Altarpieces, liturgy, and devotion

Speculum

Volumn 79, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 341-405

  Williamson, Beth ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60949242229     PISSN: 00387134     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0038713400087947     Document Type: Article

References (202)

1. Staale Sinding-Larsen, Iconography and Ritual: A Study of Analytical Perspectives (Oslo, 1984);
2. Sible de Blaauw, Cultus et decor. Liturgie en architectuur in laatantiek en middeleeuws Rome: Basilica Salvatoris, Sanctae Mariae, Sancti Petri (Delft, 1987);
3. Sible de Blaauw, "Architecture and Liturgy in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Traditions and Trends in Modern Scholarship," Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 32 (1991), 1-34;
4. Albert Gerhards, "Der Kirchenraum als 'Liturgie' Anregungen zu einem anderen Dialog von Kunst und Kirche," in Heiliger Raum: Architektur, Kunst und Liturgie in mittelalterlichen Kathedralen und Stiftskirchen, ed. Franz Kohlschein and Peter Wünsche (Münster, 1998), pp. 225-42;
5. Elizabeth Parker, "Architecture as Liturgical Setting," in The Liturgy of the Medieval Church, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan and E. Ann Matter (Kalamazoo, Mich., 2001), pp. 273-326.
6. Kees van der Ploeg, Art, Architecture and Liturgy: Siena Cathedral in the Middle Ages, Medievalia Groningana 11 (Groningen, 1993);
7. Virginia C. Raguin, Kathryn Brush, and Peter Draper, eds., Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings (Toronto, 1995);
8. Kees van der Ploeg, "Form as Function, Function as Form: Some Recent Trends in the Study of Italian Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance," Mededelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome 55 (1996), 1-17;
9. Paul Binski, "The English Parish Church and Its Art in the Later Middle Ages: A Review of the Problem," Studies in Iconography 20 (1999), 1-25.
10. This has recently been noted in the following volume of essays: Victor M. Schmidt, ed., Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, Studies in the History of Art 61, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Symposium Papers, 38 (Washington, D.C., 2002), p. 12.
11. Jacob Burckhardt, "Das Altarbild," in Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte von Italien (Basel, 1898)
12. now translated as The Altarpiece in Renaissance Italy, ed. Peter Humfrey (Oxford, 1988). This work effectively initiated the study of altarpieces as a category.
13. Hellmut Hager, Die Anfänge des italienischen Altarbildes: Untersuchungen zur Entstehungsgeschichte des toskanischen Hochaltarretabels, Römische Forschungen der Bibliotheca Hertziana 17 (Munich, 1962).
14. Joseph Braun, Der christliche Altar in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung, 2 vols. (Munich, 1924).
15. Julian Gardner, "Altars, Altarpieces, and Art History: Legislation and Usage," in Italian Altarpieces, 1250-1500: Function and Design, ed. Eve Borsook and Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi (Oxford, 1994), pp. 5-19.
16. Paul Hills ("The Renaissance Altarpiece: A Valid Category?" in The Altarpiece in the Renaissance, ed. Peter Humfrey and Martin Kemp [Cambridge, Eng., 1990], pp. 34-48) also noted that the study of altarpieces had, at that time, become "a fashionable or at least favoured subject" (p. 34).
17. Henk van Os, "Some Thoughts on Writing a History of Sienese Altarpieces," in The Altarpiece, ed. Humfrey and Kemp, pp. 21-33.
18. Henk van Os, Sienese Altarpieces, 1215-1460: Form, Content, Function, Medievalia Groningana 4 and 9 (Groningen, 1984-90).
19. Fourth Lateran Council, canon 1: "sacerdos et sacrificium Jesus Christus [est]: cujus corpus et sanguis in sacramento altaris sub speciebus panis et vini veraciter continentur" (Giovanni Domenico Mansi et al., eds., Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 57 vols. [Venice, Florence, and Paris, 1759-1927], 22:981-82);
20. "Jesus Christ is both priest and sacrifice, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine" (full translation of canon 1 in David C. Douglas, ed., English Historical Documents, 3 [London, 1975], pp. 643-76).
21. Van Os, Sienese Altarpieces, 1:13.
22. Michelle Bacci, "The Berardenga Antependium and the Passio Ymaginis Office," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 61 (1998), 1-16.
23. See Peter Seiler, "Duccio's Maestà: The Function of the Scenes from the Life of Christ on the Reverse of the Altarpiece. A New Hypothesis," in Italian Panel Painting, ed. Schmidt, pp. 251-77, esp. pp. 255-56;
24. and Edith Struchholz, Die Choranlagen und Chorgestühle des Sieneser Domes, Internationale Hochschulschriften 177 (Münster, 1995), pp. 9-15.
25. Julian Gardner, "'. . . Ante et super altare...': From Antependium to Altarpiece," in Das Aschaffenburger Tafelbild: Studien zur Tafelmalerei des 13. Jahrhunderts, ed. Erwin Emmerling and Cornelia Ringer, Arbeitshefte des Bayerischen Landesamtes für Denkmalpflege 89 (Munich, 1997), pp. 25-40;
26. Bacci, "The Berardenga Antependium."
27. Jill Dunkerton et al., Giotto to Dürer: Early Renaissance Painting in the National Gallery (New Haven, Conn., 1991), p. 27.
28. David Bomford et al., Art in the Making: Italian Painting before 1400 (London, 1989), p. 4.
29. Neither Giotto to Dürer nor Art in the Making contains footnotes, but the bibliography of each, arranged using the different headings found in each catalogue, shows that the statements about the doctrinal change of 1215, and the supposed liturgical and ritual consequences of that change, are directly influenced by van Os. Under "Function and Setting" (p. 213), the Art in the Making bibliography gives the following reference: "For liturgical changes and the effects on the shape of altarpieces: van Os, H.W., 1984 [Sienese Altarpieces, vol. 1] . . . , pp. 13ff." Similarly, under "Images and Altarpieces" (p. 392), the bibliography of Giotto to Dürer refers to van Os's Sienese Altarpieces.
