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Updated: June 27, 2025
This work, which was executed with fine judgment and design, brought him much honour, as did also some little figures painted on the predella of the picture, in which is S. John baptizing Christ, a King causing the wife and children of S. Gismondo to be thrown into a well, S. Dominic burning the books of the heretics, Christ presenting to S. Catharine of Siena two crowns, one of roses and the other of thorns, and S. Bernardino of Siena preaching on the Piazza of Siena to a vast multitude.
As is so often the case in predella pictures, especially with Signorelli's, the spontaneity and freedom of execution, and even of conception, is much greater here than in the more carefully thought-out and finished works.
For the Chapel of S. Bernardo, likewise, in the Church of S. Fermo, a convent of Friars of S. Francis, he painted a panel-picture of the first-named Saint, with some scenes from his life in the predella.
For there you may see Madonna, her sweet, ambiguous face neither happy nor sad, with the Prince of Life in her lap, while on the one side stand S. Sebastian and St. John Baptist, and on the other perhaps S. Jacopo and S. Roch. Below the donors kneel a man and his wife and little daughter, while in the predella you see our Lord's birth, baptism, and condemnation.
At this same time there was a painter in the city of Foligno, Niccolò Alunno, who was held to be excellent, for it was little the custom before Pietro Perugino's day to paint in oil, and many were held to be able men who did not afterwards justify this opinion. Niccolò therefore gave no little satisfaction with his works, since, although he only painted in distemper, he portrayed the heads of his figures from life, so that they appeared alive, and his manner won considerable praise. In S. Agostino at Foligno there is a panel by his hand with a Nativity of Christ, and a predella with little figures. At Assisi he painted a banner that is borne in processions, besides the panel of the high-altar in the Duomo, and another panel in S. Francesco. But the best painting that Niccolò ever did was in a chapel in the Duomo, where, among other things, there is a Piet
The Tree of Life, the Fall, or Eve holding the Apple, are constantly introduced allusively in the Madonna pictures, as ornaments of her throne, or on the predella of an altar-piece, representing the Annunciation, the Nativity, or the Coronation. RACHEL figures as the ideal of contemplative life. RUTH, as the ancestress of David. ABISHAG, as "the Virgin who was brought to the King."
'It is in the next room, said he, 'but the predella is here on the next easel. I have removed it from underneath the picture to work upon. 'The head of Ruth has been taken out, said my mother, turning to me: 'but isn't it like an old master? You ought to see the marvellous Pre-Raphaelite pictures at Mr. Graham's and Mr. Leyland's, Henry.
Giovanni Santi may here be seen almost as well as at Cagli; and of Perugino there is one truly magnificent altar-piece lunette, great centre panel, and predella dusty in its present condition, but splendidly painted, and happily not yet restored or cleaned. It is worth journeying to Fano to see this.
In the former especially, the dramatic realism with which the Apostles are depicted, as they argue with animated gestures, is extraordinarily vivid. Yet another predella picture "The Feast in the House of Simon," now in the Dublin Gallery belongs approximately to this period.
A MS. of the Abbate Galgano Bicchi, which gives the date, speaks of it as an Ancona, the centre of which was a statue of S. Christopher by Jacopo della Quercia, and with a predella, which the Abbate minutely describes.
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