Description
THE TRIUMPH OF FAME, THE TRIUMPH OF TIME AND THE TRIUMPH OF ETERNITY
measurements note
16 1/2 by 69 1/2 in.; 42.2 by 176.5 cm.
tempera on panel, gold ground, a cassone panel
PROVENANCE
Walter Burns, North Mymms Park, Hatfield (Herts.), by 1922;
Thence by descent to his son Major-General Sir George Burns, North Mymms Park, Hatfield (Herts.);
By whom sold, London, Sotheby's, April 19, 1967, lot 9 (as 'The Master of the Adimari Cassone' [today identified as Lo Scheggia]);
Carlo de Carlo, Florence;
His sale, Florence, Semenzato, October 19, 2000, lot 282 (as Pesellino);
Leonardo Mondadori collection, Milan;
Purchased from his Estate by Salander O'Reilly Galleries, New York, 2004, but returned to the present owner.
LITERATURE
T. Borenius, "Unpublished Cassone Panels - V", in The Burlington Magazine, vol. XLI, 1922, no. 234, pp. 104-9, reproduced plates A-B (as Andrea di Giusto(?) "in the phase of his in which he appears under the influence of Fra Angelico");
P. Schubring, Cassoni. Truhen und Truhenbilder der italienischen Frürenaissance. Ein Beitrag zur Profanmalerei im Quattrocento, Leipzig 1923, p. 421, no. 908, reproduced plate CXCII (as Andrea di Giusto(?));
G. Hughes, Renaissance Cassoni: Masterpieces of Early Italian Art: Painted Marriage Chests 1400-1550, Sussex 1997, details of left and right sections reproduced in colour on pp. 144-5 (as Pesellino);
A. De Marchi, Catalogo della Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, ed. J. Bentini & D. Scaglietti, vol. I, p. *** (as Domenico di Michelino).
NOTE
This painting once formed part of the front panel of a cassone or marriage chest. Cassoni were normally commissioned on the occasion of a wedding and were used to store linen. These chests rarely survive whole: the most famous and impressive surviving examples are the two cassoni commissioned on the occasion of the Morelli-Nerli wedding in 1472, painted by Jacopo del Sellaio and Biagio d'Antonio, today in the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Chests were often dismembered so that panels could be sold individually or, more likely, many cassoni suffered condition problems due to their function and the fact that they were actually used.
The subject of this painting is inspired by one of the most well-known literary texts of the Trecento: Petrarch's I Trionfi. Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) was born in Arezzo and though he lived in Provence from 1311, he settled in Italy after 1353. In 1327 he set eyes on a woman he named Laura, with whom he fell in love and whom he celebrated in his poetry: she served as inspiration for numerous works of art in the ensuing centuries including Giorgione's only signed and dated work, the famous portrait in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Petrarch's Trionfi, which he worked on from 1350 until his death almost twenty-five years later, were initially inspired by Laura and described processions commemorating love, chastity, death, fame, time and eternity. In 1441 the manuscript illuminator Matteo de' Pasti wrote to Piero di Cosimo de' Medici regarding a commission he has undertaken to decorate a codex containing Petrarch's text. This demonstrates that interest in I Trionfi reawakened in the 15th century and its popularity for cassone panel decoration, particularly during the fifth decade, is attested to by surviving works by the leading Florentine artists of the time: Zanobi Strozzi, Francesco Pesellino, Apollonio di Giovanni, Giovanni di Ser Giovanni (called Lo Scheggia), Bernardo Rosselli, and Domenico di Michelino amongst them. The suitability of the subject in I Trionfi for cassone panel decoration led to an increasing number being produced in the Quattrocento, although many of the figures included in the paintings were not directly borrowed from Petrarch's writings. Indeed The Triumph of Death as described by Petrarch is eliminated by Domenico di Michelino in this panel, possibly due to the subject being inappropriate for a cassone: Borenius remarked that perhaps it struck "too tragic a note for a marriage chest" (see Literature below, p. 104).
The picture space is divided into three separate scenes although the central and lefthand scenes appear to run in a continuous narrative: on the left, The Triumph of Fame (Petrarch's Fourth Trionfo), in which Fame is shown on a horse-drawn chariot and surrounded by poets (including Dante dressed in red and possibly Boccaccio beside him), heroes, scholars and other figures; in the centre, The Triumph of Time (Petrarch's Fifth Trionfo), in which Father Time and four putti representing the Elements Fire, Water and Air (Earth is hidden behind Time), are shown on a chariot drawn by deer; and in a separate compartment on the right is the cosmic representation of The Triumph of Eternity (Petrarch's Sixth Trionfo), showing Christ in glory surrounded by angels, above a bird's-eye view of the earthly sphere. The subject is taken from Petrarch's I Trionfi and, together with its pendant, also from the collection of Walter Burns, representing The Triumph of Love and the Triumph of Chastity (sold, London, Sotheby's, April 19, 1967, lot 10), it constituted part of a cassone, or marriage-chest (see Fig. 1).
The subject was treated on other occasions and two pairs of contemporary cassoni, with very similar compositions and iconography to the present work and its pendant, have been identified: one pair are in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, where they are given to Pesellino (an attribution formerly also applied to the present work; see Hughes, under Literature, both reproduced in color pp. 96-99). The other pair have been dismembered: the one showing The Triumph of Love and the Triumph of Chastity, is in the Landau collection of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, whilst its pendant, representing the same subject as that in the present work, is divided into three separate panels (two are in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna, inv. nos. 256 & 257, and one, a fragment of the upper part of The Triumph of Eternity, was formerly in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and was sold, New York, Sotheby's, May 19, 1995, lot 60). The latter have been ascribed to Domenico di Michelino in the past but an attribution to Zanobi Strozzi has more recently been put forward by Andrea De Marchi (unpublished opinion). The present panel appears to be the best preserved among these different renditions: apart from the silver-leaf on the soldiers' armour which has rubbed off, the gold ground is for the most part original and the paint surface has not suffered as much abrasion or damages as cassoni normally do (by the very nature of their function).
Domenico di Michelino's real name was Domenico di Francesco but he took on the name of his first master, the cassone-painter Michele di Benedetto, by whom no works are known. In 1442 Domenico di Michelino became a member of the Compagnia di San Luca and in the same year he is mentioned in connection with Filippo Lippi's workshop. In 1444 Domenico di Michelino became a member of the Arte dei medici e speziali. His artistic links with Francesco Pesellino and Zanobi Strozzi, as well as the lack of documented works (his Dante explaining the Divine Comedy in the church of Santa Maria del Fiore is the only known commission that is recorded) has led to Domenico di Michelino's works passing under erroneous attributions. A date in the first half of the 1440s, by comparison with other known works by Domenico di Michelino, seems plausible.
The attribution of the present work to Domenico di Michelino has been independently proposed by Everett Fahy and Andrea De Marchi. We are grateful to Dr. De Marchi for providing an unpublished article on this painting from which we have derived parts of this note.