30. For example, Judith Sobré's study of Spanish retables asserts: "a change in liturgy moved the altar against the back wall of the apse so that during the Mass the priest, his back to the congregation, blocked the altar rather than circling it" (Judith Sobré, Behind the Altar Table: The Development of the Painted Retable in Spain, 1350-1500 [Columbia, Mo., 1989], pp. 4-5).
31. The following section owes much to the fundamental studies by Paul Binski ("The Thirteenth-Century English Altarpiece," in Norwegian Medieval Altar Frontals and Related Material: Papers from the Conference in Oslo 16th-19th December 1989, Acta ad Archaeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia 11 [Rome, 1995], pp. 47-57)
32. and Julian Gardner ("Altars," as in n. 7 above).
33. Andrew Martindale noted (citing Hager, n. 5 above) that there could be no altarpiece where the priest habitually stood to the east of the altar and faced the congregation and that there are many churches in Rome still complete with their thirteenth-century furnishings that would have made it impossible for the priest to have done anything other than celebrate from the east of the altar (Andrew Martindale, "Altarpieces in Italy during the 13th Century," in Norwegian Medieval Altar Frontals, pp. 37-45).
34. Binski, "English Altarpiece," p. 48.
35. See also Kees van der Ploeg, "Form as Function," p. 10
36. and "How Liturgical Is a Medieval Altarpiece?" in Italian Panel Painting, ed. Schmidt, pp. 103-21, where it is argued that altarpieces are not necessary for the liturgy and therefore cannot be explained purely in liturgical terms.
37. It was suggested by Henk van Os ("St Francis of Assisi as a Second Christ in Early Italian Painting," Simiolus 7 [1974], 115-32) that a particular class of altarpiece, the Franciscan double-sided altarpiece, functioned to divide the choir from the nave and hence the friars from the laity.
38. Donal Cooper has recently reexamined this proposition and has shown that in positing a dividing function for such altarpieces van Os was broadly correct. See Donal Cooper, "Franciscan Choir Enclosures and the Function of Double-Sided Altarpieces in Pre-Tridentine Umbria," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44 (2001), 1-54. In his study, however, Cooper has considerably revised and refined van Os's original conclusions.
39. Barbara G. Lane, The Altar and the Altarpiece: Sacramental Themes in Early Netherlandish Painting (New York, 1984), p. 1.
40. See below, pp. 372-75, for a discussion of one such image, Dirk Bouts's Blessed Sacrament Altarpiece (Fig. 10).
41. Lane, Altar and Altarpiece, p. 79.
42. Dirk de Vos, Rogier van der Weyden (New York, 1999), cat. no. 35, p. 330.
43. Ursula Nilgen, "The Epiphany and the Eucharist: On the Interpretation of Eucharistic Motifs in Mediaeval Epiphany Scenes," Art Bulletin 49 (1967), 311-16.
44. Charles Hope, "Altarpieces and the Requirements of Patrons," in Christianity and the Renaissance: Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento, ed. Timothy Verdon and John Henderson (Syracuse, N.Y., 1990), pp. 535-71, at p. 544.
45. For this painting see Carol J. Purtle, The Marian Paintings of Jan van Eyck (Princeton, N.J., 1982), pp. 98-126.
46. De Vos, Rogier van der Weyden, cat. no. 1;
47. Van Os, Sienese Altarpieces (above, n. 13), 1:14.
48. Van Os, "Some Thoughts" (above, n. 8), p. 27.
49. Hope, "Altarpieces," p. 544.
50. "[M]ost altarpieces are reflections of devotion to the Virgin and the saints, not to Christ": ibid.
51. Individual studies were published on Italian, German, Netherlandish, and English material, all of which offered views that opposed, offered alternatives to, or supplemented the strongly "eucharistic" emphasis of scholars such as van Os and Lane. See, for example, Gardner, "Altars";
52. Michael Baxandall, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (New Haven, Conn., 1980);
53. Lynn F. Jacobs, Early Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces, 1380-1550: Medieval Tastes and Mass Marketing (Cambridge, Eng., 1998);
54. Binski, "English Altarpiece," p. 48 n. 6.
55. All churches and altars are actually dedicated to God, but they can be dedicated in memory of, or in honor of, saints, the Virgin Mary, the Trinity, or other holy persons or sacred objects (e.g., the holy cross). See John Berthram O'Connell, Church Building and Furnishing: The Church's Way. A Study in Liturgical Law (London, 1955), p. 19.
56. E. W. Kemp, Canonization and Authority in the Western Church (Oxford, 1948), p. 6.
57. For the cult of saints in the early years of Christianity, see H. Delehaye, Sanctus: Essai sur le culte des saints dans l'antiquité, Subsidia Hagiographica 17 (Brussels, 1927)
58. Gregory of Tours reports the building of a basilica over the tomb of the martyr Benignus. See Kemp, Canonization and Authority, p. 30;
59. Rev. 6.9: "When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne." See Alison Binns, Dedications of Monastic Houses in England and Wales, 1066-1216, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 1 (Woodbridge, Eng., 1989), p. 13, where Binns notes that Remigius of Auxerre quotes this passage in his Tractatus de dedicatione ecclesiae.
60. For this text see Cyrille Vogel and Reinhard Elze, eds., Le pontifical romano-germanique du dixième siècle, Studi e Testi 226-27 and 269 (Vatican City, 1963-72), pp. 91-121 (and for this passage, p. 118).
