Santa Maria foris portas, castelseprio

When the extraordinary mariological programme of paintings on the wallsof the church of Santa Maria foris portas at Castelseprio was first uncovered,and then quickly made known to the art historical community in an exemplarypublication, historians of early medieval art were transfixed. here was the miss-ing link, the key which would provide the means to unlocking and understandingthe role that the classical Byzantine tradition of art played in the evolution ofelite artistic developments in the various theatres of state formation in post-Roman western Europe, from papal Rome to Carolingian Aachen and Northum-brian Lindisfarne, in the early medieval centuries. The artists responsibleappeared to be masters of an almost undiluted tradition of Greco-Roman paint-ing, testifying to the enduring existence of a strain of what has been designatedby Ernst Kitzinger as ‘perennial hellenism’, continuing unbroken in one or morecentres in the eastern Mediterranean and potentially available to artists in west-ern Europe, minded to recover some of the elements of ancient classical prac-tice in an age in which overt classical form and subject-matter were valued ata high premium in the rival courts of Europe.1

Paradoxically, after brilliantly illuminating the sky for historians of early me-dieval art for a decade or so, the star of Castelseprio started to wane. Capitanid’Arzago, in the initial publication, had assigned the paintings to the mid 7th cen-tury,2 Weitzmann a few years later, argued cogently for early in the 10th

century,3 while Schapiro and Kitzinger opted for an intermediate stage in thedevelopment of early medieval art, sometime around 800.4 The iconographicand stylistic indices could not be resolved. Carbon-14 dates of 865AD+/-87years, from a roof-beam respected by and apparently sealed by the plaster in-tonaco carrying the painted decoration in the eastern apse,5 thermolumines-cence dates in the 9th century, with a median date of 828, for roof-tilesassociated with the building,6 and a date of 787+/- 65 years for ceramic frag-ments from the make-up of the original pavement,7 prompted Bertelli to arguefor a date in the mid-9th century and to propose as founding patron of thechurch, john, Count of Seprio and Milan, a major protagonist in the region.8

Subsequently a date in the middle years of the 9th century has found some gen-eral acceptance.9 however, perceived similarities between the paintings at Cas-telseprio and 7th-and early 8th-century phases of painted imagery at Santa MariaAntiqua, in Rome, have continued to lead others to argue for an earlier date.10

WAll PAiNtiNgS iN S. MAriA foriS PortAS (cAStelSePrio)

AND the toWer At torBA. reflectioNS AND reAPPrAiSAl

John Mitchell, Bea lealUniversity of East Anglia

School of World Art Studies and Museology

1 Kitzinger 1958, 7; Demus 1970, 7-10,64-7; Kitzinger 1981, 503-10; Andaloro2006.. 2 Bognetti, Chierici, De Capitani D’Arzago1948, 699-700.3 Weitzmann 1951, 19-27.4 Schapiro 1950; Schapiro 1952; Scha-piro 1957; Kitzinger 1958, 8-9; Kitzinger1962.5 Leveto jabr 1987.6 Martini, Sibilia, Spinolo 1986.7 Sibilia, Della Torre, Martini, Spinolo 1988.8 Bertelli 1988, 896-7.9 Lomartire 1994, 50-2; Bertelli and Bro-giolo 2000, cat. 370; Goll, Exner, hirsch2007, 108.10 Peroni 1973, 27; Lomartire 2004, 50;Rossi 2010, 132.11 Romanini 1988, 235; Andaloro 1993,458; De Spirito 1998.12 Bognetti, Chierici, Capitani D’Arzago1948, 344-5; Weitzmann 1951, 5; Peto-letti 2009, 323-4; Rossi 2010, 131.13 Weitzmann 1951; Leveto 1990, 406-9.14 Leveto 1990, 409-13. Protoevangeliumof james: Elliott 1993, 57-60, 15 Weitzmann 1951, 69-90.16 Leveto 1985; Leveto 1990.17 Rossi 2010, 134-5.18 Bognetti, Chierici, De Capitani D’Arzago1948, 682-700; Weitzmann 1951, 27,32, 34, 91, 93-7; Demus 1970, 23, 47;Bertelli 1988, 898, 906.19 Weitzmann 1951, 91-7; Leveto 1985,221-38; De Spirito 1998, 29, 30, 43.20 Bognetti, Chierici, De Capitani D’Arzago1948, pls. LV, LXII, XC; Weitzmann 1951,fig. 10 21 Mango and hawkins 1965, 125-7, 137-9, figs. 21-2, 30, 41-2; Mango 1997, 37and 39.22 Grabar 1996, fig. 53; Nuseibeh andGrabar 1996, 84.23 Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 139, fol. 3v, Davidanointed by Samuel, Buchthal 1938, fig. 3;Weitzmann 1971.24 Buchthal 1938, fig. 3.

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A radically divergent early dating, to the 6th century, has also found favour witha number of scholars over the past twenty years.11 A reasonably certainly ter-minus ante quem for the paintings is provided by a graffito, traced into the sur-face of the painted plaster beneath of Presentation of Christ in the Temple,recording the name of Ardericus, archbishop of Milan in the second quarter ofthe 10th century (938-945); a further less secure graffito reference, beneaththe Adoration of the Magi, is to Tado, archbishop between 860-868.12 At thetime of writing a new dendrochronological examination of samples from theroof-beam in the eastern apse is being made. As the plaster level carrying thepaintings appears to respect this beam, this should result in a secure terminuspost quem and probably a terminus ad quem for the painted programme.

Meanwhile, both the consensus for a date in the 9th century, essentiallyfounded on carbon-14 and thermoluminenscence dating, by no means exact in-dices, especially in their early days, and essentially unsupported by secure sty-listic or iconographic evidence, and the 6th-century consensus, which discountsthe relevance of these scientific dates for the painted decoration, remain un-easy. Following De Capitani D’Arzago and Weitzmann, apparently telling formalcomparisons can be drawn between the frescoes in S. Maria and paintings ofthe 7th and early 8th century in S. Maria Antiqua in Rome, on the one hand, andmetropolitan Byzantine manuscripts, like the joshua Roll and the Paris Psalter,on the other, with no obvious point of resolution in sight – and a dating in the6th century only extends the spectrum of uncertainty. We are faced with a situ-ation comparable to that in which experts are unable to come to agreement onwhether a particular work should be assigned to an artist working in a classi-cizing narrative mode in the 16th century Europe or to a historicist painter activein the 19th century. The situation is embarrassing.

The content and shape of the programme of imagery, the sense of the se-quence of episodes from the life of Mary and the infancy of Christ, on the wallsof the church, together with the axial iconic images which punctuated the se-quence, are also problematic. Two of the four iconic clipeate images are lost,only Christ at the mid-point of the apse and the hetoimasia, the prepared throne,high on the facing west wall survive. The various narrative scenes are notarranged in chronological sequence but follow a doubling, switching course, pos-sibly determined by a design in which resonating subjects are paired off withone another in symmetrical opposition.13 The subjects illustrated have been se-lected from the apocryphral Protoevangelium of james as well as from thecanonical Gospel narratives. The apocryphal scenes include the episode of theTrial of the Virgin’s Virginity by Water, the Presentation of the Virgin and herDomicile in the Temple and possibly other scenes from the early history of theVirgin, a now extremely fragmentary panel which has been identified as showingthe Rejection of joachim’s Gifts and another now completely lost, which mayhave shown the Birth of the Virgin, balancing the nativity of Christ on the facingwall.14 The canonical scenes include the Annunciation, Visitation, journey toBethlehem, Adoration of the Magi, and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.The apocryphal scenes are more at home in the literary and visual culture ofthe Byzantine eastern Mediterranean than they are in the West in the early me-dieval period. The underlying sense of the programme has been examined insome detail by Weitzmann, who sees it as primarily dogmatic and having the in-carnation as its principal subject.15 Paula Leveto, on the other hand, recognizesthe Virgin Mary as being the focal subject of the cycle, and argues that she ishere particularly identified with and assimilated with Ecclesia, the institution of

