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Benedictine abbey on the River Enns in Styria, Austria. It was founded in the mid-11th century by Bishop Gebhard from Salzburg, endowed by St Henna von Gurk, Gräfin von Friessach (d 1045), and settled by Benedictine monks from St Peter’s, Salzburg under Abbot Isingrin. The Romanesque minster (consecrated 1074), which was dedicated to St Blaise, was famous for its marble columns and was rebuilt after a fire in 1152; a Gothic choir was added in 1276–86. The present church incorporates Romanesque side doors as well as other fragments. The abbey became an important cultural centre with a renowned scriptorium. Amongst the many famous scholars there was Abbot Engelbert of Admont (reg 1297–1327). From 1121 to the 16th century a convent was attached to the abbey. Under the abbots Mathias Preininger (reg 1615–28) and Urban Weber (reg 1628–59) the whole establishment was transformed in the Baroque style, and the church was rebuilt (...

(b Dec 12, 1479; d ?Bologna, c. April 1552).

Italian historian, topographer, writer and patron. He was a friar and first entered the Dominican Order at Forlì but was in Bologna from 1495 and was officially transferred to the monastery there in 1500. Alberti received an extensive grounding in humanist studies under the Bolognese rhetorician Giovanni Garzoni. After acting as companion to the head of the order, Tomaso de Vio Cajetan, Alberti was made Provinciale di Terra Santa in Rome in 1520. This included the role of travelling companion to Tomaso’s successor, Fra Silvestri da Ferrara (‘il Ferrariense’). His travels with Silvestri throughout Italy, including the islands, laid the foundations for his most important work, the Descrittione di tutta l’Italia (1550), modelled on the Italia illustrata of Flavio Biondo. It was reprinted many times: the Venice edition of 1561 was the first to include Alberti’s sections on the islands of Italy, which were not covered by Biondo; the Venice edition of ...

Cistercian abbey in Portugal. The abbey, dedicated to S Maria, was founded as part of the policy of repopulation and territorial improvement of the first king of Portugal, Alfonso I (reg 1139–85), who in 1152 granted a large area of land to St Bernard of Clairvaux by a charter known as the Carta dos Coutos (Lisbon, Arquiv. N.). Work on the monastery started in 1158 and adhered to the rigid precepts of the Order. Although the exterior was extended and altered in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially the Baroque façade of the church, the interior essentially preserves its original Early Gothic appearance.

(b Florence, before March 12, 1446; d Lucca, 1496).

Italian painter and illuminator. He was a Camaldolite monk; his appointment, from 1470, as Abbot of Agnano, Arezzo, and Val di Castro, Fabriano, was disputed, since he never resided at either abbey. His work is known from a signed triptych of the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints (1460–67) in SS Martino e Bartolomeo at Tifi, Arezzo (in situ). It shows the influence of the most fashionable Florentine artists of the time, such as Neri di Bicci, and such artists from the Marches as Giovanni Boccati and Gerolamo di Giovanni da Camerino. The most noteworthy aspect of the altarpiece, however, is its chromatic quality. This undoubtedly derives from the work of Piero della Francesca and has made it possible to identify Amedei as the collaborator to whom Piero entrusted the small predella scenes and pilaster figures of the polyptych of the Misericordia (Sansepolcro, Pin.), a work that can be dated by the final payments made in ...

[Fra Giovanni da FiesoleGuido di Piero da Mugello]

(b nr. Vicchio, c. 1395–1400; d Rome, Feb 18, 1455).

