MINO DA FIESOLE

Alfonso V (1396—1458), was the king of Aragon (1416–58) and king of Naples (as Alfonso I, 1442–58), whose military campaigns in Italy and elsewhere in the central Mediterranean made him one of the most famous men of his day. After conquering Naples, he transferred his court there. His byname was Alfonso the Magnanimous. He was a key player in Italian politics of the fifteenth century.

Mino’s portrait relief shows the ruler in contemporary garb.

Guillaume d’Estouteville (1403-1483) was a wealthy, career churchman from a Norman noble family with ties to the French royals. He advanced to cardinal in 1439, archbishop of Rouen in 1453, and bishop of Ostia in 1461.

The present portrait is not a bust in the round but a high relief carved free of its backing. It was mounted on a wall rather than a horizontal support. The identification of the sitter of the present portrait was possible due to the resemblance to a figure on the now-dismantled ciborium commissioned by d’Estouteville from Mino da Fiesole for the Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. In the extant relief of the ciborium, the cleric gesturing to himself and to the snow falling at the apse of the church is surely d’Estouteville.

In the art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Virtues were often personified by human figures carrying identifying attributes. Charity typically holds one or more children. As represented by Mino da Fiesole, a contemporary of Desiderio da Settignano and Antonio Rossellino, Charity and a companion piece Faith appear as slender young girls in clinging, layered gowns with fine pleats. Their heavy mantles are carved in distinctive, angular folds. Typical of Mino’s style is the fine, precise, sharp-edged treatment of textile folds and locks of hair, giving these features an ornamental quality different from the softer approach of Desiderio and Antonio Rossellino.

Set in arched niches, the figures must have been intended as part of a monument combining architecture and sculpture, probably a wall tomb inside a church.

Diotisalvi Neroni (1401-1482) was an Italian politician.

On 28 July 1464 Mino was inscribed in the Arte della Pietra in Florence, and he began to accept commissions from Florentines in the Medici circle. In 1464 Diotisalvi Neroni commissioned a marble altar in half relief with the Virgin and Child with Sts Leonard and Lawrence (Badia Fiorentina, Florence) for his family chapel in San Lorenzo, and he also had Mino carve his portrait (1464; Mus�e du Louvre, Paris). The altar was not completed in the four months stipulated in the contract, since in 1466, when Neroni was exiled from Florence, the marble was still in Mino’s possession; it was only in 1470 that he sold the completed altar to the Badia, Florence.

Within a Brunelleschian architectural frame, appropriate for the altar’s intended setting, the saints’ figures are shown frontally; the stylized linearity of the drapery, the inconsistencies of scale between the figures and the shifts in relief depth reflect the influence of Isaia da Pisa and other sculptors active in Rome, while the format and style are based on Early Christian ivories.

On 28 July 1464 Mino was inscribed in the Arte della Pietra in Florence, and he began to accept commissions from Florentines in the Medici circle. In 1464 Diotisalvi Neroni commissioned a marble altar in half relief with the Virgin and Child with Sts Leonard and Lawrence (Badia Fiorentina, Florence) for his family chapel in San Lorenzo, and he also had Mino carve his portrait (1464; Mus�e du Louvre, Paris). The altar was not completed in the four months stipulated in the contract, since in 1466, when Neroni was exiled from Florence, the marble was still in Mino’s possession; it was only in 1470 that he sold the completed altar to the Badia, Florence.

Within a Brunelleschian architectural frame, appropriate for the altar’s intended setting, the saints’ figures are shown frontally; the stylized linearity of the drapery, the inconsistencies of scale between the figures and the shifts in relief depth reflect the influence of Isaia da Pisa and other sculptors active in Rome, while the format and style are based on Early Christian ivories.

In the art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Virtues were often personified by human figures carrying identifying attributes. Faith in this case had a chalice and a cross, now broken. As represented by Mino da Fiesole, a contemporary of Desiderio da Settignano and Antonio Rossellino, Faith and a companion piece Charity appear as slender young girls in clinging, layered gowns with fine pleats. Their heavy mantles are carved in distinctive, angular folds. Typical of Mino’s style is the fine, precise, sharp-edged treatment of textile folds and locks of hair, giving these features an ornamental quality different from the softer approach of Desiderio and Antonio Rossellino.

