in 1700, yet the peculiar emergence of Bardi might still seem unlikely even with this explanation, if not for its consistency with the nearby mistaken choice of a Statius text. 66. Chastel, 275. 67. Lisner, 308. In other cases the centaurs defeated by Hercules are interpreted as tyranny, and Lust defeated by him is symbolized by the hydra. 68. Lisner, 299–344. The early lives of Michelangelo consistently report this anecdote, of Poliziano’s guidance in proposing and explaining the story of the lustful centaurs being defeated. It is a rare, clear case of a humanist providing an artist with a text for a work that has a moral charge. (The fact that the artist was very young may have played a part in this happening.) The Orvieto wainscots suggest a similar circumstance. The ambiguity about the specific theme of the Michelangelo relief does not need to be discussed here. 69. Pollaiuolo’s engraving of the Battle of Ten Nudes and other instances were mentioned earlier. An appropriate example is one that
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is exceptionally classical in style among the relief sculptures of the fourteenth century on the façade of Orvieto Cathedral. This is Cain killing Abel where both are nude, although both are clothed in the adjacent scene of their sacrifice. The change can be explained only by the fact that a fight scene calls for nudity. 70. Apollodorus, Bibliotheke, 2.7.2–3; Plutarch, Roman Questions, 90. 71. When Clementini reported this vertical set of three monochromes, he correctly noted that Hercules was the hero of the top one. For the bottom one, he also offered an identity with a Hercules story—wrongly, as will soon appear. (As this idea of his emerged only when his text was published in 1996, it could not usefully influence previous writers’ opinions about the middle story.) It was therefore natural in him to be sure the middle story concerned Hercules too, even though the usual sources failed to offer any such possibility. Searching further, Clementini would find the obscure Oionos story, derived from Apollodorus, in the mythological handbook of Cartari, which had been widely circulated but published only in 1555, long after the Orvieto work. By a normal pattern, his difficulty in finding any title would all the more persuade him that the only one he did find was correct, regardless of its weak match, once he was certain that this must be a Hercules story. 72. The romance exists in two versions: in French by Benôit de Saint Maure and in Italian by Guido delle Colonne. Illustrated manuscripts of the former show
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this episode, as I am kindly informed by Dr. Imogene De Smet, citing Vatican Regina Latina 1501. 73. Biagi, 1:150. 74. In this case the other two male sinners briefly named by Dante in the circle of lust, Paris and Tristan, would presumably be the two men shown tortured by devils, along with one woman, in the topmost monochrome of this group, discussed earlier. It is striking that Signorelli thus seems to account for all three male lustful sinners named by Dante, but only one of the five women (again apart from the separate treatment of Paolo and Francesca). It may be, however, that in an early plan another theme for this rectangular monochrome was considered, with the story of one of the five women, Dido, rather than Achilles. Dante condemns her (5.61–62) as the one “who killed herself for love, and broke faith with the ashes of” her late husband, in this way departing from the usual positive view of her. A splendid drawing by Signorelli (Uffizi 130 F) shows a woman collapsing after stabbing herself, assisted by two other grieving women. The literature invariably identifies this as the death of Lucretia, who, however, was always shown assisted by men, consistent with the literary sources (see Chapter 5). When Dido kills herself, on the other hand, “her handmaids see her fallen on the weapon” (Aeneid 4.662–63). The drawing differs from that description only in that she falls away from the cut. Dido, like Achilles, let lust overcome reason. The
verso of this drawing is always called Apollo Playing a violin, but an identity as Orpheus would be equally reasonable. If so, this would recall how he is seen playing on the adjacent wainscot in Orvieto. 75. Colonne, 429. The strange central motif of the victim’s mouth pried open, in Signorelli’s monochrome, recurs in a woodcut of 1510 by Hans Burgkmair, of “Death Killing a Lover.” 76. Clementini, 457. 77. See note 71. 78. Lee, 302–19. The author credits earlier scholarship on the literary use of the motif. 79. Liebeschutz; Lisner, fig. 23, reproduces this illustration more accessibly. The provenance of the manuscript, as is common, is not known. 80. More may have been planned at an early stage. Vivid evidence is a Signorelli drawing in London (Popham and Pouncey, cat. 241, plate ) showing the scene from Inferno 28, Count Ugolino, who ate his sons. The verso shows a circle filled with rough figures, matching the unusual framing scheme of the monochromes. Nardo’s fresco cycle is the only Last Judgment that includes a complete survey of Dante’s Inferno, and it has a different organization. Using the Ugolino scene in the Orvieto wainscot would have involved a design so different that it does not seem possible even to speculate about it. It is possible, although unlikely, that the Ugolino drawing is not related to Orvieto. 81. The idea of Pegasus as symbol of poetry, which is common
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today, has been said to have been worked out first in 1495, in the Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo (see article “Pegasus,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 1909), but efforts to find it in that text have not succeeded. This might have stimulated Signorelli’s unusual inclusion of the horse in his monochrome, which concerns a poetic story of virtue. 82. Entry “Landino,” Enciclopedia dantesca, 1971, 2:566–68. 83. Trinkaus, 2:713–14. 84. Divina Commedia, ed. Landino, fol. 55v. Lisner, 310, called attention to this passage, omitted from the condensed version of Landino’s text in Biagi’s standard publication of Dante commentaries. 85. Furthermore, the proposal about the bishop does not note the exclusion of bishops over the centuries from decisions about work in the cathedral, or this bishop’s exile. The label offered for Alberi, “the leading humanist in Orvieto,” seems to be without basis on two counts. He did not live in the town, and there is not anything to show he was a humanist, although some friends of his were. His library, to judge from the portraits in it (Gilbert, in Testa 1996, 307–20), included oratory and poetry but also civil and canon law (the area of his education), grammar, astronomy, and medicine. In terms of the categories offered by Petrucci, 209–18, in his standard study of reading in the period, this library was of the “scholastic” rather than the “humanist” kind. To call him a humanist may only reflect a casual use of the term for bookish people of this era. On Alberi, see, further, Fagliari Zeni
Buchicchio, in Testa 1996, 460–66. 86. Fumi, editor’s note in Tommaso di Silvestro, 23 n. 4. On Laetus, see Jacks. 87. Panvinius, 367. This life first appeared in 1551 as part of a supplement to Platina’s lives of earlier popes. 88. Pesenti, 291. 89. Frugoni, passim. 90. Fumi, Orvieto, 69. 91. Fabroni, 1:191, 2:376–77. 92. Fumi, Orvieto, 69. 93. Vasari 1878, 3:689. 94. Kury, 349. 95. Mancini, 67. 96. Kury, 348, 351. 97. Chastel, 230, reasonably calls the Pan “the most complete visual realization of the ties” between the Medici and their Neo-Platonist philosopher Ficino. Its specific iconography has most recently been explored by Gilbert 2000. It seems suitable to underline that Lorenzo, contrary to popular tradition, did not give many commissions to painters and that the famous Botticelli mythologies belonged to his cousins. His major patronage was for frescoes in his country villas at Ospedaletto (now lost) and Poggio a Caiano (begun only at his death). These would be not so conspicuous to a visitor like Farnese. 98. (A) One is in the De Cardinalatu of Paolo Cortesi, the writer already mentioned (above, in text related to note 92) as a correspondent of the young Farnese and as having taken a Farnese villa as the setting for a dialogue. When Cortesi wrote the later book, he inevitably would have had Cardinal Farnese in mind as much as
any other cardinal, and perhaps more. The book hardly mentions artists, so when Signorelli’s name comes up it seems forced. While speaking of the rule against working on Sunday, Cortesi suggests that a pope might make an exemption to that rule if Signorelli was commissioned, and then he praises the artist (Weil-Garris and D’Amico, 39). This mention of Signorelli, shoe-horned into the text, was surely designed to get the artist some work at a time when he had little. There is no known or presumed link between Cortesi and Signorelli, but Cortesi’s surprising and unsolicited mention of the artist’s skill would be understandable if it reflected similar concern by an old friend like Farnese. This seems to be the only available explanation, even if it is only speculative, for the allusion to the artist. The other case is more direct: (B) A letter of 1585 from the Farnese family’s librarian, Orsini, responds to an inquiry seeking portraits of the Greek scholar Gaza. Orsini recalls, under this stimulus, how one of Paul III’s grandsons, Cardinal Sant’Angelo, spoke of his grandfather’s having shown him in the Sistine Chapel “one of those big paintings by the hand of il Cortone”—that is, Signorelli (Nolhac, 11). The incident would have occurred about 1545–50, to judge from Paul’s life dates and Sant’Angelo’s title. What is remarkable is Paul’s citing the artist by name sixty years after the fact, when that work of his was no longer much remembered; he must have had a particular interest in Signorelli, thus
