1 See especially van Eck, Caroline, ‘Architecture, Language and Rhetoric in Alberti's De re aedificatoria’, in Architecture and Language: Constructing Identity in European Architecture c.1000–c.1650, ed. Clarke, Georgia and Crossley, Paul (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 72–81Google Scholar; and eadem, Classic Rhetoric and the Arts in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge and New York, 2007)Google Scholar; Carruthers, Mary, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge and New York, 1998)Google Scholar; Rhetoric Beyond Words: Delight and Persuasion in the Arts of the Middle Ages, ed. Carruthers, Mary (Cambridge, 2010)Google Scholar; and eadem, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2013)Google Scholar; Binski, Paul, Gothic Wonder: Art, Artifice and the Decorated Style, 1290–1350 (London and New Haven, 2014)Google Scholar; Nuechterlein, Jeanne, Translating Nature into Art: Holbein, the Reformation and Renaissance Rhetoric (University Park, Pa, 2011)Google Scholar.

2 Archival documents relating to the oratory can be found in Sartori, Antonio, ‘Nota su Altichiero’, Il Santo, 3 (1963), pp. 291–326Google Scholar.

3 On theoretical justifications for the use of images in medieval preaching, see Rivers, Kimberly A., Preaching the Memory of Virtue and Vice: Memory, Images and Preaching in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 187–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 The façade of the Oratory of St George once bore a now illegible inscription that identified the building as an oratorium, and the inscription was transcribed towards the end of the sixteenth century by Valerio Polidoro: Oratorium hoc sub auspiciis beati Georgii …’. See Polidoro, Valerio, Delle religiose memorie, scritte dal R. Padre Valerio Polidoro, padovano conventuale di San Francesco (Venice, 1590), p. XLIIGoogle Scholar.

5 Representative artists include the Paduan Guariento, the Venetian Nicoletto Semitecolo and the Veronese Jacopo da Verona. On Guariento, see Murat, Zuleika, Guariento: pittore di corte, maestro del naturale (Milan, 2016)Google Scholar.

6 On art and agency, see Gell, Alfred, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar; and Art's Agency and Art History, ed. Osborne, Robin and Tanner, Jeremy (Malden, Ma, and Oxford, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a study applying Gell's theories to fifteenth-century Italian art, see Michelle O'Malley, ‘Altarpieces and Agency: the Altarpiece of the Society of the Purification and its ‘invisible skein of relations’”, Art History, 28 (2005), pp. 417–41.

7 On the agency of fictive structures, see Amanda Lillie, ‘Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance painting’ on the website of the National Gallery, London: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/research/exhibition-catalogues/building-the-picture/introduction; accessed 4 April 2017. See also Eck, Caroline van and Bussels, Stijn, ‘Introduction’, Art History, 33, no. 2 (2010: Special Issue), pp. 208–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Marc Bayard, ‘In Front of the Work of Art: The Question of Pictorial Theatricality in Italian Art 1400–1700, ’ ibid., pp. 262–77.

8 Maretto has identified the porticoed street as a specifically Paduan feature, adopted from the thirteenth century, that differs from the Venetian fondaco, the private porticoes of medieval Genoa, and the many porticoes in Bologna; see Maretto, Paolo, I portici della città di Padova (Milan, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 9 and 22–25. The loggia of the Reggia had a frescoed decoration on the walls, probably similar to that seen in Altichiero's loggia in St George Destroys the Temple. See also Gasparotto, Cesira, ‘La Reggia dei Da Carrara: Il Palazzo di Ubertino e le nuove stanze dell'Accademia Patavina’, Atti e memorie dell'Accademia Patavina di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 79 (1966–67), pp. 70–116Google Scholar (p. 93); and idem, ‘Gli ultimi affreschi venuti in luce nella Reggia dei Da Carrara e una documentazione inedita sulla Camera di Camillo’, Atti e memorie dell'Accademia Patavina di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 81 (1968–69), pp. 237–61 (pp. 237–38 and 261)Google Scholar.

9 Cf. Richards, John, Altichiero: An Artist and His Patrons in the Italian Trecento (Cambridge, 2000), p. 188Google Scholar. The swallow-tail crenellations following the triangular shape of the roof can also be found, as Mellini noted, in the Castello Colleoni in Thiene, near Vicenza; see Mellini, Gian Lorenzo, Altichiero e Jacopo Avanzi (Milan, 1965), p. 74Google Scholar. The Castello, however, was built in the fifteenth century and cannot be considered a model for Altichiero's paintings.

10 Dellwing, Herbert, ‘Il traforo’, in L'architettura gotica veneziana, ed. Valcanover, Francesco and Wolters, Wolfgang (Venice, 2000), pp. 195–203 (p. 196)Google Scholar.

11 Schulz, Juergen, The New Palaces of Medieval Venice (University Park, Pa, 2004), pp. 49–50Google Scholar. Ogee arches are also seen in Padua, appearing after the Venetian conquest of the city in 1405. On Venetian architecture and Middle Eastern influences, see Howard, Deborah, Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture 1100–1500 (New Haven and London, 2000)Google Scholar.

12 The Fondaco del Megio, a storage house for millet, dates from at least as early as 1321; see Agazzi, Michela, ‘Edilizia funzionale veneziana del XIV secolo’, in L'architettura gotica veneziana, ed. Valcanover, and Wolters, , pp. 139–56 (pp. 150–52)Google Scholar.

13 I discuss Altichiero's structures in relation to the architecture of the Veneto in more detail in my doctoral thesis ‘Rhetoric of Place: Fictive Architecture and Persuasion in Altichiero da Zevio's Oratory of St George and Fra Angelico's Nicholas V Chapel’ (University of York, 2016); and in my essay ‘Fictive Architecture and Pictorial Place’, in Place and Space in the Medieval World, ed. Hawkes, Jane, Boulton, Megan and Stoner, Heidi (forthcoming 2018)Google Scholar.

14 Benelli, Francesco, The Architecture in Giotto's Paintings (New York, 2012), pp. 72–209Google Scholar.

15 Cf. Edwards, Mary, ‘Altichiero as Architect’, Il Santo, 29 (1989), pp. 303–31Google Scholar (pp. 305–08).

16 See note 5.

17 Mellini, Altichiero e Jacopo Avanzi, p. 57; idem, ‘Le architetture delle cappelle padovane dei marchesi di Soragna e quelle dipinte all'interno degli affreschi di Altichiero e Jacopo Avanzi’, Archivio storico per le province parmensi, 46 (1999), pp. 401–08 (p. 401)Google Scholar; Baggio, Luca, ‘Sperimentazioni prospettiche e ricerche scientifiche a Padova nel secondo Trecento’, Il Santo, 34 (1994), pp. 173–232 (p. 219)Google Scholar; idem, ‘Sperimentazioni spaziali negli affreschi di Altichiero nell'Oratorio di San Giorgio’, in Il secolo di Giotto nel Veneto, ed. Valenzano, Giovanna and Toniolo, Federica (Venice, 2007), pp. 417–35 (p. 419)Google Scholar; Donato, Maria Monica, ‘“Pictorie studium”: appunti sugli usi e sullo statuto della pittura nella Padova dei Carraresi (e una proposta per le “città liberate” di Altichiero e Giusto al Santo)’, Il Santo, 39 (1999), pp. 467–504 (p. 479)Google Scholar.

18 Onians, John, Bearers of Meaning: the Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance (Princeton, N.J., 1988)Google Scholar; Van Eck, ‘Architecture, Language and Rhetoric’; and eadem, Classic Rhetoric and the Arts.

19 Onians, Bearers of Meaning, pp. 114–19, 199–200 and 205–06.

20 Moss, Ann, ‘Copia’, in Encyclopaedia of Rhetoric, ed. Sloane, Thomas O. (Oxford and New York, 2001), pp. 175–77 (p. 175)Google Scholar.

21 Lanham, Richard, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, 2nd edn (Berkley, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1991), p. 42 and p. 8Google Scholar.

22 Paul Binski has touched on this rhetorical trope in relation to micro-architecture in the lecture ‘Micro-architecture and Medieval Aesthetics’ given at the conference Microarchitecture et figures du bâti: l’échelle à l’épreuve de la matière, Musée du Moyen Âge-Termes de Cluny, Paris, 8 December 2014.

23 Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1419b, 20–21. See Montefusco, Lucia Calboli, ‘Stylistic and Argumentative Function of Rhetorical “Amplificatio”’, Hermes, 132 (2004), pp. 69–81 (p. 69)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Cicero, Orator, XXXVI, 125: Summa autem laus eloquentiae est amplificare; Cicero, De oratore, II, 104.

25 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, VIII, 3, 1–5. According to Cicero (De oratore, I, 94), the truly eloquent (eloquens) orator is described as someone who, unlike the merely skilled (disertus) orator, ‘can exalt (augere) ever more admirably and more magnificently, and ornament what he wants.’

26 Cf. note 20 and 23.

27 The complete text of Quintilian's Institutio oratoria was discovered by Poggio Bracciolini in 1416 but his work was well-known during the Middle Ages through partial manuscripts, commentaries and excerpts in other texts. This article uses primarily Book VIII of the Institutio, which features in Ms 51 in the Bürgerbibliothek in Bern, from which medieval manuscripts of the Institutio derive for the most part. The ninth-century manuscript E 153 sup. (s.IX) at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan contains all the Institutio apart from IX, 4, 135 – XII, 11, 22; see Ward, John, ‘Quintilian and the Rhetorical Revolution of the Middle Ages’, Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, 13 (1995), pp. 231–84 (pp. 249 and 253)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a history of manuscripts of Quintilian and their reception during the Middle Ages, see Boskoff, Priscilla, ‘Quintilian in the Late Middle Ages’, Speculum, 27 (1952), pp. 71–78Google Scholar; Winterbottom, Michael, ‘The Textual Tradition of Quintilian 10.1.46 f.’, The Classical Quarterly (1962), pp. 169–75Google Scholar; and Ward, ‘Quintilian and the Rhetorical Revolution’, pp. 250–82. Mary Carruthers has argued that the Institutio continued to be an influential text throughout the Middle Ages even if in the form of digests; see Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, p. 316, note 35.

28 Quattuor tamen maxime generibus video constare amplificationem, incremento, comparatione, ratioconatione, congerie: Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, VIII, 4, 3.

29 Incrementum est potentissimus, cum magna videntur etiam quae inferiora sunt: Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, VIII, 4, 3.

30 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, VIII, 4, 9–15. Edwards has analysed the numerous parallels established by Altichiero in the Oratory but she has not considered these in relation to the rhetoric of amplificatio; see Edwards, Mary, ‘Parallelism in the Frescoes in the Oratory of St George in Padua (1379–1384)’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 71 (2008), pp. 53–72Google Scholar.

31 The short wall coming forward toward the viewer is a favourite device of Altichiero's. As well as appearing in three scenes of the life of St George in the Oratory, it also features in the Crucifixion in the Chapel of St James in the Santo, where Altichiero collaborated with Jacopo Avanzi between 1376/7 and 1379.

32 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, VIII, 4, 15–26. Quintilian points out that amplification by ratiocinatio can resemble emphasis, but the final effect of emphasis is given by words and that of ratiocinatio is given by things. As such, amplification via ratiocinatio has more value; Institutio oratoria, VIII, 4, 26.

33 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, VIII, 4, 26–29.

34 Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, p. 9.

35 Moss, ‘Copia’, p. 175.

36 Copeland, Rita and Sluiter, Ineke, ‘Brunetto Latini, Rettorica: Introduction’, in Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric. Language, Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300–1475, ed. Copeland, Rita and Sluiter, Ineke (Oxford, 2009), pp. 753–57 (p. 753)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ward, John O., ‘The Medieval and Early Renaissance Study of Cicero's De inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium: Commentaries and Contexts’, in The Rhetoric of Cicero in Its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition, ed. Cox, Virginia and Ward, John O. (Leiden and Boston, 2006), pp. 3–76 (pp. 3–70)Google Scholar; and, in the same volume, Virginia Cox, ‘Ciceronian Rhetoric in Late Medieval Italy’, pp. 109–36.

37 Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter, ‘Giles of Rome, Commentary on Aristotle's Rhetoric: Introduction’, in Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric, pp. 792–811 (p. 793). Giles of Rome, ‘Commentary on Aristotle's Rhetoric’, 1359a, 22.

38 Copeland and Sluiter, ‘Brunetto Latini’, p. 753.

39 Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter, ‘Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria nova, ca. 1208–1213: Introduction’, in Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric, pp. 594–96 (p. 595); Woods, Marjorie Curry, ‘A Medieval Rhetoric Goes to School – and to University: the Commentaries on the Poetria nova’, Rhetorica, 9 (1991), pp. 55–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria nova, ed. Nims, Margaret F. (Wetteren, 1967), lines 43–48Google Scholar.

41 Paul Binski has argued that this was the case in ‘Working by Words Alone’, pp. 14–51. See also Carruthers, Mary, ‘The Poet as Master Builder’, New Literary History, 24 (1993), pp. 881–904Google Scholar.

42 One of Geoffrey's examples, the Lament for Richard I, was famously cited by Chaucer in his Nun's Priest's Tale (VII, 3347, 54).

