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Transformations of Time and Temporality in Medieval and Renaissance Art

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Transformations of Time
and Temporality in Medieval
and Renaissance Art
By
Simona Cohen
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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CONTENTS
List of Illustrations ......................................................................................... ix
Acknowledgments ......................................................................................... xix
Color Plates
Introduction ....................................................................................................
PART ONE
SOURCES AND PROTOTYPES OF THE RENAISSANCE
ICONOGRAPHY OF TIME
1. Concepts of Time in Classical Philosophy ........................................
2. Classical Personications of Time ....................................................... 
Chronos ........................................................................................................ 
Aion/Aeternitas .......................................................................................... 
Phanes and the Leontocephaline ........................................................ 
Time and Solar Symbolism .................................................................... 
Mithraic Time Imagery ........................................................................... 
Saturn ........................................................................................................... 
Janus ............................................................................................................. 
3. Early Christian and Medieval Concepts of Time ............................ 
The Negation of Time in Early Christian Art................................... 
Nox intempesta—The Problem of Dening Time .......................... 
The Medieval Concretization of Time ............................................... 
Technology, Society and the Clock ..................................................... 
4. Time and Temporality in Medieval Art ............................................. 
The Cosmic Diagram ............................................................................... 
Annus and the tempora .......................................................................... 
Macrocosm and Microcosm .................................................................. 
Fortuna and the Ages of Man ............................................................... 
Time and Death ........................................................................................ 
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5. The Romanesque Zodiac: Its Symbolic Function on the Church
Facade .......................................................................................................... 
The Earliest Monumental Zodiacs ...................................................... 
The Symbolic Context of the Portal Zodiac ..................................... 
Omnia Tempus Habent ............................................................................ 
The Medieval Zodiac ............................................................................... 
The Architectural Context of the Zodiac .......................................... 
PART TWO
CHANGING CONCEPTS OF TIME IN THE RENAISSANCE
Introduction: Changing Concepts of Time in the Renaissance ....... 
6. The Renaissance Personication of Time in Illustrations to
Petrarch’s Trionfo del Tempo ................................................................. 
Questioning Assumptions: The Problem of “Father Time” ......... 
Petrarch’s Description of Time............................................................. 
Illustrations of the Trionfo del Tempo—the initial stage ............. 
Time and Temporality: Stage II, 1450–60 .......................................... 
Eclecticism and Experimentation: 1460–80 ..................................... 
Antique Revival and Renaissance Innovations: 1480–1500 .......... 
Transformations of Time in the Sixteenth Century ...................... 
7. Time, Virtuousness and Wisdom in Giorgione’s Castelfranco
Fresco ........................................................................................................... 
Fantasia per mostrare l’arte ................................................................... 
Objects and Maxims—the Visual Evidence ..................................... 
Dening the Frame of Reference ........................................................ 
Liberal and Mechanical Arts ................................................................. 
Arms and Armor ....................................................................................... 
The Function of the Maxims ................................................................ 
Images of Virtue ........................................................................................ 
Images of Time .......................................................................................... 
Contrasts of Virtues and Vices ............................................................. 
Virtutis laus omnis in actione consistit ................................................ 
8. Kairos/Occasio—Vicissitudes of Propitious Time from
Antiquity to the Renaissance ................................................................ 
Lysippos and the Classical Literary Tradition ................................. 
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Medieval Mediators ................................................................................. 
Classical Reliefs of Kairos ...................................................................... 
The Fate of Kairos/Occasio in Medieval Art .................................... 
Pigliar il Tempo: Kairos/Occasio and Fortuna in the Early
Renaissance ................................................................................................ 
Occasio & Fortuna—the Literary Tradition of the Early
Cinquecento ................................................................................................ 
Occasio and the Fata Morgana ............................................................ 
Modications of Kairos/Occasio in Painting and Emblems ........ 
9. Veritas lia temporis: Time in Cinquecento Propaganda .............. 
Early Renaissance Precedents .............................................................. 
Cinquecento Innovations: Michelangelo and Pontormo ............. 
Veritas lia temporis in the mid Cinquecento ................................. 
The Emblem of Time as a Printers Device ....................................... 
Personications of Time: North Italian Monumental Art of the
Mid Century ............................................................................................... 
Time in the Artistic Propaganda of Cosimo I—
Francesco Salviati: Time in Political Strategy ............................. 
Angelo Bronzino: Time and Moralization ................................... 
Giorgio Vasari: Time Recruited ....................................................... 
Epilogue ............................................................................................................ 
Appendix I: Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts of Petrarch’s
Trion Located in European and American Collections .............. 
Appendix II: Illustrated Incunabula and Books Containing
Petrarch’s Trion, 1478–1610 .................................................................. 
Select Bibliography ........................................................................................ 
Index .................................................................................................................. 
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CHAPTER FOUR
TIME AND TEMPORALITY IN MEDIEVAL ART
A personication of Time per se, as opposed to images of limited dura-
tions or periods, was not depicted in Christian art before the fteenth
century. The preceding chapters, dealing with the problematic issues of
time as perceived in early Christian and medieval contexts, have under-
lined the negation of time or its evasiveness as an abstract concept and
the rejection of associated pagan tradition. How all of this changed in the
Renaissance still remains somewhat enigmatic. Although focused stud-
ies of particular philosophical, theological, literary, scientic, historical
or artistic aspects have been undertaken, a comprehensive picture is still
lacking. Basic questions will be confronted in the following chapters from
a predominantly art-historical viewpoint, while taking into account rel-
evant issues, primarily of religious, intellectual and social history. Were
changes in the conception of time expressed by iconographic innova-
tions? Did pagan time imagery undergo a revival? Did medieval models
contribute to the creation of a Renaissance iconography of Time? In the
present chapter we will begin to investigate this last question by studying
relevant artistic developments in late medieval art.
The Cosmic Diagram
Gothic rose windows throughout Europe illustrated the relationship
between God and the temporal universe. In the round window of the Lau-
sanne Cathedral, for example, Christ is surrounded by seasons, months,
elements, signs of the zodiac, the sun and moon, night and day, and the
rivers of Paradise. The images surrounding Christ represent the universe
as conceived in categories of time, space and matter, through which the
divine creator is revealed. This diagrammatic image of the deity ruling
the dynamics of time, as dened by tempora or periodic units, is derived
For the sources of this concept, see Plato’s Cosmology: the Timaeus of Plato, translated
by Francis Macdonald Cornford with a Running Commentary, Indianapolis, (1935), 1997,
34B & 47A.
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from astrologically related traditions of Hellenistic and Roman origin that
were mediated by medieval art.
Medieval cosmic diagrams, evoking the relationship between a cosmic
personication or deity and the universal dimensions of time and space,
demonstrate initial eforts to organize Christian ideas of temporal domi-
nation, duration and periodicity within a comprehensive universal struc-
ture. As gurative illustrations to complex texts that treated interrelated
cosmological and theological theories, relationships between natural phe-
nomena and man, the interdependence of the material and the spiritual,
and the duality of time and eternity, their contribution might be limited.