61. Gardner, "Altars" (above, n. 7), p. 10.
62. This council passed a canon to the effect that altars that could not be proved to contain the body or relics of a martyr should be destroyed: "Et omnino nulla memoria martyrum probabiliter acceptetur, nisi ubi corpus aut aliquae reliquiae sunt, aut origo alicujus habitationis, vel passionis fidelissima origine traditur" (PL 84:212);
63. "Ubi ecclesia aedificatur, a propriae diocesis episcopo sanctificetur: aqua per semetipsum benedicatur, spargatur, et ita per ordinem compleat, sicut in libro ministeriali habetur. Postea eucharistia quae ab episcopo per idem ministerium consecratur, cum aliis reliquiis condatur in capsula, ac servetur in eadem basilica. Et si alias reliquias intimare non potest, tamen hoc maxime proficere potest, quia corpus et sanguis est Domini nostri Jesu Christi" (Mansi, 14:356).
64. See Patrick J. Geary, Furta sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J., 1978), p. 40;
65. and Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, ed. Arthur West Haddan and William Stubbs, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1869-78), 3:580.
66. Geary, Furta sacra, p. 29;
67. Nicole Herrmann-Mascard, Les reliques des saints: Formation coutumière d'un droit, Collection d'Histoire Institutionnelle et Sociale 6 (Paris, 1975), p. 167.
68. Binns (Dedications of Monastic Houses, p. 13) notes that a fifteenth-century pontifical provides directions for the dedication of altars with relics (mos Romanus) and without relics (mos Anglicanus). She points out that the proliferation of altars in the later medieval period may have created a problem with providing relics for every altar and that this may lie behind the lack of insistence on relics in later pontificals. She further suggests (p. 14) that where relics would have been unavailable or inappropriate, as in the case of altars dedicated in honor of the Holy Trinity or Michael the Archangel, the process of enclosing relics in such altars may have seemed less relevant, even though there was actually nothing to prevent other relics from being deposited.
69. and R. Naz, ed., Dictionnaire de droit canonique, 7 vols. (Paris, 1935-65), 4:253 ff.
70. See also Julian Gardner, "Inscriptions and Imagination in Late-Medieval Italy," in Epigraphie et iconographie: Actes du colloque tenu à Poitiers les 5-8 octobre 1995, Civilisation Médiévale 2 (Poitiers, 1996), pp. 101-9.
71. For England, see Binski, "English Altarpiece" (above, n. 27), p. 52.
72. For early altar inscriptions in the French abbey of Saint-Denis see J. Formigé, L'abbaye royale de Saint-Denis (Paris, 1960), pp. 120-23.
73. Baxandall, Limewood Sculptors, p. 64;
74. Braun, Der christliche Altar (above, n. 6), 2:281-83.
75. On the Church of St. Pieter and the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, see Edward van Even, Louvain monumental ou description historique et artistique de tous les édifices civils et religieux de la dite ville (Leuven, 1860), pp. 174 ff.
76. Shirley Neilsen Blum, Early Netherlandish Triptychs: A Study in Patronage (Berkeley, Calif., 1969), p. 72.
77. It is now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena, in temporary storage from the Church of S. Agostino, Siena. See Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena: I dipinti dal XII al XV secolo, 3rd ed. (Genoa, 1990), pp. 51-54;
78. and Andrew Martindale, Simone Martini (Oxford, 1988), pp. 31-34 and cat. no. 41, pp. 211-21.
79. It is not clear when the body of Agostino was translated to Siena. It is thought likely that it had been brought to Siena by 1324, and this is the approximate date normally given to the painting. See Martindale, Simone Martini, pp. 212-13.
80. M. Butzek, "Altar des sel. Augustinus Novellus," in Die Kirchen von Siena, ed. Peter Anselm Riedl and Max Seidel, 2 vols. (Munich, 1985-92), 1:1-273, at p. 210.
81. On tomb-altars see Gianna Bardotti Biasion, "Gano di Fazio e la tomba-altare di Santa Margherita da Cortona," Prospettiva 37 (1984), 2-19.
82. For the position of the Agostino altar and its relationship to other altars in the Church of S. Agostino in Siena see Rudolf Hiller von Gaertringen, "Seven Scenes of the Life of Saint Stephen by Martino di Bartolomeo in Frankfurt: A Proposal for Their Provenance, Function, and Relationship to Simone Martini's Beato Agostino Novello Monument," in Italian Panel Painting, ed. Schmidt (above, n. 3), pp. 315-39, at p. 324.
83. Max Seidel, "Studien zu Giovanni di Balduccio und Tino di Camaino," Städel Jahrbuch, n.s., 5 (1975), 37-84.
84. Hiller von Gaertringen ("Seven Scenes," p. 334) suggests that this format may have been adopted for Agostino Novello in order to avoid the problem of placing the bones of an uncanonized individual inside the altar mensa.
85. See van der Ploeg, "How Liturgical Is a Medieval Altarpiece?" (above, n. 32), pp. 111-12.
86. O'Connell, Church Building (above, n. 58), p. 163;
87. André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, Eng., 1997), pp. 85-103.
88. Joanna Cannon, "Popular Saints and Private Chantries: The Sienese Tomb-Altar of Margherita of Cortona and Questions of Liturgical Use," in Kunst und Liturgie im Mittelaltar: Akten des internationalen Kongresses der Bibliotheca Hertziana und des Nederlands lnstituut te Rome, Rom, 28.-30. September 1997, ed. Nicolas Bock, Sible de Blaauw, Christoph Luitpold Frommel, and Herbert L. Kessler (Munich, 2000), pp. 149-62, at p. 152.
89. Vauchez (Sainthood, p. 91) notes that the bishop of Siena played a part in the birth of the cult of Agostino by forbidding the body to be buried in the ground and having it laid in a stone tomb.