25 Weitzmann 1948.26 Weitzmann 1948, 51-72; Weitzmann1951, 28-68. 27 Brescia: Brogiolo, Gheroldi, Ibsen,Mitchell 2010; Brogiolo forthcoming. Müs-tair: Goll, Exner, hirsch 2007, 30; Mitchellforthcoming28 Menologion: Bib. Apost. Vat. gr. 1613;Menologio 2007; Lazarev 1967, 140-1,fig. 145; D’Aiuto forthcoming; Psalter: Ve-nice Bib. Marciana cod. gr. 17; Lazarev1967, 141, fig. 129; Cutler 1976-7; Cut-ler 1984, 115-9, pl. 58; Maguire 1988,93-4, fig. 7. 29 Paris, Bibl. Nat. gr. 510, fol. 143v;Brubaker 1999, fig. 19. 30 Romanelli and Nordhagen 1964, pl. IIIB;Nordhagen 1968, colour pl. IV.31 Non-withstanding the reservationsvoiced by Leslie Brubaker (2000), who ref-erences and discusses the principal previ-ous literature, there is probably aByzantine cast to much of the 7th- andearly 8th-century work in the church at thefoot of the Palatine. The painted schemesat S.Maria Antiqua certainly were con-ceived and worked for patrons resident inRome with broadly Roman interests andconstituents, whatever their particular eth-nicities may have been; however,Brubaker’s expedient of turning the tradi-tional East-to-West equation on its headand positing formative western, Italian in-fluence on Byzantine practice in this re-gard in the century after Iconoclasm,requires a more comprehensive demon-stration. 32 Romanelli and Nordhagen 1964, pl. VII;hubert, Porcher, Volbach .33 DeWald 1932, pls. XIII, XIV, XVII, XXIV,XXVII, XXIX, XXXV, XLIV, XLV, LVILXI, LXIV,LXVI, LXXIV, LXXVI, LXXXVI, LXXXVIII, XC,CXXXI, CXII and passim.34 Pace 2007 for a detailed and thoughtfuldiscussion of the difficulty of mapping thecourse of this current of Byzantine art dur-ing this period.35 Demus 1970, 23-4.36 Brescia: Panazza 1962, 173-5; Peroni1983, 74-6; Müstair: Bognetti, Chierici,Capitani D’Arzago 1948, 667, pls.LXXXIIIb-d; Davis -Weyer 1987, 226-32.37 Bognetti, Chierici, Capitani D’Arzago1948, ????pl. LXXXIII; Goll, Exner, hirsch2007, figs. 63, 85-87k 38 Goll, Exner, hirsch 2007, passim.39 Sulser 1980.40 Goll, Exner, hirsch 2007, 30.41 Castelseprio: Bognetti, Chierici, De Ca-pitani D’Arzago 1948, pls. LVII-LIX, XC;Weitzmann 1951, figs. B, 7, 11; Müstair:Goll, Exner, hirsch 2007, 46k, 52k.42 Castelseprio: Bognetti, Chierici, De Ca-pitani D’Arzago 1948, pls. XXXVII-XXXVIII,LVII-LIX, XC; Weitzmann 1951, figs. A, B,8, 11; Müstair: Goll, Exner, hirsch 2007,45k.43 Castelseprio: Bognetti, Chierici, De Ca-pitani D’Arzago 1948, pl. XLIII, XLV, XC;Weitzmann 1951, figs. B, 3; Müstair: Goll,Exner, hirsch 2007, 46k.

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the Church.16 The number of scenes given over to episodes from the early lifeof the Virgin and the visual prominence she is given in every scene seem to con-firm that she is indeed the focal subject of the scheme. More recently MarcoRossi has seen the programme as an exposition of the mystery of the Trinity,with a particular focus on the two salvific aspects of Christ, his physical incar-nation as Word incarnate, and his divinity as pre-existent Logos.17 The last wordhas not been said on this issue; and furthermore the role played by the centralapsidal chapel and its decorative programme as one element in a sequence ofinterrelated spaces which included the nave of the church and the north andsouth apses, as a socially and liturgically functioning complex, needs further ex-amination.

From the outset, there has been a tendency tosee the fresco-cycle as iso-lated, as the work of a painter of genius, a visitor from an alien cultural tradition,in all likelihood an artist schooled in a pure Byzantine tradition, from the easternMediterranean.18 The dramatic compositions, the free and accomplished brush-work, the immediate visual impact and relatively good state of preservation ofthe paintings have tended to add to the sense of difference, detachedness, evenuniqueness, which scholars seem to see in them. Their otherness is only in-creased by the almost total loss of comparable Byzantine painting from the 7th-9th centuries. In the absence of direct comparanda, the paintings at Castelsepriohave commonly been envisaged as a screen on which conceptions of ideal oractual Byzantine pictorial practice of the period can be projected. The artist, orrather artists, since to judge from the design and execution of the figures in thevarious compositions, there were at least two painters at work in the church,mayhave been trained in an eastern Mediterranean centre, possibly even inConstantinople itself, as Weitzmann was the first to argue.19 however, in theabsence of surviving examples of comparable Byzantine monumental paintingfrom the early medieval period, it would be well to be cautious in this regard.The debates which have continued for almost a century on the roles whichByzantine artists may or may not have played in the mosaics of Norman Sicilyprovide a salutary warning of the difficulties involved in assessing the probablenationality, even the training, of the makers responsible for particular works, inany period.

That the paintings at Castelseprio were composed using pictorial formulaewhich formed part of the stock in trade of Byzantine practitioners, in the earlymedieval centuries, is beyond question. They can be cogently related to a tradi-tion which can be reconstructed from the scant material remains from the pe-riod, whether original Byzantine works or derivatives produced by contemporaryartists in papal Rome and Carolingian Francia.

A diagnostic index of this relationship is the foliate rod bound round with spi-ralling ribbons which serves as a dramatic cornice-motif marking the horizontaldivide between the narrative scenes above and the curtained dado below.20 Thedetail of the foliate rods issuing from bell-mouthed trumpet-sleeves at the inte-rior corners of walls is particularly indicative. Beribboned garland-rods of thiskind, emerging from similar trumpet-tubes at the corners, frame the fields ofmosaic in the bema of hagia Sophia in Constantinople, a scheme completedand dedicated in 867,21 and a version with straight tubes was deployed on thesoffits of the arches of the octagon in the Dome of the Rock, probably the workof Byzantine craftsmen working for the Caliph, Abd al-Malik in the early 690s.22

Early in the 10th century, the motif was picked on again as a framing-device by

44 Koshi 1999 Textband, 249-54.45 For the ascription of the still standingchurch to Desiderius and Ansa, see Brogi-olo, Gheoldi, Ibsen and Mitchell 2010 andBrogiolo forthcoming. 46 Panazza 1962, figs. 81, 82; Bertelli1992, 222. 47 Castelseprio: Bognetti, Chierici, CapitaniD’Arzago 1948, pls. XLV-XLVII; Brescia:Panazza 1962, 173, figs. 80, 135; Lomar-tire 1998, 46, figs. 49b, 50. The Image ofthe Flight into Egypt at Müstair also, in areduced form, follows the same basic pat-tern as the journey to Bethlehem at Cas-telseprio (Panazza 1962, fig. 128; Goll,Exner and hirsch 2007, 32k; Brogiolo,Gheroldi, Ibsen, Mitchell 2010, figs 26-8). 48 Brubaker 1999, fig. 6. 49 Peroni 1983, 74-6.50 Panazza 1962, 128-79, esp. 172-9 51 Bognetti, Chierici, Capitani D’Arzago1948, pls. XXXVI, XXXVIIIa and b, XXXIX,XLI, XLV, XLVI, XLVII, XLVIII, L, LI, LIII, LV,LVII, LVIII, LIXa.52 Köhler 1958, pl. II, 2a, 54, 58, 81, 83,85, 87, 94-6, 104a, 106a, 108.53 Castelseprio: Bognetti, Chierici, CapitaniD’Arzago 1948, pls. XLIII-XLIV; SoissonsGospels, Paris Bibl. Nat. lat. 8850, fol. 81v:Kohler 1958, pl. II, 83; Mütherich Gaehde1977, pl. 6.54 Castelseprio: Bognetti, Chierici, CapitaniD’Arzago 1948, pls. XXXVI, XLIII, XLIV,XLVII, XLIX, Court School manuscripts:Kohler 1958, pls. II, 38-40, 58, 60, 81,83, 94, 104a, 106a, Mütherich and Gae-hde 1977, pl. 6.55 Mitchell 1994, 935-9; Mitchell 1999b,103-4; Mitchell 2000b, 364-7.56 Panazza 1962, 169. 57 Buckton 1988; Buckton 1996, 659-60;Osborne 1990; Brubaker 1991; Brubaker2000; Effenberger 2000; Mitchell 2008,263-7.58 Torp 1959; Mitchell 2000a; Mitchell2000b, 347-56. 59 Boeckler 1952-1953; Boeckler 1956;Beckwith 1965; Grape 1974. 60 Mitchell 2008, 272-82.61 Mitchell 1999b.62 C. Bertelli, Gli affreschi nella torre diTorba, Milan: Electa, 1988. See also: Per-oni 1973; Bertelli 1980; Lomartire 1992.63 Kloos 1980: 219.64 Bertelli 1988, 39-40.65 Mitchell 1993, 105-8; S.Maria Antiqua:Wilpert 1916, vol. IV, pls. 179, 181,182/2, 183, 184; Belting 1987, figs. 1,2 and 8; San Vincenzo al Volturno: Mitchell1993, 105-6, figs. 7:39 and 40.66 Kloos 1980; Bertelli 1988, 39; Lomar-tire 1992: 216..67 Lomartire 1992: 216. Saverio Lomar-tire kindly and most usefully commentedon our reading of the inscription. 68 Kloos 1980: 221.69 Kloos 1980: 223-4; Bertelli 1988: 47.70 Lomartire 1992: 216.

