The Life of St Augustine, by Benozzo Gozzoli (Part 2)

The first part of this, which was published on Thursday, the feast of St Augustine, ended with the scene of his conversion; here we pick up the story from his baptism. As in the first part, these public domain images are all taken from the Wikimedia Commons page on the choir chapel of the church of St Augustine in San Gimignano, Italy, where these frescoes were done by the Florentine painter Benozzo Gozzoli between 1463 and 1467.

Eleventh scene: St Augustine is baptized by St Ambrose. In accordance with the tradition that the Te Deum was composed by them both on this occasion, the first words of it are painted on the wall behind them. Until 1913, the header “Hymnus Ss Ambrosii et Augustini” was printed in the breviary above it. In keeping with a common artistic convention of the period, after this, the Saint always appears anachronistically clothed in the habit of medieval Augustinian friars, which Gozzoli makes dark, but not black, which would clash too strongly with the color scheme of the whole.

Twelfth scene: on the left, the famous (and apocryphal) story that Augustine, after finishing his book on the Trinity, went walking on the seashore, where he saw a boy trying to pour the ocean into a hole in the sand. When he told the boy that this was impossible, the boy replied that it was also impossible to fully explain the Trinity, and disappeared. In the background is represented a medieval tradition of Italian Augustinians that he once visited a group of hermits on Mt Pisano, about 40 miles to the north-west of San Gimignano. (The absence of any reference to a visit to Tuscany in his own writings was ingeniously explained as a lapse of memory, brought on by grief over the death of his mother, St Monica.) On the right, St Augustine is shown as a friar among friars, giving them the Augustinian Rule.

Thirteenth scene: the death of St Monica. This event, which is described in one of the most moving passages of the Confessions (book 9, 11-12), took place in the Roman port city of Ostia, well before Augustine returned to Africa and began to live in a monastic community. His departure is shown through the colonnade on the right. The Augustinian friar who commissioned these paintings, Fr Domenico Strambi, stands at the foot of the bed with an inscription underneath him to indicate who he is. St Monica was buried in Ostia, and her relics were kept there in the church of St Aurea until 1430, when they were transferred to the Roman basilica named for her son.

Fourteenth scene: St Augustine (barely visible on the right where the plaster has been damaged) blesses the people of Hippo after becoming their bishop.

Fifteenth scene: St Augustine converts a priest of the Manichean sect named Fortunatus. Note that he continues to wear his Augustinian habit under his cope.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Life of St Augustine, by Benozzo Gozzoli (Part 1)

In 1463, the Florentine painter Benozzo Gozzoli (1421-97) left his native city, then suffering from an outbreak of plague, and settled in the little town of San Gimignano about 30 miles to the south and west. During his stay, which lasted for four years, he was commissioned to decorate the choir of the local Augustinian church with a fresco cycle of the life of St Augustine, whose feast is today. Gozzoli had been a student of Fra Angelico, but unites to the typically Florentine style of his teacher, which tends towards the use of relatively simple backgrounds, the richly decorative style known as the International Gothic. The result is justly considered one of the best narrative cycles in fresco of its era. We begin with some overview photos, and then closer images of each individual panel of the narration. There are also several portraits of Saints on the pillars of the chancel arch, with Christ and the Twelve Apostles, and Ss John the Baptist and Elijah on the arch itself. (All public domain images from the Wikimedia Commons page about this chapel.)

A frontal view of the chapel; Augustinian religious communities tended to be quite small, as we can see from the size of the choir.

The left wall; the stories run around the chapel from left to right, first through the whole bottom band, then the middle, then the top.

The middle and top bands on the back wall.

This photograph gives a more complete view of the back wall, although it does no justice to Benozzo’s brilliant colors. I include it because it shows the whole arrangement more clearly, and includes the panel under the window, of which no other image seems to be available, St Augustine’s voyage from Carthage to Rome.

The right wall.

The vault, with the Four Evangelists (clockwise from the top, Luke, Mark, John and Matthew), and Christ and the Twelve Apostles in medallions on the chancel arch.

