Francesco di Vannuccio, « Christus am Kreuz zwischen Maria und Jonannes » ; « Thronende Maria mit dem Kind und heiligen »

Francesco di Vannuccio (Sienne, documenté de 1356 à 1389)

Christus am Kreuz zwischen Maria und Jonannes (Le Christ sur la croix entre Marie et Jean, saint Augustin et donateur augustin), recto ; Thronende Maria mit dem Kind und heiligen (Vierge à l’Enfant en majesté et saints), verso, 1380.

Étendard processionnel à double face, tempéra sur panneau et verre doré, 39 x 23 cm (avec son encadrement).

Inscriptions :

• (paroles prononcées par Augustin) : « vulnerasti dne cOr MeUm caritate tua » [1]« Vulnerasti domine cor meum. caritate tua » (« Tu as blessé mon cœur par ta charité »).
• (phylactère du moine augustin agenouillé) : « In te dne speravi nô côfundar in aeternum » [2]In te, Domine, speravi : non confundar in aeternum. » (« En toi, Seigneur, j’ai mis mon espérance : je ne serai pas confondu à jamais »). Ps 30, 2.
• (au recto, sur le cadre, date et signature) : « FRANCISChVS DEVANNVCIO DESENIS PINSIT HOC HOPVS MCCCLXX[X] » [3]« Franciscus de Vannuccio de Senis pinsit hoc opus MCCCLXXX » (« Francisco di Vannuccio de Sienne peignît cette œuvre en 1380. »
• (sur le parchemin du donateur) : « Misere mei et audi orationes meas » [4]« Misere mei et audi orationes meas » (« Aie pitié de moi et entend mes prières »). D’après le Psaume 50. Le roi David y demande pardon pour avoir séduit la femme d’autrui : Miserere mei, Deus: secundum magnam misericordiam tuam (« Ô Dieu ! aie pitié de moi dans ta grande bonté »). Ps 30.m, 2 et 70, 1, ainsi que le dernier verset (closing … Poursuivre

Provenance :

Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz).

Francesco di Vannuccio

« Chronologically, the iconography of Augustine’s Ecstasy appears next in Tuscany, in the lower nave of the Hermits’ church of San Salvatore at Lecceto in the Sienese contado.

Here Augustine is represented alongside St John the Baptist, St Nicholas of Tolentino and an unidentified bishop saint in a votive fresco dated to 1374 by a donor inscription in the lower border (fig. 58). Augustine wears the Hermits’ black habit under his cope, which again opens to reveal a bloody wound in his chest. The upper portion of the fresco, including St Augustine’s head, was lost with the construction of an organ loft on the counter façade in the seventeenth century, but sixteenth-century descriptions record a now-lost ‘Salvatore’ above the saint’s head, and its original position is signalled by the three rays that descend to strike his heart. Augustine points to his wound with his left hand, which clutches a scroll bearing the inscription: You have wounded my heart with your charity’ (Vulnerasti cor meum de charitate tua »).

It is impossible to say whether the subject of Augustine’s vision in the Lecceto fresco was a representation of the Trinity or of Christ alone, as a strict reading of

‘Salvatore’ might suggest, but six years later the Sienese painter Francesco di Vannuccio included Augustine and the same inscription in a Crucifixion scene with no obvious reference to the Trinity. Vannuccio’s double-sided processional standard, dated to 1380 and housed today in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, has a verre eglomisé panel of the Virgin and Child with saints and an Augustinian donor on the back? » On the front, the artist painted a conventional Crucifixion flanked by the Virgin and St John the Evangelist with the artist’s dated inscription below (fig. 59). To the right an Augustinian friar kneels in prayer beside the Evangelist, his silent petition spoken by a flowing banderole.? To the left Augustine contemplates Christ on the cross with his hands raised in fervent devotion. The painter omits the wound in the saint’s chest, but the same phrase ‘the left Augustine contemplates Christ on the cross with his hands raised in fervent devotion.

The painter omits the wound in the saint’s chest, but the same phrase « Vulnerasti domine cor meum caritate tua » links his gaze to the side wound of Christ, from which blood and water gush forth.28

Donal Cooper, « St Augustine’s Ecstasy before the Trinity in the Art of the Hermits, c. 1360-c. 1440 », dans Louise BOURDUA et Anne DUNLOP (éd.), Art and the Augustinian Order in early Renaissance Italy, Londres, Routledge (coll. Faith and Culture in the Medieval West), 2007, pp. 183-204.