Domenico Veneziano active 1438; died 1461
NG 1215, 766, 767 
The Carnesecchi Tabernacle

Dillian Gordon, 2003

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

c. 1440–4

The following fresco fragments come from a street tabernacle on the Canto de’ Carnesecchi in Florence, signed by Domenico Veneziano.

NG 1215 
The Virgin and Child Enthroned

Fresco, transferred to canvas,¹ 241.0 x 120.5 cm

Signed on the step of the throne: DOMIN(I)CUS/D(E). VENECIIS.P(INXIT). (fig. 1)

The Virgin gazes out beyond the viewer, presenting, rather than merely holding, the blessing Child, who stands on her right knee. They are enthroned on a deeply recessed marble cosmati throne, placed amid foliage and flowers. Above is God the Father despatching the Dove of the Holy Ghost, surrounded by rays of light and with three rays emanating from his mouth. The whole is surrounded by a fictive grey frame of pietra serena with intermittent roundels of blue with white petals.

Technical Notes

Restoration

Restored in 1851–2 (see Provenance) and in 1980.

Condition and technique

The fresco, which must in its original state have been magnificent, has been damaged by exposure to the elements [page 59][page 60] [page 61] [page 62]and by its removal and transfer to canvas. Much of what survives is discoloured and stained by glue and varnish applied in the nineteenth‐century restoration, and the canvas onto which the fresco was transferred is visible in places. The upper part, which was presumably protected by the canopy of the niche, is the best preserved.

A report on the technique of the painting was made in 1977.² It was stressed that because of the extremely damaged condition and complex history of restoration, it was difficult to assess the materials and technique. The painting was certainly executed on lime plaster, since a thin layer of calcium carbonate remains. The pigments are consistent with the technique of buon fresco; the yellows, browns and red are ochre (iron oxide) pigments, the white areas are lime white, the Virgin’s robe is azurite over an underlayer of carbon black (achieving a more economical use of blue), and the greens of the decorative panels of the throne are green earth, also present in the flesh tones of the Virgin and Child. Although Vasari implied that Domenico Veneziano might have used drying oil as a medium in wall painting,³ there is in NG 1215 an apparently total absence of any organic binding material, with the possible exception of the gold, where gold leaf has been laid over what may be an egg‐tempera mordant pigmented with white. Joyce Plesters concluded that the painting had probably been done using the technique of buon fresco with the fine details added a secco. This is confirmed by the examination of cross‐sections from NG 767 made by Ashok Roy, which further shows that the painting probably originally had a black sinopia underdrawing.

The mordant gilding has largely come away but originally decorated the rays around God the Father and those emanating from his mouth, as well as the Dove’s halo, the outline of the haloes of the Virgin and Child, the edging of the Virgin’s veil and the signature around the steps of the throne. The Virgin’s dress, which is decorated with a floral pattern incised with fairly dense parallel lines (see detail opposite), is of tin with gold lying over it; little of this has survived.⁴ Incised lines also lend three‐dimensionality to the silver‐leaf balls at each corner of the throne. The haloes, which have an outline of gold leaf, are metallic tin (as in NG 766 and 767), identified in a sample from the Child’s halo. The flesh areas have been badly damaged and so no attempt was made to reconstruct them when the painting was cleaned in 1980. However, enough survives to give some idea of the original appearance, particularly in the Child’s right arm except for the fingers, his left arm, his legs and feet, the Virgin’s right hand and her right eye. The losses in the Child’s face and most of the Virgin’s face are extensive. The blue of the Virgin’s robe is damaged, but the white modelling of the drapery is reasonably preserved. There are vestiges of a pearl crown on the Virgin’s head.

The outlines of the figures seem not to have been incised, unlike the ruled lines of the architecture of the throne, which mostly were. The red mouldings of the throne are well preserved, but the marbling has lost most of its subtlety and the decorative inlay pattern is damaged.

