The Bishop of Assisi Giving a Palm to Saint Clare, 1350, German, tempera and gold on panel
This is a fine example of what I like in Gothic art--
1. highly narrative (the bishop extended the palm to her specifically on Palm Sunday, as part of her choice to enter communal life; it is clearly also meant as a reference to her future sainthood).
2. figures in the International Gothic Style: delicate, swaying bodies, elongated hands with thin curving fingers, sweet precious faces.
3. even the grotesque stigmata on St. Francis's hands are cute little red dots
4. the beautiful tooling of the gold in the background--heavenly setting, luxury cues
5. the introduction of naturalistic elements--perspectival rendering of the book that hangs over the edge of the table, shading in the folds of the altar cloth.
1350 is a pivotal artistic point: right on the wake of the devastation of the Black Death, situated in the luxury of the past (though celebrating here figures who gave up their wealth specifically to be part of the Church--and who worked for the institution itself) as well as the hinted styles of the Renaissance.
Cool & interesting as always.
ReplyDeleteIs this treatment of halos (Simple circles, more or less) also standard Gothic?
More typical would be elaborate gold circular halos with lots of detailed repousse work. They would have stood out on a different colored background (and required less gold in terms of expense for the project).
DeleteBecause the background here is already an elaborate golden worked surface, that wouldn't be as effective here. When you zoom in on them, they are tooled in the gold--patterns are inscribed on the surface--but then the red tempera circle is added to make them stand out more. The red tempera is also interesting to me since the standard prepping procedure was to lay down a layer of bole--clay and glue, typically a red brown color--onto the gessoed surface of the panel so that the gold leaf adhered better. It creates a warm tint to the gold as well. Sometimes patterns were done in the underlayers so as to create more surface variation in the gold.
So one thing I wonder is whether this artist saw the color connection in the bole layer and continued it onto the finished layer of the halo?
The other possibility that raises itself is that the Nuremberg painters were closely allied to the glass trades (see the Met entry); a standard glass technique would have outlined the gold of the halo in another color, often red.