The Art Bulletin

Classical artists often portrayed events in a narrative out of sequential order. From an examination of well-known classical pictorial narratives, I have found two patterns of organization: hierarchical and spatial time. In the former, figures and events are arranged according to their importance and role in the narrative. In the latter, the placement of figures and events is determined by the physical location in which the event occurred, because time in classical antiquity was mistakenly thought to be movement through space and not duration. Hence, to show that time has elapsed, the setting or location of a scene must change.

Of the many surviving Romanesque cartularies, very few are illuminated. After reviewing general considerations of the oral, textual, and visual elements at play in these works, this paper then focuses on the Vierzon Cartulary, particularly on the processes of its charters' transcription to codex. Specifically, this paper argues the performative role of the scribe and illuminator, who, by their transformation of the mise-en-page, appropriation of papal notarial authority, and translation of sealing practice, participated in a new diplomatic ceremony of conveyance. This paper advances a reconsideration of text-image relations to account for ritual performance, both actual and symbolic.

Matthew Paris’s itinerary maps preface his Chronica majora and have been understood as illustrations for that history. I scrutinize the dynamic designs of one of these maps and argue for its appreciation as a meditational aid in imagined pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Cooperative, interactive strategies in the map encourage the monk to participate in its movements to the Holy City as a fulfillment of his desire to access that sacred site’s theological meanings. I describe contexts by which its St. Albans audience learned and understood practices whose manipulations of time and place were similar to the map’s dynamic presentation of geography.

Although sixteenth-century print images of witchcraft from Germany are well known, this large Italian engraving, associated stylistically with Michelangelo, is a relatively obscure oddity. It is argued here that the print was made to quell unrest over the execution of ten people for "Il Corso" (the Course or Procession), that is, gathering at night for devil worship, in Mirandola. Particular as its circumstances seem to have been, the engraving provides evidence of the problematics of the imagination, the viewer’s as much as the artist's, in a world in which fantasia tipped easily from legitimate to illegitimate realms.

Trinity Church, Boston, is often described as a building of "firsts," giving the country its first "Richardson Romanesque" masterpiece and first example of comprehensive mural painting. This essay seeks to show that Trinity might as justifiably be viewed as culminating a decades-long tradition of American Protestant patronage of Romanesque churches containing large-scale mural cycles. These churches and their frescoes were inspired by the revival of Romanesque architecture and mural painting then occurring in Munich. Newly discovered documents affirm Trinity Church’s connection to the earlier churches and highlight the formative role played by its minister-client, Phillips Brooks.