Giacobbe Giusti, BARNA da Siena: Christ Bearing the Cross, with a Dominican Friar
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Barna da Siena, also known as Berna di Siena, was presumed to be a Sienese painter active from about 1330 to 1350. The painter was first referred to by Lorenzo Ghiberti in his I Commentarii (mid 15th century) as a Sienese painter who painted several works in Tuscany, including many stories from the Old Testament in San Gimignano. Giorgio Vasari referred in the first edition of his Vite (1550) to the Sienese painter ‘Berna’ who was responsible for frescos of Old Testament scenes in the Collegiata di San Gimignano. In the second edition of the Vite (1568) Vasari only connected the artist with the New Testamentscenes in that church, dating them to the very end of Barna’s life, apparently to 1381.
Because of the wide variations in style and quality in the New Testament paintings in San Gimignano it is believed that they were the work of three or four distinct painters. It is further believed that Vasari’s dating of the New Testament scenes was incorrect as on stylistic grounds they should be dated to the period 1330-1340s. Because of these problems with the identification of the artist a majority of scholars now believe that ‘Barna’ is a historical fiction. This conclusion has generated various theories on the authorship of the San Gimignano frescoes. The view is that the Collegiata frescoes and other panel paintings attributed to the artist are all closely linked to the work of followers of Simone Martiniand the circle of Lippo Memmi.[1]
References
- Jump up^ H. B. J. Maginnis. » Barna. » Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 25 Feb. 2016
- Jump up^ Faison, S. L. Jr (Dec 1932). « Barna and Bartolo di Fredi ». The Art Bulletin. 14 (4): 285–315.
- Jump up^ Sullivan, Ruth Wilkins (Sep 1988). « Duccio’s Raising of Lazarus Reexamined ». The Art Bulletin. 70 (3): 374–387.
- Jump up^ Pope-Hennessy, John (Feb 1946). « Barna, the Pseudo-Barna and Giovanni d’Asciano ». The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. 88 (515): 34–37.
Sources
- Cecchi, Emilio, Sienese Painters of the Trecento, London, F. Warne, 1931.
- Ghiberti, Lorenzo, Lorenzo Ghiberti, I commentarii, Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, Firenze, Giunti, 1998.
- Vasari, Giorgio, Le Vite delle più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori, many editions and translations.
Further reading
- Pope-Hennessy, John & Kanter, Laurence B. (1987). The Robert Lehman Collection I, Italian Paintings. New York, Princeton: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press. ISBN 0870994794. (see index; plate 11-12)
Giacobbe Giusti 