PART II
BY a strange coincidence those paintings in the ‘Cappella Maggiore’ of Santa Trinita to which the entries in Alesso’s ‘Ricordi, Libro B,’ refer, have alone been preserved of all the frescoes once in the chapel, with the exception of some fragments of the lunettes on the lateral walls. The last but one of these entries records the purchase of cinnabar for the wings of the seraphim on the soffit of the arch opening into the ‘Crociera.’[51] The first entry in ‘Libro B’ is dated March 9, 1470–1; but according to an abstract of an entry in ‘Libro A,’ Alesso ‘received the commission to paint the “Cappella Maggiore” of Santa Trinita from Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, for 200 gold ducats, on July 1, 1471, and undertook to finish the work within the period of five to seven years.’[52] The latter date, no doubt, was that of the execution of the ‘writing,’ subscribed by the hand of Misser Bongianni, which Alesso held, and to which he refers in the ‘ricordo’ on the first page of ‘Libro B.’ In the interval between these two dates the painter began the cartoons for the figures of the prophets and the other ornaments of the vault. On April 28, 1471, he bought ‘16 quires of coarse paper (carta da straccia) in royal folio, at 5 soldi the quire, for making the “spolverizzi” of the prophets and the other “spolverizzi” that occur in the said vault.’ The ‘spolverizzi’ properly were the outlines pounced upon the plaster, by means of the pricked cartoon; but here, by a figure of speech, Alesso clearly intends the cartoons themselves. The more usual method of transferring a cartoon was to trace the outlines, by means of a metal style, on to the fresh plaster, as Vasari recommends.[53] Pricked cartoons seem to have been more commonly employed in the case of embroideries and ‘drappi.’[54] ¶ Having in the meantime purchased certain colours for the work, Alesso, at length, on August 29, 1471, paid various sums for moving the boxes containing his colours, etc., into chapel, and for the purchase of brushes and pipkins in preparation for the actual painting of the vault. There are two entries of that date: the first records that he bought ‘from Bernardino di Ventura, the pencil-maker, 58 pencils of minever, between coarse and fine, one with another, great and small,’ costing, lire 1 soldi 12; the second, that he spent, ‘between new pipkins and small pots, and hogs’-hair and pack thread for making pencils of hogs’-hair, and for the carriage of chests and trestles for the work of painting the said chapel, lire 3 soldi 5.’ Alesso, however, does not appear to have proceeded very far with the actual painting of the vault until the following spring; for on April 12, 1472, he records that he bought ‘five pounds of azzurro della Magnia (namely, biadetto) for making the bed under the fine blue, and this I bought from Lorenzo di Piero, the painter, in Borgo Sant’Apostoli, at the price of 5 soldi the ounce.’[55] This ‘biadetto’ was probably identical with the ‘sbiadato’ mentioned by Cennini, in a passage in which he says, that ‘a blue like sbiadato, and very similar to azzurro della Magnia,’ may be made with indigo and white, ‘biacca’ or ‘bianco sangiovanni.’[56] Alesso would seem to have painted a fresco the blue backgrounds behind the figures of the prophets on the vault with this ‘biadetto,’ using it as a ‘bed’ for the fine azzurro della Magnia, which he afterward applied a secco.[57] It cost one-fifth, or even less, of the genuine azzurro della Magnia, and, no doubt, resembled it in colour. The genuine azzurro della Magnia seems to have been not easily obtainable in Florence; and Alesso is generally careful to record how he came by his purchases. On March 7, 1470–1, according to the first entry in ‘Libro B,’ he bought ‘2 pounds 9 ounces of azzurro di Magnia from Cardinale del Bulletta, at the price of 26 soldi the ounce’; and on the 12th of the same month, 4 pounds 2½ ounces, at 33 soldi the ounce. On April 31, 1471, he bought 1 pound 7 ounces, ‘from a German, in a bladder,’ at 31 soldi the ounce. ‘On 25 day of September, 1472,’ records Alesso, ‘I bought 2 pounds of azzurro di Magnia from Giovanni d’Andrea, glazier, at the price of 25 soldi the ounce; he said it belonged to a gossip of his, a courier, who brought it from Venice: the said Giovanni wanted 4 soldi to go drinking with.’ This Giovanni d’Andrea was the glazier who, in partnership with Il Lastra, had executed the window of the ‘Cappella Maggiore’ of Santa Trinita, from Alesso’s design. Finally, on January 13, 1472–3, Alesso bought 2 pounds 10 ounces, ‘from a Pole,’ at 20 soldi the ounce; ‘a clear, beautiful, finely-ground blue,’ he adds with satisfaction. At that time the painter was about to begin the lunettes on the lateral walls of the chapel. ¶ Cennini calls azzurro della Magnia ‘a natural colour that is found in and around silver lodes.’ ‘Much,’ he adds, ‘is obtained in Germany [La Magnia, whence its name], and also in the country about Siena.’[58] Milanesi, in the notes to his edition of Cennini, says that this blue was an oxide of cobalt; but Mrs. Herringham, with more probability, identifies the colour with blue carbonate of copper, commonly called blue verditer: in the same way, she identifies ‘verde azzurro,’ which Cennini says was made artificially from ‘azzurro della Magnia,’ with green verditer, which is also a carbonate of copper.[59] Alesso records in ‘Libro B,’ that, on March 20, 1470–1, he bought 6 pounds of ‘verde azzurro,’ at 14 soldi the ounce. ¶ It is worthy of remark that in a work of the importance of these frescoes, executed for so wealthy a patron as Messer Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, Alesso should not have used ultramarine, but a blue which cost but a twentieth part of that ‘noble, beautiful, and most perfect beyond all colours.’[60] According to the entries cited above, Alesso bought his azzurro della Magnia at prices varying from 20 soldi to 33 soldi the ounce.
Few other colours are specified by name in these ‘Ricordi.’ On May 24, 1471, Alesso purchased 4 pounds 5 ounces of yellow, namely, ‘arzicha,’ at 13 soldi the ounce. Cennini calls ‘arzica’ a colour chemically produced and little used, but more at Florence than elsewhere. He adds that it perishes on exposure to the air, and is not good for walls, but mixed with a little azzurro della Magnia and giallorino it makes a beautiful green.[61] Mrs. Herringham suggests that ‘arzica’ may be massicot, called azarcon in Spain.[62] ¶ On September 1, 1471, Alesso bought 5 ounces of fine lake at 14 soldi the ounce. The colour was probably used for the purple robe of the David. Lastly, on September 14, 1472, he bought ‘8 ounces of fine cinnabar to make the cherubim of the arch before the said chapel,’ at 2 soldi 8 danari the ounce. This was the vermilion for the wings of the seraphim, which still remain on the soffit on the arch. ¶ By June 1472 the painting of the vault had so far advanced that Alesso began to buy the gold for the ornaments. On June 13 he bought from Domenico, the gold-beater, 1,700 pieces of fine gold ‘laid upon tin-foil,’ for lire 61; on June 15, from Giovanni, the gold-beater, called Il Rosso, 500 pieces, also on foil, for lire 18; on June 23, 4,000 pieces of fine gold, at 3 lire 4 soldi the hundred, from a Genoese; and on June 28, 86 sheets of yellow foil, on which to lay the gold, for lire 8. Lastly, on July 9, 1472, he bought ‘8 pounds of liquid varnish, to apply them upon the vault, namely, the ornaments of fine gold.’ In all this Alesso appears to have followed the method set forth by Cennini, in cap. 99 of his ‘Trattato.’[63] ¶ But one other entry in these ‘Ricordi’ calls for any remark: on July 24, 1471, Alesso ‘bought four pounds of linseed oil at the price of 4 soldi the pound.’ What purpose was this oil intended to serve? Was it for some oil ‘tempera’? Vasari, speaking of these paintings of Santa Trinita, says that ‘Alesso laid them in a fresco, and afterwards finished them a secco, tempering the colours with yolk of egg, mixed with liquid varnish made over the fire’; he adds that Alesso ‘thought that this tempera would protect the paintings against damp; but it was of so strong a nature that where it has been applied freely the work has in many places flaked away, and so, whereas he thought to have found a rare and most beautiful secret, he remained deceived by his opinion.’[64] Without attempting to discuss the nature of the ‘tempera’ which is here described, I may recall the fact that Domenico Veneziano, who was undoubtedly Alesso’s master, is celebrated by Vasari on account of ‘the new method which he employed of colouring in oil’; and the books of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova record payments for very considerable quantities of linseed oil which that master used for the lost paintings in the ‘Cappella Maggiore’ of Sant’ Egidio.