2016 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
日本とイタリアにおける芸術交流―１４世紀フランシスコ修道会の布教活動を中心に―
| Project/Area Number |
15F15790
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| Research Institution | Rikkyo University |
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Principal Investigator |
加藤 磨珠枝 立教大学, 文学部, 教授 (40422521)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
SIMBENI ALESSANDRO 立教大学, 文学部, 外国人特別研究員
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| Project Period (FY) |
2015-11-09 – 2018-03-31
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| Keywords | Western Art / Giotto / Franciscan Iconography / Preaching / Mission to Asia |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In this year Dr Simbeni analyzed the fresco decoration dated 1305～1315 ca. in the Franciscan church of St. Francis in Mantua. These wall paintings depict two unusual subjects: a large scene of Inferno and the Tree of the Cross. The scene of Inferno depicts a large tree on which the souls of the damned are terribly tortured and harassed, with highlighted details of the physical sufferings. Compared with the Giotto's Last Judgment in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, he pointed out that these paintings were at the preaching activity's service.
He carried out an iconographic study on the tapestry depicting the Genealogy of the Franciscan Order, now kept in the Treasury Museum of the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi, woven in the Netherlands between 1471～1482, and is particularly interesting because it includes a portrait of Pope Sixtus IV, a fifteenth-century personage who was a major patron of the arts. In his opinion, the Assisi tapestry seems to be a political manifesto, conceived by a Franciscan pope, and aimed to prevent the division of the Order.
He conducted a fieldwork for the frescoes of the martyrdom of 26 Christianson at Nagasaki in 1597 on the orders of Hideyoshi Toyotomi, in St. Anthony at Rivello (Basilicata) in southern Italy. Even if depictions of this account plentifully exist in Jesuit churches (both in Italy and in Japan), on the contrary such depictions are extremely rare in Franciscan churches. The frescoes at Rivello are among the earliest depictions of this account that can be found in a Franciscan environment.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
Japan is an excellent starting point to carry out the inspection trips in other countries of Eastern Asia, where to look for traces, testimonies and artistic products of Christian culture of the last centuries. For our research project based on the analysis of 14th century Italian frescoes correlated with the Franciscan missionaries reports of their journeys in East Asia, it is necessary to understand how Europe and East Asia had reciprocally influenced each other during the Middle Ages with respect to artistic production and consider the two types of art from different points of view. Italy and Japan share a long and important academic tradition in the study of history of art, but with different approaches and methods, both essential to completely understand the mutual influence.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
We will work to complete a study on the Franciscan martyrs of Thana (India) in 1321 and the fourteenth century depiction of their martyrdom in the Franciscan church of San Fermo Maggiore at Verona.
In addition, we plan to deepen researches on the wall-painting depicting the martyrdom of the Christians at Nagasaki, still surviving in the church of St. Anthony at Rivello (Basilicata) in Italy. We also want to collect and analyze the depictions of the Christian martyrs of Nagasaki, both in Japanese paintings and in Italian paintings from the late sixteenth century to the first half of the seventeenth century.
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