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POPE-HENNESSY

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METROPOLITAN

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 速 www.jstor.org

THE METROPOLITAN

MUSEUM OF ART BULLETIN

Fall 1988

Volume XLVI, Number 2 (ISSN 0026-I521) Published quarterly ? 1988 by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, New York, N.Y. 10028. Second-class postage paid at New York, N.Y. and Additional Mailing Offices. The MetropolitanMuseumof Art Bulletin is provided as a benefit to Museum members and available by subscription. Subscriptions $i8.00 a year. Single copies $4.75. Four weeks' notice required for change of address. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Membership Department, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, New York, N.Y. 10028.

Back issues available on microfilm from University Microfilms, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48Io6. Volumes I-XXVIII (1905-1942) available as a clothbound reprint set or as individual yearly volumes from The Ayer Company, Publishers, Inc., 99 Main Street, Salem, N.H. 03079, or from the Museum, Box 700, Middle Village, N.Y. I I 379. General Manager of Publications: John P. O'Neill. Editor in Chief of the Bulletin:Joan Holt. Assistant Editor: Robert McD. Parker. Design: Bruce Campbelf. On the cover: Giovanni di Paolo (ca. 1400-I482).

The Coronationof the Virgin, figure 63. Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (I975. 1.38). Inside front cover: Giovanni di Paolo. God the Father with the planets, the sun, and the circle of the zodiac, detail of figure 17

Director's

Note

In 1937 the Londonpublishing firm of Chatto & Windus issued a 208-page volume devoted to Giovanni di Paolo.

Written by a twenty-four-year-oldscholarand art historian, it was hailed as one of the best books on an Italian artist to have appearedin years. This monographcombined connoisseurshipwith a meticulous command of documentaryinformation and a sharpcriticalfaculty, therebyushering in the distinguished careerof John Pope-Hennessy.Now, in this Bulletin,John Pope-Hennessyreexaminesthe painterabout whom he firstwrote. After more than fifty years, he has found Giovanni di Paolo to be a "richerand even more rewardingartist than I had originally supposed."

The MetropolitanMuseum of Art has twenty-onepaintings by Giovanni di Paolo- the largestgroup of works by him outside his native Siena. Elevenof these are in the RobertLehmanCollection. They rangefrom the magnificent Coronation of theVirgin,the center of a majoraltarpiece painted during the 1450s for an unidentifiedpatron, to small narrativescenes from the predellas,or bases, of elaborate Gothic polyptychs. Few of these altarpieceshave survived intact. In the courseof the eighteenth and nineteenth centuriesthey were dismantled, their pilastersand predellas cut apart, and sold. One of the primaryproblemsconfronting anyonewriting on these works is the identificationof relatedpanels and their reconstruction,a task to which Pope-Hennessy'sbook addresseditself with remarkable successand to which he here adds furtherrefinement.

Giovanni di Paolo'sreputationshifted widely over the centuries. He neverlackedcommissionsduring his life.

Giovanni di Paolopainted large altarpiecesfor virtuallyall the importantreligious ordersof his day and was given the task of creating the firstcomprehensivecycle on the life of Saint Catherineof Siena. However,his fame did not long outlast him: Renaissancetaste made his Gothic works seem unappealingand old-fashioned.In his comprehensiveLives, of 1565, Vasaridoes not so much as mention Giovanni di Paolo, whose memory was kept alive only by local antiquarians. Although included by Croweand Cavalcasellein their monumentalHistoryof Paintingin Italy,published in I866, Giovanni di Paolo is relegatedto the "massof still less distinguished individuals,"and he is chastisedfor his "strangefancy in composition, and his epileptic vehemence and awkwardnessin the delineationof action." Inevitably,a reevaluationfollowed a revolutionin taste and the advent of modern art, with its abandonmentof academicprinciples of drawing and design. By 1931 his reputationhad so changed that BernardBerensonwas able to write, "The SieneseQuattrocentohas been as attractiveas the Trecento to recent collectors, even more attractive.Any Sassetta. .. any Giovanni di Paolo, no matter how caricaturedin type and expression ...

has found an eager buyer, and not in

Americaonly."As this observationmakes clear, American 3

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collectorsled the way in acquiringGiovanni di Paolo's paintings, and it is to them-to Michael Friedsam,George Blumenthal, and Philip and RobertLehman-that the MetropolitanMuseum owes its rich collection.

This Bulletinservesa dual purpose. In addition to celebrating the works of one of the most individual artistsof the fifteenthcentury,it is also a prelude to an exceptional Siena:1420-I500, which exhibition, Paintingin Renaissance will be held at the MetropolitanMuseum in honor of John Pope-Hennessy'sseventy-fifthbirthday.Composedof just under 140 paintings and illuminated manuscripts,this exhibition, which will run from December 20, 1988, to March 9, 1989, will be the largestdevoted to Sienese painting in the last three-quartersof this century.More than thirty paintings by Giovanni di Paolo-spanning his entire careerand including his miniatures-are to be shown. The exhibition will affordthe unique opportunity to view some of Giovanni di Paolo'smost importantnarrative cycles reunitedfor the first time since their disassembly.

All ten scenes from the life of Saint Catherine,three of which are in the MetropolitanMuseum, will be shown of theVirginand its together, as will the LehmanCoronation predella. Perhapsneveragain will Museum visitors have the rareprivilege of reacquaintingthemselveswith the works of this exquisite and fascinatingartist of the quattrocento.

PHILIPPE

DE MONTEBELLO

Director

Detail of The Coronationof the Virgin

4

WITH ARTISTS of the past are like with living people. They start in a casualfashrelationships ion, they deepen and mature, and if you are lucky you find in old age that you have had a friend for life. My own associationwith the Sieneseartist Giovanni di Paolo is of this kind. I happenedon his work as a boy at the Fogg Museum and at FenwayCourt;I fell under his spell again at Oxford as an undergraduate;and it was Giovanni di Paolo who was RELATIONSHIPS

the subject of my first book. The 1930S were not the days

of dilatorydissertations.War was imminent, and whatever was accomplishedhad to be accomplishedrapidly,so in 1937 the book saw the light of day. Fortyyearslater, when I took chargeof the Departmentof EuropeanPaintings at The MetropolitanMuseum of Art, I found myself in daily contact with the largestgroup of works by Giovanni di Paolo outside Siena;there are twenty-one in all, eleven of them in the RobertLehmanCollection.

Why half a centuryago did I settle on Giovanni di Paolo?Becausehe appearedto me a substantialand highly personalartist. His paintings spoke, or seemed to speak, with a human voice, and their study, or so I believed, involved the responsesof an individual, not of that abstract concept, an artisticpersonality.A good deal has been written on him since, and I suspect that we now know more about Giovanni di Paolo than we know about most other artistsof the fifteenthcentury.If, that is, one believes, as I do, that "knowingabout an artist"involves more than identificationand dating of his paintings, that it connotes an understandingof his creativepsychology.

