Hello Mike,mikeh wrote:Good research, Phaeded and Marco.
For Marco, I have more questions. Re-reading Marcos's post, I seeFollowed by the picture of St. Catherine. That looks to me that he is proposing the one in Lentate as being like the ones in Milan, all hidden images of Guglielma. For the ones in Milan, he just gives us a text, not a picture.I found a curious fact. The guglielmiti painted hidden images of Guglielma in the guise of Santa Caterina. They did this, at least in:
- Santa Maria Maggiore
- Santa Eufemia
[both in Milano]
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In c. 1377, Lanfranco Porro -a noble which working for Visconti- pay the works of "L’Oratorio di santa Maria di Mocchirolo"
http://www.comune.lentatesulseveso.mi.i ... mocchirolo
Among the frescoes, a painting of Santa Caterina, now in Brera...
And Ross responds,without qualification to exclude the one in Lentate:I admit that Marcos is only proposing that the one in Lentate is Guglielma in disguise, like the other ones, not asserting it as a fact. But it is a proposal he thought worth considering, and so do I. Ross did not seem to reject it.Yes, Guglielma's followers did paint her disguised as St. Catherine.
Looking at the fresco in St. Eufemia, it seems to me to paint the same scene as in Lentate, but without the additional rings, and so even less like the one in Brunate.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ilan_5.jpg
the fact that Guglielma was represented as Saint Catherine is reported both by Barbara Newman and Marina Benedetti. Apparently, this information comes from the confession of Mirano da Garbagnate, during the inquisition processes of 1300. As Newman reasonably writes “the inquisitors would have destroyed these public images of St. Guglielma after the trial”. The Saint Eufemia painting clearly is influenced by Leonardo, so it should be dated to the end of the XV / beginning of the XVI century. It is not the painting mentioned by Mirano.
I confirm that the St. Eufemia painting (from what can be seen) is a normal Mystical Marriage of S. Catherine, like the Lentate fresco. There is no reason to imagine that Guglielma la Boema was represented as Catherine after her condemnation in 1300.
I cannot see any additional ring in the Lentate fresco (and I don't think that detail would be relevant anyway). I reiterate what I proposed in my previous post about Lentate:
If you see anything strange in this fresco, please be specific so that we can discuss it.
The Brunate fresco is about a completely different Saint Guglielma, the English / Hungarian one.
I translate here some sentences from the article I linked in my previous post (“La leggenda di Santa Guglielma, figlia del re d'Inghilterra”, Zsuzsa Kovács):
Kovacs' article seems to me serious and well documented, but (even without reading the article) one look at the legend of the English/Hungarian Guglielma makes it clear that it is unrelated to Guglielma from Milan. Newman is right when she writes that the legend of the English / Hungarian Guglielma "bears only the faintest resemblance to" the biography of the Milanese Guglielma.Zsuzsa Kovacs wrote:p.37 In 1842, Michele Caffi, mentioned the cult of Guglielma in Brunate when discussing another Guglielma, who was thought to be a princess and lived in Milan, her followers were condemned as heretics by the inquistion in 1300. Later, people studying the guglielmite heresy, posed the question of a possible link between the two cults. In the last decade, in various publications appeared the hypothesis that the legend we are discussing was actually based on Guglielma from Milan, and that it was created as a coverage to continue her cult prohibited by the inquisition. The authors of these works have formulated their hypotheses without knowledge of the history of the legend (39) that was copied in collections of legends, was documented since the XIV century in Lombardy, Veneto and Tuscany, was diffused among the most various religious orders and was linked to the devotion to Mary, to an ecclesiastic cult that, as we will see below, already existed when the inquisition processed the guglielmites. This excludes that our legend (and the cult in Brunate) could be a derivation from the heretic tradition of Guglielma from Milan.
(footnote 39) Newman, erroneously thinking that the legend was created by Bonfadini in Ferrara in the XV century, made efforts to build an hypothesis explaining how the heretical cult spread to Ferrara, in order to link it to the origin of the legend.
p.39 At the end of the London manuscript, in Andrea Bon's version of the legend [London, British Museum, Add. Ms. 10051, ff. 47. – Sec. XV] one can read: ... “Deo gratias semper. 1300 1. adi 20 Marzo. Finis.” (forever thanks to God. 1301, the 20th of March. The end)
p. 40 The date at the end of the London manuscript not only proves that our legend was already known in 1301, but the Latin liturgical text suggests that the cult of the Saint had a much earlier origin.
Thanks to Ross' interpretation of the two kneeling people as donors, I made a “google images” search for “donatore” on the site were Federico Zeri's collection of photographs is published:mikeh wrote: (I have no idea how you do it, Marco, because when I look on Google nothing comes up. Maybe I should put my search terms in Italian.)
site:fe.fondazionezeri.unibo.it donatore
Without recognizing the donors as such, it is much more difficult to find anything relevant.
About a different subject:
Today I visited the Bembo exhibition at the Brera Museum. I hoped to find out something more about Filippo Maria's fiorino. The exhibition texts and the catalogue by Sandrina Bandera say: “I semi con i Denari presentano ora un lato ora l'altro del fiorino d'oro coniato da Filippo Maria Visconti nel 1442, e in uso fino alla sua morte, nel 1447” (the suit of Coins presents now one side now the other side of the golden fiorino coined by Filippo Maria Visconti in 1442, which remained in use until his death in 1447). Almost the same words we find in Berti. Also in this case, no reference is provided.
On the other hand, thanks to the advice I received on lamoneta.it forum, I found a 1426 edict about our golden Fiorino (Giulini "Memorie spettanti alla storia, al governo ed alla descrizione della città e campagna di Milano ne' secoli bassi", 1854 – pag.290).
I translate the first sentences: “Letter from the Masters of Ducal Incomes to the city, about the exchange rate of golden coins. Respectable, Egregious, Learned and Honourable Brothers, our Illustrious Lord ordered that the coin mint of this City of Milan must produce golden fiorini with his own mould. ... June 7th 1426”.
The rest of the edict is also interesting, since it prohibits the export of gold from Milan in order to grant the production of the greatest possible quantity of fiorini.
So I couldn't come to any conclusion about the dating of this coin, since Berti and Bandera seem to contradict the evidence I have found.