Art Eyewitness Review: Siena: the Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

 Siena: the Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 

 

Metropolitan Museum of Art

 October 13, 2024 to January 26, 2025

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art may be surprised to learn the identity of the most expensive art work ever purchased by The Met. It was not a landscape by Van Gogh or – as I thought - the portrait of Juan de Pareja by Velasquez.

Back in 2004, The Met paid $45 million for a painting “no bigger than a sheet of typing paper.” That was how, in the lead paragraph of its article, the New York Times reported the purchase of a late-medieval Madonna and Child created in the Italian city-state of Siena,.

The Times’ description of Madonna and Child was a case of being accurate to a fault. Yes, the painting is modest in its measurements, but masterpieces are not determined by size. Moreover, the Met’s acquisition was a work by one of the great innovators of art history, Duccio di Buoninsegna.

                                          

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) 

Duccio's Madonna and Child, 1290-1300

                                                                                     

Twenty years later, Duccio's Madonna and Child is a “keystone” work in a brilliant exhibition at The Met, Siena: the Rise of Painting, 1300-1350. Over a hundred works of art are on view, opening the gates - and our eyes - to the paradise-like realm that was the Bel Commune or Republic of Siena located in Tuscany.

Of these exhibited works, an astonishing number were created by Duccio or the handful of other Sienese masters who made the first half of the 1300's, Siena's golden age. Others, by little known or mysterious, yet to be identified,  artists testify to the influence of Duccio or of Pietro Lorenzetti on the art and culture of their times.

   Ed Voves, Photo (2024) 

Goro di Gregorio's sculpture of the Enthroned Virgin

An especially notable member of the supporting cast of Siena: the Rise of Painting is Enthroned Virgin by Goro di Gregorio. The curators believe that this rare work of art - the only surviving terracotta sculpture from Italy during the early 1300's - was created as a working model for a goldsmith's commission to make an altapiece.

This is very likely to be the correct explanation of the Enthroned Virgin's function. Goro di Gregorio was both an accomplished goldsmith as well as the leading sculptor of Siena during this era.

Yet, it should be noted that the basic pose of Enthroned Virgin closely follows that of The Met's Madonna and Child. It lacks the figure of the Christ Child, an important detail for a  finished devotional statue. But the right hand of the Virgin is missing and the left badly damaged. Might a separate Christ Child have been modeled and kiln-fired to be placed in the Virgin Mary's now missing hands? If so, this beautiful statue may well be a three-dimensional version of The Met's $45 million "typing paper" masterpiece.

Siena: the Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 is a joint endeavor of The Met with the National Gallery in London. The curators of the exhibition - Joanna Cannon, Caroline Campbell, Stephen Wolohojian, Imogen Tedbury and Laura Llewellyn - have combined their efforts to assemble an array of top-tier works of religious art from the fourteenth century, the trecento as it is called in Italy.

Ed Voves, Photo (2024)

Duccio di Buoninsegna’s The Virgin & Child with Saints Dominic & Aurea

Here, the use of the term “iconic” is accurate.        

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

        Ed Voves, Photo (2024) 

Gallery view of Siena: the Rise of Painting,

    The Chalice of Peter of Sassoferrato in the foreground       

The galleries of Siena: the Rise of Painting are so richly endowed with masterpieces that Duccio’s “small wonder” almost gets lost in their company. 

Almost. 

Duccio, along with his younger contemporary from Florence, Giotto di Bondone (c.1267-1337), was the founder of Western painting as it has developed since the Middle Ages. This was the moment of the rise of painting – characterized by professional artists whose works were signed or otherwise documented - alluded to in the exhibition title.

This pivotal moment in the story of human creativity is immortalized by the proud inscription on one of the exhibition's truly "signature" works:

"Petrus pictor, quondam Lorenzetti qui fuit de Senis” (“The painter Pietro del fu Lorenzetti who was from Siena”)

There are no paintings by Giotto in the Met’s exhibition. But direct comparison of the works of Duccio and Giotto is possible. The Met is one of the select group of U.S. museums with at least one painting by each of these masters in its collection.

