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Book Series
Harvey Miller Studies in the History of Culture
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Silvia Tita
- Pages: approx. 380 p.
- Size:225 x 300 mm
- Illustrations:160 b/w, 60 col.
- Language(s):English
- Publication Year:2025
- € 175,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-1-915487-64-3
- Hardback
- Forthcoming (Jul/25)
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A methodologically innovative study of a crucial political and visual theme whose longevity and implications in relation to changing conditions and mentalities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are revealed here for the first time.
Subject(s)
BIO
Silvia Tita is a scholar of early modern art and the first appointee of the Carol Ann Bennett-Vallès Professorship in Art History at Michigan State University.
Summary
This study is the first to explore the reasons for the intriguing proliferation of the visual theme of the Donation of Constantine in the early modern period and the implications of the theme for the global politics of the papacy. The (in)famous Donation, a document forged in the eighth century, stipulated the endowment of the papacy with the entire “West” by the first Christian emperor Constantine the Great (306-37). Instead of looking at related visual material as application of the vivid politico-religious argumentation over the matter, the book demonstrates the significant and original contribution of images to this early modern debate on the Donation of Constantine (and its corollaries). Moreover, it interrogates both the presence and the absence of this controversial episode from Constantinian imagery. Departing from iconographic methodology, the study proposes political art and, what the author calls, legal visuality as the overarching concepts. The book deals with issues of intermediality, bridging over two centuries and over conventional geographical divides, situating Italian art in a larger European context especially through diplomatic art. It analyzes familiar artworks from new perspectives (like pieces by Raphael and Bernini in the Vatican or Rubens’ tapestry designs) as well as many little-studied but equally revelatory images (like prints, medals, and cabinets).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter I. Competing Views and Evidence of Constantine’s Main Deeds
Chapter II. Gregory XIII and Tommaso Laureti’s Explanation of the Donation of Constantine in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican
Chapter III. New Exegesis at the Lateran under Sixtus V and Clement VIII: Appropriation, Prescription, and Ambiguity
Chapter IV. Genealogies of Donations to the Papacy: The Frescoes in the Novum Archivum Vaticanum and Bernini’s Constantine
Chapter V. The Foundation of Constantinople, or the Translatio Imperii ad Orientem, as a Proxy for the Donation of Constantine: The Life of Constantine by Rubens and Cortona
Epilogue
Appendixes
List of Illustrations
Bibliography