First scene: Augustine’s parents, Patricius and St Monica, bring him to his first day of school in his native town of Tagaste in north Africa. The kindness of his teacher is emphasized by the way he pats the boy’s cheek; note that Monica is dressed as a wealthy matron in a beautiful white dress, where below, after she is widowed, she appears more like a nun. On the right side, Augustine studies his letters, while another boy is beaten; the Latin inscription at the bottom notes that he quickly made remarkable progress in his studies. (Tagaste is now a town called Souk Ahras in eastern Algeria, about 55 miles from the Mediterranean coast. It has been a see in partibus since the later 15th century, and is currently held by the recently-retired nuncio to Portugal.)

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Story of the True Cross, by Piero della Francesca

In the mid-15th century, the Italian painter Piero della Francesca (1416-92) did a remarkable series of frescoes in the choir of the Basilica of St Francis in Arezzo, known as The History of the True Cross. Although a few sections of the paintings are completely lost, most of it is in very good condition; the entire cycle was beautifully restored in the 1990s. Arezzo is a lovely city, but it would be worth a visit even if there were nothing else to see there besides these works.

The cycle includes not only St Helena’s discovery of the Cross, which is celebrated today, and its recovery in the 7th-century, which is celebrated on September 14th, but also some of the popular stories collectively known as the Legend of the Cross, as recounted in Bl. Jacopo de Voragine’s Golden Legend and elsewhere. It has to be said that some of these stories stretch the bounds of credibility well past the breaking point, a fact of which Bl. Jacopo was quite aware. In his account of today’s feast, he refers several times to conflicting accounts in the histories to which he had access. The stories are not depicted in order within the choir itself; I will give them here in the chronological order of the legend. (Click on the images to enlarge them.)

The first panel (right wall at the top) depicts the death of Adam, the elderly man lying on the ground on the right, with Eve supporting him from behind. His son Seth receives from the Archangel Michael a branch from the Tree of Life in the Garden of Paradise, which he plants in his dead father’s mouth (at the bottom, to the left of the tree.) From this branch grows the tree which will become the wood of the Cross. (The depiction of a skull at the base of Christ’s Cross derives from this legend.)

Second panel, below the first - The tree lives until the time of Solomon, when it is cut down and part of it used to make a bridge. When the Queen of Sheba comes to visit Solomon, she recognizes it as coming from the Tree of Life, and kneels before it. On the right, she meets Solomon and his court, and bows before him. One version of the story adds that she had webbed feet, which were made normal by touching the wood. (Piero della Francesca’s mastery of the art of perspective is seen very nicely in the horse on the far left. His habit of depicting people in unusual hats, which he shares with a number of his Tuscan contemporaries, comes from seeing the delegates of the Eastern churches to the Council of Florence, which concluded shortly before he began this project.)

The third panel is to the left of the one above, on the back wall; Solomon has the wood from the bridge buried. (Piero does not depict the story of how the wood was then recovered and used to make the Cross of Christ.)

In the fourth panel just below it, the story moves forward to Constantine; an angel appears to him in a dream as he sleeps in his tent, the night before the great battle which will make him master of the Roman Empire, leading to his conversion. The angel bears a small Cross in his hand, a very subtle depiction of the In hoc signo vinces episode. (Piero has here done a very skillful depiction of a night scene, which most artists of the Renaissance shy away from.)

Returning to the right wall, to the right of the panel above, Constantine defeats Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, another tour-de-force of perspective, but sadly also the most damaged of the frescoes.

After the death of Christ, the wood of His Cross is buried again. According to the legend, when St Helena went to find it, some of the Jewish leaders knew where it was, but refused to tell her, so she threatened to have them burned alive. They therefore handed over to her one of their number, a man named Judas, whom she had lowered into a well and left for several days, until he agreed to reveal its location. This scene, to the left of the window at the back wall, shows him being lifted out of the well; his foot on the edge of the well is another example of Piero’s clever mastery of perspective. (This distasteful episode furnished the antiphons for Lauds, Vespers and the minor Hours of the Finding of the Cross in the pre-Tridentine Roman Breviary; the second, for example, reads “Then she ordered them all to be burned, but they, being fearful, handed over Judas, alleluja.” These were removed in Clement VIII’s revision of the Tridentine Breviary, and replaced with the antiphons of the Exaltation.)