John Murdoch noted that “the central works of the Middle Ages on natu-
ral philosophy were for the most part bereft of illustrative material” and
“most of the illustrations one nds in manuscripts of medieval works on
natural philosophy do not relate to the subject of the work as a whole
or even to some general doctrine expounded by the work in question”.
We will see, nevertheless, that from the seventh or eight centuries some
of the diagrammatic rotae illustrations were integral parts of manuscript
texts serving as computistic aids (for the dating of Easter and liturgical
feasts) or “handbooks” dealing with various doctrines and ideas through
the classication, order, correspondences and oppositions of universal
phenomena and their relationships to man. What will concern us here is
the question of how these developments afected the gradual emergence
of time imagery in the medieval and early Renaissance periods.
Among the earliest extant prototypes of the medieval cosmic diagram
are late second and third century mosaic pavements found in various
parts of the Roman Empire, related to the eastern cult of Sol Invictus that
was ocially instituted by Aurelius in 274. Examples from Münster and
El Djem (Tunisia), for example, portray the solar god Helios/Apollo on
his quadriga, surrounded by the solar year as represented by the circular
band of zodiacal signs, with symbols of the four elements in the corners.
Related mosaics in the eastern empire also portrayed personications
of the months, with seasons or winds delegated to the four triangular
corners. In the third century a syncretistic image of Christ as Sol Invictus
was depicted in a ceiling mosaic of the mausoleum of the Julii, located
See John E. Murdoch, Album of Science, Antiquity and the Middle Ages, New York,
1984, 288.
See Karl Lehmann, “The Dome of Heaven,” Art Bulletin, vol. 29, 1945, 225–48, g. 14.
E.g. the Antioch mosaic, in Doro Levi, Antioch Mosaic Pavements, vol. I, Rome, 1971,
36–37, gs. 11–12. On winds, see Obrist (as in note 13 below).
      55
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in the necropolis under the Church of St. Peter’s (the Vatican), but it still
lacked the temporal representations of pagan precedents. The image of
the solar deity in the center of a cosmic diagram was perpetuated by astro-
nomical illuminations, the most famous and earliest extant example being
a ninth century illustration of Ptolemy’s so-called “handy tables”, a revised
version of astronomical tables in his Almagest (mid 2nd c.) (Fig. 11). This
Ptolemaios, Geographia, Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Gr.1291, fol. 9r.
The date of the manuscript is still debated and has been assigned to either 813–20 or
829–42, as in I. Spatharakis, “Some Observations on the Ptolemy MS. Vat. GR. 1291: Its
Date and the Two Initial Miniatures,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift, vol. 71, issue 1, 41–49 and
H.D. Wright, “The Date of the Vatican Illuminated Handy Tables of Ptolemy and its Early
additions,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift, vol. 78, 1985, 355–62.
Fig. 11.Astronomical Diagram including Sol, the Zodiac and Periods of Time, Illus-
tration to Ptolemy, 9th c. copy of 4th c. original, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,
MS. Vat.gr. 1291, fol. 9.
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illustration contains six concentric circles, divided into twelve segments,
with personications of daily and nightly hours (distinguished by their
dark or light colors), months and zodiac signs, and identifying Greek
labels. The labels framing the personied hours around Helios dene the
date and time in which the sun enters the zodiac sign and have enabled
scholars to calculate the date, presumably of the manuscript itself.
By the ninth century, concentric diagrams in computus manuscripts
similarly represented the universe in combined categories of time and
space but they frequently replaced the central image, or symbol of the
deity, with a spherical shaped orbis terrae (depicted in two-dimensional
form) divided into three parts labeled Asia, Europe and Africa, the three
known continents (Fig. 12). The earliest rota of this kind illustrated
Isidore’s chapter “De partibus terrae” that was copied in some seventh
century manuscripts of De natura rerum (such as El Escorial R.II.18,
fol. 24v). These were explicitly requested by the author and were referred
to in his text. They were taken over in mid ninth century manuscript
illuminations of Bede’s De temporum ratione (ca. 725), which presented
twelve radial divisions, including winds, days of the lunar month and
monthly high tides, and ages of the moon, divided between the central
A rare diagram illustrating De Concordia mensium atque elementorum of the monk
Byrhtferth (late 10th or early 11th c.) shows a complex concordance of temporal factors,
such as months, seasons, ages of man, solar and lunar months and signs of the zodiac,
with spatial and material ones. At the center is an eight-spoked wheel that seems to be
a variant of the cross or Christ’s monogram with χρ (abbreviation for Christos in Greek)
written above. See Murdoch (as in note 2), 356, g. 290.
Plato, in the Timaeus, conceived of a spherical earth in a spherical universe. This con-
cept was generally accepted by Greeks in the 5th c. B.C. See Francis M. Cornford, Plato’s
Cosmology. The “Timaeus” of Plato, 4th edit., London, 1956 and Wesley M. Stevens, “The
Figure of the Earth in Isidore’s ‘De natura rerum’,” in Cycles of Time and Scientic Learning
in Medieval Europe, Aldershot. & Brookeld 1995, chap. III. Beda, in his De natura rerum
(ca. 701) still described the earth as a globe in a geocentric universe; for illustrations of the
tripartite spherical earth in rotae illustrations to Bede, see Harry Bober, “An Illustrated
Medieval School-Book of Bede’s “De Natura Rerum,” The Journal of the Walter’s Art Gal-
lery, vol. 19/20, 1956–57, 64–97, gs. 2, 3, 6, 78, 13, and Bianca Kühnel, The End of Time in
the Order of Things, Regensburg, 2003, gs. 21 & 22. A spherical depiction of the world
was depicted in Roman statues of Atlas supporting the cosmic globe. The Farnese Atlas
(Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples), a 2nd century Roman marble copy of a Hellenistic
sculpture of Atlas kneeling with a globe, is the oldest extant statue of the Titan of Greek
mythology, and the oldest known representation of the celestial sphere. On computistic
literature between the 2nd to the 8th centuries, see C.W. Jones, Bedae Opera De Tempori-
bus, Cambridge, Mass., 1943, 6–122.
On “Rotae and Circular Diagrams”, see Murdoch (as in note 2), 52–61 and Stevens
(as above), 272–73.
      57
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rota and four corner discs. Subsequently, this spherical earth image with
its tripartite division became a standard form in late medieval cosmologi-
cal texts as well as texts of classical Latin authors, thereby mediating its
adoption in allegorical illustrations of Time in the Quattrocento.
Annus and the tempora
Personications were dispensed with in the series of rotae diagrams illus-
trating Isidore of Seville’s De natura rerum, and inscriptions were used for
the subdivisions to illustrate complex temporal and spatial concordances,
such as the zodiacal circuit of the sun and planets, phases of the moon
On these and other Carolingian computus and astronomical rotae illuminations, see
See Kühnel, (as in note 7) 65–83; on “The Carolingian Contribution,” Op. cit., 101–15 and
Bruce S. Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens, Roman Astronomy and Cosmology in the Carolin-
gian Renaissance, Leiden, 2007–08. Regarding manuscript illustrations of Isidore, Bede and
the related tradition, see Bober (as in note 7), 64–97.
Fig. 12.Cosmic Diagram with tripartite orbis terrae, illustration to Isidore of
Seville, Etymologiae, chapter XIV: De terra et partibus, 1472.