90. "B. Augustini novi imago haec, quae paulo post eius obitum, in ara ipsi sacra, mox genti Ptholomeae attributa, colebatur, in nova ecclesiae extructione huc transfertur A.D. MDCCLIV" ("This figure of the Blessed Agostino Novello which, shortly after his death, was revered on the altar sacred to him, then assigned to the Tolomei family, is transferred hither on the building of the new church 1754": translated by Martindale, Simone Martini, p. 214 n. 13).
91. Klaus Krüger, Der frühe Bildkult des Franziskus in Italien: Gestalt- und Funktionswandel des Tafelbildes im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1992).
92. See also Joanna Cannon, "Beyond the Limitations of Visual Typology: Reconsidering the Function and Audience of Three Vita Panels of Women Saints, c. 1300," in Italian Panel Painting, ed. Schmidt, pp. 291-313, at p. 291.
93. See Cannon, "Beyond the Limitations of Visual Typology," p. 303.
94. It may be the case that altar inscriptions were used precisely in situations where the dedication was not immediately clear. For example, at Assisi the altar in the south transept of the upper church is dedicated to St. Michael, as proclaimed by the inscription (see above, n. 71), but the image above that altar is a Crucifixion by Cimabue, like that in the opposite transept. Obviously the friars required two matching images of the Crucifixion over these altars in the transepts, and that imperative took precedence over a desire to "match" the image over the altar to the dedication of that altar. See Giorgio Bonsanti, The Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi: Glory and Destruction (New York, 1998), col. ill. 6.
95. Magdalen Master, Virgin Lactans with Sts. Peter and Leonard, New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery (Jarves Collection), c. 1290.
96. See Charles Seymour, Jr., Early Italian Paintings in the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, Conn., 1970), cat. no. 1.
97. See Albert Gümbel, Das Mesnerpflichtbuch von St. Lorenz in Nürnberg vom Jahre 1493, Einzelarbeiten aus der Kirchengeschichte Bayerns 8 (Munich, 1928)
98. and W. Hass, "Die mittelalterliche Altaranordnung in der Nürnberger Lorenzkirche," in 500 Jahre Hallenchor St. Lorenz zu Nürnberg, 1477-1977, ed. Herbert Bauer, Gerhard Hirschmann, and Georg Stolz (Nuremberg, 1977), pp. 63-108, both cited in Crossley, as in the following note.
99. Paul Crossley, "The Man from Inner Space: Architecture and Meditation in the Choir of St Laurence in Nuremberg," in Medieval Art - Recent Perspectives: A Memorial Tribute to C. R. Dod-well, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Timothy Graham (Manchester, Eng., 1998), pp. 165-82.
100. See Paul Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets: Kingship and the Representation of Power, 1200-1400 (New Haven, Conn., 1995), pp. 167-71, figs. 217 and 218. Binski (pp. 170-71) notes that the altar itself was coeval with the building of the transept and chapter house complex (c. 1250) and offers various suggestions as to why the altar painting should have been carried out so much later (c. 1290-1310).
101. See Constantine Athanasiadis, "Guarding the Treasure of Henry III: A Re-examination of St Faith's Chapel, Westminster Abbey," M.A. dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2002. (I am grateful to Prof. Richard Marks for this reference.)
102. Binski (Westminster Abbey, p. 169) suggests that this monk may represent either the monastic community at large or perhaps an individual monastic donor.
103. Hans Belting suggests that in this arrangement the mural decoration over the altar of St. Faith replicates an arrangement whereby altars with low retables were placed in front of raised tabernacles in which statues of saints were placed. Here the Crucifixion panel acts as the retable, with the figure of St. Faith placed in a tabernacle above and theoretically behind it. Belting points out that the saint is shown unmistakably as a statue here, by the socle with a capital upon which she is supported. See Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago, 1994), p. 446 and figs. 270 and 271. (I am grateful to Prof. Richard Marks for this reference.)
104. Innocent III's "De missarum misteriis" (or "De sacro altaris mysterio"), written before his elevation to the papacy in 1198, had stated the need for an altar to possess a cross: "Inter duo candelabra in altari crux collocatur media, quoniam inter duos populos Christus in Ecclesia mediator existit, lapis angularis qui fecit utraque unum: ad quem pastores a Judaea, et magi ab Oriente venerum" (PL 217:811).
105. For this altarpiece, see van Os, Sienese Altarpieces (above, n. 13), 2:133-35
106. and Gaudenz Freuler and Michael Mallory, "Der Altar des Beato Philippino Ciardelli in S. Francesco in Montalcino, 1382," Pantheon 47 (1989), 21-35.
107. Henk van Os, "Tradition and Innovation in Some Altarpieces by Bartolo di Fredi," Art Bulletin 67 (1985), 50-66, at p. 59.
108. "Cristofero Costanti nel 1382 edificò un altare ad onore del Gloriosissimo Confessore di Christo B. Filippino Compagno dilettissimo del Gloriosissimo Taumaturgo S. Antonio di Padova, ove presentemente si venera il Serafico P. S. Francesco" (italics mine). See Freuler and Mallory, "Der Altar des Beato Philippino Ciardelli," pp. 21 and 23.
109. Patricia Harpring discussed the possible alternative reconstructions of the altarpiece and concluded that the physical evidence indicates that the normally agreed construction (with St. John on the viewer's left) is preferable. On the other hand, she suggested that the alternative reconstruction, with Filippo Ciardella on the left, is tempting because she felt that it would be compositionally more successful and because "the scenes of the saint to whom the altar was dedicated, Filippino, would be on the more honoured side of the altar." See Patricia Harpring, The Sienese Trecento Painter Bartolo di Fredi (Rutherford, N.J., 1993), p. 77.
