DOI article:
Krasny, Piotr: Exempla viva: the prelates of the Roman Catholic Church as inspirers of Charles Borromeo’s instructions on shaping sacred srt
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.38234#0039
38
Gas par Card „ С о ndarenvs
Crafen ?. \s3sjffi10rc: 1-C42.. r,v,w^t
2. Gaspare Contarini, copper engraving by Frans van den Wyngar-
de, mid-17th century
According to Contarini, one of the most severe and
detrimental sins of the Roman Catholic Church was the
lack of proper care to ensure that church furnishings and
utensils employed in the administration of sacraments
had appropriate forms, and that ‘the images of our Lord
and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as well as all other images
that are painted for churches, should be executed in the
most honourable and orderly manner, so that they would
encourage the faithful to venerate the only God so reso-
lutely as if they were leading them by the hand’. By ne-
glecting to control these questions through legal regula-
tions and instruction of the faithful, the prelates had pre-
cipitated a situation inviting abuses which became the ob-
ject of rightful criticism and at the same time a fuel for the
‘pestis heretica’ (heretical plague). Therefore, the bishops
should make sure that the artistic aspects of the external
cult be wisely regulated through the decrees of diocesan
synods or rulings of the ordinary bishops, and by means
of the bishops’ immediate involvement in the elimination
of errors, so that ‘the Church of God would be strength-
ened against this plague’. The bishops themselves should
also responsibly shape the physical setting for the worship
E.G. Gleason, Gaspare Contarini. Venice, Rome and Reform,
Berkeley, 1993, pp. 93-98.
of God in order to set a proper example for other mem-
bers of the clergy and the laity.19
De officio episcopi had been compiled by Contarini still
before Martin Luther (1483-1546) proclaimed his ninety-
-five theses, therefore, while referring to heresiarchs, he
must have had in mind either the critics of sacred art from
the rather remote past, as for example John Wickliff (1320-
1384), or the Hussites, whose influence at the beginning
of the sixteenth century was restricted to the Kingdom of
Bohemia and the neighbouring areas.20 Soon, however, it
turned out that the ‘heretical plague’ was spreading across
most of Europe and, through Venice and Lombardy, start-
ed to penetrate into Italy. The local bishops, therefore,
could not linger any longer to ‘vaccinate’ the sacred art
produced in their dioceses against Protestant attacks, and
to apply it to fortifying the faith of their observant flock.21
Thus, the regulations and solutions they had developed
had a decisively Counter-Reformational character - many
years before the assembly of the Council of Trent, which
- according to opinions prevalent in art-historical litera-
ture, under the influence of Werner Weisbach - was a de-
cisive factor that pointed the art of the Roman Catholic
Church in that direction.22
Some of those prelates took actions which, as I shall try
to demonstrate in what follows, were later developed by
Charles Borromeo and, on the strength of his authority,
were subsequently imitated in the entire Roman Catholic
Church. Therefore, before analysing these undertakings,
it would be worthwhile to take a closer look at the reforms
introduced by those prelates in their local Churches, in or-
der to get some orientation as to the extent of the role the
artistic patronage played in their fashioning themselves as
‘exempla viva’ of performing the function of a bishop.
Such a stance, at the end of the 1520s, was adopted by
Gian Matteo Giberti (Fig. 3), in the title of his first biog-
raphy called ‘a singular example and model of the good
19 ‘imagines Domini et Beatissimae Virginis alliorumque in ecclesi-
is pinguntur, omnia honestissime ordinateque fiant, illiamque
plebem ad Dei unius cultum quemadmodum decet, quasi per
gradus manu ducant’; ‘protinus tales pestes ab Ecclesia Dei arcea-
tur’ , G. Contarenus, ‘De officio episcopi libri II’, in idem. Opera,
Venetiis, 1578, p. 425 (all above quotations are from this page). See
also E.G. Gleason, Gaspare Contarini, p. 97 (as in note 18).
20 P. Kalina, ‘Cordium penetrativa. An Essay on Iconoclasm and
Image Worship around the Year 1400’, Umëni, 43, 1995, no. 3,
pp. 247-257; M. Bartlova, ‘Husitské obrazoborectvf, in Umëni
ceské reformace (1380-1620), ed. by K. Hornickovå, M. Sronëk,
Prague, 2010, pp. 63-70.
21 M. Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici. Il mondo di Lorenzo Lotto tra
Riforma e Controriforma, Rome, 2011, passim.
22 W. Weisbach, Der Barock als Kunst der Gegenreformation, Ber-
lin, 1921. See also B. Toscano, ‘Storia dell’arte e forme della vita
religiosa’, in Storia dell’arte italiana, pt 1: Problemi e metodi, ed. by
G. Previtali, voi. 3: L’esperienza dell’antico, dell’Europa, della reli-
giosità, Turin, 1979, pp. 300-304.
