Pictures in Dialogue: A Viewer-Centered Approach to the Hypogeum on Via Dino Compagni

This essay shifts the locus of meaning-making from painter and painting toward the viewer, specifically with reference to paintings in the Hypogeum on Via Dino Compagni. I argue that a viewer seeing paintings simultaneously or in series would sense conversations between pictures, in part because the process of linking pictures is analogous to the linking of disparate scriptural texts in homiletic practice. Approaching the closely juxtaposed paintings of Hercules, Moses, and Christ from this dialogical perspective allows us to characterize their relationship more richly than describing it as either syncretistic or conflictual.