Giovanni di Paolo active 1417; died 1482
NG 5451–4 
Scenes from the Life of Saint John the Baptist

Dillian Gordon, 2003

Extracted from:
Dillian Gordon, The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume I (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2003).

1454

Egg tempera on wood

(for dimensions, see under individual entries)

These panels – which show the Birth of Saint John the Baptist (NG 5453), Saint John the Baptist retiring to the Desert (NG 5454), the Baptism of Christ (NG 5451) and the Head of John the Baptist brought to Herod (NG 5452) – are discussed here in chronological order and not according to inventory number. They are almost certainly from the predella to an altarpiece by Giovanni di Paolo, dated 1454, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (fig. 21).

Technical Notes

Restoration

All four panels were cleaned and restored in 1944. All are considerably warped and have been fitted into modern frames, retaining elements of their original frames to varying degrees, as described below. On the back of each panel is stencilled 781 HG.

NG 5453 
The Birth of Saint John the Baptist

The story is told in Luke 1:57. Saint Elizabeth has just given birth to John the Baptist, who is being tended by two mid‐wives, one holding him, the other drying a cloth by the fire. Saint Zacharias, who had been struck dumb for not believing the angel who foretold the birth of his son, is writing down that the child’s name is to be John. The bedhead and bed end are decorated with small music‐making figures (angels?) under an arcade (figs 1 and 6).

Panel construction

Original panel: height 30.8 cm, width 39.7 cm, thickness 2.3 cm. Painted surface 30.5 x 36 cm.

Photographs taken in 1944 after cleaning and restoration show that there is a strip of exposed wood at the right‐hand side, presumably where mouldings were removed; this is now concealed by the modern frame.

The only remaining original moulding is the vertical inner raised ridge at the left‐hand side. To the left of this are traces of what may be the remains of a flat, gilded vertical band. The rest of the frame is entirely false: the inner ridge has been repeated on the other three sides and then a gold band of approximately 4 cm width and external mouldings have been applied to the original panel and extending beyond it. The whole has then been encased in a modern outer frame. Traces of gold around all the edges indicate that the original frame was gilded. Dimensions, including false mouldings, 38.7 x 44.2 cm. Modern containing frame 41.2 x 47 cm.

Condition and technique

The condition is generally good. There are scattered flake losses, most evident in the fireplace, the dark green dress of the midwife, the infant Baptist, the architectural background and the red bed‐cover. The tiny figures on the bed ends are well preserved.

All the gilding is water‐gilding. The stars of the bed canopy are executed in sgraffito. The pillow and fire are red lake painted over gold, and traces of a brown glaze modelling over the gilding of the ewer and basin survive.

The haloes are all decorated with a semicircular punch. All the architectural lines have been incised and were ruled [page 86] [page 87] [page 88] [page 89] in around the figures. Infra‐red reflectography reveals a free underdrawing for the outlines of the figures and draperies, with diagonal hatching in the draperies, and a few minor pentimenti, such as in the hands and toes of Zacharias and the left arm of the midwife drying a towel (figs 2–5).¹

Comment

Painted bedheads with religious subjects, like the one in NG 5453, still survive: a painted bedhead and bed end with the Virgin and Child and a donor, dated 1337, is in the Ospedale del Ceppo, Pistoia.²

Original Appearance of the Predella

From the distribution of the wormholes and the continuity of a narrow extension attached at a slant along the top of the principal plank of wood, it is evident that the Birth of John the Baptist, John the Baptist retiring to the Desert and the Baptism of Christ (NG 5453, NG 5454 and NG 5451) were painted on a single plank and were immediately juxtaposed. However, there are no signs of any continuation from NG 5451 to NG 5452. Moreover, a split in the wood of NG 5452 (described above) does not continue in NG 5451, and it therefore seems that there is a missing panel between the Baptism of Christ (NG 5451) and the Head of John the Baptist brought to Herod (NG 5452). On the basis of a comparable cycle of scenes from the Life of John the Baptist by Giovanni di Paolo (for which see below), a number of episodes are possible for the missing panel: Saint John the Baptist preaching in the Desert, Saint John preaching before Herod, Saint John in Prison, the Feast of Herod, or the Decollation of the Baptist. Most likely is that the missing scene showed Saint John the Baptist preaching in the Desert, since that would presumably balance the scene of the Baptist going into the desert, on the other side of the Baptism. The missing panel would have had floral bands on either side, matching those of Saint John the Baptist retiring to the Desert. The pale architectural piers at the left and right sides of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist and the Head of John the Baptist brought to Herod respectively, which are similar to each other in size and construction, seem to confirm that these were the first and last panels. This arrangement would mean that the Baptism of Christ, the most important episode in the Baptist’s life, was in the centre.

