Italian Paintings
TEFAF 2013 Tel. +1 212 226 6616 Fax +1 212 226 5496 Mobile +33 (0)61 160 5665 mail@grassistudio.com
GRASSI STUDIO
Grassi Studio 158A East 71st Street New York, NY 10021 www.grassistudio.com
Italian Paintings
TEFAF 2013 Maastricht Stand 365
Foreword Grassi Studio, continuing a gallery tradition dating to the late nineteenth century, is pleased to present a selection of European paintings that represent several schools and span four centuries. With no pretense at embracing the full spectrum of that period’s artistic achievements, these works nonetheless illustrate certain of its specific moments with clarity. A number of the paintings, such as the Bartolomeo di Giovanni altarpiece and the Gypsy Girl by Bartolomeo Manfredi, have appeared more the once in the crtical literature, while others, such as the two Pellegrino Tibaldi panels and the ‘Maestro di Beffi’ pinnacle, have not heretofore been published or exhibited. All, however, have benefitted from careful conservation campaigns and, more importantly, each has been studied by a recognized scholar with a view either to a first publication, or to reassess a well established art-historical profile. We are exceedingly grateful to these experts for this collaboration and are confident that our combined effort represents a small but significant contribution to the bibliography of European art-history. All the paintings included in this catalogue will be on view in the stand of Grassi Studio during the 2013 TEFAF Maastricht fair and, thereafter, by arrangement with the gallery. Marco Grassi Matteo Grassi
Acknowledgements Grassi Studio acknowledges and is grateful for the collaboration of the following scholars in the preparation of this catalogue:
Dr. Annamaria Bernacchioni, Scuola di Specializzazione in Beni Artistici e Storici, Università di Firenze Prof. Andrea De Marchi, Università di Firenze Dr. Alessandro Delpriori, Università di Firenze Prof. Craig Felton, Ph.D., Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts Dr. Alessandro Nesi, Art Historian Dr. Gianni Papi, Art Historian Dr. Linda Pisani, Università di Firenze Dr. Nicoletta Pons, Art Historian Dr. Giuseppe Porzio, Soprintendenza Speciale per il PSAE e per il Polo Museale della Città di Napoli
Contents 1
Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni
10
The Annunciation
2
Master of Beffi
16
God the Father
3
Vittore Crivelli
23
Saint Anthony Abbot
4
Bartolomeo di Giovanni
5
‘Gallo fiorentino’ or Master of the Campana cassoni
34
Madonna and Child with Saints 40
Nativity
6
Pellegrino Tibaldi
46
Saint Felix, Saint Nabor
7
Francesco Morandini known as ‘Il Poppi’
54
Adoring Angels
8
Bartolomeo Manfredi
60
The Gipsy Girl
9
Jusepe de Ribera
65
Saint Thomas the Apostle
10
Matthias Stom[er] Young Saint John the Baptist
74
BIOGRAPHY
Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni Active in Florence between 1369 and 1415
1 For the first date see D. E. Colnaghi, A Dictionary of Florentine painters from the 13th to the 17th centuries, London 1928, p. 69, for the second: Jacobsen, ad vocem ‘Cenni di Francesco’, in Saur. Allegmeines Künstlerlexikon. Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, München-Leipzig 1997, XVII, p. 518. 2 See S. Pasquinucci, ‘Note sulla cultura figurativa a San Miniato fra Trecento e Quattrocento’, in Sumptuosa Tabula Picta. Pittori a Lucca fra Gotico e Rinascimento, exh. cat. (Lucca, 1998), ed. M T. Filieri, Livorno 1998, p. 118 and fig. 88. 3 F. Zeri, ‘Sul catalogo dei dipinti toscani del secolo XIV nelle Gallerie di Firenze’, in Gazette des Beaux Arts, LXXI, 1968, 1, p. 71; M. Boskovits, ‘Ein Vorläufer der spätgotischen Malerei in Florenz: Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni’, in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, XXXI, 1968, pp. 273-292; M. Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, Firenze 1975, pp. 285-294. 4 B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Florentine School, London 1963, p. 216. 5 For a recent summary on this polyptych see F. Baldini, ‘Cenni di Francesco’, in L’eredità di Giotto. Arte a Firenze 1340-1375, exh. cat. (Florence, 2008), ed. A. Tartuferi, Firenze 2008, cat. no. 43a-b, pp. 182-184. 6 See S. Chiodo, ‘Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni’, in The Alana Collection. Paintings from the 13th to the 15th century, Firenze 2009, pp. 57-61. 7 D. Parenti, ‘Giovanni del Biondo e Cenni di Francesco’, in Dipinti. II. Il tardo Trecento. Dalla tradizione orcagnesca agli esordi del gotico internazionale, eds. M. Boskovits and D. Parenti, Firenze 2010, cat. no. 8, pp. 50-55. 8 See M. Boskovits, op. cit. (note 3), 1975, pp. 126-128; 285-294.
Cenni di Francesco is documented between 1369, year of his matriculation in the Florentine Arte dei Medici e Speziali (Guild of Doctors and Apothecaries), and 1415, when he is still a member of the Compagnia di San Luca in the same city.1 A vast catalogue consisting of nearly eighty works, most of which scattered among small towns in Tuscany, has been attributed to this petit maître. The keystone of his oeuvre is the fresco cycle of Stories of the Virgin and Legend of the True Cross in the Oratorio della Croce in San Francesco in Volterra, dated to 1410. Stylistic comparisons with this cycle signed by Cenni, allowed the attribution of several works to this prolific artist, many of which are datable with precision: the triptych for the church of San Giusto a Montalbino (Montespertoli), dated 1400, the polyptych in the Pinacoteca in Volterra, referable to 1408, the panel with Saint Jerome in his study in the museum in San Miniato al Tedesco (1411),2 and the fresco cycle in the oratory of San Lorenzo in San Gimignano (1413). The reconstruction of his early activity has proved more difficult: an important contribution comes from the studies of Federico Zeri and Miklós Boskovits,3 who connected it to a group of paintings that Bernard Berenson had put together under the name of ‘Maestro della Santa Caterina Khan’.4 Cenni’s earliest known painting is therefore considered to be the polyptych destined to the church of San Cristofano a Perticaia, a work still in situ except for a compartment with a Bishop Saint, today in the Museo Diocesano in Milan.5 The picture, dated 1370, reveals the training of the artist within Orcagna’s circle, close to the Maestro della Misericordia.6 Soon after this, Cenni collaborated with Giovanni del Biondo, with whom he painted the panel with Saint John the Evangelist triumphant over the Vices, commissioned by the Arte della Seta (Guild of Silk) and very likely destined to one of the pillars in the oratory of Orsanmichele.7 In this work, now in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Cenni’s contribution is recognizable in the predella, while Giovanni del Biondo reserved himself the right to work on the main part of the panel, a distribution of tasks that confirms Cenni’s subordination to the older and already well-established master. The two scenes painted by the artist, the Funeral rites and the Ascension of Saint John, reveal several features that will dominate Cenni’s subsequent production, including the small panels that are the object of our study: the inclination for narration, the attention given to details in the setting (be it architectural or external locations), the colour range characterized by lively combinations. In his works datable to the last decade of the 14th century and to the first of the 15th, when Agnolo Gaddi’s influence on the painter is recognizable, Cenni creates vast compositions and enriches them with minor narrative episodes; he is also careful in the faithful reproduction of the fashion of his time and lengthens the proportions of his figures, making them more slender. In short, he is sensitive to the first signs of the Late Gothic style, displaying, however, a certain clumsiness that betrays a training of a different mould. In fact, his figures often end up being static, as if blocked by rigid outlines that prevent the musical flow of the last flare of the Gothic style, whose main exponents in Florence are Gherardo Starnina, Lorenzo Monaco and Lorenzo Ghiberti in his early phase. Cenni’s activity as a miniaturist has been identified in a few sheets of a Choir book in the Library of Santa Croce in Florence (D, folios 77v, 105v, 144, 150) and in an Antiphonary kept in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore (W 153, folios 4v, 27v), illuminated in collaboration with the Maestro della Misericordia.8
9 Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni
1
The Annunciation c. 1400 Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni
10 Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni
Two panels from the wings of a triptych Tempera and gold on panel, each 32 x 21,5 cm; 12.5 x 8.5 in
11 Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni
PROVENANCE
Florence, prof. Giovanni Poggi, thence by descent LITERATURE
Unpublished
Giovanni Poggi, memorable superintendent of Florence in the 1920s and 30s and for several years owner of the two fragments, linked our paintings to Andrea di Cione.9 Recently, Andrea de Marchi proposed a more accurate attribution to Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni. This identification and the dating to the first years of the 15th century are confirmed by various details, such as the wooden pew next to the chair where the Virgin is seated. Its interest does not lie in its vague positioning (a trait that we can often recognize in Cenni’s works) but in the certosina work that recalls other paintings by the Florentine master, such as the Saint Jerome in his study in the Museo Diocesano in San Miniato (fig. 1). Typical of Cenni is the colour range, dominated by very bright hues, sometimes combined in order to create a mismatch effect and therefore increase the vividness of the composition: this is detectable in particular in the orange cuff of the Virgin’s blue mantle. Because of these features these paintings can be compared with other works from the last years of the 14th century, such as the Annunciation that is part of the Acton collection.10 The two small panels, decorated with punch marks along the edges, must have once been the pinnacles of the lateral wings of a portable tryptych. It was therefore a picture intended for private devotion, belonging to a typology that was widespread in the late 14th century and in the early 15th, of which several examples survive (often in private collections), along with numerous references in the old inventories.11 A possible typological comparison can be made with a small triptych by Taddeo di Bartolo (today part of the permanent collection of Palazzo Blu, Pisa), decorated with the figures of the Archangel Gabriel and of the Virgin Mary in the pinnacles of its lateral wings. Because of the cutting of the gables from a larger portable altarpiece, the two panels present some old damages and retouchings in the upper part (visible on a small area of the gold surface over the head of the Archangel) and behind the Virgin Mary (the back of her head and the chair behind her have been repainted). Linda Pisani
9 I owe the information about provenance to Matteo Grassi. 10 The picture is reproduced in M. Boskovits, op. cit. (note 3), 1968, p. 288, fig. 16. 11 For this typology see V. Schmidt, Painted Piety. Panel Paintings for Personal Devotion in Tuscany, Firenze 2005, pp. 31-71.
12 Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni
fig. 1 Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni, Saint Jerome in his study, San Miniato al Tedesco (Pisa), Museo Diocesano
BIOGRAPHY
Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino di Leonardo da Teramo?) Documented in Sulmona from 1385 to 1435
With this conventional name, coined by Ferdinando Bologna in 1948,1 we can reconstruct the career of the leading character of late Gothic painting in Abruzzo between the 14th and the 15th century. His name-piece is the triptych of Santa Maria del Ponte in Tione, near Beffi, now in the Galleria Nazionale d’Abruzzo in L’Aquila, which represents a Madonna and Child with the Nativity of Christ on one side and the Death and Coronation of the Virgin on the other. The shape of this rectangular triptych, crowned by a single central gable, and the monumental narrative scenes, which are the same height as the Enthroned Madonna between them, make this picture quite different from both Tuscan and Venetian polyptychs. The artistic culture of the painter is no less original: it appears permeated by an expressive verve that implies the indirect knowledge of Bolognese painting, due to the influence of Andrea de’ Bruni da Bologna, who had moved to Ancona in the 1360s. The Master of Beffi was also the author of some remarkable mural paintings, including the spectacular decoration of the presbitery of San Silvestro in L’Aquila; he even polychromed wooden sculptures and illuminated important liturgical manuscripts by commission of noble families, such as the Orsini Missal from San Francesco in Guardiagrele and the Acquaviva Antiphonary. Older than other protagonists of late Gothic painting in Abruzzo, he probably started out within the circle of Antonio da Atri. His work was significant for the goldsmith Nicola da Guardiagrele, who was also a painter and an illuminator, while the Master of the Cappella Caldora, the author of the eponymous cycle in the Badia Morronese, trained in his workshop. Sulmona was most likely the epicentre of his multifaceted activity, insomuch as Cristiana Pasqualetti recently suggested identifying him with Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo, who grew up and established himself in the city of Ovidio.2
1 La Mostra di opere restaurate, exh. cat. (L’Aquila, 1948), eds. F. Bologna and U. Chierici, L’Aquila 1948, pp. 9-10. 2 C. Pasqualetti, ‘‘Ego Nardus magistri Sabini de Teramo’: sull’identità del ‘Maestro di Beffi’ e sulla formazione sulmonese di Nicola da Guardiagrele’, Prospettiva, CXXXIX-CXL, 2010, pp. 4-34.
15 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?)
2
God the Father (the mission of the Holy Spirit in the Annunciation) c. 1420 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino di Leonardo da Teramo?)
Tempera and gold on panel, 92,5 x 62 cm; 36.5 x 24.4 in Painted surface 87 x 62 cm; 34.3 x 24.4 in Thickness 3,5 cm; 1.4 in 16 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?)
PROVENANCE
Italy, Private collection LITERATURE
Unpublished
3 C. Pasqualetti, ‘Ascendenze emiliano-adriatiche nella pittura aquilana dell’ultimo quarto del Trecento: nuovi affreschi di Antonio d’Atri nella chiesa di San Domenico all’Aquila’, Prospettiva, CXXXIII, 2009, pp. 46-68. 4 See F. Manzari, Il Messale Orsini per la chiesa di San Francesco a Guardiagrele. Un libro liturgico tra pittura e miniatura dell’Italia centromeridionale, Pescara 2007. 5 See C. Pasqualetti, op. cit. (note 1), speciatim pp. 30-31 note 6. 6 C. Pasqualetti, op. cit. (note 1). 7 The relationship between the Master of Beffi and Nicola da Guardiagrele, starting from the analysis of the Cross of Lanciano from 1422, was recognized for the first time by Serena Romano (S. Romano, ‘Nicola da Guardiagrele: alcune tracce di gotico internazionale in Abruzzo’, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, XVIII, 1988, pp. 215-230). For the goldsmith activity of the artist from Guardiagrele see now the splendid material in the catalogue, edited by Sante Guido (Nicola da Guardiagrele. Orafo tra Medioevo e Rinascimento. Le opere, exh. cat. (Roma-ChietiL’Aquila, 2008) ed. S. Guido, Todi 2008), to be completed with the documentary appendix edited by Claudia Di Fonzo (C. Di Fonzio, in Nicola da Guardiagrele, un protagonista dell’autunno del Medioevo in Abruzzo, ed. A. Cadei, Cinisello Balsamo 2005).
The originality and intensity of late Gothic painting in Abruzzo has surfaced only recently, and the socalled Master of Beffi, active between the end of the 14th century and the first quarter of the 15th, was no doubt a ‘hinge-man’. His conventional name comes from the triptych in the Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo in L’Aquila (fig. 1), formerly in the church of Santa Maria del Ponte in Tione, near Beffi. This picture, admirable for its integrality, shows a fascinating mixture of Tuscan references, mediated by the Master of the Dormitio of Terni, an Umbrian painter from the area of Spoleto, of compositions of Venetian or, more broadly speaking, Adriatic origin, and of precise influences of the full-blooded Bolognese carnality and expressiveness, due to the knowledge of works by Andrea de’ Bruni da Bologna, who had moved to Ancona between the seventh and the eighth decade. After all, the ground in Abruzzo had been prepared to absorb the infiltration of this Bolognese influence by the totally 14th century, top-level painter Antonio da Atri, whose profile has been further clarified thanks to Cristiana Pasqualetti’s recent attributions and specifications.3 The same scholar organically re-analyzed the oeuvre of the Master of Beffi, which also includes illuminations (the fragments of the Orsini Missal from San Francesco in Guardiagrele4 and of the Acquaviva Antiphonary)5 and a grand fresco cycle in the presbitery of San Silvestro in L’Aquila. Pasqualetti suggested identifying this painter with Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo, who is documented in Sulmona over a long period of time, from 1385 to 1435, the year his associate Cicco di Pietro da Sulmona drew up his will.6 Though nothing more than a supposition, this hypothesis is very attractive, because the reference to both the areas of Teramo and Sulmona recalls the ‘hingeman’ role in the Apennine territory of this figure, that inspired the differently oriented experiences of the Master of the Caldora Chapel, in the direction of the Abruzzo hinterland as far as Celano and Subiaco, and of the Master of Loreto Aprutino, towards the coast and the Piceno area, as far as Offida. The great goldsmith Nicola da Guardiagrele, during his youth, must have also had contact with the Master of Beffi:7 documented since 1413, he trained in Sulmona, in the main school for goldsmiths of the region, but left the masterpiece of his maturity, the famous silver altar frontal, in the cathedral of San Berardo in Teramo (1433-1448). Nicola was not just a goldsmith: he was also a sculptor, a painter and an illuminator. This last aspect of his career, still hardly known, is testified by his signed Madonna of Humility in the Uffizi and by the illuminations in a book of hours in the Musée
17 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?)
fig. 1 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?), Madonna and Child, Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds, Death and Coronation of the Virgin (triptych), L’Aquila, Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo (from Santa Maria del Ponte in Tione, near Beffi)
8 I proposed an Abruzzo provenance, along with a precise attribution to Nicola da Guardiagrele, to Gennaro Toscano, but the scholar reported these indications in an incomplete and inaccurate manner (G. Toscano, in Enluminures italiennes. Chefs-d’oeuvre du Musée Condé, exh cat. (Chantilly, 200-2001) eds. T. D’Urso et alii, Paris 2000, pp. 20-24), and omitted them completely in a second text, where he dissociated himself from his previous opinion and suggested linking the illuminations to the Master of Beffi (G. Toscano, ‘Un manoscritto abruzzese a Chantilly’, in L’Abruzzo in età angioina. Arte di frontiera tra Medioevo e Rinascimento, proceedings of the Symposium (Chieti, 1-2 aprile 2004) eds. D. Benati and A. Tomei, Cinisello Balsamo 2005, pp. 211-223). The Abruzzo character of these illuminations was then surprisingly denied by Francesca Manzari (F. Manzari, Un libro di preghiere tardogotico, in Nicola da Guardiagrele. Un protagonista… cit. (note 7), pp. 125-139), who is moreover incapable of providing a clear alternative, suggesting vague comparisons with Gentile da Fabriano, which for similar works is the same as defining “giottesque” a painting from the 14th century, as Corrado Ricci used to do in front of a young, dumbfounded Roberto Longhi! These illuminations can be compared strikingly and definitively to the signed panel in the Uffizi and with several silver plaquettes by Nicola da Guardiagrele, but it will obviously be necessary to explain these connections analytically, for those who are not able to do so for themselves.
fig. 2 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?), God the Father (the Mission of the Holy Spirit in the Annunciation), historic photograph (Bologna, Fondazione Federico Zeri)
9 The correct attribution to the Master of Beffi was made by Filippo Todini, who informed De Simone (in Palazzo Blu. Le collezioni, ed. S. Renzoni, Pisa 2010, p. 67) of the existence, on the antiquarian market, of a gable depicting God the Father, originally part of the same structure. 10 This was the opinion of Carlo Volpe (C. Volpe, La pittura gotica. Da Lippo di Dalmasio a Giovanni da Modena, in La Basilica di San Petronio in Bologna, I, MilanoBologna 1983, pp. 288-289, note 16, figg. 283-284). 11 See the long text by Gerardo De Simone (G. De Simone, in Palazzo Blu...cit, pp. 66-69), who is uncertain whether to identify them with prophets or evangelists, though the absence of halos leaves no doubt. The two panels measure 16.5 x 13.4 inches (42 x 34 cm) and 18.5 x 13.8 inches (47 x 35 cm), including the beautiful leafy frame.