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Fig. 13.[C. P. 3] Annus, “Fuldaer Sacramentar Fragment,” Berlin Staats-
Bibliothek, ca. 980.
      59
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that determine tides, and formation of the months of the year. An early
innovation with far reaching implications is the schematic illustration to
Isidore’s chapter De Annus (the Year), where the center of the circular
diagram is simply inscribed ANNUS in large capital letters, with seasons
(tempora), humors and cardinal directions inscribed in the peripheral geo-
metric design. By the tenth century artists would enhance the ANNUS
See Kühnel (as in note 7), gs. 50–52.
Fig. 14.Annus, Aosta Cathedral, choir mosaic, 12th c.
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inscription by adding a visual personication, as seen, for example in
so-called “Fuldaer Sakramentar Fragment” (Berlin, Staats-Bibliothek)
assigned to about 980 (Fig. 13). There Annus is shown as a regal, bearded
elder seated on a throne, holding the earth (space) in his right hand and
controlling the seasons (time) in his left. Dies and Nox are personied as
busts in medallions, and gures of the months are associated with their
traditional agricultural attributes.
Of importance to this subject are medieval examples of transitional
syncretistic iconography. One example is the Sol-Christ synthesis men-
tioned above, which exhibits the appropriation of solar symbolism and
ritual by early Christianity. Another synthesis is represented by the Annus-
Christ gure functioning as pantocrator or more specically as ruler of
Time (holding the Sun and Moon, Day and Night), as in the Romanesque
oor mosaic in the choir of the Aosta Cathedral (Fig. 14). Not far away, in
the presbytery of San Savino in Piacenza, a slightly later mosaic likewise
focuses on the haloed personication of Annus-Christ, seated on a regal
throne and holding the sun and moon.
Contemporary manuscript illuminations and tapestries presented the
familiar version of a regal, crowned Annus seated on his throne in the cen-
tral circle, holding luna and sol, with kneeling personications marked lux
and tenebre. A famous example is the rota miniature in a manuscript of
Hidegard von Bingen’s Liber Scivias, written in the mid twelfth century and
illustrated almost a century later (Heidelberg, cod. Salem X 16, fol. 2v, 13th c.)
(Fig. 15). The second concentric circle of this rota diagram contains
heads of the four cardinal directions, oriens, auster, occidens and aquilo.
Allegorical representations relating to weather and climate are depicted
in the third circle. The fourth circle contains four large personications
related to times of day and climatic conditions, with framed zodiacal signs
between them. Personications of the winds occupy the corners beyond
the circular scheme to express their function as ordering cosmic forces
that originate on the periphery.
For further examples, see Peter Springer, “Trinitas-Creator-Annus,” Beiträge zur mit-
telalterlichen Trinitäs-ikonograqphie,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, 38, 1976, 17–46.
On Hildegard and her writings, see Charles Singer, “The Visions of Hildegard of
Bingen,” in From Magic to Science, New York, 199–239 and his “The Scientic Views and
Visions of Saint Hildegard,” in C. Singer, (ed.), History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science,
(Oxford, 1917), repr. New York,, 1975, 1–55, esp. pl. IV for the Heidelberg MS. Illumination
discussed here.
See Barbara Obrist, “Wind diagrams and Medieval Cosmology,” Speculum, vol. 72, no. 1,
Jan. 1977, 33–84. In explaining the cosmic role of the winds, Obrist discusses the assimilation
      61
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Fig. 15.Annus and the Macrcosm, Hildegard of Bingen, Liber scivias, ca. 1200,
Heidelberg University. Cod. Salem X 16, fol. 2v.
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The uppermost gure in the outer circle is Aurora (Dawn), a nude gure
whose lowered head is covered by her long red scarf, as if to suggest her
awakening as she protects herself from the morning dew that she herself
brings forth. According to Homer and later sources, Eos (Aurora) was “saf-
fron robed”, as indeed she appears here (by design or by chance), but she
lacks other mythological attributes, such as the chariot, wings and torch.
This gure of Aurora, in its iconographic succinctness, almost seems to
pregure Michelangelo’s statue of the same name, created almost four
hundred years later in the Medici Chapel. But with the exception of
Notte, Michelangelo’s sculpted personications lack identifying attributes
and convey the artist’s laconic and introverted vision through suggestive
bodily movement. Unlike the Medici complex, the next three personica-
tions in the Liber Scivias schema represent temporal change by referring
to climatic or seasonal conditions. The second gure to the right, labeled
Serenitas (Sunshine), carries owers and a scepter and may represent the
day or the month of May. Tempestas protects herself with warm clothes
from stormy weather, which is a suitable way to represent the month of
January, and Pruina (hoarfrost) is a man wearing a hat and tunic typical of
the farmer who is pruning the vines in the month of March. These gures
are particularly interesting in that they demonstrate how periods of time,
were represented by seasonal activities or events, even in a cosmological
diagram intended for didactic use.
In classical tradition, personied Night was linked to the moon, the g-
ure of Dawn rose from the ocean and scattered dew from a vase, Day was
associated with the sun deity, and the Evening, Hesperus (or Vesper), was
represented by a boy carrying a torch, symbol of the evening star. Mini-
malistic icons of Dies and Nox identied with Sol and Luna are all that
remained of this; instead the passage of time was represented in medi-
eval art through Labors of the Months or Seasons. Actually, this method
demonstrates a similar way of thinking. Since time was not yet conceived
as an abstraction from events, it could be represented only by the events
themselves. It would take a few more centuries before representations of
time would be liberated from traditional Aristotelian associations, from
of stoic concepts of pneuma to metaphorically describe the action of the incorporeal (and
immaterial) Christian Divine Spirit, emphasizing the closeness of the winds to the Divine
Spirit, on the pictorial level (p. 76). Although they were employed as illustrations of natural
phenomena, winds in cosmological diagrams would also play a prominent role as spiritual,
life supporting instruments of the divine will.
Homer, Illiad, I, 477; Virgil, Aenead, V, 738, VI, 535, VII, 26; Ovid, Metamorphoses,
VII.
      63
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the identication of time with change, without which it could not exist,
and its conception as the measure of change (or movement) in respect to
before and after (Physics 219b 1–2). We have noted the inuence exerted
by these precepts on medieval philosophers and theologians, primarily
after the rediscovery and translations of his texts.
By the twelfth century Annus was generally the focus of cosmological
rotae. A beautiful example is that of the Chronicon Zwfaltense (cod. Hist.,
fol. 17v, Stuttgart), dated around 1140–45, where the concentric circles
focus on a bearded image of Annus, crouching or sitting and holding up
busts of Sun and Moon, with roundels of Nox and Dies at his sides (Fig. 16).
A remarkable feature of this Annus gure is his hairy body, identifying
him with the pre-Christian mythical Wild Man, a barbaric liminal creature
of erotic and savage behavior, who lived on the margins of civilization. He
survived in medieval and Renaissance fables and rituals of seasonal fertil-
ity and rejuvenation of nature, primarily in northern Europe. But what
is he doing in the guise of Annus?