Gas par Card „ С о ndarenvs
Crafen ?. \s3sjffi10rc: 1-C42.. r,v,w^t
2. Gaspare Contarini, copper engraving by Frans van den Wyngar-
de, mid-17th century
According to Contarini, one of the most severe and
detrimental sins of the Roman Catholic Church was the
lack of proper care to ensure that church furnishings and
utensils employed in the administration of sacraments
had appropriate forms, and that ‘the images of our Lord
and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as well as all other images
that are painted for churches, should be executed in the
most honourable and orderly manner, so that they would
encourage the faithful to venerate the only God so reso-
lutely as if they were leading them by the hand’. By ne-
glecting to control these questions through legal regula-
tions and instruction of the faithful, the prelates had pre-
cipitated a situation inviting abuses which became the ob-
ject of rightful criticism and at the same time a fuel for the
‘pestis heretica’ (heretical plague). Therefore, the bishops
should make sure that the artistic aspects of the external
cult be wisely regulated through the decrees of diocesan
synods or rulings of the ordinary bishops, and by means
of the bishops’ immediate involvement in the elimination
of errors, so that ‘the Church of God would be strength-
ened against this plague’. The bishops themselves should
also responsibly shape the physical setting for the worship
E.G. Gleason, Gaspare Contarini. Venice, Rome and Reform,
Berkeley, 1993, pp. 93-98.
of God in order to set a proper example for other mem-
bers of the clergy and the laity.19
De officio episcopi had been compiled by Contarini still
before Martin Luther (1483-1546) proclaimed his ninety-
-five theses, therefore, while referring to heresiarchs, he
must have had in mind either the critics of sacred art from
the rather remote past, as for example John Wickliff (1320-
1384), or the Hussites, whose influence at the beginning
of the sixteenth century was restricted to the Kingdom of
Bohemia and the neighbouring areas.20 Soon, however, it
turned out that the ‘heretical plague’ was spreading across
most of Europe and, through Venice and Lombardy, start-
ed to penetrate into Italy. The local bishops, therefore,
could not linger any longer to ‘vaccinate’ the sacred art
produced in their dioceses against Protestant attacks, and
to apply it to fortifying the faith of their observant flock.21
Thus, the regulations and solutions they had developed
had a decisively Counter-Reformational character - many
years before the assembly of the Council of Trent, which
- according to opinions prevalent in art-historical litera-
ture, under the influence of Werner Weisbach - was a de-
cisive factor that pointed the art of the Roman Catholic
Church in that direction.22
Some of those prelates took actions which, as I shall try
to demonstrate in what follows, were later developed by
Charles Borromeo and, on the strength of his authority,
were subsequently imitated in the entire Roman Catholic
Church. Therefore, before analysing these undertakings,
it would be worthwhile to take a closer look at the reforms
introduced by those prelates in their local Churches, in or-
der to get some orientation as to the extent of the role the
artistic patronage played in their fashioning themselves as
‘exempla viva’ of performing the function of a bishop.
Such a stance, at the end of the 1520s, was adopted by
Gian Matteo Giberti (Fig. 3), in the title of his first biog-
raphy called ‘a singular example and model of the good
19 ‘imagines Domini et Beatissimae Virginis alliorumque in ecclesi-
is pinguntur, omnia honestissime ordinateque fiant, illiamque
plebem ad Dei unius cultum quemadmodum decet, quasi per
gradus manu ducant’; ‘protinus tales pestes ab Ecclesia Dei arcea-
tur’ , G. Contarenus, ‘De officio episcopi libri II’, in idem. Opera,
Venetiis, 1578, p. 425 (all above quotations are from this page). See
also E.G. Gleason, Gaspare Contarini, p. 97 (as in note 18).
20 P. Kalina, ‘Cordium penetrativa. An Essay on Iconoclasm and
Image Worship around the Year 1400’, Umëni, 43, 1995, no. 3,
pp. 247-257; M. Bartlova, ‘Husitské obrazoborectvf, in Umëni
ceské reformace (1380-1620), ed. by K. Hornickovå, M. Sronëk,
Prague, 2010, pp. 63-70.
21 M. Firpo, Artisti, gioiellieri, eretici. Il mondo di Lorenzo Lotto tra
Riforma e Controriforma, Rome, 2011, passim.
22 W. Weisbach, Der Barock als Kunst der Gegenreformation, Ber-
lin, 1921. See also B. Toscano, ‘Storia dell’arte e forme della vita
religiosa’, in Storia dell’arte italiana, pt 1: Problemi e metodi, ed. by
G. Previtali, voi. 3: L’esperienza dell’antico, dell’Europa, della reli-
giosità, Turin, 1979, pp. 300-304.