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Excerpts from Artists in Renaissance Italy by John T. Paoletti and Gary M. Radke
Rome: Artists, Popes, and Cardinals
Introduction
No city in Italy could boast as rich and complex a history as Rome. A fifteenth-century
woodcut emphasizes its papal and imperial monuments (Fig. 1). The palace of the popes (clearly
labeled palatium pape) stands on the horizon immediately to the right of Old St. Peter's Basilica,
burial site of the Apostle who was the first pope. The prominent position of these structures on
the Vatican hill reflects the city's domination by the papacy. Major monuments of Roman
antiquity stretch across the foreground of the print, documenting the city's former grandeur.
Many of these had acquired or been given Christian significance. At the far left appears a corner
of the Colosseum (sacred site of Christian martyrdom), followed by the dome and portico of the
Pantheon (rededicated as a church to the Virgin Mary) and the column of Trajan (an ancient
monument to one of the Roman emperors whom Christians recognized as "good"). At the far
right stands the huge drum-shaped Castel Sant'Angelo, originally the mausoleum of the Emperor
Hadrian but later endowed with fortifications by several popes. Hefty ancient walls continued to
define the city's limits.
Even so, Rome was but a shell of its former self. Whereas other cities repeatedly outgrew and
expanded their ancient and medieval walls, Rome rattled around inside them. Huge fields of
ruins stood starkly in what once had been densely populated neighborhoods; sheep and cows
grazed in the remains of the imperial fora. Most of the population lived in the neighborhood at
the bend on the river Tiber where the Vatican met the old imperial city.
The woodcut shows a good number of houses in front of the Vatican, along with a porticoed
church-like building and enormous courtyard that made up the papal hospital of Santo Spirito, an
institution committed to public charity. As effective rulers of Rome, the popes, who claimed that
their temporal rulership of the state had been conferred on them by Constantine before he moved
the capital of the Empire to Constantinople in the fourth century, were responsible for all aspects
of life in the city. Although the Roman Senate continued to exist as the official civic government,
real control over the city was exercised by the pope and a few very strong factionalized feudal
families such as he Colonna and the Orsini whose histories went back to classical antiquity, or so
they claimed.
Artistic patronage in Rome was determined by the peculiar nature of papal authority, which
was both religious and secular, local and international, and by the papacy's need to respond to the
political demands of the Senate and the city's leading families. The lineage of the papacy had
been continuous and unbroken since Peter, the first pope, but it was non-dynastic. A pope was
elected for life by the cardinals, his major subordinates within the hierarchically organized
institution of the Church. Presumably celibate, a pope had no heirs to whom the office could
descend. The cardinals and the popes were not always Roman or even Italian, a situation that led
inevitably to power struggles between the popes and local families who sought favorable
treatment from the papacy. Thus the popes had to construct an artificial lineage, associating
themselves with the histories and deeds (including artistic commissions) of their predecessors, so
as to underscore the continuity of he papal office and their unbroken connections with its
previous holders. Given these concerns and the imposing, ubiquitous reminders of past glory, it
is not surprising that art and culture in Rome were often highly traditionalist. Within these
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traditions, however, were some of the key elements from which artists and patrons would fashion
a new art. Rome boasted unsurpassed riches of ancient and Early Christian art, including vast
expanses of painting and mosaic as well as imposing architectural remains.
Nicholas IV at Santa Maria Maggiore
Pope Nicholas IV (r. 1288-92), a native of Ascoli and the first member of the new reforming
Franciscan order to head the Church, continued the cultural policies of Nicholas III. His major
focus was Santa Maria Maggiore, the papal basilica in the neighborhood controlled by the
Colonna family, who effectively adopted this non-Roman pope, a redressing of urban power
after the earlier Orsini pope. Nicholas replaced the old apse at Santa Maria Maggiore with a
larger, more impressive structure that included a transept, enhancing its similarities to Old St.
Peter's. He lined the apse with marbles and mosaics by the Roman painter and mosaicist Jacopo
Torriti (active 1270-1300 Rome) depicting the Coronation of the Virgin in a star-studded blue
orb (Fig. 2). Imperially clad figures of the Virgin and Christ sit upon a golden throne softened
with scarlet and blue cushions. Raising his right hand to the Virgin's head, Christ completes the
coronation of his Queen of Heaven while angels steady the celestial sphere. The Latin inscription
below it comes from the liturgy for the August 15 feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, the
anniversary of the traditional founding of the basilica. It calls explicit attention to key elements
in the representation: the Virgin's assumption to the heavenly throne, the starry realm of Christ
the King, the chorus of angels, and the Virgin's royal status. This depiction of the Virgin as the
Queen of Heaven can also be seen as a reference to Mary as Ecclesia, or the Church, the bride of
Christ, a metaphor based on the Old Testament Song of Songs. In this role Mary/Ecclesia
appears as co-ruler with God, like him capable of granting salvation. It is a powerful image of
the Church controlling Christian destiny and of the popes who were its head.