Giovanni di Paolo was born in Siena a little before 1400, and his fatherwas a painter. Trainedas a painterand illuminator, he lived a reclusivelife in the quarterof Siena known as the Poggio dei Malavolti, nearSantAgostino, and it was there, in 1482, that he made his will and died. To judge from a tax returnof 1453 and from repeatedinvestments in real estate, he was reasonablyprosperous.The staple productsof his studio were altarpiecesand illuminated books (only two of which, however,survive), but in addition, like all Sieneseartistsof the time, he undertook what we would now think of as odd jobs-decorating book coversand banners,designing embroideriesfor vestments, pigmenting wooden sculptures.As he developed, his style inevitablychanged but his imagery remainedconstant, and

I. Giovanni di Paolo. Hippolytus being crushed by a cart, illustration for the Legendof Hippolytus.From Dante's Paradiso.Yates-Thompson Codex, folio 158r. The British Library,London

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2. Giovanni di Paolo. Semele exploding into flame, illustration for Dante and BeatriceAscendto the Heavenof Saturn. From Dante's Paradiso.

Yates-Thompson Codex, folio I65r. The British Library,London

his works from first to last possessa highly individual imaginative quality. He relives the scenes he representswith such intensity that we see them through his mind and with his eyes. He was a literal painter, as emerges very clearly from his most importantmanuscript, a codex of Dante's Paradisoilluminated about 1445 for the AragoneseLibrary in Naples; probablyit was made in connection with one of the many embassiesdispatchedthere from Siena. Through all its scenes the commentary(generallythe OttimoCommento)is illustratedpari passu with the text. The scenes are translatedinto terms of contemporarylife. Hippolytus,

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exiled from Athens, is crushedbeneath the weight not of a chariotbut of a farm cart, and when Beatricetells Dante that if she smiled he would be consumed like Semele, there in the illustrationwe see Semele exploding into flame (figs. i, 2).

In Giovanni di Paolo's predella panels the same some-

times elevated, sometimes earthyimagination is at work. A

panel in The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection in the MetropolitanMuseum shows the Adorationof the Magi, but an adorationof great simplicity, with one unprecedented feature. The timid SaintJoseph is reassuredby the youngest king, who puts one arm aroundhis shoulderand with the other holds his hand (fig. 3).

3. Cilovannl di Paolo. Detail ot 1 he Adorationof the Magz, hgure 38

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6. Giovanni di Paolo. Virgin and Child.

Monte dei Paschi Collection, Siena

4. Giovanni di Paolo. Saint Catherine(?).

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Robert Lee Blaffer Memorial Collection, Gift of SarahCampbell Blaffer (53.3)

5. Giovanni di Paolo. SaintJohn theBaptist.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The Robert Lee Blaffer Memorial Collection, Gift of SarahCampbell Blaffer (53.2)

One point should be made at once. The reasonwhy so many paintings by Giovanni di Paolo exist in the Metropolitan Museum and in other museums in the United States is that his works were brokenup. Giovanni di Paolo, like other Sienesepaintersof his time, was primarilya makerof altarpieces,and in Siena through the middle of the fifteenth century the altarpiecewas a polyptych, in which a central panel (usually though not invariablya Virgin and Child) was flankedby two or four panels of saints beneathGothic arcading. Generallythere was a superstructurewith halflength figuresof the Evangelistswith in the center a Redeemer, attachedby dowels to the main panels. Often there were small superimposedfiguresof saints in pilastersat the sides. The whole structurerestedon a base or predellawith narrativescenes relating either to the centralfigure, or to the saints flanking it, or to one of the saints to the exclusion of the rest. The predellawas normallycomposed of a single horizontalplank on which the individual scenes were separatedby pigmented intersticesor by gesso decoration.

When altarpieceswere disassembled(as many were in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), the lateralpanels 8

were frequentlydetachedfrom the panel in the center, the pinnacleswere removed, and the wood of the predellawas sawn through so that the individual scenes on it could be disposed of as separateworks. By the law of probability, when one panel from the predellaof a quattrocentoaltarpiece has been preserved,other panels are likely to have been preservedas well. Applying this rule to Giovanni di Paolo fifty yearsago, it proved possible to reunite a number of what till then were looked upon as discretepanels. The law of probabilityalso suggests that where anraltarpiece survivesintact, its predella, or part of it, is likely to be preservedas well, and converselythat where a predellasurvives it is likely to belong to an existing altarpiece.

The firstpainting by Giovanni di Paolo to enter the Museum shows two full-length figuresof Saints Matthew and Francisturned slightly to the left (fig. 7). The tops of the panels have been reduced, but the figures fill the whole height of the surfacethat remains,and their haloesabut on, and in places are cut by, the molded decorationabove. In Siena in the 1930s there was a mysterioustabernaclein the Via delle Termethat was said to contain one of Giovanni di

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8. Gentile da Fabriano (ca. 1370-I427).

The Adorationof the Magi. Uffizi, Florence The right-hand predella panel is a copy of the panel in the Louvre (figure 15)

Paolo'spaintings. With some trouble I procuredthe key, and when the door was opened it revealeda filthy panel of a Virgin and Child cut down at the base and coveredwith votive offeringsin the form of silver hearts. Dirty it was, but of one thing there was no doubt, that it was the missing centralpanel to which the New Yorksaints belonged.

It has since been cleaned, and is now shown in the gallery of the Monte dei Paschiin Siena (fig. 6). It transpiredthat the panels from the left side of the altarpiecealso existed (they are now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), but they too had been maltreated(figs. 4, 5). They had been separatedfrom each other (a little piece of the cloak of the right-handfigure, a John the Baptist, appearedon the lefthand panel with Saint Catherine[?]), and they had been cut down at the bottom just below the knees and at the top in such a way that only the areaof the haloes, not the gesso framing, was preserved.

Panelswere usually cut down and placed in tabernacles for one reasononly, that they had been burnedor scorched, IO

and there is everyreasonto believe that this occurredboth with the Madonnaand Child and with the Houston saints.

Even with the panels in the MetropolitanMuseum there is slight evidence of damage at the base. BecauseSaint Francis is representedin the altarpiece,it is likely to have come from a Franciscanchurch, and the principalSieneseFranciscan church, San Francesco,was gutted by fire in I655. We know from inventoriesthat the altarof the Fondi family in San Francescowas decoratedwith an altarpiecepainted by Giovanni di Paolo in 1436, and though the Fondi altarwas dedicatedto SaintJames, it is very likely that the panels formedpart of that altarpiecesince they seem to have been painted at about that time. Takentogether, all the panels, the fair-hairedVirgin, the richly dressedSaint Catherine(?), the pink-cladBaptist, and above all the splendid figure of Saint Matthew,with its heavypale green cloak, createan effect of subtlety and opulence that is unique even among the altarpiecesof their time. Two yearslater, in I438, Giovanni di Paolo was employed on work in the Cathedral

by the operaio,the sculptorJacopo della Quercia, and della Quercia'sample style is reflectedin the pose and volume of the Saint Matthew of this altarpiece.

In the fifteenthcenturySiena did not welcome foreign painters, but in I425-26 a contractwas, by exception, awardedto a painter from the Marches,Gentile da Fabriano.The greatestGothic painter of the day, Gentile was an itinerantartist. He had worked, with conspicuous success, in Veniceand in Brescia;he had moved to Florence, where he was responsiblefor the altarpieceof TheAdoration of theMagi in SantaTrinita(now in the Uffizi, fig. 8) and for a polyptych in San Niccolo oltrArno;and when he visited Siena he was on his way to Rome, whither he had been invited by the pope.

The rich pigment of his paintings, their naturalism,and their opulence strucka new note both in Florenceand Siena.

