Discursive Meditation and Botticelli's Bardi Altarpiece
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chapter 4 Discursive Meditation and Botticelli’s Bardi Altarpiece 1 Meditation and the Choir Altarpieces 1.1 Passion Images and Affective Meditation The role of varied incident and striking detail in stimulating devotion is evident in the two altarpieces devoted to the Passion in the choir. The earliest, Biagio d’Antonio Tucci’s c. 1499 Journey to Calvary (fig. 4.1) was located in the left arm at the entrance to the croce. D’Antonio was a sophisticated Florentine artist, author of brightly hued cassone paintings as well as carefully designed reli- gious works.1 Here, he adapted his lively style to Christ’s carrying of the cross, an image that had already developed a rich tradition in Northern Europe.2 D’Antonio’s painting is replete with features that belong to this northern tradi- tion, most prominently, the parting glance between Christ and the Virgin, the brutality of the guards, and Saint Veronica’s presentation of the Sudarium. The artist was also faithful to the formal devices found in northern representations, pressing up grotesque profiles against the picture plane, enmeshing figures so that body parts appear chopped up, and using the jarring obliques of banners and weaponry and the clash of bright, discordant hues. This accumulation of incident and descriptive detail in the Journey to Calvary succeeds in evoking the violence and claustrophobia typical of the painting’s northern prototype: a procession framed by two turbaned figures in strict profile and yellow garb and a grimacing, punching soldier, while Christ’s followers emerge as a row of parallel faces hemmed in by a matching row of jutting rocks in the cliff above. Despite the multiple episodes described and the hectic character of the scene, emotionally charged details are clearly de- scribed and arrayed for the viewer’s contemplation. The extreme acuity of the contours and the absence of any indicia of volume, texture, or atmosphere in- tensifies the visuality of the work, simulating perceptions affected by hyper- focus. The effect is violent but dematerialized, as if the painting mimetically transcribed, not the real, but vividly imagined mental images. 1 Roberta Bartoli, Biagio d’Antonio (Milan: Federico Motta, 1999), 124–130. 2 See e.g. Master Francke’s Christ Carrying the Cross from his Saint Thomas of Canterbury altar- piece, finished in 1436, in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Ringbom, Icon to Narrative, 147–170. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004419896_006 126 chapter 4 figure 4.1 Biagio d’Antonio Tucci, Journey to Calvary, c. 1499, Louvre, Paris Photo: © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY In the early sixteenth century, a second Passion altarpiece, Raffaellino del Garbo’s Nasi Chapel Pietà (fig. 4.2) was inserted between the Visitation and the Nerli altarpieces. The painting revolves around Christ’s pallid body, which extends out rigidly on Mary’s lap, frozen by rigor mortis.3 Like Biagio’s Journey, the altarpiece privileges its devotional purpose. John the Evangelist who gazes intently in our direction supports and displays Christ’s body on Mary’s lap. 3 The rigidity of Christ’s body in Raffaellino’s Pietà, as well as the placement of John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalen, are derived from Pietro Perugino’s 1482–83 Pietà with Saints John the Evangelist, Mary Magdalen, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, painted for the church of San Giusto alle mura outside Florence..