To the left of the central image a small figure of Nicholas in a scarlet coat and papal tiara
kneels as patron before standing figures of the saints Peter and Paul, who appear to be presenting
the pope to the celestial court. To the left of these saints Torriti represents the plainly clad and
tonsured figure of St. Francis, an appropriate inclusion for a patron who had begun his
ecclesiastical career as a Franciscan. At the right a miniaturized Cardinal Jacopo Colonna kneels
before another pair of saints, John the Baptist and John the Evangelist; at the far right St.
Anthony of Padua, another Franciscan, completes the Franciscan "bracketing" of the scene.
Torriti's full, soft forms and the poses of his figures recall the Byzantine imperial style of the
mid-1260s that had abandoned the characteristically insistent linear patterns of Byzantine art.
The mosaic's lush green rinceaux (stylized, scrolling vine patterns) sprout red flowers and give
roost to splendid paradisiacal birds—peacocks, cranes, and partridges. These motifs and the
water flowing from river gods along the base of the mosaic suggest that late classical models also
formed part of the mosaicists' repertoire. Here, in fact, the artists may have been replicating or
even reusing elements from the original fifth-century apse. Obviously, neither Byzantine nor late
antique models had outlived their usefulness, primarily because both were still vibrant, living
traditions.
Patrons from the Papal Curia
Commissions by two cardinals at their titular churches in Rome document the competitive
spirit that prevailed among patrons at the papal court. Toward the end of the thirteenth century, at
Santa Maria in Trastevere, Cardinal Bertoldo Stefaneschi commissioned the Roman painter
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Pietro Cavallini (Pietro dei Cerroni; c. 1240/50-1330s) to renovate the church's mid-twelfthcentury apse mosaic by the addition of a band of scenes from the life of the Virgin below it.
Cavallini was an artist of considerable genius, who has been under-appreciated by many art
historians—partly, no doubt, because he was largely unknown by Vasari, who credited many of
Cavallini's innovations to the Florentine artist Giotto. Cavallini made his reputation working for
Pope Nicholas III, restoring Early Christian frescoes in the papal basilica of St. Paul's Outside
the Walls, works that disappeared when that church burned in 1823. There Cavallini's task seems
to have been to replicate badly deteriorating Early Christian images, thus training himself to
produce an essentially late Roman stylistic vocabulary at will. That experience allowed him to
give Byzantine prototypes new vitality and a greater sense of movement, enhancing their threedimensionality and heightening the human interaction among them.
In one of the scenes at Santa Maria in Trastevere, the Birth of the Virgin (Fig. 3), Cavallini
placed St. Anne (the mother of Mary), her attendants, and the infant Virgin in three tightly
connected planes parallel to the picture surface: the maids preparing the child's bath far forward,
the large reclining figure of St. Anne in the middle, and two more servants behind the bed. The
parted curtain at the far right implies further space beyond this densely clustered composition, as
does the space around the stage-like architecture and its receding diagonals. The effect is both
noble and domestic. Intimate in its scale, the scene communicates dignity and solemnity through
the strong vertical and horizontal lines of its architectural setting.
Around the same time that Cavallini was working on these mosaics, the French cardinal Jean
Cholet engaged him to create a larger and more extensive cycle of frescoes for his titular church
of Santa Cecilia, also in Trastevere. Frescoes were cheaper than mosaic, but the scope of this
project was larger. For the nave walls of Santa Cecilia, Cholet commissioned a now-ruined cycle
of Old and New Testament scenes, directly imitative of established models that Cavallini knew
intimately from the papal basilicas. The entire back wall of the church was reserved for a Last
Judgment (Figs. 4, 5), a subject traditionally placed in that location to complete the cycle of
Christian history begun in the biblical scenes on the side walls.
