Art in Tuscany | Giovanni di Paolo, Adoration of the Magi, about 1450-1460 | Podere Santa Pia, holiday estate in the south of Tuscany

Giovanni di Paolo | Adoration of the Magi, about 1450-1460

Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia (ca. 1403 - ca. 1483), one of the most important Italian painters of the 15th-century Sienese school. He is chiefly notable for carrying the brilliantly colourful vision of Sienese 14th-century paintings on into the Renaissance. His early works show the influence of previous Sienese masters, his landscapes and his figures still reverberate with echoes of Duccio's work, but his later style grew steadily more individualized, characterized by vigorous, harsh colors and elongated forms. His art most beautifully reflects the 15th-century artistic conservatism of a commercially declining city.[1]

The Adoration of the Magi

According to the Gospel of Matthew, three Magi, guided by a star, found the newborn Christ and laid gifts before him. Artists throughout the 15th century considerably elaborated upon this biblical account, devoting particular attention on the Magi's entourage, which gave them an opportunity to depict the splendor of contemporary aristocratic life. Here, the Magi supplicate solemnly before the divine child in the Virgin's arms, while their bustling retinue of courtiers and animals provides an exuberant visual diversion.

Giovanni's brilliant color and pattern were typically Sienese, but he is distinguished from his teachers and contemporaries by an expressive imagination. His unique style is otherworldly and spiritual. Here the drama is heightened by a dark background and contrasting colors, nervous patterns, and unreal proportions. In the center, Gabriel brings news of Christ's future birth to the Virgin. Thus is put in motion the promise of salvation for humankind, a salvation necessitated by the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, which we see happening on the left, outside Mary's jewellike home. Mary will reopen the doors of Paradise closed by Eve's sin. The scene of Joseph warming himself in front of a fire, on the right, is an unusual addition. Perhaps it refers simply to the season of Jesus' birth, but more likely it is layered with other meanings, suggesting the flames of hope and charity and invoking the winter of sin now to be replaced by the spring of this new era of Grace. The three scenes help make explicit the connection between the Fall and God's promise of salvation, which is fulfilled at the moment of the Annunication.

Trained in Siena, Giovanni di Paolo was heir to a long tradition of famous painters who worked in the city. The artist borrowed heavily from his contemporaries in creating his own highly personal and graceful style. Giovanni di Paolo depicts the arrival of the Magi at Bethlehem in a wealth of color and detail befitting the riches they brought the Christ Child. The Magi pay homage to Christ as he sits on the Virgin's lap beneath a blazing, golden star. Crowns, sumptuous robes, a crowd of servants (one sprawling to remove the spurs of the standing king), and even a pet monkey stress the wealth and power of the visitors. The visit of the Magi is described in the Book of Matthew as the epiphany, when the arrival of Christ became known to the world. Magi are literally astrologers, but over the centuries, popular legends transformed them into kings and they are usually shown in royal robes and crowns.		Adoration of the Magi, 1440-45, The Cleveland Museum of Art
		The adoration of the kings, 2nd quarter 15th C., Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, collection in Otterlo


Giovanni di Paolo, Adoration of the Magi , about 1450, tempera on panel, 26.9 x 46.4 cm, Washington, National Gallery of Ar
This Adoration of the Magi panel is the latest of four known depictions of the subject by the artist. The other three are in the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Giovanni di Paolo's brilliant color and pattern were typically Sienese, but he is distinguished from his teachers and contemporaries by an expressive imagination. His unique style is otherworldly and spiritual. Though Giovanni's primary concern is not the appearance of the natural world, it is clear that he was aware of contemporary developments in the realistic depiction of space. This panel originally formed part of the predella of an altarpiece, along with a "Nativity" (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts), an "Infant Christ Disputing in the Temple" (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston), and possibly a "Crucifixion" (Christ Church, Oxford). The central panel of the altarpiece may have been the "Presentation of Christ in the Temple" formerly in the Conservatorio di S. Pietro at Colle di Val d'Elsa and now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena. Art in Tuscany \| Giovanni di Paolo \| The Annunciation and Expulsion from Paradise		Giovanni di Paolo, Adoration of the Magi, about 1450-1460, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

