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Gabriele di Francesco
Viterbo, third quarter of the 15th century
Among Francesco d’Antonio’s pupils, his son Gabriele stands out, of whom only a small number of paintings are known. The Saint Andrew and the Saint Victor from the Museo di Arti Sacre in Orte, side panels of a triptych commissioned in 1473 and originally from the collegiate church of Sant’Andrea Apostolo in Vallerano, are the only surviving documented works by the artist.
Christ Blessing
Tempera on panel, 72 x 48 cm
PROVENANCE
Milan, Gian Marco Manusardi, 1971
BIBLIOGRAPHY
C. Volpe, Catalogo della collezione G.M.M. [Manusardi], Milan 1971, pp. 6-7
F. Todini, La Pittura Umbra dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento, I, Milan 1989, p. 29
G. Spina, Bartolomeo di Tommaso da Foligno, pittore itinerante tra gotico e rinascimento. Aspetti e problemi della pittura del Quattrocento tra Adriatico e Appennino, doctoral dissertation, Università degli Studi di Firenze, 2024, p. 193
Steady, severe and absolutely frontal, the face of the blessing Christ constitutes the fulcrum of this pinnacle surrounded by scarlet cherubs.
It was published for the first time by Carlo Volpe in 1971 when it was in the collection of the Milanese banker Gian Marco Manusardi as the Master of Gualdo di Narni, a master that Todini later also includes in his repertoire but without citing this panel, but placing it among the Lazio followers of Bartolomeo di Tommaso.
The attribution to Gabriele di Francesco is due to Andrea de Marchi, later confirmed also by Spina who had initially attributed it to the circle of the Viterbo painter Francesco d’Antonio known as Balletta by Spina in 2024, father of Gabriele.
In the artistic panorama of Viterbo painters, still far from a systematic analysis, some works appear similar to ours, such as the Redeemer of San Giuliano a Faleria, whose face, in the organization of the brush-tipped beard, in the generation of the moustache at the sides of the mouth and in the shape of the eyes, reflects the face of our Christ, and the Madonna of the Mercy (Florence, private collection) by Gabriele di Francesco, with whose Christ the Judge finds important parallels with ours. Initially the Redeemer was published by Volpe as the Master of Gualdo di Narni and was later attributed to Simone da Roma, an artist documented in the Vatican between 1450 and 1453. The figure, although manifesting a Viterbo cultural origin, shows traits derived from a contact with the art of Masolino and Gentile da Fabriano, almost absent in our panel.
Four sections of a polyptych, which were auctioned in 1998 at Finarte and attributed to Gabriele di Francesco by Italo Faldi, on the basis of a suggestion by Filippo Todini, should be dated to a period immediately after, but still before 1473 . These have a similar width (40-44 cm) to our cusp and could suggest that they belong to the same polyptych.Drawing on Balletta’s style but, compared to his language, expressed in a more solid formula, aimed at restraining the loose rhythm of Francesco d’Antonio’s sinuous lines, the work was probably created by the artist in the 1470s, when Gabriele’s eloquence still depended partly on his father’s teachings.Looking at the three-quarter face of Saint John the Evangelist of Ronciglione polyptych, a shared hand emerges, justified by the similarity both to the figures of the faithful and to the rigid, frontal faces of Christ and the Madonna. The rounded curvature of the eyebrows, the distribution of shadows in the orbital cavity, and the line of the eyelashes are identical. The mouths, defined by a wavy line, with the narrow lower lip, are perfectly superimposable.The punch marks here are positioned at various points using circles and semicircles to form polylobed circles, and are not far from what can be found in the Madonna of the Mercy and the Ronciglione panel.Gabriele di Francesco devoted particular attention to the realisation of decorative details in this work, a further piece in understanding the development of his art. And it is precisely in the preciousness of these elements, in the splendour of the lacquers spread over the gold, in the measured engravings of the precious surface that the Viterbo artist concentrated his greatest effort.
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