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Lot Essay
This sumptuously decorated cassone panel is a rare and important work by Giovanni dal Ponte. The Seven Virtues was a popular subject for cassoni, which were often commissioned on the occasion of a marriage celebration in Renaissance Florence. Charity occupies the center, presumably with Marcus Amelius Scaurus at her feet. From left to right, the various Virtues are presented alongside their most notable historical or mythological exemplar: Fortitude with Hercules; Justice with Trajan; Faith probably with Marcus Atilius Regulus; Hope with Alexander the Great; Prudence with Solon; and Temperance with Scipio Africanus. Above each Virtue and Master, hovering putti animated with individualized gestures emerge from the sky.
Giovanni dal Ponte began his training under Spinello Aretino and went on to run a studio near Santo Stefano a Ponte in Florence, which led to his playful sobriquet. The artist’s tax report and inventories from 1420 reveal that he was frequently working on cassone panels of this sort, but few of his marriage chests survive today. Remarkably, both the present work and its companion, The Seven Arts (fig. 1; Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) survive. In the Prado panel, each of the Liberal Arts is shown with both its personification and a representative allegorical figure: Euclid with Geometry; Pythagoras with Arithmetic; Tubal-Cain with Music; Ptolemy with Astronomy; Cicero with Rhetoric; Aristotle with Dialectic; and Priscian or Donatus with Grammar. Although a small panel showing Dante and Petrarch in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge was formerly thought to be a side panel originally associated with our Seven Virtues, that theory has recently been rejected. Both the present and Prado panels are datable to c. 1434-1435, placing them among the artist’s most mature works.
The present cassone frontal entered the prestigious collection of the American political leader and financier William Collins Whitney (1848-1904) around 1898, in a sale brokered with the leading Florentine dealer Stefano Bardini by the architect and decorator Stanford White. Whitney’s newly acquired fifty-four room New York mansion at 68th Street and Fifth Avenue was to be renovated, under White’s direction, with “Old World magnificence”, and our panel was certainly acquired with this goal in mind. Indeed, photographs of the mansion’s grand entry hall taken c. 1915-1930 (fig. 2) show the present work in situ at lower right in the grand entrance hall at Whitney’s new home, surrounded by tapestries and elegant Italian furnishings.
Please note the present work has been requested as a loan for the upcoming exhibition Giovanni dal Ponte (1385-1437): Protagonist of Late Gothic Humanism, which will be held at the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence from 22 November 2016-12 March 2017 and is being organized by Angelo Tartuferi.
Giovanni dal Ponte began his training under Spinello Aretino and went on to run a studio near Santo Stefano a Ponte in Florence, which led to his playful sobriquet. The artist’s tax report and inventories from 1420 reveal that he was frequently working on cassone panels of this sort, but few of his marriage chests survive today. Remarkably, both the present work and its companion, The Seven Arts (fig. 1; Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) survive. In the Prado panel, each of the Liberal Arts is shown with both its personification and a representative allegorical figure: Euclid with Geometry; Pythagoras with Arithmetic; Tubal-Cain with Music; Ptolemy with Astronomy; Cicero with Rhetoric; Aristotle with Dialectic; and Priscian or Donatus with Grammar. Although a small panel showing Dante and Petrarch in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge was formerly thought to be a side panel originally associated with our Seven Virtues, that theory has recently been rejected. Both the present and Prado panels are datable to c. 1434-1435, placing them among the artist’s most mature works.
The present cassone frontal entered the prestigious collection of the American political leader and financier William Collins Whitney (1848-1904) around 1898, in a sale brokered with the leading Florentine dealer Stefano Bardini by the architect and decorator Stanford White. Whitney’s newly acquired fifty-four room New York mansion at 68th Street and Fifth Avenue was to be renovated, under White’s direction, with “Old World magnificence”, and our panel was certainly acquired with this goal in mind. Indeed, photographs of the mansion’s grand entry hall taken c. 1915-1930 (fig. 2) show the present work in situ at lower right in the grand entrance hall at Whitney’s new home, surrounded by tapestries and elegant Italian furnishings.
Please note the present work has been requested as a loan for the upcoming exhibition Giovanni dal Ponte (1385-1437): Protagonist of Late Gothic Humanism, which will be held at the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence from 22 November 2016-12 March 2017 and is being organized by Angelo Tartuferi.