Giovanni di Paolo_ The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 46 ..

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6. Giovanni di Paolo. Virgin and Child.Monte dei Paschi Collection, Siena4. Giovanni di Paolo. Saint Catherine (?).The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TheRobert Lee Blaffer Memorial Collection,Gift of Sarah Campbell Blaffer (53.3)5. Giovanni di Paolo. Saint John the Baptist.The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. TheRobert Lee Blaffer Memorial Collection,Gift of Sarah Campbell Blaffer (53.2)One point should be made at once. The reason why somany paintings by Giovanni di Paolo exist in the MetropolitanMuseum and in other museums in the United States isthat his works were broken up. Giovanni di Paolo, likeother Sienese painters of his time, was primarily a maker ofaltarpieces, and in Siena through the middle of the fifteenthcentury the altarpiece was a polyptych, in which a centralpanel (usually though not invariably a Virgin and Child)was flanked by two or four panels of saints beneath Gothicarcading. Generally there was a superstructure with halflengthfigures of the Evangelists with in the center a Redeemer,attached by dowels to the main panels. Often therewere small superimposed figures of saints in pilasters at thesides. The whole structure rested on a base or predella withnarrative scenes relating either to the central figure, or tothe saints flanking it, or to one of the saints to the exclusionof the rest. The predella was normally composed of a singlehorizontal plank on which the individual scenes were separatedby pigmented interstices or by gesso decoration.When altarpieces were disassembled (as many were in theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries), the lateral panelswere frequently detached from the panel in the center, thepinnacles were removed, and the wood of the predella wassawn through so that the individual scenes on it could bedisposed of as separate works. By the law of probability,when one panel from the predella of a quattrocento altarpiecehas been preserved, other panels are likely to havebeen preserved as well. Applying this rule to Giovanni diPaolo fifty years ago, it proved possible to reunite a numberof what till then were looked upon as discrete panels. Thelaw of probability also suggests that where anr altarpiecesurvives intact, its predella, or part of it, is likely to bepreserved as well, and conversely that where a predella survivesit is likely to belong to an existing altarpiece.The first painting by Giovanni di Paolo to enter the Museumshows two full-length figures of Saints Matthew andFrancis turned slightly to the left (fig. 7). The tops of thepanels have been reduced, but the figures fill the wholeheight of the surface that remains, and their haloes abut on,and in places are cut by, the molded decoration above. InSiena in the 1930s there was a mysterious tabernacle in theVia delle Terme that was said to contain one of Giovanni di8
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Page 3 and 4: JOHNPOPE-HENNESSYI_IGIOVANNI DI PAO
Page 5 and 6: Director'sNoteIn 1937 the London pu
Page 7 and 8: RELATIONSHIPS WITH ARTISTS of the p
Page 9: exiled from Athens, is crushed bene
Page 13 and 14: by the operaio, the sculptor Jacopo
Page 15 and 16: I 5. Gentile da Fabriano. The Prese
Page 17 and 18: I7. Giovanni di Paolo. The Creation
Page 19 and 20: I9. Fra Angelico ( 387-I455). The L
Page 21 and 22: 2 . Giovanni di Paolo. The Baptist
Page 23 and 24: 25. Giovanni di Paolo. TheAngel Gab
Page 25 and 26: but about I440 it reappears in the
Page 28 and 29: 2633. Giovanni di Paolo. The Miracu
Page 30 and 31: 35. Giovanni di Paolo. SaintJohn th
Page 32 and 33: 38. Giovanni di Paolo. The Adoratio
Page 34 and 35: 3240. Giovanni di Paolo. Saint Ambr
Page 36 and 37: 45. Giovanni di Paolo. SaintJerome
Page 38 and 39: 3648-5 I. Giovanni di Paolo. Four S
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Page 42 and 43: 55. Sano di Pietro (I406-I48I). Mad
Page 44 and 45: 57. Giovanni di Paolo. The Crucifix
Page 46 and 47: 446 3. Giovanni di Paolo. The Coron
Page 48 and 49: 66. Giovanni di Paolo. Pieta. Priva
Page 50 and 51: NOTESPhotography of Robert Lehman C
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Giovanni di Paolo_ The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 46 ..

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