Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

This 1457 altarpiece panel by Giovanni di Paolo depicts a miracle performed by Saint Nicholas of Tolentino in which he saves a ship from a storm. Saint Nicholas can be seen in the top right corner dressed in the Augustinian habit and holding a lily with his left hand, his symbol as a non-martyr saint. Flight is a characteristic representation of posthumous miracles, and this is combined with Saint Nicholas’ gesture of blessing to quell the storm and bring light. The broken masts of the ship are also featured in the dark sky above the steep waves of the Mediterranean Sea. Aboard the ship, nine sailors and passengers kneel in prayer, looking up towards the saint and away from the figure swimming in the bottom right corner. This siren gestures towards the scene with her right hand.

Saint Nicholas of Tolentino Saving a Shipwreck is part of a larger altarpiece dedicated to the saint depicting scenes from his vita. Only two other panels of the five belonging to this altarpiece have been identified so far:one is a side panel placed underneath Saving a Shipwreck titled Saint Nicholas of Tolentino Interceding at Ventorinus’s Funeral (also known as the Vienna Miracle of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino), now at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna. The other panel is the center portrait located at Sant’ Agostino church in Montepulciano, Italy believed to have been inspired by the images of Saint Bernardino by Pietro di Giovanni d’Ambrogio (1444) and Sano di Pietro (1450). The altarpiece itself, presumably commissioned for Sant’Agostino, is modeled after Simone Martini’s 1324 Beato Agostino Novello which features a similar central portrait flanked by two scenes from the saint’s vita on each side. Altar panels of a shipwreck miracle performed by Nicholas of Bari by Gentile da Fabriano (1425) and another by Lorenzo Monaco (1423-4) would have both been familiar to Giovanni. From Monaco, details including the broken sails of the ship and barren background can also be seen in Saving a Shipwreck, while the most notable inspiration from Gentile da Fabriano is the addition of the siren in the bottom corner, although she is depicted with fish tails and scales. The figure of the siren was often a composite fish woman or bird woman, sharing some of the mermaid’s meaning and iconography.

In Gentile’s Nicholas of Bari piece, the siren swims away from the ship, likely "fleeing from the saint’s powers" (Strehlke). Giovanni di Paolo curiously paints his siren swimming towards the ship instead and interacting with the ongoing action. During the late medieval period and early Renaissance, sirens carried the connotations of lust and nefarious intentions contrasted with their extraordinary beauty. Giovanni di Paolo’s siren, like that of Gentile, is shown to have the seductive hallmarks of long blonde hair and nudity, perhaps meant to distract the sailors from their prayer. Even prior to the translation of The Odyssey into Latin by Leonzio Pilato around 1360, sirens had cultural connotations with seduction and danger in Italy throughout the Middle Ages. In the thirteenth century, Brunetto Latini wrote,

Through their sweet song [sirens] made the unsuspecting people who were passing over the sea perish. But in truth, the sirens were three prostitutes who tricked all passers-by and brought them to ruin…they remain in the water because lust was made of moisture (Miziolek).

Other authors focused on the spiritual distraction a siren represented, such as Alberic of London (the third Vatican Mythographer) in the twelfth century:

The wise man stops up the ears of his dependants, lest they hear [the Sirens’] melodies, that is he instructs them with salutary teachings, lest they become entangled in secular delights. But he himself passes by bound to the mast, that is, supported by virtue, although he feels the enticements of the mutable world, yet he despises them and makes course for his fatherland of eternal bliss (Holford-Strevens).

Following the Latin translation of The Odyssey in the fourteenth century, the work of Italian scholars such as Petrarch and Boccaccio (the latter’s Genealogia deorum gentilium of 1360 is one example) helped spread the Homeric myths throughout Italy and beyond. Representations of classical, fully human sirens made their way into the art of the fifteenth century: for example, Apollonio di Giovanni’s Odyssey panels from 1440 features four sirens surrounding Odysseus tied to his ship’s mast. While these sirens are also blonde and nude, they are noticeably less intimidating than Giovanni di Paolo’s single siren.

Giovanni di Paolo was born in late fourteenth century Siena, likely in 1399, where he continued to live and work throughout his life. As such, Giovanni was mainly inspired by the Sienese and Florentine art scenes, most significantly the artists Gentile da Fabriano (1370-1427) and Simone Martini (1284-1344), whose works he sketched and copied. His first commission at the age of eighteen in 1417 was an illuminated book of hours for a professor of law; manuscripts and altarpieces continued to be his best known works. Critics note his unusual style for the time which placed emphasis on new ways of representing narrative, graceful stylization of the human figure, and effects designed to evoke the viewers’ emotions. Like many artists, Giovanni apparently kept extensive sketchbooks of model figures, poses, compositions, and more to recycle in his paintings, but his fresh and sensitive reinterpretations made him one of the most sought-after artists in Renaissance Siena. His patrons included Dominicans, Servites, Franciscans, private individuals and families, guilds, and even Pope Pius II. Among his most frequent patrons were friars of the Augustinian order whose commissions include the altarpiece of Saint Nicholas in Montepulciano and a 1445 mural in San Leonardo al Lago.

Saint Nicholas of Tolentino Saving a Shipwreck was painted one hundred and fifty years after the death of the saint in 1306 and ten years after his canonization in 1446 by Pope Eugenius IV. As a more recently canonized saint, artists representing Nicholas of Tolentino borrowed imagery from other saints, including the aforementioned Saint Nicholas of Bari and Saint Bernardino, to help establish the visual markers and provide further legitimacy. A 1326 biography by Pietro da Monte Rubiano likely assisted in the panel’s creation and would have been accessible to Giovanni di Paolo as the Sienese government had acquired a copy in 1446, eleven years prior to completion of the panel. The biography was written to complement the 1325 depositions for canonization, during which three hundred and seventy-one witnesses attested Nicholas of Tolentino’s alleged miracles.

Devotion to Nicholas was amassing popularity in the region leading up to the depositions, seen in artistic representations such as the 1325 fresco in the chapel of Basilica di San Nicola in Tolentino generally attributed to Giovanni di Rimini, or the 1375 mural outside of Siena in Lecceto. His emergence as a protector from plague in the late fourteenth century also contributed to his following and sustains the debate over the Vienna companion panel as a plague scene rather than Venorinus’ resurrection. As the first Augustinian to be canonized, Saint Nicholas of Tolentino contributed to Pope Eugenius’ efforts of reform in the monastic and mendicant orders, but also fulfilled a deeply personal interest previously seen in the pope’s visits to Augustinian communities and his founding of the Congregation of Secular Augustiniain Canons of San Giorgio in Alga on the Venetian lagoon. For the Augustinians, the canonization and artistic representation of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino served the dual purpose of piety and political influence.