Giovanni da Rimini

Exhibited by Flavio Gianassi - FG Fine Art Ltd

Material tempera on panel

Dimensions 160.5 x 130 cm

Price Price available upon inquiry

Status Vetted

About the Work

This crucifixion can nonetheless be considered a benchmark in the production of Giovanni da Rimini, the oldest and noblest of the artists belonging to the school which flourished in the city following the sojourn of Giotto, miraculously able to combine the innovations proposed by the latter with the 13th century substratum of his early artistic education.

Possibly belonging to the Chiesa collection in Milan, the painting was purchased by the Jewish merchant Jacques Goudstikker, who in 1929 presented it as the work of Giuliano da Rimini in an exhibition in his gallery in Amsterdam.

In 1940, following the racial persecutions, his entire patrimony was requisitioned by the Nazis, while Goudstikker died accidentally when falling into the hold of the ship that was to take him to safety in England. Recovered by the Allied forces in 1945, his paintings were then entrusted to the care of the Dutch government and this Crucifixion was exhibited first at the Aartbisschoppelijk Museum in Utrecht, then at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht and finally at the Instituut Collectie Nederland in Rijswijk. In February 2006, at the end of a long dispute, the heirs obtained the restitution of this and other paintings formerly owned by Goudstikker.

It was Carlo Volpe, in 1965, who grouped together the crosses of the older Giovanni, pointing out that the date on the Mercatello cross was not 1345, as had been accepted until then, but 1309 or 1314. The series, which started with the cross of Talamello, would therefore have culminated in that of Mercatello and dating this one betweem 1310 and 1320.

Subsequently, noting the echo offered by Giuliano da Rimini in the altar screen dated 1307 (Boston, Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum), Daniele Benati sustained an earlier date compared to the same Mercatello cross of the frescoes in the chapel in Sant’Agostino at Rimini. The sequence proposed by Volpe was taken up again by Miklós Boskovits (1993), who claimed that the adoption of rectangular panels implied that the Talamello painting belonged to a much older phase compared to all the other crosses by Giovanni, deriving from a different prototype by Giotto on the type of that of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. While this indication was accepted by Volpe, a complete review of the sequence of crosses by Giovanni da Rimini has recently been offered by Andrea De Marchi, who has confirmed the early dating of the Diotallevi cross of the Museo della Città in Rimini, in which an older stylistic and formal vocabulary is clear. Even if reinterpreted in a naturalistic context based on the lesson learnt from Giotto, it is evident that in the Diotallevi cross the threefold knot of Christ’s loincloth continues to allude to the cingulum of 13th century crosses: a reference that tallies perfectly with an artist who, already working in 1292, must initially have expressed himself in accordance with the filo-Byzantine culture of those years, to then receive with enthusiasm the innovations introduced by Giotto in the course of his stay in Rimini before 1300.

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Provenance

Milan, Achillito Chiesa collection (?)
Amsterdam, Jacques Goudstikker Collection
Requisitioned by the Nazi authorities, July 1940; recovered by the Allied forces, 1945; entrusted to the care of the Dutch government
Utrecht, Aartbisschoppelijk Museum, until 1987
Maastricht, Bonnefantenmuseum, until 1997
Rijswijk, Instituut Collectie Nederland
Returned to the heirs of Jacques Goudstikker, February 2006
London, Christie’s, sale 5-6 July 2007, lot 7
New York, Sotheby’s sale 29 January 2015, lot 131

Literature

Catalogue des nouvelles acquisitions de la collection Goudstikker, Amsterdam, Jacques Goudstikker Gallery, 1929, no. 33
R. van Marle, La pittura all’esposizione d’arte antica italiana di Amsterdam ‘Bollettino d’arte’, 28, 1934-1935, p. 446
C. Brandi, La pittura riminese del Trecento, exhibition catalogue, Rimini 1935, p. 98 no. 36
M. Salmi, La scuola di Rimini. III, in “Rivista del R. Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell’arte”, 5, 1935, pp. 115-116, fig. 27
C. Brandi, Conclusioni su alcuni discussi problemi della pittura riminese del Trecento, ‘La critica d’arte’, I, 1936, p. 237
Idem, Giovanni da Rimini e Giovanni Baronzio, in “La critica d’arte”, II, 1937, pp. 196-197, pl. 137
M. Bonicatti, Trecentisti riminesi. Sulla formazione della pittura riminese del ’300, Roma 1963, pp. 27, 30- 32, 69-70 nos. 32, 75
C. Volpe, La pittura riminese del Trecento, Milan 1965, pp. 13-14, 16-17, 72 no. 15
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools, London 1968, I, p. 363
D. Benati, C. Volpe, in Pittura a Rimini tra Gotico e Manierismo, exhibition catalogue, Rimini 1979, pp. 18, 20
C. Wright, Paintings in Dutch Museums. An index of Oil Paintings in Public Collections in the Netherlands by Artists born before 1870, London 1980, p. 141
C. Wiethoff, De kunsthandelaar Jacques Goudstikker (1897-1940) en zijn betekenis voor het verzamelen van vroege italiaanse kunst in Nederland, ‘Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek’, 32, 1981, pp. 256, 261
D. Benati, in La pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. E. Castelnuovo, Milano 1986, II, p. 578
P. G. Pasini, La pittura riminese del Trecento, Rimini 1990, p. 63
W. Angelelli, A. De Marchi, Pittura dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento nelle fotografie di Girolamo Bombelli, Milano 1991, p. 162 no. 304
Old Master Paintings. An illustrated summary catalogue, Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst (The Netherlandish Office for the Fine Arts), The Hague 1992, p. 106 no. 802
M. Boskovits, Per la storia della pittura tra la Romagna e le Marche ai primi del ’300. II, in “Arte Cristiana”, LXXXI, 756, 1993, p. 176
C. de Jongh-Janssen, D. van Wegen, Catalogue of the Italian paintings in the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht 1995, pp. 52-53 no. 21
D. Benati, the entry Giovanni da Rimini, in Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale, VI, Roma 1995, p. 757
M. Minardi, the entry Giovanni da Rimini, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, LVI, Roma 2001, p. 189
A. Volpe, Giotto e i Riminesi, Milano 2002, pp. 100, 170
A. De Marchi, Una nuova tavola di Giuliano da Rimini, i “L’Arco”, 2003, 1, p. 19
A. De Marchi, in Arte per mare. Dalmazia, Titano e Montefeltro dal primo Cristianesimo al Rinascimento, exhibition catalogue, Milano 2007, p. 66
A. Tambini, the entry Giovanni da Rimini, in SAUR. Allgemeines Künstlerlexikom, 55, Leipzig 2007, p. 81
D. Benati, in The Middle Ages and Early Renaissance Paintings and Sculptures from the Carlo De Carlo Collection and other Provenance, Firenze 2011, pp. 20-27
D. Benati, L'oro di Giovanni. Il restauro della Croce di Mercatello e il Trecento Riminese, Rimini 2021, pp. 8, 28-32, 37, 43, 50, 54, 65, 88, 118-119, 135

EXHIBITIONS
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Tentoonstelling van Oude Kunst door de Vereeniging van handelaren in OudeKunst in Nederland, July – 1 September 1929, no. 115
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Italiaansche kunst in Nederlands bezit, 11 May-1 October 1934, no. 155
Rimini, Palazzo dell’Arengo, La pittura riminese del Trecento, 20 June - 30 September 1935, no. 36
Rimini, Palazzo Buonadrata, L'oro di Giovanni. Il restauro della Croce di Mercatello e il Trecento Riminese, 18 September - 7 October 2021