Dear Mike H,
Thank you for your kind response to my inquiry. I apologize for the delay in my own. It was not intentional. I have not visited this forum for a few months due to my hectic schedule.
mikeh wrote:Kate wrote. in August
I read recently (albeit I cannot attest to the veracity of the source) that the practice of utilizing “shame paintings” for financial crimes/debts had fallen into disuse by the time Trionfi cards were introduced to Italy. Can anyone tell me if research supports this contention?
Ross and I discussed this issue in Nov. 2013 at
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=971&p=14472&hilit=debtors#p14472, each of us quoting the same source to an opposite conclusion. Perhaps that's what you read, I don't know.
Frankly, I do not recall my source at this time, but it was not the cited discussion between you and Ross (thank you for the reference).
However, if I may summarize the salient points of your discussion—and please correct me where I err:
• According to Edgerton (1985; as cited by you and Ross), Florentine statutes specified the use of pittura infamante (shame paintings) for commercial fraud, beginning in 1283/84 and until the 16th Century.
• However, according to Ortalli (as cited in Edgerton, 1985), whereas, there are numerous recorded instances of persons depicted in Florentine shame paintings for acts of treason, there are few recorded instances of persons so depicted for commercial fraud. How this scarcity of evidence in the latter case should be interpreted in view of the city’s existing statutory laws remains a matter of conjecture. It is also interesting to note that contemporary, Florentine law books do not specify the exact nature of the punishment for treason. Edgerton speculates that the Florentine government may not have wanted its “hands tied” as to the punishment exacted for treason, given the heinous nature of the crime.
• Further, it is not certain—research on this issue being somewhat limited—whether Florence was the only Italian city state to utilize shame paintings for commercial fraud. For instance, in 1390, Giangaleazzo Visconti banned the use of shame paintings, asserting that the numerous depictions of various falsifiers—vile notaries, moneychangers, and merchants, in addition to false witnesses—on the walls of Milan’s new palace made it appear to foreigners as if the whole of Milan was so inclined, thus, seeming to indicate that the practice was, indeed, utilized for commercial fraud in Milan until 1390.
• Additionally, it is not clear if the earlier shame paintings (regardless of the crime alleged) depicted the offender hanging upside down. According to Edgerton, the earliest known shame painting showing two offenders hanging upside down (for the act of treason) was commissioned in Rome, 1347. The first known instance of a Florentine shame painting showing the perpetrator hanging upside down was commissioned on 13 October 1377. In this latter case, Ridolofo da Camerino, “traitor to the Holy Mother Church, and the people and Commune of Florence,” was shown suspended from a gallows by the left foot. “On his head at the bottom,” wrote an anonymous commentator, “is a big mitra [of Justice]. At the side and tied to his neck is a devil. His arms are spread out, and from both right and left hand he gives the finger [fa le fica] to the Church and to the Commune of Florence.” Conversely, an earlier, Florentine shame painting of Walter VI of Brienne and his henchmen (ca. 1343) which, according to Vasari, remained on the Bargello wall until 1550 [!], presumably showed the perpetrators hanging upright from the neck and with a mitre of Justice on their heads. Edgerton notes that another shame painting of Brienne "with devilish features and dark and scraggly beard" was composed 20 years later (ca. 1363?). Here, Brienne appeared in a setting suggesting the Last Judgment and with an animal, which Edgerton speculates may have been inspired by Dante’s portrayal, within Inferno, of Fraud (Geryon?).
• Edgerton reports that, apart from Florence and a few, sporadic instances elsewhere, the practice of shame paintings generally died out in Italy and the rest of Europe by the 15th Century. He further purports that the last documented use of shame paintings in Florence were those of eight, designated Pazzi conspirators rendered by Botticelli in 1478 on behalf of Lorenzo dei’ Medici. Here, according to the 16th Century commentator, Anonimo Magliobecchiano, seven, already deceased conspirators were depicted hanging by the neck in an upright position, in addition to an eighth (Napoleone Francese), who had, thus, far evaded capture, hanging upside down by one foot. Lorenzo composed a verse for each of the culprits, characterizing his brother’s assassin [Bernardo di Bandino Baroncelli?], who was, apparently, one of the seven shown hanging in an upright position, as the “new Judas.” These works were unique in that, by custom, Florentine pittura infamante were reserved for living culprits, who had escaped the city in contempt of court. Presumably, the upside down positioning of Napoleone Francese—viz. as opposed that of the other seven—reflected this custom.
