Laura De Zuani

University of Padua, Italy

This essay presents the painter Bartolomeo Montagna (1452–1523), founder of the Renaissance vicentine school of painting. He was born in Orzinuovi (a small town near Brescia, in Lombardia) and lived in Vicenza. This essay starts from his early production side by side with Gianfrancesco Somaio, to the direct comparison with Venetian innovations, introduced by Giovanni Bellini. Bartolomeo Montagna met the Venetian master during two journeys to Venice between 1469 and 1483. Looking at his eighties production, bounded to the Venetian experience and to Antonello da Messina’s heritage, the report focuses on the complex links between Bartolomeo Montagna, the inlayer Pierantonio degli Abati and the architect Lorenzo da Bologna. The collaboration between these three artists started with the construction of the Vicentine church of San Bartolomeo and then it developed thanks to the most important artistic workshops in Padua at the end of the century. The first years of the painter are examined through archival documents and stylistic analysis, in order to make new hypothesis on his patrons. After explaining the complex cultural contributions matched by the painter, this paper deals with a particular case: a signed and dated painting (1487) wich does not fit this date.
New hypothesis will be suggested regarding the subject (Virgin and Child with Saint Sebastian and Saint Roch), the date and the unusual position of the inscription (on the back), trying to find a more suitable place for this painting in Montagna’s artistic career. A new document, regarding Montagna’s masterpiece in San Bartolomeo, recently brought to light by the Italian archivist Manuela Barausse, will also be helpful in this way. The essay will finally show how an apparently well-defined case will lead to a long journey, in order to comprehend the meaning of his creation.

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Yulia Revzina

Moscow Architectural Institute (State Academy), Russia

The revolution that took place in the Italian Renaissance was one of the most dramatic overturns in the architectural history. Strictly, there were two great revolutions: the first one was the turning towards the heritage of the classical antiquity, the second one was the new method of fortifying places. Today the first event has a long and extremely fruitful tradition of interpretation but the second one only calls for a research.
During the period of the late 15th — early 16th centuries the new fortification (it. “fortificazione аlla moderna”) was born. The event predestined the development of the fortification no less than for two centuries. At that time thick city walls and tall towers were replaced by thin curtinas and low bold platforms — the bastions that served for arrangement of batteries of artillery. Another important thing about the new fortification is that it implicated the perfect (from the Renaissance point of view) geometry, which meant the use of equilateral polygons as the base of their plan design. What is more, that perfection was about both pragmatism (engineering) and ideality — the two aspects that were bound up. That is verified by the material of the Renaissance treatises on architecture, fortification and mathematics (those by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Pietro Cataneo, Niccolo Tartaglia, Buonaiuto Lorini, Francesco de Marchi, Vincenzo Scamozzi, Galasso Alghisi and others).
Unlike the 17th–18th centuries, when the fortification became a sphere independent of the “civil” architecture, the Renaissance was the period when fortresses, villas, palazzo and churches were designed and build by the same architects who passionately studied the ancient ruins and Vitruvius at the same time. The paper deals with the relations that bound together the new fortification and the key problems of the architectural thought of the Italian Renaissance. Among them there are: the ideal city, the very Pythagorean attention to the problem of numerical relations that reveal the correlation of the micro- and macrocosm; the utopia of the Platonian ideal state; harmonic proportions. All these ideas formed the intellectual space that gave birth to the fortification “alla
moderna”.

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Elizaveta Titova

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow Kremlin Museums, Russia

Francesco Zorzi, also known as Francesco Giorgio Veneto (1460–1540) was an Italian Renaissance philosopher, theologian and humanist. He specialized in Greek and Hebrew, studied Bible and kabbalah and was in correspondence with Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.
In his first treatise De harmonia mundi Francesco Giorgio proposed an idea of the Universe created according to the universal system of proportion, which may be studied as laws of mathematics used by architects. According to Francesco Giorgio’s opinion, this proportion shall be repeated in architectural practice. He figured out himself the proportion of the interior of the temple San Francesco della Vigna in Venice rebuilt by Jacopo Sansovino and finished by Andrea Palladio.
Allegorical buildings reflecting the concept of ideal proportion appear in majority of philosophical and architectural treatises, such as Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by Francesco Colonna, Trattato di Architettura by Antonio Filarete and Da Pintura Antiga by Francisco de Hollanda.
We will analyze the development of the idea of “Universe as the ideal building” on the example of the treatise by Francesco Giorgio in the context of the architectural theory of Renaissance: we study architectural images, proposed by Francesco Giorgio; analyse system of proportions; review his architectural vocabulary. We study the original latin edition: Francesco Giorgio, De harmonia mundi totius cantica tria, Paris, A. Berthelin, 1545 of BNF, Paris, as well as the translation of Guy Le Fevre de La Boderie, Francesco Giorgio, L’Harmonie du monde, divisée en trois cantiques, Paris, 1578 of RSL, Moscow.

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Ekaterina Tarakanova

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia

The Mazzatosta Chapel in the Church Santa Maria della Verità is practically ignored in Russian historiography. Foreign studies on this chapel are focused on stylistic features of its paintings — this is one of the two known undoubted works of Lorenzo da Viterbo. Issues of the portrait presentation and correlation between the paintings’ subjects and contemporary developments of the master’s time are raised in several papers. However, Mazzatosta Chapel has never been examined as an integral artistic ensemble. In this research such approach is applied for the first time.
The monument was created at the end of the 1460s. Since that a unique leading idea of its decor program is the theme of the miracle, inspired by the fact of Madonna vision in the Church Santa Maria della Verità in 1446. Miracles are represented on the murals of Mazzatosta Chapel. This are the behavior of three-year-old Mary, running up the Temple steps and being admitted to the sanctum sanctorum, Joseph’s staff blooming up in his hands, Annunciation scene that was the first stage of God’s incarnation, the Adoration of the Child, and culmination — the Ascension of Our Lady; apostle Thomas’ desire to make sure himself in it returns us to the question of the miracle belief.
Artistic realization of Mazzatosta Chapel decor program has a number of formal features with distinct meanings. The sanctuary wall composition appears to be the axis of the mariologic cycle. Madonna’s image is presented three times on its vertical line. The core is an upper scene of the Ascension of Our Lady. One of the apostles — witnesses of this event — stands apart from the rest of the group. He could be perceived faced both to the chapel space (like a reasoner inviting a visitor to join miracle contemplation) and to the adjacent right wall (here, he is perceived as a participant of the scene of the Adoration of the Infant Jesus). Biphory, dissecting the right wall of the chapel, at certain time of day is projected on the opposite wall with a scene of the betrothal of Joseph and Mary on it; exactly along with this the figures of the main characters are illuminated with
sun light.

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