Florentine School, Noli me tangere

Giuseppe Pazzagli, Florence, 1924;¹ Maitland Fuller Griggs (1872–1943), New York, by 1927

The four panels, of a horizontal wood grain, were cut from a single long plank of wood. The Agony in the Garden and the Way to Calvary were once contiguous: both are 2.5 centimeters thick, and a split at the left edge of the latter is continuous with a knot at the right edge of the former. The Resurrection and the Noli me tangere were similarly contiguous: both are 2.4 centimeters thick, and a knot sawn through at the left edge of the latter continues at the right edge of the former. The outer panel of each pair—the Agony in the Garden on the left and the Noli me tangere on the right—shows evidence on the reverse of the attachment with two nails to a 3-centimeter-wide vertical brace from the predella box. The lack of a central brace from this box and the discontinuity of the wood grain between the Way to Calvary and the Resurrection argues that some member of the predella is missing between the two pairs of panels now at Yale, while three nails driven at an angle into the reverse of the outer edges of the outer panels suggest that no further panels are missing at either end.

All four scenes retain a barb from an engaged frame at top and bottom, but none at left or right. Three scenes were cleaned aggressively by Andrew Petryn around 1970 and are uniformly abraded; the fourth, the Way to Calvary, was not cleaned at that time and retains a rich paint surface as well as veneered capping strips on its left and right edges; similar strips may be presumed to have been removed from the other three panels. Minor flaking losses in the Way to Calvary along its left edge, in all three haloes, and in the landscape on either side of the figure of Christ were retouched by Patricia Garland in a cleaning of 1998; she repaired similar damages in the other panels at the same time. These include losses along the left edge of the Agony in the Garden as well as at the back of the head of the reclining apostle and in the hill behind him; small but more extensive losses in the landscape at the right of Christ’s tomb in the Resurrection as well as in the painted framing elements all around the scene; and losses in the painted framing of the Noli me tangere as well as repairs covering nail heads from the vertical brace at Christ’s shoulder and behind His left heel.

The four panels are fragments of a dismembered predella illustrating episodes from Christ’s Passion. Technical evidence confirms that the Way to Calvary and the Resurrection flanked a missing fifth element, located in the center of the predella and possibly showing the Crucifixion.² The Agony in the Garden and the Noli me tangere stood, respectively, at the extreme left and right of the structure. No other elements from the same complex are known. The original appearance of these works is best understood through the Way to Calvary, the only one of the four scenes that was not part of an overzealous restoration campaign carried out around 1970. As noted by Patricia Garland in a 1998 treatment record, “Cleaning of this painting underscored, dramatically, the extent of the overcleaning of the three companion panels. The tonality of this one remains warmer and the colors are richer.”³ The abraded surfaces and retouching are most noticeable in the figures of the kneeling Christ and the angel in the Agony in the Garden and in the figures of both the Magdalen and Christ in the Noli me tangere, the most altered fragment in the group. At least two different hands were involved in the execution of the predella: one artist was responsible for the Agony in the Garden and the Resurrection; another for the Way to Calvary and, possibly, the Noli me tangere, although the condition of this panel precludes a definitive assessment. The latter two images betray a different formal vocabulary, defined by smaller proportions and body types and a more nuanced approach to the modeling of facial features. The distinctions are most obvious in the sharp contrast between the delicate, almost feminine figure of Christ in the Way to Calvary and his sturdily built counterpart in the Resurrection. All four episodes are set within illusionistically conceived, lavender-colored architectural borders that act as windows into the compositions, which are organized around a gauzy landscape of green valleys crossed by rivers and mountain ranges disappearing into the far distance. The hazy outlines of turreted cities are visible in the background of the Resurrection and Noli me tangere, whereas a more tangible, detailed view of church spires and towers, meant to recall the city of Jerusalem, distinguishes the Agony in the Garden. The wattle fence and River Cedron (John 18:1–2), usually included in this episode, have largely disappeared as a result of the early treatment. Still preserved in the Way to Calvary are the gold highlights in the hair of the figures and the vegetation in the distance, as well as the deftly applied white highlights on the soldier’s dark armor, conveying a sense of the artist’s concern with decorative surface effects that is presently missing from the other fragments.

The Yale predella scenes first appeared on the art market in Florence in 1924, when they were identified by F. Mason Perkins as products of the Florentine School in the second half of the fifteenth century, under the influence of Filippino Lippi.⁴ Richard Offner reiterated the generic designation of “Florentine School,” albeit slightly postdating the panels’ execution to between the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century and noting a former, unrecorded attribution to Francesco Botticini.⁵ The association with Botticini was taken up by Raimond van Marle,⁶ who first published the Yale panels among the works of the artist’s school. The panels were overlooked by subsequent scholarship, until Bernard Berenson listed them as “studio” of Domenico Ghirlandaio,”⁷ and Charles Seymour, Jr., catalogued them as “shop of?” Jacopo del Sellaio, with a tentative date around 1480.⁸ Seymour qualified his judgment, however, by citing Everett Fahy’s opinion, in litteris, that the artist’s style also showed affinities with miniature painters active in Ghirlandaio’s studio, such as Attavante degli Attavanti. Following Federico Zeri, who concurred with van Marle’s attribution to the school of Botticini, scholarly opinion—registered primarily in correspondence to the Yale University Art Gallery⁹—oscillated between Botticini and the Ghirlandaio workshop. Lisa Venturini omitted the works from her 1994 monograph on Botticini, but in a 1999 visit to the Gallery, she cautiously endorsed the designation “School of Botticini,” noting that the Way to Calvary, of a higher quality than the other scenes, came closest to the artist’s style, while exhibiting a more generalized, less descriptive approach to the depiction of the landscape elements.¹⁰ Around the same date, Fahy elaborated on his earlier comments by reiterating the panels’ connection to the Ghirlandaio shop but acknowledging that he had not been able to ascertain the identity of the painter: “As the style is early, that is to say still in the 1470s,” Fahy wrote in correspondence with Carl Strehlke, “they could be the youthful work of Benedetto before he leaves for France, or of Davide before his frescoes in San Martino dei Buonomini, or even the youngest Ghirlandaio brother, Giambattista, about whom we know very little.”¹¹ Following the panels’ treatment, however, Fahy retracted this opinion in favor of Botticini, comparing the paintings to the artist’s illuminations in a manuscript of Matteo Palmieri’s Città di vita in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence,¹² and proposing a date shortly after the execution of that work, about 1475.¹³ The reattribution to Botticini was endorsed by Strehlke in his checklist of the Italian paintings at the Gallery.

