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The Chalice of Santa Giustina in Monselice

The chalice was originally one of many in the collection of the Church of Santa Giustina in Monselice. It is kept at the Diocesan Museum in Padua. It is thought to have been made by the Paduan workshop between the late 14th century to early 15th century. The height of this chalice is 25.5 cm.

Chalice of Saint Giustina

Chalice
Artist	Generally judged as Paduan workshop
Year	Late fourteenth century to early fifteenth century
Dimensions	25 cm (10 in)
Location	Diocesan Museum, Padua

History

This Chalice was made especially for the parish church of Santa Giustina in Monselice. Among the six images at the base of it is a figure of Christ on the cross, and we can note the appearance of Santa Giustina

Chalice partial: Christ on the Cross

on the hill and the church of San Paoloat the foot of the hill on either side of the cross. In addition, the saints

that appear at the base, the central diamond-shaped projections, and the part of the cup holder are identified as the patron saints of the church and the parish. The date of the chalice cannot be fully determined, but the approximate range is from the end of the fourteenth century to the beginning of the fifteenth century. On one hand, has been suggested that the painterAltichiero da Zevio may have been involved in the design of these panels and that this work was completed before the artist's death, in 1393. On the other hand, the use of the punch technique at the base of the chalice, which was only possible after the annexation of Padua by the Venetian Republic,pushes the date forward to 1405. Another event related to this chalice is the re-consecration of Santa Giustina by Bishop Giovanni in 1403.

Description

The base of the chalice is divided into six areas by botanical figures, each centered by a spiked blue enamel piece tilted toward the axis, each with a metal-engraved figure. Only the part of the halo above the figure now retains the green enamel layer, but G. Ericani's research suggests that initially all figures were covered with enamel, as seen in the halo.

Chalice partial: Bust of St. John

The bottom of the chalice is connected to the central shaft by several components, the lowermost of which is decorated with a string of beads and then tapered inward, and the upper component is inscribed with an inscription. The inscription reads PRESBITERI IACHOBI ME FECIT FIERI (Presbyter James made me made). Double rows of openwork arches surround the top and bottom of the central sphere, which is surrounded by ivy foliage all around and has six diamond-shaped projections with painted images of saints. G.Ericani believes that these diamond-shaped bumps were originally covered with enamel as well. The central shaft is joined to the bottom of the cup section by a six-leaf circular cup holder, with a bust carved into each leaf area. The cup portion gradually expands upward.

Chalice is made of gold, silver, and enamel. Traces on the base of the chalice indicate that the enamel technique known as champlevé champlevéwas used to create it. This technique is performed by first making frameworks on the surface of a metal object, and then filling them with glass enamel powder. Then the piece is fired until the powder melts, and after cooling and setting, the surface is polished. Usually, the surface of works made in this way can still be seen as a metal framework. In addition to Enamal technique, the chalice was made using silver casting, embossed, chiseled, punched, and golden techniques. The combined use of multiple techniques may reflect the specific notion that the closer an art approaches perfection, the closer it approaches divine creation, the more of the lower arts it will inevitably contain, just as a work that contains relatively minor separate techniques such as painting, sculpture, and casting.

Iconography

The foot of the chalice shows six half-length figures, including the crucifixion and various saints: St. Giustina of course, the titular saint of the church the chalice comes from, but also St. John the Evangelist, the Vergin Mary, St. Peter and finally St. Martin or maybe St. Bartholomew. Other saints were represented on the pomo, the central spherical node. They completed the decoration, with the saints represented on the base. On the rhomboidal nails are engraved the figures of St. Christopher, a holy bishop holding the model of a church (St. Sabinus?), St. Catherine, a prophet saint (St. Simeon?), St. Philip (?) and St. Daniel (?). Engraved in the six-lobed circular cup holder are half-figures totally filling the fields: the symbols of the four Evangelists, St. Paul and St. James.

St. Giustina in Monselice was born as a pieve, that is the center of a precise baptismal district with the right to care for the souls of the faithful residing there. The church originally stood on the top of the mountain, but in 1256 it was destroyed by Federico II, in order to build his castrum, and the pieve was officially transferred to S. Martino Nuovo, which took the title of S. Giustina, in a more convenient location for both canons of Monselice “et etiam hominum inibi habitantium”. The better location, halfway up the hill, probably facilitated the attendance of worshippers and the regular exercise of soul care. Although small compared to Padua, the center of Monselice held a significant political position in the Middle Age thanks to the rich religious foundations which spread collective identity. These communities were formed by groups that had the same spiritual needs and shared the same charitable commitment: the collaboration between civil and ecclesiastical institutions, led to the birth of two welfare structures in Monselice, the hospital of St. James in 1162 and the leprosarium of St. Michael in 1191. There was a need to offer care to the poor and pilgrims arriving in Monselice, located on the ancient Roman road from Bologna to Padua. The dedication of the hospital to James the Great, protector of wayfarers and pilgrims, who is also represented on the chalice, is quite clear, but it should be emphasized in relation to the presence of another saint engraved on the chalice: St. Christopher. The role of Monselice as a spiritual and territorial crossroads is significant if we consider the role of the ferryman of pilgrims assigned to St. Christopher by the tradition spread in the 13th century by Jacopo da Varagine's Legenda Aurea: when he converted by putting himself at the service of Christ, he began to make wayfarers and pilgrims cross a dangerous river by loading them on his shoulders, since he had the strength of a giant. Another of the so-called Christophers saints was the prophet Simeon, another figure probably engraved on the chalice, who according to the tradition was an old man who held the baby Jesus in his arms during the Presentation in the temple.

