L'Epifania

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Si avvicina l'Epifania ed ecco come Wikipedia la definisce:

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L'Epifania è una festa cristiana celebrata il 6 gennaio (cioè dodici giorni dopo il Natale), che ricorda la visita dei re Magi a Gesù bambino. [...] Nella Chiesa cattolica è una delle massime solennità celebrate, assieme alla Pasqua, il Natale, la Pentecoste e l'Ascensione, ed è quindi istituita come festa di precetto (giorno in cui «i fedeli sono tenuti all'obbligo di partecipare alla Messa; si astengano inoltre, da quei lavori e da quegli affari che impediscono di rendere culto a Dio e turbano la letizia propria del giorno del Signore o il dovuto riposo della mente e del corpo.»

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Quindi, spegnete il computer e andate a messa! In tema di re Magi, ecco, in alto, la bella copertina a collage di The Economist di questo mese che raffigura, oltre ad un Tony Blair santificato, alla Statua della Libertà, a un tacchino, cavallo e maialino, anche L'adorazione dei Magi di Gentile da Fabriano. La rivista dedica ai re Magi anche un articolo molto interessante di Ann Wroe che potete leggere qui o in basso, preceduto da un'intervista audio, sempre di The Economist, all'autrice dell'artcolo: 

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The rule of three: What those magical, royal wanderers through the desert really signify

Of all the actors in the Nativity story, the three wise men are by far the most fun. To a scene that would otherwise verge on the gloomy – a hazardous birth, a stroppy landlord, a derelict stable, uncouth shepherds – they add glitter and mystery. Small wonder that most primary-school thespians, offered the choice between the saintly principals and the glamorous visitors, plump for the velvet robes, the gold-foil headgear and the tissue-boxes stuck with jewels.

T.S. Eliot, filled with the anomie of his age, did his best to drab the wise men down:

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp...
...the night fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.

It didn’t work, however. These surprising visitors to the stable always look splendid, and remarkably fresh for the journey. Longfellow’s kings are perhaps best of all:

Their robes were of crimson silk with rows
Of bells and pomegranates and furbelows,
Their turbans like blossoming almond-trees.

Glum or extravagant, were these figures magi (specifically Persian scholars from the Zoroastrian tradition, tasked with keeping the holy fire of Ormuzd and skilled in astronomy, medicine, magic and astrology), or kings from Tarsus, Saba, Sheba and points east, as Psalm 72 had predicted? Matthew, the only Gospel source, used the Greek word magoi, which signified wise men in general, and had them announce that they had seen the star at its rising. This tilts the balance towards astronomers, which was what the early church imagined them to be.

If these travellers were magi, the most circumstantial source – the Book of Seth, attributed to St John Chrysostom in the fourth century – said there were 12 of them, and that they had been watching for a star on the mythical mountain of Vauls, vaguely in Persia, for generation after generation, ever since Adam in old age had taken refuge there. With him he already had the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, actually pinched from Eden. It was because the gifts were three (symbolising respectively king, God and mortal, since resinous myrrh was used to anoint the body after death) that the travellers, too, were reduced to a trio of seekers cleverly navigating their way across the desert. This version finds favour with modern researchers, who have spilt much ink unravelling the parallels between Zoroastrianism and Christianity (basically, Good and Evil Principles) and pinning down the exact spot in “the east” the magi came from, most probably the border between Iran and Afghanistan, possibly India, via the Silk Road. It is still impossible to know, though, exactly what sort of scholars they were; and much easier to dismiss them, as Rowan Williams did when Archbishop of Canterbury, as simply mythical, together with the ox and the ass.

It is just as hard to say which heavenly phenomenon the wise men were meant to have seen. It was possibly a supernova; possibly a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation Pisces in 7BC; and possibly a comet, since the star’s beams were often said to stream and wave like a bird flying. In the Hellenic-Roman world comets presaged deaths or disasters, not births. Nonetheless the magi had been instructed, according to the Book of Seth, that one particular bright star would announce the coming of a child; and Matthew’s magoi knew it was a king’s star. One modern writer on magi, Martin Gilbert, spins the theory that the wise men themselves represent three stars in conjunction, this time Saturn, Jupiter and Mercury, and that they have swum into Matthew, chapter 2, for purely astrological reasons.

The magi edition of the story did not, however, get much traction in the Middle Ages. Nor has it done on Christmas cards since. A sixth-century mosaic at Ravenna (see picture above) is almost the last time they appear as scholars, looking suitably impecunious, and in the tight trousers and floppy Phrygian caps worn by Persians. “People think they were magi,” wrote John of Hildesheim, whose “Historia Trium Regum” of the mid-14th century was taken then as the last word on the matter, “because the star was so bright, and they did the journey so fast [in 13 days from the Nativity, to arrive on January 6th, the feast of the Epiphany]. But this is a mistake.” The reason they travelled so swiftly, he added, was partly divine assistance and partly because they were on dromedaries, “which can really go”.

