THE 7JOURNET OF THE THREE KINGS BY SASSETTA
BY ROGER FRY
ASSETTA is one of those minor artists
ho claims a peculiar position, a curi-
ously intimate and personal one, in the
affections. The history of art would
have been almost the same if he had
not existed. We do not rely on him for the
revelation of any essential truth of form or any
great discovery in design. He is rather a story-
teller who uses the pictorial form. None the less
there are many greater artists who claim our
respect and admirationbut towards whom we can-
not extend anything of the peculiar affectionate
sympathy that Sassetta hardly ever fails to arouse.
For a long time his personality was almost com-
pletely overshadowed by that of better-known
artists, and it was in the pages of The Burlington
Magazine' that Mr. Berenson and Mr. Langton
Douglas first made him known. To what Mr.
Berenson said in those articles there is no need to
add anything here. Indeed, his main thesis that in
Sassettawe get the completest expression in art of
the Franciscan spirit is singularly borne out by the
beautiful little panel [PLATE] published for the
first time here through the kindness of the Mar-
chioness of Crewe, to whom it belongs. Certainly
here the gay serenity of the Franciscan spirit
illumines everything. There is a childlike play-
I A Sienese Painter of the FranciscanLegend, by Bernhard
Berenson (Vol. Iv, pp. 13, 19-32) ; A Note on Recent Criticism of
the Art of Sassetta(Vol. IV,p. 265).
NOTES ON ITALIAN MEDALS--XIII*
BY G. F. HILL
SOME FLORENTINE MEDALS
MEDAL of one Pandolfo, whose
surname is not given, has long been
in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
As an example, though not fine, of Flo-
rentine work of the end of the 15th
century, it is worth illustrating [PLATE I, A], since
the more such pieces are made accessible, the
nearer we shall be to defining the true limits of
the work of Niccol6 Fiorentino. This piece may
safely be regarded as outside those limits. The
reads * PANDVLPHVS *
inscription IANO
INTIS * SVE the middle portion is
" XXVIII';
evidently intended for i(n) a(n)no (aeta)tis. The
blunder is probably not original, but due to a
second casting by an illiterate person. On the
reverse is a human skull between two crosses--a
type which has gained for the medal a place
in Dr. Parkes Weber's "Aspects of Death in
Art".' The inscription is O(mn)IVM RERVM
VICISSITIVDO.
The same reverse, without the inscription,
* For previous articles see Vol. xx, p. 200, and Vol. xix,
p. 138, where will be found a full list up to that date.
1 P. 69.
THz BURLINGTON No. 117. Vol. XXII.-December, 1g2.
MAGAZINE,
fulness and abandonment about the whole scene.
The long procession winds down the mountain
road, stirring up the dust as it moves smartly
along. The pilgrims are not at all impressedwith
the solemnity of the' occasion ; their expansive
rapid gestures express rathertheir simple pleasure
in the journey itself, heightened by the joy of
anticipation. They are as merry and talkative as
countrymen going to a fair. The leaders turn
now and again to look at the star which Sassetta
with a charming literalness imagines not as fixed
in the sky over Bethlehem, but much more ser-
viceably moving its flickering radiance along the
road in front of them, waiting round the corner
of each bend in the mountain road till the caval-
cade has taken the direction. I take it to be just
dawn; the figures are already clearly silhouetted
on the road, but the opposite hillside is still enve-
loped in a cool, grey gloom, while the pearlylight is
spreading upwardsover the clear, dark sky. In the
sky itself,but newly caught by the rays of growing
light, we can just make out a great flock of swans
hurrying high up overheadon their way to Bethle-
hem-an invention that only the delicate sympathy
of a Franciscan artist could have conceived.
This picture has been traditionallyascribed to
Paolo Uccello, but it bears so .unmistakably in
every part the stamp of Sassetta'speculiar charm
that I need not point out in detail the reasons
which lead me to give it to him.
occurs with the portrait of an unknown person
in the Paris Cabinet [PLATE I, BJ.' Armand
describes the objects on either side of the bust
on this anonymous medal as arrow-heads; this
they do not seem to be, though I cannot say
what else they are. The bust is a fine one-much
finer than that of Pandolfo-and comes very
close to the series of French officers in the suite of
Charles VIII, of whom medals were made in
Florence in 1494-.
