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The inscribed image: negotiating sculpture on thecoast of the Adriatic SeaIt tai Weinryb

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The inscribed image: negotiating sculpture on thecoast of the Adriatic Sea

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On the morning of December, , an unoccupied boatreached the Adriatic shore near the city of Ravenna. On theboat, so the legend informs us, was only one object: a relief iconof the Virgin in an orant posture, bearing only the abbreviationsof her title as the Mother of God (figure ). The sculpted iconbore no further inscriptions, nor any text that might indicate thecircumstances behind its making.

Like other objects washing up from the sea, the orant ofRavenna represented otherworldly forms. At the very least,it was perceived as presenting a form foreign to its place ofarrival. Its having come without concrete circumstances tonarrate and, in many ways, to decipher may very well havecontributed to its mystique as an object that was alien to theenvironment in which it was installed.

The Ravenna orant forms part of a larger group of worksthat produced a similar otherworldly awe and that scholarshiphas labeled Byzantine relief icons. They appear on the coastof the Adriatic, from Caorle in the north to Messina in Sicily.Although fragmented, their survival indicates a more exten-sive phenomenon of monumental Byzantine sculpture on theAdriatic coast. In many cases, these relief icons were installed onthe exterior of churches, but were not part of a large decorativeprogram.

Ever since Reinhold Lange published his works on Byzantinesculpture, which cataloged some of the surviving relief icons,their origins and the circumstances of their making have beenat the center of scholarly debate. Scholars have distinguishedbetween Venetian relief icons, especially those installed on theexterior of the church of San Marco, and the relief icons scat-tered along the Adriatic coast. Masters of stylistic analysis,such as Otto Demus, dealt with the problems of the dat-ing and provenance of these icons through extensive sets ofcomparisons. Until now, however, no definitive study of themaking and installation of the relief icons on the Adriaticcoast has been undertaken. Some claim that they arrived aspart of the loot of the Fourth Crusade of . Others seethe icons as objects made in Constantinople in the late thir-teenth century and later sent from Constantinople to Italy.

Yet another school of thought declares these icons were carvedin Italy and suggests dates spanning from the later eleventhcentury to the late thirteenth. Reliefs like the one of St.Demetrios located on the façade of San Marco present suchhigh-quality carving that it is extremely hard to affiliate it

with other works originating in Constantinople, thus strength-ening the possibility that it was carved in Italy, perhaps evenin Venice itself. It must be noted, however, that the entiredebate concerning the provenance and dating of the relief iconshas been conducted by scholars of Byzantine art who avoidlooking into the development of sculpture in twelfth-centuryItaly.

Only in the dissertation of Trude Krautheimer-Hess,which deals with the development of Romanesque sculpturein eastern Lombardy, does one find a strong and convincingargument for the influence of Byzantine sculpture on worksof early Romanesque sculpture bordering the shores of theAdriatic. For example, Krautheimer-Hess suggests that thecarving of the folds in the lower front part of the dress wornby the Virgin by Niccolò on the portal of the Cathedral ofFerrara bears a resemblance to that of the Ravenna orant.Similar folds, as well as the carving of features such as theround and clear face of the Virgin, can also be found in anotherwork signed by Niccolò on the tympanum of the Cathedral ofSanta Maria Assunta in Verona (figure ). Unfortunately, thework of Krautheimer-Hess has been completely overlooked byByzantinists working on the question of the relief icons. Thisarticle will follow Krautheimer-Hess’s argument to the effectthat the Byzantine relief icons, or at least some of them, werecarved in the late eleventh or early twelfth century — beforethe development of the sculpture of Niccolò. Its goal, however,is neither to date the relief icons nor to determine how and towhat extent they represent early precursors to the Romanesquesculpture of Niccolò, but rather to focus on the interactionbetween these two types of sculptural expression along theAdriatic coast.

Apart from both being carved out of a single stone, thebasic affinity between the icons and the sculpture of Niccolòlies in their similar place of installation. Many relief icons wereincorporated into the façades of churches. A striking examplecan be found in Ancona, where the icon is installed over thethreshold to the church of Santa Maria della Piazza (figure ).

Similar examples, like the now-lost relief of St. Clement, whichwas installed above the threshold to a chapel by the same namein the church of San Marco in Venice, testify to the uniquenature of these images as Byzantine markers of thresholds.Given that they date to the second half of the eleventh cen-tury, they represent pre-Romanesque examples of monumental

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Figure . Relief icon of Mary in Orant. c. . Ravenna, Santa MariaPorto Fuori. Photo: Scala/Art Resources, NY.

sculpture on the exterior of churches. Even if these relief iconswere carved in situ and then installed on church façades, theyundoubtedly represent a primordial moment of monumentalsculpture on the exterior of churches along the Adriatic coastof Italy.

This group of relief icons shares one further critical aspect:other than the abbreviations marking the name of the sculptedfigure, inscriptions were not used as tools to mediate betweenimage and viewer. By virtue of their placement on the exte-rior of the church, however, the relief icons nevertheless becamepart of the medieval public environment where texts in theform of inscriptions were still the dominant medium. Denudedof text and thus devoid of history, icons such as the orant ofRavenna arrived in a western medieval environment in which

Figure . Nicolò, Mary enthroned. Twelfth century, before . Verona,Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta. Photo: Author.

Figure . Façade with relief icon above the tympanum, first half thirteenthcentury. Ancona, Santa Maria della Piazza. Photo: Author.

public inscriptions — that is to say, inscriptions covering theoutside walls of edifices — decorated the civic landscape. Theseinscriptions functioned not just as bearers of literary contentthat could be deciphered by an attentive reader, but also asauthoritative representations of those texts. As signs, inscriptionsalso functioned as representational markers of text, that is, asreferences to the existence of literacy as a form of culturaldistinction rather than an embodiment of functioning literacyitself.

In one of the pioneering studies of the history and functionof the public inscription, Armando Petrucci refers to, amongothers, the inscription on the Cathedral of Salerno which wasmade in the second half of the eleventh century, around thetime when the relief icons appeared on the Adriatic coast. Heexplains it not just as a return to ancient epigraphic models,but also as a means ‘of conveying of a political message thatwas expressed through innovative aesthetic-formal solutions.’

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Petrucci believes that the aesthetic mode specific to publicinscriptions has its origins in concepts of invasion — he namesthe Norman invasion of Italy in – as the beginningof the tradition of medieval public inscriptions — or at leastin the interrelations between communities that resulted fromthe occupation of lands. Taking Petrucci’s thesis as a pointof departure, we should consider what effect the appearanceof icons such as the Ravenna orant had on the predomi-nately inscription-centered public environment of the Italiancoast. This new form of sculpted image, itself part of a revivedmedium, must have altered the way in which the public envi-ronment was perceived.

The monumental sculpture that developed in response to thearrival of the Byzantine relief icons shares many characteris-tics with the relief icons. For instance, the tympanum sculpturethat developed in the early twelfth century in the Veneto, EmiliaRomagna, and the Marche shared aspects of both placementand functionality with the icons. The sculpture of St. Zenoon the tympanum of his eponymous church in Verona offersan example (figure ). Like the relief icons, it is cut from a sin-gle stone. The sculpture of St. Zeno, in keeping with the restof the Romanesque sculpture from the area of this period, alsopresents a problematic history in terms of its dating. Althoughall scholars agree that it was sculpted after the great earthquakeof , there is disagreement as to how long after that disasterit was actually made. Some scholars, based on sporadic inscrip-tions, date it to , whereas others date it earlier, to . Atympanum of the church dedicated to St. George in Argenta,which has several features in common with the Zeno tympa-num, is securely dated by an inscription to (figure ). Thedate of the Argenta tympanum pushes the dating of the Zenocloser to the first half of the twelfth century.

The sculpture of St. Zeno belongs to a group of tympanawhich are ascribed to a sculptor who signed his name asNiccolò. In addition to St. Zeno, Niccolò’s name is also attached

Figure . Niccolò, St. Zeno. Twelfth century, before . Verona, San ZenoMaggiore. Photo: Author.

