Mattia di Nanni's Intarsia Bench for the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena

• Autores: Keith Christiansen
• Localización: Burlington magazine, ISSN 0007-6287, Vol. 139, Nº 1131, 1997, págs. 372-386
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The long association of intarsia with perspective and illusionistic still life has, perhaps, overshadowed an independent and earlier tradition centred not on the geometry of an inan- imate world ordered by the laws of perspective, but on the figure depicted with a technical refinement rivalling the subtleties of silverpoint drawing.'1 This tradition was the creation of Sienese rather than Florentine craftsmen and makes its debut in the fourteenth-century choir-stalls of Orvieto cathedral, which not only introduced figurative intarsia but established a level of craftsmanship only occasionally equalled in later works (see the accompanying article by Antoine Wilmering on p.387 below). It reached its apogee in the work of the celebrated sculptor/woodworker Domenico di Niccolo (c. 1363-1450/53), whose choir-stalls in the Cappella de' Signori of the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena (Fig.2), earned him the epithet 'dei con', and of Mattia di Nanni di Stefano, called Bernacchino (1403-33), whose key documented commission, an intarsia bench that for four centuries stood beneath Simone Martini's great Maesta in the council chamber of the Palazzo Pubblico, has, until now, been known only from documents and cryptic later descriptions. Miraculously, parts of Mattia's bench - dismantled in 1809 and subsequently dispersed - have reappeared (Figs. 10, 11, 12 and 13), making it possible for the first time to come to terms with this extraordinary master of the woodjoiner's craft. The recovery of these fragments also provides an opportunity to reconsider the character of the decorative projects undertaken by the newly reformed communal government of Siena following the death of Giangaleazzo Visconti in 1402.