Preparing the Way: Confraternal Art in the Oratory of San Giovanni Battista in Urbino, 1390-1440

Abstract

This dissertation examines the decorative program in the Oratory of San Giovanni Battista in Urbino, the meeting place of a homonymous flagellant confraternity founded in 1350. The Urbino oratory, built in the late fourteenth century, is an early instance of an independent confraternal meeting house, and one of an even smaller number that has survived with large portions of its pictorial decoration intact. This cycle was completed between 1390 and 1440 in a series of interventions by different artists, including celebrated Marchigian painters Lorenzo and Jacopo Salimbeni. Scholarship to date has been preoccupied with questions of dating, style and attribution, and has focused on the contribution of the Salimbeni in isolation. This thesis offers an alternative reading which considers the pictorial decoration as a whole and analyses the program in terms of the interests and needs of the commissioning confraternity. The confraternity’s unpublished fifteenth-century statutes are identified as a key source in reconstructing confraternal ritual and devotional practices, used to elucidate the ways in which the fresco program is aligned with members’ sense of corporate identity and penitential practice. Finally, the thesis argues for the need to recognise confraternity-specific viewing modes as a fundamental aspect of program’s design and reception. Examination of similar decorative programs elsewhere confirms that this is not unique to Urbino, and suggests the importance of recognising site-contingent viewing practices.