S. Maria di Anglona (Matera)

Today the cathedral of S. Maria di Anglona has a basilical layout with three naves, defined by two rows of rectangular pillars which support five arches on each side[1], a presbytery with a transept and deep choir with a semi-circular apse. From the façade, the original square pronaos and two original camapaniles[2].

The fresco cycle[3], generally attributed to Grecian cultural workshops, follows a Latin iconographic programmed linked to Norman patronage. If the paintings are often associated with the mosaics of the Monreale cathedral (Sicily), some authors discern a stylistic dimension with is more clearly Byzantine, above all in the lateral naves, where the paintings evoke frescos of the Chapel of the Virgin in the Monastery of Saint Jean the Evangelist in  Patmos (c. 1180), which would narrow down the dating to the twelfth century alone. According to V. Pace, the painters of Anglona are “Italo-Greek”: his hypothesis is that there were iconographic models in books and drawings which would have circulated with the Greek texts which are amply in evidence in southern Italy in this period[4]. According to G. Roma (1986), the stylistic details indicate that, next to the “Greco-Sicilian” artists, the local workshops were entrusted with the marginal parts; among these, the decorations in Cufic could be attributed ot representatives of the strong Arab Muslim community present in the area[5], to whom we perhaps owe the engraved tiles which decorate the outside of the cathedral.

Theses tiles display animal decorations within circles or lozenges, framed by pseudo-Cufic characters, palm leaves and heart shapes containing trefoil palm leaves. The tiles with engraved decoration are relatively rare in Italy and the technique may come from Islamic craftsmen who used it for stucco, according to a tradition well evidenced in southern Italy in the Norman period[6]. Their ample decorative repertory which includes generic oriental elements, some of which are well evidenced in Byzantine and Roman contexts[7], but also the pseudo-Cufic­ elements of which examples exist in Greece, suggest cultural horizons which go beyond the southern Italian aspect. The only really relevant precedents for a comparison with the Anglona tiles are located in Athens, in the church of Saint Theodore (eleventh century), where the exterior is ornamented with little panels in terracotta engraved with aniconical motifs, and in the Panagia Gorgoepikoos (twelfth century) which has walls decorated with particularly interesting marble panels.

The decoration in pseudo-Cufic, in a continuous flow with no ornaments, is nevertheless very present as a decorative element on the frescos of the extrados of the arches and pillars of the principle nave[8]. We can see a similar decoration in the frescos of S. Maria Le Cerrate à Squinziano (Lecce, end twelfth – beginning thirteenth century), compared, like the Anglona church to the Episkopi church in Manea (Greece). Recent studies have focused on Byzantine mediation for these painted decorations, which are abundant in Basilicate and in Puglia in the twelfth – thirteenth centuries[9]. The chronology of the fresco cycles, their affinity with figurative late Komnenos culture and the fact that these regions belonged to the Byzantine Empire until the Norman Conquest in the eleventh century make the reference to models known in Greece in the late eleventh - twelfth centuries[10] more probable than to those from the Islamic world. In the Anglona fresco cycle we can also note the presence of costumes and objects characterised by Arabic pseudo-inscriptions which was also widespread, which can be generically qualified as “oriental” instead of Islamic[11].

[2] The façade with double towers of Carolingian origin is widespread in Franco-German and Anglo-Norman areas, a couple of the oldest examples being the S. Nicola in Bari and the cathedral of Acerenza. In Sicily, a little afterwards in the cathedrals of  Mazara (beginning 12th century), Cefalù (1131) and Monreale (1174), the two towers are clearly further forward in relation to the façade and the long sides.

[3] Judgement day, veterotestamentary scenes(Genesis), Christological cycle, lives of martyrs, saints, bishops and prophets.

[4] The time required for such a transferral process would support the author’s dating of the Anglona frescos to the first decades of the 13th century.

[5] The local toponymy suggests the presence of an Arab Muslim community in Tursi, where part of the down is still called “Rabatana” (Rizzitano, U., Storia e cultura della Sicilia saracena, Palermo, 1975, p. 458).

[6] Scerrato 1979, p. 356;  D. and R. Withehouse 1969 are of the same opinion, postulating that this technique was introduced in Sicily from Maghreb and Roma 1986, n.97,  p. 101.

[7] Muratova 1991; Whitehouse 1969, p. 40-41.

[8] The characters are painted in white on a blue background or in black or in red on a white background.

[9] This is the case at S. Pietro in Otrante (Lecce), in the rock churches of S. Marco in Massafra (Tarento), of S. Vito Vecchio in Gravina di Puglia (Bari province; today in the Museo Pomarici), and S. Giovanni di Monterrone  Matera (work by Maestro della Bruna).

[10] For these patterns which were thought to be unknown in Byzantine milieu, the following can be mentioned for the 11th – 12th centuries: the Katolikon and the crypt of Hosios Lukas in Phocis, the exonarthex of the church of Daphnae, the church of  Episkopi in Mani; the vaults of the church of the 40 martyrs in Sivas in Cappadochia (1216-1217) and for the 15th century, S. Nicola of Kyritze in Kastoria (north-west Macedonia) and the Panaghia in Molivdoskepasto (north-west of the Epirus). For examples in the Islamic world, cf. Fontana 1999.

[11] This is similar to the turbans worn by the “Wives of Noah’s sons” or by the Ishmaelites in the scenes “Joseph brought to Egypt” and “Joseph sold at Poutiphar”, the cup in the centre of the “Hospitality of Abraham” and the architectonic decoration of the attic of a building, maybe a church, in “Pentecost”. Cf. Fontana 2007 (whom we would like to thank for giving us permission to read this text which has not yet been published). For others, these costumes may be associated on the contrary to Islamic miniatures, cf. Roma 1986, note 97, p. 101 (who refers to Islamic Painting and the Art of the Book,  London: 1976, tav. I,17).