| It is commonly held that the Crucifixion, the most characteristic and conservative of Christian images, is transformed in Italy during the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance from an icon into a dramatic narrative. This study assesses this view through an examination of (1) the pictorial means used by Renaissance painters to represent the Crucifixion as an illusion of fact and (2) the impact of the theme's traditional modes and conventions, both mimetic and non-mimetic, on Renaissance invention. The development of the narrative Crucifixion is marked by continuity and change that is responsive to the subject's twofold nature as symbol and history. The Renaissance painter's achievement ultimately rests on the balancing of inherited structures, professional challenges, and personal vision.;Chapters 1 and 2 deal with the continuity of pre-Renaissance conventions and focus on selected aspects of place, architectural and landscape backgrounds, respectively. Chapter 3 examines the crowded Calvary of the trecento and links it to the emergence of a fuller vision of place: the development of the hill of Golgotha and the expanded background in which elements of architecture and landscape are fused for the first time. Chapter 4 is devoted to the nine Crucifixion drawings of Jacopo Bellini, a unique group ranging from simple icons to panoramic spectacles that is contained in his drawing albums in London and Paris. Jacopo's drawings evidence the importance of pictorial theory and practice in the formation of the Renaissance Crucifixion. Chapter 5 concerns the role of iconic and narrative modes in the Crucifixions of Jacopo's heirs, Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini. An epilogue, finally, gives brief attention to an untraditional narrative structure pioneered by Jacopo, the oblique Crucifixion, in sixteenth-century Venice. |
