The Making of an Icon: The Madonna Bruna del Carmine in Naples (13th-17th Centuries), in Saints, Miracles and the Image. Healing Saints and Miraculous Images in the Reinassance, Sandra Cardarelli and Lara Fenelli eds., Turnhout: Brepols, 2017, pp. 229-249. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Sacred Imagery, Confraternities and Urban Space in Medieval Naples
Confraternities in Southern Italy: Art, Politics and Religion, edited by David D'Andrea and Salvatore Marino, Toronto, Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies (Eassys and Studies, 52), 2022, pp. 43-102, 2022
In recent years, scholarly research has shown an increasing interest in the confraternal imagery, although studies have mainly concentrated on single case-studies. More comprehensive overviews were attempted for limited areas, such as Central and Northern Italy, during specific periods of time. Medieval Naples, like Southern Italy in general, has received no attention, although historical studies during the last few decades have offered a clearer picture of confraternal movements and other forms of lay associations that were active in the city since the early Middle Ages. Far from filling the gap, this article adopts an art-historical methodology to explore the visual culture, rituality and social composition of confraternities and other lay associations in medieval Naples. The survey focuses on three types of sacred images. Firstly, it discusses the monumental wooden Crucifixes that were on display in the main churches of the city. An essential feature in the visual layout of the church, the crucifixes also benefited from donations of lands and properties from the laypeople, a practice originally reserved in Naples to images of private devotion. Utilizing textual and material evidence, the article examines their relation with the most common kind of secular associations in the churches of Naples during the medieval and early modern periods: the “staurite”, from the Greek word for cross (“stauròs”). They were made of laymen who lived in the surroundings of the church and were devoted to charitable activities for the sick and poor of the district. Secondly, it examines sacred imagery in late medieval confraternities and other forms of lay religious associations by analysing three case-studies: the Disciplina della Croce, one of the oldest and longest living confraternities in Naples, originally formed by flagellants; the Annunziata, founded by a consortium of laymen and women in the fourteenth century as a church and hospital; two fifteenth century confraternities linked to the Dominican convents of S. Domenico Maggiore and S. Pietro Martire, whose members came from the aristocracy and the middle class respectively. Lastly, it presents two ancient images that originally belonged to local confraternities but gained a larger reputation after they proved miraculous in the sixteenth century: a panel with St. Antony of Padua in S. Lorenzo Maggiore, and the icon of the Madonna Bruna in S. Maria del Carmine. The narrative will ideally follow a historic itinerary in the medieval city: from the earlier places of worship in the old Greek and Roman centre, to the late medieval expansion towards the Market Square and the grand church of the Carmelites.
In the context of the new centrality given by the Council of Trent to the cult of the relics of saints (as “tangible” evidence of sanctity), the case of the Republic of Genoa in the 17th century is of particular interest, as ancient objects of devotion were reread in terms of identity formation, consequently generating new iconographies (a process which is the subject of the present study). In the Middle Ages, Genoa became home to two extraordinarily important relics: the ashes of St John the Baptist (one of the city’s patron saints) and the “Sacro Catino” (Holy Basin), which was believed at the time to be made of emerald and alternately identified as either the Holy Grail or the plate used by Christ during the Last Supper (or both). These invaluable relics, the object of widespread devotion, were not linked until the early modern period, when the historiographic and literary sources began to put them in relation to the heroic feats of Guglielmo Embriaco. The Genoese military leader, who was already locally considered to have been the main figure behind the conquest of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, was now also held to have been the one who brought them to the city. As a consequence, he came to be represented in multiple fresco cycles not only as the conqueror of the Holy City but also as solely responsible for the arrival of priceless relics. Indeed, his figure ended up alongside the patron saints and the Virgin in the decoration of the site where the city’s religious glories were celebrated more than anywhere else: the chapel of the Ducal Palace, itself the seat of government and the Doge. In parallel, while this strengthened interest in votive objects that were already part of the city’s history, it also launched a process for the construction of a new cult that involved retrieving the remains of St Desiderius from France to resolve an age-old problem. The Republic of Genoa claimed the merit of having never stained itself with Christian blood and so of having never created a martyr in the whole history of Christianity, not even when savage persecution was being carried out elsewhere; but this also meant that there were no martyrs’ relics to venerate. The lack of a local martyr to serve as the protector of the city – as was common in the system of patron saints in other Italian cities – created the grounds for a complex diplomatic venture, backed by a few local noblemen, that caused the arrival of the relics of St Desiderius in Genoa in 1654. Desiderius was a saint of remote Ligurian origin who was, however, martyred in Langres, and so he offered the perfect solution for finally guaranteeing the city possession of a martyr’s remains. This event led to the inclusion of a saint until then almost unknown in the decorative programme of the chapel of Ducal Palace, frescoed in those same years, within the canon of the city’s most important religious imagery. The aim of this study is therefore to bring into focus the identity-forming value assumed by ancient relics in Genoa at the height of the 17th century, determining the development of new religious iconography understandable in relation to the political and socio-cultural context that generated it.
