The Madonna of Humility - Boydell & Brewer

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16 The Madonna of Humility There have been several studies of the image, most of which have been concerned with the place of origin, and with the way in which the image might have been developed. As far back as 1935 Georgiana Goddard King argued for a Spanish origin, developing out of images of the Woman of the Apocalypse in Spanish Apocalypse manuscripts. 2 Millard Meiss, a year later, argued for a Central Italian origin, developing out of images of the Virgin seated on the ground at the Nativity. 3 In 1969, Henk van Os published a book on ‘Humble Madonnas’, 4 in which he developed further the discussion of the Madonna of Humility. He agreed with Meiss that the image had a Central Italian origin, but he suggested that the type had developed out of the seated Virgin Annunciate. More recently, Joseph Polzer has broadened the base of suggested source images by investigating Central Italian representations of the Crucifixion in which the Virgin sinks to the ground beside the crucifix. 5 Millard Meiss’s 1936 article has remained influential, and is still the most frequently cited source on the type in general works and catalogues. He suggested that the Madonna of Humility composition was invented by Simone Martini, whose earliest dated work was in Siena, and who produced much important work for that city, but who also produced work for patrons all over Central Italy, including in Assisi, Orvieto and San Gimignano, as well as for patrons in Naples and Avignon. Meiss’s guiding method was to consider the Madonna of Humility as a devotional image derived from a narrative image. Erwin Panofsky produced the classic definition of this process of derivation in his discussion of the type of image he called the Andachtsbild, an image designed to be the focus of devotion, excerpted from a narrative context which focuses on moments of high emotion or pathos with the intention of arousing the viewer’s compassion. 6 Meiss saw the process of the development of the Madonna of Humility as ‘an isolation of a group appearing 2 Georgiana Goddard King, ‘The Virgin of Humility’, Art Bulletin, 17 (1935), 474–91. 3 Millard Meiss, ‘The Madonna of Humility’, Art Bulletin, 18 (1936), 435–64; reprinted in Meiss’s Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton, 1951), 132–56. Unless otherwise indicated, all references here will be to this reprinted version. 4 Henk Van Os, Marias Demut und Verherrlichung in der sienesischen Malerei, 1300–1450 (The Hague, 1969) [originally published in Dutch, as the author’s doctoral thesis]. 5 Joseph Polzer, ‘Concerning the origin of the Madonna of Humility’, RACAR: Revue d’art Canadienne/Canadian Art Review, 27:1–2 (2000), 1–31. 6 Erwin Panofsky, ‘ “Imago Pietatis”: ein Beitrag zur Typengeschichte des “Schmerzensmanns” und der “Maria Mediatrix” ’, in Festschrift für Max J. Friedländer zum 60. Geburtstag (Leipzig, 1927), 261–308. Other more recent studies of this process of image development include: Sixten Ringbom, Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up in Fifteenth- Century Devotional Painting, 2nd ed. (Doornspijk, 1984); Hans Belting, The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion, trans. Mark Bartusis and Raymond Meyer (New Rochelle, NY, 1990), translation of the German original, Das Bild und sein Publikum im Mittelalter: Form und Funktion früher Bildtafeln der Passion (Berlin, 1981); Karl Schade, Andachtsbild: die Geschichte eines kunsthistorischen Begriffs (Weimar, 1996).
Descriptions and Definitions 17 in an historical scene, which was, in this instance, the Nativity.’ 7 He noted that the evolution of the Nativity in the first third of the fourteenth century in Tuscany was ‘characterized by an increasingly affectionate and intimate relationship between the Virgin and Child.’ 8 He traced a development from Giotto’s fresco in the Arena Chapel, where the Virgin reaches towards her child, 9 through other Nativity paintings by Giotto and his circle, where the Virgin holds the child in front of her, to paintings by Bernardo Daddi and Taddeo Gaddi, where she holds the nursing infant at her breast. 10 This latter group of paintings, Meiss argued, served as the source for the Madonna of Humility. He envisaged a process where the composition of the Virgin seated on the ground, suckling her child, was abstracted from the Nativity narrative, and became the basis for the new devotional image. This understanding of the process of development was supported by all the other writers who investigated the origins of the image, even where they saw a different narrative as providing the original source, such as the Annunciation or the Crucifixion. In fact, none of these narrative images, neither the Nativity, nor the Annunciation, nor the Crucifixion, provides a basis for all the iconographical elements of the Madonna of Humility image as it developed in the 1340s and beyond. The Nativity image might explain the seated posture and the suckling motif, but it does not explain the frequent references to the Annunciation (unless we were to see the Annunciation as a generally alldefining event in the Virgin’s life as Mother of Christ, and therefore understandable as a background or an addition to any image of the Virgin Mary). The alternative suggestion that the Madonna of Humility was abstracted out of the Annunciation better explains the presence of the lily or the book, and references to the Angel, but does not immediately explain the addition of the suckling motif. The Crucifixion explains neither the suckling motif nor the Annunciation references. And none of these three images provides a reason for the addition of the Apocalyptic symbols of the sun, moon and stars. Georgiana Goddard King’s hypothesis that the Madonna of Humility was derived from illustrations of the Woman of the Apocalypse in Spanish Apocalypse manuscripts of the twelfth and thirteenth century (specifically those illustrating the eighth-century commentary of the Spanish monk Beatus, and thus known as ‘Beatus Apocalypses’ ) 11 provides the best connection with these Apocalypse symbols. But her theory was rejected by Meiss, who suggested that the relationship which King traced between the illustrated Beatus manuscripts and the Madonna of Humility seemed 7 Meiss, ‘Madonna of Humility’, 147. 8 Meiss, ‘Madonna of Humility’, 147. 9 See James H. Stubblebine, Giotto: The Arena Chapel Frescoes (London, 1969), fig. 25. 10 For example, the panel by Taddeo Gaddi in Berlin: Meiss, ‘Madonna of Humility’, fig. 159. 11 See John Williams, The Illustrated Beatus: A Corpus of the Illustrations of the Commentary on the Apocalypse, 5 vols. (London, 1994–2003).
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