Danny Smith
In the thirteenth century, the city of Rome was adorned with frescoes, mosaics, and sculptures of dreaming figures: images that depicted both a sleeping figure and their dream. My dissertation, “Dreaming in Public in Late Medieval Rome,” argues that these dream depictions were a powerful visual tool in the duecento, one that assimilated evolving scientific conceptions of dreaming into the visual arts. I look at four ways in which dream images functioned in the period: to trumpet papal legitimacy over foreign ruler, to assert aristocratic power in the city, to secure the role of the fast-growing Franciscan and Dominican orders, and to present the city to pilgrims as indelibly linked to the biblical past. I frame these depictions of dreams as the nexus of intellectual, religious, and political histories in the city, drawing from scientific texts, sermons, even popular guidebooks for personal dream interpretation.