Condé in Chantilly,8 which show similarities to the Master of Beffi but are characterized by a richer texture of the painted surfaces and by denser and more delicate colours. The panel we are here commenting on for the first time, depicting God the Father, is an interesting addition to our master’s oeuvre. It is a triangular shaped gable composed of two vertical boards. Along the straight bottom edge we can detect the original ledge of the gesso layer and of the gold leaf on the frame and the trace it left on the raw wood. A candle scorch, in the centre of the lower part of the painting, suggests that the picture was used as an image of worship even when it was no longer part of the triptych it originally belonged to. An old photograph, property of Federico Zeri (fig. 2), testifies the condition of the painting before the removal of the frame and of two triangles at the bottom, where the cavity for the wooden pin that connected them to the structure is still visible. The four vertical boards of which the picture was originally made carried on downwards to form the underlying panel, the middle section of a triptych. This would have been characterized by a rectangular shape with a raised central section and three gables set on the upper rectilinear profile: the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin of the Annunciation were depicted respectively on the left and on the right. Remarkable was the late Gothic fretworked foliage, with the pulpy lobes of a succulent plant: we find an identical frame in two drop-shaped panels (figs. 3-4) that sprouted from the slightly truncated tips of the lateral gables of the same polyptych, already well known to the scholars,9 though mistaken in the past for Bolognese works by Lippo di Dalmasio.10 These paintings belong to the Palazzo Blu collections of the Cassa di Risparmio di Pisa, and represent two unidentifiable figs. 3-4 prophets,11 one holding a scroll and the other a book and Master of Beffi a quill, and both facing the centre of the polyptych: the (Leonardo di Sabino drapery is wide and their faces are realistically worn by da Teramo?), Prophets, Pisa, Palazzo Blu, time. collections of the The magnitude of God the Father, enveloped in a flaming red robe lined with green, energetically wound around his Cassa di Risparmio di Pisa shoulders and fluttering behind him, is quite impressive. His towering figure emerges from the clouds, created by white brushstrokes that overlap onto the robe and that appear noticeably curved, resembling a mandorla of light; he is stretching out his arms downwards, to one side, with open palms, with the clear gesture of sending the dove of the Holy Spirit to the Virgin of the Annunciation. This sober depiction, lacking the customary ring of angels, accentuates a feeling of powerful, physical immanence, filling the whole gable with the half-bust figure. Even the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin, in the two lateral gables, were probably half-bust, so as not to appear too out of proportion if compared to the imposing God the Father. The direction in which the hands of this forceful figure are pointing corresponds to the position of the Madonna lower down. We can therefore imagine a rectangular structure with a raised central part, which is typical of the middle section of Venetian polyptychs from the 14th century. The simple squared profile is similar to the one of the Beffi triptych, which is however divided into rectangular compartments of the same height, with a narrow gable, surmounting only the central part, occupied by the Virgin’s face. In our painting the dove of the Holy Spirit is missing: it could have been
18 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?)
Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?), reconstruction of a triptych: Prophets, Pisa, Palazzo Blu (figs. 3-4); God the Father (The Mission of the Holy Spirit in the Annunciation), Grassi Studio
12 Published in A. De Marchi, ‘Ancona, porta della cultura adriatica. Una linea pittorica, da Andrea de’ Bruni a Nicola di maestro Antonio’, in Pittori ad Ancona nel Quattrocento, eds. A. De Marchi and M. Mazzalupi, Milano 2008, pp. 39-41, and in S. Romano, La via degli smalti, in Nicola da Guardiagrele. Orafo… cit. (note 7), pp. 451-511.
depicted in the drop-shaped panel at the top, instead of a more canonical prophet in a frontal position, or next to the Virgin of the Annunciation, in the right-hand gable. Or again, the angel itself could have carried the Baby Jesus in his arms, following a heterodox iconography only known to us from the Annunciation by Nicola di Guardiagrele in the altar frontal in Teramo (fig. 5), dated 1433. The Holy Spirit is not represented in this embossed, gold-plated silver compartment, but a large, starry, champlevé enamelled sphere stands out at the top, shedding granulated rays onto the gold leaf. The lateral movement of God the Father is highlighted also in our gable by the blue celestial sphere that emerges onto the gold at the top on the left, strewn with golden stars and encircled by a rainbow of multicoloured rings, from green to white, orange and red. The same colours are used in the drapery, where the red mantle is painted on a base of orange minium, covered with layers of cinnabar glazes and finally with lacquer, to create the shading. Similar starry hemispheres are a leitmotif that can be found in other works by the Master of Beffi, for example in the upper part of the large Dormitio Virginis in a private collection12 (fig. 6) and at the top of the Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds, in the left compartment of the Beffi triptych, where it is also surrounded by overlapping mordant-gilded rays, incised in the gold. These elements are very similar to the ones we find in a few enamelled plaquettes by Nicola da Guardiagrele, in the already mentioned Annunciation in Teramo, but also under the half-bust of God the Father at the vertex of the Cross of San Nicola in Orsogna (fig. 7), encircled by rays instead of the usual foliage. A comparison between our painting and this powerful figure in embossed, gold-plated silver, can be very useful, although we are talking about a work
19 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?)
fig. 5 Nicola da Guardiagrele, Annunciation, detail of the altar frontal, Teramo, cathedral of San Berardo
fig. 6 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?), Dormitio Virginis, Private collection
13 The Dormitio Virginis measures 57.1 x 100.4 inches (145 x 255 cm): the size would only be compatible if we hypothesized the presence of smaller lateral gables, a possibility discouraged by the imposing God the Father, who would have been excessively out of proportion. I tried making a scale reconstruction, and the dimensions of God the Father appear exaggerated beside the Dormitio Virginis. Before being cut down at the corners the base of the gable must have measured nearly 35.5 inches (90 cm). In the Beffi triptych the side panels are slightly narrower, but if we imagine compartments of the same width and gables of the same size, the total width would amount to 106-110 inches (270-280 cm). Our painting was therefore decisively larger than the Beffi triptych (72.9 x 48.5 inches, 185 x 123 cm). 14 Neither can we hypothesize that God the Father is stretching out his arms to receive the Virgin’s soul, which is facing the far righthand side of the composition. 15 Radically different are the halos in the Dormitio Virginis, decorated with circular bands, enriched with punch marks on the inside, and lozenge motifs with a granulated outline.
datable to the fifth decade, after Nicola’s journey to Florence around 1430, where he updated his style with flowing over-stylized motifs inspired by Lorenzo Ghiberti’s art. Moreover, the images by the Master of Beffi had also become more delicate, if compared to the sharp masks and pointed profiles in the Dormitio Virginis and in the frescoes of San Silvestro; the Beffi triptych already shows a softer carnality and finer, richer details. Our God the Father is characterized by narrow eyes, small features, smoky but mellowed shades, a soft mass of beard and hair just turning white: all these elements are quite different from the harsher lines and the more prominent physiognomies of the apostles in the Dormitio Virginis (figs. 8-9), for which Pasqualetti proposes a provenance from San Francesco in Teramo and a dating still to the 1390s. It is to be excluded therefore that it belonged to this horizontal panel, which in my opinion was already complete, with the function of an antependium or of a retable of the same shape. Gerardo De Simone has in fact hypothesized that it was crowned by the Prophets in Palazzo Blu, despite their size,13 the more advanced style and the improbability of iconographically combining the Annunciation and the Death of the Virgin.14 As we have already mentioned, this work is datable to c. 1420, later than the Beffi triptych, executed during the previous decade. The finer features, the minutely drawn frothy beard and hair (fig. 10), the more fluent Gothicism that characterizes the robes encourage a comparison with the last work we know of by the Master of Beffi, which is probably the diptych representing Saint Onuphrius and a female donor and Saint Mary Magdalene (figs. 11-12), now in the Museo Civico in Sulmona but originally in the hermitage of Sant’Onofrio. It is worth observing the total identity of the halos, decorated with motifs that stand out on the granulated surface, rosettes with six, seven or eight petals alternating with four-leaf clovers with lanceolate, crenate leaves arranged to form an X.15 Andrea De Marchi
20 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?)
fig. 7 Nicola da Guardiagrele, God the Father, detail of the cross, Orsogna, San Nicola
fig. 8 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?), Dormitio Virginis, detail of the head of an apostle, Private collection fig. 9 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?), Dormitio Virginis, detail of the head of Saint John the Evangelist, Private collection
fig. 10 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?), God the Father, detail of the face fig. 11 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?), Saint Onuphrius and a female donor and Saint Mary Magdalene, detail of Saint Onuphrius, Sulmona, Museo Civico (from the hermitage of Sant’Onofrio) fig. 12 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?), Saint Onuphrius and a female donor and Saint Mary Magdalene, detail of Saint Mary Magdalene, Sulmona, Museo Civico (from the hermitage of Sant’Onofrio)
21 Master of Beffi (Leonardo di Sabino da Teramo?)
BIOGRAPHY
Vittore Crivelli Venice? 1435/1440-1501
Vittore Crivelli, younger brother of the more famous Carlo, was probably born in Venice around 1435-1440. His father, Giacomo, was also a painter; though we know nothing of his activity and production, it is possible that it was he who introduced his sons to an artistic career. Nevertheless, the first document to mention Vittore is from 1465, when he is witness of a friar taking the habit in the church of Saint James in Zadar. He stayed in that city until 1479, when he moved to the Marches, at the service of Ludovico Euffreducci of Fermo. During his years in Dalmatia he had started quite an active workshop, which produced several paintings for private devotion and at least one polyptych, now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow but documented in 1471 as a work for the very same Saint James in Zadar. In 1472 the bishop of Zadar sent for him to work as an architect on the drawings for the façade of Saint Mary’s church. He arrived in the Marches more than a decade later than his brother Carlo, who in the meantime had settled in Ascoli Piceno. In a period when his style was very close to his brother’s, Vittore lived and worked in Fermo, the other main centre of the Piceno area. After the noble commission by the Euffreducci, rich landowners and merchants, he specialized in stunning altarpieces for minor cities, in very close connection with the Franciscan order. Several important works of high quality, such as the polyptychs for Sant’Elpidio a Mare and San Severino Marche, were created in those years. From the end of the eighth decade, in the paintings for Monte San Martino, Vittore showed a particular tendency towards classical culture and the construction of three-dimensional spaces. In 1495, following Carlo’s death, he sent a letter to the Comune of Ascoli to reclaim his brother’s inheritance, being the only male heir. It is the only documented contact between the two artists, who would seem otherwise to have lived parallel, sometimes competitive lives: Carlo, who had been knighted and was therefore a nobleman, had worked for greater and smaller courts in the Marches, while Vittore was the common people’s painter for parish churches and country convents. In 1501 he was commissioned to paint the polyptych for the church of San Francesco in Osimo, but died by August of the following year; it was his son Giacomo who passed the job on to the Venetian artist Antonio Solario, who then abandoned the idea of a polyptych in favour of an arched altarpiece on a single panel. It was the end of the grand season of polyptychs in the Marches and the beginning of a new era.
22 Vittore Crivelli
3
Saint Anthony Abbot 1481-c. 1483 Vittore Crivelli
PROVENANCE
Monteprandone, Collegiata of San Niccolò, on the high altar at least until it was moved to the sacristy in 1834 Rome, Pope Gregory XVI’s private collection, sent from Monteprandone on 26th September 1844 London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1871, in 1912 the painting was no longer in the museum Düsseldorf, Arthur Haupt Collection, 1929 London, Brinsley-Marlay Collection New York, Oberlaender Collection, Parke-Bernet Galleries, sale 25th26th May 1939 London, Christie’s, auction 1st April 1960 Munich, Private collection LITERATURE
J. A. Crowe, G. B. Cavalcaselle, History of Painting in North Italy, London 1912, p. 98 B. Geiger, ad vocem ‘Crivelli Vittorio’, in U. Thieme, F. Becker, Allgemeine Lexicon del Bildenden Kunstler, VII, Leipzig 1913, p. 137 L. Testi, Storia della pittura veneziana, Bergamo 1915, II, pp. 700 and 706 F. Drey, Carlo Crivelli und seine Schule, München 1927, p. 528 R. Van Marle, The Develpoment of italian school of paintings, XVIII, The Hague 1934-1936, p. 84, note 1 The eminent collection of Paintings by Old Masters formed by the late Gustav Oberlaender, Sale catalogue, Parke-Bennet Galleries, New York 1939 B. Berenson, Italian pictures of Reinassance. Venetian School, London 1957, I, figg. 161-162 F. Zeri, ‘Un polittico di Vittore Crivelli’, Bollettino d’arte, XLVI, 1961, pp. 231-232, now in F. Zeri, Diario Marchigiano 1948-1988, Torino 2000, pp. 171-172 S. Di Provvido, La pittura di Vittore Crivelli, L’Aquila 1972, pp. 126-128 G. Crocetti, ‘Vittore Crivelli e l’intagliatore Maestro Giovanni di Stefano da Montelparo’, Notizie da Palazzo Albani, V, 2, 1976, pp. 17-28 S. Di Provvido, ‘Schede dei dipinti’, in Vittore Crivelli e la pittura del suo tempo a Fermo e nel fermano, ed. S. Papetti, Milano 1997, cat. 34, pp. 223-224 S. Di Provvido, ‘San Giacomo della Marca in due raffigurazioni di Vittore Crivelli’, in Il culto e l’immagine. San Giacomo della Marca (1393-1476) nell’Iconografia Marchigiana, ed. S. Bracci, Ascoli Piceno 1998, pp. 77-81 “Dotti amici”. Amico Ricci e la nascita della storia dell’arte nelle Marche, ed. A. M. Ambrosini Massari, Ancona 2007, pp. CX-CXI and p. 524 A. Delpriori, in Da Venezia alle Marche, Vittore Crivelli. Maestri del Rinascimento nell’Appennino, exh. cat. (Sarnano, 2011), eds. F. Coltrinari, A. Delpriori, Venezia 2011, cat. 12, p. 126 Tempera on panel, 108,7 x 36 cm; 42,8 x 14,2 in
23 Vittore Crivelli
EXHIBITIONS
Da Venezia alle Marche, Vittore Crivelli. Maestri del Rinascimento nell’Appennino Sarnano, Palazzo del Popolo, 2011
1 G. Cantalamessa, ‘Artisti veneti nelle Marche’, Nuova Antologia. Rivista di scienze, lettere e arti, XXVII, XLI, 19, 1892, pp. 401-431, in particular p. 422. The polyptych had actually already been alienated when this article was published; the author evidently reported second-hand information. 2 For his activity in Zadar now see J. Gudelj, ‘Carlo e Vittore Crivelli a Zara’, in Da Venezia alle Marche, Vittore Crivelli. Maestri del Rinascimento nell’Appennino, exh. cat. (Sarnano, 2011), eds. F. Coltrinari, A. Delpriori, Venezia 2011, pp. 37-43. 3 The artist was paid for the picture of a Madonna for the audience hall in the residence of the priors on 24th March 1468, see F. Coltrinari, ‘Vittore e Carlo Crivelli, due vite parallele’, in Da Venezia… cit. (note 2), pp. 45-71, in particular p. 49 and F. Coltrinari, ‘Regesto documentario’, in Da Venezia… cit. (note 2), p. 192, docs. 37-38. The work in question, apparently lost, may be identified with the Madonna and Child now in the Museo di Palazzo Bonaccorsi in Macerata. The painting is in bad condition; it has been cut down on all sides and transferred to canvas. On the reverse side there is a spurious inscription that says KAROLVS CRIVELLUS VENETUS PINSIT 1470 FERMIS, but as the writing is from a later period, the discrepancy in the dating may be justified by a simple mistake. 4 F. Zeri, ‘Un polittico di Vittore Crivelli’, Bollettino d’arte, XLVI, 1961, pp. 231-232, now in F. Zeri, Diario Marchigiano 1948-1988, Torino 2000, pp. 233-245.
5 See note 2. 6 E. Hilje, ‘Nepoznati dokument o radu Vittorea Crivellija u Zadru’ [An unknown document on the work of Vittore Crivelli in Zadar], Radovi Instituta za povijest umjetnosti, XXXII, 2008, pp. 39-48, for the document see pp. 41-42. 7 A. De Marchi, ‘Centralità di Padova: alcuni esempi di interferenza tra scultura e pittura nell’area adriatica alla metà del Quattrocento’, in Quattrocento adriatico. Fifteen-Century Art of the Adriatic Rim. Papers from a Colloquium held at the Villa Spelman, Martellago 1996, pp. 57-79, speciatim pp. 76-77. 8 For this work now see F. Coltrinari, in Da Venezia… cit. (note 2), cat. no. 8, pp. 118-119, though it needs in my opinion to be backdated. 9 G. Capriotti, in Da Venezia… cit. (note 2), cat. no. 9, pp. 120-121. 10 For this subject see F. Coltrinari, ‘Vittore e Carlo…’ cit. (note 2), pp. 56-58.
24 Vittore Crivelli
Saint Anthony Abbot, standing in three-quarter view to the right, is wearing a cope over his Franciscan habit and holding a weighty, bound volume with a golden cover, the centre of which is decorated with a precious stone. A bell, once totally coated in silver leaf, is hanging from his left, gloved hand. The saint has leant his crosier on his shoulder in an extremely natural way and is supporting it with his left arm, as both his hands are busy holding the book. An elegant wild boar wearing a pearl necklace has just walked into the painting and appears in the foreground, on the left at the bottom of the panel. The figure is standing on a pale green marble plinth; behind him we can see a red parapet, covered with a lighter-coloured marble slab. The picture, already attributed to Vittore Crivelli by Cantalamessa in 1892,1 is a typical painting by the artist and fits perfectly into his first years in the Marches, when his style was strongly consistent with that of his brother Carlo. It is likely that Vittore arrived in that region in 1479, after having completed his training in Venice and having spent at least fifteen years in Zadar;2 in doing so he was following the footsteps of his elder brother, who in 1463 emigrated from the Venetian Lagoon to Dalmatia and five years later was already documented in Fermo, where the Comune commissioned him to paint a Madonna and Child for the Palazzo dei Priori.3 Federico Zeri’s studies4 and the recent in-depth analysis of Vittore’s activity in Zadar5 allow us to outline the early years of his career, which saw the creation of many a Madonna and Child, clearly for private devotion, and of the polyptych for the church of Saint James in Zadar, now in the Pushkin Museum, documented in 1471.6 In this period the painter’s works were still closely linked to the purest Veneto tradition and to the Vivarini brothers’ style, especially Antonio’s, along with careful attention paid to Giovanni Bellini’s new ideas and Paduan models such as the Child standing on the Virgin’s lap, as Andrea De Marchi rightly pointed out.7 If we compare the figures from this phase to his later activity in the Marches, we notice that their features are more placid and less graphic, and that the draperies appear more metallic, almost sculptural, and full of fragmented lines, as if recalling his distant Squarcionesque descent. These elements are also present in the Pietà in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino, 8 whose proposed chronology will need to be backdated by several years, so as to include it in Vittore’s activity on the other shore of the Adriatic. The same traits are recognizable in the artist’s first works in the Marches, such as the Madonna adoring the Child in Falerone, dated 8th September 1479,9 and the polyptych commissioned by Ludovico Euffreducci on 2nd December of the same year, formerly in San Francesco in Fermo, and now divided between various museums and collections; these two paintings were preceded by another polyptych for the same donor, destined to the church of the Annunziata in Fermo, but now unfortunately lost.10 These pictures, clearly close to Carlo’s works, are to be objectively
11 S. Papetti, in I Pittori del Rinascimento a Sanseverino, Lorenzo d’Alessandro e Ludovico Urbani, Niccolò Alunno, Vittore Crivelli e il Pinturicchio, exh. cat. (San Severino Marche, 2000), eds. S. Papetti, V. Sgarbi, Milano 2000, cat. no. 41, pp. 220-221. 12 S. Di Provvido, ‘Schede dei dipinti’, in Vittore Crivelli e la pittura del suo tempo a Fermo e nel fermano, ed. S. Papetti, Milano 1997, pp. 197-265, in particular cat. no. 15, pp. 209-210; for the document see R. Paciaroni, Il polittico sanseverinate di Vittore Crivelli, San Severino Marche 1987, and now F. Coltrinari, ‘Vittore e Carlo…’ cit. (note 2), p. 58. 13 S. Di Provvido, La pittura di Vittore Crivelli, L’Aquila 1972, pp. 126-128; S. Di Provvido, in Da Venezia… cit. (note 2), cat. no. 34, pp. 223-224, for the collection history of the picture, to be found further on in this text.
