Early Christian Baptisteries: Online Interactive Map

in D. Hellholm et alii (ed.), Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism. Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 176), Berlin, Boston 2011, pp. 1587-1609, fig. 27-39.

www.arkeologiuv.se Cover illustration The illustration shows the laser-scanned façade A. Graphics Håkan Thorén. Production and layout Britt Lundberg Graphics Olof Brandt, Håkan Thorén Photography The project Printed by UV Öst, Linköping, Sweden 2010

www.arkeologiuv.se Cover illustration The illustration shows the laser-scanned façade A. Graphics Håkan Thorén. Production and layout Britt Lundberg Graphics Olof Brandt, Håkan Thorén Photography The project Printed by UV Öst, Linköping, Sweden 2010

www.arkeologiuv.se Cover illustration The illustration shows the laser-scanned façade A. Graphics Håkan Thorén. Production and layout Britt Lundberg Graphics Olof Brandt, Håkan Thorén Photography The project Printed by UV Öst, Linköping, Sweden 2010

2006

In The Parma Baptistery and Its Pictorial Program, I examine how in 1233 the painter responsible for the extensive decoration of the Baptistery at Parma, Italy, adopted and redeployed Byzantine sources to promote the religious and political agenda of the Franciscan preacher in control of the city government. I read the sixteen-sided, domed interior of the Baptistery, built largely between 1196 and 1216, as a synthesis of late antique and early Gothic architecture. The iconographic program laid out in this idiosyncratic space depicts Heavenly Jerusalem in the dome, the Baptism of Christ in the apse, and an array of figures and scenes in the other niches. Through an analysis of the functions of the building and the connections between the iconographic program and the city’s political context, I identify the preacher Gerard Boccabadati, an early disciple of St. Francis, as the patron of the pictorial decoration. The painting of the Baptistery is thus dated to 1233, at the height of the religious movement known as the Alleluia, or Great Devotion, which spread from Parma throughout the cities of northern Italy in that year. My study of the pictorial program examines the process of the transmission of images in the medieval world and the assimilation of Byzantine sources into the visual vocabulary used in Parma. Discrepancies in the rendering of figures and scenes reveal the use of drawings as a means of recording and handling iconography. Consequences of this practice in the Baptistery are studied in comparison with another extensive pictorial program from this period found in the chapterhouse at Sigena, Spain. Five appendices focus respectively on historiography, on painting technique, on other works attributed to the Master of the Parma Baptistery, on the liturgy of baptism and on the political reasons behind the building of monumental baptisteries in high medieval city-states. My research challenges standard readings of thirteenth-century paintings in the so-called maniera greca showing that the Byzantine elements in the Baptistery at Parma derive – more than from an appreciation of Byzantine art – from the appropriation inherent in the medieval process of handling images and iconography.

The baptistery of the Christian building at Dura-Europos was almost certainly used for two of the rituals of Christian initiation: anointing and baptism. 1 During that experience, a neophyte would have seen a room full of wall paintings. 2 The extant ones are among the earliest Christian art objects and contain some of the earliest surviving Christian narrative imagery. They portray many biblical scenes, including some containing depictions of Jesus Christ. The compositions have been reproduced and anthologized in many surveys of early Christianity, and rightly so: they are early, compelling, and relatively well-preserved. 3 Perhaps we misspeak, though, if only slightly, when we call these scenes biblical. A stable canon of the New Testament did not yet exist. Narratives of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection circulated in diverse oral, liturgical, and written forms. For example, consider the relationship between text and image for these compositions from the baptistery: the healing of a paralytic occurs in all four canonical Gospel traditions, the Diatessaron, and several extant homilies; the so-called myrrophores (the women at the empty tomb) are variously described in the canonical texts and are difficult to identify in the painting; and the baptistery's central image of shepherd and sheep is hardly a clear representation of the text of the Good Shepherd from the Gospel of John. Any analysis of the relationship between biblical texts and images in the baptistery should account for the general instability of Christian textual forms that circulated in the third century and the importance of the Diatessaron among Syrian Christians. 4 The instability of how these images might relate to corresponding texts should give us pause about even the seemingly stable relationships. My approach therefore avoids, for the most part, proposals of one-to-one correspondences between images and biblical texts, as if the images were allegorical treasures that the right biblical text could unlock. 5 This is not to say that the texts are irrelevant; the importance of Christian texts for understanding the compositions in the baptistery easily can be proven by contrasting them with those in the Mithraeum from Dura-Europos. Both artistic programs present initiate mythologies, but the lack of an extant Mithraic textual tradition prevents us from understanding most Mithraic art. 6 We use our texts to M i Ch A E l P E P PA r D

ISPRS - International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, 2016

The Baptistery of San Giovanni is one of the most important pieces of architecture in Florence. It is an octagonal building, encrusted with marble both internally and externally (including the pyramidal roof) and covered inside by a magnificent dome with sparkling gold mosaics. During Dante’s time, it appeared much older than the other monuments, so its origins were considered as hailing straight from Florence’s most remote and mythical history. Even though we have much more data now, scholars still disagree over the interpretations on the origin and construction sequence of the monument. <br><br> Survey has always been considered a main instrument for understanding historical architecture, mostly from constructional and structural points of view. During the last century, the Baptistery was surveyed using both traditional techniques and the most up-to-date instruments available at the time, such as topography, close-range photogrammetry and laser scanning. So, a review o...

Buried History Monograph 3, 2007

Anthropology Today, 2016

Brexit needs to be placed in the context of the United Kingdom’s violent, sometimes revolutionary history since its foundation 300 years ago. What happens after the UK breaks up has been the primary issue ever since the collapse of empire, not Europe as such. There is a creeping constitutional crisis on many fronts, focusing on parliament's prerogatives, the monarchy, the house of lords, the voting system and centralization of everything in London at the expense of the regions. The main political issue, after Scotland's secession and the reunification of Ireland, will be and already is, decentralization from London in England itself--a trend exaggerated by the pandemic and a disastrous 13 years of Tory rule. A new federation for the former UK is likely. Britain is in some ways the most unstable major polity in the world.