Torcello
| Torcello | ||
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| Waters | Venice lagoon | |
| Geographical location | 45 ° 29 '48 " N , 12 ° 24' 59" E | |
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| length | 1.2 km | |
| width | 1 km | |
| surface | 44.169 9 ha | |
| Highest elevation | 2 m | |
| Residents | 14th (2009) 32 inhabitants / km² |
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| main place | Torcello | |
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Torcello is an island in the laguna morta , the northern part of the Venice lagoon , where the tides are no longer noticeable.
geography
Torcello is 150 meters north of the islands of Burano and Mazzorbo , separated from them by the Canale di Burano . The island is 44.17 hectares , more precisely 441,699 m², and only two meters high. At the 2001 census, 25 permanent residents were found on the island.
history
According to earlier beliefs, Torcello was settled in the 7th century, but near Torcello the floor of a Roman villa was discovered two meters below the water level. Therefore it is assumed that Torcello was settled as early as the 1st century.
Torcello was the seat of the Bishop of Altinum from 638 to 689 and quickly gained importance as a center of politics and trade. There is only one church left today, namely the cathedral, but the Benedictine monastery of San Giovanni Evangelista and the church of Sant'Andrea (Apostolo) di Torcello were built in the early Middle Ages. Both are only mentioned in the Chronicon Altinate .
During excavations carried out between November 2012 and March 2013 on an area near the church of Santa Maria Assunta, a village of wooden houses from the 10th and 11th centuries was found. The houses looked out onto canals. They were separated from each other by inner courtyards with cisterns. Numerous ovens indicate the production of glass, and bones and horns of goats were processed to make fittings, buttons, needles or combs. Pigs, sheep and cattle were also kept. The proportion of cattle increased sharply in the 15th and 16th centuries, but this was not due to the need for meat, but to the demand for labor, especially for plowing. While pigs were more likely to be eaten in late antiquity , in the early Middle Ages it was mostly sheep and goats. Amphorae with remains of olive oil and wine from southern Italy and the eastern Mediterranean are evidence of the long-distance trade contacts that were otherwise hardly verifiable for this early period. Already from the 4th / 5th In the 19th century, the cultivation of fruit, wine and cucumbers could be proven.
In the 10th century, Torcello probably had 10,000 to 20,000 inhabitants and was bigger and richer than Venice. In the 12th century the manuscript indicates ms. 768 in the Museo Provinciale di Torcello in addition to the sacred buildings mentioned, the hospice of San Pietro di Casacalba, two other Benedictine monasteries (Sant'Angelo di Zampenigo - it existed around 900 - and Sant'Antonio Abbate - it was built around 1000), then two Cistercian monasteries ( San Tommaso dei Borgognoni - the building goes back to pre-Christian times - and the Benedictine-Cistercian monastery of Santa Margherita), finally the Baptistery of San Giovanni Battista and the two chapels of Santa Fosca and San Marco. However, apart from Santa Fosca, which still exists today, as well as San Giovanni Evangelista, Sant'Angelo di Zampenigo and San Marco, the locations were no longer known. Remains of the sacristy and apse of San Tommaso dei Borgognoni were found in a private building as early as the 19th century. On the other hand, a church was discovered during excavations that does not appear in any of the known sources. The other churches appear in the diocese's visitation reports, but also in the holdings of the State Archives , so that their locations could also be determined in the 1970s and 80s. San Giovanni Evangelista was completely destroyed in two fires, around 640 and in 1343.
After the 12th century, this period of prosperity ended and the place sank into insignificance. The lagoon around Torcello swamped, and malaria epidemics threatened. The inhabitants left the island for Venice or Murano and took everything with them that could be used as building material, so that the city was almost completely demolished. Around 1860 Torcello still had around 360 inhabitants. At the 2001 census, 25 permanent residents were found on the island, in 2009 only 14 residents lived on Torcello.
Little of the once magnificent buildings on Torcello has been preserved. Of the original twelve parishes and sixteen monasteries of the diocese, which also included other islands in the north of the lagoon, the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, which dates back to 639, with its rich Byzantine mosaics and the Church of Santa Fosca from the 11th century. Century preserved. There are also two 14th century palazzi that house a small museum. The so-called throne of Attila , a seat carved from a piece of stone, has nothing to do with the Hun king. This was probably the 'throne chair' of the Podestà or the bishop. Today Torcello is a well-known destination for well-heeled gourmets, mainly because of the Locanda Cipriani .
Santa Fosca
The church of Santa Fosca owes its existence to a martyr's grave. According to tradition, the relics of the martyr Santa Fosca were brought to Torcello from the Sabrata oasis in Libya before 1011 . The church is a central building built in the 11th century with a Greek cross inscribed in an octagon and thus contains a typical design feature of the Byzantine architecture of the 11th century. An arcade with stilted arches, columns and hewn capitals surrounds the church on five of the eight outer walls. On the other outer sides of the church is the pentagonal apse , which is flanked by semicircular side apses . Santa Fosca is connected to Santa Maria Assunta by a 16th century portico . Originally it was planned to vault the church with a brick dome, but after the collapse of the vaults of similar buildings, a decision was made for a wooden dome with roof tiles.
In 1811 the French government decided to destroy Santa Fosca , but the decision was not carried out.
Santa Maria Assunta
The island owes its art-historical importance to the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta ( Assumption of the Virgin ) , consecrated in 1008 by Bishop Orso Orseolo .
The church has an altar barrier, a so-called iconostasis from the 15th century. Such an iconostasis separated the area of the holy of holies around the altar from the parish room in the Greek Orthodox Church of the Middle Ages. Originally, in the Byzantine influenced churches, there was a half-height parapet at this point in the style of the early Christian choir screens.
