Giovanni dal Ponte
1385–1438 · Republic of Florence · Late Gothic, Florentine school
The story
In 1424 the Florentine painter Giovanni di Marco was locked up in the debtors' prison. He is known by the place of his workshop, dal Ponte, after the little square of Santo Stefano al Ponte near the Ponte Vecchio. Once free, he looked for a steadier footing, and in 1427 he took on an older partner, the painter Smeraldo di Giovanni. Their contract gave Giovanni about two thirds of the profits. It was renewed in 1431, and together they frescoed the Scali chapel in Santa Trinita, the Vallombrosan church near the Arno.
The shop produced altarpieces and also the painted furniture Florentine families ordered around a marriage. One chest front, now in the Prado in Madrid, lines up the seven Liberal Arts as women, each paired with a famous practitioner, Euclid with Geometry, Cicero with Rhetoric, Ptolemy seated at the feet of Astronomy, while small angels crown them with laurel.
His style sits between the late Gothic of Lorenzo Monaco, the Camaldolese monk-painter, and the new solid figures of Masaccio. His Coronation of the Virgin, with four angels making music, hangs in the Galleria dell'Accademia. After Giovanni died, around 1437, Smeraldo gave up painting.