110. Vauchez, Sainthood, p. 87 n. 8.
111. As early as 1317 Angelo Clareno responded to the accusations that the Spiritual Franciscans at Narbonne were publicly (and thus abusively) rendering to Peter John Olivi honors that should be accorded only to canonized saints: "nec enim facte sunt nec fiunt nec recitantur sollempnes orationes et officcia in honorem eius, nec in kalendario nec (in) letania ponitur nomen eius nec similia fiunt que ecclesia facere pro Sanctis canonizatis consuevit" (ed. F. Ehrle, "Olivis Leben und Schriften," in Archiv für Literatur und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters 3 [1887], 443
112. cited by Vauchez, Sainthood, p. 95 n. 34). (I am grateful to Dr. Donal Cooper for this information concerning Olivi.)
113. As David Burr points out, the writer goes on to note that such practices, far from being illegitimate, had constituted a normal part of the processes
114. Nigel Morgan's study of Catalan altar frontals notes that from c. 1250 altar frontals became most commonly devoted to a saint. He further notes that these may have been combined with images of Christ and/or the Virgin appearing elsewhere in the ensemble of decoration around the altar, in apse murals for instance. See Nigel Morgan, "Devotional Aspects of Catalan Altar Frontals, c. 1100-1350," in Proceedings of the First Symposium on Catalonia in Australia (La Trobe University, Melbourne, 27-29 September, 1996), ed. Robert Archer and Emma Martinell (Barcelona, 1998), pp. 101-22, esp. pp. 103-4.
115. See Sobré, Behind the Altar Table (above, n. 26), pp. 83-84.
116. C. M. Kauffmann, Catalogue of Foreign Paintings. Victoria and Albert Museum, 1: Before 1800 (London, 1973), cat. no. 221.
117. For detailed studies of this altarpiece see Micheline Comblen-Sonkes, The Collegiate Church of Saint Peter, Louvain, Corpus of Fifteenth-Century Painting in the Southern Netherlands and the Principality of Liège 18 (Brussels, 1996), pp. 1-84
118. and Maurits Smeyers, "The Living Bread: Dirk Bouts and the Last Supper," in Dirk Bouts, een Vlaams primitief te Leuven, ed. Maurits Smeyers, exhibition catalogue, Church of St. Pieter, Leuven, 19 September-6 December 1998 (Leuven, 1998), pp. 35-58.
119. Blum, Netherlandish Triptychs (above, n. 76), p. 63.
120. On the foundation of the feast of Corpus Christi and the importance of Liège, see Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, Eng., 1991), pp. 164-212.
121. See also P.-M. Guy, "Office liégeois et office romain de la Fête-Dieu," in Fête-Dieu (1246-1996): Actes du Colloque de Liège, 12-14 Septembre 1996, ed. André Haquin, Textes, Etudes, Congrès 19 (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1999), pp. 117-26.
122. See also Julien Chapuis, Tilman Riemenschneider, Master Sculptor of the Late Middle Ages (Washington, D.C., 1999), pp. 29-32.
123. Dieter Harmening, "Fränkische Mirakelbücher," Würzburger Diözesangeschichtsblätter 28 (1966), 30, 143, and 152-54.
124. The original Chapel of the Holy Blood was consecrated in the thirteenth century, but the cult surrounding the relic increased during the fifteenth century, and new indulgences were attached to it in 1446, 1455, and 1459. See Baxandall, Limewood Sculptors, p. 235 n. 15.
125. Chapuis, Tilman Riemenschneider, p. 29;
126. Hills, "Renaissance Altarpiece" (above, n. 7), p. 42.
127. An earlier faith in "context" as the crucial and defining background against which to place objects, or events, in order to achieve an understanding of their significance is now increasingly tempered by an acceptance of the view that contexts themselves are not simple, given, or determinate but that they are "just as much in need of elucidation" as objects or events. See Jonathan Culler, Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its Institutions, Oklahoma Project for Discourse and Theory 3 (Norman, Okla., 1988), p. xiv.
128. Crossley, "St Laurence in Nuremberg" (above, n. 106). See above, pp. 363-65.
129. As Norman Bryson points out, "What is not at stake is that 'context' be abandoned as a working concept, in the supposed free play of 'anything goes'; rather, what visual semiotics proposes is that the concept be problematized and reformulated." See Norman Bryson, "Art in Context," in Studies in Historical Change, ed. Ralph Cohen (Charlottesville, Va., 1992), p. 19.
130. The catalogue of the Art of Devotion exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, restricted itself to works of art "the size and provenance of which clearly demonstrated that they had been made for a private room, be it a nun's cell or a layman's bedroom": Henk van Os, ed., The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe, 1300-1500 (Amsterdam, 1994), p. 8.
131. Erwin Panofsky, " 'Imago pietatis': Ein Beitrag zur Typengeschichte des 'Schmerzensmanns' und der 'Maria Mediatrix,' " in Festschrift für Max J. Friedländer zum 60. Geburtstage (Leipzig, 1927), pp. 261-308;
132. Hans Belting, The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion, trans. Mark Bartusis and Raymond Meyer (New Rochelle, N. Y., 1990).
133. The classic definition of this type of image, developed by Panofsky, is the Andachtsbild, an image excerpted from a narrative context that focuses on moments of high emotion or pathos with the intention of arousing the viewer's compassion. Karl Schade has recently reconsidered the concept and definition of the Andachtsbild: see Karl Schade, Andachtsbild: Die Geschichte eines kunsthistorischen Begriffs (Weimar, 1996).
134. Sixten Ringbom, Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up in Fifteenth-Century Devotional Painting, 2nd ed. (Doornspijk, 1984), p. 32 and fig. 5.
135. Confraternities offer the perfect example of groups of laypeople gathering, often in an ecclesiastical setting, perhaps in a semiprivate or private chapel, for prayer, devotion, and other paraliturgical activity. On confraternities see, among others, Barbara Wisch and Diane Cole Ahl, eds., Confraternities and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy: Ritual, Spectacle, Image (Cambridge, Eng., 2000).
