Watercolour, copy after the fresco The Procession of the Kings (wall with the Procession of the Middle King, Balthasar), Benozzo Gozzoli in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi Chapel (Florence), Edward Kaiser, Arundel Society watercolour, c. 1881

Watercolour showing a scene taking place in a mountainous landscape. It represents a procession with numerous well-dressed figures, horses and exotic animals. On the foreground, on the right hand side is depicted a horseman with a crown wearing a coat embodied with gold, it is the Magi Balthasar.

Museum acquisition in 1995, from the National Gallery of Art, London.
Watercolour copy made for the Arundel society. Not published

This watercolour is a copy made around 1881 for the Arundel Society by Edward Kaiser (1820-1895) after one of the scenes (Procession of the Middle King, Balthasar) of Benozzo Gozzoli’s fresco cycle of the Procession of the Magi. However this copy was never lithographed or engraved and remained unpublished.

Original work
Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497) was first the apprentice to the famous painter Fra Angelico (1395-1455; for copies after Fra Angelico made for the Arundel Society see Museum nos. E.4 to E.18-1995), whom he assisted in the 1440s in painting frescoes cycles in the monastery of San Marco (Florence), in San Brizio chapel in the Duomo of Orvieto and in the Niccoline chapel in the Vatican. Gozzoli’s independent career as a painter started in 1450 when he moved to Montefalco, a small town in the province of Perugia in Umbria (Italy). During the following three years (1450-52) he worked intensely, first in the church of San Fortunato, then in the church of San Francesco (see the copies made after these cycles for the Arundel Society, Museum nos. E.152 to E.156-1995). He then painted in Viterbo cathedral a cycle of frescoes representing the Life of Saint Rose, none of which survive.

In 1459-60, Gozzoli undertook a very prestigious commission: the fresco cycle in the chapel of the Palazzo Medici in Florence (today Palazzo Medici-Riccardi). He painted on all walls of the small chapel the Procession of the Magi in the rich narrative and decorative style typical of the Italian late Gothic. The three Kings are usually identified as Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449-1492, called Lorenzo the Magnificient) as the Young King Gaspar, the penultimate Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos (1392-1448) as the Middle King Balthasar, and Joseph II (1360-1439), Patriarch of Constantinople, as the Old King Melchior. Both John VIII Palaiologos and Joseph II had come to the Tuscan capital in 1439 for the Council of Florence.

The fresco, located in the family chapel was also meant as a celebration of the financial support provided by Cosimo de’ Medici (Lorenzo’s father) in the organisation of the Council two decades earlier. An endless train of colourfully and opulently dressed courtiers escorts the oriental princes down from the distant hills against a background of wild rocky slopes. The courtiers depicted bear the features of many wealthy and important Florentine patricians. The lushness and the magnificence of the numerous details have long attracted great admiration.

Arundel Society
The Arundel Society was founded in 1848 to promote knowledge of the art through the publication of reproductions of works of art. The Society was named after Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel (1585-1646), important aristocratic patron and collector of the early Stuart period. The Society was intended to reach the largest possible audience through these reproductions. Subjects were chosen because of their instructive meaning rather than their popularity. In addition to copies of famous paintings, the Society published an English translation of Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the most excellent painters, made in 1850 by Giovanni Aubrey Bezzi (1785-1789), one of the founding members of the Society.

The Arundel Society popularised Renaissance art, particularly that of the Italian Old Masters, echoing a growing interest for ‘primitives’ in the second half of the nineteenth century. The founding members of the Arundel Society were all acknowledge experts on Italian art. For instance, Sir Charles Eastlake (1793–1865; painter and art administrator), whose house was the meeting point of the Society, was Director of the National Gallery in London from 1855 until 1865 and during his tenure, he began one of the finest collections of Italian art in Britain.

Other preeminent members were John Ruskin (1819-1900, English writer, painter and collector), who supervised projects including the watercolours series of the Upper and Lower Church in Assisi, and Sir Austen H. Layard (1817-1894; English archaeologist, politician, diplomat, collector and writer). Layard lived and travelled in Italy for many years and his knowledge of the country’s art was extensive. It was thanks to Layard’s funding that the Society were able to publish copies of the watercolours made at their direction using chromolithography. Although photography was increasingly popular, as photographs could only be made in black and white, chromolithography was chosen as it was felt to be closer to the principals of the Arundel Society: they were coloured and had the aura of traditional prints. In this way, copies were more like the originals.

