1414
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Navicella (recto) is a 1414 by Parri Spinelli, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a boat full of men in rough waves, with Jesus walking toward them on the water. This is a rare surviving drawing from the early 1400s. Back then, artists didn’t sketch much—most work was done straight on wood or walls. Parri Spinelli copied a giant mosaic that once stood at Old Saint Peter’s in Rome. The original is gone, so his drawing is the closest we have. To see more early Italian drawings, look up Parri Spinelli (Italian, 1387–c. 1453).
Parri Spinelli was most important painter from Arezzo in the early 1300s. About 30 of his drawings are extant, more than for any other artist of the period, when drawing was just beginning to be common to artistic practice. Spinelli used a quill pen and ink on a large sheet of paper to copy the composition of a monumental mosaic by the Florentine artist Giotto that adorned the portico of Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome (since destroyed). In this scene from the Bible, Christ walks on water at right, while Saint Peter kneels before him in front of a ship filled with Christ’s disciples.…
Dating from the early 1400s, this drawing by Parri Spinelli is the oldest in the Cleveland Museum of Art's collection.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Parri Spinelli (c. 1387 – 1453) was an Italian (Tuscan) painter of the early renaissance who was born in the Province of Arezzo. His father and teacher was Spinello Aretino (1350–1410), who was active throughout…
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