Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Cardinals and their Images
- Part I Individuality and Identity: Florence and Rome
- Part II Divided Loyalties: Venice and Rome
- Part III Collecting and Display: Portraits and Worldly Goods
- Part IV Post-Tridentine Piety: The Devout Cardinal
- Conclusion: Cardinal Portraits beyond Italy
- Index
- Plate Section
6 - Role Playing: Cardinals in Historical Action in Leandro Bassano’s Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216 and the War of the Interdict
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Cardinals and their Images
- Part I Individuality and Identity: Florence and Rome
- Part II Divided Loyalties: Venice and Rome
- Part III Collecting and Display: Portraits and Worldly Goods
- Part IV Post-Tridentine Piety: The Devout Cardinal
- Conclusion: Cardinal Portraits beyond Italy
- Index
- Plate Section
Summary
Abstract
Leandro Bassano's historical narrative painting, Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216, produced for the sacristy of the Dominican church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, depicts several contemporary cardinals here identified for the first time while accompanying the pope, such as cardinals Giovanni Dolfin and François de Joyeuse beside him. When the painting was executed, Venice was emerging from the difficult papal interdict of 1606, and it was thanks to the diplomatic negotiations of these two cardinals that the crisis was resolved favourably. Using this painting as a case study, this chapter examines how the representation of specific cardinals in public settings could assume a precise historical and political meaning.
Keywords: cardinals; Venice; Santi Giovanni e Paolo; Leandro Bassano; interdict
A recent monograph has greatly expanded our knowledge of the Dominican church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, but its important sacristy was inevitably dealt with in a cursory manner. With regard to the sacristy, it remains necessary to reconcile a ‘pending account’ with the large canvas illustrating Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216 (Plate 5) by the painter Leandro Bassano (d.1622), second son of Jacopo da Ponte. The iconography of the scene dates back to the Middle Ages, showing Pope Honorius III's formal approval in 1216 of Domingo di Guzmán's's rule. In the canvas, however, the founder is accompanied by seven Dominican fathers and the ceremony takes place in the presence of eighteen cardinals, whoflank the pope in two groups, with a procession of Swiss guards and the masters of ceremonies. One of them is delivering a dispatch, the contents of which are unclear, but, as this chapter will argue, it could allude to dramatic contemporary events in which members of the order were inevitably involved, namely the interdict placed on Venice by the pope in 1606 and its ultimate revocation a year later.
In his description of Bassano's canvas, Carlo Ridolfi recorded that the painter ‘portrayed from life some Cardinals and Fathers then residing in that convent’. The image therefore forms a sort of tableau vivant that has not yet received adequate scholarly attention, especially considering its historical significance in documenting an important episode in the problematic relationship between the preaching fathers, the Venetian government, the papacy, and other European states, such as France and Spain.
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- Information
- Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal , pp. 149 - 178Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021