ALTARPIECES AND AGENCY: THE ALTARPIECE OF THE SOCIETY OF THE PURIFICATION AND ITS ‘INVISIBLE SKEIN...

1.1 Benozzo Gozzoli, The Virgin and Child Enthroned among Angels and Saints, commissioned 1461. Tempera and

gold on panel, 162 � 170 cm. London: The National Gallery. Photo: The National Gallery.

A L TA R P I E C E S A N D A G E N C Y

& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2005

ALTARPIECES AND AGENCY: THE ALTARPIECE

OF THE SOCIETY OF THE PURIFICATION AND

ITS ‘INVISIBLE SKEIN OF RELATIONS’

M I C H E L L E O ’ M A L L E Y

In 1461 the Florentine Confraternity of the Purification and St Zenobius com-

missioned from Benozzo Gozzoli an altarpiece depicting the Virgin and Child

enthroned among angels and saints, now called the Purification altarpiece (plate

1.1). As one of the few groups organized to guide the religious devotions and good

works of the young men of Florence, the confraternity had a particularly large

membership. This, and its support from both the Medici family and the Domin-

ican friars at San Marco, made it a central institution of the city, with connections

to a number of individuals and other organizations.1

Much of what is known about the confraternity and its altarpiece has long

been established, largely through Diane Cole Ahl’s sensitive work on the altar-

piece in her book on Benozzo Gozzoli and the thorough research on the Con-

fraternity of the Purification recently undertaken by Ahl and others, particularly

Lorenzo Polizzotto, and this paper will not add data to the scholarship on the

work and its patrons.2 Instead, it will analyse the commissioning of the altarpiece

with regard to its operation within a group of social connections, drawing on the

concept of agency developed by Alfred Gell in his compelling book on the anth-

ropology of art.3 The paper will focus on a single work, but its aim is to examine

new issues concerning the active function of Renaissance altarpieces in social

contexts.4 By arguing that the Purification altarpiece came into being and took

on its distinctive appearance precisely because of the social relationships within

which the confraternity was situated, it will demonstrate how commissions

generated by those with wide social connections created objects that helped to

embed the social needs of the commissioning body in a web of obligations across

social life.

The study of patronage as an energetic act with a profound impact on the

significance of a work of art has long been a focus of the study of art history, and

patronage studies have been fundamental for elucidating a central aspect of the

ART HISTORY . ISSN 0141-6790 . VOL 28 NO 4 . SEPTEMBER 2005 pp 417–441& Association of Art Historians 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 4179600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

meaning of works of art, including altarpieces. Similarly, the approaches of pol-

itical, cultural and social history to the study of works of art have clarified the

intersection between Renaissance works and the political, familial and commu-

nal or court life of the period.5 However, while creating important structures for

understanding aspects of works of art, these methodologies present the works

themselves as symbolic rather than dynamic. Considering the work of art as an

organizing entity offers a new perspective for comprehending the creation of

works of art. This perspective has been explored by Hans Belting, who has argued

cogently that the icon, or the image of an individual sacred figure, operated in

society as a locus of power with immense and concrete force.6 However, for

Belting this force derived solely from the direct association of the icon with the

sacred figure depicted, and Belting does not trace how images enacted their

power in a wide social context, nor does he discuss in much detail how the be-

holder and the object interacted. In his paradigm neither the maker (whether

considered as the patron or as the painter) nor the reasons for instigating a work

are significant. In contrast, in Gell’s concept of agency the fundamental question

is ‘why does this work of art exist?’ To establish an answer, Gell articulates a

variety of active and practical roles that art objects play for people, and he con-

templates the many kinds of relationships that cause their creation.7 Groups,

individuals and works of art themselves can operate as agents for the production

of new works, and the art object, in turn, has direct agency in particular rel-

ationships. It causes things to happen. For Gell, art is ‘a system of action intended

to change the world’, and he argues that art can behave in this way because the

attachments that people form to works of art also attach those people to the

social projects in which the works are entailed.8 The theory offers a system of

analysis for positioning works of art as active entities brought into being with

social missions.

Gell’s discussion centres largely on non-Western decorative objects and Wes-

tern post-eighteenth-century works, with a few references to Leonardo and Mi-

chelangelo. Nevertheless, his paradigm is useful for understanding an earlier field

of works and other classes of objects. It is especially resonant for Renaissance

culture. In particular, Gell’s characterization of an African nail fetish (nkisi, see

plate 1.8) as ‘the visible knot that ties together an invisible skein of relations,

fanning out into social space and social time’ is an apt way to describe an altarpiece

made in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.9 Renaissance altarpieces

were remarkably similar to nail fetishes as active centres of sets of associations;

they were created precisely because of specific religious, social and political ties.

Thus, considering altarpieces in this way, in terms of the relationships in which

they were embedded, helps to illuminate the genesis of specific altarpieces and to

clarify the functions they undertook in their specific cultural environments.

Taking the Purification altarpiece as a case study, this paper will explore the

idea of agency in regard to a network of relationships knotted around the Con-

fraternity of the Purification and St Zenobius. In the first section the paper will


418 & ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2005

consider the confraternity and examine the variety and tangled nature of its

relationships. These included religious, social, political, civic, patronal, artistic

and architectural alliances. The altarpiece commissioned by the group drew tog-

ether its associations with the Virgin, the Medici family, the Order of the Ob-

servant Dominicans, the citizens of Florence and the painters Fra Angelico and

Benozzo Gozzoli. In the second section of the paper the altarpiece will be located

as the index or product of these relationships. The social efficacy of the work itself

will be investigated in the final section.

T H E C O N F R AT E R N I T Y O F T H E P U R I F I C AT I O N A N D S T Z E N OB I U S

The confraternity that commissioned the Purification altarpiece was founded in

1427 when a group of youths separated from an already oversubscribed sodality of

young men. The boys formed a new society, dedicated to the Virgin of the Pur-

ification, to whom the cathedral of Florence was consecrated. This made clear the

confraternity’s fundamental relationship with the Mother of God.

Confraternities, both of youths and of adults, were a central part of the re-

ligious and social life of a Renaissance city.10 Most were associations of lay people

who came together principally to pray and to undertake pious works. Adult

groups might also undertake civic functions, such as the organization of citywide

celebrations, or the provision of major public decorative programmes. Con-

fraternities were officially incorporated bodies; they drew up statutes, elected

officers, collected dues, and often put into place mechanisms for providing for the

social welfare of their members. Many confraternities drew together people who

worked in the same profession or lived in the same neighbourhood, and in this

way they induced social cohesion. This was the case with the Confraternity of the

Purification. At its inception, most of the members were young men between the

ages of twelve and eighteen who were recently qualified artisans, apprentices and

workshop assistants.11 Many of the confratelli were in the cloth trade and, prob-

ably for this reason, the first guardian of the new confraternity was a cloth-

shearer. The sodality also included a handful of richer and some poorer boys, and

thus seems to have had a composition that more or less reflected all levels of

Florentine society. The confraternity met weekly to pray, hear Mass and enact

religious plays. These activities were mainly undertaken in private; in the early

years most of the plays were dramatized for the benefit of the group itself and

were not normally open to the public.

