Episode 35: San Gimignano: Black Death Paintings in the Collegiata

Buongiorno! I’m Dr. Rocky Ruggiero. Join me in rebuilding the Renaissance, and making art and history come to life.

Welcome to the Rebuilding the Renaissance podcast, your guide to the art and history of Italy, from the glory of Rome, to the magnificence of the Renaissance. Now here’s your host, Dr. Rocky Ruggiero.

Buongiorno, and/or buonasera to everyone. Today, we continue our discussion about the ramifications and the impact left by the Black Death, particularly as regards the art that was produced afterwards. You may remember that at the end of my last podcast, we talked about how in the middle of the 20th century, an art historian by the name of Millard Meiss actually proposed this notion that there was a distinct post-Black Death style of art. That was a direct result, obviously, of the cataclysm that was the Black Death. Others instead would say, no, that it’s just this trend that we have put together because there are a series of artists who seem to be rather on the dark side of things, rather pessimistic and emphatic of violence and darker imagery, more-so than the optimism that we saw when we were looking at Giotto.

As an example of this post-Black Death style, we’re leaving Florence and heading to a town called San Gimignano. San Gimignano. Now, my own personal pet peeve is that anyone who has toured with me, or studied with me, or studied with my online material, that it is obligatory that you learn how to pronounce that name, that name, San Gimignano.

Most time when Americans come to Italy, and they plan on visiting, they sort of say, sahn-jimmy-hmm. They just kind of mumble the rest of that name with their hands over their mouths. Gimignano, it’s spelled G-I-M-I-G-N-A-N-O. A very easy way to remember how to pronounce it, Jimmy, like the name Jimmy, the nickname Jimmy, and then nyah-no. There’s that GN like gnocchi. San Gimignano is the name of the town.

Famous today, in fact very famous, for its towers, right. San Gimignano is the town probably in Italy with the greatest number of preserved tower houses. There are 13 of the original 76 tower houses still standing in the city. When you approach San Gimignano from a distance, you really get this distinct, almost modern metropolis skyline. Often times, San Gimignano is rather exaggeratedly described as the medieval Manhattan of Tuscany. I say exaggeratedly because consider that Florence once had double the amount of towers that San Gimignano did at its peak. There were once 144 tower houses standing in the city of Florence.

San Gimignano has always been a bit of a provincial town, not a major player in medieval politics and/or economics. The town was named after the Bishop of Modena, who allegedly liberated the town from barbarians in the fourth century, and this Bishop’s name was Gimignano, and so it became known as San Gimignano. Today, San Gimignano of the Belle Torre, the beautiful towers.

Now consider that a majority of the towers in San Gimignano, like in Florence and in Siena, and just about every other major Tuscan city were constructed in the 12th and 13th centuries. Tower house essentially tells you the function. It was a fortification where families could protect themselves from a rather anarchic society, right. It was the rule of the mightiest. It was not ruled by law at this particular time, but it was also a home. It was a domestic structure where people lived, and slept, and ate and what have you.

The town of San Gimignano flourished in the middle ages. If you remember back to my podcast about the whole Guelph and Ghibelline conflict, San Gimignano vacillated between the two. It was Ghibelline at first, but then went over to a Guelph alliance in 1269, and eventually submitted to the city of Florence. In other words, San Gimignano became a satellite city of Florence in the year 1353.

Important also, you may remember our discussion about pilgrimage and religious travel. Well, San Gimignano is directly on the Via Francigena, which I described as the medieval pilgrim Route 66, right. Leading essentially pilgrims from Northern Europe, all the way down to the city of Rome, and not surprisingly, San Gimignano earning quite a bit of revenue from this particular reality, and showcasing its own very important relic, which is the remains of Santa Fina, F-I-N-A. F like Frank, Fina, who was a local Saint, and there is a chapel inside of the Duomo.

Now consider that in San Gimignano, we refer to the Duomo as the Collegiata, just so you know. The name of this podcast, The New Testament Frescoes in the Collegiata is just the local expression for Duomo, inside of which is this chapel dedicated to Santa Fina to their local saint.

In fact, I remember as an undergraduate, when I was at Holy Cross, they had a special guest lecturer come in and present. She was a PhD candidate somewhere. I don’t remember exactly where, but her research focused on Santa Fina. The one thing I remember from her lecture about Santa Fina is geography about her life was that she slept on a wooden plank from which she never moved, and that allegedly when they finally did move her body, they discovered that woodworms had eaten away the majority of the plank, and also had eaten a way into her own body. I guess that’s sort of a fast track to sainthood, if any of you are interested.

