Leo von Klenze, The Camposanto in Pisa, 1858, New Pinacothek of Munich [5]

Over the centuries, the Camposanto became the cultural center of Pisa and the region. Many were buried there, and priceless Roman sarcophagi and statues, along with biblical relics, were housed there. The walls were completely decorated in immaculate frescos, and were beautiful beyond description. In short, the Camposanto was the one of the most important and priceless historical structures in all of Italy. The painting seen here shows how it looked.
On July 27, 1944, a wayward Allied bombs started a fire nearby that quickly spread to the Camposanto. The wooden rafters burst into flame and melted the lead on the roof, which dripped down and completely destroyed everything inside.

Andrea di Bonaiuto, detail of St. Ranieri in the Holy Land, Museo delle Sinopie, Camposanto, Pisa

Andrea di Bonaiuto, detail of St. Ranieri in the Holy Land, Museo delle Sinopie, Camposanto, Pisa

Interior of the Campo Santo in Pisa, c.1845 (w/c on paper), Italian School, (19th century)
Private Collection / © Charles Plante Fine Arts / The Bridgeman Art Library

Benozzo in Pisa (1467-1495)

"Although almost completely destroyed during the bombings of 1944, Benozzo’s most important work in monumental terms remains the great mural cycle he painted between 1468 and 1484 for the Camposanto (Graveyard) in Pisa.
Even at that time, the Camposanto (Graveyard), where precious Roman sarcofagi co-existed with frescoes by the most renowned fourteenth-century painters, was considered one of the great wonders of Italy. It was said, in fact, that the earth in which the dead were laid to rest came from none other than Mount Calvary. The people of Pisa, well aware of this treasure, insisted that only a highly prestigious artist must be engaged to paint the twenty-six frescoes required to decorate it, demonstrating, once again, the high regard and esteem in which our painter was held.

In accordance with the custom of the time, Benozzo enlisted the help of numerous co-workers to complete this vast work, and this allowed him to take on new commissions. One of these was the altarpiece, dated 1470, produced (probably by his studio) for the main altar of the Church of San Lazzaro (Saint Lazarus) outside the walls, also commissioned by Pisa’s Opera Primaziale (the lay institution responsible for the construction of the Cathedral and Camposanto (Graveyard) monumental buildings, officially recognised in 1217), now housed in the institution’s museum. Others include the back of the Bishop’s chair in the Cathedral, now in the Louvre (a work of a highly doctrinal nature given its intended use and its depiction of the Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas, a subject very dear to the Dominican’s and the Church in general), and the small devotional altarpiece depicting the Madonna and Child with Saint Anne and donors, now housed in the Museum of St Matthew, originating from the Dominican convent of Santa Marta (Saint Martha).

In order to work on the Camposanto (Graveyard) site, Benozzo and his family moved to the ancient maritime republic of Pisa, buying a house near Piazza dei Miracoli (Square of Miracles). However, during the summer of 1479, due to the plague that raged all over Tuscany, the situation in Pisa had become critical. For this reason, the painter decided to relocate to the countryside outside Pisa, taking up residence in Legoli, a small outlying hamlet of what is now the municipality of Peccioli in the Era Valley. There, he worked on a magnificent tabernacle, frescoed on all four sides, which still stands at the entrance to the village. During his stay there, Benozzo was called to Volterra to decorate the chapel of the Virgin in the Cathedral. The chosen subject was the Procession of the Magi, which he set to work on assisted by his studio of artists.

Having returned to Pisa and completed the frescoes for the Camposanto (Graveyard), he received new engagements including a lost cycle recalled by Vasari in his Lives (1568), created for the nuns of San Benedetto in Ripa d’Arno. For the same church, he frescoed a niche with the Virgin with Saint John. This fresco has now been removed and is housed in the rooms of the old nunnery, now home to the Cassa di Risparmio (Savings Bank) of Pisa. During this same period, in around 1490, he painted the altarpiece depicting the Holy Conversation for these same nuns in Ripa d’Arno. The panel, now in a poor state of repair due to careless restoration work in the past, is housed in the San Matteo (Saint Matthew) National Museum in Pisa together with a Crucifixion and Saints frescoed for the refectory of the Dominican women’s convent. While perfectly settled in this city, which was proud to host him, Benozzo always maintained strong links with his home town of Florence. This patriotic love is clear from the way he consistently defines himself as "Florentine" in the inscriptions and signatures affixed to his works, and also manifested itself in his activities with the company of Florentines residing in Pisa, for whom he painted the altarpiece for the main altar of the chapel, now housed in the National Gallery in Ottawa.
During this second period in Pisa, according to the scholar Padoa Rizzo, Benozzo may also have produced the round-topped panel painting in the Parish of Calci, depicting the Virgin and Child, originating from the Dominican convent in Poggio."

