Scarlett H. Strauss
PhD Candidate, The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Abstract
Painted in 1475 for the small town of Staggia on the shifting border between Florentine and Sienese territory, Giovanni di Paolo’s Assumption of the Virgin with Saints Bernardino of Siena, John the Baptist, George, and Gregory the Great is a compelling visualization of both political and personal identity. While the altarpiece has often been dismissed as a poorly executed late work, I contend that the very aspects criticized by twentieth-century scholars were in fact calculated to represent the enduring power of a distinctly Sienese visual tradition. In the fifteenth century, when Staggia was under Florentine control, this was a powerful way to express an alternative loyalty: the painting visualizes the donor’s allegiance to Siena and devotion to the city’s patron saint, the Virgin Mary. Furthermore, the fragmentary inscription and donor portraits offer a tantalizing glimpse of the personal and familial identity of the patron, whose self-fashioning aligns him with the “poor” saints of the left half of the altarpiece and underscores his piety and penitence.
A close examination of the polyptych in relation to its geopolitical context is vital to reconstruct the identity and agency of rural communities. This essay offers a postcolonial analysis of this complex web of individual and local identities, presenting a new critical lens on the rising awareness of “style” prior to 1500 and disrupting homogenizing narratives of the “development” of Italian painting in urban centers.
Local Identity and Civic Allegiance in Giovanni di Paolo’s Staggia Polyptych
Studying the altarpiece’s original geographic and historical context reveals multifaceted messages about individual self-fashioning, local identity, and civic allegiance. It also allows for a stylistic and historiographic reevaluation of the polyptych: rather than seeing it as a poorly executed late work, I argue that both patron and artist intentionally invested in a Sienese artistic tradition so as to express an alternative loyalty in the face of Florentine rule.
Though the role of Staggia as a subject town is central to the meaning of the polyptych, geography and site-specificity have thus far received short shrift in the scholarly literature on the painting. The altarpiece was first published in an 1872 catalogue from the Istituto Provinciale di Belle Arti di Siena. The brief entry lists the figures and scenes depicted, transcribes the inscriptions—including a now-lost signature that originally appeared below the main register, “OPUS . GIOVANNI . DE . SENIS . M.CCCC.LV.XX”—and notes that the painting entered the collection from the suppressed oratory of San Silvestro in Staggia.[2] The question of provenance is never seriously discussed in the scholarly literature. It is taken up only in passing by John Pope-Hennessy in a footnote to his monograph on Giovanni di Paolo, where he mentions that the painting might have been made for a different church in Staggia before being moved to San Silvestro.[3]
Pope-Hennessy’s interest in the altarpiece centers around questions of style and drawing, and his analysis reveals a Vasarian and Florentine-centric investment in disegno. He explains away the “very disagreeable qualities of this panel” by suggesting that it was an attempt to satisfy the market of late-fifteenth-century Siena, a market whose “emphasis, like the emphasis of all spontaneously classical painting at every period, was on draughtsmanship.”[4] Most damning of all is Cesare Brandi’s assessment in 1941, in which he describes the altarpiece as a “tired and provincial painting.”[5] Subsequent scholarship on the altarpiece has remained within the parameters established by Pope-Hennessy and Brandi. In a 1990 catalogue of the Pinacoteca di Siena, Pietro Torriti quotes Brandi’s dismissive description of the Virgin as a “still and unlovely idol.”[6] The few subsequent mentions of the Staggia Polyptych by Andrew Ladis, Thomas Bohl, and Janneke Panders have followed Pope-Hennessy in their focus on drawing practices.[7]
Pope-Hennessy’s and Brandi’s comments are particularly striking, given that both played a pivotal role in drawing attention to Giovanni di Paolo’s artistic career. A prolific and successful painter, Giovanni di Paolo was largely neglected after his death. Only in the 20th century did major figures like Van Marle and Berenson, as well as Pope-Hennessy and Brandi, take an interest in his work. These scholars were invested in Giovanni’s idiosyncratic and unusual style, as well as his talent for emulating older Sienese masters to create powerful and moving compositions.[8] In addition to citing the work of earlier artists, Giovanni di Paolo was known for repeating figures within his own oeuvre: in the Staggia Polyptych, for example, the figures of John the Baptist and Bernardino of Siena are drawn from stock types. Pope-Hennessy further observed that Giovanni di Paolo took his penchant for linearity and hard contours to extremes in this altarpiece, aligning with a calligraphic turn in his painting at the end of his career.[9]
This brief overview of the existing literature on the Staggia Polyptych exemplifies an entangled set of teleological and geographical problems discussed by Stephen Campbell in his book The Endless Periphery. Campbell contends that Vasari’s investment in a city-focused history of art has been retroactively applied to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, establishing monolithic narratives of regional “schools” rather than acknowledging more complex networks of artistic production.[10] The issue he raises suggests a need to reexamine the so-called “centers” of painting—for example, major cities such as Florence and Siena—in relation to a rising awareness of the concept of style. Indeed, slippages such as Pope-Hennessy’s claim that the Staggia Polyptych catered to a Sienese taste for drawing (despite its production for a site outside of the city and under Florentine control) reveal the complexities that are lost when reducing paintings to the broad categories of “Florentine school” or “Sienese school.”
Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe provides a valuable theoretical model to step outside of the existing center-periphery narrative that prioritizes urban artistic production. Chakrabarty observes that much of modern Western scholarship follows a pattern of historicism, which he defines as the reduction of history into sequential phases in a development. The practical result of this approach is that colonies and other marginalized places—such as the subject town of Staggia—are often seen as less “developed” and consequently not at the same “stage” of history. Nonetheless, these marginalized sites exist in the same chronological moment as the “centers” and consequently face many of the same cultural, political, and socioeconomic concerns.[11]
The historicism discussed by Chakrabarty offers a new lens for understanding Brandi’s and Pope-Hennessy’s interpretations of the Staggia Polyptych. Brandi’s description of the altarpiece reflects precisely the fundamental assumption that Chakrabarty unpacks: the Italian phrase “pittura stanca e campagnola” carries the same negative connotations as the English “tired and provincial painting.” For Brandi, being for a small subject town is intrinsically linked with backwardness, a distinctly historicist approach to the polyptych. Pope-Hennessy, too, approaches the altarpiece from the perspective of the urban center—he sees the altarpiece as an ineffective attempt to keep up with the artistic “development” of the cities, where drawing and design were particularly valued. Though these scholars appreciated Giovanni di Paolo’s traditionalism in his work for the city of Siena itself, the Staggia Polyptych pushes this traditionalism to extremes. Both Brandi and Pope-Hennessy interpreted this as an artistic failure, the result of an elderly artist making a low-quality work for the less sophisticated tastes of a small-town patron.
Chakrabarty’s response to the problem of historicist scholarship is to look closely at a group—in his case, of middle-class Bengali intellectuals—to recognize how their selective adoption of local (and often older) traditions is in fact a part of their modern identity-formation.[12] Following his model, I reconstruct the hitherto overlooked context of the creation of the Staggia Polyptych in order to situate the altarpiece in relation to the patron’s construction of identity as a citizen of a subject town. While social history is hardly a new approach within the field of art history, a painting for Staggia cannot be adequately understood through the lens of urban Florentine or Sienese values. Chakrabarty’s discussion of historicism highlights the blind spots of Brandi’s and Pope-Hennessy’s city-focused approach, revealing the need to consider how the agency and objectives of provincial patrons might not precisely align with those of city-dwellers. By considering art for a subject town on its own terms, it becomes possible to see it not as an earlier “stage of development” unaware of contemporary artistic and political circumstances, but as an equally self-conscious investment in particular visual languages with different cultural roots. Studied from this perspective, the Staggia Polyptych offers an emphatic and recognizable visual rebuttal to a Florentine pictorial style, underscoring instead Checho’s loyalty to Siena and his devotion to the city’s patron saint, the Virgin.
The original context of the Staggia Polyptych can be at least partly reconstructed from the fragmentary inscription at the bottom of the predella: “[QUE?]STA TAVOLA A FATO FARE CHECHO DI NANNI CINEGLI GIOVA… A[?]… DELLA CHIESA DI S[AN]C[T]A MARIA A ST[AGGIA?] [E S?]TATO OP[ERAIO?]…”.[13] The two more complete sections of this inscription can be translated as, “Checho di Nanni Cinegli had this panel made […] was the works commissioner of the church of Santa Maria a Staggia.”
The inscription provides tantalizing evidence about the altarpiece’s patronage. The name “Checcho di Nanni Cinelli” appears as one of the councilors of Staggia in the town’s statutes of 1422, in a section discussing the raising of funds to pay taxes to both the League of Chianti and the City of Florence.[14] Despite the early date, it almost certain that this is the same person commemorated in the altarpiece. If Checho already held a position of importance as a councilor of Staggia in 1422, however, he would necessarily have been quite elderly if he even survived until 1475 when the Staggia Polyptych was made. The second partial name in the altarpiece’s inscription might then have been an heir or family member who commissioned the painting in his stead, which would also explain the past tense describing Checho’s position as works commissioner.
The kneeling figures at the left side of the predella offer a further clue to reconstructing the commission. A man and two women are arranged hierarchically: the man is closest to the center of the altarpiece, his head and upper torso are turned into a three-quarter profile, and his face is much more naturalistic than that of either woman. Behind him—both farther from the center of the altarpiece, and deeper into the spatial recession of the small space—are two women depicted in strict profile, also kneeling and with their hands clasped in prayer. The man’s graying but untonsured hair, receding hairline, and the visible wrinkles on his face suggest his age and lay status, consistent with Checho di Nanni Cinegli’s role as a city councilor and an operaio or member of a works commission for Santa Maria a Staggia. Behind him kneels a woman with a white wimple and black gown or overgown, followed by a third figure in a red gown and a veil more loosely wrapped around her head. The looser veil, brighter clothing, and unwrinkled skin of the third woman all suggest that she is younger than her two companions.
