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Notes

Sources listed here may be referenced in the bibliography of the exhibition catalogue From Filippo Lippi to Piero della Francesca: Fra Carnevale and the Making of a Renaissance Master (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005).

1. The first reference to Bartolomeo Corradini as Fra Carnevale is in a document of 1465 relating to an altarpiece for the Confraternità del Corpus Domini. The name recurs in a number of other documents as well: See Matteo Mazzalupi's contribution to the appendix.
2. See the essay by Emanuela Daffra in this catalogue.
3. See the appendices by Andrea Di Lorenzo and Matteo Mazzalupi.
4. See Michelini Tocci 1986, pp. 304–5.
5. Among the documents discovered by Don Franco Negroni, and transcribed in an appendix to this catalogue by Matteo Mazzalupi, we find Fra Carnevale and Ottaviano Ubaldini appointed as co-executors of a will drawn up in 1471 by the lawyer Matteo Catani. Ottaviano was among the executors of Fra Carnevale's estate.
6. Viti 1986, pp. 471–72, 477.
7. Franceschini 1970, pp. 442–44, 454.
8. On Piero's depiction of Byzantine dress, see Bridgeman 2002, pp. 88–89.
9. I commentarii, Ghiberti 1998, p. 94.
10. The description is from the dedication to Brunelleschi of the Italian edition of Alberti's treatise on painting, the Della pittura, translated from the Latin in 1436: Alberti 1972, pp. 32–33.
11. See Landucci 1976, p. 55; Carloni 1998.
12. On the convent of Le Murate, see Holmes 2000; Weddle 1997. The principal article on Sant'Ambrogio remains Borsook 1981.
13. For the current scholarship regarding these panels, long thought to have been painted for the Medici palace, see the masterly summary of Gordon 2003, pp. 387–93; they probably date to the late 1430s. Caglioti (2001) identified the Bartolini Salimbeni family as the original patrons.
14. Wohl 1980, pp. 339–40.
15. Ibid., p. 341.
16. Longhi 1927 (1963 ed.), p. 137; Banker 2002, pp. 173–201.
17. The translation is from Gilbert 1980, p. 93.
18. Bruschi (1996, p. 298), urges a much broader consideration of "authorship" than the simple one of identifying the artist who painted a given work: "Al concetto di 'autore'—unico artista 'creatore'—potra, all'esame dei fatti . . . essere sostituito o affiancato, volta a volta, quello, per cosi dire, di 'regista,' di creativo 'responsabile' o 'organizzatore' del lavoro."
19. Piero's and Domenico's work in the sacristy of the great pilgrimage basilica in Loreto has been dated on circumstantial evidence to about 1447 (Wohl 1980, p. 210) or about 1454 (Lightbown 1992, p. 119).
20. Here reference must be made to the fact that earlier scholarship regarding Giovanni Angelo da Camerino has to be discarded in view of the documentary sources published by Di Stefano (2003, pp. 271–78); Di Lorenzo in De Marchi and Giannatiempo López (2002, pp. 196–97); and Di Stefano and Cicconi (2002, pp. 453–56). On the basis of insufficient and, as is now established, wrongly dated documentary information, Zeri (1961, pp. 89–99) identified Giovanni Angelo as the Master of the Barberini Panels. So brilliantly did he argue this case that this identification was widely accepted—even after documents were discovered that pointed clearly toward Fra Carnevale as the most likely candidate. In the exhibition catalogue Il Quattrocento a Camerino (De Marchi and Giannatiempo López 2002), a new profile for Giovanni Angelo was put forward. Confirmation that he was responsible for the finest paintings heretofore ascribed to his fellow Camerino painter (and sometime partner) Girolamo di Giovanni emerged with the discovery of yet another new document (Mazzalupi 2003a). The net result of this is a far clearer basis for understanding the complex cultural exchanges between Florence, Padua, and the Marches in the fifteenth century.
21. See Di Stefano 2003, p. 277.
22. See the appendix by Andrea Di Lorenzo to this catalogue.
23. For the document, see Di Stefano and Cicconi 2002, p. 454.
24. The information occurs in a manuscript in the Biblioteca Valentiniana, Camerino (ms. 144, folios 124v–125r) and has been transcribed by Matteo Mazzalupi: See also Andrea De Marchi's essay in this catalogue.
25. For an analysis of these various currents in Boccati's work, see De Marchi 2002b, pp. 60–62; Minardi 2002, pp. 214–17.
26. In the famous letter patent Federigo issued in 1468 in favor of his architect Luciano Laurana he declared his high esteem for architecture: "fondata in l'arte dell'aritmetica e geometria, che sono, delle sette arti liberali, et delle principali, perche sono in primo gradu certitudinis."
27. For these terms, see Levi Pisetzky 1964, vol. 3, pp. 253–54, 339–41; Herald 1981, pp. 218–20.
28. There is some confusion as to whether Antonio Alberti's altarpiece was painted for the church of San Bartolo or for San Cipriano, outside Urbino. Don Sperandeo is documented as rector of San Cipriano from 1450 to 1456, and it is possible that the saint sometimes identified as Augustine in Alberti's painting is, in fact, Cipriano, and that Don Sperandeo's church was its intended destination. I wish to thank Matteo Mazzalupi for this information; see the appendix by Mazzalupi in this catalogue.