St Helena finds the crosses of both Christ and the two thieves by digging up Mt Calvary. The Lord’s is identified by touching all three to a dead man whose funeral procession happens to be passing by; the third one raises the man back to life, at which all present adore it. (Piero is really showing off on the right with the perspective of the Cross. This panel is in the middle of the left wall.)

The Cross is stolen from the church of the Holy Sepulcher by the Persians when they take the city of Jerusalem in 614 AD. This spectacularly chaotic battle scene shows the defeat of the Persian Emperor Chosroes at the hand of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, which took place in 627 at Nineveh. Chosroes returns in defeat to his capital, where he is murdered by his elder son and successor Siroes. The latter will sue for peace with Heraclius, who makes the return of the relics of the Cross one of the conditions for the treaty. (This panel is located lowest on the left wall, to mirror the Battle of the Milvian Bridge on the right wall.)

At the top of the left wall, Heraclius, simply dressed and barefooted, brings the relics of the Cross back into Jerusalem. As described in the Matins lessons for the Exaltation of the Cross, on approaching the city, Heraclius found himself unable to pass the gate, held back by a mysterious force. The bishop of Jerusalem then told him to imitate the poverty and humility of the King of kings by laying aside his royal robes, at which he was able to continue his way to the Holy Sepulcher. It may be guessed that this story was particularly appealing to the Franciscans who sang Mass and Office in this choir every day, and was therefore put at the top as the most “exalted” of the scenes. (Here Piero really goes to town with the funny hats!)

To the left of the window in the back wall, below the scene of Judas being lifted out of the well, is depicted the Annunciation. More than one art historian has failed to realize that this is also, obliquely, part of the Holy Cross cycle, in accord with the ancient tradition, very widely accepted in the Middle Ages and beyond, that the earthly life of Christ was a perfectly circle of years, and that the day of His Incarnation was the same as the day of His death.

The Life of St Augustine, by Benozzo Gozzoli (Part 2)

The first part of this, which was published on Sunday, the feast of St Augustine, ended with the scene of his conversion; here we pick up the story from his baptism. As in the first part, these public domain images are all taken from the Wikimedia Commons page on the choir chapel of the church of St Augustine in San Gimignano, Italy, where these frescoes were done by the Florentine painter Benozzo Gozzoli between 1463 and 1467.

Eleventh scene: St Augustine is baptized by St Ambrose. In accordance with the tradition that the Te Deum was composed by them both on this occasion, the first words of it are painted on the wall behind them. Until 1913, the header “Hymnus Ss Ambrosii et Augustini” was printed in the breviary above it. In keeping with a common artistic convention of the period, after this, the Saint always appears anachronistically clothed in the habit of medieval Augustinian friars, which Gozzoli makes dark, but not black, which would clash too strongly with the color scheme of the whole.

Twelfth scene: on the left, the famous (and apocryphal) story that Augustine, after finishing his book on the Trinity, went walking on the seashore, where he saw a boy trying to pour the ocean into a hole in the sand. When he told the boy that this was impossible, the boy replied that it was also impossible to fully explain the Trinity, and disappeared. In the background is represented a medieval tradition of Italian Augustinians that he once visited a group of hermits on Mt Pisano, about 40 miles to the north-west of San Gimignano. (The absence of any reference to a visit to Tuscany in his own writings was ingeniously explained as a lapse of memory, brought on by grief over the death of his mother, St Monica.) On the right, St Augustine is shown as a friar among friars, giving them the Augustinian Rule.

Thirteenth scene: the death of St Monica. This event, which is described in one of the most moving passages of the Confessions (book 9, 11-12), took place in the Roman port city of Ostia, well before Augustine returned to Africa and began to live in a monastic community. His departure is shown through the colonnade on the right. The Augustinian friar who commissioned these paintings, Fr Domenico Strambi, stands at the foot of the bed with an inscription underneath him to indicate who he is. St Monica was buried in Ostia, and her relics were kept there in the church of St Aurea until 1430, when they were transferred to the Roman basilica named for her son.