The Society reached the height of its popularity in the 1860s. However, by the end of the century, it faced mounting criticism with regards to the accuracy of its watercolour copies. The Society ceased its activities in 1897. At this time the availability of second hand prints had increased and the Society found it difficult to find market for its chromolithographs. Moreover, photographic reproductions were becoming increasingly popular thanks to technical advances. The last display of the Arundel Society’s watercolours took place at the National Gallery and when the Society was dissolved, some watercolours were given to that Institution, while others were acquired by the then South Kensington Museum (now V&A). The outstanding watercolours were transferred from the National Gallery to the V&A in the 1990s.

Arundel Society’s choices
In nine watercolour copies, executed around 1881, Edward Kaiser represented every wall of the Magi Chapel. Only three of them were then published (Museum no. E.157-1995, E.160-1995, E.165-1995), as chromolithographs in Berlin by the firm Frick, two in 1884 and the last one in 1887. Oddly, the published watercolours were all copies after secondary scenes (Angels adoring and details of archers) and none of the walls representing the Magi themselves were printed.

Gozzoli’s first biographer, Giorgio Vasari, gave the painter scant praise (Acidini Luchinat 1994, p. 4). The idea that Gozzoli was an extremely pleasant painter but one who perpetuated an old-fashioned Gothic style persisted along the centuries. At the time of the Arundel Society, no specific study had yet been dedicated to him. Studies only began to appear at the very end of the Nineteenth century and the first text in English was not published until 1904 (Strokes, 1904).

Despite his scarce fame, the Arundel Society committee seems to have shown a recurring interest in the painter, perhaps because he had been Fra Angelico’s assistant or possibly because of his highly decorative style. Consequently, in around two decades, the Society commissioned as many as twenty-one watercolour copies after Gozzoli (more than Fra Angelico [20 copies] or Ghirlandaio [18 copies]) to three different copyists.

Although the Magi Chapel is universally considered Gozzoli’s most important work, the Arundel Society commissioned these copies only after having hired other artists to copy two other fresco cycles by the artist. Thus, six watercolours after scenes of the Life of Sant’Agostino in the church of Sant’Agostino in San Gimignano were first copied in 1863 by Cesare Mariannecci (Museum nos. 2804, E.166 to E.170-1995) while another five copies of the Life of Saint Francis (Museum nos. E.152 to E.156-1995) in the church of San Francesco in Umbria were made by Eliseo Fattorini in 1872.

Copyist
Edward Kaiser (1820-1895) was an Austrian water-colourist and lithographer. He studied in Vienna where he became a famous portrait lithographer from the late 1840s to the 1860s. After a first sojourn in Rome in 1852-1853, he returned to Italy in 1867, splitting his time between Rome and Florence. He decided to devote his career to the copying of great works of art, a taste for which he had already developed in Vienna, making copies after the paintings in the Belvedere.

Kaiser began work for the Arundel Society in 1869. Although his first copies were not greatly praised, he soon received important commissions, such as the copying of the frescoes in the Upper and Lower churches of San Francesco in Assisi under the supervision of John Ruskin (see for instance Museum nos. E.121 to E.134-1995). In a little over fifteen years, Kaiser realised about 150 copies after old master paintings for the Society, in particular after Giotto’s work in Padua and Assisi but also, for example, after Masolino’s frescoes at Castiglione d’Olona, Pinturicchio’s Piccolomini library cycle in Siena and Fra Angelico’s frescoes in the Vatican. By 1885, Kaiser’s copies had fallen out of favour with the Society’s council and the commissions were indefinitely suspended. He finally returned to Vienna in 1886, where he spent the rest of his life, dedicating himself to oil and watercolour portrait painting.

This watercolour is a copy made around 1881 by the Austrian artist Edward Kaiser (1820-1895) after Benozzo Gozzoli’s fresco painting depicting Procession of the Middle King (Balthasar). The scene belongs to the Procession of the Magi cycle in the chapel of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi (Florence) painted by Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497) in 1459-1461.
Kaiser’s copy was commissioned by the Arundel Society. Founded in 1848, the society commissioned and published reproductions like this one in order to promote knowledge of the art European Old Masters. However, this copy was never published.

E.162-1995