Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index



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  • Title: Trinity
  • Creator:
  • Description: Within a barrel-vaulted chapel God the Father holds up Christ on the cross. The dove of the Holy Spirit hovers between them. The Virgin and John the Evangelist flank the cross below. Mary looks out to the viewer and lifts her right hand to direct the gaze to Christ's body, while John contemplates Christ intently. Records indicate a tomb slab for Domenico di Lenzi and his family on the floor before this image. According to Eve Borsook, however, the man's red robe is that of a gonfaloniera di giustizia, an office held not by Domenico but by his cousin Lorenzo. The identity of the donor figures is thus still open to question. According to Joanathan Katz Nelson, an altar table would have been set before the sarcophagus and skeleton depicted at the bottom of the image and would have been seen only by those kneeling at the table. The evocation of mortality would have reminded clergy and members of the Lenzi family to pray for the souls of the donors.
  • Source: Wikimedia Commons
  • Rights: Public Domain
  • Subject (See Also): Crosses and Crucifixes Donor Portraits Memento Mori Trinity
  • Geographic Area: Italy
  • Century: 15
  • Date: ca. 1426-1427
  • Related Work:
  • Current Location: Florence, Santa Maria Novella, north nave wall
  • Original Location:
  • Artistic Type (Category): Digital images; Paintings
  • Artistic Type (Material/Technique): Frescoes
  • Donor:
  • Height/Width/Length(cm): 667cm/317cm/
  • Inscription: Io fu già quel che voi sete: e quel chi son voi ancor sarete (What you are, I once was; what I am, you will become.)
  • Related Resources: Eve Borsook, "Masaccio," in The Mural Painters of Tuscany (second edition, Oxford, 1980), 58-63; Nelson, Jonathan Katz, "Memorial Chapels in Churches: The Privatization and Transformation of Sacred Spaces," in Renaissance Florence: A Social History (Cambr