To judge from the centralpanels of two altarpiecesexecuted in I426 and 1427 for the Sienesechurch of San Domenico, Giovanni di Paolo was deeply influencedboth by their imagery and by their technique, and a decade later the cutdown Madonnafrom the altarpiecefor San Francescois still redolentof Gentile's style. In later works Giovanni di Paolo also reverts,and revertsfrequently,to compositions by Gentile. A notable case is the predellaof an unknown altarin the piece, of which ThePresentation of Christin the Temple Museum formed Four other 9).

Metropolitan part (fig. panels from this predellasurvive, an Annunciationat Washington, D.C., a Nativityin the Vatican,an Adorationof the

9. liovannl di Faolo. l he PresentationoJ Christin the lemple. Gitt of George Blumenthal, I941 (4I. I00.4) II

io. Giovanni di Paolo. TheAnnunciation.National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection 7-

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ii. Giovanni di Paolo. The Nativity. Vatican Museums

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12. Giovanni di Paolo. The Adorationof the Magi. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Delia E. Holden Fund and L. E. Holden Fund (42.536)

I 3. Giovanni di Paolo. The Crucifixion.Gemaldegalerie, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin-Dahlem

14. Gentile da Fabriano. The Nativity, left-hand predella panel of The Adorationof the Magi, figure 8. Uffizi, Florence 12

I 5.

Gentile da Fabriano. The Presentationin the Temple,right-hand predella panel of The Adorationof the Magi, figure 8. Louvre, Paris

Magi at Cleveland, and a Crucifixionat Berlin (figs.

I0-I3).

The Nativityis adaptedfrom the left-handpredellapanel of Gentile'sAdorationof theMagi (fig. I4); the Adorationis a condensedversionof the main panel of Gentile'saltarpiece; and ThePresentation of Christin theTemple depends from the right-handpredellapanel, which was separatedfrom the altarpieceand is now in the Louvre(fig. I5).

The panel in the MetropolitanMuseum tells us a good deal about Giovanni di Paolo'sassimilativeprocesses.

Gentile'spanel is horizontal;its length is two and a half times its height. Giovanni di Paolo's,on the other hand, is nearlysquare.The firstnecessity,therefore,was that Gentile's composition be compressed.The copy, moreover,is thirteen centimetershigher than the original, so the design had also to be revisedwith a new emphasison verticality.A high viewing point was substituted for the low viewing point adopted by Gentile. We look down on the temple floor, and the upper part of the temple itself fills the whole height of the panel. At the sides the superfluousspace is dispensed with, and the parts of the lateralbuildings that were retained are raisedonce more to the full height of the scene.

Two women spectatorson the left are brought in so that they abut on the temple step, and the old woman and beggar on the right are moved inwardin the same way. Two changes in the imageryare also made. A priest is inserted centrallybehind the altar(the reasonfor this was that a priest appearedbehind the altar in a famous Sienese trecento painting of the scene by Ambrogio Lorenzetti),and in the lower right corner,markedby displacedmarble slabs, is a hole in the ground. Described in these terms, Giovanni di

Paolo'spanel may sound derivative, but it readsas an original creation, and it does so becausethe idiom into which the composition was translatedis highly personal. The use of Florentinesourcesin this whole predellais so consistent-the Annunciation depends from FraAngelico-that it must be due not to a decision by the artist but to the terms of referencelaid down by the body commissioning the altarpiece. This may have been the Spedaledella Scala, whose relationswith Florencewere especiallyintimate. In 1440 Giovanni di Paolo receivedthe commission for an altarpiece for the chapel of the infirmaryof the hospital adjacentto one of the women'swards. Since ThePresentation of Christin theTemple and its companionpanels date from about 1440, they could well have formed the predellaof this altarpiece.

Religious life in Tuscanyin the second quarterof the fifteenthcenturywas dominated by two reformingmovements, the FranciscanObservance,which had as its protagonist San Bernardinoand as its epicenterthe Convent of the Osservanzaoutside Siena, and the Dominican Observance establishedfirst in Fiesole and then in Florenceat San Marco. Giovanni di Paolo had a direct connection with the firstand an oblique connection with the second of these movements. For the Osservanzahe painted, in I440, a panel of the Crucifixionthat is now in the Pinacotecaat Siena. The tormented figure of Christ, the horror-struck Virgin, and the intensely emotional figuresof the Magdalene and SaintJohn would have been highly appropriate in this setting. Some of the principallocal events of these yearswere the great cycles of sermonsthat San Bernardino preachedin the Piazzadel Campo in Siena in 1427, in the I3

I6. Giovanni di Paolo. The Virgin Enthronedwith FourSaints. Uffizi, Florence

PiazzaSan Francescoin 1434, and to the Disciplinati della Scalain the Spedaledella Scala. Their tenor was mystical, but it was a mysticism adaptedto the needs of daily life, and it may well have stimulated the literal, sometimes mundanequality of Giovanni di Paolo'simagination. Certainly its characterand influencewere very differentfrom those exercisedby the Dominican Observancein Florence at San Marco.

Inevitablythere was a close connection between the houses of individual religious orders,and one must suppose that in the late I43os and I440o when the Dominican

convent of San Marcoin Florence,under the inspirationof FraAngelico, became a majorcenter of religious painting, the work that it producedwas thoroughlyfamiliarto the Dominican community in Siena. There is visual proof that I4

this was so. A seventeenth-centurysource, Ugurgieri, describesan altarpieceby Giovanni di Paolo on the Guelfi altar in San Domenico that bore the date I445 and had in its predellathe scenes of the Creationof the World, the LastJudgment, and the Flood. The altarpieceis now in the Uffizi in Florence;it shows the Virgin EnthronedBetween Saints Peter and Paul, with, in the outer panels, two Dominican saints, Dominic and Thomas Aquinas (fig. I6).

Two pieces of the predella, the only pieces to survive, are in the MetropolitanMuseum. One, in the RobertLehman Collection, is the scene describedby Ugurgieri as the Creation of the World, and the other is a Paradisethat formed the left side of the LastJudgment (figs. 17, 8). That the two panels formedpart of a single complex is not open to doubt; they are so similar in style and handling that no

I7. Giovanni di Paolo. The Creationof the Worldand the Expulsionfrom Paradise.Robert Lehman Collection, I 97 5 (I97 5.1.I 3 I)

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i8. Giovanni di Paolo. Paradise.Rogers Fund, I906 (o6. I046)

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I9. FraAngelico ( 387-I455).

The LastJudgment. San Marco, Florence

other conclusion is admissible. On the right side of the Paradise,moreover,are a number of gold raysthat prove it to have been contiguous to the LastJudgment scene. Evidently the centralpanel, with Paradiseon the left, the Last Judgment in the center, and Hell on the right, was a Sieneseequivalentfor the LastJudgment painted for Santa Mariadegli Angeli in Florenceby FraAngelico (fig. I9).

But the spatial characterof the scene of Paradiseis once more changed. The angels are arrangedin horizontalstrips, not in the circle in which they are shown by FraAngelico, and the figuresare treatedmore intimately; they include Saint Augustine greeted by his mother, Saint Monica, and on the left an angel is shown welcoming a SieneseDominican, Beato Ambrogio Sansedoni.The method of narration thereforeis the same that is used throughout the London codex of Dante'sParadiso.Like the Dante illuminations, the firstpanel, the Creation, representstwo separatescenes.

