15th century AD

Most studies of tomb sculpture in late medieval and early modern Europe have focused on the attribution and dating of individual monuments, or have presented typological surveys which emphasize the formal development over time of genres such as wall monuments and floor tombs. Recently, some scholars have begun to turn their attention to the patronage of funerary monuments in terms of the concerns and characteristics of the social and economic groups commemorated in them.(1) The study of tomb sculpture, however, should not be limited to questions of authorship, style, and patronage. As I will demonstrate in this article through my analysis of a single tomb designed by Donatello, the complex cultural and historical matrix in which tombs were commissioned, designed, and encountered in late medieval and early modern Europe can be understood more fully by considering two issues that have only occasionally been addressed in discussions of funerary art: the important role played by contemporary viewers, and the impact of ritual practices associated with death and postmortem commemoration on tomb design.(2)

Situating the Pecci Tomb

Sometime after 1427, Donatello cast and signed a bronze floor tomb for Giovanni di Bartolomeo Pecci of Siena, bishop of Grosseto and apostolic protonotary, which depicts the dead prelate laid out in a concave bier in highly illusionistic low relief (Figs. 1, 2).(3) As I will discuss below, the tomb, currently in the northeastern transept of Siena Cathedral in the chapel of Saint Ansanus, was originally located in front of the high altar in the center of the old canons' choir over the site where the bishop's body had been buried (Fig. 3).(4) The placement of the tomb in this choir was particularly appropriate because Pecci had himself been a canon in the Duomo.(5)

[Figures 1 to 3 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The tomb is first mentioned as being in the center of the choir in a cathedral inventory of 1458.(6) In a 1467 inventory, it is still clearly listed as being "in mezo al coro," where it most likely remained until the old choir was torn down in 1506 and the relief was moved to the nearby Saint Ansanus chapel patronized by the Pecci family.(7) In a document of 1452, members of the Pecci family discussed installing the relief over the bishop's burial site, which suggests that it was first set up sometime between 1452 and 1458.(8) However, this document does not prove exactly when Donatello designed and cast the tomb, only that he must have done so in the years between Pecci's death in 1427 and the family's deliberations in 1452.(9) John Paoletti end John Pope-Hennessy have suggested that the tomb may at one time have been intended for a Pecci family chapel abutting the cathedral's north flank, but the tomb's prominent placement in the choir over the bishop's burial site suggests that this position was the one originally intended: it is unlikely that the tomb would have been moved from a private side chapel to a key location in front of the high altar more than a quarter of a century after Pecci's death.(10) Pecci's will stipulated that his tomb should be placed inside the Duomo--"in Ecl[es]ia cathed[r]ali Senarum in loco honorato"--while the Pecci family chapel was connected to the main body of the church only in 1442, facts that lend further support to the conclusion that the relief was originally intended to be placed over the bishop's remains in the center of the old canons choir.(11)

The Pecci tomb is designed so that the illusion of three-dimensionality, of a real body displayed in a fully concave bier, is best appreciated from one viewpoint in particular, namely, that of a beholder looking obliquely at the effigy while standing at the foot of the tomb (Fig. 2). This observation, mentioned briefly by H. W. Janson and somewhat elaborated in subsequent scholarship, has implications well beyond Donatello's interest in one-point perspective.(12) For here, as in several other projects by Donatello, the implied beholder is not simply any viewer standing in the correct position, but rather a historically specific viewer whose presence enhances, one could even say completes, the meaning of the tomb. The beholder most likely to stand in this position at the time the tomb was commissioned would, of course, have been a priest celebrating Mass at the cathedral's high altar, which was dedicated to the Virgin, Siena's main patron saint, and was crowned in this period by Duccio's altarpiece, the Maesta.(13) As I will discuss below, I believe that the celebrant's position implied by Donatello's design would have recalled the bishop's funeral, a service during which Pecci's body, like the bronze effigy, would probably have been placed before the priest on the high altar. Metaphorically, a beholder drawn into standing in this position by the tomb's perspective design would thus have reenacted Pecci's funeral Mass or, equally appropriately, would have evoked an intercessory Mass for the dead bishop's soul.(14)