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Marco d’Agrate’s St. Bartholomew Flayed: Material History and Reception
Sterns, Madeline Naomi
Sterns, Madeline Naomi
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Abstract
This research examines the under-studied sculpture of St. Bartholomew Flayed, by Marco d’Agrate (c.1500 - 1572), a focus on twenty-first century, interdisciplinary methodology to analyze this art object through a layered lens of materiality and forensics in the context of the era of artist-anatomists in the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. Where past scholarship has been quick to employ this sculpture as an eye-catching case study to support larger ideas, a more in-depth understanding of the artwork is long overdue, in order for it to better serve in support in art historical discourse on a larger scale. As part of this process, this paper compiles a history of the known works of Marco d’Agrate, and of the working environment of sixteenth-century Milan. This St. Bartholomew is unlike most depictions that came both before and after d’Agrate’s. Other depictions of St. Bartholomew in Italian art are compared against d’Agrate’s, followed by an analysis of the similarities and differences between St. Bartholomew and Ovid’s Marsyas, who are often linked by the shared nature of their deaths. It has been said that this sculpture resembles the early anatomical models ( écorché ) made from the collaboration of artists and anatomists. In this paper, I include a direct “reading” of the body of Marco d’Agrate’s St. Bartholomew Flayed and its structures to discern that Marco d’Agrate must have practiced human anatomy through dissection in order to produce it. This paper concludes with a discussion on its infamous Latin inscription and the relocation of the sculpture from the exterior of the Cathedral of Milan to the south transept, where it can be found today as one of the most highly viewed works in one of the largest churches in all of Italy.
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Master of Arts in Art History -- John Cabot University, Spring 2023.
Date
2023
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Keywords
D'Agrate, Marco, ca. 1504-ca. 1572, Duomo di Milano
Citation
Sterns, Madeline Naomi. "Marco d’Agrate’s St. Bartholomew Flayed: Material History and Reception". Master's Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy, 2023.