Avignon as 'nova Roma'

This article explores the complex, subtle and multifaceted process of the visual and material construction of Avignon as the ‘nova Roma’, determined by the role of this Provençal city as the established seat for the papacy in the Trecento. By offering a new in-depth reading of pictorial programmes, inscriptions and monumental buildings, this paper reveals that papal fashioning of Avignon in relation to the Eternal City went hand in hand with a new visual construction of the ‘old’ Rome. It further contends that, only by taking a broader internationalist approach to Avignonese art and seeing it in the wider context of contemporary commissioning in Rome, can current debates and interpretations be revised in such a way as to shed new light on artistic production in both Provence and Rome.