Fourteenth scene: St Augustine (barely visible on the right where the plaster has been damaged) blesses the people of Hippo after becoming their bishop.

Fifteenth scene: St Augustine converts a priest of the Manichean sect named Fortunatus. Note that he continues to wear his Augustinian habit under his cope.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Life of St Augustine, by Benozzo Gozzoli (Part 1)

In 1463, the Florentine painter Benozzo Gozzoli (1421-97) left his native city, then suffering from an outbreak of plague, and settled in the little town of San Gimignano about 30 miles to the south and west. During his stay, which lasted for four years, he was commissioned to decorate the choir of the local Augustinian church with a fresco cycle of the life of St Augustine, whose feast is today. Gozzoli had been a student of Fra Angelico, but unites to the typically Florentine style of his teacher, which tends towards the use of relatively simple backgrounds, the richly decorative style known as the International Gothic. The result is justly considered one of the best narrative cycles in fresco of its era. We begin with some overview photos, and then closer images of each individual panel of the narration. There are also several portraits of Saints on the pillars of the chancel arch, with Christ and the Twelve Apostles, and Ss John the Baptist and Elijah on the arch itself. (All public domain images from the Wikimedia Commons page about this chapel.)

A frontal view of the chapel; Augustinian religious communities tended to be quite small, as we can see from the size of the choir.

The left wall; the stories run around the chapel from left to right, first through the whole bottom band, then the middle, then the top.

The middle and top bands on the back wall.

This photograph gives a more complete view of the back wall, although it does no justice to Benozzo’s brilliant colors. I include it because it shows the whole arrangement more clearly, and includes the panel under the window, of which no other image seems to be available, St Augustine’s voyage from Carthage to Rome.

The right wall.

The vault, with the Four Evangelists (clockwise from the top, Luke, Mark, John and Matthew), and Christ and the Twelve Apostles in medallions on the chancel arch.

First scene: Augustine’s parents, Patricius and St Monica, bring him to his first day of school in his native town of Tagaste in north Africa. The kindness of his teacher is emphasized by the way he pats the boy’s cheek; note that Monica is dressed as a wealthy matron in a beautiful white dress, where below, after she is widowed, she appears more like a nun. On the right side, Augustine studies his letters, while another boy is beaten; the Latin inscription at the bottom notes that he quickly made remarkable progress in his studies. (Tagaste is now a town called Souk Ahras in eastern Algeria, about 55 miles from the Mediterranean coast. It has been a see in partibus since the later 15th century, and is currently held by the nuncio to Portugal.)

Continue Reading this Article. . .

5th Century Frescoes From a Church Built Into a 1st Century Roman Aqueduct

A reader brought this article in the History Blog to my notice recently, which I encourage you to read. It features a partially restored and recently reopened church that was originally built in the 1st century AD as an aqueduct in a small village, Santa Maria in Stelle outside Verona, Italy. There is a World Monuments website description here.

The current exterior of the church

The History Blog article linked above describes in thorough and well-presented detail the content of the frescoes, which date from the 5th to the 9th century, and gives an account of the church’s history. It began as an aqueduct, which later had a nymphaeum (a shrine dedicated to the water spirits known as nymphs) built into its arches in the 3rd century AD. This became a baptistry in the 4th century, and in the following century, a church. In the hypogeum (which is the underground part, what we might call the crypt in a church today) there is a fresco of the Virgin Mary with a blue background and stars, not yet restored, and not clearly discernible at this point. This is what gives its name to the village. 

This aroused my curiosity. It seems that the need for a baptistry was greater than the need for a church, which is why it was built first. The other place where I have seen this occurring is at the Duomo in Florence, where the baptistry was built a century or so before the main cathedral building. One couldn’t image this happening today - any suggestions as to the thinking behind this would be welcome in the comments!

The frescoes are all line based, that is, they use line to describe form, rather than tonal variation, and are done with a sure and smoothly flowing hand, which indicates great skill, especially on this scale. Coloration tends to be applied as flat, ungraded tone. The donkey upon which Christ rides is done particularly gracefully, I thought.

