Appunti di ricerca dal progetto ‘Opere firmate nell’arte italiana. Medioevo’: l’alto medioevo e il caso di Siena

The article is part of the research project Opere firmate nell'arte italiana / Medioevo (Corpus of Signed Works of Art in Italy / Middle Ages), directed by Maria Monica Donato (Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa). The project aims to create an archive of all works of Italian art with a signature executed between the VIth century and the XVth century. For the field of onomastics, the project provides unusual written sources relating to the relationship between an artist’s identity and his need to advertise his name. My part of the article is focused on the Late Middle Ages in Siena. The composition of the signatures indicates “legal” and “devotional” intentions. This section focuses attention on the palaeographical characteristics of the inscription naming Lippo Memmi in the frescoes of the collegiate church of St. Gimignano, which help assign the work to the first half of XIVth century, and on epigraphical textura - a type of miniscule Gothic script typical of northern Europe - and its distribution in Italy.