Enough of the Last Judgment survives to give a solid understanding of this mature phase of
Cavallini's art. Christ sits at the center of the composition, flanked to left and right by enthroned
apostles. Beneath them, in areas now obscured, angels attend to persons who are about to be
saved on Christ's right (the viewer's left), while on the other side devils take possession of the
bodies of the damned. Cavallini's debt to the increasing naturalism of northern Gothic art of the
period is evident throughout these frescoes, especially in some of the complicated curving border
of the drapery folds. However, neither Gothic sources nor the Byzantine prototypes that clearly
inspired the iconography of his frescoes (see, for example, the similar subject in the Florentine
Baptistry, Fig. 4.4) fully explain the warmly modeled reality of his figures, the way drapery
actually seems to flow volumetrically around them, the deep thrones in which each of the figures
sits, the effective way that bright light from either side of the composition throws them into
relief, and the remarkable coherence of his overall composition. These we must credit to
Cavallini's own genius. A detail of two of the apostles shows the hard work that Cavallini put
into each of these figures, with the shading of the apostles' faces suggesting three-dimensionality.
Varying the size of his brush and the intensity with which he moved it on the wet plaster,
Cavallini convincingly distinguishes between the right apostle's soft beard and flowing locks.
Long strokes of light paint add glimmer to his hair, and highlights suggest the play of light down
his arm and shoulder. Rather than merely mimicking what he found in artistic models around
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him, Cavallini was synthesizing them, learning their lessons, and applying them in novel ways to
his own work. While the multi-colored wings of the angels surrounding Christ's throne owe
much to earlier prototypes, never before had an artist created such a carefully gradated
meditation on tonal variation.
Assisi: Narrative Realism
Introduction
One of the earliest documented assimilations of the newly naturalistic style of painting first
seen in Rome occurred in the hilltown of Assisi, birthplace of St. Francis. St. Francis's
canonization in 1228 virtually demanded that a church in his honor—as a focus for devotion to
the most popular of Italian saints—be built in his home town of Assisi. The issue of ownership of
property such as churches and convents had already divided the Franciscans within Francis's own
lifetime. On the one side were the Spiritualists, who wished to maintain the vow of absolute (or
apostolic) poverty upon which Francis had founded his order. On the other side were the
Conventualists, for whom the success of the order in terms of its numerous communities
throughout the Christian world indicated the need for permanent established churches and
convents. In order to satisfy Francis's vow of poverty and yet meet the need for a cult church for
Francis's relics and a home church for the Franciscan order, the papacy became the nominal
patron and "owner" of the Basilica of San Francesco; the church was by deed a papal basilica,
not a Franciscan church. The close relationship between the Franciscans and the papal hierarchy
ensured that the church containing the mortal remains of a man who zealously abjured physical
wealth and comforts was one of the most lavishly conceived structures of its time, although St.
Francis's tomb, unlike the tomb of any other monastic founder during this period (see Fig. 9.6),
was hidden from view under the building. (It was only recovered in the nineteenth century and
now rests in a specially constructed crypt.) Poverty and simplicity rarely prevailed at a shrine
controlled by the papacy.
Preparations for the construction of the Basilica of San Francesco (Fig. 6) began even before
Francis's canonization in 1228. Pope Gregory IX built a papal residence within the adjoining
monastic complex, and a papal throne sits within the church's apse. The aisleless, double-storied
structure of the church (Fig. 3.2) was immediately recognizable as a palatine chapel, an
architectural form given one of its best-known expressions at about the same time in Paris in
Louis IX's splendid Sainte Chapelle (1240s). Bundles of thin colonettes and finely carved
crocket capitals demonstrate an up-to-date knowledge of key features of the French kings'
coronation church at Reims as well. Thus although San Francesco is ostensibly a Franciscan
site—the home church of the order—it must also be seen as a princely papal site, with all that
this implies for its decoration.
The architecture itself is rather simple, with large expanses of wall providing large surface
areas suitable for elaborate fresco cycles (see Fig. 3.1). The present proliferation of chapels in the
lower church was added over time. Both the lower and upper churches were laid out basically in
the form of a tau, the T-shaped cross which had inspired Francis's own design of his friars'
habits. The broad, low bays of the nave and the stubby transepts culminate in a shallow fivesided apse, whose number recalls the five wounds of the crucified Christ and by extension
Francis's own stigmata. From a functional point of view the nave of the upper church at Assisi
was separate from the apse and transepts since, as in most medieval monastic churches, a large
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screen, now removed, created a barrier at the end of the nave beyond which most laypeople were
not allowed to pass. The areas beyond this—the choir stalls and apse with the high altar—were
for the privileged use of the friars.