Italian painter, illuminator, and Dominican friar. He rose from obscure beginnings as a journeyman illuminator to the renown of an artist whose last major commissions were monumental fresco cycles in St. Peter’s and the Vatican Palace, Rome. He reached maturity in the early 1430s, a watershed in the history of Florentine art. None of the masters who had broken new ground with naturalistic painting in the 1420s was still in Florence by the end of that decade. The way was open for a new generation of painters, and Fra Angelico was the dominant figure among several who became prominent at that time, including Paolo Uccello, Fra Filippo Lippi, and Andrea del Castagno. By the early 1430s Fra Angelico was operating the largest and most prestigious workshop in Florence. His paintings offered alternatives to the traditional polyptych altarpiece type and projected the new naturalism of panel painting on to a monumental scale. In fresco projects of the 1440s and 1450s, both for S. Marco in Florence and for St. Peter’s and the Vatican Palace in Rome, Fra Angelico softened the typically astringent and declamatory style of Tuscan mural decoration with the coloristic and luminescent nuances that characterize his panel paintings. His legacy passed directly to the second half of the 15th century through the work of his close follower Benozzo Gozzoli and indirectly through the production of Domenico Veneziano and Piero della Francesca. Fra Angelico was undoubtedly the leading master in Rome at mid-century and had the survival rate of 15th-century Roman painting been greater, his significance for such later artists as Melozzo da Forlì and Antoniazzo Romano might be clearer than it is....

Astrology is the art of predicting events on earth as well as human character and disposition from the movements of the planets and fixed stars. Medieval astrology encompassed both general concepts of celestial influence, and the technical art of making predictions with horoscopes, symbolic maps of the heavens at particular moments and places constructed from astronomical information. The scientific foundations of the art were developed in ancient Greece, largely lost in early medieval Europe and recovered by the Latin West from Arabic sources in the 12th and 13th centuries. Late medieval astrological images were successfully Christianized and were adapted to particular contexts, acquired local meanings and changed over time.

Astrology developed into a scientific branch of learning in ancient Greece, but because of the opposition of the Church Fathers it was transmitted to early medieval Europe in only fragmentary form in technically unsophisticated textbooks and popular divinatory genres. Literary and scientific texts provided more general ideas about the nature and attributes of the planets which were influential on later iconography. The first significant astrological images appear in 11th-century illustrated astronomical texts (e.g. London, BL, Cotton MS. Tiberius BV), which were acquired and produced by monasteries to aid with time-keeping and the construction of the Christian calendar....

(b Bologna, 1627; d after 1687).

Italian architect. His first known work is in connection with the church of S Bartolomeo (consecrated 1664) in Bologna; he completed this for the Theatines to the designs, which he modified, of Giovanni Battista Falcetti (1580–1629). His masterpiece is the church of St Kajetan in Munich, which was commissioned by Adelaide Henrietta of Savoy (1636–76), wife of Ferdinand, Elector of Bavaria, in thanksgiving for the long-awaited birth in 1662 of the heir to the throne, Maximilian II Emmanuel. When her initial attempt to employ Guarino Guarini failed, Adelaide Henrietta approached Barelli, who submitted his first scheme in Munich in October 1662 and was awarded the commission. Six months later he presented a second set of designs; in April 1663 the foundation stone was laid. The building, which faces the Residenz, was designed to fulfil several functions: it served as a church for the Theatines and as a sacred ceremonial assembly hall for the court, and it housed the Wittelsbach family sepulchre. One of the terms of the commission was that Barelli should observe the proportions of the mother church of the Theatines, S Andrea della Valle (...

[Porta, Baccio della]

(b Florence, March 28, 1472; d Florence, Oct 31, 1517).

Italian painter and draughtsman. Vasari and later historians agree that Fra Bartolommeo was an essential force in the formation and growth of the High Renaissance. He was the first painter in Florence to understand Leonardo da Vinci’s painterly and compositional procedures. Later he created a synthesis between Leonardo’s tonal painting and Venetian luminosity of colour. Equally important were his inventions for depicting divinity as a supernatural force, and his type of sacra conversazione in which the saints are made to witness and react to a biblical event occurring before their eyes, rather than standing in devout contemplation, as was conventional before. His drawings, too, are exceptional both for their abundance and for their level of inventiveness. Many artists came under his influence: Albertinelli, Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, Titian, Correggio, Beccafumi, Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino.

Fra Bartolommeo was the son of Paolo, a muleteer and carter. After 1478 he lived in a modest family house outside the Porta S Pier Gattolini in Florence and consequently was dubbed Baccio (a Tuscan diminutive for Bartolommeo) della Porta. In ...

