Interpreting Andrea di Bonaiuto's 'The Way of Salvation'

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Primary Source Analysis on The Way of Salvation
Kyunghee Baek 774459

The Way of Salvation fresco, situated in the Spanish Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, is created by Andrea di Bonaiuto during the years 1365 to 1368. It also has given many names to the Triumph of the Church and the Dominican Order, Allegory of the Active and the Via Veritatis, the meaning of the Church as the Path to Salvation. As the names well represented its purpose, Via Veritatis depicts the Triumph of the Faith and the Dominican doctrine with the intension not only to awaken the ordinary people living at the time, especially who are the disbelievers or heresy, to the idea of that the church is the only institution to lead the true path to salvation but also, among the people in the church, to invoke Dominican doctrine. …show more content…

_ By Diana Norman
On the approaching this large fresco itself, it suggests to imply meaningful messages about the way of the view of the Medieval church in the fourteenth century.
[OVERALL COMPOSITION]

Firstly, the mural’s left bottom section, one can see the various hierarchy figures of the Medieval church society surrounding the pope, the symbol of the church, who seated at the center of the basilica which appears to be the cathedral — Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore — of Florence. To the left side of him, the Dominican(a cardinal), a bishop and Holly Roman Emperor seated at the right side of him. The Dominicans, who appear in many figures in this fresco, represent themselves visually all the time as the hounds of God since the name of Dominican in Italy means ‘dogs(canes) of the Lord(Domini)’. It is depicted as white and black dogs, reflecting Dominican attire, in front of the church guarding the sheep as a role of the shepherds, symbolizing God’s protection of humankind. On the right side of

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