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The Child in the Picture: a Medieval Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Andrew Martindale
Andrew Martindale*
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
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Extract

THE subject of this paper is the child in art about the year 1300. Some years ago, while studying the Tuscan painter Simone Martini (active c. 1310-44), I noticed that he painted what seemed to be an unusually large number of scenes involving children; and I was curious to know whether this was as special or as interesting as at first appeared. As my knowledge increased, the subject broadened to involve the more general issue of change. Around 1300, images of children become more lively, more human, and more probable. Simone’s painting forms a part of that change; and the question was ‘What happened and why?’ Other scholars have commented on this general problem; but although it is possible to criticize their approaches, the issue of ‘change’ remains. Moreover, although the analysis and explanation of change are exercises common to all historians, the special problem of the visual arts is the integration of the world recorded by texts and documents with that recorded by the visual sources. The connections are often obscure; and, in order to clarify the issues, this paper will begin with some description.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 31: The Church and Childhood , 1994 , pp. 198 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1994

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References

1 The study appeared as Simone Martini (Oxford, 1988). Throughout this paper, frequent recourse is had to it - not because it contains all the answers, but because it is a source both of illustrations and of further bibliographical references.

2 In particular, Ariès, P., L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris, 1960)Google Scholar. For further discussion, see below pp. 205-6.

3 For information on this altar, including the relevant miracle texts, see Martindale, Simone Martini, pp. 211–14. The main additional writing consists of the two contributions of M. Seidel: ‘Questioni iconographichè’, in A. Bagnoli and L. Bellosi, eds, Simone Martini e ‘chompagni’ (Florence, 1985), part of the catalogue entry for this altar-piece which was exhibit no. 7; see pp. 68–72. This contribution is particularly concerned with the representation of Agostino. See also ‘Condizionamento iconografico e scelta semantica. Simone Martini e la tavola del Beato Agostino Novello’, in L. Bellosi, ed., Simone Martini, atti del convegno (Florence, 1988), pp. 75-80. This contribution is more concerned with the interpretation of the miracles and the civic context of the altar-piece.

4 The Grande dizionario della lingua italiana gives guastella as a specie di focaccia. The child’s head must have seemed round and soft because the sister-in-law reshaped it ‘like wax’.

5 See here the paper given by Joan Greatrex, above, pp. 169-81, in which she alludes to the change from the custom of giving children as oblates. This change occurred during the twelfth century and is relevant to the discussion of the type of education on offer by the late thirteenth century at Norwich Cathedral Priory.

6 For other examples of children being offered to the saint, see Margaret of Cortona: Bevegnati, Fra, Leggenda della vita e dei miracoli di Santa Margarita da Cortona (Vicenza, 1978), pp. 341–6 Google Scholar; Agnes of Bohemia: Nemec, J., Agnese di Boemia (Padua, 1987)Google Scholar; Louis of France: Fay, P. B., Les miracles de Saint Louis de Guillaume de Saint-Pathus (Paris, 1931), p. 20 Google Scholar. This occasion was rather more complicated since an initial vow both of a visit to the tomb of St Louis and of the girl victim to the saint (‘je vos veu ma fille et la vous doins et vour promet que des or en avant ele n’aura autre mire que vous’) was followed by further visits during which the malady gradually abated.

The custom seems to have developed post-1250, and is not to be confused with the earlier custom of giving small children as oblates. Among the miracles of St Francis there is what appears to be an intermediate stage where an eight-year-old boy, miraculously spared from beneath a mound of collapsed masonry, entered the order at the age of fourteen (Legenda Maior. Miracula III. 5).

7 The issue is given more detailed attention in the paper offered at the conference by Diana Webb, ‘Friends of the family: some miracles for children by Italian friars’, pp. 183-95, above.

8 It was only attributed to Simone Martini in the early nineteenth century. See Martindale, Simone Martini.

9 M. Seidel, ‘Condizionamento’.

10 The panel is reproduced in a paper by H. van Os, ‘Due divagazioni intorno alla pala di Simone Martini per il Beato Agostino Novello’, in Bellosi, Simone Martini, pp. 81-6. It should be said that the author emphasizes the special characteristics of the tripartite design of the Simone altar-piece which make it different from those seen in the predella panel. He suggests connections with goldsmiths’ work and the design of reliquaries.

