Full title | The Virgin: Altarpiece Pinnacle (Left) |
---|---|
Artist | Probably by Jacopo di Antonio (Master of Pratovecchio?) |
Artist dates | 1427 - 1454 |
Group | Pratovecchio Altarpiece |
Date made | about 1450? |
Medium and support | Egg tempera on wood |
Dimensions | 57 x 27.5 cm |
Acquisition credit | Bought, 1857 |
Inventory number | NG584.7 |
Location | Not on display |
Collection | Main Collection |
This small, arched painting of the Virgin Mary grieving comes from a large polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted in around 1450 for a provincial house of Camaldolese nuns in Pratovecchio, Tuscany. A number of other panels from this altarpiece are also in the National Gallery’s collection. This one would have been at the top, to the left of an image of the Crucifixion (now missing).
In contrast with the rest of the polyptych, and most early Renaissance altarpieces, the Virgin stands against a dark background rather than one of burnished gold. This is not original, however – it would have originally been gold like the other panels.
This small, arched painting of the Virgin Mary grieving comes from a large polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted in around 1450 for a provincial house of Camaldolese nuns in Pratovecchio, Tuscany. A number of other panels from the Pratovecchio Altarpiece are also in our collection.
Early Renaissance altarpieces were often multi-storey constructions, with figures arranged in layers around a large central panel. This one would have been at the top of the altarpiece, on the left of an image of the Crucifixion (now lost) above the central panel of the Assumption of the Virgin.
The Virgin’s sombre dress and sorrowful expression gives a feeling of brooding melancholy to this panel. The artist, Jacopo di Antonio, was heavily influenced by the emotional intensity of Florentine painter Andrea del Castagno and by Donatello’s sculptures. The strong contrasts of dark and light in the complex folds of the draperies and the shadows cast by the figures in the altarpiece create an illusion of three-dimensional space, so that they seem like statues standing in niches rather than flat paintings. One device that we see – the rows of white dots around the Virgin’s halo – is also found in Florentine manuscript painting.
It is very unusual to have the Virgin turning away from the Crucifixion as she does here: she was usually shown collapsing in distress or gazing sorrowfully at her dead son. Renaissance painters often borrowed ideas from other artists, and her gesture might be derived from the sculptor Donatello’s terracotta relief of Saint Damian in San Lorenzo, Florence.
In contrast with the rest of the polyptych – and most early Renaissance altarpieces – the Virgin stands against a dark background rather than one of burnished gold. The background has, however, been overpainted and would originally have been gold like the other panels.
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The Virgin: Altarpiece Pinnacle (Left)
Pratovecchio Altarpiece
This altarpiece is a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) but parts of it are missing. The two halves were not originally next to each other, but were on either side of a painting of the Assumption of the Virgin formerly in the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, in Pratovecchio, Tuscany.
The whole altarpiece once stood on a side altar in the Camaldolese nunnery of San Giovanni. Very unusually we know quite a lot about its commissioning. In June 1400 one Michele di Antonio Vaggi, a Camaldolese monk, made a will asking his mother Johanna to found a chapel at San Giovanni, for which she was to provide a ‘tavola picta’ (a painted altarpiece).
Both Johanna and Michele’s patron saints appear in the main panels, with Camaldolese saints in the pinnacles. This is presumably the altarpiece made for their family chapel, although it wasn't painted until the 1450s.
This altarpiece is a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) but parts of it are missing. The two halves were not originally next to each other, but were on either side of a painting of the Assumption of the Virgin formerly in San Giovanni Evangelista, Pratovecchio, Tuscany.
The altarpiece was originally made for the Camaldolese nunnery in Pratovecchio. The Camaldolites were a reformed Italian branch of the Benedictine Order, famous for their strict lifestyle. Monks and nuns lived in hermitages rather than in communal buildings, coming together only to eat and pray.
Renaissance Italian altarpieces came in many shapes and sizes, depending on where they were to be placed and on how much their patrons could pay. A larger polyptych from Pratovecchio is also in our collection: the Ascension of John the Evangelist Altarpiece, made for the high altar in the 1420s.
This altarpiece is smaller and must have been in a side chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary; church rules said that images on altarpieces generally had to reflect the dedication of the altar on which they sat. Very unusually, we know quite a lot about the commissioning of this altarpiece and the intentions of its patrons. A document in the nunnery records that in June 1400 one Michele di Antonio Vaggi, a Camaldolese monk, made a will naming his mother Johanna as his main beneficiary. He asked her to found a chapel at San Giovanni Evangelista, for which she was to provide a ‘tavola picta’ (a painted altarpiece) and other furnishings. Saints Michael and John the Baptist, Michele and Johanna’s patron saints, appear in the main tier of the altarpiece and there are various Camaldolite saints in the pilasters. This must the ‘tavola picta’ made for the family’s chapel, and is one of the few surviving Renaissance altarpieces to have been commissioned by a woman (another is Crivelli’s The Virgin and Child with Saints Francis and Sebastian).
Johanna herself made wills in 1405 and 1415, but possibly lived much longer, as stylistically the altarpiece should be dated to the 1450s. The artist, Jacopo di Antonio, added figures to Giotto’s Badia altarpiece (Uffizi, Florence) in 1451 and died in December 1454. Both Johanna and Michele’s wills were copied into the nunnery’s records in 1440, perhaps after the death of one or the other; presumably the commission for the altarpiece was not put into effect until this point.
We don't know exactly when the altarpiece was split up. The main panel showing the Assumption was still in San Giovanni in 1914, and our panels were there in the early nineteenth century. The nunnery at Pratovecchio had been closed down by 1810, and these panels, along with others from the same church, were in a private collection in Florence by 1845, where they were probably put into their current frame. The frame was regilded in 1858 and it is impossible to tell how much of it is modern and how much medieval. The paint surface is covered with a layer of old, discoloured varnish.








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