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The Adoration of the Magi by Bartolo Di Fredi

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The Adoration of the Magi by Bartolo Di Fredi Art “The Adoration of the Magi by Bartolo bellishing the whole. Virtually all this is now di Fredi: A Masterpiece Reconstructed” lost. What escaped the senseless vandalism, Museum of Biblical Art, New York. besides the central panel, are fragments of the June 8–September 12, 2012 mutilated predella, a long, narrow, horizontal panel that originally appeared just below the Stories of unlikely yet joyous reunions Adoration. At some point after the altarpiece are invariably heartwarming and, moreover, was dismembered, this predella was itself cut make for excellent copy: comrades-in-arms into three pieces. The larger, central segment who, as survivors, embrace for the first time depicts Christ crucified, flanked on either side in decades; long-lost offspring rejoining a by groups of saints kneeling in adoration, the family incapable of comprehending its good whole against a tooled gold background. By fortune—the variations are both infinite the mid-1840s, it had found its way into the and infinitely moving. Albeit with consider- hands of a pioneer collector of early Italian ably less drama, The Museum of Biblical Art paintings, Bernhard August von Lindenau, (mobia) was the recent venue where several and is still conserved in the museum founded paintings, rather than people, were reunited. by him in his native city of Altenburg, Germa- It was a significant and satisfying event, both ny. A smaller fragment depicting kneeling fe- historically and artistically. male saints, clearly cut from the left side of the In the attractive and spacious second-floor predella, reappeared fleetingly in a 1927 New area that the Museum occupies in the Ameri- York auction and then, finally, came to rest can Bible Society building at 61st Street and in 1971 as a gift to the University of Virginia Broadway, curators of several institutions Art Museum. The location of a similar frag- collaborated in bringing together for the first ment with male saints cut from the right side, time fragments of a major fourteenth-centu- although known to exist from photographs, ry altarpiece: a masterpiece by the Sienese remains unknown. painter Bartolo di Fredi (c. 1330–1410) that This very partial “reconstruction” of the was brutally dismembered and dispersed in Bartolo di Fredi altarpiece, with the three the early nineteenth century. That deplorable pieces now hanging in close proximity, is a event is yet another sad example of the care- tribute to the curators and staff, not only of lessness, even contempt, with which early mobia, but of the University of Virginia Art Italian “primitive” paintings were regarded Museum as well as the Pinacoteca Nazionale, in the waning years of the Baroque and Ro- the latter two collaborating in an exempla- coco age. Emblematic, in this respect, was ry instance of restitution (by UVaM) of ar- the fate suffered by that absolute pinnacle of chaeological material removed illicitly years Medieval art, Duccio’s Maestà, installed in ago from the Morgantina site in Sicily. The 1311, eventually demoted from the high altar fact that a large, multi-section, poplar panel of the Cathedral in Siena, and finally cut to such as the Adoration would be allowed to pieces in 1771. travel to two American venues (Charlot- The focus and centerpiece of the mobia tesville was a first stop before New York) is exhibition is the large main panel of the al- also a testimony to contemporary advances tarpiece depicting The Adoration of the Magi, in conservation and packing techniques. All painted around 1380 by Bartolo di Fredi. The this has allowed this remarkable, yet frag- stunning (and stunningly preserved) panel mentary, Sienese masterpiece to be viewed normally resides in the Pinacoteca Nazio- both with a smattering of its original ancil- nale in Siena. It survives today unfortunately lary elements, and an interesting and reveal- shorn of many elements that once comprised ing way, removed from the context of the a typical, and flamboyantly Gothic, retable: Pinacoteca where it is normally submerged the flanking “wing” panels, the many subsid- by a mind-boggling wealth of other Sienese iary narrative scenes, as well as the intricately masterpieces. Seen in such splendid isola- carved and gilt framing surrounding and em- tion, the Adoration reveals, as if for the first The New Criterion September 2012 1 Art time (even to those fortunate to know the hold at close range. The overall composition, Pinacoteca well), a rich mixture of narrative on the other hand, so dynamically unbal- invention, subtle psychological perception, anced and complex, delivers its message with and sublime execution. stunning directness. The energy that gradu- More importantly, the exhibition serves as ally builds up as the Kings’ cavalcade pro- a belated rebuttal to a view, still widely held gresses through the landscape background in some quarters, that later fourteenth-cen- towards its intended destination explodes, tury art in Siena was, essentially, little more finally and with supercharged intensity, in than a tired reiteration of earlier prototypes. the multitude of heads, hands, eyes—all No one denies, of course, how decisively the directed towards that one small, incredibly great innovators of the first half of the four- noble, creature in His Mother’s lap, raising teenth century—Duccio, Simone Martini, His hand in benediction. The lone counter- and the Lorenzetti—conditioned what fol- balance to this onslaught of sheer color and lowed over the subsequent decades. Nothing gold is the standing figure of Joseph, facing new here: generations of art historians have the crowd as if to protect his precious wards noted the derivative aspects of Sienese art within their elaborately arched marble niche after the 1340s, attributing this to a variety (no thatched roof hut for these aristocrats!). of factors, including the Black Death of 1348. Finally, how justified is it to classify this But, whatever the causes, this dependency composition by Bartolo di Fredi, dating to had been interpreted as a symptom of regres- the third quarter of the century, as simply sion, isolation, and, ultimately, decline. An- a continuation of tired, repetitive pictorial other persistent and oft-repeated criticism of schemes? Undeniably, its visual grammar the Sienese school was that, grounded as it owes an overwhelming debt to the works was in the tradition of manuscript illumina- of Simone Martini; one needs only to think tion, it found the reduced scale of the predella of the narrative fresco cycle of St. Martin in or of the intimate image for private devotion the Lower Church at Assisi (ca. 1315–18). Yet far more congenial to its practice than the here Bartolo reserves a wealth of surprises large-scale, monumental altarpiece. for the attentive viewer. For instance, the About three decades ago, a shift away from courtly procession with the Three Kings these prejudicial readings was evidenced in depicted several times before their arrival— an unparalleled and unforgettable exhibition including a stop in a lifelike “Siena-as-Jeru- held in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico (Il Gotico a salem”—is a startling invention destined to Siena, 1982). Despite this, Bartolo’s Adoration be repeated (in reverse) by Gentile da Fab- (which was not included) was stigmatized in riano in his celebrated Strozzi Altarpiece of the show’s catalogue as “difficult to digest” 1423. Also, never before had horses played and “ornery’”(“indigesta e coriacea”) by the such a prominent role in the sacred story of distinguished scholar Luciano Bellosi. The the Epiphany: they are the only participants great altarpiece, seen today, reveals, if not present incapable of comprehending the sig- the fallacy, certainly the inadequacy of per- nificance of the momentous event, twisting sistent and recurring criticisms such as Bel- and recoiling with bizarre expressions and losi’s regarding the perceived “miniaturist” in the most awkward postures. Not surpris- limitations and derivative weaknesses of later ingly, their minder shows more than a hint fourteenth-century Sienese art. As regards of unease. It is with these subtle human (and the former, no doubt there are everywhere non-human) psychological notes, as well as in the crowded vortex of this Adoration myr- with the extravagant profusion of colors and iad details rendered with the elaborate care gold, that the artist underscores the drama and fastidious precision of the choir book: and solemnity of this set piece. from the gorgeous coiffes and caparisons of Quite in contrast to conventional wis- the horses to the lavishly embroidered kingly dom about Sienese painting, the predella, robes and accouterments—all a joy to be- or at least what is left of it, is decidedly not 2 The New Criterion September 2012 Art the main event, hardly rivaling the principal Adoration panel in terms of either novelty or excitement. The same can be said about an- other, smaller version of a similar subject by Bartolo (Adoration of the Shepherds), now in the Lehman Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Two further items on exhib- it (a large cross and a portable triptych) by other contemporary masters also add little to the story. What matters is that this excellent mobia effort affords a rare opportunity to revisit a magnificent Sienese altarpiece and to reassess its significance in the context of that city’s late medieval art. —Marco Grassi The New Criterion September 2012 3.
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