29. See Varese in Dal Poggetto 1992a, pp. 18–19. Andrea De Marchi has informed me that he believes them to be earlier.
30. For Landino's text, see Morisani 1953, p. 270. Baxandall (1974, pp. 143–54) has argued that Landino's judgments closely reflect those of Leon Battista Alberti.
31. Clark 1951, p. 5.
32. The writer was the agent of Lodovico Il Moro in Milan. On these critical terms, see Baxandall 1988, pp. 26, 118–51.
33. Ruda (1993, pp. 126–32) has argued against Lippi's knowledge of and debt to Netherlandish painting. I cannot agree with his conclusions.
34. Bellosi 1990a. However evocative the term, it is misleading in that it suggests that Lippi was less interested in light than was Veneziano. This is not true; he was concerned with investigating a different balance between light and form. Although Bellosi proposes that Veneziano's was the approach Alberti recommended, the matter is more complicated, as Alberti's notion of black and white as modifiers of color needs to be taken into account. On Alberti's theory of color, see Edgerton 1969. For a review of Bellosi, see Christiansen 1990.
35. From Leonardo's notebooks; see Richter 1883, vol. 1, p. 258.
36. The finest analysis of this approach remains that of Shearman 1962, pp. 36–37.
37. See Del Bravo 1973, pp. 12–13, 23–24; Boskovits in Bellosi 2002, pp. 186–88; De Marchi 1996b, pp. 10–11.
38. For these terms, see Kemp 1977.
39. Morisani 1953, p. 270; see the excellent discussion of the critical terms in Baxandall 1988, pp. 128–39.
40. Pope-Hennessy (1980a, pp. 119–28) brilliantly explored Donatello's reinterpretation of the Late Gothic techniques of Gentile da Fabriano, which parallels some of Lippi's experiments. However, Donatello does not revive Gothic forms the way Lippi does, as, for example, in the painter's triptych for Alfonso of Aragon.
41. Arasse 2004, pp. 20–21.
42. Ibid., pp. 16–17; see also Kemp 1977, p. 390. These categories of artistic genius and style seem to me more important for understanding the variations in Lippi's work than the suggestion of an insufficient training to sustain his artistic ambition, as posited by Holmes 1999, p. 15.
43. In his 1510 guidebook Francesco Albertini cites two paintings by Lippi in the church. One of these was commissioned by the rector of the Arcispedale di Santa Maria Nuova, Michele di Fruosino: Payments were made in February 1444 and February 1445. On this, see Merzenich 1997, p. 71; Holmes 1999, pp. 265–66 n. 9. Merzenich speculates—unconvincingly to my way of thinking—that Fruosino's altarpiece is the Annunciation now in San Lorenzo. Parronchi (1964) noted that later guidebooks mention an altarpiece of the Annunciation by Andrea del Castagno (not referred to by Albertini) that included portraits of two men—such an unusual feature that he felt it worth considering whether the painting might be the Annunciation by Lippi now in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome. See Ruda 1993, p. 403.
44. To this list should be added a ruinous painting in the Metropolitan Museum—the remains of what must have been a large and impressive altarpiece for a Benedictine establishment. See Ruda 1993, pp. 416–18.
45. See the appendix by Andrea Di Lorenzo for a discussion of the documents.
46. See Borsook 1981, p. 163.
47. De Angelis and Conti 1976, pp. 101–2.
48. See Ruda 1993, pp. 426; Lachi 1995, pp. 21–24.
49. Annamaria Bernacchioni, who kindly checked the documents for this exhibition, has noted in a letter that Piero di Lorenzo, "dipintore in Por' san Piero," was active as an artisan: In 1421 he painted a dossal for the chapel of Ilarione dei Bardi in Santa Lucia de' Magnoli; in 1440 a "cassettina per deporre le ossa" for the marchese Ugo di Toscana; and between 1437 and 1443 undertook a number of minor tasks for the Arcispedale di Santa Maria Nuova.
50. Berenson 1932b (1969 ed.), p. 188. As Andrea Di Lorenzo points out in the appendix to this catalogue, the documents may refer to two artists named Piero di Lorenzo, one of whom—the "Piero di Lorenzo dipintore"—may in fact be the Master of the Castello Nativity.
51. The significance of Domenico Veneziano's lost fresco cycle in the Baglioni palace in Perugia has perhaps been overstated, to the detriment of the importance of Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli, both of whom also worked in the city. Zeri (1961, pp. 40–42) placed Veneziano's cycle at the very center of his reconstruction of Umbrian and Marchigian painting, but this was based on the erroneous assumption that the existing letters between Giovanni Angelo and Giovanni de'Medici and between Giovanni Angelo and his Camerino relations dated from 1451, whereas we now know that two of the letters were written in 1443 and 1444: See Di Stefano and Cicconi 2002, pp. 452–53.