Frescoes in San Francesco
Many of the artists responsible for the early decoration of the Basilica of San Francesco in
Assisi had connections with papal Rome, either as natives of the city or as artists who had
worked there. The most important of these was the Florentine Cimabue, who was in Rome by
1272. Assisted by his workshop, he was largely responsible for the apse and transept decoration
of the upper church (see Fig. 1.3). Befitting Francis's special devotion to the Virgin, the apse
presents apocryphal stories of her death and afterlife flanking the centrally placed papal throne.
One of these, the Coronation of the Virgin, repeats the imagery seen in Roman basilicas and may
also indicate the papal presence in this building. Five scenes from the lives of the saints Peter and
Paul in the south transept, now largely ruinous, also underscored the Franciscans' Roman and
papal associations by reproducing the same subjects and virtually the same compositions as the
papal frescoes in the courtyard of Old St. Peter's. Frescoes of the Crucifixion in both transepts
provided a model of sacrifice closely emulated by Francis and his followers.
Frescoes painted on the nave walls in the upper church pair Old Testament stories on the
right side with the life of Christ on the left, repeating the subject and compositional order of
narratives of the major Early Christian basilicas in Rome and expanding upon subject matter also
treated in stained glass windows in the apse and transepts. In the nave scene of the Kiss of Judas
(Fig. 7) we see how Roman-trained artists adopted Early Christian and Byzantine prototypes
with their sense of emotional gravity, solid figural mass, and modeled drapery forms revealing
the body beneath them to enliven stories from the life of Christ. Since at least the sixth century,
Byzantine art had shown Judas striding towards his master to kiss his cheek. Here Judas is
dressed in a sulphurous yellow robe that marks him as Christ's traitor. Christ, the great law giver
of Early Christian iconography, holds a scroll in his left hand, and stares forward, ready to accept
his fate. He extends his right arm (largely hidden by Judas's body) in a standardized gesture of
address towards St. Peter whom he chastises for cutting off the ear of the high priest's servant,
whom Christ subsequently heals. Though a murderous crowd of soldiers and religious leaders
presses in around them, and lances, torches, and lanterns jut into the sky, Christ's. placid facial
expression blunts much of the drama, calling attention instead to his divinely inspired
cooperation with his captors, a theme emphasized by Bonaventure in the Lignum vitae (The Tree
of Life), a Franciscan devotional tract of c.1259-60. This fresco emphasizes that Christ was the
ready victim and gracious healer even in the face of violent death.
On the opposite wall the scene of Esau Before Isaac (Fig. 8), like Cavallini's work in Rome
at this same time, structures the narrative in successive stages of receding architectural volumes.
Neat crisp folds wrap around the reclining figure of Isaac, evoking the images of majestic
classical prototypes. The tremulous and hesitant gesture of the blind and blankly staring Isaac as
he gradually realizes that he has been duped into giving the birthright to Jacob rather than to his
first-born, Esau, marks an important moment in the depiction of psychological awareness and
emotional intensity, a naturalistic development very different from the frescoes of the transept
and apse of the building and especially well-suited to the crowds of laypeople who filled this part
of the church.
Below the Old and New Testament scenes are other stories obviously directed toward the
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ever-growing crowd of pilgrims visiting San Francesco: an extensive cycle of the life of St.
Francis stretching around the entire lower part of the nave and entrance walls. Although it is not
clear by whom and when they were painted—suggested dates range from the 1290s well into the
fourteenth century—recent studies show that the painting techniques are distinctly Roman, quite
close to Pietro Cavallini, and extremely different from the broader manner of Giotto, to whom
they have often erroneously been attributed. The twenty-eight scenes present the story of the
saint in a straightforward and highly accessible manner. An inscription from Bonaventure's
official biography of Francis, the Legenda Maior, accompanies each scene beneath its painted
molding. The frescoes have a noticeably institutional emphasis, repeatedly illustrating St.
Francis's respect for Church authority by presenting the episodes of his life before popes and
cardinals. Francis's sanctity is recognized through an extended depiction of his death, funeral
rites, and canonization. Avoiding poetic and mystical images, these frescoes are overtly didactic,
intended to tell an officially sanctioned version of the saint's life.