As these Frenchmen have been mentioned, I
may note that another fine Florentine medal, in
the Berlin Museum,' seems to belong to the same
series. The inscription on the obverse has been
obliterated ; only the letters GVY . . VR .. are
legible. The reverse is from the same model
which was used for the medal of Giovanni Torna-
buoni by the " Hope Medallist ", but of the legend
FIRMAVI only the last three letters are visible.
There are also tracesof the inscriptions[I] SPER[O
IN DEO] and AV BESOING [S I]L FAVLT.
2Armand II, p. 78, 27.
3
Heiss, NiccolbSpinelli, etc., PI. II and III.
4 Friedlinder, Die ital. Schauminzen, p. 155, No. 42, PI. XXX;
Armand I, p. 96, No. 14.
L 3 '
Notes on Italian Medals
I would point out, merely as a suggestion to be
followed up, that the remains of the obverse in-
scription seem to indicate some follower of
Charles VIII named " Guy ", and that the letters
VR would also not be inconsistent with the name
of Guy d'Aurillot. This man was notary and
secretaryof the king, and was with him at Amboise
on 24th January, 1494, and 8th March, 1496 ; but
whether he went to Italy I do not know.
If this medal certainly represents one of the
Frenchmen, there can be no doubt that the
Frenchmen's portraits and those with the Hope
reverse were made in the same workshop ; whether
that was Niccolb Fiorentino's is another question.
Another medal [PLATE I, C] which was made
either in Florence or in Rome, at the time (about
1485-90) when Florentine influence was at its
strongest there, represents the Ferraresehistorian
Peregrino Prisciano.6 Unfortunatelythe only two
specimens known to me (Paris and London) are
late and indifferent casts ; of the two, the London
specimen is slightly the better, although an alien
reverse (the Pegasus of Cellini's Bembo medal) was
added when the cast was made, some time in the
late I6th century. The inscription of the obverse
should apparentlybe expandedinto PEREGR(ino)
PRISCIA(no) FERRA(riensi) RO(mano)EQVI(ti)
COM(iti)Q(ue). Presumably Prisciano was a
Count Palatine; and the medal may have been
made on some visit to Rome when he received
this dignity, or at Florence on his way through.
Dr. Bode has stated a theory that Niccol6
Fiorentino visited Rome about 1485 and there
modelled the portraits of a number of people,
including that of the Englishman John Kendal.
Assuming this theory to be correct, it is difficult to
say of the portrait of Prisciano, in the compara-
tively poor reproductionsof it which have survived,
whether it is worthy to rank with the undoubted
creations of Niccol6 Fiorentino ; and it is perhaps
best to leave it for the present with the label
"Florentine School".
One of the finest productions of that school is a
unique portraitin lead of the humanist Sebastiano
Salvini, in the possession of the SocietaiColombaria
at Florence, reproduced on a reduced scale in
PLATEII, G. As the description and illustration
of this striking medal, which by the courtesy of the
Society I have been privileged to give in its
" Proceedings "7 are not likely to meet the eye of
many readers of TheBurlington Magazine, I may be
allowed to repeat here that the readings of Armand5
and Poggi9 should be amended to "Magister
5P licier, Lettresde CharlesVIII, IV, p. 6; V, p. 28. Another
Guy who is mentionedin the documentsof the time is Guy de
Rochefort, Seigneur de l'Abergement,Chancellorof France.
6 Armand II, 45, 14. The specimen illustrated here measures
69.mm.
7 A tti della Soc. Colomb,,
1909-19Io,
8111, 17I, E.
9Catalogodelle Medagliedella Soc. Colombaria,p. 87.
132
Sebastianus Salvinus qui semper sectatus est
eam que circ . . at ambitum celi sola ", and
that the object of Salvini's pursuit was Wisdom
(Ecclesiasticus xxiv, 8). The portrait seems to
me not to be the work of any known medallist,but
rather of some good sculptor of 1480-1500 who
was trying his hand at a portrait-plaqueon a small
scale.
