Signatures of Artists

In English and Spanish. Catalog from the exhibition "Andrés Sánchez Gallque y los primeros pintores en la Audiencia de Quito" held at the Museo de Arte Colonial in Quito, Ecuador (2014). This is the galley proof. The footnotes for my article are unfortunately off by one number.
Catálogo de la exposición celebrada en el Museo de Arte Colonial en Quito, Ecuador (2014). Este es el machote. Lamentablemente, las notas al píe de página de mi artículo están corridas por un número.

Cet ouvrage rassemble quinze articles explorant les deux aspects, distincts mais imbriqués, de la fabrication et de la réception des œuvres d’orfèvrerie à l’époque gothique. Embrassant la période qui va du début du XIIIe au début du XVIe siècle, ces études s’appuient tant sur les œuvres elles-mêmes, qu’elles soient célèbres ou peu connues, que sur les sources écrites afin d’éclairer, sur un espace qui s’étend de l’Angleterre à Chypre et de la Catalogne à Prague, les attentes des commanditaires, le goût des élites, les usages de l’orfèvrerie sacrée ou profane, leur rôle respectif dans la mise en scène du pouvoir, la circulation des produits de luxe, les conditions de travail des orfèvres, l’organisation des ateliers… Par la variété des auteurs (chercheurs jeunes ou confirmés, appartenant tant au monde des musées qu’à celui de l’Université), de leurs questionnements et de leurs choix de méthode, ce recueil s’inscrit dans un renouveau des études sur les arts précieux qu’il espère ainsi conforter.

[Please note that the uploaded pdf file requires a password. To get it, write me at: ludovico.rebaudo@uniud.it]
Starting from a skeptical point of view on classical philological approach to ancient copies and Meisterforschung, the paper
deals with copyists’ signatures in Hellenistic and Roman time. A list of about thirty signed copies proves that copyists used the standard formula ὁ δεῖνα ἐποίει/ἐποίεσε,  such an one has made it , like any sculptor from Archaic to Roman Imperial time. This suggests that copies were probably perceived as standard sculptural artifacts, in which the craftsman could take pride (kleos). Some relevant cases are discussed in full: the bronze Doryphoros herm by Apoll nios of Athens from Herculaneum; the  galma of Athena Kranaia by the ‘sons of Polykles’ in Elateia; the Herakles, Hermes and Teseus by Apollonios and Dem trios of Alexandria from Rooms II and III in the Gymnasion of Messene.

En els darrers anys una sèrie d’estudis han intentat esbrinar, amb major o menor dificultat, com era el procés d’aprenentatge de l’artista romànic, quins eren els seus mètodes de treball i, finalment, quin era el seu estatus social. Amb aquest objectiu es va desenvolupar un projecte a la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, en col·laboració amb el Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya i el Museu Episcopal de Vic, titulat -Artistas, patronos y público. Cataluña y el Mediterráneo (siglos XI-XV)-MAGISTRI CATALONIAE (MICINN HAR2011-23015)-, que es va dur a terme entre els anys 2012 i 2015.
    El XXIII Seminari de Romànic, dut a terme el 5 de juliol de 2014, va ser una activitat, en la qual els membres del projecte Magistri Cataloniae varen explicar algunes novetats. La present publicació recull aquells treballs així com el d’Iris Bautista Morenilla i Anna Nualart Torroja, de la Facultat de Belles Arts de la Universitat de Barcelona, ja que ens ha semblat pertinent que la recerca que aquestes dues investigadores havien realitzat sobre el pas del frontal d’altar als retaules primitius durant el segle XIII tingués una representació en aquest número monogràfic. El resultat és una revista en la qual participen persones d’una formació molt variada –historiadors de l’art, conservadors de museu i conservadors-restauradors- que busquen donar resposta a qüestions innovadores com l’estatus de las arts i els artistes a l’època romànica i els coneixements tècnics i materials dels seus protagonistes.

Il volume raccoglie gli studi che amici, colleghi e allievi hanno voluto dedicare a Marina Righetti in occasione dei suoi settant'anni. Allieva di Angiola Maria Romanini, con cui si è formata dopo essersi laureata con Cesare Brandi, si è distinta per l'intensa attività scientifica e d'insegnamento, condotta principalmente alla Sapienza di Roma. I suoi studi si sono imposti nel panorama italiano e internazionale per la chiarezza e il rigore con cui ha perlustrato alcune tematiche, in particolare il mondo cistercense-che ha ispirato il titolo di questo libro-, Roma, l'alto Medioevo e l'età longobarda. Altre linee di ricerca hanno riguardato l'architettura in Sabina e Abruzzo, la scultura nel Meridione, il mondo monastico nel Nord Italia. Tale ampiezza di interessi si riflette nella ricca articolazione del volume in suo onore, i cui saggi, distribuiti in sei sezioni, spaziano per cronologia e àmbito geografico dal Mediterraneo tardo-antico all'Europa contemporanea.

