Imagine St. Paul in the flickering light of candles: hieratic, comes to life, becomes unreal. Her face emerges, vivid and colorful, from the gold background, divine light. Standing, facing, his figure belongs to the celestial world. The sword of his martyrdom is also the symbol of his career as a soldier. In hand, his epistles, letters addressed to the first Christian communities.
At the beginning of the Renaissance, the Sienese fourteenth century mixed influences: from the art of Byzantine mosaics for the static attitude and gaze, and from Gothic art for its ogival format or punch-worked motifs. The ground already evokes the perspective and the shadows the modeling of the body.
Painted on wood, the oldest work in the collections is a fragment of the altarpiece in the Church of San Domenico in Siena.
At the end of the 14th century, easel painting did not exist. The Church is the main artistic client. Vasari in his Lives judges Bartolo di Fredi as a "mediocre painter in his day", but he had some success and made this altarpiece. Use the gold background technique: on a support glued and then coated with a red preparation, apply gold leaves, symbols of the sacred world. This polyptych, in five panels, presented the Virgin of the Evangelists in a frame in the center. St. Paul was on his left. The few known objects are scattered in museums and collections around the world.
© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.
Title: St. Paul
Author: Bartolo di Fredi
Date: About 1395-1400
Technique: Oil on poplar
Displayed in: Quimper Museum of Fine Arts
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