An addition to the 12th century Po Valley miniature: the kinship trees in a little-known manuscript of the Decretum Gratiani in the Archive of San Pietro in Perugia

Abstract

The arbores consanguinitatis et affinitatis, painted with figures depicting a bearded monarch and a married couple within a codex of the Decretum Gratiani in the Archivio di San Pietro in Perugia (CM 4, fols 291v-292r), were briefly mentioned by Hermann Schadt in his seminal study on kinship trees, with a plausible dating to the late twelfth century. The arbores in the Perugian manuscript have largely been overlooked in subsequent studies. The figures adorning the diagrams can be compared to a group of specimens likely from the same workshop, possibly active in Bologna during the last decades of the twelfth century. This contribution addresses the problematic artistic culture of these illuminators, a subject of controversial interpretations by scholars due to its intersections with transalpine production and the extremely limited knowledge of the Bolognese pictorial scene during this period. The transalpine elements of the miniatures suggest a circulation of Nordic forms common in book decoration of the time in the Po Valley area, which must also have characterized an international center of legal studies such as Bologna.