Altarpiece of Pellegrino II

The altarpiece of the Pilgrim II is a medieval altarpiece, which stands in the cathedral of the Italian city of Cividale. The silver paper was of Pilgrim II, the Patriarch of Aquileia, about the year 1200 and donated crowned today the main altar of the church of Santa Maria Assunta. It shows Mary and the baby Jesus surrounded by archangels and a host of saints. The artwork is by its rich ornamentation and early typographic production technology of its inscriptions both art history and pressure history of interest.

Description

The silver, partly gilded relief portrait is now in the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, the small town of Cividale in Friuli. The approximately one meter high and two meters wide rectangular plate sits in a modern display case above the main altar in the choir. The essay is a votive offering of Pilgrim II (Latin name Pellegrino ), who exercised the Patriarchate of Aquileia from 1195 to 1204.

The altarpiece is divided into four parts: the center is the triptych shows Mary as the Mother of God (Latin mater dei ) with the infant Jesus on her lap; from left and right rush the Archangels Michael and Gabriel to the seated mother with child. The scene takes place under a dreibögigen arcade. The triptych is flanked on each side by a department in which a total of 25 male and female saints stand side by side in three horizontal rows. All characters with the exception of the Child Jesus are identified by name. To the triptych and the two side compartments running around the frame, are mapped in the head medallions without inscriptions. In the upper horizontal frame piece Christ and John the Baptist and the four Evangelists are represented. In the lower counterpart may Pilgrim II, who is kneeling at the feet of Mary, be identified by an accompanying inscription as the donor of the altarpiece. Horizontally on the inside of both frames running boards along the votive inscription, which contains ten leonine verses.

Typography

All inscriptions on the altarpiece were written in Latin. The font type of the consecration inscription is classified broadly as a gothic capitalism. The letters were turned to the matching view of modern commentators, using individual Letterpunzen successively in the silver for the production of inscriptions. For the typographic production method is the fact that the letters apparently meet the criterion of type identity, therefore must come each letter image of one and the same Letterpunze. This can, inter alia, to recognize the erroneous "R ", the damage is repeated in all Rs in the text. The characters in high relief sticking out of rectangular depressions that have been created by the flesh of the Tiefreliefpunzen; the separation of the letters and their indentations from each other by fine margins is another indication of the sequential use of single letters. Also, the observation that the letters do not always hold the line, but ' dancing ' on the baseline as it points to the use of individual Letterpunzen.

Overall, it is in the typeface, the use of approximately forty letters make up appearing in approximately equal parts into a smaller and a larger font size. With the smaller letters the names of saints and the donor's inscription of the patriarch were punched, while the others were used for the printing of the names of the archangels, the Mother of God, the abbreviations of sanctus / sancta ( "holy" ) and the two-line inscription. The latter was beaten on eight silver strips, which were then nailed lined up on the wooden base of the altarpiece.

The typographic technique could have been borrowed from the Byzantine cultural area art historian Angelo, according to the Lipinsky, where such inscriptions created in the 10th were to find to 12th century reliquaries and Lipsanotheken. However, a random check of this assumption on the basis of Limburg reliquary showed that the inscription was engraved rather directly into the metal.

The Prüfening consecration inscription of 1119 is another early example of typographical text production in the Latin West, but differs in some technical features: the inscription appears in low relief and the plate is made ​​of clay, not silver. According to the lower hardness of the printing material no metal punches, but (wood ) were used stamp.