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The Virgin Mary comes alive across
Italy
Arnolfo di Cambio's
"moment", as man and as artist, culminated in his work for Santa Maria
del Fiore. This name given the new cathedral begun by Arnolfo, although
formalised only later, indicates a change that was part of the project
from the start: the principal church of Florence would no longer be
dedicated to Santa Reparata, an obscure early Christian martyr, but to
Mary ever Virgin, the holy Mother of God, whose cultus strongly
influenced theological reflection and popular devotion in Florence as
elsewhere in late Medieval Europe.
The Marian dedication was given immediate expression in
a programme of monumental marble statues begun by Arnolfo at the same
time as the first segment of the Cathedral actually built, the western
front, which the statues were meant to adorn: the grand, never to be
finished principal faηade
finally dismantled in 1587. Important components of the programme in the
Cathedral Museum and elsewhere make clear its emphatic Marian focus;
these include, above all, Arnolfo's works for the three faηade
portals: the statue of Mary seated, crowned and holding the Christ
Child, originally above the central door; and the high reliefs once over
the other two doors, which show Mary just having given birth and Mary in
death, mourned by St John the Evangelist (the main parts, respectively,
of scenes representing The Nativity of Christ and The Dormition of
the Virgin). In addition, on the inner facade a mosaic
executed in the same years as the sculptures and still in place, The
Coronation of the Virgin attributed to Gaddo Gaddi, extended the
exterior Marian programme to the then as yet to be realised interior of
the new Cathedral.
Taken together, these works suggest two fundamental
aspects of late Medieval Marian iconography: on the one hand, the still
strongly theological character of many images of the Mater Christi;
and on the other, the narrative emphasis that, especially from the
13th century onwards, coloured all of Christian art. In fact, in the
spiritual climate developed from St Bernard of Clairvaux to St Francis
of Assisi, Mary, even as she continued to be seen as ideal "figure" of
the Church, also became a human woman. That such simultaneous "double
vision" of her role is possible, indeed necessary, was a given of
patristic and medieval Marian thought: Augustine says that "Christ is
truth, Christ is flesh; Christ is truth in Mary's mind and flesh in
Mary's womb. But what is in the mind counts more than what is in the
womb", and thus concludes with an astounding assertion that fully
clarifies the fluid relationship between Mary and the Church: "Mary is
holy, Mary is blessed, but the Church is better than the Virgin Mary.
Why? Because Mary is a part of the Church: a holy part, an excellent
part, a part that surpasses all others in dignity, but still only one
part in respect to the entire body. And if she is but a part of the
whole, then surely the whole body is worth more than any single one of
its parts".
It follows that everything we can affirm with regard to
the Church, we both can and should affirm with regard to Mary who is
part of the Church. What is more, according to the 12th-century
theologian Blessed Isaac of Stella this equation works in the opposite
sense as well: "In the divinely inspired Scriptures, whatever is said in
general of the virgin mother Church should be understood in a personal
sense as applicable to the virgin mother Mary", Isaac (echoing St
Augustine) affirms, adding: "And what is said specifically of the virgin
mother Mary should be applied to the virgin mother Church; and whatever
is said of either one of the two can, without distinction, be said of
the other".1
Arnolfo's regally hieratic Madonna and Child for
the central portal, with a classical dignity that reflects the artist's
years in Rome, is a superb example of this equation, projecting both the
"maiestas Ecclesiae" typical of earlier Mary figures and the
impression of being a "real person", a strong, vital young mother. The
statue's vitreous paste eyes, which in the sunlight of Piazza del Duomo
would have appeared to flash with intelligence as Mary, far above the
men and women passing in the square, interacted with two other patrons
of the Florentine cathedral shown, St Reparata and St Zenobius; indeed
the "iconic" central figure must have been perceived as part of an
animated sacra conversazione, if not, indeed, of a
sacra rappresentazione. Since, moreover (as noted), these figures
were themselves part of a programme including biographical elements
Mary shown just after giving birth to Christ and Mary on her death bed
,
the new equilibrium between iconic and narrative elements emerged even
more clearly, fruit of a process we might call the "humanisation of the
symbol".
The final narrative element of the programme was the
mosaic attributed to Gaddi, The Coronation of the Virgin, meant
to be read both as continuing the story told on the outer facade
Mary, after her death, raised to share the glory of her Son
and as confirming the theological dimension of the main image of the
sculptural programme, the Madonna with the Glass Eyes, whose
majesty (on the outside of the building) was "explained" inside by the
mosaic alluding to Mary's future elevation to the side of her glorified
Son.