Interpreting these figures in conjunction with the inscription, it seems likely that they represent Checho di Nanni Cinegli, his wife, and his daughter. One possibility is that Checho di Nanni left money in his will for an altarpiece, and the commission was overseen by one of the women in the bottom left corner. The more portrait-like features of the man could then be a deliberate choice to commemorate Checho’s appearance after his death. The fragmentary “Giova” after Checho di Nanni Cinegli’s name is most likely the beginning of the name of the person who oversaw the commission. “Giovanna” would be a predictable family name for Checho’s daughter, honoring his father Nanni/Giovanni.[15] Especially if the altarpiece commission was carried out by a daughter or another descendant, commemorating Checho would both demonstrate filial piety and enhance the status of subsequent generations. By recording Checho’s appearance and recalling his position as works commissioner, the painting would have reminded viewers of Checho’s importance and consequently also the importance and lineage of the two women shown with him.
The inscription on the book held by Gregory the Great also offers information about the patron’s values and objectives. Based on a comparison to the known text on the Tablets of the Law in Giovanni di Paolo’s Maestà in the Pinacoteca in Siena, Pietro Torriti’s transcription of this text may be expanded to read: “Quia in multis delinquimus in multis fer[…?] videmur interi[…?] et ext[er?]i[…?]”. While I have been unable to find this text in its entirety, there are two potential points of reference suggested by the initial words. “Quia in multis delinquimus” is one possible translation of James 3:2, “Because we sin in many ways.”[16] The phrase also appears (in slightly different form) in Gregory the Great’s gloss on the fourth penitential psalm when the prophet Nathan came to David after he had sinned with Bethsabee: “In hac enim vita quia in multis quotidie delinquimus, oportet ut contriti cordis et contribulati spiritus Deo sacrificium offeramus” (emphasis mine; “In this life, because we sin in many ways every day, it is necessary to offer sacrifice to God with a contrite soul and an afflicted spirit.”).[17]
Whether it originated from a biblical verse, gloss, or other source, the text held by Gregory the Great in the Staggia Polyptych conveys a penitential message. The first four words undeniably refer to the prevalence of human sin, a major motivating factor in expressions of piety such as the choice to commission an altarpiece. The inscription was also most likely selected and provided to Giovanni di Paolo by or on behalf of the patron and his family. If the text highlights their sinful nature, the rest of the altarpiece provides a solution. The three figures kneel and look through a doorway toward the heavenly court, shown in an attitude of endless and undying devotion.[18] As the only figures in the polyptych without haloes or a gilded background, the three devotees are linked to the place where the altarpiece itself was located, on an altar in Staggia. Anyone performing or witnessing the Mass before the altarpiece would have been reminded of the image that Checho and his family sought to project, of piety and penitence.
The placement of the donor and his family relative to the overall scheme of the altarpiece further enhances this humble and devout self-presentation. The two sides of the polyptych convey very different visual messages: the left half of the main register (to Mary’s proper right, and thus the side of honor) depicts figures invested in poverty. John the Baptist appears in his hide tunic and mantle as a wanderer of the desert, and beside him stands Bernardino of Siena, a Mendicant saint. By contrast, on the opposite half of the altarpiece stands St. George, whose now-tarnished silver armor would originally have shone, and the figure of St. Gregory the Great, wearing ornate gold and silver vestments. Despite Checho di Nanni Cinegli’s prominent status as a city councilor and head of the works commission of the major church, the three kneeling donors are shown wearing simple clothing without any rich jewelry, and they are situated on the side of the altarpiece highlighting the significance of poverty. The altarpiece thus projects a particular view of Checho and his descendants, underscoring family ties and the memory of Checho as a noble and devout citizen.
