Benedictine, Art

BENEDICTINE, ART. - In the strict sense the term designates — and for this reason it is used by a good part of modern criticism — an artistic movement that had its center in southern and central Italy between the 9th and 12th centuries. On the other hand, the enormous religious, political and social importance that the Benedictine Order had, especially in the Middle Ages, was reflected in so many and such varied artistic manifestations, stamping them with a character of its own, impressing its own particular accent upon different figurative languages, that it is necessary to make mention of it also from this point of view.

Already from its origins, through the moral and intellectual temper of its founder and through the personalities who soon gathered in its ranks, the Order appears as the most valid guardian of the still living Roman cultural tradition which, in the matter of figurative arts, now amounts to paleochristian art. The accession to the papacy of St. Gregory the Great, by tightening the bonds between the Order and the Roman See, strengthened it and, in missionary activity, broadened its function, which was not only religious but also cultural. The illuminated "Evangelary" preserved at Cambridge, sent to England by Pope Gregory through the Benedictine monk Augustine, who was to become bishop of Canterbury, is a clear example of this perpetuation of paleochristian spirit and forms.

These first Roman-Benedictine missions introduced (though one does not wish to deny limited contributions of Eastern culture on the part of Syrian or Thebaid monasticism) a vein of paleochristian tradition into a soil rich in other ancient traditions — Celtic culture; and they stirred up and drew forth other copious sources, all converging together into the great stream of Anglo-Saxon and Irish art; concerning which there is now renewed dispute as to which has precedence (Masa), but both, powerfully original and both having, in the rich and stupendous production of miniatures and in the related but more modest production of carved crosses, an origin and character predominantly, not to say exclusively, monastic and more precisely Benedictine.

As largely monastic are the "scriptoria," in the Carolingian period and then also in the Ottonian; and it is therefore from the Benedictine monasteries of Metz, of Tours, of St. Gall, etc., that the most distinguished illuminated codices come.

In southern Italy, around the mother abbey of Montecassino and in the lesser ones flourishing around it, the work of the book workshops was intense, while churches were being built and adorned with the decoration of vast pictorial cycles, thus employing veritable crews of painters and miniaturists dependent on the Order.

In the church of the mountain cenobium of S. Vincenzo al Volturno a series of Gospel frescoes, datable to the 9th century, have a frank and popular vigor that always leads them back to the usual late-Roman source.

But it is above all in the time of the great abbot Desiderius (1058-86) and of his works of renewal and embellishment of the monastery and church of Montecassino that one can trace that movement definable as "Benedictine art in the strict sense."

With the mosaics of Montecassino destroyed, conspicuous testimony nevertheless remains, on the one hand in the series of illuminated codices, on the other in that of frescoes. Among these, those of S. Angelo in Formis are most important; among those, a Vita s. Benedicti at the Vatican, a Regestum of S. Angelo in Formis (library of Montecassino) and numerous rolls of the Exultet (v.), etc.

There is discussion concerning the value and originality of this art, especially in relation to metropolitan Byzantine art. While Bertaux tends to emphasize its Byzantine character, Van Marle, having recognized in it the firm and continuous stylistic link between the manifestations of the 9th century and those of the 11th, inclines to judge it rather as dependent on Carolingian and Ottonian art. Greater independence is recognized by Laduev, and likewise by Lavagnino.

That abbot Desiderius commissioned works of goldsmithing and carving at Constantinople, and that he brought from there masters of mosaic and of inlay, is evident from the well-known passages of the Chronicle of Leo of Ostia. But everything suggests that this intervention of foreign elements was operative far more in the technical field than in the stylistic one. Acquisition of rare and precious objects, work and teaching of masters specialized in difficult and complex operations whose tradition had been lost, rather than creative artists. And even if there was participation by some artist (the "imaginarius" as well as the "musearius"), his work was limited; his influence slight and of very brief duration; so that his local pupils immediately assumed an autonomous position. The imposing decoration of S. Angelo in Formis offers proof of this. For in it, which evidently reflects the fortunes of the Cassinese school at the time of the arrival of these Greeks, only a few passages, on the exterior of the facade under the portico and especially the Angel and the Madonna over the door, have a pure and exquisite Byzantine accent, in the refined decorativeness, in the heraldic rigidity, in the abstract solemnity of their appearances. Whereas, on the other hand, through successive developments of taste and style, with various mutations of sentimental tones revealing the succession of just as many different masters, from the Stories of hermits, still on the exterior, from the enormous Last Judgment on the interior of the facade, through the very numerous biblical and Gospel stories along the walls of the naves, one arrives at attitudes of a robust, almost violent expressionism in the Redeemer of the apse, which betrays links with Ottonian art. But between these two extremes lies the most conspicuous mass of these paintings, and especially the series of "biblical and Gospel stories," which has a character of its own, of great representational and expressive effectiveness in the compositions, in the liveliness of the attitudes, in the simple and perspicuous dramatic quality of the mime; an inspiration of fresh and copious vein, a virile and frank sentiment; a popular manner but by no means plebeian, a painting swift in patches of color on the white of the plaster, with a preference for cold tones (sky-blues, violets, amaranth reds, browns), within vigorous contours and compact abbreviations. Moreover, the iconography too departs from the Eastern one; for example, Christ in person, in the scene of the Judgment, in place of the empty throne of the Etimasia. This is an artist, with his collaborators, among the greatest, without doubt, of the Middle Ages. These same qualities, even if transposed into the format of the "reduced step," reveal the best Cassinese codices, especially the Vita s. Benedicti. And some of the Exultet; even if some of these (that of Salerno, for example, for the fineness of its workmanship; that of Bari for certain inscriptions in Greek) present some greater accentuation of Byzantinism.

The poor quality of some of them must not surprise, when one considers that not all come from true scriptoria and miniature workshops, but are copies, for current use, taken from the more distinguished exemplars and evidently to spare these. They cannot therefore be judged by the standard of works of art, but rather as manual productions of occasional draughtsmen, amateurs devoid of technical training; and for this reason the judgment of Bertaux on the "barbarism" of the second exemplar of Gaeta appears too severe, a literal but crude copy, the work of a calligrapher inexperienced in drawing, of the other exemplar which is instead the work of an artist endowed with notable personality and typical of this tendency.

That these so varied and numerous manifestations of Benedictine art, with which southern Italy is rich, had their own particular differentiated character appears obvious also for historical reasons, since there is no doubt that Western Benedictine monasticism tended if not to oppose itself certainly to distinguish itself from Eastern monasticism, though the latter was widespread especially in Apulia and Calabria with the so-called Basilians.

They appear moreover in close kinship - and this too is obvious for historical reasons - with the painting that developed in Rome between the 9th and 12th centuries. Like the oldest Ascension (datable between 847 and 855) and then the admirable Stories of St. Clement and St. Alexis in the lower church of S. Clemente, earlier than 1084, in which the peculiar character of the medieval Roman pictorial language, based predominantly on the decorative value of a thin, vibrant line, manifests itself in exquisitely elegant ways, in a tone of courtly refinement, such as are also found, though to a lesser degree, in other frescoed cycles, especially in S. Elia at Nepi, the work of Stephen, John, Nicholas (also Farfa, Tuscania).

While still within this current but with a vein of ruder sentiment, in almost dialectal attitudes, other Latial frescoed cycles with stories of Genesis (S. Maria in Vescovo, S. Giovanni a porta Latina in Rome) can be counted, in parallel with the illustrations of certain Atlantic Bibles (Tocesa).

Roman and Benedictine together are the frescoes of the Benedictine church of S. Maria in Pallara on the Palatine and the large and very rare panel with the Last Judgment, recently entered the Vaticana, signed by John and by Nicholas, and datable, as Redig de Campos rightly affirms, to the end of the 11th century rather than to the 13th as Paeseler would have it.

If as Benedictine art one can properly designate this painting of central-southern Italy, also a great part of all artistic production in general in the period between the 9th century (and even earlier) and the 13th, before the affirmation of the new mendicant Orders, can be traced back under the multiform activity of the Benedictine Order, which covered with its powerful and flourishing abbeys all of civilized and civilizing Europe from Ripoll to Fulda, from Durham to Nonantola, from Durrow to Einsiedeln.

And it is above all Cluny that, with the prestige of its religiosity, of the wisdom and firmness of its ordinances, becomes a singularly lively and active center for the assimilation, elaboration, and propagation of artistic currents and especially of architectural types, in the periods corresponding to the three abbots: Berno (910-27), Maiolus (954-94) and Hugh (1049-1109) and to the respective constructions of the abbey church, relatively modest that of Berno (the so-called Cluny I), larger that of Maiolus (II), of exceptional sumptuousness and impressiveness that of Hugh (III), in which architectural motifs, already timidly appearing elsewhere, are affirmed with new vigor and clarified: such as especially the plan with an archiepiscopal cross with double transept and double choir (in order to accommodate the great number of monks) and the ambulatory around the high altar, crowned by a series of small chapels or apsidal recesses; while there makes one of the very first, if not perhaps the first appearance, the pointed arch in the load-bearing walls along the naves. Motifs that spread widely and also, though more rarely, in Italy, where the most notable examples of a deambulatory with apsidal recesses of the Cluniac type are the cathedral of Aversa founded by the Norman dukes, and the abbey church of S. Antimo near Siena.

But one must bear in mind that the ties of Cluny with Rome and therefore also with Montecassino remained always firm and tenacious; if we see the Pontiffs frequently visiting the abbey and Urban II consecrating there the altars of the choir in 1095, and Innocent II in 1130 the entire new church founded by Hugh and continued by Pons of Melgueil (1109-22) and finished by Peter the Venerable (1122-56).