This mosaic, which should thus be considered the
culminating element of a conceptually unified scheme, also suggests the
likely sources of the programme. Done in the first decade of the 14th
century, Gaddi's Coronation has no obvious prototypes in the
monumental art of Florence but seems to draw inspiration from the use of
the same subject in Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, in the mosaic executed
several years earlier by Jacopo Torriti, where moreover the
theologically charged event
the elevation and crowning of Mary, figure of the Church
was similarly combined with detailed narration of her earthly life.
Such, indeed, was the
desire to connect the glorious symbolic event with Mary's human life, in
the Santa Maria Maggiore programme, that the very sequence of the vita
Mariae had been manipulated, with the Dormition set between the
Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi in order to
get it right beneath the Coronation. In that way, just as later
at Santa Maria del Fiore, the heavenly vision of glory immediately
"followed" the scene showing Mary's falling asleep in the Lord.
Torriti's Coronation
invites a further comparison: that with the apse mosaic of Santa Maria
in Trastevere, a theological masterpiece of the mid 12th century in
which we see a crowned Woman seated on a throne alongside Christ who
embraces her. The texts exhibited by the Woman and by Christ identify
him as the Bridegroom and her as the Bride of the Song of Songs, even if
in a Basilica dedicated to Mary
identification of the Woman with Christ's mother is also clearly
implied. Let us note, however, that whereas this 12th-century programmer
responsible for this
image was content to imply the identification of Woman embraced by
Christ with Mary, 13th-century theologians wanted to make it
explicit: in the 1290s (just before
or after
the Torriti mosaic in Santa Maria Maggiore), Pietro Cavallini was
commissioned to do a mosaic cycle depicting the Life of Mary immediately
below the symbolic subject in Santa Maria in Trastevere, with the
evident purpose, again, of "humanising the symbol" in light of new
narrative taste. I believe it was this updating of the programme in
Santa Maria in Trastevere, along with the programme in Santa Maria
Maggiore that inspired the inner and outer faηade
iconography of Santa Maria del Fiore: an hypothesis that draws comfort
from discernible bonds, at the level of patronage with Cavallini's
mosaics commissioned Cardinal Bertoldo Stefaneschi and Torriti's by the
Franciscan pope, Nicholas IV. For, as everyone knows, the projected
cathedral of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore, was morally and
economically supported by Boniface who had been elevated to the dignity
of cardinal priest by Nicholas IV and was related to Stefaneschi.
Beginning with these Roman
works, it is moreover possible to grasp connections in Marian thought
and iconography of the later Middle Ages which are basic to
understanding the facade of Santa Maria del Fiore. Interesting above
all, in my view, are the internal dynamics of evolution from theology to
narrative, which cannot be entirely explained in terms of the affective
spirituality promoted by the Franciscans and others at the time, but
as I sought to do in a recent
study of Mary in European Art2
has to be brought back to solid
scriptural and theological bases. Indeed, what most attracts us in the
faηade is
a process of "humanisation" that in no way compromises but, on
the contrary, reinforces the symbolic dimension, simultaneously
ascribing dignity to that which is human and human vitality to that
which is Divine.
What are the sources this
extraordinary synthesis?
Mary's special election was
symbolized, from the 11th century onwards, through the metaphor of regal
status dear to a medieval Europe fascinated by the idea of parallelism
between this world and the next. It is no accident that, above the main
portal of Reims Cathedral
the church in which ancient tradition required that the kings of France
be consecrated
we find a Coronation of the Virgin
that visually legitimizes the sacral character of the monarch. Even far
from the courts of northern Europe, though
in
free Italian republics like Siena and Florence
the poetry of royal status conditioned Marian iconography: the stories
told in the central column of Duccio's rose window in Siena cathedral,
done in the 1280s, are the Dormition, Assumption and Coronation, and the
first work commissioned for the interior of the rising cathedral of
Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore, was (as noted) a mosaic depicting
Mary's coronation. One hundred thirty years later, as the church finally
neared completion, the subject chosen for the enormous stained glass
window above the main altar designed by Donatello was again the
Coronation of the Virgin.
A writer of the 12th
century, Bishop Amadeus of Lausanne, a pupil of St Bernard of Clairvaux,
helps us savor this Marian application of the regal metaphor: "The Holy
Virgin Mary was assumed into Heaven", he says, "but her admirable name
shone forth in all the earth independently of this singular event: her
immortal glory was everywhere irradiated even before she was lifted
above the heavens [...]. She dwelt in the sublime palace of holiness,
enjoying divine favor in the greatest possible abundance, and she, who
in wealth of grace surpassed all other creatures, in turn showered grace
to slake the thirst of ordinary believers".3
To be queen, though,
often further implied being bride, as with Byzantine and
Holy Roman empresses shown receiving their crowns from Christ thanks to
the bond with their imperial husbands. The biblical texts that the
liturgy associates with Mary
the Old Testament psalms employed to suggest her relationship to Christ
in fact link her dignity as queen with that which she has as figure of
the Church (Sponsa Christi) and thus bride:
"Listen, daughter, pay
heed, bend your ear: forget your nation and ancestral home, for the king
will be pleased with your beauty. He is your master, bow down to him.
