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Abstract
The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican was the intended site for tapestries depicting the lives of Saints Peter and Paul that were commissioned in 1515 by Leo X, designed by Raphael in Rome, and woven in the Brussels workshop of Pieter van Aelst. The contribution these tapestries made to papal majesty has long been acknowledged, and various schemes for their hanging within the chapel have been proposed. Their effect not only on the preexisting paintings but also on the spoken and sung rituals that took place in the Sistine Chapel is significant as well.
Notes
1. Nicole Winfield, “Sistine Chapel Pollution Levels Threaten Michelangelo Frescoes, Vatican May Limit Visitors,” Huffington Post, October 17, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/17/sistine-chapel-pollution_n_4114534.html (accessed February 27, 2014)
; and John Hooper, “Sistine Chapel Revived by Cutting-Edge Lighting and Air Conditioning,” Guardian (London), October 29, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/29/sistine-chapel-lighting-air-conditioning-michelangelo-vatican (accessed January 31, 2015) .2. A sample of this work accompanies the online version of this essay at Taylor & Francis Online (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2015.1043827). See also Disquiet, exh. cat. (Kingston, Ont.: Modern Fuel Gallery, 2005); and Christof Migone, “Sonic Somatic: Performances of the Unsound Body” (PhD diss., New York University, 2007), 65–66.
3. John Shearman, “The Chapel of Sixtus IV,” in The Sistine Chapel: The Art, the History, and the Restoration, ed. Carlo Pietrangeli et al. (New York: Harmony Books, 1986), 24–25.
4. Eight of the ten extant tapestries show scenes from the Acts of the Apostles; The Miraculous Draught of Fishes is based on Luke 5:3–10, and Christ’s Charge to Peter, on Matthew 16:17–19 and John 21:15–17. For a concise and canonical listing of the biblical texts associated with each tapestry, see John Shearman, Raphael’s Cartoons in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, and the Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (London: Phaidon, 1972), 210
. Christian Kleinbub recently considered these tapestries as part of Raphael’s pictorial participation in period debates about the use and abuse of religious images (Vision and the Visionary in Raphael [University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011], 71–99) . The long-awaited two-volume discussion of these tapestries being prepared by the Vatican Museums will soon be available: Anna Maria De Strobel et al., Leone X e Raffaello in Sistina—Gli arrazi degli Atti degli Apostoli (Vatican City: Musei Vaticani, forthcoming). I thank Arnold Nesselrath for news about this last reference.5. The other saint so honored was John the Evangelist. The fundamental study of sermons preached “before the pope during and as part of the liturgical solemnities [coram papa inter missarum solemnia]” is John O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450–1521 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1979)
.6. Shearman, “The Chapel of Sixtus IV,” 24–25. The temporary structure built by Leo X to shelter the high altar of St. Peter’s during construction was discussed by Jens Niebaum, “Bramante’s Tegurio and the Planning of St. Peter’s under Leo X” (paper, Renaissance Society of America conference, New York, March 28, 2014)
.7. John Shearman, Raphael in the Early Modern Sources (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), vol. 1, 205
, who cautions the June 15, 1515, payment “should not be described as the ‘first.’”8. L. D. Ettlinger, The Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo: Religious Imagery and Papal Primacy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 19–22
; Gianni Danzi, Arnold Nesselrath, and Franco Maria Ricci, Vaticano: La Cappella Sistina; Il Quattrocento (Vatican City: Musei Vaticani; Milan: FM Ricci, 2003) ; and Jorge Maria Mejia et al., The Fifteenth-Century Frescoes in the Sistine Chapel (Vatican City: Musei Vaticani, 2003) . There has been great debate about whether the ten extant tapestries were all that had been planned originally, or whether sixteen tapestries (corresponding to the number of available bays in the chapel) had been intended. For a summary of this still unresolved debate, see Thomas Campbell, Tapestries in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002), 199–201 .9. John White and John Shearman, “Raphael’s Tapestries and Their Cartoons,” Art Bulletin 40, no. 3 (1958): 193–221
, at 218–19; and Eugène Müntz, Les tapisseries de Raphaël au Vatican (Paris: Rothschild J., 1897), 30–31 .10. Mark Evans and Clare Browne, eds., with Arnold Nesselrath, Raphael: Cartoons and Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, exh. cat. (London: V&A Publishing, 2010), 81
.11. Shearman, Raphael’s Cartoons, 11.
