When I first saw this image in the corner of one of the panels of the Armadio degli Argenti, I found it jarring. I didn't like it, or at least I didn't like it where it was. I didn't seem to fit with the rest of the paintings. It was too geometrical. To tell you the truth, I hadn't even looked at it beyond a mere glance, and had no idea what it was all about until I read this in Diane Cole Ahl's Fra Angelico
[The] over-arching theme was introduced with the Mystic Wheel, the first scene of the Silver Chest. The Mystic Wheel illustrates an apocalypic prophecy from Ezechiel and its interpretation by the sainted Pope Gregory the Great.... For St. Gregory, the prophet's celestial vision of the 'wheel within a wheel' (Ezechiel 1:15-21) prefigured the reciprocity between the two Testaments.
Ms. Ahl goes on to explain that St. Gregory saw the Old and New Testaments as a single entity with the New contained in the Old. And so we see the prophets of the New Testament in the inner wheel, and the prophets of the Old in the outer wheel. The Old encircled by the beginning of Genesis, and the New by John 1. Ezekiel is on the bottom left, crying out in the wilderness, and Gregory is on the right holding, I presume but am not sure, his commentary on Ezekiel. There are banners with their texts above them. So, this panel sets the pattern for all the rest of the paintings.
I wish I had time to write more about this, because I find it fascinating, but I just don't. My own copy of Ms. Ahl's book arrived today, and I plan to read it slowly, and maybe some time when I'm not getting everything ready for Holy Week at work, and trying to find my mother a place to live, and getting ready to feed twenty people on Sunday, I will have the opportunity to write something longer and more thoughtful. Most of this post is just a paraphrase of Ms. Ahl's work.
I wish I had time to write more about this, because I find it fascinating, but I just don't. My own copy of Ms. Ahl's book arrived today, and I plan to read it slowly, and maybe some time when I'm not getting everything ready for Holy Week at work, and trying to find my mother a place to live, and getting ready to feed twenty people on Sunday, I will have the opportunity to write something longer and more thoughtful. Most of this post is just a paraphrase of Ms. Ahl's work.
While looking around for the best images of the paintings, I found this on Wikipedia. The picture was taken inside Sanctissima Annuziata, which is now part of the Museo di San Marco in Florence, and I think it might actually be the Armadio. It's nothing like I imagined. There are many other works by Beato Angeli in this museum, so now there is another name on my list of places I have to go should I ever get to Europe.
Now onto the Triduum.
AMDG
Thanks for this series of posts, Janet. I don't think I have time to comment on all of them, but I have sure enjoyed them.
ReplyDeleteI've been to San Marco once, but I don't remember seeing the Armadio. I guess it is not in San Marco proper, but in the museum in Santissima Annunziata -- which, if memory serves, is just down the road? I didn't get into S.Annunziata for some reason, though I do remember the piazza it fronts on, and I remember that on one end of the long portico there was a "chute" where, I was told, people used to put babies whom they could no longer care for. The sisters who lived inside would then take care of them. A good idea, I suppose, but who would put a baby into a chute?
Anyway, a very happy Easter to you.
Thanks, Craig. I enjoyed doing it, but it wore me out. Now I figure I need to translate the rest of the panels and use them for something else. I really wish I could go there.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
I hope you are able to go there one day. You would appreciate it more than most, I think.
ReplyDeleteMe too.
ReplyDeleteI can obnoxiously stand in front of the armadio and translate for people.
ReplyDeleteAMDG