Eleventh International Conference on The Image

Abstract

Hans Belting’s analysis of the new role of narrative explores the shift from isomorphic narrative, in which a textual story is reproduced visually, to an instrumental form often monumental in scale, and featuring an allegorical message. He discusses the outcome of Good and Bad Government, illustrated by Ambrogio Lorenzetti on the walls of the Sala dei Nove in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena (1338-39), and demonstrates the efficacy of the Dominican creed by reference to the frescoes of the walls of the Spanish Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, painted by Andrea Bonaiuto between 1366-67. This paper accepts Belting’s thesis, but extends its applicability to diminutive imagery painted at a similar time by other Sienese and Florentine artists. I contend that the development from isomorphic to instrumental imagery was concomitant with considerable political, social, and religious change, and that alongside grand-scale allegorical paintings, small-scale stories offered contemporary interpretations to old stories often assigning new meanings to them by imaginatively juxtaposing earlier images. Methodologically, I explore this proposal by taking features which characterised monumental instrumental narrative–empiricism, causality, and emotionality, and arguing that these elements may also be identified in two narrative pieces: The Carmelite Altarpiece by Pietro Lorenzetti, commissioned in 1329, and The Altarpiece of the Blessed Agostino Novello (ca. 1324-28) painted by Simone Martini.