(b Murcia, 1594; d Madrid, May 20, 1679).

Spanish architect. He entered the Jesuit Order at 16 as a lay brother and began his career as a carpenter and assembler of retables. His earliest work included the Mannerist retable in the church of the Jesuit college of Alcalá de Henares and the tabernacle in Juan Gómez de Mora’s Bernadine church (c. 1624–30) in the same city. The latter is an empty, free-standing feature, placed on the altar, quite distinct from the traditional Spanish retable, which rests against the rear wall of the sanctuary. In 1633 he replaced the lay brother Pedro Sánchez (1568–?1633) as master of the works at the church of the Colegio Imperial in Madrid, now the cathedral of S Isidoro. There he built the vaults and the dome over the crossing, the latter being the first instance of the ‘cúpula encamonada’, a dome constructed using a timber frame (‘camón’), roofed in slate and plastered inside, with a brick drum. The ease of construction of this type of dome, its low cost and its structural stability made it the prototype of Madrid domes in the Baroque period. Bautista reduced the height and width of the nave arcades in S Isidoro and replaced the capitals and entablatures of the façade columns and paired pilasters of the nave with others of his own particular invention. The capitals featured Corinthian foliage surmounted by an egg-and-dart moulding, while the entablatures displayed paired triglyph consoles....

(b Pfarrkirchen, Upper Bavaria, c. 1660; d Augsburg, Jan 31, 1738).

German sculptor. He was the son of the sculptor Johann Christian Bendl, with whom he trained. Having become a journeyman, he travelled for six years, probably to Bohemia and Venice. On his return he entered in 1684 the workshop in Augsburg of Johann Jakob Rill (fl c. 1686–99); on 26 November 1687 he was made a master and also became a citizen of Augsburg. He was the city’s leading sculptor during the late Baroque period; many important churches in and outside of Augsburg had sculptures by him. He worked mostly in wood, but also in stone, terracotta and stucco, and probably in ivory and metal as well. For jewellers and goldsmiths he produced models, such as a figure of St Sebastian (1714–15) and a crucifix (1716). His major work included two series of life-size statues: one, of the Apostles, for St Moritz and the other, of the ...

[Bitti, Aloisio Bernardino Giovanni Demócrito]

(b Camerino, the Marches, 1548; d Lima, 1610).

Italian painter and sculptor active in Peru. One of seven children born to Pablo and Cornelia Bitti, Bernardo Bitti commenced formal training in the arts at the age of 14 in Camerino and completed his training in Rome. He was inducted into the Society of Jesus as a Coadjutor Brother on 2 May 1568 at the age of 20. The General of the Society of Jesus, Everardo Mecurián, assigned Bitti to the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1573 at the request of the Jesuit Provincial in Peru, Diego Bracamante, who believed religious imagery would facilitate the Catholic indoctrination of indigenous Andeans at missions. After spending 14 months in Seville, Bitti arrived in Lima on 31 May 1575 and worked there for 8 years. He subsequently embarked on a peripatetic career decorating the interiors of Jesuit sites in Cuzco, Juli, La Paz, Sucre, Potosí, Arequipa, and Ayacucho.

Bitti created the main and lateral altarpieces of the Jesuit provisional church of S Pedro in Lima with the assistance of the Andalusian Jesuit artist Pedro de Vargas (...

[Morten]

(d Copenhagen, 1553).

Danish sculptor and architect. His sculptural work shows a precocious awareness of early Renaissance art, suggesting that he trained in the workshop of Claus Berg in Odense. He first served Christian II, King of Denmark (reg 1512–23), as architect and sculptor and had settled in Copenhagen by 1523. His tombstone sculptures equal or surpass his architectural successes. The first in his series of gravestone reliefs was of Elisabeth of Habsburg (c. 1523; Copenhagen, Nmus.), Christian II’s queen, a pendant to an earlier representation of King John (1503; Copenhagen, Nmus.), sculpted by Adam van Düren. The limestone high relief had a conventional Gothic framework but hinted at Bussaert’s mature work in the more naturalistic folds of Elisabeth’s gown. After Christian II fled to the Netherlands in 1523, Bussaert elected to remain in Copenhagen in the employ of the newly crowned Frederick I (reg 1523–34). Frederick rewarded Bussaert well, naming him master builder in ...