136. See James H. Marrow, "Symbol and Meaning in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance," Simiolus 16 (1986), 150-69;
137. and Joseph Leo Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago, 1993);
138. also Wolfgang Kemp, ed., Der Betrachter ist im Bild: Kunstwissenschaft und Rezeptionsästhetik, new ed. (Berlin, 1992);
139. and John Shearman, Only Connect . . . : Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance (Princeton, N.J., 1992).
140. Martin Davies, The Earlier Italian Schools, rev. ed. (London, 1961), pp. 285-86. The church was consecrated in 1485, and an inscription on the floor of the chapel, dated that year, identifies the chapel as the burial vault of the descendants of Domenico di Filippo di Vanni Rucellai, who died in 1484. The Rucellai arms appear at either end of the predella, and therefore the altarpiece is reasonably associated with the project to create a Rucellai family burial chapel.
141. Dunkerton et al., Giotto to Dürer, p. 338.
142. Martin Kemp agreed with "those who advocate caution" in the iconographical analysis of paintings and distinguished between analyzing intended meaning (on the part of the artist or patron) and available meaning (in the eye, or mind, of the beholder). He pointed out that, once installed, altarpieces became available for sophisticated theological or devotional contemplation and interpretation but that this was not the same as saying that sophisticated meanings were "actively embodied in such images during their production" (Martin Kemp, "The Altarpiece in the Renaissance: A Taxonomic Approach," in The Altarpiece, ed. Humfrey and Kemp [above, n. 7], p. 11). Here Kemp acknowledged a separation between issues of interpretation relating to the patronage of altarpieces and those relating to the use of altarpieces. This separation is not always made clear in other studies.
143. On the exposition of the Sacrament see P. Browe, S.J., Die Verehrung der Eucharistie im Mittelalter, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1967), pp. 141 ff.
144. By this process the body of Christ was treated in effect as a relic and displayed for adoration in ostensories, which took their form from reliquaries in which body parts of the saints had been displayed. See Belting, Image, pp; 81-84.
145. Francis's near obsession with the Crucifixion and with the wounds and body of the crucified Christ is well known and documented from the time of Bonaventure's Legenda maior (1260). See Marion A. Habig, St Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early Biographies. English Omnibus Sources for the Life of St Francis (London, 1979).
146. On the crucial differences between images and relics, see David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, 1989), pp. 97-98.
147. Robert Campin is documented as having worked in Tournai between about 1405-6 and his death in 1444 and is generally agreed to have been the teacher of Rogier van der Weyden. For the attribution of the Firescreen Madonna to Robert Campin, see M. J. Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting, 2: Rogier van der Weyden and the Master of Flémalle, trans. Heinz Norden (Leiden, 1967), no. 58;
148. Martin Davies, Early Netherlandish School, 3rd ed. (London, 1968);
149. and Dunkerton et al., Giotto to Dürer, no. 13.
150. The Master of Flémalle was named by Hugo von Tschudi in 1898 from the three panels in Frankfurt, of the Virgin and Child, St. Veronica, and the Trinity, which were (wrongly) thought to have come from Flémalle near Liège. See Hugo von Tschudi, "Der Meister von Flémalle," Jahrbuch der königlich preussischen Kunstsammlungen 19 (1898), 8-34 and 89-116.
151. The relationship between the personalities and the paintings associated with what has come to be known as the "Flémalle group," or the "Campin-Flémalle-Mérode group," is complicated, and there is no general agreement, but Robert Campin is now often equated with the Master of Flémalle (see Lorne Campbell, "Robert Campin, the Master of Flémalle, and the Master of Mérode," Burlington Magazine 116, no. 860 [November 1974], 634-46).
152. Later, in his catalogue of the early Netherlandish paintings in the National Gallery, London, Campbell again took Robert Campin to be the painter responsible for the "Flémalle" panels and thereby equated Robert Campin and the Master of Flémalle (see Lorne Campbell, The Fifteenth-Century Netherlandish Schools [London, 1998], p. 72). On the other hand, some who think that the Master of Flémalle is not to be identified as Robert Campin have equated the Master of Flémalle with the painter of the Mérode Triptych. Still others have separated Robert Campin and the Master of Flémalle and have regarded the Master of the Mérode Triptych as yet another separate personality.
153. See Maryan W. Ainsworth and Keith Christiansen, eds., From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1998), cat. no. 2, where the Mérode Triptych is attributed to "Robert Campin and assistant, possibly Rogier van der Weyden."
154. For the attribution of the Firescreen Madonna to the painter of the Mérode Triptych see Campbell, Fifteenth-Century Netherlandish Schools, p. 98.
155. See examples of winged altarpieces combining sculptural and painted elements in Jacobs, Early Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces (above, n. 56), pp. 96-114. In all of these cases, however, the smaller painted panels contain narrative scenes, not images of a devotional nature such as the Virgin and Child. This might suggest that the Firescreen Madonna would be unlikely to have been originally part of such an ensemble.
156. C. Ferguson O'Meara, " 'In the Hearth of the Virginal Womb': The Iconography of the Holocaust in Late Medieval Art," Art Bulletin 63 (1981), 75-88.
157. See, for example, Rogier van der Weyden's St. Luke Painting the Virgin, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts;
158. For the Virgin's lap as an altar, see Purtle, Marian Paintings (above, n. 48), p. 100 n. 8.
159. It is not possible to read any of the text of this book: only the initials are legible. Felix Thürlemann has described it as an Old Testament, which is balanced by the New Testament, in the form of the chalice: Felix Thürlemann, Robert Campin (Munich, 2002), pp. 94-95.
160. Carol Purtle has noted that the Child can be seen as "paralleling the active pages of the Word of God in the elevated manuscript" and suggests that this emphasizes "the role of the Child, the Word made Flesh, as active intercessor for the viewer": Carol Purtle, "The Iconography of Campin's Madonnas," in Robert Campin: New Directions in Scholarship, ed. Susan Foister and Susie Nash (Turnhout, 1996), pp. 171-82, at p. 175.
