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The Origins of a Miraculous Image: Notes on the Annunciation Fresco in SS. Annunziata in Florence

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 80; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00233609.2010.531892

1651-2294

Maria H. Oen,

Visual Culture and Art Theory

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. The present article is based on my MA thesis »Devotion and Interpretation: A Study of the Miraculous Image of SS. Annunziata in Florence and the Pictorial Understanding in the Early Modern Period«, University of Oslo, 2009. The study of cult images is not a new trend in art history. However, an interest in the cult image as located in a devotional context, particularly in the early modern period, has appeared in the last decade. David Freedberg introduced a new debate on the subject with The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response, Chicago and London, 1989, shortly after followed by Hans Belting's Bild und Kult – Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst, 1990, translated as Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, Chicago, 1994. Among the more recent contributions, see Erik Thunø and Gerhard Wolf, eds, The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Analecta Romana Insituti Danici, Supplementum XXXV, Rome, 2004; Gerhard Wolf, »Icons and sites: Cult images of the Virgin in medieval Rome«, in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki, Aldershot and Burlington, 2005, pp. 23–49, and Michael W. Cole and Rebecca Zorach, eds, The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions and the Early Modern World, Farnham, 2009. The historian Richard C. Trexler was one of the first to explore the Florentine Renaissance cult image, see Trexler, »Florentine Religious Experience: the Sacred Image«, Studies in the Renaissance, Vol. 19, 1972, pp. 7–41; Public Life in Renaissance Florence, New York and London, 1980, see also »Being and Non-Being: Parameters of the Miraculous in the Traditional Religious Image«, in Thunø and Wolf, The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Rome, 2004, pp. 15–27. 2. See Belting, Likeness and Presence. 3. See Megan Holmes, »The Elusive Origins of the Cult of the Annunziata in Florence«, in Thunø and Wolf, The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Rome, 2004, pp. 97–121. In April 2009, Kunsthistorichen Institut in Florenz (Max-Planck-Institut) housed a workshop on the image, »Das Gnadenbild der Santissima Annunziata um 1600. Verehrung – Verbreitung – Verwandlung«. 4. On the restoration and the measurements of the image, see Eugenio Casalini, Una icona di famiglia: Nuovi contributi di storia e d'arte sulla SS. Annunziata di Firenze, Florence, 1998. 5. On the history of the construction of the church, see Walter and Elizabeth Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz: Eine kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch, Frankfurt am Main, 1955, Vol. 1, pp. 62–196, and Giuseppe Richa, Notizie istoriche delle chiese fiorentine divise ne’ suoi quartieri, Florence, 1754–1762, Vol. 8. 6. Holmes, »The Elusive Origins of the Cult of the Annunziata in Florence«, 105. 7. Richa, Notizie, Vol. 8, p. 3. On the crowns offered to the image in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Ottavio Andreucci, Il Fiorentino istruito nella Chiesa della Nunziata, Florence, 1858, p. 96. 8. On the dressing and ornamenting of images see Trexler, »Being and Non-Being: Parameters of the Miraculous in the Traditional Religious Image«, and Trexler's »Dressing and Undressing Images: An Analytic Sketch«, Religion in Social Context in Europe and America, 1200–1700, Tempe, 2002, pp. 374–408. 9. Trexler quoting Benedetto Varchi, see Public Life in Renaissance Florence, p. 65. 10. Tolmes has found descriptions of two veils in the inventory of the chapel of the Annunziata from 1439 and a description of a silk veil from 1452, see »The Elusive Origin of the Cult of the Annunziata in Florence«, p. 99. n. 6, see also Trexler, »Florentine Religious Experience«, pp. 11–21. For more on the Impruneta Madonna, see Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence. 11. PIERO DI COSIMO DE MEDICI FECE FARE QVESTA HOPERA ET PAGNIO DI LAPO DA FIESOLE FV EL MAESTRO CHELLA FE. MCCCCIIL COSTO FIORINI 4000 EL MARMO. Quoted from Pellegrino Tonini, Il Santuario della Santissima Annunziata di Firenze, Florence, 1876, p. 89. 12. »Sono state poste e apicate tante imagini che, se le mura non fossono poco tempo fa state incatenate, a pericolo erano col tetto insieme di non dare a terra«, see Franco Sacchetti, Opere, Milan, 1957, p. 1118. 