GIOTTO'S OGNISSANTI MADONNA

GIOTTO'S OGNISSANTI ALTARPIECE


One of the best ways to measure the difference between Gothic and Renaissance art is to compare two altarpieces in the Uffizi Gallery, GIOTTO'S MAESTA for the church of Ognissanti in Florence (1310) and VENEZIANO'S ALTARPIECE for the church of SANTA LUCIA DEI MAGNOLI (also Florence)(1445) (next blog entry):
 

Both were altarpieces made for smaller churches away from the center of Florence, but the Giotto altarpiece is considerably larger than the one made by Veneziano. Both paintings are of the same subject, the Madonnna and Child ENTHRONED with saints, and both are painted in tempera on panel.

           What is GOTHIC about GIOTTO's painting? The first thing to notice is the Gothic arch in the construction of the throne. A Gothic arch in architecture is pointed, unlike Romanesque arches which are round. Here the point of the Gothic arch is reinforced by the pointed elements in the gable of the throne and in the pointed shape of the altarpiece itself.

1) The Madonna and Child are larger than the surrounding figures because they are the MOST IMPORTANT SACRED FIGURES. Giotto's Madonna and Child look like a painted version of

the statue Arnolfo da Cambio carved out of marble for the facade of the Florence Cathedral:

She is enormous, stiff, blocky, and Giotto gives her shadows under the chin and around the breasts and neck to make her appear to be three-dimensional, but because she is so much bigger than the other figures, the viewer sees her as removed from real life and holier than normal humans, in a realm by herself and up the stairs on her throne. Even her Child is similar to the Arnolfo; he blesses with his right hand and sits on her lap in similar fashion.

Both Mother and Child are large, too, because they are the most powerful figures in the scene.

2) The background of the painting is GOLD LEAF, for the gold light of heaven, and the haloes that each of the figures wear are disks of gold, embossed with tools from Giotto's workshop. The Madonna and Child are portrayed raised up on a throne in heaven, with gold leaf outlining their clothing as well. They are holy figures worthy of the most expensive materials and covered with the most expensive cloths. The Child blesses with two fingers of the right hand. These haloed creatures are extraordinary humans, not living in a human landscape.

The angels and saints on either side of the Madonna in Giotto's version are placed symmetrically, same number on each side, and the angels in the foreground bring the Madonna symbolic gifts. One on the left holds a crown because the Madonna is considered the QUEEN OF HEAVEN; the one on the right holds an incense box to keep the throne area perfumed. The two angels kneeling in front hold vases of lilies and roses, symbolic of the Virgin's purity and love. These types of altarpieces are sometimes known as Madonna in MAESTA, the Madonna in Majesty, because she is displayed as royalty.

          The child looks like a small adult and the throne is perforated with quatrefoil decoration in the windows and pointed arch finials.

          HOW is GIOTTO moving away from the GOTHIC way of presenting this scene?

1) The artist is interested in space and how to represent things being further forward or further backward in depth. His pictorial space progresses from the picture plane at the lowest part of  the painting, to the kneels of the white angels, to the first step of the throne stairs, to the green robes of the front angels, to the first section of the pedestal of the throne room, to the seated Madonna and Child, to the seat she is sitting on complete with cushion, with the saints on either side of that, to

the back of the throne room, to the rows of saints looking through the windows on either side, to the

gold leaf of the background landscape of HEAVEN.  ALMOST 11 separate delineations of SPACE!

He is obviously intent on showing his skill at being able to demonstrate the receding pictorial planes

in regular, mathematical fashion. At the same time, however, the emphasis is on the vertical, with the people who are most important being placed closest to the top.

2) In keeping with his interest in the depiction of picture planes and depth in space, he has used shadows to convey space that is receding, such as the shadows on the necks of the angels and around their knees.

3) The most interesting advance in his depiction of depth occurs in the throne ceiling and windows and in the steps of the throne.

