ON A PROFILE PORTRAIT BY BALDOVINETTI BY ROGER FRY
THE portrait No. 758 in the National Gallery presents the profile of a lady with a palm leaf embroidered upon her sleeve [Frontispiece]. This is attributed in the catalogue to Piero della Francesca, and is said to represent a Contessa Palma, no doubt from the conspicuous decoration alluded to. Atonetime or another most of the profile portraits of this period have been attributed to Piero on account of their general likeness to the known portrait in the Uffizi of the Duchess of Urbino, but more careful critics have always felt considerable difficulty in accepting these attributions. Dr. Richter, in his book on the National Gallery, adopted Morelli’s attribution of this example to Paolo Uccello, drawing attention to the treatment of the hair and of the palm leaf pattern as particularly characteristic, and this attribution has been generally accepted by Mr. Berenson and others.
I believe it is possible to prove with more certainty than is usually attainable in such matters that it is by the closely allied painter Alesso Baldovinetti. The attribution to him rests upon several grounds. First, upon the general character of the design and special characteristics of form in the face and drapery; secondly, upon the colour scheme; and thirdly, upon the peculiar technique.
Considerations of pure technique are, as a rule, not much resorted to by critics of old Italian painting; partly because they have not themselves sufficient familiarity with the handling of tempera to form very definite judgments, and partly because in any particular group of painters the same general methods of technique are usually applied in common; but it so happens that Baldovinetti is an exception to this rule, and since those technical grounds which are usually the least useful criteria are in this case of very strong evidential value, I propose to speak of them first.
From Vasari’s ‘ Life of Alesso Baldovinetti’ (Sansoni, Volume 2, page 591, et seq. ) we learn that he was much occupied in questions of technique. He mentions, for instance, his attempts to discover the best method of working in mosaic. And in another place he says that he painted in Santa Trinitá certain stories from the Old Testament, ʽwhich Alesso sketched in al fresco, and then finished a secco (i. e., in tempera), tempering the colours with yolk of egg mixed with varnish over a fire, which tempera he believed would protect the pictures from moisture, but it was so strong that where it was put on heavily the work crumbled away in many places, and thus while he thought to have discovered a rare and fine secret, he turned out to have been deceived. ’ Such are the indications given in Vasari’s ‘ Life, ’ of Baldo
vinetti’s curiosity about new technical methods; and here, at all events, the pictures which remain to us bear out Vasari’s statement.
The great object of research in tempera at this period was to enable the artist to effect fusions of tone more completely than was possible by the traditional method of hatched strokes. It was no doubt the perfect fusion of tone displayed in examples of Flemish painting which found their way into Italy, that set the artists of the midfifteenth century upon his track. We find an example of it in Baldovinetti’s fellow student, Piero della Francesca, whose Baptism in the National Gallery, painted in tempera, shows an extraordinary closeness and minuteness in the hatching, while his other picture of The Nativity shows that from some source or other he had already learned the secret of some fusible oil-medium.
This pre-occupation with technique was an inheritance from Domenico Veneziano’s studio, where both these artists were educated, for Domenico himself is known to have used oil in his wall-painting of The Virgin in the National Gallery. And similar pre-occupations in technique were handed on by Baldovinetti to his pupil, Piero Pollaiuolo. That Baldovinetti, at all events, was not satisfied with the traditional methods of tempera is made very plain by his pictures. The earliest known works by him are the three small panels in the Academy at Florence, which belong to the series of decorations undertaken by Fra Angelico for the presses of San Marco. In these panels there is already apparent an unusual technical peculiarity. In the one which represents the Feast at Cana in Galilee, the wine-jars which stand in the foreground are represented as being made of metal, and the high lights upon them are painted with constellations of minute dots of light colour, the dots growing sparser as they
recede from the centre of the high light [Figure i].