Set in arched niches, the figures must have been intended as part of a monument combining architecture and sculpture, probably a wall tomb inside a church.

The tomb features a relief sculpture of a male figure laying on his back with his hands crossed. He is resting on a rectangular base supported by two creatures with wings and claws. A sculpture of the sun is above the male figure.

Francesco Tornabuoni (died c. 1436) was an Italian merchant and ambassador; he was the grandfather of Lorenzo the Magnificent.

Giovanni de’ Medici (1421-1463) was the son of Cosimo Il Vecchio (the Elder) and the younger brother of Piero de’ Medici. The brothers were pivotal figures in Florentine and Italian history in the middle of the fifteenth century, not only because their activities in the economic, political, and diplomatic spheres, but also owing to their role in cultural and artistic life.

Mino da Fiesole’s marble busts of the brothers from about 1453 and 1455, respectively, are almost startling innovations, generated by the brothers’ love of classical literature and their collecting of ancient coins and sculpture. Resonant as they were with the prestige of ancient precedent, independent, secular busts of living people were nonetheless a modern novelty.

Both sculptures were eventually over doors in the Palazzo Medici, but they date before its completion in 1459, and were not conceived as pendants.

This marble head is probably a fragment that was originally part of a slightly larger work, a secular portrait bust of a child, probably a member of a Florentine aristocratic family.

This relief is one of four produced for the ciborium (canopy) erected by Cardinal Guillaume d’Estouteville over the high altar of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.

The ciborium, a large and ornate structure, was originally decorated with 32 sculptures carved in high relief. It was dismantled in 1747 with most of its sculptures now displayed in other locations throughout Santa Maria Maggiore. Other sculptures were sold into private collections, with one, the Madonna and Child, now in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Three other relief sculptures from this same set, Christ Blessing, The Annunciation, and Saints Peter and Paul, were later set into the walls of Maggiore’s sacristy where they remain today.

The sitter of this bust, Niccolò di Leonardo Strozzi (1411-1469), was one of the most influential members of that large and famous Florentine family, who had become one of the principal bankers at the papal court after enjoying similar economic successes in the great commercial centres of Italy and Europe. Mino worked for the Strozzi and their circle on several occasions in both Florence and Rome.

Contemporary documents record Niccolò’s obesity as well as his passion as a gourmand, characteristics that the present bust conveys, recording his features with a merciless realism but also some genuine sympathy. The bust was likely destined for Niccolò’s Roman residence or perhaps the headquarters of his bank.

During the 1450s Mino produced a steady stream of portrait busts that benefited from his study of antique busts in Rome; the inscription on the marble bust of Niccolò Strozzi records that it was carved in Rome in 1454. The almost brutal naturalism of the portrait, the alert expression of the subject, with the head set at an angle to the torso, and the elegant surface finish of both flesh and cloth are sophisticated solutions to the problem of bust portraiture, not the work of a tentative beginner.

The early busts show a remarkably sensitive appreciation of the dual nature of portraits as both a record of individual features and a commemoration of the sitters’ status. Mino’s insistence on a sense of movement and on an almost palpable link between viewer and bust is present in all his portraits.

Portrait busts became fashionable at mid fifteenth-century in Florence, far more than elsewhere in Italy. While medals and reliefs portraits, like painted portraits before 1470, were rendered in profile, the sculpted bust was carved in the round, in marble, in polychromed wood, wax and terracota (glazed, painted and unpainted) and only later in costly bronze.

The first surviving dated bust is the portrait of Piero de’ Medici by Mino da Fiesole. He also created busts of Piero’s brother Giovanni and his wife, Lucrezia Tornabuoni. All three, carved in the round, were set in niches over doors in the Palazzo Medici. Piero’s bust is more idealized than many others.

This work represents one of the first independent portrait busts made in Europe since antiquity, reflecting Mino da Fiesole’s reinvention of the portrait bust as an artistic type, first in Florence and then elsewhere.

A Latin inscription carved on the underside identifies the subject and artist: “Astorgio Manfredi II, lord of Faenza, 42 years old, 1455, the work of Nino.” Astorgio by this time had been ruler of Faenza for seven years and a military commander for almost 25. He is immortalized with starkly unidealized realism, his power conveyed by a brocaded mantle over field armour consisting of a chain-mail shirt and metal breast plate fastened with a worn leather strap.