On the left is God the Fatherwith a symbolic depiction of the earth surroundedby eight spherescontaining the planets, the sun, and the circle of the zodiac, while on the right, in a wooded landscape,the archangelexpels Adam and Eve from Paradise.The two scenes are more dramatic than the Paradise,but they are treatedwith the same freshness and revealthe same sense of wonderat the richesof the naturalworld. When they stood beneath the altarpiece, it would have made a very differentimpressionfrom any that it makes today in the Uffizi.

Another such case is a ratherforbiddingpolyptych in the MetropolitanMuseum (fig. 20). Dated I454, it shows in the center the Virgin and Child Enthronedwith Four Angels (two angels peering over the back of the throne and two playing musical instrumentsin front). At the sides are four saints, to the left of the Virgin Saint Augustine and a female saint, probablySaint Monica, and to the right Saint John the Baptist and Saint Nicholas of Tolentino. The flat tops of the five panels were originally crownedby pinnacles of the Redeemerand the four Evangelists, which are now in a privatecollection at Palermo. Since the attarpiececontains two Augustinian saints, it must have been painted for an Augustinianchurch, and though it reachedthe Museum from a collection at Cortona, it may have been painted for SantAgostinoin Siena. The altarpiecelacks its predella, which would have comprisedeither four scenes from the lives of the saints representedin the lateralpanels with a centralCrucifixionor a number of scenes from the life of the most prominent of the saints to the right of the Virgin, SaintJohn the Baptist. In at least one other case, that of a polyptychof about I460 in the SienaPinacoteca,the subject of the predellais the life of the Franciscannun standing to the Virgin'sright, Saint Clare, from which four panels have come down to us. Fourpieces from a five-panelpredellaby Giovanni di Paolo with scenes from the life of the Baptist survive. Once owned by Pierpont Morgan, they are now in the National Gallery,London. They include TheBirth of the I7

20.

Giovanni di Paolo. Virginand Child Enthronedwith Saints. Bequest of Michael Friedsam, I93I. The Friedsam Collection (32. I00.76)

2

. Giovanni di Paolo. The Baptist Enteringthe Wilderness.National Gallery, London

22.

Giovanni di Paolo. The Baptismof Christ. National Gallery, London

TheBaptismof Baptist,TheBaptistEnteringtheWilderness, Christ,and TheHeadof theBaptistBroughtto Herod(see figs.

2 , 22). TheBaptismof Christis wider than the other panels and would have stood in the center, so the missing scene came from the right-handside and must have shown the Baptist PreachingBeforeHerod or the Executionof the Baptist. The widths of the panels do not correspondexactly with the widths of the panels in the Metropolitanpolyptych (there is a discrepancyof about five centimetersin the width of the panels at the sides and of twenty centimetersin that of the centralpanel, which has been cut down), but in Siena mathematicalcomputation in such caseswas an exception ratherthan the rule, and very likely the Londonpanels formed the predellaof the New Yorkaltarpiece.

Fine as it is, this austerepolyptych is not one of Giovanni di Paolo'smost appealingworks. Though boldly drawn, its figuresare uncommunicativeand impersonal. Combined with its predella, however,it would have made a very different effect, for the four panels in Londonare some of Giovanni di Paolo'smost richly imaginative works. The compositionsof two of them, the radiantBaptismand the dramaticHeadof theBaptistBroughtto Herod,derive from bronzereliefsmade in the I420s by Ghiberti and Donatello for the font in the Baptisteryunder Siena Cathedral,and both scenes are infused with peculiarintensity and vividness. Still more remarkableis TheBaptistEnteringtheWilderness.The foregroundis filled with a panoramiclandscape intersectedby three roadsrunning parallelto the base of I9

23. Giovanni di Paolo. The Baptist Enteringthe Wilderness.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection (I933. IOIO)

24. Giovanni di Paolo. The Head of SaintJohn the Baptist Broughtto Herod.The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection ( 933. 1015) 20

the panel and three more at an acute angle running across them. Between them are fields demarcatedin the same way, with the horizontalsand diagonals incised in the paint surface.

Geometricalpatterningis used to still greatereffect in a secondseriesof panels with scenesfrom the life of the Baptist, of which six are in the Art Institute of Chicagoand two in the WestfilischesLandesmuseum,Miinster,while single panelsare in the Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena, the Louvre,and the RobertLehmanCollection in the MetropolitanMuseum. In everycase saveone, the Chicago (fig. 23), the action is confined BaptistEnteringtheWilderness to the lower half of the verticalpanels, and a vertical architecturalstructureis superimposedon the narrativescene, so that the horizontalpanels in Londonmust have been planned firstand were later extended as vertical designs. If the horizontalpanels date from I454, the verticalpanels can hardlyhave been producedbeforethe late I450s.

The verticalpanel in the LehmanCollection represents to ZachariastheBirth of a Son TheAngelGabrielAnnouncing (fig. 25). Its two main figuresonce more depend from a bronzerelief on the Siena baptismalfont. But whereasin the bronzereliefJacopo della Querciaplaces the figuresto the right of center under an arch that is genericallyRomanesque, Giovanni di Paolo moves them to the middle of his panel, and replacesdella Quercia'sspectatorswith two highly expressivegroups of spectatorsof his own. As with the other vertical scenes, the action is confined to the bottom half of the panel, and the upper part is filled with a temple whose structurerecallsthe fragile buildings in Burgundian InternationalGothic illuminations. The twelve upright panels (one of them is still missing) were mounted in two groups of six pairedpanels. The two upper panels in each group were ogival, and the four lower panels rectangular. The LehmanZacharias,the firstpanel in the series, occupied the top left-hand cornerof the left wing. On its back is an AnnunciatoryAngel painted over a hinge covered with gesso, and the wings must thereforehave been hinged.

This is confirmedby the back of the Norton Simon Museum's Baptismof Christ(the only one of the rectangular panels that has not been thinned down), which is covered with a reddishpreparationfor gilding or porphyrypaint.

Reconstructedin this way, each wing measures250 centimeters in height and 80 centimetersin width, and the total width when the wings were closed would have been I60 centimeters. The possibility that they enclosed a painting of the Baptist can be ruled out on the grounds of size, and the tabernacleor custodia must thereforehave contained a sculpture. The combinationof sculptureand painting in Siena was not uncommon. There are records,for example, of a number of wooden statues of Saint Anthony the Abbot with painted wings. Possibly the commission for the panels

25. Giovanni di Paolo. The Angel GabrielAnnouncingto Zachariasthe Birth of a Son. Robert Lehman Collection, I975 (I975.1.37) 21

26. Giovanni di Paolo. The Deposition.Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore

27. Donatello (ca. I386-I466). SaintJohn the Baptist. Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena 22

28. Giovanni di Paolo. The Madonnaof Humility.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Marie Antoinette Evans Fund (30.772)

was connectedwith the arrivalin Siena of the bronzeBaptist of Donatello, which was dispatchedin 1457 and which has the ratherexceptionalheight of I85 centimeters(fig. 27).

It was not put on exhibition for many years, and this may explain why there is no recordof Giovanni di Paolo'spanels in any inventory. in London, The scene of TheBaptistEnteringtheWilderness a numberof upright panels in Chicago, and the little Adorationof theMagi in the LinskyCollection (fig. 38) are filled with the patternedlandscapesthat are generallythought of as a hallmarkof the artist. It has been suggested that their idiom depends from paintings by Paolo Uccello and the Florentineperspectivists.That is unlikely to be correct.