In the panel of The Baptism a similar method is employed for representing the reflection upon the ripples in the Jordan, while a similar tendency to use spots of light is seen in the fringe of Christ’s garment, This technical peculiarity is more or less evident in almost all known works by Baldovinetti. One of the most striking examples is that
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THE portrait No. 758 in the National Gallery presents the profile of a lady with a palm leaf embroidered upon her sleeve [Frontispiece]. This is attributed in the catalogue to Piero della Francesca, and is said to represent a Contessa Palma, no doubt from the conspicuous decoration alluded to. Atonetime or another most of the profile portraits of this period have been attributed to Piero on account of their general likeness to the known portrait in the Uffizi of the Duchess of Urbino, but more careful critics have always felt considerable difficulty in accepting these attributions. Dr. Richter, in his book on the National Gallery, adopted Morelli’s attribution of this example to Paolo Uccello, drawing attention to the treatment of the hair and of the palm leaf pattern as particularly characteristic, and this attribution has been generally accepted by Mr. Berenson and others.
I believe it is possible to prove with more certainty than is usually attainable in such matters that it is by the closely allied painter Alesso Baldovinetti. The attribution to him rests upon several grounds. First, upon the general character of the design and special characteristics of form in the face and drapery; secondly, upon the colour scheme; and thirdly, upon the peculiar technique.
Considerations of pure technique are, as a rule, not much resorted to by critics of old Italian painting; partly because they have not themselves sufficient familiarity with the handling of tempera to form very definite judgments, and partly because in any particular group of painters the same general methods of technique are usually applied in common; but it so happens that Baldovinetti is an exception to this rule, and since those technical grounds which are usually the least useful criteria are in this case of very strong evidential value, I propose to speak of them first.
From Vasari’s ‘ Life of Alesso Baldovinetti’ (Sansoni, Volume 2, page 591, et seq. ) we learn that he was much occupied in questions of technique. He mentions, for instance, his attempts to discover the best method of working in mosaic. And in another place he says that he painted in Santa Trinitá certain stories from the Old Testament, ʽwhich Alesso sketched in al fresco, and then finished a secco (i. e., in tempera), tempering the colours with yolk of egg mixed with varnish over a fire, which tempera he believed would protect the pictures from moisture, but it was so strong that where it was put on heavily the work crumbled away in many places, and thus while he thought to have discovered a rare and fine secret, he turned out to have been deceived. ’ Such are the indications given in Vasari’s ‘ Life, ’ of Baldo
vinetti’s curiosity about new technical methods; and here, at all events, the pictures which remain to us bear out Vasari’s statement.
The great object of research in tempera at this period was to enable the artist to effect fusions of tone more completely than was possible by the traditional method of hatched strokes. It was no doubt the perfect fusion of tone displayed in examples of Flemish painting which found their way into Italy, that set the artists of the midfifteenth century upon his track. We find an example of it in Baldovinetti’s fellow student, Piero della Francesca, whose Baptism in the National Gallery, painted in tempera, shows an extraordinary closeness and minuteness in the hatching, while his other picture of The Nativity shows that from some source or other he had already learned the secret of some fusible oil-medium.
This pre-occupation with technique was an inheritance from Domenico Veneziano’s studio, where both these artists were educated, for Domenico himself is known to have used oil in his wall-painting of The Virgin in the National Gallery. And similar pre-occupations in technique were handed on by Baldovinetti to his pupil, Piero Pollaiuolo. That Baldovinetti, at all events, was not satisfied with the traditional methods of tempera is made very plain by his pictures. The earliest known works by him are the three small panels in the Academy at Florence, which belong to the series of decorations undertaken by Fra Angelico for the presses of San Marco. In these panels there is already apparent an unusual technical peculiarity. In the one which represents the Feast at Cana in Galilee, the wine-jars which stand in the foreground are represented as being made of metal, and the high lights upon them are painted with constellations of minute dots of light colour, the dots growing sparser as they
recede from the centre of the high light [Figure i].
In the panel of The Baptism a similar method is employed for representing the reflection upon the ripples in the Jordan, while a similar tendency to use spots of light is seen in the fringe of Christ’s garment, This technical peculiarity is more or less evident in almost all known works by Baldovinetti. One of the most striking examples is that
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