An Italian Workshop at the Avignon Court: Matteo Giovannetti, Painter to Pope Clement VI (1342–1352)

2017 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-488
Author(s):  
Étienne Anheim
Keyword(s):  
Project Management ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Papal Court ◽  
Innovative Techniques

The artist Matteo Giovannetti, originally from Viterbo, arrived at the papal court of Avignon in the early 1340s. During the reign of pope Clement VI (1342–1352), he succeeded in organizing a court-based workshop of an unprecedented size, which has left numerous traces in the papal administrative archives. This exceptional documentation makes it possible to reconstruct the administrative, financial, material, and technical phases of this workshop’s development, corresponding to the increasing affirmation of Matteo’s artistic position. As well as his mastery of the new Italian visual culture, Matteo drew on innovative techniques in fresco production, project management, and bookkeeping. Studying his workshop thus shines a light on the figure of the artist, at once craftsman, courtier, and entrepreneur. It also reveals the collective and material dimension of creative labor in fourteenth-century Europe.

scholarly journals Wenceslas Looks Out: Monarchy, Locality, and the Symbolism of Power in Fourteenth-Century Bavaria

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (02) ◽  
pp. 179-210
Author(s):  
Len Scales
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Purpose ◽  
Local Perspectives ◽  
Political Success

AbstractThis article reassesses the reputation enjoyed by Charles IV of Luxemburg, emperor and king of Bohemia (r. 1346/1347–1378), as the author of a program aimed at projecting his monarchy via visual media. Current scholarship, which stresses the centrally directed character of this program, regards it as serving clear political goals, as “propaganda” to unify Charles's far-flung territories. This article challenges that view. It contends that a straightforward political purpose is often less detectable than usually claimed, and the political “success” of Caroline image-making easily overstated. Above all, it argues for the necessity of decentering Caroline visual culture by stepping away from the familiar focus on the Prague court, to explore instead provincial viewpoints. Focusing on northeastern Bavaria, it shows that local examples of Caroline imagery are often best understood not as impositions from the “center,” but rather as products of interactions between court and locality, through which local perspectives and interests also found expression.

The Litany of the Saints on Holy Saturday

1950 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-62
Author(s):  
Stephen A. van Dijk
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Holy Saturday ◽  
Liturgical Reform ◽  
Personal Connections ◽  
History Of ◽  
Papal Court ◽  
The Church

Everybody who knows the ABC of the history of the Roman liturgy has undoubtedly heard of the story about the fourteenth-century dean of Tongres, Ralph van der Beke (de Rivo). His education in matters ecclesiastical had been splendid; his zeal for the reform of the Church was fervent and sincere; he was especially devoted to a revival of the liturgy of his time and the problems which he raised are accepted as being of the greatest importance. But this is not the whole story. Ralph's life does not lack a certain note comigue which is not often heard of. Ralph had his weaknesses: one of them was a whole-hearted aversion to the Friars Minor, who a century before had occasioned a liturgical reform in the Church, the consequences of which he saw every day and simply did not like. Until someone has checked Ralph's personal connections with the friars and the influence which he underwent from those Italians, who, under a show of zeal for the Eternal City, hid their jealousy and selfinterest and disputed everything concerning the papal court at Avignon, it is difficult to decide whether he could not stand the friars because of their Roman liturgy or the Roman liturgy because of the friars. All the same, whatever they did, for Ralph it was always wrong, and the most flattering thing which he could find in his heart was that those friars singularem usum cum regula servant singulari, as though it were a crime to follow the customs of the pope and nothing but praiseworthy to keep to those of the bishop of Liège or Lyons, or even the abbot of Cluny or Montecassino.

Nicholas Trevet and the Consolation of Prophecy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian FitzGerald
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual Ability ◽  
Dominican Order ◽  
Papal Court

This chapter examines the writings of Nicholas Trevet, the English Dominican whose work was influential at the beginning of the fourteenth century both at the new centre of power in papal Avignon and in early Italian humanist circles during the height of turmoil over radical Franciscans and Joachimism. Trevet was suspicious of predictive claims, and he combined this suspicion with an attentiveness to prophetic language and philosophical discernment of the workings of time and providence. Developed especially in his commentaries on Boethius and on Seneca’s tragedies, Trevet’s model of prophecy had affinities with literary talent and intellectual ability and was indicative of trends within both the Dominican Order and the Avignon papal court.

FitzRalph's Antimendicant ‘proposicio’ (1350) and the Politics of the Papal Court at Avignon

1984 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 376-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Marsilius Of Padua ◽  
The Status ◽  
University Support ◽  
Papal Court ◽  
The University ◽  
Theology Faculty ◽  
The Church ◽  
Dominant Part

The conciliar movement is often seen as the major political issue in which the universities of Oxford, Paris and the newer universities became actively embroiled during the fourteenth century and thereafter. It was the last and most ambitious product of the medieval vision of government by consent and representation that had evolved during the fourteenth century, and it marshalled the resources of theorists and practitioners of politics, of arts and theology faculty lecturers, of canon and civil lawyers, of monarchical publicists and papal hierocrats. In general, conciliarism drew upon the university-trained in a manner not previously seen on such a scale. During the Great Schism (1378–1449), the universities assumed exceedingly important roles in the affairs of the universal Church, with the University of Paris playing a dominant part from the start in proposing the via concilii. Pierre d'Ailly was, like Gerson, Conrad of Gelnhausen and Henry of Langenstein, and like the earlier Marsilius of Padua, a Paris scholar. And it has recently been argued that university support for the Basle conciliar programme was motivated not only by an attachment to the ideal of conciliar government but also by the hope of reforms which would improve the status of university-trained doctors in the Church. While the bulk of controls proposed by the conciliar movement concerned the reduction of papal control, a few aimed more explicitly at promoting the interests of graduates.