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reinforcing the suggestion about (A) above. Memory of Signorelli’s Sistine fresco at that time may also be evidenced in a borrowing of a motif from it by Bronzino in a work of 1541–42 (Cox-Rearick, 60). 99. This general cultural pattern, making epic poetry serve Christianity even if pagan, is exemplified in a little book printed at least seven times between 1490 and 1500 but hardly noted in recent study. That book, the Opusculum perelegans of Antonio Mancinelli (1452–1506), consists solely of quoted passages from Cicero, Juvenal, Ovid, Virgil, and others less often cited, all presented as evidence that the writers were arguing in favor of such doctrines as One God, the Virgin Birth, and numerous other Christian articles of faith. 100. The standard Last Judgments do not refer to purgatory at all, for the good theological reason that it must cease to exist on Judgment Day, when all souls are either definitely saved or damned. The standard composition of the scene had also gained a fixed form before the theory of purgatory became popular about 1200. The literature thus, reasonably, does not note its absence, but that may have had a disadvantage in that no one has noted the oddity of its appearance in the Orvieto version. It is to be included as part of the general oddity of the wainscot poetry: the introduction of outside reports about the underworld. Separately, quite varied visual treatments of purgatory not hitherto assembled appear in this general period in Umbria, more, apparently, than elsewhere. A recently discovered
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fresco of about 1345 in the monastery of San Francesco a Borgo Nuovo, Todi, is inscribed as an image of Saint Patrick’s purgatory, the medieval account of the place that was most popular before Dante’s (Polzer, 264). It shows access downward through a well, while, at the bottom, pits subdivide purgatory by types of sin. This structure is more like Dante’s hell than like his purgatory, which is a mountain to be climbed. Quite nearby in Terni, a three-wall Last Judgment of 1445–51 with Christ on the altar wall shows hell and purgatory on the side walls (most accessibly reproduced by Riess, Antichrist, figs. 35–37). The choice of theme was surely dominated by the patrons’ family name, Paradisi. (The best known analogous case of a theme chosen because of a patron’s name is in Piero di Cosimo’s work for the family called Vespucci, wasps.) The idea offered that the Terni cycle influenced Signorelli failed to take note that the Terni purgatory is also Saint Patrick’s, very different from Dante’s. In Orvieto itself a new water supply system of the 1520s with a very deep well was and is still called Saint Patrick’s Well. Local historians have until quite recently been baffled by the name, an indication that this tradition had been entirely lost. Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, much influenced by Signorelli’s, again omits purgatory (as it does all the earlier artist’s wainscot imagery), and so do all later representations of the subject. 101. Fumi, Orvieto, 69. Chapter 5 1. Andreani, 435, doc. 226.
2. Andreani, 434, doc. 223. 3. Fairweather, 98–99 n. 15, with previous literature. 4. Derolez, 203. 5. Andreani, 435, doc. 226. 6. A visual precedent to some degree appears in the Blessed segment of the Last Judgment at the Cathedral of Chartres, at the far left. 7. Augustine (City of God, book 20), in general the prime text for details of the Last Judgment, following the Gospel’s few words, provides the neatest such text. As part of his concern to show that the Old and New Testaments are consistent on the matter, he first quotes (chapter 23) from the prophet Daniel (12:2): “Many that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Then he quotes from the Gospel of John (5:28): “The hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.” The latter text with graves was dominant, no doubt supported by Augustine’s citation at the beginning of his survey from Isaiah 26:10 (in Augustine’s chapter 21): “The dead shall rise again, and they shall arise again that were in their graves.” On the other hand, a famous verse from Job (19:25), “My redeemer liveth, and on the last day I am to arise out of the earth,” was cited, for instance, in Otto of Freising’s On the Two Cities, a major discussion of this topic (cited by Bynum, 184).
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8. Both the examples encountered are in very famous works, thus more likely than most to be accessibly reproduced in all their parts. Hence the existence of others is likely. (A) The Pericope of Emperor Henry II, 1000–1004, shows the dead summoned from graves, wearing clothes, with trumpeting angels, on folio 201v, and the standard Judgment on folio 202r. The left-right arrangement, matching the time sequence, is reproduced by Boase, 24. (B) The Klosterneuburg altarpiece, 1181. its fifty-one panels form three horizontal series of seventeen each. Of the resulting seventeen vertical sets of three each, the first fifteen each show a Gospel scene in the middle with Old Testament scenes above and below it. Of the other two sets, the last of all shows the Judgment between heaven above and hell below. The penultimate shows, from the top down, Christ’s second coming, four trumpeting angels, and the naked dead rising from graves. This rarely noted scene is reproduced by Belli Barsali, fig. 5. The six scenes are a suggestive precedent for Signorelli in thoughtfully working out assignments of phases of the theme to framed sequences predetermined by the architecture. 9. Both reproduced by Longnon and Cazelles, nos. 29 and 30. The standard Last Judgment is at the head of Psalm 95 and shows the sorting of the naked saved and damned. At the end of the psalm, a miniature shows three naked souls emerging from the earth while, as Signorelli will also show, two angels trumpet above. This miniature has wrongly been said to
belong to the following Psalm 96, but the text is not related, and the spacing on the page also connects it better with the preceding psalm. 10. Meiss, 230–31, discusses the two Adam miniatures and reproduces them as his figs. 558 and 655. He wrongly labels the miniature of the Raising of the Dead as a Last Judgment (also in the caption to fig. 565), an indication of how puzzling its isolation from the main image seems. The fullest account of the 1412 miniature is by Sterling, 68, fig. 104. 11. The marked rarity of Last Judgment images in all illuminated manuscripts of this period, all the more so in the arrangement here observed, tends to support the inference that Signorelli’s model was in this particular context, where it does appear. The most popular type of illuminated manuscript of this century, as is well known, was the Book of Hours, and its imagery shows great variety, yet a study of it (Harthan, 14–19) does not mention that it might include the Last Judgment, even in a survey of the less common options. A helpful check is provided by the catalogue of manuscripts of the Walters Art Gallery (Randall), which indexes every theme shown in its 112 Books of Hours—which are a large sample, and a random one with respect to this matter. Just ten include a Last Judgment, which, however, never accompanies Psalm 94, as it does in the Très Riches Heures, but either the Penitential Psalms, Seven Last Requests, or Office of the Dead. In nine of these the Raising of the Dead is included in the lower area in the usual way, and the abbrevi-
ated tenth one omits it entirely. It is also included in the usual way in the two other Walters manuscripts showing Last Judgments, a City of God and the Breviary of 1412 discussed in the text. The separate scene of the Raising in the Très Riches Heures thus seems most exceptional, and the likeness to Signorelli the more interesting. 12. Bynum, 187 nn. 100, 101. Her survey of skeletons in this scene omits Michelangelo, and one must remain open to the emergence of other earlier examples. Misled perhaps by a poor reproduction in the source she cites, she calls Ghisi’s engraving of 1554 a painting. Nor is it the case that Signorelli’s skeletons are “not naked but in the process of acquiring flesh.” 13. Condivi, 122–23. The same Ezekiel text had earlier been reflected in images of the dead raised, but not as skeletons, linked to Christ’s resurrection, not to the Last Judgment. They seem to disappear after the twelfth century (Schiller, 3:66–68). 14. Testa, “La cappellina,” presents the newly rediscovered fresco of 1468 and its documents, making all previous discussions obsolete. 15. Fruscoloni, 179–82. 16. Natalini, passim. 17. Andreani, 249, doc. 136. 18. Pastor, 6:596. 19. All the above in Stoyanov, 191, 196, 204. 20. Clementini, 456; he also reports that the cult of Parenzo was still active in the seventeenth century, when the town named the saint one of its official protectors. 21. In Filippino Lippi’s fresco of Saint Thomas, in Rome, men-