 On view in Gallery 601 at the Met is Giotto's The Adoration of the Magi, painted around 1320. It is a small masterpiece, too, but in theme and style it is very much in the spirit of Giotto's famous narrative scenes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.

     Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Giotto's Adoration of the Magi at The Met        

Giorgio Vasari, writing in the late 1500’s, gave the lion’s share of credit to Giotto for pioneering “the great art of painting as we know it today …” 

Many modern historians, while acknowledging that Vasari was biased in favor of fellow artists from Florence, have followed his lead. Works by artists from Sienalike Simone Martini's Virgin and Child with Four Saints and a Dominican Nun are held to illustrate the prevailing "medievalism" of Siena in contrast to the bold explorations of pictrial space by their rivals in Florence.

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) 

Simone Martini's Virgin and Child with Four Saints & a Dominican Nun

A pilgrimage to The Met’s Gallery 999, where Siena: the Rise of Painting is on view, hopefully will lead many art lovers to take a second look at Siena's role in the “rise of painting.” Wisely, the exhibition curators do not belabor the issue of Siena vs. Florence. There were multiple paths to the Renaissance and the road leading from Siena was an important one indeed.

If Duccio led the way, other Sienese artists of genius followed in quick succession. Siena: the Rise of Painting focuses on four major artists who formed a dynasty of achievement which would not be equaled until a century later in Florence during the era of Donatello. 

Ed Voves, Photos (2024)

 A collage of paintings from Siena,(clockwise from top left)

 Duccio, Simone Martini, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Pietro Lorenzetti

The Siena quartet - Duccio, Simone Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti and his brother, Ambrogio Lorenzetti - contributed strokes of technical mastery to the development of painting that established its primacy in the Western canon of art.

The Met exhibition reveals contributions by Siena's "big four" to innovations usually credited to Florence in the 1400's: fresco painting and one point (or vanishing point) perspective.

Among the rarest works on view in Siena: the Rise of Painting are two sinopia designs for fresco paintings of the Annunciation. These, dating to the mid-1330's, were created by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (active 1319–47). 

Sinopia was the red-brown highlight color brushed on to the wet plaster base to delineate the underlying composition of the picture. This would then be painted with colored pigments before the plaster could harden. Ambrogio's designs were over-painted later by a less accomplished hand. During modern-day restoration, his sinopia designs were rediscovered and preserved.

Ed Voves, Photo (2024)

 Ambrogio Lorenzetti's The Angel Gabriel and the Annunciate Virgin,

sinopia on plaster for frescoes, c. 1334-36

 Normally, a fresco would be based on a single design (as imagined above)  not separated into two components. But Ambrogio created a pair of designs because they would be placed on either side of a chapel window. Sunlight, beaming down between the images of the Angel Gabriel and Mary into the church interior, would symbolize the glow of divine light associated with the incarnation and birth of the Messiah.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti reused this Annunciation design for his last signed painting, dating to 1344. He chose a square format, very unusual for the 1300's but much favored by later painters.

Ed Voves, Photo (2024)

 Ambrogio Lorenzetti's The Annunciation, 1344

This tremendous work of art was graced with all the technical skill that Ambrogio could muster. This is especially notable in the way he treated the floor under Gabriel's and Mary's feet. The black and white tiles appear to diminish in size as they recede into the background.

Here we see one of the first, perhaps the very first, demonstrations of linear, one-point, perspective. Here, in Siena, the Italian Renaissance may be said to have begun.

Ironically, the great breakthrough in art which led to the "rise" of painting in Siena resulted from a masterpiece of sculpture. This was a monumental pulpit carved in marble by Nicola Pisano between 1265-1268. Narrative scenes from the New Testament adorned the sides of this pulpit, made for the cathedral of Siena. 

Sculpting in a deep, almost three-dimensional, relief, Pisano brought the sacred history of Christianity to life. His pulpit also revealed the potential of narrative depiction in other genres of art. One young artist from Siena artist evidently was very inspired: Duccio di Buoninsegna.

