Scolaio di Giovanni (Master of Borgo alla

Collina)

(Florence 1369-1434)

Ca. 1405-1410

Madonna with Child worshiped by two angels and Saint

Francis of Assisi and Julianus

Tempera on wood. 93 x 52 cm

Provenance: Collection F. von Wolff-Ebenrod 1920s;

Private property in succession, North Rhine-Westphalia

Bibliography: unpublished

Cited Literature: A.Bernacchioni, in Mater Christi

Austellungskatalog (Arezzo 1996), Cinisello Balsamo

1996, p.46; Alberto Lenza, Il Maestro di Borgo all

Collina.Proposte per Scolaio di Giovanni pittore

tardogotico fiorentino, Florence 2012; Gaudenz.Freuler,

in: Gherardo di jacopo Starnina, in: The Middle Ages and

early Renaissance Paintings and Sculptures from the Carlo

De Carlo Collection and other Provenance, Florence 2011,

p. 58-67; Lorenzo Monaco.Dalla tradizione giottesca al

Rinascimento, (exhibition catalogue, Florenz Galleria dell’

Accademia 2006), Florence 2006

Our Lady stands before the shimmering golden ground.

Her face is tenderly turned towards the boy Jesus, whom

she holds lovingly embraced in her arms. In a childlike emotion, he reaches with his left hand for the

tip of her white headscarf, while he starts to suck his thumb on the other one. With his lively gaze

directed at the viewer, he communicates with him and places him in a state of contemplative

meditation. Two angels in profile as well as the Franciscan founder of the Order, Francis of Assisi, and

Julianus, dressed in a noble ermine-lined red cloak, are also witnesses of this intimate divine gathering

of Mother of God and Child.

The unknown Florentine gold ground image, which has been withheld from research so far, shows

some changes; with the exception of the original preserved aureoles, the gold ground in particular has

been restored and some abrasions and losses of the upper painting layer are visible. The graceful

picture of the Madonna, a typical product of late Gothic Florentine painting at the beginning of the

15th century, eclectically combines the pictorial ideas of the protagonists of this artistic movement on

the threshold to the Renaissance. Thus the picture commissioned by a wealthy citizen for his private

devotion in Florence corresponds to a type of picture similar to the one created in Agnolo Gaddi's

workshop - for example, the Madonna picture formerly embodied in the Moretti Florence Gallery (fig.

1).

This pictorial idea was often repeated and developed by Gaddi in several, slightly altered variations,

which in the end unmistakably indicates that it was apparently a considerable commercial success.

1 2

3 4

It is therefore this type of painting that forms the basis of our panel and other paintings by the same

painter (fig. 2,3,4), which is hardly surprising when we consider the evolutionary history of its creator,

Scolaio di Giovanni, to whom the work in question here can undoubtedly be attributed. The attribution

to this painter results not only from the use of a common pictorial invention, but also from details such

as the curved cloak-saws or headscarf folds of the Madonna (fig.5-7). Consistency with Scolaio's

work can also be asserted for the somewhat pithy male faces of saints, which correspond exactly to

our painter's repertoire of figures.

5 6 7

The faces of other paintings by our painter, such as that of Dominic of a panel formerly in the Galeria

Salamon in Milan (fig. 9) or the face of Joseph or of a shepherd worshipping the child of the former

Kofler-Truniger collection in Lucerne (fig. 10,11), are also designed in the same way as our Francis

(fig. 8).

8 9 10 11

Finding the true name Scolaio di Giovanni is a relatively recent achievement in art history and

replaces this Florentine painter’s placeholder name. For a long time he was named after one of his

main works, the large altarpiece in the parish church of San Donato in Borgo alla Collina (fig.12),

created in 1423, and was thus called the master of Borgo alla Collina.