Recently, Debra Higgs Strickland associated a Renaissance illumination
(ca. 1500) of the Wild Man and his family, attributed to Jean Boudichon,
with a popular French ballad of Les quatre états de la societé (The Four
Conditions of Society), and the positive idea of the Noble Savage, who
is satised with his natural state and rejects the decadence of civilized
society. The emphasis on family and progeny in the Renaissance iconog-
raphy of the Wild Man appears to be a vestige of his function in fertility
symbolism as related to cyclic periodicity in nature.
Other Renaissance images throw further light on this Annus-Wild Man
synthesis. A woodcut illustration in Stephen Hawes, The Pastime of Plea-
sure, published in London, 1506, shows a personication of Time as a
hybrid gure. His upper half is that of the hairy and bearded Wild Man,
the lower part is that of an armored knight, and his attributes are the
wings of Time, the sun and stars, a mechanical clock, and the ames of
destruction.
See R. Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, 1952, New York, 1979;
Timothy Husband, The Wild Man: Medieval Myth and Symbolism, catalogue of an exhibi-
tion at the Cloister’s, MMA, New York, 1980; Dorothy Yamamoto, The Boundaries of the
Human in Medieval English Literature, Oxford, 2000.
D. Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art,
Princeton, 2003, 247–49.
Reproduced in Samuel C. Chew, The Pilgrimage of Life, Port Washington, New York
& London, 1973, g. 33.
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Fig. 16.Annus, from Chronicon Zwifaltense, Cod. hist. 415, 2°, fol. 17v, ca. 1140–62,
Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek.
      65
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Fig. 17.Wild Man-Annus, marble façade statue, Venice, Campiello Santa Maria
Nova, Palazzo Bembo-Boldù. Author’s photo.
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Another bearded Wild Man holding a large solar disc or sun-dial stands in
a classical niche on the Venetian Trecento facade of the Palazzo Bembo-
Boldù in Campiello Santa Maria Nova (Fig. 17). It was probably superim-
posed on the older palace by the scholar Giammatteo Bembo, nephew of
Pietro Bembo, when he resided there in the second half of the sixteenth
century. The statue of classical mien, and apparently devoid of negative
connotations, is characterized by the ancient solar chronometer. He may
have been conceived as Annus or Tempus or some conation of personi-
ed time images. In any case, he provides evidence of the perpetuation
of Annus, in the guise of the primeval Wild Man, as a gure of cosmic
time.
A third type of Annus gure is found in the embroidered cosmologi-
cal tapestry from Girona, Catalonia (ca. 1100) (Fig. 18), which also depicts
Creation scenes from Genesis, winds, seasons, months, rivers of Paradise
and the sun and moon on chariots. A young and beardless Christ as Pan-
tocrator occupies the central circle of the concentric design but, in the
exterior square frame above him, the half gure of Annus is conspicuously
emphasized on the white ground of a roundel. This Annus is bearded and
hold a tee shaped walking stick in his right hand and the wheel of Time
in the left. It appears, therefore, that the personication of the Year, in
that it constituted a representation of cyclic periodicity, was concurrently
conceived as an image of time in its broader sense. Such a clear-cut divi-
sion between Christ as Pantocrator and a personication of Annus reects
the beginning of time’s emergence from the dominion of theological cos-
mology and astrology. How early Renaissance illustrators of Petrarch’s
Trionfo del Tempo were inspired by models of this kind will be discussed
in chapter six.
Macrocosm and Microcosm
Variants of the cosmic diagram established correspondences between
categories of time, space and matter. The four seasons (tempora) were
juxtaposed to the cardinal points, elements or winds (the macrocosm) and
to ages of man (the microcosm); the twelve months (i.e. divisions of time)
This gure of the “homo silvanus” was referred to by Patricia Fortini Brown, in Venice
and Antiquity, The Venetian Sense of the Past, New Haven & London, 1996, 285–86.
For a diferent interpretation of the relation between the Christ gure and Annus, see
Lily Arad, “From Creation to Salvation in the Embroidery of Girona,” Miscellània Litúrgica
Catalania, 12, 2004, 59–88. Arad argued that Annus often represented Christological ele-
ments that turned him into an allegory of Christ as Chronocrator-Cosmocrator, ibid., 14.
      67
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corresponded to signs of the zodiac or planets (the macrocosm) and to
parts of the body (in the microcosm); the six days of Creation or Ages of
the world were compared to qualities of the combined elements (matter)
and to Ages of Man (cycles of the microcosm). Time, space and matter
were not clearly diferentiated as such either in the texts or the illustra-
tions, but as Annus inevitably became the representative of cosmic time,
the macrocosm was depicted in categories of space, matter and time func-
tioning under its domination, and man reected in his body and soul a
parallel synthesis of the three categories.
Ideas regarding the nature of the cosmos and macro-microcosmic parallels appear in
the writings of Isidore (7th c.), Bede (673–735), Byrthferd of Ramsey (Commentary on Bede,
ca. 1000), Hugh of Saxony (1096–1141), Bernard Sylvestrus (ca. 1150), Herrad of Landsberg
(d. 1195), Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179), and Lambert of St. Omar (Liber Floridus, 1120); see
L. Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, New York & London, 1964, vol. II,
pl. 35a; Charles Singer, From Magic to Science, London, 1958; Saxl, (as in note 8). Regarding
the medical aspects of the theme and their illustrations, see Harry Bober, “The Zodiacal
Miniatures of the Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry: its sources and meaning,” Jour-
nal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1948, 1–7.
Fig. 18.[C. P. 4] Creation Tapestry, ca. 1100, Museum of the Girona Cathedral,
Catalonia.
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Diagrammatic depictions of the microcosmos-macrocosmos analogy
were originally introduced in manuscripts of Isidore de Seville’s De natura
rerum. In late eighth century manuscripts, the words MUNDUS, ANNUS,
HOMO were inscribed in the central roundel, with elements, humors and
their qualities concentrically arranged in a framing geometric pattern
(Fig. 19). This scheme was repeatedly copied in manuscripts of Bede’s De
natura rerum, which was derived from Isidore’s work of the same name,
in his De temporum ratione, and in compilations that included the latter
as well as other related texts. In his study of such compilations on natu-
ral science, Harry Bober emphasized that illustrations were conceived in
the original plan of the work geared to didactic purposes, and that chap-
ters were written about the illustrations and not, as we might assume, in
the opposite order. According to Bober, “the writers wrote explanations
around such rotae, among which the unforgettably simple and ingenious
schemes for the Microcosmic-Macrocosmic harmony remain the “classic”
graphic statement for the Middle Ages”. Consequently, Isidore was cred-
ited for the wheel schemata that were used as a method of expressing
textual correlations by graphic means.