In truth, the magi theory languished for simple reasons. Medieval folk knew what kings were; magi they were unsure of, except that they were pagan, followed the teachings of Balaam, and dealt in demons. It was not good to introduce devilry into the Christmas scene, even if the Christ-child could defeat it with one wave of his tiny hand. Magi were linked to Persia, of which well-read Europeans perhaps knew a bit; oriental kings opened up a much more fantastical geography, stretching mistily via several different Indias to the shores of the Great Ocean, where mapmakers scattered rivers and mountains more or less as they liked, with an occasional camel or dragon and sultans, wearing turbans, forlornly perched in tents. The farther east you went, in this continent where all exotic place-names blended together, the more venomous and strange the beasts got, the thicker the trees and the vaster the deserts. That men should venture from such places, at the end of the earth, to find the Christ-child, was much more interesting than a short hop from the Middle East. And it was more interesting (as moderns also tend to think) if the wise men were not too wise but, like kings, often floundering and beset.

For so it seemed they were. To begin with, said John of Hildesheim, they were not magnificent figures of men but small, feeble and scrawny. Yes, he admitted, that was surprising; but so men became as you went farther east. (Conversely, the sheep got bigger, with enormous tails.) The kings also set out singly, since they ruled over lands that were far apart, and came together only when they reached Jerusalem.

Conveniently, a lamp-like star guided each of them; but had it not hung before their noses as close as a fish on a line (for kings, not being astronomers, could not read the sky and needed leading), they would never have made it. An Armenian source said they were also led by an angel; in the late 19th century, Edward Burne-Jones put the star in a walking angel’s hands. As the kings arrived in Jerusalem the star or stars disappeared, and a thick fog descended. Their first words in Matthew, “Where is the child that is born King of the Jews?” came out of mist, confusion and panic. They were taken in, too, by King Herod, who invited them to dine: traditionally on a roasted cock which, in honour of the true king in the stable, rose up and crowed. Herod co-opted them to spy on the child and report back, and they were happy to oblige. Luckily, an angel intervened and warned them not to. They were then told to return “by another way”; starless this time, with no God-assisted steering, they took two laborious years over it, seeking directions from everyone en route. (“And so you see”, wrote John of Hildesheim smugly, “the difference between divine and human operations”.)

Small wonder, perhaps, that though the kings became patron saints of trouble-on-the-road from the 12th century they were not all that popular, because they were not that lucky. Their feast-day, July 23rd, seems to have been usurped in modern calendars by St Apollinaris, who cures gout and the French pox. It was St Christopher who actually kept travellers safe, and it is his image that still swings beside the rear-view-mirror rosaries and fluffy dice; whereas the kings come into play when the tyre is already flat, the speed cop already spotted, or the fine-notice glued to the windscreen by several days of rain.

Myrrh on your clothes

Their names and kingdoms were fairly obscure. For the sake of a good story, though, they had to have both. So they were called Melchior, Balthazar and Gaspar (or Caspar), names that never really caught on, except in northern Europe in the high Middle Ages and in posher parts of west London in the late 20th century (“Melchior, give me that phone at once”). They were kings, respectively, of Arabia and Nubia, Godolia, and Tarsus, and hence their gifts: for gold lay so thick in Arabia’s red earth that you kicked it up as you walked, incense dripped from the trees of Godolia, and you could not wander in parts of Tarsus without myrrh, “moist as wax”, clinging to your clothes.

In fact, being kings, they brought a good deal more. Magi might well have only one small, portable gift each; but Matthew’s wise men had treasure chests. In the Spanish-speaking world, by long tradition, they are the Father Christmas figures, the bringers of unlimited money and sweets. In fact, said John of Hildesheim, the kings carried with them all the ornaments that Alexander the Great had left behind in Asia, and all the wealth that had been liberated from Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. The high-crowned travellers of modern Christmas cards plod across the dunes unburdened and unescorted; but medieval people knew that when kings travelled, ever on the move between their palaces as sport, work or blocked drains dictated, they took their chattels, treasure, beds, dogs and all their servants with them. Some painters hinted at this enormous retinue, hustling and holding back horses at the edges of the scene; some donors had themselves put in it, as grooms or falcon-trainers. There were so many hangers-on, said John of Hildesheim, that they could not get lodgings in Jerusalem and had to camp outside, looking like a besieging army.

