When Guido di Pietro entered the Convent of San Domenico in Fiesole near Florence at some point between 1417 and 1421,1 he took on the name Fra Giovanni (Brother John). But thanks to the riveting beauty and intense spirituality of his paintings, he has become known as Fra Angelico (Angelic Brother) and even the Beato Angelico (Blessed Angelic One).2
He had probably already trained as a painter and miniaturist in Florence before entering the convent, and continued to paint after taking holy orders, producing works primarily for Dominican establishments. His most celebrated achievements are the altarpiece for the high altar in the church of San Marco in Florence and the frescoes in the adjoining convent, conceived to inspire his fellow monks in their daily devotions.3 As exemplified by these masterworks, Fra Angelico was an artist at the forefront of early Renaissance painting, exploring innovations of linear perspective, the plasticity of figures and their situation in space, as well as the important role of light. He was highly acclaimed during his lifetime, and his last commission, unfortunately no longer extant, was to paint monumental frescoes in the Vatican for Pope Eugenius VI.4This exquisite small panel of Saint Anthony Abbott was first recognized as a work by Fra Angelico by Frida Schottmüller in 1925,5 and Percy S. Straus was apparently persuaded of its outstanding quality when he acquired it just five years later. The scene from the life of the hermit saint is based on the biography written by Saint Athanasius (c. 296–373), the patriarch of Alexandria, who relates that Saint Anthony Abbot was tempted by the devil with a large mass of gold. He writes that Anthony “marveled at the amount, but as one stepping over fire he passed it without turning.”6 In this depiction, however, the saint turns and recoils from the rock-size gold nugget with such force that his cloak flutters. He rushes toward the safety of the church on the hill, to which he points with his raised right hand, his stony path leading him metaphorically from evil and temptation to salvation. The incident takes place in a lonely landscape of ominous crags, some in deep shadow, some dramatically lit. Indeed, the innovative handling of light in landscape painting is acknowledged as one of Fra Angelico’s achievements. In the middle ground, a row of trees, whose differentiated foliage is carefully highlighted, leads the eye to the hills in the far distance where a crenellated wall of a fortified hilltop town or large castle is seen. A tiny church rises from the hills at the center of the composition. Despite the overall small size of the panel, the landscape has both great depth and breadth. Nonetheless, it is the figure of the saint that draws the attention above all else. His features are masterfully painted, individualized and expressive, and his energized stance enlivens the entire composition. The large golden halo, with its delicate punched pattern, acts as a counterpoint to the mass of gold, both compositionally and symbolically.
Much scholarly debate has taken place regarding the attribution of the panel to Fra Angelico since Schottmüller’s authentication in 1925. Carolyn Wilson has systematically laid this out, concluding that, despite differing opinions, the authentication is still valid, although she does not entirely preclude studio assistance.7 Giorgio Bonsanti not only includes it in his 1998 Catalogue Raisonné as autograph but deems it “of the highest quality.”8 In 2005 Laurence Kanter questioned this finding, proposing that it is a work by Fra Angelico’s close assistant Zanobi Strozzi.9 However, his conclusion, based on the comparison of the Straus St. Anthony Abbot with a panel in the Louvre, whose own attribution vacillates between Fra Angelico and Zanobi Strozzi,10 has not found wide acceptance.
