Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Venice: Gallerie dell’Accademia - Paradise Regained – Michele Giambono

 
Venice: Gallerie dell’Accademia - Paradise Regained – Michele Giambono. At the Gallerie dell’Accademia the exhibition Il Paradiso Riconquistato - Trame d’oro e colore nella pittura di Michele Giambono - Paradise Regained - golden textures and color in the paintings of Michael Giambono, until April 17 is curated by Paola Marini,  Matteo Ceriana and Valeria Poletto. The exhibition arose from the need to explain the largely unexpected and highly significant results that emerged during the restoration of two panel paintings in the Gallerie dell’Accademia: The Coronation of the Virgin and Saints (also known as Paradise) and the Deposition of Christ from the Cross, both by Michele Giambono.  In the former, detail above, the restoration has revealed large, previously unimagined areas of original paintwork, which implies a complex and fascinating historiographical premise:  the activity of a busy, greatly varied workshop peopled by individuals from different cultures, individuals whose role and and identity might eventually be revealed thanks to determined research and scholarship.  The works exhibited aim to illustrate this special aspect and in particular the relationship in the 1440s between Michele Giambono and the workshop of Giovanni d’Alemagna and Antonio Vivarini, the other great protagonists of this period who have been linked through archival documentation with this same altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin.

 
The Two Paradise
Giovanni d’Alemagna, Antonio Vivarini - Coronation of the Virgin and Saints – Paradise – 1444
tempera and oil, pastiglia on wood
Michele Giambono - The Coronation of the Virgin and Saints – Paradise – 1447-1448
tempera on wood
In 1447 Giambono signed a contract with the procurator of the church of Sant’Agnese for an altarpiece for the high altar. The contract specified that he had a year to produce a work designed to replicate the 1444 altarpiece for the church of San Pantalon by Giovanni d’Alemagna, Antonio Vivarini and the woodcarver Cristoforo da Ferrara. While remaining faithful to the 1444 model, Giambino modified the orderly San Pantalon Paradise into a highly charged composition with an excited crowd of holy figures.


photograph courtesy Gallerie dell’Accademia


Michele Giambono - The Coronation of the Virgin and Saints – Paradise – 1447-1448
tempera on wood

 
Paola Marini, director of the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Matteo Ceriana and Valeria Poletto curators of the exhibition and Maria Chiara Maida
technical director of the restoration 

 

Michele Giambono - The Deposition of Christ from the Cross
1430-1435 Ca.
tempera and gold on wood
Documented between 1420 and 1462, Michele Giambono was the last and extraordinary interpreter of the late Gothic style in Venice.  His was a technically intense and stern style, and figuratively he was influenced by the work of Gentile da Fabiano, even though he had never been his direct apprentice or student.  Much appreciated for his aristocratically tasteful compositions, he was also one of the Venetian Republic’s official painters. A stunning work that perfectly illustrates his production, the Deposition of Christ from the Cross, above is being exhibited for the first time.

 
Michele Giambono – San Crisogono – 1450 ca.
mixed media on wood

 
Michele Giambono – Virgin and Child – 1440-1445 ca.
tempera and gold on wood
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