In addition to these carefully-constructed messages about personal and familial identity, the Staggia Polyptych also provides a commentary on local identity and political allegiance. The altarpiece’s inscription, though vague, unequivocally lists a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. If the two halves of the inscription should indeed be reconstructed together to read that the altarpiece was commissioned by Checho di Nanni Cinegli who was operaio of Santa Maria a Staggia, then the most likely original location for this altarpiece was the high altar of the pieve or parish church of Staggia, Santa Maria Assunta.[19] This hypothesis is supported by the subject of the central panel: a church dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin could logically have had a high altarpiece depicting this scene. The presence of John the Baptist in the place of honor also supports the possibility that the altarpiece was made for Santa Maria Assunta—in addition to being the name saint of the Giovanni/Giovanna listed in the inscription, his presence would also commemorate the fact that this church had its own baptistery.[20]
There was evidently some interest in providing new altarpieces to Santa Maria Assunta in the second half of the fifteenth century: the Grazzini family commissioned an Elevation of the Magdalen from Antonio del Pollaiuolo (Figure 2) around 1460, as well as an Adoration of the Magi from Francesco Botticini (Figure 3). Like the Cinegli, the Grazzini were a powerful local family; however, they had strong ties to Florence, and their commissions to Florentine painters reflect this allegiance.[21] If Checho di Nanni Cinegli’s commission formed a part of this larger redecoration campaign, then his choice to commission a Sienese artist was not a politically neutral move.
For centuries before the date of Giovanni di Paolo’s altarpiece, Staggia had played a role in the territorial disputes between Florence and Siena. As the towns of the Valdelsa grew alongside the development of the Via Francigena as a major pilgrimage route, they increasingly began to negotiate the challenges of trying to maintain independence and sovereignty in the face of the expansion of the larger powers of Florence and Siena.[22] Staggia remained largely under the control of Siena or its allies for the century leading up to the Battle of Monteaperti, but was conquered by the Florentines during the Battle of Colle in 1269. It came under the control of the Franzesi family from 1297 until they sold the castle and town to Florence in 1361, after which it became a Florentine fortress.[23] As attested by the town’s statues from 1422, in which Checho di Nanni Cinegli is listed as a city councilor, the town was required to pay a dazio or tax to Florence as the dominant city, though it still retained its own local ruling council.[24]
Although Staggia was under Florentine control in 1475, the Staggia Polyptych nonetheless provides a powerful and immediately recognizable statement of allegiance to Siena and its patron saint, the Virgin. The importance of Marian imagery and depictions of the Assumption of the Virgin as a visual marker of Sienese cultural identity is discussed extensively by Diana Norman.[25] I contend that this is vital to understanding both the choice to commission a painting from Giovanni di Paolo, and the resulting appearance of the Staggia Polyptych itself. Checho—or a descendant who carried out the commission after Checho’s death—was clearly aware of the connection between the city of Siena and the Virgin Mary. However, unlike the instances Norman discusses, where imagery of the Assumption frequently served as a mode of asserting Sienese authority or cultural hegemony over subject towns, here a patron in a town under Florentine rule adopted this visual language to articulate his own political message. Much like Chakrabarty’s instances of Bengali intellectuals employing “modern” European modes of self-presentation, but only in conjunction with local traditions and insofar as they were productive for local needs, Checho here similarly adapted models from the “center” to his own ends. In commissioning a painting using the visual language of Sienese dominion, Checho repurposed this imagery of the Assumption as a mode of visualizing an alternative to either Florentine or Sienese rule: though in practice Staggia was subject to the city-state of Florence, Checho showed his own investment in an earlier history of allegiance to Siena.
The central scene of Giovanni di Paolo’s polyptych is depicted in an unequivocally Sienese idiom: the iconography of the central panel is strikingly similar to Bartolomeo Bulgarini’s Assumption of the Virgin for the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala in Siena (Figure 4). The close visual similarities to Bulgarini’s panel in fact explain a number of the visual elements that Cesare Brandi criticized in the Staggia Polyptych. Brandi compared the painting unfavorably to another Assumption by Giovanni di Paolo (Figure 5) which is now in Asciano.[26] I argue that Giovanni di Paolo’s distinctive choices between the Asciano and Staggia Assumptions are the result of an intentional desire to refer to Bulgarini’s earlier painting, perhaps even a modo e forma commission requesting Giovanni di Paolo to emulate Bulgarini’s model.
In both the Staggia Polyptych and Bulgarini’s Assumption, Mary is monumental in scale and strictly frontal, seated on a cloud amidst a floating cluster of angels. Indeed, as noted above, Brandi described the Staggia Virgin as a “still and unlovely idol.”[27] Rather than referring to her as an idol, it would be more precise to see the Virgin as an icon: directly facing the viewer and with most of her form covered by ornate silver and gold patterning, both Bulgarini and Giovanni di Paolo evoke the majesty and material splendor of a reveted icon.
