Full title | Saint Nicholas |
---|---|
Artist | Benvenuto di Giovanni |
Artist dates | 1436 - after 1509/17 |
Group | Altarpiece: The Virgin and Child with Saints |
Date made | 1479 |
Medium and support | Tempera on wood |
Dimensions | 170 x 50 cm |
Inscription summary | Inscribed |
Acquisition credit | Bought, 1874 |
Inventory number | NG909.3 |
Location | Not on display |
Collection | Main Collection |
A bishop saint, a mitre on his head and his crosier leaning casually against his shoulder, stands reading a book. This is Saint Nicholas of Bari, an enormously popular saint who is thought to have lived in the fourth century, and about whom almost nothing certain is known. This is the right-hand panel of an altarpiece made by Benvenuto di Giovanni, other parts of which are also in the National Gallery’s collection: The Virgin and Child and Saint Peter.
Although Benvenuto has here abandoned the pala format, which showed figures in a single unified space and which had become popular during the later fifteenth century, for a more traditional triptych (a painting in three parts), he was still interested in achieving a sense of naturalism and monumentality. Both saints are large in comparison with the Virgin and Christ Child in the centre, while Nicolas’s flowing cope, bowed head and slightly bent knee give a feel of the plasticity and mass of a three-dimensional form. His crosier even casts a shadow on the marble of the parapet.
A bishop saint, a mitre on his head and his crosier leaning casually against his shoulder, stands reading a book. This is Saint Nicholas of Bari, an enormously popular saint who is thought to have lived in the fourth century, and about whom almost nothing certain is known. His popularity was based on the miracles recounted in his legendary Acts: he was reputed to have given bags of gold to three girls as dowries to save them from prostitution, and to have revived three boys who were murdered in a brine-tub by a butcher.
This is the right-hand panel of an altarpiece by the Sienese painter Benvenuto di Giovanni, other parts of which are also in our collection: The Virgin and Child and Saint Peter. In some ways the altarpiece looks more traditional than Benvenuto’s Borghesi altarpiece, an earlier work for the church of San Domenico in Siena (1475/1477–78). The Borghesi altarpiece has a fully painted background and pala format, which had become popular during the later fifteenth century, while the National Gallery altarpiece is a triptych with figures set against a gilded background. This more traditional form was presumably the preference of the commissioner, although Benvenuto has modernised it by giving all three panels a rectangular format, unlike the ogee tops of his Montepertuso triptych of 1475 (now in the parish church of Vescovado di Murlo, near Siena).
The artist was also keenly interested in achieving a greater naturalism and sense of monumentality. Both saints are very large by comparison with the Virgin and Christ Child in the centre, while Nicolas’s flowing cope, bowed head and slightly bent knee give a feel of the plasticity and mass of a three-dimensional form. His crosier even casts a shadow on the marble of the parapet and his foreshortened book with its fluttering pages creates a sense of perspective. The decorative parapet unites all three panels into a single, coherent space in spite of the burnished gold background. At the same time, the level of detail reflects the strongly decorative qualities of Sienese painting in the late fifteenth century, for example the careful rendering of the cloth of gold cope and the fringed strip of embroidered saints along its edge, the extraordinarily delicate embroidery on the saint’s white gloves and the shadows cast by the pearls on the mitre.
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Altarpiece: The Virgin and Child with Saints
Sienese painting of the second half of the fifteenth century blended the artistic ideals of its own time with a continued reverence for the language of earlier Sienese art. Nowhere is this more true than in this altarpiece, painted in 1479 by Benvenuto di Giovanni, possibly for a church in Orvieto.
In the centre the Virgin Mary is seated on an inlaid throne with the infant Christ on her knee; in the side panels saints stand like statues on a marble parapet which runs across the whole altarpiece. The figures are set against burnished and tooled gold backgrounds, and all are spectacularly dressed in accordance with the Sienese passion for jewels and textiles – but they look convincingly solid underneath their clothes.
Sienese painting of the second half of the fifteenth century blended the artistic ideals of its time with a continued reverence for the language of earlier Sienese art. Nowhere is this more true than in this triptych, painted in 1479 by Benvenuto di Giovanni.
Benvenuto has integrated a very contemporary interest in naturalism and perspective with a typically Sienese love of lavish materials, brilliant colours and decorative detail. In the central panel, the Virgin Mary is seated on an inlaid throne with the infant Christ on her knee; in the side panels Saint Peter and Saint Nicholas stand like statues on a marble parapet which runs across the triptych. The figures are set against burnished and tooled gold backgrounds, and all are spectacularly dressed in accordance with the Sienese passion for jewels and textiles – but they look convincingly solid underneath their clothes. The precise dresses to be worn and materials to be used were sometimes stipulated in artists‘ contracts.
The altarpiece is very characteristic of the paintings made by Benvenuto in the 1470s. He was a pupil of Vecchietta and his early style was heavily dependant on that of his master, but it was changed by the arrival of Liberale da Verona and Girolamo da Cremona in Siena in 1466 and 1470 respectively. These two Northern Italian illuminators (artists who painted illuminated manuscripts) came to contribute to one of the greatest artistic projects of the late fifteenth century: the decoration of the great series of choir books for Siena’s cathedral. The project attracted artists from near and far, and Benvenuto also worked on it.
There was no hard and fast division between painters and illuminators in Siena, and Liberale and Girolamo were of enormous importance in introducing a more progressive style that combined brilliant colours with minutely detailed technique. Close examination reveals that the pearls on the Virgin’s dress cast shadows, an idea derived from Girolamo’s trompe l’oeil border decorations.
The masterpieces from this sharply defined, highly detailed and decorative phase of Benvenuto’s career are the triptych from Montepertuso (dated 1475, now in the parish church of Vescovado di Murlo, near Siena), the Borghesi altarpiece in the church of San Domenico in Siena (1475–1477/78) and the National Gallery altarpiece. In this painting Benvenuto has reverted from the single unified space of the Borghesi altarpiece – the pala format – to a triptych with gilded ground (presumably at the request of the commissioner). We are not sure where this altarpiece was originally intended to be displayed. In the early nineteenth century it was apparently in the church of the Gesù at Orvieto, which was founded in 1618; it had perhaps been made for a church there.



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