RSA-Session ‘Arts in Quattrocento Pisa I-II’
Berlin, 26-28 March 2015
Deadline: 12 June 2014
The Quattrocento was a dramatic century for Pisa. The Tuscan town, formerly a leading “Maritime Republic” and one of the wealthiest and most splendid Mediterranean centers in the Middle Ages, lost its independence in 1406 and fell under the dominion of Florence. The
political, economic and social crisis reached its apex in the first half of the century: thousands of people, both locals and foreigners, migrated elsewhere. Despite this, many of the foremost artists of the period were present in town, personally or through their works, from the International Gothic champs Lorenzo Monaco and Gentile da Fabriano to the founders of the early Renaissance revolution, Masaccio, Donatello (with Michelozzo), Fra Angelico. Their influence can be seen in the locally active painter Borghese di Piero and in the prolific
sculptor Andrea Guardi.
In the second half of the Quattrocento the archbishop Filippo de’ Medici and Lorenzo il Magnifico himself patronised notable architectural and artistic commissions (such as the Archbishop’s and the Sapienza University Palaces). The Opera del Duomo promoted the
completion of the fresco decoration of the Camposanto, which was entrusted to Benozzo Gozzoli who prevailed over such competitors as Andrea Mantegna, Vincenzo Foppa and the Lucchese Michele Ciampanti. Other notable painters, all of them Florentine, active in Pisa in those decades were Paolo Schiavo, Alesso Baldovinetti, Cosimo Rosselli, Domenico Ghirlandaio; not to say of the Flemish presences (e.g. the Master of the Legend of St. Lucy), or of the glazed-terracotta creations of the Della Robbia and Buglioni workshops. The only local talent, emerging in the last years of the century, was Niccolò di Bartolomeo dell’Abbrugia, better known as Niccolò Pisano, who then moved to Ferrara.
The century ended with the descent of French King Charles VIII in 1494: Pisa regained its liberty for fifteen years, rediscovering an ephemeral but intense civic pride in the profoundly changing assets of Italy and Europe.
The two sessions aim to give a proper critical and historical consideration to this still fragmentary and little studied chapter of Italian Quattrocento Art. Please send paper proposals – in English, Italian, or French – of 150 words (with keywords) and a cv of 300 words by June 12, 2014, to < gerardo.desimone@gmail.com > https://accademiadinapoli.academia.edu/GerardodeSimone
Medieval Art Research 