The Venetian Gioacchino della Torre, the
General of the Dominicans, who in 1498 sentenced
Savonarola,is represented on a fine medal in the
British Museum [PLATE I, DJ, which has been
attributedby Bode to Niccol6 Fiorentino. Every-
one will, at any rate,admit its Florentineorigin. It
has all the strength and all the weakness of the
Florentine work of the end of the i5th century;
the bust is fine and characteristic, the reverse
design clumsy and ineffective. Armand'o has
fallen into a slight confusion in cataloguing
this specimen and a variety which was in his
own collection.' He describes the London
specimen as bearing the date 1498, whereas it is
undated. But his own specimen, which has as its
reverse a dagger, has the date incised on the
truncation of the bust. What, further, he has
failed to notice is that his own specimen is a very
bad and late after-cast,much tooled, and entirely
valueless. The form of the " 8" in the
date-which was doubtless incised by the man
who made the cast as the year when the Dominican
visited Florence-is a form which is not found in
the 15th century.'2 The dagger on the reverse is
a grotesque piece of bungling, and the whole piece
should be excluded from any critical list of Italian
medals.
Yet another medal which will have to be con-
sidered by the critic who essays to describe the
work of Niccol6 Fiorentino is one of 1493, which
I know only from the engraving in the " Ricordi
Storici di Filippo di Cini Rinuccini ", from which
Armand'•has describedit. It representsAlamanno
Rinuccini at the age of about seventy-four (being
dated 1493), and seems, from the engraving, to be
good Florentine work of the time.
On the other hand, since a remarkof Armand's,
to the effect that the reverse of the medal of
Thomas Bakacs [PLATE II, E] is imitated from
the Fortune who appearson so many medals of the
Florentine school, might raise expectations of
something in the Florentine style, it should be
said that it is pnly in subject, and not in style,
that there is any imitation. The medal has
nothing Florentine in it, and was probably made
in North Italy, or even perhaps north of the Alps.
It was cast between 1500 and 1521, for Bakacs is
described as cardinal and primate of Hungary.
10II, p. 71, Nos. 9, 1o.
1 I owe a cast of this to the kindness of M. de Foville.
12Hill, On
the Early UseofArabic Numeralsin Archccologia,
LXII, p. 147, note 4.
1 III, 171 D.
 ifi

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NOTLES tN ITALIAN MEDALS-XIII

PLATE
 IA1

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F F

vii
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H H

NOTES ON ITALIAN MEDALS-XIII

PLATE II

GIROLAMO, COUNT OF PANICO, AND
POMPEO LUDOVISI. BY CAVINO
This medal [PLATE II, F] is a little more interest-
ing than the majorityof the works of Giovanni dal
Cavino, whose portraitsof his contemporarieshave
usually little to recommend them beyond the fact
that they are by the same hand as the best-known
series of forgeries of Roman coins. On the obverse
are the busts jugate to left of the Paduan Girolamo,
Count of Panico, bearded, in plain robe, and the
Bolognese Pompeo di Ludovico Ludovisi, also
bearded, in embroidered dress. The inscription
is HIERONIMVS PAT" POMPEIVS
PANICVS"
BON and on the reverse is the
LODOVISIVS" ? described as captain-general of the Emperor's
inscription ET NOS ET TVA SIGNA PIVS
TVTARE COLENTES.14 The type is an elaborate
heraldic device; the difficulty of finding English
terms for the peculiarities of Italian heraldry must
be my excuse if the following description sounds
amateurish. Two shields of arms, one above the
other. The lower: three bends enhanced; on a
chief, S P Q R (for Ludovisi), impaling: a lion
rampant checquy, having a rose in his ear (for
Panico); surmounted by two helms, having for
crests the dexter a camel, bridled, the sinister a
lion rampant checquy. The upper: quarterly:
I, a cross; 2 and 3, barry of four; 4, a lion
rampant; on a chief an eagle displayed; on
a superior chief the papal tiara surmounting
two keys in saltire. Surmounting the shield
a cardinal's hat over a cross patt6e (for Pio di
Carpi).
The piece has a granitura or border of dots on
both sides, is 39'5 mm. in diameter, and, like most
of Cavino's, is struck.
