Original scientific paper

A Painting of the Virgin and Child at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London – an Attribution to Petar Jordanić

Emil Hilje orcid.org/0000-0002-2675-9491 ; Department of Art History, University of Zadar, Croatia

Abstract

A painting of the Virgin and Child, signed as “OPVUS P. PETRI”, from the former Fareham Collection (today at the Courtauld Institute of Art), has been known in the scholarly literature for a long time but has only been subject to tangential analyses. These studies attempted to attribute it to painters meeting relatively dubious criteria: that their name was Peter (Petar) and that they could be linked to the painting circle of Squarcione or, more specifically, to that of Carlo Crivelli with whose early works, especially the Virgin and Child (the Huldschinsky Madonna) at the Fine Arts Gallery in San Diego, the Courtauld painting shares obvious connections. Roberto Longhi ascribed it to the Paduan painter Pietro Calzetta in 1926, while Franz Drey, in 1929, considered it to be the work of Pietro Alemanno, Crivelli’s disciple, who worked in the Marche region during the last quarter of the fifteenth century. After the Second World War, the Courtauld painting was almost completely ignored by the experts. The only serious judgement was that expressed by Pietro Zampetti, who established that it was an almost exact copy of Crivelli’s Huldschinsky Madonna, meaning that if Calzetti had painted it, he would have done it while Carlo was still in the Veneto, before he went to Zadar.
The search for information which can shed more light on the attribution of the Virgin and Child from the Courtauld is aided by the valuable records in the Fondazione Federico Zeri at the Università di Bologna. The holdings of the Fototeca Zeri include three different photographs of the Courtauld painting with brief but useful accompanying notes. Of particular importance is the intriguing inscription on the back of one of the photographs, which points to the painting’s Dalmatian origin. In a certain way, this opens the possibility that it might be linked to another painter who was close to the Crivelli brothers: the Zadar priest and painter Petar Jordanić. That he may have been the one who painted it is indicated by the signature itself, which could be read as “OPVUS P(RESBITERI) PETRI”.
Archival records about Petar Jordanić provide almost no information about his work as a painter. Apart from his signature of 1493 on a no-longer extant polyptich from the Church of St Mary at Zadar, the only record of his artistic activities is one piece of information: that in 1500 he took part in a delegation which was sent from Zadar to its hinterland charged with the task of making drawings of the terrain which could be used to help defend the town against the Ottoman Turks. However, more than thirty documents which mention him do paint a picture of his life’s journey and his connection with Zadar. The most important basis for any consideration of a possible connection between Petar Jordanić and Carlo Crivelli can be found in the will of his father Marko Jordanov Nozdronja (in late 1468) where Petar was named as the executor, meaning that at this point he was of age. Therefore, it can be concluded that he was born between 1446 and 1448. This makes him old enough to have been taught by Carlo during his stay in Zadar from c. 1460 to 1466. Although relatively modest, the oeuvre of Petar Jordanić demonstrates striking connections with the paintings of Carlo and Vittore Crivelli, and Ivo Petricioli has already put forward a hypothesis that he may have been taught by one of the brothers.
The comparison between the painting from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and the known works of Petar Jordanić (the Virgin and Child from a private collection in Vienna; the Virgin and Child from the Parish Church at Tkon; fragments of a painted ceiling from Zadar Cathedral; the lost polyptich from the Church of St Mary at Zadar) reveals a multitude of similar features. Apart from the general resemblance in the physiognomies of the Virgin and Christ Child which represent the most conspicuous analogies, a number of very specific “Morellian” elements can also be noted in the manner in which the faces were painted. These similarities are particularly apparent when one compares the head of the Christ Child on the painting from London and his head on the one from Tkon, which are almost identically depicted. Further similarities between the London painting and the one at Vienna can be seen in the way in which landscapes were painted and in the similar decorations of the gold fabrics in the backgrounds with their undulating scrolls and sharp almond-shaped leaves.
However, with regard to visual characteristics, it is apparent at first sight that the quality of the London painting is markedly higher and that it is stylistically more advanced than those works which are attributed with certainty to Jordanić. These differences can be explained by the possibility that this was a more or less direct copy of one of Carlo Crivelli’s painting, probably not the Huldschinsky Madonna but one that was very similar to it and subsequently lost.
Naturally, if the London painting is attributed to Petar Jordanić, meaning that it was produced in Zadar, then the argument on the basis of which the Huldschinsky Madonna has been dated to the time before Crivelli’s arrival in Zadar becomes a counter-argument, and, in that way, corroborates the possibility that the Huldschinsky Madonna, which shares a large number of similar elements with the painting from the Courtauld Institute of Art, was created while Carlo was in Zadar.

Keywords

Petar Jordanić; Carlo Crivelli; London; Zadar; painting; fifteenth century

Hrčak ID:

130731

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/130731

Publication date:

19.12.2014.

Article data in other languages: croatian italian

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