MINARDI, TOMMASO. — Painter, born in Faenza on 4 Dec. 1787, died in Rome on 13 Jan. 1871. A pupil of Giuseppe Zauli, he obtained a stipend from the S. Gregorio Institute in Faenza and moved to Rome to study at S. Luca. Establishing himself as one of the finest artists of his time, from 1818 to 1821 he was in Perugia as director of its Academy, then returned to Rome as a teacher at S. Luca, a role he carried out for about forty years. In 1843 he subscribed, together with Overbeck and Tenerani, to the “Purist” manifesto by Antonio Bianchini (v. PURISMO).
Initially oriented toward Neoclassicism, as evidenced by various historical and mythological paintings and drawings and the NAPOLEON as ANTICORONATION from the Pinacoteca of Faenza, he soon moved toward more distinctly Romantic styles, of which a precise testimony is the self-portrait in the Galleria d’arte moderna in Florence. Subsequently, however, he adopted “Purist” tendencies, becoming the most authoritative representative of that movement, which proclaimed the need to return to the examples of great artists of the past, from the 14th-century masters to early Raphael, in order to achieve “a severe, simple, evident demonstration of the things represented.” A meticulous and highly acute draftsman, he spent seven years (others say twelve) copying Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in drawing, on behalf of the engraver Longhi of Milan; the work is now in the Vatican Library.
Works by him in Rome include: several cartoons in the Accademia di S. Luca; the Madonna and Child with St Lawrence and the Souls in Purgatory in the church of Campo Verano; the Virgin, St Agnes, and other saints appearing to St Stanislaus Kostka in the room where he died, near S. Andrea al Quirinale; The Propagation of Christianity in the Quirinal Palace; The Coronation of the Virgin in the chapel of Palazzo Doria; and a Madonna and Child in the Galleria d’arte moderna. At Spoleto, in the Duomo, is his Heart of Jesus, while in the Pinacoteca of Faenza are also his Socrates Instructing Alcibiades and The Supper at Emmaus.
MINARET. — Tower erected near the mosque, from which the muezzin (muʿaddin) calls the faithful to prayer. Its character varies in different regions according to the influence of pre-existing structures: bell towers of Christian churches from pre-Islamic times, or towers of vengeance or defense. To the latter category seems to belong one of the oldest surviving minarets, that of the Great Mosque of Kairouan (Tunisia), from the 8th century: a massive quadrangular construction, which, in its extreme scarcity of openings, reveals its defensive nature.
The square-plan minaret was spread by the Umayyads in Syria and throughout North Africa; in the most common type, the tower is crowned by a Muslim crenellation, and above it rise two or more recessed storeys culminating in a pyramidal or onion-shaped spire; the brick walls, originally bare, later received a picturesque cladding of lozenge-shaped tracery. Minarets were more numerous according to the importance of the mosques. The Great Mosque of Damascus, besides the four minarets originally placed at the corners of the enclosure (the surviving ones are the eastern, called of Jesus, rebuilt in the 13th century, and the western, rebuilt in the 15th), has a fifth, from the 22nd century, in the middle of the northern portico, oriented toward Mecca, as was later frequently done.
From Morocco (where the tower of Hasan at Rabat is remembered, with highly ornate windows, single-light below and three-light above), the minaret was introduced by the invading Arabs into Spain, where, though that of the mosque of Córdoba has disappeared, the famous Giralda of Seville survives (12th century), preserved in the reconstruction of the cathedral.
The polygonal-plan minaret seems to have originated in the more easterly regions (Persia and Turkestan), where during the Seljuk domination the circular plan was also introduced. More slender than those of square plan, these minarets, adorned with vertical striations or bricks arranged to form geometric patterns, or later with vivid polychrome ceramics, are divided into storeys by annular terraces projecting on corbels. These two types spread to India (e.g., the famously tall minaret of the mosque of Qutb al-Din in Delhi, 13th century) and to the western regions, particularly Egypt. Here there already arose in the 9th century the singular minaret of the mosque of Ibn Tulun in Cairo, whose structure (square base surmounted by a cylindrical tower with an external spiral for ascent) would, according to some, derive from the famous lighthouse of Alexandria; but the numerous minarets built subsequently in the Mamluk period are predominantly polygonal or cylindrical. This type also penetrated into Turkey and from there into the Balkans.