By the twelfth century inscribed labels in the rotae were often replaced
by gurative images. This transition from word to image is noteworthy
as a further step towards the visual representation of time as an abstract
concept. Among the wealth of beautiful illuminations in manuscripts of
the encyclopedic Liber loridus, by Lambert of Saint Omer (ca. 1090–1120),
there is a remarkable depiction of the macrocosm-microcosm analogy con-
structed in two interrelated circular diagrams (Wolfenbüttel, codex. Guelf,
Gud.lat. 1.2, fol. 67, ca. 1150) (Fig. 20). The geometric layout follows the rotae
precedents in manuscripts of Isidore’s De natura rerum that, as previously
noted, contained inscriptions instead of images. By contrast, the center of
the Mundus maior circle in the Wolfenbüttel illustration shows a nude and
aged male with a nimbus and long beard holding spheres marked dies and
nox, with others below representing anni and menses. The surrounding
concentric circles contain inscriptions that introduce analogies between
the six Days of Creation and the six Ages of the World. The central image
below, representing Mundus minor, depicts a nude child carrying ignis and
E.g. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 16128, fol. 16r and Paris, B.N, MS.lat.6413,
fol. 5v. See discussions and reproductions in Bober (as above), gs. 53–55; Fritz Saxl, Mac-
rocosm and Microcosm in Medieval Pictures, London, 1957 and Murdoch (as in note 2),
356, g. 286.
Bober (as in note 7), 64–97, esp.73–74, & gs. 4, 5, 11, 13.
      69
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aer as inscribed spheres, with additional elements and seasons inscribed
in spheres below. It is notable that the gure representing Mundus maior
is not Christ, for although he is haloed he is also nude, nor is he Annus,
for he holds the Year together with other parts of time. He is character-
ized by his age, nudity, nimbus and parts of time—attributes taken over
from Annus and from Helios-Sol as Cosmocrator but, to my knowledge,
never before combined. This might be a depiction of the platonic World
Soul, the nous or anima mundi, from which the human soul was said to
be derived, as described in the Timeaus (29d-47e), then by Neoplatonists
in late antiquity, and was revived in theological texts of the Romanesque.
For a 12th c. personication of the anima mundi as a female gure in the Clavis physi-
cae of Honorius Augustodunenesis, see Murdoch (as in note 2), 332–34, g. 274.
Fig. 19.Mundus/Annus/Homo, illustration to Isidore of Seville, De responsione
mundi et astrorum ordinatore, printed Augsburg, 1472 (after an late 8th c., manu-
script of De rerum natura), Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 16128, fol. 16r.
70  
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Fig. 20.Mundus Maior and Mundus Minor in Cosmic Diagram, Lambertus of
St.-Omer, Liber Floridus, ca. 1150, cod. Guelf 1, Gud.lat. 2o, fol. 31r, © Wolfenbüttel,
Herzog-August Bibliothek.
      71
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In any case, illustrations of this type indicate that artists were seeking
ways to visually depict a universal imago temporis, one that did not merely
represent phenomena of nature but aimed to express the idea of time as a
fundamental creation or manifestation of the Divine Spirit.
An even more explicit representation of this idea is found in a twelfth
century illumination of the Clavis physicae of Honorius Augustodunensis
(Paris, B.N. lat. 6734, fol. 3v), an adaption of the De divisione naturae of
John Scotus Eriugena (ca. 810–77) (Fig. 21). At the top is a personication
of Bonitas, anked by wisdom, knowledge and virtues. In a second rank
efetum causarum are represented by busts of Locus and Tempus, with
materia informis (unformed or primordial matter) in the center. Thus Time
and Space are presented as the two elements, or dimensions, needed to
form an organized world. Tempus has no dening traits beyond his gender
and beard, presumably dening him as aged by contrast to the youthful
female locus. The rank below, marked natura creata, non creans, shows
the four elements, and at the bottom of the page God is depicted as nis
(i.e. the beginning and end).
It is remarkable that the earliest extant depiction of the ancient meloth-
esia doctrine (Paris, B.N., MS.lat. 7028, fol. 154r, 11th c.) (Fig. 22) resembles
the rota designs, in that it centers on a Christ-like image of Sol surrounded
by signs of the zodiac with the four seasons in corner roundels. If not
for the inscriptions on the circumference of the circle, which connects
each zodiacal sign with a part of the body, there would be no indication
of the micro-macrocosmic connection. Subsequent illustrations explicitly
connecting parts of the body with signs of the constellations are found
primarily in medical texts and express astrological concepts originating in
late antiquity that were proliferated by Greek and Latin texts and trans-
lations of these, launching the melothesia doctrine into far areas of east-
ern civilization. It should be underlined that, in this eleventh century
melothesia diagram, specic medical implications seem less important
than the general idea that the functioning of the human body is inter-
related with the temporal passage of the sun (the central image) through
the constellations (the zodiacal signs on the periphery).
This illumination comes from the same manuscript mentioned above of the Clavis
physicae, discussed by Murdoch, with a reproduction (as above).
Specic aspects of this subject were investigated in two of my studies; see S. Cohen,
“The Scorpion Apsaras at Khajuraho: Migrations of a Symbol,” Journal of the Asiatic Society
of Bombay, Mumbai, vol. 74, 2000, 19–38 and “The Ambivalent Scorpio in Bronzino’s Lon-
don Allegory,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, vol. 135, 2000, 171–88, repr. in Animals as Disguised
Symbols in Renaissance Art, Leiden, 2008, 263–90.
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Fig. 21.Manuscript Illumination, Clavis physicae of Honorius Augustodunensis,
MS.lat. 6734, fol. 3v, 12th c., Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
      73
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Fortuna and the Ages of Man
While artists were depicting relationships between man and the universe
as one harmonious system functioning according to a more or less pre-
dictable underlying order, another artistic image depicted the human
situation in moralistic terms. The allegorical gure of Fortuna in medi-
eval art personied the ever changing fortunes of man and his resulting
Fig. 22.Melothesia, Paris, MS.lat. 7027, fol. 154r., 11th c., Paris, Bibliothèque nation-
ale de France.
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sense of precariousness, but this denition does not adequately account
for her accumulated connotations. Ancient Fortuna was an omnifarious
gure, transformed from an abstraction into a Goddess, a mythological
gure, or a symbol of fate, mutability and the enticements of chance.
The concept of time is implicit in conceptions of ancient and medieval
Fortune. But the medieval lady who turns her wheel in manuscripts and
frescoes does not resemble her antique predecessors Kairos, Tyche, Occasio
or even the Roman Fortuna, although the Romans had already given her
the sphere or wheel, a rudder and a capricious character. Nor does medi-
eval Fortuna relate to the iconography of time in the early Renaissance,
although sophisticated allegories of the Cinquecento made Time and For-
tune partners and occasionally interchanged their attributes. By then
Fortune looked more like her pagan predecessors than like the Christian
Fortuna, whose role in moral allegory was derived from Boethius (early
6th c.). While it may appear from the above that the iconography of
medieval Fortuna turning her wheel had little in common with that of
her Renaissance namesake, both were implicitly associated with temporal
concepts. Although they are not common, one can nd some early expres-
sions of this connection in literature and art at the end of the fourteenth
and beginning of the fteenth centuries.
For an excellent study of the history and transformations of Fortune, see Florence
Buttay-Jutier, Fortuna, Usages politiques d’une allégorie morale à la Renaissance, Paris,
2008.