Flustered as the kings were, the great treasure seemed to get forgotten (except for a small golden apple that was once Alexander’s, offered by Melchior, which immediately fell to ash because it symbolised, unhappily, Eve’s apple in Eden). Some cartoons have pointed out that these gifts were hardly suitable for a baby, or even for his mother (“Three wise men, and no one brought chocolate?” Mary fumes in one). In the 13th-century “Book of Marco Polo” the Christ-child gave them a present in return: a box which, eagerly opened on the way home, was found to contain a stone. Disgusted, the kings threw it down a well, whereupon it burst into flames; they somehow fished it out, took it home and worshipped it. The nature of the gifts, though, was less important than the fact that the kings represented the whole Gentile world coming to pay homage. Traditionally one of them, usually Balthazar, was swarthy, darkening over the centuries until Hieronymous Bosch makes him black as coal, his skin contrasted with robes of gleaming white damask. By then he was assumed to be a king of Ethiopia; the darker he got, the farther south he drifted. He was usually calm, silent and in the background, as if no painter of the medieval or early modern age could imagine a negro who was not a servant. The kings were also all the ages of man, respectively 20, 40 and 60. The oldest, with long snowy hair and beard, struggling to kneel to give his present first, was usually taken to be Melchior; Gaspar was the young blade, rosy-cheeked and beardless and, just occasionally, oriental.

Together, then, the kings added up to Everyman; and as such they became a triune symbol of human striving, hope and folly. Over the featureless desert, over the centuries, they have taken on the characters of politicians, bankers, sunglass-sporting sheikhs, officers of OPEC and rock stars. They have carried election pledges, Turkish delight, overdue library books and barrels of oil. At times of austerity the gifts have become aluminium, potpourri and baby oil. The light they see in the sky, big as the sun, has become a digital stock-price display (for gold, frankincense and myrrh), the neon sign of the Ramada Bethlehem (five stars) and, of course, a UFO. And they have got lost, continually; despite the star, they often get their maps out, scratching at their crowned heads and longing, now, for satnav. The angel’s warning to return by a different way was interpreted early on, by some commentators, as a version of the saying of Heraclitus that you could never step into the same river twice in the endless flux of life.

To sea in a bowl

It is therefore easy to see the kings as an example – perhaps the prototype – of the three hapless travellers, who crop up everywhere once you start to look:

Three wise men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl;
If the bowl had been stronger,
My tale had been longer.

This is Gotham in Nottinghamshire, not New York; but it could be either. Wynken, Blynken and Nod sail out in a wooden shoe, evidently unseaworthy, to catch the herring-fish stars and to fall asleep. The three jovial Welshmen go off hunting on St David’s day, they know not for what:


An’ one said, “Mind yo’r e’en, an’ keep yo’r noses reet i’ th’ wind,
An’ then, by scent or seet, we’ll leet o’ summat to our mind.”

Jerome K. Jerome’s three men in a boat row off down the Thames in the 1880s because they are feeling seedy, and in need of a change—only to find that none of them can steer, or navigate a lock, or simply open a tin of pineapple, without great ado and even physical injury.

There was also, in the Middle Ages, another wandering-kings story in which the three monarchs, out hunting frivolously, came upon their own bodies in three graves, respectively just-dead, decayed and reduced to bones. A favourite imago mortis was to show the kings, splendidly clad and with hawks still on their wrists, holding their noses as they gazed in horror. The original three kings, it could be argued, contemplated their own deaths in the offering of myrrh; and also confronted them, as all humans do, by setting out at all. For all beginnings are a type of birth, all lives are journeys part mapped, part unknown, and all journeys end, at least in the world of the here and now.

Brothers, stooges, wise guys

The kings were so neatly arranged, by races and ages, that some chroniclers maintained they were brothers, not strangers. The possibility was emphasised by putting them all in the same bed, straight as pins and with their crowns on, as they appear in stone reliefs at Autun, in Burgundy, and in the Louvre.

Certainly, whatever they had been before, they were forged in comradeship afterwards. Having journeyed back together, they preached Christ together, were baptised together (by St Thomas the Apostle, somewhere in India, where he found them all living in virtuous decrepitude), were buried together, and were gathered up afterwards by St Helena, mother of Constantine, to end as a cosy fraternity of bones in a magnificent gold reliquary that still stands behind the high altar in the great cathedral at Cologne. Before they died they had built a wood and stone chapel on the mountain of Vauls, the summit topped with a golden star that turned in the wind.

