Taddeo di Bartolo, The Blessing Redeemer

on book, EGO / SUM / VIA [ET VERITAS ET VITA]

Edward Hutton (1875–1969), England; from whom purchased by Maitland Fuller Griggs (1872–1943), New York, 1923

The panel, of a vertical wood grain, exhibits a pronounced convex warp. It has been irregularly sawn through its thickness: its depth varies unevenly from 2.4 centimeters at the bottom to 1.4 centimeters near the top. A vertical split along the center of the panel runs from the top edge to the gold hem of Christ’s tunic, approximately through the thinnest area of the wood. Two tapering dowel channels are visible at the lower edge on the reverse, 4 centimeters in from either edge, 8.3 centimeters long on the left (as viewed from the reverse) and 7.4 centimeters long on the right. The gilding, except in the hems of Christ’s garments, has been effaced by abrasion. Only the red bolus survives, in some areas worn to the gesso underlayer. The paint surface has been severely abraded throughout, leaving little more than terra verde underpaint with scattered pink highlights in the flesh tones and thin passages of blue or mauve in the draperies. A vigorous brush underdrawing is visible everywhere except through the areas of blue color.

The panel, whose original appearance can be more properly assessed from photographs predating its overcleaning in 1967 (fig. 1), is typical of representations of Christ as Redeemer usually placed above the central compartment in multitiered polyptychs. Shown in three-quarter length and facing the viewer, Christ raises His right hand in blessing while displaying with His left hand a book open to the biblical verse “Ego sum via et veritas et vita” (I am the way, the truth and the life, John 14:6). The painting was acquired by Maitland Griggs from the English collector and dealer Edward Hutton in 1923. According to Hutton, who stated that the color was “perfect and exquisite,” although the gold background had been restored, the picture had been authenticated as a work of Taddeo di Bartolo by both Bernard Berenson and F. Mason Perkins.¹ In his 1925 lecture at the Griggs residence in New York, Richard Offner reiterated the attribution, which has been accepted by all subsequent scholars.² Raimond van Marle, who first published the panel,³ listed it among other iconographically related images of the Blessing Redeemer by Taddeo, the closest of which, in the Lindenau-Museum Altenburg, Germany,⁴ has since been associated with the artist’s 1395 altarpiece for San Paolo all’Orto in Pisa.⁵

In 1975 Gordon Moran convincingly identified the Yale Blessing Redeemer as one of two images of Christ in the pinnacle of Taddeo’s monumental, double-sided altarpiece for the high altar of the church of San Francesco al Prato, in Perugia, signed and dated by the painter in 1403.⁶ As subsequently confirmed by Gail Solberg in her reconstruction of the original complex,⁷ the Yale panel is one of twenty-four surviving fragments from this ambitious structure, dismantled in the sixteenth century to make room for successive programs of renovation in San Francesco.⁸ The original complex, conceived as a double-sided, multitiered polyptych, comprised a main register of seven compartments with full-length figures, a narrative predella, and decorated pilasters (figs. 2–3). Each compartment was painted on the recto and verso. On one side, facing the nave and the lay audience, was the Enthroned Virgin and Child flanked by Saints Clare of Assisi, John the Baptist, and Mary Magdalen to her right and Saints Catherine of Alexandria, John the Evangelist, and Elizabeth of Hungary to her left. On the other side, facing the so-called retrochoir, was the image of Saint Francis of Assisi displaying the wounds of the Stigmata, flanked by Saints Herculanus, Anthony of Padua, and Peter to his right and Saints Paul, Constantius, and Louis of Toulouse to his left. In the predella, below each of the standing saints on both sides, were twelve episodes from the life of Saint Francis.⁹

At some point during the disassembly of the altarpiece, the individual compartments, including the pinnacle and predella, were sawn apart through their thickness to yield multiple panels. Twenty-three of these are now divided among the following collections:

• Perkins Collection, Museo del Tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi: Saint Elizabeth of Hungary

• Museo Diocesano, Gubbio, inv. no. DP007S3N005: Saint Clare of Assisi

• Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia, inv. no. 66: Virgin and Child; Saint John the Baptist; Saint Mary Magdalen; Saint Catherine of Alexandria; Saint John the Evangelist

• Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia, inv. no. 62: Saint Francis Trampling the Vices; Saint Herculanus; Saint Anthony of Padua; Saint Louis of Toulouse; Saint Constantius

• Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia, inv. no. 63: Saint Paul

• Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia, inv. no. 64: Saint Peter

• Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia, inv. no. 135/1072: Redeemer Displaying His Wounds

• Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hanover, Germany, inv. no. KM 307a–f, six episodes from the life of Saint Francis: Saint Francis and the Trial by Fire; The Approbation of the Rule; The Miraculous Mass at Greccio; The Vision of the Fiery Chariot; The Miracle of the Source; Saint Francis Preaching to the Birds

• Collection of Dr. J. H. van Heek, Huis Bergh Castle, ‘s-Heerenberg, the Netherlands, inv. no. 3354: Saint Francis Appearing at Arles

• Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, inv. no. 36: Saint Sebastian

Technical comparisons between the Yale panel and the fragment with the Redeemer Displaying His Wounds in the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia (fig. 4) present clear evidence that the two images originally stood back-to-back on the uppermost, central pinnacle of the San Francesco altarpiece (see figs. 2–3).¹⁰ As first pointed out by Henk van Os, it is likely that the Perugia Redeemer was on the choir side, where its unusual iconography provided a visual parallel to the image of Saint Francis as alter christus (second Christ) showing the wounds of the Stigmata.¹¹ The Yale Blessing Redeemer, indebted to a more traditional iconographic type, stood above the Virgin and Child on the nave side of the church. Both Redeemer panels, Solberg has proposed, must have been accompanied by additional pinnacle elements over the side compartments with standing saints, although none of these have yet been identified.

Executed for the most important Franciscan foundation in Umbria after Assisi, the polyptych for San Francesco al Prato confirms Taddeo’s standing as the most sought-after painter in Siena and the adjoining territory, following his return to the city in 1399. The magnificently imposing structure is generally viewed as the crowning achievement of his career and a showcase for his fully developed technical abilities. At the same time, this work, like the artist’s equally grandiose 1401 polytpych in Montepulciano Cathedral, marks the final evolution of his style away from the more nuanced naturalistic approach of his earliest efforts of the previous decade, as exemplified by works such as the Saint John the Baptist and Saint Jerome panels also at the Yale University Art Gallery. The robust, darkly contoured figures enveloped in ample folds of cloth that distinguish the Perugia altarpiece anticipate the increasingly conventional, formulaic style adopted by the artist over the course of the next two decades of his activity, possibly as a result of the ever-greater demands placed on his workshop.¹² —PP

1. Edward Hutton, letter to Maitland Griggs, November 18, [1923], Griggs correspondence, Yale University Art Gallery Archives. ↩︎

2. Lecture notes recorded in the Frick Art Reference Library, New York. ↩︎

3. van Marle 1931a, 172, pl. 10. ↩︎

4. Inv. no. 63. ↩︎

5. See Amato 2009, 110, 117n42. ↩︎

6. Moran 1975, 4–7. ↩︎

7. Solberg 1991, 551–54; Solberg 1992a, 650n18, fig. 26; Solberg 1992b, 13, 18–23, figs. 1, 12; and Solberg 2020, 19, 206, 213, 217, no. 27e. ↩︎

8. The various phases of the church’s construction and the location of the altarpiece are discussed in detail by Cooper and Sartore 2020, 71–87 (with previous bibliography). ↩︎

9. For a discussion of the structure and iconography of the predella, in particular, see Gardner von Teuffel 2020, 103–17. ↩︎

10. A full account of the technical examination of the two panels can be found in Solberg 1992a, 22–23. ↩︎

11. van Os 1974, 120–21. ↩︎

12. Amato 2009, 109–10, 117nn40–41. Cesare Brandi, as quoted by Amato, perceptively referred to a “gothic hardening” (rincrudimento gotico) in Taddeo’s forms, beginning around 1400. For Amato, the change is already manifest in Taddeo’s frescoes with stories of the Virgin in the Sardi Chapel in San Francesco, Pisa. ↩︎