We want to start talking about 15th century artists with Gentile da Fabriano,
We don't know his exact birth date,
you'll find this is fairly frequent.
He died in 1427, and
the work we're going to look at is known as the Strozzi Altarpiece,
or the Adoration of the Magi, which is the
main subject, as you can see.
It was made
for the sacristy, an altar in the sacristy
of the church of Santa Trinita,
and the patron was
Palla Strozzi.
At this time, the Strozzi were the wealthiest
family in Florence, and
and as you can see its a very elaborate altarpiece with
guild ed pinnacles.
It was created in 1423,
and of course the main subject is
the Adoration of the Maji, and then in the predella,
you have three scenes from the infancy of Christ the Nativity,
the Flight into Egypt, and Presentation in the Temple.
Now, the predella is the
small scenes below, its what rests directly on the altar.
One of the things you'll notice about this is
how rich it is. The word pageantry comes to mind,
and we're going to look at some details, and you'll see there's gold leaf on it,
there's intricate patterns.
There's just so many things to make it rich and
beautiful and this is kind of an interesting transition.
We know what comes next in art,
Gentile wouldn't have but we know what comes next,
and so you see things that are very traditional, trying to make this very
rich, remember the patron, you know
he's rich, he wants it to be
be a beautiful work
with lots of decoration. There also are things in this
that do suggest, there's things that suggest space
and things that take away from the illusion of depth.
Just looking at it overall you can see some of those things
you have the magi approaching the Madonna and child who is
down in the lower left, with the two
midwives behind her, and then, as you
see on the right, there's this
whole crowd of people
densely packed, and
it doesn't really look like there's enough rooms for them all,
he's trying to show you these people are behind each other
and there's some, these are the bretenoux of the magi,
the magi,
or the wise men of the gospel of Saint Matthew
were also known as the three kings,
because of a verse in
the Old Testament that was associated with them, and so it was believed they were
kings from the, well, either from the east or from the
different continents of the world, they saw the star
in the sky, that's what the Bible tells us, but there are other
stories such as that of Johannes of Hildesheim,
enriching the story of the Magi,
so they each are observing the heavens and they see this star
and, they come, and they meet and
then they travel eventually
well, to Bethlehem where they pay homage
to the christ child, but, if they're kings, they
can't just travel alone or with a couple of servants,
they have to have an entourage and
as you can see they brought lots of people with them. I don't know if you can make
it out here but there's even a monkey there,
and you can also look at the animals,
down here. There's a dog,
in a very natural pose,
seen dogs do that, where they have their hind lets up, and their
lower legs down, the dog's looking up, evidently at the horse,
and you've got the two horses in the foreground, and they are fore shortened.
So, in a way Gentile is saying, 'see,
I can do for shortening,' which is a bit difficult perhaps, you know,
and it gives you the illusion of depth, and then you get back into the
crowd.
Now if you look in the far background, under the
arches you'll see various scenes, I know you can't make them out here but
there's the
magi on a mountain top, observing the heavens.
There is the journey of the magi
to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and then I think
there's also maybe the magi returning,
but anyways theres a whole
parade of the magi who are really
in the centre of that central
arch, and all of their accompanying
entourage court.
Okay, so
this idea of covering every single surface,
with figures and a
landscape, and everything else,
and then you see this little teenie bit of the gold sky
its of course, gold leaf as traditional,
it makes it seem almost like a surface pattern.
You know, we can say although those people are way way back in the distance because they're
small
but at the same thing it seems to rise up, and so you have this feeling of a kind of
shallow space.
But as I said there are also things such as the fore shortening,
and as we'll look at the drapery of the virgin
that make it appear
to have more depth, so there's this kinda pull and shove
between decorative elements that enrich the picture,
and elements that suggest a more illusionistic
space. So let's look at
this group with Virgin and Child,
of course you have these two gold halos,
and if you want to know why the magi have halos, because according to
christian legend, they became christian saints and were eventually
martyred.
So, the saints
have these gold halos, and the midwives
are there behind Mary, remember, I think
they are from an apocryphal gospel called the Proto Evangelium,
or the gospel of Saint James, and I think we talked about that earlier
with Jateau when we talked about the
infancy the birth and infancy
of Mary, that midwives come to the birth
of Christ, but he has already been miraculously born,
and Mary tells them that she's a virgin and one of the midwives just doesn't believe
believe that
and says she reaches out with her hand to
check it out essentially, I assume she's going to feel for a hymen,
and her hand withers,
and Mary tells her to touch the child,
and her hand is healed. So, then
they both believe, you can see
beautiful decoration, kind of exotic, little turban-like structure on
the head of the the nearest
midwife with all this beautiful patterning,
the beautiful meander pattern with the gold around
the hymn of her mantle, and shes turned, you know
away from us as the other one turns forward, so you know, we have the feeling they
can turn in depth.
But look at Mary. Mary is dressed in this beautiful
blue garment, and it is modeled
in a lighter and darker shades of blue,
with the draperies that seem to wrap the body,
we don't have that network of gold lines that, such as Chimabue used
for example.
It does seem that she has a real body beneath the
the mantle, we can see where the arm
presses against the cloth and the leg, and the knee,
you know, its quite believable, we'll see a detail,
and you'll see how modeled the faces
and the body of Christ are.
