拍品专文
Bartolomeo di Fruosino was a pupil of Agnolo Gaddi. He worked with his master on the frescoes of the Cappella del Sacro Cingolo in Prato, but probably only on the decorative details. After Gaddi's death in 1396 he collaborated with Lorenzo Monaco. Bartolomeo is recorded as a dipintore, a painter of miniatures, but he also made paintings: in 1411 he is documented as having painted a crucifix. Paintings attributed to him are at Avignon, in the Serristori Collection, and in the Vatican.
This miniature is from a choir book from Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence. Most of these choir books are now in the Biblioteca Laurenziana, but a number of illuminated leaves are missing. The text on the verso is from the Common of Saints, and based on the handwriting it can be dated circa 1420.
The composition of this miniature is typical of the school of Lorenzo Monaco. A leaf designed by Lorenzo from a manuscript for Santa Maria degli Angeli, but executed by Bartolomeo di Fruosino, includes a very similar geometric border to that of the present drawing, The Bernard H. Breslauer Collection of Manuscript Illuminations, 1993, exhib. cat., New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, no. 74, illustrated.
The figure types in the present miniature are characteristic of Bartolomeo, and can be compared with those in other securely attributed works. Two miniatures in Florence, one in the Arcispedale di Santa Maria Nuova and the other in the San Marco Museum, include figures with comparably angular heads with triangular noses, and the faces are similarly flattened due to the artist's wish to include as much detail of the features but to show them in three-quarter profile, M. Eisenberg, op. cit., figs. 247-8.
The figures in the border of the present miniature are probably the four Evangelists; in the upper corners the sun and the moon; and in the middle the pelican in its piety. The sun and the moon allude to a line in the synoptic gospels, which relates that on the day of the Crucifixion from noon to three darkness fell over the whole land. Saint Augustine interpreted the sun and the moon as the symbolic relationship between the New and the Old Testament; the old, the moon, can only be understood by the light shed upon it by the new, the sun. The pelican refers to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. The symbolism stemmed from the belief promulgated in medieval bestiaries that the female pelican smothered her young by an excess of love, and that the male restored them to life, forfeiting his own in the process, by stabbing his breast with his beak and giving them his blood. This act of sacrifice is paralleled by Christ's death on the Cross in order to redeem man. Dante in the Paradiso, 25, 112 describes John the Evangelist as 'he who leant upon the breast of Christ our Pelican'
This miniature is from a choir book from Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence. Most of these choir books are now in the Biblioteca Laurenziana, but a number of illuminated leaves are missing. The text on the verso is from the Common of Saints, and based on the handwriting it can be dated circa 1420.
The composition of this miniature is typical of the school of Lorenzo Monaco. A leaf designed by Lorenzo from a manuscript for Santa Maria degli Angeli, but executed by Bartolomeo di Fruosino, includes a very similar geometric border to that of the present drawing, The Bernard H. Breslauer Collection of Manuscript Illuminations, 1993, exhib. cat., New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, no. 74, illustrated.
The figure types in the present miniature are characteristic of Bartolomeo, and can be compared with those in other securely attributed works. Two miniatures in Florence, one in the Arcispedale di Santa Maria Nuova and the other in the San Marco Museum, include figures with comparably angular heads with triangular noses, and the faces are similarly flattened due to the artist's wish to include as much detail of the features but to show them in three-quarter profile, M. Eisenberg, op. cit., figs. 247-8.
The figures in the border of the present miniature are probably the four Evangelists; in the upper corners the sun and the moon; and in the middle the pelican in its piety. The sun and the moon allude to a line in the synoptic gospels, which relates that on the day of the Crucifixion from noon to three darkness fell over the whole land. Saint Augustine interpreted the sun and the moon as the symbolic relationship between the New and the Old Testament; the old, the moon, can only be understood by the light shed upon it by the new, the sun. The pelican refers to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. The symbolism stemmed from the belief promulgated in medieval bestiaries that the female pelican smothered her young by an excess of love, and that the male restored them to life, forfeiting his own in the process, by stabbing his breast with his beak and giving them his blood. This act of sacrifice is paralleled by Christ's death on the Cross in order to redeem man. Dante in the Paradiso, 25, 112 describes John the Evangelist as 'he who leant upon the breast of Christ our Pelican'