001 Ioannis Permeniates (workshop), John the Baptist. 1520s.
Ioannis Permeniates XVI Jh.
Franz von Lenbach 1836 Schrobenhausen – 1904 München
Oil painting on wood. With a vertical burr on the verso. Unsigned. Inscribed "Ecce Agnus Dei" on the scroll. Fragment of a larger painting.
Provenance: Estate of the painter Franz von Lenbach.
We would like to thank Mrs. Marisa Bianco Fiorin, Trieste, for her kind advice. Mrs. Fiorin will soon be publishing the painting offered here in "Archeografo triestino".
Ioannis Permeniates was a Byzantine painter of the Cretan School, which trained on the island of Crete between 1200
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and 1650 under the rule of the Serenissima. Thanks to the cultural exchange with Venice a special style of painting was formed, which was influenced by the Byzantine tradition as well as by Italian painting and especially by the Venetian school. The most famous artist of this school was El Greco. After his first painterly beginnings, he soon left the island of Crete for Venice, slowly abandoned his early artistic influence and became one of the most famous artists of Mannerism.Only a few documents have been preserved on the icon painter Ioanni Permeniates. Literary records (Fiorin 81) show that he paid a fee to the Greek brotherhood "I Greci" in Venice in 1523, 1527 and 1528 and ran an influential workshop. Permeniates mainly painted depictions of Madonnas, surrounded by saints, which is why he was also called "Madonnari".The panel offered here shows parallels with the icon in the Correr Museum "The Madonna between St. John the Baptist and St. Augustine": the Baptist is painted with a calligraphic border and, in both works, holds a scroll/cartouche with the inscription in Latin letters "ECCE AGNUS DEI" in his hand. The fine landscape depiction in the background reminds of Venetian traditions of Alvise Vivarini and Giovanni Bellini, but is reinterpreted in the Byzantine style. Probably in the middle of the composition there was also a Madonna, of which only the fragment of her red cloak has survived.
Works by Ioannis Permeniates can be found in the Italian museums of Ravenna and Vicenza. In the Museo Nazionale in Ravenna there is a panel entitled "The Virgin among Saints Jerome, Baptist, Andrew and Augustine" with a precious golden background.
Literature:
Marisa Bianco Fiorin, “Icone della Pinacoteca vaticana”, Citta` del Vaticano 1995, S. 126, Abb. 233.
Marisa Bianco Fiorin, Giovanni Permeniate pittore greco a Venezia e una tavola del Museo Nazionale di Ravenna, in „Bollettino d’Arte Roma”, N. 11, Firenze 1981, pp. 85–88.
Marisa Bianco Fiorin, “Aggiunte per Giovanni Permeniate, pittore greco a Venezia nel secolo XVI”, in “Quaderni della Sopintendenza”, N. 3, Ravenna 1997, s. 29–32.
Luciana Martini, "Cinquanta capolavori nel Museo nazionale di Ravenna", Ravenna 1999, Kat. 39.
Emanuele Fiori und Rosa D`Amico, “La forma del dialogo. Bruno Ceccobelli e le icone della collezione classense”, Roma 2016.
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Wooden panel shortened to the right side and in the area of the ogival arch. Left edge of the panel with old nails. Loss of material to the lower left corner. Panel with old wormholes of a former anobia infestation, isolated open wormholes (small holes) to the paint as well as with a drying crack in the middle of the right edge of the picture. Paint with abrasion, slightly soiled as well as with numerous small scratches and defects and splashes of white paint on the surface. Upper corners bumped, with small losses of paint.
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47 x 21,5 cm.