In parallel with the growth of the central Cluniac abbey and of other neighboring ones in Burgundy and in Languedoc and always at the stimulus of that central one of Cluny, others arose that were very rich in art and famous like the Daurade at Toulouse and above all, through the work of the abbots Durand (1048-72) and Ansquitil (1085-1115), that of Moissac.

And one must also bear in mind that among the greatest of these Benedictine promoters and builders is to be counted that William of Volpiano, a native of Lake Orta, founder of an abbey in Piedmont (Fruttuaria), monk at Cluny under the abbot Maiolus and founder of the church of S. Benigno at Dijon; then called by the Norman king Richard II to found the abbey of Fécamp; William of Volpiano, who certainly introduced into Norman and Burgundian architecture results of experiences, motifs of taste, constructive and decorative elements of Lombard origin. Just as it is probable that the abbot Lanfranc, made archbishop of Canterbury, was the bearer of Lombard customs and practices into England.

The series of splendid capitals already in the deambulatory (now in the Octav museum) of Cluny, on whose dating there is dispute (Kingsley Porter 1095, Michel 1130-40, Aubert 1109-13 and 1113-18), find a counterpart for their already Gothicizing taste and the subtlety of their workmanship in exemplars of the Modenese cathedral: not so much in the "biblical stories" of Wiligelmo on the façade, as in the capitals with drôleries at the top of the pilaster strips on the side. While, on the one hand, the tympanum with the Last Judgment of Conques (ca. 1130-35) and, on the other, the Gospel Histories of Moissac seem rather to approach the art of Wiligelmo. And at Moissac, the sublime tympanum of the Last Judgment, as at Souillac the other famous tympanum, evoke strange, ill-defined but certain echoes of the art of the far East, with stylistic attitudes and iconographic details that recall India and China.

Among the paintings, the series of biblical histories on the vault of the nave, as well as other frescoes of the porch and the apse in the abbey church of St-Savin-sur-Gartempe, in Poitou, show great analogy in design and composition with S. Angelo in Formis, though differing from it in the range of tones harmonized on the warm hues of yellow ochres, reds, and greenish tones, and in a certain more developed elegance. The affinity is greater, even in iconographic subject, between S. Angelo in Formis and the group of frescoes in one of the churches of the "Dives Augia" on Lake Constance: St. George in Oberzell at Reichenau, as Kraus has already recognized.

The properly Cluniac painting, of which — the decoration of the church of Cluny having been destroyed and known only from old descriptions — we can know a direct derivation at Berzé-la-Ville in Burgundy, would be, according to Mercier and Focillon, closer to Byzantine modes than to the Romanesque ones of St-Savin and others, on account of a greater technical refinement in the delicacy and continuity of the modelling, and in the fullness and richness of color. But these frescoes of Berzé-la-Ville also have surprising affinities with certain ones in the crypt of Anagni (figures of Hippocrates and Galen, etc.).

A new wave of diffusion of Benedictine art in the broad sense occurred with the Cistercian reform, so effective in propagating, at the beginning of the 13th century, modes of an austere Gothic verging on bareness; but no less expressive and evocative for that. Its fundamental motifs, in their constructive essentiality, were later to be adopted, but with substantial modifications and adaptations that alter their meaning, by the two great mendicant Orders of the Franciscans and the Dominicans.

According to the most widespread opinion, but recently contradicted by Serafini, a long series of abbeys, one the daughter-house of another, would mark in Italy the spread both of the Cistercian Rule and of architectures modeled on those of Cîteaux and Clairvaux: Fossanova, Casamari, S. Maria di Arbona, S. Galgano near Siena, and so on through many others, among them the many Chiaravalle foundations in honor of St. Bernard. Not without such influence having been able to make itself felt also in secular churches, as when we find monks of S. Galgano at the head of the building works of the cathedral of Siena, concerning which the original existence of an ambulatory of Cluniac type derived from the example of S. Antimo, supposed by Lusini and accepted by Salmi, is contradicted by more recent criticism (Carli).

Typical in the examples of Italian Cistercian churches closest to the origin is the plan with three naves, a wide transept and square terminal chapels aligned with the transept.

The rapid flourishing of the mendicant Orders marks the decline of the Cistercians, but, as has been said, the new Orders take over, in part, the architectural style of the former.

Recently, an attempt was made to give life to a new Benedictine artistic movement in the abbey of Beuron (v.), whose monk painters and decorators also worked extensively at Montecassino (Crypt) at the beginning of the century. But this style seems rather a programmatic compromise between a deliberately archaizing culture and a rather uncertain taste such as was that of that time, between the "floral" and the Pre-Raphaelite.

Luigi Coletti