Now you can measure the importance of a city or town based on the distance between the town’s major monuments. In other words, you visit Florence and you know where the Duomo is, and you know where Palazzo Vecchio is, and there’s a bit of distance there. It’s about a quarter of a mile or so between the two. You visit Siena, and you have the Duomo perched up on the highest hill, and then you have the Palazzo Pubblico or city hall, located a ways away.

But when you visit San Gimignano, all of these monuments are concentrated into the same singular urban space, which is the Piazza del Duomo. It’s a piazza located at the peak of the hill. In fact, if you visit San Gimignano, it’s a pretty quick visit. You can pretty much walk end to end, from the Porta of St. John, the door of St. John, to the door of San Marco, going all the way through in approximately eight or nine minutes. You pretty much just walk up to the top of the hill, and then walk down. At the peak of that hill, you will find the Piazza Duomo.

The Piazza Duomo is where all of the major monuments of Siena are pretty much concentrated. There is the Duomo itself, or the Collegiata, as I call it, is an 11th century Romanesque style cathedral. Then directly next to it is the Palazzo del Popolo. Looking at the facade of the Collegiata or the Duomo, the building to your left with that big tower is the Palazzo del Popolo, which was their city hall. Then if you turn around, that building opposite, directly opposite the Duomo is the Palazzo del Podesta. If you remember from my podcast on Siena, the Podesta was the supreme judge of these medieval communes. All of those buildings pretty much built in the 13th century. Consider that if you’re in San Gimignano, you can actually buy a ticket and climb the tower of the Palazzo del Popolo, which is the highest point within the walls of the city. It gives you a pretty breathtaking view over the entire city itself.

Now the Duomo, as I mentioned, known as the Collegiata, but like most of the other cathedrals or Duomos in Tuscany, dedicated to Santa Maria del Assunta, or St. Mary of the Assumption, consecrated the Duomo in 1148 under the rule of a Pope named Eugenius III. It’s a rather eclectic mix of architectural styles because begun in the middle of the 12th century when the Romanesque was still the dominant architectural style, but construction continues into the 13th century when the Gothic had taken over. You can actually see that the cathedral was built in the traditional manner from back to front. You go from a more Romanesque crossing area, to a more Gothic style nave, and then some Renaissance architecture thrown in because the structure was enlarged in the 15th century by a very important early Renaissance architect by the name of Giuliano da Sangallo.

Now the decorations inside of the Collegiata, and that’s really what we’re here to see, and here to discuss, particularly the New Testament fresco cycle painted by an artist named or known as, maybe that’s a better way for me to describe this, as Barna da Siena. Barna, like B-A-R-N-A da Siena. Barna from Siena. The traditional date given to these frescoes is 1350, or immediately after the event known as the Black Death, 26 scenes depicting episodes from the life of Jesus Christ, from beginning to end. This isn’t Giotto who segmented or what have you. We go all the way from the Annunciation to the Resurrection as well.

The 26 scenes are divided up, like Giotto, into three horizontal tiers and six arched bays along the southern wall. In other words, when you walk into the Collegiata, you’re actually walking through the northern nave wall. So when you come through the door, it’s kind of disorienting. In fact, today they aluminate the inside of the Collegiata, but back in the day, I remember in the early 2000s, late ’90s, it was pitch black. It’s a very dark cathedral, and we’d have to put coins in the machine to actually aluminate the frescoes, otherwise it was nearly impossible to see anything at all.

The frescoes opposite, in other words, the door that you walk through is on the northern wall, you want to go directly across the nave, which is that long rectangular arm of the church, to look at the frescoes opposite you on the southern wall, which are these frescoes attributed to this artist named Barna da Siena, one of the most violent fresco cycles ever created. In fact, this Barna character, to whom we attribute the frescoes, is somewhat mysterious as well.

There’s very, very little that’s known about this artist named Barna da Siena, if we’re to believe his first biographer, in fact, he was first mentioned in the 15th century by a very famous artist named Lorenzo Ghiberti. Many of you know Ghiberti as the artist who produced the Gates of Paradise, the most famous stores on the planet, to which we’ll dedicate an entire podcast later on. We’ll Ghiberti wrote a chronicle in the middle of the 15th century, and he was the first to mention this artist named Barna, who was allegedly a contemporary of Simone Martini, and the Lorenzetti brothers that we’ve discussed.