The aim of the present communication is to offer a new study of potters’ signatures during the Orientalising and Archaic periods. Most signatures are attested on ceramics (with only a few exceptions on stone). The point is to reconsider the problem of artwork in a period about which we have just a little information, and where the initial problem is the very identification of the inscriptions that should be considered as signatures

This paper is dedicated to the problem of artists’ signatures in Byzantium and, more specifically, to the question of anonymity,
which is often considered to be a basic characteristic of Eastern Christian art. Declaration of authorship is traditionally seen as a sign of
sinful vanity, antagonistic to the religious spirit of the Middle Ages. However, work on this material reveals numerous traces of authorship
left by Byzantine artists on their work in the form of epigraphical records. Through a selection of the most insightful examples, based
primarily on mosaics, murals and icon painting, this paper demonstrates that the tradition of creating inscriptions bearing the names of
masters was a phenomenon neither limited to a particular chronological period of Byzantine history nor influenced by specific historical
or cultural transformations. On the contrary, it represents a continuous tradition developing from the period of late antiquity right
up to the end of the Middle Ages. The range of surviving evidence, the variability of linguistic forms and paleographic aspects, as well
as the array of creative approaches taken to the placement of signatures and dedicatory inscriptions, help to reveal a concern for the
preservation of memories of individual involvement within the world of the Medieval Christian masters. Whilst not always in line with
a contemporary understanding of the role of artists’ signatures, these testimonies nevertheless call for a reevaluation of the question
of complete anonymity and the personality of the artist in Byzantine art.

Abstract:
In late Byzantine monumental painting, works are rarely signed by the artists and even when they are, it is very scarce for us to have more than one signed work by the same painter. Exceptions to this “rule” are two masters, Michael Astrapas and Eutychios (Astrapades), who left their signatures in five different churches. All of these churches are located in the historical region of Macedonia, which is today divided between the states of Greece, FYROM and Bulgaria. The Astrapades painted their signatures or monograms and even other undecipherable letters not in apparent places, but almost hidden among the garments of some saints, the weapons and the armory of holy warriors and upon some ceramic vessels that are decorating some scenes of the iconographical program. Their signatures in some cases are like cryptograms and some of them have only been recently discovered in the last fifty years. This paper suggests a new way of deciphering their inscriptions, based on the material of the objects bearing the signatures, letters or monograms. We argue that these outstanding masters of the Paleologean Renaissance, as great innovators of their time, intentionally “invented” a new ingenious way to declare their presence in the churches that they have decorated.

Location: Barcelona, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona – Museu Episcopal de Vic

Publisher: Professor Manuel Castineiras.

Event Date: Nov 7, 2014

Organization: I Simposi Magistri Cataloniae. Artista anònim. Artista amb signatura. Identitat, estatus I rol de l'artista en l'art medieval

Publication Date: Nov 7, 2014

Publication Name: I Simposi Magistri Cataloniae. Artista anònim. Artista amb signatura. Identitat, estatus I rol de l'artista en l'art medieval.

Conference End Date: Nov 8, 2014

Conference Start Date: Nov 7, 2014

Susan Frances Jones, Anne-Sophie Augustyniak and Hélène Dubois, ‘The Authenticity of the Quatrain and the other Frame Inscriptions’, in The Ghent Altarpiece. Research and Conservation of the Exterior. First Phase, (Contributions to the Study of the Flemish Primitives 14), eds. B. Fransen, C. Stroo, KIK-IRPA (The Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage), Brussels, 2020, pp. 273-308

Suite à l’exposition The Year 1200, organisée en 1970 par le Metropolitan Museum of Art de New York, l’idée prédominante de l’historiographie européenne a été que l’impact de l’art byzantin dans la peinture occidentale s’était produit surtout à travers son assimilation dans les centres artistiques du nord de l’Europe, en particulier dans l’Empire Allemand, en Île-de-France ou dans l’Angleterre des Plantagenets. De là naquit une nouvelle catégorie artistique largement plébiscitée – art 1200 – qui tend à favoriser la voie de transmission septentrionale lorsqu’il s’agit de comprendre certains exemples de la Péninsule Ibérique, du Midi ou même d’Italie, au lieu de reconnaître le rôle actif que joua l’Europe méditerranéenne dans l’accès, la réception et l’assimilation de ces nouvelles formes.