Ovid (Tristia, V, viii, 5–8) described Fortuna standing on her wheel. Horace (Odes,
1:35) described her as mistress of the sea, and she often carries a rudder in Roman iconog-
raphy, especially on coins. Horace (Odes, III, xxix, 49f.), Ovid (op. cit.), Apuleius (Golden
Ass, VII, 2), Juvenal (Satires, X, 363), Seneca (Epistles, lxxiv, I), Pliny (Historia Naturalis,
II, 22), all refer to her capricious character. For the iconography of Fortuna in classical
art, see Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen
Mythologie, (1915) 1965, vol. 1.2, pp. 1503f. For a basic study of Fortuna’s depictions with
literary and iconographic sources, see Howard R. Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval
Literature, New York, (Harvard, 1927) New York, 1967. Regarding classical sources of the
circle and wheel to which man is bound and sufers undesirable fate, see Richard Broxton
Onians, The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time
and Fate, Cambridge, 1988, 452–54. Cf. Fig. 98 and my discussion in chapter eight.
See R. Wittkower, “Chance, Time and Virtue,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes, I, 1937, 313–21 and F. Kiefer, “The Conation of Fortuna and Occasio in Renais-
sance Thought and Iconography,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 9, 1979,
1–27.
Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, II: The consolation of Philosophy, trans. V.E.
Watts, Harmondsworth, 1976, 54–77. Louis Réau, Iconographie de l’art Chrétien, II, Paris,
1957, 639–41. Regarding late antique and early Christian literary sources of Fortuna, see
Buttay-Jutier (as in note 26), 60–66.
See Patch (as in note 27), 115–17.
      75
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In a French miniature of about 1400, originally reproduced by Erwin
Panofsky in 1939, “Temps” is uniquely personied as a winged and tri-
ple-headed woman standing on the wheel of Fortuna (Fig. 23). The detail
shown by Panofsky, however, is a small section of a full-page allegorical
Erwin Panofsky, “Father Time,” in Studies in Iconology, Humanistic Themes in the Art
of the Renaissance, New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London, (1939), 1972, 69–94, g. 50.
The same illustration was reproduced in it its entirety in Raymond Klibansky, Fritz Saxl
& Erwin Panofsky, Saturn and Melancholy, New York, 1964, g.58, as “The Wheel of Life”,
without explanations.
Fig. 23.‘Mere Nature’/ ‘Temps’ on the Wheel of Fortune, French miniature, ca. 1400
(location unknown; originally published by Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, 1972
edit., pl. 50).
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depiction, complete with inscriptions and a title explaining that this is a
portrait of Mere Nature. Revolving with the wheel are seven gures—a
scheme familiar from church art (sculpture, pavements and stained glass)
and manuscript illuminations illustrating the uctuation of human exis-
tence under Fortune’s rule. Below the wheel and supporting it is a dark-
faced, half naked woman, which I presume to be Fortuna Meretrix (the
harlot) as described, for example, by Ovid, Boethius and later by the Ital-
ian Latin poet Arrigo (Henry) of Settimello, whose Elegia (1190) appeared
in two Trecento translations and was referred to by later authors.
Panofsky referred to the upper gure as a scholastic personication of
time and failed to mention her position on the wheel of Fortuna or to
explain her function in its iconographic context.
Who was Mere Nature, and how was she related to Time and Fortune?
The literary tradition of Natura, the personication of nature, goes back
to antiquity but gained popularity particularly in medieval philosophical
allegories. As a literary personication Natura could stand for the cre-
ative principle or the order and harmony of all creation. She was some-
times conceived as an intermediary between the divine principle and
matter; often she presided over continuity in the mutable world. In the
French manuscript the underlying cosmic order is illustrated by the parts
of time, the seasons and months inscribed in Time’s wings, the hours of
prayer, and the three heads marked past, present and future. Thus peri-
odicity was conceived as the underlying order of nature, a concept set
forth by Boethius, which had bridged the classical idea of Natura with
that of the Middle Ages. Boethius had placed lady Natura opposite a
two-faced Fortuna in an allegory of man’s right to self-determination that
was later illustrated with the translation of Jean de Meun (ca. 1305) (Paris,
B.N., MS. Fr.809, fol. 40, 15th c.). Man could choose between a life in
Ovid, Fasti, VI, 569f.; Henry of Settimello: Elegia de Diversitatem Fortunae et Philoso-
phiae Consolatione, (ca. 1190), Liber I: “Que peiora potes, meretrix fortuna, noverca pessima,
Medea dirior, Ydra ferox? Deveni ad nichilum: restans michi spiritus ossa non habet, in quo
nil hec tua probra valent.”. See Howard R Patch, The Tradition of the Goddess Fortuna in
Roman Literature and in the Transitional Period, Northhampton, Mass. & Paris, 1922, 151.
See George D. Economou, The Goddess Natura in Medieval Literature, Cambridge,
Mass., 1972.
Boethius, De Cons. Phil.(as in note 29), II. Pr.II, Iv & V; see Economou (as above),
28–52.
This is reproduced in Richard A. Dwyer, Boethian Fictions: Narratives in the Medieval
French Versions of the Consolatio Philiosophiae, Medieval Academy Books, no. 83, Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1976, g. 4.
      77
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accordance with his true nature, one that is attune with the universe, or
a life under the rule of Fortuna. Chaucer, who also translated Boethius
in the fourteenth century, not long before the illustration under discus-
sion was designed, repeated this theme in his Parlement of Foules. He
focused on the conict between Natura, the principle of universal har-
mony, and Venus-Luxuria, goddess of enticement. The illustrator of the
French illumination contrasted Temps, an angelic modestly attired gure,
with a half-naked temptress. Between these two rotated the wheel of life.
But whatever choice man made, the inscription warns us, Temps would
bring both douceurs (sweet things) and desereune (misfortune). In fact
she is dispensing these from two jars that recall Fortuna’s urns of good
and evil.
Two important conclusions can be drawn from this comparison
between the illustration and its literary precedents. Natura was newly
interpreted by the French illuminator in terms of time, and although they
were contrasted in the illustration, Time and Fortune were associated as
two interrelated aspects of Nature. This is one of the earliest visual expres-
sions of an association between time and fortune in proto-Renaissance
iconography and, as such, anticipates those of Renaissance and Baroque
allegories.
The iconography of Fortune’s wheel demonstrates a transformation that
was widely adopted from the fourteenth century, primarily in northern
Europe. The traditional gures rising and falling on the wheel originally
conveyed a social and moral message, admonishing against pride and van-
ity in a world of uctuating fortunes. The king at the summit would lose
his crown in the descent. But in this later variant of the wheel, images of
changing status are replaced by those of the Ages of Man. There are seven
in this wheel, but the life cycle could alternately be divided into four, six,
See F.N. Robinson (ed.), The Works of Geofrey Chaucer, Boston, 1957, 791–92 and
Economou (as in note 33), 129–30.
See Patch (as in note 27), 53, note 1.
For depictions of the wheel of Fortune in Trionfo del Tempo illustrations, see e.g.
Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Kupferstichkabinett, MS.78 D11, fol. 204r (Fig. 51), Florence,
Biblioteca Nazionale, BR.103, fol. 57v, and the engraving by George Pencz (Fig. 69). The
identication or association of Time and Fortune (or Occasio) was very common in 17th
and 18th century art; e.g. “die Zeit” by E. Maser in the 1758–60 Hertel edition of Cesare
Ripa’s Iconologia: C. Ripa, Baroque and Roccoco Pictorial Imagery, Dover & New York,
1971. See Samuel C. Chew, “Time and Fortune,” Journal of English Literary History, VI, 1939,
83–113 and The Pilgrimage of Life, Port Washington, New York, London, 1973, 26 f.
