Matteo di Giovanni | Art in Tuscany | Podere Santa Pia, Holiday house in the south of Tuscany

Matteo di Giovanni (1435–1495)

MATTEO di Giovanni (b. ca. 1430, Borgo San Sepolcro, d. 1495, Siena) Italian (Sienese) painter, who originally came from Borgo San Sepolcro and he painted the wings and predella (Pinacoteca Sansepolcro) of the altarpiece of which Piero della Francesca's Baptism of Christ was the centre panel. Matteo is first documented in Siena in 1452, when he was commissioned to gild an angel carved in wood by Jacopo della Quercia for Siena Cathedral. In 1457 he decorated the chapel of San Bernardino there. The modest nature of these projects suggests that he was still an apprentice. In this period he collaborated with Giovanni di Pietro, the brother of il Vecchietta, which supports the hypothesis that his early training was in the circle of il Vecchietta. His large surviving oeuvre exemplifies the development of Sienese painting in the 15th century from an emphasis on line and pattern to an early interest in the innovations of contemporary Florentine art. It has been suggested that he was first influenced by Umbrian painting of the mid-15th century, but he was already active in Siena by the early 1450s. This was a decade of transition in the artistic life of the city after the death of Sassetta, Domenico di Bartolo and Pietro di Giovanni d’Ambrogio and before the influx of new ideas during the pontificate of Pius II. His style was elegant, linear, and decorative, revealing affinities with Pollaiuolo, and he seems to have been one of the most popular and prolific Sienese painters of the second half of the 15th century.
Matteo di Giovanni is best known for four monumental compositions of the Massacre of the Innocents, three for Sienese churches and one in inlaid stone for the pavement of the Duomo. In the version in Sant'Agostino, the arches and columns of Herod's palace suggest that the artist had visited Rome. He has left no foreground space and every inch of Herod's hall is occupied by screaming mothers, dead or dying babies, and bloodthirsty soldiers. The marble pavement is covered by infant corpses. Impassive courtiers flank Herod's throne, while the gloating king is portrayed as a monster: one hand is outstretched to order the butchery; the other, like a claw, clutches the marble sphinx on the arm of his throne.

Matteo di Giovanni, Massacre of the Innocents, 1482, The Chapel of our Lady, Ospedale Santa Maria della Scala, Siena
Matteo di Giovanni, Massacre of the Innocents

	The Chapel of our Lady also holds one of the four versions of the Massacre of the Innocents, which Matteo di Giovanni, an artist born in Sansepolcro, and one of the leading figures of fifteenth-century Sienese art, painted in the course of a decade. The canvas on deposit at Santa Maria della Scala, is the work made by the artist in 1482 for the church of Sant'Agostino in Siena. Matteo di Giovanni painted four monumental compositions of the Massacre of the Innocents, three for Sienese churches and one in inlaid stone for the pavement of the Duomo. The picture painted for Sant'Agostino, like the final one made for the Basilica of Santa Maria dei Servi (also known as San Clement), seems to present some iconographic innovations, probably the fruit of the terrible echo, still resonating among his contemporaries, of the siege and massacre perpetrated by the Turks at Otranto in 1481. Here, in the place of clothing and armor with a classical imprint, oriental styles prevail, and even in the facial features we can detect some 'Moorish' characteristics. The entire scene is marked by ferocity and cruelty, emphasized also by the range of colors used. The arches and columns of Herod's palace suggest that the artist had visited Rome. He has left no foreground space and every inch of Herod's hall is occupied by screaming mothers, dead or dying babies, and bloodthirsty soldiers. The marble pavement is covered by infant corpses. Impassive courtiers flank Herod's throne, while the gloating king is portrayed as a monster: one hand is outstretched to order the butchery; the other, like a claw, clutches the marble sphinx on the arm of his thronThe panel for the church of Sant'Agostino was originally part of an altarpiece 'in the ancient style', topped by a gold ground lunette which was removed in the seventeenth century, while the panel itself, although moved to a different place, always remained inside the church. [1]


Matteo di Giovanni, Massacre of the Innocents, 1488, Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples

Siena Duomo \| The Mosaic floor
Sibylla-Samia was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle near Hera's temple on the Isle of Samos, a Greek colony.		Matteo di Giovanni Bartoli, Sibilla Samia, Floor of the Duomo, Siena