If you look closely at the ceiling of the throne room, 

you will notice that the right side of the ceiling (painted in red and gold) is larger than the area of the ceiling shown on the left. By the same token the left side of the throne steps (the vertical part) is larger than the right side, or, we see more of the left side of the throne step in front than we do of the right side. 

 

We also see more of the opening of the right window of the throne and its concomitant saint's face) than we do of the left window and its saint's face. 

 

 

WHAT IS GIOTTO DOING? He is showing us more of the right side than the left in the ceiling and windows, and more of the left side of the staircase in order to convey the sense that we are not looking at the throne from the front of it, but rather from the left side. From the left a spectator would see more of the right window, more of the right ceiling, and more of the left side of the stairstep. 

For the first time in the history of Western painting we see the artist showing his awareness of the viewer of his painting. He assumes the spectator to have a position to the left of the scene, and he confirms it by having the Child face to our left and bless a person standing in that position. He is starting to think about the relationship of the holy heavenly figures to the spectator looking at them in the space of the church. His interest in space and depth means that he is observing more what happens in actuality in nature and is trying his best to imitate real recession in his pictorial world. Unlike other Gothic altarpieces, where the angels and Madonna are flat against the picture plane and the Madonna is huge, his Madonna and child are starting to look more like humans, with volume in the clothing and bodies suggested under the drapery.

          But he has not come anywhere near the mirroring of nature that is made possible with the

invention of ONE-POINT PERSPECTIVE IN THE 15TH CENTURY. We will now move on in the next blog to the Renaissance altarpiece of the Madonna Enthroned by Domenico Veneziano and see how it differs from Giotto's.

          Just remember when you walk into the Uffizi room where Giotto's Madonna Enthroned is

installed, make sure to stand slightly to the left where you can receive the full measure of the Child's

blessing,  and with it the full measure of understanding what Giotto is conveying with his large, wide-eyed Virgin on a throne full of gold. Then walk into the next room of the Uffizi to see the Veneziano altar and you will be taking on a new perspective.

          

DONATELLO'S MARY MAGDALENE

DONATELLO'S MARY MAGDALENE  

The one thing we can be certain about Donatello (1389-1466) is that he never does the same work
twice. Even when he is asked to produce sculptures that have similar themes, such as the Cantoria
and the Prato outdoor pulpit, both with dancing putti, he makes sure the works are unalike and can be distinguished from one another.  

 He never repeats the same statues, even when they are both assumed to be prophets:

or both saints:

 

But his need to innovate means that he chooses different subjects to tackle as well:
David 
                                                                                                                               Judith and Holofernes
                

                                                          Annunciation in Santa Croce
He makes an equestrian statue in Padua, a marble bas-relief (now in the MFA, Boston), and bronze pulpits in the Florentine church of San Lorenzo.

 

and in none of these does he follow convention. He enjoys the originality of the new subject, the creativity of making a new composition with new emotional content and new material. 
          But in one statue he outdoes himself as an innovator and creator: his statue of MARY MAGDALENE, carved out of one trunk of poplar wood between 1453 and 1455, now in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Florence:

The statue of Mary Magdalene is unusual in its material since few artists work in wood in 15th-century Italy, and few wooden statues survive the centuries. Donatello does other works in wood, but never repeats a Mary Magdalene. His Mary Magdalene is also one of the most unusual portraits of old age. We have no documents for its commission; the only record of its location was in the Florence Baptistery before it was moved to the Museo dell'Opera. Was it made, like other painted images of Mary Magdalene, for the convent of Santa Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi in Borgo Pinti in Florence? and then moved to the Baptistery when its powerful effect on viewers was noted? 
            The statue has been newly cleaned and some of the brown paint has been removed to reveal traces of gold leaf on the hair; the gilding is put back in the recent restoration and she has new shine that was intended by the artist. If you look closely at particular sections from certain angles, you can see the young woman before life caught up with her. The wisps of hair against her skin on her left and right cheeks suggest what beauty there might have been in an earlier age. In Donatello's hands we see the young woman inside the old one.
 