12. The tapestries are no longer regularly hung in the Sistine Chapel. In modern times, these tapestries have been hung only twice: in 1983 during the quincentennial of Raphael’s birth and in 2010 in preparation for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to London and the concomitant exhibition of some of Raphael’s tapestries at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
13. Shearman, Raphael’s Cartoons, 12 n. 66.
14. Ibid., 7 and 12.
15. Other painters, including, for instance, Lorenzo Lotto, were involved as well. See Guido Cornini et al., Raffaello nell’appartamento di Giulio II e Leone X (Milan: Electa, 1993)
; and Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny, Raphael (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 49 .16. Shearman, “The Chapel of Sixtus IV,” 24–25.
17. Hugo Chapman et al., Raphael from Urbino to Rome, exh. cat. (London: National Gallery, 2004), 26–29
.18. Stijn Alsteens et al., Raphael to Renoir: Drawings from the Collection of Jean Bonna, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009), 12–15
, cat. no. 6.19. Sharon Fermor and Alan Derbyshire, “The Raphael Tapestry Cartoons Re-examined,” Burlington Magazine 140 (1998): 236–50
, .20. Carta reale, or a royal-sized sheet of paper, was about 11⅝ by 17 in. (29.5 by 43.3 cm), according to Arthur Hind, Early Italian Engraving (London: Knoedler, 1938), vol. 1, 305
. See also David Landau and Peter Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 1470–1550 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 376 n. 51 .21. For example, the 1425–50 Life of the Magdalene tapestries for the Church of the Magdalene in Troyes had used bedsheets sewn together by a seamstress for the cartoon support. Elizabeth Cleland, “Tapestries as a Transnational Artistic Commodity,” in Locating Renaissance Art, ed. Carol M. Richardson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 103–34
, at 109, 111; and Laura Weigert, Weaving Sacred Stories: French Choir Tapestries and the Performance of Identity (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004), 9–10 .22. Carmen Bambach, Drawing and Painting in the Italian Renaissance Workshop: Theory and Practice, 1300–1600 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 34–39, 54–56
. Bambach (55) cites Parmigianino’s Head of a Bishop Saint cartoon as “a highly original use” of wet media for a painting cartoon, adapted from “the painting technique of sixteenth-century stained glass and tapestry cartoons.”23. Fermor and Derbyshire, “The Raphael Tapestry Cartoons Re-examined,” 239.
24. Edith Standen and Jennifer Wearden, “Early Modern Tapestries and Carpets, c. 1500–1780,” in The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 597–630
, at 598.25. J. R. Hale, ed., trans. Hale and J. M. A. Lindon, The Travel Journal of Antonio de Beatis: Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, France and Italy, 1517–1518 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1979), 94
. For more on the production of these tapestries, see Campbell, Tapestries in the Renaissance, 1–12, 102–87; idem, Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty: Tapestries at the Tudor Court (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); and Nello Forti Grazzini, “Arazzi di Bruxelles in Italia, 1480–1535,” in Gli arazzi del Cardinale Bernardo Cles e il ciclo della Passione di Pieter van Aelst, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo (Trent: Temi, 1990), 34–37 .26. Standen and Wearden, “Early Modern Tapestries and Carpets,” 599.
27. Ettlinger, The Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo; Danzi et al., La Cappella Sistina: Il Quattrocento; and Mejia et al., The Fifteenth-Century Frescoes.
