print;
book-illustration
- Museum number
- 1850,1014.1028.5
- Description
-
Illustration of a detail from Giotto's "The Meeting of Anna and Joachim at the Golden Gate" fresco in the Arena Chapel, Padua, showing Anna and Joachim embracing with a number of women standing framed within a stone arch to right; page three of Maria Callcott's "Description of the Chapel of the Annunziata dell'Arena; or, Giotto's Chapel in Padua" (London, Printed for the author, by Thomas Brettell: 1835)
Wood-engraving
- Production date
- 1835 (c.)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 125 millimetres (image)
-
Width: 134 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- For all the illustrations see 1850,1014.1028.1-13
For more information about the history and context of the "Description of the Chapel of the Annunziata dell'Arena; or, Giotto's Chapel in Padua", see the curatorial comment to 1850,1014.1028.1.
This is the first illustration to accompany a textual description in the "Description". It depicts the seminal moment from the Life of Joachim and Anna, as told in Jacopo da Voragine's Golden Legend - the meeting of Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate. The differences between this illustration and its source are acute, and terming it an 'interpretation' rather than a straightforward copy would be much more accurate. As a copyist, Callcott did not faithfully translate Trecento stylistic qualities in the illustrations and, in this one in particular, the feeling created by the physiognomies of the characters, hairstyles (particularly that of Anna) and, to a lesser extent, costumes, is much more early Victorian than Giottesque. More important, perhaps, is the fact that Callcott either made a mistake with, or deliberately mis-represented, the embrace between Joachim and Anna, as in Giotto's original fresco the couple are shown kissing and Joachim's face is not obscured by Anna's. Callcott also secularised them through removing their haloes. This fresco is on the top tier and the viewing conditions when the Callcotts visited the chapel (in November 1827) may well have not been ideal.
Literature:
Carly Collier, 'British Artists and Early Italian Art, c. 1770-1845', unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Warwick 2013 (Chapter 7).
Carly Collier, ‘From “Gothic atrocities” to Objects of Aesthetic Appreciation: The Transition from Marginal to Mainstream of Early Italian Art in British Taste during the Long Eighteenth Century’, in Frank O’Gorman and Lia Guerra (eds.), "The Centre and the Margins in Eighteenth- Century British and Italian Cultures" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013) pp. 117-139.
- Location
- Not on display
- Associated titles
Associated Title: Description of the Chapel of the Annunziata dell'Arena; or, Giotto's Chapel in Padua
- Acquisition date
- 1850
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1850,1014.1028.5
