TWO PICTURES IN THE POSSESSION OF MESSRS. DOWDESWELL
THESE two remarkable and curious pictures appear to us likely to interest students of mediaeval painting. They are painted on thin panels measuring 12⅛ ins. by 7⅞ ins. The wood has first been covered with a rather coarse canvas, over which the usual gesso ground has been laid; directly on this, and without the usual preparation of bole, gold leaf was laid over the whole surface. The gold is elaborately tooled in the halos and crowns. The pictures are painted in tempera over the gold ground. The handiwork is of exceptional fineness, the hatchings being extremely minute, and the whole is wrought to an enamelled surface of extreme beauty. I can recall only one other work in which quite the same minuteness and perfection of surface quality are attained, and that is the Richard II diptych at Wilton House, which indeed surpasses the present examples. Unfortunately the tempera has not adhered perfectly to the gold, and in many places only a trace of colour is left; the faces are, however, for the most part intact. ¶ This somewhat lengthy description of the methods employed in these pictures may not be without value in view of the attempt to determine the origin of these curious and unusual works. Many characteristics of the pictures seem to point to a Siennese origin, such, for instance, as the tooling of the halos, which may be almost be matched in the works of Ceccharelli and Vanni; the Madonna’s face seems like a vulgarized version of Simone Martini’s type, while the treatment of the hair by separate, rather thick, continuous, and parallel lines of light is such as we find frequently in Siennese art. The seated figures in the Dormition of the Virgin, again, if not distinctly Siennese are decidedly Italian, and are among the common properties of Giotto’s heirs. Italian, again, is the appearance of the inlaid woodwork of the bed-stand. The use of a canvas basis for the gesso ground is, too, in Italy, a peculiarly Siennese tradition, though it is there only a late survival of what was probably a universal practice. On the other hand the absence of a bole foundation for the gilding is quite unlike the practice of any Italian painters. Again, the types with their heavily modelled features, their full round staring eyes and protruding noses, seem to suggest a northern origin for these works. No less distinctive is the colour. The chief characteristic of this is the extraordinary brilliance and purity of the local tints, combined with an absence of any feeling for a distinct colour scheme as opposed to the mere putting together of agreeable tints. The main notes are an ultramarine of quite astounding intensity and saturation, a pure deep rose, and a bright green midway between apple and myrtle green. The flesh is florid and full coloured without traces of a terra verte foundation being apparent. These qualities of colour are such as we might expect from a miniaturist, and other things point to the same conclusion; first, the extreme minuteness and the marvellous perfection of the workmanship, then the crowding of the composition, and the elegant but singularly unstructural disposition of the draperies. Finally, one may surmise that no artist who was accustomed to work on a large scale would have made so elementary a blunder in space construction as our unknown master has in the Adoration of the Magi. The Madonna is clearly intended to be seated beneath the thatched roof, yet the foremost support, instead of coming down in front of her knees, is placed behind her. Such a mistake would be possible, however, to an artist who was accustomed to the almost hieroglyphic symbolism of miniature painting. ¶ Taking all these points into consideration I think it most probable that we have here two of the rare and singularly beautiful works of the French school of painting of the fourteenth century. This is made probable most of all by the colouring. This intense ultramarine never occurs in Italian work, but is to be found in the paintings attributed to Jean Malouel in the Louvre. It indeed remained endemic in French art, for we find it in many miniaturists, and something not unlike it turns up again in the work of Ingres. There is, moreover, in the Louvre a small picture, No. 997, representing the Entombment, in which not only does the same blue appear, but united with the same deep rose and vivid myrtle green. It has also the same rare perfection of surface quality, the same even, hard smalto. This picture is no doubt rightly attributed to the French school of the end of the fourteenth century. But neither this nor any other French picture in the Louvre shows so strong an Italian influence as our panels do, and it is partly for their interest as yet another proof of the constant interchange of ideas between Italy and the North about this period that we give them publicity. Of such intercourse there are, of course, already many proofs in the work of painters like Enguerrand de Charenton, of Fouquet, and most remarkable of all in a miniature by Pol de Limbourg, which is a free copy of a fresco by Taddeo Gaddi in Santa Croce at Florence.
R. E. F.