The Pompeo Ludovisi in question is the man
who in 1536 received from Paul III the title of
Count for himself and his descendants, and died
in 1565. Count Girolamo da Panico was a poet,
and wrote in both Greek and Latin. The Pio
referred to by the inscription (PIVS) and by
the uppershield appearsto be the CardinalRodolfo,
who died in 1564. On his monument in S. Trinita
de' Monti in Rome the arms are represented in a
similar way. The charge on what-because I do
not know what else to call it-is described as a
"superior chief ", belongs to the Gonfalonier of
the Church, and should properly be charged on a
pale over the quarters.
Such is the reverse type which Armand briefly
describes as "deux 6cussons ". What relation
between the two counts and the Cardinal
Rodolfo Pio prompted the execution of this medal
1 do not know; perhaps a better equipped genea-
logist will follow up the problem.
The specimen illustrated is in the British
Museum and seems to be the only one that has
been published. The same double portrait also
'aArmand I, p. 183, No. 26, not recognizing the fact that this
inscription is a hexameter, begins it with TVTARE.
Notes on Italian Medals
occurs with a reverse (GENIO BENEVO-
LENTIAE DVLCIS) which was probably not
intended for it, but for the portraitof the Paduan
jurisconsult Giov. Antonio Dolce.
Before leaving the subject of Cavino, I take the
opportunity of noting another addition to the list
of his portraitsof his contemporaries. Regling has
already noticed in his admirable catalogue of the
Lanna collection (No. 331) that the manner of
Cavino is to be discerned in the medal of Gabriele
Taddini of Bergamo (or rather Martinengo),an
architect and engineer, who was born in 148O
and died in The medal is thoroughly
1543..5
characteristic of Cavino's arid style. Taddini is
artillery. On the reverse is a battery of four guns,
with the inscription VBI RATIO IBI FORTVNA
P(ro)FVGA and the date MCCCCCXXXVIII.
This adds another to the four dates (1539, 1540,
1554, 1565) already known on Cavino's medals.
Regling expands the abbreviation into Perfuga (a
deserter) instead of Profuga (put to flight), which
seems to be more correct.
GIROLAMO VIDA. BY TEGNIZA
The medal of Girolamo Vida6"illustrated in
PLATE II, H, is not rare, but no one seems to have
noticed that it bears an artist'ssignature, until Mr.
W. T. Ready discovered one on this specimen in
Mr. Oppenheimer'scollection. Even this was not
easy to make out, but our combined efforts even-
tuallyproduced the reading TEGNIZA CREMON.
That this is correct admits of little doubt. Vida
was himself a Cremonese, and the very unusual
name Tegnizzi is igiven by Grasselli17 among the
Cremonese artists, although the man he mentions
under this heading belongs to an earlier period
than the artist of Vida's medal, being, indeed, a
sculptor of the 14th century.
The medal,which is cast, and measures 43 mm.,
describes Vida as bishop of Alba, to which see he
was elected in i533; behind his bust are a mitre
and the head of a crozier. On the reverse he is
seated writing at a table, and is crowned by
Virtue (?); on the left are a tall pyramid and a
column. The inscription is
VIRTVS. NON'STEMMA'SED"
Vida (whose full baptismal name was Marco
Girolamo) was born in 1470, and became bishop
of Alba in Piedmont in his sixty-second year, in
1533. He died there in I566.
Another medal'8 of the same man, with the
reverse legend QVOS AMARVNT DII and the
type of Pegasus springing from a rock, is smaller
in diameter
(38"5mm.);
but the bust appears to be
15Armand II,
176, 15 ; III, 234 d.
16Armand II, 161, 16.
17Abecedario biogr. dei Pittori , Cremonesi (1827), p. 246.
Arisius, Cremona Liter., II, p. 105 ; Armand II, 161, 17
18s
(38 mm.) ; Berlin, Katal. Simon, 382 (37'5 mm.) ; Katal. LObbecke,
151 (38'5 mm.).
137
Notes on Italian Medals
from the same model as the one signed by Tegniza,
as will be clear from the illustration in PLATE1I,J
of the Berlin specimen.19 If so, two medals are to
19I1have to thank
Dr, Menadierfor a cast of this piece.
