Various celebrations and important anniversaries - such as the seven hundredth anniversary of Dante which falls in this 2021 which is about to end - can be an opportunity to focus on the art of the era in which people who profoundly influenced Humanism lived; Giotto and Dante for example, the first in the figurative arts, the second for his works which make him the Father of the Italian language. But did Giotto and Dante know each other? There is no certain evidence in the sources, but by analyzing the Divine Comedy and Giotto's rich iconographic repertoire we can conclude that although there is no documented evidence of a meeting between the two, the hypothesis that the fame of one did not reach the other must be discarded. For example, in the Purgatory of the Last Judgement which can be admired in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Giotto painted a poet and a painter side by side. Many believe that it is precisely Giotto himself flanked by Dante. A thesis also supported by the fact that in those years they lived respectively in Padua and Treviso. Historical sources do not report it, but Dante also included Giotto in Purgatory writing (Purg. XI, 94 – 96): You believe Cimabue in painting, to hold the field, and now Giotto has the cry, so that his fame is dark.

Revaluation of antiquity

As far as figurative art in Istria is concerned, a real “awakening” takes place in many fields, important innovations emerge in urban planning, architectural works are created, castles are built, paintings and frescoes are painted – in which the authors try to obtain the “mosaic” and “gilding” effect –, sculptors work not only with local stone, but – after centuries in which it had not been used – also with marble. In the field of arts there is also a splendid revaluation of everything that dates back to antiquity, Greek mythology, classical Roman art, but also to paleo-Byzantine art. For his part, Dante describes the monuments of Pola. At the time an important city; seat of the Istrian Franciscans, administered by the Castropola until 1331, with workers who also work outside the province, especially in places connected to the Franciscans.

Master Jacopo

It is in that period that in Capodistria, Pirano, Pola a series of churches with a Latin cross plan developed. They create a specific late medieval Istrian group. We see this example of architecture painted in the Scrovegni Chapel where even the three-light window and the portal - and not only the apse - remind us of San Francesco in Pola where Maestro Jacopo (Iacobus de Pola), Franciscan and head of the workshop in the construction of the church with the Franciscan monastery and the Town Hall, but perhaps also of the castle of Dignano, which was demolished in the nineteenth century, worked. Iacopo was certainly involved in the construction of the church of the Saint in Padua: at least twice he is mentioned in the sources as proto(magister), head of the construction of the architecture that at the time surpassed San Pietro and San Marco, in Rome and Venice respectively. He must therefore have known Giotto, since he also worked in Padua. We do not know whether he also knew Dante.

Quotes in the Divine Comedy

In the specific Istrian case it is difficult to argue that Dante visited Istria, but various reasons require us to absolutely exclude this possibility. The mentions of Pola and Quarnaro in the Divine Comedy, but also the mention in a Parentine source from the early fourteenth century of an Alighiero Fiorentino in the Palazzo Pretorio, could simply be artistic quotes, but… If we focus on the sculptures of the time it is inevitable to also look at the public and religious architecture and, consequently, to discover the pictorial works. The best way to do this is to visit the Istrian cities, at least the main ones. We will thus discover that in some works all three elements – sculpture, architecture, painting – meet. This is the case of the Baptistery of Capodistria with the thirteenth-century architecture of the rotunda, the fourteenth-century portal with coats of arms, the first relief of St. Mark from Istria in the portal (1317), but also the fresco of Christ Pantocrator identical to the one in Pomposa, which clearly reveals how the author was formed by observing the works of the great Giotto.

The splendor of mosaics

Speaking of production of the time we cannot fail to mention the Ciborium of the Euphrasian Basilica of Poreč in which sculpture, mosaic, tempera and gilding meet. In the Euphrasian Basilica we find not only the Angel in the Ciborium, but also the one in the Atrium and then a fresco from Rimini that portrays a saint who recalls Saint Helen the Empress and many other works dating back to the period between the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Other interesting frescoes in which the authors attempted to revive the splendor of mosaics in the fresco technique are those that can be seen in San Vincenzo (Maestro Ognibenus Trivisanus) or for example in San Nicola a Racotole (Rakotule). The crucifixion of San Martino a Bicicci (Bičići) also dates back to the early fourteenth century and is also dated by the podestà of Barbana whose name is reported on the fresco in Latin: Bobosius. The repertoire is therefore truly rich not only in quantity, but sculpture and architecture are the main attractions and to “touch them with your hands” you could follow different itineraries. I have chosen one that emphasizes the sculptural heritage. We will see in conclusion how important classical Roman art and Greek mythology were for the individual workshops.