28. Campbell, Tapestries in the Renaissance, 194.
29. Nonetheless, these tapestries were famous works of art that were copied repeatedly, a history I deal with further in my book in preparation, Raphael and the Arts of Collaboration. See Lorraine Karafel, “Border Zones: Reproduction and Change in Raphael’s Designs for Tapestries” (paper, College Art Association Annual Conference, New York, February 2013)
; Campbell, Tapestries in the Renaissance, 215–18; Clifford Brown and Guy Delmarcel, Tapestries for the Courts of Federico II, Ercole, and Ferrante Gonzaga, 1522–63 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996) ; and Shearman, Raphael’s Cartoons, 143–46.30. Carl Bunsen, “Anhang über die ursprüngliche Anordnung der Tapeten Raphaels in der Sixtinischen Capelle,” in Beschreibung der Stadt Rom, by Ernst Platner et al. (Stuttgart: Gottaschen Buchhandlung, 1832), vol. 2, 408–15
; Ernst Steinmann, “Die Anordnung der Teppiche Raffaels in der Sixtinischen Kapelle,” Jahrbuch der königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 23 (1902): 186–95 ; James von Schmidt, “Über Anordnung und Komposition Teppiche Raffaels,” Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, n.s., 15 (1904): 285–89 ; White and Shearman, “Raphael’s Tapestries and Their Cartoons,” 197–201; and Tristan Weddigen, “Tapisseriekunst unter Leo X: Raffaels ‘Apostelgeschichte’ für die Sixtinische Kapelle,” in Hochrenaissance im Vatikan, 1503–1534, ed. Francesco Buranelli et al. (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 1999), 268–84 . See also Michael Rohlmann, “Raffaels vatikanisches Bilderzeremoniell: Grenzüberschreitungen in der Sixtinischen Kapelle und den Stanzen,” in Functions and Decorations: Art and Ritual at the Vatican Palace in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Tristan Weddigen et al. (Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2004), 95–113 . This search for a single hanging order parallels the search for a definitive text of a play by Shakespeare that Stephen Greenblatt characterized as the “dream of a master plan” (The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Greenblatt [New York: W. W. Norton, 1997], 71) .31. Indeed, for Good Friday, the Sistine Chapel was regularly bare of any tapestries. Marc Dykmans, L’oeuvre de Patrizi Piccolomini, ou le cérémonial papal de la première Renaissance (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1982), vol. 2, 376
; Johann Burchard, Diarium sive rerum urbanarum commentari (1483–1506), ed. L. Thuasne (Paris: Ernst Leroux, 1885), vol. 1, 182 ; and Ernst Steinmann, Die Sixtinische Kapelle (Munich: Bruckmann, 1905), vol. 1, 578 .32. On the gallery to the Scala Regia, see Francesco Cancellieri, Descrizione delle cappelle pontificie e cardinalizie (Rome: Salvioni, 1790), vol. 2, 4, vol. 3, 286–89
. On the Sala de’ Paramenti in the Vatican Palace, see idem, Storia de’ solenni possesi de’ somme pontefici (Rome: Lazzarini, 1802), 392, 518; on the Sala de’ Paramenti in the Quirinal Palace, 408, 518. See also Edward Wright, Some observations made in travelling (London, 1730), 271, as cited in Shearman, Raphael’s Cartoons, 142–43.33. Shearman, Raphael in the Early Modern Sources, vol. 1, 708–9.
34. Shearman, Raphael’s Cartoons, 140; and idem, Raphael in the Early Modern Sources, vol. 1, 825, where he cautions that it “cannot be considered certain” that the tapestries mentioned were in fact those designed for the Sistine Chapel by Raphael for Leo X.
35. Shearman, Raphael’s Cartoons, 140–41.
36. Two new tapestries designed by Perino del Vaga were intended to serve as a basamento, or bottom border, in their stead. Shearman, Raphael’s Cartoons, 141; and idem, Raphael in the Early Modern Sources, vol. 1, 849.
37. This occasion invalidates Creighton Gilbert’s claim that period viewers would not have tolerated a suite of fewer than sixteen new tapestries to clothe all four walls of the chapel ( “Are the Ten Tapestries a Complete Series or a Fragment?” in Studi su Raffaello: Atti del congresso internazionale di studi, ed. Sambucco Hamoud and Maria Letizia Strocchi [Urbino: Quattro Venti, 1987], vol. 1, 533–50, at 535)
.38. White and Shearman, “Raphael’s Tapestries and Their Cartoons,” 208; Shearman, Raphael’s Cartoons, 38; and idem, Raphael in the Early Modern Sources, vol. 1, 491.
39. With further references, Bonnie Blackburn, “Music and Festivities at the Court of Leo X: A Venetian View,” Early Music History 11 (1992): 1–37
; Jennifer Fletcher, “Marcantonio Michiel, ‘che ha veduto assai,’” Burlington Magazine 123 (1981): 602–9 ; and idem, “Marcantonio Michiel, His Friends and Collection,” Burlington Magazine 123 (1981): 452–67.40. Shearman, Raphael in the Early Modern Sources, vol. 1, 491: “Queste feste di Natale il Papa messe fuori in Capella 7 pezzi d razzo, perché l’ottavo non era fornito, fatti in Ponente, che furono giudicati la più bella cosa che sia stata fatta in eo genere a’ nostri giorni, benché fussino celebri li razzi di Papa Giulio de l’Anticamera, li razzi del Marchese di Mantove del disegno del Mantegna, e li razzi di Alfonso, overo Federico Re di Napoli. Il disegno de’ ditti razzi del Papa furono fatti da Raffaello da Urbino pittore eccellente, per li quali el ne hebbe dal Papa duchati 100 per uno, e la seda et ora, de li quali sono abundantissimi, e la fattura costorono 1500 duchati el pezzo, si che costavano in tutto, come il Papa istesso disse, duchati 1600 il pezzo, per benché si giudicasse e divulgasse valer duchati 2000.”