Brandi also comments on the absence of space around the figure of Mary in the Staggia Polyptych as compared to the Asciano Assumption, arguing that the Staggia Virgin thus loses all sense of three-dimensionality and movement. However, this alteration too makes the panel more closely resemble Bulgarini’s.[28] In both Bulgarini’s Assumption and in the Staggia Polyptych, Mary is surrounded by seraphim and cherubim that fade into the gold background. Only the angels grouped around Mary’s legs are shown with full bodies and sumptuous robes. In both images, these lesser angels are variously depicted playing music or in attitudes of prayerful attention, perhaps joining the musicians in song. Below, the figure of St. Thomas looks toward the Virgin as she rises to Heaven and leaves him her girdle. Even the basic shape of the two panels is similar, a pointed arch with semicircular crenellations inside of it, though Bulgarini’s painting includes additional figures above in the spandrels.[29]
Subtle distinctions between Bulgarini’s Assumption and the Staggia Polyptych can help to highlight the choices Giovanni di Paolo made in both evoking and altering Bulgarini’s precedent. First and foremost, the figure of St. Thomas is de-emphasized in Giovanni di Paolo’s altarpiece: the saint is surrounded by angels in similarly bright clothing, rather than standing out as the only colorful figure in a sea of gold. St. Thomas’s attitude in the Staggia polyptych is one of devotion, unlike the Eucharistic posture Henk Van Os noted in Bulgarini’s panel, where St. Thomas raises the Virgin’s girdle in a gesture similar to the raising of the Host during the Mass.[30] These adjustments can be understood in relation to the context of the two paintings. Bulgarini’s Assumption of the Virgin was made for an altar in the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala in Siena, where a relic of the Virgin’s girdle was kept. As Van Os and Steinhoff observe, the visual emphasis placed on St. Thomas is understandable as it also highlights the importance of the relic.[31] Giovanni di Paolo kept these same formal elements—the Virgin seated on a cloud rising to heaven, surrounded by angels, and dropping her girdle to St. Thomas—but selected a different focus. The girdle is in the process of falling, rather than already being in St. Thomas’s possession (and, metaphorically, in the possession of the place where the painting was displayed).
While St. Thomas’s presence links the painting back to Bulgarini’s Assumption for the Ospedale, Giovanni di Paolo places the focus squarely on the Virgin. He retains—and perhaps even enhances—Bulgarini’s hierarchy of scale. Mary looms large above the surrounding figures, comparable in size to the standing saints in the adjacent panels of the altarpiece. St. Thomas, instead, appears slightly smaller than the angels around him. This distinction is underscored by his kneeling posture, which compresses his form to only half the height of the elongated floating angels beside him. In effect, St. Thomas here becomes an attribute of the Virgin of the Assumption, and specifically of a Sienese Virgin of the Assumption.
Siena was not the only city to house a relic of the Virgin’s girdle—Prato venerated the same relic, and by 1475 had been securely under Florentine control for over a century—nor was Bulgarini’s model the only way to depict the Assumption. Furthermore, churches dedicated to the Virgin or to her Assumption were not uncommon. In a pieve such as Santa Maria a Staggia, the presence of both the Assumption of the Virgin and the figure of John the Baptist can be easily explained in relation to the church’s titular dedication and its dual function as a baptistery. Indeed, the preeminence of these scenes is a further indicator that the altarpiece was most likely originally made for this church.
Nonetheless, the choice and placement of the altarpiece’s central subject matter lends itself to a reading against the grain, one that acknowledges the tensions of Staggia’s placement as a town subject to Florentine rule.[32] For all that St. John the Baptist is in the place of honor, he is undeniably in a less important position than the central Assumption, depicting the patron saint of Siena in a distinctively Sienese idiom. Furthermore, opposite to the patron saint of Florence is a personification of armed force: St. George. Unlike in Florentine paintings, where John the Baptist tends to be the intercessor looking out at the viewer, here it is the stern presence of the military St. George who gazes out at the audience. Rather than turning to a Florentine artist, as had the Grazzini family less than two decades earlier, Checho di Nanni Cinegli commissioned a Sienese artist, whose signature as “Giovanni of Siena” only underscored the political allegiances suggested by this particular mode of depicting the Virgin. If this painting was indeed originally commissioned for the high altar of Santa Maria Assunta in Staggia, it would have served as an emphatic rebuttal to the Florentine political allegiance of the Grazzini family as visualized in their commission to Antonio del Pollaiuolo a decade and a half earlier.
The altarpiece also raises a broader question: was Giovanni di Paolo’s signature and his centering of the patron saint of Siena enough to make this statement of political allegiance, or did style also play a role in identifying this altarpiece as something that “looked Sienese”? One way to approach the question is to consider style more broadly in Giovanni di Paolo’s oeuvre. In his study of Giovanni di Paolo’s artistic models, Thomas Bohl quotes Cennino Cennini’s admonition to young artists to consistently draw and study works by the same master, so as to establish a single unified maniera rather than emulating that of multiple different artists. Bohl contends that Giovanni di Paolo not only neglected this advice, but did so intentionally, consciously citing different and recognizable styles.[33]
A return to Brandi’s comparison between Giovanni di Paolo’s Staggia and Asciano Assumptions also strongly suggests an understanding of style. All of the elements that Brandi critiques in the Staggia Polyptych in fact make it resemble Bulgarini’s model more closely: the greater sense of monumentality in the Staggia Polyptych is very like Bulgarini, as is the insistence on Mary’s strictly frontal face with a more rounded physiognomy, defined through soft shadows rather than distinct outlines. These formal choices in the Staggia Polyptych go beyond simply copying Bulgarini’s subject matter and composition. They reveal a desire to emulate formal qualities that we would categorize as “style.” This ability to strategically cite older artists may even have been a contributing factor in Checho di Nanni Cinegli’s decision to commission a work from Giovanni di Paolo. If so, then Checho can hardly be dismissed as an unsophisticated rural patron willing to accept a second-rate altarpiece from an aged master. Instead, he made a calculated choice of a painter able to stylistically adapt his work to suit local needs.
