Blessed Agostino Novello Analysis

Two visual artefacts made over a century apart and in very different climates, Gerhaert’s Virgin in the north and Martini’s panel in the south of Europe. Although both visual artefacts differ in type, time and place they share many formal similarities.

Simone Martini’s Blessed Agostino Novello and scenes of his Miracles (1), painted around 1320 in Siena, is a sequence of four narrative scenes surrounding a central scene in the form of a triptych with five main picture spaces in three inner rounded-arch frames. Two small roundels fill the space between the arches. The two outside inner frames are slightly smaller in height and width than the central space and are divided horizontally into two separate smaller picture spaces by a thin board. This large-scale (200 x 256 cm.) visual artefact was commissioned to be part of the final resting place of the Augustinian hermit known as Agostino Novello in the church dedicated to him.

Niclaus Gerhaert of Leiden’s Virgin and Child (2-6) made around 1460-65, is a free-standing, smaller than life (105 cm. high), painted wooden sculpture in the round on a small base. It is in generally good condition with a few damaged areas such as missing strands of hair and the toes of one of the child’s feet. Its subject is the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child. The origins of this work are

Her stance is in contrapposto – one leg forward, one shoulder back. The most noticeable is the triangular shape of the robe. This robe also divides the composition into two, from her hair and right hand down one third of the sculpture towards her left side makes Geraert’s use of the rule of thirds apparent. These lines and the structure of the sculpture’s front bring viewers’ attention from her foot on the bottom up through the robe to the crowded area of the child’s feet, up to her hair and face and thus down to the child’s arm down to his