Giovanni d'Alemagna

German, Venetian, 1400 - 1450

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German painter, active in Italy, who collaborated with his brother-in-law Antonio Vivarini

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A woman climbs a ladder propped against a tall base of a white stone sculpture with a sledgehammer over one shoulder in this vertical, arched painting. The statue stands in a narrow town square hemmed in with buildings on each side. About a dozen people look on from the ground and from a balcony to our right. All the people have pale skin and wear dresses, robes, or cloaks in topaz blue, red, harvest yellow, or black. The base of the statue is twice as tall as any of the onlookers, and the statue atop is life sized. The base has eagles standing astride garlands, with flame-like leaves flaring above their heads. The statue is of a nude male with chin-length hair. He holds a gold staff in one hand and what appears to be a branch in the other. The woman climbing the ladder wears a carnation-pink dress, a gold crown, and has a gold, disk-like halo. Two more women brace the foot of the ladder, and another stands nearby. The three-story building behind them has a white façade with a carved, pink entablature across the top of the first level. More women and men gather to our right in front of a terracotta-orange building with a wide, arch opening on the ground level. Four women look down from a balcony on the second level. The face of that building is carved over the door to read, “EVSEBIV.” A tree grows beyond an enclosing wall at the far side of the square, between the buildings, beneath an azure-blue sky.
Giovanni d'Alemagna, Saint Apollonia Destroys a Pagan Idol, c. 1442/1445, tempera on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.7

Saint Apollonia Destroys a Pagan Idol

Giovanni d'Alemagna · c. 1442/1445 · tempera on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.7

Bibliography

1908

  • Lazzarini, Vittorio. Documenti relativi alla pittura padovana del secolo XV. Illustrations and notes by Andrea Moschetti. Venice, 1908: 146-149.

1912

  • Gebhardt, Carl. "Giovanni d'Alemagna." Monatschefte für Kunstwissenschaft 5 (1912): 395-403.

1922

  • Planiscig, Leo. "Un politico sconoscinto di Antonio Vivarini e di Giovanni d'Alemagnga." Bollettino d'Arte n.s. 1 (1922): 427-432.

1948

  • Fiocco, Giuseppe. "Le pitture venete del castello di Konopiste." AVen 2 (1948): 18-28.

1971

  • Zeri, Frederico. "Un 'San Gerolamo' firmato di Giovanni d'Alemagna." In Studi di storia dell'arte in onore di Antonio Morassi. Venice, 1971: 40-49.

1986

  • Christiansen, Keith. "La pittura a Venezia e in Veneto nel primo Quattrocento." In La pittura in Italia: Il Quattrocento. 2 vols. Milan, 1987: 1:142-145.

1989

  • Merkel, Ettore. "Giovanni d'Alemagna." In La Pittura nel Veneto. Il Quattrocento. Edited by Mauro Lucco. 2 vols. Milan, 1989-1990: 1(1989):346-347.

2000

  • Massini, M.E. "Giovanni d'Alemagna." In Dictionario biografico degli italiani 55 (2000): 646-649.

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 315.