Far from being a tired or poorly executed late work, Giovanni di Paolo’s Staggia Polyptych negotiates between personal identity and political allegiance, reflecting the particular values of a subject town caught between Florentine dominion and Sienese cultural influence. Just as the annual ritual of submission to Siena and the Virgin on the feast of the Assumption served to continually reaffirm ties between the city and its subject towns, Giovanni di Paolo’s Staggia Polyptych would have served as a powerful reminder of political and spiritual loyalty to Siena each time it served as the backdrop of Mass—an important counterpoint to the practical reality of Florentine political control. Furthermore, through their visual and textual presence in the form of donor portraits and an inscription, the altarpiece commemorated Checho di Nanni Cinegli and his family, eternally devout and eternally present in this visual declaration of civic allegiance.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 1. Giovanni di Paolo, Staggia Polyptych, 1475. Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Figure 2. Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Elevation of the Magdalen, c. 1460. Museo di Staggia. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Figure 3. Francesco Botticini, Adoration of the Magi, late 15th c. Museo di Staggia. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Figure 4. Bartolomeo Bulgarini, Assumption of the Virgin, c. 1360. Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena. Photo: Stéphane Mendelssohn.
Figure 5. Giovanni di Paolo, Assumption, Asciano. Photo: Stéphane Mendelssohn.
ENDNOTES
[1] The pope in the right-hand pilaster is listed as Gregory the Great in the Catalogo della Galleria del r. istituto provinciale di belle arti di Siena (Siena: Lazzeri, 1872), 59; Cesare Brandi, “Giovanni di Paolo,” Le Arti 4/5 (1941), 338 n. 84; Pietro Torriti, La Pinacoteca nazionale di Siena. I dipinti (Genova: Sagep, 1990), 242; and in the Pinacoteca di Siena’s current label. The duplicate presence of Gregory the Great seems unusual—the dove serves to unequivocally identify the figure on in the main register as St. Gregory, but it is possible that the smaller figure in the pilaster might be another papal saint.
[2] Catalogo della Galleria, 58–59; Torriti, La Pinacoteca nazionale di Siena, 242, echoes this information, and adds that the painting was removed from San Silvestro in 1864.
[3] John Pope-Hennessy, Giovanni di Paolo, 1403 – 1483 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938), 140 n. 8: “…STA TAVOLA A FATO FARE CHECHO DI NANNI CINEGLI GIOVAN … DI … DELLA CHIESA DI SCA MARIA A ST … TATO OPA …. This suggests that the polyptych was commissioned for a larger church at Staggia and later moved to the Oratory of S. Silvestro.” Janneke Panders, “The Underdrawing of Giovanni di Paolo: Characteristics and Development.” (Ph.D. dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1997), 81, echoes but does not pursue this suggestion.
[4] Pope-Hennessy, Giovanni di Paolo, 118–19.
[5] Brandi, “Giovanni di Paolo,” 338: “pittura stanca e campagnola”.
[6] Torriti, La Pinacoteca nazionale, cat. no. 324 p. 243: “Ora Giovanni porta il suo esasperato e contorto gigantismo alle estreme conseguenze: la Vergine, ‘idolo fermo e senza vaghezza’ si distende su quasi tutta la superficie…”. The quote originally appears in Brandi, “Giovanni di Paolo,” 339.
[7] The Staggia Polyptych is noted in passing in Andrew Ladis, “Sources and Resources: The Lost Sketchbooks of Giovanni di Paolo”, in The Craft of Art: Originality and Industry in the Italian Renaissance and Baroque Workshop, edited by Andrew Ladis and Carolyn Wood (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1995), 48–85; and Thomas Bohl, “Giovanni di Paolo, fantastichetto!: l’art de combiner les modèles, entre Sienne et Florence”, in Regards sur les primitifs. Mélanges en l’honneur de Dominique Thiébaut, edited by Jean-Luc Martinez (Paris: Hazan, 2018), 55 n. 32). Janneke Panders, “The Underdrawing,” 81–88, takes a more technical approach, examining infrared images of the Staggia Polyptych and arguing that the drawing should unequivocally be attributed to Giovanni di Paolo.