Little is known of Duccio's early life until 1285 when he painted the Ruccelai Madonna for a church in Florence. This powerful work was greatly influenced by Byzantine icons.The art of the Christian East would continue to influence Duccio, but when he was commissioned to paint a massive altarpiece for Siena's cathedral, he embellished it with narrative scenes drawn from Pisano's pulpit.

 

 The Nativity scene from Nicola Pisano's pulpit for the Siena Cathedral

 compared to Duccio's later version on the Maestà Altarpiece

Duccio's moment of triumph came on June 9, 1311 when the huge altarpiece was installed in Siena Cathedral to great acclaim. Today, it is very difficult to grasp the revolutionary impact of Duccio's Maestà because of the shocking mistreatment it has received over the centuries.

Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Maestà  (1311), as it appears today

When Duccio's Maestà was first exhibited, its height approached sixteen feet, with the central image of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child measuring fourteen feet. Many of the heavenly host of saints and angels surrounding Mary were rendered "life-sized" in human terms. 

Back in 1311, the Maestà was a considerably bigger, double-sided painting. Two bands of narrative paintings, called predella panels, were positioned at the bottom of the work, one on each side, front and back. These predella pictures depict incidents in the life of Jesus or his mother, Mary.

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) 

Predella paintings from the Maestà: The Nativity with Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel (front predella panels); The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew and The Wedding at Cana (back)

Above the Maestà's back predella sequence, forty more paintings of episodes from the life of Christ were displayed, chiefly for the spiritual edification of the clergy.  

Over the centuries, the Maestà lost its commanding position on the altar of Siena's cathedral. As artistic styles and popular tastes changed, the Maestà lost its place in the hearts of the city's people, as well. 

In 1506, the Maestà was taken down from the altar. Two hundred years later, it was treated with what amounts to an act of sacrilege. The huge panel was sawn down its entire length, separating the back from front. As illustrated above, the central part of the front was preserved, but the narrative predella panels below it were removed. All the scenes of Christ's life on the back were removed. Some of these were kept in Siena. Others, along with predella paintings, were sold or lost.

By the mid-1800's, the extent of this tragedy was realized. Scholars and collectors searched out the widely-separated panel paintings and a number returned to Siena. British and American collectors, some of whom possessed great wealth like Henry Clay Frick, purchased those available on the art market. Several of these were bequeathed to the National Gallery in London and to U.S. museums.The Met, the National Gallery in Washington and the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth each have one; the Frick Gallery has two.

Gallery view of Siena: the Rise of Painting, showing predella paintings from the Maestà. (Photo, the Metropolitian Museum of Art)

In an incredible feat of planning, organization and transport, two of the front predella paintings from the Maestà and all eight of the known back predella paintings have been reunited for the exhibition. (The ninth has long been missing.)

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) 

Gallery view showing predella paintings from the Maestà. Visable in this photo are The Wedding at Cana and Christ and the Samaritan Woman 

With becoming modesty, the Siena: the Rise of Painting gallery caption notes that "this exhibition is the first time in centuries that the elements of the back predella can be seen together."

To stand before these predella paintings of episodes in the life of Jesus and see them as Duccio intended them to be seen, is truly a moment to be treasured.

Duccio, however, envisioned these separate scenes as parts of a whole sensory experience. His altarpiece, and later ones by Sienese artists, was intended to serve as a backdrop to the sacred rites of the Christian Mass and to help the members of the clergy and congregation to comprehend what was taking place during the Mass.

Might it still be possible to reassemble all of the surviving components of Duccio's masterpiece, if only for the length of this special exhibition?

Alas, no. It would have been absolutely impossible to bring the central panel of the Maestà with its fourteen-foot Madonna to New York and later to London to display in tandem with the predella paintings. But the curators have performed a second Coup de théâtre by securing the loan of a smaller, yet equally stunning, altarpiece.

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) 

Gallery view of Siena: the Rise of Painting, showing the Pieve Polyptych

      

In an act of unprecedented generosity, the Roman Catholic bishop of the city of Arezzo, Italy, has permitted the altarpiece known as the Pieve Polyptych to travel to The Met and, later, to the National Gallery in London for display in the exhibition. Arezzo, located in Tuscany to the east of Siena, was an important city-state like Siena during the 1300's.