That scene of the kings in bed, however, suggests an even richer legacy. For, no matter how close, there are three distinct characters here. At Autun, while they sleep, the angel shows them, or tries to show them, the star. With one finger he touches the hand of Balthazar, who has woken up but is looking the wrong way. Melchior, the dotard, is sound off. Between them – the natural place to confine a spry young troublemaker—Gaspar has opened one eye suspiciously. Here we have the beginnings of the chemistry, and comedy, of three: of first, next, last; wise, wiser, wisest; old, middle-aged, young; good, better, best. In a stained-glass window at Canterbury Melchior is pleading, Balthazar expostulating and young Gaspar, gazing at the star, just sensibly trying to establish where they are.

This is the classic rule of three. One man, often the oldest or ostensibly the wisest, declares or does something, setting up the joke or establishing the pattern; the second queries, challenges or contradicts him, while also taking the theme on; and the third, typically the youngest (littlest, poorest, last), disrupts the pattern and trumps them all. The first two may also gang up on the third, making him seem all the more hapless and all the more the outsider, until, like Harpo Marx deliriously playing through the gibes of Groucho and Chico, the third takes sweet, mad revenge. The ruse crops up in the Three Stooges, in all jokes involving an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman, and almost every fairy tale of three sons or daughters ever written. In those it is always the third who wins love, finds the treasure or saves the day, while the siblings trail home disappointed.

In jokes among the three, or in jokes set up in three, whoever says the third line blows a metaphorical raspberry and gallops away:

How do you make a Venetian blind?
I don’t know; how do you make a Venetian blind?
Stick him in the eye with a hat-pin.

Bathos is most neatly done in lists of three, and the kings have a little list capable of infinite permutations: gold, frankincense, digestive biscuits; gold, diamonds and the deed to a condo in Florida. It is largely because they can be used this way – and are wandering haplessly, and on lurching camels, to boot – that the kings have enjoyed such long popularity, lasting seamlessly into a secular age. No one has fun with the shepherds, although in medieval mystery plays their rough humour was often endearing. They were not characters; and, most important, they were not indubitably three.

For those who feel deprived of the mystical significance of the kings, however, there is a more profound dimension to the rule of three to ponder. For three encompasses everything: past, present, future; here, there, everywhere; earth, sea and air; positive, negative, neutral; this, that and the other. Through these trinities the kings, who might be any Tom, Dick or Harry, wander in search of answers (yes, no, maybe) to mysteries even older than that of Father, Son and Holy Ghost: the birth of light, the dawn of life and the primacy of love.

Dec 20th 2014; The Economist

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Nell'articolo sui re Magi, Ann Wroe menziona Ravenna e ne approfittiamo per fare una piccola digressione per "visitare" la bellissima città di Ravenna che è poco conosciuta all'estero, ma che vale davvero la pena visitare. Ecco quindi una bella introduzione alla città tratta dal programma della SBS, Global Village, andato in onda nel 2011, e presentato dall'inimitabile Silvio Rivier:  

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Tornando alla copertina di The Economist, vogliamo soffermarci sulla tavola dipinta da Gentile da Fabriano, L'adorazione dei Magi, nota anche come la Pala Strozzi ("pala" in inglese significa "shovel" ma può significare anche "alterpiece", e Strozzi è il cognome del committente che si chiamava, guarda caso, Palla - doppia "l" – Strozzi). La pala è famosissima: la si vede riprodotta nei biglietti di auguri di Natale, su francobolli, su oggetti di cartoleria; è una delle grandi attrazioni della galleria degli Uffizi, dove è esposta; ed è uno dei grandi capolavori dello stile gotico internazionale "italiano". Ma che cos'è lo stile gotico internazionale? Ecco due brani – il primo tratto da Storia dell'Arte Italiana, di Bertelli, Briganti, e Giuliano; il secondo, da Art: The Whole Story, di Stephen Farthing – che ce lo spiegano (abbiamo messo in risalto le parti del testo che si riferiscono ai temi che verranno sviluppati in seguito):

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Il dominio del gotico internazionale in tutta Europa 

Lo stile artistico che dominò in Europa nel periodo che va approssimativamente dal 1380 al 1430 (ma in alcune regioni italiane si protrarrà anche oltre) fu quello che convenzionalmente, viene definito gotico internazionale. Cerchiamo di individuare le caratteristiche storiche e artistiche di questo movimento. 

Il carattere peculiare del gotico internazionale era proprio il suo internazionalismo, quasi che le tradizioni locali fossero state improvvisamente interrotte per essere sostituite da una moda univoca e imperiosa che dilagò rapidamente, e uniformemente, in tutte le principali corti europee: nelle isole britanniche, nella Francia, nella Spagna, nella Boemia e nell'Italia. Una conferma di questo dato è la difficoltà che la critica incontra nella definizione del luogo d'origine di alcune opere legate a questo stile, cosa impensabile per altri periodi della storia dell'arte, nei quali la forza delle tradizioni locali non lascia dubbio sul loro luogo di provenienza. 