Froma very early time Giovanni di Paolo had an interest in geometry. The first signs of it appearin a predellapanel of I426 of the Deposition in the WaltersArt Gallery,Baltimore, where the shaft of the Crossis set in the center of the panel and its arms are contiguous with the upper edge (fig. 26). There are, ratherexceptionally,two ladders, one in front and the other behind the Cross, and their edges meet in a sharpangle on the Crossshaft. Were the figure of Christ less powerfulthan it is, the scene would be dominated by the diagonalsof the laddersand the transversalsof their steps. So long as the spell of Gentile da Fabriano endured, there was no room for patternmakingof this kind,

but about I440 it reappearsin the backgroundof a Madonnaof Humility in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which is coveredwith diagonal incisions brokenup with horizontallines, producing a number of rhomboid fields differentiatedfrom each other by their crops (figs. 28, 30).

There is no system of diminution, and it is distance, not degreesof distance, that is shown. Not till the I450S was this technique developedto the point at which we see it in the scenes from the life of the Baptist. The decorativeprinciple throughout these panels is uniform;it consists of consecutivehorizontallines parallelto the base of the panel cut sharplyby diagonal lines at angles of between ten and forty-fivedegrees. The effect is a peculiarone; it carriesthe mind out beyond the confinesof the picture space. It is anybody'sguess whether it was intended to do that, or whether it was thought of as no more than a means of imposing visual coherenceon the scene.

Simpler and less decorativethan Giovanni di Paolo's scenes from the life of the Baptist are his ten scenes from the life of Saint Catherineof Siena, three of which are

29. Detail of the London Baptist Enteringthe Wilderness,figure 21

30. Detail of figure 28

23

owned by the Museum (figs. 32-34). Saint Catherinedied in Siena in 1380, and in her lifetime and throughout the firsthalf of the fifteenthcentury she was the subject of a powerfulcult. Canonizationin the fifteenthcenturywas a capriciousprocess, and at the VaticanCatherine'sclaims seem to have receivedless attention than they deserved;it was indeed only with the election of a Sienesepope, Pius 11, in 1458 that her cause was actively promoted, and she was canonizedin I461. She was frequentlyrepresentedin Sieneseart, however,with the raysof a beata not the halo of a saint. In Giovanni di Paolo'sten panels she is depicted with a halo, not with rays, so it is reasonableto suppose that the paintings date from 1461 or from soon afterward.

This inferenceis supportedby the style of the ten panels, which have the pallid, gray tonality of Giovanni di Paolo'sonly dated work of the early I46os, an altarpiecein the Cathedralat Pienza of I463.

The panels are first mentioned in the third quarterof the eighteenth century by a

Sieneseantiquarywho saw them in storagein the Spedale della Scalaalong with an altarpieceof the Presentationin the Temple, now in the Pinacoteca,that was commissioned in I447 by a Sieneseguild, the Arte dei Pizzicaiuoli, for its chapel in the churchof SantaMariadella Scala(fig. 3 ). It has been suggested that the scenes from the life of Saint Catherinewere integral with the altarpieceand were painted in the same year, but this is impossible on grounds both of style and iconography.They must thereforehave been added to a preexistingaltarpiece.

The interest of the panels is independentof the purpose for which they were made. Based on a life of the saint written by her confessor,Raymond of Capua, they tell the story of her inner life with undeviating concentrationand incomparablesensibility. They have the characterof illuminations ratherthan of paintings, and their idiom may have been adaptedfrom that used in illuminated manuscriptsshowing the life of anotherDomystic, Saint Bridget of Sweden. ~minican ^^^L

3 . Giovanni di Paolo. The Presentationin the Temple.Pinacoteca, Siena 24

33. Giovanni di Paolo. TheMiraculousCommunion of Saint Catherineof Siena.Bequest of Michael Friedsam,I 3I.The FriedsamCollection (32.

26

I0095)

Christ to ResuscitateHer Mother.Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (i97 5.

34. Giovanni di Paolo. Saint Catherineof Siena Beseeches

33) 27

35. Giovanni di Paolo. SaintJohn the EvangelistRaising Drusiana. Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975. I. 36)

28

The firstof the three panels in the Museum illustrates an event at Pisa, when Saint Catherine,afterhearinga Mass said by her confessor,collapsedon the ground. "Suddenly the body that lay prostrateupon the ground was raisedup, and she kneeled upon her knees, stretching up her arms and hands and showing in her face a marvelousgoodly and clearbrightness."When she recovered,she explainedthat she had receiveda vision of the crucifiedChrist, and that from Christ'swounds there descendedraysthat "changed their color out of a sanguine red to a marvelousbrightness, and so in the form of a pure light they lighted and rested upon the said parts of her body."The stigmata receivedby Saint Catherine,unlike the stigmata of Saint Francis,were invisible. The second scene illustratesan occasionwhen Saint Catherine,becauseof illness, forewenther customary daily Communion. Raymondof Capuathereforebegan Mass, but at the Communion found that part of the host was missing becauseit had been conferredby Christ on Saint Catherine,who was kneeling elsewherein the church.

The third and most elaborateof the scenes shows Saint CatherinebeseechingChrist to resuscitateher mother in orderthat she might die penitent. Her mother, though her life through the saint'sintercessionhad been prolonged, had died without contrition, whereuponthe saint prayed that she be resuscitated.In the presenceof neighborswho had come in to tend the corpse, she came back to life and then died contrite. On the left is the saint kneeling in prayerbeforea Crucifix,on the right is a bed in which her mother sits erect, and behind are two surprisedspectators

and the unknown woman who heardand reportedthe words of the saint'sprayer.The three panels portray,with great fidelity, the domestic world that formed the setting for these occurrences.

In the same style and of approximatelythe same date is anothersmall panel in the LehmanCollection (fig. 35). It shows a chamberwith an archeddoorwayon the left and a second room behind. In the foregroundis a bier or litter from which a female figure with hands raisedturns toward a saint standing in benediction by the bier. To the left, behind the bier, is a beardedman expressingwonder at the miracle. Strangelythere has been some doubt as to the miracle that is portrayed.The scene has been describedas Saint Peter Raising Tabitha(despite the fact that the imagery and descriptionof the scene in the Acts of the Apostles do not correspond)and as a miracle of Saint Paul. But the saint is SaintJohn the Evangelist, and the subject is the Martyrdom of Raising of Drusiana. A panel of TheAttempted SaintJohntheEvangelistBeforethePortaLatina in a private collection comes from the same predella.

Memoriesof Gentile da Fabriano'sAdorationof theMagi haunted Giovanni di Paolo even in old age. But whereas Gentile practiceda courtly style addressedto the sophisticated patronsfor whom he worked, Giovanni di Paolo'swas a simpler audience. In the latest of his Adorations, the small panel in the Linsky Collection, Gentile's motifs are stripped of their courtly characterand brought firmly down to earth (fig. 38). The narrativefills two-thirds of the foreground, and though the Child still places his left hand on the head

37. Giovanni di Paolo. The Crucifixion.The Governing Body, Christ Church, Oxford 36. Giovanni di Paolo. Christ Teachingin the Temple.Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston 29

38. Giovanni di Paolo. The Adorationof the Magi. The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection, I982 (I982.60.4)

30

39. Giovanni di Paolo. The Nativity. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Grenville L. Winthrop Bequest (I943.1

of the kneeling king and the second magus is still shown taking off his crown, the action of the figuresis inelegant.