11 Martindale, Simone Martini, p. 212. For a more complete biography, see Biblioteca Sanctorum (Rome, 1961-9).

12 Or so the seventeenth-century Visitors were told. Agostino was shown being ‘invested’ with a chasuble (planetam).

13 M. Seidel, ‘Condizionamento’, passim.

14 And others-see Van Os, ‘Due divagazioni’; and Seidel, ‘Condizionamento’.

15 Seidel, ‘Condizionamento’, p. 79.

16 As noted by Seidel, in Simone Martini e ‘chompagni, ‘ (Florence, 1985), p. 72.Google Scholar

17 Jordan of Saxony said, ‘Fuit hospitalitatis auctor’, persuading a rich Sienese, Dominus Restaurus, to become head of the hospital and to commit his wealth to it. Agostino obtained privileges for the hospital from Rome. He gave the brothers an ordo and a modus of life; and he decreed how the Master should be dressed. See Acta SS, 19 May, p. 618.

18 Two of the four lost scenes related to the manner in which he came to join the Order. Traditions relating to a saint’s choice of a particular order or institution were displayed in other instances, since it could be the matter for curious enquiry. A celebrated case would have been the tomb of Ogier the Dane at the monastic church of St Pharamond at Meaux (destroyed at the French Revolution). For an account of Ogier’s choice of St Pharamond, see Plessis, Dom Toussaints du, Histoire de l’église de Meaux (Paris, 1731), pp. 73–7 Google Scholar. For an illustration of the monument, see Sauerlander, W., Gothic Sculpture in France 1140-1270 (London, 1970), p. 396 Google Scholar. The more recent story of St Nicolas of Tolentino may also be cited (see below, p. 212).

19 On this see the recent work of M. Butzek in Riedl, P. A. and Seidel, M., eds, Die Kirchen von Siena (Munich, 1985), pp. 210–12 Google Scholar. The Tolomei ‘interest’ dates from the very early fourteenth century—in fact to a will of 1307; and the Tolomei claimed a family burial place in front of the altar. The process by which the remains of Agostino came to rest on their altar is not known; nor is it known what liturgical arrangements were in position in the fourteenth century (this only becomes clear in 1413 when the family agreed to pay an annual rent in return for a daily Mass).

20 The well-known Maestà in the sala di Dante, painted by Lippo Memmi 1317-18, was commissioned by Nello di Mino Tolomei, podestà and capitano del popolo. See Martindale, Simone Martini, p. 17, for comment and bibliography.

21 In the paper presented by Diana Webb, see pp. 183-95.

22 By Binski, Paul, ‘What was the Westminster Retable?’, Journal of the British Arthaeological Association, 140 (1987), pp. 152–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 According to Mark 5.42, the girl was 12 years old. There are a few miracles in which a ‘son’ (filius) is cured but the age is not specified. See for instance John 6.46-54. The son of the widow of Nain is described as adolescens (Luke 7.14).

24 Aries speculated that the high infant mortality rates made it initially unbearable to become emotionally bound up in the early stages of childhood. One of the main catalysts for change was the increasing development of educational programmes and theories.

25 In this respect, the outstanding contribution is Shahar’s, Shulamith Childhood in the Middle Ages (London, 1990)Google Scholar. During the conference her paper underlined the richness of the medieval material: see pp. 243-60 below.

26 It is very difficult to distil Aries’ view of the precise chronology of these changes. In this paper the focus is on the period around 1300; but Aries’ examples tend to sweep across the centuries.

27 See any edition of the Legenda Maior of St Bonaventure.

28 Grosjean, P., Henrici VI Anglae Regis Miracula Postuma (Brussels, 1935)Google Scholar.

29 Jessop, A. and James, M. R., The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich by Thomas of Monmouth (Cambridge, 1896).Google Scholar

30 The textual position is mildly complicated and unexpected since, for even such a small number of miracles, there are two independent fourteenth-century sources. The altar-piece draws one miracle from each source and supplies two miracles for which there is no text. See Martindale, Simone Martini, p. 212.

