SELF-PORTRAITS OF BENOZZO GOZZOLI IN THE CHAPEL OF THE MAGI IN THE PALAZZO MEDICI RICCARDI IN FLORENCE

Created by Benozzo Gozzoli, the picturesque setting of the Magi Chapel (Chapel of the Magi) in the chapel of the Palazzo Medici Riccardi (1459–1460, Florence) includes about one hundred and fifty images of people, among which the artist himself is represented. In the Russian literature devoted to this fresco cycle, only one self-portrait of Benozzo is mentioned, which is dressed in a red cap, on which his name is indicated. He is among the escort of the youngest Magus, which mostly consists of the Medici, the unofficial rulers of the city, and their entourage. Meanwhile, on the opposite wall of the chapel, the master has painted himself again twice. This paper analyzes the three self-portraits in terms of the artist’s psychological features, of the growth of his artistic self-consciousness and of their compositional arrangement and the meanings conveyed through such variations

Mobilizing Visitors: Political Persuasion and the Somaesthetics of Belonging in the Chapel of the Magi

Chapter Two provides a thick reading of the set up and action of somaesthetic experience in the Chapel of the Magi, constructed by Michelozzo inside Palazzo Medici and lavishly decorated by Benozzo Gozzoli and Fra Filippo Lippi in the 1450s. Linking the mindful movements of viewers in the room to contemporary rituals of Epiphany, the analysis recasts the chapel as a virtual Florence that was practiced by the visitor in a time-based experience. By reconstructing the ways in which theater and ritual were enfolded into the artistic program and the process of viewing itself, the chapter recovers the somaesthetic co-involvement of the visitor in the processional drama of the room and demonstrates how somaesthetic experience is a critical key to understanding the style and content of the chapel within its dynamic political dimensions.

Substanzaktivität. Farbe als prima materia im Andachtsbild der Frühen Neuzeit

In devotional pictures of the Quattrocento by Giovanni di Francesco Toscani, Fra Angelico, Zanobi Strozzi, Benozzo Gozzoli, and Bartolomeo Caporali, floor and wall fields repeatedly appear as non-representational color grounds. They refer to a hitherto rather insufficiently analyzed multi-layered reflection of the design modes of the time. These surfaces only superficially resemble natural stone structures. Rather, they are coloristic protoforms of the pictorial figurations, which is why these color fields, apart from a theological sub-iconography, can also be understood as references to the substrate character of the color. By evoking spiral and snail shapes in addition to completely amorphous spots, they also seem to reflect the processes of rock formation as explored in Albertus Magnus’s De mineralibus. As a fluid matter that can develop spontaneously into any form in the sense of a painterly generatio spontanea, color finally approximates the Aristotelian concept of hylē. This contribution seeks to explore the exciting and dynamic relationship between matter and form in the quattrocentesque devotional picture. The color substance of the amorphous grounds is understood as an activated source material that is transformed into vivid forms by way of the respective artistic technē.