Emissaries from Tyre bearing gifts solicit your favor, the wealthiest
nations with jewels set in gold. Dressed in brocades the king's daughter
is led into the king, with bridesmaids in her train. Her
ladies-in-waiting follow and enter the king's palace amid general
rejoicing (Ps 45[44]:11-16).
In visual terms, this
bridal dimension gives special meaning to the sumptuous garments in
which Mary is shown as queen. The crown and gem-encrusted robes of
Arnolfo's Madonna with the Glass Eyes, for example, evoke
the "bride adorned with jewels" of the old Testament (cf. Is 61:10)
the young woman "dressed in brocades" for presentation to the king on
her wedding day. It is again Amadeus of Lausanne who specifies that:
"The bride rich with spiritual jewels was Mary, mother of the one
Husband and font of all sweetness, delight of the spiritual gardens and
the spring from which flow the living, life-giving waters that descend
from the heavenly Lebanon [...]. As this Virgin of virgins was assumed
into Heaven, the prophecy was fulfilled in which the Psalmist says to
the Lord: 'The queen stands at your right in cloth-of-gold, in brocades
and embroidered garments' (Ps 45 [44]:10) ".4
The presentation of Mary in
regal and bridal terms was especially insistent in the ancient imperial
capital, Rome. In the first grand Marian program realized in the West,
the mosaic decoration of the "arch of triumph" in the Roman Church of
Santa Maria Maggiore (a 4th-century Basilica enlarged by Sixtus III
between 432 and 440), we find the Virgin "in cloth-of-gold, in brocades
and embroidered garments": an immediate iconographic response to the
solemn declaration of the Council of Ephesus a year earlier, in 431,
which gave Mary the title "Mother of God". The collective nature of her
royal condition is underlined here by the dedicatory inscription on the
mosaic-clad arch, "Xistus episcopus plebi Dei" ("Bishop Sixtus
[had this made] for the people of God"): a phrase that suggests how such
images were read, with Mary conceived not primarily as an individual but
as a collective figure of the God's people: the Domina Ecclesia
or "Lady Church".
The most emphatic
visualization of the high dignity reserved to the Church and of the
splendor of her royal nuptials with the "King of kings" is the already
mentioned monumental apse mosaic in another Roman church, Santa Maria in
Trastevere, showing Christ and Mary seated on the same throne, so close
that their bodies in gold, gem-embroidered robes actually touch,
and Christ can put his right arm around the shoulders of the Lady, who
here already wears a crown.5 Executed in the mid 12th
century, in the thick of the Popes' struggle to defend Church autonomy
from the interference of the Germanic emperors, the mosaic intentionally
evokes early Christian elements of form and content in order to suggest
uninterrupted continuity between the formative centuries of Roman Church
life
the waning centuries of the Empire
and the medieval present.
Thus (as at Santa Maria
Maggiore) even though the woman represented is obviously Mary
we are after all in a church dedicated to her
,
she is above all the "Lady Church", young and splendidly attired for her
eternal nuptials. Christ bears a book with the invitation to his "chosen
one" to herself become his throne
"Veni electa mea et ponam in te thronum meum"
,
and the "chosen one" (the Church) displays a scroll on which we read
words drawn from the Canticle of Canticles:
"Laeva eius sub capite meo, et dextera
illius amplexabitur me". "His
left arm is under my head, his right embraces me" (Cant 2:6; cf. 8:3).
Seen in the curvature of the apse, above the altar on which the
Eucharist makes present the Bridegroom's "passion" for his Bride and the
gift of his body, this explicit statement of a spousal vocation, and
this way of conceiving believers' future blessedness as an embrace,
reveal unexpected humanity: a personalist poetic anticipating the new,
affective spirituality of the 13th and 14th centuries.