Related Panels and Date

Martin Davies⁶ suggested that the four panels were part of the predella of an altarpiece now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (fig. 21), dated 1454 and showing the Virgin and Child with a Female Saint (Lucy?),⁷ Saints Augustine, John the Baptist and Nicholas of Tolentino⁸, signed and dated at the base of the central panel, on the green marble step, OPUS IOHANNES MCCCCLIIII.⁹ However, Davies cast a small element of doubt on this association on the grounds of measurement. Pope‐Hennessy, who considered the association correct, rightly pointed out that the discrepancy was small: the [page 96] width of the New York altarpiece is 236.5 cm, while the minimum projected width of the London panels (including a missing fifth panel) is approximately 225 cm.¹⁰ The distance between the centres of the base socles of the panels showing the female saint and Saint Augustine in the New York altarpiece ( c. 45 cm) corresponds approximately to the width of the outer panel (NG 5453) plus half a floral panel; the same is true of NG 5454.¹¹ The distance between the centres of the base socles below the panel with the Virgin and Child is c. 67 cm, so if the Baptism was similarly divided from the adjacent panels with a single floral band, then the Baptism panel would have been reduced in width by approximately 6 cm on each side. Another version of the Baptism (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum; fig. 24) includes a tree on the right of the composition, present in Ghiberti’s relief (fig. 22) that was the model for both, which could originally have been included in a more extensive landscape at the right of the National Gallery version, with possibly the continuation of the left‐hand angel’s wing and more angels at the left.¹² A date of 1454 is consistent with the style of the paintings.

Pope‐Hennessy also associated pinnacles with the Redeemer and the Four Evangelists in the Chiaramonte Bordonaro Collection in Palermo with the altarpiece.¹³

Original Location

Given the presence of Saint Augustine at the right hand of the Virgin, and the prominence accorded to Saint John the Baptist both in the main tier and in the predella, the altarpiece probably comes from a church either dedicated to Saint Augustine or belonging to his Order, and from an altar or chapel dedicated to the Baptist.¹⁴ It may have come from a side altar rather than a high altar: Henk Van Os observed that the altarpiece is designed to be viewed on the right because of the outward‐turned poses of the Christ Child and John the Baptist.¹⁵ Pope‐Hennessy suggested that the altarpiece might have come from the church of Sant’Agostino in Siena,¹⁶ and this remains a possibility: a chapel dedicated to John the Baptist was founded there on 14 May 1439.¹⁷

However, Giovanni di Paolo executed a number of commissions for the Augustinians in Siena and its environs¹⁸ – for example, at San Leonardo al Lago,¹⁹ where he painted a Crucifixion in monochrome in the refectory,²⁰ and at San Salvatore at Lecceto, for which, probably in 1442, he executed an Antiphonary and contributed to a Gradual.²¹ Van Os suggested that the altarpiece could have come from Sant’Agostino, Montepulciano, where Giovanni di Paolo signed and dated an altarpiece dedicated to Saint Nicholas of Tolentino in 1456.²² But if the association of the National Gallery predella panels with the New York main tier is correct, which seems probable, then one of the most likely options is that the altarpiece came from Sant’Agostino, Cortona, since the New York altarpiece came from the Tommasi‐Aleotti (modern spelling Aliotti) Collection in Cortona.²³ The Tommasi family, one of the wealthiest families in Cortona in the fifteenth century and later, had a collection drawn largely from the locality. It is not known how the altarpiece entered their collection.²⁴

The church of Sant’Agostino in Cortona was founded between 1256 and 1273,²⁵ and in the 1430s a new church was being built. From at least 1432, and still in 1438, a member of the Tommasi family was building a chapel there: in his third will, of 11 May 1432, and again in his fourth, of 26 March 1438, Giovanni di Tommaso (d. by 1439) left 50 lire to his nephew Niccolò di Cristoforo di Tommaso towards the fabric of the chapel which Niccolò was building in the new church of Sant’Agostino.²⁶ No mention is made of the dedication of the chapel or of furnishings or altarpiece.²⁷ Niccolò, who was ‘riformatore’ of Cortona in 1451 and 1454,²⁸ was still alive in 1461.²⁹ The building of the new church seems [page 97]to have continued into the 1440s, as there are several bequests towards the fabric of the building.³⁰

