Giacobbe Giusti, ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO Madonna and Child with Saints Fresco, Contini Bonacossi Collection, Florence

Giacobbe Giusti, ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO Madonna and Child with Saints Fresco, 290 x 212 cm Contini Bonacossi Collection, Florence

 

Madonna di casa Pazzi Giacobbe Giusti, ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO Madonna and Child with Saints Fresco, 290 x 212 cm Contini Bonacossi Collection, Florence
Autore	Andrea del Castagno
Data	1443
Tecnica	affresco staccato
Dimensioni	290×212 cm
Ubicazione	Uffizi, Firenze

La Madonna di casa Pazzi è un affresco staccato (290×212 cm) di Andrea del Castagno, datato al 1443 e conservato nella Collezione Contini Bonacossi agli Uffizi di Firenze.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_di_casa_Pazzi

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Bell Beaker culture

Giacobbe Giusti, Bell Beaker culture

Prehistoric spear points in copper so-called «Palmela points». Part of a funerary equipment from a Bellbeaker culture burial in San Román de Hornija (Valladolid, Spain) in the Archaeological Museum of Valladolid, dated in 1800 BCE

Giacobbe Giusti, Bell Beaker culture

*European_Union_map_heightfield.svg: CIA – World Factbook derivative work: Pethrus (talk) derivative work: Fulvio314 – Questo file deriva da: European Union topographic map.svg:  : Stuart Piggott: Ancient Europe (2007, isbn 978-0-202-30939-2)

 

 Giacobbe Giusti, Bell Beaker culture

Geographical range	Europe
Period	Chalcolithic Europe – Bronze Age Europe
Dates	c. 2900–1800 BC
Major sites	Castro of Zambujal
Preceded by	Corded Ware culture
Followed by	Nordic Bronze Age, Únětice culture, Atlantic Bronze Age, Elp culture, Hilversum culture[1]

The Bell-Beaker culture (sometimes shortened to Beaker culture), c. 2900–1800 BC^[2][3] is the term for a widely scattered archaeological cultureof prehistoric western and Central Europe, starting in the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic and running into the early Bronze Age (in British terminology). The term was coined by John Abercromby, based on the culture’s distinctive pottery beakers, which he interpreted as drinking vessels.^[4]

Introduction

Giacobbe Giusti, Bell Beaker culture

The distinctive Bell Beaker pottery vessels shaped like a reversed bell, early examples from southwestern Germany (Stadtmuseum Bruchsal)

The Bell Beaker culture is understood as not only a particular pottery type, but also a complete and complex cultural phenomenon involving metalwork in copper and gold, archery, specific types of ornamentation and shared ideological, cultural and religious ideas.^[5] The Bell Beaker period marks a period of cultural contact in Atlantic and Western Europe on a scale not seen previously, nor seen again in succeeding periods. It can be seen initially as the western equivalent of the contemporary Corded Ware culture, though from c. 2400 BC Bell Beaker expanded eastwards over parts of Central and Eastern Europe where Corded Ware previously thrived. Thus in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, as far east as Poland, there is a sequence from Corded Ware to Bell Beaker, but this is not the case in Iberia, France or the British Isles, where Corded Ware is unknown.

It is important to note that underlying the Bell beaker superstratum existed a wide diversity in local burial styles (including incidences of cremation rather than inhumation), housing styles, economic profile and local ceramic wares (Begleitkeramik) which continued.

There are two main international Bell Beaker styles: the « All Over Ornamented » (AOO), patterned all over with impressions, of which a sub-set is the « All Over Corded » (AOC), patterned with cord-impressions, and the « Maritime » type, decorated with bands filled with impressions made with a comb or cord. Later, characteristic regional styles developed.^[6]

It has been suggested that the beakers were designed for the consumption of alcohol, and that the introduction of the substance to Europe may have fuelled the beakers’ spread.^[7]Beer and mead content have been identified from certain examples. However, not all Beakers were drinking cups. Some were used as reduction pots to smelt copper ores, others have some organic residues associated with food, and still others were employed as funerary urns.^[8] They were used as status display amongst disparate elites.

Origins

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There have been numerous proposals by archaeologists as to the origins of the Bell Beaker culture, and debates continued on for decades. Several regions of origin have been postulated, notably the Iberian peninsula, the Netherlands and Central Europe.^[9]Similarly, scholars have postulated various mechanisms of spread, including migrations of populations (« folk migrations »), smaller warrior groups, individuals (craftsmen), or a diffusion of ideas and object exchange.^[10]

Recent analyses have made significant inroads to understanding the Beaker phenomenon, mostly by analysing each of its components separately.^[11][12] They have concluded that the Bell Beaker phenomenon was a synthesis of elements, representing « an idea and style uniting different regions with different cultural traditions and background. »^[12]

Radiocarbon dating seems to support that the earliest « Maritime » Bell Beaker design style is encountered in Iberia, specifically in the vibrant copper-using communities of the Tagus estuary in Portugal around 2800–2700 BC and spread from there to many parts of western Europe.^[3][13] An overview of all available sources from southern Germany concluded that Bell Beaker was a new and independent culture in that area, contemporary with the Corded Ware culture.^[14][15]

The inspiration for the Maritime Bell Beaker is argued to have been the small and earlier Copoz beakers that have impressed decoration and which are found widely around the Tagus estuary in Portugal.^[16] Turek sees late Neolithic precursors in northern Africa, arguing the Maritime style emerged as a result of seaborne contacts between Iberia and Morocco in the first half of the third millennium BC.^[17]

AOO and AOC Beakers appear to have evolved continually from a pre-Beaker period in the lower Rhine and North Sea regions, at least for Northern and Central Europe.^[18]

Furthermore, the burial ritual which typified Bell Beaker sites was intrusive into Western Europe. Individual inhumations, often under tumuli with the inclusion of weapons contrast markedly to the preceding Neolithic traditions of often collective, weaponless burials in Atlantic/Western Europe. Such an arrangement is rather derivative of Corded Ware traditions^[17] although, instead of ‘battle-axes’, Bell Beaker individuals used copper daggers.

Expansion and culture contact

The initial moves from the Tagus estuary were maritime. A southern move led to the Mediterranean where ‘enclaves’ were established in south-western Spain and southern France around the Golfe du Lion and into the Po valley in Italy, probably via ancient western Alpine trade routes used to distribute jadeite axes. A northern move incorporated the southern coast of Armorica. The enclave established in southern Brittany was linked closely to the riverine and landward route, via the Loire, and across the Gâtinais valley to the Seine valley, and thence to the lower Rhine. This was a long-established route reflected in early stone axe distributions and it was via this network that Maritime Bell Beakers first reached the Lower Rhine in about 2600 BC.^[3][19]

Another pulse had brought Bell Beaker to Csepel Island in Hungary by about 2500 BC. In the Carpathian Basin the Bell Beaker culture came in contact with communities such as the Vučedol culture, which had evolved partly from the Yamna culture, and therefore shared the same type of metallurgy practised by Bell Beaker metal-workers. But in contrast to the early Bell Beaker preference for the dagger and bow, the favourite weapon in the Carpathian Basin during the first half of the 3rd millennium was the shaft-hole axe.^[20] Here Bell Beaker people assimilated local pottery forms such as the polypod cup. These « common ware » types of pottery then spread in association with the classic bell beaker.^[21] From the Carpathian Basin, Bell Beaker spread down the Rhine and eastwards into what is now Germany and Poland. By this time the Rhine was on the western edge of the vast Corded Warezone. The Corded Ware Culture shared a number of features with the Bell Beaker Culture, derived from their common ancestor, the Yamna culture. These features include pottery decorated with cord impressions, single burial and the shaft-hole axe.^[22]

A review in 2014 revealed that single burial, communal burial and reuse of Neolithic burial sites are found throughout the Bell Beaker zone.^[23] This overturns a previous conviction that single burial was unknown in the early or southern Bell Beaker zone, and so must have been adopted from Corded Ware in the contact zone of the Lower Rhine, and transmitted westwards along the exchange networks from the Rhine to the Loire,^[24][25] and northwards across the English Channel to Britain.^[3][26]

The earliest copper production in Ireland, identified at Ross Island in the period 2400–2200 BC, was associated with early Beaker pottery.^[3][27] Here the local sulpharsenide ores were smelted to produce the first copper axes used in Britain and Ireland.^[3] The same technologies were used in the Tagus region and in the west and south of France.^[3][28] The evidence is sufficient to support the suggestion that the initial spread of Maritime Bell Beakers along the Atlantic and into the Mediterranean, using sea routes that had long been in operation, was directly associated with the quest for copper and other rare raw materials.^[3]

Migration vs. acculturation

Given the unusual form and fabric of Beaker pottery, and its abrupt appearance in the archaeological record, along with a characteristic group of other artifacts, known as the Bell Beaker « package », the explanation for the Beaker culture until the last decades of the 20th century was to interpret it as the migration of one group of people across Europe. However, British and American archaeology since the 1960s had been sceptical about prehistoric migration in general, so the idea of « Bell Beaker Folk » lost ground, although recent genetic findings lend renewed support to the migratory hypothesis. A theory of cultural contact de-emphasizing population movement was presented by Colin Burgess and Stephen Shennan in the mid-1970s.^[29]

Under the « pots, not people » theory the Beaker culture is seen as a ‘package’ of knowledge (including religious beliefs as well as methods of copper, bronze and goldworking) and artifacts (including copper daggers, v-perforated buttons and stone wrist-guards) adopted and adapted by the indigenous peoples of Europe to varying degrees. This new knowledge may have come about by any combination of population movements and cultural contact. An example might be as part of a prestige cult related to the production and consumption of beer, or trading links such as those demonstrated by finds made along the seaways of Atlantic Europe. Palynological studies including analysis of pollen, associated with the spread of beakers, certainly suggests increased growing of barley, which may be associated with beer brewing. Noting the distribution of Beakers was highest in areas of transport routes, including fording sites, river valleys and mountain passes, it was suggested that Beaker ‘folk’ were originally bronze traders, who subsequently settled within local Neolithic or early Chalcolithic cultures creating local styles. Close analysis of the bronze tools associated with beaker use suggests an early Iberian source for the copper, followed subsequently by Central European and Bohemian ores.

Investigations in the Mediterranean and France recently moved the discussion to reemphasise the importance of migration to the Bell Beaker story. Instead of being pictured as a fashion or a simple diffusion of objects and their use, the investigation of over 300 sites showed that human groups actually moved in a process that involved explorations, contacts, settlement, diffusion, and acculturation/assimilation. Some elements show the influence from the north and east, and other elements reveal the south-east of France to be an important cross road on an important route of communication and exchange spreading north. A distinctive ‘barbed wire’ pottery decoration is thought to have migrated through central Italy first. The pattern of movements was diverse and complicated, along the Atlantic coast and the northern Mediterranean coast, and sometimes also far inland. The prominent central role of Portugal in the region and the quality of the pottery all across Europe are forwarded as arguments for a new interpretation that denies an ideological dimension.^[30]

A Strontium isotope analysis of 86 people from Bell Beaker graves in Bavariasuggests that 18–25 % of all graves were occupied by people who came from a considerable distance outside the area. This was true of children as well as adults, indicative of some significant migration wave. Given the similarities with readings from people living on loess soils, the general direction of the local movement according to Price et al., is from the northeast to the southwest.^[31]

Extent and impact

Bell Beaker people took advantage of transport by sea and rivers, creating a cultural spread extending from Ireland to the Carpathian Basin and south along the Atlantic coast and along the Rhône valley to Portugal, North Africa and Sicily, even penetrating northern and central Italy.^[32] Its remains have been found in what is now Portugal, Spain, France (excluding the central massif), Ireland and Great Britain, the Low Countries and Germany between the Elbe and Rhine, with an extension along the upper Danube into the Vienna Basin (Austria), Hungary and the Czech Republic, with Mediterranean outposts on Sardinia and Sicily; there is less certain evidence for direct penetration in the east.

Beaker-type vessels remained in use longest in the British Isles; late beakers in other areas are classified as early Bronze Age (Barbed Wire Beakers in the Netherlands, Giant Beakers (Riesenbecher)). The new international trade routes opened by the Beaker people became firmly established and the culture was succeeded by a number of Bronze Age cultures, among them the Únětice culture in Central Europe, the Elp culture and Hilversum culture in the Netherlands, the Atlantic Bronze Age in the British Isles and the Atlantic coast of Europe, and by the Nordic Bronze Age, a culture of Scandinavia and northernmost Germany–Poland.

Iberian Peninsula

Giacobbe Giusti, Bell Beaker culture

Vessel from Ciempozuelos, beginning of the second millennium BC (National Archaeological Museum of Spain, Madrid)

The Bell Beaker phenomenon in the Iberian Peninsula defines the late phase of the local Chalcolithic and even intrudes in the earliest centuries of the Bronze Age.^[33] A review of radiocarbon dates for Bell Beaker across Europe found that some of the earliest were found in Portugal, where the range from Zambujal and Cerro de la Virgen (Spain) ran between 2900 BC and 2500 BC, in contrast to the rather later range for Andalusia (between 2500 BC to 2200 BC).^[15]

At present no internal chronology for the various Bell Beaker-related styles has been achieved yet for Iberia.^[34] Peninsular corded Bell Beakers are usually found in coastal or near coastal regions in three main regions: the western Pyrenees, the lower Ebro and adjacent east coast, and the northwest (Galicia and northern Portugal).^[35] A corded-zoned Maritime variety (C/ZM), proposed to be a hybrid between AOC and Maritime Herringbone, was mainly found in burial contexts and expanded westward, especially along the mountain systems of the Meseta.

Reconstruction of a Beaker burial (National Archaeological Museum of Spain, Madrid)

With some notable exceptions, most Iberian early Bell Beaker burials are at or near the coastal regions. As for the settlements and monuments within the Iberian context, Beaker pottery is generally found in association with local Chalcolithic material and appears most of all as an « intrusion » from the 3rd millennium in burial monuments whose origin may go back to the 4th or 5th millennium BC.

Very early dates for Bell Beakers were found in Castelo Velho de Freixo de Numão in Guarda, northern Portugal. The site was located on the summit of a spur. A short-lived first occupation of pre-Bell Beaker building phase about 3000 BC revealed the remains of a tower, some pavings and structures for burning. After a break of one or two centuries, Bell Beaker pottery was introduced in a second building phase that lasted to the Early Bronze Age, about 1800 BC. A third building phase followed directly and lasted to about 1300 BC, after which the site was covered with layers of stone and clay, apparently deliberately, and abandoned.

The second building phase was dominated by a highly coherent group of pottery within the regional Chalcolithic styles, representing Maritime Bell Beakers of the local (northern Portuguese), penteada decoration style in various patterns, using lines of points, incision or impression. Three of them were carbon dated to the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. The site demonstrates a notable absence of more common Bell Beaker pottery styles such as Maritime Herringbone and Maritime Lined varieties found in nearby sites like Castanheiro do Vento and Crasto de Palheiros. One non-local Bell Beaker sherd, however, belonging to the upper part of a beaker with a curved neck and thin walls, was found at the bedrock base of this second phase. The technique and patterning are classic forms in the context of pure European and Peninsular corded ware. In the Iberian Peninsula this AOC type was traditionally restricted to half a dozen scattered sites in the western Pyrenees, the lower Ebro and the Spanish east coast: especially a vessel at Filomena at Villarreal, Castellón (Spain), has parallels with the decoration. In Porto Torrão, at inner Alentejo (southern Portugal), a similar vessel was found having a date ultimately corrected to between 2823 and 2658 BC. All pottery was locally made. The lack or presence of Bell Beaker elements is the basis for the division of Los Millares and Vila Nova cultures into two periods: I and II.

