Il ciclo di Tristano e Isotta a Castel Roncolo

The Tristan legend was one of the most represented literary themes between the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age: its depictions are to be found in a variety of different media, from illuminated manuscripts to painted walls, from ivory baskets to tapestries. The present essay analyzes a paradigmatic example of this secular artistic production, the cycle of frescoes of Castel Runkelstein (Bozen, Italy), hosted in one of the few surviving “Camere Lanzeloti” (Lancelot’s rooms), expression used in ancient inventories to designate boardrooms of castles and noble palaces decorated with scenes inspired by famous poems of chivalry. The frescoes are analyzed in relation to their literary source, which I propose is to be identified with Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan romance, on the ground of a series of striking parallels and analogies between the painted images and the text.