Federigo Pedulli

I remember the first night I ever saw the painting. Maybe six years ago. It was dark, a rare night call for me. The owner was a young man, married with a child. He was having hard times. The house was a two story on the end of a cul de sac, a middle class neighborhood of fairly new, but nondescript homes.

He had explained to me that his parents had once owned a gallery in North County in the 1960's. He was trying to sell their art. I recognized a few of the names, local San Diego artists who pretty much never went anywhere. A few decent canvasses but mostly those awful nudes. Boudoir nudes from the 1960's over thirty of them, the kind that would have been in gentleman's magazines in the 1950's but very overdone and tawdry. Not for me, anyway.

I remember seeing the watercolor then and being amazed at it's depth, detail and complexity. A painting of a european chapel. How much was it? Not for sale at this time. Appeared to be unsigned. I filed it away under one of the great one's that got away and went back to it often in the ensuing years. Thought about calling the young man back but never did.

I got the call from the picker a couple of months ago. A woman had been widowed and she needed to sell her art. She had been born again in a big way. Had painted over all of her husband's nudes, well, at least the one's she hadn't shredded. I asked about the nudes and found out that they were painted by a man named Garrison. Garrison, I thought, I remember that name. Was there a large painting of a chapel, I inquired? Oh, the church, sure, the man said. Bingo, I thought.

In the following week, I made an offer on the painting which was accepted and started doing my research, the most exhilarating and stimulating part of my job. The painting was heavy, one of the heaviest paintings I have ever owned, still having a thick wood panel backing. It stood over six feet tall, in the original gilt frame and wavy glass. The image a robust 34 x 52". And oh, what a frame, an orientalist design from the late 1880's, with a side scalloping that is so rare in 19th century framing.

In a design sense the frame would I think be most properly termed moorish. The 1870's were the start of what we call the orientalist period, but the aesthetic wave tended much more in the early years towards japonism. The 1880's brought the movement more into the ottoman empire. People had "turkish" rooms in their homes in this period and this frame hearkens back to that movement. The scroll work and repeated pattens have no anthropomorphic or living pictorial elements, which were taboo to depict in islamic culture. The frame is an article of great beauty in itself, almost perfectly pristine with very few losses.

The painting itself, which dates to around 1888, was in perfect condition, with little or no fading. It was the finest watercolor I have ever seen, the frescoes depicted evidently having been painted with a single hair brush. It had to take years to complete and literally be someone's life's work. It still bore pencil marks on the right side of the painting near the column as if the artist could go so far, but only so far. Removing the glass and exploring the work under magnification I saw the tiny lines of paint that broached the paintings border. The execution of the painting is perfect. The illuminated light coming in the large stained glass windows on the left showing just the perfect hue and gamma.

I did find a signature on the bottom, F. Pedulli and the detective work started. I googled Pedulli and found a Federico Pedulli, first name also alternately spelled Federigo. Born in 1860.  I found a study for the painting on ASKART online. It had failed to sell at a Paris auction house, Tajan. It was titled Intérieur de chapelle de couvent à Florence and created in 1888. It was about a third of the size of my painting. I see that one of his paintings is held in a museum in Milan. Another in Worcester.

He is mentioned in a few more places, this old snippet in a book, but not much else: (29) Perhaps Federico Pedulli, dealer at Florence, mentioned in The Burlington Magazine, Vol. LXIII (1933), p. 174. References: (a) E. Sandberg-Vavala, ....

Could he have in fact been a dealer as well as an artist? I find records of two or three more of his paintings that have sold at auction in past years. These two thumbnails years ago at Butterfields, both Florence paintings as well.

Both titled IL CORTILE DEL BARGELLO A FIRENZE . I find another work and then another reference to Pedulli regarding a work by the 14th century Italian artist Orcagna at the Walters Museum.


I started trying to figure out more information about my painting. My first thought was researching the family crest found on the pilaster. It would have been the family that commissioned the chapel. Alas, it was family that I could not find the emblem of, in any of my research on italian nobility. Why could it not have been somebody easy like the DeMedicis?  

Not being a catholic, I started querying a few that I knew. One told me that the garb of the priest looked Dominican, not of the Jesuit or Franciscan Order. Here is the Wickipedia entry for Dominicans:


The Order of Preachers (Latin: Ordo Praedicatorum), after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III (1216–27) on 22 December 1216 in France. Membership in the Order includes friars^[1], nuns, congregations of active sisters, and lay persons affiliated with the order (formerly known as tertiaries, now Lay or Secular Dominicans).
A number of other names have been used to refer to both the order and its members.