Balearic Islands

Radiocarbon dating currently indicates a 1200-year duration for the use of the Beaker pottery on the Balearic Islands, between c. 2475 BC and 1300 BC (Waldren and Van Strydonck 1996). There has been some evidence of all-corded pottery in Mallorca, generally considered the most ancient Bell Beaker pottery, possibly indicating an even earlier Beaker settlement about 2700 BC.^[36] However, in several regions this type of pottery persisted long enough to permit other possibilities. Suárez Otero (1997) postulated this corded Beakers entered the mediterranean by routes both through the Atlantic coast and through eastern France. Bell Beaker pottery has been found in Mallorca and Formentera but has not been observed in Menorca or Ibiza. Collective burials in dolmen structures in Ibiza could be contrasted against the individual burials in Mallorca. In its latest phase (c. 1750–1300 cal BC) the local Beaker context became associated with the distinctive ornamented Boquique pottery^[37] demonstrating clear maritime links with the (megalithic) coastal regions of Catalonia, also assessed to be directly related to the late Cogotas complex. In most of the areas of the mainland Boquique pottery falls into the latter stages of the Bell Beaker Complex as well. Along with other evidence during the earlier Beaker period in the Balearics, c. 2400–2000 BC, as shown by the local presence of elephant ivory objects together with significant Beaker pottery and other finds (Waldren 1979 and Waldren 1998), this maritime interaction can be shown to have a long tradition. The abundance of different cultural elements that persisted towards the end of the Bronze Age, show a clear continuity of different regional and intrusive traditions.

The presence of perforated Beaker pottery, traditionally considered to be used for making cheese, at Son Ferrandell-Oleza (Waldren 1998: 95) and at Coval Simó (Coll 2000), confirms the introduction of production and conservation of dairy. Also, the presence of spindles at sites like Son Ferrandell-Oleza (Waldren 1998: 94) or Es Velar d’Aprop (Carreras y Covas 1984) point to knowledge of making thread and textiles from wool. However, more details on the strategies for tending and slaughtering the domestic animals involved are forthcoming. Being traditionally associated with the introduction of metallurgy, the first traces of copper working in the Balearics was also clearly associated with Bell Beakers.

Central Europe

Giacobbe Giusti, Bell Beaker culture

Copper dagger from Brandenburg, c. 2500–2200 BC (Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Berlin)

Giacobbe Giusti, Bell Beaker culture

The « Giant Beaker of Pavenstädt », 40 centimetres (16 in) high, c. 1500 BC (Gütersloh town museum, Germany)

In their large-scale study on radiocarbon dating of the Bell Beakers, J. Müller and S. Willingen established that the Bell Beaker Culture in Central Europe started after 2500 BC.^[15] Two great coexisting and separate Central European cultures – the Corded Ware with its regional groups and the Eastern Group of the Bell Beaker Culture – form the background to the Late Copper Age and Early Bronze Age. Their development, diffusion and long range changes are determined by the great river systems. As a third component counts the indigenous Carpathian Makó/Kosihy-Caka culture.^[38]

The Bell Beaker settlements are still little known, and have proved remarkably difficult for archaeologists to identify. This allows a modern view of Bell Beakers to contradict results of anthropologic research.^[39] The modern view is that the Bell Beaker people, far from being the « warlike invaders » as once described by Gordon Childe (1940), added rather than replaced local late Neolithic traditions into a cultural package and as such did not always and evenly abandon all local traditions.^[40] More recent extensive DNA evidence, however, suggests a significant replacement of earlier populations.^[41]

Bell Beaker domestic ware has no predecessors in Bohemia and Southern Germany, shows no genetic relation to the local Late Copper Age Corded Ware, nor to other cultures in the area, and is considered something completely new. The Bell Beaker domestic ware of Southern Germany are not as closely related to the Corded Ware as would be indicated by their burial rites. Settlements link the Southern German Bell Beaker culture to the seven regional provinces of the Eastern Group, represented by many settlement traces, especially from Moravia and the Hungarian Bell Beaker-Csepel group being the most important. In 2002 one of the largest Bell Beaker cemeteries in Central Europe was discovered at Hoštice za Hanou (Moravia, Czech Republic).^[42]

The relationship to the western Bell Beakers groups, and the contemporary cultures of the Carpathian basin to the south east, is much less.^[43] Research in Northern Poland shifted the north-eastern frontier of this complex to the western parts of the Baltic with the adjacent Northern European plain. Typical Bell Beaker fragments from the site of Ostrikovac-Djura at the Serbian river Morava were presented at the Riva del Garda conference in 1998, some hundred kilometers south-east of the Hungarian Csepel-group. Bell Beaker related material has now been uncovered in a line from the Baltic Sea down to the Adriatic and the Ionian Sea, including countries such as Bielo-Russia, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Albania, Macedonia and even Greece.^[44]

The Bell Beaker culture settlements in Southern Germany and in the East-Group show evidence of mixed farming and animal husbandry, and indicators such as millstones and spindle whorls prove the sedentary character of the Bell Beaker people, and the durability of their settlements.^[43] Especially some well-equipped child-burials seem to indicate sense of predestined social position, indicating a socially complex society. However, analysis of grave furnishing, size and deepness of grave pits, position within the cemetery, did not lead to any strong conclusions on the social divisions.

The Late Copper Age is regarded as a continuous culture system connecting the Upper Rhine valley to the western edge of the Carpathian Basin. Late Copper Age 1 was defined in Southern Germany by the connection of the late Cham Culture, Globular Amphora culture and the older Corded Ware Culture of « beaker group 1 » that is also referred to as Horizon A or Step A. Early Bell Beaker Culture intruded^[14]into the region at the end of the Late Copper Age 1, at about 2600–2550 BC. Middle Bell Beaker corresponds to Late Copper Age 2 and here an east–west Bell Beaker cultural gradient became visible through the difference in the distribution of the groups of beakers with and without handles, cups and bowls, in the three regions Austria–Western Hungary, the Danube catchment area of Southern Germany, and the Upper Rhine/lake Constance/Eastern Switzerland area for all subsequent Bell Beaker periods.^[45] This middle Bell Beaker Culture is the main period when almost all the cemeteries in Southern Germany begin. Younger Bell Beaker Culture of Early Bronze Age shows analogies to the Proto-Únětice Culture in Moravia and the Early Nagyrév Culture of the Carpathian Basin.

Giacobbe Giusti, Bell Beaker culture

An example of Beaker pottery from Straubing, Germany

During the Bell Beaker period, a border ran through southern Germany, which culturally-divided a northern from a southern area. The northern area was oriented around the Rhine and the Bell Beaker West Group, while the southern area occupied much of the Danube river system and was mainly settled by the homogeneous Bell Beaker East Group. This latter group overlapped with the Corded Ware Culture and other groups of the Late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. Nevertheless, southern Germany shows some independent developments of itself.^[14] Although a broadly parallel evolution with early, middle, and younger Bell Beaker Culture was detected, the Southern Germany middle Bell Beaker development of metope decorations and stamp and furrow engraving techniques do not appear on beakers in Austria-Western Hungary, and handled beakers are completely absent. It is contemporary to Corded Ware in the vicinity, that has been attested by associated finds of middle Corded Ware (chronologically referred to as « beaker group 2 » or Step B) and younger Geiselgasteig Corded Ware beakers (« beaker group 3 » or Step C). Bell Beaker Culture in Bavaria used a specific type of copper, which is characterised by combinations of trace elements. This same type of copper was spread over the area of the Bell Beaker East Group.

Previously some archeologist considered the Bell-beaker people to have lived only within a limited territory of the Carpathian Basin and for a short time, without mixing with the local population. Although there are very few evaluable anthropological finds, the appearance of the characteristic planoccipital (flattened back) Taurid type in the populations of some later cultures (e.g. Kisapostag and Gáta–Wieselburg cultures) suggested a mixture with the local population contradicting such archaeological theories. According to archaeology, the populational groups of the Bell-beakers also took part in the formation of the Gáta-Wieselburg culture on the western fringes of the Carpathian Basin, which could be confirmed with the anthropological Bell Beaker series in Moravia and Germany.^[39] In accordance with anthropological evidence, it has been concluded the Bell Beakers intruded in an already established form the southern part of Germany as much as the East Group area.^[14]

Ireland

A modern reconstruction of the halberd from Carn, County Mayo, which was found with its oak handle intact. The shaft is just over one metre long.

Beakers arrived in Ireland around 2500 BC and fell out of use around 1700 BC (Needham 1996). The beaker pottery of Ireland was rarely used as a grave good, but is often found in domestic assemblages from the period. This stands in contrast to the rest of Europe where it frequently found in both roles. The inhabitants of Ireland used food vessels as a grave good instead. The large, communal passage tombs of the Irish Neolithic were no longer being constructed during the Early Bronze Age (although some, such as Newgrange were re-used (O’Kelly 1982)). The preferred method of burial seems to have been singular graves and cists in the east, or in small wedge tombs in the west. Cremation was also common.

The advent of the Bronze Age Beaker culture in Ireland is accompanied by the destruction of smaller satellite tombs at Knowth^[46] and collapses of the great cairn at Newgrange,^[47] marking an end to the Neolithic culture of megalithic passage tombs.

Beakers are found in large numbers in Ireland, and the technical innovation of ring-built pottery indicates that the makers were also present.^[48] Classification of pottery in Ireland and Britain has distinguished a total of seven intrusive^[49] beaker groups originating from the continent and three groups of purely insular character having evolved from them. Five out of seven of the intrusive Beaker groups also appear in Ireland: the European bell group, the All-over cord beakers, the Northern British/North Rhine beakers, the Northern British/Middle Rhine beakers and the Wessex/Middle Rhine beakers. However, many of the features or innovations of Beaker society in Britain never reached Ireland.^[50] Instead, quite different customs predominated in the Irish record that were apparently influenced by the traditions of the earlier inhabitants.^[51] Some features that are found elsewhere in association to later types^[52] of Earlier Bronze Age Beaker pottery, indeed spread to Ireland, however, without being incorporated into the same close and specific association of Irish Beaker context.^[53] The Wessex/Middle Rhine gold discs bearing « wheel and cross » motifs that were probably sewn to garments, presumably to indicate status and reminiscent of racquet headed pins found in Eastern Europe,^[54] enjoy a general distribution throughout the country, however, never in direct association with beakers.

In 1984, a Beaker period copper dagger blade was recovered from the Sillees River near Ross Lough, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.^[55] The flat, triangular-shaped copper blade was 171 mm (6.73 in) long, with bevelled edges and a pointed tip, and featured an integral tang that accepted a riveted handle.^[55] Flint arrow-heads and copper-blade daggers with handle tangs, found in association with Beaker pottery in many other parts of Europe, have a date later than the initial phase of Beaker People activity in Ireland.^[56] Also the typical Beaker wristguards seem to have entered Ireland by cultural diffusion only, after the first intrusions, and unlike English and Continental Beaker burials never made it to the graves. The same lack of typical Beaker association applies to the about thirty found stone battle axes. A gold ornament found in County Down that closely resembles a pair of ear-rings from Ermegeira, Portugal, has a composition that suggests it was imported.^[56] Incidental finds suggest links to non-British Beaker territories, like a fragment of a bronze blade in County Londonderry that has been likened to the « palmella » points of Iberia,^[49]even though the relative scarcity of beakers, and Beaker-compatible material of any kind, in the south-west are regarded as an obstacle to any colonisation directly from Iberia, or even from France.^[49] Their greater concentration in the northern part of the country,^[48] which traditionally is regarded as the part of Ireland least blessed with sources of copper,^{[citation needed]} has led many authorities to question the role of Beaker People in the introduction of metallurgy to Ireland. However, indications of their use of stream sediment copper, low in traces of lead and arsenic, and Beaker finds connected to mining and metalworking at Ross Island, County Kerry, provide an escape to such doubts.^[57]

The featured « food vessels » and cinerary urns (encrusted, collared and cordoned) of the Irish Earlier Bronze Age have strong roots in the western European Beaker tradition. Recently, the concept of these food vessels was discarded and replaced by a concept of two different traditions that rely on typology: the bowl tradition and the vase tradition, the bowl tradition being the oldest^[58] as it has been found inserted in existing Neolithic (pre-beaker) tombs, both court tombs and passage tombs. The bowl tradition occurs over the whole country except the south-west and feature a majority of pit graves, both in flat cemeteries and mounds, and a high incidence of uncremated skeletons, often in crouched position.^[59] The vase tradition has a general distribution and feature almost exclusively cremation. The flexed skeleton of a man 1.88 tall in a cist in a slightly oval round cairn with « food vessel » at Cornaclery, County Londonderry, was described in the 1942 excavation report as « typifying the race of Beaker Folk« ,^[60] although the differences between Irish finds and e.g. the British combination of « round barrows with crouched, unburnt burials » make it difficult to establishes the exact nature of the Beaker People’s colonization of Ireland.^[50]

In general, the early Irish Beaker intrusions don’t attest^[61] the overall « Beaker package » of innovations that, once fully developed, swept Europe elsewhere, leaving Ireland behind.^[62] The Irish Beaker period is characterised by the earliness^[56] of Beaker intrusions, by isolation^[56] and by influences and surviving traditions of autochthons.^[63]

Beaker culture introduces the practice of burial in single graves, suggesting an Earlier Bronze Age social organisation of family groups.^[64] Towards the Later Bronze Age the sites move to potentially fortifiable hilltops, suggesting a more « clan »-type structure.^[65] Although the typical Bell Beaker practice of crouched burial has been observed,^[66] cremation was readily adopted^[67] in accordance with the previous tradition of the autochthons.^[46] In a tumulus the find of the extended skeleton of a woman accompanied by the remains of a red deer and a small seven-year-old stallion is noteworthy, including the hint to a Diana-like religion.^[68] A few burials seem to indicate social status, though in other contexts an emphasis to special skills is more likely.^[69]

Ireland has the greatest concentration of gold lunulae and stone wrist-guards in Europe. However, neither of these items were deposited in graves and they tend to be found isolated and at random, making it difficult to draw conclusions about their use or role in society at the time.

One of the most important sites in Ireland during this period is Ross Island. A series of copper mines from here are the earliest known in Ireland, starting from around 2500 BC (O’Brien 2004). A comparison of chemical traces and lead isotope analysis from these mines with copper artifacts strongly suggests that Ross Island was the sole source of copper in Ireland between the dates 2500–2200 BC. In addition, two thirds of copper artifacts from Britain also display the same chemical and isotopic signature, strongly suggesting that Irish copper was a major export to Britain (Northover et al. 2001). Traces of Ross Island copper can be found even further afield; in the Netherlands it makes up 12% of analysed copper artifacts, and Brittany 6% of analysed copper artifacts^[70] After 2200 BC there is greater chemical variation in British and Irish copper artifacts, which tallies well with the appearance of other mines in southern Ireland and north Wales. After 2000 BC, other copper sources supersede Ross Island. The latest workings from the Ross Island mines is dated to around 1700 BC.

As well as exporting raw copper/bronze, there were some technical and cultural developments in Ireland that had an important impact on other areas of Europe. Irish food vessels were adopted in northern Britain around 2200 BC and this roughly coincides with a decline in the use of beakers in Britain (Needham 1996). The ‘bronze halberd’ (not to be confused with the medieval halberd) was a weapon in use in Ireland from around 2400–2000 BC^[71] They are essentially broad blades that were mounted horizontally on a meter long handle, giving greater reach and impact than any known contemporary weapon (O’Flaherty 2007). They were subsequently widely adopted in other parts of Europe (Schuhmacher 2002), possibly showing a change in the technology of warfare.^[72]

Britain

Beakers arrived in Britain around 2500 BC, declined in use around 2200–2100 BC with the emergence of food vessels and cinerary urns and finally fell out of use around 1700 BC (Needham 1996). The earliest British beakers were similar to those from the Rhine (Needham 2005), but later styles are most similar to those from Ireland (Case 1993). In Britain, domestic assemblages from this period are very rare, making it hard to draw conclusions about many aspects of society. Most British beakers come from funerary contexts.

