‘Ad Honorem et Reverentiam Sanctissimi Patris’: Manno Bandini's statue of Boniface VIII
Abstract In 1975, Carlo Ragghianti published a passionate essay on Manno Bandini's statue of Boniface VIII in Bologna (figure 1).1 Ragghianti's article was spurred by the exhibition of the statue at the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan and the accompanying essay written by Enrico Castelnuovo.2 In the lengthy brochure, Castelnuovo highlighted the propagandistic value of this Trecento statue and its political significance. Ragghianti rejected outright the discussion of the statue in terms of its political meaning and instead stressed its value as a work of art. The author's barely veiled criticism focused on those like Toesca and Venturi who had previously disparaged the statue as ugly and rude.3 Ragghianti, instead, argued that its archaism was in line with contemporary Roman achievements and in particular with the neo-Egyptian style that had entered the art of Rome with the Cosmati and had been given new life by Arnolfo di Cambio. The author mentioned Arnolfo's Florentine portrait of Boniface as an example (figure 2). By way of conclusions, Ragghianti drew attention to Boniface VIII's ears and argued that such an abstract and fanciful construction could not find its raison-d'être in the statue's political significance but rather in its aesthetic essence. The aesthetic essence was, he concluded, meaningful in and for itself.
The Bronze Object in the Middle Ages
This book presents the first full-length study in English of monumental bronzes in the Middle Ages. Taking as its point of departure the common medieval reception of bronze sculpture as living or animated, the study closely analyzes the practice of lost-wax casting (cire perdue) in western Europe and explores the cultural responses to large-scale bronzes in the Middle Ages. Beginning with mining, smelting, and the production of alloys, and ending with automata, water clocks, and fountains, the book uncovers networks of meaning around which bronze sculptures were produced and consumed. The book is a path-breaking contribution to the study of metalwork in the Middle Ages, and to the reevaluation of medieval art more broadly, presenting an understudied body of work to reconsider what the materials and techniques embodied in public monuments meant to the medieval spectator.
Correlation of the Upper Cretaceous White Chalk (Turonian to Campanian) in the Anglo-Paris Basin
Using key lithological, biostratigraphic and geophysical borehole-log markers a correlation of the Upper Cretaceous Chalk stratigraphies across the whole Anglo-Paris Basin has been achieved. A common lithological marker bed stratigraphy applies and key fossil markers (inoceramids, Micraster and Echinocorys ) are consistently related to the same lithological markers throughout the basin. The major lithological changes consistently occur at the same levels but are not necessarily equally strongly developed. The magnificent dip section along the French Channel coast between the Somme and the Seine, and the inland sections at Precy-sur-Oise and Verlin (Loiret) illustrate the influence of long-lived tectonic lines on Chalk sedimentation history recognised by: (i) rapid thickness variations; (ii) channel flooring hardgrounds and associated anomalous bedding dips: (iii) stratigraphically anomalous infills of channels which may be metres to kilometres across; (iv) redeposited chalks containing abundant Bathichnus paramoudrae ; (v) tectonically induced slumps and slides with flint and chalk shatter beds (palaeoseismic horizons). These features are found along may axes including the Anticlinal du Bray at Precy and Dieppe, the Anticlinal de Margny-les-Compiegne at Nourard le-Franc and Le Treport (the Bresle Valley Axis) and the Fecamp and Verlin fault systems. The ‘events’ recognised along these axes link with similar events recognised in Sussex (e.g. Kingston Anticline), on Portsdown, at Culver Cliff, Isle of Wight (Sandown Pericline) and on the Weymouth Anticline (White Nothe). Such events are common in the high Turonian, low Coniacian, basal Santonian, and the low and mid Campanian. The recurrence of key marker beds dominated by a particular trace fossil association or sequence, Bathichnus-Thalassinoides suevicus-Zoophycos associated with major changes in lithology, micro and macro-fauna indicates more widespread ‘oceanographic’ cycles of transgression and regression related to Atlantic opening.