41. Walter Denny, “Oriental Carpets and Textiles in Venice,” in Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, exh. cat., Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007), 174–91
; and Rosamund Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 75–94 .42. Fletcher, “Marcantonio Michiel, ‘che ha veduto assai,’” 604.
43. Mariano Armellini, ed., Il diario di Leone X di Paride de Grassi (Rome, 1884; reprint, Charleston, S.C.: Bibliolife, 2010), 77; and Shearman, Raphael in the Early Modern Sources, vol. 1, 490: “de quibus tota capella stupefacta est in aspectu illorum, qui, ut fuit universale juditium, sunt res qua non est aliquid in orbe nunc pulchrius.”
44. Evans and Browne (Cartoons and Tapestries, 96) suggest that the cartoon was “probably in the collection of Ferdinand de’ Medici in Florence in 1627.”
45. A. Paul Oppé, personal communication with Edgar Wind, cited in Oppé, “Right and Left in Raphael’s Cartoons,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 7 (1944): 82–94
, at 85 n. 1.46. Gaetano Moroni states that “in [il fondo del baldachino] dell'altare si pone l'arazzo istoriato che fa le veci del quadro” and notes that on Saint Stephen's Day in his time, “il quadro dell'altare è l'arazzo rappresentante il presepio” (Le cappelle pontificie, cardinalizie, e prelatizie [Venice: Tipografia Emiliana, 1841], 14, 353). On the basis of an early eighteenth-century engraving, J.-D. Passavant suggests a tapestry designed by Raphael “decorait autrefois l'autel de la chapelle Sixtine” (Passavant, Raphael d'Urbin et son père, Giovanni Santi [Paris, 1860], vol. 2, 211, no. 196). Johann Burchard, papal master of ceremonies, had indicated that on Easter 1486, there was a tapestry altar frontal with Christ's Passion: “Ante altare fuit pallium panni de rascia passione Christi laboratum.” A tapestry as high as the Stoning of Stephen (14 ft. 9⅛ in. by 12 ft. 1⅝ in., or 4.5 × 3.7 m; Evans and Browne, Cartoons and Tapestries, 96) would have hung almost from cornice to floor, which White and Shearman (“Raphael's Tapestries and Their Cartoons,” 216) estimate was about 15 ft., 5 in. (4.7 m), but Shearman (Raphael's Cartoons, 27) described the original altar as a wooden table altar that stood near but not necessarily attached to the wall. See also Niels Krogh Rasmussen, “Maiestas Pontificia: A Liturgical Reading of Étienne Dupérac's Engraving of the Capella Sixtina from 1578,” Analecta Romana Instituti Danici 12 (1983): 109–48, at 117.
47. The door is visible on the right side of the altar wall in Dupérac's print of the Sistine Chapel (Fig. 11). Rasmussen, “A Liturgical Reading,” 120, suggests that Shearman (Raphael's Cartoons, 29) “forgets that access to the sacristy [through the sacristy door] was required by the person preparing the thurible who would also have to return it to the sacristy after use so that the Chapel would not fill up with smoke.”
48. Anna Maria De Strobel, “Weaving the Sistine Tapestries,” in Evans and Browne, Cartoons and Tapestries, 34.
49. Shelly Matthews, Perfect Martyr: The Stoning of Stephen and the Construction of Christian Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 100–101
.50. Francesco Cancellieri, Descrizione delle cappelle pontificie e cardinalizie (Rome, 1790), vol. 3, 218; and Dykmans, L'oeuvre de Patrizi Piccolomini, vol. 2, 331.
