L'Age d'or del Camposanto di Pisa. Cantieri e fasi decorative pittoriche nella prima metà del Trecento

The Camposanto of Pisa, a unique monument in Europe, built from 1277 onwards, is the product of religious, identity and artistic requirements, which can only be studied and understood through an interdisciplinary approach. Pisa, still at the beginning of the Trecento, was the Ghibelline city par excellence, but from the end of the 1320s, the politics of the city underwent a radical change, thanks to the intervention of Count Fazio Donoratico della Gherardesca. He drove out the vicar of Louis the Bavarian, Tarlato Tarlati, freeing Pisa from imperial domination and sought to establish good relations with Florence and Genoa, once Pisa's worst enemies, and above all with Pope John XXII. It is in this complex political context that the fresco decoration of the Camposanto began. The phases of the formulation of the project, the management of the building site, and the choice of artists and iconography cannot be properly understood outside this context. This dissertation focuses, therefore, on the sponsors of the frescoes and on the interweaving of the building site with civic society: the role of the Council of Anziani, the body of the Pisan political government that also presided over the Camposanto; of the "Operai" - in particular Giovanni Rossi and Giovanni Scorcialupi - who functioned as an interface between the Commune and the artists; of Archbishop Simone Saltarelli and the Dominicans; and, not least, of of Count Fazio Donoratico della Gherardesca, an emblematic figure in Pisan life at the time.