31 This is rather different from the placing of a whole craft, profession or association under the protection of a particular saint—St Luke for painters, St Eligius for goldsmiths, Our Lady of Loreto for airline pilots, St Francis for the Planning, Environmental and Ecological Institute for Quality Life, etc.

32 Grosjean, Henrici VI, pp. 159-60.

33 On this, see ‘Processus canonizationis et legendae variae Sancti Ludovici OFM episcopi tolosani’. Analecta Franciscana, 7 (1951). This contains an account of the miracles of the saint apparently drawn from the records kept (presumably by the sacristan) at the shrine (see p. xlviii). Of the 211 miracles, the large majority refer to physical ailments. But two (no. 167, p. 318, and no. 204, p. 329) refer to fishing difficulties. One of the problems was the shame brought on by lack of success. In the second of these two cases, the fisherman vowed that he would offer at the shrine unum thonum de cera. After making this promise, he threw his net into the sea ‘et in uno ictu extraxit novem thonos, stupentibus et admirantibus qui astabant’. Within the same area of activity, St Louis’ recovery of a stolen fishing boat may also be noted (no. 181, p. 322).

34 P. B. Fay, Les Miracles de Saint Louis, pp. 140-2. Aelis l’Aveniere was the widow of Enoul, one of St Louis’ esquires; and her late husband had acquired some of St Louis’ hats (decorated with peacock’s feathers) at some point when the king had renewed all his hats. It should be said that the church authorities severely forbade Aelis to use the hat in this way when she first suggested it. She nevertheless went ahead privately with the experiment, aided and abetted by a servant. The result was a success—and a miracle which was duly placed in the ‘official’ records of William of St-Pathus. I am much indebted to Christopher Hohler for first drawing my attention to this splendid story.

35 For an astonishing tally of sick children, see the miracles of fifteenth-century S. Giacomo della Marca in G. Caselli, Studi su S. Giacomo della Marca pubblicati in occasione del II centenario della sua canonizzasione (Ascoli Piceno, 1926).

36 Martindale, Simone Martini, pp. 193–4.

37 Ibid., p. 176.

38 Jessop and James, William of Norwich, pp. 189-91. See also G. Caselli, Studi su S. Giacomo della Marca. The eighty-ninth miracle concerns a boy aged six who vomited up ‘vermem rubeum et magnum praeter solitum’. Exactly what got inside these people is not clear. Poisonous snakes seem most unlikely; large tapeworms or something similar are more likely.

39 See especially Vauchez, A., La Sainteté en occident au derniers siècles du moyen âge (Rome, 1981)Google Scholar, and Ward, B., Miracles and the Medieval Mind (Aldershot, 1987).Google Scholar

40 For a recent account of this development see particularly van Os, H., Sienese altarpieces 1215-1450, vol. 1 (Groningen 1984).Google Scholar

41 They are illustrated passim in Garrison, E. B., Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: an illustrated index (Florence, 1949).Google Scholar

42 The cycle has been described and analysed by J. Gardner in ‘The cappelone di S. Nicola at Tolentino: some functions of a fourteenth-century fresco cycle’, in W. Tronzo, ed., Italian Church Decoration of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, I (Bologna, 1989), pp. 101–17.

43 The painting is in the Uffizi, Florence. See Marcucci, L., Gallerie Nazionali di Firenze. I dipinti toscani del secolo XIV (Rome, 1965), pp. 161—3 Google Scholar. For the text of the miracle, see the Legenda Aurea of Jacopo da Voragine, ed. T. Graesse (Dresden and Leipzig, 1846), p. 28.

44 The number of child stories in the Old Testament and Apocrypha is small. Moreover the age of some of the ‘children’ is not always clear—e.g., the young Isaac, David, or Tobias. Certifiable children are uncommon and where they emerge (e.g. to taunt the prophet Elisha) they are seldom the subject for illustration.

45 The Latin text of the Meditationes was printed under St Bonaventure’s name in Sancti Bonaventuri … opusculorum Tomus Primus at Lyons in 1647. I have used F. le Bannier, Méditations sur la vie de N—S Jésus-Christ (Arras, 1873), whose text is based on the Lyons edition. In the present context, see Ch. XIII, ‘De reditu domini ex Aegypto’ (p. 43): ‘Exinde autem usque ad duodecimum aetatis annum pueri Jesu, aliquid non legitur de ipso.’ Also Ch. XV, ‘Quid dominus fecit a duodecimo anno usque ad tricesimo’ (p. 47): ‘Nec in scripturis reperitur quod in toto iste tempore aliquid fecerit.’

