WILLIAM DAVIE

By the mid 1450s, esteemed Florentine artist Francesco di Stefano, known as Pesellino, was beginning to shift his artistic focus. 

Pesellino had established his reputation and that of his workshop through small-scale devotional paintings such as the exquisite two panel The Annunciation (about 1450-3), domestic furnishings, and half-length paintings of the Madonna like Virgin and Child (about 1455), which were widely copied by Lippi-Pesellino imitators. But now, his focus was on large-scale altarpieces. 

His first, The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Zenobius (?), John the Baptist, Anthony Abbot, and Francis (about 1453), in the collection of the Musée du Louvre in Paris, was a trial by fire. The project necessitated lengthy contractual negotiations and multiple stages of drawings - Pesellino was an acclaimed draughtsman, drawing day and night, recalled Giorgio Vasari, a leading architect of the history of renaissance art - including preliminary sketches, compositional designs, and underdrawings for the painting. However, technical analysis shows that Pesellino had to make significant revisions late into the production process. Most notably, he replaced a three-column arcade behind the figures with the architectural enclosure seen today.

By the time Pesellino received his second commission for the high altar of the church of the Holy Trinity in 1455, he was determined not to fall foul of the hindrances posed by the first. 

Commissioned by confraternity of priests in Pistoia, a small city north-west of Florence, surviving documents show that they agreed to spend between 150 and 200 florins, a substantial sum, underlining its importance. But Pesellino would never live to see the result. He died suddenly during the summer of 1457 aged 35.

Today, Pesellino is little known, a wrong the National Gallery aims to rectify with the agonisingly moreish exhibition Pesellino: A Renaissance Master Revealed. It gathers a small but eye-opening selection of the very few known surviving works in just one of the museum’s galleries, with The Pistoia Santa Trinità Altarpiece, acting as one of two visual anchors.

The accompanying catalogue, written by the exhibition curator Laura Llewellyn, gives an insightful overview of the historical context, the storied histories of Pesellino’s works and designs thereafter, his influence on Florentine painters to come, and to the discoveries made during the restoration process of Stories of David (about 1445–55). Together, these set the stage for future scholarship of this all but forgotten and once, very justifiably, heralded artist. 

After a financial disagreement between Pesellino’s widow and his associate Piero di Lorenzo, Fra Filippo Lippi and his workshop, where Pesellino once worked, including on altarpieces, were chosen to complete Pesellino’s design for The Pistoia Santa Trinità Altarpiece for 115 florins. The altarpiece was finally completed and put into place in June 1465. 

In the catalogue, Nathaniel Silver, Associate Director and Chief Curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, argues that Pesellino painted only Saints Mamas and James and very little of the landscape. Even so, the altarpiece is a spectacular sight to behold. The captivating symmetry of Pesellino’s design powerfully accentuates Christ's outstretched arms nailed to the cross just above the heads of the saints, creating a welcoming arc in the lower foreground that viscerally invites us to step into the scene. 

Like our most revered cultural voices, Pesellino’s ingenuity lies not just in arrestingly showing us a glimpse of another world, but in transporting us body and soul into it. A feat that is brought about by his extraordinary eye for detail and composition. This is breathtakingly experienced standing before the two newly restored cassone panels that comprise Stories of David, the exhibition’s main visual anchor. 

The first panel, The Story of David and Goliath, depicts the biblical story through vignettes. Starting from the top left corner, as day begins to break over a bucolic landscape that closely resembles the rolling hills of Tuscany, we see David watching over his father’s livestock. He is perched above a stream, a device used to help audiences follow the plot across the panel. Roaming nearby, towards the foreground, are immaculately rendered lions; animals were one of Pesellino’s coveted skills during his lifetime, with at least 78 horses appearing across the two panels.

As our eye moves, we see David picking up rocks from the stream in the foreground, then, further along, we are taken to the battlefield where David was sent to bring supplies for King Saul’s army, including his three brothers, who are strategically paralyzed by the daily emergence of the Philistine giant Goliath. Here, we see David volunteering to fight Goliath and refusing Saul’s offer of armour. 

Next, diverging from biblical accounts, in the middle ground of the panel, extending from the centre to the right, we are thrust into the chaotic battleground. Israelites dressed in dark suits of armour charge at the Philistines, who wear turbans. Horses rise in gumption and fright as wounded soldiers litter the ground. Flailing limbs crash in a symphony of violence, all while the impervious Goliath towers over everyone else. We see David taking aim, a look of determination across his face, the visual embodiment of ‘This day will the LORD deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee’ (1 Samuel 17:46). Our eye is then drawn back, to the central foreground of the panel where Goliath is seen face down by the stream, bleeding from the forehead, as David begins to behead him.  

The second panel, The Triumph of David, forgoes a sequential narrative and instead shows a densely populated procession of the victorious Israelite army returning to the walled city. It snakes from the far-left background, up to the foreground and then across the panel, and showcases the breadth of Pesellino’s talent. 

Scores of cavalrymen on horseback and foot soldiers march, escorting prisoners of war. The elaborate and delicately incised golden patterns on their clothing and on the reins are a sumptuous feast of minute brushwork. Dogs, a cheetah, and a bear cub roam alongside, as falcons soar above. In the centre, David stands triumphantly above them gripping the head of Goliath by the hair, his lifeless body behind him, the bloodied stump of Goliath’s neck visible between his legs. 

In front of him, Saul leads the procession wearing a crowned helmet decorated with a dragon, atop an opulently incised, golden winged throne, preceded by trumpeters, further illustrating Pesellino’s mastery of and extensive use of gold and silver leaf that had long been tarnished and hidden by previous restoration attempts, writes Jill Dunkerton, Paintings Conservator at the National Gallery. The surviving areas set against the dark grey walls and spotlight of the gallery are a fascinating indicator of just how rapturous and animated the scene must have looked, especially in the flickering glow of candlelight. 

On the far right, in front of the city walls a group of women and girls in lavish dresses eagerly await their return. One, in white, appears to be being presented to a man in contemporary Florentine clothing which, it has been suggested, may reference Michal, Saul’s daughter, who David falls in love with and marries. Or, more likely, that it was an homage to the couple for whom the cassone was likely given as a wedding present. 

Returning to view The Pistoia Santa Trinità Altarpiece once again, and spying the unmistakable presence of Pesellino’s hand, Vasari’s lament becomes our lament: ‘From what we know of him, if he had lived longer, he would have achieved much more.’

First published by The Catholic Herald
https://catholicherald.co.uk/pesellinos-work-is-spectacular-alas-we-shall-never-know-what-else-might-have-been/