Britain’s only unique export in this period is thought to be tin. It was probably gathered in streams in Cornwall and Devon as cassiterite pebbles and traded in this raw, unrefined state.^[73] It was used to turn copper into bronze from around 2200 BC and widely traded throughout Britain and into Ireland. Other possible European sources of tin are located in Brittany and Iberia, but it is not thought they were exploited so early as these areas did not have Bronze until after it was well established in Britain and Ireland.^[74]

The most famous site in Britain from this period is Stonehenge, which had its Neolithic form elaborated extensively. Many barrows surround it and an unusual number of ‘rich’ burials can be found nearby, such as the Amesbury Archer. Another site of particular interest is Ferriby on the Humber Estuary, where western Europe’s oldest plank built boat was recovered.

Italian Peninsula

Bell Beaker sites in Italy

The Italian Peninsula‘s most affected areas are the Po Valley, in particular the area of Lake Garda, and Tuscany. The bell-shaped vases appear in these areas of central and northern Italy as « foreign elements » integrated in the pre-existing Remedello and Rinaldone cultures.^[75]

Graves with Beaker artifacts have been discovered in the Brescia area, like that of Ca’ di Marco (Fiesse), while in central Italy, bell-shaped glasses were found in the tomb of Fosso Conicchio (Viterbo).^[76]

Sardinia

See also: Beaker culture in Sardinia

Sardinia has been in contact with extra-insular communities in Corsica, Tuscany, Liguria and Provence since the Stone Age. From the late third millennium BC on, comb-impressed Beaker ware, as well as other Beaker material in Monte Clarocontexts, has been found (mostly in burials, suchs as Domus de Janas), demonstrating continuing relationships with the western Mediterranean. Elsewhere, Beaker material has been found stratigraphically above Monte Claro and at the end of the Chalcolithic period in association with the related Bronze Age Bonnanaro culture (1800–1600 BC), for which C-14 dates calibrate to c. 2250 BC. There is virtually no evidence in Sardinia of external contacts in the early second millennia, apart from late Beakers and close parallels between Bonnannaro pottery and that of the North Italian Polada culture.

Like elsewhere in Europe and in the Mediterranean area, the Bell Beaker culture in Sardinia (2100–1800 BC) is characterised by the typical ceramics decorated with overlaid horizontal bands and associated finds: brassards, V-pierced buttons etc.; for the first time gold items appeared on the island (collier of the Tomb of Bingia ‘e Monti, Gonnostramatza). The different styles and decorations of the ceramics which succeed through the time allow to split the Beaker culture in Sardinia into three chronological phases: A1 (2100–2000 BC), A2 (2000–1900 BC), B (1900–1800 BC).^[77] In these various phases is observable the succession of two components of different geographical origin: the first « Franco-Iberian » and the second « Central European ».^[78]

It appears likely that Sardinia was the intermediary that brought Beaker materials to Sicily.^[79]

Sicily

The Beaker was introduced in Sicily from Sardinia and spread mainly in the north-west and south-west of the island. In the northwest and in the Palermo kept almost intact its cultural and social characteristics, while in the south-west there was a strong integration with local cultures.^[80] The only known single bell-shaped glass in eastern Sicily was found in Syracuse.^[81]

Jutland

In Denmark, large areas of forested land were cleared to be used for pasture and the growing of cereals during the Single Grave culture and in the Late Neolithic Period. Faint traces of Bell Beaker influence can be recognised already in the pottery of the Upper Grave phase of the Single Grave period, and even of the late Ground Grave phase, such as occasional use of AOO-like or zoned decoration and other typical ornamentation, while Bell Beaker associated objects such as wristguards and small copper trinkets, also found their way into this northern territories of the Corded Ware Culture. Domestic sites with Beakers only appear 200–300 years after the first appearance of Bell Beakers in Europe, at the early part of the Danish Late Neolithic Period (LN I) starting at 2350 BC. These sites are concentrated in northern Jutland around the Limfjord and on the Djursland peninsula, largely contemporary to the local Upper Grave Period. In east central Sweden and western Sweden, barbed wire decoration characterised the period 2460–1990 BC, linked to another Beaker derivation of northwestern Europe.

Stone and copper arms trade

Northern Jutland has abundant sources of high quality flint, which had previously attracted industrious mining, large-scale production, and the comprehensive exchange of flint objects: notably axes and chisels. The Danish Beaker period, however, was characterised by the manufacture of lanceolate flint daggers, described as a completely new material form without local antecedents in flint and clearly related to the style of daggers circulating elsewhere in Beaker dominated Europe. Presumably Beaker culture spread from here to the remainder of Denmark, and to other regions in Scandinavia and northern Germany as well. Central and eastern Denmark adopted this dagger fashion and, to a limited degree, also archer’s equipment characteristic to Beaker culture, although here Beaker pottery remained less common.

Also, the spread of metallurgy in Denmark is intimately related to the Beaker representation in northern Jutland. The LN I metalwork is distributed throughout most of Denmark, but a concentration of early copper and gold coincides with this core region, hence suggesting a connection between Beakers and the introduction of metallurgy. Most LN I metal objects are distinctly influenced by the western European Beaker metal industry, gold sheet ornaments and copper flat axes being the predominant metal objects. The LN I copper flat axes divide into As-Sb-Ni copper, recalling so-called Dutch Bell Beaker copper and the As-Ni copper found occasionally in British and Irish Beaker contexts, the mining region of Dutch Bell Beaker copper being perhaps Brittany; and the Early Bronze Age Singen (As-Sb-Ag-Ni) and Ösenring (As-Sb-Ag) coppers having a central European – probably Alpine – origin.

Connections with other parts of Beaker culture

The Beaker group in northern Jutland forms an integrated part of the western European Beaker Culture, while western Jutland provided a link between the Lower Rhine area and northern Jutland. The local fine-ware pottery of Beaker derivation reveal links with other Beaker regions in western Europe, most specifically the Veluwe group at the Lower Rhine. Concurrent introduction of metallurgy shows that some people must have crossed cultural boundaries. Danish Beakers are contemporary with the earliest Early Bronze Age (EBA) of the East Group of Bell Beakers in central Europe, and with the floruit of Beaker cultures of the West Group in western Europe. The latter comprise Veluwe and Epi-Maritime in Continental northwestern Europe and the Middle Style Beakers (Style 2) in insular western Europe.

The interaction between the Beaker groups on the Veluwe Plain and in Jutland must, at least initially, have been quite intensive. All-over ornamented (AOO) and All-over-corded (AOC), and particularly Maritime style beakers are featured, although from a fairly late context and possibly rather of Epi-maritime style, equivalent to the situation in the north of the Netherlands, where Maritime ornamentation continued after it ceased in the central region of Veluwe and were succeeded c. 2300 BC by beakers of the Veluwe and Epi-Maritime style.^[82]

Clusters of Late Neolithic Beaker presence similar to northern Jutland appear as pockets or « islands » of Beaker Culture in northern Europe, such as Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and southern Norway.^{[83][84][85][86][87]} In northern central Poland Beaker-like representations even occur in a contemporary EBA setting. The frequent occurrence of Beaker pottery in settlements points at a large-scaled form of social identity or cultural identity, or perhaps an ethnic identity.

Burial practices

In eastern Denmark and Scania one-person graves occur primarily in flat grave cemeteries. This is a continuation of the burial custom characterising the Scanian Battle-axe Culture, often to continue into the early Late Neolithic. Also in northern Jutland, the body of the deceased was normally arranged lying on its back in an extended position, but a typical Bell Beaker contracted position occurs occasionally. Typical to northern Jutland, however, cremations have been reported, also outside the Beaker core area, once within the context of an almost full Bell Beaker equipment.

Social tranistion

The introductory phase of the manufacture and use of flint daggers, around 2350 BC, must all in all be characterised as a period of social change. Apel argued that an institutionalised apprenticeship system must have existed.^[88] Craftsmanship was transmitted by inheritance in certain families living in the vicinity of abundant resources of high-quality flint. Debbie Olausson’s (1997) examinations indicate that flint knapping activities, particularly the manufacture of daggers, reflect a relatively low degree of craft specialisation, probably in the form of a division of labour between households.

Noteworthy was the adoption of European-style woven wool clothes kept together by pins and buttons in contrast to the earlier usage of clothing made of leather and plant fibres.^[89][90] Two-aisled timber houses in Late Neolithic Denmark correspond to similar houses in southern Scandinavia and at least parts of central Scandinavia and lowland northern Germany. In Denmark, this mode of building houses is clearly rooted in a Middle Neolithic tradition. In general, Late Neolithic house building styles were shared over large areas of northern and central Europe.^[91] Towards the transition to LN II some farm houses became extraordinarily large.

End of a distinctive Beaker culture

The cultural concepts originally adopted from Beaker groups at the lower Rhine blended or integrated with local Late Neolithic Culture. For a while the region was set apart from central and eastern Denmark, that evidently related more closely to the early Únětice culture across the Baltic Sea. Before the turn of the millennium the typical Beaker features had gone, their total duration being 200–300 years at the most.

A similar picture of cultural integration is featured among Bell Beakers in central Europe, thus challenging previous theories of Bell Beakers as an elitist or purely super-structural phenomenon.^{[92][93][94][95][96]} The connection with the East Group Beakers of Únětice had intensified considerably in LN II, thus triggering a new social transformation and innovations in metallurgy that would announce the actual beginning of the Northern Bronze Age.^[97]

Postulated linguistic connections

As the Beaker culture left no written records, all theories regarding the language or languages they spoke is highly conjectural. It has been suggested as a candidate for an early Indo-European culture; more specifically, an ancestral proto-Celtic,^[98]although this is generally not an accepted theory for the development of Celtic languages.^[99] Mallory has more recently suggested that the Beaker culture was possibly associated with a European branch of Indo-European dialects, termed « North-west Indo-European », ancestral to not only Celtic but equally Italic, Germanic and Balto-Slavic.^[100]

Physical and genetic anthropology

Skeletal studies

Historical craniometric studies found that the Beaker people appeared to be of a different physical type than those earlier populations in the same geographic areas. They were described as tall, heavy boned and brachycephalic. The early studies on the Beakers which were based on the analysis of their skeletal remains, were craniometric. This apparent evidence of migration was in line with archaeological discoveries linking Beaker culture to new farming techniques, mortuary practices, copper-working skills, and other cultural innovations. However, such evidence from skeletal remains was brushed aside as a new movement developed in archaeology from the 1960s, which stressed cultural continuity. Anti-migrationist authors either paid little attention to skeletal evidence or argued that differences could be explained by environmental and cultural influences. Margaret Cox and Simon Mays sum up the position: « Although it can hardly be said that craniometric data provide an unequivocal answer to the problem of the Beaker folk, the balance of the evidence would at present seem to favour a migration hypothesis. »^[101]

Non-metrical research concerning the Beaker people in Britain also cautiously pointed in the direction of immigration.^[102] Subsequent studies, such as one concerning the Carpathian Basin,^[39] and a non-metrical analysis of skeletons in central-southern Germany,^[103] have also identified marked typological differences with the pre-Beaker inhabitants.

Jocelyne Desideri examined the teeth in skeletons from Bell Beaker sites in Northern Spain, Southern France, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Examining dental characteristics that have been independently shown to correlate with genetic relatedness, she found that only in Northern Spain and the Czech Republic were there demonstrable links between immediately previous populations and Bell Beaker populations. Elsewhere there was a discontinuity.^[104]

Genetic studies

Early papers publishing results on European-wide Y-DNA marker frequencies, such as those of Semino (2000) and Rosser (2000), correlated haplogroup R1b-M269 with the earliest episodes of European colonization by anatomically modern humans(AMH). The peak frequencies of M269 in Iberia (especially the Basque region) and the Atlantic façade were postulated to represent signatures of re-colonization of the European West following the Last Glacial Maximum.^[105][106] However, even prior to recent criticisms and refinements, the idea that Iberian R1b carrying males repopulated most of western Europe was not consistent with findings which revealed that Italian M269 lineages are not derivative of Iberian ones.^[107]

More recently, data and calculations from Myres et al. (2011),^[108] Cruciani et al. (2011)^[109] Arredi et al. (2007),^[110] and Balaresque et al. (2010)^[111] suggest a Late Neolithic entry of M269 into Europe.

These hypotheses appear to be corroborated by more direct evidence from ancient DNA. R1b was detected in two male skeletons from a German Bell Beaker site dated to 2600-2500 BC at Kromsdorf, one of which tested positive for M269 but negative for its U106 subclade (note that the P312 subclade was not tested for), while for the other skeleton the M269 test was unclear.^[112] A later Bell Beaker male skeleton from Quedlinburg, Germany dated to 2296–2206 BC tested positive for R1b M269 P312 subclade.^[113] Ancient Y-DNA results for the remains of Beaker people from Iberia have yet to be obtained.

Haak et al. (2015)^[113] concluded that R1b was very likely spread into Europe from the Pontic-Caspian steppe after 3,000 BC by the Yamna people, putative Proto-Indo-Europeans under the Kurgan hypothesis. The authors noticed a paucity of haplogroup R1b in European population samples predating the Bronze Age, with only one of the 70 individuals from Mesolithic and Neolithic Europe belonging to haplogroup R1 or any of its branches.

The study also found, via autosomal analysis, that the majority of post-Neolithic populations in Europe, including their ancient samples taken from Beaker culture sites in central Europe, are the result of a three-way admixture between the Yamnaya; Neolithic farmers; and western European hunter gatherers who were present in Europe since at least the Mesolithic.^[113]

From a mitochondrial DNA perspective, haplogroup H, which has high incidence (≈40%) throughout Europe, has received similar attention. Early studies by Richards et al (2000) suggested that it arose 28–23 kya (thousand years ago), spreading into Europe ≈20 kya, before then re-expanding from an Iberian glacial refuge ≈15 kya, calculations subsequently corroborated by Pereira et al. (2005).^[114] However, a larger study by Roostalu et al. (2007), incorporating more data from the Near East, suggested that whilst Hg H did begin to expand c. 20 kya, this was limited to the Near East, Caucasus and Southeastern Europe. Rather its subsequent spread further west occurred later, in the post-glacial period from a postulated South Caucasian refugium.^[115] This hypothesis has been supported by a recent ancient DNA analysis study, which links the expansion of mtDNA Hg H in Western Europe with the Bell Beaker phenomenon.^[41]

Whilst such studies are insightful, even if the dates postulated by authors are correct, they do not necessarily imply that the spread of a particular genetic marker represents a distinct population, ‘tribe’ or language group. Genetic studies have often been treated with suspicion not only by archaeologists and cultural anthropologists, but even by fellow population geneticists.^[41]

See also

• Beaker (disambiguation)
• Amesbury Archer
• Prehistoric Britain
• Prehistoric Iberia
• Bronze Age Britain
• The Time Traders by Andre Norton— a classic science fiction novel wherein the time traveling protagonists assume Beaker Culture identities when visiting the time period

Notes

1. Jump up^ « The story about the Nordic civilization ». Cradle of Civilization. 17 March 2015. Retrieved 9 July 2017.
2. Jump up^ Bradley 2007, p. 144.
3. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f g h} Cunliffe, Barry (2010). Celtic from the West Chapter 1: Celticization from the West: The Contribution of Archaeology. Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK. pp. 27–31. ISBN 978-1-84217-410-4.
4. Jump up^ The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology
5. Jump up^ Fokkens & Nicolis 2012, p. 82.
6. Jump up^ Ember, Melvin; Peregrine, Peter Neal, eds. (2001). Encyclopedia of Prehistory. 4 : Europe. Springer. p. 24. ISBN 0-306-46255-9.
7. Jump up^ Sherratt, A. G. (1987). « Cups that cheered: the introduction of alcohol to prehistoric Europe ». In Waldren, W.; Kennard, R. C. Bell Beakers of the Western Mediterranean: definition, interpretation, theory and new site data. The Oxford International Conference 1986. Oxford: British Archaeology Reports. pp. 81–114. ISBN 9780860544265.
8. Jump up^ Doce, Elisa Guerra (2006). « Sobre la función y el significado de la cerámica campaniforme a la luz de los análisis de contenidos trabajos de prehistoria »[Function and significance of bell beaker pottery according to data from residue analyses]. Trabajos de prehistoria (in Spanish). 63 (1): 69–84. doi:10.3989/tp.2006.v63.i1.5. ISSN 0082-5638.
9. Jump up^ Lemercier 2012, p. 131.
10. Jump up^ Lemercier 2012.
11. Jump up^ Vander Linden, Marc (2006). Le phénomène campaniforme dans l’Europe du 3ème millénaire avant notre ère: Synthèse et nouvelles perspectives. British Archaeological Reports, international series, 1470 (in French). Oxford: Archaeopress. p. 33. ISBN 9781841719061.
12. ^ Jump up to:^a b Fokkens & Nicolis 2012, p. 200.
13. Jump up^ Case, Humphrey (2007). « Beakers and the Beaker Culture ». In Burgess, Christopher; Topping, Peter; Lynch, Frances. Beyond Stonehenge: Essays on the Bronze Age in honour of Colin Burgess. Oxford: Oxbow. pp. 237–254. ISBN 9781842172155.
14. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d Heyd, Volker (1998). « Die Glockenbecherkultur in Süddeutschland– Zum Stand der Forschung einer Regionalprovinzentlang der Donau » [Bell Beaker Culture in Southern Germany, State of research for a regional province along the Danube]. In Benz, M.; van Willigen, S. Some New Approaches to the Bell Beaker ‘Phenomenon’: Lost Paradise…?. British Archaeological Report S690 (in German). Oxford: Hadrian. pp. 87–106. ISBN 9780860549284.
15. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Müller & van Willigen 2001, pp. 59–75.
16. Jump up^ Fitzpatrick, A. P. (2013). « The arrival of the Beaker Set in Britain and Ireland ». In Koch, John T.; Cunliffe, Barry W. Celtic from the West 2 : rethinking the Bronze Age and the arrival of Indo-European in Atlantic Europe. Oxford: Oxbow. p. 44. ISBN 9781842175293.
17. ^ Jump up to:^a b Fokkens & Nicolis 2012, p. 201.
18. Jump up^ Fokkens & Nicolis 2012, p. 172.
19. Jump up^ Johannes Muller, Martin Hinz and Markus Ullrich, Bell Beakers – chronology, innovation and memory: a multivariate approach, chapter 6 in The Bell Beaker Transition in Europe: Mobility and local evolution during the 3rd millennium BC, ed. Maria Pilar Prieto Martinez and Laure Salanova (2015).
20. Jump up^ Joseph Maran, « Seaborne Contacts between the Aegean, the Balkans and the Central Mediterranean in the 3rd Millennium BC – The Unfolding of the Mediterranean World », Between the Aegean and Baltic Seas: Prehistory across Borders. Proceedings of the International Conference Bronze and Early Iron Age Interconnections and Contemporary Developments between the Aegean and the Regions of the Balkan Peninsula, Central and Northern Europe, University of Zagreb, 11–14 April 2005, eds. I. Galanaki, H. Tomas, Y. Galanakis and R. Laffineur, Aegaeum 27 (2007) 3–21, note 55.
21. Jump up^ Piguet, M.; Besse, M. (2009). « Chronology and Bell Beaker common ware ». Radiocarbon. 51 (2): 817–830.
22. Jump up^ Harrison, R.; Heyd, V. (2007). « The Transformation of Europe in the Third Millennium BC: the example of ‘Le Petit-Chasseur I + III’ (Sion, Valais, Switzerland) ». Praehistorische Zeitschrift. 82 (2): 129–214. doi:10.1515/pz.2007.010.
23. Jump up^ Jeunesse, C. 2014. « Pratiques funéraires campaniformes en Europe – Faut-il remettre en cause la dichotomie Nord-Sud ? La question de la réutilisation des sépultures monumentales dans l’Europe du 3e millénaire », in Données récentes sur les pratiques funéraires néolithiques de la Plaine du Rhin supérieur, P. Lefranc, A. Denaire and C. Jeunesse (eds.), BAR International Series 2633, 211. Oxford: Archaeopress.
24. Jump up^ Salinova, Laure (2000). « La question du campaniforme en France et dans les Iles Anglo-Normandes ». Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française (in French). 94 (2): 259–264.
25. Jump up^ Lanting, J. N.; van der Waals, J. D. (1976). « Beaker culture relations in the Lower Rhine Basin ». Glockenbechersimposion Oberried 1974. Bussum-Haarlem: Fibula-Van Dishoeck. pp. 1–80. ISBN 9789022836194.
26. Jump up^ Needham, S. (2009). « Encompassing the Sea: « Maritories » and Bronze Age Maritime Interactions ». In Clark, Peter. Bronze Age Connections: Cultural Contact in Prehistoric Europe. Oxford: Oxbow. pp. 12–37. ISBN 9781842173480.
27. Jump up^ O’Brien, William (2004). Ross Island: Mining, Metal and Society in Early Ireland. Galway: Department of Archaeology, National University of Ireland. ISBN 9780953562039.
28. Jump up^ Ambert, P. (2001). « La place de la métallurgie campaniforme dans la première métallurgie française ». In Nicolis, Franco. Bell Beakers Today : pottery, people, culture, symbols in prehistoric Europe : proceedings of the International Colloquium Riva del Garda (Trento, Italy) 11–16 May 1998 (in French). Trento, Italy: Provincia Autonoma di Trento. pp. 577–588. ISBN 9788886602433.
29. Jump up^ Burgess, C.; Shennan, S. (1976). « The Beaker Phenomenon: some suggestions ». In Burgess, C.; Miket, R. Settlement and economy in the third and second millennia BC : papers delivered at a conference organised by the Department of Adult Education, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports 33. pp. 309–331. ISBN 9780904531527.
30. Jump up^ Lemercier, Olivier (2004). « Historical model of settling and spread of Bell Beakers Culture in the mediterranean France ». In Czebreszuk, J. Similar but Different: Bell Beakers in Europe, Poznań Symposium, Poland, 26-29 May 2002. Poznań, Poland: Adam Mickiewicz University. pp. 193–203. ISBN 9788385215257. Available from the author’s web site.
31. Jump up^ Price, T. Douglas; Grupe, Gisela; Schröter, Peter (1998). « Migration in the Bell Beaker period of central Europe ». Antiquity. 72 (276): 405–411.
32. Jump up^ The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe – Barry Cunliffe, Oxford University Press (1994), pp. 250–254.
33. Jump up^ F. Jordá Cerdá et al., Historia de España 1: Prehistoria, 1986. ISBN 84-249-1015-X.
34. Jump up^ Jorge, Susana Oliveira (2002). « An all-over corded Bell Beaker in northern Portugal: Castelo Velho de Freixo de Numão (Vila Nova de Foz Côa): some remarks » (PDF). Journal of Iberian Archaeology. 4: 107–123. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-11-06.
35. Jump up^ Prieto Martínez, M. P. (2013). « Unity and Circulation: what underlies the homogeneity of Galician bell beaker ceramic style? ». In Prieto Martínez, M. Pilar; Salanova, Laure. Current researches on bell beakers : proceedings of 15th International Bell Beaker: From Atlantic to Ural, 5th-9th May 2011, Poio (Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain). Santiago de Compostela: Copynino. ISBN 978-84-941537-0-9. Retrieved 4 October 2015.
36. Jump up^ Trias, Manuel Calvo; Ayuso, Víctor M. Guerrero; Simonet, Bartomeu Salvà (2002). « Los orígenes del poblamiento balear: una discusión no acabada ». Complutum (in Spanish). 13: 159–191. ISSN 1131-6993.
37. Jump up^ Waldren, William H. (2003). « Evidence of Iberian Bronze Age ‘Boquique’ Pottery in the Balearic Islands: Trade, Marriage or Culture? ». Oxford Journal of Archaeology. 22(4): 357–374. doi:10.1046/j.1468-0092.2003.00193.x. Available from the author’s web site.
38. Jump up^ Bertemes, François; Heyd, Volker (2002). « Der Übergang Kupferzeit / Frühbronzezeit am Nordwestrand des Karpatenbeckens – Kulturgeschichtliche und paläometallurgische Betrachtungen » [The transition from the Copper Age to the Early Bronze Age at the north-western edge of the Carpathian basin culture historical and palaeometallurgical considerations]. In Bartelheim, Martin; Pernicka, Ernst; Krause, Rüdiger. Die Anfänge der Metallurgie in der alten Welt [The beginnings of metallurgy in the old world] (in German). Rahden: Verlag Marie Leidorf. pp. 185–228. ISBN 978-3-89646-871-0.
39. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Zoffmann, Zsuzsanna K. (2000). « Anthropological sketch of the prehistoric population of the Carpathian Basin » (PDF). Acta Biologica Szegediensis. 44 (1–4): 75–79.
40. Jump up^ [1] The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology – Timothy Darvill, 2002, Beaker culture, p.42, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-211649-5
41. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Brotherton, Paul; et al. (2013). « Neolithic mitochondrial haplogroup H genomes and the genetic origins of Europeans ». Nature Communications. 4: 1764. doi:10.1038/ncomms2656. PMC 3978205 . PMID 23612305.
42. Jump up^ Anthropology of skeletal remains of Bell – Beaker people from Moravia (Czech Republic)
43. ^ Jump up to:^a b Heyd, V.; Husty, L.; Kreiner, L. (2004). Siedlungen der Glockenbecherkultur in Süddeutschland und Mitteleuropa [Bell Beaker settlements in South Germany and Central Europe] (in German). Büchenbach: Faustus. ISBN 3-933474-27-2.
44. Jump up^ The Eastern Border of the Bell Beaker-Phenomenon – Volker Heyd, 2004
45. Jump up^ Heyd, Volker (2000). Die Spätkupferzeit in Süddeutschland [The Late Copper age in Southern Germany] (in German). Bonn: Habelt. ISBN 3-7749-3048-1.
46. ^ Jump up to:^a b Flanagan 1998, p. 71.
47. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, p. 99.
48. ^ Jump up to:^a b Flanagan 1998, p. 78.
49. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Flanagan 1998, p. 82.
50. ^ Jump up to:^a b Flanagan 1998, p. 81.
51. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, pp. 94–95.
52. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, p. 84.
53. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, p. 85.
54. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, pp. 86-88.
55. ^ Jump up to:^a b Sheridan, Alison; Northover, Peter (1993). « A Beaker Period copper dagger blade from the Sillees River near Ross Lough, Co. Fermanagh ». Ulster Journal of Archaeology. 3rd series. 56: 61–69. JSTOR 20568187.
56. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d Flanagan 1998, p. 88.
57. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, p. 89.
58. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, p. 104.
59. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, pp. 104-105, 111-114.
60. Jump up^ Male sizes range between 157 and 191 cm (62 and 75 in), to average 174 cm (69 in), comparable to the current male population: Flanagan 1998, p.116
61. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, pp. 84–85, 116.
62. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, p. 133.
63. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, p. 91.
64. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, p. 150.
65. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, p. 158.
66. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, pp. 96, 151.
67. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, pp. 105–106.
68. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, p. 156.
69. Jump up^ Flanagan 1998, p. 155.
70. Jump up^ Northover 1999, p.214
71. Jump up^ Needham 1996, p.124
72. Jump up^ James, Simon (1993). Exploring the World of the Celts. London: Thames & Hudson. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-500-27998-4.
73. Jump up^ Charles, J. A. (1975). « Where is the Tin? ». Antiquity. 49 (193): 19–24.
74. Jump up^ Bradley 2007, p.146
75. Jump up^ Le grandi avventure dell’archeologia VOL. 5: Europa e Italia protostorica – Curcio editore, pp. 1585-1586
76. Jump up^ Il complesso culturale di « Fosso Conicchio » (Viterbo) Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.
77. Jump up^ Giovanni Ugas-L’alba dei Nuraghi (2005) pg.12
78. Jump up^ Ceramiche. Storia, linguaggio e prospettive in Sardegna, Maria Rosaria Manunza – p.26
79. Jump up^ Salvatore Piccolo, Ancient Stones: The Prehistoric Dolmens of Sicily. Abingdon: Brazen Head Publishing, 2013, ISBN 9780956510624, p. 32.
80. Jump up^ Tusa 1999, p. 310
81. Jump up^ Tusa 1999, p. 311, fig. 52
82. Jump up^ Lanting/van der Waals 1976 a, p.
83. Jump up^ Struve 1955, pl. 22
84. Jump up^ Kühn 1979, pl. 11; 18
85. Jump up^ Myhre 1978-1979
86. Jump up^ Jacobs 1991
87. Jump up^ Prescott & Walderhaug 1995
88. Jump up^ Apel 2001, 42, p. 323 ff
89. Jump up^ Bender Jørgensen 1992, p.114
90. Jump up^ Ebbesen 1995; 2004
91. Jump up^ Nielsen 2000, p. 161 ff.
92. Jump up^ cf. Shennan 1976; 1977
93. Jump up^ Harrison 1980
94. Jump up^ Thorpe & Richards 1984
95. Jump up^ Lohof 1994
96. Jump up^ Strahm 1998
97. Jump up^ Vandkilde, Helle (2005). « A Review of the Early Late Neolithic Period in Denmark: Practice, Identity and Connectivity » (PDF). http://www.jungstein.SITE.de. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
98. Jump up^ « Almagro-Gorbea – La lengua de los Celtas y otros pueblos indoeuropeos de la península ibérica », 2001 p.95. In Almagro-Gorbea, M., Mariné, M. and Álvarez-Sanchís, J. R. (eds) Celtas y Vettones, pp. 115–121. Ávila: Diputación Provincial de Ávila.
99. Jump up^ Chadwick with Corcoran, Nora with J.X.W.P. (1970). The Celts. Penguin Books. pp. 28–33.
100. Jump up^ J.P. Mallory, ‘The Indo-Europeanization of Atlantic Europe’, in Celtic From the West 2: Rethinking the Bronze Age and the Arrival of Indo–European in Atlantic Europe, eds J. T. Koch and B. Cunliffe (Oxford, 2013), p.17–40
101. Jump up^ Cox, Margaret; Mays, Simon (2000). Human Osteology in Archaeology and Forensic Science. London: Greenwich Medical Media. pp. 281–283. ISBN 9781841100463.
102. Jump up^ A Test of Non-metrical Analysis as Applied to the ‘Beaker Problem’ – Natasha Grace Bartels, University of Albeda, Department of Anthropology, 1998 [2]
103. Jump up^ Gallagher, A.; Gunther, M. M.; Bruchhaus, H. (2009). « Population continuity, demic diffusion and Neolithic origins in central-southern Germany: The evidence from body proportions ». Homo. 60 (2): 95–126. doi:10.1016/j.jchb.2008.05.006. PMID 19264304.
104. Jump up^ Jocelyne Desideri, Europe during the Third Millennium BC and Bell Beaker Culture Phenomenon: peopling history through dental non-metric traits study (2008)Archived July 26, 2011, at the Wayback Machine..
105. Jump up^ Semino, O.; Passarino, G.; Oefner, P. J.; Lin, A. A.; Arbuzova, S.; Beckman, L. E.; De Benedictis, G.; Francalacci, P.; Kouvatsi, A.; Limborska, S.; Marcikiae, M.; Mika, A.; Mika, B.; Primorac, D.; Santachiara-Benerecetti, A. S.; Cavalli-Sforza, L. L.; Underhill, P. A. (2000). « The genetic legacy of Paleolithic Homo sapiens sapiens in extant Europeans: a Y chromosome perspective ». Science. 290 (5494): 1155–9. doi:10.1126/science.290.5494.1155. PMID 11073453.
106. Jump up^ Rosser, Zoë H.; Zerjal, Tatiana; Hurles, Matthew E.; Adojaan, Maarja; Alavantic, Dragan; Amorim, António; Amos, William; Armenteros, Manuel; Arroyo, Eduardo; Barbujani, Guido; Beckman, G; Beckman, L.; Bertranpetit, J.; Bosch, E; Bradley, DG; Brede, G; Cooper, G.; Côrte-Real, H. B.; De Knijff, P; Decorte, R.; Dubrova, Y. E.; Evgrafov, O.; Gilissen, A.; Glisic, S.; Gölge, M.; Hill, E. W.; Jeziorowska, A.; Kalaydjieva, L.; Kayser, M.; Kivisild, T (2000). « Y-chromosomal diversity in Europe is clinal and influenced primarily by geography, rather than by language ». American Journal of Human Genetics. 67 (6): 1526–1543. doi:10.1086/316890. PMC 1287948 . PMID 11078479.
107. Jump up^ Capelli, Cristian; et al. (2007). « Y chromosome genetic variation in the Italian peninsula is clinal and supports an admixture model for the Mesolithic–Neolithic encounter ». Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 44 (1): 228–239. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2006.11.030. PMID 17275346.
108. Jump up^ Myres, Natalie M.; et al. (2011). « A major Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b Holocene era founder effect in Central and Western Europe ». European Journal of Human Genetics. 19 (1): 95–101. doi:10.1038/ejhg.2010.146. PMC 3039512 . PMID 20736979.
109. Jump up^ Cruciani, Fulvio; et al. (2011). « Strong intra- and inter-continental differentiation revealed by Y chromosome SNPs M269, U106 and U152 ». Forensic Science International: Genetics. 5 (3): 49–52. doi:10.1016/j.fsigen.2010.07.006. PMID 20732840.
110. Jump up^ Arredi, Barbara; Poloni, Estella S.; Tyler-Smith, Chris (2007). « The peopling of Europe ». In Crawford, Michael H. Anthropological Genetics: Theory, Methods and Applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 380–408. ISBN 9780521546973.
111. Jump up^ Balaresque, Patricia; Bowden, Georgina R.; Adams, Susan M.; Leung, Ho-Yee; King, Turi E.; et al. (2010). Penny, David, ed. « A Predominantly Neolithic Origin for European Paternal Lineages ». PLOS Biology. Public Library of Science. 8 (1): e1000285. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000285. PMC 2799514 . PMID 20087410. Retrieved August 19, 2014.
112. Jump up^ Lee, E.; et al. (2012). « Emerging genetic patterns of the European neolithic: Perspectives from a late neolithic bell beaker burial site in Germany ». American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 148 (4): 571–579. doi:10.1002/ajpa.22074. PMID 22552938.
113. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Haak, Wolfgang; Lazaridis, Iosif (February 10, 2015). « Massive migration from the steppe is a source for Indo-European languages in Europe ». bioRxiv 013433 .
114. Jump up^ Pereira, L; et al. (2005). « High-resolution mtDNA evidence for the late-glacial resettlement of Europe from an Iberian refugium ». Genome Res. 15 (1): 19–24. doi:10.1101/gr.3182305. PMC 540273 . PMID 15632086.
115. Jump up^ Roostalu, U; et al. (2007). « Origin and expansion of haplogroup H, the dominant human mitochondrial DNA lineage in West Eurasia: the Near Eastern and Caucasian perspective ». Molecular Biology and Evolution. 24 (2): 436–448. doi:10.1093/molbev/msl173. PMID 17099056.

