Full title | The Ascension of Saint John the Evangelist: Main Tier Central Panel |
---|---|
Artist | Giovanni dal Ponte |
Artist dates | about 1385 - 1437 |
Group | Ascension of John the Evangelist Altarpiece |
Date made | about 1420-4? |
Medium and support | Egg tempera on wood |
Dimensions | 163 x 67.8 cm |
Acquisition credit | Bought, 1857 |
Inventory number | NG580.1 |
Location | Not on display |
Collection | Main Collection |
A bearded saint is being raised to heaven by Christ, who leans out of a cloud to grasp him by the wrists. This is Saint John the Evangelist, usually shown as a young man, but here old, balding and bearded.
This is the centre panel of a large polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) made for the high altar of the church of the Camaldolese nunnery of San Giovanni Evangelista in Pratovecchio in Tuscany. Other panels from the altarpiece are also in the National Gallery’s collection.
The artist, Giovanni dal Ponte, took the story’s details from the Golden Legend, the great medieval collection of saints' lives, and from an earlier painting by Giotto in Santa Croce in Florence. He adapted Giotto’s composition to fit the upright shape of the panel better: Saint John is hauled up vertically rather than sliding diagonally.
A bearded saint is being raised up to heaven by Christ, who leans out of a cloud to grasp him by the wrists. This is Saint John the Evangelist, usually shown as a young man, but here old, balding and bearded. This is the centre panel of a large polyptych made for the high altar of the church of the Camaldolese nunnery of San Giovanni Evangelista in Pratovecchio, Tuscany.
At the top Christ is surrounded by bearded saints and figures from the Old Testament, including King David, identified by his crown and psaltery (a kind of medieval harp). Saint John wears a pink cope, decorated with embroidered figures of prophets and evangelists holding books or scrolls. He is being lifted out a tomb in front of an altar. The Golden Legend, a medieval collection of saints' lives, tells how Saint John had a pit dug in front of the altar of his church in Ephesus. After mass one night he said farewell to the congregation and climbed down into the pit, then held up his hands and prayed to Christ. Bright light shone around the altar; when it stopped the saint had vanished. Here we can see Saint John kneeling on a strangely solid looking cloud, with the empty pit and the altar below.The incised rays around him perhaps represent the great light mentioned in the story.
The Florentine artist Giovanni dal Ponte probably took the idea of showing the saint lifted bodily up into heaven from a glossary:fresco of this scene painted by Giotto in the Peruzzi Chapel in Santa Croce in Florence in about 1328. But rather than sliding up diagonally, as in Giotto’s fresco, here Saint John is pulled directly upwards by Christ. Dal Ponte might have adapted the iconography either to follow the Golden Legend more closely or to make the scene fit better into the centre panel of an altarpiece.
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The Ascension of Saint John the Evangelist
Ascension of John the Evangelist Altarpiece
This large, gilded polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) is one of the few almost complete early Renaissance altarpieces in the National Gallery’s collection. It was made for the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, in Pratovecchio, Tuscany, probably in the 1420s.
Altarpieces on the high altar had to show the saint to whom the church was dedicated. Here, in the centre panel, we see Saint John the Evangelist being raised to heaven by Christ. A crowd of saints seems to watch from the large panels on either side.
The nuns at Pratovecchio were Camaldolites – a small, strict religious order found mainly in Italy – and the saints on the altarpiece would have been those who were important to them. This is one of the few surviving paintings of this date which might well have been commissioned by women – two abbesses – for the use of women.
This large, gilded polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) is one of the few almost complete early Renaissance altarpieces in our collection (the frame is modern). It was made for the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, in Pratovecchio, Tuscany, probably in the 1420s. This was the church for a house of nuns, making this one of the few paintings of this date we think may have been commissioned by women – two abbesses – for the use of women.
It probably sat on the high altar, as it shows the saint to whom the church was dedicated. In the centre panel, Saint John the Evangelist is being hauled up to heaven by Christ while scenes from his life are shown in the predella. A crowd of saints watch from the large panels on the left and right, while smaller saints stand in the pilasters. In the Middle Ages people believed that saints could intercede with God on their behalf at the Last Judgement, and the saints here are those who were important for the nuns at San Giovanni. Some of them are identified by inscriptions, although these are not original and might not all be correct.
In the pinnacles at the top are the Trinity – God the Father holds the crucified Christ while the dove of the Holy Ghost hovers between them – and the Annunciation, when the Virgin Mary was told by the Archangel Gabriel that she‘d bear a child. On one side we see Gabriel and on the other Mary. Below this is the descent into limbo, where Christ breaks down the gates of hell and leads souls out of purgatory.
The nuns at Pratovecchio belonged to the Camaldolese Order, a small reformed monastic order founded by an Italian monk, Saint Romuald, in 1012. Although they followed the Rule of Saint Benedict, Romuald wanted them to live a stricter and more solitary life. They wore white habits and lived in individual cells, like hermits, although they came together to eat and pray. We have parts of two other altarpieces made for Camaldolese houses, one from San Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti, Florence, and another also for Pratovecchio.
This altarpiece may well have been commissioned by two abbesses of San Giovanni, Catherine and her successor Agatha. Saint Catherine of Alexandria appears in the right-hand main panel, while the saint in the bottom left corner with the inscription ’Apollonia' might have been intended as Agatha. Often, the objects that saints hold help us identify them, but it’s not clear if what she is holding is meant as a tooth or a breast (Saint Agatha was tortured by having her breasts cut off, while Apollonia had her teeth pulled out).
We do not have any documents showing exactly how this commission worked, but the artist, Giovanni dal Ponte, had a workshop in Florence, about 50km from Pratovecchio. The nuns presumably did not deal with the artist themselves, but would have been assisted by a male advisor, perhaps the prior of the local Camaldolese monastery at Poppiena; when this altarpiece was made its prior was a Florentine called Francesco, and Saint Francis appears here in the left pinnacle.












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