Benozzo Gozzoli | Scenes from the Old and New Testaments | www.brunelleschi.imss.fi.it

The Opera Primaziale Pisana is also committed to making this complex and prestigious restoration intervention available for reference by publishing the ongoing results of its work on the internet. | www.opapisa.it

Johannes Tripps, A critical and historical corpus of Florentine painting. IV: Tendencies of Gothic in Florence, 7/1: Andrea Bonaiuti, Firenze, Giunti, 1996.

Piero di Puccio was a fourteenth century Italian painter of the Gothic period, active mainly in Orvieto. He is also known as Pietro di Puccio. He painted a fresco of stories from Genesis, from the Creation to the Deluge on the North wall of Campo Santo in Pisa. The fresco was devastated during the allied bombing during World War II. Farquhar, Maria (1855). Ralph Nicholson Wornum. ed. Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters. Woodfall & Kinder, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London; Digitized by Googlebooks from Oxford University copy on Jun 27, 2006. pp. page 136 | www.books.google.com

Buonamico Buffalmacco | Gli affreschi del Campo Santo

[1] Francesco Traini was an Italian painter who was demonstrably active from 1321 to approx. 1365 in Pisa and Bologna. He appears to have been a follower of Andrea Orcagna. There is only one work known to be by Traini: in 1345 he signed and dated a polyptych of the Pisan church S. Caterina, showing Saint Dominic and eight hagiographic scenes (now in the Museo Nazionale, Pisa).
Buonamico di [son of] Martino or Buonamico Buffalmacco (active c. 1315–1336) was an Italian painter who worked in Florence, Bologna and Pisa. Although none of his known work has survived, he is widely assumed to be the painter of a most influential fresco cycle in the Camposanto in Pisa, featuring the The Three Dead and the Three Living, the Triumph of Death, the Last Judgement, the Hell, and the Thebais (several episodes from the lives of the Holy Fathers in the Desert). Painted some ten years before the Black Death spread over Europe in 1348, the cycle - a "painted sermon" (L. Bolzoni) - enjoyed an extraordinary success after that date, and was often imitated throughout Italy. The youngsters' party enjoying themselves in a beautiful garden while Death piles mounds of corpses all around is likely to have inspired the setting of Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, written a few years after the Black Death.
Boccaccio (in his Decameron) and Franco Sacchetti (in his Il trecentonovelle) both describe Buonamico as being a practical joker. Boccaccio features Buonamico along with his friends and fellow painters Calandrino and Bruno in several tales (Day VIII, tales 3, 6, and 9; Day IX, tales 3 and 5). Typically in these stories, Buonamico uses his wits to play tricks on his friends and associates: convincing Calandrino that a stone he possesses (heliotrope) confers invisibility (VIII/3), stealing a pig from Calandrino (VIII, 6), convincing the physician Master Simone of an opportunity to ally himself with the devil (VIII, 9), convincing Calandrino that he has become pregnant (IX, 3), convincing Calandrino that a particular scroll can cause a woman to fall in love with him (IX, 5). Throughout the stories, Buonamico is frequently depicted at work painting in the houses of notable gentlemen in Florence but eager to take time to eat, drink and be merry.

Giorgio Vasari includes a biography of Buonamico in his Lives, in which he tells several anecdotes about his comic escapades.[1] Vasari tells of Buonamico's youthful tricking of his master Tafi during his apprenticeship, various pranks and tricks that Buonamico played on his patrons, and his habit of embedding texts within his paintings. Dismissed by Vasari as just another of the witty painter's gags, which his "clumsy" contemporaries had misunderstood and foolishly imitated, the Camposanto frescoes are actually scattered with texts, a possible indication of the veracity of Vasari's remark. In the scroll over the cripple beggars in the center of The Triumph of Death, for instance, it says, "Since prosperity has completely deserted us, O Death, you who are the medicine for all pain, come to give us our last supper."
Vasari discusses various paintings by the artist which no longer exist, and many of which had already perished by the time of Vasari's writing in the sixteenth century. He describes a series of paintings at the convent of Faenza in Florence (already destroyed by the sixteenth century), works for the abbey of Settimo (now also lost), tempera paintings for the monks of the abbey of Certosa (also in Florence), and frescoes in the Badia at Florence. He describes a series of paintings depicting the life of Saint Catherine of Siena in a chapel in her honor in Assisi at the Basilica of Saint Francis (an attribution rejected by later scholars), and several prominent commissions at various abbeys and convents in Pisa. Interestingly, Vasari does not attribute the famed Pisan frescoes now associated with Buonamico to the painter, but rather, credits him with four frescoes at the Camposanto depicting the beginning of the world through the building of Noah's Ark, which later scholars have instead attributed to Piero di Puccio of Orvieto.
Vasari presents conflicting information regarding Buonamico's death, dating it to the year 1340, but also stating that he was still alive in 1351. In any case, he is said to have died at the age of 78, in poverty, and to have been buried at the hospital of Santa Maria Novella, in Florence.
[2] Buonamico di [son of] Martino or Buonamico Buffalmacco (active c. 1315–1336) was an Italian painter who worked in Florence, Bologna and Pisa. Although none of his known work has survived, he is widely assumed to be the painter of a most influential fresco cycle in the Camposanto in Pisa, featuring the The Three Dead and the Three Living, the Triumph of Death, the Last Judgement, the Hell, and the Thebais (several episodes from the lives of the Holy Fathers in the Desert). Painted some ten years before the Black Death spread over Europe in 1348, the cycle - a "painted sermon" (L. Bolzoni) - enjoyed an extraordinary success after that date, and was often imitated throughout Italy. The youngsters' party enjoying themselves in a beautiful garden while Death piles mounds of corpses all around is likely to have inspired the setting of Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, written a few years after the Black Death.

