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5 - ‘Speculum sine macula’: The Trittico di Santa Chiara in Trieste as an Object of Clarissan Devotion
- Edited by Donal Cooper, University of Cambridge, Beth Williamson, University of Bristol
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- Book:
- Late Medieval Italian Art and its Contexts
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 20 December 2022
- Print publication:
- 29 November 2022, pp 69-88
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Summary
In 1895, the Triestine physician Antonio Lorenzutti gave a precious fourteenth-century painted triptych with foldable wings on permanent loan to his local town museum. The object had been given to him by the Benedictine nuns of San Cipriano in Trieste, as a thank-you for the free medical services he had provided for their community over the years. In 1907, Lorenzutti’s family bequeathed the triptych to the municipality of Trieste; currently displayed in the Civico Museo Sartorio, it still forms part of the city’s art collections (Plate V).
Since its transition from female monastic clausura to museum context, the triptych has played an important part in the historiography of Venetian Trecento panel painting. Its wings, especially, believed to be early works by Paolo Veneziano, have received a considerable amount of attention, and have mostly been discussed in the context of his workshop production and artistic development. Most scholars now date the wings to c. 1328–30, and very plausibly argue that they were added to the slightly older central panel, painted c. 1300–20, in a second stage of development.
In addition, iconographic studies have mainly focused on the images depicted on the wings and linked them to the early history of the Benedictine nuns of San Cipriano in Trieste, from where the triptych emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. Before moving to the premises of the church of San Cipriano in 1458, the community, then operating under the name of Santa Maria della Cella, went through a period of relative institutional fluidity. A ‘Cella dominarum Sancte Marie’, probably a semi-religious group, mentioned in the documents in 1265, was transformed into a monastic house by the Triestine bishop in 1278, and from at least 1282 belonged to the Ordo Sanctae Clarae, the female branch of the Franciscan Order as instituted by Pope Urban IV (r. 1261–64). This institutional shift – the reasons for which are unknown – caused serious differences between the community of Santa Maria della Cella and the Triestine bishop, which were only settled in the years around 1330. Maria Walcher Casotti suggested that the scenes on the triptych’s right wing, in particular the one in the middle register showing how Saint Clare and Saint Agnes present a group of young women to a bishop saint, may be connected to the community’s reconciliation with the Triestine Episcopal See.
7 - ‘Tabernacles, Howsynges and Other Things’. Three Alabasters From the Burrell Collection in Context
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- By Claire Blakey, The British Museum, London, Rachel King, The Burrell Collection, Glasgow, Michaela Zöschg, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
- Edited by Zuleika Murat
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- Book:
- English Alabaster Carvings and their Cultural Contexts
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 14 September 2019
- Print publication:
- 16 August 2019, pp 173-193
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Summary
If fame were measured in photographs, the Burrell Collection's Head of St John the Baptist in a Tabernacle would be a celebrity (Inv. 1.34; Pl. X). Few objects have been reproduced as frequently or as generously in treatments of English alabasters or of St John's severed head. It has increasingly stolen the limelight from all other known examples and all but entirely eclipsed its two Glasgow fellows (Inv. 1.33 and 1.35; Pl. XI and Pl. XII). Yet this Head of St John in a “howsynge” has been a reluctant star. Its pre-museum life remains buried in the past. Many of the same ideas have been rehearsed again and again. This chapter sets out the state of research to date and looks at Burrell's trio of tabernacles afresh with a focus both on the central panels and on their wooden cases.
SIR WILLIAM - ST JOHN
Though it has usually been stated that Sir William Burrell (1861–1958) acquired his first English alabaster in 1900/1 in Paris, he probably began acquiring them in the 1890s. In 1944, he gave twenty-nine examples to Glasgow, complemented by a further nine, in 1948, 1949, 1951, and 1955. Burrell was competing with other voracious collectors, such as Walter Leo Hildburgh (1876–1955) and Philip Nelson (1872–1953). The tendency has been to see the Burrell Collection as exactly mirroring the collection that the Burrells assembled and enjoyed in their homes. Yet a closer reading of Sir William's meticulous purchase books begun in 1911 reveals that alabasters were occasionally returned or given to others. The tabernacles discussed here were acquired at fairly regularly spaced intervals.
The first of the group to be acquired was Inv. 1.34 (Pl. X). Published in 1920 as in Burrell's collection, this never-before-seen example does not appear in Burrell's notebooks, suggesting purchase before 1911. Philip Nelson clearly states that it goes back to George Grosvenor Thomas (1856–1923), an Australian artist-cum-dealer. Grosvenor Thomas was based in Glasgow between 1885/6 and 1899. Burrell is likely to have known him through his sales of paintings of the Barbizon and Hague Schools, or through his relationship with the Glasgow Boys002E
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