Structurally,however,the scene is anything but unsophisticated. It forms part of a predellaof which three other panels survive, a Nativity in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass., a panel of ChristTeachingin the Temple in the IsabellaStewartGardnerMuseum, Boston, and a visionary Crucifixionat Christ Church, Oxford (figs. 39, 36, 37). At firstsight the settings of TheNativityand TheAdorationof theMagi look very similar. In both the stable appearson the left, and in both the right side of the panel opens on a

2)

patternedlandscapepeopled by shepherdswith their flocks and a vast panoramabehind. But when we look at them more closely, we find that they are different. In the Fogg panel we look into the stable, with its wattle roof and walls, while in the Linskypanel we stand outside it a little to the right. The change involves a change in the projectionof the stable and its roof, and the means by which this was achievedis recordedin a complicated system of incised lines running on each side of the beams, evidently planned beforework on the painting properbegan.

31

40. Giovanni di Paolo. Saint Ambrose.Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (I975.1.30) 32

Giovanni di Paolo. Saint Gregory.

Location unknown 42.

4 . Giovanni di Paolo. Saint Augustine.Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Gift of Arthur Sachs (I938.13I)

Only one dated painting survivesfrom the last two decades of Giovanni di Paolo'slife. This is an altarpiecepainted for San Silvestroat Staggia, which is said once to have borne the date 1475. It is a coarse,rathergrotesquework showing the Assumption of the Virgin Between FourSaints, with an ill-fitting predellaand four pilasterpanels. A number of panels in the same debasedstyle survive, but luckily none of them is in the MetropolitanMuseum. Till about 1470 Giovanni di Paolo must still have been a capableexecutant, and the latest of the panels by him in the Museum'scollection seem to have been painted about this time. The most impressiveis a cut-down panel of Saint Ambrose in the LehmanCollection, which formedpart of a polyptych with lateralfiguresof the Fathersof the Church(fig. 40). A companionpanel of Saint Augustine is in the Fogg Art Museum, and a third panel of Saint Gregoryis known from photographs(figs. 41, 42). The fourthpanel must have representedSaintJerome. All three panels are cut through the elbows. Some impressionof their original appearance, however,can be gained from a magnificent isolated panel of SaintJerome of the same date in the Museo dell'Operadel Duomo in Siena (fig. 43). Probablythe three centralpanels were burnedand then cut down, and we would expect the

43. Giovanni di Paolo. SaintJerome.Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena

33

45. Giovanni di Paolo. SaintJeromeAppearingto Saint Augustine.

Gemaldegalerie, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin-Dahlem

44. Giovanni di Paolo. The Virginand AngelHoldinga Crown.

Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, Mass., Bequest of Mrs. Caroline Hill, 1965 (46. I965)

centralpanel to be in the same mutilated state. This requirement is fulfilled by a panel in the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum showing an angel holding a crown over the head of what was evidently a Virgin and Child enthroned(fig. 44). Two impressivepanels from the predella of this altarpiecesurvive, one of SaintJerome Appearing to Saint Augustine in the StaatlicheMuseen, Berlin, and the other of Saint Gregorythe Great Staying the Plague at the Castel SantAngelo in the Louvre(figs. 45, 46). No complete altarpieceof the same high quality and the same late date as the three Fathersof the Churchhas been preserved. There is, however,in the LehmanCollection a small panel of the Madonnaand Child with SaintsJerome and Agnes, which is painted with the same roughnessand the same rich impasto as the Berlin predellapanel (fig. 47). It has sometimes been dismissed as the work of an assistant, but there is no reasonto suppose that it is anything but autograph.Designed for privatedevotion, it bearson its porphyry-coloredback the arms of two Sienesefamilies.

34

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X

'il

'':

''

46. Giovanni di Paolo. Saint Gregorythe Great Staying the Plague at the CastelSant'Angelo.Louvre, Paris

35

48-5 I. Giovanni di Paolo. FourSaints: Catherineof Alexandria, Barbara, Agatha, and Margaret. Bequest of Michael Friedsam, I93 The Friedsam Collection (32.100.83 a-d)

36

I.

37

UO!DallOD a?A^TJd

sauS

putVauavp2vW ;JeW s4u.zS 'O*10d !P !UUAOT!D p -'

'

Fourfiguresof female saints at the Metropolitanalso date from this or from a ratherlater time. They representSaints Catherineof Alexandria,Barbara,Agatha, and Margaret, and each is accompaniedby her emblem (figs. 48-5 I).

Saint Catherineholds a section of a wheel and the handle by which it was rotated, Saint Barbaraa rectangulartower, Saint Agatha a dish containing her breastsand the instrument with which they were cut off, and Saint Margarethas a dragonat her feet. Two more panels from the series recently reappearedin a privatecollection; they show the Magdaleneand Saint Agnes with her lamb (figs. 52, 53).

Three of the saints face to the right and three to the left, so they must originally have formed the left and right pilasters of an altarpiece.The six saints are shown standing on a marbledfloor, and from their positions on the pavementwe can infer that Saints Barbaraand Agatha were at the top, with Saints Catherineand Margaretunder them and Saints MaryMagdaleneand Agnes at the bottom of the two pilasters. A number of small altarpiecesin the form of triptychs with pilastersat the sides were producedby Giovanni di Paolo in the last two decadesof his life, and it is from one of these that the presentpanels must come. The haloes are shown in perspective, as they are in two much coarserpilasters in the Siena Pinacoteca.Perspectivehaloes tooled like the haloes of the six saints appearonly in one large panel, a beautifulNativity in the KeresztenyMuseum, Esztergom, Hungary, and it is very possible that this painting (fig. 54), two panels at Avignon that are associablewith it, and the pilasterpanels formedpart of a single altarpiece.

Painting in Siena in the fifteenthcenturywas subject to the simple law of supply and demand. The norm is supplied by that little-studied artist Sanodi Pietro, whose work merits reconsiderationnot so much from an artisticas from a socio-historicalpoint of view (fig. 55). His simple uninflected paintings must in the fifteenthcenturyhave been found in practicallyevery house. We know almost nothing about his studio, but it was evidently very fully staffedand seems indeed to have been the place where most of the paintersof the later fifteenthcentury,including Neroccio, Matteo di Giovanni, and Benvenuto di Giovanni, received their early training. It would be generallyagreedthat Sano's colossalproductivitywas made possible by the use of models or pattern books in which clients could select the type of composition they preferred-whether in a Madonnaand Child the Child'shead was to be partiallyconcealedbehind the Virgin'scheek or whether the Virgin'scheek was to be brokenby the circle of the Child'shead, whether the Child should look into or out of the picture space, and how many angels were to be included and which conventionalsaints.

It was a placid art in which the dominant factorwas the illustrativecontent of the painting and in which experiment was rigorouslyeschewed.