Figure . Niccolò, St. George fighting the Dragon. Twelfth century, before. Ferrara, Cathedral of San Giorgio. Photo: Author.

Figure . Niccolò, The martyrdom of St. George. Argenta, . SanGiorgio in Argenta. Photo: Author.

to tympanum sculpture at the cathedral of San Giorgio inFerrara (figure ) and the Cathedral of Verona. Together withthe tympanum at the church of San Giorgio in Argenta, theseprovide the first instances of tympanum sculpture on the shoresof the Adriatic and represent the earliest moments of iconic,non-narrative tympanum sculpture in north-east Italy. Thetympana sculptures are linked to the relief icons in that theyboth present themselves as iconic sculptures and share a sim-ilar functionality on the threshold of the holy house. As theicons and the tympanum sculptures also share the same envi-ronment on the Adriatic coast, it would be useful to try tolook at the tympana together with the relief icons not as apart of a diachronic historical development of sculpture alonglines of stylistic and iconographical argumentation, but ratheras corresponding images operating in a defined spatial setting.It is important to reiterate that relief icons such as the orantof Ravenna were objects that, according to legend, enteredinto the environment of the Adriatic coast. Thus, in this case,the horizontal movement of objects across geographical terrain

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generated an alteration of type and means of image productionin the defined geographical environment into which they wereimported.

The Adriatic coast, especially its northern stretches, was,at least from the seventh century, an area with a notableByzantine presence. Since that period, Latin rule over theseplaces had changed hands through endless conquests. By thetwelfth century, the presence of Greek settlement was not asstrong as it has been and cannot be compared with the contin-uing Greek presence in the south. As a result, looking into twosimilar but distinct sculptural forms that share the same envi-ronment becomes less a question of political identification thana question of taste. As the Byzantine icons were placed on thethresholds of churches at an earlier date than the Latin tym-pana, changing taste or theological considerations — at leastthose concerned with religious problems relating to the man-ufacture of sculpture in that early stage — are more probablereasons for the creation of the Latinate tympana as competingsculptural objects on the outside of the church.

Although the icons and the tympana shared a certain func-tionality and some stylistic affinities, they diverged insofar as thelatter include lengthy inscriptions. In all the Adriatic tympana,the borders of the lunette are typically framed by an inscriptionthat traces the base of the lunette as well as its hemisphericalborders. In the San Zeno tympanum, the words circumscribeZeno and the supporting figures, thus creating a border betweenthe pictorial plane of the tympanum and the rest of the façade.Throughout the corpus of Adriatic tympana, as in the case ofSt. Zeno, the inscription serves to frame or enclose the sculptedbody in the center of the tympanum.

Lengthy inscriptions on church exteriors were tradition-ally intended to commemorate construction. However, whenaccompanying sculptures or painting, inscriptions also servedas captions and thus functioned as didactic tools in the nar-ration of and commentary on the images they accompanied.At San Zeno, for example, an inscription on the tower datedto commemorated construction, and another inscriptionon the south-east wall, just right of the façade, dated to ,recorded the completion of the renovation of the church. Yetthese inscriptions are more than just passive records of historicalfacts. By virtue of their monumentality, they also commemorateeternally the foundation of the church in the public environ-ment. Like the monumental image, the monumental inscriptionserves to revivify past time in a present, communal space.

Inscriptions also participate in the decorative programs ofother churches on the Adriatic. Quotations from the OldTestament, as well as captions commenting on specific scenes,create a grid of text that is part of the overall pictorial programof these churches, yet at the same time function in the samesphere in which commemorative inscriptions operated. Ratherthan being simply on display, therefore, inscriptions accompa-nying images had a role as an intermediary between the imageand the viewer. The role of the accompanying inscription hasbeen traditionally understood as didactic. In other words, their

function is understood as being to narrate, explain, and deci-pher the image. In many cases, these inscriptions are regardedas captions, the function of which was to comment on what washappening in the image, perhaps providing a rationale for theexistence of the image itself. Inscriptions could also refer to ahistorical event, the commemoration of which was the reasonfor creating the image.

The exterior of the church — the public sphere where theseinscriptions and the early phases of images such as the relieficons appeared — became an experimental site for the devel-opment of early twelfth-century art. Not only images, but alsotexts in the form of inscriptions were rediscovered as bearersof literary content that would be deciphered by the reader, aswell as authoritative representations of a text. In the publicenvironment, in the field exterior to the church, monumentalwords and images constantly refashioned their relations to othermedia, thus creating reciprocal experience between observer,epigraphy, and image on the outside of the church.

The interrelationship of inscription and image raises multi-ple issues. Scholars such as Jean-Claude Bonne, M.T. Clanchy,Kirk Ambrose, and Stefano Riccioni have advanced the notionof ‘visual poetics,’ according to which inscriptions deliver a sup-plementary meaning that is not connoted by their content ortheir role as text accompanying an image. From this point ofview, the text and the image constitute two independent visualfields that relate to one another, first and foremost because oftheir juxtaposition. Text and image are thus combined into adense visual display that is more than the sum of the mean-ings of each medium. A certain reception of an image could bederived from understanding the amalgam which the image andinscriptions created together. The ontological question of textand image and their interrelation as a composite is the strikingfeature in the Adriatic tympana, as well as their main point ofdeparture from the Byzantine relief icons.

The Adriatic tympana group is the earliest example of Italianmonumental sculpture to include a circumscribing inscrip-tion bordering their lunettes. As such, they respond to theuncircumscribed relief icons that appeared along the Adriaticcoast. They also present, for the first time, life-size sculptedbodies on the exterior of churches. In doing so, the tympanacorrespond with another primordial example of monumentalsculpture on the Adriatic coast: ecclesiastical thrones. Thronessuch as that at the Cathedral of San Nicola in Bari (figure ), tra-ditionally dated to the late eleventh century, are often thoughtto mark the origins of monumental sculpture in medieval Italy.Other examples include the throne at the Cathedral of SanSabino in Canosa di Puglia (figure ), dated to the first half ofthe twelfth century, and the throne at San Clemente in Rome(figure ), composed of fourth-century spolia. Both the thronesat Bari and Canosa di Puglia are adorned with very minimalfigurative sculpture. The thrones’ backrests are circumscribedby inscriptions indicating for whom the throne was made andon what occasion. When a bishop sat enthroned, the inscrip-tion circumscribed his very body, creating a textual border. The

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Figure . Episcopal throne. c. . Bari, San Nicola. Photo: Author.

body of the bishop was thus enclosed by the inscription inthe same manner that the sculpted body on the tympana wascircumscribed.

The backrest inscriptions were not carved to be read in a nor-mal fashion. Rather, they were positioned more as ornamentalbanderoles than as easily legible texts. Visually, these inscrip-tions functioned as ornament encircling the body of the bishopand effectively defining his limits. This definition of limits, whichalso expresses a certain understanding of space, is especially evi-dent in the throne at San Clemente in Rome. The throne thereis carved from a fourth-century tombstone; the word Martyr isstill visible from its previous use. The throne was fabricated dur-ing the so-called restoration of Rome in the twelfth century, andthough it was composed of a piece of spolia, its makers consid-ered it necessary to add the circumscribing inscription. Thus,for the fourth-century tombstone to operate as a twelfth-centuryecclesiastical throne, it was deemed necessary to add a circum-scribing inscription that would frame the body of the seatedbishop. The backrest of another twelfth-century throne, thisone in San Pietro di Castello, the erstwhile Cathedral of Venice(figure ), was fashioned from an Islamic tombstone. Arabicscript proceeds around the semicircular edges of the backrest,and would have thus framed the seated bishop with an Arabictext, once again highlighting his borders. In sum, the trend

Figure . Episcopal throne. Early twelfth century. Canosa di Puglia,Cathedral of San Sabino. Photo: Author.

