The Devil
Posted: 12 Nov 2009, 22:07
A thread to discuss the iconography of The Devil
Okay, found something - "Spendio" and "Machio". Sara Charney, "Artistic Representations of Petrarch's Triumphus Famae", in Konrad Eisenbichler and Amilcare A. Jannucci, eds., Petrarch's Triumphs: Allegory and Spectacle (University of Toronto Italian Studies 4; Doverhouse, 1990), pp. 223-233.Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: My sources which discuss the iconography of Fama don't identify the captives. This old article seems to discuss the state of the question up to 1937 however -
Shorr, D. C, "The Identification of the Captives in Petrarch's Triumph of Fame".
Die graphischen Künste, NF, Bd. II, S. 41 — 44.
Maybe you have access to this article.
Yes. But I had in mind the specific motif of a figure on a pedestal with two bound figures below it.The idea of a Diablo with captives is very old.
As Ross says, Petrarch does not mention the captives. In the Renaissance and after. artists probably did see friezes of Roman generals in triumphal procession followed by prisoners; and they could have used them as models. I know of one clear case, from a Roman sarcaphagus. It is not of a Roman victory, however, but of Dionysus returning victorious from India.However, it is probable that Petrarch not take this idea here, but of the Roman triumphs, where a train of prisoners followed the victorious general as he entered Rome.