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tioned earlier, the primary means of identifying as such the heretics the saint refutes is by showing them throwing their books to the ground. Earlier, in the Spanish Chapel at Santa Maria Novella in Florence, in 1365, in the scene of the triumph of the church, one such heretic tears his book. 22. “Furentes armis haereticos repraessit.” 23. The tomb shows a batwinged devil dragging the heretic, who holds his book (and sword), to hell. This motif might explain a Signorelli drawing in the Morgan Library, New York, that is commonly said to relate to the Orvieto project but does not match anything specific in it (repr. Van Cleave, 250, with discussion). It shows four bat-winged demons, one holding up a book and the other three gazing at it. Because the tomb shows a demon whose captive has a book, one might presume for the drawing a moment following, when the demon has appropriated the evil book from his captive and studies it. That would be a variant of the Damned scene. There are other cases of drawings that seem to relate to unused ideas for the chapel. 24. Kristeller 1913, 74–75. Only one copy of each edition survives. That very high rate of loss makes it reasonable to think that other editions have been totally lost. 25. Aichele, 34–35; Bartholommaeis, 1:35–52. The Antichrist section begins (lines 1–36) with the motifs shown by Signorelli: the sun darkens, the moon is bloody, Antichrist is believed, and the fire comes from heaven. The Last Judgment is also treated in the standard
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way: tombs open, bones reassemble, Christ on his throne shows the symbols of the Passion, he sorts the just and the unjust at right and left, they enter heaven and hell. 26. Bisogni, passim. 27. McGinn, 148. 28. Copinger, 2:2, nos. 6380–522. This saturation bears emphasizing, because studies of the culture of the period often fail to consider whether a claimed source was widely known. Thus one recent writer on the chapel discounted the Golden Legend, not noting its print history, while nearby arguing for another source on the ground that it was printed five times in the period, though only once in Italy. (Single printings, like last printings, may connote failure to circulate.) 29. McGinn, 144. 30. Still other cases link Enoch and Elijah tightly to the Last Judgment. The contract to paint a Last Judgment in Florence in 1499, to be executed by Fra Bartolommeo, specifies that it shall include Enoch and Elijah (Borgo, 478). As already noted, the two witnesses had also appeared in the San Gimignano Last Judgment of around 1413. These Last Judgments with the two witnesses do not involve Antichrist at all. Thus, the witnesses’ appearance in Signorelli’s Antichrist scene signals its attachment to the Judgment. 31. Even the two “extended” motifs cited above as not present in the Golden Legend’s chapter on advent are also not present in the biography of Antichrist. In a letter of September 15, 1537, to Michelangelo, the literary man Pietro Aretino urged him to make
the Antichrist a main figure in his Last Judgment, but this idea had no follow-up (Michelangelo, 4:1979, 83). 32. T. Henry, 755. 33. Sprenger, 34. The authors of this famous book, the Malleus Maleficarum, against witches, first issued in 1486, debate this question and decide that comets do foretell deaths in the case of kings but not in the case of other people. (They allude elsewhere [152, 196] to heretics whom they call Cathari and Manicheans.) 34. T. Henry, 755. 35. T. Henry, 755. It has been argued, against this, that the building is not structurally sound and hence not Bramantesque. This seems to ignore Bramante’s reputation for poor engineering, as well as the intervention of a painter’s ideas. Marchetti (in Testa 1996, 155–60) argues that the temple is structurally sound, associating it with another architect, Francesco di Giorgio. 36. Scarpellini, 42, fig. 52. Of 129 reproductions in this monograph, this is one of just four not of works by Signorelli. 37. An association between John the Evangelist and Antichrist was offered in 1450 by Saint Antonino of Florence in his Summa Theologica (4.13, chap. 4, sec. 3). He notes that some early writers say Antichrist killed the Evangelist, as well as Enoch and Elijah. The association might have drawn Signorelli to Filippino’s image. The latter’s fresco cycle includes a standard scene of John’s martyrdom, not by Antichrist. 38. Goldner and Bambach, nos. 99–101, date these drawings about
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1500, even though they are “far removed from the final work” in poses and other ways. Signorelli’s attention to the scene would then be still later. 39. In giving Simon the status of “the first of the heresiarchs,” Augustine (De Haeresis, chap. 1) is among many early Christian writers who so treat him. Lapide (in his notes on Acts 8:9, p. 159) and Stock assemble such comments. 40. In a throwaway line, suggesting its commonness, Augustine (City of God, 20:19) dubs heretics as those whom the evangelist John calls “many Antichrists.” 41. The second figure on the tile is noticeably younger than Signorelli, unlikely for the chamberlain. A plausible hypothesis is that he is an assistant to Signorelli on the project, perhaps the nephew mentioned in 1510 (Andreani, 439, doc. 269). Self-portraits with assisting family members were included in large projects by Ghiberti (Doors of Paradise, Florence Baptistery, with his son Vittorio) and Ghirlandaio (altarpiece of the Hospital of the Innocents, Florence). The “Maitani” figure in the Last Judgment on the Orvieto façade is accompanied by others in this way. In a later Last Judgment, in the dome of Florence Cathedral, Federico Zuccari portrayed himself with artist friends and associates in the work. Zuccari studied Signorelli’s work in Orvieto in preparing his own. A self-portrait on tile by Andrea del Sarto (Uffizi) and another reported by Vasari (1878, 6:546n) were produced in informal situations. 42. See the preceding note and Chapter 2, note 62. It is remark-
able that this long tradition is overlooked in the large literature on Michelangelo’s self-portrait in his Last Judgment. 43. The shift in the two figures of Angelico and Signorelli to modern costume, from the historical costumes of everyone taking part in the Antichrist scene, is prepared by Maitani and his associates in the Last Judgment, and by Ghirlandaio and his family in the more recent Florentine case cited above in note 41, as well as by the Sistine onlookers also mentioned above. 44. Gilbert 1986, 109–24. 45. Vasari (1878, 4:181) reports a portrait of Angelico among the blessed in Fra Bartolommeo’s Last Judgment of 1498–99, finished by Albertinelli in 1500–1501. Vasari is unreliable in identifying portraits, especially of artists, but need not be wrong, and here there is an argument that such a portrait may have existed. Fra Bartolommeo, also a Dominican painter, certainly had a special feeling for Angelico. 46. Early examples are by Melozzo (Masciotta, fig. 8) and by Filippino Lippi, in the same scene as his Simon Magus (Masciotta, fig. 19). 47. Bambach (1999, 108) notes that the “Angelico” head is based on a pounced cartoon, unlike all the others in the scene, and suggests that the use of a prior likeness might account for the difference. Vasari names many other figures in the Antichrist scene as portraits (1878, 3:690), and these have often been given more credence than any evidence warrants. A likely exception to their unreliability is the name Cesare Borgia, assigned to the last figure in the last row of
Antichrist’s listeners. It matches fully a contemporary woodcut portrait of him (Cieri Via, 178, figs. on p. 176) that may well derive from Signorelli’s painting. This relationship between these media is normal for the period and is apparently exemplified in the wainscot portrait below the Antichrist, to be discussed below. The identity also matches the historical situation—in a way much simpler than that offered by its proponent—in that in 1502 Borgia was the effective ruler of Orvieto. 48. Giotto’s rolling scroll, at the very top of his Last Judgment, is often not mentioned in accounts of the work. The graphic vigor he gives the motif marks a contrast with the very slight involvement in Signorelli of any motifs from the Apocalypse. 49. The same viewers who called the first man a sibyl identified the adjacent man in the turban as David, giving no basis. Presumably they imply a reference to the hymn about the Last Judgment, Dies Irae, where David and the sibyl are named as its witnesses. However, that specifically links them to that day itself, not to the preamble with the five signs seen here. Further, the chapel shows David elsewhere, among Angelico’s prophets in the vault. He has his normal attributes of crown and harp and does not resemble the turbaned figure. Turbans in this culture most often indicate infidels. 50. Geiger, 96, figs. 46, 50. The same trousers appear in a fresco of about 1506 in Rome, Palazzo dei Conservatori, by Jacopo Ripanda, of a classical triumph.
