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Lot Essay
This splendid Crucifixion has been attributed to the rare, fascinating artist Giovanni da Bologna, one of the most faithful pupils of Lorenzo Veneziano (fl. 1356-1372), the leading Venetian painter of the second half of the 14th century. Although Giovanni's career remains somewhat shrouded in mystery, recent efforts to reassess his development have uncovered numerous documents, including several which show that he worked in Treviso in the late 1370s and early 1380s. He is also recorded as living in Venice from 1383-1385, where he seems to have primarily remained for the rest of his career, writing his will in that city in October 1389. Four signed works by him survive: a Virgin and Child with Saints in the Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice; a Virgin and Child with Angels in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan; a Saint Christopher in the Museo Civico, Padua; and a Coronation of the Virgin in the Denver Art Museum. Although the first two are considered earlier works, neither is dated. The Saint Christopher, identified as a 1377 commission for the Scuola dei Mercanti in Venice, provides the only fixed point around which scholars are able to base their studies of this enigmatic and intriguing painter.
As his name implies, Giovanni was probably born in Bologna, but likely trained further north in Italy in the wake of Lorenzo Veneziano. He seems to have had contact with the Bolognese painter Jacopo degli Avanzi, active in Padua in the third quarter of the Trecento, with whom he shares a tendency for emphasizing narrative and naturalistic effects: here, for instance, the angels flanking the cross beat their breast (left) and rend their hair (right) with anguish, while the green-gray flesh of Christ's limp body is especially affecting, his overstretched, bony limbs and exposed ribs meant to instill in the viewer empathy for his physical suffering.
As Cristina Guarnieri has noted, many scholars have characterized Giovanni's works as "the most faithful representation of the fusion of the Bolognese style with that of Venice" ("il più felice rappresentante della fusione dei caratteri bolognesi con quelli veneziani"), and consider the painter among the most important to blend the more modern art of the terrafirma with the archaic, Byzantinizing style of the Veneto (op. cit., p. 32). As this vigorously expressive, boldly colored Crucifixion shows, Giovanni's art is a precious document of the melting-pot of styles in northern Italy at the end of the 14th century: the gothic, archaizing designs of the Venetian Trecento; the confident plasticity of the Giottesque tradition in Padua; and the captivating, linear rhythms of the art from across the Alps.
As his name implies, Giovanni was probably born in Bologna, but likely trained further north in Italy in the wake of Lorenzo Veneziano. He seems to have had contact with the Bolognese painter Jacopo degli Avanzi, active in Padua in the third quarter of the Trecento, with whom he shares a tendency for emphasizing narrative and naturalistic effects: here, for instance, the angels flanking the cross beat their breast (left) and rend their hair (right) with anguish, while the green-gray flesh of Christ's limp body is especially affecting, his overstretched, bony limbs and exposed ribs meant to instill in the viewer empathy for his physical suffering.
As Cristina Guarnieri has noted, many scholars have characterized Giovanni's works as "the most faithful representation of the fusion of the Bolognese style with that of Venice" ("il più felice rappresentante della fusione dei caratteri bolognesi con quelli veneziani"), and consider the painter among the most important to blend the more modern art of the terrafirma with the archaic, Byzantinizing style of the Veneto (op. cit., p. 32). As this vigorously expressive, boldly colored Crucifixion shows, Giovanni's art is a precious document of the melting-pot of styles in northern Italy at the end of the 14th century: the gothic, archaizing designs of the Venetian Trecento; the confident plasticity of the Giottesque tradition in Padua; and the captivating, linear rhythms of the art from across the Alps.