The northern chamber, recently restored with Christ Enthroned among the Apostles, above the altar.

The post also includes a link to a visual device, here, that leads to a virtual tour of the more recently constructed north chamber, which has frescoes of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, the three young men in the fiery furnace, and the massacre of the Holy Innocents. Look out for the ornate and beautiful floor design, not remarked upon by the writer of the article.

Another point that struck me is the contrast between the care given to the use of space under the arches of an aqueduct in Roman times, and the most common use for the space between such arches today, which are under viaducts. Today, in California, at least, these become tented villages for the homeless.

The Abbey of Pomposa (Part 2): Frescoes of the Nave, Chapterhouse and Refectory

As we noted in part 1 of Nicola’s photos of the Abbey of Pomposa, the church building preserves a huge amount of fresco work in the nave, which is still in very good condition. These frescoes are the work of a group of anonyous artists of the artistic school of Bologna, and were executed in the 14th century. The upper stage has episodes of the Old Testament, the middle of the New, while the arcades over the columns show stories from the Apocalypse. (These photos partially overlap; the description of a scene will not be repeated if it appears in the previous photo.) Below we see the chapterhouse, also painted in the 14th century, but by a different unknown artist, believed to be a student of Giotto.

Starting on the right side of the church, running from the apse towards the façade. Upper stage: Cain and Abel; Noah’s Ark; Abraham meets the three angels. Middle stage: the Annunciation and Visitation; the Birth of Christ; the Adoration of the Magi; part of the Massacre of the Innocents. On the arcade: St John’s vision of the angel amid the candlesticks; Christ amid the twenty-four elders; the Lamb of God and the four animals.

Upper stage at the right: the hospitality of Abraham; the Blessing of Isaac. Middle stage, in the middle: a more complete view of the Massacre of the Innocents; the Presentation. On the arcade, middle and right: the Four Horsemen.

Upper stage at the right: Jacob’s dream of the ladder; Joseph’s dream of the sheaves (partial). Middle stage, in the middle: the Baptism of Christ; the Wedding at Cana. On the arcade, middle and right: the angels pouring their phials upon the earth.

Upper stage: Joseph’s dream of the sheaves; Joseph sold to the Midianites; Joseph in the house of Potiphar; Joseph and his brothers; the sons of Israel are introduced to Pharaoh. Middle stage: the Wedding at Cana; the healing of the daughter of Jairus.

On the counterfaçade; the Last Judgment. The fresco cycles continue on the left wall of the nave in the opposite direction, from the counterfaçade towards the apse. On the arcade: the dragon with seven heads and the woman clothed with the sun.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Story of the True Cross, by Piero della Francesca

In the mid-15th century, the Italian painter Piero della Francesca (1416-92) did a remarkable series of frescoes in the choir of the Basilica of St Francis in Arezzo, known as The History of the True Cross. Although a few sections of the paintings are completely lost, most of it is in very good condition; the entire cycle was beautifully restored in the 1990s. Arezzo is a lovely city, but it would be worth a visit even if there were nothing else to see there besides these works.

The cycle includes not only St Helena’s discovery of the Cross, which is traditionally celebrated today, and its recovery in the 7th-century, which is celebrated on September 14th, but also some of the popular stories collectively known as the Legend of the Cross, as recounted in Bl. Jacopo de Voragine’s Golden Legend and elsewhere. It has to be said that some of these stories stretch the bounds of credibility well past the breaking point, a fact of which Bl. Jacopo was quite aware. In his account of today’s feast, he refers several times to conflicting accounts in the histories to which he had access. The stories are not depicted in order within the choir itself; I will give them here in the chronological order of the legend. (Click on the images to enlarge them.)

The first panel (right wall at the top) depicts the death of Adam, the elderly man lying on the ground on the right, with Eve supporting him from behind. His son Seth receives from the Archangel Michael a branch from the Tree of Life in the Garden of Paradise, which he plants in his dead father’s mouth (at the bottom, to the left of the tree.) From this branch grows the tree which will become the wood of the Cross. (The depiction of a skull at the base of Christ’s Cross derives from this legend.)