considered the acme of his whole production, as regards quality. The figures are flattened on the surface and excel in formal refinement; they show a careful attention to the smallest details and an abundance of anecdotal and often symbolical elements, which are the Crivelli brothers’ trademark. The palest complexions, flooded by a brilliant, diffused light, stand out in the vivid colours of these paintings: a chromatic range that will be later abandoned in favour of softer tones, that turn amber and brown and will become one of the painter’s distinctive features until the end of his career. The accuracy in the reproduction of the fine robes, the damasks and the ornaments, painted without the help of stencils, is also impressive. It is obvious that a similar lavishness is justified by the illustrious commissioners and contexts to whom these pictures were destined, but also, we think, by the desire to compete with the artist’s elder brother, already considered at that time the best active painter in that area. The polyptych for the church of San Francesco in San Severino Marche,11 now in the local Pinacoteca Comunale, is to be anchored to the date 1481. In that year the friars requested the Comune’s economic assistance for the execution of a painting which already had a frame waiting for it: it had been created years before by the best wood carver available, Domenico Indivini, the author, moreover, of the choir in the Basilica Superiore in Assisi. As Francesca Coltrinari has recently pointed out,12 this polyptych is stylistically quite different from the works at the end of the eighth decade: the figures are softer, the richness of paint is substituted by pastiglia relief and by an almost tactile consistency in the details. The outlines of the objects become less vigorous, as if weary and impregnated with expressive and anti-heroic melancholy: this the main trait of Vittore’s style and one of the essential things that differentiate his works from those of his brother. At the same time we can here detect the first signs of a focus on three-dimensional spaces which had been absent in his previous works, where his figures were programmatically bidimensional (except in the predella of the polyptych of Sant’Elpidio a Mare). Thus, it is likely that our painting is datable to a slightly later time, maybe the middle of the ninth decade. Saint Anthony Abbot is suspended between these two phases. The essentially perfect condition of the picture makes it possible to study every single detail with care, and to therefore analyze the drawing of the figure, still very close to Carlo’s elegance; the distinctive way of applying the colour using the tip of the paintbrush, in order to create the volume of the figures with a network of overlapping strokes; the skilful use of gold on practically the whole surface (water-gilded leaf in the decoration of the cope, of the robe and of the mitre, shell gold in the book cover and in the closely woven hatching of the abbot’s mantle). Every detail, including the crosier, part gold part silver, reveal the desire to create preciousness, as if working on a piece of jewellery (see also the orange peel texture of the punch-marked gold leaf). However, the general tone is already slightly low-key, and the saint’s face, not inferior in quality to the artist’s best works, is marked by a veiled melancholy. The theatrical entrance of the wild boar in the foreground is the first sign of a timid desire to distance the figure from the surface of the panel, visually creating a barrier between the saint and the viewer of the painting. All these elements lead to a dating after 1479 but before the middle of the ninth decade, possibly between 1481 and 1483. In a photograph published in the two monographs on Vittore Crivelli, the picture still appears to be mounted in its triptych-shaped frame with two other panels, a Madonna and Child in the middle and a Saint Nicholas on the far left.13 This is how it appeared when it was presented at the auction at Christie’s on 1st April 1960 (fig. 11), which is the last move we know of before the present one. After the sale the painting was clearly taken apart and
25 Vittore Crivelli
14 R. Lightbown, Carlo Crivelli, New Haven and London 2004, pp. 348-349. 15 “Dotti amici”. Amico Ricci e la nascita della storia dell’arte nelle Marches, ed. A. M. Ambrosini Massari, Ancona 2007, p. CX and p. 524. 16 S. Di Provvido, San Giacomo della Marca in due raffigurazioni di Vittore Crivelli, in Il culto e l’immagine. San Giacomo della Marca (1393-1476) nell’Iconografia Marchigiana, ed. S. Bracci, Ascoli Piceno 1998, pp. 77-83, in particular p. 77. 17 For these pictures now see G. Ravalli, in Da Venezia… cit. (note 2), cat. nos. 13-15, pp. 126-128.
its original frame was lost. The triptych was in fact already just a small part of a larger structure, which only recently we have been able to reassemble virtually almost to its entirety. Thanks to Sandra Di Provvido’s detailed and meticulous research, we know that the painting was still on the main altar of the Collegiata of San Niccolò in Monteprandone in 1844, as related by Don Nicola Falasca. An accurate description of the picture from the following year, written by the same canon, mentions the presence of an upper register with another three panels: in the centre “the half-length figure of the Dead Christ, supported by four angels”, and at his sides Saint Peter (fig. 2) and Saint Jerome (fig. 4), identifiable with the two saints now in the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia. We learn from the same source that the bishop of Ripatransone, under the explicit request of the pope, gave the triptych to Gregorius XVI on 26th September 1844. The painting did not stay in Rome for long: in 1871 it was already in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where it could be seen by Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle and Joseph Archer Crowe. Though the museum has no record of the panels, they were probably alienated at the beginning of the 20th century, as they reappeared in 1929 in the Haupt collection in Dusseldorf, Germany. Sandra Di Provvido points out that at that time the central panel of the upper register had been replaced with the Saint Lawrence by Carlo Crivelli, formerly in the Thyssen Bornemisza collection in Lugano and originally from the polyptych of Castel Truosino. 14 In this spurious form, the work passed into the Brisley-Marlay collection and then into the Oberlaender collection, but without Carlo’s Saint Lawrence. The remaining two panels from the upper register were detached after the ParkeBernet Galleries sale in 1939 and went into the Chrysler collection, while the main figures of the triptych were purchased by Baron Tibor de Budai. As mentioned before, the triptych with its original frame appeared at an auction at Christie’s in 1960 and was bought by a dealer who sold the panel with Saint Anthony back to its former owner. Before 1844, the year the painting left its original location, it was also described by Amico Ricci, who saw it at the Epistle side (“cornu epistolae”) of the altar during a journey in 1828. The central panel of the upper register was obviously still in its place, but, unlike Falasca, Ricci mentions not four, but two angels supporting “the half-length figure of the Ecce Homo”. 15 Other information on this work is once again provided in an essay by Sandra Di Provvido from 1998.16 The scholar reports a description of the Collegiata in Monteprandone which is not precisely dated but included in a volume from 1825: on the main altar of the church there was a painting “sul fare di Pietro Perugino. Sul principio del medesimo quadro viene rappresentata la Flagellazione alla Colonna di Nostro Signore. Sotto, ciascuno in un lato, vi sono i due SS. Apostoli Pietro e Paolo e sotto ad essi il Nostro Protettore S. Niccolò e S. Antonio Abate, ai lati fuori del quadro in Cornu Epistolae ci sono dipinti il nostro Concittadino S. Giacomo, e S. Egidio Abate e dall’altro S. Leonardo, e S. Barbara vergine e martire” (in Pietro Perugino’s style. The Flagellation of Christ at the Column is represented at the top. Underneath it, one on each side, are Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and beneath them Our Patron Saint, Nicholas, and Saint Anthony Abbot. On the right, on the outer sides of the painting, there are Saint James, our fellow citizen, and Saint Giles the Abbot, and on the other side Saint Leonard and Saint Barbara, virgin and martyr). Though the description forgets to mention the lower central panel (the fact it depicted a Madonna and Child was evidently taken for granted), it is clear we are talking about a pentaptych with an upper and a lower register. In short, our triptych was completed on both sides by another four panels, that the very same Di Provvido correctly identified with those in the Pinacoteca Comunale in Ripatransone.17
26 Vittore Crivelli
figs. 1-9 Reconstruction of the Monteprandone Polyptych by Vittore Crivelli: Saint Ursula, stolen from the Ripatronsone Museum in 1983 (fig. 1); Saint Peter, Norfolk (VA), Chrysler Museum (fig. 2); Dead Christ Supported by Three Angels, location unknown (fig. 3); Saint Jerome, Norfolk (VA), Chrysler Museum (fig. 4); Saint Placidus, Ripatransone, Museo Civico (fig. 5); Saint Leonard, Ripatransone, Museo Civico (fig. 6); Saint Nicholas of Bari, location unknown (fig. 7); Madonna and Child, location unknown (fig. 8); Saint Anthony Abbot, Grassi Studio; Blessed James of the Marches, Ripatransone, Museo Civico (fig. 9); The frame is the same as in the Monte San Martino Polyptych by Carlo and Vittore Crivelli.
27 Vittore Crivelli
18 S. Di Provvido, in Da Venezia… cit. (note 2), cat. nos. 35-36, pp. 224-225. 19 Ibidem, cat. no. 83, pp. 254-255. 20 G. Crocetti, ‘Vittore Crivelli e l’intagliatore Maestro Giovanni di Stefano da Montelparo’, Notizie da Palazzo Albani, V, 2, 1976, pp. 17-28, in particular pp.22-24. 21 He worked in close contact with other artists who specialized in the same production, such as Paolino da Ascoli and Apollonio da Ripatrasone. See F. Coltrinari, Domenico Indivini e Sebastiano D’Appennino: una bottega di scultura e intaglio ligneo nelle Marches del Rinascimento, in Rinascimento scolpito. Maestri del legno tra Marche e Umbria, exh. cat. (Camerino, 2006), ed. R. Casciaro, Cinisello Balsamo 2006, pp. 47-72, in particular p. 54. 22 For this work see M. Minardi, ‘Opus Iohannis Boccatii de Camereno. Singolarità, vicende e fortuna di un polittico marchigiano’, in Il polittico di Giovanni Boccati. Chiesa di Sant’Eustachio a Belforte del Chienti, ed. M. Giannatiempo Lopez, Roma 2005, pp. 35-47; for the wooden structure see A. De Marchi, ‘Pittori a Camerino nel Quattrocento: le ombre di Gentile e la luce di Piero’, in Pittori a Camerino nel Quattrocento, ed. A. De Marchi, Milano 2002, pp.24-98, in particular pp. 72-73.
If we cross-check the data, we understand that the polyptych on the main altar of the Collegiata in Monteprandone was divided into five compartments on two registers. The saints Leonard (fig. 6), Nicholas of Bari (fig. 7), the Madonna and Child (fig. 8), Saint Anthony Abbot and the Blessed James of the Marches (fig. 9) were represented on the lower one: the two panels on the far sides are in the museum in Ripatransone, the other Franciscan saint is the painting we are looking at, while the remaining two appear to still be on the market. Saint Ursula (fig. 1, mistaken for Barbara in the earlier description), Saint Peter (fig. 2), a figure of Christ, Saint Jerome (fig. 4) and Saint Placidus (fig. 5) were painted in the upper register; as before, the figures on the far sides went to Ripatransone, but the Saint Ursula was stolen in 1983. The other two saints are in Virginia,18 but we are still uncertain about what was depicted in the central panel. The descriptions reported are conflicting: the author of the earlier one who saw the polyptych when it was complete mentions a Flagellation in the central panel; Amico Ricci describes an Ecce Homo supported by two angels, and Falasca a figure of a Dead Christ with four angels. Taking into account the existence of other inaccurate information, it seems plausible that the hypothesis of a Christ at the column is also to be rejected: it would represent an exception in the painter’s production, since a Dead Christ is depicted in that position in almost all the polyptychs coming from his workshop. Skimming through Vittore’s oeuvre, all his Engel Pietà with two or four angels are already included in larger compositions, but an ideal candidate would seem to be the gabled panel (fig. 3) that passed through the Silberman Gallery in New York and was once in the Contini Bonaccossi collection in Rome:19 Di Provvido was already tempted to connect it to the Monteprandone polyptych, but abandoned the idea owing to the different number of angels. However, seeing that the two descriptions do not agree, it may be possible that both authors were mistaken as to the number of angels, and this could actually be the missing panel. This hypothesis is supported by its gabled shape, quite uncommon for Vittore’s paintings; by the identical halos, in the shape of a circular beam of rays framed by a double ring decorated with small, regular, round punch marks; and finally by the size. According to Di Provvido, the panel is 54,6 cm (21.5 inches) wide, which is almost the same width of the Madonna and Child from the lower register (55 cm, 21.7 inches). It is therefore likely that this painting and our Saint Anthony were originally part of the same polyptych. All this reconstruction is also obviously supported by the homogeneous style of the pictures and by the same spatial setting, as for example the parapet that runs behind the figures in the lower register, identical in all the compartments except for the colour. We even find the analogous care taken in the gilding and in creating the orange peel texture of the gold leaves with repeated punch marks to simulate the shading also on the gold and silver surfaces, an effect which would have been intensified by the light of the candles. The figures’ complexions are all painted in the same way: a thick web of strokes of colour applied with the tip of the paintbrush, while their outlines are all similarly incised on the gesso layer. And finally the three main panels that we can see today all show the same arched traces of the frame on the gables. The original frame, part of which remained on the painting at least until 1960 before losing all trace of it, was rightly attributed to Giovanni di Stefano da Montelparo by Giuseppe Crocetti.20 He was a key figure on the artistic scene in Umbria and in the Marches: he was one of the most sought-after wood carvers specializing in choirs at that time,21 and was also known to produce frames for polyptychs. It is my opinion that he was the author of the amazing wooden structures for the altarpieces by Giovanni Boccati in Belforte del Chienti (1468),22 and by Niccolò di Liberatore in the Pinacoteca
28 Vittore Crivelli
23 For the polyptych see F. Todini, Niccolò Alunno e la sua bottega, Perugia 2004, cat. no. IV.32, pp. 557-560. The contract between Niccolò di Liberatore and Giovanni di Stefano di Montelparo was published in A. Rossi, ‘I Pittori di Foligno nel secolo d’oro delle arti italiane’, Giornale di Erudizione Artistica, 1872, I, IX, pp. 249-280, in particular pp. 273-274. 24 See at least G. Crocetti, ‘Vittore Crivelli…’, 1976 and G. Crocetti, ‘Vittore Crivelli e gli intagliatori dei suoi polittici’, in Vittore Crivelli e la pittura… cit. (note 12), pp. 71-83, in particular pp. 75-80. 25 For the diffusion of the polyptych in the Marches, in relation also to the activity of Niccolò di Liberatore and of the Crivelli brothers, see A. De Marchi, La pala d’altare. Dal polittico alla pala quadra, Firenze 2012, pp. 154-160. 26 F. Coltrinari, ‘Vittore e Carlo…’ cit. (note 2), p. 58 and doc. no. 87, p. 194. 27 Ibidem, pp. 54-56, who outlines the profile of Ludovico Euffreducci and declares his origin from Falerone. The donor was so close to the Franciscans as to destine the polyptychs he commissioned to Vittore to churches of that order. The Madonna of Falerone was made for the church of San Francesco, and it was also one of the most ancient depictions of the Immaculate Conception, full of symbolic references that were probably suggested by a theologian of the order. For this subject see G. Capriotti, ‘Ce sta picto. Simboli e figure nella pittura di Vittore Crivelli e del suo tempo’, in Da Venezia… cit. (note 2), pp. 73-85, in particular pp. 73-75. 28 For this subject allow me to suggest consulting A. Delpriori, ‘Percorso per un Rinascimento dell’Appennino’, in Da Venezia… cit. (note 2), pp. 23-35, in particular pp. 28-31. 29 F. Coltrinari, Regesto… cit. (note 2), doc. no. 91, p. 195. I have already suggested identifying two panels from this polyptych with the Saint Anthony of Padua and Saint Peter by Vittore now in the Zucconi Collection in Camerino: see A. Delpriori, in Da Venezia… cit. (note 2), cat. no. 16, pp. 130-131.
30 Old master and 19th Century European Art, Sotheby’s, New York 10 luglio 2011, lot. 212. The two panels are unpublished. In the short text in the catalogue of the New York auction these two saints were connected with two other small panels depicting Franciscans: one is the friar reading, now in the Pinacoteca Comunale of Sant’Elpidio a Mare, while the other, location unknown, was once part of the Metropolitan Museum collections (cat. no. 1888. 3. 76). For the first panel see S. Di Provvido, in L’Aquila e il Leone. L’arte veneta a Fermo, Sant’Elpidio a Mare e nel Fermano. Jacobello, i Crivelli e Lotto, exh. cat. (Fermo, Sant’Elpidio a Mare, 2006), ed. S. Papetti, Venezia 2006, cat. no. 22, p. 137; for the second see Census of the Pre-Nineteenh-Century Italiana Paintigns in North American Public Collections, eds. B. B. Fredericksen and F. Zeri, Cambridge 1972, p. 60. I find this idea fascinating but unconvincing. The abovementioned pictures are exactly the same size (22 x 13 cm, 8.7 x 5.1 inches), but slightly smaller than our two panels (24 x 15 cm, 9.5 x 5.9 inches). It seems also very strange that our two saints have halos, while the other two have not; this cannot depend on a possible regilding of the background, because in both cases we can still detect the incisions on the gold leaf outlining the figures of the friars, the inner contour of the frame and the position of two small capitals that once decorated the spiral columns that separated the compartments of the predella from which the two pictures come from.
29 Vittore Crivelli
Vaticana, once in Montelparo and dated 1466, and in Gualdo Tadino (1471); a contract of collaboration between Niccolò and Giovanni is actually documented for the latter polyptych.23 The list of frames that have been, or can be, attributed to him is very long, and cannot be examined here.24 It is however useful to pinpoint their similarities and the structure they more or less share, with the exception of the normal differences in size and shape: the space for the figures is limited by polylobed, gothic arches and spiral columns, and the upper part of the frame is crowned with pointed gables and sometimes high, isolated panels. Despite the vertical emphasis of the structure, the harmonious proportions and the modular forms of the frame deny the impression of gothicism and create a different way to conceive an altarpiece during the Renaissance, which will have no doubt influenced the choices of painters.25 We often find a horizontal string-course, decorated with plant motifs, dividing the two upper registers and creating a noticeable ledge under the central panel, a feature that is visible, among others, in the photograph of the triptych of Monteprandone, validating therefore its attribution to Giovanni di Stefano. His relationship with Vittore was however not as close as the one he had with Niccolò di Liberatore: we know that in 1479 the painter had already made an agreement with the wood carver Simone di Martino da Camerino,26 a fact that proves that his workshop was able to follow all the phases in the creation of a polyptych, from the wooden structure to the painting. This is the moment of the altarpieces for Fermo, the frames of which are unfortunately lost, and of the commissions by Ludovico Euffreducci, to whom we can also, in some way, refer the Adoring Virgin of Falerone.27 The wooden structure of the latter painting is still the original one, with the exception of several parts that were subjected to restoration: it is likely that it was executed by Simone, as his collaboration with the painter dates to the same years. The frame, not that different from works by Giovanni di Stefano, consists of a flat architrave resting on pilasters internally decorated with candelabra and vegetal motifs; it appears certainly more in line with Vittore’s growing interest for three-dimensional spaces and classical structures.28 It thus seems that the relationship between Vittore and Giovanni was almost accidental, or imposed by other factors, and this is actually confirmed by the well-known document from 1481: in that year Giuliano da Montelparo, prior of Santa Maria in Loro Piceno, and Dioniso di ser Antonello, mayor of the same city, commission our artist to paint a polyptych for that church, to be inserted in a frame “di legno buono e intagliato da Maestro Giovanni da Montelparo” (made of good wood and carved by Master Giovanni da Montelparo).29 Vittore therefore agreed to work on a polyptych whose shape had already been decided, and it is likely that the same happened with the Monteprandone altarpiece. It is no chance that the dating of our picture, based upon its style, fits in with the chronology of the painting for Loro Piceno. On the raw parts of the wood of our Saint Anthony and the other panels from the same polyptych, it is possible to see several black paint strokes that apparently don’t represent anything in particular. Could these signs have been made when the panels were dismantled to be painted, so as to indicate the right order in which they were to be remounted? All the polyptychs by Giovanni di Stefano we know of are supplied with a predella, but there is no trace of it in the descriptions of the picture of Monteprandone: it is possible that it had long since been detached and that it was by that time missing. However, two small paintings by Vittore Crivelli (fig. 10), a Saint Bernardino of Siena and another anonymous Franciscan saint (maybe one of the Protomartyrs in Morocco), have recently appeared on the antiquarian market30 and are now in a private Florentine collection: they
would seem to me to belong to the same moment of our Saint Anthony Abbot, since they share the same style in painting the complexions, a similar limpness in parts such as the martyr’s fingers, and the shape and decoration of the halos. Both are 14,5 cm (5.7 inches) wide, which is almost half the width of the main panels from our polyptych: if we imagine leaving enough space between the two figures for a spiral column, they would fit perfectly under the upper register. The only drawback is represented by the presence of two Franciscans in a polyptych destined to the Collegiata of Monteprandone, where two of the main figures are the Benedectine saints Leonard and Placidus. This problem may be overcome by the fact that, had it been a polyptych for a Franciscan church, Saint Bernardino of Siena would have held too high a position in the order to be relegated to the predella instead of being depicted in one of the main panels. Likewise, we must remember that the altarpiece was created for the native town of Saint James of the Marches, one of the most important preachers of the Observant branch of the Franciscans: it is likely that below what would have been his earliest effigy, there were other saints from his order, maybe the very same Bernardino of Siena, with whom he had been in contact more than once during his lifetime.
fig. 10 Vittore Crivelli, Saint Bernardino of Siena and Anonymous Franciscan saint, Florence, Private collection
Alessandro Delpriori
fig. 11 Part of the Monteprandone Polyptych by Vittore Crivelli as appeared in the auction at Christie’s in 1960
30 Vittore Crivelli
BIOGRAPHY
Bartolomeo di Giovanni Documented in Florence from 1488 - Florence, 1501
1 For a profile of the artist see E. Fahy, Some Followers of Domenico Ghirlandaio, New York & London 1976, pp. 126-166; N. Pons, ‘Precisazioni su tre Bartolomeo di Giovanni: il cartolaio, il sargiaio e il dipintore’, Paragone, 41, 1990, pp. 115-126; Bartolomeo di Giovanni collaboratore di Ghirlandaio e Botticelli, exh. cat. (Florence, 2004), ed. N. Pons, Firenze 2004. 2 For this panel see E. Fahy, ‘The Este Predella Panels and Other Works by the Master of the Fiesole Epiphany’, Nuovi Studi, VI-VII, 2003, 9, pp. 17-29, speciatim 25-26. 3 For the relationship between Bartolomeo di Giovanni and Botticelli see N. Pons, in Bartolomeo di Giovanni… cit. (note 1), pp. 30-36.
