The lost wheel map of Ambrogio Lorenzetti

Art Bulletin, The, June, 1996 by Marcia Kupfer

The world map that Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted in 1345 for the communal palace of Siena has long since vanished, but not without leaving spectacular traces of its unique design [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 1, 2 OMITTED!. A rotating wheel, the work scratched a series of great concentric rings into the surface of the wall on which it hung, thereby damaging a prior layer of painting concealed beneath. These rings and other aspects of its installation were discovered in 1980-81 when the fresco of Guidoriccio da Folignano was subjected to technical examination. In the middle register of the wall just below the image of the war captain, conservators exposed to view a previously unknown trecento fresco of the highest quality. The newly revealed scene, two men in the act of surrendering a town (hereafter referred to as the "New Town"), bears the imprint of the revolving map that superseded it. A fresco border painted in black around the circumference of the wheel, and serving to integrate it into a system of monumental mural decoration, was also partially recovered. As far as the cartographic image itself is concerned, a scarred patch of earlier painting admittedly amounts to an empty cipher. Yet the visible signs of the work's display and use, exceptional in the fragmentary history of medieval cartography, mitigate the absence of the monument that gave to the council hall its popular name, the Sala del Mappamondo.

More Articles of Interest: The Guidoriccio fresco: a new attribution: Thomas de Wesselow argues that the...; Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti; DETAILS COMPETITION; The city's new clothes: Ambrogio Lorenzetti and the poetics of peace; A newly discovered Hondius map - Jodocus Hondius 1603 map of the world

To date, study of Lorenzetti's map has focused on reconstructing its intriguing pictorial content. Several generations of scholars have sought to visualize the lost image by mining archival sources, glossing apparently conflicting descriptions, and identifying later works for which it may have served as model.(1) Since the recent restoration campaign, attention has been given to how physical evidence of the map's installation may bear upon the superposition, and hence relative dating, of the paintings on the Guidoriccio wall. In what follows, I shall attempt to open the discussion to broader issues raised by the map's enigmatic relation to known cartographic traditions, its location in the Palazzo Pubblico, and its rotary operation.

The first part of the study reviews the documentation concerning the map in order to clarify its physical nature. Here, the tradition of medieval display maps puts into new perspective the minimal clues about the Lorenzetti with which we are now sadly left. With regard to the cartographic image itself, the second part considers the crucial problem, not heretofore adequately addressed, of how the wheel's rotation would have been implicated in the formal depiction of the world.(2) For the revolving map to have worked visually, its pictorial composition, including any writing, must have met the demands of a shifting orientation. With this in mind, it may be possible to single out a specific class of maps as Lorenzetti's most likely point of departure. The development of a particular cartographic genre, I am proposing, underlay the very possibility of the commission. We cannot hope, nor perhaps should we try, to reconstruct the "look" of Lorenzetti's painting. But the artistic context that enabled the con(re)ception of such an extraordinary work can be interrogated.

Parts three and four explore the work's production of meaning as a function of its place within a constellation of framing images. Surrounding pictorial material activated the signifying potential of both the cartographic image and its performance as a wheel. On these two levels also, Lorenzetti's painting reciprocally engaged earlier decoration in the hall to new ends. Just as the wheel map revised or expanded on ideas previously articulated in the Sala del Consiglio, so also it was in turn incorporated into a continuously evolving ensemble. Recalling the role of mappaemundi both in ecclesiastical and royal settings, the Sienese treatment of the theme displaced age-old traditions to further the secular ideology of the commune. Lorenzetti's map contributed to the elaboration of a civic agenda by appropriating competing discursive "regimes."(3) Finally, I suggest in part five that the Mappamondo may have been part of a programmatic transformation of the Sala del Consiglio itself.

The Cartographic Artifact

Scholars agree on some basic features of Lorenzetti's map. The great majority of specialists visualize it as a rotating disk located on the Guidoriccio wall below the equestrian figure, where the scoring is now visible. Predictably, Gordon Moran and Michael Mallory, who deny the authenticity of the Guidoriccio, argue a different view. But holding the Mappamondo hostage to the Guidoriccio, as Moran and Mallory do, will not help advance understanding of either work.(4)

The written evidence may be easily summarized. The date of the commission and its attribution to Ambrogio are first recorded in the chronicle of Agnolo di Tura del Grasso at the end of a series of miscellaneous entries for the year 1345: "El Napamondo, che e in palazo de' segnori di Siena fu fatto in questo anno; fecelo maestro Ambruogio Lorenzetti dipentore da Siena."(5) The Concistoro authorized the restoration of the Mappamondo in 1393.(6) The substantial sum paid then to three painters for their colors, including azure, suggests a pictorial surface of monumental proportions.(7) A glass window was ordered to be made "iuxta mappamundum" in 1413.(8) When preaching in the Campo in 1427, Saint Bernardino of Siena reminded his audience of the image of Italy "nel Lappamondo."(9) Ghiberti called Lorenzetti's work in the Palazzo Pubblico a cosmografia - a term he used both as a synonym for a map of the inhabited world and as the title for Ptolemy's Geography.(10) Remarking on what could only be the same work, the Sienese antiquarian Sigismondo Tizio (1455-1528) retained the term mappamundi entrenched in local tradition,(11) whereas later in the sixteenth century Vasari followed Ghiberti in referring to the Lorenzetti as a cosmografia.(12)

Featured Download

Speak Like a CEO

The lost wheel map of Ambrogio Lorenzetti

Art Bulletin, The, June, 1996 by Marcia Kupfer

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Health

Most Popular Articles in Arts

Most Popular Publications in Arts