51. See Burchard, Diarium, vol. 1, 5, 124, 173, 232, 282, 328, 379, 440; vol. 3, 2, 90, 179, 324, 374. There were two exceptions between 1483 and 1504: in 1490 there was no sermon because the preacher was absent (ibid., vol. 1, 379), and in 1502 “by order of the pope” (ibid., vol. 3, 179). On the office of master of ceremonies, see Jennifer Mara DeSilva, “Ritual Negotiations: Paris de' Grassi and the Office of Ceremonies under Popes Julius II and Leo X (1504–1521)” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2007), 72–74
.52. Paul Oskar Kristeller, “An Unknown Humanist Sermon on Saint Stephen by Guillaume Fichet,” Mélanges Eugène Tisserant 6 (1964): 459–97
.53. O'Malley, Praise and Blame, 19, 23. See also Rasmussen, “A Liturgical Reading,” 134.
54. O'Malley, Praise and Blame, 19.
55. Burchard, Diarium, vol. 1, 232: “bis erravit et titubavit.” Indeed, even the celebrant of the Mass could be criticized, as on the day of the inaugural display of the seven tapestries, December 26, 1519, when Grassis notes that Cardinal Andrea del Valle celebrated the Mass, “but not well enough [licet non satis bene]” (Shearman, Raphael in the Early Modern Sources, vol. 1, 490, omitted in Armellini, Il diario).
56. O'Malley, Praise and Blame, 27–28, 51–54.
57. G. B. Picotti, La giovanezza di Leone X (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1927).
58. Grassis, “Diarium,” Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City (hereafter BAV), cod. Vat. lat. 12275, fol. 307r, as cited in O'Malley, Praise and Blame, 21.
59. O'Malley, Praise and Blame, 20–21, also noting that Grassis wrote that the sermon could not be heard on Trinity Sunday 1521 because of the noise.
60. Rachel Zoll, “Inside the Conclave: Extra Omnes to Habemus Papam,” Huffington Post, March 14, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/14/inside-the-conclave-extra-omnes-to-habemus-papam_n_2878366.html (accessed May 28, 2013). I thank his Excellency Francis Cardinal George, archbishop of Chicago, for confirming the poor acoustics and lack of electronic amplification during this conclave (personal communication, May 29, 2013).
61. “The Sistine Chapel: Success Story—House of Worship Sound System,” Bose Professional Systems Division, http://pro.bose.com/pdf/pro/success_stories/ss_sistene.pdf (first accessed January 14, 2012).
62. Richard Kieckhefer, Theology in Stone: Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 50–51
; and Peter Poscharsky, Die Kanzel: Erscheinungsform im Protestantismus bis zum Ende des Barocks (Gütersloh: Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1963), 131–37 .63. On the S. Maria Novella pulpit, see Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, The Renaissance Pulpit: Art and Preaching in Tuscany, 1400–1550 (Turnhout, Belg.: Brepols, 2007), 76–77; and on the Louvain pulpit (now in Brussels Cathedral), Xander van Eck, “Rhetorics of the Pulpit,” in Turn of the Soul: Representations of Religious Conversion in Early Modern Art and Literature, ed. Lieke Stelling et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 373–92
, at 385–88.64. Leon Battista Alberti, De re aedificatoria (Florence: Niccolò di Lorenzo, 1485), bk. 7, chap. 3
: “Accedebat que concionantis pontificis vox commodius basilica audiret materiata, que testudinato in templo”; and bk. 1, chap. 9: “Locis quidem omnibus, quibus vox aut recitandum aut canetium aut disputandum audienda est, testudinata haud usque conveniunt, quod vocem retundant, contignata conveniunt, quod sonora sint.” See also Elisa Bastianello, “Architettura e musica tra Rinascimento e Barocco: Percorsi alla recerca del ‘loco risonante’ nella trattatistica dalla seconda metà del Quattrocento alla fine del Seicento” (PhD diss., Università IUAV di Venezia, 2003), 34–44 .65. Francesco Zorzi, quoted in Deborah Howard and Laura Moretti, Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Music, Acoustics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 316 n. 73
: “che sanno li periti dell'Arte e l'esperienza il comprobarà.” For more on the project of building S. Francesco della Vigna, see ibid., 94–113, 316–17 nn. 73, 90; Antonio Foscari and Manfredo Tafuri, L'armonia e i conflitti: La chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna nella Venezia del '500 (Turin: Einaudi, 1983) ; Deborah Howard, Jacopo Sansovino: Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 66–67 ; and Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1962; New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), 101–6, 155–57 . Zorzi's Tuscanized name (which Wittkower uses) is Francesco Giorgio. The coffered ceiling recommended by Zorzi was not built, and Braxton Boren's computer simulation suggests that it in fact may not have improved speech intelligibility (Boren, “Music, Architecture, and Acoustics in Renaissance Venice: Recreating Lost Soundscape” [master's thesis, University of Cambridge, 2010], 62–69).66. Sebastiano Serlio, Tutte l'opere d'architettura di Sebastiano Serlio bolognese (Venice: Francesco de' Franceschi, 1584), bk. 7, 218–19
; and Vincenzo Scamozzi, L'idea della architettura universale (Venice: Giorgio Valentino, 1615), pt. 2, bk. 8 , heading 15, 326, as cited in Bastianello, “Architettura e musica,” 55, 59 n. 71. See also Howard and Moretti, Sound and Space, 7.67. Howard and Moretti, Sound and Space, 179–86.
