This triptychA picture consisting of three parts. The term denotes both the object itself and its compositional form. As an object, the triptych may vary in size and material, but usually consists of a central panel flanked by wings (or shutters), which may be hinged; as a compositional form it is a tripartite structure, often with an emphasized central element. Although its imagery was, until the 19th century at least, predominantly religious, the object as such was not tied to a specific function.
—Victor M. Schmidt, Grove Art © Oxford University Press consists of two laterals with paired saints and a central panel with the Madonna and Child. All three panels are topped with similar triangular gables with a painted medallion in the center. The reduction of a five-part altarpieceAn image-bearing structure set on the rear part of the altar, abutting the back of the altarblock, or set behind the altar in such a way as to be visually joined with the altar when viewed from a distance. It is also sometimes called a retable, following the medieval term retrotabulum. The altarpiece was never officially prescribed by the Church, but it did perform a prescribed function alternatively carried out by a simple inscription on the altarblock: to declare to which saint or mystery the altar was dedicated. In fact, the altarpiece did more than merely identify the altar; its form and content evoked the mystery or personage whose cult was celebrated at the altar. This original and lasting function influenced the many forms taken by the altarpiece throughout its history.
—Alexander Nagel, Grove Art © Oxford University Press into a simplified format with the external profile of a triptych may have been suggested to Florentine masters as a consequence of trends that appeared towards the end of the fourteenth century: a greater simplification in composition and a revival of elements of painting from the first half of the Trecento. Agnolo Gaddi followed this trend in several of his works. He demonstrates this in the three panels being discussed here by his deliberate revival of motifs that had been abandoned by most Florentine painters since the mid-fourteenth century. To present the Madonna seated on a throne of Giottesque type, instead of concealing the structure of the throne with a gold-embroidered cloth of honor as in most paintings realized by masters in the circle of Orcagna(Orcagna; Orgagna; Arcagnuolo)
(born 1315–20; died Florence, 1368)
Painter, sculptor, and architect, thought to have also been active as a poet. He was trained as a painter and referred to himself as “pictor” on the tabernacle in Orsanmichele. Details of his training are not known, but his first surviving works reveal various influences, especially of Maso di Banco and Taddeo Gaddi.
—G. Kreytenberg, Grove Art © Oxford University Press, was a sort of archaism at this time. Agnolo scrupulously describes this seat and at the same time exploits its form to create three-dimensional effects. Yet these archaizing motifs are combined with more forward-looking features. Gaddi’s progressive adjustment to the innovative late GothicTerm used to denote, since the 15th century, the architecture and, from the 19th century onward, all the visual arts of Europe during a period extending by convention from about 1120 to c. 1400 in central Italy, and until the late 15th century and even well into the 16th century in northern Europe and the Iberian Peninsula. The early gothic style overlapped chronologically with Romanesque and flourished after the onset of Renaissance art in Italy and elsewhere. The term gothic is applied to western European painting of the 13th century to the early 15th century. Unlike gothic architecture, it is distinguished more by developments in style and function than in technique, and even in these areas there is considerable national and regional diversity. The applicability of the term to Italian painting is debated, as is its usefulness in accounting for developments in Netherlandish painting from the early 15th century. Contact with Byzantine art was close in the early 13th century, but after c. 1250 survived principally in the Holy Roman Empire and Italy.
—Peter Kidson, Grove Art © Oxford University Press taste of his time is thus attested by various aspects of the triptych, such as the pastiglia decoration in the gables, the now lost decoration of the frame, the rich orientalizing carpet that covers the floor, and even the crowded composition of the central panel.
Lionello Venturi published this triptych in 1931 under the name of Gherardo Starnina. This attribution was based on the now discarded theory of scholars who had tried in the first three decades of the century to reconstruct the oeuvre of a putative disciple of Agnolo Gaddi, to whom the conventional name “Madonnenmeister” or “Compagno d’ Agnolo” was given and who was later identified with Gherardo Starnina. However, Bernard Berenson(June 26, 1865–October 6, 1959)
Art historian and connoisseur. Son of a Lithuanian timber merchant who emigrated to the United States with his family in 1875, he was educated at the Latin School, Boston, and at Harvard University, where he studied Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and German. In an unsuccessful application for a traveling fellowship to Europe, he wrote, ‘Art prevails in this programme because it is there that I feel myself weakest. One can study literature here . . . but art not at all.’ On his subsequent visit to Europe in 1885, financed by friends, his rapid visual self-education led to the decision to settle in Italy and to devote his life to the study of Italian art.