Sources

• Bradley, Richard (2007). The prehistory of Britain and Ireland. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-84811-3.
• Fokkens, Harry; Nicolis, Franco, eds. (2012). Background To Beakers: inquiries in regional cultural backgrounds of the Bell Beaker complex. Leiden: Sidestone. ISBN 978-90-8890-084-6.
• Flanagan, Laurence (1998). Ancient Ireland, Life before the Celts. Dublin: Gill & MacMillan. ISBN 0-7171-2433-9.
• Lemercier, Olivier (2012). « The Mediterranean France beakers transition ». In Fokkens, Harry; Nicolis, Franco. Background To Beakers: inquiries in regional cultural backgrounds of the Bell Beaker complex. Leiden: Sidestone. pp. 117–156. ISBN 978-90-8890-084-6.
• Müller, Johannes; van Willigen, Samuel (2001). « New radiocarbon evidence for European Bell Beakers and the consequences for the diffusion of the Bell Beaker Phenomenon ». In Nicolis, Franco. Bell Beakers today: Pottery, people, culture, symbols in prehistoric Europe: Proceedings of the international colloquium Riva del Garda (Trento, Italy), 11-16 may 1998, Volume 1. Trento: Provincia Autonoma di Trento. pp. 59–80. ISBN 9788886602433.
• Piggot, Stuart (1965). Ancient Europe from the Beginnings of Agriculture to Classical Antiquity: a Survey. Chicago: Aldine.

Further reading

• Bradley, Richard (2007). The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521612705.
• Case, H. (1993). « Beakers: Deconstruction and After ». Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. 59: 241–268. doi:10.1017/s0079497x00003807.
• Case, H. (2001). « The Beaker Culture in Britain and Ireland: Groups, European Contacts and Chronology ». In Nicolis, F. (ed.). Bell Beakers Today: pottery people, culture, symbols in prehistoric Europe. Servizio Beni Culturali Ufficio Beni Archeologici. 2. Torento. pp. 361–377.
• Darvill, T. (2002). Oxford Concise Dictionary of Archaeology. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-211649-5.
• Harding, Anthony; Fokkens, Harry (2013). The Oxford Handbook of European Bronze Age (Oxford Handbooks in Archaeology). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199572860.
• Harrison, R.J. (1980). The Beaker Folk. Thames and Hudson.
• Needham, S. (1996). « Chronology and periodisation in the British Bronze Age ». Acta Archaeologica. 67: 121–140.
• Needham, S. (2005). « Transforming Beaker Culture in North-West Europe: processes of fusion and fission ». Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. 71: 171–217. doi:10.1017/s0079497x00001006.
• Northover, J.P. (1999). Hauptmann, A., Pernicka, E., Rehren, T. and Yalçin, Ü. (eds.), eds. « The earliest metalworking in South Britain ». The Beginnings of Metallurgy. Bochum: Dt. Bergbau-Museum:  211–225.
• Northover, J.P.N.; O’Brien, W.; Stos, S. (2001). « Lead isotopes and metal circulation in Beaker/Early Bronze Age Ireland ». Journal of Irish Archaeology. 10: 25–47.
• O’Flaherty, R. (2007). « A weapon of choice: experiments with a replica Irish early Bronze Age halberd ». Antiquity. 81 (312): 425–434. doi:10.1017/s0003598x00095284.
• O’Kelly, M.J. (1982). Newgrange: Archaeology, Art and Legend. London: Thames & Hudson.
• Mallory J.P. (1997) « Beaker Culture ». Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, Fitzroy Dearborn.
• Piccolo, S. (2013). Ancient Stones: The Prehistoric Dolmens of Sicily. Abingdon: Brazen Head Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9565-1062-4.
• Schuhmacher, T.X. (2002). « Some remarks on the origin and chronology of halberds in Europe ». Oxford Journal of Archaeology. 21 (3): 263–288. doi:10.1111/1468-0092.00162.
• Tusa, Sebastiano (1999). La Sicilia nella Preistoria, Palermo: Sellerio Editore. ISBN88-389-1440-0.

Bellbeaker culture artefacts.

• BBC — History — Bronze Age Britain
• Bronze Age — Beaker People — Wessex Culture
• The Beaker Folk in the Balkans
• Historical model of settling and spread of Bell Beakers Culture in the mediterranean France
• Le Campaniforme et l’Europe à la fin du Néolithique
• All Bell Beaker scientific articles on line free access
• Latest findings that might dispute the American view that the Beaker Culture was a dissemination among European natives: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22252099
• Henge-like sanctuary of the late Bell Beaker Culture in Central Germany https://www.academia.edu/1076290/Systematische_Untersuchungen_der_Kreisgrabenanlage_von_Pommelte-Zackmunde_Salzlandkreis._Zum_Abschluss_der_Grabungen_an_mitteldeutschen_Rondellen_im_Rahmen_der_Forschergruppe_FOR_550

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultura_del_vaso_campaniforme

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Norman-Arab-Byzantine Art, Sicily

 

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, San Damiano, Assisi

Giacobbe Giusti, San Damiano, Assisi

 

Giacobbe Giusti, San Damiano, Assisi

Copie du crucifix de Saint-Damien dans sa situation originale.

Giacobbe Giusti, San Damiano, Assisi

 

Giacobbe Giusti, San Damiano, Assisi

St Francis in San Damiano in the upper church of the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, attributed to Giotto.

Giacobbe Giusti, San Damiano, Assisi

External view of San Damiano complex.

Giacobbe Giusti, San Damiano, Assisi

Fresco of Saint Clare and sisters of her order, church of San Damiano, Assisi

San Damiano is a church with a monastery near Assisi, Italy. Built in the 12th century, it was the first monastery of the Order of Saint Clare, where Saint Clare built her community.

The church has a hut-shaped façade; the entrance is preceded by a short portico with three round arcades supported by brickwork pillars. Above the central arch is a circular rose window. The interior has a single nave with ogival barrel vaults. The right wall is home to a rectangular chapel with, at the altar, a wooden crucifix executed by Innocenzo da Petralia in 1637. The nave ends with a deep apse with a modern stone altar, a Baroque wooden tabernacle and the choir.

Miracle of St Francis at San Damiano

Giacobbe Giusti, San Damiano, Assisi

St Francis in San Damiano in the upper church of the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, attributed to Giotto.

According to Franciscan sources, a miracle in which Saint Francis’ heard an exhortation from Christ occurred in 1205 in this church:^[1]

One day out in the countryside to meditate. Finding himself near San Damiano, which threatened ruin, old as it was, driven by the impulse of the Holy Spirit, he entered to pray. Kneeling in prayer before the image of the Crucifix, he was invaded with a great spiritual consolation and, as he affixed his tearful eyes on the cross of the Lord, with the ears of his body he heard a voice descend to him from the cross and say three times Francis, go and repair my church which, as you see, is all in ruins!. On hearing that voice, Francis remained astonished and trembling, being in the church alone and, perceiving in his heart the power of divine language, felt kidnapped of his senses. Finally returning to his senses, he girded himself to obey, concentrated everything on the mission to repair the church of walls, although the divine word was referring principally to the Church which Christ purchased by his blood, as the Holy Spirit had made him understand and how he later revealed to his fellow monks.

Afterwards Saint Francis took action to physically repair the structure of the San Damiano church, although he eventually realized that God’s message to him was to restore the entire Catholic Church as a whole body rather than literally repair one stone structure. The San Damiano cross which putatively spoke to Francis currently hangs in the Basilica of Saint Clare in Assisi.

Other artworks in the church include a 14th-century Madonna with Child between Sts. Damian and Rufinus fresco, located in the apse.

Convent of Saint Clare

This convent became the home of Saint Clare of Assisi and her followers in 1212.^[2]Work was carried out to provide buildings for this religious community.^[2] The Sisters stayed until Clare’s death in 1253 when it was thought too dangerous to remain and it was exchanged with the Canons of San Rufino for the chapel of San Giorgio.^[2] The convent is open free of charge to the public. Downstairs off the cloister is the refectory in its original state.^[2] A fresco in the refectory recalls the visit of Pope Gregory IX when he asked Clare to bless the loaves, which is said to have resulted in crosses appearing on the loaves.^[2] Upstairs are St Clare’s Oratory where the Blessed Sacrament was kept.^[2] Next to this is the dormitory.^[2] A cross marks the place where Clare died on 11 August 1253.^[2]

References

1. Jump up^ Leggenda Maggiore di San Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, Translation by Simpliciano Olgiati, and notes by Feliciano Olgiati, in a website of Le Fonti Francescana of the Frati Minori dell’Umbria, Chapter 2, 1038.
2. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f g h} Every Pilgrim’s Guide to Assisi and other Franciscan pilgrim places Judith Dean 2002

Sources

• Bellucci, Gualtiero (2005). Assisi, Heart of the World. Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola.
• Costantino, Troiano; Alfonso Pompei. Illustrated guide of Assisi. Assisi: Casa Editrice Francescana dei Fratei Minori Conventuali.

San Damiano (Assisi).

• « Saint Francis of Assisi. »Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Damiano,_Assisi

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, ANDREA del VERROCCHIO: Tobias and the Angel, National Gallery, London

Giacobbe Giusti, ANDREA del VERROCCHIO: Tobias and the Angel, National Gallery, London

 

Giacobbe Giusti, ANDREA del VERROCCHIO: Tobias and the Angel, National Gallery, London

Workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio. Tobias and the Angel. 33″ x 26″; 84 cm x 66 cm. 1470-75. National Gallery London. Detail.

Tobias and the Angel Giacobbe Giusti, ANDREA del VERROCCHIO: Tobias and the Angel, National Gallery, London
Artist	Andrea del Verrocchio
Year	1470–1480
Type	Egg tempera on poplar
Location	National Gallery, London

Tobias and the Angel is an altar painting, finished around 1470–1475,^[1] attributed to the workshop of the ItalianRenaissance painter Andrea del Verrocchio.^[2] It is housed in the National Gallery, London. This painting is similar to an earlier painting depicting Tobias and the Angel, by Antonio del Pollaiolo.^[3]

According to Oxford art historian Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci, who was a member of Verrocchio’s studio, may have painted some part of this work, most likely the fish.^[4] David Alan Brown, of the National Gallery in Washington, attributes the painting of the fluffy little dog to him as well. If so, this would be perhaps the first extant example of a painting with input by Leonardo.^[5]

• Possibly attributed to the young Leonardo da Vinci:
• 

  The fish
• 

  The dog

References

1. Jump up^ « Workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio | Tobias and the Angel | NG781 | The National Gallery, London ». The National Gallery. The National Gallery. Retrieved 31 May2015.
2. Jump up^ Wilson, Michael (1977). The National Gallery, London. London: Orbis Publishing Limited. p. 42. ISBN 0-85613-314-0.
3. Jump up^ Brown, David Allan (1998). Leonardo da Vinci: Origins of a Genius-David Alan Brown- Google Books. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. pp. 47–50. ISBN 0-300-07246-5.
4. Jump up^ Kemp, Martin (2011). Leonardo: Revised Edition-Martin Kemp-Google Books. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 251. ISBN 978-0-19-958335-5. Retrieved 31 May2015.
5. Jump up^ Brown, David Allan (1998). Leonardo da Vinci: Originss of a Genius-David Alan Brown- Google Books. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. pp. 47–56. ISBN 0-300-07246-5.

