Thursday 28 April: The Guidoriccio Controversy

In today's lecture, the second on Sienese painting, Susan Maddocks Lister presented a convincing argument for disputing the accepted authorship of an important fresco in the Sala dei Consiglio of Siena's Palazzo Pubblico [Town Hall], the Guidoriccio da Fogliano usually ascribed to Simone Martini and dated 1323 [top, above]. The fresco has been traditionally presented as a tribute to the condottiere [mercenary general] Guidoriccio da Fogliano, who had led the Sienese to a victory over the fortified town of Montemassi, depicted on the left.

Susan referred to the research of Gordon Moran and Michael Mallory from which they concluded that the fresco could not possibly have been painted by Simone in the early C14th but that it was "more likely a substitute painting from a later time, a sort of re-invocation of the golden age of Sienese history and Sienese painting".

Without going into the Moran and Mallory argument here, it does raise the problem we face when having to teach these works towards an examination, as this one could well be in an NCEA paper. An example that comes to mind is a 2008 CIE question that required candidates to analyse a no longer extant fresco by Leonardo da Vinci, the Battle of Anghiari, that we know only through a later copy by Peter Paul Rubens painted some 110 years after the original which had been obliterated by another fresco by Vasari.

Apart from any art historical claims, the Moran/Mallory assertion has become a cause célèbre for academic freedom following the lengths to which (chiefly Italian) art historians, publishers and civic authorities went to silence them. For more, read this account from a book on academic censorship, Confronting the Experts…

This morning I met Sebastian who had flown over from London for the weekend. Seb and I had become great friends at Kfar Giladi way back in 1983, founded the 'Feet Up Club' for all devotees of mellow jazz, and stayed in touch ever since. The last time I had seen him was in 1992 when I was conducting my first Art History and Classical Studies Tour, and we had a few days in London. Here's a nostalgic photo from September 1988 when Jane and I were staying at Kfar Giladi: Kevin O'Neill on the left, Seb on the right, enjoying a beer at Tiberias, Sea of Galilee.