Medieval France
MENDICANT ART AND ARCHITECTURE
. From the time of their founding in the early 13th century, the Dominican and Franciscan orders played an important role in France. Paris, especially the university, was a major center for both orders, and both also benefited from royal pa-
tronage, but the mendicants could be found throughout France. Several difficulties are encountered, however, in studying their impact on French art and architecture. Because of their mendicancy and vows of poverty, their conventual structures and furnishings, which emphasized function and simplicity, did not conform to particular stylistic characteristics. The orders did not produce their own art but rather relied on secular artisans. And finally, they preferred urban centers, where many of their buildings and possessions have been destroyed or dispersed. Despite these limitations, several approaches provide insight into their influence on late-medieval French art.
Because so many mendicant structures have been destroyed, knowledge of French mendicant architecture is based on a few surviving buildings, primarily in southern France, and on plans and drawings. For example, none of the four Dominican churches in Paris is extant, but plans reveal that the major church of the Jacobins had parallel naves supported by center piers.
This type of plan recurs in one of the most impressive surviving mendicant churches in France, the Dominican church of the Jacobins in Toulouse. In this late 13th-century edifice, the long nave of six rib-vaulted bays is supported by central columns and terminates in a polygonal choir. Although other double-nave Dominican churches were built in France, as at Agen, the Dominicans and Franciscans favored simple structures with a large single nave that either had a flat roof or was vaulted, as in the now destroyed church of the Cordeliers (Franciscans) at Toulouse.
In some cases, royal patronage promoted more elaborate architecture. In 1295, Charles II, count of Provence, entrusted to the Dominicans a foundation dedicated to St. Madeleine at Saint-Maximin. The church, built during the 14th century, had a long nave with double aisles, a po lygonal apse with two diagonally placed chapels, and a three-story elevation reminiscent of Gothic architecture in northern France. French mendicant architecture, though it lacks common stylistic features, reflects the way in which the demands of function, practicality, and patronage were adapted to a particular situation.
Although the mendicants stressed simplicity and poverty, their churches were furnished with appropriate devotional paintings, sculpture, and other objects. Unfortunately, because few of these art forms have survived in situ, direct evidence for the character of visual arts associated with the French mendicants is limited. The Franciscans and Dominicans had a great impact on popular piety and the iconography of devotional art that it inspired in the later Middle Ages. Their influence is apparent in French manuscript illumination, especially in liturgical and devotional books whose usage indicates Franciscan or Domini-can connections. The late 13th-century north French Psalter and Hours of Yolande de Soissons, for example, shows Franciscan inspiration in miniatures of St. Francis preaching to the birds, the magus kissing the Christ child’s foot, and the image of the Tree of Life. Many French manuscripts from the 13th century on utilize similar iconographic motifs. The illumination of the Belleville Breviary of ca. 1325, produced for a Dominican, is associated with Jean Pucelle. The complexity of the didactic imagery, including three lost miniatures that can be reconstructed from a prefatory explanatory text, may reflect the Dominican mission of teaching and explicating theological issues. The cycle representing the articles of faith was the model for illustration in several other French devotional manuscripts. The mendicants thus had a pervasive and diverse influence on French art, architecture, and iconography in the late Middle Ages.
Karen Gould
[See also: AGEN; DOMINICAN ORDER; FRANCISCAN ORDER; PUCELLE, JEAN; TOULOUSE]
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Gould, Karen. The Psalter and Hours of Yolande de Soissons. Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America, 1978.
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