‘Dei Templum oblatum Deo est in templo’. Iconographical Approach to The Presentation of Mary at the Temple in Italian Trecento Painting from its Apocryphal Sources
Abstract
This paper emphasizes, first of all, that the alleged episode of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary at the temple, forged by some apocryphal fables, had a remarkable success in the medieval Christian art, as evidenced by the eleven images of the Italian Trecento art that we analyzed here. Secondly, however, our essay seeks to highlight that the intellectual or manual authors of these eleven artworks assume with great freedom the apocryphal sources that inspire them, to the point of daring to correct or even contradict them in some important details.