Ugolino di Nerio: The Predella Panels of the Santa Croce Altarpiece
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| The Betrayal of Christ, National Gallery, London. |
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| The Way to Calvary, National Gallery, London |
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| The Deposition, National Gallery London |
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| The Resurrection, National Gallery, London |
Ugolino's predella panels are now separated, but were originally joined together: they were painted upon one long, thick plank of poplar wood which ran right along the base of the altarpiece. Thus the predella panels can be regarded either as separate scenes or as a single integrated work of art. It is not known exactly how the predella was attached to the rest of the altarpiece. It may have been joined to the altarpiece with dowels, casein glue and wooden cross-beams hammered into the back. Or it may have been fitted into a kind of box-frame, which was itself attached to the altarpiece, as was the case with Duccio's Maesta (Art in the Making 102, White 91). It is also not known whether the altarpiece was painted in separate sections by Ugolino, working in Siena, which were then sent to Florence to be fitted together, or whether the whole structure was completed in Florence before Ugolino began to paint it (Art in the Making 104, White 35). All of this joinery would have been done by specialist carpenters, contracted to do the work, and not by Ugolino and his team of painting assistants. The whole of the back of the altarpiece was covered with gesso and red lead paint, to help prevent the warping of the wood and perhaps to guard against woodworm.
The National Gallery's technical experts have shown that Ugolino's panels were prepared in the usual 14th-century manner as described by Cennini (Art in the Making 101, Cennini 67-74). Firstly they were coated with size to cover up any holes or knots in the wood. They were then covered with linen fabric to help protect the paint layers and to provide a flat surface. Finally they were covered with layers of gesso grosso and the finer gesso sotile to provide a smooth surface. The white gesso also helped to lend brilliancy to the colours when they were painted on top of it.
The design of the actual picture would have been sketched on the panel with charcoal, which was dusted away to leave a faint outline drawing. The lines of the drawing were then emphasised with ink. The National Gallery's experts have discovered that "Far less underdrawing can be detected by infra-red examination on the panels by Ugolino than on those by Duccio, although this may be partly due to Ugolino's choice of pigments" (Art in the Making, 112). This seems surprising because, when compared with Duccio, Ugolino seems an even more "draughtsmanly" artist. Ugolino gives a strong emphasis to line, especially in the folds of garments, so that his pictures almost seem like coloured drawings and have an affinity with manuscript illustrations. The explanation may be that Ugolino "drew" with his brush, using it to create both lines and shading.
Ugolino makes an interesting use of pigments. Painters often emphasised the most important figures by painting them in the brightest colours. In Ugolino's scene of The Deposition, the grieving Magdalen is painted in bright vermilion; but the less important figure who is pulling the nail out of Christ's feet is also painted in a vermilion gown, probably because Ugolino feels that the composition needs another dash of vermilion in this place. In this bold use of colour as an element of composition Ugolino was influenced by Duccio's Maesta. Duccio, however, usually depicted Christ and his Mother in robes of ultramarine, the most expensive pigment, but Ugolino has used the cheaper azurite. The writers of the National Gallery exhibition catalogue - Art in the Making: Italian Painting Before 1400 - make the important point that Ugolino has probably chosen azurite not because he could not afford ultramarine but because the greenish-blue of azurite was better suited to his overall colour scheme (Art in the Making 114). Unfortunately, the azurite has lost its original appearance and has now turned almost black, perhaps because varnishing destroys "the power of azurite to reflect blue light", turning it black (Thompson 134). A similar fate has occurred to the green of Ugolino's trees, which were perhaps made by mixing blue (azurite?) and yellow. The original greenish-blue of the azurite would have been a complement to the blueish-green of malachite - which is used on the robes of Christ's disciples and tormentors - and both colours serve as a foil to the various shades of red: haematite or red lake (Judas, Saint John, Mary's underrobe), and orange-red (the servant whose ear is being severed by Saint Peter). These bright, decorative colours are characteristic of medieval taste; to our own eyes they provide a curious contrast to the grim subject matter of the panels.