The frescoes closest to Cavallini's style occur early in the cycle and demonstrate the same
spatial richness and narrative intelligence that we saw in Rome. Each bay (Fig. 9) contains three
scenes framed by twisted columns and fictive marble corbels that recall the mosaic-encrusted
medieval cloisters at the papal basilicas in Rome. In the frescoes at Assisi the corbels splay left
and right as though the viewer is standing at the center of each bay. This unified point of view
extends to the arrangement of individual scenes within each triad. In the second bay, for
example, the overall composition pivots around the gap—both physical and psychological—
separating St. Francis and his father in their confrontation in the main square of Assisi. On the
right the embarrassed bishop of Assisi covers Francis's nakedness after the saint had stripped
himself of his clothing; on the left his indignant father, barely restrained by worried onlookers,
lurches forward to strike his apparently mad son for selling bolts of cloth from their shop to feed
the poor. The bifurcated composition opens a dramatic space for the appearance of the hand of
God reaching down diagonally towards the outstretched arms of the saint. In the scenes at the left
and right the painter has also placed the architectural settings at a diagonal, so that they seem to
point inwards toward the central bay. At the left Francis kneels in the ruinous church of San
Damiano, whose walls are crumbling and roof beams partly exposed. On the altar stands the
crucifix that commanded him to repair the church. In the right panel Pope Innocent III, identified
even in his sleep by his papal robes and tiara, dreams of Francis upholding the porch of the papal
basilica of St. John Lateran, which tips perilously. In the inscription below the fresco, taken from
Bonaventure's officially authorized Legenda Maior, the pope says of Francis, "Truly this is he
who by his work and teaching shall sustain the church of Christ," thereby underlining the notion
of Francis as an alter Christus and appropriating his work (and that of the Franciscan order) for
the institutional Church.
The style of the frescoes is particularly well suited to their task. Impressively naturalistic and
illusionistic, they communicate with unprecedented eloquence. Francis himself had urged his
followers to imagine their religious experience in visual, tangible terms. In the scene of the Crib
at Greccio (Fig. 10) we see Francis constructing the first Nativity scene before the altar of the
little church at Greccio for a Christmas Eve mass in 1223 (see Contemporary Voice, "St. Francis
and the Christ Child"). In this painting the friars in the rear of the choir enclosure open their
mouths wide as if singing the Christmas liturgy; the clergy and a townsman near the altar canopy
bend to get a closer look; town leaders bear witness by their sober presence; and a group of
women, normally not given entrance to this sacred part of the church, crowd forward through a
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central doorway. The broad solidity of their bodies seems to occupy actual space—an impression
greatly enhanced by rear views of a pulpit and crucifix that lean out into the nave. Candles,
festoons, and other small details of clothing and architecture help to make the scene visually
compelling.
The time and degree of collaboration required to produce a decorative program as complex as
that of the church of San Francesco make it difficult to specify who may have been responsible
for any particular section. In many ways that is as it should be. Artists at Assisi were not asked to
produce highly individual or idiosyncratic works; rather, they were working together with their
Franciscan and papal patrons to create a broad, visual biography for Francis of Assisi. Whereas
previous generations of worshipers had focused much of their devotion on local Early Christian
martyrs, the thirteenth century turned for inspiration to Francis and other contemporary
preaching saints, such as the Spaniard St. Dominic. Both Francis and Dominic inspired
enthusiasm for a renewed, more accessible religious experience. The search for means to express
these new and vivid ideas, though linked to the great traditions of the Church, proved extremely
fertile ground for artistic experimentation.
Fig. 1: View of Rome from Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum, 1493, Woodcut
Fig. 2: Jacopo Torriti, Coronation of the Virgin, c. 1294, Sta. Maria Maggiore, Rome, Mosaic
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Fig. 3: Pietro Cavallinin, Birth of the Virgin, c. 1290, Sta.
Maria in Trastevere, Rome, Mosaic
Fig. 4: Pietro Cavallinin, Last Judgment, c. 1290,
StaCecilia in Trastevere, Rome, Fresco
Fig. 5: Pietro Cavallinin, Last Judgment, c. 1290, StaCecilia in Trastevere, Rome, Fresco
Fig. 6: Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi, Begun 1228
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Fig.7: Roman Master, Kiss of Judas, c. 1290, Upper
Church, San Francesco, Assisi, Fresco
Fig. 8: Isaac Master, Esau Before Isaac, c. 1290, Upper
Church, San Francesco, Assisi, Fresco
Fig. 9: Fig. 8: Assisi Master, Scenes from Life of St. Francis, c. 1290, Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi,
Fresco
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Fig. 10: Fig. 8: Assisi Master, Crib at Greccio, c. 1290, Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi, Fresco