46 They occur occasionally in the course of manuscript decoration. See, in particular, BL, Egerton MS 2781 where some of the infancy ‘events’ occur (very unusually) as parts of the main cycle of pictures (c. 1340).

47 Some of the gospels are printed in M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, 1924). A useful summary of these extraordinary stories is to be found in Rappoport, A. S., Medieval Legends of Christ (London, 1934)Google Scholar. See particularly Ch. VI, ‘The early childhood of Christ’, pp. 107-41.

48 Some of the visual evidence is to be found in A. Horton, The Child Jesus (London, 1975). One of his illustrations is indeed a piece of church decoration. It shows the incident in which the boy Jesus makes a dove of clay which turns into a real bird and flies away. The context is the twelfth-century ceiling of the church of St Martin, Zillis (Graubünden, Switzerland); and the remoteness of the church merely underlines the unusualness of the scene.

49 The stories are mainly derived from the so-called Proto-Evangelium of St James which is to be found in James, Apocryphal New Testament, pp. 38-49. They are to be found passim in the Legenda Aurea; but for a recent view of the legendary material available in the Middle Ages, see W. Scase, ‘St Anne and the education of the Virgin: literary and artistic traditions and their implications’ in Rogers, N., ed., England in the fourteenth century = Harlaxton Medieval Series, 3 (Stamford, 1993), pp. 81–96.Google Scholar

50 Martindale, Simone Martini, pp. 204-9.

51 Cf.Gold, P. S., The Lady and the Virgin (Chicago and London, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 See London, BL, MS Royal C VII, fol. 6r.

53 Oxford, All Souls College, MS Lat. 6, fol. 4v.

54 For the whole development of the devotion to Mary during this period, with particular reference to England, the reader is referred to two very substantial papers by N. Morgan: ‘Texts and images of Marian devotion in thirteenth-century England’, in M. Ormrod, England in the Thirteenth century = Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 1, pp. 69-103; and ‘Texts and images of Marian devotion in fourteenth-century England’, in Rogers, England in the fourteenth century, pp. 34-57.

55 H. van Os, Simiolus, V (1972), pp. 5-19, ‘The Madonna and the mystery play’ discusses the subject with further references.

56 See St Bonaventure, Legenda Maior, Cap. X. 7.

57 For the development in England, see Morgan, ‘Marian devotion’, passim.

58 See n. 45 above.

59 Le Bannier, Méditations, p. 31-2 (Ch. X, ‘De morae dominae apud praesepe’). The devotional texts available in England complement this development—see especially Morgan, ‘Marian devotions’, passim.

60 Ibid., p. 43, Ch. XIII, ‘De reditu domini ex Aegypto’.

61 Toesca, P., Il battistero di Parma (Milan, 1960)Google Scholar, plate XXI.

62 Martindale, Simone Martini, plates 119 and 120, pp. 171–3.

63 L. Marcucci, Gallerie Nazionali di Firenze, pp. 56-62 and plate 310. The scene is attributed to Taddeo Gaddi and formed part of the decoration of a relic cupboard formerly in S. Croce, Florence. It was probably painted c. 1330. In a scene of the Road to Golgotha painted probably a little earlier in the church of S. Maria Donnaregina in Naples, children throw stones at Christ.

64 Two very unusual Byzantine images may be noted at this point, both in the church of the Chora, Constantinople, and therefore datable c. 1320. See P. A. Underwood, The Kariye Djami (New York, 1966), 1, pp. 68-72 and 2, plates 104 and 114 for respectively the scenes of the first steps of the Virgin and of Joachim and Anna caressing the Virgin. The first of these illustrates an episode in the Proto-Evangelium of St James (see note 49). The second, dubbed by the author a Byzantine innovation of the thirteenth century, remains unexplained.