The identification of the figure of the saint with the knife/sword attribute, played out between St. Bartholomew and St. Martin, remains doubtful. The link between the cult of St Justine in Padua and that of St. Martin is documented by one of the oldest documents mentioning the saint's tomb: the Vita Martini, written by Venanzio Fortunato in 573: from this ancient testimony, we know that the Paduan basilica of Santa Giustina prior to the post-earthquake reconstruction of 1117 had the deeds of St Martin painted on the walls of the saint's tomb. Considering Venanzio Fortunato's testimony attesting the ancient existence of St. Martin in Padua's figurative culture, and considering the ancient dedication of the Monselice church to St. Martin, it is likely that - as has been said - the saint in bishop's attire accompanying the Virgin and Child painted on the bottom of the apse of S. Giustina in Monselice can be identified precisely with St. Martin (Enrica Cozzi dates the paintings to the mid-13th century).

Style

The chalice made by the Sienese goldsmith Guccio di Mannaia on the commission of Nicholas IV for the basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, an absolute masterpiece of medieval goldsmithing, represents a "heroic moment" in the history of the Italian chalice, where it became the progenitor of a new tradition destined to last for over two centuries and to spread widely. Proof of the authoritativeness and persistence of the Sienese model is – along with many other pieces – also the chalice made for the Collegiate Church of Santa Giustina, from which it transposes the distinctly late-Gothic style of the structure and other decorative details. Still referable to the Sienese sphere is the choice of completely covering the figures with translucent enamel and the adoption of the hexalobed conical foot in place of the octagonal polylobed one.

Other similarities, such as the introduction of polychrome translucent ogive enamels and the distinctly Sienese style, can be found in the chalice known as the Cardinal Albergati chalice from the Treasury of Saint Petronio in Bologna, dated to the 1420s. Again, other stylistic similarities can be found in a group of chalices dated to the first decades of the 15th century that the scholar Steingräber refers to the Da Sesto workshop; with the Monselice chalice they share the structure of the stem and the node still in the 14th-century style, the projecting trefoil panels and the presence of leaves on the foot applied with fanciful lightness, in keeping with Venetian taste. Scholar Ericani then identifies close affinities with 14th-century Venetian examples by the Master of the Serpentine in the presence of engraved plaques covered with translucent enamel and in the vegetal decoration. The latter, a key piece of Venetian goldsmith's art, bears translucent enamels, a exuberant embossed decoration and an astonishing animalistic component, «with an almost ferocious plastic energy». Despite the wild freedom of the decoration, it is conducted with skilful restraint and freshness. Compared to chalice kept at the Tesoro di San Marco museum, the chalice of Santa Giustina features an embossed decoration in more essential, firm and regular forms.

With the Chalice of San Geminiano (c. 1340 - 1350) – also rich in enamels and plant elements – it shares the limpid rationality and control of the decorative structure. The Giottesque character of the set of enamels, arranged with impeccable measure, leaps out in the essential plastic clarity, in the dense spatial articulation, in the sweetness of the sentimental intonation with which they are conducted. Relative to the Padua area are the stylistic similarities with the reliquaries of the Treasure of the Basilica of the Saint from the late 14th and early 15th centuries; the foot of the Monselice chalice, for example, shares with the reliquary of the Cappuccio di San Francesco, the rational organisation of the foliage decoration and the particularly prominent embossing.

The presence of the architectural backdrop recalls illustrious examples from Padua, such as Altichiero da Zevio's Crucifixion in the Chapel of St. James. On the basis of the formal values that strongly recall Giotto's tradition, evident in the ample and dense plasticity, in the robust volumes, «worthy of the neo-Giottesque lesson», and given the lofty quality of the figurations, a possible intervention by Altichiero himself, or by direct followers in the designs for the panels, has been proposed. The figurative plaques are also up-to-date on Paduan artistic culture and point towards execution in a workshop operating in the city of the Saint.

Finally, one cannot fail to remember how much the goldsmith's production guided and informed that of painting: one need only note the close stylistic dependence of the base of the throne of the Madonna and Child in Berlin by Guariento with the foot of the Chalice in Monselice.

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