The Triumph of Death, at the Camposanto in Pisa, has been puzzling generations of art historians. From G. Vasari to the twentieth century, the attribution and the date of this grandiose masterwork was very much a matter for debate. In Buffalmacco e il Trionfo della Morte L. Bellosi attributed the famous fresco beyond doubt to Buonamico Buffalmacco. He dates the artwork to about 1336. L. Battaglia Ricci in Ragionare nel Giardino studied the theme in correlation to Boccaccio's Decameron, pointing to the ten personages, seven women and three men, appearing in the gardens of the famous works of both Buffalmacco and Boccaccio. Thus, art historians have changed their view and approach in the understanding of this famous masterpiece appearing in the first half of the fourteenth century in Italy. Many scholars have been tempted to relate the famous Triumph of Death and paintings displaying the Dead and the Death to the Black Death in 1348, which devastated social life in Tuscany and other regions of Europe. When looking at these frescoes representing the Triumph of Death there is no doubt that medieval people felt death to be a drama. The plague may have given reason to personify death in its most dramatic nature, but this was not the case for having personified death in the shape of a woman armed with scythe and in the most vivid expression.
Ingrid Valser , The Theme of Death in Italian Art: The Triumph of Death, Department of Art History McGill University, Montréal, pp 59.
[3] The Triumph of Death Page about historian Barbara Tuchman's analysis of the Traini fresco in the Camposanto Monumentale, the Monumental Cemetry.
Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978

"A strange personification of Death emerged from the plague years on the painted walls of the Camposanto in Pisa. The figure is not the conventional skeleton, but a blackcloaked old woman with streaming hair and wild eyes, carrying a broadbladed murderous scythe. Her feet end in claws instead of toes. Depicting the Triumph of Death, the fresco was painted in or about 1350 by Francesco Traini as part of a series that included scenes of the Last Judgment and the Tortures of Hell. The same subject, painted at the same time by Traini's master, Andrea Orcagna, in the church of Santa Croce in Florence, has since been lost except for a fragment. Together the frescoes marked the start of a pervasive presence of Death in art, not yet the cult it was to become by the end of the century, but its beginning.
Usually Death was personified as a skeleton with hourglass and scythe, in a white shroud or bareboned, grinning at the irony of man's fate reflected in his image: that all men, from beggar to emperor, from harlot to queen, from ragged clerk to Pope, must come to this. No matter what their poverty or power in life, all is vanity, equalized by death. The temporal is nothing; what matters is the afterlife of the soul.
In Traini's fresco, Death swoops through the air toward a group of carefree, young, and beautiful noblemen and ladies who, like models for Boccaccio's storytellers, converse and flirt and entertain each other with books and music in a fragrant grove of orange trees. A scroll warns that "no shield of wisdom or riches, nobility or prowess" can protect them from the blows of the Approaching One. "They have taken more pleasure in the world than in things of God." In a heap of corpses nearby lie crowned rulers, a Pope in tiara, a knight, tumbled together with the bodies of the poor, while angels and devils in the sky contend for the miniature naked figures that represent their souls. A wretched group of lepers, cripples, and beggars (duplicated in the surviving fragment of Orcagna), one with nose eaten away, others legless or blind or holding out a clothcovered stump instead of a hand,implore Death for deliverance. Above on a mountain, hermits leading a religious contemplative life await death peaceably.
Above in a scene of extraordinary verve a hunting party of princes and elegant ladies on horseback comes with sudden horror upon three open coffins containing corpses in different stages of decomposition, one still clothed, one half rotted, one a skeleton. Vipers crawl over their bones. The scene illustrates "The Three Living and Three Dead," a 13th century legend which tells of a meeting between three young nobles and three decomposing corpses who tell them, "What you are, we were. What we are, you will be." In Traini's fresco, a horse catching the stench of death stiffens in fright with outstretched neck and flaring nostrils; his rider clutches a handkerchief to his nose. The hunting dogs recoil, growling in repulsion. In their silks and curls and fashionable hats, the party of vital handsome men and women stare appalled at what they will become."
[4] Andrea di Bonaiuto (c. 1325–1379) was a respected and successful painter active in Florence after the black death. He is also known as Andrea da Firenze (but should not be confused with the composer Andrea da Firenze). Unfortunately, only a few archival entries refer to Andrea di Bonaiuto by name, and this of course hampers any attempt to reconstruct his career or personality.

