Download PDF | (Yale Publications in the History of Art, 36) Charles B. McClendon - The Imperial Abbey of Farfa_ Architectural Currents of the Early Middle Ages-Yale University Press (1987).
338 Pages
Acknowledgments
This study has been facilitated by many individuals and institutions. First among them is Richard Krautheimer, who has served as my mentor in every sense of the word. He first suggested the topic to me as deserving of detailed investigation and has subsequently provided steadfast support, enthusiastic encouragement, and constructive criticism during every phase of my work. My special thanks go also to the monastic community of Farfa Abbey, especially to Father Stefano Baiocchi and the present abbot, Father Anselmo Bussoni, for the warm hospitality | have enjoyed over the years while working at Farfa. Without such generosity this study could never have been realized.
My initial research and sojourn in Rome during the academic years 1974 to 1976 were made possible by a Samuel H. Kress Art History Fellowship to the Bibliotheca Hertziana. Subsequent grants from the Kress Foundation have helped to cover the costs of fieldwork at the monastery and of the completion of the architectural drawings that form an integral part of this book. In this regard, | wish to express my gratitude to the Foundation's former executive vice-president, the late Mary M. Davis, and to the current president, Dr. Marilyn Perry, for their continued support of my work. While | was a Kress Fellow in Rome, the Bibliotheca Hertziana and its director, the late Wolfgang Lotz, provided the ideal conditions for me to carry out my research. Among the members of the staff, all of whom were most helpful, special mention must go to three resident architects who were instrumental in producing the survey drawings of the medieval abbey church at Farfa.
Claus-Christian Willems shared with me the demanding task of measuring and recording the remains of the building. Peter Haas and Gerhard Bergmann were responsible for minor modifications to the survey drawings and for all but one of the axonometric reconstructions. To them go my sincerest thanks for their patient and meticulous work. The resident photographer, Gabriele Fichera, provided several plate-negative photographs of the monumental east end of the abbey church that appear in this publication.
My dream of carrying out excavations of the medieval abbey at Farfa became a reality through the auspices of the British School at Rome and its former director, David Whitehouse, now chief curator of the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. In a dramatic demonstration of good faith, the British School organized and funded the first year of fieldwork in 1978, and Dr. Whitehouse has remained the driving force behind the excavation project ever since. In subsequent years, this work has received the generous support of a variety of additional funding sources, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the British Academy, and the Center for Field Research through its Earthwatch program. The permission to excavate was granted to the British School, over several seasons, first by Ing. Giovanni di Geso of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Ambientali ed Architettonici del Lazio and subsequently by Dr. Maria Luisa Veloccia Rinaldi of the Soprintendenza Archeologica del Lazio. The site supervisors, Peter Donaldson and Roberta Magnusson, helped to assure the success of the excavations in innumerable ways. To all the above go my heartfelt thanks.
Over the years, | have enjoyed the valuable advice of countless friends and colleagues, of whom only a few can be singled out for special mention. They are. Walter Cahn, Caecilia Davis-Weyer, Mario D'Onofrio, Judson Emerick, Creighton Gilbert, Katherine Kiefer, Joan Lloyd, John Mitchell, Valentino Pace, Cecil Striker, and Irmgard Voss. Bernhard Bischoff very kindly shared with me his unrivaled expertise on palaeographic matters. And Walter Horn has been a constant source of information and enthusiastic support.
A Morse Fellowship in the Humanities from Yale University, awarded for the academic year 1982—1983, allowed me the time and financial resources to prepare the manuscript for publication. During the same period, a grant-in-aid from the American Council of Learned Societies made it possible for me to inspect manuscripts in various European libraries that were relevant to my study of the Romanesque frescoes at Farfa. Similarly, an A. Whitney Griswold Faculty Research Grant from Yale enabled me to make a final inspection of the excavation site and the recovered artifacts. The architectural historian, Jean Bony, and the historian, Robert Brentano, renowned experts in their respective fields, were kind enough to read portions of an earlier draft of this text and to provide their detailed criticisms that in turn allowed me to avoid many pitfalls in fact and interpretation. Those errors that remain are entirely my own.
My thanks go to those at Yale University Press who have contributed to this publication: to George Hersey, editor of the Yale Publications in the History of Art Series; to Judy Metro, fine arts editor; and to Otto Bohlmann, who carefully edited the text. Also in New Haven, the architect Daniel Cecil prepared the maps and the final versions of the survey and reconstruction drawings of the abbey, the abbey church, and the excavations that appear in this volume. | cannot thank him enough for his expert draughtsmanship and his unwavering good humor. Another young architect, Keith Hudson, added some last-minute touches to these illustrations. And finally, my wife, Judith Calvert, has contributed to the completion of this study in ways beyond measure.