The Pieve Polyptych is also known as the Tarlati Altarpiece. It is composed of several painted and gilded panels joined together to form an ornate altarpiece, still in use today. The overall structure of the Pieve Polyptych is similar to Duccio's Maestà and both were dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) 

Detail of Pietro Lorenzetti's Pieve Polyptych, showing the Annunciation in the upper register and Mary's Assumption in the pinnacle, above

In 1320, the powerful archbishop of Arezzo, Guido Tarlati, commissioned Pietro Lorenzetti to paint an altarpiece bearing the images of the Infant Jesus, the Virgin Mary and various saints of special significance to the people of his city. Pietro Lorenzetti was the elder of two immensely talented brothers and is believed to have been a member of Duccio's team worked with him on the Maestà.

Vasari, who was born in Arezzo, wrote that the Pieve Polyptych had a band of predella paintings at its base like the Maestà. Unfortunately, Vasari did not specify if these predella paintings were narrative scenes or portraits of saints or church officials.

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) 

Pietro Lorenzetti's Pieve Polyptych (Tarlati Altarpiece), 1320

Even if the predella paintings of the Pieve Polyptych were narrative scenes, Lorrenzetti was clearly tasked to create a "portrait-driven" altarpiece for Bishop Tarlati, who wanted to emphasize the importance of Arezzo's patron saints. 

The portraits of the four saints who stand to the left and right of the Virgin Mary are imagined likenesses. Lorenzetti had no way of knowing what St. Donatus looked like back in the early days of Christianity nor did he have much awareness of historical details of clothing. He depicted St. Donatus in the garb of a contemporary bishop, which likely pleased Bishop Tarlati.

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) 

Detail of the Pieve Polyptych, showing the portrait of St. Donatus

Human Psychology was a different matter. Donatus is portrayed as a distinct person, an individual with his own thoughts and concerns. So too were the other three saints, especially St. John the Baptist. It is impossible to believe that Lorenzetti did not use actual persons to model for these striking portraits.

With the Virgin Mary, Lorenzetti had to adhere to a more traditional likeness, for Christian teaching maintains that the mother of Jesus was born without the taint of sin.Thus, she remains untouched by the blemishes and wrinkles to which everyone else, including saints like Donatus, are subject.

Never-the-less, Pietro Lorenzetti's Pieve Polyptych is a revolutionary work of art. A major turning point in Western culture had occurred. 

For nearly a thousand years, Christian art had identified saints by a code of symbolism. The keys of Saint Peter, for instance, provided instant recognition for the leader of the Apostles. Lorenzetti took a different approach. He conceived the heroes and heroines of Christianity as flesh and blood human beings, like the members of the congregation worshiping before the altar.

The true significance of this would not be fully apparent for a long time to come. Pietro Lorenzetti's portraits, however, were expressive and populist images, well-suited to Siena's democratic government and the social dynamism rising throughout Tuscany during the 1300's.

And then, first as rumor and then as terrifying fact, bubonic plague, the Black Death, struck Siena. Thousands died in the pestilence, including both of the Lorenzetti brothers. The half-century of Siena's noble aspirations and solid achievements, 1300-1350, was over.

This is the point in time where the Met's splendid exhibition ends - by necessity, abruptly. We will close this review in like fashion and for the same reason. 

Siena deserved a better, kinder fate. It deserves, too, a more just and accurate assessment in the pages of history, as well.

This is a task which the curators of Siena: the Rise of Painting have taken upon themselves to achieve. With skill, conviction and brilliant insight, they have gone far to "acknowledge and probe the achievement of Siena's trecento artists - in painting, sculpture and metalwork ..."

As the above quotation from the exhibition catalog affirms, the artistic achievement of Siena extended to other genres beyond painting. This last was, of course, the most important, which is why I have emphasized painting in this review to the exclusion of almost everything else. 

