Art imitates architecture: the Saint Philip reliquary in Renaissance Florence

I am aware of only one comparable Florentine image, an early-sixteenth-century manuscript illumination from one of the cathedral's choir books depicting a Corpus Domini procession (Fig. 17). (79) In this image, the bishop, accompanied by the clergy and followed by the populace, carries a monstrance under the shelter of a portable baldachin decorated with the images of various saints and martyrs. This illumination, contemporary descriptions of processions, and the surviving visual evidence provided by the reliquaries from the cathedral and baptistery allow us to imagine a vision of communal and ecclesiastical harmony similar to the one shown in Gentile Bellini's painting every time the Florentines brought out their relics. The head of Saint Zenobius was encased in an object fashioned in the likeness of the saintly founder of the Florentine church (Fig. 1). The reliquary bust's shoulders were made to look as if draped in a rich brocade, and it has a removable silk and enameled silver miter. The miter especially must have invited a visual comparison between it and the one worn by the Florentine bishop when he took part in the processions in which it was carried. The Saint Philip reliquary did not recall the appearance of the procession's participants, but it echoed that of the massive building that dominated the urban setting through which they moved. In this manner, the reliquary's form, particularly its cupola, served as a portable representative not of the Baptistery of S. Giovanni and its rich collection of relics but of Saint Philip's role as an intercessor for all of Florence--as symbolized by S. Maria del Fiore.

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A Protective Shadow

During the trecento and quattrocento, the spirit of competition between S. Maria del Fiore and S. Giovanni guided their respective acquisitions of relics and commissions for reliquaries in which to house them. (80) This local competition has been linked, in part, to the battle for prestige between the guilds that were responsible for the maintenance, construction, and embellishment of the two churches. The Calimala Guild, composed of merchants who dealt with imported wool, had been in charge of S. Giovanni from about 1157, whereas the guild of the domestic wool merchants, the Arte della Lana, was assigned the administration of the Opera di S. Maria del Fiore in 1331. (81) The two rival guilds never missed an opportunity to surpass one another, and while this generally appears to be true for the history of their artistic commissions, when it came to Florentine ritual, the cathedral and baptistery were more often united than they were divided. (82)

Accounts of various celebrations and processions show that the two churches were regularly paired ritually, and Franklin Toker has noted that "the Baptist altar in the Baptistery was so tightly bound to the liturgy of the cathedral that it was a virtual S. Reparata altar as well." (83) We have seen that this was the case on the May 1 feast of Saints Philip and James the Less, when masses were celebrated and the arm relic was exhibited in both churches. There is no reason to suspect that the liturgy on that day was altered when S. Maria del Fiore replaced S. Reparata, especially as one of the chapels in the eastern, and most prestigious, tribune of the new church was dedicated to those very apostles. (84)