Hope it's alright if I revive this thread. Something caught my interest that was mentioned a while back in this thread, so I wanted to comment here instead of starting a new thread.
VViews mentioned the Giotto painting, "
Morte di san Francesco," from the Assisi basilica, that was found to contain the "hidden" face of a devil that is camouflaged in the edge of some of the painted clouds. (In 2011 an art historian who had studied these frescoes for over 30 years suddenly noticed this detail, that no one had noticed for centuries since its creation in the late 13th century (or at least it is not recorded that anyone noticed before.)
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While images of hidden faces like this were rare, I wondered what other similar examples from medieval art were known and whether there is any connection between them.
One other example I found is also from an Italian fresco: Ambrogio Lorenzetti's "Effects of Good Government" (part of the fresco series "The Allegory of Good and Bad Government" at Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, 1338-9). In one section of the painting, a winged figure (a personification of Security) hovers over the city walls and holds a small gallows with a hanged man, apparently to show that one of the virtues of a "good government" is its effective criminal justice. The fabric of the hanged man's clothing is blowing in the wind, and the fabric folds seem to form a noticeable profile of a devil's face.
A section of the painting:
This seems to be a less well-known example, since I could find little written about it, but the main source I could find is a You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. that has an interesting take on why the devil's face might be hidden in this manner:
"In medieval imagery, it's not unusual to find civil offenders surrounded or even goaded by devils... Even, the proximity of devilish figures to hanged persons is not a novelty... Their faults, as social evils, have to be considered not only capital crimes, but also deadly sins. So those guilty, as
disparate ("hopeless"), have--or rather wear--a kind of demonic, for they should be totally eliminated from the civil community. However, the hiding of the devil's face by Lorenzetti in the dress-folds of the hanged man seems to disclose a more peculiar sense, which draws this finding up to that--more famed--made in Assisi Giotto's fresco by Chiara Frugoni, and which is perhaps to be related with the presence of the positive figure of the "angel" Security and, in general, with the positive message of
Buon Governo. Evil, even if subdued by the triumph of Good, appears then to be not completely "erased": its presence still keeps threatening, this time in a hidden way, by the effects of Good."
It is difficult because examples are rare, but does anyone know of any other, or better, examples of this kind of "hidden face" and if so, is the face meant to represent someone "good" or "bad"?
I know that only two examples don't make a pattern, but I wonder... if there is an intentional profile in the VM's plant of f17v, could a reason for the departure from the VM's usual style of drawing faces be because it represents an "unseen" presence of the devil?