Artibus et Historiae no. 83 (XLII)
2021, ISSN 0391-9064Up
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MARILYN ARONBERG LAVIN - Giotto – Piero della Francesca – Cavallini: Conceptual Connections (pp. 9–26)
Seven set patterns of arrangement guided almost half of ecclesiastical narrative cycles carried out during the Italian Middle Ages and Renaissance. I thought that Giotto had broken new ground in the Arena Chapel when he combined two different patterns in one building. Upon discovering he had used three patterns, that is the Wraparound, the Up-Down Down-Up, and the Double Parallel, my estimation of his place in history went up another notch. I further realized that his inclusion of poems at the foot of each of the Virtues and Vices in the same chapel occurred within less than five years of Cavallini’s equally astonishing combination of image and poetry in his Santa Maria in Trastevere mosaics. Giotto having been in Rome in the interim, I argue, this fact could not have been casual.