Par ailleurs, le terme monolithique d’ « art byzantin » a été, depuis des décennies, nuancé par une série d’auteurs tels que K. Weitzmann, Jaroslav Folda, Lucy-Anne Hunt, Bianca Kühnel ou encore Michele Bacci, qui ont démontré comment l’interaction entre latins, grecs et chrétiens d’Orient des nouveaux États de Terre Sainte contribua à créer, tout au long des XII et XIII siècles, ce que l’on appelle le Crusader Art (Art des Croisés), lequel eut un impact important en Occident. C’est donc à partir de ce phénomène particulier d’acculturation mené à bien à Jérusalem, Bethléem, Acre, Mont Sinaï, Chypre ou même dans certains endroits de l’Empire Byzantin sous la dynastie des Comnènes et des Anges, que se forgea un art hybride, facilement assimilable par l’Occident.

Cependant, il reste à savoir quels furent les véritables agents de tout ce processus – humains et matériels – qui contribuèrent à ces échanges. Au-delà du rôle des commanditaires – aristocratie et ordres militaires – et de l’acquisition d’objets de luxe, amplement pointés du doigt par l’historiographie, il m’intéresse d’explorer la curiosité inhérente des artistes itinérants – qu’ils soient grecs ou latins – qui se dirigeaient indistinctement vers les deux rives de la Méditerranée. L’assimilation de l’Autre, l’usage ou l’accès aux ‘ανθίβολα byzantins, l’exercice de la mémoire à travers des esquisses, caractérisèrent probablement son singulier processus d’introjection. Après la chute de Jérusalem en 1187, ces échanges se virent particulièrement accélérés en Occident, dont la peinture expérimenta alors les fruits de cette hybridation, ainsi que le montrent, par exemple l’œuvre de Magister Alexander ou la dénommée « croix gréco-pisane ».

Resumen: El presente estudio investiga las relaciones entre la escritura, la pintura y el poder socio-político mediante el análisis de las firmas de los pintores andinos a principios de la época colonial en Quito. En particular, se enfoca en la forma, materialidad y técnica en las inscripciones de la firma del pintor andino Andrés Sánchez Gallque, examinándolas a la luz de estrategias educativas, textos pedagógicos e imágenes pictóricas, a fin de mostrar las maneras en que los pintores quiteños participaron en una ciudad letrada. //
Abstract: This study explores the relationships between script, painting and socio-political power by analyzing the signatures of Andean painters in early colonial Quito. It focuses particularly on the form, materiality and technologies of the Andean painter Andrés Sánchez Gallque's signature inscriptions, examining them in light of contemporary educational strategies, pedagogical texts, and pictorial images in order to reveal some of the ways that Quito's early colonial painters were active agents in the lettered city.

The mysterious kneeling figure carved on the east-facing side of the trumeau of the Pórtico de la Gloria has long been thought of as a self-portrait of Maestro Mateo - one in which he shows humility before God. This kind of depiction goes back to the earlier Middle Ages. It was common to depict the author, both artist and patron, within the work for which they were res- ponsible, as in the cases of Volvinius, Saint Dunstan, Abbot Suger or Guidetto. For it relates to one of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit - the fear of the Lord - a quality that Theophilus tells us (De diversis artibus, III, preface) any artist should have. However, it is highly likely that Mateo was here also claiming status as an intellectual artist. The portrayal is extremely distinctive, in immortalizing Mateo as a scribe or author bearing a scroll. This particular choice, in which Mateo resembles his homonym - Mathew the Evangelist - should be seen in the context of Lacan’s concept of the symbolic.

As it is well acknowledged, the formulas of the Etruscan aristocratic gift-exchange, attested by several inscriptions of the 7th to mid-6th century BCE, derive from a broader oral tradition, which has left trace in the epigraphic documents that record the final stage of this phenomenon.
Starting from the hypothesis that the earliest phases of writing record often oral expressions, at times with rhetoric and formulaic aspects, the authors shows that some long and complex gift text belong to an earlier tradition, which included in gift-formulas information on the past history of the object, from its production to its exchange.
Comparanda in Homeric tradition and in the history of craftsmen’s signatures help to explain the passage from oral to written formulas, still ongoing during the Orientalizing period.

