Publication details
High cultures e low cultures visualizzate: le metamorfosi del “Sacro Catino” di Genova tra temi cavallereschi e miti di fondazione
| Title in English | High cultures and low cultures visualized: the metamorphoses of Genoa's "Sacred Basin" between chivalric themes and foundation myths |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Eikon / Imago |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | full volume |
| Keywords | Sacred Basin; Genoa, Arthurian Literature; Jacopo da Varazze |
| Description | The "Sacred Basin," an exotic object that arrived in Genoa around 1100, received various identifications between the 12th and 13th centuries: from marvelous artifact to holy grail, relic of the Passion. Analyzing the identifications of the basin in the light of dialogue with the literary world, this essay investigates the transformation of exclusive and complex themes into elements of city memory. The article first focuses on the appropriation of the Grail motif, and shows how precisely the visual treatment the theme receives in Arthurian novels makes this literature the ideal vehicle for identifying the basin with the Grail and thus visualizing Eucharistic dogmas and mysteries. The second part examines the place where the cathin-Grail association is fixed, the Chronica of the Archbishop of Genoa Jacopo da Varagine, and describes how this work is at the origin of the construction of a monumental setting dedicated to Genoese foundation myths that finds a place in the cathedral and in which the cathin also participates. The basin is thus involved in a circular relationship between literature traditionally intended for the few and the monumentalization of literary themes, and at the same time it is visual and tangible evidence of strategies that exploit the gradation of high and low cultural planes for the construction of collective memory. |