Figure . Throne. Early twelfth century. Rome, San Clemente. Photo:Author.

of furnishing the backrests of thrones with a circumscribinginscription that borders the seated bishop corresponds withthe concurrent tendency to circumscribe the sculpted bodies

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Figure . Throne. First half twelfth century. Venice, Cathedral of SanPietro in Castello. Photo: Author.

displayed on the tympana of churches along the Adriatic. Inthe initial encounter between viewer and inscription, the letterswould appear first and foremost as a visual marker, functioningas border and frame, and only secondarily as a bearer of literarycontent.

Such semicircular inscriptions have an ancient pedigree anda persistent function that further articulates the meaning behindthe circumscribed sculpted figures on the tympana and theseated bishop on the throne. Bordering or delimiting the spaceoccupied by the body has a long tradition that extends to pre-Christian Roman roots. The imago clipeata, the iconic image ofa ruler, was originally painted on round shields, thus creatingan image of the ruler enclosed in a circle. The portrait of theruler enclosed in a roundel became part of the imperial cult andoften served as an apotropaic device. Circular frames werealso standard in representations of the dead in late Roman cul-ture. The rich dual meaning of the circumscribed image — asa protective device of the ruler or as a commemorative framefor the deceased — was appropriated by Christian art andemployed throughout the Middle Ages. In Christian contexts,the circular frame most often connoted the divine nature of

the God who had ascended into the heavens, whom the frameactively separates from the terrestrial world.

Defining the limits is a process in which the circumscribedperson, for instance, the bishop on the throne, is made con-tiguous with borders external to his own body. The questionof selfhood and its so-called rise in the twelfth century is amuch debated issue. Colin Morris has dealt with the notion,showing how the humanism considered characteristic of theRenaissance existed already in the twelfth century. He arguesthat self in the modern sense of the word, as a reciprocal pro-cess of self-fashioning, was actually a medieval invention. Inthe controversy that followed the publication of Morris’s book,medieval scholars discovered that in the twelfth century selfmeant something different from what it means in modern times.In a path-breaking article on the self, Caroline Walker Bynumexplained that the twelfth-century discovery of the self was actu-ally a discovery of group identity (and thus one’s ability to electan affiliation with a group) rather than the realization of mod-ern individuality. Jean-Claude Schmitt, Bernard McGinn,and Jérôme Baschet all demonstrated that the so-called discov-ery of the self actually meant the rise of interest in anthropologyand in the other, by which the definition of a group selfhoodcould be generated.

According to these scholars, the classical definitions ofmedieval self changed in the twelfth century into a category thatpermitted groups to define themselves and the environments inwhich they were situated. In her study of the relation betweenthe self and space in the twelfth century, Sarah Spence observed:‘Space and the body (the self) had come to assume preemi-nence denied them in the early Middle Ages.’ For Spence,a body could also mean the corpus of a political organism.Just as an individual corporeal body operates in space, so toothe metaphorical body of society operates within a specific set-ting. Inscriptions that border thrones or sculptures limit thebody, whether human or sculpted, and define the space thatremains exterior to the inscription. In the moment of the riseof iconic sculpture on the thresholds of churches and the con-struction of ecclesiastical thrones celebrating the foundation ofthese churches, the articulation of a particular communal selfembodied by the public figure of the bishop or the sculpted bodyof the saint could very well represent a self-conscious counter toother types of images made in the same medium, such as relieficons. In any case, it is significant that the notion of the self,either as part of a group identity or as involved in a process ofanthropological investigation of ‘others’ to arrive at a definitionof the self, coincided with the rise of the public image and thepublic inscription.

Thus far, I have avoided reading the circumscribing inscrip-tions found on the tympana. Reading these inscriptions, how-ever, only further clarifies their function. Indeed, moving intothe interpretation of each of the inscriptions in the group illu-minates how the function of these circumscribing inscriptionsextends beyond their pictorial use as a bordering ornamen-tal device or a mere ‘word displayed.’ The exterior inscription

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on the San Zeno tympanum reads: ‘Let us praise Niccolò, theskilled craftsman who sculpted this; and let us beg the LordChrist to grant him the Kingdom of Heaven above.’ Thesemicircular inscriptions around the other Niccolò tympanadenote the same idea. For instance, on the main tympanumof the Cathedral of Ferrara, above the sculpture of St. Georgefighting the dragon, the inscription reads: ‘May the peoplescoming to visit this place forever praise Niccolò, the skilledcraftsman who sculpted this.’ At the Cathedral of Verona,the inscription circumscribing the Adoration of the Magi andthe Annunciation to the Shepherds reads: ‘Here the Lord, thegreat lion, is seen as a lamb.’ The viewer who raises hisor her gaze sees in a roundel above the tympanum a figureof Christ as a lamb and immediately above it an inscriptionthat proceeds across the entire width of the porch: ‘The peo-ples coming to visit forever praise him — Niccolò, the skilledcraftsman who sculpted this.’ Here, the inscription celebratingthe work of the artist borders, so to speak, not just the tympa-num itself but also the eight sculpted figures of Old Testamentprophets and the hero Roland that flank the door of the churchto both sides and may explain why the inscription not only pro-ceeds around the tympanum but, in a sense, circumscribes theentire porch.

The final example of the group of Adriatic tympana is foundat the church of San Giorgio in Argenta. The small-sizedchurch, which dates back to late antiquity, is found on the roadleading from Ravenna to Ferrara, in the heart of the Marche.During renovations in the first half of the twelfth century, itwas decorated with one of the earliest sculpted tympana ofRomanesque Italy. The tympanum, dated to , represents,to my knowledge, the first depiction of the martyrdom of St.George in the Latin West and is preceded by only a few repre-sentations of this scene in Byzantine manuscripts and frescos.

This early image, located almost on the shores of the Adriatic,where the Ravenna orant was said to have arrived, depictsGeorge tied on his back to the wheel with two flanking figures.The tympanum’s lunette is framed by an inscription that runsaround its border then proceeds, in two different tiers, along thelower part of the tympanum.

In its iconography, this portrayal of the martyrdom ofSt. George generally follows a depiction of Ixion, the king ofthe Lapiths, in his moment of death, a subject which could onlybe found as sculpture in the surviving relief fragments at theCathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello (figure ), datedto about . Like the orant of Ravenna, the otherworldlyByzantine sculpture of Ixion as presented in Torcello influencedthe appearance of the new Romanesque sculpture at Argenta,while the addition of a circumscribing inscription delimited theimage of the martyrdom. The inscription on the lunette of SanGiorgio reads: ‘The man spurned the wheel which broke him inall his limbs and which gave life to the man to whom it thought itwas giving death.’ On the lower part of the architrave we findthe words: ‘These shining things sculpted by John of Modiglianagleam. Those who see these let them beg for him with a daily

Figure . The death of Ixion. c. . Torcello, Cathedral of Santa MariaAssunta. Photo: Foto Böhm.

prayer.’ The iconography of the martyrdom of St. Georgeadapted from the scene of the death of Ixion was framed by aninscription celebrating the maker John of Modigliana. John ofModigliana is the initiator and the person operating both media(sculpture and epigraphy) together in the creation of a new typeof agency. Argenta thus presents a conglomerate of artisticmoments condensed into the single pictorial plane of the tympa-num: a first depiction of the martyrdom of a saint, an adaptationof otherworldly Byzantine sculpture portraying a scene fromclassical mythology, and an inscription that circumscribes thescene.

As in the Niccolò tympana, the inscription framing the tym-panum sculpture at Argenta celebrates the artist’s skills. Whilethe Ravenna orant was a precursor to the Niccolò group interms of its style, at Argenta the framed image is also a resultof horizontal mobility, insofar as the artist adopted not just thestyle but also the iconography of a Byzantine image itself chan-neling ancient mythology. The foundational moment of a noveliconographical depiction of St. George is thus also the momentwhen the image transforms from a borderless Byzantine sculp-ture depicting Ixion from Greek mythology into an iconicdepiction of a saint in his moment of martyrdom.