Original Location and Removal

NG 766, 767 and 1215 are the surviving fragments of a street tabernacle (see Provenance)⁷ painted at the Canto de’ Carnesecchi, which was at the convergence of Via de’ Panzani and Via de’ Banchi, not far from Santa Maria Maggiore, Florence.⁸ This was a pivotal point in the city’s processional topography.⁹ Hellmut Wohl identifies the tabernacle as that shown in an arch framed by columns on the level of the piano nobile at the end of a row of buildings on the right of an engraving by Giuseppe Zocchi (1754), because in Cinelli’s edition of Bocchi’s guide to Florence the tabernacle is described as being ‘sopra’ on the Canto de’ Carnesecchi.¹⁰

According to a statement made by a previous owner, Prince Ercole Pio di Savoia, once the fragments had been removed from the wall in 1851 they were given to Antonio Marini to restore; the heads of the saints were in the sides of the tabernacle (ali) and the remaining parts of the figures, which were presumably full‐length, were too ruined to warrant removal.¹¹

Patron

Although Hellmut Wohl dismisses Decio Gioseffi’s suggestion that the Carnesecchi family commissioned the tabernacle,¹² a member of the Carnesecchi family remains the most likely patron. The Carnesecchi owned several properties on Via Cerretani and Via de’ Panzani¹³ and had two family chapels in the nearby church of Santa Maria Maggiore.¹⁴ Brenda Preyer has established that the patron was probably Bernardo di Cristofano (1398–1452). In the catasto records she has found that his sons, including Cristofano di Bernardo Carnesecchi, inherited from their father after his death in 1452 ‘una chasa nuova chola Vergiene Maria di fuori’ (‘a new house with the Virgin Mary on the outside’), still known in 1458 as ‘la chasa della Vergine Maria’. This is probably identifiable not with Bernardo’s own dwelling but with the house located across the Via de’ Panzani from where the Carnesecchi lived. In 1447 he stated that he had built it ‘al tempo della chorte’, meaning during the time the papal court was in Florence – that is, June 1434 to April 1436, or February 1439 to March 1443 – and that he had used it as rental property. It is not listed in tax returns of 1427, 1430 and 1433, and was therefore probably built between 1433 and 1443.¹⁵ It is almost certainly the case that the house took its name from the fresco by Domenico Veneziano.

Attribution, Date and Iconography

There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the signature.¹⁶ The poor condition prejudices any attempt at accurate dating. According to Vasari, the Carnesecchi tabernacle was the first work that Domenico Veneziano executed when he arrived in Florence.¹⁷ He was certainly in Florence by 1439 and may also have been there for a while before going to Perugia, where he was in 1438 (see biography). There are wide variations in the dating of the Carnesecchi tabernacle, ranging from c. 1432–4 to c. 1450 and summarised by Wohl, who himself dates it c. 1432–7 and sees the style and iconography as locating the tabernacle fresco in the same period as Fra Angelico’s Linaiuoli tabernacle of 1433 (Florence, Museo di San Marco; fig. 4).¹⁸ Although other writers, such as Curtis Shell, also see the Carnesecchi Virgin and Child as the earliest among Domenico’s surviving works, the Virgin appears close in type to that in the Washington Virgin and Child (National Gallery of Art) and seems to fall into the sequence of his works between the Virgin and Child in Bucharest (National Museum), which Wohl placed in Domenico’s time in Perugia, and before the altarpiece for Santa Lucia de’ Magnoli (Florence, Uffizi), plausibly dated c. 1445 by Andrea De Marchi and Giovanni Agosti.¹⁹

The iconography has its roots in both Florentine and Venetian painting.²⁰ The motif of God the Father with the Dove, with its connotations of the Trinity, is often shown with the Baptism,²¹ and with the Annunciation;²² it is less common in connection with the Virgin and Child Enthroned. However, there is a strong Florentine tradition, dating from the late fourteenth/early fifteenth century, of showing the Virgin of Humility suckling the Child, while immediately above, or above and to the side, are the Dove and God the Father.²³ More relevant to NG 766 is a panel painting by Agnolo Gaddi (see p. 196, fig. 6) from Santa Maria degli Angeli, Florence (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie),²⁴ showing the Virgin and Child enthroned with the Dove in the spandrel above; presumably a pinnacle panel with God the Father is missing. In Fra Angelico’s Linaiuoli tabernacle the Child stands on the enthroned Virgin’s knee, a dove hovers above them, and in the pinnacle of the frame carved by Ghiberti is God the Father.²⁵ However, most pertinent is the use of this iconography in the context of a street tabernacle sometimes attributed to Paolo Uccello, but possibly by Pietro Nelli (active 1375–1419), and possibly [page 65] painted in 1416, from Via P. Fanfani, on the corner of Via dei Perfetti Ricasoli, now in Santa Maria Mater Dei a Lippi, Florence (fig. 2), which shows the Virgin suckling the Child, with standing saints on either side, and God the Father despatching the Dove above.²⁶