52. See, especially, De Marchi in De Marchi and Giannatiempo López 2002, pp. 174–75; De Marchi 2002b, pp. 42–46.
53. Borsook 1981, p. 195 n. 113.
54. This suggestion was made by Annamaria Bernacchioni; see the appendix by Andrea Di Lorenzo.
55. For a possible identification of Andreino with Andrea del Castagno, and Piero di Benedetto with Piero della Francesca, see the appendix by Andrea Di Lorenzo.
56. See the discussion in the biography for the Pratovecchio Master.
57. Ruda 1993, pp. 520–23, 534–36. Holmes (1999, pp. 151–52) provides a good analysis of the relationship, and accepts the traditional identification of Giovanni di Francesco with Giovanni di Francesco da Rovezzano. On this, see the discussion in his biography and in that of the Pratovecchio Master in this catalogue.
58. I owe this suggestion to Annamaria Bernacchioni.
59. Ruda (1993, p. 402) presents a comprehensive account of the attributional history of the predella. The ascription was first made by Pudelko (1936, pp. 61–62), but with the idea that the predella was painted in the late 1440s. We now know that by that time Giovanni di Francesco's association with Lippi had been severed. Bellosi (1990b, pp. 21, 31–42) argued against the attribution, believing the predella to be the work of Fra Carnevale, but he was unaware of the documents indicating that Fra Carnevale only joined the workshop in 1445, and he summarily dismissed the documents associating Giovanni di Francesco with Lippi.
60. See the comments of Procacci 1961, pp. 62– 63.
61. Ibid, pp. 30–34.
62. Fahy in Di Lorenzo 2001, pp. 71–72; Angelini in Bellosi 1990a, pp. 125–27.
63. De Angelis and Conti 1976, p. 109.
64. On the date, see Ruda 1993, pp. 419–20. For Marsuppini, see Martines 1963, pp. 127–31.
65. See Christiansen 1979, p. 200.
66. For a discussion of the date of this altarpiece, for which no documents are known, see Wohl 1980, pp. 125–26; Chelazzi Dini in Bellosi 1992a, p. 98.
67. Ruda (1993, p. 419) gives his reasons for believing that the altarpiece was conceived as a trilobed, open-field painting, much like the Sant'Ambrogio Coronation of the Virgin. This view is based on an eighteenth-century inventory describing how the three panels had "composed one single [panel]" ("quali tre quadri sono in tavola, e ne componevano, uno solo"). Taken in context, the passage says no more than that the three panels, when framed, formed a single altarpiece. The composition, with groups of figures carefully distributed on each of the three panels, would be inconceivable as an open-field painting.
68. For background information on the Murate altarpiece, see Holmes 2000; for the novitiate chapel's altarpiece, see Holmes 1999, pp. 192–99.
69. The date of the novitiate chapel altarpiece is undocumented, but a consensus places it in the early to mid-1440s. A sixteenth-century chronicle of Le Murate states that the church and its paintings were finished in 1443. However, it seems virtually impossible for Lippi to have completed two altarpieces for Le Murate by that date, given the other paintings he had in hand. The Sant'Ambrogio ledgers record a payment on April 15, 1445, to Lippi's account for the Murate altarpiece. More than likely the chronicle conflates the dedication of the church building with the undertaking of the altarpieces to add luster to the initiative of the abbess, Madonna Scolastica Rondinelli; the chronicle is transcribed in Weddle 1997, p. 379.
70. Ruda 1984. A somewhat different approach to the issue of style is taken by Holmes (1999, pp. 215–40) in an analysis of the Sant'Ambrogio Coronation of the Virgin and the Murate Annunciation. Curiously, she does not address the issue of chronology but implausibly believes these stylistically divergent altarpieces could have been conceived at about the same time. See note 68, above, for the very little information we possess regarding this painting. The style of the Murate Annunciation cannot be reconciled with a date of 1443.
71. I commentarii, Ghiberti 1998, p. 95.
72. Angelini (in Bellosi 1990a, pp. 73–77) gives a fine and convincing chronology of Paolo Uccello's work—still a matter of much discussion. See also the remarks of Bellosi (1992b, pp. 25–27), on the affinities of Uccello's fascination with perspective and that of Piero della Francesca.
73. See the contrary view of Andrea De Marchi in his essay in this catalogue. Like him, I, too, had at one time thought this work by the Master of the Castello Nativity.
74. The Baltimore painting could not be lent to the exhibition. This is unfortunate, as the combination of delicacy and flatness and of refinement and lack of anatomical interest is very like what we find in the work of Fra Carnevale. Interestingly, this was one of the pictures Offner illustrated to demonstrate the degree to which certain characteristics in Fra Carnevale's work derive from the work of Filippo Lippi; see Offner 1939, p. 248, as school of Lippi.
75. On this work, see the entry by Andrea De Marchi. While I am in agreement that this painting is by the same artist responsible for the predella of Filippo Lippi's Annunciation in San Lorenzo and a small painting of Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, I am not convinced that the person in question is Fra Carnevale. See also note 59, above.