Possibly a more likely patron is Zaccaria di Matteo Cenni degli Bencivenni, a merchant of Cortona, who on 22 July 1450, ‘corpore languens’, left 80 florins for the construction and endowment of a chapel in Sant’Agostino dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, to be built within eight years of his death. No mention is made of an altarpiece or chapel furnishings. The dedication to the Baptist could have been motivated by the fact that Zacharias, the name saint of the possible donor, was the Baptist’s father, which likewise could have prompted the inclusion of the naming of the Baptist in the first predella scene. The chapel passed to the Laparelli family, another leading family in Cortona, through the marriage of Zaccaria’s only daughter, Lucy, his universal heir.³¹ It was still dedicated to the Baptist in the seventeenth century, when it had a painting of Saint John baptising Christ by Pietro Montanini, also called Pietruccio Perugino (1626–1689), and according to a note in an apparently eighteenth‐century hand in the margin of the copy of Zaccaria’s will in the Contratti di Sant’Agostino, the chapel was then still in the Laparelli family.³²

The question remains as to whether the altarpiece indeed came from Sant’Agostino, Cortona, and if so, whether it came from the Tommasi chapel or from a different family chapel (such as that of the Bencivenni/Laparelli family) and entered the Tommasi‐Aliotti Collection as a purchase or otherwise.³³

Iconography and Design

The pose of the Virgin and Child with two front angels facing each other, although widespread, could owe something to Sassetta’s altarpiece painted between 1430 and 1436 for the spice merchant (‘aromatorio’) Niccolò di Angelo di Cecco for his chapel to the left of the high altar in San Domenico, Cortona (now Cortona, Museo Diocesano).³⁴

Vertical floral bands dividing the narrative scenes of the predella were used by Giovanni di Paolo throughout his working career, from the ‘Fondi’ (or more likely ‘Tondi’) altarpiece of 1436³⁵ to late works such as Saint Jerome appearing to Saint Augustine (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie). This motif may have originated with Gentile da Fabriano: it seems quite likely that the painting (which may have been a fresco) made for the Notaries of Siena by Gentile da Fabriano in 1424 or 1425 had floral decoration on the borders similar to that on the frame of the Strozzi Adoration of the Magi (Florence, Uffizi) of 1423,³⁶ and that Giovanni di Paolo, who was profoundly influenced by Gentile da Fabriano,³⁷ adopted the idea. Alternatively, it is accepted that Giovanni di Paolo probably went to Florence between 1436 and 1440, where he would have seen the Strozzi altarpiece.³⁸

It has often been noted that the compositions of NG 5451 and 5452, the Baptism and the Head of John the Baptist brought to Herod, derive from the bronze panels of those subjects by Ghiberti and Donatello respectively (figs 22 and 23), made for the Baptistery font in Siena, which arrived in Siena in 1427.³⁹ Christopher Lloyd noted that until the erection of the font in Siena Baptistery, cycles of John the Baptist were more common in Florence (whose patron saint he is) than in Siena, and commented that Giovanni di Paolo was not influenced by the thirteenth‐century Sienese altarpiece of John the Baptist Enthroned (Siena, Pinacoteca), which he would obviously have known.⁴⁰

The subject of Saint John the Baptist retiring to the Desert is a rare one in painting. The iconography of this scene is similar to that in the thirteenth‐century mosaics of Florence Baptistery and on the bronze Baptistery doors completed in 1330 by Andrea Pisano,⁴¹ and to that in a predella panel (Leicester, Leicestershire Museum and Art Gallery) thought to come from an altarpiece painted by Lorenzo Monaco for Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence.⁴² As noted above, Giovanni di Paolo almost certainly visited Florence.

Giovanni di Paolo frequently reused compositions and motifs.⁴³ For example, the bed and interior in NG 5453 are close to those in the predella panel showing Saint Catherine of Siena beseeching Christ to resuscitate her Mother (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lehman Collection).⁴⁴ Another, slightly simplified, version of the Baptism by Giovanni di Paolo (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum; fig. 24) is identifiable as part of the predella of the altarpiece painted for the Compagnia degli Artisti for their chapel in Montepulciano.⁴⁵