The Confraternity of the Purification was among only four societies sanctioned

for the youth of Florence by Pope Eugenius IV in a bull of 1442.12 In 1444, partly in

response to this, the group draw up new statutes.13 At the same time the ded-

ication of the confraternity was altered. In addition to its commitment to the

Virgin of the Purification, the group also devoted itself to St Zenobius, one of the

patron saints of Florence.14 This dual dedication associated the group strongly

with the core religious values of Florence itself. The pope’s support was continued

by Fra Antonino Pierozzi (later canonized as St Antoninus), the Archbishop of


419& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2005

Florence from 1446 to1459. Antoninus was a reformer dedicated to the reassertion

of the ecclesiastical leadership of lay religious life. Before serving as bishop of the

city, he had been the prior of the Florentine convent of the Observant Dominicans

(1436–1444) and had also held the position of vicar-general of the Observant Dom-

inicans in Italy (1432/37–c. 1446). In 1448, as Archbishop, he personally signed the

statutes of the confraternity, clearly indicating his endorsement of the society.

Before this official sanction and soon after its incorporation, the confraternity

became associated with two major institutions within Florence. The first was the

Medici family.15 While Cosimo de’ Medici, the patriarch of the family, seems to have

showed little interest in the group when it was first established, he placed the seven-

year-old confraternity under his protection when he returned to the city in 1434

after a brief period of exile. It is not known exactly why the society attracted Cos-

imo’s interest. The Medici sons did not belong to this confraternity but to the youth

Confraternity of St John the Evangelist.16 However, at this time the Purification

membership was largely drawn from the local neighbourhoods that supported the

Medici, and the confraternity met at the Hospital of San Matteo, premises that were

very close to the Medici palace.17 Lorenzo Polizzotto contends that these factors

induced Cosimo’s attention to the society, arguing that Cosimo supported the

group because he recognized the benefits of politicking at the grassroots level.18

The second of the confraternity’s institutional associations was with the Dom-

inicans at the Florentine convent of San Marco. To follow this aspect of the con-

fraternity’s fortunes, it is essential to note that at the same time that Cosimo was

undertaking the patronage of the youth group, he also associated himself with

the Florentine Order of the reformed Observant Dominicans, backing the friars in

their struggle for ownership of the convent of San Marco. The community was

seeking to relocate from the convent of San Domenico in Fiesole to Florentine

premises. With Cosimo’s support, the Dominicans’ campaign was successful and

in the late 1430s the order took over the church and buildings dedicated to St

Mark.19 Again, it is not known why Cosimo was interested in the Dominicans, but

his reasons may have been similar to those that influenced his attention to the

confraternity. The convent of San Marco was located in the neighbourhood of

Medici supporters. Indeed, it stood on the same square as the hospital at which

the confraternity met, and this square was located at the end of the street on

which stood the Medici palace.20 Once the convent had been allocated to the

Dominicans, Cosimo continued his patronage. He renovated it for the friars at

great expense, erecting new living areas, constructing a magnificent library, and

dedicating one of the cells to his own use.21 In addition, he built within the

convent a substantial meeting place for the Confraternity of the Purification. This

was unusual; few youth confraternities owned their own premises.22

During this period of interaction with Cosimo de’Medici and negotiating for

and taking up residency in San Marco, the Dominicans were under the direct

leadership of Antoninus. While the money behind the project certainly came from

Cosimo, Antoninus’s particular dedication to the reinforcement of the clerical



direction of lay religious life was undoubtedly equally central for the provision of

space for the confraternity within the convent’s walls. The confraternity seems to

have been housed with the Order precisely because of the confluence of the in-

terests of Cosimo and the Observant Dominicans themselves.23

In setting up the confraternity’s new meeting space, Cosimo was very gen-

erous. He provided a large oratory (or meeting place) for the young men, with

three rooms: an entrance area, called the chapel, a huge central room (22 m long),

which the group called its corpus, and a sacristy (plate 1.2).24 When Cosimo turned

the premises over to the confraternity in 1444, he also donated a painted panel of

SS. Cosmas and Damian, the patron saints of the Medici family. The panel (now

lost), described as old and unframed, was set up in the chapel.25 This did not

conclude Cosimo’s support, however; he continued his association with the

confraternity over subsequent years.

This brief precis of the confraternity’s history makes it clear that the society’s

social relationships were numerous, specific and ongoing. It had a primary rel-

ationship with the Virgin, as did many confraternities, but its associations with

the city of Florence, the Dominicans and the Medici were more particular. The

history of the group over the next several years is unremarkable: the boys con-

tinued to meet, hear Mass and enact religious dramas. In 1458 the confraternity,

1.2 Reconstruction of the

residence of the Society of the

Purification, its position and

that of the other confraternities

at San Marco, Florence,

1444–1506. Drawing: Theresa

Flanigan. Photo: Ann Matchette

and Theresa Flanigan.



in common with all such societies in Florence, was suppressed by the commune

of Florence. The decree was made in the interests of the Medici. It had to do with

political developments in the city and was an attempt to avoid sedition – by

preventing meetings of any kind. In January 1461 this ban was lifted, and later

that year the confraternity commissioned a new altarpiece.

This altarpiece, the altarpiece of the Purification, was generated by the civic,

sacred, religious and political relationships of the confraternity. In turn, the al-

tarpiece itself had a causal impact on these connections; it solidified and sus-

tained the group’s associations.

R E L AT I O N S H I P S A N D A G E N C Y

Perhaps the primary association inducing the production of the altarpiece was

the confraternity’s connection to the Virgin. This bond may not, at first glance,

seem like a social relationship, but while devotion to the Virgin was an article of

faith whose purpose and depth cannot be plumbed, it had the character of a

social relationship. It was certainly couched as a reciprocal association, in which

the boys of the confraternity offered devotion and worship, and in return the

Virgin gave protection and intercession. When it was formed in 1427, the Con-

fraternity of the Purification had been given an old altarpiece by its parent

company. This altarpiece is now lost; there is no record of its subject but it dep-

icted the Misericordia and the Nativity and was established on the altar of the

oratory from 1444.26 Commissioning a new altarpiece, however, was a way for the

group to embody directly its piety to the Virgin. This was not an unusual un-

dertaking: to venerate a sacred figure and to proclaim devotion are often the

reasons given for commissioning an altarpiece in contracts and other documents

of the period. Nonetheless, the centrality of this motivation makes the Virgin the

primary agent for the production of the Purification altarpiece, as, indeed, she

was for most fourteenth- and fifteenth-century altarpieces.

The operation of this system of agency can be illustrated visually. To de-

monstrate his ideas, Gell devised a schematic system that makes immediately

apparent both the relationships within which a work was embedded and the force

that these relationships had upon it. That system is used here because it offers art

historians a concise means to represent the impact of relationships and to vi-

sualize simultaneously the complicated networks of relationships that exercised

agency for the creation of new works. In Gell’s paradigm, arrows stand for action.

Here black arrows (-) represent the work of primary agents, who directly cause

the creation of a work of art. Arrows in outline ( ) show the work of secondary

agents. Commonly secondary agents act upon the primary agent, but the primary

agent may also act upon a secondary agent, who takes some action upon the work

of art. Secondary agents appear in brackets, but primary agents are never enclosed

in brackets. They stand alone. The object or index of the action, that is, the thing

created by the agent, also stands alone. Thus, the relationship between the Virgin



and the altarpiece, demonstrating that the Virgin caused the Purification altar-

piece, is expressed:

Virgin-Purification altarpiece

Without the fundamental relationship between the Virgin and the confraternity,

there would have been no reason at all for the altarpiece to exist, and it is worth

remembering this as less divine causes for the creation of the work are explored.