(de)

(b Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Aug 23, 1501; d Trigueros, Huelva, June 21, 1570).

Spanish architect. He began his career as an ecclesiastic in the parish of Caravaña, Madrid. After studying in Alcalá de Henares he served Cardinal Juan Pardo de Tavera as secretary (1534–6) and chaplain (1536–45) and travelled to Italy as his diplomatic envoy (1536). Tavera appointed him Inspector of Works for the archbishopric of Toledo, where he advised on the layout of the Hospital de S Juan Bautista (1541–50), which was founded by Tavera and built to Covarrubias’s designs. As the administrator (and rector) of the project (from 1549), Bustamante’s main responsibility lay with the organization of construction; his criticism of the different schemes confirms his actual absence from the planning process. In 1551 Bustamante left Toledo to join the Jesuit Order, becoming secretary (1552–4) to Francisco Borja (1510–72), Provincial of Andalusia (1555–61), general of the Jesuit Order (...

(fl 1517–35).

South Netherlandish painter, active in Portugal. He is the most obviously Flemish of the artists working in Portugal during the first half of the 16th century. His earliest-known work may have been painted before he went to Portugal: the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (London, N.G.), clearly influenced by the triptych of the same subject by Hans Memling (1479; Bruges, Memlingmus.). This affinity with the Bruges school and with Memling is apparent in all of Frei Carlos’s work, which is close to that of other painters then working in Évora, such as Francisco Henriques. Their marked Netherlandish characteristics derive in part from the panels of the great altarpiece dedicated to the Life of the Virgin (c. 1500; Évora, Mus. Évora), painted for Évora Cathedral by Netherlandish artists, which recalls the art of Hugo van der Goes, Gerard David and Quinten Metsys. Between 1510 and 1512 Carlos collaborated with the ...

[Manuel de Sousa]

(b Braga, c. 1650; d Tibães, 1716).

Portuguese sculptor. He was born to a family of craftsmen and later entered one of the many workshops of wood-carvers in Braga. In 1676, however, he entered the Benedictine order at its Portuguese mother house of Tibães, near Braga. Here he made statues and reliefs for the church of S Martinho. From this period date his St Benedict and St Gregory the Great and the relief of the Visitation, now in the Benedictine church, S Romão do Neiva. Between 1680 and 1683, during the abbotship of Frei João Osório, he made terracotta sculptures of the eight Virtues and the four Benedictine kings (Tibães, Sacristy), images that appear rather rigid and stereotyped.

Frei Cipriano da Cruz moved to Coimbra before July 1691, when it is recorded that he made the St Catherine in the chapel of the University of Coimbra. This contact with the main centre for sculpture in Portugal had a broadening effect on his art. His most important work outside Tibães is the group of serene and dignified sculptures (dispersed) that he made for the Colégio de S Bento (Benedict), Coimbra. This group includes his gilt and polychromed wooden ...

[Giorgio; Klovic, Juraj]

(b Grisone [Grizane], Croatia, 1498; d Rome, Jan 3, 1578).

Italian painter and illuminator of Croatian birth. The most important illuminator of the 16th century, he was a ‘Michelangelo of small works’, according to Vasari. Many of his documented works are dispersed or untraced, and some attributions are controversial, but his secure oeuvre gives a clear idea of his stylistic influences and development. Although much of his inspiration came from Raphael and Michelangelo, he developed his own visual language, brilliantly translating their monumental forms for work on the smallest scale.

Educated in his native Croatia, Clovio came to Italy at the age of 18 to study art. He began his training in Venice and spent several years there in the service of Cardinal Domenico Grimani and his nephew Marino Grimani. During this period he visited Rome, where he met Giulio Romano and studied with him. This stay in Rome, as well as his experience of the art collections of the Grimani, which included many works by northern artists, notably Dürer, strongly influenced his artistic development. Around ...

