THE ENTOMBMENT OF CHRIST BY JEAN DE ROUEN, A MYSTERIOUS WORK AND A CASE OF FORMAL TRANSMIGRATION (original) (raw)
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digitAR - Digital Journal of Archaeology, Architecture and Arts, 7 (2020) - João de Ruão. Arquitecto e escultor do Renascimento europeu, 2020
Upon his arrival in Coimbra, in about 1528, Jean de Rouen immediately started working for the Monastery of Santa Cruz, of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine. The house was undergoing a spiritual and physical reformation ordered by John III, with the Hieronymite Friar Brás de Braga in charge. Jean de Rouen, sculptor, or “imagineer”, was commissioned with some ornamental architectural pieces, such as arches and doorways, where he applied the new language of the Renaissance – as, for example, the arch of the high choir of the church, framed by a classic composition of pilasters, entablature and a pair of tondi. Simultaneously, he also became responsible for those space-containing architectural structures such as a small chapel amongst the Silence cloister, or the Manga cloister fountain tempietto. In this paper we aim to analyse Jean de Rouen’s work at Santa Cruz, during the first phase of his Portuguese career, and the growing scope of his artistic activity from the scale of sculpture to that of architecture.
The paper focuses on the Romanesque wooden Crucifix of the church of Sainte-Marie at Cherier Le Vieux Bourg (Loire, Rhônes- Alpes, France). It is stylistically related to some other sculptures originating in the Massif Central region and, in particular, to a Christ from Herment in the Musée de Cluny (Cl. 2149), a Crucifix from Lavaudieu, now divided between the Musée du Louvre (head: r.f. 1662) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (body: 25.120.221), a head of Christ in the treasury of Clermont-Ferrand cathedral. Furthermore, the Cherier Crucifix appears to be connected to the Madonna and child statues – the most important being in the Metropolitan Museum of Art – attributed to a sculptor conventionally known as “The Morgan Master”. Thus, these wooden sculptures are assumed to have been carved in the workshop of this anonymous master. Some comparisons with Romanesque stone sculpture in the Rhone Valley during the mid-twelfth century are made in order to place the Cherier Crucifix in a chronological and artistic context.
Cet article examine une étrange gravure de la fin du XVIII e siècle qui illustre la plaie du dos du Christ. Elle fut découverte dans les archives de l'Inquisition de la ville de Mexico. Cette plaie gigantesque, autour de laquelle sont disposés, sans ordre apparent, les instruments de la Passion du Christ, laisse voir quatre os. La gravure fut censurée par le Saint-Office à cause de son inscription, qui renfermait des informations incorrectes, principalement de fausses indulgences. Néanmoins, on peut établir des liens entre cette gravure et différentes peintures du XVIII e siècle en Nouvelle-Espagne qui mettent l'accent tout particulièrement sur le dos du Christ pour y concentrer la souffrance de la Passion. En étudiant simultanément ces oeuvres, la gravure et l'analyse de l'Inquisition, on parvient à mieux comprendre la signification complexe de certaines images de la Passion du Christ en Nouvelle-Espagne. Les difficultés à représenter visuellement cette souffrance m'intéressent à un plus haut point parce qu'elles conduisirent les artistes à utiliser le dos du Christ comme élément de dévotion suscitant la compassion des fidèles. Évitant de représenter le corps en entier, la gravure de la plaie dorsale du Christ permettait d'élever la représentation visuelle de la souffrance du Seigneur.
Relics of Place: Stone Fragments of the Holy Sepulchre in Eleventh-Century France
Journal of Medieval History, 2018
This article considers stone pieces from the Holy Sepulchre brought to France in the eleventh century. Recent years have seen a growing awareness of architectural replications of the Holy Sepulchre built throughout the Latin West. Less attention has been devoted to its unmediated translation; namely, transporting its matter. Many French pilgrims who set out for Jerusalem before Urban’s instigation towards the East in 1095 returned with stone fragments of the Holy Tomb to commemorate their visit and to consecrate architectural copies. I argue that like the bodily remains of saints, these stone fragments acted as parts signifying the whole: they represented their place of origin and lent authenticity to local monuments. They could also act in unnatural ways, attracting cults and prompting narratives, visual representations, and staging in the church that announced their significance.
