Fourteenth-century Remains in San Martino Maggiore, Bologna: Painted Vestiges of a Sacred Space during the Gothic Age

Abstract

The Carmelite Basilica of San Martino Maggiore is among the Bolognese mendicant churches with the most important evidence of fourteenth-century painted decoration, together with San Giacomo Maggiore, the seat of the Hermits of St. Augustine, and Santa Maria dei Servi, the house of the Servants of Mary. The scattered and isolated remnants of Trecento painting in San Martino include: a fragmentary complex of murals made in subsequent phases during the second quarter of the fourteenth century at the end of the north nave near the entrance to the sacristy, a column painted by Pseudo Dalmasio, incorporated within the third right pillar between the third and fourth bays, the fragment of a mural depicting the Crucifix, a late work by Vitale degli Equi, detached and moved onto the fifth right pillar between the fifth and sixth bays, finally, a mural painting in a niche representing the Madonna of Humility by Simone di Filippo, also known as “dei Crocifissi”, along the left wall of the church near the entrance to the cloister. Although both the surviving evidence and the related archival documentation is fragmentary, the article intends to make a first attempt to place those paintings in the architectural and religious context of the Carmelite church of Bologna.