—William Mostyn-Owen, Grove Art © Oxford University Press recognized that a good part of the work given to the “Compagno d’Agnolo” belongs to Agnolo himself. The studies of Ugo Procacci on Starnina finally put the proposed identification to rest, though it continued to enjoy residual credit for some time to come. In the National Gallery of Art, the altarpieceAn image-bearing structure set on the rear part of the altar, abutting the back of the altarblock, or set behind the altar in such a way as to be visually joined with the altar when viewed from a distance. It is also sometimes called a retable, following the medieval term retrotabulum. The altarpiece was never officially prescribed by the Church, but it did perform a prescribed function alternatively carried out by a simple inscription on the altarblock: to declare to which saint or mystery the altar was dedicated. In fact, the altarpiece did more than merely identify the altar; its form and content evoked the mystery or personage whose cult was celebrated at the altar. This original and lasting function influenced the many forms taken by the altarpiece throughout its history.
—Alexander Nagel, Grove Art © Oxford University Press was cataloged as a work by Agnolo Gaddi, and since the 1960s, art historians have unanimously accepted this attribution.
The present writer proposed that Agnolo Gaddi’s altarpiece might have been executed for the sacristy of the church of San Miniato al Monte (Florence), of which the Alberti were patrons and for whose decoration Benedetto di Nerozzo Alberti left funds in his will of 1387. The reasons adduced at that time in support of such a hypothesis were, it must be admitted, not quite convincing: referring to the inscription in Saint Benedict’s book to the “admonition” (an administrative sanction by the Florentine government) against Alberti in 1387 and his subsequent exile is open to question. Furthermore, I erroneously asserted that Saint Giovanni Gualberto was represented in the painting. The saint to the right of the Virgin is, in fact, Bernard of Clairvaux, but the presence of this saint in the altarpiece is actually a further argument in support of a provenance from the sacristy of San Miniato. Saint Bernard was the patron Saint of Benedetto Alberti’s son Bernardo, who in his will dated 1389 left money for masses to be celebrated annually pro anima dicti testatoris (for the soul of the said testator) in the family chapel in San Miniato, which had evidently already by that date been consecrated. The representation of Saint Andrew, who was the patron saint of a predeceased son of Benedetto Alberti, also links the altarpiece to the sacristy of San Miniato. As to the fourth saint, Catherine of Alexandria (standing on a broken wheel), she was evidently much venerated in Benedetto’s family. This is proved by the fact that, in his will of 1387, he bequeathed money for the decoration of an oratory near Florence (Santa Caterina dell’Antella) dedicated to the martyr saint of Alexandria (and decorated by a cycle of frescoes illustrating scenes from her life by Spinello Aretino); additionally, his son Bernardo wished to build a monastery and a church in her honor. The Alberti family’s veneration of Saint Catherine may have been based on the popular etymology of her name (catherine = catenula) diffused by Jacopo da Varazze in Legenda aurea, with reference to the chain represented in the Alberti coats of arms.
Although the provenance from San Miniato remains a hypothesis, it still seems to me a quite plausible one that, if correct, would give us the certainty that by 1830 the triptych was still on the altar of the sacristy. An altarpiece can apparently be seen still in situ in a sketch of the sacristy’s altar wall [fig. 1] [fig. 1] C. A. R. Roller, ""Design of the east wall of the sacristy of San Miniato in Florence,"" from Tagebuch einer italienischen Reise (Journal of My Trip to Italy in the Years 1829 and 1830), 1:7, June 1830, Rittersaalverein Castle Museum, Burgdorf, Switzerland made in that year by architect Christoph Robert August Roller (1805–1858), in his Tagebuch einer italienischen Reise (Castle Museum Burgdorf, Burgdorf, Switzerland). Unfortunately, the sketch, to which Stefan Weppelmann kindly drew my attention, is very small and certainly not sufficient for the identification of the triptych in the Gallery. What may be said for certain is only that an altarpiece composed of five panels stood on the altar of the sacristy of San Miniato in 1830, but by 1836 this altarpiece was no longer there, as Stefan Weppelmann rightly observed. It was removed and sold presumably by the Pia Opera degli Esercizi Spirituali, which had owned the furniture and decorations of the church since 1820.
As for its date, the Gallery’s first catalog (1941) cautiously suggested “the last quarter of the XIVth century,” while the volume devoted to the Duveen Pictures (1941) proposed an approximate date of c. 1380. More recent publications in general support a time frame within the 1380s, although without explaining the reasons for this proposal. Arguing for a provenance from the sacristy of the Florentine church of San Miniato al Monte, Miklós Boskovits (1975) attempted a more precise dating shortly after the codicil dated 1387 was appended to the testament of Benedetto di Nerozzo degli Alberti, its putative patron. For his part, Bruce Cole (1979) stylistically linked the Gallery triptych with the cycle of frescoes in the choir of Santa Croce in Florence, for which he proposed a date of execution in the years c. 1388–1393. Given the lack of securely datable panels by Gaddi, with the exception of the composite altarpiece of the Cappella del Crocifisso, still in the church of San Miniato, various scholars have attempted to construct a chronology for the artist based on an analysis of the punched decoration of his work; however, this effort has failed to yield any precise indication for the Washington altarpiece other than a vague association with a relatively late phase in the painter’s activity.