12

Late payments to Scolaio di Giovanni, who has so far only been known through biographical data –

until now only a painter without an oeuvre - by the priest of Borgo alla Collina around 1430 for his

altar for Borgo alla Collina dated 1423, allowed its author to be identified as Scolaio di Giovanni

(Annamaria Bernacchioni, 1996, p.46; Alberto Lenza, 2012 , p. 17, 154). With these new insights, the

biography of the painter, especially his creative period, could also be outlined more precisely. Scolaio

di Giovanni was born around 1369/70 and his training as a painter probably took place around 1385.

Since his artistic roots can be traced back to Agnolo Gaddi's art, there is some evidence that he was

trained in the workshop of this very painter. 1391 the Scolaio is called "dipentore", which probably

means that he had finished his apprenticeship at that time and was accepted into the Florentine

painters' guild, which happened sometime between 1386 and 1391. Between 1393 and 1410 the

documents on Scolaio di Giovanni were silent, which suggested that the painter might have joined the

Florentine painter Gherardo Starnina (Lenzi, 2012), who apparently followed the Florentine merchant

colony to Spain, where he must have made a successful debut as a sought-after painter. Starnina's

paths probably led via Barcelona to Valencia and Toledo. Scolaio's return to Florence probably took

place around 1403, when Starnina was again active in Florence and quickly became the most sought-

after and most original painter with Lorenzo Monaco (G. Freuler, 2011, pp. 58-67). After his return to

Florence, Scolaio di Giovanni must have quickly re-established himself in the Florentine painting

scene. From 1410-1411 he is mentioned alongside a collective of painters that included Niccolò di

Pietro, Ambrogio Baldese, Lippo d'Andrea and the Portuguese Alvaro Pirez, who were responsible for

the frescoing of the villa of the famous merchant from Prato, Francesco di Marco Datini. Scolaio di

Giovanni's apprenticeship with Agnolo Gaddi and his work with Starnina had a striking influence on

his art. Agnolo Gaddi's models and Starnina's pictorial world are therefore important and decisive

sources for Scolaio's art. But we cannot escape the fact that Lorenzo Monaco's influences on Scolaio

di Giovanni's artistic work became increasingly influential. This comes as no surprise, especially since

the paths of Scolaio and Lorenzo Monaco may have crossed early during their joint training period

with Agnolo Gaddi. The extraordinary talent of the Camaldolese painter monk could hardly have

remained hidden from our painter. (Lorenzo Monaco, 2006, p. 20 ff, 106-117)

Agnolo Gaddi, Lorenzo Monaco and Starnina are also the triumvirate that has decisively

artistically inspired the panel painting discussed here. As already mentioned, Agnolo Gaddi's pictorial

ideas are at the base of our painting. It is easy to see that the latter had inspired the prototype (fig.1)

for our Madonna picture (fig.4), the Madonna panel of the Scolaio di Giovanni sold in May 1995 at

Sotheby's in New York (fig.2). This probably earliest Madonna painting by our painter, probably

dating back to the 1390s (Alberto Lenza 2012, p. 21), was undoubtedly the origin of another panel,

formerly in the Saulmann Collection in Florence, which has only been handed down to us through an

old photograph (fig. 3) and whose creation by Alberto Lenza is dated to the first decade of the 15th

century (Alberto Lenza, 2012, p. 26). In fact, in this later version of this pictorial idea, expanded by a

larger number of figures, somewhat elongated figures can be seen in more strongly moved draperies

that correspond to the late Gothic aesthetic feeling of the early 15th century.

13 14 16

It is easy to see that for these two works (figs. 2-7,13) our painter used a motif for the communicative

and lively Christ boy which Starnina also used for his Madonna in the Crespi Collection in the Museo

Diocesano in Milan (fig.14). It is possible that this motivic delicacy of the thumb-sucking Christ boy,

like the detail of the child playfully reaching for the headscarf, goes back to a pictorial idea of Agnolo

