DOI Heft:
Nr. 3
DOI Artikel:Skubiszewska, Maria: Franciabigio's two tondi with Annunciation
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18860#0108
9. Franciabigio, Saint Nicholas of Tolentino Healing the Sick, the Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford (after McKillop)
from below. The physiognomical type of the Warsaw Gabriel, his hair, his wings and the lily in
his hand find close analogies in the left angel from Saint Nicholas' chapel (fig. 1 and 7). The
Virgin resembles strikingly the kneeling woman in the Oxford fragment of the predella (fig. 2
and 9). The illusionistic architecture of the High Renaissance Tuscan type and its role in the
spatial build-up of the scene also resembles the pictures with the angels. Finally, the Warsaw
Annunciation represents the same iconographie recension as that designed by Sansovino. This
particular moment of the episode, Mary's submissive acceptance of her mission, which was
rather unfrequently depicted in the Florentine Cinquecento painting, was in complete harmony
with the main ideas of a retable dedicated to a saint : his obedience to God and his subsequent
reward in heaven.
These ideas are easily readable from the design of Sansovino, and Franciabigio together with
Nanni TJnghero expressed them no less clearly. In the central part of the predella Saint Nicholas
was represented as dead. In the central arcade of the retable he appears in his heavenly glory :
two angels crown his head with a corona vitae. Thus was he rewarded for his virtuous life. The
angels step down from a palace, which may be tentatively identified as the Heavenly Jerusalem,
and bring the symbols of the saint's virtues and a book with the text referring to the just man
of God. This old iconographie pattern of a saint being rewarded with the heavenly crown was
94
Oxford (after McKillop)
from below. The physiognomical type of the Warsaw Gabriel, his hair, his wings and the lily in
his hand find close analogies in the left angel from Saint Nicholas' chapel (fig. 1 and 7). The
Virgin resembles strikingly the kneeling woman in the Oxford fragment of the predella (fig. 2
and 9). The illusionistic architecture of the High Renaissance Tuscan type and its role in the
spatial build-up of the scene also resembles the pictures with the angels. Finally, the Warsaw
Annunciation represents the same iconographie recension as that designed by Sansovino. This
particular moment of the episode, Mary's submissive acceptance of her mission, which was
rather unfrequently depicted in the Florentine Cinquecento painting, was in complete harmony
with the main ideas of a retable dedicated to a saint : his obedience to God and his subsequent
reward in heaven.
These ideas are easily readable from the design of Sansovino, and Franciabigio together with
Nanni TJnghero expressed them no less clearly. In the central part of the predella Saint Nicholas
was represented as dead. In the central arcade of the retable he appears in his heavenly glory :
two angels crown his head with a corona vitae. Thus was he rewarded for his virtuous life. The
angels step down from a palace, which may be tentatively identified as the Heavenly Jerusalem,
and bring the symbols of the saint's virtues and a book with the text referring to the just man
of God. This old iconographie pattern of a saint being rewarded with the heavenly crown was
94