13. On the ex-voto images in SS. Annunziata, see Megan Holmes, »Ex-votos: Materiality, Memory, and Cult«, in Cole and Zorach, The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions and the Early Modern World, Farnham, 2009, pp. 159–182. 14. Franco Sacchetti, Il Trecentonovelle, Rome, 1996, novella CIX, pp. 329–331. 15. For a description of the various life-size ex-voto images and their donators as well as the fate of these images, see Aby Warburg, »The Art of Portraiture and the Florentine Bourgeoisie: Domenico Ghirlandaio in Santa Trinita: The Portraits of Lorenzo de’ Medici and His Household«, in The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance, Los Angeles, 1999, pp. 185–221. For a description of the wax portrait industry and the ex-voto effigies of Lorenzo de'Medici, see the Vita of Andrea del Verrocchio in Giorgio Vasari, Le Opere, Vol. III, pp. 357–377. 16. See Holmes, »Ex-votos: Materiality, Memory, and Cult«. 17. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, p. 99, and Holmes, »The Elusive Origins of the Cult of the Annunziata in Florence«, p. 99. 18. Quanti mutamenti sono stati ne la mia città pur ne la figura di Nostra Donna! È fu un tempo che a Santa Maria da Cigoli ciascuno correa; poi s'andava a Santa Maria de la Selva; poi ampliò la fama di Santa Maria in Pruneta; poi a Fiesole a Santa Maria Primerana; e poi a Nostra Donna d'Orto San Michele; poi s'abbondonorono tutte, e a la Nunziata de'Servi ogni persona ha concorso con gran ceremonia«, Sacchetti, Opere, pp. 1117–1118. 19. Luca Landucci, Eine Florentinisches Tagebuch 1450–1516, Jena 1912–1913, Vol. 1, p. 29. 20. See Trexler, »Florentine Religious Experience«. 21. Servite scholars have referred to certain celebrations of Marian feasts in the church, which they present as evidence for an earlier dating of the fresco. Several other arguments, which do not correspond to any actual sources, are presented in Fra Prospero Bernardi's Apologia in risposta a quegli che dicono l'Immagine dell'Annunziata di Firenze essere stata dipinta da’ Sequaci di Giotto written before 1678, published in Richa, Notizie, Vol. 8, pp. 89–113. 22. Tonini, Il Santuario della Santissima Annunziata di Firenze, p. 252. 23. Holmes, »The Elusive Origins of the Cult of the Annunziata in Florence«, p. 108, n. 41. 24. Other copies can be found on the inside of the façade walls of San Marco (c.1371) and Santa Maria Novella (c.1400). There are also copies attributed to Jacopo di Cione in Santo Spirito in Prato (c.1375) and in San Niccolò in Calenzano. In Prato there is another copy by Agnolo Gaddi (1394–1395) in the Sacro Cingolo chapel in the Duomo. Furthermore, there are copies on several public walls in Florence: Via dei Tosinghi, Piazza dei tre Re (Vicolo del Onestà), Vicolo degli Alberighi (corner of Via S. Elisabetta), Piazza del Capitolo, and Via S. Margherita (corner of Via del Corso). Throughout the fifteenth century, the image was widely copied in different sizes and media; however, when the miraculous fresco came under Medici patronage the permission to create a copy could only be obtained from the family, see Casalini, Una icona di famiglia, p. 76. 25. See Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz, Vol. 1, p. 158. 26. See Holmes, »The Elusive Origins of the Cult of the Annunziata in Florence«, pp. 110–111. 27. Holmes, »The Elusive Origins of the Cult of the Annunziata in Florence«, p. 111, n. 48, and n. 4. 28. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, plut. 23.21. The Dialogus is published in Giovanni Lami, Delciae Eruditorum, Florence, 1742, Vol. 13. For a brief description of the ms, see L. Crociani et al., eds, I codici della basilica della SS. Annunziata in Firenze nella Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, 1983, pp. 67–68. 29. See Aristide M. Serra, »Memoria di fra Paolo Attavanti«, Bibliografia dell'Ordine dei Servi I, Bologna, 1971, pp. 221–222, and pp. 240–242. 30. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, plut.23.21, ff. 39r–40r. 31. See Giovanni Villani, Cronaca, Libro VII, Cap. XCIC, Frankfurt, 1969, p. 431. 32. The text was published in Peregrinus Soulier, Monumenta Ordinis Servorum Sanctae Mariae, 1913, 4. See also Holmes'a appendix 2. 33. See Holmes, »The Elusive Origins of the Cult of the Annunziata in Florence«, and in particular her appendices 3 and 4. 34. For further references to the 1252 dating and the miracle books, see Holmes, »The Elusive Origins of the Cult of the Annunziata in Florence«, p. 103, n. 20. 