• In England and other countries the Dominicans are referred to as Black Friars because of the black cappa or cloak they wear over their white habits.^[2] Dominicans were Blackfriars, as opposed to Whitefriars (for example, the Carmelites) or Greyfriars (for example, Franciscans). They are also distinct from the Augustinian Friars (the Austin friars) who wear a similar habit.
• In France, the Dominicans are known as Jacobins, because their first convent in Paris was built near the church of Saint Jacques,^[3] and Jacques is Jacobus in Latin.
• Their identification as Dominicans gave rise to the pun that they were the Domini canes, or Hounds of the Lord.^[4]

Members of the order generally carry the letters O.P. standing for Ordinis Praedicatorum, meaning of the Order of Preachers, after their names.

Founded to preach the Gospel and to combat heresy, the order is famed for its intellectual tradition, having produced many leading theologians and philosophers. The Dominican Order is headed by the Master of the Order, who is currently Father Bruno Cadoré.^[5]Bingo. This was the information that I needed. I found the Dominican Chapel in Florence, Santa Maria Novella. The New Basilica of Santa Maria, if you can call something built in 1221 new. But I could find no images of this chapel in my research. So I decided to google florence murals and found this page. Eureka. One of my murals. Ghirlandaio's 14th century painting, The Visitation.

I knew exactly now where my painting was executed. Pedulli's masterwork was in fact depicting the Tornabuoni Chapel. 


The Santa Maria Novella church is located across from the railway station. It was the first great basilica in Florence and the principal Dominican Church. Rich Florentine families would donate buildings in order to have a consecrated place to be buried.


Tornabuoni was a family that picked up the rights to the chapel from the Sassettis: 


The main chapel of Santa Maria Novella was first frescoed in the mid-14th century by Andrea Orcagna. Remains of these paintings were found during restorations in the 1940s: these included, mostly in the vault, figures from the Old Testament. Some of these were detached and can be seen today in the Museum of the church.


By the late 15th century, Orcagna's frescoes were in poor condition. The Sassetti, a rich and powerful Florentine family who were the bankers of the Medici, had long held the right to decorate the main altar of the chapel, while the walls and the choir had been assigned to the Ricci family. However, the Ricci had never recovered from their bankruptcy in 1348, and so they arranged to sell their rights to the choir to the Sassetti. Francesco Sassetti wanted the new frescoes to portray stories of St. Francis of Assisi; however, the Dominicans, to whom Santa Maria Novella was entrusted, refused. Sassetti therefore moved the commission to the church of Santa Trinita, where Ghirlandaio executed one of his masterworks, the Sassetti Chapel. The rights to the chapel in Santa Maria Novella that were lost by the Sassetti were then sold by the Ricci to Giovanni Tornabuoni.


Ghirlandaio, who then had the largest workshop in Florence, did not lose the commission however, because on September 1, 1485 Giovanni Tornabuoni commissioned him to paint the main chapel, this time with the lives of the Virgin and St. John the Baptist, patron of Tornabuoni and of the city of Florence. It is possible that the new scenes followed the same pattern as Orcagna's.


Ghirlandaio worked to the frescoes from 1485 to 1490, with the collaboration of his workshop artists, who included his brothers Davide and Benedetto, his brother-in-law Sebastiano Mainardi and, probably, the young Michelangelo Buonarroti. The windows were also executed according to Ghirlandaio's design. The complex was completed by an altarpiece portraying the Madonna del Latte in Glory with Angel and Saints, flanked by two panels with St. Catherine of Siena and St. Lawrence. On the recto a Resurrection of Christ was painted.

I had now found my chapel and my frescoes. I can now sleep better. I hope that you can visit my gallery and marvel and share my appreciation for this sensational work.

Nothing too exceptional or brilliant about my efforts. A few well placed keystrokes and the information appears. But now my two dimensional image turns into a window to the past and becomes much more interesting, at least to me.

I would like to tell you that I get as much pleasure doing the detective work on a painting like this as I do selling it but you would only call me a liar. But believe me when I tell you that I feel it is a privilege to be its custodian.