It may seem that the direct agent on earth for the creation of the altarpiece

was the painter: Benozzo Gozzoli. However, Renaissance altarpieces of the size

and specificity of the Purification altarpiece were not made for speculative sale,

and the work could only have been created by Benozzo once he had been formally

hired and specifically instructed about the details of its appearance. Benozzo was,

therefore, a secondary agent; the primary earthly agent for the work was not the

painter but the youth group that commissioned the altarpiece: the Confraternity

of the Purification.27 The group caused the work to come into being, and the

following diagram illustrates that act.

confraternity-Purification altarpiece

A more precise way of outlining the creation of the altarpiece, however, to

show that the confraternity generated the work by instructing the painter, is with

the following diagram:

confraternity-[Benozzo ] Purification altarpiece

Despite his subsidiary role as an agent, the painter’s own associations almost

certainly played a part in his being chosen to produce the new work. Benozzo had

strong connections both to the Observant Dominicans of Florence and to Cosimo

de’ Medici, and these echoed the confraternity’s own direct links both to the

Dominicans and to the Medici family. Benozzo had been trained by the Domini-

can painter Fra Angelico, who had been the prior of the Observant Order in Fie-

sole, just before the friars moved to San Marco.28 Furthermore, Benozzo worked

with Fra Angelico when the friar undertook to decorate the newly acquired

convent of San Marco. In the convent, Benozzo painted the fresco of the Adoration

of the Magi in the cell that Cosimo had created for his own use.29 In 1459 Cosimo

commissioned Benozzo to paint the chapel in the Medici palace, and this means

that when, in 1461, the confraternity hired Benozzo, he had just completed the

sumptuous murals of the journey of the Magi for the Medici family (plate 1.3).

Indeed, it may be that Cosimo proposed Benozzo to the group.30 So while the

confraternity was the primary agent for the work, it hired a painter whose net-

work of relationships reinforced its own social connections in Florence. This

complicates the diagram of the associations that generated the altarpiece:



{[ Fra Angelico Dominicans] [Fra Angelico Benozzo] [Medici

Benozzo]} confraternity-[Benozzo ] Purification altarpiece

Here, Fra Angelico led the Dominicans, Fra Angelico trained Benozzo, and the

Medici hired Benozzo; all these associations had an impact upon the con-

fraternity, which hired Benozzo, who painted the altarpiece. This very long ex-

pression demonstrates a variety of entangled acts of agency, each of which had

direct effect upon the confraternity, which itself acted upon the painter to cause

the creation of the altarpiece.

Furthermore, the importance of the Medici and the Dominicans in the crea-

tion of the work was not restricted to their place in the painter’s career. Their

1.3 Photograph of the east wall of the Chapel in the Palazzo Medici-

Riccardi, Florence, showing Benozzo Gozzoli’s fresco of The Journey of the

Magi, 1459. Photo: The Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art.



causal impact within the wide web of relationships central to the confraternity

itself was made especially apparent because the confraternity chose to model its

new altarpiece on one that already existed. This was the altarpiece on the high

altar of San Marco, the church of the Dominican convent (plate 1.4).

The altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with Saints, now commonly called the

San Marco altarpiece, had been painted for the convent c. 1440 by Fra Angelico,

Benozzo’s master. Benozzo’s contract, using the terms modo et forma and simili-

tudine, specifically required him to make certain aspects of the confraternity’s

altarpiece resemble those in Fra Angelico’s work. These aspects included the

throne of the Madonna and elements called ornamenti. ‘Ornamenti’ is a complicated

term with several meanings, though here it probably referred to the background of

the picture and to the carved frame of the altarpiece.31 The contract reads: ‘First,

1.4 Fra Angelico, Virgin and Child Enthroned among Angels and Saints (San Marco altarpiece),

commissioned c. 1440. Tempera and gold on panel, 220 � 227 cm. Florence: Museo di San Marco.

Photo: Index, Florence. Photograph by Orsi Battaglini.



in the middle of the said altarpiece, the figure of Our Lady, with the throne in the

manner and form [of] and with ornamenti like and similar to [that of] the altarpiece

of the high altar of San Marco in Florence’.32 In addition, Benozzo was to paint six

saints, described in a very detailed subject clause, in which the figures, their at-

tributes and their positions in the composition are described and whether they are

to be kneeling or standing is noted.33 This clause does not mention the San Marco

altarpiece, but the description makes it clear that the figures, while fewer in

number than on Fra Angelico’s panel, were to be arranged in a similar manner.34

The Madonna, enthroned in the centre of the panel, the background details of

tapestry and trees, and probably the antique-style woodwork were required by the

contract terms, but the confraternity must also have communicated a desire for

the whole arrangement of the panel to echo the composition of the earlier work

because the visual association between the altarpieces is strong. In each, the

Madonna is enthroned and surrounded by angels; the saints stand in front of a

tapestry that conceals part of a landscape; two of the saints kneel before the Ma-

donna and Child in adoration; and the haloes of the figures are labelled with their

names. But there are also striking differences. The San Marco Madonna is seated in

a carpeted space and she is placed back from the picture plane, remote not only

from the viewer, but also from the saints. Benozzo pushed the figures to the front of

the picture plane, which makes the society’s Madonna more accessible both to the

viewer and to the depicted saints. The new composition is less spacious than that of

the older work; there is no graceful forest retreating to the edge of a sea and only

the tops of trees are visible above the fabric stretched behind the figural group.

These differences were simply part of Benozzo’s approach to painting the subject

and they suggest that the painter was particularly attuned to the fact that the

altarpiece was to serve the spiritual needs of young men and endeavoured to create

an image with which the youths could engage. Nonetheless, the similarities are

strong enough to make the connections between the works immediately apparent.

In fifteenth-century Italy the use of a model by a commissioning body to in-

dicate the subject matter of a proposed work of art was unusual. Italian clients were

much more interested in innovation than they were in repetition and reproduction;

this means that models were used for subject matter mainly in cases in which a

client specifically wanted to underline an association with the owners of an existing

work.35 Indeed, it is significant that the confraternity’s contract refers to the model

as the altarpiece ‘of the high altar of San Marco in Florence’, not as the altarpiece by

Fra Angelico at San Marco, even though the authorship of the Dominicans’ altar-

piece was well known in Florence. This locution emphasizes the importance of the

location and ownership of the model for the generation of the new altarpiece.

