“Circulata melodia”: Dante's Paradise and the iconography of the ‘Assumption of the Virgin Mary' in Siena

Raffaele Marrone
Simone Martini's large wall painting, since destroyed, that once adorned the front of the Camollia outer door of Siena's city walls, introduced to the town a new iconographic canon for the episode of the 'Assumption of the Virgin Mary', which considerably changed with respect to the 'heraldic' formula of the 13th-century tradition. This article investigates the possible textual sources of the new image conceived by Simone Martini, attempting to identify its premises in the two 'triumphal' visions of Canto XXIII of Dante's Paradise. The relationship between the 'Assumption' of Camollia and the Comedy seems to further demonstrate the influence that Dante's poem exerted in Siena in the elaboration of a Marian iconography with a 'civic' intonation.

Index

Francesco Aceto Giotto and Antiquity. An early-Christian model for the frescoes in the Palatine Chapel in the Castel Nuovo in Naples
read abstract » pp. 3-21
Raffaele Marrone “Circulata melodia”: Dante's Paradise and the iconography of the 'Assumption of the Virgin Mary' in Siena
read abstract » pp. 22-38
Gabriele Fattorini Two notes on the young Luca Signorelli: a document from Siena dated 1475 and the 'Madonna of Mercy' of Pienza
read abstract » pp. 39-68
Paola Coniglio Sculpture in Messina in the early 16th century. Giovambattista Mazzolo in the wake of Benedetto da Maiano and the pull of Antonello Gagini
read abstract » pp. 69-80
Fernando Gilotta e Giorgio Trojsi Some new data about Hellenistic Caere
read abstract » pp. 81-93