Bembo Panel

This painting by Bonifacio Bembo was originally the right panel of a triptych; at center would have been a panel depicting the Coronation of Christ and the Virgin; and, at left, a panel showing the Kiss of St. Anne and St. Joachim, which, like the panel on view here, is also in the collection of the Denver Museum of Art, the only American museum to hold paintings attributed to Bembo. Although executed in oil paint on a wooden support, materials that offered very different working properties than the pasteboard and tempera of the cards, many of the personages and backgrounds are similar. In the top middle, the bearded figure with the pointy red hat is reminiscent of the Magician card. Bembo’s style is evident in the elongated hands of the Virgin, the child, and the magi. The hills in the distance and the greenery at bottom and at center left evoke the physical world of the cards. The ornamental coats, colored stockings, and myriad folds in the Virgin’s dress conjure the fashion of the ducal court. The heads in the painting, human and animal, look in all directions – left and right, down, and occasionally straight at the viewer. Bembo uses this technique in many of the cards and it gives the individual characters a sense of mystery or isolation. The clearest relationship between Bembo’s figures can be seen by comparing the standing magus at right with the Page of Cups displayed nearby.