Siamo dunque di fronte a un fatto abbastanza straordinario, ad un fenomeno di portata europea segnato da un linguaggio nettamente alternativo rispetto a ciò che avveniva a Firenze a partire dall'ultimo Trecento e che anzi lasciò isolati i fatti toscani ponendosi, in un primo tempo, come opzione vincente. Altra caratteristica fu il suo policentrismo: non è infatti possibile risalire ad un unico focolaio di diffusione, poiché in queste vicende giocarono un ruolo paritetico più centri, quali Siena e A vignone, Milano e Parigi, Bologna,'praga e Digione, Verona e Vienna. 

I principali centri innovatori non erano più Firenze (che con Giotto aveva determinato la grande svolta nella storia della pittura occidentale) o Siena, ma si localizzavano nell'Italia settentrionale, ad Avignone, Parigi, Praga. Il ruolo innovatore passava così all'Italia del nord e all'Europa continentale che erano ora legate da una fitta trama di rapporti e influenze reciproche dovute ai viaggi di artisti, allo scambio delle opere tra i signori, alle relazioni dinastiche fittamente intrecciate per vincoli di parentela. 

La ragione dell'omogeneità del gotico internazionale va ricercata nella situazione storica che caratterizza l'Europa in questo periodo. 

L'unità europea, alla fine del Trecento, era soprattutto un'unità di crisi che investiva tutte le strutture politiche, culturali e sociali sulle quali si era retto il mondo medievale: la Chiesa era lacerata dallo scisma; il Sacro Romano Impero, che con l'imperatore Carlo IV e suo figlio Venceslao IV aveva la capitale a Praga, era ormai ridotto a un puro simbolo sopranazionale; l'istituto della cavalleria era in piena decadenza; il lusso delle corti feudali celava la profonda crisi economica legata sia alle croniche guerre tra stati sia all'evoluzione della rendita fondiaria. 

All'interno di questa situazione si sviluppò, come per contrasto, una produzione artistica il cui dato unificante era costituito, al di là delle caratteristiche formali, dalla preferenza per i temi legati alla vita e ai riti della corte, per i materiali pregiati (grande sviluppo ebbero le oreficerie e gli arazzi), per gli oggetti di piccole dimensioni, quali i dittici dipinti o scolpiti a uso di devozione privata. Il gotico internazionale fu prima di tutto un'arte di corte, che aveva l'aristocrazia come committente e destinatario. Ma in questo clima culturale furono coinvolti anche gli strati superiori di ceti borghesi: gli uomini di legge, i grandi mercanti, i banchieri. In uno sforzo di omogeneizzazione culturale e sociale con l'aristocrazia, i borghesi facevano affrescare le loro dimore e i palazzi municipali con soggetti cavallereschi e in particolare con quelli del ciclo di re Artù. 

La preferenza accordata a opere d'arte di piccole dimensioni, e quindi, per loro natura, di ampia diffusione, fu un dato che determinò l'unitarietà di questa produzione, all'interno della quale giocò un ruolo fondamentale il nuovo e straordinario interesse verso la miniatura che diventò oggetto prediletto di un collezionismo quasi fanatico. Non a caso una sola generazione vede nascere i più grandi nomi della miniatura di tutti i tempi: Jaquemart de Hesdin e i fratelli di Limbourg che lavorano per il duca di Berry, figlio di Giovanni il Buono e fratello del re di Francia Carlo V -, il Maestro delle Ore di Rohan - il più drammatico e appassionatamente espressivo miniatore degli ateliers parigini di primo Quattrocento -, Michelino da Besozzo - attivo a Milano almeno fino al 1450 e definito pictorem supremum - e ancora i miniatori, anonimi ma di altissimo livello, che negli stessi anni operarono alla corte di Praga. 

Come la miniatura anche l'arazzo diventò oggetto di collezionismo e di circolazione di cultura poiché, data la sua natura di arredo "mobile" poteva seguire la corte nelle sue migrazioni da un castello all'altro arrivando a sostituire spesso la pittura ad affresco o a divenirne il modello.

Un mondo cavalleresco e raffinato 

La produzione gotica internazionale predilesse la scelta di soggetti rivolti alla rappresentazione di un mondo idillico, raffinatissimo, quasi che il committente, e con lui l'artista, volesse sottolineare, attraverso la scelta di questi temi, la propria appartenenza a una classe privilegiata. Così i santi e le sante diventarono principi e principesse, le scene religiose pretesti per rappresentazioni profane di cortei cavallereschi (quali spesso vediamo nella scena dell'adorazione dei Magi) o di tornei (sui quali è spesso esemplata la scena di San Giorgio che libera la principessa dal drago). Le immagini belle, aristocratiche, raffinate paiono voler esorcizzare le difficoltà della vita del tempo segnata da guerre, roghi, pestilenze e fame. 

