Issues of Pictorial Narrative at Mezzaratta

Abstract

The paper presents a first systematic analysis of the issues of pictorial narrative raised by the well known Trecento fresco cycle with Stories of the Old and New Testament formerly decorating the church of Santa Maria di Mezzaratta on the Bolognese hills. Painted by a few generations of artists during at least four decades after 1338, the murals were mostly detached with the technique of strappo in the mid-twentieth century and displayed in a room prepared for their exhibition in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Bologna, where one can still admire them as the most complete cycle of frescoes survived from the Bolognese Trecento painting. After reconstructing the original narrative order of the mural cycle by using early modern artistic literature to fill the gaps left by lost scenes, the paper investigates some problems raised by the narrative distribution of the stories, particularly focusing on the reasons why the whole counter-façade was painted with the Annunciation and the Nativity