FG FINE ART LTD
Giovanni da Rimini
Rimini, documented from 1292 to 1336
Initially believed to be a painting by Giuliano, in 1935 it was presented by Cesare Brandi at the exhibition La pittura riminese del Trecento as a work by Giovanni Baronzio, an artist under whose name two artists were at that time confused: the older Johannes who painted the cross of Mercatello, whose date was then read 1345, and the later Giovanni Baronzio, the cross presented here, following its recent restoration, can nonetheless be considered a benchmark in the production of Giovanni da Rimini, the oldest and noblest of the artists belonging to the school which flourished in the city following the sojourn of Giotto, miraculously able to combine the innovations proposed by the latter with the 13th-century substratum of his early artistic education.
Crucifix
Tempera on panel, 160.5 x 130 cm
Provenance
Milan, Achillito Chiesa collection (?)
Amsterdam, Jacques Goudstikker Collection
Requisitioned by the Nazi authorities, July 1940; recovered by the Allied forces, 1945; entrusted to the care of the Dutch government
Utrecht, Aartbisschoppelijk Museum, until 1987
Maastricht, Bonnefantenmuseum, until 1997
Rijswijk, Instituut Collectie Nederland
Returned to the heirs of Jacques Goudstikker, February 2006
London, Christie’s, sale 5-6 July 2007, lot 7
New York, Sotheby’s sale 29 January 2015, lot 131
Exhibitions
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Tentoonstelling van Oude Kunst door de Vereeniging van handelaren in OudeKunst in Nederland, 1929, no. 115
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Italiaansche kunst in Nederlands bezit, 1934, no. 155
Rimini, Palazzo dell’Arengo, La pittura riminese del Trecento, 1935, no. 36
Rimini, Palazzo Buonadrata, L'oro di Giovanni. Il restauro della Croce di Mercatello e il Trecento Riminese, 18 September - 7 October 2021
Bibliography
Catalogue des nouvelles acquisitions de la collection Goudstikker, Amsterdam, Jacques Goudstikker Gallery, 1929, no. 33
R. van Marle, La pittura all’esposizione d’arte antica italiana di Amsterdam, ‘Bollettino d’arte’, 28, 1934-1935, p. 446
C. Brandi, La pittura riminese del Trecento, exh. cat., Rimini 1935, p. 98 no. 36
M. Salmi, La scuola di Rimini. III, ‘Rivista del R. Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell’arte’, 5, 1935, pp. 115-116, fig. 27
C. Brandi, Conclusioni su alcuni discussi problemi della pittura riminese del Trecento, ‘La critica d’arte’, I, 1936, p. 237
C. Brandi, Giovanni da Rimini e Giovanni Baronzio, ‘La critica d’arte’, II, 1937, pp. 196-197, pl. 137, fig. 4
M. Bonicatti, Trecentisti riminesi. Sulla formazione della pittura riminese del ’300, Rome 1963, pp. 27, 30-32, 69-70 nos. 32, 75, fig. 32
C. Volpe, La pittura riminese del Trecento, Milan 1965, pp. 13-14, 16-17, 72 no. 15, fig. 35
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools, London 1968, I, p. 363
D. Benati, C. Volpe, in Pittura a Rimini tra Gotico e Manierismo, Rimini 1979, pp. 18, 20
C. Wright, Paintings in Dutch Museums. An index of Oil Paintings in Public Collections in the Netherlands by Artists born before 1870, London 1980, p. 141
C. Wiethoff, De kunsthandelaar Jacques Goudstikker (1897-1940) en zijn betekenis voor het verzamelen van vroege italiaanse kunst in Nederland, ‘Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek’, 32, 1981, pp. 256, 261, fig. 19
D. Benati, in La pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e il Trecento, Milan 1986, II, p. 578
P. G. Pasini, La pittura riminese del Trecento, Rimini 1990, p. 63
W. Angelelli, A. De Marchi, Pittura dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento nelle fotografie di Girolamo Bombelli, Milan 1991, p. 162 no. 304
Old Master Paintings. An illustrated summary catalogue, Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst (The Netherlandish Office for the Fine Arts), The Hague 1992, p. 106 no. 802, repr.