(b Lisbon, 1598; d Cotovia, May 11, 1644).

Portuguese painter and Jesuit priest. He was apprenticed in Madrid to Eugenio Cajés, in whose studio he became familiar with the tenebrist style characterized by sharply contrasting figures, strong gradations of chiaroscuro and naturalistically rendered background and drapery. He returned to Lisbon around 1625. In 1632 he became a Jesuit, and in 1644 he died in the Noviciado da Cotovia, renowned for his saintliness. The naturalism of his works quickly gained him fame, and he was nicknamed cabrinha (little goat) by his contemporaries because of his ‘oriental features’. An early work is the beautiful Visitation (c. 1630; Lisbon, S Mamede, Sacristy). Among his patrons and collectors were the Inquisitor General, Dom Francisco de Castro, and the Capelão-mor (royal chaplain) and future Bishop of Elvas, Dom Manuel da Cunha.

Like the work of André Reinoso, that of Domingos da Cunha clearly reflects the innovative spirit of the Portuguese painters trained at the school of Madrid. Félix da Costa Meesen noted that ‘he is a good colourist’ and a ‘great imitator of the natural’, although ‘narrative was not his strong point’. These qualities are seen in the series of scenes from the ...

(b Vic-sur-Seille, Moselle, 1588 or 1591; d Agde, Hérault, Oct 29, 1644).

French Jesuit priest and architect. Entering the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in 1611, he studied in Rouen and La Flèche, was ordained a priest in 1621 and studied theology in Paris (1621–2). He had also taught grammar at Rennes (1615–18) and mathematics at La Flèche (1618–21). He worked first as an architect at the Jesuit college in Rouen, where from 1622 to 1629 he was praefectus fabricae; then as architectus at the college in Rennes, where he supervised the building works; at the college of Orléans, for which he provided plans in 1632; and, above all, at the Jesuit church in Paris, St Louis (now St Paul–St Louis). In plans for the latter he found himself in competition with Etienne Martellange. Both sets of plans were submitted to Rome; those by Martellange were preferred, and he began work on the church in ...

(b Terranuova, Val d’Arno, c. 1430; d after 1492).

Italian painter. He was brought up in the Carmelite convent in Prato and first worked as garzone for the Carmelite painter Fra Filippo Lippi. On 17 July 1447 he was paid for gilding a temporary predella for Lippi’s Coronation of the Virgin (Florence, Uffizi). At Prato he assisted Lippi on his fresco cycle in the choir of the parish church (now the cathedral) between 1452 and 1466. In July 1460 Diamante received payment on Lippi’s behalf for the latter’s completion of Pesellino’s Trinity with Saints (London, N.G.), and in the same month he is recorded as a Vallombrosan monk. At this time he probably executed the frescoes of St John Gualbertus and St Albert of Trapani beside the window of the choir of Prato Cathedral.

In 1463 Diamante was imprisoned in Florence for an undisclosed crime. His absence from Prato coincided with a halt on Lippi’s fresco project, and in ...

Benedictine abbey and Marian pilgrimage site c. 35 km south-east of Zurich, in the canton of Schwyz, Switzerland. The original abbey, on the site of the martyrdom of St Meinrad (ad 861), was founded in 934 by Eberhard, provost of Strasbourg Cathedral. The abbey church (consecrated 948) burnt down in 1029 in the first of a series of fires. A new building, erected in 1039, was divided in the middle by twin towers into an upper and lower minster, corresponding to the respective requirements of monks and pilgrims. Baroque rebuilding started in 1674, when Johann Georg Kuen began work on a new monks’ choir and a confessional chapel for the upper minster (completed 1684).

Plans for reconstructing the upper minster, then the rest of the church and finally the whole abbey were commissioned in 1702 from Caspar Moosbrugger, a lay brother of the abbey who had worked as a mason under Kuen. The work was carried out between ...