The Earliest Works of Andrea Del Castagno

* The present study is the by-product of a monograph on Andrea del Castagno, on the research for which I have been engaged sporadically since 1951. My studies have been supported by grants from Washington University, aiding my travel during the summers of 1951 and 1956 and financing new photography, by a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and by a Fulbright Research Fellowship, both granted for work in Italy during 1954–1955. I wish to express my gratitude for this assistance, and for the kind cooperation of the staffs of the Superintendency of Galleries in Florence, especially Dr. Ugo Procacci, and of the Superintendency of Monuments in Venice, especially Dr. Michelangelo Muraro. Dr. Gino Corti has assisted me by checking against the originals in the Archivio di Stato in Florence the published versions of documents concerning Castagno. I am grateful for the interest and encouragement of Mr. Bernard Berenson and for the privilege of using his great library at Settignano, as well as for the helpfulness of Dr. Ulrich Middeldorf, Director of the German Institute in Florence. Portions of this study were presented before the College Art Association of America at its annual meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, in January, 1953. My remarks at that time concerning the authorship of the vault frescoes at San Tarasio were proved largely erroneous by the recent cleaning of the frescoes, which I have since had the opportunity to study at length from scaffolding with excellent light. The concluding section of this article will appear in a subsequent issue of the ART BULLETIN.

Abstract

FEW great painters of the Florentine Quattrocento have been so persistently misunderstood as Andrea del Castagno. For three centuries the legend that he had murdered Domenico Veneziano blackened his name and diverted attention from his immense artistic gifts. The date of his birth has had to be revised about thirty years forward, that of his death more than twenty years backward, with drastic consequences not only to the accepted notion of his longevity, but to his chronological position in the development of Renaissance art, and to the proposed dates of his principal works. At least two thirds of Andrea's paintings mentioned in sources and documents have perished, and few of the survivors have escaped attribution to other masters. The other great painters of the early Renaissance did not suffer quite so severely. Despite the inevitable accretion of errors, key works by Masaccio, Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Uccello, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Ghirlandaio, and Botticelli were continuously visible since their creation and recognized by all. But before the middle of the nineteenth century only the Niccolò da Tolentino and the two Crucifixions from Santa Maria degli Angeli remained as evidences of Castagno's style. The Famous Men and Women were rediscovered in 1847, and the majestic cycle of frescoes at Sant' Apollonia, which we think of today as Andrea's crowning achievement, was quite unknown until about 1890. On discovery it was attributed to Paolo Uccello. Although the two great frescoes at the Santissima Annunziata had occasionally been seen for brief periods, the covering Mannerist altarpieces were always immediately replaced before them, and these masterpieces were not visible to the public or even photographed until the opening decade of the present century. Only in 1920 was Castagno's name discovered on the frescoes of San Tarasio.