Martin Romatowski is a PhD candidate in art history at the University of Oslo. During the 2025–2026 academic year, he is a Visiting Researcher at the Norwegian Institute in Rome.
During my seven months as a guest researcher at the Norwegian Institute in Rome, I have had the opportunity to visit many of the city’s museums and research libraries. Beyond the sheer pleasure of becoming acquainted with these bastions of learning, the wealth of knowledge they contain has been invaluable for the art history dissertation I have been working on for the past year and a half at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo. From time to time, however, it becomes necessary to broaden one’s horizons further through research trips to other parts of Italy. I was able to undertake just such a journey during a week at the end of February.
First Stop: Genoa
The first stop was Genoa in Liguria. In this port city—one of Italy’s foremost power centres during the Middle Ages and the early modern period—there are objects that feature in my research project: so-called ‘pomanders’. These small hollow spheres were once filled with pastes made from fragrant essences. Usually attached to a belt by a chain, they became mobile objects that released scents believed to purify the air, reduce the risk of airborne diseases and—perhaps most importantly—make their wearer more attractive.
In the Footsteps of Bernardino of Siena
From Genoa, I continued to Siena, in the heart of Tuscany. In this medieval city, I followed in the footsteps of Bernardino of Siena, the Franciscan preacher who, in the first half of the fifteenth century, burned objects he associated with immoral living—among them the aforementioned pomanders and other artefacts he regarded as material expressions of vanity and sin. During a visit to the Basilica di San Bernardino all’Osservanza just outside the city, founded by Bernardino himself, a friendly caretaker offered to let me go behind the scenes of the church and convent. I was shown, among other things, the preacher’s death mask and a panel bearing the letters IHS, an abbreviation of the name of Christ that Bernardino frequently used in his well-attended sermons and which also provoked controversy among his opponents. An hour later, I found myself standing on the very spot in Piazza del Campo, in front of the Palazzo Pubblico, where Bernardino addressed thousands of listeners in the spring of 1427.
Relics, Hermit Life, and the Return to Rome
The final stage of the trip took me to Assisi, the home of the Franciscan Order. For one month, between the end of February and the end of March, the relics of the order’s founder, St Francis of Assisi, were displayed for public viewing for the first time ever, as part of the commemorations marking eight hundred years since his death. Seeing the physical remains of such an influential figure in the lower church of the Basilica of San Francesco—together with large numbers of pilgrims from around the world—was, naturally, a powerful experience. Yet what perhaps left the strongest impression was a walk up to a hermitage on Mount Subasio, a few kilometres outside the city. At the Eremo delle Carceri, St Francis and his closest followers withdrew when they sought solitude for contemplation and prayer. Unsurprisingly, Bernardino had also been here: in the early fifteenth century he expanded the complex and left his IHS emblem above the entrance to the refectory.
With a train—unusually delayed—I eventually made my way back to Rome, filled with impressions and inspiration for the months that remain at the Norwegian Institute.
