Creative Connectivity

by Melissa Shanks

Of the many Benedictine reform movements that have occurred throughout history, one of the most interesting and least well known is that of the Cassinese Congregation.  As was the case so often with earlier reform movements, the leaders of the Congregation sought to return Benedictine monks to a purer form of observance of Benedict’s Rule. The reform movement began in 1424 at the abbey of Santa Giustina in Padua under the leadership of its abbot, Ludovico Barbo, spreading eventually to many of the other Benedictine monasteries in Italy. Monks no longer took vows to a particular house but to the congregation. Ruling authority was concentrated in an annual general chapter, and superiors of the congregation were elected for three-year terms.

A key feature of the reform was that, since monks now made vows to the congregation and not just to their house, abbots and monks were circulated yearly among the various monasteries. Each religious house was autonomous and had administrative freedom, but this mixing created a complex network.

The “creative connectivity” of this network of monasteries resulted in what this book refers to as a “visual network,” consisting of the artists, architects, and monks who occupied and designed Benedictine churches and monasteries of the reformed Cassinese Congregation. The authors argue that this network was larger, more continuous, and more multilayered than previously understood, and this book offers a deeper and richer appreciation of the works produced by the artists and architects employed by the Cassinese. To illustrate this strong circulation pattern within the Congregation, the authors include a map of all the Cassinese monasteries in Italy from 1419 to 1582 in order to show the reach of this connection up and down the Italian peninsula.

The return of Benedictine monastic life to an observant following of the Benedictine rule bore fruit not only in the spiritual and intellectual lives of the monks but in the art and architecture they commissioned and built. As a result of the reform, monks circulated through the network, and master artists gained broader reputations among the members of the Congregation. They were encouraged to supply works of art for sites far from where they were made. Some monks simply relocated to serve another monastery as the monastic complexes and churches were being rebuilt or renovated during the roughly fifty years of intensive activity that followed the beginnings of the reform.

Lay artists also benefited from, and were influenced by, the monks. Artists were offered workshops in monasteries and were granted burial privileges and other benefits. The painter Correggio, for example, lived with the Cassinese abbey in Parma where they purchased pigments for him through their network of apothecaries—an example of a secondary monastic network that served as a channel of artistic influence. Efforts to allow multiple artists within the network to study and to reimagine the Congregation’s masterpieces by making copies and replicas also linked the communities.

Co-edited by Giancarla Periti, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Toronto and a specialist in Italian Renaissance art, this book is an outgrowth of an international conference organized at the Kunsthistorisches Institute/Max-Planck-Institut in Florence in March 2017. A lengthy introduction by the co-editors presents the main theme of the network. The individual essays—primarily papers presented at the conference—are divided into three groups by subtheme to illustrate the extent of the network. The subthemes are “1. Models, Mobility, and Identity, 2. Works and Agents, 3. Networks, Artistic Geography, and Circulation.” Each essay appears in the languages in which it was presented at the conference—English, Italian, or German—so those who can only read English will have access to only about half of the essays.

The text emphasizes that this research on the visual network is still emerging, and so the editors do not work to tie the information together in a streamlined fashion. My word of caution would be that, because of the emerging nature of the work, this mosaic of essays varies quite a bit in style and relationship to the central theme of the book. There is a lot to reflect on if you are interested in this subject given the detailed mapping and extensive footnotes. But for readers looking for more comprehensive and fully presented arguments, this book would not fully satisfy them.

Editors Nova and Periti work to “map” their way through the complexities of this vast array of context. So go into this book with a sense of academic adventure, expecting to explore these subjects with the researchers and marking out some trails of your own in this emerging subject.