Ugolino's inventive use of colour means that it is often difficult to tell what pigments he has used. This is because he likes blending two or more pigments together to create new colours. For example, some of the greens may have been created by blending blue and yellow, and the flesh colours must have been created by mixing red and white. It is also difficult to tell if the colours have been created by physically mixing different pigments together or by painting one pigment on top of another, so that the colour underneath modifies the colour above it. This very sophisticated technique is characteristic of tempera painting, since the colours are more or less semi-transparent, depending on the type of pigment. The technique can be clearly seen in the body of Christ on the cross, where the green underlayer - used to create realistic flesh tones - is beginning to show through the upper layers of red and white. It can be seen again in Christ's semi-transparent loin cloth which reveals his legs beneath.
Ugolino's panels are also characteristic of tempera painting in their clearly defined shapes and attention to detail, as in the detailed painting of the disciples' beards and the soldiers' armour. There is no treatment of light and shadow except in the shading of the garments and the different tones of the rocks. Cennini tells his readers to paint folds of drapery by taking a pigment and mixing it with varying quantities of white lead to make three different shades of the same colour: dark, medium and light (Cennini 91). Ugolino uses this technique not just for drapery but also to depict strands of hair, designs on soldiers' armour and the facets of rocks.
In common with his contemporaries, Ugolino places thin pieces of gold leaf in the background of his pictures, to cover the area where the sky would be. This gold background would have been added before the painting of the panel. The gold was fixed to a base of red bole, which can be seen emerging where the gold has worn away. The gold haloes behind the holy figures are marked out with indented punch marks, which are not mere decoration because they help to differentiate the gold haloes from the gold background. In The Way to Calvary Christ's cross appears to pass through his halo, indicating that the halo is not a solid object but is made of light. All of this gold was burnished to make it look as though the panels were made of solid gold. The gold would have gleamed in the candlelit church, silhouetting the holy figures against the gold background. Ugolino makes less extensive use of gold than Duccio. Duccio's Virgin in the National Gallery Annunciation has the edge of her blue gown emphasised with mordant gilding and the lines of her red undergarment picked out in sgraffito, a technique in which an upper paint layer is scratched of to reveal gold underneath. Ugolino does not seem to use either of these techniques, although it is possible that the edge of his Virgin's gown was originally gilded and that the gold has worn away. It is more likely, however, that he is here using paint to imitate the effect of gold.
Ugolino's predella panels are based on the equivalent scenes in Duccio's Maesta (which is still in Siena), though this does not detract from Ugolino's stature as an artist. Originality was not as highly prized in the Middle Ages as it is today - an artist's job was to present the Bible stories in the conventional manner - and Ugolino may well have been asked to produce an altarpiece like the Maesta. The production of art was a cooperative enterprise between different painters. The authors of the National Gallery exhibition catalogue attribute the entire altarpiece to Ugolino, but it is possible that some of it was the work of his assistants. The angels decorating the spandrels - two of which are in the National Gallery - seem to be painted in a softer, more fluid manner than the figures on the predella and are perhaps by a different artist. Ugolino's figures on the predella are even more slender than those of Duccio and also more angular: the folds of their garments are emphasised more strongly. Duccio introduced elements of naturalism into his work, a trend continued by Ugolino: for example the bald heads of some of Christ's tormentors or the bloodstained marks on the cross where Christ's hands have been nailed. Duccio helped to introduce human emotion into the Gospel stories, and Ugolino took this trend even further. This can be seen especially in the sorrowful look which passes between Christ and his Mother in The Way to Calvary and the intense grief shown by the people taking Christ down from the cross in The Deposition. Ugolino was probably a pupil of Duccio and may even have worked with him on the Maesta, but this did not prevent him from developing his own personal style. As Cennini wrote, if you apprentice yourself to a great master "you will eventually acquire a style individual to yourself" (Cennini 15).
Works Cited
Art in the Making: Italian Painting Before 1400 (exhibition catalogue by David Bomford and others), London: National Gallery, 1989
Cennini, Cennino d'Andrea, The Craftsman's Handbook, translated by Daniel V Thompson, New York: Dover, 1954
Thompson, Daniel V, The Materials of Medieval Painting, London: Allen & Unwin, 1936
White, John, Duccio: Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop, London: Thames & Hudson, 1979
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