Andrea matriculated in the Florentine painters’ guild in 1346. This would suggest a date of birth sometime around 1325. He lived in the parish of Santa Maria Novella and seems to have been influenced by the work of Nardo di Cione, with whom he may have trained. He left Florence in 1355 to work in Pisa, where he stayed for roughly ten years. When he returned to Florence, he received the most important painting commission of the 1360s.

In December 1365, Andrea accepted an offer to decorate the Dominican chapter house of Santa Maria Novella, built sometime around 1350 and funded in part by the estate of Buonamico di Lapo Guidalotti. To compensate Andrea, the Dominicans provided him and his wife with a house next to the church and a generous stipend. The agreement called for the artist to cover the four walls and the ceiling vaults of the chapter house with frescoes within a two-year period. Andrea appears to have met this deadline.

Probably as a result of this commission, Andrea was simultaneously appointed to a committee planning the design for the dome of the cathedral of Florence. He served on this board for two years, completing his term in 1367. He then spent a brief time in Orvieto before returning to Florence, where he painted a panel of Saint Luke for the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in 1374. In 1377, he accepted a commission to paint an altarpiece in Pisa, and then stayed in Pisa long enough to execute a fresco (now damaged) in the Camposanto. He died in 1379, leaving only a paltry estate for his widow and his one child, Bartolomeo.

Because almost none of his other works survive, Andrea’s murals in the chapter house of Santa Maria Novella, commonly referred to as the Spanish Chapel, stand as his greatest paintings. This cycle — probably based on ideas expressed by Fra Jacopo Passavanti of Santa Maria Novella — celebrates the spiritual and intellectual achievements of the founder of the Dominican Order and his disciples. The central image, on the north wall facing the entrance, depicts scenes from the passion of Christ. The Way to Calvary, Crucifixion, and Harrowing of Hell are placed in a continuous frieze running from one end of the lunette wall to the other. Flanking this space on the west wall is an image of Thomas Aquinas, enthroned, presiding over allegorical representations of the cardinal virtues and the liberal arts. The Via Veritatis decorates the east wall, with Dominic, Thomas, and Peter Martyr converting heretics, providing spiritual guidance to the devout, and leading the faithful into heaven. An architectural portrait of the cathedral of Florence, complete with an envisioned octagonal dome (the actual dome had yet to be constructed), serves as a backdrop to this scene; it may have been a result of Andrea’s membership on the committee planning the dome. Scenes of the Navicella, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost occupy the vaults above, providing theological analogies to the images below.
The choice of Andrea di Bonaiuto as the painter of the Spanish Chapel suggests that he was one of the most important artists of the day; his appointment to the committee planning the dome of the cathedral indicates that he was highly respected by Florentine civic leaders. There can be no doubt that Andrea was recognized as a major figure in his native city during this period, and his works in Santa Maria Novella are one of the great decorative programs of the late Trecento. But the paucity of signed or dated paintings leaves us with only a meager understanding of the artist’s abilities, interests, and influences.
[5] Leo von Klenze (b. 1784 Schladen, Germany, d. 1864 Munich, Germany painter). An architect, painter, and writer, Leo von Klenze is most noted for his work as court architect to Ludwig I, king of Bavaria. He designed streets, squares, and numerous monumental buildings that set the scale and tone of Munich, the Bavarian capital. His other European commissions ranged from Athens, where he was the first to take steps to preserve the Acropolis, to Saint Petersburg, Russia. In addition to building, Von Klenze studied public building finance, designed and arranged museum galleries of ancient art, and was an accomplished painter. His paintings exhibit a richness of detail and special attention to light and compositional space. He successfully combined his talent for sharp observation with an equal and complementary ability to improve upon nature. On his visits to Italy, he both drew and painted landscapes and examined the remains of Greek temples as sources for his archaeological Greek style.

Buonamico Buffalmacco, Sinopia of one of the Damned in The Last Judgment

Podere Santa Pia

Podere Santa Pia, garden (June)

Monte Christo, view from Santa Pia

Sant'Antimo, between Santa Pia and Montalcino

Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence

Pisa

Orvieto, Duomo

Siena, Duomo

Florence, Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore