Integrating Poetry: An incorporative approach to documentary and visual evidence of the Dominican reception of ancient and vernacular poetry in Santa Maria Novella (14th century)

• Grant number: 24/03436-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: August 28, 2024
• End date: February 27, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Maria Cristina Correia Leandro Pereira
• Grantee: Bruno dos Santos Menegatti
• Supervisor: Rebecca Bowen
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Kunsthistorisches Institut In Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut, Italy
• Associated to the scholarship: 22/14026-0 - Christianizations of Classical Antiquity: historicities of the mural painting of Hell in the Strozzi di Mantova Chapel (c. 1350-1357), BP.MS

Abstract

This research internship abroad aims to map and analyze textual and visual evidence of the reception and circulation of ancient, vernacular, or non-Christian poetic works among the Dominican friars of the convent and church of Santa Maria Novella in the 14th century. The most notable example is the painting of Inferno in the Cappella Strozzi di Mantova, which is part of the cycle of frescoes of the Last Judgment and was created by Dominicans for the site in the 1350s. This painting has been interpreted for centuries as the most faithful representation of Dante's Inferno from that period, often understood more as an illustration of the poem than as ornamental part of the chapel. Such an interpretation reinforced a decontextualized view of its entire ornamental ensemble, Dominican theological thought, and the social context of the time that made it possible. The objective of this project is to investigate, on the one hand, the visual and material cultures that constituted the ornamentation of Santa Maria Novella in the 14th century, and, on the other hand, textual sources written by Dominican friars during the same period. The investigation will encompass, in an incorporative approach, a range of materials (including paintings, frescoes, reliefs, sculptures, manuscript illuminations, as well as Dominican constitutions, chronicles, contracts, sermons, and works of friars dating back to the 14th century) that provide evidence of friars' reflections and appropriations of ancient, vernacular, or pagan poetry to explain how such literary works were censured or visually employed conveying admonitory and homiletical messages, as well as in shaping their theological interpretations.