Old Master Paintings

A Gold Ground Tradition

New York
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T his Masters Week, Sotheby’s invites an exploration of the rich tradition of gold ground painting from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century and its influence on artists of the nineteenth century. Throughout his career, Frederic, Lord Leighton drew inspiration from classical art and Renaissance painting, particularly the early Italian painters, including Cimabue and Giotto. And while the gold-grounds of Giotto and his contemporaries were typically reserved for sacred subjects and devotional pieces, with Erato, Leighton selected the lustrous color tone for its aesthetic possibilities in the decoration of one of the Gilded Age’s grandest mansions.

A Gold Ground Tradition

  • Pseudo Jacopino, circa 1335 - 1340
    Crucifixion with Saints and Archangel Michael above
    ESTIMATE $300,000 – 400,000
    Some of the most influential and important gold ground painters are still unidentified due to the constantly changing nature of attributions in this area as well as a dearth of documentary evidence. The Pseudo-Jacopino is one such artist. Active in Bologna in the early 14th century, in the days of Giotto, he merged Bolognese and Riminese influences with motifs from illuminated manuscripts. Here the artist employed both hieratic scale for the figures and a nuanced treatment of facial expressions to reflect the bystanders’ grief. The panel likely had a pendant or belonged to a diptych, as two of the four Evangelists are depicted at the top.
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  • Workshop of Paolo Veneziano
    Madonna of Humility with the Annunciation
    ESTIMATE $60,000 – 80,000
    The gold ground in this richly-colored work, which was painted in the Veneto in the 14th century, covers much of the panel surface. In the center background, part of the bole layer is visible, which is the red clay surface that served as an adhesive base for the gold. Once the gilding was laid down, tools would be used to smooth and polish the surface. After this point, the punchwork and tooling would be added. In the present work, this punchwork consisted of a beautiful network of stars, which suggests that the painting was destined for the Marche region.
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  • Taddeo di Bartolo
    Saint Simon; Saint Francis of Assisi
    ESTIMATE $400,000 – 600,000
    Many gold ground paintings that now reside in private collections or are sold at auction are in fact single panels from much larger altarpieces, such as this pair of standing saints. These panels once belonged to a signed and dated polyptych painted by Taddeo di Bartolo in 1395 for the sacristy chapel at San Francesco in Pisa, the second most important Franciscan church in Tuscany. The central image was a Madonna and Child, now in Budapest, and the present two saints were external flanking saints that refer to patron of the order (Francis) and the deceased brother (Simone) of the patron, Lady Datuccia Sardi de Campiglis. The gold ground on panels such as these would have reflected beautifully off of the candlelight in Italian churches.
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  • Master of Roncaiette
    The Sermon of St. Peter Martyr
    ESTIMATE $100,000 – 150,000
    Dating to the early 15th century, this vibrantly colored panel by the Master of Roncaiette shows an episode from the life of Saint Peter Martyr. Saint Peter Martyr proved his sanctity to a heretic and a large crowd of figures that gathered by ordering clouds to fill the sky and provide relief from the heat. Here, the gold-ground covers only the upper register of the painting and serves as part of the narrative of the scene, standing in for the sunny sky. Fine tooling has been used to create the rays of sun that burst from behind the clouds, and a delicate punchwork pattern has been used to render the halo of Saint Peter Martyr.
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  • Giovanni di Francesco Toscani
    Madonna and Child with musician angels
    ESTIMATE $200,000 – 300,000
    As is often the case with early Italian gold ground painters, Giovanni di Francesco Toscani’s identity was only revealed in the late-20th century with the discovery of a document recording payment to him for a set of frescoes in Florence. Toscani fused the International Gothic style with contemporary Florentine painting trends, and his unique style is characterized in part by his patterned punchwork in the haloes of saints, which resembles Kufic script against a cross-hatched ground, as seen in this panel from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.
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  • Sano di Pietro
    Madonna and Child surrounded by Saint John, Saint Bernardino of Siena, and angels
    ESTIMATE $100,000 – 150,000
    This panel was painted in about 1470 by Sano di Pietro, one of the most important artists in 15th century Siena. The gold ground in this painting is used both for the backdrop and also for the delicate details in the costume. The gold background is enlivened by a distinct series of punchwork that defines the halos of all of the figures, including the letter’s in the halo of the Virgin. Artists during this period had sets of punchwork tools specific to their workshop that served almost like signatures, and very often punchwork like that seen in this painting help to identify the workshop from which the painting arose.
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  • Frederic, Lord Leighton, P.R.A.
    Erato
    ESTIMATE $700,000 – 1,000,000
    Rather than Christian iconography, with his gold ground Erato, Leighton captures the Greek mythological Muse of love poetry, a fitting part of the decorative scheme he completed in 1886 for the ceiling of the “Greek Parlor” — the music room of Henry Marquand, banker, real estate agent, and the second president of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, whose vast fortune afforded an almost limitless budget for the decorations of his mansion on New York’s Madison Avenue. As the artist explained of his tripartite panel design: “I have thought that in a room dedicated to the performance of music the muses… [will be] the proper presiding spirits... In the central compartment therefore, I have introduced two of them; Melpomene and Thalia, the muses of sacred and epic poetry. Seated between them is Mnemosyne, the mother of the muses…. In the side compartment a contrast is offered— the poetry of love by a fair maiden [Erato] crowning her head with roses while a winged boy tunes the lyre by her side— in the other I show a Bacchante [Terpsichore] and a little faun dancing… representing the… element of revelry” (Letter form Frederic, Lord Leighton to Henry Marquand, 17 January 1886).
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  • Views of the Marquand Mansion and Interior
    Leighton’s aesthetic approach for the ceiling decoration extended to the background. Despite Marquand’s request that the artist place his figures within a sylvan environment, Leighton was adamant that the background should be gold: “My notion in this instance would be to design something which would have the decorative definitions and aspect of a Greek vase … only instead of being black on a red round or white on black they should be of full rich tone on a gold ground — the effect would be rather that of the Old Masters and I think very telling.” The gold background was essential to the works’ design, as Leighton explained: “if you look into it you will find it a luminous surface…. Viewing the pictures from this point you get a brilliant effect, like the brightness of day upon it; if from the other side you observe the light resolves itself into the rich, warm glow of the setting sun” (The President's Pictures, An Interview with Sir Frederick Leighton," in The Pall Mall Budget, volume XXXIV, 27 May 1886, p. 6). The brilliant effect of the ceiling impressed Marquand and his visitors for decades and, thankfully, Leighton’s panels were saved from destruction when the home was demolished in 1902. Later in the twentieth century, the panels were separated and Erato’s reemergence today shines light on the history of gold ground painting.
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