10/25/2024
It is humbling to be surrounded by these monumental frescoes from the 1370s and 80s by Altichiero da Zevio, one of the most important trecento artists from Northern Italy. During our visit this summer, we found it especially moving to witness a young custodian practising baroque violin sonatas in the empty Oratory of St. George, covered from wall to wall in Altichiero’s frescoes.
Altichiero was one of few artists tasked with the creation of fresco cycles across multiple building complexes in the center of Padua over the course of the 14th century, which included Giotto’s ground-breaking work for the Scrovegni Chapel. The unique and extraordinary existence of this ‘Padova Urbs Picta’ (Painted City of Padua) attests to a decisive moment in art history: when Italian painting broke away from the earlier Byzantine model practised by Duccio and Cimabue in Siena and Florence, the innovative impetus originating with Giotto and his disciples in the Veneto resulted in new possibilities of perspective, volume and texture, and also the authentic portrayal of human emotions. A visual parallel to the writing of Petrarch, if you may, whose portrait Altichiero included in one of his frescoes in the Oratory of St. George.
We are thrilled to have facilitated the latest acquisition at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford of a Crucifixion, attributed to the young Altichiero, or in the very least, an artist who provides a critical link between him and Giotto. Painted in the Veneto around 1350, it is the first trecento painting to be acquired by America’s oldest public museum in 70 years.