Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (17.1976)

Mojmir S. Frinta

A NEW WORK BY ALVARO PIREZ

Although AIvaro Pirez was by no means an important painter, his case is nevertheless an
interesting one. His art basically is an Italian art, yet made by a foreigner. It is only very rarely at
that time that we can be sure of such a situation although we can reckon that thcre probably
were other foreign artists immigrating or sojourning in Italy such as the Maestro di Bambino
Vispo who revealed their un-Italian artistic personality in some way or another. One may perhaps
ask oneself about the chances that there may have been otheis even more flexible in their expres-
sion to the point of submersion whom we just not even suspect as being contributors to the huge
pile of anonymous paintings of the later Trecento and Ouattroeento.

We get the feeling that Alvaro did not wish to be lost in the melting pot of the unąuestionably
superior indigenous tradition. We can sense that it was with some pride about his origin that
Alvaro (di Piętro, as called by the Italians) wrote in Portuguese on his Madonna from the church
of Santa Croce in Fossabanda in Pisa: ALVARO PIREZ DEYORA PINTOU and again: ALVA-
RUS PETRI DE PORTOGALI (sic) PINXIT on his Madonna in Nicosia (fig. 1).
It is two centuries later that we recognize such a spirit in the Greek inscription:
DOMENICOS THEOTOKOPOTJLI. Yet „el Greco" was a great artist, and the explicit expres-
sion of his self-awareness and intransigeance was more than justified. I think that in both cases
this was not a merely nostalgie expression but rather a sort of David versus Goliath cultural
stance.

The earliest reference to Alvaro Pirez is from 1411 when he painted with Niecolo di Piętro
Gerini murals in the Palazzo del Ceppo in Prato1. He apparently was active mostly in Pisa and
then in Volterra. There survive four paintings signed by him, one of them dated and one datable
by implication and there are several well founded attributions. In order to perceive the direction
of his art we must attempt to put his paintings into a chronological seąuence after having
evaluated the merits of the arguments for the individual attributions. The signed Madonna
from Santa Croce in Fossabanda in Pisa must be for stylistic reasons considcrably earlier than
the Yolterra altarpiece datable to 1423. Probably still earlier is an Enłhroned Madonna with two
angels in the church in Nicosia near Calci2. Both these Madonnas signed by Alvaro produce an
impression of a still rather awkward work of a young painter. F. Zeri dated the Nicosia Madonna
to c. 1415 and the Santa Croce Madonna 1418-20 while K. Steinweg thought that the first cannot
be earlier than 1420 but before the Volterra altarpiece of 14233. I feel that the paintings might
be even slightly earlier as they are cjuite close to the Pisań production of the turn of the century,

1. Raimond van Marle, T/ił' Development of the. Italian Scltools of Painting, The Hague, 1927, IX, p. 581.

2. Ibid., figs. 364, 365; Enzo Carli, Pittura Pisana del Trecento, la seconda meta, Milano, 1961, figs. 68, 69.

3. Federico Zeri, ,,Alvaro Pirez; tre tavoIe", Paragone, 1954, No 59, p. 45; Klara Steinweg, ,,Operę seonosciutc di Alvaro
di Piętro", Bivisla d'Arte, XXXII, 1957, p. 42.

33