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Skin is the parchment upon which identity is written; class, race, ethnicity, and gender are all legible upon the human surface. Removing skin tears away identity, and leaves a blank slate upon whichlaw, punishment, sanctity, or monstrosity can be inscribed; whether as an act of penal brutality, as a comic device, or as a sign of spiritual sacrifice, it leaves a lasting impression about the qualities and nature of humanity. Flaying often functioned as an imaginative resource for medieval and early modern artists and writers, even though it seems to have been rarely practiced in reality. From images of Saint Bartholomew holding his skin in his arms, to scenes of execution in Havelok the Dane, to laws that prescribed it as a punishment for treason, this volume explores the ideaand the reality of skin removal - flaying - in the Middle Ages. It interrogates the connection between reality and imagination in depictions of literal skin removal, rather than figurative or theoretical interpretations of flaying, and offers a multilayered view of medieval and early modern perceptions of flaying and its representations in European culture. Its two parts consider practice and representation, capturing the evolution of flaying as both an idea and a practice in the premodern world.
Larissa Tracy is Associate Professor, Longwood University.
Contributors: Frederika Bain, Peter Dent, Kelly DeVries, Valerie Gramling, Perry Neil Harrison, Jack Hartnell, Emily Leverett, Michael Livingston, Sherry C.M. Lindquist, Asa Mittman, Mary Rambaran-Olm, William Sayers, Christina Sciacca, Susan Small, Larissa Tracy, Renée Ward
ST BARTHOLOMEW is the most prominent flayed Christian martyr, perhaps best known in Michelangelo's rendition on the Last Judgement wall of the Sistine Chapel (1534–41). In this High Renaissance work, the saint holds the instrument of his martyrdom – a knife – in his right hand and his flayed skin, draped like an old coat, in his left. The figure holding his skin is, inexplicably, also wearing his skin. That is, he demonstrates his grisly martyrdom and simultaneously defies both its gore and its finality. Such a presentation of Bartholomew is common, particularly in iconic, rather than narrative, images, where the clothed saint holds his attribute and yet his skin remains intact. Two hundred years before this, the Florentine artist Pacino di Bonaguida (active c. 1303–c. 1347) created a complex composition to present this unsettling figure and his martyrdom. His strikingly different Bartholomew appears on a folio of the fragmentary Laudario of Sant’Agnese, a book of Italian hymns produced for the Compagnia di Sant’Agnese (Confraternity of St Agnes) (c. 1340, Fig. 6.1). The manuscript was disbound in the nineteenth century and only thirty-one illuminated leaves and fragments now survive, some by Pacino and others by the Master of the Dominican Effigies.
The Bartholomew folio, housed in the collection of the Cloisters Museum, New York, presents five moments within (and bursting out of) three frames. Three scenes are contained within the central frame, divided into two conjoined rectangular panels that occupy the upper half of the text block. The opening of the lauda for Bartholomew is below: ‘Appostolo beato da gesu cristo amato. Bartholomeo te laudiam diboncore’ [Blessed Apostle, loved by Jesus Christ, Bartholomew we praise you whole-heartedly]. In the left margin, which was the outer margin when this folio was bound, there are two small roundels, connected by delicate, multicoloured leafy decoration that then spills downward and unfurls into the lower margin. The beauty and elegance of the foliate work, dominated by pinks and blues and highlighted with spots and points of gold, stand in sharp contrast with the horrific acts occurring in the images it frames.
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