Introduction
‘Th. Benedictine abbey of Farfa was without question one of the great monasteries of Central Italy in the Middle Ages. Founded in the late seventh century through Lombard patronage, Farfa passed into Frankish hands with the conquests of Charlemagne and subsequently prospered under the protection and patronage of the Holy Roman Emperor until the Concordat of Worms in 1122. Its land holdings were extensive, and, as an important imperial establishment within a short distance of Rome (Map 1), the monastery often found itself at the center of events involving the empire and the papacy.
The importance of Farfa has long been recognized by historians, who have found its famous Register and Chronicle, both compiled ca. 1100 by the archivist Gregory of Catino, to be indispensable sources for the political, social, and economic history of medieval Italy. In contrast, the physical remains of the monastery itself have received little attention from historians of art and architecture, due in part to the fragmentary nature of the remains. Various archaeological investigations were initiated during the first decades of this century but for one reason or another were never completed. From 1959 to 1962, a restoration campaign by the Superintendency of the Monuments of Lazio (which is now the Soprintendenza per i Beni Ambientali ed Architettonici del Lazio) revealed more of the medieval church, but these discoveries were left largely unstudied. The historical significance of Farfa alone seemed to warrant a new examination of the material, and this study was first conceived to fulfill that goal.
My work began in 1974—1975 with a detailed examination of the visible remains of the medieval church, which resulted in a thorough photographic record and a series of survey drawings, rendered on a scale of 1:50. During this process, various phases in the building's construction became apparent; once established, these phases could be reconstructed and dated through historical, archaeological, and stylistic evidence. These results, in turn, permitted an assessment of the place of the Farfa abbey church in the overall development of medieval architecture. The primary purpose, then, has been to record and analyze this little-known medieval monument; moreover, in spite of the incomplete state of its remains, sufficient information exists to provide a detailed picture of the medieval abbey church and an understanding of the circumstances under which it was built.
A few words of explanation should be added. The extensive remains of fresco decoration in various parts of the abbey church will be considered here only insofar as they pertain to the building's history. The paintings will be described, their decorative programs reconstructed as much as possible, and an approximate date proposed on the basis of stylistic or historical evidence. A full stylistic and iconographic treatment, however, particularly of the Romanesque wall paintings in the base of the bell tower, goes beyond the scope of this architectural monograph. Such a study would necessarily involve not only a detailed technical examination of the paintings but also an extensive comparative analysis of manuscript illumination and other wall paintings in the region that would take us too far afield. Although | hope to complete such a project in the near future, my primary concern here will be to see how these paintings relate to their architectural setting.
Excavations at Farfa abbey were initiated in 1978, sponsored jointly by the British School at Rome and Yale University, with David Whitehouse, then director of the British School (now chief curator at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York), and myself serving as directors of the project. The area made available for investigation lay adjacent to the west end of the medieval abbey church and corresponds in size (40 X 40m. ) to almost one-sixth of the monastic site. By 1983, after six seasons of fieldwork, the remains of numerous medieval features had been uncovered, including a courtyard with paved walkways, several contingent structures, a subsidiary chapel, and numerous burials. Substantial evidence of pre- and post-medieval habitation was also found.
More limited seasons in 1984 and 1985 have helped to clarify these earlier findings. Preliminary reports of the excavations have appeared in the Italian journals Archeologia medievale and Archivio della societa romana di storia patria. A full analysis of the project together with specialized studies of the pottery, coins, glass, and human, animal, and botanical remains, will appear in the final report, now in preparation. The results of this extensive investigation can only be summarized here insofar as they pertain to the medieval monastic layout, and my analysis of the excavations should be viewed as preliminary while the wealth of archaeological data continues to be evaluated. Nevertheless, the major building phases of the monastery are clear and need to be seen in conjunction with the history of the medieval abbey church. My remarks are therefore addressed to those interested primarily in the history of architecture rather than medieval archaeology per se. In this way, the present volume should be seen both as a separate work, standing on its own merits, and as an eventual complement to the final excavation report.
This study is thus both limited and ambitious in scope. It is limited in that its concerns are predominantly architectural, and it is ambitious in its attempt to evaluate the significance of the various building phases of the abbey in the broader context of the architectural currents of the early Middle Ages. The remains of the medieval abbey at Farfa shed light on obscure yet pivotal moments in the development of medieval architecture as a whole. In addition, an attempt has been made to go beyond the analysis of forms in order to understand the function of various architectural features and the motivations behind their adoption. Here the extensive archaeological evidence, together with the historical record, help to provide the human factor that is all too often missing in studies concerned solely with the development of styles and building technology.
The book has been arranged in a form that as much as possible separates fact from interpretation. Thus the first three chapters provide the historical and archaeological information upon which this study is based, so that the reader can arrive at his or her own conclusions. Chapters 4—6, on the other hand, represent my own ordering of the material in a chronological sequence involving a comparative study of representative buildings in each period. Such a “synthetic approach’ is meant to place the achievements of the abbey of Farfa in their proper setting. Above all, I have tried to convey some sense of the creative dynamics involved in the development of architecture in Europe from the eighth through the eleventh centuries and the role Farfa may have played in this process.
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