Le caratteristiche formali del gotico internazionale denotano sempre una spiccata predilezione per la linea sinuosa e guizzante. Essa si manifesta soprattutto negli strabilianti panneggi che non coprono mai il corpo, inteso come forma volumetrica, ma lo avvolgono, muovendosi in maniera autonoma, senza alcun rapporto con le membra, quasi alla ricerca di una voluta irrealtà che si ritrova anche nella fantasiosa moda di quel periodo: scarpe dalle lunghissime punte, copricapi bizzarri, maniche che toccano terra. È una moda che veste una ristrettissima classe sociale, egemone del potere e della ricchezza e che viene trasferita, quasi in un doppio di sé, sui personaggi sacri. Ma accanto a queste immagini di eleganza estrema il gotico internazionale amava raffigurare anche il mondo dei poveri, dei contadini, degli uomini selvaggi: si vedano ad esempio i barcaioli e i pastori nel codice delle Ore di Rohan o in quello delle Très riches heures del duca di Berry. Era quasi una riscoperta della vita semplice dopo l'estrema formalizzazione di quella del nobile e del ricco, ma aveva anche una funzione di confronto tra due classi, ben distinte e incomunicabili tra loro: quella dell'escluso, del perdente delle grandi rivolte contadine e popolari che, nella seconda metà del Trecento, erano scoppiate in tutta l'Europa, e quella della corte che viveva in un'atmosfera di cerimoniale ostentazione. 

Questa sorta di duplicità nei confronti dei soggetti si manifesta anche nel sistema di raffigurazione spaziale; accanto ad un interesse per la rappresentazione tridimensionale che sopravvive a stento e che evidenzia come il modo giottesco di rappresentare non venga più inteso come la sola norma valida, si possono trovare anche soluzioni alternative, persino all'interno dello stesso dipinto in modo che, vicino a sfondi e paesaggi assolutamente appiattiti, senza traccia di tridimensionalità - particolarmente presenti in arazzi, miniature e affreschi - possano coesistere altri elementi, quali edifici, costruiti come concreti volumi. Ne è un esempio chiaro la serie dei Mesi, miniati prima del 1416 dai fratelli di Limbourg per Les très riches heures del duca di Berry, in cui la rappresentazione dei castelli è generalmente esemplata su opere esistenti e dove è possibile vedere ancora l'eco della maniera di Ambrogio Lorenzetti nel paesaggio in primo piano in cui sono presenti le ombre portate. 

Accanto alla scoperta del paesaggio vi fu quella della natura, particolarmente evidente in quella sorta di enciclopedie medico-dietetiche a uso familiare che vanno sotto il nome di Tacuina sanitatis e che ebbero la loro massima diffusione in Lombardia negli ultimi decenni del XIV secolo. Qui le piante erano rappresentate nel loro ambiente naturale e, attraverso l'illustrazione miniata, era spiegato il modo di coltivarle e l'uso medico al quale erano destinate. Questi manoscritti conobbero una diffusione straordinaria e contribuirono a divulgare i modelli di rappresentazione lombarda in Europa, soprattutto presso le corti perché l'alta aristocrazia amava questo genere di rappresentazioni a un punto tale da giocare un ruolo importante nello sviluppo naturalisti co della pittura e della scultura tardo-gotica. 

Accanto all'interesse per il paesaggio e la natura emerse prepotente. anche quello per il ritratto, che aveva già una tradizione precedente rivolta soprattutto alla glorificazione dell'istituto dinastico; a questo proposito particolarmente notevole fu la produzione di Pisanello. 

Le origini e gli sviluppi del gotico internazionale 

Le radici culturali sulle quali crebbe lo stile del gotico internazionale vanno ricercate all'indietro, fin dentro la metà del Trecento, e, in particolare, nella produzione di alcuni centri. Tra questi spiccano: Avignone, dove nel 1344 morì Simone Martini, l'artista la cui maniera ebbe un peso determinante per la nascita di questo stile, e dove era ancora operoso il viterbese Matteo Giovannetti, uno fra i suoi primissimi protagonisti; Bologna, che in un ambiente fervido di studi e di circolazione di artisti, sulla metà del secolo vide attivo il grande Vitale; Firenze, dove lavorava il lombardo Giovanni da Milano; Treviso, città in cui, nel 1352, Tommaso da Modena lasciò una serie di straordinari ritratti nella sala capitolare della chiesa di San Nicola (e l'influenza di Tommaso sarà determinante per la pittura boema di quegli anni). 