Despite efforts to confine the stylistic points of reference of the Yale predella to Ghirlandaio’s or Botticini’s workshop, the links between these personalities and the four fragments seem too generic and distant to warrant a specific attribution. Certain compositional and decorative solutions, like the oblong architectural frames and the tendril motif around them, find an echo in the framing elements of works produced in Ghirlandaio’s studio, but as intuited by Fahy, the figure style cannot be associated with any of the known personalities in his circle. By the same token, the relationship to Botticini is equally superficial. While sharing similar proportions, the small figures in the artist’s Laurenziana miniatures, singled out for comparison by Fahy, are characterized by a more nuanced modeling technique and a lively expressiveness that is absent from the Yale scenes. The painter’s approach seems to go beyond the immediate circle of Ghirlandaio and Botticini to reflect the full complexity of the workshop environment in Florence between the 1470s and 1490s and the multiplicity of artistic exchanges and reference points. The unusual iconography of the Yale Noli me tangere, for example, which is set in an empty enclosure devoid of the traditional references to a cave or tomb, may hark back to Botticelli’s depiction of the same subject in the predella of the Santa Maria delle Convertite altarpiece,¹⁴ although the surrounding wall in the latter has been replaced by a rustic wooden fence. Other iconographic anomalies, like the contrived pose of the young soldier in armor in the Way to Calvary, suggest a conscious imitation of different models derived from sketchbooks or contemporary sculpture, in addition to paintings. The equally artificial stance of the figure of the executioner leading Christ by a rope in the same episode, in particular, seems clearly indebted to the bronze statuette of a nude male referred to as Il pugilatore, or “the boxer,” in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, a work sometimes attributed to Verrocchio.¹⁵ In light of these disparate elements and borrowings, a more general attribution of the Yale predella to the Florentine school, between around 1480 and 1490, seems the only justifiable conclusion at present. —PP

1. According to F. Mason Perkins (verbal communication, 1924, recorded in the Frick Art Reference Library, New York), the paintings were on sale at the dealer “Passagli” in Florence in January 1924. This is most likely the Giuseppe Pazzagli who owned other works alternately referred to as ex-Passagli or Pazzagli. He had a shop in via della Vigna Nuova in Florence. See Strehlke and Israëls 2015, 744. ↩︎

2. A total original length for the complete predella may be estimated at a minimum of 156 centimeters, but 191 centimeters is more likely if the missing central scene had similar proportions to the four extant panels. ↩︎

3. Patricia Garland, treatment record, November 1998, curatorial files, Department of European Art, Yale University Art Gallery. ↩︎

4. Verbal opinion, 1924, recorded in the Frick Art Reference Library, New York. ↩︎

5. Verbal opinion, 1927, recorded in the Frick Art Reference Library, New York. ↩︎

6. van Marle 1931c, 420. ↩︎

7. Berenson 1963, 1:76. ↩︎

8. Seymour 1970, 182–83, nos. 132–35. ↩︎

9. Curatorial files, Department of European Art, Yale University Art Gallery. ↩︎

10. Lisa Venturini, as cited by Jean Cadogan, email to Patricia Garland, October 20, 1999, curatorial files, Department of European Art, Yale University Art Gallery ↩︎

11. Everett Fahy, email to Carl Strehlke, November 1, 1999, curatorial files, Department of European Art, Yale University Art Gallery. ↩︎

12. MS Plut. 40,53; see Venturini 1994a, 92–93, 168–76, pls. 4–5, figs. 50–66. ↩︎

13. Fahy, letters to Clay Dean and Carl Strehlke, both January 26, 2000, curatorial files, Department of European Art, Yale University Art Gallery. For the Laurenziana manuscript, dated 1473, see Venturini 1994a, 114–15, no. 38. Venturini convincingly attributed the decoration of this volume to two different hands: Gherardo di Giovanni (responsible for the full-page miniatures on fols. 9v and 10r–v, and the frontispieces on fols. 11r, 124r, and 213r) and Francesco Botticini (author of the illuminations on fols. 41v–46r). ↩︎

14. Philadelphia Museum of Art, inv. nos. cat. 44–47, https://www.philamuseum.org/collection/object/102846. ↩︎

15. Inv. no. 584. See Covi 2005, 262, no. 6 (with previous bibliography). ↩︎