[8] Panders, “The Underdrawing,” 1–3 and 22–24, provides a concise and effective overview of Giovanni di Paolo’s artistic career and subsequent critical fortunes.
[9] For a more extensive stylistic discussion of this work and its relationship to Giovanni di Paolo’s oeuvre more broadly, see both Pope-Hennessy, Giovanni di Paolo, 118; and Panders, “The Underdrawing,” 82–84.
[10] Stephen Campbell, The Endless Periphery (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2019), especially Chapter 1, “Off the Axis: The Renaissance without Vasari,” 1–24.
[11] Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), especially pp. 6–16, 22–23, 30–34.
[12] Ibid, 11–16, 34–37.
[13] Torriti, La Pinacoteca nazionale, 242, transcribes the final section is, “DELLA CHIESA DI SC.A MARIA A ST[AGGIA?] … STATO OP[ERAIO? …”. I follow his suggestions that the fragmentary “ST” most likely stands for Staggia, and that “OP” may have been “OPERAIO”. Given the spacing of these final sections, I believe that the only plausible reconstruction is “DELLA CHIESA DI SANCTA MARIA A STAGGIA E STATO OPERAIO,” thus following Torriti’s suggestion that Checho di Nanni Cinegli was an operaio or works commissioner at Santa Maria a Staggia. Both Torriti and Pope-Hennessy, Giovanni di Paolo, 140 n. 8 read the fragmentary central letters as “GIOVA… DI.” I disagree with this reconstruction, as every other instance of the letter “D” in the inscription includes a horizontal tail, similar to the shape of the Greek lowercase sigma, whereas in these letter fragments the tail angles downward. Instead, I propose that this is an “A” conjoined to a rounded letter such as an N, O, or P, as the angle resembles instances when the letter “A” is joined to another letter, as in the “AN” of “NANNI.” The upright letter following this could either be an I or an L, but without context, it is impossible to determine.
[14] Paolo Cammarosano, ed., Staggia. Mille anni di storia, 994–1994 (Poggibonsi: Arti Grafici Nencini, 1995), 78–83.
[15] I have been unable to find other information about Checho di Nanni Cinegli or his possible descendants. Limited archival documentation from 15th century Staggia survives, mostly in the Archivio di Stato of Siena (though a copy of the town statutes also exists in the Archivio di Stato in Florence). On the historical archive of Staggia and its movements, see Cammarosano, Staggia, 48, n. 9, and 59; and Mario Brogi, ed., L’Archivio comunale di Poggibonsi. Inventario della Sezione storica (Siena: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturale, 2004). To my knowledge, Checho di Nanni Cinegli appears only in the 1422 town statutes of Staggia and in the inscription on the Staggia Polyptych. In the Archivio di Stato of Siena, one 15th-century document regarding a Cinegli or Cinelli family survives, though this parchment refers to entirely different people living in Asciano (perhaps a distant branch of the same family, though this is unclear). The parchment dates to April 23, 1449, outlining an agreement between Ansonio and Giacomo di Mancino di Cinello of Asciano, and Bartolomeo di Angelo di Cinello. Maria Ilari, Famiglie, località, istituzioni di Siena e del suo territorio (Siena: Betti, 2002), 96 includes a reference to the inventory of parchments directing to the letter.
[16] See Kenneth Pennington, “Roman Law, 12th-Century Law and Legislation,” in Von der Ordnung zur Norm: Statuten in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, edited by Gisela Drossbach (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010), 20–21, esp. n. 23, for an instance where the psalm appears as such in Latin in a 12th century manuscript of Roman legal code.
[17] From Gregory the Great’s commentary on the seven penitential psalms, In septem psalmos poenitentiales, expositio, published in Jacques-Paul Migne’s Patriologiae cursus completus, Series latina, vol. 79, Sancti Gregorii Papae I (Paris, Venit Apud Editorem, 1849), 599.
[18] On donor portraits and their votive function, see Aby Warburg, “The Art of Portraiture and the Florentine Bourgeoisie,” in The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, transl. David Britt, with an introduction by Kurt W. Forster. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 1999. Interestingly, in other of Giovanni di Paolo’s altarpieces, such as his Madonna and Child with Saints Nicholas of Bari and Galganus in the Walters Art Museum or his Madonna and Child with Donor in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, kneeling donors are situated in the central panel near the Madonna.
[19] On churches in Staggia, see Anna Benvenuti et al., Il Chianti e la Valdelsa senese (Florence: Mondadori, 1999), 102–03.
[20] A baptismal font is recorded already in a 1440 account of the church furnishings of Staggia, in the episcopal visit of Monsignore Roberto Cavalcanti preserved in the Archivio storico diocesano of Volterra, folio 13v.
[21] Alison Wright, “Pollaiuolo’s ‘Elevation of the Magdalen’ Altar-Piece and an Early Patron,” Burlington Magazine 139 (1997): 444–51. Both altarpieces are listed in connection with the Grazzini family in episcopal visits from 1507 and 1576; the visit in 1507 offers a terminus ante quem for Botticini’s altarpiece.