[65] Domenico, no doubt, possessed the secret of some improvement upon the old method of painting in oil on walls, which Cennino Cennini, who describes it at length in the ‘Libro dell’ Arte,’ cap. lxxxix.–cap. xciv., says ‘was much in use among the Germans.’ ¶ Alesso, as I have said, originally undertook, on July 1, 1471, to paint the ‘Cappella Maggiore’ of Santa Trinita for 200 gold florins, and to finish the work within a period of five to seven years. It was not, however, until January 19, 1496–97, after an interval of more than twenty-five years, that the total amount to be paid him for finished work was estimated by Cosimo Rosselli, Benozzo Gozzoli, Pietro Perugino and Filippino Lippi at 1,000 gold florins.[66] In other words, Alesso had spent upon the work five times the minimum period originally stipulated for its completion, and he was awarded five times the original sum for which he had undertaken to complete the chapel. Two causes appear to have contributed to this delay. The one was that Alesso’s method of laying-in his paintings a fresco, and finishing them a secco, admitted of endless elaboration, and a consequent expenditure of time, which pure fresco painting did not admit of. The other was, that shortly after receiving the commission for the chapel Alesso appears to have turned his attention to reviving the art of mosaic, which had almost died out in Florence. We first hear of Alesso working in mosaic in 1481, in which year he restored the figures on the façade of San Miniato a Monte.[67] In 1483 he was appointed by the consuls of the Arte de’ Mercanti to restore the mosaics in the tribune of the baptistery of San Giovanni, ‘there being no one, in all the dominion and jurisdiction of Florence, but he, who then understood that art’: in consideration of which the consuls resolved to convey to him, ‘for the term of his natural life, such real property as would yield 30 florins yearly, upon the condition that he bound himself, so long as he lived, to repair and restore the mosaics of San Giovanni.’[68] In accordance with this resolution two houses in the Piazza di San Giovanni, belonging to the Arte de’ Mercanti, were assigned to Alesso on February 26, 1483–4,[69] and by two instruments of the same date, engrossed by the notary, Ser Giovanni di Jacopo de’ Migliorelli, Alesso re-leased the two houses to the persons who were already in possession of them at the date of the assignment. These instruments are printed, for the first time, in the appendix to this article.[70] ¶ The decoration of the ‘Cappella Maggiore’ of Santa Trinita, and the restoration of the mosaics in the baptistery of San Giovanni and San Miniato a Monte, appear to have almost entirely engrossed the last thirty years of Alesso’s life. During that time we hear of no work of importance undertaken by him, with the exception of the lost altar-piece of Sant’ Ambrogio, which he began in 1470. Messer Bongianni Gianfigliazzi died on November 7, 1484, and was buried in his chapel at Santa Trinita, long before Alesso had brought its frescoes to a conclusion.[71] The work, however, was continued at the instance of his son, Jacopo Gianfigliazzi; and Stefano Rosselli records in his ‘Sepoltuario Fiorentino,’ that at the time he was writing, c. 1657, the basement of Alesso’s altar-piece in the ‘Cappella Maggiore’ of Santa Trinita bore the inscription: ‘Jacobus Gianfigliazzius Bongiannis Equitis Filius, sua erga Deum Pietate.’[72] ¶ Of the paintings that once decorated the walls of this chapel we possess but some partial and imperfect accounts. Vasari, to whom we chiefly owe the meagre notices which are extant, says that they consisted of ‘stories from the Old Testament.’ Alesso, he says, ‘drew many portraits from the life; and in the story of the aforesaid chapel [of Santa Trinita], in which he represented the Queen of Sheba going to hear the wisdom of Solomon, he drew Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Magnificent, who was father of Pope Leo X, and Lorenzo dalla Volpaia, a most excellent master of dials, and a great astrologer.’ ‘In another story which is opposite to this, Alesso drew Luigi Guicciardini the elder, Luca Pitti, Diotisalvi Neroni, Giuliano de’ Medici, father of Pope Clement VII; and next to the stone pilaster [of the arch opening into the church] Gherardo Gianfigliazzi the elder, and Messer Bongianni, knight, wearing a blue habit and a collar round his neck, together with Jacopo and Giovanni of the same family. Near to these last are Filippo Strozzi and Messer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, astrologer.’