Storia, geografia e umanità nel timpano della Madeleine a Vézelay (Borgogna): alcune riflessioni = History, Geography, and Humankind in the Tympanum of the Madeleine of Vézelay (Bourgogne) : Some Reflections

The topic and narrative embedded in the iconography of the central tympanum of the narthex in St. Mary-Magdalene abbey in Vézelay have attracted the attention of scholars for decades, due to the uniqueness of its content: the Pentecost as well as the mission of the Apostles all over the world, accor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annali di studi religiosi
Subtitles:History, Geography, and Humankind in the Tympanum of the Madeleine of Vézelay (Bourgogne)
Main Author: Corgnati, Martina 1963- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:Italian
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Published: 2022
In: Annali di studi religiosi
Online Access: Volltext (kostenfrei)
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Summary:The topic and narrative embedded in the iconography of the central tympanum of the narthex in St. Mary-Magdalene abbey in Vézelay have attracted the attention of scholars for decades, due to the uniqueness of its content: the Pentecost as well as the mission of the Apostles all over the world, according to Mark and Matthew's Gospels. The image is indeed centered around Christ's monumental figure, surrounded by his Apostles and, on the outside, by a decorated lintel and eight compartments displaced around a double archivolt with the zodiac's symbols. In the compartments exotic characters and hybrid monsters describe the races and people of the earth that the Apostles are about to convert and to save. Their spatial disposition has been interpreted as a world map of the T-O type (east at the top) and their place of origin consequently recognized. A recent contribution by Conrad Rudolph adds a new, fascinating detail to this already complex representation, identifying the waves sculpted at the four corner of the image not as clouds but instead as the four elements, which give a new meaning to the whole: it is indeed to interpret as the Macrocosm in relation to its "micro" complement, the human being. This contribution adds some new details and observations that mainly confirm Ru- dolph's thesis and enriches the description of the "mundus", the weird people and races who offer a true, twelve- century catalogue of otherness and, at the same time, maybe show the worries of the priors and abbots for the sicknesses of the monks of that time.
ISSN:2284-3892
Contains:Enthalten in: Annali di studi religiosi
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.14598/Annali_studi_relig_23202205