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San Giovanni Evangelista Siena
Artist: Andrea di Bartolo
Current location: Museo di San Donato - Collezione di Banca MPS
Original location:
DESCRIPTIVE INFORMATION
dimensions
45 x 30 cm
This table constituted the cusp of a polyptych that Andrea di Bartolo made for the Cathedral of Tuscania towards the end of the third decade of the fifteenth century. The generic nature of the attributes that accompany the figure makes it difficult to identify the holy personage who, pen and inkwell in hand, must certainly have represented one of the four Evangelists intent on writing the Gospel texts: the large cloaks that surround the bodies represent the rest that particular type of clothing codified by the iconographic tradition regarding the representation of biblical characters. The intense concentration of expressions, typical of the people engaged in the effort of mental elaboration, is as underlined by the dense network of wrinkles that runs through the faces of the character, whose old age seems however contradicted by the robust plasticism of the body that rises under the folds of the abundant drapery: this particular interpretation of physical nature refers directly to the pictorial ways of Taddeo di Bartolo, whom Andrea will show that he approaches in the later period of his career.
San Giovanni Evangelista