Giovanni dal Ponte A Protagonist of Late Gothic Humanism Florentine

The exhibition on Giovanni dal Ponte marks the first true moment of fertile interaction between two different realities: the reality forged over decades of experience in temporary exhibitions in Florence and the reality spawned by the dictates enshrined in the recent ministerial reform, of which the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence is one of the first examples.

Reflecting a now consolidated tradition in this museum, the exhibition takes its cue from the gallery's determination to maximise the potential of its collection, the reference in this case being to Giovanni dal Ponte's exquisiteCoronation of the Virgin with Four Saintswhich has been especially restored for the occasion. Cecilie Hollberg, the Galleria dell'Accademia's director, however, was eager to graft significant innovations onto this tradition in terms of the conception of the layout, with its huge scenographic impact underscoring and emphasising this Florentine painter's artistic career, while at the same time innovating the catalogue with a new editorial line designed to offer an interdisciplinary approach involving art history, organology and restoration.

The Galleria dell'Accademia di FirenThe exhibition on Giovanni dal Ponte marks the first true moment of fertile interaction between two different realities: the reality forged over decades of experience in temporary exhibitions in Florence and the reality spawned by the dictates enshrined in the recent ministerial reform, of which the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence is one of the first examples.

Reflecting a now consolidated tradition in this museum, the exhibition takes its cue from the gallery's determination to maximise the potential of its collection, the reference in this case being to Giovanni dal Ponte's exquisiteCoronation of the Virgin with Four Saintswhich has been especially restored for the occasion. Cecilie Hollberg, the Galleria dell'Accademia's director, however, was eager to graft significant innovations onto this tradition in terms of the conception of the layout, with its huge scenographic impact underscoring and emphasising this Florentine painter's artistic career, while at the same time innovating the catalogue with a new editorial line designed to offer an interdisciplinary approach involving art history, organology and restoration.

The Galleria dell'Accademia di #firenze is getting set to host the first monographic event, comprising some fifty works of art, ever devoted to the painter Giovanni dal Ponte (1385–1437/8) – curated by Angelo Tartuferi and Lorenzo Sbaraglio – in the attempt to fill a gap in scholarship of which art historians have been only too aware for a long time. The exhibition's primary aim is to ensure that this strong artist and personality of the early Quattrocento is restored to his proper place – a place of far from secondary importance – in the development of Florentine Early Renaissance painting, while also introducing him to a broader audience so that the public can discover and appreciate Giovanni's highly individual and at once imaginative style: a style that betrayed an acute awareness of the work being done by the most important artists active in Florence in the first three decades of the 15thcentury – men such as Gherardo Starnina, Lorenzo Monaco and Lorenzo Ghiberti, or Masaccio, Masolino da Panicale and Fra Angelico.

Giovanni di Marco is likely to have trained in a workshop steeped in the tradition of 14th century art, although his painting was soon to reflect the crucial influence of Gherardo Starnina. The latter, on his return to Florence in the early years of the 15thcentury, brought back with him an exuberant secular interpretation of Late Gothic art that was to have a tremendous impact on the painter and on the development of his style. Giovanni di Marco – whom Vasari in hisLives of the Artists nicknames Giovanni dal Ponte because he lived and worked in the parish of Santo Stefano al Ponte in Florence – showed an immediate propensity for playing a role in the Florentine cultural panorama at the dawn of the 15thcentury, a period known for its exceptionally lively and creative elan.

The most important work to have survived from his earliest period is a triptych originally painted for the church of Sant'Andrea in Brozzi but now in the Museo di San Donnino in Campi Bisenzio. For a long time the painting was attributed to a hypothetical "Master of the Brozzi Annunciation" but it is now considered to be an example of Giovanni dal Ponte's early work, dated circa 1410, containing several very clear references to the work of Gherardo Starnina.

