The Medieval Salento. Linda Safran
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it is relatively easy to compare the dress of monastic supplicants with the costumes worn by monastic saints, who are plentiful in Salentine churches, it is less easy to know whether a clerical supplicant has been represented in accord with sainted models. While bishops are attested epigraphically as patrons, they are not shown in extant monuments. The same is true for deacons; at least four are attested in inscriptions, but none are identifiable as painted supplicants. The only distinctive article of clothing occasionally worn by saintly deacons is the orarion, the striped prayer shawl worn over the left shoulder by, for example, Saint Stephen in the Candelora crypt at Massafra [63.B]. Unlike these other clerics, Salentine priests are not only cited but also depicted as supplicants. At Vaste in 1379/80, a tonsured priest named George kneels in prayer beside the Virgin and Child [157.G]. He wears a tight-sleeved red tunic under a white surcoat with loose elbow-length sleeves; the surcoat may be slit like that of Calogerius at Palagianello [92.B], though no colored lining is visible. At Otranto, in the same century, a tonsured priest identified in Latin as presbyter John, son of a magister, wears a similar color scheme [87.B]. A white, tight-sleeved tunic is visible under a red cape with a dark decorated neckline; a blue maniple hangs from his left wrist.
The representation of men’s footwear ranges, as noted above, from soled stockings in a neutral hue to bright-red socks and pointed, pearl-trimmed strappy shoes. Sandals seem to have been associated in painting only with the classical garb of long-ago saints. On sacred figures shown as nonnarrative icons sandals predominate, although Pope Leo the Great wears soft black shoes at the Candelora crypt, as does Vitus at the Buona Nuova in Massafra [62]. Footwear in narrative scenes usually consists of sandals, although in the Flight into Egypt scene at San Vito dei Normanni, the young James leading the donkey on which Mary rides wears what look like soft brown calf-high boots (botta) over bright-blue stockings; these “boots” were actually a second pair of rolled-down stockings. Except for children and laborers, who might be barefoot and stockingless, men wore woolen stockings that covered the feet and legs, often with sewn-on leather soles (the distinction between shoes and socks is postmedieval). These stockings were held up by cords and eventually attached by laces to the breeches worn by the well-to-do. Shibolei ha-Leqet confirms that men’s hose have laces to connect them to their breeches, and also cites a contemporary opinion that a man may wear two outer garments or two sets of stockings when it is cold on the Sabbath.89 Judah Romano’s fourteenth-century glossary contains the injunction that one should not appear before important persons without proper leg coverings,90 and surely this was true for men of status regardless of religious affiliation. Circular iron shoe buckles have been found at Apigliano and Campi Salentina, and boot hobnails were discovered in one tomb.91 A bronze shoelace tip was found at Otranto.92 Some men must have worn sandals, sandalia, and Shibolei ha-Leqet permits them even though there is a risk that the laces might break, rendering them forbidden footwear on the Sabbath.93 None of the Salentine men sports either elegant colored shoes or the practical types of medieval footwear made of wood (patinus, τζώκουλος) or with cork soles (summellara, φελλοκάλλιγον), even though these are attested in notarial sources in Apulia.94 Finally, very few males wear headgear in local paintings. The red cap at Lecce [58.C] and the coppula (chaperon) at Li Monaci [43.C; Plate 9] are rare exceptions.
Female Dress
There is more to say on the topic of female clothing and accessories even though many more female supplicants were included (though not named) in inscriptions than are depicted on walls or carved on tombstones; the disparity here is much greater than it is for males. Nevertheless, here, too, we can bring into the discussion both archaeological and untapped documentary sources to flesh out the pictorial evidence.
As I have argued elsewhere, the identification of a kneeling figure at Muro Leccese as a mid-eleventh-century Byzantine empress is incorrect [77.A].95 Marina Falla Castelfranchi identified her as Zoe, wife of Constantine IX Monomachos, and argued that she is present in this church originally dedicated to Saint Nicholas because of imperial involvement in renovations at the original shrine of Nicholas in Myra in 1042.96 For Falla, the Muro Leccese image records a contemporary historical scene. However, the tiny figure kneels alongside a huge enthroned one who is probably Christ or the Virgin and not Nicholas, because even though only the lower half of this monumental figure is preserved there is no trace of the episcopal omophorion.97 Such an outsized Christ, or indeed any such oversized devotional focus, is not found in Salento churches before the thirteenth century. Nor can the kneeling figure’s attire be dated before the thirteenth century, the earliest possible date for the scooped neck and pearl-like buttons from wrist to elbow.98 Before the late eleventh century buttons were limited to the front of upper-class male garments. The figure is not dressed even remotely like an imperial personage: she wears a blue-gray tight-sleeved garment cinched by a brown leather or fabric belt, much like many other female supplicants discussed below. While the buttons on the sleeve were certainly expensive items, there is no loros (jeweled ceremonial scarf) or any of the expected accoutrements befitting an empress. What appears at first glance to be a crown99 is, rather, an elaborate hairstyle, parted in the center and bound with a fabric net (reticella, ριτικέλλα),100 seemingly of red silk where it meets the forehead. Because it is the same shade of brown as the long braid that falls down the woman’s back it may be a fabric caul (caia, cala, κάγια) but it cannot be a crown, although nuptial crowns (corona, στέφανος) were used in the Salento until the twentieth century. Fourteenth-century aristocrats, but not empresses, might wear a crown directly over the hair rather than atop a veil.101 A review of imperial regalia, both surviving and represented in artwork, confirms a lack of parallels with the figure at Muro.102 In addition, her pallor and the modeling of the exposed neck are thirteenth-century features unparalleled among the extant figures at Muro Leccese. Most telling, perhaps, is her kneeling and hands-clasped pose, which was not introduced until the middle of the thirteenth century and is explored further in Chapter 6.
Also datable to the thirteenth century are two back-to-back females holding lit candles at San Nicola in Mottola [76.E; Plate 13].103 One faces Pope Leo the Great and the other the empress Helena. While the left-hand figure has a broader face, both have long hair trailing down the back like the woman at Muro Leccese, and they are dressed identically in wide-belted V-neck tunics, one off-white and one greenish-gray. The belts are probably fabric sashes, because they lack the trailing ends and metal ornamentation of leather belts so well attested archaeologically from funerary contexts. Both wear black shoes or soled stockings. Although the elaborateness of their dress is very different, the V-necks and lit candles suggest that the painted person of uncertain gender in the rock-cut Santa Marina at Massafra is also a thirteenth-century female [67.E]. She abuts a saint who is datable to the thirteenth century on stylistic grounds. The supplicant wears a white tunic under an orange V-neck outer garment that is draped below the bust with a white fabric ornamented with red roundels and red stripes, knotted at the waist. The sartorial details are difficult to understand.
On the south wall at Santa Maria del Casale are five different women, four of them wearing one or two layers of red clothing. In the other case, a woman venerates a male saint, perhaps a bishop, with her clasped hands crossing the painted border between them [28.K]. Either her hair is light brown or all of it is bound in a fabric caul that matches her golden-brown cloak. On the opposite wall, a kneeling woman being presented to the Virgin and Child by a deacon saint wears a white tunic and red mantle trimmed across the shoulders and at the elbow-length sleeves with white fur [28.R, top]. These are either extremely wide sleeve openings or the lining of a mantle; because of the height of the panel and its state of preservation it is impossible to be sure. The regally attired saint who is the first female to be saved in the Last Judgment on the west wall of the same church has similarly wide bell-shaped sleeves also lined in white, probably the silk-lined diopezzi, or διπλούνι, distinct from a simpler gonnella [28.sc.1].
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