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I’ve posted earlier on my five favorites from the Gardner Museum (see here), but those were chosen from artworks I found on the Net. In August 2020, I visited the Gardner for the first time in decades. The introduction to this series is here. For all posts on the Gardner, click “Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum” in the tag cloud. The Gardner’s site is here.

Early Italian Room

The core of Isabella’s collection is Italian art, including (as in this room) Late Gothic as well as Renaissance. The furniture and decorative objects, however, reflect her eclectic travels elsewhere in Europe and in Egypt, the Middle East, and Asia. On the Early Italian Room, see here. The works in that room are mostly (but not entirely!) earlier than those in the Raphael Room. As I did for that room, I’m putting the works in chronological order and adding labels. (Sorry, Isabella!)

Above: Simone Martini, Virgin and Child with Saints Paul, Lucy, Catherine, and John the Baptist, ca. 1320. More here. Martini probably studied with either Duccio di Buoninsegna or Giotto (a marvelously innovative artist: see Innovators in Painting, Chapter 15). Martini, however, took a different turn. He became one of the most influential early artists in the International Gothic Style, which spread throughout Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. International Gothic emphasized courtly sophistication and elegance rather than three-dimensional realism: one of the best examples is the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.

Above: Fra Angelico, The Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin, 1424-1434. Fra Angelico’s career overlapped with that of Masaccio, whose works – with their solid, three-dimensional figures and mathematically calculated perspective – hearken back to Giotto. Masaccio’s works are considered the beginning of the Italian Renaissance in painting. (See Innovators in Painting, Chapters 18-19.) Some later works by Fra Angelico show hints of Masaccio’s influence, but mostly he leans toward International Gothic. The colors in the painting at the Gardner (pale pink, blue, green, red) and the heavy gold leaf are typical of that style. So is the greenish cast to the faces, also visible in the Martini painting above – perhaps is the result of Byzantine influence.

Above: Piero della Francesca, Hercules, ca. 1470. Usually Hercules is shown older and far more muscular, like the Hercules Farnese. Here he’s identified by his lion skin and club, but he’s much younger. Piero painted this fresco for his own home! Alas, we don’t know what the young Hercules represented to him.

This fresco was once high on a wall: hence the figure is shown in steep perspective. Piero was so fascinated with perspective that in the 1470s or 1480s, he wrote the treatise On Perspective in Painting.

Getting an actual fresco for her museum was quite a coup for Isabella. In fresco, the paint is bonded with the plaster, so part of the wall has to be detached in order to move the painting. Hercules is the only original Piero della Francesca painting in the United States. Isabella placed this work quite high on the wall, so the steep perspective still works.

Above: And then there’s this bronze head, which I haven’t been able to find on the Gardner’s site. The tilt of it is rather lovely and evocative. It reminds me of a Donatello’s Niccolo da Uzzano, ca. 1432 (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence).

Back to the staircase, before we head up to the third floor: more wrought-iron work.

The Veronese Room

The focal point of this room is a painting by an artist who worked in Venice, a city that Isabella loved. As usual, however, she didn’t confine the room to particular period, place, or style. The walls are covered in stamped and painted leather panels from Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. Several late-nineteenth-century works hang on the walls, including a couple by James McNeill Whistler. More on the Veronese Room here.

Above: While the Gardner Museum was under construction, Isabella acquired The Coronation of Hebe, then attributed to the noted Venetian painter Veronese. (It’s now attributed to his studio, rather than Veronese himself.) She ordered an elaborate frame created for it, then installed it on the ceiling of this room. In this room as elsewhere in the Gardner, the ceilings are worth looking at! More here.

Above: Seat from an early eighteenth-century gig, a two-wheeled carriage designed to carry only one person. The Asian figures on a deep red ground are typical of Venetian furniture imitating Chinese lacquer work. After a stroke paralyzed her in 1919, Isabella was carried around the museum in this chair. See here.

Above: Francesco Guardi, View of the Riva degli Schiavoni and the Piazetta from the Bacino di San Marco, 1760s. More (including a better photo) here. Guardi and Canaletto are both famous for views of Venice, painted for the tourist trade. I love Canaletto’s work – it seems to have more verve, more light – but occasionally Guardi comes close, as he does here.

A sedan chair, for when you want to be carried about by people rather than horses. I suppose that would make sense in Venice, where the canals make space for streets rather limited. Painted wood with glass, leather, and upholstery, created in Northern Italy ca. 1770-1785.

And back to the courtyard! Next week: other rooms on the third floor.

More

• In Getting More Enjoyment from Sculpture You Love, I demonstrate a method for looking at sculptures in detail, in depth, and on your own. Learn to enjoy your favorite sculptures more, and find new favorites. Available on Amazon print and Kindle formats.
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