In the course of the 1420s Giovanni di Marco began to show an increasing interest in interpreting the ideas being developed by the Renaissance culture then dawning, with particular reference to Masaccio in the sphere of painting as can we see in the polyptych of theMadonna and Child Enthroned (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) withSt. John the Baptist andSt. Peter on the left andSt. Paul andSt. Francis of Assisi on the right (Museo Bandini, Fiesole) and with a predella depicting theDeliverance of St. Peter; St. Peter Enthroned with St. Louis and St. Prosper; the Martyrdom of St. Peter; St. Thomas and St. James the Greater; St. Luke and St. James the Less; St. Andrew and St. John the Evangelist; St. Matthew and St. Philip (Uffizi, Florence).

From about 1427 Giovanni dal Ponte formed a partnership with the painter Smeraldo di Giovanni, with whom he specialised in the supply of painted bridal chests, an item of furniture that was extremely popular in the city at the time. The finest examples of his output in this field include the front panel from a bridal chest now in the Museo Civico "Amedeo Lia" in La Spezia.

The Galleria dell'Accademia's large triptych entitledThe Coronation of the Virgin with Four Saints has been especially restored for this exhibition – as indeed have a considerable number of the other paintings on display – pointing up the extraordinary quality of Giovanni's draughtsmanship and the intensity of his palette. The wonderful carpet on which the sacred figures stand has shed its former darkness to once again reveal its original brilliant green decorated with rich gilded tendrils. The cleaning of the bottom step, which had also been totally concealed by dirt and repainting down the centuries, was another huge surprise, showing the care that the artist had lavished on this detail too: showing, in fact, how he had deliberately used the step to demonstrate his skill in handling painterly naturalism.

The exhibition also marks the museum's definitive acquisition of another work by Giovanni dal Ponte, a tender and luminousMadonna and Child Enthroned, originally from the church of the Badia Fiorentina in the heart of the city but stored for many years at the Certosa del Galluzzo – it, too, splendidly restored for the occasion. In this picture the artist offers us a highly original take on the manner of Masolino da Panicale, Masaccio's partner in art.

Giovanni's final phase is documented in the show by a series of dated works testifying to his development of an intensely personal style characterised by ample, solemn forms that appear to conjugate the great tradition of 14thcentury Florentine painting with the forms and modules of the Renaissance which by then had gained full currency. It is worth pointing here to his luminous "neo-14thcentury" triptych for the abbey church at Rosano (in the province of Florence) depicting theAnnunciation with Four Saints, an altarpiece commissioned from him by Abbess Caterina da Castiglionchio in 1434; or to the grandiose altarpiece from the church of San Salvatore al Monte in Florence (after 1434) portraying theMadonna and Child with Six Saints and a Donor.

Giovanni dal Ponte also painted frescoes, the fragments recovered in the Chapel of the Judgement in Pistoia cathedral partly reflecting his style, while he is known for certain to have frescoed the Chapel of St. Peter in the church of Santa Trinita in Florence, a cycle now lost for the most part, in around 1430, and to have frescoed the Scali Chapel in the same church withStories of St. Bartholomew between September 1434 and October of the following year.

Giovanni's last will and testament, drafted on 19 November 1437, reveals that he had begun to enjoy considerable prosperity by then, but he was to die shortly thereafter.

The prestigious museums which have generously helped to make the exhibition possible by lending works of immense importance include the National Gallery in London, the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford (Connecticut), the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire de Belgique in Bruxelles, the Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore (Maryland), the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge (Massachusetts), the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), the Musée Jacquemart-André de l'Institut de France in Paris and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon.

The layout of the exhibition, designed by the architect Piero Guicciardini with the Guicciardini-Magni practice, skilfully evokes the architecture of Florence in the age of Giovanni dal Ponte, combining with the lighting of the gold-ground paintings to create a magically atmospheric effect.

The exhibition, curated by Angelo Tartuferi and Lorenzo Sbaraglio, is promoted by the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo with the Galleria dell'Accademia di #firenze.