Keywords: Etruscan epigraphy, orality, gift-exchange, signature, gift formulas

La scheda n. 15 è dedicata al candelabro bronzeo dell'abbazia di Polirone (San Benedetto Po, Mantova), qui attribuito a maestranze bizantine e datato ipoteticamente fra l'XI e il XII secolo.
La scheda n. 16 illustra invece il candelabro sottoscritto da Costantino di Limoges oggi conservato ai Musei Civici di Modena, un'opera proveniente dall'abbazia di Frassinoro, ascrivibile al primo quarto del XII secolo.

The twenty-five papers in this volume arise from a conference jointly organised by the British Archaeological Association and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. They explore the making of art and architecture in Latin Europe and the Mediterranean between c. 1000 and c. 1250, with a particular focus on questions of patronage, design and instrumentality.

No previous studies of patterns of artistic production during the Romanesque period rival the breadth of coverage encompassed by this volume – both in terms of geographical origin and media, and in terms of historical approach. Topics range from case studies on Santiago de Compostela, the Armenian Cathedral in Jerusalem and the Winchester Bible to reflections on textuality and donor literacy, the culture of abbatial patronage at Saint-Michel de Cuxa and the re-invention of slab relief sculpture around 1100. The volume also includes papers that attempt to recover the procedures that coloured interaction between artists and patrons – a serious theme in a collection that opens with ‘Function, condition and process in eleventh-century Anglo-Norman church architecture’ and ends with a consideration of ‘The death of the patron’.

How did the profession and the status of goldsmiths change in the Middle Ages? This contribution first of all questions the relevance of the proposed chronology (11th-13th centuries) for analysing these possible transformations. After discussing the prominent position that goldsmiths are often granted among other craftsmen, the article finally invites to interpret the sources that inform us about these masters iuxta propria principia, and not only with the aim of extracting what one would like to be 'objective' data on the most illustrious of these artists

L’œuvre d’Hugo d’Oignies et de son atelier (essentiellement 1228-1240) comporte de nombreuses inscriptions, comme c’est souvent le cas d’ailleurs des pièces d’orfèvrerie mosane.  La plupart d’entre elles donnent des précisions sur les reliques conservées dans l’objet liturgique, ou bien encore identifient les personnages, scènes et symboles que comporte le décor.  Mais les plus intéressantes nomment l’orfèvre lui-même.  Ainsi, de manière tout à fait exceptionnelle, une longue inscription  qui présente le « labeur » (labor) de Frère Hugo comme un moyen de louer Dieu, se double de son autoportrait sur le plat antérieur de l’Évangéliaire dont exécuté la reliure et copia sans doute le texte.

Ces inscriptions – qu’elles consistent uniquement en un nom éventuellement accompagné d’une formule pie, ou qu’elles soient complexes comme celles dans lequel est fondu le nom de l’artiste – jouent un rôle structurant et esthétique autant que fonctionnel, ce qui ajoute à l’intérêt qu’elles présentent in se.  C’est de tous ces points de vue qu’elles sont analysées ici, dans deux parties distinctes : 1. Les légendes identificatrices (p. 133-142) ; 2. Les signatures, l’inscription dédicatoire et les deux autoportraits (p. 143-152).

The category of medieval inscriptions generally known as "artists' signatures" is traditionally considered as the artist’s claim of authorship of a work, in order to obtain recognition of his talent and status. This study aims to question the epistemological and historical foundations of such an approach, and considers a corpus of French inscriptions of the XIth and XIIth centuries as its base.
The texts of these epigraphic signatures deliver extremely concise information on the identity of the signer and on his role in the production of the work. It is therefore delicate to systematically link these tokens to the artist, especially since such a figure seems foreign to the mentality of the Middle Ages.
Furthermore, the issue of artists’ literacy has been broadly neglected in previous works, although it is clearly connected with the production of epigraphic signatures as written productions. The second part of the thesis undertakes to evaluate the writing skills of those who executed these inscriptions and to examine the contexts in which medieval craftsmen could have received cultural and technical education.
Finally, the analysis of the exhibition contexts of these inscriptions shows that they were often invisible to a large public, and that they were concentrated in symbolic spaces of the church. Since the ostentatious value of the French epigraphic signatures of XIth and XIIth centuries seems to be nuanced, this study suggests their interpretation from an ecclesiological and eschatological perspective.