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one of the artists responsible for the so-called Paris Psalter, Paris Bibl. Nat. gr.139, one of the principal instances of a markedly classicizing pictorial idiomwhich characterized elite production of illuminated manuscripts and carvingsin ivory in the late 9th and early 10th century Byzantium, a tradition which hasgone by the name of the Macedonian Renaissance.23

Similarly, some of the narrative compositions at Castelseprio, the prominentarchitectural settings deployed to dramatic narrative effect, and many detailsof figures and buildings seem to have their analogues in Byzantine art of the pe-riod. The composition of the scene of Christ being presented to Symeon in thetemple at Castelseprio has the same underlying structure as that of the full-page miniature of the Anointing of David in the Paris Psalter (fol. 3v):24 the majorprotagonists at the focus, one upright and dominant, the other bending and min-istering, with a somewhat detached group of secondary figures to one side,against a busy and varied backdrop of buildings, characterized by a variety ofopenings, both arched and trabeated, with columns and piers supporting elab-orate architectural crestings. A number of characteristic features clearly showa close relationship with this elite Byzantine classicizing idiom, best preservedin the Paris Psalter and the joshua Roll (Bibl Apost. Vat. cod. palat. gr. 431).25

The location of scenes in romantic landscape settings, asymmetrical openings,arched or trabeated openings, depicted on the angle, supported by a columnon one side and a rectangular pier on the other, irregular contorted trees grow-ing around and even through the architecture to impart a sacral-idyllic identityto the location, a lone column sometimes supporting an urn or sundial, some-times bound with a sash, ghostly groups of buildings on the horizon all-but dis-solved in ambient sunlight and heat-haze, and a range of formulaic figuralcompositions, as well as particular stylistic conventions; all these derived, seem-ingly quite directly and knowingly, from an ancient Greco-Roman pictorial tradi-tion, best exemplified in surviving paintings of August Mau’s Second and ThirdPompeian Styles.26

Unfortunately, the almost total loss of elite Byzantine painting, monumentaland manuscript, from the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries means that it is almost im-possible to trace the early course of this classicizing idiom, which appears in afully developed state in a handful of surviving manuscripts from the decadesaround 900. however, there is some tangential evidence to suggest that it mayhave had a considerable history and was already at least two centuries old attime of the Paris Psalter and the joshua Roll.

On the one hand, there appear to be clear references to this Byzantine pic-torial tradition in the wall paintings at San Salvatore di Brescia and in St. johannat Müstair, both now fairly securely dated, to the 750s and the last quarter ofthe 8th century, respectively.27

Furthermore, a long ante-life reaching back at least to around 700 can betraced for a characteristic composition for figural narratives set in open land-scape, quite extensively adopted by Byzantine artists working in a slightly laterphase of this elite metropolitan tradition, in the later 10th and early 11th cen-turies. This type features two precipitous rocky hills, their peaks breaking intosun-lit facetted crags, framing a central valley in which the drama of the imagetakes place – typically a biblical narrative or a scene of martyrdom. The conven-tion is most clearly represented in the Menologion of Basil II, of the late 10th

century, and in his Psalter, of around 1020, which also feature some reducedvariants of the classicizing architectural tropes of miniature painting of a century

71 De Capitani D’Arzago 1952: 135-8,plate 11, figs. 43-9; Fiorio Tedone 1986:411-19, figs. 13-15, 19-29.72 Cassanelli 1990.73 Fiorio Tedone 1985: 268-80, figs. 14,19; Fiorio Tedone 1986: 420-1, fig. 33. 74 Fiorio Tedone 1986: 419.75 Fiorio Tedone 1986: 420.76 Bertelli and Brogiolo 2000: 248-9, cat.264; Lomartire 2003: 426.77 hodges, Leppard and Mitchell 2011:102.78 Mazzei 1984: 361; D’Angela 1991.79 Pers. comm. Marina Castelfranchi Falla.80 Mitchell 2001b.81 Mitchell 2001a82 hodges 1995: plates 3: 121317, 20.83 Belting 1987; Mitchell 1993. 84 Bertelli 1988: 12-34.85 Bertelli 1988: 25-6.86 Osborne 1992.87 Mitchell 1993: 76, 109-110, figs. 7:6and 46. 88 hodges, Leppard and Mitchell 2011:77-80, 84, 86-7. 89 Goll, Exner and hirsch 2007: 30, 43,49.90 Goll, Exner and hirsch 2007:figs. 30,83-84k, 102k, 112k, 91 Peduto and Mauro 1990: 23, figs. 4,12, 13; Orabona 2006: 14.92 Bertelli 1988: figs. 7 and 8.93 Barry 2007; Mitchell 2012.94 Grabar 1957: 219-22, 234-48; La-fontaine-Dosogne 1968: 135-43. 95 hoddinott 1963: 175-9, colour platesVI-VII, plate 48 ; Wisskirchen 1996; Ia-cobini 2000: 173-8, figs. 64-6.96 Iacobini 2000: figs. 16018, 20, 2203597 hubert, Porcher and Volbach 1969: ill.89.98 Bowes and Mitchell 2010: 580, 583;fig. 7.99 Bertelli 1988: 26.100 Lomartire 1992: 215.101 Belting 1987; Mitchell 1993; Rettner1995; Mitchell 1999a.102 Bertelli 1988: 41-45.103 Lomartire 1994: 49.104 Lomartire 1992: 215.105 Bertelli 1988: ; Lomartire 1992: 216.

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earlier.28 A century earlier the formula was deployed as a setting for the parableof the Good Samaritan in a magnificently illuminated copy of the homilies of StGregory of Nazianzus, one of the most sumptuous surviving early representa-tives of the classicizing phase book-painting of the late 9th and early 10th cen-turies.29

This standard compositional type, consisting of two framing mountain peaksflanking a central valley, in which a protagonist, often with dramatically flyingcloak, engages with an adversary, is to be seen in a fully developed state in theimage of David killing Goliath, painted on a low wall screening the bema in thechurch of S. Maria Antiqua in Rome.30 This forms part of the comprehensiveredecoration of the church, which took place under Pope john VII (705-7) inthe first decade of the 8th century. john was of course of eastern, Byzantine an-cestry, educated in Constantinople, S. Maria Antiqua was home to a communityof Greek speaking monks, probably refugees from eastern iconoclasm, and thepaintings and mosaics associated with john’s patronage in Rome have generallybeen understood as owing much to Byzantine pictorial tradition and practice.31

The idiom took root in Rome and is to be seen in various devolved variants overthe following two or three generations, for instance in the early 740s in thefocal image of the Crucifixion in the funerary oratory of Theodotus, also in S.Maria Antiqua.32 Over a century later, at Rheims, in Carolingian Francia, around830, the artists of the Utrecht Psalter repeatedly drew on the same composi-tional type, adapting it variously for their idiosyncratic illustration of the Psalms.33

Both this landscape tradition and the conventions of composition and classiciz-ing detail deployed in S. Maria at Castelseprio may have enjoyed a centuries-long, albeit punctuated, life in pictorial practice in Byzantium before the periodof the so-called Macedonian Renaissance in the early 10th century.

The production of highly finished, elegantly composed, and detailed classiciz-ing works of this type may well not have been continuous and steady over thecenturies but rather subject to fluctuating, changing rhythms, increasing anddiminishing following the dictates of patrons and the readiness of workshops tosupply that demand. The shape of this evolution is now impossible to recoverand this means that any attempt to determine the position of the compositionsat Castelseprio at a particular point in its progress is almost bound to fail.34

If Castelseprio cannot satisfactorily be tied exactly to a particular contem-porary Byzantine cultural context, can it be understood more satisfactorily inrelation to contemporary monumental painting in its more immediate geograph-ical context, northern Italy, the Alps and more widely continental western Eu-rope? At first glance, this might seem an unpromising line of inquiry. Otto Demuscertainly saw Castelseprio as an exceptional case, the work of a Byzantine artistfar from home, standing almost alone in an alien cultural landscape: “It de-pended on the circumstances whether works created by Byzantine artists inthe West remained isolated and were forgotten or became the fountain headsof Byzantine influence. The more barbarian (in the Greek sense of the word) thesurroundings were, the less the likelihood of their exerting any lasting influence.This seems to have been the fate of the work of the really great painter who, atthe instance of a Lombard princeling, painted – as we believe, in the later sev-enth or early eighth century – the frescoes of Castelseprio; they may help usreconstruct in our minds the great art of Constantinople of the time but, as faras we know, they had no effect on subsequent developments in Lombardy. Thecultural and artistic distance between the painter and his patrons or the be-

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holders, was too great for this isolated work to have had any significant effect.”35

however, beneath their dazzling surface style, the paintings at Castelsepriodo share a range of critical features with monumental wall-painting in other cen-tres in the region, in particular the monastery churches of St. johann at Müstairand S. Salvatore at Brescia.36 To begin with the foliate rod or garland, woundwith a ribbon and issuing from corner sleeves, which was used at hagia Sophiain Constantinople in the 9th century and in the Dome of the Rock in jerusalemin the late 7th, and which at Castelseprio separated the narrative register fromthe dado zone; this same motif is deployed to frame the Ascension at the top ofthe east wall of the church at Müstair.37 Ribboned foliate rods or garlands framethe Old and New Testament scenes on all five registers in the nave,38 and a sim-ilar meticulously carved ribboned garland ornamented the vertical posts froma liturgical screen in the cathedral at Chur.39 Dendrochronological examinationof one of the beams from the roof of the church at Müstair has given a date of775, suggesting that construction was underway at that time; the carved postsfrom Chur seem also to date from the same period.40