54. Giovanni di Paolo. The Nativity. Kereszteny Museum, Esztergom, Hungary

39

55. Sano di Pietro (I406-I48I). Madonnaand Child with SaintsJohn the Baptist,Jerome,PeterMartyr, Bernardino,and FourAngels. Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (I975.1.43)

Giovanni di Paolo was also a prolificpainter, but his case differsfrom Sanodi Pietro'sbecause, first, he had a smaller studio (looking at the paintings and documents, it would be hard to credit that he had at any time more than two assistants) and because, second, he had greatercommunicative range. The initial image seems to have been arrivedat with less facility, and was frequentlyreusedaftera long lapse of time. This was the case with the componentsof his Crucifixions.One of the most impressiveof his images of the CrucifiedChrist is a panel once in the Lanckoronski Collection, Vienna, in which the head is fully frontaland is turned slightly down (fig. 56). In this it recallsthe central 40

pinnacle of Masaccio'sPisa altarpiece.About I440 this image appearsagain, as the center of a narrativepredella panel, and a year or two after I460 it appearsonce more, again in a narrativecontext, in a panel that is now in Amsterdam. The change of scale, from the large compass of the Lanckoronskipicture to the predellapanels, suggests that the Christwas recordedin some model book. With the subsidiaryfiguresthe same processoccurred.In the centralpanel of a predellapainted for Santo Stefanoalla Lizzawe find a beautiful figure of the Mourning Virgin who looks up in anguish at the body of Christ with hands claspedabove her head (fig. 57). This predellamust date

56. Giovanni di Paolo. The Crucifixion.Formerly in the Lanckoronski Collection, Vienna

41

57. Giovanni di Paolo. The Crucifixionwith SaintsJeromeand Bernardino.Church of Santo Stefano alla Lizza, Siena

58. Giovanni di Paolo. The Crucifixion.Australian National Gallery, Canberra

42

59. Giovanni di Paolo. The Crucifixion.Gemaldegalerie, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin-Dahlem

60-62.

Giovanni di Paolo. The Coronationof the Virginwith Saints Andrewand Peterand Angels. Church of Sant'Andrea, Siena

from after 1450 since it includes a figure of San Bernardino.

The same cartoonis employed once more, on a much larger scale, in a panel of the Crucifixion,seemingly painted about 1455,

that is now in the Australian National Gallery at

Canberra(fig. 58). And then just after 1460 it is repeated, with much greaterintensity, in a little panel with the Piccoloministemmain Berlin (fig. 59), where it is, rather surprisingly,combined with a mourning SaintJohn based on a cartoonoriginallyused in the earliestof Giovannidi Paolo'spredellas,that of I426. The processwas not mechanical, and the repeatedimage could acquirean intensity far greaterthan it had at the time it firstappeared.

Whole compositionswere sometimes reproduced.This is the casewith two altarpiecesof the Coronationof the Virgin, one painted in 1445 for the Churchof SantAndreain Siena, and the other in the LehmanCollection(figs. 61, 63).

The SantAndreaaltarpieceis a triptych; it was dismantled

before 1835 and has now been reconstitutedwith a largely modern frame. The wings are occupied by figuresof Saints Andrew and Peter, with music-making angels in the front plane (figs. 60, 62). There are six angels behind the throne and six in the wings, twelve in all, and the floorof the centralpanel is markedout with inlaid orthogonals.

Originally the triptych must have had a predella, but though it probablyexists, there are no clues to the panels that formedpart of it.

The painting in New York is by far the richerand more beautifulof the two; thirteen angels are introducedbehind the throne, the foregroundis marbled, and the forward step is coveredwith patternedred brocade.The dating of the painting is generallyregardedas conjectural,and so is its form. But it can be demonstratedfirst that the painting dates from the very late I450S, and second that it was never wider than it is today.The reasonfor this is that its predella 43

6 3. Giovanni di Paolo. The Coronationof the Virgin. Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975. 1.38) 44

can be identified. It consistedof two published panels. The first is an Entombment of the Virgin in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, which has Saint Bartholomewon the left and the Mourning Virgin turned to the right opposite (fig. 64). The second is an Assumption of the Virgin in the El PasoMuseum of Art, which is again flankedby two saints, Saint Ansanuson the extreme right and SaintJohn the Evangelistturned to the left (fig. 65). It is a reasonablesupposition that the centralpanel, set between the Virgin and SaintJohn, would have been a Pieta, and not long ago the missing Pieta appearedon the art marketin New York(fig. 66). It was possible to juxtapose it with the LehmanCoronation, and when that was done the

marbling in the main panel and in the predellaproved exactly to correspond.So there can be no doubt that this was the predellaof this altarpiece.The aggregatewidth of the three panels, 134 centimeters, is so close to the width of the main altarpiece,that it can have had no wings.

These three somberpredellapanels formed a foil to the above. In the main panel the scene of splendid Coronation the Coronationwas thought afresh. The architectureof the throne is more elaborate,and the two main figureshave acquireda new intensity. Since the head of the Virgin has been raisedto the level of the head of Christ, the act of coronationtakes on a ratherdifferentcharacter,with the arms of Christ raiseddiagonally acrossthe scene. The two

64. Giovanni di Paolo. The Entombment of the Virgin. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England

65. Giovanni di Paolo. The Assumptionof the Virgin. El Paso Museum of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection

45

4

_

-yy', 66. Giovanni di Paolo. Pieta. Private collection

heads, which were comparativelyweakly treatedin the earliertriptych, now protrudeabove the throne. It is clear that the second altarpiecewas in fact workedout afresh, and it reflectsthe action of the same self-criticalinterpretative mind that directed the adaptationof the figure content of his smallerpaintings.

So much for what we know. What of the unknown?It remainspuzzling that in the middle of the fifteenthcentury a market, quite a large market, existed for what, by the standardsof the time, must have seemed eccentric, heterodoxpaintings. Of the complacencyand the sometimes exasperatingtendernessof Sano di Pietro there is no trace, yet these works stood in the same churchesas Sano di Pietro's,were addressedto the same public, and were made for the same use. Did they result from heightened personal conviction, or are they due to some currentof doctrinal

46

'jgr''lii^

= FiaiaEFI

*.' vl

thinking of which we know nothing at all? In Giovanni di Paolo'slate works the imagery is the imagery of fearnot consolation. When the New YorkParadisewas reproduced, about I465, in a great oblong panel of TheLastJudgment in Siena, even Paradiseseems, as a prospect, not to be much fun (fig. 67). How did it happen that in the contented climate of Siena there was this thirst for moral chastisement? Or are the qualities that we interpretas despairdue ratherto failing eyesight or to some arthriticdisability that causedthe artist after 1453 to abandonthe practiceof illumination?There are, of course, no answersto questions of this kind. What is significant is that they are questions prompted by no other quattrocentopainter, and my sense, in looking at Giovanni di Paolo and his work once more, is that he was humanly and historicallya richerand even more rewardingartist than I had originally supposed.

67. Giovanni di Paolo. Detail of The LastJudgment. Pinacoteca, Siena

68. Detail of figure 18

47

NOTES Photographyof RobertLehmanCollection paintings by Malcolm Varon.

