Giovanni Di Paolo - Style

Style

Later in his life Giovanni became greatly skilled at painting illuminated manuscripts, he illuminated choir books for the Augustinian monks at Lecceto as well as Dante's Divine Comedy. The illuminations that he created for Dante's poem are some of his most famous and best preserved works. His illuminations are one area viewers can see how Giovanni di Paolo differentiates himself from other Sienese artists. He may have been in contact with Franco-Flemish illuminators, who had been in Siena during Giovanni's early years. It seems their Northern influence may have rubbed off on Giovanni because his landscapes resemble those in the famous painting by the Limbourg brothers; Tres Riches Heures. His suspected master, Taddeo di Bartolo, probably taught him how to paint with a "toughness of line", which can be seen in any of his works. The most striking quality of Giovanni di Paolo's work is the fantastical quality. John Pope-Hennessy explains Giovanni di Paolo's work eloquently, "Few experiences in Italian painting are more exciting than to follow Giovanni di Paolo as he plunges, like Alice, through the looking-glass. If one looks at the Madonna of Humility (1435) the checkerboard landscape confirms the world beyond the garden scene in the foreground (also referred to as the hortus conclusus). This checkerboard panorama effect is used frequently by Giovanni for its ability "to create an abstraction of space, whose appeal is not to the fixed optic of the spectator, so much as to the winged flight of the dream-voyager." .