161. Frances Pitts, "Iconographic Mode in Campin's London Madonna," Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 55 (1986), 87-110, at p. 90.
162. See, among others, Madonna and Saints in a Garden, Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection;
163. In the Mérode Annunciation the book held by the Virgin behaves normally, while two pages of the book on the table turn and curl in a manner similar to, but more animated than, that in the Firescreen Madonna. In the Brussels Annunciation (Brussels, Musée Royale des Beaux Arts), closely associated with the Mérode Annunciation, both books appear to be exceptionally animated. Several pages of the book on the table are ruffled and curled, and even the pages of the book on the Virgin's lap seem to move independently, with one page flipping backward over her hand. For a useful comparison of the Mérode and Brussels Annunciations see Jeltje Dijkstra, "The Brussels and the Merode Annunciation Reconsidered," in Robert Campin, ed. Foister and Nash, pp. 95-104, figs. 1 and 2.
164. See Brigitte de Patoul and Roger van Schoute, eds., Les Primitifs flamands et leurs temps (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1994), color illustration on p. 195.
165. Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character (Cambridge, Mass., 1953;
166. Catherine Reynolds, "Reality and Image: Interpreting Three Paintings of the Virgin and Child in an Interior Associated with Campin," in Robert Campin, ed. Foister and Nash, pp. 183-95, at p. 190.
167. Reynolds notes the famous firescreen behind the duke of Berry, in the January miniature of the Très Riches Heures (see Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Late Fourteenth Century and the Patronage of the Duke, 2 vols. [London, 1967], 2, fig. 539). This firescreen serves a similar focusing function as that in the Firescreen Madonna.
168. It has been noted that the fires in other related paintings - the London Virgin and Child attributed to Jacques Daret and the St. Petersburg Virgin and Child - are much lower and are not screened (Reynolds, "Reality and Image," p. 194 n. 64).
169. See O'Meara, "Iconography of the Holocaust," p. 83
170. I am grateful to Prof. Anne-Marie Bouché for this suggestion. Other suggestions as to the role of fire and light in the compositions of the Virgin and Child in an interior from the Campin circle, including the Firescreen Madonna, are made by Purtle, "Campin's Madonnas," p. 177.
171. For example, "Nobis Sancti Spiritus," the hymn for matins of the Holy Spirit: "Nobis Sancti Spiritus gratia sit data, / De quo virgo virginum fuit obumbrata, / Cum per sanctum Angelum fuit salutata, / Verbum caro factum est, virgo fecundata." For the structure of the Hours of the Holy Spirit, see Roger S. Wieck, Time Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life (New York, 1988), pp. 162-63.
172. Mary Virginia Orna, O.S.U., Manfred J. D. Low, and Norbert S. Baer, "Synthetic Blue Pigments: Ninth to Sixteenth Centuries. 1. Literature," Studies in Conservation 25 (1980), 53-63.
173. It was suggested, as early as 1926, that the Reboux painting (which appears to show a bowl on the cupboard next to the Virgin, rather than a chalice) reflected the original composition of the Firescreen Madonna (J. Destrée, "Altered in the Nineteenth Century? A Problem at the National Gallery, London," Connoisseur 74/ 296 [April 1926], 209-10).
174. However, the Reboux painting, when compared with the Firescreen Madonna, is simplified in many other ways, not just in the elimination of the chalice. For example, the book does not have the elaborate jeweled clasps of the London painting, and the pages are still. The view from the window in the Firescreen Madonna has been eliminated and replaced with heraldic stained glass. The gesture of the Child's left hand has been simplified. The lower half of his body is much less naked in the Reboux painting than in the London picture. The folds of white cloth have been multiplied and cover his right leg, whereas in the London picture both legs are left uncovered. There is, therefore, no need to set such store by the lack of a chalice in the Reboux painting and no need to assume, simply on that basis, that the chalice in the Firescreen Madonna must be an invention of the restorer. More recently, it has been argued that the Reboux version corresponds to the Firescreen Madonna in its restored state (Stephan Kemperdick, Der Meister von Flémalle: Die Werkstatt Robert Campins und Rogier van der Weyden, Ars Nova 2 [Turnhout, 1997], pp. 61-62). This calls into question the true relationship between the Reboux painting and the Firescreen Madonna, and the issue needs further investigation. In the current state of scholarship, however, it seems unlikely that the Reboux painting helps to establish the original appearance of the Firescreen Madonna.
175. Pitts argues that the chalice was probably a part of the original composition and that its presence would have been perfectly logical and acceptable: "Campin's London Madonna," p. 92.
176. For full details of the cleaning and technical examination of the painting, see David Bomford, Lorne Campbell, Ashok Roy, and Raymond White, "The Virgin and Child before a Firescreen: History, Examination and Treatment," in Robert Campin, ed. Foister and Nash, pp. 37-54. The newly cleaned and restored painting was exhibited in a "Brief Encounters" exhibition at the National Gallery in London, where it was juxtaposed with a diptych The Virgin and Child and the Trinity, from the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, which is also associated with the circle of Robert Campin. The papers given at a symposium held in connection with the exhibition on 12-13 March 1993 were published in Foister and Nash, Robert Campin.
177. "See B.G. Lane . . . who suggests a sacramental interpretation of the panel which is not accepted here": Michael Michael, "The Virgin and Child before a Firescreen at the National Gallery: The Origins of the Madonna of Humility as the Amicta Sole," Apollo 143 (May 1996), 8-14, at p. 14 n. 44.
178. Millard Meiss, "The Madonna of Humility," Art Bulletin 18 (1936), 435-64, at p. 451;
179. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, p. 163;
180. Reynolds, "Reality and Image."
181. In Bomford et al., "Virgin and Child," p. 38.
182. Leo Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1996), pp. 386-89. Steinberg had not mentioned the Firescreen Madonna in the first edition of this work, which was published before the painting was cleaned, and the genitals of the Christ child were therefore not yet clearly visible, still being hidden under the nineteenth-century repaint. Once the painting had been cleaned, Steinberg added the Firescreen Madonna to his discussion in the second edition.
