This essay discusses the reconstruction of Domenico Ghirlandaio’s double-sided altarpiece for the cappella maggiore of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, based on an unpublished manuscript by the Dominican friar Vincenzio Fineschi. Such conclusions recast modern understanding of this important monument of the Italian Renaissance as resulting from a collaborative approach to iconographical invention that challenges prior notions of artists working in humanist contexts in the period as ‘passive’ recipients of ‘active’ textual programs.
Moreover, it reveals Raphael's intellectual grasp of difficult religious and philosophical ideas, as expressed in his ingenious conjoining of medieval and classical Roman forms, ideas of materiality and immateriality, and body and soul. This also permits a clarification of the contributions of the patron (Julius II), intellectual advisor (Giles of Viterbo), and artist (Raphael). Understood in this way, the private library may be viewed as a fluid discursive space created for a discerning pontiff and suited to its contemplative function. It also uniquely combines all four branches of knowledge-philosophy, theology, poetry, and jurisprudence-depicted in the room. Not structured as an unalloyed Platonic hierarchy, Theology presents Christ’s material body as simultaneously present in heaven and on earth, and structures a corresponding interpenetration of the terrestrial and celestial realms. Designed in particular dialogue with the Philosophy (‘School of Athens’) fresco on the Stanza’s opposite wall, Theology embodies the philosophical concord between Plato and Aristotle.
This article introduces source texts and images that support a new analysis of the iconography of the Theology (‘Disputa’) fresco, and the proposition that it was conceived as the visual and conceptual centerpiece of the Stanza della Segnatura (1508-11).
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