ON VIEW

Description

The central panel of this triptych portrays the Virgin Mary seated on a cushioned throne. She wears a blue mantle lined with yellow, over a pink tunic. On her left knee sits the baby Jesus, dressed in a light-blue cloak with a hem of gold embroidery, over a red tunic. He raises his right hand in benediction and holds a bird gently in his left hand. Below and at Mary’s right kneels a diminutive male figure, presumably the donor of the triptych. The left panel shows Saint James the Greater holding a red book and a staff from which hangs a shell, the symbol of medieval religious pilgrimage. To his left stands Saint John the Baptist, barefoot and clad in a rough, hairy tunic. The opposite, righthand panel shows Saint Anthony Abbot, holding a tau-shaped staff and a book, and Saint Nicholas with a bishop’s crozier in one hand and three golden balls and a book in the other. In the pinnacle above Saints James and John, the Archangel Gabriel announces to Mary (in the opposite pinnacle) that she will give birth to Jesus. In the pinnacle above the central panel appears God as the Blessing Christ, holding a book under his left arm.


The three panels are made of poplar a little over an inch thick and are in excellent condition. The frame, which is largely original, has suffered only minor damages, including areas of regilding. Some portions of the frame have been replaced, including a few of the small, carved ornaments, called crockets; the two long columns, called pilasters, on either side of the central panel; and the horizontal line, or string course, running atop the gilt base. The incised elements, called punch work, and the painted and gilded surfaces are in excellent condition and appear never to have been varnished. The blue pigment used in the figures of the Blessing Christ, Saint James, and both images of Mary is made of a mineral called azurite. Unusually, in this triptych, the azurite surfaces are matte and show no signs of blackening.


Context and Analysis

The altarpiece’s original location is unknown. However, based on scant written accounts, stylistic analysis, and the selection of saints portrayed, it is likely to have been commissioned for the high altar of the Roman Catholic convent of Santa Verdiana in Florence, Italy.


Santa Verdiana was founded in 1391 with a bequest from Florentine notary Ser Niccolò di Manetto di Buonagiunta. The complex was under construction by 1395, and the first nuns began living there in 1400. A short time later it was officially dedicated to Saints Giovanni Gualberto (985 or 995–1073) and Verdiana (1182–1242). Buonagiunta chose Saint Verdiana as the patron saint of the convent because she was the most important religious figure ever born in his hometown of Castelfiorentino. Verdiana spent the last three decades of her life secluded in a cell of the Vallombrosan Abbey in Castelfiorentino. Saint Giovanni Gualberto was selected because he was Florentine and the founder of the Vallombrosan Order, which the nuns of Santa Verdiana followed.


The iconography of the altarpiece may allude to the convent’s founding history. Saint Verdiana decided on a religious life of solitude and penance after a visit to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, which was built to house the relics of Saint James. Saint John the Baptist is the patron saint of Florence. Saint Nicholas was likely the name saint of Ser Niccolò. Saint Anthony Abbot was a model for most monastic orders, but it is equally possible that the figure identified here as Saint Anthony really represents Saint Giovanni Gualberto. Giovanni del Biondo’s altarpiece (1379) for the Cappella Bardi di Vernio, in the church of Santa Croce in Florence, which Gerini would certainly have known, depicts Saint Giovanni Gualberto very similarly.


On stylistic grounds this altarpiece should be dated during the last years of Gerini’s productivity, when he had adopted a more naturalistic and soft style, like that of Florentine painter Agnolo Gaddi (about 1350–96). This style is clearly evident in the altarpiece’s two side panels. The central panel, however, is by a different, lesser hand. The expert modeling of the saints, using highlights and shadows to create the convincing illusion of three-dimensional form, is not present in the central panel. Art historian Laurence Kanter 1 has proposed the Florentine artist Lippo d’Andrea di Lippo (1370/71–before 1451) as the painter of the central panel, on the basis of other, securely attributed paintings. In 1411 Lippo d’Andrea joined the artists’ guild called the Compagnia di San Luca and received a joint commission with Gerini to paint frescoes on the façade of the Palazzo del Ceppo in Prato. A date of 1411 for the altarpiece would coincide with their collaboration and would support the Santa Verdiana commission. Historian Cesare Guasti notes that after Gerini’s death in 1414, his family received payment for a partially finished altarpiece intended for Santa Verdiana. Guasti mentions this painting as being untraced. 2 It is possible that the Currier altarpiece was commissioned for Santa Verdiana after 1411 and left unfinished at the artist’s death, only to be completely by his then collaborator Lippo d’Andrea.


Connections

This is the first gold-ground picture to enter the Currier’s permanent collection. Gerini’s early Renaissance altarpiece illustrates the initial influences of humanism, in which artists begin to deemphasize Jesus’s divine nature. For example, unlike the Follower of Meliore,(Currier, 1954.5 ) Gerini depicts the Christ child not as a young adult but as a baby. In both pictures, Mary and Jesus occupy a divine space, but Gerini dispenses with the angels that surround Mary’s throne. Space and figure are moving from the heavenly to the earthly realm. In later pictures like the Holy Family by Joos van Cleve,(Currier, 1956.5 ) this shift in emphasis is realized fully. The divine space common in earlier pictures is completely absent, and Jesus with exposed genitalia reminds all viewers that he is God made flesh. The environment the mother and son occupy has also completely changed from a vision of the heavenly to a room typical of northern Europe in the 1400s.

Written by Kurt J. Sundstrom


Notes
1 Personal communication.
2 Guasti1874, 62.


Bibliography


Guasti, Cesare. Belle arti: opuscoli descrittivi e biografici di Cesare Guasti. Florence: Sansoni, 1874.


Kanter, Laurence B. Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence, 1300–1450. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995.


Smith-Abbott, Katherine, Wendy Watson, Andrea Rothe, and Jeanne Rothe. The Art of Devotion: Panel Painting in Early Renaissance Italy. Middlebury, VT: Middlebury College Museum of Art, 2009.