Giovanni di Marco, called Giovanni dal Ponte

(Florence 1385–1437/8)
Madonna and Child,
tempera on goldground panel, shaped top, 55 x 46.3 cm, in an integral frame

Provenance:
Private European collection

Literature:
L. Sbaraglio in: Giovanni dal Ponte protagonista dell’Umanesimo tardogotico, ed. by A. Tartuferi/L. Sbaraglio, exhibition catalogue, Galleria dell´Accademia, Florence 2016, p. 215, no. 72

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri (no. 10438) as Giovanni dal Ponte.

The present work has been dated to around 1415-1420 (see exhibition catalogue). By this time Giovanni dal Ponte had evolved his own personal style which was characterised by elegance, a lively palette and an increasingly sculptural rendering of figures. One of his works from this period is the Triptych with the Madonna among Saints in the Columbia University Museum of Art, New York.

The present panel represents the Madonna and Child, also called ‘Madonna of the Rose’ on account of the flower held by the Madonna in her left hand. It fully expresses Giovanni dal Ponte’s cultural heritage as his painterly style is rooted in the late gothic tradition of Lorenzo Monaco, while it also reveals a tendency towards the linearity and elongated curvaceous forms typical of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s production. The emotional restraint found in the Madonna’s features also reflects the ‘courtly’ culture of the era.

Born in Florence, Giovanni di Marco was called dal Ponte because of the location of his studio in Piazza Santo Stefano near the Ponte Vecchio. He was enrolled in the Arte dei Medici e degli Speziali [Guild of Doctors and Apothecaries] in 1410. He joined the Confraternita di San Luca [Confraternity of Saint Luke] in 1413. His training occurred in the sphere of painters who followed the fourteenth century tradition influenced by Spinello Aretino, and he only later embraced the manner of Ghiberti and Lorenzo Monaco, mentioned above, as well as of Gentile da Fabriano. He produced the Coronation of the Virgin (Musée Condé, Chantilly) before or around 1420, while his Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest) is dated 1421. In 1424 Giovanni was imprisoned for eight months on account of his debts, but subsequently returned to work with renewed vigour producing, among others, the triptych of the Ascension of Saint John the Evangelist with Saints today in the National Gallery, London. From 1429 he shared his studio with Giovanni di Smeraldo who he collaborated with on the frescoes of Santa Trinita in Florence which today are almost entirely lost.