• Of particular note are a set of eight shame paintings by artist, Andrea del Castagno (“Andrea degl'Impiccati”), commissioned by the Medici, and showing the traitorous Rinaldo degli Albizzi and seven designated henchmen hanging upside down for having fought against their Florentine homeland at Anghiari (1440). Interestingly, the use of eight shame paintings by Botticelli in relation to the Pazzi Conspiracy and eight by Castagno in reference to the betrayal at Anghiari possibly reflects the convention, derived from Macrobius, of associating this number with the virtue, Justice. It echoes the custom utilized in a number of documented shame paintings of placing a mitre of justice upon the head of the culprit, as well as the numbering scheme employed in some Tarot decks for this virtue.
Mike H wrote:
Before this time, it is known that people (not historic individuals) hanging upside down had been depicted in hell, as part of Last Judgment scenes, as in Giotto's Arena Chapel (p. 28), but also for traitors. Edgerton comments (p. 87):
Pittura infamante artists elsewhere in Italy had already devised this denigrating pose, which was to become the standard for victims of the art during the next centuries. (84) Actually, the upside-down figure as a symbol of infamy traces back to antiquity. Trecento Florentines had no trouble recognizing its meaning from the popular image on the tarot card, or the occasional upside-down suspension of an actual living culprit (often a Jew), or in other painted hell scenes such as Giotto's Last Judgment in Padua.
Others may, of course, arrive at a different interpretation of the Scrovegni Chapel’s Last Judgment (ca. 1304-5) by Giotto. However, I believe that the three groups of figures depicted hanging in hell within this work possibly have reference to the three Theological Virtues or their antitypes (Cf. detail of Hell in Giotto’s Last Judgment, below, which Huck kindly provided in an earlier post with the groups highlighted):
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1) Infidelity (antitype of Faith), as manifested by idolatry and its associated sexual promiscuity. A man and woman hang upside down, dangling from cable hooks, which pierce their genitals. Adjacent, a woman hangs upright from her hair for self-idolatry or vanity; a man hangs from his mouth for blasphemy.
Giotto.Last Judgment.Hanging Group 1a.jpg
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2) Avarice (antitype of Charity/Love), as manifested by usury. Moneylenders hang upright from their necks; money bags dangle directly above their heads (see detail, below).
3) Despair (antitype of Hope), as represented at the lowest level by Judas Iscariot—a suicide dangling upright from the neck and with guts spilling out from an open wound at his abdomen. This contrasts as well with the chapel’s post-Resurrection Ascension of Christ, which resembles Giotto’s Hope, thus, implying that these feelings of desperation arise from a lack of hope in this event or exclusion, therefrom.
You’ll recall that Giotto depicted the four Cardinal Virtues plus the three Theological Virtues and their respective antitypes in the following order (moving from the east, adjacent the altar, to the west entrance/Last Judgment, with Justice/Injustice at center of the chapel):
1) Prudence (vs. Folly)
2) Fortitude (vs. Inconstancy)
3) Temperance (vs. Anger)
4) Justice (vs. Injustice)
5) Faith (vs. Infidelity)
6) Charity (vs. Envy) *
7) Hope (vs. Despair)
Below, is another detail of Giotto’s Last Judgment and its Donation scene on the side of the blessed:
Here, Enrico degli Scrovegni and a clerical member of the Augustinian military-religious order popularly known as the Cavalieri Gaudenti (more properly, Knights of St. Mary of the Tower or Mary, Mother of God) kneel as co-donors as they present a symbolic model of the chapel to the Virgin, in red robe, for Caritas. The Virgin is flanked by a figure in a transparent, light pink robe and another in green—possibly for Faith and Hope. According to its constitutions, the local chapter of the Cavalieri to which Enrico belonged as a lay member had two principle aims: devotion to the Virgin and the suppression of usury (Rough, R. H. 1980. The Art Bulletin, Vol. 62, No. 1, pp. 24-35). Further, the Virgin, to whom the chapel was dedicated both in her role of Annunciate and Caritas, purportedly wears the liturgical robes of a deacon, who had the responsibility in the early church of dispensing alms to the poor as an act of Charity (Paoletti, J.T. and Radke, G. M. 2005. Art in Renaissance Italy, pp. 75).
