Paradiso

Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia

Paradiso

  • Roma, Friday, July 25, 2014 6:33 PM
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Scheda di approfondimento
Together with a scene of the Creation and Expulsion from Paradise, also in the Metropolitan (Robert Lehman Collection), this picture formed the base (predella) of an altarpiece formerly in the church of San Domenico, Siena (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence). Painted in 1445, the two paintings rank among the finest works by the artist. Groups of saints and angels embrace in a rich, tapestry-like garden of Paradise. Giovanni di Paolo was much inspired by paintings he saw in Florence by Fra Angelico, but he rejected the perspectival rationalism of Florentine art in favor of a visionary effect of exquisite intensity. For a reconstruction of the altarpiece, see metmuseum.org/collections. Widely considered one of the defining masterpieces by the artist, this captivating work and a companion showing the Expulsion from Paradise, also in the MMA (Robert Lehman Collection, 1975.1.31), unquestionably formed part of the same predella. Pope-Hennessy (1937) first proposed that they belonged to an altarpiece in the Guelfi chapel of the church of San Domenico, Siena, described by the seventeenth-century Sienese writer Ugurgieri Azzolini (1649). Ugurgieri Azzolini states that the altarpiece was dated 1445 and that the predella showed the Last Judgment, the Flood, and the Creation of the World; the latter scene would coincide with the painting in the Lehman collection. Pope-Hennessy further proposed identifying the main panels of this altarpiece with a Madonna and Child with Saints Dominic, Peter, Paul, and Thomas Aquinas in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, signed and dated 1445. From the outset there seemed to be a contradiction in the fact that another, earlier seventeenth-century source (Chigi 1625–26) recorded that the altarpiece in the Guelfi chapel was dated 1426. Thus, the leading Italian specialist on Giovanni di Paolo, Brandi (1941), rejected Pope-Hennessy’s identification (this was one of many cases in which the two scholars crossed swords over issues of the date, reconstruction, and interpretation of various works by Giovanni di Paolo). The matter was thus viewed as unresolved until Bähr (2002) provided evidence that the Uffizi altarpiece was commissioned for a chapel dedicated to Saint Dominic—hence the inclusion of both Dominic and the great Dominican theologian Thomas Acquinas—and was only subsequently moved to the Guelfi Chapel, which was dedicated to Saint Anthony. This would explain the conflict in the recorded dates, which would apply to two different altarpieces. Bähr’s explanation makes it extremely likely that 1) the two fragments in the MMA did, indeed, form part of the predella to the Uffizi altarpiece; and that 2) this is the work described by Ugurgieri Azzolini. The two pieces would have been adjacent to each other, the Expulsion from Paradise being succeeded by Paradise, followed by scenes of the Last Judgment, Hell, and the Flood (lost, but perhaps reflected in a later altarpiece in the Pinacoteca, Siena; see Pope-Hennessy 1937, Strehlke 1988, and Sallay 2010 for detailed discussions of these issues). Some time during the 1430s Giovanni di Paolo visited Florence and made a series of drawings of compositions that particularly captured his imagination (Ladis 1995). The composition for Paradise was almost certainly inspired by Fra Angelico’s Paradise (Museo di San Marco, Florence). Giovanni di Paolo’s depiction of the Creation and Expulsion from Paradise shows certain affinities with Dante’s Divine Comedy (Strehlke 1988). Among the identifiable figures in the depiction of Paradise are Saint Giles at the upper left, dressed in white, with a deer behind him; Beato Ambrogio Sansedoni, a patron of Siena, at the middle left, dressed in the black and white Dominican habit, with a white dove near his head; Saint Augustine with his mother, Saint Monica, greeting each other at the center, she an old woman in black, he a bishop; Saints Dominic and Peter Martyr at the lower center, both in the Dominican habit; and Saint Anthony Abbot at the bottom right with two Dominican nuns. The paint surface has been cut on the right side, where a painted border has been added over remnants of the original composition to make the scene appear complete. There are traces of the original border on the other three sides. Despite its nineteenth-century transfer from panel to canvas, the paint surface is well preserved (the original gesso was preserved in the transfer). [2011]

 

Titolo Paradiso
Sottotitolo
Artista Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia
Note artista
Datazione 1445
Committente
Tipologia
E' un insieme? No
Opera di riferimento
Tema