This narrative scene is from the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and with slight changes it is also an illustration of the story from the dialogue between the Prophet Isaiah and King David presented in the Golden Legend about Jesus descending to Limbo to defeat Satan and liberate the souls of the just of the Old Testament. Church representatives considered Limbo to be on the edge of Hell. Altar paintings with this theme were used for liturgies for the deceased and during requiem masses.
This painting depicts the moment when the resurrected Jesus descended to Limbo with the sign of the cross on his banner, Hell’s doors made of bronze are falling apart and the unchained dead are liberated one by one. Christ has just blessed Adam and now he is liberating him. Eve is standing next to Jesus and Abel in front of her, marked by fur, will be liberated in a moment. We can see Moses, Isaiah and the repentant thief, Dismas between Christ and Eve. According to related depictions, King David and John the Baptist, the last of the Prophets, are also present.
The larger part of the painting is occupied by four monumental nudes, Abel and Adam in the front, Eve and Christ right behind them. They are disfigured by a strange Mannerist angle; the vision of forced grace and bodies are painted almost in one pale color and all of the loincloths except for Christ’s, are of the same color. The background is dark, with only slightly articu lated figures in the dim light. Satan, the demon from another world, blasphemously appears in the upper corner of the painting.
The effort to achieve style refinement and formal abstraction is obvious. The space is filled with figures in calculated and coordinated contrasts of poses. In an effort to achieve an expression, their faces show excessive mimics and interesting postures and the gestures are theatrical rather than apt. The integrity of the figures, almost a sculptural three dimensionality, the rough folds of the clothing, the distinctive musculature and the diffusively soft qualities of style indicate the influence of Michelangelo (1475–1564), which was almost universal in the Florence milieu in the last third of the 16th century. The formal harmony in composition and tone, the melancholy expression and lyrical exaltation and the sensuality and torment are at least as important as the narrative content.
Francesco Morandini, called il Poppi, was a student of Giorgio Vasari, who, in addition to his own artistic ideas, arranged for solid contacts. It was natural for the generation of Morandini to refine nature in the spirit of the abstraction of the ideals of beauty; however, the imitation of the work of predecessors, Andrea del Sarto and Michelangelo in concrete terms, was universal. Morandini was also influenced by another contemporary, Giovanni Battista Naldini (around 1537–1591), particularly in colors and composition outline. The expectations of theologians of the anti-reform movement with requirements that artists create paintings to inspire love for Christ and through that the religious faith can be seen behind the efforts of a simplified visual structure and moderated colors.
Zuzana Ludiková ●
LUDIKOVÁ, Zuzana - BURAN, Dušan. Talianska maľba = Italian Painting. Bratislava : Slovenská národná galéria, 2013. 242 strán. ISBN 9788080591748.
public domain