By stipulating that the Purification altarpiece should be similar to the one

painted for the convent’s high altar, and by hiring a disciple of the Dominican

painter of the model, the confraternity was proclaiming and reinforcing its

connection to the Dominicans of San Marco. At the same time, the members were

honouring the spiritual patronage given to them by the friars, who were their



models in religious life. In its choice of prototype, the confraternity made clear

the agency of the Dominicans in the making of the new altarpiece. A simple

diagram of the association looks like this:

[Dominicans San Marco altarpiece] confraternity-[Benozzo ]

Purification altarpiece

The San Marco altarpiece was not, however, associated solely with the Domini-

cans. It was also closely connected with the Medici. Or, more precisely, the al-

tarpiece was associated with the Dominicans and with the Medici in terms of its

artist and appearance, and then again with those two bodies in the course of its

use. This dual association was especially important to the confraternity. In the

first instance the connection with the Medici had to do with patronage. Cosimo

de’ Medici had hired Fra Angelico to paint the altarpiece for the Dominicans

when he renovated the convent for their use. Cosimo obviously generated the San

Marco altarpiece and it was consecrated in a very public ceremony on 6 January

1443 that celebrated his agency.36 In choosing the altarpiece on the Dominicans’

altar as a model, therefore, the confraternity was also choosing well-recognized

evidence of Cosimo’s benefaction. By making their altarpiece ‘like’ the San Marco

altarpiece, the youths of the confraternity were drawing attention to the agency

of Cosimo in their own society. This was a living memory for the group, even

twenty years after Cosimo had built their premises. Over that period the members

had prayed for Cosimo at every meeting, and Ahl notes that ‘until the end of the

fifteenth century, the confraternity was associated indelibly’ with the Medici.37

Thus the choice of prototype not only indicated Dominican agency; it also drew

attention to Medici agency in the making of the confraternity’s new altarpiece.38

Ordering a work of art was not novel for the confraternity; the group had been

commissioning art objects from the late 1440s.39 No records survive to document

why the group decided to go ahead with the commission of a new altarpiece in

1461, but the timing of the commission suggests that the confraternity wanted

specifically to proclaim its association with the Medici and its support for the

family after the period of banned meetings. With this commission, the con-

fraternity made clear its political associations. A simple diagram of Medici effi-

cacy mirrors that for Dominican agency:

[Medici San Marco altarpiece] confraternity-[Benozzo ] Purification

altarpiece

However, the associations among the Medici, the Dominicans, the confraternity

and the painter were not simple and individual as the foregoing diagrams imply.

Instead, they were entangled and overlapping. Furthermore, the agency of the

Virgin and that of the city were central to the making of the work. A more precise

diagram, suggested by the following, illustrates these complicated relationships:



[Virgin ] [Florence ]

{[ Fra Angelico Dominicans] [Fra Angelico Benozzo] [Medici Benozzo]}

{[Medici Dominicans] [Dominicans Fra Angelico] [Medici Fra Angelico]}

{[Fra Angelico San Marco altarpiece] [Fra Angelico San Marco altarpiece]}

confraternity - [Benozzo ] Purification altarpiece

This indicates the strands of agency related to the support of the confraternity,

beginning with the Virgin and the city. It also shows the individual associations

that caused the choice of Benozzo Gozzoli to paint the altarpiece (Fra Angelico

led the Dominicans, Fra Angelico trained Benozzo, the Medici hired Benozzo), and

the knotted associations that had an impact upon the proposing of Fra Angelico’s

altarpiece as a prototype for the Purification altarpiece (the Medici supported the

Dominicans, the Dominicans inspired Fra Angelico, the Medici hired Fra Angel-

ico, Fra Angelico painted the San Marco altarpiece, the Dominicans prayed before

the San Marco altarpiece). These associations caused the confraternity to hire

Benozzo to paint the Purification altarpiece.

A further point is that these entwined relationships among the Medici family,

the Order of the Dominicans, the confraternity and the two altarpieces were not

static; they were periodically enacted in the use of both the old and the new

altarpieces. The associations among the Medici, the Dominicans and the San

Marco altarpiece were highlighted by the celebration of the feast of the Magi,

which took place in Florence irregularly, but certainly once every three to five

years.40 This was a major civic festival designed to demonstrate the magnificence

of Florence. It was organized by the Confraternity of the Magi, which, like the

Confraternity of the Purification, had premises in San Marco built by Cosimo.41

The feste was particularly grand and very expensive. Its central feature was a

splendid procession of costumed men and decorated horses that began at the

Baptistry and moved through the streets of Florence with tremendous pomp.42

The Medici family was closely associated with the Company of the Magi, and in

the pageant the family members were known to take the role of the three kings.43

Indeed, this association may have influenced Benozzo to depict the portraits of

Cosimo and his sons as Magi in the palace chapel frescoes (see plate 1.3). Certainly,

by the late 1460s the pageant was used as an instrument of Medici political pol-

icy.44 The procession culminated at the church of San Marco, which was opened

fully to receive it. This was unusual. The choir and the apse of the convent church,

the site of the high altar and the altarpiece painted by Fra Angelico were normally

closed to the public. These areas were divided from the nave by a tramazzo, or

screen-like wall, and they were generally used solely by the friars in the course of

their daily devotions.45 However, during the pageant on 6 January, the date of the

feast of the Magi, the populace was admitted to the whole church, including

the choir and apse area. It was of critical importance for people actually to see the

altarpiece and to pray before it, because an indulgence, or remission of sins, had

been granted by papal decree to those who visited the altarpiece on this date.46



On the occasion of the festival, the Medici, the Dominicans and Fra Angelico’s

altarpiece were visibly bound together.

The collective association among the Medici, the Dominicans, the con-

fraternity and the Purification altarpiece was also publicly enacted. By 1444 the

confraternity had formally adopted SS. Cosmas and Damian (the Medici saints) for

particular devotion, although the members did not add these saints to the name

of the group.47 On the feast day of SS. Cosmas and Damian the confraternity

performed a ritual that had similarities to the Magi festival. The confraternity

normally met in private; its Sunday

services were held behind a guarded

door. However, on the Sunday closest

to 27 September, the date of the feast

of the saints, the confraternity opened

its oratory to the community and held

a special ceremony specifically to hon-

our the saints and their benefactor,

Cosimo de’ Medici. Special bread rolls,

marked with the insignia of the con-

fraternity, were given to those attend-

ing the ceremony. Florentines may

have physically entered the oratory

through the convent and this must

have reinforced the association among

the three groups.48 In the confratern-

ity’s meeting space, the Purification

altarpiece underlined the association

that the sodality enjoyed with the Vir-

gin, the Medici and the Dominicans.

This type of public ritual was also

held on the feast day of St Zenobius

and highlighted the connection of the

confraternity to the religious and civic

leadership of Florence. In particular,

the depiction of St Zenobius called at-

tention to the city’s association with

the group. This relationship was un-

derlined not only through this cele-

bration, but also through the contribution that the confraternity made to central

civic processions held on the feasts dedicated to the Purification and to San Gio-

vanni and through the religious plays that the confraternity, increasingly after

1450, enacted for the public.49 This was particularly evident when the group

performed outside their oratory, in the cloister of San Marco (plate 1.5), or in the

Medici garden, which was across the road from the meeting space.50

1.5 The San Domenico Cloister of the convent of

San Marco (the premises of the Society were

located on the northeastern border of the

cloister which is located directly behind the

church). Florence: San Marco. Photo: The

Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art.



The Virgin, the Medici, the Dominicans, Fra Angelico, Benozzo Gozzoli and

Florence itself were associated with the confraternity in complex, multi-layered

and overlapping relationships that had both spiritual and secular facets. This web

of associations generated the Purification altarpiece. If the confraternity had not

been embedded in this nexus, the altarpiece, in its present form, would not exist.