Sembra che lo stile internazionale guardi quasi con nostalgia al passato, al periodo pregiottesco, al gotico. Ma la generazione di artisti attiva a partire circa dal 1380 elaborò una maniera del tutto nuova che in nessun caso può essere definita gotica. 

Il periodo in cui si sviluppò lo stile internazionale fu lo stesso in cui a Firenze sorgeva quello rinascimentale di Brunelleschi, Masaccio e Donatello. Tuttavia i due movimenti furono del tutto indipendenti e per molti versi antagonisti: il Rinascimento costituiva una rottura col gotico internazionale e si rifaceva piuttosto alla lezione giottesca. Nella prima metà del Quattrocento lo stile rinascimentale restò sostanzialmente minoritario e la produzione artistica italiana continuò a orientarsi prevalentemente sullo stile internazionale. Solo nella seconda metà del secolo si ebbe il consolidamento e la diffusione delle scelte· rinascimentali e lo stile internazionale conobbe in Italia un irreversibile declino. 

Sarà invece la pittura fiamminga, con Robert Campin e i fratelli Van Eyck, a riprendere alcune ricerche portate avanti dal gotico internazionale e a non interrompere, come accadde invece con le nuove scelte fiorentine, i legami con questo stile.

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International Gothic emerged as a style of art in Europe at the end of the 14th century. It was characterized by strong narrative and courtly elegance, coupled with exact naturalistic detail, decorative refinement, surface realism and rich decorative colouring. The style was neglected by historians until the end of the 19th century, when Louis Courajod, a professor at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris, first pointed out its international character – international because of the similarity between stylistic trends and techniques that appeared in geographically distant European centres. Artists from France, Italy, Austria, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) and England developed an artistic style that intensified elements of the Gothic during its last flourish, and that became a prelude to the Early Renaissance. 

The development of the International Gothic movement was influenced by the same factors that provoked a European crisis in the political, social and cultural spheres at this time. The decline of the Holy Roman Empire signalled the end of its unifying role in the Christian culture of the West, and the schism in the church prior to the death of Emperor Charles IV (1316-78), coupled with the removal of the papal court to Avignon, further undermined the absolute authority of the Church. This religious crisis paved the way for a refiguring of religious themes in art, with an increased emphasis on elements of fantasy and personal piety. The movement of the papal throne to the West, along with the establishment of Charles IV's throne in Prague, helped to develop a dialogue among artists travelling between Europe's various cultural centres. 

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Religious figures and scenes were the period's predominant subject matter. In the Annunciation (above) by Lorenzo Monaco (c. 1370 -1425), the painter's emotional intensity and subtlety of feeling are evident and the work displays a particularly graceful flow of line. These qualities also appear in his panels titled The Flight into Egypt (c. 1405) and The Coronation of the Virgin (1413). Some artists set themselves apart from their Gothic predecessors, however, by the close observation of nature and lavish craftsmanship that characterized their work. One of the period's most memorable paintings is the Wilton Diptych (below). This devotional masterpiece is an icon of Catholic heritage, yet the artist has never been identified – art historians cannot even agree on the artist's country of origin, such is the international nature of the style. The altarpiece was most likely commissioned by the English king, Richard II, whose coat of arms and white hart appear on the diptych's exterior. Hinged like a book so that it is portable for use in prayer, the interior shows the king being presented to the Virgin Mary. 

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The succession of wars and the terrible cost of the Hundred Years' War between England and France, that lasted from 1337 to 1453, dramatically changed the social and political landscape of Europe and further influenced the development of its art. The tapestry Offering of the Heart (below) expresses a nostalgia that members of the old order felt for the court's feudal values, outdated chivalry, extravagance and splendour. Economic crisis and civil strife had undermined the position of the aristocracy and produced an increasingly powerful and sizeable middle class of merchants and bankers. The tapestry is therefore an indirect expression of the struggle for power between them and the merchants. The bourgeoisie, meanwhile, were gaining increasing influence and were perhaps more attracted to some of the ruling class's venal excesses than to the courtly customs that sometimes masked them.

