Restoring Monreale

  

Just before Christmas the BBC News website reported on thealerestoration work that has been undertaken on the late twelfth century mosaics that decorate the interior of the cathedral at Monreale in Sicily. This has involved auto cleaning but also conserving and restoring the spectacular series which cover the whole interior of the building.

The article can be seen at It's pure beauty' - Italy's largest medieval mosaics restored

The restoration project is also covered in slightly more detail on the Medievalists.net site at Medieval Cathedral Transformed with Stunning New Lighting

Wikipedia has a history and description of the cathedral at Monreale Cathedral and a separate article about the mosaics, which are the especial glory of the building, can be seen at Monreale Cathedral mosaics

The cathedral started as an abbey founded by King William II following a dream or vision in which the Virgin Mary appeared to him and suggested he should found the church. It was rapidly promoted to being a cathedral with an Archbishop, and was to be the burial place of the King and of his father.

Cathedrals with monastic chapters were rare on the continent, but quite frequently to be found in medieval England. The fact that the King’s consort, Joanna, was a daughter of King Henry II and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine may have influenced the decision, as may the known presence in Sicily of English clergy and administrators.

A further link to England is the prominent figure amongst them mosaic saints of St Thomas of Canterbury, who had been martyred only a very few years before the establishment of the monastery at Monreale.

Festum Asinorum

Today, being Januar 14, as I was reminded by a note on The Pillar website, was for several centuries in the medieval era the Feast of the Ass, the Festum Asinorum. This was intended as a commemoration of the Flight into Egypt.

It appears to be particularly associated with northern France, although that may be a reflection of what records survive.

Wikipedia gives an account of the events associated with it at Feast of the Ass

Linked to it is the concept and history of the Feast of Fools which marked the days after Christmas Day itself, with role reversal celebrations in cathedrals. This apparently originated in southern France. The article can be seen at Feast of Fools

Although banned by the Ecumenical Coucil of. Basel in 1431, and by the University of Paris in 1444, the customer was along time a dying, surviving at Amiens until at least 1721. It occurs to me that this was perhaps a consequence of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges in 1438.

In England the best recorded evidence for such events is the tradition, now quite frequently revived, or the Boy Bishop.

From the Feast of the Ass there survives in seasonal usage  the familiar music for the hymn Orientis Partibus. The text and recordings of the hymn, arguably an inspiration for Carl Orff in composing Carmina Burana, can be found online at both Festum Asinorum and Orientis Partibus

More on medieval Greenland

Greenland is in the news, whether it, its people or its autonomous government want it to be or not. The background to the present furore can be read in an article from the Politico news website at Trump joins history’s long line of suitors coveting Greenland

I have posted in the past about research into the cause of the medieval eastern and western settlements in the south of the island. I came came upon a video about the medieval settlements in the territory which can be seen at  What Happened to Norse Greenland?

The Medieval Religion discussion group was sent an interesting link last week to an article about monastic foundations in Greenland and also later stories about monasteries in Greenland, which, according to the reports,  had thermal underfloor heating….. The far north seems to have been a fruitful breeding ground for rather fanciful stories of the unusual in that period. The link can be seen at Monastic orders in medieval Greenland

A New Years Gift from 1405

620 years ago King Charles VI of France received a New Year Gift from his Queen, Isabeau of Bavaria. The devotional image wrought in gold and enamel ornamented with precious stones and pears shows the King, in armour, together with his squire holding the royal helmet kneeling in prayer before the Virgin and Child who are accompanied by St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist, shown as children playing with their attributes of tha Lamb and a chalice, and with St Catherine of Alexandria. On a level beneath the King his groom is tending to the King’s horse.

The whole ensemble, known today as the Göldene Rössl is illustrated and described in a 2020 article from the Index of Medieval Art at The Index | » New Year’s Gifts, then and now

Such lavish devotional objects were very much the fashion at the French court in these years. The British Museum has a similar piece from the 1390s in the Reliquary of the Holy Thorn, described by Wikipedia at Holy Thorn Reliquary

The Louvre has another example of similar date from the later treasury of the Order of the Saint Ésprit.

Such gifts are perhaps to be seen as an antecedent of the Russian bejewelled Easter Eggs made by Fabergé.

Given their precious constituent materials it is hardly surprising that so few examples are still extant today. Indeed this 1405 gift survives because a few months later King Charles, short of cash, passed it on to his brother-in-law in Bavaria as part payment of his pension, and as a result the piece ended up at the great Bavarian Marian and Wittelsbach shrine at Altötting.

The delicacy of the workmanship is wonderful in its intricacacy and charming to the eye. As the photographs show the often rather tragic and forlorn King Charles, assailed by mental heath problems and ruling over a faction ridden realm, appears calm, if pale and slightly drawn, and suggests a vulnerability that was only too real in his own life. Even if he felt obliged to give his gift way one can hope it gave him some pleasure in January 1405.

Epiphany

Today is the Epiphany of Our Lord, a wonderful event in the earthly life of Christ, and a wonderful event in the annual life of the Church, full of meaning and one which has shown itself to be a rich source of inspiration to artists in fulfilling commissions over many centuries.

Two of the most famous, and which regularly features on Christmas cards are in Florence. The earlier in date is Gentile da Fabriano’s The Adoration of the Magi from 1423 which was commissioned by the Strozzi family for the church of Sta Trinità, but is now in the Uffizi. The second is Benozzo Gozzoli’s fresco cycle of the journey of the Magi, which was painted in 1459 on the walls of the private chapel of the Medici Palace.

