Reconstructing the Office Furniture: The Art of the Early Modern Choir Stall Angela D. Glover Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Art University of Toronto 2016 This dissertation examines a range of choir stalls made in northern Europe and Spain between 1450 and 1550 with the aim of reinstating choir stalls as significant objects in our understanding of the arts of the early modern period. This century of prosperity and renewal supported widespread church commissions and resulted in the construction of some of the most complex and inventive sets of stalls ever built. As objects that were central to the ritual life of religious communities and helped define the sacred space of the choir, their form and iconography tell us about the values, beliefs and aspirations of the patrons who commissioned them and the communities who used them. As large, complex microarchitectural structures, they allowed varying and potentially interacting visual programs to be displayed in diverse and innovative ways. Using a variety of approaches, four broad art historical issues are investigated, showing some of the ways that choir stalls contribute to the larger discourse. Historiography elucidates the longstanding emphasis on misericords and the lack of integration of this work with broader art historical research, as well as suggesting ways to move forward. Analysis of a variety of historical documents along with current research on acoustics and design, and engagement with modern theorists of space highlight how the spatial configuration of choir stalls contributed to key aspects of their use and meaning. The examination of a range of documentary sources provides a picture of how a set of stalls might be realized

The origins of the modern Roman liturgy : the liturgy of the Papal court and the Franciscan order in the thirteenth century

Reconstructing the Office Furniture: The Art of the Early Modern Choir Stall

The image of the desert at the heart of this thesis is contained within a late thirteenth-century Italian tabernacle, on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. It is a striking and intricate narrative painting, showing numerous scenes of eremitic life and death in a mountainous desert landscape. The central panel of the Edinburgh Tabernacle represents the earliest surviving example of ‘eremitic landscape’ painting in Italy (dated to some fifty years earlier than the well-known Lives of the Anchorites fresco in the Camposanto of Pisa). It contains a unique combination of iconography that draws from both East and West. Yet it has been largely overlooked in the extensive literature on Italian panel painting of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and its patronage, origins and intended function are not well understood. This thesis examines the Edinburgh Tabernacle in some depth, drawing on recent technical analysis prompted by my research. Seen as part of a wider cultural and religious context, it emerges as an object of considerable artistic and historical significance. The tabernacle provides persuasive visual evidence for a profound interest in the desert among the increasingly urban landscape of late thirteenth-century Italy. In addition, it raises important questions concerning the legacy of the Desert Fathers in late-medieval Italy, the spirituality of the recently-formed Mendicant Orders, and the relationship between Italian religious life and the monastic culture of Byzantium. This study pursues the impulse that lies behind the making of the Edinburgh Tabernacle. It explores connections between the tabernacle, the religious context from which it emerged, and a number of eremitic landscape paintings made in central Italy for different patrons between c.1330-1500. In doing so, it aims to shed new light on the function of the object, and the significance of the eremitic life, in late-medieval Italy.

background

Images of the desert, religious renewal and the eremitic life in late-medieval Italy : a thirteenth-century tabernacle in the National Gallery of Scotland

Many works in the various fields of liturgy and history refer to a Celtic Rite that
was supposedly in use in Ireland prior to the arrival of Normans in the twelfth
century. The existence of this liturgical rite and its supposed suppression at the
hands of the Normans are usually taken for granted in these works. However some
modern liturgical scholarship has begun to question the importance (or even the very
existence) of the Celtic Rite.
This thesis examines the actual evidence for the Eucharist in Pre-Norman
Ireland. Unlike the other Celtic regions (Scotland, Wales, Brittany, etc.) it is possible
to study the Eucharist in Ireland as there still exists enough textual and historical
evidence for such a study.
V
The main contribution of this thesis is that it provides the first major analysis
of Eucharistic practice in pre-Norman Ireland in over one hundred years. Great care
has been taken to situate the evidence within both the historical and liturgical
contexts that are sometimes ignored in secondary literature. Both the remaining
ritual texts and other texts of the period that deal with the Eucharist are studied. In
addition archaeological and iconographical elements are analyzed. This provides an
up to date picture of the place of the Eucharist in Pre-Norman Ireland.
The results of this study seriously cast into doubt the nineteenth and early
twentieth century claims of a separate Celtic Rite in Ireland. This, in turn, has its
repercussions on the fields of the History of Early Christian Ireland and the study of
medieval liturgy. Thus the ground is prepared for further study of medieval liturgy
and the religious dimension of the Pre Norman period of Christianity and society in
Ireland.

The Eucharist in Pre-Norman Ireland: Liturgy,Practice, and Society

DURING THE LAST YEAR of his life, Francesco Cavalli, then maestro di cappella of St. Mark's in Venice, published a collection of doublechoir Vespers psalms and Magnificats. The print was issued by Gardano in 1675 and entitled simply Vesperi a otto voci.' On first examination, the collection seems to be just one more of those comprehensive Vespers publications designated per tutte le solennitd dell'anno that were common in the late sixteenth and seventeenth

The "Vespero delli Cinque Laudate" and the Role of "Salmi Spezzati" at St. Mark's

The venerable Master Adam, canon of St. Victor's in Paris, was composing the sequence Salve mater Salvatoris. When he had just written another strophe of rhythmic poetry, namely Hail Mother of compassion And noble resting place Of the entire Trinity, the glorious Virgin appeared to him. As if repaying him for the homage he had paid to her, she supplicantly bowed her head in deepest humility to him while he was reflecting.2

The origins of the modern Roman liturgy : the liturgy of the Papal court and the Franciscan order in the thirteenth century

Citations

Reconstructing the Office Furniture: The Art of the Early Modern Choir Stall

Images of the desert, religious renewal and the eremitic life in late-medieval Italy : a thirteenth-century tabernacle in the National Gallery of Scotland

The Eucharist in Pre-Norman Ireland: Liturgy,Practice, and Society

The "Vespero delli Cinque Laudate" and the Role of "Salmi Spezzati" at St. Mark's

Who Was Adam of St. Victor? The Evidence of the Sequence Manuscripts

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