[73] What the subject of this latter story may have been, we do not now know. According to Giovanni Cinelli, in his edition of the ‘Bellezze di Firenze,’ published in 1677, the other story of the Queen of Sheba was on the left wall of the chapel, ‘dal Corno del Vangelo.’ Cinelli, after quoting this passage from Vasari, adds that ‘in the angle of the choir, on the left side, there is painted a Cain in the act of striking his brother Abel, a figure which is very admirable in its attitude, and which expresses in its countenance the malice and hatred which Cain bore in his heart towards his brother: and it is greatly esteemed by the connoisseurs; so much so, that when the cardinal of the serene house of Este came to Florence and visited this church, he desired to see and consider with attention so fine a painting.’[74]
Photograph by Alinari
THE PAINTINGS OF ABRAHAM, NOAH, MOSES, AND DAVID BY ALESSO BALDOVINETTI ON THE VAULT OF THE CAPPELLA MAGGIORE OF SANTA TRINITA AT FLORENCE
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Already, when Vasari wrote in 1568, the frescoes in the ‘Cappella Maggiore’ of Santa Trinita ‘had begun to flake away in many places.’[75] The last writer to allude to their indifferent condition is Giuseppe Richa, who speaks of them as ‘not a little consumed and spoiled by time.’[76] That was in 1755; five years later, in 1760, Alesso’s ‘stories’ were ruthlessly destroyed or covered with whitewash, and the walls of the chapel decorated with ‘stucchi’ in the taste of the time.[77] During the recent restoration of the church, in 1890–7, the paintings of the four patriarchs on the vault of the chapel, the seraphim on the soffit of the vault, and the fragments of the lunettes on the lateral walls of the chapel, were found under the whitewash, and restored by Signor Dario Chini. [Plate III.] ¶ The vault itself is divided into four triangular compartments by the intersecting ribs of the vault, which spring from the four corbels at the angles of the chapel. In the compartment above the window of the chapel is a seated figure of Noah, in an ample cloak of dark green, worn over an under-dress of a reddish colour. He holds some object which is now undecipherable in his right hand; and beside him, on the left, is placed the ark. ¶ In the compartment above the left wall of the chapel is a seated figure of Abraham clad in a yellow robe lined with green, over an under-dress of vermilion. In his right hand he holds the sacrificial knife, and at his feet kneels his son Isaac, bound and clad in white. In the compartment above the right wall is a seated figure of Moses, holding the two tables of the Law in his hands. The robe, which falls over the knees of the figure, is vermilion in colour, and the underdress appears to have been a dark leaf-green. In the compartment above the arch is a seated figure of David playing upon a psaltery with three sound-holes. He is attired in a purple mantle lined with green, which almost entirely envelops his figure. The purple of this robe is now much perished. All these four figures are relieved against blue backgrounds, broken by rays of gold which appear to proceed from the figures; and all the four compartments are surrounded by borders of fruit and flowers upon a vermilion ground. The ribs of the vault are painted with green foliage intertwined with a running ribbon, and the keystone of the vault is blazoned with the arms of the Gianfigliazzi: or, a lion rampant azure. On the soffit of the arch opening into the chapel is painted, on a blue ground, the series of seraphim with vermilion wings, to which allusion has already been made. ¶ In the lunette on the left wall, immediately below the figure of Abraham, in the vault, are the remains of a ‘story’ of the ‘sacrifice of Isaac.’ In the upper part of the picture, on some rising and rocky ground, Abraham is seen turned towards the right, and kneeling before an altar. This figure is in large part almost obliterated, and the figure of the angel who appears to him in the sky, and that of Isaac upon the altar, can now scarcely be made out. On the right of the painting, however, there may still be seen a tree boldly designed against the sky, recalling certain passages in Alesso’s painting of the Nativity in the atrium of the Annunziata at Florence. The lower part of this lunette has entirely perished. ¶ In the lunette on the opposite wall, below the figure of the patriarch, in the vault, is a ‘story’ of ‘Moses receiving the tables of the Law on Mount Sinai.’ The upper portion of this painting alone remains in a ruined condition. On the top of the mount Moses kneels, turned to the left. The figure is much damaged; and that of God the Father, who appears to him out of the heavens, has almost entirely disappeared. The bare mountain-top is broken by patches of herbage, and around it may still be seen some cypresses, with other foliage. ¶ Below each of these lunettes, on the lateral walls of the chapel, appear to have been two other stories; but the subject of only one of them has been recorded (as I have said) by Vasari, namely, the visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon, which appears to have been on the left wall of the chapel. The story of Cain killing his brother Abel, recorded by Cinelli, was probably on the altar-wall beside the window, in the left-hand corner. ¶ In the figures on the vault, Alesso attains to a nobility of design, and a largeness of manner, which he does not again reach in any extant work of his. That extreme research for form, which so largely spoils our enjoyment of the altar-piece which he painted for this chapel, does not detract, at all in the same degree, from the severe beauty of these figures; for they possess a charm both of conception and design which is little distinctive of Alesso’s later manner, though akin to a certain grace and sweetness in some of his earliest works. The attitudes of these ‘prophets old’ are very grandly imagined, especially that of the David, who looks up as he touches his psaltery with a gesture that expresses a spiritual ecstasy, with an admirable fineness and reticence. Indeed, these figures are represented with a truth of character, and a refinement of feeling, for which we vainly look in similar works by his more famous, and more obviously gifted, pupil, Domenico Ghirlandaio; such as the vaults of the ‘Cappella Maggiore’ of Santa Maria Novella, and of the Sassetti chapel in Santa Trinita. To judge from these figures of the four patriarchs, the destruction of the ‘stories’ which were below them cannot sufficiently be deplored; the reputation of few Florentine masters depended so largely on a single work as Alesso’s did upon this chapel of the Gianfigliazzi. ¶ One other fragment of the ‘stories’ which once decorated the walls of this chapel has come down to us. Giuseppe Richa, in his ‘Notizie Istoriche delle Chiese Fiorentine,’ after mentioning the various portraits to be found in these paintings, adds: ‘all these figures are named by the writers of the life of Alesso; but they do not allude to [the portrait of] a young man in the angle of the choir, on the epistle side, who is represented in a red habit, with a green cap on his head, and a white handkerchief in his hands; and this is Alesso Baldovinetti, who portrayed himself as he was, when a young man; and he, also, drew there the portrait of Guido Baldovinetti, who was the man most gifted and renowned at that time in his illustrious family.’[78] ¶ Domenico Maria Manni, in the notes to his edition of ‘Baldinucci,’ published a few years after Richa’s work had appeared, cites a certain ‘Memoriale’ of Francesco di Giovanni di Guido Baldovinetti, written in the year 1513. According to this ‘Memoriale’ (from which, no doubt, Richa derived his notice of the portrait in question) Alesso portrayed on the walls of the ‘Cappella Maggiore’ of Santa Trinita, among many other noble citizens, ‘Guido Baldovinetti, and, last of all, himself, wearing a cioppone of faded rose, and a handkerchief in his hand.’[79] Among the pictures which Morelli bequeathed to the Accademia Carrara, at Bergamo, is a fragment of a fresco, No. 23, containing the head of a man. It has been cut to a round measuring 0.23 centm. in diameter. According to an inscription on the back of the painting it is a portrait of Alesso Baldovinetti, painted by himself and taken from an angle of the choir of Santa Trinita in Florence.[80] There can be little doubt that this is the head to which Francesco Baldovinetti referred in his ‘Memoriale,’ and that it was cut from the walls of Santa Trinita when Alesso’s paintings were destroyed in 1760; but whether it is a portrait of the painter is a question which I must not here attempt to discuss.
A GROUP OF THREE, BY JAN MIENSE MOLENAER; IN THE COLLECTION OF MR. EDGAR SPEYER (See THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE for June 1903, [page 52])
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