How many people had heard of Francesco di Stefano before London’s National Gallery decided to stage a mini-exhibition of his work? Better known as Pesellino (all things being relative) he flourished in Florence in the middle of the fifteenth century, where he was the darling of the ruling Medici and known to the more artistically-minded members of the papal household – including Pope Nicholas V. Since then he has, however, languished in obscurity.
Pesellino took his name from his grandfather, the artist known as Pesello, whom we know was active in late-fourteenth- and early-fifteenth-century Florence as what the curators describe as “a specialist in banners and festive ephemera”, and who taught his grandson the rudiments of painting. Pesello, they note, means “a pea”, and so his grandson became “the little pea”. While this is true, it also means something else: let the reader understand.
Other contemporaries have fared rather better in the memory: Andrea del Castagno; Domenico Veneziano; Benezzo Gozzoli. Pesellino worked closely with the famous Carmelite priest-painter Filippo Lippi, and, as Gabriele Finaldi observes in his foreword to the show’s catalogue, became “an admired and successful artist with a thriving workshop”. And then, suddenly, nothing. The rising Pesellino simply disappeared.
Pesellino’s longstanding absence from the artistic canon may well be attributed to little more than bad luck – or perhaps the frequently inscrutable vagaries of Providence. In the summer of 1457 plague hit Florence as it sweltered in the beating summer heat. This was a regular occurrence and no great surprise – except perhaps to Pesellino himself, who suddenly died. He was only 35, and thus remains a great “what if” of the Italian Renaissance.
Giorgio Vasari later mentioned Pesellino, tantalisingly hinting at his cut-short genius; for almost everything else we know about him we are reliant on Nathaniel Silver, who has been Pesellino’s latter-day champion and observer. He contributes the opening chapter of the slender and elegant catalogue, where he talks of his subject’s talent and versatility – and of the opportunities available amid the wealth of the Florence of his day.
The paintings on display in Room 46, that little space that sits like a side-chapel at the top of the National Gallery’s main staircase, give just a glimpse into that world; but it is an exhilarating and breathless one. They begin with Pesellino’s Stories of David panels, probably commissioned for the Medici as domestic rather than liturgical pieces; their sheer detail and quality sets the scene for everything else that follows.
The Stories of David form something of a narthex; over the rest of the space towers the Pistoia Altarpiece, which was finished by Lippi after Pesellino’s untimely death. It’s a vibrant physical rendition of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and because the National Gallery knows how to do this sort of thing, it’s viewed as if it were above an altar. Cut up in the 18th century, the jigsaw was later reunited by the National Gallery with only one missing piece.
Other items represent Pesellino’s earlier period – which is a strange thing to think of, given that he was really only active for about 15 years – when he focussed on high-quality smaller works. Little pieces destined for predelle, the wide spaces at the bottom of altarpieces, just behind the gradine on which rested the cross and candlesticks, perhaps should seem obscure – but not for Pesellino. His scream with vivid life of the tales of the saints and their miracles.
Two of his predella pieces for the Novitiate Chapel at Santa Croce in Florence are here, on loan from the Louvre; the other three are in the Uffizi Gallery. The Stigmatisation of St Francis has a modern sci-fi quality to it, while The Miracle of the Black Leg recounts the work of Ss Cosmas & Damian in removing the cancerous leg of a white Christian and exchanging it for a healthy one removed from a recently-deceased black co-religionist.
Pious tales abound. A Miracle of St Silvester tells the story, in no more than a few inches by a few more, of the wretched Zambri – summoned with other philosophers by the Empress Helena to persuade her son, Constantine, to embrace Christianity. Zambri claimed to have killed a bull by uttering to it the name of God; when he failed to revive it holy Silvester saw the Devil’s work and brought it back to life himself, after which everyone converted.
Other subjects are more conventional: a diminutive diptych Annunciation sings in minute subtlety of the contrast of heaven and earth, light and shade – but you have to squint to appreciate it. Meanwhile a Virgin and Child, the baby all puppy-fat and both sporting golden dinner-plate haloes, is a prototype for mass production. Like so many of his peers it was not enough for Pesellino to be an accomplished artist; he had to be a businessman as well.
Some of his less-sacred offerings also appear in the form of colourful allegories from the classical canon: not least his collaboration with Zanobi Strozzi on a miniature edition of Silius Italicus’s De Secundo Bello Punico. Rome and Carthage both appear as virginal young women in stylised seascapes, but with the very slightest of nuances Pesellino lets you know immediately who eventually comes out on top. Spoiler alert: Carthaga delenda est.
Far and away the star of the show, if there can be one, is surely King Melchior Sailing to the Holy Land, a fantastical take on the Epiphany story. Perhaps it’s one worth meditating on at this time of year, because of course we actually know very little about the Magi save that they presented gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. If indeed there were three of them, it seems unlikely that they would have travelled alone – or even together.
That’s Pesellino’s take here. Melchior sits in the largest ship of a whole fleet traversing an impossibly narrow sea. The towns on the coast and hillside round about are those of fifteenth-century Tuscany, and so are the costumes of the dozens of onlookers and attendants. The details are fantastically good, from the folds of cloth to the sea spray to the pinkish sun-kissed clouds reflecting the first light of dawn. It is all heartrendingly intense.
A few pieces can hardly do Pesellino full justice, but what there is is spectacular. What might have been, we can never know. Perhaps he might have gone off the boil, but it seems unlikely. There is a vibrancy to his surviving work which speaks of longevity and lasting vigour, and there seems little chance of his patronage having dried up as the great Florentine families vied with each other as patrons of the arts. He might even have been called to Rome.
This exhibition is small, but perfectly formed. It has brought Pesellino out of the shadows and presented him for the world to see, should they choose to look. Hot on the heels of its much larger St Francis of Assisi show earlier this year, the National Gallery has done it again: presenting religious art in ways that speak to the layman while retaining a sense of the sacred. In this day and age that is not something to be taken for granted.
Pesellino: A Renaissance Master Revealed is at the National Gallery in London until 10 March 2024
© Worcester Art Museum / Bridgeman Images
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