Cappella della Maddalena.
Many years ago I bought a beautifully illustrated biography of the Florentine painter Giotto (ca. 1266-1337), written by Francesca Flores d’Arcais. The author dedicated just a few lines to the heavily damaged fourteenth-century frescoes in a chapel of the Bargello in Florence. Since their rediscovery in 1840 there has been discussion about who painted these frescoes: Giotto himself or his assistants? Flores d’Arcais attributed them entirely to Giotto’s assistants. That position was and still is controversial. The Bargello itself claims that Giotto was definitely involved in the planning and execution of the frescoes. As it is reasonable to assume that they were completed in 1337, the frescoes may have been among the last works of the great artist.
History
The chapel in the Bargello is known as the Cappella della Maddalena or Cappella del Podestà. It was built between 1316 and 1322. The Bargello was struck by a fire in 1332 and then by a flooding of the river Arno on 4 November 1333. It is therefore assumed that the frescoes in the Magdalene Chapel were painted between 1333-1334 and 1337. The latter year is based on the text below a fresco of Saint Venantius. That text mentions the podestà (mayor) Fidesmino da Varano, who was in office in the second half of 1337. The walls of the chapel featured frescoes of Paradise (back wall) and Hell (entrance wall), as well as scenes from the lives of Saints John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene. We know that Giotto died on 8 January 1337, so it is certainly possible that he designed the frescoes in the years before his death. The Bargello moreover attributes to him the frescoes of the vault (unfortunately heavily damaged) and the upper part of Paradise (ditto). Other painters who may have contributed are Giotto’s assistants Taddeo Gaddi, Maso di Banco and Stefano Fiorentino.
Back wall with Paradise.
The choice of Paradise, Hell, John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene was presumably influenced by the fact that condemned criminals spent the last hours before their execution in the chapel. The presence of Paradise and Hell is self-explanatory, because criminals would ultimately go to one of these. In most cases it would be Hell of course, but perhaps a fair dose of penitence could ensure a place in Heaven in the end. A condemned man would furthermore automatically associate Mary Magdalene with penitence, as she was considered the patron saint of sinners who had repented. Saint John the Baptist was, of course, the patron saint of Florence, but a convict would also have seen him as someone who was executed. After all, the tetrarch Herod Antipas had ordered his beheading by a guard at the request of his stepdaughter Salome.
Hell.
In 1574 the Bargello was converted into a prison. The chapel was split into two floors and the frescoes were whitewashed. In 1840 a fresco fragment was rediscovered, an event that was followed by the rediscovery of the other scenes as well. Unfortunately the state of conservation of the frescoes was deplorable. They were heavily retouched in the nineteenth century, a process that involved the repainting of entire parts. These additions were removed again during restorations in the twentieth century. Of course it is, on the one hand, commendable that additions based on nineteenth-century fantasies are now no longer visible, but on the other hand the removal again makes clear how badly damaged the fresco cycle actually is. Faded shapes and colours alternate with spots where the frescoes are lost altogether. Many visitors of the chapels will shed a few tears over the loss of so much beautiful art.
Dante and the other frescoes
The frescoes are famous because of the presence of a portrait of a man in a red robe. He is holding a book and a branch of apples. There is a fair degree of consensus that it is the famous poet Dante Alighieri (ca. 1265-1321) that we see here. The book he is holding is usually identified as his Divine Comedy. If the man is indeed Dante, then we are looking at the oldest known portrait of the poet, painted at most 16 years after his death and therefore definitely older than his presumed portrait in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence (from ca. 1360). The portrait can be seen as a kind of rehabilitation of Dante, who had after all died in exile. After their victory over the Ghibellines the Florentine Guelphs had split into two new factions, the Neri (“Blacks”) and Bianchi (“Whites”). Dante was a member of the Whites, the faction that ultimately ended up on the losing side. The Blacks were supported by Pope Bonifatius VIII (1294-1303) and in 1301 managed to bring down the Whites. White leaders were punished and in 1302 Dante was banished from Florence. The poet wandered through Italy for many years, staying in many different places and ultimately settling in Ravenna in 1318, where he completed his Divine Comedy. Dante died in Ravenna in 1321 and found his final resting place there, in spite of Florentine attempts to repatriate his bones to Florence.
Portrait of Dante, fifth from the left with the apple branch.
Dante is part of a group of people who are admitted to Paradise. On the other side of the chapel, on the entrance wall, we see a truly terrifying depiction of the Devil (image above). It strongly reminded me of the Devil of the Last Judgment in the Baptistery of Florence. Of the scenes about the life of Saint John the Baptist a mere two survive, a meagre number compared to the eight scenes about the life of Mary Magdalene. In the image below we for instance see how she is presented with the sacred host by a saint who may or may not be the monk and priest Zosimas of Palestine (it is possible that Mary Magdalene was confused with the former prostitute Mary of Egypt). In the next scene she receives the blessing of a bishop just before her death. In the upper part of the fresco angels take her up to heaven. The message for condemned criminals was clear: penitence can be rewarding. What is interesting is that Giotto painted similar scenes in the Cappella della Maddalena in Assisi.
Scenes from the life of Mary Magdalene.
A final fresco in which we may recognise Giotto’s hand can be found all the way on the other side of the Bargello in the Sala del Michelangelo. I am referring to a detached fresco fragment that was originally in a different location (although I have been unable to figure out what this location was). The fragment is a Maestà. The Madonna and Child share a throne, with the Madonna looking to the left and accepting a white and a red rose, while the child is looking to the right and reaching for a pear-shaped piece of fruit. The figures offering the gifts have regretfully lost their heads. According to the caption the work features a Madonna and Child and allegories of the six neighbourhoods or sestieri of Florence. As we know that these sestieri were abolished in 1343, the fresco must have been painted before that time. The Bargello dates it to ca. 1340. This means that Giotto cannot himself have contributed to it. After all, he died in early 1337.
Maestà del Bargello.