The frescoes in the Collegiata of San Gimignano had been attributed to Barna since Vasari, so essentially since the middle of the 16th century. Vasari has a kind of gruesome tale to tell when he claims that Barna actually fell to his death from the scaffolding he was using to paint these frescoes in the year 1381. Not only are the frescoes, dark sinister and violent, but they almost seem to be cursed, if we were to believe as Vasari, and that the artist responsible for them in in fact fell to his death. Again, these frescoes used as an example of this post-Black Death theory that is this unparalleled cruelty and use of sinister personages in the art. Now was this a direct consequence of the Black Death, or was this just the sicko demented personality of the artist? That’s what we’re going to discuss right now.

Now we begin the fresco cycle in a surprising place. In other words, usually when you see fresco cycles in churches or chapels, like we did in the Scrovegni Chapel, they begin at the altar end. In other words, you’re reading left to right as we did in the Scrovegni Chapel. But for some odd reason, Barna decides to begin his fresco cycle at the facade end. We start, essentially, at the door. If you’re looking at the whole wall with the New Testament fresco cycle, you start at the far right-hand side in the upper corner, and the first scene is the Annunciation.

Now when you look at the Annunciation, you can clearly see that Barna, whoever this artist might be, was exposed and was familiar with the paintings of Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel, because the overall composition of Barna’s Annunciation is similar to that of Giotto’s, where essentially we have this house type structure, the Virgin Mary located, inside the angel to the left, but most strikingly similar to Giotto is the presence of that spinster figure on the outside of the home, who interrupts her spinning to eavesdrop on what is going on inside.

Obviously this artist, whoever it may have been, was familiar with the innovations introduced by Giotto at the beginning of the 14th century. The difference is though that A) yes we’re starting by the facade end, which is a bit odd, but 2) the figures are positioned such, in other words, the angel is seen from its right-hand side in profile.

If you remember when we were talking about Giotto, the idea is that the viewer has a tendency to move his or her eyes in the direction in which the figures in the paintings are looking. In other words, if I see figures from their right-hand side, the movement is from left to right. If I see fingers from left-hand side, the movement is from left to right. But instead here we’re starting in the upper right-hand corner of the nave wall, and the frescoes will read right to left, yet the figures appear in profile from their right-hand side. In other words, he doesn’t understand the subtlety of this use of profile to suggest movement the way Giotto did.

The scenes then continue, so you’re reading right to left now on that top tier, with the conventional and traditional subject matter, we have the Nativity, which also includes an adoration of the shepherds. The next scene is the Adoration of the Magi. The next is the Presentation at the Temple. Then something interesting happened. In fact, the pattern that you’re going to pick up here when discussing Barna is that when dealing with conventional subject matter, in other words, these narrative subjects from the life of Jesus, he’s an unexceptional painter. They’re pretty paintings, but you wouldn’t go to San Gimignano to see them because there are much prettier paintings in Florence and Siena, and in Padua.

But when does artists does excel, when he seems to step into his skin is when he’s dealing with violent and pessimistic subject matter instead. In fact, the next subject after the Presentation at the Temple should be the Flight into Egypt. Joseph has a dream in which he’s told by God to get the holy family out of dodge, that there is danger brewing. It should be the Flight into Egypt, but instead in the New Testament fresco cycle, Barna depicts the Massacre of the Innocents first. In other words, the reason Joseph is getting the holy family out of dodge is because Herod is on the rampage thinking that this new king is a threat to his own power, and so is prepared to order the slaughter of all children under the age of two. So the holy family gets out just in time.

It should be Flight into Egypt, followed by this Massacre of the Innocents. Instead, Barna switches the order. He shows the Massacre of the Innocents first, then it’s a veritable bloodbath with just a massive pile of infant cadavers in the scene, blood pouring everywhere. The reason he’s moved it out of narrative order is so that he can align the bloodbath of the Massacre of the Innocents with this massive Crucifixion painting that’s underneath it. In fact, we’ll get to the Crucifixion in just a minute.

But consider that Barna’s Crucifixion painting occupies four full square compartments. He makes it massive, as it should be, it is the epic climax of the entire story. But interestingly, what he does is to align subjects of similar subject matter, and that subject matter happens to be the bloody gory, a subject matter when dealing with, for instance, this Massacre of the Innocents scene directly above the Crucifixion itself.

