FOREIGN COLLECTIONS

FILE : Boston Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 4

TITLE : The Judgment of Solomon

LOCATION: Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

DIMENSIONS: cm. 112 x 61,5

PROVENANCE: The panel belongs to the Old Testament Cycle in the Milan Cathedral (n II window). Actually, the remnants panels of this stained glass window, are dismembered and partially get up in the Cathedral aisles windows. Therefore, several panels of the three apse windows scattered on account of the Bertini family restorations, were sold at the auction A Pickert Nuremberg (1875).

CRONOLOGY : 1544-45

AUTHOR: Giorgio d’Anversa

PATRONAGE:

SUBJECT/S: The king Solomon stops the soldiers dividing the little boy

CRITICAL NOTES: Currado Mochis ad Colonia was the main glacier engaged with the Milan Cathedral windows during the second half of the sixteenth century. He carried out several stained glass panels from the cartoons of many artists, mostly from the Arcimboldi’s designs: the St. Catherine of Alexandria window (see Milano Duomo 24), the Old Testament window (about the erratic panels see Milano Duomo 34 – 112 and Milano Duomo Museo 1 -5; 15 –22). He painted also the windows of St. Catherine of Siena and Life of the Virgin (see Milano Duomo 25), St James the Elder (see Milano Duomo 26), The Glories of the Virgin (see Milano Duomo 29), Four crowned Saints .(see Milano Duomo 30). As it appears from the Libri mastri in the Cathedral archives, Giorgio d’Anversa received many payments (November 1544 -October 1545) "pro designis seu picturis factis pro invidriatis" [for many stained glass windows designs]. It is convenable that Giorgio made them to be executed in the workshop of Currado Mochis da Colonia engaged in the same period by the Cathedral board.

CONDITION: Some heavy mending leads. The buildings are repainted.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• G. MARCHINI Vetri italiani in America in “ Arte in Europa-Scritti in onore di Edoardo Arslan”, Milano,1966, 433,
• C.PIRINA Stained glass from Milan Cathedral in the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Fenway Court” 1983, 32 M.H.C. item “ Studies in the History of Art Stained Glass before 1770 in American Collections :new ”,Corpus Vitrearum Checklist I, National Gallery of Art Washington vol. 15, 43.
• M.P.FOUCAULT Conservation de six vitraux du Musée Isabella Stewart Gardner de Boston – Anciens panneaux de la cathédrale de Milan Italie in “Grisaille, jaune d‘argent, sanguine, émail et peinture à froid” - Forum pour la Conservation et la Restauration des Vitraux”, Liège, 19-22 juin 1996, 91-92.
  
  For the general bibliography see Milano Duomo Bibliografia Vetrate cinquecentesche
  
  PHOTOGRAPHIC REF: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Archives
  
  COMPILER: Caterina Pirina May 2006