DUCCIO DI BUONINSEGNA AND HIS SCHOOL IN
MOSTRA DI DUCCIO AT SIENA
BY GIACOMO DE NICOLA*
HE first requisite for the study of the
revivalof Italian painting which origi-
nated in Central Italy at the end of
the I3th century is the knowledge of
Duccio. In this respect his art is
nearly as important as Cimabue's and Giotto's,
and even more important than Pietro Cavallini's,
since that may be said to have remained without
succession, owing to the calamities which befell
Rome in the i4th century, mainly due to the
removal of the papal court to Avignon. The three
schools, the Roman, the Sienese and the Florentine,
rose independentlyof each other from the common
basis of Italo-Byzantinepainting, but the certainty
of Cimabue's presence in Rome and of Duccio's
and Ugolino's in Florence, the probability of
Giotto's presence in Siena,1 and the frequent
conjunction of their works in Pisa, Naples, Assisi
and elsewhere lead us not to regard each master
separately,but rather to unite them in one wider
range of vision.
The effects of such relations culminate in the
problem of the Madonna Rucellai of Santa Maria
Novella in Florence. We are still disputing,
although we have been long debating, the claims
of Cimabue, to whom the picture is assigned by
tradition, of Duccio, to whom the majority of
modern critics attribute it, and of some imitator
of Duccio for whom it is claimed by the small
group of students to which I belong. So, con-
versely, any serious study of Duccio involves an
examination of the whole problem of the origins
of Italian painting.
Siena has just offered the opportunities for
such an investigation. The Sienese determined
to celebrate the secentenary of the completion of
Duccio's principal work, the Maestt, which is
reckoned to have been finished on the 9th of June,
1311, by gathering round it in the Museo dell'
Opera of the Duomo a full series of other works
by Duccio and his school. Private owners and
the Sienese and Florentine country churches con-
tributed to the exhibition. It was impossible for
the series to be completed, for who would dare to
* Translatedfor the authorfrom the Italian.
1 That is to say, the Parigiotto (by abbreviationGiotto) who,
with Buonaventuradi Bartolomeo,values the reverse side of
Duccio's Maesti, may be supposed to be none other than the
famous Giotto (see the document in Milanesi, Doc. Sen. ,.
p. 178).
138
be credited to Tegniza or Tegnizzi; he was not a
great artist, certainly, but it is satisfactory to be
able to remove two more medals from Armand's
second volume to his first.
THE
remove the Madonna Rucellai from the chapel in
Santa Maria Novella, or Segna's ancona from the
Collegiata di Castiglion Fiorentino ? And who
would dareeven to suggest the loan of the fragment
of the Maesta" from the National Gallery? More-
over, the experiences of former exhibitions in
Italy have quite rightly disinclined the Ministry of
Public Instruction from liberality in granting
permission for the transference of works of art.
The best photographic reproductions, therefore,
had to supply the place of the numerous paintings
which were necessarily absent.
But the exhibition, even as it stood, has brought
to light many paintings hitherto unknown; re-
united fragments once parts of a single whole,
which had long been scattered in various places;
demonstrated that some established attributions
are unfounded, and established others. I propose
to give here an account of the principal results of
such investigations, illustratedwith reproductions
of some pictureswhich have never been published
before.
We have only one picture attributableto Duccio
with absolute certainty, on the strength of docu-
ments and a signature, namely, the Maesth. A
single painting, therefore, is our sole point of
comparison for the critical attribution of other
Ducciesque works, and this example represents
the master's activity at the period of his maturity,
13o8 to 1311. Did he attain to the plenitude of
the Maesti,through degrees of development,as we
should suppose, or did he spring out of the Italo-
Byzantine school, full grown ? This is what we
do not know from the evidence of the only docu-
ments which we possess ; and this is why we must
strictly exclude from the corpus of the master's
genuine works all the paintings stylistically at
variance with the Maesta.
By submitting the Madonna Rucellai to this
criterion, its authorship is negatively decided, in
spite of the well-known document and any others
which may yet appear; its derivation from Duccio
can be demonstrated,but it cannot be by his hand.
If we continue to apply analysis with equal
severity, very few certified works of Duccio will
remain. Besides the Maesth, I cannot point to
more than three in the exhibition, which means,in
the whole of the Senese. Two of them are in the
Galleria di Siena, and the third in the church of