By virtue of their very inclusion of manufactured stone figurescircumscribed by inscriptions, all four tympana — at San Zeno,the Verona Cathedral, the Ferrara Cathedral, and at Argenta —boldly proclaim their origins as man-made, physical objectsintended for contemplation, as opposed to relief icons with enig-matic, perhaps even divine, origins. The inscriptions featuredon the tympana, of the type traditionally known in the scholar-ship on Romanesque sculpture as the ‘celebratory inscription,’belong to a historical trajectory of inscriptions that culminate inthe lengthy inscriptions made by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano.Cornelius Claussen has interpreted these inscriptions as expres-sions of twelfth-century humanism, whereas Albert Dietl has

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linked them to the aforementioned twelfth-century notion of the‘rise of self.’ As Kendall summarized the situation, sculptorslike Niccolò were ‘urban artisans who were conscious of them-selves as autonomous artists and who took the means at theirdisposal to perpetuate their fame through their art.’

All five inscriptions acknowledge three basic participants inthe interaction between the sculpted object and the viewer.There is an understanding, at least by the maker of the inscrip-tion, that someone will look at the image and even read the text.The first participant in the interaction between the reader andthe inscription is thus the object (referred to as ‘this,’ hec), thesecond is the act of sculpting (the verb ‘to sculpt’), and the thirdis the viewer who has, in response to his interaction with theobject, to react and pray for the salvation of its maker.

Epigraphy, both on account of its esthetic quality as borderand its meaning, served a crucial role in the making of pub-lic, monumental sculpture in areas of contact like the Adriaticcoast. The artist acted as a master mind controlling the sculp-tural event in which stone and word interacted not for didacticand instructive purposes, but rather to balance and control theopposing medium. The celebratory inscription on the Adriatictympana was a tool for regimenting the exterior sculpture ratherthan deciphering and amplifying its representation.

Whereas the relief icons, like that at Ravenna, were bydint of their otherworldliness closer to what we might call liv-ing or miraculous images, the early phases of Romanesquesculpture on the Adriatic purported to be nothing other thanartifacts made at a specific moment by a human being who begsfavor for his creation. The proclamation of temporality — theunderstanding of past, present, and future as it appears in theinscriptions — identifies the sculpture as nothing more than aman-made object. All five tympana are located in areas thatare either in direct contact with or in close proximity to theAdriatic coast. In all five tympana, it is the act of making, notsome legend of miraculous creation or arrival from otherworldlydomains, that is emphasized by the inscription. To enlarge fur-ther on Krautheimer-Hess’s study, the horizontal movement ofByzantine sculpture and its installment in churches along theAdriatic coast led to a Romanesque response of circumscribinginscriptions that objectified the sculpted body. At the meetingpoint of the Italian and Byzantine worlds, against the borderlessByzantine relief sculpture, the word and its letters functioned asa tool to negate the efficacious presence of the image as a cultobject and subsequently as a miracle-working object.

When considering what it meant to be the author or makerof a work of early Romanesque sculpture, with respect to reliefsculpture in the early twelfth century, it is helpful to think ofthe author functioning as a mediator between local and other-worldly images. In the assimilation of Byzantine relief sculptureinto a western environment generally, as well as in the creationof the Adriatic tympana specifically, the role of the author asmediator between viewer and image was crucial. Furthermore,the artistic energy expressed in these first instances of mon-umental sculpture must be viewed as an inherently different

expression of artistic self: it is crucial that the inscribed state-ments are not made to glorify the maker but to lessen the valueof his creation, to insist on it being an artifact rather than anotherworldly icon or miracle-working image.

When the orant of Ravenna appeared in the Latin West,bearing no inscriptions and following Byzantine traditions ofmaking, it could not have been regarded as anything but aworking miraculous or cult image. A sculpted image intendedfor worship, it possessed three-dimensional qualities similar toother working images, such as the Holy Face of Lucca, the cultof which gained popularity around this time. As opposed tothe Holy Face of Lucca, however, the Byzantine relief icons wereplaced on the exterior of churches, where the Adriatic tympanawere operating against them. The circumscribing inscriptionsguaranteed that they would be understood as nothing morethan mere artifacts on the threshold of the holy house.

At the point where the sea meets the land, and whereByzantium interacts with Latin Europe, media displayed in thepublic environment, whether inscription or sculpture, conveyednot only ideas regarding the relations between the image andthe edifice it represented, but also deeper and more thought-ful ideas about image making. As Willibald Sauerländer arguedlong ago, the thresholds of churches, with their sculpted tym-pana, could be compared to modern-day Las Vegas billboardsigns. The relief icons on the Adriatic coast, as well as the sub-sequent Romanesque tympana, were, so to speak, advertisingtheir own church in the public domain. Although the Byzantinerelief icons were made according to Byzantine image theory, thewestern images, with their fear of sculpture as resonating idols,used the artist inscription as a tool to negate the image by pro-claiming its presence as a man-made object that does not meritworship.

Geographical orientation played a crucial role in the makingof twelfth-century art, especially in relation to epigraphy andmonumental sculpture. Public environments where inscriptionsand images were consumed and where forms of civic and eco-nomical exchange took place responded to the arrival and thehorizontal movement (or, in the case of the relief icons, seem-ing movement) of artifacts across geographical terrain. Aroundthe Mediterranean basin, the movement of objects, and theircircumscription or lack thereof by words, was a preliminarymoment in the making of monumental sculpture across theItalian peninsula. Within this geographical terrain, the place-ment of words on the exterior of churches and the existence ofepigraphy as part of a visual field that constructs the public envi-ronment of the early twelfth century interacted during a densemoment on the coast of the Adriatic. The sculptor’s inscription,more than his carvings, offers an acute tool for understandingthe dialog between types of communities. In the rise of mon-umental sculpture, the public inscription functioned as bothan image and a mediator, a conveyer that both limited andexpanded the image it accompanied — not through patterns ofdirect visual relations, but rather through a complex referentialrelationship between epigraphy, maker, and object.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sections of this article formed part of my dissertation writ-ten under the supervision of Herbert Kessler at Johns HopkinsUniversity. I thank him for his support and encouragement ofthis project. A version of this article was first presented at a ses-sion organized by Jeffrey Hamburger at the Medieval Academyof America’s annual meeting in New Haven, . I thank himfor the invitation to participate in the session as well as to publishthe article in this special volume of Word & Image. In addition,I thank him for his valuable comments on various drafts of thearticle. This work also benefited greatly from comments andadvice offered by Beate Fricke, Ashley Jones, Richard Leson,and Jannette Vusich. Any residual error, however, remains myown.

NOTES

– The orant of Ravenna would have been labeled in Byzantium an iconof the type of the Virgin Blachernitissa. As this article focuses on thepresence of this icon in the Latin West, I shall continue to refer to it as theRavenna orant. On the Ravenna orant at the church of Santa Maria inPorto, see the recent discussion in the exhibition catalog edited by AngelaDonati and Giovanni Gentili, Deomene: l’immagine dell’orante fra Oriente eOccidente (Milan: Electa, ), pp. –. See also Reinhold Lange, Diebyzantinische Reliefikone (Recklinghausen: Bongers, ), p. andClementina Rizzardi, ‘Il rilievo marmoreo con l’immagine della cosiddettaMadonna Greca in Santa Maria in Porto di Ravenna,’ Felix Ravenna –