Romanesque, Saints and Pilgrimage, ed. J. McNeill and R. Plant, Routledge, New York-London, 2020, pp. 187-201
As has been noted by a number of scholars, the reliquary-altar depicting the martyrdom of Saint Saturninus at the abbey church of Saint-Hilaire d’Aude – generally attributed to the enigmatic Master of the Tympanum of Cabestany – is a puzzling and potentially deceptive 12th-century work of art. Superficially it resembles a Late-Antique sarcophagus, carved in the Roman manner on three faces, though the size of the internal cavity makes it clear that it is in fact a reliquary-altar. Furthermore, the style of its carvings is deliberately archaic and designed to emulate Early Christian sculpture. In short, the intention seems to have been to create a sort of counterfeit that might persuade an onlooker to view the altar as a genuine reused Late Antique sarcophagus. One can find similar instances of the imitation of Antiquity elsewhere in 12th-century Languedoc and Tuscany, in which the aim seems to have been to evoke a prestigious past. From a formal point of view, it has led scholars to propose a long and varied training for the Cabestany Master in Tuscany, Languedoc, and even Catalonia. However, certain iconographical details at Saint-Hilaire reveal something of the sources the artist used in carving the reliquary-altar and of the underlying intention behind its creation. This evidence points to a direct knowledge of Roman sculpture reused in 11th-and-12th-century Pisa, as Laura Bartolomé has pointed out. Furthermore, the Benedictine milieu of the abbey, the interests of the family of the Trencavel counts of Carcassonne and the emerging Albigensian conflict are the historical context for the making of this ‘sarcophagus’. It will be concluded that the reliquary-altar acts as a type of manifesto, distancing the community for whom it was made from heresy, in an attempt reclaim the orthodoxy of the past and implicitly compare the troubling present to the age of St. Saturninus and St. Hilaire de Carcassonne.
The Beatitudes Casket in Madrid's Museo Arqueologico - its Iconography in Context
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I. Benincampi, Roman Baroque Models and Local Traditional Construction. The Sanctuary of St. Ignatius of Loyola and its dome, in «X Congreso Nacional y II Internacional Hispanoamericano de Historia de la Construcción», atti del convegno (San Sebastian, 3-7 ottobre 2017), I, Istituto Juan De Herrera, Madrid 2017, pp. 175-184. ISBN: 978-84-9728-561-2 ABSTRACT: La realización indirecta de la Basílica del Santuario de Loyola por el arquitecto papal Carlo Fontana (1638-1714), que diseñó todo el complejo pero nunca se hizo presente en su ejecución, dejó un amplio espacio para la intervención de los diferentes maestros de obras locales. En particular, la elevación de la cúpula – una doble concha casi perfectamente semiesférica – constituyó la máxima expresión de esta mezcla de culturas. De hecho, en lugar de cumplir plenamente las directrices probablemente trasmitidas por el dibujo del profesional romano, los maestros de obras de la region de Guipúzcoa trataron de adaptarlas a la situación provincial de la construccion, pobre en medios. Además, al participar en un cuerpo consolidado de conocimientos transmitidos por la tradición y favorecida por la gran disponibilidad local de piedra, se procedió a la redacion del proyecto ejecutivo a través de la aplicación de los principios de la ‘estereotomía’: una dirección operativa, que dio lugar a una obra artistica única, marcada por algunos dispositivos específicos. Por lo tanto, a través de un intento de traducción tridimensional del método de composición de la cúpula de acuerdo con las reglas establecidas por esta práctica y la profundización de las técnicas de construcción definidas en los tratados en el momento todavía en circulación – por ejemplo 'El libro de trazas de Cortes de Piedras' (1578-89) de Alonso de Vandelvira (1544-1626) o ‘Cerramientos y trazas de montea’ de Ginés Martínez de Aranda (1556-1620) bien conocido por Joaquin de Churriguera (1674-1724) quien participó en la fábrica – se han explorado las singularidades de esta estructura, que afectaron no sólo la misma estabilidad del implante de la iglesia, sino esctructural también que determinaron las modalidades de ejecución de las decoraciones.
The Baptistery of Pisa and the Rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre: A Reconsideration
in: Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, ed. by Bianca Kuehnel, Galit Noga-Banai, and Hanna Vorholt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 95-105 , 2015
The Baptistery of Pisa has long been known to be one of the most accurate medieval copies of the Rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Despite the many similarities, there are, naturally, some divergences in Pisa from the plan and section of Jerusalem as it was in the 12th century. These have been noted and seen as following the general tendency in the Middle Ages for selective copying, as outlined by Richard Krautheimer. Yet a close reading of the Baptistery's architecture, both in plan and in section, hints that the divergences are deliberate and occur only when they add symbolic value. They seem even more conspicuous in light of some previously unmarked similarities of architectural elements that coincide exactly with those in Jerusalem, but whose placing is deliberately changed in Pisa. The changed location of some elements demonstrates a reflection on their significance and symbolism. This paper analyzes the architectural elements, direct quotes and deviations, in this Pisan interpretation of the Holy Sepulchre and shows its innovation. The analysis leads to a re-assessment of the relationship between the two buildings and points to the Baptistery as a building that does not conform to the known characteristics of medieval architectural translation, but ushers in an innovative approach to the idea of copy and representation.