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The elegance and emotional exaggeration of the International Gothic style combined with a new kind of humanism, which found its way into the artistic depiction of figures and themes. At the Castello della Manta in Saluzzo, Italy, a student of Giacomo Jaquerio (c. 1375-1455), known only as the 'Master of Manta', painted frescoes on the walls around the baronial hall, including the scene called 'The Fountain of Youth' (detail below). It shows elderly people entering the miraculous waters to be rejuvenated, and the work is full of lively detail and strong colours. The artist was one of many painters associated with the International Gothic who were highly sensitive to the sense of movement underlying the composition. Further examples of the International Gothic aesthetic are La Grande Pietà Ronde (c. 1400) by Jean Malouel (c. 1360-1415), which is characterized by intense emotion and a soft, dream-like pictorial quality, and The Road to Calvary (1440) by Jaquerio, a crowded canvas in which the sharp angles of innumerable spears suggest shared suffering, the scene realized with a religious intensity and remarkably elegant composition. 

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Pisanello (c. 1394-1455) was a very competent draughtsman and many of his works feature animals. The representation of animals, vegetables, architecture and artefacts within the decorative landscape is achieved with the same attention to detail and harmony as that given to the figures. In Madonna with the Quail (below), the quail at the Virgin's feet, the other birds, the leafy wreath and the fruits blend into an idealized portrait of the Madonna and Child.

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The illumination of Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (c. 1413-89; see Winter below) by the Flemish Limbourg brothers (a.1402-16), completed after their deaths by Jean Colombe, is replete with animals, vegetables and wide landscapes, peopled by both aristocratic and peasant figures.

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While the art of the past had represented the ideal with much recourse to imagery from the imagination, the International Gothic style produced a synthesis of the ideal – in the sense of a nostalgic looking back to the glory of the past – with a descriptive and detailed realism. The Adoration oj the Magi (below) by Gentile da Fabriano (c. 1370-1427) exemplifies the fusion of these two artistic impulses and represents the peak of the artistic movement. The altarpiece was painted for the Cappella Strozzi, in the Santa Trinita church in Florence (now the sacristy) and has a strong sense of narrative that is typical of International Gothic. The artist depicts the complete story of the adoration of the Magi as told in the Bible, with a vast array of lavishly attired figures. The larger figures in the foreground, nearest to the Madonna and Child, represent the chivalrous tradition of honour and servitude, and the more animated procession of knights and huntsmen, winding its way to a turreted castle in the distant hills in the background, includes more plebeian figures. Behind the youthful king in the centre is the Florentine banker Palla Strozzi, who is included in recognition of his commission of the work. 

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There is a notable aura of meditation and purpose in the most important works of the International Gothic style, even within the context of its close detail and occasional extravagance. Many of the miniatures were portable so that the viewer could easily use the work of art for private contemplation. The artistic aim was always to familiarize the viewer with the myriad details of the pictorial landscape and the individual characters of the figures. While fully appreciating the realistically presented figures in all their finery and glory, the viewer was at the same time exposed to the light and space that surrounded them-an experience designed to lift and expand the spirit.  

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Ancora due piccole digressioni: su YouTube abbiamo trovato un bellissimo documentario dedicato a Les Tres Riches Heures, dipinto dai fratelli Limbourg per il duca di Berry, menzionato nel brano sopra tratto da Art: The Whole Story  – non c'entra nulla con l'Italia ma c'entra molto con il gotico internazionale; inoltre, vi proponiamo una "visita" al Castello del Buonconsiglio di Trento – un'altra bellissima città italiana situata nella regione del Trentino-Alto Adige (in giallo, nella cartina in basso), dalla forte impronta mitteleuropea, praticamente sconosciuta qui in Australia – in compagnia del grande Marco Hagge. Nel Castello del Buonconsiglio, c'è un ciclo di affreschi, il celebre Ciclo dei Mesi, in stile gotico internazionale, assolutamente straordinario e assolutamente da visitare:

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Ritornando al discorso della Pala Strozzi, nel brano tratto da Storia dell'Arte Italiana, di Bertelli, Briganti, e Giuliano, che abbiamo riportato sopra, viene menzionato Giotto. Ma chi era Giotto? Per spiegarcelo, ecco un documentario assolutamente straordinario di Andrew Graham-Dixon, del 2007, The Art of Eternity. Il documentario è dedicato all'arte bizantina (abbiamo parlato di Bizanzio e dell'impero bizantino in un articolo di blog precedente dedicato a Venezia) ed è costituito di tre puntate. La puntata che ci interessa in modo particolare è la terza, When East Meets West, perché in questa puntata lo straordinario Andrew Graham-Dixon parla non soltanto di Giotto ma del ruolo fondamentale che il movimento francescano ebbe sull'arte figurativa italiana, ma vi proponiamo tutte e tre le puntate perché vale davvero la pena vedere tutta la serie – il signor Graham-Dixon esamina i mosaici di Ravenna nella seconda puntata. Inoltre vi proponiamo anche un documentario molto interessante, dedicato a Giotto, tratto dalla bella serie The Great Artists, di Tim Marlow.     

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Da continuare...