Once we’ve reached that Flight into Egypt scene, which ends the first cycle, what we do is we drop down one level and we begin reading now left to right, and the first scene to the right of the Crucifixion. We’re going left to right now. Artists keeping us guessing here. This is less, I think, by intention, and more because his narrative is just not as fluid and as elegant as Giotto’s was in the Scrovegni Chapel.

But let’s go through the scenes, and just to the right-hand side of the Crucifixion we have Jesus amongst the elders in the temple, or we’ve already discussed how his parents had left him behind in Jerusalem and find him there, then the baptism of Jesus Christ. The next scene is the Calling of the First Apostles, Peter and Andrew.

The next is the Wedding Feast at Cana. Now, interesting that again, this artist exposed to the innovations of Giotto because you actually see that wine taster figure that we were lingering on for so long in Giotto’s version of the story, that jolly big bellied figure. Barna saw this figure because you see a similar thing, but he’s just not funny. It’s hardest to, again, looking at the greats of his time, but not necessarily understanding the nuances of why Giotto would put that big bellied figure in, and that was to make his audience laugh. You don’t see that there.

The next scene is the Transfiguration. You’ll notice this rather intense use of color, very different palette than we’ve seen before. Those earth tones that dominate both Sienese and Florentine painting, of being of the 14th century, have been replaced by these incredibly, almost electric colors. The reason is because of that darkness. I mentioned that the cathedral of San Gimignano is a rather dark church, and so obviously using these bright colors to make the scenes visible, one of the few scenes you can actually see with your naked eye.

The next scene is the Raising of Lazarus. Again, effective representation of the subject, but nothing to write home about. Then the next, we see a rather clever motif on the part of Barna when he shows us the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. He does a couple of interesting things, one of which is to actually have the entry into Jerusalem through two scenes. It actually occupies two scenes, Jesus on donkey back on the left, and then you see Barna borrowing that attempted animation that we talked about with Giotto, in the Scrovegni Chapel, those three figures representing essentially one person removing a robe, starting to show animation, and he does this through the actual board. In other words, the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem extends behind the border between two square spaces and all the way through. The idea, again, like Giotto in the Scrovegni who was suggesting that space continued beyond the borders of his frescoes. We have Barna essentially doing the same thing here in San Gimignano.

Then we dropped down and now we get in the climax of the story. This is also when Barna seems to excel, and again, not surprising because it’s the more violent part of the whole thing. We moved to the lower level and now we’re reading right to left. We went right to left at the top, left or right in the middle, and now on the lowest tier we’re going back right to left. The first scene is the Last Supper, nothing to write home about, but a Last Supper that’s similar to Duccio’s and the Maesta, where you have Jesus and six apostles sitting on one side, a couple of figures at the ends of the table, and then four stretched out across the front as well. He’s obviously looking at Duccio’s version, although Judas is pretty easy to spot because he’s sitting on the opposite side without a halo, and actually extending his hand with bread towards the figure of Jesus Christ.

The next scene is the Betrayal, Judas taking his 30 pieces of silver. Now this is one of my favorite paintings from the 14th century because it really does successfully embody this notion of conspiracy and of betrayal. The architectural setting, we go back to this almost doll house architecture that was typical of early 14th century painting when it wasn’t Duccio or Giotto. It’s just this cheap stage prop that he puts in the back because what we’re really focusing on is this grouping of men who are all leaning in. You get this sense that they’re up to something nefarious, that they’re up to something no good. The focus of it all is this exchange.

Judas is on the right, extending his right hand to collect the 30 pieces of silver, and his eyes are fixating on those coins, and the figure who is handing Judas those coins. You can almost hear the paint, you always hear the clinking as each coin falls individually into the hand of Judas is just money hungry as he looks at the scenes. Between them, positioned frontally, is my favorite character who has his hands raised in this conspiratorial gesture eye with his fingertips touching. It reminds me of very much if you were fans of the Simpsons cartoons series, of that Mr. Burns conspiratorial, up to no good hand gestures. Well you can almost hear the raspy breathing on the part, hah-hah, all these figures kind of lean in, and you really get this sense of evil, and of an artist who was very good at actually portraing. You just heard me talk about one scene for the better part of three or four minutes, whereas I’ve flown through all the others. The idea, again, of an artist who is at his best when dealing with evil and/or violent subject matter, and it just gets better.

We get then into Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, then to the Kiss of Judas. In Barna’s interpretation of the Kiss of Judas, it’s very different from what we were discussing with Giotto. In Barna’s interpretation, you get this literal tsunami of people swarming in from the right-hand side. In fact, it’s such a force, a palpable wave of soldiers, that they’re pushing the apostles out on the left-hand side. You see the fear in the apostles eyes as they scatter, and a couple of hands coming out, actually grabbing onto the rope of one of the apostles, trying to pull him back in.

