Miniatures

This unusual Crucifixion likely comes from a Missal in which it would have prefaced the Canon of the Mass. Its distinctive technique resembles fresco painting in the thin washes of paint applied to the figures and the landscape, while the rich anecdotal detail, the elegant and expressive Gothic figures, and the frame composed of a green wreath recall Bolognese art of the first half of the fifteenth century. The composition derives from a well-known model of uncertain origin, but best known in a niello Pax attributed to Maso di Finaguerra of Florence in the early 1450s. The composition circulated widely not only in prints, but also in manuscript illumination and paintings.

Thanks to recent research, we are now able to propose a new attribution for this striking contribution to, or more probably closely following, a Bolognese painter, Giovanni di Pietro Falloppi, known as Giovanni da Modena.  From nearby Modena, he is first recorded in Bologna in 1409.  His major surviving work is the imaginative and dramatic fresco decoration of the Bolognini Chapel in San Petronio in Bologna, commissioned in 1408.  Attributed to him also are manuscripts produced for the various guilds in Bologna, through the 1420s including the Statuti della Società dei Drappieri,1407 (Bologna, Museo Civico Medievale, MS 639), the Matricola della Società dei Drappieri, 1411 (Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS 641) and a copy of Valerius Maximus, De dictis et factis, MS 2279.  Another single illuminated page is in La Spezia.  His last surviving work is the little-known Way to Calvary and Crucifixion fresco cycle in the 1450s in the Church of Santo Stefano in Bologna.  An exhibition in 2014-15 assembled many of his works, but they have not been well-studied.

It is apparent that the painter of our Crucifixion knew the model of the Crucifixion used for, or originating in (?), the Florentine niello Pax and related engravings, although the present miniature is nearly three times larger than these sources.  The artist, however, transformed the model into a work of art of his own.  Details that stand out as typical of Giovanni are the unusual facial types of rectangular form with partially closed eyes and heavy lids, the outlining around the draperies especially in the mantles of the female figures, and the partially opened mouths showing the tips of several front teeth (see the swooning Virgin but also the figure of Christ).  The green wreathed frame is strikingly like a frame Giovanni painted in a Matricola dated 1428 and occurs commonly in Bolognese full-page illumination of the first half of the fifteenth century.  Giovanni’s activity as both a fresco painter and an illuminator could account for the fresco-like technique employed in the Crucifixion miniature.  The manuscript painting merits further research to uncover its exact relationship to this talented artist, but the similarities remain tantalizingly close.

Literature

D. Benati.  Giovanni Da Modena: Un Pittore All'ombra Di San Petronio, exhibition catalogue, Bologna, Museo Civico Medievale, 2014-2015.

A.M. Hind.  Nielli, chiefly Italian of the XV century, plates, sulphur casts and prints preserved in the British museum, reproduce in facsimile …, London, British Museum, 1936, page 11 and pl. 1.