(), pp. –. The most comprehensive bibliography found on theorant is in Charles Davis, Byzantine Relief Icons in Venice and along the AdriaticCoast: Orants and Other Images of the Mother of God (Munich: Fondamenta Arte,), p. . Available online at: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/artdok/volltexte// (accessed August ). – The arrival of objects in new environments could present possiblemisinterpretations of the objects, or misconceptions, and both could leadto labeling these objects as foreign to their environment. See, for example,the legends surrounding the arrival of panel painting in Italy orinterpretations of objects such as the San Marco Cup: Hans Belting,Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art, trans. EdmundJephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), pp. –; AliciaWalker, ‘Meaningful mingling: Classicizing imagery and Islamicizing scriptin a Byzantine bowl,’ The Art Bulletin / (), pp. –; AvinoamShalem, ‘Hybride und Assemblagen in mittelalterlichen Schatzkammern:neue ästhetische Paradigmata im Hinblick auf die ‘Andersheit,’ in Le Trésorau Moyen Âge: Discours, pratiques et objets, ed. Lucas Burkart (Firenze: SismelEdizioni del Galluzzo, ), pp. –. – The sea as a generator of artifacts and as a relevant geographical entityin the production and consumption of art has rarely been an avenue ofresearch explored by art historians. Recent calls in this direction, however,can be found in: Hannah Baader, ‘Gischt: zu einer Geschichte desMeeres,’ in Das Meer, der Tausch und die Grenzen der Repräsentation, ed. HannahBaader and Gerhard Wolf (Berlin: Diaphanes Verlag, ), pp. –. Inthe same volume, see also Beate Fricke, ‘Schaumgeburten: zur Topologieder Creatio ex nihilo bei Albrecht Dürer und ihrer Vorgeschichte,’pp. – and Alessandro Nova, ‘Kirche, Nation, Individuum: dasstürmische Meer als Allegorie, Metapher und Seelenzustand,’ pp. –. – The principal literature on Italian relief icons includes André Grabar,Sculptures byzantines du Moyen Âge: (XIe–XIVe siècles), (Paris: A. et J. Picard,); Lange, Die byzantinische Reliefikone; Otto Demus, ‘Die Reliefikonen derWestfassade von San Marco,’ Jahrbuch der Österreichischen ByzantinischenGesellschaft (), pp. – and The Church of San Marco in Venice: History,Architecture, Sculpture (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Libraryand Collection, ), pp. –; Hans Belting, ‘Eine Gruppe

Konstantinopler Reliefs aus dem .Jh.,’ Pantheon, (), pp. –;Belting, Likeness and Presence, pp. –; Henry Maguire, ‘Observations onthe icons of the west façade of San Marco in Venice,’ in Vyzantines eikones:techne, technike kai technologia: diethnes symposio, Gennadeios Vivliotheke, Amerikanikeschole klasikon spoudon, – Phevrouariou , ed. Maria Vasilake (Herakleio:Panepistemiakes Ekdoseis Kretes, ), pp. –; Arne Effenberger,‘Die Reliefikonen der Theotokos und des Erzengels Michael im Museumfür Byzantinische Kunst, Berlin,’ Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen (),pp. –; Davis, Byzantine Relief Icons in Venice and along the Adriatic Coast. – Lange, Die byzantinische Reliefikone. – Demus, ‘Die Reliefikonen der Westfassade von San Marco,’ pp. –

and The Church of San Marco in Venice, pp. –; Guido Tigler, Il portalemaggiore di San Marco a Venezia : aspetti iconografici e stilistici dei rilievi duecenteschi(Venezia: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, ), p. ff. And alsoAnthony Cutler, ‘From loot to scholarship: Changing modes in the Italianresponse to Byzantine artifacts, ca. –,’ Dumbarton Oaks Papers

(), pp. –. – Effenberger, ‘Die Reliefikonen der Theotokos und des ErzengelsMichael im Museum für Byzantinische Kunst, Berlin,’ pp. –. – André Grabar, Sculptures byzantines du Moyen Âge: (XIe — XIVe siècles);Lange, Die byzantinische Reliefikone; Belting, ‘Eine Gruppe KonstantinoplerReliefs aus dem .Jh.,’ pp. –; Davis, Byzantine Relief Icons in Venice andalong the Adriatic Coast. – Maguire, Observations on the Icons of the West Façade of San Marco in Venice. – Trude Krautheimer-Hess, ‘Die figurale Plastik der Ostlombardei von–,’ Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft (), pp. –. – From the vast bibliography on Niccolò, see: David M. Robb, ‘Niccolò:A north Italian sculptor of the twelfth century,’ The Art Bulletin (),pp. –; Trude Krautheimer-Hess, ‘The Original Porta dei Mesi atFerrara and the art of Niccolò,’ The Art Bulletin (), pp. –;Evelyn Kain, ‘An analysis of the marble reliefs on the façade of S. Zeno,Verona,’ The Art Bulletin (), pp. –; the essays in Angiola MariaRomanini, ed., Nicholaus e l’arte del suo tempo; (atti del seminario tenutosi a Ferraradal al settembre ) (Ferrara: Corbo, ); Kain, The Sculpture ofNicholaus and the Development of a North Italian Romanesque Workshop (Wien:Böhlau, ); Christine Verzár Bornstein, Portals and Politics in the EarlyItalian City-State: The Sculpture of Nicholaus in Context (Parma: Università degliStudi di Parma. Istituto di Storia dell’Arte. Centro di Studi Medievali,); Andrea von Hülsen-Esch, Romanische Skulptur in Oberitalien als Reflexder kommunalen Entwicklung im . Jahrhundert: Untersuchungen zu Mailand undVerona (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, ), pp. –; Giovanna Valenzano,‘Dall’ellenismo al medioevo: alcune considerazioni a margine diNicholaus,’ in Memor fui dierum antiquorum: studi in memoria di Luigi De Biasio,ed. Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini and Attilio Mauro Caproni (Udine:Campanotto, ), pp. –; Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, ‘Le origini diNicholaus e l’immagine della riforma fra secolo XI e secolo XII nella‘Lombardia,’ in Medioevo: immagine e racconto, ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle(Milano: Electa, ), pp. –; Valenzano, ‘Uso, riuso, abuso:Nicholaus e le citazioni dagli antichi,’ in Medioevo: il tempo degli antichi, ed.Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milano: Electa, ), pp. –; Quintavalle,‘Nicholaus, la chevalerie e l’idea di crociata,’ Medioevo mediterraneo:l’Occidente, Bisanzio e l’Islam, ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milano: Electa,), pp. –. – The place and function of church thresholds is a dense andcomplicated topic. Generally, see: Francesco Gandolfo, ‘La facciatascolpita,’ in L’arte medievale nel contesto (–), pp. –; JérômeBaschet, L’Iconographie médiévale (Paris: Gallimard, ), pp. –; XavierBarral i Altet, Contre l’art roman?: Essai sur un passé réinventé (Paris: Fayard,), pp. –; Dominique Iogna-Prat, La Maison Dieu (Paris: Éditionsdu Seuil, ); Charles Altman, ‘The Medieval marquee: Church portalsculpture as publicity,’ Journal of Popular Culture (), pp. –;Jean-Claude Bonne, L’Art roman de face et de profil: Le tympan de Conques (Paris:Le Sycomore, ); Michael Camille, ‘ “Seeing and lecturing”:disputation in a twelfth-century tympanum from Reims,’ in ReadingMedieval Images: The Art Historian and the Object, ed. Elizabeth Sears and

