The first Bathing of the Christ Child in Trogir and Venice

A Bathing of the Christ Child (fig. 5-6) is reconstructed from two fragments, one in the Chiostro di Sant’Apollonia of the Museo Diocesano di Venezia and the other in the Galleria Franchetti alla Ca’ d’Oro. These sculptures in the round belong to a large Nativity Cycle in pietra d’Aurisina that was carved in Venice during the second quarter of the 13th century. A number of pieces, including the Adoration of the Magi in the Seminario Patriarcale di Venezia (fig. 3) and the Dream of Joseph on the facade of San Marco (fig. 4), are still preserved. They have been compared with the same scenes on the portal of the Cathedral of St. Lawrence in Trogir (fig. 1-2), which an inscription records being carved by Radovan in 1240. The comparison between the Bathing of the Christ Child, which plays a major role in Radovan’s Nativity, and the Bathing in Venice calls for a reassessment of the connections between the portal of the Cathedral of St. Lawrence and the Nativity Cycle from San Marco. The article argues that the sculptures in Trogir and Venice were the result of concurrent but largely independent artistic developments

Giorgio Spavento e la facciata di Santi Filippo e Giacomo a Venezia

Nel 1491, Giorgio Spavento, proto di San Marco, rimodellò il portale della chiesa dei Santi Filippo e Giacomo aggiungendovi una lunetta in cui collocò le statue di un Magio inginocchiato, una Madonna col Bambino e un San Giuseppe. La facciata della chiesa è stata modificata nell’Ottocento e la lunetta interamente rimossa. Le sculture in pietra d’Aurisina – una pietra calcarea di colore grigio – sono ora conservate presso il Seminario Patriarcale. Le statue erano state scolpite per un ciclo dedicato alla Natività di Cristo progettato a metà del Duecento per il tramezzo della Basilica di San Marco. Non sono note né la data né le circostanze che portarono allo smantellamento del tramezzo. L’attuale transenna scolpita da Jacobello e Pierpaolo dalle Masegne è datata 1394. L’articolo esamina le testimonianze grafiche e documentarie relative alla lunetta dei Santi Filippo e Giacomo e le interpretazioni date alle statue gotiche, risalenti a più di due secoli prima, che Giorgio Spavento fece collocare al suo interno. Il caso, poco noto ma significativo, esemplifica gli equivoci interpretativi che la rifunzionalizzazione e il reimpiego di sculture gotiche potevano causare.In 1491, Giorgio Spavento, architect (proto) of San Marco, Venice, remodeled the portal of the church of Santi Filippo e Giacomo. He added a lunette to the façade, in which he placed three statues – a Madonna and Child, Saint Joseph and one of the three Wise Men from the East in a kneeling posture. A drawing of the lunette made in 1759 by the draughtsman and painter Jan van Grevenbroeck records the presence of the statues there. In the nineteenth century, the façade of the church was altered and the lunette removed. The article explores the evidence concerning the lunette of Santi Filippo e Giacomo and the interpretations of the Gothic sculptures dating from more than two centuries earlier that were placed inside it. The statues, now considered among the masterpieces of Venetian Gothic sculpture, were originally carved for a large cycle dedicated to the Nativity of Christ, designed in the mid-thirteenth century for the chancel screen of the Basilica of San Marco. The date and the circumstances that led to the cycle being broken up and the chancel screen dismantled are unknown. The rood screen that is currently in place was carved in 1394 by the sculptors Jacobello and Pierpaolo dalle Masegne. This little-known case study offers a rare and intriguing example of a Gothic set repurposed by shifting its iconographic meaning without erasing it entirely. As the lunette of Santi Filippo e Giacomo exemplifies, once statues were taken out of the context they had been carved for originally, their iconographic meaning was open to reinterpretation. Even though it was driven by pragmatic intentions (in this case, to redesign an ancient monastic façade in keeping with a newly fashionable late fifteenth-century style), repurposing statues led to semantic shifts that made them appear enigmatic, if not downright bewildering, to those who looked at them at a later time

The syntax of spolia in byzantine thessalonike

The word spolia is a plural noun from the Latin spolium, meaning the hide or fleece stripped from the body of an animal. More generally, spolia referred to a soldier’s booty or the spoils of war. Architectural historians use the term today to refer to artifacts “incorporated into a setting culturally or chronologically different from that of [their] creation.”1 According to this definition, spolia are pieces of architectural material, either found on the ground or purposely gathered by stripping a standing building, which are incorporated into a new monument that is being built. The use of spolia establishes a relationshipwhether deliberately or not-with visual and architectural remains from the past. The selection of spolia and the specific uses to which they are put ought to tell us something about that relationship, at least as far as those responsible for the monuments being built are concerned.2 This chapter looks at selected examples of the use-and in one case, the telling lack of use-of architectural spolia in Thessalonike, and it proposes that a dramatic change in the meaning of the use of spolia can be detected with the end of Byzantine rule over the city in the fifteenth century

A nativity cycle for the choir screen of San Marco, Venice

The article offers new evidence concerning a set of sculptures carved in pietra d’Aurisina for the Basilica of San Marco in Venice. The statues represent scenes of the Nativity and Childhood of Christ. Similarities in style, proportions, dimensions and raw material reveal that they belong to a single set. An analysis of stable carbon and oxygen isotopes indicates that several of the statues were carved out of blocks of stone excavated from the same precise site in the Aurisina quarry in the upper Adriatic. The article takes into consideration the entire set, that is both the preserved pieces and those that were presumably designed for the original cycle but are no longer extant. A lectern angel, likewise in pietra d’Aurisina, set into the northern pulpit of San Marco, as well as four angels celebrating the birth of Christ beneath the crossing of the basilica, offer evidence to support the hypothesis that the Nativity cycle was created for the choir screen of San Marco. The screen, along with the northern and southern pulpits, was probably built at the time of Doge Ranieri Zeno (r. 1253–1268). In 1394, the choir screen was taken down and replaced by the current transenna, and the set of sculptures dismantled with it. The present article is a first attempt at piecing the Nativity cycle together and reconstructing its context in San Marco