Visual Culture

2021 ◽  
pp. 187-207
Author(s):  
Gervase Rosser
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Contrary View ◽  
Words And Images ◽  
Contemporary Artists

The chapter first reviews an old assumption that the ‘realism’ of Dante must have responded to the ‘naturalism’ of Giotto and other contemporary artists. Taken simply, this assumption is naïve and valueless. The chapter proceeds to consider the contrary view, now more prevalent, that in the Commedia Dante’s visionary mind detached itself from material images, rendering these irrelevant. This attitude is also problematized, in the light of Dante’s persistent use of visual imagery in ways which complicate the assumed distinction between words and images. Selected fourteenth-century paintings are cited to demonstrate how certain painters, like Dante in his poetry, were capable of working simultaneously in more than one register, with deliberate intent to bring the audience first into lively engagement with a naturalistically realized scene, and then to disturb that recognition, prompting awareness of a truth which lies beyond the surface. Both Dante and these artists engaged the same challenge, and deployed equivalent means.

scholarly journals Visions of Disaster in theUnlucky Voyage of the ShipBatavia, 1647

Itinerario ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-374
Author(s):  
Jane Lydon
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Western Australia ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Historical Images ◽  
Full Page ◽  
Foundation Myth ◽  
Fine Copper ◽  
Innovative Techniques

This article examines the illustrated pamphletOngeluckige voyagie, van’t schipBatavia (Unlucky voyage of the shipBatavia) and its representation of a 1629 shipwreck off the coast of western Australia, followed by mutiny and the massacre of many survivors. The pamphlet was published in Amsterdam in 1647, and included fifteen (six full-page) fine copper engravings. It was very popular, helping to shape a new genre of shipwreck narrative and expressing the preoccupations of contemporary visual culture. The pamphlet’s illustrations translated new conceptualisations of space emerging from the period’s unique collaboration between cartography and art into popular form within a booming Dutch print culture. Through innovative techniques of montage and vignette these engraved images conveyed the narrative’s drama and affirmed principles of morality, honour, and order. While the era’s spectacular violence now seems very far away, these historical images effectively communicate the contemporary relish of the disaster to modern audiences. This “earliest of Australian books” is sometimes offered as an alternative Australian foundation myth, and theBataviadisaster continues to grow in cultural significance. Now as then, these illustrations provide a vivid counterpoint to its audience’s comfortable lives.

scholarly journals La rappresentazione del paesaggio toscano nel Trecento

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonella Piras
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
Careful Observation ◽  
Man And Nature ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Innovative Techniques

The book aims to identify the prevalent characteristics of the Tuscan landscape in the fourteenth century through the artistic and literary expressions of two of the main protagonists of the century, Giotto and Boccaccio. Emerging from a critical reading of the Decameron by Boccaccio and the paintings by Giotto is the relationship between fourteenth-century man and nature: having overcome the fear of existence, man is aware of the territory/landscape and his capacity of control over nature. This emerges in the relationship between the city and the landscape outside the walls, in the two artists' careful observation of nature, in the sense of belonging to places, in the role of open spaces, in the conditions of well-being of the environment, in the sense of protection and security; and it is also highlighted in the characteristics of the landscape, such as the sense of proximity, distance, time and aesthetics, in relation above all to gardens and the countryside. From the studies performed there emerges a curiosity that was not yet capable of expressing itself in autonomous forms, but was already appreciable in the innovative techniques heralding the next century.

Italy, Rome, and Empire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Lee
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Roman Emperor ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Papal Court

The middle decades of the fourteenth century saw a change in the nature of the humanists’ enthusiasm for Empire. Often closely associated with the papal court, either as civic administrators in Rome, or as benefice holders or rhetoricians in Provence, they appealed to imperial authority out of a concern for the ‘Italic world’. This depended above all on the restoration of Rome. Only when the Eternal City had been returned to its ancient glory would Italy know peace and liberty; and it was hence upon the emergence of a truly ‘Roman’ emperor that the humanists now pinned their hopes. At times, this could be one who had already been elected king of the Romans, or even crowned emperor; but, as this chapter demonstrates, the imperial mantle could also be draped about the shoulders of entirely different political actors, or even placed in the hands of the Romans themselves.

Niccolò da Reggio's Translations of Galen and their Reception in France

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael McVaugh
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Traditional Language ◽  
Papal Court ◽  
Medical Teachers

AbstractIn the first half of the fourteenth century, Niccolò da Reggio translated more than fifty works by Galen from Greek into Latin, and by mid-century most if not all of them had reached the papal court at Avignon, where Guy de Chauliac praised their accuracy and cited them regularly in his Great Surgery of 1363. Yet contemporary physicians at nearby Montpellier almost never referred to them, ordinarily preferring to quote from the older Arabic-Latin translations. Examining a particular context, the ways in which urological conditions were described in the old and new versions of Galen, suggests that medical teachers and commentators may have found it difficult to give up the familiarity of the traditional language in favor of Niccolò's new terminology.

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