68. Dykmans, L'oeuvre de Patrizi Piccolomini, vol. 2, 508, merely notes that the “orator … vadit ad pulpitum, et eo conscenso.” I have come across no descriptions in the diaries of Johann Burchard or Paris de Grassis of the preacher's pulpit (as opposed to the wooden “pulpit, or rather lectern, from which the Prophetiae are chanted” that Grassis urged on Easter Monday 1518 should be replaced by a gilt solid silver one [quoted in translation at length in Shearman, Raphael's Cartoons, 10]; see also Ramussen, “A Liturgical Reading,” 119–20). For engravings showing the preacher's pulpit, see, for example, at number 56, “Theologus sermonem habens,” in Étienne Dupérac's 1578 engraving, Rasmussen, 110, fig. 1, 121.
69. Shearman, “The Chapel of Sixtus IV,” 33; and Steinmann, Die Sixtinische Kapelle, vol. 1, 159. Restorations in the Sistine Chapel in the late twentieth century also revealed hundreds of musicians' names scratched into the plaster, including that of the composer Josquin des Prez. Klaus Pietschmann, “Ein Graffito von Josquin Desprez auf der Cantoria der Sixtinischen Kapelle,” Die Musikforschung 5 (1999): 204–7.
70. Richard Sherr, “Performance Practice in the Papal Chapel during the Sixteenth Century,” Early Music 15 (1987): 452–62, at 453, 458.
71. Howard and Moretti, Sound and Space, 104–7.
72. Richard Sherr, “Speculations on Repertory, Performance Practice, and Ceremony in the Papal Chapel in the Early Sixteenth Century,” in Studien zur Musikgeschichte: Tagungsbericht Heidelberg 1989, Capellae Apostolicae Sixtinaeque Collectanea Acta Monumenta, Collectanea 2, ed. Bernhard Janz (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1994), 103–22, at 117 and n. 30.
73. On the duties of the papal choir, see Adalbert Roth, “Lo stato della ricerca riguardante la Cappella Sistina,” in Musikstad Rom: Geschichte, Forschung, Perspektiven: Beiträge der Tagung “Rom—Die Ewige Stadt im Brennpunkt der aktuellen musikwissenschaftlichen Forschung” am Deutschen Historischen Institut in Rome, 28–30 September 2004, ed. Markus Engelhardt (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2011), 90–101
; and Rafael Köhler, Die Cappella Sistina unter den Medici-Papsten, 1513–1534: Musikpflege und Repertoire am päpstlichen Hof (Kiel: Ludwig, 2001), 98–115 .74. Grassis, Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome, MS 2141, fols. 366r–v, as translated in Jeffrey Dean, “Listening to Sacred Polyphony c. 1500,” Early Music 25 (1997): 611–14
, 617–20, 623–28, 631–32, 635–36, 614, 631 n. 19.75. Grassis, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 2143, fol. 19v, as translated in Dean, “Listening to Sacred Polyphony,” 614, 631 n. 20. See also Jesse Rodin, Josquin's Rome: Hearing and Composing in the Sistine Chapel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 126–30
; and Sherr, “Speculations on Repertory,” 114–15.76. The Quirinal cantoria, at 18 ft. 9⅛ in. (5.72 m) long and almost 4 ft. (1.2 m) deep, is longer but narrower than the cantoria in the Sistine Chapel, which Shearman (“The Chapel of Sixtus IV,” 33) described as approximately 16 ft. 4½ in. by 6 ft. 6¾ in. (5 by 2 m). I thank dott. Francesco Colalucci for providing me with the exact dimensions of the cantoria in the Pauline Chapel in the Quirinal Palace even during the busy Easter season in 2014.
