This article reassesses artistic production in Rome at the time of the temporary return of Pope Urban V, between 1367 and 1370, after a lengthy period of absence of the papacy in Avignon, and offers new insights into the long-term impact of this production. It does so by starting from a thoroughly neglected artwork now in the Museo Storico Artistico del Tesoro di S. Pietro, a victim of the traditional interpretative dichotomy as either a work by Giotto or not. By taking a different methodological approach, which is to think in terms of movement of patrons and artists, and on the basis of combined technical/visual analysis and documentary sources, the article sheds new light on this painting, offering new proposals concerning its dating, attribution, original location and function. It then addresses its historical contextualization and significance, allowing us to rethink art in Rome in the fourteenth century by discussing the role that the circulation of patrons and artists played in creating new forms. This discussion not only contributes to a better understanding of the art produced in Rome in the Trecento but also throws some light on the very origins and nature of Renaissance art.

Il saggio analizza in dettaglio, con immagini inedite e di alta qualità (frutto di apposita campagna fotografica), le trecentesche Storie della Passione di Cristo della cappella «degli Illustrissimi», posta all'estremità del braccio settentrionale del transetto del duomo di Napoli. L'opera, realizzata a monocromo, si compone di quattro scene maggiori, leggibili da sinistra a destra, Cristo schernito e spogliato delle vesti, Flagellazione, Andata al Calvario e Deposizione, e di una scena minore, un'Annunciazione con probabile offerente. A dispetto dell'alta qualità esecutiva e del raffinato livello d'invenzione, l'opera è scarsamente conosciuta, e spesso ignorata, da parte della critica moderna. Scopo del contributo è di presentare in dettaglio le Storie della Passione per fornire una corretta e approfondita lettura iconografica dei singoli episodi e per individuare le fonti visive alla base della rappresentazione.

This article takes its lead from research into the ‘language’ of Roman portraiture. More specifically, it explores a work that literalizes the idea of ‘reading’ a Roman portrait (to quote Sheldon Nodelman's classic phrase): a picture-poem by Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius — a much maligned poet active in the first decades of the fourth century ad — that purports, through its iconotextual form, to visualize the countenance of the emperor Constantine (uultus Augusti). After a brief introduction to Optatian and his œuvre, the article offers a close reading of his third poem, demonstrating the sophisticated ways in which it probes the latent iconic potential of written script. What particularly interests me about this case study is its underlying paradox: on the one hand, Optatian boasts that his painted page will outstrip antiquity's most celebrated painter (it ‘will dare outdo the waxes of Apelles’, uincere Apelleas audebit pagina ceras); on the other, the actual form of the picture seems to eschew mimetic modes of representation, rendering Constantine's ‘portrait’ a geometric pattern. So how should we make sense of this image? What does the poem reveal about ideas of portraiture in the fourth century? And how might we contextualize Optatian's abiding fascination with the limits of ‘seeing’ and ‘reading’?

By examining the historical narratives of Saint Catherine of Siena's death and burial this paper sheds new light on the liturgical layout of the Dominican church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome c. 1380. Since then Saint Catherine's remains have been translated five times, and at each translation, the form and decoration of her sepulchre has changed, showing how different aspects of her life were commemorated at each renewal of her tomb. These transformations are examined in the light of what survives today and of other literary documentation. Particular attention is given to the way Catherine was represented before and after her canonization in 1461. This explains why a relief attributed to Donatello that has been associated with her tomb may date c. 1430, while a figure of the saint by an artist close to Isaia of Pisa was made c. 1466. The paper also examines the consequences of placing the tomb under the altar of the Capranica chapel in 1579, and of moving the monument under the high altar of the church in 1855, when Santa Maria sopra Minerva was restored according to neo-Gothic principles. Each phase of her tomb shows how Catherine has been venerated from 1380 until the present.

This article explores the significance of sculptural and painted representations of ‘overweight’ and ‘underweight’ body types in the visual culture of Roman Italy from the fourth century bc through to the late Empire, and considers the relationship of this imagery to Greek and Hellenistic precedents. In spite of the topical character of fat in 21st-century sociology, anthropology and medical science, obesity and emaciation in the ancient world remain almost completely unexplored. This article sets out to examine the relationship of fat and thin bodies to power, wealth, character and behaviour, and seeks to identify patterns and continuities in the iconography of fleshiness and slenderness across a stretch of several hundred years. Such bodies could be evaluated in a number of different ways, and this article exposes the diverse — and sometimes contradictory — responses to body fat in the art and culture of the Roman world. It first examines the significance of obesity and emaciation in language, literature and medicine, and then discusses visual representations under three headings: ‘Fertility’; ‘The marginal and the ridiculous’, examining the relationship between body fat, humour and figures at the edge of civilized society; and ‘Portraits’, exploring fat and thin in the portraiture of real-life individuals in the realms of philosophy, Hellenistic rulership, Etruscan funerary art and Roman public sculpture.

Attingendo alla nozione di Jaś Elsner della ‘visione mistica’ e le contestuali fonti scritte che descrivono la decorazione degli interni della chiesa e l'importanza simbolica della luce e delle stele nell'esegesi paleocristiana, questo articolo riesamina le volte mosaicate con cieli stellati, principalmente quelle all'interno del cosiddetto ‘Mausoleo’ di Galla Placidia a Ravenna. Esso enfatizza il ruolo attivo dello schema decorativo nella tarda antichità; e il ruolo dell'arte non solo come esemplificazione, ma anche come mediazione del culto paleocristiano. La proposta avanzata è che gli effetti visivi esibiti dai mosaici sono strumenteli nel creare una particolare relazione con lo spettatoie antico, relazione in cui le stelle potevano essere state viste non solo come una rappresentazione del cielo, ma come una concreta manifestazione del potere raggiante dei santi nel loro ruolo di intermediari tra la terra e il paradise.