PREDELLA Journal of Visual Arts

The first part of this paper is an iconographic analysis of the central panel of the triptych by Fra Angelico in Palazzo Corsini, Rome. It represents the Last Judgement and is a somewhat reduced version of a composition first seen in the panel from the monastic church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence. The saints represented to the left of Christ are Peter and his brother Andrew, and those to the right Paul and John the Evangelist. Behind the latter are represented Sts. Benedict and Francis, and a holy pope, often identified as Sixtus on the basis of a similar pope represented on the wing of a triptych painted by Fra Angelico for the Dominican cardinal Juan de Torquemada. The pope in the Corsini Triptych does not carry an attribute, and may also represent another saintly pope such as Gregory the Great. The saints in the second and third rows to the left of Christ are Stephen, Dominic, and a mitred monk identified in a previous contribution to this journal as Basil the Great. The presence of the latter among the heavenly host has an interesting parallel in a passage in the Chronicon of St Antoninus, in which he explains that the founders of the religious orders such as Basil, Augustine, Benedict, Dominic, and Francis (all of whom, with the exception of Augustine, are depicted in the panel) are surely present in the seraphic order of the heavens. There is some technical and documentary evidence to suggest that the three panels of the Corsini Triptych did belong together originally. However, the two wings, representing the Ascension and the Descent of the Holy Spirit, present some slight anomalies: the number of apostles is reduced, and the figural types of Sts. Peter, Andrew, and John do not correspond to those in the central panel. Although these inconsistencies remain difficult to explain, they do not constitute decisive arguments for the hypothesis that the triptych in its current form is an assemblage of two different works. The combination of the three subjects is unique for a triptych, but not anomalous: the Ascension and the subsequent Descent of the Holy Spirit signal the beginning of the Church, the Last Judgement its fulfilment. In the final part the issue of cryptoportraits is addressed. It has been proposed that St Sixtus and the similar pope in the Corsini Triptych are in fact portraits of Eugene IV, the pope who had created Torquemada cardinal-priest of San Sisto, the implication being that the cardinal also ordered the Corsini Triptych from Fra Angelico. The similarities with the documented portraits of the pope are minimal, however. It is still quite possible that the cardinal commissioned the triptych, but this cannot be demonstrated on the basis of iconography.

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Questioni pierfrancescane: la Maddalena di Arezzo

Pietro Barbucci

This paper analyzes the fresco depicting the Magdalene, painted by Piero della Francesca in the Arezzo Cathedral. After briefly examining the history of the artwork as well as the literary and figurative sources for the figure of the Magdalene, an iconographic and iconological analysis of the fresco is conducted. Drawing from this, the hypothesis is formulated that Piero intends to propose a precise historical moment in the life of the saint, the one that precedes her conversion. The fundamental clue for this interpretation is the fact that the door that the saint is about to enter is particularly narrow. This could allude to the “narrow door” of salvation, which is mentioned in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. In the last part of the paper, the scene depicted in the fresco is reconstructed in three dimensions. This demonstrates that, for its realization, Piero applied literally the methods he would set out years later in his famous treatise De prospectiva pingendi. The extraordinary harmony transmitted by the fresco may be also linked to the rigor in the representation of the saint and her spatial context, and to the different canons and modules used in the creation of the figure and of the architecture.

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Un percorso agostiniano per l’esordio di Raffaello a Città di Castello e i suoi echi seicenteschi

Laura Teza

The gonfalone by Raphael, now in the Pinacoteca Comunale Palazzo Vitelli alla Cannoniera in Città di Castello, was initially created for the local Confraternity of the Holy Trinity. The two canvases were painted as a double-sided processional banner: one shows the Trinity with Saints Sebastian and Roch, commonly considered as protectors against the plague; the other depicts the Creation of Eve, with God the Father who is about to pluck the rib from the sleeping Adam. Two angels fly above the scene. Newly discovered documents inform us that the sixteen lunettes in the sacristy were painted in 1633-1634 by Giovanni Battista Pacetti called the Sguazzino and show the childhood of Baby Jesus compared with that of Saint John the Baptist. The Trinity and the Creation of Adam and Eve are very characteristic subjects of the writings of Saint Augustine. Especially in the De Trinitate and in the De Genesi ad litteram Augustine explains the main role of the Trinity in the Creation of Mankind. The salvific role of Christ and of the Virgin is exposed in dialectical opposition to Adam and Eve. The Virgin and her virginal conception of Jesus, in the same way, confirm her divine role in dialectical opposition with the human nature of Saint John the Baptist.

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