M. Boskovits, Per la storia della pittura tra la Romagna e le Marche ai primi del ’300. II, ‘Arte Cristiana’, LXXXI, 756, 1993, p. 176 note 46
C. de Jongh-Janssen, D. van Wegen, Catalogue of the Italian paintings in the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht 1995, pp. 52-53 no. 21
D. Benati, entry Giovanni da Rimini, in 'Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale', VI, Rome 1995, p. 757
M. Minardi, entry Giovanni da Rimini, in 'Dizionario biografico degli italiani', LVI, Rome 2001, p. 189
A. Volpe, Giotto e i Riminesi, Milan 2002, pp. 99-100, 170
A. De Marchi, Una nuova tavola di Giuliano da Rimini, ‘L’Arco’, 2003, 1, p. 19 note 5
A. Marchi, in Arte per mare. Dalmazia, Titano e Montefeltro dal primo Cristianesimo al Rinascimento, Milan 2007, p. 66
A. Tambini, entry Giovanni da Rimini, in 'SAUR. Allgemeines Künstlerlexikom', 55, Leipzig 2007, p. 81
D. Benati, in The Middle Ages and Early Renaissance Paintings and Sculptures from the Carlo De Carlo Collection and other provenance, Florence 2011, pp. 20-27
D. Benati, L'oro di Giovanni. Il restauro della Croce di Mercatello e il Trecento Riminese, Rimini 2021, pp. 8, 28-32, 37, 43, 50, 54, 65, 88, 118-119, 135
Possibly belonging to the Chiesa collection in Milan, the painting was purchased by the Jewish merchant Jacques Goudstikker, who in 1929 presented it as the work of Giuliano da Rimini in an exhibition in his gallery in Amsterdam.
In 1940, following the racial persecutions, his entire patrimony was requisitioned by the Nazis, while Goudstikker died accidentally when falling into the hold of the ship that was to take him to safety in England. Recovered by the Allied forces in 1945, his paintings were then entrusted to the care of the Dutch government and the Crucifixion under examination was exhibited first at the Aartbisschoppelijk Museum in Utrecht, then at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht and finally at the Instituut Collectie Nederland in Rijswijk. In February 2006, at the end of a long dispute, the heirs obtained the restitution of this and other paintings formerly owned by Goudstikker and entrusted them to Christie’s in London, which put them on auction in 2007.
It was Carlo Volpe, in 1965, who grouped together the crosses of the older Giovanni, pointing out that the date on the Mercatello cross was not 1345, as had been accepted until then, but 1309 or 1314. The series, which started with the cross of Talamello, would therefore have culminated in that of Mercatello and then proceeded, between 1310 and 1320, with those of Goudstikker and Diotallevi.
Again in 1979 Volpe would confirm this sequence, noting in the Diotallevi cross a “development […] in a more Gothic and certainly less archaic direction compared to that of Mercatello”, for which, between the two options offered by the uncertain reading of the script, he resolutely opted in favour of the date 1309.
Subsequently, noting the echo offered by Giuliano da Rimini in the altar screen dated 1307 (Boston, Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum), Daniele Benati sustained an earlier date compared to the same Mercatello cross of the frescoes in the chapel a cornu epistulae in Sant’Agostino at Rimini and therefore also of the Diotallevi cross, which shows “in the body of Christ the same diaphanous beauty as the figures of Sant’Agostino, as if swathed in a tender luminescent cocoon, whereas the Crucifixion of Mercatello, by comparison, appears more evolved and complex in the exhibition of its culture components”. The sequence proposed by Volpe was taken up again by Miklós Boskovits (1993), who claimed that the adoption of rectangular panels – rather than mixtilinear panels like those adopted by Giotto starting precisely with the cross of Rimini – implied that the Talamello painting belonged to a much older phase compared to all the other crosses by Giovanni, deriving from a different prototype by Giotto on the type of the Crucifixion of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. While this indication was accepted by Alessandro Volpe, a complete review of the sequence of crosses by Giovanni da Rimini has more recently been offered by Andrea De Marchi, who has confirmed the early dating of the Diotallevi cross of the Museo della Città in Rimini, in which a clearly older stylistic and formal vocabulary is manifest. Even if reinterpreted in a naturalistic context based on the lesson learnt from Giotto, it is evident that in the Diotallevi cross the threefold knot of Christ’s loincloth continues to allude to the cingulum of 13th-century crosses: a reference that tallies perfectly with an artist who, already working in 1292, must initially have expressed himself in accordance with the filo-Byzantine culture of those years, to then receive with enthusiasm the innovations introduced by Giotto in the course of his stay in Rimini some time before 1300.
A full fact sheet is available on request.
