ZANINO DI PIETRO
Documented in Bologna, 1389 – Venice, 1448 ca.
Madonna of the Humility
tempera and gold on panel, cm 50×33
At the close of the 14th century, Niccolò di Pietro revived in Venice the iconography of the Madonna of Humility, first inaugurated at the beginning of the century by Simone Martini in Avignon: the Virgin is depicted seated upon a meadow, at times upon a golden cushion, according to a typology destined for considerable success within the Venetian milieu. It is within this tradition that the present panel is situated, a graceful Madonna of Humility now recognised as a work by Zanino di Pietro (born Giovanni di Pietro Charlier), among the most representative interpreters of late Gothic Venetian painting, active in the lagoon throughout the first half of the fifteenth century.
The documented history of the painting, however, begins only in the 1970s, with two appearances on the art market: initially attributed to the school of Gentile da Fabriano and subsequently to the school of Jacobello del Fiore. The attribution to Zanino, long marginal within the scholarly literature, was correctly proposed by Angelelli (in Pittura dal Duecento, 1991) and by Filippo Todini on the basis of the photograph preserved at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (inv. 451354, catalogued as Giovanni di Francia), and has more recently been reaffirmed by Linda Pisani. Valentina Baradel has furthermore included the painting within the catalogue of her 2019 monograph on the artist.
The chronological question appears central. Whereas Pisani proposed a dating in the second decade of the century, placing the work within the painter’s mature Venetian phase and relating it to the Madonna in the National Gallery of Athens and to that now in the Fioratti Collection in New York, an earlier dating to the first decade of the century—already suggested by Angelelli and subsequently reiterated by Baradel—appears more convincing, particularly in light of the uncertainties in the treatment of foreshortening and the close relationship with the early Venetian phase of Gentile da Fabriano. Likewise, the mirrored reprise of the Christ Child’s arm resting upon his little leg, already experimented with in the so-called Madonna degli Alberetti (Bianchi Bonomi Collection, Milan), points towards an early phase, probably close to the artist’s return to Venice following the experience likely acquired in Bologna, which helps to explain the progressive refinement of Zanino’s pictorial language, fully evident in the Virgin’s countenance. This marks a development beyond his earlier works, while still preserving a degree of experimental tension.
Particularly noteworthy is the working of the gold ground: from the dense striated tooling of the background to the decoration of the halos, embellished with ring punches of two concentric circles arranged in lozenge formation, concentric rosettes, and granulated lettering, directly derived from the contemporary production of Gentile. Finally, the trimming of the mantle displays a spiral ornament incised with a pointed stylus, in keeping with the fourteenth-century Venetian tradition, a motif already employed by the artist in other works.
Publications:
“Catalogo Fototeca Kunstihistorisches Institut di Firenze”, entry no. KHI 451354.
“Pittura dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento nelle fotografie di Girolamo Bombelli”, edited by A. G. De Marchi, Milan, 1991, cat. 585, p. 237.
“Zanino di Pietro. Un protagonista della pittura veneziana fra Tre e Quattrocento”, edited by Valentina Baradel, Poligrafo, Padua, 2019, pp. 179-180, fig. XIV, form 7.
