One - The Santi Quattro Coronati Frescoes in Context

Summary

At their completion, at some time between 1244 and 1254, Cardinal Conti’s fresco decorations extended across every available wall in Santi Quattro Coronati’s great hall, from the floor level to the tops of the ribbed vaults, and even across the jambs of the doors and windows (Figure 1.1). At present, less than half of the original wall paintings remain intact. Preserved are portions of the south bay vault and the upper halves of all six walls; however, the paintings that covered the north bay vault and the lower halves of the walls are lost. In light of such lacunae, it is remarkable that the paintings which do remain offer a relatively clear sense of the mural program’s thematic focus as a whole. A quick scan of the preserved frescoes reveals a unified system of knowledge organized into distinct subunits. In the south bay, the months of the year and the personified seasons represent knowledge of time, the stars and planets painted on the vault represent cosmological knowledge, and images of the liberal arts in the lunettes represent knowledge of the ancients as preserved and disseminated through institutionalized education (Figures 1.2–1.4). In the north bay, the cycle of virtues and vices represents moral, historical, and theological knowledge, while the images of Roman antiquities represent the city’s material heritage and the idea of Rome as a site of Christian triumph over paganism (Figures 1.5–1.7). This program of images constitutes a “pictorial encyclopedia” in the sense that its combined treatment of temporal, cosmological, historical, moral, and educational themes approximates the diversity of subject matter and organizational logic found in textual encyclopedias of the medieval period. While comparable iconographic programs were executed in sculpture for the façades of French cathedrals in the twelfth century, Conti’s great hall is one of the earliest fresco programs to feature encyclopedic knowledge.