Even her tanned arms still seem young and vital.
But the rest of this portrait is a horrifying documentation of the ravages of age. She is missing teeth, her skin sags on her face, her cheekbones show, her veins in the neck protrude, her chin lacks the force to keep her mouth closed.

Her eyes are not seeing properly, her bare feet are mangled by wear.

She stands alone, absorbed in the prayer she is mouthing, oblivious to anyone around her, especially the viewer. Her hands encapsulate the spirit of air she is about to become. 

           Donatello has chosen to depict, not the young Mary Magdalene seen in painted Crucifixions in the 15th century, such as Botticelli's, where she holds Christ's feet:

but an old and haggard saint, emaciated by her fasting in the desert after Christ's death and Resurrection. She has no clothes, wears only her hair, which has grown long enough to cover her, and she lifts up her hands in prayer. She has turned away from the material world, the world of the body by which she was thought to have earned her living, and she faces old age and death with a spiritual intensity that seems to burn within her.
           In the 15th century Mary Magdalene had acquired stories that were not entirely connected to her by name in the Bible. The stories associated her with the prostitute Christ saved from stoning, with the woman who anointed Christ's feet with her hair and oil. She is, of course, the woman who witnesses Christ's Crucifixion, and she is the first person to see Christ after his Resurrection (Luke 7:36-50), where she meets someone in the garden of Christ's tomb, whom she thinks at first is the gardener. When she realizes it is Christ risen, she reaches for him. He says, "Noli me Tangere," "Do not Touch me, I have not yet arisen to the Father."

             Fra Angelico's Noli Me Tangere (1438-1441), San Marco monk's cell

Magdalene's stories get conflated with the stories about another female saint, the ascetic St. Mary of Egypt, who lived her life in the desert as a recluse.  
           Donatello draws on all of these facets of Mary Magdalene's life from visual images of her that
he might have known. Her long hair, then, is a reminder to the viewer of her using her hair to bathe Christ's feet. Her long hair covering a naked body reminds the viewer of the life of sin of the
woman who sold her body for sex. 

The space between her hands reminds us of the Noli Me Tangere story; the hands do not touch because Christ had said, "No not touch me."

Her lifted praying hands also remind the viewer of her penitence after Christ's death, her desire for absolution from her sinful past life. The emaciation of her body shows a turning away from the life of the body to the life of the spirit, the fasting of the saint in the desert. Her brown skin and nakedness reflect her life outside worldly comforts, without clothes or protection from the sun. The length of her hair suggests the long life she has endured after witnessing the death and Resurrection of someone she loved and believed in. Her hands and mouth offer up a prayer that her suffering be at an end.   
           The viewer of Donatello's Magdalene cannot help but be moved, by her age, by her wistfulness, by her longing, by her anxious gaze. Donatello lived with his mother all his life in a small place near the Florentine Baptistery. His mother's name was Orsa Bardi, so Magdalene was not
her name saint, but we cannot help but see the aging of his own mother in this work. He has filled this wooden statue with a life that has been lived long and hard, softened only by single wisps of hair along the cheeks. He knew how to portray a penitent Magdalene who readies herself for the life of the spirit after death because he had watched his own mother grow old and leave her flesh behind. If her hair is turning to gold, Donatello wishes it so. Young people who stand in front of this statue are mesmerized by the vision of what happens to the body over time; they look at her as if looking at
their own future.

We are not the only viewers to be moved by his depiction of Magdalene. In his own century,
artists reproduced in paint the gaunt, hair-covered figure out of tribute to the master who made her:

 Pollaiuolo, Assumption of Mary Magdalene, S.Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi, Florence, 1470's.

 Botticelli, Pala delle Convertite, 1490's, Courtauld Institute, London, originally made for the
church of Santa Elisabetta delle Convertite, Florence.