Most closely related to the predella scenes in the National Gallery is a series of eleven vertical panels by Giovanni di Paolo showing the Life of John the Baptist, now dispersed, whose original function, location and date are not known.⁴⁶ The scenes corresponding to the National Gallery panels are the Birth and Naming of the Baptist (Münster, Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kunstgeschichte, inv. no. 355LG; fig. 25);⁴⁷ Saint John the Baptist retiring to the Desert (Art Institute of Chicago, Mr and Mrs Martin A. Ryerson Collection, inv. no. 1933.1010; fig. 26);⁴⁸ The Baptism of Christ (Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum, inv. no. 1973.07.P; fig. 27); and Saint John the Baptist’s Head brought before Herod (Art Institute of Chicago, Mr and Mrs Martin A. Ryerson Collection, inv. no. 33.1015; fig. 28).⁴⁹ In these four panels the poses of all the figures are almost identical to those in the National Gallery compositions, with only minor variations, suggesting the use of patterns. Tracings of the figures in the London panels placed over the equivalent figures in panels from the other Baptist [page 99] cycle consistently showed an increase in scale (for example, fig. 29): in NG 5454 the young John the Baptist is substantially smaller than in the Chicago panel; in NG 5451 the figures are all smaller than those in the Pasadena panel; in NG 5452 Salome and the two onlookers, and the soldier bearing the head, are smaller than in the Chicago panel, whereas the three men behind the table, the angle and length of the table and the placement of the two end figures are close in the two versions, although the male figure at the table in the London panel is slightly smaller in all proportions.⁵⁰ The variations in scale are accompanied by minor variations in the poses. In the Birth of the Baptist in Münster the main differences are that the midwife is slightly further from the fire and two more figures have been introduced into the foreground; a vertical column has been added to contribute an upward dynamic to the composition. In the Baptist retiring to the Desert in Chicago the poses are almost identical except for a slight adjustment in the position of the hands; the architecture of the small town is more elaborate. In the Baptism of Christ in Pasadena the poses are again almost identical, except that Christ looks up at the Baptist instead of out at the spectator and thus the strong centralising emphasis of the London panel, which would have been at the centre of the predella, is absent; three angels have been added to the group on the left and God the Father and the surrounding sky have been adapted to a vertical format. In the Baptist’s Head brought before Herod in Chicago the right‐hand figure has been turned so that the hand of his companion around his shoulder is visible; Salome has no white bands on her arms and her left arm has been raised; the direction of the floor tiles has been changed to take account of the different function of the panel.⁵¹

The comparative chronology of the two cycles is problematic. Giacomo de Nicola called the National Gallery panels an ‘editio minor’, post‐dating the more extensive Baptist cycle. Pope‐Hennessy, in 1937, dated them c. 1460 – that is, after the larger Baptist cycle, which he dated 1455–60; but in 1987 [page 100]he reversed the order, having argued for the association of the predella with the 1454 altarpiece (see above) and still dating the more extensive cycle to the late 1450s. Cesare Brandi saw the Gallery’s predella panels as a late work painted after the larger cycle, which he dated c. 1450–3; they were also dated after the larger cycle by Elisabeth Mognetti, and by Paul Pieper, who dated the larger cycle c. 1453–4. Carl Strehlke argues for the National Gallery predella panels having preceded the more extensive cycle, although by how much remains uncertain.⁵² In a comparison of the scenes of the Baptism, the logical development seems to be from the almost exact repetition of Ghiberti in NG 5451 to the composition adapted for a vertical format in the Pasadena panel and then simplified in the Ashmolean version (see p. 86, and figs 22, 27, 24).

The New York/National Gallery altarpiece was painted at the height of Giovanni di Paolo’s powers, just after the signed polyptych with Saint Nicholas of Bari Enthroned and Saints (Siena, Pinacoteca) dated 1453.⁵³

Provenance

Possibly from Sant’Agostino, Cortona, and possibly Tommasi‐Aliotti Collection, Cortona, by 1858; Charles Butler Collection 1887–1904; acquired by J. Pierpont Morgan 1904;⁵⁴ listed for sale in the Morgan sale at Christie’s, 31 March 1944 (lot 121); they were acquired before the sale, half the purchase money being given by the NACF .

Exhibited/Loaned

London 1887, RA (lent by Charles Butler⁵⁵ and framed in two frames, 187 and 188); London 1893–4, New Gallery (17 and 18); London 1896, RA (146 and 153); London 1904, BFAC (27 and 28); London 1945, NG , Exhibition of Returned Pictures ; London 1945–6, NG , Exhibition in Honour of Sir Robert Witt…of the Principal Acquisitions Made for the Nation through the National Art‐Collections Fund (35); London 1947–8, NG , Exhibition of Cleaned Pictures (18–21); London 1973, NG , The National Art Collections Fund 1903–1973 ; London 1982, NG , Watch this Space.

Select Bibliography

• J. Pope‐Hennessy, ‘Giovanni di Paolo’, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, XLVI, 2, 1988, pp. 6–48 (pp. 18–23).
• C. Strehlke in Painting in Renaissance Siena 1420–1500, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1988, p. 218.

Notes