External links

Tobias and the Angel by Andrea del Verrocchio.

hide v t e Leonardo da Vinci
List of works Science and inventions Personal life
Paintings	Medusa The Annunciation The Baptism of Christ The Madonna of the Carnation Ginevra de’ Benci Benois Madonna The Adoration of the Magi St. Jerome in the Wilderness Madonna Litta Virgin of the Rocks Portrait of a Musician Lady with an Ermine La Belle Ferronnière Salvator Mundi Madonna of the Yarnwinder The Virgin and Child with St. Anne Mona Lisa Head of a Woman (La Scapigliata) Leda and the Swan St. John the Baptist
Works on walls	The Last Supper Sala delle Asse The Battle of Anghiari
Sculptures	Sforza monument (unexecuted) Horse and Rider Rearing Horse and Mounted Warrior
Works on paper	Vitruvian Man Portrait of a Young Fiancée The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist Self-portrait Studies of the Fetus in the Womb
Manuscripts	Codex Arundel Codex Atlanticus Codex on the Flight of Birds Codex Leicester Codex Madrid Codex Trivulzianus A Treatise on Painting
Museums	Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci (Milan) Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci (Vinci)
Other projects	De divina proportione Architonnerre Leonardo’s crossbow Leonardo’s fighting vehicle Leonardo’s robot Leonardo’s self-propelled cart Viola organista
Leonardeschi	Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio Cesare da Sesto Giampietrino Giovanni Agostino da Lodi Bernardino Luini Cesare Magni Marco d’Oggiono Francesco Melzi Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis Salaì Andrea Solari
Posthumous fame	Cultural references Mona Lisa replicas and reinterpretations Things named after Leonardo

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobiolo_e_l%27angelo

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Venus de’ Medici, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Giacobbe Giusti, Venus de’ Medici, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

 Giacobbe Giusti, Venus de’ Medici, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

La Vénus de Médicis

La Vénus de Médicis est une célèbre sculpture grecque en marbre représentant la déesse Aphrodite(Vénus pour les Romains). C’est une copie du i^er siècle av. J.-C.d’une statue originale en bronze, du type de l’Aphrodite de Cnide¹, qui aurait été faite par un élève de Praxitèle. Elle est devenue un point de repère de l’évolution de la tradition classique occidentale. Elle se trouve à la Galerie des Offices à Florence.

La déesse est représentée dans une pose fugitive, comme surprise au moment où elle émerge des flots, ainsi que l’évoque un dauphin à ses pieds, qui pourrait ne pas faire partie du bronze original.

Elle porte sur sa base l’inscription en grec CLÉOMÈNES FILS D’APOLLODORE D’ATHÈNES². L’inscription n’est pas d’origine, mais date du xviii^e siècle, où le nom de « Cléomène » était ajouté aux sculptures pour augmenter leur valeur. La restauration des bras fut faite par Ercole Ferrata, qui lui donna de longs doigts maniéristes qui furent seulement reconnus au xix^e siècle comme étant déplacés sur une telle sculpture.

C’est également sous le nom de Vénus de Médicis que sont connues de nombreuses répliques et fragments de cette version du thème, introduit par Praxitèle, d’une représentation grandeur nature d’Aphrodite. Ces sculptures sont décrites comme des « copies romaines », sous-entendant qu’elles ont été produites, peut-être par des sculpteurs grecs, sous l’Empire romain.

Découverte et exposition

L’origine de la statue est mal connue. « Sa réputation semble avoir grandi graduellement » remarquent Francis Haskell et Nicholas Penny. Elle fut décrite pour la première fois en 1638, dans la collection de la Villa Médicis de Rome, dans une anthologie de l’artiste François Perrier des plus nobles statues à Rome que les ravages du temps avaient épargnées. Elle était cependant déjà connue en 1559, car sa réduction en bronze apparaît dans une série de cette année commandée par Niccolò Orsini, comte de Pitigliano, comme cadeau à Philippe II d’Espagne. La série fut exécutée par un sculpteur néerlandais, élève de Benvenuto Cellini, nommé Willem van Tetrode³.

Giacobbe Giusti, Venus de’ Medici, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

La peinture de 1772 de John Zoffany : La Tribune des Offices (maintenant dans la Royal Collection), montrant la Vénus (à droite) exposée dans la tribune, entourée par des connaisseurs anglais et italiens.

Bien que les visiteurs à Rome, tel John Evelyn, l’aient décrite comme « un miracle de l’art », elle fut envoyée à Florence en août 1677. Dans la tribune des Offices, elle était un des passages obligés du Grand Tour, et était universellement considérée comme l’une des meilleures statues antiques à avoir survécu. Luca Giordano en fit des centaines de croquis ; Samuel Rogers lui rendit visite quotidiennement ; Zoffany l’inclut dans sa peinture de 1778 de la Tribune des Offices ; Byronconsacra cinq strophes de Childe Harold à sa description. Ce fut l’une des précieuses œuvres d’art envoyées à Palerme pour échapper à la rapacité française, mais en vain : une pression diplomatique telle fut exercée par l’intermédiaire du consul général Claude Antoine Marson, qu’elle fut transportée à Paris en 1803⁴. Ce n’est qu’après la chute de Napoléon qu’elle revint à Florence le 27 décembre 1815.

Copies

Giacobbe Giusti, Venus de’ Medici, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Copie en marbre du xviii^e siècle de la Vénus de Médicis au Peterhof, Saint-Pétersbourg.

La Vénus de Médicis est l’une des antiquités les plus copiées. Louis XIV n’en avait pas moins de cinq, des marbres exécutés par Carlier, Clérion, Coysevox et Frémery, et un bronze réalisé par les frères Keller⁵. De nombreuses copies en plomb de la Vénus de Médicis se trouvent dans des jardins anglais et européens, parfois protégées par de petits temples. Ses réductions en bronze figurent parmi les antiquités les plus souvent trouvées dans les cabinets de collectionneurs : dans le portrait fait par Greuzede Claude-Henri Watelet, env. 1763-65, le connaisseur et auteur de L’Art de peindre est montré avec instrument de mesure et calepin, étudiant une statuette en bronze de la Vénus de Médicis, comme pour déduire les proportions idéales de la forme féminine à partir de l’exemple de la sculpture.

Études récentes

En 2012, des analyses chimiques ont permis de découvrir d’infimes traces de polychromie sur la sculpture. Jadis, la Vénus de Médicis avait donc les lèvres peintes en rouge et ses cheveux étaient recouverts de feuilles d’or. D’après les trous découverts sur ses lobes d’oreilles, elle portait également des boucles d’oreilles. Tout cela pour lui donner un aspect plus réaliste. Cet ornement a disparu, selon les chercheurs, à la suite d’une restauration un peu trop zélée vers 1815, quand les Italiens ont récupéré la Vénus auprès des autorités françaises⁶.

Références

1. ↑ Mansuelli, 1958–61, vol. I, p. 71–73
2. ↑ (en) Mary Beard et John Henderson, Classical Art: From Greece to Rome, Oxford University Press, 2001 (ISBN 0-1928-4237-4), p. 117
3. ↑ Onze des sculptures de la série perdue, y compris la réduction de la Vénus de Médicis furent réunies dans l’exposition « Willem van Tetrode », Rijksmuseum and Frick Collection, New York, 2003 (Communiqué de presse [archive]).
4. ↑ Michel Palmieri de Miccichè Pensées et souvenirs historiques et contemporains. Suivis d’un essai sur la tragedie ancienne et moderne, et de quelques apercus politiques, 1830 p. 110 [archive]
5. ↑ Haskell et Penny, p. 325
6. ↑http://www.lejournaldesarts.fr/site/archives/docs_article/98516/des-analyses-montrent-que-la-venus-de-medicis-etait-polychrome.php [archive]

Bibliographie

• la Vénus de Médicis,

• (en) Francis Haskell et Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500–1900, Yale University Press, 1981
• (it) Guido Mansuelli, Galleria degli Uffizi: Le Sculture, 2 vol., Rome, 1958–61, vol. I, p. 71–73
• https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A9nus_de_M%C3%A9dicis
• www-giacobbegiusti.com
  .

Giacobbe Giusti, Fresque de la Tombe du Plongeur, Paestum

Giacobbe Giusti, Fresque de la Tombe du Plongeur

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Fresque de la Tombe du Plongeur, Paestum

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Fresque de la Tombe du Plongeur, Paestum

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Fresque de la Tombe du Plongeur, Paestum

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Fresque de la Tombe du Plongeur,  Paestum

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Fresque de la Tombe du Plongeur, Paestum

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Fresque de la Tombe du Plongeur, Paestum

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Fresque de la Tombe du Plongeur, Paestum

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Tomb of hunting and fishing, Monterozzi necropolis,

Tomb of hunting and fishing, Monterozzi necropolis, Tarquinia, Italy.

Tuffatore, Tomba della Caccia e della Pesca, VI secolo a.C. Necropoli dei Monterozzi

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Tomb of the Leopards. Tarquinia, Italy

Tarquinia Tomb of the Leopards.

Simposio, Tomba dei Leopardi, 473 a.C. Museo archeologico nazionale di Tarquinia

Giacobbe Giusti, Fresque de la Tombe du Plongeur, Paestum

Le « plongeur » (détail du couvercle).

 

La fresquede la Tombe du Plongeur est composée d’une série de scènes peintes dans une tombe à caisson datant de la Grande-Grèce, découverte le 3 juin 1968 par l’archéologue Mario Napoli, pendant les fouilles d’une petite nécropolesituée à 1,5 km au sud de Paestum (Poseidonia, Italie), cité fondée par des colons de Sybaris.

Elle se trouve actuellement exposée au Musée archéologique national de Paestum. Elle daterait de 480–470 av. J.-C.

Description des fresques

L’appellation générique « tombe du plongeur » (en italien : tomba del tuffatore) provient de la scène peinte sur la face interne de la dalle de couverture de la tombe. Cette scène représente un athlèteplongeant dans l’eau.

Cette tombe à caisson comporte en réalité une série de cinq fresques.

Certaines des interprétations qui en ont été faites sont sujettes à caution. En revanche, les hypothèses les plus probantes énoncées par les archéologues et les spécialistes de la Grèce antique révèlent que, dans cette série de fresques, les cinq scènes représentées présentent une unité stylistique et sémantique ; il est probable qu’elles soient en lien avec la personnalité du défunt mais rien n’est sûr ; les thèmes renvoient probablement aux valeurs pythagoriciennes et orphiques¹. « Pour l’homme [grec] qui n’échappe pas à sa condition, le séjour des morts est nostalgie fondamentale, regret de la vie, et c’est uniquement en ce sens qu’il importe de considérer la religion grecque, les croyances grecques de l’au-delà, sous un aspect métaphorique », rappelle Pascal Torres².

La dalle : le motif du plongeur

La dalle de la tombe, brisée en son centre.

Ce motif, situé sur la voûte céleste et face au mort, peut éventuellement symboliser le saut vers l’inconnu³. On notera que l’homme plonge vers une étendue d’eau à surface convexe, représentant la mer (Okéanos). On remarque également la récurrence du chiffre 7, présent dans la représentation du jeu de colonnes d’où saute le plongeur ainsi que dans les branches des arbres, qui sont des oliviers. Ce chiffre symbolise la régénération. Les branches des arbres peuvent aussi témoigner d’une possible amélioration de la vie une fois le défunt dans « l’au-delà » (l’Hadès, « l’invisible ») : on peut observer que l’arbre situé à droite et localisé derrière le plongeur, connaît par endroits des cassures au niveau de ses branches tandis que l’autre arbre, situé à gauche, est entièrement redressé. Par ce saut situé sur la face intérieure du couvercle du caisson, l’artiste a voulu peut-être tout à la fois rendre hommage aux qualités athlétiques du défunt et symboliser dans un même geste le passage du temps et le changement d’état, la vie donc. L’au-delà, le monde de l’Hadès, est possiblement représenté par ce qui est sous l’eau (où est le non-visible, l’inconnu), la limite entre le monde des vivants et celui des morts étant représentée par cette colonne d’où plonge le personnage.

Les parois latérales représentent un banquet rassemblant dix personnages : elles renvoient aux joies terrestres (poésie, musique, chère, philia) et convoquent la nostalgie de ce qui a été et n’est plus. La lecture doit se faire de droite à gauche.

La paroi latérale sud : le banquet (1)

Paroi latérale côté sud.

Cette peinture représente un banquet rassemblant cinq convives masculins (les comastes) disposés en klinai (un homme seul et deux couples), buvant, se prélassant et jouant de la musique. Il s’agit plus précisément d’un symposion⁴. Le couple de gauche joue de l’aulos (double hautbois) et du barbitos (lyre), tandis que les deux convives du centre s’adonnent au jeu du cottabe (kottabos). On remarque que les deux visages des personnages situés à gauche convergent vers un personnage situé au centre, tandis que les deux convives de droite sont pris par la musique (on parle ici d’enthousiasme et non d’ivresse). Enfin, le personnage situé à gauche, assis seul sur un klinè, tient une lyre dans une main et de l’autre, entre le pouce et l’index, un œuf. C’est ce personnage « qui se trouve au plus près de la tête du mort » (M. Napoli). « L’œuf, offrande funéraire omniprésente [dans les tombes] symbolise non seulement la fécondité, mais plus encore la puissance vitale dans la mort et la résurrection »⁵.

La paroi latérale est

Paroi côté est.

Côté est, la peinture, en partie abimée, représente une scène de libation dans laquelle un éphèbeéchanson, l’œnochoé en main, tourne le dos à un cratère et s’en va servir un convive : c’est vers ce motif que la tête du défunt était tournée, le contenu du cratère symbolisant l’élixir de jouvence ou tout simplement la jeunesse et le commencement de la vie.

La paroi latérale nord : le banquet (2)

Paroi latérale côté nord.

Comme sur la paroi latérale sud, on peut voir ici cinq convives disposés en klinai et qui se distinguent des cinq précédents. Le couple situé à droite, pris dans une « scène amoureuse », renvoie peut-être à la paideia ou aux joutes érotiques. Ce couple est observé par un des personnages situés au centre, tandis que les deux autres, à gauche, s’amusent au jeu du cottabe dont le signifiant est également érotique⁶. C’est le « couple amoureux » qui est situé au plus près de la tête du défunt et qui s’apprête à être servi par l’œnochoé. Napoli et Rouveret notent que le dessin préparatoire est beaucoup plus soigné ici que pour la paroi latérale sud. Le jeune homme tenu par la nuque et dont l’habit est particulièrement soigné (ceinture rouge, motifs ondulés) occupe la place d’honneur selon l’ordonnancement du symposium⁷. On y a vu une représentation du défunt.

La paroi latérale ouest

Paroi côté ouest.

Côté ouest, un cortège d’influence étrusque montre trois personnages : un homme barbu habillé d’un manteau et s’avançant avec un bâton noueux, un éphèbeportant une chlamyde bleue et enfin l’aulétride, une jeune femme jouant de l’aulos ; elle est de petite taille, le visage pâle et habillée d’un chitonblanc⁸. Il pourrait également s’agir d’un jeune garçon, la scène symbolisant les trois âges de la vie. Cette scène est jugée comme la plus difficile à interpréter. Les spécialistes s’accordent pour une représentation d’un kômos, par la présence au centre du trio de l’éphèbe esquissant un pas de danse et saluant l’un des convives situés sur la paroi Nord. Selon Daisy Warland, « le cortège illustrerait l’intégration du défunt à sa nouvelle vie, après sa régénération par la mer, figurée sur le couvercle »⁹.