The Apostle of Buie

Above the tympanum of the church of San Servolo in Buie there is the sculpture of an Apostle, almost the signature of a fluted classical column and it is part of a group of three sculptures that perhaps all belonged to a tympanum portal with three bases similar to that of the portal of San Francesco in Pola. The other two sculptures that were part of the Buie group are now in Carsette. From the same workshop in the house of the Two Saints there are also San Cassiano and one of his pupils (perhaps San Clemente) with stilus and attribution tabula. These classical works are very reminiscent of the hand of the Master of the wooden crucifixes of Montona and Gallignana, who tends to conclude the beards with spirals, but who proposes belts identical to those we find on the sculptures and with the tendency of the triangle in the drapery of the loincloth. Even the faces of the statues seem almost identical to those made by the Master. Are these works made by the same Master or in the same Workshop? To try to understand this, we will move to Pula where the mullioned windows of the Franciscan monastery almost certainly came from the same workshop in which the three-light window at the front of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua was created.

Telamon and the Nymph

I have always thought that the crown on the head of the nymph that adorns the Town Hall in Pula was a strange detail. In reality, finding out why is very simple. Just write the name of the Telamon that is on the left side (in the opposite corner) of the building correctly, using a capital “T”. Telamon, with a capital “T”, is a Greek hero who took part in the hunt of the Calydonian boar, in the expedition of the Argonauts and in the first destruction of Troy and is mentioned in the Iliad and other works. He was the son of a nymph from the mountains named Endeide. This reveals the reason for the crown that was originally adorned with precious stones: because the nymph was a queen and, again according to the myth, Telamon was also a king. But then on the Palace there are the characters who, again according to Greek mythology, founded Pula through the Roman cult of Hercules. In Roman times in Pula there was certainly also the temple of Hercules and it was called Colonnia Iulia Herculanea Pollentia Pola. The oldest gate of the city next to the consuls offers reliefs with attributes of Hercules, it is called Hercules Gate, while among the decorations that adorn the Praetorian Palace there are also numerous lion sculptures and the City Cross. Other decorative elements that were on the Palace are today preserved in the deposit of the Archaeological Museum in Pula.

Telamon was an Argonaut, and it is interesting how the cult of Hercules has survived over the centuries and was depicted so splendidly in 1296, the year in which the workshop of Iacopo da Pola built the Praetorian Palace. At the time the podestà was Bartolomeo Dei Vitrei, from Padua, portrayed as a knight in cipollino marble (the same used for the columns of the Ciborium in Parenzo). These links between the Istrian, Treviso, Venetian and especially Paduan craftsmen are interesting, where our Iacopo da Pola collaborated with Giovanni degli Eremitani in the construction of the walls (but perhaps also of the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua).

The frescoes of Visinada

The most appreciated Master of the time, as the Supreme Poet also said, was Giotto who also worked in the palaces built by Iacopo da Pola. Certainly in the church of the Saint, but perhaps also in the Scrovegni Chapel. He also painted the overturned ship of the Palazzo della Ragione (the stairs are identical to those of the Palazzo di Bartolomeo in Pola). The influence of Giotto's art in Padua crossed all of Europe. Guariento, Menabuoi, Altichiero, and many other Masters brought their innovations and Giotto's teachings also to Istria. Among them in Udine and especially in Alto Adige we find Martino da Verona, a painter who worked in Padua, Verona and also in Istria, as attested by a cited work of the Alto Adige workshop in the frescoes of San Barnaba Apostolo in Visinada which proposes elements that can easily be linked to a Master and a Alto Adige workshop whose works are found in various churches and Castel Roncolo (Bolzano). The fresco depicts the Last Judgement. It took me a while to understand it. The frescoes were in fact discovered and restored by the restorers' workshop of Artegna (Udine). They present three scenes in one with figures that particularly recall those of Dante's Inferno. The inspiration is clearly Giotto-esque (Padua phase), but perhaps even more so drawn from the baptistery of San Giovanni Batrista in Florence, well known to both Giotto and Dante. On the frieze are painted figures without halos. I would say that they are portraits of illustrious figures, perhaps Virgil, Dante's guide in Hell, and perhaps even Dante himself; some characteristic elements suggest this: the face, the nose, the hair, the laurel... All the characters are in a sort of Purgatory and have their gaze turned towards Hell: an important fresco, Dante-esque, humanistic, but now late fourteenth century. Christ the Judge is in the center (Christ in a mandorla), Paradise (Christ crowning the Madonna) is placed on the left, while Hell (Seven Deadly Sins) is placed on the right. The reference to the scheme proposed by Giotto in Padua is clear and the central scene proposes descriptive iconographic elements used several times by Dante in the Inferno.

Thus, once again we conclude a story that teaches us how the simple absence of citations in historical sources capable of attesting to the physical presence of a famous person in a certain territory should not be seen as a tragedy. The important fact is the richness of the cultural and artistic environment: this can tell of a quality that gives a satisfaction that goes far beyond our expectations.

Marine Baldini
Archaeologist and art historian
Source: The Voice of the People – 27/12/2021