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Giovanni di Paolo

Five Angels Dancing. Giovanni Di Paolo Di Grazia. Date: 1436. (Photo: Wikioo.org)

By Art in Tuscany

August 20, 2025
6:50 pm
Los Angeles, CA

Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia, one of the most important Italian painters of the 15th-century Sienese school. He is chiefly notable for carrying the brilliantly colourful vision of Sienese 14th-century paintings on into the Renaissance. His early works show the influence of previous Sienese masters, his landscapes and his figures still reverberate with echoes of Duccio’s work, but his later style grew steadily more individualized, characterized by vigorous, harsh colors and elongated forms. His art most beautifully reflects the 15th-century artistic conservatism of a commercially declining city. Many of his works have an unusual dreamlike atmosphere, such as the surrealistic Saint Nicholas of Tolentino Saving a Ship (1455?, Philadelphia Museum of Art), while his last works – particularly Last Judgment, Heaven, and Hell (1465?) and Assumption of the Virgin

Saint Nicholas of Tolentino Saving a Shipwreck. iovanni di Paolo (Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia). Date:1457. Medium: Tempera and gold on panel with vertical grain. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons )

Many of his works have an unusual dreamlike atmosphere, such as the surrealistic Saint Nicholas of Tolentino Saving a Ship (1455?, Philadelphia Museum of Art), while his last works – particularly Last Judgment, Heaven, and Hell (1465?) and Assumption of the Virgin (1475), both at Pinacoteca, Siena – are grotesque treatments of their lofty subjects. Giovanni’s reputation declined after his death but was revived in the 20th century.

The Descent from the Cross. Giovanni di Paolo. 1426. tempera and gold leaf on panel. This is one of four early masterpieces by Giovanni di Paolo in the Walters. It was originally part of a predella (paintings on the base of an altarpiece) in the chapel of the Malavolti family in the church of San Domenico in Siena. (Photo: The Walters Art Museum)

The original Malavolti polyptych is Giovanni’s earliest known altarpiece, painted in 1426 when he was twenty-three, for the large church of San Domenico in Siena. Throughout his career he worked for the Dominican Order and its austerity may have encouraged his lifelong path toward an ever more mystical expressionism. In The Entombment, the shadow points up Nicodemus as the key figure who gave up his tomb for the burial of Jesus. This unusual act of charity may be a reflection of the Malavolti family’s commission of the altarpiece, and their relationship to the mendicant order.

Christ on the Way to Calvary. Giovanni di Paolo. 1426. tempera and gold leaf on panel. This is one of four early masterpieces by Giovanni di Paolo in the Walters. It was originally part of a predella (paintings on the base of an altarpiece) in the chapel of the Malavolti family in the church of San Domenico in Siena. (Photo: he Walters Art Museum)

This is one of four early masterpieces by Giovanni di Paolo in the Walters. It was originally part of a predella (paintings on the base of an altarpiece) in the chapel of the Malavolti family in the church of San Domenico in Siena. The main altar panel, dated 1426 and depicting the Virgin and Child flanked by saints, is in Italy. The predella panels show, chronologically, the Resurrection of Lazarus, the Way to Calvary, the Descent from the Cross, and the Entombment. Originally, an image of the Crucifixion (now in Germany) would have been in the center.

Throughout his career, Giovanni di Paolo referred to the pictorial tradition of his native Siena that was rooted in Byzantine art and is characterized by, in particular, the gold ground and the stylized rock formations.

Giovanni di Paolo was an independent artist who managed to thrive in a Siena which was on the one hand conservative and on the other responsive to such inventive minds as Sassetta and the Osservanza Master. Like these artists, Giovanni di Paolo had remarkable narrative gifts as an artist as is clear from such masterpieces as The Life of John the Baptist (Art Institute of Chicago), The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden (Robert Lehman Collection, Metropolitan Museum, New York) and the Paradise (Metropolitan Museum, New York). His early training seems to have included contact with Lombard artists (his earliest patron was the Lombard Anna Castiglione a relative of Cardinal Castiglione Branda, patron of Vecchietta) and probably French artists too. He could, for example, have known the Limbourg brothers, the Franco-Flemish illuminators who were in Siena in 1413. Certainly the nervous, staccato quality of line that distinguishes his work from that of his Sienese contemporaries betrays an assimilation of Lombard and French Gothic forms. By the mid 1420s Giovanni di Paolo’s career was flourishing and from that period come the Pecci and Branchini altarpieces (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena and Norton Simon Museum, San Marino) which both show the influence of Gentile da Fabriano who had painted a (now lost) altarpiece in 1425/6 for the Sienese Notaries Guild.

The Annunciation and Expulsion from Paradise. c. 1435. Giovanni di Paolo. (Photo: National Gallery of Art)

Giovanni di Paolo’s brilliant color and pattern were typically Sienese, but he is distinguished from his teachers and contemporaries by an expressive imagination. His unique style is otherworldly and spiritual. Here the drama is heightened by a dark background and contrasting colors, nervous patterns, and unreal proportions. In the center, Gabriel brings news of Christ’s future birth to the Virgin. Thus is put in motion the promise of salvation for humankind, a salvation necessitated by the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, which we see happening on the left, outside Mary’s jewellike home. Mary will reopen the doors of Paradise closed by Eve’s sin. The scene of Joseph warming himself in front of a fire, on the right, is an unusual addition. Perhaps it refers simply to the season of Jesus’ birth, but more likely it is layered with other meanings, suggesting the flames of hope and charity and invoking the winter of sin now to be replaced by the spring of this new era of Grace. The three scenes help make explicit the connection between the Fall and God’s promise of salvation, which is fulfilled at the moment of the Annunication.

Though Giovanni’s primary concern is not the appearance of the natural world, it is clear that he was aware of contemporary developments in the realistic depiction of space. Note how the floor tiles appear to recede, a technique adopted by Florentine artists experimenting with the new science of perspective.

The Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise. Giovanni di Paolo (Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia). 1445. (Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The Creation and the Expulsion from the Paradise

This extraordinary panel is widely admired for its brilliant colours, curious iconography, and mystical vitality At the left, God the Father, supported by 12 blue cherubim, flies downward, pointing with his right hand at a circular “mappamondo”, which fills the lower half of the scene. The representation of earth is surrounded by concentric circles, including a green ring (for water), a blue ring (for air), a red ring (for fire), the circles of the seven planets, and the circle of the Zodiac. On the right, in a separate scene set in a meadow filled with flowers, Adam and Eve walk to the right against a line of seven trees with golden fruit. Their heads turn back toward a naked angel, who expels them from Paradise. Below them spring the four rivers of Paradise, which extend to the base of the picture.

This panel is a fragment from the predella of an altarpiece painted for the church of San Domenico in Siena and now in the Uffizi in Florence. Another panel from the same predella is also in the Museum’s collection. The influence of the International Gothic style, especially French miniature painting, can be seen in the figures of the angel, Adam, and Eve, and in the details of flora and fauna.

Source: travelingintuscany.com