Second panel, below the first - The tree lives until the time of Solomon, when it is cut down and part of it used to make a bridge. When the Queen of Sheba comes to visit Solomon, she recognizes it as coming from the Tree of Life, and kneels before it. On the right, she meets Solomon and his court, and bows before him. One version of the story adds that she had webbed feet, which were made normal by touching the wood. (Piero della Francesca’s mastery of the art of perspective is seen very nicely in the horse on the far left. His habit of depicting people in unusual hats, which he shares with a number of his Tuscan contemporaries, comes from seeing the delegates of the Eastern churches to the Council of Florence, which concluded shortly before he began this project.)

The third panel is to the left of the one above, on the back wall; Solomon has the wood from the bridge buried. (Piero does not depict the story of how the wood was then recovered and used to make the Cross of Christ.)

In the fourth panel just below it, the story moves forward to Constantine; an angel appears to him in a dream as he sleeps in his tent, the night before the great battle which will make him master of the Roman Empire, leading to his conversion. The angel bears a small Cross in his hand, a very subtle depiction of the In hoc signo vinces episode. (Piero has here done a very skillful depiction of a night scene, which most artists of the Renaissance shy away from.)

Returning to the right wall, to the right of the panel above, Constantine defeats Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, another tour-de-force of perspective, but sadly also the most damaged of the frescoes.

After the death of Christ, the wood of His Cross is buried again. According to the legend, when St Helena went to find it, some of the Jewish leaders knew where it was, but refused to tell her, so she threatened to have them burned alive. They therefore handed over to her one of their number, a man named Judas, whom she had lowered into a well and left for several days, until he agreed to reveal its location. This scene, to the left of the window at the back wall, shows him being lifted out of the well; his foot on the edge of the well is another example of Piero’s clever mastery of perspective. (This distasteful episode furnished the antiphons for Lauds, Vespers and the minor Hours of the Finding of the Cross in the pre-Tridentine Roman Breviary; the second, for example, reads “Then she ordered them all to be burned, but they, being fearful, handed over Judas, alleluja.” These were removed in Clement VIII’s revision of the Tridentine Breviary, and replaced with the antiphons of the Exaltation.)

St Helena finds the crosses of both Christ and the two thieves by digging up Mt Calvary. The Lord’s is identified by touching all three to a dead man whose funeral procession happens to be passing by; the third one raises the man back to life, at which all present adore it. (Piero is really showing off on the right with the perspective of the Cross. This panel is in the middle of the left wall.)

The Cross is stolen from the church of the Holy Sepulcher by the Persians when they take the city of Jerusalem in 614 AD. This spectacularly chaotic battle scene shows the defeat of the Persian Emperor Chosroes at the hand of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, which took place in 627 at Nineveh. Chosroes returns in defeat to his capital, where he is murdered by his elder son and successor Siroes. The latter will sue for peace with Heraclius, who makes the return of the relics of the Cross one of the conditions for the treaty. (This panel is located lowest on the left wall, to mirror the Battle of the Milvian Bridge on the right wall.)

At the top of the left wall, Heraclius, simply dressed and barefooted, brings the relics of the Cross back into Jerusalem. As described in the Matins lessons for the Exaltation of the Cross, on approaching the city, Heraclius found himself unable to pass the gate, held back by a mysterious force. The bishop of Jerusalem then told him to imitate the poverty and humility of the King of kings by laying aside his royal robes, at which he was able to continue his way to the Holy Sepulcher. It may be guessed that this story was particularly appealing to the Franciscans who sang Mass and Office in this choir every day, and was therefore put at the top as the most “exalted” of the scenes. (Here Piero really goes to town with the funny hats!)

To the left of the window in the back wall, below the scene of Judas being lifted out of the well, is depicted the Annunciation. More than one art historian has failed to realize that this is also, obliquely, part of the Holy Cross cycle, in accord with the ancient tradition, very widely accepted in the Middle Ages and beyond, that the earthly life of Christ was a perfectly circle of years, and that the day of His Incarnation was the same as the day of His death.