April 26, 2024, by Roberto Pomi
Matteo Giovannetti, the painter from Viterbo who made the French city of Avignon beautiful
Home page – WEEKEND / STORIES – If you want to see what remains of his work in the capital of Tuscia you can go to the church of Santa Maria Nuova. A small painting is available to the Carivit Foundation.
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WEEKEND / STORIES – Matteo Giovannetti, he is the painter from Viterbo called in the fourteenth century to fresco the papal palace in Avignon.
If you want to see what remains of his work in the capital of Tuscia you can go to the church of Santa Maria Nuova. A small painting is available to the Carivit Foundation. How many know that painting? But let’s go back to Giovannetti and his story, from one papal city to another. He was a pupil of another great man, Simone Martini, and died in Avignon in 1344. He is considered the intermediary of Sienese-inspired Giottismo and master of that style known as International Gothic. The painter from Viterbo also had the merit of including, in the body of his frescoes, one of the first examples of profane painting with the hunting and fishing scenes of the so-called Chamber of the Deer. The change of register was also applied in his fresco cycles with the scenes of the Life of San Marziale in the homonymous chapel of the papal palace, where alongside the scenes of a sacred nature he inserted naturalistic elements such as vine shoots to suggest a pergola which they replaced the golden backgrounds or the starry skies of the Giotto tradition and the re-appropriation of the late antique models that disappeared after the arrival of the Byzantine style.
In addition to the Chamber of the Deer and the Chapel of San Marziale, Giovannetti also frescoed the Chapel of San Giovanni Battista, the Chapel of San Michele and the Audience Hall in the Avignon palace. In the Villenueve Charterhouse, also near Avignon, the frescoes for the chapel commissioned by Pope Urban IV remain.
Much of his work was lost mainly following the destruction caused by Napoleon’s soldiers. The lives of several of his assistants are also linked to Giovannetti’s adventure in France. Even these people from Viterbo, who he brought with him to mix the colors and get help with the work near Avignon. Which is why, if you go through the telephone book of the French town, it is not so rare to find surnames from Viterbo. Maybe Frenchized. A twinning between the two cities would therefore bring us back to being closer even with people from Viterbo of ancient origin, who left for France in the fourteenth century.
