Sign-In
Cart
The Tempietto del Clitunno Near Spoleto
Hardcover
Art HistoryMedieval & Renaissance HistoryArchitecture History
ISBN13: 9780271017280
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Published: Oct 23 1998
Pages: 630
Weight: 1.43
Height: 0.79 Width: 8.72 Depth: 11.08
Language: English
This is the first full-length study of the enigmatic Early Medieval chapel near the river Clitunno in central Umbria. Judson Emerick makes the Tempietto del Clitunno, a celebrated art-historical test case, the focus of a study that penetrates to the deep structure of the discipline.
For centuries scholars have puzzled over the chapel's lavish Corinthian column screens, the crosses surrounded by Neo-Attic vine scrolls in its pedimental reliefs, and the Christian Latin inscriptions in huge Neo-Augustan block capitals from its friezes. The sixteenth-century humanists who named the building the Tempietto del Clitunno treated it as an ancient Roman temple that the Christians later converted. But modern art historians, learning that the Tempietto had been built from the ground up as a chapel, declared it an anomaly, the product of a most startling and unexpected Early Christian and medieval classical revival.
Emerick intervenes by critiquing the notion of classical revival in medieval architecture. Impatient with the old Enlightenment historical plot that makes the Tempietto into a dark-age prodigy, Emerick boldly redescribes the architectural record to take away the Tempietto's strangeness. He shows conclusively that the chapel's orders, pedimental reliefs, and inscriptions conform to ancient Roman Imperial Corinthian standards, but then goes on to show that just this Corinthian decorative system was frequent, even normal in festive, public, Christian cult rooms from Constantine's day down through the twelfth century.
History of style as an end in itself yields here to style treated as political phenomenon. Emerick turns to the frescoes on the Tempietto's rear apse wall for clues to the builders' political goals. He explains how grandees from the medieval Lombardo-Frankish Duchy of Spoleto, full participants in a Christian theocratic state, set up an array of Mediterranean icons inside the Tempietto to enhance their social and political control. The chapel's Corinthian decorative system, he concludes, must be integral to this political program.
Also in
Architecture History
The Power of Place: Rulers and Their Palaces, Landscapes, Cities, and Holy Places
Rollason, David
Hardcover
Rural Utopia and Water Urbanism: The Modern Village in Franco's Spain
LeJeune, Jean-François
Paperback
A Field Guide to American Houses (Revised): The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture
McAlester, Virginia Savage
Paperback
Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks: Landscape Monuments of the Ancient Ohio Valley
Hancock, John E.
Hardcover
The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers
McKissack Daniel, Cheryl
Hardcover
Frédéric Chaubin. Cccp. Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed. 45th Ed.
Chaubin, Frédéric
Hardcover
The Golden Age of Normandale: An Illustrated Remembrance of Montgomery's Legendary Shopping Center
Moseley, Willie G.
Paperback
Welcome to Paradox City: A Critical History of Dallas as Told Through Its Architecture
Lamster, Mark
Hardcover
The Divine Blueprint: Temples, power places, and the global plan to shape the human soul.
Silva, Freddy
Paperback
The Genius in the Design: Bernini, Borromini, and the Rivalry That Transformed Rome
Morrissey, Jake
Paperback
Fausto & Felice Niccolini. Houses and Monuments of Pompeii. 45th Ed.
Schütze, Sebastian
Kockel, Valentin
Hardcover
Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City
Sante, Lucy
Paperback
Men at Work: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen Who Built It
Kurtz, Glenn
Hardcover
September 2026 Revision: What to see in Palm Springs - Sights, History & Stories
Stark, John
Paperback
The One World Tartarians (Black and White): The Greatest Civilization Ever Erased From History
Lee, James W.
Paperback
Antifascist Architecture: A Genealogy of Antifascist Architects, Buildings, History, and Theory
Santa Lucia, Andrew
Roche, Daniel Jonas
Paperback
Historic Homes of the Old West Side: The neighborhood at the heart of the planned city of Longview, Washington
Baxter a. I. a. Emeritus, Fred J.
Hardcover
Broken Glass: Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the Fight Over a Modernist Masterpiece
Beam, Alex
Paperback
The Sea Ranch, Revised: Fifty Years of Architecture, Landscape, Place, and Community on the Northern California Coast
Lyndon, Donlyn
Alinder, Jim
Hardcover
The Stage of Time: Secrets of the Past, The Nature of Reality, and the Ancient Gods of History
LaCroix, Matthew R.
Paperback
Cathedrals: Masterpieces of Architecture, Feats of Engineering, Icons of Faith
Jenkins, Simon
Hardcover
100 Turn-Of-The-Century Brick Bungalows with Floor Plans
Rogers & Manson
Manson
Manson, Rogers &.
Paperback
Grand Avenues: The Story of Pierre Charles l'Enfant, the French Visionary Who Designed Washington, D.C.
Berg, Scott W.
Paperback
The Stahl House: Case Study House Ú22: The Making of a Modernist Icon
Stahl Gronwald, Shari
Stahl, Bruce
Hardcover
Restoring Notre-Dame de Paris: Rebirth of the Legendary Gothic Cathedral
Zachmann, Patrick
de Chalus, Olivier
Hardcover
The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers
McKissack Daniel, Cheryl
Paperback
The Great Miscalculation: The Race to Save New York City's Citicorp Tower
Greenburg, Michael M.
Hardcover
Barragán Outside Barragán: A Journey Through Books, Trips, Exhibitions and Friends
Barragan, Luis
Canales, Fernanda
Paperback
Skyscrapers: A History of the World's Most Extraordinary Buildings -- Revised and Updated
Dupré, Judith
Hardcover
Historic Homes of the Old West Side: The neighborhood at the heart of the planned city of Longview, Washington
Baxter a. I. a. Emeritus, Fred J.
Paperback
New York 2020: Architecture and Urbanism at the Beginning of a New Century
Stern, Robert A. M.
Fishman, David
Tilove, Jacob
Hardcover