Photographyof other MetropolitanMuseum paintings by WalterJ. F. Yee, Chief Photographer,The MetropolitanMuseum of Art Photograph Studio

33. Tempera and gold on panel, I i3/8 x 83/4 in. (28.9 x 22.2 cm) 34. Tempera on panel, 1 x 85/8 in. (28.3 x 22 cm). Strips of wood

added at base, top, and left; nail heads appearin four places on back 35. Tempera on panel, 95/16 x 83/16 in. (23.7 x 22.3 cm), excluding

added strips. Panel cut on four sides and strips of wood added at top and bottom

I, 2. Photographs:The British Library,London

3. See figure 38 4. Tempera on panel, 413/16 x i71/4 in. (o04.6 x 43.8 cm). Photograph:The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 5. Temperaon panel, 41 x i87/o in. (104.3 x 46.8 cm). Photograph: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 6. Temperaon panel, 33/2 x 22 in. (85 x 55.9 cm). Photograph: Grassi, Siena 7. Temperaon panel, gold ground. Overall, with added strips, 545/8 x 343/4in. (138.7 x 88.3 cm); painted surface, 527/8x 331/2in.

(134 x 85.1

cm). Inscribed (on haloes): SANCTVS.

APOSTOLVS;

SANCTVS.

F[RANCISCV)S

MACTEVS

SERA[F)RIC[VS].

8. Photograph:Alinari/Art Resource,New York 9. Temperaand gold on panel, embossed and gilded studs in spandrels of central building. Overall, 51/2x 81/8in. (39.4 x 46 cm); painted surface, 51/4x 171/4in. (38.7 x 43.8 cm) io. Temperaon panel, 153/4 x i8/4 in. (40 x 46.4 cm) 1. Photograph:Alinari/Art Resource,New York 12. Temperaon poplarpanel, 155/8x i83/16 in. (39.7 x 46.2 cm).

Photograph:The ClevelandMuseum of Art I 3. Photograph:Jorg P Anders, Berlin 14. Photograph:Alinari/Art Resource,New York I5. Photograph:Servicede documentationphotographiquede la Reunion des musees nationaux, Paris I6. Photograph:Alinari/Art Resource,New York 17. Tempera on panel, I85/16 x 201/2 in. (46.5 x 52 cm) 18. Temperaand gold on canvas, transferredfrom wood. Overall, 181/2 x 16 in. (47 x 40.6 cm); painted surface, 171/2 x I5/8 in.

(44.5 x 38.4 cm) 19. Photograph:Alinari/Art Resource,New York 20. Temperaon panel, gold ground. Centralpanel, 823/4 x 257/8 in. x 65.7 cm); left panels, 707/8 X I67/8 in. (I80 x 42.9 cm), 63/4 in. (180 x 42.5 cm); right panels, 707/8 x I67/8 in.

(180 x 42.9 cm), 707/8 x i63/4 in. (180 x 42.5 cm). Signed and dated (on base of central panel): OPvs IOHANNES MCCCCLIIII. (210.2

707/8 x

21. Photograph:National Gallery,London 22. Photograph:National Gallery,London 23. Tempera on panel, 263/4 x 41/4 in. (68 x 36.3 cm). ? I987 The

Art Institute of Chicago. All rights reserved 24. Tempera on panel, 263/4 x 153/4 in. (68 x 40 cm) ? I987 The Art

Institute of Chicago. All rights reserved 25. Tempera on panel, 297/8 x 17 in. (75.8 x 43.2

cm), excluding

added strips at the bottom and sides 26. Tempera on panel, 157/8 x 17/8 in. (40.3 x 43.5 cm). Photograph:

WaltersArt Gallery, Baltimore 27. Bronze, height 727/8 in. (I85 cm). Photograph: Alinari/Art

Resource,New York 28. Tempera on panel, 243/8 x 91/4 in. (61.9 x 48.9 cm). Photograph:

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 29. See figure 21 30. See figure 28

36. Tempera on panel, Io7/8 x 93/8 in. (27.5 x 23.9 cm). Photograph:

IsabellaStewartGardnerMuseum, Boston 37. Photograph:The Governing Body, Christ Church, Oxford 38. Temperaand gold on panel, Io5/8x 9/8 in. (27 x 23.2 cm) 39. Temperaon panel, IoV2x 91/4 in. (26.7 x 23.5 cm).

Photograph:Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass.

40. Temperaon panel, 2313/16 x I47/16 in. (60.4 x 36.8 cm), excluding added strips at top, bottom, and left. Panel cut on all sides and gold field reshapedby superimposedpainted black spandrels 41. Temperaand gold on panel, 231/2 x 14 in. (59.7 x 35.6 cm).

Photograph:Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass.

LehmanCollection, 42. Photograph:FromItalian Paintingsin theRobert The MetropolitanMuseum of Art, 1987 43. Photograph:Alinari/Art Resource,New York 44. Temperaon panel, 227/8x I37/8 in. (58. i x 35.3 cm). Photograph:Mount Holyoke College Art Museum 45. Photograph:Jorg P. Anders, Berlin 46. Photograph:Servicede documentationphotographiquede la Reunion des musees nationaux, Paris 47. Temperaon panel, I25/8x 93/4in. (32 x 24.7 cm), excluding added strips on four sides 48-51. Temperaon wood, gold ground. Left to right: overall, i83/4 x 6 in. (47.6 x 15.3 cm), painted surface, i8/4 x 51/2in. (46.4 x 14 cm); overall, i83/4 x 6 in. (47.6 x 15.3 cm), painted surface, I83/8 x 55/8 in. (46.6 x 14.2 cm); overall, i83/4 x 6 in. (47.6 x I5.3 cm), painted surface, i83/8 x 53/8 in. (46.6 x 13.2 cm);

overall, I83/4 x 6 in. (47.6 x 15.3 cm), painted surface, i8/4 x 55/8 in. (46.4 x I4.2 cm)

52, 53. Temperaon panel, each 18 x 5/2 in. (46 x 14 cm) 54. Photograph:MudrakAttila, Esztergom 55. Tempera on panel, overall, 281/8 x 221/l6 in. (71.5 x 56. i cm); painted surface, 243/4 x I85/8in. (63 x 47.3 cm)

56. Photograph:Courtesyof John Pope-Hennessy 57. Photograph:Alinari/Art Resource,New York 58. Temperaand gold leaf on poplarpanel, 45 x 347/8 in.

(I14.2 x 88.5 cm). Photograph:? AustralianNational Gallery 59. Photograph:Jorg P. Anders, Berlin 6o-62. Photographs:Stablimento FotograficoLombardi,Siena 63. Tempera on panel, 705/8 x 5111/16 in. (179.9 x 131.3 cm). Point

of arch is completed by section of old wood coveredwith modern gilding 64. Temperaand gold on panel, 73/8x I83/8 in. (I8.9 x 46.8 cm).

Photograph:? Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England 65. Temperaand gold on panel, 75/16x I87/8 in. (i8.8 x 48.3 cm).

Photograph:Bullaty-LomeoPhotographers,New York 66. Tempera and gold on panel, IO x I5 in. (25.5

x 38.5 cm), exclud-

ing added strips. Photograph:FromItalian Paintingsin theRobert LehmanCollection,The MetropolitanMuseum of Art, 1987 67. Photograph:Alinari/Art Resource,New York 68. See figure I8.

31. Photograph:Alinari/Art Resource,New York 32. Tempera on panel,

o'15/16 x 77/8 in. (27.8 x 20 cm). Panel cut on

four sides; four nails visible on back

Inside back cover:The Expulsion from Paradise,detail of figure 7. Back cover: Zachariasand the Angel Gabriel, detail of figure 25

48

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