Mino used the pattern of the sitter’s chain-mail armour to frame and accentuate the face, which exaggerates the lifelike qualities of the features.

In 1473 Mino contributed two reliefs, the Feast of Herod and the Beheading of St John the Baptist, to the circular marble interior pulpit in Prato Cathedral, the overall design of which has been attributed to Mino and to Antonio Rossellino, among others.

In 1473 Mino contributed two reliefs, the Feast of Herod and the Beheading of St John the Baptist, to the circular marble interior pulpit in Prato Cathedral, the overall design of which has been attributed to Mino and to Antonio Rossellino, among others.

Mino da Fiesole’s final project was the large marble reliquary altar for Sant’Ambrogio, Florence (1481; in situ), which, in form and iconography, combines altar and tabernacle. It was commissioned by the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio, intended for a new chapel dedicated to the important Eucharistic relic situated to the left of the choir.

Within a fanciful architectural framework crowned with a pediment with a relief of God the Father in Glory, the main scene, with the Christ Child and Saints, is in high relief, while the low-relief predella scene is set at a strongly raking angle. This was the second time that Mino had worked in association with Cosimo Rosselli, who painted the chapel frescoes (the first occasion was in the Salutati Chapel in Fiesole Cathedral). Mino was buried in the entrance of Sant’Ambrogio.

The tabernacle was commissioned by the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio. It was intended for a new chapel dedicated to the important Eucharistic relic situated to the left of the choir.

In the tabernacle relief, eight nun and a novice are shown on the left side of the composition, kneeling in prayer before the relic, counterbalanced by a separate group of male worshippers on the right.

Mino da Fiesole’s final project was the large marble reliquary altar for Sant’Ambrogio, Florence (1481; in situ), which, in form and iconography, combines altar and tabernacle. It was commissioned by the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio, intended for a new chapel dedicated to the important Eucharistic relic situated to the left of the choir.

Within a fanciful architectural framework crowned with a pediment with a relief of God the Father in Glory, the main scene, with the Christ Child and Saints, is in high relief, while the low-relief predella scene is set at a strongly raking angle. This was the second time that Mino had worked in association with Cosimo Rosselli, who painted the chapel frescoes (the first occasion was in the Salutati Chapel in Fiesole Cathedral). Mino was buried in the entrance of Sant’Ambrogio.

In the predella relief, eight nun and a novice are shown on the left side of the composition, kneeling in prayer before the relic, counterbalanced by a separate group of male worshippers on the right.

One of the most powerful cardinals in Rome during the mid-fifteenth century was the Frenchman Guillaume d’Estouteville. For the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore he ordered a marble baldachin from the Florentine sculptor Mino de Fiesole to cover the main altar. Now dismembered, the tabernacle had marble reliefs on each of its upper faces depicting events related to the basilica. This detail shows the Miraculous Fall of Snow, a relief now immured in the wall of the apse of the basilica. The cleric gesturing to himself and to the snow falling at the apse of the church is surely d’Estouteville

This tabernacle, which was originally in the church of the nunnery of Le Murate, is now in the Castellani Chapel in the right arm of the transept of Santa Croce. The chapel was frescoed by Agnolo Gaddi and his workshop with stories of saints on the walls and with the Doctors of Church on the vault.

This relief is a detail of the Monument of Pope Paul II in the St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Requiem K 626: Dies irae

In the third quarter of the fifteenth century Mino da Fiesole carved two tombs for the oldest monastic foundation in Florence, the Benedictine abbey known as the Badia. The first tomb, completed about 1468, was essentially a private commission for the Florentine jurist Bernardo Giugni. The second, paid for by the monks at the Badia and only finished in 1481, honoured the memory of their founder, Count Hugo of Tuscany. Produced over the course of more than two decades, these monumental marble wall tombs are Mino’s most famous works. They reveal his skill as a sculptor of portraits, reliefs, and elaborate decorative moldings, as well as his sophistication as a designer of complex architectural structures.