43 Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria nova, lines 219–689.

44 The apostrophe consists of addressing the reader or hearer with an exclamatory tone. If one excludes the damaged areas where the faces of the figures are now lost (especially in the St Catherine cycle), there are three instances of a figure looking out towards the viewer.

45 Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria nova, lines 231–33.

46 Ibid., line 262.

47 Ibid., lines 248–53.

48 Ibid., lines 469–507.

49 Ibid., lines 528–29.

50 Ibid., lines 555–56.

51 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, VIII, 3, 2–5 and 11–12.

52 Cf. entry ‘ampliare’ in Salvatore Battaglia, Grande dizionario della lingua italiana (Turin, 1961), I, 432, and especially the listed excerpts by Boccaccio and Matteo and Filippo Villani.

53 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, VIII, 3, 7.

54 Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria nova, lines 1244–51.

55 Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty, pp. 151–55.

56 Already in 1965, Mellini used the words ‘prospettiva plurifocale’ in connection with Altichiero, but did not expand upon this formulation; see Mellini, Altichiero e Jacopo Avanzi, p. 61.

57 Marjorie Curry Woods, ‘A Medieval Rhetoric Goes to School’, pp. 55–56.

58 Ibid., p. 61. Pace's commentary is addressed to a certain Simon, who has been tentatively identified with Simone della Tela, another scholar in the liberal arts at Padua.

59 Ibid., p. 63.

60 Nicoletta Giovè Marchioli, ‘Circolazione libraria e cultura francescana nella Padova del Due e Trecento’, in Predicazione e società nel Medioevo: riflessione etica, valori e modelli di comportamento, ed. Laura Gaffuri and Riccardo Quinto (Padua, 2002), pp. 131–41 (p. 138).

61 Carlo Delcorno, ‘La retorica dei Sermones di Antonio da Padova’, in Congresso internacional pensamento e testemunho – 8° centenário do nascimento de Santo António: Actas (Braga, 1996), pp. 245–62 (p. 246).

62 Giovè Marchioli, ‘Circolazione libraria e cultura francescana’, p. 139.

63 Ibid., p. 141; Poppi, Antonino, ‘Per una storia della cultura nel convento del Santo dal XIII al XIX secolo’, Quaderni per la storia dell'università di Padova, 3 (1970), pp. 1–30 (p. 7)Google Scholar. For the circulation of the classics on rhetoric in the Middle Ages, see Reeve, Michael D., ‘The Circulation of Classical Works on Rhetoric from the 12th to the 14th Century’, in Retorica e poetica tra i secoli XII e XIV, ed. Leonardi, Carlo and Menestò, Enrico (Florence, 1988), pp. 109–24Google Scholar.

64 Giovè Marchioli, ‘Circolazione libraria e cultura francescana’, p. 139.

65 McAvoy, Liz Herbert, ‘Introduction: Place, Space and the Body Within Anchoritic Rhetoric’, in Rhetoric of the Anchorhold: Space, Place and Body Within the Discourses of Enclosure, ed. McAvoy, Liz Herbert (Cardiff, 2008), pp. 1–14 (p. 5)Google Scholar.

66 Herbert McAvoy, ‘Introduction’, p. 5; Cate Gunn, ‘Private Meditations and Public Discourse: Ancrene Wisse and Sermon Rhetoric’, in Rhetoric of the Anchorhold, ed. Herbert McAvoy, p. 67.

67 Delcorno, ‘La retorica dei Sermones di Antonio da Padova’, p. 246.

68 Ibid., pp. 246–55.

69 Folena has observed how St Anthony often included rarely-used polysyllabic nouns, like populositas and gelicidium cupiditatis as well as frequent clausulae; see Folena, Gianfranco, Culture e lingue nel Veneto medievale (Padua, 1990), pp. 168–69Google Scholar.

70 Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty, p. 18.

71 Debby, Nirit Ben-Aryeh, ‘Italian Pulpits: Preaching, Art and Spectacle’, in Charisma and Religiuos Authority: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Preaching 1200–1500, ed. Jansen, Katherine L. and Rubin, Miri (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 123–44Google Scholar; Bolzoni, Lina, La rete delle immagini: predicazione in volgare dalle origini a Bernardino da Siena (Turin, 2002)Google Scholar.

72 On architecture and memory see among others Eiximenis, Francesc, ‘On Two Kinds of Order That Aid Understanding and Memory’, in The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, ed. Carruthers, Mary and Ziolkowski, Jan M. (Philadelphia, 2002), pp. 189–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carruthers, The Book of Memory, pp. 89–98.

