The Crowning of the Virgin

Author: Klazina Botke

This drawing represents the crowning of the Virgin. In an architectural setting with both Classical and Gothic elements, four groups of figures have been placed in a clearly hierarchical position relative to each other. At the top are Christ and the Virgin, seated on a throne with a group of kneeling angels on either side. The two angels at the front on the outside are playing an organ and a lira da braccio. The register below is occupied by the twelve apostles sitting on a long bench. St Peter sits left of centre with the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven in his hand; opposite him St Paul reads a book. The third tier is made up of various saints, some of whom are clearly recognizable: St Francis with the stigmata, St Stephen with a stone on his bloodstained head and St Catherine with her wheel beside her. Amidst these saints stands St John the Baptist, pointing upwards with one hand and holding a banderole that reads ‘ecce agnius dei’ (Behold the Lamb of God) in the other. In the fifteenth century, with the rise of the volgare (Tuscan vernacular), ‘agnus’ was quite often spelled ‘agnius’.^[1] At the bottom of the composition kneels a group of chosen men in contemporary fifteenth-century clothes, who watch the scene.

The coronation of the Virgin as the Queen of Heaven is not described in the Bible, but is an interpretation of a number of biblical texts and based on a passage from Jacobus de Varagine’s Golden Legend, a thirteenth-century collection of the lives of saints.^[2] This important event in the life of the Virgin was often used in horaria (books of hours), as an illustration accompanying Compline, the final prayer of the day.^[3] Because the back of the parchment sheet is lined, and the size of the sheet corresponds with that of manuscripts of this kind, it could well be that the drawing was intended for an horarium.^[4]

Illustrations of the crowning of the Virgin became increasingly popular as the century advanced. Compositions like the one on the Rotterdam sheet are found mainly in the Veneto, among them the famous panel by Jacobello del Fiore (1370-1437) of 1438.^[5] Here, too, there is a Gothic throne with different levels and various groups in attendance at the ceremony: the patriarchs and apostles on the right, prophets and martyrs on the left, below them saints and holy virgins, and angels making music right at the front. The model for this composition was undoubtedly the large fresco by Guariento di Arpo (c.1310-c.1370) in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in the Doge’s Palace in Venice. Only fragments of that fresco, painted around 1365, now remain.^[6]

The sheet was once attributed to the Sienese artist Lippo Memmi (c.1291-1356), but given similarities in structure and composition to works from the Veneto it is more likely that the Rotterdam drawing was made there.^[7] The kneeling men’s contemporary clothes and the style of the architecture make a date of around 1450 the most probable.