Joseph is standing there behind his family. so you have
a little kind of holy family there.
The ass is a little hidden,
almost like he can't see because there's this Magus with the gold disk
halo blocking his view. The ox is
very interested in the christ child.
There were a lot of different legends about the ox and the ass, and one of
them
was the idea that the ox represented the gentiles who became the church, and
the ass was the Jews who rejected Christ
sometimes that's not what's at play. Sometimes, its, they're warming the child with their breath,
or they're both very interesting.
The ox and ass know their master
from biblical quotation.
The magi as kings, usually one of them
is about to doff his crown, the other one, the oldest Magus,
has already removed it, and indeed the christ child is a
little baby, he's sort of patting, he's patting the eldest Magus on
his bald pate, like little babies kind of fascinated with that.
Also, you could see it as, you know
is touching him in this is, this is, according to Christian belief the
incarnate God,
what an honor. The middle Magus
looks like he's going to take off his crown, so he's tipping the hat,
but you can see they're all covered with
all of these intricate decorations, presumably
to represent gold brocade and
other rich stuffs,
and patterning does have
the effect of flattening,
unless you're very careful to show the patterns
falling into the folds, so
its enriching but its also a little bit flattening,
and here are some of the details, and you'll notice how the Christ child is modeled
in light and dark instead of the tera vedra modeling, but
he looks like a baby,
and he's held on his mother's lap and the eldest Magus comes to
kiss his feat, which is a motif that you do see in a lot
of adorations of the magi.
You also might notice that his hand, the one that is not touching the magus,
is fore shortened,
and you know that's a tricky little gesture and he handles it beautifully.
So there are things that say space,
and there are things that deny space, as it were, such as the crowd of
people rising up.
Of course, you've got this individual man who seems to, we're seeing him
once again foreshortened, his head is tipped up,
he's looking at these birds above him,
and here you can see the youngest Magus,
once again with all of these patterns, and
gold leaf that makes the painting
even richer.
I took this picture in the Uffizi
actually and of course it doesn't come out very well to show all the details
but I left it in because it shows you
the light shining off the gold, and
remember you know this is not an altar piece and they were candles there and they're
flickering, that's going
to pick up the gold.
I'm not going to show you everyone of the Rendella scenes, I'm trying to
cut the lectures up a little bit, but I did want to show you
Gentile da Fabriano's nativity,
and this is the foreseen, the one on the left, in the predella.
You see on the far
left, the midwives, they
don't have anything to do, the child's already miraculously born.
One of them is turned away, one of them is looking, so presumably you have the
one who didn't believe and the one who did believe perhaps.
There is a little building here, that you
you have the
side of the wall seems to recede into space a little bit.
On the far side Joseph has gone to sleep, he's sort of huddled here behind this
kind of spindley tree, the ox and the ass here
are both I'll enthralled with this,
newborn child, and they're paying a lot of attention to it.
You'll notice that you have the cave of the nativity,
behind Mary but you also have something else, you
have a new kind have nativity.
This isn't the first example of it, but it's something that comes, starts
in the late 14th, and as we get into the
15th century, this type of nativity
that we call the Brigatine nativity, as repeated over and
over. What does that mean? Well, St.
Bridget of Sweden
went to the Holy Lands, excuse me, went to the Holy Land
on pilgrimage, and when she went to various sacred sites
she had visions and these recorded in a book called 'The
Revelations of St. Bridget,'
and one of them was about how the Nativity came to be. She said
the Virgin Mary appears to her and shows her
the way the Nativity occurred,
and there's a slight difference, she's wearing white, for example, in the vision and of course here she's
in the traditional blue cloak,
but the main point
is the miraculous birth rather than a painful birth
through the birth canal,
Mary kneels,
and suddenly, Bridget says, 'I know not by
what member, the child that was in the womb
is now miraculously on the ground.'
She comes from the seal womb later on, or comes from the sealed tomb as
they came from the sealed womb,
they sometimes say just as the resurrection, you know,
probably just this miraculous passing through matter
that christ can do, and you have, and he says the child is there on the ground
naked and shining,
and Mary adores the child, so you see here, she's adoring
the child, lying on the ground,
naked in shining,
and then she says "be welcome my lord and my god,"
and then eventually she picks up the child and succors him,
but when you see that child
lying on the ground
its from this vision that St. Bridget had
at Bethlehem in the grotto, the cave
of the Nativity.
One of the other things about this that's interesting is its a night scene,
it's not the first night scene, there are other night scenes
that precede it, thinking about crucifixion, for example in the
Très Riches Heures,which is a manuscript
created for the Duke de Berry,
created in France by Netherlandish artists called the Limbourg Brothers,
and they have in night crucifixion, so you know, this is the
not the first time but it is
not terribly widespread,
its new-ish we'll say,
and so you have that idea of the light
from the Christ Child who is shedding a light, you see that's a light source, you know
he's shedding a light on
Mary and the christ child, and then you have a secondary light which is up in the
right corner, which is the Annunciation to the sheppards,
and then you see all the stars in the sky,
so you know he's really trying to give you a more natural light effect.