In terms of composition, too, there are telling similajrities between Cas-telseprio and Müstair; in the grouping of figures and the use of dramatic archi-tectural settings to bring life to the narrative. This is apparent if the Presentationin the Temple at Castelseprio is compared with scenes of Christ working mira-cles at Müstair, the healing of the Deaf-Mute and the Woman taken in Adul-tery.41 Although the execution and overall visual effect is very different, exactlythe same vocabulary of piers and columns, flat architrave-lintels and depressedarches is deployed, with characteristic thin triangular areas of shadow underthe lintels and arches to intimate spatial depth and indicate that the openingsare seen on the slant. The asymmetrical pavilion behind the two seated blindmen in the scene of Christ healing the Blind at Müstair is a more completelyrendered variant of the structure on the right of the Presentation of Christ inthe Temple and the setting for the Annunciation at Castelseprio;42 and the an-gled free-standing pier crowned by a red sphere with a radiating fan of red andblue foliate rays, which marks the moment of the miracle of healing of the deaf-mute at Müstair, appears to be a variant of the prominent column, bound witha sash and topped by a brilliant disc, which performs a similar role at Cas-telseprio, announcing the miraculous appearance of the angel to the sleepingjoseph.43

A late stage in the evolution of this pictorial tradition, just to the north acrossthe Alps, on the shores of Lake Constance, can be seen in the painted pro-gramme with narratives from the miraculous ministry of Christ on the walls ofthe church of St. Georg Oberzell, on the Reichenau. The church there was con-structed under Abbot hatto III (888-913) and there is little reason not to assignthe principal painted decoration of the nave of the church to the same period.44

An earlier moment in the historical course of the idiom deployed by the work-shop responsible for Müstair is to be found at S. Salvatore in Brescia, commis-sioned by the Lombard king, Desiderius and his wife, Ansa, and built andembellished with stucco and frescoes in the late 750s.45 The painted decorationat Brescia is now extremely fragmentary; however, enough survives to showthat a similar vocabulary of depicted architecture was deployed in the narrativecompositions on the walls, with the same lintels and depressed arches seen onthe slant, which are among the most salient features at Müstair.46 The striking

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similarity in composition and delineation between the donkey carrying Mary andthe child Christ in the Flight into Egypt at Brescia and the donkey bearing Maryto Bethlehem at Castelseprio has struck observers since the uncovering of thepainted walls in Salvatore in the late 1950s.47 Furthermore, in a well-preservedpanel at Brescia, which has been identified as illustrating the transport of therelics of St. Giulia from Carthage, a composition with a bird’s eye representationof a city, circled by crenellated walls and filled with basilical buildings on the slantwith prominent frontal pedimented gables, seems to derive from the same prob-ably Byzantine tradition as that followed in the narrative miniatures of a late-9th-century manuscript of the homilies of St Gregory of Nazianzus, a book doubtlesswritten and painted in Constantinople.48 Adriano Peroni has made a close analy-sis of the commonplaces in composition and style between the paintings atBrescia and Castelseprio, concluding that the artists at both sites had theirtraining in the same eastern tradition of pictorial practice.49 The paintings atBrescia and Müstair are more distant relatives, variant members of a commonpictorial idiom, probably separated by about 25 years; both apparently drawingon an aulic classicizing Byzantine tradition.As was recognized by GaetanoPanazza, fifty years ago, there are telling relationships between the paintings atCastelseprio and those at Brescia, the Tempietto Longobardo at Cividale andMüstair.50 These remarkable surviving programmes of painting in sub-alpinenorthern Italy, designed for elite monastic foundations in the last years of Lom-bard power and the first decades of Frankish domination, provide the most im-mediate and tangible context for Castelseprio. It is with these that theextraordinary dramatic and vividly executed paintings in Santa Maria foris portasbegin to touch ground and find something approaching a familial setting. Theyprovide an art-historical context and also a general chronological frame in whichCastelseprio can be situated and understood, as the construction and comple-tion of all three of these buildings can now be quite securely dated.

A few shared features and connections between Castelseprio and the pic-torial conventions developed by the artists responsible for the de-luxe manu-script books of the so-called Court School of Charlemagne, in the years around800, could be taken to confirm such a north Italian context of the later 8th cen-tury for Castelseprio. A salient feature of a number of the compositions at Cas-telseprio is an attention-catching fall of cloth, with zig-zag angled contours,dramatically lit, which enlivens the upper mantels of figures in the Visitation, theTrial by Water, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi and the Presentation ofChrist in the Temple, and which in the journey to Bethlehem is formed by thesaddle cloth, falling down either side of Mary.51 Similar cascades of drapery area feature also of the portraits of the Evangelists in the Gospel Books of Charle-magne’s Court School.52 Then, the figure of St Mark in the Soissons Gospels, abook of the first decade of the 9th century, with his dramatic angled pose, hisupper pallium embellished with broad gold bands and lit with a dazzling patternof white highlights, provides a striking analogue to the figure of the angel ap-pearing to joseph in his dream in the church.53 Finally, the manner of highlight-ing cloth, with thin white lines along the tops of narrow drawn folds and littleclusters of parallel white lines on the surfaces between, sometimes irregularlyshaped, at others taking a comb-like form, is generally similar in the wall-paint-ings and in the manuscripts, although more systematic and mannered in thehands of the Carolingian book-painters.54 It has been argued that one of theprincipal sources on which the painters of Charlemagne’s Court School drewfor ideas and inspiration was the art produced for the Lombard courts at thetime of the Carolingian conquest.55

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On the one hand, then, the paintings at Castelseprio sit within a local northItalian, late Lombard, context of the second half of the 8th century. On the otherhand, they have been seen as standing, in some way, alone, as differing in a crit-ical way from other surviving work preserved in the region. This difference iscommonly characterized as involving stylistic and iconographic features whichhave been associated with an ancient Greco-Roman ‘hellenistic’ idiom, and witha more contemporary Byzantine tradition which in some way picked up on andcontinued this ancient idiom, and developed it for new audiences.

Panazza saw this north Italian group of churches, together with Santa MariaAntiqua in Rome, with its rich palimpsest of painted layers, as revealing ‘una vivae profonda koinh fra Oriente ed Occidente (che) sembra esistere ancora nelsec. IX’ (Panazza assigned San Salvatore with its painted decoration to the 9th

century).56 The shape and dynamics of this koine, this common language or lin-gua franca, which has generally been understood in terms of ‘Byzantine art andthe West”, that is as predominantly a movement of ideas and patterns fromthe eastern Mediterranean to the post-Roman successor states in western Eu-rope, is now being called into question and is beginning to be re-examined andreconfigured. The chronological precedence of surviving material evidence, in arange of media, in the western over the eastern Mediterranean cultural the-atres has led scholars to countenance and propose the transmission of tech-niques, conventions, iconographies and styles in the opposite direction, fromthe West to Byzantium in the early medieval centuries. 57 Castelseprio will haveto be thoroughly analysed in the light of this debate.

however, a prominent characteristic of artistic production, at the highestlevel, in both late Lombard Italy and early Carolingian Francia, was an intenseengagement with both late antique and more contemporary eastern Mediter-ranean models and traditions. First the Lombard kings and their dukes, andthen the Carolingian elite, commissioned artists to create striking new visualvocabularies capable of projecting an aura of power, authority and cultural am-bition, appropriate to rulers of newly-forming states. The official arts of both theancient and the contemporary, Byzantine, Roman empires provided one of themost readily available, effective and easily appropriable visual rhetorics toachieve this aim. In architecture, architectural sculpture and painting, the lateantique, often Ravennate, as well as more recent Byzantine underpinnings ofLombard court art have been recognized;58 and similarly the role played by lateantique and contemporary Byzantine models and practice in the artistic pro-duction of the workshops serving for the court of Charlemagne have long en-gaged and exercised modern scholars.59 The Byzantine element in the paintedprogrammes at Brescia, Cividale and Müstair may be best understood as ele-ments of such a visual rhetoric of power and cultural ambition, appropriated bythe Lombard elite in various stages during the course of the 8th century, in theprogressive construction of a new court art, unprecedented in early medievalEurope for its elegance, sophistication and finish.60 This formed part of a culturalstrategy which was then taken over and developed by the Carolingians in theaftermath of their conquest and appropriation of Lombard Italy.61

The extraordinary set of paintings in S.Maria foris portas at Castelseprioplayed a part in this narrative of cultural strategies and state formation in thechanging geo-political dynamics of northern Italy. The formal connections be-tween the compositions at Castelseprio and the paintings preserved in San Sal-

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vatore in Brescia and St. johann at Müstair suggest that this took place to-wards the end of the 8th century – but hopefully new dendrochronological datesfor the timbers in the eastern apse will soon give a secure terminus post quemfor the paintings. On the one hand the artists may have been visitors from theeastern Mediterranean, exponents of a pure strain of metropolitan Byzantineartistic practice, as has often been claimed, taking advantage of a particular in-terest and demand for work in a contemporary aulic idiom, with its connotationsof imperial high culture, prestige and power. On the other hand, it is possiblethat they were locals who, in response to particularly intense patronage-demandhad availed themselves of Byzantine example and maybe Byzantine training todevelop a highly skilled and sophisticated, dramatic and evocative pictorial idiom,full of antique style and reference, and made brilliantly alive through mastery ofexecution. Given the difficulty in establishing a satisfactory contemporary east-ern context for the paintings, it may be that after all we would do well to attemptto re-think the whole problem and to consider the possibility that we have to dohere with the work of a western workshop, taking advantage of a new politicalclimate and new opportunities for patronage in the aftermath of the Carolingianappropriation of the Lombard kingdom, and fully open to a ‘una viva e profondakoinh fra Oriente ed Occidente’.

the funerary tower at torba

Twenty-five years ago, following the modern consolidation of the Tower atTorba and the cleaning and conservation of its wall paintings by FAI, CarloBertelli, with a team from the University of Lausanne, undertook a careful surveyand interpretive analysis of the painted decoration of the two rooms in the upperlevels of the building. The lower chamber contains commemorative images ofprominent deceased members of the monastic community and an epitaph writ-ten around a great cross in its deep window recesses, and in the upper chapelthe original painted scheme is to a greater or lesser extent miraculously pre-served on all four walls62. however, there still exists some uncertainty as to thefunction of these two chambers in the context of the early medieval monastery,of which they formed part, and the precise sense and date of their painted dec-oration.

The Lower Chamber

The lower room is entered through a door at the mid-point of the west wall;the other three walls each are punctuated by two deep arched recesses, withwindow openings to illuminate the room. These arched alcoves are spaced soas to give a substantial field of wall-surface at the centre of each wall.

This lower chamber would appear to have received its first apparatus ofpainted decoration before the upper chamber with its more completely pre-served scheme. The first level of plaster on the walls is best traced on the focaleast wall facing the entrance. This appears to have served as a kind of arriccio,levelling up the wall surface, lapping up to the larger more projecting stones,the tops of which were in some cases left uncovered. Over this was laid a finish-ing layer of plaster, which received the first scheme of painted decoration. Theprincipal upper central field of this wall, between the two large arched niches,carries the remains of a complex figural composition, now fragmentary in theextreme. On the right-hand side of this area, next to the left shoulder of the right-

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hand arched recess, are traces of a standing figure, the lower curving sweepof a yellow pallium, articulated with fold lines in red, the skirt of an ankle-lengthbluish-white tunic and the ghost of a foot, in profile outlined in white. The fall ofthe pallium and the foot show that the figure stood in profile, facing inwards to-wards the centre of the composition. There appear to be traces of plants withred flowers growing from the surrounding ground.

Further up the wall, at a point about 2.84 m above the present pavement,and a little to the left, a patch of plaster with the lower part of a head, inclineddown towards the left, is preserved. It seems likely that this head belonged to asecond figure, set a little higher and towards the centre in the composition.Against a faintly pinkish ochre ground, the ground flesh-colour of the face is awarm light ochre. The head appears to be that of a young person, with featuresdelicately defined in a soft red, the lower part of the nose contoured, the eye astrong red disc, circled with white, with a prominent curling hollow of shadowbeneath, in turn defined with a running white highlight on the cheekbone, withragged fingers of white running down over the cheek-bone.

To the left in this central field, more or less on a level with the inclined head,are the faded remains of a complex of elements, in which vertical and horizon-tals, in reds and greys with embellishment in white and an element of purple, inrectilinear formation, predominate. Whether these represent the remains ofan architectural feature is not clear.

From the few fragmentary remains of painted plaster it is clear that the cen-tral field of this east wall was filled with a large narrative composition. Given thefunerary character of the chamber and on the supposition that the rectilinearelements on the right side of the image may have formed part of a building, thestanding figure on the right and the inclined head further up might be consonantwith a representation of the Maries speaking with the Angel at the tomb of therisen Christ, with the guarding soldiers sleeping, on the eve of Easter.

At the bottom of this east wall, recognizable elements of a dado painted inimitation of polychrome opus sectile are preserved. The distinguishing featuresof two painted panels can be made out in the centre and right-hand side of thewall-surface, each containing a porphyry rota, a disc. The right-hand panel is thebetter preserved. here the central purple disc, some 0.41 m in diameter, isframed by a 60-70 mm white collar, strongly contoured in black and articulatedwith characteristic rounded rectangular features on the outer erimeter, at fouraxial positions. This, in turn, is set within a rectangular field, parti-coloured pinkand yellow, with the colour-switches on the corner diagonals, all surrounded bya 60 mm frame in white. On its right-hand side this panel is bordered by a ver-tical band of pink extending to the rim of the right-hand recess, which is definedby a thick black band framing the arched opening. The left-hand panel of thisdado, extremely fragmentary, is uniform with its companion but with the pinkand yellow areas framing the central medallion counter-changed. The full heightof the dado from the top of the outer white frame to the present pavement isc. 1.25 m.

Traces of the same initial plaster level can be found on the other walls of theroom. With the exception of a small passage high up by the right shoulder ofthe right-hand recess in the east wall, which may represent part of a wing, littleof iconographic significance can now be recognized. however, it would appear

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that all four walls of the room were plastered and painted, in this initial phase,with a complex scheme of figural imagery over a dado of imitation polychromemarble revetment.

The plaster of this first phase laps round into the openings of the two archedrecesses in the south-east corner of the room, where the surfaces are bestpreserved. however, it does not appear to have gone any further; there are noobvious traces of this early plaster on the wall surfaces of the interiors of therecesses. In both the right-hand recess on the east wall and the left recess onthe south wall, plaster supporting the preserved painted imagery appears tooverlap the first-phase plaster on the outside wall-surfaces. This is best observedin the right-hand recess in the east wall, where the first-phase plaster just turnsthe corner, the deep purple band defining the outline of the opening extendingjust onto the reveal of the alcove, where it is met and overlapped by the plastercarrying the painted decoration of the interior surfaces. This suggests that whenthe chamber was first prepared for the use of the monastery, the first applica-tion of plaster covered only the principal forward surfaces, leaving the archedrecesses bare. These were decorated only later in a subsequent phase orphases.

In the right recess on the east wall, facing the entrance, the plaster on therear wall below and around the window has largely gone; however, recognizablepainted surfaces are preserved on the two flanking reveals. On the left side arethe lower parts of a front-facing standing figure, wearing a long white tunic, ar-ticulated with long vertical folds in blue, and over this a pallium-like garment indeep purple; orange-red shoes issue from the lower hem of the tunic. The feetare at a height of c. 1.3 m above the present pavement. This figure standsagainst a yellow ground, which continues down below his feet, and to the rightof his lower leg is depicted what appears to be a piece of wooden furniture, pos-sibly a skeletal seat. To judge from its attitude this must represent a saint, in astance of iconic frontality. Below, a female ecclesiastic stands in veneration,turn-ing her head to confront the viewer, holding a long yellow candle up before her.This figure, of which only the upper part survives, seems to have been depictedon almost the same scale as the saint above. The painted surface is extremelyabraded here; however, this postulant seems to wear a deep purple maphorion,a long mantle, drawn up over the head like a shawl, worn over a lower garmentwith tight pinkish-red sleeves. As with the inclined head high on the north wall,the flesh of the face is laid on in a pale ochre; with heavy impasto white lights onthe brow and round the eyes, and thelower nose, mouth and eyelids are definedwith fine red contours. The flaring eyebrows and the eyes with their framingwhite lights to contrast with prominent curling shadows beneath, are particu-larly striking and characteristic. It is unclear whether this observant nun is ad-dressing and directing her candle to the saint directly above, or rather towardsa now lost subject depicted on the rear wall of the arcosolium.

A pendant group is depicted on the opposite right reveal of the arched open-ing.

here two frontal figures were deployed on the upper level. A little more ofthese figures is preserved than is the case on the opposite reveal, but their bod-ies above the waist and heads are lost. The ground against which they stand isbanded, pale blue behind their legs, yellow from ankle-level down, bordered by a40 mm band of deep purple, contoured in white, at the edges of the field. Bothwear heavy enveloping almost cylindrical garments, with a tubular pipe of ma-

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terial falling down from the right arm. The left-hand figure is characterized by aparticularly richly worked dalmatic, with thick panelled golden yellow band andhem, set with jewels and worked with lines of closely-set pearls, and little redshoes contoured in white, characterizing a saint of noble even royal ancestry.her companion may originally have been equally richly dressed; however, theembellishments on the bottom of her dress were painted in secco and havenow fallen off the wall, leaving only the blue ground beneath and her shoes asmere shadows.

just as on the opposite reveal, suppliant figures stand at the feet of thesetwo saints, set against a deep ochre ground, the one on the left better preservedthan on the right, with legs slightly flexed at the knee and hands raised in sup-plication. In both cases, these are cowled female ecclesiastics, their deep pur-ple-brown maphoria drawn up over their heads, their bodies probably inthree-quarter profile, turned towards the centre, their faces looking almost fullyout from the wall. The better preserved head, to the left, is characterized by acreamy light ochre flesh tone, with the features described by dramatic whitehighlights on brow, eyes, nose and mouth, and then defined with a fine deep pur-ple-brown contour. The formal vocabulary used here is similar to that of the in-clined head on the north wall and the kneeling nun opposite but the colour islaid on rather more thickly, the highlighting systems are a little more rigid andthe linear definition of the features more insistent, the shadows under eye andchin more blunt. Raised hands with expressively gesturing fingers, in the sameochre flesh tones as the face, lighted with white, are discernible immediately tothe left of the head. Of the second pendant figure, on the right, only the top ofthe veiled head and one raised gesticulating hand are preserved.

These two figures were both identified by tituli and the space between themfilled with words in lines of large white capital letters. The inscription which mustonce have named the right-hand figure is now lost but the somewhat enigmatictitle of her companion on the left, survives: ALIBERGA, in capital letters, deployedon four registers, characterized by A with square top and sloping median bar,E with short bars with bifurcating ends, and G with a short vertical “tail” andbranching upper terminal. There are traces of other white letters, of very similartype, written over and apparently erasing this inscription, which Kloos has readas CASTANA63, Bertelli as CASTA ABA(tissa)64. It would appear that this seconddesignation was written with colour applied in secco, a medium far less stablethan the al fresco application of the original name. Neither reading of the uppername is quite secure.

A feature of the suppliant figures on both sides of the arch is that their headshave been painted on secondary thin skims of plaster, little giornate, apparentlyapplied freshly at the appropriate points over the new and probably still dampplaster on which the figures are painted. These patches of plaster, here followingquite closely the contours of the heads, can be traced most easily by raking light.In this the painters at Torba seem to be following a convention quite widespreadin early medieval Italy for representing the portrait image of a living or recentlydeceased individual in a commemorative funerary context. The practice ofadding the head of a painted portrait on its own skim of plaster is witnessedelsewhere, in the Chapel of SS. Quiricus and julitta in Santa Maria Antiqua,around the middle of the 8th century, where the heads of the donor, Theodotus,and the reigning pope, zacharias, are treated in this way, and almost a centurylater, in the 830s, in a funerary oratory, the so-called crypt of Epyphanius, at

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the monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno, where a deacon donor and the abbotof the time are similarly depicted65.

The space between the two suppliant figures was inscribed with text, in whitecapitals some 40-45 mm tall, in seven registers, against the ochre ground. Theletters may have been painted in secco and their remains are vestigial. The textis probably in part retrievable but has yet to be read.

Little painted plaster has been preserved on the back wall of this recess. Asmall surviving area on the far right, level with the left-hand frontal saint on theadjacent reveal, shows a blue field, with the right edge of a prominent greenish-ochre feature. This field is framed by a 45 mm. band of red and then by 40 mmof deep purple brown at the extreme edge, with white pearls running up the di-vide between the two bands. Another area survives on the far left, here an ochreground with a feature in light purple.

There are no signs of a tomb having been constructed in this recess. On therear wall the original plaster between the lower border of the painted field andthe modern pavement (0.74 m) is plain lime-washed; and on the left reveal thesurface at the bottom of the wall is also lime-washed, with a 20 mm band ofpale purple forming a horizontal accent 40 mm above the pavement. It seemsunlikely that a masonry structure was built against these surfaces.

Painted imagery is also present in the adjacent recess, on the south wall.here on the left-hand reveal of the alcove is preserved the lower half of a largecross surrounded by an elaborate commemorative inscription in eight lines. Thecross is parti-coloured deep yellow and deep red, with the redemptive lettersAlpha and Omega suspended by triple chains from the horizontal arms, and isset against a white ground. This white field is framed by a 10 mm band of black,a 35 mm orange-red band and then a 10 mm strip of purple red at the extremeedge, with white pearls running down the divide between red and purple. Thisborder also frames the lower edge of the cross field, some 0.7 m above thepresent pavement, with below a 10 mm band of purple red, 30 mm of orangered and then lime-white down to the floor.

The inscription, in large letters, 45-70 mm tall, black in the first two pre-served lines, then red, has been read variously by Bertelli, Kloos and Lomartire.66

Our reading, based on limited study on site, is as follows:

[.]EX? [.]EX DEh VERA

A

[…] B?[.]DNI SAL?[…][…]VA[…] VT ANIMA […]PVS.BAEVA.FAMO LA TVA.ALEXANDRIA hIC IN IS TV(m) LOCV(m) TVMVLO IA[ci]O[in] PAC[e don]AEI DNE REQUI SEPI[ternam?…] ABRE ISAC ET IACOB[…] […] ONI […][…] […] AVD […]

The letters are much faded, vestigial and in places lost and the reading can-

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not yet be certain. however, this would appear to be the epitaph of a female ec-clesiastic, with the name of Alexandria, the sense of the words being: ‘… thatthe soul […] of your blessed servant Alexandria may lie in peace in this tomb.Lord [grant] her eternal rest [in the bosom of] Abraham, Isaac and jacob […].67

Of the four short vertical sequences of letters immediately beneath the hor-izontal bar of the cross, the two on the right-hand side DEh and VERA are clearlylegible, those on the left less so. here Kloos reads hEK EX.68 however, in thefirst word, the lower terminal, which is all that survives of the first letter, is noteasily suited to a letter h in this position and the three surviving terminals ofthe third letter would suit an X more happily than a K. The sloping right memberof the first letter of the second word is clear but set rather awkwardly to theleft for a in this position and there are no visible traces of the correspondingleft leg of this Greek letter. These two short words, and the degree to whichthey playfully combine Latin and Greek characters, require more attention. Thename Alexandria is the name of the commemorated deceased woman ratherthan a reference to the Egyptian metropolitan city, as was proposed by Kloos,69

and the word BAD(issa)A (abbess), immediately preceding FAMOLA TVA, pro-posed by Lomartire is not a straightforward reading.70

The cross itself with its parti-coloured stems and huge bar-terminals, flat ontheir outer sides but with angled peaks on their inner sides, is typical of the pro-tective crosses commonly painted on the inner walls of elite block-built tombsin the old Lombard region of Italy, between the 8th and the 10th centuries, ex-emplified in Milan,71 Monza,72 Verona,73 Leggiuno,74 Mantua75 and Pavia,76 inthe north, and in the south at San Vincenzo al Volturno,77 at Troia78 and Canosadi Puglia.79 Similarly the whole composition, with the epitaph laid out around across, is one which is peculiar to the place and time, developed and favouredparticularly in the area of Milan in the post-antique period and subsequentlytaken up in a few other centres, particularly at the southern Lombard monasteryof San Vincenzo al Volturno, in Italy, and further afield at monasteries in Anglo-Saxon and in Ireland.80

The absolute chronology of the phases of painting identified in this roomisnot easy to determine. The parti-coloured cross, with its characteristic terminalbars, on the reveal of the recess in the south wall, cannot of itself be dated withany precision. Painted crosses of similar type and function are found in a rangeof 8th-9th and even maybe 10th-century, contexts. The script of the painted in-scriptions is also not easy to assign with precision; however, the characteristicfeatures of the letters of the epitaph about the cross seem to point to the firsthalf of the 9th century: demonstrative impagination with lines of script runningon a scaffold of red guide-lines and framed by similar red vertical contours atthe sides, the rather tall, drawn-out proportions of the letters, the practice ofvarying the form of characters, as with A, sometimes with straight and some-times with sloping median bar, A with square top and upper bar, M with one legthin the other thick and with short sloping bars, N in ligature with E and T withV, O elongated and tending to a point at top and bottom, X with dramaticallybending lower member. These are features which appear in painted and carvedinscriptions from the monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno, where they canbe dated with some confidence to the first half of the 9th century.81 The conven-tions used here are characteristic of painting in the old Lombard areas of Italytowards the beginning of the 9th century.

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The characterization of the painted heads points in the same direction. Theformula adopted in the lower chamber at Torba for shaping and delineating thefeatures of a face was one which had been evolving in Italian practice since atleast the middle of the 8th century. The states it assumes in the now isolatedfragmentary inclined head high on the east wall and in the suppliant figures ofabbesses on the reveals of the right-hand recess on the east wall accord bestwith the tradition as it can be traced two or three generations later, in the firstpart of the following century: a pale ochre to render the flesh of the face, dra-matic but formulaic white lights to draw attention to the brow, eyes and nose,large intense round pupils in the eyes, with emphatic curling shadows beneath,and delicate sinuous red contours to shape the nose, the mouth and eyelids.The degree of schematisation of the small fragmentary inclined head seemsgenerally comparable (although less emphatic) to that of the painted figures ofprophets from the monks’ Assembly Room at San Vincenzo al Volturno, workof the first decade of the 9th century.82 That of the now anonymous abbessstanding before a saint on the left reveal of the recess on the east wall is closelyrelated and may represent a slightly later stage in this pictorial tradition; whilethe face of Aliberga/Casta opposite, with its more rigid lights and harsher con-touring of features seems to belong to a further typological advance in theprocess. Of course how these differences translate into absolute chronologicalintervals is impossible to say. however, to judge from their formal qualities, theportrait of the first abbess may have been made in the second decade of thecentury, and Aliberga possibly a decade later. Alternatively, they could be thework of two artists, working more or less contemporaneously.

At the time it was painted out, probably in the first years of the 9th century,and the arched recesses completed, the function of this lower chamber un-doubtedly was, in some way, funerary and memorial. The painted panel with theparti-coloured cross surrounded by the epitaph of Alexandria, the images of thefemale ecclesiastics standing suppliant beneath frontal saints, one proffering acandle up as a votive offering, the representation of portraits of named individ-uals from the monastic community at Torba, their heads on individual giornateof plaster in typical funereal portrait iconography, even the lengthy inscriptionbetween the two nuns in the recess in the east wall, all speak the language ofmortuary commemoration. The conventions are those commonly deployed inelite funerary oratories of the period, from Theodotus’s chapel dedicated to SSQuiricus and julitta at S. Maria Antiqua to the Crypt of Epyphanius at San Vin-cenzo al Volturno, the burial chapel of one of the pre-eminent benefactors ofthe monastery in the 830s.83 however, there is no unequivocal evidence forthese recesses having served as actual tombs for abbesses and particularlyprivileged members of the community. The first-phase plaster on the walls ofthese alcoves, with their original painted surfaces, extends right down to thepresent pavement of the room. If there were tombs in these niches, they musthave consisted of free-standing sarcophagi, possibly of wood or lead, which haveleft no traces of their erstwhile presence. An alternative is that this room serveda purely memorial purpose, a space, possibly furnished with an altar standingin front of the north wall, in which the nuns could gather to remember and prayfor predecessors who had enjoyed high standing in the community.

The Upper Chamber

The upper chamber in the Tower has been described and analysed fully andattentively by Carlo Bertelli.84 Much of its original painted decoration is pre-

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served, more or less intact, although the finishing applications of colour haveeither fallen or faded from the walls, so that in many areas the observer is con-fronted by figures in intermediate stages of execution, rather than in their fin-ished state.

On the focal, east wall of the room, at the mid-point between the two win-dows, Christ is represented, enthroned, frontal, beardless, holding his book inhis left hand, gesturing in speech with his right. he is flanked by two angels, thebest preserved holding an orb in his left hand. As Bertelli has described, Christwas accompanied, beyond the windows, by john the Baptist and three standingmale saints, the first St Peter, to judge from his physiognomy, and two apostles,standing fields of red flowers; and on the right, where the plaster has now com-pletely gone, probably the Virgin Mary and two further apostles. Bertelli recog-nizes a further apostle in the figure standing above a dado painted as a velumat the far eastern end of the south wall, and projects three more on the eastwall to the left of the central group of Christ, with angels, the Virgin Mary andjohn the Baptist, and three more on the north wall at its eastern end.85

A feature which distinguishes this wall from the other three walls of the roomis the dado, painted in imitation of hanging vela, rather than polished marbleopus sectile.86 These are divided in panels, with varying designs of curtains alongthe wall. In the central bay, beneath Christ and the two flanking archangels,these curtains are embellished with scrolling vine-trails, a scattering of stylizedflowers or a reticulate design with little crosses and rosettes. however, as CarloBertelli has acutely observed, this sequence is broken beneath the wall on whichhe believes the Virgin Mary was represented, standing alongside Christ, to-gether with john the Baptist, and constituting a deesis, the classic interces-sional triad. here the section of velum is dominated by a large cross at thecentre of a field embellished with stems, flowers and fruits.

This is an instance of the use of the dado to articulate and introduce hierar-chical structure into a sacred space, a common practice of the period. Cognateinstances are to be found at San Vincenzo al Volturno. The first of these is inthe Crypt of Epyphanius, a small subterranean funerary oratory, in which thepanels of the painted dado, with their various reticulate designs, are broken intwo places, behind the altar, where two affronted eagles call to mind the idea ofrebirth and resurrection, and at the entrance where a large complex knotserves as a sentinel, protecting the soul of the dead person from invasive malignspirits.87 A second instance is to be found in the ring crypt of the basilica of SanVincenzo Maggiore, where the dado of complex polychrome painted opus sectileis broken in the axial corridor leading to the relic chamber by panels of reticulatedesign with diagonal accents, alluding to screens marking off a sacred focus,and then in the relic chamber itself, in which painted dados imitating marblerevetment were replaced by actual vela of real silk, hanging round the lowerwalls, suspended from iron staples, one of which was found still in position duringexcavation.88

On a more general level, painted dados were commonly used in this periodto articulate sacred spaces in terms of a hierarchy of sanctity. The two principalidioms in the repertoire of referent materials used were, vela, on the one hand,more or less richly embellished textile hangings, and on the other elaboraterevetments in polished polychrome stone, either set in book-matched panelswith diagonal marbling or in compositions of opus sectile. Of these two, textiles,

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real and painted, held the superior rank; with their reference to the curtains ofthe Desert Tabernacle of Moses and to the Veil of the Temple. In the early Mid-dle Ages, vela were markers of high sanctity and of elevated social status, out-ranking polychrome marble revetment and its painted imitation. The relativestatus of the two is clearly visible at other sites in Italy and in the Alps in the pe-riod. In the north, it is to be seen at Müstair, beyond Meran, at the top of theVinschgau, in the far south-east part of Switzerland, both in the main church ofthe monastery, St. johann, now firmly dated by dendrochronology to 775 andin the central apse of the subordinate funerary heiligkreuzkapelle, dated to778.89 In both the church and the free-standing chapel, the apses were paintedwith hanging vela, the walls of the nave with marbled revetment.90 A similararrangement is to be found in the Lombard south, in the middle decades of the9th century, in the church of Sant’Ambrogio at Montecorvino Rovella, to the eastof Salerno. There three distinct dado modes are in operation: a painted velumin the apse, beneath the Virgin Mary enthroned between four saints; panels ofdiagonally-veined marbling beneath the two flanking niches in the east wall, con-taining jewelled crosses; and panels imitating complex opus sectile revetment,on the walls of the side walls of the church. here there is a clear hierarchy ofdados: first vela, then book-matched diagonally veined marbled panels, and finallypanelled crustae featuring rectangles, lozenges, discs and other forms.91 So atTorba, in the upper chamber in the tower, the figures on the east wall, Christ,archangels, the Virgin Mary, john the Baptist and the apostles, stand abovevela – extending round onto the start of the south wall, and undoubtedly onceonto the north wall too, to mark the peripherally displaced apostles there. Onthe other three walls, on the other hand, panels painted in imitation of poly-chrome marble revetment, in a variety of types and designs, predominate. Thissuggests a dominant devotional and liturgical focus in front of the east wall,where it is possible that a free-standing altar may originally have stood.

A curious detail of the scheme on the east wall is a small painted panel pre-served beneath the right-hand window. On this are delineated two birds, pea-cocks, or similar birds of Paradise, affronted either side of a large chalice withfull bowl and sweeping conical base.92 These figures are sketched in grisaille, ingreyish-black against a greenish-grey ground. The effect is of chance imagesformed in the natural veining of polished stone, in a marble like Carystian greencipollino. If this was indeed the desired intent of the painter, it would accord witha fascination for the presence of natural mimetic images in patterned marble,and their reproduction in paint, for which there is widespread evidence fromLate Antiquity and the early medieval period.93

A feature of the scheme of decoration is a line of written text or texts in whitecapital letters running between the figural register above and the dado registerbelow, preserved in part on the east and south walls. There may originally havebeen elements of inscription at this level on the other two walls although, tojudge from the preserved surfaces, it is unlikely that this band of white charac-ters continued uninterrupted round the entire room. Lone words, parts of wordsand letters are preserved but insufficient to afford a sense of the tenor of thetext.

A second visual focus in the room, now sadly ruined and faded, met the eyesof the visitor at the centre of the north wall, between the two windows, immedi-ately opposite the entrance door. here a tall panel carrying a long painted in-scription stood between two figures; on the right the large figure of an

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ecclesiastic, to judge from his stole, possibly an archbishop, who may once haveheld up the inscribed scroll; on the left a much smaller figure, a male in longapostolic tunic and sandals, with feet set 0.43 m. above the lower border of thispanel. The upper parts of these figures are lost and the letters of the inscription,in white on a purple ground, are fragmentary and faded beyond the limits of de-cipherability. This panel, emphasized in the dado below by a disc with polychromesectors and flanked by prominent vertical vine-trails, is likely to have marked thededication of the chamber as a sacred space, the larger figure possibly the pre-siding ecclesiastical authority, the smaller perhaps the material benefactor.

Much of the plaster on this north wall, facing the entrance, has been lost,but a surviving passage at the far left, western, end, preserves the remains ofwhat would appear to have been another focus, in this case devotional. Imme-diately to the left of the left-hand window, a fragment of the lower right sectionof a red aureole is preserved with the emerging head and fore-quarters of alion holding a bejewelled book in its paws. Elements of the lower right-hand sideof a throne or seated figure, in brown, are visible within the frame of the aureole.This is the remains of a composition, quite widespread throughout the Mediter-ranean basin in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, consisting of the figureof Christ seated within an aureole, with the four apocalyptic beasts/symbols ofthe evangelists emerging from behind on the diagonal axes.94 The scheme wasused from hosios David at Thessaloniki in the 5th century95 to the chapels ofthe monastery of St. Apollo at Bawit on the Nile in the late 6th and early 7th cen-tury,96 from the sarcophagus of bishop Agilbert at jouarre, near Paris,97 in thelate 7th century, to an elite funerary oratory in the amphitheatre at Durres/Du-razzo, in modern Albania, in the 11th century.98

The position of this north wall, immediately opposite the entrance, and thepresence of the prominent dedicatory inscription with donors at its mid-point,suggest that this was possiblysecond only to the east wall in focal significanceand rank, of the four walls of the chamber. The theophanic composition at itswestern end marks a devotional station, and possibly implies the presence ofsome article of related devotional furniture.

Another rather different devotional station is attested by the composition onthe southern, entrance wall, to the west, the right, of the door. here the Motherof God, holding the child Christ, stands at the head of a line of saints: first a virginmartyr, holding her crown and a little cross, then an ecclesiastic, a deacon,dressed in a dalmatic, and holding a book, then two sainted bishops. The Motherof God inclines slightly to the left and stretches out her right hand to receive acandle, offered to her by the considerably smaller figure of a standing woman,clearly a donor and major benefactor of the monastery. To judge from her dress,a yellow over-garment, drawn up over her head, with tight sleeves, worn over along red tunic, this was not a member of the monastic community but a lay-per-son. Closely framing her head is what appears to be a so-called square halo, inyellow, marking the image as a contemporary portrait of an individual of stand-ing. Behind this lady, to the left is a frontal male martyr saint in court dress, longchlamys, short tunic, white hose and black slippers, with his jewelled crown inhand. These figures are all depicted within a framed field. The courtly male mar-tyr is shown extending his right arm and laying his hand on the head of a furtherfigure, far shorter, who stands outside the frame, immediately flanking the en-trance door. This individual is vested as a bishop in long tunic and chasuble, witha richly embroidered stole emerging from the skirt of the chasuble and hanging

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down over his legs. he holds a scroll or book in his hand. his head is now largelylost but it is clear that he had no halo. This would appear to be the portrait ofanother donor or at least a ranking ecclesiastic with a particular interest in thecommunity at Torba.

On the other side of the door and extending over the entrance is a furthergroup of figures, to judge from one partly preserved head, haloed saints. Theseturn towards the left and so presumably to Christ on the adjacent east wall. Forthe most part only their legs and feet are preserved, dressed in carefully paintedlong tunics, with brilliant red clavi and ornamented with particularly richly em-broidered broad vertical bands. It is unclear who is being distinguished here;martyrs have been proposed.99

The west wall is given over to ranks of frontal figures, ranged about the oneaxial window on this side of the room, now closed with masonry. To the left,south, of the window are eight male saints, with panels of marbled dado below:looking from the central window, a metropolitan followed by another ranking ec-clesiastic, a young eremitic, a figure in court attire, two ecclesiastics, one ofwhom is bearded, and finally two more aristocratic aulic saints, vested inchlamys and richly apparelled tunics. To the right, north, of the window are eightfemale saints, the firstretaining an identifying inscription in white characters, S.Eufemia; these are poorly preserved and hard to characterize more exactly,some in monastic habits, others in richly ornamented courtly attire. Below eachof these saints, at dado level, is depicted the frontal figure of a female monastic,eight in all, dressed in dark habits, drawn up over the head, one hand raised ina gesture of intercessory prayer, the other holding up a small cross. The saintsabove may represent the name patrons of the nuns below, who, it has beensuggested could represent the full community of the monastery at the time.100

To judge from the disposition of the painted imagery, the room was designedto serve as a chapel, with its principal focus on the east wall. There Christ, withthe apostles, in generic reference to the Last judgement, with the Virgin Maryand john the Baptist in the central group as pre-eminent intercessors formankind, were arrayed above a dado of variously embellished vela. Presumablya small altar stood in front of this wall. On the west wall, opposite, a range ofmale and female saints, segregated right and left, stood facing Christ and hisco-inquisitors, in exemplary attendance, and below the female saints the mem-bers of the community at Torba were portrayed in prayer, calling on their ce-lestial patrons to intercede with Christ for their own elevation and preservationand for the health and salvation of the benefactors of the monastery. A groupof saints, possibly martyrs, with particularly richly embellished clothing, to theleft of the entrance door, on the south wall, seem to participate in this action,maybe representing the interests of high-ranking patrons of the community.There were two other focuses; that with the Mother of God with the Christ childand a company of saints, receiving a candle offered by a suppliant female donor,and another with a vision of Christ enthroned in an aureole surrounded by theapocalyptic creatures of the four evangelists. In what ways each of these func-tioned as independent devotional stations for the nuns and their guests is hardto determine.

A striking feature of the painted programme is the number and the varietyof portrait images of contemporary individuals, ecclesiastics, lay men andwomen, as well as members of the Torba community: the tall ecclesiastic ac-

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companied by a smaller figure in apostolic tunic flanking the axial inscription,probably dedicatory, on the north wall, opposite the entrance; the bishop orpriest, sponsored by a tall male saint in court attire, immediately to the right ofthe entrance door; the lady offering a candle to the Virgin and child, to the rightof the door on this same wall; and the eight nuns on the west wall. The spirit ofmemorial is exceptionally strong here, and portraits commemorating living orrecently deceased individuals are a characteristic feature of funerary contexts,in the early medieval period – witness the oratory of Theodotus at S. Maria An-tiqua in Rome and the Crypt of Epyphanius at San Vincenzo al Volturno.101 Theroom with its emphatic focus on epiphany, judgement, intercession and memo-rial has all the characteristics of a chapel intended for commemorative massesand prayer in a funerary context.

As with the lower chamber, the date of this elaborate pictorial programmeis not easy to determine. Carlo Bertelli, choosing his words with great care,while suggesting that the paintings in the upper chamber have an archaic, 8th-century, tenor about them - the beardless features of Christ and the standingfigures rendered in quite straightforward fashion, without the mannerisms ofoutline and interior articulation of the draped body typical of pictorial practicein the later 8th and early 9th centuries in Italy - observes that this may not trans-late directly into an early date.102 Saverio Lomartire accepts a date towards theend of the 8th century.103

Indeed, the particular style of the painting is not easy to characterize or toplace. There are few if any points of close acquaintance either with the paintingsin the church of S. Maria foris portas, at Castelseprio itself, or with the aulic lateLombard tradition exemplified in the so-called Tempietto Longobardo at Cividaleor S. Salvatore in Brescia.

however, these paintings can be situated in relation to the fragmentary re-mains in the lower chamber of the tower at Torba itself. First, one of the dadopanels, at the southern end of the west wall, painted in imitation of a centraldisc of purple porphyry, ringed in white, and set within a rectangular field, parti-coloured red and yellow, follows the same pattern as the two panels of the dadoat the foot of the focal east wall in the lower chamber. The version in the lowerchamber is more ample in its proportions, more detailed in its articulation andsomewhat more precise in execution. The panel in the chapel has the marks ofa derivative of the dado in the lower room. Similarly, in the depiction of figures,the inclined head in the lower room is more delicately and finely rendered thanthose in the chapel. The flesh tone is a similar pale ochre but the dramatic andcarefully orchestrated patterns of white lights and the delicate red or purplecontouring lines defining features are not in evidence. The figures in the chapelare drawn quite flatly with little feel for volume or line. The same is the case withthe painted inscriptions; the white letters are of the same type and design, butthose of the epitaph set about a cross in the lower room are somewhat moreelegantly formed than in the chapel. The paintings in the chapel, to a degree,belong to the same tradition but something of the elegance and style whichmust once have characterized the work in the lower chapel is absent. It wouldappear that the artists responsible for the chapel were trained in conventionswhich in some aspects were very close to the those evident in the lower cham-ber but in others different. It is likely that a certain distance separates thepainted decoration of the two chambers. If the dating suggested above for thelower chamber is correct then the chapel is likely to have been decorated some-

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time later, perhaps in the second quarter of the 9th century.

To judge from the painted schemes in the two chambers, the tower was re-stored by the monastic community at Torba, with the construction or possiblyreconstruction of the two upper stories,104 expressly for funerary use, probablyearly in the 9th century. The lower room was designed as a place of individualcommemoration, perhaps for burial of prominent members of the monasteryand possibly their pre-eminent patrons, the upper storey as a chapel for me-morial masses, remembering and praying for the salvation of deceased sistersand benefactors. The tenor and function of the space is clear from the make-up of the pictorial programme on the walls, from the multiple portrait imagesof individuals associated with the monastery, and from the prominence ofpainted inscriptions. There is no reason to suppose that the chapel served ini-tially as a major liturgical space for the regular use of the community, at a timebefore a proper church had been constructed.105 It would appear to have beendesigned from the beginning as a corporate funerary oratory for the nuns andtheir patrons.

We would like to thank Gian Pietro Brogiolo, Marina De Marchi, VincenzoGheroldi, jürg Goll, Saverio Lomartire and Michael Wolf, for help of various kindsin the preparation of this note.

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