1.6 Diagram of the interwoven relationships that were

causal for the Purification altarpiece. Diagram: Michelle

O’Malley. Drawing: Will Barker.

1.7 Tree Diagram devised by Alfred Gell to show acts of agency in the creation of

a nail fetish (nkisi). See Alfred Gell, Art and Agency, 1998, 61. Drawing: Will Barker.



Plate 1.6 offers a schema of these in-

terwoven relationships that is less

awkward than the long, linear expres-

sion of agency proposed above. It in-

cludes the connection of the confrater-

nity with Florence and the group’s

primary association with the Virgin,

both of which impacted upon the

generation of the altarpiece. The dia-

gram deviates from Gell’s tree dia-

grams in order to illustrate the density

of the relationships that created the

altarpiece, which is only hinted at in

the individual diagrams above. It also

simplifies the linear schemes.51 In

Gell’s tree diagrams, including the

example (plate 1.7) devised for the nail

fetish (nkisi, plate 1.8), efficacy is gen-

erally expressed in terms of relation-

ships that are individual and discrete,

leading cleanly from one set of causal

relations to the next. The analysis of

the Purification altarpiece, however,

introduces a more robust use of the

theory and suggests that complicated,

highly enmeshed associations can also

be interpreted as causal. Here, relation-

ships are nested (for example, the sig-

nificance of Fra Angelico’s training of

Benozzo exists within the importance

of the Dominicans to the confraternity)

and also overlapping (for example, Co-

simo’s support of the Dominicans occurs at the same time as his support of

the confraternity; and is simultaneous with the Dominicans’ support of the

confraternity). They are also multidirectional, particularly in regard to Cosimo’s

involvements.

T HE A LTA R P I E C E A S A G E N T

The confraternity’s spiritual and human associations were not the only re-

lationships to possess agency. The San Marco altarpiece can also be interpreted as

causal for the creation of the Purification altarpiece. Certainly the one exists and

takes its present form because of the other: the San Marco altarpiece generated

the Purification altarpiece.

1.8 Congo region, Wooden figure with cord costume.

Wood with cord, 79 cm. London: British

Museum. r The Trustees of The British Museum.



San Marco altarpiece-Purification altarpiece

Gell makes it clear that objects can never act alone; their agency is always ulti-

mately connected to people. Nonetheless, as he notes, objects have powerful

causal functions within social relations. Approaching objects as agents is useful

in considering the creation of the relatively few Renaissance works that were

made, as was the Purification altarpiece, in relation to a prototype and as the

result of a commission. However, other works of art that are similar to a model

but were probably not commissioned perhaps demonstrate more forcefully the

agency of one work of art in the production of another. Megan Holmes has re-

cently investigated the creation of some such pictures by an unknown painter she

has called The Lippi and Pesellino Imitator.52 Many of these works reproduce

compositions or figures that appear in works owned by the Medici. A particularly

influential panel for the Imitator (who may have been more than one master) was

1.9 Filippo Lippi, Adoration of the Christ Child with St Bernard and the Baptist, c. 1459. Oil

on poplar, 129.5 � 118.5 cm. Berlin: Gem.aldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

Photograph: Jorg P. Anders.



the Adoration of the Christ Child with St Bernard and the Baptist painted by Filippo Lippi

as the altarpiece for the Medici Palace chapel (plate 1.9). Figures taken from it were

combined in various compositions. For example, in the panel now in the Indiana

University Art Museum (plate 1.10), the Virgin, Child and St John appear, but the

relationships among them are different from those in the original work, and an-

gels, taken from another composition, have been added to the scene. While it is

impossible to know who owned this and other ‘copied’ works, the small size of

most of them suggests that they were intended for private devotion. While the

Medici family undoubtedly had a causal impact upon the creation of these ‘copies’,

the original works of art themselves by Lippi and Pesellino, because of their valued

aesthetic properties, the acclaim accorded their painters and the roles of the pic-

tures in general civic, social and religious networks, acted as agents for the creation

of these similar works.53

1.10 Lippi and Pesellino Imitator, Virgin Adoring the Christ Child with the Infant

St John and Three Angels, c. 1460–80. Tempera on panel, 94.6 � 82.8 cm.

Bloomington: Indiana University Art Museum. Gift of Thomas T. Solley

in Memory of Marguerite Lilly Noyes. Photo: r 2005 Indiana University

Art Museum. Photo: Michael Cavanagh and Kevin Montague.



Works of art also acted as agents for the creation of new works when com-

missioning bodies had rival relationships. Here there was a strong connection

between the diverse clients, but in these cases no connection was made between

the pictorial aspects of the works. It was purely the existence of one altarpiece

that called forth the creation of the other. For example, the Confraternity of

St Barbara, a Sienese confraternity of artisans that hired Matteo di Giovanni in

1478 to paint an altarpiece for its chapel in the church of San Domenico, was

clearly motivated in its generation of the commission by another work (plate

1.11).54 The contract with the painter notes that the work should be ‘rich and

grand and larger in every direction’ than the altarpiece made for the chapel of the

elite Borghese family in the same church. The Borghese altarpiece was painted by

Benvenuto di Giovanni, but he is not mentioned in the contract. Instead, the

client, who was the head of the Borghese family, is named, and the exact place-

ment of the chapel is noted.55 Similarly, in 1523, when the Confraternity of

1.11 Matteo di Giovanni, St Barbara Enthroned with SS. Catherine and Mary Magdalen (Santa Barbara

altarpiece), commissioned 1478. Tempera on panel, 168 � 191 cm. Siena: San Domenico.

r Soprintendenza PSAD di Siena e Grosseto.



St Lucy in the town of Jesi decided to commission an altarpiece for their chapel,

the group hired Lorenzo Lotto, who had produced an altarpiece for the town’s

Society of Jesus. Lotto agreed to make the altarpiece of St Lucy ‘better and more

beautiful’ than the earlier work, but otherwise they were to have no visual con-

nection.56 The convent of Sant Agostino in Perugia probably undertook the pro-

duction of a large and complicated altarpiece precisely because the Perugian

Benedictine convent had commissioned one. In 1495 the Benedictines hired Per-

ugino to create their work, and one month later the Augustinians commissioned

woodwork for a similar altarpiece. The Benedictine altarpiece was erected in 1499

and in 1502 the Augustinian convent hired Perugino to paint its altarpiece.57 In

each of these circumstances, the existence of one altarpiece called forth another.

In this context, it is important to recognize that the Purification altarpiece was

not only acted upon. It also acted. Once it was created, it was efficacious in

maintaining the social relationships that initiated its production. As an example of

‘a system of action intended to change the world’, the Purification altarpiece had

direct effect upon the confraternity’s actions and the ways in which its cultural

world operated. It affected the confraternity’s prayers as well as the continued

involvement of the Medici and the Dominicans with the group. Ahl notes, for

example, that the altarpiece ‘implored [the youth’s] reverence toward the Mad-

onna.’58 She does not use the term ‘agency’, but her statement makes it clear that

she sees the altarpiece itself as directing the boys’ expression of devotion to the

Virgin. Inscribed on the panel are two salutations to the Virgin. Her halo contains

the greeting of the Annunciate Angel – ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord [is with

thee]’ (Ave Maria gratia plena dominu[s tecum]) – and the hem of her robe (plate 1.12) is

inscribed ‘Hail Sacred Queen of Heaven, mother of angels, from whom the light of

the world is born’ (Ave regina celorum mater angelorum sancta es qua mundo lux est orta).

