Anastasis: Research in Medieval Culture and Art (May 2018)
Hypostases of Representing the Portrait of the Pope in the Western Art
Abstract
Our objective of the study”Representation of the Pope in Western Art” is to present a few specific features of the typology of the portrait for the sovereign pontiff. The article is structured in two parts, the introductive one which treats problems related to the iconography of the papal portrait, a short presentation of the clothes and papal signs, while the second one contains a description of a few representative papers for the history of art, starting with the papal portrait from the Middle Ages, reaching the contemporary period. The history of the papal portrait has been a long one, reaching its peak during the Renaissance and Baroque, when various artists have approached this theme, creating works which have become historical documents of that time. The works in which the figures of the sovereigns pontiff were represented have continued up to contemporary times, under different forms and mediums of artistic representation, some of them being more controversial, others, in return, less usual such as the works of Maurizio Cattelan – La Nona Ora and Mark Wallinger – I am Innocent. Being very appreciated by contemporary people, the papal portrait has enjoyed a real success, between 2004-2005 there was an exhibition suggestively called Papi in Posa (Papal Portraiture). The exhibition reunited a real gallery of portraits of sovereigns pontiff , a sort of journey through history and art, materialized in a volume dedicated to this event.
