Journal of The Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 

About: Journal of The Warburg and Courtauld Institutes is an academic journal published by University of Chicago Press. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Painting & Iconography. It has an ISSN identifier of 0075-4390. Over the lifetime, 1195 publications have been published receiving 12496 citations.

Ancient History and the Antiquarian

Abstract: Prijevod clanka Arnalda Momigliana, izvorno objavljenog 1950. u casopisu Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. Pregled povijesti antikvarnih studija od staroga vijeka do 19. stoljeca.

Introduction to an "iconography of mediaeval architecture"

Abstract: Since the Renaissance it has become customary to consider architecture as being determined by \"commodity, firmness and delight\" or, to use a less Wottonian terminology, by function, construction, and design. To view architectural problems from these angles and from them alone, has become something like a fundamental tenet of architectural history. Yet the validity of such a view appears rather doubtful where mediaeval architecture is concerned.' Obviously there can be no doubt that problems of construction, design and function, and of the integration of these elements, were of fundamental importance to mediaeval as well as to later architects. Yet it would seem that these essentials of architecture as laid down by Sir Henry Wotton, and before him by Leone Battista Alberti, were differently emphasized and that in addition to them other elements played a vital part in the mediaeval conception of architecture. As a matter of fact, no mediaeval source ever stresses the design of an edifice or its construction, apart from the material which has been used. On the other hand the practical or liturgical functions are always taken into consideration; they lead on to questions of the religious significance of an edifice and these two groups together seem to stand in the centre of mediaeval architectural thought. Not once, it will be remembered, does Suger refer to the revolutionary problems of vaulting and design in his new building at St. Denis. Evidently the design of an edifice or for that matter the construction were not within the realm of theoretical discussion. On the other hand the religious implications of a building were uppermost in the minds of its contemporaries. Time and again Suger discusses the dedications of altars to certain Saints. Questions of the symbolical significance of the layout or of the parts of a structure are prominent; questions of its dedication to a particular Saint, and of the relation of its shape to a specific dedication or to a specific religious-not necessarily liturgical-purpose. The 'content' of architecture seems to have been among the more important problems of mediaeval architectural theory; perhaps indeed it was its most important problem. The total of these questions would form the subject of an iconography of architecture. Such an approach would merely return to an old tradition which as recently as a century ago was still present in the minds of

Marvels of the east. A study in the history of monsters

Abstract: The following pages are concerned with a strictly limited aspect of the inexhaustible history of monsters, those compound beings which have always haunted human imagination. The Greeks sublimated many instinctive fears in the monsters of their mythology, in their satyrs and centaurs, sirens and harpies, but they also rationalized those fears in another, non-religious form by the invention of monstrous races and animals which they imagined to live at a great distance in the East, above all in India. It is the survival and transmission of this Greek conception of ethnographical monsters which will here be studied. But even the history of this one trend in the conception of monsters cannot yet fully be written, for the "Marvels of the East"'1 determined the western idea of India for almost 2000 years, and made their way into natural science and geography, encyclopaedias and cosmographies, romances and history, into maps, miniatures and sculpture. They gradually became stock features of the occidental mentality, and reappear peculiarly transformed in many different guises. And their power of survival was such that they did not die altogether with the geographical discoveries and a better knowledge of the East, but lived on in pseudo-scientific dress right into the I7th and I8th centuries. In order to illustrate the fluctuating history of this tradition it will be necessary to lay before the reader a great bulk of material, which may seem bewildering but which may serve to convey an impression of the impact which the Marvels made on the European mind.

Political Ideas in Sienese Art: The Frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Taddeo di Bartolo in the Palazzo Pubblico

Abstract: W hen between 1337 and 1340 the government of Siena commissioned Ambrogio Lorenzetti to adorn their council chamber in the Palazzo Pubblico,1 the frescoing of town halls and palaces had already become fairly widespread in Italy. Few of these early frescoes in secular buildings have survived, but the evidence we possess shows that they were frequently meant to serve political and didactic purposes.2 Inscriptions often helped to press home the message of the paintings. One of the most remarkable of these frescoes was painted in 1315 by Simone Martini in the Great Council Hall of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena (P1. I5a). The 'Maest1'3 is more than a religious painting of the Madonna and Child. According to the Sienese tradition, the Virgin had been the ruler of Siena since 126o, when before the battle of Montaperti against Florence the Sienese had put themselves in her hands ;* thus in the 'Maesta' she addresses the spectators, who are the councillors assembled in the hall, not only as the Mother of Christ but also as the protector of Siena. \"Diligite iustitiam qui iudicatis terram,\"5 we read on the scroll the Christchild is holding; and in the inscriptions below, the Virgin expresses her delight in good counsel, and her contempt for selfishness, which leads citizens to despise her and to betray her city ; 6 and she replies to the four other Sienese patron saints interceding for the citizens at the foot of her throne, that acceptance of their prayers would not extend to those who oppress the weak and betray her town. In short, the message of the 'Maesta' turns on the two concepts of justice and of the subordination of private interest to that of the community. These are also the two concepts underlying the programme of the frescoes which about twenty-two years later Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted in the adjoining council chamber of the government, the Nove. But instead of using the direct and somewhat rudimentary approach of the 'Maestai,' Lorenzetti couches the message of his frescoes in a complex philosophical allegory.