15,5 x 16,1 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest The picture was cut out from a so-called antiphonary (which is a manuscript containing liturgical texts and music) along the line of its frame. When and why this happened is not known. The picture originated from the workshop of an artist known as The Master of the Martyrologium of Gerona, who, in the first two decades of the fifteenth century, was one of the most important figures in Bohemian miniature painting. He knew the leading movements in Western European art at first hand, and adopted the layout of his compositions and the method of representing landscape masses mainly from the painter of the Mar?chal of Boucicault and the Limbourg brothers. The prolific output of his workshop, where numerous assistants were engaged, exerted a marked effect on miniature and panel painting not only in Bohemia but in the neighbouring countries too (for example on the Hungarian Thomas de Coloswar). The picture reproduced here is, in all likelihood, the work of one of his assistants. Its frame is a three-dimensional, quatrefoil green shape embedded in a golden square. The background is provided by a geometrical design of stylized white flowers in a golden network on a red ground. The ground- plan of the setting is undefinable, the only furniture being a stepped, pale yellow platform, on whose right side stands a lectern of the same colour. Facing the spectator, St Benedict is seated in the middle, holding an abbot's crozier in his left hand and, with his right hand, presenting to the monks the book containing the rules of the Benedictine order. The rich design of the background sets off the simplicity of the monks and the same effect is achieved by the contrast of the plain d?cor without any details and the figures in their plain black habits. The emphasis on the massive group of the monks is brought into equilibrium by the mass of the lectern placed fairly high and by the figure of St Benedict which is set slightly to the right of the central axis. His right foot, placed somewhat higher, is in the axis of the composition. His black mantle falls asymmetrically to two sides from his raised right knee. The undulating hem of this garment runs parallel with the lines of his arm and virtually merges with the lobes on both sides of the frame. , MINIATURIST, Bohemian , St Benedict , 1401-1450 , Bohemian , illumination , religious
Painting ID:: 65103
Piero della Francesca Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1422-1492 Italian painter and theorist. His work is the embodiment of rational, calm, monumental painting in the Italian Early Renaissance, an age in which art and science were indissolubly linked through the writings of Leon Battista Alberti. Born two generations before Leonardo da Vinci, Piero was similarly interested in the scientific application of the recently discovered rules of perspective to narrative or devotional painting, especially in fresco, of which he was an imaginative master; and although he was less universally creative than Leonardo and worked in an earlier idiom, he was equally keen to experiment with painting technique. Piero was as adept at resolving problems in Euclid, whose modern rediscovery is largely due to him, as he was at creating serene, memorable figures, whose gestures are as telling and spare as those in the frescoes of Giotto or Masaccio. His tactile, gravely convincing figures are also indebted to the sculpture of Donatello, an equally attentive observer of Classical antiquity. In his best works, such as the frescoes in the Bacci Chapel in S Francesco, Arezzo, there is an ideal balance between his serene, classical compositions and the figures that inhabit them, the whole depicted in a distinctive and economical language. In his autograph works Piero was a perfectionist, creating precise, logical and light-filled images (although analysis of their perspective schemes shows that these were always subordinated to narrative effect). However, he often delegated important passages of works (e.g. the Arezzo frescoes) to an ordinary, even incompetent, assistant. St Benedict 1445(1445) and 1462(1462)
Medium oil and tempera on panel
Dimensions Height: 54 cm (21.3 in). Width: 21 cm (8.3 in).
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