Accompanying an exhibition at the Frist Art Museum, this lavishly
illustrated catalogue is the first major study in English about
manuscript illumination, painting, and sculpture in the northern
Italian city of Bologna between the years 1200 and 1400. By
focusing on Bologna, Europe's first university city, this
publication aims to expand our understanding of art and its
purposes in the medieval world. Universities are a medieval
invention, and Bologna has the distinction of having the oldest one
in Europe. Its origins have been traced to the late 11th century,
when masters and students started gathering in the city to study
Roman law. The academic setting gave rise to Bologna's unique
artistic culture. Professors enjoyed high social status and were
buried in impressive tombs carved with classroom scenes. Most
importantly, teachers and students created a tremendous demand for
books. By the mid-13th century, the city had become the preeminent
center for manuscript production in Italy. Most books were made
outside traditional monastic scriptoria, within a revolutionary
commercial system involving stationers, parchment makers, scribes,
illuminators, and clients. A new style of script, called the
littera Bononiensis, distinguished Bolognese books, and the city's
illuminators were celebrated in Dante's Divine Comedy. The legal
textbooks produced in great numbers in the city are remarkable for
their heft and size. In addition to illuminations, which include
colorful narrative scenes, these manuscripts often contain in their
margins the notes, corrections, and doodles of their original
owners. The seven essays in this publication - by academics, a
conservator, curators, and a museum educator - create a rich
context for the nearly seventy works of art in the exhibition,
which are drawn primarily from American libraries, museums, and
private collections. Many of these works have never been studied in
depth or published before. The authors explore medieval Bologna -
its porticoed streets, towers, communal buildings, main piazza, and
mendicant churches - and how the city became a center for higher
learning at the end of the Middle Ages. They describe the way books
were made there, including identifying the pigments used by
illuminators. The authors also discuss the illustrious foreign
artists called to work in the city, most notably Cimabue and
Giotto; the devastating impact of the Black Death; and the
political resurgence of Bologna at the end of the 14th century that
led to the construction of the Basilica of San Petronio, one of the
largest churches in the world, in honor of the city's patron saint.
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