Madonna of Humility

Formerly owned by Robert Langton Douglas, the British art critic and Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, this painting was published by Roberto Longhi in 1965 and correctly attributed to the Maestro del Bambino Vispo or Master of the Lively Child, later identified as Gherardo Starnina.¹ While the painted surface is in an excellent state of preservation, the sanded down and cradled panel was completely regilded some time between the auction at the Galerie Fischer, Lucerne, in November 1961² and the year of Longhi’s publication. The photograph in the auction catalogue, where the work is attributed to the Maestro del Bambino Vispo, documents its earlier condition, with the gold leaf worn away and the wood bole showing through, as do the two Schiff photos of 1958-59, when the painting was in the collection of the noted New York art dealer Julius H. Weitzner (Fototeca Zeri, inv. nos. 32342 and 32343). The Child’s cruciform halo, adorned with a pseudo-Arabic inscription, the sgraffito red Cross on the gold and the patterned cushion on which Mary sits are instead original and in a good state of preservation.

The Madonna of Humility is an excellent example of the inherent ambiguity of Starnina’s painting, developed under the influence of divergent and contradictory stimuli, combining rigorously Florentine cadences with exotic touches of Iberian origin. The Child shown keeping his balance as he clambers up his mother’s body is consciously borrowed from the Giotto Madonna and Child in the Ashmolean, which enjoyed great popularity in the early 15th century.³ Starnina was the first to take it up in joyful accents of an openly late-Gothic nature, freeing the rhythms of the garments in their sharp, acid colours, accentuating the rosiness of the cheeks and heightening the emotional intensity of the looks exchanged by the mother and child.⁴ The source of this vivacity, something unknown in Florentine painting at the time, was firsthand experience of the cosmopolitan art scene in Valencia, dominated by Pere Nicolau and Marzal de Sax, whom the artist met during his time in Spain. Starnina’s example was to prove crucial on his return in kindling the late-Gothic flame in early 15th-century Florence. The painter’s Spanish works are the immediate origin of the mantle folded back over the Virgin’s head to leave her soft hair exposed, as in the Deesis of the Last Judgement in the cusp of Bonifacio Ferrer’s polyptych in the Museo de Bellas Artes in Valencia.

The fiery orange lining enters into dialogue with the glowing palette of the predella by Collado de Alpuente. Mary’s fingers are as delicate as those of the Madonna of Humility in the Cleveland Museum of Art, certainly painted in Spain, and there are again two rings on the ring finger. The volumes are fuller than those of the Spanish period, however, and the warmth of firm flesh recalls the Virgin of the Annunciation altarpiece in Lucca and still more explicitly the polyptych of the Martin von Wagner Museum in Würzburg. This was most probably produced for the chapel of the Gentili family in the church of San Frediano in Lucca⁵ in the same period as the frescoes for the Carmine in Florence (1402-04), valuable points of reference for the painter’s chronology.⁶ The successful synthesis of opposing orientations is the highest peak of Starnina’s art, for which the first decade of the 15th century saw gradual attenuation of the whimsicality of the Spanish works under the influence of ever-closer dialogue with Lorenzo Ghiberti and Lorenzo Monaco. The absence of any trace of these contacts in the Langton Douglas Madonna suggests a dating between the end of the artist’s time in Valencia,⁷ where he is last documented in July 1401, and his return to Tuscany, where his presence is already documented in June 1402.⁸

This appears to be borne out also by similarities with the equally elusive Thronus Gratiae of the Chiaramonte Bordonaro Collection in Palermo. While the work’s history, its support of poplar wood and the fine shaping of the volumes all suggest an Italian origin, the mixtilinear outlines and a certain calligraphic agitation are rather characteristic of Spain, as is the floral decoration of the gilded ground. The latter element, a unique case in Starnina’s catalogue, was already common in the Iberian peninsula from the beginning of the 15th century but very rare indeed in Tuscany before its sporadic appearance in the mature works of Pirez and the art of Francesco d’Antonio.⁹ The style is identical. The purplish-blue raiment of God the Father takes up the bordeaux hues of the Child’s tunic in the Langton Douglas Madonna and is similarly animated by the gathering of curved folds. The lively face and mischievous expression of the Child, precariously balanced in the Virgin’s arms, is closely akin to the seraphim clustered all around the Cross in the Chiaramonte Bordonaro panel, who display the same joyous and wily youthfulness.

[Emanuele Zappasodi]

¹ Van Waadenojien 1974.

² Bedeutende Kunstauktion 1961, p. 88, lot 1640.

³ Bellosi 1966, p. 47; Volpe 1973; A. De Marchi, “Gherardo Starnina”, in Lucca 1998.

⁴ Zappasodi 2017, p. 78 no. 13.

⁵ Pisani 2017, p. 161.

⁶ Procacci 1933, pp. 188-190; A. M. Bernacchioni, “Riflessioni e proposte sulla committenza di Gherardo Starnina, pittore del guelfismo fiorentino”, in Parenti, Tartuferi 2007, p. 44.

⁷ De Marchi, “Gherardo Starnina” cit., p. 260.

⁸ As ascertained by Alberto Lenza: see A. De Marchi, “Gherardo Starnina, l’Annunciazione di Lucca”, in Biscottini, Righi 2014, p. 38, no. 6.

⁹ Zappasodi 2017, pp. 80-81, note 44.