SUIVEUR DE GIOTTO DI BONDONE (vers 1350) Lot n° 305

ARTIST FOLLOWER OF GIOTTO WORKING IN NAPLES AROUND 1350 Christ on the Cross supported by God the Father (The Trinity) Egg painting and gold background on rectangular wood panel, reinforced, upper corners added. Gilded wood frame and black paint. 130x60 cm Expert : Cabinet Turquin On the halos, in gothic letters engraved on a gold background: The Christ : JESU CRISTO, The Virgin : (san)TA MARIA VER(gine), Saint Madeleine : SANTA MARIA MAG (dalena), Saint John the Evangelist : SANTO GIOVANNI V(angelista), Saint Martha : (san) TA MARTA This representation corresponds to the usual iconographic type of the Trinity known as "Throne of Grace" - God in three persons, the foundation of Christian dogma -, here associated with the theme of the Crucifixion. The composition is divided into two superimposed registers: on the one hand, the celestial realm, which emerges against the golden background of a mandorla with poly-lobed and dotted edges where God the Father sits, an old man with a beard, crowned with a tiara and dressed in a large blue mantle with a white collar covering a pink robe. He presents the cross of the crucified implanted on a rocky ground, while the dove of the Holy Spirit, in flight, is inserted between the two sacred figures. On either side of the cloud serving as the Father's throne, a flying angel emerges, collecting in a cup the blood flowing from Christ's hands. The latter, nailed to the cross, dressed only in the perizonium covering his nakedness, expires with his head haloed by the crucifixion nimbus and leaning on his right arm. On the other hand, in the lower part, the earthly domain where the holy women identified by the inscription of their names in the halos are arranged in two groups "in diminished quantity" and stand at the foot of the cross, all placed on a cut-out ground. On the left, they assist the weeping Virgin and on the right they stand behind St. John the Evangelist, while in the center, St. Magdalene kneels and kisses the cross. Behind the latter, a bearded, hairy man with clasped hands holding a red cross and adoring the supplicant, is probably a later overpainting covering an underlying figure with the profile of the nose. The style of the face of God the Father, totally different from that of the other assistants, must have been repainted at a later date. This unpublished panel appears here for the first time, deprived of any bibliographic reference. Despite the presence on the reverse of the trace of a crossbeam, which may have been placed to reinforce the panel's assembly, the absence of other technical elements of assembly does not allow us to certify that the panel belongs to an altarpiece. Its iconography, combined with its high format and large size, indicate a particular situation of origin, perhaps a single panel initially in a gouged format, intended for the chapel of a confraternity? Whether it is the clear general composition centered on the median cross, or the details of the postures of Christ, the Magdalene or Saint John the Evangelist, the Giotto influence is evident here. We think of the fresco of the same subject in Padua, the large crucifixes made by the master kept in Rimini, Padua or those made with the help of the workshop, in Florence, (church of San Felice in Piazza) and in Paris, (Louvre Museum). The stretching of the forms imposed by the prodigious momentum of the cross, which is embedded in the rock to rise and only slightly exceed the horizontal crosspiece, characterizes in particular the Crucifixions produced in Naples by artists who worked after Giotto, leading, from 1328 to 1333, the project opened by the Angevin dynasty to decorate the royal and religious buildings commissioned by the sovereigns. Several panels created in the city of Campania, including the two Crucifixions in the Louvre, one square (RF. 1999-11) and the other rectangular in height (M.I. 358), as well as the miniature of the Bible moralisée (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms français 9561, fol. 178v), are prestigious examples produced at the court of Naples between 1340 and 1350 by Neapolitan artists who followed Giotto. Historians F. Bologna and P.L. Leone De Castris have attributed them to the Master of Giovanni Barrile and Roberto d'Oderisio, but D. Thiébaut (op.cit.) prefers to leave them under the dubious generic term of "Giotto? and his workshop" or "Neapolitan disciple of Giotto". (...) Complete file on request at the study or at the Cabinet Turquin To bid on this lot, a prior registration (with references) with the auction house is mandatory (contact : benoit.legros@euronet.be)