![]() ![]() This was the church for a house of nuns, making this one of the few paintings of this date we think may have been commissioned by women – two abbesses – for the use of women. It was made for the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, in Pratovecchio, Tuscany, probably in the 1420s. This large, gilded polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) is one of the few almost complete early Renaissance altarpieces in our collection (the frame is modern). Like many medieval artists, Giovanni dal Ponte reused designs and compositions in different contexts, and this scene appears almost identically in an altarpiece by him (Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence) – even down to the detail of the soldier immediately behind John the Baptist. ![]() Several panels from this altarpiece are now in our collection.īeyond being generally appropriate for an altarpiece, the Descent into Limbo has no special relevance for the iconography of this work. It originally sat on the high altar of the church of the Camaldolese nunnery of San Giovanni Evangelista at Pratovecchio in Tuscany. The scene takes place immediately above the central panel of a large polyptych painted in the 1420s by the Florentine artist Giovanni dal Ponte. They are led by an old man and woman, Adam and Eve, and guided by Saint John the Baptist. This is the Descent into Limbo (also known as the Harrowing of Hell) when, between the Crucifixion and Resurrection, Christ was thought to have gone down into hell and brought out the souls of the righteous. On the opposite spandrel three devils are being crushed under the fallen doors of hell, which Christ has just trampled down. Christ, holding a white banner with a red cross – the symbol of the Resurrection – over his shoulder reaches out towards a crowd of figures who are squeezed into the right-hand spandrel. ![]()
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