The lost wheel map of Ambrogio Lorenzetti

The world map that Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted in 1345 for the communal palace of Siena has lengthy since vanished, but not without leaving spectacular traces of its unique design [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 1 2 OMITTED!. A rotating wheel, the work scratched a series of great concentric rings into the surface of the wall upon which it hung, thereby damaging a prior layer of painting concealed beneath. These rings and other aspects of its installation were discovered in 1980-81 when the fresco of Guidoriccio da Folignano was make subordinateed to technical examination. In the middle register of the wall just below the image of the war captain, conservators expos to view a previously unknown trecento fresco of the highest quality. The newly revealed sight two men in the act of surrendering a town (hereafter referr to as the "New Town"), bears the imprint of the revolving map that supersed it. A fresco border painted in black around the circumference of the wheel, and serving to integrate it into a a whole of monumental mural decoration, was also partially win backed As far as the cartographic image itself is interested a scarred patch of earlier painting admittedly amounts to an devoid of contents cipher. Yet the visible signs of the work's display and use, exceptional in the fragmentary history of medieval cartography, mitigate the absence of the testimonial that gave to the council hall its popular name, the Sala del Mappamondo.

To date, inquiry of Lorenzetti's map has focused upon reconstructing its intriguing pictorial easy in mind Several generations of scholars have sought to visualize the not to be found image by mining archival sources, glossing apparently conflicting descriptions, and identifying later works for which it may have serv as model(1) Since the new restoration campaign, attention has been given to by what means physical evidence of the map's installation may bear on the superposition, and hence relative dating, of the paintings upon the Guidoriccio wall. In what come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behinds I shall attempt to unclose the discussion to broader issues raised by the agency of the map's enigmatic relation to known cartographic traditions, its location in the Palazzo Pubblico, and its rotary operation.

The first part of the investigation reviews the documentation concerning the map in order to clarify its physical nature. Here, the tradition of medieval display maps places into new perspective the minimal ball of threads about the Lorenzetti with which we are now sadly left With regard to the cartographic image itself, the next to the first part considers the crucial moot point not heretofore adequately addressed, of in what way the wheel's rotation would have been implicated in the formal depiction of the world.(2) For the revolving map to have worked visually, its pictorial composition, including any writing, must have met the demands of a shifting orientation. With this in mind, it may be possible to single on the outside a specific class of maps as Lorenzetti's greatest in quantity likely point of departure. The exhibition of a particular cartographic genre I am proposing, underlay the actual possibility of the commission. We cannot trust nor perhaps should we put to proof to reconstruct the "look" of Lorenzetti's painting. on the other hand the artistic context that enabled the con(re)ception of of the like kind an extraordinary work can be interrogated.

Parts three and four explore the work's production of meaning as a function of its place within a constellation of framing images. Surrounding pictorial material activated the signifying potential of the one and the other the cartographic image and its performance as a wheel. upon these two levels also, Lorenzetti's painting reciprocally engaged earlier decoration in the hall to of recent origin ends. Just as the wheel map revised or expanded upon ideas previously articulated in the Sala del Consiglio, in like manner also it was in move round incorporated into a continuously evolving general impression Recalling the role of mappaemundi one as well as the other in ecclesiastical and royal settings, the Sienese treatment of the theme displaced age-old traditions to further the secular ideology of the converse Lorenzetti's map contributed to the elaboration of a civic agenda by means of appropriating competing discursive "regimes."(3) Finally, I put in mind of in part five that the Mappamondo may have been part of a programmatic transformation of the Sala del Consiglio itself.

The Cartographic Artifact

Scholars agree upon some basic features of Lorenzetti's map. The great majority of specialists visualize it as a rotating disk located upon the Guidoriccio wall below the equestrian figure, where the scoring is now visible. Predictably, Gordon Moran and Michael Mallory, who gainsay the authenticity of the Guidoriccio, argue a different view. on the contrary holding the Mappamondo hostage to the Guidoriccio, as Moran and Mallory do, will not help advance understanding of either work.(4)

The written evidence may be easily summarized. The date of the commission and its attribution to Ambrogio are first recorded in the chronicle of Agnolo di Tura del Grasso at the extreme point of a series of miscellaneous entries for the year 1345: "El Napamondo, che e in palazo de' segnori di Siena fu fatto in questo anno; fecelo maestro Ambruogio Lorenzetti dipentore da Siena."(5) The Concistoro authorized the restoration of the Mappamondo in 1393(6) The substantial gross amount paid then to three painters for their colors, including azure, indicates a pictorial surface of monumental proportions.(7) A glass window was ordered to be made "iuxta mappamundum" in 1413(8) When preaching in the Campo in 1427 Saint Bernardino of Siena reminded his audience of the image of Italy "nel Lappamondo."(9) Ghiberti called Lorenzetti's work in the Palazzo Pubblico a cosmografia - a bourn he used both as a synonym for a map of the inhabited world and as the title for Ptolemy's Geography.(10) Remarking upon what could only be the same work, the Sienese antiquarian Sigismondo Tizio (1455-1528) retained the boundary mappamundi entrenched in local tradition,(11) whereas later in the sixteenth hundred Vasari followed Ghiberti in referring to the Lorenzetti as a cosmografia.(12)