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

55. Sano di Pietro (I406-I48I). Madonna and Child with SaintsJohn the Baptist, Jerome, Peter Martyr,
Bernardino, and Four Angels. Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (I975.1.43)
Giovanni di Paolo was also a prolific painter, but his case
differs from Sano di Pietro's because, first, he had a smaller
studio (looking at the paintings and documents, it would be
hard to credit that he had at any time more than two assistants)
and because, second, he had greater communicative
range. The initial image seems to have been arrived at with
less facility, and was frequently reused after a long lapse of
time. This was the case with the components of his
Crucifixions. One of the most impressive of his images of
the Crucified Christ is a panel once in the Lanckoronski
Collection, Vienna, in which the head is fully frontal and is
turned slightly down (fig. 56). In this it recalls the central
pinnacle of Masaccio's Pisa altarpiece. About I440 this
image appears again, as the center of a narrative predella
panel, and a year or two after I460 it appears once more,
again in a narrative context, in a panel that is now in
Amsterdam. The change of scale, from the large compass
of the Lanckoronski picture to the predella panels, suggests
that the Christ was recorded in some model book. With
the subsidiary figures the same process occurred. In the
central panel of a predella painted for Santo Stefano alla
Lizza we find a beautiful figure of the Mourning Virgin
who looks up in anguish at the body of Christ with hands
clasped above her head (fig. 57). This predella must date
40