Art imitates architecture: the Saint Philip reliquary in Renaissance Florence

An anonymous diary dating from the late trecento shows that similar processions were held in late May 1387; twice in 1390, on June 30 and October 16; and again in December 1398. (75) The procession of October 16, 1390, was held at a time when the Florentines were in conflict with the Sienese, Giangaleazzo Visconti and his Milanese army, and were concerned about the plague. At that time, the Madonna of Impruneta, the head of Saint Zenobius, and the arm of Saint Philip were carried through the city streets and then set up on the ringhiera, the rostrum in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, to make them visible to everyone assembled in the Piazza Signoria while the bishop celebrated mass. (76)

The anonymous diarist's description of the December 1398 procession, this one held when the Florentines called on all of their most potent holy resources in order to stop an incessant rain, is also of interest. He states that on that day:

   There came to Florence the panel of the Virgin Mary from Impruneta,
   and the relics from the Certosa, [accompanied by] all the clergy
   wearing copes and other liturgical garments, with all their relics
   under banners, and many youths wearing gloves and with poles in hand
   on which they carried the platform with the relics. Then [came] all
   the clergy with the relics of Saint John, the head of Saint Zenobius,
   and with the arm of Saint Philip and [the relic] of Saint Andrew. And
   in all, between the clergymen and monks, they numbered 460, with all,
   or the majority of, the Florentine people--men and women--behind
   them, and in this manner they went about the city. Once they reached
   S. Maria del Fiore, they placed the relics on the altar, and the
   entire church was filled with lit torches and Bishop Nofrio
   celebrated mass in the said [church of] S. Maria [del Fiore]. (77)

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Each of these accounts is unusually informative as to the manner in which the relics carried in the processions were displayed. More often than not, in contemporary descriptions of such events, diarists or chroniclers simply state that the relics were shown to the people, without specifying where and how. The literary image of the Florentine youths bearing the relic-laden platform brings to mind the way in which a relic of the True Cross is carried by the members of the Scuola di S. Giovanni Evangelista, a Venetian lay confraternity, in the Procession in the Piazza S. Marco that Gentile Bellini painted for the scuola's Sala d'Albergo (now the Sala della Croce) in 1496 (Fig. 16). In this scene, the piazza and church of S. Marco serve as a dramatic stage and backdrop for the barely discernible miracle that takes place when the Brescian merchant Jacopo de' Salis, in an attempt to effect a cure for his wounded son, kneels down while the scuola's relic of the True Cross passes by. Patricia Fortini Brown has interpreted this image as a representation of communal harmony, one that can be seen in the coats of arms of the Venetian Scuole Grandi that hang from the edges of the canopy above the reliquary containing the fragment of the True Cross, the other participants in the procession, and, most important, the marble- and mosaic-covered basilica of S. Marco in the background. (78)