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Thelma K. Thomas (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, ),pp. –; Christine B. Verzar, ‘Medieval passageways and performanceart: Art and ritual at the threshold, Arte medievale (, ), pp. –;Caroline Roux, ‘Essai sur la symbolique et les fonctions du portail d’égliseen France entre le XIeme et le XIIIeme siècle,’ Revue belge de philologie etd’histoire (), pp. –; Willibald Sauerländer, ‘Über dieKomposition des Weltgerichts-Tympanons in Autun,’ Zeitschrift fürKunstgeschichte (), pp. –. More recently, see Marcel Angheben,L‘Iconographie du portail de l’ancienne cathédrale de Mâcon: Une visionsynchronique du jugement individuel et du jugement dernier,’ Les Cahiers deSaint-Michel de Cuxa (), pp. –; Willibald Sauerländer,‘Romanesque sculpture in its architectural context,’ in The RomanesqueFrieze and Its Spectator, ed. Deborah Kahn (London: Harvey Miller, ),pp. –; Sauerländer, ‘Omnes perversi sic sunt in tartara mersi: Skulpturals Bildpredigt: das Weltgerichtstympanon von Sainte-Foy in Conques,’Romanesque Art: Problems and Monuments (London: Pindar Press, ),pp. –. See also the articles dealing with thresholds within the sacredspace of the church: Sharon E.J. Gerstel, ed., Thresholds of the Sacred:Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical, and Theological Perspectives on ReligiousScreens, East and West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ). – Manlio Marinelli, L’architettura romanica in Ancona (Ancona: Camera diCommercio Industria e Agricoltura, ), pp. –; Mara Bonfioli,‘Ancona, Santa Maria della Piazza: un problema ancora aperto,’ in Studi inmemoria di Patrizia Angiolini Martinelli, ed. Silvia Pasi (Bologna: Ante Quem,), pp. –. – Narratives of ‘development’ and ‘rise’ usually follow linear chronology.My attempt here is to look at artistic interaction on the Adriatic coast aspart of an event occurring in a specific geographical location rather than aspart of a long and unrelated art historical sequence. The story of thedevelopment of monumental sculpture in the Italian peninsula is narratedin these classic studies: Robb, ‘Niccolò: A north Italian sculptor of the thcentury,’ pp. –; George Crichton, Romanesque Sculpture in Italy(London: Routledge, ); Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, Da Wiligelmo a Nicolò(Parma: Studium Parmense, ). The narrative still persists in mostsurveys, as is evident in: Joachim Poeschke, Die Skulptur des Mittelalters inItalien vols. (München: Hirmer, –), On the ‘rise’ or ‘revival’ ofmonumental sculpture in general, see: Harald Keller, ‘Zur Entstehung dersakralen Vollskulptur in der ottonischen Zeit,’ in Festschrift für Hans Jantzen,ed. Kurt Bauch (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, ), pp. –; Hubert Schrade,‘Zur Frühgeschichte der mittelalterlichen Monumentalplastik,’ Westfalen.Hefte für Geschichte, Kunst und Volkskunde, (), pp. –; Ilene H.Forsyth, The Throne of Wisdom: Wood Sculptures of the Madonna in RomanesqueFrance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ). Recently, the questionhas been reevaluated in: Beate Fricke, Ecce fides: die Statue von Conques,Götzendienst und Bildkultur im Westen (München: Fink, ) and also HerbertL. Kessler, ‘Image and object: Christ’s dual nature and the crisis of earlymedieval art,’ in The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in EarlyMedieval Studies, ed. Jennifer R. Davis and Michael McCormick (Aldershot:Ashgate, ), pp. –. See also the interpretation of the ‘revival’ ofmonumental sculpture in Italy as part of the outcome of the GregorianReform in Dorothy F. Glass, The Sculpture of Reform in North Italy, ca–: History and Patronage of Romanesque Façades (Farnham: Ashgate,). – In the Byzantine tradition, icons of the post-iconoclastic period weremarked with the abbreviations of the saintly figure they represented. Thereis an ongoing debate as to why these types of abbreviations developed aftericonoclasm. See Henry Maguire, The Icons of Their Bodies: Saints and theirImages in Byzantium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ); KarenBoston, ‘The power of inscriptions and the trouble with texts,’ in Icon andWord: The Power of Images in Byzantium, ed. Antony Eastmond and Liz James(Aldershot: Ashgate, ), pp. –. Another type of inscription found onicons is votive ones and they develop in Byzantium, especially inaristocratic culture. See Titos Papamastorakis, ‘The display of accumulatedwealth in luxury icons: Gift-Giving from the Byzantine aristocracy to Godin the twelfth century,’ in Vyzantines eikones, pp. –; Anthony Cutler,

‘Uses of luxury: On the functions of consumption and symbolic capital inByzantine culture,’ in Byzance et les images, ed. André Guillou and JannicDurand (Paris: La Documentation Française, ), pp. –; Bissera V.Pentcheva, ‘Epigrams on icons,’ in Art and Text in Byzantine Culture, ed. LizJames (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. – Different inscriptions in different languages function to state thepresence of specific communities. This happens especially wherecommunities are diverse, as Linda Safran has shown in regard to southItaly: there, she claims, the inscription serves as an expression for thepresence of community as much as for rendering information in alanguage that is coherent to only part of the community. See Linda Safran,Language choice in the medieval Salento: A sociolinguistic approach toGreek and latin Inscriptions,’ in Zwischen Polis, Provinz und Peripherie: Beiträgezur byzantinischen Geschichte und Kultur, ed. Lars M. Hoffmann (Wiesbaden:Harrassowitz, ), pp. – and ‘Cultures textuelles publiques: Uneétude de cas dans le sud de l’Italie,’ Cahiers de civilisation médiévale (),pp. –. In regard to distinction as a form of cultural elites, see PierreBourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. RichardNice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ). – Armando Petrucci, Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, ), p. . – On the architectural context of the development of the tympanum,see: Richard Hamann-MacLean, ‘Les Origines des portails et façadessculptés gothiques,’ Cahiers de la civilisation médiévale Xe-XIIe siècles (),pp. –. – Evelyn Kain used this point to argue for a later dating of the Zenofigure suggesting that the sculpture was inserted last as part of aconsecration ceremony; see ‘An analysis of the marble reliefs on the façadeof S. Zeno, Verona,’ pp. –; also The Sculpture of Nicholaus and theDevelopment of a North Italian Romanesque Workshop. On the consecration ofchurches, see generally Éric Palazzo, Liturgie et société au Moyen Âge (Paris:Aubier, ), pp. –. The sculpture of Zeno is also the corner stone ofthe tympanum; ‘corner stone’ is a loaded term in Christian symbolism. Cf.most recently Eric Thunø, ‘Looking at letters: “Living writing” in S.Sabina in Rome,’ Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft (), pp. –

Peter Low, “‘You who once were far off:” Enlivening scripture in the mainportal at Vézelay,’ The Art Bulletin / (), pp. –; and the classicstudy by Gerhart B. Ladner, ‘The symbolism of the biblical corner stone inthe Medieval West,’ Medieval Studies (), pp. –. – Krautheimer-Hess, ‘Die figurale Plastik der Ostlombardei von–’; Giovanna Valenzano, La Basilica di San Zeno in Verona: problemiarchitettonici (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, ); Giovanni Lorenzoni andGiovanna Valenzano, Il Duomo di Modena e la Basilica di San Zeno (Verona:Banca Popolare di Verona, ). – On Argenta, see Sauro Gelichi, ed., Storia e archeologia di una pievemedievale: San Giorgio di Argenta (Firenze: All’Insegna del Giglio, ); MariaPia Fabbri, ‘La pieve di San Giorgio ad Argenta,’ La Pie / (),pp. –; Fabio Coden, ‘Micant hic fulgida: il portale della pieve di SanGiorgio ad Argenta,’ Felix Ravenna / (), pp. –. – On the history and topography of medieval Ferrara, see Anna Mariaand Visser Travagli, ed., Ferrara nel Medioevo: topografia storica e archeologicaurbana (Casalecchio di Reno: Grafis, ). – Francesca Bocchi, ‘Noti di storia urbanistica Ferrara nell’altomedioevo,’ Atti e memorie della Deputazione provinciale ferrarese di storia patria

(), pp. –; Bocchi, Le città emiliane nel Medioevo, in Storia dell’EmiliaRomagna, ed. Aldo Berselli (Bologna: Bologna University Press, ),pp. –. See also Sauro Gelichi, ‘Flourishing places in north-easternItaly: Towns and emporia between late antiquity and the Carolingian age,’in Post-Roman Towns, The Heirs of the Roman West, ed. Joachim Henning(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, ), vol. , pp. –. – Valenzano, La basilica di San Zeno in Verona, pp. –; see also:Lorenzoni and Valenzano, Il duomo di Modena e la basilica di San Zeno,pp. –. – See Arwed Arnulf, Versus ad picturas: Studien zur Titulusdichtung alsQuellengattung der Kunstgeschichte von der Antike bis zum Hochmittelalter (Munich:

