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Early Medieval Wall-Paintings in the Catacomb of San Valentino, Rome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

John Osborne
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Affreschi altomedievali nelle catacombe di san valentino, roma

Lo studio dello stile e dell'iconografia degli affreschi parietali del vestibolo delle Catacombe di San Valentino sulla Via Flaminia suggerisce che essi risalgano all'inizio dell'VIII secolo d.C. e che siano associati al patronato di Giovanni VII (705–707). Essi vengono confrontati ai mosaici di una cappella nella Vecchia San Pietro, ed alle decorazioni parietali di S. Maria Antiqua, ambedue riconducibili a questo stesso Pontefice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 49 , November 1981 , pp. 82 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © British School at Rome 1981

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References

1 On 14 February 1979 (St. Valentine's day) the author arranged a visit to the Catacomb of San Valentino in which a number of the scholars and residents of the British School participated. This paper is offered in memory of that occasion.

2 Panvinio, Onofrio, Le Sette Chiese Romane, tr. Lanfranchi, Marco Antonio (Rome 1570), 332Google Scholar, locates the relics of St. Valentine in the San Zeno chapel of S. Prassede. Marucchi, Orazio, Il Cimitero e la Basilica di S. Valentino (Rome 1890), 135Google Scholar note 2, claimed that the text of an inscription recording the translation in the time of pope Nicholas IV was preserved in a manuscript in the Vatican Library (cod. Vat. 3407, fol. 20), but an examination of the manuscript has failed to locate this reference.

3 For the basilica and its history see Krautheimer, Richard et al. , Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae iv (Vatican City 1970), 289–312Google Scholar.

4 Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, L. (Paris 1955), i, 332–3Google Scholar: ‘Fecit et ecclesiam beato Valentino via Flamminea, iuxta pontem Molbium a solo, quam et ipse dedicavit et dona multa optulit.’ The surviving brickwork of the crypt of the basilica has been ascribed to the seventh century by Krautheimer, (Corpus iv, 310)Google Scholar, and by Bertelli, G., Guidobaldi, A., and Spagnoletti, P., ‘Strutture murarie degli edifici religiosi di Roma dal VI al IX secolo’, Rivista dell' Istituto Nazionale d'Archeologia e Storia dell' Arte N.S. xxiii–xxiv (1976–1977), 95–172Google Scholar, esp. 122. For a general account of the growth of these suburban cult sites see Dulaey, Martine, ‘L'entretien des cimetières romains du 5e au 7e siècle’, Cahiers Archéologiques xxvi (1977), 7–18Google Scholar.

5 ‘…ad portam Flamineam ubi S. Valentinus martyr quiescit via Flaminea in basilica magna …’ Valentini, Roberto and Zucchetti, Giuseppe, Codice Topografico della Città di Roma ii (Rome 1942), 73Google Scholar.

6 See Pesci, Benedetto, ‘L'itinerario romano di Sigerico arcivescovo di Canterbury e la lista dei papi da lui portata in Inghilterra (anno 990)’, Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana xiii (1936), 43–60Google Scholar.

7 By a bull of pope Agapitus II dated 955. The text is published by Federici, V., ‘Regesto del monastero di S. Silvestro de Capite’. Archivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria xxii (1899), 213–300Google Scholar, esp. 269: ‘Nee non et confirmamus vobis monasterium integrum S. Valentini cum omnibus suis hedificiis et adiacentiis et ubique eius pertinentiis, situm foris porte S. Valentini …’.

8 The inscription recording the restoration of the church by abbot Theobald is dated 3 February 1060. Despite a recent claim that it is ‘no longer extant’ (Corpus Basilicarum iv, 291), it does in fact survive in the atrium of S. Silvestro in Capite where it is set in the wall to the right of the entrance to the church. The text is published by Marucchi (1890), 130.

9 Codice Topografico iii (Rome 1946), 294Google Scholar. The catalogue is preserved in Turin, Bib. Naz. Lat. A 381. For its dating to 1313–39 see Falco, G., ‘Il catalogo di Torino delle chiese, degli ospedali, dei monasteri di Roma nel secolo XIV’, Archivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria xxxii (1909), 411–43Google Scholar.

10 Ciacconio's copies of the murals are preserved in the Vatican Library, cod. lat. 5409, fol. 37r–37v. The exact date of his visit to the catacomb is unknown. Antonio Bosio visited the site in April 1594, and his notes and drawings made on this occasion were published posthumously in his Roma Sotterranea (Rome 1632), 576–83Google Scholar.

11 Boldetti, Marc' Antonio, Osservazioni sopra i cimiterii de' santi martiri ed antichi cristiani di Roma (Rome 1720), 577Google Scholar.

12 Garrucci, Raffaele, Storia della Arte Cristiana nei primi otto secoli della Chiesa ii (Prato 1873), 92Google Scholar.

13 Marucchi, Orazio, ‘Das Coemeterium und die Basilica des h. Valentin zu Rom’, Römische Quartalschrift iii (1889), 15–30, 114–33, 305–42Google Scholar; and Il Cimitero e la Basilica di S. Valentino (Rome 1890)Google Scholar.

14 Bosio, 579.

15 Marucchi (1890), 46, records that there were three different levels of plaster on the walls.

16 The two differ on the precise reading of the titulus. Bosio records it as IESUS REX IUDEORUM, while Ciacconio gives IHS NAZARENUS REX IUDEORUM.