The altarpiece induced prayer. Thus, while the Virgin was an agent in the creation

of the work, the altarpiece was similarly causal for the confraternity’s piety to the

Virgin. Other altarpieces to the Virgin had equal agency with other social groups.

Thus the earlier diagrams can be seen to work in reverse:

1.12 Detail of Benozzo Gozzoli, The Virgin and Child Enthroned among Angels and Saints. London:

The National Gallery.



Purification altarpiece-[confraternity ] the Virgin

The diagram shows that the Purification altarpiece induced prayer to the Virgin.

The altarpiece also continued the confraternity’s relationship with the Dom-

inicans. Ahl notes that the altarpiece ‘proclaim[ed] the confraternity’s affiliation

with the Dominican church of San Marco, a most prominent example of Medici

patronage, where the oratory of the Purification had been founded.’59 However,

the altarpiece can be said to have done more than proclaim the affiliation. In

as much as it reciprocated the attention that the Dominicans gave to the con-

fraternity, the altarpiece cemented and continued the relationship between the

friars and the boys. In this context, it is worth noting that young men from the

confraternity often entered the Dominican convent: the groups had a porous and

ongoing relationship.60 Thus the expression demonstrates that the Purification

altarpiece induced imitation of the Dominicans:

Purification altarpiece-the Dominicans at San Marco

The altarpiece equally exercised agency in continuing relations with the

Medici, who were still involved in funding renovations to the oratory in 1463. Like

a gift, the altarpiece answered the Medici munificence and induced the con-

tinuation of gift giving. The relationship is demonstrated by the expression:

Purification altarpiece-the Medici

The altarpiece was also instrumental in maintaining strong relations with the

city. The prayers of the young men, as ‘innocents’, were believed to be particularly

efficacious in obtaining divine favour for the city.61 The figure of St Zenobius

reminded the group of the city’s support and their own position within the social

life of Florence.

Purification altarpiece-the city of Florence

The agency of the altarpiece introduces a further dimension into the web of

associations and these are expressed in plate 1.13. The structure knots together

again to express the agency of the San Marco altarpiece upon the creation of the

Purification altarpiece, then that relationship widens in a different structure to

illustrate the agency of the Purification altarpiece itself.62 The fan shape de-

picting the agency of the Purification altarpiece rests on the root of the associa-

tions that generated it.

C O N C L U S I O N

The social role of an altarpiece derived both from its individual appearance

and from its environment. These gave to altarpieces a dynamism that had direct



effect upon how people interacted; considering such efficacy is one way to

conceptualize the roles played by commissioned works of art in their specific

social contexts. It also permits the simultaneous grasp of a network of relations:

not relations in a series, but an entity that consists of a number of concurrent

associations. Ideas about agency offer a way to draw together relationships con-

cerned simultaneously with politics, patronage, religious devotion and civic re-

sponsibilities. Certainly, the relationships enjoyed by the Confraternity of the

Purification were well known within the sodality and almost certainly recognized

outside it. It is highly likely that, in regarding their altarpiece, the young men of

the confraternity and those who worshipped with them on special feast days were

reminded of its social efficacy, and saw it as ‘a visible knot that tied together an

invisible skein of relations, fanning out into social space and social time’.63

1.13 Diagram of the interwoven relationships that were causal for the

Purification altarpiece and the relationships for which the altarpiece

had agency. Diagram: Michelle O’Malley. Drawing: Will Barker.



Notes

I am indebted to Paul Betts, Craig Clunas, Liz James, Vibhuti Sachdev and Steve

Wharton for their comments and observations on various drafts of this paper.

This argument first appeared in a paper delivered at the conference of the

Association of Art Historians in London in 2003, in a session organized by

Luke Syson and Alison Wright. The argument was further developed in a ver-

sion delivered to the History Department at the University of Sussex in 2004; it

benefited from discussion at both venues. Finally, I am grateful to the editor of

Art History and to both readers; they offered especially insightful observations,

which widened the scope of the text and helped to shape the diagrams.

1 By the late 1430s the Confraternity of the Pur-

ification had at least six hundred members,

which accounted for 14 per cent of the youth of

the city. See Lorenzo Polizzotto, ‘The Medici and

the Youth Confraternity of the Purification of

the Virgin’, in Nicholas Terpstra, ed., The Politics

of Ritual Kinship: Confraternities and Social Order in

Early Modern Italy, Cambridge, 2000, 102, and

Lorenzo Polizzotto, Children of the Promise: The

Confraternity of the Purification and the Socialization

of Youth in Florence 1427–1785I, Oxford, 2004, 40.

2 Diane Cole Ahl, Benozzo Gozzoli, New Haven and

London, 1996; Diane Cole Ahl, ‘In corpo di com-

pagnia: Art and Devotion in the Compagnia della

Purificazione e di San Zenobi of Florence’, in

Barbara Wisch and Diane Cole Ahl, eds, Con-

fraternities and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Italy:

Ritual, Spectacle, Image, Cambridge, 2000, 43–73;

Polizzotto, Children of the Promise.

3 Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological

Theory, Oxford, 1998.

4 An extensive bibliography exists on the typology,

production and meaning of altarpieces. See, in

particular, Eve Borsook and Fiorella Superbi

Gioffredi, Italian Altarpieces 1250–1550: Function

and Design, Oxford, 1994; Jacob Burckhardt, The

Altarpiece in Renaissance Italy, ed. and trans. Peter

Humfrey, Oxford, 1988; Monika C.ammerer-

George, Die Rahmung der Toschanischen Altarbilder

im Trecento, Strasburg, 1966; Donal Cooper,

‘Franciscan Choir Enclosures and the Function of

Double-sided Altarpieces in Pre-Tridentine Um-

bria’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld In-

stitutes, 64, 2001, 1–54; Jeltje Dijkstra, ‘Origineel

en Kopie’, PhD diss., University of Amsterdam,

1990; Christa Gardner von Teuffel, ‘Studies of the

Tuscan Altarpiece in the Fourteenth and Early

Fifteenth Centuries’, PhD diss., University of

London (Courtauld Institute), 1974; Hellmut

H.ager, Die Anfange des Italienischen Altarbildes: Un-

tersuchengen zur Entstichungsgeschichte des toskan-

ischen Hoch altarretabels, Munich, 1962; Peter

Humfrey, The Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice, Lon-

don, 1993; Peter Humfrey and Martin Kemp, eds,

The Altarpiece in the Renaissance, Cambridge, 1990;

Lynn Jacobs, Early Netherlandish Carved Altarpieces

1380–1550: Medieval Taste and Mass Marketing,

Cambridge, 1998; Patricia Meilman, Titian and the

Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice, Cambridge, 2000;

Henk W. van Os, Sienese Altarpieces 1215–1460, vol.

1: 1215–1344, vol. 2: 1345–1460, Groningen, 1984

and 1990.

5 The literature on patronage studies and the so-

cial contexts of work of art is immense. For a

recent and thorough discussion of scholarship

on Renaissance art in these areas, see Jill Burke,

‘Introduction’, in her own Changing Patrons: Social

Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence,

University Park, PA, 2004.

6 Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence, Chicago and

London, 1994.

