In 'Augustinian Art and Meditation in Renaissance Florence', Antonia Fondaras reunites the fifteenth-century altarpieces painted by Botticelli, Piero di Cosimo, Filippino Lippi, and other masters for the choir of the Augustinian church of Santo Spirito in Florence. Departing from a conventional focus on artist and patron, the author illuminates the engagement of the Augustinian Hermit friars with the composition and iconography of these pictures, and discusses how they were used to fashion the choir into a space suited to the friars’ institutional and spiritual ideals. Fondaras includes a close reading of the choir’s most compelling and original altarpieces, which were grounded in the writings of Augustine and provided a focal point for the friars’ sophisticated meditative practices.
Author(s): Antonia Fondaras
Series: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 308. Brill’s Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, 42
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 384
City: Leiden
Acknowledgments
Illustrations
Introduction: The Fifteenth-Century Altarpiece Decoration of the Santo Spirito Choir
Part 1: The Influence of the Friars
Chapter 1: Saint Augustine, the Augustinian Hermits, and the Convent of Santo Spirito
1 Saint Augustine: the Ascent to Wisdom and the Journey of Love
2 The Order of the Augustinian Hermits
3 Augustinian Art
4 The Convent of Santo Spirito
Chapter 2: The Santo Spirito Choir and the Presence of the Friars
1 Building the New Church
2 Encountering the Architecture
3 Furnishing the Church
4 Creating Augustinian Space
5 The Choir as Marian Space
6 The Choir Chapels: Itineraries of Augustinian Influence
Chapter 3: The Santo Spirito Format: Fashioning Sacred Space
1 The Santo Spirito Format: Spatial Continuity and Figural Presence
2 Shared Space
3 Heaven and the Choir
4 The Santo Spirito Format, Simplicity, and Devotional Viewing
5 Ornament and the Perfected Space
Part 2: Art and Meditation in the Santo Spirito Choir
Chapter 4: Discursive Meditation and Botticelli’s Bardi Altarpiece
1 Meditation and the Choir Altarpieces
2 The Bardi Altarpiece
Chapter 5: Hope and the Virtues: Piero di Cosimo’s "The Visitation with Saints Nicholas of Bari and Anthony Abbot"
1 The Commission and the Painting
2 Saints Nicholas of Bari and Anthony Abbot
3 The Landscape
4 The Inscription
5 The Reconciliation of the Virtues
6 The Reconciliation of the Testaments and the Covenant of Grace
Chapter 6: Caritas and Family: Filippino Lippi’s Nerli Altarpiece
1 The Patron and the Painting
2 The Geography of the Nerli Altarpiece: Separate and Conjoined Spaces
3 Painting Charity
4 Augustinian Charity: the Judgment of Love
5 Marriage and Charity
6 Charity and the Nerli Marriage
Chapter 7: Faith and the Mirror of God: Agnolo del Mazziere’s "The Holy Trinity with Saints Mary Magdalen and Catherine of Alexandria"
1 The Altarpiece
2 The Trinity as Throne of Grace
3 The Saints in Contemplation
4 Saint Augustine and the Trinity
5 The Throne of Grace as the Visionary
6 The Landscape: “The Things That Are Made”
7 Contemplation and the 'Visio Dei'
Conclusion: The Santo Spirito Altarpiece
Bibliography
Index
