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Medieval art was intensely symbolic, with an expansive visual vocabulary: everything from the colors to the clothing and objects in the painting cued viewers as to what was happening and who the people depicted were supposed to be. Most people of the time would have been familiar with the major Christian saints and their attributes—objects, symbols, or motifs by which they can be recognized. For example, martyrs usually hold a palm frond, while each of the Evangelists has his own symbol: a man for Matthew, a lion for Mark, an ox for Luke, and an eagle for John. Here is Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Rofeno Abbey Polyptych, made in the 1330s for the Badia (Benedictine abbey) of Rofeno near Siena: the various saints in it would have been patrons of the monastery.
The INFOGRAPHIC
The INFOGRAPHIC
The people, stories, and symbolism of medieval art aren't as familiar these days, so students in the seminar used online tools like Canva and Piktochart to create infographics explaining the symbolism of particular works of art created in medieval Italy.
The Polyptych
The Polyptych
Then each student marshalled their own symbolism resources to design a polyptych for New College in the time of coronavirus, taking into account both the traditional values and symbols of the College, and also the concerns of the present pandemic, just as medieval Italians called on particular saints to assist them with particular problems.
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