The icon of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome: an image and its afterlife
Renaissance Studies, 2005
Focussing on the icon of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, this article explores the re-use, replication and documentation of a medieval image in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The icon, a portrait of the Virgin and Christ attributed to the hand of St Luke the Evangelist, helped to reinforce both the Catholic cult of images and the cult of Mary, which had come under attack during the period of the Protestant Reformation. During this time, the copying and dispersion of the Roman image served various purposes: the reproductions reinforced the popularity of the original representation from Santa Maria Maggiore; the copies established political ties through diplomatic gift giving; and the replications played a significant role in the Catholic missionary programme, especially under the Jesuits. The popularity of the icon copies, encouraged by missionary zeal, miraculous occurrences, or authoritative texts, blurred the distinctions among prototype (the Virgin or Christ), holy image (the icon) and replica (the Counter-Reformation copy). (pp. 660–672)
The Madonna del Baraccano. Reworking and Reframing a Marian Image in Early Modern Bologna
The miraculous image of the Madonna del Baraccano, a thirteenth century fresco depicting the Virgin and Child Christ painted inside one of the bastions of the south wall that used to protect the city of Bologna, was restored into the image we know today by Francesco del Cossa in 1472, and an oratory was built to host its cult. The fifteenth-century intervention destroyed the original figures almost completely, except for the heads of the holy personages, which significantly, were left intact and integrated by the artist in the new scene. This talk will re-examine the material transformations underwent by the fresco of the Madonna del Baraccano in the light of recent reflections on the status of images in the early modern period, and will ask what it meant for an artist to intervene on a miracle-working image, and how – if at all – its authority and efficacy were affected by physical alterations and stylistic updating.
Tradition and Propaganda in the Venetian Madonna della Pace
2016
In 1503 a large icon of the Hodegetria belonging to the Dominican friars of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, was transferred from the chapter house of the monastery to its own chapel adjacent to the cloister. The image was promoted as the icon before which St John of Damascus recovered his amputated hand, as a mediator in family disputes, and as an object of veneration by both Venetian Catholics and the Greek Orthodox community in that city. A series of polyglot pamphlets recording the history of the icon and its function as mediatrix par excellence further promoted the icon in the 17 th century, reinforcing the link the icon provided between Counter Reformation Catholics and Greek Orthodox immigrants in early modern Venice. Over the last one hundred and fifty years historians of both art and culture have addressed the presence of miraculous images in the city of Venice in a peculiarly univocal manner. Scholarly publications have limited their scope to the role of popular imagery in the secular sphere; the authenticity of the great palladium of the State-the Nicopeia; the presence of Greek icons in the Venetian Marian cult; and the development of Renaissance architecture associated with the most famous of the indigenous Venetian images. Only a very few studies, such as Edward Muir's article on the Venetian capitelli, expound the view of the miraculous images residing in Venice and its environs as part of an open system of efficacious objects that assisted the people of the city in their civic, religious, and spiritual self-identification. 1 The large Byzantine panel of the Hodegetria now resting on the altar in the chapel of San Giacinto at the Do-minican monastic church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice is a prime exemplar of the narrow focus scholars have directed towards images of sanctity in the Serenissima (fig. 1). Its own chapel was destroyed when the Venetian civic hospital was built in the 19 th century, nearly all the art adorning the space has been lost, and the archives of its religious confraternity contain significant lacunae. Scholars have found little of interest in the story of the icon beyond its sad history in the years after Napoleon's wholesale suppression of religious organizations in the city. 2 Yet the position the image occupied in early modern Venice as mediatrix par excellence both at the personal level and within the complicated religious structure of the city warrants a closer examination, for its function in early modern Venice was unique. Unfortunately the fate of virtually all the miraculous images in Venice has been harsh. During the initial period of French occupation immediately after the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797, soldiers looted a large number of churches and monasteries of their precious objects and works of art. The great wave of destruction came in the period between 1806 and 1815, when the French reoccupied Venice and suppressed over a third of its 187 churches. Of the eighty-six churches that were closed, seventy were torn down between 1806 and 1860, and though some material survives from these lost churches the contextual relationship between the images and the sacred space they occupied has been irrevocably lost. UDK: