Painting the Sculptural Body in Lucca and Florence: Intermediality in Croci Dipinte

Abstract

One of the most common ways that art historians have described the naturalism of fourteenth-century painting in Italy is to characterize its painted figures as “sculptural,” calling attention to their plasticity, solidity, and occupation of pictorial space. This article traces the “sculptural” body in painting back to the twelfth century, rather than forward toward the Renaissance, by demonstrating the ways in which painted crosses (croci dipinte) in central and northern Italy engaged with sculpted crucifixes in their pictorial strategies, material effects, and devotional function. Rather than seeing the weighty “sculptural” body of Giotto’s painted cross in Santa Maria Novella as a break from tradition, I place it within a long series of examples that evoke sculpted models, and in some cases operate as intermedial hybrids of painting and sculpture. And instead of considering the sculptural effects of the painted crosses only as attempts to suggest the presence of Christ’s actual body, I argue that the desire to evoke sculpture in painted examples points to long-standing belief in the devotional efficacy of sculpted images of Christ. Focusing on a group of examples in Lucca and Florence, I explore the stakes of commissioning painted crosses versus sculpted crucifixes during the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, and show that new pictorial and material devices were invented to lessen the distinction between the two, including painted crosses that incorporate low-relief gesso, hybrid crucifixes that mount a sculpted body on a painted background, and painted “cut-out” crosses that turn the flat surface into a shaped sculpture.