![]() ![]() Comparisons with similar frames in Florentine churches (surviving and documented) suggest that the V&A frame can be identified as an example of a particular category of monumental altar that was popular in the city in the decades around 1500. The frame's provenance remains obscure, but this article offers the first critical evaluation of the object based on first-hand examination. Its dimensions indicate that it would have housed a large altarpiece in one of the city's churches. The quality of the frame identifies it as the product of a leading Florentine sculpture workshop, possibly that of Giuliano da Sangallo at the end of the fifteenth century. In 1864 the V&A (then the South Kensington Museum) purchased a large marble altar frame from a dealer in Florence. Stylistic and iconographic analysis clarifies the relationship between the Badia cycle and its textual and pictorial sources to show how the murals served Gomezio’s institutional reforms by expressing themes crucial to the abbot and his monastic community. Benedict cycle was produced by two teams of artists, who included the documented, much-debated, and poorly understood Portuguese painter Giovanni di Consalvo. A review of documentary, circumstantial, and stylistic evidence suggests that the Life of St. Issues of architectural authorship are also addressed to question the validity of historians’ attempts to identify the cloister’s “architect.” Similarly, art historians have struggled with the authorship of the cloister’s murals. A discussion of the patron, Abbot Gomezio di Giovanni, explains how the cloister complex formed an integral part of his reform program initiated at the monastery in 1419. Analyzing the extant building fabric, documentary evidence - much published here for the first time, and other primary sources, this study aims to reconstruct the cloister’s fifteenth-century appearance and function. This dissertation examines the entire complex, remedying the artificial division between architectural and art history. A review of the literature demonstrates how previous studies of the Orange Cloister focus on issues of authorship, as historians have discussed either the cloister’s construction and responsible architect or its mural program and painter. Rather than its authorship, this investigation begins with questions of the mural program’s function and reception, creating a framework where issues of architectural setting, iconography, historical context, patronage, and style are integrated to present a more extensive and satisfying interpretation of the paintings. ![]() However, they survive as a rare example of progressive Florentine mural decoration painted during the decade following the death of Masaccio. Despite their position in one of the oldest and richest Florentine ecclesiastical institutions, these murals are not included in general surveys of Italian Renaissance painting for lack of an accepted author. ![]() Between 14, this cloister was built and decorated with mural paintings depicting the Life of St. ![]() This dissertation investigates the Orange Cloister of the Badia Fiorentina - a Benedictine abbey located in central Florence. If you enjoy this book, please help out the James Ackerman Award program by buying a copy, available here:, or through second party retailers. Winner of the James Ackerman Award in the History of Architecture. This book presents a rigorous new observation-based approach to an important but little studied area of architectural history with wide applicability. It furthermore uses proportional analysis as a form of historical evidence to shed new light on difficult questions of authorship and construction histories. In particular, this book provides an alternative understanding of medieval and Renaissance proportional systems in response to Rudolf Wittkower’s influential writings on this subject. The proportional analysis is continually explored in light of late medieval developments in mathematics and measuring systems, and in light of modern scholarly theories of proportion. Using Brunelleschi's basilicas of San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito as case studies, the author reveals multi-layered, late medieval proportional systems through his analysis of building measurements that he recorded from scaffolding, other observations of the built fabric, and a variety of documentary sources. Cohen challenges this and other longstanding preconceptions about proportional systems in the history of architecture. The notion that numerical proportional systems contribute to the serene, orderly appearance of the basilica of San Lorenzo has long stood as a virtual axiom of architectural history. ![]()
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