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Art History With or Without Names (2/9) Adoration of the Christ Child with Saint Jerome, Saint Mary Magdalene, and Saint Eustace Station details
The painting by the artist Paolo Uccello shows Mary kneeling in front of the baby Jesus in the upper part. Joseph is sitting behind her. Further back you can see a donkey and a cow and a palm tree. Angels are seen in the sky. In the lower part the three holy kings kneel.
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Adoration of the Christ Child with Saint Jerome, Saint Mary Magdalene, and Saint Eustace

Paolo Uccello

Dimensions:
H 48.5cm W 111cm
Year:
around 1436
Place:
KunsthalleKarlsruhe@ZKM

Description

Here, two adoration scenes are combined unusually, one above the other. The work is attributed to Paolo Uccello, one of the great masters of the early Italian Renaissance. Typical for this period is the tentative approach to reality utilising various pictorial means. For example, the clear structure of the seascape, which gradually stretches towards the horizon, the almost mathematical stylisation of the palm tree, or the attempt to create corporeality in the doll-like figures, for example, through drapery.

Who Is Who

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If you look for documents about this painting in the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, you won’t find anything under the letter U for Uccello. The reason for this is that the story of the painting is actually the story of an intensive search for a name, which has only just come to an end.

The cover of the inventory file for Uccello’s painting at the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe with many handwritten notes of possible names.

The Name Game

Matteo de’ Pasti, Florentine, in the manner of Alesso Baldovinetti and Benedetto Buonfigli — these are just some of the names that are found in catalogues or inventories in reference to this painting.

Ausschnitt aus dem Gemälde von Paolo Uccello: kniende Maria mit gefalteten Händen und sitzender Josef, das Bein überschlagen und den Kopf in die Hand gestützt.

Under Investigation

What to do with an unsigned painting, about which one has hardly any reliable facts like a date or place of origin? Attributions and non-attributions, such as those in the case of this nocturnal adoration scene, are rather like a trial based on circumstantial evidence. One compares, checks the hand of the suspected creators, searches for similar compositions, motifs, painting techniques, and so on. For example, on the predella of an altarpiece in Quarate, a small place not far from Florence, one finds a mirrored version of Joseph, lost in thought, who in our painting is sitting behind Mary and the Christ Child. The colours, three-dimensional representation of figures and plants, and the design of the space through perspective all point to Florence during the second third of the 15th century.

The First Clue

Soon after the painting arrived in the collection of the Kunsthalle in 1857, it was suggested that Paolo Uccello was the author of the unusual composition, constructed as though in layers. In the 1930s, people became more cautious again: it was still suspected that the artist came from Uccello’s studio, but in the absence of reliable facts the author was simply named the Master of the Karlsruhe Adoration and the work was made the nucleus of a group where all the paintings were given the same artist’s name.

In the meantime, research tends to equate this provisionally named Master with Paolo Uccello, a highly influential master painter of the early Renaissance.

Ausschnitt aus dem Gemälde von Paolo Uccello: Drei Heilige knien vor einer Felshöhle. Im Vordergrund ein Löwe, ein Hirsch und ein Hund.

The Clue Is in the Name

However, it’s worth taking a closer look the name itself: the painter’s name was actually Paolo di Dono. “Uccello” was just a nickname he was given because he was passionate about depicting animals, especially birds — uccello means bird in Italian. The animals in the Karlsruhe painting are not only possible clues to the artist’s identity or just a charming feature, they are also clues to the identity of the saints depicted: a lion accompanies Saint Jerome, and a stag and a dog Saint Eustace. The names of the saints, in turn, could be clues to the origin of the panel: Does it come from a church dedicated to one of these saints?

The search goes on…

Dates and facts