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51. The shaky basis for the name Empedocles, almost always assigned to this figure, is discussed in Chapter 4, note 47. 52. The scenes around “Lucan,” with combats, have commonly been said to refer to his Pharsalia, an epic on the civil war between Caesar and Pompey. However, the epic does not contain even one description of a single combat, the sole motif of the monochromes here. The poem is all about mass battles between large armies, sea voyages, and long speeches. Frederick Ahl (whose book has been called “the best general introduction to Lucan” [Widdows, xxiv]) kindly informs me that nothing in the monochromes fits the poem. 53. Italian Renaissance portraits of Homer make a point of his blindness, as later in Raphael’s Parnassus, circa 1510, and earlier in the portrait cycle of famous authors in the Ducal Palace at Urbino. 54. Pliny, Natural History, 16.3–5. 55. A small number of images from the fifteenth century show oak-crowned figures that when they can be identified either certainly or very possibly signal civic heroes. A genealogical manuscript of the Visconti of 1403 shows Aeneas in a circular frame of oak leaves, along with the next three generations of his successors (a different set from Virgil’s) (cf. Kirsch, fig. 31). King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary is so crowned in an Italian sculptor’s relief portrait (Budapest, Hungarian National Gallery). A famous drawing by Leonardo (Windsor, Royal Library, 12495) shows a man in profile so
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crowned, surrounded by caricatures of mockers, much like the standard composition of the mocking of Christ. The oak wreath is presumably a clue to the baffling identity of this work; it might represent Caesar and the conspirators. In Goethe’s play Tasso, of the 1790s, a civic hero receives an oak crown (1:4, 682), an indication that this meaning was still readily understood. 56. Recent studies of Judith iconography have focused on images showing her nude, with reasonable proposals that her seduction of Holofernes is being seen as a sexual narrative. However, the idea that this monochrome also makes a sexual reference benefits unduly from looking at this figure out of any context. In the chapel, Judith’s many nude monochrome neighbors in the wainscot are relevant to her nudity and do not themselves signal sexual reference. This is not the earliest nude Judith, as has been supposed. An earlier one, in a rare North Italian manuscript of the Biblia Pauperum (Wright, 9–10), shows her bathing and treats her as a parallel to Christ being baptized, and thus as an emblem of purity. 57. In the Siena cycle, each scene has a label beneath in goldleaf capital letters identifying the event in Pope Pius’s life. Scenes with incidents before he became pope call him either “Aeneas Sylvius,” in the first two cases, or “Aeneas,” in the other five. Thus the name was conspicuously reinforced just at the time Signorelli was working in Orvieto, in a fresco cycle by a friend of his. Virgil
repeatedly dubs his hero “Pious Aeneas,” and the choice by Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini of the papal name “Pius,” when he was elected, makes that classical reference. It is not surprising that around the year 1500 the aristocratic Pio family named a son Enea (Bandello, 518). 58. Gilbert, in Testa 1996, 307–19. The proposal that Alberi provided the iconographic scheme for the Orvieto Last Judgment has been backed up by statements that he lived in Orvieto and was a humanist, but there is no evidence supporting those statements. 59. Clementini, 458. 60. A drawing by Signorelli in the Uffizi prepares the motif of the winners pinning the losers to the ground. One pair at the left is a close variant of the left pair in the upper monochrome and is related to a second pair to the right. Berenson, 330, observed the connection, if only as one of several suggestions and with a slip of the pen saying “Lucian.” Later commentators failed to note this, and in general it has been held that no surviving drawings by Signorelli prepare the fresco cycle. However, the good study by Van Cleave, in Testa 1996, 241–51, has changed the situation. 61. See Chapter 5, note 52. 62. The postulate being invoked concerns the most effective way to learn what text was used for the image here. Our usual way is to try to identify the image in a reasonable way (in this case “Ino”) and then to locate its text, commonly in the best-known account of the story. But that is fallacious because it is the opposite of the procedure used at the origi-
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nal time, which arrived at the image at the end. The beginning was to find a story that suited the scheme (in this case, classical visits to the underworld). If Ino looked good, he would next check the most helpful account of her story. It might well not be the most famous, Ovid’s brief allusion, as it was not for Proserpina. One would tend to go, as in that case, to a work fully devoted to the theme. Of course, the wider awareness of more classical authors in that period is relevant too. 63. See Chapter 5, note 16, and related text. The pose of the man on tiptoe raising his hammer to kill Parenzo was recycled in a number of Signorelli’s works from early in his career, usually flagellations. A splendid nude life drawing at the Louvre devoted to it illustrates the artist’s effective fascination with figures in tension, expanded in the scene of the damned to an entire event. 64. They differ from predellas in being on the same level as the standing saints, while around the corner from them on the side walls of the niche chapel. They share the level of the other narrative monochromes in the large chapel, thus again insisting on design unity. 65. If water was shown, it would indicate a reference to Ovid, because Statius does not mention it. The eighteenth-century description, without water, would thus imply a citation of Statius only, while the analogue with Faustino’s death would suggest that the iconographic planner was aware of Ovid too, as he surely
was. This matter must remain open. 66. Testa and Davanzo, in Testa 1996, illustration on p. 49. 67. See above, Chapter 5, note 53, for discussion. 68. The reproduction of this circular portrait in Gilbert 1996, 314, is misleadingly printed; it shows the head in a vertical position but should have it leaning down. It is correct in Riess, fig. 59. 69. Hind, 2:119, no. 29. 70. Hind, 2:131, no. 87. 71. See Chapter 5, note 40. 72. Signorelli’s absence from Orvieto for a good part of 1502 is often noted, most recently by Kanter, 122, who names the period from February to June. Kanter rightly offers the authority of Mancini, the leading scholar on Signorelli documents, but instead of citing his page 144 (which instead concerns 1504) he should have cited pages 134–37, and added the time up to August 1 as shown there. These documents place the artist in Cortona but only record him on a few specific days, and so allow for other local trips. 73. Filippino at the time had far greater career success. He had just finished conspicuous large chapel projects both in Rome and in Florence, cities where Signorelli had produced only smaller works, and that years earlier. It is reasonable to suggest that Filippino borrowed from Signorelli the bat-winged demon, a Signorelli specialty, for a drawing (Goldner and Bambach, 94). Its closest analogue by Signorelli is perhaps the green one in the Minos scene.
