Beard of the Week XXXIV: Medieval Cloisters
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This week's beard belongs to Saint Peter Martyr, also known as Peter of Verona. Peter (1205–1252) became a Dominican Friar at the age of 16, apparently received into the order by Dominic himself. He was murdered on a road near Milan, Italy, by being first struck on the head with an ax then stabbed through the heart with a knife. (Giovanni Bellini's painting "The Murder of St. Peter the Martyr" is a suitably gruesome representation.) Thus, his iconographic representation tends to be on the violent side, as in this list describing his representations (source):
- Dominican holding a knife
- Dominican in a forest being stabbed
- Dominican with a gash across his head
- Dominican with a knife in his shoulder
- Dominican with a knife splitting his head
- Dominican with a large knife in his head
- Dominican with his finger on his lips
- Dominican with the Virgin and four female saints appearing to him
- Dominican writing "credo in unum deum" in the dust as he dies man with a knife in his head and a sword in his breast
As another representation, consider this statue, from a 16th-century Dominican church in Oaxaca, Mexico, showing Peter with the ax stuck in his head. This stained glass representation maintains the ax-in-head iconography, but is a little less graphic.
By comparison, the image at right is a relatively placid representation. He does seem to display the gash across his head, and he is holding a palm leaf, another common indicator. This is a work in marble by Giovanni di Balduccio known as "Relief with Saint Peter Martyr and Three Donors", created c. 1340. It currently belongs to the Metropolitan (New York) Museum of Art, in the Cloisters Collection. It is a moderately sized piece, 80 x 86 centimeters, originally part of a triptych. (The collection photograph was my source for the images at right; follow the link for a much larger version.)
When Bill and I were recently in New York we took a morning and visited The Cloisters, which was quite a treat. Located at the northernmost edge of Manhattan (the view southward of the George Washington Bridge was quite lovely), we followed directions and took the A train from 23rd street uptown to the 190th-street station. Some helpful, if slightly odd, young men helped us find the appropriate exit, which required using the elevators.* From there, we took a pleasant walk further north through Fort Tryon park, in which the museum sits.
It's an unusual museum to be sure. As the official site describes it,
The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe, was assembled from architectural elements, both domestic and religious, that date from the twelfth through the fifteenth century. The building and its cloistered gardens—located in Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan—are treasures in themselves, effectively part of the collection housed there.
There are at least four cloisters in the assemblage, several medieval halls, three chapels, and a small crypt. As mentioned, most of the museum's architectural elements are authentically medieval. Of particular note, we thought, each of the cloisters featured some fine examples of small columns around their perimeters. They reminded us so much of our visit to the cloisters of San Giovanni in Laterano (Basilica of St. John Lateran), in Rome. (I photographed the cloisters and columns here: one, two, three, and four.)
We added The Cloisters to our list of things to see because, when Bill originally asked me what kind of museums I'd prefer to see, I told him that my primary interests were modern art and medieval art. Even disallowing the building, itself a museum of medieval art and architecture, the collection on display at The Cloisters was magnificent and delightfully manageable. We spent perhaps 2 or 3 hours and felt like we'd managed a good examination of the collection without exhausting ourselves–nor feeling left wanting more.
By far the most famous part of the collection is "The Unicorn Tapestries", a series of large tapestries, displayed in one room, depicting a unicorn hunt. The most famous of these is "The Unicorn in Captivity", that familiar image of the unicorn trapped in a small, circular corral. Without a doubt they were lovely, and they drew crowds, but we found other treasures more to our taste.
In the lower level, in a series of rooms called "the Treasury", were the most precious and delicate parts of the collection. Here there were some beautiful pages from illuminated manuscripts protected from the light, goblets and altarware made of gold, silver, and adorned with gemstones, and similar pieces.
In a few spots throughout the building were various depictions, mostly carvings in wood, of Madonna-with-Child images. Some were surprisingly detached, while one we thought had a most remarkable expression on the virgin's face. We tend to think of Medieval art as backward, or undeveloped, or technically immature, but in fact it is none of these. Viewing this collection one comes to understand that there was technical mastery aplenty but that the Medieval artists saw the world differently.
But perhaps the most memorable piece for me was this relief of "Saint Peter Martyr and Three Donors"–and not just because I admired Peter's beard! It's a beautifully executed work, certainly, and I was surprised that a piece from this period would show such distinctly recognizable faces. In times and places not too distant from this work, faces tended to be more generic representations, but these faces all look like real, living, specific people.
I was also interested to see that the donors are represented, if you will, at life size, at least compared to Peter. We are quite used to seeing works from the period showing less important people (i.e., the donors of an apse mosaic compared to the saints depicted) shown as smaller than the main images as befits their status. I wondered whether this more democratic approach to sizing the personages was intended to tell us about Peter's humanity, or some similar message. Of course, there may have been no symbolic meaning at all. I was also amused to see that the artist included the hats of the donors, all doffed and lying on the ground at their knees.
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* One of the odd young men earnestly explained that one of the elevators only went up, and one only went down, but he'd see to it that we got the correct one.