73 On ductus, see Carruthers, Mary, ‘On the concept of ductus, or Journeying Through a Work of Art’, in Rhetoric Beyond Words: Delight and Persuasion in the Arts of the Middle Ages, ed. Carruthers, Mary (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 190–213Google Scholar.

74 Walker Bynum remarked on the difference between imitation and admiration in the Middle Ages, observing that wonder can be the prelude to appropriation; see Bynum, Caroline Walker, Metamorphosis and Identity (New York, 2001), pp. 43, 51 and 73Google Scholar.

75 Morse, Ruth, Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Representation, and Reality (Cambridge, 1991), p. 63Google Scholar. Herbert McAvoy, ‘Introduction’, p. 5. For a brief but thorough discussion of preaching in Italy, see Delcorno, Carlo, ‘Medieval Preaching in Italy (1200–1500)’, in The Sermon, ed. Kienzle, Beverly Mayne (Turnhout, 2000), pp. 449–560Google Scholar.

76 Milner, Stephen J., ‘Communication, Consensus and Conflict: Rhetorical Precepts, the Ars Concionandi, and Social Ordering in Late Medieval Italy’, in The Rhetoric of Cicero in Its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition, ed. Cox, Virginia and Ward, John O. (Leiden and Boston, 2006), pp. 365–401 (p. 381)Google Scholar.

77 Ibid., pp. 381–83.

78 Ibid., pp. 369 and 373.

79 Costume scia de ambaxature et de gentili homini favelare ornata mente, e dire belleçe de parole a zò ch’ ey possano atrovare grande presio e nomo pretioso: Guido Fava as quoted in Milner, ‘Communication, Consensus and Conflict’, p. 375.

80 … studio brevitatis in duas tantum partes divido. Quarum prima continet actum correctionis laudabilis, quia ‘convertetur’. Secunda continet pactum possessionis amabilis, quia ‘populus meus hic’: Petrarch, Arenga in civitate Novariae, ed. Carlo Negroni (Novara, 1876), p. 18.

81 Gallo, Donato, Università e signoria a Padova dal XIV al XV secolo (Trieste, 1998), p. 23Google Scholar; Collodo, Silvana, ‘Ordine politico e civiltà cittadina a Padova nel Trecento’, in Il secolo di Giotto nel Veneto, ed. Valenzano, Giovanna and Toniolo, Federica (Venice, 2007), pp. 309–33 (p. 312)Google Scholar.

82 Gallo, Università e Signoria a Padova, p. 22.

83 Collodo, Silvana, ‘Padova al tempo di Francesco Petrarca’, in Petrarca e il suo tempo, ed. Mantovani, Gilda P. (Milan, 2006), pp. 15–26 (p. 15)Google Scholar.

84 Mardersteig, Giovanni, ‘I ritratti del Petrarca e dei suoi amici di Padova’, Italia medioevale e umanistica, 17 (1974), pp. 251–80Google Scholar.

85 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms. Lat. 6069 G, frontispiece verso.

86 Gargan, Luciano, ‘Scuole di grammatica e Università a Padova tra medioevo e umanesimo’, Quaderni per la storia dell'Università di Padova, 33 (2000), pp. 9–26 (p. 11)Google Scholar; Black, Robert, Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 2001), p. 212Google Scholar; Benussi, Paola, ‘L'età medievale’, in I collegi per studenti dell'Università di Padova, ed. Negro, Piero Del (Padua, 2003), pp. 49–96.Google Scholar

87 Gargan, ‘Scuole di grammatica’, pp. 1–16; Black, Humanism and Education, p. 86. Elementary school pupils were taught how to read and write, and they were introduced to the psalter and then to Ianua, a treatise on ars grammatica spuriously attributed to Aelius Donatus; see Black, Humanism and Education, pp. 34–63.

88 We know some of the names of the rhetoricians who taught at private schools in Padua during the late fourteenth century, for example Carletto Galmarelli, Anastasio Ghezzi da Ravenna, Lazzaro Malrotondi da Conegliano, Egidio da Siena; see Gargan, ‘Scuole di grammatica’, p. 15. These names demonstrate the extent to which Padua attracted rhetoricians from various parts of Italy. For a general view on the curriculum of rhetorical school teaching, see Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter, ‘Part 4: Pedagogies of Grammar and Rhetoric, ca. 1150–1280: Introduction’, in Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric, pp. 544–50.

89 Gargan, ‘Scuole di grammatica’, p. 25.