Bartolomeo di Giovanni is documented for the first time in 1488, when the prior of the Spedale degli Innocenti in Florence commissioned him to paint the predella for Ghirlandaio’s Adoration of the Magi.1 According to the original contract, drawn up in 1485 with the spedalingo Francesco Tesori, Domenico was supposed to paint the predella along with the altar panel within thirty months from the drafting of the act: it is he therefore who will pay Bartolomeo for his work. The archive papers reveal that Bartolomeo was meant to paint seven stories, listed in the document and identifiable with the Annunciation, the Baptism of Christ, the Marriage of the Virgin, the Lamentation of Christ, the Presentation at the Temple, the Martyrdom of Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Antoninus consecrating the church of the Innocenti (Florence, Museo degli Innocenti). Moreover, Bartolomeo had also taken part, even if in a minor role, in the creation of the altarpiece: his contribution is recognizable in the background of the picture, in the animated and dramatic scene of the Massacre of the Innocents. It was clearly a standard procedure for Domenico to delegate his helpers and collaborators to paint the predella of his altarpieces: Bartolomeo di Giovanni is in fact the author of the five compartments of the panel with the Madonna Enthroned and Saints Dionysius, Dominic, Clement and Thomas, executed in 1481 by Domenico Ghirlandaio for the church of San Marco (today in the Uffizi).2 A similar intervention of our painter is also detectable in the Narni altarpiece (Narni, Pinacoteca), painted by Ghirlandaio between 1484 and 1486 with the considerable partecipation of his workshop: Bartolomeo executed two stories in the predella, representing the Stigmata of Saint Francis and Saint Jerome in the desert, while the central scene can be attributed to David. Bartolomeo di Giovanni had a stable, lasting relationship with the workshop of the Bigordi, with whom he worked in the Cappella Sistina in the Vatican, as proven by some parts of the fresco by David and Domenico, The Calling of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew: the figures in the background, on the right-hand side around Jesus, are all created by his paintbrush and once again highlight his specializing in small figures. The relation with Ghirlandaio’s workshop was not, however, an exclusive one: in 1483 the painter collaborated with Botticelli in the making of a series of panels of domestic use depicting the Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, commissioned for the occasion of the Pucci-Bini marriage. Bartolomeo was the author of The Banquet in the Pine Forest (Madrid, Prado), while the other three episodes (divided between once again the Prado and the Pucci Collection, Florence) show the hand of another of Botticelli’s collaborators; the whole series, however, was conceived by the master himself. Other works by Bartolomeo reveal familiarity with the workshop of Filipepi, next to whom he also most likely produced drawings for book illustrations.3 Between 1486 and 1487 Bartolomeo partook in the making of new wedding furniture for the marriage of Lorenzo Tornabuoni and Giovanna degli Albizi: he is the author of two panels with Apollo and Aphrodite (private collection) and Jason and the Argonauts in Colchis (New York, private collection), while other episodes were given to Piero del Donzello and Biagio d’Antonio. In 1487 he worked for Filippo Strozzi as a fresco painter in his Villa del Maglio, today Maglio di Sopra near Prato, but unfortunately nothing remains of these paintings. In 1489, once again for the Spedale degli Innocenti, he created a cortina, or curtain, destined to cover and protect the Adoration of the Magi by Ghirlandaio when not on show to the public.
32 Bartolomeo di Giovanni
At the beginning of the 1490s Bartolomeo di Giovanni is active in the Vatican, in the Room of the Mysteries in the Borgia Apartment, as part of Pinturicchio’s entourage. The Umbrian artist had, in fact, brought along several painters from Umbria and Florence, as is evident from the different hands that are discernable on the frescoed walls. Bartolomeo’s intervention, in collaboration with an unidentified Umbrian artist, is traceable in large parts both in the Nativity and in the Adoration of the Magi, where he no longer appears as a simple executor of predelle and backgrounds as in his Florentine phase of the 1480s. In 1495 he is once again documented in Florence, where it appears he has a workshop in the Canto dei Pazzi, on the corner between Borgo degli Albizi and via del Proconsolo, a space he rented from the sculptor Benedetto da Maiano. In the 1490s the painter will devote his time to producing a great number of altarpieces, which show a strong Umbrian influence. Noteworthy are the Crucifixion of Sant’Andrea a Camoggiano (today in the church of San Silvestro in Barberino di Mugello) and the Lamentation in Toronto, both of which include the portrait of the donor Pandolfo Cattani, prior of Sant’Andrea a Camoggiano in 1496.4 The Saint Jerome in the Accademia, Florence, originally in the church of San Vincenzo di Annalena and probably commissioned by the Minerbetti family, also dates to the end of the 1490s: the three Stories of Saint Jerome in Baltimora may have been part of this painting. 1498 is the year of the painting for the Convent of San Giovanni Evangelista di Boldrone, which is the object of our study, while in 1499 “Bartolomeo dipintore al Canto de’ Pazzi” receives a payment from the Convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli, in via degli Alfani, for part of an unidentifiable panel depicting Saint Anthony.5 This document also mentions Chimenti di Giovanni, possibly Chimenti di Giovanni Rosselli, as his collaborator.6 Bartolomeo died in Florence in October 1501 and was buried in the church of Santa Maria del Campo.
4 C. Acidini Luchinat, ‘Il priore Cattani nel percorso di Bartolomeo di Giovanni frescante’, Bollettino d’arte, 47, 1988, pp. 49-70. 5 N. Pons, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 118-122. 6 D. E. Colnaghi, The Dictionary of Florentine Painters from the 13th to the 17th Centuries, London 1928, p. 231.
33 Bartolomeo di Giovanni
4
Madonna and Child with Saints John the Evangelist, Benedict, Romuald and Jerome Bartolomeo di Giovanni
Tempera on panel, cm 144,5 x 146, 57 x 57.5 in
34 Bartolomeo di Giovanni
1498
PROVENANCE
Florence, Convent of San Giovanni Evangelista di Boldrone Francis Cook Frederick Cook, Doughty House, Richmond, Surrey Herbert Cook Mark Fawdry, Haining Castle, Selkirkshire, Scotland Sotheby’s, 13th February 1946, no. 3, March 1946, no. 127 LITERATURE
T. Borenius, A Catalogue of the Collection of Paintings of Sir Frederick Cook, Bt., I. Italian Schools, London 1913, p. 71, no. 61 G. de Francovich, ‘Nuovi aspetti della personalità di Bartolomeo di Giovanni’, Bollettino d’arte, 1926, pp. 84-85, 91 and 92, note 36, fig. 26 M. Brockwell, Abridged Catalogue of the Pictures at Doughty House, Richmond, Surrey etc., London 1932, p. 61 The Connoisseur, 131, 1953, p. 61 B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Florentine School, London 1963, I, p. 26 E. Fahy, Some Followers of Domenico Ghirlandaio, New York & London 1976, pp. 158-159; N. Pons, ‘Precisazioni su tre Bartolomeo di Giovanni: il cartolaio, il sargiaio e il dipintore’, Paragone, 41, 1990, pp. 121-22, fig. 81 Bartolomeo di Giovanni collaboratore di Ghirlandaio e Botticelli, exh. cat. (Florence, 2004), ed. N. Pons, Firenze 2004, pp. 50-53.
7 N. Pons, op. cit. (note 1), p. 122. 8 Ibidem 9 For the presence of Raffaellino del Garbo in the Borgia Apartments in the Vatican see C. Acidini Luchinat, ‘Pittori fiorentini al servizio dei papi’, in Maestri e botteghe. Pittura a Firenze alla fine del Quattrocento, exh. cat. (Florence, 1992-1993), eds. M. Gregori, A. Paolucci, C. Acidini Luchinat, Cinisello Balsamo 1992, p. 276.
On 3rd June 1498 Bartolomeo di Giovanni, “dipintore al canto de’ Pazzi” (painter of the Canto de’ Pazzi), was paid for “dipintura della tavola del monasterio di Boldrone” (painting of the panel for the monastery of Boldrone), namely a monastery situated in the environs of Florence, near Quarto, founded in 1193 by the Frenchman Boldrone di Guardino. The painting mentioned in the document was identified by the undersigned with the Madonna and Child enthroned with the saints John the Evangelist, Benedict, Romuald and Jerome, a work that fits perfectly with this provenance for both iconographic and stylistic reasons.7 The monastery was dedicated to Saint John the Evangelist, who is depicted, in fact, in the position of honour on the Virgin’s right. The Camaldolese nuns that resided there followed the Benedictine Rule, and this explains the presence of both Saint Benedict, characterized by the white robe and by the bundle of rods that is lying on the floor, and Saint Romuald, founder of the order. The latter, kneeling opposite Saint Benedict, can be recognized again by his robe, by the book he is holding and by the small model of the church at his side. The presence of Saint Jerome, instead, is probably linked to “Don Girolamo da Bibbiena”, who drew up and signed the document, maybe acting as the nuns’ attorney.8 The panel, a perfect example of Bartolomeo’s later style, shows elongated figures, characterized by sharp profiles, clearly recalling Umbrian artists, but also Raffaellino del Garbo, a painter whom Bartolomeo possibly met in Rome, on the working site of the Borgia Apartments, and then again in Florence.9 The sobriety of the setting, devoid of trees or decorative elements, is a recurrent feature of the artist’s style, in particular in religious paintings, as is evident in the predella of the Innocenti; the simplicity is partly compensated, in the
35 Bartolomeo di Giovanni
picture of Boldrone, by the use of bright colours, such as red, green and pink. The severity of the composition, amplified by a refined symmetry, and the plainness of the Virgin with her head covered, lend the panel painting a strong Savonarolian spirituality. Speaking of which, it is important to remember that Bartolomeo di Giovanni has been rightly recognized as the author of several illustrations that accompany the Savonarolian writings, from the Arte del bene morire to the Libro della Vita Viduale and many others.10 This activity and the consequent drawing closer to the preaching and iconography linked to Savonarola could not but leave a trace on Bartolomeo’s work as a painter, especially in a painting destined to a nuns’ convent. In 1976 the benedectine origin of the monastery of Saint John the Evangelist led Everett Fahy to cautiously hypothesize that the four small panels with Stories of Saint Benedict by Bartolomeo di Giovanni, today divided between the Uffizi Gallery and an American private collection (figs. 1-2), could originally have formed the predella of the painting of Boldrone:11 an hypothesis recently reaffirmed by Liletta Fornasari.12 However the chronological distance between the four small panels, datable to the end of the 1480s, and the painting, documented to 1498, finally refutes this idea, which is unlikely also from an iconographic point of view. In fact, Cecchi rightly believes it to be improbable that stories of the saint from Norcia could occupy the whole predella of a panel painting dedicated to the titular saint of the monastery, Saint John the Evangelist.13 Nicoletta Pons
fig. 1 Bartolomeo di Giovanni, Saint Benedict and the miracle of the hidden flask, Private collection fig. 2 Bartolomeo di Giovanni, Saint Benedict exorcises a monk, Private collection
10 For the subject see Immagini e azione riformatrice: le xilografie degli Incunaboli savonaroliani nella Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze, ed. E. Turelli, Firenze 1985; N. Pons, in Bartolomeo di Giovanni… cit. (note 1), pp. 33-34. 11 E. Fahy, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 158-159. 12 L. Fornasari, in Verrocchio e l’atelier del Rinascimento, exh. cat. (Arezzo, 2001), ed. L. Fornasari, Firenze 2001 (Leonardo e dintorni), pp. 62-63, 68-69 and 95-97. 13 A. Cecchi, in I mai visti. Capolavori dai depositi degli Uffizi, exh. cat. (Florence, 2001-2002), Firenze 2001, p. 56.
36 Bartolomeo di Giovanni
BIOGRAPHY
‘Gallo fiorentino’ or Master of the Campana cassoni (Antonio di Jacopo Gallo) Documented in Florence from 1503 to 1527
1 F. Zeri, ‘Una congiuntura tra Firenze e la Francia: il Maestro dei Cassoni Campana’, in Diari di lavoro, II, Torino 1976, pp. 75-87. 2 E. Fahy, Some Followers of Domenico Ghirlandaio, New York & London 1976, pp. 200-202. 3 J. K. Nelson, L. A. Waldman, ‘La questione dei dipinti postumi di Filippino Lippi: Fra Girolamo da Brescia, il Maestro di Memphis e la pala d’altare a Fabbrica di Peccioli’, in La Deposizione della Santissima Annunziata e il suo restauro. Filippino Lippi e Pietro Perugino, eds. F. Falletti, J. K. Nelson, Livorno 2004, pp. 137-138. 4 L. Venturini, in Maestri e botteghe. Pittura a Firenze alla fine del Quattrocento, exh. cat. (Florence, 1992-1993), eds. M. Gregori, A. Paolucci, C. Acidini Luchinat, Cinisello Balsamo 1992, p. 286, note 7; M. Sframeli, in Il Museo Bandini di Fiesole, ed. M. Scudieri, Firenze 1993, pp. 145-147; A. Lenza, Il Museo Bandini di Fiesole, Firenze 2006, pp. 38-39. 5 For this subject see A. Bernacchioni, ‘Familia et civitas: i Ghirlandaio e Scandicci’, in Ghirlandaio. Una famiglia di pittori del Rinascimento tra Firenze e Scandicci, exh. cat. (Scandicci, 2010-2011), ed. A. Bernacchioni, Firenze 2010, pp. 27-51; A. Bernacchioni,‘Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio: una pala per ‘Johannes Petri italiano’’, Arte Cristiana, XCVII, 854, 2009, pp. 345-350. 6 A. Padoa Rizzo, Iconografia di San Giovanni Gualberto. La pittura in Toscana, Pisa 2002, p. 129. 7 A. Bernacchioni, ‘Il ‘Gallo fiorentino’: Il Maestro dei Cassoni Campana. Un pittore francese nella Firenze rinascimentale’, in Benozzo Gozzoli e Cosimo Rosselli nelle terre di Castelfiorentino. Pittura devozionale in Valdelsa, exh. cat. (Castelfiorentino, 2011), eds. S. Nocentini, A. Padoa Rizzo, Firenze 2011, pp. 117-127, 160.
The Master of the Campana Cassoni is one of the most intriguing foreign artists active in Florence during the Renaissance; he was given this name by Federico Zeri, who took it from the spalliera panels (once thought to be cassoni) depicting stories of Theseus and Ariadne, formerly in the Campana collection and now in the Musée du Petit Palais in Avignon. The scholar, noticing Nordic elements in his art, assumed he was a painter of French origin emigrated to Florence at the beginning of the 16th century.1 At the same time, Everett Fahy put together a group of paintings around the Madonna and Child enthroned with the Saints Martin and Sebastian in the Museo d’Arte Sacra in Tavernelle Val di Pesa, a work that Federico Zeri attributed to the Master of the Campana Cassoni: the artist, an imitator of Filippino Lippi, was christened Master of Tavernelle, a name that has sometimes been used for our anonymous painter.2 The picture from this museum was then also acknowledged by Fahy himself as a work by the Master of the Campana Cassoni, and finally removed from the nucleus of Filippinesque paintings, which was later ascribed to the Master of Memphis by Jonathan Nelson.3 In the meantime, the catalogue of the Master of the Campana Cassoni was further enriched by Lisa Venturini with other works, such as The Coronation of the Virgin and the Hierarchies of Angels in the Museo Bandini in Fiesole. This painting was originally in the oratory, later demolished, of the Order of Saint Anthony, once in Via di Porta di Faenza, Florence, where it had been erected in 1333 by the Hospital Brothers from the Mother House in Vienne (Rhone Valley, near Lyon): an important indicator to support the theory of the French origin of the anonymous artist.4 It is difficult to establish exactly where he was from: he may have received his training in Provence, within the circle of the painter Josse Lieferinxe, or in Auvergne, where Benedetto Ghirlandaio had lived and worked for Gilbert de Bourbon from 1486 to 1493. Our painter has also much in common with other French Renaissance masters, such as Jean Bellegambe de Douai and Jean Perréal, the latter a painter from the Parisian court who often travelled to Italy. It is possible that he arrived in Florence due to the frequent connections that not only Benedetto, but the whole Ghirlandaio workshop had with foreign countries: in 1496 David was commissioned to execute the mosaic of the Madonna and Child and Two Angels (Château d’ Ecouen, Musée de la Renaissance) by Jean de Ganay, an influential politician from the court of Charles VIII, and in 1510 Domenico’s son Ridolfo painted an Adoration of the Shepherds with the Saints Sebastian and Roch (Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts) for the German printer Johannes Petri.5 The only element that is certain in his catalogue is the date 1519 written on the canvas with Saints Lucy, John the Baptist, John Gualbert and Peter, commissioned by Piero di Giovanni di Cante Compagni, friend and disciple of Marsilio Ficino; once in the church of Santa Lucia in Montebicchieri near San Miniato (Pisa), the painting was stolen in 1980 and has lately reappeared on the antiquarian market.6 I have recently re-christened the Master of the Campana Cassoni with the name ‘Gallo fiorentino’, therefore suggesting an identification with the painter “Antonio di Jacopo, known as Antonio Gallo”, in other words French, documented in Florence from 1503 to 1527.7 In the spring of 1507 Antonio
38 ‘Gallo fiorentino’ or Master of the Campana cassoni
Gallo collaborates with Bernardo Rosselli, Agnolo di Donnino (the Master of Santo Spirito) and other artists in the decoration of the loggia of the hospital of San Bonifazio in via San Gallo in Florence, where he is busy “painting poormen”. On 16th November 1521 the friars of Santissima Annunziata pay him for a new picture of “Saint Jerome, four other saints, an angel and a mountain” for the assembly room of the Compagnia di San Girolamo. On the 30th of the same month he is paid once again for painting a coat of arms and a figure of Saint Ansanus in a house in Via dei Servi. We are also able to track other personal data of the artist: in 1503, the year he appears to be enrolled in the Compagnia dei Pittori in Florence, his son Giovan Francesco is born, while in 1527 he witnesses the death of the daughter of painter Giovanbattista di Tommaso del Verrocchio. Antonio settles in Florence and gives birth to a dynasty of painters known as Gallo or Giallo; both his sons Jacopo and Vincenzo become artists. Jacopo is mentioned in the sources and in documents and in 1537 moves to Venice, where he becomes a famous illuminator; the works we know of show many similarities to our artist’s pictures. ‘Gallo fiorentino’ was active for the church of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence, where he executed the panel with the Saints Blaise, Ignatius and Erasmus for Ignazio di Manfredi Squarcialupi, abbot of the Badia Fiorentina and of Montecassino (fig. 1). He also left several paintings behind him in the area of Valdelsa and Val di Pesa, among which the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian between the Saints Anthony Abbot and Roch, in the Museo di Arte Sacra in San Casciano, and the Holy Trinity between the Saints Roch and Lucy, commissioned by the Pucci family for the church of Santa Verdiana and today in the parish church in Petrazzi (Castelfiorentino). They were all examples of popular devotional art, the aim of which was the protection and healing from epidemic diseases such as the plague and syphilis, at that time widespread in Florence and its environs (fig. 2).
39 ‘Gallo fiorentino’ or Master of the Campana cassoni
5
Nativity c. 1510 ‘Gallo fiorentino’ or Master of the Campana cassoni
Tempera on panel, cm 53,5 x 68,5; 21.1 x 27 in
40 ‘Gallo fiorentino’ or Master of the Campana cassoni
PROVENANCE
Italy, Private collection LITERATURE
Unpublished
8 The painting has also been recently mentioned in A. Bernacchioni, op. cit. (note 7), note 39. 9 E. Peters Bowron, European Paintings Before 1900 in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge (MA) 1990, pp. 119-120, 321. 10 E. Fahy, ‘Ghirlandaio copying Memling’, in Invisibile agli occhi. Atti della giornata di studi in ricordo di Lisa Venturini, ed. N. Baldini, Firenze 2007, pp. 44-52, speciatim p. 46.