In a future, follow-up essay in Art Eyewitness, we will examine more - and more widely - of the fantastic array of treasures on view in Siena: the Rise of Painting.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved                                                                                          

Original photography, copyright of Ed Voves

Introductory Image: Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Detail of Pietro  Lorenzetti’s Pieve Polyptych (the Tarlati Altarpiece). Measurements below.

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Duccio di Buoninsegna’s Madonna and Child, 1290-1300.Tempera and gold on wood: 9 3/8 x 6 1/2 in.(23.8 x 16.5 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art #2004.442

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Goro di Gregorio's sculpture of the Enthroned  Virgin.Terracotta:  Overall: 17 5/8 x 10 x 9 1/2 in. (44.8 x 25.4 x 24.1 cm) Met Cloisters 1998.214

 Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Duccio di Buoninsegna’s The Virgin and Child with Saints Dominic and Aurea. Tempera and gold on panel: Framed: central panel 24 3/16 x 15 3/8 in.(61.5 x 39 cm); left wing 17 11/16 x 7 1/16 in.(45 x 18 cm); right wing 17 11/16 x 8 1/16 in.(45 x 20.5 cm) National Gallery, London.

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Gallery view of Siena: the Rise of Painting exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Chalice of Peter of Sassoferrato from the collection of The Met Cloisters Museum appears in the foreground.

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Gallery view of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 601. Giotto's Adoration of the Magi appears in the foreground.

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Simone Martini's Virgin and Child with Four Saints and a Dominican Nun. Tempera and gold leaf on panel: 11 3/16 × 7 15/16 in. (28.4 × 20.1 cm) Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Photo collage of paintings from Siena, 1300-1350: Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Temptation of Christ on the Mountain. Tempera & gold leaf on poplar panel: 17 × 18 1/8 in. (43.2 × 46 cm) Frick Collection; Simone Martini, Detail of Christ Discovered in the Temple. Tempera & gold leaf on panel.19 1/2 × 13 13/16 in. (49.5 × 35.1 cm) Walker Art Museum, Liverpool; Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Stories from the Life of Saint Nicholas. Tempera and gold leaf on panel: 37 13/16 × 20 7/8 × 2 3/16 in. (96 × 53 × 5.5cm) Uffizi; Pietro Lorenzetti, Silhouetted Cross.Tempera on panel: 57 7/8 × 35 15/16 in. (147 × 91.3 cm) Museo Diocesan no, Cortona

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Ambrogio Lorenzetti's The Angel Gabriel and the Annunciate Virgin. Plaster sinopie for frescoes: 94 15/16 × 68 1/4 in. (241.1 × 173.4 cm)95 7/16 × 68 1/16 in. (242.4 × 172.8 cm) San Galgano a Montesiepi

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Ambrogio Lorenzetti's The Annunciation, 1344. Tempera and gold on panel: 50 × 47 in.  (127 × 120 cm) Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena.

Comparitve study of the Nativity scene from Nicola Pisano pulpit for Siena Cathedral and nativity scene from Duccio's Maestà: (from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Pulpito_del_duomo_di_siena_06.JPG) and Ed Voves, Photo (2024)

Duccio di Buonisegna (Italian, 1255-1319) Maesta, 1308-1311. Tempera and gold on wood: 84 x 156 in. (213 x 396 cm.)  Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena, Italy https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duccio_maesta1021.jpg

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Gallery views of the Siena: the Rise of Painting exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, showing predella paintings from the Maestà:

Duccio di Buoninsegna, (Italian, active by1278–died 1318 Siena) The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel Tempera and gold leaf on single poplar panel Overall, including original frame, 18 7/8 × 343/16 × 3 1/8 in. (48 × 86.8 × 7.9 cm); painted surface: center image 16 15/16 x 17 5/16 in.(43 x 43.9 cm), left side image 16 15/16 x 65/15 in (43 x 16 cm), right side image 16 15/16x 6 5/16 in. (43 x 16 cm) National Gallery of Art; The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew. Tempera and gold leaf on panel: painted surface 16 13/16 x 1715/16 (42.7 x 45.5 cm) National Gallery of Art; The Wedding at Cana. Tempera and gold leaf on panel17 1/8 × 18 5/16 in. (43.5 × 46.5 cm) Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo

Eileen Travell, Photo (2024) Gallery view of Predella Paintings from Duccio's Maesta. © Metropolitan Museum

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Pietro Lorenzetti's Pieve Polyptych, 1320. Tempera and gold on panel Overall: 9 ft. 9 11/16 in. × 10 ft. 4 3/16 in. × 39/16 in. (299 × 315.5 × 9 cm) Center panel height: 10 ft. 4 3/16 in. (315.5cm) Flanking panels height: 94 1/2 in. (240 cm)

Margaret Anne Logan, Photo (2024) Gallery showing Pietro Lorenzetti's Pieve Polyptych, 1320.  Photo taken for Art Eyewitness.

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Ambrogio Lorenzetti's The Angel Gabriel and the Annunciate Virgin. Plaster sinopie for frescoes: 94 15/16 × 68 1/4 in. (241.1 × 173.4 cm)95 7/16 × 68 1/16 in. (242.4 × 172.8 cm) San Galgano a Montesiepi

Art Eyewitness Book Review: Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance

Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance

By Carl Brandon Strehlke and Ana Gonzales Mozo

Thames & Hudson-Prado Museum/255 pages/$40

Reviewed by Ed Voves

For art scholars, conscientious about assigning correct dates to works of art, the Renaissance presents a problem. When did this "rebirth" of Western art begin? When did painting and sculpture in Europe cease being International Gothic in style and start exhibiting the hallmarks of Renaissance theory and practice?

Most histories of the Renaissance focus on 1401 as the "takeoff" of the Renaissance in Italy. That year marked the momentous competition between Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi to design the bronze doors of the Baptistery for the city of Florence. If one requires timeline accuracy, then Ghiberti vs. Brunelleschi provides a serviceable date.

The year 1425 is also a contender as the alternative birthday for the Renaissance. A brilliant new book, Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance, investigates the events of that decisive moment in art history. Published by Thames & Hudson, this thoughtful and lavishly illustrated book documents a major exhibition at the Prado during the summer of 2019 to help celebrate the 200th anniversary of Spain's greatest museum. 

A quarter of a century after the Ghiberti- Brunelleschi competition, a Dominican monk named Fra Giovanni da Fiesole painted a puzzling work entitled Annunciation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. In many ways, his work looks notably medieval. Yet closer inspection reveals that this egg tempora painting on wood panel exhibits Brunelleschi's revolutionary art theories. 

The implications of shifting the start of the Renaissance to this 1425 painting are unsettling. The key player in this scenario now becomes a monk who was proficient in manuscript illumination and application of gold leaf, hardly the skill set of a "Renaissance Man."

Fra Angelico, The Virgin with the Pomegranate, ca. 1424-25

Fra Giovanni da Fiesole is better known today as Fra Angelico. Born Guido di Pietro, around the year 1395, he was a native Tuscan from the town of Vicchio, near to Florence. Trained as an artist, he joined the Dominican Order, along with his brother, who was also a noted illustrator of manuscripts.

Not only did Fra Angelico paint some of the most ethereal, indeed celestial, beings imaginable, but his own personality was close to being angelic. He was held in high esteem during his lifetime, as an artist of exceptional talent and as a devout Christian. In 1982, Fra Angelico was beatified by Pope John Paul II, an important step on the road to sainthood.

Fra Angelico excelled in more than traditional medieval artistic conventions. Both Carl Brandon Strehlke, the primary author of the Thames & Hudson book, and Ana Gonzales Mozo, who contributed a perceptive essay on Fra Angelico's painting technique, affirm that he incorporated advanced ideas from Brunelleschi, solidly based on mathematics, in the Annunciation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise.

Fra Angelico, Annunciation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, 1425-1426

Strehlke, Curator Emeritus of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, notes that Fra Angelico took the bold step to accurately position his protagonists, the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary within an architectural setting in the picture. They are not floating in space but occupy a set position, a "you are here" point established by mathematical calculation. Strehlke writes:

The architecture of the Virgin's house shows how open Angelico was to Brunelleschi's ideas about drawing buildings in spatial recession. It is the earliest surviving painted example of architecture in perspective. The manipulation of the orthogonals, horizon line, and vanishing point suggests careful consideration of what Brunelleschi's biographer Antonio Manetti noted 'painters today term perspective.'