35. For an example of their sometimes aggressive defense, see Bernardi, Apologia, in Richa, Notizie, Vol. 8, pp. 89–113, and Peregrinus Maria Soulier's »De Antiquitate Imaginis Sanctissimae Annuntiate«, from 1908. 36. »Se alcun mi dicesse (perocché questa è arte mia) che questa Imagine da senno umano fosse stata dipinta, io direi che e'dicesse bugia: perché di vero l'artifizio dell'uomo, e il suo ingegno non puote, come è questo valore, tanto aonde io avviso, che miracolosamente sia stato fatto questo divin sembiante da Dio e dagli Angeli sense più«, Francesco Bocchi, Della immagine miracolosa della SS. Nunziata di Firenze, Florence, 1852, quoted in Tonini, Il Santuario della Santissima Annunziata di Firenze, p. 28. 37. See Eugenio Casalini, Una icona di famiglia, and Holmes »The Elusive Origins of the Cult of the Annunziata in Florence«, p. 104. Prior to Holmes's examination of the image and the cult, the fresco had not received much attention from art historians. However, a few connoisseurs have attempted to date the fresco based on stylistic analysis. Evelyn Sandberg Vavalà has asserted a strong resemblance to the style of Taddeo Gaddi, though she did not want to suggest him as the actual painter, see Evelyn Sandberg Vavalà, Studies in Florentine Churches, Florence, 1959, xVol. 1, p. 99, and Miklos Boskovits, the expert on Tuscan Trecento painting, has presented Jacopo di Cione as a possible author and proposed the date 1360, see Zygmunt Wazbinski, »L'Annunciazione della Vergine nella chiesa della SS. Annunziata a Firenze: un contributo al moderno culto dei quadri«, in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, Florence, 1985, p. 545, n. 7. 38. On acheiropoetic images, see Ernst Kitzinger, »The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm«, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 8, 1954, pp. 83–150; Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence; H. L. Kessler and G. Wolf, eds, The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation, Bologna, 1998; Jeffrey Hamburger, »Vision and the Veronica«, in The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany, New York, 1998, pp. 317–382, and Ernst von Dobschütz, Christusbilder: Untersuchungen zur Christlichen legende, Leipzig, 1899. 39. »And you see and hear that not only at Ephesus but almost throughout all Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable company of people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods.« 40. On the oldest versions of the legend, see Han J. W. Drijvers, »The Image of Edessa in the Syriac Tradition«, Kessler and Wolf, The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation, Bologna, 1998, pp. 13–31. 41. See Gerhard Wolf, »From Mandylion to Veronica: Picturing the ‘Disembodied’ Face and Disseminating the True Image of Christ in the Latin West«, in Kessler and Wolf, The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation, Bologna, 1998, pp. 166–167. 42. On the Veronica image, see Ewa Kuryluk, Veronica and Her Cloth: History, Symbolism and the Structure of a »True Image«, Oxford, 1991. 43. See Hamburger, »Vision and the Veronica«, p. 318, and p. 322. 44. See Hamburger, »Vision and the Veronica«, pp. 322–323. 45. See Wolf, »From Mandylion to Veronica«, pp. 168–169. 46. See Vita of Stephen II in Liber Pontificalis: Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes, Liverpool, 1992, p. 57. 47. See Vita of Leo IV in Liber Pontificalis: Lives of the Ninth-Century Popes, Liverpool, 1995, p. 118. According to Ernst Kitzinger, it is not certain that the icon from S. Maria Maggiore played an important part in the procession until its later years, see Kitzinger, »A Virgin's Face: Antiquarianism in Twelfth-Century Art«, Art Bulletin, Vol. 62, No. 1, 1980, p. 17. Belting, on the other hand, claims that this Marian icon was also the final destination of the procession in its earliest phase. He explains that the reason why the icon was not mentioned explicitly in the oldest documentary sources was because it was not carried around in the actual procession, as the icon of Christ was. See Belting, Likeness and Presence, p. 68. 48. On the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the procession was copied in Tivoli, Casape, Velletri, Capranica, Sutri, Tarquinia, Trevignano, and Viterbo. In Tivoli the procession continued until the eighteenth century. 49. The treatise was copied towards the end of the century for a liturgical book of S. Maria Maggiore, now in Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Fondo SMM 2, ff. 237-44. An extract of the text is printed in Belting, Likeness and Presence, Appendix 4F, p. 500. 