The Nativity portrays the Virgin, kneeling in adoration before the Child, accompanied by Saint Joseph, sitting on the left and praying, and by the chubby infant Saint John in the centre. A donkey, an ox and two shepherds who are talking to one another leaning on the wall are observing the Holy Family. Behind the figures stands a ruined hut, that frames the view in the background: on the left there is a river crossed by a bridge and a building with a typical Northern European pitched roof. The landscape is inhabitated by several sketchy figures, two of which are standing on a small bridge, in front of a gate, and possibly allude to the meeting of Joachim and Hannah at the Golden Gate. Behind them a thick wood separates the countryside from a walled city of many soaring towers and Gothic pinnacles. The sprightly figure of a wayfarer returning from the fields is coming along the road in the foreground. The picture, which Federico Zeri attributed to the Master of the Campana Cassoni, shows the typical traits of his style of painting, the characteristic round faces with noticeably bulging eyes, along with the detailed description of the natural setting and the distinctly Nordic buildings.8 As for the composition, this Nativity, which is probably datable to around 1510, reveals the painter’s ability to adapt his own style to Florentine models: as in other pictures, he re-elaborates ideas introduced by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli and Piero di Cosimo in the last decade of the 15th century and in the first of the 16th. Zeri reported the presence of a replica in the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge (MA), which differs from our picture in a few variations in the landscape and in the absence of the star above the wooden roof, replaced by angels, God the Father and the dove of the Holy Spirit (fig. 3).9 The views of riverside cities or seaports, the careful description of the movement of the waves and the reflections on the water are recurring themes in the painter’s works. We meet them again in the abovementioned panel in Petrazzi (Castel Fiorentino); in the diptych with the Man of Sorrows and Our Lady of Sorrows, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg, purchased in Florence in 1890 and attributed to the painter by Everett Fahy;10 in the eponymous so-called Campana Cassoni (which are actually spalliere panels for the decoration of a bridal chamber), where references to the artistic culture of countries beyond the Alps harmonize with perspective views of cities characterized by classical style buildings. These works, dated between 1510 and 1515, may have been commissioned for the
41 ‘Gallo fiorentino’ or Master of the Campana cassoni
fig. 1 ‘Gallo fiorentino’, Saints Blaise, Ignatius and Erasmus, Florence, church of the Santissima Annunziata fig. 2 ‘Gallo fiorentino’, Holy Trinity between the Saints Roch and Lucy, Petrazzi (Castelfiorentino), church of Santa Maria e Santa Lucia
fig. 3 ‘Gallo fiorentino’, Nativity, Cambridge (MA), Fogg Art Museum
occasion of the wedding of a Florentine merchant, connected to the Medici and their associates by political and commercial alliances: this is proven by the coats of arms painted on the ship carrying the young Athenians to the Minotaur. The background of these spalliere panels have much in common with the views in the paintings by the Master of Santa Lucia sul Prato, whose name derives from the picture in the homonymous Florentine church. This last work is a free copy of Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Adoration of the Shepherds in the Sassetti Chapel in Santa Trinita, Florence; it was once attributed to a Northern European artist that Louis Waldman has lately tentatively identified with the German painter Alexander Formoser, agent in Florence for King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary.11 The prestigious model of the Sassetti Adoration also influenced our Nativity, in the Virgin’s posture, in the gesture of the Child bringing his hand to his mouth, in the shepherds conversing and above all in the wicker basket held by the shepherd on the right, a faithful copy of Ghirlandaio’s. The Flemish taste of the Master of the Campana Cassoni, which is evident in his landscapes, is also visible in the complex compositions, as, for example, in the panel in the Museo Bandini in Fiesole, where the layout of the figures on different planes is taken from paintings by Hans Memling. The works by this artist circulated in Italy and in Bruges, Flanders, which was the main centre of artistic and cultural exchange between Italy and Northern Europe, along with being the seat of business for the wealthiest Florentine merchants. ‘Gallo fiorentino’ executed many altarpieces and often depicted subjects such as the Adoration and the Nativity, a circumstance that along with the painting of spalliere panels confirms his specializing in the production of objects for domestic use. He was able to adapt his style to the demands of his patrons, switching from the noble, courtly language of the panels in Avignon, to the popular ex-votos connected to epidemic diseases, with unvarying sensibility and care taken in the description of nature and the settings in his paintings. Annamaria Bernacchioni
11 L. A. Waldman, ‘Commissioning Art in Florence for Matthias Corvinus: The Painter and agent Alexander Formoser and his sons, Jacopo and Raffaello del Tedesco’, in Italy and Hungary. Humanism and Art in the Early Renaissance, eds. P. Farbaky and L. A. Waldman, Florence 2011, pp. 426-501.
42 ‘Gallo fiorentino’ or Master of the Campana cassoni
BIOGRAPHY
Pellegrino Tibaldi Puria Valsolda, Como, 1527 - Milano, 1598
Pellegrino Tibaldi was born in Puria Valsolda in 1527, as has been confirmed by various of the oldest historical sources, but was taken by his father to Bologna at a very young age. Malvasia, the 17th century biographer of Bolognese painters, claims that he there entered the workshop of Bagnacavallo junior. Briganti, in 1945, then reconstructs - his claims accepted by scholarly examination - Tibaldi’s early development, attributing to him certain paintings, such as the Madonna and Child with Saints in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, from the Church of Santi Naborre e Felice, which in fact is actually signed by Bagnacavallo. It was not until 1990 that Vittoria Romani, recognizing the work of Tibaldi in the frescoes of the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, discerned the presence of the painter, at the time little older than twenty, in the Roman workshop of Perin del Vaga. Around the middle of the century Pellegrino returned again to Bologna to oversee the decoration of the Poggi Palace and the Chapel, belonging to the same family, in San Giacomo. These commissions created opportunities for other works outside of Emilia, particularly in Marches, first in Loreto around 1555 and then in Ancona, where his presence is first documented in 1554 but did not appear continuous until the end of the decade from 1558 until 1561, when the artist worked on the decoration of the facade of the Loggia dei Mercanti. Local history falsely attributes to him the works in Macerata as well, yet, however strongly a reflection of his style can be sensed, it is merely a demonstration of the important impact of his presence on the style of painting in the Marches in the 16th century. In the years spent in Ancona, in which Tibaldi oversaw predominately architectural work, he met Carlo Borromeo, then bishop of the city, who wanted Tibaldi with him in Milan; this most likely after another stay in Bologna, during which the panels here discussed were created. In his time spent in Milan Tibaldi was almost entirely concerned with architecture and developed a late 16th century structural language that would come to resonate in Europe at large. In 1588 he was summoned by Philip II, at the direction of Escorial, to decorate the Library and the Cloister of the Evangelisti, his last great undertaking. He died in Milan less than a decade later, in 1598.
44 Pellegrino Tibaldi
6
Saint Felix, Saint Nabor 1563 Pellegrino Tibaldi
Oil on panel, 91 x 34 cm; 35.8 x 13.3 in
46 Pellegrino Tibaldi
PROVENANCE
Bologna, Church of the Poor Clares, Convent of Santi Naborre e Felice until the Napoleonic suppression of 1797 Bologna, Regia Pinacoteca della Regia Accademia di Belle Arti until 1882 Parish church of Riolo di Castelfranco LITERATURE
Unpublished
The two panels represent the saints Felix and Nabor, recognizable from the inscriptions found below each figure. Independent and positioned in shallow recesses, the two soldiers, dressed in an antique manner, stand at a slight three-quarter profile, one facing right and the other left, as if about to look at one another. Both hold the palm of martyrdom and a spear. Saint Nabor, in an elegant gesture, rests his left foot on a winged helmet placed on the ground, emphasizing the artificiality of his pose as one not natural, but rather as that of an actor permitting his portrait to be painted. The paintings benefit from an excellent state of conservation: the structure has undergone no damage despite its relative thinness. The painted surface of Saint Felix has small amounts of flaking in the utmost section, some to the left of the head of the saint, around the border of the recess; other gaps of the same kind are found on the palm of martyrdom. At the left border of the panel can be seen, outside the gray of the painted recess, a band of gesso that was, perhaps, originally intended to be covered by the frame. The gaps in the panel of San Nabor are even more contained; those worth noting, still no larger than a (0,5 cm (0.1 in), are found just over the left temple of the saint and on his left shoulder. Here, too, the external border (on the right) exhibits the same band of gesso that, similarly, was meant to remain under the frame. The panels have not been recut on any side and even the bearding of the color appears to be entirely antique. They are two paintings of well-maintained quality, held in a noteworthy state of conservation and coming from one of the highest traditions of Italian Mannerism. The figures that move out from their recesses, too small to contain them, are depicted in full and ornate fashion, emphasized by the knowledgeable use of light that glows in the highlights of the skin and fades to gray in the areas of shadow around the face and on the legs that remain in the background. The physicality of the bodies, which seem to enter into dialogue with a developed, but certainly not exhausted, Michelangelesque style, is readable under the robes of highly polished colors, attached to the forms as if they were wet and plastered there. It is a manner of realizing the style that remains deeply tied to Roman solutions based on the model of Perin del Vaga. To him, Tuscan of origin, one is reminded of his precise way of rendering clothes, of the elegance of the elongated hands that hold the palms, of the physicality of feet firmly placed on the ground and the drawn form of the face of Saint Nabor, his nose squared and eyebrows significantly pronounced. The example of Perino, however, is incorporated into these panels after some time. The paintings were in fact attributed to Pellegrino Tibaldi by Andrea De Marchi, the best to come from the workshop of Perino, whose team played an
47 Pellegrino Tibaldi
1 Contrary to the thought of the oldest storiography, Pellegrino Tibaldi did non study in the workshop of Bagnacavallo senior, but rather in the Roman workshop of Perin del Vaga, as was demonstrated in V. Romani, Tibaldi dintorno a Perino, Padova 1990. 2 As in K. Hermann Fiore, in Il Rinascimento a Roma nel segno di Michelangelo e Raffaello, exh. cat. (Rome 2011-2012), eds. M. G. Bernardini and M. Bussagli, Milano 2011, cat. 134, pp. 311-312. 3 The dating of which established by V. Romani, Problemi di Michelangiolismo padano: Tibaldi e Nasodella, Padova 1988, pp. 36-39. 4 F. Caneparo, B. Rovetti, ‘“Intezione, Invenzione, Artifizio” in Palazzo Poggi a Bologna’, Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte, 91-92, 2007, pp. 57-67, in particular pp. 61. For the frescoes, above all regarding the critical reception, see W. Bergamini, ‘Il mito di Ulisse in Palazzo Poggi’, in L’immaginario di un Ecclesiastico. I dipinti murali di Palazzo Poggi Bologna, eds. V. Fortunati and V. Mosumeci, Bologna 2000, pp. 113-125. 5 I think it pertinent the definition of S. Tumidei, ‘Alessandro Menganti e le arti a Bologna nella seconda metà del Cinquecento: alla ricerca di un contesto’, in Il Michelangelo incognito. Alessandro Menganti e le arti a Bologna nell’età della controriforma, eds. A. Bacchi and S. Tumidei, Ferrara 2002, pp. 55-110, in part pp. 62, which in reference to Pellegrino Tibaldi emphasizes “la nuova libertà di manipolazione dello spazio” (the new freedom in the manipulation of space).
6 E. Sambo, in Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. Catalogo Generale, 2. Da Raffaello ai Carracci, eds. J. Bentini, G. P. Cammarota, A. Mazza, D. Scaglietti Kelescian, A. Stanzani, Venezia 2006, cat. 95a-b, pp. 141-142. As it can be seen, also the proposed date c. 1550-1555, which is the same indicated by G. Briganti in his reference monograph Il manierismo e Pellegrino Tibaldi, Roma 1945, pp. 82 and pp. 119, should be reconsidered in favour of the one read by the author of the list of works removed from suppressed monasteries, infra note 7.
48 Pellegrino Tibaldi
active part in the decoration of Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome.1 All of these characteristics can be found already in his first certified work (signed and dated 1549), the Adoration of the Shepherds in the Galleria Borghese,2 where Perino’s style is combined with the example of Michelangelo, creating a painting considered to be one of the best in the whole of the 16th century in Italy; these characteristics become even more elevated in his masterpieces, the decorative works for the Poggi family, in Bologna, painted between 1550 and 1551.3 They constitute a work which, for Bologna, signified a definitive stamping of Raffaelism as well as of the classical painting of the beginning of the century, creating a change clearly seen through such painters as Prospero Fontana and Giovan Battista Ramenghi, called il Bagnacavallo junior, and reinforced by the presence of Giorgio Vasari. Actually the work of Tibaldi acts as an alternative parallel to the painter from Arezzo, whose style is slightly veiled by a Michelangelesque classicism and more measured, completely different, therefore, from the dizzying views of perspective of Pellegrino and the exaggerated spatial exuberance of his paintings. In my opinion the comparison between the panels of Saints Felix and Nabor and the figures that adorn the plumes in the Sala di Ulisse in Palazzo Poggi in Bologna banishes any possible doubt regarding the validity of De Marchi’s suggestion: the four frescoed figures, difficult to identify,4 have the same stylized characteristics of our two soldiers, from the method of conceiving the bodies to the sculpture-like and almost wet creation of the drapery. Even the conception of space is the same; the figures in Palazzo Poggi are held tightly in the same perspective boxes seen in the panels in discussion and, just as in the case at hand, the figures move out from surface and invade the space of the panel with a virtuosity that is typical of the best work of Tibaldi.5 Clearly the difference in size, financing, and prestige on the part of the commissioner reduce the Saints Nabor and Felix to a lesser tone in comparison to those compositions; all the same, the substantial commitment to the same ideas is not lost even, as can be seen, after more than a decade. The paintings most similar to those herein described, however, are the two horizontal panels with the Sibyl and Cupids (figs. 2-3), conserved in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna. The figures have the same chromatic qualities, made with vivid and polished colors, the same sensibility in light quality and, most significantly, the figures are found framed by the same identical grey boxes hold the knighted saints. The recent description in the general catalogue of the paintings of the Pinacoteca in Bologna,6 however, lowers these paintings to the level of works in a range of workshop production. Certainly, the contained dimensions and some details, such as the faces of the cherubs found around the Sibyl in the yellow mantel, make these panels appear slightly less refined with respect to the predominant work of the painter. When more closely observed, however, it seems necessary to me to requalify the paintings and underline the presence of inventive aspects that cannot be attributed to a common painter: to begin with, the high quality of the drapery partakes of the same sensibility evoked in the two figures that were, evidently, intended to be seen in continuity along a horizontal axis. The Sibyl, dressed in green and found on the left, is turned toward the spectator with her head outside the false frame of stone and her body, positioned at a slant, receding almost to the point of placing her right foot in complete shadow. The other woman, on the other hand, is turned with her back to us, her left foot being the part farthest outside of the recess while her head remains framed inside the box, already almost obscured. The spatial rhythm of these figures, helped also by the presence of the cherubs, creates a horizontal chiasmus that, from my perspective, can only be the work of the master. Stylistically speaking our panels should be read together with the two sibyls
7 G. P. Cammarota, Le origini della Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. Una raccolta di fonti, Bologna s.d. but 1997, pp. 337-342, in particular Monastero dei SS. Naborre e Felice, p. 340: “Nella chiesa interna: la tavola dell’altare che rappresenta la Madonna, San Francesco, San Giovanni, Santa Chiara, Santa Catterina e la Maddalena, nel piede del quadro vi sono sei caselle coi santi Naborre e Felice. Opera fatta nel 1563 bella e ben conservata” (In the interior church, the panel depicting the Madonnna, St. Francis, St. John, St. Clare, St. Catherine, and the Mary Magdalene, at the foot of the painting are six boxes with the Saints Nabor and Felix. Work created in 1563, beautiful and well conserved). 8 For the chronology of the works of the Marches and the presence of the painter between Ancona and Loreto see F. da Morrovalle, ‘Pellegrino Tibaldi a Loreto’, Arte Antica e Moderna, 27, 1964, pp. 356-359; G. Pasquini, ‘Pellegrino Tibaldi’, in Lorenzo Lotto e le Marche. Il suo tempo, il suo influsso, exh. cat. (Ancona 1981), eds. P. Dal poggetto, P, Zampetti, Florence 1981, pp. 418-420; M. Massa, ‘Appunti per una nuova cronologia delle opere di Pellegrino Tibaldi’, Notizie da Palazzo Albani, XVI, 1, 1987, pp. 43-51, in particular pp. 45-46. It is relatively difficult to understand if this 1563 refers only to frame or also to the dais of Bagnacavallo junior within it. E. Sambo, op. cit. (note 6), cat. 89, pp. 131-133, dates the painting to 1550, as suggested by stylistic data that presupposes the arrival of the dais of Sermoneta in Bologna in 1548 and eliminates the problem of the date brought forth by the inventories of the suppression, given the fact that “questa puntualizzazione non compare più negli inventari seguenti, quando la tavola è ricordata ormai priva degli elementi che in origine la componevano, tanto da far ritenere che la data si trovasse sulla cornice” (this clarification does not appear in subsequent inventories, where the panel comes to be remembered without the elements that originally were part of it, so much as to maintain only the date found on the frame).
In reality this point does not solve the problem, particularly since, if the inscription could refer to the painting as well, as given in S. Tumidei, op. cit. (note 5), pp. 79, regardless of awareness of the same data used by Sambo, it can be taken for granted that this 1563 justifies an archaic turning point in the painting of Bagnacavallo that presents itself as “svolta iconica e sacrale della pittura bolognese” (the change in the iconic and sacred in Bolognese painting). In fact the style of the painting, as judged by G. Briganti, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 61 and pp. 119, reflects more the style of the young Tibaldi and is restored to its true author first by A. Emiliani, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, Bologna 1967, pp. 243 (which announced the discovery of the signature found during restoration) and, from a critical perspective, by F. Bologna, ‘Il soggiorno napoletano di Girolamo di Cotignola con altre considerazioni sulla pittura emiliana del Cinquecento’, in Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Valerio Mariani, Napoli 1971, pp. 147-165, in particular pp. 162-163, it becomes possible to recreate better the general beginning of the seventh dacade, far from the almost exaggerate movement of Prospero Fontana and Giorgio Vasari who influenced the Adoration of the Shepherds of Cento, the most Vasarian of Ramenghi’s works, datable to the end of the fifth decade, as reestablished by M. Danieli, ‘Precisazioni su Giovan Battista Ramenghi detto il Bagnacavallo junior’, Storia e critica delle arti: annuario della Scuola di Specializzazione in Storia dell’Arte dell’Università di Bologna, 2, 2001, pp. 163-185, in particular pp. 167-174, and then again by P. Ervas, ‘Un modello di Vasari per i pittori bolognesi’, Nuovi Studi, 12, 2007, pp. 117-119, in particular pp. 118. In the panels of Saints Nabor and Felix, in fact, a more concrete adhesion to the pictorial language of Tibaldi can be seen, sculpture-like and concrete, with the clothing, rigid and almost marble-like, cradling the forms of the bodies, the bodies statuesque and self-contained, which reflects a Raffaelism thought to be lost.
49 Pellegrino Tibaldi
Figs. 1-3 Reconstruction of the Altarpiece of the Church of the Poor Clares in the Convent of the Santi Naborre e Felice in Bologna: Giovanni Battista Ramenghi, called Bagnacavallo Junior, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale (fig. 1); Pellegrino Tibaldi, Sybills, Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale (figs. 2-3); Saints Nabor and Felix, Grassi Studio; paintings of half figures of Prophets, documented but lost (a-b); grating for the Eucharist (comunichino) (c). Madonna and Child, 231,7 x 264 cm (91.2 x 103.9 in); Sybills, each 32 x 69 cm (12.5 x 27.1 in).
of the Pinacoteca Nazionale and, for this reason, it follows naturally to identify them with the two figures of the Saints Nabor and Felix which, at the beginning of the 19th century were documented together with them. The recent publication of the inventory of the Napoleonic suppression7 informs us that the two sibyls, our two saints, and two other figures of prophets all come from the Church of Santi Naborre e Felice in Bologna, and were panels adorning the frame of the choral altarpiece of the Poor Clares, a work signed by Bagnacavallo junior (fig. 1) and dated 1563. Such a date, it seems, could possibly coincide also with the style of the paintings which, as has been noted, are similar in, though not perfectly identical to, the artistry of the frescoes in Palazzo Poggi, weaker and in a certain sense less refined, much like the panels that later followed the wall paintings, they come almost certainly after the work in the Marches between 1553 and 1560.8 All of these paintings were transferred to the former Regia Pinacoteca dell’Accademia di Belle Arti where they still appear together in the inventory
9 G. P. Cammarota, op. cit. (note 7), in particular Catalogo dei Quadri esistenti nella Reale Pinacoteca della R. Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, pp. 626-658, cat. 180 is the dais of Bagnacavallo, cat. 181-182 the two sibyls, cat. 183-184: “Altri due [quadretti] rappresentanti l’un S. Naborre, l’altro S. Felice. In ciascuno c’è una mezza figura di un profeta cm. 125 x 34” (Other two [paintings] representing the one St. Nabor, the other S. Felix. In each there is a half figure of a prophet, 49.2 x 13.3 in). 10 Ibidem, pp. 706, cat. 388-391. 11 E. Sambo, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 142. 12 See above, note 9. Here I renote the dimensions of the panels, 125 x 34 cm (49.2 x 13.3 in), as the paintings in discussion are measured 91 x 34 cm (35.8 x 13.3 in) here it is evident that the difference between the height established in the description and the true one indicates that the half figures of the prophets should have been almost square. 13 See above, note 7; erroneously L. Meluzzi, ‘Le soppresse chiese parrocchiali di Bologna (VII)’, Strenna storica bolognese, XXI, 1971, pp. 143-174, in particular Saints Nabor and Felix, pp. 152-153, claims that the painting was in the vestry. 14 For information on the church, G. Rivani, ‘L’Abbadia dei SS. Naborre e Felice ora Ospedale militare di Bologna’, Strenna storica bolognese, XVII, 1968, pp. 67-90; more recently, A. Benati, ‘La chiesa di Bologna nell’alto medioevo’, in Storia della chiesa di Bologna, eds. P. Pradi and L. Paolini, Bologna 1997, pp. 7-96, in particular pp. 13 and A. Giacomelli, ‘Ordini religiosi in età moderna’, Ibidem, pp. 501-544, in particular pp. 506.
