Studies in the Imagery of Mercy in Late Medieval Italian Art. (Volumes I-Iii).

This study considers the concept of Mercy and four categories of images late medieval Italian artists employed to represent it. Chapter I introduces the art-historical material with a discussion of the anonymous Allegory of Mercy fresco of 1342 in the headquarters of the Misericordia and Bigallo Companies in Florence. This fresco is particularly significant because it includes aspects of each category and is, therefore, an early conflation of Marian and Christological images of Mercy. Chapter II describes European representations of the Corporal Works of Mercy predating the Florentine fresco and several later Italian series, so establishing the continuity of the type. Contemporary literary and theological works are discussed, demonstrating the pertinence of those biblical directives to late medieval society. Chapter III treats the historical and sociological context for performance of the Works, emphasizing the positive valuation of wealth used in a socially constructive manner. A discussion of Italian charitable foundations follows. Several representative institutions, including the Misericordia and Bigallo, are studied in detail. The Madonna of Mercy, the compositional model for the Bigallo Allegory, is discussed in Chapter IV, with special emphasis on its literary and artistic origins and its later popularity during periods of epidemic disease. Chapter V identifies the Nursing Madonna as another iconographic type signifying Mercy. Mercy was defined as the "lesser" component of Charity: love of man (including God's love for man) as distinguished from love of God. Logically, then, the human act of the Virgin suckling her Son came to signify this "human" aspect of Charity. Moreover, following a common metaphor describing merciful behavior, the personified Virtue Charity both in the upper border of the Bigallo fresco and elsewhere appears as a nursing mother. In certain cases, Italian artists used the similar Nursing Madonna and breast-feeding Charity types interchangeably. Chapter VI deals with images of the wounded Christ, especially in combination with one of the two Madonna types. Christ's sacrifice made possible His fellow man's salvation, provided that man helps his neighbor. The allegorical Pelican in Her Piety and the symbolic letter Tau, both present in the Allegory of Mercy, were traditional substitutes for representations of the wounded, merciful Christ.PhDFine artsUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/159593/1/8324230.pd