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Deutscher Kunstverlag, ); Robert Favreau, Épigraphie médiévale(Turnhout: Brepols, ); and Cécile Treffort, Paroles inscrites: À la découvertedes sources épigraphiques latines du Moyen Âge (VIIIe–XIIIe siècle)(Rosny-sous-Bois: Bréal éditions, ). See also Herbert L. Kessler, NeitherGod nor Man: Words, Images, and the Medieval Anxiety about Art (Freiburg imBreisgau: Rombach, ). – See Bonne, L’Art roman de face et de profil; M.T. Clanchy, ‘Reading thesigns at Durham Cathedral,’ in Literacy and Society, ed. Karen Schousboeand Mogens Trolle Larsen (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, ),pp. –; Kirk Ambrose, ‘Visual poetics of the Cluny hemicycle capitalinscriptions,’ Word & Image (), pp. –; Stefano Riccioni, Ilmosaico absidale di S. Clemente a Roma: ‘exemplum’ della chiesa riformata (Spoleto:Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, ). – In my search I found no Roman precursors to the circumscribinginscription in what could be defined as a public exterior image. Bydefinition, Romanesque art saw its origins in the monumental sculpture ofthe Roman period. This is not the case with the circumscribing inscription.From the plethora of studies on the relation between Romanesque andRoman sculpture, see recently in regard to Niccolò: Giovanna Valenzano,‘Uso, riuso, abuso,’ pp. –. – Germany and Spain supply early precursors to the circumscribinginscription of the Adriatic tympana. Examples occur at Jaca, Alpirsbach,and in the stucco sculpture on the exterior of the church dedicated to St.Emmeram in Regensburg. On these precursors see: Sauerländer,‘Romanesque sculpture in its architectural context,’ pp. –; FranziskaMorgner-Fanderl, ‘Das Majestats-Tympanon der Klosterkirche inAlpirsbach,’ Zeitschrift für württembergische Landesgeschichte (),pp. –; Serafín Moralejo Âlvarez, ‘La Sculpture romane de laCathédrale de Jaca: État des questions,’ Les Cahiers de Saint-Michel de Cuxa

(), pp. –; Günter Lorenz, Das Doppelnischenportal von St. Emmeram inRegensburg: Studien zu den Anfängen des Kirchenportals im . bis . Jahrhundert(Frankfurt a. Main: Peter Lang, ); Hans-Rudolf Meier, ‘Ton, Stein undStuck: Materialaspekte in der Bilderfrage des Fruh- und Hochmittelalters,’Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft (), pp. –. – André Grabar, ‘Trônes épiscopaux du XIème et XIIème siècle enItalie méridionale,’ Wallraf Richartz Jahrbuch (), pp. –. See alsoLawrence Nees, ‘Forging monumental memories in the early twelfthcentury,’ Memory & Oblivion: Proceedings of the XXIXth International Congress ofthe History of Art held in Amsterdam, – September , ed. Wessel Reinink(Dordrecht: Kluwer, ), pp. –; and Francesco Aceto, ‘La cattedradell’abate Elia: dalla memoria alla storia,’ in Medioevo: immagine e memoria,ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milano: Electa, ), pp. –. – On San Clemente in Rome, see Francesco Gandolfo, ‘Reimpiego disculture antiche nei troni papali del XII secolo,’ Rendiconti/PontificiaAccademia Romana di Archeologia (), pp. –. – Paolo Rizzo, Cattedrale di S. Pietro di Castello (Venezia: Marconi, ),pp. –; Stefano Carboni, Venice and the Islamic World, – (NewHaven: Yale University Press, ), cat. no. ; Tarif Al Sammam,‘Arabische Inschriften auf den Krönungsgewändern des HeiligenRömischen Reiches,’ Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien

(), pp. –. – Cornelius C. Vermeule, III, ‘A Greek theme and its survivals: TheRuler’s shield (tondo image) in tomb and temple,’ Proceedings of the AmericanPhilosophical Society / ( December ), pp. –; Rudolf Winkes,Clipeata imago: Studien zu einer Römischen Bildnisform (Bonn: Habelt, );Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence, pp. –. See also: Kessler, ‘Realabsence: Early medieval art and the metamorphosis of vision,’ in SpiritualSeeing: Picturing God’s Invisibility in Medieval Art (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, ), pp. –; Rabun Taylor, The Moral Mirror ofRoman Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. – Circumscription in Christian art has a long tradition rich insymbolism. Since the Second Council of Nicaea, when God was identifiedas ‘uncircumscribable,’ every circumscribed image is by definition not aphysical image of the divine. On the complexity of this notion, see thearticles in François Boespflug and Nicolas Lossky, eds, Nicée II, –:

Douze siècles d’images religieuses; Actes du Colloque International Nicée II, tenu auCollège de France, Paris, les , , octobre (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, );Olivier Christin and Dario Gamboni, eds, Crises de l’image religieuse: De NicéeII à Vatican II = Krisen religiöser Kunst: vom . Niceanum bis zum . VatikanischenKonzil (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, );Kessler, ‘Real absence: Early medieval art and the metamorphosis ofvision’; Charles Barber, Contesting the Logic of Painting: Art and Understanding inEleventh-Century Byzantium (Leiden: Brill, ). – Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual – (Toronto:University of Toronto Press, ); Morris, ‘Individualism intwelfth-century religion: Some further reflections,’ Journal of EcclesiasticalHistory (), pp. –. – Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘Did the twelfth century discover theindividual?’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History / (), pp. –. See alsoSusan Kramer and Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘Revisiting thetwelfth-century individual: The inner self and the Christian community,’ inDas Eigene und das Ganze: Zum Individuellen im mittelalterlichen Religiosentum, ed.Gert Melville and Markus Schuerer (Münster: LIT Verlag, ),pp. –, which includes an overview of the state of research on thequestion. – Jean-Claude Schmitt, La Raison des gestes dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris:Gallimard, ); Bernard McGinn, Three Treatises on Man: A CistercianAnthropology (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, ); Jérôme Baschet,‘Âme et corps dans l’occident médiéval: Une dualité dynamique, entrepluralité et dualisme,’ Archives de sciences sociales des religions (),pp. –; Horst Bredekamp, ‘Das Mittelalter als Epoche derIndividualität,’ in Individualität: Akademievorlesungen (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag,), pp. –. – Sarah Spence, Texts and the Self in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, ), p. . – +ARTIFICEM GNURAM QUI SCVLPSERIT HECNICOLAVM + OMNES LAVDEMVS CRISTVM. DOMINUMQUE.ROGMVS + CELORVM REGNVM SIBI DONET VT IPSESVPERNVM. On the inscription, see: Albert Dietl, ‘In arte peritus: zurTopik mittelalterlicher Künstlerinschriften in Italien bis zur Zeit GiovanniPisanos,’ Römische historische Mitteilungen (), p. and Die Sprache derSignatur: die mittelalterlichen Künstlerinschriften Italiens, of vols (Berlin: DeutscherKunstverlag, ) vol. , pp. –; Valenzano, La basilica di San Zeno inVerona, p. , inv. no. IV; Calvin B. Kendall, The Allegory of the Church:Romanesque Portals and their Verse Inscriptions (Toronto: University of TorontoPress, ), pp. , –; Christine B. Verzar, ‘Text und Bild in dernorditalienischen Romanik: Skulpturen, Inschriften, Betrachter,’ in Studienzur Geschichte der europächen Skulptur im ./. Jahrhundert, ed. Herbert Beckand Kerstin Hengevoss-Dürko (Frankfurt a.M.: Henrich, ), p. . – +ARTIFICEM GNARVM QUI SCVLPSERIT HECNICOLAVM + HVC [CON]CVRRENTES LAVDENT PERSAECULA GENTES. On the inscription, see: Giovanni Uggeri, ‘Ilreimpiego dei marmi antichi nelle cattedrali padane,’ in Nicholaus e l’arte delsuo tempo, p. ; Kendall, The Allegory of the Church, pp. , ; Verzar,‘Text und Bild in der norditalienischen Romanik,’ p. ; Dietl, Die Spracheder Signatur, vol. , pp. –. – HIC DOMINVS MAGNVS; LEO CRISTVS CERNITVRAGNVS∼. – +ARTIFICEM GNAURVM QUI SCVLPSERIT HECNICOLAVM ∼ HVNC CONCVRRENTES LANDAVANT PERSECVLA GENTES∼. On the Verona Cathedral inscriptions, see:Kendall, The Allegory of the Church, pp. , –; Verzar, ‘Text und Bild inder norditalienischen Romanik,’ p. ; Favreau, Épigraphie médievale, pp.– and Dietl, Die Sprache der Signatur, vol. , pp. –. – On the iconography of St. George and its arrival to the west, see:Temily Mark-Weiner, ‘Narrative cycles of the life of St. George inByzantine art,’ PhD dissertation, New York University, , pp. –;Mario Iadanza, ‘San Giorgio nell’agiografia latina,’ in San Giorgio e ilMediterraneo: atti del II colloquio internazionale per il XVII centenario (Roma, –