15 As in M. Danieli, in Pinacoteca Nazionale… cit. (note 6), cat. 119, pp. 176-177. 16 L. Ciammitti, ‘La chiesa di Santa Maria degli Angeli. Committenti e pittori’, in I pittori degli angeli. Dipinti del secondo Cinquecento per un monastero femminile a Bologna, exh. cat. (Bologna 2003), ed. L. Ciammitti, Bologna 2003, pp. 9-28, in particular pp. 13-18. 17 Ibidem, pp. 14; C. Bernardini, ivi, pp. 99-102, in particular pp. 101-102, note 11, smartly notes our dais as well, hypothesizing that the composite structure could be due to the situation herein suggested.
50 Pellegrino Tibaldi
of 18119 and where they remained until 1883 when the two saints and the two figures of prophets were deposited in the parish church of Riolo di Castelfranco and, from there, dispersed and forgotten.10 The fortuitous rediscovery of the panels here described permits us to reflect on the hypothetical (and inevitably partial) reconstruction of the work in its entirety as well as its particular function in the interior of the Church of the Poor Clares. Clearly the form of the panels, the sibyls horizontal and the two saints vertical, as has already been suggested by Elisabetta Sambo,11 does not permit them to constitute a dais, as was maintained in the Napoleonic inventory. In actuality the two paintings found in the Pinacoteca Nazionale were at the feet of the altar piece while the two saints were most probably placed along its flanks. There exists no data with regard to the two “half figures” of the prophets documented together with the panels here discussed,12 but it can be supposed that these, smaller in size, could have been placed along the sides of the sibyls and under the saints Nabor and Felix, at their base. Not knowing anything else about the dimensions of the frame or its structure it is not possible to know if, as suggested by sources, all of these paintings actually constituted the entirety of the original work. In this case it seems unusual that the two panels of the dais would leave between them such a large empty space. One possible solution to this problem is proposed again by the famous Napoleonic inventory, which states that this painting was found in the interior church of the nuns.13 The Church of Santi Naborre e Felice, the crypt of which goes back to one of the oldest ecclesiastic foundations of Bologna, was originally a Benedictine abbey, fallen into decay by the end of the 15th century and given to the Poor Clares in 1512, who then entered in January of the following year.14 This allowed for the commissioning of new paintings and, evidently, the reordering of the space according to their own needs. It is clear that the large panel of Bagnacavallo, as can be seen by the size and content, was intended to be placed on a central altar which, since it could not be the primary one in the church (which was occupied by a large canvas painting of Orazio Smacchini),15 had to correspond with the one in the interior church of the nuns. It could be thought, then, that between the two sibyls now found in the painting gallery there was the necessary space allowed the communion grate placed between the two sacred spaces, the church of the nuns and that of the faithful, and, possibly, a point of exchange. Even the examination of movement of the two sibyls previously discussed suggests a continuity and substantial autonomy which, it seems clear, render unnecessary the presence of other figures between the two tables. A recent study by Luisa Ciammitti,16 commenting upon the results of the restoration of the paintings in the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Bologna, demonstrates that the existence of composite paintings, which allowed space for the communion grate, was relatively normal occurrence in 16th century Bologna and that, furthermore, the presence in this church and in the analogue of Corpus Domini of paintings by Bagnacavallo junior leads to the thought that these paintings take part in a similar system.17 It is obvious that the problem at hands is one unconcluded and, given the state of the studies of the entirety of the Church of Santi Naborre e Felice and its current fate as a military complex, one without a simple solution; however, it seems, to me, a possible road to pursue. Alessandro Delpriori
BIOGRAPHY
Francesco Morandini known as ‘Il Poppi’ Poppi, Arezzo, c. 1544 - Florence, 1597
1 The fundamental essays for the study of Poppi’s oeuvre are the following: R. Borghini, Il Riposo, Firenze 1584, pp. 640-647; P. Barocchi, ‘Appunti su Francesco Morandini detto il Poppi’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, XI, 1963-1965, pp. 117-148; V. Pace, ‘Contributo al catalogo di alcuni pittori dello Studiolo di Francesco I’, Paragone, CCLXXXV, 1973, pp. 75-76; S. Padovani, Qualche considerazione sul Poppi: restauri e proposte, in Kunst des Cinquecento in der Toskana, ed. M. Cämmerer, München 1992, pp. 249-259, and the monograph by A. Giovannetti, Francesco Morandini detto il Poppi, Firenze 1995, p. 113, n. 79, with further literature.
Poppi is undoubtedly one of the painters who has been most studied among the artists that worked in the Studiolo of Francesco I de Medici in Palazzo Vecchio in Florence between 1570 and 1572.1 Francesco Morandini was born around 1544 in Poppi, a small town in the Casentino area (Arezzo) from which his nickname was taken. His father was a notary and would have wished him to take up the same career, but as Francesco had a talent for drawing he sent him to Florence; there he was under the protection of Don Vincenzo Borghini, director of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, who was close to the court of the Medici and was also a friend of Giorgio Vasari. It is no coincidence that Poppi became first one of Vasari’s apprentices and then one of his very closest collaborators from 1564 onwards, when he also begins to have contact with the Florentine Accademia del Disegno. It was too late for Morandini to be involved in the making of the decorations for Michelangelo’s funeral ceremony, which took place in the church of San Lorenzo in Florence in 1564; but he did take part the following year in the creation of the ornaments for the marriage between Prince Francesco de’ Medici and Joanna of Austria, including the frescoing of the courtyard in Palazzo Vecchio, the only part of this magnificent decorative campaign to have survived until today. The first autograph work by Poppi that we know today, the Madonna and Child with angels venerated by the young orphan girls of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, is documented in 1565 and still belongs to the same institute. The painting was definitely commissioned by Borghini, who soon after appointed Poppi to create the evocative Nativity “a lume di notte” for a church in Colle Val d’Elsa (Siena); the same subject (again in a nocturnal setting) was repeated shortly after this for the Prepositura di San Jacopo in Altopascio (Lucca) for Ugolino Grifoni, another important member of the Medici entourage. In the meantime the young artist was beginning to make a name for himself at court: in 1567 Prince Francesco commissioned him to paint The Golden Age, today in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. He also continued working with Vasari, taking part in the execution of the paintings for the enormous altar in the church of Santa Croce in Boscomarengo (near Alessandria), commissioned by Pope Pius V. But above all the constant contact with Vasari granted him a leading role in the ornamentation of the Studiolo of Francesco in Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, decorated by various painters and sculptors between 1570 and 1572. Poppi is the author of the frescoed ceiling, including Nature hands Prometeus the Philosopher’s Stone, The Four Elements and other allegorical scenes created following Borghini’s iconographic plan, plus two panels on the side walls depicting The Bronze Foundry and Alexander the Great gives Campaspe to Apelles. In these works Morandini refined his sophisticated style, characterized by a choice of precious colours (never excessively bright, unlike the Mannerist paintings in fashion at that time) and elongated, slender female figures in complex, twisted poses: emblems of a cold, distant beauty. His style is also particularly recognizable for its recurring somatic traits (the sharp, thin faces, the ‘Greek’ profiles with slim, prominent noses) that can be considered almost his ‘trademark’. After working in the Studiolo Poppi increased his production of cabinet paintings, but he was also very sought-after for his altar-pieces, destined to churches in Florence and its environs; in these works he managed to
52 Francesco Morandini known as ‘Il Poppi’
combine the Mannerist subtlety and freedom of form with the demands of the Counter-Reformation taking place at the time. Among these pictures we can mention the large Deposition in the church of Santi Jacopo e Lucia in San Miniato al Tedesco (Pisa), the Assumption in Santa Chiara in Castiglion Fiorentino (Arezzo), the many works in his native town, Poppi, and the paintings for the Florentine churches of San Michele Visdomini, San Pier Scheraggio, San Niccolò Oltrarno, San Marco, San Michele a San Salvi and the suppressed nuns’ convent of the Crocetta. Despite not being all datable with certainty, they are the framework of the artist’s oeuvre and reveal the exact degree to which he was appreciated by his patrons. The main source for the reconstruction of Morandini’s life and oeuvre up to 1584 is Il Riposo by Raffaello Borghini, published that year, which includes his detailed biography. As for the last phase of his career, it is on the contrary not that easy to outline, characterized as it is by only a few documented elements. In his last years Poppi often repeated compositions that had been successful in his early days, and also devoted himself to an interesting production of portraits.2 He died in Florence on 3rd April 1597, the date of his last will, and was buried on 9th April in the Painters’ Chapel in Santissima Annunziata.
2 For Poppi’s portrait production see my article ‘Un ritratto del Poppi’, San Sebastiano, CLXXIX, 1994, pp. 15-16, and, more in depth, A. Giovannetti, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 80-81, 99, 102-103, and 109.
53 Francesco Morandini known as ‘Il Poppi’
7
Adoring Angels c. 1567 Francesco Morandini known as ‘Il Poppi’
54 Francesco Morandini known as ‘Il Poppi’
Oil on panel, 48 x 31,5 cm; 18.8 x 12.4 in Painted surface 41,5 x 25 cm; 16.3 x 9.8 in
55 Francesco Morandini known as ‘Il Poppi’
PROVENANCE
Italy, Private collection LITERATURE
Unpublished
3 Two paintings representing the Pietà, one in the Banca Toscana collection in Florence and the other in the Museo del Cenacolo di San Salvi, that were formerly attributed to Coppi, must be reinserted in Poppi’s catalogue, while the opposite should be done for the Penitent Saint Jerome, location unknown. For the latter painting see my ‘Un’‘invenzione’ di Vincenzo Borghini e alcune pale d’altare con la ‘Pentecoste’. Note d’iconografia e stile’, Storia dell’arte, CXIII-CXIV, 2006, pp. 103-118. 4 A. Giovannetti, op. cit. (note 1), p. 102 knows of the existence of both Vincenzo Ulivieri and Olivo di Vincenzo, but considers them two different people (and painters). The archive papers of the Ospedale instead reveal that they are the same person, “adopted” by Borghini (who gave him his own Christian name as a “surname”) along with another young boy named Antonio (Antonio di Vincenzo), who later took up a clerical career. 5 A. Giovannetti, op. cit. (note 1), p. 19.
Despite the fact that among the painters of the Studiolo Poppi’s work seems to be the easiest to recognize, having always remained faithful to his own personal style, a couple of his pictures in the past were ascribed to Jacopo Coppi, at a time when the profile of these artists had not yet been completely defined; Coppi’s life and career, for example, has only recently been investigated in depth by the undersigned.3 Poppi’s hand is also easily identifiable due to the assumed absence of pupils or followers, which implies that all the paintings matching the criteria of his style could in theory be considered autograph. The only exception are the works that can be traced back to the still little known Vincenzo Ulivieri, whose name was actually Olivo (or Oliviero) di Vincenzo; he was a foundling from the Ospedale degli Innocenti who had been encouraged to take up a painting career alongside Poppi by Spedalingo Don Vincenzo Borghini.4 Olivo had worked at Morandini’s side since an early age, as Poppi himself was under Borghini’s protection and had lived in the Ospedale during the first phase of his career. The young boy quickly developed a style that was very similar to Poppi’s, but of inferior quality; for this reason he never took part in the prestigious decorative campaigns that his colleague was regularly involved in. Despite the ease in recognizing his work, there remains however a marginal possibility of misconstruing when it comes to the artist’s early paintings, i.e. when the typical traits of his formal repertoire had not yet fully developed and he was completing his training beside his master, Giorgio Vasari, and the young Giovambattista Naldini, taking part in joint works such as the monumental altar of Boscomarengo. Within these first prestigious assignments it is not easy to distinguish between Poppi’s contribution and the intervention of the other collaborators: as they were still all training under Vasari’s guidance and often working on his cartoons, their contributions appear unified under the same general stylistic imprint. The two small panels we are here examining must have once been part of a ciborium or of a portable altar, and are probably referable to that very same early stage in Poppi’s career: hence the uncertainty of attribution, that had induced other scholars to assign them to Morandini, before later changing their minds. The authorship of our painter will now be effectively confirmed thanks to the comparison with photographs of other works by the master. The excellent quality of the execution of the painting, characterized by the “rotondo modellato” (rounded shaping) and “diafane trasparenze” (diaphanous transparencies) typical of Morandini,5 is sufficient to exclude an attribution to Olivo di Vincenzo, whose harder and more intricate style never reaches the overflowing refinement of our two pictures. At a quick, superficial examination, the face of the angel kneeling in the foreground in the right panel seems the more ‘Poppi-like’ feature of the two paintings: the ‘greek’ profile with its straight, prominent nose, is recurrent through his whole career, starting from his first
56 Francesco Morandini known as ‘Il Poppi’
6 This comparison is also important as regards the general posture and the similar, complex way the drapery falls over the knees. 7 Compare for example Apelles from the oval painting in Palazzo Vecchio (photograph in A. Giovannetti, op. cit. (note 1), p. 67) with the angel in the foreground in the right panel.
important autonomous altarpiece, The Adoration of the Shepherds in San Jacopo in Altopascio (1569-1570, fig. 1), where it is simmetrically repeated in a shepherd on the left in the foreground. It can be further seen in the Apostle holding flowers in the Assumption in Castiglion Fiorentino (Arezzo), of unknown dating but certainly from Poppi’s early years (fig. 2),6 and in many other figures in his pictures. The profiles of other angels show similarities to the Penitent Magdalene at the foot of the cross in the Crucifix and Saints in San Michele a San Salvi (c. 1575, fig. 3), a composition repeated on numerous occasions during Poppi’s career. The Altopascio altarpiece is a significant basis for comparison with our small panels from a chromatic point of view: it is dominated by a free, fluent use of bright tones tending towards gold, partly justified by the unique nocturnal setting, but also by a definition of planes and volumes not as clear as in his later works. As in The Adoration of the Shepherds, in our Angels the impasto is free-flowing, but at the same time skilfully measured to obtain the lightness ‘of touch’ also relevant to the small size of the panels; the same element can also be found in another important juvenile work, The Golden Age in Edinburgh. In the angels’ bright, rosy complexion there is still no sign of the warm, brown glaze that at a later stage, and almost excessively in his last phase, Morandini will always use for the epidermis. All these elements speak of a very early moment in the artist’s production, as confirmed by further details, e.g. the important similarities to the oval panel representing Alexander the Great gives Campaspe to Apelles in the Studiolo of Francesco de’ Medici (1570-c. 1572): the locks of hair of the boy holding the leashes of the wild beasts (fig. 4) are obtained with very liquid and twisted brushstrokes (almost Luca Cambiasolike), similar to the hair of some of our Angels, in particular the one kneeling in the foreground in the left panel. As in the figures in the oval and in other paintings by the master, the Angels’ robes are fastened with precious, translucent pearls, with a taste for decoration that is typical of the artist from Casentino. The draperies, with slight touches of white on the folds where the light hits them, appear convincingly plastic and at the same time very refined, as if they were carved out of gems;7 this gives Poppi’s painting an extremely rich, luxurious appearance, that accompanies the slim elegance of his figures. In addition to their customary chromatic splendour, the robes of some of the Angels are also enriched by iridescent hues that go from pink to light blue; an element that reveals Poppi’s careful study of Andrea del Sarto, father of the Florentine ‘Modern Manner’ and, moreover, Vasari’s master. Several angels in the background instead show faces that are less typical and fingers which are not so elongated nor so carefully arranged as in most of his following works. The way their hands are joined, with the third and the middle finger together and the index and little finger wide apart, is a traditional Mannerist topos that gives an elegant, though artificial, effect.
57 Francesco Morandini known as ‘Il Poppi’
fig. 1 Francesco Morandini known as Il Poppi, The Adoration of the Shepherds, Altopascio (Lucca), Propositura di San Jacopo Maggiore fig. 2 Francesco Morandini known as Il Poppi, Assumption (detail), Castiglion Fiorentino (Arezzo), Palazzo Comunale
fig. 3 Francesco Morandini known as Il Poppi, Crucifix and Saints (detail), Florence, church of San Michele a San Salvi. fig. 4 Francesco Morandini known as Il Poppi, Alexander the Great gives Campaspe to Apelles (detail), Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, Studiolo of Francesco de’ Medici Propositura di San Jacopo Maggiore
8 For reproductions of these works see once again the monograph by Giovannetti.
Poppi uses it at the very beginning of his career, as can be seen in several figures from his first painting, the Madonna and Child with angels venerated by the young orphan girls of the Ospedale degli Innocenti; he will then abandon it in his later works, when he wishes to give the hands of his figures a specific role, dramatic and expressive. As for the Angels’ facial features, some are comparable with the figures in the above-mentioned painting, while others can be likened, for example, to the face of the woman breast-feeding in The Golden Age in Edinburgh. Others still remind us of the mourning Saint John the Evangelist in the Deposition from the Cross in San Miniato al Tedesco (1572-1574), or of Tobias in the Archangel Raphael and Tobias, painted in 1580 for the church of San Niccolò Oltrarno in Florence.8 Others, finally, were used by Poppi only in these two panels and never repeated again: this confirms their dating to the artist’s early stage, when he was gradually breaking away from Vasari and refining his own store of stylistic and facial features, from which he will later select only the ones more congenial to his taste. In conclusion, it is my opinion that these two paintings, small jewels of formal refinement and chromatic vividness, can be dated to around 1567, or slightly later, therefore already a superb expression of Poppi’s early phase. Alessandro Nesi
BIOGRAPHY
Bartolomeo Manfredi Ostiano, 1582 - Roma, 1622
We don’t know the exact date of Manfredi’s arrival in Rome; he was probably part of the entourage of Cristoforo Roncalli, whom he must have met in Mantua, while staying at the court of the Gonzaga. He may be identified with Caravaggio’s servant of the same name, mentioned in the depositions of the Baglione process in 1603. What is certain is that Manfredi had his first contact with Merisi when still young, and that he was considered very close to Caravaggio right from the beginning, given that Giulio Mancini1 considered him as one of the few members of the Lombard painter’s “schola”, with Spadarino, Cecco del Caravaggio and Ribera. It is not until 1607 that Manfredi’s presence in Rome is certain; he is then included, at least from 1610 onwards, in nearly all the Easter census registers, where he appears as resident in various Roman houses. His name no longer shows after 1622, the year of his premature death. The works that allow the reconstruction of the course of the painter’s career are very few. The execution of Cupid Chastised (Disdain) (today in the Art Institute, Chicago), painted for Agostino Chigi, is documented by Giulio Mancini and is datable to 1613. The Crowning with Thorns in the Uffizi and its pendant formerly in the same museum (before its destruction in 1993 in the bombing at the Uffizi), are most likely datable to the years 1617-1618, along with the Concert and The Card Players. These two paintings and the Drinking Party (once in the Trafalgar Galleries, now in a private collection) must have been very important models for the convivial scenes that were so popular from the end of the second decade to the beginning of the third. The bond with Caravaggio, excessively highlighted by biographers who have unjustly labelled Manfredi almost as Merisi’s copyist, was undoubtedly a permanent feature in the oeuvre of the painter from Ostiano: this is evident in the use of themes and iconographies developed by the master, the most significant example being the Crowning with Thorns, of which Manfredi painted seven different versions during his career. The paintings of the artist’s last years are characterized by frailer figures and background shadows that soften their outlines. His final achievement is the tragic, almost unpleasant, Christ appearing to His Mother in the Museo Ala Ponzone in Cremona, which probably also reflects the physical and existential suffering of the sick painter, at the end of his life.
1 G. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura (c. 1617-1621), eds. A. Marucchi and L. Salerno, 2 vols, Roma 1956-1957, I, p. 251.
