Subtle and erudite, Marta Madero’s book is a contribution both to the history of the property rights to artistic works and to the history of ideas about material things. The corpus that she so meticulously analyzes is that of the glosses and commentaries that medieval jurists consecrated to the question of tabula picta, a notion inherited from Roman law and the terms of which are seemingly simple: To whom does a painted tablet belong? To the owner of the physical piece of wood on which an image is painted? Or to the person who made the painting on that piece...

Who is the owner of a painting? He who painted the figures or he who owns the wood tablet on which the painter applied colors? Who is the owner of a written object? He who owns the parchment or he who wrote the text? From the twelfth century and until the end of the Middle Ages, jurists have debated these issues which seem very odd to us. Over the centuries, they have accumulated arguments and garnered references to support one position or the other. And, after them, legal historians have focused on this issue, traditionally known as that of the...

When the issue is to know to whom a written or painted object belongs when the owner of the support and the owner of the inscriptions or motives are not the same person, things, at the outset, always come down to a determination of the dominium. However, under Roman law, the dominium is invested in the thing; it has the same destiny. If the thing disappears, if it becomes extinct under the law, so does the dominium. Such is the case for a metallic part, such as the handle of a vessel or an arm affixed to a statue, when...

Two of the most interesting texts about accessio are Placentin’s Summa to the Institutes, probably written during the last third of the twelfth century,¹ and Azo’s Summa,² written at the beginning of the thirteenth century. In fact, Placentin is the first to discuss the tabula picta at length within an original system. According to him, the ius gentium governs two modes of acquisition of the dominium: “Per apprehensionem et per accessionem” (by appropriation and by accession). The first mode itself breaks down into four subcategories: captio (taking), permutatio (exchange), traditio (delivery), and occupatio (occupation). The one that concerns us, accessio,...

The first gloss writer who thought of painting within the explicit framework of specificatio is Placentin, writing about the Institutes. However, one should not forget that, for him, specificatio was a category subsumed into accessio, and most particularly into “accessio discreta de re ad personam,” which ranked specificatio on a par with the progeny of animals and slaves and with the islands born of the sea. Placentin incarnates a defense of art and technique that is not often present in the debate.

Envisaged within the framework of the rules of accessio, painting characteristically inverts the principle by which things that...

We must now return to D.50.16.14, a fragment by Jurist Paul, which states, as we have seen:

Labeo et Sabinus existimant si vestimentum scissum reddatur, vel res corrupta reddita sit: veluti sciphi collisi: aut tabula rasa pictura: videri rem abesse: quoniam earum rerum pretium non in substantia, sed in arte sit positum.

[Labeo and Sabinus think that if a garment is returned torn, or if a thing is returned corrupted, such as a broken vessel or a scratched painting, the thing is assumed to be absent, because the value of those things does not reside in their matter,¹ but in...

Ferruminatio unites iron to iron by means of iron, silver to silver with silver. The result is a continuity of substance, a full and definitive coherence. Adplumbatio, on the contrary, unites without continuity of substance.

[Cassius] dicit enim, si statuae suae ferruminatione iunctum bracchium sit, unitate maioris partis consumi: et quod semel alienum factum sit, etiamsi inde abruptum sit, redire ad priorem dominum non posse. Non idem in eo, quod applumbatum sit: quia ferruminatio per eandem materiam facit confusionem, plumbatura non idem efficit.

[(Cassius) says in fact that, if an arm is attached to its statue by ferruminatio, it is...

None of the three fragments from the Justinian corpus applied the categories of things that are factae and infectae to painting and writing, but Odofredo and Alberico do, to designate the relationship between colors, ink, the tabula and the charta. The opposition also is at the center of the gloss at D.6.1.23. That excerpt deals with the adjunction of a part to whatever can be designated as a whole: an arm added to a statue, a handle added to a vessel, a leg added to a table, and so on. This rule of absorption of the part by the whole...

In an article on specificatio, Contardo Ferrini states that the Romans conceived of two original forms of acquisition of dominium, one being that of occupation, and the other they called “attraction of the dominium.” The Romans may have expressed that power of attraction of the dominium in sentences such as “what is built on a land appertains to the land” or “appertain to the tabula because of accession.” Jurist Paul (D.6.1.23.3) probably best stated that “law of attraction” by stating that there is accessio when my thing attracts and makes mine the thing of another “per praevalentiam.”¹ This law of...

For the gloss writers, orthodoxy with respect to the Justinian corpus on tabula picta may take three forms. Two of them concern hypotheses of logic and the third a distribution of objects. The first one does not differentiate between pictura and littera, because “it is necessary that the thing appertain to that without which it cannot subsist” (D.6.1.23.3–4). The second one is that of the pretium (ibid. and I.2.1.33–34). From the first two rationales, superficies solo cedit and pretium, the third one gives foundation to the opposition between writing and painting. Commentary writers multiply the forms of value,...

According to Roman law, the pars is considered that which, in relation to the whole, is an element whose subtraction would make the thing seem mutilated, diminished in its essence, in its integrity.¹ Thus one regards the painted tabulae set into the walls and marble incrustations (D.19.1.17.3) as partes of the house, but not the wood panels that surround the walls or drapes (D.19.1.17.4). The mast is part of the boat, but not the prow’s sail (D.50.16.242). Similarly, the lead used in the roof of a house is pars, but not that used to cover an uncovered terrace (D.50.16.242.2).

In...

Another criterion must be added to the previously mentioned plurality governing the union or transformation of materials, which, in turn, cancels the rules of inseparability, part, and price: the ornandi causa, whose consequence is that ornamentum sequitur rem ornatam. The gloss and commentary writers refer generally to Title 34.2 of the Digest dealing with gold and silver legacies, and particularly to D.34.2.19 Cum aurum. Let us first review the texts in question:

Perueniamus ad gemmas inclusas argento auroque. Et ait Sabinus, auro argentove cedere. Ei enim cedit, cuius maior est species, quod recte expressit Semper enim cum quaerimus, quid cui...

In his commentary at D.6.1.23, Angelo de Ubaldi (1328–ca. 1407), Baldus’s brother, both categorizes the relationship between substantia and substantia, and reflects on the relationship between substantia and qualitas focused on painting and writing. Paint and writing, which are both applied on their respective support, are of the order of qualitas, whereas the tabula and charta are substantiae, and qualitas “per se non potest.” For him, the praevalentia is a criterion based on the qualitas-substantia relationship; and the substantia always prevails over the qualitas, which depends on it.

Quandoque qualitas adiungitur substantie. Exemplum in pictura que imponitur tabule et...

To order the interpretations, let us return first to the Summae, which were elaborated between the second third of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth century. Under Placentin’s construction, the accessio subsumes the specificatio. The main split is between things that are separate, always discussed in terms of “birth” and for which he uses the verb accedere, and things that are continuous in the spatial sense, but deprived of birth, for which he uses cedere. Birth designates fruits of the womb, islands, species—among which painting under certain conditions—whereas accessio continua includes seeds and plants of...