74. Geiger, 94–97, identified this source in Summa contra Gentiles, 4.1–26. 75. This is true both of texts and images in this culture and of later descriptions of them, accurate or inaccurate. Fra Angelico’s workshop produced a triumph of Aquinas over heretics, identified in inscriptions as William, Averroes, and Sabellius (repr. Schottmuller, fig. 137). The three are visually derived from the similar group in Thomas’s triumph in the Spanish Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, of 1365. These are not labeled, but Vasari’s identification of them as Arius, Averroes, and Sabellius is generally accepted (Offner and Steinweg, 29). Elsewhere Vasari wrongly says “Sabellius, Arius, and Averroes” appear in the similar scene of an altarpiece at Santa Caterina, Pisa. In fact it shows Averroes only (Vasari 1967, 2:226). Earlier, Saint Bernard had contrasted the anonymous heresies of his time with those of the past named for Mani, Sabellius, and Arius (cited by Lambert, 55). A sermon to a major church assembly in Rome in 1512 cites “Arius, Sabellius, and Photius” (Olin, 51). A search for a Sabellius alone has produced none, unless Signorelli’s head is such. 76. The largest-scale such pair, in a major location yet commonly overlooked today, is among the frescoes in the vault of Orsanmichele, Florence, about 1400 (Gilbert 1994, figs. 12a, b). The pair in Michelangelo’s Sistine vault continues the tradition. In the 1490s Ercole de’Roberti had shown them in a lost altarpiece in
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Ferrara (copy at Palazzo Venezia, Rome). 77. Antal, 71–73. 78. Signorelli himself painted just such a figure of Magdalene in the predella of his Siena altarpiece noted earlier. Though understandably called “striding,” she is between other immobile figures, and so must be likewise. (The panel is in the Maxwell Collection, Glasgow.) The group of sculptures in the round of a Mourning over Christ, of the 1480s, by Niccolò dell’Arca, at Santa Maria della Vita, Bologna, includes another such figure. The statues have several times been shifted from their original positions in questionable ways, one of which made a figure seem to run. That Magdalene plainly does not is a striking token of the situation discussed. 79. The author introduces both stories as cases of lust in powerful men leading to revolutions against them. 80. Examples are in cassoni presented in the corpus of such works by Schubring, nos. 78 and 138, and a panel by Brescianino in Siena (Torriti, 2:190). 81. Menestò, 88–89. 82. P. O. Kristeller, 223. 83. An English translation is in Jed, 149–52. 84. Plutarch 1.207. This is in the Life of Poplicola, Brutus’s colleague as consul. 85. Boccaccio, Comedia della ninfe fiorentine, 36, and Filicolo, 2.17. 86. Brown, 291; Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, 2:16. This is one of the rare points that Machiavelli actually bases on Livy’s text;
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another refers to the story of Virginia (2.39). 87. One other motif in the chapel not mentioned, a very small one, in the inner bay, is the egg painted as if suspended from the vault, over the central window. The large literature on the motif in the period barely mentions this example. The fullest survey is by Gilbert 1974. There is little to say whether this egg is a religious symbol (the majority view about such eggs among current historians) or exemplifies the practice of hanging ostrich eggs in churches to draw curious visitors (the only raison d’être offered in the period). Its presence in a rare chapel with no dedication might favor the latter view. 88. Unpublished document, from the Ms. Rif. 1484–1526, carta 367–367v, transcribed in the dissertation of McLellan, doc. 360. 89. Printed by Ceccarelli, 154ff., in the sixteenth century, more recently cited only by McLellan, 15. 90. McLellan, doc. 409, from the Ms. Mem. 1500–1523, carta 52. 91. McLellan, doc. 408, unpublished, from the Ms. Cam. 1501–16, carta 154. 92. Transcribed by Perali, 123. The writer offers no basis for his statement that the widow set up the plaque, and it is unusual that the text does not identify the person doing so. However, the wording shows that this occurred after his death but not long after, indicating that either she or another immediate heir was responsible. 93. This chapel, treated in a confused way earlier, has now been dis-
cussed with clarity by Testa, in Testa 1996, 273–75. The committee did not act as its patron for ornament, but sold it to others, who gave Signorelli a separate commission to paint it. Later it was resold, and the work by Signorelli was removed and partly destroyed. 94. This might seem to invalidate several earlier rejections in this study of proposed identifications on the basis that they do not relate to the Last Judgment theme. A response would be that these other proposals do not show, as the civic case does, affirmative evidence such as separate patronage, coats of arms, the accumulation of images with the same theme, and the grouping in one part of the chapel. 95. Gilbert 1988, 136–38. Envoi 1. Gilbert 1986, 112–13. 2. Sacchetti Sassetti, figs. 13–26. 3. Heikamp, 54. 4. Paleotti, in Barocchi, 2:425–52, 304–5. 5. Berthold, nos. 247–51. 6. H. Cotter, exhibition review, New York Times, October 21, 1997. 7. E. M. Forster, A Room with a View, first published 1908. In chapter 10, the first meeting of two main characters, in an art museum, is reported: “They were admiring Luca Signorelli.” In chapter 12, one of the same characters goes swimming with two other men, evidently nude, with vigorous athletic play, during which he refers back to the meeting at the museum. The swimming scene is preceded by talk of the importance of men’s bodies. Here the hypothesis is that the
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author, a closeted homosexual, chose to use Signorelli’s name because he associated the athletic energy of the naked men with the Orvieto murals. The book has many other allusions to Italian artists in fashion at the time. A precedent and perhaps a model for Forster is the Victorian literary man John Addington Symonds. His Memoirs (published only in 1984) focus, uniquely for their era, on his effort to analyze his own homosexuality, specifically manifested in his visual obsession with beautiful male bodies. His biography of Michelangelo (1892) includes a surprising seven-page excursus on the Signorelli chapel fresco cycle, a cadenza emphasizing “naked forms treated with audacious freedom”
and the “muscular energy of brutal life” (pp. 157–64 in the 1936 reprint). 8. Cadmus, in a letter to the author, calls Signorelli better than Michelangelo. It is worth noting that both he and Forster seem to overlook the female nudes prominent in Signorelli. 9. Another modern approach to Signorelli favors a connection between him and the apocalyptic. This almost standard tie-in may be exemplified by remarks by a historian of Renaissance painting, in 1998, to the effect that in the chapel apocalyptic imagery covers the walls and ceiling. This approach, briefly cited at relevant points above, is here relegated to a note because it is entirely inaccu-
rate. It is a tribute both to the power of “new age” interests in current culture and to the power of Signorelli’s art. 10. G. Della Valle 1791. 11. Förster, 1:139–40. 12. Bertorello, in Testa 1996, 352. 13. Extrapolating still further, one could place the project in a general Renaissance context of assigning high value to the physical. It is evocatively illustrated by Angelico’s concern to assign heaven to a place with a ground, and a further stage is evoked by the tendency, shared by Signorelli with others, in a departure from Angelico, to evade the representation of hell.