[1] Giovanni di Paolo was an independent artist who managed to thrive in a Siena which was on the one hand conservative and on the other responsive to such inventive minds as Sassetta and the Osservanza Master. Like these artists, Giovanni di Paolo had remarkable narrative gifts as an artist as is clear from such masterpieces as The Life of John the Baptist (Art Institute of Chicago), The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden (Robert Lehman Collection, Metropolitan Museum, New York) and the Paradise (Metropolitan Museum, New York). His early training seems to have included contact with Lombard artists (his earliest patron was the Lombard Anna Castiglione a relative of Cardinal Castiglione Branda, patron of Vecchietta) and probably French artists too. He could, for example, have known the Limbourg brothers, the Franco-Flemish illuminators who were in Siena in 1413. Certainly the nervous, staccato quality of line that distinguishes his work from that of his Sienese contemporaries betrays an assimilation of Lombard and French Gothic forms. By the mid 1420s Giovanni di Paolo's career was flourishing and from that period come the Pecci and Branchini altarpieces (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena and Norton Simon Museum, San Marino) which both show the influence of Gentile da Fabriano who had painted a (now lost) altarpiece in 1425/6 for the Sienese Notaries Guild.

Bernhard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Oxford, 1932, p. 249
Keith Christiansen in The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1984, pp. 26–29, no. 4, ill. (color). Keith Christiansen discusses its relationship to other depictions of the subject by the artist, mentions its dependence on Gentile da Fabriano's Strozzi altarpiece of the same subject of 1423 (Uffizi, Florence). Keith Christiansen mentions that the unusual gesture of the youngest magus, who embraces Joseph, has a precedent in the work of Fra Angelico, and postulates a common literary source; accepts the MMA, Fogg, and Gardner panels as parts of the same predella, and does not rule out the inclusion of the Ashmolean picture as well; suggests dating the series prior to 1463.

Art in Tuscany | Sienese Biccherna Covers | Biccherne Senesi

Tuscany is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. Known for its enchanting landscapes, its fantastic and genuine food and beautiful towns as Florence, Pisa, Lucca and Siena. The strategical geographical position in southern Tuscany will give you the opportunity of arriving in Siena and other important cities of art in Tuscany, such as San Gimignano, Volterra and Massa Marittima. Podere Santa Pia is located in the heart of the Valle d'Ombrone, and one can easily reach some of the most beautiful attractions of Tuscany, such as Montalcino, Pienza, Montepulciano and San Quirico d'Orcia, famous for their artistic heritage, wine, olive oil production and gastronomic traditions. It is the ideal place to enjoy the beauty of Tuscany – both its cuisine and its historical towns – and to pass a very relaxing holiday in contemplation of nature, with the advantage of tasting the most typical dishes of Tuscan cuisine and its best wines.
The extreme simplicity of Tuscan cuisine is its strongest strength, as the flavours that emerge during the cooking process are vibrant and pure. A little known fact about Tuscan cuisine is that the French learned how to cook from their Tuscan counterparts when it was imported by Catherine de' Medici into the court of Henry II. The Tuscan style of cooking is richly flavoured and wholesome. With its original kitchen and the wood burning pizza oven, Casa Santa Pia offers an upbeat atmosphere.


Podere Santa Pia	Podere Santa Pia, garden view in April	Pienza

Siena, Palazzo Publico	Siena, Duomo	Val d'Orcia
Siena is in fact surrounded by the Chianti hills (north-east), the Montagnola (west) and the Crete Senesi (south-east). Often reproduced in breathtaking postcards and posters, Siena`s hills are a real distillation of beauty. Their gentle profiles, fruit of human labour, are covered with vineyards, cereal fields and cypresses whose dark green canopies rise against the skyline, and dotted with ancient reddish sharecropper houses. It is not by chance that UNESCO has included not only Siena historical centre (in 1995) but also a part of the Sienese countryside, that is, Val d`Orcia (in 2004) in its list of World Heritage Sites. Tuscany \| The crete Senesi \| The Val d'Orcia \| The Maremma