Gaddis that can no longer be traced today. In any case, the rare motif of the sucking boy is preformed

in Agnolo Gaddi's picture world, a panel (fig.16) in a private collection in Monte Carlo today. Scolaio

di Giovanni's lost and photographically handed down panel formerly in Florence (fig.3) undoubtedly

presents itself as an immediate model for our painting down to smaller details - even concerning the

identity of the saints - but in addition to smaller, barely perceptible variations, the variant in question

here now contains an artistic ideal that, in contrast to earlier interpretations, strives for greater

linearity, a dynamisation of the elongated forms and generally an increased precision. Thus the painter

obviously sought to incorporate Lorenzo Monaco's pictorial world into his work, which can be

illustrated by a comparison with Lorenzo Monaco's Madonna with Child in Lastra a Signa (fig. 17-

20), a work created between 1404 and 1410.

17 18

19 20 21

It is probably the very moment in Lorenzo Monaco's career when, in the first decade of the 15th

century, Lorenzo led the late-Gothic stylistic phrases ad infinitum in their dynamics and at the same

time forced the ornamental richness of his pictures, which our painter here aspired to for his picture.

Similar to Lorenzo Monaco, he made the mantle seams of Our Lady vibrate and, with reference to the

richly worked golden Madonna mantle, he almost anticipated solutions that later - in a certainly more

refined form - Gentile da Fabriano would also magnificently place at the service of his Gothic ideal of

beauty. The Madonna dell' Umiltà at the Pinacoteca Civica in Ancona (fig.21) will show a comparable

materiality for the Madonna's cloak made of gold only by Arcangelo di Cola da Camerino.

22

The linear filigree delicacy as it can also be seen in our panel in the drawing of the probably best

preserved face, the profile of Julianus (fig.22), stands out from the earlier neo-Giottesque tendencies,

still entirely under the sign of Agnolo Gaddi's late work around 1390-96, which still influenced

Scolaio's early work and indicate an increased interest in Lorenzo Monaco's Gothic cadenzas and their

refined appearances. The above-mentioned tendency to dynamise the line and to render material

splendour in our picture, as it was modelled by Lorenzo Monaco in Florence in the second half of the

first quattrocento decade, suggests that Scolaio di Giovanni may have painted this magnificent panel

between 1405 and 1410. Although art historical research sometimes insisted that Scolaio's art was

first and foremost Starnina's, which at least for certain pictorial motifs is quite true - we remember the

thumb-sucking and Mary's headscarf-tipping "Bambino" of our panel, which was unmistakably

preformed in Starnina's art and turned towards the viewer (fig. 13,14). 13,14) - just like Scolaios

Adoration of the Child (formerly Lucerne Collection Kofler Truniger fig. 23,25) from Starnina's

painting of the same pictorial theme (formerly in the collection of the Duchess of Northhampton in

Compton (Wynyates fig. 24), he nevertheless remained closely committed in his formal language to

the art of Agnolo Gaddi and primarily to the more modern Gothic imagery of Lorenzo Monaco. As

also a comparison of Scolaio's panel with the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in the church of S.Maria

Assunta in Stia (fig.26) and Lorenzo Monaco's later Adoration of the Kings in the Uffizi in Florence

(fig.27) can make clear, however, for Scolaio di Giovanni Lorenzo Monaco's extremely refined Gothic

pictorial language increased and permanently became the measure of all things. Scolaio di Giovanni's

work was marked by incalculable fluctuations in artistic quality, which at times generated rather

handcrafted, routinely painted products, but in other cases, such as the altar in Borgo alla Collina (fig.

12), which once gave the work its name, or the aforementioned panel in Stia (fig. 26) produced

paintings of quite remarkable artistic power.

23 24 25

This panel is a remarkable extension of Scolaio di Giovanni's oeuvre and at the same time a

fascinating example of the artistic tendencies of Florentine painting in the early 15th century, which

were directed towards a late-Gothic refinement and material preciousness, which only a decade later

were to give way to a new Renaissance pictorial reality committed to nature by artists such as

Masaccio and Fra Angelico.

26 27

Prof. Dr. Gaudenz Freuler, Prof. emeritus, Zurich University, September 2018