AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

Giovanni di Paolo’s unusual use of silver is a material choice unexplored, yet it contributes to defining his aesthetic, as well as contextualizing him within the artistic zeitgeist of his generation. The genesis of this project was the conservation treatment and technical study of Giovanni di Paolo’s Saint John the Evangelist, The Assumption of the Virgin, and Saint Ansanus, part of the Kress Collection at the El Paso Art Museum. Treatment and technical analysis revealed that this predella fragment once had a silvered frame and silver leaf ground, prompting a reevaluation of how the work should be displayed, and how its current condition with degraded and tarnished silver affects our reading of the work.

Giovanni di Paolo (c.1402-1482) was a prominent Sienese artist; his style is typified by his surreal compositions and imaginative spirituality. His works express a vivid opulence through a rich use of pigments and geometric patterning, and he doggedly pursued a traditional style while many of his contemporaries had moved on to more realistic imagery. As a result, he is often labeled as eccentric, idiosyncratic, and anachronistic. These labels are predominantly based on his fantastical imagery rather than his choice of materials, yet during the course of this project a review of fifteenth-century Sienese panels revealed that Giovanni di Paolo was seemingly alone in his continual use of silver leaf for backgrounds and framing - a stylistic choice more closely tied to fourteenth-century Sienese practices.

Unfortunately, as a painter of predominantly altarpieces, most of Giovanni di Paolo’s works are now in a fragmentary state. This creates a challenge when contextualizing how the predella fit into its original altar format, and whether it is feasible that the artist mixed metal leaves without a clear example as a comparison. A known fragment from the same predella, owned by the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, was also examined and compared, and provided additional information about the original structure. John Pope-Hennessey had proposed a reconstruction of the altarpiece, yet misunderstood the physical structure of the predella fragment. I evaluate his hypothesis, with the materiality of the object more clearly explored.

Silver is well known to oxidize and tarnish, turning a reflective white metal surface to dull, mottled brown and black. This physical change of silver is often overlooked or misinterpreted in the reading of an object, and silver is particularly vulnerable to aggressive and damaging restorations. Text labels in books are frequently incorrect in identifying silver as gold, and from photographs alone it can be hard to identify the once white metal. Yet, Giovanni di Paolo actively chose to use silver over gold for aesthetic reasons, and this choice, as demonstrated through a reconstruction, changes the tonal color balance of the panel. This highlights the need to truly reflect on materials used within an altarpiece, and stresses the importance of understanding the materiality of an object when reconstructing larger pictorial schematics.