| Giovanni Baronzio executed the panel which may have been the centrepiece of a triptych. It was presumably commissioned by an associate of the Franciscan order, the first to adopt this new genre. The choice of saints in the lowest section of the panel, Clara and Francis, identified by the robes of the order, suggests the Franciscans. The Crucifixion of Christ occupies the centre of the painting. Clearly modelled on Giotto (c. 1267–1337), it was in fact once attributed to that great innovator in Italian painting. Giovanni Baronzio worked in Rimini where Giotto’s fresco cycle, once thought to have depicted scenes from the life of Christ and now lost, strongly influenced the local school of painting. The Adoration of the Magi is inserted in the upper section beneath a trefoil arch. In contrast with the two lower sections, a bleak, rocky landscape rather than a two-dimensional gold plane serves as a background, as in works by Giotto. The sections of the painting are united by a framing profile, with the figure of Christ, as Judge of the World, in the pediment. He, in turn, is flanked by angels, or possibly Mary and John. The shape of the pediment and the decoration on the frame are borrowed from architectural motifs. In larger altarpieces, this design element articulates the internal structure, as in a church façade. The hierarchy that these panel confi-gurations produce forms the basis of the theological iconography in several figure zones. On the basis of Baronzio’s only signed and dated work in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino, the picture in the Princely Collections is dated to around 1345. |
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Oil on panel
height 58 cm, width 31 cm
Inv.-No. GE867
Provenance: 1881 acquired by Prince Johann II von Liechtenstein
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