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Abruzzi, Last Judgment in Loreto Aprutino, 47, 81, 169 n. 66 Achilles, 106, 108 Aeneas, 93, 97–98, 111–12, 143, 184 n. 57 Aeneid. See Virgil Alba Longa, 143 Alberi, Archdeacon, 73, 112, 144, 179 n. 85 Alberti, Leandro, 11 Alexander VI, Pope, 66–67, 163 n. 28 Ambrose, Saint, 175 n. 23 Ammanati, Cardinal, tomb of, 65, 73, 90 Amphiarios, 98 Andrea Pisano, 24 Andromeda, 109–10 Angelico, Fra Giovanni de Fiesole, 51, 76, 111, 121, 137 fame of, 70, 159 frescoes at San Marco, Florence, 27, 53 Last Judgment panels Berlin, 33–34, 48–50, 87–88 Florence benchback, 33–34, 41, 43, 45, 49, 61, 73, 87 Florence silver cupboard, 47–48 Rome, 55–56 in Orvieto contract, 25–26 drawing, xviii, 30, 48, 54. See also gavantone hired, 24–25 Judging Christ, 30, 32–33, 37, 39 leaves Orvieto, 56, 58, 60, 62 portrait of, by Gozzoli, 52, 136 portrait of, by Signorelli, 51, 135 Prophets, 33, 37 scheme, 44, 49, 51, 54, 76, 115, 117 work, xi, xviii
angry, circle of, in Inferno, 110 Annius of Viterbo, 113 Annunciation, theme of paintings, 58, 104 Antichrist legend, xvi, 129–32, 149 Antonino, Saint, 62 Apelles, 147–49 apocalyptic ideas, 89, 132, 138, 168 n. 57, 175 n. 36 Apollinarius, 139 Apollodorus, 108 Apostles, 74 Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 3, 12, 62, 149–50, 162 n. 7 Arcas, 104 archangels, 77–78 Aretine ware, 163 n. 24 Aretino, Pietro, 182 n. 31 Aristotle, 12, 13 Arius, 129, 150, 185 n. 75 Ascension of Christ, 56 Assumption of the Virgin, 16–19, 167 n. 23 Augustine, Saint, 2, 29, 81, 83, 134, 149, 180 n. 7, 183 n. 40 Averroës, 185 n. 75 Balkans, fresco cycles in, 11–12 Bardi, Roberto de’, 177 n. 65 Barna, 35 Bartolommeo, Fra, 138, 176 n. 40, 183 n. 45 Beccafumi, 153 Beckmann, Max, 160 Benton, Thomas, 128, 160 Berenson, Bernard, 52 Bernard, Saint, 74 Bernardino, Saint, 62 Bersuire, Pierre, 110 Bertoldo di Giovanni, 65, 85–86, 112 Beaune, 51
Biblia Pauperum, 56, 184 n. 56 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 108, 153, 186 n. 85 Bologna Church of Santa Maria della Vita, 186. n. 78 San Petronio, 90 Bolsena Miracle of, 2–3, 4 fresco of, 126–27 relic, 14 Bonaiuti, Andrea, 47, 55 Boniface VIII, Pope, 5 Books of Hours, 90 Borgia family, 66, 68–89 Cesare, 67–69, 81, 183 n. 47 Bosch, Hieronymus, 80, 81 Bosnia, 128 Botticelli, Sandro, 70, 72, 151–52, 154 Bramante, Donato, 132 Brizio, Saint fresco of, 76–77, 125 name assigned to Cappella Nuova, 18, 165 n. 65 Brunacci, Don Francesco, 23–24 Brunelleschi, Filippo, 85 Bruni, Leonardo, 111–12 Brutus, first consul of Rome, 94, 152–54 Byrd, Robert, 153 Cadmus, Paul, 158, 187 n. 8 Cadmus of Thebes, 144–45, 158, 160 Calisto, 104 cartaro, 30, 37 Castor and Pollux, 98 Cathari, 2, 12, 127–28, 134, 182 n. 33 Cathedral of Orvieto, xviii, 1, 3 apse, 5, 14, 15, 27, 29 Bishop, 63 Cappella Nuova, passim from 15
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Cathedral of Orvieto (cont’d) altar, 16, 23, 24 frescoes, passim: archangels, 77–78; Bishop Saints, 76; conservation, xviii, 174 n. 20; dating of completion, 75, 174 n. 16; David and Judith, 142–43, 150; finds after conservation, xix; frames, 35–36, 38, 56–57, 142, 160; outer vault, 118; sequence of work, 75, 173 n. 14; technique, 132, 183 n. 47; vault, xv, xvii, 32, 57, 71, 72, 75, 173 n. 7; wainscot area, xviii, 52, 54, 75, 90–111, 141, 146 little chapels inside it, 20, 59, 75, 123 Madonna of San Brizio, 18 no dedication, 18 scaffolding, 62 scenes of frescoes: Ascent of the Blessed, 79; Assembly of the Blessed, xvi, 79, 83, 121, 136; Assembly of the Damned, xv, 85, 122; Antichrist, xiii, xv, 118, 120–21, 132–35, 137–38, 140–43; Descent of the Damned, 87–89; of entrance wall, 118–19, 137–41; Raising of the Dead, xv, xvii, 76, 117–18, 120–22, 145, 149, 159 tabernacle of the Assumption, 16–18, 56, 75–76 tabernacle of the Crucifix, 17 use of the term Chapel of the Assumption, 18–19 windows, 16, 17, 19, 36, 75, 174 n. 18 coat of arms, 58 committee, xi, 71, 117, 119 construction, 4-5, 13 façade, 7, 163 n. 24 mosaics, 7, 9, 29 sculpture, 7, 9, 11–12, 28, 51, 65, 121, 135; of pagan figures, 13; of Tree of Jesse, 11, 13; early comments on 10, 11 name, 6, 165 n. 75
named chapels of the Coronation of the Virgin, 16, 17 of the Magdalene, 20, 123, 155, 186 n. 93 of the Monaldeschi, 20 of the Reliquary, 15–16, 20–21, 27, 91 reliquary, 3, 14, 15 sacristy, 16 semicircular chapels, 5–7 transeptal bays, 5–7, 15–16 Cerberus, 93 Ceres, 93–94 Cézanne, Paul, 158, 160 Chantilly, Musée Condé, 38, 48–49, 52, 136 Charity and Envy, allegories of, 101, 103 Charon, 44, 87–88, 105, 123, 151 Chartres, 160 Chastity and Lust, allegories of, 103–4, 108 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 94 Cicero, 83, 142, 147, 149, 151 Cimabue, 27 Città di Castello, 70 Claudian, 93–95, 97–98, 100, 104, 112, 146 Clementini, Girolamo, 104–5, 158–59, 176 n. 53 Cleopatra, 106 coats of arms, 58, 154 Coca, Bishop, 40 Cologne, cathedral of, 165 n. 79 Colonna family, 65 Condivi, Ascanio, 123 confessors, category of saints, 74 Corbara, Count, 69 Corinthians, First Letter to, 41 Coronation of the Virgin, 16, 56 Corpus Christi, feast of, 3, 14, 126, 162 n. 9 Cortese, Cristoforo, 81 Cortesi, Paolo, 113, 179 n. 98 Cortona, 1, 71, 85, 113, 126 Costanzo, Saint, 76–77 Cupid, 103 Daniel, Book of, 131, 180 n. 7 Dante, 89, 97, 129 in Last Judgment, 44–45, 53, 88 lines on allegory, 101, 111
portraits of, 54, 59, 87, 94–95, 112 scenes from Divine Comedy illustrated, 52, 87, 94–96, 99–104, 105–11 David, Jacques-Louis, 153 David, King, 152–54, 183 n. 49 Della Valle, Guglielmo, 158–59 designum, 71–72, 75, 173 n. 5 Diana, 93, 103–4 Dido, 106, 178 n. 74 Dies Irae, 41, 183 n. 49 Dis, city of, 110–11, 128 disegno. See designum doctors of the church, category of saints, 72–74 Dominic, Saint, 46 Dominicans, 2, 72, 162 n. 7 Donatello, 85, 150 Dresden, gallery in, 38, 49 Duccio di Buoninsegna, 14, 15 Dürer, Albrecht, 132 Elice, 104 Elijah. See Enoch and Elijah Empedocles, 176 n. 47, 184 n. 51 Enoch, Book of, 78, 114, 175 n. 22 Enoch and Elijah, 83, 129, 132, 182 n. 30 Envy, allegory of, 176 n. 56 Erasmus, 83 Eritrean sibyl, 13, 83 Eurydice, 93 Ezekiel, Book of, 123, 128 Faith, allegory of, 102, 103, 177 n. 59 Farnese family Bishop Guido, 67 Cardinal, later Pope Paul III, 67–68, 81, 112–13, 115, 122 family castle of, 113 frescoes of family history, 171 n. 34 Luigi, 67 Pietro, Captain, 67 Faustino, Saint, 59, 123–26, 145–46, 155 Fiani, Crisostimo, 69, 71, 172 n. 45 Ficino, Marsilio, 106, 152 Filippeschi family, 96 Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, 30 Florence cathedral of, 9, 158 churches Baptistery, 41–43, 45, 54, 61, 168 n. 59
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Carmine, 133–34 Orsanmichele, 185 n. 76 San Miniato, 7, 15 Santa Croce, 28 Santa Maria degli Angeli; 46–47 Santa Maria Novella, Spanish chapel, 27, 47, 55, 169 n. 68 Strozzi chapel (painted by Filippino Lippi), 133, 139, 149 Strozzi chapel (painted by Nardo), 28, 43, 168 n. 58, 182 n. 21 chapel of the Bargello, 44 Medici chapel, 52 Medici court, 113–14 Palazzo Vecchio, 94 Wool Guild Hall, 153 Forster, E. M., 158, 186 n. 7 Francesco di Giorgio, 70, 172 n. 50, 182 n. 35 Francesco di Urbano da Cortona, 71 Franci, Nicola, 135 Francis, Saint, 46, 53–54, 59 Freud, Sigmund, xii–xiii, 158, 161 nn. 5, 6 Fulgentius, 107 Furies, 110, 128 Gabriel, archangel, 77–78 gavantone, 30, 37–38, 40, 49–52, 71, 75, 91, 100, 117, 137, 167 n. 45 Genga, Girolamo, 147 Genoa, 66 Gentile da Fabriano, 11, 24, 56, 63 Ghiberti, Lorenzo, 183 n. 41 Ghirlandaio, Domenico, 70, 72, 81, 183 nn. 41, 43 Ghisi, Giorgio, 181 n. 12 Giotto di Bondone portrait by Gozzoli, 53, 176 n. 45 reference to in Orvieto wainscot, 92, 100–101 self-portrait, 51, 135 works Florence, Last Judgment, 44, 53, 92 Padua, Last Judgment, 27, 42–44, 54, 56, 61, 80, 139, 183 n. 48 Rome, Navicella, 7, 9, 24, 27 Giovanni da Udine, 58 Giovanni di Paolo, 83 gluttonous, circle of , in Inferno, 108
Golden Legend, 129–31, 137–39 Gozzoli, Benozzo assistant of Angelico, 25 drawings, 38–39, 52, 136–37, 169 n. 72 frescoes in Florence, 52 in Montefalco, 53, 91–92, 176 n. 45 return to Orvieto, 58–59, 100 self-portrait, 137 Grimani, Cardinal, 81, 115, 122 grotesque, technical term, 91, 144 Gualtieri family, 20 Helen of Troy, 106 Hercules, 93, 97–98, 106–12 heresy, 2, 3, 12–13, 128–29, 148–49, 163 n. 9 Homer, 13, 108, 112, 142, 147, 151, 184 n. 53 Hope, allegory of, 101 humanism, 13, 78, 83, 94, 112 Iacomo di Cartari, 37 Innocent III, Pope, 2 Innocent VIII, Pope, 66, 101, 128 Ino, 144, 146 Iovanni Antonio, 25 Isabella d’Este, 63 Jacopo de Poli, 25 John the Baptist, 33, 35, 73, 167 n. 33 John the Evangelist, 182 n. 37 Josaphat, valley of, 47, 81, 85, 87 Jove, 104 Judith, 143, 147–48, 152, 157, 184 n. 56 Julius II, Pope, 66, 127 Juno, 104 Klosterneuburg altarpiece, 181 n. 8 Kyrie eleison, 74 Laetus, Pomponius, 113, 129 Landino, Cristoforo, 108, 111–12, 115 Last Judgment in Balkan frescoes, 13 in Biblia Pauperum, 56 denied by Cathari, 62, 129, 132 in France, 170 n. 1 in medals, 171 n. 22 in Orvieto, xii, 27, 61, 73
plays of, 62, 129, 132 related to death of individual, 90 theme of visual images, 106 n. 22 in tombs, 65 Leonardo da Vinci, 184 n. 55 Leo X, Pope, 126–27 Limbourg brothers, 121–22 Lippi, Filippino, 70, 72, 81, 91, 133, 139, 147–49, 151, 183 n. 46, 185 n. 73 Lippi, Fra Filippo, 27, 35–36 Litany, 74 Livy, 152 Lochner, Stefan, 80, 121 Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, 14, 176 n. 44 Loreto, 70 Lucan, 142, 144, 184 n. 52 Lucca, San Frediano, 7 Lucretia, 151–54 Lucretius, 105 Luke, Gospel of, 138–39, 146 lustful, circle of, in Inferno, 106–9, 128 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 153, 186 n. 86 Maitani, Lorenzo, 51, 137, 169 n. 62, 183 nn. 41, 43 Malleus Maleficarum, 182 n. 33 Mancinelli, Antonio, 180 n. 99 Manichaeans, 2, 126–28, 139 Mariotto di Urbano da Cortona, 71 Martin IV, Pope, 5 Martin V, Pope, 24, 65 martyrs, category of saints, 73–74 Mary Magdalene, Saint, 151, 186 n. 78 Masaccio, 27 Masolino, 24, 166 n. 7, 167 n. 40 Matthew, Gospel of, 41 Matthias Corvinus, 184 n. 55 Mauropous, John, 12 Medici family Filippo de’, 65 Giovanni de’ (Leo X), 113 Lorenzo de’, xii, 70, 86, 112–14, 172 n. 49, 179 n. 97 Melozzo da Forlì, 183 n. 46 Memling, Hans, 80, 121 Michael, archangel, 77, 129, 132, 147 Michelangelo admiration for Signorelli, xii, 89, 157 self-portrait, 135
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Michelangelo (cont’d) works, 150, 183 n. 42 Battle of Centaurs, 107, 113 David and Judith, 186 n. 76 Last Judgment, 115, 123 tomb of Julius II, 65, 70, 72 Michelotti, Archdeacon, 23 Minerva, 93, 94, 110 Minos, 87–88, 99, 105–6, 110, 123, 157 Monaldeschi family, 1–2, 14, 16, 20, 63, 67, 96, 172 n. 46 Achille, 154–55 Camilla, 65 Gentile and Arrigo di Pietroantonio, 23, 58, 155 Gentile di Luca, 64 Giovanna, 63, 154, 156 Paolopietro, 63, 65 Pietroantonio, 63, 65, 154–55 Montagues and Capulets, 96 Montefalco, fresco cycle, 53, 54, 59 Monte Oliveto, abbey of, 70, 91, 172 n. 52 Naples, 20 Nardo di Cione, frescoes, 28, 43–46, 52–53, 61, 75, 79, 87–88, 91, 111 Nazarenes, 159 Neptune, 108–9 New Jerusalem, 47 Niccolò Rosex da Modena, 147–48, 157 Nicholas IV, Pope, 5, 13, 14 Nicholas V, Pope, 128 nudity, 80, 107, 175 n. 23, 178 n. 69 Nürnberg chronicle, 132 Ochsenbrunner, Thomas, 153 Oedipus, 145 Oionos, 108 Orcagna, 24, 28 Orpheus, 93, 98, 100, 108, 112, 158 Orsini family, 113 Cardinal, 67 librarian, 179 n. 98 Orvieto, 111 abbey of Santa Trinità, 81 heretics, 2 panorama of, 14 social history, xvii, 1–2, 158 visits to, 67–68, 157