The tombs of Bernardo Giugni and Count Hugo of Tuscany stand today at opposite ends of the modern church of the Badia, on the west wall of the right transept (viewed from the entrance) and the centre wall of the left transept, respectively. Although they never faced each other directly, the two tombs complement one another in both visual and conceptual ways.

The Giugni Tomb commemorates both a particular individual and, more broadly, the virtue that his life exemplified. The inscription describes Giugni as “a Florentine knight, always a founder of public concord, and a truly popular citizen.” The right to display the Visconti biscia, or serpent, which appears embroidered over his breast, was awarded to him in his youth; in 1438 he was named count palatine by Emperor Frederick III; and in 1447 he was knighted at the peace negotiations held among Venice, Milan, and Naples in Ferrara. He remains known above all for his role as diplomat for his city. The pinnacle of Giugni’s career of service to Florence came in 1451, when he served as gonfaloniere di giustizia, the standard-bearer of justice, chief among the nine officers of the Signoria and the highest and most sought-after elected office in the republic.

The tomb of Bernardo Giugni includes a powerful profile portrait of the deceased. It shows a marked interest in the articulation of the architectural structure and a tendency to abstract the human form.

In the third quarter of the fifteenth century Mino da Fiesole carved two tombs for the oldest monastic foundation in Florence, the Benedictine abbey known as the Badia. The first tomb, completed about 1468, was essentially a private commission for the Florentine jurist Bernardo Giugni. The second, paid for by the monks at the Badia and only finished in 1481, honoured the memory of their founder, Count Hugo of Tuscany. Produced over the course of more than two decades, these monumental marble wall tombs are Mino’s most famous works. They reveal his skill as a sculptor of portraits, reliefs, and elaborate decorative moldings, as well as his sophistication as a designer of complex architectural structures.

The tombs of Bernardo Giugni and Count Hugo of Tuscany stand today at opposite ends of the modern church of the Badia, on the west wall of the right transept (viewed from the entrance) and the centre wall of the left transept, respectively. Although they never faced each other directly, the two tombs complement one another in both visual and conceptual ways.

The Giugni Tomb commemorates both a particular individual and, more broadly, the virtue that his life exemplified. The inscription describes Giugni as “a Florentine knight, always a founder of public concord, and a truly popular citizen.” The right to display the Visconti biscia, or serpent, which appears embroidered over his breast, was awarded to him in his youth; in 1438 he was named count palatine by Emperor Frederick III; and in 1447 he was knighted at the peace negotiations held among Venice, Milan, and Naples in Ferrara. He remains known above all for his role as diplomat for his city. The pinnacle of Giugni’s career of service to Florence came in 1451, when he served as gonfaloniere di giustizia, the standard-bearer of justice, chief among the nine officers of the Signoria and the highest and most sought-after elected office in the republic.

The tomb of Bernardo Giugni includes a powerful profile portrait of the deceased. It shows a marked interest in the articulation of the architectural structure and a tendency to abstract the human form.

The tomb of Bernardo Giugni includes a powerful profile portrait of the deceased. It shows a marked interest in the articulation of the architectural structure and a tendency to abstract the human form.

In 1469 Mino began work on the tomb of Count Hugo of Tuscany (died 1001), probably completing at that time the recumbent effigy on the bier and the high-relief personification of Charity. In this work Mino’s style of figural relief-carving achieved a high level of linear abstraction; the tomb’s size and solidity seems far removed from the decorative emphasis of Mino’s model, Desiderio da Settignano’s Marsuppini tomb (Santa Croce, Florence).

In 1480 Mino returned to Florence from Rome and resumed work on Count Hugo’s tomb (finished 1481); the elaborately carved, classicizing lunette decorated with palmettes and egg-and-dart moulding framing a tondo of the Virgin and Child, and the base, with its elegantly lettered inscription, probably date from this time.

The putto on the tomb depends directly from Desiderio da Settignano’s Marsuppini tomb.

In 1480 Mino returned to Florence from Rome and resumed work on Count Hugo’s tomb (finished 1481); the elaborately carved, classicizing lunette decorated with palmettes and egg-and-dart moulding framing a tondo of the Virgin and Child, and the base, with its elegantly lettered inscription, probably date from this time.

There is a faint inscription on the base: AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA.