Giovanni Baronzio

Baronzio, Giovanni di

Italian, active c. 1320 - 1350

Explore Selected Works

A woman holding a baby sits on a throne in front of a cloth held up by five winged angels in this vertical painting. The woman, baby, and angels all have pale skin tinged with gray, long, straight noses, narrow mouths, almond-shaped eyes, and gold halos. The woman sits with her knees and shoulders squared to us. She looks at us with light brown eyes, and her head tips slightly to the right, toward the baby. A white veil drapes over her head and shoulders, and she wears a slate-blue dress under a teal-green robe, which is lined with pale, spring green. Gold lines densely spaced across the dress and robe suggest folds and wrinkles. She supports the baby’s bottom with her left hand, to our right. He sits upright with his knees and body angled to our left. He reaches up with his right hand, to our left, to touch the woman’s veil, and the other hand rests on an oversized cricket in his lap. He wears a transparent white garment edged with gold and a marigold yellow and coral orange cloth wrapped across his lap over bare feet. His features are small in a round face. He has brown hair, and his hairline is high. The cloth behind the pair is patterned with gray, brick red, and gold. Two angels hold up each long side and one holds up the top. The angels all look in or down. They have brown hair, and wings and robes in shades of golden yellow, pale peach, and celestial blue. The throne has a blocky seat, and the base projects in a semicircle against the navy-blue floor. There are lion finials at the front of each arm. The background is gilded with a leafy pattern in gleaming gold. The upper corners and some areas along the edges are damaged.
Giovanni Baronzio, Madonna and Child with Five Angels, c. 1335, tempera on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1943.4.45

Madonna and Child with Five Angels

Giovanni Baronzio · c. 1335 · tempera on panel ·  Accession ID  1943.4.45

About a dozen women, babies, and men gather in small groups across interior spaces with a bedroom to one side and a covered space to the other in this vertical panel painting. The women have nearly white-colored skin, and the men and children have pale skin, sometimes tinged with gray. The bed spans the left two-thirds of the composition. A woman lies under a vibrant red coverlet and white sheets pulled up to her chest. A white veil covers her head, forehead, and neck, and she wears a white, long-sleeved gown. Her shoulders rest up on pillows, and her head is surrounded by a shiny gold halo. A pale face by the woman’s feet looks through an opening at the base of the bed. Two women on the far side of the bed wear green or blue dresses and white head coverings. They both attend to a swaddled blond baby, who also has a gold halo. The wall behind the bed is patterned with an intricate geometric design in grass green and brown. The space above the bed is shiny gold punched with a leafy pattern. The wall is capped with an entablature held up with corbels. A balcony space rises to the left, and a structure with arched openings is to our right. A deep bench runs parallel to the bed along the bottom edge of the painting, closer to us. A balding man with a gray beard sits there and writes, brows deeply furrowed, on a scroll braced on one knee. If complete, writing on the scroll would read “NOMEN EST IOHANNES.” He wears a blue robe under a pale pink cloak, and he has a halo. A man standing just to our right of the seated man gestures toward the first with both hands. This second man has a brown beard and long hair and wears a marigold orange cloak over red robes. A bearded man with gray hair standing behind him wears leaf green and looks to our right. Four men and a haloed baby crowd in the covered space to our right. The man wearing green is shown again, now holding the nude baby. The man with brown hair now wears white vestments and cuts foreskin of the baby’s penis. Two other two men look on, and a sliver of an orange cap indicates that a fifth person is at the back of the crowd. The covered space is ivory-white and has a balcony above the taller, lower level. The whole panel is edged by gold patterned with a clover-like design.
Giovanni Baronzio, The Birth, Naming, and Circumcision of Saint John the Baptist, c. 1335, tempera on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.68

The Birth, Naming, and Circumcision of Saint John the Baptist

Giovanni Baronzio · c. 1335 · tempera on panel ·  Accession ID  1952.5.68

A nude man, Jesus, stands with hands together in prayer, hip-deep in a stylized river with a bearded man wearing a fur-like garment on a rocky bank to one side and two winged angels on the other, all against a gleaming gold background in this vertical painting. Another bearded man wearing a white robe floats in a blue field at the top center of the panel. All the people have pale skin, brown hair, and gold halos encircle their heads. At the center of the painting, Jesus’s body is angled to our left, and he tips his head the same direction. Jesus has shoulder-length hair and a trimmed beard. Slate-blue water reaching his hips is painted with regular, white, curving lines to suggest flowing water. Standing on the flat top of a tan-colored rock to our left, the other man head has raggedy, darker brown hair and a fuller beard. His brow is furrowed, and he has dark eyes. He wears the brown, fur-like garment under a white robe. He steps forward on his left foot, farther from us, to touch Jesus’s head with his right hand, and he holds a staff in his other hand. To our right, the angels stand side-by-side facing Jesus. The angel farther from us wears indigo blue and the one closer to us wears a brick-red, patterned, long robe over bare feet. A swath of beige, geometrically patterned fabric drapes over that angel’s arm, whose hands are also held together in prayer. Their wings darken from cream-white at the top to golden yellow, then burnt orange at the bottom. Stylized trees, one to our left and two to our right, grow from the rocky hills beyond the people. In a half-circle at the top, a man smaller in scale hovers, chest down, over the scene. He lifts his right hand toward Jesus and holds a book with a crimson-red cover with his other hand. The semi-circle fades from deep teal at the center to pale aquamarine blue at the outer edge, and is painted with gold starbursts. The entire scene has a gold border with clover-like forms set within diamonds along the inner edge of the panel.
Giovanni Baronzio, The Baptism of Christ, c. 1335, tempera on panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.131

The Baptism of Christ

Giovanni Baronzio · c. 1335 · tempera on panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.131

Bibliography

1902

  • Brach, Albert. Giottos Schule in der Romagna. Zur Kunstgeschichte des Auslandes 9. Strasbourg, 1902.

1908

  • Sirén, Osvald. Giottino und seine Stellung in der gleichzeitigen florentinischen Malerei. Kunstwissenschaftliche Studien Bd 1. Leipzig, 1908: 71-76.

1916

  • Sirén, Osvald. “Giuliano, Pietro and Giovanni da Rimini.” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 29 (1916): 313-321.

1935

  • Brandi, Cesare, ed. Mostra della pittura riminese del Trecento. Exh. cat. Palazzo dell'Arengo, Rimini, 1935: xii, xiii, xviii, xxii, xxvii, xxxii, 88-99, 160.

  • Salmi, Mario. “La scuola di Rimini, 3.” Rivista del R. Istituto d'archeologia e storia dell’arte 5 (1935): 98-127.

1937

  • Brandi, Cesare. “Giovanni da Rimini e Giovanni Baronzio.” Critica d’Arte 2 (1937): 193-199.

1958

  • Martini, Alberto. “Ricostruzione parziale di un dossale riminese.” Paragone 9 (1958): 40-44.

  • Zeri, Federico. “Una Deposizione di scuola riminese.” Paragone 9 (1958): 46-54.

1960

  • Minardi, Mauro. "Giovanni da Rimani." In Dizionario biografico degli italiani. Edited by Alberto Maria Ghisalberti. 79+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 56(2001):188-193.

1965

  • Volpe, Carlo. La pittura riminese del Trecento. Milan, 1965: 38-39, 41-43, 48, 52-53, 181-186, 198-209, 299-304.

1988

  • Boskovits, Miklós, ed. Frühe italienische Malerei: Gemäldegalerie Berlin, Katalog der Gemälde. Translated by Erich Schleier. Berlin, 1988: 15-18.

1990

  • Pasini, Pier Giorgio. La pittura riminese del Trecento. Milan, 1990: 123-130.

1992

  • Delucca, Oreste. I pittori riminesi del Trecento nelle carte d’archivio. Rimini, 1992: 112-114.

1993

  • Boskovits, Miklós. “Per la storia della pittura tra la Romagna e le Marche ai primi del ’300.” Arte Cristiana 81 (1993): 163-182.

1995

  • Benati, Daniele, ed. Il Trecento riminese: Maestri e botteghe tra Romagna e Marche. Exh. cat. Museo della città, Rimini. Milan, 1995: 29-57, 246-273.

2006

  • Benati, Daniele. “Il Dossale Corvisieri nel percorso di Giovanni Baronzio.” L’Arco 4 (2006): 18-29.

2016

  • Boskovits, Miklós. Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2016: 157-158.