7 Some scholars of Renaissance art have touched

upon Gell’s concepts. See William Hood, Fra An-

gelico at San Marco, New Haven and London, 1993,

ix, who refers to altarpieces as ‘embodying a

variety of interdependent social relationships’,

and notes that altarpieces were important for

‘creating and maintaining social cohesion in

Italy’. See also Norman Bryson, Michael Ann

Holly and Keith Moxley, ‘Introduction’, in Visual

Culture: Images and Interpretations, Hanover, NH

and London, 1994, xviii, where it is noted that

works of art may actively organize their social

and cultural environments. But no art historian

has worked out a coherent system of analysis for

examining agency in regard to the work of art;

it is Gell’s theory that provides a blueprint for

considering what the work of art as an embodi-

ment of social relationships might mean. For the

use of Gell’s theory to analyse the corpus of work

of single artist and calligrapher, see Craig Clu-

nas, Elegant Debts: The Social Art of Wen Zhengming,

1470–1559, London, 2004.

8 Gell, Art and Agency, 6 and 74 respectively.

9 Gell, Art and Agency, 62.



10 On confraternities and their sphere of opera-

tions, see Wisch and Ahl, Confraternities; Konrad

Eisenbichler, The Boys of the Archangel Raphael: A

Youth Confraternity in Florence, Toronto, 1998; and

Nicholas Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Re-

ligion in Renaissance Italy, Cambridge, 1995.

11 The upper age was later increased to twenty-

four. On the political ramifications of this see

Polizzotto, Children of the Promise, 59. The enrol-

ment fee was ten soldi and 1 denaro, an amount

equivalent to the daily wage of an unskilled

builder in Florence. Those who could not man-

age that fee were allowed membership for saying

three paternoster prayers. The weekly dues were

1 denaro. See Ahl, in Wisch and Ahl, Confrater-

nities, 54.

12 On Florentine youth confraternities, see Richard

C. Trexler ‘Ritual in Florence: Adolescence and

Salvation in the Renaissance’, in C. Trinkaus and

H.O. Oberman, eds, The Pursuit of Holiness in late

Medieval and Renaissance Religion, Leiden, 1974,

200–264; Nerida Newbigin, ‘The Word Made

Flesh: The Rappresentazioni of the Mysteries and

Miracles in Fifteenth-century Florence’, in Ti-

mothy Verdon and John Henderson, eds, Chris-

tianity and the Renaissance, Syracuse, 1990, 361–75.

13 On the Statutes of the Confraternity of the Pur-

ification and their preservation in the chapel,

see Ann Matchette, ‘The Compagnia della Pur-

ificazione e di San Zenobi in Florence: A Re-

construction of its Residence at San Marco, 1440–

1506’, in Wisch and Ahl, Confraternities, 78, and

Polizzotto, Children of the Promise, 55–7.

14 Polizzotto, Children of the Promise, 58.

15 The Medici family, as brokers of power and in-

fluence in fifteenth-century Florence, operated

as an institution. The literature on the Medici is

immense; see, in particular, Nicolai Rubinstein,

The Government of Florence under the Medici: 1434 to

1494, Oxford, 1997; Alison Brown, The Medici in

Florence: The Exercise and Language of Power, Flor-

ence, 1992; and Dale Kent, The Rise of the Medici:

Faction in Florence, 1426–1434, Oxford, 1978. For the

organization of a network that made the Medici,

from the beginning of the fifteenth century, the

power brokers between the families of the Flor-

entine oligarchy and the city’s ‘new men’, see

John F. Padgett, ‘Robust Action and the Rise of

the Medici, 1400–1434’, American Journal of Sociol-

ogy, 98, 1993, 1259–1319. It is clear that it was

common for contemporaries of Lorenzo de’

Medici to refer to him as ‘maestro della bottega’, or

‘the boss’. See F.W. Kent, ‘Patron-client Networks

in Renaissance Florence and the Emergence of

Lorenzo as ‘‘Maestro della Bottega’’ ’, in Bernard

Toscani, ed., Lorenzo de’Medici: New Perspectives,

New York, 1992, 279–313.

16 See Matchette, in Wisch and Ahl, Confrater-

nities, 88.

17 See Ahl, in Wisch and Ahl, Confraternities, 54, and


18 Polizzotto, Children of the Promise, chap. 2, parti-

cularly 57–62.

19 See Hood, Fra Angelico, 29–31.

20 This was the Medici ‘casa vecchia’. Hood, Fra An-

gelico, 305, n. 3. See also Crispin Robinson, ‘The

Early Medici and Architecture’, in Francis Ames-

Lewis, ed., The Early Medici and their Artists, Lon-

don, 1995, 58.

21 Hood, Fra Angelico, 30, notes that Cosimo spent

36,000 florins on the whole project. See also

Dale Kent, Cosimo de’Medici and the Florentine Re-

naissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre, New Haven and

London, 2000, 177–8. On the structure of the

convent, see La chiesa e il convento di San Marco a

Firenze, 2 vols, Florence, 1989.

22 Matchette, in Wisch and Ahl, Confraternities, 76.

23 Despite the interest of Antoninus, the annals of

the convent indicate that, because it depleted

living space, not all the friars supported the

housing of the confraternity in the convent. See



25 Ahl, in Wisch and Ahl, Confraternities, 48.


27 See Gell, Art and Agency, 52–9, for a discussion of

the artist as a secondary agent.

28 On Benozzo’s training, see Ahl, Benozzo Gozzoli,

6–7, and Francis Ames-Lewis, ‘Reconstructing

Benozzo Gozzoli’s Artistic Identity’ in Mary Ro-

gers, ed., Fashioning Identities in Renaissance Art,

Aldershot, 2000, 33–43.

29 Hood, Fra Angelico, 250, dates the fresco to 1450.

30 Ahl, Benozzo, 59. On the decoration of the Medici

chapel see Ahl, Benozzo Gozzoli, 97–112, and Kent,

Cosimo de’Medici, 308–322.

31 On the term ‘ornamenti’ and its multiple mean-

ings, see Michelle O’Malley, The Business of Art:

Contracts and the Commissioning Process in Re-

naissance Italy, New Haven and London, 2005,

28–31; on the relation of the term to the depic-

tions in the background of a work, see Jeron

Stumpel, ‘On Grounds and Backgrounds: Some

Remarks about Composition in Renaissance

Painting’, Simiolus, 18, 1988, 219–43.

32 For a slightly different English translation, see

D.S. Chambers, ed., Patrons and Artists in the Italian

Renaissance, Columbia, SC, 1971, 52–5. For a

transcription of the original document in the

Archivio di Stato, Siena, see Leopoldo Tanfani-

Centofanti, Notizie di artisti: tratte dai documenti

pisani, Pisa, 1897, 84: ‘Et prima nel mezzo di detta

tavola la fighura di nostra Donna, con la sedia

nel modo et forma et chon ornamenti chome et

in similitudine della tavola dello altare maggiore

di Sancto Marco di Firenze.’