In the course of his career, especially between the 1380s and the early 1390s, Agnolo Gaddi produced a number of polyptychsType of object with several panels, usually an altarpiece, although it may also fulfil other functions. The polyptych normally consists of a central panel with an even number of side-panels, which are sometimes hinged to fold. Although in principle every object with two panels or more may be called a polyptych, the word is normally used as a general term for anything larger than a triptych. As with diptychs and triptychs, the size and material can vary.
—Victor M. Schmidt, Grove Art © Oxford University Press, now in part dismantled and dispersed, of which at least the surviving central panels propose a composition close to that of the triptych discussed here. I refer in particular to Madonna and Child with Eight Angels (now united with laterals that did not originally belong to it) in the Contini-Bonacossi bequest to the Uffizi, Florence; Madonna and Child Surrounded by Eight Angels in the church of San Lorenzo at Borgo San Lorenzo; the triptych in the Staatliche Museen of Berlin, in which six angels are placed around the throne and a further pair are in the gable; and Madonna and Child Flanked by Twelve Angels, now in a private collection in Milan. None of these is securely dated, but the Berlin triptych can in all probability be identified with that formerly on the altar of the Nobili chapel in Santa Maria degli Angeli, which bore the inscription “An D 1387 Bernardus Cini de Nobilibus fecit fieri hanc cappellam.” This gives us a useful point of reference not only for defining a chronological sequence of the paintings in question but also, as we shall see, for the dating of Gaddi’s great cycles of Florentine frescoes. Another chronological point of reference, albeit an approximate one, is 1383, the date of the testament of Michele di Vanni Castellani, in which he made bequests for the construction and decoration of a family chapel in Santa Croce, the chapel that would later be frescoed by Agnolo Gaddi. The style of this decoration suggests a period of execution not much later than the will; indeed, most art historians tend to place the execution of the cycle in the years immediately following 1383.
Although successive restorations have now made it difficult to assess, the Borgo San Lorenzo panel seems the earliest of the group. It was perhaps painted even before the frescoes in the Castellani chapel, with which it has affinities in its use of dense shadows in modeling, in the rigid profiles of the angels, and in the deeply channeled and brittle-looking folds of their garments. Between that work and the Nobili triptych now in Berlin can be placed both the Madonna of the Contini-Bonacossi bequest (it too now altered by retouches) and the triptych in the Gallery. In contrast to these latter two, the animated composition of the panel destined for the Nobili chapel seems to represent a further step forward, in the direction of the more dynamic compositions and the more delicate modeling that characterize the painter’s final phase, to which the above-mentioned Madonna surrounded by twelve angels now in a private collection can, I believe, be ascribed.
If such a chronological sequence of the altarpieces executed by Agnolo in the 1380s is plausible, the Gallery triptych ought to date to a period slightly preceding 1387—that is, slightly preceding the execution of the other and more important enterprise promoted by Benedetto di Nerozzo Alberti, the frescoing of the choir in Santa Croce. Various similarities can be identified between passages of that cycle and the Washington triptych, in confirmation of the chronological proximity of the two works: the bust of Saint Andrew [fig. 2] [fig. 2] Detail of Saint Andrew (left), Agnolo Gaddi, Madonna and Child with Saints Andrew, Benedict, Bernard, and Catherine of Alexandria with Angels, shortly before 1387, tempera on poplar, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection recurs, in similar form, in the scene of the Making of the Cross [fig. 3] [fig. 3] Detail of spectators, Agnolo Gaddi, The Making of the Cross, 1385–1390, fresco, Cappella Maggiore, Santa Croce, Florence. Image: Scala/Art Resource, NY, in the group of spectators to the extreme right of the fresco, while analogies can also be identified between the other saints of the triptych and the busts of the prophets inserted in the ornamental friezes that articulate the chapel’s decoration. Close similarities have also been observed between the lateral saints of the Gallery triptych and the fragments of an altarpiece now in Indianapolis. We have no secure evidence to help us date these fragments, probably the remains of the decoration of the lateral pilasters of a polyptych roughly contemporary with, or perhaps slightly later than, the triptych being discussed here. In conclusion, therefore, the Washington altarpiece exemplifies a stage in the artist’s career in which he embarked on the gradual discovery of the innovative features of late Gothic art. This led him to develop greater elegance in poses, more delicate and harmonious arrangement of draperies, and more spontaneous vitality in the conduct of the angels thronged around the sides of the throne as if drawn magnetically to the child. A clear sign of the innovations of the phase in which Agnolo painted the frescoes in the choir of Santa Croce is also the artist’s polychromy: abandoning the somber palette of previous works, he now prefers or utilizes combinations of delicate pastel colors.
Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)
March 21, 2016