The faces of the soldiers are just frightening. They look like you know, characters or extras in Planet of the Apes. They just look like mean figures, looking in with this evil intent, as Judas just leans in and pecks Jesus’s cheek. There isn’t that same pathos or dramatic intensity that we saw with Giotto’s interpretation, but there is violence because in the lower left of the Kiss of Judah scene, you see Peter just lunging at this figure with an 18 inch machete in his right hand, and just lopping off the ear. In fact, you always get a feeling of that this kid was lucky to get away with just his ear getting cut off because it looks like Peter was actually going for the throat. The idea again of an artist who excels and celebrates with the violent subject matter in the artwork.

After the kiss of Judas, we have Christ before Caiaphas who’s ripping his cloak. Although again, the dramatic gesture is not as successful as we’ve seen it in Giotto and Duccio, for that fact, followed by the Whipping of Christ, the flagellation where you really get a sense of the people performing this torture on Christ, enjoying their jobs. You have one winding up, it looks like he’s about to knock one out of Yankee Stadium as he pulls that whip back, and the other drawing that whip all the way behind him as well. You get this sense almost lust for the infliction of violence. Again, Barna showing this to really bring out the meaning of the violence of this particular scene.

The next scene is the Crowning of Christ, a sort of mystical, mocking, if you will. This is when essentially they were all mocking Christ who claimed to be the King of the Jews, and so they’d put the crown of thorns on his head and the bamboo sceptre in his arms. But I think the real success of the scene is the effectiveness of the gestures in communicating the sense of mockery, people on their knees with their hands folded saying, “Oh, King,” You really get this sense that they are laying into Jesus Christ, another figure pulling his beard, another about to whack him behind the head. You get the sense of pathos, of sympathy. We’re sympathetic towards Christ who’s being humiliated. Whereas other artists may simply represent the scene, even Giotto, not necessarily, I think, achieving the same level of effectiveness in rendering the mockery that was actually thrown at Jesus Christ.

Then we have the Carrying of the Cross, and so Jesus carrying his own cross as he does in Florentine art. Although an interesting mixture here, almost hybrid scene because you have Simon of Cyrene who assists Jesus. He has one hand on Jesus’ back, and the other up on the cross in this almost orthopedic position as he assists Jesus in the carrying. Jesus being led like livestock. He has a rope wrapped around his neck, which is not something you see very often in these representations. Then perhaps most startlingly in the scene, the Virgin Mary to the right-hand side, and a soldier rather menacingly putting a sword directly into her face. This is the BVM that we’re talking about here, and a soldier sticking the point of a sword directly into her face.

Now, whether or not it happened [inaudible 00:26:34], but the reverence that was shown to the Virgin Mary would have prevented any other artist to show such a raw gesture of violence towards someone as important as the Virgin Mary. But obviously, this particular artist is one who prefers the violence over the reverence that they may have shown. Just something exceptional in the light of conventional hierarchy at that time.

Now the grand finale, which is the Crucifixion scene, which I mentioned earlier occupies four full square compartments. It is one of the most violent that you’ll ever see. When you look at the figures, Christ crucified in the company of the good and bad thieves as the tradition maintains. We’ve already talked about how the good thief is considered good because he recognized Jesus as the Messiah, and asked to be remembered in Heaven. The bad thief was bad because he said to Christ what I probably would have said to Christ had I been up there on the cross with him, and that is, “Do some of that magic stuff you do and get all three of us off these crosses.”

The traditional way of showing these three is that the good thief is usually peaceful and tranquil on his cross because he is at peace with himself spiritually. Whereas the bad thief is usually riving around in agony because he’s tormented by his own obsession with saving himself. But in reality, we’re looking at an artist here in Barna who has looked quite closely at the reality of crucifixion and what it means to be crucified. Now, we’ve discussed this in past podcasts, but I’ll bring it up for those of you joining us today. That is that when you die crucifixion, you die of asphyxiation. In fact, if you look at the image of Jesus in this Crucifixion scene, you’ll see Longinus driving that spear up through his side as the Gospels describe, and the blood and water coming from the wound.

The water essential in getting a physiological description of what crucifixion is, because if you can’t breathe, your lungs filled with water. When that soldier drove the lance up into the side, saw water come from the wound, he knew that Jesus’ lungs were already filled, that Jesus Christ was dead, which is why they did not do to Jesus what they did to the other two.

