Publication details
Germigny-des-Prés, il santo Sepolcro e la Gerusalemme Celeste
| Title in English | Germigny-des-Prés, the Holy Sepulchre and the Heavenly Jerusalem |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | This speech is dedicated to one of the most widely-studied monuments on the high medieval landscape, the palatine chapel of Germigny-des-Prés, commissioned by Theodulf (755-821), bishop of Orléans. After years in which criticism has dealt primarily with its specific aspects, the ambition of this speech is to propose an iconological reading around the whole monument. First, an analysis of the architecture, stuccos and mosaics will be presented in order to determine their origins. With all the necessary precautions – given the absence of similar monuments – a consideration of the building the work of a local workshop will be proposed. Second, the building will be read as a meditation on the mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ. This interpretation is, first of all, based on the image of the apse, interpreted as an open and empty ark, a visual allusion to the empty sepulchre of Christ. Because of its form, function and decorations, the group together can be considered, to begin with, a visual echo of paradise. That first idea is then overlapped by the idea of a heavenly Holy Sepulchre. This relationship is not, in this case, mediated by a direct reference to the building of Jerusalem, but rather through the church of Pharos – palatine chapel of the Byzantine emperors and “Holy Sepulchre” of Constantinople. This thesis appears to be sustained in another of its probable receptions on the Carolingian panorama: the first Saint Mark of Venice and palatine chapel of the doges. To this reading a further layer can be added by contemplating the visual similarity between the ark of the apse of Germigny and golden Carolingian reliquary-altars. This visual overlap perhaps alludes to the ark as ideal prefiguration of the reliquary, but also as image of the sacrificial altar of Christ. |
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