33 See Chambers, Patrons and Artists in the Italian

Renaissance, 54: The clause following the one

concerning the Virgin reads: ‘And on the right-

hand side of the picture, beside Our Lady, the

figure of St John the Baptist in his accustomed

clothing, and beside him the figure of St Zeno-

bius in pontifical vestments; and then the figure

of St Jerome kneeling, with his usual emblems,

and on the left-hand side the following saints:

first, beside Our Lady, the figure of St Peter, and

beside him St Dominic, and by St Dominic the

figure of St Francis kneeling, with every cus-

tomary ornament.’ For the original text, see

Tanfani-Centofanti, Notizie, 84: ‘et dal lato ritto di

detta tavola allato a nostra Donna la fighura di

sancto Giovanni Batista nel debito usato suo ha-

bito, et apresso a llui la fighura di sancto Zanobi

chol suo ornamento pontificale, et di poi la fig-

hura di sancto Girolamo ginochioni chol suo

debito et usato ornamento, et dal lato sinestro

gl’infrascripti sancti, . . . la fighura di santo Piero

et apresso a llui quella di santo Domenicho, et

dipoi apresso a santo Domenico ginochioni la

fighura di santo Francesco chon ogni ornamento

intorno a cio consuet.’

34 Eight saints are depicted in the San Marco al-

tarpiece and six in the Purification altarpiece;

St Francis and St Dominic appear in both altar-

pieces.

35 There is a substantial literature on the reference

to models in contracts, often referred to as the

‘modo et forma’ clause. The scholarship suggests

that making a work of art ‘like’ another was

common in the Renaissance. However, it is im-

portant to note that while ‘copy’ clauses offer an

insight into commissioning practices and the

uses of art in the Renaissance, the stipulation

was not commonly employed in regard to the

pictorial elements of works of art. On the ‘copy’

stipulation, the use of models and the associa-

tions emphasized between prototypes and new

works, see O’Malley, Business of Art, chap. 9. See

also Hannalore Glasser, ‘Artists Contracts of the

Early Renaissance’, PhD diss., Columbia Uni-

versity, 1965 (Garland Press, 1977); Christa Gard-

ner von Teuffel, ‘The Buttressed Altarpiece: A

Forgotten Aspect of Tuscan Fourteenth Century

Altarpiece Design’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen,

21, 1979, 21–65.; and Christa Gardner von Teuf-

fel, ‘Clerics Contracts: Fra Angelico, Neroccio,

Ghirlandaio and Others: Legal Procedures and

the Renaissance High Altarpiece in Central Italy’,

Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte, 62, 1999, 190–208.

On the use of models in Renaissance Siena,

see Henk van Os, Sienese Altarpieces, 99–128. For

the analysis of direct copies of particular works

that were not commissioned but made to be of-

fered on open sale, see Megan Holmes, ‘Copying

Practices and Market Strategies in a Fifteenth-

Century Florentine Painter’s Workshop’, in Ste-

phen J. Campbell and Stephen J. Milner, eds,

Artistic Exchange and Cultural Transmission in the

Italian Renaissance City, Cambridge, 2004, 38–74.

36 Hood, Fra Angelico, 97–8. It is the argument of

Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici, that Cosimo de’Medici

was the agent for the creation of a corpus of

works that established and maintained the fa-

mily identity.

37 Ahl, Benozzo Gozzoli, 49 and 47. The statutes re-

quired the members to pray for the Medici at

every meeting, see Polizzotto in Terpstra, Ritual

Kinship, 107.

38 Polizzotto, Children of the Promise, 100, draws at-

tention to the strong political motivation that

the confraternity had for making the altarpiece

‘like’ the one painted by Fra Angelico.

39 On the objects owned by the confraternity, see

Matchette, in Wisch and Ahl, Confraternities, 75

and Appendix, and Polizzotto, Children of the

Promise, 104–106.

40 Kent, Cosimo de’Medici, 313. On the pageant in

1443, see Hood, Fra Angelico, chap. 2.

41 Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici, 177. The Confraternity of

the Silk Weavers also had premises in the con-

vent, which it had occupied since before the ar-

rival of the Dominicans; see Robinson in Ames-

Lewis, The Early Medici, 58.

42 On the fortunes of the Confraternity of the Magi

and the problems of organizing and paying for

the procession, see Rab Hatfield, ‘The Compagnia

de’ Magi’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld

Institutes, 33, 1970, 107–161.

43 On the Medici family associating itself with the

story, pictures and festivals of the Magi, see Kent,

Cosimo de’ Medici, 305–313.

44 Hatfield, ‘Compagnia de’ Magi’, 118.

45 D. Cooper, ‘Franciscan Choir Enclosures and the

Function of Double-sided Altarpieces in pre-

Tridentine Umbria’, Journal of the Warburg and

Courtauld Institutes, 64, 2001, 47–9. Another wall

bisected the nave horizontally, to separate male

from female worshipers.

46 Although the pageant was not held annually,

the altarpiece (but not the whole church) was

available to be viewed annually, because of the

indulgence attached to seeing it; Kent, Cosimo

de’Medici, 313.


48 Matchette, in Wisch and Ahl, Confraternities, 75–6

explains the placement of the confraternity’s

space within the convent and suggests that

entrance to the oratory was from the cloister.

Polizotto, Children of the Promise, 97–8 argues

that the rooms had a separate entrance on the

street.

49 See Matchette, in Wisch and Ahl, Confraternities,

81 and 84, and Polizzotto, Children of the Promise,

71–96. On the nature of the plays, see Newbigin



in Verdon and Henderson, Christianity and the

Renaissance, 361–75.


51 Gell, Art and Agency, 51–65.

52 Holmes in Campbell and Milner, Artistic Exchange

and Cultural Transmission, 42–52.

53 See Holmes in Campbell and Milner, Artistic Ex-

change and Cultural Transmission, 63, for a discus-

sion of the power possessed by these paintings by

The Lippi and Pesellino Imitator to transmit the

‘aura’ of the originals.

54 On the confraternity and the altarpiece, see Max

Seidel, ‘The Social Structure of Patronage and its

Impact on Pictorial Language in Fifteenth-

century Siena’, in Borsook and Gioffredi, Italian

Altarpieces, 119–34.

55 See Gaetano Milanesi, Documenti per la storia

dell’arte senese secoli XII –XVI, Siena, 1854, (reprinted

Utrecht 1969), 364. On the altarpiece, see Maria

Cristina Bandera, Benvenuto di Giovanni, Milan,

1999, 94–106 and 226–7.

56 Giovanni Annibaldi Jr., ‘Documenti d’archivio

sull’allogazione a Lorenzo Lotto della pala d’al-

tare della Santa Lucia di Jesi’, Notizie da Palazzo

Albani, 9, 1980, 148–52.

57 See Pietro Scarpellini, Perugino, Milan, 1984. On

Perugino’s prices and rivalrous relationships,

see Michelle O’Malley, ‘Perugino and the Con-

tingency of Value’, in Michelle O’Malley and

Evelyn Welch, eds, The Material Renaissance, Man-

chester, forthcoming 2007. The main panels of

the Benedictine altarpiece are now in Musee des

beaux arts, Lyon; those of the Augustinian altar-

piece are now in the Galleria nazionale dell’Um-

bria, Perugia.

58 Ahl, Benozzo Gozzoli, 117.

59 Ahl, Benozzo Gozzoli, 115.



62 An equally detailed fan could be generated for

the San Marco altarpiece, resting upon a root

specific to its own generating relationships.

63 See Gell, Art and Agency, 62.



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