Walls and Memory: The Abbey of San Sebastiano at Alatri (Lazio) from Late Roman Monastery to Renaissance Villa and Beyond

Description

The abbey of San Sebastiano, which lies not far from the town of Alatri in Southern Lazio, preserves within its walls almost fifteen hundred years of history. This history is unusually bound to a number of important figures, from Saint Benedict to Pope Nicholas V and his circle of humanists. For the past four years a small team has been investigating the standing structures of the abbey, analyzing the stratigraphy of the standing walls and tracing the various phases through the building. The study has produced some startling discoveries: the plan and preserved walls of one of the oldest monasteries in Europe, and one of the earliest Renaissance villas. The book gives an account of the architecture and the history of the building, showing how each phase relates to the last both structurally and thematically. The project was initiated at the American Academy in Rome, where Elizabeth Fentress was Andrew Mellon Professor, and Caroline Goodson, Margaret L. Laird and Stephanie C. Leone were Fellows. Margaret Laird and Stephanie Leone are now assistant professors at the University of Washington, Seattle and at Boston College. Other contributors include Caroline Bruzelius, Professor of the History of Art at Duke University, Antonio Manfredi, Vatican Library, Serena Romano, Professor of the History of Art at the University of Lausanne, Marco Rossi, director of the Museum of Alatri, and Ingrid Rowland, Andrew Mellon Professor at the American Academy in Rome. List of Plates 7 List of Figures 13 Abbreviations 15 I. Introduction Documenting the Building 18 II. The Building History The Sixth-Century Abbey (Elizabeth Fentress) 32 The Abbey in the Middle Ages The Buildings (Caroline A. Bruzelius, Caroline J. Goodson) 72 The Frescoes of the Church and Oratory (Serena Romano) 114 The Devotional Paintings (Caroline J. Goodson) 142 The Renaissance Villa of Giovanni Tortelli 'Apud Alatrium, Campaniae Oppidum': Giovanni Tortelli and the Abbey under Pope Nicholas V (Antonio Manfredi) 154 The Image of Giovanni Tortelli at Work and at Court (Ingrid D. Rowland) 185 From Medieval Monastery to Early Renaissance Villa: the Patronage of Giovanni Tortelli (Stephanie C. Leone) 190 The Abbey from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century From Villa to Fattoria: the Abbey as Income (Stephanie C. Leone) 226 Medievalizing the Abbey: the Twentieth-Century 'in Stile' Renovations of Romolo Giralico (Marco Rossi) 239 III. The Lands 'Beni si urbani, che rustici': The Abbey Lands from the Sixth to the Nineteenth Century (Margaret L. Laird) 250 IV. Conclusion Walls, Memory, and Appropriations (Elizabeth Fentress) 301 Appendices: The Evidence 1. Selected Primary Sources for the Abbey of S. Sebastiano (Caroline J. Goodson, Margaret L. Laird, Stephanie C. Leone, Antonio Manfredi) 313 2. Transcribed Documents (Margaret L. Laird, Stephanie C. Leone, Antonio Manfredi) 321 3. The Archaeology of the Building: the Structural Stratigraphic Units (Elizabeth Fentress, Caroline J. Goodson) 345 4. Masonry Typology (Caroline J. Goodson) 375 5. The Excavations (Elizabeth Fentress, Caroline J. Goodson) 381 6. Tracing the Property Parcels (Margaret L. Laird) 393 7. The Field Survey (Margaret L. Laird) 399 Bibliography 411 Index 437