17 Vatican Library, cod. lat. 5409, fol. 37v.

18 For a full discussion of the subject see Weitzmann, Kurt, The Fresco Cycle of S. Maria di Castel seprio (Princeton 1951), 53–7Google Scholar; Nordhagen, Per Jonas, ‘The origin of the washing of the child in the Nativity scene’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift liv (1961), 333–7Google Scholar; Lawrence, Marion, ‘Three pagan themes in Christian art’, De artibus opuscula XL: Essays in honor of Erwin Panofsky, ed. Meiss, M. (New York 1961), 321–34Google Scholar; and Kitzinger, Ernst, ‘The Hellenistic heritage in Byzantine art’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers xvii (1963), 95–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 See Nordhagen, Per Jonas, ‘The mosaics of John VII (A.D. 705–7)’, Acta ad Archaeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia ii (1965), 121–66Google Scholar, esp. 131–4.

20 See Beckwith, John, ‘Some early Byzantine rock crystals’, Studies in Memory of David Talbot Rice, ed. Robertson, Giles and Henderson, George (Edinburgh 1975), 1–5Google Scholar.

21 The censer can be dated c. A.D. 550 on the basis of its stamps, see Dodd, Erica, ‘The Sion Treasure: problems of dating and provenance’, Byzantine Studies Conference. Abstracts of Papers vi (1980), 3–4Google Scholar.

22 James, M. R., The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford 1924), 46–7Google Scholar.

23 A list of other examples is given by Weitzmann, Castelseprio, 55 note 57.

24 Nordhagen (1965), 142. The fragment has not survived but is described by Grimaldi and illustrated in a watercolour of circa 1630 (Vatican Library, cod. lat. 4410, fol. 12 = Nordhagen, pl. xxi b). It was formerly in the Vatican grottoes but disappeared during the course of the seventeenth century.

25 Mango, Cyril, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–1453. Sources and Documents (Englewood Cliffs 1972), 68Google Scholar.

26 See Wessel, Klaus, ‘Frühbyzantinische Darstellung der Kreuzigung Christi’, Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana xxxvi (1960), 45–71Google Scholar, and ‘Die Entstehung des Crucifixus’, Byzantinische Zeit schrift liii (1960), 95–111Google Scholar.

27 Grabar, André, Les Ampoules de Terre Sainte (Paris 1958), 55–8Google Scholar.

28 Only the portion of the mosaic which depicts Mary and Longinus has survived, but the figure of Christ dressed in a colobium is clearly indicated in a seventeenth-century woodcut of Angelo Rocca in De particula ex pretioso et vivificatio ligno sacratissimae crucis (Rome 1609), 43Google Scholar. At that time the fragment was preserved in the Bibliotheca Angelica in Rome, and Rocca states that the colobium was purple. The woodcut is reproduced by Nordhagen (1965), pl. xxi e.

29 See Weitzmann, Kurt, The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai. The Icons i (Princeton 1976), 61–4Google Scholar and pl. xxv.

30 See Osborne, John, ‘The portrait of pope Leo IV in San Clemente, Rome: a re-examination of the so-called “square nimbus” in medieval art’, PBSR xlvii (1979), 58–65Google Scholar.

31 Liber Pontificalis i, 363, 500, 504; ii, 9, 28, 78.

32 Marucchi (1890), 59. The dating has been accepted by Wilpert, Joseph, Die römischen Mosaiken und Malereien der kirchlichen Bauten vom IV. bis zum XIII. Jahrhundert (Freiburg im Breisgau 1917), 878Google Scholar; Farioli, Raffaella, Le pitture di epoca tarda nelle catacombe romane (Ravenna 1963), 40Google Scholar; and many others. The only notable exceptions are van Marle, R., La Peinture Romaine au Moyen Age (Strasbourg 1921), 62–3Google Scholar, and Belting, Hans, Die Basilica dei SS. Martiri in Cimitile und ihr frühmittelalterliche Freskenzyklus (Wiesbaden 1962), 64, 115Google Scholar, both of whom prefer a date in the eighth or ninth century.

33 The most recent argument for this dating is presented by Wright, David, ‘Sources of Longobard wall painting: facts and possibilities’, Atti del 6 Congresso Internazionale di Studi sull’ Alto Medioevo (Spoleto 1980), 727–39Google Scholar.

34 It is recorded by Grimaldi, MS Florence, Bib. Naz. II–III–173, fol. 103–4, illustrated by Nordhagen (1965), pl. xviii. Two fragements of this centrepiece survive. The figure of Mary as regina is now in the church of San Marco in Florence, and the figure of John VII is in the Vatican grottoes.

35 Nordhagen, Per Jonas, ‘The frescoes of John VII (A.D. 705–7) in S. Maria Antiqua in Rome’, Acta ad Archaeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia iii (1968), 91Google Scholar.

36 Ibid., 39 and pl. cxiii.

37 Liber Pontificalis iii, 99.

38 See Gray, N., ‘The paleography of Latin inscriptions in the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries in Italy’, PBSR xvi (1948), 38–162Google Scholar, esp. 48–9 (catalogue nos. 2 and 3).

39 For a full description of the S. Maria Antiqua niche painting see Nordhagen (1968), 75–6.