50. Holmes, »The Elusive Origins of the Cult of the Annunziata in Florence«, p. 113. 51. Some, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Cod.Vat.Lat. 3921, ff. 72-88. On Giovanni Battista and his treatise, see Gerhard Wolf, Salus Populi Romani: Die Geschichte römischer Kultbilder im Mittelalter, Weinheim, 1990. Extracts from the treatise are printed in Wolf's appendix Q 21, pp. 330–338. 52. See Wolf, »Icons and Sites«, pp. 31–37. 53. See Vita of St Gregory in Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, Princeton, 1993, pp. 173–174. 54. The image appears in sources at this time; though it is likely that the attribution to St Luke was added somewhat later, but before the ninth century, see Belting, Likeness and Presence, p. 57. 55. On the so-called Tuesday miracle, see Alexei Lidov, »The Flying Hodegetria: The Miraculous Icon as Bearer of Sacred Space«, in Thunø and Wolf, The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Rome, 2004, pp. 273–304. On the icon, see also Robin Cormack, Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks and Shrouds, London, 1997, and Michele Bacci, »The Legacy of the Hodegetria: Holy Icons and Legends Between East and West«, in Vassilaki, Images of the Mother of God, Aldershot and Burlington, 2005, pp. 321–331, and Bissera V. Pentcheva, »The ‘activated’ icon: the Hodegetria procession and Mary's Eisodos«, in Vassilaki, Images of the Mother of God, Aldershot and Burlington, 2005, pp. 195–207. 56. See Bacci, »The Legacy of the Hodegetria«. 57. Fra Mariano da Firenze describes a situation of rivalry between the Roman St Luke icons in his Itinerarium Urbis Romae from 1517, quoted in Belting, Likeness and Presence, p. 532. 58. »Florentiae quoque imago Virginis angelico salutata congressu quam multis sit nota quamque miraculis reverenda ex cereis imaginibus in ecclesia sua quasi tropheis pro impetrata cuiusque salute appensis patere potest; quarum tam crebra est expositio, ut cum saepius ammoveantur, semper ecclesia sit eis referta«, see Wolf, Salus Populi Romani, p. 331. 59. Benedetto Varchi, Storia fiorentina, Cologne, 1721, Libro IV, p. 74. 60. Erik Thunø and Robert Maniura have studied cases in Italy in which old forgotten frescoes have suddenly become centers of new and dynamic cults, see Erik Thunø, »The Miraculous Image and the Centralized Church: Santa Maria della Consolazione in Todi«, and Robert Maniura, »The Images and Miracles of Santa Maria delle Carceri«, both articles printed in Thunø and Wolf, The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Rome, 2004, respectively pp. 29–80, and pp. 81–95. 61. Belting, Likeness and Presence, p. xxi. 62. Holmes, »The Elusive Origins of the Cult of the Annunziata in Florence«, p. 115. 63. Trexler, »Being and Non-Being«, p. 15. 64. Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, New York, 2010. 65. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, p. 29. 66. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, p. 32. 67. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, p. 29. 68. The Marian icon at the focal point in the Tivoli procession was not a replica of the Salus Populi Romani in S. Maria Maggiore in Rome but a replica of the rival icon in S. Maria in Aracoeli, which was also competing for the title of the true St Luke image. On the icons and the processions in Latium, see Belting, Likeness and Presence, pp. 323–329. 69. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, pp. 53–73. 70. Trexler quoting Benedetto Varchi, see Public Life in Renaissance Florence, p. 65. 71. See the Vita of Pietro Cavallini, which only appears in Vasari's 1568 edition, Vasari, Le Opere, Vol. I, pp. 537–543. 72. Varchi, Storia fiorentina, Libro IV, p. 74. 73. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, p. 83. 74. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, p. 80. 75. Approximately 50 years after the first transference of the cult the Orsanmichele Madonna was, for unknown reasons, replaced by another panel that immediately inherited the veneration of its predecessor. On the Orsanmichele Madonna, see Villani, Cronaca, Libro VII, Cap. CLV, 479; Nancy Rash Fabbri and Nina Rutenberg, »The Tabernacle of Orsanmichele in Context«, Art Bulletin, Vol. 63, No. 3, 1981, pp. 385–405, and Diane Finello Zervas, ed., Orsanmichele a Firenze, Modena, 1996. 76. Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, p. 203. 77. For an example of the anthropological work on cult images, see Victor & Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives, New York, 1978.