Smarthistory has two illustrated pieces about these famous works Which placed them in their historical context and bring out some of the details which draw you ever deeper into homage of the Magi, with all their wealth, as depicted for two very wealthy and cultured Florentine banking families. In one aspect these paintings are extravagant celebrations of the wealth and lifestyle that the two families had or aspired to. They are an insight, a vision indeed, of an exclusive and privileged world for fifteenth century Florentines. Yet the very fact of their having commissioned them indicate an awareness on their part that they were fortunate and both able and anxious to place themselves as humble suitors before the infant King of Kings. One difference is that the Strozzi commission was for a parish church, but the Medici chapel was very much private sacred space.That also applies to Gozzoli’s painting of the Adoration which he painted in the cell created by Cosimo de Medici for private meditation at San Marco in Florence. This is also discussed in the relevant article. In temporal terms the Medici at least had made money out of the institutional Church,  yet both commissions suggest an awareness that all the good things in the Strozzi and Medici families came from God.

The Strozzi Adoration is discussed at Smarthistory – Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi (reframed)

The Medici chapel is described at Smarthistory – Benozzo Gozzoli, The Medici Palace Chapel frescoes

A card trick from the time of Shakespeare

The BBC News website has a story about a mathematician who, aided by his son, has worked out the mathematical basis of a card trick recorded in the 1590s. The trick is recorded in the diary of Philip Henslowe, who built and ran The Rose theatre adjacent to The Globe on Southwark’s Bankside.

 The article, together with the link to the problem-solver’s own description of the mathematics involved, can be seen at Weymouth mathematician solves Elizabethan card trick

Mathematics, beyond those things one needs to survive in daily life, was never my enthusiasm. I have friends who are enthralled by such things, but understanding such matters tends to leave me cold. However I do find it interesting that such mathematical processor were used to provide popular entertainment by at very least the later sixteenth century. The fact that mathematical calculation underlies, indeed is essential to, the creation of medieval castles and cathedrals, and significant parts of medieval science, philosophy and mystical theology, as well as the reception of the heritage of the Greco-Roman world is, of course, remarkable and fascinating. Like Philip Henslowe’s card trick it may well be something we take for granted, and not appreciating how skilled our ancestors were. Henslowe must have used mathematics to create and run his theatre. Whether he was interested in the card trick because of its mathematical basis or just as a party piece we do not know, but his record of it makes him and his world that little bit more immediate to us.

Cimabue’s Maestà cleaned and restored

This would have been a very suitable post for the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God on New Year’s Day as it is about one of the very greatest early Italian paintings of the Virgin and Child.

The Art Newspaper has a fascinating article about the cleaning and restoration of La Maestà, painted by Cimabue about 1280 for a friary church in Pisa which was plundered by the French in the Napoleonic period and is now in the Louvre. Newly restored it will be the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Louvre in coming months that investigates and re-evaluates Cimabue’s place in the development of Italian art.

The cleaning is a revelation as the before and after photographs show. Instead of the sombre tones which dominated the painting now it glows with warm colour, a rich blue and an exuberant rose, and radiates, for all its statuesque pose a calm joyfulness that had for years, maybe centuries, been hidden by varnish.

The illustrated article can be viewed at Was Cimabue the true father of the Italian Renaissance? New restoration reveals pivotal innovations

Carmina Burana

Happy New Year and may I wish all good things in 2025 to my readers.

Given the current state of the world and the uncertainties of one sort or another in so many countries and institutions we need our wits about us as we negotiate the path ahead.

It was certainly not consciously, and I doubt if it was unconsciously with that in mind either, but over Christmas I sought out on the Internet the 1975 production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. This was made to mark the composer’s eightieth birthday. Ponnelle worked closely with Orff to realise his vision of a combination of music, dance, and movement. This is a much more effective way of presenting the piece than a concert version, however well or beautifully sung.

It was my introduction to Carmina Burana and I vividly remember seeing it on television when it was new and it remained in my memory. 

It can be seen at Orff’s Carmina Burana: the 1975 Jean-Pierre Ponelle TV production (with English subtitles)

The varieties of Fortuna, with her ever turning wheel, lies at the heart of Carmina Burana, and it is a fact of life, both public and private, that we forget at our peril.

Having replayed this several times and thoroughly enjoyed it with its verve and style

I then found that there is a second costumed film version with singers and dancers which was made in 1996. It can be seen at Carl Orff: Carmina Burana (Daniel Nazareth) 1996

This is very similar in many ways to the Ponnelle version, but is a film using locations for some scenes rather than being entirely studio based gives it a different feel. There is however very clear artistic homage in it to the earlier version.

The opening sequence and its reprise at the conclusion is perhaps less satisfactory than the rest of the film although one can see what the intention was of those who made it. Don’t let them put you off the rest of this visually striking and very entertaining production.

The rustic fertility rite in the second section brought to my mind a passage in that outstanding historian Norman Cohn’s Europe’s Inner Demons where he provides a critique of the highly individualistic ideas of the nineteenth century French historian Jules Michelet about ‘alternative religion’ in the medieval centuries.

Watching both of these versions made me wonder if they could be seen as “Montaillou - The Musical” or “Breughal: The Musical”?

That led me to pose the question to myself, and to my readers: Is your vision of the middle ages “Braveheart” or “Carmina Burana”, “Game of Thrones” or Boccaccio and Chaucer?

Whatever your answer enjoy these two splendidly joyful and splendidly earthy versions of Carmina Burana, its Goliard humour and its immensely tuneful score.