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Bulletin of Rhode Island School of Design Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design Issued Quarterly Vol. IX OCTOBER, 1921 No. 4 MADONNA AND CHILD Attributed to Andrea di Giovanni Anonymous Gift, 1920 Entered as second-class matter January 16, 1913, at the post office at Providence, Rhode Island, under the Act of August 24, 1912. Copyright, 1921, by Rhode Island School of Design. All rights reserved. IX, 34 Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design MADONNA AND CHILD, he painted in collaboration in 1372, and ATTRIBUTED TO he not infrequently repeated that master’s ANDREA DI GIOVANNI forms, though in a somewhat coarse manner. Pietro da Puccio executed in HE Rhode Island School of Design 1390 the mediocre frescoes of scenes from at Providence has acquired an ex- Genesis on the north wall of the Campo- T santo of ceptionally attractive panel picture Pisa. Of Cola da Petruccioli, of the Madonna and Child, which ap- Mr. Berenson has recently written, iden- pears at first sight to be a product of tifying this modest and not always attrac- 1 the Sienese school of the latter part of tive artist as a follower of Fei. the 14th century. No one will deny the A number of documents exist which en- Sienese character of the picture, although able us to follow the career of Andrea di closer study may suggest its attribution to Giovanni from 1370 to 1417. At the for- Andrea di Giovanni, a painter of Orvieto. mer date he was working with Cola da I recently had occasion to call attention Petruccioli and other painters, under the to the fact that even as late as the begin- direction of Ugolino da Prete Ilario, on the ing of the 15th century painting at Orvieto tribune of the Cathedral of Orvieto; but was dominated by the artistic tradition it is impossible to distinguish in these 1 of Simone Martini. Two important frescoes the work of the different artists/ polyptychs of the great Sienese master In 1380 Andrea was still working in the were until late years among the treasures tribune of the Cathedral. In 1402 he of the town. One still exists in the Museo had finished a panel for the church of del Duomo; the other has passed into the Corneto. In 1404 he illuminated an collection of Mrs. Gardner at Fenway Indulgence, and in 1411 he executed fres- Court. There is also a Madonna della coes in the chapel of Bonconte in the Ca- Miseracordia in the Cathedral of Orvieto, thedral of Orvieto. The following year he and a Madonna and Child in the Museum. decorated the organ of the cathedral. Both are by Lippo Memmi, a painter Four documents dated 1417 show him whose best works are hardly distinguish- to have been occupied at that time with able from those of his brother-in-law and the restoration of mosaics of the facade of master, Simone Martini. That most of the Cathedral, probably those executed by the masters of Siena continued to paint in Andrea Orcagna. the manner of Simone Martini may be Two identified works of Andrea di seen from their works in the churches of Giovanni are to be seen at Orvieto. One San Giovenale, San Domenico, and the is a panel of the Innocenti, in the church Cathedral. of San Luigi. It represents the Holy We learn from documents that between Child with the mystic lamb in a mandorla 1357 and 1400 no fewer than seventeen of Angels, flanked by groups of Saints and painters were employed in the Cathedral by the symbols of the Evangelists. Above alone, but only four of these masters have is a half figure of the Lord carried by four as yet been identified/ They are Ugolino Cherubim, and below a group of blood- da Prete Ilario, Pietro di Puccio, Cola da stained child Martyrs. The other is a Petruccioli, and Andrea di Giovanni. fresco, above the left lateral entrance of Ugolino da Prete Ilario was the principal the Cathedral, representing the Madonna master of Orvieto in the second half of and Child enthroned between two Angels. the fourteenth century. He was strongly On the completion of this fresco, Andrea influenced by Luca di Tomnie, with whom di Giovanni received in April, 1412, the 1 B. Berenson: “A Sienese Little Master in New 1 Martini et les Raimond Van Marie: “Simone York and Elsewhere.” Art in America, February, 1918. Peintres de son Ecole,” Strasbourg, 1920, 169. pg. 2 Exception is of course to be made for the frescoes 2 L. Fumi: “II Duomo di Orvieto,” Roma, 1891, on the right wall, which were entirely repainted by An- pg. 385. tonio da Viterbo. Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design IX, 35 payment of four florins and five soldi. script guide of the city dated 1625, still With this latter work we shall compare preserved in the city archives, was signed thev panel of the Providence Museum; with the following rhyme: but we must remember that the fresco “Septantadue Milletrecento Anni thirty-four years after was executed the da Siena qui dipinsi Lippo Vanni.” first extant mention of Andrea di Gio- This fresco is the turning-point in Lip- vanni’s activity, and is, therefore, a crea- po ’s career. In his triptych at SS. Dom- tion of his approaching old age. Indeed enic and Sisto in Rome, dated 1358, he both works at Orvieto reveal that lack is still influenced by the Lorenzetti, but of inspiration and of careful execution in the fresco of 1372 he has become a fol- which so often characterize the late works lower of Simone Martini’s manner. of minor artists. But the picture in Prov- Bartolo di Fredi’s datable works are idence shows neither of these weaknesses three: the largely repainted frescoes of and evidently belongs to Andrea’s earlier San Gimignano, probably of 1362, and years, perhaps to about 1380; and it was the two polyptychs of Montalcino of undoubtedly inspired by the work of 1382 and 1388. It is especially this later artists then active in Siena. manner of the frequently varying Bartolo The similarity of the forms of the Provi- di Fredi which seems to have been familiar dence picture with those of the fresco of to Andrea di Giovanni when he painted 1412 suggest that both are by the same the Madonna of the Providence Museum. hand. The spirit of the work, the drawing He follows him in the detailed and decora- of the features, the similar shape of the tive design, the clear coloring, the some- hands, of the feet of the Child, the wavy what hard caligraphy of the outlines, and hair of the Madonna of the Providence in the pink cheeks of his figures. The Museum, compared with those of the Madonna of Bartolo’s Adoration of the figures of the Innocenti panel, are all to Magi in the gallery of Siena shows clearly be noted. The drawing of the mouth the link which existed between the two of the Madonna of the Providence panel artists. is more refined than that of the fresco, The iconography of the Providence and the eyes of the Madonna of the fresco picture is not quite clear. Whether the are rather elongated compared with those two crowns which the Child holds refer of the Madonna of Providence; but in to the coronation of the Virgin where the general the forms are the same. If, with Lord Himself is also represented as wearing the Providence picture in mind, we search a crown; or whether the panel was once for possible inspirers of Andrea di Gio- flanked by side-panels with representa- vanni, we find that no earlier Orvietan tions of Saints receiving the crown of painting accounts for its fine caligraphical Martyrdom, is a question which we cannot and coloristic qualities; but these elements answer. are present in the work of the Sienese Raimond Van Marle. master Fei, in Lippo Vanni, and more especially in Bartolo di Maestro Fredi. Reprinted from Art in America, vol. TX, No. 3, April, 102 sq., by permission of Frederic Fairchild Fei, 1921, pg. whose Madonna at San Domenico in Sherman.. Siena has many affinities with the Provi- dence picture, was perhaps too closely “How does the artist get his sense of Andrea’s contemporary to have influenced Beauty? By seeking the beautiful in Na- him so early in his career. There is a ture and in works of art and trying to pro- fresco by Lippo Vanni which, more than duce the beautiful in his work. The sense of any other of his works, resembles the Beauty grows and develops as it is fed and Providence panel. It is the fragment of by the efforts which are made to achieve it an Annunciation, in the cloister of the technically.” same church, which, according to a manu- — Denman W. Ross. IX, 36 Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design BRONZE MIRROR Chinese, T’ang Dynasty Museum Appropriation, 1918 CHINESE BRONZE MIRRORS ever, in the Han (200 B. C.-264 A. D.) and T’ang (618-960 A. D.) dynasties HE metal mirror is something to the Chinese made some of their best which at the present time we mirrors, and the Museum collection T are unaccustomed, but which up contains many representative examples. to a comparatively recent date was in The mirror has always been an object common use. The Egyptians, Greeks, of interest to the Chinese. Wholly their metal Etruscans and Romans had apart from its utilitarian uses, it was, mirrors, some of them, notably the Greek, with the sword, one of the most impor- being distinguished by the beautiful tant symbols of the Taoist cult.* In designs applied to, or worked on the the religious ceremonies it was used, when backs.
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