Week 6 Class 2

Contextual Analysis

ART 100

agenda

discussion of context

an example

review for test

test is next Tuesday from 5 to 6:20 on Compass

Gentile da

Fabriano,

Adoration of the

Magi, 1423

Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi, 1423

What questions might we ask?

1. what is the relationship between this work and other

works of the time period?

2. what is the relationship between this work and other

works by the same artist?

3. how does this work express the values and ideas of the

patron?

4. how does this work relate to contemporary social

conditions? religious beliefs? political events?

1. what is the relationship between this work and other

works of the time period?

“International Gothic Style”

courtly style,luxury objects using expensive materials and

emphasizing elegant subject matter

illuminated manuscripts, tapestries (woven and painted)

could travel relatively easily, allowing for diffusion of style

across national borders; intermarriage between European

royal families also facilitated artistic transfer

Simone Martini, The Annunciation, 1333, tempera on panel, 72 1/2 x 82 5/8

The Limbourg

Brothers

The Tres Riches

Heures du Duc du

Berry

1412-16

Gentile da Fabriano

The Coronation of the

Virgin

c. 1420

tempera and gold leaf on

panel

34 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches

Christ's halo is gilded and

tooled.

It carries an inscription:

YHS XPS FIL(IUS).

Combining Greek and

Latin, translates as: Jesus

Christ Son of God.

Stylistic features visible in this detail:

• extensive tooling (impressing/stamping a design using metal tools)

• gold leaf

• decorative patterning using richly colored pigments

http://web.ceu.hu/medstud/manual/MMM/glossary.html

The scroll held by the angel

on the left reads: Timete

dominum et date ille hono

[rem] (Fear the Lord and

give honor to him).

The Coronation of the Virgin

Gentile was commissioned to paint this scene for his native town, Fabriano (Gentile’s hometown) commissioned this work from him after he became famous.

This was processional standard held aloft in town parades that honored the Virgin Mary. The reverse side of the panel originally depicted The Stigmatization of Saint Francis. However, the panel was sawed in half (not side to side, but front to back); the Saint Francis side is now in a private collection in Italy.

Gentile's most famous

surviving works were made

during his time in Florence

in the 1420s, where his

work was widely seen and

he had the opportunity to

see the works of Florentine

painters. He worked in

Venice, Florence, Siena,

Orvieto, and Rome, but

most of his frescoes have

been destroyed.

Things to look for:

abandoning abstract

backgrounds for real skies,

introducing a light source

into the picture,

depicting cast shadows,

and

making the earliest known

drawings after the antique.

Gentile da

Fabriano,

Adoration of the

Magi, 1423

Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi, 1423

Santa Trinita, Florence

outside of city walls at time of construction

#20 marks the

location of the

Capella Strozzi

Palla Strozzi

wealthy merchant and banker in Florence

spent huge sums of money on art (e.g., marble tomb for his father, decorations for the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Trinita)

spent 30,000 florins on Gentile’s Adoration of the Magi

this was an absurdly large amount of money and a chunk of his fortune.

did not manage his money well

was exiled to Padua for life after the return of the Medici family to Florence

continued to invest in the Strozzi Chapel from afar

references to the

Strozzi family

*Order of the Golden Spur (being placed around the ankle of the foreground king).

*Company of the Magi (Florence social club to which Palla Strozzibelonged); held festival on Epiphany (Jan 6) with parade from Town Hall to San Marco.

*Magi as symbolic of wealthy merchants laying gifts at the feet of the church

*Strozziere—”Master of the Falcons”—symbolic of the family name

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Billingsgate, 1859, Etching and drypoint, 6 x 8 13/16 inches