If you look at the good thief’s legs, particularly at the height of the shins, you’ll see two gaping wounds. The Gospels maintaining that in order to expedite death, the soldiers would break the legs of the crucifixion victims. If you look at those two welts, the idea is that good thief’s legs have been broken, he is already dead. The reason he’s peaceful is not because he was at peace with himself, the reason he’s peaceful is because he’s dead.

The bad thief instead, if you look at him riving around, you see a wound on one of his shins, but the other without any. In fact, just to the left of him, you’ll see this dark, ominous Planet of the Apes looking figure with a mason in his hand who’s about to come through and shatter the other shin. In other words, the reason he’s riving around is not because he’s tormented with his own egotism, it’s because he’s having his legs broken as we speak.

There’ is sort of nauseating feelings, it starts to bubble up, even from me, and I have a pretty high threshold for gross things. But when I see this kind of imagery, it’s just unprecedented in terms of its graphic detailing in the rendering of the Crucifixion. Not to mention the swollen fingertips and toes of all three of the crucifixion victims, including Jesus Christ. In other words, if someone drives nails through your hands and feet, presumably there will be some swelling occurring in the fingers and toes of the figures. That’s exactly what we see.

An artist, again who was pretty blase, who is pretty run of the mill and mediocre when rendering traditional New Testament subject matter. But when getting into these more gory and violent scenes, suddenly we have a rock star. Again, we’ve discussed, for instance, if you look at the Virgin Mary down below that she’s normally shown swooning and losing consciousness at these crucifixion scenes. But here, we have a TKO’d Virgin Mary. She’s down and she is out in the scene.

All this craziness that you see, the violence, the movement, the fainted Virgin Mary that’s lined up, again, if you look directly above, there’s that Massacre of the innocents, and that pile of bleeding babies. It’s just gore that is unparalleled in the 14th century. Is this the result of the Black Death or is this because we have a Quentin Tarantino type artist from the 14th century who’s depicting? Well, it might be a bit of both because the interesting thing is that the violence in this church is not just limited to this particular site.

If you go across the nave to the Old Testament paintings, which are signed and dated, and that’s a rare thing in the 14th century, by an artist named Bartolo di Fredi, 1367. Right around the same time. And if you look at a couple of scenes, particularly the job as in old Testament figure job scenes, there is a level of violence that’s almost more shocking than it is on the other side. One particular when the livestock of job is stolen, and you see people being hacked to bits with knives, and spears and what have you. Or when job’s properties crumbled and fell to the ground, you look at this pile of people who are being crushed by the debris from up above, and one of them has a 2×4 literally sticking into the back of his head, another has been cleanly decapitated as well.

Is it Barna as this example of post-Black Death style of painting, or is the art in San Gimignano just collectively violent? In fact, we want to throw one more into the mix. As you’re walking out of the church, at the facade end you’ll see this figure of Jesus Christ above the large rose window, and Christ is sitting in judgment. Heaven is to your left-hand side, Jesus’ right-hand side, on the nave wall, and Hell is on the other. This last judgment was painted by Bartolo di Fredi’s son, whose name was Taddeo di Bartolo in the early 15th century.

As the expression goes, “Like father, like son,” because if you look at the Hell imagery on the right-hand side, you will see perhaps the most graphic and disturbingly violent rendering of Hell in the history of art figures being sodomized by the tales of demons, demons defecating gold coins into the mouth of sinners, just sexual imagery, violent imagery as well. You’re starting to get the sense that maybe it’s something in the water in San Gimignano that’s compelling all of these artists to create such violent scenes. So that Barna might not just be a product of the Black Death, he might be the singular figure, but painting in a town where violence really seems to be the most important aspect of the art that they’re creating.

Again, obviously, if you’re a younger audience, this is something I think you appreciate very much, and I love taking my students into the Collegiata, because I think they’re surprised to see such an unprecedented violent series of frescoes in the scenes. Again, may be something connected to the Black Death, or maybe just a particular movement in this town.

Stay tuned, in my next podcast, we’ll continue with this notion of post-Black Death art, but we’ll be going back to Florence and to the Spanish chapel inside of Santa Maria Novella, which is also often celebrated as an example of this post-Black death style. Stay tuned for more.

For more information on lectures and programs in the United States, art history tours in Italy, and for online video lectures, visit rockyruggiero.com.