Fra Angelico's painting depicts the interface - we might also say the intrusion - of the realm of the sacred into human reality. Although the Virgin Mary's house has a theater-set ambiance, Fra Angelico revealed that he was adept at utilizing Brunelleschi's methodology in the depiction of the small side room which has a "homey" feel to it. Look through that door and you see a small patch of the real world shown in perspective.

Fra Angelico, as a Dominican monk, had also to be faithful to the theological precepts of his Order's great theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Aquinas believed that reason, if founded upon faith, will lead to understanding and union with God.

Fra Angelico, Annunciation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (detail)

The painting of the Annunciation is a visualization of this process. The streams of golden light proceeding from the hands of God represent the Incarnation, the act of divine inspiration by which Mary, a virgin, will give birth to Jesus the Son of God. 

Fra Angelico, Annunciation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (detail)

Mary is mystified by the Angel Gabriel's entreaty but accepts that she has been chosen to be mother of the Messiah. This act of faith engenders an awareness, a deeper form of knowledge, that God is intervening in the lives of human beings.

"Human salvation," Aquinas wrote, "demands the divine disclosure of truths surpassing reason."

Hard to believe?  Aquinas, the "Angelic Doctor," is famous for his voluminous, densely argued philosophical treatises, but he "cuts to the quick" on the point of faith.  

"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible."

The faith-acceptance-awareness process is what we see depicted in the major incident of Annunciation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. But what about the  Paradise Lost "sidebar"?  Why was this seemingly-unrelated episode from Genesis placed in juxtaposition with the Annunciation?

The answer reveals more of the "medieval" roots of the Renaissance. 

Fra Angelico painted Annunciation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise for the Dominican Order's church, San Domenico in Fiesole. The Thames & Hudson book has an intriguing drawing showing how this painting was displayed. It was positioned on a large frame which straddled the width of the church. Called the Rood Screen, this framework separated the nave of the church where the congregation stood or knelt from the sanctuary and choir. In this most sacred area stood the altar where the priest and monks gathered. Here the priest conducted the sacrifice of the Mass, turning bread and wine into Christ's body and blood.

The positioning of the Rood Screen prevented direct observation of the sacred ceremony by the lay people in the church. By way of compensation, paintings and statues were placed on the Rood Screen for them to contemplate as they listened to the clergy conduct the Mass. 

One of the paintings hung on San Domenico's Rood Screen was Annunciation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. 

Fra Angelico

            Annunciation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (detail)

An important hymn/prayer of the Roman Catholic liturgy during the Renaissance was Salve Regina, in honor of Mary, mother of Jesus. It was included in the evening prayer service known as Compline. The opening words of the prayer reveal why Fra Angelico painted Adam and Eve's banishment from Paradise on the same poplar board with the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary. 

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,
Hail our life, our sweetness and our hope.
To thee do we cry,
Poor banished children of Eve; 
To thee do we send up our sighs,
Mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

The words of the hymn would have been powerfully reinforced by the imagery of the painting. Humanity's suffering, caused by the disobedience of Adam and Eve, would be redeemed through the agency of Mary's faith and the life and death of her son, Jesus.

Fra Angelico created Annunciation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise in 1425. Another version of the banishment of Adam and Eve was being painted at the same time in Florence: Masaccio's Expulsion of Adam and Eve in the Brancacci Chapel of the Santa Maria del Carmine Church. Fra Angelico almost certainly was aware of Masaccio's handling of this episode from Genesis. While Masaccio portrayed the existential grief of Adam and Eve, Fra Angelico chose to show the pair as less grief-stricken and ultimately redeemable.

Masaccio's Expulsion may appeal more to modern interpretations and ideas. Yet, Fra Angelico was an artist capable of great psychological insight. One of the supporting works in the Prado exhibition reveals the profound extent of his ability to probe human character and emotions.