From the 14th century - especially in the Russian church - a complete partition wall was developed, which was covered with pictures and into which one or more doors were let, so the altar area was completely hidden from the view of the faithful. Here is a later version, which one can only vaguely see the earlier wall character. In front of the iconostasis, on the left, you can see the pulpit from the 12th century on pillars, from which the Christian message was preached to the parishioners outside the sanctuary.
The former picture wall later became the so-called Templon , a picture frieze that closed off the open construction of the iconostasis at the top. Depicted are Mary and the 12 apostles: from left to right Andreas and his brother Peter with the key and the book, next to it the central figure Mary with the child - a so-called Madonna Hodegetria - decorated on a gold mosaic background. Here you can still see that in the early Middle Ages it was not the altar that stood in the apse, but the bishop's throne, which was reached via several steps, was clearly elevated. In Christian church painting, the images of the apse differ significantly from the rest of the church furnishings . As the surroundings of the altar, the representations of the apse often have visionary themes and allow a partial view of the heavenly spheres.
The church's mosaics are its most valuable part. However, their dating is controversial and their state of preservation varies. The central Madonna probably dates from the 12th or early 13th century.
The very well preserved apostle frieze under the Madonna is dated the 12th / 13th Dated century. Its quality is on the same level as the San Marco mosaics . Here the mosaicists have made an effort to create an individual and detailed representation of the faces and to emphasize the folds of the robes. What cannot be overlooked, however, is the tendency of Byzantine-oriented art towards abstract-geometric patterns, especially in the design of the garment in the lower part of the body.
The two side aisles of the church each have their own apse with its own apse mosaic. The right side chapel has the oldest mosaic in the church in the vault in front of the apse. It is from the previous building of the current basilica, from the 7th century: four angels wear a wreathed medallion with the Lamb of God .
The mosaics of the actual apse date from the 12th century: in the middle, Christ in the gesture of the blessing Savior on the throne between the archangels Michael and Gabriel. Including the four church scholars Gregor, Hieronymus, Augustinus and Ambrosius. Incidentally, here we also have a comparison of the two numbers three and four, above the "spiritual" triple constellation, below the "secular" group of four.
Two of the oldest works of art still in the church are a holy water font and the so-called "peacock tablet", both from the 11th century. The peacock tablet is a marble relief with two peacocks pecking from a bowl. This bird symbolism relates to the renewal of life and the resurrection of Christ. In the medieval symbolic language, the peacock stands for the resurrection, because according to Pliny it loses all feathers in autumn and gets new ones in spring and its flesh - according to the teaching of Augustine - is incorruptible.
On the opposite side, where the entrance to the church is located, another huge mosaic with the theme of the Last Judgment covers the entire wall in five superimposed zones, but the lower two zones of which were poorly restored in the 19th century. It was installed here in the second half of the 12th century. The theme of the Last Judgment was commonly used in medieval churches on the west side, the side where the sun sets. When leaving the church, the believer was reminded of the judgment foretold in the Apocalypse of John at the end of the historical world.
literature
- Torcello. Santa Maria Assunta Basilica with the bell tower and Santa Fosca Church. Associazione sant 'Appollonia. ISBN 88-8428-016-8
- Ennio Concina: Churches in Venice: Art and History . Photographs by Piero Codato and Vittorio Pavan. Translated from the Italian by Peter Schiller. Munich 1996 (original edition Udine 1995) pp. 112–123
- Marcel Durliat : Romanesque Art . Freiburg-Basel-Vienna 1983. Color plate 23
- Wladimiro Dorigo : Venice before Venice - from Grado to San Marco . In: Romanelli, Giandomenico (ed.): Venice. Art and architecture . Cologne 2005, 2007 ( ISBN 978-3-8331-3621-4 ), 2009 ( ISBN 978-3-8331-5575-8 ), pp. 20-25
- Wolfgang Fritz Volbach , Jaqueline Lafontaine-Dosogne: Byzanz (= Propylaea Art History, Vol. 3. Frankfurt am Main - Berlin [1968] 1990), fig. 113;
- Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan : La Mort lente de Torcello. Fayard, Paris 1995.
- Lech Leciejewicz: Torcello. Nuove ricerche archeologiche. Bretschneider, 2000.
Movie
- In the Venice lagoon - Burano and Torcello. Documentary, Germany, 2006, 43:30 min., Script and direction: Birgit Kienzle, production: SWR , first broadcast: September 6, 2006 on SWR, table of contents .
See also
Web links
- Search for Torcello in the SPK digital portal of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
Remarks
- ↑ Venice Islands ( Memento of March 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Censimento Generale della Popolazione e delle Abitazioni , Istat, 2001
- ↑ Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, April 4, 1991, p. 48.
- ↑ Venezia, scavi in Laguna: la vita a Torcello nel X secolo , in: Corriere della sera , January 22, 2014.
- ^ According to Maurizia Vecchi: Chiese e monasteri medioevali scomparsi della laguna superiore di Venezía. Ricerche storico-archeologiche , Rome 1983, p. 25.
- ^ Meyer's Neues Conversations-Lexikon für alle Stände, Vol. 14, Hildburghausen, New York 1860, p. 1097.
- ↑ Gianpaolo Trevisan: Il rinnovamento architettonico degli edifici religiosi a Torcello, Aquileia e Venezia nella prima metà del secolo XI , in: Glauco Maria Cantarella, Arturo Calzona (ed.): La reliquia del sangue di Cristo , Bonae artes 2, Verona 2012, Pp. 479–504, here: p. 487 ( online , PDF).