[22] Mario Caciagli, “Congetture sull’identità valdelsana,” in I centri della Valdelsa dal Medioevo a oggi, edited by Italo Moretti and Simonetta Soldani (Castelfiorentino: Polistampa, 2007), 13–17.
[23] Maria Grazia Ravenni, Poggibonsi nel basso medioevo. Genesi di un territorio comunale (Poggibonsi: Lalli, 1994), 219–20.
[24] Cammarosano, Staggia, 78–83.
[25] Diana Norman, Siena and the Virgin: Art and Politics in a Late Medieval City State (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999). On the significance of the Assumption in Sienese control over the contado, see especially Chapter 1, “Civic Rituals and Images,” 1–17, and pp102–03. On Marian imagery and the contado more generally, see Part III.
[26] The Asciano painting’s original provenance is not known, but already in 1941 Brandi noted that it had been put together with two saints by Matteo di Giovanni which originally belonged to a different altarpiece (see “Giovanni di Paolo,” 336). Pope-Hennessy, Giovanni di Paolo, 120–23, proposed that the Asciano Assumption might originally have been the central panel for Giovanni di Paolo’s San Galgano Polyptych; Brandi, “Giovanni di Paolo,” 336 n. 79, opposed this view, pointing out discrepancies in the reconstruction of the measurements of the various altarpiece components. Matteo di Giovanni’s polyptych has been reconstructed by Luke Syson in Renaissance Siena: Art for a City Renaissance Siena: Art for a City (London: National Gallery, 2007), 124–31.
[27] Brandi, “Giovanni di Paolo,” 339: “idolo fermo e senza vaghezza”.
[28] Ibid, 338–39.
[29] Bulgarini’s painting may also have originally been part of a larger structure with flanking saints and a predella, like Giovanni di Paolo’s Staggia Polyptych, but only the central panel survives. See Judith Steinhoff, Sienese Painting After the Black Death: Artistic Pluralism, Politics, and the New Art Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 202.
[30] Henk Van Os, Marias Demut und Verherrlichung in der sienesischen Malerei, 1300–1450. (‘s-Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij, 1969), 169.
[31] Van Os, Vecchietta and the Sacristy of the Siena Hospital Church: A Study in Renaissance Religious Symbolism (‘s-Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij, 1974), 8; and Steinhoff, Sienese Painting, 201–03.
[32] The concept of an oppositional reading was repurposed from Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life by historians seeking to reconstruct or understand the agency of enslaved peoples. I draw most from the work of Saidiya V. Hartman, studying slavery in the United States, and Sandra Joshel and Lauren Hackworth Petersen, examining the history of slavery in ancient Rome. See Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America (London and New York: Norton, 2022, originally published 1997, especially Chapter 2, “Redressing the Pained Body,” 81–136; and Sandra Joshel and Lauren Hackworth Petersen, The Material Life of Roman Slaves (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). An important distinction when using this approach to understand the agency of citizens in a subject town, as opposed to the agency of enslaved peoples, is the degree of freedom possessed by these historical subjects. Unlike Hartman, who is explicit that her goal as a historian is not to reinstate the agency of enslaved peoples (thereby creating a fictitious and romanticized vision of the past, where agency is a gift to be granted by the historian; see Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 90–91), my objective in an oppositional reading is to reconstruct the agency that someone like Checho di Nanni Cinegli did in fact possess, but which has been neglected in subsequent scholarship. As an important figure in a subject town, Checho was able to express his own political views in visual form—while in practice he was still required to pay taxes to Florence as part of Staggia’s submission to a dominant city, Checho nonetheless had considerable agency in being able to commission a major artwork that reveals his political leanings. Reading this altarpiece against the grain, then, reveals the visual messages in this altarpiece that express opposition to Florentine rule albeit in a plausibly deniable way (as devotion to the Virgin was hardly restricted to Siena alone). However, it also offers a historiographic recuperation of Checho’s agency, which was systematically ignored in the scholarship–a project more aligned with Chakrabarty’s ivnestment in recognizing the agency of marginalized communities in adapting the practices of the “center”.
[33] Bohl, “Giovanni di Paolo, fantastichetto!”, 50.
AUTHOR BIO
Scarlett H. Strauss is a Ph.D. Candidate in Italian Renaissance art history at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She holds a B.A. in art history from the University of Washington and an M.Phil. from the Institute of Fine Arts. Her dissertation, entitled “Local Identity and Cultural Hegemony: Religious Paintings Between Florence and Siena, c. 1348–1490,” considers artistic production and reception from a postcolonial perspective. Her work reconstructs complex and multifaceted local identities, offering a new perspective on the traditional city-focused approach to Italian painting.