77. Howard and Moretti, Sound and Space, 106–7.
78. Wilhelm Eysengrein, Chronologicarum rerum aplissimae clarrissimaeque urbis Spirae (Dillingen: Mayer, 1564
), fol. 287, as translated in André Pirro, “Leo X and Music,” Musical Quarterly 21 (1935): 1–16 , at 13. See also Anthony Cummings, The Lion's Ear: Pope Leo X, the Renaissance Papacy, and Music (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012) ; and Adalbert Roth, “Leo X and Music,” in Evans and Browne, Cartoons and Tapestries, 15–18 .79. Paulus Jovius, Vita de Leonis X: “Quum vero phonascorum chorus induceretur, aulea detrahi iuberet, ut voces nudis parietibus illisae, acutius atque suavius resilirent, quae omnia ad alendam hominis insaniam probabat pontifex, quando ipse in ea arte consumatissimus secum de tonis et chordis totaque numerorum proportione disputaret, ac se omnino superari egregia simulatione fateretur.” Online edition published at http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/scanned/paulo_giovio_de_leonis_x.htm (accessed April 25, 2012).
80. Ireneo Affò suggests that Giovio's characterization was perhaps extreme, calling Tarascono a “not uncultivated writer [scrittore non incolto]” (Scrittori e letterati parmigiani [Parma: Stamperia Reale, 1791], vol. 3, 229–30). Evangelista Tarascono Parmigiano is unrelated to the “Tarascono codex” (despite any connection implied by its name) compiled in 1586–88. I thank Anthony Cummings for bringing this codex to my attention, and for confirming that Evangelista Tarascono Parmigiano has not attracted much attention among musicologists. See Guglielmo Barbian and Agostina Zecca Laterza, “The Tarasconi Codex in the Library of the Milan Conservatory,” Musical Quarterly 60, no. 2 (1974): 195–221
, esp. 197 n. 1, which cites a Professore Clerici in describing in 1917 the Tarasconi as “one of the oldest and wealthiest noble families of Emilia,” whose archival traces have vanished.81. The tapestries have the following published measurements: Landing at Asilah: 368 (left) / 357 (right) by 1108 (upper) / 1107 (bottom) cm; Siege of Asilah: 428 (left) / 422 (right) by 1078 cm; Assault on Asilah: 369 (left) / 355 (right) by 1099 (upper) / 1094 (bottom) cm; Fall of Tangier: 404 (left) / 387 (right) by 1082 cm. See Ana de Castro Henriques, ed., The Invention of Glory: Afonso V and the Pastrana Tapestries, exh. cat., Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon; Fundación Carlos de Amberes, Madrid (Dallas: Meadows Museum, 2010), 50
, 60, 70, 80.82. Cummings, The Lion's Ear, 54. The manuscript is BAV, MS Cappella Sistina 16. The musicologists Derek Katz and Alejandro Planchart based at the University of California, Santa Barbara, were also consulted (personal communication, October 13, 2011). For the development of the papal choir's repertory in the late fifteenth-century repertory, see Rodin, Josquin's Rome.
83. Howard and Moretti, Sound and Space, 206–7. See also Appendix.
84. Neither the Definition Index (D50) nor the Speech Transmission Index (STI), indices used by acousticians to measure speech intelligibility, was calculated.
85. Boren, “Music, Architecture, and Acoustics in Renaissance Venice,” 85, 90.
86. Another aspect is the commensurability of spoken and sung texts, especially in terms of the acoustical parameters included in the survey. I thank Derek Katz for pointing out that responses to the spoken Credo in the presence of tapestries were more variable than for other configurations, and for suggesting that this result stems from contemporary listening habits as well as recording and mixing styles that do not prioritize the clarity of lyrics. Personal communication, June 13, 2013.
