Duvarın Dili: Bizans Kenti Ayasoluk’un Erken Rönesans Dönemi Floransa’sına Yansımaları

Abstract

The character and the context of the painted programs of the chapels built by the affluent Florentine families located within the Church of Santa Croce in Florence have been studied extensively. This article focuses on the Peruzzi Chapel, one of the chapels commissioned by the Peruzzi family in the 1300s. The chapel reveals the scenes from the life of St. John the Evangelist and St. John the Baptist painted in the 1330s by Giotto. This article, in particular, narrows its lens to the Raising of Drusiana displayed on the right wall depicting the scenes from the life of St. John the Evangelist. Mentioned in the Acts of John, an appended text added to the New Testament by Saint John the Evangelist, the Raising of Drusiana had been reportedly taken place in Ayasoluk, a city named after the Saint himself, was one of the most sacred cities in Byzantine Anatolia. Giving an overview of the painted program in the Peruzzi Chapel, the article focuses on the depiction of this miraculous event and discusses how Giotto’s “painted architecture” creates the urban image of Ayasoluk and what it means in the fourteenth-century Florentine context. Using comparative evidence from the other pictorial programs done by Giotto and the notion of the “reality effect” borrowing from Roland Barthes’ seminal theory, this article argues that Giotto’s selection of architectural details to depict Ayasoluk’s urban context is a conscious choice. Not only Giotto but also the Peruzzi family was instrumental in choosing the image of Saint John the Evangelist and his city to underscore their urban and civic identity in Florence.