Discrepancies in the rendering of figures and scenes reveal the use of drawings as a means of recording and handling iconography. My study of the pictorial program examines the process of the transmission of images in the medieval world and the assimilation of Byzantine sources into the visual vocabulary used in Parma.
The painting of the Baptistery is thus dated to 1233, at the height of the religious movement known as the Alleluia, or Great Devotion, which spread from Parma throughout the cities of northern Italy in that year. Francis, as the patron of the pictorial decoration. Through an analysis of the functions of the building and the connections between the iconographic program and the city’s political context, I identify the preacher Gerard Boccabadati, an early disciple of St. The iconographic program laid out in this idiosyncratic space depicts Heavenly Jerusalem in the dome, the Baptism of Christ in the apse, and an array of figures and scenes in the other niches. I read the sixteen-sided, domed interior of the Baptistery, built largely between 11, as a synthesis of late antique and early Gothic architecture. In The Parma Baptistery and Its Pictorial Program, I examine how in 1233 the painter responsible for the extensive decoration of the Baptistery at Parma, Italy, adopted and redeployed Byzantine sources to promote the religious and political agenda of the Franciscan preacher in control of the city government.