87. Bissera V. Pentcheva, review of Howard and Moretti, Sound and Space, Art Bulletin 93, no. 4 (2011): 489–91
, at 491. Howard and Moretti, Sound and Space; and Bissera V. Pentcheva, “Hagia Sophia and Multisensory Aesthetics,” Gesta 50 (2011): 93–113 . For a useful overview, see Deborah Howard, “Architecture and Music in Fifteenth-Century Italy,” in Cambridge History of Fifteenth-Century Music, ed. Anne Maria Busse Berger and Jesse Rodin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 330–60. I thank Prof. Howard for providing me with the text of this essay before its publication.88. Wallace Clement Sabine, Collected Papers on Acoustics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1922), 212–14
.89. I know of only two studies of the sound absorption coefficients of tapestries, one using a nine-meter-square (29 ft. 6⅛ in.) cotton tapestry made by the students of the Liceo Artistico “Pino Pascali” in Bari (Francesco Martellotta and Maria Laura Castiglione, “On the Use of Paintings and Tapestries as Absorbing Materials,” Forum Acusticum 2011, 27 June–1 July, Aalborg, DK, Paper 00078, http://www.fmartellotta.altervista.org/pub/FA11_tapestries.pdf [accessed June 2, 2013]), and one using the likely twentieth-century “textile tapestry” (no indication given of the material) that lined the curved rear wall under the balcony of the Lviv Opera House, Ukraine, before being replaced by a Schroeder diffuser ( Taduesz Kamisinski, “Correction of Acoustics in Historic Opera Theatres with the Use of Schroeder Diffuser,” Archives of Acoustics 37 [2012]: 349–54
). Both studies report a sound absorption coefficient α of 0.70 at 125 Hz and 0.20 at 500 Hz but diverge at higher frequencies, reaching 0.52 in the former and 0.40 in the latter at 4000 Hz (see Martellotta and Castiglione, fig. 7; and Kamisinski, 352, fig. 6). Thus, the only two published papers on experimental research that have measured the Sabine absorption coefficient α for a “cotton tapestry” or “tapestry textile” (in the first and second study respectively) do agree with each other at lower frequencies of sound but do not agree at higher frequencies of sound. Further research is needed since it may well be that the discrepancy is due to the differences between the cotton tapestry and tapestry textile used, or indeed the position of the textile in relation to the wall and other architectural structures (a question already being addressed in Alicia Alonso and Francesco Martellotta, “Room Acoustic Modeling of Textile Materials Hung Freely in Space: From the Reverberation Chamber to Ancient Churches,” Journal of Building Performance Simulation (forthcoming). I thank Prof. Martellotta for providing me with this paper before its publication.90. Boren, “Music, Architecture, and Acoustics in Renaissance Venice,” 91.
91. Paris de Grassis, quoted in Shearman, Raphael's Cartoons, 9 n. 50: “Papa … iussit quod panni aurei, qui solent estendi in tribuna Basilicae ponantur in Cappella intro Cancellos, sed et reliqua pars Cappellae ultra Cancellos similiter pannis ornetur.”
92. Shearman, Raphael's Cartoons, 9.
93. Ibid., 13 n. 75.
94. Dr. Sweidel is currently senior vice president for Strategic Initiatives at Goucher College.
95. The gallery is 58 ft. (17.7 m) square by 17 ft. 4¼ in. (5.3 m) high.
96. Jonathan Abel et al., “Estimating Room Impulse Responses from Recorded Balloon Pops,” Audio Engineering Society Convention Paper 8171, Presented at the 129th Convention (Nov. 4–7, 2010, San Francisco, CA), http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=15594 (accessed March 2, 2013).
97. For a basic introduction to amplitude, see Jeffrey Hass, An Acoustics Primer, consulted online at http://www.indiana.edu/∼emusic/acoustics/amplitude.htm, chap. 6 (accessed June 30, 2015).
98. Scott Douglas, personal communication, April 23, 2013.
99. For a basic introduction to reverberation time, see Carl R. (Rod) Nave, HyperPhysics, 2012, consulted at http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/acoustic/revtim.html (accessed June 30, 2015).
100. Scott Douglas, personal communication, April 23, 2013.
101. Howard and Moretti, Sound and Space, 206–7. We adapted the questionnaire published in M. Barron, “Subjective Study of British Symphony Concert Halls,” Acustica 66 (1988): 2–14
, at 5, following suggestions from Thomas Tunks, Southern Methodist University professor of music education.102. Dr. Pearson currently heads Pearson Statistical Consulting & Expert Witness Testimony, in Richardson, Texas (http://statisticalexpert.com).
103. Thus, the top and bottom of the box enclose what statisticians call the Inter-Quartile Range (IQR). For a basic introduction to boxplots, see http://www.stat.yale.edu/Courses/1997-98/101/boxplot.htm (accessed July 1, 2015).
104. The p-value is thus the probability that what statisticians call the “null hypothesis”—that the tapestries have no effect—is true. For a further introduction to statistical significance tests, including the two-tailed (or two-sided) t-test, see https://epilab.ich.ucl.ac.uk/coursematerial/statistics/significance/index.html (accessed July 1, 2015).