Matteo di Giovanni, Massacre (Slaughter) of the Innocents
Matteo di Giovanni Saint Augustine and Saint Michael the Archangel tempera on panel 196x55 cm (frames included) (1474) Asciano - PALAZZO CORBOLI MUSEO D'ARTE SACRA Two side panels of a lost polyptych whose central panel, the Annunciation, is today at the National Gallery in London. Formerly from the Augustinian church of Asciano it was transferred to the church of Santa Eugenia in Monastero, nearby Siena. The paintings represent Matteo di Giovanni’s stylistic period in which he is attracted by the Renaissance’s new ideas of an “eccentric and bizarre” taste. (C.Alessi) The village of Monastero d`Ombrone belongs to the municipality of Castelnuovo Berardenga.

[0] Image by Lforzini, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. [1] MATTEO DI GIOVANNI: an account of a painted massacre, 23rd June - 08th October 2006 The exhibition intends to illustrate the paintings of Matteo di Giovanni in a chronological sequence to establish the compositional-substantial developments especially in the last one carried out for the powerful, Sienese Spannocchi family. The exhibition MATTEO DI GIOVANNI: an account of a painted massacre comes from the recent restoration of two Sienese altar pieces, one made for the basilica of St. Augustine and the other for the church of the “Servi”, which have The Massacre of the Innocents as subject. Every piece of restoration work increases knowledge and critical reflection and even this time, the work carried out upon the two paintings has put forward once again all those questions of criticism regarding a subject which has, in a period of over ten years, appeared for four times in Sienese art by the same artist, Matteo di Giovanni. Three large altar-pieces, one of which was for the Neapolitan church of “Santa Maria a Formello” after having done the “clearing” of the floor of the Duomo, commissioned by the Worker Alberto Aringhieri, which opens the series and which has, in recent years, posed the problem of attributing the works either to Matteo or to Francesco di Giorgio. Fulcrum of the exhibition are in fact the paintings of the artist having The Massacre of the Innocents as a subject: the text of the Epistle of St. Matthew, scanty but rich in dramatic implications, used for the first time in the history of the floor of the Duomo of Siena, must have seemed, to the artists of those days, the representation which best rendered the topical drama of a recent event, the battle of Otranto. The battle which was fought on 27th July, 1480, saw the Turkish naval fleet, at the orders of Gedik Ahmed Pascià, one of the generals of Muhammed II the Conqueror, against the resistance of the small town which - hoping in a rapid arrival of the much-needed aid on the part of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, who had left from Siena to lead Aragonese troups - succeeded in resisting the attacks for two weeks before being conquered by the Turks. Matteo di Giovanni, born in Borgo San Sepolcro in around 1430, is already present in Siena in 1452: it is possible that he was greatly influenced by the works of his fellow countryman Piero della Francesca and that, once having reached Siena, it can be said that his artistic itinerary was completed under the protection of Lorenzo di Pietro known as “Il Vecchietta”. Not to be underestimated is the Sienese activity of Donatello, which has left deep and unavoidable traces even for those artists who like Matteo, have become the “first generation” of followers of the “Vecchietta”. The exhibition intends to illustrate the paintings of Matteo di Giovanni in a chronological sequence to establish the compositional-substantial developments especially in the last one carried out for the powerful, Sienese Spannocchi family, the points of contact and the differences between the marble order of the Duomo, with which the painting of St. Augustine shows a more direct filiation and more precise references. The exhibition, organized by Cecilia Alessi and Alessandro Bagnoli, is promoted by the City of Siena, the Santa Maria della Scala Institution and by the Ministry of National Heritage and Cultural Activities - the Superintendence for the Historical- Artistic Heritage of Siena and Grosseto and will be held from 24th June to 8th October 2006 in the museum complex of Santa Maria della Scala - Palazzo SQuarcialupo. The catalogue holds, amongst others, essays by Franco Cardini and Ludwin Paardekooper.
"Matteo di Giovanni’s lost altarpiece for Sant'Agostino, Asciano". National Gallery. Pope-Hennessy, John & Kanter, Laurence B. (1987). The Robert Lehman Collection I, Italian Paintings. New York, Princeton: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press.ISBN 0870994794. (see index; plate 68) Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Matteo da Siena". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
This article incorporates text from the article Matteo di Giovanni,in Wikipedia and the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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