PUTTING ART (back) IN ITS PLACE

Fra Angelico and his workshop assistants painted small frescoes in each cell of the dormitory that wraps around three sides of the cloister.  The Last Supper in one of them covers much of the wall whose window looks out over the cloister.  

The windows painted in the wall of the Upper Room are identical to and in perfect visual continuity with the actual window in the room and with the windows across the cloister directly visible through the actual window in the cell.

Just down the stairs from Fra Angelico’s small Last Supper is another Last Supper, this one frescoed by Domenico Ghirlandaio on the end-wall of the friars’ dining hall. 

A quick look at photographs of these two Last Suppers gives the impression that they are almost identical, surely following the same template.

The Temptation and Expulsion are depicted in the top half of the pillars—Adam and Eve in and out of Eden.  (Here is the Temptation, painted by Masolino in the 1420s.)

The Temptation and Expulsion are depicted in the top half of the pillars—Adam and Eve in and out of Eden.  (Here is the Expulsion, painted by Masaccio in the 1420s.)

Directly below them, but reversing the order of in-and-out, are scenes of Peter inside prison and being let of prison.  Together, the scenes introduce the visual matter of the chapel’s decoration, and also introduce the likely visual pattern of parallelism between scenes on opposite walls throughout the chapel.

Directly below [the Temptation and Expulsion], but reversing the order of in-and-out, are scenes of Peter inside prison and being let of prison.

Given the training of that period’s eye to look back and forth, or almost instinctively to compare the endpoints of symmetrical or chiasmus patterns, we may suppose that most people in the 1420s would have quickly spotted the parallels in the two large scenes that ll the lower level of the side walls in the Brancacci Chapel.  Depicted on the left side (facing the altar) is the scene of Peter raising Theophilus’s son ...

... and on the right [side of the chapel] the contest of power between Peter and Simon Magus (the magician mentioned in Acts chapter 8 as offering to buy the spiritual power he envies in Peter) before Nero.

The parallel disposition of the sequence places Peter’s crucifixion directly opposite his enthronement. Nothing remarkably sophisticated or arcane is required of the viewer to observe the thematic inversions of Peter’s two rewards. The image of Peter crucified upside down serves as a sort of visual concentration of all the moments of upside-down-ness in the fresco.

The parallel disposition of the sequence places Peter’s crucifixion directly opposite his enthronement.  Nothing remarkably sophisticated or arcane is required of the viewer to observe the thematic inversions of Peter’s two rewards.

The scene on the top of the left wall, directly above the Raising of Theophilus’s Son, is drawn from the episode in Matthew 17 concerning the obligation of paying the temple tax, The Tribute Money [as this panel is conventionally titled by art historians].

On the left is the healing of the crippled man described in Acts 3:1-10, to whose begging for money at the door of the temple in Jerusalem Peter responds, “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.” On the right side of the panel is a depiction of Peter’s raising Tabitha from the dead in an upper room of a house in Joppa, recounted in Acts 9:36-41.

Yet precisely in this center Masaccio has placed two elegant men dressed in the highest and most expensive fashion of the time, one with a cloak and the other with a hat made from the sort of richly brocaded silk purveyed by the Brancacci. 

Two battle scenes are placed across from each another on the bottom layer on the walls. Yet through another convex/concave pairing like the one we saw in Masaccio’s Expulsion, a chaotic mass of soldiers and horses overfills the center of the left panel, ... 

... while on the right panel, the two warring factions are separated by a serene meadow through which the river recedes deeply into the distance. Highlighted against the visual background of the meadow, Constantine holds up a small white cross at whose power the enemy takes flight.

The panels directly above the battle scenes feature the two great women of the narrative: the Queen of Sheba (in the era before Christ) and Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, after the era of Christ.  The panels mirror each other in arrangement.  Each panel depicts two episodes; each episode is given half of the space, one episode in the countryside, the other in a setting defined by architectural elements. 

The panels directly above the battle scenes feature the two great women of the narrative: the Queen of Sheba (in the era before Christ) and Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, after the era of Christ.  The panels mirror each other in arrangement.  Each panel depicts two episodes; each episode is given half of the space, one episode in the countryside, the other in a setting defined by architectural elements. 

Both frescoes painted on the arched areas at the top of each wall are visually punctuated by trees. 

Both frescoes painted on the arched areas at the top of each wall are visually punctuated by trees. (The image of the great tree in the Garden of Eden has been damaged by eroding plaster, and the bright green foliage that certainly covered the tree has fallen off because the leaves were painted a secco, that is, were painted on top of the plaster after it had dried -- and hence were on the plaster rather than in the plaster.)

The initial episode is narrated at the top of the right wall: the scenes of the death of Adam and of the angel telling Seth that healing will come but not for many, many years. 

... check out whether the story follows one of those typical patterns of arrangement, namely, a big U-pattern of “reading” down one wall and up the opposite.  A quick glance at the second panel down: yes, the next stage of the story, scenes concerning King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. 

Confirm the pattern by looking at the top of the left side wall.  Yes, clearly the concluding episode of the return of the stolen cross to Jerusalem.

We begin to glance about, hunting for the next scene.  We find it: the men burying the beam at Solomon’s order, but over on the altar wall on the same level as the Solomon and Sheba scenes.

The beam itself, raised at a 45-degree angle by the laborers struggling to slide it down into the pit, points diagonally down and to our left, perhaps directing our eyes to a scene on the opposite side of the east-wall window: clearly that of the Annunciation.

Their parallel right-angle structure links the Annunciation with another annunciation, that of the angel appearing to Constantine in a dream with a cross in hand, back across to the right side of the window (an episode occurring 300 years later).

Then back to the left and up a level to the scene of the Jew who knows where the Cross is buried being drawn out of the dry well, now ready to divulge the information to the Empress Helena. 

Then straight around the corner to Helena’s finding of the Cross

Then down to the Christian emperor Heraclius defeating (two centuries later) the wicked king Chosroes, who had stolen the Cross from Jerusalem.