Within the oeuvre of Fra Angelico, the Straus panel is seen as being close to his Strozzi Deposition (fig. 10.1), also known as the Santa Trinita altarpiece, dated around 1432. Although neither this date nor the actual commission are firmly documented, it is believed that Fra Angelico was requested by Palla Strozzi (1372–1462) to finish or alter an earlier work by Lorenzo Monacho that had been commissioned for the sacristy of Santa Trinita, a space also used as the funerary chapel of the Strozzi family.11 It is in the landscape immediately behind a group men, contemplating the instruments of Christ’s suffering—actually recognizable Florentine worthies portrayed by Fra Angelico—that we find elements very similar to those dominating the Straus panel. Here too we find the craggy cliffs, bare hills, one of them crowned with a small white church identical to the one at the center of the Straus panel, a town with crenelated walls, and the stand of trees with highlighted foliage are all suffused in sunlight that grows lighter in the distance.12 The physiological similarities of Saint Anthony Abbott with the figure of Saint John the Evangelist of the Cortona altarpiece (fig. 10.2), a work recent scholarship dates around 1434 and therefore in close proximity to the Deposition have also been noted. 13 Furthermore, a small panel in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Cherbourg, The Vocation of Saint Augustine, is regarded by some art historians as sharing many stylistic qualities with the Straus Saint Anthony, although here too scholarly opinions differ as to the authorship.14
There is no disagreement regarding the function of the Straus panel as a predella, however, even though it has so far not been determined for which altarpiece it had been had intended.15 An association of the Straus panel with a large panel of the standing Saint Anthony today in the Burke Collection was first proposed by Boskowitz, who, however, knew of the image only through a photograph. Despite some stylistic differences, he believed that the two panels had been components of the same altarpiece.16 Wilson was able to substantiate this proposition with the discovery of an engraving of Saint Anthony Abbott with Eleven Scenes from his Life, today in the Museo Civico, Pavia (fig. 10.3), which includes the Straus panel on the upper left of the central image of the standing Saint Anthony. (Both images are reversed on the print.) She concedes that the relationship between the two works is still speculative, and Kanter has subsequently argued against it.17 Indeed, the measurements of the two extant panels preclude an arrangement as indicated by the print.18 Thus, despite the tantalizing documentation, the question of their original relationship remains open at present.
—Helga Kessler Aurisch
Notes
1. Christopher Lloyd, Fra Angelico (London: Phaidon, 1992), 7.
2. Edgar Peters Bowron and Mary G. Morton, Masterworks of European Painting in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2000), 7.
3. Bowron and Morton, Masterworks of European Painting, 8.
4. Carolyn C. Wilson, Italian Paintings, XIV–XVI Centuries, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in association with Rice University Press and Merrell Holberton, 1996), 128–29.
5. Frida Schottmüller identified the work as by Fra Angelico in 1925, and it was acknowledged as such by a number of eminent Renaissance scholars, including Bernard Berenson, Lionello Venturi, and John Pope-Hennessy, although others such as Richard Offner were less certain; see Wilson, Italian Paintings, 138. However, Pope-Hennessy reversed his earlier judgment; see John Pope-Hennessy, Fra Angelico (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), 227. Boskovits retains the work as autograph; see Miklós Boskovits, “Appunti sull’Angelico,” Paragone 27 (March 1976), 43, n27; as does John Spike, Fra Angelico (New York: Abbeville, 1996), cat. 113E, 254–55. Kanter gives the work to Zanobi Stozzi, an attribution that has not been widely followed; see Laurence Kanter and Pia Palladino, Fra Angelico (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 104.
6. Bowron and Morton, Masterworks of European Painting, 8.
7. Wilson, Italian Paintings, 137.
8. Giorgio Bonsanti, Beato Angelico: catalogo completo (Florence: Octavo, 1998), 132–33, cat. 43.
9. Kanter and Palladino, Fra Angelico, 104, cat. 19, fig. 62.
10. Kanter and Palladino, Fra Angelico, 104.
11. Spike, Fra Angelico, 108.
12. Wilson, Italian Paintings, 139; Spike, Fra Angelico, 106, no. 74.
13. Wilson, Italian Paintings, 139; Timothy Verdon, Beato Angelico (Milan: 24 ORE Cultura, 2015), 149.
14. Kanter and Palladino, Fra Angelico, 105 n3.
15. Wilson, Italian Paintings, 137.
16. Wilson, Italian Paintings, 139.
17. Kanter and Palladino, Fra Angelico, 104.
18. Wilson, Italian Paintings, 139; Kanter and Palladino, Fra Angelico, 104.
Saint Anthony Abbot Shunning the Mass of Gold
Frame: 12 3/16 × 13 13/16 × 3 1/8in. (31 × 35.1 × 7.9cm)
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Comparative Images
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