59 Bartolomeo Manfredi
8
The Gipsy Girl 1616-1617 Bartolomeo Manfredi
Oil on canvas, 65 x 59 cm 25.6 x 23.25 in
60 Bartolomeo Manfredi
PROVENANCE
Florence, De Mari collection Geneva, Uzielli collection LITERATURE
R. Longhi, ‘Ultimi studi sul Caravaggio e la sua cerchia’, Proporzioni, I, 1943, p. 49, n. 42 M. Gregori, in Mostra dei tesori segreti delle case fiorentine, exh. cat. (Florence, 1960), Firenze 1960, p. 63 B. Nicolson, The International Caravaggesque Movement, Oxford 1979, p. 71 G. Merlo, in Dopo Caravaggio. Bartolomeo Manfredi e la Manfrediana Methodus, exh. cat. (Cremona, 1988), Milano 1987, p. 70 B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, second edition revised and enlarged by L. Vertova, 3 vols, Torino 1990, I, p. 144 N. Hartje, Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582-1622). Ein Nachfolger Caravaggios und seine Europäische Wirkung. Monographie und Werkverzeichnis, Weimar 2004, pp. 322-323 G. Papi, Bartolomeo Manfredi, Soncino (CR) 2013, pp. 172-173 EXHIBITIONS
Mostra dei tesori segreti delle case fiorentine Florence, Circolo Borghese e della Stampa, 1960 Dopo Caravaggio. Bartolomeo Manfredi e la Manfrediana Methodus Cremona, Santa Maria della Pietà, 1988
2 R. Longhi, ‘Ultimi studi sul Caravaggio e la sua cerchia’, Proporzioni, I, 1943, p. 49, n. 42 3 Mostra dei tesori segreti delle case fiorentine, exh. cat. (Florence, 1960), Firenze 1960, p. 63. 4 G. Merlo, in Dopo Caravaggio. Bartolomeo Manfredi e la Manfrediana Methodus, exh. cat. (Cremona, 1988), Milano 1987, p. 70. 5 N. Hartje, Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582-1622). Ein Nachfolger Caravaggios und seine Europäische Wirkung. Monographie und Werkverzeichnis, Weimar 2004, pp. 322-323.
Roberto Longhi was the first to assign the painting to Manfredi in 1943 (“Busto di zingara con tamburello, a Firenze, in collezione marchese De Mari”2); it was then included in the Mostra dei tesori segreti delle case fiorentine by Mina Gregori,3 who confirmed the attribution to Manfredi, and later in the monographic exhibition in Cremona in 1987,4 appearing on the front cover of the catalogue. It was then finally published in the monograph by Nicole Hartje.5 Two poor copies of the painting are known of: the first belongs to the Accademia Tadini in Lovere (oil on canvas, 23.8 x 18.9), while the second appeared in an auction at Christie’s in London (10th July 1992, lot 253). As it has already been observed, the model who posed for the painting appears in several other works by Bartolomeo. Her perfectly oval face can be recognized, with the benefit of the doubt, in the Venus of the Cupid Chastised (Disdain) in Chicago, and with more certainty in the slothful accomplice of the cardsharp in The Cardsharps (once in the Rothmann collection), in the Pero of the Roman Charity (Uffizi, fig.1), in the tambourine player that accompanies David in his Triumph (today in the Louvre), and finally in the maidservant in the Verospi Denial of Saint Peter, now in Braunschweig. Even if it really were the same model (though we cannot exclude the possibility of similar but different models, made alike by the painter’s tendency towards the same face type), this doesn’t provide a chronological indication, as the above-mentioned
61 Bartolomeo Manfredi
fig. 1 Bartolomeo Manfredi, Roman Charity, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi
works can be dated within a period of just a few years (Manfredi’s whole career, as far as we know, lasted no longer than three lustrums), too short a time to perceive physical changes in the woman. The painting is characterized by remarkable high-quality, quite evident in the beautiful tambourine and in the skilful lighting effects, due to which half of the face of the woman, her neck and bosom emerge from the shadow and the white pearls on her forehead and ear shine bright. We perceive a strong Caravaggesque atmosphere, highlighted also by a type of feminine physique not so different from the models that Merisi chose for his own works (for example in the Madonna in the altarpiece for the Palafranieri, or in the Madonna of Loreto), but also by the choice of a lighting that leaves a considerable part of the picture in shadow. As for the dating, it is my opinion that The Gypsy Girl shows several similarities with the canvases that Cosimo II de’ Medici bought in 1618 (The Concert and The Card Players, unfortunately destroyed in 1993 in the terrorist bombing at the Uffizi), as Giuseppe Merlo pointed out in 1987, when he compared our figure to the singer in the Florentine work. I would also like to draw attention to the connections with the Denial of Saint Peter in Braunschweig, with the Cleansing of the Temple in Libourne (note the face of the merchant in the centre, wearing a fur hat) and with the Drinking Party once in the Trafalgar Galleries (see the contrasts of light and shade on the face of the young man wearing a plumed hat on the left). I’m therefore inclined - unlike Hartje, who hypothesized a dating to 1613-1615 - to place the painting around 1616-1617, chronologically closer to the aforementioned works. Gianni Papi
62 Bartolomeo Manfredi
Jusepe de Ribera
BIOGRAPHY
Xátiva, Provence of Valencia, 1591 - Naples, 1652
Jusepe de Ribera was baptized in Xátiva (Játiva), Provence of Valencia, Spain, on 17 February 1591.1 On 11 June 1611, the young Spanish painter was paid for an altarpiece for the church of San Prospero in Parma. How he traveled from Spain to Italy remains a mystery, and although Giulio Mancini relates in his Considerazioni sulla pittura (written c. 1614-1621) that Ribera traveled in Lombardy and was in Rome, most scholars now believe that he made significant professional contacts first in Rome and then went to Parma where he was awarded important commissions.2 A recently discovered document, of 5 June 1612, records his leasing of a house in Rome.3 During the next four years, as Mancini tells us, Ribera “came into a great reputation and a very great profit”. He became a member of the Accademia di San Luca in 1613. Patrons in Rome include the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, one of the most important collectors in the city, and Pedro Cosida (Pietro Cussida), agent in Rome for the Spanish crown. This period of his career has been the subject of significant research during the last decade and many paintings from this Roman period have been proposed.4 Rather precipitously, in the spring of 1616, Ribera removed to Naples, where he became the most important painter in this capital of the Spanish Kingdom of Naples; he also gained an international reputation. In a ceremony held in Saint Peter’s in Rome in 1626, during the papacy of Urban VIII Barberini, Jusepe de Ribera was received into the Order of the Cross of Christ.5 In addition to obtaining commissions from the major religious institutions in Naples, such as the convent of Santissima Trinità delle Monache, the Certosa di San Martino, and the Treasury of San Gennaro in the cathedral, he painted for private clients, including the Prince of Liechtenstein and the Spanish Viceroys, and, in addition, sent many paintings to the collection of Philip IV, King of Spain. Ribera died in Naples on 3 September 1652.
1 For the pertinent biography of Jusepe de Ribera see: G. Finaldi in the 1992 exh. cats.: A. E. Pérez Sánchez and N. Spinosa (eds.), Jusepe de Ribera, 1591-1652, Naples, pp. 387-408; Madrid, pp. 490-506; New York, pp. 231-255. For a general biography of Ribera, see: C. Felton, ‘Jusepe de Ribera, Called ‘lo Spagnoletto’(1591-1652): A Spanish Painter in Baroque Italy’, in Jusepe de Ribera’s Mary Magdalene in a New Context, exh. cat. (Dallas, 2011), eds. G. Finaldi and E. Cenalmor Bruquetas, Dallas (TX) 2011 (The Prado at the Meadows, 2), pp. 34-77, 114-119 (and in Spanish, pp. 163-184). 2 G. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura (c. 1617-1621), eds. A. Marucchi and L. Salerno, 2 vols, Roma 1956-1957, I, pp. 249-251. For a summary of these early years, see: C. Felton, op. cit. (note 1). 3 D. Danesi Squarzina, ‘New Documents on Ribera, ‘Pictor Urbe”, 1612-1616’, The Burlington Magazine, 148, 1237, 2006, pp. 244-251. 4 See the many publications of G. Papi: ‘Jusepe de Ribera a Roma e il Maestro del Giudizio di Salomone’, Paragone, 44, 629, 2002, pp. 21-43, plates 1-27; ‘Ancora su Ribera a Roma’, Cahiers d’histoire de l’art, 1, 2003, pp. 63-74; ‘Ribera 3’, Paragone, 57, 655, 2004, pp. 16-21, plates 48-77; ‘Ribera a Roma: Dopo Caravaggio, una seconda rivoluzione’, in Caravaggio e l’Europa. Il movimento caravaggesco internazionale da Caravaggio a Mattia Preti, exh. cat. (Milan-Vienna, 2005-2006), ed. L. Spezzaferro, Milano 2005, pp. 45-55, and also in the same exh. cat.: ‘La giovinezza di Ribera: Schede dei dipinti”, pp. 250-285; Ribera a Roma, Cremona 2007; ‘Il Maestro del Samaritano’, Paragone, 62, 98-99, 2011, pp. 14-23, plates 3-25. The latter includes a discussion of the Apostolado in the Real Academia de Bellas
Artes de San Fernando, Madrid; ‘Ribera en Roma. La revelación del genio’, in El joven Ribera, exh. cat. (Madrid, 2011), eds. J. Milicua and J. Portús, Madrid 2011, pp. 31-59, and also in the same exh. cat.: ‘Apostalado Cosida’, pp. 104-108; ‘Ribera a Roma: la rivelazione del genio’, in Il Giovane Ribera tra Roma, Parma e Napoli. 1608-1624, exh. cat. (Naples, 2011-2012), ed. N. Spinosa, Napoli 2011, pp. 30-59; ‘Ribera y Velázquez: una primera reflexión’, Ars Magazine, 10, 2011, pp. 18-28. 5 J. Chenault, ‘Ribera in Roman Archives’, The Burlington Magazine, 111, 798, 1969, pp. 561-562.
64 Jusepe de Ribera
9
Saint Thomas the Apostle c. 1626-1630 Jusepe de Ribera
Oil on canvas, 101,5 x 76,5 cm; 40 x 30.25 in 65 Jusepe de Ribera
PROVENANCE
France, Private collection. LITERATURE
Unpublished
6 N. Spinosa, Ribera. La Obra Completa, Madrid 2008, p. 370, cat. no. 110.
This painting, in excellent condition, is on what is called a “Neapolitan” canvas made of coarse, loosely-woven cotton threads, the kind frequently used by Jusepe de Ribera and other artists in Naples. Although the painting has been relined and is not on the original stretcher, the scalloping or “garland” effect from where the original canvas was pulled by the old tacking nails is evident on all four sides, indicating that the original paint surface has not been reduced. This has been verified by X-radiographic study. The canvas weave has established the craqueleur pattern typical of a painting by Ribera, and of works on Neapolitan canvases. The paint was applied to allow texture from the brush to remain visible. The paint used for the fabrics is thinner than that used for the flesh areas, which are more richly impasted and textured with various depths of color. The figure is set against an un-modulated, dark background, and a rock occupies the lower, right corner of the composition. The figure is wrapped in a brownishbeige cowl, covering his head, shoulders, and left arm, and falling over his right arm to his elbow. Under it, the figure wears a vermilion-red robe; a touch of white, in two places along the collar and neck of the robe, reveals the edges of an under garment. This Apostle clutches a carpenter’s square tightly in his left hand; he holds his right hand, with fingers loosely cupped, near the base of the square. (fig. 1) A dramatic light falls upon the figure, striking his brow and the right side of his face with the greatest brilliance, and moving diagonally down from his head in the upper right, to his hands at the center, and his sleeve at the left. (fig. 2) Although there are three important identifying factors for this subject, an exact identity for him is not easily determined. The dark-bearded figure is shown with a brown, beige-colored cowl over his head and around his shoulders and arms, and carrying a carpenter’s (or architect’s) square. Examining the Apostles painted by El Greco, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Ribera, one finds that four of Christ’s Disciples (to become his Apostles after the Resurrection): Saints Thomas, James the Minor, Matthew, and Jude Thaddeus are depicted with the symbol of the carpenter’s square. The square also is used as an attribute for the ancient philosopher Archimedes, but when he is being portrayed, there are often other attributes accompanying him. Such is the case with a painting by Ribera which was in the Madrid collection of Eufemio Díez Monsalve in 1999. (fig. 3) Although the painting is not signed, Nicola Spinosa places it in the period around 1630-1632, but raises some doubt about the identification of the subject6. This philosopher holds a compass (or calipers) in his right hand, and, with his left hand,
66 Jusepe de Ribera
figs. 1-2 Jusepe de Ribera, Saint Thomas the Apostle, details
fig. 3 Jusepe de Ribera, Philosopher Archimedes?, Madrid, Eufemio Díez Monsalve Collection
7 Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. Dresden, I, ed. M. Harald, Köln 2005, p. 115, ill. See also: E. Safarik, Fetti, Milano 1990, A29, p. 303, as Old Astronomer in Meditation (Aristarco?). This painting was once attributed to Ribera. 8 P. Askew, ‘A Melancholy Astronomer by Giovanni Serodine’, The Art Bulletin, 47, 1, 1965, pp. 121-128. 9 H. E. Wethey, El Greco and His School, 2 vols, Princeton 1962, II, cat. nos. 160-172, with additional text on the iconography, pp. 99-102, and I, plates 205-217; additional text, II, pp. 99-108 for three series: Cathedral of Toledo, Museo del Greco, Parish Church in Almadrones. 10 Ibidem, II, p. 101 for the iconography of the carpenter’s square. See I, pl. 210 for the Saint Thomas. One might also consult: F. and G. Lanzi, Saints and Their Symbols, Collegeville (MN) 2004, with Saint Thomas, pp. 66-67. 11 For a discussion of the history of Saint Thomas see: Butler’s Lives of the Saints, complete edition revised and supplemented by H. J. Thurston, S. J. and Donald Attwater, Westminster (MD) 1981, IV, December 21, pp. 589-592. 12 H. E. Wethey, op. cit. (note 9), for a series that is now in the Museo Greco, Toledo, I, plates 218-230. 13 F. Calvo Serraller, El Greco “The Burial of the Count of Orgaz”, London 1994, pp. 20-21. 14 A. Vergara, Rubens and His Spanish Patrons, Cambridge 1999, pp. 20-21. See also: H. Vlieghe, Corpus Rubenianum L. Burchard, VIII: Saints, I, London 1972, pp. 34-60.
balances a book on a table on which a carpenter’s square has been placed. Another painting, presumably of Archimedes (fig. 4), is in the collection of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, where it is attributed to Domenico Fetti.7 In 1965, Pamela Askew published the work as being by Giovanni Serodine and identified the subject as Aristarchus of Samos, an ancient astronomer.8 This white-bearded philosopher, crowned with a laurel wreath, leans on a table, with his left hand supporting his chin. His right hand rests on a globe placed at the right edge of the composition. In addition to the globe, a number of other objects are on the table: two piled books, a drawing with geometric designs, a rolled paper, an ink-pot and quill pen, an hourglass, a compass, a mirror, and a carpenter’s square. The attribution to Fetti is maintained in the current literature. The identification of the figure in this painting by Ribera in the Grassi Collection with one of the Apostles is fraught with difficulties. A survey of other Apostles with similar attributes provides some clues, but no firm identification. El Greco’s series of the Apostles, or Apostolado, now in the Cathedral of Toledo, was painted c. 1605-1610 and was considered by Harold E. Wethey to be with the assistance of the workshop.9 It includes an image of Saint Thomas (fig. 5), a half-length figure facing to our right, blessing with his right hand and holding a carpenter’s square in his left hand.10 Saint Thomas’s attribute is the square because of the early legend that he went to India where he was to build a palace for King Gundafor.11 In his other two series of Apostles, in the Museo del Greco, Toledo, and the Parish Church of Almadrone, but now scattered in several collections, El Greco does not use the traditional symbolic attributes for his figures.12 Nevertheless, in one of his most famous paintings, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, commissioned in 1586 for the church of Santo Tomé in Toledo, and completed in 1588, El Greco placed the church’s titular saint as the foremost figure to our right of the large figure of Saint John the Baptist, and after the intermediate figure of Saint Paul (fig. 6). This Saint Thomas holds a large carpenter’s square.13 The identification of the figure in Ribera’s painting becomes more complicated when we look at the Apostolado by Peter Paul Rubens, painted about 1610-1612 and sent from Antwerp to Madrid. Alexander Vergara tells us that the paintings were in the Netherlands collection of Charles de Croy, 4th Duke of Aarschst, and then passed to his brother-in-law Charles, Count of Arenberg, who, in 1614, gave the series to Roderigo Calderón, Count of Oliva and later Marquis de Siete Iglesias. Soon thereafter, Calderón fell from power; he was executed in 1621. By 1618, the paintings entered into the famous collection of the Duke of Lerma, Prime Minister to Philip III, King of Spain, and would eventually become part of the Royal Collection, and hence to the Museo Nacional del Prado, where they are today.14 In the “Calderón-Lerma Apostolado”, the figure in the painting identified as Saint James Minor (fig. 7) has a cowl over his head and holds a carpenter’s
67 Jusepe de Ribera
fig. 4 Domenico Fetti, Archimedes or Aristarchus, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister fig. 5 El Greco, Saint Thomas, from an Apostolado, Toledo, Cathedral
fig. 6 El Greco, Saint Thomas, detail from The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, Toledo, Church of Santo Tomé. fig. 7 Peter Paul Rubens, Saint James Minor, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
15 Ibidem, Vlieghe, cat. no. 15, p. 46. 16 Ibidem, Vlieghe, plates 50-53. 17 Ibidem, Vlieghe, plates 46-49. 18 Ibidem, Vlieghe, plates 42-45. 19 Ibidem, Vlieghe, plates 73-88. 20 E. Larsen, The Paintings of Anthony Van Dyck, 2 vols., Freren 1988, II, pp. 80-81 for the paintings in: Rotterdam, cat. no. 172; Vienna, cat. no. 173, from the Böhler Series; Aschaffenburg, cat. no. 170. 21 G. Papi, op. cit. (note 4), 2007. These paintings are presented among the latest attributions to Ribera’s early years. All are illustrated in color: Saint Matthew, plate 1, p. 61; Saint James Minor, plate 2, p. 62; Saint Thomas, plate 3a, p. 63. N. Spinosa, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 303, cat. nos. A1, A2, A3. Two of these paintings were exhibited at the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, op. cit. (note 4), N. Spinosa, 2011-2012, cat. no. 2 Saint James Minor, pp. 100-101, cat. no. 3 Saint Thomas,pp. 102-103. 22 N. Spinosa, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 303-304, cat. nos. A1, A2, A3. Each of the three paintings bears an identifying cartel at the bottom, along the edge of a table. Saint Matthew is depicted as a bald man facing to our left, with a short, white beard and holding a carpenter’s square. 23 N. Spinosa, op. cit. (note 6), p. 303, cat. no. A2, Saint Thomas, and cat. no. A1 Saint Matthew bears the label: S. Mathaeo, and that on p. 304, cat. no. A3 Saint James Minor as S. Jacobvs. Mi.