65 Doncoeur, P. and Pulignano, F., Le livre de la bien-heureuse Angele de Foligno (Toulouse, 1925), pp. 131–2.Google Scholar

66 Steinberg, L., The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion (London, 1983).Google Scholar

67 This event, apart from being the first of the Sorrows of the Virgin, was also held to be the first occasion on which Christ shed blood for mankind. It was normal to stress or to assume the child’s meekness. However, there is at least one representation in which the Christ-child struggles—see the scene which forms part of the huge Embriachi altar-piece given c. 1400 by the Duc de Berry to the nunnery of Poissy (it is now in the Louvre).

68 Contrary to Steinberg’s view, Sexuality of Christ, p. 146, the ‘token covering of the Child’s nudity by transparent garments or veils’ is not a motif common ‘throughout the Trecento’ though it seems to appear more frequently towards the end of the century. A totally nude Christ-child appears frequently in late fourteenth-century Bohemian painting and sculpture.

69 The pieces of a polyptych of c. 1340 by Lippo di Benvieni survive in which the figure of the Christ-child (see here plate 12) is swathed in a diaphanous piece of drapery (see R. Fremantle, Florentine Gothic Painters (London, 1975), plate 54, where the altar-piece is reconstituted). This polyptych is not large; and its original context is unknown.

70 Le Bannier, Méditations, p. 4, Proemium.

71 White, J., The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space, 2nd edn (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Hills, P., The Light of Early Italian Painting (New Haven, 1987).Google Scholar

72 In large-scale decoration, the most famous of these are probably Giotto’s fictive ‘chapels’ in the Arena Chapel at Padua (c. 1305); and Pietro Lorenzetti’s fictive bench in the Lower Church at Assisi (c. 1315-20). Both the upper and the lower churches at Assisi are, of course, full of illusionistic tricks which the painters have played with the ‘real’ architecture. The later (1340s) secular decorations in the papal palace at Avignon may also be noted.

73 Extensive comment on the identification and symbolism of the thirteenth-century foliage carving in France and Germany is to be found in L. Behling, Die Pflanzenwelt der mittelalterlkhen Kathedralen (Cologne and Graz, 1964). The author is, however, as interested in the parallel developments both in scholastic philosophy and in natural science (especially botanical taxonomy and description); and she quotes at length from the writings of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas.

74 See the essay by Schöller, W., ‘Le dessin d’architecture à l’époque gothique’ in Recht, R., ed., Les battisseurs des cathédrales gothiques (Strasbourg, 1989), pp. 227–35.Google Scholar

75 Writing about the botanical sculpture carved on the thirteenth-century capitals of Southwell Minster in The Leaves of Southwell (London and New York, 1945), N. Pevsner argued eloquently and elegantly for the presence of a ‘spirit of the age’ to which these common manifestations might be imputed (see especially pp. 63-5). This is good Hegelian doctrine and, despite the restrictions of his context (the King Penguin Books were not intended to contain more than short essays), Pevsner went on to explore a little how this concept might be perceived to operate in the thirteenth century. It makes interesting reading, demonstrating both the strengths and the weaknesses of the deductive approach to history.

76 Martindale, Simone Martini, pp. 51 and 190-1.

77 Such a pair of paintings is to be found in the right transept of the lower church of Assisi (perhaps c. 1310). A rustic version of the same pair is to be seen among the wall-paintings of St George, Rhäzüns (eastern Switzerland) from c. 1360.

78 Further comment will be found in A. Martindale, ‘Innovazioni di Simone Martini: i problemi di interpretazione’ in Bellosi, ed., Simone Martini, atti de convegno, pp. 233-6. One of the most influential meditations on this whole episode was the treatise De Iesu Puero duodenni, long believed to be by St Bernard but in fact by Aelred of Rievaulx. See Hoste, A. and Talbot, C. H., Aelredi Rievallensis Opera Omnia (Turnholt, 1971), pp. 245–78 Google Scholar. Aelred’s expostulation on the reunion reads ‘Tene, o dulcissima Domina, tene quem diligis, rue in collum eius, amplectere, osculare, et triduanam absentiam eius multiplicatis deliciis recompensa.’ Thus Aelred conjures up a picture of Mary falling on Christ’s neck and giving him a passionate hug. This does not resemble very much the Liverpool painting and merely emphasizes its singularity.

79 Pointed out to me by Christopher Hohler.