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ten or twelve denitive stages. As the wheel became associated with the
passage of life, its traditional social and moral signicance was modied
into a type of memento mori theme. Both versions proclaimed the van-
ity of worldliness, but the rst was a product of religious moralization,
whereas the second expressed a mental attitude, an ontological aware-
ness, that was beginning to nd expression in artistic themes.
Images of the Seven Ages of Man, as related to the Seven Planets, were
popularized in Trecento painting, occasionally arranged in a linear rather
than a circular (rotae based) progression. These illustrated the planetary
inuences on the stages of human life, a theme familiar from the Tetrabib-
los of Ptolemy, transmitted by medieval western and Islamic writings, and
subsequently promoted in Renaissance literature and art. One of the
salient characteristics of later presentations was the manner in which it
demonstrated human traits and experience, emphasizing the signicance
of temporal development in each stage of life, rather than reproducing the
paradigmatic, abstract analogy between microcosm and macrocosm. Eliz-
abeth Sears indicated that the seven-part schema, as opposed to alterna-
tive divisions into three, four, ve, or six-ages, was used to express man’s
moral dilemmas or his stage of moral progress. Thus late medieval art-
ists adopted the seven-part scheme as a moralizing device, enhancing the
identication of the spectator by introducing relevant details of daily life
at each stage.
It has been suggested by Catherine Harding that Guariento’s cycle of
the Seven Ages of Man, in the apse of the Church of the Eremitani in
Padua (c. 1361–65), “was conceived in response to a climate of intellec-
tual enquiry into notions of time framed by naturalistic and theocentric
theologies of history, conceived in relation to the discernment of signs,
both invisible and visible...generated in the fourteenth century ‘renais-
sance’ of Augustinian thought”. Whether Guariento’s inspiration for the
Ages of Man and Woman, was indebted to the writings of Augustine or to
A fourteenth century manuscript illumination in the De Lisle Psalter, British Library,
MS. Arundel 83, fol. 126v (1339), shows a Wheel of Life with the face of God at the hub and
ten stages in roundels, each stage dened by a characterizing inscription and depiction.
Beginning with the infant and his mother, the series ends with the funeral in the ninth
medallion, and the tomb in the tenth.
See Elizabeth Sears, The Ages of Man: Medieval Interpretations of the Life Cycle,
Princeton, 1986, 47–53.
Sears (as above), 134–37. See also John Anthony Burrow, The Ages of Man, Oxford,
c. 1986, 1988.
Catherine Harding, “Time, History and the Cosmos: the Dado of the Church of the
Eremitani, Padua,” in Louise Bourdua & Anne Dunlop (eds.), Art and the Augustinian Order
in Early Renaissance Italy, Aldershot & Burlington VT, 2007, 127–42, esp. 128.
      79
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contemporary notions of astral inuence in the Trecento seems peripheral
in the context of his visual interpretation. In other words, the images, far
from constituting textual illustrations, convey an independent, unmedi-
ated message where the actual experience of mutability is demonstrated,
signicantly, on the dado that represented the profane as opposed to the
sacred sphere. While the question of a moralistic-theological message in
the Augustinian context may still be controversial, we should not over-
look the direct realism of the image. The fact that the movements of time,
subject to stellar rotations and planetary conjunctions, led ultimately to
the pains of mental and physical dissolution, is poignantly illustrated by
the melancholy geriatrics in the Seventh Age of Life under Saturn, who are
trying to warm themselves over braziers.
Time and Death
The Earliest personication of Death produced by Christianity was the
fourth horseman of the Apocalypse, who was characterized in the New
Testament only by his pale horse. Medieval equestrian gures of Death
derive from this text or from the early interpretations it inspired. Personi-
cations of Life and Death were not common. One example, in a diagram-
matic illustration of tenth century English missal, shows Mors as a winged
monster with horns and a beard, naked but for a hairy loin-cloth, with
claws on his feet. Monsters emerge on either side of his head (Fig. 24).
Mors and Vita help illustrate Christ’s victory over death in the symbolic
Crucixion illuminating the eleventh century Book of Pericopes by the
Abbess Uta of Regensburg (Fig. 25). The inscription tells us that death
was defeated and perished, while the life of the saints continues eternally.
Vita and Mors replace Ecclesia and Synagoga on either side of the crucix,
therefore Mors assumes Synagoga’s bent stance and carries the broken
lance. Synagoga had a blindfold; Mors has his mouth tied. The sickle he
carries is an original attribute of death as well as of time.
In contrast to Harding’s assumptions regarding Augustinian or contemporary Pad-
uan inuences, Sears (as in note 40), 113, assumed that Guariento’s cycle was not conceived
for the church and that he probably had recourse to a manuscript model with no connec-
tions to Padua.
See reproductions in Sears (as in note 40), g.48 and Harding (as in note 42), g. 40.
Munich, MS.clm. 13601, fol. 3v, ca. 1020. The Book of Pericopes or Uta Codex is a richly
decorated monastic gospel lectionary; see Adam S. Cohen, The Uta Codex: Art, Philosopy
and Reform in Eleventh Century Germany, University Park, Penn., 2000, esp. g. 10 & color
plate 2.
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Fig. 24.Mors, English illumination, Leoforic Missal, MS. Bodl. 579, fol. 50r, 9th–
11th centuries, © The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.
      81
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Fig. 25.Crucixion with Vita and Mors, illumination, Book of Pericopes of Abbess
Uta, Regensburg, MS.lat. 13601, fol. 3v, rst quarter of the 11th c., Bayerische Staats-
bibliothek, Munich.
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By contrast to the scarcity of death imagery in early medieval art, this
theme became conspicuously prominent from the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. Pagan personications, such as Thanatos, were unsuited to
express medieval attitudes to death and entirely new iconographic themes
were introduced. Four of these themes, that were widespread, also pro-
vide evidence of new temporal concepts. The theme of The Three Living
and the Three Dead was based on a legend that appeared in literature by
the twelfth century and was illustrated from the early thirteenth century,
especially in Italy and France (Fig. 26). In accordance with the legend
reciting how three kings were shown three open graves by the Egyptian
hermit Macarius, artists depicted three corpses in various stages of decom-
position. Inscriptions relayed a warning to the living, supposedly com-
municated by the corpses themselves, that a similar fate awaited them.
Social connotations, not unlike those conveyed by Fortune’s wheel, were
introduced by converting the kings into equestrian nobles or by assigning
each of the three living to a diferent social milieu.
Fig. 26.The Three Living and the Three Dead, detail of the Trionfo della Morte,
Pisa, Camposanto, attributed to Francesco Traini or Buonamico Bufalmaco,
ca. 1330s.
