Guided Pathway

If we imagine the panel’s own vault as resting on a central column, the capital is formed by a detail from a bronze relief by Bartolomeo Bellano (#7). When viewed with the scenes of Christ’s childhood to its left, this is simply another image of two parents protecting their child. However, if we look at the relief in its entirety, we discover that these figures are peripheral witnesses to the crucial moment in the story of Solomon. The king has rendered his judgment, and the executioner raises his sword to halve the child. Thus this detail ties the nurturing calm of the panel’s left side to the violent fury of its right.

This duality is maintained in the four images that follow on the vertical axis beneath, of which two show Tobias and the angel, and two show Judith with the head of Holofernes. On a cassone panel with legends of the saints (#14), the angel shepherds Tobias through a landscape of spiritual and physical danger, including the temptation of Saint Anthony and the martyrdom of Saint Stephen. In Botticini’s painting below (#15), Raphael and Tobias are joined by two further archangels. At right stands Gabriel with the lily that he presents to the Virgin in scenes of the annunciation, while at left Michael holds high the sword with which he usually spears the devil.

The engraving below is literally double (#22). At top, Judith stands triumphant, her sword in one hand, and the head of her foe in the other. Below, two figures clad in armor display a shield decorated with a female personification optimistically interpreted as “hope.” If the engraving seeks to redeem the individual act of violence by placing it in the service of a canonical virtue, the Ghirlandaio below is more ambiguous (#25.1). The grisaille relief that accompanies the two women shows, not a principle personified, but another soldier winning another battle. Here victory justifies itself.