Part three of six

The drawings in the North Italian Album are thought to have been drawn from existing buildings. This can help to date the drawings, as it is assumed that they must postdate construction.

But the draughtsmen of the Album did not just observe built examples: their drawings engage with a tradition of architectural representation whose foremost representatives were the painters Guariento and Altichiero da Zevio. Active in Padua and Verona during the second half of the fourteenth century, these painters created ambitious architectural settings for their narratives. 

Building on a local tradition that exalted Gothic forms, Altichiero took it to the extreme by proposing complex buildings and ornament so varied and intricate that it resembles a jeweller’s filigree. His work directly informs drawings in the Rothschild collection in the Louvre, which also includes later drawings probably realised by the draughtsman who created the North Italian Album. 
 

Hand unknown
Frame 
Chalk and ink on parchment 
c. 1500
North Italian Album, SM volume 122/2 
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London 

Giovanni Antonio Amadeo
Façade, detail, Colleoni Chapel 
Polychrome marble
1470-1475 
Bergamo

Specific details in some of the drawings in the North Italian Album reinterpret innovative solutions observed in built architecture starting from the late fifteenth century. For example, the accumulated order of medals, plaquettes and classical motifs in this drawing is very similar to Amadeo’s pilasters for the Colleoni Chapel in Bergamo.

Sant’Antonio (Il Santo), a thirteenth century cathedral in Padua, Italy.

Sant’Antonio (Il Santo) 
1238 – 1310 
Padua

Altichiero da Zevio
St Catherine before the Pagan Idol 
Fresco 
1379-1384
Oratory of St George, Padua
© Elio and Stefano Ciol, Fototeca Centro Studi Antoniani  

Hand unknown
Five-domed basilica 
Ink and pigment on parchment
c. 1500
North Italian Album, SM volume 122/6 
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London 

This five-domed basilica in the North Italian Album simplifies the design of the basilica of Sant’Antonio (known as Il Santo) in Padua, but it also draws from Altichiero da Zevio’s structure to the left of this frescoed scene, using the same perspectival viewpoint to represent a basilica with pediments and lead-tiled domes supported by drums with arched openings. 

Altichiero da Zevio 
Presentation of the donor’s family to the Virgin and Child, detail
Fresco
1379 – 1384
Oratory of St George, Padua 
© Elio and Stefano Ciol, Fototeca Centro Studi Antoniani 

Hand unknown
Gothic structure, peach and duck 
Pen and ink on parchment 
First half of the fifteenth century 
Inv. 855 DR recto, Rothschild collection 
Musée du Louvre, Paris. 
© GrandPalaisRmn (Musée du Louvre) / Thierry Le Mage 

Altichiero’s throne for the Virgin and Child is ornamented with pediments, pinnacles and crockets, and made all the more precious by intricate tracery. The signature lead-tiled domes, paying homage to those of the basilica of Sant’Antonio, crown the whole structure. This composition is reproduced with few variations in this drawing in the Musée du Louvre’s Rothschild collection. The inclusion of scalloped niche domes in the drawing is a classicising detail that demonstrates the draughtsman’s fascination for all’antica (or classical) details as much as the continued relevance of Gothic architectural forms.

Altichiero da Zevio
St Lucy Dragged by Oxen
Fresco
1379 – 1384 
Oratory of St George, Padua. 
© Elio and Stefano Ciol, Fototeca Centro Studi Antoniani 

Hand unknown
Cityscape
Pen and ink on vellum. 
c. 1500 
Inv. 860 DR recto, Rothschild Collection 
Musée du Louvre, Paris. 
© GrandPalaisRmn (Musée du Louvre) / Thierry Le Mage 

This cityscape in the Rothschild collection is a direct copy with classical variations of Altichiero’s striking setting for an episode in the life of St Lucy.  Realised by a later hand compared to the other folio from the same album shown above, this drawing confirms the enduring appeal of Altichiero’s architectural designs, which supersede in inventiveness and ornamental complexity any previous or contemporary built example. Altichiero’s work throws a challenge to large-scale, three-dimensional structures, articulating a little discussed, early form of paragone, or competition between the arts, where painting vies with architecture.

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