Millard Meiss

Light as Form and Symbol in Some Fifteenth-Century Paintings

In accounts of the development of naturalism in fifteenth-century painting, linear perspective is usually given first consideration. This modern emphasis on perspective has been influenced, no doubt, by the writings of the fifteenth-century artists themselves. Discussions of it occupy a prominent place in the treatises of Alberti and Piero della Francesca. But these discussions were motivated not only by a sense of the importance of perspective for painting, but also by a desire to raise the status of the craft, and a corresponding insistence on the theoretical and mathematical modes of thought necessary to it.

The Madonna of Humility

In the Museo Nazionale at Palermo there hangs a panel which represents the Madonna seated on a small cushion on the ground (Fig. 2).1 She is turned oblique to the picture plane, her head is inclined gently toward the left, her further leg is raised higher than the nearer one, and she holds close to her body the Infant Christ. The Infant draws her breast into His mouth, while at the same time He turns His head away from her and looks out at the spectator. From the head of the Virgin radiate thin spires of gold, at the tips of which are twelve stars; and at her feet is visible a small crescent moon. This painting, while of no considerable quality, has an historical importance as one of the earliest dated (1346) examples of the Madonna of Humility. The Madonna of Humility, a phase of the Madonna distinguished by her lowly seat on the ground,2 attained a very wide popularity in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in Italy, and appeared, beyond Italy, in Spain, France, and Germany. Van Marle has ...

The Original Position of Uccello's John Hawkwood

Paolo Uccellos simulated tomb and monument of the condottiere John Hawkwood has always been regarded as one of the incunabula of systematic perspective construction. The master executed the fresco in 1436, only about twelve years after Brunelleschi had discovered the principles of focus perspective and just about the same time as Leon Battista Alberti completed the first written account of the theory and practice of projection. One important aspect of Uccellos painting has, however, not been discussed, at least until the past few months, when two historians quite independently made similar observations.

An Illuminated Inferno and Trecento Painting in Pisa

Of the early illustrations of Dantes Commedia those in a manuscript in the Musee Conde are outstanding. Only one other fourteenth century cycle approaches them in beauty of design, and their narrative power is unrivaled. The Chantilly codex contains only the Inferno, together with a commentary on it in Latin and a dichiarazione poetica, both by Fra Guido of Pisa. The fate of both the text and the pictures of this manuscript has been similar. The miniatures have been almost entirely ignored by historians of Italian painting—at least until 1956, when I described them as Trainesque and spoke briefly of their significance1—while the text, though studied by Dante scholars, is the only fourteenth century commentary that has never been published.2 It contains, in fact, some statements of interest to historians of art; we may mention here the formulation of Dantes position in literary history: Ipse enim mortuam poesiam de tenebris reduxit ad lucem. This sounds like the immediate literary antecedent of Boccaccio...

Toward a More Comprehensive Renaissance Palaeography

Of all the accomplishments of the cultural renewal in the fifteenth century the basic change in the symbols of writing has proved one of the most durable, for its results are still clearly with us today. Though the story of the abandonment of “Gothic” and the restoration of “Roman” has, of course, often been told, it has nevertheless been told briefly, with interest concentrated on the early stages of the development and on the design of type in the first printed books.1 But even for the initial period at the beginning of the fifteenth century many of the important documents have not been published, so that despite a few valuable essays we are still not well informed about the sources or the contributions of the pioneers, such as Niccolo Niccoli and Francesco Poggio. This lack of close investigation is probably due to the weakness of a motive that usually serves as a powerful stimulant of palaeographical studies: the wish, indeed the need, to classify objects or documents on grounds of script. Our compara...

A Documented Altarpiece by Piero Della Francesca

When a panel representing a saint by Piero della Francesca (Fig. 2) emerged from obscurity and passed into the Frick Collection in 1936,1 it was generally recognized to be part of a polyptych of which two other leaves were known, a St. Michael in the National Gallery, London (Fig. 1), and a saint usually called Thomas Aquinas in the Poldi-Pezzoli Museum, Milan (Fig. 3).2 For reasons of style, the panels in London and Milan have always been dated late in Pieros career, at the end of the ‘sixties or in the early ‘seventies.3 The only attempt to provide “external” evidence for their date, and also for their place of origin, was made some time ago by Tancred Borenius. In a footnote to a book review published in 1916,4 he remarked that the saint in Milan is not Thomas Aquinas, as was commonly supposed, but the popular Augustinian Nicholas of Tolentino, and that the panel, therefore, was probably part of an altarpiece painted in accordance with a commission given to Piero in 1454 by the church of S. Agostino i...

Not an Ostrich Egg

In a persuasive article in The Art Bulletin, LIII, 1971, 435ff., Dr. Isa Ragusa offered, among other things, new evidence for the identification of the famous ovoid object in the Brera Altarpiece by Piero della Francesca as the egg of an ostrich. In the June, 1974, number of The Art Bulletin Professor C. Gilbert undertook “a criticism of just one aspect of her article.” At the end of more than five pages of objections he reasserted once again his conviction that the egg in the altarpiece is probably Ledas.

A New Monumental Painting by Filippino Lippi

The panels presented in the following pages will come as a surprise to all but a very few historians of art (Figs. 1–4). Five feet high, they cannot be kept in a drawer.1 Like the smaller panels of the Santa Maria Maggiore Altarpiece by Masolino and Masaccio that emerged in 19512 they prove that major monumental paintings of the Early Renaissance are still – but alas in greatly diminished number – enjoyed quite privately by British families – a sign of their distinctive way of life as well as of their exceptional heritage. There seems to be no record that any connoisseur saw our paintings during the century or more when they belonged to the Earls of Lucan, who possessed them until 1964. During at least part of this period they apparently hung in the house at Laleham in Middlesex, not far from London.3 The seals of the third Earl, who succeeded in 1839, are affixed to the backs of the panels.4

The Bookkeeping of Robinet d'Estampes and the Chronology of Jean de Berry's Manuscripts

In most respects the two volumes by Jules Guiffrey, Inventaires de Jean duc de Berry, Paris, 1894–96, gave historians a publication worthy of these extraordinary documents, which are an unrivalled source of information about a largely vanished world of artists, dealers, publishers, and artifacts of all kinds. Guiffreys text is remarkably accurate – correlation with the documents themselves discloses very few errors. And all students of the period constantly bless him for the fullness of his index.

Italian Primitives at Konopiště

Ever since the late eighteenth century, when artists, historians, and collectors first showed a persistent interest in Italian primitives, the number of paintings known to scholars has continued to grow. It is evident, however, that this long period of discovery or rediscovery is coming to an end. Except perhaps for the panels of the thirteenth century, the last to be understood, the number and the quality of the primitives brought to light in recent years have diminished greatly. Twenty years ago new works of Masaccio or Giovanni Bellini still were scattered through the journals. Today there are mostly Squarcioneschi. In these circumstances it is surprising to come across a collection of some forty unpublished Italian panels and altarpieces, even though only one is of really great beauty. Equally surprising is the fact that in this instance the collector preceded the student by one hundred and fifty years. For whereas the paintings are still unknown to scholars, they were almost certainly brought togethe...