      83
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The second theme, known as the Dance of Death or Danse Macabre,
appeared later but also juxtaposed living and dead, this time in pairs where
both gures were facets of the same individual (Fig. 27). It broadened the
population of prospective victims to include all social strata and occu-
pations as well as both genders. Paintings of this theme rst decorated
walls in courtyards of cemeteries and monasteries, and later it was dif-
fused through prints. As in the previous example, the dead were originally
pictured as corpses in the process of decomposition. Clean skeletons were
substituted only in the sixteenth century.
Both of the above mentioned versions of the living confronted by the
dead are related to the so-called transi-tombs and especially to those that
contrasted the decaying corpse of the deceased with his living egy on
the same tomb (Fig. 28). About the time that the earliest transi-tombs were
appearing, just after the Black Death wiped out about a third of Europe’s
population (1348), artists began covering entire walls with images of Death
triumphing over mankind. Between 1350 and 1360, contemporary with or
soon after the composition of Petrarch’s Trionfo della Morte, the personi-
cation of Death attacking her victims was painted at the camposanto in
Pisa, in Sacrospeco near Subiaco (Fig. 29), in the Church of Santa Croce
in Florence, and elsewhere in Italy.
Fig. 27.Danse Macabre, anonymous woodcut in Guy Marchant editions, Paris,
1491 & 1492, London, British Museum.
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Fig. 28.Drawing of Transi Tomb, North England, ca. 1430–40, MS.Add. 37049,
fol. 32v, London, © The British Library Board.
      85
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We need only to compare artistic portrayals of death predating the twelfth
century with the latter depictions to grasp the change of approach. In
examples of the tenth and eleventh century Death remained an abstrac-
tion, an external force whose victims and efects were not shown. By con-
trast, in the later themes of the Three Living and the Three Dead, the Danse
Macabre and the transi-tombs, cadavers were morbid representations of
human transience, characterized by the stark realism of post-mortem
decomposition. The emphasis was not on the cause but on the efect—on
the process evolving in time. The sense of temporal passage was inevita-
bly linked to the idea of death and, whether the approach was mystical,
religious or epicurean, the association was ostensible.
Socio-economic transitions and upheavals, technological progress that
was changing life-styles, and recurrent epidemics of the plague that inten-
sied the sense of precariousness, have been related to changing concepts
On attitudes to death in the Middle Ages, see Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the
Middle Ages, London, 1924; Alberto Tenenti, Il senso della morte e l’amore della vita nel
Rinascimento, Torino, 1957: Jeannie Choron, Death and Western Thought, New York and
London, 1963, 81–108; Philip Aries, Western Attitudes Towards Death from the Middle Ages
to the Present, London, 1974.
Fig. 29.Triumph of Death, fresco, Sacrospeco near Subiaco, 14th c.
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of time and death in the late Middle Ages. For a devout Christian who
aspired to and revered the absolute, the concept of change denoted
decline, degeneration and even evil. Transitional states and the reality
of physical corruption and decay had not been dealt with in western art.
The altered perception of time and space, as expressed in late medieval
naturalistic art, has also been linked to the developments of natural sci-
ence in the urban milieu. In the light of the foregoing discussion, we
may conclude that the perception of time was not only naturalistic but
also realistic. I use the term naturalistic to dene a formal and objective
approach, and the term realistic in describing an attitude to that which
underlies external experiences and constitutes the true essence. Natu-
ralistic temporal perception may be used to signify the cognition of an
objective and external dimension of time, which could be represented,
for example, by means of an hourglass or mechanical clock. The expres-
sion realistic perception of time refers here to the subjective and inter-
nal experience of time, biological and psychological time, which does not
synchronize with clocks. One way of representing this is to depict a state
of transition where past, present and future are suggested by one image
or in consecutive images. The confrontation of the Three Living and the
Three Dead suggested duration by linking the three parts of time in one
continuum, as the oft accompanying inscription states: sum quod eris,
quod es olim fui. Masaccio inserted this same inscription in Italian: Io fu
gia quell che voi siete e quell che son voi a[n]co sarete, above Adam’s corpse
in the Holy Trinity (Florence, Santa Maria Novella, ca. 1427–28). Among
speculations regarding the symbolic connotations of Masaccio’s fresco it
has been suggested that the architectural structure was meant to suggest a
memorial tomb for the prior and patron, Benedetto di Domenico di Lanzo
and his wife, or was conceived to serve as an illusionistic altar for their
memorial services. The combination of the memento mori theme below
and the triumphal arch above (symbolizing triumph over death) establish
the analogy between the Resurrection of Christ and that anticipated by
his devotees.
On the subject of change in early Christian writings, see Etienne Gilson, History of
Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, New York, 1955, 73–74; Jean Danièlou, The Origins
of Latin Christianity (A History of Early Church Doctrine, vol. III) 1977, 251–58.
See Lynn White Jr., “Natural Science and Naturalistic Art,” American Historical
Review, vol. 52, no. 3, 1947, 421–35.
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In early modern England, how normal is the idea that individuals can manage their time—the idea that time belongs exclusively to them? Does Shakespeare’s drama stage and circulate this idea? Recent critical and cultural turns highlight the importance of these questions, which ask for a re-evaluation of our history of self-regulation. As has been widely acknowledged, early modernity proved a crucible for the dissemination of the idea of individual, controllable time. In attending to both time’s subjectivity and its dependence on larger social expectations, this chapter departs from, and contests, recent conclusions about time’s subjectivity in Shakespeare by examining the relationship between Shakespeare’s keen interest in personal temporal experience and the social norms he associates with that experience.
Que peiora potes, meretrix fortuna, noverca pessima, Medea dirior, Ydra ferox? Deveni ad nichilum: restans michi spiritus ossa non habet, in quo nil hec tua probra valent
  • Fasti Ovid
  • V I Henry
  • Settimello
Ovid, Fasti, VI, 569fff.; Henry of Settimello: Elegia de Diversitatem Fortunae et Philosophiae Consolatione, (ca. 1190), Liber I: "Que peiora potes, meretrix fortuna, noverca pessima, Medea dirior, Ydra ferox? Deveni ad nichilum: restans michi spiritus ossa non habet, in quo nil hec tua probra valent.". See Howard R Patch, The Tradition of the Goddess Fortuna in Roman Literature and in the Transitional Period, Northhampton, Mass. & Paris, 1922, 151.
The Goddess Natura in Medieval Literature
  • See George
  • D Economou
See George D. Economou, The Goddess Natura in Medieval Literature, Cambridge, Mass., 1972.
Phil.(as in note 29)
  • De Boethius
  • Cons
Boethius, De Cons. Phil.(as in note 29), II. Pr.II, Iv & V; see Economou (as above), 28-52.
Boethian Fictions: Narratives in the Medieval French Versions of the Consolatio Philiosophiae
This is reproduced in Richard A. Dwyer, Boethian Fictions: Narratives in the Medieval French Versions of the Consolatio Philiosophiae, Medieval Academy Books, no. 83, Cambridge, Mass., 1976, fijig. 4.
Art and the Augustinian Order in Early Renaissance Italy
  • Padua Eremitani
Eremitani, Padua," in Louise Bourdua & Anne Dunlop (eds.), Art and the Augustinian Order in Early Renaissance Italy, Aldershot & Burlington VT, 2007, 127-42, esp. 128.