183. Steinberg used the expression "ostentatio genitalium," expressly suggesting a parallel with "the canonic ostentatio vulnerum, the showing forth of the wounds": ibid., p. 3. On Christ's humanity he wrote (p. 15), "If the godhead incarnates itself to suffer a human fate, it takes on the condition of being both deathbound and sexed."
184. Caroline Walker Bynum had developed Barbara Lane's sacramental interpretation of the Firescreen Madonna in her essay "The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg," Renaissance Quarterly 39 (1986), 399-439
185. (repr. in Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion [New York, 1992], pp. 79-117: all references here are to this later reprint). She discussed the Firescreen Madonna as having eucharistic inflections, linking it with her wider exploration of Christ's flesh being understood in the Middle Ages as in some senses female: pp. 103-4.
186. Steinberg, Sexuality of Christ, p. 330.
187. William Hood, "The State of Research in Italian Renaissance Art," Art Bulletin 69 (June 1987), 184
188. In fact, Steinberg had discussed the theology of the circumcision and its possible relation to the ostentatio genitalium in both his first and second editions. However, as Bynum's reply to Steinberg had focused mainly on questions of gender in relation to the body of Christ, when Steinberg came to discuss the Firescreen Madonna in his own reply to Bynum, he, in turn, considered the painting in terms of gender and sexuality, and not in relation to the theme of circumcision. For a review of Steinberg that rejects the central argument of The Sexuality of Christ and favors the circumcision as an explanation of some of the images discussed, see Charles Hope, "Ostentatio genitalium," London Review of Books (15 November-6 December 1984), pp. 19-20.
189. According to Luke 2.21, Christ was circumcised and given the name Jesus
190. For the Madonna del Bordone, see Gianna Mina, "The Madonna del Bordone: Political Statement or Profession of Faith," in Art, Politics, and Civic Religion in Central Italy, 1261-1352: Essays by Postgraduate Students at the Courtauld Institute of Art, ed. Joanna Cannon and Beth Williamson, Courtauld Research Papers 1 (Aldershot, Eng., 2000), pp. 237-93, at p. 251.
191. For the Wilton Diptych, see The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych, ed. Dillian Gordon, Lisa Monnas, and Caroline Elam (London, 1997).
192. For example, in Rogier van der Weyden's half-length Madonna and Child in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (inv. no. 44-535, 30 x 20.7 cm.), the Child's feet are arranged so that the upper surface of the left foot and the sole of the right foot are visible. The Child touches his right foot with his left hand, with one finger pointing to the center of the sole of his foot. At the same time, the big toe of the left foot points to the same place, which might indicate a concern to emphasize the site of a future wound. See Friedländer, Early Netherlandish Painting (above, n. 169), 2, pl. 57.
193. Michael, "Virgin and Child," p. 12.
194. See Bartolomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum 5.34 (Frankfurt am Main, 1601;
195. See Beth Williamson, "The Cloisters Double Intercession: The Virgin as Co-Redemptrix," Apollo 152 (November 2000), 48-54;
196. see also Pitts, "Campin's London Madonna," p. 92, where the author proposes a parallel between Christ's blood and the Virgin's milk - and a reference to dual intercession - based upon the balanced presentation of the breast and the eucharistic chalice.
197. In the light of this suggestion, it is interesting to note that the feast of the Circumcision was very closely linked with devotion to the Virgin Mary and her motherhood of God. As was noted above, 1 January was celebrated as the feast of the Circumcision from the mid-sixth century in the Gallican rite but from a much later date in Rome. The feast celebrated on 1 January in Rome in the sixth and seventh centuries was not the Circumcision as such, but the octave of Christmas. It has been noted that the five major feasts of the Virgin Mary (Conception, Annunciation, Nativity of Christ, Purification, and Assumption) were slow to develop, and none was celebrated in Rome before about 700. The only older Roman commemoration of the Virgin was on the octave of Christmas, when Mass was said in commemoration of the reality of the Virgin's motherhood of Jesus. The prayers of the Mass and of the office of the day had a particular Marian character, which was retained even when the feast became more commonly celebrated as the Circumcision. In the office, the responses and antiphons refer to the Virgin's privileges and prerogatives. The Psalms for vespers of this day are those appointed for Marian feasts, and the antiphons and hymns of lauds have a distinctly Marian emphasis. See The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1908), "Circumcision, Feast of the."
198. Bynum, "Body of Christ," p. 104.
199. On the Virgin as coredemptrix, see J. B. Carol, De corredemptione B. Virginis Mariae, Franciscan Institute Publications, Theology Series, 1 (Vatican City, 1950);
200. Beth Williamson, "The Virgin Lactans as Second Eve: Image of the Salvatrix," Studies in Iconography 19 (1998), 105-38, at pp. 111-12.
201. This is one of the reasons why Susan Urbach's reading of the image of the Christ child's exposed genitals is ultimately unsatisfactory. In "On the Iconography of Campin's Virgin and Child in an Interior: The Child Jesus Comforting His Mother after the Circumcision," in Flanders in a European Perspective: Manuscript Illumination around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad. Proceedings of the International Colloquium, Leuven, 7-10 September 1993, ed. Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon, Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts 8/5 (Leuven, 1995), pp. 557-68, Urbach suggests that in the group of paintings from the circle surrounding Campin that exhibit this feature, the painter has followed the passage in the Meditationes vitae Christi in which, after the Virgin has circumcised Christ, he comforted her, and "touched her mouth and face that she should not cry."
202. Bryson, "Art in Context" (above, n. 151), p. 19.