Overbeck, Johann Friedrich, 159 Ovid, 93, 94, 104, 108–9, 144 Paccagnino, Angelo, 83 Padua, 153 Paleotti, Gabriele, 158 Paolo and Francesca, 106 paper prices, 168 n. 45 Parenzo, San Pietro, 2, 182 n. 20 chapel of, 59, 123 martyrdom of, 124, 126, 128, 145 Pastura, 69 patriarchs, category of holy men, 41, 44 in Last Judgment, 33, 46, 72–73 Paul II, Pope, xviii, 65, 112 medal of, 65 tomb of, 65, 73, 80, 90, 128–29, 136 Paul III, Pope, xviii, 123. See also Farnese, Cardinal Paul, Saint, 128 Pegasus, 111, 179 n. 81 Pentecost, 56 Pericope of Henry II, 181 n. 8 Perseus, myth of, 109–11 Perugia, 1, 4, 70, 135 Perugino, Pietro Vannucci, 26, 59, 63, 66, 68–70, 91, 114, 135 Petrarch, portrait of, 53, 83, 176 n. 45 Phanuel, angel, 78 Phineus, 109 Piccolomini clan, 73. See also Pius II Jacopo, 65 Pico della Mirandola, 78, 114 Piermatteo d’Amelia, 62 Piero della Francesca, frescoes of, 27 Pietro di Nicola, 32, 56, 58, 59, 118, 123, 145, 170 n. 87 Pietro Parenzo. See Parenzo, San Pietro Pinturicchio, Bernardo, 63, 72, 91, 135, 144, 157 Pisa, 1, 4 Campo Santo frescoes, 27, 28, 43, 61 Pisanello, Antonio, 24 Pius II, Pope, xviii, 10, 65, 128 frescoes of his life, 91, 144, 157, 184 n. 57 Pius III, Pope, 144 Plato, 12, 13, 49, 158 Pliny the Elder, 142 Plutarch, 12, 13, 108, 153 Pluto and Proserpina, 93, 108–9
Poliziano, Angelo, 107, 113, 114 Pollaiuolo, Antonio, 65, 86, 101 Pollock, Jackson, 158 Pride and Humility, in Dante, 100, 101 prophets, category of holy men, 33, 44, 73, 167 n. 38 Proserpina, 97, 100 Purgatory absent in Last Judgment, 180 n. 100 doctrine rejected by heretics, 128 Saint Patrick’s, 180 n. 100 images in the Capella Nuova of, 90–100 Raphael, archangel, 78 Raphael (painter), 2, 58, 75, 159, 168 n. 51 visit to Orvieto, 136, 157 works allegories of virtues, 102, 157 drawings after Signorelli, 136, 157 Mass of Bolsena, 126 Massacre of the Innocents, 150 Parnassus, 184 n. 53 self-portrait, 135–36 Ravenna, Last Judgment fresco, 129 Revelation, as a text for Last Judgment, 47. See also apocalyptic ideas Rieti, Last Judgment mural, 158 Ripanda, Jacopo, 153, 184 n. 50 Rizzi, Alfonso, 128 Roberti, Ercole de’, 187 n. 76 Rohan hours, 83, 90 Romania, church frescoes, 13 Rome, 1, 2, 81 Arch of Constantine, 139 Lateran Palace, 6, 7 Sant’ Agostino, 65 Santa Maria Maggiore, 5–7, 13 Santa Maria sopra Minerva, 139, 147, 149, 182 n. 21 Saint Peter’s, 7, 15, 128 Rovere families, 65, 66 Cardinal. See Julius II, Pope Giorgio, Bishop, 65–67, 112 Rustici, Marco, 94 Sabellius, 129, 149, 185 n. 75 Salutati, Coluccio, 94, 98, 100, 104, 111–12, 115, 142, 146 Declamatio Lucretiae, 152
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San Gimignano, Collegiata, frescoes, 35, 175 n. 31 sarcophagi, Roman, 38, 85 Sarto, Andrea del, 183 n. 41 Satan, image of in Last Judgment, 41 Savonarola, Girolamo, 89–90 Scala, Bartolommeo, 153 self-portraits, 51, 135, 169 n. 62, 170 n. 73, 183 nn. 41, 46 Severo and Martirio, saints, abbey of, 65 sibyl Cumaean, 94 Eritrean, 13, 83 Siena, 1, 4, 14 cathedral, 9, 13 loggia, 153 work by Signorelli, 69–90 Signorelli, Luca, passim anticipations in Orvieto of his work there, 29, 43, 45, 49 begins work, 30, 71 contracts,71, 75, 117–20 Court of Pan, xii, 70, 113–14 drawings, 178 nn. 74, 80, 182 n. 23, 184 n. 60, 185 n. 63 hired, 69, 70 inspects drawing for Cappella Nuova frescoes, 26 Medici Madonna, 70, 113 Monte Oliveto frescoes, 70, 91 Pietà altarpiece, 124 praised by Vasari, xi self-portrait, 51, 135, 148 tile, 135–36 travel, 185 n. 72 Vitelli portrait, 135
Silvius Aeneas, king, 143–44 Simon Magus, 134, 147, 183 n. 39 Sistine chapel, frescoes, 118–19, 135 Sixtus IV, Pope, 65 breve, 165 n. 75, 171 n. 27 tomb of, 101 skeletons, 122–23, 128 Sodoma, 135, 148 Statius, 104–6, 145, 177 n. 65 “stories” in painting defined, 71, 173 n. 2 Tarquin, 152 Te Deum, 74 Terni, Last Judgment fresco, 180 n. 100 Thebes, 145 Theodore psalter, 12 theologians of Orvieto, advice of, 119 Theseus, 93, 97–98, 110–11 Tiresias, 145 Titian, 104, 154 Todi, 1 fresco of Last Judgment, 180 n. 100 tombs, in Last Judgment, 168 n. 56 Torcello, Last Judment mosaic, 41 Torresani brothers, 158 transubstantiation, doctrine of, 3 Traversari, Ambrogio, 47, 61 Tree of Jesse, 13 Très Riches Heures, 85, 121–22 Tristan, 106 Tundal, 85 Tuscania, fresco, 27 Ugolino, enamelist, 14 Urban IV, Pope, 2, 3, 5, 12, 14
Urbano da Cortona, 71 Uriel, archangel, 78 Valla, Lorenzo, 83 van der Weyden, Rogier, 51, 80, 83, 121 van Eyck, Jan, 81, 121 Vasari, Giorgio, xi, xii, 113, 135, 157–60 Vatican, frescoes in Chapel of Nicolas V, 27 in Raphael Stanze, 126–27, 135 Venice church of Gesuiti, 78 church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, 15 Venus, 93, 103–4 Villani, Filippo, 44, 94, 100 Virgil Aeneid, 11, 93, 95, 100, 104, 143 as allegorical poet, 111–12 Eclogues, 113 portrait of, 92, 146 as traveler in Dante’s text, 110 Virginia, 151–52 virgins, category of saints, 73, 74 Vitelli, Vitelozzo, 135 Viterbo, 1–2, 4 Volterra, 1, 70 Waldensians, 127–28 Well of Saint Patrick, 172 n. 40, 180 n. 100 William of Moerbeke, 12 wreaths, laurel and oak, 97, 142–43, 177 n. 59, 184 n. 55 Zuccari, Federico, 183 n. 41
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Alinari; Anderson; Archivio Fotografico della Fabbrica di S. Pietro; Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; Brogi; Gemaeldegalerie, Berlin; Giraudon; Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, Rome; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée Condé, Chantilly; Musei Vaticani; Raffaelli e Armoni, Orvieto; Reunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris; Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici, Florence; Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici, Parugia; Joseph Szaszfai; Witt Library, London.