The relationship of this
image to the great Old Testament love poem, the "Canticle of Solomon" or
"Canticle of Canticles", is extremely significant. Rabbinical and
Christian tradition alike unanimously interpreted the Canticle's erotic
subject matter in mystical terms, and the Fathers of the Church
identified the male protagonist of the text, called "the bridegroom", as
Christ, and the female protagonist, "the bride", as the Church. An
English miniature more or less contemporary with the Santa Maria in
Trastevere mosaic shows
in an arrangement similar to that of the Roman work
the Canticle's putative author, King Solomon, and his beloved wife side
by side in royal robes, while the textual gloss identifies the woman
speaking to the king as "vox Ecclesiae", the voice of the Church,
thus inviting us to read the poem's intimate dialogue between a bride
and her bridegroom in terms of the love relationship between Christians
and their Lord. We have only to cite the startling opening verses of the
Canticle, written beneath the miniature in the English manuscript, to
grasp the emotional force of this interpretation, in which it is the
Church herself who says to Christ: "Kiss me with the kisses of your
mouth, for your caresses are sweeter than wine! The fragrance of your
perfume is inebriating, your name is fragrant unguent and that is why
the maidens love you. Draw me in your footsteps, let us run! The king
has brought me into his chambers. We shall praise your love above wine;
how right it is to love you" (Cant 1:1-4).
We saw that a similar
iconographical scheme was used again at Rome, in the apse mosaic in
Santa Maria Maggiore executed between 1291-1296 to a design by Jacopo
Torriti, where however Mary
seated on Christ's throne
is shown in the act of receiving the crown from him. This image is
situated above a smaller one depicting Mary's death, and thus represents
not only the love between "bride" and "bridegroom" but also the moving
reunion of a mother with her Son in Heaven;6 above all it
represents the final goal of every woman and man, the heavenly vocation
of our human flesh in which Christ was born. An inscription set between
the representation of Mary's death and the image of her beside Christ on
the throne in fact clarifies that "mother" and "bride" are one and the
same: "Maria virgo assumpta est ad ethereum thalamum in quo rex regum
stellato sedet solio. Exaltata est sancta Dei genitrix super choros
angelorum ad celestia regna"
"The Virgin Mary has been assumed into the celestial bridal chamber
at whose starry threshold sits the King of kings; the holy mother of God
has been lifted above the angelic choirs to Heaven's realm". And Christ,
who with his right hand crowns Mary, with his left displays an open book
with the same text we noted in Santa Maria in Trastevere: "Veni
electa mea et ponam in te thronum meum"
"Come, my chosen one, and I will set my throne in you".
That the "Roman" way of
seeing Mary as both institutional figure and woman might colour her
depiction in the early iconography of Santa Maria del Fiore is, as
already suggested, not surprising. The Bishop who presided over the
birth of the new Florence cathedral, Francesco Monaldeschi, came to
Florence from Orvieto where he had just launched a similar project, the
Duomo of that city, formally considered planned "ad instar"
on the model
of Santa Maria Maggiore. And Boniface VIII, official "promoter" of the
Florentine project, while the most institutionally minded of the late
Medieval popes, was also a man of own his time, brought to real power by
the first Franciscan to become Pope, Girolamo Masci, Nicholas IV.
Notes
1 Theological reflection on Mary is too
copious to be adequately presented here, but an excellent recent source
is S. de Flores and S. Meo (editors), Nuovo dizionario di mariologia,
Milan 1986. In addition see G. Raschini, Dizionario di mariologia,
Rome 1961; Etudes sur la sainte Vierge, ed. H. du Manoir, 8
vols., Paris 1949-1971; A. Tondini, Le encicliche mariane,
Rome 1950; Paul VI's Apostolic Exhortation Marialis Cultus,
1974; John Paul II's Encyclical Redemptoris Mater,
1987. Cf. also R. Cantalamessa, Maria. Uno specchio per la Chiesa,
Milan 1989; G. Ravasi, L'albero di Maria, Cinisello Balsamo
1993.
2 Nuovo
Dizionario di mariologia,
cit. at the voice "Dio Padre", pp. 430-431.
3 Amedeo di
Losanna, Homily 7. Cf. Sources Chretiennes, Paris,
from 1942, vol. 72, pp. 188-200.
4
Ibid.
5 V. Tiberia,
I mosaici del XII secolo e di
Pietro Cavallini in Santa Maria in Trastevere,
Perugia 1966; R. Krautheimer, Rome:
Profile of a City 312-1308, Princeton 1980, pp. 163-164; T. Verdon,
L'arte sacra in Italia, Milan 2001, pp. 74-75; idem., "Il
fiore di Maria. Teologia ed iconografia in Santa Maria del Fiore", in E.
Neri Lusanna (curatrice), Arnolfo alle origini del Rinascimento (catalogo
della mostra, Firenze, Museo dell'Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, 21
December, 2005-21 April, 2006, pp.99-108.
6 T. Verdon,
L'arte sacra, cit. (above, n. 5), pp. 74-75; idem., "Il fiore di
Maria", passim.
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