Novembre ), ed. Guglielmo De’ Giovanni-Centelles (Città del Vaticano,

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), pp. –; Linda Safran, ‘The art of veneration: Saints and villagesin the Salento and the Mani,’ in Les Villages dans l’empire byzantin (IVe–XVesiècle), ed. Jacques Lefort, Cécile Morrisson, Jean-Pierre Sodini (Paris:Lethielleux, ), pp. –. The arrival of St. George to Italy istraditionally paralleled with that of St. Nicholas; see Nancy PattersonŠevcenko, ‘The Vita icon and the painter as hagiographer,’ Dumbarton OaksPapers (), pp. – and, more recently, Michele Bacci, ed., SanNicola: splendori d’arte d’Oriente e d’Occidente (Milano: Skira, ); MicheleBacci, San Nicola: il grande taumaturgo (Roma: Laterza, ). – Renato Polacco, La Cattedrale di Torcello (L; Altra Riva: ‘Canova’, )and ‘Il prebiterio della cattedrale di Torcello: trasformazioni e restauri,’Arte documento (), pp. –; Guido Tigler, ‘Cronologia e tendenzestilistiche della prima scultura veneziana,’ in Torcello: alle origini di Venezia traOccidente e Oriente (Venezia: Marsilio, ), pp. – and in the samevolume, Gerhard Wolf and Manuela De Giorgi, ‘I tempi e lo spazio delleimmagini,’ pp. –. – ISTE ROTAM SPRETEVIT QUEM MEMBRA PER OMNIAFREGIT + VITAM DONAVIT CVI MORTEM FERRE PVTAVIT. – ANNI D[OMI]NI MIL(LESIMO) [CE]NTESIMO XX SECVNDOINDICCIONE Q[VAR] TA DECIMA and SCULPT(A) AIOHA[NN(E)] MICAT H[IC] [F]ULGID(A) A MUTILIANO + PROQUO QUIUE UIDENT ROGITENT PRECE COTIDI[ANA]. On theArgenta inscription, see: Coden, ‘Micant hic fulgida,’ pp. –; Verzar,‘Text und Bild in der norditalienischen Romanik,’ p. and Dietl, DieSprache der Signatur, vol. , pp. –. – See Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford:Oxford University Press, ), pp. – and ‘The technology ofenchantment and the enchantment of technology,’ in Anthropology, Art, andAesthetics, ed. Jeremy Coote, and Anthony Shelton (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, ), pp. –; Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence,pp. –; Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans.Alan Schapiro (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, ). – Peter Cornelius Claussen, ‘Früher Künstlerstolz: mittelalterlicheSignaturen als Quelle der Kunstsoziologie,’ in Bauwerk und Bildwerk imHochmittelalter: anschauliche Beiträge zur Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte, ed. KarlClausberg (Giessen: Anabas Verlag, ), pp. –; Dietl, ‘In arte peritus,’p. ; Dietl, ‘Italienische Bildhauerinschriften: Selbstdarstellung undSchriftlichkeit mittelalterlicher Künstler,’ in Inschriften bis : Probleme undAufgaben ihrer Erforschung, ed. Helga Giersiepen (Opladen: WestdeutscherVerlag, ), pp. –. Dietl continues with the classical assertion ofwhat ‘self ’ meant in the twelfth century, and follows the study of Morrisrather than the more elaborated notions developed by Walker Bynum.Recently Albert Dietl published a four-volume opus magnum, where heenhances his argument concerning the place and function of Romanesqueartist’s inscriptions: Albert Dietl, Die Sprache der Signatur. See also recently:Anton Legner, Der Artifex: Künstler im Mittelalter und ihre Selbstdarstellung; eineillustrierte Anthologie (Köln: Greven, ). – Kendall, The Allegory of the Church, p. . – The question of the role of the signature in relation to the entireworkshop and the role of Niccolò as a workshop headmaster has also beenraised. More recent theories of workshop practice in the Middle Agessuggest the role of the headmaster to be a moderator of different styles of

the artists constituting the workshop, rather than an author-creator in themodern sense of the word. See: John White, ‘The reliefs on the façade ofthe Duomo at Orvieto,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes

(), pp. –; Kain, The Sculpture of Nicholaus and the Development of aNorth Italian Romanesque Workshop; Roberto Cassanelli ed., Cantieri medievali(Milano: Jaca Book, ); and Bruno Zanardi, Giotto e Pietro Cavallini: laquestione di Assisi e il cantiere medievale della pittura a fresco (Milano: Skira, )and ‘Giotto and the St. Francis cycle at Assisi,’ The Cambridge Companion toGiotto, ed. Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, ), pp. –. – From the vast literature, see Belting, Likeness and Presence, pp. –;the articles in: Erik Thunø and Gerhard Wolf, eds, The Miraculous Image inthe Late Middle Ages and Renaissance: Papers from a Conference Held at the Accademiadi Danimarca in Collaboration with the Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max-Planck-Institutfür Kunstgeschichte), Rome, May– June (Rome: ‘L’Erma’ diBretschneider, ); and Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Motherof God in Byzantium (University Park: The Pennsylvania State UniversityPress, ), pp. –. – See especially Lucca, il Volto Santo e la civiltà medioevale: atti, convegnointernazionale di studi, Lucca, Palazzo Pubblico – ottobre (Lucca: PaciniFazzi, ); Herbert Kurz, Der Volto Santo von Lucca: Ikonographie und Funktiondes Kruzifixus in der gegürteten Tunika im . Jahrhundert (Regensburg: Roderer,); Jean-Claude Schmitt, ‘Les Images d’une image: la figuration duVolto Santo de Lucca dans les manuscrits enluminés du Moyen Âge,’ inThe Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation: Papers from a Colloquium held atthe Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome and the Villa Spelman, Florence, , ed. HerbertL. Kessler and Gerhard Wolf (Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, ),pp. –; and the articles in Michele Camillo Ferrari and AndreasMeyer, eds, Volto santo in Europa: culto e immagini del crocifisso nel medioevo; atti delconvegno internazionale di Engelberg (– settembre ), (Lucca: InstitutoStorico lucchese, ). – The affinity between the circumscription of the sculpture and theseated bishop contributes to the pertinent concept of the possibleenlivenment of sculpture. A life-size sculpture may very well present thesame efficacy and demand the same response from a viewer as a livingperson would. See David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the Historyand Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ),pp. – and Horst Bredekamp, ‘Schlussvortrag: Bild — Akte —Geschichte,’ in Geschichts Bilder: . Deutscher Historikertag vom . bis .September in Konstanz, ed. Clemens Wischermann (Konstanz: UVKVerlagsgesellschaft, ), pp. –. – Sauerländer, ‘Romanesque sculpture in its architectural context,’ p. . – For recent studies which view the Mediterranean as an integralgeographical region of artistic production, see: Michele Bacci, ‘Greekpainters, working for Latin and non-Orthodox patrons in the late medievalMediterranean: Some preliminary remarks,’ in Crossing Cultures: Conflict,Migration and Convergence, ed. Jaynie Anderson (Carlton: The MiegunyahPress, ), pp. – and also in the same volume: Gerhard Wolf, ‘Fluidborders, hybrid objects: Mediterranean art histories –, questions ofmethod and terminology,’ pp. –. See also the articles in the volumeedited by Eva Hoffmann, Late Antique and Medieval Art of the MediterraneanWorld (Oxford: Blackwell, ).

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