square.15 This figure has a lustrous, full white beard. However, a copy of that painting, now in the Galleria Pallavicini, Rome, is identified as Saint Matthew. P. Isselburg’s engraving of the subject is labeled Saint James Minor; whereas, N. Ryckman’s engraving of it is labeled Saint Matthew.16 To complicate matters, Rubens’s painting of Saint Matthew holds a spear/halberd with sharp blades attached to the side near the top. The copy in the Galleria Pallavicini, Rome, is identified as Saint Thomas. The P. Isselburg engraving is labeled Saint Matthew and the N. Ryckmans engraving is labeled Saint Thomas.17 Rubens’s painting of Saint Thomas in this series is shown as an old man, balding, and with a long, lustrous, white beard and holding a spear. The copy in the Galleria Pallavacini, Rome, is identified as Saint Simon; the engravings are identified in the same manner as the two Apostles discussed above.18 Further, Rubens produced illustrations for a volume: SS. Apostolorum Icone, with the images engraved by C. Galle.19 In these, we find the figure of Saint Jude Thaddeus (fig. 8) holding the carpenter’s square, Saint Matthew holding a halberd, Saint Thomas holding a spear, and Saint James Minor leaning on a Herculeanlike club. Three paintings of Apostles by Anthony Van Dyck add to this discussion, or confusion! Erik Larsen has identified three paintings of Saint Jude Thaddeus as being original works by the artist: Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen (fig. 9); Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum; and Aschaffenburg, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Staatsgalerie.20 All of these paintings show the saint holding a carpenter’s square. In 2007, Gianni Papi published three Apostles, probably from a series of about 1611, as the earliest known paintings by Jusepe de Ribera; these paintings are included in the 2008 publication by Nicola Spinosa.21 All three bear identifying labels. The first is Saint Matthew, in a private collection in Paris; the second is Saint Thomas, in the National Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest; and the third is Saint James Minor, formerly with Galería Caylus, Madrid.22 The painting labeled Saint Matthew (fig. 10) depicts a balding man with a short, white beard, who holds a carpenter’s square in his right hand. The Saint Thomas shows a young, dark-haired man, without attributes. The Saint James Minor is a dark-haired, and bearded, young man who holds a club. The identifying labels may have been added later. That on the Saint Thomas spells the saint’s name as “S. Thomas”, the English spelling and not the Italian or Spanish, as would be expected. It was in the London collection of Edmund Burke in 1821, raising the suspicion that the identifying label was added at a later time.23 I believe that the figure of Saint Thomas holding the carpenter’s square in El Greco’s The Burial of the Count of Orgaz provides the most logical identification of Saint Thomas and the identification of the figures in the paintings in the several Apostolado series should be reconsidered. The early Roman period of Jusepe de Ribera has been the subject of major
68 Jusepe de Ribera
fig. 8 C. Galle after Rubens, Saint Jude Thaddeus, engraving
fig. 9 Anthony Van Dyck, Saint Jude Thaddeus, Rotterdam, Museum Boymansvan Beuningen
fig. 10 Jusepe de Ribera, Saint Matthew, Paris, Private Collection
24 For the critical bibliography on the early years of Ribera, see: G. Papi, op. cit. (note 4), and also catalogue entries by G. Papi (exhibition, Naples, 2011-2012), pp. 31-59; and C. Felton, op. cit. (note 1). 25 Op. cit. (note 6). This painting is A21, p. 314. 26 A. E. Pérez Sánchez and N. Spinosa, op. cit. (note 1), exh. cat., Madrid, 1992, pp. 248-262, cat. nos. 42-55. In this series, the figure holding the carpenter’s square (Prado Number 1088) is identified as Saint Matthew. 27 Ibidem, cat. no. 51, p. 258.
scholarly attention during the last decade, primarily from the diligent research of Gianni Papi, and two significant exhibitions, in Madrid and Naples.24 Two of these early paintings have additional bearing on our discussion. The first is identified as Saint Jude Thaddeus (fig. 11) from the collection of the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, with a proposal that this is a painting from an Apostolado commissioned by Pedro Cosida, agent in Rome for the Spanish King Philip III, who commissioned a number of paintings from Ribera.25 Here, the white-haired and bearded saint is shown swathed in a voluminous gray cloak and holding a carpenter’s square in this right hand. Another painting called Saint Jude Thaddeus (fig. 12) is in the Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi, Florence. This is one of a series of Apostles formerly attributed by Longhi to the “Master of the Judgment of Solomon”, after a painting of that subject in the Galleria Borghese, Rome. This figure is shown with a cowl over his head, shoulders, and arms, and he carries an axe. These two paintings, re-attributed to Jusepe de Ribera, have now been dated to c. 1611-1612. Ribera painted another Apostolado, now in the Museo Nacional del Prado, which Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez dated to 1630-1632.26 The dark-haired, scruffily-whiskered figure, dressed in a brown cloak and a bluish-gray under robe, with a hint of a white undershirt, holding a carpenter’s square, is identified as Saint Matthew (fig. 13), although in earlier Prado catalogues it was identified as Saint Philip. The painting of Saint Jude Thaddeus portrays a dark-haired and dark-bearded man holding a spear;27 Saint James Minor, also dark-haired and dark-bearded, holds what looks to be a walking staff. Although the carpenter’s square should identify Saint Thomas, a problem arises because of the several other identifications of Apostles with this attribute. Only Rubens’s painting from the Calderón-Lerma Apostolado in the Prado shows a figure of an Apostle with a cowl over his head; this is of Saint James Minor, if the modern-day identifications are accurate. We are left, therefore, with multiple possibilities. This painting by Jusepe de Ribera in the Grassi Collection represents one of the Apostles, but is the painting of Saint Matthew, Saint James Minor, Saint Jude Thaddeus, or Saint Thomas? Having two of the three qualifying characteristics does not confirm any of these saints as the subject of this painting. I prefer to follow El Greco and to identify him as Saint Thomas. In this painting, Ribera has skillfully varied his painting technique for the different parts of the composition. For the fabric, he used a pigment-loaded brush, sweeping it along the contours to provide a sense of the weave, and establishing patterns of highlights and darker shadows that emphasize the underlying structures as well as the brilliant light striking the figure. The face and hands are worked from the dark tones to the brightest lights, creating a sense of real, sun-tanned, weathered flesh. This technique of sculpting the flesh parts of his paintings is reminiscent of Ribera’s mature brushwork from the Neapolitan period, beginning with such paintings as the 1616 Saint
70 Jusepe de Ribera
fig. 11 Jusepe de Ribera, Saint Jude Thaddeus, Naples, Museo di Capodimonte fig. 12 Jusepe de Ribera, Saint Jude Thaddeus, Florence, Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi.
fig. 13 Jusepe de Ribera, Saint Matthew, from an Apostolado, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado.
28 N. Spinosa, op. cit. (note 6), cat. no. A70, p. 343. C. Felton, ‘Marcantoniio Doria and Jusepe de Ribera’s early commissions in Naples’, Ricerche sul ‘600 Napoletano, 1991, pp. 123-139, ill. in color p. 129. 29 N. Spinosa, op. cit. (note 6), cat. no. A105 Plato, p. 366, and cat. no. A106 Democritus, p. 367.
Matthew and the Angel (fig. 14), painted soon after Ribera arrived in Naples and probably from a series of the Evangelists which was commissioned by the Genoese shipping magnate Marcantonio Doria, who was a frequent visitor to Naples.28 Ribera’s paintings during his long career in Naples demonstrate a continued technical development, with an amazing virtuosity in the handling of the brush and a growing maturity to the tonal qualities and range of coloristic effects, including what is often referred to as a neo-Venetian manner in many works from the beginning of the mid-1630s. His paintings from his earlier years in Naples and during the following decade into the late 1620s, show a maturity of modeling that captures a visual accuracy in the folds of the fabrics and a sculptural plasticity to the flesh areas. Ribera’s surfaces are never fussy and overly worked; moreover, he gave his figures a three-dimensional presence, causing them to be more than just sculptural, but seeming to be vitally alive, with a commanding force of personality and intent of purpose. Such is the nature of this figure who grips the carpenter’s square securely and forcefully, thrusting it out to the viewer. He looks out at us with resolve and seriousness of purpose. His demeanor also assures us of his integrity. From a survey of Ribera’s paintings during his early years, one could place this unsigned and undated work to the period between 1626 and 1630. It has a liveliness of surface and a surety of handling that indicates the artist at his full maturity. The paint itself is not as lustrous, or creamy, as can be found in the paintings of a later date, although the method of working the paint is consistent in Ribera’s paintings throughout his career. This is particularly noticeable with the flesh areas. Here, Ribera begins with a deep, dark-brown base color, and builds the surface with the application of increasingly lighter tones until he reaches the final bright areas caught by the strong light. Ribera also worked wet on wet, using a coarsely-bristled brush which he dragged through the under layers of the paint to reveal the darker tones, thereby creating the sense of real light on three-dimensional, sculpted surfaces. With this superlative skill, which is a hall-mark of his art, Ribera, produced works which occupy our space and command our attention; he gives vitality and life to his figures. During this period around 1630, Ribera painted a number of works depicting ancient philosophers as well as saints. The latter group includes the wellknown Democritus (fig. 15) in the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, which is signed and dated 1630, and Plato (fig. 16) in the Musée de Picardie, Amiens, which also is signed and dated 1630.29 It is with these paintings, and those of the Prado Apostolado, that this painting in the Grassi Collection has the greatest stylistic affinity. This painting is larger than those of the Prado Apostolado which measure in the 76 x 64 cm (29.9 x 25.1 in) range, and, technically, it demonstrates qualities of structure and modeling similar to them. Although it may be one from a now lost series of Apostles, its size could indicate that it was painted on commission for a private patron. This is a masterful work, demonstrating those characteristics that caused Jusepe de Ribera to be one of the most celebrated artists during his lifetime. Craig Felton
71 Jusepe de Ribera
fig. 14 Jusepe de Ribera, Saint Matthew and the Angel, Chile, Private Collection.
fig. 15 Jusepe de Ribera, Democritus, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado fig. 16 Jusepe de Ribera, Plato, Amiens, Musée de Picardie
Matthias Stom[er]
BIOGRAPHY
Amersfoort?, c. 1600 - post 1649
1 For a detailed summary of the painter’s career see E. Nencini, ‘Matthias Stom(er). Percorso critico’, in S. Danesi Squarzina, «fiamenghi che vanno e vengono non li si puol dar regola». Paesi Bassi e Italia fra Cinquecento e Seicento: pittura, storia e cultura degli emblemi, ed. Irene Baldriga, Roma 2000, pp. 194-203; and A. Zalapì, ‘Matthias Stom’, in Dipinti caravaggeschi nelle raccolte bergamasche, exh. cat. (Bergamo, 2000), eds. E. De Pascale and F. Rossi, Bergamo 2000, pp. 83-88. 2 See B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, second edition revised and enlarged by L. Vertova, 3 vols., Torino 1990, I, pp. 179-188. 3 G. J. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome (1600-1725). Uittreksels uit de parochiale archieven [Dutch artists in Rome (1600-1725). Extracts from the parish archives], s’ Gravenhage 1942, p. 279, note 2. 4 See Alla ricerca di “Ghiongrat”. Studi sui libri parrocchiali romani (1600-1630), ed. Rossella Vodret, Roma 2012, p. 436, no. 1592, for the hypothetical identification of the painter with the “Mattia Strozzer todesco” living in the parish of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte in that year. 5 See M. G. Mazzola, ‘Matthias Stomer a Palermo: alcuni inediti per la sua biografia’, Storia dell’arte, 89, 1997, pp. 67-73. 6 See E. Celentano da Napoli, Memorie storiche cronologiche attenenti a’ FF. Minori Cappuccini della Provincia di Napoli… Tomo I (c. 1750), ed. F. F. Mastroianni, Napoli 1988, p. 668. 7 See B. De Dominici, Vite de’ pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani, 3 vols., Napoli 1742-1743, III, p. 155; O. Giannone, Giunte sulle vite de’ pittori napoletani (1771-73), ed. O. Morisani, Napoli 1941, p. 63. 8 See A. Zalapì, op. cit. (note 1), cat. nos. 8-9, pp. 58-65.
9 S. Bottari, ‘Aggiunte al Manfredi, al Renieri e allo Stomer’, Arte Antica e Moderna, XXIX, 1965, p. 59, pl. 23b, as Stom. B. Nicolson, ‘Stomer Brought Up-to-Date’, The Burlington Magazine, CXIX, 1977, p. 234, note 16, as circle of Manfredi-Valentin, by the same author of the painting in Venezia. 10 Inv. 62. The painting, always considered a secondary work in Valentin’s oeuvre, has been lately attributed to the French painter himself by G. Papi, ‘Postille ai dipinti in mostra al “Genio degli anonimi”’, in Caravaggio e l’Europa. L’artista, la storia, la tecnica e la sua eredità, ed. L. Spezzaferro, Milano 2009, pp. 224 and 282, fig. 212. 11 See A. Zalapì, ‘Il soggiorno siciliano di Matthias Stom tra neostoicismo e “dissenso”. Nuove acquisizioni documentarie sull’ambiente artistico straniero a Palermo’, in Porto di mare, 1570-1670. Pittori e pittura a Palermo tra memoria e recupero, exh. cat. (Palermo-Roma, 1999-2000), ed. V. Abbate, Napoli 1999, pp. 147-157. 12 See L. Moretti, ‘Antonio Stom’, in Canaletto. Venezia e i suoi splendori, exh. cat. (Treviso, 2008-2009), eds. G. Pavanello and A. Craievich, Venezia 2008, pp. 114-115. 13 See P. A. Orlandi, L’Abcedario Pittorico dall’autore ristampato corretto et accresciuto…, Bologna 1719, pp. 318-319.
73 Matthias Stom[er]
Matthias Stomer (or more correctly “Stom”, which is the name used by the artist himself and in the documents, where we can also find “Matteo”) is probably the most authentic exponent of Caravaggism on an international scale, and without doubt its most tireless continuator: in the first half of the 17th century he was active in the Netherlands, Rome, Naples, Sicily and Northern Italy.1 However, despite his leading role in this movement regarding quality and quantity, acknowledged also by Benedict Nicolson in his catalogue,2 his personal data is still scanty and uncertain. According to the information in the Roman parish registers, Stom was born around 1600 in Amersfoort, near Utrecht;3 he is attested in Rome from 1630 (less likely 1625)4 to 1632, and then in Palermo from January 1640,5 though he had probably been living there since 1638-1639. The idea that he stayed in Naples between these two periods is based chiefly on the large number of his paintings in this city, the most important of which are documented from 1635 onwards in the church of Sant’Efremo Nuovo (now in Capodimonte).6 This hypothesis is confirmed by stylistic factors and above all by the 18th century testimonies of Bernardo De Dominici and Onofrio Giannone, who refer to Domenico Viola and Giacomo Manecchia as his Neapolitan followers.7 It is actually quite difficult to outline the evolution of Stom’s language, also because of the strong homogeneity of style in his oeuvre. The only exception is a compact group of particularly elegant paintings, that can be connected to his Roman and earliest phase thanks to the evident influence of Baburen, Honthorst and Valentin: the most memorable is the pair of canvases with Daedalus fixing the wings on Icarus and Tobias healing his father’s blindness, from the Scotti collection,8 that should be, in my opinion, associated with the two Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, formerly in the Gargallo collection in Syracuse9 and in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice.10 The rest of his Southern Italian production, which combines ‘candle-light nocturnal scenes’ with coarse Riberesque realism, appears easier to define. Unquestionable cornerstones of Stom’s stay in Sicily are the Miracle of Saint Isidor Agricola, signed and dated 1641, today in the church of San Giorgio Martire in Caccamo; the Adoration of the Shepherds now in the Complesso Monumentale “Guglielmo II” in Monreale, donated to the local convent between 1646 and 1648; several canvases - such as the Death of Cato, identified with the painting in the Museo Civico del Castello Ursino in Catania - purchased by Antonio Ruffo between 1646 and 1649 for his personal picture gallery.11 The duration of the Sicilian phase and the chronology of Stom’s last activity will now need to be reviewed however, in the light of a recent, important archival discovery, that has yet to be acknowledged and verified by scholars. These new documents reveal that the children of “pictor fiamengo” Matthias Stom and of his companion Vincenza di Pietro (“Vicenza de Petro”), i.e. the illegitimate twins “Mattio” and “Zuanna”, and “Zuanne”, were baptized in Venice in July 1643 and March 1645.12 This also confirms the idea that Stom had travelled to Northern Italy, which had already been suggested by the presence of a substantial number of his works in the area of Bergamo. The Dutch painter was therefore the forefather of a family of vedutisti (landscape painters) of the same name, active in Veneto in the 17th and 18th centuries, in accordance with what is said in Orlandi’s Abcedario under the entry for Matteo Stom, landscape and battle painter.13 At the moment it is not possible to add anything more to this unexpected development: research is still ongoing.
10
Young Saint John the Baptist 1633-1637 Matthias Stom[er]
Oil on canvas, 75,5 x 60,5 cm; 29.7 x 23.8 in
74 Matthias Stom[er]
PROVENANCE
Weimar, Schloßmuseum, inv. 29 (on deposit from the Hessische Hausstiftung, from 1945 to 2009) LITERATURE
G. De Vito, ‘Alla ricerca del “vello d’oro” (appunti di un viaggio)’, Ricerche sul ’600 napoletano. Dedicato a Ulisse Prota Giurleo nel centenario della nascita, Milano 1986, pp. 127 and 156, fig. 37 S. Causa, Battistello Caracciolo. L’opera completa, Napoli 2000, p. 132, note 174
14 Inv. P2094. See T. Posada Kubissa, Pintura holandesa en el Museo Nacional del Prado. Catálogo razonado, Madrid 2009, cat. no. 53, pp. 136-138. 15 See A. von Schneider, Caravaggio und die Niederländer, Amsterdam 1967, pp. 118-119, pl. 37b; B. Nicolson, op. cit. (note 2), I, p. 183. The canvas has lately appeared in an auction at Dorotheum, Wien, 6th June 1999 (lot 278).
Despite its remarkable quality, the painting, in exceptional good condition and on its original canvas, has never received particular attention from scholars. It is to be remembered that, until today, the experts of 17th century naturalism were only acquainted with it through a black and white photograph included in Giuseppe De Vito’s account of a visit of the Museum in Weimar: the painting, “halfhidden by the shadow of a curtain”, was located in the same room as the Madonna and Child with Saint Bruno by Ribera, now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. Though preferring to leave it anonymous, the scholar spoke of “la luce di Battistello, l’incarnato ed il tratto del Lanfranco” (the light of Battistello, the complexion and the brushstroke of Lanfranco), as if connecting it to the Southern Italian artistic environment. On the basis of that photo, which had become highly contrasted and consequently more caravaggesque in the printing, De Vito’s opinion was turned into a direct attribution to the Emilian artist “at the beginning of the second decade” in Stefano Causa’s monograph on Caracciolo. It was certainly an untenable idea, but it was justified by the terse structure of the painting, obtained by using multifaceted surfaces and large illuminated areas, and by the loose fluency of details such as the ruffled locks of Saint John’s hair. Though unusual for the artist’s repertoire of mainly elderly human types, the intense figure of Saint John undoubtedly belongs to Matthias Stom’s original oeuvre. The comparison with the Apollinean, tufaceous-like body of Christ in The Incredulity of Saint Thomas in the Prado (fig. 1)14 is sufficient to attribute them to the same hand. Even the young boy’s gaze, in shadow like the Costa Baptist by Caravaggio now in Kansas City, finds an identical match in the face of Christ carrying the Cross, a work published by Schneider which appeared on the market last time little more than a decade ago.15 As frequently happens with works by Stom, dating the painting causes more difficulty: this is due to the shortage of reliable dates within his large production, which tends towards repetition of themes and models. However, the idea behind the figure and its structure, which does in fact recall Battistello, take us back to the Neapolitan scene and therefore to the period the artist presumedly spent in the capital of the Vice-kingdom, roughly between 1633 and 1637. There is no doubt that the origin of this undomesticated adolescent lies in Merisi’s prototypes and in the versions of this theme by his first followers, in a city where this subject must have lasted longer than
75 Matthias Stom[er]
fig. 1 Matthias Stom[er], The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
elsewhere; moreover, the same sullenness is again to be found in Stom’s melancholy David with the head of Goliath in the Etro collection (fig. 2), such a ‘Neapolitan’ masterpiece to be understandably mistaken for a work by Hendrick van Somer, another foreigner active in the same city.16 Even the small size of the painting is appropriate to a more intimate sensitivity, far from the theatrical, dramatic, and somehow already Baroque, monumental works executed by Stom in his Sicilian years. This is the key to understanding the probable Neapolitan provenance of Saint John the Baptist, indicated by a label from the auction house “Ernesto Bowinkel” (post 1879) attached to the back of the canvas. Finally, we must also observe how the creases in the scroll fastened to the cross are accurately repeated in the painter’s other two versions of the half-length figure of the saint, despite the chronological and stylistic distance between the pictures. The first one is an early painting in the convent of Santi Bartolomeo e Stefano in Bergamo,17 close to the abovementioned Tobias healing his father’s blindness, a work of solid but subtly precious realism, Valentin-style. The second one, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, (fig. 3)18 and probably executed in his later years, is characterized by the use of pale colours and by a sumptuous, golden pictorialism. Giuseppe Porzio
fig. 2 Matthias Stom[er], David with the head of Goliath, detail, Etro collection fig. 3 Matthias Stom[er], Young Saint John the Baptist, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
16 See N. Spinosa, in Ritorno al Barocco. Da Caravaggio a Vanvitelli, 2 vols., exh. cat. (Naples, 2009-2010), ed. N. Spinosa, Napoli 2009, I, cat. no. 1.40, p. 116 (as Hendrick van Somer). The canvas is the pendant of a full figure, lying John the Baptist, which formerly belonged to Giovanni Previtali and is still unpublished. 17 The canvas is documented by the photographic negative 206527/S, in possession of the relevant Soprintendenza BSAE. 18 Inv. SK-A-216. B. Nicolson, op. cit. (note 9), p. 241, no. 18, unconvingly dates it to the Roman period.
76 Matthias Stom[er]
Italian Paintings TEFAF 2013 Maastricht
Translation Raffaella Calamini Realization De Stijl Art Publishing, Firenze Š 2013 Grassi Studio New York ISBN 978-0-615-76219-7
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Italian Paintings
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