Ainsi, les cinq fresques de la tombe s’inscriraient bien à l’intérieur d’une même unité.

Constat

La fresque de la Tombe du Plongeur doit son importance au fait d’être, à ce jour, l’unique exemple de peinture pariétale décorative à sujet figuratif et humain, datée de l’époque archaïque et classique qui nous soit parvenu dans son intégrité. Cette tombe est exceptionnelle et tend à démontrer que les Grecs se sont inspirés de la civilisation étrusque et de ses tombes parées de fresques. On retrouve en effet le motif du plongeur dans la fresque de la chasse et de la pêche située dans la Nécropole de Monterozzi, proche de la ville de Tarquinia en Étrurie méridionale et datée du dernier quart du vi^e siècle av. J.-C.¹⁰.

Descriptions techniques

L’excavation, qui fait suite à une campagne de fouille menée dans le golfe de Salerne, date de juin 1968 et eut lieu dans une petite nécropoleutilisée entre vi^e siècle av. J.-C. et iv^e siècle av. J.-C. sur un terrain appelé « Tempa del Prete ». Les cinq fresques de cette tombe dite « à caisson » ont été peintes sur du tuf calcaired’origine locale. En 1969, après une première communication¹¹, une étude fut publiée par l’inventeur, le professeur Mario Napoli, intitulée Le pitture greche della tomba del tuffatore¹², laquelle offre une approche descriptive circonstanciée.

Les dimensions de la tombe sont de 215 × 100 × 80 cm.

Des traces de cordage à même la peinture fraîche furent découvertes par Napoli : elles prouvent qu’il s’agit là d’un travail de commande, ce qui tend à relier la personnalité du défunt et les motifs représentés. Napoli signale également que la dalle du couvercle a été brisée intentionnellement en son centre au moment de l’inhumation et donc avant le scellement des parois entre elles.

Les restes du défunt étaient majoritairement à l’état pulvérulent, transformés en poudre du fait de la sécheresse mais la tête avait été visiblement orientée vers l’est.

Dans le mobilier funéraire, on a trouvé des récipients d’offrandes qui ont permis la datation : deux aryballes et un lécythe d’époque attique vernis dans le style melanomorpha (à figures noires), tous deux servant à contenir de l’huile parfumée pour oindre le corps des athlètes. Des fragments métalliques et de carapace de tortueont été également identifiés. L’analyse des vases permet de donner un intervalle de datation situé entre 480 et 470 av. J.-C.

L’ensemble pèse plusieurs tonnes : la tombe, une fois le corps du défunt installé, était scellée et les peintures soustraites au regard.

Il ne faut pas confondre cette fresque, exemplaire à ce jour unique dans les représentations funéraires de la Grande-Grèce, avec les nombreuses fresques (plus d’une quarantaine à ce jour) découvertes dans cette même nécropole mais datant de la fin v^e siècle av. J.-C. et du début du iv^e siècle av. J.-C., et exécutées par les Lucains¹³.

Représentations contemporaines

Depuis leur découvertes, certains motifs de cette tombe, dont la « scène amoureuse » du banquet mais aussi le saut du plongeur, ont été largement reprises pour illustrer le thème de l’homosexualité.

Sur les dix hommes installés en banquet, on trouve quatre couples et deux hommes seuls. Selon Daisy Warland, il y a là « une répétition des couples éraste–éromène » (trois fois), à savoir, l’adjonction d’un jeune homme (présence du duvet sur les joues) et d’un homme plus âgé (pilosité faciale avancée). Cette conjonction manifeste évoque « l’initiation sexuelle dans les sociétés d’hommes archaïques et, plus généralement, la puissance vitale »¹⁴. Il ne s’agit pas d’homosexualité au sens contemporain du terme, mais d’une sexualité ritualisée et codifiée entre hommes, qui n’exclut en rien la femme¹⁵.

Galerie

Giacobbe Giusti, Fresque de la Tombe du Plongeur, Paestum

• 

  « Scène amoureuse »

• 

  Vue générale

 

Références

1. ↑ « La Tombe du Plongeur » [archive] par Pierre Somville in Revue de l’histoire des religions, Année 1979, Volume 196-1, p. 41-51.
2. ↑ « Grèce ancienne » in Dictionnaire de la mortsous la direction de Philippe Di Folco, coll. « In Extenso », Paris, Larousse, 2010, p. 500.
3. ↑ Ce saut n’a rien à voir avec les Jeux olympiquesantiques, cette discipline n’y étant pas reconnue.
4. ↑ Platon, La République, livre II, 363 C.
5. ↑ D. Warland (1999, 196) qui rappelle la symbolique des « œufs de Pâques ».
6. ↑ D. Warland (1999, 195).
7. ↑ Platon, Banquet, 175 c-d et 213 a-b.
8. ↑ Cette pâleur et sa petite taille caractérise assurément son sexe, comme dans la plupart des représentations de cette époque.
9. ↑ D. Warland, 1999, 203.
10. ↑ La troisième représentation de plongeur datant de cette époque est celle trouvée sur le cratère apulien en calice à figures rouges dit « du Soleil et des Heures » exposé au British Museum (D. Warland, 1999, 199).
11. ↑ Daisy Warland (1999, 196) signale cette publication : M. Napoli, « L’attività arcbeologica nelle provincie di Avellino, Benevento e Salerno », in La Magna Crecia e Roma nell’età arcaica. Atti dell’ottavo Convegno di Studi sulla Magna Crecia,Taranto, 6-11 ottobre 1968, Naples, 1969, p. 139-152.
12. ↑ (it) « Le pitture greche della tomba del tuffatore » in Le Scienze, 2, 1969, n. 8, p. 9-19.
13. ↑ Exposition Peinture pour l’éternité. Les tombes de Paestum [archive], Berlin, 2008.
14. ↑ D. Warland, 2, 1999.
15. ↑ Bernard Sergent, L’homosexualité dans la mythologie grecque, Paris, Payot, 1981 – préface de Georges Dumézil.

Bibliographie

• (en) R. Ross Holloway, « The Tomb of the Diver » in American Journal of Archeology, Vol. 110, n. 3, juillet 2006 (p. 365-388) (en)(Lire en ligne (PDF) [archive]) [lien introuvable].
• (it)Mario Napoli, La Tomba del Tuffatore. La Scoperta della grande pittura greca, coll. « Spazio e tempo », Bari, De Donato, 1970.
• [version française] Angela Pontrandolfo – Agnès Rouveret – Marina Cipriani, Les tombes peintes de Paestum, Paestum, Éditions Pandemos, 2004 (ISBN 88-87744-13-0).
• Agnès Rouveret, « La Tombe du Plongeur et les fresques étrusques : témoignages sur la peinture grecque » in Revue Archéologique, 1974, Fascicule 1, p. 15-32.
• Pierre Somville, « La Tombe du Plongeur à Paestum » in Revue de l’histoire de Religions, Paris, PUF, Tome 196, fascicule 1, juillet 1979, p. 41-51.
• Daisy Warland, « La Tombe du Plongeur : étude de la relation entre le symposion et le plongeon » in Revue de l’histoire de Religions, Paris, PUF, Tome 213, fascicule 2, 1996, p. 143–60.
• [PDF]Daisy Warland, « Que représente la fresque de la paroi Ouest de la tombe au plongeur de Poseidonia ? »] in Kernos, 1999, n. 12, p. 195-206.

Fresque de la Tombe du Plongeur

• Agnès Rouveret, « Rites et imaginaire de la mort dans les tombes étrusques archaïques [archive]» in Cahier des thèmes transversaux ArScAn, Université Paris X Nanterre, Cahier II – 2000/2001, Thème 4 – Images, textes et sociétés, p. 98-205
  .

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresque_de_la_Tombe_du_Plongeur

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Myth and Nature. From Greece to Pompeii

Giacobbe Giusti, Myth and Nature. From Greece to Pompeii

Cratere a volture pestano con Giasone, Medea e il vello sull’albero, ceramica, 330-310 a.C. Napoli, Museo Archeologico Nazionale Su concessione del Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo: Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Napoli

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Myth and Nature. From Greece to Pompeii

Anforisco detto Vaso Blu: Eroti Vendemmianti, dettaglio. Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli Su concessione del Mibact: Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Myth and Nature. From Greece to Pompeii

Anforisco detto Vaso Blu: Eroti Vendemmianti. Metà I secolo d.C. Da Pompei Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Su concessione del Mibact: Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Myth and Nature. From Greece to Pompeii

Statuetta raffigurante Afrodite, terracotta, IV secolo a.C. Paestum, Museo Archeologico nazionale Su concessione del Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo: Museo Archeologico Nazionale Paestum, gabinetto fotografico/foto di Francesco Valletta e Giovanni Grippo

Giacobbe Giusti, Myth and Nature. From Greece to Pompeii

Piatto apulo a figure rosse: pesci, ceramica, 325 – 300 a.C. Da Ruvo di Puglia (Ba), Officina del pittore di Baltimora Collezione Intesa SanPaolo

Giacobbe Giusti, Myth and Nature. From Greece to Pompeii

Casa del Bracciale d’Oro, affresco. Intonaco dipinto, età giulio-claudia. Pompei, Casa del Bracciale d’Oro. Su concessione del Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo: Soprintendenza Speciale per Pompei, Ercolano e Stabia

Giacobbe Giusti, Myth and Nature. From Greece to Pompeii

Affresco con testa femminile coronata, intonaco affrescato, da Ercolano. Napoli, Museo Archeologico Nazionale Su concessione del Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo: Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Napoli

Giacobbe Giusti, Myth and Nature. From Greece to Pompeii

Affresco con paesaggio mitologico di gusto idilliaco, Paride pastore, intonaco affrescato, da Pompei. Napoli, Museo Archeologico Nazionale Su concessione del Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo: Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Napoli

Giacobbe Giusti, Myth and Nature. From Greece to Pompeii

Lastra tombale dipinta: un giovane si tuffa nel mare, 480 a.C. Da Paestum, località Tempa del Prete (Sa) Paestum (Sa), Museo Archeologico Nazionale Su concessione del Mibact foto di Francesco Valletta e Giovanni Grippo

Giacobbe Giusti, Myth and Nature. From Greece to Pompeii

Bacco con corpo coperto di grappoli, il Vesuvio, affresco, 68-79 d.C., da Pompei, Casa del Centenario Napoli, Museo Archeologico Nazionale Su concessione del Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo: Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Napoli

 

2016/03

After the success obtained at Palazzo Reale in Milan, the exhibition “Myth and Nature. From Greece to Pompeii” come to the excavations of Pompeii and to the National Archeological Museum.

Readjusted for the new spaces which house it and enriched with more works, the history of nature in its different aspects and in a close relation with human interventions is enhanced by a path inside the archeological area of Pompeii, where green spaces of ancient “domus” have been restored and reopened.

The exhibition project is promoted by the Monuments and Fine Arts Office of Pompeii and by the National Archeological Museum of Naples with the collaboration of the publishing house Electa. It is curated by Gemma Sena Chiesa, Angela Pontrandolfo and Valeria Sampaolo as regards Naples and by Massimo Osanna, Grete Stefani and Michele Borgongino as regards Pompeii.

In this stage of the exhibition, not only frescoes, but also precious objects such as silverware and jewels, statues, crockery and vases express the perception of nature in the Greek and Roman worlds between the 8^th century BC and the 2^nd century AD and the diligent search for unity among architecture, painting and arrangement of green spaces.

Arranging gardens was an art closely related to frescoed walls and furnishings of rooms. In Pompeii, on the occasion of the exhibition, all these things are perceptible in a new itinerary including the visit of five “domus”: Praedia of Iulia Felix and the houses of Loreio Tiburtino, “Venere in conchiglia, “Frutteto” and Marco Lucrezio along Via Stabiana. They have been reopened thanks to the restoration carried out inside the project entitled “Grande Progetto Pompei”, in addition to the garden of “Casa degli Amorini dorati”, which can already be visited.

The section “Natura morta”, mounted in the Pyramid inside the Anphitheatre, is to be added to the new itinerary. This is a genre which originates in the Hellenistic Roman world with the representation of fruit and animals. For the first time the frescoes bearing these representations, removed in the past and guarded in the Museum of Naples, will be exhibited in Pompeii, as well as seeds, fruit and loaves – returned in their integrity by the ashes that covered them after the eruption of 79 AD – and plasters in a game of references both to painted nature and to its real models.

The landscape, The enchanted garden, The cultivated nature as gods’ gift, The space of nature and Nature as a sign are the themes illustrated by about 100 archeological relics on exhibition in the magnificent “Sundial Hall” (Sala della Meridiana), for the section of the exhibition in the National Archeological Museum of Naples. They are themes which, besides illustrating the relation between the ancient man and the environment, allow the visitors to focus on the artistic Magno-Greek production and in general on the Southern Italian, Hellenistic and Roman production.

“The exhibition, due to a precise scientific project, is not an end in itself, but it has been the occasion for admiring a large number of findings that are not usually exhibited in the Museum of Naples and a stimulus to definitively reopen the historical gardens of the building in order to offer the public a more and more pleasant experience”, tells Mr Paolo Giulierini, Director of the MANN, where the two inner gardens go back to flourishing again and in particular in the Eastern Garden a Roman garden will be reconstructed with a shady pergola of vines and roses and sculptural fragments.

Moreover, in Portico XLV, facing the Western Garden, a part of the maritime nymphaeum of Massa Lubrense will be exhibited. The nymphaeum is completely ornated with floreal and faunal motifs and richly decorated with glass paste and polychromatic marbles.

https://www.museoarcheologiconapoli.it/en/2016/03/myth-and-nature-nature-is-on-exhibition-in-pompeii-from-march-16th/

http://www.arte.it/foto/mito-e-natura-a-palazzo-reale-milano-407/

https://www.museoarcheologiconapoli.it/en/2016/03/myth-and-nature-nature-is-on-exhibition-in-pompeii-from-march-16th/

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Apollon sauroctone, Louvre

Giacobbe Giusti, PRAXITELE: Apollon sauroctone, Louvre

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PRAXITELE: Apollon sauroctone, Louvre

Roman copy from the 1st–2nd centuries AD after a Greek original from the 4th century BC.

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PRAXITELE: Apollon sauroctone, Louvre

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PRAXITELE: Apollon sauroctone, Louvre

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PRAXITELE: Apollon sauroctone, Cleveland Museum of Art

Apollo Sauroktonos (Lizard-slayer) attributed to Praxiteles, c. 350-275 BCE, bronze, copper and stone inlay, Cleveland Museum of Art

Giacobbe Giusti, APOLLO

Apollo with a lizard on a string on a mosaic from Roman Africa

Giacobbe Giusti, PRAXITELE: Apollon sauroctone, Louvre

Artiste	Praxitèle
Date	Ve siècle av. J.-C. ou années 350 av. J.-C.
Matériau	bronze

Giacobbe Giusti, PRAXITELE: Apollon sauroctone, Louvre

 

Le Sauroctone Borghèse du Louvre

L’Apollon sauroctone est un type statuaire grec traditionnellement attribué à Praxitèle, représentant le dieu Apollon s’apprêtant à tuer un lézard, principalement connu par le Sauroctone Borghèse conservé au musée du Louvre (Ma 441), le Sauroctone du Vatican conservé au musée Pio-Clementino (Inv. 750) et plus récemment, par l’Apollon en bronze conservé au Cleveland Museum of Art (Inv. 2004-30).

D’un point de vue historiographique, l’œuvre a été à l’origine de la Kopienforschung (« recherche des copies »), démarche consistant à recomposer un prototype perdu à partir de l’étude des copies, variantes, représentations sur d’autres supports (intailles, monnaies, etc.) et textes littéraires.

