FG FINE ART LTD
Paolo di Stefano Badaloni, called
Paolo Schiavo
Florence, 1397 - Pisa, 1478
Paolo Schiavo (1397–1478) was a Florentine painter whose work represents the transition from the Late Gothic tradition to the early Renaissance. Influenced by artists such as Masolino and Masaccio, he combined elegant figures with a growing interest in perspective, space and volume.
Christ before Caiaphas and the Denial of Saint Peter, painted around 1435-1440, is a particularly interesting example of his style. The small painting presents two episodes of the Passion of Christ in the same architectural space, creating a complex but clear narrative. It was also part of a larger Passion cycle, now dispersed among museums and private collections.
Christ Before Caiaphas and the Denial of Saint Peter
Tempera on canvas applied on panel, 36 x 31 cm
PROVENANCE
London, Henry Harris Collection (1870 c. - 1950)
London, Sotheby’s, 24 October 1950, lot 216
London, Carmen Gronau Collection (1910 - 1999)
London, Christie’s, 27 April 2007, lot 65 Sidney, Robert Compton Jones Collection (1930 c. - 2024)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
F. Zeri, Early Italian Pictures in the Kress Collection, in “The Burlington Magazine”, CIX, 773, 1967, p. 477, fig. 57
F. R. Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. Italian Schools XVI–XVIII Century, Addenda al vol. I, London 1973, p. 5
M. Boskovits, Ancora su Paolo Schiavo: una scheda biografica e una proposta di catalogo, in “Arte
Cristiana”, LXXXIII, 770, 1995, pp. 336-8, fig. 7
Paolo di Stefano Badaloni, known as Paolo Schiavo, was born in Florence in 1397 and died in Pisa in 1478. The son of Stefano, he was registered with the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries in 1429; he is documented in 1436 in connection with the stained-glass windows of the Florence Cathedral dome and in 1462 for a commission intended for the church of San Domenico in Pisa. His training took place within the Florentine Late Gothic milieu, and art historians have identified an early connection to the style of Lorenzo Monaco, overlaid by an interest in Masolino and - particularly during the 1430s - in the spatial and volumetric innovations of Masaccio. Indeed, Vasari placed him within Masolino’s orbit, whereas twentieth-century scholarship has revealed a more complex profile, in which Late Gothic linear elegance, an interest in perspective, and a new sense of plastic solidity coexist in a distinctive manner.
Christ Before Caiaphas and the Denial of Saint Peter dates to the period - around 1435/1440 - when Paolo Schiavo’s interest in spatial construction and the solid definition of forms was particularly evident. The small painting brings together two episodes from the Passion that unfold within the same narrative arc: Christ being led before the High Priest Caiaphas and, concurrently, Peter denying three times that he knows Jesus. The decision to depict two distinct moments in a single panel allows the painter to develop a simultaneous narrative. The architecture serves not merely as a backdrop but organizes the action, separating the story of Christ from that of the Apostle while maintaining a relationship between them. The small scale of the figures is balanced by the precision of their gestures, the arrangement of the characters, and the rhythm of the architectural openings, all of which transform the compact pictorial space into a complex narrative scene.
The work was first published by Federico Zeri in 1967 - at which time it was in the Carmen Gronau collection in London - and he was the first to establish a coherent connection between it and other Passion panels of similar dimensions. The attribution and reconstruction of the ensemble were subsequently revisited and expanded upon by Miklós Boskovits, who dated the group to around 1435–1440.
The reconstruction of the dispersed ensemble was initiated by Zeri, beginning with two paintings formerly in the Samuel H. Kress Collection: The Flagellation of Christ (Fig. 4) and the Crucifixion (Fig. 5). The Flagellation - now at the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico - measures approximately 33 x 26.7 cm and bore the Kress collection number K216. Christ, bound to the column, stands at the centre of the action; the scene focuses the drama on the contrast between the motionless figure of the protagonist and the movement of the tormentors. The panel had previously been published in the Kress catalogue by Fern Rusk Shapley and was later identified by Zeri as belonging to the same cycle as Christ Before Caiaphas. Subsequent scholarship has retained the work in Paolo Schiavo’s catalogue, highlighting its connection to the phase of his career most closely aligned with the culture of Masaccio.
The Crucifixion - now at the Georgia Museum of Art (University of Georgia, Athens), formerly Kress K1188 - measures approximately 35.9 x 28.9 cm. It represents one of the cycle’s climactic episodes: the cross dominates the small pictorial field vertically, while the figures at the foot of the cross embody the grief and emotional engagement with the scene. The proximity in terms of scale and style to The Flagellation was already recognized in the Kress catalogue, where the two works were published together. The Crucifixion was subsequently recorded by in the Fredericksen and Zeri Census and connected by scholars to the same phase of Paolo Schiavo’s career.
Zeri associated The Kiss of Judas (Fig. 2) - at the time in a private collection - with these two panels. The painting depicts the moment of the arrest: Judas approaches Christ and identifies him with a kiss, while a group of armed men and followers crowds around them. It is a scene particularly well-suited to Paolo Schiavo’s narrative style, which packs numerous figures into a confined space without sacrificing the clarity of the action. The tension arises from the clustering of characters around the central figures of Christ and Judas, and from the contrast between the seemingly intimate gesture of the kiss and the violence of the arrest. Zeri considered it part of the same series as The Flagellation, The Crucifixion, Christ Before Caiaphas, and The Resurrection.
The Resurrection of Christ (Fig. 6) - which had previously appeared on the London market and subsequently entered the Willard B. Golovin collection - was published by Zeri and later reappeared at auction in New York in 2003. The Risen Christ naturally forms the narrative conclusion of the cycle: the figure of Christ emerges victorious from the tomb, while the presence of the soldiers introduces a contrast between the miraculous nature of the event and earthly reality. In this instance, too, the dimensions, format, and pictorial style are consistent with the other elements identified by Zeri. Its inclusion in the series is attested to both by the 1967 article and by the bibliographic update in the Kress catalogue.
In 1995, Miklós Boskovits added another panel to the group reconstructed by Zeri: The Agony in the Garden (Fig. 1), which was then in a private collection and had previously been unpublished. Boskovits proposed that all these small paintings might have belonged to the same altar frontal, dating them to around 1435–1440.
The ensemble that can be reconstructed today thus comprises at least six episodes: The Agony in the Garden, The Kiss of Judas, Christ before Caiaphas with the Denial of Saint Peter, The Flagellation, The Crucifixion and The Resurrection. The function of the ensemble also remains an open question; Zeri cautiously referred to elements likely belonging to an altar frontal featuring scenes from the Passion, and Boskovits likewise hypothesized that they belonged to a paliotto, a single altar frontal.
A full fact sheet is available on request.
1. Paolo Schiavo, Agony in the garden, private collection
2. Paolo Schiavo, Kiss of Judas, private collection, Florence
3. Paolo Schiavo, Christ Before Caiaphas and the Denial of Saint Peter
4. Paolo Schiavo, Flagellation, Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico
5. Paolo Schiavo, Crucifixion, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens
6. Paolo Schiavo, Resurrection, formerly Willard B. Golovin collection