In 1909, acting on the advice of Bernard Berenson, the Philadelphia collector, John G. Johnson, bought what was believed to be a portrait of St. Francis of Assisi. Johnson bequeathed his collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, including this work attributed to Fra Angelico.

Fra Angelico

                          Head and Torso of Saint Francis of Assisi, ca. 1427-30  

Berenson was correct in his assessment but only years later was it discovered that this image of St. Francis had been a part of an ensemble of two saints praying at the foot of the Cross. The figures of St. Francis, his companion on the other side of the Cross, St. Nicholas of Bari and of the martyred Jesus were all painted to appear as if they were statues, thus enhancing the realism of the scene.

Close inspection of the St. Francis "portrait," which survived the centuries since 1430 in much better condition than St. Nicholas, reveals the degree of Fra Angelico's close study of human physiognomy. The sagging "bags" beneath the eyes, the pinched features of the face, the straining neck muscles, all testify to the physical toll and privation of St. Francis'  austere devotion to God.

It is vital to remember that there is no portrait of St. Francis, drawn or painted from life. An imagined likeness was created about three years after his death in 1226. Fra Angelico's depiction of the beloved saint from Assisi is thus a psychological portrait and all the more convincing for being so. Fra Angelico, as a monk, well knew the personal cost of a life of sanctity. It is obvious - at least to me - that Fra Angelico painted the figures in this devotional work while in a state of meditative awareness of Christ, St. Francis and St. Nicholas.

This sense of communion between artist and subject is a key facet of Icon painting in the Greek and Russian Orthodox traditions. Fra Angelico, working according to the Western, Latin canon of Christianity, brought intense levels of spirituality to his work. Regardless of the form of interpretation, whether it was the medieval-looking Annunciation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise or the visceral realism of his St. Francis, Fra Angelico painted in "communion" with the divine.

Fra Angelico was later to combine his skill in narrative painting with the profound feel for character and emotion which we see in his St. Francis of Assisi. 

In 1436, Cosimo de Medici funded the rebuilding of the Dominican church and monastery of San Marco in Florence.  Fra Angelico was tasked with painting in fresco a contemplative scene from the life of Christ in each of the monk's cells and larger devotional works in the public spaces of the building. The series was brought to a high state of perfection, as can be seen in the version of the Annunciation which Fra Angelico painted in one of the corridors of San Marco.
     

Fra Angelico

            Annunciation fresco, corridor of the dormitory of San Marco, ca. 1438                                      
Observing Fra Angelico's work decades after his death in 1455, Michelangelo delivered a heartfelt testimonial.

"One has to believe that this good monk has visited paradise and been allowed to choose his models there."

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Images of Fra Angelico paintings from the collection of the Prado in Madrid, Spain, are  courtesy of the Prado web pages:

https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-virgin-with-the-pomegranate/61b654df-1de2-483f-88bb-4

https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-annunciation/9b02b6c9-3618-4a92-a6b7-26f9076fcb67

Introductory Image:
Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance, 2020 (book cover) courtesy Thames & Hudson

Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1395-1455) The Virgin with the Pomegranate, ca.1424. Egg tempera and tooled gold on poplar panel: Height: 87 cm. (height) X 59 cm. (width).  Museo Nacional del Prado, # P8233. Image © the Museo Nacional del Prado. 

Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1395-1455) Annunciation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, 1425-1426. Tempera on poplar panel: Height: 190.3 cm. (height) X 191.5 cm (width).  Museo Nacional del Prado, # P0015. Image © the Museo Nacional del Prado.

Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1395-1455) Head and Torso of Saint Francis of Assisi, ca. 1427-30. Egg tempera and tooled gold on poplar panel: Height: 61 cm. (height) X 35.2 cm. (width). Philadelphia Museum of Art. John G. Johnson collection. 1917. cat. 14.

Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1395-1455) Annunciation fresco, corridor of the dormitory of San Marco, ca. 1438.  Fresco: 230 cm. x 321 cm.  Museo di San Marco, Florence.