The medieval object-enigma, and the problem of the Capella Palatina in Palermo

Abstract

Abstract The following essay is an annotated version of a paper that was presented at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery of Art in January 1992.1 My aim was to survey a rather complicated subject, and so it was possible only to touch on a number of problems that I intend to present more fully in a forthcoming monograph. At the same time I felt that the paper was self-sufficient and made — perhaps more forcefully than the extended version of the argument — a point that is directly relevant to Word & Image. The subject of the paper is the Capella Palatina in Palermo, the royal chapel of the Norman Kings of Sicily that was built by Roger II beginning probably in the 1130s (figure 1).2 The question that is addresses, however, is one of the relationship between vu=isual anf verbal forms of representation: between the material forms of the edifice — the art and architecture of the Capella Palatina — and the words and actions that occurred within it — the events, rituals, and liturgies of the twelfth century. It was not fruitful to explore this relationship interms of one-to-one structure, of the sort that has been depicted in studies of the function of medieval buildings elsewhere.3 It was necessary to conceive of it in more dynamic, indeed reciprocal, terms — in which human actions were given meaning by structured space, and material forms were made rational by the measured beat of movements and words. We no longer live this way, and our art and architecture function completely differently. However, to my mind this relationship is the very essence of the medieval experience, and coming to terms with it, a historical problem of importance.