Marco posted:
The detail you provided certainly makes a claim to being a candle, but why would Giotto deviate from depicting Humility's candle as shorter, held by one hand and spiraled as he himself had done and Pisano as well? The strongest evidence is of course Giotto’s own
oeuvre and he painted the spiral candle in the Franciscan Allegories in Assisi sometime between 1306 and 1311; the devotional painting in question came right after this, c. 1315-1320. If both works are Franciscan-commissioned then what is the reason for deviating in the way this attribute was depicted? While the topmost fleck of paint is ostensibly the wick/flame (but as you say there is paint loss here, so who knows),
what is the hemispherical pommel at the top of the candle? If it were upturned I could imagine it being a device for catching wax, but it is downturned where it could catch a slipping gripped hand…such as a pommel one finds on a sword (Giotto's Temperance in the Scrovegni chapel):
These possibly irreconcilable minor issues aside (perhaps the pommel is a vestige, signifying the transformation of Temperance’s sword attribute into the truly peaceful symbol of the candle?), I’m still willing to concede the object is a candle; however my answer as to why the spiral candle was reconfigured was because Giotto was grappling with the problem of humility being a cognate of temperance, which it was. I think Mjhurst’s suggestion that the figure is a pilgrim warrants further consideration here so that the figure is not the Virtue herself (with spiral candle) but an exemplar - an actual pilgrim displaying humility with a more homely candle (than the expensive one usually held by the heavenly virtue). But’s let return to your full objection before continuing…
Marco wrote:
Please also note that the Assisi fresco includes, next to Humility, Obedience, dressed as a nun in black with a white veil, as I think we see in the Madonna with saints and virtues. So I take the woman dressed as a nun in black and white to represent Obedience. If you can propose Giotto related paintings supporting a different explanation, I will be very interested.
The context here is seven virtues which begs the question as to why two of the 7 standard virtues are supposedly replaced; I’ve already hinted that an exemplar might have replaced the Virtue herself for Temperance so the same may hold true for Faith/Obedience. But first let’s review the unsubstantiated misattribution by the Getty author: Justice, which the Getty author calls “Faith”. I don’t think anyone can dispute that Justice is precisely in the center of the virtues just as she is in the Scrovegni series and has the exact same attributes forgiven/condemned on either side of her and has the same crown. Both I and the Getty call the red figure reaching up to infant Jesus as Charity, and given that Charity’s theological virtue color is red this is fairly clear-cut. But the Getty calls the figure on the far left “Hope” even though she has no attributes other than being clothed in white, the theological color of Faith. Given Charity is appropriately colored one would expect the flanking theological Virtue of Mary/Jesus to also be appropriately colored – and she is. The Getty is simply wrong here about Faith – she is not what I call Justice (even if “divine Justice” of the final Judgement) and is the white robed figure instead. If the three theological virtues then are wearing their traditional colors (such as we find in the contemporary Aquinas fresco) then where is green Hope? If the Virtue was replaced by an exemplar – perhaps the commissioner him/herself – then it would have been inappropriate to have this figure explicitly equated to a heavenly Virtue.
Who was the commissioner? A Franciscan, yes, but was it a monk…or a nun? It was typical to place the patrons at the lower left and right corners of the painting, such as we find in Masaccio’s Trinity, where the male patron is traditionally on the left and the female on the right:
Of all the five virtues on the lower row only the one on the far right looks upwards directly at Christ along with Charity and St. Francis (both directly above her), thus distinguishing her from the cardinal virtues, and signifying her association with St. Francis.
What then are the lower left and right persons in my revised theory, after taking in all of the input here? The Temperance exemplar of humility is a neophyte/applicant (a special kind of "pilgrim") to the order, head bowed; the Hope exemplar of Obedience is a full-fledged nun of the Franciscan order, able to look directly at Mary/Jesus. This also explains Faith above the pilgrim-supplicant – Faith’s arms open to receive the woman pledging herself to the Order (John the Baptist above Faith appropriate in baptizing/admitting one into the faith). On the other side the obedient nun/Hope gives her heart to Jesus just as Charity above her (and will of course carry out the Charitable works of the Franciscans). Such a devotional piece would not be out of character for a convent, perhaps in the monastic cell where the sisterhood received new charges.
Phaeded
PS I'm still confused about the nun's habit - the Poor Clares of the Franciscans wore a dark veil, not a white one. Was there another order of Franciscan nuns in the trecento?