None of the Florentine versions cited above is particularly close to the iconography of God the Father in NG 1215, where the frontal God the Father despatching the Dove, with the palms of his hands thrust forward, could derive from Venetian prototypes, such as Lorenzo Veneziano’s Annunciation (fig. 5) in the Lion polyptych of 1359.²⁷ Wohl stresses that the marble space‐enclosing throne is traditional in Florentine painting.²⁸ Curtis Shell sees the base of the throne in NG 1215 as probably Venetian in type,²⁹ although there are Florentine examples.³⁰ Another probably north Italian feature is the position of the Child. While the standing Child is common in Florentine painting,³¹ it is rare to find him standing on the Virgin’s right (rather than left) knee. In north Italian painting, however, there are many examples of the blessing, sometimes naked, Child standing on the Virgin’s right knee.³² This type of iconography may also have been brought south by Gentile da Fabriano, as, for example, in his fresco in the Duomo of Orvieto (fig. 3) of 1425; an unknown factor is what Gentile painted on the exterior of the Sala dei Notai in Siena in 1424 or 1425.³³

Although Domenico may have brought elements of northern painting to graft onto Florentine tradition, Wohl also stresses the position of the Carnesecchi tabernacle as ‘related to the Florentine avant‐garde of its day’ in the monumentality of the composition, deriving from Masaccio, the elaborate perspectival construction of the throne, and the ‘articulation of mass and energy as opposing forces in the human figure’.³⁴

The heads of the accompanying saints are slightly smaller in scale. It is probable that they were originally full‐length, and set in the ali (wings) of the tabernacle – that is, at an angle to the main picture, as in the example attributed to Pietro Nelli cited above. The iconographic links with Fra Angelico’s tabernacle strengthen the links Wohl makes with the contrapuntal relationship of the heads of the side saints, one looking down, the other up, as in the exterior wings of the Linaiuoli tabernacle.³⁵

According to Vasari, the Carnesecchi tabernacle was so highly praised that it aroused the envy of Castagno.³⁶

Provenance

Painted as a tabernacle at the Canto de’ Carnesecchi, Florence. Some property that included this fresco was sold in 1841 by the Marchesa Marianna Garzoni Venturi, widow of Carlo Leopoldo Ginori Lisci, to Prince Ercole Pio di Savoia. In 1851 Prince Pio had the frescoes removed from the wall by the Milanese restorer Giovanni Rizzoli and restored by Antonio Marini, in whose studio they remained by request of a civic Florentine delegation (Delegazione di Governo del Quartiere S. Giovanni) from 8 March 1852; on 10 April 1852 they were returned to the Prince, who was given official approval (ex post facto) for their detachment on 26 April 1854.³⁷ The three fragments were seen in his house in 1858 by Eastlake.³⁸ In 1859 Prince Pio sold NG 1215, and possibly the other two fragments also, to the dealer Luigi Hombert. NG 766 and 767 were acquired by Sir Charles Eastlake in 1862;³⁹ in 1867, after his death, they were purchased from his collection at the price he had paid for them. NG 1215 was sold by Hombert in 1865 to Lord Lindsay, later 25th Earl of Crawford.⁴⁰ He died in 1880 and was succeeded by his son, who presented the fresco to the Gallery in 1886.

Exhibited (NG 1215)

London 1871, RA , Winter Exhibition (269).

Select Bibliography

• H. Wohl, The Paintings of Domenico Veneziano, ca. 1410–1461. A Study in Florentine Art of the Early Renaissance, Oxford 1980, pp. 64–7 and 114–17.

Notes