FOREIGN COLLECTIONS

FILE : Boston Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 5

TITLE : St. John’s Vision of the Almighty

LOCATION: Boston Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum - Gothic Room

DIMENSIONS: cm 112 x 61

PROVENANCE: From A. Pickert, Nuremberg, 1875. Originally the panel belonged to the Apocalypse window [the ‘raza’ window] in the retro choir of the Milan cathedral (I window). In occasion of the Bertini family restorations, several panels were detached and sold.

CRONOLOGY: 1420 about

AUTHOR: Stefano da Pandino (documented)

PATRONAGE:

SUBJECT/S: St John’s Vision of the Almighty with twenty-four Elders and the seven lamps symbolizing the seven Holy Spirit gifts. The episode is preceding the scene in the panel Et unus de senioribus dixit still in the Milan Cathedral window; obviously Stefano da Pandino used the same cartoon for the two panels. The inscription of the Boston panel (lost) would have been Et septem lampades ardentes ante thronum [Apo. Cap.IV, 3]

CRITICAL NOTES:  About the attribution problems see Milano Duomo 1

CONDITION: In fairly good conditions although some mending leads and several modern tesseras. Some original tesseras had repainted. The buildings above the arch are new. The panel is covered by a layer darkening the scene. The eagle has been touched up as an angel.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• C. PIRINA Franceschino Zavattari, Stefano da Pandino, Maffiolo da Cremona ...in "Arte antica e Moderna” XXX, 1966, 25-44;
• ID Stained Glass from Milan Cathedral in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in " Fenway Court" , 1983, 27-37; 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, 40 -41.
• 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 Apocalypse window see Bibl. Duomo 1

PHOTOGRAPHIC REF: Boston Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Archives

COMPILER: Caterina Pirina, April 2006