Histoire

À Rome, au xvii^e siècle, est découverte une statue grandeur nature d’un adolescent menaçant un lézard rampant sur un tronc d’arbre, laquelle rejoint rapidement les collections du cardinal Scipione Borghese. En 1720, le baron von Stosch rapproche une pierre gravée de ses collections d’un passage de Pline l’Ancien : « (Praxitèle réalisa aussi en bronze) un Apollon jeune, guettant avec une flèche un lézard en train de ramper, et qu’on appelle sauroctone¹. » En 1760, Johann Joachim Winckelmann étend le rapprochement à l’Apollon Borghèse et à une statuette en bronze de la collection Albani. Après avoir pensé à cette dernière², il reconnaît dans son Histoire de l’art (1760) un original de Praxitèle en l’Apollon Borghèse. La découverte quelques années plus tard d’autres sauroctones, et notamment d’une autre statue grandeur nature — le Sauroctone du Vatican — ruine cette hypothèse. Winckelmann et son collègue italien Ennio Quirino Visconti déterminent alors qu’il s’agit de copies romaines d’un même type. En 1807, le Sauroctone Borghèse fait partie des statues que le prince Camille Borghèse, en proie à de graves difficultés financières, est contraint de vendre à son beau-frère Napoléon I^er. L’œuvre rejoint alors le musée du Louvre, où elle se trouve toujours.

En 2003, l’étude du type est relancée par la mise sur le marché d’une statue jusque-là inconnue, qui se révèle être le seul Sauroctone grandeur nature en bronze. Selon son vendeur, il provient d’une résidence privée située dans l’ancienne RDA, où il était considéré comme une copie du xviii^e ou du xix^e siècle³. Acquis en 2004 par le Cleveland Museum of Art, l’« Apollon de Cleveland », comme on l’appelle bientôt, est daté par les premières analyses comme appartenant au second classicisme, et présenté par Michael Bennett, conservateur du département des antiquités grecques et romaines au CMA, comme pouvant avoir été la statue vue par Pline⁴. La statue fait également l’objet d’une controverse sur son origine, des rumeurs affirmant qu’elle a été en réalité pillée en Italie ou en Grèce, ce qui a amené le Conseil central archéologique (KAS) grec à demander officiellement au Louvre de ne pas l’accueillir dans le cadre de son exposition Praxitèle du printemps 2007⁵.

Notes

1. ↑ « Fecit et pubertem Apollinem subrepenti lacertæ cominus sagitta insidiantem, quem sauroctonon vocant. » Histoire naturelle [détail des éditions] [lire en ligne [archive]] (XXXIV, 70). Traduction issue de Marion Muller-Dufeu, La Sculpture grecque. Sources littéraires et épigraphiques, Paris, éditions de l’École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, coll. « Beaux-Arts histoire », 2002(ISBN 2-84056-087-9), n^o 1406, p. 487.
2. ↑ Haskell et Penny, p. 177.
3. ↑ Communiqué de presse [archive] du Cleveland Museum of Art, 22 juin 2004.
4. ↑ M. Bennett, « Une nouvelle réplique de l’Apollon Sauroctone au musée de Cleveland », catalogue de l’exposition Praxitèle, p. 206.
5. ↑ « Louvre backs down on ancient statue here » [archive], article de The Plain Dealer, quotidien de Cleveland.

Bibliographie

• Francis Haskell et Nicholas Penny (trad. François Lissarague), Pour l’amour de l’antique. La Statuaire gréco-romaine et le goût européen [« Taste and the Antique. The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900 »], Paris, Hachette, coll. « Bibliothèque d’archéologie », 1988 (édition originale 1981) (ISBN 2-01-011642-9), n^o 79, p. 177-179.
• Bernard Holtzmann et Alain Pasquier, Histoire de l’art antique : l’art grec, la Documentation française, la Réunion des musées nationaux et l’École du Louvre (ISBN 2-11-003866-7), p. 212-213.
• Jean-Luc Martinez, « L’Apollon sauroctone » dans Praxitèle, catalogue de l’exposition au musée du Louvre, 23 mars-18 juin 2007, éditions du Louvre & Somogy, 2007 (ISBN 978-2-35031-111-1), p. 203-235.
• (en) Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, Fourth-Century Styles in Greek Sculpture, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1997(ISBN 0-299-15470-X), p. 265.
• Claude Rolley, La Sculpture grecque, vol. II : La période classique, Manuels d’art et d’archéologie antiques, Picard, 1999(ISBN 2-7084-0506-3), p. 248-250.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_sauroctono

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

 

 

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

 

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

La Résurrection (Piero della Francesca)

Artiste	Piero della Francesca
Date	1463-1465
Type	fresque et détrempe
Technique	Fresque
Dimensions (H × L)	225 × 200 cm
Mouvement	Première Renaissance
Localisation	Museo Civico di Sansepolcro, Sansepolcro (Italie)

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

Lignes de force de la composition.

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

Autoportrait de Piero dans un des personnages

La Résurrection (La Resurrezione) est une œuvre de Piero della Francesca réalisée entre 1463 et 1465, de 2,25 2,00 ^m, figure toujours sur le lieu de sa création : un des murs de ce qui est aujourd’hui le Museo Civico di Sansepolcro et qui était la sala magna de la Residenza où se tenaient les réunions du Conseil.

C’est une fresque avec ajouts à la détrempe. Après une restauration pendant trois ans elle est de nouveaux visible en mars 2018 ¹.

Thème

Jésus, après sa mort sur la Croix et enseveli, est vu sortant de son tombeau ou sarcophage, des soldats endormis sont allongés autour (ils peuvent être éveillés et surpris de l’apparition), le mont Golgotha de son supplice peut être visible avec les trois croix. Le Christ apparaît en buste ou s’élève dans les airs arborant sa bannière. La présence d’anges témoins de la scène est possible.

Description

Le Christ debout, sortant du tombeau, fait face au spectateur, portant la bannière symbolique de la Résurrection, blanche à croix rouge (celle des Croisés),

Avec sa main qui relève la toge rose et le pied posé sur le rebord du tombeau, toutes ses plaiessont apparentes.

Le Christ en entouré d’arbres de part et d’autre d’un paysage de collines. Les deux troncs d’arbres et la hampe de la bannière forment une grille verticale ; la ligne passant par la hampe croise l’horizontale, du dessus du sarcophage, par la tête du soldat adossé de face.

Les soldats endormis par terre sont séparés du Christ par la ligne horizontale du sarcophage.

Le cadre peint continue le support architectural des moulures² et fait la transition entre l’espace mural et l’espace pictural.

Analyse

La composition se pose en profondeur sur trois plans : le paysage au fond, le Christ sortant du tombeau au milieu, les soldats endormis en premier plan.

Une composition est pyramidale avec à la base, l’alignement des soldats endormis, et au sommet le Christ debout.

Le Christ en entouré d’arbres morts de l’hiver, symbolisant la mort, à sa droite et d’arbres feuillus, vivants à sa gauche du printemps, symbolisant la nouvelle naissance.

L’autoportrait supposé de l’auteur du tableau est la rencontre de la verticale de la hampe de la bannière et de l’horizontal du dessus du sarcophage.

Anecdotes

Aldous Huxley, l’auteur du Meilleur des Mondes, fait allusion à cette œuvre dans son livre de voyages Chemin faisant³.

Lui qui qualifiait la fresque de la Résurrection « de plus belle peinture jamais réalisée » (the greatest painting in the world), l’a sauvé indirectement au plus fort de la Seconde Guerre mondiale : En 1944, Sansepolcro se trouvait sur la ligne de front. Anthony Clarke, officier dans l’artillerie, qui avait lu le livre de voyage de Huxley, n’entendait pas endosser la responsabilité de la destruction de la fresque de Piero della Francesca. Il donna l’ordre de cesser temporairement le feu. Le lendemain, les forces alliées purent s’emparer de la bourgade sans coup férir. Clarke demanda ensuite qu’on lui indique où se trouvait la fresque et la trouva intacte.

Albert Camus dans Noces, (dans la nouvelle intitulée Le désert) s’émeut ainsi de La Résurrection à la suite d’un voyage en Toscane : « C’est sur ce balancement qu’il faudrait s’arrêter, singulier instant où la spiritualité répudie la morale, où le bonheur naît de l’absence d’espoir, où l’esprit trouve sa raison dans le corps. S’il est vrai que toute vérité porte en elle son amertume, il est aussi vrai que toute négation contient une floraison de « oui ». Et ce chant d’amour sans espoir qui naît de la contemplation peut aussi figurer la plus efficace des règles d’action : au sortir du tombeau, le Christ ressuscitant de Piero della Francesca n’a pas un regard d’homme. Rien d’heureux n’est peint sur son visage – mais seulement une grandeur farouche et sans âme, que je ne puis m’empêcher de prendre pour une résolution à vivre. Car le sage comme l’idiot exprime peu. »

Notes et références

1. ↑ (it) « La Resurrezione torna a splendere: il capolavoro di Piero della Francesca prima e dopo il restauro » [archive], sur La Repubblica, Repubblica, 22 mars 2018 (consulté le24 mars 2018).
2. ↑ le cadrage serré n’en rend pas compte sur l’image de cette page (un peu en haut)
3. ↑ Le texte d’Huxley : [archive]

À noter

Aldous Huxley qui admirait les œuvres de Piero de la Francesca exposées à Sansepolcro, disait du Christ de la Résurrection qu’il était « athlétique ».

Sources

• Daniel Arasse, Note sur La Résurrection du Christ de Piero della Francesca, 8 min 28 s, entretien réalisé en 2001 par Olivier Capparos et Pascal Gibourg, enregistré par Laetitia Coïa, montage : Eric Beauron

 

The Resurrection is a frescopainting by the Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, painted in the 1460s in the Palazzo della Residenza in the town of Sansepolcro, Tuscany, Italy.

Piero was commissioned to paint the fresco for the Gothic-style Residenza, the communal meeting hall^[1] which was used solely by Conservatori, the chief magistrates and governors, who before starting their councils, would pray before the image. « The secular and spiritual meanings of the painting were always intimately intertwined. »^[2][3] Placed high on the interior wall facing the entrance, the fresco has for its subject an allusion to the name of the city (meaning « Holy Sepulchre »), derived from the presence of two relics of the Holy Sepulchre carried by two pilgrims in the 9th century. Piero’s Christ is also present on the town’s Coat of Arms.^[4]

Composition

Jesus is in the centre of the composition, portrayed in the moment of his resurrection, as suggested by the position of the leg on the parapet of his tomb, which Piero renders as a classical sarcophagus. His stern, impassive figure, depicted in an iconic and abstract fixity (and described by Aldous Huxley as « athletic »), rises over four sleeping soldiers, representing the difference between the human and the divine spheres (or the death, defeated by Christ’s light). His figure in the commune’s council hall « both protects the judge and purifies the judged » according to Marilyn Aronberg Lavin.^[5] The landscape, immersed in the dawn light, has also a symbolic value: the contrast between the flourishing young trees on the right and the bare mature ones on the left alludes to the renovation of men through the Resurrection’s light. Andrew Graham-Dixon notes that apart from the wound, Christ’s « body is as perfectly sculpted and as blemish-free as that of an antique statue. But there are touches of intense humanity about him too: the unidealised, almost coarse-featured face; and those three folds of skin that wrinkle at his belly as he raises his left leg. Piero emphasises his twofold nature, as both man and God. »^[6]

The guard holding the lance is depicted sitting in an anatomically impossible pose, and appears to have no legs. Piero probably left them out not to break the balance of the composition.^[7]

According to tradition and by comparison with the woodcut illustrating Vasari‘s Lives of the Painters, the sleeping soldier in brown armor on Christ’s right is a self-portrait of Piero. The contact between the soldier’s head and the pole of the banner^[8] carried by Christ is supposed to represent his contact with the divinity.

The composition is unusual in that it contains two vanishing points. One is in the center of the sarcophagus, because the faces of the guards are seen from below, and the other is in Jesus’s face. The top of the sarcophagus forms a boundary between the two points of view, and the steepness of the hills prevents the transition between the two points of view from being too jarring.^[9]

Near-destruction

Giacobbe Giusti, PIERO della FRANCESCA: La Résurrection

Note the impossible pose of the guard holding a spear. To achieve a more harmonious composition, Piero left the soldier without legs.

Sansepolcro was spared much damage during World War 2 when British artilleryofficer Tony Clarkedefied orders and held back from using his troop’s guns to shell the town. Although Clarke had never seen the fresco, his diary records his shock at the destruction in Monte Cassino and, apparently remembering where he had read of Sansepolcro, ordered his men to hold fire just as methodical shelling had begun. Clarke had read Huxley‘s 1925 essay describing the Resurrection, which states: « It stands there before us in entire and actual splendour, the greatest picture in the world. »^[10] It was later ascertained that the Germans had already retreated from the area — the bombardment had not been necessary, though Clarke had not known this when he ordered the shelling stopped. The town, along with its famous painting, survived. When the events of the episode eventually became clear, Clarke was lauded as a local hero and to this day a street in Sansepolcro bears his name.^[11]

References

1. Jump up^ The residenza was returned by Florentine authorities to the citizens of Sansepolcro, Tuscany, in 1459 as a sign of the restoration of some measure of autonomy to the Borgo. Dates as given in Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, 2002. Piero della Francesca 234ff: « a document of 1474 concerning structural repairs to the building mentions the painting ».
2. Jump up^ http://www.andrewgrahamdixon.com/archive/itp-157-the-resurrection-by-piero-della-francesca.html
3. Jump up^ In moving of the fresco, an inscription was lost (Lavin 2002:241).
4. Jump up^ A large chunk of stone stands in the lower right hand of the fresco. « and thus we are told to recognize this stone as the founding relic carried here from the Holy Land by Saints Arcano and Egidio » (Lavin 2002:243).
5. Jump up^ Lavin 2002:244.
6. Jump up^ http://www.andrewgrahamdixon.com/archive/itp-157-the-resurrection-by-piero-della-francesca.html
7. Jump up^ The Private Life of a Masterpiece – Piero della Francesca’s « The Resurrection » (2006). Quote: « You are totally absorbed into reality, in a way, of the image, and you don’t notice — it’s perfectly true — that one of the guards has no legs. The arrangement of the guards is so perfect, so clever, so symmetrical, so balanced — in terms of colour, in terms of form — that actually the fact that he’s got no room to put these legs in ceases to important, and you don’t notice for ages and ages and ages that he’s legless. »
8. Jump up^ The banner of a red cross on a white field was a convention observed by both Andrea Mantegna (in his San Zeno altarpiece) and Giovanni Bellini (in his Resurrection in Berlin); illustrations, for example, in Lavin, 2002, figs 154, 155.
9. Jump up^ Kline, Morris (1953). Mathematics in Western Culture. Great Britain: Pelican. p. 166.
10. Jump up^ Huxley, Aldous. « The Best Picture », 1925.
11. Jump up^ Butcher, Tim (24 December 2011). « The man who saved The Resurrection ». BBC News. Retrieved 24 February 2012.

Bibliography

• Zuggi, Stefano (1991). Piero della Francesca. Milan: Elemond.
• Manescalchi, Roberto (2008). Il Cristo Risorto di Piero immagini rare e desuete. Sansepolcro: Aboca Museum.
• Manescalchi, Roberto (2008). Amintore Fanfani e Giulio Gambassi, Il Cristo Risorto di Piero della Francesca: Una battaglia per l’arte. Firenze: Grafica European Center of Fine Arts.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_R%C3%A9surrection_(Piero_della_Francesca)

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