The chapel’s depiction of Avarice was not peculiar to Giotto. We find like depictions of this vice north of the Alps, for instance. However, Enrico degli Scrovegni purportedly felt compelled to make recompense for the sins of his father, who made his fortune through usury (Cf. Dante’s Inferno, Seventh Circle, where the elder Scrovegni is portrayed among other moneylenders with a purse tied to his neck). Likewise, we see a conflation of sorts between the sins of Envy and Avarice through Dante’s peculiar “mirroring effect” within the Commedia—viz. where Inferno’s Seventh Circle equates with Purgatory’s Second Circle of the Envious.
Similarly, the association between idolatry and sexual promiscuity was not, of course, an invention of Giotto. That said, the chapel was purportedly built on the site of a pagan arena, which still retained during the late Medieval period antique Roman statues of a sexually explicit nature and for which the adjacent, wooded area was given the place name of Il Satiro. The ruins of this pagan amphitheatre were also a contemporary center for prostitution and other nefarious activities. It was hoped that with the building of the chapel such antisocial behaviour would cease. However, the local folk evidently had a different conception of the virtue, Love or Charity. The Annunciate festivities connected with the chapel purportedly proved to promote, rather than inhibit acts of salacious frivolity and were subsequently suppressed in the late 16th Century. (Pope Sixtus V also suppressed the Cavalieri Gaudenti for alleged corruption. On the other hand, Dante, reflecting Florentine prejudice, placed members of this order in Inferno’s Eighth Circle of hypocrites.)
But returning to Milan . . .
Ross wrote:
It seems what we have then is a continuation of the practice that originated the shame painting, and continued to inform it, but a ban in Milan on the painting itself. This ban and the punishments for breaking it were not lifted by any subsequent Visconti or Sforza that I can find. But the practice of hanging by the foot for high crimes like treason continued under Gian Galeazzo’s successors, like his son Filippo Maria -
From a ruling of Filippo Maria of September 1, 1422 we read how those guilty of crimes against the state were punished according to the decrees of his forefathers and the statutes of the city of Milan. The criminal would be dragged behind a horse to the place of execution, and there hanged on the scaffold by one foot; or attached to a turning wheel, or quartered; his dismembered body parts were attached to the gates of the city, and his head on a metal pole, which stood at the top of the tower of the town hall.
We have a terrible decree of the Count of Virtù (Gian Galeazzo Visconti), dated September 13, 1393. He prescribes that he who conspires against the state, should be dragged behind a horse cum asside, along the most frequented way, to the place of justice, hanged by a foot to the scaffold, and to remain there until he dies; however while he is still alive he should be given food and drink: detur tamen eidem de cibo, et potu interim donec vivet.
(from Carlo Morbio, Storie dei municipi italiani, vol. III, pp. 27-29)
I find it of some possible interest that hanging from a scaffold by one foot served as an alternative form of execution to not only quartering, but also breaking on the wheel (and with all forms ultimately resulting in dismemberment and decapitation). That is, it’s easy to see how the breaking wheel could be linked for reasons of philosophical speculation (or in context of the Tarot’s larger narrative?) with Fortuna’s Wheel. I’m thinking, of course, of the CVI Hanged Man, who is pictured per convention dangling upside down by one foot from a scaffold, but who is also idiosyncratically characterized as having an animal’s tail—a motif regularly encountered in relation to the downward path of Fortuna’s Wheel. Then, again, there’s the repeated association between this form of execution or pittura infamante and Justice, whether imposed in this life by worldly authorities or the next at the Last Judgment. Although the connotation of the two bags of gold pictured in the right and left hands of the CVI Hanged Man (or his counterparts in other Southern decks) remains a matter of contention and allowing that this trope may have more than one meaning, I am still impressed by his resemblance to an anthropomorphic set of evenly balanced scales.
Happy New Year!
Kate
[Last edited 1/5/15]