18 - Reconsidering the Traces of Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello in the Lateran Basilica

Summary

In 1998 the author published a fragment of the lost frescoes by Gentile da Fabriano, a frieze with foliated scrolls, surviving at the top of the right wall of the Lateran Basilica, at the end of the nave towards the main altar. In that paper he reconsidered all the documentary sources for the mural paintings undertaken by Gentile and Pisanello in the Basilica and argued the idea that the cycle was projected for both walls, devoted to the life of St John Baptist and St John the Divine, but uncompleted by Pisanello himself. The Veronese painter worked probably until the eighth story (eleventh, according to other scholars) of the St. John Baptist cycle. This chapter considers three other erratic fragments, relatable to the lost mural cycle: the so-called head of David of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the remains of a colossal head in the south-east corner of the Lateran Closter, considered by Bramante according a fanciful tradition, and the female head in the Museo Nazionale di palazzo Venezia, by Pisanello. The latter piece is examined as a new iconographic context in the St John the Baptist cycle.